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All things considered, these might be the best circumstances under which Bruce has ever been exposed to fear toxin.
The perpetrator is already in custody, and it wasn’t even Scarecrow. A copycat had found an old, old stash of his toxin and planned a dramatic release that Batman had foiled with, he almost hates to jinx it, with ease. No one else has been dosed. No deaths. No Robin in mortal danger, relying on him keeping a clear head. He’ll keep his head regardless, of course, but it’s nice to have the luxury of no one’s life depending on it. The night was already wrapping up.
He stops a mugging on the way home; it’s almost leisurely.
Preliminary blood analysis in the Batmobile confirms what he’d suspected. The toxin has deteriorated with age. It explains the weak symptoms. Elevated heart rate, disrupted respiratory pattern, rising body temperature to correspond with the involuntary adrenaline rush. Hypervigilance and shadows flitting in his peripheral, his mind creating the illusion of danger in the absence of a real threat for the toxin to morph and enhance. His system will flush this out by the time he even synthesizes an antidote.
It’s all very neat and clean, and yet. There’s something. An itch, still.
Bruce has a high tolerance for any sort of toxin, and there’s something about fear toxin in particular that comes almost easy to him. All his training, his observation skills and his meditation practice, his rigid discipline over mind and body earned in years and broken bones—it’s perfectly suited to resisting even chemical tricks. More than that, fear is a familiar ghost. Bruce has been functioning hand-in-hand with fear since he was a child.
This is how he can take stock of himself, his surroundings, the events of the night, and conclude that he is not in any sort of danger, no matter what his nervous system is telling him.
But, a voice says in the back of his mind, what about Robin?
Robin isn’t with him tonight. It’s Tuesday, not one of Robin’s weeknight patrol nights. He would be sleeping safe and sound in the manor, and if he wasn’t, Alfred would have called.
Not that Robin, the voice says.
Dick is in Bludhaven tonight, Jason in Crime Alley. Tim is in San Francisco for the rest of the week. Stephanie has been working a case with the Birds of Prey, her and Cassandra both. He is out of Robins to worry about.
You don’t know that you don’t need to worry about them, the voice points out.
Ah. Yes. That is the itch. Bruce recognizes the voice now too. He thought at first it was born of the toxin, but no, this one lives with him—the part of him that never stops being afraid, the fear that more and more these days is for his children, the pieces of him walking around outside of himself. It’s a familiar anxiety, twisted by the origin of tonight’s fear to be about not his children, but something close. His Robins. Robin, after all, is the one he needs to worry about protecting when Scarecrow comes calling.
Even so, this anxiety has the same one-two punch to it. First, the worry. Second, the realization that he can’t just call them. It’s a joke among his children, his teammates—Batman is prepared for everything except a conversation. It’s less funny when he’s confronted with the truth that calling to check in would be tantamount to calling in the cavalry. Jason and Tim would be deeply suspicious of everything from Bruce having an ulterior motive to Bruce being replaced by an evil version of himself from an alternate dimension, and would act on those suspicions in opposite but equally exhausting ways. Stephanie would assume the world was ending. He would not be able to convince her otherwise. She would persist in overblown concern just to raise his blood pressure, and cheerfully admit to it at that.
Dick is the only one who might graciously pass it off as Bruce being a control freak, but depending on his mood, that could have the most long-reaching consequences. They’re so much better than they used to be, but Dick is not above the silent treatment when he feels Bruce needs the reminder.
He could call Clark.
For a moment, he thinks that’s the fear toxin talking too, but no, that’s just logical. Clark could check in on each of the kids without them knowing, let Bruce know that everything is okay. Bruce could explain the situation to him, and he would say something despairing of Gotham as if he’d never encountered some alien plant or another with the exact same effects, and it would be—normal. Mostly. A vaguely embarrassing favor between colleagues and friends that Clark, if he’s feeling merciful, will never mention again, at least not for a good long time. It would be acceptable, to tell Clark that he won’t survive losing another child and he’s becoming increasingly certain that he won’t survive the night, that he knows it’s the toxin talking but he still can’t breathe—but that isn’t acceptable knowledge for his kids to have.
Even his Robins.
They’ve borne enough of the burden of Batman’s fears.
But the fact remains that if he calls Dick, he doesn’t have to talk about it—and he gets to hear his eldest’s voice. He tells himself he can mitigate the risks.
“Hey, B.” Dick picks up in the middle of a yawn. “Little bit early for you to be calling me on a civilian line, no?”
Bruce checks the time. Half past three. “Uneventful night.”
Dick hums. “That’s good. It was just you tonight, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” Bruce hesitates. “Are you… home?”
“What, at the manor?” Dick sounds surprised, but for a moment warmth spreads so strongly through Bruce he almost forgets the fear entirely. There was a time he thought Dick would never come back to the manor, and now he easily, tiredly calls it home. Natural for his mind to go there when Bruce is the one asking, but still significant.
“Are you still patrolling,” Bruce corrects.
“Oh, no. Early morning tomorrow. Why?”
“I don’t want to be distracting you from anything,” Bruce says slowly. It would be ideal if he could come up with an actual distraction, a reason for him to be calling, but his mind is occupied with anxious thoughts and moving shadows with no mission concrete enough to distract him into competence.
“Right.” Dick waits a beat. “What, exactly, are you distracting me with?”
“This phone call,” Bruce says, then closes his eyes, pained. That was bad, even for him.
Miraculously, Dick’s voice softens. “Hey. Was it… really uneventful, tonight? If it’s a case, you can talk to me.”
A lump rises in Bruce’s throat. He can’t, really, isn’t that the running joke? “There isn’t anything.”
“You know Babs will tell me if you’re lying,” Dick says, half-teasing.
“Have you spoken to her tonight?” Bruce asks, a little too sharp. Not a Robin, not his, but nonetheless—
There’s a silence in which Bruce knows he has given too much away, then Dick says, “We were just texting, actually. The girls were wrapping up for the night too.”
Bruce grunts. That’s three Robins accounted for, his daughter, and a bonus Batgirl.
“Look, I hate to do this when we’re having such a good chat and all,” Dick says, “but I do have that early morning…?”
“Of course,” Bruce says, relieved to be let off the hook without having to come up with an explanation.
“All right.” There’s another silence, one last opportunity to just say something, he knows his eldest well enough to know that, but the opportunities don’t come so much with ultimatums these days. “Night, B.”
Maybe it’s the nightmares Bruce himself is already anticipating, a familiar aftereffect of the toxin, but he says softly, “Sleep well.”
And Dick pauses, surprised again, but the silence that lingers between them in the prolonged beat before he hangs up is warm.
Bruce releases a measured breath. There. That’s three Robins—Dick safe in his apartment, Stephanie off the streets for the night, Damian sleeping in the manor—plus Barbara and Cassandra accounted for, for good measure. Maybe, as the toxin continues to deteriorate, his head will clear enough to think of a solid excuse to contact Tim before he goes to bed.
Having only one Robin left to worry about wouldn’t be bad odds. He might even be able to sleep.
Except that Robin is already dead, the voice points out. Quite logically, matter-of-fact, as if Jason never came back at all.
Bruce thumps his head back against the seat as the Batmobile takes the turnoff to the cave on autopilot. There’s a place in his heart where Jason didn’t come back, a barren place in Bruce that died with his second son where nothing can ever come back again, he knows that, but he’s erected walls around that place. It’s not reality, no matter how much the toxin makes it bleed.
He isn’t going to let a voice in his head change that, even if its his own.
Overall, he thinks he can still claim a win. Dick was confused, but not like he’s about to call J’onn to do a checkup or like he’s feeling the need to give Bruce the cold shoulder to regain his independence. Still not awful circumstances to ride out this bout of toxin exposure in peace, with no one in his family the wiser.
RR: hey u need to go babysit B, he’s trying to pretend he didn’t get dosed with fear toxin 2nite lmao
Hood: Why the fuck would I do that
RR: bc ur the only available Robin, dumbass
Hood: What the fuck did you just say to me
RR: I called you a dumbass? I kno you had all that brain damage but I’m pretty sure you can still read, right?
Hood: I’m literally going to kill you
RR: k. u should get some new material
Hood: You should try not texting like an eighth grader
RR: nerd
RR: are u going or not? robin i is tired, I’m in sf & robin iv would uhh make it worse on purpose
Hood: The kid?
RR: school nite. sleeping like the precious little baby he is
Hood: You’re really committed to provoking an assassination attempt tonight, huh?
RR: better men than both of u have tried
Hood: How do you even know B got dosed if no one’s around?
RR: he called N. acted weird. O checked cowl footage
RR: look, u kno ur like. way up there in B’s fear toxin greatest hits anyway, rite? just go & make sure he’s okay, let him stare at you like a creep, maybe check ur pulse a couple times. 2 birds, 1 stone
Hood: If I go, will you promise to never text me again? Reading your messages makes me feel like I’m having a stroke
RR: no<3
Bruce might have miscalculated. Not a lot. The toxin is running its course quickly, quicker than usual, but he’d made the incorrect prediction that it had peaked on injection and would deteriorate from there.
It is, briefly, getting worse.
He can’t close his eyes without seeing monsters. A grotesque bat, a bloody smile with every blink. Whispers and wings flutter in his ears. His mouth tastes like ash. Perhaps most uncomfortably, his heart rate has increased to a normal man’s resting pulse, and he is hot.
Even in the Cave, he wants to keep the suit on. There is nothing for fear toxin like body armor and a Kevlar cape, but more than that he wants to keep his face hidden from all the shadows flitting around him. Except there are no moving shadows, and logic has always been the best resistance to things that twist the mind. Thinking logical thoughts and doing logical things.
Bruce is hot, so he will take off the stifling layers of protective gear and take a cold shower. He will chew a piece of mint gum until his mouth remembers it has no reason to taste like anything else, and he will squeeze one of Tim’s stress balls until his hands forget the weight of his child’s corpse. His child, dead in a Robin costume. His Robins, all of them relying on him—
Dick is safe at his apartment. Stephanie is in for the night. Damian is upstairs asleep. Any moment now, Bruce will think of a reason to text Tim and get a vaguely incoherent response, and Jason… Jason…
Maybe he can get Alfred to contact Jason in the morning. And Jason will be fine, because Jason died a broken boy but he came back as a weapon, who will never allow himself to not be fine again. He will never allow himself to need Bruce again, and so Bruce doesn’t need to worry about him. Most nights this makes his heart crack, open and echoing with a hundred failures big and small, but tonight it helps, just a little.
He walks to the showers and cranks one to freezing. The water doesn’t drown out the whispers or the wings, not in the slightest, which is helpful. It means they aren’t real. He knew that, but he will never turn down empirical evidence.
The sounds aren’t real. The shadows aren’t real. There is no threat here.
But his heart is still beating in his throat and his instincts are never wrong so where is the threat?
Bruce closes his eyes and runs through the evidence again. Maybe, if he hasn’t thought of anything for Tim by the time he gets out of the shower, he can text Clark just about Tim and Jason. That’s easier to justify without a full conversation—Clark knows Tim is out of town, and it wouldn’t be the first or last time Bruce contacts him in the middle of the night about Jason.
He exhales as if he can breathe the anxiety out of his body and steps under the cold shower spray. The shock of it kicks his heart rate up instead of down, but that’s okay. It feels like heaven on his feverish skin. Humans, Clark told him once, aren’t supposed to like cold showers. Clark hates them with a passion, but then again, Clark could fly into the sun like it’s a warm bath, so what does he know?
Nothing, Bruce decides, ducking his head under the water, just as his brain does the worst thing it’s done to him all night.
Oh, the voice from earlier sighs, as if in relief. Kal.
Bruce’s eyes fly open.
Threat, his drugged brain insists. Threat you can’t fight. Kal.
Bruce, with all his training and expertise and rigid discipline, resists the urge to smash his head against the shower tile.
This is the peak, he tells himself. It was not a strong dose. This is the peak.
He manages a meditation that gets his heartbeat back down to a regular level while the shower helps with his body temperature, and he’s even starting to feel the familiar fatigue of the adrenaline crash by the time he finishes. The towel draped over his head while he scrubs at his hair doesn’t affect the shadows looming in his peripheral, which means not real, and he heads straight to the medical cabinet without acknowledging them, and by the time he lifts his head again—
When he lifts his head, Jason’s corpse is standing in the middle of the Cave.
In order to protect his and Bruce’s still-mending relationship, Jason usually tries not to go to the Cave when he already wants to shoot something. It’s just setting the whole effort up to fail, and they’re far enough along now that Jason can admit, without wanting to shoot himself, that he doesn’t want it to fail.
The problem is that things are hard with Bruce, they’re so fucking hard in what feels like a new way every single time he sees the man—it’s almost like the good old days, when everything Bruce was was everything Jason had never known and every day was an exercise in adapting to good things that made him feel like he was dying, except now the bad stuff makes him feel normal and he’s just normal enough to realize that’s bad, and the good stuff doesn’t make him feel like he’s dying so much as like he’s clawing at something not meant for him with cursed hands and dragging it down into the grave dirt where he’ll live forever, and sometimes when nothing is happening at all he wants to punch the impassive look off Bruce’s face and do anything to make him feel like Jason feels, full of hissing twisting anger with no place to go, except the anger is grief and the anger is pain, except he knows Bruce already feels that way under both his masks and that’s why they got along so well in the first place, except those jagged edges that used to fit so well are just bleeding now, and why is Jason always bleeding, why does everything always hurt, if killing him killed Bruce too the way everyone says it did then why didn’t they come back the same way too, he just wants his dad—
Things are hard, with Bruce.
And sometimes things are harder with his siblings. Hard enough that they don’t call themselves that. On the rare occasions that they’re all together, Dick will say it without going out of his way to exclude Jason, and Tim when referring to them as part of the same group sticks to a vague label of family as if they’re in the mob or the Fast and Furious movies, but they’ll also casually refer to family dinners Jason wasn’t invited to or make jokes about sitting for a family portrait he isn’t in, so he knows where he stands. Cassandra and Damian don’t talk to him at all, which is just fine. He's not a kid anymore. He doesn’t need a whole family thing.
So he is dealing and mending and settling, he is doing his fucking best, and the problem is that with all that, with as hard as these things are, they are still not the problem tonight.
Dick and Tim called him to the Cave tonight, and they didn’t call him as their sort-of brother.
They called him as a Robin.
It’s the first time anyone has called him that in any way other than disparaging since he’s been back, and he hates that that means something to him. He hates that it got him here.
Robin got him killed, and he’s still not strong enough to say no to it.
So he’s in a bad mood when he breaks into the Cave, off-kilter and skin crawling, and part of him is wondering if this is a trick somehow, if Tim is going to use this as blackmail material someday—did you actually think you could still be a Robin?—and another, far more embarrassing part of him that he tries to pretend he left in the coffin is saying Dick Grayson thinks I’m a Robin.
At least Jason can’t actually shoot anything. He didn’t bring his guns. He’d caught himself at the last second, at the edge of Crime Alley with the familiar weight in his thigh holsters, and then he remembered the connections between Bruce and fear toxin and guns and dropped them off. He can be nice like that.
So there’s no reason for Bruce, fresh out of a shower and rummaging around in the medical cabinet, to catch sight of Jason and for horror to settle into the lines of his face as if his family is being murdered right in front of him.
Oh, wait.
Bruce makes a low, mournful sound, like it’s been torn out of him. It makes Jason’s heart skip a beat, makes panic tear up his throat because that’s his dad, that’s Batman, he’s not supposed to sound like that.
But Jason was trained by Batman, so he takes a measured breath, gets his body under control, and strides forward to meet him. He does his best not to flinch when Bruce lays a broad palm over the side of his face, thumb pressing into his cheekbone right where the domino broke the last time he was Robin, but he does have to swallow twice before he can speak. “B, it’s not real.”
“Jay.”
He takes Bruce’s free hand and damn near crushes it to his chest. Over the steady beat of his heart. He’s still in combat pants and boots, but he’s grateful now he ditched the bulky body armor along with the guns. “Yeah. Just not the one you’re seeing, I don’t think.”
Bruce closes his eyes, which would look like sentiment, if Jason didn’t know he was blocking the faulty sensory input. The thumb pressing into his cheekbone softens, sweeps over his currently unbroken face. “Jay.”
“You got it, old man.” It’s only going to take a moment for the fucking Batman to put his mind back together, and Jason can’t help watching him, cataloguing his features—the furrow easing out of his brow, the pain still tightening the lines around his mouth—searching for some sign that this man sees Jason’s bloody corpse on fear toxin because he’s afraid of losing Jason, not just because he’s always been so afraid of losing, full stop.
The hand on his face turns into a caress for a fraction of a second before it falls away, and when Bruce opens his eyes again, he doesn’t look afraid anymore, just tired.
He looks old, and Jason’s heart does something funny in his chest again. He’s not qualified for this.
Bruce’s mouth twists. “Dick called you, didn’t he?”
“Dick called Tim. Tim… contacted me.”
Bruce’s shoulders drop an inch, and Jason reads both relief and defeat in the lines of his body as he pats Jason’s chest once and pulls away completely. And Jason has to hope the toxin has dulled his senses enough that he misses the split second when Jason’s fingers tighten over his. His hands were fever-warm, which is probably why he’s pulling out a cold pack from the cabinet. “Tim’s all right? I haven’t heard from him lately.”
“Sure, until I get my hands around his scrawny little throat,” Jason mutters.
“Don’t threaten to kill your brother,” Bruce says tiredly, sitting down on a cot and laying the cold pack over the back of his neck with a sigh.
He started it. Jason bites his tongue. “I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen you voluntarily stay in medical.”
“Nearest seat.” Bruce kicks at Jason’s steel-toed boot. His feet are bare, which is a strange detail to get caught up on, but he does. Has he seen Bruce this relaxed since he’s been back? Dressed down for Bruce generally means not wearing armor, but Bruce Wayne’s clothes are just a different kind of armor, and Bruce in black sweatpants and bare feet like he’s on the sparring mat is Bruce. “Join me.”
Jason swallows again and sits on the edge of the cot. It’s too timid, the way he’s moving, but he can blame it on not being sure the cot will hold both their weight. At least four hundred pounds, between the two of them, and isn’t that strange? He kicks back at Bruce, boots and all, but just lightly, only enough to make Bruce give him a dry look. “You still hallucinating?”
“Just a little.” Bruce leans back against the wall and watches him steadily. Jason watches a bead of water drip from Bruce’s damp hair, slide down the ice pack on the nape of his neck, and wet the collar of his t-shirt. Also black, of course. Emo motherfucker. “It was a weak dose.”
“You still hallucinating me?”
“Not visually.” Bruce looked hazy, when Jason got here, but those steel blue eyes are getting clearer all the time. He clocks the question on the tip of Jason’s tongue. “Are you sure you want to be having this conversation?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Jason says this instead of admitting that he’s curious what the hell other kind of hallucination there is, when it comes to a dead Robin. Bruce wasn’t there to hear him scream.
“I carried you,” Bruce says, and his eyes are still sharp, but they’re sharp like glass. Bright and breakable. He looks down at his lap. “I carried you away from the rubble and sometimes, if I find myself… holding my arms a certain way, I can still feel the weight of that. The toxin makes it… realer.”
His elbows are on his thighs, palms facing up, and it wouldn’t have looked like a strange position for him, what with the stick that’s usually up his ass, but now Jason looks, and he can see how it’s almost the right shape to cradle a dead kid, and his stomach turns. “Jesus, B, then move your fucking arms.”
Bruce flexes his hands. “It was the last time I got to hold you.”
I’m right here, Jason thinks, only saying it out loud would be too much like asking, and he’s not sure he can do that without losing his mind again. Last time Bruce denied him what he felt was a father’s love, he planted a bomb under the Batmobile, so. Jason doesn’t get trusted to ask for these things anymore.
“Of course you like it,” he says instead. “Only you, B.”
Those empty hands curl into fists. “I didn’t say that.”
“Then, what, you’re torturing yourself with it? I guess that’s also on brand.”
Bruce exhales. “Jay.”
“Whatever.” Jason sits back and shoves his shoulder into Bruce’s to try to knock his arms askew, but Bruce just gives him a placid look, immoveable as ever. If Jason didn’t know about the fear toxin, he wouldn’t know anything was wrong at all anymore. But he does.
Fucking Tim.
Then again, Tim told him exactly what to do, didn’t he? And it worked before. Jason tugs one of Bruce’s hands over and curls it around his own wrist. Bruce doesn’t resist him this time, but he doesn’t help either, so Jason pushes his fingers down one by one until he gets the hint and tucks two against Jason’s pulse. There. “I’m just saying, I’m here to fucking help you, and I can’t do it if you’re doing half the toxin’s work for it.”
“Is that why you’re here?” There’s a note of disapproval in Bruce’s voice that makes him bristle. “To help me?”
Which, yeah, so Jason does his best not to snap about his tone. Whenever he and Bruce start snapping at each other, it only escalates. Conflict escalation is one of Jason’s best talents, actually, but he didn’t put himself through coming here just to do the job wrong, so he tries for the opposite. “I told you Dick and Tim sent me. I hope you’re at least confident those two aren’t trying to kill you, I’m sure it’s a toss-up with the rest of us.”
“Not Cassandra,” Bruce says mildly, and Jason was so expecting to be reprimanded again that it shocks him into laughing.
Bruce’s eyes crinkle at the corners. It’s a particular Bruce, barely-there smile—he has different ones, for enjoyment, for amusement. This one is all affection, and it’s always knocked Jason on his ass.
He’s almost grateful when his phone buzzes against his thigh.
RR: hey, robin, fckin report
He scowls, typing one-handed as he says, “Tim’s micromanaging. You doing okay, B? Feeling a healthy sense of fear yet, no more, no less?”
Hood: I don’t report to you, you self-righteous little shit
“Tell him to go to bed,” Bruce grumbles.
“Time difference,” Jason reminds him, nice as it is to be united in annoyance against Tim for a moment.
RR: it’s called bing a team player. don’t b like B. b a team player
Hood: That was so very close to incomprehensible
RR: lol I was gonna make a joke about failing reading comprehension and I just realized neither of us actually finished high school
Hood: And I’m the one who needs to get new material?
RR: if u just answered the question…
Jason looks up to ask Bruce again, because he didn’t answer, but he’s caught off guard by the soft look on the man’s face. “What?”
“It’s nice to see you two getting along,” Bruce admits.
“We’re not getting along,” Jason says. “He’s literally bullying me, B.”
“I’m told that’s normal brotherly behavior,” Bruce says, but he gestures for Jason’s phone with his free hand like he’s ready to seriously investigate the accusation.
Jason snorts and holds the phone away from him. “That explains so much about Damian.”
Hood: He’s in the cave and I know you know that. He’s riding it out. Were you this much of a mother hen when you were Robin?
RR: someone had to be
RR: is he hallucinating
The question sobers Jason, and not just because of the abruptly proper spelling. It’s the kind of specific that—well. By all accounts, B really wasn’t doing great when Tim was Robin. Which means Tim might have a pretty good reason for worrying about him on fear toxin, and as Jason thinks it he thinks of the awful, empty cradle of Bruce’s arms and the fractured look in his eyes and—yeah. Yeah.
He nudges Bruce’s knee with his own. “Seriously, B. Symptom check.”
Bruce runs his free hand down his face. “This is not your job.”
Anymore. Jason fills in the missing word, though Bruce didn’t even bother with it. Hurt flares in his chest, but the concern is still too fresh to be overridden. “Well, I’m filling in. Unless you want me to go upstairs and wake him up.”
“Empty threat,” Bruce mutters. “You’d never bother Alfred with this.”
He hides his surprise. Damn right he wouldn’t, not when it was just a little bit of familiar toxin and Tim’s excessive worrying, but he hadn’t been talking about Alfred. Still, he rolls with it, because not even the original Robin manages Bruce like Alfred. “I don’t know, it’s suspicious that you won’t just tell me.”
Bruce makes a face. “I told you, it was a weak dose from the start. The symptoms are no longer quantifiable.”
Jason frowns and types another message while he tries to translate that from Bruce-speak.
Hood: Not anymore. He says it’s on its way out and that you should go the fuck to sleep
RR: that’s homophobic
Hood: GO TO SLEEP
Finally, Jason looks up. “Was that emotionally-stunted Batspeak for ‘I don’t know how to describe what I’m feeling’?”
“I meant exactly what I said.” Bruce’s gaze is stormy now. “I don’t want to discuss how I’m feeling, Jason.”
“And hasn’t that worked out so well for us,” Jason says.
Bruce’s fingers spasm around his wrist. Which is about when Jason realizes he hasn’t let go. He still doesn’t let go. He’s trying to force himself calm in the way that always gets Jason’s blood boiling, because Jason knows Bruce goes for calm, but god, he lands on fucking condescending every time. “I am more than capable of dealing with a dose of old, low-level fear toxin. And what hasn’t worked out well for us is you thinking that it’s your job—”
“Bullshit,” Jason says, louder than he means to. But he doesn’t want to hear the end of that sentence. He can’t. “Fucking bullshit, B, and you know it. I don’t care how low-level it is—Batman’s down, this is exactly a Robin’s job.”
The words ring through the empty cave longer than he’d like them to. Bruce’s expression has gone from stormy to flat, and he’s staring, and Jason hates it, but he can feel the flush crawling up his neck. He wasn’t supposed to say that out loud. Dick, for all that it was a sensitive subject early in his solo career, can talk about it more or less freely now, and Tim still has Robin in his name. But Jason—Jason Todd crawled out of the grave, whatever broken mess was left of him, and Robin II didn’t.
It's like invoking a ghost, and everyone knows how well Bruce handles ghosts. He lets go of Jason’s wrist.
Anger burns in the back of Jason’s throat, the anger that is grief and the anger that is pain, and he looks away, blinking rapidly, which is why he’s surprised when the cot shifts and when he catches himself, falling sideways, it’s against Bruce’s chest, Bruce’s arms coming around his shoulders. Dry lips press to his hairline. “Yes.”
“What.” Jason’s voice cracks.
“Yes, it is.” The next kiss lands in his hair and stays there. “My Robin.”
Jason closes his eyes. He’s just—not going to speak. Maybe ever again.
His left shoulder is wedged uncomfortably against Bruce’s chest and he’s twisted half away from the hug, but he’s not moving either. The most he does—he makes himself a little smaller, the way he used to. Bruce puts a warm hand on the crook of Jason’s neck, tucks Jason’s head against his collarbone and holds him there. “You’re just wrong about one thing.”
“Of course I am,” Jason mutters, but he doesn’t open his eyes and he doesn’t move.
“Batman’s not down. Patrol’s over, lad. It’s not Robin’s job, because right now I’m just your father.” It’s not the first time they’ve acknowledged it, the elephant in the room in the form of Jason’s defunct adoption papers, but Bruce still holds his breath after like he thinks Jason might protest. Like Jason hadn’t been looking for that answer since he came back, as if he hadn’t been writing the question in blood.
Jason turns his face against Bruce’s throat, stubble scratching his cheek, and pretends he hadn’t been. “I hate to criticize your parenting skills…”
“No, you don’t.”
“No, I don’t. But ‘I’m not supposed to talk about my feelings, I’m your father’ is a little dated, B.”
If his voice wavers on the word father too, he’ll still count the rest a win. Bruce’s large hand rises to cradle the back of his head, so gentle for all Jason has seen him do, and the heat that scrapes the back of his throat this time isn’t anything he recognizes from this lifetime. This feeling belonged to the kid. The one he’d get in the early days when Bruce was still mostly Batman to him, but then he’d show signs of being a stupid, normal dad, like when he talked about something Dick did at Jason’s age or ruffled Jason’s hair without telegraphing the move like it was something he’d studied out of a book, and Jason would think without being able to examine it too closely, please. Please.
Bruce’s sigh ruffles his hair now. “It’s anxiety. That’s all that’s left. No quantifiable symptoms. I just feel… I don’t feel…”
“Safe,” Jason says quietly.
Bruce nods.
Yeah. He knows that feeling.
“I realize it’s my fault for calling Dick in the first place, but no one wants to put that on their kid, Jay,” Bruce says, voice low.
Jason rolls his eyes. He sits up straighter, and Bruce’s grip on him tightens like he’s going to be torn away, but Jason just drops his arms around his father in return and butts their heads together. It’s affectionate, mostly. “You compartmentalize at all the wrong times, you know that? Patrol’s over, but that don’t make us normal, and your… your kids are still Robins, B.”
“I compartmentalize exactly the right amount,” Bruce says, pressing another kiss to the side of Jason’s head that makes Jason pretty sure the comfort is still going in the wrong direction here, but whatever. He doesn’t answer to Tim anyway.
Nightwing: Hey, everything go okay last night?
Hood: Yeah, fine. It was just a little fear toxin, I don’t know why everyone was so worried?
Nightwing: Oh, no shit? I mean, b is weird with fear toxin, but yeah, that’s not really a big deal
Hood: Wait, you didn’t know?
Nightwing: Nah, just that SOMETHING was off when he called. Was literally in bed so I asked rr and o to look into it
Nightwing: Rr said it was a robin thing
Nightwing: Of the post-patrol damage-control variety
Nightwing: And that you were going to handle it
Hood: Yeah. He got dosed by some dumb cop bagging evidence wrong, which. Never going to let him live that down, but it was minor
Nightwing: Lmao
Nightwing: Still, sorry you had to deal with it
Nightwing: I should’ve asked rr for specifics
Nightwing: Would’ve just called superman
Hood: You would’ve what
Nightwing: Called superman?
Nightwing: You know how b gets on fear toxin, right
Hood: Not really? The only time it ever happened when I was Robin, it was this weird reverse formula that made people so fearless, they lost all their fucking common sense and died doing stupid shit. B said he beat it by finding something else to be afraid of
Nightwing: Asldfkjadldf
Nightwing: Of course he did??? That is the most on brand shit I have ever heard
Nightwing: It was probably like
Nightwing: Fear for gotham’s soul or smth
Nightwing: He was probably monologuing at scarecrow like “you think you can take away my fear but I am fear itself”
Hood: Probably. I don’t know, I was captured by Scarecrow at the time. He never told me what it was, I don’t think? Vaguely recall him saying something dramatic about how he might, one day?
Nightwing: Oh
Nightwing: Oh, little wing
Hood: What?
Nightwing: Nothing
Nightwing: You should ask him if he still remembers, tho, that’d be funny
Nightwing: Anyway, he’ll never admit it, but the come down is rough on his anxiety and supes is like his big kryptonian security blanket
Hood: Now you’re just lying to me. B would never
Nightwing: Actually ask for help? Of course not
Nightwing: That’s why, as I said, I would’ve called him
Nightwing: But for real, it’s like the easiest way to make B relax a lil. You know, when there just isn’t anything he can prepare 87 contingency plans for instead. For future ref
Hood: …is B in love with Superman?
Hood: Wing
Hood: Nightwing, is B in love with Superman???
Nightwing: Lmao
Nightwing: Who isn’t?