Archive of Our Own

Jason Todd was loved best dead.

Dead he was a saint. A martyr. Nothing was more sacred in the Church of Batman than martyrdom.

Jason remembered learning about saints. He remembered field trips with Gotham Academy to the art museum. He remembered paintings of Saint Sebastian pierced beautifully with arrows. He remembered hours of Sunday School at the Catholic church he had sometimes attended with his mother; hours of free child care, hours spent away from his father. There were only three things needed to become a saint.

First one had to live a life of service. Jason had started off on the wrong foot, but what was religion without a little forgiveness. What was Robin except being reborn, except service. Endlessly. Service to Batman;

“Hey B look on the bright side I still think you’re smarter than Riddler,”

“Just keep your eyes open Boss, we're almost back to the cave. You’ll be right as rain in no time,”

“No, it’s just a scratch. It doesn’t even hurt, honest. You should see the other guy,”

Service to Gotham; It’s going to be alright, I’ll be right back with your mother -- It’s going to be alright, I promise you’ll -- we’ll get him -- they won’t hurt you again -- it’s going to be alright -- it’s going to be alright -- it’s --

Just breathe deep and wash the red from your hands. It’s holy, it’s a sign of good work. The split in your knuckles, the ache. Just look away, don’t watch the needle, it was only stitches, it was only pain. Just pain. Just pain. Just healing. That was the name of the game. Hope was the faith of being Robin. Hope and hope and hope and hope. Without end. That was the service of Robin, that was his good work.

Second; one had to perform a miracle. The miracle had been easy. The miracle was the Batmobile parked in Crime Alley ripe for the taking. The miracle was Jason weighing the risks and taking a chance on a new coat, on safety bought with sheer gall. The miracle was Batman, on the anniversary of his parent’s deaths, throwing his head back and laughing.

Third; one has to be dead. This was easier still.

“What hurts more-”

The crowbar-

The bomb. The ticking. 10. 9. 8-

The sound, the heat, the smoke in his lungs choking-

Bruce had canonized him before his body was cold in the ground. Partitioners had come to pray at his altar for years. The patron saint of reckless boys, and warning stories. The martyr of good soldiers.

Well, it was all undone now.

He had crawled his way out of his grave raw and wrong. He was not dead. The red in his mouth as he lay dying had not been communion. His death was not holy, his suffering had not been sacred. He was no Saint Sebastian, pierced beautifully by arrows. He was a child beaten bloody and grotesque drowning in gore. No one had been saved by it. Nothing was stopped by it. Pointless. That’s what it was. Pointless.

When he gasped out of the Lazarus Pit desperate to get his teeth around the throat of the world he had wondered if there wasn’t something to the original sin after all. To the idea that people are born ruined.

Likewise his miracle had been undone a thousand times over. Pain gifted in place of joy. Bruce’s love unwound and unwound and unwound back to its source and yanked free.

His new life of service was nothing Batman wanted.

Nothing Dick Grayson wanted either. Jason had slunk from the rubble of his last confrontation with Bruce and the Joker to take up roost in Crime Alley.

Now they’re fighting again like they always do. It’s a more even match than it ever was when they sparred back when Jason was Robin. They are both bloodied with it. Jason’s helmet cracked through the right lens, splitting his vision. Grayson’s always had a temper, not that you would know the way people talk about him.

“We loved you Jason,” Dick spits at him like a curse, like a condemnation. We loved you and you failed us. “Stop doing this to Bruce,” Dick says, like he is a child throwing a fit. Like everything he does is a ploy for Bruce’s attention. Like he’s the Joker.

“Stop doing what, Dick?” Jason says because he’s never been able to stop himself before it hurt.

“Stop killing. Stop with this tantrum,” Dick sneers. “You think Bruce didn’t love you?” Dick asks. Didn’t love you. Didn’t love you. Past tense. “He loved you more than anything, Jason. Losing you destroyed him,”

He’s heard that a thousand times now. Bruce loved you, they’d say, your death broke him. Like that was a measure of love. Like that’s what Jason wanted. Like he wanted to come back to Gotham to find the father he had loved gone, worse. Like he wanted every happy memory he had with his dad ruined by the poison of his death. Like he wanted every laugh and smile he had slaved over coaxing out of Bruce to be made worthless, painful. Losing you destroyed him, people said to him and all they meant was he was worse for having known you, for having loved you.

Well, that made two of them.

“Go back to New York Dickface,” Jason says, tasting blood “Daddy hasn’t needed your help for a long time and he doesn’t need it now,”

Dick rears back like Jason slapped him. He bares his teeth at Jason. Dick’s always been so protective of his family, and Jason has so rarely found himself in the inner circle.

“It doesn’t have to be like this, Jason,” Dick says, pitying, leaving the door cracked open so a sliver of light can shine through without really making anything brighter.

If Jason comes to heel they could be a family again.

Jason says nothing and Dick turns and jumps from the roof. Jason stands for a long minute after he’s gone, watching him swing away, poking at the inside of his torn cheek with his tongue.

He thinks for a moment of an afternoon spent in the cave, of Dick teaching him the trapeze. He imagines the smell of chalk and sweat and Dick’s hands clamped tight and safe around his wrists, not letting him fall.

Then, immediately, he feels sick with rage. It’s so sudden it’s almost dizzying. He rips the helmet from his head, doubles over and screams a white cloud into the cold air. He reaches up and yanks at his hair just for the grounding pain of it and screams again. Then he breathes. In. Hold. Out. Just that for minutes and minutes, until he can uncurl and tip his head up to keep the stinging in his eyes from spilling over.

He picks up his helmet and goes home.

His apartment is cold when he arrives. He closes the window, resets the security and leaves his jacket on. His windows are old and warped and don’t keep the heat. He goes to his bedroom and grabs one of his duffle bags from the floor. He drags it to the bathroom and digs out the first aid kit inside. He flips on the bathroom lights and is immediately stabbed with pain as the light meets his eyes. Dick sure knows how to hit. He slaps the lights back off and wanders eyes closed to flip on the hall light before going back to the bathroom, leaving the door half open. In that dim light he treats the rest of his wounds.

The motions are all familiar, from long use, from a good teacher. He remembers learning stitches at Alfred’s side. The meditative quality of it. The easy motions and easy expected pain. Washing his hands clean of blood and going to work.

It reminded him of services at St Mary’s. It all did. The vaulted ceiling of the cave like a cathedral. My fault, my fault, my most grievous fault. They were all sinners bleeding again and again for Gotham. Worshipping her and whipping themselves. Every night they went out and they acted out their guilt on the guilty, broke their backs with the weight of their crosses. Every failure, every tragedy made theirs. My fault, my fault. And then they went out the next night and did it again. My most grievous fault. Every night thinking to themselves that this could change anything. That they could make anything better like this. Praying. Blessed Gotham, pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our death. Amen.

When Jason was a child his mother took him to services. For the free childcare. For the hour away from Willis. For the hope that faith could give her something else to hold onto besides the drugs. Jason remembers singing. The sound of the organ swelling to fill the chapel, humming in his chest. His small hand in his mother’s cold one, secure, the hymn book propped open on the pew in front of them so he could read the words. His mother hadn’t needed it. Her voice was crystal clear and soft. Like a stream in the mountains. It flowed over him, rose above the other voices singing in the church and he listened and felt proud. So proud that that was his mom, that she could sing like that. He held her hand tight and felt like the warmth in his chest would never end.

The bathroom tile is cold beneath him. The only sounds are distant shouting and sparse traffic. Jason closes his eyes and leans his throbbing head back against the cool lip of the tub. It soothes him for a moment as he gathers the strength to stand. He sighs at the blood on the floor and leaves it. He only has the strength to strip his boots before he falls into bed asleep.

He dreams of the amber light through the windows in the manor library. He wakes up and vomits.

He swigs mouthwash and spits out bile and goes to the kitchen. He eats two slices of burnt plain toast and drinks a cup of black coffee even though it’s too bitter because he never bought sugar. He strips out of the rest of his gear, aching from having slept in his armor. He takes a shower and shampoos the grime out of his hair only to find he never unpacked the conditioner from his duffle bag or maybe never bought it. He sighs and rests his tender head against the tiled wall.

He gets out and dries off, checks the stitches on his calf. His stubble is getting long. He thinks about shaving, but can’t muster the energy and leaves it.

He spends the rest of the day working; tracking evidence and cleaning his gear and hacking the police. Then that night he puts on his gear and straps on his guns and goes out and picks a fight, picks a dozen fights. Carves a path of blood through Gotham that ends with Batman in front of him, fists clenched.

When Jason had first arrived in the manor when he was a kid he had been two parts angry and one part scared. He hadn’t trusted Bruce and he hadn’t trusted Alfred and he hadn’t trusted the floor not to crack open under him and send him falling to his death. He wanted more than anything for the other shoe to drop, convinced that the dread was worse than pain. He was snappish and defensive. He acted out. Left messes, broke plates and waited and waited for anything to happen to him. He had just wanted someone to hit him. Just to get it over with.

It was in these early days that he had discovered the secret library. It wasn’t really secret, just an alcove apart from the larger library where the sun shown amber through the window across the patterned rug. There was a light blue couch and a lamp with a stained glass shade and a shorter dark wood shelf packed with books. Jason knew instantly that this alcove was different from the rest of the library, separate, precious. The books were old, their spines worn in, bound in leather, the inscriptions gilded in gold. Most were in a language Jason didn’t recognize. When he pulled one from the shelf and flipped it open, as delicate as he could be, he found it was handwritten, the text going from right to left. He turned to the inside cover and found the only words he recognized. Martha Kane, then below it in fresher ink, Martha Wayne in looping cursive. He shouldn’t be here, he shouldn’t look at this, he shouldn’t touch it.

Then Bruce had called him from behind and he had startled so hard he dropped the book. Fear had strangled him instantly, so intense that he was dizzy with it, blind and deaf with it. He could only look at the book, face down on the rug, pages crumpled in. He had wanted to be hit. He had wanted-but not like this. He had wanted to break a plate and get punished just so he could finally understand. Not this. Not this. Bruce could kill him for this. For ruining his mother’s precious things.

His breaths had wheezed out of him, his hands trembling so hard he couldn’t move. He wanted to pick up the book and put it back like that could make it better, but he was frozen, petrified at the idea of touching it again. Bruce stepped forward, into his peripheral vision and his head felt so far away, like cotton.

But Bruce didn’t hit him. He crouched down and picked up the book with gentle fingers and smoothed the pages out and pressed it closed. He didn’t hit him. He turned the book and kissed it’s spine reverently and returned it to the shelf. He didn’t hit him. He stayed on his knees and said “It’s alright Jaylad. No harm done,” and reached out slowly until his hand was on Jason’s shoulder and rubbed up and down his arm like Jason’s mother used to do to warm him up. He didn’t hit him. He pulled another book from the shelf and said “It’s okay, son. Why don’t we go sit down and I’ll read to you,” He didn’t hit him. He guided him gently to sit on the couch and cracked open the book and said “Within the beautiful city of Prague, fierce hatreds have raged for a thousand years,”

Bruce hits him now. He swings and Jason blocks and feels the rattle all the way up his arms and into his chest. He feels the shot of pain in his forearm and is viciously pleased. He feels lit up and vibrant with rage.

“Jason, stop this,” Bruce grits “You know killing is wrong,”

Here’s the thing though; he doesn’t. He thinks of Bruce curled around his mother’s books. Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world. He remembers. But he remembers too the Catholic services he attended with his mother. He remembers the priest's voice filling the chapel. Anyone who injures their neighbor is to be injured in the same manner: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.

“No,” Jason says and swings for Bruce again “It’s justice,”

“Jason,” Bruce says and he sounds poleaxed. He sounds ruined.

His anger at Dick for saying that his death destroyed Bruce was not a lie. It was not a lie, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a part of him that’s pleased by it. Jason’s death ruined Jason too. It twisted him up inside and broke him. All his hope and trust and everything good in him had been beaten out of him, killed, and it hadn’t come back to life when he did. It had stayed dead. And Jason hated Bruce for doing that to him. Hated him for getting Jason to trust him only to fail him in the end.

So they fought. Jason hitting and hitting until Bruce hit him back. Because Bruce was an angry, stupid man and he couldn’t resist, just like Jason had always known. They fight until it’s all just blood, on his fists, darkening his bruises, filling his mouth. The phantom warmth of it spilling from his neck and down his chest. On his teeth and tongue which once tasted communion.

Jason feels unhinged, angry and joyous and devastated. This is the only time he feels good anymore. The moving is good and the hurting is good and the pain is good.

Finally Bruce gets one over on him and slams him to the ground. The breath is knocked from him, but he only needs a moment to regain his feet, just a moment. But Bruce grapples off in the brief pause. He leaves him. He just leaves him there bloody on the ground.

Jason wants to scream and tear something open. He wants to crawl out of his skin. He’s so angry and stunned. And then suddenly, he feels, hideously, like crying.

He doesn’t. He lies on the roof and swallows blood from the wound he reopened in his cheek until he feels sick with it. Then he goes home and chokes down a protein shake and sleeps cold on the couch. He dreams of dying and wakes up tired.

The next few weeks pass in a blur, the days smear together like a smudged oil painting, all the colors blending together to something gray and indistinct. He eats because he has to. He sleeps because he has to. He puts on his Red Hood gear and patrols because he has to. He fights people, but it feels like a chore. Like a mechanical motion his body does because it was made to do it. He doesn’t talk to anyone. Not the people he fights, not his people, not the people he protects. The idea of prying his jaw open to force words out is insurmountable.

Occasionally he’ll be struck with a flash of rage. He’ll think of Dick or Bruce or Alfred and feel hot all over. He’ll smash something in his apartment, but within a minute it will have fizzled out and a minute after that he’ll move to clean it up robotically.

The truth is that Bruce wasn’t very religious. He almost never went to temple and only sometimes remembered holidays. Judaism was something precious to unpack and take out once in a while, like a fine set of china. It was cherished for having been his mother’s but only for special occasions. Jason thought it was because it was too private. It made Bruce too vulnerable to pray, to worship, to entertain the idea of a God. It made him fragile when he could so rarely afford to be. It was a gift he gave himself. When he told Jason the story of the Golem. When he went to his parents' graves and said the Kaddish for them. Those were the times Jason felt closest to him. When he could have reached out and touched the exposed heart of him.

During those gray weeks Jason thinks often of Bruce saying the Kaddish for his parents and placing a small stone on top of their grave. He thinks of cooking with Alfred, the careful, practical care of it. He thinks of Dick and the trapeze, the quiet moment of chalking their hands before they began. He thinks of all the holy things he was given then.

He wonders terribly if Bruce said the Kaddish for him and left a visitation stone on his grave. If Bruce had loved him that dearly. If he had mourned him that deeply.

He lies on his couch with his eyes closed, tears racing down his temples, his chest hitching wetly, quietly. He’s so tired, so sick of this. Sick of the sadness and the nest of vipers in his chest, writhing and biting. So goddamned sick of it.

The long minutes sit heavy on his chest, until finally he sighs and rolls off the couch. He forces himself to eat a protein bar and drink a glass of water, and then forces himself to the bathroom. He sits on the toilet and fights with the laces on his boots for minutes, feeling so tired he has to rest his head on the wall and breathe after the first one. Once he’s peeled out of all his clothes he takes a shower. He shampoos his hair and checks the stitches he did on his side five days ago. They’re red and tender and hot to the touch and not nearly as neat as Alfred’s.

He shuts off the water and looks in the mirror. He’s not fifteen anymore. He forces himself to shave his patchy beard, his hand so heavy he can barely convince himself to do it. But once he starts it’s a little easier. Like cresting a hill. He chokes down some antibiotics, dresses and leaves the apartment

He walks for twenty minutes in the chill air before he arrives at St Mary’s. It’s just as he remembers, built in a time when Crime Alley was still Park Row and there was a bit of money to go around. Wooden pews and a small stained glass windows pocking the top of the two story room, throwing pools of color on the floor. There’s no service right then and the chapel is empty but for a few stragglers like him. He sits on the backmost pew and closes his eyes. It’s just like he remembers, the air warm and dense with the smells of old paper, incense and wood.

He used to sleep on this pew sometimes. Back when he was homeless and broke into the church just to get out of the rain and snow. No one had ever bothered him then.

No one bothers him now. He sits in the pew and doesn’t think anything for hours. Just sits in this familiar room and breathes. He goes out that night and he kills a man. He puts him down fast and messy and he doesn’t realize there’s blood on his hand until he tries to comfort his son and leaves red on his cheek.

“It’s alright,” Jason says, the helmet off, “He’s never going to hurt you again. You’re safe. You’re safe,” and he’s trembling, up and down his arms. The boy is crying and crying and Jason is kneeling in front of him. “I know it was scary champ, you’ve been so brave. I know it hurts. It’s going to be alright. I know a nice doctor who can help you, will you come with me?”

The boy nods and clings to his arm. Jason is still shaking, he’s afraid his teeth are going to start chattering. “You’re so brave,” Jason praises “Would it be okay if I picked you up?” the boy nods again and Jason makes his arms work because he has to.

He takes the kid to Leslie and endures her caustic glare to stay with him and make sure he’s going to be okay. He gives the boy his number and tells him to call if anyone is ever mean to him like that again. He squeezes the kid's hand and signs his new cast and leaves.

His legs give out as soon as he’s left the clinic. He shakes to pieces in the alley. There’s something wrong with him. Christ. Christ. There is something wrong with him.

He stumbles back to the church with the blood still on him. It’s still fairly early. Only just after nine. The priest is just wrapping up confession. He ducks into the dark, close booth and for a second has to swallow back thoughts of his coffin.

“In the name of the father, the mother and the holy spirit amen,” He croaks out without thinking. The familiar ritual of it coming back to him. They used to do confession in Sunday School. “Forgive me father for I have sinned. It has been eight years since my last confession” He says and stops.

Here is where he’s supposed to tell the father about himself. Recount his sins. But what is there to say? That he’s a zombie, that he’s a criminal? That he’s a killer? He isn’t sorry. Goddamn him, he isn’t sorry. That man. That man tonight he deserved it, the things he did- he deserved it. The blood is tacky on Jason’s hands. He didn’t mean for his son to be there, he didn’t mean to scare him, but what he was doing, the look of fear on that little boy’s face. Jason couldn’t. He just couldn’t.

He feels so sick and twisted up. The nest of vipers in him writhing, knotting themselves up. He thinks of Bruce and those golden afternoons in the library. He is not that little boy anymore. He’s not the boy Bruce loved. His side aches.

He remembers. He remembers putting on the costume for the first time and feeling ten feet tall. He remembers Bruce’s hand in his hair. He remembers getting shot the first time. He remembers Bruce beside him as Alfred put in the stitches. He remembers Bruce showing him how to wrap his hands to spar. He remembers being sick as a dog and Bruce pressing a kiss to his forehead. He remembers thinking it was so nice, so nice to be loved as much as Bruce loved his mother’s books.

He remembers; being Robin gives me magic.

He remembers attending service years and years ago and the voice of the preacher; Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.

He remembers believing that.

“I came back wrong,” he chokes out “I died and then I came back wrong,” and that’s all he can say, all he knows how to say.

Then it strikes him what the twisted nest of vipers in him has been all along. Grief. He is not the son that Bruce loved anymore. He cannot have that back. All the magic was scraped out of him. There is no getting it back. Grief.

He gasps wretching sobs, still in the stupid confessional booth. “I’m sorry,” he says “I’m sorry,” He’s so ashamed. He’s so ashamed of the wrong, ugly thing he is now. Sorry for it. Sorry he can’t be loved anymore.

“I’m sorry for all these sins and the sins of my past life,” Jason says, hoarse, and runs from the booth.

He runs from the church and up the street and on and on until he feels like he can’t run anymore. Muscles too raw from lack of oxygen, lungs burning from the cold air. Then he scrambles up a fire escape to collapse onto a flat gravel roof. He feels better up high. He curls on his side and heaves terrible, choking sobs until he can’t anymore. He feels wretched, pathetic and dehydrated and no better for having cried.

Grief. God help him, grief.

He lies on the roof and looks at the dim stars he can make out until he falls asleep there. He dreams of his mother for the first time in a long, long time.

He wakes from the cold only a few hours later. He wipes the caked on salt from his cheeks as best he can and climbs down. He buys a water bottle from a convenience store to sip on and starts to walk. He arrives at Gotham cemetery while it’s still dark. He clambers over the locked gate and clicks on the flashlight he keeps in his inside pocket.

It doesn’t take long to find the grave he’s looking for. He hasn’t been back since he dug himself out of it. To find himself buried next to Sheila is an unexpected blow. The pang he feels is muted and far off. He parcels it up and tucks it away to be felt later. He came here for a reason.

He turns to his own grave. He kneels for a better look. The dew through the knees of his pants and the smell of wet earth nearly overtakes him before he can reign it in. In. Out. Breathe through his mouth. He’s safe now. He’s safe now. He's not trapped. He returns to the investigation. There’s no sign here that he ever dug his way out of his grave. He supposes there wouldn’t be. It was years ago now. That’s not why he came here anyway. He turns the flashlight to the flat top of the grave. Stones, three of them. Two older, small bits of natural debris caked around their bases. One is newer, maybe just as old as the bruises on his forearms.

He shines his flashlight around the base of the grave, feels through the grass. Stones. Dozens of them. All gathered around his grave, knocked from the top by the wind or birds or anything else. He feels bumps in the dirt, more stones, buried by time in the years and years since he was put to rest here.

He pries one free from the earth and for once the dirt under his nails doesn’t bother him. It’s cool and round and fits perfectly in the well of his palm. He’s gasping on the ground, holding the rock tight in his palm trying to ground himself. He feels something in his chest shift and unlock. He feels his chest cracked open like a geode to show something glittering and cherished. He was loved. He was loved. He was really, truly loved. He rests his head against his gravestone and breathes, each lungful of cold morning air calming him, settling him. Loved, loved, loved. He presses the hard smooth surface of the stone to his chest. Loved.

He takes the rock and goes home. He changes into soft clothes and tucks himself into bed.
He holds the rock under his pillow next to his gun and sleeps for a long, long time, and wakes up warm.

It’s like the single clue that unlocks a case, the realization that what he’s feeling is grief. Everything else unravels before him. He wakes up tired and gray. He feels the nest of vipers thrash against his ribs, biting at his tender insides. He struggles to unlock his jaw and speak. Knowing the name of each of these things is grief makes them easier to bear.

He goes out to heal himself the only way he knows how. The way Bruce taught him. He puts on his Red Hood gear and goes out to fight things worse than he is. It doesn’t fix him. It’s never fixed him and it never fixed Bruce, but he’s known that for a long time. But it feels good. He talks to the sex workers when he finds them on the corners and the conversation comes easy, easier than it ever did at the manor, when he was a creature transplanted from it’s natural habitat. He understands the slang and the double meanings and the people here. He talks to his informants and checks in with street kids and the sharp suspicion and blunted consonants feel familiar, welcoming, like home.

He checks in on Lucas, the boy whose father he killed. His red cast is dense with signatures and all his bruises are old.

Some days he wakes up and the only good in the world he can do is violence. Some days he wakes up and the only good he can do is cleaning up his own messes after he makes them. Some days he wakes up and lies there for hours thinking about Alfred’s gentle hands in his hair because he was too scared for a barber. Some days he wakes up and it’s all he can do just to get himself to choke down a single meal.

But some days he can talk to the street kids. Some days he can go out and buy them bags of chili dogs and eat with them on a building stoop. Some days he can talk to the sex workers on the street and tease a laugh out of Sugar. Some days he can bring himself to cook something, like Alfred taught him and the comfort of it will not be eclipsed by the longing.

He tears apart a drug ring with vicious efficiency. Absolutely everything planned with brutal attention to detail and every detail that doesn’t go to plan is beautifully improvised. He drains their accounts and takes the paper cash and torches the rest. He leaves the men dead or trussed up for the police with a full ream of evidence. He hunts down Penny, the underage drug runner who tipped him off when people started keeling over from the supply. He hands her a fat stack of dirty money.

“Your finders fee,” He grins, and she tips back her head and laughs.

He spends the next few weeks handing out cash like fucking Robin Hood. He darns his jacket where the sleeve was sliced open in the fight and watches his bicep heal over into a scar that he can be proud of.

He buys a dilapidated tenement building and pays out the ears through four shell companies for people to come in and insulate the place and get the water running. Then he sets the rent at zero fucking dollars and lets the news loose on the street kids. He hires Bella, a sex worker with a two year old who’s been looking to get out of the game, to denmother the place.

He stitches his wounds and buys conditioner. He stocks his fridge with perishables and gets his hair cut by Sweetie in a back alley while Red and Sugar laugh at him. He screams himself hoarse, and throws out the perishables when they go bad before he eats them. He buys sugar for his coffee. He sleeps on the couch with his shoes on. He reinsulates his shitty windows and gets laid up for a full week with an infection he didn’t take care of. He buys crap furniture at Goodwill and finally unpacks all his duffle bags. He eats plain pasta and rice for three straight days because he can’t stomach anything else. Buys a stack of used books and the next time he wakes up on a gray day he sits and reads instead of thinking about Bruce tucking him under his cape when he was cold, or Bruce slitting his throat open.

The next time he sees Dick he doesn’t fight him, he just leaves him to it. The time after that they tussle, but he leaves without a concussion and so does Dick. The time after that he puts his back to Dick and fights everyone else and doesn’t kill anyone at all. Dick watches him like he’s an imposter and he tips him a mocking salute and leaves before Dick can open his mouth.

Then everything crashes and fucking burns like it always does. He has a bad run of weeks. He sees Batman and Robin skirting the edge of his territory and the stupid hurt in him at the sight instantly transmutes into anger. Anger leads to stupid mistakes on patrol, leads to anger and shame and frustration at his own shame. Leads to snapping at Sugar, and taking a potshot at Dick, leads to shame and self loathing. And everything just keeps becoming anger.

He gets hurt and feels stupid and goes out again the next night to make it up and gets hurt again worse. Then he goes out again because he’s a stupid fucking dog who’s never gonna learn new tricks and there’s no one there to tell him no.

But he can’t stop. He can’t stop because he needs to make it up. He needs to make up how he came back wrong. If the only thing he can do right is hurt people then he at least needs to do that right.

He can’t stop because he’s hurting and the only way anyone ever taught him to help himself was get hurt worse. And it does help, in that sick wrong way that’s all he is now. The pain helps him feel better. It helps him feel like he’s alive, like he’s accomplished something. His hands are shaking too hard for the stitches he needs, but he can do it. He can do it, he only needs a moment.

Then there is the snick of the lock on his door disengaging. He scrambles for his gun for a moment before a familiar voice reaches him.

“I must applaud you, Master Jason. It took me quite a while to locate your tenement. Master Bruce himself could not have done a better job,”

He is sprawled on the floor against the wall with his shirt off, blood leaking sluggishly from his shoulder and tracking down his chest to the floor. He feels shame hot in his chest at being caught like this by Alfred. Like a kid making a mess and too stupid to stop.

“Let’s get you cleaned up, Master Jason,” Alfred says, so fucking gentle. He crouches and slides the first aid kit over in front of himself. He cleans his hands and tears open a pack of curved needle and stitching gut. “Ready?” he says and Jason can only nod, too busy holding his breath to speak.

Alfred stitches his shoulder with small neat stitches that probably won’t even leave a scar and then he cleans the blood away and puts a dressing on. Alfred, alway so practical and calm. It was so good at the manor. Alfred’s pragmatic care was the only kind he could bring himself to accept without humiliation or suspicion. It is the same now. The familiar comfort soothing his prickly skin, washing away the anger to only leave what's beneath. Jason feels like he’s suffocating with the need to cry, his eyes so hot, and his throat so tight. He feels like his rib cage has been cracked open and every vulnerable, yearning thing in him has been exposed to open air. He feels like an addict, like he’ll die if he can’t have this; can’t keep it. He feels like Tantalus, hungry and thirsty for this tender care, and taunted by it.

He wants to keep it so bad. Every wall in him is crumbling, the strength of his jaw only just holding back the sobs. Then Alfred pushes his overlong bangs back from his forehead and he breaks.

“Alfred,” Jason sobs, ragged and desperate.

“That’s alright, Jason,” He says, petting his hand through Jason’s hair again and again. “That’s alright. It’s so good to have you back, you know. I’ve missed you dearly. I want to know you again,” He says, soft and straight forward.

How does Alfred always know the exact thing to say to defuse him? I’ve missed you dearly and I want to know you again. Loved, past tense, and love present tense.

Jason clings to Alfred’s jacket and cries himself out. He feels better for it, a wound lanced and made clean. It aches in the way that all healing does.

“Let’s get you to bed, dear boy, and I’ll clean up here,” Alfred says and then before any fear can take root in him “I’ll return in a few days to check your stitches and we can have tea,”

Alfred tucks him in and Jason wakes to a clean apartment and a restocked first aid kit.

He cooks an enormous pot of chicken soup and another of tomato and packs a backpack full of thermoses and cardboard cups to take on patrol with him. For the first time in weeks he doesn’t go out to fight. He goes to find Sugar. He apologizes for snapping at her and pours them cups of soup to share. She laughs at his act of penance and eats the soup. He pours more cups for the others as they come and go. He stands in a huddle with them laughing and talking. It’s nice to eat with people again. He checks on a few homeless people he knows. Gives them soup too. Talks with them. Goes to the tenement he owns that he filled with street kids and leaves Bella with two big thermoses to distribute.

Most of what Jason’s learned about love, about how to love people, how to demonstrate love, he has learned from Bruce or the streets. He has learned to keep it secret and guard it jealously. He has learned to show it by spilling blood.

The love Bruce taught him left him bleeding on a warehouse floor watching his life count down with no God to pray to, but Bruce. It held him up and protected him and made him try as hard as he could. It made him feel safe and encompassed and utterly special. And when it was gone it left him ruined.

But he has had his mother and he has had Alfred to watch and to learn from. He has gone hungry and uncared for. He understands the joy of being fed, of feeding others. He understands the love in looking after someone. It was the first love he knew. Looked after by his mother and then looking after her at the end. It was this love that kept him talking, that kept him walking the streets handing out soup instead of fighting tonight. He wants Alfred to come see him again and find his stitches unbroken. He wants to repay Alfred’s care with care for himself.

The next day he buys a circular table with clawed, uneven legs and two unmatching chairs. Then he buys a teapot and two cups. Then a bookshelf so he can shelve his books rather than leaving them stacked on the floor by the bed. At the end of all that he deems his apartment fit for viewing by Alfred.

Alfred arrives that evening. He is carrying a large fabric bag filled with tupperware. Jason takes it and helps him box it away in the fridge, a fizz of warmth sparking in his chest with every container of full cooked meals. Gratitude at being cared for. The last thing to be unpacked is a tin of loose leaf tea and jar of honey.

Alfred checks his shoulder and nods approvingly at the still pristine stitches. Jason glows with pride. Alfred compliments his teapot and brews the tea. He adds two spoonfuls of honey to Jason’s, just how he used to like it. Jason sips his tea and finds he still does, finds he’s missed this.

They talk and drink tea, until the pot is gone. They talk about books and Alfred complains about catering for a gala. Jason regales him with stories from the working girls and the kids. The longer it goes on the bigger Jason’s gestures become, the more theatrical. He feels young like he hasn’t in a long time. Like no time has passed at all, like he might actually be only nineteen instead of a thousand.

At the end of it Alfred hugs him goodbye and cups a hand around his cheek just to look at him for a moment as he pulls away. Like Jason might be gone again next time he looks.

“I’ll be back to see you again soon, Master Jason,” he says

“Okay,” Jason returns, smiling.

The weeks keep rolling by. Alfred brings him a rug for his living room next time he visits and a knit blanket the time after that. Eventually Alfred speaks of Bruce, just casually, another anecdote among discussions of literature and friends. It pierces Jason’s chest, like a whole poked in his lungs, making him leak air as he tries to breathe, but he finds as Alfred talks that it makes him more sad than angry. To hear Alfred talk about Bruce casually, living in the manor and disregarding strict orders for bed rest makes him more mournful than furious. Thinking of Bruce the man instead of the myth fills him with a sense of loss and longing and with Alfred there, there’s no room for the feelings to become anger.

The next time Jason sees Dick is during an Arkham breakout. They’re both hunting Scarecrow and pin him down in the dining room of a defunkt diner, his goons whittled down to none.

“Guard the exits, Nightwing,” Jason says, and can see the consternation immediately rising in Dick “You lost your rebreather, you can’t be in an enclosed space with him,” Jason says voice hard “I can,”

It takes a moment for grudging acceptance to dawn on Dick’s face.

“Trust me,” Jason adds mock chipper and ducks into the diner.

The fight goes well enough. The gas does nothing against the filters in Jason’s helmet and Crane isn’t really much of a match combatwise. At the end of the fight Crane nicks his wrist with a syringe, barely anything. He bounces Crane’s head off a table a moment later and trusses him up quickly before dragging him from the diner, thick with fear gas, for collection. He can feel the first hum of fear in his veins by the time Dick meets him at the door. As soon as Dick has Crane in hand Jason bolts.

He switches to rooftops almost immediately, hoping the height will calm him enough to buy another minute. It works well enough. He’s found a roof with suitably sturdy piping, far enough away from people, to cuff himself to by the time he feels like he might lose it.

He doesn’t feel like it lasts that long. He only got a little bit, maybe only ten minutes of hallucinations, maybe even less. Only that long of reliving his death and his coffin. He blinks his eyes open to a pain in his cuffed wrist and Dick Grayson crouched above him.

“What?” Jason croaks.

“Why did you do that?” Dick says and it sounds like he’s honestly confused.

“I haven’t been on Fear since coming back,” Jason slurs feeling like he’s about to give too much away, but too fragile to pull on a skin of bravado right now “I didn’t know if I would hurt anyone,”

Jason doesn’t know how to parse Dick’s reaction. He seems to slump at Jason’s answer, unspooling into a more relaxed sprawl, head tipped down. Disappointment? Relief? Exhaustion? His head is too full of cotton to dissect it.

“I doubt you’ll tell me where your apartment is,” Dick says wryly, still looking tired “Just rest. I’ll call Alfred to come get you,”

Jason feels a protest sitting in his mouth, but it’s too heavy to fit his tongue around. He closes his eyes and leans his head back, shivering as his sweat evaporates into the frigid air.

“Oh Little Wing,” he hears from far away, and a pressure on his hair. “I wish I knew how to love you better,”

Alfred wakes him when they arrive at his apartment and he thanks him and stumbles up the stairs and into his bed. Fear gas has always taken it out of him and he wants to sleep it off. The hazy memory of Dick’s voice keeps him awake though. He wrestles with the tangle of hope and pain and apprehension that tugs at his chest.

Bittersweet, he thinks, then falls headlong into sleep.

The next time he sees Dick he’s actually in New York running down a lead. He’s antsy to get back to Gotham, but he wants to yank this one out at the root.

“Hey, Dick,” Jason says into his phone “I’m in New York hunting down some bad guys, but it might be a little much for little ol’ me and I could use someone who knows the lay of the land. Could also do with someone to take the blame when I blow the shit out of three warehouses,”

“Why,” Dick says, clipped “would I help you with that?”

“Because I’m teaching you how to love me better,” Jason says like butter wouldn’t melt.

There’s a pause where only static comes through the line. Then Dick is laughing, bright and sharp, like he’s surprised at himself.

“Okay,” he says after calming down “Okay, Jason. But no killing,”

“Scouts honor,”

Jason returns to a Gotham that is one smuggling operation poorer with joy buzzing in his chest. Because Dick Grayson heard him say scouts honor over the phone and believed him. Because he had saved Dick with a perfect split second hip shot that made Dick's eyebrows jump under the mask. Because when he twirled the pistol around his finger and mimed blowing the smoke from the barrel with his helmet, Dick had rolled his eyes, but he had laughed too. Because at one point the catwalk had given out beneath him and Dick had clamped his hand around Jason’s wrist to keep him from falling and for a second it was almost like the trapeze again. Because he had felt that perfect flare of Robin magic kick back to life in his chest again and knew Dick was feeling it too.

Two weeks of easy patrols pass after that with nearly nothing to dent his mood. He goes out to patrol early one night and gets roped into a game of pick up basketball with some neighborhood teenagers. It’s fun, and life affirming because he absolutely destroys them.

The gray days only come for him once and he is able to work through it. He takes the rock from under his pillow to keep in his pocket so he can hold it all throughout the day, it’s cool smooth surface a lifeline. He drinks Alfred’s tea and reads and texts with Alfred about the book even though he knows Alfred prefers to call. He feeds himself even though he doesn’t really want to. He naps and dreams of sitting on the light blue couch in the library. He dreams of Bruce’s deep voice rumbling through him, and the amber light through the window. He’s able to eat afterwards though. He’s able to pry open his jaw and talk when he goes to ask Sugar about a lead, his rock pressed into his palm. By the fourth day he’s fine.

On the fifth day he devises a test, because in some ways he’s still a Crime Alley kid waiting for the other shoe to drop. Probably even more so now. He cooks his best goulash and texts Dick.

To: Hey, Dickie up for another learning opportunity? >:-)

Then almost instantly;

From: can't believe you put noses in your emojis
From: omw

Jason follows up with his address. An hour and half later there’s a frantic rapping at his window and Jason clicks off the security. A frisson of giddy warmth unfurls in his chest to see Dick there; worried in full Nightwing regalia just because Jason asked.

“Where’s the fire,” Dick says as he tumbles through the window.

“No fire,” Jason says trying to smother his grin “Only goulash,”

Dick’s face flickers through a range of expressions from surprise to annoyance to exasperation before finally softening into tired fondness.

“I expected something a little more exciting considering your last lesson,” Dick says miming explosions with his hands, brow raised.

“I’m a man of many hidden depths,” Jason says, dishing bowls.

“I suppose you are.”

The dinner goes well except for one thing. Halfway through Dick says “He misses you, you know?” and just that small thing rips him open. The deep reciprocal longing in him that threatens to yank him open from the inside. The rock he keeps under his pillow, the dreams of the manor. The dreams of the story of the Golem in Bruce’s deep voice. The sharp tear of betrayal that burns in him at seeing another boy be Robin. The childish hurt at being abandoned. The devastated, stunned horror of having his throat slit open. Of feeling his blood flood out of him to soak the floor. The numb fear of trying to hold it in as it gushed between his fingers. He wants and loves and hates all at once.

He doesn't know what his face looks like, but Dick drops it like a hot coal. He jumps immediately into an embellished version of his latest Titans mission. They finish dinner and Jason sends Dick off with a tupperware of goulash which leaves Dick beaming as he shuffles out the window.

Jason understands that there are two Bruces. He understands that there is the one who is Batman, who is always right and always won, the version of himself he tried to be all the time. Then there is the second Bruce who is a man. Who is fallible. Who stayed with him when he was sick and said the Kaddish and loved him. By Jason’s estimation he has had only one conversation with the second Bruce since coming back. The conversation that ended with his blood on the floor and the Joker laughing.

He wants his dad. He doesn’t want the man who has hurt him. He doesn’t want the man who has replaced him and let his murderer live. The trouble is they are the same person.

The next city wide crisis happens a month later, when Poison Ivy takes issue with a new development project. Jason avoids the epicenter where he knows the new dynamic duo will be fighting Poison Ivy. He instead dashes through the streets and hands out rebreathers and evacuates buildings. He curtails violent opportunists before they can get started. Everything is going fine until the building he’s evacuating starts to crumble under his feet. He snatches up the woman he was ushering out and dives for the window. They crash through in a shower of glass with Jason curled around her. He shoots his grapple on instinct while they’re still in free fall. They’re greeted by hell on earth. The ground is a roiling carpet of vines, the surrounding buildings in various states of decay. Looks like he didn’t avoid the epicenter after all. At least it’s the Diamond District where everyone’s liable to be insured.

His grapple catches, the harsh jolt of it catching in his shoulder. The swing isn’t enough to halt their momentum and Jason takes the landing at a run to burn the rest off.

“Get the hell out of here,” he says to the woman and she nods.

The woman runs, Ivy turns the corner, Jason draws his guns. Jason has always known the look of a fight he can’t win, but that has never, never stopped him before.

The fight is that of a lion and a mouse. Jason scrabbles across unstable footing, ducking and diving through an ever changing landscape only a bare half inch in front of Ivy’s lazy swipes. For several brilliant minutes he is perfect. Every flip and twist executed beautifully with pure precision. He carves out bare moments to fire at her while he runs. Little, little, chips in her armor, little cuts, that might eventually halt her with time and number. It is not sustainable.

He does not have a partner here to split her attention. He doesn’t have the proper supplies, he doesn’t have an R&D department at his beck and call, he didn’t have time to prepare. Perfection doesn’t last. His footing slips out from under him, a vine snatches his ankle as he stumbles and he’s whipped sideways into a parked car, the car alarm adds itself to the din of chaos around him. It’s quiet under the pulse of blood in Jason’s ears. It’s quiet under the breathless pain of his chest. He scrambles to his feet still blind with the pain and whiplash. He lasts another thirty seconds before Ivy catches him again, a hail of thorns biting through his armor to his arms and shoulders which he brought up to block. The wounds burn unnaturally. He lasts a minute and a half after that, before she catches him in the side. And on and on and on. Ivy is wounded. She is angry, but still Jason can see her slowing. His vision is blackened at the edges, but he has slowed her. He has brought her low. That is the thought that keeps him standing, that pulls him to his feet again and again. The fight. The fight. Not even death could keep him from it.

David and Goliath is only a story. Jason is not looked over by any God and it will be a cold day in hell before Ivy is brought down by a sling and a rock. But Jason comes very, very close. In a fight like this, a tie is a victory, in a place like Gotham holding the line until the cavalry can arrive is a miracle.

Jason is taken to the ground many times in the fight, but it’s not until Batman and Robin arrive that he can’t bring himself to stand up again. He tells himself it’s luck. Only luck that Batman arrived just when he ran out of steam, but there is a smooth cool rock in his pocket that fits perfectly in the well of his palm, there is a beat in his heart that says safe, safe, safe at the sight of him.

His blood is burning up, his body is aching, his head is spinning. His vision is mostly filled with cloudy sky, but out of the corner of his eye he can see Batman and Robin fighting, see the sweep of that great black cape, hear his voice. He feels the first few drops of a coming downpour hit him. The fight will be over soon. For the first time that night the darkness rises up and takes him fully, and he knows that allowing it was a choice.

He dreams of nothing. He dreams of somewhere warm and soft and safe. He dreams of the smell of Alfred’s laundry detergent and paper. He dreams of a hand in his hair and a kiss pressed to his forehead.

He comes awake slowly and doesn’t open his eyes. He can feel the amber light through the window on his eyelids. He can hear Bruce beside him, the easy, familiar cadence of his words as he reads. He is only a man. He is not a saint, he is not holy, he is selfish, he wants to lay here even longer. He wants to keep this gift. His eyes sting, his chest feels tight and warm and fragile. He sinks back into sleep to the sound of the story of the Golem given to him again.

He comes awake again to a dark room and Bruce’s voice still next to him now hoarse. The Golem again, this version written by Elie Wiesel. They are near the end, Jason knows these words well. He feigns sleep still as he listens to Bruce read the final pages.

“Well what do you think of it this time?” Bruce says, just like he used to. Just like when they used to read together and he would listen to all the things Jason had to say like they were really important. Jason cracks his eyes open,

“I think Elie Wiesel did it first,” he says, voice rough with sleep, “He made a Golem to protect people way before you did Old Man,” Jason continues tapping the cover of the book then Bruce’s chest where the Bat symbol normally lay.

“Jaylad,” Bruce says, his voice so, so soft, his expression so tender, so open, like Jason could reach out and touch the heart of him. He puts a hand in Jason’s hair and bends to press a kiss to his forehead, “my Jaylad,” he says, reverent.

Jason is not a saint. He is just a man. He is just a man. He brings his arms up around his father and he holds on.