Chapter Text
“Ja—Robin?”
“Discowing?” His eyesight was fuzzy but Dick’s voice was clear if not wobbly in shock. Those colors were completely wrong though, so Jason blinked rough and hard and threw himself back while the dizziness faded to see Dick in a whole different outfit with an arm outstretched, looking more shocked than he's ever seen before.
“Nightwing.”
“What?” Jason keeps his guard up and reaches subtly for his batarangs. Clayface is usually better about copying them but Jason wouldn't put it past the man to try another trick.
“It's Nightwing now.” That draws Jason up short.
“Night…wing.” It fills his mouth oddly but he's used to rolling with the punches at this point as Robin. “Nightwing.” Only that couldn't be right because he just saw Dick in that ridiculous Discowing getup not an hour ago. He reaches for his batarangs again. Right as his fingers brush one and Nightwing seems to shift to duck, a black shadow lands behind Nightwing. Jason would recognize that looming figure anywhere.
“Batman!” He's drowned out by Nightwing and for some reason this fake Dick sounds a mixture of doomed and relieved. Any good copy would know now was not a good time for them; they had just had another very vocal fight. Jason lets loose a couple batarangs that the Nightwing copy ducks, giving Jason the room to roll around them and to Batman’s side.
“Batman!” he tries again, tugging a bit on that cape that he spent nights wrapped under. “C'mon! Something weird is going on! We gotta check on Discowing!” A strong hand lands on his shoulder and keeps him still. He can feel it shake in a way that Bruce never does even through the kevlar weave.
“Jason?” It's whisper-soft and barely carries in the wind. “Robin?” The hand on his shoulder clenches down and holds so roughly Jason can't help but knock it off. He takes a step back and finally sees everything wrong: the helmet, the chest piece, the gauntlets, even the belt and all the pockets. Batman looks wrong in all the ways someone can take something and shift it slightly to the right and claim it's the same.
“Who the fuck are you?” He takes three quick steps back for the one he hears the Nightwing-Dick imposter take behind him. Whirls around to keep both in his sight. “Who the fuck are you both?”
“Language.” It certainly sounds like Bruce.
“Shut up. Where's Batman?” A look passes between the Fake Batman and Nightwing-Dick and Jason is already turning to leave to find Discowing when he's suddenly encased in someone's arms. He snaps his head back and feels it clip someone's chin, hears the grunt, but the arms just tighten in response. “Let me go!” Snapping a foot out he kicks whoever is holding him in the ankle and hears them curse into his ear. It sounds like a kid. He pulls the arms off and is just about to flip away and off the roof edge when he spots Robin colors that stop him cold.
That's… not possible. That's a kid in Dick’s colors. In his colors. That's a kid in Robin colors.
Jason runs.
He knows these roofs. They're ten minutes away from the Alley and he ducks behind an air-conditioning unit when he sees a large man too heavily armored to be a civilian drive by on a motorcycle. He knows these roofs. It shouldn't be so different.
It shouldn't be so—
He needs to breathe. He needs to—
“Batman.” His voice is soft and shaky and desperate as he grasps at his communicator. It spits static back at him. “Discowing. Batgirl.” He chokes. His hands shake and he imagines Bruce holding him steady and telling him to breathe and take in his surroundings. “Agent A? Someone, come in.”
Static.
“Dick. Dick, please.” He can't help but break codename and call out, “This isn't funny. I promise I won't mess with your car again. Come on, Dick, please.”
Suddenly there's a screeching in his ear that leaves him scrambling at the comms before it goes away just as abruptly. Through the ringing he can hear someone calling. “Jason? Jason, are you there? Can you hear me?”
“Batgirl!” He'll deny collapsing against the wall in relief for the rest of his life.
“Oracle,” she says, and it sounds choked. “It's Oracle now.”
“What do yo—none of this is—”
“Get to the cave. We have a foxtrot-romeo-zero-two. You've been compromised.”
“I've been…” It shouldn't make sense, a FR-02, except it makes all the sense in the world with Gotham. “What did you help me do to Discowing's car?”
“We saran wrapped it to get back at him for wrapping all the nice chairs in the library with foil.”
Jason sits on the roof behind that air-conditioner and grips his hair so tight it pulls his scalp. “Batgirl—”
“Oracle.”
He wants to sob. “Oracle… what year is it?”
She's silent for too long. “Get to the cave. Follow protocol… Robin. Just… get home.” He can hear a shudder go through the mic on her end and a shallow sigh that he would almost call a sob. “Please.”
No one can deny Barbara Gordon when she asks for something so desperately. He gets up and looks over in the direction of the cave. It's going to take a while unless he boosts a ride. “On my way. ETA two hours depending on status of a ride.”
“Batmobile is headed your way. Batman is inside.”
“Batman?”
“Robin,” and Jason isn't sure what to make of that constant hesitance when she calls him that, “just get to the cave first. Please. Please, just get home.” He's never heard Barbara Gordon beg before. It rankles something in him. Makes him want to hunt what made her sound so desperate, so unsure, and shove his fist into it. But all he can do now to make it go away is go home which is exactly what he wants anyway.
“Okay. Okay, I'll wait for Batman. I'm over by—”
“I know where you are. I have your location. Just stay put.”
He can't help the frown and the way he glances at the cameras on the streets. “Right. Okay. I'll see you in a bit, Bat—Oracle.” Jason is calming down a bit and he has two dozen questions already he wants to ask but Barbara is right, there are protocols and he should wait for the cave. He can already hear the rumble of the Batmobile anyway.
“Jason—”
“Robin.” It comes out harsher than he intends it with the fresh memory of another kid in these colors. He grips his cape in his fist and tries not to wonder what happened to make him give it all up. Can't imagine giving it up willingly at all. Robin and the magic.
“Robin. Just… be careful with Bruce and… just be careful, okay?”
A slow finger of dread goes down his spine. An old fear of locking his door every night and keeping his back to every wall in that old manor where he never heard Bruce coming around corners. “Why? What did—what do you mean?” He refuses to believe Bruce did anything to him, he's learned better now, but old fears beaten into him on the streets are hard to shake off.
“Nothing,” Oracle hurriedly reassures even as Jason spies the headlights of the Batmobile turn around the street corner and veer into the alley, “Bruce didn't do anything, Robin. I'm saying you have to be careful with him.” Jason spots Batman rushing out of the car and frantically looking around the rooftops, feels something clench inside his chest.
“Copy that.” He doesn't hear anything else as he grapples down, just a bit too fast, and lets the wind whistle past his ears. “Batman!” he shouts and watches as Bruce snaps his head up and throws his arms open to catch Jason and spin them around to absorb the blow.
“Jason, Jason, Jay,” Bruce mumbles into his hair and it makes that tight thing clench inside him again. Makes the hair raise on the back of his neck.
“Codenames, Batman.” It gets him a choked off laugh. The arms around him tighten.
“Robin.” It sounds more like a grieving father and Jason wonders again what happened to him to make him pass on these colors. Where he is in this future or this universe to make Bruce hold on so tightly. “Robin.”
“Batman, get him to the cave. Now.” Dick's voice is harsh in the comms and Bruce takes one last shuddering breath in his hair before carrying him to the car. Jason would object except he's remembering Batg—Oracle telling him to be very careful with Batman and he's suddenly realizing what that means. Careful. Jason is starting to suspect he might have to be careful with everyone.
“I'll see you soon, Dis—Nightwing. We'll see you at the cave.” Jason tries to sound upbeat and like every other time he finishes a night out with Dick and Bruce out in Gotham. But then he's hearing Dick choke on the comms, a kid cursing, Oracle sighing, and he doesn't know what he did wrong. He imagines he'll find out soon with how the car is moving through the streets. There's an edge of desperation in the way Bruce takes the corners.
“Yeah. See you soon, kiddo,” Dick finally manages and it only just barely eases the anxiety twisting up in him.
Jason spends the drive trying his best to ignore Batman's glances and tightening grip on the steering wheel. But he can't help himself when they take a turn and—
“Connie's Diners is closed?” He plasters himself to the window as if he could look back and see the empty space the diner had occupied where they've passed already. Bruce jumps beside him and takes a few deep breaths.
“Yes. They closed a couple years back. I offered to buy them out but they decided to retire and close for good instead.”
“You're kidding.” Jason can feel his eyes go round even behind his domino as he twists to stare at Bruce. “They turned down you buying them out to retire? Those old cooks retired? They were never going to retire!”
“Evidently they did.”
“This is the worst timeline!” Jason screams as he throws his hands up and slouches so far down in the seat the seat belt digs into his chin. Bruce does his little cough when he's hiding his laugh and Jason hates how he still feels that warmth in his chest at being able to make this fake Bruce—this Bruce that isn't his yet, or this Bruce that just isn't his—laugh like he always can.
“It's not so bad.” Bruce cuts a glance over while speeding down a dirt road and Jason bites back the urge to snap out the dozen questions he has swimming in his throat. Bruce is looking at him like a ghost. Like a dead man walking.
He clasps his cape in his fist.
The car speeds through the secret entrance in the cliffside and Jason breathes through the disorientation he always gets. All this time and he's still not used to it. By the time they park though Jason has spotted more than a few people lingering in the cave. Bruce is leaving the car though and Robin's job is to follow so Jason leaves too.
“What the fuck.” It comes from a large man strapped with guns—guns, in the cave—and wearing a bright red helmet. They strike an imposing figure and Jason can't help but puff up to match the effect. He's never backed down from a fight. He won't do it now wearing the uniform on his chest. “What the fuck.” The man turns to Dick, to Bruce, to… to the kid in the Robin uniform. “What the fuck is this?”
“This is a FR-02,” Barbara's voice echoes around the cave as her face flickers to life on the computer screen. “Do you have any memory of this?”
The man, and Jason has a niggling suspicion on who he is, goes stock still. “If I did, do you think I would have come here on my own two feet?” The only reason it isn't spit out is because no one talks that way to Barbara Gordon. Jason can tell already. This is him. Those fists clench and unclench the same way as his own now. The question was too pointed.
“How old are you? I'm fourteen.”
The room freezes. It shouldn't be a hard question but on screen Barbara covers her mouth and bends over and Jason can see the back of a wheelchair. A wheelchair. Oracle, not Batgirl. Bruce stalks over to the lab sets and shuffles around it the way he does when he just needs to move his hands from all the emotions he can't express. Dick just falls into the chair.
“You're fourteen?” the kid asks and Jason tries not to stare at the ‘R’ on his chest.
“Yeah. How old am I?” He points at the older version of himself, still wearing that helmet and armed to the teeth with stuff Bruce would never allow.
“Old enough.” The helmet comes off and all Jason can see is the scar running across his face. He hears the rough tone and the snide words compute too slowly.
“For what?”
They laugh and Dick seems to know what's coming because he talks over the laugh. “Jason—” a look between the two of them, “Hood, do not.”
“So you're saying you want me to—”
“I never said that,” Dick roars. Pure anger in his voice in a way he rarely even gets with Bruce. Older him stops and stares. “I never said that. I just said not to do that. You're smart enough to piece things together, even at that age. You make one joke too many and he'll figure it out.”
“Maybe he should. Maybe then he won't be so fucking stupid as to—”
“Jason.”
“Bruce.” It throws Jason off, how the older version of him spits that name out with so much anger and hate.
“There is protocol.”
“And there's your kid,” —it's exactly what snide and condescending sounds like— “about to fly to his—”
“Jason.” Barbara cuts off Bruce's rising tones and his older version's angry words.
“Fuck you.” The cape crumbles under his hands as this older, rougher, broken version of him looks around with pain in his eyes that looks so much like hate. “Fuck all of you.” Suddenly all he sees is Willis's jawline and hears his rough voice and sees the larger bodies of every person who ever chased him on the street.
He refuses to cower in this uniform.
He takes a deep breath, lets go of the cape, and steps towards the new kid in the Robin uniform. The whole talk of his future is scary and something they really shouldn't be talking about anyway. There's not enough words to put together all the questions in his head. Not enough time to spare for all the things they need to do to send him back. So he's going to focus on the kid.
It hurts him to see the kid take a step away. To stand so far apart from that older, scarred version of himself. The transition from Dick to himself was far from smooth and he would like to imagine it was better from himself to this kid but… but he doesn't think it was. So he's got to make this count.
“Robin! Hi! I'm Robin!” He grabs the ends of his cape and rocks on his feet the way the younger kids like. ‘You look like a bird,’ one had said and how could he resist.
It draws a chuckle, at least.
“Yeah, I… I know.”
“Yeah, I guess you do. Kinda obvious huh?” He cartwheels around, just to show off and bring a smile out, over to the kid’s side to stand shoulder-to-shoulder. “You made some changes though! Wicked.”
There's a snarl and Jason looks over to see his older form stalking over. “Will you shut the fuck up?”
The kid flinches almost imperceptibly from next to him and suddenly that R on his chest burns.
“Will you stop being such an ass? God, is this how I grow up?” Their face twists and—
“Language.”
“Whatever, old man.” It's layered over with the clearly reflexive cutting tone. Bruce just sighs from over by the lab kits.
“You don't know anything, you little—”
“Do you remember that day when our mom died?” It's hard, still, to think of that. He doesn't know if it's easier at whatever age he seems to be at whatever year this is, but he doesn't want to think it is. Doesn't want to imagine it ever getting easier to live without her than with her, even with all her problems and faults. “Do you remember what we told ourselves when we were packing and running through those streets the first night?” He leaves the kid behind to stalk straight up to that armored chest and looks into Willis's mirrored chin and his mother's eyes. “We watch our own backs. We know ourselves best.”
“Shut the fuck—” they reach for him and he dances out of the way with a move Dick taught him just last week.
“Why are you so afraid?” It's clear in the shoulders and the way they never stopped being combative. And maybe, maybe, that's just how he grows up. Maybe, maybe, he's wrong but they freeze for just a second and it's all he needs. “Robin is magic. Stop assuming we get to have the whole thing.”
“Those are my colors—”
He really should stop cutting his own self off but this is ridiculous. “Those are Dick's colors.” He moves forward and hears Dick choke off to the side. Hears the kid shudder behind him. It's not something that really gets addressed often in his time and he can't imagine how little it's acknowledged anymore later on. It doesn't make it any less true. “These are the Grayson colors. We don't belong in these just as much as him. We do deserve it just as much as him as long as Dick lets us!”
“Jason. Jason, no,” Dick says from over where he sits and Jason glances over to see him hunched over himself as if he took a blow, hand on his face. “You don't—you both—you all deserve it. You all are so good. You're all Robin.” Dick always sounds a bit broken when he says that. It makes something twist inside him and he sees in the edges of his vision as the kid's face goes flat. He doesn't believe it either.
Jason wonders if insecurity is part of the mantle.
“Right. Cause you were so quick to feel that way.” The sneer twists the scar and Jason feels pity lay next to his anger. He doesn't want to become this. He doesn't want to be this.
“Shove off!” he shouts with a harsh push against the armored chest. It doesn't do more than push them back a step but Jason follows and gets in their space with a snarl that digs the edges of his mask into his cheek. “And how kind were we to the kid when he took these colors from us? It wasn't even ours! Robin is magic! It's not ours to hold onto!” It's the kind of magic meant to be shared. It's the kind of magic meant to be spread. It's the kind of magic meant to be passed on. Jason just didn't imagine it being meant so literally so soon but it is what it is.
“You don't know what you're talking about.”
“Jason, enough, the both of you.” Bruce says while stalking over. He can feel himself relaxing even as his older self stiffens up. It's his only excuse as to why he lets the next part escape.
“I know you all look at me like I'm already dead!” Bruce stumbles and catches himself on Dick's chair. On the screen Barbara has gone so still she might as well have pressed pause on herself. There's something green twisting in the eyes of his older body when he glances back. It makes him step away. There's tears in his eyes that are getting caught in the mask and pooling before running under the edges to catch on his chin. His hands are shaking. This is all as much of a confirmation as anything. “You're all just…”
There's a large palm that pushes him back roughly and he reaches up reflexively to knock it off. Not a second later he can hear that gruff voice of his older self saying, “No reaction to physical interaction. Say your code and code origin.”
It's such a contrast to the combative side he was seeing this whole time it takes him longer than normal to do as told. “Two, golf, lima, romeo, zero, x-ray. Dick helped me spell out GL rocks with r-zero-x to annoy Bruce.”
The kid snorts from behind him and Barbara laughs. “That's why you had your code that way?”
“Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up. It always annoyed the old man so it worked. I'm taking the kid, we need to talk.” A hand darts out quicker than Jason can comprehend and suddenly he's being dragged away.
“Jason! Stop! You can't just—”
“Will you relax? I'm fucking talking to him, not shooting him.” He's pretty sure he's not supposed to hear the, ‘it would be kinder.’
He gets dragged into a corner, behind some display cases showing off some versions of their suits, and gets pushed away as if he wasn't the one forcibly brought along for the ride. “Don't say shit like that.”
“What?”
“Don't fucking say shit like that. Did I stutter or was I more fucking stupid than I remember?”
“Say what?”
“Shit about dying.” They breathe and run their gloved hands through their hair so roughly it makes him wince.
“You were going to. Weren't you?” He's fairly sure. He's pretty sure.
“I'm not you.”
“We're the same—”
They reach out to grab him but the cape and drag him closer. “I'm not you with your fucking Robin is magic fourteen-year-old bullshit mindset.” They drop the cape like it's lava and scrape their hand across their pants as if it would take the heat away. “You're not me. Don't fucking… don't say that shit.”
He knows himself best.
Robin isn't something you walk away from.
“What are you so afraid of?” He steps closer and puts his hand on that red bat. It gleams an almost Robin Red. “You're still wearing this, aren't you?”
His wrist stings with the hit as it's knocked aside.
“It's not the same.” He's not sure if they mean the color or the bat. It doesn't matter either way.
“What are you so afraid of? Barbara is still here. Dick is still here. Bruce is always going to—”
There's a harsh laugh that probably echos all the way down to where everyone else is. “Bruce? Bruce? Learn to watch your own back again. Stop believing in people like him. You really might turn out like me.” With one last pointed look and a smirk that makes the scar stretch, Jason is left watching that larger body walk away.
He hears a motorcycle roar and leave the cave and hates the way he hopes it was his own future self.
He doesn't want to talk to that version anymore. Doesn't want to see him.
Doesn't want to become him.
“Please,” he begs into the universe with a hand on his chest right over that magical R, “please don't let this be my future. Please… let this be some other reality.” Squeezes his eyes shut so hard and digs his fingers in so roughly they both feel numb. “Please.”
‘Stop believing in people like him,’ they had said. Jason doesn't remember what it was like not to. He steps out to go find Bruce.