Chapter Text
It’s an odd experience, watching something be given new life.
Jason hid away in the bathroom the night Tim and Bernard had found eachother again. Their voices are hushed and muffled through the door and he thinks Bernard eventually passes out.
When he gets up the next morning he finds Bernard tucked away into his bed, cheeks red and tearstained while he sleeps.
He goes back to the manor after that, fights off a hysterical Bruce with Alfred’s passive aid.
They don’t see Red Hood for a while after that.
Jason doesn’t see Bernard for a while after that.
He fully heals for that last time and is slowly let back out for patrols under heavy supervision. When Red Hood does show back up on the radar, he steers clear of Jason, opting for targeting Bruce with cyber attacks and leaving behind messages Jason never gets to see.
Jason’s memento smuggling hits a stand still and he doesn’t go into the room after that day.
He doesn’t until Bruce is gone again.
Jason walks down the main hall of the wing, a single knuckle dragging across the wall decals and eyes pointed down at his feet. Across the way he hears a scrape and then a thud. Jason stops in his tracks and looks to the door across from him.
Tim’s door room had been locked last he checked. He steps closer and presses an ear to the door.
An old dried page flips in an old dried book.
Jason wraps a hand around the door handle and slowly turns it.
It almost looks like it came straight out of a painting in a museum or a picture book in the manor’s library.
Tim is sitting legs crossed on the floor flipping through one of the few books left on the shelf and the sun shining through the window runs straight across him, the gold haloing him so much unlike the moon that had killed him that night.
Jason takes a step forward and feels the rug under his feet that he hadn’t for so long.
“How did you find him?” Tim asks, back turned to Jason.
“I might have broken into your old highschool’s records,” he admits. Tim sighs and shakes his head.
“No, how did you find him? ”
The room seems so devoid of a life past lived and Jason thinks that it fits Tim quite well.
“They didn’t want to talk about you, Bruce and them. I didn’t know anything about you, but I felt like I should if I was going to take your place,” Jason explains. Tim’s hand stills on the page. “And I didn’t mean to disturb the dead but I figured that here was a good place to start.”
“ Didn’t want to talk about me,” Tim hisses under his breath.
“I think they were guilty, or at least super touchy about it. I only really heard stuff about you from Steph,” Jason says.
“Good, they should feel guilty.”
“They really miss you Tim.”
“They don’t get to ,” Tim spits, “He knows full well that dying was a major possibility in that line of work. Knew that it was a sacrifice to be made. Which is why you need to quit. If you want anything outside of that stupid mantle then you should drop it right now.”
“I… don’t think I really do, have anything outside of it I mean,” Jason says. Tim turns his head just a bit so he can see Jason out of the corner of his eye. “I don’t have something like you did. I don’t have a Bernard.”
Tim’s grip on the book tightens and Jason thinks he sees a page corner rip.
“ How did you find him? ”
Jason shuffles in place and looks down at his feet.
“There was a CD,” he starts. Tim’s eyes widen and his shoulders tighten. “I thought it was Steph’s to you but she said she never gave you a CD so I just… stuck it in the TV. He was kind of my last chance at knowing you.”
Tim doesn’t move.
“He really loved you I think. He still loves you,” Jason says. Tim snaps the book closed and tosses it back to Jason.
“You can give him the rest of my room. I don’t need it.”
Jason frowns and looks back up from the book to Tim.
“Why don’t you bring it? It’s your stuff and he knows you’re here,” he says. Tim ignores him and starts to climb out the window. Jason steps to him and glares. “Have you even gone to see him again? He’s your boyfriend! You told him you wouldn’t leave him again! You promised him!”
Tim’s head whips around to Jason and he stays perched on the windowsill.
“It’s better if I’m gone.”
“Fuck you, he needs you!”
“He doesn’t need me kid. I was never supposed to be back in the first place, I’m an anomaly in the system. Bernard has moved on and-”
Jason seethes.
“Moved on, moved on?! ” he yells, “When I first met him and brought him the CD with a few photos he cried on the kitchen floor in front of me. A stranger! Some kid who had dug up his dead boyfriend’s possessions and just busted into his place!”
Tim doesn’t meet Jason’s eyes.
“Almost every time I brought something over he cried. He was finally starting to get to the point where he could smile when I brought something over until you came back. Now Bernard can have you but you’re just going to leave him? If I had someone who loved me that much I would never give that up!”
“You don’t understand kid,” Tim says flatly. Jason shakes his head and throws the book at Tim, and Tim lets it smack into his side and fall to the bed.
“No, I don’t.”
Tim turns around and jumps out the window. Jason stands there angry , fits clenched and face furious. He doesn’t understand.
They loved each other didn’t they? They did, he knows they did. Tim promised him.
Jason swipes the book off the bed and hauls the TV off the floor.