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There was a shadow on Dick’s roof that wasn’t supposed to be there. He hung back, peering at the unmoving form. He almost hadn’t seen it, tucked away under shadow that did belong, unilluminated by the night sky. Whoever it was, they hadn’t actually tried to hide themselves very well, crouching in plain sight rather than behind the various outcroppings on the rooftop.
He could call in back up. Maybe not Batman—no need to bring down a hammer, especially a hammer that might spark a fire—but maybe Oracle could figure out who it was or, if nothing else, Tim could be there to help hold a fight. Dick wasn’t sure he would need even that. The mystery shadow didn’t look prepared to attack in a hurry, head bowed and weight leaning too far forward, balanced like they expected to wait a while more. There was something off about that stance when Dick peered closer. Injured, maybe? Scared? Or just running on fumes.
As if feeling the weight of Dick’s consideration, the figure shifted and lifted its head, gazing in his direction with unwavering attention. Moonlight glinted across the cheek of the helmet. Red Hood’s helmet. Here, on his apartment rooftop. Red Hood, who had come back to the fold then spit in their faces too many times over to count, an agonizing whiplash that they had started to think might never end. Dick had frozen over, watching each other across the distance between two buildings for several long seconds as he tried to make heads or tails of Hood’s sudden appearance.
Still Hood didn’t move. Dick stood, and stepped toward the edge, and Hood stayed still. Worry pinged inside him, a cold fear that Hood was here now because he needed help, he was injured, what sort of injury would cause him to come to Dick? He had shunned Dick’s every welcoming word and touch, shouldered him off like an unwanted pet. To come to him now must be something dire.
Either that, or Hood was angry. It was never wise to discount that possibility.
Hood still didn’t move, even as Dick touched down on the apartment rooftop. He took two steps forward then stopped, wary. Hood stared, crouched with both hands on the ground, the silence eerie and unnatural between them.
“Hood?” he finally dared, heart pattering in his chest. He’s not okay something in him whispered, but whether he was injured or unhinged was impossible to know.
Hood finally pulled himself to his feet, the rise slow, leather creaking. He had gotten new boots, Dick remembered vaguely, just last week, and the leather hadn’t been broken in yet. It wouldn’t take long, not with the pace Hood worked. They already showed signs of use, scuff marks dull in the light as Hood began to walk forward with measured steps. He never had taken the time to care for his boots properly.
Unease tingled along Dick’s nerves but he was glued where he was, afraid to step forward and spook Hood, unwilling to step back and protect himself. Hood’s arms moved and Dick reacted on instinct, falling back on one heel and setting hands on his escrima sticks. Hood paid it no mind, hands hitching under the edge of the helmet, fingers working as clasps snapped open one by one.
Not an attack, then. Dick let his hands drop in the same moment that Jason lifted the helmet off. It slipped heavy from his fingers and rolled behind the man unheeded, abandoned as if it held no more importance than a broken cigarette.
And Jason looked… not great. His lips pulled back in the warped child of a smile and a grimace, hair matted to his head with sweat. His eyes were wild as they locked on Dick’s own, shiny and wet, expression so blitzed that Dick was tempted to call in Batman and deal with the consequences later because something was wrong, so wrong, and Dick-
Dick didn’t know what to do.
But in the next moment Jason was there, half a step away, so close they were practically breathing the same air. He gave a choked laugh, hoarse and high, unadulterated emotion rising high in his eyes. He was insane, Dick thought, heart catching. He’d lost control or himself or both. And then his expression twisted and collapsed. Jason was on his knees before Dick could even try to reach out and catch him, leaning his head into Dick’s hip and both hands on Dick’s ankles, just resting there like those few points of contact were all that were holding him up.
And God, he didn’t know what to do but that had never stopped him before, and he didn’t have that luxury now either. Jason was breaking at his feet, or maybe already broken, and Dick didn’t know what had happened or why he had come except that he was driven by simple memory of a trust they had once shared. Jason was as likely to hit him as let him hug him, but what else could he do? Why else would Jason be there if not for help?
He knelt down, knee to knee with Jason, and cupped the back of his head. Jason came easy when Dick pulled him in, and didn’t stir when Dick clasped his arms around him. “It’s okay.”
Jason laughed again, and it sounded wrong, torn from his lungs. “Yeah. It is.” And then he was curling into Dick’s arms, whole body shaking, and there was something wet against Dick’s palm against Jason’s hip. His hand came away dark with blood.
“You’re hurt,” Dick said, and Jason didn’t resist as he was forced to his feet.
It was almost surreal, Red Hood sitting on the edge of his bath tub with Jason’s face, eyes unfocused as he shifted this way and that exactly as he was bid. Dick was peeling away layers of leather slick with sweat and blood, too much blood to be from the small wound at the point of Jason’s hip, but Jason wasn’t talking and Dick wasn’t inclined to press him on it. It was enough that he was there, letting Dick take care of him. Everything else could wait.
Whatever had happened, it hadn’t been good. Jason’s torso was littered with bruises and welts. His back was candy-cane striped with red, as if he’d been hit repeatedly from behind, maybe by multiple assailants. Dick touched along them, assuring himself there was nothing broken beneath the skin, and watched Jason checking out further with every touch. It was painful and extensive, but nothing that wouldn’t heal.
Jason’s thighs bore similar marks, more sparsely distributed but front and back, and a deep bruise building around one knee. Bruises and bruises and bruises everywhere Dick unveiled, but no more bleeding wounds and no broken bones that he could find.
Dick was dabbing antiseptic to Jason’s hip when his comm crackled to life in his ear.
“Batman, Nightwing, are you still live?”
Batman gave an affirmative on the other end. Dick pressed at his own mic. “I’m not exactly in a position to head out but I’m here.”
Silence on the line. Jason’s eyes had shifted from that drifting haziness and focused on Dick’s face as he spoke, unblinking expression eerily blank. They were looking each other in the eyes when Oracle next spoke. Jason couldn’t hear the words, there was no way he could, but Dick was sure he knew the words before they had even come, waiting with patient, steady expectation.
“Joker is dead,” Oracle said.
It was as if the room had been thrown into stark relief though nothing had physically changed. The room’s detail was a sudden sharp shock in Dick’s mind, from every warm breath of Jason beneath his hands to the tile cold on his knees. The world was different, and had been for… how long? How long had Joker been dead?
And Jason sat before him, watching his face, unmoving beneath Dick’s suddenly clenching fingers.
“Where?” Dick asked without meaning to, and he was drowning in Jason’s eyes, the antiseptic wipe cold in his fingers, the smell of blood sharp in the air.
“A warehouse. He was beaten to death with-” Oracle paused.
“With what?” Batman asked, voice a dark growl.
“A crowbar,” she said.
Jason’s back was striped with red, as if he’d been hit with something long and thin, something hard swung at him over and over again-
“Where’s the Red Hood?” Batman demanded, and Dick was scrabbling the speaker out of his ear, ripping it free and clenching it hard in his closed fist.
Jason’s eyes flicked to Dick’s hand then back to his face. Dick didn’t know what he looked like, but Jason didn’t seem surprised by it, whatever it was. Dick’s breath was coming too fast, on the edge of panic, but Jason was breathing slow and deep. He had fallen far from panic into laconic dark.
“You can send me to Arkham now,” Jason said, voice low. “He won’t be there.”
Dick swallowed convulsively and stood. Jason’s eyes went with him and there was nothing there, no emotion, nothing but a yawning void with no end. Dick was falling into it and if he was falling then what was Jason, holding that empty pit inside him, untethered and so cold? He remembered Jason’s broken laugh, the way he had teetered on the line between elation and maddening heartache. On that precipice, he had come to Dick.
“You’re not going to Arkham,” Dick said.
Jason looked away. Didn’t believe him, maybe, or couldn’t. The slump of his shoulders meant something different now that Dick knew, spoke to emotional blowout and not flat out defeat, or maybe the realization that he had crossed that line again and worse this time. There was blood under his fingernails where they were clenched around the rim of the bathtub.
Dick pressed one hand on Jason’s shoulder and cupped the side of his neck with the other, like he could steady Jason inside if he could steady him outside first. “Let me finish patching that wound.”
Dick was just taping on the bandage when the window alarm beeped—just once, a quiet chirp in the quiet of the apartment. Jason went tense beneath his hands. Dick rose to his feet and turned in time for Batman to fill the doorway, shoulders wide and dark, cape fluttering around his ankles. A not-unexpected visit but he had hoped they might have more time.
“Hood,” Batman growled.
Dick stepped forward, put himself between Batman and Jason’s wilted form. “He came here on his own,” he said, raising his chin and looking Batman in the eye.
“He’s gone too far this time.” Batman stepped forward, tried to press by Dick, but Dick blocked him with one arm across the doorway. It shouldn’t have been anything, not if Batman wanted it not to be, but he only glowered and waited there, cold eyes turned on Dick. “Joker is dead.”
“Good,” Dick bit out. He saw Jason jerk from the corner of his eye. “He should have died a long time ago.”
Batman’s scowl deepened and he tore his gaze away from Dick, looking over his shoulder at Jason instead. “Get up. You’re coming with me.”
“He’s not going anywhere,” Dick snapped and stepped forward, chest to chest with Batman, and pushed. Batman let himself be edged out a step, Dick wasn’t fooling himself that it was anything but Batman choosing to give. He didn’t much care why it happened as long as it did.
But Jason was already unfolding from the edge of the tub, half-turning to grasp the sink and pull himself to his feet. It bared his back to them, the red stripes already going deep and dark on the path to purple. Dick watched Batman notice them, tracing them with his eyes, nothing visibly changing in his expression or his stance.
“He’s not going to Arkham,” Dick said. “You’re not touching him. Jason, sit down.”
Jason breathed out, not quite a sigh, and went still with both hands on the edge of the sink. He leaned there heavily, head bowed over the blood stained wash cloths, and waited. Waited like he had waited from the moment he set foot on Dick’s rooftop, like he had done what he had come to do and now left everything else to others to decide.
What did Batman see, Dick wondered, as he gazed on the listless hull of Jason’s body? The angry creature he had been on his return? A murderer? A man who would only ever be a threat to the ideals Batman held dear? Because all Dick could see was a boy beaten and bruised, lost in the trauma that had nearly taken him from them forever, victorious and ruined.
“I killed him,” Jason said into the silence, voice dull. “I killed the Joker.”
“Jay, stop,” Dick said and stepped into Batman in anticipation, pressed forward and hoped for another step back, just a little more give.
Batman gave him nothing, broad and unyielding. “You admit it.”
“He picked up that crowbar and he hit me,” Jason said, and when Dick looked over Jason hadn’t moved except to curl further down, practically into the sink bowl now. “He beat me with it and he laughed.”
Jason stopped talking but the air was heavy with words yet to come. No one seemed to breathe. Batman was watching Jason with an unblinking stare, dark and intense, and Dick had the unshakeable thought that if he stepped away, Jason would be swept into that dark and never come out.
“So I took that crowbar and I hit him back,” Jason said, voice gone rough. “I hit him until he stopped laughing, and then I kept hitting him until he’d never laugh at me again.”
Dick had put the pieces of the puzzle together himself but hearing them out loud, and from Jason’s mouth, constricted in his chest. They had a perfect view of his beaten back, red layered from shoulder to waist, hit after merciless hit. It had taken some time for Jason to wrestle the crowbar away. He had probably been on the ground for some of it if he had been hit that many times, taking the blows through armor this time but still feeling every inch of it.
“So if you’re going to take me to Arkham now, fine,” Jason said, straightening up. He turned to look at them, the lines of his face heavy with exhaustion. “Because I’m not sorry. I’m not.”
Batman hadn’t said a word or made a move toward Jason, not since he started talking. He broke that silence now, unreadable behind the cowl. “I’m not taking you to Arkham.”
“Maybe you should,” Jason said, taking one faltering step toward them then going down hard, the injured knee giving out beneath the effort.
Dick was there in a moment, gripping Jason by both elbows, and Batman at their side a mere second later. “He’s injured,” Dick said, unnecessarily. He edged between them again, intercepting as Batman reached a hand toward Jason’s slumped shoulder, knocking it away with one elbow. “Don’t touch him.”
Batman said nothing. He had always been good at that.
“I’ve got you, Jay,” he murmured, lifting him back onto the edge of the tub, resenting Batman’s presence with every fiber of his being. They had been okay before he had come—not fine, not well, but okay—and his arrival had thrown Jason’s brief flirtation with stability into a tail spin.
“I didn’t plan it,” Jason said, resting his forehead on Dick’s shoulder.
“I know you didn’t.” Dick shot Batman a quelling look, but the man didn’t seem like he had intended to say anything anyway. “It’s alright.”
“I felt my bones breaking,” Jason said. “They shattered-”
Dick’s arms tightened around him, holding him in close, and tried not to think about that too hard. Not yet, while he had to hold Jason together. “Nothing’s broken. I promise you.” He had checked every bone with care already and resisted the urge to do so again. They both needed to trust reality now, after reality had treated them so badly. Doubting what he knew was true wouldn’t say anything good to Jason.
Batman spoke only once the silence had gone on long enough that it was clear no one else planned to. “Come back to the Cave.”
Jason didn’t move in his arms, not a flinch or a flicker of notice. Dick tucked himself in closer anyway. “No. Go home, B.”
“He should be looked over.”
“I looked him over. Go. Home.”
Quiet for several long seconds. “I’ll set a watch.”
For Jason, not because of him. Acceptance, little though it was. Dick nodded once, tightly, and resigned himself to a dark shadow outside his window for the foreseeable future. It was better than the Cave. It was better than Arkham. It was better than Jason’s body on another warehouse floor, in another coffin, clean and quiet and so cold. Shattered now didn’t mean shattered tomorrow, and that was okay.
Batman was gone when next Dick looked and Jason was staring out the open window, and that was okay too.