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Peter is sitting the wrong way up on the couch at his Aunt’s apartment, hyperfocused on scrolling through tiktok, when he hears someone come in through the window and walk towards him. The footsteps are too heavy for the person to be his Aunt, but they’re too light to be Tony. Neither of them would enter through the window, so he really had no idea who it could possibly be. His Spidey Sense didn’t seem to react to the presence so he wasn’t too stressed, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t startled when they spoke.
“Okay, I had an idea and I know how much Bruce is a tightass about timeline continuity when it comes to time travel, so I thought ‘fuck him’ and decided I’d come to you about this. Consider it a bonding activity between brother and boyfriend.”
It was Jason. He sat up clumsily and saw the older boy was suited up, but he had done up the zipper of his leather jacket to cover his suit and he had his helmet under his arm.
“What?” Peter asked, confused and startled.
“Suit up and I’ll explain.” Jason said instead of offering an explanation.
“How did you know where to find me?” Jason had never been to May’s apartment until now.
“Tony offered to have Happy to drive me here when I told him I wanted to see you, but I said no, so he gave me directions instead.” Okay, that made sense. Peter stood up and walked over to his room, shutting the door mostly as he suited up.
“Okay, so I don’t know if Timmers told you about any of this, but I was all sorts of fucked up when I came back. Damian’s mum dropped me into a Lazarus pit, which completely healed me, but enhanced my anger. When I recovered from the catatonic state I’d been in previously, she fed me lies about well… a lot of things, but mostly Tim. She made me think that before my body had even gone cold, Bruce had chosen a brand new black-haired blue-eyed orphan to have as a son, and as Robin. And that he chose a rich kid so he didn’t make the same mistake. I thought Tim was nothing but a rich, privileged brat. At first I didn’t realise that he had parents but even when I found out, I didn’t know he was severely neglected. Yes, he was rich, but he wasn’t privileged, not compared to other rich kids, and he was not a brat… well, mostly. I didn’t realise that Talia was trying to groom me into killing Tim and giving Damian an express route to become Robin.” Peter was absolutely bewildered by what Jason was telling him, and he had no idea why he was telling him either.
“I didn’t know that I was the tiny kid’s hero, all I knew was that the Pit demanded blood. I announced my arrival with the decapitated heads of eight gang lieutenants in a duffel bag and meticulously planned to… well… I wanted to teach him a lesson for stealing my name, for stealing the Robin colours, as if I didn’t steal it from Dick.”
“Woah that’s… intense. I’m sorry you had to go through that.” He said as he opened his door back up.
“Dude. Why are you sorry for me? I fucking slit Tim’s throat. I beat him so badly that he could’ve died. I don’t deserve anyone to feel sorry for me, let alone you, you should be mad at me, I almost killed your boyfriend.”
“Of course I’m mad about that, I’m horrified that you did that to Tim, but what happened to you was also awful.” Something of what Jason said had only just stuck out to him “Wait. You said blue-eyed? But your eyes are green?” Peter stared intensely into said green eyes, which he noticed — now that he was looking at them closely — were indeed blue, but they had a ring of toxic green around the pupil which drowned out the blue if you weren’t looking close enough.
“That was another thing the Pit cursed me with. They used to be fully blue.” Jason shrugged, voice bitter. “But enough of the pity party for me. Our mission is to stop myself. Bruce hates intervening with the natural flow of time because paradoxes, but to be fair, nothing bad happened after we met the version of me who had become the Arkham Knight. Who even knows if those events were or weren’t meant to happen.”
“Okay… yeah, I’m down to do that.” Peter smiled lightly.
“The unfortunate thing is that I have no idea how we could pinpoint the exact time for when we travel to. As you know, we know the basics of date and we know how to determine a specific place, but nobody has tried to travel to a precise moment.” Jason sighed. The travel codes got longer and more scrambled the more information someone tried to input. They were in the progress of working out exactly how scrambled the codes got at their limit, but it was a painfully slow process.
“Well… I guess the best we can do is input what we know, attempt to input the exact moment and then hope it doesn’t send us to somewhere fucked up? I mean we’d cope but…” Jason laughed as he muttered an agreement to what Peter said.
“It eez what it eez.” Peter giggled at that and repeated it, making Jason smile.
The two masked up and made their way back to the Stark Tower, discussing plans for what they would do.
“Well, completely beating the shit out of me is out of the picture. Not that you would do that, but more for me. I do want to hit him, y’know, as a treat for the future self who knows how stupid the past self was. We need to disarm him, and we need to protect Tim too and depending on when we get there, we may need to do some first aid.”
“I can disarm him with my webs.” Peter offered. Jason seemed to think that was a pretty okay idea, he knew that Peter was fast and clearly thought he would be fast enough to disarm his younger self.
When they reached Stark Tower, they went to the dimensional travel machine and Jason wrote in the code with what he was hoping would lead to the specific time he wanted to travel to.
Tony, who was in the lab, just let them mess around with the machine and when they stood back, code ready, he told the boys to be safe.
“When am I not?” Peter replied cheekily.
“I can give you quite a few examples. Do you want them now, or later?” Tony retorted. Peter spluttered and Jason laughed.
After that, they were off.
They materialised in a hallway which was lit by red emergency lights. Jason looked both ways to confirm where they were and grabbed Peter’s wrist to lead him in a specific direction, his grip growing tighter and his speed becoming faster as they heard a gunshot. Jason turned into a stairwell and they hurried up the stairs, through a hallway with a few closed doors and to a living area. That’s where they came across two Robins, one in the suit with no mask, Jason, but only a year or two younger, and the other in normal clothes and a domino mask, Tim, who looked absolutely tiny despite also only being a few years younger. He was on the floor with one arm held up as a sad attempt at blocking any blows that came his way while his other arm was held close to his chest, clearly broken, and he was bloodied. The younger Jason held a gun in each of his hands, a bloodied crowbar and a bo staff carelessly thrown behind him.
He couldn’t see Tim’s eyes behind the lenses of his domino mask, but he could feel his eyes on him and he felt dismayed when the younger version of his boyfriend tensed more.
Peter could only imagine what he was thinking, hoping someone would save him but instead a second Red Hood and an unknown masked individual show up.
Jason and Peter look at each other and nod and Peter shoots a web at each gun, pulling them out of the Red Hood’s hands and over to Jason, then using his webs to fling himself across the hallway and over to Tim, standing in front of him
“Now what the fuck is this? Who are you? I specifically chose a day where nobody would be here to find the Replacement.” Red Hood states, eyes narrowing.
“I’m just your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man.” Peter says casually, trying not to let himself get angry. Red Hood had planned the attack so nobody would find Tim, so if he died, his friends would come back to find him dead, same with his family. Red Hood frowns at Peter’s words, but isn’t able to say anything else as Jason socks his younger self in the jaw, knocking him off his feet.
“Dude, you were such an asshole.” Peter states as Jason pinned his younger self to the floor. He doesn’t need to see his face under the mask to know that he grimaced at the fact.
“Yeah, I know. You don’t have to remind me, I already hate myself enough for attacking the Baby Bird, I’m just thankful he doesn’t flinch around me anymore.” Jason responded as he forced the hands of the Red Hood together behind his back.
“Oh, let me get that.” Peter stepped forward, away from Tim, and securely tied Red Hood’s hands together with his webs. He’d heard one too many stories about thumbs that were broken to escape being zip tied and his webs didn’t allow for that, the only way to get out of them being his dissolvent or when they naturally dissolved after an hour.
“What the fuck? Fuck off! Let me get him! He fucking replaced me! He replaced you, doesn’t that make you mad?” Red Hood tried to trigger Jason’s anger. It wasn’t working.
“Hey dipshit. Newsflash, you were the replacement first. Robin was Dick’s, it was the name his parents called him and we stole that from him. Also, did you stop to think that you were doing exactly what Talia wanted? By killing Tim, you would save her ass from the backlash she would get for killing Tim herself and would pave the way for Damian to take his place in the family as Robin. Talia al Ghul is a manipulative bitch.” Jason then grabbed his younger self by the collar of the Robin costume and forced him to his knees, forcing him to look over at Tim, who was wide-eyed as he looked between Peter, Jason and the Red Hood. If Peter knew his boyfriend as well as he thought he did, he’d say that he was probably wearing a thoughtful expression.
“Look at him. That’s your little brother. Your Baby Bird. He means the fucking world to me. If we weren’t here, you would almost kill him, even though he did nothing wrong. I know you remember him. You saved him from falling off a building when you were Robin. You took him out for ice cream at 3am and didn’t ask questions about why he was out in the city at 3am with a camera, even though the curiosity was almost painful. He was there to take photos of Batman and you, his favourite hero. If you stopped to listen to him rather than just listening to everything Talia told you, you would understand that the situation is much more complicated than Bruce just picking up a random new kid after you died. I’m not going to tell you everything because it’s not my story to tell. You are going to sit and you are going to listen to Tim.”
Red Hood looked like a petulant child listening to Jason and Peter was reminded that it was because he was a child, no matter how mature he looked. From what he’d heard, Jason died when he was 15, which made Red Hood probably around Peter’s current age.
Now that Jason had finished lecturing his younger self, Peter helped Tim to his feet. “I’ve not been trained much in first aid, so I’ll handle him, and you can treat Robin.” Peter told Jason.
“Are you sure? I know for certain that after my resurrection and the dip in the Lazarus Pit, I gained a lot of muscle. I’m quite heavy, even B struggles to carry me nowadays but he does out of sheer willpower and spite. I can carry him, if you want me to.“ Jason then offered.
“Jay, trust me when I say that carrying you will be no problem at all. I once lifted a warehouse roof that had collapsed.” The ‘on me’ was unspoken, but he knew anyone with half a braincell could tell his sentence was cut short.
“Oof, warehouses. We’ll have to share our warehouse trauma later.” Jason made Peter snicker at how absurd ‘warehouse trauma’ sounded as they changed positions.
Peter, just as he’d assured Jason, picked up the Red Hood with zero struggle, the crime lord going completely still out of surprise at the tiny masked person (who he still didn’t know anything about) picking him up like he weighed nothing. Jason moved to Tim’s side and assessed his injuries, even though he knew exactly what he had done to their Tim when he had carried out his own attack.
“Jason…? You-? But you…? What?” Tim asked. He sounded exhausted and a little heartbroken, but there was some hope there.
“Heya Baby Bird. Yes, I assure you I’m Jason, just… from a different dimension. I was feeling extra guilty about this day because you were having a bad day, so I decided to try and stop it, or stop it from being as bad as it was for my Tim.” He reassured his younger brother. There was a moment of silence and then a half cut off sob. Tim hunched his shoulders slightly and Jason instantly pulled Tim into a hug and he melted in his arms.
“Why? Why am I always the exception? I’m only 14 but I’m being treated with the same brutality as criminals by him.” He asked, trying to hold his tears back. Red Hood stiffened in Peter’s hold. Good. Maybe he’d realised his mistake.
“Oh, Baby Bird. It’s not you. You did nothing wrong. It’s just misdirected anger. I was angry at B and wasn’t acting any different to the Joker by attacking you rather than attacking B directly.”
“Fuck you. How dare you compare me to that scum.” Red Hood spat. Jason turned his head and looked at Peter as if to say ‘get a load of this guy’. Peter pursed his lips tightly to avoid laughing. How can a plain red helmet with white eyes be so expressive to him? It must be a thing that comes with working in the superhero business.
“Oh no, I’m not just comparing you, I’m comparing me too. I lived this moment but without the intervention and I had to deal with the backlash so I am allowed say this. Joker killed us to get to B, we got lucky and came back to life somehow but what do we do? We attack Robin, with intention to kill him, to get to B. Please fucking tell me what makes us different.”
“It’s just different.” Red Hood tried to argue.
“It’s not different, and you know that.“ Jason started walking through the building, still holding on to Tim. Peter was sure that Tim probably felt a little embarrassed and confused that Jason wasn’t letting him go, but his boyfriend has been described as seriously touch starved by a lot of his friends who Peter had met and he doubted that it had been any better years prior.
When they reached the medbay, Jason let go of Tim so he could sit down on the cot and he went to the medical cabinet to get out the supplies he needed. Peter put the Red Hood on the cot next to Tim, sitting him down so he was forced to look at Tim. Peter noticed a conflicted expression on his face, but he turned his head away shortly after.
“I know that you introduced yourself,” Tim began, catching the attention of everyone in the room. He was looking at Peter. “But who are you? I know about most, if not all superheroes and I have never seen nor heard of you.” He states, looking at Peter with a slightly tilted head.
“I-“ Peter looks over at Jason, who shrugs, “Okay, as I said, I’m Spider-Man. I’m from a different dimension where there’s a completely different lineup of superheroes, that’s why you don’t know me. You guys accidentally showed up in my city and since then we’ve kept in contact, visiting pretty regularly. I’m here because Jay decided to bring me along as a ‘brother-boyfriend bonding experience’ because he didn’t think your dad would agree on him doing this but wanted to do it anyway.”
“You’re dating Dickhead?” Red Hood asks. Peter shakes his head rapidly, look of disgust on his face.
“No?” Peter asks, flabbergasted that he would even ask that. Peter has met Dick’s speedster boyfriend and there is no way in hell he would ever get between that relationship.
“Do you have a brother?” Was his next question.
“No, my parents died before they could even think about having another child.” Was Peter’s instant response.
“Well, that only leaves-“
“Hey, hey, why did this turn into an interrogation about my relationship?” Peter spoke over Red Hood, thankful his mask covered his red face. He turned to look back at Jason, turning past Tim on the way around and the younger version of his boyfriend had his mouth in a small ‘o’ shape and his cheeks were pink. Peter was too late, he’d already connected the dots.
Jason, in the meantime, was laughing quietly to himself, his shoulders shaking as he laughed. Peter huffed and picked up a stress ball which had been conveniently left on the bench between the cots that Tim and the Red Hood were on and he ditched it at Jason. It bounced off his helmet, hard enough that it elicited an “Ow!” from Jason, then it hit the ceiling and then bounced once again off the floor.
“Shut up. Stop laughing.” Peter grumbled. Jason turned to stare at him.
“I’m going to ban you from the Dead Robins club.” Jason threatened.
“You wouldn’t dare.” Peter crossed his arms.
“Try me.”
“Welp, there goes your favourite brother title. You know who it’ll go to now that you’re out of the running.” Jason gasped scandalously. The next in line of the boys was Duke, and Jason constantly tried very hard to not let the newest member of the family beat him. Not that Tim or Red Hood knew about the future members of their family.
“I’ll do anything to prevent that from happening.”
“Then perish.” Peter turns away, seeing Tim and Red Hood both staring at them with wide-eyed expressions and Jason spluttered from behind him.
It was silent for a moment as Jason started working on treating Tim’s injuries, starting off with using a wet cloth to wipe off the most obviously bloody areas, then he spoke up.
“Timblerone, tell more angry me exactly why you became Robin.” Jason ordered. Tim visibly swallowed as he realised that his attacker was still in the room with him. He’d been so distracted by Peter and Jason’s interactions that he’d almost forgotten the pain he was in and the reason why he was in so much pain.
“After you died, B took a turn for the worse. I followed him nearly every day for years and I never saw him be so brutal with criminals. He- ow-“ Jason muttered a ‘sorry’ when Tim flinched, “I saw him beat a shoplifter so badly that he was sent to hospital. For shoplifting! I had to do CPR on a Riddler goon who had apparently only been on the job for two weeks only to feed his family because no regular jobs would hire him. And on top of that, he was fighting like he was trying to get himself killed. It was a problem, so I decided to do something about it. I went to Bludhaven and begged ‘Wing to come back to being Robin but refused. I then tried to go to B directly and told him- ouch- told him that he needs a Robin. He wouldn’t listen to me. B and ‘Wing got captured by Two-Face and with Agent A’s permission I put the suit on to save them. He still didn’t want to train me, but eventually he caved. Partially because I threatened to blackmail him, but anyway. He never wanted to get close to me because he didn’t want to hurt the same way he hurt when he lost you.” Tim finished quietly.
Red Hood wasn’t looking at Tim, but he quietly said “Oh.” and Peter knew his thoughts about Tim had changed.
“These lights are giving me a headache and I can’t fully see where you’re bleeding from, I’ll be back in a moment.” Jason muttered, putting down the medical equipment and speedwalking out of the room.
“I’m… sorry… for attacking you. The older me was right, I shouldn’t have just listened to Talia blindly.” Red Hood muttered, crossing his arms uncomfortably.
“It’s o-“ Tim began, but Red Hood cut him off.
“No, it’s not okay. I treated you like shit. He’s right, y’know. By attacking you I am no better than the Joker.”
“No, you’re not. You are better than him. He hurts anyone he pleases, and does it for fun, but I’ve seen the files, you’re not a mindless killer. You’re trying to make Crime Alley safer for street kids and for the working girls. Yes, you do kill, but pretty much every person I know you’ve killed have been repeat offenders of some of the worst crimes and have proven that they won’t change their ways.” Tim insisted. Peter smiled, his Tim was fiercely protective of Jason too and it seemed to be dawning to Red Hood that despite what he’d done to Tim, he wasn’t hated.
The red lights turned off and the room was lit up in bright white instead. Tim was still… reasonably bloody. There were areas on the exposed parts of his arms and his face where there were already very dark bruises. Peter grimaced, knowing that he was probably going to be bruised for a few weeks. His broken arm had been put in a sling and Tim was holding an ice pack against it.
“That’s better. Now, who would like to get in contact with B and tell him what happened?” Jason asked as he re-entered the room. Both Tim and Red Hood tried to avoid his gaze and looked at the other, trying to encourage them to volunteer.
After a few minutes of a stare-off, Tim sighed and muttered to himself before saying “Fine!” Jason handed him a phone and Tim typed in a number. Putting it on speaker as it rang, it wasn’t long before a familiar voice answered.
“You have reached the Wayne Residence. Alfred Pennyworth speaking.”
Red Hood’s breath hitched. It had clearly been a long time since he’d heard Alfred’s voice.
“Hey A. Can you get B and ‘Wing to come to the tower, there’s been a bit of a situation.” Tim asked, hissing as Jason started treating one of the last deep cuts.
“Are you okay? Are you in danger?”
“To some extent and no, not any more.”
“Are you injured?”
“Yes, but I’m being treated for my injuries at this moment.”
“How bad are your injuries? Will you need further treatment when you return?”
“I do have a broken arm, so I’ll need a cast. Otherwise no, it’s mainly cuts and bruises.”
“I’m not happy to learn about your arm, but otherwise I am glad to know that there aren’t any other horrific injuries. I will contact Dr Thompkins and tell her about your broken arm. I will first inform Masters Bruce and Dick of your call. I will see you soon.” Alfred hung up and Tim paled.
“Oh no, he’s so disappointed.” Tim sounded horrified. Jason snickered and solemnly patted him on the shoulder, muttering how he was screwed. Peter couldn’t help but agree, he’d been on the receiving end of Alfred’s disappointment exactly once since he met the man and it was terrifying.
Once Jason was done giving Tim first aid, he made sure to give the younger another hug. “Spidey, get in contact with Tony please, we only have minutes before they’ll be here.”
“Aye aye captain.” Peter pulled his phone out of a secret pocket in his suit and quickly sent a message to his mentor/father figure, asking him to be prepared to recall them. He knew that Tony would’ve been in the lab so it would take him seconds to reach the machine.
Jason turned to look at Red Hood first “You. Behave yourself. If you give Timbourine a chance, you will find that he’s the best of all your siblings. I mean, aside from Cass, but everyone agrees that Cass is the best.” He turned back to Tim “Just keep being yourself, Timber. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry we didn’t get here in time to completely stop this. And don’t forget that you always have a place in our family, no matter what anyone makes you feel.” He crossed his arms and looked away as if he could see that Tim’s eyes had started watering underneath his domino mask.
As a direct contrast to Jason, Peter was a lot kinder with what he said to Red Hood “You are loved. Whether you think you deserve it or not, you have people that love you endlessly.“ Red Hood turned his head to the side, cheeks reddening.
“Tim,” Peter couldn’t think of anything to say, “same goes for you. Even if you think there is nobody left who loves you, there will always be someone. I know it seems dark but that’s something you just need to remember.”
Tim fidgeted with his hands and opened his mouth to speak but then “01 Batman, B-1 Nightwing.”
“Oh fuck shit we need to go Pete-“
“Got it.” Peter barely looked down at his phone as he messaged Tony, only writing ‘now’. He only realised what Jason had called him after he’d pressed send, “You- name?” He’s sure that the lenses on his mask were very wide.
“I am so sorry but we just… can’t…” Jason shook his head, looking over to the door of the medbay with anticipation.
Even when Peter had first encountered Batman, he’d never really been scared of the man. However, hearing him purposefully make his footsteps loud as he stomped down the hallway was terrifying. He appeared in the doorway, Nightwing behind him and the second he laid eyes on Tim and then Jason, before he’d really noticed Peter or the actual Jason of their timeline, he looked to be preparing for a fight. Then he noticed the other two occupants of the room and Peter could basically see him connecting the dots.
“What did you do?” He growled. Whether that was at Peter or Jason, or even one oft the other two, he had no idea. Peter subconsciously stepped back a bit, drawing attention to himself “Who are you?” Peter gulped. He understood why criminals were so afraid of Batman now.
“B! Don’t!” Tim yelled, and then there was the familiar tug against his wrist as the recall occurred, bringing them back to Tony’s lab.
“I’m sorry that I took so long.” Was the first thing said, Peter apologising to Jason now that they were no longer staring down Batman and Nightwing.
“Hey, no. You didn’t do anything wrong, I promise you. You did good.” Jason reassured him.
“Okay… okay.” Peter believed him. “Man, you were an asshole.”
“You did say that.” Jason replied, amused. “So… warehouse trauma?” Peter turned to see how close Tony was, because he still hadn’t told him the full events that went down during Homecoming and didn’t plan to.
“Found out the dad of my Homecoming date was the boss of an operation that sold weapons made from alien tech. He was planning to steal stuff from Tony when he’d originally sold the tower because I busted his last attempt at stealing more of the alien tech. I confronted him in a warehouse and he used his wings which were powered by the alien tech to take out the supports of the warehouse then collapsed it on me to make his escape. I’d been essentially benched, my upgraded suit had been taken from me as punishment for something else and I was back in my homemade suit, so I couldn’t call for help. I lifted the collapsed warehouse off me and ended up crashing the plane that the Vulture was trying to steal from.” Peter told Jason, speaking quietly to prevent Tony from hearing. It seemed that he was safe, Tony didn’t react to what he said.
“Well… that’s fun. I was too dead from the explosion to feel the warehouse that collapsed on me.” That hit Peter like a slap with a fish. It was unexpected and hurt more than it should.
“Jesus fuck Jason, give a guy some warning.” Jason just laughed. Asshole.