Chapter Text
It was way too early for drinks, Jason thought while he stared at the lukewarm beer in his hands and pretended to listen to whatever game the bar’s television was playing. The sorority girls on the back disagreed, but their obnoxiously loud presence was comforting, as was that of the kids playing pool on the other side of the room. As long as he focused on the harmless white noise around him he could ignore the treacherous thoughts in his head.
If they knew he was back in Gotham, they weren’t making any attempt to contact him.
The scar on his neck from the batarang itched, but he refused to acknowledge it. He had managed to disinfect and bandage it before going completely in denial. A few months later and it hadn’t scarred well, but it also wasn’t infected. Still hurt less than the radio silence.
He wasn’t hiding.
The college bar? Not his usual scene, but public enough. Only going out in the daylight? A little odd, but not unheard of. Ditching the helmet and the bat on his chest? It’s not like they didn’t know what he looked like.
The world’s greatest detective could find him if he really wanted to.
But if they were waiting for him to start some shit to decide to give him the time of day, well that just hurt even more.
The bartender was getting suspicious, though. He wasn’t much of a drinker and holding on to the same beer for forty-five minutes without drinking it would definitely raise some flags. He was young enough to blend in with the college crowd, but he also looked like a thug. The guy probably thought he was a drug dealer or in some shady business. In another life, yeah. He couldn’t remember which one, but sounded about right.
He would leave at sunset, he just couldn’t stand the bare walls of the empty apartment for long stretches of time.
The young girl plopping down on the seat next to him bewildered him. No alarms went off on his head, and he was confident enough in his instincts to trust it. He also wasn’t the kind of guy to get that kind of attention. Handsome, he was told. But too big, too intimidating. Too many scars. Most girls knew better than to entertain guys that looked like him.
Not this one, apparently. Blond hair, blue eyes, pretty face. Tight jeans and pink sweater. Packing some muscle too, maybe a cheerleader? Maybe stop checking her out, weirdo, he thought to himself.
She flagged the bartender. “Can I get another vodka cranberry, please? Put it on his tab.” She said, nodding at him.
Jason exchanged uncertain stares with the bartender, but shrugged and fished a ten from his jacket pocket. “I don’t have a tab, but sure. I also don’t have any drugs, if that’s what you’re looking for.”
Her grin was wicked. “Yeah, I heard your empire went to shit after the family ran you out of town.”
That knocked the wind right out of him. He watched her watching him while way too many emotions crossed his face. It started on shock and landed on resignation, he knows that much. He finally noticed the scars on her knuckles. “Oh,” he said. “I see.”
Whatever she saw on his face changed her demeanor too, her bravery turning to doubt real fast.
He stood up and dropped another ten on the counter. “Enjoy your drink, miss.” Whoever you are.
She grabbed his wrist before he could get very far. “No, wait. I’m sorry. Please don’t go.”
He froze. When was the last time someone had touched him that casually? And apologized. And asked him to stay. He closed his hand in a fist to stop the tremors and she let go of him immediately. No, he wanted to say. That’s not what I meant.
He didn’t say anything and waited.
“I shouldn’t have said that”, she whispered softly. "I wanted to talk to you, but I thought you’d be angry.”
He huffed, but didn't sit back down next to her. “No, I’m all out of that.”
The girl had a soft look in her eyes that made him want to walk away, climb back into the earth and stay put this time.
“Can we try this again? I’d really like to know you better.”
“Why?” He asked, genuinely baffled for a moment. If she knew enough to recognize him, she should know enough to not want to know more. “And who are you, exactly?”
She got up and gestured to a corner booth, being careful not to touch him. This felt safer, and he could start to feel the floor under his feet again. He thought he could talk to her, if her unsureness matched his.
“I’m Stephanie.” She said, as he chose the seat on the booth with the most advantageous view of the room. “I work with Barbara.”
“Hm. Not Bruce?” It made sense, somewhat. His relationship with Barbara before his passing was very civil, bordering on friendly. And he was very careful to not bother her since. “How is she, by the way?”
“I did for a while, not anymore. Barbara's good. She’s Oracle now. Monitors the city, passes up intel, keeps us alive, that sort of thing.” Her tone was so different from the smug one from before. He took a deep breath, finally settling more comfortably into his own skin.
“Was she the one who told you where to find me?”
“No, she doesn’t know I’m here.” Dangerous thing, to not have your mentor know your whereabouts.
“But does she know I’m here?”
“...She knows you’re back.”
He nodded. If Bruce was ignoring him, then everyone else would be under orders to do the same. So why was this girl here with him? He told her as much and asked the question.
“He didn’t actually order anything.” She said, defensively.
He shrugged. “He doesn’t have to. Dick follows his lead, and everyone else follows him. Isn’t that what’s happening?”
She thought about it for a bit. “I guess. But no one told me to stay away from you.” He waved her off and signaled for her to get on with actually answering the question. She sighed. “I wasn’t looking for you. I go to Gotham U, I’m here with some friends from my dorm.”
He blinked, surprised and sort of delighted.
“You’re in college? What major?”
“Nursing,” she said, and he couldn’t help it— he felt absurdly charmed.
He couldn’t help the small, wry quirk of his lips. “Helping people in the daylight, huh… I haven’t done much of that myself.”
She snorted, a hint of a smile tugging at her lips. Jason studied her again, not as a potential threat or a pretty girl, but as a puzzle piece that didn’t fit the picture he had of his family. She was real, untamed, and somehow… just herself.
“What did they tell you about me?” he asked finally, his voice low. He braced himself for the sanitized legend, the cautionary tale they’d probably woven for the new recruits.
Stephanie’s gaze dropped to her drink, stirring the ice with her straw. “Not much. Almost nothing, really.” She looked up, her blue eyes meeting his directly, and he saw no pity there, just a blunt honesty that was more refreshing than any lie. “I know you were Robin. I know what happened to you.”
“What did they say happened to me?”
He had to hear it. He had to know what version of his tragedy they were telling.
“They said you died a hero,” she said softly.
The laugh that escaped him was a short, sharp, painful sound—more like a bark of protest. It held years of bitterness. “I died a fool.”
To his utter astonishment, a mirroring, self-deprecating smile touched her lips. “Oh, same.”
“What?”
“I died a fool too,” she said, the words tossed out like nothing. “When I was Robin.”
Jason tilted his head, trying to read her. “You were Robin? When?”
“I was, for like five minutes,” she said with a wave of her hand, like it wasn’t magic, like it wasn’t everything. “Tim was out. He got it back after I kicked it, though.” Her tone was flat, calm—but it carried a hint of irony, like she was used to laughing at herself.
A hundred things he wanted to ask, but none of them bigger than this: two dead Robins in a college bar. It was a cosmic joke written as tragedy.
“How did you come back?”
“I wasn’t dead dead,” she clarified, and he could appreciate the distinction. “Not like you. My heart stopped, but doctors brought me back. And Leslie faked my death so I could recover in peace.”
She said it like it was a simple chain of events, but he could hear the echoes of pain and isolation in the spaces between the words.
He knew that story, too.
A recovery that looked like healing but wasn’t.
“Oh,” he said, the word inadequate.
He felt a kinship he hadn’t asked for, but couldn’t shake. His own story was a gaping wound, but hers was a hidden scar he’d never known to look for. The dynamic shifted. He wasn't the sole exhibit in the museum of tragic sidekicks anymore.
Leaning forward, his own pain momentarily shelved by a surge of morbid, professional curiosity, he asked the question. “How did you die, then?” pondering the absurd complexity of their existence.
She took a sip of her drink, her eyes watching him over the rim of the glass. The bravado flickered. “Black Mask tortured me. There was a gang war that may have been my fault.” She offered a jagged smile that didn't reach her eyes. “It was a whole thing.”
Jason leaned forward, his elbows on the sticky table. The earlier tension had melted, replaced by a grim, almost academic fascination. Two case studies in catastrophic failure, comparing notes.
“How did he torture you?” The question was blunt, from one survivor to another.
She raised an eyebrow, incredulous. “Why the hell do you want to know that?”
He shrugged, too casual by half. “Curiosity. Call it due diligence.”
She gave him a slow, incredulous look. She then let out a short, sharp breath that was almost a laugh. “Knives, mostly.” She looked down at her own hands, flexing them slightly as if remembering the feel of the blade. “And a drill, once. For emphasis.”
Jason gave a slow, impressed nod, leaning back slightly as a low whistle escaped him. “Impressive.”
She blinked at him. “Impressive?”
He shrugged again, almost absentmindedly. “It’s… precise. Focused. Most people break quickly when faced with that.”
“You know, you’re creepy sometimes.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly, eyes drifting somewhere else for a second, “well… mine was a crowbar. Then a bomb. But what actually killed me was the smoke.”
Her eyes went wide. “Wait—you were alive after the explosion?”
“Yeah.” The word was simple, final, and carried the weight of a universe of pain. He looked past her, at the stained wood of the wall, but he wasn’t seeing it. He was seeing concrete dust and darkness. “Gave me plenty of extra time to think.”
He brought his gaze back to hers, and it was terrifyingly empty. “I thought… I really thought he’d make it. That he’d swoop in at the last second. That’s how it’s supposed to go, right?” He gave a small, brittle shrug that was the most heartbreaking thing Stephanie had ever seen. “He didn’t, though.”
Jason expected her to flinch away from the ugliness of it, from the pathetic hope that had been his final thought.
She didn’t.
Instead, she moved. Slowly, giving him every chance to pull back, she reached across the sticky table. Her fingers, warm and solid despite their scars, closed over his clenched fist where it rested beside his beer.
It wasn’t sympathy. It was a quiet nod to the truth: some pain doesn’t vanish, it lingers.
And for the first time since he’d crawled out of his grave, Jason felt the chilling solitude around him thaw by a single, crucial degree.