Chapter Text
Contrary to semi-popular belief, Jason Peter Todd is not a dumbass. He’s not insane, either, although he’s become less sure about that recently. No, he’s instead some mix of chronically angry and desperate for someone to care about him; at least, according to therapists he can think about but will probably never talk to.
God, him talking to a therapist, can you imagine? Any self respecting one would be terrified after hearing about his death, but this new incident would prove a whole realm of father issues that not even the most seasoned therapist would want to go anywhere near.
It’s funny, Jason dryly mused as he tossed the remaining recognizable layers of his Red Hood gear into the flames behind him, really funny where your mind goes to when you’re sort-of dying. The day anyone connected to this godforsaken family gets therapy is the day the sun fucking explodes.
Speaking of explosions; this explosion had turned the building to rubble, setting wood floor planks on fire and probably leaking all kinds of poisonous gasses into the air, knowing how bad Gotham’s building codes were. Jason vaguely mourned the loss of his helmet, no doubt crushed in the blast alongside the gun that he dropped when the batarang-
He swallowed, wincing intensely at the movement, and slowly moved away from the wreckage.
He had slapped an old, shitty bandage over the gash in his throat, but he knew that the wound, when combined with his probably broken ribs and intense bruising, spelled potential danger to his life.
Again, though, he wasn’t a dumbass: an injured Red Hood would face a lot more danger walking the streets of Gotham than some random should-be-dead civilian. As himself, he might get mugged or something, but as Red Hood? There wasn’t a single person in the criminal underworld who wouldn’t happily take the chance to finish him off.
So off Jason went, limping towards his nearest safe house with no semblance of the Red Hood left on his person, desperately ignoring the symptoms of blood loss beginning to set in.
Darkness creeped into the edges of his vision, and Jason stubbornly grit his teeth as his knees briefly weakened, nearly sending him collapsing onto the pavement.
After everything he’d gone through - his childhood, dying, his time with the League, just to name a few - a singular fuckass batarang was not about to be the thing that did him in.
Although, he would be lying if he said he hadn’t briefly considered just… staying on the ground. Letting the building come down around him, batarang laying next to him as he bled out. His dead body, with the evidence of exactly who killed him for good sitting next to him for them to find, once the DNA results Batman was undoubtedly running went through. If he wanted to truly fuck up the bat, forcing him to reckon with the fact that he had killed one of his sons would be a great way of doing it.
At least, it would be if B ever really considered him a son. Which, considering how fast he was replaced, seemed pretty unlikely.
Plus - and he would never willingly admit this to anyone - something childish and terrified flared up in him during that moment. A kid who never made it past fifteen, desperately screaming not again, please, not again, as his hands scrabbled against almost familiar concrete, the ticking of a bomb in the background sealing the irony of it all.
He couldn’t do it again.
So here he was, just a block away from the safe house and god, was it getting hard to take another step.
Jason paused at the end of an alleyway, briefly rocking back and forth. He just- one more step. He just needed one more step and-
Darkness overcame him as he extended his leg, and he was only vaguely aware of the feeling of his body hitting concrete before slipping into unconsciousness.
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Contrary to semi-popular belief, Dick Grayson is not a dumbass. He knows how to take care of himself! He can clean (ignore the current state of his apartment), he knows how to grocery shop (yes, his fridge is currently empty), and he can totally cook (sometimes).
No, the reason he’s a mess right now is because he’s adjusting to living in Gotham again. Nothing more.
Bruce never admits that he needs help with anything. And he didn’t exactly ask for Dick’s help this time around, but the vaguely repressed worry in B’s voice when he relayed the threats that the Red Hood had been leveling against Robin had Dick packing his bags in seconds. Blüdhaven needed him, but it would have to wait for a bit. If his younger brother figure was in danger (oh god, please, not again), then that came first above all else.
Of course, that meant returning to an apartment that hadn’t been used in years (no way in hell was he staying at the manor again) and being faced with the pressing need to grocery shop.
So Dick left his apartment after moving his (minimal) belongings in, walking to the nearest grocery store.
Bruce would flip out if he knew that he was staying in Crime Alley, aka the territory of the very guy Dick came here to fight. But Crime Alley wasn’t just his enemy’s home base: it was where Jason had lived before B adopted him. Sue him if it still held a mildly special place in his heart.
Besides, it wasn’t as if the Red Hood knew their identities!
Dick’s phone buzzed, and he quickly read the coded message from B through the cracked screen. Translation? The Red Hood knows our identities.
Well, shit.
Alright, so he’d have to be a little faster than expected getting his groceries. He’d like to not get his ass kicked in the middle of the produce aisle, thank you very much.
He also slightly altered his route to get there; being roughly two blocks away from his apartment makes that easier, at least. No point taking the darkest shortcuts and walking by the shadiest alleyways if it meant increasing the potential risk of getting snatched by Gotham’s latest crime lord.
Just one more alleyway to walk by. Just one more and he should be in the clear-
A painful whimper followed by the unmistakable thump of a body hitting concrete came from the alleyway up ahead.
Dick briefly froze, mentally bemoaning his idiocy to jinx himself twice within just a few minutes before his body instinctively flipped into Nightwing mode.
The thought that this could maybe be a trap had been considered, but almost immediately thrown away. The likelihood was definitely there, but he knew he couldn’t just walk away from somebody who needed help.
As Dick rounded the corner, he was shocked at the sheer size of the guy who had collapsed. Definitely taller than Dick, built almost like B, and based on the blood slowly becoming obvious underneath him, he appeared to be suffering from some type of head or neck wound.
Nightwing kneeled down to check his pulse (worryingly slow, but safe enough for now) before sticking his arms underneath the unconscious dude and flipping him (as gently as possible) onto his back.
He looked at the guy's face to assess the injury and- it- no. This was- there couldn’t be a worse possible time for his hallucinations to be flaring up again. Because-
Hallucinations had to be the only explanation for this. There’s no other way that he could be staring down at the older face of his dead baby brother.
The guy was real. Dick could feel him breathing under his hands, and he had never been able to touch the hallucinations (regardless of how much he wanted to sometimes). Therefore, for some godforsaken reason, his brain had decided to layer an approximation of what Jason could’ve looked like if he survived over the face of a very real, definitely injured civilian.
Someone had slit this guy’s throat. He’d clearly thrown a shitty bandage over it, but that wasn’t going to do much after a while. So- life threatening, definitely, but not imminently so and Dick could probably get him back to his apartment where he definitely has the medical supplies to treat this-
But why would he do that? This is a civilian, not his brother, he should call 911 or drag the guy to Leslie’s clinic. All of this waiting and hand-wringing was putting this random person into an increasingly more dangerous state.
Yet despite that very logical thought process, Dick found himself frozen. Stranger things have happened to him and those around him; why shouldn’t someone just suddenly and randomly come back from the dead? He’s probably just feeding into the hallucinations at this point, but if he just checked…
Dick suddenly lashed out, briefly poking the person in his face. He watched intensely as the guy didn’t react and as… his face stayed exactly the same. The hallucination didn’t disperse, which meant-
This might actually be Jason. Somehow.
Dick screwed his eyes shut, attempting to slow his rapidly speeding-up breathing.
Get him to the apartment and fix him up, he thought. You will have PLENTY of time to panic later.
And with that, Dick slowly (because how did he get so big?) lifted maybe-Jason-ohmygod to his feet, slinging his arm around his shoulders as he made his way back to his apartment as fast as possible, the need for groceries long forgotten.
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Nightwing snuck into the Batcave, armed with just a single vial of blood and a whole bunch of nerves. It was 4AM (stitching up maybe-Jason-holy-SHIT took a couple of hours), and he was desperately hoping that Bruce (and Tim; why does that kid never sleep??) had gone to bed for the night. Nightwing knew how to get into the Batcave without tripping any alarms or leaving behind proof that he had been there, so it was entirely possible for him to sneak in, do a DNA test on possibly-Jason’s blood, wipe it from the Batcomputer, and sneak back out without anyone knowing he was there. All he needed was for his fellow vigilantes to have a moderately reasonable sleep schedule for once. He hesitated at the end of the tunnel, peeking around the corner to see-
Bruce, his back retreating up the staircase to the manor.
As he disappeared, Nightwing let out a huge sigh of relief. Number one possible plan-wrecker gone: on to phase two.
When he had first entered the tunnel, he had wrapped a camera-looping device around a cable of the first camera in the tunnel. This would prevent him from being seen: the camera would just loop images of the Batcave being empty. Now that Bruce had left, the device needed around thirty seconds of no movement to properly loop an image and keep him from being seen in recordings.
Once the thirty seconds were up, Nightwing took a deep breath before slowly stepping out of the tunnel and into the Batcave.
He made his way over to the computer, scanning the cave for any signs of anomalies. Everything seemed clear, and he desperately hoped that there wasn’t any camera or alert system he had missed. Although, it wasn’t the end of the world if he was spotted… he could just claim that he had a case that he wanted to review the file for, or something along those lines. A perfectly acceptable thing for an insomniac vigilante to be doing at four in the morning!
Still though, this felt like something that needed to be kept secret. If the guy passed out at his apartment wasn’t Jason, then this whole thing would be highly embarrassing and would almost definitely raise some concerns for his mental health. If it was Jason, well…
There were too many questions that would need to be answered. How did Jason come back to life? How long had he been in Gotham? Why didn’t he come back to the manor? If he had been in Gotham for a longer length of time, then there was a reason he hadn’t come back to the manor, and Dick wasn’t about to throw his brother into a situation he didn’t want to be in. That meant not alerting anyone else to this situation, and trying to handle it on his own, which was totally possible (Maybe. Hopefully).
Nightwing sighed as he finally made it to the computer. This was… definitely a lot for him to handle, but he’d do it a million times if it meant that his brother was really back from the dead.
Tapping the keyboard to wake up the computer, he input a code to access it while not showing any of his activity.
Babs had taught him how to access both the computer and the general servers (from a different device) without leaving a trace while he and Bruce weren’t speaking. Which- not that they were on incredible terms these days, but things were definitely better than they used to be. Regardless, he really really hoped that Barbara hadn’t patched it out of the system in the time since he’d learned the code.
A ding of acceptance rang from the computer, and Dick silently thanked the universe for the icon that is Barbara Gordon before navigating to start the DNA test. Inserting the vial of blood into the receptacle that opened up, he slowly spun back and forth in the chair, watching the progress bar as it gradually chugged along.
He thought he was nervous about sneaking into the cave, but this was a whole new level of anxiety that he seemed to be unlocking. Regardless of what the DNA results were, he would have a lot to reckon with.
And - he felt genuinely awful even thinking this - some small part of him was absolutely terrified of the possibility that it was Jason he found in that alleyway. He had clearly grown so much; what had happened to him? Would he be anywhere near the same Jason that Dick remembered? Would he hate all of them? (Not that Dick could blame him if that was the case. He’d missed his funeral. That would always feel indescribably unforgivable)
Plus, what on Earth caused that massive gash in his throat? Was he mugged? That didn’t feel very likely - Jason would never let himself get mugged - but maybe he had lost some physical strength or ability due to dying and coming back?
Like he said earlier: too many questions. But he’d push through it, he had to.
A light ding from the Batcomputer, and he took a deep breath before looking up at the results to see-
Jason Todd: 100% Match
Shit. Okay. Well.
Shit.
Dick took a shaky breath, crumpling over himself in the chair until his chest lay flat against his legs. Closing his eyes, he took a few deep breaths in a pattern - in for four, hold for four, out for eight - before sharply exhaling and sitting up straight again.
Jason Todd, his younger brother who he failed, was currently passed out in his apartment, passable stitching in his neck from a mysterious wound that could’ve killed him (again). If Dick was being honest with himself, it wasn’t as surprising as it should’ve been. He’d somehow known, even without the DNA test, that this was the most likely outcome. But still- holy fuck.
Dick closed out of the application, shutting down the Batcomputer. The results would be wiped from the computer’s memory, so Bruce wouldn’t walk down in the morning and be confronted by that. No one would know except for Dick (for now. He’d tell the others eventually, but only when Jason was ready).
He stood up, taking one final deep breath before heading back to his apartment, the confirmation of his brother’s return weighing heavily on his mind.