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“Hey Dick.”
“Jason?”
“Yeah.”
“How did you- I didn't recognise the number. Where are you?”
“Your number hasn't changed since you gave it to me. Of course I remember it.”
“What- when did-? No- Jason, where are you?”
“...I'm not gonna tell you that.”
“Why?”
“Why do you wanna know?”
“I want to know if you're okay!”
“I'm doing alright.”
“Tell us where you are, and we'll come get you.”
“Oh, hey Barbie.”
“-Jason-”
“Stop. Both of you. Just stop.”
He breathes in, breathes out.
“Dick. Why do you care how I'm doing?”
“Of course I care!”
“There's no of course there, Dickie. If you care right now, how long is that gonna last?”
“I-”
Jason cuts him off. “I can't rely on you, Dick. I can't rely on either of you.
"…Bruce never hid what he was doing to me.
"And I never hid how I felt about it.
"I asked you for help, Dick. And you didn't want to give it. You really didn't. Instead, you deliberately fucked me up so bad that I tried to kill myself in front of you. And even after that you didn't care. Fuck, I've tried to die multiple times in front of you, and you've never- you don't notice.”
They stay silent, dreadfully, awfully.
“And you don't either, Babs.”
“Jason, I-”
“Stop.
"I can't- I can't trust that you will care about me. Not with any consistency.
"Bruce did what he did openly. Right out in public. He didn't hide it. He never hid it, because he didn't need to. And even the shit that no one else saw, I could tell you about it right in front of him, and he didn't bother to keep me quiet - because no one was gonna stop him, especially not you.
"…I don't- I don't feel safe around you. Around either of you.”
“Jason, please, I didn't-”
Dick stops her. “Babs, don't.”
Jason says, “Dick, you don't. These moments like this, they're worse than anything. The moments where I think you might actually give a shit.”
“I do- I do care. Jason-”
“For how long? You care about me when it's easy. When it's convenient.
"As soon as I do something you don't approve of, you'll stop. And you won't even talk to me about it first.”
“Fine! You want to talk about it first?” Barbara says. “You killed Firefly.”
Here they go again. “I did. He was doing his best to burn Gotham to the ground.
"And here's a question for you. When you heard that I killed someone again, what was your first thought? What was the first thing you were gonna do?
"Lemme guess. It was hunt me down and either yell at me, or beat the shit out of me.”
There's a long awful silence.
Softly, Jason says, “You thought I'd stopped killing. What, because B put something in my head? ‘Cause he finally hit me hard enough? That was never why I stopped.”
Finally, finally, Dick asks “Why did you stop?”
“Because I wanted to have my family back.
"But it didn't work. And it's never going to.
"Because me being your brother is conditional.”
“It's not. Jay, I-”
“You sure about that? Maybe it's not for the rest of ‘em. Hell, maybe it's not for me either - because the truth is I'm actually not your family. And I never will be.
"And I'm gonna stop trying. So- so you should stop trying too.
"Don't look for me. Just leave me alone.”
Dick says, “Babs-”
Derisively, Jason says, “You think I'm somewhere you can track, don't you. There's a reason I called you from here. This isn't where I was, and it's not where I will be.
"And if, Oracle, you do try to track me down, I will melt your servers to slag.”
“For what- for trying to make sure you're okay!”
“You believe that, huh. And how long til it's making sure I'm not doing something you don't approve of?
"You don't trust me. It's been a long time since you've tried.”
“Since we've- If you stopped teaming up with criminals-”
“I team up with them to mitigate the damage! I go undercover to try and work out what they're really up to!
"Dickie goes undercover, and we might be pissed about how he did it, but we understand what he's doing! He worked with Spyral to try and stop them!
"But I go undercover, and it's because I don't know what I'm doing, I'm going down a dark path, I'm doing something I can't come back from! I tell you what I'm doing, and you can't be bothered to listen!”
“It's not like that!”
Jason scoffs. “Are you sure about that?”
Shit. He doesn't want to fight. That's not- that's not what he's trying to do here.
“Look, just forget about it. It's fine.”
It's not fine, but he wants to get this over with. He knows they don't trust him. And he knows- “Just- I already know what's gonna happen, if it isn't already.”
They think he's an absolute fuck up, who kills for no reason, who has no idea what he's doing. They don't get it, and they never will. Jason had tried to tell B, over and over, had begged him to just listen- B never had. But that doesn't mean that Jason had wanted him dead. (It doesn't matter that Jason can breathe, now. He wants to feel free, and still have B be alive.) (He wanted his dad.) (But B hadn't been that man in…a long time.)
“I didn't ask for it to happen. But someone with my name, and my face, killed Bruce, and the Joker. It doesn't matter that he did it to protect me, and you, and everyone else.”
(Jason knows that's why: the Red Hood had given him the evidence he'd shown to the League, and the video of him doing it, and the video of what he'd said later, when he'd shown them what B had put in Jason's head. Because, apparently, he thought Jason deserved to know.)
“But he's gone. He's not here anymore. And I am. I'd bet that sooner or later, one of you is gonna say that I'm responsible for what happened to Bruce. That I as good as killed him.”
There's an ugly silence. Yeah. Someone's already implied it.
Because Jason had made the stupid mistake of telling Dick that he could breathe, with B gone.
Jason snorts, halfway to a sob, “Because what- Because Bruce fucked me up the worst, and someone with my name and face decided that yeah, he did need stopping before he fucked me up even more. And it doesn't matter to you that he did it for you too.
"I didn't ask the other Red Hood to do it. I never would have.
"But you will never believe that.
"And I'm not sticking around for that shit. Gotham is my home. There's nothing you can do that will change that. I will come back, and I might even let you know when I'm in town.
"But I won't be coming back to you.”
He hangs up. He doesn't want to hear anything else they have to say.