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Jason's sword clangs against his opponent's one, two, three times. Jason manages to find an opening and slip his sword inside it, but only manages to nick the man's clavicle before his opponent brings his sword back and pushes Jason's away. Blood pools across his opponent's shoulder, but he hardly seems to notice.
They've been at this for hours and Jason is drenched in sweat. His muscles are shaking and his tongue feels like a brick in his mouth, dry and dehydrated. He digs his feet in the ground, widening his stance in order to support himself.
The League watches, peering into the pit that they've thrown Jason and his opponent in. A test , Talia had told him , of your worthiness . They stay completely silent, though Jason wishes they would talk, whisper, grunt, do something to prove they are human behind their armors and masks. That they feel something, that Jason is not the only one who does.
His opponent notices Jason's actions. He ducks to the ground and tries to slide in between Jason's legs so that he can cut him from behind but Jason manages to dart away at the last second. Still, his balance is thrown off and his opponent takes advantage of that. He slashes Jason's leg, ripping through the fabric and digging into flesh.
Jason feels no pain at all, and then too much. He chances a glance down at the wound. It zigzags, and the edges are too jagged to have come from a regular sword. He squints. His skin looks corroded, blood leaking out at an alarmingly fast rate.
His eyes return to his opponent's sword. It glints unnaturally in the torchlight, and he swears he can see a drop of liquid fall to the ground.
A poisoned blade. Great.
Jason's muscles give out before he can realize they're going to and he crumbles to the ground. He lands on his back and the cavernous ceiling spins, first clockwise then counter. There's a shrill ringing in his ears and his breaths are shortening. His chest feels too heavy to lift. Everything blurs. Distantly, he hears the rustle of fabric as people crane their heads to get a closer look.
Is he dying? Can he even die again? Maybe this time it'll stick. He wants to laugh. He spent a year stumbling around Gotham with no wits to his name and then pulled himself out of the Lazarus Pit and then endured ten hour training days for a year, maybe more, and it's a poisoned blade that gets the best of him.
A hand ghosts against his skin, too warm and too soft to be anything but a figment of his imagination. It's a calloused one, nimble even in its largeness, and without hesitating he knows who it belongs to.
Leave me alone, Bruce , he wants to scream, sob, wail. I failed. I know it. Don't watch this last failure of mine. Don't watch me die again, not when we both know you won't save me.
I won't save you, Bruce agrees. His deep voice rumbles in Jason's ear. It sounds the same as it always has, like rocks crushed and then smoothed over. But you can save yourself. One last move, Jason. One last trick. And then you can rest. They will allow you to rest. And then when you are done resting you can try to do whatever you so want to do. You can kill me. But before that...
One last trick. It sounds easy--less than a minute of effort, but Jason's muscles are melting into the sand of the pit. He can't feel anything below his elbows and knees and his brain is swaying from side to side in his skull. He just wants to close his eyes and not open them again.
Do it , Bruce tells him. Don't pretend you can't. I know you can. And then he's gone.
Fuck. He's right. Jason Todd has survived the worst Gotham and Nanda Parbat and the Lazarus Pit had to offer and even when he thought a crowbar and a bomb were enough to end him, it turned out that he could survive that too.
Some Ra's Al Ghul wannabe will not be what breaks him.
Jason allows his breaths to slow and rolls his eyes into the back of his head. He even bites his tongue and allows some blood to flow out of his mouth just for dramatic effect. Through the ringing in his head he can hear the soft prowl of his opponent growing closer.
The footsteps don't sound as soft or careful as they did throughout the course of their fight. Good. He's tired. And, most likely, he thinks Jason is dead from the poison. The man kneels down next to Jason and his fingers flutter near Jason's pulse.
Before his opponent can blink, Jason tightens his grip around his sword and brings it to his chest. The sword cracks through bone and then sails through soft flesh and tissues and then crushes through bone again before protruding out of his back.
Jason's opponent looks down at the sword and then up at Jason. There's an amber fleck in his eye, Jason notices. "You..." he's saying, and then he's out of Jason's vision, crumbling to the ground.
"I won," Jason says. "I did it." The word stretches, jerks, tears around him. His heart is thundering one second, then silent the next. His chest hurts. His leg hurts more.
I knew you would , Bruce says, and he sounds warm. I told you so.
That's the last thing Jason hears before everything goes dark. The pain from his leg is the last thing he stops registering.
Jason ebbs in and out of consciousness as they move him back to his room and lay him on his cot. He's awake for good when they peel away the fabric that has gotten glued to his wound, and he starts screaming when they pour some sort of liquid--maybe alcohol, maybe something stronger--on it to clean it.
"Knock me out," he pleads when he can manage words. " Please. "
"No," a man says shortly, and then splashes on some more just for shits and giggles.
The pain is too much. It's a fire burning in each of his nerves and up his veins and into his very soul. It feels like a galaxy dying, like a universe being born from its own ashes. There is nothing in the world but him and his pain and this man and the pain. It builds up in his throat until he can no longer scream.
And then Bruce is there too, fingers trailing in Jason's hair and down the back of his neck and across his back.
It's okay , Bruce says, voice soft and firm. It's okay, I'm here and I'm going to make it okay. It's okay.
"It's not," Jason groans out. "It's not okay. Please. Bruce, Bruce, Bruce, Bruce , it hurts ."
I know. Hold my hand.
Jason's hands grip the wooden railing of his cot, so tightly that the entire structure creaks.
Good. Bruce hums the tune to some stupid song. Remember when you had that stomach bug and you swore it was the worst pain you ever went through? And then a week later you said that it wasn't actually that bad?
Jason does.
That's what's going to happen here. I promise. Bruce hums again. I know it feels terrible. I know it is terrible. But you are going to get through it, because you have to, and then you'll look back and realize that more than anything it's a cool story to tell your friends .
"Bruce." Jason's voice chokes on a sob. "Better. Promise."
"I promise."
Bruce's promises aren't good for shit. He promised he loved Jason and that he would do anything, anything for him and that he would protect Jason no matter what did and where he went and then he went and broke every last one.
But. Jason is in pain and he's cold and he wants his dad and so he's willing to overlook those gaps. His eyes flutter closed. He rides through the pain in a half-conscious daze, still feeling that ghost of Bruce stroke his hair and murmur sweet nothings and hum the tune of that fucking song like Jason is still a kid who got shot on patrol.
And then the alcohol must be done with its jobs or whatever because the pain starts to lessen.
"Done?" Jason dares, weakly, to ask.
"No," the man says again, and Jason has a moment to wonder if that's all the man knows how to say before something is pressing down on his leg, except it doesn't stop at the pressure and goes right to tightening.
Jason screams again. There's no way blood or oxygen or anything is getting to his leg through that impenetrable wall of pain. Absolutely none. If the end of the world has a second part, this must be it.
He's putting on bandages, Bruce tells him. You know what that means, Jay. You're so close to being done. So close. Just hold on a tiny bit longer. I know you can do that. I know you're more than capable of doing that.
Jason is, in fact, capable of doing that. So he holds on.
Finally, the pressure turns steady and bearable. "Done," the man says, and then Jason is unconscious.
Jason wakes up to a man's cut off groan, and then the wet thump of a body hitting the ground. When he looks up, he sees three guards splayed out on the ground, heads bloody and chests hardly rising. Above them stands Batman, cape billowing around him. The white lenses of his cowl focus on Jason as though he's the most fascinating thing he's ever seen.
Jason stares. Batman stares right back. Jason's lips part slightly. Batman stands utterly still, not a single muscle twitching.
This must be a hallucination. Maybe he's more dehydrated than he thought. Maybe the poison was laced with a hallucinogen, and it's still in his system.
"Jason," Bruce says. The word leaves his throat in an aborted gasp. He takes a jerky step forward. " Son. "
Okay. Not a hallucination, then. Jason has hallucinated after the Pit, almost this vividly, and never in any of those fantasies had Bruce addressed him as anything close to that.
"Don't call me that," Jason says. "You don't get to call me that."
Bruce goes still again. "Jason--Jay-- what --"
Jason laughs, a deep one that comes straight from his gut. Maybe the world doesn't hate him after all. Because here is Bruce, delivered to his doorstep practically gift-wrapped.
Jason swings his good leg off of the bed and clambers to his feet. His bandaged leg starts complaining immediately but the adrenaline singing through his veins is enough to keep him upright. Bruce takes another step forward, hands extended as though to help Jason, but one snarl from Jason stops him.
"You think you have any right to waltz in here and call me your son , even say my fucking name , after what you did?" Jason says. "Or, for that matter, what you didn't do?"
"Jason--you're my son --"
"No, I'm not. I thought I was, and maybe you thought I was too, but we were both wrong."
"Tell me what I did," Bruce says, and if Jason didn't know better he would have said that Bruce sounded pleading. "Please, tell me what I did wrong and I will apologize. I will go on my knees and beg for your forgiveness."
"You think a sorry will save you?" Jason snorts, disgusted. "You let the Joker live, Bruce. He killed me and he laughed as he did it and I know you must have seen my scars before you buried me but that wasn't enough for you." Green is flashing in his vision, and he can't tell if it's Lazarus or Joker green."I know you hate killing with everything in you but if I was really your son you would have killed him. And you sure as fuck wouldn't have replaced me."
He cocks his head. "Is that why you're here, B? Did the new Robin die because you couldn't save him and that's just what Robins do and now you want me to fill the mantle again?"
"No," Bruce says quickly, "that's not it. That's not it at all. Jason, let me explain. Please."
"Explain," Jason echoes. "Right. This should be fun. Please, don't hold back any details on my account. Though you might want to hurry. I think the League will catch you before you're finished otherwise."
"They won't," Bruce says, and some of that old gruffness returns to his voice, "Talia will send the guards the opposite direction and occupy them for a few hours."
Before Jason can ask how the fuck Bruce got Talia on his side and if it required hooking up with her, Bruce is digging his fingers under his cowl, scrabbling to get it off. When he does, Jason feels, for a moment, like he can't breathe.
He's always imagined Bruce looking the same as the last time Jason saw him. Same perfect skin and cold blue eyes splattered with blood as Jason beat the shit out of him.
But. The creases beside his eyes that used to look like laugh lines have deepened and look infinitely sadder, now. His eyes seem to have another layer of stoniness behind them, as though he's been fortifying the walls around himself. He's lost weight, and his cheekbones jut out like the hilts of knives.
Did Jason do this? A sense of perverse satisfaction stirs inside of him, and also something else. Something sadder. But he ignores it.
"I didn't kill Joker," Bruce says, "but I wanted to, Jason. I promise you, after you died, it was the only thing I could think about. I went to sleep thinking about what bones to break first and woke up wondering what organ would cause the slowest death if perforated and ate lunch fantasizing about hanging up his dead body in Gotham as a sign. I wanted him to die, Jason, and I wanted him to suffer as he did so."
"Really," Jason says. "Then why didn't you kill him?"
"Because I can't kill." Jason opens his mouth, but Bruce speaks over him. "And I don't mean because of morals or ethics. I mean that I cannot kill. I'm unable to." He clenches his teeth slightly. "I can leave someone for dead but if I see a gun or a knife or an arrow, in my hand or someone else's, it's like I can't think anymore. I'm in the alley again, and my father's hair is growing matted in his own blood and the pearls are flying everywhere and I'm holding my mother's hand and thinking that nothing will ever be okay again. And then I remember that nothing really was okay after that, not for a long time." He takes a deep breath. "And I can't do it , Jason."
Bruce meets Jason's gaze, and Jason realizes with a start that he looks fractured. Like a mirror splintering outwards from the core, held together by nothing but sheer will. "I'm sorry. I am. But I can't."
There's a full minute of silence, and then with a yell of frustration, Jason kicks the leg of the bed. This situation is entirely unsatisfying. He'd always imagined their confrontations as Bruce blubbering, coming up with futile explanations of why he didn't kill Joker that Jason could take great satisfaction in unraveling and unwinding, one by one. Instead, he has this. He's imagined a thousand things to say to Bruce when he saw him again but not one of them seems to fit.
He remembers, suddenly, after Catherine's death when someone couldn't even mention drugs or drinking without him thinking of her or Willis. The former was never much of a problem at the Manor but one time he walked into Bruce's office to see him sipping from a glass of scotch. He hadn't been drunk or anything, hadn't even been ditzy, but Jason had vomited all over the Persian carpet regardless.
Bruce had never drinken where Jason could catch him again and given him no indication there was alcohol in the premises at all, other than galas.
Jason grits his teeth. That's a stupid example. It's different. And yet.
"What about the new Robin?" Jason says, voice sharp as glass. "You can't go a day without something green and yellow in your vision either? Or else you'll think about the day when you saw a bird get run over by a car?"
"I didn't want him to be Robin," Bruce says, and his voice is steady and measured in the way that always told Jason he was telling the truth, before. "I didn't want a Robin ever again. I thought it would die along with you. But...he was insistent. Even more so than you and Dick. He was already staked out on rooftops every night, taking pictures of me."
"You had a stalker?"
"Yes."
"And you made him Robin ?"
"He was thirteen, Jason. I tried not to judge his character too harshly."
Jason grunts noncommittally.
"He knew who I was. He knew who you and Dick were. And he thought I was broken, and he wanted to fix me."
"Fix you," Jason says, raising an eyebrow. "Like a YA protagonist?"
"I don't know what that means, Jason. But yes. That was his motivation."
"How bad were you, that some midget wanted to be your free therapist?" Jason's stomach flips in anticipation.
"Very bad," Bruce says shortly. "When he talked to me for the first time, I was on the edge of a rooftop. I'd turned all suit functions off. Including life support. And I was..." He clears his throat. "Preparing to jump."
"Oh," Jason says, and then finds nothing else to add onto that. Satisfaction and frustration and deep profound relief mix uncomfortably in his chest.
"He wanted to help, Jason," Bruce says, and he somehow manages to sound proud and desperate at the same time. "And if I didn't let him do it under my supervision he would have tried to do it some other, extremely more fatal way." He hesitates. "When I first saw him in the Robin suit, I puked. All over my suit. And it's gotten easier to see, but not by much. I think of you every time."
Jason looks at him for a long time. His bad leg aches. "What do you want, Bruce? Why are you here?"
"I want you to come back to Gotham with me, Jason," Bruce says, gaze unwavering. "I want you to come home."
Jason snorts and shakes his head. "I can't do that. I've changed too much, Bruce. I'm part of the League now."
"So? You think I haven't changed too?" Bruce says. "I've lost a child, Jason. Of course I've changed. But I am still your father, and you are still my son, and even if the rules of gravity and matter and energy changed, that wouldn't."
Jason's heart lurches uncomfortably in his chest. He says nothing.
"Be honest with me, Jason," Bruce says, "are you happier here than you would be in Gotham? Do you think things are better here?"
"Yes," Jason tells him.
"Really? Because I doubt that." Bruce looks at him with an indecipherable gaze. "Tell me something. Does the League still drop you off at the bottom of a snowy mountain with a thin jacket, a pickax, and a rope and make you climb to the top?"
Jason presses his lips together.
"Do they still lash you twenty times when you lose a spar?"
The scars on Jason's back prickle.
"Did they put you in the same room as a prisoner the first six months you were here and order him to tend to your wounds, then tell you to kill him when you got close?"
Silence.
"Do they give you good food? Do they ever care if you're sick? Do they let you stop sparring when a bone breaks or a muscle tears?" The words are harsh but Bruce's tone is gentle. "Does anyone here love you, Jason?"
"Talia," Jason says. "Talia does."
Bruce looks at him. And Jason wants to punch that infuriating blankness of his face, he really does, but the fact is that he's right. Talia loves him in the way that a child loves candy or a chess player loves the queen piece. It is a distant sort of love, brought about by strategic need more than anything.
It can't hold a candle to the love Bruce had for him. That Jason thought he had. That maybe he still has.
And that's the big secret, isn't it? Jason misses it, misses the Cave and the Manor and the security, the comfort that Bruce had offered him. Misses being able to wake up late and eat his weight in ice cream and curl under five blankets when he went to sleep. Misses the comfort of falling asleep without wondering if he would be attacked in his sleep and being able to spend all day in bed watching TV if he had the flu. Misses tapping out, the gentle pat-pat of his fingers against Bruce's body before he was free. Misses the training mats cushioning his body when he fell and the hands fluttering over his body, gently correcting his form.
Jason misses Bruce. Misses the crinkle in the corners of his eyes when he was trying to hide his laughter and the gentle cadence of his voice when he helped Jason with his math homework and his stupidly expensive cologne that smelled like wood and smoke. He misses Bruce scooping food onto his plate at dinner, and Bruce leaving a few books that he thought Jason might enjoy in front of his door, and Bruce hoisting him up and swinging him through the air like he weighed nothing.
He misses Bruce so much it hurts.
Jason's leg gives away, but he's barely started falling before Bruce is there, catching Jason in his arms and setting him gently on his bed. It never fails to surprise Jason how fast a man as big as Bruce could move.
"I hallucinated you," Jason says. "I thought I was dying and then I was in more pain than I'd ever thought it was possible to be in and--and I hallucinated you."
Bruce clears his throat. "What did I do?"
"You told me to hold your hand."
Bruce takes Jason's hand in both of his, tenderly, like Jason is some valuable relic Bruce is afraid of breaking.
"I've hallucinated you, too," Bruce says. "Many times. Sometimes in the Manor and sometimes when I'm fighting."
"Yeah?" Jason says, voice scratchy. "And what do I do?"
"Always very normal things. You eat cereal. You read a book. You bite your nails."
"I've never bitten my nails."
Bruce rolls his eyes. "I've seen you do it almost every week, Jason."
Jason hums. He shakes his head, lets his hair fall in his eyes. "You want me to come home, B. And I sort of want to, too. But what do you see happening? I can't just let Joker go. And I can't avoid the replacement forever. Maybe we'll be happy for a week or two or a month. But it won't last."
"We'll figure it out," Bruce says, desperately, squeezing Jason's hand. "We'll figure it out, we'll find a way. This is a second chance, Jason. A second chance I'd thought it was impossible to get. I won't waste it."
Jason presses his lips together. He can't believe he's deliberating this. He's spent a year hating Bruce, loathing every inch of him, and a few kind words are enough to undo him?
But it's never been complete hatred, has it? Jason spent three years of his life with Bruce. The best three years of his life. A bond like that can't be torn, not completely. He thinks that there's always been a part of him that wanted Bruce and that life with him back. A part of him that wished he didn't have so many reasons to be mad.
Bruce lets go of Jason's hand. He opens his arms slightly. And Jason falls into them.
Jason Todd stands six feet tall. He has biceps thicker than some men's heads. He's pushing two hundred pounds. And yet as Bruce wraps him in his arms, he feels like he's still under five feet and barely able to completely wrap his arms around Bruce, like nothing's changed since he was small enough for Bruce to feel as a large, impenetrable wall against all the big and bad things in the world.
"You won't let Joker get me again," Jason breathes into Bruce's shoulder, "or anyone."
"I won't," Bruce promises. "I swear on my parents' graves."
Jason releases a low, shuddering breath. It's not over with the Joker. Maybe he'll be able to behave like a good boy for a week in Gotham, but he will kill him. He will or he'll go insane. And he doesn't think Bruce will mind much. He's clutching onto Jason like he's the first solid thing he's felt in years, and Jason doubts he's going to change his mind. Even if Bruce figures out what Jason is up to beforehand--which he will, because Jason had never figured out how to keep anything from him--he's still able to leave people for dead, his words. He'll turn a blind eye.
"Will you come with me?" Bruce asks.
"Yes," Jason says. "Yeah, I think I will."
The muscles in Bruce's back relax. He presses a kiss to Jason's forehead, then another, then a third.
"What would you do if I said no?" Jason asks.
"Knock you out," Bruce says, "and kidnap you, I guess. I'm glad we can do this with your consent, though. Might make a nicer story to tell."
Jason snorts, and it turns into something suspiciously like a sob.
He's tired. He's tired of the League and the training and the stupid fucking anger that boils and simmers and froths inside of him and never ever leaves .
Bruce gets off the bed, then kneels down. "Get on my back."
Jason stares. "You're kidding , Bruce."
"We need to move fast, and your leg isn't proving to be overly reliable."
"I'm two hundred pounds, B."
"I can carry two times my body weight," Bruce says. "And I currently have an insane amount of adrenaline in my system. I'll be fine."
"If you drop me I won't come with you," Jason warns, and then climbs onto Bruce's back. It is incredibly humiliating to be placed in what is pretty much a glorified piggyback, but Bruce stands without difficulty and starts moving out of the room and into the hallway at a brisk pace, so Jason swallows his pride.
"There's a gun in my belt," Bruce says. "Use it if you see anyone coming."
"You use guns now?" Jason asks, thrilled.
"Don't get ahead of yourself. They're tranquilizers."
"Oh."