Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In the swamp in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.

Solitary the thrush,
The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,
Sings by himself a song.

Song of the bleeding throat,
Death’s outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know,
If thou wast not granted to sing thou would’st surely die.)

--"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," Walt Whitman

It's hard to tell what a good day in Gotham is. Living in Gotham is living on a knife-edge until you fall asleep, trying to figure out if something else will go wrong in the city. Normal is that balancing act. Good is when you actually make it all the way through without something catastrophically going wrong. 

Still, there are levels to Gotham-normal, and Jim can say today edges much nearer to good than it does bad. No murders today, the gangs have been quiet, and no one has broken out of Arkham recently. All told, Jim should probably start getting nervous, because Gotham never lasts on that precipice for very long, but he wants to enjoy it.

It's a Saturday. Jim works half days most Saturdays, and he's just gotten off. The sun finally poked through the clouds sometime mid-morning, another point toward the good end of the scale, and he's decided to go out to eat somewhere he can enjoy the brief pleasant weather.

Of course, it's Gotham, so he doesn't get more than a block and half from the precinct before he hears yelling down a nearby alleyway. 

Jim rolls his eyes and peers down the alley. 

A man was the one doing the yelling. His back is to Jim, and he's facing off with a smaller figure Jim can't make out as well. The man moves his arm slightly, and Jim sees the knife. 

"Just gimme your cash, kid!" the man barks. 

Jim swears quietly, reaching to the gun in his holster, but he doesn't have time to pull it before the man lunges--

And the would-be mugging victim dodges, planting his feet against a nearby dumpster to use as a springboard before he slams both hands down on the man's shoulders and, using his momentum, neatly flips the man. He plucks the knife from the man's hand as he falls, almost like an afterthought. 

Jim stares. 

"GCPD," he manages to say, after the mugger has gotten his breath back and started to flounder around. "What's going--"

The man flees down the alleyway. Jim isn't too concerned with that, though. He rather wanted the man to go away, because the move that put him down on the ground?

That was a Robin move. 

Jim works very hard to keep up what plausible deniability with Batman he has, and he thought the man had impressed on his kids the importance of keeping their identities secret. That move, wildly unsubtle and showy as it had been, wouldn't take long for anyone to recognize. At least the kid had the hood of his red sweatshirt pulled up, and hopefully the mugger hadn't seen his face.

The kid is still holding the knife.

"Kid," Jim says, holstering his gun and walking forward. He would have expected Robin (Tim Drake? He's a little short to be Dick) to have run for it by now. Disappeared the way the Bats always do. "You want to give me the knife?" He holds his hand out. 

Don't look at his face, don't give up deniability, Jim thinks on a refrain. Pretend everything is normal. 

The kid reaches out slowly, drops the knife in his hand, and peers up through his bangs to look vaguely past Jim.

Deniability goes straight out the window. 

"Jason? Jason Todd?"

Bruce Wayne's second oldest child -- his dead son -- doesn't seem to hear him. There's maybe a slight flicker in his empty eyes, but it's there and gone too fast to Jim to be sure. Jim knows what stubbornness looks like on this face, and there's none of it here. Jason's not ignoring him, he genuinely doesn't seem to be engaged with the world, a placid expression on his face. 

Oh my God.

"Jason," Jim says again. Still no response, and Jim takes a chance. 

"Robin," he whispers.

Jason's eyes meet his. 

Jim takes Jason back to his apartment with him. It might not be the best option, but so far the only thing the kid has responded to is his codename, and Jim doesn't want that stack of cards to fall down on the Waynes. Plus, as soon as the media find out who Jim just found, it's going to be a frenzy. The Waynes don't deserve that to be the way they find their son/brother again.

Jason follows Jim willingly enough, trailing him back to his car and climbing into the passenger seat. He even does his seatbelt. Then he sits there, completely still, the whole ride back to Jim's, face blank again. It's -- somewhat disturbing, truth be told. 

"Okay," Jim says, when he gets Jason inside. "You hungry, kid?"

Jason's head tilts slightly. 

Jim heats up some soup. Judging by the state of his clothes, his hair, and how generally thin Jason is, he must have been living on the streets. More than a week, at the very least. He doesn't know how (if) Jason was getting himself food in this state, and he doesn't want to shock the boy's system too badly. Light foods are the best to start out with. 

He waits until Jason is done eating before he says, carefully, "Jason, can I check you for injuries?"

No response. Jim doesn't know if Jason can't or won't respond, or if he's simply too out of it to have even heard in the first place. 

"How about this?" Jim says. There's nothing for it but to try again. "If you get uncomfortable, you can tell me to stop. Tap my arm, or get up and walk away. Whatever you want. And then you can take a shower and we can get you into some clean clothes. Sound good?"

Jason holds out one hand. The knuckles are scraped but mostly scabbed over. Jim is going to take that as assent. 

"All right," Jim says, and reaches out. 

There are...a lot of scars. The worst are the silvery ones on Jason's fingertips, the one that Jim almost missed at first, and what is unmistakably an autopsy scar, stark and ugly on the boy's chest. Jim has to stop after that.  He hasn't been able to find anything more than minor injuries by that point; if there is something truly wrong with the boy, other than minor scrapes like his knuckles and the clear catatonia, Jim isn't sure he'll be able to find it anyway. It's better if they get a doctor involved at some point. 

Honestly? He can't deal with seeing the evidence this boy dragged himself out of his grave any longer. They'll have to deal with that more later. Right now, Jason is fed, but Jim should make sure he's clean as well. It'll give Jim a momentary break, too. It will give him a chance to do some follow up.  

After Jim has gotten Jason into the shower, leaving him a pair of old sweatpants and a Gotham Knights T-shirt to change into, he calls his daughter. 

"Barbara," he says when she picks up. "I need you to come over here. Now."

"Dad? What's going on?" Barbara sounds worried. Probably because Jim is doing a bad job of modulating his tone, dammit.

A dead kid just came back to life. He's justified in being thrown for a loop. 

"Nothing bad," Jim says. I think. "But I need a second opinion."

To make sure he isn't insane. To make this is actually Jason Todd, irrefutably, in every way they can check, before he goes and tells the Waynes that he's alive again. To figure out what the hell happened to this kid.

Because Batman should have caught this. Jim should have caught this. If this is Jason Todd, not some kind of trick -- 

The evidence is damning.

(a kid who moved like Robin, who responded to the name, who had been autopsied and buried, a kid who Jim recognizes from both in and out of costume)

Jim believes this is truly Jason Todd, but he owes it to the Waynes to make sure before he raises their hopes. He also owes it to them to have at least taken steps toward answers as to how this happened, what they missed.

Jason apparently woke up, found his way out of his grave and onto the streets of Gotham sometime in the last year and a half, and Jim doesn't know how. He'll do what he can from his side of things, but he's aware of his limits. Oracle is the best person to bring onto the case with him. If there's something to be found, his daughter will find it. 

"All right," Barbara says, and he can hear shuffling on her side. "Give me thirty minutes."

"And Babs..." Jim says, before she can hang up. "Don't tell the Waynes."

Crackling silence on the other end of the line, and Jim runs his free hand through his hair, turns -- to see Jason Todd standing a few feet behind him, hair dripping wet and dressed in the clothes Jim had left him. 

"Shit, kid!" Jim exclaims. "Don't sneak up on me like that!" 

Jim should have expected this. It's standard procedure for the Bats to sneak up on anyone and everyone. Jason's muscle memory was good enough for him to pull off a standard Robin takedown; the stealth skills were probably even more ingrained than that. 

"Dad?" came Barbara's voice. "What's going on?"

"I need a second opinion," Jim tells her again. "But this isn't something that should be talked about over the phone."

Barbara lets out a slow breath. "Thirty minutes," she says. "See you then." She hangs up. 

It's closer to twenty minutes when Jim hears the knock on his door. He's managed to get Jason settled on the couch and turned on the TV for lack of anything better to do. He'd made an executive decision to keep away from the news, instead settling on Animal Planet, though he'd left the remote with Jason in case the kid wanted to watch something else.

He opens the door halfway, keeping Jason blocked by his body. He says, "He doesn't...really seem to be reacting to much of anything. Maybe it's just me he won't respond to, but when you see him -- don't get your hopes up too high. I don't know if he'll recognize you." 

Barbara's eyes narrow behind her glasses. "That's not very reassuring, Dad. And I still don't know what you want me here for."

Jim sighs. "In this situation, I don't really know how to be. You'll understand when you see him."

"Great," Barbara says. "Well, you going to let me in so I can meet this mystery kid?"

Jim opens the door, moves out of the way, and lets Barbara roll her way in. He closes the door behind her. Jason is still watching TV -- or maybe just staring at it, it's hard to tell. He doesn't twitch as Barbara rolls closer, and sitting so that Barbara can only see his profile, his daughter must not have put the pieces together yet. 

Jim might not have put it together as fast as he did if he wasn't already looking for Robin when he met the kid. 

"Hey there," Barbara says, gentle despite whatever mistrust she might have towards this situation.

Jason turns toward the sound of her voice. 

Barbara lets out a strangled noise. Even from Jim's spot by the door, he can see the way she goes white. "No," she says. "No, that's impossible, that's -- Jason?"

Jason blinks placidly at her, then seems to lose interest. He looks back toward the TV. 

Barbara reaches out as if to grab Jason's hand, but pulls back. She scrubs her hand over her face instead. "Dad, what the hell is this?" 

"Good question," Jim says heavily. "He must've been living on the streets; I have no idea for how long. It was chance that I ran into him today. I don't know if, at some level, he recognized me and trusted me or if he simply followed me back..." He shakes his head. "He can follow directions. He has the muscle memory to do plenty of things. I just don't know what's going on in his mind." 

"Jesus," Barbara says. She hasn't looked away from Jason up to that point, but she does as she asks, "Is he...is he okay, though?" She looks startlingly young as she does so, nearly pleading with him. 

"He should probably be looked over by a real doctor, but from what I could tell, the most severe injuries--" The ones that killed him. Jim never read the autopsy report; he didn't want to know. The Joker has bragged about it before, though. Never too explicitly, but enough. Jim has to take a moment. "They're all healed. Anything else is minor injuries. There is, ah. Some scarring on his fingertips."

Barbara wheels herself over so she's in front of Jason rather than his side. He looks slightly past her the way he did with Jim. "Jason," she says softly. "Can I see your hands?"

Jason lifts them for her. 

Barbara looks them over, turning Jason's hands in her own. She traces those damning scars, the ones that Jim is pretty sure provide the answers to how Jason Todd got from his grave to the streets of Gotham. It doesn't take long for Barbara to figure it out, either.

"Please, no," Barbara says, bowing her head over Jason's hands. "Please, don't let us have missed this." 

Jim retreats to the kitchen to make some coffee and pretend he doesn't hear his daughter sobbing into Jason's lap. 

Chapter Text

Jim has already finished a cup of coffee and is working on his second by the time Barbara rolls her way into the kitchen. Her eyes are red-rimmed but dry. Jim slides the cup he'd made for her across the table. 

Barbara takes a bracing gulp before she asks, "How did you find him?"

"Someone tried to mug him," Jim says. He can't help the rather inappropriate note of dark amusement that makes its way into his voice. 

Someone tried to mug Robin. Ha. 

Someone who didn't know he was Robin. Someone who saw a helpless teenager.

...Someone tried to rob a catatonic, homeless teenager. 

It is Gotham, after all. It's perfectly in character for this city. That thought doesn't help the burn of anger he feels. 

"The mugger ran once I said I was GCPD, and then when I saw Jason's face..." After he pulled that ridiculous Robin move, he carefully omits. "I recognized him."

Jim Gordon has an excuse to know Jason Todd, thankfully. If the only excuse he'd had was recognizing Robin's face beneath the mask, it certainly wouldn't have been ideal. Fortunately, even despite Jason's disdain for and avoidance of the press, he was famous enough that most Gotham citizens would have been able to pick him out of a line up before his death. After, too, if not as easily.

But even without that -- Barbara spent a good deal of time tutoring Jason in this apartment. He personally knows -- knew -- knows the kid, not just from rooftop rendezvouses, not just from the newspapers. He knows this kid. No one should question him recognizing the kid. 

Plausible deniability. Just don't mention the flip. 

He isn't sure how much longer he's going to be able to keep up that front. 

"You said...he'd been living on the streets?" Barbara asks.

"Best guess," Jim says. "Probably a week at the least. I'm going to look into that, see if I can't narrow down a time frame. Figure out how he..." He pauses. He hasn't said it out loud yet. He isn't sure if he wants to. 

If he even can.

"Came back," Barbara finishes for him. "When he did. Where he's been, how we missed this." She clenches her jaw, a muscle ticking hard in it, before she forces herself to relax and ask, "Dad. Why did you call me?"

Because you're Oracle. Because you were Batgirl. Because if I can't tell the Waynes yet, I can at least tell you.

"I told you," Jim says. "I needed a second opinion." He weighs the balance of his lies versus the trust of his daughter, and he adds, "Honestly, I couldn't tell the Waynes. I'm still not sure we can. I need to be sure it is Jason. You recognize him, too, but we need to verify his prints and blood work before anything else. I can't in good conscience tell the Waynes until and unless we're positive this is Jason Todd, which means we have to deal with this quietly. Without, god forbid, the press getting involved. I won't give the Waynes hope just to pull it away from them again." 

He swirls the dregs of his coffee. Says, "And it's like you said. I need to know how we missed this."

"Dad--" Barbara starts. She doesn't continue. Jim is willing to bet it's because she had been referring to the Bats rather than her father when she said we, and Jim is harshly thankful he doesn't have to deal with the grating edge of her patronizing him. He's a detective, too. He's the goddamn Commissioner. 

Somehow, they all missed this. 

"You're right," Barbara says. "We need to be sure." She looks down at the table. "For what it's worth, I -- I'm almost positive it is him." She blows out a breath. "But...even if it is...he's never going to be Jason again, is he?"

"You can't give up hope," Jim says. He thinks of the way Jason looked straight at him when he said that hopeful Robin. He's still in there somewhere. 

"I'm not. I'm just being realistic." Barbara smiles grimly. "You don't come back from something like that. You'll never be who you were again. You can't."

Jim reaches out, covering one of Barbara's hands with his own. He knows that in this case, Barbara is speaking from experience. 

"But he's alive," Jim says. "Whatever else -- isn't that worth it?"

"Of course it is," Barbara murmurs. She nods. Stronger, she says, "Yes. Of course."

What they end up deciding is take Jason's prints and a blood sample. Jim lets Barbara take her own samples, to check against whatever of her own databases she has. He doesn't ask any questions, and in turn she doesn't offer any answers. They're both committed to getting to the bottom of this, and the masks are slipping.

Jason doesn't protest, not when they take his prints nor when they draw his blood. Jim is just thankful he already had the supplies to do it. Barbara says she'll drop the samples off at the precinct on her way home; Jim calls ahead and tells the lab to run the samples he's having sent in. 

It will take a good twenty-four to seventy-two hours for the results to get back. Jim's not even sure if Jason's prints are in the system. He knows the kid was living on the streets before Bruce took him in, and he seems to recall something about petty theft, but he can't recall if he was ever actually taken in for anything. 

It's possible, but he just isn't sure. He's holding onto any hope he can. Fingerprints and a blood sample. One of them has to work.

If all else fails, Babs has her own resources. She'll be able to turn up answers even if Jim fails to do so. 

God, but Jim needs them to find answers.

"I'm heading out for now, Jason," Barbara says to the kid on Jim's couch. "I'll be back tomorrow, okay?"

Jason doesn't react beyond fiddling with the hem of the Knights T-shirt Jim had given him. The bandaid they'd pressed to the inside of his elbow after drawing blood is a cheery blue; Jim always tries to carry a few colored bandaids with him, just in case there are kids.

He was a rookie still when Martha and Thomas Wayne were murdered. He still remembers drawing his jacket over Bruce Wayne's tiny shoulders. He'll never be able to forget it.

He always hopes that any tiny comfort will be able to make a bad situation that minuscule bit better. There's so little he can do, so he has to do what he can. Jim is a cop because he wants to help. 

Barbara sighs at the lack of acknowledgment. Slowly, gently, she pulls Jason forward into a hug, careful to leave him space and time to wiggle his way out of he doesn't want to be a part of it. He leans into her, though, and Barbara holds him against her for a long minute. 

"I'll be back tomorrow," she says, disentangling herself. Jason's hands had crept up out of his lap, looping around her back to return the hug. "I promise."

Jim sits down next to Jason after Babs has shown herself out. The TV is still on Animal Planet, Jason apparently disinclined to change the channel. Jim watches the program for a few minutes, and he thinks he's getting mildly invested in the science they're discussing before the abrupt introduction of dragons. 

"I thought this was about real animals," he mutters. A horrifying possibility occurs to him. "Please tell me dragons aren't real."

Jim might be imagining it, but he thinks he sees a spark of amusement in Jason's eyes. Jim settles in to keep watching.

Barring any emergencies, Jim doesn't have to go in to work on Sundays. It's beneficial now, because he's not sure what to do with Jason when he goes to work. He'll have to figure something out by tomorrow. He can't take Jason to the precinct with him -- there's too much a chance that someone will spot him and figure out who he is, and anyway, he doesn't want Jason to be stuck in the precinct all day. Between all the cops and the criminals and the fact that he's in some sort of walking coma, it doesn't seem like a good combination. Jim supposes he could lock Jason in his office to keep him out of trouble and away from others, but that seems cruel. 

The problem is that he doesn't want to leave Jason by himself at the apartment, either. Jason seems calm and willing to go along with everything right now, but he's still capable of walking around by himself -- and presumably could walk right out the door if he felt like it. If he leaves Jason alone and the kid disappears while Jim's at work, he would never forgive himself, and he'd never be able to explain himself.

"Sorry, Mr. Wayne, your son is alive and I found him, but he wandered out of my apartment and now I don't know where he is." Right.

Barbara is likely his best bet. He'll have to ask her when she arrives later this afternoon.

For now, he's spending the day with Jason. Well. He's staying in the same room as Jason and keeping an eye on him. Jim turned on the TV earlier this morning and Jason has been staring in its direction for a while now. 

He cautiously gave Jason dry cereal and a glass of orange juice for breakfast, and he seemed to handle it all right, which is a relief. Jim is mostly confident by now -- after three meals with the kid -- that as long as he doesn't give Jason food that is obscenely rich, Jason will be fine with whatever Jim has around the apartment. Still, he thinks they'll stay away from dairy completely, just to be safe. And coffee. Jim is pretty sure Jason was eyeing his mug earlier.

Jim is working his way through the newspaper's crossword puzzle, the TV a soothing sound in the background, when a shadow falls across the page. 

He's too good at that, Jim thinks, a little sourly. Much like yesterday, he didn't hear Jason approach. 

He looks up at the kid, who is standing at the edge of the table and peering down at the crossword puzzle. 

"Everything all right, kid?" he asks. 

Jason keeps looking at the crossword puzzle, then turns and wanders away -- toward the bookshelf. If Jim remembers right, Babs only ever tutored Jason in math and some science. He had never needed much help with lit. 

"Tired of watching TV, huh?" Jim laughs a little. This is encouraging. It shows that there's enough of Jason tucked away inside to be bored, to want to do something other than sitting around.

(It makes Jim even more nervous about the idea of leaving Jason on his own while Jim is at work.)

He gets up and joins Jason by the bookshelf. 

"Anything catch your eye?" Jim asks, and he follows Jason's gaze toward the row of classics in the middle of the shelf. Most of them were Jim's own, though there were a few scattered in there that Jim had bought for Barbara in high school. Required reading for a couple of her English classes. Jim had ended up reading several of those, too, and kept them to add to his collection when Barbara moved out. 

"Stop me when I get to one that sounds good," Jim says, and he starts listing off the titles, craning his neck sideways so he can read them. 

Jason takes half a shuffle-step forward when Jim gets to Dumas. 

"The Count of Monte Cristo," Jim reads out a second time. Another half-step. "Good taste." Jim makes an aborted gesture to give the book to Jason before he reconsiders and asks, "Would you like me to read it to you?" 

Jason walks back over to the couch and sits down, which is answer enough.

"All right," Jim says. He sits next to Jason, flicking on the lamp next to the couch so he can see better. He swears the text in this book used to be bigger. "On the twenty-fourth of February, 1815, the lookout at Notre-Dame de la Garde signaled the three-master, the Pharaon from Smyrna, Trieste, and Naples..."

Chapter Text

They’ve made it through several chapters and taken a break for lunch by the time that Barbara shows up again. She lets herself in with her own key.

“In here!” Jim calls from the kitchen.

“This looks cozy,” Barbara says. She smiles, but it can’t quite cover the complicated emotions Jim can read in her eyes. “Hello, Jason.”

Jason looks at her. He looks at her. He even manages a faint smile.

Jim is stunned. Barbara gasps.

Before they can get their hopes much higher up, though, Jason — the part of him that shone through — fades away again. He goes back to picking at the remains of his lunch. Jim suspects he’s already full, but some lingering instinct keeps him from leaving food on his plate.

“He recognized me,” Barbara says, hushed. “He — he definitely recognized me that time.”

It’s a marked improvement, no matter how short a time it lasted. It was a razor thin moment of awareness, except this time it didn’t surface because Jim called him Robin, but rather because his daughter was enough.

That, more than anything, gives Jim hope for the future. If Barbara is enough — Barbara, who Jason mostly knew through study sessions and his, ah, extracurriculars, before Barbara had retired — then interacting with more people he had known and cared for will surely help. It has to.

Living in Gotham, you hold onto any hope that you can find.

“Maybe it’s not that he can’t find his way out of…wherever he’s hiding in there,” Jim says. He has to believe that Jason is in there, and that it isn’t the physical trauma holding him back. He has to have hope. “Severe trauma — not only physical, but psychological — can cause catatonia. Most of the physical trauma is healed. Maybe all he needs now is time to feel safe again. And…people that he knows, so he knows he has someone to come back for.” Jim had done some research last night. He certainly hopes that Jason feels safe here.

Once they get the kid back to his family, he’ll be better than safe. He’ll be protected. No one will be able to touch him.

(Nothing should have happened to him in the first place, but what happened to him happened to Robin.

Jason will need a lot of help with his recovery, and it will be Jason doing that recovering. Bruce Wayne’s second son, miraculously returned from the dead. No one should be able to connect him to the second Robin. No one should bother the Waynes. They’ll have all the time in the world to let Jason heal.

He should be safe.

Jim worries anyway.)

“I really want you to be right, Dad,” Barbara says.

Sensing the time for a subject change, Jim asks, “Have you eaten yet?”

Barbara lets out a quiet laugh. “You’re the ones having a late lunch,” she says. “It’s almost two.”

“Lost track of time,” Jim shrugs. He gathers up his plate and glass, carrying them over to the sink. “I thought kids were supposed to want to watch TV instead of reading books.”

“I never did. Neither did Jay,” Barbara says, and then, “Wait. He was reading?”

“I was reading to him,” Jim says. “The kid likes his Dumas.”

“He had — has a first edition of The Count of Monte Cristo,” Barbara says. Pain quickly turns into fond remembrance. “He and Bruce — they collected them. First editions. I think they had just found a copy of Persuasion when…”

When.

Ethiopia. The Joker.

“We got a good few chapters in,” Jim says, quickly glossing over that. “Stopped for lunch.”

Barbara nods, but this seems to have tipped her over the edge. She’s down to business now.

“Have you gotten any results yet?”

“You know twenty-four hours is the minimum—” Jim starts. Which, of course, is right when his phone dings with a notification.

“Would you look at that,” Barbara said. “Guess we were close enough.”

Jim can’t help the sneaking thought that Oracle was involved in making this happen so quickly. It’s an email notification, with — yes, with the results of the fingerprints.

“Let me grab my computer,” Jim says. He’s not about to read off the tiny screen of his phone.

He’s back in short order, pulling up the email, clicking on the file attachment—

The bottom drops out of his stomach.

He skims the report, the most important parts sticking out like glaring neon signs, and knows that Barbara can’t have stuck her fingers into this. There is no way she would be as calm as she is if she already knew.

30 October 2017.

Unidentified male.

Injuries: cracked skull, shattered sternum, collapsed lung…

Note: repeatedly asked after ‘Bruce’. No missing persons on file with father or familial relationship with the first or last name Bruce.

No, Jim thinks in a horrid moment of clarity. Missing persons wouldn’t have found anything, would they?

Jason Todd wasn’t missing. His family knew exactly where he was.

Or they thought they did.

“Dad?”

“I found him,” Jim croaks out.

“You did?” Barbara demands, grabbing at his laptop.

“I found the when,” Jim says, and he doesn’t stop Barbara from spinning the laptop around to face her. She’ll hack it herself at some point anyway, and honestly—

He can’t. He can’t stop her.

A year.

It’s been almost a year since then.

Six months after Jason Todd was buried, he dug his way out again—

Jim gags as he remembers the part of the report that had clinically confirmed what Jim had already all but known: Injuries, clothing, and state consistent with John Doe digging himself out of dirt and wood (likely a coffin).

—and then Jason had staggered away to be hit by a car and taken to a hospital. GCPD had taken on the case, and when they and Missing Persons hadn’t been able to find out who he was, they’d had to label it a cold case.

GCPD had found Jason Todd.

“No,” Barbara says. She’s shaking her head. She’s shaking all over. “No, no, dammit. They ran his fucking fingerprints, goddammit, they—”

The boy they have in Jim’s living room matches the fingerprints Missing Persons had run a year ago.

But, Jim realizes, they didn’t turn up anything about Jason Todd-Wayne.

This is Robin, though. Jim knows it. The more time he and Babs spend with him, the more sure he is.

…This is Robin. And Batman is the most goddamn paranoid person Jim knows.

Jim closes his eyes. Exhales slowly. Opens them again, and meets Barbara’s eyes.

“Bruce Wayne got Jason’s fingerprints out of the system. And he kept them out. Didn’t he?”

“He wanted to give Jason a fresh start,” Barbara whispers. Jim is willing to bet what she’s about to tell him isn’t even fully a lie. “Jason had a record. Mostly small stuff, but — the media, the tabloid reporters, they would have dug it all up. He had Jason’s records expunged.”

“You knew that to begin with, though,” Jim says, keeping hold of his temper with an iron will.

“I forgot,” Babs says weakly. They both know it’s a poor excuse.

I’ll just bet you did, Jim thinks, vicious. You and your eidetic memory, you conveniently forgot about that—

Getting angry at Barbara about the secrets he’s actively ignored her keeping is a tad hypocritical, though, even for him. Jim tamps his anger down, until without it all he feels is tired.

“We’re back to square one, then,” he says. “We can’t confirm that we have Jason Todd.”

“You can’t,” Barbara says, quiet. “But I can.”

She pulls a folder out of her bag and passes it over to Jim.

He opens it and looks at the print-outs inside.

“He might have some new scars, but I was still able to match them,” Barbara says. “I ran the blood work, too, directly against a copy of his blood work I already had.”

They match.

“This is Jason,” Barbara says. “We found him.”

“You want to tell me why you had copies of his prints and blood work?” Jim asks later, once he’s rejoined Barbara at the kitchen table. Jason had gotten restless again, probably bored with sitting at the table when he was done eating—

God, Jim hoped Jason hadn’t comprehended the conversation they’d held right over his head, because if he had, no wonder he’d wanted to get out of the room.

—and honestly Jim had needed an excuse to step away from Barbara for a second. Jason wouldn’t sell him out, so Jim had taken a precious few minutes getting Jason settled in front of the TV again. Regrettably, Jim still had too much to do at the moment to sit down with Jason and Dumas again. He’d given Jason the remote again. Maybe he’d even end up flipping channels this time.

“I have Dick’s, too,” Barbara says, like that’s supposed to—

Ah. Wait. Jim thinks he sees where this is going.

“You will not believe how many detective novels Jason has read. I think he read all of Christie’s works in about a month and a half,” Babs laughs.

“When did he sleep?” Jim mutters. Between school and Robin, he already can’t have had that much free time.

“I’m not sure he did,” Barbara says. She sighs. “He read some other detective stories around the same time — Conan Doyle, Poe, Dashiell Hammett — and he was really interested in the process. Dick got roped in to show him fingerprinting, and we ended up talking about blood work at the same time.”

And then she had taken samples and stored them safely on her hard drive. As one does.

It was a nice lie. Shading toward unbelievable with the blood at the end, but otherwise solid. It layered enough truths in it to be convincing. Jim wonders who, exactly, it was who taught her to lie so well, or if she had figured it out on her own.

In reality, it was more likely that Barbara had gotten her copies of the prints and blood work from Batman’s database. Hopefully she had put them in her system when she started up as Oracle, and Batman wouldn’t see that someone had been accessing the records of his dead son.

Jim was too old for this shit.

“Precocious kid,” is what he ends up saying.

Eventually he’ll have to tell them. Someday he’ll slip up, or there will be no way around it. For now, he’ll keep pretending. No matter how much he despairs of their inability to see what’s right in front of their faces.

A silence falls between them.

They’ve proven as well as they can that this truly is Jason Todd. Jim will follow up on the police report about ‘John Doe’ tomorrow. But other than that…

“We need to tell the Waynes,” Jim says.

Barbara nods.

Jim groans. “How does this feel more difficult than notifying next of kin?” he grumbles. It’s good news. It’s just…inexplicable.

Barbara gives him a wry smile. “It might be better to break it to them one at a time.”

Jim snorts. “That seems like a recipe for disaster.” Though now that she says it, he can see the appeal. He could tell one member of the family — probably Bruce — and hand off all their evidence, and then he wouldn’t have to deal with telling the rest of the family and dealing with all their varied reactions. Honestly, he’s not entirely sure if Dick is even in Gotham right now, so that might be the best way to handle it.

No, wait. Nightwing ran patrol last night, didn’t he?

Still, the idea has merit.

“Well,” Jim says. “I guess we’d better call Bruce—“

In the other room, Jason starts screaming.

Jim doesn’t waste time thinking. He’s up and in the other room before his brain has caught up enough to ask what’s happening?

Jason has scrambled over to the other side of the couch, his back to the TV. He’s curled in on himself, but it doesn’t impede the terrified, unending wail he’s letting out.

One glance at the TV is all Jim needs to understand.

He’d hoped that Jason might find something interesting to watch. He’d hoped Jason might flip through the channels until he’d found something he wanted, rather than what Jim left on for him.

He should have taken the remote with him. He should never have given Jason the opportunity to see this.

“What’s going on?” Barbara asks. She wheeled straight to Jason. She hasn’t seen the TV yet.

Jason’s scream abruptly cuts off as Barbara carefully touches his shoulder. The sudden silence is like a knife.

Jim watches the breaking news alert flash across the screen. Into that silence, he says, “The Joker broke out of Arkham.”

Chapter Text

“I need to get to the precinct,” Jim says. He looks at Jason, still crouched in his defensive stance. “I can’t—”

“I’ve got him,” Barbara says. “Go, Dad.”

Jim is needed at the precinct. Oracle is going to be needed. Which means —

— she’ll be headed to the Clocktower.

Good. That’s the best place in Gotham Jason can possibly be right now. Between the Tower’s defenses and Babs herself, Jason will be safe. He has to be safe.

“Be safe,” he tells Barbara anyway.

“You too,” his daughter says. Barbara’s expression is level. Not calm, but determined.

Everyone always puts in their hardest into catch the Joker. They don’t dare do anything else, not when the madman keeps killing people. Not when nothing short of a bullet or a lethal injection is ever going to stop him. They have to do their best to save everyone they can.

And this time, they have someone more than civilians to protect. Someone precious, and someone who, if the Joker finds out about him, is going to be in incalculable danger.

Help us catch the Joker quickly, Oracle.

Then Jim is out the door and gone.

It’s organized chaos at the precinct. It’s a sad but fortunate fact that Arkham escapes happen so often that Jim’s officers are already starting the routines for this situation before he even gets there.

After he arrives, Jim gathers what information he can, gives what orders he can, but he, too, is familiar with how this goes.

The police will do their best, but it’s unlikely that they’ll catch the Joker quickly. There’s no predicting what the Joker’s newest plan will be, what he thinks will be ‘funniest.’ It’s an unfortunate truth that until the Joker makes his move, there is little the GCPD can do that amounts to more than ineffective efforts.

Then again, that’s what the vigilantes are for.

Jim walks out onto the roof. He doesn’t even have to light the signal.

Babs must have told them, he thinks. The next thought, right on the heels of the first, is, I know where your son is.

Now is not the right moment for it. Jim stares at Batman’s cowled face and forces himself to hold his tongue. The newest Robin, half hidden behind Batman’s larger bulk, makes that even more difficult.

“Here’s what we know so far,” Jim says, and starts outlining the situation. All they can figure is that this is one of the Joker’s semi-annual breakouts. Regular — or as regular as something like an Arkham escape can be. No circuses in town, no new joke shops or amusement parks; all of those have been on a steady decline for years now, but every so often, some fool out-of-towner tries to start something up. If the Joker catches wind of it—

Well. Those businesses don’t last long.

“There’s nothing he’s targeting,” Batman sums up, half statement, half question.

Jim doesn’t freeze. It’s a near thing. 

There’s no way the Joker could know about Jason . I didn’t know, the Bats didn’t know — there’s no way he could have figured it out.

The thought doesn’t do much to reassure him. Somehow, the clown always manages to surprise people at the worst times in the worst ways.

“No,” Jim lies. “Nothing we know about.”

Batman nods, because that’s really all that needs to be said here. From his perspective, anyway.

Jim can’t tell him right now. He can’t.

When Batman turns to leave, though, Jim says, “Robin.”

Tim Drake pauses, looking over his shoulder at him.

“Be careful,” Jim says. It’s far from the first time that this Robin has gone up against the Joker, but the past few days have been a stark reminder of just how disastrously wrong a Robin’s encounter with the Joker can go. No matter how well a Robin is trained — sometimes all it takes is one bad day.

Jason’s scream is going to haunt Jim’s nightmares, he just knows it.

“I will be,” Robin promises.

Batman’s hand settles gently on Robin’s shoulder, squeezes softly, before they’re gone.

Jim doesn’t know how Batman can stand to let another of his sons anywhere near that monster. Jim is too damn aware that Batman needs a Robin to keep him balanced, and Gotham needs Batman, so Jim won’t do a damn thing it.

He’d come close, that first year after Jason’s death. Batman was becoming more violent, more vicious. Jim had watched the stats cautiously, weighing how much Batman was still helping versus the harm he was causing. It had never managed to tip far enough that Jim had to stop him, but it had come close.

A thirteen-year-old had stepped in before Jim had to, and now Batman has a new Robin. He’s on more stable ground.

And Jim — Jim lets the situation continue.

…Tim Drake is Robin now. Jason has been back since before the boy ever approached Batman. How much of this could have been solved before becoming an issue if they had simply found Jason sooner? If his print were in the system to be found by the hospital staff and Missing Person’s office?

Too much, Jim suspects. He heaves out a breath and finally turns around to go back inside.

They all have work to do.

“How is he doing?” Jim asks, hours later. He washes a couple of ibuprofen down with the last of his coffee.

“Asleep for now,” Barbara says. She sounds as tired as Jim does. She’s coordinating for the Bats, searching for the Joker, and keeping an eye on Jason. It’s a lot to juggle. “He keeps waking up from nightmares.”

Jim rubs at his temples. He isn’t aware if Jason had any bad dreams the previous night, but it’s no surprise the kid is having them now.

His murderer is running around loose in the city. What kid wouldn’t have nightmares about that?

”Don’t suppose he’s managed to eat anything?” Jim asks. He isn’t sure the kid can afford to miss any meals.

“I tried, but he’s not in the mood,” Barbara says. “He won’t even drink broth.”

Jim sighs. If this pattern continues…hopefully, Jason will get hungry enough to eat at some point, because he needs it. He can’t avoid food for however long the Joker is free. He’s fragile enough as it is, and there’s only so much Jim and Barbara can do to help him before professional intervention would be necessary.

Please don’t let Jim have to return Jason to his family while the Joker is still free.

“All right,” he says out loud. “Keep me updated.”

“I will,” Barbara promises.

Jim says his goodbyes and hangs up the phone. None of his officers have found anything on the Joker yet. Neither has Barbara, apparently. Maybe the Bats have, spotting something in person that Oracle has missed.

Jim goes to pour himself another cup of coffee.

It’s going to be a long night.

Jim gets the call at nearly six in the morning. The Joker has been caught. He’s already being sent back to Arkham.

The only casualties are the Joker’s own henchmen. No civilians; small mercies, that.

It’s certainly not a mercy to a terrified teenage boy. Jim morbidly wonders how long it will take the Joker to break out again. It would be so much better if the Joker were dead.

He rubs at his eyes. Leaves his latest cup of coffee half-finished. Goes through the motions of getting everything settled and the paperwork filed before he lets himself be ushered out of the precinct.

He texts Barbara when he reaches his car, letting her know that he’s heading back. He isn’t sure if she wants to pretend she didn’t bundle Jason off to the Clocktower while she played Oracle, or if she’ll be too exhausted to bother lying.

Of course, Jim hadn’t accounted for the fact that Barbara would have known before Jim that the Joker was dealt with. She was on comms with the Bats the whole time, so she had a head start to get back to Jim’s apartment. Jim doesn’t know how often she usually sticks around to deal with clean-up, but it seems like she ducked out early this evening.

The question is if she told any of the Bats about why she doing so. There are too many layers of secrets here.

All of this means he comes home to his apartment to find both Barbara and Jason there. The TV is still firmly shut off, but Jason is awake. Jim has a feeling that, catatonia or not, Jason must have spent half the night awake from sheer terror of the Joker.

“Hi, Dad,” Barbara says as he walks in.

“Babs,” Jim says. He bends down to give her a kiss atop the head.

Jason is pacing around the living room. He wanders around in tiny circles, moving closer to Barbara incrementally before circling away from her again. He’d been near her when Jim walked in and he paused for a long moment, head tilted vaguely in Jim’s direction.

Threat assessment, Jim judges.

Jason must recognize Jim on some level, or he writes him off as a threat, because he resumes his pacing.

“I haven’t been able to get him to settle down again,” Barbara says. “I think it was the adrenaline crash more than anything that knocked him out earlier, and now…”

Now he’s had just enough sleep to keep him up. Enough to allow him to run himself ragged. Except now the Joker is back in Arkahm — does Jason even understand that? Does it mean anything to him?

Jim steps toward Jason.

“Jason,” he says gently. “Jason, everything is okay now.”

Jason doesn’t even pause this time. Briefly, Jim wonders if he’d been like this in the Clocktower too, and how on earth Barbara had managed to get him back to Jim’s apartment if so.

“Jason,” Jim says again, standing directly in the boy’s path.

Jason stumbles to a halt before he can run into Jim.

“Jason,” Jim says. “It’s over. It’s okay.”

Jim doesn’t know what he’s hoping. That Jason will understand him? That Jason will believe him, when they’re both aware that the Joker being back in Arkham has never meant that it’s truly over?

Jim isn’t surprised that Jason ignores this. He starts moving again, this time threading loops between where Babs has locked her chair and where Jim is standing. It doesn’t surprise him, but it still obscurely hurts. Jason doesn’t believe him — and really, there’s no reason he should.

As long as the Joker is alive, Jason’s nightmares will never end. And there’s nothing Jim can do about that.

There is something else he can do, though. Much as he’d like some sleep before tackling that particular problem, now is the best time. The Bats won’t be asleep yet, not when they only so recently caught the Joker, Jim has done all he can to prove on his end that this truly is Jason Todd—

And Jason deserves to be somewhere he feels safe. He deserves to be with the people he feels safe around.

It’s time to reunite this boy with his family. They’ve certainly all waited long enough.

“Babs,” Jim says. “Reroute the Bats here.”

“What?” The question is more startled than it is any flavor of belligerently pretending ignorance.

“Call the Bats. Get them over here,” Jim says.

Babs narrows her eyes. “…Here?” Jim is grateful that she at least chooses location to focus on rather than wasting Jim’s time trying to pretend she doesn’t have a way to contact the Bats.

“Joker’s—”

Jason wavers in his steps at the name, making a high noise — not quite another scream — in the back of his throat. Jim hastily cuts himself off, making a mental note not to say the name again in Jason’s hearing.

“He is back in Arkham,” Jim says, careful. Jason doesn’t let out that awful noise again, so Jim assumes he’s in the clear. “It’s as good a time as any, and Jason isn’t going to calm down any time soon.” He holds Barbara’s gaze. “He should be back with his family.”

Jim can see the urge to deny it all, heavy on Barbara’s face. He thinks she almost decides to give it a try — but then she sighs, her shoulders dropping.

“How long have you known?” she asks.

“I’ve known since the first night you put on that costume and snuck out of your bedroom window with Dick Grayson,” Jim says.

“How?”

“How? I’m a detective!” Jim snaps. He takes a moment to gather himself. “Barbara. When I found him, Jason only responded to the name Robin—”

Like magic, Jason pauses. Looks, actually looks, in Jim’s direction.

“Oh,” Barbara says, watching that happen. It’s so obvious Jason is in there somewhere. It’s so easy to forget that, until they trip over something that manages to pull him out of the depths he’s lost in.

“He seems to be holding onto his nightlife better than anything else,” Jim says.

(He almost tells Barbara his suspicions about why Jason had decided to come with him in the first place — the second Robin had always been fond of Jim, after all. No matter how much Jim had gotten onto him the first few months of his tenure as Robin, when he would try to bum smokes off Jim. He’d interrupted one of those lectures with an imitation of what was apparently Batman’s growled lecture about the dangers of smoking, which hit on several of the same points as Jim’s. It had made Jim let out a startled laugh.)

“All right,” Barbara says. Apparently she doesn’t need more than that. For once, Jim doesn’t have to fight to win this argument.

Barbara’s laptop bag is sitting on the coffee table. Barbara grabs it, quickly opening it and establishing her connection to the Bats. Then—

“This is Oracle,” Barbara says clearly. “Nightwing, Batman, come in.”

“Everything alright, O?” Nightwing’s exhausted voice comes over the line almost immediately. He must have stayed in Gotham to help with the breakout — or maybe he’d gone home to Blüdhaven and turned right around to Gotham when the clown broke out.

“I need you at Commissioner Gordon’s,” Barbara — no, Oracle — says. “No danger.” A momentary pause. “Get here quick.”

“Oracle, report,” Batman orders.

Jason freezes in place. Jim isn’t even sure he’s breathing.

“When you get here,” Oracle says, and closes the line.

“Jason,” Jim says. He holds the kid’s shoulders loosely. “Kid. Robin. Take a breath.” Jim exaggeratedly demonstrates. “Like this. Come on, kid…”

Jason sucks in one breath. Another. He does it in sync with Jim. He looks like he’s concentrating deeply as he does so, but not on keeping rhythm. No, his lips are moving soundlessly, though Jim can’t puzzle out any words. He leaves Jason to it. It isn’t hurting anything.

They stay like that, simply breathing, until Jim hears the faint sound of his kitchen window sliding open.

“In here,” Jim calls. He’s angled toward the kitchen doorway, so he sees Batman slip soundlessly into the room, Nightwing half a step behind him.

“Commissioner,” Batman says formally. “Oracle informed us—”

He doesn’t get a chance to finish. At the first sound of his voice, Jason rips himself out of Jim’s loose grip, whirling to face Batman.

“B,” Jason rasps. His voice is hoarse — whether from the disuse or the screaming, Jim isn’t sure — but the word is clearly audible.

Batman staggers.

“Babs—” Nightwing says, strangled.

“Far as we can tell, it’s him,” Barbara says.

“Jason,” Batman chokes out.

Jason throws himself at him. Batman meets him halfway, catching him in a practiced move. Jason buries his face in Batman’s armored chest; Batman clutches him tight, one gauntlet rising to cradle the back of Jason’s head.

“Jason,” Batman says. “Jay-lad.”

The domino and its whiteout lenses help hide it, but Nightwing’s eyes are wide as he looks back and forth between the Gordons and the tangle of his father and brother.

“How?” is the single bewildered question that falls out of his mouth. He steps closer to Jim as he asks, past Batman, but his gaze lingers a long moment on the boy doing his level best to merge with Batman’s armor. 

“Sheer luck,” Jim says. Now that they have safely made it all this way, Jim can acknowledge it for what it was. If he hadn’t been walking by that alley at just the right time—

It doesn’t matter. Spiraling down into what-ifs doesn’t help.

He shakes his head.

“Some two-bit thug tried to mug him while I was heading home from the precinct,” Jim starts over, with an actual explanation this time. He’s sure Nightwing was mostly asking how did Jason come back to life? That, unfortunately, isn’t something Jim knows. What little he does know doesn’t feel appropriate to bring up just yet. It’s too horrible.

“The kid busted out a Robin move,” Jim continues. “Which I would have ignored, except he very obviously wasn’t Tim Drake.”

Nightwing chokes. Jim very pointedly doesn’t roll his eyes.

“I took him back home with me and called Babs so we could run a few tests.” Along with some investigations of their own, but, again: Jim isn’t going into the gory details right now. “We were about to call the Waynes when…”

When the Joker escaped. Jim isn’t going to say the name aloud, not given Jason’s previous reactions to it. Nightwing doesn’t need him to explain further; he blanches.

“He was at the Clocktower with me the whole time,” Barbara says. Nightwing regains a little of the color in his cheeks at that reassurance.

“Good,” he says. He looks over his shoulder at Batman. “I just…I can’t believe it.”

Batman still hasn’t looked away from his son, more concerned with holding his son against his chest, stroking his hand over Jason’s head. Jim would think he wasn’t paying any attention at all to his surroundings, except Jim has worked with Batman for too long to be willing to bet on that.

Sure enough, Batman unexpectedly speaks.

“Thank you, Jim,” he says. A whole world of emotion makes it into those few words. “Thank you.”

“Of course, Bruce,” Jim says, quiet and gentle as a cop thirty-odd years ago sliding his coat around a newly made orphan, trying to tell him that it would be okay.

There will be time enough later for more questions and not enough answers. There will be time for Jim to hand over all the information he has gathered, while Barbara does the same with whatever else she found and didn’t tell Jim about. There will be time for Jim to sit down and grapple with the fact that he has thoroughly and completely shattered all of the plausible deniability he’s been allowing himself to hold onto for almost a decade.

For now, Jim has done his job. He has reunited a boy with his father.

For right now, this is exactly where Jim needs to be.