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Dick blinks to awareness, the red from the cut at his hairline bleeding into his vision. It left Jason’s face with a rouged tint, even after he removed the helmet. Jason.
Jason?
“I thought you died.”
“I-” Jason pauses at that. At the uncertainty, the hopefulness trapped in that statement. He grasps at it, tries to hold onto some of that hope for himself, “I thought so, too.”
“We had to wait, to give you a proper funeral, you know. ‘Would have been too suspicious for you and Robin to go too close together. Were you around then? Did you watch it happen? Watch me lose my brother twice?”
“I didn’t… no. I wasn’t alive then,” Dick’s face contorts at that, and Jason isn’t present enough to discern whether it’s in fear or confusion, “I came back when I could.”
“This is real, right? You’re here… I’m not dying, am I?”
“No, Dick, you’re not going to die. I’m here.”
Dick lowers his gaze, eyes falling on the gloved hands of the Red Hood as they frantically lift him to an upright position, check for injuries, apply pressure to various gashes and scrapes.
“Hey, man. I need you to keep talking, alright? C’mon.”
Dick looks back at him wordlessly. He thinks back to the first time they’d celebrated Jason’s birthday without him. About the photos they set up around the living room. The yellow candles they had lit. How many birthdays had Jason spent away from them? If he hadn’t been alive for either funeral, he would have missed that first birthday. Sixteen . He looked far older–
“Dick, talk to me. How many fingers am I holding up?”
Dick ignores the question, or maybe he just doesn't process it. “How old are you?”
This time, Jason doesn’t respond, instead reaching up to the side of Dick’s face and pulling away.
He was missing something. What did he do? His earpiece. Jason had taken his earpiece, and was lifting it to speak.
“Nightwing down, Park Row and 18th. Nightwing down. Definitely concussed and not coherent. We’re on the ground. In need of immediate transport. Park Row and 18th.”
Dick repeats his question over the muted chattering from the earpiece in Jason’s hand.
“How old are you?”
His younger brother looks down, “nineteen, twenty-one: it doesn’t matter. Why?”
Jason is uncomfortable. This wasn’t the plan. This wasn’t what he was prepared for. For the past half a decade, Jason has entered every peaceful conversation with the intent of ending it as quickly as possible. If he wanted someone to talk, to give him information, he resorted to… other methods. When it came to his family, he had one goal: to avoid detection. He can’t risk them seeing him and not seeing Jason Todd. This wasn’t the plan. Drawing out a conversation like this, talking just for the sake of talking felt distinctly alien. Wrong in a way that refuses to settle in your gut. Wrong in a way he knew he couldn't take back. This wasn't the plan.
He didn’t account for a group of brandless goons setting off an EMP to commit a simple robbery. He didn’t account for that EMP frying his helmet, disabling the helicopter that knocked Dick to the street and crashed a block away. He didn’t account for his older brother bleeding out in an alley with nobody there to save him but himself, the man who swore up and down he would never intervene. Nightwing himself had been out of range of the EMP, just not of the careening metal body that ripped him out of the sky. His earpiece- Batman's earpiece- was intact. So here he is, relying on the man that failed him to prevent him from losing another son. Dick would not die today.
“Birthdays.”
“What?”
“It matters for your birthdays. We have to make up for– we have some making up to do,” Dick slurs.
Jason smiles sadly, “Yeah, we’ll have a big ol’ party.”
The glow of headlights blooms from around a corner and Jason jumps to his feet, dropping the earpiece into Dick’s lap.
“Goodbye, Dick Grayson.”
And he’s gone again.
Later, there would be questions. Hours spent scrubbing through traffic cams, security footage, tracking license plates, and testing every bloodstain in that god forsaken alley.
Right now, all they know is that, inexplicably, both sons are alive.