Chapter Text
In an ideal world, Dick would have just driven Jason out of Gotham. Unfortunately, all of the roads in the city were still very much fucked. This meant that they were going with the less ideal option of Donna carrying them both. He’d tried explaining what would happen to Jason a couple of times, but he had no idea how much he understood about what happening. He watched him chew his sleeve and okay, maybe telling him that they’d be hurtling through the sky at high speed was a little bit intimidating for the teen. But it was pretty accurate. Besides, Donna would hold Jason in a harness, he was going to be fine. Dick was the one who’d be dangling from her free hand, running on mutual trust that neither of them would let go. He was honestly looking forwards to that part.
He paced back and forth, flicking his fingers and trying not to think about how fucking anxious he was. He was about to introduce his team to the kid who was probably his dead should-have-been-brother. He was about to find out if Jason really had done the impossible and come back to life. There was no other rational explanation for it at this point, aside from Jason being a clone with all of his old memories at which point, the fact he was a clone didn’t matter. He was still Jason. Just clone Jason.
Argent and Damage would probably end up learning his secret ID with Jason staying at the Tower and he sort of maybe trusted them but they were Jason’s age. They were effectively babies and okay, he trusted Tim who was a couple of years younger, and Lian knew despite the fact she was literally three years old. But Lian was being brought up with the idea that everyone had two names and Tim was Tim, hiding a secret identity from him was pointless in the first place. And oh god, what if someone was a prick to Jason? He’d fire them if it was bad enough. Dick did not need ableist twats on his team. But that would be after the fact. And what about Lian’s babysitter? Sure, he couldn’t find anything worrying about her but he still didn’t… Roy was a lot more trusting person than him and maybe Roy was sane and healthy to be more trusting and Dick had just managed to catch Bruce’s paranoia but that didn’t change the fact that he did not want Jason to be left unsupervised with anyone that wasn’t him, Roy, Donna, Kori, Wally, Garth or Vic, Gar if needed. But what if there was an emergency and they were all required on the scene and Jason needed to be left alone. They could put him in a safe room with some snacks and a drink but what if they were gone a while and even if they weren’t, that would be stressful for him.
“Dick, sit down,” Bruce said just as Donna said she was a second away on the comms. He escaped strained family breakfast.
He stepped out onto the balcony to watch Donna land among the deck chairs. “Sorry about the early wake up,” he told her, forcing a smile.
“I’ve done far worse for you,” Donna reassured him, stepping over for a hug and to kiss his cheek. He kissed hers back. “How are you feeling honey?” She asked as she pulled away, hands resting on his arms a moment. He could tell she was feeling the way the Nightwing suit hung slightly loose on him, they’d all lost weight to the No Man’s Land.
“I’m-”
“If you say you’re okay, I’m throwing you off this building until you say otherwise,” she threatened lightly.
Dick chuckled. “I’m about as okay as I can be after everything that’s happened.” He looked at the horizon, they had a bit of time to talk. “So, the person we’re taking back with us is probably Jason Todd and okay, saying that aloud, I know it sounds like I’ve lost it and by all laws of probability I probably have but every test we’ve been able to do has either said he’s Jason or been inconclusive. And sure that could just be the fact that all of us have been taking an absolute mental and physical beating from the No Man’s Land, but his grave was filled with old blood and he got all excited when I talked about the Tower and-”
“Deep breaths,” Donna caught him from the pacing he didn’t notice he’d started again. “Whatever happens, we’ll work it out.” She dragged him to sit down sideways on one of the deck chairs, sitting down next to her.
“I- if he is Jason, I’m going to have to quit my job and move back to Gotham.” He saw Donna’s confused look. “He has a severe brain injury, potentially multiple brain injuries, as well as probable joint damage and whatever else we just haven’t been able to find yet. He’s probably going to need full time care for the rest of his life. I can’t leave Bruce and Alfred to do that alone, it wouldn’t be fair on him either. Imagine having to have Batman dress you for the rest of eternity.”
Donna rested a hand on his shoulder, “You know that you’ll have support in whatever decision you make.”
Dick smiled slightly. He had no idea what he’d do without his friends. “Thank you.” He knocked his head into her shoulder.
They remained like that for a moment, just until he felt a little bit calmer. “So, shall we go get Jay?” Dick asked.
“Of course,” they helped each other stand before heading into the penthouse.
Jason was masked up already when Dick and Donna came into the main room. He glanced at Dick then stared at Donna, looking slightly confused before his face absolutely lit up. A fair reaction to the wonderful Troia in Dick’s, somewhat biased, opinion. He then started to look a little nervous, leaning into Bruce for reassurance.
“It’s so good to see you again, Jason,” Donna said, looking slightly shell-shocked, she’d definitely thought Dick had lost it until she saw Jay.
Jason didn’t reply, so Dick prompted, “Do you remember Donna?”
Jason nodded. “Cool.”
That was a new word, “Yeah, Donna’s cool,” Dick smiled. “How do you feel about flying with her to Titans Tower?”
Jason looked utterly delighted at that idea which meant they were heading off.
Alfred handed Dick a bag he’d packed with a couple of things Jason seemed particularly attached to as well as cookies for everyone at the Tower because Alfred was a godsend. That meant they were ready to go.
Aside from the fact Bruce was starting to hold Jason closer to himself protectively.
“We should probably head out before the sun starts to rise,” Dick commended, hoping that reminding Bruce of the security risk of them leaving in full daylight would make it easier for him to let Jason go. “If you’re ready Jay?”
Jason nodded, then looked at Bruce, clearly picking up on the fact he was stressed. He then cuddled into him, headbutting him until Bruce kissed his forehead, Donna biting back a coo.
“Keep him safe,” Bruce said to Dick and Dick would do everything he could to make sure nothing horrible happened to Jason again. “And you keep him safe,” Bruce added to Jason. Dick wasn’t really sure what Jason was going to protect him against but it was nice that Bruce cared he guessed.
Jason grinned anyway, looking immensely proud of himself about something.
Yeah, he definitely still had that vigilante urge to save the world in him. Despite that, Dick doubted either of them would be fighting Darkseid anytime soon. “We’ll be fine,” he chuckled lightly.
Dick had a feeling that he was being a little overprotective putting Jason in as close to full kit as he possibly could. However the ear pieces would protect his ears against the noise from the wind, and meant he could talk to them on the comms and the vitals monitor, okay, there was no plan for Jason to get into any situation where a vitals monitor would be necessary but getting pulse, O2, BP and location sounded good right now. Jason seemed to remember exactly what the ear plugs were for, letting Dick put them in place and adjust noise sensitivity and comm frequency. “Testing, testing,” he said in his own comm.
Jason laughed a little nervously.
“Are those okay?” Dick checked.
Jason nodded then spun around for reasons Dick didn’t know but he seemed happy.
“Can we get this watch on you?” Dick asked, holding out the disguised vitals monitor. Most of their monitors were built into their suits, this was mostly for covert operations, even came with a built-in alert button.
Jason held out his arm and Dick quickly rolled up his sleeve to put it in place.
“Perfect,” he said. “Ready to go to Titans Tower?” he asked.
Jason nodded.
Jason was absolutely delighted once they took off. Squealing and grinning and testing the force of the air against his hands. Dick glanced up at Donna and found she was grinning too. Most of the time if she was carrying someone at speed, it was either Dick or Roy who had been thoroughly desensitised to the experience, or a panicked civilian who was going through enough horrors without being hurtled through the sky at the speed of the average race car. Someone genuinely just enjoying the experience was definitely a change for her.
Donna rolled onto her back for a moment, letting Jason see the stars before they were in Manhattan. Dick smiled when he heard Jason mutter a quiet, “Woah.”
By the time they got to New York, Jason had fallen asleep in what could only be described as an otter hold. Dick felt a little guilty about the landing waking him up, but he looked so delighted when he realised they were at the Tower. “Glad to be back?” he asked, thinking about how long it had been since Jason was last here.
Jason nodded and Dick freed him from Donna so he could walk in of his own volition. It had been half a year since Dick was back here himself and he was maybe a little bit emotional over it after everything.
In a few hours from now, they’d have confirmation as to who Jason was. Dick could do a retinal scan and get a DNA sequence, and tomorrow they could actually do a full medical scan. Soon Dick Grayson’s little foster brother would be alive and well in the eyes of the world too, hopefully. Dick didn’t know who he was going to have to beat shit out of if this was all some sort of trick. “Let’s get inside,” he said, pushing all of those thoughts aside.
The Tower security system matched Jason with himself and that was an excellent sign. Jason whinged, chewing at his hoodie sleeve again. “What’s up?” Dick asked.
Jason glanced up a moment and then at the stairs going down.
“Yeah, the Tower is a hologram, it’s really an underground bunker. At least this time,” Dick explained.
Jason whimpered, looking even more distressed, a little bit of frustration starting to build up in his posture too.
“It’s okay,” Dick told him. “It’s a new Tower, but it’s still the Tower. Roy and Wally are still going to be here and I’m not going anywhere. It’s going to be okay.”
Jason glowered at him and then clung to Donna. Dick guessed he was in the shit for forgetting to tell him that they’d rebuilt.
Dick felt a little bit nervous as they got down to the main living space. He knew that he didn’t exactly look good, better than he had a few days ago, but it was still obvious that he’d had a rough few months. And that, combined with the whole Jason situation and the quitting his job to go back to Gotham, meant he was probably going to get quite a few concerned questions from his friends.
The things Dick was worried about quickly shifted however as Jason decided to rush over to Roy, not exactly giving Dick the time to broach the concept of him being back from the dead gently. “Hi,” Roy said to the beaming teenager in front of him, giving Dick a definitely concerned look.
“So, No Man’s Land was weirder than I expected,” Dick started. He noted the ‘not at all’ conspicuous absence of Jesse, Damage and Argent. Everyone had expected him to be in a bad enough state to need to drop the mask. “Jason, Roy might need some space a moment.”
Jason looked anxious too now, wandering over to Donna to be picked up and comforted.
“Jason, do you want to come help make breakfast?” Donna asked.
Jason gave everyone another concerned look then nodded. Dick gestured for Donna to take him out of the room.
When the door clicked shut behind the pair, Roy was the first to speak, “What the fuck, Dick?”
“Seriously,” Vic agreed.
“To cut a long story short, Jason is somehow back from the dead, probably. I’m going to do a genome sequence today to make sure but he knows who everyone is, his retinal scans match and his grave’s empty.”
“Humans definitely never come back, right?” Kori asked.
“Dick, bud, I don’t want to question your mental health but you’ve been through a lot lately…” Wally started.
“I know, it seems completely irrational,” Dick said. “I accused Bruce of having snapped when I first saw Jay too. But his injuries match the ones Jason would have, he started calling Bruce Dad unprompted. He has definite opinions on who he interacts with which are in line with Jason’s. He fights like he’s had training from me and Bruce. He knows things that really only someone who’s a part of the hero community would know. Hell, he made a point of trying to give the new Robin his mask. The only logical explanation is that he’s Jason.”
“Yeah, aside from the fact Jason’s dead,” Roy commented.
“I’m going to do a genome test this afternoon. We’ll find out from that,” Dick replied.
“I want him under full time supervision until you’re certain,” Roy said seriously, protective father mode in full swing.
“We’re in full agreement there,” Dick said. “Even if he is Jason, he’s- we don’t know the extent of the brain injuries he has yet, but he’s got a lot of support needs at the moment. I don’t want him left alone or left with anyone who isn’t in this room or Donna.”
“What can we do to support him?” Kori asked.
“You’re going to have to play detective a bit on what he’s trying to communicate. Some of it’s pretty easy to make sense of. If he’s whimpering or whinging, he’s probably upset or scared, if he’s groaning or shouting angrily, he’s angry. If he’s laughing or squealing and bouncing up and down, he’s definitely happy. Keep sentences shorter and wait a while to see if he’s processing them. Don’t get frustrated if he doesn’t reply or his reply doesn’t make much sense. Also, he probably won’t say please or thank you, he sometimes signs thank you but manners really aren’t the priority at the moment. He will probably put random objects in his mouth. Keep an eye on what he’s holding and swap it with something else if it’s not safe to be chewed on, also just generally don’t let him be around plug sockets or hot stoves. No pool if it’s just one of you and him, I’m not sure he’d be able to help if you start struggling. He might need help with food sometimes, particularly anything that requires a lot of coordination to eat. If it requires cutlery, you’re going to have to feed him. Let me deal with bathroom stuff, give him some dignity and privacy. Beyond that, he’s a seventeen-year-old boy who’s been through hell, treat him like his age as much as is safe and just don’t be a prick to him.”
After that Dick ended up having to give a few reassurances. Jason would only be staying a few days, a couple of weeks at most. Just until they could get him legally resurrected. Yes, there would be some shenanigans involved in getting him legally resurrected. If any of them were willing to take the credit of breaking up a human trafficking ring and ‘finding’ Jason, then he would be eternally grateful. Dick wasn’t going to be taking him in long term, but he was moving back to Gotham to be nearer to him. Yes, he had thought this through. Bludhaven would cope better without a vigilante than Gotham would and he really didn’t know if Bruce would be able to manage the same number of hours. Yes, he would let them know if Bruce started being a twat again.
When all of that was established he walked back into the kitchen, heard Rolling Stones then saw Jason looking for his bottle of rolling stones and left the kitchen again in search of it. He hoped to God Alfred had packed it. If not, it wouldn’t be that hard to make a new one.
The bottle of rocks had been packed but it was only now that Dick processed how little else Alfred had packed. They’d needed to pack light and a lack of washing machines and materials for clothing repairs paired with a generally more hazardous environment, meant that most of their clothes were more than a bit ragged. He’d really need to take Jason clothes shopping soon. Maybe today. He grabbed the bottle and headed back into the kitchen. Donna was making pancakes and he was so looking forwards to that.
Jason was immediately delighted by the bottle, shaking it up and down. Dick watched the pebbles bounce too. “Hey that one just bounced off the cap,” he observed.
Jason’s smile broadened a little, gaze skimming Dick’s face for a moment.
“Jason, do you like syrup on your pancakes?” Donna asked.
“Jay?” Dick tried. He then looked to the extractor fan and the whirring fridge and the fact that their voices echoed just slightly against the tiles in the kitchen and this was also a new environment for Jason and neither of them had actually slept yet today. “Put the syrup on the side,” Dick said, grabbing a small bowl for it. “All of this cutlery and crockery was bought new with the new base, right?” he double checked.
Donna nodded.
“Okay, cool,” Dick patted down his suit for a sample bag and miraculously found one. Hopefully they could do a DNA sequence as stress-free as possible.
Everyone gradually trailed in for pancakes. Argent and Damage introducing their selves to Jason. Lian waved at him, Jason not giving any external indication that he’d noticed or cared beyond a quick glance. Jason took a little while to warm up to new people, so this wasn’t that unexpected. “Uncle Nightwing,” Lian said, and Dick got ready for a Jason question, “Why do you look tired?” she asked instead.
Dick guessed he looked worse than he thought. “I haven’t slept in about thirty-six hours, kiddo,” he explained, the thought of sleep prompting a yawn.
“Are you… um… noc-ernal?” Lian asked. “Like an owl?”
“More cathemeral than anything else,” Dick tried to explain.
“What does that mean?”
“I sleep when I can,” Dick said. “Like cats do.”
“Does that mean you don’t have a bedtime?” Lian asked.
Dick shook his head then startled when Jason hit the table, looking deeply annoyed that he wasn’t being fed.
“Sorry Jay,” Dick really hadn’t meant to just torment him with pancakes. “Yeah, let’s help you with second breakfast.”
The moment he was done helping Jason eat, Dick rushed the fork he’d been using for Jay to the lab before it could get contaminated with anything else. He put it in a sample bag before throwing himself under the decontamination shower for a moment. Not only did it clean any contaminants off his suit, meaning he could use it as PPE and not have to bother with the latex gloves or the goggles that drove him slightly ballistic, the cold water actually woke him up a little. Wally came in then, “Why are you showering in the lab, in your full suit?” he asked.
“Decontamination,” Dick told him, glancing at his outfit. “If you’re going to stay in here while I work, and especially if you want to help, either suit up or put on a labcoat, gloves and goggles.”
“Yes, Doctor Grayson,” Wally rolled his eyes, taking Dick’s labcoat and goggles before pulling some gloves out of the box. “What are you doing?”
“A couple of genetic tests,” Dick answered, picking up the sample bag. “To confirm that Jay is actually Jason.” He set it down at his bench and then grabbed a few reagents to lyse the cells and precipitate the DNA.
Mercifully, there was actually enough DNA from the fork that Dick could do a couple of tests even if there was a reasonable chance that he’d also get the genomes of some of the pancake ingredients as a side product. Wally didn’t so much help as just look over as Dick eluted DNA and put it into the sequencer. “It will be a few hours before we get confirmation that Jay’s genome matches Jason’s,” he said, although the machine was comparing the two as it sequenced and the first few thousand base pairs were a perfect match.
He got another sample ready to prepare to test methylation as he waited, mixing the sample with sodium bisulphite and putting them in his field genome sequencer.
“What’s the difference between the two tests?” Wally asked.
Dick had a feeling Wally already knew all of this but was happy to ramble anyway. “The big genome sequencer is checking that he is in fact him. The small genome sequencer is checking how much of his DNA is methylated, from which I can work out how old he is. Effectively, it means I can get a good guess on whether he’s a clone or not, and if he’s not a clone, how long he was dead for before he came back to life, assuming that methylation stops during death,” Dick explained. “They should both be done in about four hours or so.” He checked the time, it was nine am now, they could get the results by one pm, be out of the Tower for two, get Jason some very much needed supplies after that and then hopefully get pizza from pizza fish at about seven ish. That meant that he could grab four hours sleep while the tests ran.
“Cool,” Wally said, looking slightly more confused than anything. “Now get some rest.”
He went to his room to find Garth and Donna watching Jason sleep in his bed. “He started to doze off after breakfast,” Garth said, “He looked exhausted.”
“Yeah, he doesn’t sleep great at the best of times and then none of us went to sleep this morning so he wanted to stay up too,” Dick explained. He then looked at the space on the bed next to Jason and decided that he was going to take it. “On Wally’s orders,” although he guessed it was probably a mutual agreement between all of them, “I’m also going to get some rest. If my alarm doesn’t wake me up when the results come in, please do. I need to take him shopping after this.”
“Sure,” Garth smiled slightly.
“Thanks,” Dick sat down on the bed as gently as possible to avoid waking up Jason. “Are you sitting guard?” he asked with a bemused smile at the pair.
“Just in case,” Donna said.
Dick guessed that if this wasn’t Jason, there was a risk of him getting killed in his sleep. And that, for reasons primarily about Jason liking the clicking of the igniter on the gas stove, he’d never been left with just a sleeping person in the room with him. “And you call me paranoid,” he joked softly.