Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The moment that Jason realized the night had gone to utter shit was when he squeezed the trigger of his pistol, expecting three more shots to bury themselves in a trio of Two-Face's two-bit fuckers, only to be met with a hollow clicking sound. His eyes widened as he mentally ran through every time he'd fired his gun over the last few hours. He had just enough time to swear under his breath at the realization that he'd miscounted, forgetting the handful of warning shots he'd offered the Penguin's asshat accountant.

The enforcer with the smallest brain cell count took advantage of the half-step hesitation to swing her metal pipe right at Jason's collarbone. Tough hit, if it wasn't telegraphed clearly enough for Roy to probably see it from the Watchtower. Jason ducked it without much issue, but in the time it took to slam the idiot's skull against the brick wall hard enough to knock her out, the other two took their own shots.

One slashed at him with a dripping knife he didn't trust, while the other tried to grapple for him with his bare hands. Jason had to admire the chutzpah, if nothing else. He tightened his grip on the gun and pistol-whipped the first thug, right in the pearly whites. The man had just enough wherewithal to spit out a chunky glob of blood before Jason was hurling him into a nearby dumpster. When he turned back around to deal with the last one, he was met with a thud and a muffled curse.

Jason looked at the Twofacer nursing a hand close to his chest, red and throbbing. "Did you just try to punch my fuckin' metal helmet?"

"I — I, um — "

Before the dumbass could push out some bullshit excuse in an attempt to save face in front of literally nobody, Jason dug his own hands into the idiot's shoulders and smashed his forehead against the other man's. It made his own vision blur for a moment, dealing him a bit more of a concussion than he'd intended, but it knocked out the goon in what Jason knew to be a really fucking cool move.

He made quick work of searching their pockets. Nothing unusual, just the typical burners and cigarette packs that seemed par for the course in this type of employment, except the last Twofacer was suspiciously unarmed. Probably lost a bet or was put on some fucked up version of probation, though even that was a stretch. Not much use in a henchmen who couldn't deal damage.

None of them were carrying rubber bullets, which Jason knew was a reach anyway. Like he said, not much use and all. With a sigh, he checked his backup pieces. No dice. He'd already reloaded them with real ammo, just like he'd have to do with that last gun of his. Damnit.

Best way tonight ended from this point was he called it quits and slunk back to one of his safe houses until the sun came up. If he kept at it, he'd run into trouble sooner or later, and the odds he'd manage to get out of that without firing genuine bullets was shit. Last thing he needed was Bruce up his ass over a couple rogues made into target practice.

Quickly, he looked up, trying to orient himself. He had a bag of supplies stashed in an AC unit two streets over. Gauze, flares, protein bars — but no ammo. He'd looted it last month and hadn't restocked yet. Fuck. He checked his watch. The plan had been to stay out for another hour, but he'd gotten more done than he'd planned. He could definitely afford to call it a night early.

Plus, Alfred had invited him over to work on a veggie dish tomorrow morning, and he really didn't want to deal with Bruce's whole Bruceness. Because Bruce would get passive aggressive, and Jason would get loud, and Bruce would match him beat for beat, and then Jason would start breaking things, and then Alfred would get mad — and just like that, the one good thing Jason had been looking forward to this week would be over. Not worth it.

There was a safe house maybe ten minutes from here. If he kept his nose in his own business, he could be watching Community reruns before his upstairs neighbors' tiny banshee baby woke up for her nightly concert. Wait out her subpar vocals with a twenty minute episode, crash for a couple hours, then peel himself out of bed to get cracking on his newest case. Not a bad setup at all.

Of course, that was when Dickhead had to ruin it all, and make his prophesied crappy night complete shit.

"Hey, um, anybody busy?"

Jason's hand flew to his comm before his brain caught up to the movement. Easing a slow breath out, he didn't let himself push the response button down just yet. Last thing he needed was to get dragged into someone else's bullshit. Oddly enough, no one else spoke up either. Was he the only one on comms at the moment? No way, couldn't be. O, of all people, had to be listening in.

"I'm, uh — I could use an extra set of hands, if anyone's got a minute." Dick's voice was tight, holding back something Jason couldn't quite identify. Not emotional distress, as far as he could tell. Some sort of physical pain. Just the fact that Jason was able to pick that out was a testament to how bad it must be affecting Dick, performer first and non-ethereal human being second. "No worries if not."

Another beat, and still nothing. With a sigh, Jason clicked on. "I'm right here, N. Between 166th and Lincoln. What's up?"

Slowly, haltingly, annoying, Dick gritted out, "I was investigating a — a human trafficking — uh, thing, and I — fuck!"

A half-bitten back scream wrenched its way out from Dick, accompanied by a rotten sound of flesh hitting flesh. Jason was already hauling ass back to his bike, nestled at the mouth of the alley he'd followed the Twofacers into. He didn't even bother tying the losers up. The GCPD could handle them. He had bigger issues at hand.

"Nightwing, where are you?" he barked into his mic. With his free hand, he hit the direct line to Oracle's channel. Of all the fucking times do go AWOL. "Nightwing. Give me your location now."

"They had a hostage," he breathed on the other end of the line, as if that was important compared to the reality of the situation. Always the hero, always the golden boy. "I didn't notice, I dunno how, I swear he wasn't there, but — but I had to let them get me, and — they did something to me, left me in a closet, didn't even bother to take my stuff and — Jason, it really hurts."

Jason's heart gave a painful squeeze. Last time Dick had slipped up enough to forget call signs in the field, he'd taken a rough enough hit to dislocate his left shoulder and break three ribs in one fell swoop. Scratch that, last time Dick had been willing to admit he was in any real pain, it'd ended with him bedridden for weeks.

"I know, N. I know. But I need you to tell me where you are so I can come get you. Where are you?"

There was a pause. Jason's grip on his bike's handlebars tightened. Fastest set of wheels this side of the Batmobile, and it wouldn't mean shit if he didn't know where Dick —

"Old dialysis clinic on St. John's," said Oracle, clean and calm and completely late. Jason didn't bother giving thanks, just heaving a sharp left onto the less busy roads and gunning it with everything his engine had. That was a ten minute drive on a good day. He'd make it there and five, and even that might take too long.

"Great fucking timing, O," he scoffed into the comm. On the other end, both she and Dick were deathly quiet. "You know, for the all-seeing eye, you sure miss a lot of what's going on behind your back."

"Spoiler got hit with fear toxin. Everyone in-range has been dealing with that while I've been keeping the streets clean from my angles. What matters is that I'm here now." There was the quick click-clacking of keys. "Look, I've got his location. He's got slight movement in a small space, probably pacing around that closet he mentioned."

"Nightwing, is that right?" In front of him, a car stalled to a stop, even though the light had just barely turned yellow. Come on, man, be a fucking Gothamite and risk the red. Unpatriotic asshole. Jason changed lanes and barreled down the intersection, just barely missing contact with an overly eager pickup truck.

"Mm, yeah, I — " Dick's voice cut out. Jason picked up metal-on-metal screeching from the speaker, some sort of movement nearby. "What are you — Get off me! Don't fucking touch me!"

There was the sound of struggle, and then the line went dead. Jason's fingers went numb, digging little welts into his bike's handlebar. "O, you keep an eye on him," he forced himself to say. "Anything changes, you let me know. Otherwise, I don't want to hear it."

There was an affirmative click, and then nothing.

Jason took a breath. Then another, and another, and then nothing. No freak outs on patrol, that was his rule. If he was alive enough to panic, he could fix the fucking problem instead of whining about it. So he sped down sketchy street after sketchy street until he came to a stop in front of the clinic Oracle had told him about. There wasn't any sort of correction from her, so he hauled himself up the fire escape of a nearby apartment building and leapt onto the roof.

Robin protocol dictated he make a full surveillance check before engaging. Find a vantage point, scout that there was an emergency way both in and out if things went south. Above all, take the time to gather as much information as possible. He'd been drilled on the checklist more times than he could count.

But intelligence gathering was for bird-brained optimists who weren't intimately familiar with the difference between a life-threatening blow and one that fucking killed you dead, so Jason swung through a window and looked for his goddamn brother.

First glance told him that there was a surprising lack of humans in this, quote unquote, human trafficking thing. He cleared the top two floors without coming across a single soul. Probably for the best. That meant Dick really had gotten most of the hostages out. He'd probably listened to the old Robin handbook, gotten a head count and dove in from there. And look where it'd gotten him.

It was when he crept down the stairs onto the first floor office that he got a glimpse into whatever the hell was going on here.

Crooked spine craned over a keyboard, a thin, pale man with mousy brown hair stood in front of a desk. There was a greasiness to him that Jason felt rather than saw. He was typing something out onto the massive monitor in front of him, muttering underneath his breath low enough that Jason couldn't pick up any whole words. On the screen facing Jason was a skeletal outline of a terrifyingly small human.

On cue, a clanging sound came from beneath the desk the computer stood on. Glaring daggers, cuffed to a table leg by his wrist, was a tiny boy baring his teeth at the man as he maneuvered the mouse. Seven, maybe eight, he was leaning away as far as he could, skin going red where the handcuff bit into it. With his free hand, he was reaching toward the bundle of cables that connected into the wall.

"Don't do that," the man muttered, and then there was a yelp of barely suppressed pain as he kicked the boy in the nose. "God, you're a pain in the ass. Barely worth the resale value I'll get." Famous last words. Yeah, Jason had seen fucking enough. He cocked the gun in hand, slipping past the door —

Only to see stars as a desk lamp was smashed against his skull.

The helmet took the brunt of the blow, but it was still forceful enough to send him stumbling back. One of the two men took advantage of his reaction to tackle him, arms around waist. Jason hit the floor hard enough to see stars. On instinct alone, he twisted away, toward the exit. A curved knife buried itself into the ground where his head had been.

In a parody of earlier tonight, Jason whipped his head back and slammed it against another man's. The contact was hard enough that one of the eye sockets of the helmet blacked out, which was a hindrance Jason couldn't deal with in a fight like this. Raking his fingers across one of the assailant's faces, he unlatched the helmet, one hand hooked within, and smashed it into the other's gut like a pair of brass knuckles. He tumbled to the ground, motionless.

The impact they both took gave him the chance to scramble to his feet. His gun had been lost in the tussle, but he snatched the knife that'd almost brained him and jammed it into the first assailant's palm, right atop a ring of teeth marks he hadn't given him. There was a shriek he quickly silenced by another one-two bash of the helmet.

Jason took a breath. Fuck, man. Both assailants were out, that was for sure. Not for long, but he'd be sure to bounce before they got back up. He swiped a hand over his domino-clad face, moved to turn back to the man and the boy, and froze in his tracks.

His gun had been picked up by the pale man, pressed to the little boy's forehead as he tucked himself into a corner of the desk, uncuffed.

"Hands up," the man said. Jason did as he was told. "W — Walk away, Red Hood, and no one has to get hurt."

"You know I ain't gonna do that." He kept his tone flat. This was the kind of shit that he kept the helmet around for. There was nothing like a crooked jerk begging for mercy, only to receive the mechanized drone of the unaffected, unamused, unblinking paragon of everything that went bump in the night.

"Y — You have to!" the man insisted. "I'm the one calling the shots here, so you — "

"Let me tell you what I have to do," Jason said, careful not to move an inch. His gambit was risky as hell, but so was leaving the civilian in a situation like this. "If you shoot that kid, I have to track you down and gut you like a goddamn fish. Not Batman, not any of the birds. Me. 'Cause the only thing I hate worse than traffickers are sickos who get off on messing with little kids. So do yourself a favor and put — the gun — down."

The man swallowed. Jason could see that his words had gotten to him. Of course they had. Half the reason Jason bothered to keep up his reputation was so it'd do the heavy lifting during moments like there. He watched as the man visibly parsed through his options, before sighing quietly. Right where Jason needed him to be. The man looked down at the kid. Slowly, he brought the weapon away from the kid.

"This is your fault," he said, and then shot himself in the head.

Jason was yanking the kid away before the body even hit the floor. Under the sound of the gunshot, he couldn't hear if the boy had screamed or cried or even gasped. Jason knew that he himself hadn't. At one point or another, someone slipping the barrel between their lips had lost its oomph.

But that was the case for undead freaks of nature, not little boys whose skinned knees were likely the harshest violence they'd been exposed to, so Jason crouched down, shifting until the kid's back was to the body. The kid tried to turn back around, eyes wide and mouth opened into a little o, but Jason kept his gaze fixed firmly forward.

"You're okay, you're fine. Everything's going to be fine," Jason murmured, before taking a breath. Everything wasn't fine, actually. Dick was still MIA, Gotham's CPS had to be called to deal with the elephant in the room, and Bruce was going to be so fucking annoying that someone had died on Jason's watch. He'd probably make some sort of remark that Jason has forced him to shoot himself, the asshole.

But the kid didn't need to know how royally fucked everything was, so Jason pulled himself together with another quick breath and delved into some actual victim training. Slowly, he released his grip on the boy's arms. No need for unnecessary and possibly unwanted contact. He kept his movements minimal, heavily choreographed when needed, as he studied the kid.

He was goddamn small, for starters. Every piece of clothing hung off of him like he'd rifled through his dad's closet. It was dated, too. An oversized Metallica shirt hanging at an angle, old cargo shorts with a brand logo printed on that Jason didn't recognize. They seemed familiar, in a way Jason couldn't yet place.

There was a blooming bruise on the kid's nose, from the kick the man had placed, but that wasn't the only injury. Dark marks covered his arms and legs, some shapeless and some in distinct patterns that made Jason's stomach hurt. Smeared across the kid's mouth was a slight red discoloration, starting at his gums and ending right at his chin. If Jason were a betting man, he'd guess that the kid had bitten one of these fuckers.

When Jason moved his examination upwards, he was stopped in his tracks by the fierce, eagle-eyed glare he was given in turn. The kid was studying him. There was a little pout to his lips, this determined sheen in his eyes that spoke of clinical, categorical intelligence-gathering.

It was the same way Bruce looked moments before donning the cowl for the night.

Freaky, but Jason didn't time to unpack his daily daddy-issues flare-up, so he pushed that aside and said, soft, "Hey, kid, you're safe now. I know this all must have been a lot, but I promise that I'm gonna help you get it all straightened out. Do you know who I am?"

Slowly, the kid shook his head. Huh, okay. Jason was more commonly recognized by street kids and their parents, but even Bristol's average joe wasn't completely clueless to the legend of a duffel bag and a flash of red. Maybe he was an out-of-towner smuggled into Gotham. In that case, better to keep it to the basics that even tourists knew. No need to further complicate things.

"I'm Batman, pretty much," he said, which made him vomit a little in his mouth, yeah, but when the kid untensed by a microscopic degree, and it was almost worth it. Silently, Jason made a mental note to dispose of this moment in his mask footage as soon as he got the chance. If Tim got his hands on that sound bite, Jason would actually have to kill him, for real this time.

Speaking of mask, Jason stayed perfectly still as the kid slowly reached out toward his face. He set his tiny fingers on the bridge of the domino, but when he begun to dig a nail underneath the edge, Jason had to step back, shaking his head. "Sorry, kid. Can't let you do that."

He wrinkled his nose. The sight was sort of funny, all things considered, and Jason had to fight not to smile. That somehow got the kid the brighten up a bit. Jason wasn't really sure why, but he'd take the win. Might as well push his luck while he was at it.

"Can you tell me your name?"

The gave him a capital-L Look, like Jason had suggested they hold a kick flip contest on the roof of Wayne Tower, then shook his head.

"Do you — know your name?" Jason tried. Amnesia wasn't a super common cause, but there were plenty of rogues whose schtick could lead to something along those lines. Ivy or Scarecrow were the obvious suspects, but really anyone who dabbled in chemicals was possible.

The kid nodded easily.

Jason sat back on his heels. "Huh. Alright, then. How — "

"Your Batburner is ringing," the kid pointed out, gesturing to the flip phone clipped to Jason's belt.

Jason had to keep from reacting at the casual display of speech. His fault for not checking, but damn, way to keep him on his toes. The kid spoke just fine, not with halting syllables like Cass on her rougher days, though there was an accent mixed in that Jason couldn't identify. Something smooth and harsh at the same time that shouldn't fit together, yet somehow did. Fuck, Jason couldn't even nail down a continent, much less a region.

"It's not a Batburner," he said as he took it out. Compare himself to Batman one time, fucking hell. "Just a regular old phone."

" — one time, fucking hell. We go off of comms one time and we come back to radio silence. Of course we do. Why am I even surprised?"

Great, a bitchy Red Robin at ass o'clock in the morning. Really what Jason needed right about now, thanks. He sighed, debating the merits of hanging up. It really wouldn't be out of his skill range to call Gordon and get him started on the CPS work. But Dick was still unaccounted for, and as much as Jason hated to admit it, he needed the extra manpower at a time like this.

Man, Dick was gonna owe him after this one.

"I'm here, Applebee's. Don't blow a fuse."

"After the night I've had, I'm going to blow up," Tim snapped. There was the faint sound of shuffling feet and the recoil of a grapple on his side of the line. He was in pursuit of some sort. "Spoiler took Robin out of commission while zonked, both of them are pouting in the med bay with a sick Agent A, Batman's already sent four rogues back to Arkham with six more on the docket, and Black Bat's flight got redirected to Hungary. Do you know what language BB can read, Hood?"

"Not Hungarian?" he guessed.

"Bingo. And to top it all off, by the time I've finished drugging my ex so she doesn't further maul my typically more murderous little brother, I hear from my other brother's ex that my other other brother is out on a one-man op to rescue brother number two from fuck knows what!"

"Sounds like you've had a tough night," Jason said dryly. "Let me make it worse. Get your ass over to St. John's. We got one preschooler, one dead body, and no Nightwing on site. Sounds like we could use the world's fifth-best detective."

"Fifth-best? If you're gonna beg for help, at least try being accurate about it."

"Sorry, sixth-best. Forgot about Batcow."

"Asshole," Tim muttered. "I'm two minutes out. Already got the coordinates from O."

"Good. Start at the bottom, work your way up. I didn't finish checking the ground floor before finding the kid. I might've missed N or some sign of him."

"Sure thing, number seven." Damnit, Jason could practically hear the smirk in Tim's voice. Uppity little prick. "Any personnel I need to worry about?"

"Not that I know of. I think Nightwing cleared almost everyone before he — " Something flashed in the corner of Jason's eye. The instant he processed what he saw, he was scrambling to his feet, snatching the red pocketknife out of the kid's hands. "What the shit are you doing?"

"What are you — "

The kid just blinked up at him, kneeling uncomfortably close to the corpse on the ground. Blood had soiled one of his pant legs, alongside a grass stain. "Investigating," he said slowly, as if he was sounding the word out. On the body's outstretched arm closest to him, there were small little scratches. Not like someone had pressed a blade to skin and sliced, but as if the flesh had been poked, prodded, like a science experiment.

"Investigating what?"

"Dead people," he said, as if it was obvious. He shifted, leaning back until he was sitting criss-cross applesauce. It had the unintended effect of making Jason feel like he was presenting during show and tell. "They smell real bad right when they start being dead people. Right after. 's not decompositing, it's just bad. I'm trying to figure out why."

The bladder. Not many people knew that slitting wrists or making a successful head shot would be accompanied by the organ's release. The first time Jason had come across a group of unrecovered hostages, still tied to their chairs in the back of a bank, he'd thrown up into a potted plant. Bruce had come across him after and wordlessly handed him a pack of breath mints and let him cry into the cape until morning.

Jason gripped the knife tighter. "How many bodies have you been across?"

"Two. My fourth's coming up, though."

Like that wasn't ominous as fuck. Jason's heart just about dropped to his feet. "What's that supposed to mean?"

The kid just fixed him with a curious look, the type that made Jason felt like their roles had switched and he was being studied by the seasoned vigilante. It was trippy.

"There this guy. He's evil. You know evil, right? Like Maleficent or Rhoda Penmark. At the end of the movie, someone's supposed to push him off a building, or strike him with lightning, or hand him the gun meant for his, uh — brainstem, that's the word. But no one did." The kid shrugged, not missing a beat. "He's evil, so I'm going to push him off a building, or maybe hit him with a hammer. Haven't decided yet."

What the actual shit. The instinctive response to whatever the fuck that was would be to take it as childish exaggeration, but there wasn't a hint of hyperbole in the kid's tone. He made steady eye contact with Jason as he conversationally explained himself, swaying from side to side in that way that kids were never completely able to stay still.

He didn't even seem to realize the weight of what he was saying. Most of the little kids in Jason's memory admitted their deeds in hushed voices, clasping their hands together. Sometimes they'd cross their fingers behind their back, tears in their eyes. But the kid in front of Jason just set his sins on the table and dared Jason to counter them.

Behind him, he heard a faint set of footsteps. They got quicker, rounding the doorway. Jason turned to see Tim tapping away on a burner, hair stuck to his face in sweaty strands. There was the beginnings of bruises all along his jawline. That was where Steph liked to land her punches when she was particularly pissed, he remembered.

"First floor's empty," Tim said, typing something into the keypad fast enough that Jason figured he was transcribing his own speech. "Heat reading on the upper floors says they're the same. I couldn't find any tire tracks along the perimeter of the building, and O would've noticed an aircraft liftoff, so running theory is that they took N on foot. I'm working on getting access to the sewer cams."

"Hello to you to." Jason rolled his eyes. Always had to be the smartest motherfucker in the room. "There's some weird shit on this computer. Probably the best place to start if we're aiming to figure out what the hell Nightwing was trying to bust these guys for."

"Run of the mill human trafficking isn't enough for you?"

"He would've gotten Oracle to prep GCPD prison cells after he made his arrests if it was business as usual. This is something more on the level of Arkham shit." The kind of problems that justified having an entire fleet of vigilantes on standby, rather than a cop or two. Toxins, death rays, doomsday plans. Issues that would've made the anti-mob Batman from early into his career develop a stress ulcer on the spot.

That got Tim to dip his head in agreement, humming softly as he considered the new angle. He swiped his fingers through his bangs, looking up toward Jason with a thoughtful expression, only for it to clear out as his eyes widened. He almost fumbled his burner as he slowly flipped it closed and slid it into a nearby pocket.

"Hood, what — Is there a fear toxin exposure to the building?"

"What? No." He checked a monitor clipped onto his belt. Looked alright, but a second opinion was rarely a bad thing. He showed it to the kid. "This look like a flat line to you."

The kid blinked. "If you're delusional, what I say wouldn't matter, 'cause you'd delude all over it." Then he studied the monitor again. "Flat enough, I guess."

"How old are you?" Tim blurted. He squinted at the kid with an almost disturbed look to him.

In response, all the kid did was squint back. His eyes narrowed into little slits, jaw set in that singularly hateful way that only kids could accomplish without looking unrealistically melodramatic. Without tearing his gaze away, the kid reached out and tugged twice on the bottom of Jason's leather jacket. "I want my knife back."

"I can't have you poking another dead body, kid."

"Won't be a dead body. It'll be his." The kid jerked his chin over towards Tim. "And I'll be poking him right in the carotid arteries. Then it'll be a dead body."

"Jeez, you're morbid." The kind of kid Jason would've thought was cooler than he had any right to be, unfortunately. Especially when he was pint-sized like that. When the kid just bared his teeth in what could be generously described as a grin, if one were to squint and generally have the vision quality of a mole, he turned back to the rapidly paling Tim. "You want to sweep the place for signs of N while I wrap things up with junior over here?"

"Junior," the kid scoffed, which was real fucking rich for someone who was an inch or two from being strictly categorized as fun-sized. "Fuck off."

"Hey, watch your mouth. Kids who don't know times tables aren't allowed to swear."

"I can multiply just fine, jackass!"

"Hood," Tim cut in, voice squeaky like it'd been squeezed-compressed-squashed ten times over. "I don't need to keep looking for Dick. He's right there."

Unsure as to what sort of point Tim was trying to make, Jason turned to look over his shoulder. There was precisely fuckall behind him. Interestingly enough, the kid didn't copy him the way he'd absently expected him to. If anything, his glare directed toward Tim only harshened in a way that somehow reminded Jason of Damian. Eh, maybe it was just him grouping all bitchy pre-teens in one vague box.

"No, he's Dick. The kid." Tim gestured to the only elementary schooler in the room, like Jason was bound to get him confused with some other twerp.

"What kind of shit are you trying to pull, Replacement?"

'Cause there was no way that — There was just no way. Sure, they lived in a crazy world where aliens were both little green men and world-renowned reporters, where magicians were just as likely as psychics as mermaids as dragons, where Jason heart had stopped, literally stopped, only to be beaten back to life by the grace of a godlike devil, but —

Fuck. There was a way. There was a metric shit ton of them, to be honest.

Tim snapped, frustrated, "Hood, I studied him for hours when I was younger. I know what he looks like. That's Dick."

Jason looked down at the four-foot scowl at his side. "Fucking weird thing to say about a kid," he muttered as he did the exact same thing. Truth was, he could see it. Kind of, sort of. Curls piled atop his head that'd mellow out into Dick's easy waves, sun-warmed skin just a touch darker than the version that'd spend years in Gotham's perpetual smog, a gymnast's build in the making.

"Holy shit, you are Dick."

The man — sorry, boy — of the hour just tilted his head to the side, narrowed eyes. "Y'said not to say my name when we're out at night. It was, like, a whole rule and everything."

"When the hell did I say that?"

Crossing his arms, Dick pitched down his voice, his lips tugging into an almost comical frown. "Grr, Dick, you have to treat this life with utmost of secrecy, grumble grumble. I'm sad and I didn't sleep well last night but I won't drink decaf when it'd bed time, grr."

Jason blinked.

Tim blinked.

Dick, stubbornly, did not blink.

"That's Jason," Tim said, stilted and loud. His gaze whipped back and forth between the two of them. "You — don't know him. You've never met him. He's not — He's not Bruce." With a wince, he pressed a finger to the comm in his ear. "O, I'm gonna need you to erase, like, all of that from any nearby audio receivers."

Dick just cocked a hip, giving Tim a withering look. "You're fucking stupid," he said, matter of fact, in a way that was so sudden that Jason had to press a palm to his mouth to keep the snickers at bay, "and your costume's even stupider. It's like you needed to point out exactly where someone should stab you."

Tim looked down to the criss-crossing utility belts forming an x right in the center of his chest. He blushed. "Um."

Jason rolled his eyes. "Go call in backup, Replacement."

"I'm gonna go call in backup," Tim said distantly, then dipped out, presumably to do just that.

As soon as he was out of the picture, Jason took a knee in front of Dick. He never liked leering over kids. Too many memories were stained with an innate fear of the larger-than-life adult towering over him. As much bluster as he'd thrown at whatever came at him, he'd always been a scared kid. All bark, no bite. Part of him suspected the mini-Grayson in front of him to be the same type.

He was shifting his weight from one foot to the other, picking at the end of what Jason realized was Bruce's old tee. When he looked up at Jason, it was through a mess of tangles that spoke of tumbles and roughhousing. "Are you mad at me?"

Jason just wrinkled his nose. "Why would that matter? You don't know me. You don't owe me shit."

Dick shrugged, the way that kids did when they didn't want to answer nosy questions. Or didn't know how to, really. Hard to really verbalize all those confusing thoughts in your head when you had the vocabulary of a Labrador. "You didn't know me, but you tried to help when that guy grabbed me. That's pretty cool of you." After a beat, he added, "That's what B did for me, you know? Didn't matter who I was, he just saw I needed someone to have my back."

Humming along, Jason let the words roll around in his head. Made enough sense. When it came to giving love, Dick was always a very open person, but the moment it changed to where he was on the accepting end, he turned transactional. Gotham knew that half the shit Bruce pulled slid only because of that decades-long loyalty baked into Goldie's bones.

Except…

"There's more. What aren't you telling me?"

For a moment, Dick froze. He was a performer, through and through. It probably wasn't obvious that someone saw through the curtain, noticing what was truly going on backstage. To his credit, he recovered quickly enough, letting the young-and-innocent persona vanish as quick as it'd appeared.

"You had a loaded gun on you, and when the man threatened me, you threatened him right back. B would never."

Jason dipped his head into a nod. "You're not wrong."

Dick sighed. "B's great, but I see the way he looks at me when we train. He knows exactly what I'm planning to use his lessons for, and he's not gonna let me go through with it. I trust him with my life, just not with the life of the man I need to kill."

"Who is it that you need dead so badly?"

In an instant, Dick's eyes were watery and red and so very angry. "Tony Zucco. He killed my parents. Cut their ropes and blamed Pop Haly. So now I gotta cut his ropes, 'cause that's whatcha do for family. You get that, right?"

Jason wanted to deny it. Rule of thumb was generally to discourage kids from murder. But he remembered how it'd felt to dig his way out of his own death through willpower alone, only to nearly be bowled over at the realization that Bruce hadn't done shit when it'd actually mattered. When it came down to it, he understood, better than maybe anyone, the all-powering, all-encompassing, all-consuming need for someone to drop dead where they stood.

"Yeah," Dick said slowly, too wise for his years. "You get it."

Jason eased out a breath. "You're not like this when you're older."

"Are we ever?"

"You're fucking morbid," he said, for the second time that night. Then he brought his hand up to squeeze space above the bridge of his nose. "So what exactly do you want from me? 'Cause I gotta be honest, snatching you from the others long enough to plot a murder isn't exactly a plan that's gonna pan out."

"I'm staying with you." It was stated plainly. Just the truth, nothing more, nothing less. "Not Bullseye over there or some old, arthritis-y B. When I go out to kill Zucco, you're not gonna stop me."

"Counter offer," Jason said to the kid who'd shown his cards to a dealer a decade his senior, "I help you hunt down the son of a gun, I go with you when you decide it's his time, and I keep you from going splat off a roof." At the end of that, he barely bit back a wince. Fuck. Not the best choice of words for a Dick Grayson whose parents had, well…

To his credit, Dick didn't react beyond going very, very still, hate burning in his eyes. Jason remembered the days he'd stumble into his brother's screaming fights with Bruce, where they both exited fuming and furious. Even then, he didn't think he'd ever seen Dick so undebatably angry. "Or you snitch to B, right?"

"Bingo."

"Fine. Just don't fuck up like you did with that guy." He hiked a thumb over his shoulder, gesturing to the nearly cooled corpse on the floor. Jeez, this kid.

"And quit it with the swearing. Alf's gonna wash your mouth out with soap if he hears you."

"Get bent."

Before Jason could ask where he'd heard that one, there was a sharp crackle in his ear. He was extremely careful not to react, nodding toward the door until Dick took the hint and stepped through the threshold. As soon as he was out of earshot, Jason pressed a finger to his comm.

"You're aware that I heard all of that."

Jason rolled his eyes. "If I didn't want you hearing, B, I would've set off an EMP and been done with it." On the other end, there was a telling silence as Bruce one hundred percent bit back whatever indignant retort sat on his tongue. "Look, I'm not planning on handing him a shotgun and letting him go buck wild. You've met Dick. If he doesn't get his way, he'd just go around my back and do it anyway."

"That's — accurate. So your best idea is to string him along?"

"More like stall until you all figure out how to reverse this, but yeah. Same difference. I figure I've got two days before I have to actually start taking him out at night. That should give you all a decent head start."

"Smart."

"Shocking, I know."

"Hood — "

"Save it. I'll take him back to the Cave long enough for a med eval, and then after that, we're crashing at my place. Safe house on Westminster, you know the one." It was the only property of his that any birds or bats had sniffed out, as far as he could tell. Jason was always careful to keep it separate from his other operations.

"There will have to be check-ups. If not by me, than the others."

Because god forbid Bruce go one day without having his control freak fingers smudging every happening in Gotham. "Fine." At least this way, the annoyances would make Jason look a little better in Dick's books. Not the worst thing that could happen. "Anything else?"

"Well, I — "

"Whoops, sorry. Going through a tunnel." Jason switched channels on his comm until Bruce's voice fizzed out. He was treated to the sound of crackling static instead. Much better.

With that, he turned back toward the dead body, still slumped beside the desk. The would-be clues of the night swirled in his head. Human trafficking with a twist that necessitated Nightwing's presence. Skeletal projections that even Jason hadn't understood. Some unknown substance ripping its way through Dick's system. A hostage that one of the most experienced vigilantes in the field had missed. All of it culminating in the replacement of a grown man by a little kid.

"Good thing I'm on babysitting duty," he muttered to himself, already turning back toward the exit. "This shit is Tim's problem."

Chapter Text

When the crick in his back, coupled with the lumpiness to his pillow, became too much for him, Jason sighed and cracked opened his eyes. He let his gaze drift upwards, toward the popcorn ceiling that drifted down in crumbling flakes whenever the fourth floor neighbors stepped too heavily. It was doing just that now, oddly enough. He wrinkled his noise when a particularly dense cluster broke apart into particles. They were usually mindful enough to keep their steps light enough this early in the morning. Tracing the fault line towards the source of the fracture, he was met with —

Fucking hell. Jason shot up to gawk at Dick, staring at him with those big eyes of his, clinging to the ceiling fan with a deadpan expression.

"What the shit," he muttered. Dick didn't so much as twitch. He had his fingers clenched around a single blade, free dangling with a careful stillness to him. There wasn't any sign that his arms were struggling to support his weight. "What are you doing up there?"

Dick didn't blink. "Watching."

"Right." Jason ran a hand through his hair, half expecting white-black strands to fall out at the movement. Maybe this was why Bruce had started balding by the time most people finished grad school. "And why exactly are you watching me?"

He wrinkled his noise like he'd tasted something rotten, not unlike the way Jason had just done. "I'm not watching you. I'm just watching."

Of course he was. Yeah, sure. Why not? It was as shit a way as any other to start his day. With that, Jason sat up and swung his legs out of bed, absently feeling for the slippers he could've sworn he'd left the night before. This safe house had a fuckass heating system that never worked right, which kept the rent low but was a pain in practice. When his feet met empty space, Jason looked around until he found his missing slippers carefully balanced on one of the other blades of the ceiling fan, caddy-corner to Dick's hands.

He dragged his hand across his face. "Get up to any other remodelling last night?"

"Mmm… yup."

"Great. That'll be a fun surprise to come across." Soles cold on the hardwood floor, Jason snatched the slippers off from the top of the fan and slid them on. While he was occupied, the brat took the opportunity to jump off from his perch, landing on Jason in a grapple of tiny limbs. Before Jason could protest, he had his little hands twisted into his pajama shirt, clinging piggyback-style. "Hey, who said you could hitch a ride?"

In response, Dick just buried his face into Jason's shoulder. He sighed softly, and maybe Jason was being a hopeful dumbass this early in the morning, but he maybe, possibly, sounded just a bit more content than he'd been a moment ago. So Jason didn't make him climb off as he headed to the miniature kitchen he'd scoped out the night before. There was a box of Cheerios somewhere that he wouldn't feel too morally against serving the kid. It wouldn't be as balanced of a breakfast as what he'd prefer serving, but he suspected there was only so much he could do to avoid the tried and true typical Dick Grayson sugary abomination of a meal.

When he stepped out of the bedroom, however, he had to pause, counting backwards from ten in his head. Maybe Dick could sense his growing annoyance, because he peeled off of him and scurried toward the counters that overlooked the living room, scaling a stool that was too tall for him. Jason watched as he kicked his socked feet against the cupboard doors.

"Dick?"

"Yeah?"

"Did you scratch the eyes off from all of my posters?"

"Oh. Yeah."

Jason rubbed his temples and resisted the urge to scream. Seven in the fucking morning, jeez. "Wanna tell me why?" he gritted out.

He hiked up one shoulder in a half-shrug, before adding, "Um, I didn't like that they were watching for free."

"For free?"

"They didn't pay for a ticket or nothing. That's not fair."

Okay. That was getting carefully catalogued away for more detailed examination at a later time. For now, Jason just nodded like that made perfect sense. At least he'd steered clear of the few photos Jason had risked bringing to this safe house. Seeing Roy's face gouged out, Coraline-style, might've put him off eating for the day.

He was careful to choreograph his movements as he slowly reached out to grab the cereal off of the top shelf, keeping his tone light as he poured a bowl for Dick. "Alright, twerp. We've got a pretty full day ahead of us. When we're done with breakfast, we're heading over to the Manor, unfortunately. Alfred's got a bunch of clothes your size, plus we gotta give you a bit of a check-up to keep B from taking custody of you in the divorce."

Understatement of the fucking century. Bruce had left him no less than fourteen messages over the course of the night, explaining, in excruciating detail, how pertinent and vital and non-negotiable, Jason it was to bring Dick by so they could make sure he wasn't, like, radioactive, or whatever. Which was dumb as shit, Jason would like to contest, because back when he was Robin, he got blasted with fuck knew what on a nightly basis, and all he'd gotten out of it was an x-ray and a pat on the head. And look how he turned out! Fucking amazing!

"'m I gonna get a shot?" Dick tilted his head so far to the left that he nearly toppled off the chair. Jason carefully slid the bowl of cereal to the opposite side, leading him to balance himself out as he grabbed the spoon and started to push his food around.

"Maybe," he said honestly, because lying to kids was something he tried to do only on weekends and federal holidays. "Tell you what, though. If B pulls out the needle, I'll hold him down and you can go ham on him after he's stolen your blood."

He stuck out his tongue, clapping his hands on his face. "Why's he want my blood? It wouldn't sell well."

Jason took a rice cake out from a package sitting on the counter. He was pretty sure the peanut butter jar had enough left in it to mask the weird aftertaste he usually got from those glorified hockey pucks. "That so? I would've thought you'd get a good rate going there. Three, maybe four hundred a pint?"

Dick blinked at him, expression smoothing out in an instant. "My blood's evil. Rotten, all the way down."

Damn. There went that easy, light-hearted conversation. Maybe it was fucked up to joke about a thing like this with a kid as young as him, but — but nothing. Jason should've known better, should've figured that playing with fire around someone who'd already been burned so bad wouldn't end well.

Sometimes — Alright, this was fucking stupid, but sometimes, Jason was damn near certain that there was something wrong with him that'd been there since the day he was born. It made sense, really. No one else had the uncanny ability to fuck things up so disasterously, with a nearly surgical precision. Some people had perfect pitch, others were natural athletes. Jason, by contrast, excelled at existing incorrectly.

Maybe he had the evil blood.

"I'm sure," he said softly, trying to pick out every word the way that Alfred clearly had back in the day, "that your blood is perfectly good. Uh, and that there's plenty of people out there who want it." Shit, his face had to be as red as his helmet by this point. He used to be good at giving speeches, he swore. Used to be verbose and all of that, before he'd gotten half his brains switched around.

He took advantage of making breakfast to turn around until his cheeks died down. The banana in his fruit bowl was about to go, so he sliced it up into little circles and set them atop the peanut butter he'd smeared across the rice cake. Only one, because he'd inevitably end up snacking on whatever Alfred had cooked up when they made it to the manor.

"How long will the check-up take?"

Jason was careful to keep his face free from tells. "Not totally sure. I'll get you McDonald's if it runs past lunch, though. You like chicken nuggets?"

Dick just shrugged, stirring his spoon through the soggy Cheeries with a more morose expression than was typical of an eight-year-old. "I wanna go hunting for Zucco."

"After the check-up."

He shoved his bowl forward, milk splashing all over the countertop. "I wanna go now!"

"Hey!" Without thinking, Jason snatched his wrist. "You don't lash out like that — "

Teeth popping out from his maw like tiny pearls, Dick threw his head back and shrieked. In an instant, Jason had an armful of squirming, writhing limbs that he was trying to contain before Dick threw himself off the stool and cracked his head open on the floor. There wasn't any strategy to his tantrum, but the kid did manage to rake his uncut fingernails right over a sensitive part of Jason's face, rife with scabbed scars.

Dick pitched backwards in one sudden movement, and it was all Jason could do to fall with him, hitting the ground first hard enough to knock the wind out of him. As he wheezed, he caught Dick scrambling away out of the corner of his eye. He made a grab for his ankle that caught, and the kid went down with a small oof and a whole lot of screaming.

"Stop," Jason was hissing, trying to compress him into something smaller and more compact, something that wouldn't get himself hurt, because that was where they were heading by now. "Just — fucking quit it! What the fuck are you — "

There was a knock at the front door. Jason froze. Then his mind caught up to body, and he jammed his palm over Dick's mouth barely a microsecond before the kid let out another ear-splitting wail. He had less than thirty seconds to get his shit together. The residents of this building were good people, the type that Jason didn't mind leaving Dick around. Last thing he needed was a call to CPS that left the rest of Bruce's fanclub with reason enough to take Dick away.

His gaze flickered toward the linen closet, briefly considering shoving the mess that was Dick away while he dealt with whatever well-meaning citizen had likely heard the screaming and investigated, but he dismissed the thought before it fully formed. The kid would just see the challenge and get louder in response.

Hand still firmly clapped over Dick's mouth, he leaned in close and whispered, "Two minutes. Two goddamn minutes of silence, or we're both fucked. You hear me? We don't need them calling Gordon and getting both of us dragged down to the station, so keep your yap shut." When Dick just glared back at him, buckets-worth of hate dripping from him, Jason shook him a little and repeated, "You hear me?"

Slowly, so slowly, Dick nodded. Jason didn't believe him for a single solitary second, but he didn't really have any other options, so he let him go, just as slowly, and made for the door. He gave himself a beat to cool down as best he could before easing the door open a crack, studying the figure on the other side.

"Peter, son, what's all the ruckus me 'nd Alva are hearing?"

Jason let out a breath. Giovanni, old and graying and half-blind on a good day, was definetly one of the more understanding tenants of this shithole. Jason had been renting this apartment for maybe nine months by now, and he could could on one hand how many times the geezer hadn't popped by on a Sunday afternoon to give him the paper secondhand. He was always trying to get Jason to finish up his crossword section, which was in character for an ex-actuary on the Riddler's payroll. He'd been out of the game for longer than not at this point, though, so Jason didn't hold that era of his employment against him.

"Sorry about that, Mr. G. I've got family in town and we got a little excited for breakfast this morning." Enough to keep the old man satisfied, yet not nearly as transparent as he could be. A nice balance. He was about to rattle off some platitude and shut the door as semi-politely as he could get away with, but he found it swinging open before he could stop it.

Dimpled with baby soft curls, Dick grinned up at the old man. "Hiya! Were you the one making kanelbullar last night? It smelled so good!"

Jason tried to shove him out from the doorframe. Dick just gritted his teeth and smiled even harder, flipping Jason off with the hand tucked behind the door. The little shit. Next chance Jason got, he swore he was dunking that kid in the fryer and serving him up for a dollar fifty a pop. Then he'd finally get his money's worth on the lippy little fucker.

Giovanni beamed back at him, wrinkled and crinkled like all the best old people. "You've got my darling wife to thank, actually. She's always been the better with dessert, though I can whip up a mean chocolate malt anytime you'd like, son."

"I love chocolate!" Dick swayed from side to side like grass in a breeze, which did a hell of a job at masking the jabs he was making at Jason's wallet. In a quick motion, Jason snatched his wrist and pinched him hard, but Dick just launched a bony kick at Jason's ankle, all without breaking the act for an instant. "I've got a tío whose buddies gave us a tour of their factory in Malmö, and it was the best thing ever. I ate a whole brick all by myself!"

It wasn't a surprise when Giovanni barked out a laugh, hugging his stomach. Jason was rapidly realizing that Dick Grayson's infamous skills were the product of a talent that'd started very, very young, and might just be dangerous in his current packaging. It was one thing to hear tales of how his pint-sized brother had charmed his way through Bruce's galas, and another thing entirely to see it happen in real time, reproduced for a one-person audience.

"I'll be sure to tell Alva that! I know she'll get a kick out of it." Giovanni took a knee, keeping himself at eye level with Dick. "Say, son, whenever Peter here needs an evening to himself, you let me and Alva know, alright? We've got too many sweets over in our home and not enough mouths, so we'd more than appreciate help getting rid of it all."

Jason took advantage of the lull to insert himself into the conversation, trying to regain what control he still could. "That's kind of you, Mr. G, but I think we'll be okay. We've got our hands full for a while."

"We're going hunting!" Dick piped up, curls framing his head in a way that could've been called angelic if he wasn't the fucking antichrist reborn in acrobatic form.

The only think keeping Jason from throttling him like a Thanksgiving turkey was the knowledge that he knew, with absolute certainty, that the kind old man at their front door was carrying a bigger gun than he was.

Mr. G was fucking hardcore, what could Jason say? Not just anyone ran with Nygma and lived to retire with benefits.

"Oh!" Giovanni turned to Jason, eyebrows raised a little higher than they'd been before. He slowly worked himself up to his feet. "I didn't know you were in for that sort of fun. You should've told me! Alva's got a lovely six-point-five Creedmoor I'm sure she'd let you snag for the day." He set a hand to his heart and sighed. "You know, if there's one thing my Alva can do better than work a kitchen, it's land a shot square between the eyes of a white-tailed deer. What a woman."

"My brother and I'll tell you all about it once we're back," Dick promised him, like a lying liar who lied. "We're gonna do great, I think. He's strong and all, but I'm real determined. Once I got my eye set on a target, I never, ever let 'em go."

Jason stayed very, very still, because he knew exactly what Dick was doing here. What he was saying. Damn. If he hadn't seen the proof himself, he didn't know if he'd believe that the cold-blooded kiddie in front of him was the light of Gotham, the same mother fucker who'd pulled them all back from the brink of destruction time and time again.

He knew that Dick had been at risk of implosion himself over the years. It'd been intermixed in the jumbled, mumbled memories of everything that'd been awashed green from the Pit, scenes of Dick screaming his throat bloody at Bruce overriden by barked orders in the field. But what he was used to seeing was the full, glorious weight of a star pressing in on itself, so bright that it blinded even itself in its eminence.

This was raw. It was razor wounds that bled through their choo-choo train Band-Aids. Teeth that flashed in a faux grin, only to end up coated in gauze and antiseptic. As a kid, Jason had always wondered if there'd been a mistake, that he'd been destined to be a dog instead of a boy, because why else was the world so focused on his dripping maw and violent claws? Dick Grayson was a kid that meant to be put down, yet here he was. Drugged and dragged and drowned in his own himself, but still here.

With a barely smothered sigh, Jason dragged a hand over his face and sighed. It was too early for metaphors that didn't make a lick of sense. "Thanks for the offer, Mr. G. Really. Now, I don't mean to be rude, but my brother and I really have to get running. I'll see you around, yeah? Give Alva my best."

"Sure thing, Peter. You two have a great day now." With that, the old man shuffled away, arthritic and slow. Jason clicked the door shut, letting his hand rest on the knob for a moment longer than strictly neccesary. He took a beat to gather himself before turning back to the hellspawn, who had busied himself with — tying his shoes?

Jason leaned against the wall, watching quietly as Dick stuck out his tongue in concentration, clumsy fingers looping bunny-rabbit ears with his laces. He hadn't changed out his ratty pajamas for the laundry-shrunken sweats Jason was planning to pawn off on him, but it was the thought that counted, Jason supposed. After a moment, Dick nodded to himself and hopped to his feet, clicking his heels together like he was Kansas-bound.

"Ready!" he announced, a stark contrast from the shrieking, screaming scrap of a few minutes ago. Oddly enough, though, he wasn't an exact match for the darling little darling that had charmed Giovanni. This was something calmer, maybe even pleasant to be around, if that was a possibility. This, by far, was more align with the young Dick that Jason would have pictured, before this whole mess.

Then Dick tilted his head sideways, narrowing his eyes. "You smell like ass. Go change so you don't stink up the car."

Jason huffed. There it was. "Bold of you to assume I've got four wheels to spare. Give me ten to find a helmet, we're taking my bike."

His eyes lit up. "Heck yeah."

Sliding back up toward the kitchen counter, Jason quirked a lip. "Heck yeah, for sure."

"Don't patronize me, fucknut."

Then there was the pattering of fleeing feet down the hall.

Jason just shook his head. This kid. Never stuck to one thing, which was distinctly Dick-ish in a way that he hadn't considered before. Turning that over in his mind, Jason moved to clean up their attempt at a breakfast. He tossed the banana peel and was about to clean up the rest of the crumbs when he paused, hand hovering over his own meal.

There was a clean, careful bite taken out of his rice cake.

He turned to look at Dick's cereal, soggy and steeped and still otherwise untouched, then went back to his own food. He'd picked the banana slices off and everything, leaving little dips in the peanut butter where the spread had scraped off. Huh.

Weird kid.

Cass's plane still hadn't landed by the time Jason and Dick made it to the Cave. Or well, the plane had gotten to Gotham just fine. Only problem was that Tim, in his infinite wisdom, had recommended that Cass switch to a Delta flight somewhere between Budapest and Madrid, which was fucking stupid on so many levels. Tim had chalked it up to the sleep deprivation. Jason blamed natural causes.

Anyway, all of this was quite the blessing, actually. Don't get Jason wrong, Cass was definetly one of the more tolerable of Bruce's birds and bats, but her absence took one more body out of the somehow already crowded Cave. Not to mention, it forced Bruce to periodically step back and reroute her doomed flight. Always a great day when Bruce wasn't around.

As soon as they pulled up to the Manor, Alfred was already rushing Dick upstairs, to the packed-away handmedown clothes set aside for him to pick through. He brushed aside Jason's concerns over his own wellbeing, but eventually, Jason was able to get him to at least take a seat during Dick's improvised fashion show. Screw him, but he didn't want the old man's cold to develop into, like, consumption or something.

Besides, it gave Jason a nice half hour to waste away as he appreciatively ooh'd and aah'd over Dick's runway moves, until he noticed Bruce glowering from the doorway. Yeah, whatever, whatever. Jason knew he'd been pushing his luck. While Dick was changing into the final set, he dipped out into the hallway, hackles already raising over the way Bruce was scowling.

Distantly, Jason was reminded of his first month at the Manor. It had felt like every time Bruce cracked one of his ever-present frowns, Jason's heart had jumped right out of his chest. Some part of him had been certain that the man was about to grab him, push him into the wall or maybe onto the ground, lose a temper Jason couldn't find. It was only after he'd barricaded himself in the closet in a panic that Bruce's expression had begun to thaw.

Gritting his teeth, Jason pushed the memory away. It scraped his throat with overgrown thorns on the way down.

"What."

Bruce just nodded down the hall, toward the entrance to the Cave. Jason didn't budge. There was a beat, and then Bruce blinked, something draining out of him. "How is he?"

Jason just bit down on the inside of his cheek. He had to fight back the irrational urge to twist his fingers around Dick's shirtsleeve and yank him back to the bike, take him far away from this house and its bodies and it's bodies. "He's right inside," he hissed, careful to keep his voice down. "Why don't you ask him yourself?"

"He doesn't want to see me. If he did, he would have spent the night in his own bed."

"His bed is in Blüdhaven," Jason muttered, petty and petulant.

"Jason."

"What?" he snapped.

"You're not —" Bruce started, then visibly stopped himself with a sigh. There was a moment where Jason saw, in real time, as the other man edited whatever he was about to spit out. "This is about Dick," he said after a moment. "I'd really like for us to prioritize his wellbeing here."

Jason just set his jaw even tighter. "What do you think I'm doing here? It's sure as hell not 'cause of your sparkling presence."

"If you would just — "

A pint-sized prick materialized to Jason's left. "What the fuck are you two talking about?"

At that, Jason had to hide his smirk behind his fist. It was the way Dick said it that got to him. Not aggressive, or even confrontational in his own way. Just as casual as could be. What the fuck are you two talking about, bright and cheery and out of the mouth of a third-grader.

When Bruce shot him a look, clearly appealing for a hand, Jason just stared back and kept his lips firmly zipped. Yeah, you handle this one, B. After a most definetly noticable pause, Bruce murmured, "Hi, Dick. How are you feeling?"

"Facetious."

"Ah."

Dick turned to look back up at Jason, tugging softly at the bottom of his hoodie. "Are we done here? My fingers are itchin' for ditch diggin'."

Jesus. Fucking. Christ, Dick.

"You're really gonna just — say that in front of Bruce," Jason forced out, already rubbing his temples. The ulcers this brat was gonna give him, fucking hell.

"That's not Bruce. Bruce's got seven-and-a-half gray hairs. I counted 'em myself."

"You're a little freak."

Dick slammed his toes into Jason's ankle, then skittered away before Jason could swipe back at him.

Swearing softly to himself, Jason watched as Dick tore down the hall at a speed only ever recorded in Ferraris and baby panthers. He took a flying leap down the stairs, easily sticking the landing with the ease of a kid jumping rope. As he switched gears to turn the corner toward the Western Wing, Tim made the mistake of crossing paths with him. Without skipping a beat, Dick snatched the headphones off from Tim's head and tossed them into the fish tank, leaving them to sink to the bottom in a flurry of tiny bubbles.

The little shit.

Jason turned back towards Bruce, only to find the other man chuckling to himself, shaking his head slowly. When he caught Jason staring, he just shrugged with one shoulder, his nearly invisible smile creasing his wrinkles into something younger. "I missed having life breathed into these old walls," he said, by way of explantion. "You know, I never had the opportunity for more than one of you to live under my roof at any point."

Something ugly rose in Jason's chests at the sight of seeing Bruce like this. "You mean because you kicked Dick out before his eighteenth birthday? Or because you left me to bleed out before my sixteenth?"

He didn't get the reaction he wanted out of Bruce, of course. He never did. It didn't matter how cutting Jason made his words, how much toxin he let coat his tongue. Bruce never fell into the flying, violent rage that little Jason had always feared. He just blinked, and breathed, and and spoke with such calm disapointment that it made Jason's skin crawl.

And that was exactly what he did in that momet. Like always, he just looked at Jason with those tired eyes and said, "Why do you always pick a fight with me, Jason?"

Get out, whispered the acidic haze that rattled his lungs. Get out, get out, leave and never ever never come back. Get the fuck out!

It sounded like a pretty good set-up. Scratch that, it sounded fucking divine. Except Dick was here, and he wanted Jason, of all people, despite it all, and that meant something, didn't it? It had to mean something. So Jason let his eyes burn, let his shoulders tighten into something taut, and turned on his heel down toward the corner Dick had turned.

"Because the alternative is picking flowers," he barked over his shoulder. "And we both know I'd be shit at that."

As soon as Jason stepped into the Cave, he was nearly bowled over with the force of a bullet train ramming straight into his chest. It was more instinct than anything else to widen his stance, bracing himself as he scooped up the projectile and swung with the momentum, rather than against it. He was met with a pouting Dick, dangling about two feet above the aire, Jason lifting him from the armpits.

"You didn't tell me about any jailbreak," Jason said.

Dick just stuck out his tongue. "Tim's tryna stick me!"

"With?"

"A knife."

"A needle," Tim corrected, holding the telltale murder weapon beside enough chem equipment to stock one of the smaller Ivies. "And he told me he wasn't scared of getting his blood drawn. Called me a few names for doubting him and everything."

"You deserved all of them," Dick shot back, at about the same time that Jason muttered, "I'm sure you deserved it."

They stared at each other. Then Jason dropped the kid like a hot potato. He sprung off of the floor as soon as he made contact, rolling through Jason's legs. Once he was clear, Jason watched as he launched himself up the side of one of the Cave's rock walls, not unlike that fuckass monkey from Dora.

"He's so weird," Jason mumbled to himself. Then he walked over to the medkit and began to casually peel the adhesive labels off of the good drugs. Tim snatched the box out of his hands before he could get very far, though, and slammed them on a nearby table. "What's your problem?"

"My problem? Gee, where should I start?" Tim flopped down onto one of the gurneys, burying his head in the pillow.

"I mean, I'd begin with the crippling caffeine addiction, but that's just me."

"Fuck off," Tim groaned. "Just — Fuck all the way off."

Irritation crackled in his chest like a firework. In a quick motion, he yanked the pillow out from underneath his head and swung it over his shoulder, slamming into Tim's shoulder hard enough for him to yelp. "Lock the fuck in, Replacement. Nobody's got time for your moping. You think any of us want to be here right now? Just do your nerd shit so the rest of us can get some real work done."

"I've been trying," Tim said, raising his head to squint at him. "But it's not that simple. Dick didn't log any info on the trafficking gang he was tackling. O says that he's ass at staying on top of that, and that he usually goes back and fills in the blanks once he's finished a case. So I've got nothing to go on, and no one's doing shit to help me. Cass is in the middle of a Stockholm layover, Bruce can't get over himself, you're — well you're you."

Jason frowned. He gave into the urge to slap Tim upside the head. "And the demon?"

Tim paused. Jason could practically see the little loading sign behind his eyes. Then he sat up, quick as a jackrabbit, and sprinted toward the elevator. "Shit, shit, shit!"

Jason made it upstairs just in time to see a small, angry elementary-schooler bodyslam a not as small, yet somehow even angrier middle-schooler into a coffee table. The surface shattered in a spray of glass, and Jason instinctively flinched back to cover his own eyes. As soon as the collision was over, however, he was hurling himself toward the conflict. He had just enough wherewithawl to grab Dick by the collar of his hoodie and yoink him away from the mess.

"Hey, hey, the fuck is this!"

"Holy shit, Damian." Tim dove toward the coffee table, stolen med kit from earlier in-hand. "Alfred! Alfred, we need help!"

"I'm fine," Damian scoffed, already shoving Tim's hands away. Despite all other logic, he sat up easily enough, bearing his teeth. Weirdly enough, there wasn't the mottled blotchiness of bloodstains seeping through his clothes, the way Jason would have figured there'd be. It made more sense, though, when Jason realized that he was still wearing his all-but bullet-proof Robin uniform. "He barely scratched me. My returning blow, however, will warrant Pennyworth's aid."

Jason was about to snap at him for that one, only to be cut off by Dick's piercing caterwaul right next to his fucking ear, damnit. "Take it off! Take it off, take it off, take it off, take it off!"

"I bear the visage of my mentor!" Damian barked back. "I've earned these colors with honor and discipline! What right do you have to demand them, you interloping idiot?"

An odd ringing in ears, Jason felt rather than saw Bruce appear in the doorway. His heart thumped a viscious tempo in his chest, nearly on-beat with Dick's own rabid thrashing. He turned toward the other man, nearly bruising Dick's baby-soft skin with how tightly he was holding him. "You didn't tell him?!"

Bruce just gaped, uncharacteristically thrown. "I — I — "

With a hiss, Tim looped his arms around a writhing Damian, who had launched himself up from the bed of broken glass. The boy was practically frothing at the mouth in an attempt to reach Dick, who seemed hellbent to do the exact same thing. "It's Dick!" he shouted, rushed. "Damian, it's Dick, this is Dick!"

Damian immediately froze at that, going limp in Tim's straining arms. "What? No. It can't…" If it was possible, he went even more still, until Jason wan't entirely sure he was breathing. He squinted his eyes at Dick, studying him in that scrutizining way that all birds were trained to achieve. "Grayson?"

"I hate you!" Dick screamed, red in the face. "Shut up, shut up! You deserve to die. I wish you were dead."

There was a punched-out sound as Damian paled. "But I — "

"Those are my colors!" Dick shrieked, swiping out with untrimmed nails. "Those aren't yours! Give them back!" Then, to Jason's horror, he started sobbing, leaning into Jason's chest as fat tears ran down his cheeks. Brain graying out, Jason couldn't think of anything else to do besides hold him a little closer. The kid in his arms buried his face into his neck.

For a moment, all Jason could hear was Dick's wailing cries. Each new torrent broke off a piece of Jason's stomach, leaving him queasy. All the videos of Dick as a kid were so — light. Cherubic cheeks splitting into peals of laughter, angelic ringlets framing a beaming face like a halo. Never in a million years would he have thought that the real deal would be so heavy. They said to never meet your heroes, but no one ever warned you about the angry little kids that'd grow up to paper your bedroom walls.

Quietly, Tim helped Damian off of the floor. The brat actually was bleeding a fair bit, on his forehead where the uniform failed to cover. They limped out together, toward the ground level medbay. There was a beat where Bruce didn't move a muscle, just watching Jason the same way he watched fucking everything but never did shit about it, before he turned to follow them.

Jason sat there until the tears stopped. It took the better part of an hour.

He really wasn't such a pain when he was asleep. Jason watched as Dick curled up into himself, legs already tangled in the sheets. Even his little frown smoothed out into a more manageable crease. Slowly, step by step, Jason backed away. Last thing he needed was for the kid to develop some sort of psychic link that snitched on Jason's attempts to ditch him. It'd probably be just his luck, though.

Jason moved through the Manor silently. He went to the medbay first, listening with an ear to the door as Tim spoke softly to Damian. There were intermittent pauses where — by Jason's guess — Bruce was supposed to respond. Every so often, the quietude was interrupted by a quick word from Alfred. After a moment, Jason figured that the four of them were as occupied as they were going to be, and dipped down to the Cave. Right before he left, however, he heard Damian whisper, "I mess everything up."

He got to work once he got down to the Cave. Too much to do, not enough time. That sort of thing. He didn't bother hacking into the computer, since there were two Robins and a Batman that had sold their left kidney to program a strong enough firewall. Instead, he tossed the phone he'd pickpocketed from Tim onto the table and used the fake thumb to unlock it.

Oh, yeah. He'd 3D-printed an exact copy of Tim's thumb, like, ages ago. To be up front, he'd printed an entire hand, but it'd gotten boring to chop it up into bits and slowly mail Tim the pieces, so he'd kept the thumb for himself. Shout out to Ms. Ashley at the Third Street library who'd helped him figure out UltiMaker. An absolute icon.

Once he had Tim's phone open, he pulled up the notes app that Tim had with all his passwords written down. And yeah, one might think that someone as tech-conscious as Tim would have the sense not to copy every single one of his passwords into one document, but consider. Gen Z Zoomer. Next slide, please.

All that being said, it took Jason maybe three minutes to sign into the computer with Tim's credentials. Once that was up, he brought up the running theory sheet Tim had of all of Bruce's possible passwords. Most of them were senseless strings of letters, numbers, and other symbols that wouldn't make sense to the average sane person. Jason, however, had brain damage. Booyah.

He typed in one of the longer passwords to the username he'd wormed out of Bruce last time the old man had gotten fear toxin'd. That brought up the entire unrestricted Bat Computer database. With that, Jason sat back and smirked. He might not be a linguistic mastermind. He might not have a fancy-ass prep school education. He might not know what an integral was. But he was still smart, damnit.

With that, he searched Tony Zucco into the top bar and waited for the fireworks to go off.

Most of the initial data was expected. Gotham-born mobster, around fifteen suspicious disapearances linked to his name. Jason got confirmation that Zucco was, indeed, connected to Dick. He'd cut the lines for Mary and John Grayson's show, fucking hell. Just when he was hoping Bruce had locked his ass up for a long time for that one, he came across something that threw him.

Tony Zucco was already dead.

More specifically, he'd died quite a few years ago, while in prison. The log didn't give details as to how exactly it happened, but with a set-up like this, there wasn't exactly a ton of ways this could go. With cases like these, someone usually footed a huge bill in order to get the first and last swing on someone who'd wronged them.

But then Jason saw the date on the obituary. And he did the math. And he swore to himself, and swore to himself, and swore a third time, because Zucco had died less than two months after Dick's parents had died.

For the first time, Jason actually considered what it meant that the angry little kid upstairs was the same Dick Grayson that he knew. There was fire in that boy's blood. Just because time passed, it didn't mean that the flame had extinguished. For all Jason knew, that rage was still wholly present with Dick. Enough so that he maybe, possibly, might have actually gone through it.

Dick might have already killed Zucco.

Fuck. Then, again, because what else could Jason do — Fuck.