Work Text:
He couldn’t remember a time when Gotham wasn’t there. Pavement beneath his sneakers, nudging at his shoulder, smirking in the corner of his eye when he met someone new. Some days, he thought it was a hallucination, and didn’t dare mention it. Some nights, he knew the city was a hell of a lot older than he was, and she’d always been around in some form or other, long before his brain cells formed.
When he was 5, he got lost in the subway, separated from his mom at the Sprang River station. He’d started to panic, a sea of bodies towering around him, but the ground beneath his feet almost seemed to hum. He somehow knew just where to put his feet, ducking and tunneling through the crowd. Suddenly he was blocked by his mom’s coat, and she scooped him up with a cry of relief. The hum faded, and he burrowed his face into her shoulder, hugging until his arms ached.
At 8, he’d felt a nudging in his brain, like someone whispering in his ear, and he followed it to the library. He got lost on purpose this time, wandering through the stacks in awe. When he left that day, it was with a small pile of books squirreled into his backpack. Later, he even got Catherine to come in and sign him up for a library card, so he didn’t have to sneak in and out.
The winter he was 11, Catherine died, and Gotham was still his home, but there was no steady roof over his head for a while. Somehow he always managed to find just enough food, knew just where to pick up an odd job or two, and he listened to the little tug that told him “don’t go near that bitch, but he’s got a little extra and a soft heart.” There was no more school, but he stayed alive and he kept all his limbs, and made it to spring. He even found a tire iron, tossed aside in an alley. Jason washed the blood off and it was good as new, a door to so many possibilities.
When he could, he’d leave a penny, flipping it over his shoulder. He never looked back to see how it landed, and probably a few filtered their way down into storm drains and sewers, but he kept giving them. It felt right, a scrap of adulterated copper for this city of blood and smoke and piss.
It tapped him on the shoulder one night, a promise of some unnamed good, and he followed it into an alley. Jason stared, swinging the tire iron in one hand, wondering if he dared. He’d have to be an idiot to try jacking the Batmobile’s tires, right? But Batman was nowhere in sight, and that tugging had never led him wrong when he listened, and he could make a killing off those whitewalls. When a gauntleted hand landed on his shoulder, his first thought was betrayal. She’d led him right into a trap, and he was going to pay for it, and he was a fucking idiot-
But a couple months later, perched on a stool in the nicest kitchen he’d ever seen, dunking a warm chocolate chip cookie into a glass of milk, he decided that nudge had been as right as ever. She’d promised food, warmth, safety. Maybe it looked a million miles away from anything he could have dreamed of, but that’s exactly what this seemed to be.
He started to listen again, and he heard her, even out here in Bristol. When he found the clock, he hesitated, scared he might learn this had all been a beautiful lie. But he felt the hum. Knew just what time to set the hands to. The hum seemed to rise as the clock opened, Gotham singing a welcome as he crept down the stairs.
When he learned to fly, he would swear he heard her laughing and whooping right alongside him. When he fought, he sometimes caught a cry of warning, just in time to dodge. When Batman turned on him, he felt her anger buzzing through the pavement and brick, echoing his own.
Dick asked him once, about the pennies. Things had just started to get a little better, and Jason hesitated, but decided on honesty. He shrugged, swinging his feet over the edge of the rooftop. “Guess it’s a good luck thing. Give the city something so she’ll give something back.”
Dick, who had tucked coins in his parents’ caskets, nodded his understanding. “She looks after us in her own way.”
“Yeah.” Jason tugged at his sleeve. “Guess so.”
Then he was in Ethiopia, and he couldn’t feel her. No matter how he concentrated or begged, no matter how many pennies he tossed, there was just an empty unfamiliarity. Only the quick tick of numbers, and flames, and a darkness that wasn’t hers, wasn’t home. His mom wasn’t there.
~
Wake up, Little Bird, you’ve slept too long.
And he was in a box, and his hands burned, and the dirt was everywhere, and he didn’t know where here was but the air, the sky, the rain poured down, washing the dirt from his skin
And she was there, and he didn’t know who she was and he couldn’t see her, but there were lights in the distance and he knew that was her and he tasted metal and he had to go home
She cradled him, and sometime he caught a glimpse of raven-black hair, bruise-blue eyes, and a smile, disappearing into a safe corner where he could sleep for a while, pausing by a bag that had a little trail mix left in it She always seemed to want more, but he didn’t know what, and sometimes he saw her looking longingly up at the sky, and sometimes he could almost remember flying
Then another dark-haired woman found him, and the woman with the bruise-blue eyes looked like she might cry, but she nodded when Jason looked her way, and then she was gone and the whole world went green green green green
~
“What is Gotham like?”
Jason turned his head slowly, studying the boy at his side. Black hair, green eyes, sitting so stiffly as he tried not to show how important this was. Jason’s tongue had felt heavy, so heavy, since he was dragged gasping from the Pit, but he took a deep breath and opened his mouth.
“She is…dark. Rains a lot. Smells like blood and piss and smoke, and she’s got more gargoyles than any city needs, and a serious bat problem.”
Damian frowned. “Why does Father choose to inhabit such a city?”
“Because it’s home, and it’s worth fighting for.” Jason leaned back against the garden wall. “Gotham is all those things, but she’s also fierce and loyal and stubborn and beautiful, and once you love her, there’s no stopping.”
“You speak of the city as if it were a human being.”
“Human, no. Living, though? Gotham’s as alive as you or- well, maybe more alive than me.”
“Do you and father…love Gotham?”
Jason closed his eyes and remembered flying over dark rooftops. Usually, when he thought of his time as Robin, there was only green and rage and the poison of betrayal. But this memory was Gotham, and his lungs aching from giddy laughter, and how had he almost forgotten this joy? He’d forgotten that Batman had smiled that night, resting a hand on a pillar, and Jason had known exactly what he was thinking.
“Yeah. Yeah, we do.”
And he was tired of missing her.
He made grand plans with Talia, no room for mistakes as long as he kept his head on somewhat straight. He had backup, and resources, and a 24-step plan that would kick off the second he deplaned. He had managed to hug Damian goodbye with minimal stabbing involved, and threatened to drag the kid to Gotham with him if he wouldn’t keep in touch. Batman was going to pay for letting him die and then dragging another kid into this fucked-up life.
And then his boots hit tarmac and she was singing .
She was wrapped around him like the fog, and his brain was full of birds and bricks and dirty water that rolled like a dream, and it was like a part of his heart had been stitched back in place.
Little Bird, my Little Bird, you’re home, you’re safe, you’ve come back to me, my bird.
How had he ever stayed away? How had he left all this to Batman , and thought he might be content in Nanda Parbat?
He tossed a penny over his shoulder as he left the airport.
It was easier than ever to hear her, to see her. Maybe dying had done it, maybe it was his training with the All-Caste. He would see her perched on the edge of a pool table or napping beneath a bridge, hear her snicker at a visiting businessman getting rolled on the edge of the Diamond District. He heard her wailing the night he confronted Bruce, and maybe, if he was being honest with himself, it drove the green away just enough that the knife stayed shallow.
Jason tried not to think about that too much. If she didn’t approve of The Plan, then maybe there was more to this than he was seeing, and sometimes he found himself thinking about that memory Damian had brought up, and that day in Alfred’s kitchen, and plans he hadn’t understood until they’d played out. But that would mean he’d fucked up, and Talia had lied, and people were dead, a lot of people, and
Sometimes she leaned her head on his shoulder, and the green almost disappeared, drowned in night rain and smoke, and he would dig a penny out of his pocket, holding it tight in his fist. He could feel her watching as he filled a duffel bag and shot his way through the ranks of Crime Alley’s worst. He wasn’t entirely sure she approved, but she wasn’t telling him no.
~
Step 18, and the zeta tube was right where it had been. His codes were still in the system, because who would bother removing a dead kid’s security? He could feel the Pit rising, and he let it, embracing the rage that tinted everything, and he absolutely was not noticing another anger, black and blue beneath his feet. He was not feeling a hand against his chest, trying to push him away from the phone booth. He was not hearing a scream, the righteous fury of a matriarch, ordering him to stand the fuck down, Little Bird.
He stumbled out of the zeta tube, and he was not shaken. He had a job to do, a plan to complete, and Batman needed to know what he had opened this kid up to, he had to know that Robin was done, he needed to know how much he had failed because Robin had died.
Jason had died .
And his dad hadn’t been there.
Even Gotham hadn’t been there, so he was not going to reach for the penny in his pocket.
It was cold between his fingers, despite being carried at his hip for weeks. Cold enough to make the green fade a little. The Replacement was slumped at the kitchen table, yawning into a cup of coffee, slowly paging through a report. His hair was black, and his eyes were blue as bruises, and fuck .
He was hers.
They were hers.
Even across the distance she was screaming, begging for her littlest bird, for history not to repeat itself.
Tim looked up. “Red Hood?”
Jason dropped the penny on the table and left.