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To say the Wayne family handled the deaths of one of their own gracefully and rationally would not be telling the whole truth. From experience, they do not take the news well. Infact, it'd probably be like telling a fish that's lived under 30,000 ft of water its whole life that not only does there exist places that have so little water they spontaneously combust, but also like trying to explain to said fish the process of radioactive isotope degradation. Its just... its hard. Impossible, even.
So really, dick should have expected something wild when the man infamous for becoming a bat-themed vigilante upon his parents passing, would react to the death of a child, adopted or not. In his nightmares, dicks imagined situations like this, everything from plausible to downright insane. Almost as soon as he learned another boy would be taking the name his parents gave him, the dreams started, even if he didn't like him- hated Jason at first, the death of a family member was devastating.
In all the dreams Dick Grayson had. Not a single one went like this.
It starts off unnerving. He had just got home from an exhausting space mission with the titans when his phone starts buzzing. Bruce, a call from him, nevermind an unplanned one, is always bad news. When dick picks up the call, the man says nothing, he almost thinks the man has butt-dialled him. That would be okay, hed make fun of him for that later-
"Hey- Hey um, son" dicks blood turns to ice. That tone of voice alone, forget word choice, has told him everything he needs to know. someone in their small group is dead. grievously injured at best. The exhaustion makes him not even want to inquire any further, eventually the curiosity wins over the exhaustion. "what happened." he asks, wearily.
"...How do you feel about being an only child again?"
Dick hangs up the phone.
____
So. it turns out, there isn't a Funeral that dick has to attend. There isn't a funeral because Dicks brother has been dead for weeks.
Sure, he might have not been the best, most amazing brother ever, but he and Jason had… eventually grown close. Recently. They complained about Bruce, went on trips, did patrols when dick was in town, fistfought over the last dessert until they were both sick and lightly bleeding. Normal, good old-fashioned sibling stuff.Anyway, from what hes learned from the timeline. Dick was still on earth by the time jason had planned to leave after his argument with bruce, he couldve- he was avaliable for him to talk to before- before.
There's something about the small grave in front of him, its somewhere nearby the wayne family plot and something about it just makes him want to run. Back to bloodhaven, back to some war torn planet of banana people or sentient psychic space dolphins*
Something lurks around the grave like a bad smell.
So he leaves behind the grave that bears only a name and a date and treads back to the mansion. He barely notices the feeling of something joining him as his grief and anger hold hands and run off together into the night.
When he gets back, Bruce is in the cave. Staring at the computer. As usual. Dick takes a peek over his shoulder, all sneaky like and stops dead in his tracks.
“You cannot be serious.”
Batman, eloquent as ever, grunts at him. His anger is quickly evolving into rage, on the screen is a character file. A boy he vaguely recognizes from galas in the mansion down the street.
“Its not what you think it looks like”
“You- “ for a moment dick is speechless. Classic batman has made a complete comeback.
“What it looks like is that youre picking out your next black haired, blue eyed orphan to bump the fucking collection back up”
Bruces silence is powerful. Dick hit it spot on. The silence says it all. It says “Thats exactly what I’m doing but since a brick wall is more emotional than me, I cant face that right now”
Nightwing is going on patrol tonight.
____
Stress and grief do weird things to people, like really weird. We aren't just talking depression, personality change or gaining a strange habit or mourning technique. No, capital G- Grief leads people to murder, insane revival plots, wild whole-city revenge plots and delusion.
Dick blames the stress for the reason why he's currently completely failed at taking down a group of thugs.
The last thing he remembers is doing a signature Nightwing flip tackle to take out the last one in the party. What he thought was the last one.
Guessing by his current situation it obviously Was Not.
There's no other reason as to why he's blearily coming to his senses, head to toe feeling like a stray asteroid hit him.
Something is swimming above his head. He's sure past the ringing something is making a sound that might be words. Right now he can only sort of understand sensory input. He is seeing all sorts of colours.
Yellow, red, black, grey, green.
The colours morph into a person, someone crouched beside his head
“-ome onn. Wakey wakey dickface. What y-”
Ah he's clearly dead. Ok. he can deal with this. Cool.
“GET UP!!”
He wishes being dead were quieter.
“Come on you buttface you're lying in gross. Like straight gross. Gross even for gotham, gross. Also your stupid sticks are shouting and its getting annoying”
Not even in death can he escape Gotham's all encompassing grime. He groans, regaining the rest of his feeling just makes the sensation of every one of his nerves screaming at him that much more pronounced, that guy must've had one hell of a swing.
He gets up, not dead and- Wow this concussion is strong.
Robin stands a few meters away examining one of his escrima sticks, not bothering to get them for him. And is also not dead. Jason straightens up and looks at him. Then suddenly is standing in front of him.
“Whoa… you… look like a smashed egg.”
Dick Sobs.
______________
It's been three months since dick visited his brother's grave, got beat the crap out of and gained a tag-along. Those couple of months have felt like years to him though.
First of all, when he thought the unseen crook that got him had a nasty swing? That turned out to be a severe understatement. Guy had a swing that would've made professional batters jealous. Seriously jealous. Like legitimately why do half the goons that wander Gothams streets have potential to be ace athletes and they've taken up jobs doing what? Watching a warehouse roof for a penguin man looking for a guy dressed as a huge bat? instead of going to the big leagues? He's honestly a little disappointed the guy wasn't a baseball star.
Second, Bruce, for some unholy reason, has been trying to contact him. Dicks personal theories are that a) he needs someone to do grunt work (probably recon) for him or b) he was replaced by a shape-shifting brain-eating fungus alien from mars. He's honestly hoping it's option b.
Third… Well he's trying to ignore the third reason he feels like he's gone 10 rounds against bane, mentally and physically. The spectre of his brother that's taken to trailing around after him.
His hallucination brother isn't around all the time, thank god, but dick puts in a fair amount of effort into tuning him out. Especially after the first few weeks where as soon as he'd wake up- from a nightmare more often than not, he'd be immediately jumped on by an over-excited robin.
Surprisingly, and to his horror, he sometimes finds Jason's commentary comforting. There's been a few times already he's had to hide a smile once or twice, listening to robin dish out devastatingly accurate roasts about everyone in a nearby vicinity.
The time he was forced to sit through a full debrief with Bruce while Jason mocked him directly to his face and copied him with exaggerated movements had him biting his cheek to keep a straight face.
Dicks just grateful the boy doesn't seem to realize he's dead. The robin costume is whole and undirtied, not at all like the one hanging in the batcave-
Oh and don't even get him started on that.
The day had been a good day so far, then he'd walked into the cave, ready and raring to go and he stopped dead at the sight of a glass case by the wall of the cave.
He lasted all of four seconds before he was turning around and retching, splattering his dinner all over the caves floor.
The sight of the costume his parents had originally made for him, torn, melted, charred and so- so bloodied, Had hit somewhere deep in his brain worse than he'd ever felt before in his life.
Now that was an achievement.
Jason didn't flicker about or disappear for a while after that.
He just lurked on the edge of his vision. Not adding anything, not accosting him, not babbling a running commentary of what was happening.
It was almost worse than it was before.
That was the final part in his decision to leave again. The increased violence from Bruce was one thing, the robin candidate another. The 'memorial' was the straw that broke the camels back though.
After half a year of living in the good old hell of a city, Dicks decided to move back to Bludhaven.
He doesn't know why he expected otherwise, but not-a-ghost Jason is able to follow him out of Gotham, and he does.
"Man, I forgot how boring the drive here was. Also how boring Bludhaven is in general. This place might get called a shithole too but it aint got crap on even the good parts'a gotham"
Jason frowns and slouches in the front seat, his arms are crossed. The perfect picture of an annoyed, fed-up teenager.
"I've missed Bludhaven, you know. Missed having a daylife too. It'll... it'll be better here i think..." Dick mutters. More trying to convince himself then to the boy staring out the window next to him.
____
Dick was right. Sort of. It was nice to be back in Bludhaven. The first patrol brought the same sense of freedom as it did the first time he set up shop in the city. He likes Gotham, but Bludhaven is the home he'd carved out for himself.
Jason has been fairly quiet, possibly just adjusting to the new place. Most times when Nightwing is about to grapple from the window to start the nights patrol he sees Jason flicker and disappear from the corner of his eye.
Occasionally he’ll reappear during patrol, his usual annoying self. But when he doesn't it makes Dick realise something.
It's nice to be able to swing without anyone breathing down his neck again.
(Though… he's almost glad his hallucination followed him home sometimes. How weird is that? It's just just- having Jason is almost fun sometimes. Like a couple of weeks ago, dick was calmly drinking coffee, barely listening to him badly summarising some book
“And then he realised he fluffed up and-”
The boy paused, long enough for dick to notice.
“Hold on…. I CAN SWEAR FOR REAL NOW”
The ensuing swear screamed at the top of ghostly lungs made coffee spurt from his nose as he laughed harder then he had in months)
It does force him to see the loneliness of it all though. He'd never really felt that way before Jasons death. Drunk off finally having proper freedom and always being whisked away on new adventures with the titans. He didn't think about being in an all new city, almost as bad as Gotham, all on his own.
He reminisces on his life at the beginning of the year and it starts to make sense why his brother didn't come to him before he fell.
_____
This time. Dick knows he's alive through Jason. Only life could be as cruel as to force his first sight to be his broken and bleeding brother. No longer in the clean uniform, This time in his death suit with every injury open on display.
He barely remembers what happened. Something about a drug bust he had a feeling was gonna go sideways.
Last time he had a concussion this bad was when he gained his first unwanted ghostly sidekick. It seems the trend has continued.
Dick wishes now more than ever the annoying but cheerful robin would come back , Anything would be better than the figure dripping blood in front of him.
The corpse stares down at him with blood filled, haunted eyes. The suit a mirror of the one in the cave but somehow worse.
Worse because he can see where skin becomes one with fabric. Where each crowbar strike landed and tore through skin and armour alike. Every single broken bone.
Unlike the first time. This Jason just stares at him in silence. He doesn't need to say anything. With his presence a buzz of white noise and screaming is all dick can hear.
His ‘kidnapper’ has come back for more, with a classic villain monologue to boot. Despite the fact dick is already beat to hell, it seems there's more in store. Dick just closes his eyes. He doesn't care what happens next.
"You know I can't help you. I'm already dead"
___
Fortunately or unfortunately, dick was rescued last minute. A whole rescue mission, led by Roy and a few of the titans.
In the whole mess of fights, arrests and getting rushed to the hospital. The dead boy has not left his side.
Today, dicks was released from his five day stay in hospital. When he gets in he practically collapses onto his bed, Exhausted.
He's almost asleep when he's startled back into alertness
"Guess who's back~" says a cheerful voice
Oh god.
"Wait who the hell is THIS TURD??"
There's two.
_____
Good news: The first Jason hallucination and the second Jason hallucination (he's just gonna call him ghost Jason) can see each other. He has a quick hope that, now they have each other, they'll leave him alone!
That hope is quickly dashed as in comes the Bad News: they do NOT like each other.
Dick, admittedly, is a little high on painkillers and watching the argument a little like a tennis match. He's not sure what's going on but its something to watch anyway
The dead one and the more dead one have been pointing and waving hands at each other for almost 10 minutes.
They don't seem to realize dick is watching. Interesting. They've really taken arguing with yourself to the next level. A mans worst enemy really is himself.
___
After the argument that dick fell asleep watching, Ghost Jason seems to have found his tongue.
He talks to robin more than he does dick, they still don't really like each other but he guesses they have more in common, being hallucinations of the same person and all.
Currently, the ghost is standing in the kitchen, dripping apparition blood in puddles all over the place. He's staring at a calendar.
He mumbles something dick can't quite hear, then he suddenly looks straight into dicks eyes.
"Did you know? It's been three years since I died.”
He doesn't know what to say. Jason fades away after that.
The blood stays.
___
The two Jasons continue to get along like a warehouse blown up and on fire. That is to say, not good.
His only relief is that ghostly Jason doesn't seem to be able to pull himself together often, and not for long periods of time. It's a relief because while Hallucination Jason has the decency to a) look like a normal human and b) give him peace (occasionally). Ghost Jason both does neither of those and doesn't seem to be able to control his… bloodiness. Or the part white noise part screams of the damned sound that seems to follow him around.
He's also, as hallucination Jason puts it, “a huge fucking downer”
So it's easy to see where the robin that doesn't seem to remember dying and the literal personification of a dead robin clash, and thus, where the non stop arguments come from.
____
At the year mark, Dick starts to notice that Ghostly Jason is having more and more trouble pulling himself together.
Robin seems to notice this as well, and the arguments subside for the most part. The longer the ghost spends between the times he's present, the more distraught he gets. It's not fun for any of them as the ghost of Jason Todd collapses to his knees in the living room and death wounds appear and open in real time.
The truce between robins does give dick a little solace though.
He fears he's going to need it. His current case is taking him into Gotham.
Gotham, as you well know, is the home of Batman. In the years following Jason's death Bruce got… violent. As he seems to when without a robin. This led to one of the worst ever decisions made by Batman ever. He put another damn kid in that suit.
The very same one the boy he claimed as a son died in.
Robin, as robins do, isn't in Gotham permanently anymore. He's off, spreading his wings with the teen titans.
…meaning Batman will not be thrilled to see him.
___
The next few days are a shitshow. Along with his case going cold, Dick gets caught up in a showdown between Batman, Joker and Gothams newest number 1 crime lord, the Red Hood.
The worse part is, breaking his leg during the fight has stranded him in Gotham for the next while.
___
Dick Grayson has been awake for 79 hours.
His two unwanted chaperones have been fighting for a solid of 28 them.
At this point, he doesn't care why they're fighting, or what they're fighting about. At one point around the 17 hour mark they tried to actually fight, Jasons hallucination threw a punch at his ghostly counterpart, receiving a slap in response (each going through their target) they pause for a second and just continue on screaming at each other
"I'm a ghost dipshit! why the hell do you think that'd work!"
"speak for yourself asshole I'm not even fucking real!! what was the plan there huh??"
"Plan!? you're the one who fucking did it first! I was just reacting!"
At some point when dick had been staring at the wall, reminiscing to when it'd only been 56 hours since he last slept, another person had joined him in the room.
Dick only needs a short look at him before completely giving up the will to live,
"Oh god, another one, great. awesome." he groans before burying his head in his hands.
This takes the cake for the weirdest choice yet. He doesn't know why on earth his small, malnourished brother would appear this time as a hulking 6"4 powerhouse, it's just getting stupid at this point. Stupid like the singular white streak in the newest one's hair.
Brick shithouse hallucination Jason is more realistic, somehow. The demons in his brain have been improving, he’ll give them that, but god he's like ebenezer scrooge except instead of christmas its the ghosts of Jasons past, present and yet-to-come, or more not-to-come. Because his brother is still definitely dead
Maybe that sleeping dart idea had some merit.
______
Jason would say his return to Gotham has gone decently well for how much of a complete shitshow his masterplan had went. Watching Batman through the bug he'd planted, seeing him figure out his bastard son had returned from the grave had been immensely satisfying. The rest was also interesting. despite that monster being cheating death once again and him being left with what could've been a lethal injury had his reflexes not kicked in the exact moment he seen the batarang in Bruces hand. He's built up quite the good empire so far, most of it even got done in a single, very productive 5 hour beheading.
Even Alfred had a dramatic reaction to seeing him in person, even knowing. Though it wasn't his intent to make the old butler cry, both him and Alfie let out a few tears. Since Jason had managed to get that extreme of a reaction from the most put together one in the family, when his most emotional sibling just gave him a glance and groaned, the confusion and rage leapt up at him again. Your long lost brother came back from the whole ass dead and that's all you can manage?
"what. not even gonna ask why I'm here?" he snaps.
Head still hung, dick just gestures vaguely,
"Why are any of you three here?"
Now Jason's just stone cold confused, Three? He gives a glance at Alfred who just arrived and already looks tired.
"Master Dick, Are you Alright?"
Dick groans again "Yeah, Yeah just... do you think you can tell the three ghosts of Christmas past to quiet down and stop arguing please"
Jason shoots Alfred an incredulous glance and receives the slightest twitch of an eyebrow in response.
Alfred, professional as ever, just gives an emphatic nod "Of course sir. In the meantime may I make you a cup of herbal 'sleeping' tea?"
Dick just nods, and that's that.
___
("what the hell was that???" Jason whispers as soon as dick is out of earshot.
Alfred just sighs, sort of like he's disappointed but more just tired and concerned,
"it has been roughly 80 hours since Master Dick has slept, and in that time you know full well what has been happening"
Jason is somehow even more confused. He admits, strange things happen with sleep deprivation but that display was a whole other level.
He just shrugs, tired, guess he’ll see where this shitshow goes.)
_______
Red hood, after being beat to submission by batman many times, becomes a tentative ally of the bats.
Buff Jason is also quickly becoming Dicks favorite of the three hallucinations. This one is kind enough to keep to himself, he doesn't follow dick around and is quiet, for the most part.
He has the robin filter and also seems to be bothered by dick way more then the other way around. Dick has even surprised the newly named ‘Consolation Jason’ quite a few times, resulting in some fairly hilarious interactions between his three ghosts
(Dicks alone in the cave, or as alone as one can be with a gaggle of ghosts. Consolation Jason, weirdly enough, is fiddling about near the garage area, he cant move anything so Dick wanders over to see what he's doing.
“What's up?” He asks, not expecting Jason to quite literally jump a foot in the air
“GODAMN kitten on a barbeque, you almost scared the hair off my head
Dick barely hides his snort at the other twos reactions. Ghost Jason looks aghast, mouthing a clear ‘what the fuck’
Hallucination Jason, meanwhile, looks disgusted,
“Sorry, what he meant to say was HOLY FUCKING JESUS CHRIST YOU SCARED THE SHIT OUT OF ME” Hallucination Jason yells, and gives dick a bright smile. )
______
Jason has come to the conclusion that his brother has went completely insane in the time he's been gone.
There's been quite a few occasions where he's mentioned seeing different ‘jasons’ everywhere and nigh constantly. Due to this Jason is convinced that the reason he didn't get a good reaction to his reveal is that dick just doesn't think he's real. Like he's a hallucination or something.
Jason can only sigh in disbelief. He's sure Dick will get it one day.
Hopefully one day soon, he adds.
___________
That day comes four months later. Jason gives dick a friendly punch on the shoulder after surviving a debrief after a long night. Dick stares at him as if he's seen a ghost, hesitatingly reaches out to touch him.
When dicks fingers reach the armour of his (deactivated) chest plate he jumps back, as if he's been shocked. Bruce gives them both a strange look.
A couple minutes later a shout permeates through the entire mansion.
“SO WAS NOONE GOING TO TELL ME THAT JASON IS REAL??”