Chapter Text
Knife met skin and Jason came back to himself, but not in time to stop the kid’s throat from splitting.
The pretender—Timothy Drake, Jason remembered; he’d stalked the kid, but knowing his name, address, and what his parents did for work didn’t quite prepare Jason for the head-over-heels feeling of looking at another black-haired boy in the Robin suit and only seeing himself—gasped and choked as blood spilled out of the gash that opened his throat from left to right.
Jason had slit his throat.
It had seemed like a good idea thirty seconds ago.
The blood just kept coming. To match it, tears ran out of the kid’s twin black eyes, visible behind the cracked and broken lenses of his domino mask.
God. Jason had done a real number on him. What had he been thinking? He couldn’t even see the kid’s throat under all the blood.
It wasn’t a lethal wound by itself. As long as Timothy Drake managed to stop the bleeding, he would be fine. Jason had made sure not to nick any arteries or sever his vocal cords. He could even breathe. Well, he would be able to, if he’d stop choking like a prima donna.
Jason smelled copper and tasted smoke. His head swam again. Titan’s Tower turned green, but the kid whimpered, and colors went back to normal.
Jason had to get out of here. This was such a colossal, stupid mistake. When had no more dead Robins turned into no more Robins? How had he convinced himself that injuring the kid until he could no longer return to the field was a smart decision?
“You’ll be fine,” he said brusquely, and pulled his helmet on. He felt bare without it, even though Timothy Drake had already seen his face. He knew who the Red Hood was, even though Jason hadn’t wanted any of the Bats to figure out his identity this early. “Call Batman for help,” he added. Then, bitterly, “Or Dickwing.” In his weeks spent stalking the kid, he’d seen just how much Richard Grayson cared for Timothy Drake. Looking at him now, no one would ever guess that he had once not wanted a brother. That he’d hated his old one so much he hadn’t even bothered to come to his funeral.
Leather creaked, and Jason realized that his hands had clenched into fists. He took a deliberately deep breath and relaxed them. “So long, kid.” But before he could turn around, he hesitated.
Something felt… wrong.
Timothy Drake hadn’t responded to any of his words, for one. Nor had he even twitched since Jason’s knife slit his throat.
Jason’s stomach flip-flopped. Was he…?
He inched closer. The kid’s eyes were wide open, glossy, still leaking tears, but unblinking. They were blue. Very blue. Jason’s eyes used to be that blue, but now all he saw was green in the mirror. Green out of the mirror. Green everywhere, under his skin, inside his—
Timothy’s eyes were also swelling rapidly. His nose might be broken, Jason wasn’t sure, but it was sure as hell bruised. As was his jaw. From ducking to escape Jason’s fist and meeting his knee instead.
Blood still gushed from Timothy’s ruined throat, the torn skin flaps gaping, and his chest barely moved with one breath about every fifteen seconds.
Shock. He was going into shock. Jason had sent a kid into—
If he was going into shock, he wouldn’t be able to help himself.
Jason had—
If Timothy Drake didn’t get his neck looked at, he really would die.
—meant to, had he, the kid was—
Before Jason knew what he was doing, his knees were sticky in the growing puddle of Timothy Drake’s blood, and he was rummaging through his meager first-aid supplies. Fuck. Jason didn’t have any sutures. Why didn’t he have sutures? Oh, right, because getting hurt was for fools, and dying was for children.
Except Timothy Drake didn’t look much like a fool. He looked small and pale on the ground. He didn’t look like a hero. He just looked like a kid.
He looked like a victim.
And that made Jason—
Fuck.
Where was the stupid tower’s med bay?
Jason tore through the silent halls, half-hoping, half-dreading, that one of Timothy’s teammates would hear him and wake up. But he’d done his job too well, and no one stirred.
That sparked anger anew in Jason’s chest, and he skidded to a halt. What were all the adult superheroes doing, letting a bunch of teengers live in this tower by themselves when just anyone could get in? Jason didn’t even have powers and he’d taken them all out so easily. They were undefended. Unprepared and unguarded. Un—
Right. Bleeding-out-kid. Worry about that first.
It felt like an eternity before Jason found the med bay. His hands shook as he scooped up gauze, sutures, a suture needle—he grabbed another, just in case—antiseptic wipes, and… He was forgetting something, but he didn’t know what, and the kid needed to stop bleeding more than he needed any more fancy medical treatment.
Jason sprinted the whole way back and fell to his knees before he reached Timothy, skidding a little as he went. His kneecaps rattled with the impact.
The bleeding had slowed to a trickle rather than a gush, but Timothy remained unresponsive. Jason ripped off his gloves—he couldn’t sew with them on—and realized that he could barely see the wound beneath all the blood. Fuck. Where was the kitchen?
Jason didn’t find a kitchen, but he found a bathroom. The only cloths in the room were pure white. Seriously? Did none of these kids bleed?
Actually, Jason mused as he ran the washcloth under warm tap water, considering everyone on the Titans team was a meta except Timothy, maybe they didn’t.
Bitterness rose in his throat and threatened to choke him once more. Timothy was just like perfect Richard, wasn’t he? Good enough to lead the Titans. Good enough for Batman to let him go off on his own.
Not good enough to fight Jason off, at least.
He knelt once more by the frighteningly-still teenager and wiped the blood from his throat. A soft whimper escaped Timothy’s mouth. Good. He was still present enough to feel what was going on around him. And the sound of pain didn’t twist Jason’s heartstrings at all.
More conscious than ever of just how many precious structures were present in the human throat, Jason slid the suture needle through the kid’s skin like a knife through soft butter and tried once more not to gag on the smoke that seemed to be filling the room. But the air was clear and Jason knew, rationally, that nothing was on fire.
He looked up anyway, just to check. Maybe that Kryptonian kid had finally woken up and was on a rampage with his laser eyes.
Nope. The coast was still clear.
Jason tied off the last thread and sat back on his heels to survey his handiwork. The wound was closed; a neat line of sutures ran across the kid’s throat like a grotesque second grin.
Jason felt sick.
The throat might have been the worst part, but it was far from the only. Timothy’s arm and fingers were broken, his ankle twisted, eyes swollen to the point of closure, and he was still in shock.
Jason couldn’t leave him lying on the ground like this. Even with the stitches, he could still die.
As he gathered the kid into his arms and set off for the med bay, all Jason could think about was how colossally stupid a mistake this had been.
Maybe he could still get away scot-free. After his ordeal, what were the chances Timothy Drake remembered the name and face of his attacker? Probably all of it would be a hazy blur.
He would be terrified of the Red Hood from now on. And it was better that way, anyway. When he wasn’t actively dying, just the thought of Timothy Jackson Drake made Jason want to kill him. Better for the kid to stay far away than trigger him again.
He laid Timothy on one of the cots and tucked him under three blankets. Then Jason walked straight out of the room without looking back.
He’d overstayed his welcome.
Until he became Robin, life had been a spectator sport to Tim.
He’d watched through the lens of his cameras, focusing on the angle, lighting, pose, all to get the perfect shot. He’d had plenty of muses and models over the years, but Tim knew that his favorite would always be the first.
Tim still remembered the night his parents took him to the circus. They were home celebrating a successful dig and he wasn’t quite so keen to be left alone as he was now, so they took him along to the circus that had stopped in Gotham for a week or two.
Jack Drake had been in such a good mood, in fact, that he’d bought Tim a green plastic Polaroid camera, and Tim had been so excited to use it, he saw the whole show through the camera lens. All the photos he took were terrible, of course. He was a few days shy of his fourth birthday and hadn’t even heard the word ‘clarity’ before, let alone knew what it meant, but he shook each shiny picture as it printed and begged for his parents to look at them. Janet said they were “very nice, dear,” which, Tim supposed as he looked at the decade-old faded snapshots, was surprisingly generous.
The only photo he’d taken all night with any kind of resolution was of the youngest performer they watched. By some miracle, Tim had caught the young boy’s flourish right as the crowd erupted with hysterical cheers because he’d landed a quadruple somersault. Arms up straight above his head, hands poised for applause, mouth straight and jaw set to conceal the look of delight that brightened his eyes. Tim had taken that photo, and fallen in love with photography. Tim had then taken three more photos, the first when two bodies streaked through the air, and the second as a mistake when he didn’t understand when they hit the ground and red started to pool beneath their bodies. Jack’s hand dominated the third, when he moved to cover the lens to keep Tim from seeing the corpses.
For some reason, Tim still had those photos. They were small, compared to the rest of his collection, and had the usual Polaroid border. Their glossy finish had long since started to peel, and the boy’s knees were blurred from Tim’s fingers rubbing over them so often growing up. He rubbed the picture again, just for good measure. Compared to the rest of his collection of photographs printed as small as four by six inches or as large as twelve by eighteen inches (he didn’t dare print any larger than that, as if that was the line where the hobby became weird), they could easily have been lost to time or carelessness.
But they had been Tim’s most precious possessions for over a decade, more so than the black Amex his parents let him use or any of the artifacts they deemed sturdy enough to store in their manor alongside their growing son. The only thing that came close was his skateboard.
They couldn’t come with him, but Tim didn’t know when he would be back. What if the cleaners vacuumed under his bed again and accidentally sucked up the Polaroids?
“Tim?”
Bruce’s voice outside the room startled him. He jumped and shoved the box of pictures back under his bed, which was a stupid knee-jerk reaction. He’d asked for privacy, and Bruce had acquiesced, as much as they both knew it killed him at the moment. He wouldn’t open the door until Tim knocked Morse code on the floor to let him know it was okay.
One minute, he tapped out on the cold laminate. Drake Manor was always drafty, just like Wayne Manor, but the Waynes lit fires and draped blankets over couches to make the people inside feel warmer. The only person that lived inside Drake Manor was Tim, though, and he didn’t want to tend fires, so he dealt with the chill.
Tim had to make sure… He dragged the box of photos back out. They weren’t sorted, so he had to dig through them to get to what he needed. There was a picture of Starfire kissing Nightwing, Kid Flash devouring a donut, a long-distance shot of Dick Grayson in his bedroom, a long-distance shot of Bruce Wayne in his bedroom, a mother and father holding the hands of their blonde son as they crossed the street, the full moon above a Gotham skyline… Ah, finally.
Determined not to feel the pain in his ruined arms or busted legs or broken hand—basically everything hurt, actually—Tim hobbled over to his desk and flipped the lamp on. He squinted against the glossy glare to make out the subject’s features.
Yep. Absolutely.
Tim would recognize that face anywhere, even if it was several years older and attached to a body two feet taller and a hundred pounds heavier than the last time he’d seen it.
Tim had spent almost nine years watching other people live through the lens of a camera, and no one could make him go back. Not even the resurrected son of his mentor.
He tapped, Ready, and his bedroom door swung open. It spoke wonders that Bruce Wayne, who was usually paranoid to a fault about his identity, had only half-changed out of his suit. He still wore his gauntlets and boots. The cowl hung down his back, caught in the collar of the sweatshirt he’d thrown on while Alfred patched Tim up in the Cave.
Kon hadn’t bothered to change at all. He hovered anxiously next to Bruce, brow alternately furrowing with anger and smoothing out when he gave Tim yet another once-over to make sure his good ankle hadn’t spontaneously broken itself in the five minutes of privacy he’d had to argue the both of them for. Tim would have to scrub the security camera footage later if Bruce didn’t remember.
Bruce carried the hasty bag he’d packed while Tim struggled into the backseat of the Bentley with Kon’s help, and the car peeled away from Drake Manor’s driveway with a screech.
Bruce really was freaked, Tim marveled internally as he watched the scenery flash by. First they were in Tim’s front yard—then the Wayne’s—then Bristol—then Mooney Bridge—
He was driving almost as fast as he did as Batman.
“You’ll make sure he doesn’t sleep too long?” Bruce asked Kon.
Tim bristled and signed, I’m not concussed.
Kon wasn’t as fluent in ASL as the Bats were, so he couldn’t translate. Luckily, Bruce was a maniac that never watched the road, so his eyes were glued to Tim’s hands in the rearview mirror as he signed.
“Tim,” Bruce sighed. “What you think you saw… it’s not possible.”
It’s true, he insisted. I saw it with my own eyes.
“I’ll take care of him,” said Kon, so worried about Tim that he was actually being polite to Bruce. Would wonders never cease.
This sucked. Tim should have broached the matter with a little more caution, but he’d been so out of it after waking up that the first thing he’d signed (after attempting to speak and realizing what an awful idea that was) was Jason’s alive. Jason Todd’s the Red Hood as Alfred taped up his broken fingers.
Bruce had dropped the mug of tea he’d been carrying to Tim.
Jason Todd had always been a sensitive matter. Dick liked to talk about him, but he was always sad after. Alfred answered Tim’s questions. But Bruce…
After the bad days, Bruce never talked about Jason. If he heard someone talking about him, then his face went white and his jaw set and he excused himself to brood or punch the bag in the Cave or torture himself by staring at the same Gotham cold cases. Which was fine. Tim had never lost a family member except for his grandparents, but he’d only seen them once a year until he was, like, four years old, so he didn’t really remember them. He hadn’t been close to them in the way Jason and Bruce had been close.
Besides, it was his job to keep Batman happy. If he wanted to pretend he’d never had a second son, then Tim could pretend right along with him.
But now Jason was back. Tim would swear his life on it.
Somehow, Jason was back from the dead, and he wanted to kill Tim. He wanted Tim to stop being Robin.
That would never happen.
Dick had thought it was a good day.
Judging by the little boy sitting on the ledge, it absolutely was not.
The child kicked his legs aimlessly. His heels hit the side of the building every time, just a quiet tap, one after another in the endless, repetitive rhythm, but so strange that Dick’s mind would focus on that.
Then again, Dick’s subconscious never really did like him.
He sighed and made his way over to the roof’s edge, then swung his legs over, too. He sat next to the boy, and though it was a chilly night—they always were, in Blüdhaven—he didn’t try to put his arm around the child. Their suits would keep them warm enough, although it only mattered for one of them.
The boy outlasted him. He always did; Dick had never enjoyed silence. He straightened his back and pushed back his shoulders until three vertebrae in his spine popped, then slouched and said, “How are you doing, Little Wing?”
Jason turned to look at him and Dick wished he hadn’t. From behind, Jason looked fine. Maybe the Robin suit was a little beat up, but that tended to happen when you fought crime. From behind, Dick could pretend that Bruce had dropped Jason off at his apartment so they could spend the weekend together as brothers.
Jason’s face never let him pretend that things were okay. His mask was always cracked, nose always broken, lip always scabbed. Always, always, that hateful jagged ‘J’ carved into his cheek sluggishly weeped blood.
He was always dead.
“I’m a’ight,” he said in his little Crime Alley drawl. He’d liked to exaggerate it sometimes in the Robin suit, but he’d tried so hard to hide it in public as Jason Wayne. Then Jason shrugged. “‘Cept I’m dead.”
Dick winced. Two and a half years had gone by, and the wound was as fresh as the day Alfred told him the news. It didn’t feel like the time had passed at all. Every day Dick woke up wondering what he could have done to fix things, to save Jason in time, and every night he went to sleep in a world where Jason was dead. “I’m so sorry, Jaybird.”
Jason shrugged again. “Don’t make a difference. But thanks, I guess. Woulda meant a lot more if you’d come to my funeral, but I guess we’re all busy.” His lips twisted into a smirk. The scab on his lip tore and a bright drop of blood streaked its way down his chin. “You wouldn’t believe how busy I am these days, Dickhead. Hauntin’ houses and answering Ouija board calls. You’re lucky I make time to stop by to see you.”
“I’m always happy to see you,” Dick told the ghost, well aware he was talking to thin air. If anyone saw Nightwing like this… “You know that, Jay.”
He liked to imagine Jason like this: mischievous and smiling. Not sullen or dying. Not that Dick would know if he’d ever been like this. He hadn’t spent enough time with Jason to figure him out, and that left him with his imagination and a hollowing guilt.
“How’re you doin’, though?” Jason asked. A beam of light caught his blue eyes. They glinted yellow behind the mask like an animal’s. “Got something to say?”
“Nothing, really,” Dick lied smoothly. It really was getting too easy these days. He couldn’t burden his hallucination-brother with his problems. That he worried himself sick about Tim constantly. That Bruce hadn’t been the same and Dick was tired of talking to a stranger that wore his father’s face. That everything felt like a dream and if only he could wake up, Jason would still be alive.
His comm buzzed. By the time he answered, Jason was long gone, as if he had never been there in the first place. Because he hadn’t. Not really.
It was Bruce. Dick’s stomach flip-flopped and he remembered that he hadn’t really eaten anything other than cereal in three days. He swallowed with a dry throat and answered. “Hey, B. What can I—”
“I need your help,” came Bruce’s ragged reply.
The tone—that mix between Batman and B that used to be comforting and now just hurt—and the fact that Batman never, ever asked for help had Dick shooting to his feet. “What happened?” he demanded. “What’s wrong?”
“Robin,” was all Bruce said.
Oh.
Oh, no.
Dick hadn’t even been in space this time.
The world tilted. Dick whispered, “What?”
“He’ll be staying at your apartment until he recovers. I have to—”
Bruce said something else, but the roaring in Dick’s ears drowned him out. Recovery meant Tim was still alive. Dick could do recovery. He was a master mother hen; everyone said so.
“When?” he asked hoarsely, cutting B off mid-word. It was a testament to how frazzled he was that Bruce didn’t reprimand him for it.
“I just picked him up from Titan’s Tower in a zeta. Alfred will look him over. Once he’s given the all-clear, I’m bringing him straight to you. You’re the only person I trust to keep him safe right now.”
Bruce never spoke this much, at least not to Dick. They’d stopped fighting after Jason died, then just kind of… drifted away. Dick had never known him to ramble before. He didn’t know if Bruce had even meant to say that he trusted Dick, but the sentiment made his chest warm just a little.
“What happened to him?”
“Debrief once we arrive. Be ready.”
Dick had to clean. He had to stock up on groceries. Tim had been over before, but Bruce had never gone to his apartment once he moved out. When he dropped Tim off, he stayed in the car until Tim walked through the door. If Dick was lucky, sometimes he waved. Then he always drove away without looking back.
Dick didn’t know if he feared pity or disgust more when Bruce looked at his place. He was pretty sure the man had never stepped into an apartment so small in his entire life.
Five minutes later, in the middle of Dick’s grocery run, his comm buzzed again. “Yeah?” Please let Alfred have said Tim was okay. Please, not another Jason.
Was that why the ghost had stopped by? Some kind of too-late warning?
“On our way,” Bruce said. “Thirty minutes out.”
Knowing how B drove, that was twenty minutes tops.
The clerk wouldn’t let Nightwing pay, which Dick would have resented if he could have actually afforded the food. He made a mental note to pay them back someday, then juggled the bags awkwardly as he grappled through Blüdhaven and landed on the fire escape by his window.
The very second he finished stocking the fridge, someone knocked on his front door. It was undoubtedly a Bruce-knock. Dick didn’t know if the man was aware of the rhythm he always used.
A creature of habit if nothing else.
He hadn’t had any time to clean. All Dick could do was kick old napkins and takeout boxes beneath his couch as he passed, then he wrenched the door open.
Bruce held Tim in his arms bridal-style. He was swaddled in a blanket up to his chin. Judging by his sour face, he did not appreciate the position or his constricted limbs but knew better than to argue.
After all, Dick had gotten his mother-henning from Bruce.
Behind Bruce was Conner Kent, Superman’s clone-slash-child-slash-it’s-complicated-okay? Dick vividly remembered watching the boy die at the hands of Superboy-Prime, but as far as he could tell, Conner had suffered no ill effects since his resurrection. He hovered over Bruce’s shoulder—literally hovered—alternating between peering at Tim anxiously and glancing around as if he expected someone to jump out of the shadows.
Dick stepped aside and Bruce barged in. He headed to the couch without hesitation. Dick frowned. He didn’t like Bruce’s familiarity with his apartment. As far as he was aware, Bruce had never been here before. But Tim had also broken into Dick’s apartment without his knowledge and, well, he was much more similar to Bruce than Dick had ever been. Maybe they’d done it together as a bonding experience; Dick had never wrangled the circumstances out of Tim.
When Bruce laid him down and Dick got a good look at Tim’s battered face, he gasped. “Oh, my God. What happened?”
“Some motherfu—”
“The Red Hood,” Bruce interrupted Conner’s furious snarl in a weary tone. Dick suspected Superboy had done his fair share of swearing on the ride over. “Broke into Titan’s Tower and attacked Tim.”
“What? Why?” They knew next to nothing about Hood, except that he had risen to power alarmingly quickly and that his men were surprisingly loyal. Bruce had wanted to keep Tim away until they learned more about him.
“‘Cause he’s a sadistic asshole and the second I get my hands on him—”
“Absolutely not,” interrupted Bruce. “You are to stay with Tim at all times.”
“Come on, you can’t honestly believe—”
“Whether or not Tim is right, I have to investigate Hood’s motivations.”
“Whether or not Tim’s right about what?” Dick asked, but Conner and Bruce continued to bicker; judging by Tim’s face, this had been going on for a while.
“It doesn’t matter what his motivation was if I just kill him now,” argued Superboy.
“While you are in my city, you follow my rules,” said Bruce. “We do not kill. Nor will you fight crime in Gotham.”
“Your no meta rule’s bullshit!”
“And yet we don’t have aliens invading every other weekend. Nor does the entire infrastructure of Gotham change once a year due to time travel shenanigans.”
Tim snorted at Bruce saying ‘shenanigans’ with such a straight face and looked like he wanted to say something sarcastic but refrained, which was quite out of character.
“I’m so confused,” said Dick. “How did Hood get into the tower? Weren’t you there?” he asked Conner.
“I don’t know how, but he got past all our defenses and… put me to sleep,” said Conner, somewhat uncomfortably. “Same with everyone. Except Tim.”
“That shouldn’t be possible,” said Dick. “There are access codes, and—”
“Yeah, well, Hood has tricks, I guess,” said Conner. “Look at Tim! He looks like fucking roadkill!”
“Tim?” Dick asked. “What are they talking about?”
“He can’t talk right now,” said Superboy.
“What?”
Tim grimaced. After a lot of squirming, he unearthed an arm and pulled the blanket down past his chin, revealing a neck swathed with bandages. He mimed cutting his own throat.
“Oh, my God.” Dick rushed to his side. “I can’t believe—are you okay?”
Tim gave him a scathing look that wouldn’t have been out of place on Bruce’s face.
“Okay, dumb question,” Dick conceded. “But holy shit.”
“That’s what I said!” Conner exclaimed.
“His vocal cords are intact,” Bruce said quietly. “His carotid arteries were not cut. Hood was very precise with the wound—and with his sutures.”
“Hold on,” said Dick. “He… you know, to Tim, then patched him back up?”
“We found him in the med bay on a coat,” said Conner. “He was in shock, but Hood had left him with blankets.”
Dick stared at Bruce blankly. For once, the man looked lost. “I have to check the security tapes,” he said. “I have to investigate.”
“I hate him,” seethed Conner.
“Here.” Bruce fished a bottle of painkillers out of his pocket and handed them to Dick. “One pill every six hours. His bandages will need to be changed. And—”
“I know how recovery works,” said Dick, slightly nettled, although he’d never suffered a slit throat before. “I’ll take care of him. Let me know what you find on Hood, okay?” Dick would be checking his own intel as well.
“Of course,” Bruce said like it was a given. Like he and Dick had never stopped being partners. He knelt by the couch and said something very quietly to Tim, who nodded with a wince.
Dick looked away at the sight of Bruce pressing his lips to Tim’s forehead. He remembered Bruce doing that to him as a kid when he was sick to check his temperature. They hadn’t been close enough for that in years.
When Bruce stood, both his knees cracked, and Dick abruptly remembered that Bruce was pushing forty.
Conner plopped down on the other side of the couch by Tim’s feet. Immediately Tim lifted them to set in Conner’s lap. Superboy rolled his eyes and pulled out his phone. Tinny sound began to play from the small speakers, and he leaned so that Tim could watch the video, too.
Bruce clapped Dick on the shoulder. He nearly jumped out of his skin.
“Hold on,” Conner said before Bruce could leave. “Aren’t you gonna tell him?”
“Tell me what?” Dick asked sharply when Bruce said nothing. “B.” He refused to be treated like a sidekick. Not at twenty-four years old.
“Hood’s identity,” said Conner. “Tim saw his face. Apparently, Hood wanted him to. The whole thing was a reveal.”
“Who?” Dick asked.
Bruce turned. The shadows of Dick’s apartment made him look haggard, or maybe that was just how he looked now. “Jay—Jason,” he said, voice ragged. “Tim said that the Red Hood is Jason.”