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Rule number one for surviving an explosion: Be somewhere else when the exploding was actually happening.
Since Jason had already fucked that up, he skipped straight to rule number two: don’t be otherwise injured, for example, from a neck wound gushing blood all over his good hand, or somehow worse, from a gut-wrenching betrayal.
Well then. Jason skipped straight through the rest of his list, landing near the bottom. Those were the rules for if he’d already fucked everything else up, left in the dire fucking straits of needing someone else to save him. He hated that part of the list, but he hated dying a tiny bit more.
Rule twenty-six: shelter in place and wait for rescue.
He’d fallen through two sets of apartments when the floor had collapsed, which was bad news for his back, but otherwise good. The fire sparked by the explosives was still well above him, and should stay that way for some time. As long as he could keep the bleeding to a minimum, Bruce would have time to save him.
Because Bruce would save him.
This ending had always been a possibility, a larger change than Jason had been willing to admit to himself. Bruce’s stubbornness was the stuff of stories, the thing that turned him from a man with a peculiar deathwish to Gotham’s protector, however flawed his methods were.
Of course even Jason’s best plan wouldn’t change that. But that also meant that Bruce’s stupid, irrational defense of lives would extend to Jason. Right?
Hot blood wept through his fingers, matching the wetness at the corners of his eyes. The flames visible through the wound of concrete and steel shifted, casting dancing lights, illuminating flashes of all the lives he’d lived.
Jason waited until the fire was too close for him to comfortably ignore any longer. His back had grown cold and sore from laying on the condemned floor of the empty building, and his fingers hummed, but did not feel. It had to be close to an hour of waiting - old asbestos riddled buildings took a lot longer to burn - but no sign of Bruce.
The explosion had torn the floor apart in spectacular fashion. Bruce had seen it, even as he escorted the Clown away, just like he’d seen the way his batarang had torn Jason’s neck apart, equally spectacular.
Pain was one thing. An old friend, one who told Jason what was wrong and how to fix it. But he was filled with more than pain, a gripping, aching embarrassment that burrowed through his slit throat and into his soft, delicate heart. He’d been wrong about Bruce, twice in as many hours. Wrong about what he saw in Jason - a monster, not a son. Wrong in thinking there was anything more precious to him than redeeming the worst man alive.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
And now Jason was all the closer to death for it.
If someone had been recording that moment, Jason was pretty sure they would have captured exactly when he snapped. The weight of the past day, the past year, hell, his whole fucked up life, had brought him low. Jason was pretty flexible. He preferred to bend instead of break. But he couldn’t keep lying to himself.
The homecoming he’d imagined? Nothing more than a fantasy dreamed up by a pit-addled mind desperate to stay sane in the ruins of his life. His plan? Doomed from the start, contingent upon the only thing Bruce would never do. He didn’t love Jason. He never had. All he’d been was a body to fill the Dick-shaped hole in his life and then a horror story to tell himself.
As the smoke drifted down and the hungry fire roared, Jason snapped, as loud and razing as an earthquake.
There would be some new rules, the kind that didn’t get him trapped in a burning building waiting for a man who never really cared.
—
Rule number one: Jason always comes first.
Jason fought against inertia to pull his body off the apartment floor, then somehow managed to stumble down the empty staircase and out onto a near-empty street. Pink hugged the edge of the horizon, nearly morning. Even more time had passed than he thought, a fact that added to the icy chill in his chest.
Rule number two: Always stay in peak condition.
If Jason had been running on more than a few hours of sleep and a half-eaten sandwich during the confrontation, maybe he could have dodged the batarang. Maybe he would have seen the end coming, before it hit him with the grace of a nuclear bomb. Maybe he would have realized it was a bad idea.
He wasn’t making that mistake again, not ever.
By one of the few miracles Gotham had ever known, Jason managed to hot-wire a bike and ride the three miles back to his closest safehouse. Then he un-did, then quickly re-did the security protocols keeping it off the grid, managed to tape up his neck before collapsing onto his sofa.
Sometime later, Jason’s bladder woke him. After dealing with the loudest complaint, Jason discovered a whole symphony of other issues that sleep had held at bay. Re-bandaging his neck - and admitting that he needed to do better than some skin glue and a prayer - Jason went through the motions mechanically, like he was puppetering someone else's body through someone else's life.
He collapsed back into a cold, dreamless sleep once exhaustion returned. The couch was comfortable enough, and he could not bear to go further.
The cycle continued for a stretch of days Jason did not bother to count, a purgatory of the same small world on repeat, his body healing around the mind that would never be the same.
During one of these brief moments of wakefulness, Jason happened to turn the television on. The sun cast the screen dim and distant, but nothing could have kept Jason from the image it contained.
The Joker, handcuffed, scuffed and dirty as he’d been when Bruce had picked him, frogmarched past the gates of Arkham once again. He wasn’t just the cat with the canary, from the look of his wide, gaping mouth, he’d caught the whole damn flock.
The Joker. Alive, when Jason had been left for dead.
The screen cracked where the remote hit it, leaving behind a flickering smile, already burnt into Jason’s brain.
Rule number three: Revenge is the point.
The Joker’s return to Arkham was a bad starting point, but somehow, things got worse.
Barely three weeks later, there was another breakout. Jason’s neck was healed enough to move (provided he didn’t mind pain), but still he managed to pop the stitches by laughing so hard he had to stop and catch his breath in the middle of the grocery store.
“Of fucking course,” he said, though no one was listening. “You gotta stop lying to yourself, Jason. It’s not a good look.”
He ignored the alarmed looks he received as he finished shopping and paid, cash only. The cashier’s hands shook as they bagged his items, but it was a dangerous city and Jason wouldn’t be the worst he’d have to deal with. There was blood in the water, and finally he could smell it.
He threw the whole bag into the fridge, then unlocked the safe hidden against the wall. The chest-height compartment slid open, sleek black velvet cushioning his tools. Chewing his cheek, Jason deliberated. A glock would be a classic, but a trick shot from a thousand feet away might be more fun.
Mid-pace, he stopped, then slid the compartment closed, leaving a smooth wall behind. There was only one thing that would do for what he had in mind.
—
Two blocks later, Jason ducked into a closed mechanic garage. Not his choice - by hand was the only way to make sure the work was actually good - but they would do for now. There wasn’t even an alarm as he pried the door open. Whoever owned this shop was either breathtakingly stupid (not exactly an impossibility) or they trusted the Red Hood to keep them safe. Scratch that, they were a moron either way.
Passing under a suspended car, its silver innards spread out like an angel’s wings, sending even darker thoughts to him. Jason ignored them and fished through the equipment laid on a long metal table until he found what he needed. The handle of the crowbar fit into his holster, jostling with every step he took.
Once satisfied, Jason left the shop, not bothering to fix the broken lock. Let this be a lesson.
Despite what Bruce thought, it wasn’t actually that hard to track down the Clown. All you had to do was let yourself be just as sick, then patterns emerged from the knots and burls of Gotham, a trail inked in blood and death leading him straight to the Joker.
Jason didn’t stop himself from following. He couldn’t. He had to set this right, before someone else died because Bruce was too softhearted to do the right thing.
—
The Joker had stopped moving.
His body twitched, yes, spasming from left-over impulses and a sheer, animal fight to live, but he was not in control. It’s not like there was a mind left to lever the buttons and switches that moved him, bashed flat against the concrete floor, concave from the temple to the tip. Flecks of white and red sat amidst his rancid green hair, and more dripped down his face, pooling in the creases of his open, unseeing eyes.
There was blood in Jason’s mouth. Hot and wet. His own? The clowns?
It joined the rest, splattered across the ground, a painting of violence that soaked Jason knee-high and covered the room with long, trailing streaks. A picture worth a million words, and would tell anyone who looked exactly what happened here.
Gingerly, Jason unclasped his helmet and plucked a few hairs free. He scattered them around the room, one in the drying pool of blood. One in Joker’s lost shoe. One where the sole spotlight was brightest. Let them see what he’d done, what he was capable of when the gloves came off and Jason started playing by his rules. Give them no chance at self-denial, just the scorching truth.
Once he was a few miles clear of the crime scene, Jason pulled into a quiet side street, scaled a small building, and lay spread-eagle against the roof. The night held onto haze like memories, thick clouds of fog creeping north from the Bay. Tiny hints of starlight peeked through the clouds, twinkling as their strength waned and returned with the movement of the air.
Jason pulled out a cigarette. The tip was slightly broken, but it burned all the same. He blew a thick breath into the air, obscuring the stars completely.
Truth be told, this was just step one. Something to whet his appetite and a trap, all in one.
The moment Bruce realized that Jason was alive (thanks for that, asshole) and that he was the one who offed the Clown (fucking finally), the hunt would be one. Except they wouldn’t realize who the prey was until it was too late.
He stubbed the cigarette out, the smoke cloying in his mouth.
It wouldn’t be long now, and slackers didn’t beat the Bat. But he would.
—
In the end, it was Rule Number Three that won him the night.
The old Jason - the Jason that ended up with a slashed throat and a hole in his psyche - would have been drawn to the drama like a moth to the fucking sun. Before, this would have been a confrontation. Bruce and him duking it out, filled with enough pathos to make the W.W.E. jealous, Jason playing to the invisible audience and to Bruce alike.
But the time for fighting was over. It died a cold, lonely death in flames and blood. There was only revenge, and revenge was not a thing of feeling.
The Joker was the bait, something to draw Bruce back onto Jason’s trail, and to bring him to the quiet warehouse on the north side of town, lights dark and workers gone. Through his scope, the stage was set. A spotlight illuminated the raised platform, the exact kind of thing the old Jason would have loved.
Like clockwork, dark wings appeared: enter Bruce, stage left. He picked through the warehouse, but froze when he saw the stage. It was obvious he was expecting Jason to appear, to drop from the ceiling or from the middle of a novelty birthday cake pushed through the floor.
Bad luck, old man.
Jason readied the shot. Not bullets, that would be a waste of a perfectly good Bruce, but thick tranquilizers with enough ketamine to knock out a horse.
Movement caught his attention, blue on black chasing the tip of Bruce’s cape like a lost puppy.
Grayson. Jason felt his mood worsen, irritation threatening his aim. He hadn’t expected Bruce would be willing to bring someone else in on this, but if he did, Grayson would be the obvious choice. He must have known all along, and had left Jason there just like Bruce.
Well, he’d figure out what to do with Grayson on the fly.
Jason moved his hand away to avoid pulling the trigger. The shot was tricky, limited by both time, speed, and the two bodies instead of one.
Two shots flew across the nearly two-thousand foot gap. One hit Bruce in the seam between his leg and torso plates, the other dug squarely on Grayson’s shoulder, like landing on a bright blue runway. A moment later they both dropped.
Disposing of their trackers was easy. He dropped anything removable in a plastic bag - including one of Bruce’s teeth, a fake, hard-wired to the Computer - then covered them with a splash of an acid that ate away the metal bits. There would be others, he was sure. A tracker implanted in soft muscle, or replacing a fingertip. It wouldn’t matter.
Jason dug through his shoulder bag until he found what he was looking for. A small, black, innocuous device that was worth every penny of the thousands of dollars he’d paid. He clicked the single button and waited until the smell of cooking meat filled the air. He placed the EMP back into the bag.
Dragging their bodies into a plateless and untraceable van, Jason counted the minutes. With the deactivation of the trackers, someone would be at the warehouse soon to search for these missing men. But he’d planned for that too, and didn’t have far to go.
—
Dick woke up alone. The darkness around him was thick enough to choke on, ceaseless in every direction. His senses told him he was right side-up, but other than that, he was clueless.
Bruce had asked him to keep the mission quiet. He’d been doing that more and more lately, since the explosion and especially since the Joker turned up dead, in a particularly brutal fashion that felt like it had to be a joke, just one Dick wasn’t privy to.
He was just glad Bruce was finally reaching out. The others didn’t see it, but Dick was Bruce’s creature. He saw the future in the hairline fractures - in his silence and the way he beat down criminals - and knew he was reaching a breaking point.
Or he had been glad. Before they’d stumbled into a show missing the main performer, and before he felt the impact in his shoulder. Now he was stuck in the dark and Bruce was god knows where, alone, with whoever had done this.
“Bruce, what have you gotten us into?” Dick whispered to himself.
Tied behind his back by something sturdy, a rope or belt, his hands were useless. His legs, however, were free. Navigating out of a dark room, tied up and still weaning off the effects of whatever he’d been drugged with. Not bad. He’d done more with less.
Scooting across the floor, metal dragged against the cold-to-touch floor. Dick made for the nearest wall. From there, he could search the room until he found an exit. Given the reverberation from the chair, he had to guess the room wasn’t all that big.
He made it another few feet before a voice cut into the air.
“Now this is just sad,” they said, too low to be anything natural.
Dick tensed, drawing himself inwards. Whoever their kidnapper was, they’d been here the whole time, watching and listening. Which meant-
“But don’t worry, Grayson, I’m not going to just sit here and jerk off to you, all quivering and afraid," the voice said sarcastically. “That would just be sad, and I have bigger plans for you.”
Dick ignored the way his heart stuttered at hearing his own name. If he knew Nightwing’s identity, then he knew Batman’s too. They were compromised.
The thought occurred to him, a knife in the dark. Had Bruce known? Was that why he’d been so squirrelly lately, holding everything tight to his chest? This wasn’t the first time someone had gotten to the truth, but Hush was long gone.
“Who are you?” Dick had meant to ask what the voice wanted, but his mouth had different plans.
There was a low growl, one he realized was coming from the voice. His sweat drenched hair stood at attention along his neck and a familiar dump of adrenaline warmed his stomach.
“Don’t act like you don’t know, Grayson.”
“Know what? I just met you,” Dick pleaded.
The voice moved, surefooted steps moving closer. They had some way to see in the dark, then. An enhancement, like the technology Dick had in his mask.
His mask. Dick crinkled his face, and sure enough, it was bare save the tacky film that stuck the domino to skin. Somehow, this made him feel more naked and vulnerable than knowing his identity was out in the open.
A warm, gloved hand brushed over the arch of his cheekbone, just missing his under eye. They smelled like motor oil and gunpowder, the custom kind that still smelled of saltpeter and had a bigger kick than the legal stuff. This guy was a professional - they’d have to be to hit both Dick and Bruce within seconds of each other.
“Don’t try to fucking lie to me, Grayson. It won’t get you out of this, and it's not as cute as you think it is.”
“I’m not lying,” Dick groaned. He leaned away, not wanting the stranger to touch him, despite knowing that his unconscious body hadn’t walked itself into the chair.
Strangely enough, the voice pulled away.
“Well I’m a busy man. Places to be, people to torture. I’ll give you some time to think about your choices, then maybe you’ll be more honest when I get back.” Footsteps retreated, then paused. “And if there’s anything I can do to make your stay nicer, I’m all ears.”
Sarcasm certainly, but what did Dick have to lose?
“Yeah, how about some light?”
A second later and a light poured from the ceiling. Dick’s eyes snapped shut from the pain, and only opened again in time to catch the back-side of the stranger. Except it wasn’t a stranger. He’d seen that red helmet from a hundred different angles as Bruce poured himself into catching him.
The Red Hood had kidnapped him, and he had kidnapped Bruce. The only question was: why?
—
Once the door shut, Jason had to clutch a metaphorical hand to his mouth to stop from breaking out in laughter.
The look on Grayson’s face when he realized it was the Red Hood who had orchestrated the plot had been exquisite. The Red Hood, who if Jason was betting, Bruce had kept him away from. The Red Hood who had painted a scene of vengeance from the Joker’s skull, and who had relieved seven heads from seven necks to make a point, along with various other crimes.
Without a mask to hide behind, the terror was clear and beautiful on his face. Grayson had the wide-eyed innocent look down - practically his trademark - but now it seemed more alike to the photo on a milk carton, or one of those sad, grey-eyed children from a medieval painting, the kind that made you want to look away in shame, like you caused the plague or something.
Jason almost felt bad for him, but remembered his third rule just in time.
Grayson had left him as much as Bruce had. He knew that the Red Hood was the same boy he’d once trusted Robin to, but had deemed him irreparable all the same.
He clung to the sweet taste of Grayson’s fear as he moved into the next room over, better than stewing in betrayal.
Once a strip club, then a seedy bar, and then abandoned, Jason had purchased the deed to the property with an alias that would lead to a series of falsified bank accounts, and immediately faked his own death. That should be enough to stop anyone from looking too deep, at least for the time being. While Oracle and her minions razed Gotham in search of their patriarch and golden boy, they’d have no reason to look into the affairs of a man dead twice-over.
The rooms were already soundproofed when he’d bought the place, but he’d upgraded their walls and doors all the same. He also added some extra security and a metric assload of tech designed to keep people like him out.
Or in. Jason hadn’t lied to Grayson. He was a busy man, one with more plans than time, and most of those plans relied on his ability to keep the world’s greatest pain in the ass on lockdown.
Lucky for Jason then, that there was no puzzle for Bruce to solve. There was nothing left to prove, and hadn’t been since Bruce tossed the gun aside for the batarang, a son for a monster.
Still, he took a moment to collect himself before opening the door. Seeing Bruce for the first time since, well, everything, sent an odd shock through him. A premonition of five minutes in the future, when his pink-healed scars would be opened again and his carefully bottled emotions would wash him away.
Were it anyone else, Jason wouldn’t have been so nervous. But it was Bruce, who got under Jason’s skin without trying. The rules would keep him safe. So would the plans.
—
Dick had almost gotten used to the room - plain white walls, featureless save for the small ceiling vent and the dismal cot - when the furthest wall fell away.
On second glance, it was not the wall that had vanished, but a large rectangular portion of it, beginning just below his eye level and extending close to the ceiling. Before he could look closer, the light in his cell dimmed and a scene became clear just beyond the glass.
Dick’s heart stopped.
The Red Hood stood over an operating table, dull chrome and straight from his nightmares. Bruce was strapped to the table, his arms and legs restricted by thick bands of leather, and most alarmingly, missing his cowl. Tubes fed into the skin of his obscured side, hidden by the span of Bruce’s chest and the angle from which he was viewing.
Dick fought against his restraints. Old memories kept alive at the altar of guilt found him, dogging him beyond sense. He needed to get in there, to help Bruce. This was no Two-Face, but whatever the Red Hood wanted, it couldn’t be good. It was Dick’s responsibility to make sure that Batman was okay. No matter what.
A comms system crackled, projecting from a hidden speaker.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Red Hood said, easing away from Bruce and walking towards the wall. “I paid a lot of money for this place, more than even you could break. Besides, I’ve got all your little gadgets.”
That just made Dick want to try even harder. But reconnaissance first, then planning.
“What do you want?”
Red Hood’s shoulders slumped, like he was disappointed Dick would even bother to ask. He pinched the helmet where the nose would have been, and was probably making a face under the metal.
“Really? Still on with the whole innocent bystander act? You know what he did to me, Dick. Is it really so hard to imagine why someone might be a little pissed off about it?”
Dick looked at Red Hood. Really looked, because it was obvious that he was missing something that might explain why he was acting like Dick had kicked his dog and his grandmother.
A search through his mental address book came up with no single person with both the means and motivation to hunt both of them. At least not someone under sixty, and Slade would never be so evasive. Plenty of people hated Dick - for good reasons too - but there was little overlap with those who hated him and those who hated Bruce. And that was ignoring the whole identity thing, a clusterfuck he very much wanted to pretend wasn’t happening.
“I wish I knew what you were talking about, really, I do.” Dick couldn’t emote much in his state, but did his best to seem sincere. “But I can’t help if I don’t know what’s going on. Please, just tell me.”
It was only then that he realized Bruce had been silent while he and Red Hood talked. That was often how it went, Dick using his charisma to get the perp to talk while Bruce analyzed in silence. That’s why it took so long to realize that Bruce wasn’t just silent, he wasn’t awake.
“Is he dead?” Dick asked.
“Bruce?” Red Hood patted Bruce’s leg, a familiar motion. “Oh, no. He’s just asleep. I would never be so wasteful. But to your earlier point. Here, this should help jog your memory.” He did something to the back of the helmet, then slid it off. Hair burst out, black striped with white, sitting over a strikingly familiar face. “Does this help?” he asked, voice almost sing-song.
The drugs were not fully gone and Dick’s brain was still sluggish. “Do we… Do we know each other?”
“Oh my god, Dickie. Are you fucking serious?” Without the helmet, Red Hood was no less intimidating, even as his face twisted into something childish. “Even Bruce recognized me. But this is just insulting. Did I really matter that little to you?”
Dick, now worried that he’d somehow forgotten an ex-boyfriend, squinted a little more. An answer was taking shape in his brain, but he couldn’t hold still long enough to grasp it.
Red Hood was still talking. Boy, he was chatty.
“I guess I have grown a bit,” he said, an understatement. “But come on, we both know you’re not as stupid as you look. Who’s the only person I could be? I’ll give you a hint.” Red Hood faced him fully and mimed something hitting the side of his head, then stuck out his tongue in play-death.
Dick’s stomach turned. The blood drained from his face.
“You’re not Jason. My brother is dead.”
Red Hood’s eyes tightened, made smaller by irritation. It was exactly how Jason used to do it, down to the poorly concealed pout hidden behind a sneer.
“Didn’t suit me. But what would you care, you didn’t even come to my funeral.” There was a hardness in his eyes, like he was expecting someone to hurt him. Like they already had.
“I didn’t know,” Dick blurted. It was absurd, treating the Red Hood like he really was Jason. Like Jason would turn out like this.
The little Dick had seen of the Red Hood was grim. The ‘shooting up bars’ and ‘chopping off heads’ kind of grim. There was no way the sweet boy who’d died too soon had turned into this monster.
“Oh, sure. You didn’t know. And I’m sure you didn’t know where I was, either, when Bruce left me to die.”
That wasn’t even correct. Bruce hadn’t left Jason in Ethiopia, Jason had left Bruce, and had died before he was found again. Dick’s stomach churned again, from nausea to anger. Using Jason’s face like this was inexcusable.
“Listen, Clayface, or whoever you are. This is sick. Just tell me what you want and I’m sure we can come to a compromise.”
The thing pretending to be Jason was a quick study. Their nostrils flared, the way Jason’s had when he found a cause worth fighting for. Dick wasn’t sure what he liked less: that the look was aimed at him, or that he was reluctantly starting to treat the imposter as Jason. What the brain knew the heart rejected, and he knew the man standing before him couldn’t be Jason. Dick would never be that lucky.
“You caught me smoking once, on the part of the Manor roof without any cameras. I thought you’d rat me out to Bruce, but you never did.”
Dick gasped, trying to rationalize how the imposter could possibly know that. Like a boulder down a hill, the Red Hood didn’t slow.
“You’re terrified of spiders, even if you pretend not to be, and you once told Bruce quote: Your parents probably got themselves shot on purpose so they wouldn’t have to deal with you. I think you gave him an aneurysm over that,” he chuckled.
Dick grimaced. That had been a particularly nasty fight, one he’d never really made up to Bruce for.
“Didn’t even check to see if the sweet, impressionable Robin was there to hear it. But I bet you weren’t thinking about that, were you? Too busy worrying about Bruce’s feelings to care about the children in his care. Has he started hitting Tim yet? Or has he managed to tow the line for now?”
“Bruce wouldn’t-”
“Oh my god, Dick. This is fucking pathetic. You’re never going to be his number one priority again,” Jason said - because who else could it be - and ran a hand through his hair, longer than the last time he’d seen it and curly. “And frankly, I don’t know why you want that. Just shut up and be a good victim.”
“Jason, no,” Dick said, half brotherly command, half plea. “Think about what you’re doing. You don’t want this.”
“All I’ve been doing is thinking.”
He’d been playing before, Dick realized, as the full brunt of Jason’s presence bore down on him. There was no smile on his lips, no humour to his tone. This was the man who had single-handedly broken Black Mask’s powerbase, the man who had filled a duffle bag with severed heads, who’d picked a fight with Bruce and nearly won.
“Thinking about a whole bunch of things. Mostly about revenge though. Do you know how it feels to six through six feet of dirt?” Jason didn’t wait for Dick to muster his fear-scattered thoughts. “Or how it feels to see that the man who killed you, the man you died to stop, is alive and happy as a fucking camper in Arkham? Or how it feels when you give Bruce the easiest choice in the world, me or him, and he chose-” His voice cracked, reminding Dick that for all he looked grown, Jason couldn’t have been older than twenty.
“What do you mean, Bruce chose him?” Bindings dug into his skin. To reach out to Jason, or to throw the first punch? He was confused all over, every part of him wanting a different thing, screaming out questions and apologies and exclamations of joy.
That was the wrong thing to say. Jason’s walls slammed down, his expression distancing.
“You’re all fucking hypocrites.” There was a loud buzz as Jason cut off Dick’s connection to the comms. “Hypocrites who think they know best for everyone. Who think they are the only ones with the right to choose.”
He bent over Bruce’s supine form and slapped him hard, catching the angle of his jaw.
“Hey old man, it’s time to wake up.”
Any feelings of happiness at seeing Jason - here, alive - evaporated. He was treating Bruce like a criminal, like he deserved to be strapped down and… whatever was going on.
Bruce grunted, snapping awake. Whatever he was drugged with was enough to keep him foggy, but he still found Jason’s face and fell into a practised grimace.
“Jason.”
So it was true.
“Like anyone else could have made that shot.”
Head inclining, Bruce scanned the room. “Where is Nightwing? There were two shots.”
“And here I was worried you were going deaf, old man. But don’t worry about Dick, he can’t be hurt anymore.” Jason grinned, too wide and toothy. “This is about you and me.”
In the time it took Dick to process the implication, Bruce had already jolted against his bindings. A stormcloud settled around him, dark and foreboding as any that sat above the Gotham Bay. But Dick’s supposed death - whether he really believed it - was something he could deal with later.
Dick wouldn’t have been as strong if the roles were reversed. God, he hoped they weren’t.
“You wouldn’t.”
“On the contrary, Bruce. There is very little I wouldn’t do, not after what you did to me.”
A grimace chased by a heavy swallow, Bruce’s brow deep with fury. “You were asking me to do the impossible.”
“I was asking you to be a Father,” Jason replied, voice heated. “I gave you a chance. More than you ever gave me.”
“You didn’t give me a chance, Jason. You gave me a Gordian scenario, betray everything I stand for, or betray my son. I found an option you hadn’t considered, one that spared as many lives as possible, and I took it. I don’t know what you were expecting me to do.”
Jason didn’t reply. He looked sick to his stomach, choking on a memory Dick couldn’t see.
“You know what I wanted, Bruce. I gave you a choice, two options that I would have been satisfied with, and you managed to find a third that fucking sucked. The Joker was right, everyone loses.”
The Joker was dead, but it sounded like the sort of thing he’d say. Especially if the scene Dick was imagining was correct.
“I bet you thought everything would turn out alright. That I would crawl away, lick my wounds, and eventually forgive you. It’s what everyone else does, cutting you more and more slack until there’s nothing left to give. But Bruce, before we start, I just have one question.”
Jason peeled back the neck of his undershirt. Bruce’s eyes widened.
“Did you really think this was the bloodless option, or did you believe that it wasn’t really killing if I was already dead?”
—
If Jason believed that Bruce was capable of regret, or of treating his own actions as sub-optimal, he would have believed the look of horror worn plainly across his face. Without the cowl to his upper face, Bruce was far more expressive, eyes wide and full of rarely shown emotion.
The horror was aimed squarely at Jason’s throat, still tender to the touch and held together with surgeon's tape after splitting open again in aisle three. It looked grisly, which Jason hadn’t bothered to hide. The show was over, and the time for truths was now.
“Not what you expected?” He spared a glance towards Dick, who had managed to scoot to the glass. “Did you think you’d miss?”
Silence. “No.”
Of course not. Batman didn’t miss. He didn’t miscalculate. Everything Bruce had ever done was purposeful, even if it took months of hindsight and rigid denial to convince himself of it.
“So you admit that you aimed for me, for my neck. Do you know the odds of surviving that injury in the field? Without medical attention?” Emphasis on that last bit. “But you were too busy holding hands with the Clown to worry about that, right? Had to make sure he got home safe, Gotham’s such a dangerous city and all that.”
“He was the bigger threat. If I let him go-”
“He was tied up.” Jason flinched against the noise, his shouts reverberating around the room. “What could he have possibly done? Laughed someone to death?”
“I made a tactical decision. I can’t expect you to understand that.”
The scar throbbed, Jason’s whole body felt like pins and needles. Something heavy and old rose, pushing his heart aside, holding his lungs tight until each breath was a gasp. Strapped down, drugged up, and more beat to a pulp, Bruce was still acting like he had the upper ground.
Stupid. Why did Jason keep hoping that things would change?
“We’re done here,” he said.
Bruce shifted, likely planning to try and slip his restraints. Too bad Jason was faster, and never learned what Bruce would do when freed. The medication hit harder than a punch, knocking out Bruce’s higher senses first, then plunging him wholly into unconsciousness. His face slackened.
Next came the fun part. Well, maybe not fun, but Jason had to admit he’d been looking forward to this from the moment he’d realized that his plans were for two, instead of one.
He adjusted the screen separating Bruce and Dick’s enclosures. Instead of one-way glass, he’d sprung for a seamless screen which projected a live recording. Originally meant for his own surveillance of Bruce, it meant he couldn’t see Dick in person. But more importantly, it meant he could do this.
Clicking again on his phone, Dick’s screen went entirely black. To him, it would look as if the shutters had fallen on Bruce’s half of the space. Another click, and the pre-recorded audio began to play, just loud enough to be believable. Quiet noises, metal clinking, the breath of sanitizer on equipment, then louder, as wet, fleshy noises were added to the mix.
On the feed, Dick blanched, mouthing something under his breath.
Jason, of course, had no desire to torture Bruce. For all the bloodshed, it was pointless, doing nothing to sate the injustice tearing at Jason, and nothing to make Bruce suffer. Before Dick, Bruce had trained to carry out the mission alone, including surviving worse than Jason was willing to give.
But he knew Bruce, as much as anyone could through the shell of ruthless self-protection. The only thing that would really hurt him - hurt him like he’d hurt Jason - would be to take the mission away. Make him powerless, a bystander, forever the eight year old confronting the cruelty of the world, holding on to the hand of a dead woman. Jason couldn’t break Batman, better people had tried and failed, but he could break Bruce Wayne.
Reaching for his tools - the real tools, not the scalpel and chainsaw hell Dick was hearing - Jason grasped the thin tube feeding from the ceiling. Turning the valve released a thin stream of water, filtered to sterile perfection. He fiddled until the flow was almost non-existent, a steady bead every few seconds. It fell on Bruce’s face, an irritant that was impossible to ignore.
Later, Jason told himself. Once the medication worked, Bruce, for once in his life, healed from the voluntary abuse of his body and mind. Once all reminders of what he did were stripped away. Then would be the time for the games, the unwinding of his hard-won mind and commitment to the mission.
Sure, this was just as likely to fail as it was to succeed, but when did bad odds stop him?
—
“Morning, Dickface,” Jason said, propping the door open with a foot as he balanced a tray in his hands. All of Dick’s favourites, eggs scrambled slowly, cinnamon toast, and some pan-seared bacon curved like a smile, alongside some medication for his worn-raw wrists and bruises.
Dick regarded him with open hostility, hands balled and bloody.
Right, he’d left the recordings on for a while, and though Bruce did little but sleep overnight, Dick would think he’d been up all night acquainting Bruce with the meaning of pain. Well, nothing Jason could do about it now.
“I’ll eat some if you’re worried about poison, but honestly, that’s not my style.” Jason laid the tray down, pushing it towards Dick. “Now you’ve got to be uncomfortable in that chair, right?”
“Oh, so you’re playing the good cop now? After what you did to Bruce?” Dick sounded sick, breath catching like he’d been crying. He must have been, for most of the night, from the tears stained into his face.
Jason hummed, tilting his head back and forth. “I gave what you said some thought. I believe that you didn’t know who I was, seems the kind of thing Bruce would do. And I checked the records, you weren’t even planet-side when I died, were you? You were up on some important mission in space. Now I know why you never answered my calls.”
Through pursed lips, Dick replied, “I didn’t know.”
Jason suppressed a smile. Dick’s skin was paper-thin and easy to slip beneath, for as good as his poker face was.
“I know, and I forgive you. I hadn’t known either, otherwise I might have gone to someone else. Someone planet-side, for starters. Someone who didn’t go running to Daddy would help too. Do you know anyone like that?”
“I wouldn’t have ratted you out,” Dick said. Then, more solemnly, “I wish I had answered. I could have helped you. You didn’t need to go after the Joker alone.”
As if his opinion of Bruce couldn’t get lower. Lying, about Dick’s dead kid brother.
“Is that what he told you?” Jason switched the feed on, showing a bandaged, but otherwise unharmed Bruce. “That I went after the Clown alone, like some kind of moron?”
Dick was fixed on the screen. On Bruce.
“This whole time, I thought you all hated me. Because of where I came from, because I saw the world the way it is, because I grew up and stopped bleeding myself at the altar of Bruce fucking Wayne. But you did the same thing. You know what he does to people. That’s why you left, isn’t it?”
It took a sharp jab to the foot to return Dick’s attention, but he reflexively jerked away.
Jason sighed, feeling his plan unravelling in real-time, the tread beneath his feet vanishing into spools of useless threads. He wanted to be angry, to clutch to the blood and pain and fury which had saved his life, but the fear in the other man’s expression wasn’t the feeling he’d craved.
He was feeling bad for Dick, he realized. The only other person in the world who could understand what their childhoods were like, the pressure, the guilt, how it built beneath your skin like mould, only blooming once you were free and there was no one to destroy but yourself.
“I didn’t go after the Joker, Dick. I went after my mother. My biological mother. I hoped that I had someone out there who wanted me.” Jason coughed. “I was wrong on that account.”
The sterile room hardly seemed the place for an honest conversation, but if he let Dick go now, he’d only cause more complications. What he was doing to Bruce was important, necessary. Neither he nor Gotham would survive if things continued to stagnate.
Dick startled hard enough to nearly tip the chair over when Jason took a step forward, but he caught him by the arm just in time.
“Look,” Jason said. “If you’re being honest with me, which I’m pretty sure you are, I shouldn’t have wrapped you up in the whole mess to begin with. The Red Hood is Bruce’s fucking problem.”
“I won’t let you hurt him,” Dick said, pleading. “Take me instead. You know I deserve it.”
Jason waited for the punchline that never came. He stopped, brain rebooting loudly.
“Are you fucking serious? Oh my god, you are.” Jason felt a headache forming in his molars. “I’m not doing this because I need someone to lash out at. This is why I killed the Joker, what I tried and failed to get Bruce to see. His methods aren’t working. Gotham is no safer than it was twenty years ago, and that’s not just because the world is a more dangerous place.”
Eyes glazed by stubbornness and half a lifetime of training, Dick was unyielding.
“You’re not out there. You’re not seeing what happens to Gotham if we don’t step in,” he said, pulling from a lifetime of seeing the worst of Gotham.
“Jesus. You’ve certainly got his attitude,” Jason said. “Hold still, I’m going to release you. Then you can eat and we can talk about this like adults.”
Dick nodded, seeming too overwhelmed by the events of the day to fight back. Appearances were deceiving, but Jason was just as tired of playing interrogator as Dick looked. The switch was hidden at the back of the chair, releasing both cuffs at once with a soft pop.
As expected, Dick immediately swung at Jason. He was running on less than an hour of sleep, and only a few sips of water. Still, he was fast enough to nick Jason in the jaw, though not with enough force to do more than turn his face slightly.
Dick fell into a fighting stance, backing into the corner so there was only one angle of attack. His chest heaved, fresh blood leaking between the folds of his fingers, his hair a mess.
“Dude, I’m not going to fight you,” Jason said, leaning against the opposite wall.
“Yes you are. You tortured Bruce for hours. I heard every second of it, you sick fuck. You’re not going to get away with that.”
Pinching his brows - he could not deal with this, even if it was the sole fault of his past self - Jason fiddled with the controls, navigating to the recording of the previous night. The real recording, not the one Dick had heard.
He hesitated. Dick didn’t trust him. What reason would he have to, Jason wearing his dead brother's face while kidnapping and other such crimes? Blowing his whole plan up now - for that’s what this would do, if he revealed that Bruce was just fine - wouldn’t mean that Dick would roll over and forgive him. That wasn’t in his nature, a steadfast protection of Bruce right beside his Christ-sized guilt complex.
“You must have questions,” he said instead, putting the controller away, for now. “I’m an open book.”
“Why are you doing this?” Dick finally settled on, after a moment of contemplation.
“I’ll tell you, but seriously, eat. It’s hard to look at you like this.” Jason nodded towards the tray, the eggs surely cold by now.
“Like you care.”
“I said I was sorry,” Jason said, having not apologized once. “I thought you had left me there too. I was wrong. Are you going to keep fucking crying about it, or can we move on?”
“Left you where?”
Hand rising to his throat, Jason turned away, finding comfort in the plain white of the wall. Wall had never betrayed him, had never left him to an almost-certain death.
“Jason,” Dick said, voice closer. “What happened?”
Stupid, self-sacrificing Dick. Of course all it took was a single drop of blood in the water, a glimmer of vulnerability to get him to dive headfirst towards the man who had terrorized Gotham for a month straight, and had kidnapped two of the most competent people alive without that much effort.
“You’re still a fucking idiot,” Jason said. “I could kill you. Right now. It wouldn’t even be hard.”
The bed bowed beside him. Dick had the tray in one hand, tucking his legs beneath him. He was still on the end closer to the door, but he was close enough to touch. He held the tray out.
“You first,” he said.
“Seriously? Poison isn’t my style, Robin’s honour.”
Dick levelled a flat, disappointed look at him. He felt thirteen again and desperate for the approval of the Robin before him, only to be met with a distant condescension that would only lift years later.
“You look like crap too,” Dick said. “Either eat something, or tell me what happened. Or both, if you’re really feeling that sorry.”
Jason shoved a bite of egg into his mouth, chewing furiously in protest. Even as a paste, it was delicious.
Dick smiled, a real smile like sunshine after a storm, then swallowed the pills Jason had included. One for pain, one for infection, though he’d certainly been through much worse.
“Bruce is fine, isn’t he?”
Jason froze for a second too long as his brain buffered, then finally processed what Dick had said.
“No, you heard-”
“I know you, Jason. I don’t know why you’ve done this, or what you’re trying so hard to hide, but I know who you are, deep down. You’re the boy I knew could be Robin, who did good, not because the world took something from you, but because you loved it enough to work with Bruce to fix it. Even thinking I had abandoned you to whatever happened, you just stuck me in here. No torture, no punishment.”
“Not exactly a high bar.” And not to mention the recording, which had been designed knowing that Dick feared more for others than himself.
Dick inclined his head.
“You really need to work on that,” Jason said, watching as Dick finally ate. “People will take advantage of you.”
His chest unclenched, even as he tried to remind himself why he was doing this. He remembered watching the fire, watching the Clown’s final laugh, watching Bruce turn away, even before the bomb went away. The rules kept him alive, but now they had driven a wedge between him and what he really wanted.
Bruce was a different story, of course. Somehow he knew that Dick understood that, or could at least pretend, for his sake.
“Tell me, from the start. What happened to you?”
Perhaps foolishly, Jason could do nothing but comply. He told Dick all that he remembered, the wet, the rain, headlights and then nothing at all. Waking up in the waters as he was reborn and all that came after. It felt good to finally tell the whole truth, even if he knew that it would tear them even further apart.
What he’d done had been necessary. In the League and in Gotham both. That didn’t make it the picture-perfect world that Dick and others like him lived in, where action was the provenance of villains and good heroes could only react.
As he finished, avoiding the raw nerve of his final confrontation with Bruce, Jason looked up. Dick’s tray was empty and his movements were smooth. He was looking with glass-wet eyes, like he wanted to reach for Jason but couldn’t bring himself to cross the moral divide that held Jason apart from everything he’d once had.
Not that he wanted it. Pieces, perhaps. The comfort from knowing someone had your back, the challenge to better yourself without the hatred, those would feel really good.
He moved to leave, to check on Bruce, but a hand caught his arm.
“Why didn’t you come home? If I had known you were alive-”
Like it wasn’t obvious. The calm was gone, replaced in an instant by a sharp-clawed anger, the one Jason learned only after the damage was already done.
“What home? There’s no place for me here. There never was.”
Jason pushed to his feet, snatching the tray from Dick’s lap before he could react. Ignoring the protest and the attempt to hold him back, he left, slamming the door behind him. Then he sank to a kneel, back against the door and tray clutched to his chest, bearing down until he could think clearly again.
The soundproofing worked well, but not well enough to dampen Dick’s cries completely. He switched between calling for Jason - for a memory of his brother overwritten all at once - and for Bruce. Never for himself, he was too much of a hero for that.
Jason left him to it, not interested in playing nursemaid. Instead, he went to Bruce, leaving the feed and noise dead. He was still asleep, a healthy glow on his cheeks, though his face twitched from whatever nightmare he was stuck in.
As he rehung medications and removed Bruce’s bandages - which had been entirely for show - he thought about what Dick had said, how he’d reacted when Jason told him the truth. Disgust, yes, both for his actions and his plans. But sympathy too. If he wasn’t so unwaveringly loyal to Bruce-
Then what? Then Jason would set him free? Recruit him? No, they would never be friends.
But maybe Jason could do this for more than just himself. He remembered snippets of what it was like, before he’d kicked the clown-shaped bucket. Dick and Bruce, always at odds. He would storm out, hurling insults and accusations, yet Dick never managed to get away. He always came crawling back, if it was Bruce who asked.
“You fucked up with me,” Jason said to the sleeping figure. “And you fucked up with him. He was too young to be Robin, too young to carry your weight on his back. I don’t know how I never saw it.”
It was easier thinking of Dick as competition, then as a source of reassurance. Never a real, living person with reasons for what he did.
“I-” Hands at his side, Jason wasn’t sure what he wanted to say. What he wanted to do. “I really fucking hate you.”
Bruce said nothing. Jason knew what he needed to do.
—
He waited a few hours, more for a sense of dramatics than any true function. And to give Dick time to cool off. Not even he was brave enough to face the full force of his anger.
Through the feed, he saw Dick curled on the cot, deep in the same fitful half-dream as the hours before. He’d worn himself out at the door, begging for freedom, for Bruce, for Jason.
Let him sleep a little longer, Jason rationalized rather than admit that he felt bad for causing the meltdown to begin with. Dick had been willing to listen. That was more than Bruce had ever been, and more than the rationalist part of Jason buried deep down had ever expected. All he had to do now was figure out how to untangle the clusterfuck his recent actions had created.
Bruce had been right about there being a Gordian knot, but he was wrong about where it was. Jason had given him a choice. A or B. Save the Joker or save Jason. It was his black and white thinking that knotted a simple decision into a near homicide.
He checked the feed again. No change.
Jason put his phone away as the person in line before him stepped up to the till. He stared at the board of rotating burgers and drinks, blanking on what Dick might like.
“Sir,” the cashier said, looking right through him. “Are you going to order something?”
Looking out the window, he saw it was close to dark. Dusk settled between the tall towers, nearly a full day since he’d lured Bruce to the warehouse.
He shook his head and ordered a few combos, more than enough for two grown men. The bags were carried over by a different and tired-eyed employee a few minutes later, warm and a little wet from condensation. He walked a few minutes back to the alley, then pushed aside the rusted sheet metal that hid the entrance.
Through the ripped-out belly of the bar, and past an old kitchen that was better at making rats than food, he knocked on the door to Dick’s cell. Then he moved the heavy surface, a heavy, grating noise.
“Daddy’s home,” he said.
Dick stared from his cot, awake, but unwilling to do more than roll over and glare.
Jason placed the bag in the middle of the room, then made his way back to the far side. He waited, then grew more hungry than patient. The burger had extra pickles, just the way he liked it, and set his aching stomach to rest.
“You can’t buy me off with some junk food, you know.”
Jason crossed his arms, fishing a second burger from his bag. “Just fucking eat. Making this harder for yourself is just stupid.”
Pouting, Dick relented. He snatched the bag and returned to his cot, looking a little too happy to be truly convincing. After unwrapping his own meal, placing it on the spread-out bag to keep clean, he took a bite.
“Jay, this is exactly how I like it.”
“I know, you onion-loving freak. It’s not exactly hard to forget, since your onion breath is lethal.”
“Hey,” Dick said, then tossed a balled up wrapper at Jason. “So what, you’re just going to keep me here, feed and water me so we can play happy family?”
It would be easier to just ask, but that would mean ceding control.
“You asked me what he did yesterday. And I told you.”
Dick nodded.
“I want to trust you, Dickie. I was wrong about you - I admit that. But I can’t let you out of here with you still thinking the sun shines out of Bruce’s ass.”
“I don’t think that. Me and Bruce fight all the time, about pretty much everything.”
That was true. Jason had been witness to more than his fair share of nuclear fallouts between the two of them, and time was unlikely to have changed their relationship to the extent those no longer happened.
“You still march on his orders. You still throw yourself in front of the bullet for him, take the hits that he’s earned. You say you hate him, but he’s still your master.”
Dick cringed, hiding behind his meal.
Looking at him was hard - like looking at a mangy dog in a cramped cell. Even if he took the dog home, bathed it, wrapped its wounds, another would take its place in that sad, small cage. Drake already had, and who was to say he was the last of them. Bruce was jailer to them all, even as he slumbered away, unaware of anyone or anything.
“It’s not like that.”
A weak defence. The trap snapped closed.
“You begged me to hurt you instead of Bruce. Begged me, like you’d beg God. Harder, actually, since I’m pretty sure the only God you’ve believed in is that self-important asshole.” Jason set the food aside, no longer important. “Why do that for him? Why, time and time again, put yourself under his boot? Bend to the rules he created, jumping at the shadows of his traumas? Do you actually like it? Or are you just so desperate for someone to tell you that you’re good that it doesn’t matter?”
A shadow, hard and cold, hid over Dick’s face. He looked distant, much older than his real age. He looked like the too-young boy who had fought Gotham since childhood, wrath and pain wrapped in circus colours.
“You don’t understand it. You never had a chance to, with how it was after I left.”
“Then tell me. Please, Dick. Tell me. Convince me that the love you hold for Bruce isn’t blinding you. I want to believe you,” he lied. It was easier to lure with kindness, even if it felt like too-tight shoes.
“He cares. He cares so much,” Dick started, then paused. Uncertainty was clear in the twist of his brows and the way his fingers rubbed together, searching for something to ground him. “He’s never hurt me more than I deserved.”
Jason barely restrained himself from gagging.
“Dick, he can’t hear you. You don’t need to defend him.”
“Bruce-”
“Bruce tried to kill me. Aimed, with a deadly weapon for my exposed throat. Sure, I was trying to kill the Clown, and I did my damn best to blow up as much of the drug trade as I could to get there. But he knew what he was doing, and it wasn’t skill that saved him from breaking the rule, it was luck. Luck and the fact that I can’t seem to die right.”
In hindsight, he should have died. Maybe the pit was to blame, or maybe it was whatever brought him back in the first place.
“You told me-“
Jason slammed his hand against the wall. He was no Dick, whose temper was as quick to rise and it was to simmer, but he could be pushed to anger. Especially when his stupid, self-sacrificing brother insisted that the world was the problem, and not its self-appointed ruler.
“Just think. Stop falling back onto whatever lines he’s fed you, all the justifications and the apologies that just heap more blame at your feet.” Jason stood and crossed the room in a few long strides. “He tried to kill me.” Looking into Dick’s eyes, making sure he could not escape, not even to his thoughts. “How can you defend that?”
“I…” Thoughts too large for his brain were plaguing Dick. His mouth puckered, eyes twisted shut.
Jason had never seen Dick like this, not even in his weakest moments. Knowing that he had done this filled him with a perverse satisfaction, quickly washed away by more bad memories. Too many times, he'd failed. Too many times, he continued to hope.
The room was not large, but now it felt even smaller. Cramped, closing in on the two of them.
“You can’t,” Jason said once, firmly. “You can’t.” The second has lost the authoritative edge, desperation bleeding through his words.
The room was quiet, filled by the sounds of laboured breath and the question hanging above both of their heads.
“What happens if I agree with you?” Dick asked. “If I say that Bruce was wrong - has been wrong, since the moment he took me in and agreed that the best way for me to get justice was to take it with my own hands.” He paused, looking down at his fingers, bitten to the quick. “I look at kids now, the age I was, and they look like infants. Hell, Jay, you were an infant too when you showed up in my old uniform. But I think back to myself and all I see is the power and the purpose being Robin gave me.”
Jason looked away, fixing his gaze instead on the screen. He wouldn’t want to be watched if he was going through what Dick was now.
“I’d be throwing everything away. My whole life, everything I’ve done as a hero. Nightwing.”
“No you wouldn’t,” Jason said. “Why the fuck would any of that shit happen?”
Dick looked at Jason like he was stupid. “Because it’s Bruce. Because he’s Batman. Because he’s the best to ever do it.”
“No the fuck he isn’t. He’s not even like, top ten. Everyone knows Bruce is an ass, even people like Clark who for some reason, can actually stand him.”
Wide-eyed, Jason stared at Dick, and for the first time wondered if he really believed that his place in the world hinged entirely upon Bruce, including him. He was Nightwing, for fucks sake. Even Jason - bitter and furious - knew that the name meant something. Not just here in Gotham, or the gloomy Bludhaven he called home, but everywhere he went.
“No one will believe me,” Dick whispered. Finally, the truth.
God, Jason hated being this earnest. His track record with moments like this, with Bruce, and in Ethiopia, was terrible. Really, he should have checked under the bed to make sure the Joker wasn’t hiding beneath it.
“I believe you.” Jason wanted to reach out, allow himself to cross the space between them.
“That’s not enough,” Dick said.
He looked ruined. Not by the captivity or the torment, but by the fact that he could no longer pretend that Bruce was perfect. This was the hardest part - the gap between realizing his suffering and getting pissed enough to do something about it - a swamp of guilt, as if Dick wasn’t already drowning in it.
“It can be,” Jason said, quickly. “Bruce isn’t a fucking tornado. He’s a man. That’s all. A man I have tied down and drugged so high he’s in orbit.” He laughed, bitter and low. “You know, I didn’t see that until he tried to kill me.”
“He didn’t-”
Jason sent Dick a look.
“He panicked, because I had him backed into a corner where there was no option but to change. And, I mean, credit to him. He changed all right, not that he seems to believe that he would have killed me.”
Dick was closer now, having moved from the cot onto the floor. The blue and black of his suit was tattered, ripped along the fingers and missing a patch on the shoulder where Jason’s dart had punched through the armour. Strange how small he seemed, when normally Dick was the largest presence in a room.
Jason waited for Dick to reply, but he said nothing, only curling his legs to his chest.
“Point is, there’s nothing Bruce can do. Take him out of the equation, what do you want?”
“I want to go home,” came Dick’s reply, buried in his knees.
A memory of warmly lit halls, always smelling faintly of the lemon cleaner Alfred preferred hit Jason like a punch. He could still recall the way footsteps were swallowed by the plush carpet running along hardwood, how each wing was distinct, if one knew the paintings by heart, and how if he was quiet enough, he could sneak up on Bruce while he worked.
He would sit there for hours, just beyond Bruce’s door, simply marvelling at the belonging he felt. Bruce would always find him, and Jason would be allowed in the office itself, austere decoration no place for a child. How precious the time felt then, when Jason was still a thing to be treasured.
“I know.” Jason held a hand out to Dick. “I do too. But it’s gone.”
“Part of him died with you, I think,” Dick said.
Even if he’d allowed children into danger, giving them a weapon instead of a life, Bruce had cared. Half the reason Jason had been so desperate to give him chance after chance was because he still felt the warmth of Bruce’s hand on his shoulder - proud, when Jason managed to down a man twice his size. He’d believed that there was a perfect series of events, that if he orchestrated, would cause Bruce to remember being that man.
“Bruce made that choice and he’s had years to un-make it.” Jason pulled the scattered pieces of himself together, blinking away tears. “It’s too late. He’s going to keep hurting people. He’s going to keep hurting you.”
“Stop pretending you care.”
Jason pulled his hand away from Dick’s, placing it instead in his hair, pulling his face up to eye level. They shared a long look, and Jason hoped that it communicated just how serious he was.
“Let me do this,” Jason said.
His control was slipping, seeing the face of every person Bruce’s code had failed reflected in Dick’s own. How many dead children were there, because Bruce could never, ever, give up on people? Did he even consider the casualties to be people? Or was that reserved to the named and infamous, who sought him out?
Dick jerked away. “Don’t kill him. God, Jay. He’s our dad.” There were no punches thrown, no pretenses to fight, only tired acceptance.
“Don’t worry, I won’t kill him. I’ll even let you watch, if you want. Make sure I’m up to no funny business.” Jason rose, hand out. “He’s the God of his little world right now, but that’s only because he’s strong enough to control it with brute force. This is a kindness, really.”
“What are you going to do?”
No outright hostility. God, Dick was worse than he’d thought. Or, more likely, Bruce had been worse than even Jason could anticipate and the rebellion had been building in Dick for years.
“I’m going to take Batman away, force Bruce to just be Bruce. Who knows, maybe he’ll start actually dealing with his shit if his precious coping mechanism is gone.”
“Gotham won’t-”
“Shh,” Jason said. “You think I’m going to let Gotham suffer, just because Bruce has had this coming for a long time? I want her to get better, for good this time. That starts with fixing the source.”
A sliver of hesitation remained, testament to Dick’s devotion to the man Bruce had once been. Jason considered leaving him here, letting the dark and the hunger fix it for him. But no, he could still follow rule number three. In fact, he could do more than seek payment for his own tragedies.
Jason chose his words carefully, as soft and cutting as a knife made of silk. “Dick, what happens when the new kid starts thinking for himself? Do you want to be the one to hold him after Bruce beats him? And what about whoever comes next? It’s not going to stop unless I stop it.”
Dick took his hand, skin painfully cold. There was no life in his eyes, only a tired determination. He could fight half the city like this and win, but his normal glowing attitude was gone. Jason hoped it would return, once Bruce was no longer the specter in the corner of their eyes.
“No, Jay. I can’t let Tim get hurt like that.” He sighed, bone-deep. “We’re going to stop it.”