Chapter Text
It’s funny how all of the little things can be taken for granted so easily. Theres a saying that those who don’t have much appreciate things more, but that isn’t always true. There are certain things like books, a shared conversation, a good nights sleep, even getting to watch the sun come up and sink into the horizon each day. Things like that, things most associate with being human and living day to day only to allow themselves to miss the beauty and the privilege of such blessings. Sure, there are the material things: the trending clothing, the latest model of phone, those new wireless earbuds everyone’s been raving about, but that isn’t what matters the most, is it?
Maybe in the light of day it seems so, when the golden rays of the sun seem to sooth all fears and give even the ugliest of things an undeniable beauty. But moonlight, sheds a different reality. The silver glow brings out all faults and fears, it allows demons to hide in the darkness, clowns with crowbars crouched in abandoned warehouses, gunmen guarding alleys. Its tapered light shined on children crying for lost parents bleeding from bullets, others for ones that will arrive too late, singing along to a symphony of metal on bone. Moonlight has never protected anyone, not in the end.
Moonlight betrayed Jason. He had thought the man in the orb to be his friend. Night had been his shelter during his time on the streets and the time he thrived when he had later acquired a home. They say the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Jason despised the sunlight, and with the sun and the moon being to opposite they ever share the same sky, he had assumed a truce. He had been naive.
Instead, the glistening lights had worked together, the sun giving him a false hope, the moon a sense of the security he had fallen to rely on. He had followed it, trusted it into a warehouse at a time his hopes had been to high to be logical. The sun had been a coward, joining the victory party before the battle was over. The moon allowed crowbar wielding clown into a warehouse.
The moon had killed Jason.
Thats what he liked to think anyway, it was much better than saying his teenage idiocy had killed him, or that he had been bloodied by a bastard clown. That while falling down the road of death, he had been calling for the mother who had given him the map and a man of empty promises he had once, nearly called dad.
Of course the conversation didn’t come up much, there weren’t many people who knew about his death, or his return. One or two, perhaps a handful, and even those had been short coming. There had been few he had wanted to tell.
Coming back had been nothing short of of when he had been murdered. The pain was the same, physically, but oh so worse mentally. Leaving, he had known Bruce wasn’t coming, he had known his mom had tricked him, he had known he was dying. But coming back? He didn’t even know who he was.
He had been so confused, passed like an item from one servant to another. He remembered Talias disapproving glares, her snide remarks, how she tried to hide him from her father and yet didn’t seem to care at all. But that was it, the end of his clear memories. No more scenes of the Leagues compound, even though he almost wished there were more. That would be easier to shake than the emotional trauma and fear of not knowing what had really happens when he being reborn.
Or at least, he had always assumed that the pain was from being reborn. It had sure felt like he had died, even if Talia seemed to shy away from answering any time he mustered the courage to ask.
His first clear memory, the first that had finally seemed like something real, and not that of a dream, had him standing on a Gotham pier.
He hadn’t known how he had gotten there, wby he was there, or where he had been before. He knew where he was, his mental map slowly piecing itself together as he wandered further into Gotham. There was nothing with him but the clothes on his back.
Memories came back slowly, people, of whom he was both close to and distant from, speckled his memory as he walked to an unknown destination. Times laughing on rooftops, with a man in a black and blue.... wetsuit? Seemed the most common, but sometimes he would see another boy, around his own age, sitting on a couch and cracking jokes to him as they battled each other on the video game console.
He supposed these ‘memories’, if you would, were what led him to the apartment building he found himself outside of. There wasn’t much security, the front door came open easily, and he allowed his (hopefully reliable) muscle memory to take him where he was needed. The halls were dingy, the wallpaper peeled back in corner and at edges but the floor was free of litter and the ceiling of holes. Jason knew of his time on the streets, he had bits and pieces after all, and if anything he liked the rundown look. It made him feel less out of place.
Six flights later and not as much physical activity as he felt he needed, he stood in front of a door. It matched all the others, same warped wood, same tarnished numbers, what was so special about this one? Had this been his apartment? He hadn’t though he had ever owned his own place, but there were a lot of things he didn’t remember. He placed his hand on the knob and turned.
No luck, the door had been locked from the inside, dead bolted twice if the owner was a true Gothamite. Not his home then. Was it the other teens? Was this where he had played video games and laughed like he wasn’t going to die young, without knowing that one of the only people he had finally allowed himself to love was going to betray him?
Knocking was easier said than done. Besides the confusion and little control he seems to have over his actions, Jason’s heart was thumping, beating rapidly in his chest as he waiting for whoever to open the door.
Perhaps no one was home?
He was close to turning and leaving for another lonely night on the streets when the sound of way more than just two deadbolts being unlocked echoed through the door. He froze.
He waited, back to the door and more than half expecting a bullet through the chest or a crow bar to the back of the head. He hadn’t expected anyone to talk.
“ Can I help you?” The voice was young and male and everything Jason wanted to hear. He was even more so convinced now, that this man had once been his friend. He swallowed the nervous bile threatening to escape his throat and slowly forced himself around.
Wide, blue eyes stared into green before flickering up and down, settling on the two toned hair before moving back to Jason’s face.
“ J-Jay?” The man asked, pushing the door open further as his jaw slacked and eyebrows rose in disbelief. “ Is that you Little Wing?”
The nickname washed over Jason like a refreshing wave of holy water. Memories and names surprised by Talia and the waters of the pits flooded his mind. Times spent, more than just on rooftops, with the man in front of him. Looking up to the boy when Jason has only been a kid, the original Robin, the fav-
“ Dick?” Jason asked, voice thick and gravely from disuse.
“ W-wha… y-your… alive?” The man, supposedly Dick, seemed flabbergasted and for the first time since waking up, Jason’s suspicion of his death was confirmed. He feels like the realization should scare him, terrify him even, but instead, he feels an almost calm wash over him. After all these months of being a pawn, it feels beyond refreshing to finally know something.
“ Talia’s Pit.” He says instead, because he’s still trying to re rap his tongue around speaking again and short answers are easier for his broken mind.
Dick bright blue eyes drain of confusion, turning to first shock and then a look not far from sympathetic. Jason doesn’t want sympathy. He doesn’t need Dick feeling bad for him, he needs this man to help him remember the last seventeen years of his life.
“ Y- you grew up, little wing.” The addition of the nickname brings years flooding back. There still isn’t much detail, just scene after scene of him and the man in front of him sprawled over training mats, huddled in front of a movie, making a mess of a culinary kitchen and acting so much like brothers it he’d go believe they hadn’t always been that close.
“ Yeah..... we-ll, it’s been a-while.” Stumbles Jason, taking his time to carefully pronounce each word but smirking all the same. It’s the first real joy he’s had since before the warehouse, it’s not a smile, not even close really but inside he’s so giddy he feels the need to pinch himself from his dreamworld, because there is no way this is all real.
“ I-it’s really you?” Dick asks, all uncertainty and suspicion detectable in his voice. Jason’s heart sinks. He had known it was too good to be true, all of this. Gaining trust wasn’t going to be easy, but now he was starting to doubt f it would possible at all.
“ I’ll leave.... if you don’t trust.” Words are coming a little easier now, but putting them from thoughts actions is still kind of difficult. He hopes Dick knows what he means. He doesn’t want to be a bother, even if walking away will beyond disappoint him.
He takes Dicks silence as his answer, sighing, and turning to retreat. He nearly makes it to the stairs when he’s stopped again.
“ Jay, wait!” Jason pauses, hand resting on the railing. He doesn’t turn around though instead opting instead, to wait for something more.
“ Do you- do you want to come in?” Because of course Dick-all too trusting- Grayson invites a supposed to be dead man into his apartment.
But really, is Jason in the position to judge? Not in the slightest.