Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Somewhere deep and forgotten in the reaches of the Swiss Alps, the snarling Head of the Demon, the dreaded Ra’s al Ghul, is writing a letter.

It is not the first letter he has written tonight, but he is fast approaching the end of the matter, and he knows with certainty that this letter will be the last. It will join the stack of fine stationery he has created on his desk, and it will be found in the morning, after the alarms have sounded, after his security detail has searched the compound, after he has disappeared in earnest. It is all arranged. The letters are the last piece of the jigsaw image, and they fit neatly into the hole that Ra’s perpetual life will leave.

Talia is prepared for her role as the grieving heir apparent, but even so, hers is the letter at the bottom of the stack, the ink now fully dried. There is a letter to young Damian Wayne, so that he will understand when he is older, when the time comes. There is a letter to the boy’s father, Bruce, who Ra’s was never able to sway– he does not trouble himself to attempt the feat now. The time for it is long since past, the letter likewise already finely sealed. Ra’s could not take the sentiment back now if he tried.

Besides, he does not need understanding from the Wayne family. Not anymore.

Ra’s slips his fine pen back into its inkwell and studies what he has written upon this final and most crucial letter even as he prepares the wax for its seal. There is much he wishes to say, but there are eyes upon him, both in this compound and in this delicate world. This will have to do.

He does not doubt his decision. He has not always been a good man, he knows, both by way of being more and less than good and likewise more and less than a man, but in this, at least, he has done right. He nods to himself, and then he pours the wax, closes the letter, and stamps the envelope simply with his signet ring as it cools. 

There. He places it gingerly upon the pile with the other letters. The work of six hundred years, finally done.

Ra’s taps the letters together and gets up from his fine desk chair. Yes. The work is done– and now, there is only one task remaining. For a moment, he stands in silence and watches the wild snow whirl past the window, blanketing the compound in pure droves. He does not breathe. He does not blink. After six hundred years on the fine and leveled face of this world, he is at last able to think of nothing at all.

And then, as he leaves the room, one final thought presents itself: that it is a good night to drown.

Under the heavy, foreboding clouds of Gotham, a tinny bass guitar rumbles and crashes out of a phone speaker in a shitty apartment, and the room’s sole occupant sings along  to the best of his ability as the introduction ends: “I don’t wanna feel better /”

This is, of course, Jason Todd, dressed in his boxer shorts and doing his best to make a smoothie out of whatever the hell he’s found in his freezer. Most of the food he’s pulling out is in plastic bags, and it’s all too covered in ice to really discern the shape of, so it’s a very slow process, and it’s not going well. He’s currently trying to tell if this latest item is cooked chicken or pieces of banana.

Shit. Oh, god, he really can’t tell, but he’s got a fifty-fifty shot, right?

“No one’s ever gonna love me like that again / I don’t wanna get over it / I wanna sit with you–”

“Hang on,” Jason mutters to himself, pausing the music so he can consider the contents of this bag more seriously. Whatever it is, it’s been cut into little discs, which implies that it’s a banana, but it could also be some of Alfred’s really fancy chicken that he stole a few weeks ago. Jason frowns.

He still empties the bag into the blender.

He’s examining what’s probably a bag of strawberries when his phone pings with Dick’s ringtone. He doesn’t check it at first, not until it pings again, and then with Tim’s ringtone, and then with Bruce’s, all in quick succession– the family group chat is raucous with recent activity when he finally abandons his smoothie to look.

DGrayson: I have news

DGrayson: Starting a video call I need everyone to be so extremely cool right now

RDrake: I’m cool I’m cool what’s up

BWayne: Ra’s al Ghul is dead.

What the fuck? Jason stares at the screen for a long time waiting for someone to tell him fucking anything else, but no one does. He opens Dick’s video call.

Tim is, predictably, already losing his shit, and has, predictably, angled his phone camera so that everyone can see up his nose. Jason steps in halfway through him freaking out. “–fucking way. There’s no way, this has to be a– a trick or something, there’s–”

He turns off his microphone and lets Tim finish his thought as he closes up the blender and presses the button to start it. “Like, have we gotten the autopsy report? Do we know anything except where he was found?”

Bruce and Dick seem to be coming in from different rooms of the house, with Bruce in front of his display in the cave, and Dick coming in from… his room, maybe? He’s clearly using his laptop, because his microphone is shit. “Tim, can you cool it?”

“I’m cool! I’m so cool!” 

Jason’s smoothie is about as smoothie-d as it’s going to get, so he turns off the blender and activates his microphone. “What happened?” he cuts in, because he’s clearly the only one who’s capable of taking this seriously right now, nevermind that he’s in his boxers. He puts his phone down on the counter and angles it so everyone can only see his top half, anyway. “S’this a power play? Is there someone new we need to be worried about?”

Bruce’s face might be carved in stone, but he’s wearing a very strange expression, and he doesn’t answer for a minute. In his absence, Dick takes point. “It looks ,” he says carefully, “like it was a suicide.”

That shuts Tim up, but Jason only squints. Hm. “You guys aren’t convinced, though.”

Bruce’s expression gets weirder. He still doesn’t say anything, though, so Dick continues, his voice still oddly careful. “His security detail found him floating dead in a Pit yesterday morning.”

Oh, yeah. That’s why they’re being weird– mystery solved. Jason starts looking for a clean cup to pour his smoothie into. “Isn’t that kind of like blowing your brains out with a hairdryer?”

Over the camera, Bruce’s neutral expression splits into confusion. “Excuse me?”

“Because you’d, like, put it to your head, but it’s a hairdryer, so you’d…” He stops just shy of demonstrating. “It doesn’t work , is what I’m saying.”

Everyone is staring. “What?”

“Jason,” Bruce says levelly, “can you please put some clothes on?”

Jason grumbles, but that’s a pretty fair request, all things considered, so he turns off his camera and goes to find some pants. He can hear Tim through the phone, still trying to puzzle everything out. “Do you think maybe someone, like, hurt him and he tried to get the Pit to bring him back?”

“The official autopsy found water in his lungs,” Bruce tells him as Jason opens the door to his bedroom. Paper rustles over the phone. “Quite a bit of water, actually, but I’ve checked the report. All the evidence points to death by drowning.”

“Which shouldn’t be possible,” Dick clarifies. “Right?”

“It shouldn’t be possible,” Bruce echoes pensively. “It shouldn’t be possible at all.”

Jason picks up a pair of worn jeans from the floor and starts to put them on. There’s a spattering of blood around the hem of the left leg, but that’ll probably come out with some bleach. It’s fine. He’s able to take advantage of a quick lull in the conversation. “Why do we think it was a suicide, anyway?”

“Because he left notes.”

Shit, that’s pretty convincing. Jason makes his way back to the kitchen. “Which I assume we know because we got one?”

“Yes, I got one.” Paper rustles again, and Jason checks his screen just in time to see Bruce hold up a wax-sealed envelope. “So did you.”

Jason turns his camera back on so they can have this conversation face to face– or, at least, as face-to-face as the phone will allow. “We weren’t penpals or anything,” he preempts, but Bruce’s face only grows stonier. Jason rolls his eyes, but he thinks back, considering. “If you’ll recall , Bruce, we’re not exactly on speaking– wow, I haven’t talked to him in years.”

Ra’s is– was, apparently– a weird guy. Impeccably put together (and maybe responsible for Jason’s post-resurrection bisexual identity crisis), but also six hundred years old and obsessed with wiping out most of the planet, so, yeah, pretty weird. Their relationship, or whatever it was, could probably best be defined as ‘cordial,’ like a father towards his daughter’s boyfriend, except the daughter in question was an ancient, toxic fountain of youth. Pretty standard stuff.

Scratch that, actually. That makes it sound like Jason was sleeping with the Lazarus Pit. Gross. Reiterated: for several reasons, gross .

Jason opens the cabinet, wrinkling his nose a little at the thought, and pours his smoothie into a cup that’s mostly clean, just a little dusty. It’s weird thinking that Ra’s is gone, especially in light of the circumstances. “Isn’t he pretty notoriously hard to kill?”

Dick pipes up before Bruce can speak. “There’s still a lot we don’t know–”

“There is,” Bruce agrees, “which is why I’d appreciate it if everyone could make their way over so we can discuss this.”

Tim immediately raises a hand. “Can I be excused if I’m on patrol?”

“Tim–”

Jason sips his smoothie. Fuck yeah. No chicken. “Yeah, I’m actually hosting my book club today, so…”

Dick hides a grin– nice– and Bruce doesn’t roll his eyes, but he very clearly wants to. Double nice. “If you won’t be here, I reserve the right to open your mail.”

Checkmate. Damnit. He scowls, and hangs up before anyone can stop him. “What are we, Communists?” he says aloud to himself as he opens his messages.

Dick is already typing.

DGrayson: JFC drama queen are you coming over or not

JTodd: yeah obviously

DGrayson: oh cool nice

DGrayson: so are you ok?

JTodd: yeah why wouldnt I be

A pause. Jason finishes his smoothie. Look at him go, getting his daily servings of fruits. He’s crushing this.

DGrayson: do you want that alphabetically or chronologically?

JTodd: very funny

JTodd: yeah im so ok im the oldest guy i know

JTodd: *okest

DGrayson: you’re just historically weird abt hole stuff

JTodd: .

JTodd: Dicky do u want to rephrase that rq before I screenshot it

DGrayson: don’t you dare

Jason takes a screenshot.

DGrayson: youre the one who fucking named it the bad decision hole

DGrayson: do not pin that shit on me

JTodd: too late

He immediately sends it to the family group chat.

DGrayson: how could you do this to me

JTodd: easily lmao

JTodd: yeah fr I’m fine tho

JTodd: fuckin weird as hell that he drowned I didnt know you could do that

DGrayson: weird as hell indeed

DGrayson: do you want to see the autopsy report when you come over?

JTodd: are there photos

DGrayson: yeah

JTodd: are they gross

DGrayson: yeah he’s all pruney and junk

JTodd: fuckin bet

JTodd: yeah I’ll be there in like 20

Jason tosses the empty cup into the sink, grabs his earbuds off the counter, and makes his way out to his motorcycle. He’s so fine. The Lazarus Pit is like an old ex, one that he didn’t even sleep with– which is to say he doesn’t think about it. He doesn’t. It’s fucking nothing to him. He puts his earbuds in and presses play on his music, and lets the distorted bass guitar snarl like a junkyard dog as Penelope Scott’s singing-speaking voice drowns out anything he’s definitely still not thinking about. For the first time in days, his mind is stillwater placid as he mouths along. “I don’t wanna feel better / I’d do anything to miss you again / I don’t wanna get over it /”

He does not think about Ra’s al Ghul, or, indeed, about his Lazarus Pit as he turns the engine and starts at a breakneck speed towards Wayne manor. There’s just the silence of the wind and the rabid bass guitar: “I wanna get under it instead /”

Jason Todd thinks of nothing at all until one final thought presents itself: that Dick is absolutely going to kill him for not wearing his helmet.

Chapter Text

Jason comes in through the Cave, hoping to avoid Alfred, and obviously fails, because Alfred has eyes everywhere all the time in perpetuity. He’s lying in wait in the garage entrance with the vehicles– “You’re not wearing your helmet,” he says lightly, but disappointment is all but radiating off of him.

“It makes me look stupid,” Jason tosses back. Tough shit. Alfred’s been disappointed in him ever since he first came back. This is just… how they are now, he supposes. It’s fine. He’s not bitter. “Where is everyone?”

Alfred wordlessly gestures deeper into the Batcave, and Jason starts to follow the motion in that direction when he’s quietly interrupted. “How are you handling the news?”

He stops. “The news about Ra’s?”

“Unless there’s something I’m not privy to.”

Jason feels his shoulders fall. Memory weighs heavy on him now– or perhaps it’s all the time since he returned that they’ve spent not forgiving each other. “It’s weird,” he finally says, trying to make sure his voice doesn’t echo through the interior of the cave. “I didn’t think he was the type to off himself.”

Alfred doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to. His silence speaks volumes. Jason rolls his eyes, an imaginary conversation already moving in his mind. “Yeah, yeah,” he mutters, turning away. “Shut up.”

He finds Dick and Bruce at the assembly of computer monitors, Bruce in his suit and Dick in street clothes– one of them quickly dismisses what might be an image of Ra’s al Ghul’s body, but it’s gone before Jason can tell. “I wasn’t sure I should expect you,” Bruce says by way of greeting. He’s not smiling. “You came to get your mail?”

Jason nods towards the screen and shoves his hands into the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie. “Well, Dick said I could see the autopsy photos.”

“Yeah, they’re gross,” Dick tells him enthusiastically. “He’s all bloated.”

“Can we try to be respectful?”

“Maybe if he hadn’t tried to kill us so many times,” Jason mutters as he takes a seat, but Dick’s face settles back into a serious neutrality. “Fine, yeah. Whatever. What’s the autopsy say?”

“Excessive fluid in the lungs,” Bruce tells him, pulling up the details– and not, Jason notes, the image they were looking at before he stepped in. It’s full of jargon he’s usually on the practical end of. Bruce continues. “And I do mean excessive fluid– the autopsy classifies the cause of death as a noncardiogenic pulmonary edema. It suggests that our victim was trying to breathe in as much water as he could.”

“Ra’s,” Jason interrupts, squinting at the screen as he turns that piece of information over in his head. Something doesn’t feel right about this. A lot doesn’t feel right about this, but something about that, specifically, especially doesn’t feel right. “You don’t have to be so clinical, Bruce. I’m pretty sure you two were on a first-name basis.”

Bruce shoots him a piercing look. Jason stares back. After a while, Dick tries to break the tension by clearing his throat. “So do we want to talk about that, or…”

Jason doesn’t answer. He’s still looking at the screen. “I’m not squeamish,” he finally says. “I won’t freak out. Can I see his lungs?”

Bruce tries to exchange a glance with Dick, but Dick doesn’t look back, already pulling up the images from the autopsy. It’s just like he says– the lungs, now free of al Ghul’s chest and resting indecently in a medical container, are ghostly-white with water decay. “Do you have a theory?” Bruce asks as he pulls up a 3d representation of the lungs for them to examine.

“I might.” It’s not a question of whether or not he has a theory, it’s just a question of whether or not he wants to share that theory with the class. It’s a question of whether or not they’ll understand. He taps his nails absentmindedly against the bottom of the table. “Who found him?”

He’s stalling. Bruce starts speaking about the composition of al Ghul’s security detail, but Jason isn’t listening, too busy spinning his wheels in deep mud. Memory presents itself: one of the first nights of his new life, so many years ago, when he was a guest of al Ghul’s, when he could do nothing but shiver under the blankets of a fine bed with the bone-deep chill of death.

Thinking had been difficult. His brain had started to rot, he’d found out later, the fine tissue already breaking down when he’d been brought back, and though the Lazarus Pit could put it to rights again, it could not fill him with thought or purpose. He had been little more than a corpse that could breathe in those first nights, void of anything that might once have been his humanity. It had been terrifying and miserable, a prelude to so much more terror and misery to come, but there had been strange kindness, too: in the dead of night, unaccompanied by bodyguard or daughter, Ra’s had paid him a visit.

He hadn’t seen it as a kindness at the time, of course. Even half-alive, Jason had held nothing but contempt for Ra’s al Ghul. All he could do when the man came through the door and pulled out the chair from the desk was tremble with what he hoped was a defiant air and try to burrow deeper in the blankets. He hadn’t even been able to tell Ra’s to fuck off.

Ra’s had watched his pitiful display for a moment before discarding a hardcover book on the desk he had taken the chair from. “It gets better,” the man had said lowly. “I have seen you in the daylight, Robin. You are a fighter. I know this.”

Jason had bared his teeth at the title, but he’d been unable to look away as Ra’s choreographed a slow motion that ended with his hand on the covers of the bed. “I have been where you are now,” he said, his eyes gleaming like a housecat’s in the firelight. “I promise you, Jason, there is nothing to fight. All is as it should be.”

Jason hadn’t believed him, of course. He’d wanted to spit, to scream, to flee this terrible place– but Ra’s had only picked up the book from the table and, in an unwavering, gentle voice, started to read. “‘It was a dark and stormy night,’” he began smoothly. “‘In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind.’”

Jason had known those lines, and he’d almost wept with the familiarity of the story. He had clung to Meg like she was real, like she was watching over him, thorny and determined. It had hurt less than the reality of knowing he was alone

He had lost himself in the cadence of al Ghul’s voice, letting it break over him like the waters at the edge of the Pit, and it had taken him almost a full chapter to realize what was right in front of him: Ra’s was pausing appropriately for periods and commas, but he wasn’t stopping for breath. Jason had focused on that, too, as his shivering gradually subsided, just to confirm what could not be possible, just to come to the conclusion that, indeed, it was.

Ra’s wasn’t breathing.

Now, under the drone of Bruce’s voice echoing through the cave, he looks over al Ghul’s lungs, bathed in blue hologram lighting. Ra’s shouldn’t have drowned like this. He would have had to consciously decide to take on water, and while Jason’s chest aches in sympathy, he knows that just taking on water shouldn’t have killed him, either.

That’s the thing about the Pit, the thing that made Ra’s so uniquely terrified of growing old– it doesn’t fix the body, not really. It just makes it work again. It’s like taking a car to the world’s worst mechanic: they don’t buff out the dents, they don’t put gas in the tank. They stop the engine from wheezing without opening up the hood.

The car might work, but actually un-wrecking it takes time.

The bruises in Jason’s brain took weeks to heal, but the Lazarus Pit kept him alive, brought him back slowly and agonizingly from the brink of dissolution and held him there until the cliff’s edge stabilized beneath him. His bones knitted back together, his blood cells replenished. Nevermind the fact that he treated breathing as a voluntary activity; if he was submerged in the waters of the Lazarus Pit, Ra’s al Ghul could not have died of a noncardiogenic pulmonary edema. He couldn’t have died of anything.

“Jason?”

“I’m here,” he says, almost before he knows what he’s responding to. Right. Bruce has been talking. “Sorry. Yeah, this is…”

He has information– but he doesn’t voice it. If the great Batman hasn’t realized by now that Ra’s al Ghul didn’t need to breathe, then really, what can Jason do to convince him otherwise? He shrugs. “It’s weird. I don’t know, sorry.”

“You said you had a theory?”

“I thought I did,” Jason half answers. It’s not technically a lie. He shrugs. “I guess not. Can I have my mail?”

Bruce glowers at him suspiciously, but Jason’s played this game before. He’s very good at keeping his face neutral. Pain’s a great teacher. “You don’t know anything that could help us?”

“Nope.” He pops the P and leans back in his chair. “Nothing.”

Bruce’s expression doesn’t change, but he nevertheless produces a heavy, wax-sealed envelope and slides it down the table. Jason takes it– there’s no address, of course, but that’s his name spelled out unmistakably in al Ghul’s fine calligraphy. He checks, but there’s nothing else on the envelope, so he runs his thumb under the wax seal and opens it up to find a piece of thick paper inside.

The letter is similarly unadorned, save for a series of numbers and letters that Jason immediately recognizes as coordinates. There is no greeting, no explanation. Were it not for the fact that he so easily recognizes the handwriting, the letter would be entirely anonymous. “Huh,” he says out loud. “Well, that’s interesting.”

“What–”

“Coordinates,” he answers, because Dick is going to catch fire if he gets any more curious. “Bats, can you pull these up?”

Jason rattles them off, and the hologram of al Ghul’s bloated lungs disappears, replaced by a map that swoops in on a tiny town in Gilliam County, Oregon. It’s little more than a few shelters built around what appears to be a running creek and miles of rural roads that drift aimlessly through deadwood forests. There’s nothing here that screams ‘I’m hiding the world-ending plot of a six hundred year old mastermind, gentlemen, come and get it!’ There’s nothing here that screams at all– and if there were, the houses seem too far apart for any of the neighbors to hear. “Maybe he left you property,” Dick jokes. “You know, some nice riverside real estate.”

Bruce stares up at the map with him, the little of his face that’s visible bathed in ghostly blue light. “You don’t need me to tell you this is a trap.”

Jason squints for a name, and finally finds it: Thirtymile. “Oh, definitely.”

Bruce looks over at him, entirely unamused. “Then I don’t need to tell you that you shouldn’t go.”

Jason frowns dramatically, and just barely stops himself from rolling his eyes. “You’re such a killjoy.”

“Jason–”

“Ra’s is dead,” he reminds Bruce, still looking up at the map. His eyes burn against the side of Jason’s head. God, this is always easier with the hood on. “And I’m sure Talia’s too busy to deal with me right now.”

“Are you willing to gamble on that?”

Jason grins wolfishly, and Dick groans. “Oh, god.”

“Is that a challenge?”

“No.” Bruce is catching on now. He looks almost off-guard with surprise. “No, it’s– Jason, this is a bad idea .”

“Yeah, it is.” He gets up, still grinning, and playfully salutes the table. “See you guys in a week or so, I guess!”

“Jason!”

It’s too late. He’s already heading back to the mouth of the cave, putting his earbuds in and pressing play. Pipe organ rushes through his brain as he gets back on his bike, displacing Bruce’s voice: “There's all this dirt under my nails / Wouldn't you like to see where I went to high school? / Blood under my knuckles / You should've heard the way I spoke last night.”

The door groans open, but Jason’s gone into the cold Gotham evening before it’s stopped moving. His bike rumbles under him as he speeds away, starting back to his apartment to pack a bag and find his wallet.

He doesn’t look back– he never does. He’s always been good at making an exit.

Chapter Text

According to Google Maps, it takes forty-two hours of uninterrupted driving to reach Thirtymile, Oregon from Gotham, New Jersey.

Jason manages to do it in only forty-four, but in his defense, he’d never been to a Buc-ee’s before, so that was at least three extra hours right there.

He follows I-76 out of the Eastern seaboard in what’s mostly a straight line, the distance only punctuated by occasional toll booths where he pays in cash, doling out ten dollar bills where ones and fives would do. Road maintenance is serious business, he reasons, and nevermind his extensive criminal record– he has a civic responsibility. He refills the tank when it dips towards empty, likewise refills his coffee at gas stations, makes sure to text Dick whenever he passes a billboard that promises “HELL IS REAL” in big red letters.

Dick might text back. Jason stops checking his phone somewhere around Akron.

Gradually, his playlists run out of music to shuffle through. It’s around the fourteen hour mark that he realizes his speakers relay only silence, that he’s been humming a chorus to a song for miles now with only the car’s engine for backing. He finds he doesn’t mind it– he drives in silence for a few hours. The lights over the highway cast rolling shadows on his face, like waves lapping up against a shore. Above them, he can see satellites, clouds, and, when the highway lights fall into disrepair, real stars, small and scattered and distant.

It’s nice.

The Buc-ee’s stop in Colorado, of course, sends him an hour out of the way, but it’s worth it. It’s so worth it. They have that stupid fucking beaver on everything. “On everything ,” he tries to impress upon Dick after he gets in the car absolutely laden with be-beavered merchandise. “They have Buc-ee’s napkins , Dick. They put him on napkins .”

“Uh huh.”

Jason turns to look out of the back window as he leaves the parking lot. It’s, like, three in the morning. There’s definitely no one else here. He checks anyway.  “How are you not impressed by this?”

“Because I’m an adult human with a functioning brain,” Dick deadpans. Even hundreds of miles apart, the sound of him rubbing his temples is practically audible. “It’s a gas station with a mascot, Jay, it’s just a gimmick.”

“They had brisket.”

Dick pauses. “Was it–”

“It was good, yeah.”

Dick sighs, and Jason grins, hoping the expression makes it through the phone. “You’re almost there, though?”

“Yep.” He drives out of the parking lot and makes for I-25. “Sixteen hours out.”

“Jesus, haven’t you slept?”

He hasn’t, and he doesn’t bother to lie now. Dicky would have him out in a heartbeat. “You know me,” he finally says, his smile fading. “I’m just planning to crash when I get to Oregon.”

“Do you have sixteen more hours of driving left in you?”

“I’m fine,” Jason says, which he knows doesn’t really answer the question. He doesn’t sleep, is the thing. He doesn’t need to. Sleep is only a cheap imitation of death, and he’s already been ruined by the hard stuff. Besides, he’s so hopped up on Buc-ee’s coffee he’s not sure he could if he tried. “I’ve got, like, straight caffeine in my veins right now, man, I’m wired .”

“Doesn’t caffeine give you nightmares?”

“That’s melatonin.” He downshifts, pulls onto the highway. They did try melatonin, in the first days, until al Ghul told him he didn’t have to sleep if he didn’t want to. More time for training. He would stop when he needed to. All was as it should be. “I’m fine on caffeine.”

“If you say so.” Dick doesn’t sound at all convinced, but that’s alright. He doesn’t understand, but, then, Jason hasn’t explained himself. How do you even begin to have that conversation? “I’m tracking you on our maps, by the way, I can be there in, like, an hour if anything happens.”

The thought comes from way out of pocket: like what, Dick? “Nothing’s going to happen.”

The silence on the other end rings with disbelief. “You think you’ll be safe to crash when you get there?”

“Yeah, why?”

“The trap–”

“I’m not worried.”

“ Why? ”

God, the sky is beautiful out here. He’s starting to look forward to Thirtymile– no streetlights, no highway lanterns. Just the split-open depths of the cosmos. “I can handle whatever he throws at me,” he lies. “We always have before.”

Dick stays silent. Again, the thought comes in from out of pocket: not always. “Bruce is worried,” he finally says, clearly trying to make it sound like Bruce is the only one. “He’s stress-prowling.”

“I’m honored.”

“Jay–”

“I’m gonna get back to driving,” he says, which isn’t technically a lie this time. It’s dark out. Maybe sleep deprivation actually is starting to catch up to him, because he’s kind of looking forward to the nothingness of zoning out. “I’ll call you next time I get gas, alright?”

“Can’t you drive with me on the phone?”

Jason hesitates before hanging up. Is that concern he hears? “What time is it for you?”

“It’s… like, five.” There’s a pause as Dick checks. “Five eleven.”

“Go to bed.”

“I’m not tired.” Read: I’m worried about you.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Jason reassures him. Read: yeah, well, I promise I won’t die without telling you this time. “I mean, I’m going to Oregon, but I’m not– you know what I mean, I’ll see you soon.”

Dick doesn’t answer. When Jason looks down, he sees that the call’s been disconnected. He’s lost signal.

The trip through the Rockies passes in a haze. For what must be half a day, Jason falls into a sort of road hypnosis. He doesn’t think of anything, except occassionally about Ra’s, or about Gotham, how strange it is to be away from the city. No one here knows Jason Todd. His name isn’t written on memorial hospital wings or park benches, not on college scholarships or debt forgiveness payments or gravestones.

He’s never been buried here.

Some part of him reckons it’s good to be away from Gotham. He could start again out here, if he wanted to. It’d be easy.

Isn’t that such a common refrain, though? Lots of things are easy. Even the hard stuff gets easy, if you’re desperate enough. Synth keens. Electric bass guitar snarls. In Ab major, Penelope Scott has the audacity to ask him what the plan is.

Jason pushes down on the accelerator and keeps going west.

When he finally makes it to the coordinates in Thirtymile, it’s a little past eight in the evening, or at least, he thinks it is. His internal clock is all kinds of fucked up. He was right, though: even in Oregon, it’s winter, and with the sun down, the uninterrupted sky stretches out forever, dizzying and deep, dusted with stars. He doesn’t even care about the mystery of the property– as soon as he arrives, it becomes an afterthought. He parks the car in the tinder-downy brush of what might be a sugarpine and then clambers through the sunroof just to stare.

There is no music. There is no interruption. The creaking insects are all gone away for parts unknown, and the lonely wind rustles through the deadwood skeletons without them for company. Somewhere, Thirtymile Creek trickles through a path it carved centuries ago. He can hear it. Even in the reverent stillness, the water moves. Jason closes his eyes, and lets the silence fill him up until he goes silent, too, and for the first time since he left Gotham, he breathes.

Expectation fogs outwards, disappearing under the vast sky.

When he’s had his fill of being empty, when his body starts to go numb, Jason finally takes his sole bag of supplies in hand and gets out of the car. The cabin Ra’s has left him is a modern little thing, with a slanted roof and plenty of black-tinted windows he can’t see through, but it looks like it’s been here for years at least. It’s weathered, a little ragged– abandoned, but not unloved. He trudges up the moss-stained wooden stairs to the unassuming front door, and finds it to be unlocked when he tries the handle. “Okay, Ra’s,” he says quietly as he pushes it open. “Don’t fuck me on this, old man.”

The door creaks, of course, but nothing happens. No one jumps out to attack him. Neurotoxin doesn’t immediately spray in his face. After a moment of groping blindly in the dark, Jason flicks on the lights.

The house is little more than a bedroom and a bathroom. There’s a couch by one wall, a fridge tucked into a corner by what appears to be a free-standing stove. There’s no television, only cases and cases of books with titles he can just barely read from here: The Last Mastodon, The Plumber’s Guide to Light, After the Revival. Sylvia Plath is shoved haphazardly beside Shel Silverstein. It’s all poetry.

Jason closes the door behind him and locks the deadbolt in place, still looking around warily. The curtains are closed. The fridge is empty. The couch, after forty-four hours, is inviting– but he’s here for a reason, and it doesn’t take him more than a few minutes to see an envelope with a familiar red wax seal lying on the countertop.

He puts his bag in the bedroom (and oh, god, that bed is so tempting) and riffles through the bathroom, which mysteriously seems to have clean running water all the way out here, before he attends to al Ghul’s message. This letter is much heavier than the last, and when he breaks the seal, he’s rewarded with a veritable sheaf of paper, all of it covered in sprawling calligraphy. Jason slides down the wall and sits on the floor to read.

Jason,

Do forgive me for not stocking the kitchen with perishables. I was not sure when this day would come, and I did not know if it would spoil before you arrived. Besides, I recall that you weren’t much for eating when you were in my care. Why sup on what cannot fill you? Tantalus might have learned something from us.

I digress. If you are reading this, then our time together has already drawn to a close– that is, I have departed, and this is all I will be able to leave you. The house is yours, of course, as is the surrounding acre of land to do with what you will. You will find the deed to both in the safe hidden behind the collection of Audre Lorde, the combination to which I have included in this letter.

I suspect that this is all you will accept from me, after our strange, turbulent history, and I have made my peace with that notion. As you have no doubt guessed by now, I have given you this place with ulterior motives. Forgive me– unlike myself, my selfishness does not die easily. I did not tell Talia of this place. It is ledgered on no map of its ilk. You are the only soul I have entrusted it to.

This house is built on a Lazarus Pit.

The words blur together. Fear surges headlong with fury, the adrenaline causing his heart to beat once, painfully , before it goes still again as he grips his chest. Jason stares through the letter, his jaw clenching, his teeth beginning to grit together. “You son of a bitch,” he mutters to himself. “You motherfucker .”

You will find it soon, I am sure, and then perhaps you will understand . I have my doubts, but there is no one else on the face of this earth like us, Jason Todd, and I mourn the fact that I must depart before you come into your inheritance.

Alas, I have frittered away too much of my time already. I am tired. You are here now, and that is what matters. All is as it should be.

From wherever I am now, be well. Give her my love.

There is no signature.

Jason’s not sure how much time he spends on the floor, just that he can hear a sound that the Joker might make in between landed hits, except he’s probably making it himself. It’s the kind of noise you only get to make once in your life. It’s the sound you make when you realize no one’s coming.

Ha. Been there.

He crumples the letter in hand and throws it across the kitchen. Even in death, Ra’s can’t leave well enough alone. He’s still fucking crazy. Jason stares at it balefully without blinking, wiping off his face with the sleeve of his hoodie. “Fuck,” he finally spits out. “God. You– you –”

No one’s listening. Ra’s is dead, and the letter can’t say anything else.

Jason gets out his phone and calls Dick.

The phone rings, and rings, and Jason gets sent to voicemail. He doesn’t leave a message. Dick’s probably on patrol, so he stands up and goes to look for the safe while he cools off. He needs to be calm while he decides what to do next. He needs to be rational. He needs to not lose any more of his entire shit than he already has.

Fuck, he’s getting a migraine.

The safe is right where the letter said it would be. The door swings open almost eagerly. There’s a manila file with the deed in Jason’s name inside. There’s a corked glass phial of what could probably be flat lime soda, but which he knows can only be water from the Pit, which he reaches for and then thinks better of, just in case it bites. There’s a sheet of paper, too, covered in what can only be described as the code of a madman, emerald-green symbols running thick, vertical interference over what might be black print, like someone cross-wrote a message in two different languages with their nondominant hand.

“Because of course you wouldn’t just leave me a note like anyone else,” Jason mutters. “Had to be fucking dramatic and shit. Asshole.”

This paper doesn’t say anything to him, either.

He puts it back in the safe and tries calling Dick again. The phone rings, rings, ri–

“Did you get there?” Dick asks him without preamble, way too close to the mic. Jason fumbles his phone and drops it on the couch. “Are you okay? Are you– Jason?”

“I’m here,” he reassures him, his voice croaking hoarsely. Fuck, it’s good to hear Dick’s voice. “Yeah, sorry. Hell of a night.”

The wind in Bludhaven whistles across the connection. “Did you get ambushed?”

“Kind of.” He’s breathing again. He always fucking does this when he talks to Dicky. Stress response. Prey-based camouflage adaptation. He swallows, but it only makes his headache worse. “You were right. He left me some nice real estate.”

“And?”

Jason doesn’t say anything.

“Jay–”

“There’s a Pit,” he finally manages, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Under the house. Ra’s– he left a letter.”

Dick’s silence is duly horrified. “Oh.”

Jason nods before remembering that Dick can’t see him. “Can you–” His voice cracks, and it takes him a minute to continue. This is fucking pathetic. “Can you still come get me?”

“I can.” Dick’s voice is soft and level, like he’s trying to gentle a scared animal. It’s appropriate. That’s basically what he’s doing. Jason sits on the couch and rests his head in his free hand, lets his eyes fall shut. The darkness is a relief. “I’ll be there soon, okay?”

“Yeah.”

A rustling noise. Nightwing’s moving. “Three hours.”

“Three hours,” he repeats. That’s so fucking long– at least someone’s coming this time. “Okay. I’m gonna try to sleep.”

“Are you safe?”

The old question rings in his head: are you a danger to yourself or others? He’s not angry. They’re just doing their job. He’s too tired to be a danger to anyone right now, anyway. “I’m fine,” Jason says blearily. “I’ll see you soon?”

“Yeah,” Dick reassures him. “I’ll see you–”

Jason hangs up and tosses his phone away, lays down. After forty-four hours, he’s gone before his body finishes falling. He dreams of Thirtymile creek.

In his head, the water sluices ever forward.

Chapter Text

When Jason wakes up, it’s still dark outside, and judging by the state of his migraine, it definitely hasn’t been three hours.

Awesome.

There’s no clock in this godforsaken house, and his phone might have fallen between two of the couch cushions, because it’s sure as hell not where he remembers tossing it, so there’s no real way of telling what time it is. He lays prone for a while, thinking lazily about getting up when thinking doesn’t hurt like a bitch. He’s calmer now, more collected. It’s much easier to consider the facts when he’s not freaking the fuck out or running on fumes from forty-four hours of driving. He can be cool about this while he waits for Dick to show. He can be–

He lets out a little mewling noise as his head pounds. Pain. In the utmost, pain . Jason squeezes his eyes shut and waits for the steady drum-beat rolling through his mind to fade but it doesn’t help. Every time it hammers, a web of red pulses behind his eyelids, like he’s seeing into the crawling depths of his own optic nerve.

He keeps his eyes closed, tries again to get up. There’s a wave of nausea as he gets himself upright, and he gags momentarily, but nothing comes up. He’s fine. When he finally does open his eyes, the combination living room/kitchen is illuminated by what may be starlight, augmented by Jason’s own fucked up vampire night vision. Everything is tinged slightly green– slightly more so than it should be, actually– and Jason scowls for no one as his head pounds again.

God, this sucks.

He still can’t find his phone, even though he looks, hoping to text Dick about his ETA, but that’s probably for the best. The blue light would just make him want to hurl again, anyway. Dick will get here when he gets here. He’s already on his way. All is as it should be.

Jason freezes.

That’s a weird fucking thought.

It’s only made weirder by the fact that he seems to hear it in al Ghul’s voice, which echoes through his mind, tracing fingers against the curved walls of his skull: all is as it shh all is as it all is as all is all…

It leaves an eerie wake of silence through his brain, raises the hairs on the back of his neck until the migraine pounds again and chases it away. The pain comes almost as a relief. It’s certainly more comforting than whatever the hell just happened. “Ra’s?” Jason croaks into the dark, feeling… god, so stupid for asking. “Are you haunting me?”

It’s a stupid question, but he grimaces, waiting on tenterhooks for the voice in his head to return, almost laughing at himself when nothing comes. He’s just hearing things again. That’s all. He runs a hand down his face. “Fuckin’… holes.”

The deadwood trees outside laugh, rustling softly in the wind. Jason smiles thinly. Whatever walks here, be it lark or katydid or bottomless pit, it walks alone. He’s fine.

Motion flickers in the bedroom doorway.

It’s the kind of motion that makes you rewind a tape to confirm it was there at all, but there’s no tape to rewind, no confirmation. He stares, his head still pounding, as Dick’s voice rings in his head: the trap–

Fuck this. Fuck Ra’s. Fuck this trip. Fuck . When he gets to his feet and musters up the will to look, there’s nobody in the bedroom. He checks behind the door, inside the little closet, even under the bed covers, but there’s no one there. “There’s no one here,” Jason says aloud, trying to make it sound convincing enough to believe as he looks under the bed. “There’s no one–”

Under the bed, hidden in shadow, lies a staircase that seems to descend through the floor.

Jason stares at it, totally, perfectly, deathly still in every limb. Adrenaline starts to claw through his veins again, and the painful web of nerves buried behind his eyes pounds harder, faster, trying to keep time with the hammer of a pulse that died years ago.

It’s happening again.

After he’d been able to walk, after his brain had reconstructed itself from a mass of bruises and damaged fatty tissue and his body had hauled itself, trembling, away from suspension at death’s door, he had wandered al Ghul’s complex aimlessly, everything cast in shades of toxic green. Against all possible odds, he’d kept finding his way to the Pit. It was like he could hear it. It was like it was calling to him.

Talia would lead him back to his room if her father was away, off on one more crusading attempt to end the world, and that’s what he remembers the most– a calloused, porcelain hand slipped into his own, and a soft, reassuring smile on a face that wasn’t soft or reassuring in the slightest. “Whatever are you doing here?” she would ask him gently. “Aren’t you cold?”

Jason had been cold, but not because he was outside, and regardless, he hadn’t allowed himself to be moved from where he was standing at the edge of the water. He’d still been trying to find relief in breathing, in those days. He’d still been trying to pretend he was a real boy, and not whatever parasite-infested thing he found himself now to be. “When can I go home?” he would finally ask her, still staring down at the water. His voice had been hollow, then. It had matched with the rest of him. “I want to go home.”

They were only children. They had pretended he was speaking of Gotham.

She’d squeezed his hand and lied smoothly. “I will speak with my father,” she promised him. “Come inside, Jason.”

Those words ring in his head now, still in her voice– come inside, come inside, come inside. The ghostly fingers don’t trace against his skull anymore. They claw, scratching against the bone like it’s chalkboard. In so many ways, he didn’t ever come away from the edge of the water. In so many ways, he didn’t ever come away from the edge.

Movement flickers in the shadows of the stairs. In an instant, the pulse of the web behind his eyes turns from blood red to bright green, and the pounding in his head ratchets into sheer agony –

Jason is standing. The bed has been pushed against the wall.

The hole yawns open before him.

Some part of him wants nothing more than to get back in the car and tear out of here, and meet up with Dick at the nearest parking lot. Some part of him is still being reasonable– at least, it’s being as reasonable as any part of him can be at the moment. He could go, he knows. He could leave.

He’s standing on the edge again.

Everything he can see is just another shade of green. His migraine is moving where his pulse isn’t, but his body’s still not moving, and it keeps not moving until, finally, he manages to take a step away from the hole in the bedroom floor.

That’s it. He can practically hear Dicky’s voice at his shoulder, even though Jason knows he’s so terribly, vastly alone. He doesn’t dare close his eyes. Good job– can you do that again for me, Jay?

He grits his teeth, takes another step back. It’s only four more to the doorway. He doesn’t turn his back to the hole, which watches him go with all the pleading exposure of a wounded dog, but he can do this. He can do this.

Jason’s migraine jumps again. He bites back a scream as ice-cold fingers squeeze in a vise around his brain. In an instant, his thoughts fry , music and quotation and opinion smoking and charring black as he attempts to wrench his mind back, but to no avail– he can only feel it, can only feel every second as his mind is unspooled like thread, unwound like tape–

If he’s a tape, something starts to play him. Something is crawling through his mind as he tries not to scream, as he loses track of his body in the bright green tide that’s pulling his mind apart. Images rush past– the Joker leering down at him in an abandoned warehouse, the smoking tires of the Batmobile as it screams down a back street, shards of broken glass scattered across the floor of a safehouse, floating in the deep reaches of green water as he tries to fight his way towards the surface–

But the water, at least now, is a balm. His body goes still, fingers and muscles unclenching as his migraine softens, and then leaches out of him entirely. For a moment, as he struggles to regain his faculties, he can only drift, his lucidity thin and flickering and bolstered only by the sheer relief of ended pain. He doesn’t dare breathe, even in dreaming, not when he can so easily recall the corpse-white of al Ghul’s bloated lungs. His body owes him this favor. He looks up, searching for the source of light that casts rippling shadows over him, and starts to swim up towards it when a voice cuts through the water. Jason.

He doesn’t recognize it. He doesn’t stop swimming upwards. Panic is starting to return, even in this strange vision. He shouldn’t be here. For any number of reasons, he shouldn’t be here– he doesn’t remember ever being this deep the last time he was in one of the Pits, doesn’t remember the surface taking so long to break. The water is as thin as it’s ever been, but with the way his eyes burn, he can’t even be sure if he’s coming closer to the light of the surface, can only tell depth by the pressure in his ears, pounding where his migraine lay only moments ago. Jason, the voice comes again, pleading– Jason!

It’s changed. He recognizes it now. This is the voice that echoed around the rubble of his life as he stared up at the stars that night, slowly fading into death. This is Bruce Wayne’s voice, full of anguish, begging him not to close his eyes. Jason, he cries, like he’s being left again–

“Jason?”

In the real world, back in his body, Jason takes a deep, gasping breath and opens his eyes. He’s on solid ground, albeit in what appears to be a cave if the surrounding stone is any indication. The room is lit by torches, each of which flickers with a ghostly white magnesium-flame, illuminating the surface of an wide, unassuming green pool. Jason’s breath catches as he realizes how close he is to it– he’s right on the precipice, only a step away from wading in. “Oh, fuck,” he whispers. “Fuck. Fuck .”

“Jason?” Dick repeats himself. Jason looks up, eyes wide, to see his brother standing a few yards away by a set of worn stone stairs that seem to lead into the cave, his unmasked face perfectly unconcerned. He smiles, but it’s the kind of smile he uses during hostage negotiations to tell everyone they’re going to be just fine, that trusting him is the right choice. It’s too much in the eyes. “You there?”

“I’m here,” he answers automatically, swallowing hard. His migraine is gone. Everything is still tinted slightly green, but less so than he expected it to be. He doesn’t blink. “Are you real?”

Dick’s smile doesn’t change. “Pretty sure I am, yeah.”

Jason reaches for his hip on reflex, but he comes up empty. “I need better than ‘pretty sure’ right now,” he says softly, his voice beginning to return. Water drips distantly, and he flinches at the sound, but it’s only water. It can’t hurt him, right? He tries to ground himself, but it’s harder without a pistol in hand. “Tell me something only you would know.”

Dick’s smile fades. Jason sees him glance at the surface of the Pit’s waters with calculation clear in his eyes before looking back at him. “Two years ago, I broke the news that you had basically the same top five songs as Tim on your Spotify Wrapped, and you deleted your account to hide the evidence.”

Yeah, he remembers that. “I thought we agreed not to bring that up?”

“It’s true.”

“Yeah, man, I know it’s true.” He frowns, but Dick’s right. “You just went for the jugular out of nowhere.”

“That’s my job.” Dick glances at the water again. “Can you walk towards me?”

Jason resists the urge to roll his eyes, but he obliges, takes a step back. The water drips again, and he manages not to cringe. Two steps. Three. He holds a hand out to Dick, who carefully helps him towards the stairs. His legs are shaking. He almost wishes the migraine would come back. “So, how was the drive?” he asks sarcastically.

Dick reels him in away from the water, and into a tight hug before he can refuse. Jason hesitates for a second before nosing into Dicky’s shoulder and letting himself be held. “This is nice.”

“Shut up,” Dick mutters hoarsely. Jason closes his eyes. He’s breathing again. It’s like playing possum– just another bodily stress response. “Fuck, you scared me. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he says softly. It’s nice to be held by someone who’s his size. Why doesn’t he do this more often? He feels himself start to relax. “Sorry.”

Dick squeezes him tighter for a second. Is he shaking? “I had to pick the lock,” he rasps. “Why would you come down here?”

His eyes snap open. “I didn’t–”

“Dude.” Dick pulls back so he can look at Jason face-to-face, but he’s not any less vulnerable than he would be in his domino mask. His expression is shuttered and serious. His eyes are afraid. “You didn’t move the bed?”

“I swear to god I didn’t,” Jason tells him, but Dick’s face only hardens. “Wait, you seriously don’t believe me?”

“Can we have this conversation upstairs?”

Oh. Jason glances at the Pit. It’s eerie how quickly its presence makes him forget where he is. “Yeah,” he says, nudging Dick towards the stairs. They should go before he forgets again. “Yeah. Sorry. What time is it? I couldn’t find my phone when I woke up.”

Dick keeps an arm around his shoulders and puts himself between Jason and the Pit in what’s probably supposed to be a surreptitious movement, herding him forward like a collie. “I’ll call it.”

“Okay.” He does some quick math as they start back up the impossibly long staircase– they must be at least fifty feet belowground, but the thought doesn’t make him claustrophobic like it should. He doesn’t dare turn to look at the water with Dick watching him. “How long was I–”

“I don’t know.”

“When did you–”

“Just a few minutes ago,” Dick reassures him. Some of the tension is starting to come out of his voice. “I had to pick the lock,” he repeats

“Sorry,” Jason says again, and tries not to wonder what Dick means, because he’s reasonably sure that door was deadbolted. “I crashed.”

“I could tell,” Dick says drily, just a few steps behind him. “I saw your letter.”

“Did you stop to read my mail before you came to get me?”

He can practically hear Dick shrug. “It told me where to find you.”

“I mean, I guess.”

When they come upstairs, Dick audibly breathes a sigh of relief. Jason makes a different sound, because Jesus Christ, Dick actually took a blowtorch to his front door. It’s still sitting on the kitchen floor. “Dude.”

“I was worried!”

“Your go-to stress response is a blowtorch?”

“I don’t want to hear this shit from the guy who’s banned from Home Depot!”

“It was Menard’s ,” Jason mutters darkly to himself. He crosses the living room to close the front door, which is still ajar, as Dick tries to put the bed back over the hole. He glances around the corner of the doorframe to find a miniature Batplane nestled snugly under the trees. How the fuck did Dicky land that thing? “You’ve had episodes in public before, too!”

“Not in Menard’s!”

Jason closes the door and doesn’t deadbolt it, because apparently home security is a fucking joke in Oregon. He can hear Dick dialing someone in the next room over, and feels his hackles rise with a familiar, venomous anger before he can stop himself. “Are you calling Bruce?”

Dick looks up from his phone. “Yeah, I–”

“I’m fine!”

The force with which he says it implies exactly the opposite. In a practiced deadpan, Dick takes a picture of him, and then flips his phone around so Jason can see just how bright green his eyes are. “I left in a hurry,” he says while Jason takes himself in. He looks half-dead, which is a full twenty-five percent more dead than he usually looks. His face is all but bloodless. “I just need to give him a proof of life call.”

Jason rubs at his eyes, knowing full well they won’t become any less green. This fucking Pit– “He’s gonna be a bitch about it,” he finally growls. “He told me not to go.”

“It’s kind of his job to be a bitch.”

Jason doesn’t answer for a moment as he gathers himself. “I’m fine ,” he finally manages. “Please don’t tell him, Dick, I’m fine, I swear.”

“If you were fine–”

“Please.” He doesn’t meet Dick’s eyes, still looking at his own from the photograph, but his voice is pleading. God, he really looks like shit, doesn’t he? He’s finally looks up, but Dick’s face is steely-hard with concern. “He’s gonna try to pull the dad card on me.”

Dick puts his phone away, but this, at least, seems to have landed. Bruce Wayne’s dad card is universally renowned– no one wants to be on the receiving end of it, especially not Jason Todd, who by all rights left his inheritance behind years ago. If Bruce tries to kick up dust over this, it’s just going to be unpleasant for everyone. “I’ll text him,” Dick relents. “But we’re calling in the morning, okay?”

“Yeah.” That seems like a fair compromise. At the very least, it seems like a problem he can push off until tomorrow, so Jason clears his throat. “Do you want the couch for the night, then?”

Dick glances at the door. It has not stopped being recently blowtorched. “I was just gonna sleep in the plane, but–”

“Is there room for both of us, then?” Jason waits for Dick to look guilty. He doesn’t. “Because you did kind of fuck up what was, again, my front door.”

“It’s still your front door.”

“That’s the raccoon’s door now,” he argues. It’s easier for everyone if he picks fights over stupid shit when he’s Pit-furious and lets it wear off without having to throw a punch. It’s easier for Dick’s nose, for sure. “So if you don’t have room–”

“Do you want to sleep in the plane?”

He grumbles. “No.”

“Do you want to sleep in here?”

“The raccoons–”

Dick crosses his arms. Oh no. “Jay.”

“Shut up,” Jason mutters, already moving over to the couch. Dick follows him. Some part of him is relieved that he won’t have to spend the hours until dawn alone, but the other part is just fucking cranky. Sleeping is dumb . He doesn’t like this place. “I don’t know where the blankets are.”

Dick waits for him to sit down and then flops onto the couch next to him and holds out his arms. In turn, Jason dumps his whole face into his brother’s chest. “If you’re weird about this,” he says, muffled by Dicks shirt, “I swear to god I’ll throw you out.”

“Mm hm.” Dick starts carding Jason’s hair back away from his face. Fucker thinks that’s funny. “Sure you will.”

“I mean it.”

“Uh huh.”

Jason grumbles to himself, but he gets comfortable. This is nice. He likes being held, he thinks muzzily. He really should do this more often. “The Pit–”

“Will be there in the morning,” Dick promises him. “And I’ll be here, too.”

He doesn’t offer any more protest. Outside, the temperatures drop. Clouds gather in the sky. The snow begins to fall.

The Pit is singing. Jason doesn’t sleep.

Chapter Text

Dick calls home around seven in the morning.

He leaves Jason on the couch, but he finds blankets in the closet by the front door, so he makes sure he’s comfortable. Jason’s face is hard and still and drawn up, like he’s not sleeping peacefully, but his eyes aren’t moving under his eyelids. He’s not dreaming.

Dick watches him for a moment, until he rolls over and buries himself under the blanket with his face in the couch cushions, and then leaves him there– he goes outside to the front steps, where the sun is starting to rise, and calls their dad.

Bruce picks up on the second ring. “Jason’s fine,” Dick reassures him before he can say anything. He sits down on the top stair. “There wasn’t an ambush.”

Something moves in the background on Bruce’s end, a clicking that fades in and out like heels on a tile floor. Dick can picture the scene: he’s in formal street clothes, standing outside the glass walls of an investor’s meeting. Everyone inside is trying to pretend they’re not watching him. Bruce waits for the person in heels to move down the hallway before he responds. “You wouldn’t have left so quickly if you thought he was fine.”

There’s a dusting of snow under the trees, white powdered on the military-black miniature Batplane that Dick flew here. “He’s fine for now,” Dick clarifies. “It was a trap, you were right. Ra’s left him a Pit.”

“Christ.”

Bruce’s voice is tight with stress, but Dick doesn’t think anyone else would be able to tell. It’s the tone he gets when Tim is in the same room as a gun. “He’s fine,” Dick says again, still trying to be reassuring. “As fine as he can be, I mean. I’m gonna try to get him to come home with me today.”

“Thank you,” Bruce says, and then, a moment later: “You’re a good brother, Dick.”

Despite himself, he smiles. He can’t tell if it’s real or not. “Don’t thank me, I haven’t done anything yet.”

“You flew to Oregon.”

That’s fair. Dick watches the sun come up over the trees. They’re all dead for almost half a mile out. Maybe it’s the Pit’s fault. His smile starts to fade as he thinks about that. “Do you remember what medication Jason’s on now?”

Bruce hums. Dick doesn’t expect him to come up with the correct answer– if he doesn’t know off the top of his head, then Bruce definitely doesn’t. “Lumateperone?”

That sounds familiar, but Jason’s been through a few by now looking for something that works on the Pit’s particular brand of knockout mood swings. He might have cycled off of it already. “Maybe,” Dick says half-heartedly. “Whatever. I’ll ask him.”

“Why?”

He hesitates. It feels childish to tell Bruce exactly what he’s worried about, but… “I’m just not sure he brought them with him,” he half-lies, because that’s easier than outright saying that Jason might be off his meds. He shrugs. “I dunno.”

“I’ll check with Harley,” Bruce tells him, picking up on his subtext. “If you can’t get him to come home, could you call me?”

“I’m not going to leave him alone, don’t worry.”

“I wasn’t.” Fuck. “Should that be on my radar?”

“I’ve got it,” Dick says, trying not to grimace. Goddamnit. “We’ll be fine. I’ll call you back once– I’ll call you back.”

“Alright.” Bruce sounds vaguely amused. “I love you.”

“Mhm.”

“You have to say it back.”

Oh, god. Dick drags a hand down his face. “I have to g–”

“If you don’t say it back, I’m not hanging up.”

“ Dad .” There’s a clattering noise inside, like someone sorting through a cabinet full of pots and pans, and he rolls his eyes. “Look, Jason’s awake.”

“Say–”

“I love you, asshole!” He is bright the fuck red. “Oh, my god, go back to your stupid meeting!”

Bruce laughs, but he hangs up, thank god . Dick goes back inside to find the couch abandoned, even though Jason was asleep when he left. Thankfully, he doesn’t have to look far– Jason’s humming something as he goes through the pantry. The blowtorch Dick used to break in last night gleams in the morning sunlight from its place on the counter. “G’morning,” he says bemusedly.

Jason peeks out from behind the pantry door, something like suspicion in his eyes until he realizes it’s just Dick. “Oh, hey, you’re back.”

“Yeah, I was just out front, I had to call–”

Jason tosses something at him, and he catches it on reflex. It still takes him a moment to realize it’s a box of instant coffee packets. “Did you go shopping?” he asks dumbly, looking it over.

“No.”

It’s that one particular off-brand kind that Jason likes so much. Dick flips it over to check the expiration date, but it’s good for another year, at least. “Al Ghul did your grocery shopping?”

“Apparently.”

He puts it on the counter and watches, at least a little suspicious, as Jason comes up with enough non-perishables for a small breakfast. “How’s Bruce?”

“He’s fine.” Dick moves to stand behind him, and briefly considers heating up some water for coffee in the microwave. It doesn’t look like they’ve been given a pot. “I think he was in a meeting when I called.”

From behind, he sees Jason’s shoulders tense in a way that suggests he doesn’t want Dick to notice. “I’m surprised he picked up.”

“He usually does.”

Jason makes a noise that’s too small to be called a scoff, but he hands Dick a little plastic container of cereal anyway. Oh, nice. Lucky Charms “What’d you tell him?”

“That we found a Pit,” he responds conversationally as he peels back the lid. Right. He needs a spoon. “That you’re kind of fucked up about it.”

“I’m not fucked up about it.”

Dick pulls a face, but Jason’s still not looking at him. He’s crouched to look through the bottom shelves of the pantry. “You’re a reasonable amount of fucked up about it.”

Jason shrugs, signaling what’s probably as far as the conversation is going to get right now. “I’m fine.”

Dick hesitates, then puts his cereal on the counter. “Have you been taking your meds?”

Jason looks over his shoulde r, something like shame or confusion scrawling through his expression. “What?”

“Have you been taking your meds?” Dick repeats himself. He leans back against the counter. “Just cause you couldn’t tell if I was real last night.”

“Oh.” Jason looks back into the pantry. The planes of his shoulders have drawn tense again. “That was actually because of something else.”

Dick blinks. That’s not an answer, but he’ll play along. “Something else?”

“Yeah. Like…” Jason goes quiet as he thinks, and then gets back to his feet. Apparently, he hasn’t found whatever he was looking for. “Like, it doesn’t matter if I’m on meds when I get fucked up by Scarecrow, right? It was like that.”

“Okay.” That’s concerning. Dick looks his brother over– he looks better in the morning, but still not a hundred percent. There are dark, green-tinged shadows under his eyes. “But you are on your meds, right?”

Jason closes the pantry door and dusts off his hands. “Nope.”

He pops the P the same way he did when Bruce asked him if he knew anything about al Ghul’s death. It’s his tell– he’s hiding something. “What?”

“I’m not on anything right now,” Jason repeats himself. When they meet eyes, he seems to look through Dick instead of at him, like he’s only playing at contact. “You can check with Harley. She’s the one who okayed it.”

“Harley’s not a licensed psychiatrist anymore,” Dick says in a vaguely horrified tone, despite the fact that everyone in their family sees her for their various issues. “Jason–”

“She’s the best psychiatrist in Gotham.”

“And she took you off your meds?”

Jason turns to look through a cabinet of mugs. “Do you want coffee?”

“What?”

“Do you want coffee?” he repeats himself, like Dick is the one being unreasonable here. Neither of them are being unreasonable, though, he reminds himself. They’re fine. They’re not arguing. “I’m gonna heat up some water in the microwave.”

“You’re not on anything ?”

Jason, to his credit, seems to at least be controlling himself, because he hasn’t told Dick to fuck off once since they started this conversation. “No,” he says patiently, “I’m not, and before you start, the only reason I didn’t say anything is because I knew you’d freak out.”

“I’m not freaking out.” He drags a hand through his hair, sweeps it back– he’s totally freaking out. “I’m fine. Were the side effects that bad, or–”

“They don’t work.”

A beat. What the fuck does that mean? “Specifics?”

“They don’t work,” Jason repeats, staring at the tap. “Hey, did you bring any of those water testing kits with you?”

Dick doesn’t dignify that question with a response, and instead continues to stare until Jason deigns to explain. If the rising silence is any indication, he seems to be struggling with it. “I have issues with my blood flow,” he finally manages. “For the meds to work, I have to wait for them to get in my blood, yeah? But they don’t.”

“What do you mean they–”

“Pit stuff.”

Dick lays a hand on the counter, careful not to slam. He just needs something stable to cling to. “What exactly do you mean,” he asks carefully, “by blood flow issues?”

Jason rolls his eyes, and rather than respond, he holds out an arm. “You know how to take a pulse, right?”

Dicks grabs his arm before he can take it back, ignoring the old scarring, and jams his thumb into the raclette lines at Jason’s wrist. He expects to find a beat that’s irregular or thready, but even after adjusting his grip and bringing Jason’s wrist right up to his eyes, there’s… nothing. There’s nothing at all. “Jay, what the f–”

Jason is already picking the marshmallows out of Dick’s abandoned Lucky Charms. “I told you,” he says simply. “Blood flow issues.”

“You’re missing a pulse! ”

“Yeah,” Jason agrees readily, looking up. A marshmallow cracks loudly between his teeth. “It’s fuckin’ crazy, right?”

Dick stares blankly, his jaw doing its level best to hang open despite every value Alfred has tried to instill in him about being polite. “The Pit stole your pulse?” he finally splutters. “What, are you telling me you’re– you’re some kind of vampire?”

Jason shoots him a look of lazy amusement. “Richard–”

“No, fuck you!” Jason smiles bitchily, revealing his little wolfish canines. Dick hopes to god they’re still not arguing. He’s started to talk with his hands. “Am I out of my fucking mind, Jay? Am I– is it completely out of the realm of all fucking possibility for you to be a vampire?”

“I’m not a vampire.”

“Then what–”

Jason shrugs. Another marshmallow cracks like a whip between his teeth. “Well, first of all, I’m kind of offended it took you so long to notice.”

Dick just barely refrains from shooting back that maybe he’d have noticed sooner if Jason came within arm’s reach more than once a week. Now isn’t the time. He drags his bangs out of his eyes again, trying not to let on how completely fucking rattled he is. “You said this is from the Pit?”

“Mm hm.”

He points at the floor with his free hand and hopes to god that this isn’t a stupid question. “The Pit downstairs?”

“Would you believe me if I said no?”

Dick stares numbly for a moment as that response rattles through his skull, pinging off bone and brain like he’s a goddamn Windows screensaver. His brother– his kid brother, the one who said being Robin gave him magic – came out of the Lazarus pit nearly ten years ago. Has he been living like this all that time? “Jason…”

“I’m fine,” Jason tells him, putting down the Lucky Charms. He’s acting like it’s nothing to him, but Dick is a damn good liar– he’s a better liar than Jason, and he can see right through this stupid, devil-may-care facade, because Jason still won’t meet his eyes. “I’m used to it.”

“Bullshit,” Dick snaps. He says it with more force than he intends to, if Jason’s face is any indication, and tries to soften his tone. He might not succeed. “Jason, bullshit you’re used to it, that’s awful . That’s not human .”

Jason stares at him for a moment before his gaze unfocuses, like he’s looking to some unknown horizon, and his eyes are a kaleidoscope of black and grey and brown, like he’s fourteen again. Dick almost wishes he could see something green in them, just to anchor him. A lump is rising in his throat. “If you’re telling me that my house shouldn’t be on fire,” Jason says heavily, like he’s tired of doing this speech even though Dick’s never heard him do it before, “then I need you to understand that I am well beyond that, okay?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Dick bites. He wants to grab Jason by the shoulders and shake him a little bit, like they’re in a shitty movie where arguing like this can solve anything. Fuck, they’re arguing now. Fuck. “Jason, you don’t have a pulse!”

“Yeah,” Jason says simply, a gleam in his eyes like Dick’s said something stupid. “Which means it’s the same as it was yesterday.”

“But it shouldn’t–”

Jason shoots him another look. He’s not at all amused anymore. “Look, can we drop this?”

“Does he know?”

“Who?” Jason doesn’t get any less amused. “What, god? Does god know that he fucked up my whole shit? I’m pretty sure–”

“ Does Bruce know ,” Dick grits out. Fuck, doesn’t he wish this was as easy as questions about god? No– it’s so much worse than that. It’s so much harder. “Did you tell him about– fuck, about any of this?”

“Why should I?”

“Because he cares about you, dumbfuck!”

It’s not until Jason takes a half-step back that Dick realizes he’s not only raised his voice, but that he’s said something he absolutely shouldn’t have. There’s a look in his brother’s eyes like he’s a kid again, and the dog he was reaching out to pet just raised its hackles. He looks betrayed, hurt– but now that Dick is watching, he doesn’t see Jason take a deep, steadying breath to calm himself down. He doesn’t see Jason breathing at all.

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that,” Jason says quietly, and then raises a hand when Dick opens his mouth to argue. “I don’t care if it’s true, I don’t– I don’t care, shut up. I haven’t told anyone. Some people know. I haven’t made a day of telling anyone before you.”

“So does Bruce–”

“No,” Jason tell him, looking away again. “I don’t think so.” There’s another long, long moment of hesitation, wherein Dick sees him wrap his arms protectively around his middle, and then, like an admittance of guilt: “Alfred knows.”

Every revelation is like a fresh punch to the gut. Of course Alfred knows. Dick and Bruce didn’t figure out what was right in front of them, but Alfred did. He tries to remain unphased, tries to focus on the matter at hand. “Why didn’t he say anything?”

“Because I asked him not to,” Jason says softly, still looking away. He’s starting to get a funny look on his face, something like the same blank expression he had last night when Dick found him by the Pit. It sends the high strings of a scare chord creeping up the back of his neck. “Alfred knows a lot of things.”

Dick waits for him to elaborate, but he’s losing his patience dangerously quickly. Jason doesn’t have the time. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

If it’s possible, Jay gets smaller, but he still doesn’t say anything. His jaw has gone slack, and it’s given him a strange expression, something akin to the peace of catatonia. “Do you hear that?”

“What?”

Jason shakes his head like he’s trying to get a bug to fly away. “That,” he says again without explaining. His eyes crawl across the room until they land on the bedroom door, still firmly closed from last night. “Do you hear…?”

Dick’s anger melts away. “Jay, do you want to go home?”

Jason flicks him a glance, the way a wild animal might. There’s fear in his eyes like he’s going to be punished for getting the answer wrong. A dim green ring feathers out around his iris. “I…”

Dick glances at the bedroom door, too. He doesn’t hear anything. “Do you want to go call Bruce?” he asks gently. “We can go sit in the plane–”

But Jason is already shaking his head, this time like he’s trying to clear water from his ears. “I can hear it,” he says distantly. He raises a hand to his nose, then looks at his fingers like he’s checking for blood. There’s nothing there. “I think it’s getting bad again.”

“Again?” Dick is still trying to keep his voice gentle. “Jay, what do you mean by ‘again?’”

Jason looks back at him, but his eyes are far away and glassy. Dick’s seen him with that expression before– the coroner had a hell of an eye for photography. He looks young, like he never actually came back all the way. It takes a moment for his eyes to refocus. “You wanted to call Buce?”

“I think we should,” Dick agrees. He holds out a gentle hand, like he does when he finds people on the edge of the bridge that leads out of Bludhaven looking down at the water. That shouldn’t be what this feels like. Ice is crawling through his veins with every heartbeat. “Can we go sit in the plane?”

After a moment where he does nothing but stare, Jason takes his hand. His lips part like he’s going to say something, but then they just stay open, and Jason doesn’t say anything at all. Dick squeezes his hand and draws him closer, so that they can move towards the front door without looking away from each other. “Attaboy,” he murmurs. “Attaboy, Jay.”

He doesn’t actually feel himself exhale until they’re down the stairs, when Jason has tucked himself into the side of Dick’s body like he’s in shock, like he still fits. He’s cold, but… when Dick thinks about it, he’s no more so than any corpse should be. He’s fine. What had he said? He’s the same as he was yesterday. He’s the same as he’s been for ten years– and Dick hadn’t noticed.

He hadn’t fucking noticed.

“You’re freaking out,” Jason says out of nowhere. His voice is a little hoarse, but he sounds more present than he had been in the house, and Dick’s willing to take that as a win. “You shouldn’t do that, it’s bad for your health.”

“Oh, do forgive me for having an aneurysm in your presence,” Dick grumbles, fumbling in his pockets for the plane’s fob. He doesn’t let go of his brother’s hand. “My sincerest apologies.”

“As long as you’ve learned your lesson,” Jason murmurs. “I’m fine.”

“Good.” He keeps not letting go. If anything, he actually just clings tighter. “Talk to me.”

“About what?”

“You said it’s getting bad again.” He finally finds the button to lower the boarding ramp. “Tell me what you mean by ‘again.’”

Jason’s silence turns sullen– when he speaks, his voice is tinged with what can only be shame. “I haven’t been able to hear it in a while.”

Dick’s not going to overreact about that. He’s cool. “You mean the Pit?”

“Mm hm.”

He nods, and starts to lead Jason up into the plane. “Do you want to elaborate on that?”

“Not really,” Jason jokes. It lands flat– he continues. “It, uh… it’s weird. I’m not gonna snap, or anything, I just…”

He’s quiet all the way into the plane, until the ramp closes, until he’s closed in and sitting in its belly, like he’s really considering what he wants to say next. Dick is rummaging through a box of supplies when he finally speaks. “Do you ever think things would be easier if I didn’t come back?”

There’s a true answer to that question. There’s a true answer, but Dick won’t ever say it. “Of course not,” he lies easily. Horror churns in his stomach as he turns to look at his brother. “Jay, do you think that?”

Jason is staring off into the distance again, considering. Why the fuck is that something he needs to think about? “Not all the time,” he says slowly. “But more than I should.”

Dick closes the supplies box, and Jason keeps talking, still in that strange, slow voice. “But do you ever think that, like… the reasons you have for not doing something are probably the wrong reasons?”

Dick remembers what it had been like before he and Bruce had started to heal, to close the gaping wound that Jason’s absence had left in their lives. He remembers the last time he’d had this conversation. It was with a teenager on the bridge out of Bludhaven. They’d had the same look in their eyes, the same light reflecting off the water. He tells Jason the same thing he’d said to them that night, in exactly the same tone of voice: “Well, I don’t think there’s any wrong reason to stay alive.”

In his memory, the kid glances back down at the river. In the plane, Jason’s eyes stay fixed on a point in a middle distance. When he looks up, water crashes in Dick’s head. His eyes are green again. “Are you sure?”

There’s a true answer to that, too, but instead of giving it, Dick just crosses the floor and kisses the top of Jason’s head. “I’m calling Bruce.”

In memory, he walks the kid home, and neither of them looks back. Jason’s eyes gleam like the surface of the Pit’s waters, illuminated from the wrong side. He doesn’t fight, but that’s fine– Dick’s done it before.

He can carry them both.

Chapter Text

About five or six years ago now, when Jason first started speaking with Bruce again, Alfred had called him. Just to chat, he’d said at the time– just to check.

It had been, what, three in the morning? He’d been awake, whatever time it was, and the sun hadn’t been up yet, and his hands had been covered with blood, in the way that they always were in those days, leaving streaks on the screen of his burner phone. Alfred had gotten the number from someone. He still doesn’t know how. He hadn’t really been in a fit state to ask.

Alfred had invited him over for dinner.

Jason had said no, obviously, because it had been, again, three in the morning. “Lose this number,” he’d demanded. “I’m serious. Don’t fucking call me again.”

“Language,” Alfred had reminded him smoothly. “And why should I bother? I’m sure you’ll have a new one by tomorrow.”

This had been the first time they’d spoken since Jason had come back. There had been a few times, in the first, most awful days when he called just to hear Alfred’s voice, but he never said anything. Alfred stopped picking up after the first few days, anyway. He thought it was a prank caller. He’d been grieving. It had been… well. It hadn’t been good for any of them. “What do you want?” Jason had snapped bitterly.

“To invite you–”

“No,” Jason had demanded, leaning forward intimidatingly even though Alfred couldn’t see him. “What do you actually want?”

“I see al Ghul’s manners have rubbed off on you.” Alfred had sounded, even over the phone, entirely unimpressed. “I do wish to briefly impress upon you that this is not a request on behalf of Master Wayne. I simply…”

A moment of silence. “Does he know you’re calling?”

“I am sure he will learn of my having done so in the morning,” Alfred had told him. His voice had been dripping with… not sarcasm, exactly, but something equally scathing. “I merely saw you on the television this evening, and I was reminded that I had not witnessed your miraculous return for myself yet.”

He knows what Alfred’s talking about. The news cameras had briefly caught sight of him at the end of that hostage situation at the bank. There had been three survivors, including a woman who had hidden in the bathroom the whole time, but three out of four is a solid passing score. The aggressors, obviously, had not walked away– he couldn’t let people believe he was getting soft now, could he? “You just saw me on your TV.”

“I did,” Alfred agreed readily. “You looked like you hadn’t been eating.”

That had surprised him for several reasons, not least of which being that while, yes, he hadn’t been eating, he hadn’t been losing any weight from it, either– at least, not that he’d noticed. “What?”

“Well, you were wearing your mask, so I couldn’t see your face,” Alfred had said nonchalantly, the sound of running tap water coming through the speaker. He’d been doing the dishes, apparently. “But at a glance, you looked… unwell. Not as healthy as I remember.”

“Dying’ll do that,” Jason had spat, more out of habit than any actual malice. He’d curled his legs up into the ripped armchair he’d been sitting in and cleared his throat to try again. “You’re calling because you’re… worried about me?”

The water stopped. “Should I be?”

“No,” he’d said, much too quickly. He’d always been terrible at lying to Alfred. “Of course not. Why would you–”

“I’ve been doing some research,” Alfred had cut in before he could ramble. “On your Lazarus Pits. About what it is they do , exactly. I can’t say I enjoy what I’m finding.”

No one had done research about the Pit before this, or at the very least, no one had told him. “Get to the point.”

“Good god, it’s no wonder you’ve been so unpredictable recently.” Alfred’s voice had been wry, unfamiliar. “Mood swings, hallucinations– have you been dealing with all this by yourself?”

“I’m not unpredictable.”

“That’s either denial or naivete.” A dry pause. “I’m desperately hoping it’s the former. You’ve killed too many people by now to still be naive about it.”

“I’m not unpredictable,” Jason had said again, more emphatically this time. He’d closed his eyes then, trying not to fall into the grip of rising anger and do anything that might prove Alfred right about his mood swings. “Do you think I’m just… winging this?”

“I think you’ve certainly created a code for yourself by now,” Alfred said appraisingly. “Perhaps even one that would make sense, should I care to analyze it.”

“Then why–”

“Because I don’t care to,” Alfred told him, somehow managing not to snap. Jason rolled his eyes, waiting for him to make his point. “The men at the bank tonight– what were their names?”

“Which ones?”

“The ones you killed.”

“Why would that–”

“You always were thorough,” Alfred mused to him, a note of nonchalance in his voice. “I’m just wondering if you still are.”

Jason hadn’t said anything– not out of frustration, or to make some kind of point, but because he couldn’t. He hadn’t learned their names. If he did, he couldn’t remember them any more. “Why does that matter?”

“Because they were people,” Alfred said simply, “and you killed them. Is that truly no longer obvious to you?”

Jason stared out the window, across the witching-hour lights of Gotham, trying to register what Alfred wanted him to take away from this conversation. He didn’t know how many men he’d killed by now. He didn’t know which had been his first– if it had been al Ghul who had taught him to take a life, or if he’d known that instinct even during his time as Robin. It had been shockingly easy to stop thinking of the people he hunted as people, with lives and hopes and sorrows. They weren’t real. They didn’t have to be.  “Does that matter?” he said again, his free arm slipping around his knees. “It’s–”

“Does it matter? ” Alfred hadn’t sounded angry, at least, just… shocked. Disappointed. That had been worse. His silence had rung through the line. “Jason, you can’t mean that.”

Jason had tried not to let his voice shake when he next spoke. “Is this the only reason you’re calling me?”

Alfred sighed. “I wish it were, but believe it or not, I’m actually worried about you for several reasons.”

A street light flickers outside. “Go ahead.”

“Well, for starters, you aren’t usually caught on tape.”

It gutters, and then goes out. “You’re calling because you saw me on camera?”

“If I saw you, then so did your enemies.”

“Why do you care so much?” He’d gotten up to close the blinds. “I mean, I’m flattered, but–”

“Is it so inconceivable to you that I might still care for you?” Anger had started to seep in. “Is it so utterly unbelievable that, despite everything, I might still wish you well?”

“Alfred–”

“You are eighteen ,” Alfred said, a plaintive note in his voice. “And Master Wayne may be too proud for it, but I am not, and I am begging you, Jason– I am begging you– to come back to the manor. Please .”

The words had hung in the space between them, and Jason had hesitated, opened his mouth to respond–

And he’d ended the call.

He could not return to Wayne Manor as her prodigal son. Jason Todd could not return at all– the Red Hood was no longer the boy who had left so very long ago. The only way he could return to the manor now was the very same way that he always should have: blue, cold, and still. He understood this most inherent of facts. 

Alfred did not.

In those days, Jason fielded calls from him once a week, at least, always with Alfred extending a hand to him– but that is the terrible thing about reaching a hand out to someone in need, isn’t it? To bring someone up from the depths of their suffering, they must be beneath you, and what was left of Jason Todd could no more stand to be below another than he could stand to take their hand and leave hell in earnest. His pride was all he had left now. It was all he could rely on.

He had stopped picking up the phone.

After a few weeks in turn, Alfred had stopped calling. As far as Jason was concerned, the message was clear between them. It was nothing personal– or, at least, it didn’t have to be. He was the Red Hood now, and he didn’t take anything from anyone.

Not anything. Not anyone.

The thing about that philosophy is that one day you look up, and the hands that were ready to feed you expect to be bitten, and so you’ve all fallen into your roles and you no longer have a choice in biting before they can beat you, and you pretend you’re happy, and you’re not. You pretend you didn’t want the treat, or the gentle hand at the scruff of your neck telling you that you were good. You pretend you weren’t ever anything more than a junkyard dog; that is, you pretend that you’re only good at killing. You can stay like that for a long time, if you put the work in.

Jason reads. He kills. He kills time. The years are a blur of motion. He gets into Sylvia Plath, and then Penelope Scott, of course, who are both writing about the same thing, and he relates more than he should, but he doesn’t stop to question it. No time. No point. He stops sleeping. He stops eating. He can be a good machine. He’s so good at being a machine. He puts good work in– god help him, he puts the work in. When he finally stops moving, he’s rewarded: he can hear the water crashing in his head like a long-lost pulse, like a prayer. Thanks for nothing. Amen.

Perhaps he can hear al Ghul laughing, too, back from another hellbent turn at ending everything. There is no one else like the two of them in all the world. All is as it should be.

He thinks he might get it now.

Jason’s empty body goes to the edge, just to prove to itself that it can step away. The spiral is tight, and dizzying, and downward, but, then, the Pit has always held a gravity all its own.

He’s not getting bad again. He’s already there.

When Dick gets Bruce on the line, Jason’s thinking about the last time Alfred called. He’s only half-listening to what Bruce is saying, recalling another chat with this same vocal interference, the same kind of echo bouncing through the Cave even if it’s not carrying the same words. “We wanted to talk to you,” Dick says expectantly from somewhere in the distance. “Right, Jay?”

He closes his eyes, and lets himself fall backwards into memory instead of answering. He’s not going to say anything that anyone wants to hear. It’s bad again.

He’s really good at falling.

It’s like a passage out of The Snow Child. Alfred doesn’t need quotation marks anymore. Jason knows his part of the interview by rote. The two of them are aware that he remains very much a danger to others. Doesn’t matter. Alfred has put that aside for now in favor of asking Jason if he’s safe.

So it’s midwinter in Gotham, somewhere in the clawing cement reaches of the Alley. He’s on his ass in the broken glass scattered over the concrete, remnants of some scrap he didn’t get to see. Jason waits for his breath to fog in the air before he remembers. He’s hurt. Anyone else would be bleeding out, but he won’t. Not enough blood. Never enough. “I’m fine,” he says mildly, turning his face up to the sky. The clouds tell him that it’s going to snow soon. “I’ll be fine. I just didn’t want to be alone.”

Alfred asks him what he’s doing.

Jason doesn’t have any answers anyone wants to hear. He smiles for no one, watches the sky. “I’m fine,” he says again, his voice drifting on the wind. “I’m not– you know. I’m fine.”

Silence. Somewhere, the sky is ticking.

Alfred asks him if he thinks he’s funny.

“A little bit.”

A bell rings distantly, signaling the second round. More silence. Alfred asks him if he wants to get better.

Jason laughs like a busted tire. That’s funny. Why would he want that?

The line goes dead. Jason keeps laughing for a little bit, because it’s better than anything else he could do right now. The bells keep ringing, but the bomb never detonates.

That’s alright. No one’s coming this time.

“Jason?”

“I’m fine,” he says on instinct, grimacing as he comes back to himself. That’s Bruce. His body is pressure-crushed tin, already fathoms too deep to avoid the bends. He should say more than that if he’s not going to come back up. “I think I’m dying.”

“That’s not fine,” Bruce says. Panic is a squirming maggot in his voice. Jason rests his head in his hands. “Dick, what–”

“I didn’t tell him to say that,” Dick says, placing a hand on the small of his back. This, too, is maggots. He doesn’t cringe. “He’s not dying.”

“I’m already dead.”

“You’re not dead,” Dick reassures him, smoothing a hand over his spine. That’s right. Dick’s a really good liar. “He’s not dead. Jason has some, um… circulation issues he didn’t tell us about.”

Bruce’s face is steely, masked not by cowl, but by something fatherly. Ha! “What do you mean by circulation issues?”

“I don’t have a pulse,” Jason says before Dick can interject. His voice falters like a heartbeat before he pulls the thread steady. “I lied to you.”

“You didn’t–”

“Omission,” he enunciates. He will take no reprieve now. He sees a microexpression of fear move across the clockwork of Bruce’s face, and Jason wrings his hands in his lap. His knuckles go pale, paler than they usually are. “The Pit– didn’t bring me back all the way.”

“Jason.”

“It didn’t,” he says again, ignoring Dick. His voice grates when he speaks. “It didn’t. And there’s a Pit here, and it’s– it’s bad again.”

“Again?”

Jason bows his head. “Again,” he says, and watches as the word drops like a diving weight into dark water. It barely leaves a ripple. “It’s worse. I can hear it– it’s bad .”

“Jay,” Bruce breathes. Jason closes his eyes– god, how he wishes he could hear anger, anything hard he could crash against and cling to. He can’t even hear disappointment. He doesn’t want to name what’s curling around his ankle to drag him deeper. Might just be seaweed. Better for everyone that way. Easier. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

It’s a laughable question, but Jason doesn’t have space for laughter, so he just breathes a little punched-out snort instead. Dick’s hand is firm against his shoulder. “Do you,” he starts, and then swallows it down and tries again. “Do you remember the last time I asked you for something?”

He can picture how Bruce’s expression must fracture like flint, cracking open to reveal paint-slag fordite, ugly and inorganic– grief hidden under layers and layers of justice and duty and code. In effigy, his eyes gleam like raw quartz. In enhydro crystals, the water stays where it belongs until the cavity is blasted open. Jason knows all about opening , about bodily abandonment. He has the autopsy scars to prove it. “I do,” Bruce says softly. “I’m sorry.”

He might mean it. Jason wouldn’t know. The two of them are a goddamn case study in forgiveness.

“Are you busy?” Dick asks. “There’s… we could use your help.”

“No, I’m not busy,” Bruce says quickly. “I can be there tonight. Is that okay, Jason?”

He lifts a shoulder in a shrug. What he means to say is that he’s had enough of dying offscreen, but all he can manage is feeble admission. “Okay.”

“Okay.” The silence flutters like cloth. “I love you.”

Dick’s voice buzzes. “Love you.”

Jason squeezes his eyes tighter. The water’s leaking into his ears. If he puts the work in, he can pretend it’s a comfort.

Dick doesn’t leave him alone, which is stupid, because it’s not like he could go anywhere. His energy washes in and out like a tide lapping into the edge of a cove. He stays where he is and fumbles for the echo of a current in his own veins, like he’s been standing in the harbor too long and can still feel the crash of waves where his blood should move. It’s nice. It’s… not bad. “Can I get you anything?” Dick asks from somewhere. “Something to read? I can go–”

Jason’s phone buzzes. He must’ve retrieved it from the couch cushions at some point, though he can’t remember– when he slips it out, he sees that Alfred is trying to call him. It’s enough to bring him nearly back to himself. What the fuck? “I’m getting a call,” he says dumbly. “Could you, um– go outside for a second?”

Dick shoots him a look. His brain is too fuzzy to decipher it, so he just sort of stares blankly back until Dick relents. “The cockpit’s soundproofed,” Dick offers. “Can you walk, or–”

He blinks. “Why the fuck wouldn’t I be able to walk there?”

“I–”

“Dicky.” There’s that old habitual irritation. He’s not helpless. Certainly feels a little more like himself, though. He clenches a fist, and then uncurls it, just to make sure he can still throw a punch if he needs to. Just in case. “I’m suicidal, not kneecapped.”

“I know.” Dick manages to sound offended. “I– if you need me, I’m nearby, okay?”

“You’re not going anywhere.” Jason carefully rises up from his seat, shaking out his feet. He must’ve been sitting for some time now, because they’re all pins and needles, like they’ve been asleep. He gets his phone out, checks the screen. Somehow, impossibly, it’s Alfred. “It’s a pretty small plane, man. I’m not going anywhere, either.”

“Well–”

He closes the door to the cockpit behind him just in time to miss Alfred’s call. He swears quietly and calls him back, and thanks god that Alfred is more punctual than he is, because the call gets picked up on only the second ring. “Hello?”

Fuck. Yeah, that’s Alfred. It takes Jason a second to find his words. “Hi, Alf,” he finally manages. “I, um… you called?”

“It rather seems that way.” Is Jason completely tripping, or is that amusement in his voice? “In light of recent events, I’ve decided to say my piece now rather than later, if that’s quite alright by you.”

He’s already rolling his eyes. “I’m not going to do anything stupid–”

“Jason Todd, you are calling me from Oregon ,” Alfred says sharply. It is a tone that absolutely brooks no argument. “You’ve already done quite a number of stupid things to get here, so forgive me if I doubt your word about what unpredictable horse shit you are or are not going to attempt next.”

Jason closes his mouth.

“For your sake, I have held my tongue. I have tried to give you the benefit of the doubt. You have been sick. You have been deeply wounded. I understand this. I am speaking to you now as someone who has processed that information, so please believe how far out of line the situation has become for me to call you.”

Yeah. Jason has no goddamn idea what to say to that. He leans against the pilot’s seat. “Alfred–”

“I should have burned that letter before letting it inside my home,” Alfred continues over him. “Rest assured, I will be damned before I let al Ghul take anything else from me.”

A beat. Jason’s head pounds. His vision begins to swim with fury. “This is about Ra’s?”

Alfred scoffs into the speaker. “Hasn’t it always been?”

Jason digs his fingers into the pilot’s seat. Of course this is about Ra’s. Everyone knows that he’s beyond saving. He’s nothing more than another fucking broken antique. “Oh, sorry, Alf. I thought maybe it was about me .”

“Hasn’t it always been?” Alfred says again, his voice hard and unsympathetic. “You told us you were free of al Ghul, that you were done hanging onto his every word– and here you are, following in his footsteps, playing out the game just as he planned.”

“That’s not–”

“That’s exactly what this is,” Alfred spits. “He’s still manipulating you. He’s still trying to pit us against each other. Jason,” and now a note of desperation creeps into his voice, “he’s dead . Let him stay that way. Do not hasten to join him. He made his decisions. You are your own man. You do not need to follow him anymore.”

There’s a quiet pop as Jason’s nails bite through the material of the pilot’s seat. “I’m not following him,” he says numbly. “I–”

A few days ago, he was fine. A few days ago, feelings like this were nothing but distant memories, only a landmark of how far he’d come. He’s backsliding. It’s bad again. Did Ra’s know this would happen?

Jason closes his eyes, thinks of deep water, bloated lungs. How could he not?

“Jason?”

“I’m here,” he says automatically. He keeps his eyes closed. He needs to say something else. “I’m sorry.”

Alfred is quiet for a moment. He might be dead. It might be the shock. “Don’t say anything you don’t mean,” he finally says. “You’ll only want to take it back in a few days.”

“Maybe.” He might. That’s true. He opens his eyes and stares out the plane’s front window at the deadwood forest. The snow is melting away. The ground’s all wet. Somewhere, the creek rushes on. He takes a deep breath, even though he doesn’t need to. “But I’ll be here to take it back, alright?”

Silence. Jason lets it hang between them.

“When you come back to Gotham, you have a standing invitation to dinner.”

“When I come back,” he echoes. A return trip no longer sounds so impossible, but he can’t leave yet. He can’t leave without understanding what this is, what it’s for. Something is still speaking to him, even if it’s a language only he understands. That must mean something . It must. “We’ll have a lot to talk about.”

“We will.” Alfred sounds a little less gutted. “So will I see you soon?”

Jason looks over towards the house. It rests unassumingly on the ground, tucked into a corner of Thirtymile’s forest. He is going to leave it here, he knows now. After everything, he will go back to Gotham. He’s never died here. What a pity it would be to tarnish that achievement now.

The Pit is still calling. No switch has suddenly flipped. It’s still bad. He has only been reminded that he is Jason Todd, and that he is, above all, a stubborn bitch.

“You will,” he tells Alfred softly. Somehow, impossibly, the distant sun falls to light upon his face. “I’ll be home soon.”

Chapter Text

Better than his word, Bruce gets in before sunset. Dick and Jason wait for him.

It’s funny, Jason thinks when the Pit is quiet, just how much of his life he’s spent waiting on Bruce to either save him or let him finish dying. Dick keeps an eye on him, but Dick can only see what’s external. Dick can’t see what’s plunging deep and deeper through the fathoms of his mind, the cleaving bow of memory turned away from the light. Jason sits back down in his seat in the belly of the plane, letting his thoughts move like any other eyeless plurality of fish in any other cave pool.

No one in Gotham has ever asked him what death was like. No one has asked him if he suffered. They think they know the answer.

They do not.

The terrible fact that only Jason seems to know about death is how easy it is. Dying– oh, dying is difficult. Dying is painful. Like a hermit crab from its shell, the mind pulls away from the body; like seabirds taking flight from bobbing waves, the soul pulls away from the mind. It will hurt to leave behind the sky, the smell of gasoline, of smoke, the body which no longer shivers or aches or feels its father’s arms holding it close. It no longer has access to words, so in that language that only souls know, it says goodbye.

It is true that absence makes the heart grow fonder. It is true that the dying wish only to live again.

But the dying are not the dead– indeed, the dead wish for nothing.

What is the quote about physicists speaking at funerals? It plays through him as though from a distance. “According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly. Amen.”

Whatever he was, he’s not gone. He is boundless, infinite.

This had been death.

When the Pit is quiet, Jason can think of Bruce. He can think of liminality and great arching doorframes, of the way objects of greater dimensions express themselves in lesser dimensions– only ever passing through. Deja vu ripples outward forever, but then the ripples catch up with each other, fall into the tide, and there is the Pit like it’s always been, patient, welcoming. It gets loud again, but not bad. It’s not bad. It’s better than it’s been since he got here.

Maybe numbness just feels different when it’s warm.

He meant what he said to Alfred. He means to come home when this is done. He’s even looking forward to it. The Pit is just… something he has to do first. Any other place to visit on the drive back.

Jason thinks about the Buc-ees in Colorado and feels his face twitch in a smile. Maybe the Pit serves brisket.

He’s still curled up to sit sideways in his seat in the back of the plane when Bruce comes up the boarding ramp, and the fucking hair stands up on the back of his neck before he realizes anyone’s there, much less who it is. It’s a conditioned reaction– it might as well be, anyway. His eyes flick open to watch Bruce, who is at least attempting to look non-threatening despite the fact that he almost needs to stoop not to brush his head along the ceiling. It’s the same body language anyone else might use around a skittish dog.

Jason’s not skittish, though, and he doesn’t blink while he watches Bruce, who avoids looking at him while he hugs Dick and they exchange words in low voices, in that secret language of sons and fathers. They exchange pleasantries, no doubt. Bruce tells Dick that he did so well, but that he is no longer solely responsible for what happens here. He says something along the lines of don’t worry, or it’s okay, or even I love you, son. You make me proud.

Jason still doesn’t blink. Whatever he wears now, it’s not an expression of longing. He’s survived so far without Bruce’s love. It will not fill him now. Nevertheless, he lets them pull apart from the hug before he speaks. “Jesus, it’s like you haven’t seen each other in months.”

His voice is a croak. Finally, Bruce turns to observe him– without the white lenses of his cowl to inhibit eye contact, he just looks sad,and  tired. Then again, he’s looked like that ever since Jason came back. “Jaybird,” he finally says. He doesn’t come any closer. His hands flutter uselessly around his pockets before finally coming back to rest at his sides. His expression roils. “How do you feel?”

“Fine.” Bruce hasn’t called him Jaybird in… well. A long time. “You look awful.”

“That’s been going around,” Bruce says softly. He raises a hand, telegraphs the motion, hesitates– then gently feels Jason’s forehead as though he’s looking for a fever. Whatever he finds, his expression settles. “Damian’s inconsolable.”

“Damian’s…” That’s right. His grandfather is dead. Something in Jason’s chest twists– the kid’s probably a mess. He finally looks away, knowing full well how the motion reads as guilt, guilt, guilt. “Right.”

“Alfred’s with him,” Bruce says in what’s probably meant to be a reassuring tone. “He wanted me to check on you, anyway.”

“Yeah?”

Bruce takes his hand away. “He told me to take care of you.”

That’s cute, but Jason feels his expression harden. “Yeah,” he says reflexively. “Because you’re so good at that.”

“Okay!” Dick claps his hands before Jason can say anything else, like he’s a kindergarten teacher trying to break up a fight. “So! What’s the plan for going home?”

Jason stares at him like he’s grown a second head. “What?”

“Going home?” Dick repeats. “Like, getting away from here? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’re, like, actively fucked up.”

Jason rolls his eyes. The waters of the Pit crash behind his temples, like they’re trying to join the conversation. “I’m fine.”

“Oh, my god,” Dick mutters.

Bruce’s face hardens into the shell of something businesslike. “You said some pretty concerning things on the phone.”

“I’m fine,” Jason repeats. He doesn’t blush, but that’s only because he can’t. He keeps his voice steady.  “Look, I’ll come back to Gotham, but you have to trust me, first.”

“Anything.”

“Let me go back to the Pit.”

Bruce’s expression shatters. “Jason.”

“You have to trust me,” he repeats. He keeps eye contact. He hasn’t won every argument in his life, but that’s fine, because they’ve all been practice runs for this. “Let me do this, and I’ll come back to Gotham with you. I’ll– I’ll come home.”

His voice cracks a little bit on that last word. He doesn’t know if it’s on purpose. He’s a very good liar, but he’s never called Bruce’s Gotham his home before. He’s not sure what it’s supposed to feel like when it comes out of his mouth. Bruce, to his credit, looks gutted– but this face, at least, Jason is familiar with. This is the face one wears in a warehouse at three in the morning when staring down one who holds a gun to the Joker’s temple, knowing full well that you can never give them what they want. This is the face of a father about to fail his son.

“I can’t do that,” Bruce says, right on cue. There are tears in his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Jason leans forward and lets malice spill into his voice. “If you were sorry ,” he spits, “then we’d be having a different conversation right now.”

“That’s enough,” Dick cuts in, resting a hand on Jason’s shoulder. It might be to hold him back. “Sorry, Jason, we’re not throwing you into the Pit.”

“Why not?” He bats Dick’s hand away. “You two can’t protect me! That ship has– it has left the harbor, okay? I’m already dead!”

Bruce’s voice is so stupidly sad that Jason almost wants to laugh. “You’re not–”

“Yes, I am!” He’s raising his voice. “I don’t have a pulse, I don’t eat, I don’t breathe– I am already dead . You can’t change that. I’m dead .”

Dick steps around the chair and kicks him in the shin. “You’re dead,” he says quietly. “But you’re being an asshole, man.”

“You’re not dead,” Bruce murmurs, looking down. “You came back.”

“You’re not listening.”

“Then tell me!” he says explosively, looking back up. Jason tries not to flinch at the wild expression in his eyes. “Tell me what happened! Tell me how I can fix it– I’ll do anything, Jason, but I can’t–”

He cuts himself off, but Jason knows how that thought ends. There’s only one thing Bruce can’t do. “You can’t lose me,” he whispers, the words somehow thick in his own throat. “But you don’t understand. I’m not here.”

Bruce doesn’t say anything. His face doesn’t move. If he tries, Jason can recall rough concrete under his back, the impossible stars above him. When he closes his eyes, he can believe that he’s still there. What is death but any other kind of falling? “I didn’t come all the way back,” Jason tells him. “I left something there. I have to go get it.”

“Was it your common fucking sense?” Dick hisses violently. Jason glances up to him and finds a nearly animal rage in his eyes, like prey that’s been backed into a corner and knows it has nothing left to lose. He barely looks like a person. “If you wanna leave us behind,” he seethes, “if you wanna die so bad, you fucking say it .”

“Is that what you fucking think this is about?”

Dick puts a hand to his own scalp, where Jason can see him pulling at his hair. They both do the same thing when they’re stressed, he knows. They both learned from Bruce. “What the fuck else could it possibly be about?”

Jason doesn’t take a deep breath. He doesn’t try to steady himself. Going to the edge is all about learning how to fall. He trusts his body. “I wasn’t supposed to come back,” he says, trying to be as gentle as he can, the way he didn’t try with Bruce. His brother needs him to be gentle. “Something’s wrong with me. You’ve seen it.”

Dick turns his face away before Jason can see his expression break. “You’re not broken, though,” he mutters. “We’re not going to just throw you away.”

“Jay.” God . He looks back to Bruce, who has the wettest, saddest eyes he’s ever seen on a living person. It’s fucking pathetic. “You weren’t a mistake,” he says, a broken note in his voice. “You were a miracle. You were a gift.”

Jason feels himself once more harden, a whorling skin coming to cover him like he’s made of volcanic glass. “A gift from al Ghul.”

“I don’t care where you came from,” Bruce tells him. He brings a faintly trembling hand back up to Jason’s face, and Jason, for his part, doesn’t bite. “I don’t care who gave you back to me. I don’t care. I love you.”

Jason stares at him for a moment, and then raises a hand to cover Bruce’s in what could be labeled a display of reciprocal affection. He can win this argument. He must. “If you love me,” he says, despite the hardness, despite the distance, “then you have to let me choose to come back to you. You have to let me do this.”

It’s a cruel thing to say. He doubles down before Dick can interrupt. “Please,” he says, his voice rough with… something. Frustration, maybe. He doesn’t want to try assigning any other words to what he hears. He doesn’t dare. “Let me do this.”

In the dim light, Bruce’s eyes glitter with a far-off kind of understanding. “And you’ll come back?”

“Do not fucking consider this,” Dick snarls. “He’s manipulating you. Jason–”

“I’ll come back,” Jason promises, the words barely a whisper. He doesn’t think he’s lying. He thinks he believes what he’s saying. He squeezes Bruce’s fingers– somewhere, the Pit is singing, and it’s loud . “I’ll come back.”

The anger in his body circles a drain somewhere in his chest before it finally disappears. It is so difficult to let go of what you cannot live without. Everyone that he and Bruce have ever loved has walked away covered in claw marks, but that’s the terrible thing about love: everyone walks away. He should know better by now. Bruce will never agree to this.

“Okay,” Bruce says, the words a weight in the air. “Then let’s go.”

Oh. “Now?”

“Absolutely not,” Dick says again. Jason looks up, but he lets him go– no matter how angry he is, Dick will wear himself out eventually. “You two are fucking delusional if you think I’m letting you do this.”

Something flickers in Bruce’s face– in an instant, he’s taken his hand away, all business again. “Don’t call your brother delusional.”

Jason sees a muscle tic in Dicky’s jaw. “Okay, I say this with so much love, but you need to shut the fuck up.”

“You don’t trust me,” Jason observes in a tone that he hopes reads as polite instead of passive-aggressive. Dick’s eyes are fiery. “Dick.”

“I don’t trust the Pit!” Dick fires back. His voice is furious with desperation. “I don’t trust what it does to you! You’re fucked up right now! It– it’s messing with your head, Jay, don’t you get that? Am I the only one who gets that?”

“Then help me!” Jason pleads, switching tactics. “If you think this is so dangerous, then help me do it safely!”

“This isn’t like doing weed in the house!”

“It’s exactly like doing weed in the house!” he insists. “Do you know why? Because it’s going to happen with or without you, and at least this way you can be there if something goes wrong!”

Dick’s knuckles have gone white in his hair. “And what,” he hisses spitefully, ”pray tell, the fuck will I do if something goes wrong?”

“You’ll be there.” Bruce’s voice brooks no argument. “We both will.”

“Why are you encouraging this?”

Bruce stares at Dick, and something else that Jason doesn’t understand passes between them, and then Dick’s hand goes slack, and he looks away. “I don’t like this,” he says in a tone of defeat. “I want that on the record. I think you’re both being stupid.”

Jason gets to his feet and nudges Dick with his shoulder. “Better than the alternative, right?”

Dick doesn’t smile. Jason looks away first.

It’s a quiet procession back to the little house. Jason doesn’t lead, but it’s not for lack of eagerness– something draws him forward, now, and he listens to it, letting it fill him up the way air might, the way blood should. Bruce stays at his shoulder as he makes his way over the few yards from the front door to the bedroom threshold, from the threshold to the descending stairs, and then down the stairs proper, anticipation a lump in his throat, his hands twisting and wringing empty around themselves, every part of him finally in tune and singing the same word, go, go, go, and his vision goes fuzzy for a moment when he sees the green waters of the Pit, open and inviting before him, steam curling off the surface like it’s only bathwater, and he takes a step towards it–

Dick grabs him by the back of his collar before he can go anywhere, and he makes a tiny, strangled noise even though there’s no air in his lungs. “It’s not going anywhere,” Dick mutters. “Jesus. Take your shirt off.”

This, at least, is strange enough to break him from his reverie. Distantly, a stalactite drips, and for a moment, the waters are alive before they fade back to placidity. They are the only sound through the whole of the cavern. “What?”

“It’ll weigh you down if you can’t come up.”

The water hisses. It says that’s the point of going under. Regardless, he takes off his shirt and tosses it to his brother without looking him in the eyes. “Do you want my pants, too?” Jason asks hoarsely. His throat is dry. How long has he been thirsty? “Are we good now?”

Dick won’t look at him head-on, either, so Jason glances at Bruce, who’s eyeing the water like he has any semblance of a plan in case things go wrong. He doesn’t. No one responds.

Jason turns back to the water. This is all that matters. Maybe it’s all that’s ever mattered. “I’ll be back soon,” he says to no one. It’s not a promise. Down here, it’s barely even believable. “I…”

The water laps at the stone, and then, gently, against his toes. His lips part in surprise– it is warm. It’s warm.

It’s been waiting for him.

He closes his eyes and begins to move deeper. It feels like coming home. It feels like being welcomed. It feels–

The bottom drops out of the shallows. Without a thought or instinct against it, Jason slips underwater and lets himself sink. All is as it should be.

At last, it feels like nothing at all.

Chapter Text

He sinks.

The surface of the water dapples him with light as he twists to stare upward. The world falls away. The pool is deep. For what could be a period of minutes, or hours, or even days, he revels in falling, in pressure, in the receding motion of the surface world.

No one comes after him. No one makes him resurface.

Ecstasy.

The water cradles him. If he were alive, he would be drowning, but as it is, the water is only stroking his skin. Laura Gilpin wrote that about a dead dog lying in the gutter, he thinks distantly. It’s a good poem. It’s good.

Oh, honey.

As soft as the flutter of eyelashes, a presence joins him. Its body blots out what little light still filters through his eyelids, and then its gentle fingers cup his cheek. What are you doing here? Somehow, even underwater, the words carry. It’s just, I didn’t expect to see you again.

He gingerly opens his eyes, expecting the water to sting, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t even obscure his vision– and, oh, what a vision it is, because floating just above him, her arm outstretched to caress his cheek as fond wonderment dances over her face, is Gloria Stanson, alive and well, dressed in a leather miniskirt and a high-cut top. One of her stilettos drifts just behind her in the water, Newton’s first law in effect as it falls away at a snail’s pace. Her expression is soft with curiosity, so unlike the last time he saw her, and her hair swirls around her face as she smiles, lipstick still stained in memorium on her front teeth.

Jason, she asks him again without moving her lips, honey, why are you here?

Overhead, a ceiling fan clicks and circles. Jason sits on the edge of a bed next to Gloria, who plucks her shoe out of the air and slips it back onto her foot as though nothing at all peculiar or remarkable is occuring. “You’re dead,” he says dumbly. Somehow, it does not spoil the scene. “You’re… am I…?”

She gets up to look herself over in the mirror over a little vanity. He sees her realize there’s lipstick on her teeth. “You’re not dead,” she says without a backwards glance as she plucks a tissue from a box. “Do you wanna be?”

He doesn’t say anything. Gloria fluffs her hair and meets his gaze in the mirror, then sighs. Her eyes are Pit-water green and deep with sadness. “Jason.”

“Yes, ma’am?” His voice is no more than a whisper, but he remembers his manners, at least, and then remembers not to breathe in, too, al Ghul’s ghost-bloated lungs spinning in an instant through his mind. “I–”

She turns away from the mirror and stretches her arms out over her head, as though simply reveling in the living ache of muscle and ligament, so long forgotten. Her hair starts to drift out around her head again as the water creeps back in. “Did you come here to die?”

She isn’t real. She cannot possibly be real. “Don’t ask me that,” he pleads, his voice trembling. “What are you doing?”

The current moves in her hair. When she opens her mouth, only the sound of rushing water falls out into the space between them. He does not cringe away from it. He stares at her, wide-eyed, as though he is a boy again, and does not flinch when he hears the gentle noise of water filling his ears. He is only a dog in the gutter. It is only the rainwater stroking his skin.

He does not know if he came here to die.

Whatever the answer, Gloria smiles softly. The apartment is gone, but she seems to have gotten the lipstick off of her teeth. She must have been very important to you , the Pit says from where it is pressed up flush inside of him. Did you love her?

Did he love Gloria Stanson? He knows this answer. It is one thing entirely to love someone– it is another thing to mourn them. “No,” he whispers. “I didn’t.”

The sound falls away in a glassy, streaming bubble of air, and they both watch it drift away. Gloria looks fascinated. She died what seems like only moments ago– has she forgotten already what it’s like to breathe? The Pit drips inside his ear canals, trickling past the eardrum and somehow, impossibly, into his very brain in a sensation that can only be described as autopsical. His vision swims. In a flicker of light from somewhere impossibly far above, Gloria is a mermaid, her tail long and sinuous, winding down into an equally impossibly green forever.

You think you’ve lost something, the water murmurs. It fucks into his brain like a knife into a wound, but it’s not violent; it’s just the only way this could ever happen. He cannot breathe. He cannot remember how. Did you come looking for it?

He sinks deeper, incidentally. Gloria’s body is blotting out the light, once more and finally above him.

She’s like an angel.

Did you come looking for it? the Pit repeats. It doesn’t sound angry or impatient, but maybe the sudden tonelessness is because it’s not using Gloria’s voice anymore. This is something older, deeper, a cacophony of overlapping familiar cadences. They rise, clamoring, and Gloria disappears as a rumble, as though of tectonic plates or the vibration of metal grinding along metal, moves through the water. He looks down– air bubbles upwards. Eyes glint dimly. 

There’s something down there.

The water moves in his skull. You want answers.

He does, but he doesn’t have to say anything– it already knows. Ask your questions.

Jason just barely stops himself from opening his mouth. He has all the time in the world– there’s no need to rush communication. Will you kill me if I breathe?

No. It sounds almost offended, but it’s answer enough. He takes a deep breath, and lets the water flood through his body. It’s cold, stale– but it’s a relief. When was the last time breathing was a relief? Why would I kill you? the Pit asks.

You killed Ra’s.

The voices momentarily go silent. I did.

Why?

The sunlight glimmers in the water in the same motion as before, but no one appears. Al Ghul’s image doesn’t appear. He had finally come back to me, the Pit says reproachfully. The voices clamor together, and then disappear into one . Why would I let go of such a gift?

For the first time, fear begins to creep in. You can’t keep me here.

Did I say that I would?

In a trickle of ice melt, fear creeps into doubt. He takes another breath, and feels himself sink deeper. Then why did you bring me here?

The sentiment echoes out endlessly. The Pit doesn’t respond for a long time. Why do you think I would have brought you here?

To kill me–

Is that what you think of me?

Again, the sunlight fractures, and then Jason is lying in clover and staring up at a brilliant sun burning through Gotham’s omnipresent smog. He rolls his head to the side to see Dick lying next to him in street clothes, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes wide and unmasked. This is not a memory. “Why would I kill you?” Dick asks, his voice rapt and far-away. “Why would I kill anyone?”

Jason sits up and looks down at his brother’s face. Dick’s eyes are a deep, luminous green, wide with a boyish sort of confusion. “You ruined my life,” he tells Dick, his voice thick with… something. Something. It rocks, seasick. “You made me crazy. You made me hurt people.”

“I gave you your life,” Dick says, that note of confusion still in his voice. He looks back up towards the sun. “I gave you this . Why would you want to give it back?”

“But Ra’s–”

“How old are you?” Dick asks him, still staring into the sun. He’s going to burn his corneas if he keeps that up. His voice ebbs and flows with twin solemnity and softness. “How many years weigh on you now that you would ask me to take them away?”

It’s a ridiculous question– Jason scoffs, but he answers anyway. “I’m twenty-four.”

Dick nods thoughtfully. The soft clover ripples in a gentle breeze. Jason feels it ruffle his hair. “You’ve lived less than a quarter of a century,” Dick finally says. “And already you wish to be finished?”

“I didn’t say that.”

Dick smiles– or, rather, the Pit smiles, but it borrows Dick’s face to do it. All at once the expression is kind and sad and ferocious. “You did.”

“I don’t want to die,” Jason repeats. Did he ever say that in the first place? “I just– whatever you’re doing to me, you have to stop, okay?”

Dick’s eyes roll back up towards the sun. “‘When we are loved,’” he says, “‘we are afraid love will vanish. When we are alone, we are afraid love will never return.’”

That’s Audre Lorde. Jason closes his eyes, and imagines Ra’s wading ankle deep into the water, reading aloud from the Litany for Survival. His pants are rolled up to his calf. Even in effigy, he does not stop to breathe. “What the fuck do you know about love?” he asks harshly. “No one loves you.”

“You love me.”

“I don’t,” he says, but he doesn’t open his eyes, because then he’d have to look Dicky in the face while he says it, and he’s not a good enough liar for that. “I hate you.”

The words settle between the two of them. Dick’s voice smiles. “Then why are you here?”

Jason’s hand curls into a fist in the clover. “Because I want you to leave me the fuck alone!”

“And were you afraid I would not hear you all the way from Gotham?”

“You’ve never heard me!” he yells. The words come up metallic, covered in gore. “I fucking– I asked you to get out of me, I begged you, and you just– you–”

“Ah.” It’s fucking patronizing him. “You resent that I did not give you back your life the way it was.”

He takes a deep breath, like he’s going to have to scream again, and then lets it fall out of him in a long, trembling exhale. “Was I broken before I came to you?”

“I don’t understand.”

He can feel himself snarl. Water crashes, pounds like a migraine behind his eyes. It’s storming in his head. “Was I already like this, or did you break me?”

The Pit pauses for a moment, seemingly to consider its answer. “Everything that comes to me is broken,” it finally says. “You overestimate me. I cannot give you back a self that is unmarred by the terrible acts of living and dying.”

Gentle rain begins to patter on Jason’s face. The scene must be dissolving again– someone is moving the set of the sky off the stage. “Then what fucking good are you?”

“I gave you a second chance.”

He throws his arm over his face so that his eyes are in the crook of his elbow. He doesn’t open them. The water floods around him– he’s sinking again. I fucked it up, he tells the Pit, as though it doesn’t already know. It was a shit second chance. Everything was awful when I came back.

Everything?

Jason had been replaced, forgotten, used, thrown away. He’d hurt people. He’d killed, and when he hadn’t been killing, he’d wanted to die. His clean slate had been so fucking dirty with the wreckage of what his dying hand had written that there was no way to undo it. Everything, he says to the water. It was all gone.

Well, I’m sorry I hurt you, the water says. Suddenly, the pressure is a burden. He cannot cry underwater. When was the last time he cried? I was lonely, and you were warm. I think you’ve heard that excuse before.

The water stings against his eyes. It should burn against the surface of his brain, too, but it’s just like the last time his brain was exposed, because the brain doesn’t have the nerves required to feel sensation, just to carry thought, which is both sentiment and soul. I was warm, he repeats dully. I was on fire. I burned.

You did, the Pit says softly. A new scene is beginning to form– the interior of the car he drove to Thirtymile, the endless American circulatory system laid out plain before him. Ra’s is sitting in the passenger seat, staring forward, the sun reflecting off of the horizon and into his eyes. He must be blind with it, but he doesn’t look away. “Do you think I broke you?” Ra’s asks, and, oh, isn’t that a loaded fucking question. Jason doesn’t answer, but it doesn’t matter, because Ra’s just shakes his head. “I suppose the real question is whether or not you believe that broken things can be fixed.”

Jason’s hands tighten around the steering wheel. “I’m not a thing,” he says before he can stop himself. “You can’t fix people.”

Ra’s keeps looking into the sun. “Do you think you can break them, either?”

“You don’t make sense.”

“I rarely do.”

“Did Ra’s understand you?” Jason says before he can stop himself. The question hangs in the air until he follows it up– “Is that why he’s dead?”

“No.” The Pit meets his eyes in the mirror. Both their eyes are the same radioactive shade of green. “But I suppose that Ra’s already knew everything else. Maybe now he’s found what he was looking for.”

“You don’t know?”

The Pit looks away from the mirror in an action that reeks of guilt, or maybe of shame. “I am a doorway,” it says, still with al Ghul’s voice. “You move through me, and you do not come back. I know not what lies in the room beyond.”

Jason stares. Water is already starting to lap at his feet again, bubbling up from under the pedals. It’s cold. “Then why–”

“Why anything?” Ra’s says, leaning back in the seat as though already resigned to drowning. “I ruined your life. Why have you come back to me?”

Jason– no.

No.

He hits the brake on the interstate and stops the car on the median. Underfoot, the water stops burbling. “You called me, ” he spits as he unbuckles. “You brought me here. Ra’s brought me here. I know what I want, so what the fuck is it that you want?”

Ra’s stares. Jason presses the button to unbuckle his seatbelt, too, and then throws open the driver’s-side door. The water splatters out onto the eerily empty road. “Get out.”

“What?”

“Get out,” he demands again as he steps out. “Come on.”

So he watches as Ra’s gets out of the car, blinking in the sunlight. He seems confused. Good. “What are you doing?”

Jason scoffs. “I don’t fucking know!”

“Then why–”

“Because if you’re gonna try to pull the world’s shittiest Uno-reverse on me,” he tells the Pit over the roof of the car, “then you have to know what other cards are in your hand.”

Ra’s eyes are wide, like a child’s. The wind ruffles his hair, his three piece suit. “I’ve never played Uno.”

“Yeah, you don’t fucking say.”

It sighs. “What I mean,” the Pit says impatiently, “is that I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“You don’t say,” Jason repeats himself, turning away. There still aren’t any cars on either side of the road. He looks further, squinting, and his stomach swoops– wherever he is, the earth doesn’t curve. It’s just a flat expanse that runs parallel to the sky, completely unmolested by a horizon. “Pick a direction.”

“Why?”

He smiles, even though the Pit can’t see his expression. Look at that– in real time, he’s finally forgetting how to be an inside pet. “Maybe I’ve decided it’s your turn not to know what the fuck is happening.”

“That’s not–”

Behind him, he can hear the water starting to trickle out of the car again. They don’t have time for this. “Pick a direction.”

Ra’s hesitates, and then points further down the road. “We should–”

Cool. Jason immediately heads for the trees on the other side of the asphalt.

“Wait!” The Pit scrambles to follow him, moving up to his elbow. “You can’t just–”

The side of the road is covered in gravel and garbage. Someone’s thrown a styrofoam gas station soft drink cup out of their window, and it’s been gnawed through and broken down by… something. An animal, probably. Are there animals here? “Can’t do what?”

“You can’t just walk away from me!” it says desperately, almost like it’s pleading. “You still– you want me to tell you everything, don’t you?”

He steps over the little metal fence he can’t remember the word for– the gravel crunches underfoot. He can feel himself smiling. “I’ve kind of given up on that, actually.”

“What?”

“You’re not telling me anything,” Jason says impatiently, striding through the patchy grass towards the trees. “Why would I stick around to listen to you if you’re not telling me anything?”

“I’ve told you–”

“Why did you bring me here?” he demands without looking back. If the stumbling footsteps behind him are any indication, the Pit is still following him, but he’s used to that by now. He’s lived that way for years now. “And don’t give me any bullshit, okay? I want the truth.”

The Pit stammers, its voice once again approaching the edge of that strange cacophony before stabilizing. It sounds like Bruce now, but he still doesn’t turn to look at it. “Maybe I missed you,” it says desperately. “Maybe I wanted you back.”

“Maybe isn’t good enough.”

“Jason–”

It’s effortless to ignore Bruce’s voice. He’s been doing it for years. He keeps walking away. “The truth,” he says again. “Now.”

“I missed you!” the Pit repeats desperately. “I missed you, I– it’s lonely–”

“You had Ra’s.”

“But I don’t have him anymore!” Panic is starting to rise in its shifting voice. Now, it sounds a little like Talia. “He’s dead!”

The sunlight filters through the trees, green and splotchy. It’s warm. “You killed him, yeah.”

“I didn’t want to!”

“Then you shouldn’t have done it.”

“He–” A crash, as though of someone attempting to stagger through brush. He doesn’t look back. “I didn’t want him to die! I cannot– I couldn’t stop him!”

“Then why–”

“Jason!” Finally, he stops walking, and listens to it start to catch up. Its voice is changing again. “Please, whatever point you’re trying to make– I’m listening now. I won’t– I’ll do what you want, but you have to stop– just stop!”

He doesn’t turn around.

“I’m sorry I called you back,” the Pit says. Who’s voice is this? He doesn’t recognize it. “Ra’s was gone. I was lonely. I wanted to see you again.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.” Its voice is pitiful, raspy and fraught with tears. “I just wanted to see you. I didn’t– I didn’t want you to die.”

Jason clenches a fist. He doesn’t turn around. It’s lying. It must be. “Then why –”

The words fall flat between them. The fault is not external. God help him.

He looks.

The Pit has taken the form of a young teenager with dark hair and a face swollen with injuries. They’re dressed in his old Robin costume, and his heart practically drops into his stomach as he realizes what– who– he’s looking at. It’s crying. “You were gonna leave me alone again,” it says in his own broken voice. “If you get better, you’ll forget me, and then I’m alone again, and I can’t–”

And suddenly, just like that, it makes sense.

It all makes sense.

So Jason watches it cry for a moment. Is he supposed to feel pity? Is this it? The first thing anyone sees when they look into a body of water is their own reflection, and here is his, just as he left it, broken and abandoned like a shattered porcelain doll. He watches its chest heave, tracing the jagged edges of broken ribs where they attempt to rise through skin. The old Robin costume is covered in blood.

This is how the Pit remembers him.

He takes a knee in the grass so he’s eye to eye with the ghost. “I’m never going to forget you,” he tells it. Everything around them is green– the leaves, the grass, the sunlight. They’re cradled in viridescence. “I don’t think you’re ever getting rid of me.”

The kid wipes at his eyes. “I’m sorry,” the Pit says thinly, its voice high and childish and exhausted. “I wish you could forget me.”

Jason feels his lips twitch in a smile. “Yeah.” Somewhere, water is crashing. It sounds like a song. “I wish you could forget me, too.”

If the Pit says anything else, he does not hear it. He does not understand. Jason is lost in the green, staring up towards the sun.

Somewhere, the sky goes on forever.

It’s time to wake up.

Chapter Text

There are lots of ways this story could end.

This is the way of futures, yes? They spiral outwards, ballooning to take up all the available space of their vessels. They bubble up like breath from deep water; they careen in the same way any open road plunges through any open landscape. Here are the roadlights, illuminating the asphalt. Here are the solitary, luminous figures that wait in a cave deep below the earth. “He’s taking too long,” one of them says to the other, anxiety clear in his voice. “Do you think–”

“It’s only been a few minutes,” the other one says. If he’s scared, too, his voice is better at hiding it. “Give him time.”

Dick grinds his teeth, staring down at the murky, placid water. It’s impenetrable– he can’t see shit. Jason could be anywhere. “How are you so calm about this?”

“I’m not.”

“Stop bullshitting me.”

“I’m not calm,” Bruce repeats. Dick glances over– he’s looking into the water, too, with the same gaze that speaks of contingencies, eventualities. It is a clear, ruthless expression. “He gets ten more minutes, and then I’m going to get him.”

“But you can’t–”

“I did my research,” Bruce says roughly. “I talked to Talia. I have equipment. I didn’t come unprepared.”

Dick’s arms unfold, come to rest at his sides. “So that show in the plane–”

“It wasn’t a show,” Dick’s father says. He’s unnaturally still in the darkness. Only the wet gleam of his eyes reveals that he’s anything more than another shadow. “I didn’t want it to come to this.”

“To this, ” Dick repeats, like he’s asking a question. The echo of his voice reverberates through the cave, and he scoffs. “Of course you had a plan,” he mutters, mostly to himself. “Right.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t?”

“I thought you’d stop him,” Dick says, maybe a little surprised by the rancor that rears its head in his voice. “I thought you had a plan to stop him, not a plan for… I don’t know. After .”

Bruce is silent for a moment. “I couldn’t have stopped him.”

“What?”

“You heard what he said.” Bruce crouches, his eyes still glittering in the dim light off the water. “This was going to happen with or without us. I would rather be here to pick up the pieces than let him do this by himself.”

“This,” Dick says again, the rancor dissolved. He crouches next to his father like he can understand him by following his actions. Such is the way of sons. “Killing himself, you mean.”

It’s not the first time he’s said it out loud, but the words hang differently in the air of the cave. To his credit, though, Bruce doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t even blink. Distantly, water drips into the Pit, sending tiny ripples across its surface, racing towards the lip of stone where they stand now.

“I hope not,” Bruce says softly. “God, I hope not.”

Elsewhere, the future rolls like a stormcloud across a humid New Jersey sky– unstoppable, unquenchable, its internals flickering with spun lightning. It hovers on the barest precipice of being, as unsure as the little boy who waits in the foyer of Wayne Manor, peering at the front door as though at any moment the future might come strolling back in. “Alfred,” Damian says impetuously, “when did you predict that Jason would be back?”

Alfred Pennyworth is nearby, his presence even now as reliable as it’s ever been. “Soon,” he responds simply, his tone betraying nothing at all as he once more takes a rag to the fine vase by the door. His lips press together for a mere moment, and then he says, almost casually– “He’s running late, I think.”

Damian huddles his legs closer to his body and rests his chin on his knees from where he perches on the stairs. His dark eyes are baleful with concern, but he is only a child, and he is far from his brother, and he knows that there is nothing he can do now but wait.

At least at this, he has practice.

The future pulls ahead from the present. The present, in turn, pulls ahead from the past, and the past, alone, is left bare and vulnerable to memory, that greatest and most feared of ambush predators. It shivers like a dying child in a ruined warehouse– see them both staring up at the stars as the world goes dark, as certainty sets in and tucks itself around them like a blanket, like a body bag. Hush, now, it whispers. There is nothing more to be afraid of. It’s done. It’s all done.

Perhaps it is inaccurate to say that time moves forward. After all, it can travel in only one direction, a guiding central column, a beanstalk to worlds unknown. Time does not move forward. It simply moves, period, and as for the past–

Well. Whatever is left there only chokes, and goes finally, irrevocably still. ||

Jason Todd is late, yes. That is, as Alfred says, he is taking his time under the waters of the pit. Bruce Wayne’s internal clock ticks down, hits the one minute mark, the two minute mark, starts creeping towards three. How much trust can one man muster? How much love can one man hold? The surface of the water is a glass-smooth seal, and he cannot see beneath it. Distantly, he can hear water dripping into water. “Come on, Jaylad,” he mutters under his breath. “Come on.”

Somewhere above him, above the little house, above Oregon, the open, timeless sky goes on forever.

Somewhere below him, the water is saying goodbye.

Four minutes.

Five minutes.

The waters of the Pit begin to pull back from the edge of the stone shore, like they remember how it felt to hold the moon’s hand and perform the pas de deux of low tide. The water casts dapples of light against the walls of the cavern.

Six minutes. No one sees it, but a body is emerging from the deep. ||

It rises not like a bloated corpse, which bobs and drifts, but like a whale calf being buoyed to the surface by its mother for its first breath of air. It rises like the sun over the horizon, like dawn cresting the ridge and painting the sky a sweet rosy-pink. It rises like flame, like dust, like hope– quietly, and yet somehow entirely unstoppable.

I didn’t expect to see you again, Gloria’s voice whispers from the bottom of the trench. Even now, her dead, loving eyes are watching him ascend. No debts, darling. Get home safe. Go see the sun for me.

Jason Todd opens his eyes and kicks for the surface.

Seven minutes. Eight. Bruce crouches by the water, staring at it fixedly. “Jason,” he mutters to himself, keeping his voice low enough that no one can hear him. His breath skims the surface of the water. “Jay, please .”

Nine minutes.

Nothing.

Nine and a half.

The surface ruptures.

I hope you forgive me for the way this story ends. This is the way of futures– they carry so far in the only direction they can, but we know that most parts of a ray are unviewable with the human eye. We can only ever see segments of a line. We can only ever see snapshots of what will be.

So here’s a photo album.

Snapshot: December. Jason Todd tries again. One more time can’t hurt, right? Back home, Dr. Harley Quinn prescribes an inhaled antipsychotic and a defibrillator to get the blood to jump-kick it into his brain as she snaps her bubblegum. “You know how to use one of these, right?”

Snapshot: January. It’s New Year’s. Damian watches the fireworks in a pair of extremely cunty sunglasses, which he says Jason can have back after the show. Alfred brings him coffee, and they watch the lights from the doorway. They don’t talk. They’ve said everything they need to say. It’s a comfortable kind of silence.

Snapshot: February. He goes to the movies with Dick, and, more begrudgingly, with Tim. They watch some trashy horror flick in an empty theater, and spend the whole time yelling at the characters to make better choices with their lives, like they’re so good at doing that, themselves.

Snapshot: March. He listens to the new Penelope Scott album with Bruce. The music is good. The company is bearable.

He still likes the old stuff more.

So Jason doesn’t die, because he doesn’t want to ruin Christmas, and then because he makes a New Year’s resolution, and then it starts warming up– and who the fuck kills themself in March, right? You just can’t kill yourself in March. You can’t go out like a chump.

Time passes. More time passes. Spring blooms in the dirty alley corners of Gotham City. He keeps putting it off, and to his astonishment, he wakes up one day and finds that he just doesn’t want to die. Isn’t that crazy? He spends some time crying about it, astonished to find that he can cry nowadays, astonished that the future has settled in as the present. It’s astonishing. It is miraculous.

It is, somehow, inevitable.

I will not leave you in a cold, dark cave with the water looming for fathoms below. The water isn’t the important part. Somewhere, Jason Todd is clawing his way out of it, and remembering to breathe.

That’s the most important part. The future comes in one day at a time.

Keep breathing.