Chapter Text
Dick should have realized something was wrong when he started seeing Bruce. His estranged former guardian was, after all, three thousand miles away in Gotham City. Dick was used to hearing Bruce’s voice in his head—it was normal for that judgmental voice in your head to sound exactly like your biggest critic. What wasn’t normal was for that voice to materialize into an actual person before your very eyes.
A figment. Or a delusion. This Bruce had interacted with Dick’s environment. Mocked his investigation. Aided him when he got stuck. Dick had even fallen prey to arguing back at it.
Something was wrong with Dick. Very, very wrong. But he couldn’t waste time worrying about the why. Deathstroke had targeted his team—his family—and he couldn’t waste getting sideline over an itty-bitty (albeit annoying) hallucination.
Not that coming into the tower, waving a gun around would do much to quell his teammates’ concerns.
“What’s with the gun?” Hank asked, but Dick didn’t have time to explain. He needed an accounting of the team. He needed to make sure Deathstroke hadn’t gotten to any of them yet.
“Psst!” The figment said. “Yoohoo! There’s somebody missing.”
Dick looked over the room. Other than Conner, who was still in a coma in the infirmary, the only other person who was missing was Jason. Fuck. After what happened Jason was the last person he wanted near Deathstroke. “Where’s Jason?” Dick asked.
“Just took off,” Dawn said. “Maybe toward the stairs. Dick, what’s going on?”
“Stay here,” Dick commanded. “Watch out for the kids. I’m getting Jason.” He made a beeline for the stairs.
There was a stairwell at the end of the hallway that led directly up to the roof. There was little reason to go up to the roof short of helicopter access, and if they needed a quick retreat from the tower, then they couldn’t afford Jason to screw up their exit plan with an ill-thought-out joyride.
Jason wasn’t near the helicopter, though. When Dick arrived on the roof, he found Jason standing on the ledge, looking down below. “Jason?” Dick asked, approaching cautiously, scared he might spook the boy. What the hell was Jason thinking? It was one thing to find a perch during a patrol, but Jason looked like he was about to jump. That couldn’t be it, though. Jason would never. His mind had to be playing tricks on him again.
“I keep falling,” Jason said. It was windy, way up here. The stench of Axe-body spray wafted off of him.
The Bruce hallucination had sounded like Bruce and had looked like Bruce. But all of Dick’s other senses had screamed liar. Fake. They didn’t with Jason. One whiff told Dick all he needed to know. This was really Jason.
And he was standing on a ledge.
“You’re okay,” Dick said, and suddenly none of the other shit mattered. Deathstroke didn’t matter. Jason disobeying orders didn’t matter. The Bruce hallucination didn’t matter.
Suddenly Dick was a kid again, watching his parents plummet to their deaths. He could almost see frayed trapeze ropes dangling in front of Jason, waiting to snap. But Jason wouldn’t need broken ropes to fall. All he had to do was take one step, and by the looks of it, he was already planning on it.
“No,” Jason said. “It won’t stop.” He wouldn’t bother to look at Dick as he spoke. Instead, his gaze held steady on the building across the way, as if it mesmerized him. His head twitched and bobbed slightly as if he was reading text that scrolled by too fast. He rambled about people who tried to help him before Bruce. Called himself poison. His thoughts came out in a disjointed mess, the ravings of a man at the end of his rope. Or a boy. Dick couldn’t help but focus on how young Jason looked right now. Young and scared.
Dick sat down on the ledge next to him. That at least got a glance from the boy. “We’ll just sit up here quietly. Together.”
Jason looked away and started up again. “I fucked it all up.” He told Dick about the time he spent two nights in juvie and four people died. How? Jason didn’t elaborate. He didn’t explain his involvement. He just used it as further proof that he was cursed. “I’m the reason that kid got shot,” Jason added.
Just like Dick and Jericho. Except Jason didn’t choose to get Conner involved. Conner had come out of nowhere to save a kid—to save Jason—from falling to his death. Nobody had tracked Conner down or treated him like a pawn, carelessly putting him in harm’s way. Conner had made his own choices without any involvement with Jason—without even knowing him. But Jericho? Dick chose to involve Jericho. And those choices led to Deathstroke capturing Jason for revenge. To Jason becoming so disillusioned that he was standing here on the ledge of a roof.
This was all Dick’s fault.
“I can fix it,” Jason said. “Remove the poison.”
It really looked like he was about to jump. And all Dick could come up with to stop him was, “Jason, wait!”
And Jason did. He looked over at Dick expectantly. It was Dick’s turn to make a big, grand speech that would convince Jason to step away. To step down and to come inside. But what could he possibly say? What could Dick tell him that would change his mind? Jason was too stubborn. There was no talking him out of anything.
Maybe that was it. Maybe there was nothing that could be said to change his mind. Maybe Dick just needed to talk to him like they were teammates. Friends. Brothers. Maybe he needed to be honest and let Jason know the real reason everything in his life had gone to shit. And that it was Dick’s fault.
The Bruce-figment was back. He nodded at Dick, telling him it was time to unburden his soul.
“I killed Deathstroke’s son.”
Jason never used to be scared of heights. He used to find comfort in sitting on a fire escape, hiding from his fighting parents and watching the people below. Not that the people in the streets of Crime Alley were any less hostile, but his perch above the chaotic streets always felt safe and secure.
That safety and security was ruined the night Deathstroke dropped Jason off the roof of a skyscraper. Now, Jason couldn’t stop falling. Every time he glanced out a window, his mind wandered back to the freefall. Buildings blurred, wind rushed past his ears, and the ground was fast approaching. It didn’t matter how many times he blinked or tried to look away. His mind kept returning to that moment. It was inescapable. Maybe he could be distracted away from it for a few minutes, but his mind always returned.
There was only one way to end this. He had to finish the fall. This time no deus ex machina would fly up and catch him. This time he would be at peace.
Or he would have been if Grayson had just left things alone.
“I killed Deathstroke’s son,” Grayson said.
The words barely registered. They couldn’t be right. It was too hard to focus. Hard to stay in his reality. His mind just wanted to wander away.
“What did you say?” Jason asked, barely listening.
“I killed Deathsrokes’ son,” Grayson repeated.
He stopped falling. Instead he was back there, in that room, with Deathstroke. Every threat replayed in his head. His wrists chaffed with rope burn. His leg wound, where Deathstroke had dug out his tracker, pulsed.
A groan squeaked out of his already raw throat. He couldn’t scream anymore. He had screamed and cried and bitched enough for a lifetime, all just in that one night.
Was this why Jason had been put through all that? Revenge for Deathstroke’s son? Was Jason’s torture—was his express ride off that skyscraper—nothing more than a ploy to hurt Dick?
His legs felt wobbly. He stumbled a bit. Stumbled forward. Dick didn’t give him a chance to fall. He shot across his spot on the ledge and grabbed Jason’s arm, pulling him in the opposite direction, away from the edge. They both tumbled to the ground.
Jason’s chance was gone. He doubted he’d get another.
Now he’d never stop falling.
“I got him,” Dick said to no one in particular as he pulled Jason into a restraining hold.
There was only enough fight left in Jason to struggle out of Dick’s arms. He didn’t make another attempt for the ledge. Dick would never let him near it. Instead, Jason sat on the roof, his knees pulled up to his chest as fat tears dripped down his cheeks. His lanky arms did little to cover his face when he tried burying it behind them.
“Jason…” Dick’s voice was soft, like when he was consoling Rachel. That only made things worse. He shouldn’t need to be coddled. He should’ve just blinked away his tears and hit something, like Bruce taught him. “Just come back downstairs with me. We’ll figure it out with the others.”
“The others hate me,” Jason said, his voice cracking. “They think I fucked with their shit. I didn’t do nothing!”
“I know. Slade’s been in the tower. He still might be. That’s why we need to go downstairs. We need to come up with a plan.” Dick stood, offering his hand.
Jason’s blood went cold. Slade had been inside? All day? Fucking with him?
“He’s here to kill me,” Jason said. “Finish the job.” Looking back at the roof ledge sent a shiver down his spine that finally broke the spell. He still felt like he was falling, but he no longer wanted to finish the fall.
“I won’t let him,” Dick promised.
Jason wiped his tears away and stood, refusing Dick’s hand. He wasn’t so weak he couldn’t stand on his own. “Look, I just lost my head for a minute. Slade was messing with my mind. Don’t tell the others what happened up here, okay?”
“Jason, I—”
“No. This is your fault anyway. What the fuck did you mean you killed Slade’s son?”
It still didn’t make any sense. He had to have heard Dick wrong. Dick was Batman’s golden child. The perfect Robin. He was the unobtainable that Jason would never live up to. He would never break Batman’s most important rule.
“It’s a long story.”
“Why the fuck bring it up if you’re not going to tell me?”
“I will… I need to tell everyone. Just come inside and you can gang up with everyone else to tell me how awful I am.”
He really didn’t need the backup to tell Dick off. “Fuck everyone else!” Jason said. They had just accused him of so much that there was no doubt he’d somehow be blamed for this too. He wiped his eyes again, sure they were puffy and red. “Hey Dick…” he winced at the softness of his own voice.
“Yeah, Jay?” Dick asked.
“None of them give a fuck about me—”
“—that’s not tru—”
“—why do you?”
There was a long pause. Then Dick finally said, “Because you’re Bruce’s kid.”
The words felt like a dagger, right in his heart. Dick was supposed to say anything, anything, but that. He was supposed to say because you’re my brother. Teammate. Family. Anything that cemented a connection between them.
That’s what Dick would have said for anyone else.
But Bruce’s kid? Was that all he was to Dick? Just Bruce’s dirty little favor. No wonder Dick had let him fall the first time. Dick probably still resented that Bruce even took in another kid.
“Yeah, well, fuck Bruce too. And fuck this team. I don’t want to be a Titan anymore.”
There was a long pause. Maybe Dick would backtrack. Tell him what Jason really meant to him.
“Fine,” Dick said, not even pretending to fight for him. He actually sounded relieved. “I’ll make the arrangements for you to go back to Gotham. But right now we have to deal with the Deathstroke issue.”
Dick placed his hand on the small of Jason’s back. It wasn’t a brotherly gesture. It was a motion of a guard demanding its charge to move. They went back inside the tower without another word.