Work Text:
Jason Todd slips into Blüdhaven through back alleys and shadows. He’s not supposed to be here. He isn’t. He’s supposed to be down in South America training with the master that Talia al Ghul shipped him off to learn from.
He ducks around the corner of a building, ignoring the crunch of broken glass beneath the thick soles of his boots. The sound is familiar. It reminds him of Gotham and Crime Alley. It reminds him of the slums he grew up in.
That means it’s real, right?
Jason wishes that he knew for sure. He wishes that he could trust his senses, but the cold, hard truth of it is that he can’t.
Did he die? Did he wake up in a coffin and claw his way out? Did Talia take him in? Did he get dumped in the Lazarus Pit?
“Is any of this real?” Jason whispers.
The night air is thick with smog and the stench of old vomit and beer as he sneaks down another alleyway. It tastes disgusting, dirty, almost exactly like the air he grew up breathing and tasting in Gotham. The brick walls his fingers trail across are tagged with graffiti. The bricks feel real. Their uneven surface catches at his bare fingertips. They are rough and gritty and pockmarked.
“It feels so real,” Jason says.
Still, despite the taste on his tongue, despite the heavy air in his lungs and the texture beneath his fingertips that feels as familiar as the oldest of friends, Jason can’t stop the doubts that spill over in his mind like floodwaters crashing over the top of a levee.
It doesn’t make sense for this to be real.
If Jason woke up in a coffin for real, then that means that he was buried. If Jason was buried, then that means that Jason died. And if Jason died, then that means his dad was too late to save him from the bomb in the warehouse in Ethiopia.
“That’s not possible,” Jason says for the thousandth time since he snuck onto a different airplane than the one Talia told him to get on.
Batman isn’t perfect. He’s not. Jason is well aware of that. Sometimes, Batman doesn’t solve a case before more people get hurt. Sometimes, Batman isn’t fast enough and people die. Sometimes, Batman is too injured to patrol and he can’t save anyone at all.
Yet, Batman never fails Robin.
Jason has been kidnapped. He’s been hurt in fights. He’s been stabbed and shot and gotten his bones broken on patrol. Before that, the same things happened to Dick Grayson, the original Robin. Only, Dick was Robin significantly longer than Jason has been Robin. So, naturally, Dick’s injury and kidnapping numbers are much, much higher than Jason’s.
In the end, there are only two absolutes about Batman that keep those floodwaters from destroying the levees in Jason’s mind. First, Batman doesn’t kill anyone. Talia told Jason that the Joker is still alive, so that, at least, checks out. Second, Batman always saves Robin. Always.
“So how did I wake up in a coffin?” Jason mutters under his breath, his mind picking away at the problem.
No matter how he turns it or twists it, it just doesn’t make sense.
The world feels real. He gets hungry and tired and sore and hurt. He has to use the bathroom and sleep. If he holds his breath too long, his chest starts to ache as his lungs scream for oxygen. If he doesn’t dodge fast enough during training, he gets bruises and cuts and bleeds blood that’s bright red and smells and tastes like old pennies.
Is he in some type of suspended animation healing chamber, which would make this all a dream, as he heals from the torture Joker inflicted on him? Is he still in that warehouse in Ethiopia, and this is all some elaborate fantasy his mind has created to protect himself from the horrors of his current situation? Is this an alternate universe? Is it a delusion? Has Jason been brainwashed? Is it the product of a hallucinogen? Was Joker partnered with a magic user who trapped Jason in a hellish nightmare that’s meant to make him hate and doubt his dad?
It doesn’t matter what lies Talia spews; Jason won’t believe them.
Jason whispers aloud the fear that clogs up his throat and sends the floodwaters gushing in his mind. “Am I dead?”
He slips around another corner and jumps to catch the fire escape of Dick’s apartment building. The metal is cold and rusty, harsh against his palms as he hauls himself up. It would be smarter to wear gloves, to protect against potential injuries, because he doesn’t want to catch tetanus if he cuts his palms and gets rust in them, but he can’t bring himself to do that. When he wears gloves, the world feels even further away.
If Jason can’t feel it, if his baffled senses become even more confused … well, he’s not sure what will happen to his mind.
Jason clambers up to the window that leads into Dick’s living room and stares at the traps that will silently alert Dick to intruders. They’re exactly the same as they were when Jason was last here. But is that because Dick hasn’t changed them in the last little while, or because the illusion he’s trapped inside is pulling details directly from Jason’s mind?
Jason’s shoulders hunch and he squeezes his eyes shut.
“I hate this.”
He knows that he’s supposed to be strong and brave. He has been. He really, really has. He’s tried so, so hard. He struggled his way out of that coffin he woke up in. He played along with everything Talia said, just so that he could get away from her. Whatever this is, real, unreal … Jason doesn’t know how much longer he can last before he breaks.
If he does, Jason doesn’t think he will like what he becomes.
Honestly, he doesn’t even know why he’s here. Dick is in space right now on a mission. Right? So, if he’s not in his apartment, that means Jason is still in the warehouse in Ethiopia and this is all his mind’s way of protecting him. Unless … unless it’s a magician who has him trapped and Dick will be gone just so that Jason will believe that?
If Dick is there, does that mean that Jason really died and it’s been months and months like Talia claimed and Dick is back from his mission to space? Or— No. Maybe not. If Dick is here, maybe it’s just Jason’s mind creating his big brother down to the smallest detail.
“Or I’m dead,” Jason rasps wetly, “and Dickie is too.”
Rage swells inside Jason, but he stuffs it down. It’s not any more real than the fire escape he’s perched on, is it? If he never died, if he never came back, then he was never shoved in the Lazarus Pit, right?
But if the fire escape isn’t real—
“Stop it!” Jason snaps at himself.
His thoughts keep spinning and tangling and knotting. His rationale and reason are a frustrating mess of snarled comprehension and incomprehension. Jason doesn’t know what it will take to make him absolutely sure that he’s alive or dead, but he knows he won’t figure it out himself. He’s been trying for what seems like months with no success.
Jason dismantles the security measures on Dick’s living room window with shaking hands. He leaves dirty, smudged fingerprints on the glass when he shoves the window up. He slips over the windowsill and into Dick’s apartment.
It’s … different.
The couch isn’t the same color as the one Jason remembers. There are more pictures on the walls than there were before. Jason walks toward them in a daze. He touches the photo they took together on the skiing trip. It wasn’t here the last time Jason visited. His hands shake harder as tears sting his eyes. It’s right next to a picture of Dick with flour on his cheeks, swatting a towel at Jason as Jason steals some cookie dough from a mixing bowl. It wasn’t here the last time Jason visited. Beneath that is a photograph of Dick’s arm slung around Jason’s shoulders as they eat chili dogs at a Knights game. Jason— He has never seen this picture in his life.
He remembers that moment. He remembers that the Knights lost spectacularly, but Jason didn’t mind because his brother took him to the game. He remembers that he took too big of a bite and chili squirted down his hand and onto his jersey. He remembers how warm Dick’s arm was around him. He remembers how safe it made him feel when Dick used it to nudge Jason over and swapped seats with him because the guy seated next to Jason kept drinking beer after beer and slurring his words just like Willis Todd used to do before laying into Jason.
“I need this to be real,” Jason sobs.
His chest hurts. Is that because he’s actually crying and struggling to breathe, or is that because he’s in a warehouse in Ethiopia with shattered ribs courtesy of Joker’s not-even-remotely tender care?
A large, strong hand grabs Jason’s shoulder, spins him around, and pins him to the wall. Picture frames dig uncomfortably into his skin. He doesn’t struggle. He just stares at the golden-bronze hand on his shoulder. It feels real. It feels warm and steadfast and like it’s strong enough to catch Jason no matter how fast he’s falling. It looks real. Other than the cut that’s currently in the process of healing, it’s exactly as Jason remembers.
“You picked the wrong place to rob, kid. I’m a cop,” Dick says.
It sounds real. It’s hard and cold, but with the edge of gentleness that always colors Dick’s voice when he’s dealing with a kid or teenager who’s clearly down on their luck.
“How did you get—?”
Jason tears his gaze away from Dick’s hand and follows it up to shoulders that Jason has jumped off while on patrol. He trails his focus up a familiar jawline, across familiar cheekbones, to meet eyes that are an unforgettable shade of blue. In the process, Jason’s longer-than-usual curls fall away from his face.
Dick’s hand on Jason’s shoulder tightens with bruising force. He staggers, his grip on Jason seemingly all that keeps him on his feet. His unmistakable blue eyes widen and his mouth drops open. “Little Wing?” Dick breathes as softly as if he’s talking to a ghost.
“Dickiebird,” Jason rasps through his tears as he stares up at his big brother, “am I dead?”
“Little Wing!” Dick cries before crushing Jason in a hug not even a professional stage magician could escape from.
Jason wraps his arms around Dick and sobs and shakes. He doesn’t stop crying when Dick scoops him up as if he weighs nothing and carries him to the couch. He doesn’t stop when Dick collapses onto it with Jason in his lap and curls around him as if Dick can keep him there forever.
“Is this real?” Dick cries against Jason’s hair. “Are you alive? Are you actually alive? Are you real?” There is a wealth of desperation and grief and pain in Dick’s voice. It’s tinged with a mountain of bitterness that says this is all too good to be true.
“I don’t know!” Jason sobs back as he rubs his tear-stained cheek onto Dick’s shirt.
If this is real—how could anything fool Jason’s mind into mistaking anything else for a loving, bone-crushing hug from Dick?—then that means that Jason is alive. If Jason is alive, that means he escaped from Talia al Ghul and the League of Assassins. If he escaped from the League, that means Jason really woke up in that coffin. And if Jason woke up in that coffin and clawed his way out, that means— It means that— Jason had— Dad didn’t— B couldn’t—
Rage flickers to life in Jason’s chest. It’s an inferno of madness tinged in green.
Dick brushes Jason’s curls behind his ear and then stills. “Your eyes are green,” Dick says blankly as tears trickle down his cheeks. “Your eyes are green.” When he repeats his words, there’s a black maw of slavering rage dripping from each one. “Someone put you in a Lazarus Pit.”
“Talia,” Jason answers rotely as the floodwaters of his thoughts smash violently against the levees.
“You were with Talia?” Dick yells, hunching over Jason protectively and gaze sharpening to lethal blades.
“Yes.”
He was, wasn’t he? If this is real, before he came here, he was with Talia and the League of Assassins.
“For how long?” Dick demands.
“I … I d-don’t know,” Jason stutters as his emotions spiral out of control. “Since I c-crawled out of my c-coffin and g-grave, I guess.” There’s a blank spot in his memories. Whatever happened after he escaped the grave and before he suddenly came alert in the Lazarus Pit is a whole lot of nothing at all.
Dick pales to a sickly shade and clutches Jason even more tightly. “No. No. No.”
“I d-died in that warehouse, d-didn’t I?” Jason asks.
Dick trembles so hard that Jason’s entire body shakes in his hold. “Yes, Little Wing. You died,” Dick says as if the words are being ripped out of him, each one full of agonizing grief.
The tears that are tacky on Jason’s face are real. The numbness in his right leg from how he’s perched in Dick’s lap is real. The warmth and safety of Dick’s hug are real. The smoggy air, the gritty bricks earlier, the tiredness and hunger are real. The countless injuries from training with the League, the rage from the Lazarus Pit, the terror of waking up buried in a coffin … it’s all been real. All this time, it’s been real.
Oh.
The floodwaters ravage Jason’s mind and rip down the levees he’s erected to maintain his sanity. The rage snuffs out like a wick that’s burned to the quick.
He understands now. It … it all makes sense.
The tangles and snarls and knots finally unravel. Abruptly, the picture is in such clear, detailed focus that it hurts more than getting shot and stabbed combined.
There are only two absolutes about Batman. First, Batman doesn’t kill anyone. Second, Batman always saves Robin. Always.
All this time, Jason forgot the one thing that would have cleared this all up from the very start. The one truth that would have saved Jason from all of the agonizing thoughts and overwhelming emotions that have been tearing him apart since his unwanted dunking in the Lazarus Pit.
The truth is so simple that it’s cruel.
“B fired me. I wasn’t Robin, so he didn’t come for me,” Jason says, speaking his realization aloud.
Dick stops breathing.
Jason wishes he could stop breathing too. Because that realization, that truth, hurts more than anything he suffered at the end of Joker’s crowbar. It makes him wish that he never crawled out of his grave in the first place. Because Jason doesn’t want to live in a world where the only value his dad sees in him is as—
“Don’t ever say that again,” Dick says so softly that Jason can barely hear him. “If B hears you say that, it’ll destroy him, Jason.”
“But—”
“He came for you, Jason,” Dick says, voice sharp as a serrated knife but coated in liquid grief, “but he didn’t make it in time. He calculated it, after the fact. He was 43.72 seconds too late to save you from the explosion. You died in his arms, Little Wing.”
What? Jason doesn’t understand—oh! Of course. The adoption papers.
There is one absolute about Bruce Wayne. His immediate family members die in front of him.
The last time Bruce lost someone—his parents, in Park Row—he decided to become Batman and never once wavered from that goal. It took almost two decades for Bruce to open his heart and home after that. Then for Jason to die in his arms not long after the adoption was official? B must have been devastated.
Jason isn’t sure if he wants to know what dying in his dad’s arms did to Bruce.
Dick hugs Jason more tightly and whispers against Jason’s ear as if the words he’s about to speak are top secret and revealing them is a capital offense, “B tried to kill Joker. Superman stopped him.”
Before Jason can even attempt to process the enormity of those words, the front door of Dick’s apartment slams open so hard that it almost rips right off the hinges. The light from the hallway illuminates the culprit. It’s Bruce. His chest is heaving in a way Jason has rarely seen outside of extended battle during alien invasions. He’s wearing a tuxedo; he must have raced here from a gala of some sort. He’s paler than the marble busts in Wayne Manor.
“Jason,” Bruce says, sounding scared and leery and desperate all at the same time. “Dick. Dick. Jason.”
“Hi Dad,” Jason says as his heart wrenches in his chest.
He’s never seen B like this before. His dad is the strongest person that Jason has ever met in his life. So seeing his dad like this, as if he’s made of flawed crystal and will shatter at the slightest touch, is humbling.
“Dick,” Bruce says as he crosses the threshold and hastily closes the door with shaking hands. “Dick.”
“I haven’t run any tests yet,” Dick says. “I think it’s Jason, but I can’t promise you it is, B.”
Jason watches Bruce try and fail to raise a wall behind his eyes. He watches Bruce try and fail to smother the desperate hope that’s painted across his face to anyone who knows him well. He watches Bruce’s hands shakily reach for him, only to fist at his sides, and then repeat the cycle.
“My DNA sequencer is in—” Dick cuts himself off and stands up from the couch with Jason still in his grasp.
Bruce lurches forward, following Dick down the hall as if he can’t stand to let Jason out of his sight. As if Jason will die if he looks away for even a moment. As if the levees behind his own eyes are about to fail, drowning the last spark of hope in his soul. “Jaylad?”
“Yeah, Dad?” Jason sniffles.
His dad is staring at Jason as if he’s the most precious thing in the entire universe. He feels so loved that it hurts.
“Please be real,” Bruce says. “Please be alive.”
Jason wipes his wet eyes on his sleeve and then yelps before he can respond as something sharp pricks his finger.
“It’s him, B. It’s really him,” Dick says.
Dick hands Bruce the DNA sequencer. Jason has just enough time to see a photograph of his younger self grinning on the screen before it clatters to the floor as Bruce engulfs both of them in his arms.
Jason smiles up at his dad and big brother, heart aching as they stare at him with as much awe and love as he feels for them. He hugs them as fiercely as he can in the tangle of limbs and laughs as if the entire world has been lifted off of his shoulders.
He doesn’t have to wonder anymore. Jason is alive. This is real.