Chapter Text
Jason isn’t exactly sure as to what’s just happened. One moment, he’d been in Gotham’s sewers - because of course he would end up in Gotham’s sewers - but then the next moment, he was laying face down in a bunch of trash bags someone had piled in the corner of an alleyway somewhere. Which is possibly worse than being in the sewers. At least his helmet is giving him some ventilation to keep out the fumes of whatever toxic chemicals the citizens of Gotham might have in their trash.
He groans and sits up, trying to take in his surroundings to figure out where he’s ended up. And how. The gap in his memory between being in the sewers and winding up here is, well. Concerning, to say the least. And why does his body hurt so much? It felt like he’d gotten sucker punched through a wall by Bane.
Jason taps on the comms, frowning hard. “Red Hood to… Anyone. Can anyone read me?” Nothing but static. That is even more concerning than the memory gap. There was almost always someone on the line, especially with just how many people were connected to said line.
Deciding that standing there in an alley for the rest of his life was a useless waste of time, Jason begins the climb up onto the rooftops. He pauses when he’s high enough to actually see the skyline a little better. Something feels… Off. But he can’t quite place what it is. He shakes it off and keeps walking. He’s sure he’ll figure it out eventually.
Jason decides to try to take a look around and perhaps get a better feel for what is making him feel so antsy. Water droplets begin to drizzle from overhead before full-on coming down in sheets. Rain splashes down on his helmet, beads of water sliding across it like it would on glass. Lightning illuminates the sky for a brief moment, a crack of thunder following suit. Jason curses as cold trickles of rain send prickles along his skin. He doesn’t know why karma suddenly turned against him, but he figures it’s his penance for ticking off the demon brat.
Just as Jason figures he should try and figure out where he is, he hears it. He almost wishes he could just pretend it was another thundercrack, but he knows what a gunshot sounds like. It’s followed by a second one only a few moments later, and Jason sighs and starts heading in that direction.
The scene that is laid out in front of him when he gets there is… Tragic. There isn’t another word to really describe it. There’s two dead, and a little boy that sobs between them, clutching a broken pearl necklace tightly in his small fist, blood splattered on his white dress shirt.
Jason approaches the scene with caution. Whoever did this is obviously already on the run. There’s a chance Jason might be able to catch up with them, but he decides that the little boy needs him more. He approaches him with caution, not wanting to spook him too much.
“Hey,” Jason tries to say it softly, but the voice modifier in his helmet doesn’t really do softly. The kid does startle, looking up at Jason with wide blue eyes that look just a touch broken . He looks familiar, Jason notes, squinting a bit. He looks like…
Bruce.
But that can’t be right. Bruce is well into his forties. This has to be a coincidence. Maybe one of Bruce’s countless flings ended up getting pregnant and never spoke about it, and now coincidentally the kid’s parents were being killed right here in front of him.
…Yeah, Jason doesn’t even believe it in his head. Knowing Jason’s luck, this really is Bruce. Which means he’s probably in the past. Which extra means he’s in deep trouble, because now he’s interacting with Bruce. This couldn’t be good. Bruce’s number one time travel rule is not to interact, especially when it’s someone he knows .
It’s too late now, though. Jason realizes that he’s been standing here silently for a while now, and that Bruce is still staring at him. He’s already messed up, he figures, so he might as well try and help the kid out a little bit. He will just have to deal with the consequences as they come.
“Um. Hey,” Jason clears his throat and kneels down next to Bruce a bit awkwardly, trying not to picture the man who’d raised him. Right now, Bruce is just an ordinary boy who’d watched his parent’s brutal murder in front of him. “I’m the Red Hood. Let’s… Let’s get you out of here.”
Jason pauses when he hears a police siren, looking over with a blink. Oh great. He should really get out of here, and fast. But he can’t just leave Bruce.
His indecision costs him as a few policemen round the corner. “Put your hands in the air and step away from the kid!” one of them yells, clearly seeing ‘man in a mask (or rather, helmet)’ and thinking ‘that’s our perpetrator’. Jason does put his hands up, slowly standing back up. He glances down at Bruce.
“I know what this looks like,” Jason begins, slowly turning to look back at the officers. “But I didn’t do it.”
Obviously, the officers don’t believe that for a second, but hey, at least he tried. They move to cuff him and Jason decides to send caution to the wind.
“Listen, kid. You’ve got to tell them it wasn’t me.” He looks to Bruce, who is now shivering in the rain. Bruce just stares up at him with wide eyes, and then back at the police, and then back at Jason.
Jason stops, realizing Bruce isn’t going to say anything. He almost fights, but then… He doesn’t, letting the police put him into the cuffs. He cooperates as they shove him into the back of their vehicle, deciding he can use the time to think about his current situation.
So, Jason is in the past. That much is obvious. He’d just walked in on his sort-of grandparent’s murder, and he was now going to be blamed for said murder. None of his family members are around to help him get out of this mess, which means he’s definitely on his own.
Jason stays silent, contemplating his next move while the police car drives back to the station. He has no doubt that the officers are going to try to interrogate him, and he’s certain that they aren’t going to be very successful. It isn’t like he’s planning to just come out and say, “I’m from the future and that kid is going to adopt me in about thirty years”, and even if they find out his name, he won’t show up on any records because he technically hasn’t been born yet.
This was a dilemma, but it was minor. All Jason has to do is pretend to just be some guy. He can get away with that, right? He just needs a name and a story to stick by.
Jason thinks about it as the cops give him a luxury car ride. When they get to the station, it’s not long before he finds himself cuffed to a table in a room. There’s a cop in front of him, looking annoyed and rather unfriendly.
“What’s your name?” the cop begins with, and Jason decides he’s going to absolutely mess with this guy.
“You made me get in your car and drive all the way here with you without even knowing my name? Wow. That’s pretentious,” Jason scoffs, shaking his head. “At least take me to dinner first.”
The cop still doesn’t look impressed. He just levels Jason with a flat stare that speaks volumes about how few shits he gives.
“...Keannu Reeves,” Jason finally says with his own straight face, doing everything in his power to keep from laughing. The cop writes the name down on the sheet he presumably has on the other side of the clipboard.
“Age?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know, weather boy?”
“Sir,” the cop frowns at him. “You’re the prime suspect in the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne, two of the most well known and respected people in Gotham City. If you’re not going to take this seriously, we’re going to have some issues.”
Jason thinks about it for a moment. On the one hand, he probably should be a bit more careful if he was expecting to get out of this situation without being in more serious trouble than he’s in already. On the other hand, though, there’s nothing that this officer could do that would be as bad as what he’s been through already.
…And he’s having fun .
“How about you take a guess and I’ll tell you if you’re right?” Jason proposes, leveling a smirk at the man across from him.
The officer gives him a flat look, most likely trying to determine whether or not Jason is being serious. However, Jason refuses to back down from this little game.
“Go on. Take a crack at it. I’ll give you three guesses.”
~~~~~
Jason now realizes that police officers in the past have a lot less patience than they do in his time. It only takes him ten minutes to figure this out, and he chooses to reflect on this new discovery while he nurses his broken nose in his cell. Apparently, his sense of humor was not appreciated, and his new favorite law enforcer had felt the need to make it known. Aside from his annoyance at the newfound numbness in his face, Jason was feeling pretty good about himself. It didn’t take long to notice that breaking out of this confinement was going to be easier than he was expecting. Old technology was certainly his friend in this moment, enabling him to escape the moment everyone’s backs are turned and be back out in the streets within minutes.
Jason decides that his next course of action is to go find baby Bruce. While he realizes that this is in direct disregard of all of the rules that adult Bruce had set in place, he doesn’t really care. He is in a bad mood (partially from the broken nose, and also partly because he still smelled like a dumpster), and at the moment, he feels like the only thing that will make him feel better is doing something he knows that Bruce would not approve of. Plus, he could really use a shower, and he doesn’t feel like crashing in some stranger’s apartment.
However, Jason does have some common sense. He decides to keep wearing the suit, just on the off chance that if Bruce were to remember this encounter in the future, it would probably screw up the timeline a little less if Bruce remembers Red Hood and not his future son Jason Todd .
The taxi Jason had gotten into drops him off right in front of the gate to the Manor. Jason just leaps the fence, heading straight for the front door. It’s fine, probably. He knocks on the door and leans against one of the columns outside while he waits, and it doesn’t take long before Alfred opens the door.
Jason blinks a bit in surprise, because Aflred has hair . Sure, he has a little bit of a receding hairline, but still. There’s quite a bit of black hair sitting on that head. Jason’s suddenly fairly certain that raising Bruce must be what causes Alfred to have to perfect the art of the combover, actually.
He doesn’t say that out loud though. After a long moment of staring and awkward silence, Jason holds a hand out to him. “Uh. Hi,” He clears his throat. “...I’m Red Hood. I was there when…” He trails off a bit, fairly certain that it doesn’t need to be said out loud. He’s pretty sure Alfred will get what he means. “Is Bruce here?”
Alfred narrows his eyes a bit suspiciously at him for a moment before he takes his hand and shakes it. “Master Bruce is here, but I am not sure if he will be accepting visitors at the moment.”
“Will you tell him I’m here?” Jason bites his lip under the helmet. He knows that Bruce knows he’s innocent, even if the police didn’t seem to think so. Bruce saw the whole thing happen, he has to know Jason was innocent. Well. Innocent in the Wayne’s murder, at least.
Alfred sighs and lets Jason into the Manor, although he can tell he’s hesitant about it. Jason steps inside and does his best to seem less threatening, even going so far as to hunch his shoulders down. “I’ll just wait here while you go and get him, yeah?”
Alfred gives him a sharp nod before heading up the stairs, and Jason does stay put. For one thing, he doesn’t want to seem untrustworthy. And for another thing… Well, He also doesn’t want to get on Alfred’s bad side. He’s seen the guy in action before. He doesn’t look like much, but it’s Alfred Pennyworth. The guy could probably take down the entire Justice League before they even knew they were being attacked. Jason would believe it.
It’s a few minutes before a small, scrawny ten year old boy slowly makes his way down the stairs. He looks a bit shell shocked, and Jason would expect him to. Losing his parents was probably one of the most traumatizing moments of Bruce’s life. He never did seem to get over it, even after… What, thirty years from now? Forty? Jason isn’t actually sure how old Bruce is currently in his time, but he’s pretty sure he’s around forty to fifty ish. Still, this Bruce looks up at him with a haunted expression as he comes to stand in front of Jason.
Jason stops and sighs before he gets down into a crouch so he’s more eye level with the kid. “...Hey,” He keeps his voice quiet, although the voice modifier in the helmet doesn’t really help. He’d turn it off, but… Again, he doesn’t want to break the time stream. He has a feeling Bruce recognizing an adult Jason Todd will have some bad effects when he dies before becoming an adult. And yeah, maybe him having a soft spot for Red Hood right off the bat might be a bad idea, but… Jason wasn’t exactly known for good ideas.
“Hello,” Bruce says back to him quietly, his voice giving him a slight icy chill that matches his eyes that seem to stare straight into his soul.
“...I came to check on you,” Jason clears his throat, looking Bruce up and down. He really does look a lot like Damian as a kid. He’s just as serious, too, but Jason has a feeling that it’s more due to the crushing grief that’s probably consuming Bruce at the moment. Still, it’s not a look he loves seeing on a kid, even if that kid does grow up to be an asshole.
“Right,” Bruce answers back simply, because of course he does. Jason sighs, tilting his head back and forth for a moment before he stands up again. Oh, what the hell. He’s already doomed.
“I’m going to be incredibly honest with you right now, Bruce,” Jason clears his throat. “I am from the future.”
Bruce does not look amused, or intrigued, or like he even slightly believes him. He just stares at Jason like he’d told a really bad joke.
“I am ,” Jason sighs. Alfred is glaring at him from the staircase. “Listen, Bruce. I know you, in the future. We’re…”
What is he even going to say to the kid? You’re my dad? That would defeat the whole “I’m not Jason Todd” thing he has going on. We’re sort of enemies sometimes because you have a stupid complex and you don’t like the way I do things? That would probably scare the kid off right away. I was angry and hurt and so I took it out on you because I didn’t know who else to blame? There’s not really enough context for that one. Plus Jason doesn’t think he could ever admit most of that stuff out loud anyways.
“We know each other,” Jason settles on. “In the future. You’re kind of old, actually. Probably older than Alfred is right now, even.”
“If you’re from the future,” Bruce frowns at him, looking like he’s barely entertaining the idea. Which is honestly kind of fair, Jason’s not too sure he would believe himself either. “Why would you come here?”
“I didn’t mean to,” Jason says honestly. That’s probably the best way to go. Stay as honest as possible until he can figure this whole thing out. “While I’m on the track of being honest, I’m just going to say that there’s a lot of people who really don’t like me, and I would not be too surprised if somebody shot me back in time in an attempt to try and get rid of me.”
Bruce squints in a way that is just so much like Bruce . Jason sighs and shakes his head. Of course it was just like Bruce. It is still Bruce. Just a young, naive, kind of adorable looking Bruce.
…Yeah, Jason is never going to admit to anyone, ever , that he found Bruce an adorable ten year old.
Alfred clears his throat after a moment, though, and Jason turns his attention to the man. “Well, Master Bruce-”
“Wait,” Bruce cuts Alfred off. Jason’s a bit surprised he does, if he’s being perfectly honest, but he looks at the kid curiously. “You said you know me in the future?”
“...Yeah,” Jason winces ever so slightly.
“Are we friends?” Bruce asks him simply, innocently. Jason sucks in a breath.
“Um, well… I guess so,” Jason answers slowly, feeling all of the weight he’d felt when he’d first told Bruce they knew each other in the first place. He glances over at Alfred. He almost wants to say that they’re more than just friends, that they’re family , even if he sometimes wishes they weren’t. But that pesky little thing called a timeline probably wouldn’t be too pleased with that.
“Do you have a place to stay here, if you’re from the future?”
Jason pauses again and looks over at Alfred, who seems to have stiffened a bit. He scratches the back of his head. “Not exactly, but I know Gotham, I can-”
“If we’re friends, then you should stay here!” Bruce interjects again. Jason hates to say that it’s not exactly a habit that Bruce grows out of entirely, although he is a little better at not interrupting people as an adult.
Jason thinks about it for a moment. On one hand, potentially a terrible idea. On the other hand, he also doesn’t want to figure out where to stay in the prehistoric ages of whatever year it was when Bruce was a child. “...Only if Alfred says it’s okay,” He glances back at the butler once again.
Alfred looks indecisive for a moment before he sighs. “Mister… Hood, was it? Do you think I could have a word first?”
“Absolutely,” Jason nods sharply, figuring it only natural that Alfred should be suspicious. After all, a strange guy showing up a mere days after the Wayne’s murder claiming to be friends with a ten year old was kind of suspicious. He doesn’t blame the guy.
Alfred leads Jason into the kitchen. It’s immaculate, and Jason is a bit impressed that Alfred is keeping it together so well until someone he doesn’t recognize comes into the room to grab some dish soap. “You hired someone to clean the house?”
He doesn’t realize he’s asked the question out loud until he receives an answer from Alfred. “No, that is Mrs. Winters, she’s been here for a few months,” The man furrows his brows. “I doubt I could manage this entire property on my own.”
Jason blinks at him a few times. “...Huh. I always thought you did.”
“I want the truth, Red Hood,” Alfred says, instead of continuing that thread of conversation. “Who are you, and what do you want with Master Bruce?”
Could Jason lie to Alfred about who he was? He stares at the man’s face for a long time. Sure, there’s a few less wrinkles on there than he remembers, but it’s still the face of the man he trusts more than anyone else in the entire world, probably including himself. “...Do you want the real truth?” He asks, before he can really think it through, before he can possibly change his mind.
Alfred gives him an unimpressed and sharp nod in answer.
Jason sighs and slowly, hesitantly pulls the helmet off of his face, and then the mask that’s underneath that too. He knows Alfred can keep a secret. Hopefully he’ll be able to keep one this big from Bruce, even if he knows it would alleviate a lot of the man’s pain to know that Jason will come back from the dead.
…Besides… Maybe it would alleviate some of the pain Alfred would have felt from losing Jason, knowing he will come back.
“You have to promise me you’ll keep everything I’m about to tell you a secret from Bruce,” Jason says slowly, looking Alfred right in the eyes. “I mean it. No matter what happens, Bruce can’t know who I am.”
“And who are you?”
“...I’m Bruce’s son,” Jason swallows, looking back down at the ground. “Adopted, I mean. I don’t think I can give too many spoilers because… Well, I don’t want to wipe anyone out of existence or something like that, you know? But… Bruce is my dad. I wasn’t lying about being from the future. And if you need proof, Alfred, Bruce loves the Gray Ghost, doesn’t he? He told me it was his favorite show from when he was a kid. And… Yeah, I really don’t know much about his childhood, actually, but I’m not lying, I swear.”
Alfred is just staring at him, probably at a loss for words. But after a moment, he just dips his head. “Alright.”
Jason’s honestly surprised that Alfred actually believes him, if he’s being honest. Relieved, yes, but also surprised.
“I suppose I will get a room set up for you,” Alfred sighs, turning around, and Jason watches him leave before he runs a hand through his hair. He couldn’t believe that actually worked.
~~~~~
Jason has been at the Wayne household for just over a week now. It’s been… Chaotic, but in a very different way than what he’s used to. For example, back in his time, he would describe chaotic as screams echoing down the halls as his younger brothers fight over something stupid, with the possibility that they were genuinely trying to kill each other. Or maybe chaotic would be a big prank war that ends when Alfred gets covered in red powder that was meant for a certain someone else.
This… This is different.
For starters, Alfred isn’t the only staff member that the house has at this point in time. It’s strange. Jason has bumped into several different people. Mrs. Winters is one of them, someone who works as a maid. Jason wonders why he hasn’t heard of her before. She seems nice enough, and she doesn’t seem to ask too many questions about Jason, or about why he’s always wearing a helmet all the time, even though Jason is almost positive that she’s wondering about it.
What makes the house chaotic seems to be the absence of Thomas and Martha Wayne. Most of the staff are bumbling around, some slacking around (although never Alfred, and never Mrs. Winters). It makes sense, Jason supposes. There isn’t someone actually in charge without the Wayne’s. It is on paper Alfred Pennyworth who is supposed to take care of the estate until Bruce is old enough, but this Alfred is far from the stoic, calm and collected old man that Jason knows. He’s in his early thirties at most, and he hasn’t had time to get used to his new role. Even then, Jason knows that Alfred had cared about Thomas and Martha too, and he is grieving their deaths.
Jason sighs as he sits at the table, his helmet off while he sips a cup of tea that Alfred had made for him, but within reach on the off chance Bruce walks in on him. He probably won’t though. Alfred has been having trouble getting Bruce to eat since the shooting. It makes sense to Jason - Bruce has always been one to ignore his basic needs when he’s upset. Alfred, on the other hand, is incredibly worried, always fretting about it. Jason’s advice has been to just make sure Bruce is drinking water, and the rest would come with time. It hasn’t done anything to help Alfred from running his hand through the dark hair that was still on his head.
The impossible happens though. Jason hears footsteps - small ones. He has the helmet back on in an instant , the door to the dining room slowly opening. Bruce wanders into the room and hesitantly sits down in the chair beside Jason.
Even though Jason has been here a week, he hasn’t actually spoken to Bruce very much. The kid was almost always locked up in his room, seemingly hiding from everybody. Well. Not seemingly . Jason knows he absolutely is hiding from everyone. He still does it.
It’s funny how many things are the same about people when they’re younger. Habits that people fall into that never leave. It’s a lot of small things, Jason is noticing. The way Bruce’s eyes travel across a page when he reads, the face all-too-serious. Sometimes he has to hold back a laugh at how ironic all of it is.
Now, though, Bruce is sitting next to him and looking at him so intently. “Red Hood?”
“...Yes?” Jason says hesitantly, not sure why Bruce is looking at him like that. He doesn’t think it’s a good thing. It can’t be, can it?
“Why do you wear that helmet? Is the future full of toxic gas or something? Do you need it to breathe?”
Now, this is certainly a more… Chipper Bruce than Jason’s seen all week. He’s not sure what to make of it honestly. Of all the things he had been expecting Bruce to ask about, all the questions he possibly might have had… Well, Bruce assuming the air is full of toxic gas was not the estimate he had been expecting. That’s all. (Although… It isn’t too far off on his reasoning - Gotham in particular did have an above average amount of toxic gas in the air).
Jason stares at him for a moment before he slowly shakes his head. “Well. No, that’s… Not really why I wear the helmet. I… I help people. Or I try to, at least.”
Bruce blinks at him a few times, as if he hadn’t anticipated that answer in the slightest. “Oh… How?”
“I fight bad guys,” Jason says, and then pauses. “Um. Yeah, no. There’s really no other way to put it. I fight bad people to try and keep them from hurting good people. If that makes sense.”
Bruce seems to contemplate it for a moment. “I think it does.”
Jason simply nods.
“...Is that how we know each other in the future?” Bruce asks. “Do I help people too?”
“Yeah. That’s how we know each other,” Jason swallows. If only it were that simple.
“Oh…” Bruce says quietly. “I wish there had been someone to help my parents.”
“I know, kid. I’m sorry,” Jason looks down. He doesn’t say that he would have helped them if he’d gotten there sooner - he is pretty sure he couldn’t even if he wanted to. Something about it being a cornerstone event or whatever. Something that had to happen to keep the timeline stable. He isn’t entirely sure though - Bruce’s time travel lecture was long, and boring, and Jason had really not expected to actually be in this sort of situation. It is not something he had planned on, nor is it something he would have chosen if he could have. Even without the whole time travel lecture though, Jason could guess that saving them would have messed something up. After all, Bruce’s parents dying was a pretty big motivator for why he’d decided to dress up like a giant bat and scream “vengeance” and “justice” at every criminal he came across.
“I’m glad I’m out there helping people then,” Bruce breathes out. He looks at Jason, and there’s that determined glint in his eyes that feels all too familiar. Jason gives him a small smile.
“Yeah. I guess it’s not so bad.”
He doesn’t say anything else about it. He doesn’t think he could - or that he should. As complicated as his feelings were on the subject, he doesn’t want to find out what the world would be like without a Batman. He doesn’t want to live in a world without his family, no matter what sort of heartbreaks might be spared because of it. And boy is that not something he is ever going to admit out loud.
Jason’s there a few more days. He doesn’t speak to Bruce much again after that. Or Alfred, even. But just when he’s resigning himself to his fate of being stuck in the past, as he’s walking up the stairs towards the guest room he’s been inhabiting, Jason falls backwards, and the world goes black once again, because of course it does. That’s just Jason’s luck, isn’t it?