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Jason is curled up in his favorite booth in a ratty old coffee shop just off Harvard Yard when he gets the message from Babs. He has a final in o-chem, a subject he deeply regrets having to take, and he’s been nose deep in his review notes for close to two hours. It’s cold as balls outside; he has a huge cup of coffee and the weather has the forbidding, slate gray menace of snow.

It’s a funny thing, how no matter how shitty the past year got, organic chemistry still manages to make Jason hate everything else less. It doesn’t matter how much your family disappoints you, he supposes, there is always oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen to make you remember that there are literally worse things in the world. No wonder all the doctors in Gotham are insane, he mutters, darkly, as he checks his phone. They all probably had Professor Norton as their o-chem teacher, and now Jason will choose a gimmick and go on a killing rampage, too.

He looks at his phone, sees it’s Babs, reads the preview, takes a minute, reads it again. D’s alive, heading your way.

What?

Jason stares at the message again, and he can feel his heart start to pound. He looks around, grabs his cane, drops his cane, smashes his textbooks into his messenger bag, hits his head against the girl who is helping him pick up his cane, apologizes, thanks her, slips his bag over his head and starts to make his way to his dorm. Cambridge is freezing over, and it rained earlier which makes footing precarious at best, even for people with two functional legs. For Jason, it’s like negotiating a tightrope, an activity best left to the professionals and one he gave up at fifteen.

He gets back to his dorm and calls Babs, but she doesn’t pick up the phone, because no one in this family knows how to communicate, even if they’re not technically in this family. He huffs as he bangs his way into his dorm, and a minute later, the window opens from the outside, and Dick pops his head inside of the room. “Jaybird!” he says, brightly.

Jason hits him in the shoulder with his cane, and Dick falls out of the window and is on the icy, cold grass; Jason has always lived on the first floor. “I went to your damn funeral! I don’t care what B told you, you don’t do that to-” he starts, sticking his head out of the window, his hands on the sill. He stills as he stares at Dick, lying back on the grass, looking at him with those wide blue eyes, and he wonders how he would finish that sentence.

It doesn’t matter, because Dick is hauling himself up. “Jaybird,” he says, rubbing his mouth. “I’m sorry,” he starts.

Jason reels back into the dorm, and grabs his cane by the end, the ebony handle poking Dick in the shoulder. “You ass. Does Tim know? Does Damian know?” he asks.

“Well,” he starts, and stops. “Can I come in?”

“Absolutely not,” Jason snaps. “Do they know?”

There’s a pause, a long one. “They know,” Dick finally admits, and Jason slams the window closed.

~~~~~

He sees the clock.

Everything is pain; everything is horrible. His mom is right there, his mom is right there, smoking, and Jason feels everything hurt like the entire world has been lit on fire and it’s all under Jason’s skin, and of course, that’s when he sees the clock.

It takes a minute.

It takes a minute, because he can’t focus his eyes; his brain can’t figure out the numbers, but he knows it’s important, he knows that he needs to -

-the word disarm floats through his head as he tries to limp to it, and he watches it count down, and then there’s a flap of black and all he can think is dad, dad, dad.

The clock stops and Jason closes his eyes.

He wakes up at the manor.

He doesn’t know how he got there, but he’s in his bed, even though he doesn’t know it at first. He can hear a machine beeping, and he blinks, confused, uncertain. How did he get here?

He looks down at his arm, where there’s a heart-rate monitor and an IV dripping fluid into his arm. He can barely move his head; he closes his eyes and he thinks he goes back to sleep.

He wakes up at the manor when Alfred is over him, his eyes blinking open. “Alfr-” he starts, and he realizes that he’s here, and he doesn’t know where his mom is. “Sheila-” he starts, asking, desperate. Is she okay? Did the Joker hurt her?

He remembers-

-he doesn’t know what he remembers.

“Oh, my boy,” Alfred says, and Jason thinks he’s crying, and he doesn’t understand.

A sudden fear makes his heart race, makes the sound of it pounding reverberate in his ears. He looks up at Alfred. “She’s…” he pauses; it hurts to speak. “...not okay?”

“She is well, Master Jason,” he says, and he is crying, and Jason’s so confused. “Do not worry. Please, rest. You need to heal.”

Jason hears that she’s okay, though, and his heart relaxes; the beeping slows down. He closes his eyes. He sleeps.

He wakes up at the manor.

This time he can hear someone yelling; the pain is fuzzy now, far away. “I can’t believe you didn’t want me to know!”

“You made it very clear-”

“No! No, Bruce, no, you don’t get to do that, not this time, he has to have his hip replaced, his spine is so damaged he may never walk again, and I shouldn’t have had to learn it from-” he hears, and he realizes that it’s Dick, Dick is yelling, and he’s yelling about-

-about-

-he may never walk again.

He hears someone groaning, crying, and the door swings open and Bruce is there, suddenly, next to the bed. Dick is in the doorway; Jason can see his distinctive shape. “Jay, lad,” Bruce says. “It’s okay, you’re here, you’re safe,” he says.

He hears the heart rate machine go up, and Dick is right there, and his words are echoing, bitter and terrible in his head. “Is he right? Am I never going to walk again?”

Dick pushes past Bruce. “Little Wing, no, no, listen, I was angry, I’m sorry,” he says, and his hand catches Jason’s. It’s warm and soft in a way that Jason doesn’t understand, because he knows that Dick’s hands are covered in calluses, he knows that Dick has the grip that could crush stones. “You’re just hurt, we’ve all been hurt like this.”

Jason feels his face get hot, and Dick’s other hand is wiping at Jason’s face. “Come on, I’m sorry.”

Bruce is tugging Dick away. “He needs to rest,” Bruce says.

Dick doesn’t let go, though, he just shrugs off Bruce’s hand. “Do you want me to leave?”

Jason stares at Dick’s hand, and then looks over at Bruce. “Is Sheila okay?” he asks. “Did the Joker hurt her?”

There’s a very pregnant pause. “She’s fine, Jason,” Bruce says, finally, and Dick looks furious again.

Jason shakes his head a little. “You don’t have to stay, Dick,” he says, and Dick gets up.

“I’ll be at the manor until you’re better, okay? We can play some video games. We’ll watch some movies. Board games? Books?”

“Dick,” Bruce says, warningly.

Dick stands up, and shakes his head as he walks by Bruce. “Until he gets better, Bruce, you’re stuck with me,” and Jason watches him go.

Bruce stays there, though. He pulls an armchair close, and he reaches for Jason’s hair, brushing it back a little. Jason winces with a sudden stab of pain at his hairline, and Bruce looks like the world is crumbling. “Did you get the Joker?” he asks, then, trying to put the pieces back together of what happened in Ethiopia.

Bruce’s head dips a little, and Jason thinks, oh no. The Joker is still out there. Maybe Sheila-

-something about that fear makes him feel like his heart is dipping, though. His memory twists a little. “We got him, Jason. What do you remember?”

Jason takes a breath. His memory keeps twisting, like a television turning on, coming into focus. He remembers Sheila’s face, holding her cigarette, as the Joker kept hurting him, kept hitting him, over and over. He remembers her face and he doesn’t remember any pleasure in it, but he doesn’t remember any concern in it, either. Or remorse. Just bitter resignation.

He remembers it, and that heat in his face is back, and his breath hitches, and this time he knows he’s crying. “Oh,” he says, his heart aching, his chest hurting more now, the pain sharper than the pain at his hips or his arm or his face. “Oh,” he says again, and he lets out a cry.

It’s worse, now. “She was going to let me die,” he sobs, and then Bruce is reaching down, pulling him into a hug that’s so gentle, like Jason is spun out of sugar and he might dissolve. He cries into Bruce’s chest, as Bruce holds him. “She was going to let me die,” he repeats, wailing. He doesn’t think he’s cried like this since Catherine died.

“You’re here,” Bruce says, “you’re here, with me. You’re here, with me.”

Jason sobs until there aren’t tears left, and the entire time Bruce holds him.

~~~~~

Predictably, because no one in this family knows how to communicate, when Jason calls Tim there’s no reply. He doesn’t even bother with Damian: the gremlin child spends more time losing his phone than he does almost anything else. Instead of doing something productive with his time, like memorizing things for his o-chem final, he putters around the dorm, smashing his cane against things.

“There is an unbelievably hot guy outside asking for you, Jay,” one of his roommates says by way of greeting when he comes in the door. Kenny is self-proclaimed too gay to function and speaks almost exclusively in campy movie quotes when he’s not discovering new ways of detecting pancreatic cancer. Jason is convinced that if his parents weren’t so supportive Kenny would move to Gotham and proceed to become the most infuriating rogue of all time, all super science murder covered in Heathers-themed parties. Unfortunately for the misanthropes of Gotham City, his parents love the crap out of their son.

Jason generally finds him tolerable, but only barely.

“He’s my brother, don’t hit on him,” Jason replies sullenly as he continues to have his sulk in the common room. “He came back to life after not speaking to me for almost a year and thinks I want to see him.”

“As if,” Kenny mutters in agreement, making Jason’s only barely rise up to occasionally. “Do you want me to go down and tell him he can fuck off?”

“You wouldn’t manage it,” Jason says. “You’d survive one minute against Dick Grayson’s charm and then you would dissolve and let him walk all over you.” Kenny looks affronted, and Jason shakes his head. “It’s not your fault. That’s just.” He lifts his cane and waves it around a second. “Dick Grayson.”

“I’m surprised your family doesn’t have a reality show about you yet. Does E! know about this?” Kenny says, moving Jason’s textbooks. He spots Jason’s notes, grabs a pencil, and corrects something, and Jason grabs it and looks at the correction, scowling a little.

“Wayne Enterprises’ board won’t let my dad have a reality show,” he lies. “He checked.” Brucie’s vapid nature is a Gotham institution, at this point, and they actually had been approached. The idea of it makes Jason’s skin break out in hives. “Anyway, I don’t think Harvard would have appreciated it on my application materials.”

Kenny snorts, and they both know it wouldn’t have mattered. Jason may be a genius, and he may have an honest future in academia teaching 19th century Russian novels in an ivy-coated tower, but it was the Wayne on his application materials that got him in.

Normally, he’d mind that scoff, but today he’s too broodingly mad at Dick to care. He sits in their common room and kicks his good leg out, scuffing the floor with his heel. “I have a final in an hour,” he says miserably.

Kenny raises both eyebrows. “So what do you want? You already said not to run interference.”

Jason thinks about it; he knows that Dick is the most stubborn man alive - and an hour ago he was dead - and he tips his mouth to the side. “He’ll wait me out anyway,” Jason finally admits. He presses his cane on the ground.

Kenny looks thoughtful. “One of my friends from engineering owes me,” he says, “and he has a hopped-up illegal Segway in his dorm. You could borrow it while I distract your brother?”

Jason considers that. Dick is fast - very fast - but Kenny doesn’t know that. That said, it might not matter. He just has to get to his final, and then Dick will be barred from bothering him for at least a couple of hours, and Jason can focus on something - anything - else.

Not that Jason will actually be able to focus on his stupid final anyway. Shit, he’s going to fail because Dick chose today to come back from the dead. Still. It’s tempting, just to force Dick to have to wait on Jason, for once.

So he nods, and ten minutes later, Jason has his cane hooked on one side of an illegally souped up Segway and he’s practically mowing down frazzled looking students, which is, of course, why Dick jumps out from a bush, Jason screams, topples, and the Segway steers itself into a bank of dirty snow.

Jason sits up and kicks his good leg at Dick, who dodges with ease. “You asshole, you could have killed me!”

“I would never have killed you,” Dick clarifies, and there’s a branch in his hair. “Your roommate is a nice guy. Told me exactly how to cut you off.”

Jason was going to murder Kenny in his sleep. No. That’s too good. He’s going to murder Kenny by some terrible poison he’ll make during his o-chem final, which he’s getting more and more likely to fail. “Does it occur to you that you can’t just do this? I have an o-chem final! Some of us live the lives we’re given instead of doing whatever it is you fucked off to for an entire year!” He turns and tries to get up, but his bad leg is always worse in the cold; it takes him a long time. “You’re really living up to your name,” Jason snarls, and hits Dick’s outstretched hand as he finally manages to get up, and hop over to pick up his cane. He plants his feet, and when Dick gets closer, Jason aims for his ankles to make him keep his distance.

“I’m sorry, Little Wing,” he starts, hopping back. People are staring; everyone knows who Jason is, and people like Jason, so they’re giving Dick the eye. One of the members of the football team, who Jason occasionally gets drinks with and once kissed during a Halloween party, almost stops and raises an eyebrow.

Jason waves him off, and Dick looks vaguely offended.

Jason turns back to Dick. “Don’t you Little Wing me,” Jason snarls, pointing a finger at Dick’s chest. “You can return that Segway after you dig it out of the snow,” he snaps, rescuing his bag from another pile of snow.

Dick starts to pull the Segway out of the snow. “Jason,” he tries, this time. “I’m sorry, can you stop for a moment? Can you listen?”

“I don’t have time,” Jason growls as he tries to move, and as he tries to keep his heart in check. He realizes that what he wants, more than anything, is to cry. He hasn’t cried since Dick’s funeral, and he’s furious about it. This isn’t fair. He has an exam.

Dick hurries in front of Jason. “Okay, how about later? After your test? Please,” he adds. “Please, I just want to talk to you. Please.”

That’s three pleases. Jason’s heart thuds loud, now. He rubs his nose, his chest. He remembers when he was still a kid, and he would have given the world for Dick to speak to him that way. For Dick to say please like all he wanted was Jason’s attention.

“Fine,” Jason spits out. “Seven, there’s a ramen place a couple of blocks over. You can pay.”

“You’re the rich one,” Dick says.

Jason just levels him a look. “You. Can. Pay.”

Dick raises his hands. “Okay. I’ll pay.”

~~~~

The official story is that Jason was in a ski accident; Leslie Thomkins knows better, and she’s his doctor, she’s managed all his complicated surgeries. The official story keeps him out of school for a few weeks, and there’s a promise of physical therapy, and a new wheelchair, and Jason hates it.

The only thing that he doesn’t hate, and he’s kind of shocked by it, is that Dick really did stick around.

It’s not that Jason never liked Dick, although Bruce yelled that at Dick once when Jason was “asleep” and Jason cringed, because, did Bruce really think that? It’s more that, back in the beginning, Jason was a little overwhelmed by Dick, who was the first Robin, who was the standard he was being held to, but who was also kind of pissed at Bruce for picking up Jason and who was busy being a grown-up superhero, and not a sidekick anymore. It’s that he remembered Robin from when he was still a little kid in the East End of Gotham, every kid’s hero, because Batman was this terrifying remote myth but Robin was funny and personable and would definitely help any kid in need. Everybody knew that.

And then Jason was Robin, but Jason wasn’t as good as Dick and he knew it, and Bruce knew it, so maybe he was a little bit unsure about what Dick would think of him. And Dick wasn’t around anyway, so-

-so it didn’t matter.

But now Dick is here, in the manor. He and Bruce have found some kind of uneasy truce, where Bruce doesn’t mention the Titans more than once a day and Dick doesn’t get mad at Bruce for getting mad at him unless Jason isn’t in the room.

He’s finally getting a hold of the wheelchair - which effectively makes it impossible for him to go to the Batcave, that is not ADA compliant - when he stops and realizes he hears someone talking. It’s been a few weeks, and the voice is coming from somewhere...below him?

He looks down and realizes that he’s in the hallway right above Bruce’s office. When Jason first got the wheelchair, he didn’t know how he was going to handle all the stairs in the manor, because there were a lot of stairs. But once he got home from the hospital, he came home to find stair lifts on all the main stairs and also the little one down to the kitchen, and Dick riding on one. “I’m totally installing one of these at the tower,” he declared.

But they’re still kind of pain - noisy and slow, so slow - so Jason really spends most of his time in the family wing when he’s at home. But today he was looking for his astronomy textbook, and he had to venture to the last place he left it, which was in the other wing of the house where he had set up the telescope because it had a better view, and so he’s right above the office. He didn’t know that he could hear anything.

“-not a solution,” Dick says, and Jason knows he probably shouldn’t eavesdrop.

On the other hand, he is a detective. He can’t help himself. He slides the wheelchair closer and bends down until his ear is between his knees.

“It’s the solution we have for now,” Bruce says.

What are they talking about? “I just don’t think it’s a good idea. I can get one of the Titans to wear the suit for a while-”

“Who would you recommend?” Bruce says, but his voice is dripping with sarcasm. “It wouldn’t fit a single one of them, none of them could pull off the look for more than a second even if it did. No. Better just say he’s dead, if someone asks.”

“I don’t want Robin to die that way,” Dick replies, like his heart is breaking. “Is that what you’re going to tell the Joker? That he killed Robin?” There’s a pause. “And what happens if he gets better?”

“No.” Bruce says. “Are you insane?”

“Do you think you can just permanently bench him?” Dick asks, his voice low. “That’s not fair. You know he’ll never go for it.”

“Dick,” Bruce says.

There’s a very long pause. “Jesus, Bruce,” Dick says, finally. “Please,” he says.

“I’ve made my decision.”

“As usual, it’s a terrible one,” Dick says, and there’s a slam of a door.

Jason just sits there, feeling a wave of sickness rise up in his stomach. Bruce is going to kill Robin. It doesn’t matter if Jason walks again, because he’ll never get to be Robin again, never. He takes his wheelchair - his stupid, terrible wheelchair and rolls until he get to the end of the hall and then slams back into the wall.

He can’t even say he didn’t think this was coming. His legs don’t work - they might never work again - and even if he could walk, could he run? Could he kick and jump and fly?

But Bruce didn’t even talk to him about it. Bruce just talked to Dick, Bruce probably didn’t even want to talk to Dick, Bruce just made the decision as usual, and Jason-

-what’s going to happen now?

He’s still Bruce’s son, and he’s not stupid enough to think that Bruce would get rid of him. That’s not the kind of man he is, and Jason knows that, but there’s still a lingering trace of fear there. What if he’s just useless now, a useless son who can’t do anything right anymore? Bruce had been looking at him kind of sideways since the incident with Garzonas, and maybe this was just a good excuse to get rid of Robin. Batman was better without some ex street kid who didn’t know how to make good choices, and well.

Well.

It’s not like Jason’s own mother wanted him.

He can still see her, smoking, looking at him with that dispassionate, resigned look.

He slams the chair backwards against the wall again.

That’s how Bruce finds him. “Jay,” he says, surprised.

“You’re going to kill Robin!” Jason accuses, furious.

Bruce goes silent, and doesn’t deny it - how could he deny it? He finally speaks. “You shouldn’t eavesdrop.”

“Oh, save it,” Jason snaps. “You’re the one who taught me how to eavesdrop, remember?”

Bruce’s jaw moves a little, like he’s not sure if he wants to laugh or scowl, and normally that would make Jason laugh, except he doesn’t feel like it’s very funny right now. He feels, instead, like he’s so mad the world might explode around him. “It’s the best thing,” he says, finally.

Jason turns his wheelchair and rolls over Bruce’s foot, and Bruce yelps in pain. “Jay!” he shouts.

“You can’t kill Robin! I’m still alive! What if-” he starts, but then stops.

Bruce is leaning down to rub his foot, and for a man who regularly gets bones broken by psychopaths he is making a big deal of his son smashing him on the foot. “Jason,” he begins. “You’re not going to get back in the field,” he says, firmly.

“I could get better,” Jason says, sullenly.

Bruce tips his head a little, to the side. “You will get better,” he says.

“What if I want to go back into the field?” he asks, and prepares to roll over his foot again.

Bruce shakes his head. “No,” he says, and twists out of the way. “No,” he says again, more firmly, and his voice thickens. “No,” he says, finally, and shakes his head.

“This isn’t fair!” Jason yells.

“I am your father,” Bruce snaps back, “and you almost died.”

There is a quiet, pregnant pause between them, and Jason begs. “Please don’t kill Robin,” he asks, reaching for the bottom of Bruce’s shirt. “Please,” he tries again.

Bruce has that face, though, the one that says he’s made up his mind. “I already told Jim Gordon,” he says, firmly.

Jason just stares at him, and his hands go to his textbook in his lap. “You were going to do this since before we even found Sheila, weren’t you?”

“Jason,” Bruce says, warningly. Jason shakes his head. Bruce sighs. “Come on. Let me take you back across the house.”

“I don’t need you to help me,” Jason replies, already zooming off.

He doesn’t forgive Bruce, which is fine, really, because Bruce also doesn’t apologize. They spend weeks coyly avoiding the topic, even as news gets out that Robin died, even as Superman comes to pay his respects only to find Jason alive. It’s actually worth seeing Clark both get mad and fight with Bruce and try to be supportive of Jason at the same time. The best part is seeing Clark tell Bruce that this was the worst idea in the world since Alexander Hamilton figured out he could anonymously shame his opponents if he owned a newspaper, which made Bruce point out that was rich coming from a reporter, and made Clark yell that Bruce owned the newspaper.

Actually, the best part of the fight was watching Dick’s face get positively gleeful as Clark told Bruce exactly what a bad idea it was.

Clark had agreed, though, that Jason shouldn’t be in the field at all anymore. He just thought that they could have done it without killing Robin, and Jason wasn’t really thrilled about that.

It would have been worse if Dick weren’t around at all, though.

Dick is here, going to his physical therapy appointments with him and sitting on the other end of the room, and occasionally throwing paper clips at Jason’s head while he tries to put the weight on your legs, not just your arms, I can tell you’re cheating. It turns out when you’re a recovering vigilante, you have the ability to overcompensate too much, or something.

“Stop it,” Jason snaps at Dick, who aims another paperclip at him. The physical therapist is ignoring Dick with the air of someone who desperately wants to strangle him. The paperclip hits Jason between the eyes. “I mean it!”

“Jason, focus,” the physical therapist says, as Jason struggles to not just put all his weight on his arms, haul himself on the bars to Dick, and thwap him on the head.

Jaso does not point out that Dick is being an ass, because they all have eyes, and he tries again. They had to replace an entire portion of his hip because it shattered, and his spine really is damaged, but the doctor said that he might be able to walk again.

“You know that Two-Face almost killed me once? B benched me after it, he hit me with a baseball bat, see? I still have the scar from the surgery,” Dick had told him in the car after, when Jason was pressing his face into his knees and thinking I’ll never fly again. He had put his arm around Jason’s shoulders. “Come on, Little Wing. You’ll walk again. You’ll see.”

That was almost three months ago now. His arm came out of the cast, his skin healed up, and even though there’s a weird little white curl at the roots of his temple and a scar that cuts across his mouth, cheek, and eyebrow (that he religiously applies anti-scar cream to every night) the lasting injury is this: he still can’t walk.

He puts his weight on his legs and it feels like there are knives stabbing up into his feet, and into his legs, and the pain is always bone deep, especially on his left hip. Another paperclip hits him on the head, and it takes a lot to not yell at Dick again. He manages to not collapse, but it’s just barely; it’s the vigilante reflexes, and the physical therapist holding onto him, and the support belt around his waist.

He lets out a frustrated noise, and then the therapist shakes her head. “Okay,” she tells him. “You’re done for today, I’ll see you again on Thursday, right?”

Jason takes a breath as she helps him back into his wheelchair. “Thursday,” he says, as he tries not to let the frustration seep into his voice too much. This isn’t her fault. He looks down at his knees, and Dick is standing from his chair.

“You want me to wheel you out?” Dick asks. He always asks.

Jason never says yes. He just shakes his head and grabs the wheels; it took him forever to get a real handle on moving with them. The other kids at school already thought he was weird, Bruce Wayne’s charity case, but the first few weeks with the wheelchair cemented their general avoidance of him as he careened into things. Now he has control, but occasionally, when someone gets real mean with how they look at him like he’s broken, he’ll careen into them with the excuse of I’m still learning.

Dick laughed a lot when he came with Alfred to pick him up from school and Micah Regis Baron’s mother told Alfred that Micah was waiting for an apology over the crash, and when asked to explain himself, Jason stated that Micah called him a cripple so really who was he to deny him the full wheelchair experience?

Dick hits him with another paperclip. “Alfred’s not here yet,” he says, as Jason throws it back at Dick’s face and Dick dodges with an easy grace. “You want to get something to eat? There’s an old-fashioned soda fountain across the street.”

“What does that even mean?” Jason asks, but he’s already wheeling his way to the door.

Dick shrugs. “You know, like in Grease?”

“You didn’t sit through Grease,” Jason accuses, throwing another paperclip at Dick’s face. “It’s like seven hours long. You barely got through the first act of the Sound of Music.”

“I’m told the second act is overrated,” Dick replies, smartly, and dodging. “Anyway, joke’s on you, because Kory went through a whole earth musicals thing. I, for one, blame Wally, and they got me to watch most of Grease. Enough to know about soda fountains.”

It’s actually a frothy pink diner with pastel blue tables and a long counter. The hostess takes one look at Dick and barely looks at Jason, like she’s overtaken with some nameless emotion.

Every time.

Still, Dick asks if they can sit at the counter, and Jason wheels his chair over to the end of the counter, and then looks at Dick. “Are you going to help me?”

“Do you need me to?” Dick asks, his eyebrows up a little.

Jason throws a paperclip at him, but Dick dodges and offers his hand. Jason stares at it, but takes the stool in both hands and starts to haul himself up. Immediately there’s pain in his spine, but Jason pushes through it, tugging himself up until he’s on the cushion on his stomach; there’s a moment where he spins, gripping at the stool, and he starts to move his legs like they’re going to help him.

They do not help him.

Instead he just barely manages to get his balance, his hands on the stool’s pole, and presses his face into the side of the cushion.

Dick is laughing so hard, he’s snorting. “People are staring,” Jason says, “aren’t they?”

“Come on, do you want help?” Dick asks, again, between gulping for air and laughing again.

Jason feels his face flush red, feels his stomach drop. People are probably staring. He looks like an idiot. He can’t even get in a chair. He reaches to grab the next stool, though, and through some wiggling and fussing he finally manages to sit up, leaning his weight on the counter. “You’re such an ass,” Jason says to Dick, as Dick gives him a menu.

“You didn’t say I could help you,” Dick says, and then he laughs again. “You didn’t accept my hand.”

“You’re laughing at me!” Jason yells, pushing at him, and having to hold onto the counter to compensate. The waitress - soda jerk? - comes over and takes their orders; Dick asks for a strawberry malt and a burger, and Jason finally mutters he wants chili fries. “It’s an ass thing to do.”

Dick looks over at him. “I’m your brother, I’m supposed to laugh at you like that,” he says, but maybe he realizes he crossed a line. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself,” Jason replies sullenly. His face is still hot, and he wants to say he doesn’t care, but Dick isn’t the one who bellyflopped onto a stool in public.

They’re both quiet a minute. “Well,” Dick says, finally. “How do you want me to act?”

Jason just looks over, then, unsure. “What?”

“I’m not going to help you unless you say I can, okay? I’m not Bruce,” he adds, a minute later, and Jason thinks of how Bruce doesn’t pick him up without telling him in advance but he does push his chair a lot without Jason saying he can, and Dick never does. “If you did something that looked that stupid during training, I would definitely laugh at you,” he points out, “but this isn’t training, and maybe that wasn’t fair.”

Jason just keeps staring at him. “I mean,” he starts. And stops. The waitress brings over Dick’s malt. “Oh,” he says.

“Oh?” Dick replies, his eyebrows going up.

Oh, Jason thinks. Dick is trying to respect him, he realizes, that’s what the oh meant. He doesn’t want Jason to feel pity. Dick was being an ass, but he wasn’t doing it to be an ass.

And he’s talking to Jason now, instead of just assuming. Oh.

“You can’t laugh at me when I’m trying,” Jason says, and he feels that sullenness dissipate, just a little bit. “Everyone else is already laughing at me.”

Dick takes a sip of his malt, and he clearly looks like he’s thinking. “Yeah,” he says, finally, agreeably. “Okay.” He goes quiet, taking another sip. “For the record, I’m not laughing at you, really. I mean, I was laughing, but…” he trails off a bit. “I thought it would make you feel like things were back to normal.”

Jason frowns, and he doesn’t point out that this is his new normal and he hates it. Instead he just sits there and tries to puzzle out what Dick means. “You’re not allowed to laugh at me for something like that,” he says.

“Do you want me to punch anyone who does laugh at you?” Dick offers, and there’s a little smile that says he will.

Jason snorts. “I can punch my own bullies, thanks,” he says, “even from my wheelchair, which I’m not planning on staying in anyway.”

“Good,” Dick says, smiling, “because I can’t leave until you walk again.”

Chapter Text

Jason knows he’s late. He did it on purpose.

After his o-chem exam, which he thinks he probably didn’t fail, probably, maybe, he puttered around the building for a while. People stopped by as he did; he got invited to go to Vail (no), Aspen (no), and Tahiti (maybe?) by some of his more wealthy classmates. He wishes that everyone at Harvard with money was an asshole, but there was really no predictable measure for that sort of thing. And he wishes, sometimes, too, that they were all in it for his last name, that way he could say no without any regret at all, but that isn’t true, either.

Perplexingly, a lot of his classmates actually like him. Bizarre.

Still, it’s a good excuse for taking his time and letting Dick dangle a little while he does it. He remembers the day that Bruce called him, told him the news; he was in his Critical Analysis of Cold-War Policy, 1960-1966 session, lovingly dubbed the Henry Kissinger is a War Criminal class, and as class policy dictated, anyone who didn’t silence their phone had to put it on speaker, and could not announce that they were on speaker.

Jason, being an idiot, had not silenced his phone, and after the terse moment of ringing, Professor Andretti, a steely-eyed, black-haired Sicilian woman with zero pity, gave Jason a look that would rival even Alfred’s.

Everyone in the class had eagerly leaned forward, and Jason accepted his fate. “Dad,” he said, when he answered, which was hopefully enough to put Bruce on his guard. Jason called Bruce dad only in dire straits - when he was terrified, or when he was so sad he couldn’t protect himself from all the love he felt for Bruce. It was rare.

It was also futile. Bruce’s voice was brutal. “I didn’t think you would pick up. I thought you were in class.”

The gleeful look on everyone’s face - Bruce Wayne - was already enough. Angela McCracken had to cover her mouth to stifle a giggle. “What is it?” Jason asked, trying to get to the meat of it.

“Dick’s dead,” Bruce replied.

The silence that followed was cracked by someone pushing away from their desk, and Jason picked up the phone. Professor Andretti’s face dropped so fast it must have been made from cement. He juggled his phone as he felt his fingers fumble, as if the ice in his stomach had already reached his hands. “Dick-” he started. His phone tumbled to the ground and the screen shattered, and Jason swore.

Someone - to this day he doesn’t remember who, his memories of that moment were too jagged to approach with anything but the utmost care - helped to pick it up, even as Bruce kept talking. Saying things like I’m sending a plane to get you and the funeral is tomorrow.

Finally someone, mercifully, yelled out, “Mr. Wayne! You’re on speakerphone!”

The silence that followed was bitter. “Jason,” Bruce started. “Why am I on speakerphone?” The rage in his voice was palpable. Jason forgave him. Dick died. His oldest son. His first son. Jason’s brother.

Professor Andretti had practically flung herself across the room to Jason’s rescue, grabbing the phone and admitting, after she turned off the speaker function, “It is my fault, Mr. Wayne,” she admitted. “I’m Jason’s professor, it is class policy to keep the students from having their phones on-” she explained, but Jason doesn’t remember the rest.

All he remembers is crumpling to the ground, gripping his face, and screaming.

And now he’s remembering that, trying to approach the memory with this newfound knowledge. Dick is alive. Dick is alive, and sitting in Jason’s favorite ramen joint, waiting for him. Dick is alive, and Tim and Damian both knew. Dick is alive, and Bruce didn’t tell him.

He comes into the restaurant. Miyuki, the owner, knows Jason, who is an excellent tipper and who is so polite and who once fell asleep in the back of his booth and felt so badly about it that he offered to stay behind and help clean up. “Jay,” she says with a smile. “I met your brother.”

“Let me guess: you love him?” Jason offers as he hangs his coat up on the provided rack.

She gets a sly look on her face. “He is too handsome,” she replies. “I don’t trust handsome men.”

“Are you telling me you don’t trust me?” Jason asks, his eyes widening in fake shock. She hits him on the arm gently, and he smiles at her, even though he really doesn’t want to smile at anyone. It’s impossible to not smile at Miyuki; she’s like everyone’s grandma. An institution. Deeply beloved by the undergraduate population.

Dick is in Jason’s booth, which suggests that despite Miyuki’s whispered aside, she did trust him. Jason makes his way over, hooks his cane at the edge of the table, and looks Dick in the eye. “I tip fifty percent.”

“Jesus Christ,” Dick replies. He reaches up and runs a hand through his hair. “I guess I should be glad we came here and not some high end place in Boston.”

Jason doesn’t need a menu, but he looks at it anyway. “So why aren’t you six feet under?” he asks, and he doesn’t want to examine all the feelings he had while he thought Dick was dead, in what was arguably the worst year of his life, and considering what a nightmare it had been to learn to walk again, that was an impressive accomplishment.

“B made me,” Dick says, and his eyes close a little. “I didn’t want to. It was for a mission,” he tries. They’re speaking in those tones that Bruce taught them, that make it hard to eavesdrop, and Jason is pretty sure there’s a white noise device under the table that Dick dropped to make recording this conversation impossible.

“B made you,” Jason repeats. “It was for a mission,” he mutters, blankly. What the actual god-damned hell.

“I couldn’t tell you,” he adds, quiet.

There are about a thousand replies to that, and all of them are fueled by Jason’s rage. Years of railing against his family has transformed it into a potent, powerful weapon, but Dick looks so miserable. There are bags under his eyes, like he’s tired, like he hasn’t slept. “How long have Tim and Damian known?”

Dick rubs his face. “What time is it?”

“7:32.”

“Then forty-five hours and twenty-eight minutes,” Dick says. “I had to stop in Gotham first. They needed me there,” he adds. Some of the anger deflates. “Tim punched me,” Dick offers.

“Jesus,” Jason responds. “And after this?”

Dick rubs the back of his head. “I’m going back to work,” he admits, careful. “In a day. I have a day here, Jay,” he says. “I wanted to see you. I wanted to talk to you. Are you okay? You’re doing okay?”

Jason leans back, and he’s about to reply when Miyuki comes by. “Tonkatsu ramen, and an order of gyoza, Jay?”

“Thank you,” he says. “Dick will have the pad thai.”

Dick looks puzzled, and Miyuki looks over, her eyebrows up. “Really?” she asks.

“No-” Dick starts, and Jason levels an easy look in his direction, and he swallows it. “-problem, yes, pad thai,” he replies, and once Miyuki is gone he looks at Jason. “What is pad thai code for?”

“It’s code for pad thai,” Jason replies baldly, although that’s not strictly the truth. The truth is that a few years ago - before Jason was a student - some parent from bumfuck, middle of nowhere came and embarrassed their poor kid by demanding that the noodle restaurant serve them pad thai. It didn’t matter that it was a Japanese restaurant. Miyuki, ever gracious, attempted to make pad thai.

It was so bad the parent gave it a 1-star review on Yelp, raving that the noodle place made the worst pad thai she’d ever had. This resulted in Miyuki, in a passive aggressive rage, putting it on the menu as a “special for parents.” It was Cambridge legend. No one ordered the pad thai.

Jason takes a breath, then. “I went to your funeral.”

“You said,” Dick replies. “And for what it’s worth, I am sorry.”

“You’re making being pissed at you very hard,” Jason tells him.

Dick shrugs a little. “I’m pissed at myself, if that makes any difference.”

“This is what I mean. You just come here with your big sad blue eyes and your big sad face-”

“That isn’t fair,” Dick snaps, and Jason can see he’s getting angry now.

“-and you make moon eyes at me and say how sorry you are and you say please and you give me all this attention and chase me down before a final-”

“I didn’t do this to hurt you!” Dick says, his face getting less distressed and more angry by the second.

“-and what? I’m supposed to forgive you?”

“You don’t know what was happening!”

“I didn’t make that decision!” Jason yells, and they’re suddenly both silent. The entire restaurant is silent; Miyuki is glancing at them from where she’s sitting next to the kitchen. Jason leans over. “You’re tipping 100%,” he says, and he grabs his cane, and stalks out.

~~~~

I can’t leave until you walk again is a problem.

It’s a problem because Dick means it.

Jason knows that Bruce and Dick are trying to get along, but whatever partnership they had that worked really did suffer some blows, because they’re like oil and kindling, and the slightest match will burn them both up. It’s just so obvious how much Bruce loves Dick, and how much Dick wants Bruce to respect him, and Jason understands, he really does.

But he hates it when he can see them gritting their teeth and trying not to fight at the dinner table, when they come home so late from patrol that Jason is getting up to go to physical therapy and they’re bickering as they come out of the cave. He hates it because Dick’s so clearly wants to be somewhere else.

And because the reason he isn’t is Jason.

The first time Jason says he doesn’t have to stay, Dick has a black eye and a fat lip that some lucky mugger gave him, and Dick just ruffles Jason’s curls. I don’t have to do anything, he had said.

The second time it’s when Dick picks him up from school in the minivan with wheelchair access that Jason hates, and Dick looks surprised. I told you, when you walk again, he says, but Dick’s smile is getting tighter every time he says it, and Jason feels like he’s a mess.

He doesn’t say it a third time. The months pass. Jason turns sixteen, and Dick is underfoot, and Jason misses Robin, and Bruce is in an increasingly bad mood. Rogues are starting to notice. Hell. The media is starting to notice. Batman’s bad attitude after Robin’s death is cause for morning show conversation in Gotham, along with Bruce Wayne’s new charity initiative for more parole job options to prevent recidivism.

Jason knows that Dick is part of Bruce’s bad mood, but he can’t help but think that it’s really all on him. The manor is so big, but it feels too small at the same time. Jason can’t breathe in there. He can’t.

Alfred is driving him home one day, after school, when Jason realizes: he can’t go home. He can’t. “Alf,” he starts, and Alfred looks at him in the rear view mirror. “Can you stop the car?”

Alfred doesn’t ask. Instead he pulls the car over; they’re in Bristol already, so it’s not a big deal, and Jason bends over to put his head between his knees. “Are you going to be sick, Master Jason?” Alfred asks, turning to look at him, and Jason shakes his head, even though it might be a lie. The thing is that he doesn’t feel like he’s going to vomit. It’s worse than that.

He feels like the world is tearing around him. “Do you think,” he starts, and stops. No. That’s not what he wants to ask. He tugs at his curls. He doesn’t want to ask if Alfred thinks he’ll walk again, because he knows he will. He knows it, the physical therapist said he probably could, but it might take a long time.

No.

The question he wants to ask is so much worse than that one. “Do you think that all of this is my fault?” he asks, finally, quiet. He hasn’t asked anyone that. He hasn’t even let himself be vulnerable enough to ask. He spent all that time in recovery, fighting each battle, and thinking that it was all physical. “Because I let Garzonas fall,” he starts, and stops, his breath coming faster. “Because I trusted,” he starts, but he can’t finish. My mother. Sheila. That woman. He hiccups. “Because I wasn’t good enough,” he says, “to be Robin. To be like Dick-”

“Master Jason,” Alfred says, and then suddenly the butler isn’t in the front seat anymore. He’s gotten out of the car, and a small, stupid part of Jason thinks great, he’s going to leave me here even though he knows it’s not true. A moment later, Alfred is in the backseat, and he has a handkerchief that he’s pressing into Jason’s hand, because Jason is crying. When did that happen? “You are creating a story where there isn’t one, my boy,” he says, “because you are not at fault. You did not put the weapon into that monster’s hand and ask him to beat you with it. You did not ask a woman who should have protected you to neglect you so badly.”

Jason turns and shakes his head. “Dick won’t leave until I walk,” he says, “and he and B keep fighting-”

“Master Richard also blames himself,” Alfred says, “for not being there enough for you, and I think he means to rectify that now, but-” he pauses, and shakes his head. “You are very precious to all of us.”

He hears that and a little piece of him heals, and it makes him cry even harder. “Please don’t tell B I cried, please,” he asks, wiping his face with Alfred’s handkerchief.

“This falls very firmly under butler-young master confidentiality,” Alfred assures him, as if that’s even a thing. Jason bursts into laughter, which turns into sobs. “I think,” Alfred says, smiling, “that I should like to go shopping, if you do not mind a detour, Master Jason.”

Jason knows full well that Alfred does all the grocery shopping in the morning, when it’s quiet in the manor, so what he’s really saying is we don’t have to go home quite yet, and Jason appreciates that. “Can I wait in the car?” Jason asks.

“I think so,” Alfred assures him.

They get home a little late, and Alfred goes to make dinner. Jason sees Dick coming down the stairs. “Hey,” Dick says, brightly. “You guys are back.” His voice is purposely light, which means that he was fighting with Bruce. He looks like his shoulders are being held back by a board; Jason’s learned all of Dick’s tells.

“What did you fight about today?” Jason asks, his mouth a line.

Dick’s mouth opens, and closes. “Nothing important,” he says a little mulishly. There is no one on the planet more stubborn than Dick Grayson, Jason thinks, except maybe Bruce, and that’s probably why they’ve been fighting so much.

Jason rubs his knees a little, feeling a scowl come on his face. He didn't scowl so much, before. When he was little, sure, after Catherine died and he was on his own and he had to be tough. But he was generally in a good mood after Bruce picked him up. He was generally pretty okay. He thought so, anyway.

He feels like his entire personality is getting twisted inside out. “Dick,” he says.

“Jason,” Dick replies.

It’s all laid out before him, then. Dick and Bruce fighting, and Robin is dead, and Jason can’t walk, and the fight with Bruce that Jason can’t get over and the nightmares, and Sheila, who is in jail, and the Joker, who is in Arkham, and the wheelchair and the physical therapy and Bruce always pushing his chair and the kids at school.

The last decision that Jason feels like he made that was his own was getting on that plane, and he wants to scream it.

He wants to make a decision.

“I want you to take me to see Sheila,” Jason says, and Dick looks like he’s been suckerpunched. “Tomorrow. After school. You can pick me up.”

“Jay,” he starts.

“Bruce won’t do it,” he says, even though he hasn’t asked. He doesn’t need to ask to know that. “And Alfred would ask Bruce first. So it has to be you,” he adds.

“Jay,” Dick tries.

“You know Jim Gordon, he’ll help you,” Jason says. “And if you don’t want to go as Dick, take me as Nightwing.”

“I’m not going to do that,” Dick says, “Come on, what do you have to say to her?”

He has a lot to say to her, and Dick knows it. He also knows that no one wants to take him, because they don’t want him to get hurt. He knows because he’s not stupid, because his family is predictable. Because Alfred basically told him. You are very precious to all of us, he said. Because the last time he saw her-

-he squares his shoulders. “I deserve it. You deserved to look the man who murdered your parents in the eye. I deserve to look the woman who would have let me die in hers.”

Dick face goes a little pale, and he takes a breath, like he’s trying to stay calm, even though Jason knows he’s not getting angry. It’s something a lot more complicated than that. “Tomorrow,” he says, then.

The next day, Dick picks Jason up from school, and drives him to the jail, where Sheila is awaiting trial. He helps Jason sign in, helps Jason to the waiting area. “Do you want me to go in with you?”

Jason shakes his head. Whatever he’s doing, he’s doing this on his own. Dick nods, and one of the guards helps Jason into the little room; there’s a guard sitting on the other side of the room, watching. He doesn’t have to wait long.

She doesn’t look the same. Well. No, that’s not right. She does look the same, but she doesn’t. She looks like the woman he met, who he thought could fix his problems, who he thought might be able to fill the hole inside of him that was supposed to be family. But she doesn’t look like her, either. Thinner. Leaner. Meaner.

She looks at him and the color drains from her face. “I don’t want to do this,” she says, suddenly.

Jason shakes his head. “Don’t you think you owe me?”

There’s silence between them as Jason looks at her, and he wants to ask why. The word almost forms in his mouth when he realizes it doesn’t matter. She looks down at the ground like this is the worst possible thing that could be happening, and he knows that there’s something in him that’s furious with her, and something in him that’s sad about her, and something in him that doesn’t know what he feels.

The complication of it knots in his throat. “Why are you here, Jason?” she asks.

He looks down at his hands, and his mouth firms up. “I wanted you to know I lived,” he says.

“I knew that,” she tells him. “Batman,” she starts, and her mouth closes. Jason realizes she knows he was Robin. She has to know. His eyes flick up to look at her. “He came to see me,” he finally says, looking at the guards. They look downright bored by this.

Jason feels that same scowl that he didn’t recognize on his face, and she rubs her mouth. “You look just like Willis when you do that,” she says, suddenly.

The surprise is like being doused in cold water; he hasn’t thought about Willis in a long time, or what feels like a long time. His sperm donor was a piece of shit, and his egg donor is a piece of shit. The only one who loved him was Catherine.

And Bruce. And Dick. And Alfred.

He takes a big, deep breath. “I wanted you to know that you don’t get to define me,” he decides, finally. “I’m never coming back to see you,” he says, his voice sounding firmer than it feels coming out of him. “You don’t get to keep that piece of me. Any piece of me.”

Her lip wobbles. “Jason,” she starts.

“You were okay with watching me die,” he says, severely. “You don’t get to see me live.”

He spins the chair, and tells the guard that he’s done, and the guard wheels him back out to Dick. Dick doesn’t say anything as they go back to the car, and Jason sits there in silence for a long time as they start the drive back to the manor. “Dick,” Jason finally says, breaking the silence, when they’re about ten minutes from home.

“Hmm?” Dick replies. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” Jason says. “But it’s time for you to go home.”

There’s silence between them. “I told you-”

“No,” Jason interrupts. “Alfred said this wasn’t my fault, and maybe he’s right. But it wasn’t yours either. It especially wasn’t yours,” he says, “and I don’t care if you don’t believe me.”

“That’s not fair,” Dick starts, but Jason interrupts again.

“You’re miserable, and Bruce is miserable, and it makes me miserable. Go home, Dick,” Jason says, “because I’ll get better, and then I’ll come to you.”

There’s quiet. “I wasn’t a very good big brother,” Dick admits quietly. “If I had been better,” he starts.

“I still would have gone to find her,” Jason says severely, “because there’s nothing you could have been that wouldn’t have made me want my mother.”

They sit there with those words for a while. “Little Wing,” Dick starts. “I want to be here. For you.”

“You’re driving Bruce crazy, and it makes me crazy,” Jason says, “You need to go back to the Titans. Or something. I don’t know. You need to be out there.”

Dick turns the car into a side street, parks, and looks back at Jason, who is frowning at him with all the power he has. “You could take on Freeze with that glare and win, kiddo.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Jason agrees, “but I don’t think it matters, because I never will.”

Dick sucks air in through his teeth. “If I go back,” he says, “or wherever I do go. You know you can come and see me, right? I’ll be a better big brother, this time.”

Jason looks at Dick’s face; he has that earnest, handsome look to him. His eyes are so blue they almost look fake; no wonder Bruce took him in when he was eight. Facing Dick Grayson looking so earnest and so sad and so beautiful, only a psychopath wouldn’t want to help him.

Jason isn’t a psychopath, but he’s faced down worse demons than Grayson’s sad puppy eyes. Bruce has nothing on Jason’s backbone, no matter how many times the Joker tried to fracture it. “Go home before we all end up in a complicated murder-suicide, Dickie,” he says. “I have to fix this myself now.”

~~~~~

Jason is sitting on a park bench nearby when Dick shows up ten minutes later. He sits down, handing Jason a to-go soup container full of ramen. Jason takes it, and opens it, and takes the chopsticks that Dick hands him, too. He eats it in silence as Dick chokes down his pad thai. “This is the worst pad thai I’ve ever had in my life,” says Dick gracelessly, “and I’ve eaten pad thai in Norway.”

Okay, that isn’t fair. “What were you doing eating pad thai in Norway?” Jason asks.

“Hunting down a genetically modified liver,” Dick replies, “with the unhappiest man alive.”

“You were hunting down a genetically modified liver with B?”

“Even unhappier than B,” Dick says gently. “Cranky from start to finish. There wasn’t an hour of the day the man wasn’t angry. It was amazing. It was like someone gave a shrew one wish, and he wished to be an old Afghani special ops agent.”

Jason hums and sips his broth. “Is that where you were?”

“Yes,” Dick says. “They had - have - all our identities. I couldn’t come home. I still can’t come home. I have to go back.”

Jason rubs his mouth, and closes his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I couldn’t-”

“Dick,” he starts, “you could have.”

There’s silence between them, and it’s heavy, like the clouds that press in before a blizzard, or a Gotham fog. Jason gets it, he does. Dick had to go away. He had to do it to protect their family, and even, Jason would say, to protect Jason. But he could have - should have - told them. “You could have told me before you told Tim and Damian,” he says, staring at his soup. He doesn’t really want to eat it, now.

There is pain sitting between them, alongside the silence. Finally, Dick shakes his head. “I thought,” he starts, and stops. And starts again. “I feel like I disappoint you the most. You’re here living a great life, being normal, and-”

Jason needs him to stop. He tosses the soup on the snow; the snow melts. The noise and the ruckus makes Dick look up, and stop talking. None of them were raised to be good at feelings. Not Jason, not Dick. Dick is the best at it, but even so. “There were all of these things that I was supposed to say to you,” Jason says, “that I was holding in before you left. And I thought it was better left unsaid. I thought you were better without me.”

“You’re better without me,” Dick says as he pokes at his pad thai. “You’re doing great here. Alfred told me,” he adds.

“Alfred is just happy one of us stopped dressing in body armor and flinging ourselves off rooftops,” Jason snorts. “He’d be happy if I moved to Smallville with the Kents and took up pig farming.”

“Pigs are noble creatures.”

“Bruce is Jewish.”

“Still.” Dick sighs. “You’re at the best university in the country. You have friends. You have Kenny-”

“-not for long, I’m planning on brutally murdering Kenny when I get back to my dorm,” Jason interrupts.

“-yeah you’re not doing that,” Dick adds. “I sat at home,” he finally admits, “for hours. After I cleaned up some stupid mess that B left,” as usual, Jason thinks, “and I debated not telling you I was alive.”

Jason feels his old familiar rage in his stomach, and he grips his cane as tightly as a sword. “You promised,” he said. “When I was sixteen. That you would be a better big brother to me.”

Dick rubs his mouth. “I should never have promised you that. I couldn’t keep that promise,” Dick says, finally, and Jason feels a warmth in his stomach. An embarrassing, terrible snapping. He thinks it’s funny, for a second, that people talk about the pain in their chest when their hearts break, because it so clearly happens in the stomach.

“Please leave,” Jason says, finally, and he closes his eyes.

When he opens them, Dick is gone.

Chapter Text

It’s been almost a full month since Dick left, back to the Titans; Bruce’s irritation hasn’t entirely gone away, so Jason knows it’s not just about Dick, but at least he’s not in a sour mood in the house all the time. Things around the place settle; Babs comes over a lot to spend time with Jason, and he’s actually kind of flattered, after he gets over being confused.

It’s just.

She has the prettiest red hair. And the prettiest smile, and the softest eyes, when she wants to look soft, and she’s almost as fast as Dick and probably twice as smart. Jason loves having her come around, because she talks to him about books, and she lets him mess with her bike, and she trusts him to know to put everything back together that he takes apart. She even helps him down into the Batcave. He can’t walk, not yet, but he’s getting there. Stairs are still impossible, but Babs sets up a system of pulleys to get his chair down. Alfred is both unamused and unimpressed when he sees it, but doesn’t say anything. Bruce nearly loses his mind, and Babs calms him down. It’s great. It’s better than great.

It’s the first time since he lost control of his legs and his life that he feels normal.

And Alfred seems to understand that, too, so on weekends, after Bruce leaves for the night and he’s on the comm with Bruce, he lets Jason man Babs’ comm. Bruce knows; Bruce doesn’t like it, but he also doesn’t seem to fuss about it. “Weekends only,” he confirms, like when Jason was Robin. “And only Batgirl.”

“Weekends only, and only Batgirl,” Jason repeats, and Babs calls him Bluejay. At first, Jason thought it would be boring, but it’s actually a lot of fun. Babs doesn’t talk a lot, but she does ask his opinion, as a detective, and it makes Jason feel useful.

The best thing she does, though, is pick him up and take him to the library after his physical therapy on Tuesdays. Jason has physical therapy four times a week and lately it’s all been hydro, because it’s gotten sticky-hot. They collapse his wheelchair into the trunk of her dad’s station wagon, and then they spend three or four hours in the library until it closes and she drives him home for dinner.

On this particular Tuesday, Jason is muddling through his trig homework and Babs is sitting across the table from him with a huge stack of romance novels that she’s diligently applying barcodes to. It must be excruciatingly boring, because she’s halfway through her stack. “Why don’t you have a girlfriend?”

“Uh,” Jason starts, and he can feel his face get hot with embarrassment. “Because I go to an all-boys school,” he offers, “and none of Bruce’s parties feature teenagers?”

Babs snorts and makes a face. “Okay,” she tries. “Then why don’t you have a boyfriend?”

“Because I’m the weird kid Bruce Wayne took in from Crime Alley and I’m in a wheelchair,” Jason replies, muttering into his chest. “Also I’m five foot nothing, my hair is a mess, I have a scar that covers half my face, and also I have literally nothing in common with any of the jerks at school,” he adds. And pauses. “Also all of that is hard enough without adding dating a dude to the list of things.”

“But you like guys,” Babs asks, and Jason wants a hole to open up in the ground and swallow him whole.

He shrugs. “Yes,” he ventures. “And girls,” he adds, and a part of him, one that wants to look Babs in the eye and puff out of his chest and be tough and threatening, which is easily thought but harder done when he knows she’s tougher than nails herself. “Is that a problem? Bruce knows and he doesn’t care.”

She tips her head, and ruffles his hair. “No, it’s not a problem, Jaybird,” she says, and he wants to scream into his trig functions, because he’s too old for the hormonal issues that have started plaguing him whenever Babs touches him, but damn if he’s willing to ask her to stop hanging out with him. Jesus. He’s pathetic, pathetic enough that he’s hanging out with his brother’s ex, and wishing that maybe she didn’t see him like a little brother. “But you’re great. Maybe you should be dating, if that’s what you want to do.”

“Wheelchair,” he says.

“Shouldn’t stop you,” she replies.

“Five nothing,” he mutters.

“You’ll grow,” she laughs. “Also, I think you’re taller than five-nothing. You’ve grown a lot in the past year.” She pauses. “And anyone who is judging you by the size of your stature clearly doesn’t notice the size of your heart.”

Jason stammers. “Oh my god,” he yelps, “you’re so cheesy!”

She flicks her fingers against his forehead, and he bats at her hand, and she drops a kiss on the top of his head, and turns away before she can see the way his face must light up like a flare. He can practically feel the flames on his cheeks. “Ask someone out, Jaybird. It’ll be good for you.”

He snorts. “Maybe when I can walk again,” he mutters.

“Don’t spend all your time waiting for things like that,” she tells him as she starts loading romance novels onto her book truck. She picks one out and hands it to him, and he puts it in his bag. “That’s just an excuse.”

He hums as he considers what she says, and she pushes her book truck away. “Let me shelve these,” she says as she passes, “and then I’ll take you home.”

She eats at the manor that night, because she’s going to patrol after, and after dinner she and Bruce head to Bruce’s office muttering things about Arkham, and Jason rolls his chair over to Alfred’s side to take the dishes he washed and dry them. “You could go watch some television,” Alfred tells him.

“Nothing’s on,” he replies, “And the Knights are losing too much this season to make watching the games fun.” He thinks for a moment. “Can you help me with my essay on Twelfth Night?”

Alfred smiles. “I should like nothing more,” he replies.

Eventually, though, even that fades, and Jason goes to bed before Bruce and Babs leave for the night, so Babs pokes her head into his room. “Hey, Jaybird,” she says. “Alf told me you were having a great conversation about Twelfth Night.”

“Are you going?” he asks, and she nods; she’s mostly in her armor, except for the cape and the cowl. Jason has to keep looking at her face so he doesn’t turn red again. “I wanted to write about how Antonio and Sebastian are probably lovers.”

“Not a bad topic,” she says. “Do you want any help getting into bed?”

“No,” Jason replies. “Be careful tonight?”

“Always am,” she adds, and gives him a soft little bump with her fist before she’s gone.

Jason has confusing dreams that night; he and Babs are on a date, but then he’s thrown into the water at Gotham pier, and he floats until he’s rescued on a pirate ship by Dick, who puts him in his cabin and calls him cabin boy and runs his hands through his hair, tugging on the white curl until it turns black and smoothing his thumb over the scar on his face until it’s gone, and smiles at him. In his dream Dick turns into the sea and rocks him to safety, and then he turns back into Dick and holds him as they tumble in the water, and Babs kisses Jason on the mouth, and where did she come from?

He wakes up in a huff of sweat and stickiness, and he groans as he realizes he has to clean up. He grabs his chair and wheels himself to tug his sheets off his bed, changes into clean pajamas, and rolls to get new sheets from the linen closet in the hall. He’s closing the door when he turns and sees a shape, and he screams with surprise.

Bruce is standing in the hall. “Jesus Christ,” Jason says, gripping his chest. “What is wrong with you? You scared me.”

“Jay, what are you doing out of bed?” Bruce asks, but something is wrong, and Jason knows it. Bruce is back too early. He’s still in armor, in the house.

Jason isn’t sure what to say. I had a wet dream about my brother and his ex like a gross pervert seems inappropriate. “Um,” he starts, and holds up the sheets. He hopes that explains it.

Understanding lifts Bruce’s eyebrows, and he breathes out. “Do you want me to ask Alfred,” he starts.

“No,” Jason replies. “Why are you back so early?” he asks.

Bruce looks away from Jason, back down the hall. “Jason,” he starts.

“Did someone die?” he asks, feeling a chill in the base of his spine.

“No,” Bruce says. He looks worried, and it makes Jason even more scared. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

“You should tell me now,” he says, severely.

There’s silence. “The Joker broke out of Arkham,” he says, finally, and Jason knows he’s not going back to sleep. “I don’t know where he is, but-”

“But?”

Bruce looks unsteady, unsure. Jason’s heart feels like it’s going to pound right out of his chest with fear. “I wanted to check on you,” he admits.

Jason looks down the hall. “I’m okay,” he says, but his voice is shaking.

Bruce nods. “I know,” he admits, and Jason thinks, for a moment, that Bruce didn’t come check on him because he was worried Jason was scared. He came to check on him because Bruce was scared.

Jason takes a deep breath. “Dad,” he says, and Bruce leans down, his arms around Jason, and Jason holds him back. Bruce’s hand comes to the back of his head, and they hold each other, tight, for a long moment. “You need to go catch him,” Jason says.

Bruce nods, but doesn’t move. They stay there for a while, and finally Bruce kisses Jason on the top of his head. “Go back to bed,” he tells him softly. “I’ll be back in the morning.”

He is back in the morning, and Jason knows it, because he’s awake when he is. He didn’t sleep at all; instead he lay in his bed and stared at the window. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the crowbar, and every time he opened it he saw the digital display of his clock.

And the days drag on; Jason doesn’t sleep, and Bruce doesn’t sleep, and Alfred doesn’t sleep, so everyone at the manor is in a really bad mood; even Babs is in a bad mood.

Jason starts to stay in the ‘cave, even when he should be doing things like his homework. Bruce doesn’t like it, but it hardly matters, because Bruce is barely home, so it’s Alfred and Jason, and honestly, Jason spends a lot of his time curled up with the comms.

That’s where Jason is, when he catches the call on the scanner that there’s been a shooting, and a kidnapping, and he relays it to Bruce at the same time that he catches on the scanner that it’s Jim Gordon.

He doesn’t know what happens next. Time moves kind of funny; he’s screaming for Alfred, yelling at the top of his lungs, and Alfred is hurrying down the stairs. Jason thinks - thinks - that Alfred radios B, but it doesn’t matter because then the butler is ushering Jason up, back to the house, and they’re at the hospital before his brain catches up with his body.

They’re in the waiting room when that happens; the doctors are talking to Alfred, and Jason feels sick, and cold, and hungry all at once, as if all the grief and the shock and the stress can’t decide which is more important, so his body’s needs won out. “She’s in surgery,” Alfred tells Jason when he comes back. “I believe we won’t know anything for a few hours, yet.”

Jason is shaking a little, he realizes. “Should I call Dick?” he asks, looking up at Alfred.

“I think,” Alfred says, sitting next to Jason, “that would be wise.”

Jason takes his phone out of his pocket, and he holds it for a long minute, and then he dials Dick’s number. There’s no answer - Dick doesn’t usually pick up the phone at night, he’s usually working - and Jason balks for a minute before he leaves a message. “Hi, D,” he begins, “It’s Jay. Um. Babs is in the hospital. Gotham General. She was shot. Alf and I are here. Um. Call me back,” he finishes, and stares at the phone.

And then he folds over, takes a breath, and lets it out.

She isn’t fine.

She isn’t fine, but Jason is there with flowers, his head on the side of her bed when she wakes up, his chin on his hands. He thinks he hasn’t slept for four days now.

~~~~

It’s almost the end of winter when Jason’s roommates invite him to a party at one of their classmate’s off-campus house; Jason almost doesn’t go, but Alan, his other roommate, begs him because Elena Tran, the girl equivalent of a perfect day at the beach (Alan’s words) is going to be there, and she never goes to parties, and she loves to talk to Jason, so Alan can hang out with them.

“Man,” Jason says, “wouldn’t it be better if you went without me, so you could talk to her without her attention being on me?”

“I cannot talk to her without you there,” Alan replies, desperate, as they walk through Cambridge. “You have real people skills. I have no such thing,” he says. “She would absolutely never talk to me otherwise.”

“Okay, Mr. Darcy,” Jason says, rolling his eyes.

“Does that make you Bingley? You’re not nearly oblivious enough,” Kenny volunteers. “Maybe you’re Mr. Collins.”

“Fuck you,” Jason replies amicably. “If anyone, I’m Colonel FitzWilliam.”

“Side character with zero game?” Alan proposes, casually.

“Only man with a brain in that entire book,” Jason says, poking Alan carefully with his cane, and making Alan laugh.

When they get there, the party is already going, and there’s nothing particularly special about it. There’s music outside, and inside there are people both playing beer pong and also discussing the ramifications of late-stage consumerism as an end goal of fascist government control. “Ah, Haaaaarvaaahd,” Kenny drawls. “I’m going to go get a beer. You want one?”

“Yeah, get me one,” Alan asks, sticking close to Jason as Jason scours the room for a place to sit. There’s nowhere in sight, and after a few minutes, Elena finds them.

She really is a nice girl, Jason thinks, as she chats with him about her job in the library and her internship that she’s planning on taking in Gotham over the summer. “I mean,” she says, pulling her hair back over her ears, “You’re from Gotham, right?”

“I spent a week there in November once,” Alan volunteers, because he really is about as socially adept as a particularly stupid caterpillar.

Elena looks at him, puzzled. Jason looks over at him, incredulous. “A whole week? Jesus, man, seriously?”

“I was thirteen,” Alan says, with the obliviousness of someone who doesn’t realize that he’s being made fun of. “My dad got us lost in the East End, and we were going to get mugged, but this kid in short-shorts and a cape saved us; he beat up the mugger, handed my dad his wallet back, yelled at us to get a cab and go back to Kansas, and then, like, flew away. My mom thought it was street theater,” Alan says, and Jason squints. Alan does have that Kansas looks about him, even though Jason knows he’s from Oregon, but when he was Robin what did he know about anything? Anything that wasn’t Gotham, Metropolis, or New York was Kansas. He doesn’t remember the exact mugging, but then that doesn’t mean anything; Jason patrolled the East End with B, and that was back when he was starting his training slow with low-level crooks. Jesus. Alan takes the lack of Jason’s response to speak again. “The violence there is out of control.”

“My sociology professor wrote a paper on it,” Elena says now, and Jason finds himself getting very uncomfortable with this. “That the myth of Batman and Robin actually persuades and pushes a criminal element to Gotham that otherwise wouldn’t be there. That the worst of the crime - you know, the purported ‘rogues gallery’ that you read about - it all comes out of a desire for Batman’s attention. The more that Batman exists, the more violent and out there it becomes. She says it used to just be the mob.”

“I read a paper that suggested that the entire thing is a form of absurdist parody,” Alan says, emboldened now. Jason flicks his eyes from one to the other. “That Gotham’s violence is really a way for people who are criminally insane to continue to prove that there’s an audience for it. I mean, you’ve seen the twitters and the fanpages, right? They get more and more extreme because that’s what the audience demands. So, you know, like my mom thought: theater.”

Jason thinks that this would be a really good moment for the earth to open up and swallow him whole. Elena doesn’t seem to notice. “Theater of the absurd, maybe,” she hums. “Theater that kills people. I think that the real issue,” she starts, and Jason feels that sense of foreboding fill him, “is a particular lack of psychological care on a larger scale.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Alan agrees, “and the rampant poverty, the constant pressure from New York-” he continues, enthusiastic, and Jason has to excuse himself then, only he doesn’t excuse himself as much as he spots a single spot on the staircase where someone has just vacated to sit. Alan turns as he leaves. “Jay,” he says. “I mean, what do you think?”

“I think I need to sit a minute,” he replies. “Leg,” he adds, and Alan clearly looks like he wants to follow, but then Elena posits something else about Gotham and Jason nudges away, finally.

When he sits down, someone offers him a beer, and he takes it, looking up. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” the man, a built, handsome guy with a smile like the sun and hair so blonde as to be white, replies. “You have to wonder what kind of person thinks talking academic crime theory at a party is a blast.”

“Haven’t been to many Harvard parties, have you?” Jason says with a swig of his beer. He settles his cane over one knee.

The man laughs; it’s bright. Jason likes it. “Is it that obvious?”

“These assholes are all so used to being the smartest person in the room, they don’t know how to turn it off,” Jason says, as the man sits next to him. He offers his hand. “I’m Jason.”

“Andrew,” he answers, and shakes.

“So, Andrew,” Jason drawls, “are you a student at MIT, Tufts, or Boston College?”

“How do you know I’m not one of you?” Andrew asks, taking a drink of his own beer.

Jason laughs. “Well, maybe you are,” he says, “but then I have to wonder if I’ve been blind for the past three years.”

Andrew laughs again, Jason finds a pleasant warmth in his chest at the sound. “Smooth. Does that work?”

Jason pretends to be offended. “Excuse me, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Well, I’m flattered just the same,” Andrew says with a smile. “Do you know how to turn it off?”

“Being the smartest person in the room?” Jason shrugs a little. “My little brother is literally the smartest person I’ve ever met, so I’m definitely used to having to be more clever than smart.”

Andrew takes a drink of his beer. “Most people wouldn’t differentiate.”

“I’m not most people,” Jason says with a smile, and a laugh.

“Okay,” Andrew replies. “Are you used to being the most handsome person in the room?”

Jason feels that warmth of pleasure, of flirting with an attractive man, rumble through his chest now. “Now who’s smooth?” he asks with a smile.

Whatever Andrew is about to reply, Jason doesn’t hear it, because the music cuts to a manic, intense laugh, one that Jason knows too well, too familiarly. His heart responds first as the laugh pitches up, and the music starts, the singer’s voice too deep to be the owner of the laugh.

“Sorry, excuse me-” Jason says, gasping, as he pushes his way up the stairs, gripping his cane. His skull responds next, scrubbing away reasonable thought, the fear snarling his chest, the cold dizzying enough that his breathing comes faster.

He pushes his way to the bathroom, and closes the door, locks it, presses his face under the sink. Water runs over his curls, down his nose, drips into the sink as he closes his eyes and tries to focus. Water. Breath. Count. One. Two. Three.

Water.

Breath.

Count. One. Two. Three.

Water.

Breath.

Count.

The laugh pierces through the sound of his own breath, but this time it isn’t the music, and the song, and the ill-considered asshole musician who thought splicing the Joker’s laugh into his song would earn him a Grammy. This time the laugh is in his head, beating through his heartbeat, from the memory of that night.

He hears a knock at the door. “Jay,” he hears, and the voice is-

Jason pulls his head out of the sink and opens the door, and Dick is on the other side. “What the actual god-damned fuck,” he asks, and he looks over Dick’s shoulder to see a man in black with his arms crossed over his chest, and Andrew, looking slightly irritated. “Were you spying on me?” He slams his body against Dick’s, but holds him there, his heart still pounding.

The man in black laughs. “The fact that the first question you ask a spy that, kid,” he starts.

Dick holds a hand up. “Give me five minutes, M,” he asks, and the man in black - M - snorts.

Jason looks at Dick, and then at Andrew. “What is this?”

“I’m not spying on you. I asked M to keep an eye on you, and he, in turn, asked Apollo to help.” Dick replies.

“And what?” Jason snaps. “That isn’t spying?”

“Jason,” Dick says. “You’re having a panic attack.”

“I am not,” Jason lies, but the proof is that his hands are still around Dick’s waist, that his heart can’t slow down, that he feels like he can’t breathe. Dick’s arms are around his shoulders, then, one hand in his curls. “I am not.”

“Okay, Jaybird. You’re not,” Dick agrees, and Jason breathes hard. “Come home with me tonight.”

He doesn’t ask how. He doesn’t ask how Dick got there. Instead, he nods against Dick’s shoulder, peevish and afraid but satisfied that Dick understands that Jason is not having a panic attack, and not wanting to let go. He hears Dick say, “M, can you open a door for me?” and then there’s a buzzing, like the world is going white, for just a second, and they’re not in Cambridge anymore.

~~~~

Jason doesn’t know what time it is anymore. He knows that at some point he fell asleep, and he knows that at some point Alfred wheeled him out of Barbara’s hospital room, because visiting hours were over. He knows that he’s at home on the couch in the family room downstairs, which is just off the kitchen, when he wakes up fully. He remembers Alfred waking him a little, just enough for Jason to get up and get into the car, and then back into his chair, and then onto the couch.

So at least it’s been a few hours.

Jason gets in his chair and makes his way down to the ‘cave; he’s alone down there. Alfred is probably making dinner or something, or maybe he’s catching up on sleep, too. Jason pushes his chair through the din, towards the banks of computers, and picks up the headset for B’s comm.

He puts it on, and wonders, for a minute, if he can call B. Does B know? He has to know. Alfred must have called him. The police. Something. Someone.

He puts the headset on, and switches it on, and then the camera in B’s cowl. He can see B is running, and he’s a little disoriented for a minute. He is about to say something when suddenly there’s that laugh.

Jason’s gotten a hold of the wheelchair, he has. When he started using it, he used to tip back a lot, if he was moving fast, but at the end of the day it’s a portable, lightweight wheelchair, and Jason’s never been scared on it before.

But he’s scared now, desperately afraid, as he rolls back, and suddenly the entire chair tips backwards, and the headset is still on his head. The laugh is still echoing, and it goes again, high pitched and terrible, and Jason starts to pant with terror. There’s a lance of pure fear as the memory shocks him, the laugh, Sheila’s face, the clock, the crowbar. He can hear someone screaming, and he flings the headset away, and he can still hear someone screaming, and then someone is touching him.

Jason punches.

He may be out of practice, but he can still punch, and his punch lands against a hard shoulder. “Ow, shit, Jay, Jason, Little Wing, hey! Hey!”

Someone - Dick - is pulling him up off the ground. Jason turns, and grabs Dick, who is in armor that Jason has never seen, all dark with red accents, sleek, and he’s reaching around his shoulders and pulling himself up.

Dick tugs him up and holds him. “It’s okay,” he says, “you’re okay, you’re safe, I’m right here. You’re having a panic attack.”

Jason thinks he loses time, because he’s huffing, taking hard breaths until he’s not, until his heart stops racing. Dick sets him back in his wheelchair, when Jason finally calms down enough to wipe his face of snot and tears with his sleeve. “Dick,” he says, his voice thick. “Babs-”

“I know,” he replies. “I just came from the hospital,” he says, as he kneels down. “I came as soon as I got your message. What are you doing down here?”

What is he doing down here? “I wanted,” he starts, and stops. “I wanted to give B support,” he says, and then he thinks of that laugh, and he shudders. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to check on you,” Dick replies. There’s quiet between them, and Dick picks up the headset, and puts it down. “You know what, if you can wait a few minutes, I’ll shower, and change, and then take you up.”

It doesn’t occur to Jason until after they’re on the couch, Dick sprawled over as much space as possible, a bowl of popcorn between them, that Dick was probably going to go patrol. That Dick didn’t, because of Jason.

They’re still there when Bruce comes home later, when he comes back up in a pair of old sweats and a white shirt. He looks exhausted. “Jay,” he says, with a breath. “Dick,” he says, a moment later.

It’s around four in the morning. Dick is asleep, or at least he’s pretending to be, and Jason has been watching the Twilight Zone for the past three hours. “You’re home,” Jason says. “Are you okay?”

“The Joker is back in Arkham,” Bruce says, and comes over, and runs a hand through Jason’s curls. He leans down and presses a kiss against the top of Jason’s head, and Jason doesn’t pull away. “Are you okay?”

Jason nods a little. “Is Barbara going to be okay?”

Bruce holds a minute. “We’ll see,” he says. “I think you’ll need to help her a lot.”

Jason looks over at Dick, who still has his eyes closed, and he rubs his nose a little. “Can you help me upstairs?” Jason asks, quietly.

Bruce softens, and he nods. “Come on, chum.”

Bruce helps Jason into his chair, and then up the stairs, and to his room. Jason is quiet, and soft when he’s finally sitting in his bed, and Bruce sits on the edge of the bed. “Dad,” Jason says, breathing hard, and Bruce turns his head like a cat hearing a can of tuna opening. “Can you dismantle the wheelevator system? I don’t,” he starts, and stops. “I don’t think I can be on comms anymore.”

Bruce runs a hand through those curls, and he nods. “Sure thing,” he says, and he gets up. “I’m going to bed,” he says.

Jason nods, and he looks over at the digital clock display, and he’s about to push it away when his door opens again. Dick pops his head in. “I’m having some back stuff,” he mutters, and gets into the big armchair that’s in Jason’s room. “And my room doesn’t have a chair,” he adds, and he dangles his head back. He looks at the clock a second, at Jason, then stands and grabs a discarded T-shirt, tosses it over the clock, goes back to his place in the chair, and closes his eyes.

Jason stares for a minute, looks over at the covered clock, and takes a breath. Dick’s breathing evens out, and the sound lulls Jason to sleep.

~~~~

Dick’s apartment almost sparkles into focus, and then, after the mysterious portal in the fabric of reality closes, Jason holds onto him for another five minutes. Maybe ten. He isn’t counting. What he’s doing, instead of letting Dick go and literally doing anything else, is breathing. In. Out.

In.

Out.

To Dick’s credit, he doesn’t let him go, either; he just presses his face against Jason’s temple, just sits there and lets Jason catch himself. It takes what feels like a long time, but finally Jason’s fingers unlatch. “I should text Kenny and Alan,” he mutters, reaching for his phone.

“Mm?” Dick asks, as Jason fires a text off, and then limps over to sit on the couch. Dick’s apartment looks like the barest living space of a broke, homeless twelve year old, and Jason should know because he was once one of those. There’s random furniture that was clearly pulled up off the street, nests of old blankets, clothes everywhere.

Jason tugs a blanket over his head, and Dick comes over and sits half on top of him. “Fucking-” Jason exclaims, trying to push him off, but he can’t. Dick hums a little, pleased. “Can you go get me some water, you useless-”

“Excuse you,” Dick says, poking him on the arm, but then casually getting up and coming back with a red solo cup full of water. “Here.”

“I can’t tell which of us is the college student,” Jason mutters darkly, but he drinks his water. He feels really tired, like his whole body is drained. Panic attacks always do that to him. “Jesus, Dick.”

Dick sits back down on the couch. “You want my bed?” he asks. “I can ask M to send you back tomorrow.”

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow, Jason will deal with all the bullshit that Dick just dropped on him. Tomorrow, Jason will yell at him. “Did you bring my cane?” he asks, and Dick looks around. “Shit,” Jason mutters, rubbing his head on the back of the couch. Strictly speaking he doesn’t need his cane to get around all the time - he can get by on walls, limp slowly without it, but it hurts, and he doesn’t like it. “I’m taking your bed,” Jason says, ungraciously. “Where are we, anyway?”

“Bludhaven,” Dick says, helping Jason up, offering a hand. Jason waves it away. “I’m going on patrol in a little while anyway.”

Jason looks at him, baldly, and doesn’t want to ask him to stay. Dick brought him here because he had a panic attack over a stupid song that sampled the infamous Joker laugh track, and now he’s leaving?

Classic.

Dick just hums. “I’ll stick around for at least a few hours, Jaybird,” he says, as he nods Jason to his bedroom. The bed is a rumpled queen sized mattress on the floor, and Jason doesn’t care. He falls into it, kicking his boots off and finding the extra pillow.

Dick reaches over and points the digital display of the clock on the bedside away, and Jason presses his face into the pillow, ignoring that Dick is getting on the other side of the bed with him. He thought his crush on Dick Grayson (brother, brother, brother!! his brain screams) was long over.

It’s not. It turns out thinking he was dead and making him leave was the worst thing for it, because now Jason can’t stop thinking about him, and he’s right there, inches away from him, looking handsome and fresh and also a little tired.

“I want you to know,” Jason says, “I don’t forgive you.”

“I know.”

“And I’m extra mad at you.”

“I know.”

“And tomorrow I’m going to yell at you for spying on me.”

Dick moves and kisses him on the temple. “I know, Jay,” he says. “Get some sleep.”

And even though Jason wants to snarl and refuse, his eyes close, and he does.

Chapter Text

There’s a secret, and it’s making everyone irritable, and Jason is starting to think that Bruce and Alfred must have lost their minds. He doesn’t know exactly what is going on, but he knows that it must be bad.

It’s been a few weeks since Babs got shot, and she’s been getting used to her wheelchair, only it’s different. It’s different because the doctors have made it clear: she’s not going to walk again, not now, not ever. If Babs is heartbroken over it, Jason doesn’t know it, and Jason is with her a lot. Every day.

Which is probably why whatever this secret that makes Bruce look away, and makes Alfred harrumph around the house isn’t a huge thing. He wonders if it has to do with the fact that Jason keeps asking for a car. Maybe Bruce got him one, and Alfred doesn’t like it. He’s been asking for a while, and he’s even volunteered to take extra driving classes to pass his driver’s test, even though they all know that Jason can drive, even with adaptive features.

Still, he’s in the garage, changing the oil on a couple of the cars, trying to poke around and see if there's a hint of a new car or a new space for a new car, and he’s under Alfred’s car, a very sensible Volvo, when he hears the door open. “Hang on,” he calls out, as he uses his legs - slowly, and there’s some pain, but he can do it - to pull himself out from under the car.

There’s a boy standing in the door, his eyes round like saucers, staring at Jason. “Who are you?” Jason demands. “How did you get in here?” he yelps, reaching blindly. A tire iron slips into his hand, and Jason grips it like a weapon. The boy looks kind of familiar, actually.

“Oh,” the boy says. “Oh,” he holds his hands up like he’s warding Jason off, or maybe like he’s placating him. “I’m Tim?”

“Who?” Jason asks, still on his back. There’s a cold wash of fear over him, but he’s more annoyed than afraid.

“Tim?” he tries again.

“Yes, I’m not deaf, I heard your name.”

“Tim Drake?” he tries. “Uh,” he stammers. “I live next door.”

“Then why aren’t you at your house?” Jason yells, and he tries to think. Do they have neighbors? The houses out here are practically miles apart. “Did you get lost or something?”

Alfred comes around the corner. “Master Tim,” he breathes, and then looks down. “Is that my car?”

“I was just changing the oil,” Jason says, using the tire iron to point. “Who is that?”

“Tim!” Tim says.

“Okay Pikachu, we got your name,” Jason snaps.

Alfred looks from Tim to Jason, and takes a breath. “Oh, Master Jason. Clean up, and come into the kitchen. Come along, Master Tim.”

Jason stares as Tim follows Alfred, and he feels a burst of frustration as he gets himself into his chair and wipes his hand, then puts the tire iron in his lap and wheels himself to the kitchen.

Once he gets there, Tim is already at the kitchen table, his hands on the table, worrying a cloth napkin. Alfred sets down tea, and those tiny cucumber sandwiches that he makes when he’s particularly stressed because they remind him of home, and some scones. Jason looks from Tim to Alfred, and then back, and Alfred gently presses his hand on Jason’s shoulder. “Have some tea.”

“What...is going on?” Jason asks.

Tim looks unsure. “I wasn’t supposed to come up,” he mutters, “sorry, Alfred.”

“What is going on?” Jason asks, furious, his entire body shaking a little. Something is happening and he doesn’t know, and he feels it in the base of his stomach.

Alfred looks extremely uncomfortable, which means he must be in intense agony, because Alfred almost never looks quite so constipated. “Tim is...acting as support.”

Tim looks at Jason, his big blue eyes huge and unsure. Jason scowls. “What does that mean?” he asks, except he kind of knows what it means. He’s still a detective, he thinks; black hair, blue eyes, preteen boy. But until it’s confirmed, he could be wrong. His heart starts to move really fast.

Tim takes a deep breath, and looks at Alfred. “I’m Robin,” he mutters.

There’s a still, frozen moment. Jason stares at his hands. He thinks, for a minute, that his hands look kind of funny. He thinks, for a minute, that maye his hands are trembling, but then he thinks that maybe he’s just having a rage blackout.

Do people know when they’re having rage blackouts? Is that a thing?

Maybe it isn’t a thing.

Jason looks up at Alfred, and Alfred’s eyes are closed, his hand coming to his face. “What?” he asks, and he looks at Tim again. “What?”

“Robin,” Tim says, this time more secure, more certain. He clears his throat. “I’m Robin. I’ve been training for the past month,” he adds.

The silence comes back, and Jason thinks he hears a faint buzzing, but it’s not coming from outside. It’s coming from a space inside his head. He turns the wheelchair, grabs a scone, and goes exactly to the door before he’s suddenly zooming down the hall. “Bruce!” he yells, and he can hear a thump thump thump behind him as he careens down the hall to find Bruce racing down the stairs.

“Jason!” Bruce yells, and instead of stopping Jason smashes into Bruce, who grunts as he catches him. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“Did you get a new Robin?” he yells, angry. He doesn’t think he’s ever been this angry.

Tim runs up behind him, and he shakes his head, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to come up, I needed to ask you about the...trafficking...case you gave me.”

Jason feels like the top of his head is going to come off. “It’s okay,” Bruce says.

“It is not okay!” Jason snaps. “When were you going to tell me? When he died?”

“Jason!” Bruce snaps, and suddenly he’s being wheeled back. He turns to see Alfred pulling him away.

Jason feels a depth of betrayal he hasn’t felt before. “Alfred, stop!”

“Everyone is very angry,” Alfred says, as Jason tries to grip his wheels. “You need a moment.”

He wheels Jason into the library, and Jason is so offended he can’t speak. He just sits there, dumbfounded, until Alfred leaves.

He sits there another five minutes, until he’s taking his fury out on the science section, dumping textbooks and nonfiction all over the place, yelling into the ceiling. He thinks his fury can’t fit in this room, let alone in his body, which is why he wheels himself out a good half hour later. Tim’s left. Bruce is somewhere, Alfred is somewhere.

Jason can’t stay here.

He goes into the garage and opens the keybox, grabbing the keys to one of the cars - Jason picks a ferrari, because he’s being an ass - and dumps his wheelchair. It won’t fit. He takes some wrangling - he can use his legs, he can even drive stick, it’s just harder, it takes more concentration than before - and finally, finally, he leaves the manor.

~~~~

When Jason wakes up, Dick is there, snoozing; he’s wearing sweats and a ragged old t-shirt, soft with years of use. His hair is flopping over his face.

Jason just lays there, feeling more paralyzed than he has in years. It takes him a minute to remember why he came back with Dick; the laugh track, the panic attack, the terror. His body doesn’t feel quite like it’s recovered from the shock of it yet. He still feels tired.

Jason looks down at Dick’s hands; strongest grip in the world, Jason thinks. He has these long, long fingers, and there’s some scarring around his knuckles, little pale half-moons of skin that are a slightly different color from the rest of him.

He pokes and prods at his emotions a little, as he looks at Dick, who is sleeping without a care in the world. Who asked some meta to spy on him, who got some meta to flirt with him. Why did he do that? There’s a reason in there somewhere, and Jason wants to know what it is.

But at the same time, maybe he doesn’t want to know. Maybe knowing would hurt more. How long have people been spying on him? The entire time that he thought Dick was dead?

Probably.

An insidious, smart little voice in his head, one that was a detective, once upon a time, says that he knows why. Jason ignores it.

Jason finally gets up, setting both feet on the ground, and walking slowly to the bathroom. He doesn’t need his cane here, but it means he moves slowly, each step intentional and careful. He takes a piss, washes his face, and thanks god it’s Sunday.

“Hey,” he hears, and turns to see Dick coming over. “What are your plans?”

Dick looks sleepy and rumpled and cozy, and Jason wants to slam a pillow over his face. “I’ll have to get back to Cambridge at some point today,” he mutters. “There’s probably a train.”

Dick rubs the back of his head. “If I had been smarter, I would have set up a safehouse in Boston,” he admits.

“I don’t want you in my city,” Jason mutters, sullen and a little cold.

“Tough nuggets,” Dick says, reaching a hand out and bumping Jason’s jaw. Jason shakes his head. Dick smiles. “Come on, I’ll order breakfast.”

The breakfast place makes excellent bacon egg and cheese croissant sandwiches, and by the time it arrives Jason is sitting on Dick’s couch, enjoying the sunlight streaming in through the window. It’s only eleven, early in the grand scheme of things, and it feels oddly rare to be seeing Dick in daylight. Or maybe it just feels oddly to see Dick at all. Jason drinks his coffee as Dick rifles through the bag and finds his sandwich, and Jason can’t keep quiet anymore. “Why did you have me followed?”

Dick leans his head against his hand. “Oh, come on. You know why.”

“I have a reason to not see you,” he grumbles.

“I didn’t say you didn’t,” Dick says. “But I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

There’s quiet, then. Jason eats some of his sandwich. “I don’t want your meta friends to keep an eye on me.”

“Are you going to let me see you, then?” Dick asks.

Jason feels his jaw work, a little, as he tries to figure out what to reply. “You can call me,” he says, “and I’ll answer the phone.”

“Which is more than Tim or Damian do,” Dick jokes, easy. “I didn’t know you were still having-”

“I’m not having panic attacks,” Jason snaps.

“....scare...episodes…?” Dick ventures. “I didn’t know you still responded to that noise.”

Jason takes a minute. “I was okay, for a long time,” he admits. He considers if he’ll say the next words. That he was okay, that he could eat Jokerized Fries at Batburger or listen to edgy music that used that stupid laugh track. Or watch one of the weird biopics that high-end artsy people try to make about Batman and ended up being about the Joker. But then Dick died, and it felt like the world toppled out from under Jason, it felt like everything was on shifting pillars of jelly. He couldn’t find his footing anymore.

It was like all the trauma, all the fear, the terror, the nightmares, it was like all of that was just sitting there, behind the shield of Dick Grayson, but the second he was gone, it could all spill out. His mouth tightens a little. He can’t tell Dick that. He can’t tell Dick that he would fall asleep, after his funeral, and dream of falling crowbars and explosions. If he does, Dick will blame himself again.

He doesn’t know why suddenly that matters. Dick shouldn’t get an out. Except that Jason looks at him, looks at how he’s eating his breakfast and humming some stupid song, and he thinks about Dick, last night, his eyes soft and concerned, and he just thinks that he can’t do that to him.

“I didn’t know you were living in Bludhaven again. Doing things like patrol. I thought you were still playing spy,” Jason mutters. “No one tells me anything.”

“Oh,” Dick says, rubbing his chest a little. “Yeah, things ended, and I came back here,” he says, and shakes his head to clear it. “You’re avoiding the topic.”

“That’s rich, coming from the king of avoidance,” Jason says, but he knows that Dick is right, and he wonders if he actually owes him an explanation. This family is good at making him be the only one who can talk about his stupid feelings. Dick would rather chew glass, Tim is half computer, and Jason is pretty sure that Damian only has feelings related to murder, honor, and Dick Grayson.

Jason can’t blame him on the last front, except god, he hopes that he doesn’t have to fight Damian for Dick’s attention. Damian uses knives.

Jason breathes in. “I don’t know why I had a...scare episode last night.”

Dick looks unimpressed, and he opens his mouth, and then closes it, and he comes closer. “You want a hug, Jaybird?”

Jason desperately wants a hug. “I have a lab in the morning,” he says.

“I don’t see what that has to do with hugging me,” Dick replies, giving him those sad blue eyes.

Jason takes a breath, and leans in for that hug, and Dick’s arms come around him. It’s warm, and caring, and wonderful all at once. “I think I have a spare cane in my closet somewhere.”

“Leslie’s going to yell at me, it’s not like the cane I had wasn’t made for my specifications or anything,” Jason grumbles, even though he’s not moving away from Dick.

Dick hums. “Well, she can yell at me,” he offers, kindly. “Anyway I know that when you say ‘specifications’ you mean it’s loaded with mace in case you need to defend yourself.”

“You’re just lucky I didn’t let Alfred give me one with a shotgun mod,” he says.

Dick doesn’t reply right away. “You could get some batarangs, you know.”

“I know.”

“It wouldn’t be a problem.”

“I know.” Jason says. “But they don’t appreciate weapons in the dorms, and I’m safe.”

Dick rubs the top of his head, mussing his curls up even more. He feels good, in a way that makes Jason itch in his chest. Love is a beast, he thinks, a sharp-toothed, serrated clawed monster, easily designed for burrowing into his body and building a home, and refusing to come out. It whispers Dick’s name right against the secret spaces of Jason’s heart. It built his home in his heart a long time ago.

Dick should know better.

The problem is this: Jason doesn’t go home right away. Instead he digs through Dick’s closet and finds an old cane, one that Dick probably uses for undercover work or something, and tries it on for size. It’s not exactly the right height, but it’ll do until he can get his replacement. He makes Dick take him out, because they might be in one of the most dangerous cities on the east coast, but Jason likes to to walk around a little, stretch his leg.

He also likes to watch how impatient Dick is getting, how he’s tapping with all that restless, needy energy, even though he’s not impatient out of malice or irritation, but that sheer desire to not stop moving. Jason suspects that Dick is like a perpetual motion device, and that if he does stop moving, he’ll stop moving.

That joke was funnier before he thought Dick actually had stopped moving.

“I need to stop,” he says, after about an hour, because his leg is starting to ache, very badly, and his shoulder is beginning to grumble, too. They’re close enough to an okay coffee shop with squishy chairs and squishier sofas, and Dick buys them both a coffee. Jason stretches his leg out with a grimace as Dick pays and brings them back.

He really doesn’t want coffee, but he sips at it anyway, his mouth pressing into a fine line. “It’s not that bad,” Dick says.

“The coffee? It’s fine,” Jason mutters. He knows that he’s been at the start of this conversation a bunch of times, and he knows he has to have it. They’ve been at the start of this conversation, and he knows because he’s the only one in this stupid family who actually processes his feelings, that if they don’t have it, he’ll stay mad. He takes his cane and prods Dick’s knee. “I went to your funeral.”

Dick looks up, sharply. “Really?” he asks, and it’s not really, you went to my funeral, because Dick knew that, Jason’s told him that already. It’s really, you’re doing this now?

“Shut up. I’m talking now,” he says. “I went to your funeral, and I gave your eulogy, and Damian and I sat together and he told me that he didn’t think you would do something so stupid as to die. And Tim sat on my other side, and he looked like the whole world was on fire.”

The look on Dick’s face is the kind that would crack open the heart of grown men. Jason presses on. “And B? He sat there as I held their hands and he just stared at me like I was an alien. Like I had shown up and grown a brand-new head, right next to my old one. He stared at me and stared at me and Babs came. I had to be in a wheelchair, because I was in so much pain.” It’s not a usual occurrence. Jason hates the wheelchair; they still keep one for him at the manor, and there’s a folding one in the closet at his dorm, because sometimes his hip really does need a break. He overdoes it. But he resists, stubborn. He didn’t resist that day. Alfred suggested it, and Jason even let Tim push the damned thing.

Dick knows what that means. “Jay,” he starts, and Jason prods him again with the tip of his cane. Easy, this time. No pain. Just to make him stop.

Jason isn’t done. “Babs and I got really drunk. She cried, and so did I, and we did it because we missed you, and B, he just. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t tell us. Why didn’t he let us know? We all proved we could keep a secret.”

“I begged him to let me tell you. Jason, please, you have to believe me.”

Jason prods him again. “I believe you,” he says, and he does. “This is classic Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne from start to finish. The man practically lives and breathes this kind of crap, and we all know it.” He pauses. “I’m not telling you this because I want you to be hurt. I’m telling you this so you understand that I can’t do it again. I can’t eulogize you again. I can’t hold our brothers hands and know that it could be one of them next. You all live these dangerous lives,” he says, “and maybe I want to be a doctor because I can’t be that anymore, but you. You’re the first. You’re the best. You’re my brother, and sometimes I can’t think of you that way because I think of you and everything is complicated in my head,” he says, and immediately regrets it, but it’s too late now. Dick’s head sparks up a little, his mouth opens just a hair, and Jason continues. “And I’m not angry with you anymore. I just. Every day I wake up and I check the news to see if my family is dead, and every day I remember that when I thought you were, a part of me went with you.”

Dick is quiet, his eyes darting from side to side, like he’s thinking. He is. For all that people say Tim is the world’s second best detective, Jason knows the truth: it’s Dick. It’s always been Dick. “How can I make this better,” he asks.

The easy answer is: stop.

The easy answer is: find a job that doesn’t send you careening to your death every night.

But the easy answer is the wrong one. There is nothing that would kill Dick Grayson faster than seeing something could be done and not do it. There is nothing that would make him shrivel up more quickly.

So.

The right answer. “I don’t know yet,” Jason offers, honestly. “There are still a lot of things that I don’t know how to say to you.”

Dick thinks about it. “You know when you figure it out, you can come and tell me, right?”

Jason doesn’t have to wonder if that’s true. He knows it is. He pokes at Dick a little, again, with his cane. “I know where you live.”

“What a fool I am.”

~~~~

He doesn’t know where he’s going until he’s halfway there; his phone started ringing and he turned it off when he was about ten miles from the manor. If Bruce bitches, he’ll point out it was safer to not answer.

He accelerates and takes advantage of the radar disruptors that Bruce puts in all his cars, and he whoops in something that sounds like joy but is more bitter than he would want to admit, if was cornered and asked.

When he gets off the freeway and then winds his way through Bludhaven, he feels the sour bite of a bad idea tugging at his stomach. By the time he gets to Dick’s building, he realizes he can’t remember if Dick has an elevator.

By the time he’s calling Dick, his blood feels like it’s sludged up, turned into something icy and sharp. “Jaybird,” Dick says, his voice thick with sleep. “Is something wrong?”

“I’m downstairs,” Jason replies, as he holds his phone.

“Downstairs?” Dick asks, confused. “Like. In the ‘cave?”

He takes a breath. “No,” he mutters. “On Finch Street.”

There’s a pause, and then there’s the sound of Dick fumbling. “Okay,” he says. “I’m coming, hang on, oh, crud,” he mutters, and there is the sound of the phone hitting the floor, and Jason flinches. “Hang on, hang on!” Dick yelps, and then he hangs up, and five minutes later, Jason sees Dick in a truly terrifying polka-dot shirt and a pair of very ugly plaid pajama pants heading his way.

Dick drops his head into the window. “You know it’s my day off, right?”

“I didn’t bring my wheelchair,” Jason says, and he thinks everything is tearing inside of his chest and he can’t really explain why. Not because of the wheelchair. Dick looks mussed and sleepy and still perfect, and Jason can’t even argue with himself right now about it, because he’s so upset.

Dick shrugs. “Okay, Jesus, this car is going to get taken apart in this neighborhood, but hang on,” he says, and then comes around to open Jason’s door. “Can I pick you up?”

Jason thinks that he probably could manage with just Dick’s arms around his waist, but the sudden thought of Dick carrying him makes him flush a little, and he nods, wordless. Dick picks him up like he’s a princess, like he weighs nothing at all.

Jason feels heat up, as if his face is going up in flames. He closes the door to the car, clicks the lock, and closes his eyes. Dick carries him up the stairs, and manages not to trip over the absurd amount of crap on his floor before he sets him down on the couch, and then Dick sits down next to him. “That shirt is really ugly,” Jason says.

“Is that it? It’s really ugly? No quip? No where did you get that, desperate-incels-r-us?” Dick says, teasing. “Something must really be wrong.”

Jason doesn’t want to say it. He doesn’t want to say it but the words pour out of him anyway, as if tugged by a fishing line. “Did you know there’s a new Robin?”

Dick inhales sharply. Jason knows what that means. “You do!” he accuses.

“I do,” Dick admits. “His name is Tim. He hasn’t started yet,” he says, leaning on his knees.

Jason feels his face getting hot, and there's pins and needles under his skin, just under his nose. He has to take in a hard, sharp breath. “No one told me,” he says, gasping. He hates this. He thinks he’s about to cry, and it’s stupid. He isn’t Robin anymore, but Bruce killed Robin because Jason was bad, because he was careless, because he trusted the wrong person.

He huffs, trying to catch his breath, and he shakes his head. No one told him. “You made it clear,” Dick tries, slowly, “that you didn’t want to be involved with all of that. We didn’t think-”

“Just because I don’t want to listen in doesn’t mean I want to find out about a new Robin while I’m working on a car and the kid rolls in, cheerful that he stole my cape and mask!” Jason yells, and just then he realizes what he’s said, and who he’s said it to. He doesn’t even need to see Dick’s face, but he does, that incline of his head, the way that he’s looking at Jason.

Jason immediately feels a stab of guilt. “Oh.”

“Oh,” Dick replies, although he doesn’t sound angry. “It’s part of growing out of Robin, is finding the new kid who conned B into letting him into this bad business.” He presses his hand into Jason’s curls, slowly, and very, carefully, like he’s touching something delicate, some porcelain that might shatter.

Jason wonders if Dick felt this betrayed. “Can I stay here?” he asks, finally.

“For how long?” Dick asks, suspicious.

Forever, Jason thinks. Until he graduates and leaves for college. Until he feels the world that’s shifting under his feet sturdy up. “I don’t know,” he says, finally.

“Bruce doesn’t know you’re here, does he?”

“Well there’s probably a tracker on the car,” Jason says, which, as if Bruce has an alert, Dick’s phone rings with the Jaws theme song. Dick snorts. “See?” Jason says.

Dick reaches. “Yo, B,” he says, brightly, although now there’s a sharp brittle quality to his voice. They’ve made up - they made up a while ago, back when Jason kicked Dick out of the manor - but even now, months later, there is still a delicateness to their interactions. “Yes,” Dick says after a minute. “Yes, he’s here. He’s fine.”

Dick stands, and Jason reaches for his hand, and grips it tight, holds it firmly. Don’t leave, he wants to say. “Listen, just send-” there’s a pause, and Dick looks down at Jason and rolls his eyes, clearly at Bruce. “-yeah, okay. B, I live in Bludhaven, and he grew up in Crime Alley. It’s going to be fine. Let him stew here. Or I could send him to New York to stay with-” and Dick stops speaking, grinning brightly as Jason can hear Bruce practically screeching no into the phone. “Okay,” Dick says. “He’ll be fine with me. I won’t even patrol tonight.”

Jason’s hand softens a little, and then tightens just a little more. Okay. He’s okay. They’re okay. Jason is okay, and Dick is going to help him. “B, tell Alfie to bring some of his clothes, and his wheelchair, and I’ll handle the rest.”

There’s silence, and Dick’s brittle tone vanishes. “Yes, of course,” he says. “Bye.”

He sets the phone down on a pile of papers on the coffee table, and he sighs, and then leans back, and rubs the back of his neck. “He told me to take care of you.”

“Do you think I’m stupid because I left?”

“Well, when I found out about you I almost threw a chair at B’s head, so you’re doing loads better than I was,” Dick says affably, and opens one eye. Jason pouts just a little, and Dick laughs. “You’re not stupid. It would be better if B were a little more open about this kind of thing.” He goes quiet. “I should have told you.”

Jason takes a moment, and it softens something between them, like all the air around them contracts, and expands, and goes hazy. He closes his eyes, and leans over, and Dick’s arm comes around him. “We all have secrets,” Jason thinks, his heart hammering in furious beats, dripping and draining into his stomach. He thinks of Babs, and her red hair, and it feels light and airy but different than this.

“There are some secrets we shouldn’t have kept,” he says, gently, and then he dips his head. “You’ll give him a try, though, right?”

“Tim?” Jason says, the name feeling funny in his mouth, because he almost wants to say the pretender.

Dick nods, carefully. Jason can feel it, in the way his chest moves. “He really admires you, you know. He kept asking if he could meet you,” he adds, a moment later.

Jason doesn’t want to. He just presses his face against Dick’s shoulder, and he closes his eyes tighter. Dick’s arm comes around his shoulders. “Maybe,” he tries, at first. “I mean,” he starts, and breathes out. “Not right away.”

Dick’s arm squeezes. “Okay, Bluejay.”

The nickname makes something blossom bright in Jason’s chest, like flowers have taken root in the cells of his lungs. It balances somewhere between pain and pleasure. “Bluejay?” he asks.

“Well,” he says, “Robin was my family nickname. So I figure you need a new one,” Dick says casually.

“Okay,” Jason mutters.

“I’ll only call you that when it’s you, and me,” Dick mutters, and Jason can feel Dick’s face against his curls, and he holds on tight, like he might float away if he lets his grip get any more slack. Jason wants to mutter okay, again, but Dick speaks before he can. “You can stay here as long as you want,” he adds.

Jason nods. “Okay.”

~~~~

The train is late; that’s hardly surprising. Bludhaven’s station is a shitty spot with a shittier track, and if there’s a delay it’s always right there. Dick is sitting in one of the banged up chairs; the station looks like someone took a beautiful art deco building behind a shed and kicked the crap out of it. Beautiful, but swollen and tender and ugly, too.

Jason hates it.

“You don’t have to stay,” Jason mutters, watching Dick tap his fingers against the battered plastic.

“Don’t bully me into leaving you here,” Dick says, stretching his legs.

Jason snorts. “Hardly my intention,” he says, and Dick starts tapping his toes, and Jason hits him against his shoe with his cane. “Stop,” he says. “What’s got you so riled up?”

Dick looks up. “Do you want lunch for the train? I’ll go grab you something,” he says, and he gets up, and Jason is perplexed.

Dick comes back five minutes later with a small brown bag, and he hands it to Jason. Jason peers in; there’s a sandwich and a bag of chips, and a bottle of water. “Thanks,” Jason says carefully, but a little puzzled. Dick looks like he’s on the edge of something.

The train board flips, and Jason’s train shows as arriving on platform which means he has about five minutes before it actually gets to the platform, which is just about enough time for Jason to get to the platform without his leg taking vengeance for overdoing it later. He starts heading over, and Dick follows, and Dick gives him a hug before he goes through the turnstile. “You can always come see me. Or call me,” he says, and Jason nods.

He walks through the turnstile, then, careful. “Bluejay!” Dick calls out, and Jason turns. Dick reaches over the turnstile - someone glares at him and the good people of Bludhaven might only give him a second. Jason stares at his hand, and Dick reaches, opens his hand, closes his hand. Reaches more intentionally. Jason reaches over, and Dick tugs him so Jason is on one side, and Dick is on the other, and he presses their foreheads together. “If it were up to me,” Dick says, “we wouldn’t be apart again,” he says.

The announcement for Jason’s train comes on, and Jason looks up, alarmed. Someone pushes into Dick and snarls get out of the way, jackass, and Jason almost shakes his head. “Bluejay,” he says. He’s only called Jason that a handful of times since the first time, and it feels more intimate than a kiss.

“Robin,” Jason tries, and Dick takes a ragged breath in. “You have to let me go,” he says.

Dick’s hand lets go. “I’m never going to let you go, Little Wing,” Dick says.His eyes are big, and blue, and Jason sighs. “I’m never going to let you go,” he repeats, earnestly, desperately. “Say you understand it.”

“Say it again,” Jason says.

Dick swallows. “I’m never going to let you go.”

Jason turns to look at the train, then turns to look at Dick. “I love you,” he says, and turns back, to get on the train before it leaves.

The world shifts under Jason’s feet, again, and he can’t tell if it’s the train, or the words that hang in the air, spoken and impossible to take back.

Chapter Text

The single thing that can be guaranteed in this family, it’s this: the communication is worse than the lack of it.

Jason is at the pool; heated, glorious, and the place where he can truly function. His body still longs for the kind of exercise he used to do as a teenager, but there is no way that he can manage even a quarter of what he used to manage. Swimming was a good middle ground, and even now he’s at the pool almost as much as the swim team.

In fact, being at the pool is so routine and so blessedly quiet that when he comes up from a lap and finds Damian sitting cross-legged at the edge, in his school uniform, his arms crossed over his chest, he starts and splashes back into the water. “Jesus Christ,” he pants, snarling over the edge as he tugs himself up and out of the water. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“You are avoiding us,” Damian says. He looks like he swallowed a sour plum, pit and all.

Jason peers at him. “What,” he manages.

“I didn’t know you were deaf,” Damian spits, and then signs you’re avoiding us and sorry for your hearing loss in the most aggressive ASL that Jason has ever seen in his entire life. Deathstroke would be proud.

Jason finally manages to scoff, and hoists himself out of the pool, sits on the edge, and rubs his face. “It’s rich to hear that I’m avoiding you, considering this is the first time you’ve been in Boston, since, I don’t know. Ever?”

Damian does not look bothered by this assessment. Instead he just snorts. “You stopped calling about Richard’s return.”

“That was almost six months ago,” Jason says, his mouth a narrow line. He’s coming up on spring finals, so naturally this family finds the time to make him miserable now. “You also could have called.”

Damian’s mouth purses again. “This is more efficient,” he says, which usually means he lost track of his phone but doesn’t want to admit it.

Jason indicates to the towel on a nearby pool chair, and Damian graciously gets it and hands it to him, and Jason begins toweling himself off. They sit in silence for a minute, because Jason knows that Damian is itching to tell him exactly why he’s here and Jason is both in no rush and taking a kind of perverse pleasure from Damian stare, stone-faced and impatient both.

Finally Jason finishes toweling off, lugs himself to his feet, takes stock of his balance (good today) and carefully makes his way to the same chair where his cane is waiting. The whole while Damian watches him with that sharp-eyed green gaze. The Gotham public likes to imagine that Damian is a spitting image of Bruce, but Jason knows better: Talia’s features are frank on his face, and his entire bearing basically screams Al Ghul. He takes his cane and immediately feels the relief, more psychosomatic than anything. “Okay, squirt,” he says, balanced on both feet now. “What really brought you here?”

“Richard was shot in the head.”

~~~~

Tim is easily the smartest and stupidest person Jason has ever met in his entire goddamned life; it’s actually kind of impressive. But he takes to Robin with a detective’s attitude, even when he’s still ninety percent idiot.

It turns out that they go to the same school, which makes sense, because Tim is rich Gotham boy in a way that probably only Bruce understands. Jason never noticed him because he’s a full two grades down from him and Jason has too much on his plate to keep up with the eighth-graders, who go to the middle school and not the high school anyway.

But after the great “running away from home” tantrum, which was mollified by a week at Dick’s and also watching from the window as Bruce’s car was taken apart, screw and plate alike, until it was basically just a suspension on bricks, Jason made a decision: he couldn’t be upset by whatever bullshit the family concocted to keep busy, he couldn’t be upset by a world that he chose to leave. It took too much work. Besides, Dick was right. At some point, there would have always been another Robin.

But that doesn’t mean that the new Robin can sit next to him at lunch, easing his own tray down on the table as Jason looks over at him in surprise, meatloaf sandwich raised halfway to his mouth. “Uh,” he says, intelligently.

Tim’s face pinkens a bit. Jason usually sits alone, because despite being the son of the richest man in the state, the other boys don’t particularly get along with him. He’s friendly enough but there’s always an element of doesn’t belong that clings to Jason. “Can I sit here?” Tim asks, into his pasta lunch.

“You already are,” Jason points out, but he doesn’t go any further, he doesn’t bitch or complain or tell him to get lost. Instead he takes a bite of his meatloaf sandwich, his second favorite of the lunches that Alfred makes him, and chews, thoughtfully.

Tim pushes noodles around on his plate. Jason thinks this is the worst lunch he’s ever had and that probably includes the one time that Jervis Tetch pretty much kidnapped him and made him play tea. At least Tetch kept it entertaining.

They eat in silence for a while, before Jason can’t take it anymore. “Don’t you have friends?” he asks, and Tim has the wherewithal to look abashed at this. “I mean, come on.”

“Are you worried about your popularity?” Tim asks, benignly, and looks around. “Because I think that ship sailed.”

That actually makes Jason reel back a little; he didn’t expect Tim to have teeth. Every time they’ve encountered each other, Tim’s been quiet, a little nervous. Shy. Unable to string more than a few words together when it came to talking to Jason, but perfectly capable of speaking to Bruce.

It actually makes him smile. “You’re not worried about yours, hanging out with Bruce Wayne’s crippled kid?”

Tim shrugs a little. “I play video games and have an extensive Magic: The Gathering collection. That ship also sailed,” he says, and spears a piece of rotini. “Besides, um. They all have pretty terrible opinions.”

Jason finishes his sandwich and opens his lunch bag to pull out a pair of Alfred’s cookies. Tim eyes them like a hawk. “What opinions are those?”

“That Superman is better than Wonder Woman,” Tim says, matter of factly.

Jason’s eyes narrow a little. “Did someone tell you to say that?” he asks, because he’s not stupid.

Tim looks up, his eyes wide, and Jason wonders if that innocent act has worked for anyone in the world, ever. Maybe it has worked for Tim before. His parents seem kind of checked out. He keeps his eyes wide a moment, and the moment gets longer, before Tim coughs. “Yeah, okay. Dick told me,” he admits.

Jason opens his mouth, and then closes it, but he takes one of his precious cookies and passes it Tim’s way. “If you want to be friends, Timbo, you just have to say so.” This may be unfair, considering the Tantrum (™) but frankly, just seeing this side of Tim made Jason like him more.

Besides, maybe Jason’s the one who was unfair.

~~~~

“This family is trash,” Jason snarls over the bluetooth in the rental car that he paid through the nose for, because he’s still under 25 and this not owning a car business is absolutely bullshit.

Damian is wisely silent in the passenger seat. They’re almost to Bludhaven now, snarled in Gotham traffic, and Jason has been trying to yell at Bruce, Tim, or Barbara for the better part of the five hour drive. He would yell at Duke, but that kid has been in the family for all of ten minutes and he barely knows Jason, so he’ll reserve that for the next time someone inevitably fucks up and doesn’t tell him about it until two days after the fact.

Bruce’s reply is soft. “I didn’t want you to-”

“If the next word out of your mouth is worry, I’m going to send Hal Jordan a copy of the video I made of you snoring while Damian and I filled your mouth with cheetos,” Jason snaps. It is a very lame threat but he’s worked up. Damian looks a little alarmed that their sacred brotherhood bonding session would be used for this, but he’s not stupid so he says nothing.

Bruce sighs. “-rush to Bludhaven,” he finishes.

Jason turns off onto the exit to the Bludhaven hospital. “Well too damned bad!” he yells. He hasn’t seen Dick since the party and the day after, and he’s barely spoken to him since then, either. Dick seemed perfectly at ease with that, and Jason felt enraged that he would be. You don’t just hear shit like I love you and then not call the other person back.

The truth is that Jason’s replayed that moment. Maybe Dick didn’t realize it was romantic. Maybe he thought, rightfully, like a sane human being, that Jason was being brotherly. A family I love you, one that belonged to the side of the heart with Bruce and Alfred, the side of his heart that he had kept for Catherine.

And maybe that’s why he didn’t call? Or maybe he was just respecting the fact that Jason had asked him to leave him alone. It’s not like he was discreet about that, either.

Ultimately, Jason decides, it probably was his fault.

“The answer is four,” Damian says, suddenly.

Jason looks over at him. “What?”

“I know math can be difficult, but two plus two is four,” Damian says, again. “You looked as though you were in the midst of deep thinking, and I recognize that it can be challenging for you.”

“Shithead. Not now,” he snarls, although he recognizes that Damian being mean like that is him being worried, too. Why is he the only one in this garbage can of a family who can understand compassion?

(No, that’s not right. Dick is compassionate. Dick is compassionate out his ears.)

“I’m still on the phone,” Bruce says, “Jason, don’t call your brother a shithead.”

“I do not need you to defend me!” Damian retorts, and Jason considers crashing the car into a brick wall as a way out of this conversation.

Instead, Jason taps the red end call button on the car screen, leaving Bruce to ponder if two of his sons are now dead, and tosses Damian the phone. “Turn it off, we’re almost there and I don’t have the emotional capacity to deal with Bruce calling back in a snit,” he says.

He turns into the hospital, has a two minute bicker with Damian about using the handicap parking (Damian does not like to take up space, because he does not consider Jason disabled, merely “slow”) and finally they get out of the car. Jason’s leg is screaming; his entire body feels like shit. His stomach rumbles.

Damian eyes him a moment, and for that moment, he wonders if Damian is really looking at him and considering that Jason might be in more pain than he’s letting on. Damian’s mouth firms into a fine line, and Jason knows that this, this is Damian being as compassionate as possible.

They make their way through the hospital. Dick is no longer in the ICU; he’s in a room upstairs, and Jason and Damian find Bruce standing in the doorway of his room. “You shouldn’t have come. I told you not to tell him.”

Jason wants to break his father’s face. Damian does not look contrite. “He will be the doctor in this family, you need to get used to him attending to things when we are injured,” Damian says, sharply.

Jason looks at Bruce, whose face is shutting down bit by bit. “I’m going to go get a coffee,” he says, uncharacteristically, and Jason wants to prod at that, wants to examine that particular reaction.

Dick is awake; he looks like hell. Damian looks at Jason, and he grabs Jason’s hand. “You need to know something else,” he says. “His head injury,” he starts, and that’s when Dick makes a noise.

They both turn, and Dick is looking at them. His eyes are hazy, but the blue of it is less intense than before. “Not again,” he groans.

Jason tugs away from Damian, and leans on his cane, heavily. “Dick-” he starts.

Dick looks away.

Jason’s heart thumps in a way he’s pretty sure it hasn’t since the day that Sheila looked away from him, a kid, dying on the floor. Dick has never looked away from him, not like that. Even when Jason thought he didn’t like him. Never.

Jason takes another step forward, but he knows. Damian doesn’t come in the room. “Dick,” he says, again. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner.”

Dick doesn’t look at him. Jason turns to look at Damian, whose mouth is a moue of displeasure, and Damian shakes his head.

Head injury. Trauma. This fucking family.

Dick doesn’t remember him.

~~~~~

“If Father had loved you, he would have killed the clown,” Damian announces on day three of his arrival to Gotham, stern as a little soldier, and about as likable as a rat with the bubonic plague.

Jason is finally - finally - starting to walk more than just in the house. The first time that he had managed it, Dick was playing keep away with Jason’s first edition of Dracula that Bruce got him for his seventeeth birthday. He had had enough, got up, and toppled his way to Dick, fists flying. Ace had gone absolutely batshit, howling to bring the house down. Jason toppled onto Dick, Dick had fallen onto Ace’s bed, Ace had howled his way onto Jason’s back, and that’s how Alfred and Bruce found them. I walked Jason had managed, because this idiot stole my book! But Dick had been crying then, and not because he was upset over Jason’s inability to deal with teasing.

Since then, it had been new distances every day; new physio, new water therapy, new everything, but Jason still took his sweet time. Almost a year passed; the world almost ended, probably, at least once, but it was funny how being a civilian seemed to speed things up. He would come home from school and Tim would be running to the ‘cave, yelling something about new enhanced superfear gas, make sure you take your gas mask if you go out or Alfred would be letting Jason know that Bruce was going to space over the weekend. Or Jason would be preparing for exams and be the only creature in the manor sleeping more than three hours a night, because the Riddler had decided he didn’t have enough attention and invented some kind of nightmare killer maze under the Narrows.

But while his family came back bloodied and patched and traumatized, fighting aliens and god knows what else, Jason-

-went to school. It was downright idyllic, right up until Talia showed up with a kid and unloaded him on Bruce. After Dick, Tim, and Jason had finished staring at Damian, a straight backed, sour faced kid with zero sense of humor and less sense of restraint (he did, in fact, attempt to kill Tim upon their first meeting) Bruce pretty much skedaddled off into what Jason presumed was a fraught night of the soul. One would imagine that a man who adopted three children, all traumatized beyond real salvation, wouldn’t be so intimidated by a fourth one.

Well, it turns out the fourth one is a sociopath so maybe Bruce had the right of it. “Excuse me?” Jason says, even though, no, he heard him.

“Mother says that of all my brothers, you are the least concern, because if Father had loved you, then he would have killed the clown for maiming you,” Damian elaborates.

Jason waits for a moment; he waits for the rage to come.

Oddly enough, it doesn’t.

Instead he leans forward. “Damian,” he says, and Damian stiffens a bit. “Do you know what a sociopath is?”

Damian scowls. “Yes,” he says.

“Don’t be a sociopath,” Jason replies, using his cane to start back down the hall and away from this conversation. He’s at the door. “And stop trying to kill Tim, for the love of god, the kid has enough to deal with, he has terrible acne.”

It’s satisfying, it is, but later he calls Dick; Dick, who is still living in Bludhaven and probably is getting ready for his own patrol. “What’s up?” Dick asks as he answers. He’s eating something.

“How’s your rotator cuff?” Jason asks by way of greeting.

Dick makes a little noise, like a hum. “Acting up, still. You’re not calling to find out about my rotator cuff though.”

“Maybe I, unlike everyone else we know, care if you plunge to your death because you’re in so much pain your grip falters,” Jason replies, leaning back into his bed.

“I would never. Grip like steel. Strongest grip in the multiverse. Don’t be offensive,” Dick says cheerily. “How’s the new kid?”

Jason does not reply at first. He is quiet, stonily so. “That good, huh?” Dick asks.

“Do you think-” Jason starts, and stops. This is stupid. “He’s a brat.”

“Do I think he’s a brat?” Dick asks. “Don’t know. I imagine he had a hard time of it. I mean, can you imagine Ra’s as your grandfather? The first time I met him as Robin I thought I was going to die from how he looked at me. I had to hide in Bruce’s cape, practically shaking in my pixie boots.”

Jason finds this entire line of speech preposterous. “Do you think that Bruce should have killed the Joker? For what he did to me?”

To his credit, Dick doesn’t go silent, or thoughtful. “I think Bruce needs to live by a code that makes everything more difficult,” he replies, instantly. “Killing the Joker would be easy. But it would kill B, too,” he adds.

“But what’s the line?” Jason asks, softly, almost whispering it into the phone. “Where does a man decide that his family should be worth it?”

“I think that’s not a fair way to look at it,” Dick replies. “I don’t think that B thinks that his family is more special than any other.”

I think you’re more special than any other Jason thinks, mutinously, but he keeps that to himself. Already he knows that whatever he feels for Dick is not particularly brotherly. “Do you think that?”

Dick actually is, quiet, then. “Did Damian say that? That Bruce didn’t love you because the Joker is still alive?”

“He’s not subtle,” Jason says sullenly.

“He’s an injured child,” Dick tells Jason, gently. “One who is in a brand new world, with brand new people, and who was raised by assassins.”

“I know that!” Jason retorts. “I told him not to be a sociopath! I didn’t yell or anything.”

Dick laughs a little. “No,” he says, “I don’t think you would have.” There’s a rustle. “Birdie,” he says, a moment later. “You’re the most special, okay?”

“Would you have killed the Joker?” Jason asks, suddenly. He immediately wants to take the words back. He immediately regrets asking, because now, now he needs to know.

Dick’s voice is soft. “If he took you away? If he killed you? I would have burned the world down.”

~~~~~

Jason is at a bar, in a lower middle class part of Bludhaven. He’s dyed his white streak black; he’s put in dark contacts. He added a bunch of fake facial hair for good measure. He’s still got his cane, but it’s the beat up one that he had to take when he was visiting Dick, not his usual one. He looks nothing like himself.

Jason is, on the best of days, recognizable. He’s been on the covers of magazines, he hosts a gala every year for the Martha Wayne Foundation. His twitter has a blue checkmark, even though he barely uses it. He shows up on listicles about rich people, even though he really does try and keep a low profile. Unlike his brothers, who are also famous but generally are photographed less, Jason’s contribution to the family was to soak up the media spotlight, to distract from the others, who keep a lower public profile. It’s not exactly a job he likes, but since he left the vigilante life behind, it became a real service. If the question “where is Tim Drake-Wayne” popped up at the Met Gala (attended twice, once with an actress who was actually a lesbian but wasn’t ready to come out yet, once with an art student from Harvard who tracked him down and begged him for a week) well, there was Jason, smiling, hands in his pockets, famous white curl styled just right. Firmly C-list celebrity - famous for no reason but his family, and generally able to keep a relatively low profile, but still recognizable.

So in order to do this, he had to rely on the skills he remembered from when he was fourteen, plus getting help from Damian. Damian had seemed relatively unbothered by this request, which means either he knew what Jason was doing and approved, or he figured that Jason needed a night out. Either way.

KGBeast is sitting on the other side of the bar, swilling a drink and looking like the very picture of Russian displeasure. Why he didn’t book it out of town, Jason doesn’t know, and frankly, he doesn’t care.

The rage sitting in Jason’s gut is swirling with discomfort, and fear. He feels like he could throw up, but also like if he did it would come out as venom or acid or both. Both would be handy, if it meant that he could throw up on KGBeast.

Was this what it felt like when he was a kid? Jason doesn’t remember the ache in his gut, he doesn’t remember the terror.

But then, when he was a kid, he didn’t have a gun, loaded, in his coat, either. When he was a kid, he wasn’t on a mission to kill anyone.

Finding KGBeast was surprisingly the easy part; he didn’t even need help to do it. He just went down into the ‘Cave, used his old credentials on the computer, did about two hours of research, and then went back up and had tea with Alfred. He was worried he would have to ask Tim or Babs, but no.

His hands, blessedly, aren’t shaking now. He might feel like he’s about to come apart, but years of physical therapy combined with a life as a teen do-gooder, and all the manual skills he’s picked up to practice steady hands for his eventual life as a surgeon have made him more than capable of keeping his hands still, even in the face of something terrible.

KGBeast drinks his beer. Makes a grunting noise, and the bartender pushes him what is probably vodka but god only knows, because the glass looks like it hasn’t been cleaned since the Eisenhower administration. Jason nurses his tonic water.

Dick’s eyes, blue and beautiful and absolutely cold, remain in Jason’s memory. The way he looked at him: like a stranger. The way that, days later, even though time was burning through Jason’s finals and he was getting panicked calls from his dean, all he could do was watch helplessly as Dick walked through the Manor without a speck of recognition of home.

If he took you away, I would have burned the world down sits as heavy as the fear in Jason’s gut. Dick is still alive, but he’s not there, and Jason thinks-

-Jason thinks he’ll never come back.

Everything is lost. The grief is so real that all it feels like is a monster trying to scrabble its way up Jason’s throat. He’s had a pounding headache for days, and even his leg, whose pain is usually demanding and all-encompassing, has taken a background part in the cacophony of misery.

Jason didn’t even have him, and Jason lost him.

So.

So he watches as KGBeast finishes his drink, passes the bartender a bill, and ambles his way to the door. He waits the requisite minutes before he leaves his own bill and starts behind him. The other man is moving slowly, thank god, so when Jason is sure that they’re not seen, when he’s sure that they’re alone, he takes the gun from the inside of his coat.

This shouldn’t be so easy, a small, tiny, insistent voice in his head says. Something’s wrong, it adds.

He raises the gun.

He’s shot a gun before. Bruce makes them all learn, even though they don’t use them, and Jason knows he has good aim. Jason thinks of Alfred, who loves them all but who he suspects has a very special place in his heart for Dick. He thinks of Dick, who is memoryless, a bird without wings.

His hand doesn’t tremble even though Jason feels like his whole body is about to riot. He could kill him. It would be easy. KGBeast isn’t even paying attention. Jason was just the cripple in the bar, and now he’s just the cripple on the street.

He could kill him. He could. He could kill him and it would be over, Dick would be avenged. Jason feels that grief mix with the rage, and he wants to, he wants to so badly. He could just pull the damned trigger. He’s supposed to want the opposite of this. He wants to be a doctor!

He holds the gun another moment. Aims. This is all so fast but so slow. Less than a second, and his entire world is churning in his stomach. Sheila’s face and Damian saying if father loved you and everyone who didn’t love him enough, but Dick, but Dick saying I would burn the world down.

The world can fuck it.

He imagines the man in front of him crumbling to the ground.

Fuck.

He drops the gun.

The clatter draws KGBeast’s attention, and Jason thinks, well, at least his death will be quick, when the sound of the cape fills his senses, the rush of air that’s nostalgic and familiar and foreign all at once. He loses track of himself, unsure what’s happening, except that suddenly he’s on a rooftop and Batman is there, his arms around Jason, holding him tightly like he might have just realized that he almost lost another son.

There is a moment of shock, before Jason screams, and he keeps screaming, and Bruce keeps holding him.

~~~~

“So. Harvard,” Dick says, as Jason sits in the middle of a pile of papers in Dick’s apartment. While all of the actual forms are filled out online, Jason printed out a lot of the information so that he could go through it and make his pros and cons lists for his college decisions. He had been accepted to Harvard and Brown, waitlisted at Yale, and then had a handful of safety schools to choose from.

“I can go to Stanford,” Jason says with a sly little grin, pushing the printed packet over for Dick to peruse.

Dick doesn’t even pick it up. “West coast? And what, if something happens you have to call Oliver Queen? I don’t think so,” Dick scoffs.

“Roy is a good guy!” Jason laughs.

Dick snorts. “Bruce would disown you,” he says easily, although they both know it’s not true. “Besides, you’d leave Tim here to fend for himself? With Damian?”

“I swear you all need me too much. What would you do without me?” Jason asks, picking up the forms for Brown. “Brown is closer than Harvard.”

“Providence is a nothing town,” Dick replies. “I can’t believe you were waitlisted at Columbia.” He pokes at the forms for Brown, and he’s quiet a moment. “We’ll be lost without our king,” he says, cheerfully.

Jason looks over. “You’ll all be fine. I bet you won’t even take my calls anymore.”

Dick rubs his mouth. “Only because we want you to succeed,” he says, and then presses a kiss to the top of Jason’s head. “Guess we’re going to Cambridge.”

“We?” Jason asks, his heart thumping. But his heart is stupid, and Dick laughs. “Since when is me going to college a ‘we’ thing?”

“Maybe I’ll finish up some cases and come and stay with you a while,” Dick offers.

Jason picks up his cane and gently hits Dick on the ankle. He wants to say yes. He wants to tell him to do it. He wants to, and he knows what needs to come out of his mouth next. “Mind your own damned business,” he says, “If you come to Cambridge we both know that within three months the entire student body will have to carry gas masks with them to class.”

And bless Dick, because he laughs, and doesn’t catch the tremor in Jason’s voice, the one that says that all he wants is Dick Grayson.

~~~~

The trip back to Gotham is exhausting; Jason feels wrung out by the time they get back to the manor, even though he didn’t drive, even though he’s just a passenger.

When they get to the ‘cave, Batman clicks the locks, and he looks over at Jason. Jason looks back, his eyebrows up a little. Finally, Bruce takes down the cowl.

“Would you have let me kill him?” Jason asks, finally.

Bruce looks at Jason a long time. “You and Dick have always had something special,” he says, “ever since you got hurt.”

That isn’t an answer, and they both know it. “I wanted to,” Jason says, finally. He puts his hands over his stomach and he presses his head against the dashboard, and stays bent that way for a long minute. “I saw his face, and I wanted to. I saw the back of his head and I wanted to. He hurt Dick. He took Dick away. I wanted to. I wanted to.”

Bruce’s hand is on his back, then. Jason doesn’t move away. He feels like he did when he woke up from the explosion, from the rush of black, as if he can’t move his legs anymore. He opens his mouth and no sound comes out. “Jason,” Bruce says, finally. “There is a difference between wanting and doing.”

Jason looks up at Bruce, and he knows that’s the truth. “Did you want to kill the Joker?” he asks, finally.

“Every day,” Bruce replies. “I wasn’t there to stop you, Jason.”

He wasn’t there to stop Jason, because he knew; whatever Jason was, he wouldn’t have been capable of killing him. Whoever he is, he’s not that. All the grief and all the rage and all the misery combined, and he was blind, but only for a minute. Only for that minute.

He feels his face get hot, but he doesn’t cry. Instead he moves, and lets Bruce hold him for a long, long time.

~~~~

Med school applications are hell; Jason is in hell, which is a typical Thursday afternoon. Kenny is sitting near the door and Jason is sitting on the floor, his cane near him. “Okay, but are you actually applying to Gotham U or is that a joke?”

“The medical school is named for my grandfather, man, I have to apply, or my great-aunt Agatha will show up in the night and murder me,” Jason replies, checking off the list of application paperwork for John Hopkins. His computer is open nearby; applications are due in a week, but Jason is doing what he always does: wasting printer toner to look at everything on paper.

“We’re going to kill a forest if you keep this up, man,” Kenny says dryly, and Jason barely looks over as Kenny winds his way through piles of papers.

In the months since Ric - Jesus - started driving a goddamned taxi and living his own life, Jason hasn’t spoken to him. Why should he? That isn’t Dick Grayson, and maybe it’s a sign. Move on, Jason. Jason is good at that; he’s good at moving on. He’s good at getting to the next thing. He’s the only one in this family who is - everyone else seems caught in a cycle of their own making, reliving the same thing over and over. Jason, Jason is the only one moving forward.

“Food’s here,” Kenny says, and Jason waves his hand, like, sure. Kenny opens the door, and makes a little noise, and that’s when Jason looks up.

It’s Kenny’s ex, who is holding a bag of food and a posy of flowers. Kenny starts making bird noises and screaming about you bitch, which makes Jason laugh as the door closes.

“You have a great laugh, you know,” someone says from just above him, and Jason screeches like a banshee and smacks Dick - Ric? - with his cane.

Ric oofs, hard. “What the actual goddamned fuck-” Jason snaps, trying to scramble to his feet. His leg gives out with the speed, and Ric catches him. “Get your hands off me-!” Jason starts.

“Bluejay,” Ric starts, and Jason is about to yell that he doesn’t get to call him that, when he realizes that he called him that.

He looks at him, again. His hair’s grown back. He looks tired, but not vacant, and not angry. Ric always looked so angry; like the world was out to get him. “What?”

“Bluejay,” Dick says, softly, and reaches to pull him in. “I’m sorry,” he adds.

Jason’s breath catches. “Dick?” he says, quietly. Dick catches him with a kiss to the mouth. Jason’s entire face is aflame, then and he gapes like a fish looking for food. “Dick?” he says again, his voice wobbling.

“Are you looking at Columbia?” he asks, and Jason breathes in, sharp. “Because it would be convenient. And no gas masks.”

Jason will figure out what happened later; right now he just grips Dick around the shoulders, lets him hold him up. “You’re back.”

“I told you. I’ll never let you go,” Dick says, right against Jason’s temple, as if he had been there all along.