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Dick's ears are ringing. His head hurts. His awareness seeps in slowly and then snaps into place all at once—he's laying on a cold concrete floor, a distant acrid smell is clogging his throat, and the lights are yellow and tinged with green.
It's a warehouse. He's in a warehouse, surrounded by crates. The nearest one is pried open, a frozen cascade of glass spilling out from it. There's a hazy sense to the lighting, as if the world is one degree separated from Dick's senses.
His shoulder aches, and his head, but else seems uninjured. He can't remember how he got here, everything a blank past the start of patrol. He needs a concussion check.
His escrima sticks are on the ground. He was knocking out henchmen, wasn't he? The usual. He stoops to pick them up, and—
Freezes.
There's a body sprawled on its back in front of him.
Gangly, ash-pale limbs lay askew, the thin slip of a tank top doing little to hide a torso mottled with black and blue bruises; it's topped with a crushed nose and swollen eyes framed by mussed hair in oil-slick green. His knuckles throb in phantom pain.
The Joker is dead. The Joker is dead, and Dick killed him, because Dick is a murderer.
"I hit Jason a lot harder than that," a voice hisses from a memory he can't quite grasp. "His name was Jason, right?"
"It hurt."
Dick jerks, twisting towards the much more real voice, to the threat that he managed to miss, and it's—
A kid looks up at him with bright blue eyes through curly bangs. He's wrapped up in the Robin cape, the yellow eclipsing his body and the rest of his uniform, trailing behind him, leaking blood all over the floor. "It hurt," he repeats.
"Jason," Dick says, or he thinks he does. His mouth shapes the words but he can't hear it, not over the crackling cough that wretches itself, shuddering, from his throat.
Jason steps closer. His face is shrouded in shadow, but his eyes are bright, fixed on Dick's. He stops in front of another corpse still half dressed in that glitzy disco outfit, turned on its side, beaten and still, arm broken so violently that the bone is peaking through. "He killed me."
Dick can see them all, now, the bodies strewn across the glass and concrete, stark white and green-haired and broken and beaten and dead. "I know," he whispers.
"He beat me," Jason says. "Until I died. It hurt."
Something about that doesn't sound right, but the words catch in Dick's throat. He can't see Jason's face. He wants to, he can't remember—
He reaches out, but Jason steps back, tracking blood behind him. It's soaking into the bottom of the cape, burning away the parts it touches, leaving behind charred edges and the faint scent of smoke.
Dick can't see his mouth moving, not with how the shadows cover it, but Jason's voice is loud. "I was alone. He beat me and I died alone." Then, stronger. "You weren't there."
"I'm sorry," Dick says. His mouth is dry, his voice too soft. It still echoes, like it's bouncing around the high ceilings of a cathedral.
"You weren't there," Jason repeats. Blood trickles down from his hairline. "You let me die."
"I wasn't there," Dick says it back, as if acknowledgement could possibly be enough to absolve him. "I let you die, I know. I'm sorry."
Jason steps forward, and Dick finds himself stumbling back. He loses his balance, disoriented, and finds himself sprawled on the floor once more—and Jason keeps watching him with piercing blue eyes. They're cold and empty—an accusation, a condemnation.
"I'm Robin because he hurt you," Jason says. He nudges the corpses with one foot. Because the Joker had shot Dick and then, and then Bruce had fired Dick and thrown him out and, and—
"I'm Robin because he missed you," Jason continues. He takes another step forward and Dick scrambles back again. He stays on the ground, not trusting his own legs to hold him up if he tries to stand. Jason's right. Jason's right, Dick remembers that, remembers asking why Bruce took in a whole new kid, made a new kid Robin, pushed him until he said, I was lonely. I missed you.
Shattered glass under his hands. Jason's only Robin because—
"You left, so I replaced you, and because you left I died."
"That's not—" The words are slipping too quickly from Dick's grasp. "No—"
Smoke clogs in the back of Dick's throat, sickly sweet on his tongue. Blood trails Jason's cape on the ground, an ugly trail inching closer to Dick with every word, words overlapping with a years old conversation in a different voice. His jaw throbs with a remembered bruise. "You were lucky. When you didn't listen, your injuries weren't fatal. I wouldn't listen, either. I wanted to do everything my way. Just like you."
Dicks back presses against a wall—a crate, he can feel the texture of the splintering surface even through his suit. His hands press into glass shards, crunching under his body. "Jason, please," he says, begs, doesn't know what he's trying to ask for.
"You knew I had low self-esteem. I had self-destructive tendencies."
I really believe that if left on his own, the boy would be dead by now, says a voice that isn't a voice, echoing in Dick's ears. In my own way, I think I may have saved Jason's life.
"You gave me your number. You said you would pick up, but you didn't. I called you. You weren't there. Why weren't you there? You knew I was hurting."
Jason walked, alone, into a warehouse with a mass murderer. Alfred had said, in a murmur of grief, that Jason had been doing worse before he died. That Jason had been grieving, reckless, throwing himself into fights with no regard for his own safety.
Misguided anger and frustration. No great abundance of self-esteem.
Jason was hurting. Jason is hurting. Jason's calling him, calling Dick, his voice yelling in his ear through the phone that Dick never picked up. He's begging—how long has he been—ski trips and train surfing and they had so much fun together but it was so brief, and Dick had said to call and then Jason did but Dick wasn't there—
Jason stands next to the Joker's corpse. He kicks it lightly and it—
Dick had been so happy when he did it, so relieved it was done. He can still taste it, the victory after the rush of anger, after all he could feel was rage and another brother dead and the tattered yellow cape in the bony white hands. The viscous satisfaction before the implications of what he'd done had set in. Dick's a murderer, and the body's—
The body is Jason's. Beaten and bloodied, singed by the explosion afterwards. Red and green and yellow torn up and bleeding, the patterns of bruises and blood matching the pain in Dick's knuckles, matching the force of the punches Dick threw hard enough to tear the fabric of his suit. Dick is a murderer. This is his fault.
Dick did this.
Jason looks up from his own corpse, looming over Dick. Shrouded in shadow because Dick can't remember his face anymore, barely knew it outside the mask at all, because this is his brother and Dick never had a brother before and he did it all wrong. A phone call he never picked up.
Accusation, condemnation:
"You killed me."
Something tears out of Dick's throat—a sob that he chokes on, his body shivering. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry," he whispers, repeats it until it's a mantra on his tongue, until it doesn't sound like a real phrase anymore.
Jason watches him, impassive.
The shadows are closing in.
His corpse shifts, twitches, and he abruptly kicks it in the head, violent—Dick flinches, pushing back further against the crates. He can barely feel his own tongue anymore, but he keeps repeating those words, until they seem to drift out in the air in front of him, until he can almost hear them.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, he was waking up, I didn't mean to—Nightwing, here, let me, please don't freak out—okay? I'm sorry—
Jason eases himself forward slowly, crouched low to the ground, like a predator, sneaking closer to its paralyzed prey, except he's not even trying to hide and Dick is helpless to defend himself. It's a cruel taunt, and he deserves it. There's a glass shard glinting in Jason's hand—he must have picked it up off the floor. "It's okay. You're okay. Just hold still, for me, okay?"
"No—" Dick gasps out, broken. How can Jason say that? It's not true, it isn't—
"You killed me," Jason reminds him, gently, still prowling forward. Dick can't move. "You killed me. Aren't you sorry?" He is. "Prove it to me, then. Just hold still, Dickie."
And Dick—Dick's scared, in a way he hasn't been in a long time. He's shivering and shaking and he can barely hear Jason over the blood rushing in his ears, but he killed Jason and he—
"Okay," he thinks he says, and he squeezes his eyes shut and forces his muscles tense so they can't—
The first gentle touch of Jason's hand still makes him flinch. It's too kind. Jason shouldn't be handling him so carefully. He killed him.
A sting, a sharp, brief pain at his throat, and then the hands retreat and Dick curls up into himself, and he doesn't look, and he—he's waiting, he thinks. For Jason to kill him. Kill him like he killed the green-haired monster, like he killed Jason.
You're going to be okay, Nightwing. It's not real. You're okay.
Dick's head is fogging. The darkness beneath his eyelids is blurring. He needs to—he can't force them open. He can't feel his own limbs. He doesn't know where he is, and he's abruptly exhausted, and he can't open his eyes but he needs to see—
"Jason," he tries to say, but the words and his mind slip away, and then he's gone.
Dick's awareness seeps in slowly, then all at once. He feels a cool sensation spreading under the crook of his elbow, hears the distant chittering of bats, smells antiseptic and lemon-scented cleaner. There's a warm weight lingering near his other arm.
He's in the Batcave. He's in the Batcave, in the medical bay, hooked up to an IV drip and other monitors. His memories are jumbled, but he remembers the pounding of his heart, the breaths he couldn't fully pull in, the icy crawl of fear up his spine.
Dick pries his eyes open, wincing slightly against the brightness of the lights. Fear toxin. It was a bit concerning that it had worked so well, given the immunity he'd built up over the years. Even now, there's a frisson of tension down his spine, disorienting anxiety that hasn't calmed.
He tilts his head carefully, and stops when the world tilts on its axis and his brain swims. Still, the shift is enough for him to identify the warmth by his side—the bony form perched on a chair and leaning on the cot, head pillowed on his arms. Dick can't see much more than a tangle of black hair.
Something warm bursts in his chest, soothing away the wild tangled fears he can't put a name to. His time with Jason has always been so strained by the distance and Dick's own contentious relationship with Bruce, and the kid's prickly and defensive and likes pretending he's too cool for the world, but he's here. He's here, waiting for Dick, because he cares. He's—he's not dead, and a distant alarm sounds in his head at the realization, but it fades easily as Dick drinks in the sight of his brother.
Dick shifts, reaching out. He's aiming for the shoulder, wanting to shake Jason awake—wanting to see his face, not the blue eyes set in a black void like his nightmares insist—but he's still a little uncoordinated and it instead lands in Jason's hair. It takes a little too much energy to make sure he does it gently instead of whacking Jason on the head.
He's tired, and his head still hurts, a throbbing pain concentrated at his temple. He lets his eyes slide shut. Better to get some more rest before Alfred or Bruce start coming down to fuss over him or demand an explanation.
His fingers curl thoughtlessly, starting to stroke gently through the strands. They feel oddly stiff, too straight, not as curly as they should be, but then again he's always ducked away every time Dick's tried to ruffle his hair. Maybe he's just misremembering. Jason lets out a soft murmur, snuggling closer, and Dick doesn't try to hide his smile.
It's okay. Jason's alive. Jason's safe. Jason's here.
They're okay.