Chapter Text
Being the Red Hood was as stressful as you’d think it was. Sure, having people like Sasha and Remi on his side was helpful. He didn’t have to worry about civil disagreements or betrayal as often as one would expect from a new, rising crime lord with a public opposition to the Black Mask with people like his henchmen (they weren’t gangsters, and no one wanted to see the expression on Jason’s face when they were called that). They offered to take burdens off of Jason’s shoulders, went above and beyond to help him keep his ever-growing empire stable.
But even they couldn’t do everything. They couldn’t carry all his burdens. Especially the ones he had to take on when he slipped off the mask and responsibilities of Red Hood. In the safety of his apartment, Jason’s troubles were no one’s but his own.
Unfortunately, those tended to be the harder ones. His ridiculously complicated relationship with the Bat and the Batlings, his even more complicated relationship with Bruce and his strays, the awkwardness of crossing paths with Tim Drake after wiping the floor with him, the emotional baggage of still getting voicemails from Bruce and people who called themselves his family, trying to meet Alfred because the man wanted to see how his grandson was doing and making sure he was eating.
Oh, and the body of his eldest brother sprawled over the floor of his apartment. That one was new.
Jason switched on the light, started, and crossed the living room in record time. “Dickface?”
At the commotion, Dick rose up to his hands and knees, then stood, facing off to the side. He looked over his left shoulder at Jason and smiled a little sheepishly. “Hi, Jay.”
This was weird. Sure, Dick always tried to drop by no matter how busy his schedule was. Sure, a lot of people slept on the floor. Dick had a lot on his plate at any given moment between his job, volunteering and vigilantism, so he was always tired. It was hot outside, and Jason’s new marble tiling was probably cold relief. So it couldn’t be too weird, right?
Except the last time Dick was here, there was yelling and slamming and hitting and they’d both lost their voices, said things they’d definitely been regretting, and swore not to work with each other. Dick had stormed out, Jason had pushed him out, and the last three times they’d seen each other before that, it had gotten so bad that Bruce of all people had to tell them to take a break from each other.
Or maybe it was the fact that they hadn’t worked a case together in two weeks, and refused to hang out with each other for three. The fact that their decisions and their lives and fates and Bruce had come back to plague them, that good things never lasted, that Richard Grayson wasn’t the golden child everyone thought he was, and that Jason would never have the older brother he’d always wanted.
“Dick,” he said, a little firmer this time. “What the fuck are you doing in my house? Want a repeat of the ass thwacking I gave you last time you broke in?”
Dick scoffed humorlessly, fight replacing the softness in his tired eyes. “Don’t worry. Someone already took care of the ass-thwacking part.”
Jason had every reason to take that statement at its word. Dick didn’t look too good. He was swaying on his feet—and if there was one thing a Flying Grayson didn’t do, it was to be unsteady—and his clothes were tousled wildly. The color of his ripped jacket was rumpled, distinctly reminiscent of being fisted by an angry hand. His right shoe was missing, and his bare feet on Jason’s new marble tile was enough to send him over the edge. He was in civvies rather than his suit, and all the signs pointed to the idea that one flouncy Richie Grayson had fucked around and finally found out. About time.
“So whaddya want from me?” Jason pressed. “A med-kit? A cookie? An apology? What did you come here for, anyway? Boohoo, you got your ass beat. You can still go fuck yourself.”
Dick scowled. “Forget it,” he muttered. “If I’m that much of a bother, just pretend I’m not here. Go text your girlfriend or whatever and I’ll get out of your hair.”
It wasn’t like Jason didn’t want to. Actually, it was a great idea and all he wanted right now. But he stood his ground and crossed his arms. “No, no,” he said, sarcasm bleeding out in his voice. “You’re my guest now, Goldie. Make yourself comfortable. Go freshen up, and then we can have a nice chat. If you’re nice, you can even win yourself some dinner.”
Dick glared. “Wow, dinner?” he shot back, matching the sarcasm with the same intensity. “You’re so benevolent, Jay. What might you bestow upon me next? A red carpet? That silver spoon all that crime money shoved up your ass? A golden plate?”
“I don’t know about golden plates,” Jason ground out. “I’ve only got a dog bowl, Goldie. Sorry, but I don’t have anything for snakes.”
Heat seemed to build up behind Dick’s eyes, constricting his already impossibly small pupils. “I’ll skip on the service and get out of your way, then. A shame you don’t have more plates. Try making a friend or two, if it’s possible with all that blood on your hands.”
For a moment, it felt like all that blood on his fingertips went soaring straight to Jason’s head in boiling anger. He wanted his vision to turn green, and he wanted more of that blood. Golden blood. “You’re not going anywhere now, Dickhead. You came here, didn’t you? Well, you get to stay. In fact, I encourage you to. Go on, Goldie. Go freshen up. You’ve been looking a little tired lately. Haven’t been doing your skincare or going to the spa? Can’t keep up with that million-dollar routine anymore? Or is it that the press just doesn’t care about the golden boy anymore, now that there’s an undead son in the picture?”
He could see the hatred bleeding through every pore on Dick’s unfortunately still-perfect face. It wasn't enough. He wanted to see it explode. “Too many Robins taking away your spotlight?”
Dick did always love the attention. Jason had grown up in the manor hearing tales of his chandelier antiques, his desperate gambles for Bruce’s eyes on him. Of course he did. He was a performer, after all.
At the comment, Dick went rigid like ice. He was like a statue, facing off to the left, staring at the window. His side profile was luxuriously bathed in moonlight, as if the very moon itself yearned to touch him. It smoothed out every trouble on his face, pushing what was already obviously damn close to perfect just over the finish line and turning him into a Greek statue of some great legend. Jason hated him.
The frown never left Dick’s face. For all his incessant yapping, he didn’t have a reply to the comment. It was a low blow, Jason knew, especially considering the fight they’d been engaged in for weeks was about that very topic. Dick muttered under his breath, “Asshat.”
And Jason’s blood was curdling. Even though he’d heard so much worse from far worse people, he couldn’t keep together the last straw that had snapped at the singular word and all the hate stuffed within it. He took a step forward. “If you have an issue with my hospitality, you fucking dick, I’ll give you some great advice: get out of my fucking house.”
The frown on Dick’s face deepened. “I shouldn’t have fucking come here.”
“Finally, a fucking brain under all that hair. And here I thought you just kept that head to look pretty for the cameras.”
If Dick wasn't going to move, Jason sure as hell wouldn’t make him. He walked past Dick like the guy wasn’t there and moved into his kitchen. And finally, Dick began to walk. He swiveled and shuffled to the bathroom, infuriatingly not the front door. His footsteps, like they’d always been, were almost entirely quiet. In another lifetime, light-footed Dick would have made an excellent protege to Catwoman instead.
Jason turned to watch him out of the corner of his eye. All he caught was the last of Dick’s shoulder as he disappeared around the bend to go to the bathroom. That was enough to make him freeze.
He saw red.
He knew Dick had taken some kind of beating. He’d hoped for it a little bit, actually. A small, cruel part of him reveled in seeing Dick defeated from time to time, if only to prove to himself that everyone in their lives really had just been putting Dick on a pedestal, that he really wasn’t perfection personified.
There was so much red.
Jason’s gaze drifted down to the floor. Little smudges of blood sullied the white tiles, trailing the path Dick had taken from the living room to the bathroom. Jason followed it backwards to where Dick had been laying down, then standing when Jason had first entered.
How had he not noticed all that blood?
It wasn’t a lot. Maybe a few ounces, more staining than puddling the floor, but enough to bleed into the grout between the tiles. It would be a bitch to get out. Jason crouched by it and found droplets on his carpet, disguised by the pattern. It formed a trail vertically to the window, probably where Dick had come in from. Jason walked up to the window and opened it. There wasn’t anything on the inside, but the outside of the sill and the latch of the window boasted red fingerprints.
Well. That made a lot more sense. Especially Dick’s comment about this place being closest. He must have gotten into a scrape and needed to take care of it so he wouldn’t leave blood everywhere. And why he stayed glued to the spot until Jason turned his back must have been so Jason wouldn’t see the injury, which was clearly on the right shoulder, since his left had been facing Jason the entire time.
Jason stared at the fingerprints. Dick had the habit of downplaying his injuries, pretending they didn’t hurt as much as they did. But he’d never hid them before. He’d laugh off a bullet wound. Jason stared back at the blood on the floor, hastily concealed under the rug. Dick had been on the floor when he’d entered. He hadn’t noticed Jason until the light turned on, or maybe until he heard his name being called. And he hadn’t left, even when it was clear he was unwelcome. He’d come here of all places because it was the closest.
How bad was it?
There wasn’t an immediate way of finding out, considering the shower was now running in full force three doors down. So Jason got to work on scrubbing the pink out of his floors, cursing Dick for leaving stains on his newly-fixed white tiles and swallowing down concern when he scrubbed and scrubbed and still found more blood somewhere or the other.
When he got to work on the trail Dick had left behind to go to the bathroom, he noticed how suspiciously it looked like one bloodied right foot hopping off. Dick’s left foot was the only one with a shoe on. There was a trace of something else, miniscule gray-black smudges and grains. Ash, Jason recognized all too well.
Jason returned to the front door and tried to re envision the scene he’d entered to. Where had Dick been lying? What part of his body had been over the largest bloodstain? He couldn’t tell. His anger muddled his memory. While he could tell one track was footprints and the blood near the window were fingerprints, he couldn’t tell where the droplets came from on the rug.
Jason summed it up to at least three injuries. One on Dick’s person somewhere, one on his foot, and one miscellaneous, smaller third one somewhere. He dismissed the fingerprints as a fourth injury, since it was more likely they came from holding down the bigger wound in an attempt to put pressure on it. He couldn’t pinpoint a thing regarding the few ash traces, on top of it all.
So naturally, he checked the fire escape outside the window Dick had come in from. It was curiosity, maybe even a little petty satisfaction that his older brother had been humbled in a fight somewhere. Yeah, that’s what it was, and not concern. He didn’t care about the golden child, not anymore. Maybe Dick had finally been knocked off his pedestal and taken a little fall.
He found barely any blood on the floor or bars of the fire escape, just the same smudged right footprints, some droplets here and there, and the occasional bloody fingerprint that could totally be traced back to one Richard Grayson. He tracked the blood out to a slightly larger stain on the railing, and ultimately decided Dick had gotten down from the rooftop.
That made a little less sense. Dick was in his civilian clothing, a sweater and jeans. If he’d taken any kind of ass whooping as a vigilante, it would make sense to come in through the rooftop. Dick loved escaping people via parkour, because he was really good at it and he could show off. If Regular Person Dick came from the roof, it was either because he didn’t want anyone knowing he was coming here, or… well. He was afraid he was being followed.
Jason registered the shower turning off back in his apartment. He hopped back through the window and walked up to the bathroom door as silently as he could. He pressed an ear to the wood.
There was shuffling inside. Dick putting his clothes back on? He hadn’t taken any of Jason’s. But then came a little groan, suppressed and secretive. A little thump. A small, shaky exhale, almost a gasp. Jason could bet to boot that Dick was trying to patch himself up without Jason knowing, so no one could know how bad the injury really had been. Bandages were bandages, right?
Jason took a step back, raised his foot, and kicked down the door. Dick’s yelp of surprise was drowned out by a painfully loud bang as the door slammed open into the bathroom wall behind it.
First he registered the bathtub. Lines of pink-tinged water ran in streaks to the plug.
Then he saw his older brother, awkwardly slumped on the floor, surrounded by nightmarish smears of blood. In nothing but his boxer-briefs, Jason could see every single mark on his body, old and new. He had the clearest view of the definitely-wonky right shoulder, the bullet wound to the right upper arm, and the tinge of red under his right foot, which was precariously balanced on its toes as he leaned all his weight on his left side. Oh, and…
Jason exploded. “You have a knife through your fucking hand and you didn’t fucking tell me? What the fuck?”
Dick, running on pints and pints of lost blood, swallowed. He gaped, his never-ending stream of words having all leaked out with all that blood.
Jason stared at the hand splayed out, and the blade that went clear through his palm and out the other end. Even though it had clearly been cleaned, blood was rapidly collecting around the wound, and dripping down to the floor from the tip. Somewhere, his brain noticed how Dick’s fingers trembled.
“What the fuck?” he heard himself say again. He felt his feet move.
And Dick finally seemed to come back to himself. “What the hell, Jason? What if I was still taking a shower? You can’t barge into the bathroom like that.”
Was it bad that Jason still wanted to slap him? Even when the offending words had been nothing more than a slur? “You fucking barged into my own home. And this is my house. I can do whatever the fuck I want. And right now, I want you to explain. What the hell happened?”
Dick scowled. “What, disappointed they didn’t finish the job right? Don’t worry, Jay. I’ll clean up after myself and get out of your hair. I just need a minute.”
“Can you shut the fuck up?” Jason snapped. It must have come out way harsher than he expected. Dick flinched. Jason wanted to tone it down, but he couldn’t really help himself. “For once in your fucking life, stop talking. You walked into my fucking house and what? Expect me not to notice you’re fucking bleeding? Expect me not to ask you what happened? Who the fuck do you think I am, but more importantly, who the fuck do you think you are?”
Dick scowled fiercely, but it was obvious he didn’t have a comeback. Jason took the silence as an opportunity and tried pulling him out of the bathroom, but Dick dug in his heels and stopped before he could cross the threshold.
A part of Jason almost wanted to think Dick’s constant resistance to help was some kind of ploy for attention. A sort of performer’s gimmick, a play of appeal to lead his audience on and leave them wanting more, building their imagination until they needed to goad him on and he finally showed them.
“Don’t be an ass,” Jason warned. “I have a first-aid kit in the bedroom, and then you can tell me what the fuck happened.”
He pulled again, and again Dick strained against him. “I… I shouldn’t,” he finally admitted. Some of the fire dimmed in those blue eyes.
“You shouldn’t what?”
“I shouldn’t walk.” And then Dick rushed to add, “I’ll track more blood on your floor.”
Jason swallowed the lump in his throat. “That wasn’t a problem when you came in here, was it?”
Great. Now Dick looked mad, defensive, and guilty. He had those puppy-dog eyes that got stupidly big and innocent. No wonder Bruce bent backwards for him.
“I cleaned up the blood,” Jason tried again. “It wasn’t that bad, so don’t worry about it. Once you’re good I’m making you clean it all up anyway. And if I don’t fix you up, you’ll track a lot more blood around.”
Still, Dick hesitated, and Jason finally came to the sickening conclusion that had been in front of him all along. “You don’t want to walk because you can’t, can you?”
Dick’s silence told him everything, even if it was accompanied by a glare. After a split-second decision, Jason leaned over, grabbed Dick’s thighs and hoisted him over his shoulder.
“Stop—” Dick keened above him. “Jason.”
Jason ignored him. He marched to his bedroom.
“Jason, please.” His voice was ragged, breathless. “Jay, it hurts.”
It wasn’t fun anymore.
Jason dropped Dick onto his bed gently. “Dickface. Talk to me. Where does it hurt?”
Dick panted for a moment before shooting him a concerningly glassy glare. All that blood in the bathroom was his, after all. “It’s—I’m okay, I’m fine. I just… I need a minute, is all.”
And there it was, the Dick he knew and hated. “You have a knife through your fucking hand. How many times do you want me to fucking say it, huh? Let me help you. Stop being an ass and tell me where it hurts. You don’t need to get out of here, alright?”
Maybe he shouldn’t have sounded so begrudging. He hoped that unintentionally snarky tone was just in his head, but the brief flash of hurt in Dick’s expression was enough to tell him it hadn’t been.
“I’ll be gone soon, I promise,” his older brother spit out. “I just need… a minute. Just a minute. I can get the knife out at… at.. Um. At home.”
Fuck. Fuckity fuck. Jason wanted to kick himself. He couldn’t remember when he’d stopped being mad, but he thought he’d long since dropped all pretenses of not being concerned. “Fuck. Dick, I don’t care about the blood, okay? We can get the knife out here, it’s okay.”
Dick scowled. “Wouldn’t want to over…overstay my welcome. I’ll get out of your fucking house.”
Okay. Now Jason felt like an ass. “At least—Dick, come on.”
And now Dick was trying to get up. Jason tried pushing him back down, but he didn’t know where else Dick was hurt and didn’t want to somehow make it worse—physically, at least. He’d done enough damage emotionally. So he couldn’t stop Dick from stumbling out of bed and trying to stand on his own. When his brother’s knees inevitably and immediately buckled, Jason caught him before he could fully crumple and deposited him back on the bed. Dick’s head lolled against the pillow, the fight sucked out of him with the sudden movement. He was completely out of it.
With Dick finally pliant, Jason got one more look at him. His hand was bathed red already, despite having just washed it. The bullet wound didn’t have an exit, but there didn’t seem to be anything inside him anymore. Dick must have done some kind of first-aid somewhere before coming here. Jason wondered how much blood he’d lost then, mourned because what he’d seen in the bathroom had been a second round of cleaning. And then he saw Dick’s foot, finally.
When he’d seen red, he’d hoped it was from walking barefoot. Bludhaven streets had a bit of broken glass. He’d hoped it was a high kick gone wrong, Dick humbled after overconfidently performing his favorite trick.
He hadn’t even considered cigarette burns. Circular, pointed, intentionally-placed cigarette burns, a methodical and systematic effort peppering the sole of his brother’s foot.
His vision tunneled. He returned from a tide of raging green to a single-minded, clear focus.
“Dick, are you on drugs right now?”
“Wh-wha? No?”
“I’m giving you painkillers. Strong ones, and you’re taking them dry. Don’t throw up on me.”
“Haven’t…” Dick closed his eyes and tried to become one with the sheets. “Haven’t thrown up since I was twelve.”
“At least you still have a sense of humor. Wait here. Don’t jump out the window.”
Dick eyed the window distantly as Jason gathered all the supplies he’d need: med-kit, stitching supplies, antiseptic, a bowl of ice, and a freshly fitted trash can. When Jason reached out with the alcohol-filled cotton swab, Dick tried to curl in on himself. The position was painfully identical to the one he’d been in when Jason had first entered.
He wished he’d seen the blood. And all the signs. He wished he’d known earlier. Dick would have been safe and coherent and sleeping and not in pain. How long had he been in pain? Had Jason been that blind? He’d been so angry and now Dick was definitely worse. His eyes were completely glazed over, and he was feverish to the touch. He must have come here and argued with Jason on pure adrenaline and pettiness.
“Shoulder or hand first?”
“...let. Bullet.”
“I’m not doing the bullet first, Dick. You stopped the bleeding well enough on your own. Your shoulder is easiest and your hand needs the most attention, so take your pick.”
Dick mindlessly rubbed his face against the pillow, and Jason’s heard clenched at how quickly his brother had deteriorated right before his eyes. “Attention,” Dick echoed. He was practically talking to himself. “I don’t… like attention.”
“The fuck are you on about?”
“Cameras. I don’t like… looking pretty. For the cameras, I don’t like the cameras.”
Jason may or may not have felt even more like an ass. “Yeah, alright, whatever. Hand or shoulder? You know what, fuck it. I’m choosing shoulder, alright? We can get it out of the way and hopefully you’ll feel good enough to be a little more sane.”
He hefted Dick up to sit. As valiantly as he was clearly trying, Dick couldn’t really sit on his own without support, and he inched his way into a slump, falling more and more forward until his forehead rested precariously on Jason’s shoulder.
How long had it been since Dick had fallen asleep on his shoulder? He used to do that all the time, before he died. And now he was back here, bloody and mangled and losing blood like it was sweat. Jason wanted to hope that his right side was so wounded because he’d been hit by a car, if it weren’t for the knife through his palm and the cigarette burns on his feet, if it didn’t resemble torture—
“Alright, this is going to hurt. Bite down on something if you don’t want to slice your own tongue off.”
Dick’s good hand fluttered in the air aimlessly, reaching out to hold Jason’s hand before thinking better of it and fisting the bedsheet instead. Jason pretended the aborted gesture didn’t hurt.
“Five, four, three, two—”
Snap.
Dick keened into Jason’s shoulder, shivering out his breath. Jason bravely rubbed his back. “Shh. It’s done. I’m going to pull the knife out, okay?”
“Can—can I lie down?” Dick rasped. He sounded so young. Jason swallowed something uncomfortable down and nodded.
“Yeah. We can lie down. Here, just lean on me.”
He maneuvered Dick down onto his back, but the man instantly groaned and flipped onto his side, then his front. Jason stretched his hand out so it would dangle off the bed and over the trash can. Beside it, the bowl of ice was ready. He pushed down whatever the fuck hit him in waves when Dick’s head lolled, unable to keep itself still, and took a deep breath.
This was going to suck for both of them. He didn’t know why he was so nervous. He’d done far worse than take a knife out of someone, even himself. His time at the League and all the modifications from the Pit made injuries annoyances more actually hindrances to himself and the people he dealt with. He had so much blood on his hands. There was a time—recent enough for him to feel the minute burn of shame—that he was enthusiastic about adding Dick’s blood to the collection. Now that it actually stained his hands, soaking into the grit inside his fingertips, he felt sick.
Dick’s eyes had fluttered closed. Jason closed his fingers around the handle of the knife, held Dick’s wrist steady, and took another deep breath. All of a sudden, the fight seemed to surge back into Dick’s body. He shot up the best he could, eyes wide.
“Jay, Jay please, wait—I can take it out at home, please—”
“It’s okay, Dickie. I’ll make it quick.”
Jason shut his ears to his crying heart. He placed his knee on Dick’s back, holding him down. Then he pulled.
He felt it. He felt every inch of the serrated blade—bastards, those sick bastards and their serrated knives—sliding between bones and through muscle, the sickening squelch as it scraped Dick’s insides. Dick’s cry tore through his ears and down his body, spearing him in two. For some reason, his vision blurred, even when Dick buried those sobs into the pillow, clenching the sheets so tight his knuckles were white. Jason dropped the blade into the trash and forged on. Dick choked off into shrill, awful noises, his writhing doubling in effort as the alcohol was rubbed on and it was thoroughly cleaned and stitched. By the time it was packed, dressed and plunged into ice, Dick had stopped struggling. He was completely boneless under Jason, eyes glazed over and completely unseeing.
If he’d blacked out, Jason was thankful. Fingers trembling, he finished up with the rest of the injuries, carefully cutting Dick’s shirt off to treat the scratches—fingernails, human fingernails, someone had Dick’s skin and blood under their fingernails—on his back.
A long, suffering, aching minute later, Jason lifted his knee away and turned Dick over onto his back, quickly adjusting the ice. “Dick,” he said gently. “Can you hear me? It’s over.”
Dick let out a quivering, spineless noise. His eyes were open barely a sliver, red and wet. Jason didn’t know what to do, so he gently pushed his brother’s hair away from his face. “Dick. Dickie. Can you talk to me?”
“I’m…” Dick fought through an inhale. He was shaking, a full-bodied movement that was completely involuntary. “I’m okay. It’s okay. It’s numb now.”
“You did a…” Jason tried to keep his voice from cracking. “You did a good job, okay? You can crash here tonight. It’s okay.”
But Dick didn’t seem capable of hearing anything at all, though. His head lay completely limply on the pillow. There wasn’t one working muscle in his body, it seemed. All he was doing was breathing, irregular and difficult.
Jason didn’t even know why he was holding back tears right now. No one had been there to stitch up his wounds. No one had told him he did a good job. A lot more of him had burned than just his one foot.
The Joker had been laughing. Just like the people holding Dick down, burning their drags into the sole of his feet just to watch him squirm, and they’d been laughing—
“Dick? Dick.” He cupped Dick’s chin, trying to meet his eyes.
“Hn.”
What did they want from you? Were they laughing? Did they try kidnapping you? Were they laughing? Was it to get to Bruce, or from your police work? Were they laughing?
Was it sexual assault? Are you a victim?
“Get some rest, Dickie.”
Dick was already asleep.
Jason moved to clean everything up. His eyes strayed to the knife, bloodied and soiled, inside the new trash cover. So much DNA. So much he could find, so much justice he could get. Even if it was for a brother who didn’t believe in justice the way he did, even if Dick would be mortified if he got involved. All his dreams of reconciliation and apologies would fly out the window, and Dick would never talk to him again or drop by his house, even if it was closest.
Jason slipped on his gloves and picked the knife up. He tucked Dick under his softest, lightest blanket. He took his keys, wrote a note and placed it on the surface of the bedside table by the night lamp. Then he left his house, his brother and his heart behind.