Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“From every height I’d fall, I’d call,

I’d reach out for your hand, you sing;

If I have to be who I was (you’re not)

Do I have to be who I am?”

Secret Worlds, The Amazing Devil

If any city in the world knows how to pick itself up after a crisis, it’s Gotham.

She knows a thing or two about rebuilding herself from the ground up, from the inside out. She’s been doing it since long before Jason was even born. For decades, for centuries.

Hell, local legend says she’s been damned since the very beginning; a curse on the land, poison in the water, madness in the blood. Skeletons in the closets and ghosts in the walls, haunting generation after generation of Gothamites too stubborn to move anywhere else.

Jason believes those stories more and more, these days.

Or… wants to believe them, maybe. For the absolution it would offer him, a balm for his guilt.

Then again, guilt is the least he deserves after everything.

It’s been almost six weeks since the Scarecrow was taken back into custody of Arkham Asylum.

The water systems have been fully flushed, and the security at municipal utility buildings across the city has been tightened courtesy of a very large Wayne Foundation donation.

Fresh-faced police officers patrol the streets, recruits shipped down from Newark and Jersey City to fill the gap left by Crane’s lackeys, too new to have been corrupted yet.

Broken windows are being replaced one by one, graffiti is being diligently scrubbed from the walls, store fronts are being repaired and repainted. 

Schools and businesses are reopened, and every Church and Mosque and shelter and clinic and charity organization is running drives for food and clothes and toiletries.

Victims of Crane’s drug who weren’t exposed to the magic detox cloud are being rehabilitated and displaced families are being re-homed.

The city is slowly, meticulously putting itself back together.

Jason only wishes he could do the same.

If Gotham is a healing body, and the streets are her blood vessels, then the people are the platelets working together to restore her. They swarm around the worst of the damage, stemming the blood-flow at the source.

Problem is, if Gotham is a body then the Bowery is a bone broken in childhood that never quite set right. It’s an old ache, familiar and grown around, one not worth the time or energy to ease when there are newer wounds to tend.

Crime Alley, of course, is the seam of the break. The site of the damage, the brittle bone knitted back together around the crack. The point of exposure, prone to inflammation.

Here, the pain is either ignored or self-medicated.

The population of the Bowery doesn’t have the health insurance to cover the residual effects of Scarecrows anti-fear toxin, they don’t have the luxury of sick days. They aren’t getting any of the governmental grant money promised for repairs. 

They help each other out where they can, but the toll it takes is visible on them like it rarely is in the inner city.

Alley folks are resilient in the weary kind of way that Jason was raised with, that he feels in his bones; you keep going because you don’t have any other choice.

Maybe that’s why he’s staying here - a block and a half down from where his mom died, in an apartment that’s only a step up from a squat by virtue of the fact that he pays to crash in it.

Cash in hand, no lease, no background checks.

No questions asked when Jason wakes himself up screaming.

He couldn’t stay in Wayne Manor.

Or, well. He could have , technically speaking.

He and Bruce had rattled awkwardly around each other in that big, empty house for a full week after the Titans left before Bruce had cornered him to say in no uncertain terms that he was welcome to stay indefinitely. 

That they could, ‘work out their next steps together.’

Like they should just sit down over afternoon tea and rationally, systematically bridge the insurmountable gulf of betrayal between them.

And the crux of the problem is that Bruce almost certainly could do that. He’d sit there perfectly composed, probably with a laser pointer and everything, and logically present each and every one of the missteps Jason took to get here.

That’s what Bruce does; he focuses so closely on the logical angle that he fails to consider the emotional one.

The same way he’d solemnly looked Jason in the eye and lied through his teeth when he promised Jason’s therapy sessions would be confidential, the same way he’d so calmly stripped Robin away from him like it wasn’t the only thing in the world that made Jason worth something.

But Jason isn’t capable of being anything but emotional about this.

How do you move past the fact that the closest thing to a father you’ve ever had wasn’t there when you needed him to be? How do you look that man in the eye after you’ve betrayed his most closely guarded secrets to one of his greatest enemies? How do you share Sunday brunch with a man who abhors killing, but murdered a man for you ? How do you pass him the fuckin’ peas when your own hands are drenched in more blood than you can even remember?

Jason appreciates that Bruce went after the Joker for him, he really truly does. The thought of Crane being just across town is bad enough some days that Jason can barely breathe, he doesn’t think he could have lived with his murderer still breathing Gotham air too.

But it also aches in his chest to see how deeply broken up Bruce is over it, a hollow shell of a man questioning his purpose and unable to find any satisfactory answers. As much as Jason can relate, it’s an acute kind of torture to see that agony mirrored in Bruce and know it’s all his fault.

That noxious mix of pity and guilt clashes with the lingering hurt of Bruce using Leslie to spy on him, and churns uncomfortably in his stomach. That small, persistent whisper in Jason’s head that wants to blame Bruce doesn’t ease up, no matter how justified the lack of trust turned out to be.

Jason hadn’t known how to explain that on particularly bad days, that voice sounds like Jonathan Crane. He hadn’t known how to explain that he doesn’t always disagree with it.

It was easier to leave.

The nightmares aren’t new.

He’d had them sometimes, before. A normal response, Bruce had said. Especially after a rough patrol, or those cases that cut a little close to home.

After Deathstroke, they’d gotten worse. 

Night after night of falling, of looking up at Dick’s anguished face vanishing in the distance as the washed out yellow light of office windows streaked past; running through close, dark spaces - subway tunnels, twisting alleyways, the endless manor halls - always followed by some unseen threat just out of sight, just out of reach.

Months of waking up in a cold sweat, gasping for breath with his heart beating out of his chest and his every nerve screaming run had been enough for Crane’s offer of artificial nothingness to seem like a blessing.

Jason should have known better. That old adage; if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. He should have known, nothing ever works out the way he wants it to.

Now, with the drug’s effects lingering in his system - jangling in his nerves, suffocating in his lungs - the half-memories are twisted into something even sharper.

Dick smiles beatifically as he lets go of Jason’s hand, the Titans standing behind him watch him fall - passive bystanders at best and sneering caricatures at worst. The lights in the windows shine by turns the fairy light kaleidoscope of carnival colors and a sickly squirming ethereal blue. He’s running down a hallway but he’s the hunter not the hunted, and he really, really doesn’t want to catch whoever he’s chasing.

Details are foggy tonight, just vague impressions of an awful choking tightness in his chest, but it’s familiar enough for him to know that he won’t get any more sleep tonight.

The walls are too tight, close enough to make him itch on the inside. His limbs feel twitchy and restless, he needs to move, needs to breathe.

He grabs his hoodie and heads into the night.

Fortunately, Gotham is just as much of an insomniac as he is. She comes alive in the dark, despite repeated attempts by the City Board to install a permanent curfew.

Especially places like Park Row, which is both Gotham’s red light district and the border for at least three different gang territories. The former is almost certainly what keeps the latter from breaking into all out war, because the pimps are a gang unto themselves and they won’t tolerate damage to the merchandise whether it comes from the Freaks or the False-Facers.

Jason used to swing by as Robin and chat with the sex workers before he left for San Francisco, because he remembers a few of the older girls checking in on mom after she got too sick to leave the house and everybody knows even The Batman avoids Crime Alley.

Not many are left now that knew him as Cathy’s scrawny little ankle biter and those few that did didn’t know him as Jason, they’d known him as Robin.

Now Robin is working with the Titans on the West Coast, and Jason can’t exactly walk up and ask how they’re doing without exposing a whole bunch of secrets he’d rather not compromise twice.

He doesn’t have anything like a patrol anymore, but he likes to touch base.

Jason doesn't really know what he'd do if he found something worth interfering in. So far, he’s only scared off a few would-be muggers by just yelling at them, but they were young and clearly inexperienced.

He doesn’t know how he’d react if things got physical. Hell, the last fight he was in he froze the fuck up, had to be dragged out by the wannabe Robin.

That's unfair to Tim, he knows it is. He also knows that he has to check on the Alley workers before anything else, or the thought that something might be happening will prey on his already frazzled nerves all night.

It’s easy to clamber up the fire escape behind the Monarch Theatre and do a loose circuit around the Alley by rooftop.

Thankfully, everything seems quiet. He doesn’t have to find the limits of his cowardice tonight.

Jason lurks on the roof long enough for a smoke, then slides back down a drainpipe on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and heads for the bus stop on Crown Point.

The bike Bruce bought him is long gone - a casualty of Jason’s spotty memories from the last few months, probably found by some opportunist and scrapped for parts by now - but the annual paid transport pass has been almost as good. The monorails might be free of charge, but there isn’t a station this side of Otisburg. The bus network is decent enough for what Jason needs.

There’s a library on the north side of the West End, overlooking the river and close enough to the University that it’s open 24/7 to accommodate the night-owl students venturing away from the campus facilities. 

It’s one of the older buildings in the district, all bare stone support pillars and sweeping arched trellises, and the closest thing he can get now to scaling the elaborate towers of the cathedral roof.

While it doesn’t hold quite the same nostalgia as the Manor Library, Jason spent enough time sheltering in libraries when he was homeless to feel… familiar, if not quite at ease. They’ve got free wifi and public-use computers and electrical sockets to charge his phone. 

It’s also a damn sight warmer than his crappy little apartment. He stands in the open foyer for a few minutes, shaking feeling back into his fingers.

Jason hasn’t really read anything for a while, chemistry textbooks aside. Not since the Tower, probably.

Before that, he’d been working through the classics with Alfred. But the old butler's heart had given out before Jason had mustered up the enthusiasm to continue Great Expectations. 

The last time Alfred had gently knocked on his bedroom door and invited him down for what he’d affectionately called ‘Book Club’ even though it was only ever the two of them, Jason had mumbled some excuse and stayed in bed. He’d been hospitalized two days later.

It feels like a violation to pick it up again now; a vigil Jason lost the right to attend.

He turns away from the bookshelves, finds an empty desk with a decent vantage point and squeezes himself into the corner seat to watch people disappear into the stacks.

There are almost certainly better things he should be doing, but fuck if he knows what they are. 

Chapter Text

Jason wakes up with a tremor in his hands that he can’t still, which in hindsight might have been an early sign that the night would be a write-off.

Shakes are a normal symptom of gas inhalant withdrawal, according to the Public Health broadcasts across the city, and anyone exposed to the airborne version of the anti-fear toxin could experience them for up to a month afterwards.

It’s been almost two months since Jason’s last hit, but he still gets like this three days a week minimum. He has no clue if that’s because what Crane gave him was a stronger dose or if it’s just because of how often he was huffing that shit, and it’s not like he can just walk into a free clinic, admit to being Crane’s special little lapdog, and ask if they could please run some tests.

He isn’t even sure exactly what chemical compound it was, because Crane never gave him the full formula. The one he handed over was deliberately incomplete, a fucked up sort of test; fail and die, or pass and he owns you.

At the time, the promise of a reprieve from the choking anxiety had been enough to make playing chemical Russian Roulette with the Scarecrow seem like a reasonable risk. 

Nowadays, Jason thinks the better option would have been finding the bullet.

He’d been stupid, so fucking stupid that it didn’t even ping on his radar when Crane immediately took over production the minute he was out of his cell. Of course he wouldn’t fork over his actual formulas, his life’s work, to a Robin.

Even a broken one.

Jason could maybe reverse-engineer the exact compound from his blood if he had his old notes and the Batcave equipment to run his own tests, but that would require actually speaking to Bruce.

He shouldn’t even have Jason’s number, but of course the concept of privacy is more of a suggestion than a legal requirement for The Batman. It had taken weeks of screening every call for Bruce to finally get the message that Jason doesn’t want to fucking talk to him; Jason isn’t desperate enough yet to willingly give that hard-earned silence up.

It’s fine, he’s fine.

Jason can handle the dithers.

Sometimes it helps to rest, to lay as still as possible with his hands pressed flat to the mattress or to sit at the table and push his palms to the laminate until the pressure overpowers the tremors.

Today that only has his nerves jangling more. On days like this, he has to move.

A walk is sometimes enough, a climb up to the rooftops for a smoke. Something small, just to shake out the tension in his nerves.

And when all else fails, there’s always the tried and true method of punching things.

There’s this hole-in-the-wall gym a few blocks down from his hole-in-the-wall apartment, a retrofitted retail space that Jason doesn’t remember ever being an actual shop. The store-front is all boarded up, layers upon layers of graffiti blending it right into the wall, and the only entrance is what used to be the staff access door around back.

It’s designed that way on purpose, mostly because it’s owned by a trans woman named Ari who has a penchant for taking in strays and letting them crash until they get their feet under them. The gym is the ground floor of what’s turned into an unofficial halfway house for queer teenagers.

Jason only knows it’s here at all because Molly dragged him along one time while she was looking to check in on a runaway from the shelter.

He hasn’t spoken to Molly since he lost his old phone and he’s been staying well away from the Narrows just in case - she’s better off without him, even if she doesn’t realize that yet. But he’d run into Ari his second week back in the Alley and she’d basically frogmarched him back to the gym for a formal induction.

For all that she’s a 6”3 second generation Pakistani-American woman with biceps that could crush your skull, Ari’s stern motherliness reminds him too much of Alfred for him to refuse her.

There’s also the added benefit that she doesn’t ask questions when he rocks up at 3am four nights in a row, which ranks her higher than pretty much anybody else he knows.

Jason makes it barely halfway down Park Row before he regrets not just taking some sleeping pills and curling himself into a blanket burrito until the shaking passed.

The tremors probably aren’t all that noticeable while he’s moving, especially through the combined layers of his hoodie and leather jacket. But he can’t shake the feeling that everybody he passes can see right through him, that everyone who so much as glances his way can immediately clock his weakness.

It’s paranoia, he does know that.

That’s another of the withdrawal symptoms, it’s normal.  

But knowing the toxin is probably compounding on his already existing paranoia doesn’t make it any easier to push those thoughts aside, and the amount of focus required just to keep putting one foot in front of the other means that he’s not concentrating on much else.

If he was, he might have noticed he was being followed before they had him surrounded.

Instead, he’s shoulder-barged from behind, then shoved into the mouth of an alley and pinned against a dumpster by a bunch of kids with their faces wrapped in dollar store bandannas.

There’s four of them. All with that familiar jaded look around the eyes that means they’ve got nothing to lose.

It’s hard to pin their ages with their mouths covered, but Jason would bet they’re all younger than he is except for the obvious ringleader - a guy maybe three or four years older at the most, with an obnoxiously large ring through his left eyebrow.

The way he leans casually against the opposite wall to watch while the younger three box Jason in says this is probably some sort of gang initiation.

The shortest one of them curls their hands into Jason’s jacket, tries to shake him but their hands must be sweaty, their fingers slip against the leather. They have a round, youthful face, and it scrunches up in obvious concentration as they wipe their hands on their hoodie and try again.

Jason feels his eyebrows steadily climb his forehead. 

He can’t help but laugh in their face when the pipsqueak demands, “Hand it over.”

The guy to his right, in a beanie pulled so low Jason’s surprised he can still see, obviously takes objection to that. He shoves Jason’s shoulder into the dumpster, hard. 

If Jason were a civilian, it might even have hurt. 

As it is, his jacked up nerves settle with the sudden pressure. It’s almost a relief. 

“Your wallet, asshole,” Beanie grunts. His hands are still raised, in fists too loose to be effective.

“No can do, sunshine,” Jason cheerfully tells him. It’s not even a lie - it’s a fifteen minute walk, he left his phone and his wallet in the backpack he keeps hung on the back of his door.

Babyface frowns like they hadn’t considered that an option. Beanie bangs his fist threateningly against the metal just over Jason’s shoulder. 

“Lie to me again,” he dares.

“Not lying,” Jason shrugs, unconcerned. This kid thinks he’s tough? Jason has faced down actual supervillains. 

And, really, these idiots have East Gotham Accents. It’s funny that they don’t already know better than this. 

Funny, or sad. 

“This is Park Row, man,” Jason gestures vaguely at their filthy surroundings. “Ain’t nobody got shit in Crime Alley.”

The third kid, the only one with the sense to use the shadows of their hood to hide their full face, snorts.

“Told you, boss,” she says, and her tone says she’s told him more than once. “Shitty place to be muggin’ folk.”

“An’ I told you,” Ringleader snaps. “Ain’t about what you get, it’s about doing what you’re fuckin’ told!”

His accent is too East Gotham. Forced, faked. Not from around here, but wants people to think he is? That’s almost funny, too, because nobody ever wants people to think they’re from Crime Alley.

“So shut your face,” he says, pulling a switchblade from his jacket and pointing at Jason with the sharp end, and the situation is suddenly a whole lot less funny. “Frisk this stupid ass tweaker and we can go.”

“Now, I’m flattered,” Jason starts, because these kids aren’t a threat and he really doesn’t want to have to hurt them.

But before he has to think of a way to talk himself out of this, some well meaning idiot turns the corner of the alley and, instead of turning right back around like any sensible Gothamite, runs straight towards them yelling, “Hey!”

Jason’s body reacts without thought.

He slams his forearm down, breaking the weak grip Babyface has on his jacket, and shoulder barges them into the dumpster, spinning with the movement to kick out Beanie’s legs and send him sprawling.

Ringleader takes advantage of his distance and throws the fucking knife, but his aim is shit and Jason is still turning; the blade glances harmlessly off his shoulder.

There’s a flash of movement in his peripheral, and Jason flinches trying to dodge a blow that doesn’t come, because it’s just Hoodie ducking down and forward to yank Babyface out from underfoot. 

That second of distraction is enough for Ringleader to close in and punch, catching Jason right on the cheek.

Jason rolls with it, redirecting the momentum into a return punch that is nowhere near as glancing - he feels the tell-tale give of a nose breaking, the guy drops to the floor and doesn’t get up.

Someone edges closer, and Jason registers it as Well Meaning Idiot just in time to stop himself from clocking him too.

If nothing else, it’s good to know his instincts are still mostly intact.

Doesn’t stop him from being royally pissed off.

“The fuck you doing, man!” A quick scan of the alley comes up empty; the other three must have pegged it. But still, “Don’t you know better than to get involved with gang shit?!”

Idiot just shrugs, gives a pointed glance down at Ringleader’s prone body and asks, dry and measured, “Don’t you?”

“Hey, they came at me,” Jason snaps, and then curses himself. He shouldn’t be this fucking defensive with a fucking stranger, fuck .

“Okay, okay, relax kid,” Idiot says, and he can’t be more than a few years older than Jason himself, dark skin smooth and unblemished.

“I’m plenty fucking relaxed, asshole,” he can’t stop himself from being as contrary as possible, even when he’s wound tight enough to snap.

“You’re shaking.”

He is.

Worse now than before, with the post-fight adrenaline crash hitting.

Fuck.

Jason turns straight on his heel, and leaves Well Meaning Idiot and his concern with the trash, where they belong.

Ari’s is only half a block away, but Jason circles twice to make sure the morons from the alley aren’t tailing him.

He gets a few funny looks but nobody else approaches him. He figures it’s because he apparently looks like he’s tweaked out his gourd until he steps into the fluorescent lights of the gym and Ari whistles a long, low note of sympathy at him.

“Damn, Jace, the hell happened to your face?”

“Wha--” is as much as he gets out before he catches sight of himself in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors.

His lip is split, swollen fat around a ragged tear where the skin is prone to reopening, blood dripping down his chin. The bright, fresh red stands out harshly against the pale of his skin, the dark deep bruises under his bloodshot eyes.

Those wary looks suddenly make a lot more sense.

No wonder those gangbangers marked him as an easy target - between the early hour, the shake of his limbs, and the washed out tinge of his skin, he sure looks the part of the helpless drug addict.

Jason ignores the whisper in his head, the voice that says that’s exactly what he is.

He turns his back to the mirror wall just in time to see Ari’s long braid disappear into the back room. She returns a minute later with a first aid kit, and directs him towards the weight bench.

“It’s fine.”

“Sit your ass down, kid,” she insists. “You look like you’re gonna shake outta your own skin.”

“I’m fine,” he says again, but he perches on the edge of the vinyl seat.

She tosses a sealed alcohol wipe at him, and watches while he fumbles with trembling fingers to open it. With the heavy weight of her eyes on him, he gives up and tears the packet with his teeth.

Jason stubbornly keeps his back to the mirrors and blindly scrubs at his chin for a few minutes before Ari clicks her tongue impatiently and holds out her hand for the wipe.

Her movements as she crouches and finishes his work are all carefully telegraphed similarly to how Bruce taught Jason to approach victims. It should grate on him, he thinks, that she’s clearly got him squared into that box, but he’s too tired right now to care.

She silently probes the tender flesh of his cheek for damage, and he sits silently and lets her.

“Wanna tell me what happened?” she finally asks when she sits back on her haunches.

“Not really,” he says, and he means for it to be snappy but mostly it just sounds dull.

She fixes him with that I’m disappointed stare that absolutely should not make Jason think of tea time in the manor on rainy Sunday afternoons but somehow still does.

And, well. Ari makes it her business to know what’s what around the neighborhood. She does him the courtesy of not prying into his business, the least he can offer in return is letting her know what kinda shit’s going down on her doorstep.

It’s absolutely not guilt that prompts him to offer, “Gangbanger initiation or some shit.”

“Hmm,” she nods, not surprised but considering. “They’ve been sniffing around lately. Wearing red bandannas?”

Which he hadn’t noticed at the time, but now that she mentions it, “Yeah. Why, you know ‘em?”

Now surprise registers. “You don’t ? I thought you were tight with Mol?”

Something pinches in Jason’s chest.

“Haven’t been out much lately.”

“Well maybe you should hit her up. She’d make sure you weren’t getting involved with the Hoods.”

No, it’s not a pinch, it's a squeeze, tight and unbreakable, a weight tied to the bottom of his lungs, pulling everything down into the nauseous churn of his stomach.

“Who?” he croaks anyway, because something in him knows but he still needs to hear it.

“The gang. Call themselves the Red Hoods.”

Chapter Text

Jason doesn’t linger long after that.

He can’t. Not with Ari all but smothering him in her patented brand of gruff sympathy, not with her having no fucking idea how little Jason deserves it.

This is his fault.

The Red Hood Gang hasn’t been seen since their last head honcho fell into a vat of acid and the Joker came grinning out. You couldn’t even say the words for a few years after, for fear that the man himself would crawl out of Gotham’s cracks and give you a rictus smile to match his own.

Jason was only a kid then, but he remembers the power vacuum afterwards well enough. Wave after wave of small time gangs flooding the streets, scrambling to fill the gap.

One of those turf disputes had been what got Willis killed.

Now kids are being dragged into this shitshow all over again, because of him. Paying the price just because Jason didn’t have the willpower to say no when Crane pressed that stupid helmet into his hands and whispered the name in a puff of noxious smoke.

Red Hood.

Jason had thought it was fitting, at the time.

A big fuck you to Bruce, a banner flying in the face of his failure, a call to arms for anybody ever let down by the Bat. ‘Your greatest mistake has become your greatest enemy’.

In his more lucid moments, Jason had even considered it poetic; the murdered becomes the murderer.

Crane mostly thought it was funny.

Jason is so caught up in his thoughts that it’s almost a surprise when he finds himself at his apartment door.

The lock always sticks, so he has to jiggle the handle at just the right angle as he turns the key. It takes just enough focus to pull him out of his head, and then it’s easy to fall into ingrained habits.

Leather jacket and hoodie hung up by the door; quick check of his go bag on the door; grab his phone from the zip pocket.

He flicks it on without thinking, and almost immediately regrets it.

Two missed calls and a voicemail from Bruce - Jason swipes the notifications away, ignore, ignore, ignore - and, below them, an innocuous five word text from Tim that makes the bottom of his stomach drop out.

> boarding now. see you tonight?

Shit.

Jason completely forgot the kid was due back this week.

And Jason isn’t so dumb that he doesn’t understand that Tim is the only reason he isn’t rotting in a cell.

Sure, maybe they can’t risk sticking him down the hall from Crane in Arkham in case he spills any more of their secrets; maybe they can’t be one-hundred percent sure he wouldn’t be able to MacGyver his way out of any given cell in Blackgate if he really wanted to.

But neither of those reasons extends to ever letting Jason out of the Batcave holding cells. That was all Tim.

Tim, his misplaced hero worship, and his inability to take no for an answer.

Jason texts back a simple, yeah, and then turns his phone off again before he can take it back.

He’s so wiped out from the adrenaline crash that he actually sleeps. So deeply that he doesn’t even move - he drifts off staring at a water stain on the popcorn ceiling that looks almost like an Alsation, and blinks awake to it still directly in his line of sight.

His limbs are stiff with the lack of movement, and he feels real fucking gross with sleep crusting on his eyelashes, sweat pooled uncomfortably at the small of his back, and his lips gummed together with a half-dried mix of blood and spit.

Ugh.

Jason pries his dry mouth open and groans into his empty apartment, just to hear some sound, just to remind his brain that his body isn’t actually still a corpse.

He takes a minute to stretch his hands, shake some circulation back into his fingers, but he knows it’s a delay tactic even as he does it.

When he can’t put it off any longer, he reaches for his phone. Fumbles blindly without turning his head for no reason other than to gain another few seconds.

He’s a little surprised to see he was out for a solid 10 hours.

Tim text him back almost five hours exactly after Jason’s last message.

> where do you want to meet up?

Then, ten minutes later;

> do you have an apartment in the city or something?

> or we can go somewhere else?

> sorry, shouldve realized you wouldnt stay at the manor.

Which.

Yeah, Jason definitely didn’t tell him when he left. Whoops.

In his defense, it’s not like they’ve exchanged more than a handful of texts since the Titans snatched Tim away. It never came up, okay.

And, Jason doesn’t think for one damn second that Bruce doesn’t already know his address. If nothing else, Jason’s trust fund hasn’t been cut off yet and he hasn’t been particularly sneaky about when and where he’s been using his debit card.

Bruce must know he’s back on Park Row, at the very least, and maybe Jason just kind of assumed he’d pass that information on to the others so they could keep tabs on him.

On the other hand… Jason looks from the water stained ceiling to the ratty wallpaper to the single repaired chair sitting at the cheap laminate table, and thinks he’d really rather not have people see how he lives.

He drags himself upright, rubs the remnants of sleep from his eyes, then makes a decision.

Water tower, corner of Bierce Avenue and Chambers <

> cool

> what time?

Jason considers asking what time Tim patrols, but decides he doesn’t want to know. It’s getting dark earlier with fall creeping in, but not too dark yet. He types out three, then licks his lip and gets a pungent taste of iron, reconsiders.

4? <

He waits just long enough for Tim’s confirmation to ping through, then he drags himself to the shower.

Jason gets there a half hour early, perches himself on the ledge just below the water tower itself. It overlooks Gotham Heights High School, and he settles in just as the students start filing out.

He likes to watch them. The groups of people dressed similarly, the groups who aren’t. The herds that stick together as they leave the campus, the ones that slowly splinter off, the individuals that always wander off alone. When he’s really bored, he sometimes makes up stories for them in his head.

There’s only a few stragglers left by the time Tim drops down next to him.

He’s wearing a wool-lined canvas coat and no mask, which is kind of a surprise. 

Jason was expecting Robin.

He tells himself the little twinge in his chest isn’t relief. It’s not like it matters if the kid is wearing the costume or not.

“Not working tonight?” Jason greets, keeping his voice as neutral as possible.

“Nope,” Tim says, something in his tone kind of… bemused.

And. It’s the kid’s first day back East-side; he traveled overnight; he knows what Bruce is like on paper, but has only spoken to him in person once before today and; Bruce is pretty much the epitome of an antisocial weirdo. 

Jason fills in the blanks. “Mandatory rest day?”

“Mandatory rest day,” Tim confirms. He keeps his eyes forward, but leans sideways and lowers his voice conspiratorially. “Boss is kind of a control freak.”

Jason huffs a little laugh. “Pretty sure you knew that going in, man.”

“I don’t know. I thought I did, but I dunno if I really knew anything. Still doesn’t feel freakin’ real , y’know. Like a dream I’m going to wake up from any minute.”

Yeah, Jason knows.

He also really doesn’t want to talk about it when he’s the one waking up to reality day after goddamn day.

Another batch of students trickles out the school, the after-school extracurricular type kids. They watch them disperse, then Tim turns and mostly looks him in the eye.

“So. There a particular reason we’re at a high school, or?”

Jason practically lived here for a few months, that’s why.

He’d known the best way into the building was the window they never close in the back art room, by the pottery kilns. He’d known that the security guy clocked off at 9pm except on Wednesdays when he dipped at 8, and that he showed up in the morning at 7 on the dot regardless.

Jason had known that the fourth showerhead on the right in the locker room had the best water pressure, that the head of the English Department kept vodka in the bottom drawer of her desk, that the kitchen inventory never seemed to notice a few missing bread rolls.

It's familiar, comforting.

He almost wants to say that, wants to talk about something that’s real and easy and not at all related to dressing up in hand-me-down legacies.

But the last person he shared this with was Rose, and well.

He swallows it down, covers it with a cavalier shrug.

“Well, you dropped out right?” he jokes. “Figured you might like to see what you were missing.”

Tim snorts. “Following a bunch of invisible social rules nobody can explain and listening to underpaid teachers take an hour to explain concepts I can wiki deep-dive in fifteen minutes? Who the frick would miss that crap?”

Jason had, actually.

He hadn’t had internet access back when he was still in school, hadn’t had the resources to take a bus over to the public library. He’d soaked up whatever information those overworked teachers had given him, and spent every lunchtime in the school library chasing follow up questions.

He’d cried himself to sleep the night he’d realized he couldn’t scrounge up enough money to feed himself and his mom while spending six hours a day sitting on his ass.

Maybe if he’d made it to high school, he’d have hated it like everybody else.

“Well,” he says, climbing to his feet and turning to point down Frances Street instead. “Fortunately for you, we’re going over to Kelly’s.”

Jason isn’t fussy about food - mostly because any food is good food when you’re hungry enough - but Kelly’s Diner is his favorite place to eat.

He orders the house burger, Tim asks for a chocolate milkshake, and they sit in awkward silence for a few minutes before Jason finally clocks that Tim feels as weird about this as he does.

And, fuck it. Jason is walking proof that maybe Robins don’t do so well without support, and lord fucking knows Bruce can’t offer anything more substantial than toothpicks and crepe paper.

Jason is an asshole but he’s not enough of an asshole to abandon Tim to that.

“My mom used to clean for some of the old folks a few blocks over,” he offers. Before she turned to… other means of making money, closer to home. “She’d bring me along sometimes, and we’d come here on the way home. Food’s still awesome.”

“Oh I don’t doubt it,” Tim agrees, and his smile ticks into something slightly less forced. “Local food is the best, and I’d know because my folks own a restaurant.”

“But?”

“But my folks own a restaurant,” he laughs, with such an untone of dryness that it reminds Jason that he does actually mostly like this kid. “And they haven’t seen me for a month. Mom didn’t let me leave til I’d eaten my body weight in rice.”

“Bet you needed it,” Jason returns. “Dick still cooking everything with cauliflower instead of carbs?”

“God, yeah! It’s so bad, so freaking bad! Who the hell makes pizza crust with vegetables. Hey, did he wake you up at random times for training, too?”

“Fuck, yeah. Second week in, he poured a cup of water over Gar! Man, I forgot about that.” Maybe talking about Titans shit is tolerable if it means getting to drag Dick a little. “He made you do the blindfold training yet?”

“The what?”

“Oh, that one’s real fun. Sparing, totally fuckin' blind, some bullshit about being prepared to fight without your senses." The easy camaraderie has him admitting, “Worse, that bullshit actually came in useful. Don’t tell him I said that.”

“My lips are sealed.” Tim mimes zipping his mouth. “So, uh. I’ve been on a few test patrols around San Fran, but. What’s Gotham like? Like, in comparison? Other than, y’know. Darker, and colder.”

That honestly catches Jason off guard.

He was Batman’s partner for almost a year before he went out west, and in the three months he was there they were never cleared for patrol; Tim’s been at this for six whole weeks max and apparently it’s enough for him to pass muster. 

Jason swallows the bitter, spiteful things he wants to say, covers his hesitation by rolling his shoulders into a shrug. “Wouldn’t know.”

He can see Tim process that for a second before his face falls into an uncomfortable mix of surprise and what looks suspiciously like pity and, yeah, no, Jason doesn't like him at all anymore.

Tim opens his mouth to speak, but the waitress chooses that exact second to drop off their orders and, jesus fucking christ, Jason is gonna tip her fuckin’ triple for undercutting whatever useless platitude Tim was about to spew at him.

To the kid’s credit, he seems to think better of it in the time it takes for the waitress to unload her tray and flash them a tired smile and a perfunctory, “Holler if you need anything.”

“Right,” Tim says, once she’s disappeared back into the kitchen. “Well, uh. Anything specific I should know before I go out there tomorrow?”

And. 

This is it, this is his opening to tell Tim about the Red Hoods.

And he absolutely, one hundred percent should tell him.

Crime Alley is only a Batman problem one night a year; if anyone is going to get involved in this, it’d be Robin. Depending how far they’ve expanded, Tim might even run into them muggling someone else in a random alley at the asscrack of dawn.

But… that would mean admitting to this shitshow, admitting to these consequences that literally have Jason’s name stamped across them.

And it’s selfish, but Jason likes that he can pretend to be a real boy here, even if it’s only for an hour. He likes that edge of hero worship he sometimes thinks he catches in Tim’s eyes; the way the kid looks at him and still sees good despite the mounting evidence to the contrary.

Jason isn’t a good person.

“No,” he says, because he’s a pathetic piece of shit. “Nothing I can think of.”

Chapter Text

Jason’s cowardice buys him a little more time to work out what the fuck he’s gonna do about this mess without crawling back to the Batcave and hoping they take pity on him a second time.

He turns it over and over in his head for days after the meeting with Tim, but he doesn’t see any way that dice-throw would land in his favor.

Bruce has only been as accommodating as he has about Jason leaving the Manor and living unsupervised because he’s got some twisted idea that forgiving Jason for breaking the no-kill rule extends to forgiving himself for breaking the no-kill rule.

But Bruce rid the world of a single certified capital-M Monster. Jason crossed so many lines so quickly that he doesn’t even remember all of them. 

Jason targeted heroes over hurt feelings; he deliberately put innocent people in the crosshairs. And now some new assholes are doing harm in his name.

It’s all going to come out eventually, he knows. Bruce doesn’t let things sit, and one of these days he’s going to review the footage or reread the reports and remember that Jason shouldn’t be out on the streets. Going to him with this gang issue now would only tip him off faster.

Which means Dick is equally out of the question. 

Even if there weren’t eleven states and a metric ton of issues between them, Jason can’t guarantee that Dick wouldn’t turn right around and tell Bruce anyway. Dick might spout that Fuck Batman shit in front of his team, but he always comes crawling back to daddy eventually.

The cops couldn’t find a gang leader if Jason drew them a fucking map, and even if they did they wouldn’t fucking do anything about it. Not in the Bowery.

So he’s on his own. 

Problem is; on his own, Jason’s actionable options are severely limited.

He doesn’t know anything beyond the fact that there is a gang using his old name - or, now that he thinks about it, possibly the Joker’s old name. He’s honestly not sure which would be worse - and they’re initiating kids via mugging.

That’s it.

No estimated numbers, no approximate locations, and absolutely no idea what their motive is.

It takes him an embarrassingly long time to remember that he knows someone who might have more information, and takes a little longer than that to psych himself up to actually visit Ari’s. 

She’s wiping the equipment down when he arrives, and she doesn’t quite raise an eyebrow when he slinks through the door but her face twitches like it’s a near thing.

“Little early for you, isn’t it?”

“Little early or a little late, one of the two.”

She throws her hand-towel at him, laughs when he ducks just in time for the damp cloth to splat against the mirror. She doesn’t seem all that pissed about him running out on her the other night.

“Gimme that back,” she says, and waits for him to snag it from the floor and toss it lightly back into her waiting hands before she adds, a little pointedly, “So what can I do you for? You don’t exactly look dressed for a workout.”

“No, I, uh.” No, don’t hesitate. He fucked up, he can own it. “I wanted to thank you. For the--” he gestures at his face, the busted lip that keeps splitting and scabbing over in turns. “And sorry I didn’t say it at the time.”

Ari looks at him like he’s stupid.

Which is probably fair.

“Don’t worry about it, kid. I’ve had my share of shitty nights, I make a point not to judge other people by theirs.”

In Jason’s experience the opposite is true - people reveal their real selves at their worst - but he keeps that thought to himself. 

When he doesn’t argue the point, Ari sighs.

“What else?”

No use beating around the bush, then. “That upstart gang you were telling me about--”

Now she looks at him like he thinks she’s stupid. “I ain’t in the business of starting gang wars, kid.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Jace,” she levels him with that no-nonsense look. He raised his chin and meets it. “You really gonna try to tell me it’s not personal? Because the way you high-tailed outta here at the name sure seemed kinda personal.”

“ You’re the one who said I should know about ‘em!” he snaps.

“And now you do!” she snaps right back. “Job done!”

Silence echoes between them, expectant.

“How deep in this are you, kid?”

“I’m not --”

“This why you’re avoiding Molly?”

Ari’s look turns assessing. Jason crosses his arms across his chest and tells himself it’s not defensive.

“No,” he grits. “Told you, been busy.”

“With the Red Hoods.” Not exactly. But it’s not a question, and he’s not in a hurry to explain even if it were. “You know she asks me about you.”

“She doesn’t want to talk to me,” he says, before the full implications hit him like a sucker punch. Molly is asking about him , after everything he’s done. Fuck, fuck .

“She does ,” Ari insists.

“She fucking shouldn’t , then!”

God, Mol deserves so much better than putting up with his bullshit.

“And you shouldn’t be chasing whatever demons it is you’re chasing, kid.” Ari doesn’t sound angry anymore. Just resigned. “But something tells me you aren’t gonna stop any more than she will.”

“I can’t,” Jason admits quietly, all the bluster leaving him at once.

Ari absorbs that with all the gravity of a deathbed confession. Maybe, Jason thinks wildly, maybe that’s what it’ll be. Maybe it would be right, if it was.

“Some of the kids,” Ari starts, before she cuts herself off. She rubs a weary hand across her face, then starts again. “Some of the kids were approached. Told to go to the strip joint off of Crown Point.”

It’s not much, but it’s a start.

“Thanks,” he says, and means it.

Jason has his hand on the door when she adds, much more sternly, “Call Mol.”

“Maybe I don’t want her caught up in this shit.”

“Maybe,” Ari says, plainly. “She doesn’t want you caught up in it either.”

Well.

It’s a little late for that.

The club is, like many of Crime Alley’s seediest buildings, tucked away in the shadow of the Monarch Theatre. It’s no Iceberg Lounge, but Club Zebra has lingered here as long as Jason can remember and is well-enough known throughout the Bowery as a hub of barely concealed low-level criminal activity.

Very low-level for Gotham, considering it hasn’t yet inspired some lunatic to dress up in animal-themed stripes and bomb zoos or some shit.

At any rate, it seems an odd move to recruit a bunch of teenagers and then direct them to a strip club. Maybe that’s one of their selling points. Or the benefits package.

Jason perches himself on a fire escape on the opposite building and watches people come and go. Foot traffic starts slow and predictably ticks up the later it gets, but even then it’s the usual suspects. Sex workers and johns, the Bowery natives who barely even register the flashing XXX signs as they take casual a shortcut home and the obvious outsiders who scurry by but can’t fully tear their eyes away. Jason doesn’t clock an unusual amount of younger looking customers.

There’s nobody he outright recognises either, though a few faces ping as vaguely familiar. It’s hard to say if that’s a Known Criminal familiar or just a Sucker Who Also Lives in Crime Alley familiar.

Once, he thinks he catches the glint of an eyebrow ring in the neon glare, but it’s gone before he can pinpoint if it was the ringleader from the alley or not.

If Jason still had his WayneTech phone and it’s built-in link to the Batcomputer, he’d be able to scan these fuckers through the system and see how much of a threat they actually are. But he doesn’t, so he makes as many mental notes as he can and reminds himself that calling Bruce would be a terrible idea.

When he doesn’t get much from the outside, Jason briefly considers going in undercover.

Sure, the kids in the alley were younger, but no gang can be running purely off of tweens so green they scarpered at the first sign of violence. Jason’s not too old to blend in, he could string them along long enough to get the information he needs and then duck out on them.

But… that cuts a little close to what he thought he was doing with Crane, at first. And he got so lost in the bit that he’s still scrambling for a way out.

He’ll call that Plan B.

The second day, he buys a fresh pack of cigs as an excuse to loiter out on street level. 

It’s quieter, probably because the weather breaks into an uncomfortably consistent drizzle the entire afternoon. Jason pulls his hood low and ducks under a mostly-sheltered fire escape and watches until he’s soaked to the bone, then calls it a night.

On the third day, there’s a lady in his spot.

“Bum a cig?” she yells, to be heard over the rattle of rain on the metal railings above.

She’s maybe early twenties, with pale skin and bottle red hair shining bright in the rain, and even if Jason wasn’t acutely aware of the type of work people do on the east end of Park Row, the flashes of barely-there leather dress visible between the folds of her soggy faux fur coat give away her occupation pretty clearly.

Jason doesn’t know her, but sue him; he’s got a soft spot for folks making the best of a bad hand.

He pulls the half-empty pack from his jacket and taps one out for himself, then hands the rest over to her. Not like he can’t buy more, make the most of B’s money while he still can.

Jason lights up, then offers her his cheap plastic lighter too.

“Thanks, sugar.”

She cups her hand round the flame to protect it from the rain, and in the flare of orange light she looks younger. Closer to Jason’s own age, maybe. It makes it all too easy to picture himself in her place, if things had gone just a little differently at any point in his life.

When she holds the lighter back to him, he pushes it back towards her. “Keep it.”

“Ain’t you a sweetheart,” she says, and it’s all sales pitch. She slides closer, purses her mouth into an O shape to blow smoke at him. “Name’s Cherry. What do I call you, handsome?”

“Ja--” he starts before he thinks better of it. Should probably have gone with a fake, sniffing around in this shit like he is. He salvages it as best he can, “Jay. You can call me Jay. And it’s a pleasure, Cherry, but I’m not buying.”

She gives him an exaggerated pout, but settles back against the wall to finish her smoke.

“So, Jay,” she says, stubbing out the butt and perching another cig loosely between her lips. “This ain’t exactly a picnic spot. If you aren’t buying, what you doing here?”

Cherry is awful chatty for a Crime Alley prostitute. Maybe she’s new. Maybe he can use that.

“Waitin’ on some… friends,” he says, fighting to keep his voice casual. “But it doesn’t look like they’re showing anyways.”

She frowns, and fuck it, he doesn’t want to lose her now . He pulls the leftover cash from his wallet, flashes it where she can see it.

“Hey, Cherry, you ever work in the club?”

“No,” she scoffs. “The indoor girls are hands off. Same boss either way.”

“Yeah? He know anything about the Red Hood Gang hangin’ round here?”

“Might’ve mentioned ‘em,” she says, pulling her coat tighter against the cold rush of wind. “Haven’t seen any of ‘em in a few days, though. Sorry.”

Fuckin’ typical. Jason hands her the money. “Don’t suppose you’ve any idea where they went?”

“Dunno. Scoutin’ out the Dawkins Centre again, maybe, but,” she ends in a noncommittal shrug.

“That’s the new youth center, right?” It’s a recent development, after Jason’s time. Big old Mill renovation right in the middle of Park Row. “What would a gang want with--”

But his brain catches up with his mouth before he’s finished the question.

What would a gang want with a youth center in the most deprived part of the city?

Recruits.

Chapter Text

While relocating makes for a change of scenery, Jason can’t actually do anything more at the Dawkins Center than he could at Club Zebra.

It’s based out of a huge old building, one of the largest non-condemned factories left in the Bowery. A full block wide, bordered by Park Row on the north side and Milltown Road on the south, Jason walks past it nearly every time he leaves his apartment. He might have paid it more than a casual glance if his experience with youth workers wasn’t that they’re generally self-serving assholes best avoided.

A double circuit around the building comes up empty for anyone lurking outside. Inside seems quiet, too, despite the 24 hour refuge at one side of the remodeled factory floor. They must have a good rep. Or good security.

Jason isn’t much in the mood to test either after three days of little to no sleep, which leaves him sat on a slightly different rainy rooftop with no leads, twitching with impotent anticipation.

He should probably go back to his apartment and rest, chew on this development a little and see what his brain spits back out.

But he couldn’t sleep right now if he tried. He’s too wired, too keyed up. He needs to do something useful.

Think.

Okay.

If the Dawkins Center is a front for gang recruitment, step one should probably be to figure out how they’re running.

Jason heads to Crown Point, and catches the bus over to West End.

One benefit to visiting the library in the middle of the night is that most of the younger kids have already headed home. The people left are either college students prowling the stacks or adult researchers with their own personal laptops, keeping to themselves.

Jason heads for the mostly empty bank of computer stations, snags the corner one. It’s no Batcomputer, he thinks, annoyed, when it takes forever to load up, but it’ll do. While it whirls noisily to life, Jason plugs his phone in to charge too.

His teeth itch with how long it takes to set up a secure connection on this slow-ass system, but Jason can research the old fashioned way just fine.

The Dawkins Center has been the Dawkins Center since it was bought out three years ago by - surprise surprise - a Max Dawkins. He funded the work with Wayne Foundation grants, and has it listed as an officially liscenced youth center with the city. Which isn’t saying much, considering the state of Gotham’s municipal systems.

For a guy self-centered enough to name an entire building after himself, Max is awfully camera shy. There’s no mug shot on either his personal website or the official Dawkins Center socials, and the only photograph in the tiny article the Gotham Gazette published is a zoomed out shot of the front steps where a blurry black guy in a gray-scale suit is cutting a ribbon.

Jason's phone finally buzzes to life, pulling his attention for a second. Two message notifications flash up on the screen as soon as it connects. 

He ignores it, sends the Gazette article to print and walks the long way round the building to the printer. 

That single scant report doesn’t tell him much, but he reads it over twice anyway. According to Deb Donovan of the Gazette, Max Dawkins is a local boy - born and bred Alley kid raised in a series of group homes, who earned his social care degree via scholarship and dedicated himself to his community.

Shame it’s probably a front.

Mr Dawkins wouldn’t be the first guy in Gotham to use youth work as a cover for recruiting - hell, Jason spent enough time at Ma Gunn’s Home for Delinquent Boys to know that personally. But the Dawkins Centre has wider scope than one old lady with sticky fingers. With an extensive list of services it offers, from sports clubs to psychiatry to temporary housing for homeless youth, there are plenty of different angles to lure kids in and--

“Hey, man, you okay?”

Jason follows the irrational urge to defensively close his tab and then feels real fucking stupid for it because he wasn’t even looking at anything bad. Bat-trained habit to cover his tracks, he supposes, but it’s embarrassing as shit out here in a public library.

It puts him on the backfoot right away, and he’s expecting the girl to be laughing at him when he turns to snap, “What’s your fuckin’ problem?” before he catches the obvious concern on her face.

Her expression falls into a scowl just as quickly as Jason’s temper stalls out.

“Fuck you too then, asshole. Jeez.” She drops into a chair a couple spaces over, throws a heavy sounding backpack down by her feet and jabs the power button viciously, like she’s imagining it’s Jason’s eye. “Maybe lose the attitude along with your jacket.”

Which, “What?”

“You’re shaking like a leaf and dripping freezing ass rainwater all over the equipment, genius.”

Oh. He is shaking, his fingers twitching where he has them raised above the keyboard. He presses them flat to the desk until they stop, but now that he’s aware of it he can feel it in the rest of his body too.

He. Is he cold?

Jason closes his eyes against the suddenly too-bright glare of the monitor, tries to breathe deep and slow, tries to focus on the texture of the desk. The wooden grain is worn smooth in most places, but his restless fingers find a spot on the underside that he can follow in circles. Breathe in for a rotation, hold for a rotation, breathe out for a rotation.

He is cold, he thinks. He’s soaked from the rain, damp through to his skin on his front where his hoodie is exposed. But it’s all kind of numb, distant.

Distance is good.

Deep breath, and push it further away.

In, hold, out. In, hold, out.

Jason’s phone buzzes again; a call this time, vibration bursts loud against the desk and echoing in his head. He snatches it up, stares at Bruce’s name above the obnoxious green accept call bubble until it stops. 

It doesn’t ring again. 

He can’t decide how he feels about that when he can still feel eyes on him. Jason tips his head sideways and, sure enough, the girl is blatantly peering at him over the top of her chemistry textbook.

“Sorry for jumping you like that,” she offers, dropping the book charade altogether as soon as Jason makes eye contact. “Are you okay?”

“What do you think,” he starts, before catching himself. He squeezes his fingers around the hard plastic and breathes. Tries again. “No. Sorry. Long fuckin’ day. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”

“Lame ass apology accepted,” she beams at him, teeth bright white against her tan skin and wide enough to be threateningly cheerful. She sticks her hand out, holds it there between them until he sighs and returns the handshake. “I’m Steph.”

“Jason,” he tells her, mostly to make her let go of his hand before it starts shaking again.

“You know,” Steph says, tapping the printed newspaper article haphazardly tossed on the edge of Jason’s desk. “Dawkins is pretty good. I go there sometimes for boxercise, but they have links with the rehab center near where I live in the Narrows, and--”

She freezes mid-word, and Jason frowns, trying to rewind the conversation and figure out if he spaced out and missed something before she continues, back-pedaling so fast she’s tripping over her words.

“I mean, not that you look like you need rehab. Um. That, uh. That came out wrong. I just, your hands, and. My mom, she gets the spasms like that when she-- that’s, fuck, sorry, you don’t want to hear that oh my god, shut the fuck up Stephanie.”

Steph buries her face in her hands, blonde curls falling forwards to hide her more, and Jason actually feels bad because it’s not like she’s wrong.

“’The spasms’ huh?” he offers. “My mom used to call ‘em the dithers.”

“You don’t have to tell me, it’s none of my goddamn business,” she peeks through her fingers. “I’m so sorry.”

Jason shrugs. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m totally going to butt out now, I swear.”

And. This is an opportunity.

“You know this Max guy?”

“Not really,” Steph says, finally pushing her hair back from her face. “He sometimes supervises quiz night because the kid who runs it is only like 12, but not always. Bigger fish for the boss man to fry, I guess.”

Yeah, Jason bets there is. Bigger fish like setting up a gang enterprise.

“Boxercise, rehab, and quiz night,” he says, in a sardonic drawl Alfred would have been proud of. “I’m sold.”

She shoots him a look that dares him to judge her, all the embarrassment of before gone. “Don’t diss quiz night until you’ve tried it, dude. I mean, it’s more like a pot luck anyway; general knowledge, puzzles, riddles– Do you need to get that?”

His phone is buzzing again. Texts this time, ping ping ping, and the screen reloads quickly trying to keep up; Tim, 4 new mess— 5 new— 6 new messages.

“No,” Jason says, swiping them away. “Did you say fuckin’ riddles? In Gotham?! That’s asking for trouble, bro–”

“--please, that Jolly Green hack has nothing on us!”

“I dare you to call him that to his face!”

“If he ever showed up, I would! And, hey, it’s an open event, if he really wants to get owned by a bunch of teenagers from the East End he’s fucking welcome to come!”

Jason doesn’t realize how loudly they’re talking until a student a few desks over shushes them, and then they both turn back to their screens like guilty children. 

It’s kind of ridiculous, but it feels… good.

As pathetic as it is, Jason has missed just talking to people.

He knows he's a lot to handle, he always has been. Doesn't know when to shut up, doesn't know how to stop pushing.

Even back when he was young - when he still went to school more often than not - people didn't like him. He never had friends so much as he had a few people that let him tag along with them until they got bored of him.

Bruce was like that too. And Dick, and the Titans. 

They tolerated him.

Until they didn't.

Tim will catch on eventually. So will Molly.

But Steph doesn't know him, doesn’t know his history - any of it, the good or the bad or the real fucking complicated - and it’s...

Nice.

“So,” he says after a few minutes, and he tells himself it’s for the case even if it feels like self-indulgence. “If I was interested in tryin’ out one of these pot luck quiz nights?”

“So long as you’re not planning on showing up in a bowler hat!” Steph laughs. “There’s one next week. I could meet you there, y’know. Um. If you want. Let me get you my number.”

“Yeah,” Jason says, and hopes he doesn’t sound like a fucking creep. “Yeah, that’d be cool.”

He unlocks his phone, catches sight of Tim messages despite himself, and every ounce of equilibrium he’s clawed back drains right out of him again.

> hey man can you call me

> When you get a sec

> b gonna call you

> tried to tlk him out of it, he’s not listening

> shit, okay, he can’t get thru

> look im sorry to tell you like this but seeing it on the news is probably worse right

> there was an attempted break in at arkham tonight. someone tried to get to crane

Chapter Text

Jason gets from the library to his apartment in a sort of out-of-body haze.

He remembers his research and the conversation with the girl - Steph. He remembers getting Tim’s messages, and the cold numb feeling creeping up his hands and feet. Fumbling the phone back into his jacket, and vaguely muttering an excuse, and maybe Steph saying something as he stumbled out of the building. He remembers flagging down the bus and the rain on the window during the journey back across town and the way the rushing in his ears didn’t ease until he jangled the finicky lock of his apartment door closed.

But it’s… distant. Like watching it happen to someone else, like a TV show or something. An old one, played on one of those tiny box TVs with fuzzy, intermittent signal and static biting at the edges of the picture.

It still feels a little like that now, but nobody else has ever been in this shithole but him, and nobody else draws imaginary shapes on the crappy leaky ceiling, so it must be him.

The vaguely dog-shaped water stain radiates judgment and disappointment from above as Jason paces the cramped space of his room. It’s four steps from the front door to the kitchenette; quarter turn and three to the bed; turn and four steps to the bathroom door; three steps back to the front door.

“I know,” he snaps it. “I overreacted.”

Nothing even happened. Whoever broke in didn’t get far enough to actually do anything.

The thought catches in his brain like a thorn, and Jason is flooded with an irrational doubt, suddenly, that he’s misread or misremembered. 

He breaks his circuit of the room to cut across to the bed, snatch up his phone and flick back through Tim’s messages.

> look im sorry to tell you like this but seeing it on the news is probably worse right

> there was an attempted break in at arkham tonight. someone tried to get to crane

> they didnt get to him

> security stopped them before they got anywhere close

> the commish is on her way now, to personally interview them

> all handled, dont worry. just thought you should know

Relief unclenches his muscles as he reads and then rereads the words, body flushing cold then hot again with embarrassment. Jason refuses to look up at the dog.

He starts moving again, in reverse this time. Bed; kitchen; door; bathroom. Still exactly fourteen paces but it doesn’t feel right. He does a 360 and starts again the right way. Better.

So, these guys didn’t actually get to Crane.

And even if they had somehow managed to get through Crane’s brand new super high security measures and whatever network of bugs Jason would bet money on Barbara setting up after last time, Crane is useless right now.

At least, he is according to the single, solitary voicemail Dick has left on Jason’s new number. Jason hasn’t listened to it since the first time, but Dick had explained in clinical detail exactly how Rachel used her freshly honed freak powers to pour Crane a healthy dose of his own rancid medicine.

It’s stupid to be--

“I’m not fucking scared,” Jason tells the Alsation.

There’s nothing to be scared of.

But it’s like a toothache in his brain, and Jason can't stop poking at it. What if, what if, what if.

If they had gotten to Crane, could they have actually gotten him out? Could they have fixed whatever fucked up mind trap Rachel trapped him in?

If Crane had gotten out, would he come for Jason? Would he try to talk Jason over to him again, with his warped truths and false kindnesses? Or would he take Jason’s betrayal personally enough to write him off, to take him off the board?

Would he care one way or the other, now that Jason isn’t Batman’s Robin or Scarecrow’s Red Hood or anything to anybody anymore?

Jason’s eyes itch, and he realizes his breathing has shallowed - short and panicky, sharp pain in his chest. He tries to time his breaths to his steps, even and deep, but he can’t make his lungs cooperate.

“It’s not real,” he croaks, to the dog or himself or the room at large. “Not real, not real.”

It’s not real, Jason is stressing himself out over nothing.

He pulls up the texts again, forces his eyes to focus on the letters, forces his brain to focus on forming the sounds into words. He feels sick, but it helps a little.

Maybe he will listen to Dick’s voicemail again, just to settle his stupid irrational nerves.

Another text arrives before he can act on that thought - and then another, and another. If the nervous rapid multi-texting didn’t give away the sender, the new bubbles flashing up below the others messages on his screen would.

> hey, man, I get you not wanting to talk to b but. are you okay?

> I mean. I get if you dont wanna talk to me either.

> but youve got my number if you want to talk about it

> or anything

Jason doesn’t want to talk about it, because there’s nothing to talk about.

He’s fine.

Those guys didn’t get to Crane, and the cops and Batman and fucking Robin have it handled, and it has fuck all to do with Jason--

Oh.

Except.

Except, what if it does?

The Red Hood Gang.

A gang named for either Jason’s recent persona - a puppet, with Crane pulling the strings - or named for the Joker - whose death Crane publicly claimed to have a hand in.

So if this is about Crane… why go for Arkham now, while they’re still recruiting? A trial run, maybe? Test the security systems now, to hit harder when they have higher numbers?

But why the heavy focus on Crime Alley? Scarecrow has never had much use for the poor beyond toxin fodder and his sick little experiments.

If some new asshole is picking up that thread, Jason can’t let it happen.

Jason only has one lead, but it’s one he can follow.

It was stupid to put off going to the Dawkins Centre. There’s no need to wait for some girl to show him ‘round just because he’s a little lonely.

Stupid and selfish.

The Centre is there right now. It has a 24 hour shelter at one end. Jason can walk on in and talk to this Max guy.

His fingers tighten around the phone.

If all of this is connected, he should let Tim know. The kid would probably jump at the chance to help; he’d sweep in swishing his brand new cape and--

No.

This is Jason’s problem. He’ll fix it himself.

Jason is so caught up in his own personal call to action that he’s up on the rooftops and three blocks over before he realizes he’s forgotten to grab a jacket.

At least the constant rain of the past week finally seems to have blown over.

He’s moving more on instinct than anything else, jumping between the tight building overhangs without thought. He’s gearing up for the next leap when his foot slips on some standing water on the lip of the roof, and he manages to tuck and roll in time to soften the landing but he gets a nice long friction burn along his right shoulder and upper arm for his trouble.

He packs it away and keeps going.

Judging from the deep dark purple of the sky sprawling above him, it’s maybe 3 or 4am. Jason can’t actually check, because he left his phone right along with his jacket.

Probably a good thing, just in case Tim did have the phone bugged before he handed it over.

Jason circles the building and drops down to street level on the far east corner, close to the Refuge entrance. There’s nobody nearby, but then it is more of an alley than a real street. It’s lit by a single unbroken streetlight right on the corner; Jason hovers just outside the solitary sodium halo and tries not to twitch while he takes stock.

The Refuge entrance is a solid metal door - likely a holdover from the original mill. It’s propped open slightly, spilling more light and the sound of laughter into the cold air. If Jason angles himself correctly, he can make out a woman in a headscarf sharing a thermos of something with a second person who has their back to the doorway.

He watches them chatter for a while, foot tapping impatiently until he notices and forces it still again, but nobody that could be Max shows up. It’s not a surprise, really, but it is a disappointing stall in Jason’s action plan.

If nothing else, he supposes, he can go ask the staff when Mr Dawkins is available.

One of the people in the office laughs again, the sound echoing off the cobblestone, and something down the far side of the building moves, the reflection of the light catching Jason’s eye.

Hm.

The office will wait.

Jason slips through the fence to the yard at the back of the mill. There’s more lighting here than the street. To ward off potential thieves, or to make conducting their own midnight deals easier?

A door slams closed in his peripheral, rattle of it bouncing off the frame almost swallowed by the ambiance of the city. The catch doesn’t click and it swings back open.

Who is Jason to say no to an invitation like that.

He slips inside.

The hallway is dark enough to make the static feeling at the edges of his vision flare up again, but from what he can make out it’s all bare brick and exposed beams; clearly not renovated with the main façade.

Jason sticks his head around a couple doorways as he passes, but they seem to be used for building refuse and storage.

Maybe Jason is more out of it than he thought, imagining mysteries where there aren’t any. Probably someone just forgot to lock the door, the wind blowing it open or some stray looking for shelter.

Except the evening is unusually mild for this time of year, and the only stray sneaking around is Jason. He keeps going.

He’s vindicated a few minutes later, when he reaches a crossroads and hears muffled voices.

“--already told you,” someone says. Terse, but not shouting. Male, if Jason had to guess. “I can’t help you if I don’t know what it is you’re looking for here.”

“An’ I told you,” a different voice snaps. Less calm. Also male. Higher pitch, but a broader East End accent. Younger, maybe? “Don’t got a choice.”

“You do. JK, man, you always have a choice.”

“Fuck you,” the second guy spits, and it’s punctuated by a the dull impact sound of a fist hitting something solid.

Jason takes the opportunity to sneak closer, peer round the doorway. It’s an industrial sized kitchen, all shiny silver chrome and glass front cabinets. They’re backlit, and the eerie blue glow is the only thing illuminating the room.

“Okay, look,” says the first guy, imploringly. “How much?”

He has his back to Jason - dark skin, close-cropped hair, strong shoulders visible through his henley - hands raised in the universal sign for calm-the-fuck-down. It’s working about as well as it usually does, judging from the scowl on the second guy’s face.

“Don’t need your fuckin’ charity ,” he scoffs, crossing his arms defensively across his chest. Something about the movement is familiar. “Don’t need nothin’ but you getting outta my goddamn way.”

“You know I can’t do that, man.”

“Then I’ll make you,” the younger one says, raising his fists.

Even in the crappy light Jason can tell his form is terrible, and it clicks in his head--

This is one of the kids that tried to mug Jason.

He doesn’t have the beanie hat on this time round, but his thick, low-set eyebrows hide his eyes almost the same way. The kid drops his right shoulder to gear up a punch, and Jason acts before he registers making the decision.

“Hey!” he shouts, dashing into the room.

Both of them startle, and the mugger bolts, ducking low around the other guy and barrelling right through Jason’s shoulder.

Jason isn’t braced for the blow, his worn-out chucks slip across the tile, and the blue-green glare from the glass cabinets is suddenly office windows streaking past.

The static crackles, and Jason is falling.

Chapter Text

Jason can’t breathe.

He’s free-falling and his limbs are useless and frozen and his heart is bursting through his ribcage and he still can’t fucking breathe.

Windows and green light and fear.

Cold numbness in his veins, pulse racing in his throat and ears and wrists and chest and–

Jason is going to die, and it’s going to be what he deserves.

Oh, god, he’s gonna die! 

His heart is gonna give out from the adrenaline, he’s gonna splat against the asphalt while Dick watches--

No, wait.

There’s something solid already pressed against his back, but he doesn’t feel torn apart by impact.

Someone’s face hovers in front of him, but close, not gazing down from above and not rapidly vanishing into the distance and--

Not Dick.

“Hey, hey,” the guy says. His voice is smooth and soft and vaguely Gotham. Jason tries to focus on that instead of the whistle of wind in his ears. “Hey, kid, you back with me?”

Jason shakes his head, trying to clear it.

The man doesn’t budge. The windows behind him keep glittering.

“You gotta breathe, man. C’mon, just a little one for me.”

He can’t, he can’t. The pressure of the wind sucks all the air out of him, his lungs are cramped and useless.

Something warm presses against his wrist, something moving.

Jason tries to pull his hand away, but whatever it is has him tight and his arm won’t do what he wants it to and–

“Okay, breathe with me okay? In, two, three; out, two three. In, two, three; out, two, three.”

He can– he can do that, Jason knows how to do that.

The pressure in his chest gives with an awful burning gasp, expanding behind his ribs so painfully that it makes his head spin.

“There we go, just like that,” the man soothes. “Keep going, just like that.”

In, two, three; out, two three.  

“Good. Do you think you can look at me?”

His vision is a blurred haze of too bright colors, but Jason tries.

The guy is young and black. His face seems kind, or maybe that’s the way everything looks sort of soft around the edges.

“Hey there,” he beams when Jason drags his gaze to meet his eyes. “That’s good. Okay. We’re gonna run through a quick grounding exercise, does that sound okay?”

That sounds familiar, that-- like the breathing, and the breathing helped, maybe--

Jason’s throat won’t work - too tight, too dry, too painful -  but he thinks he manages a nod. The lights in the corners of his vision blur in a different direction, anyway.

“Good, you’re doing great. Okay, think you can tell me five things you can see? Can be anything, so long as you can see it.”

But Jason is already shaking his head, so fast the man’s face becomes a dark smudge against green-blue-silver.

No, no, no, no.

All he can see are windows, glass and metal and concrete and--

“Okay, okay, it’s alright. Keep breathing, keep--”

Jason can’t, chest heaving with the effort and not getting any air, he’s gonna die, he’s gonna die --

“Fuck,” the voice says, tone changing from soft smooth tones to something loud and conversational. “Alright, man, I’mma break out the big guns now. Who’d make a better president, Ronald McDonald or the Hamburglar?”

If Jason could scoff, he would. He snaps his eyes back to the man, because what kind of question is that!

“What,” he croaks, through the dry tightness of his throat.

“Ronald McDonald,” the man repeats, cool as anything. “The Hamburglar. Presidential election. Who’s getting your vote?”

“I don’t…” what.

“Now, me personally,” the guy says, leaning forward a little, like he’s divulging a top-shelf secret. “Not a fan of clowns. Probably the Gotham in me, y’know what I mean?”

“Mm,” Jason agrees, and it doesn’t stick this time. He takes a breath, and that doesn’t burn quite as much either. “Criminals can’t run.”

The man laughs, a deep pleasant rumble. “You know, I don’t actually know if he was ever convicted.”

“His name is The Hamburglar.”

“Well sure, but what’s in a name really. But I’m pretty sure Condiment King isn’t actually royalty.”

“Point.”

“Speaking of names,” the guy says, with a pointed look. “You got something I can call you?”

“I--” and he doesn’t have the brainpower to think up a quick, convincing lie. Fuck it. “Jason.”

“Well, it’s nice to officially meet you then Jason.”

And the way he rolls the word officially off his tongue could just mean now, here, barging into the basement of a building he very much was not invited into. But. It feels more weighted than that.

Jason rubs the remaining blur from his eyes with a hand - his eyes are embarrassingly wet, but his cold fingers actually feel amazing against the aching pressure behind the bridge of his nose - and then squints more closely at the guy.

He has smooth, youthful skin and a wide, flared nose, hair cropped close at the back and built up at the front, a dumbass little soul patch under his lower lip but otherwise clean shaven.

The man watches Jason watching him and smiles, a lopsided thing that looks a little self-deprecating when Jason obviously doesn’t recognise him. 

“We seem to have a mutual habit of following young gang recruits.”

Oh. Oh.

“You’re that idiot from the alley.”

“I guess I am,” he laughs. “Most folks call me Max.”

“Not Max Dawkins? ” Jason blurts, because honestly; what are the fucking chances.

“Yep,” Max says, with a grimace. “Name on the building and everything.”

He lets Jason work through his breathing pattern for a few more minutes before he speaks again. 

“So, Jason. Do you think we can get off the floor, or is that gonna trigger another panic attack?”

Panic attack? Is… is that what this was? It felt like a heart attack, it felt like dying--

Jason has enough presence of mind to know he can’t say that out loud.

His eyes dart away from Max’s face, snag on the glass doors behind him - and they’re just ordinary refrigerator doors, backlit in blue-white and filled with industrial sized packages of food.

Jason knows that, he can see that. But his breathing picks back up anyway, coming faster, sharper. He tries to regulate it before it suffocates him again.

Max follows his gaze, then leans over to catch Jason’s eyes.

“We could go somewhere without glass,” he says, casual and kind, like he wouldn’t be upset if Jason said no. “Or somewhere with softer lighting.”

His eyes are a warm brown, and they crinkle at the corners when he smiles.

“I don’t know, maybe find somewhere with floors a little easier on the knees?”

And Jason should say no, should get the fuck out of here right now, should crawl back to Bruce and explain just how badly he fucked this up–

“...yeah,” he hears himself say. “Okay.”

Max helps him to his feet, using his own wide shoulders to block the refrigerators from Jason’s view. It’s weirdly considerate. Jason hates it.

Maybe Max really is just a normal social worker, and he’ll hand Jason over to the authorities and then Bruce won’t have to put him in jail because the cops will.

 Or maybe Jason is right about him being tied up in gang bullshit, and he’ll wake up in a bathtub missing a kidney. 

(Maybe, a hopeful little voice in his head says. Maybe he won’t wake up at all.)

At this point, Jason doesn’t care either way.

He follows as Max leads him further into the maze of hallways - cleaner, now, gray tile floors and whitewashed brick walls, but still as twisty and crowded as before. 

Easy to get lost down here, and if Jason were more connected to his body he might be worrying about the fact that he almost certainly wouldn’t be able to find his way out if he needed to.

As it is, that vague, floaty feeling carries him through the motions of putting one foot in front of the other as Max leads them down a few more old-fashioned corridors to a very modern fire safety door and into a stairwell.

Jason’s legs ache with the effort of climbing the stairs, body heavy and slow and useless. He lets his mind drift further, lets everything go soft and blurry and distant.

It’s almost nice, not having to process anything beyond keeping Max’s broad back in sight and taking slow, measured steps to keep from tripping over his own feet.

It’s nice, right up until he realizes that it feels familiar because it’s strikingly similar to the emotional numbness of the anti-fear toxin.

Nausea rolls through him so fast he can’t swallow it back down, just curls down over his knees and pukes on the concrete stairs. Bile hits the floor with an awful wet splat.

“Welp," Max says, jovially, popping the p. "Better out than in.”

He hovers half a step away with his hands up. Probably to catch Jason if he keels over, which is not outside the realm of possibility right now, fuck.

Jason spares a second to wonder if his arm would cooperate long enough to give him the finger, and then his stomach clenches and he’s heaving again. 

“Slow breaths,” Max says, gentle. His voice is closer now, and Jason is kinda glad for something to latch onto, for the solid presence nearby.

Then a warm, heavy hand lands on his back, right between his shoulder blades, and even though Jason knows it’s not Crane, every muscle in his body locks up tight.

Max must feel it too. He snatches his hand away, takes a full step backwards and around into Jason’s line of sight again.

Fuck him, and his polite consideration. 

Jason twists himself around to lean against the wall - safer that way, less vulnerable. Pain sparks where the torn skin of his shoulder is compressed, and the jolt of it clears his head a little.

He clenches his teeth against the hiss that wants to escape, and presses back into harder. Maybe he can’t control anything else about his body right now, but fuck it if he can’t make it hurt.

“You good, kid?” Max asks. He neither reaches out nor moves any closer. “Take a minute, and when you’re ready we’re just up here.”

His tone remains that soft-spoken casual, his posture relaxed.

Jason is suddenly angry, and he can’t tell if it’s because he fucked this up so badly or because Max is being so obnoxiously nice.

“Why’re you even doing this?” he snaps. Or tries to; his voice comes out thin and whiney. Jesus Christ, he’s pathetic.

“Helping?” Max makes a vague gesture that somehow encapsulates the building around them. “Kinda comes with having your name on the building.”

He somehow makes it sound like it isn’t a brag, and Jason doesn’t know how to respond to that.

“C’mon, one more flight. We got some spare rooms up here–”

“No, I–” Jason starts to argue, though he has no idea where that sentence was going.

“Look, man,” Max says, voice taking on a stern tone for the first time. “You had a panic attack in my basement, and now you’re shaky and kinda spacey and you threw up on my floor. You can sit down with me here, or I can call an ambulance and we can go to Gotham General.”

The hospital might still have Bruce as his guardian. Fuck.

Jason keeps moving up the stairs.

His legs are shaking with the effort, lungs tight again. Jason has to concentrate on controlling his breathing. Max slows his pace, not even trying to be subtle about it, and if nothing else the fresh flare of annoyance keeps Jason going until they reach the top.

Up here it looks more like an apartment building than a Youth Center. Cream walls and wooden doors lining both sides of the hall. They’re not numbered, though.

Max leads him to one with the door ajar, flicks a lamp on. A single bed sits against one wall, a small table and two chairs the other. Max opens a second door to a small bathroom and disappears inside.

Jason collapses on the mattress like his strings have been cut. Or snapped, maybe, from all the… everything. 

He just needs a minute to pull himself together, and then he’ll get out of here. 

Max says something from the adjacent room, muffled through the wall and the cotton filling Jason’s head.

By the time he comes back into the room, Jason is already out cold.

Chapter Text

Jason dreams of a red-brick alleyway, of the echoing slap of desperate footfalls on cracked asphalt.

He doesn’t know why he’s running, doesn’t know if he’s the hunter or hunted , but he knows he can’t stop.

The walls creak around him, crumble away to reveal mystical blue and carnival purple and sickly effervescent yellow.

Cobblestones concave before him, slowly, then collapse all at once and–

Jason gasps awake with the kind of full body ache that immediately puts him on edge.

This isn’t his apartment.

It’s too nice.

The walls are a cream that’s closer to yellow than white, the ceiling smooth and unstained. Not a fleck of peeling paint in sight.

He processes all that in a glance, before his gaze catches on the person watching him and then everything snaps back into place. The Center. Max. Windows. Fear.

And, apparently, him fucking up so badly that his body just straight passed out in front of a stranger.

Fuck.

Jason knows better than this. He used to be better than this.

“Here,” Max says, sliding a glass of clear liquid and a blister pack across the dark lacquered table as Jason pushes himself upright on the bed.

Faced with a drink, he realizes just how dry his mouth is - tongue swollen and heavy, coated in a gross filmy feeling.

He doesn’t reach for the glass, as tempting as it is.

“Just water and some painkillers,” Max says, small smile knowing and amused. “If I’d wanted to hurt you, kid, I could’ve done it while you were out.”

Which, he can begrudgingly admit, is true.

Jason picks it up, takes a tentative sip. It’s blissfully cool against his sore throat, but even as small an action as lifting the glass to his mouth makes his shoulders twinge uncomfortably. He takes the tablets, too, then drains the rest of the water.

Max watches him. If he’s waiting for thanks, he’ll be waiting a long time.

“You always watch people sleep?” Jason needles instead.

“Only the ones who tried to rob me,” Max says, infuriatingly calmly.

“I didn’t--” Jason snaps automatically, forcibly reins himself back a bit. “It’s not like that.”

“Okay,” Max replies without judgment. “Then what’s it like? Why’s a kid who should probably still be in school breaking into a youth center at the ass crack of dawn on a Wednesday?”

“I wasn’t breaking in, I was--” trying to find evidence that you’re involved with gang activity? Yeah, not gonna work. “That kid, he tried to mug me.”

Max pins him with a look, and this one does feel judgemental. Or… assessing, at least. “That what this is about? You want revenge?”

“No.”

“Good,” Max nods, trusting Jason’s word just like that. “Because I don’t invite those kind of people to breakfast.”

“But you do invite people who broke into your basement?”

“I thought you said you didn’t break in?” Max returns, smugly.

“Fuck off,” Jason says, less harshly than he could have. And then, because he feels about twelve kinds of out of his depth here, “I don’t get it. Why.”

“This is what this place is for. I set it up to help kids like me. Kids like you, Jason.”

He sounds so genuine. So well-meaning.

It makes Jason’s chest ache.

“I’m eighteen,” he says, and he means for it to be smug, taunting - eighteen, and out of social services remit, fuck you very much - but it comes out like a quiet confession, almost regretful. “Not a kid. You can’t make me do anything.”

“I’m not making you do anything. I’m inviting you to breakfast. You hungry?”

And it’s a stupid decision, Jason knows it is, but it’s not like his plans aren’t all thrown to hell now anyway. Might as well get as much information as possible and maybe some food out of this deal.

“I could eat.”

Max gives him a minute to clean up in the bathroom - a windowless room he couldn’t escape out of if he wanted to, with a mirror above the sink that Jason avoids looking at while he splashes water on his face and swills the bitter taste of stomach acid from his throat - and then leads him back down the stairs.

There’s a door two flights down that Jason doesn’t remember passing on the way up, but poor spatial awareness is the least of the mistakes he’s making here, so what does it matter really.

It opens into some sort of huge open plan communal room, not dissimilar to the layout of the central hub at Titans Tower, but a thrifted version - long dining table at one side of the room, a mismatched assortment of chairs and sofas gathered around a decent TV system at the other.

A couple people mill about - mostly older teens, and a few middle school aged kids escorted by adults in rainbow lanyards that are presumably staff.

Some of them greet Max as they pass, but none of them bat an eye at Jason trailing behind him. He must pick up strays often enough that it’s a non-issue.

Max takes them through one door to a sort of reception area slash lobby, where a lady sits at a desk piled with colorful flyers opposite a big frosted glass double door, then a second doorway that leads to a small kitchen.

None of the shiny chrome and glass from downstairs, just varnished wood cabinets and a slightly chipped laminate worktop and enough clutter to give off a cozy, lived-in feel.

There’s another exterior door tucked between the fridge and the trash can, and Jason can’t decide if Max is deliberately highlighting the exits for Jason’s benefit or if it’s a coincidence.

“Omelet alright?” he asks, not waiting for an answer before opening the fridge and gathering up ingredients. He holds out the carton of eggs blindly behind him, waggles it a bit. “Grab these.” 

Jason obeys, if only because he doesn’t want to add broken egg to the dirt and water already soaked into his jeans. He places them on the counter, takes the moment of almost-privacy to close his eyes for a second an wonder what the fuck he’s doing here. 

A chopping board slides into view between his elbows, a handful of cherry tomatoes teetering precariously with the movement. 

And also; a knife.

A knife which Max does not seem concerned at all about handing to Jason.

“Not worried I’ll stab you?”

“I saw you fight in that alley,” Max answers, unbothered. “If you wanted to, I don’t think I could stop you. So. Think you could slice those tomatoes for me instead?”

He half wants to say no just out of spite. Max should be worried, Jason has stabbed people. And much, much worse. Max has no idea how dangerous Jason is.

But Jason feels dialed up to eleven, hands twitching for something to do, and if nothing else this gives him a way to keep his fingers occupied.

Jason scowls at him, but picks up the damn knife.

“I’ve been taking care of myself since I was twelve fuckin’ years old. I think I can chop a few vegetables.”

“I think they’re officially a fruit, actually,” Max laughs, dumping an unholy amount of spinach into a colander. “Technically speaking.”

“Yeah, well, you’re officially an asshole,” Jason gripes. “Y’know. Technically speaking.” 

Any answer Max might offer is lost under the rush of water at the sink. He waits until he’s shut off the faucet before he speaks again, and then his voice has lost that teasing edge. 

“So, tell me; if you weren’t breaking in, what were you doing?”

There it is.

“Saw that kid sneak in,” Jason hedges, concentrating hard on making his slices exactly the same size. “Makin’ sure he wasn’t up to no good.”

“He wasn’t.” The way Max says it, without any hesitation, gets Jason’s attention. “Not really.”

“Then what was he doing here? Didn’t much seem like he wanted your help.”

“No,” he sighs. Rubs his free hand wearily down his face. “I suppose he doesn’t.”

“Who is he?”

“JK.” 

Max goes back to the food prep - heating a pan on the stove-top and adding something that sizzles loudly in the bottom - and Jason thinks he’s gonna leave it there. 

But after a moment he adds, “Been coming in here practically since we opened.”

“Didn’t exactly look like a friendly catch up.”

“No,” he says, tone shifting again - this time into something Jason can’t read at all. 

Max dumps the pile of spinach into the pan, pokes at it with a fork. Sighs again.

“He’s with the Red Hood Gang,” Jason prompts. “This have anything to do with that?”

“No,” he rushes to say, then grimaces. Yes , then. “What’s your beef with them?”

Jason snorts. “They attacked me in that alley. I didn’t do shit.”

“That’s not exactly how I saw it, kid. Seemed kinda personal.”

It was instinct, but he can’t really explain that. He shrugs.

Max takes that as answer enough, apparently, and drops it. 

He motions for the eggs. Jason absently pushes the carton towards him, watches him swirl them over the shrunken spinach in some vague pattern. Then gestures for the tomatoes too, and adds them in on top, stirring it all together.

Jason doesn’t remember the last time he cooked, even anything this simple. He’s been living off of pre-packed 7/11 food. He… hadn’t realized how much he’s missed it.

He doesn’t have to examine that thought too hard, because Max stops prodding the eggs and turns, catches Jason’s eye and holds it.

“How long have you been having panic attacks?” isn’t what Jason was expecting him to ask, but he supposes it was inevitable.

“Dunno,” he answers, twisting the knife between his fingers, and it’s not even a lie. At least twice, maybe - if the way his body shut down after the confrontation at the GCPD building months ago counts - but he’s not actually sure.

Then Max blind-sides him completely with his follow up.

“And how long were you on the gas?”

Jason fumbles the knife, catching his finger with the blade as it drops. A small slice, no bigger than a papercut, but the sting of it is enough to shock him into anger.

“Hey, fuck you, I’m not--”

“Jason,” Max hands him a paper towel for the cut, uses the opportunity to pin him with his gaze. “We get a lot of kids in here take recreational drugs. These last few months? We’ve had a lot of ‘em struggling through anti-fear withdrawal.”

“How’d you know?” slips out of Jason’s mouth before he can stop it. Stupid.

“Muscle tremors. Lack of self-preservation. Overactive fight, flight, freeze instinct. Panic attacks,” he adds, pointedly. “All symptoms.”

Max turns the heat off the stove, then pulls a small business card from his back pocket. Simple design, plain black text on a white background. Name and a phone number.

“I’m not taking that.”

“Look,” Max says, in that awful understanding voice. “That’s my personal number. I’m not a cop, and I’m not a teacher. I don’t have to answer to anybody else, anything you want to say would be between you and me. This shit is hard on your own, and I’m a pretty good listener if you ever need it.”

Well that’s not suspicious as fuck. Is this how he’s targeting people? Gaining their trust and tying them up in the gang shit later?

If it is, it might be a lead. 

Jason reluctantly slips the card into his pocket.

“I already told you,” he says. “I’m eighteen. I’m aged out of all this shit.”

“We’re not a foster service, man. We’re more like a… halfway house. A place for young people who have been through the system to get their feet under them.” He’s still patting his pockets, frown deepening the longer he does. “Okay, wait, we’ve got some pamphlets about our adult services. You wanna grab some plates for this, and I’ll pick a few up for you?”

“Sure,” Jason says.

And the second Max disappears round the doorway, Jason slips out the kitchen door.

After the cold shock of Gotham air, even Jason’s crappy lukewarm shower feels revitalizing. With some of the knots in his shoulders eased and a dry set of clothes on, he feels mostly human again.

Unfortunately, all the hot water in the world couldn’t untangle the knot of his thoughts.

He’d hoped seeing Dawkins in person would… Jason doesn’t even know anymore. Give him a solid read on the guy? Get some concrete evidence? Which is moronic, it’s not like he was expecting the guy to outright confess to anything.

But all it’s done is confuse the issue more.

Max seemed genuinely concerned about that alley kid. He’d seemed genuinely concerned about Jason. And he had plenty of opportunity to take advantage of Jason’s meltdown last night.

And didn’t.

But objectively? 

The man has access to kids with existing issues. He picks up strays often enough that his staff don’t bat an eye at it. He apparently offers his personal phone number to some of them. And he’s covering for this JK kid, withholding information if not outright lying.

Or maybe he really is just looking out for the guy, and Jason is too jaded to trust it.

Jason can’t read the situation anymore. He’s too close, or too broken. And that is a problem.

He’d hoped that even if he can’t reliably fight, he’d be able to manage the detective side of things. Clearly he’s been fooling himself.

And if he can’t even do that, then…

Maybe it’s time to admit he needs to hand this over to someone else.

He grabs his phone before he can talk himself out of it, Tim’s message thread still open from before. 

> Can we talk? 

> In person?

Chapter Text

In the end, messaging Tim turns out to be the easy part.

It’s waiting for a reply that has Jason juddering out of his skin with energy he can’t burn off. He paces the fourteen steps around his room until he’s so wound tight he feels like he’s going to explode.

Does Tim always take so long to respond? Jason thought he was usually quick, those anxious buzzy messages pinging in one after another, ding ding ding ding. 

Jason double checks that he hit send - which he did - and the time - 11.23pm, which-- oh.

Batman and Robin will be out in the city, most likely, and rule one of professional vigilantism is no traceable devices.

Which leaves Jason to sit on his thumbs for at least another couple hours until Tim gets back to check his phone.

Fuck.

He should have told Tim weeks ago, should have ripped off the bandaid like he did the domino mask, quick and sharp and over with. Done.

Instead, he let his pride get in the way. Fooled himself into thinking he was still capable of doing anything other than making everything worse.

Jason could go out, could try to find them. If the police radio is still stashed in the old prohibition tunnels, it might not even be--

No. Jason fights the urge down. Rushing out half-cocked is what got him into this mess in the first place, he’s proven his instincts can’t be trusted. He’s not-- it wouldn’t help.

His body is shaky with movement he can’t channel, so he shakes his limbs out and then squeezes himself into the gap between the footboard of his bed and the wall - small, confined space; safe. He has to bend his knees up to his chest to fit, but it’s a good kind of compression.

There’s a crumpled pack of cigarettes in his jeans pocket, he fishes them out. He’s not technically supposed to smoke in his apartment, but the walls are already stained a gross yellow and it’s not like he paid a deposit on this shithole. Fuck it, he thinks, and lights one up.

Smoke curls hot in his lungs. A door slams somewhere in the building. Someone on the floor above is yelling.

Jason takes another drag and holds it in his chest, but instead of grounding him it makes him feel more floaty. Like a helium balloon, filled with hot air, directionless and untethered.

His hands are trembling.

This should be easy, he should be able to do this. He’s been on stakeouts that lasted for days, sitting for a few hours should be perfectly manageable. But it feels impossible when every second drags by like molasses.

God, he’s pathetic.

A sudden pain flares in his hand, the cig burned down to the filter.

The burn only lasts a second, but the shock of it yanks him into the present, connected to his body like he hasn’t felt for weeks.

Huh.

Jason has another smoke between his lips before he registers it. He lights it and takes a hit for fuckin’ luck or courage or something, then pinches the cig between his fingers like a pen and holds it above his other hand.

The heat of the cherry prickles at the delicate skin of his wrist but it’s harder than he expected, deliberately closing that final gap.

He takes a breath and jerks the cig forward, tricking his body into thinking it was a slip, an accident.

Pain scorches through the flesh, hand trying to instinctively twitch away. Jason traps it between his knee and the cigarette, nowhere to go, and hisses through the burn. It eases after a few moments, leaving a blissful kind of emptiness. He feels almost dizzy with it.

Jason fumbles his lighter to relight the cig, presses the smoldering tip to his skin a little further down from the first circular mark. The smell of tar is stronger this time, and it hurts less. He tears the burnt end away and starts fresh for the third attempt, and sighs with relief when it works.

When that cigarette reaches the filter, he lights another.

By the time his phone buzzes in his pocket, there’s a trail of neat little red circles curling from the base of his thumb around his wrist. 

They run together where his vision blurs. He doesn’t-- fuck, when did he start crying.

What the fuck is he doing--

A second buzz and a third. Jason yanks his sleeve down over the marks, feeling suddenly guilty, feeling absurdly caught even though he’s alone in his room.

Stupid, stupid.

But the fabric scritches against the burns as he twists for his phone, and those little pinpricks of sensation keep his hands mostly steady. He takes a deep breath, and opens the message.

> working on something at home base rn

> be back across the river around 2

> same place as before?

Jason fires back a simple confirmation and scrubs the drying tears from his face.

It’s a little after 12 now. He can’t stay here for another two hours.

He grabs his jacket, tugs his sleeves down over his hands, and heads out. The cold air feels good against the blotchy skin on his cheeks, at least.

Jason feels like everybody who looks at him can tell he’s been crying, can see how pathetic he is. He keeps his hood pulled low and his head down.

Punching something might help channel some of the restless energy buzzing in his veins, enough physical feedback to hurt a little even if Ari won’t let him push it where he needs it to be.

That’s… probably good, all things considered.

He makes it to the gym without being mugged, but when he steps through the door he almost wishes he had been. 

Directly across from the entrance is a person in a DIY patchwork of a jacket. A very familiar DIYed jacket, because Jason helped her to make it.

Molly. Fuck.

Jason momentarily freezes, long enough for Molly’s eyes to flick to his reflection in the mirror wall. Fuck.

“Jace,” Ari calls across the small room and it echoes in his ears, her voice distorted like it’s filtered through water. “Mol here was just asking if I’d seen you around.”

It’s… pointed, maybe, if Jason could just work through the fog in his head.

“Jay,” Molly says, and takes a step towards him, and it snaps Jason’s brain from freeze to flight.

He ducks back out the door, vaguely hearing the clatter of the metal door slamming behind him, and legs it down the alley. He hears the sound again, and doesn’t look back.

The adrenaline rush is the only thing that keeps his legs moving, instincts the only thing guiding him through the streets. He skids around another corner and scrambles up a fire escape so fast his foot slips from a rung and he has to catch himself hard on the bar.

“Jason!”

She’s below him, on bottom of the ladder, fuck, fuck. Of course she knows his habits, his tricks, because she’s just as much a street kid as him.

“Jason, please.”

He breathes for a second, ragged and aching in his lungs. He can’t make himself look at her.

“I just want to help!” she screams up at him, and it’s angry and hurt and she doesn’t understand.

“You can’t,” he snaps back. “You can’t help with this.”

“I can try!”

It’s raining, thin and misty. Jason can feel it sit heavy in his hair when he shakes his head.

“Please, Jay. Let me help you.”

She would, is the thing. Molly would help him - just like Gar did back in those subway tunnels, and Dick did taking him to San Fran, and Bruce did when he first took him in - and Jason would fucking let her knowing full well that he’s bad for people, knowing that it’ll end messy, that it always ends messy.

He can’t. He can’t let himself do that to her.

Jason hauls himself up another rung, plants himself more firmly against the ladder. He still can’t quite bring himself to look at her, so he fixes his eyes on the grotty white laces of his sneakers instead.

“I’m not one of your little fucking pet projects!” he makes himself shout over the pounding of his heartbeat against his ribs. Tells himself the dampness on his face is just the rain. “I don’t want your damn charity!”

Jason slams his body sideways, hard - jerking the ladder with his weight - and then shoots up to the roof before it’s stopped rattling. He’s four rooftops away before he lets himself stop to think.

Hopefully Mol lands on her feet, and if not she didn't have far to fall. She’ll be fine, and much much better off without him dragging her down.

Willis was a drinker.

Sometimes it made him angry - nights where Jason tucked himself small and desperately hoped smashing up the apartment would be enough to tire him out before he found Jason’s hiding spot. Other times it made him weirdly maudlin, and even at eight years old Jason knew that was worse.

The far-away look in Willis’ eyes had scared him then.

Now, he thinks he understands.

Jason takes a swill of disgustingly cheap vodka, looks down at the road beneath his corner perch, and wonders what it would feel like to actually hit the asphalt this time.

The thought doesn’t spark flashbacks of windows, this time. It feels kinda warm behind his ribs, a comfort even as he swipes tears from his cheeks.

He doesn’t want to die. But it’d be nice to just… not exist anymore, maybe.

Time slips by, and for a while everything is sort of soft and blurry and calm.

Jason knows it can’t last, but it still makes him flinch when Tim’s voice comes from behind.

“I’m here,” he pants, clearly out of breath. “I’m here, I’m here. Only, uh, twenty minutes late, sorry, there was this whole thing with Dent and--”

Jason hadn’t even noticed the time, and guilt churns heavy in his stomach. He’s pulling Tim away from important work for his petty bullshit.

“--anyway, we’re fresh out of leads for tonight so it’s cool, we’re good.”

Tim edges closer. Jason tucks the vodka bottle under the lip of the roof, hoping the shadows will keep it out of sight. He ducks to scrub a hand across his face, a flimsy attempt at composure that crumples the second he turns and catches sight of red and green.

Fuck.

He should have expected that, should have known - of course a 2am meet up is gonna be right off the back of patrol - but being suddenly faced with Robin hits like a blow to the solar plexus.

Jason feels winded, lungs tight and chest aching.

Wrung out like this, he can’t school his reactions; whatever his face does, Tim freezes mid-step.

“Uh,” he says, hands hovering awkwardly between them. “Are. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I--” Jason starts automatically. But his voice cracks in the middle and Jesus fuck, it’s so ridiculous he just starts laughing.

Tim’s eyes are wide behind the domino, panicked, and maybe he should be, maybe Jason has actually lost it. He feels light-headed and weirdly giddy and he must look like a psychopath, giggling maniacally with tear tracks down his face, and it’s so so stupid that he’s still pretending he’s okay.

Robin hesitates, hands twitching like he can’t decide whether to offer comfort or prepare for attack. Jason pulls his knees up, curls himself small, tries to get himself under control before the kid decides Jason really should be in a padded room and calls in Batman.

“No,” Jason manages, between little hiccuping spasms. He knows he isn’t, has known for a while. It shouldn’t feel like failure to admit it out loud, but it does. “No, man, I’m really fucking not.”

Tim seems to steel himself, something straightening in his shoulders, and after a moment he drops down to sit beside Jason on the ledge.

“Do, uh. Do you wanna talk about it?”

God, no.

And even if he did, how could he? How do you explain, I destroy everything I touch. How do you look at the guy in your old suit and say, I ruined everything I had and now it’s all yours and I don’t know what to do with what I have left?  

How does he explain Molly, and all the ways he’s accidentally hurt her just for the crime of wanting to help him - the times he’s deliberately hurt her, like tonight - and then turn around and ask Tim to knowingly make that same mistake?

In the last 48 hours alone, he’s fucked up his case and lost control of himself, physically and mentally and emotionally, hurt somebody he loves, and run and run and run.

Jason is already leaving Tim with an unsolved case, strung together with next to nothing - he can’t dump his personal bullshit on top too.

“No.”

Tim's mouth goes thin, pressed together like he’s swallowing down whatever he wants to say.

“Okay,” he says, instead. His voice is a little flat, rehearsed. Jason doesn’t know if that’s good or bad, with Tim. He can’t read it. “So then, uh. You said you needed help?”

That’s not exactly what Jason said, but it’s not exactly untrue either. He’s antsy enough to nitpick, is all.

“Yeah,” he forces himself to say, and it’s raw and painful in his throat, confession barbed and foul-tasting.

But Tim just nods and holds that almost-eye contact, projecting attentive listening, and fuck, Jason feels like he might cry again.

“I--” no, too personal. Just the facts, like a report. “There’s this new gang getting traction in the Bowery. Been recruiting teenagers up and down Park Row. I’ve been trying to pin ‘em down, but I can’t.”

“Alright, sure, I can help with that. Any leads at all?”

And Jason just needs to fucking say it, to suck it up and lay it all out;

They’re named after me, and I think they’re the guys who went after Crane, and it’s probably linked to all the drugs I passed around like fucking candy while I was working for him, and I fucked up my own investigation and--

Say it.

Jason swallows, licks his lips. Bites the fucking bullet. “Listen. I--”

“Robin,” Batman commands from the other side of the roof, and Jason’s head snaps round so quickly he’s pretty sure he gives himself whiplash.

“Batman,” Tim says, standing firm under the blank mask of B’s face.

Bruce looks the same as the last time Jason saw him in full gear, before everything.

The alcohol curdles in his stomach, his mouth flooding with saliva. First time he’s seen Bruce in months and he’s gonna throw up on his boots.

“Kinda in the middle of something here, B,” Tim says, and god, it’s all Robin. The attitude, the inflection, the smug little half-smirk of a kid who gets to say no to the goddamn Batman.

Jason tastes bile.

“The vault alarm was just triggered at Gotham Second Bank.”

“Frick,” Tim says, but doesn’t move. “What’s the situation?”

Bruce tilts his head a fraction to pin Jason in place and it feels like an x-ray, deep and exposing. Jason can’t make his jaw unclench to speak.

“Three security guards down and GCPD on route. Two-Face is on site.”

“Frick.” 

Bruce keeps staring, and for a fleeting second Jason thinks he’s going to say something, to ask, to care. But, of course, when he speaks it’s not to Jason.

“Now, Robin,” he orders. “This is important.”

Jason’s heart sinks somehow even further. Of course. Of course.  

This is important, and Jason isn’t.

Tim hesitates, gaze flickering between them. His mouth purses, decision made. Jason doesn’t need to guess which way it falls.

“I’m sorry,” Tim says and it almost sounds genuine. “I promise I’ll be back as soon as I can. Wait here?”

“Sure,” Jason lies through his teeth. “Go help people, Robin.”

Chapter Text

The overhead lights of the convenience store are awful.

Bright enough that the glare stings his dry eyes, loud enough that the buzz rings obnoxiously in his ears.

Exposing, Jason thinks, although he knows that’s more him than the lights. It’s ridiculous that he feels more guilty here now, buying everyday stationery completely above board, than he ever felt back when he was shoplifting just to eat.

It’s what he wants it for, he guesses. Stealing food was necessary for survival. The notebook, envelope, and pen he pulls from the display are the precursor to a much more serious confession: incompetence.

A little old-fashioned maybe, to write it down because he can’t pluck up the courage to admit to his myriad of fuck ups out loud, in person. But where keeping this case to himself was once a lifeline now it feels like a noose, rapidly tightening around his neck.

Maybe getting it out of his head and onto paper will ease the weight of failure in his chest.

And it’s not like he has any other options at this point.

Bruce and Tim are busy with whatever Dent is doing, Dick is on the other side of the country. Jason can’t go back to Ari after what he did to Mol.

He grabs a fresh pack of cigs and another fifth of bottom-shelf vodka at the counter, since he left the last one on the roof. This close to the edge of the Bowery, the cashier doesn’t even try to card him; God bless Gotham City.

Tucking the bottle into his jacket for later, Jason makes his way south and ducks into a quiet coffee shop just off of Gotham Plaza. He orders a black coffee he has no intention of drinking, and tries to convince himself it’s for blending purposes not just a delay tactic.

Jason clutches his mug tightly between his hands as he stares down at the blank page. The heat of it is more diffuse than the lit end of a cigarette but it’s enough to keep him from sinking too deep into the fog of his head.

This is the hard part, making sense of his own scattered thoughts and actually writing them down.

'Report,' he tells himself and it almost sounds like Batman in his head. Just report the facts, keep it simple and clean.

Except there’s nothing simple or clean about it.

Jason tries to explain his reasoning as much as possible, but all laid out like this it’s clear how much he’s been jumping to conclusions. It’s all feelings, and emotional judgment calls, and jumping at shadows.

Some of it Jason can’t even begin to explain - like the niggling feeling that the Red Hoods were the ones trying to break into Arkham. He has zero evidence to support that theory, just assumptions based on gut feelings rooted in drug-induced paranoia.

It makes him feel stupid. Childish. Naive in a way he hasn’t been since he was very, very young.

Bruce would be disappointed, and Jason is suddenly selfishly glad that B’s not going to see this.

An hour and several shakily scribbled, torn out pages later, it’s as good as it’s going to get. He signs off, ‘I’m sorry, for everything - J’ and slips it into the envelope. Trying to carefully control his trembling hands, he addresses this in his neatest writing to Commissioner Gordon.

It’s a dumb play, but it’s the only one he has left.

If there’s any truth to Jason’s mad ramblings Barbara will find it, and she’ll be able to act on it through both official and non-official channels

Barbie already thinks the worst of him, and Jason doesn’t think she’s petty enough to ignore a genuine threat just because he’s tangled up in the web. She’s a practical woman, she’s already put aside apprehending Jason once for the greater good. He’s sure she’ll make this work without him, too.

Jason leaves the shop and his untouched coffee behind, and catches a bus over to the Financial District.

It’s a brazen move, maybe, walking right on up into Police Plaza. Jason likes the little thrill it gives him, that echo of feeling brave for the minute it takes him to cross it.

The anticipation wins out about half way across, though, and he has to carefully control his steps to keep from sprinting the last few yards. It’s quieter than the last time he was here, fewer eyes on him.

Rather than easing his anxiety, it only ratchets up higher.

Just because he can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t watching. He’s counting on Barbara being tied up with the same shitshow that pulled Batman and Robin away, but not all the piggies can be out of the pen.

The post box is built into the wall just off the main plaza, an empty little alcove that does nothing to sooth Jason’s jangling nerves.

Making sure not to make eye-contact with the camera, he drops the envelope into the slot.

It’s… underwhelming.

The solid weight in his gut doesn’t ease, the tangle of his thoughts doesn’t suddenly come unstuck. If anything, the pinching tightness around his neck constricts further, a heavy lump in his throat. He swallows around it, and his eyes water.

Jason was stupidly expecting something. Someone to stop him, to ask him what he’s doing. A cop to recognise him, maybe. Or Barbara to somehow have anticipated he’d be here, to tear into him about all his shitty selfish choices.

He stands for a moment in the silence and nothing happens.

Nobody comes running to arrest him, nobody even sees him.

Nobody cares.

Jason doesn’t remember deciding to head for the docks, but that’s where he finds himself. The tumultuous churn of the harbor is a good companion for his thoughts.

He doesn’t know what to do now.

Or, no. He does. He knows what he needs to do.

But it’s-- he needs to build up to it. Like the cigarette burns, trick his brain into thinking it's an accident.

That. That’s what went wrong on the roof, he thinks. If he hadn’t hesitated, Dick wouldn’t have been able to stop him. But even Jason’s Robin-trained tolerance for heights balks at a 60 story drop.

Here though? Here, getting steadily more and more drunk, pacing up and down this slippery, unstable, unlit jetty in the dreary darkness of early morning? Well, it’s exactly the sort of place where accidents happen.

Jason takes a swig of vodka, cheap and disgusting. The fog in his head matches the mist hanging heavily out on the water.

Dixon Docks is still just visible across the way, the hazy flood-lit silhouettes of the night-shift workers moving between shipping crates. Him and Molly used to dick around over there, high-stakes games of hide and seek in the maze of containers.

He takes another drink.

Like playing the world's worst drinking game - take a shot for every person you’ve let down. Jason would need a hell of a lot more than one bottle to play for real, but this will have to do.

His phone buzzes in his pocket. Jason ignores it.

It’ll be Tim, he’d bet, so he takes another shot for that too. And, fuck it, one for Bruce, and Dick, and Alfred.

The phone rings again, a call this time. Bzzt, bzzt, bzzt.

Back in San Francisco, Jason’s room at the tower had a beautiful view of the marina. Gentle blue water that glittered with the sunlight during the day and gleamed iridescent silver at night.

Bzzt, bzzt, bzzt.

Gotham Harbour isn’t anything like that. It’s grey and dismal and violent, angry waves blowing in off the Atlantic to crash against the islands like they’re trying to wash them away.

Bzzt, bzzt, bzzt .

It’ll hurt, being torn between the waves and the rocks. More or less than the crowbar, he wonders. That was a specific, targeted torture. This will probably be the full body kind of pressure-pain, crushed on all sides, cradled in the agony.

Bzzt, bzzt, bzzt.

Fuck, Jason is gonna toss his fucking phone into the goddamned ocean first.

He fumbles it from his pocket, swiping the notifications away with his thumb without looking at them, and a flash of white catches his eye against the dark, rotted wood of the jetty.

It flutters in the wind, and Jason catches it under his foot on mindless instinct. Black text on white card, a name and a phone number.

Huh.

Only stumbling a little, Jason bends to pick it up. A bit boxed around the edges, but still perfectly legible.

“Why the fuck not,” he tells the card. Maybe getting some answers will make this next part go easier.

Jason dials the number.

“’lo?” comes the answer, muffled and rough with sleep.

“Heya, Max!” Jason’s voice is loud and clumsy, his accent thick with the alcohol. He can’t bring himself to care, it’s not like there’s anybody around here to hear him. “Hope I didn’t wake ya, but I got some questions.”

“Jason?” the voice snaps alert in an instant. Batman would be impressed. Or he wouldn’t, it’s not like Jason has a lot of experience in that department. “What-- where are you? You disappeared!”

“Doesn’t matter!” Jason tells him, cheerfully. “What does matter to me right now is your buddy the other night. You were covering for him.”

“What?”

“Your friend with the gang, with- with my gang.”

There’s a pause that feels vaguely weighted, though Jason can’t tell what with. 

“Your gang?”

“Not mine mine. The Red Hoods. Your boy. What’s the link?”

The phone-line crackles, like Max is moving. It echoes gratingly in Jason’s head. He takes another swig of vodka. Still tastes like ass.

“I told you--”

“You lied to me.”

“--I told you, he’s not really involved, it’s--”

“Not him,” Jason snaps, voice echoing loudly around him. “I don’t care about the kid. You. What’s your deal, what’s your fuckin’ damage, what–”

The horn on one of the ships out in the bay sounds, low and loud, carrying over the water and making Jason jump.

“What was-- what was that sound? Jason, where are you?”

“J’st a ship, don’t worry about it.”

“Jason–”

“Answer the fucking question!” Jason yells. The sound bounces oddly between the fog and the water, the reverberation of it in his head making him flinch. He lowers his voice, whispering instead, “I just. I just gotta know, before I…”

Max sucks in a sharp breath, and Jason knows he’s said too much. “Before you what, man?”

“...doesn’t matter. It doesn’t—”  Jason takes a breath, holds it in his chest and wishes it were smoke. “Answer the question.”

“Alright,” Max says, placating. It doesn’t make Jaosn feel any calmer. “Alright, how about a deal; I answer your questions if you answer mine.”

Why the fuck not, it’s not like any of this is going to matter at the end of this phonecall. “Okay. You first.”

“I don’t know the full story, but JK borrowed money from the Hoods. A lot of money, and when they wanted it back he couldn’t pay.”

“Okay. So where do you come in?”

Max sighs. He sounds exhausted. Jason realizes he doesn’t actually know what time it is. “He’s been stealing from the Center. Small things, at first - tablets, phones. Caught him trying to break into the medicine cabinets in the clinic, and I’ve been trying to talk him out of this bullshit since.”

Huh. Guess that’s another point lost; Jason takes a shot. “So you’re not recruiting for gang bangers?”

“No, why–” he cuts himself off, repeats more calmly; “No, Jason, I’m not. Are– are you drinking?”

“S’that really what you want to waste your question on?”

“No,” Max says, again. “No, I guess it’s not.” 

Something slams on the other end of the phone - a door, or a cupboard, or… something too close, too loud. It makes the hairs at the back of Jason’s neck stand up, the sound and the smell of alcohol stirring up memories of Willis’ drunken rages. 

“What are you doing at the docks, Jace?”

“Don’t” -bile rushes up Jason’s throat, hot and thick and disgusting- “Don’t call me that.”

Molly called him that. and Ari. Dick, exactly once.

People he's never going to see again.

He can’t– He’s not–

“Jason,” Max says, apologetic and still firm and so much like Bruce that Jason loses his fight with his stomach. 

He doesn’t quite make it to the edge of the jetty, vodka and stomach acid spattering noisily on the wood. The phone drops somewhere near his knee, and he can hear the vague buzzing sound of it between gasping heaves. 

Max is still talking soothing nonsense when Jason fumbles it back to his ear.

“--kay, you’re okay, man, just breathe through it, s’okay– Jason? You back with me, bud?”

“Ugh,” Jason manages. His head is pounding suddenly, his face wet from more than just sea-spray. 

“Listen, Jason. I’m on my way to you, could you tell me where you are exactly?”

“I– no, it. It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t–”

“Hey. It matters to me, okay?”

Not okay. Jason doesn’t matter to people. He’s the tag-along, the unwanted annoyance, the unnecessary hassle. 

Jason makes everything worse.

“Why.”

“Because I’ve been where you are right now, okay? And it’s a real shitty place to be alone.” Max takes a breath that sounds like it might be wet, too, and fuck, Jason doesn’t know what to do with that. “I don’t want you to make a choice you can’t take back, man.”

It’s not. It’s not taking it back that’s the issue. It’s committing to the choice in the first place, but Jason is too much of a coward for even that. 

He stares into the black, frothing water and knows he should let himself fall forward into the swell, and he can’t.

“Old prohibition dock,” he hears himself mutter. “Down by the sewers behind Janus.”

“Alright,” Max says, and now Jason is listening for it he can hear the ambient traffic noise on the line. The slam must have been a car door. “Alright, that’s great. Do you think you can stay on the line for me?”

Jason flops down against the slimy planks of the jetty, and presses the damp screen to his ear.

“Yeah, yeah. I can do that.”

Chapter Text

Max keeps talking for the full twenty-five minutes it takes him to get across the city.

Trivial small talk, mostly; “Storm coming in soon, huh”, “Real foggy out tonight”, “Can you believe the drivers in this damn city-- hey, stay in your damn lane, asshole!”.

Jason lets the smooth drone of his voice blur, lets himself drown in the space between syllables. He hums a response when there’s a lull in words, and watches the clouds swirl above him.

He must get lost in the patterns for longer than he thinks, because Max’s voice changes pitch - loud, urgent, grating.

“Jason?” he says, vaguely shrill, like he’s said it a few times before Jason noticed. “You still with me, Jason?”

“Yeah, yeah.” The words catch sticky in his throat. Jason coughs, tries again. “’m here.”

“Okay,” Max sighs. Relieved? Annoyed? Jason doesn’t know him well enough to tell. “Okay. Good. I’m almost there. How you feeling?”

“Shitty.”

“Yeah, I bet. But I mean, like. Physically? Can you focus real hard for me and tell me how your body feels right now?”

Light. And at the same time, heavy. Jason’s head is floaty and dizzy, spinning when he moves it side to side, but his body feels weighed down, like he’s carved from rock. An anchor, keeping him tethered to this useless shell.

He’s shaking, too, now that he thinks about it. Tiny tremors under his skin, and he can’t tell if it’s the cold or just him.  

Jason doesn’t want to be in his body. His body is broken, damaged. Useless.

“Shitty.”

“Okay, yeah. I get that.” Another horn sounds from the bay, and Jason hears it echo over the line. Max must be close. “How about this then, are you still on the jetty?”

“Yeah.” Jason hasn’t moved, laid out on his back staring up at the slowly lightening gray sky.

“Good. Can you touch the wood for me? Tell me what that feels like?”

“Wet.”

It’s a stupid answer, but Max doesn’t laugh at him. “Yeah, good. Is it rough, or worn smooth? Slats, or closed boards?”

Jason slides his hand across it without sitting up, feeling the breeze blow up through the small gaps. If he closes his eyes, he can really focus on the texture. He might drift again, a little bit, but not enough for Max to call him on it.

“Slats. They’re… slimy. Gross.” When he spreads his arm out like some sort of disgusting grimy snow angel, he can feel the ridges at the edges of the boards that aren’t there in the center. “Worn smooth in the middle, I think. One of them is cracked, I can feel the splinters.”

“Well let me know which one,” Max’s voice says, and his voice is in front of Jason now, the echo in his ear slightly delayed. “Wouldn’t want to come all the way out here just for an impromptu swim in the harbor.”

Jason hangs up the phone, drops it onto his chest for safe keeping. Doesn’t open his eyes, because that makes this real and if it’s real he’s talked himself out of doing what needs to be done.

His stomach churns and his head spins and his heart aches.

Can’t even die right.

“Mind if I join you?”

Max is closer now. Jason doesn’t look at him.

“Knock yourself out.”

The wood creaks as he presumably lowers himself to sit on the filthy, salt-soaked boards. His clothes rustle as he settles. A seagull squawks somewhere over the bay.

Jason’s phone rings again - bzzt, bzzt, bzzt - and he blindly swipes the call away.

They sit there in the quiet for long enough that Jason gets twitchy, starts feeling like maybe he imagined it, and he has to turn his head to check.

The world spins on its axis, but Max is really there - in a ratty old hoodie thrown over what look like pajamas with little hot dogs printed on them.

“Hi,” he says, with a smile and a dumb little wave.

“Hi,” Jason parrots. 

“So,” Max prods. “Want to tell me why you’re out on this freezing dock at the asscrack of morning?”

“Pretty sure you know,” Jason says. “Or you wouldn’t have hauled ass to get here.”

It’s mean, and Jason mentally kicks himself for being an asshole to the one person that actually showed up for him, except Max doesn’t react to the prickliness.

“Okay, yeah, that’s a reasonable assumption. Ask a stupid question, expect a stupid answer, right? How about; do you still want to hurt yourself?”

“Little late for that,” slips out before he can stop it.

Jason flushes with shame at the confession. The burns on his wrist itch accusingly. He curls his other hand tight around the unyielding plastic of his phone and resists the urge to scratch at them.

“Do you need first aid?” is all Max asks, though. “Any deep wounds, or anything open to infection?”

Bzzt, bzzt, bzzt goes Jason’s phone on his chest.

“Do you want to answer that?”

“No.” Jason swipes the call away again, and then turns the stupid fucking thing all the way off and stuffs it in his jacket pocket. Max doesn’t comment. “And, no. No medical attention required, Doc.”

“Alright, that’s good,” he says, like this is a normal conversation to have. 

Maybe it is for a guy who works with troubled teens, and isn’t that exactly what Jason still hasn’t grown the fuck out of. 

“Do you think you’ll want to do it again right now?”

Right now? Jason honestly isn’t sure.

“I don’t--” even to his own ears, his voice sounds awful. Pathetic . “I don’t know.”

“Okay, that’s. Okay. I’m here, I got you.”

“Why are you here, man? I don’t-- I’m not worth it.”

“Why wouldn’t you be worth it?”

“Because I. I fuck everything up, I– I destroy everything I touch, I’m poison, I--”

“Hey, hey,” something solid taps against Jason’s foot. “Stop that.”

Max keeps tapping his foot rhythmically on the sole of Jason’s own, offering physical feedback without actually touching him. It’s a rhythm he can time his breathing to, to rein in the building panic.

Jason’s salt-dry eyes burn at the consideration in such a simple action. At the fact that Max remembers what happened the last time he touched Jason without warning, that he cares enough to avoid doing it again.

“Look, Jason,” he says, after a moment. “I don’t know much about you but I know that’s not true.” 

“How’d’you figure?”

“I told you, I’ve been where you are. Didn’t think I had anything to live for.”  He offers that too-understanding smile again. “I know how your brain plays tricks on you when you’re at your worst, twists everything in your head up into ugly little knots you can’t untangle. But you don’t have to do it alone.”

“Who,” Jason starts, and then physically bites down on his tongue to stop. It’s none of his fucking business.

“My foster brother,” Max answers anyway, and Jason can hear the fondness in his voice. “Sean. Talked me down. Stayed with me afterwards. Helped me set up a support system.”

Jason thinks of the Titans Tower roof, of Dick sitting on the ledge with him .

Maybe if I’d stayed then, he thinks, things would be different.

 If Dick hadn’t stopped me then, he thinks, then so much of this shit could have been avoided.

“I don’t,” Jason makes himself say. “I don’t have family.”

Son, Bruce had called him exactly once.

“Well,” Max says, kindly. “For what it’s worth, you’ve got me.”

It’s worth something , even if Jason isn’t sure what yet.

“Now,” Max claps his hands together. “When was the last time you ate?”

Jason’s stomach lurches. “You know food doesn’t solve every problem, right?”

“Sure,” Max laughs, pushing up to his feet. “But it doesn’t usually make them any worse.”

He leans into Jason’s field of vision to offer his hand. 

And–

Fuck it; what has Jason got left to loose?

They end up at a tiny little mom-and-pop diner on the other end of the docks. A place so small and nondescript, Jason’s probably walked right past it and never noticed.

Max seats them by the window, a whimsical square one lined with roughly mosaicked blue tile. On a good day, it might overlook the harbor but today there is only two feet of visible sidewalk and then the gray wall of mist rolling in.

If Jason stares hard enough, he thinks he can make out the morning shift workers heading down towards the water.

He looks away before he considers joining them.

There’s something sizzling in the kitchen, the heat of it filling the air. Jason is glad, because he’s shivering in his soaked clothes. He probably shouldn’t even be sitting on an upholstered chair right now, but the idea of standing is even less appealing. At least sitting, the vertigo is mostly manageable.

Max comes back with a stack of toast and a plate of the greasiest sausage and bacon Jason has ever seen.

“Don’t pull that face at me,” he laughs as he sets them down. “Carbs to settle your stomach, fatty proteins to get your blood sugar up.”

“You’re making that up,” Jason squints at him. He does snag a slice of bread, though. Fancy wholegrain kind.

“Maybe,” Max grins. “But it’s always worked for me.”

Jason tears a chunk off, pops it in his mouth and lets it melt against his tongue before swallowing. When it doesn’t immediately turn his stomach, he repeats the process.

Max watches him take a third piece with a smug kind of aura about him, and Jason rolls his eyes.

“Your pseudoscience is still bullshit, man.”

“Sure is. Try some bacon, it’s nice.”

It is nice, fuck him.

Annoyingly, the food does actually make him feel better. Less shaky, less nauseous.

Max gets them a huge glass of OJ each, and that helps too.

Without the physical complaints, Jason is left feeling mostly stupid.

He overreacted. 

And then he pussied out.

Again.

“Hey,” Max says, gently. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Jason shrugs. It’s not like Max could help, even if Jason could tell him the truth.

“Well, it’s a standing offer,” Max says over his glass. “If you ever decide you do.”

“Do you,” Jason starts, but he’s not sure how to word what he’s asking.

Do you ever still feel like that? Like it would be better to just be gone? Do you ever feel guilty for not going through with it?

Everything Jason has done to try to make things better since the Tower rooftop has only made things worse, and here he is again making the same mistakes.

It’s all so… repetitive. Tiring. Endlessly circling the drain, and dragging others into his downward spiral.

Max seems to get what Jason can’t articulate, his smile drooping into something more like a grimace.

“Honestly? Yeah, sometimes.”

Jason grimaces. “Honestly? Not really the answer I was looking for.”

“I know,” Max says, and it sounds like he does. “But would you have believed me if I’d lied?”

“Probably not,” Jason concedes. He nibbles at another piece of bacon, but his stomach feels tight again.

“You know what helped me?”

“What?”

“The morbid curiosity.” 

“What? ”

“That feeling that, y’know. How much worse could this possibly get? ” Max takes another bite of the sandwich he’s built and chews thoughtfully. “It’s not a long-term solution, but it got me through the worst of it while I got help.”

Jason isn’t sure he wants to ask the universe that question. Isn’t sure he wants to know the answer.

“Listen, Jason. Do you have somewhere to go, right now?”

He does, technically. His shitty apartment, and the dog stain on his ceiling, and his little circuit of fourteen steps around the room, and the cigarette burn on the carpet where he fumbled before it touched his skin.

Jason doesn’t really want to go back there.

“It’s just,” Max says, a little awkwardness slipping into his posture for the first time. “I don’t think you should be alone right now. Do you have anybody--”

“No,” he snaps, too quickly. “No, there’s nobody.”

“Then. How d’you feel about staying at the Center?”

“I thought you said you weren’t a foster service?”

Max raises his hands, placatingly. “We’re not! I was trying to explain, before you left,” he doesn’t even sound annoyed about Jason running out on him, but guilt prickles up Jason’s neck worse than if Max’d been yelling. “We’re a support service, and a lot of kids need support when they age out of the system. We’ve got temporary accommodations upstairs, and--”

“Where you took me after my...”

He can’t bring himself to say panic attack out loud. Even after all this, it feels too close to confessing a weakness.

“Yeah,” Max nods. “You could stay as long as you need, and I’d feel better about being able to check in on you.”

Part of Jason resents that, wants to argue that he doesn’t need checking on. 

A bigger part is weak, and desperately doesn’t want to be alone.

“I can leave any time?”

“Yeah,” Max confirms. “You can leave any time.”

Chapter Text

All of Jason’s belongings fit into a duffel bag.

It makes him feel weirder than it should, considering he lived out of his own backpack for the years he was bouncing between shitty foster homes and the streets.

But his two years with Bruce have apparently spoiled him. At the Manor, he’d had his own room, his own space for the first time in as long as he could remember. And Bruce had money he was happy to throw at things, and Jason had maybe gone a little mad with the power.

He’d left most of that stuff at the Tower when he walked out, and the rest at the Manor the night he went after the Joker and never came home. 

Those few nebulous weeks at the Manor after - after Joker and nothingness and Crane and… everything else - it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t his place anymore, he was just crashing in a dead kid’s room. 

He slept there like a guest, or a ghost.

Anyway.

His stuff fits tidily in a duffel bag, and Max is waiting in the car downstairs.

Jason gives the shit hole one last once over, nods a goodbye to the roof-stain dog, and leaves his key on the formica tabletop. If this Dawkins thing doesn’t work out, it won’t be hard to find another crappy pay-by-the-week place.

If Jason is even still around to need one.

Max doesn’t comment on Jason’s lack of possessions when he slides back into the passenger seat. Jason drops the bag by his feet but the strap snags on his wrist as it goes, catching the tender trail of burns there, and Max definitely clocks Jason’s flinch.

“I want to take a look at that when we get in,” he says. His tone is courteous, but it’s not a question.

“It’s fine,” Jason bristles. Hunching down in his seat feels vaguely juvenile, but he does it anyway.

“All the same, I’d feel better if you let me check.” He merges into the traffic, someone behind them honking their horn. “Anything else you need to grab before we head back?”

Jason has a few caches still stashed around town, just basics like spare clothes, food, first aid supplies. No way is he clearing those out until he knows where this is going, though. Might still come in handy later.

“Nope. This is it.”

Max’s mouth pinches at the corner Jason can see, but he doesn’t comment.

The day has crept in while they’ve been busy - the sky is as bright as it ever gets in a Gotham fall, and the streets are bustling with people running morning errands.

It feels weird, watching them carry on like every other day.

Nothing is really different, except that Jason had kind of settled it in his head that he wouldn’t see this pleasant kind of ordinary ever again and here he is.

He’s not gonna fucking cry again, fuck.

Max parks up around the back, but leads Jason to the front entrance anyway - those big glass doors look about the same from here, but Jason will admit the warmly lit entryway does look welcoming from the outside.

The same receptionist from the other night is sitting at the desk, talking to a plump black woman with a staff lanyard. Max ushers Jason over to the kitchen door while he exchanges a few hushed words with them, then walks them through four neat, white-washed rooms so similar that Jason loses track of what they are.

Some sort of medical suite is where they finally stop, and Jason suddenly feels a little sick.

It’s not even anything like Crane’s filthy lab in Arkham’s basement, not anything like Jason’s own thrown together set-up, or even the cave medbay’s smooth rock and reinforced glass. It’s clean and airy, off-white walls and tasteful cream cabinets and an actual, official medical waste bin.

But after everything else the last few days, it makes Jason’s heart race so fast he feels like he might pass out.

“Hey, hey, okay,” Max catches him before his knees buckle, guides him to a chair. “Deep breaths, remember?”

Yeah, yeah. Jason remembers how to breathe just fucking fine.

“Just get this over with,” he snaps, yanking his sleeve up and, oh.

The wounds had scabbed to the fabric of his jacket.

Well, Jason thinks as he looks dumbly down at four freshly weeping burns, at least the sting of pain pulled him back from that floaty panicky feeling.

“Okay,” Max says, gathering some things in a tray and bringing them over.

He snaps some medical gloves on, gestures for Jason’s wrist with a quiet, “May I?” and actually waits for him to nod before he gently takes it.

Max tilts Jason’s arm towards the light for a better look at the damage and Jason has to fight down the urge to snatch it back. He feels small, sitting here with the evidence of how childish and stupid he is literally painted on his skin for Max to openly scrutinize.

For what it’s worth, Max works quickly and without comment. Jason doesn’t know if it’s better or worse that his discomfort is so easy to read that even a relative stranger can pick up on it, but at least it’s over fast.

“There we go,” Max says, tucking the bandage neatly and taping the end for good measure. “I wouldn’t usually wrap burns, but since it's kind of an awkward spot…”

“Sorry,” Jason says, voice as small as he feels.

“Hey, no. You don’t need to apologize for this, man.” Max squeezes Jason’s fingers before he lets go - a simple show of support that has Jason swallowing around the lump in his throat. “If you want to talk apologies, I owe you one.”

“What?”

“For leaving you alone last time. For pushing too hard, and making you feel like you had to run.”

That’s not what happened, not even close. But the words stick on Jason’s tongue, and his eyes ache and he’s not gonna cry, goddammit!

“Fuck off,” is what he manages to choke out. “Stop being so damn nice about everything.”

“No promises.”

Max putters about tidying his supplies away, keeping his back turned to give Jason a few moments of privacy. Jason pulls his sleeve back down, settles it carefully over the bandage. Wipes his eyes, tries to get a fucking grip, Christ.

“What now?” he asks, when he feels mostly under control again.

“Well, I just need to run by the office to check which rooms we have free and then I can give you the official tour. You want to hang here, or in the lounge?”

“You’d leave me here? Alone? What if I ran again?”

“There’s not a lot I can do to stop you if you really want to leave, Jason,” Max smiles ruefully. “There’s gotta be some exchange of trust here for this to work. And I trust you.”

It’s been a long time since somebody trusted him, even with something as simple as this. Even if Jason doesn’t deserve it, even if Max is lying.

Maybe this is what Max meant by morbid curiosity keeping him going, because Jason kinda wants to see how this plays out.

“The lounge is good.”

The lounge is apparently what they call the big, open-plan living space with the mismatched chairs.

It’s quieter than it was last time. The staff ratio is about the same, but less kids around. Jason’s kinda lost track of time lately, but he’s guessing it’s probably a school day.

Max follows as Jason makes his way over to an empty nook - a big corner bookshelf flanked by three circular armchairs, wide enough that he could sit crisscross in one and his knees wouldn’t touch the sides.

He didn’t pick the spot for anything other than its distance from other people, the way the wall almost separates it from the rest of the room, but Max takes in the choice and asks, pleasantly, “You like to read?”

“I, uh. I used to.”

“Well, they’re free to borrow if you want to take it up again. I, ah, can’t speak for the quality of the selection though,” Max laughs. “More of a comics guy, myself.”

“Huh,” Jason says. “Kinda figured you for stuffy non-fiction. Medical journals, dry financial reports, that sort of thing.”

“Ha! No . Quite enough of that in my day job. Speaking of…” Max telegraphs the shoulder clasp, giving Jason plenty of time to duck out of the way. He doesn’t. “I won’t be long.”

“I think I’ll cope for a few minutes,” Jason snips, but he doesn’t mean anything by it.

Max smiles, so he probably gets the intention. His fingers tighten for a second, and he offers one last pat before he heads across the room and disappears through a doorway to wherever the official business shit happens.

Jason slumps into one of the big chairs. It’s plush and comfortable but for all his bluster, it doesn’t take long for him to feel weird sitting here alone.

He leans to peek around the corner, but there’s no sign of Max yet. Three kids are playing foosball at a rickety table on the far side, and two older teens are laughing quietly at something on a laptop shared between them.

It makes something like loneliness squirm in his chest.

Jason eyes the books instead.

There’s a handful of Penguin Classics tucked to one side, and a couple of battered boddice-rippers he bets get a laugh out of the younger kids. It’s mostly YA fiction, which he supposes makes sense for a youth center.

A copy of Frankenstein catches his eye - cover torn and repaired, layers of overlapping tape holding it together - and, well. Let it not be said Jason is above indulging in a cliché.

He always did like old books, the ones that have been used, have been loved. Mom used to take him to the flea market sometimes, and those were his favorite - dog-eared corners and hand-written notes, the books that looked like someone had read them over and over and over again.

A voice sounds behind him - too close, too fast, Jason should have noticed - and he drops the book as he twists around, panic fluttering in his veins.

“Thought it was youse.”

It’s a girl with shockingly bright red curls, maybe a couple years younger than him. She has big brown eyes, a thin frowning mouth, and tan skin that’s made darker by a thick dusting of freckles. 

Jason has no idea who she is.

“Wrong guy, sorry.” He goes to step around her, maybe wait for Max in the medical room after all, but another damn kid pops out from behind her.

“Nope,” this one says, popping the p in that obnoxious middle school way. “Definitely the asshole from the alley.”

“Riles,” the girl snaps, tugging the younger kid behind her. “You ain’t helpin’.”

“Don’t care,” Riles scowls up at Jason with their chubby babyface and it clicks. The gang initiation, weeks ago. “Douchebag damn near broke my wrist with the shit he pulled.”

“Hey, you chucklefucks tried to mug me. ”

Jason can feel his hands curling into fists, tight enough that he's shaking with it. He brings his arms up across his chest instead - a stupid, defensive tell, but he doesn’t care if tucking his hands under his arms keeps them out of sight and out of trouble. The kid flinches back at the movement, though, like Jason has punched them.

It takes him a long, stunned second to realize they thought he was going to.

The girl steps forward, keeping Riles behind her, shielding them. She crowds Jason in a way that makes his neck itch, instincts prickling to run or fight.

He pushes them down and holds himself very, very still.

“Look,” she says, reasonably. “We don’t want no trouble.”

“You sure about that,” Jason asks, jerking his chin at where Riles is glaring at him.

“Ignore ‘em,” she says, with a carefully casual shrug. “Riley’s like a puppy, gets real scrappy over their territory.”

“You’re staying here?”

“For now. And we’ll stay outta your way if you stay outta ours. But we like it here, we don’t wanna have to look over our shoulders all the time, yeah?”

Jason glares, because he does understand that feeling but he still appreciate being ambushed out of fuckin nowhere. 

“So long as you keep your hands off my shit,” he says. “We won’t have a problem.”

She shrugs, unconcerned. “Wasn’t our idea, man.”

“You still with ‘em?” he asks before he even processes the thought. “The Hoods?”

“Nah,” she says, stepping back out of his space. She offers him a tight smile. “Someone fucked up our initiation.”

Jason can’t tell if she means that in a good way or a bad way, if she’s saying thank you or fuck you.

She tugs the kid away before Jason can settle on a response, leaving him even more off-kilter.

By the time Max rounds the corner again, Jason just feels… drained.

“Alright, business concluded. You ready for the official tour?”

“I don’t need the fuckin’ tour,” Jason hears himself snap. He’s exhausted on a soul-deep level, aching in his bones. “I’m tired, man.”

“No worries, the building isn’t going anywhere,” Max says, kind despite Jason’s attitude. “Come on, I’ll show you your room.”

Chapter Text

Jason does manage to sleep. He passes out for so long that it’s morning again by the time he blinks his eyes open and gets them to actually stay open.

It doesn’t really make him feel any better.

He never bothered to get undressed before he fell into bed – his clothes are stiff and uncomfortable; his hair feels greasy and limp on his forehead; his skin is crusted with dried sea-salt.

God, he needs a shower.

Fortunately, the room is a little like a hotel suite. The single bed takes up most of one wall, with a set of drawers by the headboard serving as both a bedside cabinet and the closet. There’s an empty desk between the foot of the bed and the door, a chair tucked neatly under it.

Okay, so maybe it’s more like a dorm room than a hotel. Either way, the second door opposite the desk leads to an immaculate bathroom.

It’s been a hot minute since Jason had access to a fully functioning shower with scalding hot water, and time goes a little fuzzy in the heat of the steam. He spends longer than he’d admit to just standing under the shower spray, just enjoying the way the high water pressure batters some of the tension from his shoulders.

There’s even real, actual, fancy shampoo on the edge of the bath, not the cheap 2in1 shit he’s been grabbing from the 7-11. This one smells pleasantly fruity. He uses it twice, because his hair is crusty and gross and because there’s nobody here to stop him.

It’s kinda tricky, with the bandage wound thickly around his wrist. He probably should’ve wrapped it in something waterproof first. There’s not much helping it now, so he peels the sodden gauze away instead and tosses it to the back of the bathtub to clean up later.

His burns are scabbed over nicely now, dark and thick. 

Jason holds them under the spray and watches as they soften with the moisture. He rubs the thumb of his other hand over the lowermost circle, loosening the scab until it splits and then breaks away completely.

It doesn’t bleed. 

Doesn’t even hurt.

On the next one he peels more quickly. It stings for a split second before the water washes it away again.

The third one he scratches off with his nails, letting them dig into his flushed skin. 

That pain is a little sharper, lingers a little longer.

Not enough.

Jason thinks, vaguely, that he didn’t see a razor anywhere in the bathroom.

Probably a good thing, considering.

Shaking himself out of his spiraling thoughts, Jason turns off the water. He feels a little more human once he’s clean and dry and dressed in fresh clothes.

He’s cold though. Freezing, actually.

Jason digs through his backpack for his favorite orange sweater, doesn’t find it. He’s tipped the bag out and scattered every piece of clothing he owns across the bed before he remembers…

He gave it to Tim.

Tim.

Fuck. Fuck.

Jason totally bailed on him without a word. Tim, who was trying to call him that morning on the docks, who was--

God, with everything that’s happened, Jason isn’t even sure what day it is anymore.

How long has Tim been trying to get hold of him? Shit, is Tim still trying to get hold of him?

Jason scrambles for his discarded jacket, for his phone – for the phone Tim gave him in the first place – but he finds it dead.

Hopefully just the battery? Jason thinks he remembers turning it off, maybe? It’s still damp from the inside of his sodden pockets, but nothing he can’t dry off with the towel from the bathroom.

Charger, he needs a charger.

Shit, did he remember to grab his charger?

He works through the clothes, tossing them on the floor piece by piece until finally, finally the cable is revealed. Relief floods through him so fast he feels a little dizzy with it as he scrambles around to find the outlet.

The charger clicks into place, Jason already jamming the power button even though he knows it doesn’t have enough juice yet. He just needs to do something.

A firm knock on the door startles him from his focus.

Jason freezes, expecting it to swing open immediately.

But nothing moves for a solid 20, 25, 30 seconds.

Then a second, lighter knock and a half-whispered, “Jason?”

It’s Max.

Of course it’s Max, checking in on his new pet project.

Jason swallows. Takes a breath. Cracks the door open.

Max positively beams at him.

“Hey, you’re awake!” 

They look at each other for a long moment. Jason doesn’t know what to say.

Max shuffles in place. He’s holding a tray, Jason can hear the clink of plates as he shifts. 

“Mind if I come in?”

The way he says it seems so genuine, so sincere. Like if Jason said no he’d actually stay standing out in the hall.

Jason thinks about testing that.

But then he catches the smell of bacon and his stomach gurgles. He steps back and lets the door swing open fully.

Max steps in, carefully navigating the scattered clothes all over the floor. He sets the tray on the dresser, then turns to Jason with a wry smile on his face.

“Well,” he says, teasing. “Glad to see you making yourself at home.”

Jason flushes, ashamed. Kicks two loose t-shirts and some sweatpants into a haphazard pile and then swipes it under the bed. He slumps onto the mattress, doing a piss poor job of hiding the mess behind his feet.

“Hey, no, man, I didn’t mean it like that.” Max pulls the desk chair over to sit opposite Jason. “While you’re here, this is your space. We aren’t gonna run spot checks.”

“Oh yeah?" Jason challenges. "Then this isn’t some kind of suicide watch?”

Max grimaces, caught. Caught, but not remorseful.

“It’s not forever,” is all he says.

“How long?”

“That's sort of a case by case thing.”

“You said I could leave anytime.”

“And I meant it. I’m not interested in being your jailer here, man.”

Jason is still cold. He pulls his legs up on the bed beneath him, crosses his arms and tucks his hands under his armpits to try to warm up. 

“Then what are you interested in?”

Max snags a piece of bacon, chews thoughtfully. 

He pointedly tilts the plate towards Jason. Jason’s stomach clenches at the thought of food, a twisting sort of churn that could be hunger or could be nausea. He takes some toast anyway, nibbles spitefully at one corner. 

A few minutes and half a slice later, Max says, “I want to help you. Like my brother helped me.”

The dry toast drops painfully into Jason’s gut.

“What kind of help?”

“Well that’s sort of up to you. We’ve got on-site support workers, guidance counselors, a couple of qualified therapists—”

Just the thought of cracking himself open like that again for some stranger with their own agenda has Jason’s insides coiling with fresh, hot anxiety.

“No shrinks,” he snaps. 

“Alright,” Max agrees, easily. “No shrinks.”

An awkward pause sits heavy in the air. Jason knows he’s being an asshole, but he can’t. He just can’t. 

He can’t explain either.

Max doesn’t even seem to expect him to, and that makes Jason feel almost worse. He curls his arms tighter around himself and finds his hands are still shaking. He can’t tell anymore if it’s the cold or the dithers or the everything else.

“Listen, Jason,” Max says, softly. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, face a picture of open earnestness. “I know this shit is hard. But I need you to know that I am really fucking proud of you, okay?”

Jason curls smaller. Remembers how easily his thoughts had turned in the shower earlier.

“Nothing to be proud of.”

A long, deep sigh, and then Max says out of left field;

“Riley came to me this morning. About you."

It takes Jason a minute. 

"Bitey Riley?" And then another second, because, "What about me?"

"They're worried about your gang connections."

"I don't have–"

But Jason cuts himself off. 

It's not like he can tell Max he's actually a failed vigilante. That he left his home to build what he thought was a lifelong sort of connection with other kids in the same boat as him, only for it to end hopeless and bloody. 

And, okay, when you put it like that maybe it's not so different from gang membership. 

Maybe... Maybe it's easier to let Max think that's the bullshit Jason doesn't want to talk about than try to think up another lie.

"I said," Jason says, carefully. "I said I wouldn't get in their business if they don't get in mine."

“Exactly,” Max grins. 

Jason huffs. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re trying to say here, man.”

“Okay. There’s this thing that people do. A habit or an innate need for self-flagellation or something, I don’t know, I’m no psychiatrist. But there’s this thing that people do, in my experience, where we do things we know are bad for us.”

“Bro, if this is some shitty Don’t Do Drugs PSA," Jason rolls his eyes, "you’re a little fuckin' late.”

“It’s not," Max promises, hands waving as if to emphasize his point. "But addicts do it, too. Like- like a recovering alcoholic that hangs around in bars. Or less extreme, okay, say somebody stalking their ex’s social media to see how happy they are without ‘em. Something we know we shouldn't do, but we keep doing it anyway. Because we want a reason to feel crappy in ourselves, something solid we can point to and say, 'this is why I feel like shit'.”

He lets that sit, chews another slice of cold bacon while Jason turns it over in his head. Traces the conversation back to where it started.

“You think that’s what I’m doing.”

Max gives a concilatory half nod, half shrug.

“I think a kid chasing after a gang he referred to as ‘his’, picking fights? Is probably looking to find one, yeah.”

Jason doesn’t know what to say, what to think. 

That's not exactly what he was doing. He hadn't gone looking for fights. He’d just been cleaning up his own damn mess.

Except… all he’s really done is mess everything up even worse. 

“So, yeah,” Max continues, while Jason's mind spins away from him. “I think stepping away from all that takes some serious courage. I’m so proud of you for giving this a shot. And you should be proud of yourself, too.”

Jason is still thinking about it later, when he’s laid out on his clean, comfortable bed, wrapped in his thick, warm blanket, and staring blankly up at his smooth, dogless ceiling. 

He’s thinking about Max’s words, his little armchair psych theory. 

And he’s thinking about Dick. About how Dick pulled him aside the first time they met, about how Dick warned him that being Robin would destroy him. That he would never unlearn the things Bruce taught him.

‘All those years Bruce was “helping” me, he was turning me into a weapon. His weapon.’

Bruce didn’t teach Jason violence. Neither did Dick. 

They tried to hone it, maybe. Tried to point Jason at the right people. Bruce had called it a necessary outlet. 

Dick had called it a problem, a temptation. 

‘Believe me,’ he’d said, low and serious and with deep, deep feeling, ‘the price is too high.’

Jason hadn’t believed it then. He thinks he might now. 

He never felt like Bruce’s weapon, or even Dick’s.

But he was Crane’s. 

The Red Hood was Crane’s enforcer, his mouthpiece. 

His scapegoat.

His pet. 

The thought of it makes Jason’s stomach churn, makes his lungs tight. 

He doesn’t want to be a weapon anymore. 

He doesn’t know what he does want to be. 

But he thinks of those kids downstairs - thinks of the way they expected him to lash out, the way he felt his own body tense instinctively for a fight before he could stop it, before anything had even happened - and he knows that whatever he wants, that isn’t it.

Jason has been telling himself that he was tying up his own loose ends by following up on the Red Hood gang. That he was correcting his own mistakes.

Max might be right, though. Maybe Jason just wanted a reason to feel shitty. 

He's only made things worse, after all.

For Bruce, and Dick, and the Titans. For Barbara. For Molly.

For himself.

That thought settles uncomfortably on him, like his skin is suddenly too small for his body.

It takes Jason a moment to realize why. 

He rolls over in his blanket bundle, looking to where his phone is still plugged in. 

Still switched off. 

Jason makes no move to turn it back on, now.

If vigilantism is the stick he’s beating himself with, the noose he’s been keeping around his neck… 

Well, then Jason needs to put it down. He needs to cut the threads.

All of them.