Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jason opened his eyes, and found he was somewhere else. 

His hands were wrapped so tight around a railing in front of him, he could feel the iron digging into his palm through his gloves. Green gloves. Thick gauntlets that covered his forearms. Not black with metal studs on the knuckles. A cape tugged at his neck, and his legs were cold. He looked over the ledge of the balcony, not through a helmet but a domino mask. 

A body was broken on the pavement below. 

He knew where he was. 

“Robin. Did Felipe fall, or was he pushed?”

Bruce came home alone after Felipe’s death, because Jason swung off on his own, grim and without explanation. He didn’t see him come back to the cave, or hear him returning to his room for the night. 

Bruce paced in the master bedroom, his mind stuck in dark alleys and cold pavements. He had tried and failed to sleep. He could feel that he wasn’t going to be quieting his mind any time soon. His dressing gown flapped around his legs as he walked the length of the room.

The last time he walked down Crime Alley he took a tire iron to the stomach and got called a big boob. It had made him laugh then. It seemed so removed from the rest of the world. The reality where Bruce’s parents bled out on dirty concrete. 

It was foolish of him. Jason was a product of that world. In a way even Bruce was not. 

Maybe it was a mistake to put the boy in a costume. 

Just because he had survived terrible things already, didn’t mean he was suited to it. As his training had already proven, many of the habits he developed to survive the streets worked against him in the field. The happy, bubbly schoolboy was swallowed whole by the brutality of Gotham’s boy wonder. 

Bruce dragged his hand down his face.

He never felt so ill equipped for anything as he did when it came to parenting. He almost wished there would be some emergency in the city that would demand his focus. It might even give Jason some time to calm down. 

He shook his head against the thought, and marched to the door. The criminal class had never bowed to his convenience before, if they started tonight it would be purely to make him regret wishing for it. 

He opened the door. 

Jason stood in the hallway. He was paused in front of his own open bedroom, looking in. Bruce recognised the baggy brightly coloured clothes he wore as something Dick had forgotten in the cave. Odd. 

Bruce watched him, searchingly. He didn’t know what for. 

Jason stared back at him.

The yellow light of Bruce’s room streamed out, painting his long shadow along the length of the hall. The stripes of shadow rested on Jason’s blank face. He looked tired. More tired than his fifteen years should be able to produce. His eyes were hard. 

The hardness of a killer? 

It certainly wasn’t regret. 

He might not have done it. Maybe he was telling the truth when he said Felipe slipped. But Bruce suspected, and that was condemnation enough. How could he work with a partner he didn’t trust? 

“You got something to say, old man?”

Bruce pulled his door shut. 

Bruce didn’t see him much for a couple of days. He didn’t come down to the cave. The batcomputer logged sporadic use from Jason’s account, and there was evidence of him using the training equipment when Bruce wasn’t looking. The books he had started and left throughout the manor went untouched. 

At dinner, Jason watched him carefully. He had done that back when he first came to the manor, but it had eased off as they learned to trust each other. It was back to full tilt, with a sharpness that was all robin.

Alfred told him he had stopped sleeping in his room. He was using the empty room one door down. It annoyed Alfred more than anything else, but the pointed comments on the subject Bruce overheard did not provoke any explanation.

It was odd. 

Jason had never been a grim child before. Even when he was upset or guilty, he was a firecracker. HIs emotions were too big for his child’s body, Bruce always thought, and they burst out of him with or without his permission. 

Now he was a brick wall. Whatever was happening in there wasn’t getting out.

A quiet descended over the manor. Bruce missed the bright eyed kid sitting in his office, chattering away about the latest thing he was learning at school. 

The change was so drastic he started keeping notes. Alfred suspected it was unresolved trauma from his parent’s death. That seemed plausible. Bruce suspected it was shock over realising his own capacity for harm. Alfred didn’t think that was likely, as Jason had been getting more reckless and violent for months. Self destructive. 

He and Alfred did agree that he was too unstable to be working. 

He wished that Dick was here. He was much more perceptive about this sort of thing, and about dealing with other people’s emotions sensitively. But not only was he not in Gotham, he wasn’t even on the planet. 

After a dinner he ate alone, Bruce tracked him down to the manor roof. He wondered if he was smoking again. 

Jason was leaning with his elbows on the edge of a parapet. The wind tousled his hair. 

The sun was setting. Vibrant orange danced over the treetops that hid most of Gotham from here. The towers of the commercial sector could still be seen, a cluster of spikes of glass and concrete soaked in blood red light. 

Batman would be setting off into the city soon, alone. 

Tense over what was sure to be a fight, he walked quietly over the roof. He stopped some distance away, downwind from him and out of sight. He couldn’t smell any smoke. Maybe he hadn’t lit up yet. 

Jason looked wistful. From this angle Gotham was beautiful. You couldn’t smell the filth, or see the enemy at this distance.

Jason lowered his head. His expression turned sad. It ached in Bruce’s chest. 

Maybe Alfred was right. This was grief. 

“It feels like nothing ever changes up here,” Jason said suddenly, still looking at the view. 

Good awareness of his surroundings, Bruce thought with a melancholy pride. He didn’t even notice when Jason had spotted him. What potential he had. What a waste. 

“Like I could come back in a thousand years and it’d be exactly the same,” Jason muttered, more to himself than any audience. “Go back to your grandparent’s time… and not even notice.”

“It used to be farmland,” Bruce said. He joined him at the low parapet. The grounds below were murky in  the shadow of the trees. He nodded at the neighbouring Drake manor to the south. “We were surrounded by orchards when I was a boy.”

“You come up here much as a kid?”

“Only once. We were having the gutters cleaned. I followed the workers up the stairs and watched them from that landing, until my father called me down.”

“Hn.” Jason looked out across the grounds again. The burning disk of the sun had disappeared, and the wells of shadow were taking ground. 

Bruce looked at him long and hard. 

You know, I was scared of heights,” he admitted. 

Jason snorted. “Were you?” 

“I was determined to stay up on the roof until it didn’t scare me anymore.” 

“How long did that take?” 

He shook his head. “It didn’t. When my father told me to come down, it was a relief… to have permission to go easier on myself.” 

“Shame you didn’t learn anything.”

“...Jason–”

“I don’t want to be Robin anymore.”

Bruce shut his mouth, gobsmacked. Relief followed hot on the heels of shock.

He put a hand on Jason’s shoulder. “I think that’s for the best, son.” 

Jason looked at his hand, then up at his face. Searching.

“I know,” he said, coldly. He scoffed and looked away again. “I’d rather jump than get pushed.”

Bruce furrowed his brow and took his hand back.  “What’s important is having your feet firmly on the ground again.”

“Uh-huh.”

Jason ducked past him back to the door. 

Bruce stood alone at the edge for a moment. The last of the red light had leached from the sky. The shadows clawed ever higher.

His relief settled into the silts of suspicion. 

Dick would have never willingly given up Robin. And Jason loved it. He always held onto what was his with dogged determination, it was what made him so good at it in the first place. And so volatile when it went wrong. 

Bruce looked over the edge. The grass below was too dark to see.

I’d rather jump than get pushed. 

Suspicion soured into concern. He looked back at the door that had closed silently behind the boy. 

He resolved to check on Jason again over the next month, once he had had time to calm down. He might lock up the Robin suit too in the meantime. He didn’t like this. 

He descended down into the bowls of the manor, and set off into the night. 

Gotham was quiet. 

Gordon had been on a rampage since Barbara’s paralysis six months earlier. The Joker hadn’t been seen since, and all the other usual trouble makers were keeping their heads down. 

Batman perched on a gargoyle overlooking a main road. He was tracking movement from a cartel that was trying to get a foothold in Gotham, but it seemed even they weren’t up to much tonight. 

With no Robin, no Batgirl, no Nightwing, it was just him and the wind. 

He used to prefer it that way. It didn’t feel like missing a limb in those days. He scowled. He would just have to get used to it. It was better this way and he knew it. 

He hoped Jason was doing his homework right now. Maybe he had finished his work and was reading. He would scrunch up his forehead and stick his tongue out the side of his mouth when he was really focused. He was so happy to learn. 

The wind howled by. 

He launched his grapple gun and swung away. 

His route took him near Gordon’s house, where he knew Barbara was grudgingly staying. He stopped on the rooftop of a nearby building and peered over. He visited her as often as she allowed. It wasn’t very often anymore. She had locked herself down, simmering away in her own head while the ruins of her life fell through her fingers. 

It was a travesty. 

He caught sight of her through the blinds. She sat at a desk, sketching something. Her jaw jutted out to the side and her eyes were narrowed: a habit she had had even as Batgirl whenever she was working on something that refused to cooperate. Her shoulders were tense. 

That was what Jason reminded him of, he realised with a jolt. The simmering fury. Locking everyone out. 

How dramatic of him. Babs had suffered a catastrophic loss. Jason… Jason had his wounds, but Babs’ life was never going to be the same. There wasn’t the same excuse for his anger. It had always concerned Bruce, the way he simmered, then exploded. 

I’d rather jump than get pushed. 

Maybe he should check on Jason sooner than planned. 

It never seemed like a good time. 

But crime arrived, on its own time as it always did, and Batman went out to meet it. 

Felipe Gazronas’ father died in pursuit of vengeance for his son. Only Robin wasn’t there to be avenged upon and Batman wasn’t going to give him the pleasure. 

He couldn’t rescue Jose Garzonas from the wreckage he toppled over onto himself in time. The father died crushed under a wrecked car not a week after his son fell to his death. 

Batman wished Jason was there to see it. Maybe it would have gotten through to him: there were consequences for every action. 

Maybe it would have been just one more traumatic thing a hurting child would have to reckon with.

He should never have been Robin. 

Bruce wandered into the kitchen one morning for a late breakfast. 

Alfred was staring into a cream coloured batter in a silver bowl with a contemplative expression. 

Bruce looked at him curiously while pulling a green smoothie from the fridge. He sat at the table and opened the day’s newspaper with a noisy ruffle of the pages. Alfred shook himself at the sound, and started spooning the mixture into a cake tin. 

“Good morning, sir,” he greeted, somewhat belatedly, Bruce thought.

“Morning, alfred. Something on your mind?”

He pursed his lips and levelled out the top of the cake. “I am worried about that boy.” 

Bruce stared at the words on the page without really seeing them. Friday 26th of April the cursive script read. 

“What’s he done?” 

He had checked the three latest robin suits just last night. None of them had been taken from the locker. There were no rumours on the street of a new, short, vigilante. 

Alfred looked pensively into the depths of raw cake. 

“While helping prepare breakfast this morning he asked me why he didn’t have a will.”

“What?”

“He said for someone risking his life on Gotham’s streets, surely it was arrogant to assume nothing would go wrong.” 

Bruce’s brow furrowed. He laid the paper down flat on the table. 

“What did you say?” 

“I confess I was taken by surprise and didn’t take the query seriously. I asked if he had any plans for his estate upon his passing that needed recording. He grinned and said he wanted to be cremated.”

There was a long silence.  

“He’s benched, Alfred,” Bruce choked out. “He told me himself he didn’t want to do it anymore.”

“And thank heavens for that,” Alfred said with a sigh but no real relief. “I’m not sure I trust him with a kitchen knife let alone a grapple gun at present.”

“I don’t think he’s going to hurt himself. Jay’s stronger than that.”

Alfred gave him a reprimanding look. “It isn’t always a matter of strength, Master Bruce.” 

Bruce looked away. He knew some of Alfred’s friends from his airforce days had… not survived civilian life. 

“Where is he anyway?”

“Visiting Miss Gordan, I believe.”

“Good. She’ll remind him of what’s important.”

“One would think.”

On April 27th, Bruce caught Jason coming out of the spare room he had claimed as his own with his backpack slung over his shoulder. Bruce stopped, eyes rising from his coffee to note the jacket, shoes, and bulging pockets.

“Where are you going?” 

“Visiting Dick,” Jason said, casual as anything, without stopping.

“Dick’s in space.”

“Gonna water his house plants.”

“Chum– Dick doesn’t have any house plants.” He drowned the Japanese peace lily Alfred gave him when he first moved out within a month. “Where are you actually going?”

“I’m getting out of your hair, old man, stop complaining. Also, the Joker’s in Ethiopia poisoning aid workers.”

“What?” 

“Check the computer,” Jason called, descending the stairs. “Alert came through this morning.” 

Bruce moved into pursuit. 

“Jason, stop.” He grabbed his arm. “What are you talking about?”

The teenager tensed, then very intentionally made himself relax. “You wanna go stop him or you wanna stay here and argue about something you don’t really care about?”

“Enough. Enough, Jason.” He let go of him and held his hands up. “What’s really going on, son?” 

“Nothing Bruce. Look around. Nothing is happening.”

“Is this about Robin?”

“No.” His lip curled into something that might have been a smile, or might have been a sneer. “It’s about Jason.” He kept walking.

Bruce scowled. 

“Then I’ll drive you.” 

“Don’t you have a lunatic to track down?”

Yes, he did. Jim would never forgive him if he let this lead go. 

He hesitated. 

“Be seeing you, Bruce,” Jason called. A door closed noisily behind him.  

Why would Joker be in Ethiopia? Bruce walked towards the cave entrance, possibilities presenting themselves to him. There had been some noise about a warhead in Lebanon but it sounded too much like fear mongering to him so he disregarded it. Ethiopia was a long way from Lebanon. 

Why did Jason hear about it first? 

He stopped at the clock entrance from the second story drawing room. He glanced out the window at the front of the house. 

Jason was walking down the gravel driveway, with the fence slowly closing behind him. 

When Dick left, he didn’t come back for two years. 

A fear settled into Bruce’s heart. 

Jason was very different from Dick. But he was no less stubborn. 

This was different, he and Dick had been fighting. Bruce told him to leave. He wasn’t fighting with Jason. 

Was he? 

No, he wasn’t. Jason lashed out when he was hurt, he didn’t slink away quietly. If he and Bruce were fighting there would be broken vases and screaming matches, not… not this resignation. 

He disappeared beyond the shrubs that lined the driveway. 

The fear in him seized up, that if he didn’t go out and get him right now, he would never come back at all. 

He rushed down to the garage. He hopped into the first car in the row and peeled off of the property. The driveway was clear. He saw Jason walking at a clip down the long road to the city. 

Bruce pulled up next to him. 

He leaned over and opened the door. 

Jason stared, sighed, and got in. 

“I’m heading to the alley first,” he said, throwing his backpack into the back. 

Bruce nodded. Now he had Jay in the car where he could see him, he didn’t really mind where he took him. He wanted to say something but wasn’t sure what. Jason so clearly didn’t want to talk to him, staring out the window, shoulders hunched in. He shut down any attempts to talk. Bruce settled into observation and assessment. 

They arrived in the rotting old neighbourhood before he could deduce anything beyond that Jason was tense. 

“Do you want me to come with you?” Bruce offered, when Jason directed him to stop outside his old house. 

He shook his head. “I won’t be long.”

He climbed out of the car and disappeared up the stairs to the apartment he once shared with his parents. 

He came back out five minutes later with a cardboard box. He carried it to a rusted metal drum on the corner. On winter nights there was normally a fire in its base and homeless people warming their hands around it. In the daytime on an unseasonably hot April day it was just a place to throw rubbish. 

Jason balanced the box on the drum’s ledge and pulled out a sheet of paper. Bruce couldn’t make it out at the distance, but it looked like official documentation of some form. Jason held it up gingerly and set fire to the corner with a zippo. He let it burn for a moment, then dropped it into the drum. 

He looked into the box, considering, then folded it up and came back to the car, bringing it with him. 

“What was that?” Bruce asked. 

Jason shut the door and put on his seat belt. 

“Dick’s place next.” 

“Left something in Bludhaven you need to burn too?”

“Can’t burn anything as bad as his attempts at cooking,” he replied, leaning back with an annoying arrogant ease he couldn’t quite pull off. 

“Something your parents left for you?” Bruce asked quietly. He turned back onto the main road. The tenements of Crime Alley disappeared behind them. 

“I don’t have parents, Bruce, that’s very insensitive.” 

“Me neither. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

“Cute.“

Bruce’s lips thinned. If Jason didn’t want him to ask questions he wouldn’t have done that where Bruce could see. Or he burned the document right in front of him purely to let him know he was never going to find out. The kid had his petty side. 

He had gone quiet. He was rarely quiet. Or, it used to be rare.

He needed to focus, Bruce thought, glancing at his son from his peripheral for just a moment. What were the facts? Bruce had never been good at dealing with people, not when it came to the important things. He got caught up in his own head, in the emotions he didn’t want to feel and failed to sort meaningfully. It was why Robin made such a difference. His boys were so good at connecting with people where he just wasn’t. 

“Why did you want to stop being Robin?” 

“I’m not Dick, and I’m never going to be. No point kidding myself.” 

“He’s a good standard to hold yourself to. Falling short of your goals isn’t any reason to–” Bruce cut himself off. Jason sat tense beside him, but not actually upset. “That’s not why.” 

“How do you figure?” 

“...You aren’t quitting.”

“I clearly am. Already have, in fact.”

“No, you have a new goal in mind that has superseded it. I’ve never known you to give up on something important. And I know what Robin means to you.”

“No, you don’t,” he replied quietly. 

“Are you in trouble?” 

“Yeah.” Jason looked straight ahead out the windscreen. “Two-Face wants revenge for that black eye I gave him. Gonna go the way of my old man.” 

Bruce froze for a microsecond. Then he forced himself to relax. A burst of anger flashed in him at the flippancy, but he set it aside to assess the situation. A belligerent opponent demanded a clear head. 

“No, he isn’t. No, you’re not.” 

“Sure I am,” Jason drawled. “You always knew it was gonna be this way, Bruce. Doomed to a life of crime.” 

“You are no such thing.” Bruce refused to allow it. 

“Isn’t that why you wanted to save me?” Jason looked at him, sharp blue eyes narrowed. “One less criminal on the streets?” 

“You needed help. If you don’t want–”

“Take this right.”

Bruce turned off onto a side street. Industrial buildings surrounded them, then were replaced with a towering wall with coils of barbed wire at the top. 

“Where are we going?”

“Blackgate. Figured I’d save you the runaround.”

Bruce whirled on him, anger flaring. He pulled over. 

Jason leaned his cheek on his fist, elbow resting on the door.  

Bruce stared at him. Jason didn’t even flinch. 

Bruce took a deep breath. He thought about kicking the kid out of the car for being a brat. It was exactly what he deserved with his little games. It was exactly what he wanted Bruce to do. 

He indicated a u-turn, and turned back towards the route to Bludhaven. Traffic outside the max-security prison was low. 

“If you’re going to be smart then we won’t talk.”

“That’s too bad,” Jason drawled. 

They left Gotham behind. The busy highway turned into a cracked old route with a ditch on one side and weed-ridden fields on the other. There weren’t many other cars around. 

Bruce percolated through the facts. 

Jason excelled at riling criminals into acting against their own interests. Where Dick had a disarming charm that made them not take him seriously, Jason had a knack for being insufferable that made people not care about the risks. Bruce was angry, and Jason was happy with that. 

It was well executed. And it stung.

He had always been a good kid, even when desperate and afraid. He had wanted to make Bruce proud. This remorseless bite was wholly new. 

Or was it? 

A man fell from his balcony to sudden death. 

I’d rather jump than get pushed. 

“You’re not doomed,” Bruce said into the silence. 

“You don’t believe that.” 

“Why would I take you in if I did?” 

“You left it too long to apologise to Dick and you can’t stand your own loneliness.” 

Bruce bit his tongue. “Given how vicious you’re being, I assume I’m getting closer to the heart of the matter. Your discussion with Alfred yesterday confirms it.” 

“Confirms what?” 

“...You’re thinking about dying.” 

He felt like he was outside of his body as he said it. The horror of it couldn’t reach him, it hovered, just out of reach. 

Jason laughed. 

“Alright Miss Marple. Was it the directions on what to do with my corpse or the settling of my affairs that tipped you off?”

Bruce slammed back into himself, then slammed on the breaks. He pulled onto the curb. Someone honked at him. His heart pounded in his chest. He stared at Jason like he might evaporate if he looked away.

“Where is this coming from?”

“Was it ever real?” Jason asked, thoughtfully, wistfully, like Bruce hadn’t said anything. Like they weren’t talking about this at all. “Was this just… filling the hole Dick left behind? You needed a kid to stand next to you and I was enough of a blank slate?”

“It was always real, Jason,” Bruce said. His voice came out low and rough. “I wanted to help you. I have always only wanted to help you.”

Jason smiled bitterly. 

“I wish your word meant a damn thing. I wish my word meant something to you.” 

“I don’t know what you want from me.” 

“I shouldn’t have to do this, Bruce,” he said, the smile swallowed by bitterness. “You shouldn’t need me to tell you that– that– You can’t just take in a kid and then give up when you get disappointed. Or bored. This is my life , Bruce! If you don’t fucking mean it, don’t string me along like this!”

“I’m not–” 

“You gave up on me.”

“Never.” 

“Don’t fucking lie to me!” Jason pointed a finger in his face. “You decided! I’m a killer, a criminal, a problem for you to solve, anything but your son. Who cares if it’s even true? You made up your mind and gave up. ” 

“I will never give up on you,” Bruce said through a dry throat.

Jason got out of the car. The door slammed shut and he stormed away. 

Bruce chased him. They were alone on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. 

“Jason!” Stop. Please. Come back. He couldn’t force the words out. “I… I don’t know what you need to hear.”

Jason stopped, his back to Bruce. 

“I’m not good at this, but I haven’t given up. You are my son. You’ll always be my son.” 

Jason looked back with dark eyes and a hard face. The tears running down his cheeks broke the illusion. 

“You don’t have to jump, Jay. Lad. I’m not going to push you. I want you to stay. Please.”

“What if you can never fix me?”

Bruce stopped. An instinctual insistence that he would stick with him no matter how long it took died on his tongue. 

“You’re not broken,” he said. 

Jason sneered. “Pull the other one.” 

Bruce swallowed hard. Guilt flooded him. His first thought had been an honest one. 

“I’m broken too,” he said. “It’s okay. It’s okay to be broken.”

“ I know that. Do you know that?” 

“Do you, Jay? I don’t want to lose you. I only want you to be happy. I’m sorry I haven’t made that clear.” Bruce stepped closer. Emotion choked him and he wanted to turn away from its sting, but he forced himself forward. “...I thought you knew I love you.”

“I thought you did,” Jason said. He sounded so small. 

“Lad.”

Bruce wrapped him up in a hug. Jason clung to him. 

He seemed so grown up, but there was so little of him in his arms. Tears wet his shirt. Jason trembled with the force of his emotions. Bruce pressed a kiss to his temple. 

“What’s happened to us?” Bruce muttered and held onto his boy. His son. His son!  

He closed his eyes and held him as close to his heart as he could. 

Jason hauled in a deep, hitching breath. Bruce’s arms always felt like they could fend off the entire world. He didn’t want to let go. 

He opened his eyes, and he was somewhere else. 

He looked down at his arms, his own arms, wrapped in brown leather, black gloves, and holding up a vase in one hand. 

Bruce, the scarred and greying old mountain of a man, was hunched on the other side of the manor library, holding his arms above his head. Smashed fragments of other decorations and a few upturned books were scattered around him. 

“Hey,” Jason said, lowering his arm. “I got this for Alfred last year.” 

“Jason!” Bruce lowered his arms and relief flooded his face. “You’re back?”

“What did you do, old man? Pick a fight with a fifteen year old?” 

Bruce vaulted a couch, and hugged him. 

Jason, still wrung out, allowed it. He blinked back tears. He tentatively wrapped his arms back around Bruce. His Bruce. Who knew why the gulf between was there. 

Who hadn’t said any of those things. 

Jason swallowed. “Is it still the April 27th?” 

“Yes,” Bruce croaked, and held him tighter. 

Chapter Text

Jason opened his eyes. Bruce was hugging him. 

His Bruce. Who didn’t look like a haggard old man clenching his jaw to get through another round of pallbearing. His arms were warm and strong and so big. 

It felt weird. 

He pushed Bruce away, wiping his nose on his hoodie sleeve. His eyes were sore and his cheeks were wet, even though he didn’t remember crying. He sniffed loudly. He looked around. He was in his own body again. He flexed his hands. His scars were back. They were standing on the grassy side of a road in the middle of nowhere. The roadster was parked a dozen feet away.

“Jason?” Bruce asked cautiously. 

“Yeah. It’s me. I’m back.”

His brow furrowed. “Back?”

Jason stared at him. He looked so earnest, with the constipated face he got when he was trying to be emotional.

Old Bruce had clocked there was something wrong with him on sight and put him in a choke hold. Red Hood’s throat had ached from the bruises the entire time he was in the future. Everyone kept looking at him funny. He couldn’t pass for that guy even when trying.

“You didn’t even notice?” Jason asked. “Where are we? What are we doing here?” What had Red Hood done? 

Concern in Bruce’s eye turned into alarm – turned into professional assessment in a seamless transition. 

“What do you mean?”

Jason told him. 

Bruce pulled away, and drew himself to his full height. He ushered Jason to the car. They were on the road to Bludhaven. Bruce didn’t say why. He turned the car around and joined the traffic heading back to Gotham. 

His shoulders relaxed as he drove. He kept sneaking glances at Jason. 

Jason shifted in the passenger seat. His clothes felt weird. He never wore this hoodie with this shirt, they pulled against each other uncomfortably.

Someone had been wearing his skin. He was wearing his own skin now. 

It itched. 

He put his head in his hands. Having cried so recently, fresh tears gathered in his eyes easily. They dripped down his cheeks.

“What date is it?” he managed to say. 

“April 27th.”

And he was thirty minutes from Bludhaven, sitting safely in Bruce’s car. He looked at the clock on the dashboard. 

He was supposed to be dead. About twenty minutes ago. 

“Shouldn’t we be in Ethiopia?” he asked. 

“I’m sorry Jason. You’re not Robin anymore. We all agreed it’s for the best.”

Jason looked up at him. 

Bruce was braced for some kind of blow back. He had his jaw set, ready to hold his ground. 

He didn’t know. Jason was supposed to be dead, and Bruce didn’t even know. 

“Oh.” 

He hung his head. He wiped his eyes harshly on his wrist. Great. They all agreed. Whoever ‘they’ was. It wasn’t the dozen people who made up ‘they’ in the future, but it was the same in spirit. The people who got to decide. Not Jason. Jason got to die.

Bruce patted him on the shoulder. 

“It’ll be alright, chum.” 

Jason wrapped his arms around himself. He felt so small.

They got back to the manor, where Bruce ushered him into the cave to do tests and answer questions. He had already done far more thorough tests on the other end. Technology moved so fast in a few short years. He probably wasn’t supposed to tell his Bruce about the future, in case it affected the timestream. So he didn’t tell him anything about what was supposed to have happened. 

Bruce kept looking at him with concern.

Jason Todd was meant to die an hour and thirty five minutes ago. 

Had died, actually. 

Bruce ruffled his hair. 

Everyone in the future knew. They didn’t even pretend, they looked at him like some kind of aberration. The cautionary tale. The bomb waiting to go off. Lying in an MRI machine, he had to bite back a laugh. Angry tears gathered in his eyes. He already knew all those looks on sight. He was already the screw up. Bruce looked at him with concern and suspicion from the controls. 

Nothing changed. He died, crawled out of his own grave, and nothing changed. 

No, that wasn’t true. Jason changed. 

He hadn’t recognised his older self in the mirror. He didn’t recognise his fighting style. His voice. His muscle memory. Even his taste buds were different. 

He wasn’t Robin anymore. 

The machine spat him back out. Alfred had arrived quietly, as always, and looked down at Jason when he sat up. 

“Welcome back master Jason. I see your visit to Bludhaven was brief.” 

Jason swallowed thickly. Some other things had changed. He wasn’t the only ghost haunting Wayne manor. 

“Hi Alfie.” 

Jason excused himself. 

He trudged upstairs, out of the dark of the underground into the light and found himself resenting the obvious symbolism. He just wanted to go home. Whatever that meant now. 

He crossed the threshold of his room and fell face first into his bed. It felt like being folded into a warm hug. 

He turned his face, smooshed into his pillow, to glance at the room.

It looked the same. Nothing had moved, it wasn’t even dusty. His baseball cap hung off the back of the chair, and his water bottle was three quarters empty on the desk. He had been away for weeks. 

He had died two hours ago. 

And here he was still. Not Robin. Not Red Hood. Nothing in particular. 

Red Hood saved him, he supposed. 

…Did that mean Red Hood didn’t exist anymore? Did he write himself out of existence to save his ungrateful younger self? 

There was a book on the desk, beyond the waterbottle and the photo of mom. A simple spiral bound notebook, of the sort he used to take to school in the alley, back when he still attended. Too cheap and poor quality for Alfred to ever buy for him. The pages were thin and would always tear under the heat of his hand. 

It was the only incongruous detail in the room.

He eyed it warily. His own curiosity won out.

He slid off the bed and leaned over the desk. He flipped open the cover.

‘ Hey kid.’

…Weird. 

‘I didn’t touch any of your stuff if I could help it. Didn’t feel right. 

‘I don’t know if you’ll ever read this–

‘If whatever’s going on isn’t permanent then you have to– 

‘I’m sorry. 

‘Look. Being Robin is going to kill you.’

He slammed the book shut. 

Bruce was leaving. It was something about the Joker and aid workers in Ethiopia, but he stopped talking when Jason entered the room. 

That wasn’t his life anymore. 

‘They all agreed.’ 

Jason yelled at him and stormed out. Batman left the country without a Robin to face the Joker alone. 

Two weeks ago he would have snuck out. Borrowed a credit card and surprised Bruce in Ethiopia, armed with information he had gathered himself and ready to spring into action and save the day.

Instead he ate his breakfast in the manor kitchen. 

Alfred calmly explained that it was his older self’s idea to set aside the cape and the mask. Alfred thought it a very reasonable idea.

Jason walked out. Alfred didn’t call him back. 

“What do you want, Jason?” Babara asked from the door of her new accommodation. The wheelchair was just starting to leave imprints in the carpet. He wasn’t used to looking down when talking to her yet. 

“Um. I’m sorry. For anything I did the last couple of weeks. It wasn’t me, I was possessed.”

“...Oh.”

“By a version of myself from the future,” he blurted out. Repetition wasn’t making him feel less the butt of the joke. 

She looked up at him with flat lips. He thought he was on thin ice when he arrived, and it only seemed to be getting thinner. 

“You don’t have to be sorry.”

She wheeled back from the door, making room for him to enter. 

“I know he’s an ass,” he said, shutting the door behind him as he followed her in. The house was cluttered in a way that felt unlike her, half her life untouched in moving boxes for six months now. “Whatever he said, whatever he did, I–”

“He asked if I wanted him to kill the Joker.”

Jason froze, struck by the horror. 

“I’m sorry,” he said even though she told him not to. “Did you… set him straight?” 

She gave him an unreadable look. 

She rolled the right wheel of her chair marginally back and forth slowly, changing her angle but not her position on the yellowing old carpet. 

“Did you know he’s the first person to say his name to me?” she said, almost conversationally. “Not ‘that madman’, not ‘him’, not…” and she sneered, “‘the escaped prisoner.’ He strode in here, bold as anything, and said ‘hey Barbie, what if I kill Joker?”

She said it like an accusation. He wasn’t sure… at who. 

“He killed him,” Jason confessed. “In the future.”

She looked at a spot on the wallpaper. The chair turned slowly, and turned again. “The Joker?”

“No, me. Joker killed me.” 

She stopped.

“Or would have. Yesterday. I’m supposed to be dead.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.” 

Joker beat me to a pulp with a crowbar then blew me up.

“Something to do with Ethiopia,” he said. “That’s where Bruce is now. Future Jason left him a bunch of notes and he’s all stirred up. You know how he gets.”

“How– did he come here instead of dying?” 

He shook his head. “He was dead dead. They buried him and everything, and he clawed his way back out. Years later. Nobody really… appreciated it. They all thought…”

They stared at each other. He couldn’t say it. 

“Better off dead?” she asked. She scoffed and wheeled around him. “You’re not dead. They’re going to have to deal with that on their own.”

“Yeah.” He ducked his head. “Thanks Barbie.”

“How was I? In that future?” 

“Amazing. You’ve always been amazing.” His eyes landed at a computer station he didn’t recognise. 

She narrowed her eyes at him. He looked away. 

“Was it hot air? Killing the Joker?”

“No.”

“Hm.”

“What did you say to him?”

“...Mind your own business, kid.”

He huffed. She cracked a smile, then kicked him out of her house. 

‘Robin is going to kill you.

‘Not because you’re not good enough, not because you’re reckless, or untrustworthy, or any other stupid lies they stuff your ears with. Robin will kill you because there is no other end to this. The danger will always bounce back. Sooner or later, you won’t.

‘I’m not saying this to make you stop. Even I’m not that much of a hypocrite. Just, make sure you know that. Bruce isn’t going to save you. He can’t, not forever. You know an addict when you see one. He’s going to die in that suit and he doesn’t even mind. That’s the plan.’

Jason tore downstairs and grabbed the Robin suit. Bruce had locked it away, badly. 

Red Hood could suck it, he thought as he soared. The city sprawled beneath him and the wind filled his cape. 

It felt amazing. He laughed at the sheer relief of it. It had been weeks locked down, mistrusted and off-balance. 

He was in his own body again and he was flying. 

Gotham hunched the same as it always did, past or present, all humming sodium lights and mystery puddles and distant shouts. 

He swung up to his favourite gargoyle. He sat, one leg swinging on either side of the round body of the snarling stone beast. The wind ruffled his hair.

His arms were sore. His legs prickled in the cold, pale and skinny against the dark night. This body felt weak. Small and soft in a way he never had since going home with Bruce. Robin used to make him feel unstoppable. He was untouchable. 

His comms turned on with a click. “Anything of note tonight, sir?”

He took a big sniff. 

“There’s a homeless guy getting bothered down on Poplar.”

“Be safe.”

He swung down and sorted it out. 

It felt good. It wasn’t about him, and that cleared his head. That was what this was about. He led the nearby police who usually bothered the homeless on a wild goose chase, then stopped a mugging, before finishing patrol early. 

He fell face first onto his mattress again, this time in flannel pjs.

The notebook sat open on the desk.  

‘You deserve to make your own choices, kid. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.’

He squeezed his eyes shut.

He was supposed to be dead. He would be, eventually. Sometimes it felt like he never really left that dirty alley. Somewhere somehow he was still shivering on the pavement, no matter how comfortable the bed. Pulling sheets of newspaper around himself and wondering if it would snow again. Wondering why mom had to– why she couldn’t–

He read his own file in the future. Tim had gotten him a copy since Old Man Bruce immediately locked him out of the computer. Red Hood ran the drug trade. He made a fool of all the other crooks who peddled shit and brought them to heel. He killed people by the dozen. He destroyed tainted product and executed anyone he caught adulterating the goods. It was terrifying. He didn’t want anything to do with that guy.

But mom wouldn’t have died choking on drugs cut with random chemicals under his watch. 

It was a treacherous thought. 

He knew the power vacuum left in Red Hood’s wake made it all worse than it began. But all that meant was that he shouldn’t have stopped. 

Maybe he was the monster they all said he was. 

At least Red Hood wasn’t a useless monster. 

He remembered Gloria’s corpse, spinning slowly where it hanged from the ceiling fan. A different body, falling from a balcony, arms pinwheeling. 

He still felt like he was hiding in his skin instead of wearing it. Some grasping little thing, piloting a corpse. 

Maybe he always had been. 

Bruce wasn’t back by the morning. Of course, Africa was a long flight. Jason couldn’t decide if he wished he was back or was glad he wasn’t. He couldn’t bear it right now.

In the vast silence of the old house he walked down to the kitchen for breakfast.

Alfred greeted him courteously. 

It was stock day. Alfred had set out his toast and milk for him, between vast stock pots and sheet trays of raw components ready to be broken down: onion, celery, carrots, chicken bones, veal, and giant bowls of crustaceans 

Alfred always insisted on making his own. It was a control thing, Jason figured. He had dry cleaners for linens, gardeners for the grounds, and groceries were delivered, but he would not accept pre-made stock.

Jason swallowed the last of his toast, then volunteered himself for the cause. He was usually trusted with processing the bones. Alfred eyed him for a moment, then directed him over to the kitchen table and the roll of very sharp, small butchery knives.

Jason set himself up at his station. He focused on unhooking tendons, splitting the large joints into smaller pieces, and setting them out for roasting. 

Alfred de-shelled, de-veined and beheaded shrimp. They both wore plastic aprons and black nitrile gloves, but of the two of them the shellfish was much more gory. The bones were chilled and bloodless. 

It was quiet, a shared busyness that Jason enjoyed. This time of year the sunlight made it into the kitchen in the mornings and the tang of lemon surface cleaner undercut the smell of meat. He didn’t have to think about much of anything. 

Until Alfred, apropos of nothing, broke the silence.

“My boy, have I told you about my days in the RAF?”

“...Not really,” Jason said. All he knew about Alfred came from careful observation, or from other people. “You taught Bruce how to fly, right?”

“As I will one day teach you,” Alfred replied. “I had some input on the design of that hideous thing in the hanger.”

“The Batwing is wicked, Alfred.”

“I will take your word for it.”

The quiet hesitated to return. Jason glanced over at the soldier turned butler. He suspected there was some ulterior motive here and he was on the cusp of being cornered into something. Alfred was wilier than he presented himself. He also never talked about himself. At first Jason thought he was just being stuffy, but he had since figured it was a comfort thing. Alfred controlled how much anyone knew about him to an extent Batman could only dream of. 

Jason struggled to formulate a question about the RAF that wouldn’t get the conversation immediately shut down or redirected. 

Alfred made it redundant.

“It was quite a change, you understand, from armed forces to household staff.” A scampi head was efficiently twisted off and deposited in the bowl of its brothers, red shells shiny under the lights. 

“Why did you do it?”

“I inherited the role. My father was the Waynes’ butler before me. He entreated me to follow in his footsteps in his will.” 

“...Oh,” Jason said, not quite understanding. He wouldn’t give up being Robin to go take Willis’ place in Two Face’s gang. Maybe it was an old timey British thing. “Did you not want to be in the air force anymore?”

“I needed to leave. I had for some time, in fact. I was offered an administrative role and turned it down, for that would be no better.”

“Was it that bad?”

“Yes and no.” 

Alfred was quiet for a moment. He deftly removed the shell from a shrimp in one piece, taking all the legs and compromising none of the meat. Jason watched his hands, risking no eye contact. 

“There are times I think of fondly. Achievements I am proud of. But it wasn’t a place where one complained. Oh, we gas-bagged about our superiors with great enthusiasm, and common opinion on the mess hall involved language that would make even you blush. But if you woke up screaming every night, that was your own business. If your hands shook and you needed a splash of whisky before you could face the day… it wasn’t spoken of.”

Jason put down his knife. His hands were perfectly steady. Bruce had complimented him on that. 

“‘S not so different here. In America, I mean.”

No, I suppose it’s not.” Alfred sighed. “But I fear I am responsible for that attitude in Bruce. And for him, passing it to you boys. I did not mean to.”

Jason shrugged. He picked up a smaller knife and resumed his work. His hands needed something to do. 

“I think he’s just like that. He loves to talk about his inner darkness, but give him a hug and he crashes like a computer full of viruses.”

“So he does,” came Alfred’s wry reply. 

Jason wanted to flee. He was going to be asked to share, he knew it. But he wanted to know more about Alfred. This was more of a glimpse than he had ever gotten before. 

“Did something happen?”

“Hm?” Alfred inquired.

“With the RAF.”

“My copilot killed himself.”

“I– I’m sorry.” 

“So am I,” Alfred said plainly. He continued his work, deft and focused. “He never let once let on. Not a word. And of course when my fellows asked how I was getting on, in the days following the funeral, I told them I had no complaints. It didn’t remotely occur to me that I was being insincere. Or that I ought to talk to someone. Absurd. I had a job to do, we weren’t there for navel gazing. I daresay Thomas and Martha saved my life when they took me on.” 

Jason made a little involuntary noise.

“I’m quite alright now, my boy. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“I’m not frightened.”

“I know. You’re not easily frightened. And neither am I. If you need to talk about your parents, or anything else… please do. We want you to be well. But we don’t ask you to pretend.”

Jason turned over a bleached slice of bone, dark ring of marrow exposed. “I’m not pretending.”

Alfred watched him from the corner of his eye.

“What was his name?” Jason asked. 

There was a very long silence. “Henry.” Alfred put down his final shrimp. He stopped working. “He was my friend.”

“I’m sorry.” Jason still had bones to work through. His hands fell still despite himself. “Mom… didn’t want to wake up.”

“I’m sorry.” 

“Willis wanted to come home. He always said he did. But he couldn’t stand it. I think prison made it easier. He didn’t have to keep pretending.”

Alfred opened his mouth, his face pulled into gentle reassurance. 

“And Bruce,” Jason blurted. “Future Bruce told me I was a mistake. The biggest mistake he ever made.” 

“Dear boy. I’m sure he meant–”

“I don’t know what I did. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Why does everyone always leave?” 

Alfred fell quiet. He started and stopped to say something. Then he took his gloves off. “May I show you something?”

Jason followed Alfred mutely to the parlour. He felt embarrassed about his outburst, but too wrung out to flee. 

In the sun drenched parlour, looking out onto Martha’s prized rose garden, Alfred produced a cardboard box. It was water damaged in the corner, and the sort of ugly, modern, throw away thing that had no place in the grand Wayne manor. 

Alfred held it out, and Jason opened the top flaps. 

Assorted odds and ends sat inside, all old and dusty looking. There were some papers, what looked like treasured keepsakes, and a framed photo. He leaned the photo back to see its front, and saw Catherine and Willis, in the brown-tinged overexposed lighting of a photo from the seventies, grinning together on the steps of a courthouse. Catherine was in a nice blue dress, but with a white veil pinned to her hair. Willis clasped her hand tightly. She beamed.

Jason traced a finger lightly over the glass. 

Alfred put the box on the coffee table. Jason sank to the floor. Alfred folded himself to sit on a stool, knees cracking. 

Jason pulled out the box’s contents. 

“Where did you get this?” 

“I found it in the roadster when you returned,” Alfred said. “I assume your older self retrieved it for you.”

Jason pulled out and set aside an old camera. Alfred examined it, commenting on the make. Two film canisters rolled around the bottom of the box. An address book and Catherine’s legal documents were next, slightly water damaged. He told Alfred about some of the details he recognised. Some of it he kept to himself. Old ticket stubs for a Knights game. Unfilled change of address forms. A set of tarnished old cufflinks. A tiny crocheted finger puppet of a rabbit that he didn’t recognise but it smelled familiar. 

A delicate hair comb, gold wire studded with a row of five small pearls.

“That is from long before your parent’s time,” Alfred said, leaning forward. 

Jason turned it in the light. He looked again at the wedding photo, and the pinned veil. 

“Perhaps it was passed down from a grandparent, or a great grandparent?” Alfred said. 

Jason breathed deep, and let it out slow. Some tears accompanied it. Alfred put a gentle hand on his shoulder. 

Bruce came home two days later. 

Jason didn’t know until the man himself stood in the door of the library, looking down at him. 

Jason sat curled up on the armchair, reading Little Women. The afternoon sun had moved on him, taking its warm golden beams with it and leaving only muddy greys. His eyes had adjusted to it, he could make out the lines.  

Bruce loomed, awkwardly. 

“Did you catch him?” Jason asked. It wasn’t in the news. 

Bruce didn’t say anything. 

He sat on the low couch across from Jason, his elbows on his knees and eyes watching him carefully. Bringing himself lower to be less threatening, but not losing any ground. 

Jason rolled his eyes and turned the page. 

“Jason. In a month’s time, we can discuss Robin ag–”

“No. I’m not Robin anymore.” Jason closed the book. He had decided. “I’m going to be something else.”

Bruce eyed him warily. The yelling arguments between Bruce and Dick on this same topic had shaken through every level of the manor. But the subtext was different. Dick wasn’t anyone’s replacement. He was only ever himself. 

“Are you?” Bruce asked. 

“Yes.” 

“What?”

“I don’t know yet.” Jason’s fingers drummed across the cover. “I’ll tell you when I figure it out.” 

Bruce nodded slowly. “I want to help.”

Jason offered a small smile. “Yeah, I know.”

He got up and strolled out.  

‘Kid. 

‘I’ve patented some things in your name and set up licensing agreements. And don’t worry, it’s all stuff I actually came up with, so you’re not robbing anyone of their future. 

‘It’s up to you what you do with it, but it’ll keep bringing in royalties, so consider it a rainy day fund. Whatever happens, whatever you want to do with your life, whoever you want to do it with, you’ll have a little something in your back pocket. Nobody else knows. Nobody else can access it.'

He looked at the numbers. Holy shit. 

‘I don’t know if this is weird, but I love you, kid. I’m rooting for you. 

‘-Jason.’