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“Jay,” Dick’s voice said, filtering through the phone. There was a long moment of silence, broken only by stifled sobs. “I’m sorry, I-... I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Dick’s voice broke. “I would have come to your funeral if Bruce told me you were dead. I would have come to your rescue too, I would have-” Another heaving sob.
The one thing Jason hadn’t expected to get back, especially not in a working state, was his phone. But when he’d broken into Wayne manor to look at his room, it had been there, put on his desk.
His room had been oddly untouched.
Jason hadn’t stayed long.
He’d taken the phone with him though.
Now he was staring at it as it finished the first of dozens and dozens of voice messages from Dick. They ranged back to some time after his funeral and went on for months.
Dick hadn’t known he had died? Anger flared up, familiar, green and burning. He’d been so mad at his older brother, had felt so betrayed by what Talia had told him, but he should have known she had twisted the truth. Of course it was Bruce’s doing.
He clicked on the next recording.
“Hey Jason.” Immediately he could tell that Dick was crying. “Me and B had another fight today.” The young man took a shuddering breath. “I asked him why the fuck he couldn’t be arsed to tell me.” A hitch. “He said the mission comes first.” Another hitch. “I yelled at him and he-” Dick’s voice broke.
Jason’s hands balled into fists. The mission came first.
The mission always, always came first.
“He said- He said-” Jason checked the recording, but it was running smoothly. Dick of the past was simply caught in some kind of loop. “He asked why I even cared when I was a shit brother to you.”
Jason froze and more green moved into his view. How dare Bruce. How. Dare. He. How dare he judge Dick for how he’d coped in the beginning, hesitant to interact with Jason when Jason was at the manor where Bruce was.
In the beginning, Jason had thought that he was the problem. And yes, Dick hadn’t been a very good brother. Or a brother at all.
But then Jason had gotten the flu while Batman was on a mission and Dick had come to stay at the manor, enduring Jason’s hissed insults and thinly veiled aggression at what he saw as offered charity, and had still brought him soup and read to him and told him stories.
Bruce had come back and Dick had slipped away before the man could see him, but he had left his number in Jason’s phone.
They’d been close after, as close as two brothers that didn’t live together could be.
They both had issues with distance and attachment, but they worked around it. Eventually, Dick had told him about how he had lost Robin. About how his…their father had taken his title from him, the name his late parents called him. How he had kicked Bruce out and how the titans had made sure Dick had a place to stay and time to get his feet back under him.
Jason had been horrified, but Dick had assured him that he didn’t need to feel bad for taking Robin and that he needed to have his own opinion about Bruce.
And Bruce…well, Bruce was the best parent Jason had ever had. He listened to Jason and took care of all of his needs. Sure, he was harsh and sure, he said things that weren’t alright, but he apologised.
He always apologised.
“And he’s right,” Dick said miserably and the recording ended.
Jason felt the urgent need to punch something.
An hour later, there was a new hole in his wall and Jason was sitting on the couch, a burrito bowl in his lap, his knuckles freshly wrapped.
He clicked on the third recording.
“I dreamed you were alive today.” Dick was crying again and Jason wondered if he was crying for all…he checked the phone…84 messages he’d left. He hoped not. He hoped his brother would stop sounding so broken up about his death. “My therapist said that’s normal. She encouraged me to keep doing the recordings, but she also said I need to remember that you’re-” A sob. The recording ended before Dick could get himself to say the word.
Jason’s chest clenched.
“Alfred and me went out for breakfast today,” Dick started in the next one. He didn’t appear to be crying and Jason relaxed slightly. There was almost a three week time gap between that one and the previous one. He wondered if Dick had been too sad to record or if he had been getting better. Grief was weird like that. It moved on a different timeline depending on the person.
“He says that he’s worried about Bruce,” Dick continued.
Jason’s jaw clenched. Everything came back to Bruce. That man couldn’t leave Dick the fuck alone, physically or mentally.
“But he says that it’s not my problem,” the man continued and Jason lifted an eyebrow. He doubted Alfred had phrased it like that. “He said I should focus on myself.” Dick barked out a bitter laugh. “He said he’d even bring me food sometimes without B knowing.”
Something in Jason eased when he realised that his honorary grandfather had been taking care of his brother.
There was silence on the recording and when Dick spoke next, over five minutes later, his voice was choked with tears. “I miss you, little wing.”
Jason blankly stared at his floor, unsure why that had made his eyes burn.
Carefully, he reached out and listened to it again.
“I miss you, little wing.”
He would not cry. He was an adult, technically anyway, even if the moniker ‘teen’ still applied to him, and a crime lord. He would not cry.
“I miss you, little wing.”
Jason cried.
~•~
Two weeks and thirty recordings later, Jason finally reached one where Dick wasn’t crying. He hadn’t been able to stomach more than two or three of the short ones in the beginning per day. When he’d scrolled up however, he’d seen that a lot of the newer ones were long, at the very least half an hour and one of them even spreading to five hours.
Jason was immensely curious about that one. Dick might have forgotten he was recording.
He didn’t want to skip ahead though, so this one it was, only a little under five minutes.
“Roy came by today.” Jason’s heart skipped a beat at his…friend’s name. Another person he should reach out to eventually.
The man curled his fingers around his gun, the recording playing through his helmet while he waited for his stakeout to get somewhere.
“He had a lot of opinions.” Dick laughed wryly. It sounded like it was scraping up his throat. Like it hurt. It wasn’t a happy laugh, too much bitterness lacing it for that. “Like that you wouldn’t want me to waste my life away,” his brother added, sounding like he was directly quoting the man.
Was that what Dick had been doing in the gaps between the recordings?
Jason tried to imagine his ever-active, ever-smiling brother laying listlessly on his couch, dirty dishes accumulating and some documentary playing in the background. It was surprisingly easy.
Fuck.
“He told me that you uhm…opened up to him.” Jason froze. It wasn’t that he was upset that Dick knew about his sexuality. After all, Jason had absolutely no intention of ever having a relationship anyway, so it didn’t matter. He didn’t even find most people attractive.
It was just…
“I feel bad that he told me. I’m sorry you never got to.” That.
Yeah.
That.
Jason swallowed around a lump in his throat.
“But I hope you know…knew…,” Dick’s voice wavered, but Jason could tell that he wasn’t crying. “that I love you. No matter what. You couldn’t do anything that would make me love you less.”
Yeah, right. If Dick knew that he was under the red hood, he would not be thinking that. Clearly this Dick from years ago could not fathom Jason becoming a murderer.
He didn’t regret killing those people.
They were the scum of the earth.
But he did regret that no matter what, Dick would never say those words to him other than over a year old recording.
It didn’t change his plans anyway. He still planned on getting his revenge on Bruce, still planned on showing him why his replacement had been a very bad idea.
If it took beating up a kid so there would be no more dead Robins…well.
The Lazarus pit flickered through him. Jason took a deep breath and clicked on the next recording.
“I went out as Nightwing today. Roy is right, I can’t wallow in self-pity and guilt. You wouldn’t have wanted that.” Dick sounded determined and Jason quirked a small smile despite the way it was still hard to breathe around the emotions clogging his throat. “I think my criminals missed me. It was fun.”
Jason rolled his eyes.
“I don’t think I’m going back to being a police officer,” Dick said so quietly that Jason had to rewind a little and turn his volume up.
Oh.
All Dick had ever wanted was to help people. Was this Jason’s fault? He had researched (read: stalked) everyone in his former life plus the replacement, so he knew that Dick hadn’t been an officer since…well, since he’d died. Somehow, despite the timeline matching, he just hadn’t put together that it was because he died.
“I was researching options and I found an opening as a gymnastic coach.” Jason had known that, but there was something oddly personal about hearing his brother tell him about his life, as if it was happening right now.
Just for a moment, Jason could pretend he’d never died.
“I know you wanted to be a teacher.” The illusion shattered. “I know you didn’t tell B, but I saw that essay you wrote.” A pause and then, quietly again, “I pinned it to my fridge. It’s pathetic, sorry.” The voice note ended and Jason turned his eyes to the night sky.
Huh.
He started the next one. “I got the job, little wing.”
It was a painful realization for Jason to come to that even years after, Dick’s tone tipped him off perfectly to the kind of smile he wore saying it. Sad and torn and joyful.
It was the same smile he’d had when Bruce had apologised for kicking him out.
Jason had not been supposed to listen, but he had anyway, pressed against the wall.
‘I’m sorry, chum,’ Bruce had repeated and Jason had peeked around the corner to see Dick’s face when there had been a too long moment of silence.
Dick had smiled and something in Jason had ached.
‘You and me both, Bruce,’ Dick had replied and had walked off.
“I told Alfie and he seemed really happy for me. I’m not ready to tell B.” Jason bit his lips. “I know he wouldn’t mind, but…” Dick’s voice wavered slightly and when Jason closed his eyes, it was simple to dredge up the mental image of his older brother trembling above the recording phone, trying to pull himself together.
Because yeah.
But…
It was always ‘but…’ with Bruce.
But…the man had kicked Dick out the last time he’d grasped for independence.
But…Bruce had been so proud when Dick had graduated from the academy.
But…Bruce had put enough pressure on Dick that his brother still thought he needed to be useful to be loved.
“I think he would congratulate me,” Dick continued on the recording and Jason scoffed bitterly. “You know how he would always go through the cake book with us when there was something worth celebrating?”
The cake book was a baking recipe book that Dick had dubbed as such due to it only ever being used for cakes. Jason remembered it well, leaning against Bruce as the man paged through the book and suggested gruffly ‘Truffle cake sounds fancy’ or ‘What a novelty, carrot cake.’
There was a long pause.
“I’d pick marzipan cake, I think,” Dick said.
Below Jason, someone started shooting and it was a welcome excuse to pull his gun and let some of his rage bleed out.
~•~
Jason was calmly chopping vegetables while he listened to his brother. He had hooked his phone to the stereo, but instead of music, Dick’s voice filtered through the kitchen.
His brother would hate it.
Dick was the born performer. He loved it, loved the adrenaline and the attention and the applause. When Jason had asked him why he liked gymnastic tournaments so much when he won by miles anyway, Dick had smiled ruefully. ‘It reminds me of the circus.’ Jason had expected that answer, but he’d still scoffed. Dick’s voice had softened. ‘Sometimes it’s nice to know what I’m worth.’
Jason hadn’t known how to answer.
So yes, Dick loved performing, but for some reason, he’d always hated his voice.
‘Can you please just help me record this?’ he’d begged Dick and his brother had wrinkled his nose, but had sat down to perform the French dialogue for Jason’s school with only a handful of complaints. He had left Jason to listen to it alone, claiming that he didn’t want to hear his accent. Considering that he spoke like a native, Jason really doubted that had been the truth.
“Millie is making so much progress, it’s crazy," Dick gushed and Jason rolled his eyes fondly. The past few recordings had all been long, unnecessarily so, and were almost entirely spent rambling about his students.
Jason now knew everything about Millie’s tumbling.
And Lucas’ flips.
And the twins’, Sara and Tom who had apparently decided they wanted to be a sibling act, tournament rules be damned.
“Anyways, I should probably get in a nap before I go out,” Dick said at the end. He sounded happy. Content. “Good night, Jay. Love you.”
A lot of the recordings had ended similarly. Casual assurances that Dick missed him or loved him and Jason was starting to wonder why he’d ever thought that Dick was as much at fault as Bruce.
Speaking of, he really needed to get a move on with those plans.
He pushed play again.
Almost immediately, he tensed, quick to realise that this one was different from the happy ramblings.
Dick’s breath was heavy. He sounded far away, distant, voice so very vague in ways Jason had only heard him be after a nightmare. Only twice. Dick tended to hide his nightmares from his little brother.
Then again, it wasn’t like they had slept in close quarters often.
“A kid was here today. The neighbour kid? He-” Dick sucked in a breath. “He said that Bruce, that he- that he’s out of control and he-” Another stuttering breath.
Jason furrowed his brows. The neighbour kid? Replacement? What the fuck was Dick talking about?
“He said Batman needs a Robin.”
Everything in Jason froze and tilted. How did the kid know?
How did he know?
“He asked me to- to come back and I can’t, I can’t, Jason, I can’t, I can’t.” Dick started repeating the sentence over and over. Jason wanted to tell him to calm down, to take deep breaths. He wanted to ask him for five things he saw and four he could touch, three he could hear-
But Jason was a whole city and five years away from his brother, so instead he stilled his chopping as he helplessly listened to his brother have a panic attack.
He wanted to skip forward, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He owed his brother that much.
So he listened as Dick heaved breath after breath.
He listened to Dick whimper.
He listened as something cluttered, listened to the sound of retching, listened to the sniffles and the sobs and the running water and eventually, an eternity later, Dick’s wrecked voice.
“I kicked him out, Jay,” Dick said and he sounded so miserable that Jason’s entire body spasmed with the need to hug him. And to punch the replacement for putting him through this when he knew nothing about what Dick had gone through, what Bruce had taken from him. “He’s just a kid and I slammed the door in his face.”
He could hear that his brother was beating himself up over it. His breathing was starting to quicken again. “I- I need to call Roy,” Dick muttered, sounding panicked and a moment later, the recording forcefully broke off.
Fuck.
Fuck.
“Fuck,” Jason hissed and started to chop again.
By the time he was done, his onions were perfectly diced and Jason’s hands hurt from clutching the knife so tightly.
~•~
It took Jason almost an entire week to bear listening to another recording.
Vaguely, he found it amusing that he hadn’t trembled this much once in his entire time with the league as he shakily reached out to press down on play.
“He made him Robin,” Dick’s panicked voice immediately filtered through.
Jason clenched his teeth.
“I went to Gotham to…to talk, I guess, but I couldn’t even say anything before B said I made my choice.” Dick made an odd huffing sound, nearly a laugh, bitter and choked off and angry, so very, very angry that Jason almost thought he saw green.
“As if he thinks I came to argue about wanting it back,” Dick spat. “I didn’t ask for- I didn’t want another- Jason, he has black hair and blue eyes.” Something made a thud and it was only after a second and third thud came that Jason realised that Dick was boxing.
It was oddly soothing.
‘Maybe this will help,’ Dick had said when Jason came back from school and hissed comments about street rats and thieves, trembling with rage. He’d led him to an empty room. The only thing in it was a boxing bag, hanging from the ceiling with a hook. ‘It’s mine,’ Dick had explained and had chuckled softly. ‘I was an angry teenager. It helped.’
Back then, Jason hadn’t been able to imagine his brother as an angry teenager. Sure, he’d heard him and Bruce yell, but there was always hurt curled into the tone, defensiveness crouching under his voice, something pleading for Bruce to shut up for long enough to really see his oldest son.
He could hear it now too when Dick grunted, clearly seething. Could hear it in his hitched, laboured breaths.
Jason curled up on the couch, putting the phone in front of his face.
When Dick spoke again, he had audibly calmed down. “I’m going to teach him Gymnastics,” Dick said, grimly determined. “How to do a wall flip and shit like that. Stuff that will save his life in a field.” A pause. “And I’ll take him for ice cream and…I don’t know…” Another pause as he trailed off. “Whatever kids do with their older brothers.”
Jason heard what he didn’t say. Dick didn’t want to repeat the mistakes he thought he had made with Jason.
He wanted to yell at him, shake some sense into him, but he knew it did little. Even if it would hurt Dick to go to the manor, even if it meant listening to Bruce’s lectures on how Dick handled his life, his grief, his vigilantism, Dick would go back if it meant helping this new kid.
“He’s not adopting him,” Dick said and Jason could hear the hard edge to his voice. “Doesn’t matter though. I’ll make sure he doesn’t die, I swear, Jason.”
Jason’s breath hitched and he curled in tighter.
“No more dead Robins,” Dick swore on the phone and Jason went rigid at hearing his mantra echoed.
No more dead Robins.
It pulsed through him, through the room.
No more dead Robins.
~•~
Jason was still going to do it.
He was still going through with his plan.
It didn’t matter that he now knew that the first time Dick had hugged the replacement, ‘Tim, he doesn’t like to be called Timothy, I think it has something to do with his parents’, the boy had looked heartbreakingly confused.
It was the only way to get through to Bruce, he was sure of it.
He had to show him, really show him what he meant when he said ‘No more dead Robins.’
It didn’t matter that his older brother had repeated the sentiment when he had proudly boasted about Tim’s first successful wall flip.
It didn’t matter that he had compared his tumbling to Millie’s.
And it certainly didn’t matter that Tim was apparently a big fan of musicals, even if he couldn’t hold a tune to save his life, according to Dick, who also could not hold a tune to save his life and therefore should know.
In fact, Jason was in front of the Drake manor right now, one earbud plugged into his ear as he watched Tim stumble around the kitchen. The boy was alone, but he always was, Jason had already known that from his ‘research’. He also looked hurt, limping slightly as he fixed himself a bowl of cereal.
“He held a presentation,” Dick gasped in his ear. He’d been laughing for the past five minutes, verbally tumbling through a story about Tim preparing a powerpoint presentation to be allowed to have a sleepover at Blüdhaven, apparently thinking he needed such measures. As if Dick wasn’t soft.
Absently, Jason clicked on the next recording.
“Hey Jason.”
He was not proud to say that he nearly fell out of the tree.
“I wanted to try this out because it’s been helping Dick so much to talk to you and…” Roy’s voice stuttered slightly. “And I miss you too.”
What the fuck?
Jason glared at Drake manor as if it was personally responsible for Roy’s voice in his ear.
“He’s doing better, you know,” Roy said softly. “All the kids are good for him. He took me to one of his classes the other day. They’re all brats in my opinion, but he adores them.” Jason could physically feel Roy rolling his eyes in a ‘what can you do manner’.
“The newest Robin is good for him too. Outside of the mask, I mean. I haven’t met him yet and I’m not sure I want to…but they’re good for each other. God knows that kid needs someone in his corner.”
Jason shot Tim a considering look. The boy was limping out of the room.
Jason slowly slid out of the tree. Maybe…maybe he would come back when Tim was healed. The plan would hardly be effective if the kid was already in pain. It just wouldn’t be satisfying.
Instead, he listened to Roy tell him about his daughter (and when had that happened, what?). “Roy?” Dick’s voice came groggily. “Who’re you talkin to?”
“Jason,” Roy replied softly and as often with Dick, it hit Jason just how much they were actually pretending to talk to him through those voice notes. “Go back to sleep.”
“Oh,” Dick said softly. “I should go see him soon, we haven’t caught up in a while.”
Dick’s snore almost drowned out the wounded noise Roy made. “Fuck,” the archer whispered.
Yeah.
Jason could relate.
~•~
“My therapist said that I should stop.”
Jason froze from where he’d been fiddling with a knife, idly watching Robin follow Batman around.
“She said it was a good coping method but now it’s time to let you go.”
Jason bit his lips so hard he tasted blood, before hesitantly slipping his phone out to check the current recording.
It was indeed the last one.
His heart dropped.
Over the past two weeks, he’d gotten used to his daily podcast of Dick telling him about life.
He liked hearing about Dick’s new, infuriatingly tight-lipped coworker and the barista that always gave him an extra shot of coffee.
He liked hearing about Millie getting better and the fact that Dick had babysat his neighbour’s granddaughter and had completely failed at explaining trigonometry to her.
He liked hearing about Sunday brunches, no matter how tense, and Alfie’s pancakes and Tim’s less than stellar track record of reporting his injuries.
But most, he liked the slipped in endearments, a ‘little wing’ there, a ‘love you Jay’ here.
“I just…” Dick was silent. “It feels like I’m betraying you in a way, you know? By letting you go? But I guess you deserve to rest in peace instead of hearing about my shit all the time.” Dick laughed.
No, Jason wanted to scream. I love you, he wanted to say. Don’t leave me, he wanted to beg.
Instead, he sat on the edge of the roof and blankly watched Batman and Robin slip further and further away. It was a funny image, he supposed. After all, English had always been Jason’s favourite class and he knew a metaphor when he saw one.
“And I think I’m ready,” Dick said over the recording. He might be, but Jason wasn’t.
His heart was beating, his sight oddly blurry.
So this is goodbye, little wing,” his brother whispered. “I love you. I’ll see you in heaven, yeah?”
Jason choked on a laugh. It was so very cheesy, so very Dick.
The recording stopped and for a moment, so did time.
Then, Jason put away his knife and slipped down the fire escape, phone clutched in his hand.
Heaven, huh?
~•~
“I ran out of voice notes,” Jason said, chucking the phone into Dick’s lap.
His older brother jumped at the sudden appearance of the stranger in his living room, squinting at him in the dark. Jason knew that he wouldn’t really be able to see him, his silhouette dark against the flickering light of the TV. Dick’s hand inched towards where the younger knew his panic button was, but instead, picked up the phone, tilting the screen towards himself.
A moment passed.
And then another.
“Jason?” Dick breathed, voice choked and barely audible.
“You owe me like two more years of a catch up,” Jason said simply.
A moment later, a heavy weight collided with him and he had an armful of a sobbing mess.
He opened his mouth.
Then he closed his mouth and leaned his chin on Dick’s head.
“I missed you too, D.”