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It had been nearly six months since he had last gotten to see his big brother, and Tim was frustrated.
Nobody had actually told him that he wasn't allowed to visit with Dick, to the point that he wasn't sure how many of the adults in his life even consciously knew that they were keeping the boys apart, but the fact remained that Bruce's chosen method of... "coping" with the fact that Dick had almost killed a man — even if that man was the Joker — involved keeping Dick at a distance. Between that and the scare over Tim's life meaning that Bruce had been desperately keeping him close, the brothers hadn't seen more than a glimpse of each other in almost half a year. And Tim missed the only brother he'd ever gotten to hug. Dick had just gotten him used to the idea that they were allowed to be brothers, and now it felt like something was missing from his life.
Still, brother or no brother, he had a job to do and a schedule to keep, and he was going to keep up with his work. Which was why Robin was running across a roof when the Red Hood popped up out of nowhere in his way.
Tim skidded to a stop, fortunately able to prevent himself from crashing into the larger mask as if they were in a Looney Tunes skit or something. In the split second it took him to divert his momentum and regain his balance, he mentally reviewed everything he knew about this guy. Crime lord with unclear degree of vigilante tendencies. Claimed a territory starting about two blocks south of here. Skillset suggests extensive training with nonzero assassin involvement. Recently seen working — and relaxing — with Nightwing.
That last point gave Tim pause. Sure, Nightwing was well known to be the sort of guy who could make friends anywhere, but he was also really good at reading people. If he liked Hood's company, there was probably something worthwhile about him. Best to minimize hostility unless he found a reason to start it, at any rate.
"Red Hood," he greeted the very tall man neutrally. "What brings you out this way?"
Hood crossed his arms. "Nightwing wanted eyes on you to make sure you were okay, but he didn't think he'd be able to get close enough before someone turned him away. Figured I'd do him a favor by checking on you myself."
Tim dropped his head in his hands and groaned. "So they have been keeping me away from him on purpose. That's ridiculous."
Hood inhaled sharply, loud enough that it came through his helmet as a burst of static. "You didn't know that?"
"I guessed they might be," Tim admitted, "but nobody said anything to me..." He sighed. "I'm sure they think they're protecting somebody by doing this, but I'm not sure who. It can't be Wing; he doesn't need protecting from me for the same reason he doesn't need to be protected from balloons and puppies. And it shouldn't be me, when I'm only Robin because I volunteered to see way worse than Nightwing could ever do—"
"What?" Hood interrupted. "What do you mean, you volunteered to see worse?" It was very hard to guess at his tone through the blank mask and voice modulator, but he spoke quickly, like it was urgent.
Tim looked at him for a long moment, considering how careful to be. "You're from around here, aren't you?" he asked at last. He had a pretty good idea of what the answer was going to be, given that Hood's Gotham accent was strong enough that he could hear it plain as day even through the digital alteration, but it couldn't hurt to begin by making sure they were both working with adequate context.
"Yes," Hood confirmed, tilting his head enough that Tim was pretty sure that was a question. "Lived in Gotham all my life, 'cept for about two years right before I put on this mask. Why?"
"Oh, okay, so you didn't see the worst of it." Tim noticed Hood tensing up, and quickly continued, "Nightwing had another younger brother before he adopted me. He was the best ever, but the Joker killed him. And in the aftermath of that... Batman was devastated, of course, and he didn't cope well at all. So I volunteered for suicide watch."
Another sharp staticky noise that was probably an intake of breath from Hood. "You're telling me Batman was suicidal? "
"Well, yes?" Tim frowned, slightly puzzled. "He was grieving for somebody really awesome, and he's not very good at it, so he started trying to get himself killed. And I couldn't let that happen, not while he could still do so much more good." He sighed. "It was selfish, probably, to force him not to follow his son. It was definitely cruel and manipulative, to put him in a position where he couldn't get killed because he was terrified of hurting me in the process. But it worked, and there's a limit to how bad I can feel about saving Batman's life."
"You do realize that you shouldn't have had to, right? You're a kid."
Tim shrugged. "It worked better because I'm a kid. Nightwing might have been effective too, if he'd been able to bear it, but he had other obligations and his own grief. It was playing dirty, to scare Batman with the idea of letting a theoretically vulnerable kid watch him die, but... like I said, I can only feel so bad about successfully pulling off something good."
Hood stared at him for long enough that Tim started to wonder what his face was doing behind the mask. Finally, the man said, "I'm not saying you did anything wrong, necessarily — what I'm saying is that you're a kid now, and you were even younger then. It shouldn't be your job to manage grown-ups' feelings for them."
Tim cocked his head, letting his puzzlement show on his face. "How else am I supposed to interact with adults?"
A burst of static that Tim couldn't even begin to interpret rushed out of the helmet at that, followed by what sounded suspiciously like, "I am definitely not qualified to answer that question." After a moment, Hood visibly collected himself to ask, "Did Batman tell you that?"
Tim shook his head. "Actually, he said something about it not being my job, too; I just didn't listen. It's always been my job, and he couldn't stop me from following him."
Hood let out another strange sound. "You're saying that Batman. Wasn't able. To stop you."
"Yes?" Tim frowned. "I'd been following him every night for years; by the time I let him know I was there, he'd already run out of ways to lose me as a tail. I wasn't going to give it up when it was almost certainly the only way to save his life. And it's not like I had a bad time; even when he was depressed and trying to drive me away, Batman was still a lot better company than I'm used to, so I didn't want to leave." He shrugged. "And now he's better enough that I'd listen if he still wanted me to go, but he's decided he likes having me around after all."
Something that might have originally been a choking noise issued from Hood. "This explains so much of what Nightwing says about you."
"How is Nightwing, anyway?" Tim asked, trying to sound casual.
Hood held out his hand and wiggled it. "It's all relative. He's been better; it takes time to recover from major traumas, especially when a whole bunch of big traumatic things happen really close together like that. But he's as good as he can be right now, which is fucking amazing considering all the support he isn't getting."
Tim grimaced. It was good news overall, but he missed his brother and the idea that Dick wasn't getting everything he needed didn't help. So far as Tim could tell, Hood didn't seem to be hostile at all; while it was possible that there was a trap ahead, he trusted Dick's judgement and his gut wasn't throwing him any warnings. And he knew Hood was right about Dick needing support from his family; that was just how Dick was...
"I need to see him."
Hood nodded slowly and glanced at his watch. "That should be doable. Follow me."
Tim followed him.
Hood turned out to be every bit as confident a freerunner across the rooftops as a Bat would be. Tim kept up easily enough, but noted that he never needed to slow down to stay in Hood's tracks, like he would have to follow anyone who hadn't done this a thousand times. It wasn't long at all before they were at the window of an unremarkable apartment in the Crime Alley neighborhood. Inside, lounging on a worn but comfy-looking sofa, was Dick Grayson.
Not Nightwing, but Dick Grayson.
Tim froze for a moment, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Dick turned at the sound of their arrival with a smile that only brightened when he saw that both Robin and Hood were present. Dick was not wearing a mask. Sure, Tim had been aware that Dick thought Hood trustworthy, but this level of trust still came as a shock. Just what had happened to make Dick feel so safe?
Shaking himself back to the present, Tim climbed in through the window, and fell directly into his big brother's arms. Dick's hug was just as warm and strong and protective as ever, and the slightly incoherent torrent of endearments in his ear sounded like love.
As the words tapered off, Tim took the opportunity to bring up the question he'd been wondering about for the past several minutes: "So, you're not..." He gestured towards his own eyes.
Dick laughed and looked over at Hood. "You didn't tell him, then."
Hood shifted awkwardly, like a regular person instead of the hyper-competent vigilante he seemed like on the rooftops. "I thought it was probably best to have that conversation with all three of us, and somewhere more private than the open air."
"Fair enough," Dick agreed. "But here we are, so how about taking off that helmet?"
Hood sighed and unlatched it, lifting it off his head, and Tim's half-formed theories about who he could possibly be shattered instantly. Even through the mask underneath, Tim knew that face instantly. The truth was so much better — and stranger — than he could ever have guessed.
"Jason?!"
Jason smiled wryly. "Hey, little brother. Nice to meet you properly."
"And before you ask, it's really him," Dick added. "I checked."
Tim could die happy now. Both of his heroes had verbally claimed him as a little brother. He thought he might be about to explode from a surfeit of feelings.
"How?" he managed. Jason had been dead; Tim had seen the documentation, and there was no way the autopsy could have been faked, not to mention that Bruce had been present for Jason's final moments and it was unthinkable that he could have been fooled —
"I'm pretty sure I got kidnapped out of Heaven by the League of Assassins," Jason explained uncomfortably, and that...
That was the sort of thing that was supposed to be impossible, and yet it would explain a lot. R'as had a habit of messing with the boundaries between life and death, primarily to his own direct personal benefit but sometimes also for more indirect reasons; if anyone could pull it off, it would be him. Yanking one of Batman's sons out of the afterlife also seemed like the sort of thing he might consider doing if it suited the game of twelve-dimensional chess that the two of them perpetually seemed to have going on. And that version of events would also make sense of Jason both having definitely been dead before and definitely being alive now. The only remaining question, then, was...
"Do you have any idea why?"
Jason shifted his weight from foot to foot. "I'm pretty sure they wanted me to attack you, given the... slant on the information I was given about what happened in Gotham while I was dead. Dick here defused that pretty quick, though."
Tim nodded slowly. It all fit, as neatly as he fit into the hug that Dick still hadn't let him go from. He could get used to this.
It was so warm, having brothers.