Work Text:
There’s one spot on Wayne Manor’s grounds that the security system doesn’t cover. Jason knows this because in the months he’s been back in Gotham he’s come here several times and never once was greeted with any of the Bats running out to see what was going on. It was surreal to see his own grave, even weirder to see that even five years after his death there’s still fresh flowers a bouquet of carnations, hyacinths, and a singular dark red rose. It’s deliberate, and Jason knows that Alfred personally arranged it, but he can’t bring himself to find the meaning.
The rain is heavy tonight, his clothes (pilfered from a donation box) are soaked through. For once the Wayne family hasn’t stayed out late and seem to be gathered in one room in the manor. Jason sees their shadows against the curtains. He longs to be there, but he’s the dead son and he can’t have his presence mar the happiness his family feels.
Coming home had been the only thing to keep himself from listening to Talia’s talk of how much greater he could be, and how he could prove that he wasn’t the failure by killing the Batman. He’s more grateful than he’s ever been that she sent Damian to them when she did. There’s no telling how badly the kid’s personality would have been ruined, that is if he had one left. Now that he’s home, only two-hundred feet away from a door, Jason can’t bring himself to go back.
There’s so much he misses, but he doesn’t have the warmth and life that the other family members still have. Death stripped him raw and left him empty on the side of the road, the pit filled him with anger and madness that has him not recognizing himself in the mirror. Talia sharpened the anger, but enough time away from her has dulled it.
Jesus. He’s been back in Gotham for months and his family still don’t know that he’s even alive. They would never know that his grave is over an empty and broken coffin.
“Excuse me?”
Jason tenses. Between the rain and his thoughts, he hadn’t noticed anyone approaching him. He’s halfway tempted to book it to the tree line. No one would be able to catch him and by tomorrow he could hide out in Star City with Roy. Except then he’d have to actually tell Roy he’s back, which is the same problem he’s having here.
“This is a private cemetery.”
He almost falls to his knees. It's Alfred behind him, the old butler calm and steady even when talking to a person who broke onto estate grounds. Jason closes his eyes and tries to keep the tears at bay. This is what he had been avoiding because he knew that he wouldn’t be able to leave this again. They weren’t going to want a visual reminder of how bad this life can get, and Jason would always remind them of more painful times (at least that’s what he thought, maybe the mourning was just for show).
Jason’s never been one to run away when he gets caught, otherwise, Batman would have never found out who lifted his tires and Bruce Wayne would have never adopted charity case, Jason Todd.
“I know.”
“I must ask you to leave,” Alfred replies.
There’s an awkward tension between them. Jason knows it wouldn’t be hard for him to overpower the butler and flee, but he wouldn’t do that to Alfred, at least not now when the madness is quiet. Instead, he squares his shoulders and turns towards the butler. Alfred hasn’t changed much in the five or so years he’s been “dead.” A few more wrinkles and a tiny bit thinner, but his eyes were still kind and there was not a piece of clothing out of place. Seeing him was more of a homecoming than Jason could have ever hoped for.
Alfred’s eyes were steady, and they held wariness in them like Jason was a stranger. Jason knew he didn’t look like he had when they buried him; he was broader across the shoulders and taller too, his hair was different he had bangs instead of it being carefully parted and there was a streak of white, and finally his eyes weren’t the soft blue they had been but teal that in certain light looked like they glowed green. It wasn’t like he had walked out of the grave.
But he sees the exact moment Alfred realizes who’s standing in front of him. He’s different than the seventeen-year-old that got himself killed, but not unrecognizable, that’s what Jason had been banking on if he had ever worked up the courage to knock on the door. Jason almost pinches himself when he sees tears form in Alfred’s eyes. He lived within Wayne Manor for six years before he died and not once between all of the shit that happened had he ever seen Alfred lose his composure.
“My word, Master Jason?”
Jason rubs at the back of his head at the shakiness in the butler’s voice, “surprised?”
“I daresay I am,” Alfred stares at him like he’s a ghost.
He kind of is. Jason bites his lip, he doesn’t know what to do from here. This was never part of his plan, what to do after he let people know that he wasn’t as dead as they previously thought. Then Alfred steps forward and places a hand on his shoulder, the umbrella raised to account for his height (he’s taller than Alfred now, he might have been at seventeen but Alfred always seemed larger-than-life), and he thinks that this is proof he wanted: that he could live past dying.
Alfred is holding eye-contact, and there’s nothing but love and warmth, and God, Jason can’t handle this.
“You’ve grown up well.”
Jason quickly swipes his hand over his eyes, as if he was wiping the water from the rain off his face, but really, he’s trying to hide the fact that he’s crying. Alfred politely doesn’t say anything. Thunder crashed through the silence of the graveyard, and he realizes that they’ve been standing out here for several minutes. Someone is bound to notice Alfred’s disappearance.
“Why are you out here?” Jason tilts his head.
Alfred raises an eyebrow, “I could ask you the same.”
Jason shrugs, “the weather is pretty bad, surely you could have waited until the morning to check out the gravestones.”
“I saw a figure from the window,” Alfred explains, “it’s a good thing I came out to check the gravestones. You’ll catch you- you’ll catch ill.”
Jason winces. That’s the exact reason he’s not ready to go back into that manor. There’s going to be so many awkward restructurings of sentences because no one wants to remind themselves that a family member died. It’s best to leave now, but he knows Alfred is just going to tell Bruce and the other’s that he’s alive.
“It’s not so bad,” Jason shrugs.
“Come inside and I’ll find warm clothes and fix you a hot drink.”
He glances at the window where he can still make out the shadows of his brothers. It looks like they’re wrestling. More than likely Damian’s launched an attack at Tim, so Dick would be cackling on the other side of the room while Bruce watches with dismay. The scene is so familiar that it aches in his bones. There are so many reasons he should decline the offer and vanish back into the night like the ghost he feels like, but he can’t bring himself to say no.
“Going to ask Bruce to keep the waterlogged stray you’ve found?” Jason laughs dryly.
Alfred’s eyebrow raises again, “I believe it’s apter to say that the waterlogged son has come home.”
Jason huffs, “whatever you say.”
They make their way to the back door quietly. Jason doesn’t know what to say, he doesn’t really know how he’s even going to explain what happened. It depends on how everyone reacts to him barging into their family night, very much not dead. Damian would probably guess what happened to him, he knows the magic of the pit, but to everyone else, he just is randomly alive.
Alfred opens the door and Jason lets himself in. The back-entry way is the same as it’s always been. There’s a rug to catch dirt and water, and not much decoration. Both Bruce and Alfred learned early after he was adopted that two boys coming in from playing tend to be a little chaotic. He can only see the kitchen and part of the formal dining room. Wayne Manor is warm and dry and only know does Jason realize how much the rain has cooled his body temperature down.
He observes the house while Alfred pulls out towels from the nearby closet. Jason catches the one he tosses to him and his clothes are a lost cause, but at least he can dry his face and hair.
There’s no time to react when he hears heavy footsteps. The only thing he thinks to do was act like he was drying his face. It would give Alfred maybe enough time to smooth things over or give a little more warning that Jason just standing in an entryway.
“Alfred is everything alright?” Bruce askes, “and who is with you?”
“Everything is fine, and I believe that our guest is a familiar one,” Alfred replies.
Jason takes that as his cue to lower his towel. He takes a deep breath and drapes the towel around his shoulders and then he meets Bruce’s gaze. His father figure has changed, Bruce still looks unbeatable but gentle, but unlike Alfred, he looks older: there are creases around the corner of his eyes and a hint of silver at the temples. Bruce stands like he has an old injury acting up. Jason stands up straighter and offers a cocky smirk.
Like Alfred, it takes a few minutes for Bruce to process the changes and connect the familiarities. There’s a slight widening of the eyes and he reaches his arm up like he wants to touch. Jason observes the reaction and determines that he’s just in shock and not anything negative.
“Hey Bruce,” he grins, “sorry I’m late for dinner.”
That seems to kickstart Bruce’s brain and in two long strides Jason’s crush against him. The hug feels strange, but Jason realizes that its because he has to bend down to rest his chin on Bruce’s shoulder, and he’s wider than Bruce which means it’s no longer the feeling of being fully engulfed in a hug. It doesn’t matter, they’re changes that he can get used to because Bruce still smells like Bruce and chest to chest like this he can feel the other’s steady heartbeat. Slowly Jason raises his arms to wrap around Bruce. This time he can touch the tips of his fingers together if he angles his hands right.
It’s just odd.
Bruce pulls away and holds him at arm’s length. Jason does his best to not look nervous, he knows that despite the happy look on Bruce’s face (which is alarming in its own right) there are a hundred thoughts running through his head. Some of the years seem to have fallen from his face between the hug and separation and Jason can’t believe that its all because of him.
“Jason,” Bruce breathes like it's all he can say.
Jason dips his head. The floor underneath him is soaked and so is the front of Bruce’s shirt and probably wherever his hands had been. Bruce doesn’t seem to mind it, but Jason feels like he’s being brought to Wayne Manor for the first time in his grime-stained clothes. There’s a hand on his face, Bruce is still staring at him. Jason slightly leans into the touch, but it kind of feels like the other shoe is about to drop.
“Hey, Bruce, who are you talking to?” Dick’s voice echoes from a few rooms away, “are we expecting someone?”
Bruce looks at him for permission and Jason nods, unsure of what he just agreed to, but nothing has ended horribly yet.
“It’s an unexpected guest,” Bruce calls back, “but I want you three to come and say hello.”
Jason inhales sharply. Being reintroduced one at a time was working well for him, but then again he knows his brothers well enough to know that the others would feel a little slighted at not being the first to see him. Bruce steps away from him and to the side and Jason glances at him curiously until he sees the first of his brothers enter the room.
Dick enters first, the oldest and the leader. His hair is longer and styled in a surprisingly flattering way. He hasn’t changed much, but even from this distance, Jason can tell he’s easily outgrown Dick in height and broadness. Tim stumbles into Dick who had stopped in shock. Jason grins, Tim hasn’t grown much but the short hair suits him like he’s trying to not emulate his older brothers anymore. The dark bags under his eyes are alarming, but no one is coddling him, so Jason thinks that it's probably normal. Finally, Damian squeezes past the traffic jam. The youngest has changed the most, most of his baby looks have started to fade and he’s starting to show a clear definition of the face that matches Bruce’s even though all of the angles are Talia’s, he’s only just shorter than Tim but Jason can tell he’s going to outgrow the third Robin. He’ll easily reach Dick’s high if he’s given the chance.
It’s Tim that realizes who he is first, almost three seconds after seeing him, “Jason?”
Jason doesn’t have time to reply because Dick crashes into him and they both fall to the ground. One of Jason’s arms hits the table, and it shutters but thankfully there was nothing on it to break. Dick’s weight holds him against the ground, and usually, this is the point where Jason would be shoving his limpet of a brother off of him. He doesn’t have the heart to do it once he realizes that his shirt is getting wetter, but it’s warm. Dick’s chest is shuttering as he sobs quietly. From his spot on the floor, he can see the other two getting restless as Dick hugs him for longer than either Bruce of Alfred. Jason does some impressive maneuvering so that Dick hangs on his back, leaving Jason’s front open for more hugs if the other two want it.
Tim rushes into space the second its free. His grip isn’t quite as killer as Dick’s, but it still is a tight hug. His other shoulder gets strangely warm in one spot too, and Jason ignores that as well. Dick is still crying and clinging, it’s starting to edge into the territory of gross crying, but Jason isn’t going to deter Dick. He’s not even sure his usual abrasiveness would get his big brother to let him go. There’s also the fact that there’s a stream of indecipherable words leaving his mouth and Jason kind of wants to know what they’re saying. Tim backs off after a minute longer but hovers at his side.
Damian is more cautious about his welcome back hug. Jason knows that it doesn’t mean Damian doesn’t like him, it’s just that the youngest is like him when it comes to physical contact. In fact, he thinks this might be the most physical contact he’s willingly initiated and if he reads the room right, it’s the first of a lot he’ll have to deal with until the joy at him back wears off. Damian has to angle himself to mostly wrap around Jason, but his head is right under Jason’s head and his nose is pressed into Jason’s collarbone. The kid isn’t as boney as Jason remembers him. But he knows that he’s lost five years of time with his family, and only a year of that was him being dead.
He holds Damian tighter than the others.
Dick upon noticing that Jason has changed into actively hugging back yanks Tim back into the hug. Jason’s not entirely sure he knows how, but Tim is on the opposite side of Damian and under his arm. His older brother is still a heavy presence on his back, on arm is still wrapped around his chest but the other is carding through his hair.
Jason feels warm for the first time in four years.
Alfred clears his throat, apparently returning from wherever it was he had gone off to while Jason was being smothered. Bruce is still standing to the side, he looks dazed but fond staring at the pile of his kids on the floor.
“Perhaps it would be beneficial if Master Jason changes before he catches a cold?”
Oh yeah, he’s still soaking wet.
“And the rest of you should probably change soon,” Bruce points out.
Slowly his brothers disengage from the pile on the floor. Jason misses the warmth, but the promise of a hot shower and warm (clean) clothes makes it worth it. He takes the pile from Alfred and vanishes down to one of the first-floor bathrooms. It's not time to see what they’ve done with his room.
He showers quickly and the thumping from the floor above him tell him that there’s a squabble for one of the fancy showers. Jason snickers to himself, and vaguely wonders why Bruce just never installed fancy showers in all their bedrooms. Probably because they would never leave but for patrol. He steps out of the shower and feels clean. There were showers in his apartment that he rented, but the water pressure was always bad and he had a suspicion that the water wasn’t properly filtered.
Also, the fancy generic shampoo each of the nonpersonal bathrooms had stocked beat the fifty-cent shit he picked up from the dollar store. Jason stares at himself in the mirror and tries to think about what he looked like at seventeen. His skin is naturally tanned, but it never regained the darkness it was prior to his death and his freckles have faded mostly. Strangely the Lazarus Pit lightened his hair from is dark-brown almost black shade to a distinctly chestnut brown. It’s no wonder the others didn’t recognize him. The features he shared with his brothers, that made them look like brothers, have been taken from him.
Jason shakes his head. There’s no point in lamenting over physical features now. His family knew who he was without him having to say it. He reaches down and picks up the shirt Alfred found for him, it's from Gotham University and the only person it could fit well was Bruce. Once it’s on, he notices that it's stretched across the shoulders. Another reminder of how he’s not the same as he was at seventeen. Thankfully the sweatpants were a little large on him.
Just as he reaches for the door it hits him. He’s back in Wayne Manor. His family hasn’t tried to kick him out yet. Five years later he’s finally home, and he’s grateful for it in the way he should have been before he died. Tears fall down his face and he hunches over the sink, he bites his cheek so hard it bleeds in an effort to not make a sound.
“Little Wing,” Dick knocks softly, “we’re going to finish watching the movie. If you want to join.”
Jason turns the faucet on and rinses his mouth from the blood. It sounds like he was brushing his teeth and not on the verge of some emotional panic attack.
“Yeah,” Jason replies and opens the door finally.
Dick grins as he steps out, and he wraps an arm around him. Jason rolls his eyes and shoves at him playfully. They push at each other all the way into the main living room. It looks like a sixth grader’s sleepover with how many blankets are on the floor and all the snacks on the table. Bruce manages to look dignified on the couch covered in the Green Lantern blanket Jason had bought him for his birthday one year. Jason blinks in surprise at the offending object, he hadn’t thought Bruce would keep it after his death.
He stops and stares at the floor, sure enough, Damian is already a burrito in the superman blanket, and Tim has the Wonder Woman blanket draped over his shoulders like a cape. Dick’s own Green Arrow blanket lays over the chair where he had probably tossed it earlier.
Then, sitting innocently in that same chair was Jason’s Flash blanket Dick had bought him. It was folded up like it was in the pile Alfred brought out for the movies. He wonders if this happened every movie night. Dick squeezes his shoulders and leans towards him.
“It made it feel like you were still with us,” Dick whispers.
Jason closes his eyes and breathes slowly until he reaches the count of ten and then he opens them and grins. He grabs the blanket and flops down between Tim and Damian. Dick lands on top of him a second later and Jason has to let out a soft ‘oof’ of air. Tim shifts so that he’s using Jason as a backrest and Damian crawls under Jason’s arm so that it’s almost like he’s being cuddled by Dick and Jason.
He doesn’t care that he barely makes it through ten minutes of the movie resuming before he falls asleep. Jason knows he’s home, and while there’s still a lot to sort out, this is the time to enjoy his second chance.