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“I love you. I don’t think I say that.” I love you, Jason thinks. Over the next few weeks, he rolls it around in his head; sometimes he mouths it to himself in the helmet. I love you. And it’s true, isn’t it? It’s true. Dick is his brother. They love each other. He knows that. But also, when did that happen?
He thinks back to being a kid, when Dick was nineteen and so big and so intimidating. Dick didn’t love him then. They weren’t brothers then. But it creeps in, doesn’t it? The love? And he’d thought it was gone, but now…
Well, it’s just that things are good. And Jason’s not sure how to respond to that.
He still has nightmares; he still has anxiety about leaving the Manor for too long. Dick still can’t stand to leave Gotham for more than a few days at a time. Bruce is tense, and Tim is still anxious, and Steph is pretending not to be exhausted, but things…things are good. And now Dick is saying things like “I love you” and Jason can hear it without wanting to throw up, and he’s thinking he might be able to say it back one day. That’s weird, right? No one’s fighting. No one’s hiding. All of their spats are stupid; he’s realized recently he doesn’t even get that annoyed with Tim, he just gets genuinely excited when he realizes he’s about to get to roast Tim for something. It’s demented.
I love you, Jason repeats to himself. I don’t say that. I love you.
xxx
“I love you, Jason,” his dad says, staring down at Jason while Jason sits on the floor at his mom’s feet and tries not to cry, “which is why you have to learn this. This is how the world works. Your mom” -he snaps the word mom like an insult, but she doesn’t react- “hasn’t done anything to provide for you while I’ve been gone, okay? And now” -his voice is rising- “we don’t have ANY. FUCKING. FOOD.”
His mom keeps staring at the wall.
“I think she’s sick,” Jason mumbles, his throat constricting as he tries to speak, and his dad levels his glare away from his mom and onto Jason.
“Jason,” he says, “don’t be fucking stupid. She could take care of you, if she wanted to.” He pauses, looking back up at Jason’s mom. “She just doesn’t love you enough to do it.”
xxx
Damian’s started hanging out with them more, too, which is how he knows he’s not insane, things are actually okay. Damian is his mother’s son; he’s not going to spend a single minute in a situation he doesn’t have to be in.
Three weeks after Jason has returned to the field, Robin appears at his side one night on patrol and says, with a little huff, “you have recovered well.”
“Yeah,” Hood responds, not really sure what the protocol here is. He would describe his previous interactions with Robin as minimal at best, hostile at worst, which now seems weird, because this kid is fourteen.
“Good.” A very long pause. “There are members of our cohort who would have been quite upset had you died.”
Hood nods slowly. “Cool.”
Robin sighs. “Again. Died again.” He gives Hood a lethal side eye. “They will be quite upset if you die again.”
“Yeah, well.” Hood shrugs. “I’ll try not to.” If they get two more minutes in this will be the longest solo conversation they’ve ever had.
“You know my mother,” Robin says, and Hood almost chokes. He loves this helmet, actually, because it keeps Robin from seeing the way he’s sure he flinches.
“Yeah,” he drawls. “I know your mom.”
Robin hums to himself. “Very well,” he says. And then he’s gone.
xxx
“I love you, Jason,” his mom says, and she pulls a book out of her bag, a book just for him, even though his dad says they can’t afford anything extra right now.
She’s been sick for a while, now, but his dad has been gone for a couple of weeks and she has these little flashes like this where she’s not sick, where she’s his old mom.
It’s a Redwall book, one of the ones he’s already read, one of the ones he loves. He lunges forward to hug her, and he says into her stomach: “I love you Mom, thank you so much.”
“I love you, Jason,” she repeats, “I love you. Happy birthday.”
xxx
Dick laughs so hard he nearly throws up when Jason relays the interaction with Robin to him. They’re sitting on the couch playing Super Smash, and Dick folds in on himself and drops the controller.
“Oh my god,” he wheezes. “Jay. He was trying to…oh my god. He was trying to say… holy shit I can’t breathe.”
“So insightful, thank you. You’re not understanding what I’m trying to say. It was…I was scared, Dick.” Dick is still laughing. “He just appeared at my elbow, was openly judgmental about me dying, and then sneak attacked me with Talia.”
Dick looks up at him, a single tear streaming down his face. “Jay. He was trying to say he’s glad you’re okay. And…and build a connection. Oh my god. That’s so cute.”
“Nothing involving Talia is cute,” Jason mutters. “That kid is lethal.”
“Yeah he is!” Dick crows. “And he’s glad you’re not dead! Man, it’s sweet to see the people you love get along.”
I love you, Jason thinks. “We’re not GETTING ALONG,” he protests, and he knows he’s getting a little shrieky, “we had ONE conversation that made NO sense!”
Dick picks up his controller again, smiling to himself. “Wow,” he says. “It’s really all coming together for us.”
xxx
His mom is getting more sick. He’s not stupid, anymore, he knows she’s dying, he knows the drugs she takes are the wrong ones, he know he knows he knows.
His dad is gone again. He’s doing…something. Jason doesn’t know. When he’d left, he’d nodded at Jason and said: “I love you, Jason. Take care of things while I’m gone.” And then he’d LEFT, and it’s been weeks, and the hot water just went off.
Showers are so cold Jason can hardly stand them. They’re so cold that his teeth chatter and his muscles cramp from how tense he’s holding them, and he has to stop taking showers, actually, because he’s scared of hypothermia. A kid he knew got hypothermia once, and he doesn’t know if he’d survive it. Not like this. Not alone.
He washes his hair in the sink and tries to splash the rest of his body as well as he’s able, but his mom won’t even try. And they’re running out of food, and she won’t eat what they have.
He begs her. He really does. “Please, Mom,” he whispers to her, kneeling at her bed and petting her hair, “please eat. Please. I love you, and you have to get better. I love you, Mom. Please eat. For me.”
“Oh, Jason,” she whispers back, “I love you, too.”
But it’s not enough. It doesn’t matter, in the end. It’s not enough.
xxx
The second Damian conversation is even worse, because this time, it involves Tim.
They’re in the middle of interrupting a convenience store robbery, one of those things where it’s probably just a few guys in over their heads with no connections to any of the darker villains of Gotham, and it’s an easy stop. Jason disarms a couple of guys and doesn’t even think about it, and the whole thing is wrapped up in under 5 minutes. Back in the Cave, though, when they’re about to leave, Damian fixes his eyes on Jason.
“My mother taught you that disarming method,” he says flatly, and Jason nearly chokes again.
“What?”
“At the store. What you did with your wrist.” Damian looks away, bored. “That’s my mother’s move.”
From across the Cave, Tim gapes at Jason, and Jason staunchly keeps his eyes off of Tim.
“Probably,” he admits.
Damian nods. “My mother. She was fond of you?”
“I don’t know,” Jason says automatically. “How fond can you be of a gun?”
Damian’s eyes narrow, and for a moment, Jason’s not sure if he’s messed up. Damian just returns his attention to putting his gear up, though, and says: “My mother loves guns.” He finishes his work, and then adds: “I would have told her. Had you died again.”
Tim’s whole face twists, and Jason looks away. “Cool,” he says.
Once Damian has left, Tim looks at Jason and hisses: “Okay, when did he start trying to talk to you about his mom?”
“I don’t KNOW,” Jason hisses back, “but Dick won’t HELP me.”
“Dick is so fucking useless sometimes,” Tim says in a voice that is long suffering, and Jason nods.
“Yeah. Totally fucking useless.”
xxx
Bruce says it for the first time a few months in. It seems like an accident, honestly, like he’s not totally aware he’s saying it, but the words don’t make him flinch, he doesn’t look like he regrets them once he’s said it.
He’s been out on patrol, and, well. It was a bad night. Jason couldn’t sleep; he stayed up watching the news, watching live footage of Batman in a frantic car chase, of Batman getting grazed by a car, of cops after Batman for some reason Jason can’t really comprehend while Batman is clearly trying to end a Penguin terror streak.
What will happen to Jason, if Batman dies? Alfred seems nice; he’d probably give Jason a few days to make a plan. But it doesn’t matter, does it, how long Jason has to make a plan? Because Jason doesn’t have anyone or anything. All the time in the world won’t give him anything or anyone.
If Batman dies, Jason will be three for three on guardians he’s lost. And…maybe it’s not just fear of being alone. Maybe it’s not just knowing he’d be back on the streets. Maybe…Jason tries to imagine a world with no Batman, with no Bruce, and his throat starts closing up, and he stops imagining it again.
So Jason doesn’t sleep at all. And when Bruce emerges from the Cave and sees Jason glued to the TV, watching weather coverage now, he sighs and reaches out and ruffles Jason’s hair, gentle enough that Jason doesn’t flinch away.
“You okay?” Bruce asks, and Jason nods silently.
“Are you?”
“Yeah,” Bruce says softly, and he looks exhausted. “I just need to sleep.”
“Okay,” Jason whispers, and he realizes his own eyelids are heavy and the sun is rising. “Good night.”
“Good night, Jason,” Bruce says, already taking a step towards the door. “Love you.” He gives Jason one last nod and is gone.
Jason stares after him for a few minutes, but Bruce doesn’t come back. He doesn’t take it back. He just lets it stay.
xxx
I love you, Jason thinks. I don’t think I say that. I love you.
My mother loves guns.
Dick comes back out on patrol. Jason missed him, is the thing. He’d never say that. For one, it’s childish. Two, he’s pretty sure he’s getting more face time with Dick right now than most of the other bats combined. Even though Jason isn’t injured anymore, their video games have continued, and he finds himself moving towards Dick every time they’re in the Manor, drawn by some gravitational pull.
It used to drive him nuts, how Dick and Tim would orbit each other. They’d always stand near each other in debriefs; they were always looking over each other’s shoulders at what the other one was doing. It was like they constantly had to be able to reach out and touch each other, just in case. Jason used to think it was gross, like it was some unbearable weakness on both of their parts, like they were doing to to prove that they were brothers, actually, that they were real brothers and Jason had never been anything.
Now, though…now he’s starting to be a part of it. He doesn’t notice, at first, how often he moves to stand next to Dick. How often he turns towards Dick any time someone says something that he thinks deserve an eyebrow raise. How often Dick reaches out to tap his elbow when something by funny happens.
Damian notices, though.
One morning, after a long patrol, Steph and Jason go the kitchen to try to scrounge up some sort of snack. Tim wanders in after them, and Jason finds he doesn’t mind, not really.
“It’s peanut butter and marshmallow fluff,” Steph says, placing the sandwich in front of Tim for his inspection.
He stares at it in disbelief. “And this is a meal you eat?”
Steph nods enthusiastically.
“Oh my god,” Jason says under his breath. “I can’t believe Tim just had a woman make him a sandwich.”
“I did NOT!” Tim squawks, at the same time that Stephanie says: “it’s scary to see how far a good man can fall.”
“She OFFERED to make me one!” Tim says to defend himself, but it’s too late.
“Yeah, because you’ve never heard of fluffernutter. YOU should have offered to educate yourself on how to make your own sandwich.”
“You also made one for Jason!”
“Hey!” Jason snaps. “She made ME a sandwich because I was on coffee duty! I was making lattes. Bitch. I’ve only got two hands.”
“Yeah, he’s only got two hands,” Stephanie echoes, falling into a seat next to Jason and across from Tim. She rips her sandwich into four smaller pieces, twisting her mouth to one side in that way that means she’s about to say something serious. “So Bruce is still not doing great.”
Tim groans and slumps forward on the table, laying his forehead on the wood. “Let’s just start a new thing where we start having a conversation whenever Bruce is doing WELL, yeah? Cut down on some of the time we dedicate to him.”
Jason taps the table. He can feel his whole body tensing, and he stares at his sandwich. “It’s my fault. Right?”
“Yeah, I don’t think being kidnapped and tortured is YOUR fault, Jay,” Tim says, taking a bite of the sandwich and then making a face. “This is so sweet, Steph, what the fuck?”
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize you would assume a sandwich called a fluffernutter would be savory,” she says, reaching over the table to grab some of his sandwich, too. “Yeah, Jay, it’s not your fault. It’s…it’s like I said before, yeah? He loves you. That’s not a bad thing.” She twists her mouth. “And, you know, he was already mad at whatever that last thing was, and then you went missing-“
Jason’s neck is already pricking at “whatever that last thing was,” but Tim is already shaking his head.
“No, it’s not about you, Jason. He’s just…aging. Some people grow calmer as they age, and he’s…he’s aging into anger.”
Holy shit, Tim is trying to protect him. Jason is too tired for this, because he almost lets his jaw drop before he snaps it shut. Stephanie picks up on it, too, because she twists her face and opens her mouth to say something.
“I did not know you were all friends now.”
Batman’s training is the only thing that keeps Jason from jumping.
“Oh, hey Dami,” Tim says, gesturing to the table. “Would you like an abomination of a sandwich?”
Damian wrinkles his nose, but he joins them at the table. Damian’s getting older, Jason realizes, and Jason hates it. My mother loves guns, he thinks. Damian looks skeptically between Tim and Jason. “When did the two of you stop avoiding one another?”
“I still haven’t,” Jason says reflexively, but Tim shrugs.
“Aah, you know. The Jason almost dying of it all made it feel a little silly. Don’t want to make Dick’s life even worse, ya know?”
Damian hums at this. “Todd and Dick have been quite friendly,” he says, and Jason gives a little wave.
“Still here.”
“Yeah, well. They’re brothers,” Tim mumbles, and Damian cocks his head.
“Is that why you are also friendly now? You’re brothers?”
“No,” they say in unison, and Stephanie goes still beside him, hand frozen on her coffee mug.
Tim looks at Jason, working his jaw. “But we are family,” he says, and it’s not a question, but not a statement, either. It’s like a theory that he’s putting forward; a hypothesis he hasn’t yet confirmed.
Jason nods slowly, working this over in his mind. “Yeah,” he says. “Family.”
Relief is evident in Tim’s eyes, and he nods back, before turning to Damian and saying: “step cousins, probably.”
Jason snorts despite himself. “You wish it was that close,” he says. Next to him, Steph starts drinking again. Damian doesn’t say anything at all.
xxx
There’s a time when Jason and Dick still fight every time they see each other but, also, they’re starting to have better times in between the fights, a time when sometimes Jason doesn’t hate the idea of Dick coming home, a time when they sometimes stay in the same room longer than they have to and a time when they give each other looks when Bruce does something that doesn’t make any sense.
Dick is teaching Jason how to work out the way Bruce used to. He’s helping Jason work on his acrobatics. It’s almost like….Jason doesn’t hate it. They have to go to a gala together, at one point, and Dick stays with him the whole time, making jokes about the way the rich people dress and how stupid Bruce looks when he’s acting drunk and how there are some people who definitely think Jason is Dick, and he makes Jason laugh and even makes Jason forget that the last time they were at a gala they ended the night with Jason crying and heaving in a bathroom.
It’s at this point, of course, that Jason messes up. He gets injured one night, out on patrol, and he just….well, things are going so well, aren’t they? Bruce and Dick like him; Batman is giving him more and more responsibilities. He can’t endanger all of that with this, with some weakness he can’t get rid of, with a cut on his leg he got because he was stupid. He needs Batman to think he’s good, he needs Batman to jeep letting him be Robin, to keep…to keep trusting him. To keep him. So he doesn’t tell anyone, and the cut doesn’t go away, it just starts hurting worse, and starts looking worse, and he knows…he knows he’s messed up. But at this point, all he knows is to keep going with it. Because to tell Bruce he’s injured now, he’d have to explain that not only is he a horrible Robin, not only is he stupid, but he’s also a liar, he’s also a coward, and there’s no way he’d survive that.
Dick catches him. Of course it’s Dick, of course it had to be the one who likes Jason the least and who Bruce likes the most, of course this had to be what undoes Jason.
“I’m not hurt,” Jason argues after Dick notices, but it’s not enough to stop Dick’s approach.
“You gotta tell someone—me, Alfred, or B. Or we won’t know to tell you to rest.”
“I don’t need to rest,” Jason insists, and he can feel the cold panic crawling up his throat. “I’m fine. I can still be Robin.”
Dick gives him a look that Jason can’t discern. Is it disgust? Fear? What wast that? “Yeah. I know that. Now show me your leg, dude, or I’m gonna call Bruce down here.”
There’s no way out of this, Jason realizes, no way to convince Dick to leave it alone. He lifts up his pants enough to show the cut, and it feels hot to the touch, and Dick flinches.
“Jay,” Dick says, and Jason immediately mumbles “don’t call me that,” “that looks infected.”
“It’s not,” Jason says, but it’s over, he already knows it’s over.
“You need to let Alfred dress that,” Dick says, and the panic is about to take over Jason.
“It’s fine,” he says, but that’s the wrong thing to say, because Dick contorts his face.
“Are you stupid? You’re hurt, man, and we-“
“Are you going to tell Batman?” Jason says in a rush, and and he knows he needs to calm down, to look more mature, but he can’t. “Because I- I can still be Robin. He doesn’t- he doesn’t need to know. It won’t slow me down. It won’t. So it—don’t tell him. Don’t be a dick.”
Dick’s whole face changes, the annoyance disappearing and something very calm washing over him. “Jason, you gotta treat that. Or it will get worse. Do you…do you wanna tell Alfred? Or do you want me to?”
It’s over, Jason knows this. And he’d rather let Dick be the one that tells Alfred, rather than having to say the words himself.
Alfred brings the med kit down, but Dick doesn’t come back with him, and Jason is so relieved and so afraid of what that means. The wound is gross, he knows that, and Alfred has to clean it, and even though Alfred doesn’t say anything at first, Jason can tell that he’s disappointed, that Jason messed up with him, too.
Finally, when the debridement is over and Jason has stopped gritting his teeth, Alfred says quietly: “you have to tell us these things, Jason, you can’t let things get this bad.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jason mumbles. “Batman isn’t going to let me be Robin any more. Not after this.”
Alfred frowns. “You may be placed on rest, yes, but-“
“Dick was pissed,” Jason says in a rush. “He…he’s gonna tell Batman. That I’m stupid. That I…He’s not gonna let me be Robin anymore.”
Alfred doesn’t respond at first, just looks at Jason with an inscrutable look. Finally, he says: “Dick was distraught when he spoke to me, Jason.”
Jason nods. “Yeah, because…because he knows. I’m stupid and bad at this, and he…I was just getting him to like me, Alfred.”
“Jason, no,” Alfred says, and if Jason didn’t know better, he’d think Alfred was sad. “He was upset you were hurt. He was upset you hadn’t told us, because we didn’t help you when we would have. He was upset because…because you’re cared for, Jason.” Alfred makes eye contact with him. “You’re cared for, Jason. You’re loved. We…we want you to know that. To feel it.”
“Okay,” Jason whispers, because he’s not sure how else to respond. “Okay.”
xxx
I love you. I don’t think I say that. I love you. My mother loves guns.
“Damian’s asking about you,” Dick says one day while they’re playing Mario Kart. They’ve dug up a third controller so Steph can play with them, and she and Tim lay at their feet, all four pairs of eyes glued to the screen.
“Yeah, he is, actually,” Tim adds, reaching to try to grab Steph’s controller. She dodges him easily without looking away from the game.
“He’s been lurking recently,” Jason admits, and Tim sends Dick a look.
“Dude, he’s been trying to talk about Talia with Jason.”
Dick grunts. “Well, that’s either really good or really bad.”
“Do you like Talia?” Stephanie asks, passing Dick on screen. “You never mention her.”
Jason shrugs. “Well. You know. She saved me. So.” The truth is, if he even had the desire to say what he’s feeling right now, he knows he’d never find the words for it. He can’t even explain it to himself.
There’s a pregnant pause, and Jason can feel it in his bones that Tim is about to do something stupid.
“I keep thinking about what you and Damian said the other day,” Tim says quietly. “About how she loved you like she loved a gun.”
Dick runs off the road. “Motherfucker,” he says, voice rough, and for a second, he sounds like Batman. He stands up from the couch so quickly that Jason has to freeze to keep from flinching, and Steph has to roll over to keep from getting stepped on. “I’m going to go….I’m gonna go.” Dick stomps out of the room, and they all stare after him.
“Thanks for that, Tim,” Jason says, throwing his controller down. “Great. Thanks. That’s going to be…great. Can’t wait to unpack that.”
“Yeahhhhhh,” Tim drawls. “That was…okay. Maybe I’m not as smart as I thought.”
“I’m going to be honest,” Steph says, “I’m feeling a lot of hatred for Talia right now. Per usually, Imma side with Dick. However, I am winning this game right now, so.”
“Give me Dick’s controller,” Tim says, trying to reach onto the couch. Jason launches the controller across the room.
xxx
Talia takes his face in both of her hands, and her voice is rough, cracking with emotion.
“I was wrong, Jason,” she says, and a single tear slips out. “He didn’t love you. He didn’t…he didn’t even care. Don’t you see that? He hasn’t done anything to avenge you at all.”
“You said he loved me,” Jason says, his throat too tight, and she wipes a tear from his face.
“I was wrong,” she says. “I love you. That’s why I saved you. Bruce hasn’t done anything.”
xxx
It actually takes Dick two weeks to bring it back up, which, for Dick, is a pretty impressive amount of restraint. Knowing Dick, though, it also means that he’s being stewing in it for that whole time, letting it eat at him. As a result, when he does finally say something, it feels more like an eruption than a planned statement.
“We don’t love you like a gun,” Dick blurts out one night during patrol, when it’s just him and Jason, taking a break on a rooftop.
Jason freezes, tilting his head. “I know that,” he says.
“Do you?” Dick asks. “I can’t stop…that’s such a fucked up thing to think, or say, or…experience? I don’t know. But we…even at the worst of it, it was never that. We would never…we never loved you like a gun.”
“I know, dude,” Jason repeats. He smiles, even though Dick can’t see it under the hood. “Besides. You guys hate guns.”
xxx
“I love you,” Bruce says after Jason has told him the worst of it, after Jason has asked one last time if he’s going to be kicked out, after Jason has admitted all of the things he’d been too afraid to confess before death. He kisses Jason’s head, and Jason lets himself cling to Bruce, just for a moment. “I love you.”
xxx
They get bored with Mario Kart AND Super Smash, and so they decide to start playing Halo. They settle into a routine with it, every day after they get back from patrol. They grab snacks, play a couple of hours, and then go sleep. They’re frequently joined by Tim or Steph or both, and sometimes they even give Tim a controller. Steph is experimenting with what candy mixes the best with popcorn, and she always holds the bowl out to Jason if she realizes he’s not eating it freely. He likes the popcorn with Milk Duds, and Dick likes the popcorn with Twizzlers, and Steph like the popcorn with Sour Skittles, and Tim says they’ve all got to start paying more attention to their nutrition.
On a day where it’s just Dick and Jason and they have popcorn with Reese’s Pieces, Damian joins them.
At first, he just stands in the doorway, watching silently as they play. After five minutes of this, Dick clears his throat.
“You wanna play, Dami?”
“I don’t know this game,” Damian says, taking a step forward. He sends Jason a skeptical look.
“You have been spending a lot of time in the Manor since your kidnapping.”
Jason and Dick share a look. “Yeah,” Jason admits.
Damian takes another step forward. “Do you plan to keep spending time here?”
I love you, Jason thinks. He nods. “Yeah,” he says again.
Damian nods. “Very well.” He hesitates, and then sits on the couch on the other side of Dick and watches them play in silence.
Jason plays for ten minutes without speaking, but he’s being absolutely demolished by Dick. I love you, he says to himself, I don’t say that. I love you. He grabs the controller they’ve reserved for when they decide to let Tim play and reaches over Dick to hand it to Damian. “We’ll teach you to play,” he says, and Damian still looks skeptical. Jason shrugs. “I need help beating Dick,” he admits, and Dick laughs.
“Okay,” Damian says, taking the controller, and Dick holds the bowl of popcorn out to him. Dick flashes a grin at Jason that’s so earnest that Jason briefly wishes Tim was here to roll his eyes at. Huh. He’s never wished for that before. He turns back to the screen. Okay, he thinks. He’ll get used to this now, too.