Chapter Text
The first thing Jason notices when he wakes up is that he's in the manor. He doesn't really know how he knows, he hasn't even opened his eyes yet, but he knows. There's always been something in the air there, like gloom and mistakes and regret and loss and all the other things that can't quite be covered up with Al's weekly PineSol spree get rolled together into this unending miasma that's baked into the fucking walls. That shit gets into your lungs, under your skin, and stays with you long after you're dead. Jason would know.
So yeah, he's in the manor, which does exactly fuck all to explain how the fuck he actually got there. The last thing he remembers is being alone in some warehouse by the docks, shooting it out with this chick who made 80s glam rockers look subtle and could give Zatanna a run for her money in the magic department. He remembers getting a good hit in, a gutshot he thinks, then lowering his gun like a fucking idiot because he forgot he'd been using rubber bullets after helping Dickie out with a Penguin thing earlier that night. He grimaces in disgust, his eyes still heavy with sleep and the aftereffects of whatever she whammied him with the second his guard was down. He never really had a good lock on the magic shit, but whatever it was, it was blue and bright and having it slam into him felt a little bit like the first three seconds after being thrown in the Pit; the part where it takes everything you are and pulls it apart before it decides how it's going glue you back together into the thing you're going to be.
It sucked, basically.
Jason can extrapolate from there. Someone found him somehow—he'd say Dick, since he'd just spent three hours with him, but as good as he is he'd never been able to slip a tracker on Jason without him knowing, so it was most likely something Babs or the Replacement had on him for weeks—fixed his fuck up, then dragged him back “home” to heal up just in time for a good old fashioned Bat-lecture. He sighs and figures he might as well get it over with.
He opens his eyes, and stares up at the canopy of the four poster bed he's in. It takes a second, his vision is a bit blurry, but it clears up quick enough.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
Four seconds.
Part of Jason keeps the count going, while the rest of him kind of just...seizes. Because he knows this canopy. He knows the the posts it's attached to. He—fuck—he knows the notch in the bottom left post he'd put in it when he'd stolen one of Bruce's batarangs when he was twelve and thrown it around like the stupid kid he'd been.
This was Jason's room.
He bolts up—the part of him that was helpfully keeping count, the part that Bruce had trained into existence, the part that was always aware and always collecting data, noting that, aside from the slight cottony feeling in his head, he had absolutely none of the pain he'd been expecting—and stares in fascinated horror. He hasn't been in this room for years. No one has, except maybe Al and even then Jason doubted he'd stayed long enough to do anything but dust. Why the fuck would anyone put him here? Even with the way they'd all been slowly, tentatively trying to fit the jagged pieces of their lives together, no one in the “family” would be stupid enough to think putting Jason in this room would result in anything other than a bullet to the brain. He could barely get inside the manor's front door without the need to break Bruce's fucking face welling up inside him like a wave of burning hot sewage. Opening up his old room, laying him in his old bed, then leaving him to wake up alone? Might as well have taken one of Jason's guns and swallowed the barrel while they waited for him to wake up and pull the trigger, if they were gonna be that blatant about it.
Jason braces himself, starts the count over, waits for the boiling hot rage of the Pit to start rising up...
Three seconds.
There's Jason's old dresser, the busted middle drawer not quite closed on the top right side.
Four seconds.
There's the thick brown comforter, pushed almost all the way off the bed where Jason always kicked it off in the middle of the night.
Five seconds.
There's his desk, completely immaculate and organized, aside from a pair of tighty whiteys hanging off the back of the chair.
Six. Seven. Eight. Nine seconds.
Everything in this room is full of memories, things he hadn't thought about in years, things he hadn't let himself think about in years, things that should have had him smashing the living shit out of everything—
And yet...
There was no anger.
All Jason felt was a sort of empty confusion as he looked around the space he used to call his home.
What the hell was going on?
He tears his eyes away from his room and all the things in it, which pretty much left him staring down at his body and—
What the fuck was he wearing!?
Instead of his Red Hood armor, or bare skin and a pair of boxer briefs, he's wearing fucking pajamas. Not only that, but fucking old man pajamas with pinstripes and a matching button up top and everything. He raises his arm to get a better look at them—though fuck knew why, he should be bleaching his eyes, or, better yet, the pajamas themselves—and freezes when he gets a look at his hand.
It's...small. With thin fingers and smooth skin and only about a fourth of the calluses he should have had. His nails are..well okay some of them are still bitten to the nubs, but more than a few of them show the disturbing hallmarks of nail clippers and Alfred-mandated nightly cleaning. He raises his hand up in front of him—mostly so he could he sure he was actually controlling it, to make sure the body was his and not some...he didn't know, robot or weird possessed kid or something—but when he does the slightly too large pajama sleeve falls down to bunch at his elbow, exposing a tiny, knobby wrist and a slender forearm with smooth, milky white skin.
“What the fuck?” His eyes widen in horror. “What the fuck?” he says again but, nope, that was really his voice, all high and scratchy and nothing like the voice he'd had the night before when he was taunting 80s glam magic girl.
Panicking now, he feels his face—not a trace of stubble—his body—muscled yeah, but lean and skinny and nothing like the bulk he was used to carrying around—his hair—fucking conditioner?!
Jason throws himself out of bed and runs over the mirror on his vanity.
Staring back at him, an expression of horror on his smooth, freshly washed face, is a teenaged Jason Todd.
Everything stops as he stares at a version of himself that should be long gone, dead and buried and bashed to shit with a crowbar and burned in an explosion and stitched back together by burning green hell water. Everything, that is, except for that part of his mind, which latched onto the one piece of information it found relevant in this impossible cyclone of existential confusion.
“I have dimples?!”
Jason stands there for somewhere between ten minutes and the sun death of the solar system just...looking. Cataloging. Filing away the differences between what he should be seeing an what he is seeing. Coming to the only conclusion that makes any sense.
Jason Todd is fifteen again. Or fourteen. Or...something. Something he's not supposed to be. Something he can't even think about without the urge to strangle Bruce burning him from the inside out...
And that's when he realizes the other thing. He's still not feeling any of that, that the hate and the anger and the fucking green ooze that took the place of the blood the Joker beat out of him is nowhere to be found. That, more than anything, is what finally gets him to believe his eyes. What finally gets him to accept the truth.
Somehow, he's been magicked back to the time before he died.
Somehow, he's whole again.
And that's when the door opens.
Jason keeps from screaming. Barely. He's not sure how, but he also manages to keep all the what the fuck he's feeling from showing on his face. Which is a good thing, because standing on the other side of the door is Bruce.
Jason almost dies all over again when he sees him.
Because there's still no anger. There's still no hate. There's nothing but a hollow aching void inside of him, like the Pit was a physical thing someone pulled out of his heart and left a vacuum behind. And if there's one thing Jason remembers about science, it's that nature abhors a vacuum.
The only question is, what the fuck is it going to fill up with?
Then Bruce smiles, and Jason has his answer.
“Good morning Jason,” Bruce says, that small, genuine smile still on his lips. “You're up early for once.” He crosses his arms loosely and leans against the door frame. “Something exciting happening at school today?”
Jason blinks once. Twice. Bruce is still there. Still smiling. Still happy to see Jason.
Jason bites the inside of his cheek as hard as he can, and it's all he can do not to cry.
Because this? This is his Bruce. Not the cold, emotionless stranger he knows in the future. Not the disappointed almost-father figure. Not Replacement's Batman or Damian's father/mentor for all things non-murdery. But Bruce Wayne. The man who pulled Jason off the streets and gave him a home and a purpose. The man who fit into the empty shelf in his life with the naive, hopeful label of “parent” slapped on in old, yellowing tape. The man who cared for Jason, who pushed him to be the best possible version of himself that he could be.
This was Jason's Batman.
Holy fuck, he thinks, I'm still Robin.
It's a thought that hurts more than the Pit at its worst, but in the best way possible. It's the kind of pain that lets him know he's alive.
“Jason?” Bruce asks, the smile slipping into a concerned almost-frown. “Is everything okay?”
Right. Being alive means he needs to hold up his end of the conversation, doesn't it?
“Uh, yeah,” Jason says. He's going pretty much on autopilot now, years of instinct taking over when all he wants to do is just collapse and cry for a while. “School.”
Even with the fucked up haze he's in he knows that's nowhere near good enough, so he forces himself to smile up at Bruce in that carefree way he thinks he used to smile before the Pit, which comes way easier than it should, and say, “Sorry. I just woke up and I'm still kind of asleep.”
Bruce instantly looks wry and understanding, and holy shit was he always this expressive? Or is it that Jason has so many years of reading micro-expressions through the cowl that Bruce even slightly unguarded is like an open book?
“Maybe you can talk Alfred into a coffee this morning.”
Jason snorts. “Yeah, that'll be the day.”
And holy shit how does he remember that Alfred never let him drink coffee? He hasn't thought about that in years.
Bruce looks like he's about to say something else, when Alfred's voice floats in from somewhere down the hall.
“Master Bruce, Master Jason, breakfast will be ready in ten minutes. I do hope you'll both be fully dressed, this morning,” he suggested in that very polite way that really meant “do what I say or else”.
Bruce, still in his bathrobe—smoking jacket, it's called a smoking jacket when you're rich, right?—smirks.
“I guess we should get dressed,” he says, his voice light and full of humor. “Maybe if I take a bit too long Alfred will let you have my coffee as punishment,” he adds with an actual, honest to God wink.
Jason's laugh must not sound as shaky as it feels, because all Bruce does is give him a soft grin before pushing off the door frame and leaving.
Somehow, Jason manages not to collapse the second he's gone.
The rest of the morning is spent mostly in a haze. His younger body has all the muscle memory of getting ready for school, luckily, so he doesn't need to concentrate too much on what he's doing. He's happy enough to get out of the old man pajamas until he sees the rest of his wardrobe is pretty much all sweaters and pleated pants and holy shit how did he forget about how much of a fucking nerd he was? Whatever, he thinks as he pulls on the first things that sort of look like they might match, at least he doesn't see any pocket protectors, which gives him one up on babybird.
He does his best to ignore how comfortable he feels in clothes that should have him crawling out of his skin.
Two minutes later he's pulling everything off to put on the fucking Gotham Academy uniform he just remembered existed, cursing under his breath because the fucking thing is somehow less stylish than the shit he was going to wear.
Fuck it, at least he still has a leather jacket hanging on the back of the closet door. Baby Jay wasn't a total loss.
He eats breakfast still on autopilot, every bit of his available willpower focused on not crying again when he sees Al looking at him with quiet fondness and none of the sad regret he's so used to seeing lurking around the old man's expression. Bruce sticks to his plan to come in late, and Al gives him a look of disapproval that doesn't reach his eyes but he still refuses to let Jason have any coffee. (Which is kind of hilarious, since every single one of his memories of Al telling him he can't have coffee is matched with one of babybird talking about how heavenly Alfred's coffee is. Maybe dying got him to lighten up on what the follow ups were allowed to put in their bodies. A positive to his death? Maybe?)
Thankfully, it's a quiet morning, with Bruce reading his paper more than talking and Jason gets through it without having to say much. After breakfast Al herds him into the Rolls and drives him to school while Bruce gets himself to work. It'd be embarrassing, getting dropped off by a butler in a car that cost more than most teachers get paid in a year, but there are a line of equally showy rides waiting to drop kids off so he only feels a mild disgust for the whole thing, instead of a burning mortification.
Al hands him a plain brown paper bag with his lunch in it, and he takes the side-eyed looks of disdain from some of the snobbier brats hanging around the halls with fucking pride.
(He remembers clearly not ever fitting in at this school, no matter how long he's been with Bruce. It had always made him uncomfortable, and part of him had wanted so badly to be accepted. But, Pit or no Pit, Jason wasn't the same boy he used to be, and right now he couldn't care less what these rich kids think of him. He's not classist enough to think they're all worthless just because they have money, but the ones worth knowing clearly have no interest in getting to know him, so why bother?)
He's in third period—math—when the haze finally lifts and he starts realizing some Very Important Things.
Thing number one: He remembers way more about this life than he should. Even with the Pit gone and having access to the full spectrum of human emotion again, there should still be a lot of blanks about the day to day life of a version of himself he hasn't been for almost a decade. He remembers his schedule, for fucks sake. It takes him a bit, but he finally realizes that, even though his personality and memories from his present self (future self? Fuck he hates this shit. Babybird is way more mentally equipped for time travel, the fucking dork) are mostly intact, his brain is still functioning like it did for his past self. Hell, to his brain, this shit he's remembering like it was yesterday really was yesterday. So he can pull up his mental layout of Red Hood's latest safe house just as easily as he can remember that Mr Callahan is the only teacher in his grade that doesn't bother with assigned seats. Which makes him feel more like Two-Face than he'd ever wanted to, but it's still pretty fucking useful. It also gives him a certain amount of confidence and sass the Jason Todd who attended this school never had, so he's more likely to argue a point with his teachers than he ever was in the past. It's kind of fun, especially when he knows he's right. His future self had always liked picking away at people who were too full of themselves, but now he's got all of his pre-Pit self-control, too, which pretty much makes him the best super-villain Gotham Academy has ever seen. He takes great pleasure in winding his least favorite teachers up while staying just on the right side of respectful.
Thing number two: He already knows all the shit that's being taught, either from his past self's nerdom (which his future self never quite grew out of, no matter how much he likes to pretend) or his future self's memories and experiences. Which means he has a lot of free time to think in particularly boring classes. Which leads him to figuring out the third and most important thing:
He's in the past, but he can still remember the future. And those memories aren't fading away.
He can change shit.
This actually does floor him, and he's so damn glad he's sitting in class because the last thing he needs is to collapse in the middle of Prep School USA. He can barely remember to keep breathing. His entire being, everything he is and was and ever could be, is all focused on this one truth like that cartoon dog pointing the way to Daffy Duck: all his mistakes, every single fuck up he ever made, every single horrible thing that's happened to him and Bruce and Al and Dick and Babs and babybird, every horrible thing he's done to them, none of it has to happen.
Jason doesn't have to die.
He almost laughs at the thought. Then he does. He laughs like a fucking lunatic right there in the middle of class, the teacher and the kids all staring at him like he has three heads as he runs out of the room and barely makes it to the nearest bathroom before locking himself into the first stall he sees and bursts out into huge, body wrenching sobs.
He can be the person he was always meant to be. The Jason Todd who never got the chance to grow past the Joker's crowbar. He can be a son to Bruce and a brother to Dick and a Robin to Batman. He can take his fucking life back.
He can fix everything.
It takes him another ten minutes for his sobs to taper off into quiet sniffles, and from there into nothing. But once they do, he's got that shit on lockdown. He washes his face and goes back to class, ignoring the looks from the kids and telling the teacher he's okay when she asks. He sits back at his desk, opens his notebook, and starts writing down every single thing he wants to fix. Two classes later, when he's finally done, he starts to plan.
First thing he's gonna do?
Talk B into putting some fucking leggings on the goddamn suit.