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Jason sat in the center of the dimly lit room while his burner phone buzzed on the scratched wooden table. It wasn't the encrypted line he used for his own underground contacts, it was the brick of a phone he kept strictly for the Bats, the one charged only for emergencies, world-ending scenarios, alien invasion crap. Or on the rare occasion someone was bleeding out in an alley and couldn't reach the Cave. Not that any of them ever used it for that purpose.
And right now the caller ID flashing on the cheap, cracked LCD screen read: Dickhead.
Jason let it ring. He counted the vibrations, watching the little device shimmy across the table, half-hoping it would eventually give up and go to voicemail. He wasn't in the mood for a lecture on his recent use of non rubber bullets that hit a little too close to major arteries, nor was he in the mood for an invitation to whatever mandatory, painstakingly awkward family dinner Alfred had guilted them into this month. He knew how those went: Bruce brooding at the head of the table, Tim and Damian insulting each other in some sort of way, and Dick trying desperately to glue the fractured pieces of their family together with forced smiles.
It kept ringing. The buzzing was insistent, clawing at his nerves until the sheer annoyance overrode his stubbornness. With a heavy sigh, Jason snatched it up, pressing the cold plastic to his ear.
"Make it quick, I’m busy," he grunted, picking up a rag and forcefully wiping down the barrel of his gun.
"Hey, Little Wing," Dick’s voice crackled through the cheap speaker. It was light—too light, the kind of forced cheerfulness Dick plastered on when he was trying to hide a cracked rib or a stab wound. Jason's hand paused in its motion.
"I'm in a bit of a jam in Blüdhaven," Dick continued, the audio distorting slightly, hinting at the wind on whatever rooftop he was currently perched upon. "Working a sprawling narcotics ring and the locals are being frustratingly tight-lipped. I mean, usually I can get someone to sing, but these guys are terrified of whoever is pulling the strings. I figured it might be time to play good cop, bad cop. You in?"
Jason frowned, leaning back in his creaking desk chair, his eyes narrowing at the peeling wallpaper across the room. Dick didn’t usually ask for help with basic intel gathering. He was Nightwing; getting people to talk was his specialty. He could disarm a hostile informant with a blinding smile just as easily as a well-placed escrima strike. He certainly didn't outsource his interrogations to Red Hood.
"Since when do you need me to scare some low-level dealers? Usually you just dangle them off a fire escape until they wet themselves and hand over the shipping logs."
"Just thought it’d be fun. Quality brotherly bonding, you know?" Dick said. A breathless laugh following.
Jason’s instincts prickled, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. Something was off. He could hear the tight wire of tension in Dick's voice, the way he was clipping the ends of his words. It sounded like a man walking on a tightrope over a burning building pretending he was just out for a Sunday stroll. But he didn't press it; he wasn’t exactly one to talk about feelings or emotional vulnerability. If Dick wanted to pretend everything was fine, Jason would play along. For now.
"Fine," Jason replied, slamming the magazine back into his pistol with a satisfying click. "Just no interrupting how I play bad cop."
“Of course, wouldn't have it any other way. See you at the docks."
Now Blüdhaven was a different beast than Gotham. Gotham was grand, theatrical in its madness. Blüdhaven was just sleazy. It was rust and grime, cheap liquor and cheaper lives.
They moved through the city and tracked shipments from the rotting wooden docks, shaking down longshoremen and breaking into shipping containers filled with heroin. They dismantled two underground drug rings, leaving tied-up, groaning piles of muscle for the corrupt local PD to find. They shook down every mid-level supplier in a ten-mile radius, dragging them out of seedy strip clubs and high-stakes underground casinos.
Through it all, Jason watched Dick carefully from the shadows of his helmet.
Dick was usually fluid in combat, now his movements were rigid, as if he was overthinking every strike and forcing his muscles to comply through sheer willpower alone. He was hitting harder than necessary on the opening strikes, his escrima sticks connecting with sickening cracks against collarbones and ribs, leaving thugs unconscious before they even had a chance to give up.
In the quiet moments on the rooftops, when the adrenaline faded and the freezing rain soaked through their armour, Dick would zone out. He would stand at the edge of the gargoyles, staring into the alleys below as if waiting for a ghost to emerge from the shadows. When Jason cracked a joke about the ridiculous leopard-print pants one of the drug lords had been wearing Dick didn't even smile; he just blinked, slowly turning his head.
Jason tried to run it up the flagpole, he knew when he was highly out of his depth. He called the Cave one night while Dick was busy tying up a crew of smugglers a few blocks over, leaving Jason to keep watch.
"Have you guys noticed anything weird with Dick lately?" Jason asked over the comms.
"Define 'weird'," Tim’s voice filtered through the earpiece. In the background, he could hear the familiar, rapid-fire clicking of a keyboard. "His vitals are within normal parameters. Heart rate's a little elevated, but he's in combat—"
"I don't mean his blood pressure," Jason interrupted, grinding his teeth. "I mean him. He's wound up, twitchy."
"If Blüdhaven is finally breaking his fragile resolve perhaps Grayson should return to Gotham." Damian chimed in, his clipped tone dripping with its usual haughty superiority.
"Not helpful, demon brat," Jason snapped, gripping the rusted iron of the fire escape railing until his leather gloves creaked. "Alfred? Bruce? Either of you want to chime in with something actually useful?"
"Master Dick hasn't been returning my calls," Alfred said, his voice cutting through the comms. It wasn't the butler's usual composed tone; it was heavy with quiet concern, the kind of worry he usually reserved for when one of them was bleeding on the medbay table. "Last he did I inquired about his well-being, but he said he was simply overwhelmed with casework and hung up."
"Bruce?" Jason demanded, his patience rapidly declining.
There was a long pause. He could picture it perfectly: Bruce sitting rigidly in front of the Bat computer's monitors, his cowl pulled back as he looked at some data instead of dealing with the mess of his crusade. When Bruce finally spoke, his voice was the familiar, emotionless gravel that always made Jason want to punch a wall.
"Nightwing is a professional, Hood. If he's dealing with a case, focus on the mission. Support him in the field. Don't let your own paranoia compromise the objective."
Jason gripped tightens. Behind his eyes his vision flashed a toxic, burning green for a split second. He takes a breath before it could fully take over.
"Right, god forbid you actually act like a father for five minutes and check on him once in a while. Forget I asked."
He violently tapped his earpiece, severing the connection before anything else was said.
Which led them here.
The air was thick with the stench of rotting fish, standing on a blood-stained floor in an abandoned warehouse near the Narrows of Blüdhaven. The only light came from a shattered skylight above, casting pale, jagged shadows across the room. Piles of wooden crates and rusting shipping containers formed a makeshift maze, but they both had torn through it with brutal efficiency.
They had finally cornered one of the ringleaders, a towering enforcer with a spiderweb tattoo crawling up his thick neck who liked to slice up his competition with a rusty machete. One nasty piece of work. Jason had him pinned against a cracked concrete support pillar, having just delivered a sharp backhand to loosen the man's jaw.
“You’ll have to do better than that if you want me to spill,” the thug wheezed, a grotesque rattling sound coming from his chest. “Even the Joker had an easier time breaking your little Robin. Heard the kid cried like a bitch when the crowbar came down. Begged for his mommy.”
He had heard it all before. Even if this guy didn’t realize he was talking about Jason when he brought up the “dead Robin,” the tactic was practically clockwork for every two-bit criminal trying to buy time or stroke their own ego. Goad the Bats, get a reaction. Bruce had learned to hold himself back, though Jason could never quite tell what that restraint cost him. Tim would simply refuse to engage, completely ignoring the taunts as if the criminal didn't exist. And Damian always had an accurate insult ready to piss them off even more.
Then, there was Dick.
Jason had heard from both Bruce and Alfred just how deeply his death had fucked with Dick’s head. He knew while he was still six feet under Dick had torn through the underworld like a man possessed. He’d seen it firsthand, too; when Jason had finally unmasked in front of him, Dick genuinely thought he was a hallucination. The look of both pure devastation and somewhat relief on Dick's face that night was burned into Jason's memory. Even now he didn't know how to process that.
The thug’s head lolled to the side while he spat a thick wad of blood beside himself, grinning up at them with stained teeth. He looked from Red Hood's blank visage to Nightwing's masked face.
Jason rolled his eyes at the wet, grating laugh that followed. The sound only frayed his nerves; it didn't ignite anything hot enough to make him bite.
"I don't think we'll be getting much from him—" Jason started, turning away.
He froze.
Dick was standing there, staring at the man. His jaw was clenched so tight it looked ready to shatter, his fingers twitching at his sides. Yet, his breathing was terrifyingly, unnaturally calm. Jason had seen this too many times to count. Usually, it was aimed at Bruce, with him staring back with a cold face, or at some unlucky criminal who caught him on a bad day. Jason called them Dick's "crash-outs"-moments when the anger became too much and the dam finally broke. Outside of himself, Bruce, Alfred, Barbara and Tim on the one occasion Dick apparently succeeded in killing the Joker, no one really knew about them.
Sometimes Jason wondered if he fixated on Dick's rage just to make his own look better.
But they weren't the same. Sure, Jason got angry-maybe he always would be after crawling out of his own grave. But Dick's anger was something more dangerous, it was violence bottled up with the lid screwed on so tight that it had nowhere to go.
And this bleeding, bruised idiot pinned against the pillar had no idea what he had even done. Because in a split second, the thug's arrogant smirk vanished, his face dropping in sheer terror as Nightwing was the one to lunge for him.
Dick moved fast, a blur of blue and black as he drew a escrima stick from his back. The strike wasn't aimed for a shoulder or leg, it was aimed directly at the center of the man's skull. A killing blow, or a least a good attempt at one.
Luckily for him, Jason moved faster. Driven by pure instinct and a desperate need to save his brother from crossing a line he could never uncross, he stepped squarely into Nightwing's path.
"Nightwing! Stand down!" Jason barked, his voice amplified and metallic through the helmet's modulators.
Dick probably didn't even register that it was Jason for a second, his eyes were wide behind the mask, dead-set on the man cowering on the floor behind them. He swung, grazing a harsh blow off Jason's armoured shoulder, trying to tear his way through.
"Get out of my way, Hood!"
"I said, stand down,” Jason gripped his shoulders tightly, forcing him back.
He bore Dick's weight as the man struggled wildly. Yet Jason didn't let go, he held on as Dick fought and swore. He did so until the frantic energy finally began to wane and he finally stopped struggling, his breath hitching in a sudden gasp. Dick’s body went limp as he leaned against him while his chest heaved.
Jason kept one hand firmly on him and turned slightly toward the trembling goon still pressed against the pillar.
"You're lucky he let you live, scumbag. Cops will be here in five. If you move from that spot before they arrive, I'll come back and finish what he started."
He didn't wait to see if the man complied or for the wail of sirens in the distance, he just kept a grip on Dick's arm, hoisted him upright, and practically dragged him out the rusted side door.
They navigated well enough back to Dick's secondary safehouse in complete silence, a loft overlooking the shipyards, bare-bones and smelling of mildew. The moment the door clicked shut, locking behind them Jason reached up, disengaged the seals on his collar and ripped his helmet off. He slammed it onto a nearby shipping crate with enough force to crack the wood.
"Alright, that's it," Jason snapped, his own chest heaving with adrenaline. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
Dick stood frozen in the center of the dimly lit room. Slowly, he reached up and peeled his mask off. The moonlight filtering through the dirty windows caught his features, and Jason felt his anger falter for a fraction of a second. Dick looked like a corpse. His skin was pale and drawn tight over his cheekbones, eyes bloodshot and surrounded by dark, bruised circles. His hands were still visibly shaking.
"Nothing," Dick rasped, tossing the mask onto the table. He refused to meet Jason's gaze. "He was out of line. I handled it."
"You were about to cave his skull in! Over a comment about me, and I was standing right there! He was trying to get a rise out of you."
Dick stepped back, wrapping his arms around himself defensively.
"You've been acting like a tweaked-out junkie all week, Dick," Jason continued, his voice echoing off the walls. "Spacing out on patrols, hitting guys way too hard, dodging my questions. So I’m gonna ask you one more time. What the fuck is going on with you?"
"I don't have to explain myself to you, Jason!" Dick fired back, his head snapping up. "I'm fine! I'm handling my city, I'm handling my cases. If you can't handle my methods, then leave!"
"I'm not leaving until you talk to me!"
"Then you're going to be waiting a long time!" Dick spat, his eyes wild.
He turned towards the fire escape window, opened it with practiced ease and climbed out into the night. Jason rushed after him, gripping the window frame as he leaned out into the rain. Dick was already gone. He let out a string of vicious curses, kicking a metal folding chair across the room.
He wanted to chase him, tackle him on the roof and beat the answers out of him. But he knew chasing him now would only make things worse for both of them, so with a frustrated growl, Jason slammed the window shut.
Three days passed and the rain never stopped. Jason stayed in the safehouse, keeping his ear glued to the police scanners and listening for any reports of a rogue vigilante brutalising criminals. He ordered shitty takeout from the only Chinese place brave enough to deliver to the dock and waited.
On the fourth night, a little past 3:00 AM, the window rattled.
Jason, who had been dozing on the beaten-up sofa with a half-eaten container of lo mein on his chest, snapped awake. His hand immediately dropped to the pistol resting beside the couch. He sat up slowly, shifting his weight as he watched as the window lock was picked from the outside and the pane slid open.
Dick climbed in, utterly soaked and dripping puddles of water onto the floor. He was out of his suit, shivering violently in a cheap civilian hoodie and jeans that clung to his frame. He looked worse than he had three days ago, if that was even physically possible.
He didn't say anything at first, just carefully closed the window behind him. Dick then walked slowly to the opposite end of the room, far away from Jason, and slid down the wall until he was sitting on the floor. He pulled his knees tightly to his chest, wrapping his arms around his shins before burying his face into wet sleeves.
Jason didn't push, he quietly set his food aside and stood up, walking over to the small kitchenette. He grabbed a towel from the rack and made his way back across the room, tossing it over to the corner. It landed squarely on Dick's wet hair and for a long, painful minute, he just sat there under it.
"…I can't sleep," Dick finally whispered. The sound barely carried across.
Jason stood, arms crossed over his chest. "…How long?"
"Weeks," Dick admitted. He slowly pulled the towel off his head, gripping the terrycloth tight in shaking hands. "I don't know exactly. Every time I close my eyes, my brain... It just won't shut off. But it's getting worse when I'm awake now. It’s— …It's messing with my head, Jay."
Jason’s chest tightened, a cold knot forming in his stomach. Sleep deprivation was a torture tactic for a reason, he had endured it during his training with Ra’s. He knew exactly how quickly it could tear apart someone’s mind. "Messing with your head how?"
Dick slowly looked up, the sheer exhaustion in his bright blue eyes made Jason’s stomach physically twist.
"I'm seeing things again. Hallucinations. Mild ones, mostly. Shadows moving in the corners of my eyes when I'm on patrol, feeling hands grab for me when no one is there. Hearing... Hearing laughter in empty alleys."
Jason went still. He suddenly felt the chill of the room settling deep into his bones. Laughter.
"When that guy in the warehouse started talking about you," Dick swallowed hard, closing his eyes, a tear finally escaping and cutting a clean path down his cheek. "For a second, I didn't see him. I didn't see some thug taking a dig. I just saw the Joker. I saw him, grinning at me, bleeding out on the floor. And I thought... I thought I was back there, on the night that I killed him, the night Bruce brought him back. I couldn't stop him laughing, Jason. I just wanted to make him stop."
Jason exhaled a long, heavy breath, staring at the ceiling as the pieces clicked into place. Suddenly, everything—the strange behavior, the violent outburst, the desperate need for "brotherly bonding,” it all made a whole lot of sense.
Jason pushed himself off the wall, walking over and sitting down on the floor right next to Dick. He didn't look at him, but he leaned sideways until their shoulders firmly bumped.
"You should’ve told me.”
"I wanted to," Dick murmured, leaning his head back against the brick, letting out a shaky sigh as the physical contact seemed to ground him. "I really did. But I'm supposed to be the one who has it together, “The golden boy,” as you like to put it."
"Fuck the golden boy, that guy’s a self-righteous idiot anyway… Nobody expects you to be that, Dick. Not even Bruce, though the old man sucks at showing it."
A small chuckle escaped Dick’s lips. "Yeah. He really is."
Silence settled over them, Jason let the quiet stretch linger as his mind worked. If he pushed too hard, Dick would panic and bolt again; if he was too soft, he would just deflect and put the mask back on. He needed to strip away every excuse he had for not taking care of himself, to take the weight off and leave zero room for argument.
"You're sleeping here," Jason shifts so he could reach up to grab the blanket off the couch he was using earlier, tossing it carelessly over Dick's shivering shoulders.
He looked at the blanket, then up at Jason, a flicker of panic returning to his eyes. "But the patrols— The docks—"
"Are handled, I'll call the Cave. Replacement can step away from his monitors for a few nights and Demon could use the cardio. Blüdhaven isn't going to burn to the ground in the next twelve hours."
Dick watched him, searching Jason's face for any sign of pity or judgment. Finding none, the tension finally began bleeding out. His body slumped, the exhaustion finally winning the war against his adrenaline.
"…And if I wake up...? If I see him again?"
"I'm right here," Jason said, his voice soft and devoid of its usual biting sarcasm. He bumped his shoulder against Dick's again. "Not a ghost, not a hallucination. Just me. I've got your back, Dick. I'm not going anywhere."
Dick let out a long, shaky exhale, pulling the thick wool blanket tighter around himself. He closed his eyes. "Thanks, Little Wing."
"Yeah, yeah," Jason muttered, leaning back against the wall. "Just sleep before I knock you out myself."