Chapter Text
Jason woke up to the pre-dawn grey light coming through his windows, and an eerie sense that something was wrong. It took only a moment for the previous day’s memories to filter in. He’d died. He’d fucking died. And then he woke up in a box tasting Alfred’s fucking burritos and the phantom sensation of a crowbar and a bomb battering his senses.
He’d scratched at the wood fruitlessly, before stopping and trying to move with care and precision to remove his belt so he didn’t waste time. He’d punched the lid again and again, feeling the bones in his hands break and move but unable to stop. He’d formed a tiny hole and ripped it wider, ignoring the pain of the wood breaking the skin because he’d started to feel how thin the air was. Thank god it hadn’t been the dead of summer when the sun baked the dirt of Gotham into brick. The mud and the worms and blood had been his entire world as he forced his way up and up and up and he’d thought it would go on forever. He’d thought he’d die there again and even if Bruce was coming he’d be too late. He’d find Jason’s body, still in a pose of desperate thrashing, reaching towards the light again.
He’d lived. And now he was here, in Wayne Manor. And Bruce was destroyed by his death. In the cold light of the soon-to-be morning, he can see that clearly. Alfred had been nearly overcome with relief, in that stiff British way of his. Bruce hadn’t cared how he’d come back, hadn’t wanted to test anything on the chance that Jason’s reappearance was a lie. Bruce would’ve accepted a lie.
Jason rested his head in the palms of his hands, and really wished he could dig his fingers into his hair and feel the tug, let his body settle into the sting. Instead he sat and breathed and felt the cool morning air against his arms, listened as the heat turned on, making that terrible racket that Bruce and Alfred easily slept through from long exposure. (Jason was pretty sure they both found the noise soothing, after sleeping through it for decades. He’d been planning on recording it one morning and then playing it over the speakers in the Batcave one of the nights that Bruce worked late to see if it would put him to sleep.)
His brain kept skipping beats, which is not, in fact, a thing Jason had thought brains could do! But his sure fucking was! He died! And then he came back?! (Robin really did give him magic.)
He wanted to go back to a year ago and just stop there. Just stay in that moment where Bruce trusted him and Robin was magic and maybe he didn’t have a lot of friends but he was going to a great school and… and he felt safe.
That was the trick, wasn’t it?
He felt safe, so he got angry. He felt safe, so he didn’t listen. He felt safe, so he got in trouble, and he felt safe, so he doubled down.
He felt safe, so he died.
Jason caught the panic as it rose in his chest and stilled his thoughts. He forced deep breaths through the chains around his ribs and thought of every classmate he could name until it passed. Probably not a good idea to stay sitting around in bed then.
Jason needed a plan.
He got up to look through the walk-in closet for something easy and comfortable to wear that didn’t require any finger dexterity. So no buttons, no zippers. He kinda wanted to go grab Bruce’s Gotham U hoodie that smelled like him and had just the right level of worn, but he didn’t want to wake the guy up.
Bruce had been… pretty out of it, yesterday. Alfred might’ve made plans, but Jason wanted to have a say in what happened next. He didn’t want to get sent off to some boarding school in Switzerland because it ‘wasn’t safe for him in Gotham’ or some shit. With another flip through his clothes (and how did he get so many?) he settled on a plain black t-shirt, a Wonder Woman hoodie and Gotham City Knights sweatpants. The t-shirt was a little tight on his shoulders, and the sweat pants had a cropped look, because they were already a bit small when he died, but it was all easy to put on and relatively comfortable.
What did he want though?
To be safe, he supposed. Not just feel safe, but to actually be it. Not much chance of that, but it was good to know what he wanted, even if he couldn’t have it.
With only his pinky finger and thumb of each hand in action, it took two hands to get a secure hold on his toothbrush and frankly it was an embarrassing maneuver. If it took a while to get his hands sorted, he was going to need a toothbrush holding tool or something.
He wanted to go back to school, he wanted to graduate high school, he wanted to attend university and graduate that too. Those were probably all in the cards, Bruce had always been very enthusiastic about education, and so even… Bruce would probably be happy to pay for Jason to go to school. He’d even take a boarding school in Switzerland, if it came to that.
His hair had grown a bit, not six months grown out, more like two weeks overdue for a trim grown out, and he wasn’t a fan of it. (He’d gotten his hair trimmed before going to try and find his mom… he’d wanted to look nice for her.) Nothing against longer hair for other guys, but he always thought of the druggie that slept in the doorway of the apartment building with Catherine and Willis when he was little, maybe four or five. The guy would sleep sitting up, head dropped forward, greasy hair falling over his eyes. Jason remembered jumping over his legs to get past him every morning. He remembered the ambulance coming to take away his body. He still wondered if he’d hopped over the guy’s corpse, blissfully ignorant.
He’d get Alfred to take him to get his hair trimmed. There had got to be somewhere in Gotham they could go without it getting to the press. If not, then Alfred could cut it like he did when Jason was first being fostered and nearly had a panic attack at the cost of haircuts from Bruce’s barber.
He wanted Bruce to love him, and keep being his dad. That one… might be possible. It hadn’t felt like it, not for real, yesterday, but… If Catherine came back to life tomorrow, Jason would still want her as a mother. She wasn’t perfect, but she loved him and she tried, and wasn’t that enough? Jason wasn’t perfect, but he lo— cared for Bruce, and he tried to be good, to be what Bruce wanted and needed, so maybe that could be enough? If he can make Bruce laugh, even without being Robin, maybe that could be enough?
Unwilling to leave his room quite yet, but equally unwilling to get back into bed, Jason started his body weight routine on the empty space in the room, modified for his lack of hands and extra careful to compensate for his inexplicable dead-growth-spurt.
Because that’s the other thing. He didn’t want to be Robin. Or maybe he did, god. But he couldn’t be Robin. He’s— It’s— Robin is magic… but also he died. His thoughts were all muddled but he knew this: he couldn’t be Robin. Or… maybe he could, but he didn’t want to be? But he did want to be Robin— being Robin was the best! He’d saved people, he’d helped people! The thought of putting on the mask again made him nauseous and maybe it was just the trauma. Maybe it was like falling off a horse, you had to get back on as soon as possible, so you didn’t get scared. He’s never ridden a horse, but that was what the girls at school agreed on, and Dick had made similar comments about gymnastics. You couldn’t let the fear set in.
Well what if it was too late, the fear was there, and it was too much to handle?
By the time he had finished moving through the maintenance exercises he did on busy school days, when there wasn’t time to train something new or go out as Robin, his body had become his own again. Warmth thrummed through him and there were small aches and pains, in his hands, mostly, but he felt good.
The sun was breaking past the horizon, pale rays of light illuminated the fine dust in the air. It was time to start his day, to start his new life, whatever the hell that was going to look like.
The light in Dick’s room was on, his door half open, but when Jason ducked in there was no one there. It had the look of a guest room still. When Dick had visited, he’d talked about moving out, and how he wasn’t sure if he’d ever return. Bruce had just said that the Manor had enough rooms, and that Dick could do whatever he wanted with it. Obviously Dick hadn’t moved back in. There were bare white walls and plain white guest sheets, slightly rumpled from someone laying on top, but no one had gotten under the covers. A duffle bag was on the floor, so Dick had come after Alfred’s call, but hadn’t slept, or at least, hadn’t slept properly.
With a moment of hesitation, Jason moved toward the library. Dick was not one for leisure; from Jason’s occasional run-ins with Dick, he knew if Dick wasn’t actively patrolling then he was reviewing a cold case, or training a new flip, or texting with his friends, or planning an elaborate party or something. Sure enough, the door to the library was cracked and the warm lamp light spilled out, accompanied by the sound of Dick’s tapping foot and clicking pen.
Jason let himself fall into the silent Robin walk— which had taken a significant amount of actual training, thank you very much! Dick was rudely not sitting completely visible from the line of sight of the door, but Jason could see the way he was curled up like a shrimp over some papers, sitting in that crazy compressed way he always did with one foot on the chair and the other on the floor, his head resting on his knee. In his right hand, a cheap pen was getting aggressively clicked. His mullet had grown out a bit, with the back reaching nearly to his shoulder blades and the front curling behind his ear.
“Dick?” Jason said, voice low, after watching his… his predecessor for a minute. Dick turned in an instant, fluid motion.
“Jay!” Then he was across the room, as he scooped Jason up by his armpits and threw him into the air, getting a yelp of surprise out of Jason. “Alfred called. Are you— are you okay?” Dick winced and Jason laughed, safe in Dick’s arms as they tightened in a straight jacket hug.
“I don’t know, man,” he admitted, “how am I supposed to feel? I— Time didn’t pass for me, or anything, so I just… I keep remembering that I died, and it just happened, for me, but then I’m back…”
“I don’t think there’s a right way to feel. You get to feel however you want about any part of it. I’m grateful though. Jay… I’m sorry. I didn’t know, I was off planet. I would never ignore your call.” Dick pulled back, looking Jason dead in the eye.
It had clearly been haunting him, so Jason smiled, “of course.” It was a lie, there was no ‘of course’ about it, Jason had never bothered to call before because he’d never been desperate enough before. He’d deal with his own feelings on the topic later. Now he had to make sure Dick didn’t think Jason was an ungrateful brat. No one liked a victim who did nothing but talk about how much their life sucked.
“Jay, I’m so glad you’re alive, that you’re okay,” Dick pulled him close again and Jason could feel as Dick’s breathing became ragged sobs. Tears soaked into Jason’s hoodie and t-shirt. Jason just stood there. This felt a bit… excessive. Sure, he’d died. That was really upsetting, but like… they weren’t friends, let alone brothers. They had a shared dad, at best, and frankly, he wasn’t really sure how to label Bruce and Dick’s relationship. Maybe they were co-worker-in-laws through Bruce? Or like… cousins? Cousins felt about right. He didn’t have any blood-cousins, but other kids he’d known had them. He’d gotten the idea.
Dick had shown him a few cool moves and taken him skiing once, it wasn’t exactly an intimate relationship. He’d be sad if Dick died, but he wouldn’t be… like… ‘stop getting haircuts and taking showers’ sad, and Dick smelled pretty ripe. The sobbing subsided eventually and Dick stepped back,
“Sorry.” His face was red and his eyes were swollen, but he also looked gaunt in a way Jason hadn’t seen before. Over on the table, his phone buzzed but Dick didn’t even twitch. “Ready for breakfast? Anything you want to do today? I should… I should probably stay out of the way when Bruce is around.”
“Still fighting?”
“Worse,” Dick grimaced, “but that’s not your problem. I’ll stick to my room, or maybe head into town and give Barbara a visit. I don’t want to get in the way of you and Bruce spending time together.”
“I’m not worried. Let’s go see what Alfred’s cooking up.” Jason was convinced Alfred had a laser in front of everyone’s doors, or maybe over their beds, so he knew when they woke up. While Jason had occasionally made himself breakfast after a nightmare had him awake at ungodly hours, anytime after six AM, if he was up, then Alfred was in the kitchen within ten minutes.
Sure enough, Alfred was up, quiet classical music playing over the speakers as he diced bacon for a quiche. Nice.
Jason and Barbie sat in the parlor room, alone, because Dick could actually read the room and had walked Bruce out with him. They were in the parlor room specifically because Wayne Manor didn’t have an elevator installed, so Barbie could only access the first floor, putting Jason’s room and the library both out of reach. Even getting into the manor had Barbie entering through the service door, designed for handtrucks carrying supplies, which seemed a little messed up. Or, Jason supposed, they could meet in the batcave, and Barbie could get in using one of the paths designed for the batmobile. What a joke.
Jason was definitely going to go poke Bruce to get an elevator installed as soon as possible, for Barbie, but also because Bruce and Dick did get badly hurt sometimes, and they’d probably heal faster if they didn’t have to use crutches to get down the stairs. When Jason had curled over Barbie, in his first attempt to hug her in a wheelchair, the wheel pushed into his thigh and they couldn’t quite line up comfortably, with Barbie twisting in place to hug him back. They’d have to practice and get better.
“Holy Batman, Barbie! Have your arms gotten bigger?” He wasn’t joking, the shoulder seams of her coat looked a little strained and when they hugged, he could’ve sworn her arms felt larger. Barbie grinned at him, pulled off her puffer coat, and flexed. Sure enough, there was some beautiful new definition. Jason gasped appreciatively.
“They sure have! Pushing this thing around is harder than it looks, but check this out,” Barbie pushes the wheels forward in a jerk, popping a wheelie then spinning 360 degrees in place.
“Wow! You’ve gotten good at that thing quick!” The words had barely left his mouth before his brain stuttered and he remembered. It hadn’t been that quick. He just missed all that time being dead.
“I’ve been out of the hospital for a little over four months.” She rested one of her hands on Jason’s in a small gesture of mutual comfort. They were alive. They were both alive, against all odds.
He’d not forgotten about Joker shooting her. Before, though, he’d hoped it wasn’t as bad as the doctor’s thought. There’d been some time, just after the shooting, when the swelling had been too bad to say that she was paralyzed with certainty… and then Jason had been benched as Robin and one thing had happened after another and he hadn’t thought about her much until this monring when he’d been finishing breakfast with Dick.
She’d come quickly when Dick had called her and Jason had tried not to stare. Like Bruce, Dick, and Alfred, she didn’t look well, though when he’d first glimpsed her, he’d seen a cloud of aggravated defeat that differed from everyone else’s grief. She had hidden it well by now. She was a lot like Bruce and Dick that way– no good at being weak. Jason probably wasn’t any better.
“And there’s no chance you’ll be able to walk again?” Jason asks, inexplicably guilty that he was healed and revived and she wasn’t.
“No,” Barbie says, and despite her attempts, Jason can see the way that digs at her.
It’s a good thing she retired as Batgirl first, he supposed. If Batgirl disappeared at the same time Barbara Gordon was very publicly shot and paralyzed, then less than a month later Robin and Jason both died, the conspiracy boards probably would’ve nailed them. Jason also imagined it would also hurt so much more to go from flying through the night straight to using a chair. The life of a vigilante was so much more wild and intense and free compared to the life of a civilian…
“How did you do it?” Jason asked with a glance at the still closed door. Maybe Bruce was listening, either outside the door or using a bug because he was a freak like that, but he’d learn what Jason was thinking sooner or later. If Bruce really had a problem with it… well, Jason hadn’t decided what he’d do. Robin was dead though, and going to stay that way. “How did you retire?” ‘As Batgirl,’ he doesn’t need to specify. ‘How did you do it without going mad?’ Jason couldn’t quite say. There was a bitter pain in Barbie’s eyes at the question and Jason withheld a wince. A willing retirement was miles different from a forced one, and one had turned into the other.
“I retired because a man died so I could live,” Barbie said, and Jason felt cold. He could hear the story behind the short statement, there was more to it than that, but Barbie didn’t want to say. He eyed the cup of tea Alfred had poured for him, looked at the thin wisp of steam rising. He considered drinking it, but his hands didn’t move.
What if Sheila hadn’t betrayed him? Would Joker have killed her, if she hadn’t given him Robin? Would Jason have retired Robin, if Sheila had died so he could live? “I didn’t want to force my dad to bury me,” Barbie said finally, apologetically.
Jason’s eyes burned and he had to turn away to collect himself. There was an awful heavy feeling in his chest. What an awful thing, to grieve his own death.
Coming back to life did not negate the fact he’d died; did not negate the fact that Bruce had buried him.
“It’s so different from when I first started. There are so many more heroes around, and I felt less necessary. It was hard though, like any other hobby or habit, it was part of my life. Even now I find myself thinking I’ll grab the Batgirl uniform and go investigate. And… without Batgirl…” Barbie took a deep breath. “I haven’t kept in touch with my vigilante friends. What would I even say to Black Canary? Hell, what am I going to say if Poison Ivy comes looking for me? I had a whole life as Batgirl that I willingly left behind.”
The words ring in Jason’s head. The life between Batman finding him and Robin’s death, that wasn’t Jason’s life, that was Robin’s. Maybe he hadn’t known it, but he’d been acting as Robin went he’d worked to stop Ma Gunn. It was Robin who couldn’t join any of the after school activities because he had training to do.
It was Robin who Bruce loved.
There was that grief, again.
Fuck, it wasn’t just Bruce, either. Maybe without Robin, he’ll get on with Dick better, because he didn’t need to know the whole story to know there was baggage wrapped up in Robin and Dick’s transition to Nightwing. He’d probabaly never meet Superman or Wonder Woman, or any of Batman’s other teammates ever again– why would he?
It was fine. He was used to losing people, but why did this realization feel so much like tearing out a part of himself.
Barbie wasn’t exempt. She had tutored him when he first came to the manor, and she’d helped him settle in at school, but they were teammates, first and foremost. She’d not been retired from Batgirl long, but they’d only seen each other once before Joker’s attack. Now what were they going to do together? She would never again spend hours showing him techniques for fighting against stronger opponents, or practicing quips or how to interview civilains.
She’d probably come to visit a few more times, each one more distant than the last until he tried to recall the last time they’d seen each other. Jason’s throat ached.
“I’ll do more good in my role as a librarian than Batgirl could ever hope for, because Batgirl, and any vigilante, is reactive, dealing with criminals who already exist. As a librarian, I help stop those people from ever becoming that desperate.” Jason believed her, but he wondered, in that moment, if she believed herself. Maybe though… maybe she could teach him about how to help in other ways, in civilian ways.
She was a great resource on retiring from the vigilante life, but Jason saw the way her fingers drummed against her shiny new wheelchair— one without handles or folding footplates, for full-time wheelchair users —and he suspected he was the only one of them determined to stay retired.
He wasn’t sure what vigilantism was gonna look like for Barbie now, but he knew it was gonna be great.
He was right. Oracle was great.
The fact that every vigilante he knew who retired came back with a new name was definitely something Bruce had noted as well, but thankfully he knew better than to bring it up. Jason was out.
“Master Jason,” Alfred said, and Jason looked up from his Easter-break math homework. He hadn’t stopped being thankful for the convenient timing of his death, there’s no way he could’ve stayed in the same grade if he’d been dead for six months of the school year, but that hadn’t made catching up (again) pleasant. “Timothy Drake, here to see you.” He stepped back and allowed the boy in, closing the door behind Timothy— a sure sign that Alfred was judging his lack of socialization since if he was behaving properly he would’ve checked in Jason was accepting guests, which he wasn’t.
“Oh, uh, hi?” Jason said, trying to place the face. He didn’t have any classes with the kid, which wasn’t a huge surprise, the kid looked like a baby, a middle grader. The kid pulled off his backpack and hugged it in front of himself like a shield as he approached. He had neatly trimmed hair, and a single spot on his nose that suggested the first blushes of puberty. His clothes were ordinary at first glance, but Jason had gotten used to recognizing the look of a tailored t-shirt.
“Um. Jason, I’m—” he took a deep breath and tore open the zipper on his bag, “you have to become Robin again!”
“I’m sorry?”
“After you died, Batman went wrong! He was way too violent, he was putting petty criminals in the hospital and doing everything short of murder. You came back and it got… better… but not enough! Batman is supposed to be a symbol of hope, but he’s lost a lot of trust and… and he can’t do it without Robin. Batman’s the fear, and Robin’s the hope, you know?” He placed a binder on the desk, a blank black binder that he flipped open to show a couple graphs of crime trends. Timothy spoke quickly, urgent and nervous, but not uncertainly. His accent was pure Bristol, upper class Gotham.
Jason held up a hand,
“Sorry, kid. Stop right there. I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“You were the second Robin.” Timothy said, not looking in the least uncertain, “Grayson was the first Robin, Bruce Wayne is Batman. You need to be Robin again.” A flip to the start of the binder with pictures clipped from news articles and bullet points of evidence, a lot of them.
“Okay, again, I don’t know what you’re talking about. But if I did, I died. I’m not risking my life, I’m gonna go to school and get excellent grades, and go to an Ivy League university. I’m not going to dress up like a traffic light and risk getting killed, again.”
“But Batman needs you, Gotham needs you.” The kid looked Jason in the eyes, face pleading with Jason to understand. He did, he supposed. From what Jason had seen on the news, it was true. The police weren’t really cooperating with Batman these days, because he was being so violent. He’d put a patrol of crooked cops into the hospital and three of them were forced to retire, their injuries were so severe. Without the batsignal going on, there were more deaths from rogues before Batman could catch them. Bruce hadn’t really returned to the public eye, either, so there’d been less charity work happening, which had meant a slowly increasing trend in crimes of desperation. Bruce had been coming back injured too often, for the kinds of fights he was having, Jason had been trying not to notice that.
He didn’t go into the cave, he turned off the TV when the news came on, he put on music when his classmates talked about the rumors.
“Maybe the Batman should put out an advert if he's looking for a sidekick,” Jason said, trying to sound lighthearted, he’s pretty sure he doesn’t succeed.
“If you won’t do it, do you think Nightwing would be willing to? I thought about asking him, but he’s taking care of Bludhaven…”
Jason laughed, “no, there’s no chance that Nightwing would come to Gotham to act as Robin.” He thought about adding a ‘hypothetically,’ but he didn’t really see a point this late in the game. If the kid knew their names and identities, and came here to try and make Jason take up the mask again… well he knew what he was talking about and wasn’t going to be dissuaded. Even if Dick did come back, he and Bruce really could not work together at the moment. It was probably getting better, on the whole, but it hadn’t really felt like it, when had Dick came to visit for a very frosty Christmas.
“Fine. Train me to be Robin, then.”
“Kid, did you not hear what I just said? Robin died. If Batman wants a sidekick then he should get an adult, whose brain is old enough to process the risk, to team up with.”
The kid looked annoyed, “it can’t— Robin’s a symbol. The role of Robin–” he rubbed at his face and flipped through the binder, glancing at headings before stopping on one labelled, ‘The Role of Robin.’ “Robin can’t be an adult, not really. Even Grayson was becoming less effective in the role in the later years. It puts criminals off, to be fighting a child, for one, but the important thing is Robin as a symbol of growth and change, and a better future for Gotham. An adult just can’t play that role as effectively.”
Jason would be more pissed about the kid skimming past Robin’s death, but if his return to school had shown him anything, it was the incomprehensibility of death to most of his peers. He almost preferred the bitter grief he faced when it came to the students who had lost someone important who hadn’t inexplicably returned, because Goddamn it, he was the only one allowed to make death jokes, when Bradley did it, it was just crass.
“So why ask about Nightwing then?”
“Something is better than nothing, and… well he’s The Robin,” Timothy looked away and Jason almost laughed at the hero-worship. Fair enough, he supposed. It wasn’t like Jason had really gotten past it, even now, if he was being honest with himself. Sometimes Dick would show him a new move and it would hit Jason that this was, as Timothy put it, The Robin, teaching him.
“Ha, fair enough. But for real. I was killed by Joker,” that wasn’t public knowledge so even with all the kid knew, he probably didn’t know that. “It was slow, and it hurt, and the Joker’s still out there. Batman’s not going to risk that happening again on his watch, okay? Ultimately, weight and strength are important when it comes to a fight. It doesn’t matter how well trained you are when your opponent has a foot, fifty pounds, a gun, and a willingness to kill on you.” Not to mention catching a kid by surprise because they were the sort of fucking dumbass who trusted their own mother, but anyway. Even as he spoke, he could see the dead determination in the kid’s eyes and he remembered Bruce laughing as he talked about trying to convince Dick against the vigilante lifestyle.
Fuck. This wasn’t working.
“If I were you, I’d look for an adult woman of slight stature who could pass as a kid without close inspection. Someone with an iron moral compass, and the ability to quip, ideally. ‘Cause look, you’re not wrong. For all Batman’s whole ‘creature of darkness’ thing, it’s not infalliable. He does do better with a partner, but if he loses another kid on his watch, you won’t have to worry about Batman anymore. There won’t be anything of him left to try and rehabilitate.”
Timothy nodded with all the seriousness of a soldier receiving orders.
“What do you think the youngest he’ll go?” Well at least he’s asking questions instead of carrying on with a blockheaded determination.
“I don’t know,” he rubbed his chin, enjoying the prickle of stubble under his fingers. “Maybe sixteen, if they had experience and training. He’s not going to let anyone out into the field before training them himself, but… well if I wanted to be Robin again, I think it’d be a year or two before B would let me out there.” Timothy nodded, eyes distant in thought and Jason let out an internal sigh of relief at getting through to the kid.
Bruce was looking at him funny. Jason tried to ignore it, nibbling on his toast while his stomach complained over the late night reading. The light was too bright and chemistry class was going to suck, but between another night tossing and turning over nightmares, or finishing Dracula, it had been an easy decision.
“Something strange happened on patrol last night,” Bruce said, Jason made an uninterested hum in response. “A young woman in a homemade Robin costume came to insist that I train her.” A stone sunk in Jason’s unruly sea of a stomach.
“You don’t say.”
“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about this, would you?”
“I’m out of the vigilante game, you know that,” Jason said, putting down his half eaten toast and moving to leave. He was training Bruce. Anytime he brought up the vigilante stuff, Jason left. It was working pretty well actually. Bruce hummed somewhat pointedly but didn’t try again.
“That’s a child,” Jason murmured to Alfred as they both watched Bruce, in full Batman costume, train the girl who insisted she would be Robin. Jason didn’t come down to the cave these days, but he’d been curious when Bruce had admitted he’d be training the persistent irritant who wanted so badly to be Robin.
“It does appear so.”
“Bruce said that she said she was fifteen, almost sixteen.”
“Yes, that is what he reported.”
“She's lying though, right?”
“I couldn’t say for sure,” Alfred said, in a tone that said, ‘yes, most definitely.’
“B knows that, right?”
“While I don’t believe that Master Bruce spends much time around young women, he has had a number of cases with young women playing important roles. I believe being able to accurately estimate a person’s age would be of importance in his line of work.”
“So why’s he going along with it? If she’s lying about her age, of all things, what else is she lying about?” Jason couldn’t say for certain who the young woman was, behind the lies, but he did note that Timothy Drake attended a weekday boarding school on the edge of New York, the young Robin in training was only available on weekends, and they both stood at about five feet tall.
Alfred cleared his throat, “I believe Master Bruce quite enjoys working with a partner, to the extent that it may… impinge upon his judgement.” Jason rolled his eyes and returned to the stairs and the manor, and the life as just the adopted son of Bruce Wayne, relatively safe Gotham billionaire. If this farce kept up, he’d push Bruce’s face into the mess before the kid was in any real danger, but like he’d said, there was no way Bruce was going to let a kid go on the streets for months yet. Maybe this would tire the kid out enough that they’d let the whole thing go.
Jason could admit this had gone on longer than he’d expected. The kid hadn’t been wrong, even without Robin on the streets, Batman was being safer. Bruce was in better shape in the mornings, and had been looking toward his study with excitement instead of that dead-eyed stare. The kid, who claimed to be named Caroline, was running comms on Friday and Saturday nights with Alfred, and training with Batman on Saturday and Sunday midday. It was all easy enough to avoid, since the kid stayed underground, and Jason stayed above, but he was aware of it.
Then something big started to take place underground. Bruce’s eyes were bright and sharp and his appearances above ground became sparse. Alfred drove Jason to work, taught Jason’s driving lessons, and served a single dinner on the dining table for Jason to eat alone.
“What’s happening?” Jason asked, against his better judgement.
“Our Robin in training seems to have stirred up the League of Assassins, and Master Bruce in turn, by finding that missions were run in Gotham.”
“The League of Assassins? Bruce’s ex-girlfriend?” Bruce had covered the League of Assassins briefly, but he’d mostly heard about it from Dick in the context of Talia al-Ghul and the disaster that Bruce was when he really tried to make things work with a woman.
“Among others,” Alfred said, tone absolutely withering.
When the door rang, Jason abandoned his summer reading and waved Alfred off and went to get the door himself. Since Bruce had returned to his public role, and the media wave following his resurrection had died down, the Manor gate had returned to being open during the day to make things easier for Alfred as various gardeners, Wayne Enterprise samples, and grocery deliveries could come by without double approval. However, instead of opening the door to a spotty teenager wearing a white shirt and dress pants, like the grocery delivery boys at the fancy-pants stores Alfred bought from wore… there was a woman… and worse yet, a boy, all of about five years old, wearing an eerily familiar stern face.
“Ah,” Jason manages, looking between the boy and woman. There are a lot of women in Bruce’s history as Brucie, and no doubt a great many of them would love to show up with a mini-Bruce to pump for every cent they could. There are... a lot less women on the roster who could actually, conceivably (ha!) manage a mini-Bruce. Luckily the name has recently been dusted off in Jason’s memory. “Talia al-Ghul?” The boy opened his mouth, outrage clearly on its way to being expressed, stopped by a single look from his probable mother.
“And you are Jason Todd. Now, I must speak to Bruce, are you going to invite me in?”
“I’m really not sure I should, but I don’t think I could stop you, so… please, follow me to the parlor.” The walk is dead silent. “And when I tell him who is waiting…” Jason gave a pointed look at the boy.
“Damian al-Ghul-Wayne,” Talia said, expression not budging an inch. Jason nodded them toward the exquisitely uncomfortable antique furniture, horse-hair stuffing and all, and left to find Alfred and Bruce in turn. Alfred made a quiet noise of surprise and started on hot water for tea. Bruce, on the other hand was sitting in front of the batcomputer with twelve simultaneous camera feeds, seemingly from across the world playing, and paperwork in a mess in front of him. It was a look Jason recognized from his Robin days, but only on occasions. It was the look of Bruce when he was on the hunt, and nothing would stop him until he had caught his target.
“There’s a Talia al-Ghul upstairs for you,” Jason said, prominently examining his fingernails while watching Bruce from the edge of his vision as he added, “with a Damian al-Ghul-Wayne.” Bruce went very very still. Jason couldn’t really imagine Bruce abandoning a kid— why adopt a street kid when you had one of your own? But then again, some people liked kids and hated babies. Nah, that was still out of character for Bruce “Shaped by Familiar Tragedy” Wayne. The completely blank look on Bruce’s face as he closed out the windows on the batcomputer and properly stored his files confirmed it. Not that Bruce would need to lie if it was otherwise, but Bruce was persuasive when he lied. Bruce, who was acting genuinely, was usually stoic to the point of looking like a store manikin.
The great thing about the parlor was that the ancient fireplace within it led up to a grate on the second floor which could be comfortably listened to from the reclining wingback chair in the corner. The room had been something else originally, but for as long as Jason had lived in the Manor it had served as his personal study. He had been paranoid as a kid and Bruce, instead of working against it, had assisted it by holding every meeting he could in the parlor so Jason could listen in. If the meeting couldn’t happen in the parlor, then it was probably in Bruce’s study, in which case Jason could sit in the batcave and listen to the microphones and watch the cameras placed in Bruce’s study that were used to make sure the room was empty before exiting.
Now, Jason listened as Talia introduced Bruce to his blood son for the first time. Nine months ago Jason would’ve been paralyzed with fear of Bruce abandoning him, perhaps it would’ve been even worse two weeks later when he’d learned of the Joker’s continued survival… Now, he listened to the absence of sound from Damian, barely more than a toddler, and wondered what life in the League of Assassins was like for a child.
Jason had thought his presence in Bruce’s life was dependent on his actions as Robin, which had been proven entirely wrong. Then he’d thought perhaps he was there to be a light in Bruce’s depressing-ass life, but when he’d spent months furious and distant and too hurt to play nice, Bruce had been steady. He was still feeling out the space that Bruce had actually made for Jason in his life, but Jason didn’t need to be the World’s Best Detective to know that a similar space would not have been made for a child in the League of Assassins.
“Now please, Beloved, leave us alone. You’ve found what you’re looking for. Father is getting quite annoyed with you.”
“Hm,” well that was the sound Bruce made when he didn’t know what the fuck you were talking about, and from the pause, Talia could read that too.
“So you weren’t the one digging through League personnel, with a focus on members who’ve abandoned the cause and survived?” A pause. “Well all signs pointed to the search coming from you.” There really weren’t that many options for that, and Jason could rule himself and Bruce out.
“I know who you’re talking about. I will… look into it,” Bruce said.
Talia was vocally unimpressed with the total non-commitment. This was going to cause problems with the Robin-in-training… which was fair because it really sounded like a problem Robin-in-training had caused.
Well, Jason hadn’t been wrong. He’d thought the problems would be more emotional and less stabbing related, and well! The emotional part had happened as well. To fix “Caroline’s” stab wound, Alfred had taken “her” privately off the surgery but Damian had a nose for secrets like his father and had caught on to Tim Drake’s cross-dressing and aging up endeavors almost immediately. Unfortunately for Damian, being a fourteen year old boy lying about being a fifteen year old girl was a much more minor sin than being violent against allies.
Honestly though, who gave kindergarteners daggers, and why the hell was the answer the League of Assassins?
Damian’s presence forced Bruce up into the light more often, which Jason was mostly thankful for, and occasionally jealous of. Damian was a little brat, but only really in the way little kids were, plus a little extra violence. He was a good fighter, but he was also about knee height, so Jason just took to wearing lightweight armored leggings and got on with his life. It was nice not to be the baby of the family.
Alfred started a family tradition of reading aloud in the evenings once Damian was ready for bed, with Bruce and Jason taking turns to read as well. Damian already had a complex about not being a baby, and Alfred took it effortlessly in stride, so they were reading actually good kids books like Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede.
It was shockingly enjoyable.
Catherine had read to Jason sometimes, but she’d been busy and tired a lot, and they had been limited to what was available at their nearest library. Still, there had been times when Jason would curl up on the couch, his head on Catherine’s lap while she read to him until he fell asleep, on her hands stroking his hair.
To watch Damian have that experience, his head on Bruce’s lap, peace finally filling his sleeping features as Bruce stroked his hair and read aloud… It was nice.
Bruce went fucking feral when Tim disappeared. This was fair enough, especially considering he’d been gone several days, but a little bit less fair because this was clearly some scheme of Tim’s. Tim was a scheming sort of guy, as shown by his little charade as “slightly older teenager” Caroline Hill, and his whole binder full of notes when he first showed up.
In fact, Jason felt it was so in character that he was forced to explain his reasoning to a trembling and bloodshot Bruce. He had not, until this point, actually explained that their secret identities had been revealed, because frankly he hadn’t wanted to. If Mr. World’s Greatest Detective couldn’t figure it out, that was his own problem. Unfortunately this did not actually calm Bruce at all, though Jason was proven almost immediately correct when a few short days laters, Tim returned with a silent, obviously hard-done-by young Asian woman at his side.
“Dibs on not being the one to tell Dick,” Jason said, already remembering Alfred swearing that he wouldn’t be taking that responsibility again after Jason’s revival, thus leading to Jason being the one to tell Dick about Damian.
“Okay, I see how this happened, but Bruce: no more kids for at least three years. Three new kids in one year is too many!” Jason said and knew Alfred was making expressions of agreement behind his back.
“Tim has parents,” Bruce said, plaintively.
“Tim has parents who haven’t seemed to have noticed his training as Robin. Tim is also not really the point. The point is, this isn’t about blame, it’s about expectations. No. More. Kids.”
“For at least three years.”
“For at least three years,” Jason agreed. Bruce performatively pouted but Jason had been really good about his new siblings, despite Damian’s occasional physical violence and tantrums, and Cassandra’s… well her whole thing. Her hiding under beds, her eyeing him like a piece of roadkill, her ignoring his attempts to communicate, her sneaking up on him and then using his startle reflex as an excuse to pin him.
He was being really very calm about it, and Jason was proud of himself. According to Tim, Cassandra had been living on the streets for perhaps as long as a decade, and while she was a really strong fighter— better even than Bruce, despite her size and malnutrition —she was also obviously traumatized, even outside of the abuse of not being taught how to speak. Cassandra was being unkind, but she also hadn’t actually hurt him, despite clearly being capable of it. He’d always had a soft spot for women and children and he could feel that soft spot in him very obviously these days, with Cassandra and Damian around every corner.
Jason had also been very good about the fact that not only was Tim still receiving training, and based on Bruce’s glowing comments was far closer to getting field time than Jason would like, but Cassandra had started on it too. Bruce had assured everyone (mostly Alfred) that Cassandra wouldn’t be in the field until she had good ways to communicate in various emergencies, but Jason and Alfred could both read the writing on the wall, even if Bruce couldn’t. Cassandra was going to be in the field when she felt she was ready, and not a moment later, and she really didn’t consider her own muteness nearly as much of a liability as everyone else did.
Jason had been very good about his new siblings, and Bruce knew that, and appreciated it, and therefore was going to listen to his really, quite simple request.
On returning from his year abroad, Jason had considered not telling anyone at all, but he knew his life, and he knew that the universe would laugh at him. Then he’d be trying to fight off a demon wearing civvies and a balaclava and if he was really unlucky, he’d get shot in the back by police for looking like a small time thug, while he was at it. So instead he told Alfred, and they designed him a suit together, and he put in a little used corner of the cave and forgot about it.
Until today.
“Okay, first of all,” Jason said, glaring daggers at Bruce, “not a word. Second of all, time to update your rules about magic in Gotham, pronto. Third of all, this is only for emergencies, I mean it. I am not failing university just because The Fucking Joker has broken out of Arkham, again.” Sue him, his death and subsequent lack of retaliatory vengeance was still a sore point. He really tried not to bring it up these days, but he was a little peeved that Bruce and buddies had managed to create a demon whole cloth using their fancy-ass technology and now Jason was getting in his first vigilante fight since his death. While he was pretty confident the Joker was pure enough evil for the All Blades to work, he really, really didn’t want to test it. Not unless he could cut the Joker’s fucking head off without getting thrown into Arkham himself, or whatever Bruce’s temper tantrum would look like. Or god, worse: whatever Cassandra’s temper tantrum would look like.
The point was: he wasn’t going to be fighting Batman’s rogue’s gallery for him.
The suit went on like butter on hot toast. Jason had never really gotten out of the Robin training routine, enjoying the peace and bodily control it gave him, which had been good because otherwise the All Caste probably would’ve killed him, possibly by accidental over-training. Now he stalked down the street toward the humanoid shaped void filled with iconic green 90s hacking text.
Thankfully, since no one in Gotham but Alfred and himself knew about the All-Blades, Techno-fer or whatever his dumbass name was, didn’t know about his powers in the slightest and while the fight wasn’t a piece of cake, it wasn’t too far off either.
“I am not in the hero game!” Jason shouted, the hot water of a post battle shower feeling like pure bliss, and Tim’s stupid little chatter outside was infringing on that. As he said it though, he thought he could almost hear the universe laughing.