Chapter Text
Six months ago, Dick went to Gotham to help Bruce out. There had been a new player on the scene, and even though he and Bruce aren't really talking, it's still Bruce. Dick, even though he's Nightwing now, is still Batman's partner.
But then Dick had been busy with Bludhaven, and by the time he got around to asking if Bruce needed any more help, the only thing he'd said to Dick was that it was handled, the Joker was back in Arkham, and the Red Hood was unlikely to be a problem.
Dick didn't know how the Joker had got involved in the situation, but Dick beat him to death that one time, so he understands why Bruce hadn't wanted him involved. And fine, he gets that Batman's gotta Batman, but the brush off about everything else still stings a bit.
Still, he's an adult, so he'd shrugged it off, and gone back to Bludhaven. He didn't have time to push Bruce on the little things, even if he'd finally got him to accept help with the big stuff.
Like, for example, the Arkham breakout from this afternoon. It's gonna be all hands on deck - quite a few broke out this time, the Joker included. But enough villains broke out that Dick will just be assigned to someone else, and relatively far away from the Joker. Just in case.
And then Dick walks into his apartment, ready to head over soon, and his dead little brother is staring back at him from where he's crammed into the corner.
And god , but he's grown up . He's so big now.
He chokes out, "Jay?"
Jason is holding a knife up in front of him.
And then his brain kicks back into gear.
It looks like Jason. Not the same, he's definitely older, and a hell of a lot more built.
The eyes are the wrong colour.
But he's in Dick Grayson's apartment.
Anyone who would do something like this, who would be able to do something like this, they'd be more likely to be Nightwing's enemies. They wouldn't know to put on Dick Grayson's dead little brother's face.
And-. He's older . If they were going to get him off guard - well, they already have, he's pretty damn off guard at the moment - and with this particular method, they'd use Jason as a half-grown teenager. Not an adult. They'd use what haunts Dick's nightmares - Jason, just before he died. Not as he is now.
Because Dick recognises him, of course he does, but he doesn't look the same.
And anyway, by now, the best opportunity for attacking him has passed.
And even though the eyes are the wrong colour, and Jason's too old, and he's got a whole load of new scars, and he's holding a knife, and are those guns-?
He's holding the knife in a defensive position, not an aggressive one. And he's in the most defensible corner of Dick's apartment, the corner where you can see all the entrances and exits. And he's in Dick's apartment. He's not out on Nightwing's patrol.
He says again, voice shaking, "Jay?"
Jason says "Oh, brother Richard, the sun is very high."
Definitely Jason. He doesn't know how Jason's here, but they worked this password out between themselves, just for them. Dick never told anyone else about it, and nor did Jason - to keep it secret. No one else could possibly know. It can't be anyone other than Jason.
He breathes out, deliberately steady. Replies "Then up starts Robin and looks at the sky." - not the line that follows Jason's, because it's a poem that anyone could know, so they had decided on a previous one. It still worked with the poem, but wasn't quite as obvious.
Jason relaxes, just a hair - or, is no longer almost vibrating with tension.
And then Jason says "Please."
Dick puts down his bag.
Softly, softly, he asks "Please what, Jay?"
And Jason tells him, "Please, I can't-. I asked B, an' he-. But I can't, I can't-".
He's breathing too fast, but he's still mostly with it, so Dick asks "What do you need, Little Wing?"
His little brother is here, and needs him to do something.
And Jason chokes out, "Please. I can't live like this, I can't-. I need the Joker dead. Please, I'm sorry, I'm sorry-." before running out of air.
Dick inches closer, guides the knife down and away, and rests his forehead against his little brother's. He breathes in time with him, slowing it down.
He says, easy as anything, "Of course, Jay."
He lives in a world with gods and demons, aliens and miracles. His little brother has come back to him, and the only price he has to pay is killing the Joker? Well, that's no price at all. Not really. This feels like a dream, but if it isn't -.
(he's not quite strong enough for what he will have to do now, what jason has asked him to do. but nobody but him can know that.
so he takes jason's hand, his calloused hand, his strong hand, his powerful hand, and he presses it against his cheek. there's nothing for anyone to do except for jason to hold his hand like this against dick's cheek.
and then he's not afraid anymore.)
*****
One of the last things Jason had ever done, before he died, before Dick had left to go to space, was pick what he was going to study the next year. One of the subjects was Classics, and he'd been so excited for it that he'd already got the reading list, and most of the books on it. He hadn't wanted to wait until summer.
And then he'd died, and Dick had found out, and Bruce had told him to get out and leave his keys with Alfred, and then he'd walked up the stairs, only halfway in control of his own body, and gone into Jason's room.
He'd found a suitcase, and just taken all the books off the middle two shelves of his bookcase, the one by the door, that Jay used for his schoolbooks. He hadn't wanted to touch his personal books, the ones Jay had loved, and read cover to cover until they were almost falling apart. But he'd promised to read these books with Jason, the ones on the English Reading List, and the ones on the Classics Reading List, and even though Jason had no longer been there to read them, Dick just couldn't bear to leave them unread, for some reason. So he'd scooped them up, and left the Manor. He hadn't taken anything from his own room - anything he valued from there, he'd already taken to Bludhaven. And he didn't want to take anything else of Jason's, not without his permission, which he could no longer give, because he was-.
(when he'd got back to his apartment, he'd carefully put the suitcase of books down, then fallen to his knees and sobbed . there's a sentence he goes back to, now - he doesn't know where it's from, but it said the child in her birdgrief the bird in her childreftgravecry howling . jason had been robin, and dick had been robin too, and to lose another of his family, another bird who flew, it had felt a little like there wasn't a word for it other than birdgrief. he used to fly with jason, and now he couldn't, and that was worth howling in grief over.)
And Dick had read them. He'd spent years reading them. He'd had to imagine what Jay would say about each of them, because he wasn't there to say it himself. He used to pretend he could hear Jason saying each line out loud, too. And he'd cried after finishing each one, because it was another book that Jay was never going to read, and never going to talk to him about. What did he care for life when Jason was dead? And then he'd opened the next book, still scraped raw somewhere inside, because he couldn't bear not doing it. He still has a few left, even now.
And now Jason is in his apartment, alive .
*****
Jason is in his apartment, and he's wearing the Red Hood's clothes. Dick's not stupid.
If the Red Hood is Jason, it explains how he was always one step ahead of them, how he knew them, why he was so good at evading them. Because he knew how they worked.
And it explains why no-one knows what exactly happened, when Batman finally confronted the Red Hood. It explains why the Joker was involved. It explains why Bruce has been worse, these past few months. It explains all of it.
It doesn't explain how Jason is alive, but the how doesn't matter, not to Dick, only that he is .
A brother can never be replaced, and Jason wasn't. He wasn't replaced, and instead, he has now returned. There's nothing Dick wouldn't do to keep him.
*****
Bruce had told Dick not to kill the Joker. He'd revived him, and then looked across the sputtering corpse, and said "You will never do this again, Nightwing. Do you understand?" And Dick had been so shaken by what he'd done, by the fact that he'd beaten a man to death in a blind fury, that when Bruce, when the man who raised him, had ordered him never to do it again, he hadn't. He'd been subordinate to Bruce's will, and attentive and dutiful in his duties as Nightwing. And he'd obeyed. He'd never even gone near the Joker again, not unless Bruce was right there, to keep him in check.
But now? Jason has asked him to kill the Joker. Murder in the first degree might be illegal. It might be against Bruce's orders. But Jason has asked him to do this, and it's the right thing to do.
He knows Bruce will never forgive him for this. Batman would have no dealings with law-breakers, he knows that. Not even if they were his family.
Bruce, Batman, as their leader, had to be obeyed, in all things, great and small….just…or unjust.
The Joker still living is unjust .
*****
He slips a comm into his ear and pings Oracle.
There's a click across the line - she's listening.
He says "I'm going to kill the Joker. Will you help me?"
There's a long pause, and then she says "Do you really mean to kill him? That's premeditated murder. It's illegal." Her voice is flat and toneless, deliberately so.
Helplessly, "I do. It's-. Jason's alive. He needs me to."
"Jason's-. What? Does Bruce know?" She stutters in the middle, but she's Oracle. She's the best, so she takes in the information and moves on fast.
"Yes." He brushes her opening interrogation aside. 'Bruce won't kill the Joker, not even for Jay. Will you help me?"
She might be going for the most relevant information, but so is he.
"...You know Batman won't like it. He didn't last time either." That's true enough. There's a reason Nightwing only goes into Gotham when it's necessary.
"I know. But he has no right to stop me."
She lowers her voice, whispers "Are you sure about this?"
"I know that to those who matter most, I’m doing the right thing."
And maybe that's cruel to Bruce, but Bruce was just his guardian, not his father. Besides, they haven't been talking much the last few years. And Jason is his brother . Barbara is another of his most important people . His other friends, he already knows they'd be fine with him killing someone - most of them have personally killed before anyway.
As long as he's got them, he's fine. He will be fine. He will. He will.
*****
He walks into Amusement Mile. Something quiet inside him, a voice that sounds like Jason, says you walk at last into the underworld; untouched by sickness, broken by no sword.
He read-. Fuck, he read a lot of Jason's plays, and books, and other things, including the Aeneid, which is a title he did actually know. But he read a lot of them a while ago, and some of them, they talked about the dead and dying. He's pretty sure that's a line from one of them - Batman's training pressing words into his head, even if he isn't trying to memorise them. And god, but Amusement Mile does feel like the underworld. It's haunted, here.
(he closes his eyes, whispers to himself 'may it be your will, god, our god and the god of our fathers, that you should lead me and direct my steps, and guide me, and support me, and cause me to reach my destination. save me from every enemy and ambush…' he trails off. he can't say all of it, not in this situation. it doesn't feel right, because he's not at peace, and he doesn't want to be kind, and merciful. he wants to be given those things, yes, just not when he's about to commit murder. but even so, he still wants to pray, for the voice of his prayer to be heard. he wants- something .)
He could still turn back.
But no. He has made his choice. This is the doing of his own conscious hand. Not the mindless fury that swept over him last time.
But the Joker needs to die. Whatever Dick's feeling when he does it doesn't matter. He's not crazy, he's not hurt, he just knows that in a few hours, the Joker will be dead by his hand.
*****
Dick is supposed to be dealing with Killer Croc, and Batman is supposed to be tracking the Joker. But Dick's got Oracle on his side, so Bruce is in Gotham Heights - theoretically on Joker's trail, where he might be planning to ruin the day of everyone attending the outdoor concert at the park - but mostly actually on the trail of Croc, whose most recent hideout is a couple streets down from the park and in the sewers. So Oracle will send them down there, and they'll deal with Croc, and meanwhile, Dick's got all that time to hunt the Joker down and kill him. And Dick knows where he is, or near enough, 'cause, see, he's got Oracle, and she's got just as much skin in the game as he does. She wants to see the Joker burn .
There's a crackle over his comm line.
It's Bruce.
"What are you doing, Nightwing?"
Time's up. For Dick, anyway. Not quite for the Joker, not just yet. He says, "The right thing."
"You think it's the right thing to do this?"
"Jason asked me to."
"The Red Hood is a criminal."
Dick hums in acknowledgement, but ignores it: Bruce hadn't been shocked at that last sentence - at Dick knowing Jason was alive, and he'd been quick, almost too quick to label Jason only as the Red Hood, as if he wasn't Bruce's son, as if he wasn't Dick's brother. No, he was just a criminal to Batman, apparently.
Bruce continues "You think it's the right thing to do what a criminal asks you to do?"
It's like an ethics debate, one of the very few he took part in at school. He's barely paying attention to what's coming out of his mouth, more on what he's doing. "No, not at all. I wouldn't do whatever a criminal asked me to do." He's cleared the Boardwalk, and he can already hear the haunting cackles drifting over the fairway.
"By that logic, you think the Red Hood isn't a criminal." It's not even a question. If he were focused on this conversation, that statement, that it was a statement, would be more than irritating.
"I think he's my brother . That he asked me to do this. And I think it should have been done years ago."
Bruce makes an inarticulate noise.
Dick continues, "Would you like to lecture me on the rules of vigilante justice again?"
He doesn't need to check the carousel, or the Ferris wheel, or most of the rides really. The Joker doesn't like to use those as hideouts, just as methods to hurt people in ways he thinks are funny.
"Nightwing. Do not take justice into your own hands." It's the tone he uses when he wants Dick, or any of them, to stop arguing with him right now.
"Ah." It's almost instinct to obey that tone. But- "We take justice into our own hands every night."
"You know that's not what I meant." Bruce is frustrated too, now.
"Oh, so breaking the law is fine, as long as we don't break your rules, is that it?"
"We do not kill."
The dodgems is empty. Next, he'll check the mirror maze - it's one of the more likely places.
" You do not kill. But Gotham is no city if it takes orders from one voice. You are not the only vigilante, Batman."
After a moment of silence from both of them, Oracle chimes in, "You've done the wrong thing, keeping the Joker alive instead of sending him to hell where he belongs."
God, but he needs to send her a massive box of chocolates after this.
Dick murmurs "Is there any way we can say letting the Joker live is rational, forgivable, or even in the widest sense, just? "
Barbara replies, so so quietly "No, not really."
A box of chocolates, and a very expensive massage, or something - there's pain in her voice, because the Joker hurt her.
Bruce remains silent.
(and anyway, bruce seems to have forgotten why robin was created. he fought alongside batman for years, yes. but before that, robin wasn't created for justice alone, but for vengeance and for murder . dick put that aside, both when he worked with batman in gotham, and when he started working as nightwing in bludhaven, but he's never forgotten it. he stared zucco in the eye and let him live, but his parents were dead in moments. jason, from what he knows, took hours to die.
and fine, his rage is normally fiercely hot, but his baby brother is in his apartment and needs the joker dead. he's furious, but he's in control: his entire life has been about precise control. and if jason needs the joker dead, dick is capable of doing that, capable of directing his rage for just one precise action.
bruce seems to have forgotten that. dick hasn't. and even though he's nightwing now - and the legend he was named for didn't have his hands clean either - he's still robin. robin is his name , even if it's no longer his title.)
And then Batman stops talking. Good. He was getting to be too distracting, and Dick needs to focus now. The cackling is loud now - he's close .
*****
And then Batman's too late.
Dick had left Jason in his bedroom, tucked into the corner, still holding his knife. But he'd taken one of Jason's spare knives, because all of Nightwing's weapons are carefully non-lethal - or mostly that way, and would require a lot of effort to change that, which would take too long, and Officer Grayson's weapon stays in a weapons safe, and even though it doesn't really get checked because it's fucking Bludhaven, Dick would rather not use it. Besides, a knife is easier to conceal.
Case in point: the Joker was so smug, and happy to see him all alone, and watching for Nightwing to reach back and pull out an escrima stick, or to draw his elbow back to prepare to hit him, that he completely missed Dick sliding the knife into his palm and cutting his throat open.
He'd been so confident - and Dick can't say it isn't justified because the Joker can move almost inhumanly fast, and the only reason Dick had got the drop on him last time was because he'd completely lost it. The rest of the time, it takes Bruce jumping in and pounding him into the dirt for long enough that he gives up - but the Joker had been so confident in his own skill, and with what Nightwing was limited to, that he had stepped too close.
And now he's dead. Dick's had training with blades - not from Bruce. But he knows how to use them, and use them lethally. And he wasn't trying for precise. He was trying for definite . And the slice stretches from ear to ear, right through his throat and neck, all the way to the spine. He's severed both arteries, and the vocal cords too. The Joker would be sputtering on his own blood, unable to even laugh, but he bled out too quickly for there to be too much of that, really.
And okay, this is probably why Jason had guns strapped to him - Dick hasn't missed out on the fact that he was the Red Hood, that he killed people. It just hadn't been relevant information. Jay was his own brother, criminal or not. But this is probably why Jason uses guns to kill people - Dick is a little bit covered in blood right now. Arterial spray, not a joke.
*****
Bruce might disagree with him, and yet Dick knows, in his heart - in every Gothamite's heart - that he has done no wrong. He has not sinned before God. Not with this act.
But if he had allowed his own brother to suffer, and continue suffering, that would have tortured Dick. But this ? This is nothing.
Everyone makes mistakes. But Bruce should know that not killing the Joker is wrong. And he should have yielded, and let him die. Even if he couldn't do it himself. But he's so convinced that his way is right, so proud, so righteous, that he won't acknowledge that he's wrong.
Dick can never undo this. Bruce will never forgive him for it.
But then, Bruce never forgave him for it last time either, not truly.
And at least this way, he'll be with Jason. And Jason will be safe .
He cherishes the thought - Bruce may reject him for this, but he will go home, dear to Jason, his brother.
*****
Tim arrives first. He'd been helping Batman handle Killer Croc. Presumably it's under control - Batman had been on comms earlier, and now Tim is here , so it must be.
He touches down - toe, bent knees, heel - the way Dick taught him, to minimise impact on his knees and joints.
His lenses obscure his eyes, but Dick can read body language just fine. And Tim is shocked. He's seen this side of Dick before - with the Joker, even - though maybe he had been too banged up then to really remember it, what with the way he's acting now. But then, this is a fair bit more purposeful than that.
Then Robin takes a breath in, and out, and in again, and squares his narrow shoulders before bending down and starting to drag the dead body towards the door, to dispose of it, maybe?
He doesn't get even halfway across the room before Batman rises out of the shadows.
He growls "You killed the Joker."
Tim lets go of the corpse, steps forward, claims, "I did it too. I helped." He glances at Dick as if for permission, "I should take some of the blame."
Tim got there after Dick had killed the Joker.
Dick whispers "No. You didn't. Stop it."
"Dick, please, let me-."
He says, almost snapping, "No, Robin." but manages to keep it soft, just.
Tim steps closer to him, murmurs, "Please, let me help. "
He murmurs back, "You can help by staying out of it."
" Please , Nightwing."
He orders "Robin. Stay with Batman."
Tim bows his head, steps away.
Dick raises his chin.
He's borne the consequences of this before. He beat the Joker to death with his bare hands, and Bruce has never trusted him since, not wholly. He's carried the weight of knowing that he was capable of murder, too. Maybe not first-degree murder, but murder all the same.
This time? He may not have thought about it for long, that's true enough. But he's been living with the consequences of it anyway, and at least this way, the Joker is actually dead. And Jason will feel safe.
Batman - not Bruce, not the man who raised him, he's not speaking right now - growls "Why."
"I told you. Jason asked me to."
Well, no. That doesn't quite encompass the way Jason had been terrified, hyperventilating in his kitchen.
He corrects "Jason needed me to."
Bruce focuses in on the words, but remains silent.
Dick shakes his head. "He needed you to, and you didn't. But he needed someone to, and honestly, the Joker should have stayed dead the first time I killed him. His death is long overdue.
And if that means that I'm dead to you, that we can't have a relationship anymore, because I killed him-.
Fine. Jason's safe now. Barbara's safe now. A hell of a lot of people are safer now, because he's dead."
He leans forwards. "The Joker was never going to stop. He was only going to hurt and kill more people. He was never going to change. Ever . And I stopped him."
Bruce grits out "Everyone deserves a second chance."
Dick says "The Joker was on his second hundredth chance. How many more people needed to die for us to stop letting him kill them? How many times did he need to hurt Robin before we stopped him?
Maybe killing him was legally wrong, but by god was it morally right.
Everyone makes mistakes. But your stubborness and pride have made you a fool. And cruel with it, besides.
You didn't have to keep letting him do the terrible things he did. You're still Batman. You're still the man who raised me. I still respect you. But if you reject me for this, you will force me to reject you too.
I'm asking you not to."
Bruce just stands there.
Dick looks at him.
Maybe he'd come around. But Dick wasn't going to stand here waiting until he did.
If Bruce wanted, he could come and apologize to them later. It was up to him.
But Dick had to go to his brother.
To Jason.
He would go away now without delay.
To Bludhaven. To Jason. To his home, and his family.
He goes.