Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dick watches Jason tug his boots off in the entryway, dropping them to the pristine tile with a puff of ash and dirt.

"Jesus Christ," Jason says. "That was a fucking mess."

"Sure," Dick says absentmindedly. Jason's incongruous against the finery of the luxury apartment they've somehow ended up in, still decked out in the roughly worn Red Hood gear. Either he hasn't noticed or he doesn't care, kicking his boots out of the way as he wanders further in.

For a moment, Dick considers taking off the domino mask that's starting to itch around his eyelids, but he dismisses it in the next second. The more protection he has, no matter how flimsy and intangible, the better off he is. Jason may have forgotten they're in enemy territory, but Dick hasn't.

The reason for his discomfort shoots him a sideways look as she hangs up her jacket.

"Jason," says Sofia Fucking Gigante, Gigante crime family founder and matriarch, the mastermind behind Joker's assassination. Murderer, manipulator, a thousand other crimes besides. The only way Dick sees Jason at all, these days. "You better not be tracking blood into my apartment."

My apartment. Dick clenches his jaw. He's in her arena, her hands. She could pull a gun on him and shot him where he stands. It's not like Jason would be able to stop her.

"It's mostly dried," Jason says, after a beat. "Christ, what a shitshow. Sof, do you mind if I use your shower?"

"I'd actually prefer it if you did," she says, stepping past Dick with another wary look. She's got her back to him now. From anybody else, it would be a show of trust. From Sofia Gigante, it's a show of power. Even when she has her back turned, there's nothing he can do about her. Not here. "Do you have any idea how much you stink right now?"

Dick doesn't have any choice but to follow her into the living room, which opens up into the kitchen, where Jason stands with a protein bar in his hand and a lopsided smile on his face.

"I'll keep that in mind next time I get caught in an explosion," he says. His eyes catch on Dick, and the smile spreads. "Oh, hey. You didn't go flying out the window at the first opportunity."

Dick's first instinct is to do just that, but he tamps it down to paste a smile Jason's way. "Come on, you couldn't get rid of me that easy. Just a quick debrief." Jason makes a performative expression of disgust. "Ten minutes, tops."

It's not like the debrief excuse is untrue. Jason's right in that this particular outing was a complete fucking mess: Dick had been tracking a mob offshoot from Blüdhaven, Sofia had dragged Jason into some sort of inter-family stand-off, and the whole thing had been a poorly considered attempt at a set-up. Doesn't hurt to get the finer details straight and hopefully avoid making the same mistakes down the line.

The other, even truer reason is that the longer Dick can keep Jason in his sightline, the longer he can act as a barrier between him and Sofia Fucking Gigante, the better off they all are. More likely than not, it'll all come to nothing.

But this is Dick's little brother. He has to try.

"Get it down to seven," Jason says, before he downs the whole protein bar in a single, disgusting bite. "Anyway. Sofia, do you still—"

"Chew," Sofia says, firmly. "For God's sake, Jason."

Jason mutters something indistinct under his breath, but chews and swallows like she asks him.

The only thing more unsettling than being in enemy territory is watching Jason and Sofia interact like this. The casual familiarity of it, the well-worn patterns. It's something almost disturbingly close to affection.

Especially from the woman who shot Jason in the head three hours prior.

There's still blood crusted in Jason's hair when he leans over the trashcan to toss the wrapper. "Like I was saying. Do you still have those extra clothes?"

Sofia gestures out towards the hallway. "In the linen closet."

"Thank God," Jason says. He looks down at his darkly-stained pants with an exaggerated look of distaste. "I never liked these, anyway."

"Finally," Sofia says flatly. "Is all the money I spend on tailoring actually paying off?"

Jason looks back up to grin at her. "You fucking wish."

Then he looks sideways, over to Dick, who's still hovering near the entrance of the living room. Something very small shrivels up inside of Dick whenever Jason looks at him like that. Sofia, the literal fucking crime lord, Jason's killer dozens of times over, gets sure and easy smiles where Dick gets unsteady peripheral glances. Dick is supposed to be Jason's brother. What can Sofia do for him that Dick can't?

"Your debrief," Jason's saying. "Do you want to do that now, or—"

"I can wait until after you shower," Dick says. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Sofia raise an eyebrow. "Don't worry about it. I'll be here."

Jason's shoulders relax, just fractionally. "Cool," he says, and when he smiles at Dick there's nothing uncertain at all. "I'll be out in a bit." To Sofia, he says, "Play nice."

Sofia slips down onto the leather sectional, pulls a pack of cigarettes out of her bra. "I always play nice."

"Uh-huh," Jason says, with that infuriating fondness. He gives Dick a lazy salute and a click of the tongue, and then he's off down the hallway, leaving Dick alone with Sofia Fucking Gigante.

If Dick had to pick a worst enemy, a so-called archnemesis, he would probably pick the greed and selfishness buried deep within the human soul. If he had to pick a second archnemesis, he would pick Sofia. It's not that Sofia is one of the most well-known crime heads in the whole city, although that's definitely part of it. There are plenty of well-known crime heads in Gotham, and Dick isn't giving any of them the dubious honor of high placement on his unofficial archnemesis list.

It's about Jason. Obviously, it's about Jason.

Jason, who had stormed back into Gotham full of a righteous and murderous fury, fresh off the Lazarus Pit with a new ability to come back from any awful, deadly injury anyone is unlucky enough to inflict on him. He would have been vulnerable, probably scared out of his mind and lashing out in every direction to hide it. And instead of Dick finding him, or Alfred, or hell, even Bruce, it had been Sofia. Sofia had taken advantage of Jason's skills to further the Gigante name, and Jason had been so desperate for any sort of stability that he had let her. Jason got the structure and direction he craves so badly, and Sofia got an unkillable teenager she can throw at any inconvenience that shambles into her way.

But what does Sofia get out of Jason calling her nicknames when he asks to use her shower? What does she get out of bickering with Jason over his sartorial choices? What does Sofia Fucking Gigante get out of letting Jason take up space in her house and her life?

Nobody exists without ulterior motives. Not in this town. What the hell does Sofia want, and how badly is it going to hurt Jason when she takes it?

Sofia lights a cigarette on the couch, uncaring of secondhand smoke and Dick's fresh spiral. "You wanna sit?"

"I'll stand, thanks," Dick says evenly.

"Wow," Sofia says. "So principled."

Dick grits his teeth. Sofia takes another drag of the cigarette. The shower runs down the hall.

"So," Sofia says. "Nightwing."

Dick twitches. She has to know his identity—Selina and her have been infuriatingly tight for as long as Dick can remember, and she obviously knows who Jason is. On the thankfully rare occasions they meet up at some gala outside the mask, Sofia addresses him with a chill, knowing Richard. Whenever Dick's in the mask, he gets a coolly professional Nightwing. It isn't relieving. It's like she's holding back, waiting for the worst possible moment to rip the domino mask off for him.

He says nothing. Sofia smiles with an absolute emptiness behind her eyes. "I'm assuming you wanted to talk to me."

"I'd actually rather not," Dick says, pleasantly edged. "Like I said, I have a few things about the case I need to go over with Jason. That's it."

"Well, it's just that normally—" Sofia leans back on the couch, watching Dick with those uncannily piercing black eyes. "Normally you'd do anything not to be in the same room as me."

"That can't possibly come as a surprise to you," Dick says, before he can stop himself.

Sofia smiles again, a little more lifelike. "See? You did want to talk."

"Of course not," Dick says automatically, but he realizes as he says it that he's lying. Damn it all, she's right. Another frustrating, inconvenient thing about Sofia Gigante is how cuttingly she sees through the careful masks and illusions the people around her put up. Dick's a better performer than most people. Most people know exactly what he wants them to know. Sofia is just that good, and he completely fucking hates it. He reframes. "I have nothing new to say to you."

"But you stayed," Sofia says.

"For Jason," Dick corrects. Sofia tilts her head to the side, like she's conceding the point. "You don't actually need to hear whatever it is I have to say. You're just looking for something else you can use."

"Oh, very astute," Sofia says, patronizing. Dick has to inhale and exhale, slow and controlled. "Call it professional curiosity, then. Jason's my prerogative, so excuse me for wanting to know what your endgame is here. What else you want from him."

My prerogative, Dick thinks, with a fresh burst of fury. Like Jason is something Sofia controls.

"He's my brother," Dick bites out. "That's my fucking endgame. And it doesn't have anything to do with you."

The doubtful crease in Sofia's eyebrows is constructed, meant to goad him. But goddammit, it's working.

"I don't owe you anything," Dick goes on, too loud and too fast, and he knows from the way her smile ticks up that she's counting it as a victory. "And you know what? Jason doesn't owe you anything. He is not your fucking dog. Especially not since you keep—"

Sofia looks up from a speck of cigarette ash on the couch cushion and says, "So it is this again."

Of course it's this again. It's always going to come back to this. The crime family and the drug running and the rampant manipulation and whatever else she gets up to in her spare time is secondary. Sofia is always going to be the woman who kills his brother.

"You can be oblique about it all you want," Dick says, keeping his voice even, watching her face very closely. "You're still the one who shot him in the head."

And there it is: The tell, the glimpse. Her knuckles whiten around the cigarette, her mouth twitches downwards. Sofia's good. She's very, very good. But she's still human.

"I don't know why you feel the need to rehash," Sofia says, sharper and primmer than before. "We've been over this—"

"I told you I had nothing new to say," Dick hisses. "You're the one who kept pushing—"

"What would you have me do?" She asks, exhaling, letting out a stream of smoke. "Hm? Just let him suffer?" She lifts her eyebrows expectantly, waiting on his answer. Sometimes, it's hard to see how Sofia and Jason have anything in common at all. Other times, when they latch their teeth into something, it's hard to see where they differ.

"I would rather," Dick says. "That he not be put in those situations at all."

Sofia tuts, almost pityingly. "He's going to end up there anyway," she says, as if Dick doesn't fucking know. "Might as well get some use out of it."

"And that's all it is to you?" Dick asks.

For a second, Sofia goes quiet. It's not often that Dick can unsettle her, and it is viciously satisfying every time he manages it.

"If he's dying anyway," Sofia says finally, tone flat and carefully even. "Then the least I can do is make it quick. And then he gets back up and we can all move on."

"Move on," Dick says dully. He hasn't stopped having nightmares about the first time he watched Jason go down, or nightmares about what happens if once, just once, he doesn't get back up again.

Sofia shrugs. "Who else is going to do it?" Smoke billows out around her face as she points the cigarette at him. "You? You don't have the stomach."

Dick presses his lips together tight. "You say that like it's something to be ashamed of."

"If that's what you heard," Sofia says. She leans forward, glancing up towards Dick steelily. "It's what he wants. Alright?"

"I know that's what he wants," Dick blurts. "Goddammit, that's the whole problem."

The vehemence of it catch him off-guard. It might catch Sofia off-guard too, because she goes very, very still. Dick's breathing heavily. Sofia takes another drag of the cigarette.

"Are you interested in explaining yourself?" She says, like they're old acquaintances small talking about the weather, like there's nothing of significance here at all.

"I—" Dick starts. He exhales, hard. "He's at least as good as me. Better, in some ways."

"Oh, certainly," Sofia says.

Dick has to ignore her. He has to string his thoughts together piece by piece, break it down to the awful, thorny thing sitting at the center of his chest. "He should know better. He shouldn't be—" Another shaky exhale. "Dying. He shouldn't be dying."

Sofia has to know this already, but all she says is, "You're worried he's using it as a crutch."

Dick's started pacing the length of the living room and she's gone back to watching him. "Not just that," he says. "He does it so easily. It never seems to faze him. It's like he doesn't even care if he—"

"Stop," Sofia says.

Taken aback, Dick does.

She's gone strangely pale, pinching at the skin on the side of her forehead. She takes one breath, then two, before she looks back up at Dick and says, "Are you telling me this because you want me to do something about it, or are you just here to get it off your chest?"

Great fucking question, as much as Dick hates to admit it. He trusts Sofia even less then he likes her, which is to say not in the slightest. But she's a consistent presence in Jason's life. She's one of the few people he actually fucking listens to. And at the end of the day, Dick loves Jason more than he hates her.

Before Dick can even try to articulate any of this, she's saying, "I don't know what you would want me to do about it." Dick scoffs. She goes on, voice rising. "I'm not his therapist. I'm certainly not his mother—"

"No shit," Dick snaps. "But you do understand how few people he actually has. Right?"

Sofia draws her shoulders up. "And whose fault is that—"

"Mine," Dick interrupts. "Ours. I know. You've told me. That's not the point."

"It's not my job," Sofia continues, completely heedless. "To fix him. He doesn't need to be—"

"That's not what I'm saying," Dick tries. What the hell is he saying? His thoughts are still disjointed, incomplete. "I wouldn't be telling you any of this if there wasn't a way you could—"

Help isn't the right word. Sofia is not, by nature, a helpful person. Minimize is closer, maybe. Dick is grasping at straws, and they both know it.

"Well," Sofia says, in a tone that promises nothing constructive. "That isn't the kind of relationship we have."

Dick scowls. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"First of all, you don't ask me for things," she says. Unfuckingbelievable. "Second of all, he and I—it's professional. It's convenient. I don't have any right to go around staging—interventions."

"Bullshit," Dick says impulsively.

Sofia lifts both eyebrows. "Excuse me?"

"No," Dick says, thoroughly sick of it. "No, because the only reason why I'm occupying the same space as you is because of Jason. I think you're dangerous. I don't think he has any fucking clue what you're actually capable of. I think he doesn't know how in over his head he is, and it's going to get him hurt." Sofia's face has retreated to a blank, emotionless plane. Dick takes a deep breath. "But he's my brother. He's my little brother, and the only way to get to him is through you. So. Here I am."

After a trembling beat, Sofia says in a typically flattened tone, "Very noble."

"Yeah, okay," Dick says dismissively, stepping closer to the couch so she has to crane her head up to look at him. "You know that I was raised by the world's greatest detective, right? And it's literally my job to notice things?"

"It's come up once or twice," she says.

"Right," Dick says. "And you wouldn't have gotten as far as you have if you hadn't been paying attention. Decent odds you're better at it then I am." The edged compliment doesn't get a reaction out of her, but Dick hadn't expected it to. That's for what he says next, which is, "You know just as well as I do that Jason wants to die."

He can't help the way his voice shakes as he comes out of the sentence, but it pays off. Sofia can't hide from it when he lays it out like that, naked and uncompromising. She tries to hide her small, shaking inhale with the cigarette. It's too late. Dick's already seen, and she knows Dick's seen, because they are both too goddamned good at what they do.

"Let me tell you something else I've noticed," Dick says, dropping his voice lower. "You're Sofia Fucking Gigante. You've seen the absolute dirtiest and meanest this place has to offer. Nothing phases you. Nothing scares you. Certainly nothing gets under your skin enough to startle you." He points down the hall, where Jason is still running the shower. "But I see you when he's gone, you know. When he comes back. Even somebody as good as you still has tells."

It had surprised Dick, the first time he had noticed it, the first time he had watched Sofia shoot Jason's bloodied body in the head with barely a blink. They had shouted about it, of course, Dick justifiably unnerved and Sofia characteristically reticent. But then Jason had started to wake up, and Sofia had just—

It was the tiniest thing. The smallest hiccup in her breath. A muscle jumping in her jaw. It would have been easy to pass it off as an instinctual start, but she would have known better, by that point. And Dick's watched her watch Jason come back a handful of times since then, and it's the same reaction every time. The same hitching inhale, the same ticking muscle.

"Whenever he wakes up," Dick continues. Sofia's lips are so tight they're nearly bloodless. "Whenever he wakes up, you can pass it off like you're startled, but why would you be startled? You know he does this, you have plenty of time to prepare."

"Does this have a point," Sofia says, toneless.

Yeah, it fucking does. "You're not scared of him," Dick says. "You're scared for him."

This, he can tell, cuts bone. Sofia's face goes white and then flushes again, and Dick knows, down to the core of him, that he's got her.

He continues, merciless. "So don't tell me that it's professional, or convenient, or that you don't have any right to interfere. You're just as scared as I am, and you're a fucking coward, and if you keep on pretending like none of it matters to you then we're both going to lose him."

The last sentence doesn't come out as decisive as he meant it to, shuddering apart at the end. He didn't know any of it was true until he said it, but now that he has, he's more furious than ever. Because he's fucking right. In whatever way she can manage, Sofia cares about Jason. Enough to be affected when he dies, enough for it to matter when he comes back. Whatever strange kind of affection and trust they have for each other is real. It just—isn't enough.

Dick has to take a deep breath, work the air back into his lungs. His hands are shaking. Sofia's mouth is trembling. What an awful, awful pair they make.

Sofia stands up slowly. Walks past Dick into the kitchen, each step stiff, like it takes thought and follow-through. She tosses the cigarette into the trashcan, then pulls a bottle of vodka from a cabinet, pops off the lid, and takes a healthy, healthy swig.

"Are you serious?" Dick says, following her forward. "You're drinking? Right now, you're drinking?"

"I have never once asked you to comment on my life and my choices," Sofia says, voice run ragged. She gestures towards Dick with the bottle. "You said you were only here for Jason, and you're right. You wouldn't be here if it weren't for Jason. If it weren't for Jason, I would have wiped your whole brood off the face of the fucking Earth."

Dick shouldn't be taken aback, but he is. Obviously, Sofia doesn't much care for them. Whenever they're unlucky enough to cross path, she tosses out veiled barbs and pointed eye-rolls; continuously present but ultimately benign. But this? This is visceral hatred, direct and brutal and snarling. Dislike is one thing. Where the hell is this coming from?

Sofia takes another swig, still watching him. "Sometimes I wonder if you know," she says, almost contemplatively. "Sometimes I wonder if he knows. I mean, he has to, right? World's greatest detective, or whatever it is that you all call him. But then again, that would require him to give a shit about any of you."

"Watch it," Dick warns. It's uncharacteristically nonsensical of her, disconnected, but Dick's not naive enough to think it's meaningless. She's careening towards something. Dick has to be prepared for it.

"I don't think I will," Sofia says, with a predatory tilt of the head. She clicks her tongue. "You're all so protective of him. And for what? What did it get for you? What did it get for Jason?"

There's something about the way she says it, Jason, like it's scratching at her throat, like there's something more than a name underneath. It catches at the edges of Dick's attention.

"It's not about what he does for us," Dick manages. Sofia snorts bitterly into her vodka. "And besides, since when has Jason been protective over Batman? You've met them, right?"

"Oh," Sofia says, sourly. "You'd be surprised." Another swig. She swishes the alcohol around in her mouth, swallows it down with a bitter, twisted look. "You ever notice that scar? On his neck?"

She taps the side of her own neck when she says it, fingers drumming against the pale skin. Of course Dick's noticed it. It's ugly and jagged, damn near a killing blow. Jason has this habit of brushing his fingers along it when he's thinking about things Dick can't quite parse out, a distant look on his face.

"I've noticed," Dick says finally.

"I've had a lot of time to observe him," Sofia continues, swirling the vodka round and round in the bottle. "The, ah. Mechanics of how he comes back. Sometimes it's very clean. Sometimes he walks away without a mark."

Other times, of course, he doesn't, and it's terrifyingly inconsistent and another goddamn reason why Dick goes out every night and wonders if this is the night when whatever kills the Red Hood keeps him down for good.

"I know," Dick says flatly. "I know how it works."

"Ha," Sofia says, completely without humor. "No, you fucking don't. Not you, not me, and especially not him. We're all in the dark. Don't flatter yourself."

"I'm not—" Dick cuts himself off, exhales hard through his nose. "You wouldn't be telling me this if you didn't have a point."

"So goddamn insightful," Sofia says, and she somehow manages to make it sound like an insult. "Except, of course, about the things that actually matter." She looks back up at him, eyes like sheets of steel. "What's right under your nose."

"Get to the fucking point," Dick snaps.

"Sometimes, things leave scars," Sofia tells him. "Even for Jason. Having somebody you trusted, even after everything, do that to you—" She's spitting the words out like blood or viscera, so violent that Dick has to resist the urge to flinch back. "Having somebody you were reaching out to, somebody you loved more than anything reject you so thoroughly, well. That would scar. Wouldn't it?"

Somebody Jason loved more than anything. There are very few people she could be talking about.

"It's not a rhetorical question," Sofia says, watching him blankly.

"It would." Dick is startled into honesty, a terrible kind of foreboding slipping down his spine. "It—that would scar."

Sofia smiles like a knife. "You should ask him about it."

"You mean ask Jason?" Dick tries, but it's an almost childish redirection. Somebody you trusted, even after everything, Sofia had said. Dick knows. Sofia knows he knows.

Her grin widens. "Not Jason."

And there it is. There's the wound she's been waiting to inflict. Only one other him she could be talking about.

Out in the hallway, the shower switches off.

"He wouldn't do that," Dick argues, already knowing that he's lost whatever game they're playing. Sofia knows it too, still smiling toothily around her next sip of vodka. She might be taking pleasure in how unsettled he is. "Not to his—he wouldn't do that."

"I'm not a liar," Sofia says simply. "Neither are you, Richard."

Apparently, she's through with professionalism. The gloves are off. "Don't fucking call me that."

"I'll call you what I like," Sofia says.

Dick's got a hand wrapped around his own neck without thinking about it, over where Jason's scar is. "Batman doesn't kill," he says, uselessly. "That would have killed him."

"Yes," Sofia says, and any of the sick pleasure she was getting from watching him is gone, back to the careful emptiness. "Yes, it did." She takes a final sip and screws the cap back onto the vodka bottle. "Like I said. Ask Bruce."

Vaguely, Dick registers the sound of the door down the hallway opening. He's more preoccupied with Sofia, who carelessly lets these huge, altering truths fall with no consideration for the impact. "Fuck you," he says, heated. "Go to hell."

"Trust me," Sofia says. "I've already been."

"Whoa," Jason says. Dick turns around to see him standing in the hallway, loosely toweling his damp hair, eyes flitting back and forth between the both of them. "I left you alone for, what? Twenty minutes?" He frowns at Sofia, small and concerned, and then back to Dick. "The hell did you say to her?"

Of course his first thought is for Sofia. Of course. Dick pushes that aside, grabs Jason by the arm, and drags him into a side room. Sofia doesn't say a word. "We need to talk."

"I—alright?" Jason says, sounding baffled. He's wearing a loose black tee and jeans. His feet are bare. He doesn't look like somebody who's been killed by his own father. Dick thinks he might be sick. "Jesus, if the debrief was that urgent I could have waited to shower."

Dick had honestly forgotten about his flimsy excuse to stick around. "The debrief isn't important," he says, struggling to drag his thoughts into place. Jason blinks. "Jason. It isn't true, is it?"

"Um." Jason casts a furtive look towards the door, like he's plotting out escape routes. "I think you're going to have to be more specific. There are a lot of things in this world that either are or aren't true—"

"Jason," Dick says, exhausted. Normally, he doesn't mind Jason's elaborate snark routines. Most of the time, he even finds them charming. Not tonight.

"Hey, are you—" Jason cuts himself off, chewing on his lower lip. He drops his voice lower to say, "Did she say something to you? Because I told her to play nice."

None of this should have happened to him, Dick thinks suddenly. Jason can only barely stand to be around him somedays, and they argue with each other more then they talk, but he's still willing to make sure Dick hasn't been hurt. He can't keep the care inside of his chest. He doesn't deserve this at all.

"Jason," Dick says again. "Would Sofia—lie to me?"

"I mean," Jason says slowly. "If she thought it was funny, maybe."

"And if it wasn't funny?" Dick asks, working very hard to keep his voice even.

"Then no," Jason says immediately. Dick's heart drops into his stomach. "Sofia doesn't lie. Maybe choose not to tell you stuff. Maybe talk around other things. But she doesn't lie outright." There's something settling over him now, the precipice of a realization. His eyes dart around Dick's face. "Dick. What did she say to you?"

Carefully, Dick lifts his hands up to his neck and taps at the hollow of his throat. It takes Jason a second to process, but Dick knows it the moment he does. Jason's never been able to keep his emotions to himself. They're written all over his paling face, in the way he presses his lips together and swallows, hard.

"He did do this to you," Dick says, and he's surprised, somehow, by how emotionless he sounds. "Didn't he?"

"What did she tell you?" Jason asks. He pulls one hand up to his neck, to his scar, before he apparently thinks better of it and squeezes his bicep instead. "Listen, I don't know what she said—"

"The truth, I assume," Dick says coolly. "You said it yourself. Sofia doesn't lie."

Jason winces. "Look, it doesn't matter." Dick opens his mouth furiously, but Jason isn't finished. "It was—a while ago. A lot of shit was happening. Alright? I'm sorry—"

"You're sorry?" Dick says, louder than he means. He knows it's the wrong thing to say when Jason snaps his mouth shut. "No, that's not—that isn't what I meant."

He puts his hands on his hips and blows out a long, heavy breath. Jason shifts back and forth on his feet, but he doesn't bolt out the door, so he's at least willing to hear Dick out.

"It's right across the carotid artery," Dick says at last. "You would have bled out in seconds. Because of Bruce."

Jason shudders, like a chill or a flinch he can't suppress. "I'm still here, aren't I?" He says, as dismissive as he always is. "Happened before and it'll happen again."

"In general?" Dick says impulsively. "Or you and Bruce specifically?"

He knows what he wants to hear, but he doesn't know what kind of answer he's expecting when he asks it, almost thoughtlessly. Jason's gaze flits away from Dick's, down at the floor. This, Dick supposes, is answer enough.

"Jay," Dick says. "How many times has he done this to you?"

"Dick," Jason says, very quietly. "I don't think you want to know the answer."

Jesus fucking Christ. "You don't get to decide that for me," Dick says. "It shouldn't have happened even once, and if you're telling me that he—"

"I'm not telling you anything," Jason snaps, already bristling. "That's—it's not your business. You don't want to know."

You're all so protective of him, Sofia had said, in that chilly, mocking tone. Dick had dismissed it out of hand, but here Jason is, refusing to meet Dick's eye and avoiding the bloody, obvious truth.

"Goddammit," Dick mutters. He finally rips off the domino mask, relishing in the sting as he runs a hand down his face. "God-fucking-dammit."

What the hell does he do now? Where the hell does he even start? He needs to do something about Bruce, he needs to figure out what he can do with Sofia, and most pressingly, he needs to do something with Jason.

"Listen," Dick starts and Jason just—flinches, just slightly, like he's expecting Dick to hit him or something. Dick's heart sinks even further down his throat. "I'm just—I was just going to ask if you wanted to come down to Blüdhaven sometime."

Jason's mouth parts, hangs open for a beat. "Sorry," he says. "Me?"

"Who else would I be asking?" Dick says. "We can—hang out. Watch a movie together or something, I don't know." Jason is still staring. "Listen, I know you've turned down every invitation thus far, which is honestly your right, but—"

"What invitations?" Jason says, cutting him off. "You haven't—" He frowns to himself. "Have you?"

"Of course I have," Dick says immediately. Jason blinks, hard. "I mean, I was trying not to be—obvious or pushy, but I've been trying to get you down to Blüdhaven for months."

All Jason says is a small, simple: "Oh."

It makes sense, in a sick kind of way. Jason is stunningly direct and Dick is obscure almost to a fault. Of course they've been talking past each other for the last six months.

Slowly, Dick reaches out to put a hand on Jason's shoulder. Jason doesn't push him away.

"I'm sorry I didn't know—" Dick starts.

Jason cuts him off again. "Don't," he says. "Don't make this about you."

"Okay," Dick says, even, non-combative. "I mean it. About the Blüdhaven thing. You—" Honesty doesn't come naturally to him. For Jason, he's willing to try. "You're a priority. You're my brother."

He thinks Jason wants to believe him. He hopes Jason will let him prove it.

"You're not—" Jason says finally, swallowing with a wet, audible click. "You're not mad?"

Oh, he's fucking furious. He's been fucking furious for nearly two decades. But he smiles wanly and says, "Not at you, no."

And then, impulsively, Dick grabs Jason by the sides of his face and kisses him hard on the forehead. Jason stiffens, and then stays perfectly still even as Dick pulls back.

"Okay, I've got to head out," Dick says, heading for the window. He keeps his voice lighthearted for Jason's sake, even though his fists are already itching to hit skin. "I'll get you that debrief stuff later. Text me about that movie night. Tell Sofia she can go fuck herself."

"Whoa," Jason says, making a cross with his hands. Dick stops from where he's perched on the windowsill. "Time out. You can't just—"

"I'll see you later," Dick says, and it comes out sure and steady and true. "Alright?"

"Dick," Jason says. "What are you going to do?"

He considers his response and settles on grinning with all his teeth, offputting and slightly manic. Jason leans back slightly. "I'm making some things clear," he says.

And with that, he falls back into the Gotham night.

***

The first one to spot Dick when he pulls the bike into the cave is, of course, Tim. "Hey!" He says, grinning wide around a bloody lip as Dick cuts the engine. "I didn't know you were in town tonight."

"Just wrapping up something up real quick," Dick says truthfully. Tim bounds across the cave, feigns a punch at Dick's shoulder. Dick dodges, nudges an elbow into Tim's side. "What's up with the split lip?"

"Ugh," Tim says, batting away Dick's attempt to ruffle his awful, spiky up-do. "It's not even anything cool. Some rando mugger got a lucky elbow to the face."

Dick sucks in a sympathetic breath. "Still hurts, though. Did you get Alfred to look at it—"

Tim's rolling his eyes. "Yes, mom."

"The disrespect," Dick says, throwing an arm around Tim's shoulders. Tim tries, half-heartedly, to buck him off. "You would treat your own mother like this—"

"Dick." Bruce's voice, echoing from the other end of the cave, is enough to stop him in his tracks. He's got the cowl and upper half of the armor off, black hair hanging damp around his face and arms bared in a dark tee. He looks worn in the same ways he always does. If Dick didn't know any better, he would say nothing had changed at all.

"Hey, B," Dick says, making sure his voice is casual as ever. "Long night?"

Bruce just grunts dismissively as he turns back to the computer. Nothing to report, then. Tim finally slides out of Dick's grip, fussing performatively with his hair.

"Now, Timmy," Dick says, faux-sweet. "Your poor mother just wants to know. How are you doing in school?" Tim groans, long and loud. "All your homework coming along okay? Your math—"

"Oh, shit!" Tim's eyes blow wide. "My calculus homework! I totally forgot!"

Bingo. He always does, this time of week. Dick widens his eyes in tandem and says, "Oh, seriously? When is it due?"

The answer is tomorrow, because it's due every Friday and has been for the whole semester, but Tim dodges it with a significantly vaguer, "Soon." He tosses an apologetic glance towards Bruce. "Sorry. I know there's that case down south, but I'll be really fast—"

"Don't worry about it," Dick says. Bruce grunts again, but doesn't say anything. "You get that homework assignment in. The case will still be here when you get back."

"I'll be so quick," Tim says anyway, already darting back up towards the stairs. "It's pretty basic, anyway. Just quadratics as it pertains to—"

He continues babbling to himself as he dashes up the stairs. Dick watches him go, feeling a lot fond and a little guilty. It's too easy sometimes, to say this or that thing and push people into this or that realization and direct them to a foregone conclusion without them ever knowing they've been directed. But Tim doesn't need to be here for this.

Dick turns back to Bruce, who's already watching him. "Did you need something?" Bruce asks. "You don't normally drop in this late."

It's the closest Bruce will get to showing concern. Not in a tangible way, of course, and not ever when he actually needs it. Not ever when it matters, when the chance hasn't already passed. Especially not when Jason needs it. No, when Jason needs it, Bruce just slits his throat wide open—

Dick breathes in and out, quietly enough that Bruce won't hear him. He keeps his footsteps light as he comes up behind Bruce, who actually turns his back on Dick as he approaches. "Just needed to talk to you for a minute."

"Alright," Bruce says, clicking into a new file.

"It's about Jason," Dick says, and when Bruce looks up, Dick grabs him by the back of his head and slams his face down into the keyboard.

There's the satisfying crunch of plastic and mechanics against skin. Bruce is up in the next second, bringing a fist into Dick's face. Dick rolls with it, falling back and then lunging forward, right into Bruce's chest. Bruce is still unbalanced, caught off-guard. The move takes.

"Dick," Bruce breathes, still startled.

His throat is too tight and thorny to manage anything at all. Instead, he wraps his fists into Bruce's collar, lifts him up to bang the crown of his head against the cold, concrete floor of the cave. Bruce tries to roll him over, but Dick is expecting it, unseating the attempt with a firm kick to the ribs. Bruce wheezes.

Dick gets back up to crouching. Bruce is standing now, drawing himself into a fighting stance with a blank, unreadable expression on his face.

"I don't know what you think you've done with my son," he's saying, in that full Batman gravel. "But let me tell you—"

"This isn't mind control," Dick snaps. "Or cloning, or universal displacement, or whatever else you think is going on. I'm just really fucking pissed at you."

He swings again, and Bruce only barely steps away in time. He's busy trying to figure out what must have happened to Dick, how he can make Dick act like himself again. He's trying to buy time. He's pulling his punches.

Dick isn't.

He manages a good hit into where he kicked at the ribs before, and then another to the face. Bruce stumbles back, panting.

"Dick," he tries. He blocks Dick's next side jab. "Chum. Tell me what's wrong."

"What were you thinking?" Dick asks. Bruce tries to turn him and grab him by the arms, going for a hold, but Dick brings both elbows up into his throat. "When you slit his fucking throat. Why did you do it?"

Bruce hesitates, stance stuttering, which allows Dick to knock another full-strength punch clean across his jaw. He staggers back, spits out a mouthful of blood.

"He has a scar on his neck," Dick says, bitterly. "Not that you ever try to see him out of the masks. Do you know how much it takes to scar him?"

"Dick," Bruce says again. Damningly, he doesn't ask for clarification. He knows exactly what Dick is talking about. "You're talking about things that happened a long time ago."

Dick laughs without really laughing. "Funny. That's what Jason said."

"It was the only option I had at the time." It isn't a denial. He isn't letting Dick approach him, now, opting for ducking away every time Dick steps closer. "It was an accident."

"Those are actually two different excuses," Dick says, and he finally manages to get close enough to plant another elbow into Bruce's side. He thinks he feels the rib crack under the blow. "Try again."

"I don't know what he told you," Bruce says, and this time he grabs hold of Dick's wrists, tight and bruising. Dick struggles, tugs the whole of his weight away, but in a way this was always inevitable. "But you have to remember what is he now—"

"A kid," Dick snaps. "Goddammit, Bruce, he's my kid brother, and he didn't tell me jack shit. Sofia did."

Bruce's grip loosens, just enough for Dick to get the traction and space he needs to slam his forehead into Bruce's. Bruce stumbles. Dick drives his knee up into his ribcage again.

"Sofia," Bruce wheezes, still reeling back. "Sofia Gigante told you this."

"Sure did," Dick says tartly.

"And you—" Bruce pants. "You believed her?"

"Sofia doesn't lie," Dick says, echoing Jason, echoing Sofia herself. And then he adds, "And she wouldn't. Not about Jason."

Dick's been watching them for months now. She's still selfish and dangerous and cruel, and the longer Jason runs with her, the worse he's going to hurt when she finally fucks him over for good. Yes, he hates Sofia Gigante, but he's not fucking blind. There is nothing temporary or transactional about her care for Jason. You can't fake that kind of proprietary anger. Sofia can hide a lot, but she can't hide the way her breath hitches when Jason comes back or the way her voice tightened when she had said, short and sharp and simple: Ask Bruce. Sofia doesn't lie. Not about Jason.

Bruce processes that, black eyes flickering at a thousand miles a minute. Dick lets him catch his breath.

"Sofia Gigante," Bruce starts. "Told you I—" A hard swallow. "Slit Jason's throat."

Dick watches the shame pull at his face and thinks, Good. "And then yours and Jason's reaction confirmed it."

"It was an accident," Bruce says again. Dick's aching fist twitches at his side. "He was going to kill the Joker. I needed to disarm him and—"

"And so you slit his throat," Dick says, and even to himself, he sounds awful and toneless. "Hm. Let me guess. You weren't thinking clearly, because you never do when it comes to us, but him especially. The Batarang went wide. And you were so busy protecting the fucking Joker that you didn't bother to help your son, bleeding out on the fucking floor—"

The last phrase bursts out of him along with another fist, swinging into the side of Bruce's already bleeding nose. Bruce just fucking takes it.

"There was a bomb," he says, after the blow lands and dissipates. "When the smoke cleared—Dick, I looked for him, but he was gone."

One time, Sofia had said, far too casual to actually be casual, The longer it takes for him to die, the longer it takes for him to come back. Dick was and still is horrified by it, but it comes in handy whenever he's looking back and forth between a corpse and a stopwatch. If Jason was up and moving by the time Bruce was looking for him, which wouldn't have been long after the explosion—

"Well," Dick says quietly. "At least he died quick, right?"

At that, Bruce frowns. "He didn't—die," he says. Dick tilts his head back towards the ceiling and lets out a completely humorless shout of laughter. "Dick. I couldn't kill him. I wouldn't."

"Okay," Dick says. "You were the one who taught me about the carotid artery. Remember that? If you get cut, say, here—" He taps at his own artery, pulsing thready and fast underneath his skin. "With something sharp, like a Batarang, thrown with a lot of force and intention—how quickly do you bleed out. Pop quiz."

Bruce is still staring at him, with that same, stupefied frown.

"Trick question," Dick says. "You wouldn't even have the time to do the math before you were—" He snaps his fingers. "Gone."

Jason would have had just enough time to process that it was Bruce who had done this to him before there was nothing. When he woke up, all on his own in some ruined building, he would have run. And he couldn't run to Alfred, or to Dick, and he sure as hell couldn't run to Bruce.

Possibly he went to Sofia. Probably that's where they lost him.

"That's—true," Bruce says slowly, with a shuddering breath. "We're very lucky I didn't hit it, then."

How willfully blind can one man be? Stupid question. Dick doesn't know why he bothers. "Oh, you did." He slashes a mirrored line across his neck. Bruce is getting paler by the second. "I've seen the scar. Right across the artery."

"No," Bruce is shaking his head a little wildly. "No, that—that would have killed him."

"There you go," Dick mutters. "Now you're getting it."

Bruce staggers back like Dick's hit him again, falling back into the computer chair. "What is that supposed to mean," he says, and then, "What are you saying?"

There's something occurring to Dick, now. A picture etching itself underneath his eyelids. Bruce, distracted and emotionally compromised, throwing a Batarang, uncaring of the trajectory. Jason, on the floor and bleeding out. Bruce, not even paying enough attention to know it was a killing blow. Not noticing when Jason died. Not knowing that he came back.

"If you're lying to save face," Dick starts, furiously, but it falls flat in the face of Bruce's naked devastation. "Christ. You really don't know."

It flags the fight in him, but only for a moment. If Bruce didn't know about Jason's immortality, if this is all some massive, awful miscommunication—then that makes it all so much worse. Bruce didn't even know life and death came to Jason so easily, and he was careless with it anyway.

"I don't understand," Bruce is saying. Dick snorts bitterly. "If I did hit the carotid—it would have. But I don't. He's still."

Dick considers, for a moment, being kind. Walking Bruce through the reality of it gently. In the next second, he thinks about the look on Jason's face as his hand hovered over the scar, when he had told Dick, I don't think you want to know the answer.

"You did hit the carotid," he says bluntly, watching Bruce flinch. "And it did kill him." Bruce stares, open-mouthed. "You're telling me you didn't know?"

"How," Bruce says.

"You're serious," Dick says, numb in disbelief. He spreads his hands out. "You're the world's greatest detective, and you didn't know that your own son—"

"Dick," Bruce snaps. Infuriatingly, it works. "Explain. How?"

There are very few explanations he can give. None of them are satisfying.

"Whatever brought him back the first time," Dick says at last, pretending like it's nothing, like it doesn't even fucking phase him. Let Bruce be the one who's hurting, for once. "Just—hasn't stopped bringing him back. It isn't done with him. Shoot him in the head, push him off a building, slit his throat—" Bruce flinches. Dick lets it sink in. "He just wakes up. He just keeps going."

Bruce considers this, hands clenching and unclenching over his knees.

"How does he—" he starts. "How does it—"

Dick cuts him off. "He has no fucking clue," he says. "None of us know. We just—keep on hoping it works."

"Us." Bruce's eyes snap up to Dick. Even disjointed and fight worn as he is—Dick's pretty sure that rib is broken—he's still caught the slip. "We. You and who?"

"Jason, for one," Dick says, although for Jason, hope is a strong word. "Me." The next name is, as always, glass in his mouth. "Sofia."

Bruce's face shutters. "Gigante."

"How many other Sofias do we know?" Dick says. "Yes, Gigante. She would have been the first to know."

"The first to use it," Bruce says, looking up at Dick with those black, fathomless eyes, and as much as Dick hates to agree with Bruce on anything at this stage—

"Yeah," he says. "That too."

There's blood dripping from Bruce's nose, down his chin and the side of his neck, but he doesn't seem to care. There's an already darkening bruise on the side of his face. He's still clutching his ribs, wheezing with every breath. Dick is surprised to find that there's blood beading at the corner of his own lip, swiping it away with the back of his hand.

He's still angry. Completely fucking furious, in fact. But this is the part where Bruce retreats so far into his own guilt that there's nothing at all for Dick to rail at. He'd love nothing more than to pull Bruce back up from the chair and belt him across the face again and again and again, until he puts Bruce through just a fraction of the pain Jason's been through. His knuckles are itching to be bloodied.

Bruce would just take it. He would take it and take it and Dick could beat him to a bloody pulp a thousand times over and he would never learn a thing.

This is what Dick likes to call this the resignation stage, where Dick remembers that Bruce is a fundamentally broken person, and either Dick came to him broken or he broke along the way, and no matter what they do, Dick is always going to be caught on the edges of him. He's never going to get out.

"Get Alfred to check those ribs," Dick says at last. Bruce looks up at him. There's a purpling black eye Dick doesn't even remember giving him. "And I know you want to talk to Jason. Don't."

Bruce straightens up, back cracking. "I have to—"

"I'm pretty sure you've done enough," Dick says flatly. Bruce's hand spasms over his ribs. "Have Alfred do a check-up. Don't fucking call Jason." He turns back towards his bike, and then around again. "And don't go after Sofia either. She hates you. Did you know that?"

A twitch of the eyebrow. "I've been made aware."

"I don't mean she's annoyed by you, or she rolls her eyes whenever you walk into the room," Dick says, although both of these things are certainly true. "I mean she actually wants you dead. Hell, I think she would have done it by now, if it weren't for—"

Jason. If it weren't for Jason. Jason, furious and self-destructive, who still cares about his family enough for Sofia Fucking Gigante, uncompromising as she is, to tolerate their continued existence. Christ. What a mess they've made.

Bruce is still watching him, brow furrowed. He's lost. There's no case file he can pore over, no riddle or puzzle to solve. There's just a fucked-up, awful family. A lot of love rotting and going nowhere. Nothing much left to be saved.

"I don't know how you keep us," Dick says, mostly to himself. "Sometimes I wish you wouldn't."

He doesn't want to see the impact this has. He ignores the press of Bruce's stare into the back of his neck, curls his fists at his side and carefully, very carefully, does not risk looking back.

Chapter Text

Jason stares at the window Dick's just leapt out of for a long time after he's left. It's a lot of shit to process—I was just going to ask if you wanted to come down to Blüdhaven sometime and You're my brother and I'm making some things clear. The chill in Dick's voice when he had said, He did do this to you. Didn't he? The scar. Jason's hand flies up to his neck, finally, coming to rest over the familiar feel of the mangled skin there.

Why did Dick—why? He'd found out about Jason's greatest fuck-up, and he hadn't called Jason weak or stupid or naive or any of the the things Jason's been calling himself for the last half-year or so. He'd seemed angry, sure, but he'd said it wasn't at Jason. Who? At Bruce? Yeah, right. Dickie may have had his hiccups with Bruce in the past, but at the end of the day, what is he going to do? Fight the fucking Batman? For Jason? Come on.

Another thing he keeps tripping on: Dick shouldn't have known. It's not like Jason's fucking advertised it. Telling people he got his ass thoroughly kicked by Batman does precisely jack shit for his street cred. And it's just embarrassing. Jason had thought Bruce gave half a shit about him. He was brutally and humiliatingly wrong. He doesn't like to dwell on it.

There is exactly one person he had bothered to tell.

"Sofia," Jason says, stepping out in the hall. A clatter in the living room. Jason follows the sound. "Are you—Sofia?"

The apartment widens out into one of those fancy, open-concept spaces, sparsely dotted with furniture. Sofia's foregone all of it to perch herself on a windowsill. Her hair floats lightly in the incoming breeze.

"Shit," she mutters around an unlit cigarette, shaking her lighter uselessly. "These things never fucking work when you need them—" The flame finally flickers to life. She sighs. "Jesus, there we go."

"You said you were quitting," Jason says. A beat. "Again."

Sofia tilts her head to the side with some sarcastic, almost self-deprecating expression. "Yeah, well. Been a long day, Jay."

It has, this is true. Mob thing gone wrong enough that Dick had somehow gotten dragged into it, gone wrong enough that Jason had ended up with a bullet in his lungs sucking away at his oxygen, until Sofia had taken mercy on him and put another one through his brain. He'd woken up to Dick and Sofia in one of their strange, not-quite screaming matches, Dick gesturing furiously at the body of the guy who'd gotten Jason earlier. Must have taken a stray bullet.

"You can't just—" Dick was saying.

"Can," Sofia said flatly. "Did."

Jason was still too fuzzy in the head to process any of it, and the immediate necessity of escaping from the rest of the hostiles had rendered it a non-priority. But he had, apparently foolishly, assumed that the outburst he had missed would have gotten it out of both of their systems. Obviously not.

"Soooo," Jason says slowly, leaning against the windowsill next to Sofia. She gives him a sideways look, but doesn't tell him to fuck off. Hasn't in a while. "You and Dick got into a fight."

"Big surprise there," Sofia says. Subtle and sneaky, Jason reaches down towards the pack of cigarettes she still has in her hand. She slaps his fingers away. "Don't even try it."

"Ugh," Jason says, but he doesn't bother pushing. Sofia picks very few things to stake her morals on. One is her word, which she'll keep at all costs. Another is kids. Another is, tragically, underage smoking. Drinking, she'll sometimes let slide. Smoking is a non-starter. She'll let Jason kill for her, but if he gets within six feet of a cigarette she'll know.

Sofia's quiet, pulling a drag through the cig. The smell of the secondhand smoke and the sounds of the city of his back is comforting and familiar. She isn't quite touching him—she rarely does, and Jason doesn't know what he would do if she did—but she's leaning closer than usual.

Jason takes a deep breath. "You and Dick weren't fighting about—me? Right?"

It's a dumb question. Dick made that pretty clear. Jason half-expects her to reprimand him for it, remind him that he knows better than to ask something so completely obvious. Instead, she spreads one hand out. "What else would we fight about?"

"I don't know," Jason tries. "Crime." Sofia snorts. "B, maybe."

"Bruce Wayne," Sofia says, spitting out his name in the same, brittle way she always does. "Is none of my goddamn concern. He can conduct himself how he likes." Her mouth moves with no sound, once or twice, like she's trying to add something else. Jason waits. She puts the cigarette back in-between her teeth and inhales.

"Alright," Jason says. There's no point in forcing Sofia to do something if she's decided not to. "I guess this is the part where I ask why you and Dick were fighting about me." Sofia blows out a smoky sigh and does not say a word. "Oh, come on, Sof. I think it's fair to ask."

"You can ask," she says. "I can't guarantee you'll like the answer."

Probably, she's right. It's very rarely that she isn't. He leans his head against the windowpane, tapping a finger on the side of his neck.

"You always do that when you're thinking about him, you know," she says. He looks back to her. She's mirroring him, a hand to her own neck. "Like an itch you can never scratch. It's your biggest tell."

"I know," Jason says, forcing his hand back down to his side.

Sofia smiles wryly. "Fathers," she says. Jason can't help his flinch. "They'll do that to you. Won't they?"

"Don't," Jason says, too quiet to have any real impact. "That's not—that isn't fair."

"Lots of things aren't fair." Sofia stands, wanders into the kitchen. Jason watches. "Obviously, you know that already. You had already figured it out by the time your father killed you."

She slams a half-drunk bottle of vodka into the counter. Jason swallows and looks off to the side.

"Bruce isn't special," he says. "Lots of things have killed me. You've killed me."

Sofia laughs, a bitter, smoky exhale, cig still hanging out of her mouth. "Trust me," she says. "I know."

She's getting two glasses down from the cabinet, pouring out two healthy shots. She drinks one. Repours. Then she's coming back around, handing the other glass to Jason.

The cigarettes are a no-go, always. But sometimes, if it's a special occasion or they're particularly stressed or tired, she'll let some moderate underage drinking slide. They're both stressed, certainly. But Jason knows this isn't that. This is an apology. And Sofia never apologizes for anything.

He swishes the vodka around in the pristine glass before he looks back up at Sofia, watching him, pale and tight-lipped. He knows what she and Dick fought about. His throat aches when he swallows.

"You told him," Jason says, lowly. Sofia tips back the shot. "Dick. You told him about—"

"I made certain references and implications," Sofia says. Sofia doesn't lie, Jason had told Dick, and it was true. But lying isn't the only option available to her. "He came to his own conclusions." She turns back to the kitchen, and Jason—

"I didn't want him to know," Jason says. Sofia stops, mid-step. Jason casts his eyes down towards the glass. "I don't want anyone to know, actually. Except for—"

Except for you, he almost says. He catches it just in time.

Sofia puts her glass into the sink with a neat clink and does not say a word.

"And you would have known that," Jason says, and he knows his voice is already rising, but he can never quite help it, can he? "You know that I don't want—I don't need anyone to look at me like that and you still fucking told him."

Jason is intimately familiar with anger. Not just frustration or conflict but true anger, burning behind his eyelids and bubbling up like bile in his throat. He puts himself through it a lot. But he doesn't ever remember being angry at Sofia. She's always been clear about what she needs from him. There's never been a reason for him to be disappointed.

But this. She's smarter than this. She should have known better.

Sofia's bracing herself over the counter. "Jason—"

"And you did it to what?" Jason continues, careless. Sofia shuts her eyes. "Win some stupid fucking fight? What the hell did he even say to you?"

"He's a very smart boy, your brother," Sofia says, and, characteristically, she's turned the relatively benign statement into an outright condemnation. "Figures a lot of shit out, doesn't he?"

"You're deflecting," Jason says. "It's Dick. Golden boy Grayson. It can't have been that bad."

"It was," Sofia says, after a long pause. "Uncomfortable. To hear."

"What was?" Jason says, spreading out his hands. "Dammit, Sofia, if you're going to start telling people my secrets, can't I at least know why?"

He knows his voice sounds too plaintive, too goddamned needy. His emotions are always like this. Unwieldy and untempered. Already, he's afraid he might be crying.

"It was about you," Sofia says. Jason already knows that. She can't seem to look at him when she says it. "We—he was concerned about you."

"So your solution was to make him more concerned," Jason says. He finally tips back the alcohol, burning a smooth line down to the pit of his churning stomach. "Great strategy there. Thanks a lot."

"It was a lapse in judgment," Sofia snaps. Jason scoffs, but it still catches him off-guard. Generally, she admits to failure sparingly, preferring to move past it and ahead. "He made some comments that—were targeted towards some weak spots."

"Weak spots," Jason echoes, baffled. "What weak spots?"

He means this like, what weak spots would Dick even know to target, and also, what weak spots, period? Sofia obviously can't be invulnerable, not really—but she's so good at what she does that sometimes Jason forgets.

Sofia looks over at him, typically flat and exacting. "What do you think?"

It was about you, Sofia had said, and now Jason finds that he's the one who can't look at her.

"I think you still told him," Jason says at last. Sofia lifts the cigarette to her mouth. "And you knew I didn't want you to. And you did it just because you felt like you were losing. And that isn't—"

It's not fair, is the thing, but Jason's not naive enough to say it out loud. He puts the glass down on the windowsill, scrubs a hand over his face. Sofia, still in the kitchen, exhales smoke.

"Really shitty thing to do, Sof," Jason mutters. "Jesus Christ."

What the fuck to do now? Sit here and get Sofia to forget that he's underage long enough to get blackout drunk? Pretend there's more clean-up to get done down in the street, knock a few heads around? Go out and chase after Dick, try to find a way to explain it all to him in some way that doesn't make Jason sound like the fuck-up that he is, stop him before he—

"Oh, my God," Jason says, significantly calmer than he feels. "He's going to—he's going to go to Bruce."

The realization is delayed, but it hits him like a bullet anyway, the quick ones, the ones that take you out before you've even noticed they're coming. He really is an idiot, too caught up in Dick's grandiose declarations of brotherhood and Sofia's quiet, stinging betrayal to put the relevant pieces together.

Dick is going to run straight to Bruce. Bruce is going to know the one thing Jason has actually managed to keep from him. And the first place Bruce is going to run, to confirm that it's true or false, or just to remind Jason of his own fucking failure—

"He's going to come get me," Jason says. His breaths are coming out too fast, he knows, too panicky and obvious by far. "Sofia. I don't—I don't want to see him. I can't. I have to get out of here."

He stands up, stumbling against the rush of blood in his head. Suddenly, she's standing right in front of him, putting two firm hands on his shoulders and redirecting him to the living room.

"Sit down," she says. Jason finds himself tripping back onto the couch. "For Christ's sake, Jason. Breathe."

"I am breathing," Jason says, obviously lying. His heart is pounding like he's in the middle of a fight, even though it's just him, and Sofia, and Bruce, probably tearing across the city right this minute. The thought makes his heart palpitate hollowly for a painful half-second. He bends his head over his knees. "Jesus fucking shit."

"Eloquent," Sofia says. Jason wheezes half-heartedly.

"Shut up," he manages, in-between gasps. "I—I'm fine. I'm fine, just. Give me a second."

Sofia doesn't reprimand him for talking back, or snap at him to pull himself together. She doesn't tell him he's fine, either, or touch him or try to comfort him. She just stands there, breathing slow and steady and even, and eventually, Jason matches his breaths to hers. He shudders oxygen in and then out.

"I have to leave," he says finally, lifting his head to look at Sofia. She raises an eyebrow. "He can't find me. Just—he can't."

"He won't," Sofia says like it is, impossibly, that simple.

Jason takes another shuddering breath. In and out. "Be serious. He's the goddamn Batman. The only thing that's stopped him from catching me so far is that he—" Doesn't feel the need to bother. Doesn't even want to see Jason unless he's forced to. Jason cuts himself off and bites down hard on his tongue.

"He's a guy in a leather suit," Sofia says dismissively. "I'm Sofia fucking Gigante. He isn't going to get you."

She'd handed out one of Jason's most awful secrets. She'd sat him down on the couch and waited with him until the air was back inside of his body. She's shot him in the head more times than he can count. She killed the Joker.

They're never going to be even with each other, Jason thinks. Inevitably, it'll be Jason's turn to fuck something over, Jason's turn to be left scrambling at the pieces. But he's always going to stick with her and she, for whatever reason, is going to keep on sticking with him.

"I'm still really fucking pissed at you, you know," he says.

One side of Sofia's mouth twitches upwards. "I would be disappointed if you weren't," she says, and then, haltingly, "You're right. I shouldn't have—" A tic of the jaw. "I shouldn't have."

Jason says, "Okay."

Sofia can't offer an apology, and Jason doesn't offer forgiveness. They move past it and ahead.

"Here's what you're going to do," Sofia says, leaning her hip against the armrest. "You're going to go to Selina."

"I'm not dragging Selina into this," Jason says instantly.

"Selina can handle herself," Sofia says, like Jason doesn't know. "And she's neutral territory. Bruce isn't going to bother going through her."

"That's not it," Jason lies. "I just mean—" He gestures, inelegantly, towards himself. He's a mess, to say the least, still dizzyheaded and short of breath. Bruce doesn't need to see him like this, Sofia doesn't need to see him like this, and Selina definitely doesn't need to see him like this. He can handle things on his own. That's how this shit normally operates.

"Hm." Sofia pinches her lips together. "I think you'll be better off with—back-up right now."

"Back-up," Jason echoes dully. "What, I go to Selina's place and fucking—snot all over her, and then Bruce comes in and yells at me and I yell at him and then we fight all over Selina's penthouse? That's your game plan?"

"I told you, Selina's neutral," Sofia says. "He isn't going to bother you if you're with her."

"That's not a guarantee," Jason points out, too aware that he sounds too desperate, too seeking.

"Nothing is," Sofia says. "But look at it this way instead. Grayson goes to Wayne. He mentions you were with me. Where does he go first, then?"

Jason connects the dots a little quicker this time around. Bruce and Dick, both finally given a righteous reason to gun after Sofia. It's a miracle they're not here already.

"You're not taking him on with no back-up," Jason says instantly. "No way in hell. Fuck off."

"And you're not facing him tonight," Sofia says. "Understand?"

It's something that could, in a certain light, pass for gentleness. Jason knows better, of course. Sofia isn't a gentle person, and Jason isn't somebody people bother to be gentle towards. But it's close enough. Close enough that Jason swallows and says, "Alright." Sofia lets out another smoky exhale, shoulders loosening just slightly. "But don't be—stupid about it, alright? If you need me to come in—"

"I won't," Sofia says easily. "You and Selina will be too busy gossiping about your silly romance novels anyway."

"Hey," Jason says. "We're doing Poirot this month."

Sofia smiles at him sideways, and it's easy to push through the performative offense and smile back. For a moment, things are stabilized. Maybe even simple.

"Besides." Sofia takes another drag of the cigarette, gusty and light and careless. "This would, in all honesty, be my best opportunity to shoot him."

It startles a laugh out of Jason, although he tries to hide it by pinching at the bridge of his nose in what is, he realizes, a strangely Sofia-esque gesture. "Sof. For the last fucking time. You cannot shoot Bruce Wayne."

"We'll see," Sofia says, ominously.

Jason shakes his head, still buried in the couch cushions. "Impossible," he says. "You're fucking impossible."

"Says the dead boy," Sofia deadpans, and finally, Jason laughs outright. He thinks Sofia might even snort with him, hidden behind the back of her hand.

His laugh falls into a sigh, as he tilts his head back to look up at the ceiling. He wants to run. He wants to get out of the city entirely, bike all the way down to the West Coast, if that's what it takes. He wants Sofia to shoot him in the head again and again, as many times as it takes to keep him down for good. He wants the whole dying thing to have taken the first time, so they all could have just mourned him and been done with it.

Sofia taps at his shoulder, deceptively delicate. Her fingers brush underneath his chin as he turns back to look at her.

Her eyebrows are pinched together tight. She's going to give herself another migraine. She looks down, just once, just briefly, at the scar across his neck before she's meeting his eye again.

"Go to Selina," she says.

So Jason does.

***

Selina Kyle lives in a modest penthouse down south in Midtown. It's nicer than anywhere Jason's ever lived, that's for damn sure, but with the kind of paychecks Selina pulls in, she could afford whole buildings down in the Diamond District. But she prefers to keep it simple, she tells him. Easier to clean. More pet-friendly.

Jason pulls his bike to a stop in the alleyway right outside her building and then he just—sits there. For about five minutes or so. He is unaccountably nervous, hands flexing and unflexing over the handlebars of the bike.

It's not like Selina is going to be cruel to him. Selina is one of the very few people in his life who hasn't bothered to be cruel to him. To the outside world, Selina is hardscrabble flint and iron, sharpened claws and snarls. She didn't end up as the top thief in the would by being soft. But there is a handful of people that she chooses to be soft around, with cheek kisses and affectionate pats and frankly embarrassing pet names. Sofia, of course, first and always. The working girls on the street who stop by when a grabby client needs to be taught a lesson. Dick, who she still calls birdy even though he's well into his twenties. Bruce, very occasionally and less and less, these days.

Jason. She's soft around Jason. It never fails to unmoor him.

He can't wait around at the base of the building forever. He pulls out the grapple gun tucked against his side, because he's not particularly in the mood to scale a skyscraper by hand. He's thinking it would be easier if she were cruel. He knows how to handle cruel. It's the pity that he can't take. Her looking at him and knowing exactly how weak he is, exactly how much that needy, greedy hole inside of him wants to suck up and take, exactly how starved he is for someone, anyone, to look at him and somehow forgive him for everything he's done.

He's up at her window now, tucking the grappling gun back against his side, still panting from the climb. There's a single lamp on in her living room. Selina herself is nowhere to be seen. Jason's got the helmet on, because people are less likely to call the cops on the Red Hood, but he uselessly rubs a hand over the cool plastic.

Man, what the hell is he doing? He doesn't need Selina to fucking—coddle him or some shit. He's a big kid, and he can take one awkward confrontation with Bruce on his own, even if his gut quivers just thinking about it. He isn't going to drag Selina into his mess, and Sofia might be pissed that he didn't listen to her, but Jason's still pissed too, so maybe it all evens out—

Selina throws the window open. "Jason."

Jason nearly startles off the fire escape. "Jesus fucking Christ, Sel. Scared the shit out of me."

"Imagine how I felt seeing the big, bad Red Hood at my window," Selina says, but she looks amused as she leans on the window frame. "You could have come in through the door, you know."

"Oh," Jason says. She's right. Most of the doormen know him by sight, at this point. He just hadn't thought to. Something about it seemed too clean and simple for a night like this.

She looks at him up and down, the hunch of his shoulders, the way he can't help but twist the fabric of his gloves around his fingers. The helmet should make covering up easy, but Jason's terrible, terrible emotions are always seeping through underneath it. He can't seem to hide himself, no matter what he does.

"Is this a purely social call?" She asks, light and arch and unassuming.

For some reason, the first thing out of Jason's mouth is, "I got into a fight with Sofia."

Her face crumples, collapsing into something so gentle that he has to look away, back down to the metal grating underneath him. "Oh, kitten." She touches a hand to his elbow, directing him inside. Jason goes easy.

Selina keeps her apartment nice and warm for the cats, which gets stifling in the summer, but on a drizzly night like this, it's an immediate relief to shuck off the chill leather of his jacket. She shuts the window behind them, tapping him on the shoulder as she passes back into living room and moves to the kitchen.

"Take off the helmet," she calls back to him. "That thing cannot be comfortable, I'm always telling you."

Jason's hands hesitate over the latch, but it's Selina's house and she asked, so he takes it off. The warm air prickles against his face, too bare and exposed. He sets it on the windowsill as he follows her in.

"It does the job," he says, after too long of a pause. Selina's pulling down mugs and containers. She shoots him a smile over her shoulder as she watches him stand awkwardly in the kitchen's doorway.

Selina's pushing up on her tiptoes to pull down mugs and containers. Without thinking about it, Jason reaches above her for the sugar container. She smiles up at him and, unsteadily, he smiles back.

"You wanna help me?" She asks.

It's good for him to have something to do with his hands, and the fact that Selina knows that without him having to say knocks around in his chest as he helps her measure out coffee grounds. She gets the sugar and cream into his mug before he can stop her, casual as anything, because his sweet tooth is insufferable and embarrassing but she's never seemed to mind indulging it.

"I'm wondering if I should even give this to you," she says as she hands the mug over. "Might stunt your growth."

"Ha-ha," Jason deadpans, but he's smiling into the first scorching sip. It's good, rich and smooth, still hot enough to burn all the way down.

Selina leans her elbows on the countertop, watching him with keenly dark brown eyes. She's at least as observant as Sofia is and in some ways, she knows him even better. Jason takes another sip of the coffee and fails not to squirm.

"So," she says, carefully. "You fought with Sofia."

Jason thunks his head back against one of the cabinets. "It wasn't really—" he tries. "I don't know why I said it was a fight. We weren't—" He cuts himself off with a frustrated huff, takes another sip of the coffee while he tries to—think. "Dick and Sofia got into a fight."

Selina lifts a single, perfectly plucked eyebrow. "Did they?"

"Well, you know." Jason makes some kind of jabbing gesture with the coffee mug. "They're always fucking—going at it." In a weird, indirect way, sure, but the longest Jason's seen them go without sniping at each other is approximately five minutes. It might even be worse on the rare occasions he isn't there as a buffer.

"Hm," Selina says, lips pulled to the side, tapping a nail against the marble of the counter. Jason can't imagine it feels good to hear about your beloved sister and the kid you kind of helped raise constantly bitching at each other. "What was it about this time?"

Jason laughs without any real humor. "Me. Apparently."

And then suddenly, Jason can't bear to stand still for another second. He knocks back the rest of the coffee in a single, burning sip, moves past Selina to put the mug in the sink.

"Whatever," he says, as he slinks out of the kitchen. "It's just—whatever."

"They fought about you." Selina leans on the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, watching Jason pace around the coffee table. "What did they—"

"I don't know," Jason says, turning back to her. "Dick was in a hurry to leave, and Sofia wasn't eager to hand out the details, because—because she—"

Selina frowns. "She what?"

Jason considers his words. Lets them settle over his tongue like blood. "I think she was losing," he says finally. His next breath comes in sharp and quick. piercing through his lungs. "Dick said something that spooked her, something about—" Another catch in the throat. "About me. And so she said something to spook him back. And I didn't want him to know—"

"Know what?" Selina says, distant and muffled through Jason's rushing pulse.

He digs his palms into his aching eyes. "Nobody was supposed to know," he says. It keeps on sinking in, over and over again, how well and truly fucked over he is. "She wasn't supposed to tell anyone. He wasn't supposed to know."

"Know what?" Selina might be saying again. "Jason, who?"

She's stepping across to him. Jason stumbles until the back of his knees hit the couch, and then he's falling hard on the cushions, choking on a startled inhale. Selina stops, still standing in the middle of the room.

"It isn't fair," Jason says, like he's only just now realizing it. "Selina, I don't—"

The next thing he knows, Selina is crouching in front of him.

"It's alright," she tries. "You're okay."

Her eyebrows are pressed together, her eyes are slightly shining, but she's still trying to smile. For him.

Paradoxically, this is what undoes him. He's gasping as if he's just been shot in the chest again, oxygen bleeding out of him and leaving him lightheaded. "I can't," he says, and he isn't sure who he's talking to. "I can't, I can't—"

He knows he's crying now, can't ever fucking help it, can he, immature and overwrought and always, always in too fucking deep. He's bringing his knees up to his chest like a dumb kid, like he thinks he can hide. From what? From who? It's gonna get him. It's always going to get him—

"—Jason," Selina says, a little hoarse, like she's been talking at him for a while. "Jay, baby, I think you're having a panic attack."

"I can't be having a panic attack," Jason says stupidly, muffled into his knees. "I had one earlier. I'm not—I can't—"

"Okay," Selina says. Blurrily, he can see that she's still crouched in front of him. "Okay. Can you breathe with me, kitten?"

Her voice is carefully and deliberately even, so gently constructed that Jason wants to bite on instinct. He doesn't want or need to be treated like a fucking baby, even if he throws fits like one.

But Selina breathes in, breathes out. Jason finds himself breathing with her. She puts a hand on his elbow and he grips it, tight.

"Sorry," Jason manages. "I'm—sorry—"

"Don't you fucking dare." Selina squeezes his hand. "Just breathe, okay, hon?"

So Jason does. Eventually, his heart stops pounding its way through his ribcage. He lets out a jittery exhale. "Okay," he says, after another long moment. "I—okay."

Selina stands up and slides onto the couch next to him, ghosting one hand over his shoulder. Jason shudders again. The hand settles.

"So," she says finally. "Sofia told Dick something you wanted her to keep secret."

"Yeah," Jason says. "Basically. And she did it just because she didn't want to lose."

Selina hums. Her hand rubs up and down Jason's neck. "Pretty shitty thing for her to do."

The bluntness of it makes Jason snort. "I already yelled at her for it, don't worry." Selina's nails move up to scratch at the top of his head. Jason shuts his eyes. "And she told me to—to come here."

"Foisted the weepy teenager off on me, huh?" Selina says, and Jason doesn't even have the time to feel guilty before she's tempering it with a relieving half-smile.

"I'm twenty," Jason says, more petulant than convincing. "And it wasn't foisting. The fight wasn't going anywhere productive, and she said that if I was with you, then Bruce was less likely to—"

"Bruce," Selina says, suddenly sharp.

Jason clicks his mouth shut.

"You didn't say this was a Bruce thing," Selina says at last.

"Shouldn't have said anything," Jason mutters. He twists just slightly to face Selina, who is frowning at him, tight and concerned. "Sofia's right. He isn't going to bother coming after you, so there's not anything to—"

"I don't give a shit about me," Selina says instantly. He stops. "Jason. Why do you think Bruce is coming after you?"

"He—" The side of Jason's neck itches. "Dick would have told him. And he'd—he'll try to—"

Not apologize. Bruce doesn't apologize, because he'll drown in his own sanctimonious guilt but he won't ever acknowledge actually being wrong. He would come looking for Jason to somehow be absolved. Either through Jason forgiving or through Jason doing something so awful that Bruce doesn't feel bad for hurting him. Jason doesn't want Bruce to hurt him, but he doesn't know how to forgive him either.

"What is he trying to do?" Selina says. "What would Dick have told him?"

Her eyes are two piercing spears of flint, glinting in the dark. Jason looks away, back down at his knees.

"Jason," Selina says, a slight hitch in her voice. "I'm sort of driving myself crazy thinking of the possibilities here."

He shakes his head. "It's not going to help."

Selina says, "Tell me anyway."

Jason looks over at her.

He met Selina Kyle for the first time when he was just thirteen years old, in his first few months out as Robin. Selina had said, Oh, so you're the new one, ruffling up his hair and calling him kitten and giggling when he snapped back. He'd wanted so desperately to be taken seriously that he didn't let any forms of affection pass, no matter how terribly he craved it.

It wasn't until later that she'd found him hiding in the library during a gala, and he had told her that he still wasn't used to the careless grandeur of it all, that he sometimes still wished he could crawl back to that awful, cramped apartment he'd called home his whole life, just to have something familiar besides him. And she had looked at him with a soft, contemplative frown and said, So. You're like me.

And he was. And he is. Sofia understands the bloodiness of him, but Selina came from the exact same places he did and some darker ones besides. Jason and Selina know the same things and the same tragedies, and somehow Jason watches Selina choose, over and over again, to build something up instead of tearing it down. It makes him want to do the same.

He takes a deep breath, taps at the scar on the underside of his neck. "It's just," he starts slowly. Selina's eyes are already sharpening. "We were fighting one time. And he gave me this. That's all."

"Oh, hon," Selina breathes out. She shifts closer on the couch. "Can I—"

Jason shrugs, lets Selina tilt up his neck to get a better look. It's an ugly thing, he knows—jagged and pitted, unevenly twisted. Selina inhales sharply as she runs her nails along one side.

"Jesus," she says, so quietly that Jason barely catches it.

"It was an accident," he says automatically. "There was a lot of shit going on. He didn't mean to."

"He's the goddamn Batman," Selina hisses. "He should have known to be careful." One thumb comes up to tap at Jason's cheekbone, like she's trying to reassure him. "Jesus," she says again. "Baby, this could have killed you."

For some reason, this is absolutely goddamned hysterical.

Jason snorts, and then he chokes, and then he's hacking into his elbow. Selina leans back, brow furrowed.

"Sorry," Jason manages finally. Selina frowns even harder. "Just—ha! Sorry. It's just. It's not like it fucking matters either way—"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Selina says, sharp enough that it actually makes Jason startle. "Obviously it fucking matters, Jason—"

"Okay, alright," Jason says, taken aback, raising a hand placatingly. Selina looks mad enough to spit, but over what? "Listen, it was only, like, a minute anyway, I barely even knew it was happening—"

"Jason," Selina says. "What the hell are you talking about?"

It pulls Jason to a stop. He blinks at her, uselessly.

"Knew what was happening?" Selina continues.

"Well," Jason tries. "You know." He doesn't want to say it. He doesn't think he can, even after everything. "Sofia would have told you."

Selina presses her lips together bloodlessly. "She keeps things pretty close to the chest when it comes to you."

Jason winces. Far be it from him to forget the blowout when Jason and Sofia dropped the whole back from the dead bomb. It's the only time Jason's actually seen them mad at each other.

But if Selina hadn't heard about his and Bruce's fight last year. If Selina says this could have killed you without even knowing why Jason might find this funny. Then maybe Sofia didn't—then maybe Selina doesn't actually know—

For a second, Jason considers not telling her. If he asks her to drop it then she will, and they can move away from the landmines and on to easier topics. But there's something—unsettling. About keeping something this big from her. She puts so much effort into being open with him. The least he can do is return the favor.

"Sofia didn't tell you?" Jason asks, a last-ditch attempt. "About—she never mentioned it?"

Selina smiles, cool and humorless. "Must have slipped her mind." Jason looks down at his knees, gripping tight at the fabric. Christ, Sofia. Way to make things easy for a guy.

She's sliding back into his space again, gently hooking a finger underneath his chin, bringing his gaze back up to hers. She's trying very hard to pretend she's not angry, he thinks. She hates being kept out of the loop.

"Jason," she says softly. "Jason, kitten, hey. It's alright."

Belatedly, Jason realizes he's crying. Fucking again. He reaches up to swipe at his eyes, but Selina's already taking care of it, cradling his face in both hands.

"You can tell me," she says. Jason blinks hard. "Did Sofia do something? Because if Sofia did something, I can—"

Jason snorts wetly. "Of course it's not Sofia," he says. Selina lets out a small, barely-there sigh. "Sofia is—Sofia helps."

Selina inhales, exhales. Selfishly, Jason leans his face into her palm. Just a second longer. Just a second.

"Bruce?" Selina asks, after a beat.

"Yes," Jason says, and then, stumbling over himself, "I mean, no. It's not—it isn't about Bruce." It isn't. Bruce is just a shard of glass caught up in the mess. Jason can't meet her eye when he says, "It's me. It's just me."

"It's just you," Selina echoes, a clear invitation to go on. When Jason doesn't—can't—she adds, "It's alright, baby. Take your time."

Jason's breathes are hard and jagged, ripping through his chest. Selina brings one hand up to run through his hair, shushes him like a baby. He shuts his eyes.

"I just keep coming back," he says finally. Her hand stills. "Like—like I did the first time. No matter what happens to me. I don't stay down. It just—keeps me going."

Selina is quiet for a very long time.

The silence builds and twists sickeningly in Jason's chest until he's finally blurting, "Do you get what I'm saying?" Say something. Please say something.

"Yeah, honey," she says hoarsely. Jason opens his eyes, and she doesn't quite clear her face fast enough. It's a single moment of raw devastation, grief that should have long since scabbed over, before she's pulling it back into a shaky, uncertain smile. For some reason, she's still trying to make him feel safe. "Yeah, I get it."

"Okay," Jason says, and despite himself, his voice cracks in the middle, shivers and shakes apart. "I—okay then. That's all." Selina hasn't stopped touching him yet, one hand still playing with the white streak in his hair. "I thought you knew already. I would have told you earlier, but I thought Sofia would have—"

Slowly, Selina shakes her head. "She hasn't ever mentioned it." Her smile is a little brittle. "Like I said. She's very precious about what she shares when it comes to you."

Jason doesn't know if this is comforting or not. "She tells you everything."

"Almost everything," Selina corrects and Jason, again, remembers her shouting at Sofia when they'd finally come clean. I don't care. You should have told me. He's one of mine.

Jason is strangely exhausted, wrung out, slumping against the couch bonelessly. His eyes sting and his throat is tight and sore. Selina keeps on opening her mouth and shutting it, but Jason doesn't have the energy to push her on it.

"It did kill you," she says, finally, and she doesn't have to clarify what she means. "He killed you. That's why you didn't want Sofia to tell anyone. That's why you didn't want anyone to know." Jason just lets his eyes slide shut. Selina's inhale quivers. "Jesus fucking Christ, Jason."

And then she does something he doesn't expect. She puts one hand on the back of his neck and guides him down towards her, all six plus feet of him, until his cheek presses against her chest, her arms wrapping around her shoulders.

"Sel?" Jason asks.

"Shh." Selina rests her cheek against the top of his head. "Just let me have this, alright?"

It's like—it's like something his mom might do, his real mom. Catherine. When she was coming down from a high and he was coming home from school, usually after a fight, she'd chide him over his wounds and fix them up with still shaking hands, pull him into her arms and rock him back and forth. No matter how high or terrible sick she was, she did everything she could to hold him when he needed it. And he'd complain that he wasn't a baby, that he could take care of himself, but he always, always let her.

Jason lets out an awful, strangled sob, turns his face into Selina's chest like he can hide himself. "Sorry," he says. "Sorry, I just—"

"Don't you dare, Jason Peter," Selina says into his hair. "Don't you fucking dare."

So Jason doesn't. Jason doesn't say anything at all. Just shakes apart in her arms. He's so fucking sick of crying, but he doesn't know what else to do.

It could be hours before either of them speak again. When they do, it's Selina who says, "What do you want me to do to him?"

Jason snorts into the wet spot he's left on Selina's shirt. Ugh. "Jesus," he says. "You sound like Sofia."

"Yeah, I bet," Selina says, with a huffed-out laugh of her own. And then, carefully, "I'm surprised she hasn't gotten to him already."

She sounds surprisingly blasé about it, given her and Bruce's tumultuous years-long history. Another off moment, Jason supposes. That doesn't mean Jason needs to tell her about what Sofia actually tried to do. But, well. He's told her this much already.

"She tried," Jason says. Selina's sigh hitches and shudders out over his hairline. "After the Joker. She was going to—put one out on him next."

There's no shock, no immediate reprimand. Instead, Selina says, "Well, what stopped her?"

Jason shrugs unevenly. "I told her it wasn't a good idea."

This is something of an understatement. When Sofia had first mentioned it, Jason had thought it was her attempt at a joke. He'd tried to play along, invoked the safety of Gotham or some shit like that. Sofia had said, just a touch too seriously, Gotham will figure it out. Jason invoked Selina. Sofia hadn't budged. Finally, scrambling, Jason had said—Just don't. Just don't do it. Sofia had looked at him for a long, long moment, before she'd said, If you insist. And Bruce Wayne is still alive and well today, so that must have meant something.

"He killed you," Selina says flatly. Jason only barely contains his shudder. "Why the hell would you—"

"I don't know," Jason says. "I just—I really don't know."

Selina's hand tightens and spasms on his back. "Oh, kitten." She presses a kiss to his forehead and—Jason doesn't fall apart, not again, but it's a close fucking thing. "I've got you. Okay? Nobody's gonna get you here."

Jason wants to ask her to say it again. Jason wants to ask her if she promises, make her swear to it. He doesn't. He stays where he is, quiet and strangely warm, until his heart quits pounding in his ears and his mind stops running in the same well-worn circles.

"I've got you," Selina says, over and over. "I've got you."

Jason wants, so badly, to believe it.

Chapter Text

Selina gets about three consecutive blinks of sleep that night. It takes ages to calm Jason back down—even when he goes quiet, there are these minute shudders that run through him periodically, like even after all that there's still shit he's holding back. It takes her another age to convince him to stay for what's left of the night. I have a guest room set up for this exact purpose, she tells him, and it takes at least four repetitions before it seems to sink in that she's not saying this out of obligation or spite or any other excuse he's got twisted up in that wonderful, tragic head of his.

Once he goes down, though, he's out. Selina leaves him on the bed to nab an extra blanket and comes back to see him tipped sideways over the pillows, like he put his head down and forgot how to pick it back up. It can't be comfortable sleeping like that, but she thinks if she wakes him up he might not fall asleep again. So she leaves him be.

Jason looks years younger when he's sleeping, and he looks very young to begin with. There's a constant concern he carries on his back, bleeding into the anger and sadness that hang over him, winding up his shoulders and creasing the lines in his forehead. It's not like all of that can ever really be gone. But Selina watches his chest rise and fall for a full minute and tells herself it looks a little easier.

She leaves the door open just a crack when she steps away.

Jason's down—thank God—but Selina can't quit pacing. First around her bedroom, then around the kitchen making another pot of coffee, and then around the living room, over and over, staring out the window at the jagged Gotham skyline.

The first thing she is? Angry. Absolutely fucking furious. There isn't a single person the world who she isn't angry at, whether they're involved in this or not. Irrational and shortsighted, to be sure, but she's never once claimed to be Sofia.

She's angry at Jason, for not fucking telling her, for still somehow believing this means there's something wrong with him. She's angry at Dick, for running off harebrained without stopping to think about what Jason might actually need.

She's angry at Sofia, which is unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Sofia hadn't told her any of this either, but she had told Dick just so she didn't have to deal with the indignity of losing a bitchfest. And Sofia does so goddamn much for Jason, things that the kid might never even understand, but she still couldn't protect him from his own father slitting his throat and—

Bruce. Motherfucking goddamn Bruce Thomas Wayne. It's easy for Selina to run through her anger at the others, wear the emotion back down to resignation. These people may be fucked up, but at the end of the day, they're hers, and that's all that matters. But Bruce.

As always, Bruce makes things really fucking difficult. Because Bruce has been hers, at varying points in time. They've done an awful lot with each other, some of it fun and some of it terrible. That's always going to mean something. There have been times when people have hurt him and Selina has gone in and ruined their goddamn lives, because nobody fucks with what's hers and gets away with it.

Jason is hers too. Jason is hers more completely than Bruce ever was, because Jason grew up out of the same gutters that she did; Jason died and came back and stumbled right into her family again; Jason loves like a heart attack and laughs like a sputtering car engine and cries like a kid and Selina cannot believe that she lost him again and didn't even know.

And Bruce is the one who did it.

Selina doesn't take death as easily as Jason or Sofia seem to, and anything involving Bruce is going to find a way to twist itself up into knots, but in this moment it seems incredibly simple. They'd let her into the manor. Bruce would let her into his room. She thinks she'd use a gun. Two quick bullets to the chest and one to the head for good measure. A little impersonal, but quick and practical. Sofia would be proud.

But Jason's sleeping just down the hall. Jason had said he told Sofia not to do it. He said he didn't know why. So Selina wanders back down to her bedroom and lays perfectly motionless on her side and wonders if she's doing Jason a kindness or using him as an excuse.

When she does unsteadily come awake, it's to sunlight streaming through her window and the sound of pans clattering in her kitchen. Despite herself, Selina hides a smile into her pillow case. That sweet, sweet silly boy.

Sure enough when she wanders out into the kitchen, Jason's frowning at a mess of egg, hair mussed uncaringly around the back of his head. He smiles at her sheepishly, gestures at the haphazardly plated meal with the spatula.

"Omelet," he explains, unnecessarily. "Didn't—quite come out right."

Selina loves him with her whole fucking chest. She had stumbled into love with Bruce—back when it was love—and loving Sofia was something she had worked for, deliberately practiced. But Dick and Jason, even scrawny little Tim, who she barely knows but is immensely charmed by anyway—loving them comes easy. Comes on as quickly and as totally as a flash flood or a forest fire, as naturally as bringing air into lung.

"Look at you," she says through the glowing pride, coming around and reaching all the way up to scrub at his hair. He groans and bats pathetically at her wrists. "What a terrible guest you are. I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to be making you the omelets, huh?"

"Nobody said it was for you," Jason mutters, cheeks adorably red.

Selina pinches at them. He huffs. "You are such a shitty liar, hon."

The omelet is a mess, but it's absolutely fucking delicious. Selina's own paltry offering of off-brand pancake mix doesn't measure up, but Jason plows through them just fine, not a single complaint in sight. He chatters through the whole meal, about nothing, really—some shitty book he's reading, the guy down at the corner store by his latest safe house that's annoying the fuck out of him, a whinge or two about a favorite brand of gun oil he hasn't seen on shelves in weeks. The quality of it is overloud, almost nervous. Like always, he thinks he has something to prove.

He doesn't. But Selina can't convince him of that in a single morning, so instead she sighs in all the right places, rolls her eyes at the terrible jokes like he wants her to, makes him feel like nothing at all is different.

Towards the end, he winds down into silence, pushing the last bite of pancake around on his plate. He's got that habitual frown creasing over his face now, that default expression of offbeat thoughtfulness. Selina puts her cheek on her hand and watches him. Waits him out.

"Um." He puts the fork down and scratches at the back of his head. "I'm probably going to. Head out in a bit? Have some work to finish up."

He stands, picks up both his and Selina's plate off the table. She watches him as he moves into the kitchen. "What work?"

Jason shrugs with his back to her, putting the dishes in the sink. "Just some stuff from last night."

Well, that's perfectly vague. Could mean he's going out and busting heads. Could mean he's checking in with Sofia, because Jason holds grudges, to be sure, but he holds his loyalties even dearer. Could mean both or neither or some other thing he's clumsily keeping from her.

"Besides," Jason continues, pulling her out of her thoughts. "I gotta get out of your hair at some point."

Immediately, Selina clicks her tongue. "Hey, come on. You can stay here as long as you want. You know that."

Jason isn't quite able to mask the guilt that flickers over his face when he turns back to her. "I know."

Selina wishes he did. "As long as you know." She leans over the back of the chair and watches him putter around the kitchen. He's still frowning uneasily, a tension hitching up his shoulders. Selina presses her lips together, and then opens them back up to say, "I'm glad Sofia sent you over to me."

That makes him stop. He looks back over at her, lips twisting like he's trying to smile but can't quite manage it. "Really?" He says. "With the weeping and the wailing and the hysterics—"

"Yes," she says simply, cutting him off. "Anytime you start feeling even the tiniest bit hysterical, I want you here. Alright?"

It isn't quite what she wants to say. What she wants to say is Please let me be there for you, and You're not ever going to be alone again and Nobody's going to hurt you, not if I have anything to say about it. Someway, somehow she wants him to know that she's loved. But nothing she can say here will convince him, because he knows just as well as she does that anyone can lie.

All she can do is stick around. Make it clear that she's in it for the long run.

Jason looks overwhelmed as is, mouth wobbling before he presses it back into a more neutral position. "I—" he starts. Swallows hard. "Alright."

"Alright," Selina echoes. "Thanks for breakfast. Best damn thing I've ever tasted."

This gets the first real smile out him, shy and crooked and quietly pleased, flashed her way as he moves into the living room. "Raise your fucking standards, then."

Selina pretends to consider it. "Nah," she says. "I'm a bottom dollar bitch."

He laughs, startled, as he pulls his jacket over his shoulders. So he really is headed out. Expected, but no less disappointing.

"Anyway," he says, stepping back towards the window. "I'll see you around, yeah? Sorry again about—"

"Hey," Selina says, impulsively. Jason stops. "Why don't you come over here for a second?"

Jason's blinking, caught off-guard and uncertain, but he walks back around anyway, coming to stand in front of her chair. She shifts to the side and squeezes at both of his hands. They're running warm, dry and chapped around the knuckles.

"You need something?" Jason asks, a little hoarse.

"What, you that eager to get away from me?" Selina says, teasingly. She has to crane her head all the way up to meet his eye. He used to be even smaller than her, used to fit easily underneath her chin.

With a long-suffering sigh, Jason crouches down to her eye-level. He's smirking right now, because she loves him to hell and back but he is actually a piece of shit. "There," he says. "Is that better?"

Selina pinches fondly at his cheek again, ignoring his sputtered out offense. "Brat," she says warmly. He scoffs. "And here I was trying to tell you that—"

It dries up in her throat, looking at him. He's got his head tilted inquisitively to the side, keen green eyes flicking around her face. In the light of the day, the scar slashed across his neck is plainer than ever.

He's frowning again. "Sel?"

"I'm very glad you're here," Selina tells him, and she means it to come out smooth and controlled, she really does; but it quivers in the middle, shudders around the edges. Jason goes still. "Jay, baby, I am so goddamn glad you're here. And I hope—I think you should keep on sticking around. That's all."

Jason's eyes are wide. She grasps at his hand one last time before she leans back, gives him space.

"Okay," he says, so quiet it's barely a word at all.

And then, quick as anything, he darts forward and just—presses a single, clumsy, off-center kiss to her forehead. When he pulls back to stand up, his cheeks are flaming red, but Selina can't help her fond, only slightly teary smile.

"I really do have to go," he says, heading back towards the window.

Selina clears her throat. "I do own a door."

Jason redirects. "Yep. Okay." Right before he disappears down the hallway, he turns back to her and says, short and firm and simple: "Thanks."

Just like that, he's gone. Selina has to put her head down on the table and breathe for several long, painful seconds. She doesn't let it last, though. She's got something she needs to wrap up.

The drive up to Wayne Manor is winding and familiar as ever, even though she can count on one hand the number of times she's made it in the last half-year. She's had other priorities. Namely, managing Jason and managing Sofia managing Jason. That alone is a full-time fucking job, not to mention the work she does as the best thief on the goddamn planet. But those twenty some-odd years don't wash themselves away that easily.

She has to take a deep breath at the gate. It's the same code it has been for the last five or so years—Jason's birthday. 0816. Before, it had been a bittersweet tribute. Now, it's spit in her face.

There's nobody in the front hall when she lets herself in. The house is as quiet as it always is, in ways that once seemed peaceful and now take on the timbre of a cemetery. Her heels clack down the halls as she peeks into empty room after empty room, looking for—

A figure, sitting on the windowsills in one of the libraries. Selina steps in, already steeling herself, but when the figure twists around, it's just Dick. He blinks and squints at her with a black eye and a split lip.

"Jesus Christ." Selina picks up her pace. "You kids just can't stay out of trouble for more than twenty-four hours, can you?"

When Dick grins, it's tired and slightly bloodied, but it's real. "Hey, Sel. What brings you over to our neck of the woods?"

Nominally, it's Jason. In reality, it's Bruce, who has this endless fucking hold over her. But right now, her priority can be Dick Grayson, Selina's first little Robin, who grew up into a viciously protective bird of prey. "I heard," she starts carefully. "That you got into it with Sofia."

Dick's smile twists away into a flat, hard-won neutrality. "She told you?"

"No," Selina says. "Jason did."

At that, Dick's neutrality shakes away into something else entirely, achingly vulnerable and shockingly young. All he says is, "Oh."

Selina just puts a hand on his shoulder. Some of the stiffness slides from his shoulders. He lets her slip a hand underneath his chin, tilt his head to get a better look at the nastily blossoming bruise in his undereye. "Had a busy night, huh?"

"Yeah," Dick says, with an attempt at a self-deprecating snort. "No kidding."

Selina hums, tapping at his cheekbone just once before her hand falls away. "You want to tell me what happened? I heard it from Jason, but he was—" Almost incoherent. On the verge of a meltdown. "I'd like to hear it from you."

Dick blows out a long breath. "Not much to tell. Sofia was being—Sofia," he says, unnecessarily delicate. As if Selina doesn't know that her beloved sister can be a raging bitch sometimes. Often. "I was trying to get her to take it seriously. Jason. How Jason doesn't—how Jason can't take any of it seriously."

He doesn't waste time specifying because Dick, like Jason, assumes Sofia must have looped her in. She doesn't waste time correcting him.

"She's one of the only people who can get through to him," Dick continues, even though he has to say it through gritted teeth. "Selina, I'll be honest, I really wish she wasn't, but she is. She's one of the only people he actually listens to, but she acts like she doesn't even—"

"She does," Selina says. It's not a retort or a defense. Just an automatic statement of fact.

"I know." Dick puts his face into his hands. "Goddammit, I know. That's the worst part."

He doesn't elaborate, and Selina doesn't ask him to. She lets him breathe in and out for a moment, one hand still on his shoulder.

"Then what?" She prompts.

Dick inhales shudderingly. "I was just trying to get her to take it seriously," he says again. Then, with a faint tone of awe, "I think I got to her. I really think I did."

"She's not invincible," Selina tells him. "She's only human."

"I don't feel bad for it," Dick says, already defensive. "I'd do it again if I had to."

Prickly, protective, biting down at the barest provocation. They'd both hate her if she said it, so she never will, but they're more alike than they'll ever care to know.

Selina squeezes at his shoulder. "I'm not mad," she says, genuinely. Dick sighs again. "You're just trying to keep your brother safe. That's good."

At that, Dick shudders again. "Yeah, well," he says bitterly. "Done a great job of that, haven't I?"

She frowns. "Dick—"

"I can't ever do it when it counts," Dick says, looking down at a smudge on the hardwood. "Sofia got to know and I didn't. I had to hear about it from her, for Christ's sake. He told Sofia but he couldn't tell me." He lets out something like a laugh, a sharp, hitching exhale. "She can kill the fucking Joker, and all I can do is get into fights with Bruce—"

"Bruce." Selina knuckles his chin back up, taking another look at the bruise and dried blood. "This was Bruce?"

"I threw the first hit," Dick says dismissively. Selina presses her lips together. He goes on with, "It's not like it's going to do anything. Right? He isn't going to learn his lesson."

It's not a rhetorical statement, she realizes, a few beats after he's said it. He's really, truly asking her, looking up at her with those huge brown eyes that haven't changed a single whit from when he was a kid, still just her little bird flying around rooftops with a laugh that lit up Gotham's whole sky. Selina doesn't have anything to offer him except for the awful, hollow truth, which is—

"No," she says, swallowing hard. "No, he isn't."

"Oh," Dick says, a single empty word that makes her heart fall down her throat and onto the floor. "That's—alright then." He looks back down at the floor, away from her, but she can still track the absolute hopeless grief that flickers across his face before he manages to tamp it down. Her whole body aches for him.

"Oh, birdy," she says softly, rubbing her hand up and down her back.

"I'm fine," he says, looking up at her with a beautiful, brilliant, entirely fake smile. "Anyway. Didn't mean to derail you." Selina clicks her tongue. What is it with these kids and needlessly apologizing. "What did you need again?"

She doesn't feel like lying to him, but it still takes her a second to gather the words. "I was going to see Bruce," she says finally. Dick winces, almost like a flinch. "But—I don't know. I'm not sure it's a good idea anymore."

Oh, it would be so easy. To march up into wherever he's hidden himself away this time, slap him or spit in his face or dig her nails into the side of his neck. But then what? What's left for her after?

"Why not?" Dick's saying. He spreads his hands out like he's pleading. "I think you could really talk some sense into him—"

"That's not my job," Selina says, cutting him off. Dick blinks. "He isn't a priority right now." Before Dick can get into his head about it, like he so often does, she taps a knuckle to his cheek. "That's you, birdy. And Jason."

Dick looks, for a moment, shocked, like he somehow expected Selina to side with Bruce, even after everything. Maybe it's because she might have, before. Maybe it's because Dick still would. Bruce has that effect on people, brutally mercurial and exacting. It would be hypocritical of her to blame Dick for stumbling under the weight of his orbit.

"And Sofia," Dick says finally, toneless. "She's your priority."

"She's my sister," Selina says. "She's what you are to Jason, to me." Dick still looks doubtful. Selina sighs, not unfondly. Stupid, stubborn boy. "Sofia doesn't matter here, alright? Right now, I'm talking about you and me." She has to work past the thorns in her throat before she can go on. "You're my little bird. You always will be. No matter what's going on with me and Bruce."

Dick swallows and nods, before he looks back up at her and asks, "Another rough patch, huh?"

Rough patch. Sometimes, it's like her and Bruce's entire goddamn relationship has been a rough patch. When it's good, it's fucking excellent. But when it's anything else, it's nails and tenterhooks in her back, dragging her down and down.

It would be easy to fall back into it. The misery is familiar and well-worn. She could seek him out again, shoot out every barb in her formidable arsenal, make him feel like a worm who wasn't even worthy to be stepped on, give him exactly what he fucking deserves. She could step right back into that orbit. Play into the worst of his guilt complex. She could give him exactly what he doesn't even know he wants.

But what she told Dick is true. It wouldn't do anything. He isn't going to learn his lesson, not now and not ever. All it would do is give them an awful, unearned satisfaction and an excuse to fall back in, find new ways to tear each other and everyone around them to shreds.

It has to be over. It has to be finished, no what-if's or excuses.

"He doesn't get to do that to my kids and get away with it," she says finally. Dick's eyes dart around her face, like he's looking for any hint of a lie or weakness. She hopes he doesn't find it. "I'm done with him."

Please. Please, God, let it stick this time.

"But not—" Dick starts, and then he cuts himself off with a flush flooding up into his cheeks.

"But not you," Selina finishes for him, stroking his bangs out of his eyes. "Not ever you."

Dick bites down hard on his lower lip, splitting it open again. "That's not—" He clears his throat. "I'm not the one you should be worrying about." There's a protest right on the edge of her lips, but Dick follows it up with, "How's Jason? Did you see him?"

"I had him the whole night," Selina says and suddenly, Dick's shoulders cave in on themselves, like something's cut the strings holding him up.

"Okay." Dick's voice is shaking. "I—okay. Jesus Christ."

He puts his face into his hands and takes some very long, ragged breaths. Selina drapes herself over his back, props her chin up on his head.

"Jason's alright," she promises. Dick's breath catches on the exhale. "You're alright. You did good, baby." He sighs, half-relief and half-resignation, before he tips his head against her chest. Selina strokes her nails through his hair, presses a kiss to the crown of his head. "Shhh. You're alright."

"Okay," Dick says again, still shaking. "Okay, Selina."

She leaves half-an-hour later, with Dick pretending to be on steadier ground and not a single sighting of Bruce at all. The Manor is so inextricably associated with Bruce that it's almost wrong to leave without seeing him, with having his hand brushing against hers, his quiet, strong voice rumbling through her body.

But there's something freeing about it too. Like there's a knot in her chest unspooling, loosening a space she didn't even know was taken. She doesn't need to breathe around Bruce Wayne anymore. She has other, better priorities.

There's one more person to go to, and this isn't something she's interested in backing down from.

With a rev of the engine, she points her bike back down towards Gotham. Towards her sister. Towards Sofia.

***

Sofia's apartment is surprisingly modest for somebody of her stature. It's nice, yes, with the expensive furniture and perfunctorily modern kitsch that Selina knows Sofia actually hates. Selina would never call it cozy—that's not Sofia's style—but it is simply kept, prioritizing neatness over extravagance.

Selina doesn't bother announcing herself. The doorman knows her, she knows the code, and she's let herself in hundreds if not thousands of times before. She makes sure to make plenty of noise opening the door and toeing off her heels, so Sofia doesn't startle and bring out the pistol, as she is still occasionally wont to do.

It takes three full minutes of banging around in the liquor cabinet before Sofia finally emerges from her office. She's got her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail and a simple white button-up tucked into a pair of dark slacks. Just as elegant and careful as ever, but Selina's known her long enough to see the exhaustion seeping through the cracks, the bruising dark circles underneath the eyes, the stray strands of hair wisping about her head.

"We're not drinking wine at one in the afternoon," Sofia says by way of greeting, flat and dry.

"Oh, this is nice," Selina says, ignoring her completely. She holds the bottle up into the light. "A real live vintage. Sof, you've been hiding this from me."

Sofia lets out a short, sharp sign through her nose and turns back towards the office. Selina only stops to grab two glasses before she's following.

"You've been working all night?" Selina asks. It isn't really a question. The papers scattered around Sofia's desk are answer enough.

"Had some work to finish up," Sofia says, collapsing back into her office chair. She sounds eerily similar to Jason. Maybe this flashes across Selina's face, or maybe Sofia just knows it instinctively, because the side of her mouth pinches in. "Jesus," she mutters, rubbing a knuckle into the side of her forehead. "Fucking fine. We're already alcoholics."

Selina places both glasses on the desk as she slides into the other desk chair. This is a well-worn routine. Selina likes to call it the bitch n' wine, mostly because it makes Sofia scoff every time. She uncorks the wine bottle. Sofia reaches into the desk drawer for a pack of cigarettes.

"Jason said you were quitting," Selina says as she pours, casual and even.

Sofia freezes.

Jason had said that two weeks ago, but Sofia doesn't need to know that. The wine bottle goes back on the desk. Selina takes a small, testing sip from her own glass, looking at Sofia all the while. It's good. Heady but a little too sweet for her.

"I was," Sofia says finally, pulling a lighter out of her pocket. "I say that a lot, don't I?"

She lights the cig with one hand and reaches out for the wine glass with the other, the well-worn grooves of a self-destructive routine. The scent of nicotine and secondhand smoke immediately fills the air as she exhales.

"It's always the kid," Sofia says, almost contemplatively. Selina raises an eyebrow. She wasn't kidding when she told Jason Sofia could get very precious about him. Normally, Selina has push the topic. "I'm serious. I tell myself I'm quitting, that I'm busy enough without throwing lung cancer into the mix, and I fucking mean it. Sometimes I even hold out."

Another drag of the cigarette. "But?" Selina asks.

Sofia sighs, smoky and heavy. "He'll get involved in something—monumentally stupid," she says. "Sometimes he'll hold out for a month or two, but he always ends up blowing up a building or taking on a gang or going at it with the fucking—"

She stops, conspicuously, but Selina's known her long enough and then some to trace the line of thought.

"Batman," she finishes. "Bruce." Sofia looks away and to the side. "You know why I'm here, right?"

"You mean this isn't a social call," Sofia says, but it's too perfunctory to be actually sarcastic. Selina takes a deep breath, ready to get into it, ready to lay out every minuscule grievance, but Sofia undercuts it all with a tight, gritted, "How's Jason doing?"

"He's—" Selina starts, redirecting. Sofia has yet to look at her. "Been better. Been worse too, Apparently."

Sofia exhales, careful and controlled, and says, "Alright."

Selina leans forward in her chair. "Sof," she says. "Why the hell didn't you tell me?" Sofia taps cigarette ash into the tray on her desk. "Sofia—"

"I'm thinking," Sofia says. "I'm calculating my approach." Finally, she meets Selina's eyes. "I'm not trying to make the same mistakes again."

Sofia doesn't lie, Selina reminds herself. If she says she's not going to make the same mistakes, then she means it. Or she's trying to.

"Not even about Bruce, necessarily," Selina continues and her voice almost, almost doesn't shake on his name. "That's Jason's thing to tell me. Although it would have been nice to know that the guy I fuck sometimes tried to fucking—" Not tried to. Did. Selina inhales shakily, downs another portion of wine. "I mean, Jesus, Sofia. How long ago did this even happen? How many times have I—"

Sofia's frowning, a curious pinch around her eyebrows. "How many details did Jason give you?"

Selina laughs, bitterly. "He was a little busy crying his fucking heart out to give me the specifics."

The frown spasms, deepening. Sofia isn't surprised. She can't be: Anybody who's known Jason for longer than five minutes knows how catastrophically emotional he is. But he won't collapse around Sofia the same way he did for Selina. Even him breaking down in front of her was an exception to a long-standing rule. Jason lives in a state of contradictions—chronically avoidant of vulnerability with a heart bigger than the fucking sky.

"It happened earlier this year," Sofia says finally. "A few months after we started working together. Not too long before he met back up with you."

Six months. Six fucking months Jason's lived with being killed by his own fucking father. Three months ago, Selina met up with Bruce for the first time in ages, holing up in a seedy motel room in Trenton. They went out for breakfast the next morning. Selina had laughed when he oversalted his eggs. And all the while, Bruce had killed his own goddamn son. He hadn't even known he'd done it.

"I was still—" Selina says, against the rising nausea. "Jesus, we were still—"

"You didn't know," Sofia says, after a beat. Selina tries and likely fails not to look surprised. Sofia is, usually, jumping on every chance she can to shit on Selina and Bruce's admittedly disastrous relationship. This is quiet; almost accepting. Of course, Sofia follows it up with, "It's not your fault."

"It's Bruce's," Selina finishes for her. Sofia lifts the glass in confirmation. Another well-worn routine: Most of the bitch n' wine sessions start with Selina complaining about some new Bruce-grievance, while Sofia agrees with everything she says and tries, in increasingly over-the-top ways, to convince Selina to end things with him. Sometimes she's even succeeded. "You'll like this, then. I'm not planning on seeing him again."

"Halle-fucking-lujah," Sofia mutters, tipping back the rest of her wine. She hesitates halfway through putting the glass back down on the desk, catching whatever awful, revealing look is on Selina's face. "Sel?"

"I'm not fucking kidding this time," Selina says, and this time when her voice shakes she doesn't bother to hide it. "You know, I went up to the Manor. I was gonna give it to him to his fucking face, make it hurt." She pounds back the rest of the glass, slams it down on the desk. Sofia watches all the while. "But then I just—Jesus, it was just Dick. He was just sitting in the library. He looked fucking exhausted. He and Bruce beat the shit out of each other, apparently."

"Really?" Sofia says, voice not quite as neutral as she thinks it is. "We're talking about the same Dick Grayson?"

"Watch it," Selina says, not unkindly. "He's one of mine, too." Sofia lifts both hands in capitulation. Selina continues. "I spent the whole night pulling Jason back together. And then Dick was beat to hell and so, so tired, and it's all because of Bruce fucking Wayne. And nobody gets to do that to my kids, especially not—" Sofia leans one cheek on her fist and waits, patiently, for Selina to pull herself together, to tilt her chin up and say, "I left without seeing him. Didn't fucking bother."

"Look at you," Sofia says, reaching across the desk to pour Selina another glass. "They grow up so fast."

"Shut the fuck up," Selina says, but her lip twitches up despite herself. Even after everything, Sofia's easy, natural pride still has an impact. It fades in the next second, though, because she still has to know: "Why didn't you tell me? About Jason, about any of it." Sofia moves her jaw from side to side, exhaling smoke from her nostrils. "Quit calculating your approach. You could have told me when you told me Jason was alive. You didn't. Why?" Selina's patience is quickly fraying. "Fucking spit it out already—"

"It's fucking terrifying," Sofia says. She's staring distantly at a point somewhere over Selina's shoulder. "Seeing him go down like that. Watching him come back. It's never once stopped being terrifying, and I'm not you."

Selina blinks. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"I don't care about him like you do," Sofia says, deliberately toneless. Selina opens her mouth to protest, but Sofia cuts her off with, "I'm his business partner. And that's being generous."

"Bullshit," Selina says instinctively. The first thing Jason had said to her when he showed up on her fire escape was, I got into a fight with Sofia. Sofia, removed and recalcitrant Sofia, had taken the time to ask, How's Jason doing? "You killed the fucking Joker for that kid. Don't bullshit me."

Sofia takes another sharp, furious drag of the cigarette but does not—cannot—deny it. "But I'm not his—" She gestures towards Selina vaguely, trailing smoke through the air. "Well, I'm not his fucking mother, am I?"

Mother. The word frissons up Selina's spine, an instinctive, claiming pride. It's not that simple. Nothing ever is. But it's damn close.

"And if it gets to me," Sofia continues. "If it gets to me, then what the hell would it do to you?"

Selina considers this, chewing on her lower lip. "I don't need you to—protect me."

"No shit," Sofia says flatly. "But that doesn't mean I'm going to put you through shit if I can help it."

Selina hasn't had very many people bother to be protective of her. They've spent years taking care of each other, but it's still gratifying every time Sofia proves just how deep that care can go. It's almost enough to make up for everything else.

"So you were trying not to hurt my feelings," Selina says finally. "That's it?"

Sofia tilts her head to one side, almost self-deprecating. "There are a lot of reasons I could give you." She swirls the wine glass around in one hand, considering. "I didn't want to hurt your feelings. I didn't want to give up a trade secret. I didn't want to betray Jason's trust."

"Oh, that worked out well," Selina bites out instinctively. Sofia winces, a twitch in the shoulders, not something anybody else could catch. "You didn't tell me, but you told Dick. You barely even tolerate him."

"Tolerate is a strong word," Sofia says.

"Sofia," Selina says, with just a hint of warning. Sofia, obligingly, clicks her mouth shut. "Jason didn't know shit about whatever spat you guys got into. Dick, on the other hand—"

"He's very insightful, your boy," Sofia says, like it's the worst thing Dick could be. "He can cut right to the heart of things, when he's motivated."

"He's right," Selina says, without fanfare. "Jason doesn't give a shit about whether he lives or dies. Whether or not he—" She exhales, braces herself. "—comes back. I've known about it for approximately twelve hours and it is blindingly obvious. And you're one of maybe two people on the planet that he actually fucking listens to." Sofia nurses the wine. "And you know that already. Don't pretend you don't."

Sofia stands up, suddenly, taking the wineglass and the cigarette with her. Selina watches her head towards the window, look out towards the jagged, hungry Gotham skyline. Waits her out.

"What would I even say to him?" Sofia asks, finally. "Hm? How could I even—"

She can't seem to bring herself to finish the sentence, making a few useless, aborted gestures before she goes back to the wine.

"Tell him what I told him," Selina says. "Say that you want him around. That's it."

"He wouldn't believe it," Sofia says instantly, a prepared rejoinder. "Not from me."

"That's not the point," Selina tells her. "Sof, I can't help but think you're making this more complicated than it needs to be."

Sofia half-turns back to face her, and in her delicate profile, so similar to Selina's own, there's a guilt so strong Selina can taste it festering in the back of her mouth.

"There's another reason I didn't tell you," Sofia says slowly. "It's characteristically selfish." A pause, a consideration. "You're not going to look at me the same way."

"You're my sister," Selina says instantly. "You've done and will continue to do a lot of awful, fucked-up shit. None of it stops me from showing up."

It's true. Selina's never been under a single illusion as to what Sofia is. She's done objectively terrible things without a single regret. Selina won't pretend to agree with every decision Sofia's ever made, but Sofia was the first family Selina could claim for herself. That goes a long, long way.

Sofia takes a deep, smoky inhale. "The first time I met Jason—really met him, I'm not talking about some run-in at some stupid fucking gala—I killed him."

Selina stops. Stares. Her heart stuttering and seizing in her throat.

"Then he came back and I killed him again," Sofia continues. "Didn't keep him down." She delivers it all sharp and impersonal, moving from sentence to sentence in choppy bursts with no time to process in-between. "I didn't know he was yours until later. That's not me making excuses, that's me giving you the facts."

"Jesus Christ, Sofia," Selina says faintly. Killed him. Selina hadn't even known Jason was back and she had lost him again. Jesus fucking Christ.

"Sometimes," Sofia continues, and here she falters, flags. "Sometimes we go out to handle things. Sometimes shit goes sideways. A stray bullet or knife or a bad fall—it doesn't fucking matter. And we both know that whatever's happened to him this time is going to kill him anyway." She looks back at Selina again. "He'll ask. He'll fucking ask me to take care of it, to make it quick."

And Sofia does. Of course she does. Sofia prizes quickness and efficiency, and the last thing she would want was to waste time waiting for Jason to—

Selina has to bend her head down towards her knees, breathing in deep and slow for a long, long moment. "You should have fucking told me."

"Characteristically selfish," Sofia repeats grimly. "You don't want to know how many times I've killed him, trust me. I am no better than Bruce fucking Wayne."

There's a lot Selina could and should say to this, but all of it is flying around her head like glass in a hurricane, catching and cutting in glancing pieces. Jason asks to be put out of his misery. Sofia obliges. Hell, chances are she's keeping count.

"If you're looking for absolution," Selina starts. "I'm not going to—"

"That's not why I told you." Sofia fully turns back to her with a look of genuine offense. "I told you because if anybody deserves to know, it's you." Then she scoffs, sipping at the wine. "Fucking absolution. Christ."

Selina could tell her that Bruce would have told her for absolution. No, not even that. Bruce would have told her to be ripped to shreds, so he had an excuse to sink back into cyclical misery. Sofia tells her as an simple exchange for not telling her earlier, a cool relation of the facts with a very deliberate lack of predisposing emotion. Selina could mention that Bruce didn't even know he had done it, whereas Sofia keeps track. Selina could tell her, honestly, that she's caustic and ruthless and fucked in the head but nothing, absolutely nothing like Bruce Wayne.

It would be the kind thing to do. Selina isn't exactly in a gentle mood.

Instead, she stands and makes her way over to Sofia's side. Sofia watches her warily out of the corner of one eye.

"Well," Selina says. "I don't think I've ever been more pissed at you."

"Good," Sofia says simply, no explanation or excuse, and this is another way that she's dissimilar to Bruce, another relief loosening the constant tension in Selina's chest.

"But," Selina continues, mercilessly. "That's all the more reason he needs to hear it from you."

Sofia looks at her sideways, lips pressed together tight. Selina gives her a pitiless smile.

"Think of it this way," she says. "You fucking owe it to that kid."

This hits, just like Selina knew it would. Sofia's next cigarette drag shakes on the inhale. "Fuck."

"Yeah," Selina says. "You said he wouldn't believe it, but you could tell him the moon was a hologram and he'd buy it."

"He's not that gullible," Sofia says. She's defending him. Cute.

"I'm not saying he's gullible," Selina says. "I'm saying he fucking trusts you." Sofia tightens her jaw again, another almost-flinch. "I'm saying he knows you. He knows you're not going to go around saying shit you don't mean for no reason. If you tell him, he has to listen."

"I'm not that—" Sofia starts, before she cuts herself off by going at the wine again. There are any number of ways she could finish that sentence, but Selina would bet that it was almost something along the lines of, I'm not that important to him.

"Yes, you fucking are," Selina says. "You know better." There's the guilt again, flattening over her face. "You want to know what he told me, when he showed up shaking on my fire escape? The very first words out of his mouth?"

"Something about Bruce, I presume," Sofia says.

"Wrong," Selina replies instantly. "It wasn't Bruce. It wasn't even Dick. The first thing he said to me was, I got into a fight with Sofia."

Sofia takes this in, quietly.

"That was what shook him up," Selina finishes, gentler. "That he got into it with you. Don't pretend, Sof. Doesn't suit you."

"That kid," Sofia says, more to herself than to Selina. "Is going to be the fucking death of me."

It's not like Selina can disagree.

"Do you want to know what the worst part of it is?" Sofia says, turning back towards Selina suddenly. She doesn't give Selina a chance to respond. "I can spit out all the neat, tidy platitudes I want. Hell, maybe he even believes that I'm telling the truth. Doesn't change the fact that he's traded one killer for another."

She's never minded being a killer before. Selina doesn't bother voicing this. "Lack of self-preservation must run in the family."

"Fuck you very much," Sofia says. "He didn't get it from me." Telling, to say the least. "That's not what I'm saying."

She doesn't finish the thought. That's alright. Selina is more than willing to push.

"What are you saying, then?" She prompts.

Sofia considers her words carefully. "None of it is going to matter," she says at last. "Whenever he ends up running back to Bruce. He's still going to be stuck with somebody who doesn't—who can't—" She makes a frustrated noise in the back of her throat. "One fucking killer for another. Christ."

It's more self-deprecating than Sofia usually lets herself be, and all on Jason's behalf. Sofia can deny or equivocate all she wants, but Selina knows her sister. She'd do anything for that kid. God knows he needs it.

"Running back to Bruce," Selina echoes, after a beat. "You think he will? After everything?"

Sofia looks at her like it's supposed to be obvious. "Kids will do anything for their fathers." Of course. Sofia would know, wouldn't she? "If it came down to me and Bruce, he'd choose Bruce. It wouldn't be a question."

Kids will do anything for their fathers. Jason, still trembling against her, saying Sofia had tried to put out a hit on Bruce. Jason, saying, I told her it wasn't a good idea.

He also said I got into a fight with Sofia and Sofia helps. Sofia's the one who knew about Jason's immortality first. Sofia's the one he told about Bruce and the scar on his neck. Sofia's the one who killed the goddamn Joker when Bruce wouldn't. Couldn't.

There are a hundred other things Selina could take into account. Sofia smoking through packs and packs of cigarettes every time Jason gets himself into trouble, Jason asking Sofia to have mercy on him when he's fading. Sofia following through. Jason's died for Sofia. Has he ever died for Bruce?

Sofia is still looking down at the buildings below, cigarette hanging contemplatively in one hand. It's startling to see her so deliberately inert, like there isn't anything left for her to do. Like she's already grieving.

He'd choose Bruce. It wouldn't be a question.

"I don't know," Selina tells her. "I wouldn't be so sure."