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1
Suffice it to say that it wasn’t the most pleasant of nights, but they got the job done.
Jason’s still new to this whole Robin gig and he would love the chance to show Bruce and Dick what he can do. That being said, getting in between their fights is not his favorite pastime. He feels like one of them will throw a punch at some point, and Jason doesn’t doesn’t want to be collateral.
If fists did end up flying, Jason could always try to tie their legs together to make them trip and pay attention.
Surprisingly, all the bickering died down pretty quickly when their mark showed up.
“Should we go in, B?” he asks in a whisper.
Nightwing looks at Batman, who then looks at Jason, and suddenly they’re grappling off the ledge. The rest of the fight, he’s looking to either of them for cues, but they’re a well-oiled machine. They get the mark in no-time flat and it’s all over.
“Cover Batman’s six more in the future, Robin,” Nightwing tells him as they exit the Batmobile. “He’s too used to having Robin there, so it leaves him open.”
Jason’s chest heats up, feeling a little defensive that he didn’t do enough for Batman. But he doesn’t get the chance to do anything in response. He watches as Dick takes off the mask and heads off to the locker room.
His feet move forward without his say-so.
“If you weren’t too busy—” Jason starts to say, stepping into the locker room, but he stops short.
The water’s already running, drowning out all other sounds. Jason debates going to Dick now. He'd only be throwing out accusations, no matter how wronged he feels at this moment.
The decision is made for him when Dick winces at a particular spot on his upper back. When he takes his hand away, Jason gets a full view of a scar going down diagonally. He’s no expert, but it looks like someone went after Dick with a long sword.
The scar is typically expertly hidden by the Discowing suit its high collars. No one would even bother to look that way when Dick’s got his whole chest out after all. It makes him feel a bit uncomfortable now, seeing this thing Dick’s kept away from the world.
Jason decides to go upstairs to shower instead, leaving Dick to his privacy.
2
“Stay and get treated, all right?” Dick tells him, holding his shoulders down until Jason promises to stay put.
Yeah, the team took a few blows, but it’s nothing they can’t handle. Beast Boy and Raven were already leaving the medical suite to do something or another. Whatever it is that normal teens do, he supposes. Jason doesn’t know why he has to stay, though.
He glares daggers at Dick with his torn up suit and slight limp. Nightwing dodged so many blows only to end up with something digging into his leg, but he finished the fight regardless. The injury failed to put much of a dent in his ability to be a hero.
If he didn’t know better, Jason would’ve expected the injury to be mild. Dick could walk it off after some rest and recovery. But as Jason reluctantly sits on the medical bed next closest to Dick’s, he reconsiders.
“This is going to hurt, but I’ll be fast,” Wally informs, wincing all the while.
Jason gets a front row seat to the extraction, but he hardly sees anything else with Wally’s speed. Even the blood has been cleaned up. All that’s left to see is an expertly placed gaze and bondage.
“Are you okay?” he wants to ask Dick, who looks completely dazed at this point, but he keeps his mouth shut. He doesn’t know if that kind of thing would be warranted. Do people even ask that sort of thing normally to heroes?
“Rest now,” Wally instructs as he carefully leads Dick into laying down.
Wally makes sure that Dick is comfortable first, then turns around to face him. He has hands on his hips and raises his eyebrows in question or disbelief. Jason's not sure.
“Now onto you, Jay. You gotta be more careful.”
“What? This is nothing. I’ll be back on my feet in no time.”
“You broke your arm!”
Jason sighs as Wally starts sorting out said arm, too ashamed to look at it himself. He isn’t used to resetting broken bones yet and was too scared to do it himself out on the field. It’s just his luck, he supposes.
He looks straight ahead, distracting himself with the sight of Dick’s laid out form. There’s gonna be a nasty scar on that leg when it finally heals. It’s Dick, so he’s going to be back to parkouring and acrobat activities in no time. But Jason can’t help but wonder if it’s yet another thing Dick will want to hide now.
3
Jason sips on his kid-friendly drink at this grown-up charity gala, and he wants to be anywhere else.
Bruce had promised him that Jason could leave after three hours. It’s still a long time, but he bartered it down from five hours. He’ll whittle it down even more next time, mark his words. Bruce can stay and play the partying socialite persona he’s curated since his early twenties, and Jason can cozy up in his bedroom with a good book.
What he doesn’t understand, however, is why Dick is here.
They told him on separate occasions that it was for appearances. It’s to maintain the idea that they’re a close-knit family. Unfortunately, Jason is well-aware that they aren’t. Dick and Bruce still aren’t on the best of terms, but that’s their thing. Jason just wants to spend time with either of them, together or separate, so he’s pretty much winning here.
Jason shares a small, tired smile with a server he’s somewhat befriended—mutually hiding in the kitchen a handful of times would do that to you, he supposes.
He snaps his gaze towards an outraged cry, alert and ready to intervene despite his lack of colors at the moment.
What he finds is Dick Grayson sporting a well-tailored suit, which happens to have spilled red wine all over it. Jason winces, knowing first-hand how uncomfortable that feels. Of all the tricks to get out of these galas, he doesn’t foresee doing that again. But considering how much Dick didn’t actually want to come tonight, Jason figures his brother was a little desperate.
“I am so sorry!” Both Dick and a lady Jason doesn’t recognize say to one another. They're playing hot potato with apologies. Blame keeps getting passed around before Alfred swoops in and manages the ‘excitement.’
Jason finishes his drink absently, watching the whole thing play out.
Dick moves this way and that, pretending to inspect the damage to his suit and playing up the humor in it. His sleeves pull up during all the moving around, and Jason catches a glimpse of a scar on Dick’s inner wrist.
It’s not an old one, he’s pretty sure. He hadn’t seen it while they were in the Titans’ medical suite. Jason guesses that it’s a defensive wound, perhaps from a hand-to-hand combatant. He’ll have to ask Dick about the story later, if he’s willing. Unlike the scar on his back, this one feels like he had more control over the fight and might even have more pride in the victory—because of course Nightwing won it. Jason refuses to think differently.
Nonetheless, it must be pretty annoying to cover up all the time. It’s in a pretty visible area after all.
Jason has seen how tired his brother has been the whole gala, even if he’d tried so hard to cover it up. So, it’s entirely unsurprising when Dick ends up leaving soon thereafter.
+1
As soon as Jason lays eyes on the explosive, he rapidly searches for his brother amidst all the noise. There isn’t that much time to save any of the paper evidence. He’ll have to rely on his helmet’s recording. So, he runs out of the room and heads straight for the last place Nightwing checked in from, all while yelling out his name.
He’ll be damned if he lets his brother die in one of these places; in the same way he did. Even if his cause of death was somewhere vaguely between blood loss and smoke inhalation.
“What’s going on?” Nightwing looks at him worriedly. He's holding a manila folder that’s probably important, but that doesn’t matter. Not when his brother's life is on the line.
“Didn’t you hear me? Explosive. Let’s go!”
“What? You did not say anything about an explosive!”
Jason doesn’t try to explain any further, unsure how much time has passed since he found the explosive now. He just reaches out to grab Nightwing by the collar and drags him along. It’s inelegant as most running away scenarios often are, but they keep running even farther to get out of the blast radius.
The explosion finally hits, and it’s both a spike of adrenaline and a relief. They made it.
They get bodily thrown against the asphalt and it takes a while for the ringing in his ears to stop. When they do, he flips himself over onto his back and checks for his brother’s whereabouts.
Thankfully, he hears Dick’s rapid breathing before he sees him. He won’t say it aloud, but it’s a comfort.
“Hood,” Dick calls out. It doesn’t feel like it’s the first time he’s called for Jason. “Hood.”
Jason hadn’t realized that he closed his eyes, snapping them open in an instant. He better not have a concussion.
“What is it?” he asks groggily.
“What happened to your—”
When Dick doesn’t continue the question, Jason follows his brother’s line of sight—that being his collar or upper body area. He pulls at his shirt a little to figure out what exactly. He only realizes at the last second that his shirt is singed in odd places. Dick can see a part of his autopsy scar.
Jason looks at Dick momentarily, wondering what’s going on in the guy’s head. Then he asks, “Did you end up getting a scar on your leg?”
Dick furrows his brows in confusion for a moment, but recognition soon follows. Jason doesn’t know what to expect, but it’s certainly not how Dick’s face softens. “Yeah, I did.”
Maybe it was the breathy way Dick said it, like he was confessing to something—and he might be. Every single time he caught a glimpse of the golden boy’s scars, they were hidden away. This is the first time he’d purposefully told Jason about them.
“It’s my autopsy scar,” Jason admits, and it’s as if a weight has been lifted. He’d never actually told anyone, and anyone who knows about it had already seen it for themselves. “I woke up with it.”
He watches as Dick’s eyes widen at the information. His mouth is agape and chest is tense with the desire to ask further questions. Jason thinks that he’ll answer them. It’s been years since he had his brother, truly had him. Jason has missed Dick something fierce.
So, he gets up—pulls Dick up next, and he’s going to take them to Batburger and they can talk about it. Or something else. Or nothing at all.
Jason catches the small smile on Dick’s face as he hands his brother his Batburger order, and he starts to talk.