Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was just another mission, nothing special. Honestly, he wasn’t even sure why it had affected him so deeply. It was the run of the mill drug-smuggling operation, Jason wouldn’t have even called them professionals. The only reason he’d been called on to assist by Batman was because they had a larger-than-normal amount of henchman guarding.

Of course, they didn’t stand a chance.

But that wasn’t what Jason was complaining about, not that he was complaining. Though he wasn’t with them, rather watching the police scour the warehouse clean, listening into the comms as they celebrated another successful drug bust.

Another successful drug bust.

What they were doing, Bruce’s mission, it hadn’t changed anything in a long time. Jason had seen the crime statistics, and they were only slowly increasing. Sure, he could agree, they had stabilised it, ensured there was no rapid increase, but they weren’t changing anything. They weren’t fixing anything. They were just doing the same thing, again and again, and expecting change.

They’d go through the same motions, fighting and fighting a never-ending battle.

It had been a couple of years since his tenure as the crime lord, since then, he’d slowly started to reconnect with the family. He even had an invitation (hand delivered by Bruce) to the annual Thanksgiving dinner. Things were getting better. They were. They had to be.

But they weren’t.

He was stuck in this… stalemate. Trapped in perpetual motion, forever forced to be repeat what he’d just done. His life was vigilantism, but the vicious cycle would never end. He had no civilian identity, no connection to anything outside the other capes he worked with. And with them, it was the same, same arguments and stupid discussions of morals. Stupid hopes for a better world that would never come. How could they not see it?

It was all just a big circle, a never-ending circle.

When he was a crime lord, that was what he had fought for. To stop this, all of this.

To stop the pain and the melancholy.

Back then, he had his rage. His fury. His righteous anger and yearning for a justice that Bruce, and the others, could never provide. That no one could provide. Not even Talia.

He flexed his fist, laying on that roof, wondering. The thick Gotham City smog and urban lights hiding the stars. Even the stars looked away. He wondered if they’d notice, notice him leaning away.

News flash, they didn’t.

None of them questioned when Red Hood became less chatty, when he’d stopped showing up on their patrol routes to annoy them. It was slow, a regression over months that they wouldn’t have noticed unless they cared. No one noticed. For all that Dick talked about family, he didn’t even notice that the brother he’d been so desperately pulling into the fold, was pulling away. He didn’t even question it, turning to Damian with a smile or sending Tim a proud nod or taking the girls out for dinner. Nobody mentioned anything, nobody tried harder past an initial invitation out of politeness to their stupid family outings or get-togethers.

Jason spent a lot of times sitting on the edges of roofs, or in his apartment. He was always felt colder in his apartment, long since sparse of any person effects. He’d been staying there for months, and it looked like it hadn’t changed since he’d first chosen it as a safe house almost half a decade ago. Jason felt muted, empty.

He felt trapped in a never-ending circle of crime, of life. Nothing changed. The cycle didn’t change. Nothing got better. When he had tried to do something about it, when he had been doing good, he was told he was wrong and that if he didn’t change his methods, there would be consequences. That because he didn’t agree with their morals and rules, he was sick in the head. That there was something wrong with him.

It was a gradual realisation, something that took him weeks to truly decide.

He gave them a little more time, hoping that maybe they’d notice, push for him to start showing up more or even ask him if he was doing alright. But they didn’t, and thanksgiving was coming closer by the day.

And he didn’t want to know, he didn’t want to show up to that damn dinner and feel trapped. Didn’t want his head to spin with all the jumps in logics, with the cyclical nature of the work that would send them all to an early grave with a higher scar-tissue percentage than anyone should have.

The bathtub was cool to the touch, everything in the apartment was. It was empty, numb, like him.

He flexed his hand, switching the black pistol from left hand to the other. He didn’t want to make a mess, but he also wasn’t willing to give them a chance to save him. If any of them chose to come around, if any of them even realised he hadn’t been himself.

Maybe they’d never find his body, he’d be trapped forever in his empty apartment to rot.

He took a deep breath, the knowledge of the letter he’d placed on his counter comforting him. The note was simple, he needed no fanfare for his death. His second life didn’t deserve it. It was just a request, asking them to cremate him. He wasn’t taking the chance; he wasn’t willing to come back again.

Because Jason knew, god he knew, if he woke up in a coffin again, he wouldn’t have the strength to tear his nails out and break every finger to crack through his coffin again. He wouldn’t have the strength to suffocate as the dirt trickled him, getting into his throat and lungs, suffocating as he desperately pushed up and up.

His hand was steady as he raised it to his skull, the metal of the pistol warmed by his hands. It was the same gun he had first started his crusade with, all those years ago, and it had never failed him. Jason knew it wouldn’t fail him this time either. He pressed it above his ear, feeling the nozzle digging into the skin absentmindedly. He took another deep breath.

He would be free from the cycle.

Jason would finally find peace.

His finger found the trigger.

The bang echoed.

Chapter Text

No one noticed anything out of the usual until Thanksgiving dinner had passed. Dick and Bruce shared worried looks, wondering where Jason was. He’d promised them all that he’d be there, Alfred had even made some of Jason’s favourite meals from childhood.

But he didn’t show up.

They waited a couple of days, it’s not like they wanted to crowd him. Maybe he had, had a bad night. Or day. Or week. With all that was happening, including the alien invasion and the recent Gotham outbreak, everything had been out of whack and all usual routine had been completely messed up. Half the time, even with Oracle trying to coordinate, they didn’t know where someone was until they had returned to the manor after patrol was done.

And yet, there was no word of the Red Hood.

Maybe he was with his teams? Kori and Roy had just returned from another space mission, while Bizarro and Artemis were at the Kent’s farm. Surely, someone knew where he was. And if not them, then he’d be at one of the billion’s of safehouses that he owned.

Surely.

They felt worry creep into their hearts, a week after Thanksgiving, when they realised none of his friends had heard from him (they’d all been so busy, busy, busy).

Maybe that’s why he wasn’t there? He was angry that they hadn’t contacted him?

But no, that wasn’t like Jason.

A week and a half with no word was when they stared to raid his various safehouses, hopping this was all just some understanding. It hadn’t even crossed their minds— No, it hadn’t even been a possibility. House, after warehouse, after dingy apartment and nothing. No sign of any recent activity, actually no activity in a long time.

Dick chuckled as they searched another one of his warehouses, this one in upper Gotham. It looked like less of a drug house and rat’s nesting ground then his other ones. On one of the shelves, alongside several tattered copies of classical books, was a picture of Dick and Jason together when they were younger. It was stupid picture, made at this mobile carnival (the lines weren’t very long, Gothamites had a bit of a phobia after the Joker and all the other random targeted attacks on large public events), with both of them smiling from ear to ear.

It had been a good day.

One of the few good days Dick could actually remember having with his younger brother, a result of teenage angst and his anger with Bruce. He knew he hadn’t been fair, and he’d been trying to make it up.

Truly!

He had.

He’d just been… busy recently, with everything going on. He couldn’t exactly be blamed for it all, he’d done his best to reconcile with Jason. At times, Dick felt like everyone blamed him for all that had happened. And yes, he understood he was at fault for a lot of it, but he had been a kid too when Bruce had taken Robin away from him without asking. It’s why sometimes, late at night, Dick could sympathise with Jason’s anger towards Tim (they’d both had, had Robin taken from them. And at least he hadn’t tried to kill Jason, like Jason tried with Tim). But then he’d messed it up again, doing the very thing that had destroyed him as a child to Tim, becoming Bruce 2.0, by taking Robin away and giving it to Damian.

God, he hated how dysfunctional he was. How dysfunctional they all were.

They needed therapy.

All of them.

Urgently.

His comms crackled to life; Stephanie’s voice frantic, horror-struck. “O-oh my… He, he… Dick!” She was in a safehouse four city blocks over, back in a bad area of Gotham where one of the gangs had gained a strong foothold a couple of years ago. They’d split up to cover more ground.

“Names!” Dick rebuked, but it was weak at the sound of her hysteria. “Spoiler, what’s wrong? What’s going on?”

“He… Just come here!” She sounded close to tears, not even speaking to anyone anymore “I’m at the safehouse!” She desolved into incoherent words.

Nightwing practically threw himself out the window, grappling quickly. He could hear the others at the comms, calling out to Stephanie worriedly as they sent off their ETA’s. Even Batman had been out tonight. He’d never heard, not even heard of, Spoiler displaying such blatant grief.

He couldn’t think of what could have brought her to this, and she was providing no extra details.

Could… could Jason have killed someone again?

But no, that couldn’t be it. Stephanie was desensitised to death, all of them were. It came with the job description.

He arrived at the decrepit apartment building, scaling up the wall with the speed and flexibility of a well-trained vigilante. It was all instinct, years of muscle-memory and training worked in his favour as he reached the sixth floor with lightning speed. The window was already open, traps taken apart, when Stephanie had first entered.

With the window open and the wind that night, the smell had been aired out slightly.

The smell.

It hit Dick as soon as he passed the blood-stained couch, hit him so hard he almost stumbled. His body making a connection his mind had not yet created.

How could he have missed it?

Spoiler stood in the doorway to what he assumed was the bathroom, trembling. He approached quickly, ready to take control and calm down. He’d had years more experience then her, and maybe, maybe this was something he’d seen before.

The smell was awful.

He recognised it instantly, sadly familiar. Familiar in the way it was familiar to cops, to first responders. Familiar because the horrible putrid smell of rotting flesh and feces was a day-to-day part of their lifestyle. He’d found so many dead decaying bodies, both young children and aging seniors. Both innocent and guilty. And the amount of times he’d gone gravedigging, not only because of what happened to Jason, wasn’t even funny anymore. Nor were the death-themed villains or necromancers. The smell followed him in his dreams, in his life, in his work.

Dick hated it; they all did. But it was familiar all the same.

“Spoiler?” Dick asked, softly. “Are you alright?”

He glanced around the apartment, categorising and noting things for a later report. It was impersonal, just like all of Jason’s other safehouses. But this one seemed more lived in, more recent despite the unbearable cold stillness that seemed to permeate from the apartment itself. On the table, there was a folded piece of paper. Probably a letter, or even junk mail (Dick chuckled on the inside, wondering if Jason had finally found a civilian friend in the form of a pen pal).

“Dick, look.” She whispered, and finally turned around.

Nightwing stilled when he realised that she had pulled off her mask and was scrubbing at her face, tears creating little rivers down her cheeks. She was leaning against the door frame, as if her body wouldn’t hold its weight. “Stephanie, what’s wrong?”

She couldn’t answer, bowing her head. A curtain of blonde hair hiding her devastated expression from him.

Dick slowly crept forward, inching towards the bathroom which seemed to hold the answers and from which the smell seemed to originate from.

He couldn’t understand, why couldn’t he understand?

Tim and Bruce would probably get it, they were the detectives of the family after all.

He entered the bathroom, his eyes instantly jumping to the massacre in the bathtub. A dead body with the usual dark blue, blue and green spots of rotting flesh. Dried blood on the bathtub tiles, the head at an awkward angle and a single rotting bullet hole with a few maggots crawling in and out of it above the ear.

Then he noticed the corpses face, his mind finally registering the sight before him.

His legs collapsed below him, knees cracking loudly against the hard tile.

Jason.

No—

Jason!

Stephanie had started sobbing, loud and awful sounds as she watched the man she considered an older brother collapse at the death of their mutual brother.

Jason’s eyes were glazed over white, cataracts and sunken eye sockets.

In that moment, Dick hated his mind as it noted the state of decay, the bloated body and the almost hairy white fungus, telling him that Jason couldn’t have been dead for more then two weeks, but no less then one.

The gun was in the corpse’s hands, loosely held.

Dick recognised it instantly, the nicks in the metal and the carved etches Jason would make on patrol when he was bored. That gun was almost entirely covered in those god-awful and familiar scratches.

Jason.

Why?

Chapter Text

Dick can’t remember much of what happened the rest of that day. Not really, at least. He could remember small moments, little blimps of something he wanted to forget and reverse forever.

Batman couldn’t have been far behind Nightwing, because Bruce probably arrived a couple minutes after Dick had found the body. He pulled Dick away from it, his own hands shaking as he struggled to compartmentalise that his son was dead.

Dead, again.

He thinks maybe Tim arrived next with Cassandra, both still in uniform. Cassandra held Dick as he tried to muffle his sobs, because god, how could they have not noticed? How could they have not realised that Jason was dead? Maybe if they had checked sooner, they would’ve been able to save him… Tim, on the other hand, pulled Stephanie away from the bathroom, where she had still been braced against the doorway into the bathroom, staring as Batman collected evidence.

Collecting evidence.

Evidence.

In the days after, Dick had viciously hated his father. Evidence? Your damn son is dead in the bathtub and you’re collecting evidence?

But even that state of anger didn’t last long, nothing really did.

He’d have fleeting moments of emotion, anger or… well, usually anger, but one thought of Jason’s corpse swept it all away like a tidal wave. Like a small, struggling, sandcastle being destroyed by the ocean.

He’d never been with Jason on the ocean, he should’ve taken Jason to the ocean.

It wasn’t till days later, that Dick had even realised that they weren’t investigating Jason’s death like a murder, but rather like a suicide. Dick remembers shouting at them, horrible awful words, and maybe some logical sentences about Jason’s enemies. But Damian had taken him by the hand, had shown tack for once in his life, and had pulled Dick into a hug. Damian had initiated, not Dick. It had been enough to shock Dick out of his anger, as Damian had looked up at him with a glint of sadness in his green eyes and told him that all evidence pointed to a suicide.

Apparently, the junk mail he’d thought he’d seen on the kitchen countertop was a suicide letter.

Jason had asked for them to cremate him.

Cremate him!

Some fleeting part of Dick had wanted to bury Jason again, just to hope for a second miracle. For Jason to come back to life again. He knew it wasn’t fair, and that’s why he never voiced it. But it had hurt so much, hurt so much that his first little brother was suffering and none of them even noticed (probably even caused it because they’re all awful like that).

When his Titans teammates found out, they had all sent their sympathies. None of them had ever particularly ever liked Jason, no one ever really did and that didn’t make Dick feel better either because he’d never done anything about it, but they saw how badly Dick had taken it.

The sympathies were for Dick, he had realised one morning. Not for Jason. And Dick had hated them all something awful.

Dick didn’t deserve sympathy.

They shouldn’t have sent anything if they didn’t care for Jason.

In the end, no matter how many leads they tried to follow about enemies, nothing ever panned out. It was a sad truth. Jason had killed himself. Himself. He hadn’t even let anyone else do it for him, probably too scared they’d mess it up and he’d be left in pain. It was a reasonable fear, Dick decided, with their line of work. Sometimes, Dick got really tired of getting hurt too. Sometimes he woke up from nightmares scared to go out again.

But they were just nightmares, but Dick should’ve realised it would be different for Jason. Different for the boy who had suffered so much more then anyone would ever understand. Sure, nowadays, heroes came back to life all the time. But they were always the less permanent types of death. Bruce was lost in time, Damian dumped into the pit almost immediately, Stephanie only pretended to be death, Wally was just trapped in the Speed Force and Conner had to fight a villain in the multiverse.

All temporary, all very not permanent. All almost not real, not like Jason’s.

Jason who was dead for over six months before he woke up unnaturally, crawled out of his own grave. Before he was thrown in the Lazarus Pit to heal his broken mind, had anyone even asked why he was comatose? From what he had heard from Bruce, Jason, despite all his injuries, had been very much conscious and perceptive before he died surrounded by the rubble of the Ethiopian warehouse.

Had anyone ever asked Jason if he remembered anything from death?

God, had they ever even told Jason they were glad he was alive?

Dick hadn’t, and from the guilt and self-hatred that seemed to emanate from Bruce, neither had he.

But there wasn’t much they could do. Jason was dead, even if he was his own murderer. They had a private funeral, burying a new empty casket in the Gotham Cemetery with the rest of the Wayne’s. This time, it said Jason Wayne on the tombstone. They kept it small, with only family and the two separate Outlaw teams that Jason had collected.

Dick had wondered if anyone would be offended that they weren’t invited (rude), but unsurprisingly realised he didn’t care.

All four Outlaws were heartbroken, both Roy and Kori had cried. Roy had looked like he was about to collapse when Lian stepped up to say a few words about her Uncle Jay and how much she loved him and how she hoped he was happy now. Bizarro had flown away as soon as the ceremony was over, the superman clone absolutely heartbroken that he’d lost the first parental figure he’d ever had (Clark only found Biz a couple days later, huddled on Jason’s bed in one of their old safehouses that hadn’t blown up in Egypt) and Dick could have sworn he’d even seen a tear escape Artemis’s eye, not that he’d ever mention it or call it out.

His own family was lost. Alfred had collapsed when he’d found out, heartbroken. They’d had to take him to the hospital just in case, no one was willing to risk anything anymore. Damian was far more muted, while Tim was sharper and snappier. Cass, on the other hand, spoke even more. As if compensating for the loss of their chatty brother, taking over his territory with Steph (who was happy to be focused more on where she grew up) and just doing more. She was like Bruce in that respect, overworking herself. But no to the bone, not like the man who mourned his son for the second time. Who mourned a son he never got to know well enough and who died because of Bruce’s mistakes, or so his guilt led him to believe. Again.

Jason had died again, and Bruce had only repeated his mistakes in a new fashion.

But this time they banded together for Jason, because he had asked. They’d force themselves into movie nights and made family dinners mandatory. It was for Jason, that Tim and Damian stopped fighting beyond what was acceptable for brothers. It was for Jason, that they all started talking about mental health and some of them even started seeing psychologists and therapists for their trauma. They decreased how actively they were participating in matters outside of Gotham, eventually recognising that they had stretched themselves to thin.

Days were still hard, they were. They recognised that it was their fault, to some extent, that Jason was dead. Even if he had been nice in the suicide letter. That they had not been attentive enough, hadn’t noticed that Jason stopped showing up to patrol and get-togethers as much.

They should’ve done more.

But they had let themselves move on.

And yes, most people would call them awful hideous monsters. They’d treated Jason awful, had ruined his mental and physical health. Had rarely even considered his perspective, had only truly cared when he was dead, but Jason was dead.

Jason was dead and they had to move on.

His death, their mistakes, they were a motivation to be better. To finally learn from their mistakes, it was a slow process, but they needed to do it. For themselves, for their friends, for Jason.

With every end, there was always a new beginning.

Jason’s suicide letter had been simple, but so utterly Jason it had hurt at first to look at it every time he read over it.  But it got better eventually, time healed.

Dear whoever finds me, if you ever do,

I’m sorry.

I don’t think this is anyone’s fault, not really. No matter what the Lazarus Pit tries to make me believe. I have been tired of life since I was child, since I lost my mother to the very drugs that I would give her so the pain would stop. I am tired of the fighting, of the violence, of the never-ending circle of crime and pain. I was never meant to come back a second time, I am just correcting that error.

I’m sorry, I love you all.

I hate you all too, except Alfred (you’re an incredible man, thank you for everything you’ve ever done for me). But hate has never brought me anything good, so, let’s instead just say I whole heartedly loved you all instead.

Move on, I don’t think I need to remind yourselves of this. Pay attention to each other, care for each other, love each other. Talk about mental health, I think that’s important too.

Please cremate me, I don’t want to come back again. Just in case, you know?

I love you all.

Don’t go get all self-guilty and vengeful or whatever.

Your maybe brother,

Jason