Chapter Text
“Get out.”
Tim might've been more offended at the snarled greeting if he wasn't well aware that it wasn't particularly personal. It had a lot more to do with the fact that he'd interrupted Jason in the painful process of attempting to rid himself of a shredded jacket while maneuvering around what Tim strongly suspected was a dislocated shoulder.
Of course, that interruption was exactly why he was here, but better not to say it out loud, even if Jason knew. Wouldn't exactly make him more welcome just now.
“I have just as much right to use this safehouse as you do,” he pointed out instead. “And I'm done with this rain for tonight. I'm freezing.”
He swung his cape off and draped it over the back of a kitchen chair before shaking himself like a dog. The cape might have shed the worst of the rain, but his dripping hair was starting to make him regret moving back to a mask rather than the cowl.
Mask looked better, though. The price of beauty, as Dick would say.
Jason, seated at the far end of the table with the medkit on the table in front of him, only scowled more intensely as droplets flung from Tim's hair flew his way. His fingers tightened around the scissor in his hand like he was considering turning it into a stabbing implement instead.
This wasn't one of Jason's personal bolt holes, just the closest one to where Tim had witnessed him wipe out spectacularly. He'd swung in to help him finish off the fight, but Jason had disappeared immediately afterward, before Tim could so much as ask how badly he was hurt. Which had also left him holding the bag on making sure the situation was handed off to GCPD, much as their perps might have deserved to just be left tied up in the cold until someone else happened across them.
Apparently, that head start had given Jason time to rid himself of his boots and helmet and swap his tactical pants for dry sweatpants before even attempting to begin medical care. He hated sitting around in wet clothes with an intensity that belied everything else Tim knew about his capacity to shrug off pain and discomfort. Unfortunately for that hatred, his shirt and jacket were proving a lot harder to rid himself of.
“Your place isn't even that far away,” Jason pointed out. “Probably took you just as long to get here as there.”
“So I wanted a change of scenery. Sue me.”
With a shrug, Tim dropped his mask on the kitchen table and walked over to stand behind Jason. He bent to take a closer look at the back of his jacket, where he’d taken the worst of the damage. His jacket almost didn’t have a back to it anymore. Tim gave a low whistle, looking at the bloody patches of skin through the holes. Worse than he’d thought, even.
“Jacket’s not going to be salvageable,” he told Jason. “Less painful to just cut it off.”
“Figured that out all on my own, thanks.” Jason held up the scissors, now gripped at a less stabby but very sarcastic angle.
The heavy-duty shears from the kit were the best tool on hand for the job, yeah. Didn't look like he'd made much progress with the attempt, though. Tricky to manage while working with a dislocated arm, and on reinforced leather that wouldn’t easily tear where he couldn’t reach to cut it completely. Not impossible, but he could see why Jason had paused to try working it off the normal way instead, even if that was at least as painful.
“Not going so well, huh. Lucky thing I happened by, then,” Tim said lightly, claiming the scissors from his loosened hold before he could protest.
With a growl, Jason started to grab for the scissors, but was brought up short with a sudden catch at the incautious moment. Grimacing, he subsided without further resistance, verbal or physical. He might not like dealing with another person’s presence on top of the pain he was in, but Tim was hopeful he could see the foolishness of shooting himself in the foot on this.
“Lean forward a bit,” Tim told him. “The back’s halfway to falling apart already. It’ll be easiest to finish the job there and just slide it off your arms.”
Jason grunted and propped his right forearm on the table, letting it take some of his weight. The other arm rested on his leg as he leaned forward, curled close to his body in an instinctive effort to protect it from jostling. It would be better to get that reduced sooner rather than later, but Tim didn’t much like his odds of maneuvering it successfully with the thick jacket still in the way, so it’d have to be the second order of business.
He made short work of the sections still holding the back of the jacket together. The next step from there wasn’t quite as simple as just sliding the severed halves off Jason’s arms. Some of the more mangled sections had been ground into his back as they shredded against the asphalt and now those bits were thoroughly stuck into the wounds, along with the t-shirt underneath. Not exactly a situation where the “rip the bandaid off” approach would be ideal.
“So, this part’s probably going to suck royally,” he warned.
“I’m fine,” Jason said. “Just do it.”
“Sure, I know you’ll be fine, but are you going to be able to resist punching me when it gets bad?”
He expected Jason to dismiss the question with some sarcastic comment about the fact that getting involved to begin with was Tim’s idea, and he was just going to have to deal with the consequences as they came. Getting him to accept any kind of effective pain relief beforehand was probably a lost cause.
Jason was quiet for a few seconds. Then he muttered, “I won’t hurt you.”
Tim… mostly trusted that these days, though he didn’t often think about it directly. They certainly didn’t talk about it. Things had changed, slowly but surely, and these days he didn’t find himself flinching at unexpected movements from Jason or unconsciously tracking his own position relative to the door whenever they were alone in a room. Jason had changed, and Tim mostly liked the person he’d changed into, and eventually his body learned to believe the truths his mind had initially accepted on faith.
The comment about punching him had really just been needling to see if he could get Jason to take something effective for the pain. The same kind of half-joke he might’ve made to Dick in similar circumstances, and with just as little expectation of success.
The quiet seriousness of the response had caught him off guard.
“Right,” he said, awkwardly. “Sooner we get started, sooner we can get it over with, then.”
Jason had dropped a couple of worn towels on the table along with the medkit. Tim used one now to catch the runoff as he squirted saline over Jason’s back, alternating between using gloved fingers and tweezers to gently pull the fabric free of the wounds, one scrap at a time. The gravel he didn’t bother stopping to pry out yet—that could wait for a second pass, once the area was clear and he could see what he was doing better.
Jason didn’t move. Tim could feel the muscles tensing under his fingers, the occasional hitches to that slow, deliberate breathing pattern. Twice, Jason’s breathing stopped entirely for a few seconds as he caught and held it while Tim worked loose a particularly stubborn strand of cloth.
Still, he didn’t move. Didn’t even growl curses at Tim or the situation in general, as he normally would when enduring a bit of particularly unpleasant medical care. Admittedly, it did make the work easier, but it was a little weird. Weird enough to make Tim want to talk aimlessly, as some kind of distraction to fill that empty space. He couldn’t decide what to say, so he kept quiet, too.
“Ready to get this off. Right arm first,” Tim told Jason at last.
The skin there was in better shape than on the left, where he’d landed first, not as torn up, and it would be easier to move the uninjured shoulder. Jason straightened and shifted his arm to cooperate as Tim pulled the piece off it.
The tattered halves of the jacket and t-shirt had finally come loose enough to move it freely without snagging at Jason’s back, but the pull of the movement against raw skin still drew a hiss from between gritted teeth. That arm freed, Jason leaned forward on it again while Tim discarded the half of his jacket and shirt in a heap on the floor to be dealt with later.
Turning back, his attention caught on the tattoo on the relatively intact skin at the back of Jason’s right shoulder. An abstract, spiraling design like a sunburst. He’d seen it before, of course. It wasn’t a new acquisition, and they'd all seen each other in various states of undress many times at this point. This wasn’t something Jason took particular care to hide. It was just the first time he’d had the context to recognize what it was covering up.
Tim’s fingers brushed over it, without conscious thought, as his eyes traced the faint shadow of the design underneath. Jason twitched as his fingers brushed the spot, almost a full-body flinch. A more visible reaction to the gentle touch than he’d offered the whole time Tim was peeling scraps of jacket out of his back.
“Sorry,” Tim said. “I just—you had a League tattoo. I hadn’t realized before.”
“Yeah, what about it?” The tension was almost as audible in his voice as it was visible in the knotted muscles of his back. Tim had caught him off guard, and his first instinct at being startled was always to come out swinging, literally or verbally.
“Why did you—never mind. Sorry.” Tim took up the ragged edge of the other half of his jacket. “Let's get the rest of this off so we can take care of that arm.”
Tim tried to be careful with the second side, not to aggravate the dislocated shoulder more than absolutely necessary. Jason, on the other hand, was considerably less patient. The second Tim had the damp, clinging material pulled away from the oozing abrasions that it was already trying to adhere itself to again, he grabbed hold of the sleeve to yank it the rest of the way off his arm himself.
Tim grimaced, safely behind Jason’s back where he couldn’t see it. He didn’t need the tight, sharp sound that caught in Jason’s throat to measure the immediate regret that impulsive movement must’ve brought. He’d been there with dislocations a few too many times himself. Didn’t make Jason’s stubbornness less annoying.
He shifted a little to the side—both to put himself at a better angle for the reduction and so Jason could see it coming and wouldn’t be startled when he placed his hands in position to grip the arm.
“Ready?” he asked.
Jason nodded, and under his own braced hands Tim could feel the deliberate effort to loosen his shoulder and back muscles. Better make it quick. Time to anticipate never helped with that.
The shoulder slid slowly and then popped. One strangled grunt of pain, and then a few slow breaths through his nose. Jason’s good hand had spasmed into a white-knuckled grip on the edge of the table, but his voice was steady when he spoke.
“Thanks.” It was clipped, perfunctory. “I can take it from here.”
“Yeah? When’d you get flexible enough to pick gravel out of your own back? You really want to explain to Leslie why you just left it like that when it gets infected?”
Patient. He was being patient because in the last couple of weeks he hadn't seen Jason more than in passing, but based on the reports Tim had skimmed, he hadn't been having the greatest time of it even before tonight's incident. And rainy nights always seemed to put him on edge. More than the usual discomfort of being out working in the cold and wet, that was.
“I don't care.”
“Well, I don't know why I do either. Should've just let you get run over and saved myself a few steps if you want to die again that badly.”
And maybe Tim had had a bit of a week, too. He'd been trying not to take it out on anyone else.
They sat there in tense silence for a few seconds, Tim glaring at Jason's back while Jason glared at the wall across the room. Neither wanting to figure out where to go from there but neither of them having the energy for dramatic storming off, either.
“What were you going to ask about the tattoo?”
And maybe Jason was just looking for something to wind himself up enough for a real argument, but if so, he wasn't doing a particularly good job of it. His voice was tight with an unhappy tension, but he didn't sound angry, not really.
“I was just wondering when you decided to get it covered up. And why that, instead of getting it removed.”
Jason turned a little to look at Tim over his shoulder. “Why do you want to know?”
There were a lot of things he wanted to ask Jason about. Half of them he didn’t know how to put into words, and the other half… he was pretty sure Jason wouldn’t talk about at all if he thought it was just curiosity.
Instead, Tim unzipped the top of his uniform just enough to push it partway off his right shoulder, twisting to show Jason the back of it. The same spot Jason had his tattoo.
Jason turned to face him fully, an abrupt, jerky movement. He stared at the tattoo, his face a frozen blank, until Tim awkwardly shrugged his uniform back up over his shoulder and straightened again. Then, finally, his eyes returned to Tim’s face. He'd gone very pale and his lips pressed tight together.
“When?” Jason asked.
“When I was looking for proof Bruce wasn’t really dead.”
“You went to the League for help?”
There was an edge of accusation there, and Tim was tempted to snap back, wasn’t like anyone else believed me. Instead, he explained.
“Ra’s came to me. He got curious, and when he found out what I was doing, he offered me access to his resources. When I declined, the offer became progressively less optional. Finally decided it was better to cooperate and get what I could from him until I found a way to get away more cleanly. Which I did, and nuked his entire computer system on the way out.”
“Huh.” He wouldn’t say there was respect, exactly, in the speculative look Jason was giving him now, but maybe he wasn’t imagining some level of approval there. “And at some point in between there…” Jason indicated the now-hidden tattoo with a jerk of his chin.
“Yeah.” It was hard, suddenly, to meet his eyes, and Tim’s gaze drifted back toward the collection of medical supplies on the table beside them. “I didn’t ask for it, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
Jason snorted. “Doesn’t matter much with the League, does it. I didn’t exactly choose it either, but I wasn’t in much of a position to argue at the time.”
Tim nodded. “I had to go out with some of his people on an op. Trying to keep anyone else from getting killed. Ra’s informed me that the tattoo was a prerequisite. I think he’d have done it whether I agreed gracefully or not, so.”
Branded like cattle. Or microchipped like a dog. Making sure everyone, including Tim himself, knew who he belonged to.
Among those who chose to join the League, it was supposed to be a mark of pride, an acknowledgement of their skill and loyalty. A milestone of belonging. It certainly hadn’t been anything like that to Tim. More like a confirmation that Ra’s had successfully bent him into doing his bidding and would always own a part of him now.
For Ra’s, it was a practical consideration, as well as a symbolic one. These days, the tattoos weren’t just decorative ink, they were also infused with microtech that would allow him to keep track of his people. Useful for coordination, and to make it that much more difficult for any League member who drew his wrath to escape it for long.
Child’s play for Tim to neutralize, of course, as soon as doing so wouldn’t kick up more trouble than it was worth. Ra’s must have known that would be the case. Even if the practical usefulness didn’t last long, the symbolic value would linger.
Jason must’ve deactivated his at some point, too, or it would’ve been picked up the first time he had any kind of medical scan in the Cave. Tim wondered which part would have carried the greater weight for Ra’s where he was concerned, the desire to track his whereabouts or the need to stake a claim that wouldn’t be easy to forget.
The mark might have been intended as a message for Bruce, too, if he thought there was a greater likelihood that Jason’s vendetta would end in his death rather than any desired outcome. With Ra’s, it was usually more than one thing.
“So now you want to get rid of it,” Jason concluded. “And you’re trying to decide how.”
Tim felt himself starting to wrap his arms across his chest in a gesture that was a little too obviously self-comforting, and forced them to drop back to his sides again. “There was so much going on for a while there, it wasn’t a priority. I’ve just been thinking about it more lately.” He shrugged. “And then I saw yours, and I wondered.”
Jason grunted. His eyes had gone distant, and Tim could only hope that thoughtful look heralded some kind of answer, and not an imminent decision that he was done with this conversation after all.
“I thought about getting it off,” Jason said, quietly. “But I just… After the Pit, all the old scars were gone. You’d think it’d be nice, like a fresh start, but it felt like—” He shook his head. “Like it took something from me. I don’t know.”
“Like there was no proof any of it really happened so it wasn't supposed to matter anymore.”
“Yeah.” His mouth twisted in unhappy acknowledgement. “It made me angry. Pretty much everything made me angry at that point. But that was—hard. Harder than I would've expected.”
“So you didn’t want to get rid of the tattoo,” Tim said, with slow thoughtfulness, “because it would be like losing part of your past again? Even if it was a part you didn't really want to remember?”
“Something like that, I guess.” Jason shrugged. “I don’t know if I’d go the same route again or not, but at the time it felt… important. Symbolic or something. Using stuff from the past for something new instead of pretending it never existed.”
Jason's eyes were fixed on the medkit as he flipped the latch on the cover up and down with his thumb. He looked thoroughly uncomfortable at the undisguised honesty, but—he hadn't shut Tim down yet.
“It was a while after you got back to Gotham, then. When you decided to do something about it.”
“Yeah. A while. At first—” Jason jerked his head in a sharp, dismissive gesture.
It wasn’t like Tim needed an explanation. He knew exactly how… preoccupied… Jason had been. The headspace he’d been in, splashing his own pain across half the city with the Pit in his head all the while, howling that a river of blood would never be enough to drown it.
They were all glad when the overwhelming force of that reaction to the Pit, to everything else that had happened to him, proved less permanent than they’d feared. It had eventually subsided, not disappearing but settling, leaving Jason dealing with his own very human, very painful, but less all-consuming grief and loss and betrayal, without the driving pressure of that magically enhanced rage behind it.
“Nothing wrong with getting it removed if that’s what you want to do, though,” Jason said. His tone had shifted, a little brisker, coming to the end of his capacity for transparency for now. “That’s what Bruce did.”
Oh. Bruce—Tim had never even considered that. It made sense that he wouldn’t have gone his entire time training with the League without receiving one. Not when Ra’s so desperately wanted him as a willing heir and full participant in his plans. He would have latched on to every possible opportunity of cementing that sense that Bruce belonged there, with him.
Jason and Bruce must have talked about it at some point, and presumably about their different choices in dealing with the mark later. It hardly seemed like the kind of thing the two of them would discuss these days. They all knew how Bruce felt about identifying marks that could easily provide a link to civilian identities. He wouldn’t have wanted to pick that fight with Jason when their slowly healing relationship still felt too fragile to bear that kind of disapproval over choices that were not literally life or death.
Hard to see how it would’ve come up before Jason’s own time with the League, though. Would he have even known to look for the tattoo then, when he found out Bruce had once trained with them? Or maybe it was just a conclusion he’d come to without any confirmation from Bruce, putting together what he’d seen before and what he knew now.
“Bruce doesn't know,” Tim said. “He hasn't seen mine yet.”
It wasn’t quite a request to keep it to himself, or asking for advice or reassurance. It wasn’t exactly… not… any of those things, either.
Jason hummed thoughtfully. “How much have you told him about what happened when he was gone? All that running around you did to prove he wasn’t really dead.”
“Some.” Tim shrugged. “General stuff, not details.”
Facts, explanations necessary to make sense of what had happened. The emotion, what it was all actually like, how hard it had all been, hadn’t seemed to matter at first. Not with the sheer relief of having Bruce back, and the sheer number of other things to deal with.
“You should tell him. He’d want to know.”
Jason arguing for sharing feelings and telling Bruce more about his life. Would wonders never cease. Then again, “do as I say, not as I do” was a longstanding tradition in this family. They were all great at figuring out how to fix other people's problems.
“I know.”
It wasn’t that he didn’t think Bruce would care. At first, it just hadn’t been the right time. Then later, when things had settled… it felt weird, trying to bring any of it up. And he’d had time to get nervous about how Bruce might react to some of it.
Like how he’d handled things with the League. Like the fact that Ra’s wasn’t anywhere close to over it.
“He does get it,” Jason said. “What it’s like. What Ra’s can be like. He hasn’t forgotten.”
Huh. Apparently, they’d had a few more productive conversations than Tim had realized. That was… good.
He nodded, not quite ready to make promises of things he wasn’t sure he was ready for yet. Instead, he redirected.
“Guess he wouldn’t still have his tattoo anymore even if he hadn’t had it removed.”
Tim could easily call up a mental image of the same spot on Bruce’s back. He’d seen it often enough. The splash of an acid burn. The jagged, puckered remnants of an old bullet wound.
Bruce had no shortage of scars, a crowded, overlapping roadmap of the life he’d led. The ones on his face and other easily visible locations he addressed with the best treatments that all-but-unlimited money could buy and used makeup to cover where even that fell short. He wasn't nearly as meticulous with merely cosmetic treatment of the scars that would generally be kept covered in his civilian life.
Tim wondered if any of it was because he felt the way Jason did about them. That it would mean losing a connection to his past that was important somehow. Tim had always assumed it was pure pragmatism, the knowledge that he’d collect more scars soon enough and it wasn’t worth wasting time or energy on.
“That is a third option for dealing with it, I guess,” Jason agreed. “Let the hazards of the job take care of it in their own time. Mine would’ve been pretty much gone tonight, if I’d landed in the other direction.”
And that was a timely reminder of the much more pressing issue that still needed to be dealt with.
“Probably. It's a bit scuffed around the edges as it is. So are we doing this the easier-for-everyone way or the difficult-on-purpose way?”
Jason frowned at him. Tim leaned forward to rummage in the med kit. He held up the bottle of lidocaine spray and arched an eyebrow in challenge. Jason sighed.
“Yeah. Fine.”
“Cool. Then let's get you laying down.” Tim grabbed the remaining dry towel from the table and stepped over to spread it out on the couch. He gave Jason an exaggerated gesture of sweeping invitation.
“I'm fine just—” Jason started to protest.
“Might as well get comfortable," Tim bulldozed right over him. "This is going to take a while and you look like you could fall asleep sitting up right now.”
Jason grumbled under his breath, but he was, in fact, tired enough not to argue further. He was also hurting a lot more than he’d let on, if the slow, cautious push to his feet was any indication. Easing back down to stretch out on the couch was an even more painstaking process, one careful stage at a time. Getting up tomorrow morning would be a fun time for him. The scrapes on his back might be the most visible and painful now, but by that point they’d probably be the least of his worries, compared to all the other strains and bruises from that landing.
Tim did most of the work of lifting his legs up onto the couch for him, then paused to eye him dubiously. Jason was trying to find some way to arrange his upper body that would give Tim access to his back without putting too much strain on his recently reduced shoulder, curling around the couch’s throw pillow. If the tightness of his expression and restless shifting was anything to go by, it was a losing battle.
“Hang on,” Tim said, and disappeared into the bedroom, returning a few seconds later with a couple of the pillows from the bed. “Over that way a bit—no, here.”
It took a few seconds of shuffling, and several aggravated huffs from Jason, but he got the pillows arranged to his satisfaction. And, finally, Jason settled, some of that braced tension releasing.
“Thanks.” It was almost too quiet to hear.
“Uh. Maybe save that until you see how you feel about me after this next part.”
And apparently Jason really was a lot more relaxed, now that he’d given up to it, because the sting of the lidocaine spray caught him off guard enough to get a visible cringe. Tim winced in sympathy but didn’t pause in the task as Jason pulled in a hissing breath through his teeth. Stopping to give him a second would only prolong the most unpleasant part of it.
“Sorry, he said, as he finished and set the bottle aside. “It should ease up and start to numb pretty quickly.”
“I know,” Jason bit out through still-clenched teeth, face mostly hidden as it pressed into the pillow beneath him. Definitely not relaxed now, but he would be again soon. Hopefully.
Tim stretched to grab the TV remote off the end table, then turned again to dangle it in front of Jason’s face. Jason just grunted as he cracked open an eye to look at it, irritated or confused or both.
“Pick something for distraction?” Tim suggested. “Or I can, but it’s probably better if you decide yourself.”
Another second or two of immobility and then Jason unwound enough to take the remote from his hand. The first thing he did when he turned it on was flick the volume lower. Just loud enough to hear without straining, enough to mute the drum of the rain outside, but not loud enough to become another overstimulating source of sensory input in its own right.
Tim busied himself with a couple of trips back and forth from the kitchen table back to the coffee table beside the couch, laying out the supplies he’d want for convenient access while Jason flipped through channels. He settled on a cooking show, which, honestly, the sight of cooking meat turned Tim’s stomach a bit, with Jason’s back right there looking a bit too much like ground beef for comfort, but. Wasn’t like Jason had to look at his own injuries right now—that was kind of the point—and probably just as well if Tim was less tempted to get distracted by it himself.
He waited until he was reasonably certain of the answer before prodding experimentally at a spot between Jason's shoulder blades and asking if it was numb enough yet. Jason hummed in agreement. Well, he hasn’t reacted negatively to the touch, so it was probably the truth. Tim took a seat in the kitchen chair he’d planted beside the couch and set to work.
It was almost—not fun, but an oddly satisfying process, once he got going. One small section at a time, flush what he could with saline, pry out more intractable bits of debris with tweezers. The quiet, rattling tick as he dropped one piece of gravel after another into the tray.
“I’m sorry you were alone.”
Tim looked up, startled. He’d thought Jason was on the verge of falling asleep, the way relaxation had gradually progressed into boneless melting into the couch. His eyelids were, in fact, at half mast—he might still be staring vacantly at the TV, but Tim doubted he was registering any of it anymore.
“When you were dealing with them,” Jason clarified, when he didn’t respond. “And… the rest of it. You should’ve had help.”
“Maybe. I wasn’t exactly being the most forthcoming myself, for a good part of it,” Tim admitted. “I was just—I had to be right. Couldn’t deal with anyone else trying to pull it apart and tell me I wasn’t.”
He was right, he’d proven that in the end, but his initial conviction had been born more of desperation than solid, provable logic. Dick had seen that. Tim had wanted so much to be believed, to be trusted. It had hurt that Dick had repeatedly refused to do that, but… in retrospect, he could see why Dick couldn’t bear, then, to participate in what looked very much like a spectacular demonstration of grief-stricken denial. Just unfortunate that the things they each could and could not accept in dealing with that grief were in direct contradiction with each other.
“Still,” Jason said. “Someone should’ve gone with you.”
Someone. But who? Dick had been fully occupied with Damian, with the full weight of Gotham suddenly falling on his shoulders. Tim hadn’t trusted Steph enough to even give her a chance. Cass had been busy, had been keeping herself busy, and hadn’t wanted to talk.
And Jason… it had been different with Jason, then. Things had started to change for the better, before they’d lost Bruce. And then Bruce had been gone, and Jason—well, he hadn’t fallen apart in any of the ways they might have expected him to. Hadn’t crashed back into rage-fueled unrestrained violence, hadn’t become a problem that needed to be stopped.
It’d been hard, in fact, to know what he was thinking or feeling at all. He’d just locked himself down. Still in Gotham, but he might as well have been as far away physically as Cass was, for all they knew about how he was doing. He was still going out as Hood, they’d known that much. He’d disappear for days, not so much as a rumor of his presence. At least once, he'd dropped off the map for a couple of weeks, before evidence of his handiwork would crop up again. A little more vicious than before, but in a way that spoke more of brutal efficiency than a scream for attention.
They’d all dealt with grief in their own ways, but at that point most of it had involved some form of stark isolation. Carrying on Bruce’s legacy, in his worst tendencies as well as his best.
Well, Tim was done with following in his footsteps in that regard. Trying to be done with it.
“You shouldn’t have been so alone either,” he pointed out.
“Yeah, well,” Jason said. “My own choices, too. Not saying they weren’t stupid choices, but they were mine. Not anyone else’s fault.”
And at the time, none of them had had the capacity to spare to hunt him down and find a way to pry him open again. Not after the first attempts went spectacularly badly.
“Still wishing I’d left you to it tonight?”
Jason was silent for a second before he said, more quietly, “I’ve been doing better about it. Mostly.”
“Yeah,” Tim agreed easily, “me too. Working on it.”
“Next time—” Jason cleared his throat, faltered awkwardly, then pressed on. “I’ll try not to go away again, next time you need help.”
It wasn’t easy, undoing a lifetime’s worth of habits. But maybe if they kept on working on it, they’d get there eventually.