Chapter Text
Jason didn’t know what to think of this Phantom guy.
For starters, he wasn’t quite as solid as people were supposed to be.
Jason’s eyes kept sliding off him—edges blurring, colors popping a little too bright against the grime of the street. Phantom looked like someone had taken a superhero straight from those old comic books Jason used to read at the library and badly photoshopped him onto Crime Alley: too clean, too sharp, hovering a fraction of an inch above asphalt that was cracked, stained, and real.
Phantom hovered there while Jason examined him, hands loose at his sides, posture open. He looked young. Around Jason’s age, maybe. Impossibly white hair billowed in a nonexistent wind, his glowing eyes were a strange radioactive green, his entire…everything looking just a little to the left of human.
Jason shifted his weight, boots scraping faintly against the pavement. The sound echoed wrong—too hollow, like the sound was being swallowed up by something. He took note of it but didn’t turn his attention away from the guy in front of him.
“So,” Jason finally said, folding his arms loosely across his chest, still prepared to move at a moment’s notice. “You some kind of Meta?”
Phantom blinked, startled. His head cocked to one side, like he was a bird or some shit. “Ah… yeah.” He scratched the back of his neck, smiling weakly and showing off needle-sharp fangs that sent a shiver down Jason’s spine. “Meta’s… close enough, I guess.”
Jason’s gaze flicked away from Phantom just long enough to look around them.
Something felt… wrong.
It looked like Gotham. It smelled like Gotham—oil, mildew, and smog clinging to everything. But the edges kept slipping. The streetlight overhead buzzed too loud, flickering between too bright and not bright enough, and every time Jason blinked, the cracks in the pavement rearranged themselves slightly. Like the city was trying to remember how it went.
Was that Phantom’s doing?
…Did Jason have a concussion?
Okay. Fine. He’d been hit harder than he thought. That happened. Blood loss, too—he remembered that much. The memory stuttered when he tried to grab it, like a tape snagging on itself, but that didn’t mean anything. He’d get the full picture when he caught up with Bruce. Or Alfred. Or—hell, he’d even take Dick at this point.
He just wanted his family.
Jason shook his head and focused back on the Meta. “Can you tell what part of Gotham we’re in? I think I hit my head.”
Phantom’s mouth opened.
Closed.
He glanced down the street, then up at the streetlight, then back at Jason, looking almost… sheepish.
“…Yeah,” Phantom said, with the least reassuring smile Jason had ever seen, ever. “That tracks.”
Jason’s eyes narrowed, immediately suspicious. “...Why?”
The guy fidgeted. He glanced down the street again, then back at Jason.
“Because…” Phantom trailed off, like he wasn’t certain how to word it, “this part of Gotham is… weird?”
Jason stared at him.
“That’s your explanation?”
Phantom winced. “It would be better to… show you what I’m talking about, honestly.”
Jason ground his teeth.
Whatever Phantom wasn’t saying sat thick in the air between them. The Meta wasn’t panicking or hostile, seemingly. If anything, he looked like he was trying not to freak Jason out, which somehow made things worse.
What was going on?
Jason pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth, grounding himself. He definitely had a concussion. And likely blood loss. Those were things that messed with perception. Bruce would kill him if he wandered off with a stranger to look for him, rather than staying put.
Bruce would—
Jason swallowed hard and shook his head again.
“Okay,” he said, forcing his focus back onto Phantom. “So what’s your plan for helping me find my dad?”
Phantom hesitated, then shrugged one shoulder, awkward and careful. “I could… fly us around. Get you acquainted with the area. See if you notice anything familiar. Landmarks, things like that.”
Jason’s stomach sank.
He looked Phantom up and down again—hovering, glowing, too-clean-for-Gotham Phantom—and felt the familiar prickle of don’t. Don’t trust strangers. Don’t give up control. Don’t let metas take you airborne when you’re injured and disoriented.
And yet—
There it was again.
That low, steady pull in his chest.
Safe safe safe.
Jason didn’t like that. It felt like his instincts were betraying him.
“…If you drop me,” Jason said slowly, meeting Phantom’s eyes, “I will haunt you.”
Phantom blinked.
Then, to Jason’s mild irritation, he smiled and beamed. “Deal.”
Jason rolled his eyes and stepped closer before he could think better of it, grabbing a fistful of Phantom’s sleeve.
Phantom shifted, hands coming up automatically. One arm hooked under Jason’s left arm, the other settling under his right—secure, practiced, careful to keep Jason balanced in his grip. Jason froze for half a second, startled by the familiarity of it.
“…You know,” Jason muttered, “this is how Superman carries Batman.”
Phantom scoffed before he could stop himself. Almost like a tch, except Jason read it more like tt. “Really? Allah, I bet he hates that.”
Jason was startled by the familiarity of Phantom’s tone, as well as the use of “Allah”, but he shook it off. He could ask after they found Bruce.
He grabbed one of Phantom’s wrists, jaw set. “Don’t drop me. And don’t do anything weird, got it?”
Phantom nodded immediately, all humor gone. “I won’t.”
Then the ground slipped away.
Jason’s stomach lurched as his boots left the pavement, reflex screaming as the street dropped out from under him outside of his own power. He sucked in a sharp breath and locked his grip, bracing for the worst—
—but it never came.
The air rushed past, even and constant, cool against Jason’s face. The ground fell away without the stomach-dropping lurch he’d been bracing for, the transition smooth enough that it took him a second to realize they were no longer rising over rooftops so much as leaving them behind.
Jason tightened his grip on Phantom’s wrist.
Phantom adjusted immediately.
Jason stared down as Gotham grew smaller and smaller under his feet, but…
The shapes were familiar enough—water towers, fire escapes, the jagged silhouettes of gargoyles crouched on corners. Jason tracked them automatically, scanning for landmarks, for anything that would tell him where he was in relation to places he knew.
This wasn’t Gotham at all, was it?
This place that looked like Gotham unfolded beneath them in wrong, overlapping layers—rooftops that didn’t quite line up, streets bending where they shouldn’t, entire blocks fading in and out like bad reception. Everything looked vaguely like it would be from Gotham, but nothing stood out to Jason. He didn’t recognize anything.
Jason swallowed. “…Okay,” he muttered. “Yeah. That’s not normal.”
He stared down at the city, heart pounding, scanning every rooftop and shadow for any familiar shapes—trying to figure out where the hell his dad could be in all of that mess.
Then the sky started to change.
At first it was just at the edges of the smoggy night sky—black thinning like watercolors. Then neon green seeped into the darkness in uneven bands. The clouds unraveled as they climbed, losing their weight, drifting into shapes that didn't align with anything Jason had seen on Earth.
Jason sucked in a slow breath through his nose.
He shifted his grip again, not on purpose this time, and Phantom compensated without hesitation, keeping them steady as Gotham fractured further below. The city no longer looked like a place so much as a reflection—broken, repeating, dissolving at the edges.
Jason’s chest felt tight.
“Phantom,” he said quietly.
Phantom glanced down, the green of his eyes eerily similar to the neon color bleeding into the horizon. “Yeah?”
Jason stared ahead, watching the last coherent stretch of skyline thin out beneath them. “What the hell is this?”
Phantom slowed.
The air steadied. The motion evened out, like he’d decided this was far enough.
Jason waited.
“…Okay,” Phantom said finally, voice low. Careful. “So. This is the part where I need you to stay with me.”
Jason let out a short breath. “You say that like I’ve got options.”
Phantom huffed once, then sobered. His grip shifted again, anchoring them in place, giving Jason something solid to hold onto as the city continued to unravel below.
“We’re not in Gotham,” he revealed.
Jason didn’t know whether to joke “No shit, dumbass” or try and argue but…
He looked down at the last recognizable fragment of street as it slipped away, swallowed by swirling green light. His feet dangled over an abyss of endless green.
Gotham had disappeared into nothing, as though it had never even existed.
Where was his dad?
“…Then where are we?”
Phantom’s face screwed up into a familiar expression of discomfort. Like he was worried about making Jason angry with his answer.
“The Infinite Realms.”
Then Phantom veered midair, heading in a new direction.
Jason startled and started squirming. “Wait—wait, wait, wait! Where are you taking me?”
Phantom glanced down at him, eyes blending into the endless green expanse. “Uh. Back.”
Jason tightened his grip on Phantom’s wrist automatically. “Back where?”
“To Keystone,” Phantom said, like that should have been obvious. “My Jaddi told me where to find you, so it makes sense to go back to him and—y’know. Figure out what to do next.”
Jason stared at him. “Absolutely not.”
Phantom blinked. “What.”
“Nope,” Jason said, firm. “You do not get to drag me to another weird glowing stranger. I don’t know you, I don’t know him, and I am not playing interdimensional hot potato.”
“That’s not what this is.”
“That is exactly what this is.”
Phantom slowed, hovering in place, brows pinching with the beginnings of irritation. “Okay, but counterpoint—”
Jason pointed at him the best he could with his death-grip on Phantom’s wrist. “No counterpoints.”
“If you want to find your dad,” Phantom continued anyway, unfazed, “don’t you think the best place to start is with someone who knew where to look for you?”
Jason opened his mouth.
Closed it again.
His jaw set, irritation flaring hot and familiar in his chest. “I hate you.”
Phantom grinned. “Yeah. I get that a lot.”
Jason scowled. “You’re enjoying this.”
He shrugged, careful not to jostle the Robin in his grip. “Only a little.”
Jason huffed and fought the urge to kick his feet. He didn’t have a comeback for that one. The logic was annoyingly sound, and he hated that even more than the green sky and the floating in infinite space and the fact that none of this felt like it was following any of the rules Jason knew.
“…Fine,” Jason muttered. “But we need to make a stop first.”
Phantom cocked his head. “A stop?”
“I need a minute,” Jason said. “Somewhere I can sit. Ask questions. Wrap my head around whatever this is before you haul me off to your cryptic space-grandpa.”
Phantom hesitated, glancing ahead, then back at Jason. His tail—and he had a tail now, where’d his feet go?—flicked, restless.
“Okay,” he said at last. “Yeah. That’s fair. We can take a minute.”
He continued flying, just to the left of their original path.
An island drifted into view like it had been waiting for them—a chunk of dark purple stone and pink grass suspended in the green expanse, edges trailing off into mist. It wasn’t large, but it was solid, and Jason felt a wave of relief hit him the moment Phantom set him down on his own two feet.
Jason staggered slightly, boots finding purchase on real ground.
“Okay,” he said, steadying himself and wiping imaginary dust off his chest. “That’s better.”
Phantom didn’t land. He hovered instead, making lazy, impatient loops around the island, his lower half still a wispy tail that faded and reformed as he moved like smoke in the wind. Jason watched it out of the corner of his eye.
If he wasn’t so solid, Jason would think Phantom was the most stereotypical ghost to ever exist.
…Shit. Was that why he called himself Phantom?
A sinking feeling started in Jason’s gut.
“So,” Phantom said, cutting Jason off from his thoughts. He made a lazy loop in the air, tail flicking. “You had questions?”
Jason turned slowly, taking in the view—or lack of one. The green sky stretched endlessly, dotted with drifting shapes that might have been debris or might have been something… alive? Not alive? Sound behaved oddly here; his own breathing sounded closer than it should have, like the space around him was off.
“Start with the basics,” Jason said. “What is this place?”
“The Infinite Realms,” Phantom said again. “It’s… kind of the in-between of the multiverse. It holds together everything.”
Jason absorbed that. “So. Not Hell.”
“Nope.”
“Not Heaven.”
“Also nope.”
Jason nodded. “Cool, cool. So… you from here, then?”
Phantom laughed, quick and bright. “Yep!” he chirped, then frowned and immediately amended, “well… yes and no? It’s complicated.”
Jason shot him a look that would have made Alfred proud. “Wow. Way to clear things up. I have absolutely no questions anymore.”
Phantom stuck out his tongue and blew a raspberry.
Jason sighed and dropped onto the grass, sitting heavily at the very edge of the island. The ground felt real beneath him—cool, solid. He kicked his feet over the edge, letting the solid surface ground him. Phantom continued making loops in the sky, like a restless dog trailing the perimeter of its yard.
“Do you know how I got here?” Jason asked.
Phantom shook his head, white hair unaffected by the movement. “No. But Jaddi Keystone probably does.”
Jason filed that away for later.
He leaned back on his hands, staring up at the green sky. The longer he sat with it, the more things felt… off. Not just the place. Himself.
His suit, for one.
Jason lifted one arm, inspecting the sleeve. The fabric was torn in places, scorched, edges frayed like they’d been burned. The colors were wrong, too—inverted, like someone had flipped a switch on the colors. No longer was he the traffic light known as Robin… he was blues and pinks, instead.
He shifted, pressing a hand to his chest.
There was no heartbeat.
Not the familiar thud-thud he’d let sooth him his whole life. Instead, there was a hum. Low. Steady. Purring just beneath his sternum, in the same place he’d been feeling that quiet safe safe safe pull since meeting Phantom.
Jason swallowed.
His fingers curled into the fabric over the R on his chest. The symbol felt warm under his gloved fingers. The one thing that was familiar, even with its flipped color scheme.
His mind, traitorous thing that it was, started filling in the gaps:
Ethiopia.
His mother’s apartment. The heat. The way she’d looked at him when he told her he was Robin—proud and thoughtful all at once. Talking about Bruce. About Gotham. About his home and his family.
The Joker.
The crowbar.
Pain—white-hot, then dull, then everywhere. Laughter. The smell of gasoline. Smoke. So thick Jason choked on it.
The beeping.
00:03
00:02
00:01
00:00
“Jason?” Phantom asked.
Jason sucked in a sharp breath.
Jason hadn’t realized he was crying until something wet dripped off the tip of his nose. He lifted a trembling hand—wrong color, not Robin—and touched his face. The domino mask over his eyes was torn, useless, doing nothing to hide him anymore.
His hand fell back into his lap.
“…Am I dead?” he asked Phantom, voice shuddering.
The words hung there, fragile and terrifying.
Phantom didn’t dodge it.
He landed then, tail resolving into legs as he sat beside Jason, close but not touching. His expression was solemn, stripped of all the humor he’d held before.
“…I mean,” Phantom said, green eyes bright and gentle, “if it makes you feel any better—so am I?”
Jason barked out a laugh that turned into a sob halfway through. He curled in on himself, pulling his knees to his chest and burying his face there, shoulders shaking. He hugged himself tight, feeling like his chest would fracture without the pressure.
“Oh my god,” he choked. “Bruce is going to—”
He cut himself off. He couldn’t finish the thought.
Bruce, who Jason hadn’t told about his plans to meet his mom in Ethiopia. Alfred, who had given him a knowing smile and a warm hug before letting him sneak off. Dick, off on a mission in the middle of space, who would come home only to find out Robin was dead.
Jason shook.
He cried.
Not the quiet kind, either—the ugly, full-body kind that wracked through him in uneven waves, his breath halting, gasping, and stuttering in his chest. His shoulders hitched hard enough that his teeth clicked together, the sound sharp in the open nothingness of the dimension he was in.
It was Limbo, where he was. Right? That place between life and death.
Every breath scraped his throat raw, air catching on sobs he didn’t consciously make. His chest felt too tight, like someone had cinched a strap around his ribs and kept pulling. That steady hum under his sternum shuddered and whined, upset with him.
He burned.
“I—” Jason tried, then broke off with a strangled sound.
He buried his face deeper into his knees, but the images kept slamming into him without stopping.
Bruce’s hand on his shoulder in the Cave, heavy and grounding. Alfred’s voice calling him Master Jason, warm and exasperated in equal measure. Dick’s laugh over comms, tinny and full of brotherly affection, promising to bring back souvenirs from space and don’t touch my stuff while I’m gone, got it, Little Wing?
Jason ground his forehead hard into his knees.
It hurt—dull pressure through bone and fabric—and he welcomed it. Pain meant he was still here. Pain was familiar. Pain made sense in a way this endless green sky and this humming not-heartbeat didn’t.
His tears wicked off the waterproof kneepads of his suit. He could smell smoke and copper and ozone all tangled together, the air carrying that faint static tang the Realms seemed to have everywhere. Every inhale felt too small, like his lungs couldn’t handle taking in anything more than tiny sips of air at a time.
“I didn’t—” His voice came out hoarse, barely audible. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”
That did it.
The sound that tore out of him then was raw and broken, halfway between a sob and a laugh that never quite made it. His body folded tighter in on itself, elbows digging into his ribs as if he could physically hold himself together through sheer force.
He cried for Bruce—because Bruce would blame himself, because Bruce always did.
He cried for Alfred—because Alfred would be so quiet about it, because that would somehow hurt worse.
He cried for Dick—because Dick would come back smiling, ready to tease him, and there would be nothing left to tease.
His shoulders ached. His jaw trembled. His eyes burned until the green sky blurred into streaks of light and shadow.
Time did something strange around him—stretching, maybe, or thinning—but Jason couldn’t tell how long he sat there shaking, breath rasping in and out, tears dripping steadily off the bridge of his nose and into his lap.
Through it all, Phantom stayed.
Jason was vaguely aware of him shifting closer, the grass rustling softly as he settled fully beside him. He didn’t touch Jason, but the presence was there.
You’re-safe I’m-sorry I-mourn-with-you, Jason heard.
Jason’s sobs slowly lost their sharp edge, tapering off into hitching breaths that still hurt but didn’t feel like they were tearing him open anymore. His throat felt raw, like he’d been screaming for hours even though he hadn’t.
He wiped at his face with the heel of his glove, smearing tears across fabric that didn’t feel like it belonged to him anymore.
“I was just—fuck!” he whispered, pissed at himself, his voice hoarse and wrecked. “I didn’t mean to go… God, I want my dad.”
That was when Phantom finally wrapped his arms around Jason’s shoulders and pulled him close.
Jason’s forehead pressed into Phantom’s chest. The fabric there was cool and smooth, smelling faintly like ice and something sweet, like spiced tea. Phantom held him like he’d done this before. Like he knew exactly how to keep someone from tipping over the edge.
Then the grass under him rippled. Not like wind, but as though the entire island was a reflection in still water and something had reached up from under the surface and dragged nails through it, scattering the serenity.
Jason’s head snapped up.
A presence hung over him—slick and invasive, like oil carving through water.
Jason’s vision blurred at the edges. The island dipped. The sky tilted.
And for a horrible second he was back in that warehouse, breath tasting like smoke and blood, ears full of the Joker’s laughter—
—but the laugh didn’t belong to the Joker.
It was lower. Older. Smug. But just as familiar.
And right behind Jason’s ear.
“Found you, Bluejay.”
The cold presence pushed against his mind again.
Jason’s thoughts stuttered, skipping like a scratched DVD. The green sky pulsed. The distant shapes in the Realms blurred into smears. It pressed at the inside of Jason’s skull like a thumb testing bruised fruit.
Jason’s fingers curled into claws against his own suit. His breath came fast, shallow. The air tasted sharp—metal and ozone and something bitter underneath, like burnt rubber. Gasoline. Oil. Greasy hairspray.
“No,” Jason tried, but it came out ragged. He didn’t know who he was saying it to.
“Finally.” The cold thing laughed again. It sounded like a slimy grin.
“Time to clip—
Those—
Wings.”