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Chapter Text

Jason crashed through the skylight of the top-secret Swiss genetics lab. As he dropped from his grapnel line to land in the dead center of the room, every H.I.V.E. goon in the place turned to look at him. And there were a lot of them: his recon had turned up at least four dozen, all of them in their stupid amped-up bee costumes. He was completely outnumbered.

He smiled. Good thing he hadn’t come alone, then.

“Titans Red, together!” he shouted.

There was a blaze of fire to his left as Eddie ported in, Rose and Connor tucked against his sides to keep them protected from the flames. On Jason’s right, he caught a flash of silver as Toni coasted in on a plasma force field, Grant and Koryak riding along behind her.

The H.I.V.E. drones clearly had not been expecting a three-pronged attack. As some of them fumbled for their weapons and others just stared, Jason took advantage of their distraction to send a flying kick into the nearest one’s face, flinging out two birdarangs at other drones as he did.

“Nice entrance, Reds,” he called as he flipped out of the way of a laser blast from a drone who was a little less gobsmacked than his or her fellows.

“Yeah, about that,” Koryak said.

Rose groaned.

Koryak ignored her. “Why are we Titans Red?” he asked.

“Because Nightwing’s team is the Blues,” Connor said, shooting a boxing glove arrow at a drone who had been about to jump Rose from behind.

“Yeah, but Red Robin’s the only one on this team who wears red,” Koryak continued, picking up a drone carelessly and hurling them at three who were charging him, knocking them all down.

“I am red,” Eddie volunteered.

“Yeah, but me and Ravager and Damage all wear blue,” Koryak argued. “And it’s not like no one on Titans Blue wears red.”

Grant was too far away for Jason to see his face as he used his powers to blow up a couple of H.I.V.E. weapons, but Jason could tell he was rolling his eyes. “You can just say Garth, Kory.”

“By that logic, we might as well be Team Orange,” Eddie pointed out. “Ravager and Damage and Green Arrow all wear orange.”

Toni stopped fighting, looking thoughtful. “I would say Arrow’s more of a burnt sienna, really.” She squeaked as one of Connor’s arrows whizzed by her face, tangling up the drone who’d been about to attack her in a net.

“I just think red is a dumb color,” Koryak insisted.

“I think this is a dumb conversation,” Rose snapped.

Jason would have pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration if he’d had a hand free. “Can we please concentrate on saving the incredibly rare, potentially disease-curing genetic samples from the bad guys first and argue about our team name later?”

“Says the guy who’s got a team named after him,” Koryak grumbled, but he kicked a lab sink out of the wall and used his hydrokinesis to send the water shooting out of the now-exposed pipe slamming into the nearest drones.

Despite Jason’s complaints, the fight was over pretty quickly. His team might have dumber arguments than Dick’s, but they knew how to kick bad guy ass together—and they should, considering they’d been fighting side by side since they were fifteen years old. They’d graduated from the Teen Titans to the Titans Red—regardless of Koryak’s protests—because they were good at what they did.

And yeah, even if they could be annoying sometimes, Jason did love them.

He picked up the metal briefcase holding the genetic samples the now-unconscious H.I.V.E. drones had tried to steal. “Toni, call the Swiss authorities and find out where they want us to bring these,” he said. “And Eddie, call King Faraday and let him know we handled things. And don’t annoy him, okay? I don’t need the CBI coming up with an excuse to toss you in a federal prison.”

“Excuse you, I have never been annoying in my life,” Eddie protested, which Rose, Grant, and Koryak all immediately started loudly contradicting.

Jason rolled his eyes to hide his laugh and led his team out to where they’d landed the T-Jet. Yeah, he loved his team.

*

“Jason!”

Jason frowned as the small voice invaded his sleep. Instinctively, his hand slid under his pillow for a weapon, and alarm surged through him when he realized there was nothing there.

“Jason, wake up! Daddy’s making pancakes!”

He knew that voice. Jason relaxed and opened his eyes. “Morning, princess.”

Lian grinned from the doorway to his guest bedroom. Roy had impressed upon her early the need to wake Jason up gently and from a distance; Jason’s startle reaction could be violent, and neither of them wanted her running afoul of that.

Now she hurtled across the room and flung herself onto his bed as he sat up. “You’re finally awake! I’ve been waiting hours.”

A quick glance at his phone on the nightstand told him it had probably been no more than thirty minutes, tops. Still, that was a long time for a six-year-old. “Sorry. Did you say something about pancakes?”

“Yeah!” she said, sitting back on her heels. “Daddy said if you sleep through breakfast, he’s gonna let me eat all of yours!”

“Oh, he did, did he?” Jason asked, grinning. “Well, you better go tell him I’m awake before I decide to eat you instead!”

He reached for her and she shrieked with laughter and went running back out of the bedroom. Jason chuckled, shaking his head, and got out of bed. He was glad he’d made it back to Star City in time to wake up at a reasonable hour today, even if he couldn’t quite remember the flight from Switzerland—

Wait. Of course he couldn’t remember the flight from Switzerland. That had been a dream.

He frowned as he pulled clean clothes out of his suitcase. The dream had felt so real, which was usually the case for nightmares about the Joker or the Pit, not being on a weird branch of the Titans with the world’s most random assortment of heroes, only some of whom he actually knew. Rose, of course, and Roy’s brother Connor, but he could barely pick Damage and Argent out of a lineup, and he had no idea who the water guy was.

And then there was Eddie…

He shook it off. Eddie had been a long time ago.

And Jason didn’t do teams anymore, not unless his lingering partnership with Roy counted. The Outlaws were over, but Roy was still his best friend, his favorite backup, and the person he trusted most in the world. Every time Jason came to Star City for Red Hood-related reasons, which was every few weeks lately, he stayed with Roy and Lian, even though he had multiple safe houses scattered throughout the city.

The truth was, he came to Star City to handle things that he could have handled from Gotham, because he knew he’d see Roy. The truth was…

Well. Jason knew what the truth was. He didn’t need to put it into words.

Once he’d dressed and used the bathroom, he headed into the kitchen. Sure enough, Roy was flipping pancakes at the stove, though he turned and greeted Jason with a smile when he arrived.

“Morning, Jaybird! How’d you sleep?” He was wearing a tank top, the morning sunlight spilling golden over his broad, freckled shoulders. Jason didn’t let himself stare.

“Okay. Weird dreams,” Jason said, and hurried to help Lian pour her orange juice before she dumped the entire gallon across the kitchen table.

“Daddy’s making me heart-shaped pancakes!” she informed him.

“You bet I am,” Roy said. “Yours are in the shape of your helmet, Jay. But a bird’s eye view.”

“So a circle?”

Roy shook his head mock-despairingly. “Man, I can’t get anything past you Bats.”

Pancakes were just about the only thing Roy could cook well, and today was no exception. But Jason found himself drifting off during the meal, syrup going cold and congealed on his plate as he stared into space. The warmth of the summer sun felt wrong against the back of Jason’s neck; he kept expecting the chill of a Swiss night.

Roy’s bare toes nudged his ankle bone, making him jump. “Hey. You okay?” Roy asked.

Jason rubbed his eye. “Sorry,” he said. “Like I said. Weird dreams.”

Roy winced. “The usual kind?” he asked, with a glance at Lian. Roy had some idea of the substance of Jason’s nightmares; he’d certainly woken Jason from enough of them. They didn’t need to upset Lian with them, though.

“No, actually,” Jason said. “I dreamed that I was, uh. On the Titans, sort of. Not the current lineup.”

It felt embarrassing to say out loud, which was stupid. No, Jason had never had the kind of wholesome coming-of-age Titans experience his brothers had. He was a former Titan on only the thinnest of technicalities, having helped the team out on a couple of missions when Dick was unavailable, back when Jason was still Robin. He’d felt very cool and grownup on those missions, and in fact one of them was when he’d first met Roy, so he couldn’t regret them.

It wasn’t his fault that he’d never had a Titans team of his own. He’d died. Still, confessing to dreaming about being a Titan felt like confessing to dreaming about being Dick, or Tim—especially Tim, considering Jason had gone by “Red Robin” in the dream. And if there was anything Jason was determined to be, it was fiercely himself.

“Ooh, the Titans! Was I there?” Roy asked, catching the syrup bottle before Lian knocked it over and helping her with it.

“No, but Connor was.”

“Wow, thrown over for my little brother,” Roy said, flashing Jason a grin to show he was kidding. “And here I thought I was your favorite archer.”

“Everyone likes Connor best, Daddy,” Lian informed him sagely around a mouthful of pancake.

Jason snorted. “See? Lian gets it,” he said. “Yeah, it was me, Connor, Rose Wilson, uh…there was this Atlantean guy named Koryak? Is he anyone?”

Roy looked surprised. “Yeah, he’s Aquaman’s son. I’ve never met him, but Garth complains about him a lot. Why were you dreaming about him?”

“No clue. I probably saw him in Bruce’s files somewhere,” Jason said with a shrug, even though that didn’t feel right. “Also Damage and Argent.”

Roy brightened. “Grant and Toni? Love those kids! I didn’t know you knew them.”

“Never met either of them,” Jason said, frowning. How had he known their real names, then?

Bruce’s files. It had to be.

“So this dream team of yours includes my brother, your ex, and three heroes you’ve never met, but not me? Your partner?” Roy said. “You wound me deeply, Jaybird. I thought we were forever.”

“Yeah,” Jason said distractedly. “Ex” was a strong word for Rose—they’d barely made it past some vicious flirting—but better Roy think Jason’s interests lay outside of this house. And of course he hadn’t told Roy about everyone on the team. But he didn’t want to talk about Eddie.

It was just a dream. He’d forget all about it by tomorrow.

“I miss Grant,” Lian volunteered from her end of the table.

“Me too, kiddo,” Roy said. “Next time we’re in New York, we’ll go visit him, okay? You can come with us, Jaybird, get to know him for real.”

“Sure,” Jason said absently, and rubbed the back of his neck, where the sunlight was warming his skin.

It still felt off.

*

A month later, Jason was back in Star City.

It had not been a particularly successful month in Gotham. The Red Hood’s organization had suffered from Jason’s frequent absences. He’d come back to reestablish the boundaries of his turf and remind Gotham’s underworld that his was still a name to be feared, but his hands were tied by the fact that he’d agreed to play by Batman’s rules these days. It was hard to make criminals as hardened as Gotham’s fear him when the word was getting out that he wouldn’t kill.

A small, shameful part of Jason would have been okay with his job being harder if it had actually brought him back into the fold, but it hadn’t. The Bats still thought he was a killer, the lowlifes knew he wasn’t, and there he was in the middle. Neither fish nor fowl; just one hundred percent jackass.

That had become all too obvious his last night in town. He’d agreed to work with Batman to take down a new operation that had sprung up in the Narrows. From the outside it looked like a restaurant that somehow magically stayed open despite very few people ever eating there, but it only took knocking a couple of the right heads together for Jason to confirm that it was owned by the Falcone crime family, who were running guns and drugs out of the kitchen. That was a problem, of course; the fact that they’d boldly set up shop so clearly within the Red Hood’s borders was a bigger one. The issue wasn’t Jason’s pride; the issue was that if he allowed the Falcones an inch, they’d take a mile, and they’d do it over the bodies of his people.

Bruce didn’t see it that way, of course. He’d never understood what Jason was trying to do by working within Gotham’s criminal world, fighting fire with fire instead of a cape and a spooky voice. But he wanted the guns and drugs shut down as badly as Jason did, and that was enough common ground to cooperate.

They met on a roof across the street from the restaurant to plan their attack. Bruce had brought Red Robin, which made Jason grind his teeth behind his helmet—and not just because it reminded him of his Titans Red dream. A few years removed from the Lazarus Pit, Jason knew the issues between him and Bruce weren’t actually Tim’s fault. But having him along felt like Bruce was trying to make some kind of point. Either that, or he really did give so little of a shit that he was completely oblivious to the subtext of bringing his preferred Boy Wonder along for this particular teamup. Jason wasn’t sure which would be worse.

Either way, did he have to do it tonight, of all nights?

“I’ve had my people casing the place,” Jason said instead of hello. Batman didn’t do small talk. “Go in, have dinner, get ‘lost’ on the way to the bathroom so they could check out the kitchen. There’s always at least four people working: the hostess, a waitress, a cook, and a dishwasher. Plus at least two guys who don’t seem to be doing anything but are clearly carrying. As you might expect, service is shit.”

“The veal scallopini’s not bad, though,” Tim offered, then gave Jason a rueful shrug. “I cased it too. Guess it’s pretty obvious we were trained by the same person.”

Jason turned on Bruce, on his back foot already and furious. “And you didn’t think to tell me this was happening in my neighborhood?”

“I needed eyes I could trust in there,” Bruce replied. Tim cringed visibly.

Jason took a deep breath. It didn’t make him feel any better. “Fine. Whatever. Can we just get this done?”

Bruce’s head tilted, and Jason could tell from the angle that Bruce was looking pointedly at the holsters strapped to Jason’s thighs. “No killing.”

“Oh, is that the rule?” Jason said with exaggerated surprise. “I wasn’t sure, since it’s never, ever come up before.”

“Hood…”

“Uh, we should probably move before any customers go in,” Tim interjected.

Yeah, right. Tim knew as well as Jason did that this place only got about four customers a day, and it was well past the dinner rush, even for restaurants that weren’t mafia fronts. His point was still taken. Standing here beating his head against the brick wall that was Batman wasn’t going to help Jason, or anyone else in the Narrows.

“Fine,” he said. “Let’s move.”

At first, it almost seemed to work. Sometimes it felt like the worst part of working with Bruce was how easy it was to work with Bruce, to fall into the patterns that had been trained into Jason so long ago. They burst through the door to the startled scream of the singular waitress, who immediately tried to flee. Bruce went straight ahead, all brute force, and Jason instinctually bounded to the left to flank their opponents. He caught a glimpse of Tim out of the corner of his eye doing the same on the right, so like how Jason would move that it felt like deja vu.

Had it felt like that to Bruce, when he trained Tim after Jason’s death? Or was it all so familiar by then that he hadn’t noticed as he put his third Robin through his paces?

Jason shook off the unhelpful, maudlin thoughts in time to see the dishwasher pop out from the swinging kitchen doors, whipping a gun out from under his apron and training it on Tim. Tim was too busy with the cook to notice, and Bruce was caught up with the enforcers. Jason drew his own gun.

“Hood! No!” Bruce barked, hurling a batarang at him.

It struck Jason’s wrist and fouled his aim, sending his bullet into the ceiling. The dishwasher turned on him and Jason hurled himself to the side, but not quite fast enough to stop the dishwasher’s bullet from grazing him, a line of stinging heat along the outside of his upper arm.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Jason demanded as Tim kicked the dishwasher in the head, dropping him.

“I said no killing!” Bruce snapped.

“I was just going to shoot him in the leg!” Jason shouted back, turning to punch one of the enforcers in the face. “What, should I have let him kill Red Robin? I didn’t think you wanted your dead sidekick number to go up any higher, but maybe I was wrong!”

Bruce dropped the second enforcer, and just like that it was over. Which was too damn bad—Jason had blood running down his arm and rage burning in his chest and he desperately needed something to hit.

“You’re out of line, Hood,” Bruce rumbled.

“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” Jason said, holstering his gun. “You trust me so little you just got me shot, and I’m the one who’s out of line?”

Bruce drew closer to look at the wound. “It isn’t bad,” he said. “Once we’re finished with the authorities here, you’ll come back to the Cave and I can stitch it up.”

“Fuck off!” Jason snapped, jerking away. Beneath his anger, a dull pain ached. Alfred wouldn’t stitch him up. Alfred would never take care of him again.

“Be reasonable,” Bruce said.

“Be reasonable?” Jason echoed incredulously. “And what, I suppose I should be grateful too, right? At least this time you didn’t aim the batarang at my neck.”

“What?” Tim said, glancing back and forth between them.

Jason shook his head and put his hands up. “Fuck it. I’m done. You can wait for Gordon, but I’m out of here.”

He stormed out of the restaurant. He knew he should stay until one of the Falcone underlings woke up, should interrogate them about the family’s plans for the Narrows, but if he stuck around much longer, he was going to take a swing at Bruce, and that never worked out well for him.

Bruce didn’t follow. Of course.

After a couple blocks, though, Jason heard the faintest scuff of a foot behind him. He sighed. “Did he send you to keep me out of trouble?”

“To stitch you up,” Tim said. “And I would have come even if he hadn’t sent me.”

“It’s just a graze. It might not even need stitches.”

“Better safe than sorry,” Tim argued, which Jason thought was pretty rich coming from the guy who had neglected to mention the loss of his spleen for over a year.

Still, he didn’t have the energy to fight about it. “Fine. Do what you want,” he said, and turned toward his nearest safehouse.

The wound did in fact need stitches, but just two. Tim made neat work of them, suturing quickly while Jason grimaced through it. Jason had to admit that it was faster and easier to have someone else stitch him up than to try to reach the wound himself. Well, he had to admit it to himself; he wasn’t about to say it out loud.

“You know…” Tim started to say as he pressed a bandage over the stitches, then stopped.

“What?” Jason asked, already knowing he probably wouldn’t like whatever Tim had stopped himself from saying.

“Don’t punch me for this,” Tim said. “But he does care.”

Not all that long ago, Jason would have punched him for it. Hell, not all that long ago, he would never have let Tim into his home, or a rough approximation thereof. These days, he just didn’t have the energy.

“Yeah?” he asked. “And what good does that do me?”

Tim made a rueful face. “None, probably,” he admitted, and stood up. “I’ll let him know you’re in one piece.”

“Yeah,” Jason said. He nodded toward his arm, which was throbbing badly now that the adrenalin had worn off. “Thanks.”

“Sure,” Tim said. He opened the window and slipped halfway out before pausing. “Oh, and Jason…happy birthday.”

Yeah, on second thought, fuck Tim.

Jason had flown to Star City the next morning, leaving behind the Falcones and Bruce’s disapproval and his own barely acknowledged birthday. The distance helped, a little. Roy fussing over his wound helped more, as did Lian shrieking with delight and flinging herself—a little painfully—into his arms when he and Roy picked her up after school.

It was a Friday, which meant Chili Night at Ollie’s. Jason had been confused the first time Roy had invited him; it seemed like a family thing, not a “bring the guy your family thinks you’re slumming with” thing. He’d since gotten used to the routine of tagging along whenever he was in town on a Friday, even if Oliver Queen would never be his favorite person.

Infuriatingly, the man did make a damn fine pot of chili. Jason sat sandwiched between Connor and Lian, helped himself to extra sour cream and avocado, and let the cacophony of the Queen family wash over him. Ollie was soapboxing about some local politician, Roy and Dinah were chattering animatedly about motorcycles, and the girls—Mia, Emiko, and Cissie—were bickering over whose turn it was to stay home from patrol tonight, while Lian was cheerfully telling anyone who would listen about a worm she’d found on the school playground that day.

It was a far cry from restrained, formal dinners in Wayne Manor. Still, Jason had enjoyed those dinners once. Years ago, when the multiple courses and careful, scripted manners had felt like something out of a book—like he’d stepped into a fairy tale and gotten his happily ever after.

Alfred would have made pot roast last night, he knew. And a cake, even though Jason would have told him he didn’t have to.

But Alfred was gone, and so was Jason’s fairy tale, and twenty-three was too old to pout about not getting a birthday party.

When the meal was over, he helped Cissie and Emiko clear the table, because Alfred had drilled those manners into him a decade ago, after all. As he sat back down, Lian turned to Roy and tugged on his sleeve.

“Is it time, Daddy?” she asked.

Roy glanced at Jason, telltale mischief in his eyes. “I think it might be. You wanna help me?”

“Yeah!” she crowed, and jumped down from her chair to follow him into the kitchen.

Jason glanced at Connor. “Did I miss something?”

Connor had this way of smiling inscrutably that could be truly annoying when he wanted it to be. “Oh, I wouldn’t want to ruin Lian’s surprise,” he said.

Jason frowned, but before he could respond, Lian came tearing back out of the kitchen and flung herself at him. “Happy birthday!” she shouted. “Daddy said we can’t sing or you’ll run away.”

Jason looked up from her beaming face to see Roy carrying in a cake with a single candle flickering on it. “Sorry we’re a day late, Jaybird,” Roy said. “But I figure it’s close enough for jazz.”

“I…” Jason opened his mouth, then shut it again. “You didn’t have to. It’s not a big deal.”

“Like hell it’s not a big deal,” Ollie said. “That cake is from O’Neil’s! Best bakery in the city.”

Roy snorted and put the cake on the table in front of Jason. “Yeah, we have our priorities straight in this house. Go ahead, make a wish.”

Jason looked down at Lian, because it was easier than looking at anyone else. “You want to help me?”

“Yeah!”

He hauled her properly into his lap. “Okay, blow.”

Lian closed her eyes and blew like she was trying to put out a five-alarm fire, and Jason added a little puff of his own for propriety’s sake. The candle flickered and died, and the rest of the family actually applauded, which was cheesy as hell, but Jason couldn’t bring himself to hate it.

“Excellent teamwork,” Roy said. “What’d you wish for?”

Jason met his eyes. Roy was still smiling. He’d been smiling since he brought out a cake, for Jason, for his birthday. He was always smiling at Jason.

“I can’t tell you,” Jason said. “It might not come true.”

He thought he heard Roy’s breath catch…and then Mia hollered, “All right, cut it, already!” and Jason flushed and let Lian wriggle out of his arms and back into her own chair so that she could be served.

The cake was delicious. Jason watched Roy’s family eat it and tried not to look at his own phone, dark and quiet on the table next to his plate.

“Oh, and Jason…happy birthday.”

Alfred hadn’t said it, because Alfred was gone. Bruce hadn’t said it, and whether it was because Bruce was above such petty things as birthdays these days or because he felt Jason no longer deserved to have the day acknowledged didn’t really make a difference. Even Dick hadn’t called or texted, although come to think of it Jason wasn’t sure Dick knew his birthday. He hadn’t been around much in Jason’s Robin days, back when they’d celebrated it.

Jason scowled and took a furious bite of cake. It was stupid to let it bother him. He’d died. He’d been betrayed and abandoned and driven nearly mad. What did it matter that the only people who’d bothered to acknowledge his birthday were the little creep who’d replaced him after his death and who’d probably lifted the date off of the Batcomputer, and a family he didn’t belong to and where he was pretty sure only about two and a half of the members actually liked him?

Connor, the half in question, noticed his scowl. “Is the cake okay?” he asked.

Jason blinked, then forced his expression into neutral. “It’s fine,” he said. “It’s good.”

Connor looked suddenly amused. “Do you remember that time on your birthday that Toni and Eddie tried to bake a—”

Klunk! Lian accidentally toppled her milk glass over while reaching for it, flooding Jason’s plate. Jason hastily righted the glass, while Connor and Roy scrambled to mop up the puddle with napkins before it reached the edge of the table and dripped onto the floor.

Lian gave Jason a dismayed look. “I ruined your birthday cake!” she said, lower lip wobbling dangerously.

“It’s okay, princess,” he assured her, ruffling her hair as he stood up. “I’ll get a clean plate and cut another slice, that’s all. And I’ll get you some more milk while I’m up.”

Thank you, Roy mouthed as Jason slipped into the kitchen with his soggy cake plate and Lian’s glass.

By the time Jason returned with a less precariously full glass of milk for Lian and cut himself a new slice of cake, the threat of kindergartener tears seemed to have receded, and the conversation around the table seemed to have moved on. Jason turned to Connor.

“Sorry, you were saying something, weren’t you?” he asked.

“I was? I don’t remember.” Connor frowned for a minute, then shrugged. “Well, whatever it was, if it was important, it’ll come back to me.”

Jason nodded and took another bite of his cake.

It was delicious.

Chapter Text

“...birthday, dear Jaaaason…happy birthday to youuuuu!!!”

Jason buried his face in his hands as his team finished caterwauling, each of them in a completely different key. Eddie actually seemed to be in several keys at once, somehow. Naturally, he was also the loudest.

“You guys are so embarrassing,” Jason grumbled. His hands muffled his voice, but he kept them there until he could fight the smile off of his face.

Eddie reached over and pinched his cheek when he finally straightened up. “It’s just because we love you, pumpkin.”

Jason rolled his eyes. “I can’t take any of you anywhere. You know you’re not supposed to make a scene in a restaurant this fancy, right?”

They were in the Dove, Star City’s newest glittering five-star restaurant. It was at the top of the Hall Tower, sixty-eight stories up; the wait list for a reservation was more than a year long. Jason had no idea how Toni had managed to score them a table, but he had learned very early into his time with Bruce that antics like the ones his friends were engaging in right now were very much frowned upon.

Toni waved a hand in the air, brushing off his protests. “Of course you can. Being rich means you can make a scene wherever you want. I refuse to believe Bruce Wayne didn’t teach you that.” She turned to Koryak. “Am I right, Your Highness?”

“Of course you are.” Koryak grinned. “Besides, if anyone starts anything, I have diplomatic immunity.”

Jason shook his head. “My life is so much quieter when all of you aren’t in town.”

It was normally just him and Toni and Connor in Star City. Jason and Toni were both attending Star City University, and Connor was at the smaller, artsier Papp College—but of course, he was also a local. The rest of the Titans Red were scattered across the country—Grant in Atlanta, Koryak in Amnesty Bay, Rose in New York, and Eddie in L.A. To be honest, they didn’t get together nearly as often as they had when they were in high school, even though they’d been just as scattered then.

Jason had decided to stay in Star City over the summer between his junior and senior year at Star City University. He’d managed to secure a coveted job as research assistant to his favorite professor in the English department, and the work was so interesting he hadn’t wanted to give it up—not to mention the mild Star City summer weather—to go back to sweltering Gotham for several months. He missed his family, but he spoke to both Bruce and Alfred almost every day, and Bruce had even allowed twelve-year-old Damian to fly all the way across the country by himself to spend a week with Jason back in July.

He’d resigned himself to a quiet birthday celebration with Connor. He hadn’t expected all of his friends to show up for the weekend to celebrate.

“It’s your twenty-first birthday, you dope,” Eddie had told him when he’d said as much. “Of course we’re here.”

Now his phone buzzed on the table, distracting him from his friends’ shenanigans momentarily.

Dick: happy bday again littlewing!!! 🎂🎉🎈🎈🎈🍰🎁🐦🐦🟥🥳🥳🥳🎊🍾

Jason snorted.

Jason: Aren’t you on patrol right now? Should you really be on your phone?

Dick: psh its just a stakeout its fine 🤫😂🤣
Dick: b says hi
Dick: actually he says stop texting lmao
Dick: love u lil bro!!!!! 💙💙💙💙💙🐦

Jason rolled his eyes, liked the last message, and put his phone down. The birthday calls and texts from his family had been rolling in all day and he appreciated them, but yeah, Dick should probably be paying attention to the stakeout. Still, Jason knew he was lucky to have his family: two great brothers, a kickass sister, and the best father and grandfather he could ask for.

When Jason looked up, Rose was arching an eyebrow at him. “Who was that? Got a hot date?”

It had been long enough since they’d had…whatever it was they’d had that there was barely any subtext beneath it. “Hardly,” Jason said. “It was just Dick.”

“So, yes,” Toni said.

Jason made a face. “Don’t be gross.”

He saw the mischief flicker across Rose’s face and knew he was in for it. “Oh, so no one can acknowledge that your brother is hot,” she said, “but Connor’s brother…”

“Really?” Jason said. “This? Still?”

Grant grinned broadly. “Yeah, Jase, why’d you really stay in Star City this summer?”

Koryak and Eddie guffawed, and even Connor looked amused. “I hate you all,” Jason muttered, reaching for his now completely legal glass of champagne. Bruce had insisted they order a bottle and charge it to him. “When are you gonna let this die? It’s been years.”

Six years ago, to be precise, when they were fifteen, he’d made the mistake of confessing to the team during a game of Truth or Dare that he thought Connor’s older brother Roy was hot. Connor had only looked completely baffled, but Toni, Grant, and Rose, who had all been junior members of teams with Roy, had found Jason’s confession to be utterly hilarious. Never mind that nearly every one of Jason’s friends had admitted to checking out Jason’s older brother Dick at some point or another. Jason having a crush on Roy was apparently totally different and totally ridiculous.

“It’s like having a crush on a camp counselor,” Rose had explained once, pityingly. “But one who’s like, ‘I’m not a regular camp counselor, I’m a cool camp counselor.’”

At which point Grant had laughed so hard he nearly threw up.

They’d all acted like Jason had been carrying a torch for Roy ever since, when the truth was he barely knew the guy and could count on the fingers of one hand the times he’d seen him since moving to Star City. But that was how things were with old friends, Jason figured.

“It dies when you do, Jase,” Toni said, as if to prove his point.

“Which means you’re never getting off the hook,” Eddie said. “Remember our deal?”

Jason sighed, aware that his posture of being long-suffering wasn’t fooling anyone. “Yes, I remember.”

“Back when we were thirteen, we agreed to live forever,” Eddie informed the rest of the table. “We spit-shook on it and everything.”

“Gross,” Rose said.

“We’ve washed our hands since,” Jason said.

“I meant the notion of an eternity with both of you.”

Eddie leaned into her space. “Aw, Rose, does that mean you’re going to live forever with us?”

She pushed him away with a palm to the face. “No, I’m going to haunt you dipshits to get back at you for annoying me so much when I was alive.”

Eddie shrugged. “Hey, it’s still eternity. I’ll take it.”

Jason rolled his eyes and finished his champagne to keep himself from agreeing out loud. But yeah, eternity with his annoying friends? He would take it, too.

*

Jason was not in the best of moods the next night on patrol.

Part of it was that he never felt quite at home patrolling in Star City, for the obvious reason that he wasn’t at home. He was still learning Star, and all the ways it differed from Gotham—and it differed a lot. Star was a much younger city, for one thing, and far less obsessed with the gothic aesthetic, so the buildings had fewer helpful grotesques and gargoyles and flying buttresses to hook a grapple onto. The city’s insanely steep hills added another level of difficulty that Roy and his family didn’t even seem to notice, annoyingly. On the other hand, the crime rate was lower and the supervillains significantly less murderous—but even that felt weird and wrong after a lifetime of expectations set by Gotham, like a trap waiting to be sprung.

Mostly, though, Jason knew Gotham, knew it in his bones, and it knew him. Drop him onto any street anywhere in the city, and he’d recognize it instantly. He was still fundamentally a stranger to Star—its back alleys, its criminal undercurrents, its secrets.

But whenever Roy suited up to patrol, if one of the girls was watching Lian—Cissie, tonight—Jason suited up, too. They were still partners, after all. And some part of him felt like he should get to know Star City, for an unlikely future he refused to define.

He wasn’t putting down roots, he told himself, and he almost believed it.

His failure to lie to himself wasn’t the only thing unsettling him. He still hadn’t been able to shake the dreams about being a Titan with Connor and Rose and the others. It was stupid to let such random, silly dreams throw him so much, when they couldn’t hold a candle to the nightmares that had followed him back from beyond the grave, but there it was.

Maybe that was the problem—that they weren’t nightmares. He was used to nightmares. These felt like the opposite.

So of course tonight he and Roy had run into Connor almost immediately. The brothers had greeted each other cheerfully and agreed to patrol together, which left Jason feeling awkward and oddly lonely as he tagged along after them.

“Quiet night tonight,” Roy said after they’d been patrolling for almost an hour and seen nothing except a woman who’d appeared to be breaking into a car but turned out to just have locked her keys inside. Roy’d popped the lock for her and gotten a phone number in return, while Jason’s jaw tightened behind his helmet. “Maybe we should call it soon, huh? What do you—”

CRASH! An explosion shattered the stillness of the night.

“On second thought, never mind,” Roy said, as all three of them turned and sprinted in the direction of the sound.

“Sounds like it came from over by Adams Place,” Connor said as they ran. “There’s been a turf war going on down there between Brick’s people and some of the older gangs.”

“Well, I think someone just escalated it,” Roy replied.

Sure enough, when they turned the corner onto Adams, they found a storefront in flames, the front window shattered. The store appeared to be on the ground floor of an apartment building, but all the windows above it were dark, some of them boarded up. A handful of gawkers were standing around staring at the building, but there was no sign of the fire department.

“Molotov cocktail through the window, probably,” Jason said. He grabbed the nearest onlooker. “Hey! Did you see what happened?”

“No! I mean, yeah, but not really,” the guy stammered. “Some guy went in and then there was an explosion!”

“Arson?” Roy asked.

“He’s a shitty arsonist if he blew himself up,” Jason pointed out.

“Does anyone live in that building?” Connor asked the civilian.

The civilian shook his head. “No, I mean, I don’t know. It’s condemned, but there might be squatters…”

“Quit being fucking useless and call 911.” Jason let him go and looked at Roy and Connor. “You guys still have fire extinguisher arrows or whatever the hell they are?”

Roy and Connor already had arrows on the string. They loosed them through the shattered window, and Jason could see fire extinguisher foam hissing out of them, dampening the flames a bit.

“You two take the front,” Roy said, pulling another arrow from his quiver. “I’ll check for a back entrance, see if anyone is lurking.”

Jason nodded, then kicked the door in, Connor close behind him with a second arrow nocked. The store seemed to be deserted, the counter with the register blazing merrily. Connor shot another fire extinguisher arrow at it and drew again.

“Looks like a stairwell over there,” Jason said, pointing through the smoke. “We should make sure no one’s squatting upstairs and trapped.” He knew it was dangerous to climb higher into a burning building, but they couldn’t just leave anyone in there to their fate.

But as they moved toward the stairs, a man emerged from the back room. He was blond and bigger than Jason, and seemingly unbothered by the flames. Incongruously, he wore a Hawaiian shirt, board shirts, Vans, and a puka shell necklace. He beamed when he saw them.

“All right, superheroes!” he said. “I thought I was just gonna get to kill some homeless people, this is way better.”

Connor trained his arrow on the stranger, and Jason pulled both guns from their holsters. Anyone talking that cheerfully about murder in a burning building wasn’t someone to use the Bat-approved kid gloves with.

“Who the fuck are you?” Jason asked.

The stranger rolled his eyes. “Man, I have got to get a new agent. I’m Sudden Death, brah! Baddest villain in the DMV?”

“The Department of Motor Vehicles?” Connor asked.

“DC, Maryland, Virginia, dumbass,” Sudden Death said. “I used to fight Hawk and Dove? And Batgirl?”

Jason snorted. “Really? Because I know Batgirl pretty well, and she’s never mentioned you. You must not have been that impressive.”

Sudden Death smirked. “Yeah? Go ahead and shoot me. You’ll see just how impressive I am.”

Jason shrugged and shot him in the head.

“Hood!” Connor said.

“What? He told me to.”

More importantly, the bullet hadn’t done a thing, which was about what Jason had expected after all of Sudden Death’s bravado. Sudden Death laughed.

“My turn,” he said, and another explosion rocked the building.

“Shit!” Jason said, struggling to keep his feet. He fired off another few rounds, even though he knew it would be useless. Connor shot an arrow at Sudden Death, which also plunked harmlessly off of him and hit the ground, spewing fire extinguisher foam.

Sudden Death laughed again. “Keep going, girls!” he said. He was starting to glow. “Brick paid me good to trash this building, but I’d take the two of you on for free!”

“Stop shooting, Hood!” Connor said. “I’m pretty sure it’s just powering him up!”

Jason shot him again and swore. Connor was right; the impact had just made Sudden Death glow brighter.

“You got a net arrow or something?” he asked, reupholstering his guns and fumbling a gas pellet out of his belt.

Connor was already drawing. “Go,” he said, and loosed.

Jason ran. The arrow hit first, expanding into a net and pinning Sudden Death’s arms to his sides. Jason yanked Sudden Death’s hair back, ready to shove the gas pellet into the asshole’s mouth, just to make sure he breathed it.

Sudden Death flexed, and the net shredded into useless fibers. Before Jason could jump back, there was a massive hand around his throat. Shit.

“Nice try, ladies,” Sudden Death said.

He batted aside Connor’s next arrow and grabbed him too, and then they were both dangling by their necks. Jason’s vision swam. Fuck, he was going to die again, this time via the stupidest villain he’d ever fought, and he couldn’t even warn Roy…

“I’m gonna ask Brick for a bonus,” Sudden Death crowed. “This shit’ll make my name! ‘Sudden Death, killer of Captain Helmet and Arrow Man, the gnarliest villain from coast to fucking—”

Wham!

Sudden Death let out a groan and doubled over. Jason dropped from his limp fingers to fall in a heap on the floor, Connor beside him. He turned, gasping for air, to thank Roy for rescuing them.

It wasn’t Roy.

“I can’t believe you were losing to this idiot,” Rose Wilson said, fully decked out in her Ravager gear and having clearly just kicked Sudden Death in the balls. “Now either of you two assholes want to tell me why I’ve been dreaming about you?”

*

“So all three of you have been having identical dreams for months?” Roy asked.

They were in his living room, picking at the remains of the pizzas Roy had ordered as a post-patrol snack. Once first responders had turned up at the fire, they’d handed the two gang members over to the police and let the fire department deal with the blaze and Sudden Death.

Connor had called Ollie to let him know that Brick was escalating his turf war via annoying wannabe supervillains, but they’d made the executive decision not to head over to Ollie’s to talk about the dreams. Roy’s house was significantly quieter, and besides, Roy had to relieve Cissie of babysitting duties. Lian was sound asleep, thankfully, which made it easier to have this discussion. Well, somewhat easier.

“That’s what we said. Keep up,” Rose snapped. Jason frowned at her, but Roy just rolled his eyes.

“It hasn’t been every night, or every dream,” Connor said. “At least not for me. Just…a few. Where we were all Teen Titans together. Or…had been Teen Titans together? I don’t think we’re teenagers anymore in the dreams.”

Jason shook his head. “No, I think we were Teen Titans, but then we grew up and started calling ourselves the Titans Red. Your team was the Titans Blue,” he said, nodding at Roy. “Dick’s fault.”

“It’s so dumb,” Rose said. “I was a Titan, and neither of you losers was on my team.”

“I mean, I was technically a Titan. For two missions. When I was fifteen,” Jason said.

“The first time we met,” Roy crooned. “You were an adorable Titan, Jaybird.”

Jason felt his face heating up, which wasn’t helped by the way Rose and Connor glanced at each other, clearly biting back amusement. Fucking unbelievable. Were they really going to joke about this, again, when something seriously weird was going on?

Wait. Rose and Connor didn’t joke about this, not in real life. As far as Jason had known until an hour ago, they’d never even met.

“How do you two know each other?” he asked, which had the added benefit of changing the subject.

“We met on Lazarus Island. With your brother,” Connor explained.

“He’s not my brother,” Jason said automatically. He’d known Rose had been part of the assassin tournament with Damian, and he’d heard Connor mention the island as well. He should have put two and two together on his own long before this, but maybe the dreams were rattling him worse than he’d thought.

“Right. Sorry,” Connor said, “Anyway. I don’t know the others, not really. That is, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Damage and Argent at the big crisis events, back in the day. I think Argent might be retired now? But I’ve never met Koryak or Red Devil. Have you?”

“Not Koryak,” Rose said. “But the other three…yes. I know them.” She looked away, jaw set, like she really didn’t want to discuss this.

Jason didn’t want to discuss it either. Well, he didn’t want to discuss one person in particular. “I think we’re getting away from the point,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter if we know the others, unless they’re having the same dreams—which they probably are, if we all are. But the better question is, why?”

Rose shook her head. “The better question is who,” she said. “Who is doing this to us?”

Jason had to concede the point. In their line of work, weird shit didn’t just happen. Weird shit was almost always some asshole deciding to cause problems.

Roy rubbed his chin. “There’s a Justice League villain called Dr. Destiny who messes with dreams,” he said. “I don’t know why he’d come after all of you, though. Only Connor was ever on the League, and you didn’t fight him, did you?”

Connor shook his head. “No, but it could be any psychic, couldn’t it? Or anyone with magical abilities.”

“That’s way too long of a list,” Rose said. “This is definitely your fault, Hood.”

Jason glared at her. “Why me?”

“Because Connor’s too nice to trigger anyone’s vendetta, if it was Grant they’d be messing with the JSA and not us, Toni’s retired, and no one knows who the fuck Koryak is, so it’s gotta be either you or me, and I haven’t pissed off any psychics or magicians lately, so you must have been the one.”

“Even if I did, again, why?” Jason asked. “If someone’s trying to get to me, why pull in all of you?”

“Why anything?” Rose asked, her voice getting louder before she glanced at Lian’s closed door and dropped back to an angry hiss. “Why give us weird happy-go-fuck-yourself dreams where I have two eyes and we’re all giggling and braiding each other’s hair all the time? Why not come after us while we’re awake? Why not take us out separately, if that’s what they want?”

“Why Titans Red?” Roy asked.

They all looked at him. “What?” Rose snapped.

Roy shrugged. “I know it’s a little thing, but it’s weird. Whenever we’ve had two branches before, it hasn’t been Titans Red and Titans Blue or whatever. It’s always been Titans East and Titans—”

The doorbell rang.

Jason raised an eyebrow at Roy. “Are you expecting visitors at four in the morning?”

Roy frowned. “Not that I know of.”

They were all standing. Rose and Connor had dropped back to block Lian’s door. Jason put himself in front of Roy.

“I’ll get it,” he said, unholstering one of his guns. “If it’s something to do with…whatever this is. I should get it.”

Roy had already palmed a throwing knife from the pockets at his thighs. “Sure.”

Jason flicked the safety off and walked to the door. He glanced through the peephole—and then lowered the gun, heart pounding.

“Jason?” Roy asked. “Who is it?”

Jason put the safety back on and holstered his gun. Feeling like he was watching himself do it from the outside, he unlocked all three locks on Roy’s front door and opened it.

Eddie Bloomberg, his extremely dead childhood pen pal, was standing on the front porch.

“Hey, Jason!” he said, beaming. “Long time no see!”

Chapter Text

“So who is this girl again?” Eddie asked. He was slumped over the Titans Tower meeting table, his face half-buried in his folded arms, so that his voice came out muffled.

Jason sighed. “Rose Wilson,” he said for the millionth time. “She’s Jericho’s little sister. Dick said she’d be a good addition to the team. She already knows Grant and Toni, he said.”

“Who conveniently aren’t wasting their Saturday hanging around headquarters waiting for some girl to show up,” Eddie pointed out.

“Toni’s in DC with her dad, and Grant had something with his godbrother. You know that,” Jason said. “Connor’s sick, and Kory’s got some prince thing. That leaves us.”

Eddie snorted. “I’m telling Kory you called it ‘some prince thing.’ You’re gonna get a twenty minute lecture on Atlantean politics.”

After three years of friendship, Jason knew when Eddie was trying to distract him. “Why are you being such a baby about this?” he asked. Eddie frowned and looked away. “Eddie.”

Eddie frowned harder, then gave an awkward shrug, still folded over the table. “I’m not. It’s just…we’ve got a lot of members already, you know? I mean, I kind of thought this was gonna be just you and me, and now there’s the others, and I like them and all, but…”

“You thought we were going to be a Teen Titans team of two?” Jason asked, raising an eyebrow.

“No! Maybe! I didn’t really think about it.” Eddie straightened up, only to slump against the back of his chair, arms still crossed. “I just think we have enough members.”

“I guess I should show myself out, then,” said a new voice.

Jason bolted upright, and Eddie squawked and startled so badly his chair toppled over backwards. There was a girl leaning in the open doorway to the meeting room, smirking, her long, silver-white hair tucked behind her ears. She wasn’t wearing a costume, just a Wiley Wolverman and the Doves T-shirt, ripped jeans, a flannel tied around her waist, and combat boots. Jason had no idea how she’d bypassed security—or how he hadn’t heard her do it.

“Rose?” he asked, even though who else could it be?

“Robin,” she said, nodding towards his legs. “Nice shorts. Who’s the little spiky guy?”

Eddie scrambled to his feet. “Ed Devil,” he said. “I mean, I’m Kid Eddie. I mean. Hi.”

He leaned against the meeting room table in what Jason was pretty sure was supposed to be a casual pose. The table started to smoke under his hand.

Jason elbowed him. “Eddie,” he muttered. “Ed, you’re scorching the furniture.”

“Shh, Robin,” Eddie said, waving him off. He was still staring at Rose. “I’m talking to our new teammate.”

Jason looked at the besotted expression on his face, then back at Rose, who was looking extremely dubious.

Well. This was going to be interesting.

*

“So are you going to invite me in or what?” Eddie asked.

He was still grinning broadly, standing just outside Roy’s front door. There was no question it was him, even though the last time Jason had seen him he’d been a scrawny thirteen-year-old in a devil costume. Now he was an adult, like Jason, but there was still something boyish in his smile, in his shaggy strawberry blond hair, in his cargo shorts and Star Wars T-shirt.

Eddie Bloomberg, Kid Devil, had been Jason’s only superhero friend, back in his Robin days. They’d lived on opposite sides of the country, but they’d written letters to each other religiously, sometimes multiple times a week—at least, until Jason had died.

When he came back, he looked Eddie up. Somewhere along the line Eddie had gotten actual devil powers and joined the Teen Titans. He seemed to be doing okay, and Jason hadn’t wanted to mess with that, so he’d left it alone.

And then Eddie had died at Sanctuary. Just like Roy. And Jason had run out of chances.

Feeling numb, he stepped back out of the way and let Eddie into the house.

“Thanks, buddy,” Eddie said. “Wow, you got huge. Hey, is that Rose?”

Suddenly there was a sword blade up against Eddie’s throat. Rose’s arm was steady, but a fine tremble ran through her jaw.

“You have ten seconds to tell us what the fuck you are, and then I’m cutting off your head,” Rose said. There was something terrible in her voice. “Nine.”

Eddie met Jason’s eyes. “We’re actually good friends, believe it or not.”

“Eight.”

Eddie’s expression softened. “Rose,” he said. “Hey. It’s really me. I promise.”

The sword didn’t waver. “Prove it.”

“Sure. I’m going to shift, okay? Don’t kill me.” Eddie furrowed his brow, and then his skin faded into a deep crimson, horns sprouting from his brow as his hair turned white. There was a tearing sound as a forked tail appeared behind him, and Eddie made a face. “Aw man, I liked these shorts.”

Rose lowered the sword, but not far. “It could still be an illusion,” she said. “Shapeshifter. Hologram.”

“You say that like I’m the only one in this room who came back from Sanctuary,” Eddie pointed out, nodding toward Roy. “Hey, Arsenal.” He brightened. “Connor! Wow, this is like a whole Titans Red reunion.”

And just like that, the sword was back at his throat. “What do you know about this Titans Red bullshit?” Rose growled.

Eddie looked at her like she was crazy. “What do you mean? It was our…” He blinked, then frowned. “Wait. Were we…”

He looked at Jason. “You weren’t on the Titans with me,” he said slowly. “That was Tim. You were…you died.”

“Eddie,” Connor said, breaking into the conversation. “When did you come back from the dead?”

Eddie opened his mouth, then shut it. All the fun had vanished from his expression.

“I don’t know,” he said.

*

There was a lot Eddie didn’t know, it turned out.

He didn’t know how he’d come back from the dead, or where he’d been since Sanctuary. He didn’t know when he’d developed the ability to shift between his normal, human body and his powered-up devil body. He didn’t know if being able to access his powers on any level meant that he was still doomed to Hell to serve Neron eventually. Jason had been less than thrilled to hear that the boy who had once been his best friend was damned, but that was nothing compared to the way the skin around Rose’s good eye went tight and angry when Eddie mentioned it.

Eddie also didn’t know how he’d gotten to Roy’s house.

“I was just…on my way to come see you guys?” he said, shrugging uncomfortably. “It made sense in my head.”

“Yeah, but why would you come to my house?” Roy asked. “We barely know each other. No offense.”

Eddie looked at Jason, his eyebrows lifting. Jason felt his face grow hot, and ducked away from Roy’s curious frown.

“Does it matter?” Jason asked. “I mean, if Eddie just felt like he needed to come find us, why wouldn’t whatever is fucking with our heads be able to tell him where to find us?”

Roy frowned harder and glanced back at Lian’s door. “Fair enough, but I gotta tell you, Jaybird, I don’t love my house being ground zero for whatever this shit is.”

Jason’s stomach twisted, even as he caught Eddie mouthing Jaybird? to Rose.

“Fuck. Yeah, I’m sorry. I didn’t think,” Jason said. “We’ll get out of here.”

“What?” Roy asked, sounding genuinely startled. “The fuck you will. We’re partners. Connor’s my brother. And I was technically Rose’s legal guardian for like a month, which basically makes me her dad. Right, kiddo?” Rose gave him the finger. “I’m with you guys. I’m just wondering if Lian needs to go to Ollie’s.” He nodded toward the front door. “Or hell, if Grant or Toni is about to waltz in.”

“Why not go to them?” Connor suggested. “Instead of waiting.”

Jason frowned. “Do we even know where they are?”

He was surprised when it was Rose who answered, and not Roy. “Grant’s on the JSA. They’re based in New York,” she said. “And Toni used to have some ridiculous loft in Soho or some trendy place like that. She’s probably still there.”

“So we’re going to New York?” Eddie asked.

“In the morning,” Roy said firmly. “It’s ass o’ clock. No one can fight Dr. Destiny or whoever on zero sleep. And hell, if you all have the same dream again, at least you can compare notes.”

Roy only had the one couch to spare, so after a brief discussion, Connor took Eddie back with him to crash at Ollie’s place, while Rose stayed at Roy’s. Ollie would throw less of a fit over a literal devil in his guest room than Deathstroke’s daughter, and apparently Eddie knew Mia.

Besides, Roy insisted that Lian would want to see Rose after she woke up and before they left for New York. Apparently Rose had been Lian’s nanny at some point, which was a mental image Jason couldn’t quite wrap his head around. Roy’s tone stayed friendly as they worked out the logistics, although Jason didn’t miss the wary way his eyes flickered from Jason to Rose to Eddie and back again.

Still, all Roy did after he handed Rose a spare set of sheets was squeeze Jason’s shoulder and wish them both good night before disappearing into his bedroom. Jason couldn’t explain why it left him with his stomach hurting.

He lingered as Rose stuffed the bottom sheet haphazardly around the couch cushions. “You waiting for an invitation, Todd?” she asked finally, not looking at him. “It’s not gonna happen.”

“What’s the deal with you and Eddie?” he asked, trying to make his voice gentle, even though he knew he wasn’t very good at it.

She still wasn’t facing him, but her shoulders tightened. “What’s the deal with you and Eddie?” she retorted. “By the time he got superpowers, you were six feet under.”

Once again, he didn’t let himself rise to the bait. “We were penpals, way back in the day. When he just had the devil suit. I knew he’d gotten powers, I looked him up when I came back, but…”

Then he waited.

Rose continued making the bed, shaking out the top sheet and then dropping the blanket crookedly on top of it. Alfred would have had a conniption at the sight.

“We were on the Titans together,” she said. “Not the stupid dream Titans. The real ones, with Tim and a bunch of other losers.”

If she expected him to defend Tim, she didn’t know him very well. “And?”

Rose shoved a pillow into a pillowcase like it had personally offended her. “And what?” she asked. “I don’t know what you want me to tell you. We were on a team together. He was basically the only person who didn’t treat me like I was going to snap at any second and start taking heads. It wasn’t a big deal.”

But it was a big deal. Jason knew that better than anyone. He thought about Roy on the other side of his bedroom door; he thought about what trust felt like when it hadn’t been offered in years. “And then he died.”

“And then he died,” Rose agreed. “And when I find out who is fucking with us like this, he won’t be the only one.”

Jason and Rose had always been cut from the same cloth. It was the reason they had never worked. Right now, though, it was just nice to not be the only one simmering with rage under all the confusion and the unease.

“Not if I get there first,” Jason said, and left Rose to her dreams.

*

The five of them flew to New York the next morning: Jason, Connor, Rose, Eddie, and Roy. Lian stayed behind at Ollie’s, mollified only by getting to see Rose, who she’d greeted with a level of joy that Rose had clearly had no idea how to cope with.

It was late afternoon by the time they arrived, and they still had to get from the airport to Justice Society headquarters. No one was one hundred percent certain where Toni lived, but Roy and Rose both agreed that Grant was on the JSA, and that he’d probably have Toni’s address, or at least her phone number.

“How do you know so much about them?” Eddie asked her, leaning across Jason in the rearmost seat of the minivan taxi they were in. “Outside of the dreams, I only met them each a couple of times.”

Rose shrugged, looking away. “I was on the Titans before you, remember? Grant and I were both wards of Roy’s team right after my mom—the first time I was on the team. And Toni and I both lived in the Tower when I was Lian’s babysitter.”

Eddie tilted his head. “Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. You and I are friends—”

“You wish.”

“—you and Jason have history, you know Connor from Murder Island, and Grant and Toni are apparently your childhood best friends. And Roy is like your brother-dad or something.”

“The fuck he is,” Rose said, glaring at Roy as he cracked up. “What’s your point?”

“Rose,” Eddie said very seriously. “Are you…popular?”

“Keep it up, Bloomberg,” Rose said as Jason started laughing and even Connor looked like he was biting back a smile. “We’re still trying to figure out how you came back to life, remember? Maybe I’ll give you another shot at it, just to see.”

Eddie opened his mouth to reply, but was interrupted by a sudden explosion that shook the whole cab. Jason craned his neck to try to see where it had come from through the window and spotted a plume of smoke in the distance.

The cabbie threw up his hands. “Ah, jeez. Now the traffic’s gonna be even worse.”

Jason glanced at the others. Roy nodded. Explosions were common enough in their line of work…but when a member of Jason’s dream team exploded as a matter of course, it was easy enough to pick a first place to look.

Jason leaned into the front seat. “Don’t worry about it,” he told the cabbie, handing him enough bills to cover their fare plus tip. “We’re getting out here.”

Once they were out of the cab, Eddie shifted into his demon form. No one in the traffic jam screamed, which said something about New Yorkers.

“Stay close,” he said as Jason put his helmet on. “I’ll port us over there.”

They all bunched up together. There was a surge of heat, a blinding flash of fire, and then they were stumbling out of the portal onto a street lined with brownstones. Jason had never been here before, but he could still put two and two together and come up with “JSA headquarters.”

Especially since half the JSA seemed to be out in front of one building in particular. Jason recognized Jesse Quick, Stargirl, and Wildcat, and he was pretty sure the twenty foot tall dude was Atom Smasher. There was an actual cat guy, too, a humanoid panther Jason couldn’t place.

And next to him were Grant and Toni. Toni looked just the way she had in his dreams, with her gleaming silver skin and chic, all-black costume. Grant was in his new costume, the one with the mask that covered his entire face, but Jason recognized it from the Batcomputer’s records. Something irrational in him settled at the sight of his teammates alive and well before he sharply reminded himself that he didn’t actually know Grant or Toni.

No. Damage and Argent. They weren’t friends.

But splitting semantic hairs would have to wait, because the earlier explosion hadn’t just been a fluke. The JSA was in the middle of a fight with a few villains Jason had never encountered personally, but recognized from the Batcomputer files: Psimon, Mammoth, Shimmer, Gizmo, and Jinx. The Fearsome Five.

Psimon, a skinny loser in a pink robe with a glass dome covering his exposed brain, was clearly mentally controlling Jesse Quick. Part of Jason had to admire the strategy; a speedster was always the most dangerous member of any team.

“Ah ah ah, my dear,” Psimon said, wagging his finger at her. “You’re going to be moving very slowly until I’m done with you.”

“Let her go!” shouted Atom Smasher, reaching for Psimon with a giant hand—and then doubling over, choking.

“Oops!” said Shimmer, smirking as the sunlight gleamed off her tacky gold bodysuit. “I just turned all the oxygen in your lungs to carbon monoxide. Have fun suffocating!”

“Al!” Stargirl shouted. She and Wildcat were fending off a horde of spiderlike robots about the size of cats, all clearly controlled by their giggling little opponent in a green cloak—Gizmo. Stargirl swung the staff in her hands like a baseball bat, knocking one away before blasting three more.

Wildcat didn’t have anything nearly as helpful to fend the robots off with. He was left clawing at the ones climbing all over him, swearing a blue streak.

“Dad!” cried the furry cat guy, swiping at a couple of robots before letting out a horrible scream. As Jason watched, he started to shift to human and back over random parts of his body—now a hand, now a leg, now one horrified eye, his fur receding in patches and growing again. It clearly wasn’t his doing, and it clearly hurt.

“Bad kitty,” Psimon said with a smirk.

“Tommy!” Grant shouted, sending a concussive blast in Psimon’s direction—which fizzled into nothing after Jinx, the woman shrouded in white robes, waved a hand at it. “No! You fucking—ungh!”

Mammoth, the Five’s hulking bruiser, slammed Grant across the sidewalk and into a parked car, setting off the shriek of the alarm. Toni flung her silver plasma blasts at Jinx, but Jinx batted them all away telekinetically with careless ease.

“The Fearsome Five,” Roy said next to Jason. “But they never fight the JSA, and they shouldn’t be this good. And why are they dressed like that? They don’t wear those costumes anymore.”

But watching Grant hit the car had made Jason go hot with rage. “Eddie, help Toni with the witch,” he snapped. “Rose, you take out Shimmer. Roy and Connor, get the bots.” He slipped a batarang from his belt. “I’ve got Psimon.”

“Hood, wait—” Roy started, but Jason was already moving. He stayed behind the cover of Eddie’s flames, the whirr of arrows picking off bot after bot, trying not to draw attention as he moved towards Psimon. On the other side of the fight, he could see Rose doing the same, creeping up on Shimmer. Those were the heavy hitters; they needed to take them out to win this fight.

But—

“Not so fast,” Shimmer said, turning to face Rose as the sidewalk started to melt beneath Rose’s feet, sinking her to her ankles in molten concrete.

Psimon looked their way. Jason raised his arm to throw the batarang at that stupid glass dome—and froze in place, unable to twitch a muscle.

Psimon turned back to him. “Nice try, Robin,” he said, his voice oozing smugness. “But even the Titans and the JSA combined are no match for the Fearsome Five.”

Behind him, Atom Smasher hit the ground with a thud that shook the street. Toni went flying off her plasma force field. Mammoth threw Grant into a fire hydrant, knocking the plug out of place, and water jetted up into the sky.

They were losing. Two superhero teams against the idiotic Fearsome Five, and they were losing. Jason gasped and choked and scrabbled for a handhold on his own mind. And failed.

Had it been Psimon the whole time, planting dreams in all of their minds? Was he that powerful? And why would he have even bothered? Jason had never even met the asshole before. He wasn’t sure any of them had, except maybe Roy.

Roy, who was reaching for him, also frozen. Roy, who’d come here because of Jason, who’d tried to warn him not to go rushing in, and now they were both going to be killed by a third-string villain and Jason would never get to tell him—

WHOOSH!

The jet of water from the hydrant took a sudden right angle and slammed into Psimon, plowing him into the nearest stoop. He collapsed in a sodden, unconscious heap. Before any of the other Fearsome Five could respond, the water shifted direction, blasting into Shimmer.

“Selinda!” Mammoth cried—and Grant dropped him with a neat right hook. Gizmo turned to flee and Connor pinned him down with a bola arrow. Toni waved her hand and encased Jinx in a shimmering globe of silver.

And just like that, the fight was over. Jason turned, dripping wet and already knowing what—or rather who—he’d see.

Sure enough, there he was in the middle of Fifth Avenue, barefoot and all too pleased with himself. He was almost as tall as Jason and broader in the shoulders, with golden-brown skin and straight black hair hanging halfway down his back. His blue, sleeveless costume was as familiar as Jason’s own, even though Jason had never seen it before. And just like with Grant and Toni, Jason’s heart lifted at the sight of him.

“What is this?” the newcomer said, grinning. “A Titans Red reunion and no one invited me?”

“Uh. I’m guessing that’s Koryak?” Roy muttered from behind Jason.

Jason nodded, his shoulders sagging as the adrenalin of the fight bled away. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s Koryak.”

But how he knew that was still anyone’s guess.

*

The JSA invited the non-members in for towels and any necessary medical attention. Atom Smasher and the cat guy—Tommy, apparently, and Wildcat’s son—joined Grant and the rest of them in the meeting room. Jason took the nearest chair, which had a lightning bolt stamped on the back, but whether it was for Jay Garrick or Jesse Quick, he wasn’t sure.

Well, if Jesse came in and asked for it, he’d move, but she didn’t join them. Actually, Jason hadn’t seen Stargirl or the older Wildcat either since they’d come inside -

“Rose!” Toni cried, making Jason jump. She flung her arms open. “It’s been forever! Will you stab me if I hug you?”

“Yes,” Rose grumbled, but made no move for her sword when Toni hugged her anyway.

Atom Smasher nudged Grant with one of his massive arms as they took neighboring chairs—admittedly less massive now that he was only seven feet tall or so, but still no slouch. “You okay? Mammoth got in a couple pretty good hits there.”

“I’m fine, Al,” Grant said. He hadn’t taken off his mask, even though the fabric was drenched and had to be uncomfortable. “I can take a hit. Anyway, I’m not the one who had his lungs filled with CO2, or whatever the fuck that glass-head guy did to you, Tommy.”

Tommy had disappeared briefly into his room when they’d gone inside the brownstone and emerged in human shape, wearing sweatpants and no shirt. He turned out to be slim and dark-haired—hair that he was rubbing with a towel with a look of disgust on his face that was remarkably catlike considering he wasn’t in feline form at the moment.

“I don’t know, but I hated it,” he said, draping himself into the chair on the other side of Grant. His casual shirtlessness made Grant’s full mask seem even more out of place. “Also, not that we’re not grateful for the assist, but, uh…who are you? I know Kid Devil, Argent, and Arsenal, but not the rest of you.”

“It’s Red Devil, actually,” Eddie said.

“No one cares,” Rose muttered, but it sounded like an automatic response, with no heat behind it.

“Uh,” Jason said, feeling suddenly uncertain. They had to all be having the same dreams. Why would it just be him, Connor, Rose, and Eddie? Why would Toni and Koryak just happen to be here today? And something had to explain why Eddie was back.

But losing control of his own body had unbalanced him, or maybe it was the whole fight. Something about it didn’t feel right. He’d read about the Fearsome Five, especially when he was still Robin, hero-worshipping Dick and living vicariously through everything he was doing with the Titans. It shouldn’t have been that hard at the beginning, or that easy at the end.

Something was wrong here, but Jason didn’t know if it was supervillain wrong, or just wrong with him. What if what had seemed so obvious in Star City turned out to be totally off base in New York?

It was Connor who spoke into the awkward silence.

“We’ve been having the dreams, too,” he said.

Toni slapped the table triumphantly. “I knew it!” she said. “Grant, didn’t I tell you I knew it?”

“Oh, this is them?” Tommy asked Grant.

“Wait, dreams? What dreams?” Atom Smasher—Al—asked.

Grant sighed. “I’ve been having these weird dreams on and off for a few months about being back on the Titans. But not any of the lineups I was on before. It was with all of these guys. Well, not Roy.”

“That’s okay, buddy, I still love you,” Roy said with a wink.

Grant let out a muffled, mildly annoyed sound from beneath his mask. “Anyway, it’s not just being back on the Titans. In the dreams, I…I don’t know. It’s better there. Some shit that happened to me…didn’t, there.” He paused. “My dad is alive. I mean, my real dad. Al Pratt. So I didn’t…the Emersons didn’t…”

He cut off abruptly. It was Roy who made an aborted noise this time, and moved like he was going to get out of his chair, but he sat back when Tommy leaned over and put a hand on Grant’s forearm.

Jason couldn’t help glancing up and meeting Rose’s eyes to see what she thought of whatever was going on between Grant and this semi-nude cat boy. But Rose just looked sad.

“You didn’t tell me you were dreaming about Uncle Al,” Al said.

Grant tensed visibly. “Yeah, well, we’re not actually family, so,” he snapped.

Tommy winced, and so did Jason, inwardly. It was too familiar—both because he knew Grant’s temper from his dreams, and because he had a feeling he’d said similar things himself. He and Grant had always understood each other.

No. They hadn’t. They didn’t know each other.

Toni, bless her, swept into Al’s wounded silence. “I’ve been having the dreams too,” she said. “It sounds like we all have, but I didn’t know that when I texted Grant this morning. I just told him because I thought it was funny that I was dreaming about him so much. When he said he was having the same dreams, I came over so we could try to figure out what was going on, and then…” She shrugged. “Well, you know. The Fearsome Five attacked.”

“Did they say why before the police took them away?” Roy interjected. “Because I’ve fought the Fearsome Five a lot, and they’ve pretty much only ever gone after the Titans and the Outsiders. And they haven’t dressed like that in years.”

“Retro is in?” Toni suggested. “I mean, nothing any of them was wearing has ever been in, but some people there’s just no help for.”

“Speaking of fashion, what’s with the new look, Grant?” Koryak asked, laughing a little. “You can take the stupid mask off. We all know what you look like.”

Jason had been wondering the same thing, but he wasn’t expecting the sharp intakes of breath from Toni and Roy, or the way Al and Tommy went tense and wary. The air around Grant suddenly crackled with heat.

“What?” Koryak asked. “What did I say?”

“Shut the fuck up, Kory.” It was Rose who answered, surprisingly. Her tone was cold, which meant this was genuine anger and not her usual low-level annoyance. “We might have dreamed about each other, but you don’t know shit about us in real life.”

“I’m just asking!” Koryak said, but he held up his hands, clearly letting it go. Jason glanced at Roy, who shook his head almost imperceptibly. He’d explain later, then.

“Not to change the subject,” Tommy said, in a voice that made it clear that he was doing exactly that, “but Red Devil…aren’t you dead?”

“Man, everyone keeps asking me why I’m not dead,” Eddie said. “Are you dropping hints or something? I’m starting to get a complex.”

It wasn’t much of a joke, but it eased some of the tension in the room. “That’s what we need to figure out,” Jason said. “Not just what happened to Eddie, but why this is happening to all of us. This isn’t a coincidence. And I don’t think it’s friendly.”

“But didn’t you say the dreams are good?” Al asked. “Happy?”

“Yeah,” Rose said, glowering. “That’s how I know someone’s fucking with us.”

“I’d rather have the truth than a nice lie,” Connor agreed. “This…it feels manipulative. And I don’t like being manipulated.”

Rose nodded, but Jason couldn’t help noticing that Toni, Eddie, and Koryak didn’t look so sure. Grant, of course, was impossible to read behind the mask.

Jason knew where Connor and Rose were coming from. He didn’t like being lied to or manipulated, either. The thought of someone pulling their strings made him want to stab something, ideally the puppeteer.

And there was something humiliating, something skin-crawlingly embarrassing about these fantasies of pleasant texts from Bruce and Dick, of a big happy team of childhood friends. Jason didn’t want or need those things. He didn’t. And he resented the thought of someone or something trawling through his brain and picking up on whatever random synapses had betrayed him.

“Could it have been Psimon?” Al asked, voicing the question Jason had been wondering outside. “He’s a psychic.”

“He’s never been that powerful,” Roy said. “I’ve fought the Fearsome Five plenty of times. Psimon can mess with you, sure, but only when he’s near you, and not that many people at once.”

“What if they aren’t dreams?” Grant asked suddenly.

Jason stared at him. “Uh, no offense, but I think I’d know if we’d all been besties since sophomore year.”

“No, I mean…” Grant sounded frustrated. “There’s alternate universes, right? We all know that. The JSA, we just dealt with this asshole god from another universe. He…” The air started to crackle again. “It didn’t end well.”

Al snorted. Grant glanced at him and the heat subsided.

“Okay, understatement,” Grant said. “That’s not the point. The point is, what if we’re not dreaming? What if we’re seeing a world where things are better?”

“I’ve been to a lot of other universes,” Jason said. “Somehow they always seem to have the same problems as this one. Plus vampires, sometimes.”

“You never take me on the fun trips,” Eddie said.

“And even if we are seeing another universe that really exists, that still doesn’t answer the question of why,” Jason continued, feeling a sudden burning resentment for the happy, well-loved Jason in this hypothetical other universe.

Although…he glanced over at Roy. That Jason didn’t know Roy very well, and he was pretty sure he’d never met Lian. Maybe everything wasn’t better in that universe.

“You think it’s Gog again?” Tommy asked.

“I sure fucking hope not,” Grant said. “I’m just saying it could be. You’re talking about psychics, but it might not just be someone messing with our minds. It could be someone messing with reality itself, like Gog, or Mordru, or Extant.”

Al’s jaw tightened visibly. “It’s not Extant,” he said. “Trust me.” He shoved his chair back from the table and stood. “I’m gonna check on the others, make sure they’re okay. Holler if you need me.”

“Al, I didn’t mean—” Grant said, but Al was already leaving. Jason wondered idly who the others were. “Fuck.”

“Wow, he really doesn’t want it to be Extant,” Eddie joked.

“More like he knows it can’t be Extant because Al kind of killed him,” Grant said. “It was a whole thing. I shouldn’t have…” He sighed.

“What’s your deal, anyway?” Koryak asked. “You said you weren’t related, but I thought you were brothers? At least, you were in the dreams. Other universe. Whatever the fuck it is.”

“Sort of,” Grant said. “My dad—my real dad—was the first Atom, Al Pratt, but I didn’t grow up with him. Al did. My dad was his godfather. So we’re sort of…I don’t know. Not family. I don’t have a family.”

“Eh, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Rose said, and Koryak nodded.

But Grant didn’t laugh. Instead, he slammed his fist on the table in a sudden burst of rage, leaving behind a hairline crack and a scorch mark. “These fucking dreams! Like I don’t already know my life is bullshit? I need visual aids?”

“Easy, Peaches,” Tommy murmured. “Alan’ll flip if you break the table again.”

Eddie opened his mouth. Jason knew, he just knew that Eddie was about to repeat the nickname “Peaches” and probably get his ass blown up for it. He was too far away to clap a hand over Eddie’s mouth, but luckily Toni got there first with a blob of silver plasma.

“Maybe we need a break,” she said. “We’re not getting anywhere going around in circles like this, and I for one need a glass of water. Kory too, probably, before he faints.”

Koryak rolled his eyes. “I have told you a thousand times, that is a myth. Besides, I’m three-quarters human anyway.”

Grant stood up. “I’ll show you where the kitchen is,” he said, and he and Toni left the room.

That seemed to be the cue for everyone else to get up and mill around. Jason leaned in toward Roy. “What’s with Damage’s mask?” he murmured.

Roy’s expression was grim. “Zoom,” he said. “The Flash rogue. Grant nearly died, and his face…” He shook his head. “I haven’t seen it. Grant wouldn’t let me. But it’s bad.”

He looked up, and his expression went grimmer. Jason followed his gaze and saw that he was looking at Rose, who was rolling her one good eye at some joke Eddie was telling.

“Speaking of kids I should have been there for…” Roy muttered. “But Deathstroke didn’t seem to have any interest in her. Sarge Steel and I thought she’d be safe with the foster family where she was placed.”

Something twisted uncomfortably in Jason’s stomach. “Is it weird?” he asked. “That Grant and Rose are my age, and you were…I mean, you were literally their legal guardian.”

“Well, you’re very mature for your age, Jaybird,” Roy teased.

“Thanks, it’s the trauma,” Jason deadpanned.

He was joking, but Roy still flinched visibly. “Yeah. Well, that kind of goes for all of us, right?”

Roy dragged a hand through his hair, and Jason realized anew how much he was putting Roy through: literal demons showing up at the house where his daughter slept, dragging him across the country to fight battles that weren’t his own, a partner who couldn’t trust his own memories. But then, he’d always brought Roy more trouble than he was worth.

“Anyway, I don’t know. All of that feels like a million years ago,” Roy said, and Jason realized he was still answering the question Jason wished he hadn’t asked. “I mean, Grant and Rose were kids, but so was I. I was barely old enough to rent a car, I was a brand-new father, I had no idea what the hell I was doing. If I was a better option than Slade fucking Wilson or the shitstain who raised Grant, that doesn’t say much for me.”

“You were there,” Jason argued. “It’s better than most people get. Trust me.”

“Yeah, well…” Roy sighed and then looked sidelong at Jason. “You and me…that’s different.”

Jason swallowed. The back of his neck prickled with heat. “Is it?”

Roy opened his mouth, then shut it again. He glanced across the table to where Rose and Eddie sat, then back to Jason.

Then he smiled. “Sure,” he said, and his entire tone was different. “We’re partners, aren’t we?”

There was no reason for Jason to feel disappointed, he reminded himself. There was no reason for him to have expected a different answer to that question.

“Sure,” he said, standing up. “I need to stretch my legs. I’m gonna go see what’s taking Grant and Toni so long with the water.”

He headed for the door, not looking at Roy. As he passed Connor, Koryak, and Tommy, he couldn’t help overhearing their conversation.

“So you both have superhero dads who didn’t know about you until you were adults?” Tommy asked.

Connor and Koryak nodded. “It’s oddly common,” Connor said.

“Yeah, it’s a fucking epidemic,” Koryak said, ticking a list off on his fingers. “Deadbeat superheroes who can’t wrap it up. Asshole sidekicks they keep around instead of raising their actual kids.”

“Kory, I know you and Garth have your problems, but I like Roy, and he’s also sitting right there,” Connor said mildly.

“Yolanda isn’t really a sidekick,” Tommy agreed. “Who’s Garth?”

Jason bit back a smile as he left the room. He might not know Koryak in real life, but he remembered the dreams well enough to know what a can of worms Tommy had just opened. Koryak loved complaining about Tempest about as much as he hated the actual Tempest. Toni had a theory that it was just sexual tension, but Toni thought that about everyone.

And speaking of Toni…Jason found her and Grant in the kitchen, filling water glasses at the sink. A lifetime of Bat training made Jason pause in the doorway, before they saw him.

“I thought you and Atom Smasher were getting along better these days,” Toni said.

“We are. I fucked up, okay?” Grant asked. “Do you have to rub it in?”

“I’m not!” Toni said. There was a pause. “Is he seeing anyone right now, do you know?”

“Toni!” Grant sounded hilariously scandalized.

“He’s cute!”

“I am not hearing this.”

“Well, we can talk about how cute Atom Smasher is, or we can talk about what the deal is with you and Tommy.”

There was another pause. “...I’ll get you Al’s number,” Grant mumbled, and Toni laughed. “Oh, actually, the whole Extant thing reminded me—it doesn’t have to be a whole ‘nother universe. It could be, whaddyacallit. Hypertime. When Al calms down, we should ask him about it.”

“What’s hypertime?” Toni asked. Then she raised her voice. “Jason, you want to stop lurking in the shadows and come explain it?”

Jason didn’t jump. He was too well trained for that.

“I wasn’t lurking,” he said, moving properly into the kitchen. “I came to help you carry the water glasses and I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“Bats,” Toni said, rolling her eyes, and Grant nodded. She hadn’t switched off her silver skin, and Jason wondered if she even could, or if that was just in the dreams. “Come on, you guys are all know-it-alls. What’s hypertime?”

Jason scowled, but he couldn’t really argue any more effectively against the know-it-all allegations than he could the lurking ones. “It’s a theory,” he said. “Tim could explain it better. But basically there’s the idea that the multiverse has a number of discrete universes, like the one we live in, but there’s also, like…infinite little offshoots of every existing universe all the time.”

Toni frowned. “What.”

“Okay, so…” Jason looked at the ceiling, trying to find a way to understand something he only sort of understood himself. He’d been dead when the theory was first proposed, after all, and he and Bruce didn’t get along well enough for lengthy chats about metaphysics. “There’s this universe, and then over here there’s another, completely different universe where we’re pirates, and over there there’s another completely different universe where we’re dinosaurs, right?”

“So we got the shitty universe,” Grant said.

“No argument there,” Jason said. “But in this universe, Toni, there’s one timeline where you pick up that glass with your right hand.” He pointed to one of the filled glasses. “And there’s another timeline where you pick it up with your left. That creates a divergence in hypertime. Now, in both timelines, let’s say you bring it into the other room and Connor drinks it. The divergence is resolved, and they aren’t separate universes anymore. They just got there via slightly different paths. But a more significant decision, like deciding whether or not to come here and see Grant today, wouldn’t resolve as easily, and those divergences can have snowball effects.”

She squinted at him. “You’re saying every choice we make potentially creates a new universe?”

Jason spread his hands helplessly. “Maybe? Sometimes it just makes new memories. You ever get memories of things you didn’t do after a big crisis? I mean, besides the dreams we’re having now.”

Toni shrugged. “Yeah, who hasn’t?”

“That’s hypertime divergences resolving. I think,” Jason said.

Grant grouped three glasses together so he could pick them up all at once. “That’s why we should ask Al about it. He’s been doing this forever, he’s good at this shit.”

“Who?” Jason asked.

Grant paused, frowning at him. Jason looked at Toni, who shrugged again and shook her head, clearly as confused as Jason was.

“...No one,” Grant said slowly, still with a puzzled furrow to his brow. “Sorry, I…what were we just talking about?”

Jason opened his mouth to answer, but before he could say anything, an alarm started blaring, so loudly he could feel the floor vibrating under his feet.

“What’s that?” Toni asked.

“Intruder alert!” Grant said. He ran out of the kitchen, Jason and Toni close at his heels, just as a loud crash echoed from the meeting room.

“What are the odds Eddie just annoyed Kory enough that he broke something?” Toni suggested, scooping both of the boys up on a plasma force field and flying them toward the room faster than they could run.

“Alarm wouldn’t have gone off,” Grant said. “And does anyone else smell that?”

Jason sniffed, and his stomach turned over. Sulfur. And it was getting stronger.

They burst into the meeting room to find a massive flaming portal hanging over the table. It looked a lot like one of Eddie’s, but Jason was pretty sure Eddie hadn’t made this one. Mostly because he was being dragged through it, legs first, by a bunch of people in red and black robes.

Jason recognized those robes. Even he’d fought this guy’s followers when he was on the Titans.

“It’s Brother Blood!” he shouted.

“Jason!” Eddie cried. He was holding on to Koryak for dear life, but even their combined super strength didn’t seem to be enough to combat all the hands dragging on him. “Ow! Let go of my tail, you creepy groupies!”

“Kory, hold on!” Rose ordered. She had her sword out, but there wasn’t much she could do; swinging too recklessly at the hands clinging to Eddie would risk cutting Eddie himself. Tommy looked equally helpless, shifted into his werecat form, his sweatpants shredded on the floor. Roy and Connor were faring a little bit better, launching arrows above and around Eddie and into Blood’s minions, but for every one or two they dropped, it seemed another half a dozen took their place.

“You need to send something bigger through!” Jason said. “Explosive arrow, grenade arrow, something!”

“They’re packed too close, it’ll kill them!” Roy shot back.

“I don’t care!” Jason snarled, ignoring Roy’s startled look. He’d just gotten Eddie back; he wasn’t about to lose him again this quickly.

Distantly he wondered why the other JSA members who he knew were in the brownstone hadn’t come to help. The alarm was still blaring, and the fight itself wasn’t exactly quiet. But the thought fell out of his head almost as soon as he had it, lost in the panic over the murderous zealots who were trying to drag his best friend away.

“Yes, my brethren, yes!” called a voice from beyond the portal. “Bring the demon child to me! Prepare him for the sacrifice!”

“Child? I’m twenty-three years old!” Eddie protested.

“That’s the part that worries you about what that fucker just said?” Rose demanded.

“Eddie!” Koryak gasped. “It’s too hot…I can’t hold on!”

“NO!” Jason and Rose shouted at the same time.

Jason lunged forward, but too late. Eddie slipped out of Koryak’s grasp with a scream. The portal closed.

And Eddie was gone.

Chapter Text

“Absolutely not,” Jason said.

“Oh, come on!” Toni pleaded. “It’s a sleepover. You have to play truth or dare at a sleepover.”

“It is not a sleepover, because we aren’t twelve-year-old girls,” he retorted. “It’s a team-building exercise.”

“Wow, congrats on being sexist and pretentious,” Rose said. “And you’re both wrong. It’s basic-ass camping and you know it.”

She gestured around them. Admittedly, it was hard to argue with what she was pointing to: the darkened woods of northern New Jersey; a flickering campfire with three tents pitched on the far side of it; Toni perched on a log and shivering with ostentatious sulkiness in a designer hoodie between Grant and Eddie, the two members of the team who gave off heat like a furnace. Rose, Connor, and Jason were on a neighboring log, with Koryak sprawled on the ground, unbothered by the chill of evening.

“Exactly,” Toni said. “If you think you can make me waste my spring break camping without even the fun of playing truth or dare, you’ve got another think coming, Jason Peter Todd.”

“She has a point,” Eddie said. “This blows.”

“What are you talking about? Camping’s great!” Grant said.

Connor nodded. “Someday I’ll take you camping near my father’s lodge outside of Star City,” he said. “The mountains out west are beautiful.”

“Deal,” Toni said. “Eddie and I will stay in your billionaire dad’s summer home, and the rest of you can sleep in the dirt.”

Privately, Jason agreed with her. Though he’d had plenty of training in woodcraft and survival skills, he was a city kid at heart, and didn’t care for the bugs and the dirt and the lying uncomfortably in a sleeping bag any more than she and Eddie did. Grant and Connor were having the time of their lives, and Rose and Koryak didn’t seem to mind roughing it, but Jason would be a lot happier spending a week off from school curled up in front of the fireplace in the manor’s library with a stack of books and some of Alfred’s currant scones.

But they were still a new-ish team, and they needed to learn to rely on each other the way Dick’s Titans did. If that meant playing a dumb sleepover game to keep Toni happy, so be it.

“Fine,” he said. “We can play truth or dare. But it’s not a sleepover.”

“Yes!” Toni crowed, clapping her hands. “Rose—”

“Absolutely not,” Rose said.

Toni ignored her. “—truth or dare?”

“Nope.”

Toni pouted. “Jason, make her play.”

“Not even gonna try, thanks,” Jason said. “I would prefer to keep all my limbs.”

“Ugh, fine,” Toni said. “Kory, truth or dare?”

“Dare,” Koryak said immediately.

“Okay.” Toni’s face scrunched up as she thought. “This is a lot harder with no phones and no one around. What am I supposed to do, tell you to streak through the woods?”

Koryak shrugged. “I mean, I’ll do it,” he said, starting to get up.

“Nope!” Rose said, holding a hand out to shield her eyes as Toni giggled and Eddie ostentatiously looked away. Grant, on Toni’s other side, went red.

“Kory, there are places I’m pretty sure even an Atlantean doesn’t want a tick,” Connor pointed out.

Koryak made a face and settled back down on the ground. “Thanks so much for that mental image, Con.”

“Just pick truth,” Rose said.

Toni raised an eyebrow. “You want us to play truth or truth?”

“I’m not playing anything, but I’m also not prepared to explain to the emergency room staff why my friend has gills when he gets Lyme disease on his dick,” Rose retorted.

“Let’s all stop talking about ticks on my dick now, thanks,” Koryak snapped. “Fine. Truth.” Rose opened her mouth. “Not you. Toni.”

Toni’s face scrunched up again. “Okay. Um…tell us something you’re afraid of. Besides ticks.”

“This is your fault,” Koryak said, looking at Connor. “We’re enemies now.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Connor said serenely.

“And don’t punk out,” Eddie added. “Give us a good one.”

“Keep talking, Bloomberg. You’re next.” Koryak ran a hand through his long hair. “I guess…sometimes I’m scared I won’t be as good a king as my father.”

Grant rolled his eyes. “Yeah, we know, Kory, you’re a prince.”

“I’m serious!” Koryak said. “I know I brag about it, but it’s a lot of pressure. You think it’s hard living up to the Atom, or Batman? Try ruling a kingdom.” He shrugged. “I mean, my dad’s been great about it. He’s always having me sit in on meetings with the council and going on diplomatic visits and stuff. I know he’s trying to show me the ropes before I have to take over. But some of the stuff the Justice League does is dangerous, and if anything happens to him…Andy’s just a baby. It’s all on me.”

Jason chewed the inside of his lip, suddenly pensive. He always tried not to think about what would happen if the Justice League didn’t come back someday. If Bruce didn’t come back. But at least he’d still have Alfred and Dick.

“Wow, Kory, way to bring the vibe down,” Eddie said.

“Keep laughing, flame brain. Your turn,” Koryak said. He tapped his chin thoughtfully, then looked at Rose and smirked.

“Kory,” Jason said. There was teasing, and then there was being mean. Besides, it would be a waste of a question. Everyone already knew the answer.

Koryak rolled his eyes but didn’t argue. “Okay, fine. Same question. Tell us something you’re afraid of.”

“Um, everything?” Eddie said. He started ticking his answer off on his fingers. “Pain. Death. Every movie Grant has ever made us watch. Snakes. Bugs. Sleeping in the woods, so thanks a lot, Jason. Darkseid. Turtles. Being invited to Kory’s coronation and drowning—”

“Turtles?” Grant echoed, laughing.

Toni kicked Eddie’s ankle. “Quit babbling and give us something good.”

“Excuse you, I am pouring my heart out, here,” Eddie said. She gave him an unimpressed look. “Okay, fine.” He held up his hands. “This. Me. My powers.”

“You love your powers,” Rose said, echoing Jason’s thoughts.

“I do,” Eddie agreed. “But I don’t know where they came from. I just wanted them, and then poof! I woke up one day and there they were. What if there’s a catch? I always figured I got devil powers because I was already calling myself Kid Devil, but what if it’s more sinister than that? What if it means I’m going to Hell? I’m a nice Jewish boy who doesn’t even believe in Hell, I don’t belong there!”

“If you go to Hell, we’ll come drag you back,” Jason said. “Titans Together.”

Rose and Koryak both groaned, and Eddie laughed, but he looked relieved. “Aw, I love you too, Jase,” he said, blowing Jason a kiss. “And now…Rose.” His smile turned wicked. “Truth or truth?”

Rose shook her head. “I already told you, I’m not playing.”

“Um, I’m pretty sure our team leader made this a mandatory training exercise,” Eddie said, pointing to Jason.

“He absolutely the fuck did not,” Rose said.

Jason grinned. “I didn’t, but I am now,” he said, knowing full well that if Rose really didn’t want to play, there was nothing he could do to make her. “Come on, Rose. Truth or truth?”

“Ugh.” Rose dropped her head back in theatrical annoyance. “Just get it over with.”

“I like the fear question,” Eddie said. “What scares the big, bad Rose Wilson?”

“Being stuck in the woods with you assholes forever,” Rose said. When they all just waited expectantly, she sighed. “My powers too, I guess. I mean, my visions. Mostly it’s just a few seconds ahead, but sometimes I see pretty far into the future, and…” She frowned. “It’s weird. It’s like a whole different universe. My brother Grant is dead there, and sometimes Joey is too, and my dad…” She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it. A lot of the time my visions don’t come true, anyway.”

“They better not,” Toni said. “Joey’s way too hot to die.”

Rose gave her the finger, but Jason could tell she was relieved to go back to joking. He made a note to talk to her about it later, though, just the two of them. Something about how she’d mentioned another universe snagged on his brain in a way he didn’t like. He wanted to get to the bottom of it.

The game went on, somehow shifted from “truth or truth” to confessing fears.

“What if I’m not making a difference? What if no one remembers me?” Toni asked. “I’m not related to heroes like Batman or Green Arrow or Deathstroke. My dad’s just a senator. What if I don’t matter?”

“I don’t know why I get so angry sometimes,” Grant confessed. “My life is great. My parents are great. But I feel like…I don’t know, like something was taken from me, somehow, and it makes me want to blow up, even when I know how dangerous it is.”

“My father doesn’t understand me, not really,” Connor said. “He loves me, but he doesn’t get me. Not like he gets Cissie and my aunt Emiko. Maybe if there was another boy I’d feel less like the odd man out.”

And then it was Jason’s turn. He stared at the fire. He couldn’t lie, not after his friends had shared their truths. But he couldn’t look at them, either.

“I’m afraid that I don’t deserve it,” he said. “Bruce, Dick, Damian, Alfred. Being Robin. You guys. I know what you mean, Grant, about it feeling like things are too good to be true, sometimes. I stole Bruce’s tires and sometimes it feels like I stole this life, too. Like someone else should be sitting here instead of me.”

There was a heavy pause.

“Okay, that’s the dumbest one yet,” Rose said.

“You’ve proven yourself a hundred times over,” Connor agreed.

“Plus we kinda like you,” Eddie said.

“But only kinda,” Koryak added.

Jason rolled his eyes, grateful that Koryak had given him the excuse to hide what he was really feeling. Despite their words, he still wasn’t entirely convinced that he deserved to have such good friends. But he was damned sure going to do his best to live up to their faith in him.

*

“I’ll kill them!” Rose raged, her sword unsheathed and swinging dangerously. “Blood and all his little fucking minions! I’ll kill every last one of them!”

“Rose, calm down,” Roy said, reaching for her and then yanking his hand back hastily as her sword flashed. “We need to think this through…”

“Where are Blood’s current headquarters?” Jason interrupted. “Call Cyborg or Raven or somebody, one of them has to know. Or Grant, do any of the ancient assholes you run around with know what a computer is? Does the JSA have a rogues database?”

“I can call them, but Jay, we need a plan,” Roy said. “Something weird is going on here. How did they even know Eddie was here to grab him? No Brother Blood has ever had that kind of power before, and besides, Eddie’s supposed to be dead! And I don’t think the cultists have dressed like that in ages, anyway…”

“Shut the fuck up! Why are you wasting time?” Jason demanded. “I don’t give a shit how they’re dressed, they’re not sacrificing Eddie. He’s my best friend!”

Roy gave him a startled, wounded look. It hurt, somewhere in the back of Jason’s brain, but that was beneath all the panic. He couldn’t get Eddie back just to lose him again this quickly. He couldn’t.

“Okay,” Roy said. “Give me a second.”

He turned away slightly, a shallow attempt at privacy, and tapped the communicator in his ear. “Hey, Vic?” he said. “Can you patch Raven in?” There was a pause. “Hey, Rae. Do either of you have any intel on Brother Blood’s current headquarters?” Another pause. “No, that’s what I thought too, but they just opened a portal into the JSA brownstone and kidnapped Red Devil… That’s what I thought too!”

Another, longer pause, during which Roy nodded thoughtfully and Jason fought the urge to scream. “Got it. Any chance you could join us, Raven? We just lost our only magic user and I don’t know where the fuck the JSA went… No, I understand. Is Garth free? We could use some magical backup.” His brow furrowed. “What do you mean, ‘Who’s Garth?’”

“Fuck this,” Rose said, sheathing her sword and storming towards the door. “You can sit around with your thumbs up your asses all you want, but I’m going to find where Doctor Fate or whoever the most magical asshole in this mausoleum is is hiding and make him tell me where Blood is.”

“Roy,” Jason said urgently.

“Okay, okay, I know,” Roy said, turning slightly towards him and then away again. “Thanks, guys. I’ll let you know how it goes.”

By the time he turned back to fully face the rest of them, Jason was about to jump out of his skin. “Well?”

“We’re in luck,” Roy said. “So much luck that I don’t entirely trust it. Apparently Blood’s base is right here in Manhattan. Hell’s Kitchen, to be precise.”

“You’re shitting me,” Grant said.

“I know, it’s a little too on-the-nose. Feels like a trap,” Roy said, and then met Jason’s eyes. “But you don’t care, right?”

Again, there was that dull, guilty pain at the expression on Roy’s face, but Jason could deal with that later. Eddie needed him.

“No,” he said. “I don’t care.”

*

The rest of the JSA was still inexplicably AWOL, but Grant led them to the garage, which boasted an array of shockingly modern cars for a team with so many centenarians on it. They took two and drove to the location Raven had given Roy as fast as possible, which wasn’t nearly as fast as Jason wanted in New York City traffic. Flying on one of Toni’s plasma platforms would have been faster, but carrying all seven of them, including herself, would have taken most of Toni’s power, and Jason needed her ready for the fight.

Jason shouldn’t have known Toni’s capabilities so well. Right now, he was just glad he did.

The Church of Blood was headquartered in the basement of an abandoned warehouse outside of the gentrified part of the neighborhood. The heavy steel doors were locked, of course, but that wasn’t a problem for Grant and Koryak, who kicked them in in unison. The rest of them followed, Roy and Connor with arrows on the string, Rose with her sword drawn.

At the bottom of the stairs, they encountered another set of steel doors, this time guarded by two of Blood’s acolytes.

“Intruders!” the first guard said.

“They’re here to stop the ritual!” the other one said. “Sound the alarm! Tell—”

Rose moved the fastest, slamming his head against the doors and dropping him to the floor in a crumpled heap. Connor took out the other one with a taser arrow.

“There’s going to be a lot more of them past those doors,” Connor warned.

Rose’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Good.”

“Wait!” Roy said, opening a side panel on his quiver and pulling out a handful of rebreathers. “Connor and I have knockout gas arrows. How about we try that before we murder too many brainwashed cultists, huh?”

Connor pulled more rebreathers out of his own quiver and he and Roy handed them out, Grant turning away to slip one under his mask. Jason didn’t bother; his helmet filters would do the job just as well.

“Okay,” he said once everyone had their rebreathers in place. “Let’s go get Eddie.”

Grant and Koryak kicked the doors in again. They raced inside, and—

“What the fuck?” Koryak asked.

Jason couldn’t blame him. He’d seen countless bizarre things since he’d first put on the green shorts and pixie boots a literal lifetime ago, but walking into a basement in Manhattan to find a massive subterranean cave dripping with stalactites still made him blink. The whole place was lit by blazing torches everywhere, especially around the enormous altar on the opposite side of the chamber, and the grim-looking stone table in front of it.

And as Connor had warned, it was absolutely packed with Church of Blood cultists, all of them turning toward Jason’s team with fury in their eyes.

“The Titans!” someone shouted.

“Kill them!” someone else shouted. “Protect the Chosen One!”

And then the mob was on them, screaming and hitting and waving torches. Roy and Connor loosed gas arrow after gas arrow, and Jason flung his own smoke bombs and knockout gas capsules into the mix. The combination turned the air noxious and thick with smoke; Jason’s helmet kept his breathing clear, but it couldn’t keep the stench out, and it was hard to see through the smog. He saw Rose battling her way to the altar, Toni protecting the archers with a shield of gleaming plasma. Grant and Koryak batted the cultists away from themselves easily, but the sheer numbers would overwhelm even super strength eventually.

Someone swung a torch at Grant’s head. Jason saw the moment Grant’s mask caught fire, saw Grant recoil and double over, yanking at the fabric, and something like ice squeezed at his heart.

“Grant!” Jason shouted, shoving through the crowd, hitting and kicking aside the cultists as they surged at him. He forgot that he’d never met Grant before this morning. He forgot that all of their history, all of this supposed team’s history, was either a shared hallucination or someone’s cruel joke. That was his friend, and a blow had just been struck to his most vulnerable spot.

But the cultists were determined, and if Jason didn’t actually want to kill any of them, they didn’t have the same concern for him. They brought him to his knees, still several feet from where Grant was huddled protecting his bare face—

“STOP!” a familiar voice shouted.

The cultists froze. Jason turned toward the altar disbelievingly. He couldn’t have heard who he thought he’d just heard, and yet…

Eddie stood at the altar, wearing a black robe, his hands held up. “Stop, stop, don’t hurt them! They’re, uh…my guests?” He turned to the cultist next to him, who was wearing an elaborate collar to go with her own black robe that Jason assumed signified rank. “I can have guests, right?”

She sank into a deep bow. “You may have anything you wish, my Lord Devil.”

“What the fuck?” Jason said out loud.

“Guests of the Most Unholy Lord Devil, approach the altar!” the woman declared.

Jason glanced back at Grant, who had straightened up with both hands over his face, but even peeping through his fingers, Jason could tell Grant was as baffled as he was. They made their way to the altar along with the others, the cultists parting to let them through.

As they reached the altar, Jason could see that beneath his forced smile, Eddie was sweating. “Thank you, High Priestess,” he said. “I, uh, wish to consult with my guests in private. Do I have, like, an office down here or something?”

They were led to a small chamber behind the altar. Eddie ushered the others in, then slammed the door behind him and plastered himself against it like the cultists were about to break it down. “You guys gotta get me out of here.”

“Eddie, what the fuck is going on? We thought they were going to sacrifice you!” Jason demanded.

“That’s what I thought, too!” Eddie said. “After they dragged me through, they tied me to that table on the altar. Brother Blood was waving a knife around, going on and on about how spilling my blood would grant him dominion over all the forces of blah blah blah.”

Rose stared at him. She looked almost madder than she had when she’d thought he was about to be killed. “And?”

“I don’t know!” Eddie said, looking frazzled. “I breathed some fire to try to get them off me, and they all fell down on their knees and started worshiping me. Brother Blood tried to get them to stop, and they threw him in a dungeon somewhere.”

“A dungeon? In Hell’s Kitchen? I’ve had brunch here,” Toni said.

Eddie blinked. “Like, here in this cave, or…?”

“Can we focus?” Rose snapped.

“So wait,” Koryak said. “Does that mean you’re the new Brother Blood?”

“I don’t know!” Eddie said again. “I guess they figured a real sort-of demon was better than just a creepy guy in a robe?”

Roy was shaking his head. “This doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “This isn’t how the Church operates, it’s never been how the Church operates. They worship Trigon. Eddie’s not exactly a step up.”

“I’m not sure if that’s an insult or a compliment,” Eddie said.

“There is something really weird—” Roy started before he was cut off by Toni’s sudden gasp.

“Grant! Your face!” she said.

They all turned to look at Grant.

“What the fuck, Toni?” Grant demanded, his hands flying back up to cover his face from where he’d clearly let them fall, distracted.

“No,” she said. Jason glanced back at her and saw that her eyes were brimming with tears. “Your face.”

Grant froze. The tips of his fingers felt along his forehead, then dropped to run along his nose and cheeks, then fell away completely.

The face that had been hidden beneath them was as unmarked and handsome as it had been in Jason’s dreams, in photos he had seen of Damage before Zoom had gotten to him. Not a single scar in sight. Not even a pimple.

“Toni…?” Grant asked, his voice wavering.

She raised a hand and a shimmering mirror of silver plasma appeared in front of him. Grant stared at it for a long moment, turning his head from side to side like he wasn’t sure it belonged to him.

Then he looked at Eddie. “Did you do this?” he asked. “Was it some…I don’t know, some magic demon thing?”

Eddie’s mouth moved silently for a minute. “I…I don’t think so?” he said. “I don’t think I can do, uh. Miracles.”

Grant shook his head. “I’ve had miracles,” he said. “I don’t trust them.”

“Then what do you call this?” Rose asked.

Grant looked back at his reflection in the mirror Toni had conjured. “I don’t care,” he said.

Jason turned to Roy, expecting him to point out yet another mystery, another thing that had happened in the past twenty-four hours that didn’t make sense. But when he saw the choked expression on Roy’s face, he knew in that moment that Roy didn’t care either.

*

Leaving the Church of Blood was laughably easy. Eddie just cornered an underling and asked him for a back way out of the building, and the kid fell all over himself to help “my Lord Devil.” Jason was never going to stop making fun of Eddie for that title.

They went to Toni’s loft in nearby Chelsea instead of making the trek back to the JSA brownstone.

“You sure you don’t mind coming here, Grant?” Toni asked as the uniformed doorman held the door open for them, not batting an eyelash as eight costumed superheroes trooped past him, filthy and stinking of sulfur. Jason thought of Alfred with a pang.

Grant turned away from his reflection in the door with a wary expression, and Jason knew he’d caught the teasing note in Toni’s voice. “Why would I mind?”

“You don’t want to show off your face to Tommy?” she cooed, batting her lashes at him.

Grant frowned. “Who?”

Toni opened her mouth, but just then the elevator dinged and Koryak rushed past her. “I call first shower!”

“Hey, no fair!” Eddie protested, following him into the elevator. “I was kidnapped!”

“And I have been deprived of water for a dangerously long time,” Koryak informed him with just a bit too much gravitas. “It’s a medical necessity.”

“You said that was a myth!”

The rest of them crowded into the elevator, Koryak and Eddie bickering good-naturedly. Grant couldn’t seem to stop staring at his reflection in the highly polished elevator doors, but Jason supposed he couldn’t blame him.

Then Jason’s gaze caught on Roy’s reflection. Unlike Jason’s team, Roy looked drawn and pensive, lines etched deep into his forehead. Jason frowned.

Upstairs, Toni announced that she was ordering pizza. Koryak and Eddie stopped arguing about the shower and started arguing about pizza toppings, and Connor took the opportunity to quietly steal the first shower. Grant sat on the couch, looking shaky; every so often he picked up his phone and stared into the camera app like a dying man facing down his last meal.

Rose gave him what was for her a sympathetic glance before unbuckling her sword and doing some back stretches. Halfway through she pulled her eyepatch off and let it drop, forgotten, to the floor. Jason wondered why she’d been wearing it in the first place; there was nothing wrong with Rose’s eyes.

There was someone missing.

Jason found Roy in Toni’s bedroom, the door half-closed as Roy spoke in a low voice into the phone. “Mm-hm. I’ll see you tonight. Love you, squeaker.”

Lian, then. Jason stepped into the room as Roy hung up. “Tonight?” he echoed.

Guilt flickered over Roy’s face. He hadn’t turned the lights on, and the room was dim with Toni’s curtains closed, the sound from the living room muffled. “Yeah. I, uh, just booked a flight.”

“You’re leaving?” Jason said. It was stupid to feel hurt. Roy had a life and a child back on the other side of the country. And Jason was a grown man who could handle his own problems.

But Roy was usually so willing to help shoulder those problems, even when Jason tried to stop him. Right now, Jason wasn’t even sure Roy had been planning to say anything when he left.

“Well, I mean…I should get home to Lian,” Roy said. He smiled one of the least convincing smiles Jason had ever seen from him. “And hey, you don’t need me. You’ve got a whole team! You’ve got an archer and a redhead. I’m not really adding anything to the equation.”

Jason sighed. “Is this because I snapped at you earlier? Look, I’m sorry, but I was worried about Eddie…”

If he hadn’t been watching closely, he would have missed the way Roy’s expression flickered: a flinch, a twist of something that looked a lot like resentment before it smoothed away.

“And now he’s back,” Roy said, all false cheer again. “Back from Brother Blood and back from the grave.”

Jason tilted his head, studying Roy. “Do you have a problem with Eddie?”

“No,” Roy said, too quickly. He wouldn’t meet Jason’s eyes.

Jason’s eyebrows went up. “What the fuck, Roy? I thought you said you barely knew him.”

“Yeah, while you never mentioned him at all,” Roy muttered.

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Jason demanded.

“I mean where is this ride or die act coming from?” Roy asked, flinging up his hands. “You don’t like people! You hardly like me, and I’m your best friend! Or at least I thought I was until Eddie Bloomberg showed up at my door out of fucking nowhere.” He shook his head. “You’ve got your childhood best friend. You’ve got your ex-girlfriend. You’ve got my brother and someone who can fly and super strength times two. You don’t need me hanging around like a bad smell.”

Jason stared at him. “Are you…jealous?”

It was a ludicrous thought. Roy was popular in the superhero set, with his good looks and easy charm and long stints on almost every major team. Jason was well aware that there were at least five other people who could claim Roy as a best friend besides Jason. Plus there was Roy’s lengthy and colorful dating history, almost all of it ending amicably. Everyone knew Roy was slumming it by hanging out with Jason as much as he did, Jason most of all. Hell, four of the people on Jason’s supposed team liked Roy better than they liked Jason.

“No,” Roy said, even less convincingly than before.

“Roy.”

Roy sighed. “Look…it’s just been a really weird, shitty day, okay? I barely got any sleep last night, I have no idea what time it is, and we’ve fought two groups of supervillains since we got to New York. Plus nothing is making any sense. How did Eddie come back? What happened to Grant’s face? Where the fuck is the JSA? I don’t understand anything that’s happening, and it’s freaking me out, and I’m tired.”

He dragged a hand through his hair. “So yeah, maybe you think I’m being an asshole right now. I probably am. And I want you to have friends, Jaybird, I do. You deserve people who get how fucking amazing you are. But…I don’t know.” He slipped his phone into his pocket. He still wouldn’t look at Jason. “I guess I just thought we were special, you and me.”

“We are,” Jason said before he could stop himself. “I mean, it’s not…he and I were kids together. You and I…”

Roy waited.

“...we’re partners,” Jason finished finally.

It was hopelessly inadequate, but what was he supposed to say? Eddie was his childhood best friend; Roy was the sun he orbited around? Jason had been trained too well to leave his vitals unprotected like that.

“Sure,” Roy said, with a stilted, forced little laugh. “Well, I’m glad you got Eddie back. Seriously. And you guys’ll work the Rose thing out.”

Jason frowned. “The what?”

“Come on,” Roy said. “He’s crazy about her. You can see it from space.”

“Well, yeah, but what does that have to do with me?”

Roy raised his eyebrows. Jason stared at him for a second before it clicked, and his heart gave a stupid, hopeful lurch.

Maybe Eddie wasn’t the only person Roy was jealous of.

“I’m not getting back together with Rose,” Jason said, taking a halting step closer to Roy. They’d been close already—the bedroom wasn’t a big one.

“You sure?” Roy asked. There was a smudge of dirt on his cheekbone and a scratch above his eyebrow. He looked so tired. “You guys do have all that stabby sexual tension going on.”

Jason shook his head. “Rose and I don’t work. We never did. And I don’t…I don’t need us to work like that. That’s not what I want.”

He was close enough to touch now, somehow; close enough to watch the rise and fall of Roy’s chest as he breathed. The movement quickened.

“Yeah?” Roy asked. His voice had gotten very low. “What do you what?”

Jason felt the back of his neck heat up, and he didn’t know if it was the proximity or how exposed he felt, pinned under Roy’s gaze like that.

“You know,” he grumbled, suddenly sure it was true, that Roy had known all along and that Jason had just been embarrassing himself, thinking he’d been subtle.

Roy shook his head. His eyes were so blue. “I don’t,” he said, and swallowed. “I…hope. But I won’t know until you tell me.”

Hope.

“Roy,” Jason managed, and it was answer and question all at once.

The warmth of Roy’s palm against his cheek shocked him. Roy curved that hand into Jason’s hair, his eyes searching. “Yeah?” he asked.

Jason nodded, wondering how it was possible that Roy couldn’t hear his reply in his thundering heart. “Yes.”

“Fucking finally,” Roy breathed, cupped Jason’s face in his hands and kissed him.

He kissed him like he’d been wanting to do it for days, for years, incandescent, searing Jason to the marrow. Jason clutched feebly at the unyielding fabric of Roy’s suit and tried to give back as good as he got. Roy’s arms were strong and his mouth was soft and Jason would take a lifetime of nightmares in exchange for this moment without a word of complaint.

Nightmares. A voice in the back of his mind whispered that this was just another one of the too-vivid dreams that he’d been plagued with for months, but he ignored it. This was real. There was nothing more real than the heat of Roy’s mouth.

“Jason,” Roy rumbled against his lips, his voice husky. He almost never used Jason’s real name, and it made Jason shiver now. “Tell me to stay and I will.”

Jason fought for the breath to answer him. Of course he wanted Roy to stay, selfish as it was. He wanted Roy in his veins.

He opened his mouth to answer. “I—”

“Jason!” Toni shouted from outside the mostly closed door.

Jason jumped, startled by the reminder that there was a world outside of this room, outside of Roy’s arms. A world, and a crisis they still hadn’t solved. “Shit,” he said. “I’d better see what’s going on. I—give me a minute?”

“Sure,” Roy said, but the worried crease was back on his forehead.

Impulsively, Jason leaned up and kissed it. “A minute,” he said. “Just one. I’ll be right back.”

When he pulled back, Roy was smiling. Jason took a second to memorize the sight of him in that dark and quiet room, his lips red and his hair mussed, before squeezing Roy’s hand and slipping out the door.

The others were gathered around Toni’s ridiculously huge dining room table, which was spread with pizza boxes that Koryak and Eddie were eagerly opening. Toni put a stack of plates down next to them.

“Pizza’s here,” she informed Jason unnecessarily.

He raised an eyebrow. “This is what you shrieked at me about?”

She put an offended hand to her collarbone. “Excuse you, I have never shrieked in my life.”

Connor, fresh from the shower, rubbed a towel over his hair. “What were you doing in the bedroom anyway?” he asked.

Jason felt his face heat up again and hoped everyone was too distracted by the pizza to notice. “I was, uh, talking to your brother.”

Connor frowned at him. “What? I don’t have a brother.”

Jason had a sudden moment of vertigo, the ground swaying beneath him as the edges of his vision went gray. He clutched at the nearest chair.

“Jason? Jason!”

He blinked and looked up. Eddie was pointing to the box closest to him. “You want the last slice of pepperoni?”

“Sure,” Jason said. He turned back to Connor. “What did you just say?”

Connor frowned, then shrugged. “I don’t remember. I don’t think it was anything important.”

Jason accepted his plate from Eddie and sat down in the chair he’d been leaning on.

“Yeah,” he said. “You’re probably right.”

Chapter Text

“Everyone remember the plan?” Jason asked, hands on the tiller of the T-Jet as they approached their destination. “When we get to the base, we split up. Grant, you’re taking Toni and Rose and blowing the north wall. Eddie, you’re teleporting me, Connor, and Kory in through the south wall. Got it?”

“Yeah,” Grant said.

Then there was silence.

Jason didn’t squirm in his seat. Batman wouldn’t have squirmed. “Eddie?”

He glanced over his shoulder. Eddie sat slumped in his chair, his arms folded, glaring out the window.

Jason dropped his team leader voice. “Ed, come on, man. I said I was sorry.”

“What part of ‘I’m not talking to you’ do you not understand, Todd?” Eddie snapped.

Rose rolled her eyes. “Don’t bother, Jason. If he wants to throw a big baby tantrum, let him.”

“Yeah, you two don’t really seem to care what I do, do you?” Eddie said.

“Can we not talk about this right now?” Jason asked, very conscious that the entire team was listening.

“You’re the one who brought it up!” Eddie said.

“Because we’re about to go on a mission and I need the whole team to be on board!” Jason said.

“Yeah, well, maybe you and Rose should’ve thought about team solidarity before you two started sucking face in the Tower gym!” Eddie yelled.

“Damn, Bloomberg,” Koryak muttered.

Jason winced. He hadn’t meant for any of this to happen. Yeah, over the past six months or so he’d realized that he’d been increasingly into Rose. And yeah, he’d suspected she felt the same way, as much as he could suspect anything about the feelings of his most closed-off teammate. But he also knew that Eddie had been head over heels for Rose since pretty much Day One, and Jason didn’t have a ton of friends outside of this team, but he knew there were some rules you just didn’t break.

And then he and Rose had been sparring in the gym, and she’d managed to pin him to the mat, and Jason was still pretty sure he hadn’t meant to kiss her.

Which would have been a good excuse if it hadn’t started happening every time they sparred when no one else was around. For weeks. It was inevitable that someone would walk in on them. It was just their bad luck that it was Eddie, who couldn’t seem to decide which of them to be angrier with. He’d been stewing in that anger the past few days, Jason had been stewing in guilt, and Rose was livid with them both.

“News flash, asshole: you don’t actually own me,” she snapped now. “I can make out with whoever I want. I could stick my tongue down Connor’s throat right now and you couldn’t stop me.”

“Oh, um, no thank you,” Connor said.

“And you! Team Leader!” Rose said, turning on Jason. “Grow a fucking pair, would you? This guilty sad sack act is pathetic.”

“I—” Jason started, then shut his mouth. What was he supposed to say? He knew Rose was right. But he also knew hooking up repeatedly with the girl his best friend was in love with was crossing a line.

“He should feel guilty,” Eddie said, echoing Jason’s thoughts. “That’s how you’re supposed to feel when you betray a friend.”

“Oh please, he did not,” Toni said. Jason could practically hear her eyes rolling.

“Nobody asked you, Toni,” Eddie said.

“Yeah, well, if you don’t want my opinion, you need to stop whining in front of me,” Toni retorted. “And it’s super gross how you and Jason are both acting like you called dibs on Rose or whatever.”

“I mean…Jason did know Eddie liked her,” Grant pointed out.

“Everyone knew Eddie liked her,” Koryak said. “But Grant’s right. It’s breaking the bro code.”

“Ugh!” Toni said. “Gross! That’s gross! You are all being gross!”

“Thank you, Toni,” Rose said.

“Being a good friend is being gross now?” Eddie asked.

“Your stupid bro code isn’t about being a good friend, it’s about boys mattering more than girls.”

“The bro code is for girls too,” Koryak insisted. “Like, Rose, you’re telling me that if Toni and your new boy toy Jason hooked up right now, you wouldn’t be pissed?”

“Right now? When he’s flying the plane? Yeah, because I don’t want to die,” Rose said. “Otherwise, she can fucking have him.”

“I don’t want him!” Toni said.

“You know I can hear you, right?” Jason asked.

“I think Kory’s right, and I don’t think it’s sexist,” Grant said. “Maybe it’s different for girls, but there’s some things guys just don’t do to their friends.”

“Cool. Nice to know none of you assholes consider me your friend,” Rose said.

“That’s not what I said!”

“I don’t believe all guys think this,” Toni said. “Connor, what about you? Was Jason wrong to kiss Rose when he knew Eddie liked her but was never, ever going to do anything about it, or is Rose a whole entire human being who can make her own decisions?”

“That is not an accurate description of the question at hand,” Eddie protested.

“Really?” Toni said. “So you were going to do something about it?”

There was a pause. “I want to hear what Connor thinks,” Eddie said.

“Oh, uh…” Connor cleared his throat. “I really don’t want to take sides.”

The plane erupted into furious yelling from all five other members of the team. Jason cringed and tightened his grip on the tiller as he brought them in for a landing. Why he’d ever thought leading a team was a good idea was beyond him.

*

Jason woke to the smell of frying sausage and mushrooms. He pushed his face into his pillow, trying to ignore the rumbling of his stomach long enough to eke out a few more minutes of sleep, but eventually his hunger won out, and he kicked back the covers.

After using the en suite bathroom, he shuffled down the stairs, entering the kitchen on a yawn so huge it made his jaw creak.

“Morning, Alfie,” he said, rubbing at his eyes. “You should’ve waited for me, I would’ve helped.”

“If I waited for you to wake up to make breakfast, I would be making lunch,” Alfred said dryly, but his tone was fond. Jason tried to reach for a spatula, and Alfred waved him off. “Sit. There’s tea on the table. Or if you must do something, you can bring those vegan sausages to your brother.”

Bruce and Damian were seated in the breakfast nook, Bruce drooping over a cup of black coffee and Damian already crunching his way through his toast with all the voracious energy of a middle schooler. Jason put the plate Alfred had indicated in front of Damian and ruffled his hair. “Here you go, gremlin.”

Damian batted his hand away, more distracted than annoyed. “Father, you’re being unreasonable.”

“Following the law is unreasonable?” Bruce asked. The amused weariness in his voice told Jason that whatever the argument was, it had been going on since well before Jason had entered the kitchen.

That didn’t mean Jason couldn’t get his digs in. “Yeah, B, we all know you would never break the law,” he said with a grin, reaching for the silver teapot at the center of the table.

Bruce gave him a “you’re not helping” look. “You have to go to school, Damian.”

“I was better educated than any of the neanderthals at Gotham Academy when I was five,” Damian scoffed. “Surely there’s some test I can take that will satisfy the Department of Education. The GED can’t be that hard.”

“Wait, no, school’s great,” Jason said. “I loved school!”

Damian narrowed his eyes at him. “Everyone already knows you were valedictorian. You don’t have to tell us. Again.”

“Maybe Jason could tutor you,” Bruce offered.

“It is not the subject matter!” Damian said indignantly. “It is the riffraff by which I am surrounded!”

Bruce glanced at Jason again. Jason sighed. Dick was better at this, but Dick was in Bludhaven, which meant it was up to Jason.

“Hey,” he said. “After breakfast, why don’t you and I take Titus for a walk and you can tell me about it, okay?”

Damian stabbed at a vegan sausage with his fork, but his expression was a little less thunderous than it had been. “All right,” he agreed.

Bruce smiled at Jason over the edge of his coffee cup, and Alfred, as he brought the eggs, pork sausages, and mushrooms to the table, also looked pleased. Jason gave a little shrug. It wasn’t like he was going above and beyond or anything, letting Damian talk about his struggles integrating with his peers. It was just paying it forward after Dick had helped Jason adjust all those years ago.

After all, Damian was the only little brother he had.

*

Jason and Damian were just coming in from their walk when Jason’s phone buzzed in his pocket. Jason swiped to answer it.

“Hey, Ed. What’s up?”

“Uh…what’s up with you?” Eddie answered. “Are you coming to the meeting or what?”

Jason blinked. “We have a meeting today?”

“We are literally all sitting in the Tower meeting room waiting for you,” Eddie said, sounding more amused than annoyed. “Toni is braiding Kory’s hair.”

“Only because Rose wouldn’t let Toni braid hers and I was tired of listening to her whine about how bored she was,” Koryak called. Eddie must’ve had Jason on speaker phone.

“Oh please, you love it,” Toni said.

Jason frowned, a headache creeping in around the edges. How could he have forgotten a meeting? Hadn’t they all just seen each other for…for…

“Yo! Todd!” That was Rose. “We’re not getting any younger here!”

Jason shook his head. On a Saturday morning with no traffic, New York was a quick motorcycle ride away.

“I’ll be there in thirty,” he said. “Don’t burn the Tower down.”

He made it in twenty-five, the highway even emptier than he’d expected, the August sun just bright enough to be pleasant and not scorching. His team had abandoned the meeting room by the time he found them and was sprawled in the grassy training area outside, working their way through a bag of marshmallows that Eddie appeared to be toasting with his breath.

“I thought I told you not to burn the Tower down,” Jason said. “Also, that’s gross.” He accepted the marshmallow Eddie handed him anyway.

“We were just discussing the Brother Blood incident,” Connor said as Jason settled onto the grass next to him.

Eddie snorted. “‘Incident.’ Is that what we’re calling a demonic cult trying to sacrifice me and then suddenly deciding to make me their king?”

“Well, what would you call it?” Connor asked.

Eddie paused to consider. “The fuckery.”

“I think that’s a fair name,” Jason said. “The whole thing was just weird. He said it was weird.”

“Who said?” Grant asked. “Eddie? Brother Blood?”

Jason opened his mouth, and his headache throbbed viciously. He rubbed at his temple, his train of thought thrown off by the sudden pain. He’d been talking to someone recently about Brother Blood, he knew he had. But who? It hadn’t been any of the guys on the team. Bruce? Dick?

“Hey, you okay?” Eddie asked.

“Yeah, just a headache,” Jason said. “What were we talking about?”

“Marshmallows,” Toni said.

Jason frowned at her. “No, we weren’t,” he said. “We were talking about Brother Blood.”

His headache throbbed again. Toni’s brow crumpled like she could feel it.

“You’re right,” she said. “Why did I say marshmallows?”

“I forgot we were talking about Brother Blood, too,” Eddie said slowly. “Which is weird because, you know, he tried to sacrifice me yesterday and all.”

“Was it yesterday?” Connor asked.

Jason blinked, trying to remember. Surely it was yesterday? They’d rescued Eddie. They’d gone back to Toni’s and ordered pizza. And he’d woken up at the Manor this morning.

So why couldn’t he remember getting to the Manor? Why couldn’t he remember anything about last night?

“Hey,” he said. “Did any of you dream last night?”

The intruder alarms went off.

Everyone sprang to their feet. A shiver of danger ran up Jason’s spine, and he jerked to the side, pulling Grant with him. Three throwing blades thudded into the grass where Grant had been standing.

“Argent! Shield!” Jason shouted, already turning in the direction the blades had come from. Over the silver wall Toni conjured around the team, he saw an unmistakable figure in green, moving fast across the training area.

“Cheshire,” Rose snarled. “She couldn’t even beat my father alone. She thinks she can take us all on, on our turf?”

“How’d she even get onto the island?” Grant asked.

“Why would she try?” Connor asked.

Jason caught the way he started to reach for an arrow over his shoulder before dropping his hand. Cheshire had caught them all unarmed. Of course, Toni, Eddie, and Grant were never really unarmed, and trying to fight a hydrokinetic on a small island was an idiotic plan, but Jason knew full well how dangerous Jade was.

Wait. “Jade”?

“Uh, because we’re the Titans and she’s a supervillain?” Toni said.

Connor shook his head. “She’s an assassin. She takes out political figures for money.”

“I’m a political figure!” Koryak said.

Jade—Cheshire—flung another handful of probably-poisoned blades at them, all of them clattering harmlessly off of Toni’s silver wall. “You’ve interfered with my plans for the last time, Titans!” she shouted.

It didn’t sound like her at all. But why would Jason know that? It was Dick’s team that fought Cheshire the most. Jason had only fought her once, in Switzerland, and he hadn’t been with his own Titans, he’d been with…with…

“Jason, look out!” Grant cried, but Cheshire was already vaulting over Toni’s wall and going for him with her poisoned nails. Jason dodged, blocking her with his forearms as he moved backward out of her reach.

Jade laughed triumphantly, and her smile hit him between the eyes. It was so familiar, like a smile he loved, like lazy Sunday mornings and walks to the park and…and…

Lian.

Jason gasped like he was emerging from underwater as the memories flooded him. Lian’s tiny hand in his. Lian riding on his shoulders. Lian shrieking with delight when she came home from school to find he’d made a surprise visit out to the West Coast.

And Roy. Every furtively memorized, cherished detail of Roy: the way his hair glowed when sunlight hit it and the way that one crooked canine turned his smile mischievous; the strength of his arms when he held Jason up and the gentleness of his hands when he stitched Jason’s wounds. The way he smelled.

The way he’d kissed Jason, hot and urgent and that had to have been less than twenty-four hours ago because Jason could still feel it burning against his lips.

How could Jason have forgotten them?

Whatever it was, it had to be the same thing that had started all of this, that had given them all these dreams and brought Eddie back from the dead—dead, Eddie was dead—and fixed Grant’s face. Were Roy and Lian gone, though, or had Jason just forgotten them?

“Jade, stop!” he said, jumping back out of her reach. She’d palmed a blade that gleamed sharp and wicked in the sunlight. “Something’s wrong!”

“We are not on a first-name basis, Red Robin,” she snapped.

Red Robin? No, he was Red Hood…wasn’t he? Jason frowned, trying to focus on what mattered: namely, the extremely dangerous woman coming at him with a knife.

The rest of her sentence wasn’t untrue. Jason could admit to himself that his petty, jealous heart held plenty of resentment for Jade, even though their interactions had been minimal since he’d stopped working with the League of Assassins. He did his level best not to sulk whenever Lian prattled on about her mother, whenever Roy worried about his ex or looked the other way at her crimes. But it wasn’t like Jason was involved in the custody discussions or anything. He and Roy were just friends. Or at least they had been. Now he wasn’t sure what they were.

More importantly at the moment, he knew Jade loved her daughter, and Roy, too. Whatever she was after, whoever had hired her, she’d put it aside if Lian was in trouble.

“Jade, they have Lian!” he tried desperately. “Lian and Roy, something’s happened to them!”

Jade gave him a bewildered look but didn’t stop her attack. “Who?”

Shit. Jason dodged another swing. This didn’t make sense. The mere resemblance between Jade and Lian had jolted his memory, so why wouldn’t hearing Lian’s name remind Jade of her existence? Jason knew her love ran that deep.

Unless this wasn’t the real Jade. After all, this had all started in dreams—dreams where he was Red Robin. How did he know he was awake now?

He stopped moving. “This isn’t real,” he said.

And Jade stabbed him.

Jason screamed as the blade slipped between his ribs and proved him wrong. Nothing in a nightmare had ever hurt that much. Whatever was going on with Cheshire, her knife was very real.

And predictably laced with something, he realized as she withdrew, grinning like her namesake. The world tilted around him, going black around the edges as his fingers went numb.

“Jason?” That was Connor.

“Jason!” And that was Eddie.

It was nice to have friends, Jason thought as he toppled over onto the grass. That was the good part about the dreams. He hadn’t had nearly as many friends when he was awake.

Then everything went black.

*

“Welcome back, dumbass,” Rose said.

Jason blinked blearily at her. He was in the Tower infirmary. His mouth was dry and there was a dull ache in his side, but he seemed otherwise okay.

The rest of his team was gathered around his bed. Eddie looked worried, Rose looked pissed, and the others were all ranged somewhere along the spectrum in between.

“What…?” Jason tried.

Rose rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I don’t know if Bats skipped this lesson or what, but you’re not supposed to just stand there and let the bad guy stab you.”

Jason’s head hurt. “Someone stabbed me?”

“Cheshire,” Connor said, his brow furrowing. “Do you not remember? We ran a tox scan, but couldn’t find anything conclusive. But if you have memory loss…”

Memory loss. There had been something wrong with his memory, something he’d forgotten…

“Roy!” he said. His team—no, not his team, he barely knew most of them—gave him the confused looks he’d been both expecting and dreading. “Roy, Roy Harper. He was with us, and then he…I forgot. Where did he go? Where’s Roy?”

“...Who?” Grant asked.

“Roy,” Jason snarled. “Your…he was your fucking legal guardian, Grant, and yours too, Rose! Connor, he’s your brother.”

Connor’s eyes went wide. “My…oh my god. Roy and…Lian, that was Lian’s mother who attacked us! Why would she do that?”

Grant was shaking his head. “What are you talking about, my legal guardian? Why would I need a legal guardian? My parents are…” He frowned. “No, I mean I live with Aunt Terri…and…”

His face went pale. There was an awful silence, and the air around him started to crackle.

“Grant?” Toni said timidly.

“My parents are dead,” Grant said through a clenched jaw and clenched fists. “I forgot. I forgot…who raised me instead. Why?”

Jason’s memories of Grant might have been mostly false ones, but he still knew him well enough to know that why really meant who. As in who was going to pay for this. “Something’s been fucking with us. Worse than the dreams,” he said, kicking back the sheets that were covering him even though it hurt. Cheshire’s blade had been real enough. “We aren’t a team. We never were. And I came here from fucking Wayne Manor today. I don’t live there! I don’t have…”

His teeth snapped shut. Friends, dream friends, fake friends, whatever they were—they didn’t need to know about the life he’d been given that morning, where Bruce was proud of him and Damian looked up to him and Alfred…

Oh god. Alfred was dead.

The grief hit like a sudden blow and made him wobble on his feet. He clutched at the bed.

“Jason?” Eddie asked, concern in his voice.

Jason looked at his best friend. Except not his best friend, because his real best friend had been taken away from him, and most of his memories of Eddie were false ones, and the real Eddie had been taken away from him, too.

“Eddie,” he said. He hadn’t meant for it to come out like a sob. “You’re dead.”

Eddie stared at him, then gave an uncomfortable laugh. “That’s a weird joke, Jase.”

“You died at Sanctuary. Like Roy,” Jason said. “But he came back. You didn’t. I mean, you did, you’re here, but…how, Ed? Do you remember?”

The stricken expression on Eddie’s face was all too similar to Grant’s, and just as hard to look at. Behind him, Rose let out a string of furious curses and turned away. Jason noticed she had a hand over the eye that was normally missing.

“My dad’s in jail.”

They all turned to look at Toni. There were tears in her eyes, but her chin was jutting out stubbornly, and her voice was strong.

“He was using his pull as a senator to get rich off of trafficking Velocity-9, until I turned him in. So he tried to have me killed. Me and the Titans, the team Grant and I were on before…instead of this one,” she clarified, glancing at Grant. “My mom won’t speak to me anymore. And I don’t think a lot of people even remember I was ever a Titan, so it’s not like I traded one family for another. But that’s the truth.” Her chin wobbled, and she scowled and firmed it. “Whatever this was…it made me forget. But I can’t be bought that easily. Daddy learned that the hard way.”

“I’m not in line for the throne,” Koryak said. “My father can’t stand me. But hey, he loves Garth, and Garth’s not in line for the throne, either.” His eyes went wide. “Neptune’s balls, I forgot Garth.”

Toni gave a little gasp and turned to Grant. “Al!” she said. “What happened to Al?”

Grant rubbed his temples. “I don’t know. He left the room, but he should have come back when Brother Blood attacked, the whole JSA should’ve…” His head snapped up. “Tommy was with us. When did we leave Tommy?”

Jason barely heard them. He was groping for the missing pieces of his own life, like feeling the space where a baby tooth had once been. Bruce had been there, and Damian, and Dick had been mentioned, but…

Tim. Tim was missing, and Cass, and Duke, and Jason suspected if he probed that other world he’d find more gaps where Steph and Barbara should be. But it was the absence of Tim—his replacement, his improvement—that felt especially pointed. Whoever was behind this, they were wielding their knowledge ruthlessly.

“I have a question,” Connor said. His tone was mild; only the deep line at the inside corner of his right eyebrow betrayed his unease. Jason wondered if he knew that about Connor from getting to know him while visiting Roy, or from these false memories. He hated that he couldn’t tell.

“If it’s whether you have a good relationship with your father or if that’s just another fucking lie, I suspect you’re shit out of luck like the rest of us,” Rose said bitterly.

“It’s not that,” Connor said. “It’s just…where are we?”

Jason blinked. “Titans Tower.”

“Yes, but…we aren’t Titans.”

“...That’s a very good point,” Jason said. “The Titans are based out of Bludhaven right now, and before that, it was San Francisco. When was the last time this Tower was used?”

“Me and Grant’s team, I think. Our real one,” Toni said. “Except it wasn’t really a tower, that was destroyed. It was a hologram. Our base was underground, below it.”

Jason reached out and touched the nearest wall. It felt solid. “This isn’t a hologram,” he said. “But it isn’t real, either.”

Gravity dipped away from him as the world spun dizzyingly, and suddenly he was on a Batline, soaring between buildings with the wind blowing his cape out behind him. He landed lightly on a roof next to Batman, who smiled at him from beneath the cowl, then nodded to the two other people on the roof.

“Robin, this is Green Arrow and Speedy,” he said, and put a fatherly arm around Jason’s shoulders. It was easy for him to do; Jason only came up to his chest. “Arrow, this is Robin.”

Jason frowned at the unsettlingly clean-shaven Oliver Queen standing across from him. Next to Ollie was a boy Jason’s age with brown skin and a mop of golden curls spilling out from beneath a feathered cap.

Jason looked into Connor’s eyes, younger than he had ever known them. “This isn’t real,” Connor said.

Another dizzying lurch and suddenly Jason was seated on a chair that had a strange, smooth texture. Looking down, he saw that it appeared to have been made from a giant clamshell.

He looked up and realized that he was underwater, under a massive glass dome with incandescently colored fish swimming past it. Eddie was on his right, looking incongruous in a suit, and Rose was on his left, looking even more incongruous in a dress. Jason spotted the rest of the team scattered throughout the seated crowd, as well as most of the Justice League, but the audience was largely strangers.

Everyone was looking at a dais in front of them, where Aquaman and Mera sat on pearl-encrusted thrones. Koryak knelt before them, and an older man with a white mustache and beard held a crown over his head.

“By the grace of Poseidon, I name you, Koryak, son of Orin II, heir to the throne of Atlantis,” the white-bearded man said.

Koryak looked up at him, then back at the crowd. There was a bitter smile on his face as he met Jason’s eyes.

“This isn’t real,” he said.

The world dipped and spun again. They were in Titans Tower, and Rose was standing between two men, one brunet and one blond. The brunet nudged her playfully.

“So this is what you kids have done with the place, huh?” he asked. “What do you think, Joey, is the new Ravager living up to the family name?”

“Fuck off. This isn’t real,” Rose snarled, jerking away from him.

A lurch. They were on the Watchtower. “Impressive work, Argent,” Superman said.

“Oh, come on,” Toni said. “This is just embarrassing. And not real.”

A lurch. They were in another auditorium, one on land this time. Eddie was wearing a suit again, and looking at the stage, where a woman who looked remarkably like him was accepting an Oscar.

Eddie looked at Jason, his eyes misty, and shook his head.

Lurch.

And then…

They floated in a featureless void. In the distance, an emerald light glowed, and stars somehow seemed to shine through it. Jason could hear a distant battle.

He looked at the others—just his team, no false mentors or family members or adoring crowds to distract them. They all looked as confused as he was.

Well, almost all.

“This…is real,” Grant said, looking around. “Or at least, it was. I’ve been here before.”

“You have? Great,” Koryak said. “How do we get home?”

“We can’t,” Grant said. His expression was grim. “This is the end of the world.”

Chapter Text

“What do you mean, it’s the end of the world?” Jason asked.

“Well, it was the last time I was here,” Grant said. Somehow he seemed to settle on his feet, even though there was no floor. “This is Vanishing Point. The end of time.”

“When were you here before?” Jason asked. He concentrated on standing instead of floating, like Grant was, and found that he could.

“It was right after my powers kicked in,” Grant said. “So…seven years ago? There was this huge crisis. You know, the all hands on deck kind.”

Toni shook her head. “I didn’t have my powers yet,” she said, and Eddie nodded.

“I was still living with my mom,” Rose said, her voice tight, and Koryak nodded. They were all settled on the nonexistent ground now.

Jason shrugged. “You all know where I was.”

“Well, it was a big deal,” Grant said. “A bunch of the JSA died. My father died, my real father.” His jaw tightened. “I never met him. It was before I got there.”

“Jesus,” Rose said. “Is this the fucking daddy issues brigade or what?”

Her wryly self-deprecating tone belied her harsh words. Grant huffed and gave her a knowing half-smile.

“I guess so,” he said. “Anyway, then I restarted the universe.”

Eddie blinked. “One more time?” he said.

“The universe was pretty much destroyed. We needed a big bang,” Grant said, like that explained anything.

But Connor brightened. “I’ve heard about this! My father was there, and Kyle Rayner. It, uh, wasn’t a great first meeting.” He winced, then visibly shook it away. “This was when Hal Jordan was possessed by Parallax. He was behind it, wasn’t he?”

“You think Parallax is doing this to us?” Rose asked.

“What the fuck is a Parallax?” Koryak asked.

“Big bug from outer space,” she said.

Koryak gave her a hard look. “Yeah, nope,” he said. “I’m out.”

“This isn’t Parallax. Isn’t it supposed to be the embodiment of fear?” Jason asked. He’d never faced the bug, or whatever it was, personally, but the Batcomputer’s files were thorough. “I’m not afraid. Maybe being here again is just another trick.”

“I don’t think so,” Connor said. “The other…places, dreams, whatever they were. They were temptations. This is just…nothing.” He turned to Grant. “There has to be a reason we’re here. What else do you remember? Was there anyone else there?”

Grant shrugged. “Sure, tons of people. Superman and Waverider and Impulse and Guy Gardner. And Extant, obviously.”

Eddie frowned. “Who?”

“Unbelievable,” said a voice behind them. “Remake the universe in your own image, twice, and they don’t even remember your name.”

They spun to face the newcomer. Behind him, Jason heard Rose drawing her sword, the telltale crackle of Grant’s fists.

Standing in the void with them was a man in black and red, with a full face mask and a purple cape. He was solid, thickly muscled, though not quite as tall as Jason. But he stood like he thought the seven of them posed no threat to him, and that was much more alarming than any muscles.

Grant took a step forward. He was radiating so much heat it was uncomfortable to be near him.

“Extant,” he spat. “You killed my father.”

“And your so-called ‘brother’ killed me, so we’re even,” Extant drawled, still clearly totally unconcerned.

“Al,” Grant said. “You did something to him. Where is he?”

“And where are the others? Where’s Roy?” Jason demanded.

He couldn’t see Extant’s face through his mask, but by the tilt of Extant’s head, he got the impression the other man was rolling his eyes. “Ugh. I never liked Harper. He was obnoxious when he was Speedy and he’s just gotten more self-righteous now.” His head shifted to a considering angle. “You, though, Todd, you impressed me. I didn’t think you had it in you the last time we met, but you got out from under the old man’s thumb, didn’t you?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Jason asked, even though all he wanted to do was lunge at Extant and beat the shit out of him until he got some answers about Roy, about all of this. “We’ve never met.”

“Oh, we have,” Extant said. “We’ve both improved our fashion sense since, though.”

He reached up and tugged off his cowl, revealing the face of a man about Jason’s age, with brown hair and a boxer’s nose. Something about him tugged at the back of Jason’s mind, a vague familiarity he couldn’t quite place.

“You were Robin,” Extant said. “That insufferable Harper was Speedy. That high and mighty bitch Donna Troy begged me for help and then didn’t like the way I handled my business. Remember?”

Jason’s jaw dropped as the pieces clicked into place. “Hawk?”

Jason had been fifteen, a few scant months away from his own death, although he hadn’t known it yet. He’d been thrilled when the Wonder Girl of the Teen Titans had called and asked for his help on a mission to Switzerland…and intrigued for reasons he hadn’t yet been able to name by Speedy, with his heavily muscled arms and teasing grin.

He’d done his best to avoid Hawk—Hank Hall—who seemed to be constantly on the verge of physically attacking everyone around him. When Hank had spoken to Jason, he’d alternated between insulting him and condescendingly encouraging him to ignore Batman and the Titans’ restraint in favor of emulating Hank’s more violent approach to crimefighting. The idea that Jason had grown into someone Hank actually respected as the Red Hood was not one that Jason liked. Yes, he killed when he had to, but he didn’t use violence indiscriminately like that maniac had.

Did he?

“I used to be Hawk,” Extant said. “I’ve grown beyond that, now.”

“Wait, this makes no fucking sense,” Rose said. “Hawk and Dove are definitely doing their stupid bird thing together, I’ve seen them. And you said Atom Smasher killed you. So how are you alive?” She glanced at Eddie, and Jason could track her line of thought: had the same thing brought Eddie back, too? And if they managed to take out Hawk, what did that mean for Eddie?

Toni gasped. “Hypertime. Grant, you were right.”

Hawk—Extant—whoever he was—nodded. “Atom Smasher killed me, but before he did, I splintered off a timeline where I survived. Easy enough when you’ve mastered hypertime.” He flicked a hand carelessly and a couple duplicates of himself appeared, indistinguishable from the original. “The version of me who died was resurrected, and everyone forgave him for everything I did. He and Dove even got the band back together.”

“So what’s your problem?” Koryak asked. “Sounds like you got a happy ending. Or one of you, at least.”

“I got a fucking compromise!” Hank snarled. “I had power over time and all of its tributaries and I’m expected to be happy punching out bank robbers? I could have brought Don back! I could have him and Dawn!”

“I see we’ve reached the ‘ranting supervillain’ portion of the evening,” Jason said. “Which I’m better at than you are, by the way.”

“Is it evening?” he heard Eddie murmur to Connor.

“Shh,” Connor said.

Jason ignored them. “Why are we here? I met you once. The rest of the team…do any of you guys know this asshole?”

“Eddie and I met the chick versions,” Rose said with a shrug. The others shook their heads.

“So what’s the point of all this, Hall?” Jason asked. “Why fuck with our dreams? Why erase our memories? How does this get your brother back?”

“You really are the same dumb little shit you always were, aren’t you?” Hank asked. “Those weren’t dreams. Not exactly. I’ve been plucking at hypertime, moving all of your strings around. Taking out a stolen baby here, a helicopter crash there.” He met Jason’s eyes. “A crowbar or two.”

Jason fought a shiver.

“The dreams were your brains adjusting to the new realities,” Hank said. “And I didn’t touch your memories. I just took away the things you remembered. Snipped a few connections that tethered you to the old world. Strange how many of you were tied to Harper.”

It took a second to parse all of that, and then the penny dropped. Hank hadn’t removed Jason’s memories of Roy; he’d removed Roy.

Jason lunged at Hank. “I’ll fucking kill you!” he snarled as Hank laughed and popped out of reach like a soap bubble, reappearing a few feet away. “Bring them back!”

“Jason!” Connor said, grabbing Jason’s arms. “Kory, Eddie, help me!”

More hands were on Jason, holding him back. He struggled, but two of the three teammates holding him had super strength. He wasn’t going anywhere.

“You should be thanking me!” Hank said, still laughing. “Sure, you liked Harper, but didn’t I get rid of everyone you all didn’t like? Your replacement Robin? That limp fish, Aqualad?”

“And Tommy?” Grant demanded.

Hank waved that away. “Tethers. What would you rather have? The kittycat? Or a father who keeps his hands to himself?”

Grant surged with heat. “You motherfucking—”

“Grant, no!” Connor said, still holding on to Jason. “If you kill him, we might be stuck here.” He turned back to Hank. “Hank, Extant, whoever you are. You didn’t answer Jason’s question. Why us?”

Hank shrugged, still looking amused. “Fertile ground.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Jason demanded.

“Hypertime has millions of tributaries,” Hank said, waving a hand as if to indicate them all. “Only the strongest ones last without being submerged into more dominant streams. They need multiple people experiencing them to grow. The more you lived in the branches I created for you, the more you believed in them, the more dominant they became. And you all wanted something to believe so badly.”

His tone grew mocking at the end. Jason snarled, but when he shook off the others, they let him go. “Keep going.”

“Well, take someone like Harper, or…oh, like Dick Grayson,” Hank said. “This wouldn’t have worked on him. That sanctimonious asshole has way too many people riding his dick all the time, no pun intended. So many friends, so many teammates, a family that actually likes him…if I tried to tweak his history, it’s tangled up with too many other histories. He’d notice the changes right away, or someone else would. But you…you’re all so lonely.”

“You’re full of shit,” Jason said. He ignored the dig about his family; it wasn’t anything he hadn’t said himself. “Connor’s family loves him.”

“But they don’t understand him, do they?”

“Grant’s on like the biggest team around!”

“And he won’t let them see his face.” Hank smirked. “You are all so tragic. And where do tragic young superheroes turn when they’re lost? The Teen Titans.”

“Is that what happened to you?” Toni asked.

For the first time, Hank looked startled. “What?”

“You were a Titan, right?” Toni asked. “Was that how it felt when you joined? Like you weren’t alone anymore?”

“I wasn’t alone in the first place,” Hank sneered, but he looked uncertain. “I had my brother.”

“Until he died,” Jason said. He wasn’t sure where this was going, but he knew how to press an advantage. “And you tried to come back to the Titans, but it didn’t work, did it? Is that why you built yourself a new team to play with?” He laughed as realization hit. “That was you throwing all those Titans villains at us, wasn’t it? Every time we got close, there they were to distract us. The Fearsome Five. Brother Blood. Cheshire. Did you miss it, Hawk?”

“Fuck off,” Hank snarled. “Quit trying to psychoanalyze me. You sound like Dawn.”

“Did she die too?” Connor asked. “Is that why you said you could have her and Don? If you’re fighting like this for your loved ones, why would you think we would ever stop fighting for ours?”

“Shut up! Just shut up!” Hank snapped. “If you want Harper back that badly, here!”

And suddenly Roy was standing in front of them, looking just as Jason had seen him last, whole and breathing in his Arsenal costume and looking startled. “Jason? Connor?” he asked. “What’s—wait, is that Hank?”

Jason reached for him, but Hank snapped his fingers and Roy disappeared again.

“On second thought, nah,” Hank said, having clearly regained his equilibrium. “Like I said, I never liked that guy. And you’ll forget him soon enough.”

This time Jason moved too fast for anyone to stop him, slamming a right hook into Hank’s jaw. It was like punching a sack of concrete; Hank barely moved. Jason felt the bruises blooming on his knuckles and remembered too late that Hawk had had super strength.

Hank smiled. “You really think you can fight a hawk, little robin?”

“That depends,” Jason spat, drawing his guns. “How bulletproof are you?”

He cocked the hammers—and suddenly Koryak was standing between him and Hank, his hands up.

“Wait,” Koryak said.

“What the fuck, Kory?” Jason demanded. “Get out of the way!”

“No. You’re being fucking stupid,” Koryak said. “Hey. Bird guy. Whatever your name is. Is my mom still human in this timeline?”

Hank shrugged. “She can be.”

Jason stared at Koryak, but it was Rose who spoke.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she asked.

Koryak shrugged. “Look, don’t get me wrong, I want to kick this guy’s ass for messing with us. But he can give us what we want. He can give us a better world—not just for us, but for everyone! Shouldn’t we find out before we throw it away?”

“It’s not better for Garth,” Toni pointed out, and Koryak winced. “Or Roy. Or anyone else who disappeared. Do we even know how many people that is? How can you say this could be the greater good when we don’t know how many people were affected? I’m sorry about your mom, Kory, but we can’t pick and choose like that.”

“I don’t give a shit about your mom, and I don’t give a shit about the greater good,” Rose said, crossing her arms. “My mom’s gone too. That doesn’t mean I’m gonna let some dickbag supervillain with his own agenda manipulate and lie to me.”

“Well, we can’t all be as selfish as Deathstroke’s daughter,” Koryak snapped. “I actually loved my mom.”

Rose’s eyes narrowed. “Say that again, Kory. I fucking dare you.”

“Stop it!” Toni said.

“I think Kory’s right,” Grant said. “And if Rose gets to be selfish, so do I. You can all do what you want. I’m not going back.”

“Grant,” Toni said.

“No,” Grant said, holding up a hand to cut her off. It crackled with energy as his control wavered. “You all miss your moms? I never even fucking knew mine, and she’s alive in this universe. Why should I have to go back to a world where I grew up getting smacked around by my foster parents? Why should I have to do back to a world where I’m in fucking pain all the time and everyone flinches at the goddamn sight of me?”

“We all have scars,” Connor said quietly. “We survived them.”

“Did we?” Eddie asked.

Jason turned to look at him, his heart plummeting as the meaning of Eddie’s words sank in. Eddie spread his hands.

“Look, I don’t want to erase anyone. I didn’t really know Roy or Al or any of them, but they deserve to live. But don’t I also…I mean, if we go back, if Hank undoes everything, what happens to me? Do I die? And if I die…does my soul still belong to Neron? Will I go to Hell?”

“No,” Rose snarled.

Eddie shrugged. “You can’t stop it, Rose,” he said. “But Extant could.”

Hank nodded. “Sure I could,” he said. “I already have. It wasn’t even hard.”

“Shut up!” Toni snapped at him. “We’ll figure something out! Jason came back, Superman came back, so many people have come back. We can bring you back, too, Eddie.”

Koryak snorted. “How’s that not playing god?”

“It’s not the same thing and you know it,” Connor said. “We can’t just take the easy way.”

“Exactly,” Toni said. “I know it’s hard back in the real world, but—”

“Oh, fuck off, Toni,” Grant snapped. “No, you don’t. Boo hoo, your powers make you look like a supermodel. Boo hoo, your daddy pampered you until you were seventeen and then went to jail and left you all his money. Cry me a fucking river.”

“Don’t talk to her like that,” Rose snapped as Toni’s eyes welled with tears.

“Just telling it like it is, Rose!” Grant said. “But I guess I’m not surprised you want to go back. Your family never cares who else has to suffer, do they?”

Rose drew her sword and took a step forward. “Shut the fuck up, Emerson.”

“Rose,” Connor warned.

Hank chuckled. “Oh, now it’s getting good.”

Grant was crackling with energy all over now. Koryak stepped up beside him. “You’re acting awfully high and mighty for someone who keeps threatening her own teammates,” he said.

“We aren’t a team, remember?” Rose said.

“Yeah, well, team or not, everyone with super strength is on this side,” Koryak said, indicating himself, Grant, and Eddie with his fingers.

“I’m not fighting Rose!” Eddie said. “I’m not fighting anyone. I just don’t want to die again!”

“Don’t worry, buddy,” Koryak said, cracking his knuckles. “You won’t.”

“Jason!” Toni said, her silver cheeks shining with tears. “Do something!”

Jason jolted where he’d been standing frozen, caught up in the fight, in his own indecision. “Everyone fucking stop,” he said. “We aren’t fighting each other! The goddamn supervillain is right there!”

He pointed at Hank, who smirked. “Some of you don’t seem to think I’m a supervillain,” he said. “Some of you know I’m right.”

“Keep laughing, asshole,” Rose said, moving toward him with her sword in hand. Koryak moved to intercept her.

“Both of you, stop!” Connor said. “We aren’t going to beat a hawk by fighting!”

“Jason?” Eddie asked.

Jason shook his head. This wasn’t fucking fair. Why was he responsible for making this decision? Sure, he was the team leader, but this wasn’t a real team—just Hank Hall fucking with them.

Just that thought made him livid enough to want to tell Rose to go for it. He understood her kneejerk bloodlust, maybe better than anything else in this fight; he didn’t like being manipulated either. They’d both gotten too much of that from their fathers.

But how could he tell Koryak to forget his own mother? How could he argue that the lifetime of abuse and pain Grant had survived was the moral choice?

How could he condemn Eddie?

“Hall,” he said. “Can some of us stay and some of us go back? If we wanted to?”

“We can’t, can we?” Connor said before Hank could answer. “You said you cut tethers to make this world real. You said we had to believe in it, all of us. How do you cut Grant’s tether to Roy but keep mine? And I’m sorry, Grant, but I’m not giving up my brother.”

Hank spread his hands. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s all or nothing. But I’m offering you a whole lot of all.”

Grant’s jaw clenched visibly. “I don’t want to…I love Roy, too. You know that. But I’m not the only one who has something to lose.” He pointed to Jason. “There’s only one person we know for sure dies in the old world, and it’s not Eddie.”

Jason shook his head—not to argue with Grant’s point, but to argue with this whole stupid fucked up situation, this unfair decision that shouldn’t be coming down to him. Of course he wanted a world where he’d never died. That was such an obvious low blow that it almost felt like cheating.

And this world that Hank had built…Hank hadn’t actually given him everything he’d ever wanted, but he’d given him a lot. Bruce trusted and relied on him, here. Damian looked up to him. Alfred…Alfred was alive, which might have been a dealbreaker all on its own.

And he had the Titans. Their friendship might have been built in an alternate reality, but it felt real in Jason’s bones, in his heart. He didn’t want to lose it—Grant’s fierce loyalty or Toni’s cheerful gossip or even Koryak’s complaining. He loved his friends, even if they weren’t really his.

In this world, Jason belonged.

But he had belonged with Roy, too.

It hadn’t been as obvious. Jason knew everyone either thought of him and Roy as the fuckup team, or that Roy was slumming it by being friends with him. But they’d fit together, with all of their screw-ups and scars and broken pieces. He’d fit in those mornings with Roy and Lian, eating pancakes and making Lian smile. He was starting to fit with Roy’s family, Connor included.

And yes, things were shitty with Bruce in the real world, and the rest of the Bats, and maybe they always would be. Maybe Bruce would spend the rest of their lives picking Tim over Jason. But that wasn’t Tim’s fault, and he didn’t deserve to be erased from existence because Hank Hall had decided to play god.

That was the crux of it, really. Jason could try to make things better with Bruce, and Tim, and all the rest of them. He could build a team. Hell, he could try to bring Alfred back from the fucking dead if he wanted—weirder things had happened. He was living proof, just like Toni had said.

But playing people like puppets…that wasn’t right. It couldn’t be right.

“We can’t,” he said, looking at his team, his friends. “We can’t stay. It’s not right.”

“Do you think this is a negotiation?” Hank asked. “I control all of time, remember? I can do whatever I want to you.”

“Then why did you let us have this conversation?” Connor asked.

Jason felt a cold smile creeping over his face. “Because he needs us to believe,” he said. “That’s it, isn’t it? We kept waking up. We wouldn’t let you fool us. That world can’t be complete as long as we know it isn’t real. That’s why you kept cutting more and more tethers.”

“I can do anything I want to you,” Hank said, glowering.

Jason put the safeties back on and holstered his guns. He didn’t need them anymore. “And we can see through it. That’s why you brought us here, to talk us into it. But unless we agree to go along with you…”

“And I fucking don’t,” Rose said.

“Neither do I,” Connor said.

Toni wiped her damp cheeks. “Me neither.”

“Or me,” Jason said. “And that’s four to three.”

“No!” Hank said with a sudden flash of rage. He stomped his foot like a child. “No! It’s not fair! I don’t want to be alone anymore!”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have been such a mega jerk all the time,” Eddie said. “I changed my vote. Five to two. I want to go back.”

“Wait,” Rose said, and despite the fact that she’d been staunchly against Hank since the moment they’d arrived, she suddenly seemed uncertain. “What does that mean for you? Hall, what happens to Eddie if we go back?”

“He was dead when I found him,” Hank said, with a vicious grin. “You sure you don’t want to change your vote, Ravager?”

Rose shook her head, but she was looking at Eddie. “No,” she snapped. “What about Neron? What if you end up in Hell, dumbass?”

Eddie shrugged, though his eyes were shimmering. “Hey, I’m the one who decided to sign my soul over to Neron. I can’t let Tim and Roy and all the rest of them stop existing because I fucked up. And I can’t let you guys do something we know is wrong for my sake.”

“You idiot!” she said, shoving him in the chest. He let her have it, moving a step back with her push. “If we go back, you could be damned!”

He smiled sadly. “But if we don’t, you all will be.”

Rose let out a choked sob. “Fuck you, Eddie Bloomberg,” she said, and hauled him in to kiss him fiercely. Eddie let out a startled noise and kissed her back, his claws curling against her shoulders.

Jason turned away, a lump in his throat. Toni was weeping openly again.

Koryak threw up his hands. “I give up!” he said. “Fine. Let Eddie be a martyr. We’re going back. Right, Grant?”

Grant was silent. His eyes were red.

“I’m sorry,” Toni said in a small voice. “I know you have it worse than I do. You always did. But you aren’t alone. You have Tommy, and Al, and Roy, and Jesse. You have me.” She let out a bitter laugh. “Poor little rich girl me.”

Grant’s face crumpled. Even crying, he was still handsome.

“Will it hurt?” he asked Hank.

“Yes,” Hank said. He didn’t even try to sound sorry.

Grant closed his eyes. “I figured,” he said. “Just get it over with.”

Jason looked at Hank. “It’s not going to work,” he said. “Put us back.”

Hank glared at him. “I was wrong about you,” he said. “You’re still the same goody two shoes little shit you were in short pants.” He spread his arms, and his cape rippled in a nonexistent wind. “You want your scars back? You want the pain? Fine, take it!”

Vanishing Point rippled around them—and then Jason was on the ground, he was on the ground and everything hurt and maniacal laughter was ringing in his ears and his mother was screaming. Smoke, there was smoke everywhere, he couldn’t breathe, and then he was in the darkness, the damp close suffocating darkness, dig dig dig and he was drowning, drowning, and his throat was pouring blood…

He came back to his senses on his hands and knees, right palm curved over a neck that had not been recently sliced open by a batarang. But he could still feel the scar. The scar would always be there.

Someone else was screaming, someone not just in Jason’s mind. He looked up and saw it was Grant, doubled over and hiding his face. Rose was leaning on Eddie and clutching at where her eye used to be. Connor had a hand to his chest like he couldn’t breathe.

“Grant!” Toni said, and flung her arms around him. “Grant, it’s okay, you’re going to be okay, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Jason stumbled toward his friend, and held him from the other side. He still ached all over and Grant’s phantom injuries were more recent, and maybe that meant they were that much worse. But Jason could hold him up until the pain was manageable. That was what friendship was.

As Grant’s screams receded to quiet sobs, a glowing doorway appeared before them. Hank waved a hand at it.

“That’ll take you back,” he said. “Unless you’ve learned your lesson?”

Jason shook his head and helped Toni haul Grant to his feet. “We’re going,” he said. “Just…”

He gestured to Koryak to take Grant’s arm, then grabbed Eddie’s hand. Eddie was back in his mortal skin, pale and scared. His palm was warm and sweaty.

“You’re my best friend,” Jason told him. “Even if it wasn’t real. Whatever happens, I want you to know that.”

Eddie nodded and forced a smile. “I love you too, buddy.”

He reached out and took Rose’s hand with his free one, and they walked toward the door, the others behind them.

“You’ll regret this,” Hank warned from behind them.

Jason stopped and looked over his shoulder.

“Of course we will,” he said. “That’s what real life means.”

They walked through the door. There was a blinding flash of light, and for a minute Jason couldn’t see or feel anything at all.

Then his vision cleared, and he realized he was standing in what looked like rubble. Turning, he caught the Manhattan skyline ahead of them and knew he and the others were in the ruins of Titans Tower.

The others. Heart pounding, he did a quick head count. Connor. Toni. Koryak. Rose. Grant, his handsome face horribly mangled, but no longer bothering to hide it.

That was all.

“Looks like Hall wasn’t bluffing,” Rose managed. “I thought…I thought maybe—”

Her voice broke. Jason pulled her into a hug, tucking her face against his chest just in time. His hand came up to cradle the back of her head, blocking her even further from view.

Her shoulders shook, but she still had plausible deniability this way. No one—not the rest of the team, not even Jason—would see her cry.

It was the least he could do for her. It was all he could do for her.

That was what friendship was.

Chapter Text

They were a battered and subdued group as they made their way back to the JSA brownstone. Koryak carried them across the river on a raft of hard water, and Toni flew them back to the brownstone on a silver shield. No one spoke.

As they touched down on the street outside, the door opened, and something eased in Jason’s chest as the JSA came out, Atom Smasher in the lead. Part of him had been afraid that Hank, in his disappointment and bitterness, would have given back the bad and not the good, but the JSA seemed alive and well, with no one missing or forgotten.

Jason had to call Roy.

“There you are!” Al called. “What happened to—oof! Grant?” He rocked back on his heels as Grant threw his arms around him. Jason had given Grant his helmet to wear, since Grant’s mask was long gone, but Al only seemed confused by the hug, and not the hugger. “What’s going on? What happened?”

Grant pulled back, shaking his head. “Sorry,” he said, sounding embarrassed. “I just…it’s complicated. But I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Oh,” Al said, with a tentative smile. “Sure. Likewise.”

“Um.” Toni gave an awkward wave. “I’m glad everyone’s back, but I’m pretty gross, so I’m gonna…” She made a flying gesture with her hand in the direction of downtown.

“Toni, wait,” Grant said, walking over to her. She visibly braced herself, and Jason winced.

Grant paused, then tugged the helmet off. “Thanks, Jase, but you can take this,” he said. “Toni, what I said back there…that was shitty, and you didn’t deserve it. You’re a hero. You’re a better hero than I am.”

Toni shook her head. “No, I wasn’t being fair…”

“Life isn’t fair,” Grant said. “You were right, and that’s more important. And I was a dick. But you’re my best friend, too.”

Toni blinked away tears and punched him in the shoulder. “Quit making me cry, you jerk,” she said, before hugging him.

Grant laughed, a little choked, and hugged her back. “Sorry,” he said. “Also, I still owe you Al’s phone number.”

“You’re not supposed to say that where he can hear it!” Toni hissed as Al went startled and red behind them. Jason caught Connor biting back a laugh, and Koryak didn’t bother to hide his.

“What? He’s gonna figure it out when you call him!”

“Shut up, you’re so embarrassing,” Toni moaned.

“Take it easy on him, Argent,” a voice said from behind Grant. “He’s been coasting on the gun show for years. He never had to develop any game.”

Grant stiffened as Tommy approached. Tommy was in his human form, lithe and handsome in a V-neck tee and jeans. Grant’s eyes darted to the helmet in Jason’s hands, visibly panicked.

Then Grant took a visible breath and straightened up. Extricating himself from Toni’s hug, he turned to face his other team. His real team.

Tommy didn’t flinch. “Welcome home, Peaches,” he said, and smiled.

*

They left Rose and Koryak at the train station. Koryak was headed down the shore to get closer to the open ocean; Rose was staying in New York, but she’d come to see him off.

“Can’t you just jump in the river?” she asked. “Get a dolphin friend to tow you home or something?”

“Are you kidding? The river here is disgusting,” Koryak said. “I never would’ve come in that way if Extant hadn’t been pulling my strings.”

“You could come to Star City with us,” Connor said. “Both of you.”

Rose made a face. “Ugh. There’s been enough forced togetherness, thanks.”

Koryak nodded. “I should go home. Talk to my father.”

“Apologize to Garth for disappearing him?” Jason asked, smirking.

Koryak rolled his eyes. “If he’s lucky.”

A voice over the PA called Koryak’s train. Toni wasn’t there to make them hug, so they didn’t, just waved as he merged into the line of people boarding. Jason pulled Rose aside.

“You okay?” he asked quietly, though he knew Connor would pretend not to hear them either way.

She glared at him. “Don’t try the mother hen act, Todd. It doesn’t suit you.”

Jason swallowed. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m not okay either.”

She looked away, the tendons in her neck tightening. Then she sighed and turned back to him.

“Take care of Harper,” she said. “He’s such a bleeding heart, he needs an asshole like you around to look after him.”

“Rose, come on,” Jason said. “The Roy joke went away with the dream world.”

“I wasn’t joking,” she said.

Then she slugged him in the arm, hard enough to hurt, and was gone.

Connor came up beside him. “Not much for goodbyes, is she?” he asked.

“Maybe she’s just had too many of them today,” Jason said.

“She’s not the only one,” Connor said. He gave Jason a gentle nudge. The gesture reminded Jason of Roy. “Ready to head back home?”

Jason knew he meant Star City. Star, which wasn’t Jason’s home…but maybe it could be.

Connor had called Roy when they’d left the JSA brownstone. Roy had answered immediately, safe and sound back on the other side of the country as if the whole thing had never happened—confused about how he’d gotten there and more than a little frantic, but in one piece. It had settled Jason’s mind, but not his heart. Even if he knew intellectually that Roy was fine, he wouldn’t trust it until he could see him again, hear his voice. Touch him.

But not yet.

“I’ll see you there,” Jason said. “There’s something I have to do first.”

*

Jason listened as he let himself in through the front door of Wayne Manor, but the only sound was the click of the dogs’ toenails on the hardwood as they came to investigate. He locked the door behind him, resetting the security system, then held his hands out for them to sniff. He wasn’t their favorite person—that was Damian, no question—but Ace actually wagged his tail, and even Titus permitted Jason a solid pat on his huge head.

“Good mutts,” Jason said. “Anyone home?”

The manor was quiet, but that didn’t mean much. It was the middle of the day, so Damian would be at school, but Bruce could be sleeping, or down in the Cave working. Same with any number of the others; no one lived here full time anymore but Bruce and Damian, but the Bats who were still in Bruce’s good graces were in and out of the house constantly.

Then again, Jason was still permitted a key and the security code. Maybe his own graces weren’t as bad as all that.

He made his way through the front hall, the front parlor, and down the long hallway to the kitchen. Titus abandoned him in the parlor, but Ace trotted along, probably hoping for a treat. Jason didn’t mind. He could use the moral support.

The kitchen had once been his favorite room in the house—and that was saying something, considering how much he’d loved the library and his very own bedroom, the one with the massive four-poster bed, the one he’d been allowed to decorate however he liked.

But the kitchen was Alfred’s domain.

Jason had done hours of homework there, kneeling on the bench seat of the breakfast nook and reading interesting snippets from his textbooks out loud as Alfred prepared dinner. He’d learned to bake standing on a chair, a spare apron that was way too long on him tied around his waist as he listened to Alfred’s instructions and breathed in his familiar bergamot smell. He’d learned he could be good at something besides violence and survival.

It looked the same, now, when he stepped into it: the same mile-long oven range, the same polished marble counter, the same afternoon sun streaming in through the windows. But it felt different. Stripped, like a room where all the paintings had been taken down but the shape of where they’d been was still visible on the walls.

He ran his hand over the butcher block in the center of the room, feeling the nick where he’d once dropped a heavy knife and chipped away a piece of the wood. He’d braced himself, but Alfred hadn’t been mad at all. Just relieved Jason hadn’t been hurt.

“I’m sorry,” he said into the empty air.

If Jason had made a different decision, Alfred could have been standing here right now, kneading bread and listening to Beethoven. The thought of it made Jason’s throat close up.

But if Jason had told him the price he’d paid to bring him back, Alfred would never have forgiven him.

Jason looked around the kitchen another minute. When he’d first decided to visit the manor, he’d planned on going out onto the grounds, where Alfred’s grave was. But that felt superfluous now. If Alfred was anywhere on this land, he was here.

Jason opened the pantry door.

When Tim walked in about an hour later, Jason had a Victoria sponge cake cooling on the counter and was whipping vanilla buttercream in the stand mixer. He’d brewed a pot of Earl Grey while the cake was in the oven, and the noise of the beaters and the scent of the bergamot made the kitchen feel less bare, less hollow.

“Jason?” Tim asked. He was wearing pajama pants and a Gray Ghost T-shirt and had pillow marks on his face. “What are you doing here?”

Jason gestured to the cake. “Three guesses, detective,” he said. “Tea?”

Tim frowned. “Uh…sure,” he said, and poured himself a cup. He drew a stool out from under the counter and perched on it, watching Jason with wary eyes, the cup in both hands.

Jason turned off the mixer and gave the cake an experimental prod. Not quite cool yet.

“Anything weird happen here over the past few days?” he asked finally.

Tim raised an eyebrow. “Define ‘weird.’”

Jason wasn’t sure how to describe it. But if Tim remembered not existing, he’d probably have put it in the weird category, so that was Jason’s answer right there.

“I just wrapped up a case. There was, uh, some reality bending,” he said.

Now Tim looked intrigued. “What do you mean?”

Jason sighed. It was his own fault for starting the conversation. “Well, for starters, I never died.”

“Oh,” Tim said. Jason could see him doing the math, which didn’t take long—Tim was good at math. “I don’t remember ever…not being your successor, if that’s what you mean. Or you, uh…” He winced. “Vacating the role differently?”

Jason rolled his eyes. “You don’t have to dance around it. I literally just said I died.”

“You know, not to praise Damian or anything, but he died too and he doesn’t bring it up nearly as much as you do,” Tim shot back. Jason appreciated it; Tim being snippy was a lot easier to deal with than Tim being nice. “So what happened to me, if you didn’t, oh, what was it…die?”

“You’re fucking hilarious,” Jason said. “And I don’t know. You just…weren’t here. I’m assuming you were off being a dweeb at some boarding school or other.” Tim would have been easy for Hank to remove from the Wayne family orbit; as long as Jason was around, Tim had no reason to get involved.

“Probably,” Tim said. “So why’d you undo it? I assume you undid it. Fabric of reality breaking apart or something?”

“You’re weirdly calm about that possibility,” Jason said.

Tim shrugged. “Well, it’s clearly fine now.”

Jason tested the cake again and found it cool enough to proceed. With an offset spatula, he started spreading a thick layer of strawberry jam on the bottom layer. Tim sat quietly, waiting for him to stop stalling.

“You weren’t the only person who got lost in the shuffle,” Jason said, putting down the first spatula and picking up a second to spread a layer of buttercream on top of the jam. “Maybe getting rid of you wasn’t worth losing all of them.”

Tim snorted. “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Don’t get used to it.” Jason paused, focusing on the cake and not Tim. “Besides, you were the only one of them who knew my birthday.”

Tim was silent as Jason finished spreading the frosting; as he carefully placed the second layer on top of the first and pressed it down gently. He spooned some powdered sugar into the sifter and tapped it over the cake, letting it float down like the first snowfall of winter on Wayne Manor’s perfectly manicured lawns.

“It looks just like one of Alfred’s,” Tim said as Jason set the sifter down.

“It was his recipe,” Jason said. “Want a slice?”

When they finished, Jason put the cake on one of the manor’s antique cake stands, the crystal one with the matching clear dome. Tim helped him load the dishwasher and then headed upstairs to take a shower. Jason patted each of the dogs on the head and made tracks for the airport.

He probably should have stuck around to see Bruce. He probably should have tried to talk to him, to make some progress out of the ugly cycle they were stuck in. But it had been a long, long day—a lifetime of a day—and Jason was tired.

It wasn’t much of a peace offering, but Alfred’s cake on Martha Wayne’s cake stand, with two slices cut out of it, would have to be enough.

The next move was up to Bruce.

*

It was after dark when he reached Roy’s house, and three hours later than that on Gotham time—not that Jason had any idea what time zone his body thought he was in after everything that had happened. It didn’t matter, anyway. It could have been high noon and he would still have been bleary-eyed and aching with exhaustion.

Part of him wanted to use it as an excuse to put this off even longer. To find a hotel room and sleep for twelve hours. To wake up braver.

But if Eddie and Grant could be brave, so could Jason.

The problem was, Jason didn’t know how much Roy remembered. Did he remember the kiss? Had it even actually happened in this reality? Or worse—had it only happened because of Hank’s manipulations? He’d been pulling strings, trying to give Jason everything he wanted. What if Roy’s heart had been one of those strings?

The sight of Roy’s car sitting in the driveway settled Jason’s nerves a little. So did Lian’s toys spilled across the lawn. At least they were here; they existed again. Despite the fact that Connor had spoken to Roy, a small part of Jason hadn’t been able to shake the fear that Hank hadn’t brought them back. After all, Hank had said he didn’t like Roy.

But Roy was here. Even if he didn’t actually want Jason back, he was in the world, warm and breathing. That would be enough.

Jason knocked on the door.

He heard footsteps approach, and a pause that was probably Roy looking through the peephole. Then the door was yanked open.

“Jason!” Roy flung his arms around Jason, squeezing him so hard Jason’s shoulders creaked. “You asshole, why didn’t you call me?”

Jason opened his mouth to speak and found he couldn’t. He pressed his face into the curve of Roy’s neck, breathing in his familiar scent, and fought the sudden threat of tears.

“Oh,” Roy said. “Hey, shhh. I got you. Come on, let’s get inside, okay?”

Roy shuffled them inside and locked the door. He pulled back and held Jason at arm’s length, pushing a loose curl out of his eyes as he studied him.

“Hank Hall, huh?” he said, finally. “I never liked that guy.”

Jason let out a noise somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “That’s what he said about you.”

Roy smiled, though his eyebrows were still knotted in concern. He was wearing a Doors shirt and his rattiest pair of jeans, the ones Jason hated. His hair was half pulled up into a messy bun, wild strands escaping from it to shine copper in the light from the kitchen. His chest rose and fell with each breath, and his palms were warm.

He was still touching Jason. Jason wanted to stand right here in this spot forever.

“Lian?” Jason asked.

“Asleep,” Roy said. “Hey…Connor told me what happened to Eddie. Are you okay?”

Jason nodded instinctively, pushing down the lump in his throat. Most of his history with Eddie had been—not fake, exactly, but occurring in another timeline. A different branch of hypertime. But it still felt real, and so did the hurt.

“Yeah,” he said. “Well, no, but I will be. But I…Roy, wait.”

It would be so easy to sink into the easy comfort Roy always offered, to let Roy take care of him and dodge the hard questions. But he couldn’t. He hadn’t walked away from Vanishing Point just to take the easy way now.

“How much do you remember?” he asked.

Roy shrugged. “I have no idea how I got home,” he said. “I was in Toni’s apartment in New York, and then suddenly I was here. I was this close to freaking out when Connor called me. Unlike some people I could name.”

Jason didn’t rise to the bait. “You…you remember Toni’s apartment?” he said.

“Big loft, impeccably decorated, probably obscenely expensive? Yeah, I remember.”

“I mean…” Jason inhaled, and made himself say it. “Do you remember kissing me?”

Roy raised his eyebrows. “Kind of hard to forget something like that.”

Jason pulled away from Roy’s touch and raked a hand through his curls.

“Look, Hank…he messed with a lot of stuff, even before he wrote you out of existence,” he said. “I mean, he gave me all this history with Grant and Toni and Kory, and I know intellectually I didn’t actually know any of them before this all started, but that doesn’t change the fact that I feel like they’re my closest friends. So you…I mean, if it was just Hank making you do that, trying to give me what he thought I wanted…it’s okay. I get it. But I need to know.”

Roy crossed his arms. “Why would Hank think you wanted me to kiss you?” he asked.

And Jason was tired, and sad, and suddenly sick to death of his own fear.

“Because I’ve wanted you to kiss me since I was fifteen years old, and apparently I’ve never been very good at hiding it,” he said simply.

The smile that spread over Roy’s face was like sunrise in the desert: slow and inexorable and inescapable, until the only thing left to do was stand there and be dazzled by it.

“Is that a fact?” he asked, hooking a hand into Jason’s shirt and tugging him close again. “Well, I have good news for you, Jaybird: I have never in my life done anything because Hank Hall wanted me to.” He brought his other hand up to cup Jason’s jaw. “And it sounds like I have a lot of making up for lost time to do.”

He leaned in, but Jason stopped him with a hand on his chest, earning himself a surprised look. But he needed to make himself clear.

“He tried to give me my perfect world, you know,” he said. “Hank. He undid my death, he gave me family, he gave me a team and all of these friends. But he fucked up, because that perfect world didn’t have you.”

And then Roy was kissing him, so fiercely Jason’s knees would have buckled if Roy hadn’t been holding him too tight to let him fall. Jason shut his eyes and held on for dear life.

“I love you, too,” Roy murmured against his mouth. “Welcome home.”

*

The doorbell rang early the next morning.

Jason had been kept up late last night, and he was sore in new and exciting ways, but he was also the only one in the house not on West Coast time, so he kissed Roy’s temple, smiled at his sleepy mumbles, and slipped out of bed. Lian’s door was half open and she was still sound asleep; Jason eased it the rest of the way shut, just in case the Girl Scouts or whoever it was at the door spoke loudly.

He looked through the peephole before unlocking the door. It wasn’t Girl Scouts.

Frowning, Jason opened the door to reveal Connor, Rose, Koryak, Toni, and Grant. All of them were in costume, with Grant back to his full face mask, none of which was particularly subtle on this quiet residential street. Well, Jason supposed Roy wasn’t precious about his secret identity anyway.

“What are you guys doing here? Did something happen?”

Rose smirked, looking him up and down, and Jason realized he was wearing nothing but a pair of Roy’s sweatpants and most likely some insane bedhead. “Looks like something happened here, actually. Finally got yourself some of that DILF action, huh, Todd?”

“I didn’t—”

“Yeah you did. Nice hickey,” Koryak interrupted, pointing to Jason’s neck.

Connor sighed and shook his head. “That’s my brother for you. He’s been back in existence less than twenty-four hours!”

Toni patted his arm soothingly. “We’ve all met Roy. No one is surprised by this.”

“Why are we blaming Roy?” Grant asked. “I’m assuming Jason’s been wanting to tap that for years in this timeline, too. He could have started it.”

Jason rolled his eyes and tried to ignore how hot his face was. Strangely, there was something comforting about the teasing. It felt familiar, even if intellectually he knew it hadn’t happened in his timeline.

It felt like friendship.

“Okay, ha ha, you are all fucking hilarious,” he said. “Why are you here?”

Rose’s expression suddenly went serious. “You died and came back,” she said. She pointed to the house. “He came back. My brother Joey came back. Connor’s dad. Kory’s dad. And like a hundred other people we know.”

Jason straightened up. “What are you saying?” he asked, though he had a feeling he knew.

Her one good eye met his. “I’m saying, how do you feel about going to Hell and getting our boy back?”

Jason looked at the others. Only he and Rose had any real history with Eddie, he knew that. But they all looked just as determined as he did.

He smiled. “Titans Red, together.”