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The warehouse is bitter cold, worse than any New Jersey winter Steph has experienced in her time. He’s hunched over in a corner, hyperventilating, every breath strangled. She walks slowly over to him and kneels in front of him, her knees hitting the concrete floor and landing in a shallow pool of his blood.
“Fuck off,” he rasps. “If you’re here to put me out of my misery, get it the fuck over with. Batman’s not coming.”
“Jason,” she says, and he forces himself upright, wild-eyed. She realises with a start he thinks that Joker has come back to finish the job.
“Who’re you?” Jason looks her up and down, or as well as he can with one eye swollen shut. “Some knockoff Batgirl wannabe?”
Steph’s mouth quirks into a smile. “Something like that.”
Distantly, she can hear the timer ticking down. She knows he can hear it too. Her Jason has told her the story enough times, whispered in the dark while they cuddle under the sheets. This Jason, though? He’s just a kid. Her heart hurts.
“I don’t need your help,” he spits, scabbling backwards. “Whatever sick joke this is, I don’t want your help. Tell Joker he can fuck off.”
“I’m not with the Joker,” she says, though she knows it’s somewhat futile. Explaining demons and magic and time travel and fixed points might all be a bit much for this Jason, this tiny, fourteen-year-old Jason. His hair is still all dark. It’s weird to see. “I can’t get you out of here. I just wanted to sit with you...until help comes.”
It’s a lie, and they both know it. But he rocks backward, slumping against some of the wooden crates behind him.
“Okay,” he says after a moment, spitting blood and one lone molar out onto the concrete. “I’ll play. Who are you, then?”
“My name is Stephanie,” she says. There’s no point lying. “I fight crime in Gotham, too.”
“How come I’ve never seen you?” He’s clutching his chest, just over his ribs. Steph thinks back on the autopsy report. Collapsed lung, broken ribs, ruptured spleen. He must be in a world of pain right now. She knows better than most just how bad.
“I work alone.” Steph’s lips quirk up in a smile. How many times has she – have they both – heard that line from Bruce? Too many to count. The Jason in front of her seems to think it’s funny too, because he grins at her. In addition to the molar he just spat out, he’s missing an incisor, leaving a gap in his teeth that would be cute on an elementary schooler but just looks wrong on his teenage self. She’ll have to ask him when she gets back if the teeth grew back in the Lazarus Pit, or if he got implants. His mouth is all blood.
“You’re a bad liar,” he tells her.
“I’m a fantastic liar,” she replies. “You’ve just always been too perceptive to believe it.”
He studies her for a moment, a little furrow in his brow. He’s missing the eyebrow scar her Jason has, missing all the scars her Jason has, come to think of it. There’s a familiarity about him, though. His smile doesn’t change between now and the future.
“How do we know each other?” He says, tilting his head. He coughs. More blood spills from his lips, but he waves her off when she reaches for him, wiping it onto his glove. “You’re some kind of time traveller, right?”
She nods. “Yes.”
“So, I make it out of this?” He looks hopeful, for a moment. The streaks of blood on his face are drying in the cold air.
“You know I can’t answer that,” she says quietly, looking down.
“Please, Steph,” he says, and it sounds so much like her Jason it knocks the air out of her. “You wouldn’t come to this moment unless it means something to whatever version of me you know.”
She looks down at her hands. “I just didn’t want you to be alone.”
The ticking seems to have kicked up a notch.
“I’ve been alone for a while now, I think I can handle whatever’s coming,” he snorts. Jason draws a knee to his chest, clearly causing himself pain, but it allows him to rest his elbow there. She’s pretty sure that’s the arm he broke. It has to be killing him.
“I didn’t want you to be alone…when you die,” she whispers, meeting his eyes. They’re a brilliant, brilliant blue. “I know how much it hurts you that no one was here.”
Jason exhales slowly. “Batman’s really not coming, huh?”
“He tries,” she says. “I promise you he tries.”
Jason lets out a strangled laugh. He sounds dangerously close to crying. He closes his eyes, and holds out a hand to her.
“Okay,” he says. “I don’t want to be alone.”
Steph takes it, closing her hand over his and holding on tight.
“Hey, Steph?” He cracks open one eye to look at her. “What happens to you when the bomb goes off?”
“If the spell worked how it was supposed to,” she says, squeezing his hand, “I get returned to my own time.”
“Oh,” he says. Then, “What if it kills you?”
“Then I die with someone I love very much.”
Jason swallows. After a moment, he says, “I can’t wait to meet you. In the future.”
She smiles at him and scooches a little closer. “I don’t think you’ll have any memories of this, so that should all still happen how it’s supposed to.”
“Great,” he lets out a little laugh, then swallows again, taking a shuddering breath. “Hey, Steph?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you see the timer? My eyes are all blurry.”
Her eyes flicker towards the little red numbers in the distance. They’re getting closer. A lot closer. They have less than a minute left. She takes a deep breath and reaches over to push the hair back off his face. It’s sticky with dried blood.
“Jason,” she says firmly. “You won’t remember this, so I can say it. I love you. You will make it through this. Things will be awful for a long, long time, but one day we’ll meet and both of our lives will get better, okay?”
“Okay,” he wheezes. “I believe you.”
They’ve got to be under twenty seconds by now.
“Steph, I don’t know if future me tells you this, but I love you, too.”
Her heart stutters in her chest. There’s a resounding boom, and a flash of light, and everything vanishes before Steph’s eyes.
It’s… the Batcave? He’s pretty sure this is the Batcave. He spots the giant penny and the T-rex and breathes a short sigh of relief, because it is the Batcave, just with so much future tech it looks like something out of a Star Trek movie.
It’s empty, except for a woman sitting at the monitors, her long blonde hair streaked with grey. He squares his shoulders and approaches her. He’s a little confused – this spell was meant to take him to Steph’s worst moment, and instead it’s dumped him…here. Whenever here is.
“Steph?” He asks cautiously, and she whirls around, flinging a batarang at him so fast he has to really hustle to dodge it.
“Jason?” She sounds…afraid. She’s staring at him like she’s seen a ghost.
“In the flesh!” Jason offers her one of his trademark cocky grins, the one that makes his Steph absolutely melt at the sight of him, but this Steph…this older Steph…flinches.
“I don’t know what kind of joke this is but get the hell out of my cave.”
He stops. He’s only a few feet away from her. She has another batarang poised in her hand, and he knows this time she won’t miss. He raises his hands in the universal gesture of peace and takes a step closer.
“It’s not a joke,” he says earnestly. “I used a spell to travel to your darkest moment, and apparently it’s…this? Which is not what either of us expected.”
She covers her face with one hand and rubs her temples, muttering something about Jason and his harebrained schemes. She drops back into her chair and spins around to face the screens, and Jason finally stops to look at them.
It’s…him. They’re all of him. His entire life, laid out on these screens, from birth to –
“Oh, shit,” he says, stepping closer. “Am I dead?”
“Yes,” Steph says. She sounds…bitter. Tired and bitter. It’s a far cry from the Steph he knows.
“Like, for real? Dead dead.”
“Yes, Jason.” She looks up at him with resignation, shaking her head. “It’s been ten years to the day.”
“Ten years?” He looks back up to the monitors. He looks good, a little older. A little slimmer, more grey in his hair. There’s a scar running down one side of his face that he hasn’t got yet, but it looks badass. It probably fucking sucked to get, though. “Steph? Can I sit?”
“You’re going to anyway, so you might as well,” she sighs.
He grabs a nearby chair and pulls it over, straddling it and peering at her face. There’s the faintest wrinkles around her eyes, and she has reading glasses, a pair of thin black frames perched on her nose. He has so many questions for her. How did he die? Does he accomplish anything between his time and this one? Did they stay together? But that’s not why he’s here.
Instead he asks, “Are you okay?”
Steph lets out a vicious laugh. “It’s ten years to the day my husband died, and his ghost just popped up to annoy me. What do you think, Jason?”
“I’m not a ghost.” He reaches for her hand, and she stiffens, but lets him take it. She’s still wearing the ring. He recognises it – it was his mother’s. He didn’t even know he still had that. “Do you…want to talk about it?”
Steph looks away, her eyes brimming with tears. “I want it to have never happened.”
Jason pauses, studying her for a moment. Quietly he asks, “Who’s Batman right now?”
“Dick, and it’s damn near killing him,” Steph sighs. “Cass is Batwoman. Tiffany is Batgirl. Damian is Nightwing. There’s…others.” She waves her hand kind of dismissively. “I know that’s not what you want to ask.”
“What are you?”
She gives him a wry smile. “A poor imitation of Oracle.”
His eyes flicker toward the screen. “Shouldn’t you be, you know? Oracle-ing?”
“I gave everyone the night off,” she sighs, rubbing her forehead. “They know I’m no good to them today, and the crime rate’s been down.”
“So, what are you doing down in the cave?”
Steph grabs a glass of whiskey off the desk and holds it up to him. “Reminiscing.”
He looks at this Steph, this tired, sad Steph, as she takes a sip. He’s getting a feeling he knows why this is her darkest moment, but he doesn’t want to spook her, so instead he runs his thumb across her knuckles gently. A stray tear rolls down her cheek.
“You know how important you are, right?” He asks. “I don’t know about this time, but in my time, you’re kind of the glue that holds the family together.”
“Still true,” she says with a dry chuckle. “I just got a lot worse at it, Jason.”
His heart breaks at those words. Steph has always been radiant to him – but the woman sitting in front of him, her light’s dimmed. She looks defeated in a way he doesn’t think he can fix. Still, he can hope – maybe – that this interaction is enough to keep her going. The world needs its Spoiler, its Robin, its Batgirl – its Oracle, even. Steph needs to fight another day, and all the days after that.
He gets to his feet, kneeling in front of her. Gently, he lets go of her hand and cups her face, pressing a gentle, tender kiss to her lips. She pulls back after a moment and, with a shaking hand, strokes his cheek.
“You can’t fix this,” she says, looking down at him. “I’m becoming something of a lost cause.”
“You know what you told me, once?” Jason asks earnestly. “You told me you don’t give up on lost causes.”
Steph chuckles, tucking a strand of grey-streaked blonde behind her ears. “I did say that, didn’t I?”
“You did,” he confirms. He takes both her hands in his. “I’m sorry I’m gone. But Steph, I really hope our life together was worth it.”
She smiles, and it’s a tiny glimpse into that radiant light that lives inside the Steph of his time. “Oh, it was. Every damn minute of it.”
He leans in close, and murmurs into her ear, “Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.”
“You are such a nerd,” she laughs, and he grins, because there, that’s his Steph. “Oh, Jason. I love you.”
“I love you too, Steph,” he says. “Every version of you. When I go back to my time, I hope I get to remember you like this.”
They open their eyes.
Steph’s hands are on him in an instant, his face, his hair, his shoulders, his hands. He cradles her to his chest, pressing a kiss to the top of her head, closing his eyes and thanking whatever God there is that they both made it back in one piece.
They both know that magic is unpredictable, so Steph has never felt more grateful to be in present-day Gotham as this very moment. She pulls him close and captures him in a kiss, vaguely aware of the flickering candlelight around them, the chalice of blood that has spilled on the floor at their feet.
“We’re back,” she breathes, looking up at him. Jason gazes down at her like she’s everything.
“We’re back,” he confirms. He brushes her bangs back off her face and takes a deep breath. He says again, more firmly this time, “We’re back.”
“Do you remember?” Steph asks, tracing her fingers down his cheekbone. “Do you remember me being there?”
“I remember…” Jason trails off, thinking. He does remember, but the details are fuzzy. In the moments before he died, a beautiful blonde angel in a Batgirl costume had held his hand, told him everything would be alright. He’s not sure if she said anything else. But he knows it was her, that she was there. “You held my hand.”
Her face breaks out into a smile, and she beams at him, his radiant girl. “I did!”
Jason presses another kiss to her forehead.
Steph pulls back, smile fading. “I don’t…I don’t remember you, though. Not anywhere I thought you’d be.”
“I…” Jason hesitates. “I went to the future.”
Steph wrinkles her nose, not quite sure she believes him. “The future?”
“Yes.”
“Our future?”
In a manner of speaking, he thinks, but he doesn’t voice it out loud. She studies him. She can tell there’s something he’s not saying, but she also knows him well enough that he’ll tell her eventually, when he’s had a bit more time to think about whatever he saw that’s got him rattled.
She threads their fingers together and leans in close, whispering, “Were there flying cars?”
“There’s flying cars now,” he laughs.
“The Batmobile does not fucking count, and you know it,” she says, rolling her eyes. “When I can buy a flying car on a social worker’s salary, it counts. Until then… not so much.”
“There was a lot of cool tech,” he says, and her eyes light up. “Some real Star Trek shit. The Batcave looked like something out of an episode of DS9.”
Steph hums, standing on her tiptoes and pressing their foreheads together. With a sigh she says, “I’m glad I got to be with you. You were so…”
Scared, sad, alone. It’s all true, and they both know it. Jason squeezes her hand, wishing he could express his gratitude, but the words that come to mind are empty. He thought – they both thought – he would end up with her in the moments before she escaped Black Mask, or maybe with her the day she gave up her daughter, or the last time she tried to kill her father.
He doesn’t know how to tell her it was none of that, that it was worse. Her arms circle around his waist and pull him close, and he hangs on, tight as he can bear. A world without Steph in it isn’t worth living. He’ll never know what future Steph does after he disappeared, but he can love and cherish this Steph with everything in his heart and pray to St Jude he can alter the future enough that they grow old together.
It may be a lost cause, but he can try. He tries not to think about the term fixed points too hard.
Steph rubs his back, slow and careful. She swallows and asks, “Was it bad?”
“Yeah,” he says, suddenly breathless. It was bad.
“For you or me?”
She knows he won’t answer, but she leans back to gaze in his eyes, still brilliant blue. They flicker away under the weight of her gaze, and she thinks she can guess. Bad for him in a mortal way, but bad for her in a worse way. Okay. She can take that knowledge with her, whenever it happens.
“Hey,” she says, and he looks back at her again, the corner of his mouth quirking upwards in a sad smile. “You know I love you, right?”
Jason pulls her in for another kiss. Slow and tender. Like the world will stop spinning, like the clocks will stop ticking, like their hearts will stop beating so they can do this forever.
Nothing is stopping us from doing this forever, Steph thinks. Nobody but us knows we’re here.
They have all the time in the world.