Work Text:
“Good work, Robin.”
Jay can’t stop thinking about the most recent dream vision memory, so vivid that it had knocked him from reality itself. He’s grateful that Darcy stayed by his side the whole time. He’s more grateful that he woke up before Penny could get home to find him sprawled out on the hallway floor.
He still hasn’t told her
“Good work, Robin.”
It echoes in his head like a mantra, even a week later. Sometimes he feels the phantom rush of wind tugging at his hair, or the tender pull of the muscles in his arm, as though he’s only just barely let go of the grapple.
“Good work, Robin.”
It settles into some corner of his brain like a bird nuzzling into its nest. Robin. It’s just as much a name to him as Jay, even if he knows it…isn’t.
It isn’t a name. His name is not Robin, and yet—
Jay closes his eyes and rubs a knuckle against the point right between his brows, dispersing the last bit of fog from his latest mental escapade.
Another rooftop, another conversation with a man who’s voice he swears he knows as well as his own, and yet still no progress in deciphering any of it. He’s one mental debate away from looking it up, though he’s relatively sure googling the word ‘Robin’ won’t get him any farther than the local birdwatchers’ blog.
Darcy huffs beside him, rolling over in her sleep. She’s so heavy that Jay is practically shoved over by the motion and he finds himself smiling through his exhaustion. Even when she’s fast asleep, Darcy always manages to keep him grounded.
It’s late. Whichever side wins the debate, they’ll have to wait until morning. For now, he lets himself fade back into the abyss of a distant skyline - familiar and foreign all in the same breath.
—
The long weekend is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because a three day weekend is always needed, even if Jay likes school, and also because Penny and her team actually have this one off. But a curse too, because as the weekend approaches without the promise of the distraction of class or homework, he knows that he won’t be able to keep himself from thinking about the memories again.
He knows that he can’t stop them from returning. As much as he loathes to admit it, his memories are coming back - and he knows by now that they are memories and not just some fiction, some story, that his mind is building to fill in the holes. And he’s not so much afraid of them as he is simply avoiding them for the sake of keeping himself safe.
Safe, here, with Penny.
Whether that safety lasts is wholly dependent on what he remembers - who he remembers - and how much it would hurt to lose it once he has.
—
By the time the weekend arrives and he and Penny are sprawled on their couch with bowls of cereal in hand, Jay finds himself in a dilemma. It doesn’t matter how hard he tries to shove the thoughts aside. They’ve become a constant, repeating themselves every time he closes his eyes, and they become a little more clear as they go on. The voices have less static, the edges seem to smooth out, even his own body seems to have more weight to it. More presence. More difficult to ignore.
By Thursday night, Jay already knows they’re coming. He spends it lost in his head, leaping across familiar rooftops while the lights and colors of the city swirled around him, weaving into his very being.
He’s left with a sense of longing when he wakes. There’s a tug in his chest, a desperate need to feel that weightlessness again, regardless of what other memories it will bring.
He needs to fly.
The thought comes unbidden, but not unexpected. He just doesn’t know how to address it. It’s not like he can go jumping across their neighbor’s roofs, and he can only imagine the look on Penny’s face if he were to try.
The houses are too far apart for that anyway. Not that he’s actually checked. It’s just basic physics.
Jay leans his head against the back of the couch and stares up at the ceiling fan, cereal bowl settled into his lap. He doesn’t mean to sigh, but he must, because Penny is looking over at him with a sympathetic smile.
“Bad night?” she asks, with a million silent implications hidden in those two words.
Jay shrugs lightly, still watching the fan spin. “Not really.”
And it wasn’t. The dreams aren’t unwelcome, even if the actual memories they represent are. Whoever Robin is, Jay likes being him. He likes leaping through the sky and spending time with the other figures, doing whatever it is they do and repeating moments like they’ve been pre-recorded. Spencer would call that an eidetic memory, but that would require Jay to tell him about it in the first place.
Penny is still looking at him. It takes him a moment to realize it, and he blushes when he does. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “Not very convincing, am I?”
She chuckles and shakes her head. “Not really, Jay-Baby. Maybe we both need some fresh air today, huh?”
He chews his lip, rolling it almost thoughtlessly between his teeth. “We could go walk around downtown?” he suggests.
“Bakery and the bookstore?” Penelope shoots back with a knowing grin. He can’t help but return one of his own.
Half an hour later, they’re out the door and heading for town with Darcy sitting alert in the backseat. They park near their usual bakery, where they grab their favorite pastries before beginning a lazy stroll toward the bookstore about a mile away. With the weather as nice as it is though, neither of them mind the walk.
They’re halfway there when Jay’s eyes catch on a larger building along the way. They’ve seen it a dozen times before, but he’s never really paid much attention to it. He’s never even bothered to look through the window until today.
Penelope pauses a few steps ahead of him. “Everything okay, Jay?”
He hadn’t even realized he’d stopped walking. It’s just–he swears he just saw someone flipping through the building–
“Yeah.” His brow furrows and it takes an extra second to find the rest of his words. “What is that?”
She follows his gaze. “Sky Zone…?” She sounds confused as she reads off the name of the place. “It looks like a trampoline park.” Looking back at him, her expression morphs into something more curious than confused.
She asks, “Do you want to go inside?”
He does. A small voice in his head chastise, tells him he’s too old for places like this, but—
“Ready-”
The memory echoes in his mind at the same time that an idea begins to settle. A test. That’s what this is. A test of his dreams and his supposed past. A test to see how much of it could really be reality - the mind may forget but the body rarely does, isn’t that what they say?
He nods as she heads for the door, looking perfectly happy with the sudden change of plans.
“Aim-”
“It looks fun,” he absentmindedly says as he follows her inside.
“Fire!”
Jay’s eyes are immediately pulled upwards as they approach the front desk, where off in the distance several people are quite literally launching themselves across the room. Their bodies twist as some of them do flips or pikes, while others merely jump and flail with a chorus of giddy laughter. They range in age from toddler to teen to adult, and there’s just something so inherently weightless about them.
They simply look happy.
Jay doesn’t pay much attention as Penelope gets them signed in, thoroughly distracted by what’s going on inside. He does get a bit of a smile when he sees her putting a special wristband on Darcy, though. Darcy of course raises her paw like the professional she is, making it easier to get the band around her. She won’t be allowed on the trampolines themselves, apparently, but they’ll allow her to be on the sidelines and seating areas so she can do her job if needed.
Once Jay and Penny have wristbands of their own, they wander back towards the main jumping area. Jay’s eyes catch on every detail along the way, taking in each of the various types of trampolines and obstacle courses that fill the frankly massive facility.
Something in his chest aches as they reach the main area, and he can’t pull his gaze away even as he says to Penelope, “You’re gonna jump too, right?”
She raises a brow, even if he doesn’t see it. “Do you want me to?” she asks. “I can’t promise I’ll be any good, but it does look pretty fun.”
His chest tightens with nervous excitement. “Yeah.” He looks at her quickly and doubles down. “Yeah, of course I want you to. Not like I’ll be any good either. I haven’t been to one of these before.”
A voice in his head tells him that that’s a lie, and it sounds strangely like his own.
Penelope laughs and nudges her shoulder against him. “Then I guess we can go fumble around together. Come on. No chickening out now!”
He gives her a crooked grin and resists the urge to roll his eyes as they take the final steps up towards the trampolines. This was his idea, after all. Darcy follows them to the edge before sitting at attention to watch as they carefully get onto the first one.
It’s fun. There’s something almost instinctual in the bounce of the material beneath his feet, the way it shifts his balance and the way he so naturally corrects his stance. Beside him, Penny laughs as she stumbles along. By her own admission, she’s never been one for the more athletic pastimes but it’s clear she’s having a good time anyway.
At some point, the gentle bounce isn’t enough on its own, and Jay starts taking bigger hops between the sections of trampolines. Penny grins as she watches him, choosing not to follow in his footsteps.
“What was that about never having been to one of these before?” she asks.
He tucks his legs up as he makes a longer leap, and lands with nothing short of grace with one foot hitting first so that he can keep his momentum and continue running along. Each stride gets him one step closer to weightlessness, and by the time he’s circled back to his sister, the smile on his face is wide enough to make his eyes crinkle.
“Maybe I forgot,” he finally answers as he drops down to sit cross legged on the ground. He wobbles as the trampoline does but doesn’t tip over.
Her expression softens. “Yeah?”
There’s something in her tone, a question that neither of them want to acknowledge.
He shrugs and avoids her gaze. “Yeah,” he echoes softly.
Maybe he forgot, but maybe this is him remembering.
She smiles and reaches down to ruffle his hair. “Well, I think this is my cue to take a break and give Darcy some attention. I’m already out of breath. You go ahead and jump around to your heart's content though, okay Jay?”
He nods up at her. Of course she doesn’t press it. She never does, always respectful of where his head is at. It’s a lot less scary that way.
Once she and Darcy settle themselves on a bench in the nearby seating area, Jay pulls himself back to his feet and lets instinct take over. Now that he’s not trying to stick close to Penny, it’s like his heart has decided to pound out of his chest.
The only way to calm it is to leap.
He runs, bounding across the sections without hardly a second thought about where to land or how much force to put into each jump. It’s second nature, like muscle memory, as he practically flies through the air of the warehouse. Each one sends him higher, each a little closer to the feeling of soaring like in his dreams. He feels one step shy of invincible. There’s no tug of a grapple wire, but the way it whips through his hair and burns in his thighs is as close enough of a sensation for his reality to blur ever so slightly.
For a moment, it isn’t a trampoline beneath his feet but instead a roof of brick and mortar.
For a moment, he swears he sees the Gotham skyline interposed along the surrounding walls.
It’s the first time he’s stumbled since they arrived, and it forces him to pause and catch his breath. He looks around, looks past the dozens of other people in the room, and tries to see it again. The skyline he knows almost as well as he knows the freckles scattered across his cheeks. It’s gone now, of course. It wasn’t even really there to begin with. And yet…
He squints, and he’s sure he can see an echo of it. He shakes it off as best he can and makes himself fall back into the rhythm of things. Though a little more cautious now, he returns to leaping across the trampolines.
It’s easy to fall into the weightlessness of it all, something about it like a welcome home after so much time away. He kicks off walls as he goes, getting himself higher until he’s able to snag the side of a nearby ledge. It’s second nature to yank himself the rest of the way up, where he then sits and swings his legs over the edge while he watches the room.
He finds Penny and Darcy and waves at them when their eyes meet. Penelope waves back with a grin, and even from here he can see that her eyes are practically sparkling. He must look as happy as he feels.
“What a view, am I right?”
The voice is as familiar as ever, even when Jay knows it isn’t actually there. Of course, Jay knows exactly what view he’s talking about. It’s certainly not this one, yet he can still visualize it perfectly. He closes his eyes and imagines himself up among the skyscrapers. Around him, the city lights sparkle through a thick layer of fog, and even with the added smog, the sky is nonetheless illuminated by the moon above.
“Yeah,” he hears himself agree as he leans back against the cushioned wall behind him, even though he knows he hasn’t said anything aloud.
There’s this strange feeling swelling up in him, like the veil between the here and now, and the then and there, is somehow thinning. Somehow becoming brittle. One more push and it might just shatter.
“Think you can stay awake till the sunrise, Boy Wonder?” the voice teases, as though there’s some inside joke buried in the term of endearment.
Jay feels his nose wrinkle as his reply sneaks out into the here and now.
“Of course I can, you Dick,” he mumbles. His eyes crack open in surprise and the sound of the trampoline park swells back to life around him, dragging him back to reality with the violent force of his revelation.
Dick. Dick Grayson.
Of course. No wonder he recognized the voice in his dreams, he’d heard it only a few weeks ago, outside the bookshop.
It’s like the puzzle pieces slot into place, slow and deliberate. It isn’t everything. He still doesn’t know why Dick Grayson appears in his memories, certainly can’t think of why he’d be up on the city rooftops with him. He still doesn’t know who the other voice belongs to, who B is. He doesn’t know who Robin really is, or the girl in purple who’s shown up once or twice.
But he has an idea about who he can ask.
—
Jay is exhausted when he finally makes it to bed that night, but he’s also sure he hasn’t felt this good in months. Penny is still out in the living room, watching some show or another that he was too tired to keep up with, but he doesn’t mind. She already bid him goodnight with a smile, and he’s left feeling more grateful than ever that of all the people who could have possibly found him that night, it was none other than Penelope Garcia.
Now, with a new lead to follow and new theories to test, he’s just glad that she’ll be the one to keep welcoming him home - no matter what he finds along the way.