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The night air is cold, especially against his bare arms—he lost the leather jacket when he used it to smother the flames crawling up his leg, he lost the gloves when he yanked them off his bleeding hands, he lost the armor when it constricted against broken ribs and felt too much like suffocating in a coffin.
He lost the guns and knives and gear. He took the helmet off for his big reveal, to see the shock skittering through Batman. He has a singed pair of pants and a thin undershirt right now, and he doesn’t care.
He doesn’t need his weapons anymore. Or his helmet. Or his armor.
He’s done.
Clouds drift lazily against the night sky, patches of dull grey against a dark gray sky. It’s quiet in a way that Gotham’s streets never are, a hushed stillness because even the tree branches aren’t creaking.
The grass is poking through his shirt, short and stiff. He ignores it.
The tips of his hair brush against the headstone. It wavers in the edge of his vision, silver in the moonlight. He can read the words upside down, if he tries.
He doesn’t. He knows what it says.
He started the night with a hope and a goal. The hope died, crushed to nothingness like a cigarette snuffed out under a boot, but the goal was fulfilled.
The only goal he had since he saw that newspaper. The only one he let himself have, terrified of the screaming green-laced fury in his veins.
He thinks he might have more goals if he still had hope. But that path is closed to him forever—was closed long before tonight, even if he didn’t know it—and a strange lassitude has taken control over his limbs.
This isn’t his first kill. Nor his second. Nor his third. He’s never felt like this before, like the ground is swallowing him whole and the sky is tugging him up at the same time.
It takes him a long moment to realize that the sensation is freedom.
He’s free. The chains are gone, the shackles that had clicked on in Ethiopia and never unlocked. The weight around his ankles is gone. The vice around his heart is gone.
He’s free, and it’s the most terrifying sensation in the world.
It’ll be morning soon. The sun will rise on a new Gotham. He imagines it, imagines the colors filling the sky—orange and red and pink and blue—and flinches because it burns.
The sunrise feels too much like hope. Too much like the emotion that scarred him raw and taken everything with it when it died.
He still pulled the trigger, pulled it with the aching hollow inside his heart because some things are bigger than his poor, neglected feelings, but he was numb before the gunshot sounded. Before the explosion ripped through the floor underneath him. Before he limped away from the wreckage of a warehouse, knowing that no one was following.
“Kill him, or kill me.”
It wasn’t a threat. It’s a promise. There are only two acceptable outcomes to the night, and one has already been ruled out.
The breeze smells like flowers and ash and smoke.
Something rustles in the distance. He doesn’t lift his head, not even as the rustling gets closer. Not even as he identifies the sounds—uneven gait, one shoe squeaking against dew-damp grass, breathing quiet but not quiet enough to be purposefully sneaky.
Not even when the sounds stop, right next to him. Not even at the too-sharp inhale. Not even when a soft weight lands about a foot away from him, dark hair visible in the corner of his vision.
There is a long, stretching silence, before it’s broken with soft words, “What are you looking at?”
It was raining the day he clawed out of his own grave, he remembers the taste of mud on his tongue, remembers looking up to a sky black as pitch.
It’s not raining tonight, but he can feel the phantom drops against his skin.
“The sky,” he responds. Another stretching pause, and he decides to break it this time. “You ever learned the constellations?”
It’s a stupid question in Gotham, where light pollution and smog have long since driven the stars from the sky, and he’s not surprised when the answer is a soft ‘no’.
“Dick didn’t take you?” he asks despite himself, remembering a road trip in a beat-up old car, remembering parking in the middle of nowhere and leaning against the windshield with an arm around his shoulders as a fingers splayed against the night sky and connected twinkling white dots.
“…No.”
“You should tell him to take you,” he says quietly. Dick knows all the constellations, knows names and stories that no observatory would be able to tell him, and he enjoys the feel of the memory as it curls around him.
A bright spark of happiness.
A reminder.
He was loved in life. He should’ve been content with what he had. He shouldn’t have come back.
“I will,” is the equally quiet response.
Jason tilts his head, observing his companion—one leg drawn up to his chest, cast propped awkwardly out on the grass, arms braced against the ground, head tilted up at the sky. Replacement, his mind hisses, but that isn’t fair. What do you call a replacement’s replacement?
“Tim,” he decides upon, and this startles the kid enough that he twists, meeting Jason’s gaze with dark blue eyes. The kid stills, as though just noticing how close they are. “What are you doing here?”
Jason didn’t wander into a cemetery in the middle of the night because he wants company.
“I was tracking you on security cameras,” the kid says, which isn’t an answer to his question.
“You’re injured,” Jason points out, because he remembers the feel of bone snapping under his punches and kicks, remembers the bang of the gunshot and the hot gush of blood over his knife, and all it does is make him feel sick.
Tim gives a half-shrug, still tense.
“Where’s—” not Batman, Jason knows exactly where Batman is—“Winghead?”
“Bludhaven,” Tim answers quietly, “There’s a…situation.”
Oh, right. The mass floating in the distance, the one Jason could see even on the top of a warehouse in Crime Alley. Something else curls in his gut. He wants to name it fear. Instead, it sits as guilt.
It’s an anchor in his stomach, but he’s still floating, and it isn’t heavy enough to tie him to the ground.
“Why are you here?” Jason repeats.
Tim lets out a slow exhale and deliberately relaxes. “I am…worried,” he says, picking and choosing his words carefully, “That you’re going to do something stupid.”
Jason can’t help it. He laughs, a soft, surprised chuckle turning into slightly hysterical laughter, he curls up and wheezes as he shudders, cackles ringing through the air.
When he’s done, his stomach burns and his lungs are hollow, his limbs weightless and his mind empty. Tim is curled around himself, staring at Jason like he’s gone mad.
Jason wants to tell him that that ship sailed a long time ago.
“I’ve filled my lifetime quota of doing stupid things,” Jason says instead, twisting back to stare at the sky. Good old Gotham night. Jason remembers them fondly.
Tim uncurls slightly, still wary. Jason is suddenly struck by it, by the kid that is sitting a foot away from the guy that beat him into the ground and nearly sent him to an early grave, the kid that crossed half of Gotham at night with a broken ankle to check up on the Red Hood.
“You’re brave,” Jason says softly, and it’s that, of all the things Jason has done to him, that causes the kid to jerk back.
It makes something else twist in his gut, something that feels like remorse. Jason wanted to ruin Batman and Robin, the perfect partnership, the duo that went on without him.
But there’s a reason that all of Gotham knows their names, and in the end, Jason will just be another footnote in their story, another Rogue in their gallery.
The feeling is coarse, spiking out every time Jason pokes at it, and he’s tired of the guilt. Tired of the rage. Tired.
He slowly pushes himself up—first to sitting, watching Tim’s wary stare, and then all the way to standing as Tim curls away from him, eyes wide. Jason ignores him, and ignores the wind slicing against his bare arms, and ignores the way the world seems slightly unreal around him, like it’s shifting beneath his feet.
He grabs the shovel he stole from the shed near the gate, and pushes it into the soft, grass-covered dirt.
There are easier ways to do this.
A gun, muzzle to jaw and a quick pull of the trigger.
Drugs, several pills and slipping into eternal sleep.
A rope, a fall, a blade down his arm—but Jason isn’t trying to kill himself.
He’s already dead.
He’s just reversing whatever freak of nature brought him back—well, brought his body back, empty of anything else until it was filled with green water and the cobbled-together echoes of a dead boy, vengeance and viciousness and violence.
“Jason,” Tim says slowly, “What are you doing?” There’s a small pile of dirt to his right.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” Jason asks, genuinely curious. One of the first things Batman taught him was to never assume, to find five different possibilities and evaluate them on their merits.
Jason, personally, thinks it’s obvious why he’s digging up his grave.
“Something stupid,” Tim says softly, a fierce intensity to his gaze that makes it clear what he’s talking about.
“It’s not stupid,” Jason says, “It’s the natural order of things.” He pauses digging, and points the shovel at the headstone. “Here Lies Jason Todd,” he recites, and shrugs, “I’m just following directions.”
“Jason,” Tim says again, eyes glimmering, “Please—”
Jason cuts him off. He’s tired. He doesn’t want to have an argument right now. He wants silence. He wants peace.
“You can’t stop me,” he says simply. It isn’t a threat. It isn’t a warning. It’s just a fact. Injured and alone, Tim cannot physically stop him from digging up the grave. He can’t talk Jason down. There isn’t a tool in the baby bird’s arsenal that will stop Jason.
“Jason,” Tim said, his voice barely a whisper, “You don’t have to do this.”
“I do.”
“You don’t—” and the kid is crying now, tears shining in the moonlight as his voice shakes with hitched breaths. “There are so many people that miss you. Bruce—Bruce and Dick and Alfred and Barbara and—”
“They’ll get over it.”
“They won’t.”
“They already have, baby bird,” Jason sighs, “I’m dead. This—this isn’t a second chance. People don’t come back from the dead.”
“Then what are you?” Tim raises an eyebrow.
“A ghost,” Jason shrugs, “More corporeal than the usual, that’s all.”
“Jason,” the kid tries again, but he ignores him.
There’s just the shovel, the dirt, and the slightly hysterical thought that it’s taking him longer to go back than it took him to crawl out.
Tim is silent for a stretching moment, and then he moves, shifting up to crawl forward and—block Jason’s path. “No,” Tim says, voice wavering but expression firm, “I won’t let you.”
Jason lets go of the shovel and sighs. Those blue eyes go wide, and Tim flinches hard, shivering as Jason reaches for him, but all Jason does is deposit him back to the side. He goes back to the digging.
The baby bird shudders his way through a near silent panic attack, and Jason’s created the beginning of a hole by the time the kid recovers. To Jason’s surprise, Tim Drake turns shining, wet eyes back towards him, his expression set with determination.
“No,” he says, and crawls back forward, “I’m not going to let you kill yourself.” He grabs the shovel and stares up at Jason in clear challenge at odds with the way his fingers are trembling.
Jason wants to tell him that he’s unarmed. That he’s not going to hurt him. That he’s not going to hurt anyone ever again.
Instead, he kneels and begins slowly, gently prying the kid’s fingers from the shovel. Jason’s not on a deadline. Tim can make his job more difficult, but he can’t stop him. “Jason, no,” the kid pleads, “You don’t have to do this, please, stop—you can’t do this—they’ll miss you, they’ll mourn you—”
“They already mourned me,” Jason says, matter-of-fact, “And they miss the kid, not me.” It’s not something to get angry about. Jason misses the kid too. It was simpler to be him.
Jason wishes he could go back and shake some sense into him. He had everything—a dad, a family, a roof over his head, the opportunity to go to college, Robin—and what? He threw it all away over a temper tantrum? Did he really think that after Willis and Catherine, after those two years on the streets in Crime Alley, that he was going to find someone better than Bruce?
He was a fool. He was stupid. And he paid the price.
Tim’s strong, but Jason is stronger, and he hefts the kid up after he frees his shovel. This time, he deposits Tim a little further away. Still in seeing distance, but out of easy reach. He brings the kid his crutches before turning back to his grave.
The digging passes in a meditative monotony, and Jason sighs when the baby bird blocks his path again. This time he’s upright, wavering on his crutches, glaring at Jason. “I won’t let you,” he repeats, fierce, “I didn’t let Batman kill himself, you don’t get to either.”
There’s a flicker of shock at that—Bruce? No. When?—but Jason abandons the stirrings of curiosity and scoops the kid up. “You can’t,” Tim says, his fingers gripping Jason’s shirt as Jason carries him away, “Jason, please, you’re alive, please don’t kill yourself, so many people want you here.”
That’s a lie. He asked Batman. He asked his dad.
And Batman chose.
“Dick hasn’t even seen you yet, and neither has Alfred—come on, Jason, are you really going to go without saying goodbye to Alfred?” It makes his steps stutter before firming. Alfred doesn’t need to see what he’s become. Doesn’t need to grieve again. “Please don’t do this. Please—you can come home, you can come back.” Tim’s voice has gone hoarse and desperate, “I’ll—I’ll leave if you want me to, Jason, I swear, I’ll go, I wasn’t trying to take your place, you can have it back, you can have Robin back, please don’t do this, Jason, please.”
Jason reaches out to carefully deposit Tim on the bench. “I don’t want Robin back,” Jason says quietly, “And you belong with your family, baby bird.”
Tim’s wound his fingers in Jason’s shirt and is holding on with grim determination. “So do you,” he says.
Jason does a quick calculation. Tim won’t give this up. It’s not in his nature, it’s not in Robin’s nature. Bats have always been stubborn creatures. And Jason doesn’t want to hurt him, or threaten him, or scare him, he’s not worried about the interruptions, but Tim’s injured. Injured from what Jason did to him, and he’s exacerbating those injuries trying to crawl after him.
“I’m sorry,” Jason says softly. Tim looks confused for a split-second before his eyes go wide, but Jason has already spun him into a blood choke. He counts the seconds carefully, and as soon as Tim goes limp, Jason lets go.
He arranges Tim comfortably on the bench, and heads back to resume digging.
“You asshole,” comes the hoarse voice accompanied by the sound of clothes sliding against grass. Jason made a decent-sized hole, but is nowhere near done. Tim is crawling across the grass, dragging his casted leg behind him, and where before he looked panicked-and-desperate, now he looks furious.
Jason sighs, and pauses digging as Tim practically slips into the hole he’s made. He curls up there, in the mud, and glares at Jason.
“I can do this over and over again,” Jason points out, without any hope that it’ll puncture Bat stubbornness.
“Try me,” Tim bares his teeth. Jason is too light and untethered to take offense. He reaches out to pick the kid up—Tim looks like he’s going to fight this time—but before he can, the ground rumbles and he loses his balance.
Jason slips in the mud, nearly landing on top of Tim, and the kid ends up sprawled in the dirt. In the distance, they can hear car alarms ringing. Tim looks just as confused as he is.
Jason clambers out of the hole, looking around in all directions. He can’t find a significant change. “What was that?” Jason asks, but Tim has no answer either. They stare into darkness, towards the sea, for a long, stretching moment.
Whatever it was, the alarms slowly shut off and the air is replaced with silence once more. Gothamites know how to get back to their day, unbothered by whatever the newest threat is. Tim is still staring, seemingly lost deep in thought, and when Jason hefts him up, he doesn’t say a word.
Jason deposits him back on the park bench and returns to the grave. Tim doesn’t call after him or come after him, and in retrospect, that should’ve been Jason’s first clue.
He’s dug nearly four feet into the ground by the time the dark shadow appears. Jason doesn’t have time to react, barely has enough time to register what’s happening as he’s slammed against his headstone by a towering, furious nightmare.
Jason can’t help the instinctive urge to cower as gloves clap on his shoulders like steel manacles, holding him firmly in place to face the Dark Knight’s judgement.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”
Batman…is shouting. Batman doesn’t shout. There’s a reason he whisper-growls, and it’s because his voice literally can’t go that deep and still shout. This isn’t Batman’s voice, it’s Bruce, and the parts of him braced to weather Batman’s displeasure are blown to smithereens in the face of his father’s anger.
Jason is eight, eight and trembling and crying and Willis is screaming and Jason just cries harder and Willis is shaking him and Bruce is shaking him and his voice is hoarse and furious and, “I cannot believe you right now—”
Jason is.
Jason is sorry.
He’s sorry, please, please, he won’t do it again—
“Damn right you won’t do it again—”
He’s sorry, Dad, please—
The steel manacles turn into steel restraints that wrap around him, forcing his arms by his side, squeezing him against harsh, unforgiving armor. Something inside him breaks, something kept at bay by the soothing dissociation, and Jason can’t stop shaking.
“Please,” he forces out, because he can’t, because the peace is slipping away and the world lurks beyond it and he can’t, he’s falling and he doesn’t want to hit the ground. “Please, just make it stop.”
He’s hauled back and there are gloves on his face, pressing against his skull. The cowl is gone. He’s staring into Bruce Wayne’s storm-blue eyes.
“Not like this,” Bruce says, low and intense, gripping him like he’s trying to keep him in one piece, “Not like this, Jason.”
Jason stares at him. The headstone digs into his back. Here Lies Jason Todd.
“Please,” Jason says.
“No,” Bruce snarls, stubborn and implacable and thousand unflattering adjectives Jason has hurled at his face. His hands disappear from Jason’s face—everything is moving at a speed too fast for Jason right now—and something clicks into place around Jason’s wrists. He raises them to see the cuffs shining silver-bright.
Bruce grabs him again and hauls him out easily out of his grave, manhandling him like Jason is the underfed twelve-year-old again, pulling him along with the march of a determined crusader.
“We’re going home.”
Bruce is driving like a maniac. His fingers are clasped so tightly to the steering wheel that his gloves are creaking, and he keeps darting glances at Jason, like Jason will disappear if he’s not looking.
He hits the turnoff to the Cave at a hundred miles an hour.
Jason dares to dart a glance back at Tim and sees the kid hunched in the backseat, like he’s physically trying to make himself smaller. That doesn’t bode well. Jason squeezes his eyes shut when they just barely miss the doors opening, and doesn’t open them until the Batmobile comes to a screeching, grating, whining halt.
The floaty feeling of peace is well and truly gone.
Now Jason feels sick and shaky and he can’t stop crying and he flinches when Bruce reaches across to unbuckle his seatbelt. Batman was furious when he faced off against the Joker, but that was Batman.
This is Bruce.
This is Bruce and Jason has never not felt awful when he’s upset his father and the tears don’t stop as Bruce hauls him out of the car. Tim’s moving on his crutches like an ungainly fawn, and Jason wants to turn to deadweight, to sink to the ground and through the floor if possible, but he knows it won’t stop Bruce, so he just stumbles after him.
Alfred’s waiting in the medbay, and his stoic expression fractures into surprise when he catches sight of Jason, and that just makes him feel worse. Dick’s there too, changed out of his Nightwing costume and on a medbay cot, knees pulled up and arms wrapped around them and head tucked down, still and silent.
“Master Bruce,” Alfred says, raising an eyebrow at the handcuffs, “Is that really necessary?”
Bruce pulls Jason to the free cot, pushes him down, and removes the cuffs only to exchange it for the medical restraints. He pointedly removes all freestanding objects from the vicinity. A shiver prickles through Jason—the Cave is cold, and he’s lost all his armor. The physical and the metaphorical.
“He was digging up his grave,” Bruce says, in a tone that’s gone past frigid and ended somewhere near subzero.
Looks like Jason can do nothing right. Not crawling out of his grave, not crawling back in. “I told you,” he whispers, and three sets of eyes snap at him, “I told you, kill him or kill me.” He forces himself to meet Bruce’s steely gaze, “You didn’t kill him.”
Bruce’s emotions flicker too fast for Jason to track, but where he expects it to land on fury, it ends up on upset.
“No,” Bruce says, voice wavering as he sits in front of Jason. “No, Jason, Jay-lad, my son, I don’t want you to die. I could never—” Bruce places a hand on his cheek, cupping his face, and the warmth of skin against skin is a sudden shock. “I missed you,” he chokes, “I missed you so much, Jay, and there is no part of me that isn’t overjoyed to have you back.”
“But you didn’t kill him,” and Jason sounds like a lost child, but he’s so confused. He had a goal, had a plan, and it all came toppling down. When Jason pressed the trigger for the bomb, he’d just wanted it all to end.
Bruce strokes his cheek, and the streaks of wetness on Jason’s face match those on his father’s. “Don’t ask me to kill for you,” he says, and he sounds broken, “Please, Jay-lad, do not ask for the one thing I cannot give you.”
But it’s the one thing Jason wanted and he doesn’t understand. He wanted Bruce to avenge him, and Bruce is saying no, never and I missed you in the same breath but they can’t both be true. One of them has to be a lie, it has to. He can’t—he can’t—he’s lived his entire life in a world where his dad was invincible, the Dark Knight, Batman, the shadow that watched over them all, and he doesn’t know how he can live in a world where he’s not.
“I j—just wanted you to love me,” Jason chokes out, and he’s instantly wrapped in another hug, warm and tight.
“I do,” Bruce’s voice is nearly unrecognizable, “I do, Jay-lad, I love you so much, I love you more than my heart can bear and I cannot watch you die again. I can’t.”
Jason doesn’t want to die, he wants it all to stop. The world is too confusing, his emotions are too overwhelming, everything is just too much and Jason clutches Bruce tighter as the chaos swirls around him.
Alfred and Tim are watching them solemnly—there are tears on Alfred’s face, and Jason doesn’t think he’s ever seen that before—and Dick has propped his head on his knees and is staring at them with an alarmingly vacant expression.
“What happened to him?” the words burst out before Jason can consciously process them, concern shoving to the forefront.
Bruce lets out a slow, shuddering breath. “Bludhaven was destroyed tonight,” he says quietly, “We managed to evacuate most of the city…” but not all hangs in the air.
Dick doesn’t look upset. He doesn’t look angry or sad or helpless. He looks empty.
“It has indeed been quite a night for everyone,” Alfred says levelly, “And instead of staying in a dreary underground cave, I feel everyone would be far better served with hot cocoa and warm blankets in the den.”
The Cave is silent. No one responds.
“That was not a request,” Alfred says with a touch of asperity, and everyone jolts into movement.
Bruce is on the phone, voice quiet but expression a stormcloud, pacing in front of the fireplace. Jason, from his position tucked up in blankets on the couch—Bruce swaddled him so thoroughly it almost feels like a restraint—watches silently.
Bruce—Bruce never gets angry. Not like this. Not even when he suspected that Jason killed Garzonas. He was upset and disappointed and distant, but not emotional. Not clutching Jason in desperation and darting frequent glances like he expects Jason to cut his wrists the moment he looks away.
Jason—Jason won’t. That was the first question Bruce asked before he removed the restraints, and Jason’s lost his nerve. He can’t—not now, not after seeing Alfred, not when Dick’s head is drooped against his shoulder like his older brother can’t hold it upright anymore.
It’s too much, Jason never made a plan beyond this point, and he feels exhausted and wrung out and he just wants to stop crying.
“Master Jason,” Alfred says above him, with a tray of hot chocolates. With great difficulty, Jason manages to free a hand to grab his mug.
His mug, Wonder Woman because it made Bruce’s face scrunch up, and the hot chocolate smells delicious and there are three marshmallows on top, like always. Jason feels his face prickle again.
“Master Jason,” and there’s a hand on his, gripping him firmly, and Jason forces himself to look up even though it hurts. Alfred’s face is shining, “You coming home is nothing short of a miracle, and I will give thanks for it till the day I die.”
Jason’s throat is tight. Dick’s burrowed further into his side, as though to hide, and Tim’s pressed close on the other side of Dick, watching solemnly.
“I’m sorry,” he finally manages to croak, voice barely a whisper.
“Whatever are you sorry for, lad?”
Jason can’t articulate it, can’t name the feelings rising inside of him, can’t voice the dirty-tainted-unclean prickles across his skin, or the nameless feeling of peace when he was digging, or how swiftly it turned to overwhelming upset at the sheer magnitude of his family’s distress.
Alfred’s face softens even further, and the hand moves to cup Jason’s cheek and then ruffle across his hair. Alfred isn’t free with hugs, but he dispenses firm, grounding touches, and Jason leans into it. “Welcome home,” his grandfather says, and Jason’s tears fall again.
He takes a too big gulp of hot chocolate to compensate, and by the time he’s recovered from that ill-advised decision, Bruce is in front of him again.
He cups Jason’s face like Jason is something precious and Jason tries to duck his head because he doesn’t want to see it. Bruce doesn’t let him, forcing him still until he has no choice but to meet his father’s intense gaze.
“I love you,” Bruce says, quiet and implacable, and it cracks something inside Jason. He shifts, moving to hold Dick the same way. “I love you,” he repeats. Dick trembles. He moves again, to Tim, who tilts towards him like a flower to the sun. “I love you,” he says softly and Jason watches as Tim’s eyes tear up.
It’s too difficult to hug them all at the same time, but Bruce has never met an impossibility he hasn’t tried to break and he clings to them like he will never let them go again. “We’re taking a break,” he says firmly, voice brooking no dissent, “We’ll—we’ll go somewhere. A vacation. Together.”
Jason tucks his head against Bruce’s shoulder and listens to the thudding of different heartbeats. A vacation sounds nice.
“No one is leaving this family, do you hear me?” Bruce’s voice is unyielding, “No one.” He says it like he can rearrange the world with his bare hands.
The thing is, Jason believes him.