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Jason’s mom used to hold him when he cried, sometimes. Not always, and so he tried not to cry in front of her, just in case it was the wrong time. His dad may have held him some, when he was little, but it’s only in vague, hazy memories.
After his mom dies, no one ever holds him when he cries. For the most part, though, he gets pretty good at not crying.
After he gets to the Manor, it’s like some internal switch happens, and he cries all the time. He’s not sure what it is, this new tendency to burst into tears, but it’s terrifying and mortifying and it happens all. The. Fucking. Time. And Bruce holds him. And kisses his head. And tells him he loves him. And Jason gets used to it.
When Jason dies, no one’s there to hold him and tell him it’s okay. No one’s there when he crawls out, either, and Talia doesn’t hold him when he climbs out of the pit.
Jason doesn’t cry for a really long time. And then, one day, he’s 23, and he’s crying in Bruce’s office, and, for the first time since before he died, Bruce holds him. And kisses his head. And tells him he loves him. And Jason thinks he believes him.
Eventually, Jason has to disentangle himself from his dad’s arms, and his first truly coherent thought is that he needs to get out of this house. He knows that Dick and Tim are here, and probably Damian, and who knows who else of Bruce’s orphans, and the thought of facing any of them like this—eyes red and puffy, face splotched, nose running—is unbearable. He’s not dealing with the looks on their faces. “I need to go,” he whispers, his voice horribly hoarse, and Bruce nods, but he doesn’t move his hand off Jason’s shoulder. Jason realizes he doesn’t want him to. Some frantic part of his brain tries to recall the last time someone held him while he cried, and he immediately shuts that part off.
“Da- B, will…” he stops himself from saying it, but Bruce doesn’t look away from him.
“Yeah, Jay?”
“You can come with me. If you want.”
For just a second, Bruce’s hand leaves Jason’s shoulder and cups his chin. “Okay, Jay. Of course.”
xxx
When Jason was a kid, Bruce sometimes had to leave. Justice League stuff, usually. Sometimes, it was actually Wayne Enterprises business, which was shocking, every time, because Jason wasn’t sure Bruce always remembered he had an actual company.
Jason is never left truly alone—Alfred is always there, and he spends time with Jason, actual, real time, and they cook together and watch movies and talk. Mostly, Jason explores when Bruce leaves. The Manor is quiet, and it’s safe, and Jason is able to read whenever he wants to.
Now, Jason is 23, and Bruce has been gone for two days, and he wishes someone—anyone—would leave him the fuck alone again.
The first thorn in his side is—who-fucking-else—Dick. It takes him 9 hours to show up at the safe house, knocking on the door.
“What do you want?” Jason asks, because some childish part of himself still loves acting like he has no idea why Dick’s upset.
“Bruce is missing,” Dick says immediately, and he points his chin past Jason’s arm, which is still holding the door open. “Can I come in?”
“Oh my god,” Jason says in a deadpan, “Bruce is missing? I had no idea.”
“Honestly, Jason, sometimes I can’t fucking stand you.” There’s no heat to Dick’s voice, though, and he rubs the bridge of his nose. “You’re not gonna let me in, are you?”
“No.”
“And you’re not going to tell me where Bruce went?”
“Yeah, no.”
Dick nods. “Well, thanks for absolutely nothing.”
“Any time.”
Dick turns on his heel to go, but after a few steps, he turns around. “Are you okay, Jay?”
Jay snorts. “Oh, fuck off.”
Dick smiles—actually smiles. “You look... Did you kill B?”
“You wish.”
Dick’s grin grows wider. “Go fuck yourself, Little Wing.”
Jason holds up his mug of coffee in salute. “Anytime, Dickhead.”
xxx
After Jason is done crying, he and Bruce go to the safe house that Tim has stocked with various canned fruits and vegetables. Jason sees Bruce clock the can of canned mandarins on the counter—a new addition in the last two weeks, before the Stephanie fight—but he doesn’t say anything. Once they’re here, in the safe house, Jason feels so stupid for having brought Bruce here, as if there’s something that Bruce is supposed to do now.
“You can leave if you want,” he says, but Bruce shrugs.
“Do you want me to leave?”
Jason snorts, some old self graciously retuning to his body. “I don’t care what you do,” he says, with the distinct tone of someone who didn’t just spend twenty minutes crying into someone’s shirt.
Bruce nods. “Then I’ll stay.”
When he wakes up, Bruce has made breakfast, and Jason takes one bite of it and says: “holy shit, Bruce, this is bad. You are so…you really did grow up rich, huh? Be honest, have you SEEN a kitchen before this morning?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, did I pick the wrong combination of canned foods to dump in a pot?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, are you making a joke about my poverty related eating habits?”
Bruce clicks his tongue, and Jason almost laughs. For a second, things feel normal, a kind of normal they haven’t been since Jason died. And then Jason remembers: Bruce knows everything, now. Jason freezes, and he feels like he can’t remember how his jaw works.
Bruce gives him a look, and he looks…pained. He reaches out to ruffle Jason’s hair, and Jason dodges him. “Don’t do that shit,” he mumbles. “It’s not…I’m not… I acted like a baby last night, it doesn’t mean I’m Robin again.”
“You didn’t act childish, and I know you’re not Robin,” Bruce says quietly, and there’s no anger or pain behind it. “Listen, there’s something I need to ask you.”
xxx
Alfred arrives next, only a few hours after Dick. He knocks on the door so properly that Jason would know it was him even without the surveillance equipment—the few Bats that do ever bother to knock have the tendency to sound like they’re considering breaking the door down.
Jason lets him in immediately, and he sees the way Alfred looks around the house, sees when Alfred sees the canned foods everywhere, and for a minute, he feels twelve again, Alfred watching him unpack all of his belongings and realizing everything Jason can claim as his own fits in a backpack. But just like when he was twelve, Alfred doesn’t seem alarmed or judgmental. Actually, Alfred smiles a little.
“I see you have inherited Master Bruce’s sense of interior design,” he says wryly, placing a grocery bag on the counter.
“Hey, don’t knock Bruce’s style,” Jason says jokingly, “who else would think of living in a cave?”
Alfred clicks his tongue. “Yes, per usual, Master Bruce is primarily concerned with ways to imitate bats. His decor sense in the Manor, however, is severely lacking.”
“Brutal, Alfred.”
Alfred smiles at him, and for a second, it’s the two of them sitting in the Manor kitchen, waiting for Bruce to get home from patrol, eating cookies.
“I assume Master Bruce told you where he is going?”
“Yeah,” Jason says, rubbing the back of his head, “yeah, he did.”
Alfred nods, satisfied. “Good.” He gestures to the bags. “I’ve brought food for your refrigerator. It won’t keep long, of course, but it will make you through the week.”
Jason gives him a small smile. “I can feed myself, Alfred.”
Alfred scoffs. “As if I’d ever allow you to grow up in my house without learning those skills. Of course you can feed yourself. This is a gift, Jason, not an obligation.”
Jason flushes red for a second, and he tries not to let Alfred see. “Really?” He jokes, instead of saying thank you. “Because if I remember correctly, Bruce grew up in your house, and I’m pretty sure he tried to feed me a raw potato once.”
Alfred sighs. “Yes, well, some things in life are hopeless. You, though, were not.”
“Damn, Al. Do you mind writing that down somewhere, so I can have it in print? I’d like to hang it up at Bruce’s next gala. ‘Jason Todd was fine at cooking; Bruce Wayne was completely hopeless.’”
“Unfortunately, Bruce would be in good company at his galas. Some of them are unaware that there are people who even cook their own home meals.”
“Fuckin rich kids.”
“Indeed.” Alfred pauses, gives him a meaningful look. “Jason. You will call if you need something.”
“What? Yeah, sure,” Jason says half heartedly, and Alfred shakes his head.
“I was not asking a question, Jason. I was giving an order.”
xxx
Bruce asks his questions, and Jason stares blankly at him.
“I told you,” he says finally, gripping his coffee mug a little too tightly, “I killed all of them.”
“That’s all I’m asking,” Bruce says softly, “is if you killed all of them. Or are there any still out there? I need…I need to know.”
Jason scans Bruce’s face. Is Bruce mad? That he killed them? Or is he mad that he may have missed some? Jason can’t tell. Maybe Bruce is upset that-
“I’m not angry with you,” Bruce says, cutting through Jason’s frantic thoughts. “I just…I need to know. If you know. And you’re willing to tell me.”
“I killed them all,” Jason whispers, “except four.”
Bruce makes a pained noise, and Jason’s still not sure what he’s mad upset about, whether it’s the murder or the inefficiency. After a minute, Bruce asks, in a gruff voice: “Do you have names?”
xxx
Stephanie shows up the morning after Alfred, and Jason is once again holding a mug of coffee. “Oh, okay,” she says before the door is even all the way open, “so this is how we’re playing this, now? You’re pissed at me and now you’re sipping coffee while we’re all running over Gotham looking for Bruce goddamn Wayne?”
Jason looks at her blankly. “Oh, are we talking now?”
“Don’t be an ass,” she snaps. She looks exhausted—dark smudges under her eyes, greasy hair in a sloppy braid. For a second, he almost feels bad. He’d always liked Steph, is the thing. He hadn’t meant to fuck everything up with her. But then he remembers that he didn’t start this—she did. TIM did.
“Are you going to let me in?” She asks quietly, the venom draining from her voice.
“No,” he says out of habit, and then he takes another look at her nail bitten hands and thinks about the fresh coffee still in the kitchen. “Blech. Sure. Fine. Whatever.”
She flops down on the couch the second she comes in, and gives Jason one of the most truly pathetic looks he’s ever seen. “Can I have some coffee?”
“Absolutely fucking not,” he grits out, but he goes ahead and grabs another mug from the cabinet. Stephanie is starting to use Tim’s method of using caffeine rather than sleep to stay functioning, and he wonders if he should be worried. He shouldn’t, though, because that’s not his job.
“So you’re all what? Hunting for Bruce?”
She shrugs, taking the cup of coffee from him with a sigh. “Dick isn’t. I don’t know what you said to him, but after he came here, he felt pretty secure that wherever Bruce is, it’s not a big deal.” She shoots him a look. “So I’m assuming he’s not, like, tied up in the guest bedroom.”
“Is that why you’re here? To see if I kidnapped Bruce?”
Her mouth twitches. “I notice you’re not saying you DIDN’T kidnap him.” The humor leaves her eyes. “Honestly? I just…you obviously made Dick feel better, somehow. And I…I think I may have fucked everything, J.”
Don’t ask, he told himself. It’s not your business. Don’t ask. Don’t- “what’d you fuck up this time?” Goddammit.
Stephanie gives him a grateful look before frowning. “I had a fight with Tim. And then I had a fight with you. And then I had another fight with Tim. And now…I can’t talk to either of you, now, and we fucked that Two Face attack so badly, and now Bruce is gone, and Tim is spiraling out, and you’re holing up here, and… I don’t know, man, I’m just pretty sure I did this.”
He looks at her. Don’t get involved. He leans forward. “Stephanie. Listen to me. Do not ever—EVER—blame yourself when Tim is right there, okay? Here’s a life hack, if you blame anything—anything at all—on Tim, there’s a 99% chance you’re right, okay? I just… God, what’s the point of having Tim around if we can’t blame him for all of our shit?”
She snorts, and takes a sip of her coffee. “I don’t know, dude, this one might actually be on me.”
Some horrible, awful part of Jason likes making Stephanie laugh. He wants to squash that part of himself, but he’s finding it difficult right now. She just looks so fucking tired. “This is a weird way of trying to apologize, Spoiler.”
She sighs dramatically. “Yeah, I know, I was hoping you’d pick up on the context clues. So, there it is: I’m sorry I yelled at you. I stand by what I said about being nicer to Tim. But, also, I should’ve said some other stuff, and I didn’t.”
“Like what?”
“Like, I don’t know, Tim was being an asshole and he shouldn’t have messed with your food and I should have been way angrier at him than I was.”
He tries not to smile and focuses instead on staring at his cup of coffee. “I’m assuming you told Tim all of this?”
“Oh yeah. It was a whole thing.”
“Atta girl,” he says, and he pretends not to see the grin.
“I don’t want to have to pick between being friends with you guys,” she says quietly after a moment. “It’s not your fault. I just…”
“I don’t know if there’s a world,” he says quietly, “where Tim and I are friends.”
“I know,” she replies sadly. “But you’re both my family. I’m sorry I fucked up, dude.”
He shrugs. “As if Bruce was ever going to pick kids who didn’t occasionally fuck up.”
“Except for Damian. Obviously.”
“Oh yeah, something very fucked up is going on there.”
She grins again. “Listen, thanks for the coffee. I need to go continue to search for Gotham’s most elusive billionaire, but let me know when you decide to release him from your basement.”
Don’t say it, he tells himself again. “Hey, Steph?” Jesus Christ.
“Yeah?”
“Bruce didn’t leave because he’s pissed at you.”
She pauses mid-step, twisting her mouth. “You know that?”
“Yeah.”
She nods. “Okay, then. Thanks, J.”
“Please don’t ever talk to me about your problems again.” He says, and he tries to make it sound mean, but she beams at him.
“Holy shit, we’re saying please now? Dick will be so excited.”
xxx
“What are you going to do with them?” Jason asks Bruce quietly, after he’s handed over the names.
Names he spent hours finding, names he’s been tracking for years now, just in case. None of them are in Gotham anymore, is the thing, and he could have used the Bat resources to get them, but by the time he’d been given access to the Bat resources again, it had all been so…tentative. If he killed someone, Bruce would know. And Bruce would ask questions. And at the time, the plan had been for Bruce to never know any of this, ever.
Looking at the names Bruce has written down now, though, knowing they’re still alive, knowing that they’re alive and Bruce knows they’re alive, he’s not sure he can breathe.
Bruce gives him a soft look. “Do you want to know? What I’m going to do?”
“Are you going to kill them?” Here’s what he can’t say, even though he wants to: don’t kill them. Not now. Don’t finally become someone different, right when I’ve finally believed that you’re the person you’ve always said you are.
Bruce frowns, and he looks genuinely upset. “No. I’m not. But I’ll…I’m going to destroy them, Jason.” There’s an undercurrent of rage there that Bruce rarely taps into around them, and the hair on the back of Jason’s neck stands up.
“Okay,” he says, “then I don’t need to know.”
Bruce nods. “Alright.” He stands. “I’m going to handle this,” he says gruffly, “and then I’ll be back. The others—no one needs to know, Jason, only the people you want.”
“I don’t want anyone to know,” Jason admits, and he crosses his arms tightly, tries to contain himself.
Bruce nods again. “Then no one will, Jay.” He leans forward and kisses Jason’s hair, and Jason closes his eyes and imagines he’s thirteen again. “I’ll be back,” Bruce says, and Jason heads it for what it is: a promise.
Nine hours later, Dick shows up.
xxx
Tim doesn’t knock on the door. He also doesn’t enter through the window. Instead, he just sort of lurks for an hour, until, finally, Jason is so annoyed that he opens the window and yells: “JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, if you’re going to stalk and murder me will you go ahead and get it over with?”
For a minute, there’s nothing. And then, so faintly Jason could’ve missed it if he hadn’t been trained by Bruce, there’s a knock at the door.
Tim looks even worse than Steph did.
“So you do understand how doors work,” Jason says drily. “Dick owes me 20 bucks.”
“Go to hell,” Tim mutters back. He’s still pretty banged up from the Two Face encounter, and he looks like he hasn’t slept since then. “Where’s Bruce?”
“I don’t know,” Jason says, and Tim rolls his eyes.
“Really? Because everyone looks for him, shows up here, and then stops looking for him, so maybe just tell me instead of being a giant asshole for fun-“
“TIM,” Jason snaps, “I don’t fucking know.”
Tim stares at him, meeting his eyes for the first time since he opened the door. He must see something there, because his face falls, and he somehow looks even worse. “Well, shit,” he mumbles, and he sounds dangerously close to breaking.
Jason hates him. He hates him so much, actually, with his weird entitlement and his penchant for being places he shouldn’t and his smug superiority and his shit eating grin and his belief that he’s better than all of them. Jason hates him. He always has. “Tim,” Jason says, right as Tim’s about to go, “do you want some coffee?”
Tim looks at him. “Did you poison it? Actually, fuck, I don’t care if you did. I’ll take anything, right now.”
He sits at Jason’s counter while Jason brews the pot in silence. There’s a second where Jason thinks he’s fallen asleep, but he quickly rights himself, and he narrows his eyes at Jason. “Are you just being nice to me because you’re being smug about Bruce? I don’t want your victory coffee, okay? Like, I mean, I’m obviously going to drink it, but we get it, okay? You won. Don’t be a fucking asshole and offer me coffee.”
Jason stares at him blankly. “Wow, Tim, that made absolutely no sense. I see the concussions are finally taking a toll.” He hands Tim the coffee and Tim glares at him. “Listen, buddy. One: I’m never being nice to you, okay? So get that out your head now. Two: I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“You win,” Tim hisses into his coffee. “Bruce is pissed at me. Bruce is telling you secrets now, apparently. You did it, okay?”
“Tim. I haven’t won shit.”
“Oh, right, so Bruce and Dick and Stephanie all getting mad at me about the food thing and then me fucking up the Two Face encounter and then Bruce telling me I was acting unfocused and then the two of you meeting in his office and then him disappearing and only you knowing why is all a coincidence, huh? It’s all totally random?”
Jason blinks. “Bruce and Dick got mad at you?”
“Jesus fuck, yes.” Tim takes a huge gulp of coffee. “They didn’t tell you?”
“When has anyone in this family ever told me shit?”
“Fair. They told me I was being invasive. And all this other stuff. At one point I think Dick cried. Side note, you and I need at some point to discuss the fact that we may have actually broken Dick somehow.”
“The few years where Dick appeared stable were the exception, not the standard. We’re fine.” Jason takes a sip of coffee. “To be clear, they were right. You’re the most annoying fucking thing I’ve ever met. You’re like bed bugs.”
“Bruce says that I may have a tendency to be over involved, which is ironic, considering he adopts literally every orphan he comes in contact with and he’s developed a parasocial relationship with a city. Dick says it’s because no one paid attention to me growing up, which, again, is ironic, because I actually had ten different nannies, so joke’s on him.”
“Yeah, you showed him.”
Tim nods. Jason tops off his coffee, which is almost empty already. He’s not sure Tim notices. “So, look, I’m going to stop showing up in your houses and leaving you carefully selected canned fruits.”
“It was the Dollar Store brand.”
“As I said, carefully selected.”
Jason can’t help it, he laughs. “Holy shit, is this an apology? This is like watching a toddler try karate.”
“Shut up. Go to hell. Just when you talk to Bruce, will you…” Tim trails off, and Jason raises his eyebrows.
“Do what? Tell him you managed to ramble for five minutes and drink a pot of coffee?”
“Is he kicking me out of the Bats?” Tim says it all as a rush, and Jason freezes. “Is that what he’s thinking? Because I know I fucked up, a lot, and… I need to know, man.”
Jason’s had this conversation before, is the thing. Jesus Christ, he’s had it in the last few days. He’s just never been on this side of it. He stares blankly at Tim, trying to reconcile this Tim—a Tim who thinks he’s about to lose everything because he made some mistakes—with the same Tim he’s always known.
“Tim,” he starts, not sure how this is happening to him, and Tim groans.
“I know I fucked up, okay? But I- just tell him that I’m going to do better, okay? I am. I’m not gonna fuck up anymore. And I’m going to catch Two Face. I am. I-“
“I told Bruce I used to be a child prostitute and he left to catch all the guys I didn’t kill already. He didn’t say anything about being mad at you. He seemed like he was worried about you, but you’re still a Bat. Obviously.”
For a second, Tim just stares at him. Then he drinks his coffee and stares at the ceiling. Jason can’t look away from him. He hadn’t meant to say any of that, hadn’t planned it until the words were out of his mouth. But now it’s there, and he finds he doesn’t care.
“I won’t tell Dick,” Tim says, finally, and Jason realizes that was the only thing he wanted Tim to say. He looks at Jason. “I’ve told you before, man, all I ever wanted to be was you. You were so cool. And now… I can’t do anything right, anymore. I remember…I remember fighting you, the first time, and just realizing that you’re… you’re like Bruce’s actual kid, you know? You fight like him. You look like him. You… I can’t be you, Jason. I don’t know… i don’t mean to keep fucking this up.”
Jason swallows. “You’re probably the only person in the world that wanted to be me.”
“No, that’s the whole thing, okay? Every kid my age in Gotham wanted to be you. And now every kid in Crime Alley still does. You…Bruce would never get rid of you. And I don’t… I feel like I’m always on the edge, here.”
“Tim,” Jason says slowly. “I’m going to say this one time, and then never again, I swear to God. You’re really fucking good.”
Tim stares at him, and, slowly, some sort of light returns to his eyes. “Yeah?”
“Oh my god, I’m not repeating myself, I JUST said that.”
“Fair.” Tim drains the rest of the coffee and stands. He places a hand on the countertop, flexing his forearm while he looks down thoughtfully. “I am sorry. For the record. About being an ass.”
“I’ve done so much shit,” Jason says, and what he wants to say is ‘I’m sorry I tried to kill you,’ “and I’ve always thought Bruce would get rid of me. And he just…doesn’t. I think we’re both here. Permanently.”
Tim considers this, and he spins the coffee mug on the counter. “Okay, then. We’re both in this.”
xxx
When Bruce comes back three days after he left, Jason is asleep on the couch. He wakes up to Bruce once again trying to make breakfast in the kitchen, and when he comes to sit at the counter, Bruce hands him a brutally bad cup of coffee.
“It’s all been taken care of,” Bruce says, and Jason is hit by the idea that maybe it would have always been this easy, maybe Bruce was always going to take care of things, maybe Jason never had to be afraid at all.
“Thanks,” whispers Jason. It’s all been so fucking hard, is the thing, an entire lifetime of hard things, and they’re always stacking on each other, and it’s like that for all of them, for him, for Bruce, for Dick, for Stephanie. For Tim. “Hey, B?”
“Yeah?”
“You need to check on your fucking kids.”
Bruce smiles at him. “Okay,” he says, “I will.”