Chapter Text
They ran down a series of increasingly identical and disgustingly ornate hallways until Jason yanked Tim into a set of velvet curtains by one of the massive windows that lined the building. Thoroughly hidden by the thick fabric, and the sounds of the men pursuing them still a wing away, Jason took a second to collect himself.
“Thanks,” Tim breathed.
“Don’t thank me,” Jason gritted through his teeth. He realized his hand was still clenched around Tim’s good arm. Mechanically, he undid his grip before snapping his gaze back up to Tim’s. He looked… not scared. A little angry. Mostly ashamed.
Jason didn’t have time to think about that, though. “We are going to have a talk,” Jason ground out, looking back out from their hidey-hole. The hallway was still empty, but it wouldn’t be for long. He could hear heavy footsteps, some yelling, from one of the adjacent rooms.
Tim sighed lightly. “Well, in for a penny…”, he muttered, before drawing his injured arm up high and slamming the cast, hard, into the glass. The shattering noise echoed down the empty hallway. Jason heard the alarmed shouts of some of the men.
Tim was already halfway outside. “Let’s go!” he barked. Jason scrambled to follow.
The parking lot was crawling with goons. Luckily, the bushes by the side of the east wing, where Jason stashed his bike in preparation of a mission breakdown just like this, were relatively unpopulated. It took less than a minute to wordlessly knock out the two guards milling around.
They peeled out of the hilltop venue and into the neighboring woods. It’d be only 5 miles and a short drop until they reached a road they could take down the mountain. Once they were back in the heart of the city, it’d be easy to lose any tail in the clogged arteries of Gotham’s freeway system.
Red Robin’s hand, attached to the uninjured arm, dug in tight to Jason’s suit jacket to avoid getting flung off. Jason wondered absently if he should invest in one of those side cars.
Focus. They weren’t out of the woods yet. Literally. Jason chuckled a bit to himself. Red Robin stilled from behind him. “Everything good up there?”
“Took a branch to the face. Now shut up, I’m trying to think of where we’re going.” His nearest bat-approved safehouse was all the way in the heart of Crime Alley. It’d take a while to get there.
But, as for his actual choices at hand…
Gunshots rang through the air. Jason could hear another set of wheels behind them, and a quickly approaching cliff in front of them. Fuck it, the kid already knows all my spots anyways.
They took a flying leap off the hillside and onto the mountain road below. Jason was more mobile here, but infinitely more exposed. He weaved between the hail of bullets shot at them from the men above before taking a sharp right into the treeline.
Jason kicked the apartment door open. “Home, sweet home,” Jason said into the air. Tim didn’t respond, and Jason thought that was probably for the best. Patch all the injuries up first, then ream little Timmy out. He made a beeline for the bandages in his bathroom.
Tim trailed behind him cradling his bad arm, something uncharacteristically unsure in his movements. Even as Jason moved deeper into the bathroom, Tim lingered in the doorway.
“What’s that look on your face for?”
“I… didn’t know about this one.”
Jason just gave a vague grunt in response. Internally, he was kicking himself for letting the nosiest Robin waltz into his last true hidey-hole.
Jason fished out the med bag he had stored under the bathroom sink. He took stock of his own injuries: nothing major. He’d want to wrap up his arm where his jacket had been torn by glass. There wasn’t much he could do for the bruises, but he should probably ice his ribs later. The suit, he determined, was probably beyond saving.
Which left Tim. Under the light, Jason could see the dark circles under the kid’s eyes. There were fresh bruises blooming on his face, but also plenty of purple and yellow ones earned before tonight. There were fresh cuts on Tim’s face, and he was sure there were more injuries under the suit in various stages of healing.
“Robin, report,” Jason growled in a poor Batman imitation.
Tim shot him a glare, but straightened up anyways. “Red Robin. Nothing except for some scratches on my face from that broken glass.”
“And the split lip?”
“Shallow enough to not need stitches.”
Jason dug out a handful of alcohol wipes. “Here. To clean ‘em up.” Jason tossed him the wipes, which Tim caught out of the air with ease. “But you’re going to need to go to the Cave for the arm.”
Tim plopped himself onto the edge of the tub. The bathroom was so small it put him within arm’s reach of Jason. He started picking at his kevlar absently. “It’s fine. Doesn’t hurt.”
That’s fucking bullshit. “Fucking bullshit,” said Jason. Tim had the nerve to look offended. “For real, Tim. There’s no way of knowing what you did to that thing without a proper scan.”
“I didn’t do anything to it. And why the hell do you care so much?” Tim shot back.
“Why do I-? You weren’t even supposed to be there! You dropped in from the ceiling with an arm you broke yesterday.” His voice was bouncing off the walls of the bathroom now, giving a tinny quality to the sound. “It wasn’t just stupid, it was downright suicidal,” Jason glared. “The mission was screwed from the start. Bad intel, a rat, whatever. But I could’ve handled myself.
“Instead, little Timmy decided he had to go play the hero, so suddenly I had to worry about getting both of our asses out of there.”
“You didn’t have to do anything! It was my mission in the first place, before you swooped in and took it!”
And it was back to who owned the mission. He should’ve known when he took the job that Tim would be hovering around, waiting for Jason to slip up. He could read in-between the lines. The Bats don’t trust Jason without their supervision, especially not on their important cases. Indignation flared up in his gut.
Jason wasn’t an idiot, he saw the irony in the anger at being treated like a live wire.
Doesn’t mean it doesn’t piss him off. Doesn’t sting.
“It’s different for you. You don’t have anything to prove to B,” Tim spat out.
And then it dawned on Jason. “You think I did this because Bruce asked me to?” Jason scoffed. The two rarely talked off patrol, and when they did, it was strained. It was hard to look the man in the eyes and not feel the way he saw him: the ghost of one of his greatest failures. And it was even harder for Jason to look back and not feel blistering rage at the fact that, for all his penitence, the old bastard was too caught in his own moralistic inertia to ever do anything real about it.
Over time, the choking rage he felt whenever he thought about Bruce and his damned war had simmered down into a persistent simmer. B still presumed to have complete authority over the entirety of Gotham, but the pair had mostly settled into a rhythm of sorts, staying out of each others’ way. He knew that Batman knows about every case Jason’s reached out to Oracle about, and definitely most of the ones he hasn’t. Paranoid bastard. Jason chose not to care.
Jason had basically given up on ever being anything more in Bruce’s eyes than the walking corpse of a soldier that Batman was too late to save. So he kept his distance. He had better things to do than watch Batman sulk.
Tim just stared back, expression sharp. “If not B, then who else?”
Jason gave him an unimpressed look. He started listing off, in monotone: “Oracle. Spoiler. Kori. Orphan. Robin Junior. Alfred. Signal-”
“Okay, okay!”
“But for the record, this time it was Dickhead,” Jason finished. Jason hadn’t even known the bastard was in Gotham until he somersaulted his way through Jason’s previously locked window like he owned the place. Dick asked for a favor.
He didn’t really understand why it was any of his business- hell, he was historically one of the worst people to go to for ensuring the overall health of Timothy Drake. But Dick was asking for a favor, the job seemed interesting, and he seemed serious.
“Dick sent you?” Tim repeated incredulously. Jason watched as that revelation clicked into Tim’s head and his genius intellect sorted through it. He opened his mouth, paused, then closed it again. “Oh,” he said.
“Yeah, oh,” Jason parroted back.
Tim huffed out a sigh that seemed too big, too weary for him, and slumped back against the porcelain of the shower. “I thought it might be another test from him.”
“From Bruce? Aren’t you a free agent now? Why would he be testing you?”
Tim seemed to think for a minute. “Not a test. Just, you know. A measure.”
Jason could fill in the rest. A measure of worthiness, of dedication to the mission.
Jason… Jason couldn’t remember when the whole vigilante thing stopped being fun. Being Robin was never carefree. The job came with more than its fair share of horrors. But he can’t remember when he realized he would be suiting up every night. That he’s entrenched himself so deeply into the fine mechanism of Gotham’s violence that to remove himself would be to let the system crumble back into an even worse, even more unmanageable chaos than when he first picked up the mantle.
It was unending. Jason literally died for the mission. Jason Peter Todd, the civilian, was legally buried. All that remained was Red Hood, the nights, the fight.
There must have been a time when masking up was something magical, instead marking another cycle in the endless churning of Gotham’s criminal underbelly.
Under the harsh overhead lighting of Jason’s cramped bathroom, Dick’s concern seemed more reasonable. Tim looks like he’s been running himself ragged. The shine in Tim’s eyes was dulled. Tim scrubbed at his cuts a little more rough than necessary. The dark circles under his eyes melted into the bruises.
Robin was also probably something joyful for Tim at some point, but he didn’t think personal fulfillment was what compelled Tim to throw his sorry ass through that window. He and Jason were trained by the same man. It was probably something more like an obligation, a compulsion to see the project through.
Jason sighed. He set about putting his med kit back in order. “Look, kid, when was the last time you slept more than 6 consecutive hours?”
Tim pulled a face. “Since when do you care about my beauty sleep?”
“I don’t. I mean, you look like absolute shit kid,” Jason bit back. God, did he suck at this. Why was he even bothering?
“Gee, thanks.” Tim slid off the tub and onto the tiled floor. He dusted himself off with an exaggerated motion. “I’ll take that as my cue to leave.”
“Tim.”
Tim stopped and looked back at Jason with a raised eyebrow.
“Take it from someone who fucking died for this shit. You can’t let the nightlife be all there is,” Jason said. Pot, meet kettle. “Take a night off.”
Tim’s mouth twisted into something like a wry smile.
“Will do. Thanks for the alcohol wipes, Jason,” Tim responded with a little goodbye wave, before disappearing somewhere down the hall.