Work Text:
When Jason woke up again, the first thing that disturbed him was the weight on his back. His wings weren’t that heavy. Of course, they had gained some weight with them slowly reaching maturity and their full wingspan. Alfred had said to give it another year before-
Before-
What-
Where was he? What had happened? Where was Bruce, he wanted to go home, he wanted his Dad, why didn’t the laughing stop!?
“Breathe, child.”
Jason could hardly see anything through the haze. Vague figures. A hand.
He couldn’t hear and he was choking on his own thoughts.
“Sleep a little longer, child.”
X
The next time Jason woke up, he didn’t freak out. There was no point to panicking about confusing dreams, was there?
Instead, Jason settled on inspecting his surroundings. To his right, Jason could see a lot of medical equipment. Tubes and measuring of all kinds seemed to take up most of the space. On his left, curtains covered a window. The sound of birds and people running around shouting in Arabic reached his ears. Bruce had gotten him started on lessons and that language came to him much easier than the Russian had learned before it.
Jason had a lot of dreams that were just filled with him waking up somewhere he didn’t know. According to Barbara, they were a sign of wanderlust. It fitted that a kid from Crime Alley wanted to go out and see the world. It was rare though that his dreams were as lucid as they were now.
Curious, he threw off the blanket. Jason wanted out and explore the world around himself. Of all the things to hold him back, from terrifying monsters to whatever weirdness he could dream up, Jason didn’t expect bandaged wings.
His wings were enormous for his size, making him look ridiculous. He knew he’d grow into his wingspan, but a kid that was on the short end of the spectrum with bright red wings? Yeah, needless to say, he had heard the whispers (or shouts) at school and hadn’t been impressed. In between all the rich kids with their perfectly regular and average browns, grays and blacks, red wings stood out like nothing else. His wings weren’t any help on patrol either. Coloring them dark took ages. Bruce never had to color his already pitch-black wings, but Jason hadn’t been as fortunate. And trying to get the dye out again? Even worse. It took hours with water if Jason didn’t have the actual dye remover on hand.
As annoyed as Jason was with his wings though, he took good care of them, which was why the bandages were the first surprise.
Their size the second, and their color the third.
Jason didn’t have black wings as massive as the ones attached to his back. They kind of looked like the wings he’d always wanted to have, but most certainly wouldn’t get.
The door to his room opened. The person he saw step into it wasn’t someone he expected his subconsciousness to dream up.
“Talia?” Jason asked. “Huh, alright.”
Talia mustered him, her dark green wings pressed to her back like she expected someone to leap for them. Bruce did that too when he got too wary, or when he was dosed with Fear Gas. Jason had spent most of his childhood before he had been adopted with his wings close to his body.
You could tell a lot about people from the way they held them.
Then, Talia frowned and her expression shifted to worry and pity.
“Oh, Jason,” she said. She sounded kind. Motherly. “Don’t you remember?”
The Joker laughed. Time froze.
The world kept spinning.
Jason had died and the world had kept moving.
X
Training took ages. First, Jason had to regain muscle mass, then he had to learn how to adjust to his new wings.
And new wings they were indeed. Jason’s own had been too damaged and couldn’t be saved, so Talia had ensured Jason would receive a different pair. Wing transplantations had been done successfully only a handful of times, but access to a Lazarus Pit apparently made it a lot more manageable.
“Whose wings are they?” Jason asked only once.
“Yours,” Talia replied.
Jason stopped with his training exercises to observe her. “I meant before.”
She didn’t even bother to look away from her paperwork. The sheets were strange, covered in colors and neat lines.
“They belong to a strong man, and if not broken, they will always keep you in the sky. They’re yours.”
Jason didn’t speak up again.
X
Above him, the stars of the night sky were hidden away behind clouds while below him, the streets were mostly desolate. Jason adjusted his lenses, focused on his target. Then he jumped down from the building, unfurling his wings completely.
I look like him, Jason would think later when watching and deleting the security tapes. Crashing down on the disgusting excuse of a human being, Jason appeared as a vengeful terror of massive black wings.
Good.
X
“I need one of your feathers,” Talia said. “Preferably the biggest you have.”
Jason stopped polishing his guns to face her. “Why?”
“Because I asked you to, so?”
Jason rolled his eyes. “Fine. Just take whatever.”
He returned to his previous task, but sat op straight for better access, as Talia made her way around him. She mustered the feathers, softly moved her hands over them, before coming to a stop.
“This one,” she said and pulled at it so that Jason could feel which one she would take. “Brace yourself.”
Jason barely felt the pain. Truthfully speaking, he hardly got any kind of feedback from the wings. He could control them just fine, but the connection felt dulled.
“Thank you, Jason.”
“No problem,” he replied. “I’ll be leaving for Gotham tomorrow.”
“I know. I hope you’ll find what you seek there.”
Jason didn’t.
X
The new Robin was small and his wingspan frankly speaking pathetic. Barbara’s wings had been broken and her title had been taken by a small predator. There was another girl with bright wings she would have been better off with covering and Dick’s wings, of course, were obsessively clean and cared for as they had always been.
Bruce’s wings were smaller than he remembered. But then again, Jason wasn’t as short, young and naïve as he had been. Naturally, Batman wasn’t as grand as Jason had recalled.
As he had never been.
X
Talia asked him to come back and Jason refused. It would be too much like admitting defeat. Instead, he carved out his own territory, stayed away from the Bats. This was still his city and nothing short of death could make him leave, and even that hadn’t really stuck the last time.
X
It started with a call. One foolish, irritating call Jason hadn’t wanted to answer. He didn’t particularly hate the rest of the Bats anymore, and if they needed back up, he was there. Gotham wouldn’t suffer because of him or their incompetence.
Besides, it was Tim who had called.
Usually, Robin didn’t interact with him. Whether that was because Dick had told him off or because of their history, Jason didn’t know. He didn’t care either. He most certainly wasn’t curious why Tim had such a problem with Jason’s wings especially. Whenever he saw Jason, his eyes kept flickering to his wings and it didn’t annoy Jason at all.
Whatsoever.
Okay, maybe it did.
Jason had grown fond of his dark feathers. It wasn’t terribly hard when they were precisely what he had always wanted to have.
Either way, Tim calling, sounding seconds away from a panic attack and asking Jason to come to the Cave ASAP wasn’t something he was going to ignore out of anger.
What Jason expected to find was a crisis that would throw all of Gotham into disarrange.
Not a child with Talia’s green eyes and Bruce’s frown, waving a familiar feather in Bruce’s face while Tim sat at the other end of the Cave with Alfred by his side.
“What the hell?”
Bruce stood up straight, his cape concealing his wings.
“Jason,” Bruce said. If Bruce was surprised to see him, he didn’t show. “Did you know?”
Jason bit down on his rage. “Know what?”
“About Damian. Talia’s son.”
“And yours,” the child, Damian, added rather hot-headedly. His black wings twitched. “I have your feather as proof. Mother gave it to me.”
“This is not proof,” Tim hissed. “That’s just a stupid feather and Talia couldn’t have given you any of Bruce’s either way.”
“Stop talking to me, Drake. This is a conversation between father and son-“
“My name is Wayne, you damned brat-“
“Enough.”
Jason was getting a headache and if not for the fact that there was Talia’s son standing just a few meters away from him, he would have turned around on his heels and walked away again.
“Don’t antagonize each other.”
“But-“Damian protested, only to stop talking when Bruce shot him a look.
“I don’t doubt that you are my son, but Tim is right. This feather isn’t mine.”
“But it looks like yours! I saw the photos of your wings. It’s the right color and shape, it even has the dark gray markings at the end. Mother said your wings were completely gray as a child and that’s the only leftover from it. Don’t call me a liar.”
Fighting crime was exhausting. You didn’t get much sleep, your body ached all over (except those times you were so full of pain killers, you couldn’t even tell when you got a new wound or if you were Jason and in general didn’t feel much of anything anymore) and every time you tried to fall asleep, either your nightmares or another gruesome murder would wake you up.
They all got tired, but Jason couldn’t think of a time Bruce had ever emitted such an aura of defeat.
“I’m not calling you liar, Damian. But the fact is that the feather can’t be mine. It cannot have been plucked from them.”
Damian’s face flushed in anger and desperation, perhaps. Your parents’ feathers, the ones they gave you willingly once you lost your last baby downs were something special. Jason had treasured Catherine’s, his real mother who had loved him until she couldn’t anymore, and Bruce’s like nothing else.
“Why not?”
“I don’t have wings anymore, Damian. I lost them a while ago when Bane took over Gotham.”
Jason felt like throwing up.
“Mother said Bane broke your spine and Lady Shiva trained you afterward to take back the city.”
They belong to a strong man, and if not broken, they will always keep you in the sky.
“That he did too.”
“But I saw your wings!”
“Fake. It would have been too suspicious if Bruce Wayne lost his wings at the same time as Batman.”
Jason liked to flare his wings when he left, make himself look bigger than he actually was, but right now he didn’t dare to move his no, no they weren’t they never them even an inch away from his body as he turned around and stormed outside.
Nobody would follow him.
They had bigger problems.
X
It wasn’t Bruce that tracked him down months later (because Bruce was dead, killed by a monster too big for grounded humans. Maybe, if he had been able to fly-) or Tim, who had disappeared with a bang to go on a never-ending search.
He had expected the little brat, coming to him for answers maybe, or Dick once he realized he wasn’t cut out for this Gotham anymore. Jason hardly knew the new Batgirl and he had never even spoken a word to Cassandra.
Somehow, despite her Big Brother-like presence, Jason had never accounted for Barbara.
“Your safe house isn’t very accessible,” she said and moved inside his apartment.
Of course, it wasn’t accessible. It was a cheap shithole in Crime Alley – what did she expect.
“What do you want?”
Jason used to adore Barbara. When he had first met her, she had been energetic and funny, told Batman off and thought Dick was an idiot. She had been bright and every ‘no’ was a challenge.
He couldn’t claim that he knew this version of her. She had calmed down, or maybe just grown as world-weary as the rest of them.
“We tried to find Bruce’s wings after Bane cut them off,” she said, going straight to business and delving right into Jason’s nightmares.
“I don’t want to hear it.”
Barbara pushed up her glasses. “I think you need to.”
He could stop her if he wanted to. He doubted that any regular thugs could provide a challenge, her wheelchair didn’t look like standard either and he wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she had hidden all kinds of small gadgets in there. The edges of Barbara’s wings were covered in light steel like those of many police officers. A hit from those hurt immensely.
However, Jason had trained to take down the Batman (lifetimes ago it felt like) and Oracle, while undoubtedly smarter, couldn’t fight like him.
“He took them as a trophy and while Tim and Alfred rushed to Bruce’s aid, I kept my eyes on them. I lost them while they were in Gotham still. We assumed that Bane had hidden them, but perhaps had lost them as well instead.”
“I didn’t know.”
His defense sounded weak in his own ears. He had known that the wings sewn to his back hadn’t been the wings of the closest dead body Talia could find. Every action had meaning for her, every cruel gift well-meant wasn’t just efficient but a puzzle to solve.
He should have insisted. He should have kept asking.
“When I woke up, really as myself and not full of rage or catatonic, they were already there. Talia meant well, she only wanted to help.”
Barbara kept silent for a while, let her gaze drift to the blood on the ground, the guns on the table and the take-out food on the mattress. Jason hadn’t been handling things well in the last weeks.
“In winter,” she spoke up suddenly, “when Dick and I were young, Bruce used to cover us with his wings on observation missions because we, young and stupid, refused to put on the ugly winter uniforms. The two of us could fit right beneath one wing with still so much space left over.”
Jason remembered that. Bruce always covered Jason with his wings every time he felt like he had an excuse for it. There was no word to describe the warmth Jason had felt then.
“What do you want, Oracle?”
Barbara crossed her arms, still the perfect picture of resistance.
“I need you to come home and work with us. We’re missing three of our heavy hitters and Dick’s busy trying to reign in Damian half the time they’re on patrol. You feel ashamed of these wings? Then do something worthwhile with them. I need to be able to count on you and I need you to actually cover us. This city’s never been alright when even one of us is gone.”
Alright. Okay.
Jason could understand desperation. You didn’t claw your way out of your coffin simply because you felt like it. He could do this.
He had to.