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There’s a deep ache in his bones.
He wakes up one morning a copper fills his mouth. Jason spits blood into the sink and brushes his teeth.
The headaches start gradually. At first, he thinks they’re sinus headaches, fall is curving into winter and snow is falling. They grow in intensity and frequency. He’s grateful for the distance from his family. They would hover over him and fret and worry. Jason loves them all dearly, so he doesn’t want to cause them more pain.
He knows what’s coming.
The day after he suffers his worse headache, it lays him out for a week, he holds a shaking thumb over the call button. Jason locks the phone and gets ready to meet Damian for the museum tour Jason promised him for his birthday.
He ends up hunched over a toilet losing bile and blood in equal amounts. Damian thinks its food poisoning and Jason tells him he can tough it out.
The next day he’s running a fever so high he can’t stop himself from dialing the number.
“Come to Gotham.”
She’ll come, or she won’t. Jason knows what will happen either way.
Two days later, he’s propped against the wall of the air-conditioning unit on top of his apartment building. He’s trembling like he was submerged in Gotham Bay in February, and his legs are barely holding him up.
Talia drops from the shadows.
Jason waves.
“What?” Talia’s voice is sharp and commanding.
Jason figures she wasn’t happy that he never killed the Bat as their agreement said.
“I’m dying,” the wind almost whips the words away for how quietly he says them.
Talia arches a thin brow, “you called me here for that?”
“Not entirely,” Jason says, “can the pit fix this?”
“It will restore you to how you were when you first submerged,” Talia replies.
Jason stares at the sky. The Bat-signal is bright, and he should probably figure out what’s gone wrong. Somehow it makes him feel safer.
“So, I’ll be restored to death?” Jason tilts his head.
Talia purses her lips, “or to your first moments of life after the pit.”
He spent too long after his resurrection fighting back to himself. Those first few months he was filled with a deep longing and he was terrified. Jason doesn’t want to go back to that.
“Okay.”
“The pit was never meant to be used to reverse death,” Talia says, “only to extend life and heal unhealable wounds.”
“The universe is correcting itself,” Jason says slowly, “I know. I just wanted to make sure that there was nothing I could do.”
“Are you sure that this is the pit?”
Jason shrugs, “it’s too aggressive to be completely natural.”
Talia shakes her head, “maybe there is something you can do.”
“I don’t know,” Jason replies, “if I go anywhere Bruce will know.”
“Come to the League then,” Talia’s voice loses its silky quality, “we’ll do the examination.”
Jason blinks, “why?”
“Damian loves you,” Talia replies, “I do not wish to cause him undue pain.”
It was simpler than he thought it would be. Although, he has to wonder how long Talia has been spying on them and if Bruce knows. Their relationship with Talia’s League might be benevolent now, but it might be less so in the future and the sting of Damian’s death is still fresh. He probably does, Jason doubts Bruce would be so careless when most of his kids are still living at the manor or are over there enough that it qualifies as living there.
“I’ll go.”
Talia nods, “I’ll let you say your goodbyes.”
“No need,” Jason carefully pushes from the wall, “I’ll leave them a note.”
“Is a note satisfying to you?”
“No,” Jason replies, “but they’ll know something is wrong when they see me, and this is all to keep them in the dark until the possible last second.”
Talia moves towards him, and as much as he hates it, he lets her help him to his apartment. It was only one flight of stairs, but he was winded by the time he got down them. He stumbles into the apartment towards the table. There’s a notebook open, he had been drafting a letter about him being gone before Talia arrived.
I’ll be out of Gotham for the foreseeable future. Something came up. I’ll be back soon.
His handwriting is shakier than he usual neat print. Bruce will notice, but hopefully, he’ll assume it was anxiety or nerves. Talia peers over his shoulder.
“That’s all?”
“Anything more and they’ll know something is wrong,” Jason answers.
“And if something goes wrong?” Talia tilts her head, “you can always explain when you come back, but you can’t do that if you’re dead.”
Jason looks down at the paper. His disappearance is going to cause enough problems with everyone, but his vague message is going to make them track him down. He knows if anyone left him a note like that he’d alternate from pissed to worried. So he rips the paper out of the notebook and tosses it into the recycling bin.
I’m leaving Gotham. There’s something I need to take care of. As soon as I’m done, I’ll get into contact with someone. It’s nothing dangerous, but I need to be on my own for it.
I love you all. I’ll be back soon.
It’s marginally better. Talia reads over it and her lips twitch, “you truly are his son.”
Jason closes his eyes against a wave of dizziness, “he did raise me in my formative years.”
Talia rolls her eyes. Jason signs his name a little useless because they’ll know who it was.
“Let’s go.”
The doctors at the League of Assassins confirmed what Jason thought. He’s dying and there’s no way to cure it without risking pit madness or death, and Jason would rather have the time. Talia has been sympathetic to him, she’s been giving him updates on Gotham.
Bruce is still looking for you. There’s no stone in Gotham that hasn’t been unturned.
Talia told him that she purged the footage of her arriving and them leaving. Apparently, Bruce hasn’t thought to look at the footage or it was done well enough that he missed it. Tim too. He misses them so much, the doctors can’t give him an estimate, but he knows they think it’ll be soon. It’s been a month and he’s not getting better on his own, but he isn’t getting worse. He’s on medication to treat the symptoms.
“I have to go back,” he says to Talia.
They’re on a balcony watching the sunrise. There’s an ache in his bones, but he knows what it means.
“Yes.”
Jason glances down at the spars in the courtyard, he wants to be doing that, but standing takes all his energy, “I want to go back soon.”
“We can leave at any time,” Talia says softly.
“Tomorrow then.”
Talia nods.
There’s a gust of wind and Jason bow his head, “god. I don’t want to do this to them.”
Talia places a hand on his back, its soft, “none of could have foreseen this.”
“They’ve seen me die once,” Jason closes his eyes against the burn, “wasn’t that enough?”
“They got years more than they would have otherwise.”
Jason opens his eyes, “they’ve been a bad six years.”
Talia tosses her head back, “take it from a mother, nothing is worse than losing a child. This will hurt them deeply, but I know Bruce will never wish that you had stayed dead.”
Jason looks back at the ground and squares his shoulders, “but they would have healed eventually.”
“They will heal again,” Talia says, her hand moves from his back to his shoulders and squeezes.
Jason arrives at the manor. Talia drove him from the airport. He’s feeling well enough that he can walk by himself. It’s raining. Its always raining when he comes back home, but this is an unseasonably warm rain.
“Thank you for this.”
Talia dips her head, “thank you for being a brother to my son.”
There’s a lot he could say. He doubts he’ll see her again before he dies. Jason has said all he needs to, so he offers her a Robin-bright grin and gets out of the car.
The walk to the front door is draining. Judging by the lack of rushing, they haven’t noticed that he’s approached. Something might have demanded their attention, but it seems like Gotham has decided to hold its peace for now. Maybe it’ll continue into the night He lifts the heavy knocker and tries to not look too winded or ill.
Alfred opens the door, “Master Jason.”
“Hey,” he says.
“I was wondering if you would be joining us for dinner,” Alfred says.
Jason dips his head in mild reproach. He should have called to let them know he was safe, but he was so afraid that his voice would give him away, or worse, that he would start crying. Alfred lets him into the house and Jason can make out faint conversation from the living room. It sounds like it’s just the boys.
Good. It makes this a little easier. He’ll tell the girls later, but Bruce and Dick were always going to be the hardest to tell. He won’t even be able to look at Tim.
Alfred leads him to the living room. Bruce looks up when Alfred enters, but his eyes immediately meet Jason’s.
“Jay,” he breathes and the tenseness flies from his shoulders.
Jason offers him a crooked smile, “Hey.”
The others look at him with varying degrees of relief, but Damian. Damian’s eyes are sharp, and Jason knows that he’s at least guessed at the reason Jason bolted for a month.
“I have to tell you why I left,” Jason moves slowly but naturally to one of the open chairs.
“Yes, you do,” Dick says.
Jason sits down and hunches over to look at his feet, his fingers are steepled like he was praying.
“Jason?” Tim asks.
He sighs, there’s no delaying it. The Bats thrive on honesty and hate anything emotional, so it’s best to just be blunt lest he starts a fight.
“I’ve been with Talia for the last month,” Jason raises his hand and head.
Damian practically deflates, but everyone’s eyes are trained on him.
“I’ve been… experiencing symptoms for a long time, and I went with her to confirm it before I did anything else.”
“The tests took a month?” Tim’s eyes are darting back and forth, he’s trying to piece things together before anyone else. He wants to prepare himself.
“No. It didn’t take long, we both knew what it was, but I guess. I just…” Jason trails off, “couldn’t accept it yet.”
Dick’s voice is barely above a whisper, “Jason?”
Jason inhales and pauses for three seconds to bring the words up from where they’ve sunk to his stomach, “I’m dying.”
The room falls silent and Jason takes advantage of it, “it’s the magic of the pit. Whatever caused me to be brought back to life didn’t tell my body that I was alive again. The pit was never meant to bring someone back from death.”
“There’s nothing we can do?” Tim asks.
Jason shakes his head as he loses his voice for a second.
“How long?”
Bruce’s voice is clinically neutral and Jason folds away from that. It means that Bruce is repressing his emotions, all of them. He hates when that happens, and he hates it even more that he’s the one causing it.
“They don’t know,” Jason tilts his eyes back to his boots, “I’m treating the symptoms the best I can, but it’s not doing anything to stop the progression.”
There’s silence in the room again. Jason closes his eyes and bites his lip. He hates this. Hates it so much.
“Don’t,” he forces out, “don’t make this a thing. We don’t know how much time I have left, and I don’t want to be pitied or a lab rat for tests. I’ve had years more than I should have, and I’m grateful for that. I’m asking that you let me die with my dignity.”
He looks up and sees that both Tim and Dick are openly crying. Alfred looks misty-eyed whereas Damian is stony-faced. Bruce is stone-faced, but his posture screams that he wants to be near Jason. He tilts his head for a brief second and then nods. Bruce moves towards him and hugs him. There’s a minor tremor running along his father’s spine.
“It’s fine,” Jason whispers so that no one could hear him, “I’m not scared.”
“I know,” Bruce breathes, “you’re so brave.”
“We’ll get through this,” Jason says, “you’ll heal.”