Chapter Text
“You mad?”
The ghost of an amused, or rather wicked, smile washed over Jason Todd’s expression as the Batman watched with a look mixed of agony and stoicism, however he managed to pull off that blend.
The red of the helmet thrown into the corner caught the light coming off of the shattered but somehow still flickering kitchen light bulbs. There they stood, face to face, with the air so thick with pain and loss and things too long unsaid or never even spoken in the first place.
A wounded father. A wounded son.
And a psychotic murderous clown laughing in the corner at the both of them.
“Isn’t this sweet?” The Joker cackles from underneath Jason’s knee, where’s he pinned by the boy. “You two are getting along so much better than I thought you would. What with the kid playing with guns now and all. Hehe he.”
“Put the gun down, son.”
There was a quiet yet rising tone of urgency to be heard in the Bat’s voice as he completely ignored the clown in the room between them.
He always ignored the clown in the room. And Jason hated him bitterly for it. In his insistence on being merciful towards everyone, even the cruel and undeserving, he became cruel himself towards the merciful and deserving.
Jason would need to be the one to correct this.
“I’ll count to ‘three.’ One...”
“Don’t.”
“Two…”
“NO!”
“Thr——!”
.
.
.
.
.
Jason was clutching his neck and making sounds of choking on his own blood as he braced for the pain and burning feeling of his skin taking the blast effects of the explosion.
He had felt it all once before—the fire that burns, shrapnel that tears, dust that asphyxiates.
The shock wave from the explosion that felt like it lifted your innards and put them back down in the most unnatural of ways. If he was someone that could think wishfully, he would hope it could be one of those things that got easier after the first time.
But when did he ever get the easy options in life?
He lay there with his eyes firmly shut tight for another minute before slowly cracking them open to find himself in a dark room.
He could make out the shapes of a dresser and a writing desk in the corner, and his head seemed to be laying on something soft like a pillow. In fact, he was even covered by something as large and warm as the covers he used to have back when he was living in the Manor.
Startling into a sitting position, Jason pushed back the blanket and sheets over him as his eyes adjusted to the dim light.
The curtains were clearly the same high-quality blackout ones that Alfred had installed for his nocturnal charges and the fresh smell of the linens was the same scent of detergent the butler used.
But it couldn’t be…
Getting out of the bed, Jason stumbled and fell onto a floor he couldn’t quite reach with his feet, making a small thump sound that a six-foot, pure muscle adolescent could not possibly make.
It couldn’t be…
Running over to the curtains and flinging them open, he startled back as the morning light hit his eyes, forcing himself to blink rapidly to adjust yet again to the lighting. And just beyond the window lay the vast manicured grounds of Wayne Manor Estate.
No, no, no!
Pushing open the window, a still-frigid spring wind gusted in, but Jason ignored the shiver to turn his head to the full-length mirror and take in with complete horror all of the four feet and no one cares inches!
He was short and a looked like a near skeleton again! He hadn’t looked like this since he had just arrived at the Manor at ten-years-old, but that was a whole nine years ago.
What happened at the apartment building? Was the Joker finally dead? Was he?
The door opened behind him to reveal a much younger looking Alfred with plenty of hair on his head and a look that seemed pleased to see Jason up and about already.
“...Alfred?” Jason intoned, voice full of wonder...and high-pitch. God, his voice was high-pitched and childish sounding. He wasn’t really ten again, was he?
“Oh, my. You’re not going to be calling me Mr. Pennyworth, today?” Alfred chuckled, mostly to himself as he closed the frosted glass window and tied back the curtains to let the sunlight stream in.
The small desk calendar next to the bed read that it was the month of March. Probably somewhere still early in the month as the grounds outside still had a considerable amount of snow dusting them.
And if he really was his normal ten-year-old, new-to-living-here self, he hadn’t called Alfred by just that until the second month living in the Manor.
“I...uhm. Sorry, Mr. Pennyworth.” He rubbed the back of his neck, which he knew was just as flushed as his face. He cursed the fact that he hadn’t outgrown his frequent blushing until he was with the League of Assassins.
“My dear boy, you look a bit dizzy.” Alfred, who had looked quite pleased only a split-second ago, was now kneeling in front of Jason and tucking his pristine white gloves into his pocket with a frown before pressing a hand to his forehead.
“And a bit feverish as well, it seems. Perhaps you had best lie down a while longer.”
Perhaps he should. Jason felt very lost and young at that very second and wondered if that had anything to do with his physical regression.
“Sure.” He stumbled back into bed, having to climb some to get under the still-warm covers.
“Master Bruce has already left for work, unfortunately, but I’ll see about getting him home a bit sooner.” The ageing butler straightened the linens and tucked the corners underneath the mattress and Jason’s chin.
“No!” Jason visibly startled, earning a perplexed look from Alfred.
“I— I don’t want to bother him. I’m fine. Really.” He nodded vigorously as if that would affirm his statement alone.
“You are no bother, Master Jason.” Alfred scolded before his English accent took on a kinder tone. “Now, I shall see to fixing you up some honeyed tea. I expect you not to get up from this bed ‘til I return, young man.”
Left alone to his internal screaming once more, Jason screamed even louder.
What was he supposed to do now? Maybe if he slept again, he’d wake up where he was before...no. He couldn’t. He was dead again, wasn’t he? His own father had been the one to slit his throat.
He chuckled darkly from underneath the soft, fluffy covers before it choked into something akin to an ugly sob. His own father slit his throat and chose the Joker over him. And that felt a thousand times worse than knowing he was dead again before he could have even reached twenty years of age.
And now here he was, in his old childhood bedroom and completely not knowing what to do.
Clenching his fists, his eyes burned as he attempted to blink back the tears starting to form and overflow. He should never have returned to Gotham.
Talia had wanted him to stay. He could have just stayed with her and gotten to know Damian better. He could’ve had something new and better if he hadn’t been so obsessed with vengeance and his personal vendetta.
Turning onto his side, he shoved his face into the pillow and allowed himself to mourn for his loss while Alfred brewed tea in the kitchen one floor down and calmly added honey to the mug.
Oh, God. What was he supposed to do when Bruce came back? Should he just act as if he was ten and innocent again? Like they were both innocent?
The blood which was still boiling in him screamed in negative. Bruce had left him, hurt him, replaced him, killed him. He wanted him to suffer and feel all of his pain tenfold. And that is what he’d do.
Yes, that was it. He’d play the innocent, sweet street-kid child he once was.
Bruce wouldn’t even see his demise coming.
*
Dusk was settling in as Jason slid open his window for the second time, unminding of the white snow that crunched underneath his weight and crawled out onto the rooftop, having rolled up his slightly too long arm sleeves, which Alfred had assured him he would grow into in no time.
As his bedroom window went out right onto the kitchen roof, it was possible to just walk across the slates to the double-floored library and creep in through the corner window without much climbing, provided you knew exactly where the sensors were and how not to set them off.
Which was exactly what Jason was going to do if he was truly stuck in his miserable past without any hope of escape.
He needed both a place to breathe and think and because of all the many rooms, spaces and hidden passages in the near-ancient manor, Jason favourite was and would always be the library, regardless of his feelings towards the master of the house.
Having a two-floor library was definitely an odd thing to have architectural wise and was very clearly built by some ancestral Wayne as more of a status symbol than anything else, filled with enough ornamental books to look the part, but not actually used for reading.
Thankfully, he had years of trial and error practice getting in through his bedroom window. The only other window who had this privilege was Dick’s childhood bedroom, which he had vacated prior to leaving for college.
After that, whenever he’d visit, Dick would just take one of the unused bedrooms furthest away from Bruce while still not quite being in the guest wing, saying he was an adult and needed the space or something.
But this was before all that and Dick had only just left for college this year. Heck, he was still the first and only Robin at this time and there was still some relationship to speak of between Bruce and Dick, unlike how it would escalate into shouting matches and nothing more in Jason’s early teens.
Sliding open the window and creeping into the library, he felt a sense of ease that only books and the feeling of being surrounded by them could grant him.
Running his small, why was it so small finger across the many spines in the shelves, he made his way down the classic spiral steel staircase to the first floor, caught up in his thinking.
It would be a nice feeling thing to stick around and ruin Bruce’s life and all he held dear but then he would have to put up with the man while knocking him down one step at a time. Satisfying in the end but a pain to see through.
He could simply leave, too. Bruce hadn’t adopted him yet if this timeline was matching his memories. Although it would be anytime now that Bruce would ask him that question.
But even if he refused to be adopted and tried to leave, there was no way Bruce would allow a ten-year-old to go back to the streets and do his own thing, nevermind that the ten-year-old had the mind and experience of a nineteen-year-old who was both a fully trained costumed vigilante and assassin.
He didn’t even have all the connections he had prior to waking up in his bedroom. There was no Talia who had taken care of him for four years and treated him like her own blood, no tiger-headed master combatant whom he thought of as an uncle, no teachers or fellow students like December and Jade, and no ten-year-old little brother.
He had nothing.
“Jason? You’re up rather late.”
Shit.
Bruce was back.