Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dear Jason,

This is really weird, writing to myself in the future, but I’m in your future, so it’s like you’ll read this in a few minutes after I write it. Weird.

Right now, Bruce is working with Tim to get this time wormhole thing working again. Dick told me to write a letter, so here it is.

I’m just going to start with the elephant in the room. I’m going to die when I get back.

2017

“He has a nice jacket.” Jason hears a young voice when all his senses finally come back in full force. “Maybe we’d have to wash it a few dozen times, but it’s stylish.” There’s a short pause before the voice continues, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say it, B.”

B. B? Jason pries his eyes open, noticing first that his helmet is still on.

“Back up,” another voice rasps in an odd tone of familiarity. Jason knows that one. From where, he can’t figure out just yet. His head is flashing white light, too foggy and too jarring to think through. “We don’t know if he’s hostile.”

“He’s just a guy who passed out on the roof. I saw it happen, and he hasn’t moved since.”

“Because people pass out on roofs all the time?”

That voice. Jason blinks once, long and hard, and narrows his eyes on the looming figure of black in front of him. A tightly pulled cowl, pointy ears, a mouth set into a grim, thin line. And behind him, watching cautiously, a blue suit with a ridiculous collar, yellow tassels, a horrendous v-dip down the chest, but most noticeably, the blue bird stretching from shoulder to shoulder…

“You’ve got to be kidding.” Jason groans, rolling over onto his stomach and pushing himself onto his hands and knees. “No way. There’s…oh, my God, there’s no way.” He blinks a couple times, shaking his head to clear the fog. He tries to remember, but everything still feels too stuffy. Muted.

“Welcome to the land of the living, champ,” Nightwing chirps, crouching down to meet Jason at eye-level. “Are you hostile?”

Jason’s head spins. “Depends,” he gets out. “Will you tell me what year it is?”

“Okay, buddy,” Nightwing says as Jason sits gracelessly on the gravel, “how many drinks have you had tonight? How many fingers am I holding up right now?” Dick waves around three fingers in front of Jason’s eyes.

“I’m being serious, asshat,” Jason hisses, swatting his hands away from his face. “You have to tell me what year it is.”

Nightwing crosses his arms a little petulantly. “It’s 2017. Happy?”   

Jason freezes, breath catching in his throat. 2017. Five years ago. He was…he was fifteen. “Shit,” he murmurs. He’s going to eviscerate Tim.

“Okay, not happy,” Dick comments while Jason puts his head in his arms.

“What…” Jason begins, wondering if this is going to drastically change the future, “what day is it?”

“Thursday.”

“The date, you piece of shit.”

Nightwing scoffs, the grumble sounding like you do one good thing for a drunk guy. “It’s April 20^th, 2017. Got what you need?”

April 20^th. Jason dies April 27^th. Of all the timelines he could have been sent back to, Tim just had to mess with the settings. That kid is going to eat his fist—

“Who are you?” Rock on asphalt. A growl, humorless, familiar, but…a little less severe. It’s like a mediocre imitation of the Batman voice – the one that Dick uses when he put on the cowl. God, was Bruce really that young? “If you reach for a weapon, I’ll have you disarmed before you can pull it.”

Is he even allowed to tell Bruce? His son from the future – the one that already died and came back – is launched backwards one week before he’s supposed to die? That’s got to be some sort of catalyst, right? Or will doing it turn him into infinity dust or something?

“I asked you a question,” Batman grounds out, flashing two batarangs from his fingers.

Good to know he’s the ‘throw batarang first, realize it’s your son second’ type in every timeline, Jason thinks for a bitter moment. He lifts his hands. Oh, well. Whatever happens to him while he’s in 2017 is now Tim’s fault. “Don’t go crazy on me, old man,” Jason says. “I’m just going to ditch the helmet, all right?” He doesn’t wait for a confirmation before he reaches behind him and unclasps the latches.

Dick gasps, staggering back a step. Bruce’s frown deepens impossibly more. Jason grins devilishly and waves a little. “Surprise,” he says dryly. “Dig the new look?”

Dick shakes his head as if to clear his head. “Little Wing? That…is that you?”

“Older and better, Dickface.” Jason winks.

“That’s not possible,” Batman mutters, keeping his striking gaze on Jason. “Robin is at the Cave…”

He’s benched, Jason figures. No, Jason knows. He was benched. April 20^th, Dick had told him. The whole Garzonas debacle happened days ago. It’s more or less the big domino that starts the spiral into Ethiopia, warehouses, laughter and bombs.

Yeah, Jason fucking remembers that.

“Robin,” he snarls, “is me. We are the same. I’m just five years older.” He exhales slowly, running a hand through his hair. “Look, I’m not sure how else to prove to you that I’m from the future. You’re Bruce Wayne.” He points to Dick. “And you’re Dick Grayson.”

Batman shakes his head again while Nightwing stares with his mouth hung open. “Impossible,” Bruce growls. “How could you know—”

“Your parents died in Crime Alley when you were nine,” Jason cuts him off. “At 10:48pm. You set the grandfather clock in the manor to that time. It’s an entrance to the Batcave. You become the Batman for them.”

Bruce gasps a little, shifting his weight onto his other leg. Battle stance. He’s preparing to pounce. “How do you—”

Jason barrels on. “You get Dick after his parents are murdered at the Circus. Haly’s. You get me after I steal the tires from the Batmobile. That was almost three years ago.”

Nightwing sets his hands on his hips. “Huh,” he begins contemplatively, “as far as strangers knowing our backgrounds go, that’s pretty accurate.”

“Of course, it is,” Jason snaps. “Because I’m from the future. There was a little accident and I got sent back five years. I need to get back to my time.”

“Accident,” Bruce repeats hollowly. He sounds like he doesn’t believe him. Which is utterly ridiculous because how else is Jason supposed to prove his story without jeopardizing the whole space-time continuum?

“Yeah. Can we talk about this back at the Cave?”

“And you want me to just trust you?”

“You do.” Did. He did trust him when he was Robin. The Red Hood is still on some blurry lines. “You believe Robin. I’m asking that you believe in him five years later.”

“I believe him, B,” Dick says, tilting his head. “Time travel is not impossible, and he knows things about us.” He looks Jason up and down. “I’m just having a hard time understanding if the growth spurt was a size of a comet when it hit you.”

Jason barks out a laugh before he can hold it back in. “Yeah, the growth spurt was the size of a planet.” And it fucking decked him, alright.

Bruce sighs again. “Fine. Fine, we’ll go back to the Cave. But if I find that you’re lying and you’ve endangered Dick or this city, I will not hesitate to keep you down for as long as necessary. Strangers or not.”

Jason smirks a little. “Hey, does Alfred still have hair?” 

Bruce gives him a funny look but eventually turns away, letting Dick lead Jason to the Batmobile parked below the bank (“this implies Alfie goes bald,” Dick whispers with a sharp grin).

“The first thing I want to know,” Bruce says once they’re all sitting in the Batmobile, speeding down familiar streets headed to the manor, “is about that bat on your chest.”

Jason closes his eyes and wonders where to begin.

*

Jason Todd, even after five years, is antsy.

Bruce realizes he never grows out of his need to be pacing or chewing on his fingers or lips when he’s lost in thought. A small comfort that, despite the alarming red helmet reminding him too much of his oldest failure, Jason is still Jason in the future, no matter the changes.

“So, our Jason is in 2022 right now,” Dick says, trying to reason out Jason’s, quite frankly, outlandish story. “And the technology that is able to create a time wormhole does not exist in 2017.”

Jason stops pacing, glances upwards to the empty space on the second floor, and turns back to them. “Technically, the aliens haven’t arrived yet. It’s their tech that’s able to shoot wormholes and bend space and time.”

Dick blinks twice. “Right. Aliens.”

“Don’t look so surprised, Dickwad, you fucking date one.”

Dick’s mouth swings wide open and Bruce hides his cringe. The other thing Jason Todd, five years later, hasn’t grown out of is his bluntness and choice of rash words. Jason is still Jason. Bruce can find comfort in that.

“Who…Kori?” Dick shrieks and Jason rolls his eyes, sighing in annoyance. “No way, she gives me a chance?” Dick laughs brightly. “Hell yes!”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re the luckiest guy alive, whatever.” Jason waves a dismissive hand. “Without that sort of technology on earth right now, our options of zooming through time without damning the entire universe are incredibly slim.”

“You’re saying that we can’t use magic,” Bruce says, rubbing at his chin. “We’d risk the possibility of having two versions of you in the same place.”

“Sharp as a whip, old man,” Jason nearly sneers, and Bruce is a little taken back. His Jason had his moments of anger, yes, but his temper wasn’t so short. “Pretty sure the whole universe would blow up if two of us existed at the same time.”

“So, what’s your plan then?”

Jason shrugs a little, deflating where he stands. “I don’t know. The only person who could figure it out is, like, twelve right now.”

“Well,” Dick begins, scratching his head, “I guess I could ask around the Titans. See if any one of them could give us some pointers. Bruce, you got any contacts?”

Bruce grunts. He could call in the Justice League. He doesn’t want to, but it is an option. “I’ll start with Lucius,” he says. “Maybe there’s Wayne Tech we can modify to reverse-engineer the device that sent you here.”

“It’s alien tech,” Jason presses.

“Alien tech that works within Earth’s laws,” Bruce points out. “We can try it. If not, we’ll have to look for another avenue.”

“We don’t have time,” Jason says, once again, flicking his eyes up to the empty space above them. What he sees there is beyond Bruce. As far as he can tell, there’s nothing.

He narrows his eyes. “Why don’t we have time?”

Jason stares at Bruce a moment longer, and it feels like all the air in the Cave had been sucked out. Whatever it is…Bruce thinks it’s bad. He can tell by the way his son’s face twists into something sad, something like resignation. Something dark, deep, and devastating. “Jason, why don’t we have time?” Bruce repeats, wanting to reach out, wanting to find a way to remove that ache on Jason’s face.

“Something…” Jason takes in a shaky breath and closes his eyes for a moment. “Something happens in about a week. Something big.” When he opens his eyes again, he’s staring at that same empty space, watery and angry, a little greener than before. “We can’t…there’s nothing we can do to stop it. We can’t.”

“Jason…” Bruce steps forward. It’s all he gets. Jason takes an instinctive step back. Away from him. Away from Bruce. He stops, forcing his feet to be grounded where he stands.

“Fifteen-year-old Jason needs to come back before then,” Jason goes on, voice subdued and quiet, shoulders carrying a story that Bruce can’t comprehend. “He needs to be back and—yeah, he just needs to be back.”

Something terrible happens. Bruce can read people like an expert, and he can read his own children like he is their biological parent, if not better. He sees it all in the tenseness of Jason’s body, in the trembling hands closed into fists, the eyes that dart to several places at once. Oh, Jay, what happens to us? “Okay,” Bruce finally says. “Okay, we will work with a deadline in mind. Why don’t you and Dick rest up a little. Alfred is upstairs. I’ll sort through tonight’s patrol and see what we can find through Wayne Tech.”

Dick, as always, picks up on the change in atmosphere and smiles dazzlingly. “Great! I’ll talk to the Titans tomorrow, and we’ll have you all set in no time, Little Wing.” Dick grabs Jason by his shoulders and playfully pushes him up the stairs into the manor. “Come on, Alfred has leftover dessert. It’s cheesecake. Do you still like cheesecake?”

Jason goes along, but again, not without sparing one last glance at the second floor.

There’s lots Jason isn’t telling him. Bruce knows. He knows that he’s doing it in order to keep as much stability to the timeline as possible, so he can’t really demand any more.

When asked about his choice in uniform, Jason had waved a hand and said something like, “I wasn’t going to be Robin forever. I moved on.” He hadn’t said why, and he hadn’t said what happens to Robin after that.

And he’s so big now. His Jason was small, a little frail looking, thanks to years of malnourishment. A few years of good, hearty food brought Jason to a healthier level, but his early childhood days impacted his genes and his ability to form his growing body into anything that wasn’t lean at best. But this Jason was almost at Bruce’s own height and had muscles comparable to his own. Bruce doesn’t think that sort of change happens over five years, no matter how hard a growth-spurt hits. He’s seen Willis and Catherine Todd. Neither of them could have been the reason behind his size, (but then, there was this question of a particular Sheila Haywood, who Bruce knows much too little about).

And then, there were his eyes. When Bruce first found Jason, the boy had almost cobalt-colored eyes. Blue with tints of grey that used to remind him of the hubcaps Jason pried off that night. There’s an almost unnatural green now, flecking around his irises. Unnatural. Toxic. Other-worldly. Bruce can come up with a million different ways to describe it, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s different, and it’s almost wrong for it to be in Jason’s eyes.

He turns to the computer and starts loading in the data they gathered from the night’s patrol. He got lucky with Dick being in town for a little before he has plans on going off-world for a mission with the Titans. Robin – his Jason – was benched after the disaster of the Garzonas case, and Robin might be angry at him for that decision, but Bruce is so conflicted.

Jason pushed him, Jason stood by and watched him fall intentionally, Jason tried to help because it was what Bruce taught him to do.

He wants to believe that Jason did the right thing. He wants to, so desperately, believe that, despite what a shitty person Garzonas was, Jason picked justice over vengeance and did what he could. He wants to feel horribly guilty for even thinking that his precious Jason could have done something like that in the first place.

And maybe he was on a path of feeling that guilt, that regret of doubting his son. Maybe he was going to talk to his Jason about it, tell him that he believes him, that he’s proud of Jason and all his choices.

But Bruce is a detective.

He saw those holsters on Jason. Empty holsters, but they held guns.

Bruce saw them. He wondered what his son did with a weapon Bruce never allowed. He wondered if Jason went down that path because Bruce never got to do all those things. Maybe Bruce never feels guilty about accusing his son of murder. Or maybe he doesn’t even talk to Jason about what happened on that balcony. And maybe, he thinks with his soul feeling crushed and emptied like glass shards being thrown away, maybe it’s Bruce who pushes Jason away. 

Bruce shakes his head, focusing back on the screen. No. It’s his responsibility to be there for Jason no matter what. He can’t be the one to push Jason away. Ever.

He loads up the footage from the night’s patrol, sifting through the couple of robberies he stopped, watching Nightwing step in to cover his back when he was spying on someone from the mayoral office who had the most unfortune of placing himself on Batman’s radar, and Bruce watches all the way up to the point where he sees Nightwing crouched down beside a tall man with a red helmet sprawled out on a roof.

“Welcome to the land of the living, champ,” Dick’s voice comes through. “Are you hostile?”

Jason rubs at his shoulder, staring back and forth between Dick and himself. “Depends. Will you tell me what year it is?”

It’s Jason’s voice. A little deeper and fuller, but the Narrows accent that had always landed at the ends of his words, the lilt and rasp behind his throat from managing to sneak a cigarette or two behind Bruce’s back… it’s his voice. His son’s voice. His son that grows up to be the man that he is now. Green flecked eyes, a stripe of white in his black curls, but the same half-smile, the same nervous tics…Jason is older, but Bruce does not have a single doubt in his heart or mind that this is – will be – his son.

He watched Dick mold into the person he is meant to be. Arguments, bitter endings, and empty rooms aside, Bruce knows he won’t stop Dick from searching for his place in the world. He wonders if he lets Jason do the same thing. Wonders if Jason finds his place without the verbal battles like himself and Dick spar with, less frequently these days, but with unrestrained anger a year or two back.

He hopes Jason finds his way without the fighting. He hopes he will be there for Jason to find his way.

Bruce sighs.

Glances up at the empty space on the second floor that Jason had been watching. He remembers what Jason told him before going upstairs.

Something terrible is going to happen. And all those hopes and wonderings would not matter.

*

Jason would rather die again than ever admit it, but the place is boring without Damian and Titus taking up space. He swirls the last of his hot chocolate in his mug, hunched over the kitchen bar counter while Alfred busies himself with the dishwasher.

The kid usually sits to the empty stool to his right. Titus usually sits beside him on the floor with his giant head on Damian’s lap. Tim liked the corner stool because it was the closest seat to the outlets. Dick’s sitting on the other side of Jason, grilling him on things about the future.

“So, Kori and I…” Dick says, nudging his shoulder with Jason’s. “Do I ask her, or does she ask me?”

Jason scowls at him. “What do you think, Goldie?”

“Can you tell me when it happens?”

After I die. “No,” Jason says into his cup. The hot chocolate has gotten cold.

“Are we still together in your time?”

“No.”

“Are you just saying that?”

“Dick.” Jason turns to him, setting his mug down heavily. “I need you to shut it. If the timeline gets even more fucked because you know when and how you and Kori have your first kiss, I will break your kneecaps.”

“We kiss,” Dick says dreamily and Jason groans.

Alfred turns his head around sharply. Jason was first struck by how dark his hair was back then. Five years did a number on the old man. It’s not all his fault. Alfred is probably more stressed out than all of them. He’s just better at dealing with it. “Master Jason, you know the rule,” he snips, and wow, he has always been able to make him feel bad for breaking one of his rules. “No profanities in the house. Especially not in my kitchen.”

Jason winces, despite himself. “Sorry, Alfie,” he murmurs.

“I should make you add to the swear jar,” Alfred chastises, snatching the empty mug out of his hands.

Jason sits up. “The swear jar,” he repeats, a laugh bubbling right out of him. Dick and Alfred cast him a glance. “We don’t…” Jason tries to formulate a sentence, but the whole thing is just so damn funny. The stupid swear jar. He probably racked up somewhere around two-hundred dollars in that thing by the end of it. “There is no swear jar in the future, Alf,” Jason laughs. With the mouth that Damian runs? They needed an insult jar.

Alfred crinkles his nose. “Well, I should hope it is because you have dropped the rather nasty habit.” He dries his hands on a kitchen towel. “Or must I fear the possibility that it becomes a regular utterance in this house?”

Jason doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he doesn’t stay at the house anymore.

He doesn’t have the heart to tell Alfred to not make extra grilled cheese sandwiches next week. (he saw the ingredients written out in his pretty handwriting on a notepad on the fridge. A grocery list. Jason remembers asking for those sandwiches before he ran away.)

He didn’t have the heart to tell Dick that he and Kori find each other because Dick didn’t know where to turn to in his grief.

And back in the Cave, Jason expected himself to blow up in anger at Bruce. To yell at him for benching Robin in the first place, for not believing him when he said he never killed Garzonas, for things Bruce has never done in this timeline yet. Jason looked at the spot where his memorial would be in a few weeks. How it would stand above them all, silent and haunting, a deadly reminder and an even more painful promise of all that is still to come.

He didn’t have the heart to tell Bruce to save him this time.

Alfred shakes a little glass jar in front of him. Jason blinks. “You’re making me put money in it?” he asks, incredulous.

“It is my kitchen after all. And you are still young Master Jason, for all I care.” He rattles the jar again, and Jason rummages around for a dollar.

“I can’t believe he never did this with you,” Jason grumbles, dropping whatever spare change he had in his pockets.

Dick puts a hand over his heart. “I am an angel,” he declares. “Alfred could never be upset at me. Right, Alfred?”

“Master Dick, you do not want me to answer that,” the butler says, as proper as ever. “Now, I must insist you both take a shower before retiring for the remainder of the night.” Alfred eyes Jason for a moment. “I don’t believe any of your current clothes will fit you?”

Jason shakes his head, smiling a little sadly. “No, I don’t think I’ll fit.”

Alfred considers for a moment, but turns away, head held high. “I will fetch you some of Master Bruce’s clothing, then. You’ll find it in your room after your showers. Run along, now.”

 Dick bids him goodnight and promises to get in touch with the Titans as soon as he can. Without meaning to, Jason finds himself standing at his door. His bedroom from before. For a moment, he’s tempted to turn around and use one of the guest rooms on the far side of the manor. Or even better, find one of his safehouses to spend the night at. Far away from his old room. But…then he’d have to answer those questions. He’d have to explain why sleeping in a dead kid’s room makes his stomach roil with disgust and pain.

Plus, his safehouses don’t exist. Red Hood hasn’t made his debut just yet.

With a tired sigh, he shoves the door open. Treat it like ripping off a band aid. Just do it. Get it over with.

His old room. A bed that’s always been too big for him that might just be perfect now. Posters for…stuff. Stuff that fifteen-year-old Jason absolutely adored. A new video game poster, a couple about constellations, he even has an old copy of the Flying Grayson’s hanging over his bed. His desk has homework from his algebra class. Jason scoffs quietly to himself as he scans over it. It’s completed. All of it, he’s already done it.

Books, textbooks and novels, line a bookshelf beside the desk. Jason trails a finger across the spines. The bookshelf is still there, he remembers. None of the books had been moved in years and there’s a layer of dust so thick that Alfred would be intimidated. But these…Jason thinks he regularly slid out every single book at least four times a week.

Back when he had time to lose himself to the stories. Back when Bruce let him nap in the library. Back when he did his homework so he could patrol all night with Batman.

Jason flops back onto his bed and presses his hands into his eyes. Why did he have to come back here? Time travelexists and even then, the universe couldn’t have sent him to the fucking prehistoric ages.

Riding a damn velociraptor would have made for a killer bar story.

He is, instead, stuck with the ‘I slept in a dead kid’s room for a week, but get this: that dead kid was me’ story.

Jason presses a pillow into his face and lets the universe know exactly what he thinks of that. Alfred’s swear jar just got ten dollars richer.

He scoffs, staring up at the ceiling. Glow in the dark stars, he recognizes. Bruce put them up for him once. All because Jason told him that tracing stars helped him sleep, and the Narrows, being far from the strobing lights of downtown Gotham, offered up a dripping sky to spin stories from. Wayne Manor was just barely far enough – he and Bruce have spent nights out on the lawn silently watching the stars that watched them back in even more silence.

Still. Still, Bruce dragged a ladder in here one day while Jason was at school, and one by one, pasted up at least a hundred glowing stars all above Jason’s head.

The same ones that Jason stares at right now.

The ones for a child who didn’t have blood on his hands or green in his eyes.

The fifteen-year-old boy he loves.  

Yeah. Fuck this. Jason shoots up off the bed, snatching up a towel slung over the back of his desk chair and stomps into his bathroom.

It’s irrational to be mad at Bruce in this timeline. He hasn’t done anything to warrant Jason’s anger yet, but it’s the anticipation, the knowledge, of his future actions that makes Jason feel like this Bruce and his Bruce are the same.

But that’s not entirely true either. Because this Bruce was like a father to him. Because this Bruce hung up his own stars in his sky and drove him to school some mornings with a bagel shoved into both of their mouths, and maybe it’s the power of useless hindsight, but this Bruce actually gave a damn.

Jason stands in the shower for a while, steam rising around him, fogging up the mirror and the glass door of the shower.

His Bruce gives a damn, too. He’s stubborn to admit it, but…Bruce does. Jason doesn’t get glow in the dark stars anymore, but he gets a, “Jason, please come home.”

It’s not the same. He knows it’s not the same. He’s always known it.

When Jason crawls out of the hour-long shower, dressed in some of Bruce’s old clothes, curled in his old bed, the stars watch him quietly over his head.

Jason stares right back.

*

Just a few hours before

“Jason, don’t touch that.”

Jason looks Tim in the eye and pokes the glowing cube. Tim sighs heavily, rubbing at his temples. “Come on, Timmy, it can’t be very powerful if none of the aliens are demanding it back,” Jason argues.

“We have no idea what sort of power it contains.” Tim swipes on his tablet and the cube appears on one of the giant screens of the Batcomputer. Jason gives a bare glance at the scrawl of notes Tim must have taken around the margins of the screen. Fucking nerd. “All my sensors are reading unknown elements. I would have to reprogram them to scan for Martian elements, and maybe we’ll get a trace of something similar—”

Jason’s yawn cuts him off. “I think we’ll learn way better and way faster if I just started playing around with it.”

“For once, I agree with Todd,” Damian pitches in and Jason eagerly gestures to the kid with his helmet.

“See? He gets it.”

“Father will be displeased that we are investigating without him, but I am curious about this device as well.”

“Right on, little dude,” Jason grins.

Damian, for his part, doesn’t go for his sword and instead fixes Jason with a murderous glare. Whatever. It’s a win when Jason says shit like that to Damian, and keeps his organs inside of himself.

Tim, on the other hand, is not moved. “If this thing is a beacon, or a signal, or a tracking device, what’s stopping it from calling in an armada of alien ships?” he counters.

“Then we kick ass, like we always do.” Jason sweeps up the cube, inspecting it like it was a slightly bigger Rubix Cube. It kind of moves like one, too, with different sections twisting up and down, and left and right. “Maybe this is just some advanced alien toy.” He puts his helmet back on, seeing if any of his sensors give him anything to work with.

“A toy that’s generating some sequences of numbers,” Damian says.

Jason looks up. “What?”

The kid points to the computer screen and Tim steps back to take it in with them. The more Jason twists the thing around, the more numbers are spat out. Combinations of them without any real pattern. Tim frowns as Jason flicks a section to the right. “Coordinates?”

Damian shakes his head. “Random. It’s useless if it’s just various coordinates.”

“Phone numbers?”

“Too short. No regional codes. Still random combinations. It could belong to anyone in the world.”

Jason’s thumb runs over a button on the top of the cube. “Dates?” he offers, absentmindedly, turning the device around until he sees it. A little blue button pressed into the flat plane of the face of the cube.

Damian pauses for a second. “Format works,” he reports. “Random numbers make sense.”

Tim leans over the computer for a while, rapidly tapping out a series of commands. “I think I can change those numbers manually, if I can just…”

Jason presses the button. More on accident than anything else, but it’s a real loose thing that caught him off guard when he was just trying to get a better look at it. The cube glows brighter. It starts to feel warm in his hands, and his fingertips begin to buzz. Everything starts to buzz.

Jason blinks, feeling a little dizzy with everything vibrating super fast around him. “Uh, guys? I think I did something.”

“Jason, I told you to not—what the hell did you do?” Tim is shrieking but he sounds far away. Or… a long time away? Far. Jason doesn’t really know. “Jason! Jason, you have to come back!”

But Jason, for all he knows, is still standing in the Cave. He isn’t…he wasn’t trying to go anywhere. It’s like the whole world is going somewhere with him at the center. The sky spins, the ground whips past, and oh shit, bile quickly comes up the back of this throat.

His back hits something hard and gravelly, light still exploding behind his eyes and his world in the darkness throwing him around like a rag doll experiencing G-forces for the first time. Somewhere, far away or long ago, he hears, “he has a nice jacket.”

Chapter Text

Hey, little guy.

I’m running out of time while writing this, but if anyone can decipher our writing, it’ll be us, right? Bruce and Dick are getting the wormhole open and before you know it, we’ll be back in our times.

I don’t know what you learned while you were there. All I want you to know is that you make it. You live. Whatever the world throws at you, you will fight back, kicking, screaming, crying, and it’s the ugliest thing you have ever known, but you will make it. Got it?

You make it. You will be okay.

2022

A bat on a chest.

He’s looking for the ferocious angles of the wings of a bat stretched out across a broad chest. That, or a blue eagle stretched shoulder to shoulder. The bat means he’s around Batman. The eagle means Nightwing is here. People he trusts. People he can run to when he wakes up in unfamiliar places.

When Jason wakes up in his unfamiliar place, he doesn’t see either.

There’s red and black, a harness made from a golden yellow, with…some sort of symbol on the chest, but Jason has no idea what it is.

“Hey! Hey, you’re okay! We’re not going to hurt you,” someone says over him. “Just breathe for me, alright?”

Right. Only now is Jason aware of his heart hammering in his chest, sweat collecting around his head, and how he can’t get enough air down his lungs. He’s gasping, flailing, wanting to get up and get out, but that would require him to know where he is in the first place. He blinks, vaguely aware that gentle hands are pushing him back down onto a pillow, but…no restraints. And the motion was overly careful and graciously light.

“You’re okay,” the voice continues, sounding demanding and authoritative, but at the same time, almost as high as Jason’s own voice. Young. He’s a kid – whoever was hovering above him.

Jason sucks in a deep breath, trying to remember the breathing techniques Bruce had taught him a long while ago, and holds it in until he makes sense of his surroundings.

He’s on a hospital bed, but this…this isn’t a hospital. It’s domed shaped, lots of dark corners, and it smells a little musty like…like an old cave. Wait. Jason whips his head to the right. The computer. The Batcomputer. It’s…it’s huge. Jason knew it only had four monitors, but this one is extending out an additional six. But there’s no doubt it’s Batman’s computer.

And that, over there – Jason looks left, releasing his breath slowly – training mats. He recognizes those. The dummies, the rack of weapons, punching bags and gym equipment. Beside it is the parking lot that usually holds the Batmobile, though the car in question is missing. But Jason knows exactly what goes on that circular platform.

He glances down at himself. He’s still wearing the Robin uniform. Robin. The Batcave. These people in the Batcave. Jason can trust them, right? Bruce doesn’t allow just anybody down here.

A head of black hair and blue eyes steps up to him, a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “Hey, there,” the boy says with a small smile. “Do you know where you are?”

Jason works his jaw, trying to get his tongue to move. “T-the Batcave?” he answers, searching for the owner of the cave. Where’s Bruce?

“Yeah,” the kid nods enthusiastically, and he’s familiar in weird way that Jason can’t quite figure out. “This is the Batcave. Do you know who you are?”

Trap. It’s a trap to get him to reveal his identity. Jason presses his lips into a thin line. “I do,” he says carefully. “Where’s…uh…where is Batman?”

“With any luck, far away from here,” another voice, much higher, much haughtier, sounds from somewhere. “Ask him how old he is,” it snaps rather impatiently.

The boy in front of him studies Jason for a moment, and Jason, fighting the discomfort of being under the gaze of this…stranger, tries to pinpoint where he knows this kid from. Intelligent eyes colored a faded, cloudy blue. A high nose and arched brows…so, he’s from the elite class, Jason gathers. His accent too, it comes from Bristol. Sounds like Bruce’s billionaire accent that he uses when he’s at galas and…

Oh, the gala. Jason blinks rapidly, the face piecing itself together in his head. A much smaller boy holding onto his mother’s hand. He was dressed in the stuffiest suit Jason had ever seen on a child that night, but the kid stared at everything, wide-eyed and curious, and Jason remembers because Bruce introduced him to the family, and—

“Drake,” Jason breathes.

The boy blinks this time, taken back by the realization. “What?”

“You…you’re the neighbor’s kid. Timothy Drake.”

He stares some more, and Jason isn’t so sure how to feel about the neighbor’s kid wandering around the Batcave dressed in his own cape and geared with his own harness. Does Bruce know about this? Did Bruce do this?

“Drake, I need a number,” that tinny voice drones and confirms his suspicions. This is Timothy Drake. But…last Jason saw him, Tim was a tiny elementary school student. This Tim is older. Different.

“Jason,” Tim says, turning his attention back, “how old are you right now?”

Jason freezes. “Who is Jason?” he tries to keep his face neutral, but everything is so confusing, and without Bruce around, he’s starting to get anxious.

“Oh, um…” Tim laughs nervously. “You’re Jason Todd. We know that.”

“I don’t know who—”

“Drake!” The voice screeches. “Age!”

Tim sighs. “Can you just tell us how old you are? I promise I’ll explain everything.”

There went his secret identity. Batman would be so disappointed. And he was already upset about the whole Garzonas thing. “Fifteen,” Jason replies a little sullenly.

Tim’s eyes narrow and he stiffens just a little, expression turning dark. The other voice, for once, doesn’t say anything. “Did you…” Tim begins slowly, grimly, “did you just turn fifteen?”

Jason nods, frowning at the reaction. What sort of questions were these? Why aren’t they checking him for weapons, or bugs, or tracking devices? “I turned fifteen last August.”

“Great,” the other voice hisses sarcastically, “you sent him back five whole years, moron.” The high-backed swivel chair in front of the computer turns around and…there’s a kid. That’s a literal child. Jason’s eyes widen as the child, wearing some modified version of a Robin uniform, stomps up to the medbay, an angry scowl etched onto his face like he was born with it. “How do we fix this before the very fabric of the universe starts to rip?”

“The what?” Jason doesn’t understand a single thing. Where exactly is he? Why is Timothy Drake a teenager when he was in fourth grade a few months ago? Who is this actual fourth grader? Where’s Bruce? Dick? Alfred?

Tim winces. “Jason, I want you to know first that you’re safe, and no one here is a threat.” He gives the kid – Robin? – a pointed look at that. “Damian is right. You’re five years into the future."

Jason opens his mouth, closes it, and opens it again. He runs the words through his head again. Five years into the future. Bruce…Bruce gets more kids? Robin isn’t…Jason won’t be Robin then? Does that mean Bruce doesn’t believe him about Garzonas and he takes Robin away from him?

No. No, Jason needs to figure out why. Why him, why five years, and where is Bruce from this time? He’d know what to do. Batman always knew what to do. “How is that possible,” he asks, his throat feeling a little scratchy.

“Todd’s egregiously large hands do not know how to handle delicate alien technology,” the little one – Damian – says haughtily with his arms crossed over his chest. “And Drake insisted on studying the device on his own.”

Tim rolls his eyes. “It wasn’t intentional. None of us knew what it did.”

Damian ignores him like he’s a piece of furniture. “Todd of our time got sent back to your time. You have arrived in his place.”

“Wait, so, there is a Jason in 2017? And…” Jason does the quick math, “…and this is 2022?” God, that doesn’t even sound like a real year.

“Precisely,” Tim nods with approval. “The switch of Jasons is probably why the universe is still whole and intact. Or, at least, our tiny sector is.”

“The universe?” Jason asks weakly. He’s vaguely aware that he’s clutching his sheet, eyes widely blown, and his breath is shaking, no matter how hard he tries to control it.

Tim must have noticed his worry. “I’m sure it’s okay!” he says hurriedly, quick to reassure him. “I mean, so far, our time hasn’t changed yet, so older Jason is being careful, too.”

Jason stares at the empty space where the Batmobile is usually parked. “Where’s Bruce?” Because, he still believes, that if anyone can save the day – save his day – it would be Bruce.

“Father and Grayson are investigating the point of origin of the alien tech,” Damian fills in, so matter-of-factly. “They are scheduled to arrive tomorrow.”

Jason startles. Wait. Back up. “What…what did you call him?” he stammers. Did he hear that right? Why is he seeing more of Bruce’s gaze in the kid’s face? Except for his eyes, why does Damian bear a strange…resemblance…

“What the shit?” Jason rears back, pulling away from Damian. “Are you Bruce’s fucking kid?” he nearly shrieks.

Damian’s gaze narrows, focuses, green eyes flashing with annoyance. “I am the blood son. The true Wayne heir, and clearly, the more superior Robin,” he introduces. “Talia al Ghul is my mother—”

“Talia is your mother?” Jason can’t believe what he’s hearing. Bruce and Talia? After all she is, and after all she did – wait a second. “Ra’s al Ghul is your grandfather?”

“Yes, the Demon Head is my Grandfather,” Damian states. “I have been trained to be his heir since my birth.”

“Oh, my God,” Jason breathes, shocked into silence.

“Being a test tube baby is also a possibility we have not yet scratched out,” Tim pitches, thinking he is sounding helpful, but Damian only drives his boot into Tim’s shin with a snarl.

“Oh, my God,” Jason repeats, pressing his hands into his eyes.

Tim winces again. “I understand this must be a lot to take in. Would you like to see Alfred?”

Jason drags his hands down his cheeks. Alfred. Yes, of course, he wants to see Alfred. At least there would be one familiar face. “Yeah,” he manages. “I—I’d like to see him.”

Tim breaks out into a smile. “He’s in the kitchen, I believe. We can take you.”

Jason slides off the bed, feeling his knees wobble a little. Probably a side effect of being shot forward five years. Who knows? “I know where the kitchen is, Timbo. I’ve lived here longer than you have.” He pauses, working out the details in his head. “I think,” he adds on, surveying the rest of the Cave. Most of it looks familiar except for something on the second level. Jason points to it, squinting. “Hey, is that…my Robin uniform?”

He's too busy trying to make it out to see Tim flinch and Damian take a step back.

It’s in a glass case, molded to make it look like it is being worn.

“Jason, we need to see Alfred,” Tim says a little shakily.

“Woah, do I end up tearing the cape that badly?” Jason muses, noticing how the cloth is tattered and riddled with burn marks. He wonders why Bruce wouldn’t put up a repaired one instead. Unless that one in particular was significant or—

Tim tugs on his elbow. “Jason…please, we need to go…”

But Jason can’t tear away just yet. There’s something inscribed on the plaque on the front, but from down here, on the main floor, he can’t quite make it out. “How come mine’s the only one up there?” He glances around for any more glass cases, but he doesn’t see any. Not even one of Dick’s uniforms.

“Jason—” Tim is pushing him now, but Jason is still trying to make sense of the case. “Jason, please, we have to go.”

“Can I go see it?”

“You can’t.”

“Why not? It’s my uniform—”

“Todd!” Damian screams loud enough that his voice echoes. Tim freezes and Jason whirls around. Damian stands with his hands closed into fists, brows furrowed, and so much…tension wrapped in his tiny frame. “We will be seeing Pennyworth now. This instant. I will not hesitate to render you unconscious in order to physically drag you into the kitchen.”

Silence in the Cave. Damian is staring furiously at him, nearly shaking with anger or frustration or whatever the hell else has this kid so wound up. He looks like Bruce. The distinction was there normally, but with the frown, the intensity he glares with…that’s all Bruce.

“He’s exaggerating,” Tim finally says quietly, wrapping an arm around Jason’s shoulders and leading him up the stairs to the manor. “Mostly. There was this one time where he did knock me out and left me beside a dumpster, but he’s grown from that.”

“I will kick your other shin, Drake,” Damian hisses from behind them.

Jason just follows, dazed and stunned. What was that all about? It’s his uniform, he should be allowed to see it, right? Unless…it isn’t his. Unless he was right about Bruce giving up on him and giving the colors to…who? To Tim? Skip right over to Damian before he got his current suit?

 They approach the kitchen, the manor looking the same as Jason recalls from his time. A couple more framed pictures hung up here and there – mostly of Bruce and one of the kids – the vase of flowers gets moved from corner to corner, and the daisies in the dark blue pot Jason remembers are replaced with purple pansies in a clear vase. But mostly, things have stayed the same. Except for the increase in house occupancy.

Jason doesn’t know if that should make him happy or not.

He sniffs. At least Alfred’s cooking still smells the same. “Stay back for a second,” Tim tells him, “I’m going to let Alfred know what happened.” Tim disappears into the kitchen and Jason smothers a smile. Alfred is making cinnamon rolls. He can pick apart the nutmeg, vanilla, and the perfect amount of cinnamon.

He hears Tim speak quietly with Alfred and realizes that Damian had stayed back with him. To make sure he didn’t go back into the Cave? Jason huffs out a breath. Are they going to treat him as a prisoner in his own home? “So, uh,” Jason begins as they wait, “how long have you been Robin?”

Damian examines his gloveless hands. “Almost two years,” he answers bluntly.

Jason tries to picture the timeline. Somehow, in the next five years, Jason stops being Robin. Either it passes along two eras or Jason keeps it for a little longer and Damian takes it. He swallows. Five years. He’d be twenty now. Jason supposes he’d have to outgrow it eventually. He just hopes that it was his decision to step away from Robin, and not the consequence of his own mistakes.

“Jason!” Tim pops his head back around the corner. “Come on, Alfred’s pulling out the cinnamon rolls.”

Damian strides right past him and Jason follows slowly, unsure of what exactly to expect. He sees the back of Alfred first, Tim and Damian already sitting on the barstools by the counter. Alfred is arranging iced-over cinnamon rolls on a platter, and Jason can’t help but notice that his hair, or whatever is left of it, is streaking with more grey, and his hands look a little more wrinkly, but he moves with the same speed and precision Jason has always marveled him for.

Deft fingers cut up the pastry, setting them down on the plate, his spine is still rim rod straight, and he still carries himself as the real head of the Wayne household.

Jason grins. “Hi, Alfie.” Alfred turns around, warm eyes softening immediately, and a light smile of his own peeking through his… “nice ‘stache,” Jason points out.

“Master Jason, that had better not have been sarcasm.” Alfred wipes his hands down on a towel. “I’ll have you know, the style is all over English news currently.”

Alfred barely opens his arms before Jason is running right into them, burrowing his face into the apron. “It’s so good to see you, Alfie,” Jason says through his laughter.

“It is beyond marvelous to see you, Master Jason.” Alfred holds him close, and if his voice contains something other than joy, Jason can’t detect it. “Never mind you are in your costume at the table.”

Jason pulls away and glances down at himself. Right. Alfred’s rule was to leave all that behind at the Cave before arriving at his kitchen. Jason remembers Bruce breaking it all the time, especially on mornings when he headed out for school and Bruce pulled in from a night of patrol.

Master Bruce, if you keep this up, you will have to go on patrol wearing one of Master Dick’s uniforms. I will not wash your cape nor cowl if you bring them into the kitchen ever again, he’d say, and Jason would laugh because that means Bruce would need to go out in Dick’s ridiculous disco-style costume. Disco-wing, he’d called it.

“Sorry, Alf,” Jason says sheepishly, hopping onto his own barstool beside Damian. The kid eats the roll with a fork. Jesus, he even has Bruce ‘I eat burgers with a knife and a fork’ Wayne’s mannerisms. “I don’t suppose you have any of my old clothes?”

Alfred places a small plate with a couple of cookies in front of him and lingers there for a moment. Something worrying crosses his face briefly, and before Jason can wonder any more, says, “well, young sir, you’ve certainly outgrown most of what you used to wear.”

“Woah, really?” Jason chomps down on half a whole cinnamon roll in one bite, the cinnamon-sugar butter taste feeling like he never left his time – his real home – in the first place. “How big?”

“You are about the same size as Father,” Damian supplies, not a smudge of icing anywhere on his mouth. For some reason, it makes Jason feel a little sad. He’d have chocolate, pizza, sauce, milk, anything, smeared all over his mouth because Alfred’s cooking was unbeatable, and he never cared about the mess when the food was so good.

It was always fun, too, with Alfred lightly chastising him, but being easily won over when Jason sang praises about his meals. Alfred would wipe away all that mess off his face. Bruce would watch on with a real smile of his own. And it was home. It was family.

His heart pangs with something like longing. He wants Bruce. He wants to see him from this time. He has so many questions! Not just…not just about Robin, and Tim and Damian, but Jason wants to know if Bruce still thinks Shakespeare’s best play is Macbeth (it’s actually Merchant of Venice). He wants to know if Bruce upgrades his suit with a taser on his chest, which was Jason’s own idea. He wonders if Bruce finally gets Selina.

Jason blinks out of his thoughts, thinking through Damian’s words again. About the same size as Bruce. Wow. He’s going to get super shredded. “Really? I’ve always been the smaller one in class.” He thinks of his towering classmates. In five years, he’d be the tallest of them all. “Do I take vitamins or something?”

Alfred coughs into his fist and turns away. Damian stabs his roll a little harder, and it’s Tim who eventually answers. “Something like that,” he says vaguely. “Don’t worry about it, you grow up to be insanely strong.”

Jason grins. “Cool.”

*

Damian’s glare could wilt fields, Tim thinks. Hell, it could probably melt diamonds if he tries hard enough. And if someone told Damian that, he really would try to melt diamonds with a glare just because of his superiority or something.

“Say it,” Tim finally says, eyes pinned to the screen which renders a 3D model of the cube that is capable of jumping through time.

Damian inhales.

Great.

“If you had just waited until Father returned, we would not be in this situation in the first place, Drake. Why did you think yourself capable of inspecting alien technology when clearly you do not know the first thing about it!”

Typical Damian heat. Tim has long since learned to let it go. “I don’t see you trying,” he shoots back. “And whatever the case, our current priority is to safely send Jason back to his time.”

Damian grumbles. “If he doesn’t ruin everything first.” He casts a baleful glance up at the glass case. His memorial case.

Tim couldn’t explain the four dozen heart attacks he was suffering in that moment. Pained, because this bright-eyed, innocent, child was one week away from being the reason that glass case is hoisted up. Terrified that Jason learns about his awful demise and tries to change the past.

(Hopeful that maybe he would.)

“Can you throw a blanket or something over the case until we figure this out?” Tim asks. This cube thing he’s been studying for hours now is barely making sense to him. He’s tried working it from the basics upwards but seeing at how that left him at too many dead-ends, he’s trying to work on it backwards. Look at the whole picture, then get into the screws holding it together.

Damian rummages through a storage box by the medbay. “Why are we not enlisting the help of the Flash? Or any one of the sorcerers?”

Tim flips the cube over on the screen, tracing the edges with the cursor. “It needs to be a clean switch back. Flash can travel back but if he does, there will be at least one instance where both Jasons are in the same place at the same time. And I don’t even know if Flash knew how to work the time travel trick five years ago.”

“Constantine? Zatanna?” Damian adjusts the blanket over the memorial case, blocking it off from view.

“That’s even messier. Magic isn’t as clean cut and time is a real delicate thing.”

“So, our one chance is this dastardly cube.”

“Yep.” Tim pops the ‘p’.

Footsteps sound lightly down the stairs, and Tim spares a glance up. Jason comes bounding down, a platter of three cups and a tall pitcher balanced on top. He smiles a little sheepishly, and pointedly does not look in the direction of the memorial case. Tim wordlessly sends his thanks to Damian for covering it up.

“Alfred said you’d be down here,” Jason says, setting the tray down on a workbench. He’s out of the Robin costume, instead in an old pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt that hung loosely from his already small frame. “What are you guys doing?”

Tim rubs a fist into his eye. “I’m trying to figure out how this thing works.” He points to the cube on the screen. “The goal is to take the methods that first swapped you two and reverse it. Or…” Tim scratches his chin, “or, just make it happen again.

“Like a reset?”

“Yeah, sort of like a reset,” Tim hums, thinking it through. Maybe he doesn’t need to completely get this machine to work backwards. Maybe he just needs to adjust the settings.

Jason looks around again, and Tim notices he deliberately skips over the case. By the stars and everything below them, if Jason ever finds out about that part of his life, Tim can kiss the timeline goodbye. With tongue. In the back of a dingy diner. Point being, the damage would be messy.

“Do you, um, usually go on patrol?” Jason asks, busying himself with the pitcher and the cups. He seems to be…bored? Like he doesn’t really know what to do with himself. Which is utterly and entirely different than the Red Hood Jason, who walks around with his own agenda and carries himself with enough confidence to level all of Gotham in one night. The difference is a little jarring, Tim thinks. It’ll take some getting used to, but he figures that this is the Jason he had first idolized. He’ll adjust easily enough.

“I take the later shift,” Tim explains, taking a cup of tea from him with a grateful smile. “Damian goes out first.” He nods to Robin, suiting up some distance away.

Jason’s brows shoot up. “Batman lets Robin patrol on his own? He never…” he trails off and Tim knows what those unsaid words are. He never trusted me enough to do that. Batman didn’t let Tim patrol on his own when he was Robin either, but that was for…another reason entirely.

“He’s not alone!” Tim swoops in before Jason can lose himself to those thoughts. “You haven’t met them yet, but Cass is usually out with him. She’s Black Bat in the field. She should be stopping by, actually. You can meet her then.”

Jason sips on his tea slowly. “Cass?”

“Cassandra Cain,” Tim tells him, and with another small smile, adds on, “she’s our sister.”

Jason’s mouth hangs open. “I have a sister?” He pauses, and Tim winces, realizing his mistake a beat too late. “Wait, we have a sister?”

Crap. This timeline is going to be one bumpy road.

“Yeah,” Tim squeaks, ducking his head. “Bruce has five kids. For now, at least.”

Jason stares at Tim like he’s actively growing a third eye on his forehead. “Okay,” he breathes, “okay, so Dick’s story, I know. Damian…he’s Bruce’s actual kid, and knowing Talia, I bet she just dumped him here and left, right?”

Damian clicks his tongue in annoyance and Tim’s eyes widen. “Uh, yeah, something—something like that.”

“So, what about you and Cass? How does Bruce get you guys?”

Tim rubs the back of his neck, darting his gaze around. Where’s Damian when you need him to create a distraction?  “Babs actually introduced Cass to the rest of the family.” And I come in after you die because our father figure goes batshit crazy. Yeah, Tim values the time stream too much for that. He goes with the other truth. “My parents…um, they died, and Bruce took me in after.”

Tim was Robin while Jack Drake was still alive, which was a whole thing by itself, but technically, Bruce didn’t file for adoption until after he died. He’s not totally lying to Jason.

“Oh,” Jason says softly, staring at his shoes. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be,” Damian snaps out of nowhere, fully geared for the night. “It is because of you that Drake is a permanent and unavoidable irritation in this house.”

Tim cuts him a glare. He can’t just say that! The whole point was to be intentionally vague about anything that is remotely close to his death. Explaining that Robin isn’t his in five years is already hard enough, but to throw in the fact that Tim took it up after him? After Jason spent a whole year trying to murder him?

“Because of me? What did I do?” Jason asks curiously.

Tim interrupts Damian before he can say whatever else he was planning on revealing. “As a kid, I used to follow you and Batman around Gotham to take photos,” Tim blurts. Jason blinks and Damian laughs wickedly, but Tim keeps going. “Not to…blackmail you or anything, I just…I don’t know, I thought you two were amazing. Are amazing,” he corrects.

Jason lifts a brow. “So, you…followed us around. With a camera. Like a creep.”

Tim raises a hand. “I get how that was really stalkerish of me, but I was eight. You…you were my hero. You were the reason I wanted help people too. Bruce knew me from that. So, getting swept up into all this,” he gestures to the Cave, “was a smoother transition for everyone.

Jason only points a finger at him accusingly. “You knew! You knew all that time ago!”

“Busted,” Damian sings unhelpfully from his position at the workbench. 

Tim wishes the ground would swallow him whole. His hero, his idol, the exact version that he had fallen in amazement of, and Tim is opening and closing his mouth like a fish. “I…you…I mean, I didn’t—”

“How’d you know?” Jason asked. “Bruce was always so paranoid about it.”

Tim rubs the back of his neck, feeling shades of red swim across his face. Why couldn’t he have been a normal eight-year-old, watching television all night instead of literally stalking Batman and Robin? “Uh…oh, man, this is going to sound so creepy.”

“Tim, you are the creepiest person I know, and I met you three hours ago.” Jason crosses his arms across his chest and waits for an answer.

Great, great, great. His hero calling him creepy. It could be worse, Tim reasons desperately. “I saw Dick pull off a quadruple somersault once as Robin,” he says internally cursing himself until all things disappear into oblivion. “I remembered Dick Grayson from Haly’s Circus being the only other person to be able to perform that move. After that, connecting him to Bruce was easy. And then you were introduced as his new ward, Gotham had a new Robin, and…” he trails off, knowing how lame he sounds.

“I’m the reason you get into the tights and capes?” Jason asks. “Bruce just…lets you be a part of this life?” He shakes his head in disbelief.

Tim, pulling on his fingers, chooses to answer the first question. “Yeah, I guess you were the reason I got into crime fighting.” You died, and that’s how I got into crime fighting, Tim’s mind aids uselessly. “Like I said, you were my hero.”

“Does Bruce make you Robin?” Jason asks softly, staring at his cup.

Tim swallows. “Yes,” he whispers, his heart straining.

“Does he…does he take it from me?” His voice gets even quieter.

“No,” Tim answers. “You…you move on.”

Jason’s head snaps up and there’s something like relief or hope on his face, and Tim’s chest aches. “So, it was my choice to leave Robin behind? Not because Bruce got mad at me?”

Tim feels like slamming his head into the table. Bruce was never mad at Jason. Leaving Robin wasn’t Jason’s choice. It was ripped cruelly from him, taken from him before Tim or anyone else could have gotten his blessing, and, God, he’s just a kid.

“Bruce was never mad at you, Jay,” Tim tries, standing up. “You pick something else later on, and…well, everyone steps up the ladder.”

“What do I pick?”

Tim sucks on his bottom lip, coming up with half-answers, the truth, and straight lies, because telling Jason that he takes after his murderer’s old moniker as a big, fat eat shit move isn’t as easy as it may seem.

“Tim, I’m taking Cass to her first frat party, so I need you to cover us on Friday night. I’ll murder you if…Bruce…finds…out. Oh.”

God bless Stephanie.

“Steph!” Tim waves her and Cass over and Jason turns slowly as they approach. “Jason, this is Stephanie, or Spoiler in the field. She’s a friend of ours. And this,” Tim says, nodding to smaller one, “is Cass. Black Bat.”

Stephanie’s mouth hangs open and Cass peers curiously up at Jason, eyes wide and studying. “This is Jason? He’s so…tiny?”

Jason crosses his arms defensively. “I’ve got two whole inches on you, blondie.”

Steph frowns at him. “What, you got insoles in your shoes?”

Jason grins impishly. “Are your eyebrows drawn in?”

“Is it wrong of me to call a kid an asshole?” Steph asks, crinkling her nose.

Cass steps up softly, still watching Jason. Tim thinks he sees sorrow flash across her face briefly. “What happened?” she asks, reaching forward until her hand lies on top of Jason’s heart, who turns his attention from Steph’s glare. Neither of them move, and Cass’ reaction is…strange. It’s not surprise that takes her, but…sadness. Confusion. Jason watches her with his eyes blown wide.

Tim clears his throat and Cass quickly removes her hand. “The piece of alien tech we found is a time traveling device,” he explains. “Our Jason got sent back five years, and 2017’s Jason swapped places with him.”

Steph’s brows furrow. Cass still stares. “2017 Jason,” she murmurs. “That’s when—”

Tim’s eyes widen. “He was Robin then,” he cuts in hastily, shooting her a look that she understands with a short nod.

“Robin,” Cass says. “Red Hood?”

Tim’s heartrate spikes. “Cass, let me show you your new comm device,” Tim says, tugging her to the workbench. “Steph, keep Jason company for a little, will you?”

Steph smiles brightly and throws an arm around Jason’s shoulders. “Let me tell you about the time Tim fell face first into his salad at some charity event in front of Gotham’s one percent.”

Yeah. God bless Stephanie.

“What new comm device?” Damian demands when Tim pulls Cass out of earshot.

“We don’t have a new one.”

“Jason.” Cass turns to him now, fury in her eyes, lips wobbly. “Save him.”

Tim inhales. “We can’t, Cass. We can’t ruin the timeline.” How he wishes they could do something, anything, to save Jason from his fate. It’s tearing Tim apart from the inside out, but he knows the consequences of altering the past. He can’t risk a cataclysmic ending because of one thing years ago. No matter how tragic.

“Save him.”

“Cass—”

“I fought him.”

Tim blinks at that. “What are you – oh.” It dawns on him when Cass turns her gaze down. “The League. Shiva and Talia.”

Cass nods shortly and Damian scoffs. “The fighting rings,” he says. “They must have battled in the pits.”

Cass wraps her arms around herself. “He was not there. Physically, yes. His heart was not there.”

“After the Lazarus Pit,” Tim breathes. When Pit rage was at its worst and Talia used every chance she had to hone Jason into who he was when he returned to Gotham. If Tim thought the brutality was bad with the heads in the duffle bag stunt he pulled, he couldn’t begin to imagine the kind of Jason Cass faced back then. Though, if anyone could take on a Pit rage Jason, Cass would be the only one.

“He does not know?” Cass asks again, almost begging that Tim do something about his fate. “He…he gets hurt when he fights. Badly. We must…help him.”

Tim swallows thickly and pulls Cass into a hug. “I’m sorry, Cass,’ he murmurs. “I’m so sorry. We can’t risk it.”

Cass makes a noise in the back of her throat. “Shit,” she whispers.

Tim gets a sad laugh out of that. “Yeah. Shit.”

Damian tugs on his gloves. “Come now, Cain. Perhaps patrol will take your mind off these trying times.”

“Dami, be nice,” Tim manages before Cass playfully drives an elbow into Damian’s side. “Be careful, okay?”

“Don’t let Todd destroy the future,” Damian says back.

Cass follows Robin to the bikes, but not before turning back to Jason laughing at something Stephanie said. She smiles a little, sadly, but hopefully. “His left side needs more defense,” Cass tells Tim before turning away. “He leaves it open. Always.”

Chapter Text

There’s nothing we can do to stop it. I know that. I don’t like it, but hey, you lived, right? And we’re so jacked, we’ll finally be able to beat Dick in a sparring match. For real. Without that loser holding back.

 I don’t know much else about how…it will happen. Trust us to get into some mess with the Joker, huh?

I don’t know how we come back either, or what happens when we do. Not really, at least. Your Bruce is different than mine, but he’s still Bruce. Maybe he’s more emotionally constipated, if that were possible. I think he takes it hard, Jason. I think it nearly breaks him. He almost cried when I saw him in your time and Bruce never cries. It probably wasn’t easy for him or Dick, and definitely not for Alfred.

Bruce is still Bruce, and he still loves you – me – as he always has. Okay? I feel like things are strained with you guys but remember that. He loves you the same way, if not more.

And he believes us about Garzonas. He’s just an ass sometimes and won’t say it.

2017

Jason almost believes it was all a dream.

Getting sent back in time to the week he’s meant to die surely sounds like one.

But he opens his eyes, greets a ceiling of glow in the dark stars, and silently curses. Real. It’s all real. Of course, it’s real.

He’s tired of sick jokes, he’s tired of being forced to deal with trauma, and he’s especially tired of the knocking on his bedroom door. He presses the pillow into his ear and groans.

“Jason! Buddy, come on,” Dick’s voice comes muffled through the door. He raps out a stupid rhythm on the wood. “Alfred made breakfast. You still like his scones, right?”

Jason squeezes his eyes shut, wishing Dick would just leave him alone for a few more minutes. Just until he can’t convince himself this is not a dream anymore.

It’s not real, Jason. When you open your eyes, you’re riding a velociraptor into the sunset.

“I’ve got an idea about getting you back to your time!” Dick tacks on, like it wasn’t the one thing that Jason had been trying to figure out since he got here. Moron. No. Moron with an idea.

He scrambles out of bed, nearly tripping over the blankets wrapping themselves around his legs. He stumbles to the door, the last of his sleep fading with the promise of going home. “What’s your idea,” he gasps even before his door is swung open all the way.

Dick smiles brightly. “Good morning, Little Wing! I’ll tell you all about it at breakfast.” With a wink, he’s gone, bounding down the steps to the kitchen.

Jason’s going to murder him.

Except he can’t. All the obvious reasons aside, he’s pretty sure Dick Grayson’s death in 2017 would make it impossible for him to go back to his own time. So, no. He can’t. Mentally adding another ten dollars to the swear jar, Jason drags a hand down his face and blows out a long breath before turning around to dress himself.

Downstairs, Bruce flips aimlessly through a newspaper and Dick and Alfred share a coffee. There’s a plate with a scone sitting beside them, waiting for Jason. He frowns, stalling in the doorway of the kitchen. When was the last time he had breakfast down here? With Bruce at the table and Dick in town? And…when was the last time Jason could stomach spending the night in his old room and not in one of his safehouses?

He can’t remember. It makes him kind of sad.

“Coffee, Master Jason?” Alfred offers politely. “I’m afraid I do not know how you take it,” he admits as he slides a small pitcher of milk and a tiny bowl of sugar towards him. “Young Master Jason preferred orange juice.”

Jason sits in his spot, imagining Tim to his right, Damian beside Dick, Cass sitting right beside Bruce at the front, and the occasional Steph on Jason’s left. A full table. Not…not this little grouping of the four of them. Jason doesn’t even feel like he belongs here. Was this table always so big?

He drops two sugar cubes into his coffee and spills some milk into it, stirring lightly. Bruce is doing a poor job of focusing on his paper, Alfred’s sips are far too small for any use, and Jason’s pretty sure Dick’s cup is empty, and he’s been faking it this entire time.

A velociraptor. He’s riding a goddamn velociraptor in another world. Right.

“You still don’t believe me,” Jason says, watching Bruce thumb the edge of his newspaper.

“Forgive me if I’m having trouble understanding that you traveled back five years because of alien technology,” Bruce states flatly.

“You get lost—” Jason cuts himself off. The timestream debacle. Yeah, he’s not touching that little plot point with a ten-foot pole. If Tim were here, he’d faint on the spot. Poor kid. “What do I need to do to get you to believe me?”

“What is something that only Jason and I know? From my time.” He sets down the paper, neatly tucking the sheets together. “Something that only we know. Not Alfred. Not Dick. Just us.”

Jason sets his jaw, pressing his lips together. Something cold and tight coils around his gut and he has to fight his natural urges to get away from here as fast as possible. Get away from the table with all the happy memories, away from the mansion and everything beneath it, away, away, away.

He ran away. He has always run away. He ran away when Catherine died. He ran to deal with Filipe Garzonas. He ran away to Ethiopia. And when he was unwittingly blessed with this second chance, he kept on running.

He’s about to bolt.

Dick notices. Like he always does, in the future and in the past.

“I still have a plan to get you home, Jay,” he says softly, watching him with warm, blue eyes. “Give us something.”

Jason takes a few measured breaths. He thinks back to all the trinkets in his room. The posters he hung up, the homework Alfred used to help him with, the bed that was always just a little bit too big for him. The glow in the dark stars on his ceiling.

When he speaks, he has to force the words to come out above a mumble. “The – you –”  Great. Great start, Jason.“The stars on my ceiling,” he gets out with effort. “You…uh…you put them up there one day while I was at school.” He tugs on his fingers, idly tracing the scars around his knuckles. Scars from digging out of his grave.

He’ll have to dig out of a fucking coffin a few months. Again.

Another shuddering breath, pressing his nails into his palms. “You did it because…um…because two weeks after moving in here, you asked me why I slept with the curtains open.” He risks a glance up, feeling the weight of three stares sitting on his shoulders. “I told you that watching the stars reminded me a little of home, and…and you probably figured it out by now, but it was because I feel – used to feel – like all…this was temporary.”

And the craziest part was that he still feels that way. Not even a death and resurrection could have made his uncertain presence at the manor any more certain.

Jason goes on, determined to at least get through this without his voice cracking. “I told you that watching the stars helped me sleep some nights, and the sun was really bright in the morning, but I was willing to deal with it if I got to see the sky at night. I don’t – I never told anyone else about the open curtains.” Unless Bruce told Alfred, but…something tells Jason that it was a secret just between them.

“So you…” Jason trails off when silence chokes on the air. “You put up my own stars on the ceiling, one by one. Even managed to sneak in a couple constellations up there.”

Bruce watches him warily and Jason can’t look him in the eye. Something hard and heavy batters in his chest, grates against his heart. Glow in the dark stars for his son. Bruce did that because he cared. Because he, once, loved Jason as his own blood. Things between them were once open gates and transparent walls. Mutual trust and…life. School for Jason, work for Bruce, dinner with Alfred, and weekends with Dick.

Only five years ago. Jason feels it more like a forgotten memory. It’s sad. He thinks he misses it too much to know.

Bruce speaks with a rasp that Jason considers as a little choked up. “A week ago, you had a nightmare,” he says, those haunting eyes narrowed down onto Jason. “I came home from a late-night meeting at work and you were sitting at the bay window.”

Jason nods, remembering this night. Just before…just before he fucked it all up with Garzonas. He had sat at the window, blanket pulled up to his chin, watching the stars. “When you found me, you took me outside. I think…you were still wearing your suit.” A blazer was draped over Jason’s shoulder’s that breezy night. It wasn’t sticky humid for the first time in a long while. “We sat out on the lawn,” Jason recalls, the night made of a promise of incoming rain and sweet nectar carried in the wind. “We sat there and traced the stars until I fell asleep.”

Bruce blinks twice. “Jason,” he finally breathes.

Jason finally brings his gaze up to Bruce’s. He’s mildly shocked to see warmth in his eyes. He’s only half-surprised that Bruce is believing him without the usual level of paranoia, without the usual heat of a budding argument that usually ends up with Jason storming out of the manor for the foreseeable future. Bruce considers him with…familiarity. With comfort. Love.

Jason turns back down to his scone, blinking hard. When was the last time…

“Jason, son,” Bruce begins, and Jason holds up a hand.

“Don’t – don’t do that.” Pressure builds behind his eyes. Fuck. No fucking way he’s crying here in front of them. Bruce’s jaw clenches but he doesn’t push. “Was…was that enough? Do you believe me now?” He sniffles quickly, swallowing to compose himself again.

Bruce straightens. “I believe you.”

Jason nods shortly.

When he doesn’t say anything else, Dick sweeps in. “Now that we got that out of the way,” he says, rubbing his hands together, “you ever see Back to the Future?”

Jason rolls his eyes, unable to help himself. This territory he knows. “I’m pretty sure I’m the one who showed you that movie, Dickie.”

Dick waves a hand dismissively. “Can’t remember. Anyway, the batcomputer is still functioning in your time, right?”

“Yeah?”

“So, leaving a message right now, set to open about five years from today, would mean future us gets the note. They won’t be able to respond to us, but we can pass along a message to the future. Maybe they can open the wormhole on their side with whatever info we feed them.”

Jason sits up a little. Yeah…that makes sense. It could work. And his future has Tim! If anyone could figure out what was happening on that computer, it would be him. The kid’s practically glued to the screen anyway.

“What would we say?” he asks.

Dick shrugs. “Say that you’re okay. Say that the timeline, so far, is still intact on our side, and that they have the better chance of opening a portal, or whatever. Tell future Dick to get his life together and be the best boyfriend he can be to Kori.”

Jason flings a blueberry at his head, Dick laughs like he hasn’t in years, Alfred scolds him lightly, and Bruce…when Jason glances over at Bruce, he has a sad smile on his lips.

*

Dick leans over the high-backed chair in front of the batcomputer as Jason finishes his message to send to the future. It’s addressed to someone Jason called ‘RR’, and when Dick asked him about it, Jason said Red Robin and left it at that. Dick wondered if the burger chain somehow sponsors them or something in the future. That would be everything.

Jason finishes typing and starts setting up the dates. “So, if time works the same way here and…there, they’ll get the message in…the next five seconds.” He taps a button, and the long message is gone, five whole years into the future. “Okay,” Jason says, sitting back into the chair, staring up at the screen. “What now?”

Dick straightens. “Wanna spar?”

“What?”

“Spar.” He walks to the mats, already stretching out his arms. “I could take Robin you, easy. But now that you’re older, I don’t have to hold back as much,” he grins.

Jason watches him stretch. “All those times I knocked you on your ass…you were holding back?”

Dick winces. “I couldn’t rough you up too badly. Bruce would have my head. Again,” he tacks on, thinking of those early fights he had with Bruce when Jason was first introduced into the manor. It wasn’t pretty, Dick knows. He was angry at Bruce and took it out on the new kid, who definitely did not need Dick’s weird snips and attitude while living up to his mantle. On top of him dealing with Bruce’s…everything.

“I wasn’t being fair to you,” Dick says suddenly, the image of Jason locking up when Bruce called him son. “Back…like, back then. When you first got here.” He knew he didn’t really treat Jason right all that time ago, but it was always Bruce’s responsibility to be a good father to them. If Jason grows to resent him…well, Dick wasn’t exactly chummy with the old man just yet.

Jason tilts his head. “Yeah, well…” he says, awkwardly, clearing his throat, “I wasn’t exactly the greatest little brother, either.”

Dick chuckles, missing the little boy for a short moment. Fifteen-year-old Jason with his witty quip, a sarcastic comment about Nightwing’s new suit ready to go, eyes that carried hope, ferocity, and life.

Jason, his Little Wing, grows up to be scarred and roughened. Dick doesn’t know what caused his cobalt eyes to turn to a strike of green in certain angles, but he gets the feeling that it wasn’t easy.

Whatever was awaiting young Jason, Dick was determined to be there for him every single step of the way. He’d be there for him. Whatever happens, he’d make sure he’d be a better older brother to Jason – he’d make sure he’d protect him, check in on him more, make him feel like he belongs here.

“Well, you make one hell of a Robin,” Dick says when Jason comes around, slipping his shoes off.

“You kidding?” Jason scoffs, stepping onto the mat. “I was trying to be as half as good as you. It’s all Bruce wanted anyway. Dick used to do this, Dick used to do that…” he trails off, waving a hand. “He wasn’t proud of…whatever kind of Robin I became.”

Dick lets the words simmer in his head, taking the moment to pivot on his foot and swing out with his leg. Jason blocks easily and steps back, lifting his own fists. “What makes you say that?” he asks carefully, watching Jason drop low, ready to jump.

“For starters, I wasn’t you.” Jason, despite his size, moves like lightning, leaping from one foot to another until Dick is forced to take a couple steps back to avoid his swings. “I wasn’t the golden child back then, and I never grow up to be one now.”

Dick swipes a punch away and barks out a laugh. “I’m the golden child? How badly do you mess up that I become the poster Robin?”

And…shit. He swings out with an elbow, a pretty obvious move, but Jason stutters for just a second, and Dick pulls himself to the right just before he could do any real damage. That’s the wrong thing to say, and he regrets it immediately, watching something like fear flicker across Jason’s face.

Fear. On Jason’s face. It doesn’t belong. It has never belonged on him.

The look is there just for a second. And then it’s gone.

“Sorry, man, I thought—” Dick flips backwards when Jason drops, swinging his leg out. And then he keeps going. A series of jabs and kicks, Jason moves with a fluidity that Dick hasn’t seen Bruce fight with. He ducks a move that would have landed Jason’s palm into the base of his throat and backs up to the edge of the mat. “Where’d you learn that?” he asks curiously.

Again, something dark passes over Jason’s face. A repressed memory, a recollection of something…terrible. Something he needs to mentally beat back down. Dick suppresses a shiver.

“Why? Scared that I’ll finally beat you?” Jason taunts, but Dick hears how he forces it out. Hears the strain in his growl.

He moves into the offensive, diving forward into a roll that let him get a kick at Jason’s ribs. “No. I just can’t figure out where the moves come from. Did Bruce teach you?”

It’s a subtle way to get Jason to divulge more information about his future. What their lives are like in five, short years. Dick and Bruce had been mending things, but it was all so fragile. Like all it could take is one bad argument, or one little statement said out of anger, and whatever they have would collapse back into nothing.

It’s not like Dick doesn’t want to fix things between them. He’s trying. He’s in Gotham more often. He patrols with Bruce more nights. They can get through meals without scathing comments and hurtful words now. Progress. It’s progress. Dick doesn’t want to see it all undone.

But…something about Jason.

“No. Bruce didn’t teach me.”

Something about Jason twists Dick’s chest in a million different directions. “Learned it yourself?” he tries, blocking a punch to his side.

Jason grunts, a flash of green passing over his eyes. “Something like that.”

Dick decides to just go for it. “Were your eyes always that color green?”

A kick to his stomach. Square, hard, and precise. Dick stumbles back a little, digging his heel into the mat to spring out of the way when Jason powers his elbow where he was standing a second ago.

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to, Dick,” Jason says with a gravity that makes Dick bite his cheek before his next invasive question bubbles up.

“It’s like a puzzle,” he says, noticing how Jason leaves his left side unattended. Bingo. “I’m just trying to get a vague picture of the future. Nothing extreme.” He feigns right, turning left at the last second and manages to land a couple of blows to his open side. “You know, the sanctity of the timeline and stuff.”

From across the mat, Jason scowls, rubbing his left side. “Why are you even here?”

“What do you mean?”

“You and Bruce could barely stand each other.” He tilts his head, straightening from his sparring stance. “Shouldn’t you be in, I don’t know, Blud? With your Titans?”

Dick sighs, stepping off the mat and reaching for two water bottles. “I usually am,” he says, flipping a bottle in his hand. “But…Bruce and I, we’re working on it. For…for you, actually.” He offers Jason one of the bottles that he takes. He smiles at him a little. “Like I said, I didn’t treat you fairly. I wanted to change that.”

Dick doesn’t regret many things he does. He’s not that kind of person. But if he had to have a moment he’s not proud of, it’s those early days with Jason. The ugly churn of jealousy in his gut, the frowns to the new kid (who looked exactly fucking like him at that age – tiny, black hair, blue-eyed), treating the boy who was just as lost as Dick was when he first put on the Robin costume, if not more, like a piece of furniture Dick could just walk around.

He hated that he did that to Jason. But he learned. He grew. He was an older brother, and he was going to be the family Jason needs in his life. After all, they had all the time in the world to grow in that relationship.

Jason doesn’t look him in his eyes as he plays with the bottle cap. “You’re going off-world this week,” he says eventually, softly. “With the Titans.”

Dick nods, knowing that he’s got a responsibility to bring his team home safely from their mission. It’s a big mission, one that makes him a little nervous, but for the first time in a long time, he had Bruce’s blessing for it.

He didn’t have Jason’s.

“You don’t want me to go,” Dick says, remembering fifteen-year-old Jason looking up from his Chinese takeout in Dick’s apartment in Bludhaven, eyes big and wide when Dick told him about his off-world mission.

You’re leaving the planet? He had screeched around a mouthful of orange chicken. Bruce is just gonna let you go?

Dick had stabbed his fork into a steamed dumpling and nodded. He’s on board. He even promised me that he wouldn’t send Clark as backup.

So, you’re just gonna leave me here with him? Jason had paused, pulled out some impressive puppy-wide eyes and a pout, and said, you’re gonna leave me like my parents! Like everyone else in my life, you dick!

Dick had laughed and ruffled his hair. Nope, you used that this morning to eat my waffles. You’ve used your Orphan Card for the day already.

Jason had snapped his fingers, scowling. Dang it.

“Don’t go.”

Dick blinks. “Huh?”

“I mean—” Jason shrugs and drags a hand down his face. “I mean…try to—I think you should return sooner than you’re planning to come back.”

Dick lifts a brow. “Why would I do that?”

“Bruce is…” he trails off for a moment, again looking to an empty spot on the second floor. “Well, Bruce and Alfred. They’re both going to need you.”

Again, something cold and cruel creeps along Dick’s ribs. “Is this…does this have something to do with that thing that happens later this week?” he tries.

Jason swallows hard, staring hard at the ground. He nods wordlessly.

Dick’s heart stutters a beat. What happens to them in a week? For all his detective skills, he can’t figure it out. Not with all the broken pieces of the puzzle Jason half-feeds him, half acknowledges vaguely. It’ll be intense. It’ll be hard. Dick knows that much, but how can he brace himself? How can he make sure Jason is okay through it all? Whatever it is.

“I’m going to…I’m going to shower or something,” Jason says, still not looking up at Dick. He turns to leave a stunned Dick, but not before saying, “If it means anything, you and Bruce make up.”

Jason leaves and Dick can’t decipher if that is a good thing or not.

Chapter Text

You’ll be just fine. I need you to know that and believe it in the depths of your heart. Yeah, we mess up. We disobey an order and it’ll cost us everything, but you get so damn lucky. You get it? Lucky. You’ll be okay.

Besides, we grow up to be way cooler and we can do so many sick tricks. It’s not all too bad, alright?

So, here’s the deal. I don’t know what those shitheads told you, but don’t worry about who we become. It’s more or less justifiable to us. There’s a cause you will believe in, and you’ll do it because it’s what Gotham deserves.

There will be fights. Nasty ones. Sorry about that. You win some, lose others, but you have a home. You will always have a home even if it takes those fights for you to realize it. I hope you realize it a little sooner than I did.

You have a home to come to. You have a family that loves you. Believe it. Hold onto that. It’s what gets you through.

2022

Jason’s room doesn’t really change from when he last used it.

The posters are still up, his clothes are all his from high school, even his book collection has not changed very much. His backpack is slung over the back of his chair, his homework from Mrs. Novak’s class sits, already done. Even his handwriting is his high-school’s self’s scrawl.

It’s a little unsettling. It’s like he was in this room for one night and then disappeared for years, and no one touched anything in here.

Jason feels like he blipped out of existence for five years and he’s returned now, but the whole world moved on except this one room. He’s lying on his bed, staring at the glow in the dark stars on his ceiling, ignoring that he did that homework two days ago. Even those managed to be stuck up there after all this time. He can still make out the constellations he liked to trace on sleepless nights.

Not a single star fell.

Not a single one added.

There’s a knock on his door and Jason sits up as it creaks open. Tim pops his head in. “Hey,” he greets. Jason squints in the hallway light. Tim’s wearing his uniform sans domino mask, the cape clinging to his shoulders. A glance at the clock beside his bed tells him it’s nearly two in the morning. “Can’t sleep?”

Jason shakes his head. “Not really.”

“Do you want to come on patrol with me and Steph?”

Jason perks up. “Really? You’ll let me come?”

Tim smiles at him. “Yeah. We won’t tell Bruce.”

Jason’s sliding out of bed when another thought hits him. “Wait, am I going be, like, third-wheeling you guys? Because that’s awkward. I did it enough with Dick and Babs back then, I don’t want to do it again.”

Tim stammers while Jason grabs his uniform that he had folded up on his desk. “I…um…wow, sorry, that was—” He takes in a breath and Jason shoots him a wicked grin, thoroughly enjoying his embarrassment. “We used to date. We broke up,” Tim tells him on the way to the Cave.

Jason nods knowingly. “Yeah, she’s way too good for you.” He ducks Tim’s swatting hands and hurries to get dressed, hearing Stephanie tell Tim, he’s right, I’m way too good for you.

 Being Robin comes easily to him, and it’s one of the simple constants he finds since he was spat five years into the future. Swinging through Gotham is exactly the same and Jason whoops as he flies past, a flash of red and purple following right behind him. Gotham lights up like it’s Christmas every night, a city of neon, spires, and the occasional blimp that treks slowly across the spiked skyline. Jason’s glad not very much else has changed outside of the manor.

“Did you see that?” He nearly shouts when they all come to a halt on top of a roof. “That guy was all like, what, Bats got a new punk? and I was all, like, ba-bam! Who’s the punk now, asshat, and it was so awesome!”

“Hell yeah!” Steph cheers, holding up her hand for a high-five. “You totally kicked his sorry ass!”

It was a real easy corner store robber that they just stopped. So easy that Jason was pretty sure that Tim and Stephanie let him mostly handle it on his own. It didn’t matter very much to him. He’s just glad he can fight bad guys again without—

He pauses. Without what? Without who?

Without Bruce to monitor his every move under a hyper-critical eye? Without Batman to point out all his flaws and gloss over his victories? Is that what Jason wants? To dole out justice on his terms without the approval of Bruce?

“Little you is not as much as an asshole as I thought,” Stephanie laughs while Tim fiddles with their radio, listening for wherever else they may be needed.

Jason comes over from where he was balancing on the ledge of the roof. “Can I ask you something?” he whispers so only Stephanie can hear.

“Yeah, duh,” she says easily, and Jason is immediately thinking about his life with an older sister in it. It’s a nice thought, and Steph…older or younger, sister or just a friend of the family, she’s really fun to be around. “You can ask me anything, little guy,” she says, stretching out her shoulders.

Jason takes in a deep breath, glancing over at Tim who was still twisting the knobs of their little radio, searching for any signs of help. Stephanie’s really cool to be around mostly because she indulged Jason in all his curiosity. So far, it’s been questions with no real weight to them.

Why does your accent sound so familiar? He’d asked earlier that night.

You’re never going to believe me, kid, but I’m from the Narrows, too. Crime Alley, the Narrows, that whole area becomes our section on patrol night.

Later on, he’d asked about Cass. Can Cass…communicate?

Steph’s teasing had ceased and when she spoke, she spoke with pride and care, and it made Jason feel just as impressed. She wasn’t really taught how to…talk while she was growing up. We’re working on it now, but she’s doing great. She’s fantastic, really. You’ll want no one else to have your back.

Steph is fun. Steph answers his questions. So, he asks one more.

“Why does Tim get all wiggy when I ask him about the suit in the glass case?”

And…just like that, Stephanie gets all wiggy too.

“Uh, well…you see…” she stammers, rubbing the back of her head. “I, um, I don’t actually live at the manor, so I don’t, uh, I don’t know why the Bats do the things they…do.”

Jason crosses his arms, not impressed. “I know when you’re lying.”

Steph scowls at him, and that is a true reaction at least. “You’re, like, seven. How could you possibly know if I was lying?”

“I’m fifteen. And you’re a shitty liar.”

“Am not!”

“Then tell me the truth!”

“Uh…” Steph trails off again, looking at everything other than Jason. She glances over at Tim, the desperation to get his divided attention plain and clear on her face. She finally blows out a sigh, muttering something about how it’s not fair. “Alright, listen, you twerp, I wasn’t lying earlier. I don’t live at the manor. But that just means that it’s not my place to tell you certain things.”

“I just want to—”

“Uh-huh,” Steph interrupts, pressing a finger into Jason’s lips. “Listen to me. I’m not family. Not like you, or Tim, or Cass, or any of the others.” Jason detects a little ache there, but it’s quickly washed over with rigid determination. “They had some…things to work out as a family. You included. This is one of those things.”

“The suit in the case?” Jason questions.

Steph bites her lip for a short pause. “Yeah,” she eventually sighs. “Yeah, that’s…it’s something the family has to work out. Or…did work out. I don’t know, things get complicated really fast.”

Jason considers, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “Is it a…bad thing?”

Steph freezes up. “A bad thing?”

“Yeah. Like, was it…I don’t know…” Jason hesitates, kicking a loose rock on the roof. “Did I do something? Does it get complicated because of me?”

Stephanie is fun to be around. She answers his questions unapologetically. She answers once more.

“Yes, Jason. It’s because of you.”

*

Damian is arriving to the steps of the manor with Titus in tow, just as a sleek Range Rover pulls up to the curve, around the fountain, and in front of the stairs. He lets Titus inside the house before turning back around to greet his family.

“Dami!” Grayson calls first, stumbling out of the car, the remnants of sleep clinging to him like the rising sun melting to the horizon. He’s still blinking blearily when he scoops up Damian into a bone crushing hug, swinging side to side with him, mumbling something like I’ve missed you so much, little D!

Ridiculous. It’s been two days since they last saw each other. Though, Damian knows he does this and much more when Grayson merely steps out to purchase groceries from time to time. It’s just who Richard is, and Damian has long since begrudgingly accepted it.

“Release me at once, you overgrown octopus.” He drives a shoulder up into Richard’s chest and finally breaks away. “Was the journey beneficial?” he questions.

Richard groans, half for the theatrics and half from the real exhaustion he emits. “You can read all about it in the report. That I wrote on the way up here, by the way. You don’t know how many times I got close to getting motion sickness, Dames. I’ve never felt so miserable.”

“You could have waited until you came back,” Damian points out.

Richard shrugs with a sleepy smile. “I wanted to check up on you guys first. And then sleep for two days. And then, I’d make time to write the report.” He sets his fists on his hips and examines the exterior of the manor. “Well, at least the place is still standing. That’s a good sign, right?”

Damian thinks about their newest visitor, hopefully fast asleep in his room right about now. For all his training and planning, he really doesn’t know what to expect when Father sees Todd from years ago. He can’t predict either of their reactions. It makes him both anxious and curious. What was Father like before Todd’s demise and return? Grayson’s stories always made him sound much lighter, care-free, and…happier, Damian supposes. Happier.

“I will help Father with the bags,” Damian offers, blinking out of his incoming daze. “Pennyworth wants all of us for breakfast this morning.”

Not entirely true. Pennyworth always appreciates a full table in the mornings, but he shouldn’t be expecting one today. Certainly not one with Father and a fifteen-year-old Todd in the same room at the same time. But Damian can’t keep Todd a hidden secret for days, and he knows the sooner he gets the two acquainted, past whatever initial reactions they may have, the following days will pass on accordingly.

Richard strokes a hand through his hair with a wink. “Bet I’ll beat Tim downstairs?”

Damian swats him away and begins descending the stairs to the parked car below. “Drake would sleep through an asteroid impact.” It’s not an entire exaggeration.

Richard disappears inside with his laugh ringing out across the front lawn. “Father,” Damian says, coming to the back of the car.

“Damian,” Father greets, and Damian can appreciate the forced smile on his lips. “Were you good these last two days?”

“That is the least of your worries.” Damian slings a bag over his shoulder and lets Father get the final duffle bag from the trunk. “Everyone is alive and well,” he reports when he gets a strange side-glance. “As you can see, the mansion is also intact. I have been more than good. Pennyworth is expecting all of us for breakfast,” he slips in casually.

“I’ll make sure to stop by to say hello, but I have to catch up on Gotham’s cases,” Father says, holding the front door open to let Damian haul his bag in.

“You can’t.”

“Hm?”

Damian feels his eyes boring into his back as he trudges further into the manor, searching for any sign that Todd may be awake. He, Red Robin, and Spoiler returned a few hours ago from patrol, surely, he must still be in bed? “It’s…it’s for you and Grayson. We have a full house today. Pennyworth wanted everyone at the table for once.”

Father’s eyes widen by just a fraction. “Jason? He stayed the night?” he asks, and Damian almost drops the whole act from just the sound of hope in his father’s voice. He rarely ever hears it. It makes him sound young. Happy.

Damian presses his lips into a thin line and straightens. “Yes.” Something like that.

“Oh, well – is he – where is he?” Father walks side by side with him now, scanning the rooms as they pass for any sign of the boy in question.

Damian walks a little faster to Father’s bedroom. “Asleep. He was on patrol with Drake and Brown in the early morning.”

“He was on patrol with Tim?” A pause. Damian swings open the bedroom door. “Is…Tim okay?”

Damian drops the bags with a heavy thud and whirls around. “Will you just—” he takes in a deep breath when Father watches him with a puzzled look. Maybe he should have just told them.

Welcome back from your trip. Todd is fifteen years old again and he hasn’t died. He’s waiting for you in the kitchen.

“Just…come downstairs when you are ready,” Damian says, nearly stomping out.

“Wait—”

“What.” Why does no one in this house follow simple directions?

“Why do I get the feeling that something’s happened?” Father lifts a brow.

Damian resists the urge to scoff. He ignores the question entirely. “It will take me upwards of twenty minutes to drag Drake out of bed. Be downstairs by then,” he instructs before spinning on his heel and leaving Father to watch him with even more confusion.

He goes to Drake’s room first. The boy doesn’t sleep at reasonable hours, but when he does, Drake is known to sleep through any disturbance. Damian envies that about him, but he’d never admit it aloud.

“Drake.” He pokes the pile of blankets. His room is a travesty. Damian hates being in here. Books piled in the corners, blankets strewn across the floor, folders of cases and his schoolwork all in one giant stack on his desk which looks like a small twister rampaged across.

Drake makes some guttural sound, still unaware of the world.

“Get up. And clean your room occasionally or I will light it on fire.” Damian sniffs. “It deserves to be burned to the ground.”

Drake’s hand creeps out of the layers of blankets and falls directly into Damian’s face. “’et out ‘f my room,” he mumbles, pointing limply to his door with his eyes still sealed shut. Damian has half a mind to push him off the bed.

“Father and Grayson have returned,” Damian grounds out, whacking his arm away. “They do not know about Todd yet. Since this is your fault in the beginning, you need to be there to alleviate…certain reactions.”

Drake groans, muffled. “Just kill me now,” he says, prying his eyes open.

“If you are not downstairs in twenty minutes, I will promise you a swift death.”

Drake scowls, pressing his fists into his eyes. “Get out of my room, Dames.”

Satisfied, Damian turns to leave his room, but not before flicking Drake’s forehead for the nickname. Next, he makes his way to Todd’s room. He hasn’t gone down this way very often. Just a couple of times when he had first moved in, a couple years ago. He hadn’t known what was down the hall and curiosity had gotten the better of him.

When Father found him later, while he was in the closet flipping through a school yearbook, he had scolded Damian. Made him promise to never go back in there and essentially warded off the whole hall. Damian, unwilling to entertain the threat of being sent back to the League, obeyed and stayed away.

There’s a strange sense of déjà vu when he stands in front of Todd’s door.

One more moment of hesitation, and Damian knocks twice before opening. “Todd,” he says as he enters. His room is much nicer. Organized and neat, if a little dusty, but at least Damian can walk to the bed without stepping on something or the other. “Wake up.”

“I’m awake,” a hoarse voice says, and when Todd’s head shuffles up out of his nest of blankets, Damian catches red rimmed eyes and a puffy face. Was Todd…crying? It’s a reset for Damian. Todd of his time barely shows any emotion save for either annoyance or anger. To see him, at any age, to cry into his pillow in the early morning? This is uncharted territory.

All thoughts flee Damian’s mind instantly, spearheading on an image from years ago, back on Nanda Parbat. A small boy, bruised, red, dazed. Lost. Following Mother around, hand in hand. Every once in a while, Damian remembers, in moments of faded memories, he sees that boy, a million miles away from his own body, with red eyes. A quivering lip.

The next time Damian had seen him, he was bigger. Conscious. And angry. He’d never seen the red eyes ever again.

“Are you…okay?” he cringes, hearing himself. It’s what Grayson did to check up on his brothers. It works for him, Damian figured it’d have the same effect if he did it, too.

Todd drags a hand down his face and sniffles. “Yeah,” he says, softly. “I’m okay. Sorry, was I supposed to be up for something?”

Damian blinks. “I came to get you for breakfast,” he tells him. A pause. “Father and Grayson have returned as well. They will be downstairs shortly.”

Todd gets up to his elbows. “Bruce and Dick are here? Do they…do they know?”

“Not yet.” Damian has no idea where the softer tone is coming from, but at least Todd is starting to look like his normal self. Perhaps Grayson did know how to be effectively comforting.

For a moment, neither of them say anything. Damian thinks of a way to leave that isn’t silently walking away. He can make an excuse to find one of his pets, or—

“I want to go home,” Todd says eventually, tugging his knees close to his chest. He rests his chin on top of his legs and stares hard at the wall in front of him. “Five years ago, I mean.”

Damian should leave. He isn’t equipped to handle this. He did what he came here to do so he should just go.“Father will help you,” he says instead. “Once he knows.”

“What if he’s still mad at me? Even after five years?” He looks up at Damian with wide eyes. “He—you’re Robin now. What if…”

Damian hears the rest of the unsaid sentence. What if he likes you more than me.

Which – is utterly stupid. If only Todd knew the lengths Father went to to keep him as close as possible now. If anything, judging by the emotional investment and the toll, Todd would have been Father’s favorite.

He squares his shoulders. “Enough of your wallowing,” he snaps. “You are expected at the table. Be there.” He leaves him alone on the bed, and heads over to the door, tired of playing mediator of this whole family. He hovers at the entrance, casting a glance back behind him.

It’s a sad sight. He can’t deny it. Todd scrubbing his face, dull and muted. He hasn’t died yet, but Damian feels like this is all one, giant prelude to that. The gloom, despair, the worry and anxiety that followed for years. All right here. All on this bed.

“He is not mad at you,” Damian says before he leaves. “He never was.”

Todd’s shoulders drop in relief just by a fraction, but it’s enough. Damian leaves.

*

Dick is unable to help himself when Damian finally crawls into his seat at the table, beside him and Bruce on his other side. He beams and ruffles the kid’s hair, happy to see him again. It had only been two days, but after all that’s happened, Dick would treasure every single second with him. Even if that means Damian viciously swats his hands out of his hair.

He takes a look around the table as Bruce gets settled with his paper and coffee. Damian sits stiffly, but when does he not? Tim’s bouncing his knee, picking at his fingers, his own coffee ignored. Cass, who is usually an early riser and enjoys mornings, has her head propped on a fist, idly tracing the rim of her glass of juice.

And then is he aware of the tension.

He clears his throat, popping a few berries into his mouth. “You all look worse for wear,” he says conversationally. “Patrol was that bad last night?”

“Patrol was fine,” Damian says when no one else bothers.

Alarm bells go off in Dick’s head. Something definitely happened. Something went wrong and he wasn’t here to protect them, and he doesn’t even know what. Dick takes in a deep breath. No. No, they’re all here. Alive. Right in front of him. But still…what had happened?

“O-kay,” he sings. “Anyone want to fill me in on what happened? Why all the long faces?” He gives Bruce a look, internally asking him if he knew.

Bruce sets his coffee down. “Jason spent the night,” he says, and wow, Dick can hear the tones of…what, hope? Excitement? Relief? All of it?

“That’s great!” he exclaims. “Where…where is he?” He hopes Jason hadn’t left yet. It’s entirely in the realm of possibility that Jason hated his one-night stay and booked it at first light.

“He should be joining us shortly,” Damian supplies. “He was awake when I went to retrieve him.”

Dick pauses for a second. “He…slept in his old room?”

Damian keeps his gaze on his food but nods once.

Weird. Super weird. Jason would never. Too many bad memories, too many reminders of everything that was. It’s a miracle enough that he stayed in the manor for a whole night. In his old room? As much as Dick wants to see it as progress and healing, it’s starting to sound a little superficial.

“Drake has something to tell you,” Damian says suddenly when silence battles tension.

Dick glances over at Tim, who is fixing Damian with a stare to melt icecaps.

The glare moves to Cass when she perks up and says, “Yes, Tim will tell you.”

Dick turns to Tim, aware that he’s probably feeling overwhelmed with all the attention on him, but clearly, he knows something that Dick doesn’t. So, he waits patiently for…whatever this is.

“So, uh…” Tim begins, playing with his napkin. “Do you remember that cube we took back after the whole thing with aliens a few days ago?”

Dick nods, recalling that they took it to the Cave for safekeeping. He and Bruce had left shortly after to meet up with some other Leaguers to deal with the aftermath and investigation.

“Yeah, so.” Tim clears his throat. “It’s a funny story, really.”

“It’s not,” Damian interjects.

“Turns out,” Tim continues without missing a beat, “it’s a time machine.”

Bruce frowns. Dick’s eyes widen. “A time machine,” he repeats.

“Yeah,” Tim says, slowly. “And, uh, I might have—”

“He did,” Damian cuts in again. Dick gives him a sharp look and Damian shrugs.

“I might have, uh, tried to investigate it on my own? And…and Jason was there, and he doesn’t know how to handle delicate technology, and I told him to not touch it, but of course, he did, and basically, our Jason got sent back five years in time and swapped places with the Jason of five years ago.” Rapid fire information from Tim, and Dick’s scrambling to connect the dots.

Several beats of silence pass before his words finally register in Dick’s head.

“What?” He’s going to explode because – what? “So…so, let me just…” He rubs at his face, dragging a hand through his hair. “So…” Words. He can’t find the words. What are you even supposed to say? “What?”

Bruce watches them all silently. Dick’s too confused to read into his micro expressions.

Tim sighs, setting his napkin down. “Our Jason – Red Hood – is currently in 2017. The Jason that spent the night? Fifteen-year-old Jason from 2017.”

“2017,” Bruce mumbles in his attempt of digesting what they’d just heard. “Fifteen-years-old.” His face darkens, and his frown grows impossibly deeper.

It hits Dick with a force of a train.

“Is this before he dies,” he whispers, rage uncontrolled, emotions uncontrolled. He’s gripping the edge of the table. His knuckles are white. His voice is shaky. Calm down, Dick. Breathe. Pull yourself together. Think.

His brain spits out instructions, but he focuses on the breathy, “yes,” that comes from Tim, across the table. “He doesn’t know, so don’t…try not to…you know.” He gestures with his hands, but Dick gets it. God, Dick gets it.

“It’s this week,” he says, the date seared into his brain like a branding. April 27^th. “He—it happens this week.”

Tim nods slowly. “We, um, we need to figure out a way to get him back to his time before..." he trails off.

“We can’t,” Dick says instantly. They have a chance of saving him this time, a chance to prevent all those horrible things from happening to Jason in the first place. No way in hell is he going to let go of an opportunity like that. “There’s got to be something. Anything.”

“Dick, it’s time travel. We mess with things of the past, and our whole future becomes an unpredictable mess,” Tim explains. “I know it sucks. I’ve already tried to figure something out, but there’s nothing. There’s nothing we can do.”

“Bullshit.” Dick has no idea where the anger is coming from. What Tim is saying makes perfect sense, but…how do they send Jason back to die? How is he supposed to live on like that? He turns to Bruce. “Will you say something? What are we supposed to do?”

Bruce looks lost. That’s scary on its own, but it’s much harder to shake off the unsettling feeling this time. “Where is he?” he asks quietly. Like he’s lost and doesn’t know what to do.

Dick’s going to lose his damned mind.

“Masters and Miss,” Alfred announces, appearing in the doorway so suddenly that Dick startles for a second. He stands tall, and at his side, landing just below his chest, hiding behind Alfred’s wiry frame is…oh, Jesus. “Master Jason has arrived for breakfast,” Alfred says and steps to the side so Jason is standing there. In the doorway. From five years ago. Jason without the white stripe in his hair. Jason who could probably fit on Dick’s shoulders again. Jason without the flash of green in his eyes.

Dick stills. Holds his breath. Can he breathe again? No clue.

“Hey, old man.” His voice. Dick hasn’t heard it in years. “I mean – older man.”

Bruce goes pale, looking like he’s seeing a ghost. In a way, maybe he is. Jason’s blinding smile is dimming. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Dick moves, every older sibling instinct running on override.

“Jason,” he breathes, dropping to a crouch when he gets to him. He’s half aware that his heart is still battering against his chest.

“Hi, Dickie,” Jason smiles a little more again. “You still wear the Discowing suit?”

Dick stifles a sob, forces himself to laugh, to blink away the tears. “No, Little Wing,” he says, voice raspy, pulling Jason into a tight, tight, hug. “The new suit is way cooler.”

The vile part of his brain tells him that this is the kind of hug he should have given Jason all that time ago.

The sensible part of him tells him that his Jason needs this, too. A big hug. On the floor, on their knees, tears threatening to burst. One of those hugs.

Dick pulls away before his mind can spew something else that he’s not ready to handle. “Let me take a good look at you,” he says with a light sniffle, holding Jason back at arm’s length. “Wow, you were so tiny and so frickin’ adorable,Jay!”

Jason crinkles his nose. “You are forever embarrassing,” he snips without any real heat. Not that Dick would ever hold that against him.

Dick laughs, entirely unforced. And even when there is a lull in the greetings, lost in taking in Jason’s boyish face, his clear eyes, the toothy grin, Dick stays staring. Watching. Memorizing all that he couldn’t then.

In the end, it’s Alfred who clears his throat. “I’m sure Master Jason is hungry for breakfast,” he says gently.

“Oh! Oh, yeah! Come on, I’ve got an empty spot next to me.” Dick brings him over to the table, and for once in his life, this table has never looked so perfect. So whole. He can almost ignore Bruce’s battering gaze.

Almost.

“B, I –” Jason begins and stops. He takes in a deep breath and Dick fixes Bruce with a glare as if to say I dare you to say something out of pocket to him. “I’m sorry for what happened with Filipe. I…I know that happened, like, years ago for you, but I just – I’m sorry. You trusted me and I—”

“Jason,” Bruce says, gruff and low. Dick spots something like wetness on his lashes.

Jason snaps his mouth shut and stares at his plate. Dick wants to pull him into that hug again, if only to shield him.

“Jason, you’re here.”

Jason blinks like he wasn’t expecting that reaction. “I…um, yeah. Yeah, I’m here.”

Bruce stands up. Dick watches closely. “Can I – can I give you a hug?” he asks, and Dick nearly chokes on the gentleness in his voice.

Jason stares wide-eyed at him. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, always. You…you never asked before…”

“New habit,” Bruce chokes out before enveloping Jason in his arms, coming down to his knees. Dick starts feeling sentimental again and turns his attention to his brothers and Cass across the table

“Do you have a plan?”

“Working on it,” Tim answers, soft eyes on Bruce stroking Jason’s hair carefully. Like he’s not real and Bruce is convincing himself that he is. Dick feels that way, too. It just feels all…surreal. Too hopeful. “The idea is to get it to function again with the same setting, so it would just be a clean switch back, like the first time.”

“Anything…” Dick hates asking, but he does anyway. “Anything I can do to help?”

Tim tears his focus away from the two and brings it to Dick. “Yeah. I’ll take any pointers on portals.”

Dick tilts his head. “So would I,” he agrees and mentally makes a note to ask around. He sighs heavily. “There really isn’t…anything else we can do?” he asks lowly.

Tim shakes his head sadly. “No. We can’t predict a new future if we do change the outcome.”

Dick shuts his eyes, rubbing his temples.

“No magic,” Cass adds helpfully, dispelling all thoughts of bothering Zee.

Dick nods. Forces a smile. He laughs with the family as breakfast proceeds, ruffles Jason’s hair like he does Damian’s, his gut coils tighter and tighter, but Dick has always been a showman first. If this is his second chance, he will put on the greatest show for his Little Wing.

He’ll make it all worth it.

*

Bruce barely touches his food.

Jason. Alive and well, and whole.

The last time Bruce saw this Jason was…he swallows. It was when he pulled his so small (was he always that tiny?) body out of the rubble of the warehouse. Blood streaking through the dust, bones poking through skin, the yellow of his cape tattered, ripped apart, just like the owner.

Bruce barely touches his food.

He won’t be able to keep it down. That is the face of the child who will have to face a horrifying death in a few days, and even then, he won’t find peace. A child who will grow up to think that he was always alone, unloved, that no one would ever come for him. A child who will come back…different. Angry. Justifiably angry.

And it’s all Bruce’s own fault.

Part of him wishes that he was face to face with a younger Bruce instead. He’d know what to say to him. But with Jason…there was a time when he knew what to say. A time when sticky summer nights to watch the stars were a routine event. A time when piano recitals took up lazy Sunday afternoons. A time when Bruce would come home from work to find Jason sleeping in a couch, a book sprawled out over his face and they’d both wake up in a bed come morning.

Things started to get muddy not too long after that. One too many punches here, a few more runaway incidents there, the goddam Garzonas case.

Yes, Bruce knows exactly what to tell his younger self.

He’d tell him to see Jason as what he has always been. His bright, brilliant, incredible son. To understand that Jason was touched by Misery herself, but he had the grace to weather each and every encounter with pride, with courage, and a promise of hope. Over and over again, even when he never once deserved it, he will continue to walk with his head held high, defiance in his eyes, a tongue to match his cleverness.

Oh, his brave, brave son.

Jason fought for life. Other’s and his own. He will fight his way out of the stupid grave, he’ll fight his way through the League of Shadows, and he comes back to Gotham, searching for a fight that Bruce never should have retaliated in. He should have let Jason throw the punches and he should have stood still and taken them.

It aches in his heart and in his chest. Aches with a frustrating longing and acceptance that does little to release the pressure. He knows what must happen. He knows how playing with time only brings disaster. He knows that Jason will have to die, and they will have to dance all over again. He knows.

But that won’t stop Bruce from making as many amends as he possible can before their time runs out.

Starting now. In the Cave (Tim whispered to him that they covered the glass case up and Bruce was eternally grateful that he skipped breakfast at that), sitting at his computer, reading over the files from the last two days. Cass took some newer ones over to Barbara, and the others are scattered around in the Cave. Jason sits in his lap, some book in his hands. And they’re just…talking. Like they used to. Bruce doesn’t know the last time he and Jason had a conversation that didn’t feel like either of them were walking on needles.

“So, you never get Selina, is what I’m understanding,” Jason is saying.

Bruce coughs into his fist. “It’s…not that simple.”

“B, man, hey, it’s okay to be single,” Jason says flipping a page in his book. “From the looks of it, I don’t have a girl yet either.”

Bruce can’t stop the smile tugging on his lips. “You keep yourself busy. And since when were you allowed to date?”

Jason scoffs. “Don’t give me that. Dick kissed a girl when he was thirteen.”

“Hey!” Dick calls from across the cave where he was sparring with Damian. “We have an actual thirteen-year-old with us now! Watch it!”

Damian calls him useless and distracted before kicking his legs out from beneath him. Bruce holds back a snort before a wave of that ache comes swelling up again. Temporary, he reminds himself. This is all temporary. Jason in his lap, once again small enough to fit there, without the fights, without the painful reminders of Bruce’s failures, it’s all so bleakly temporary.

He blinks, realizing that he hadn’t really been reading the file in front of him. He’s about to go back to the top of the paper to re-read when the batcomputer flashes. Bruce straightens reading the alert. Message for Red Robin.

Jason laughs reading the screen with him. “Hey, Mr. Burger Chain!” He calls for Tim, tinkering away with the cube on the other side of the Cave. “You’ve got fan mail.”

Tim comes over, confusion on his face as he wipes his hands down on a rag. “Who sends me mail while I’m at the Cave?” he wonders aloud, signing into his account. Bruce pushes back from the table, a hand keeping Jason steady on his legs, and lets Tim get the message open. A few clicks later, and a screen pops up, a short message written out.

“Hey, RR, this is 2022 Jason,” Tim reads before the realization dawns on him. “Oh! They can send messages to the future! This is…” he scuttles around, reaching for a tablet and a notebook at once, “this is brilliant. Okay, okay, so…” Tim strains his neck up and keeps reading. Bruce follows along to his voice, aware at Dick and Damian coming over to read it themselves.

This was Dick’s idea. I forgot we watched Back to the Future like a couple weeks ago. Anyway, if this works, you should know that things are stable on my end. Alfred has so much hair, man, it’s insane. Bruce also smiles way more. It’s kind of weird. Dick’s still…Dick. A dick. Whatever. He’s stoked that he dates Kori later. Anyway, no magic, and obviously no alien tech that can send me back so I’m pretty much fucked.

Bruce holds himself back from pressing his palms into Jason’s ears at the profanity, but it’s nothing he hasn’t heard before. Or…or said before, either, Bruce supposes.

You gotta get a portal, or a wormhole, or something opened on your side. Kinda like a door. You have to knock, and we can receive the signal to open it on our end. Dick said he’d ask around the Titans for advice and Bruce thinks he has some Wayne Tech he can mess around with to see if we can get it open. I’ll update you if something sticks.

I’m just going to say this next thing – no point in easing you into this: we have to switch back before I die by the end of the week.

Tim stops reading.

 The air gets sucked dry out of the Cave, every single breathing thing coming to a slamming stop mid-motion. The world might have also stopped spinning for a moment. Bruce doesn’t know. He doesn’t think. He stiffens. Jason flinches on his lap. Bruce starts shaking.

In the end, it’s Dick who lightly shoulders Tim out of the way to close the message box on the screen. Bruce watches his oldest suck in a deep breath before turning around with a forced smile. “Why don’t I take you and the others out for ice-cream, Little Wing?”

The offer is so deflated. He barely hid the distress and with the way Dick’s shoulders slump forward, it’s painfully evident that the damage had already been done.

Jason’s voice is small. Scratchy. Breathy. “What,” he begins, gulping, fingers getting caught in Bruce’s shirt, “what happens by the end of the week?”

Bruce feels like everything is unraveling right in his hands and there’s nothing he can do to keep it all together. Nothing.

Damian stares at the ground, Tim runs a hand through his hair, Dick takes a step forward and Bruce…Bruce grips the armrests of his chair until his knuckles go white.

“Jason…” Dick tries again.

And then the weight on Bruce’s lap is gone, cold air replacing it immediately. “Jason, wait!” Dick calls, but Jason is sprinting up the ramp to the second floor. Bruce watches him run across, his feet hitting the metal in light clangs that disturb the stillness of the Cave. His chest twists.

Twists some more when Jason finds himself in front of a tall structure with a blanket covering the cubical shape. No one moves, no one breathes. Jason rips the blanket off, staggering back a step when he sees his uniform. Blood-stained, tattered, ripped and shredded, burned through enough that it’s clear that the fire touched skin—

Bruce looks away first.

Jason’s breath hitches. And his next breath hitches, too. And then he’s hiccupping, choking, and Bruce should go to him. But he stares long and hard at his hands. In a couple years, past Bruce will have to choose between the Joker and his son and Bruce can only beg whatever is listening that he sets it all right this time.

Whatever right is.

He doesn’t know. Still, he doesn’t know. All he can grasp is how truly unfair all this is. Why my parents, why me, why us, why, why, why. Why Batman. Why Gotham. Why go toe to toe with Death over and over again for the sake of a city that doesn’t even want to be saved. Why fight for something that will never gift him anything in return.

Because Batman is a gift. Bruce has that much figured. Batman is a gift to him as much as it is a gift for the city. And if he was built on one, single rule – a rule that is so simple in principle – he can’t afford to break it. He just can’t.

But…but then Jason died. And every single primal instinct was on a high like Bruce had never felt before. Each and every emotion that raged and howled was backed with I want Joker’s head on a stick, I want Jason back, I want everything to mean something again, but it won’t, and I want Joker’s fucking head on a stick.

Then he looked at Tim. He looked at Damian. He looked at Dick’s tired face. The faces of what Bruce had left and wondered why they were all still with him. Why would they fight for a city that has killed all of them in one way or another before. Batman is Bruce’s gift. His children are Bruce Wayne’s gift. There’s a line in the sand. Why did they all cross it?

“I…I—” Jason stutters, eyes glued to that horrid plaque at the bottom of the case. That’s something Bruce would tell his younger self. You are angry but you never call your son a soldier.

None of it should have happened the way it did.

“I die.” Jason finally states, hollow, drained, weak. “I…”

Again, it’s Dick who watches it all, stricken, every desire to help, to pull Jason away from all the terrible things written so plainly on his face. “Jay, let us explain,” he says, gently. Desperately. “You don’t stay dead.”

Jason whirls around then, furious, and glares down at them all from the second floor. “I don’t stay dead? Is that supposed to make me feel any better?”

Dick winces. “No. I’m sorry. Can you…please come down so we can…talk about it?”

“What’s there to talk about, Dick?” Hostility in his tone, tears in his throat. He’s reacting. It’s what their Jason does, too, when he reacts to bad news. “I die and none you were going to tell me!”

“The timeline—”

“The timeline?” He stares at them, the shock, the panic, all that fear etched in the way his brows are knitted together, glossy eyes and a wobbly mouth. “I die,” he says again, and Bruce’s heart breaks again, and it’s all happening again. “I…” Jason’s voice cracks.

“Jay—”

Jason spins on his heel and bolts back down the ramp and up into the manor, both hands furiously wiping at his face, his gasps coming in short breaths.

Bruce stays in his seat, frozen, hollowed out, empty.

Damian clicks his tongue, Dick blows out a sigh, and Tim lets out an eloquent “fuck.”

Bruce just shuts his eyes.

Chapter Text

I know we call ourselves the Red Hood. Something about it being an ‘eat shit’ move to the Joker. I like it. Not that it matters – we are the same person. But…I get it. I understand. If you find any sort of comfort from this, know that I think you’re right. You help people and that has always been the end goal, no matter how we get there. None of the others are from Crime Alley. They don’t know what it’s like to wish, so badly, that all that evil is just gone. There’s a kid out there that’s glad you do what you do as the Red Hood.

And…I know that the Joker is still alive. Bruce doesn’t do anything about that, does he? He doesn’t cross that line ever. Not even for us.

This is going to sound absurd, big me, but we’re going to have to let that one go. It’s not fair and we deserved some sort of vengeance, but Dick spent the last hour or so telling me that Joker’s status and our life are two separate things that can’t be compared. And he’s right. Bruce won’t kill the Joker, but it doesn’t stop him from wanting us to come home. He wants us back, regardless of everything we do. Do you get it? He wants us back. Out of his own choice and free will. He wants us to come home. He wants to make sure you stay alive and unhurt.

He wants to be a father to us again.

Please, let him have that chance.

2017

Jason’s list of things he can’t do while he’s in 2017 is getting too long and leaving him with very little that he can actually do. It’s noon now, a couple hours after he left Dick in the Cave to shower. Alfred told him that Big Blue went to ask around about time travel. With Bruce at work for the day and Alfred busy with his own tasks, Jason is left to his own devices.

The itchy sensation has not left him since he spent the night in his old room and he’s sure that staying in the manor for this long isn’t really helping him get any calmer. So, with a note taped to the fridge for Alfred that reads Heading out for the day. Be back for dinner. – Jay, Jason tugs his leather jacket over his shoulders and crosses past Wayne Manor gates.

It’s a little bit of a walk to get out of the neighborhood, down the hill, before the rest of Gotham comes back in full force, lined with a few other mansions and all the land they own.

Jason comes to a slow stop in front of another set of iron wrought gates, the letter D carved into the grey metal. Other mansions including the Drakes.

He shouldn’t. Timeline and everything aside, Jason isn’t sure how he can face the kid he’s going to end up almost killing in a few years. Tim is, what, twelve, now? Younger than Jason when he went on his joyride to Ethiopia. Yeah, Jason can’t bring himself to look Tim in the eye. Not when he can still feel Tim’s rabbit-paced heartbeat thumping wildly beneath his thumbs.

Jason closes his hands into fists inside his pockets and takes in a deep breath. The mansion looks so dreary. Wayne manor looks alive, thanks to Alfred and his rigid upkeep of the grounds. Drake Manor is clean cut, neat, not a single shrub out of place, but…it’s empty. No color, no fountains or statues. And…Jason realizes with a frown, an empty driveway.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he gets a picture of a tiny Timothy Drake, small and wide-eyed, sitting alone in the giant house with nothing but a barely eaten pack of chips and his camera, just waiting for the sun to set so at least he’d have purpose to himself.

Shit. Talk about depressing. Jason sighs again, rubbing a hand down his face. “Goddamn it, Tim. I really need to kick your scrawny ass.”

There’s not much he can do here. He can’t exactly shove Tim, with his dad still alive, into Bruce’s care, much less start fitting out a new Robin suit. That’s a thought that leaves a sour taste in Jason’s mouth, but like everything else, he can’t be mad at something that hasn’t happened yet. In this timeline, at least. He sets his jaw, watching the unmoving house. Jason can’t dump Tim onto Bruce’s radar, but maybe he can get Tim on Alfred’s radar.

It would work. Dick’s not the only one who can’t turn away from someone in need. Alfred is just as guilty, and he’ll never say it, but Alfie’s got the softest spot for children. Jason knows this and has repeatedly used that bit of information to his own advantage.

He makes a promise to return to Drake manor before he leaves. First thing’s first: he needs to find Babs.

It takes him a minute to locate where she could be and it’s an excruciating minute while he tries to work out the timeline. Joker got to her before he got out of the country. Jason remembers being fifteen and holding a massive bouquet of flowers while Bruce spoke with the doctors about getting Barbara whatever technology they’d need to make sure she could even move. He remembers being fifteen and spending weekend afternoons at the hospital while she recovered, bringing his Nintendo to share, or homework to do with her help.

Well, if it isn’t the Boy Wonder, she’d say, dark circles beneath her eyes, the hospital gown too big on her shoulders, but with a teasing smile that Jason could hold onto and tell himself, tell her, that it’ll all be okay.

He counts the months, opting to walk instead of taking a bus. By now, Babs should have been discharged from the hospital. She’s not Oracle yet – Jason figures she takes that up while he’s dead. No hard feelings there. She did what she had to at the time. But all that leaves Jason to conclude that she’s probably working at the library again.

Gotham Library stands just off the center of the university’s campus. The semester must have just started because Jason was surrounded by kids walking around with backpacks and coffees in their hands. Well, not kids. He should be enrolled in college by now, too, if he didn’t spend the last few years training with assassins and becoming a crime boss.

But, hey, if he ever decides to go back to college, he’d have one insane personal statement.

“Hi!” The librarian at the desk greets him as he approaches. “What can I help you with?”

Jason leans over the counter and smiles at the woman. “I’m looking for a Barbara Gordon. Is she around?”

The woman lifts her brows, suspicion on her face. Which, yeah, Jason can understand. A grown man like himself asking about someone who just went through something so traumatic would raise concerns from anybody. “Commissioner Gordon sent me,” Jason adds after a moment.

“Commissioner?”

Shit. Jason mentally slaps himself. Jim wasn’t promoted to Commissioner until later. “Detective,” he amends sheepishly, flashing another smile. “A great man to consider as the Commish, yeah?”

The woman smiles a little at that. “He is a great man. Hang on right here, I’ll let Barbara know someone’s here for her. Can I have a name?”

“Um…” Jason falters for a second. “Jason. Just…it’s Jason.”

The woman nods and disappears to find Babs. It strikes Jason that he doesn’t know how he’s going to face this. He came here to get Oracle on track, leave some morbid and cryptid warnings, and maybe weasel out some Babs-level information about time travel, but…

The Joker paralyzed her. Just some months ago. And it grates against Jason’s heart that neither he nor her got the vengeance they deserved.

Barbara wouldn’t call it vengeance. She was angry and scared – same as Jason – but she didn’t don a helmet and go on a murder spree the second she left the hospital. Just dedicated herself to Oracle.

And what were they without Oracle? Nothing.

“Well, if it isn’t baby James Dean,” Barbara’s voice comes before Jason sees her. “Need more hair gel?”

Jason can’t help but to roll his eyes. Barbara wheels out from behind the desk and comes to a short stop before him, eyes widening. “You…” She blinks twice, mouth hung open. “Jason?” she gasps, hesitantly.

Jason grins. “Hey, Babs. I dropped the baby James Dean look. Crop jackets are all the rage these days.”

Barbara lifts a brow. “They most certainly are not.”

Jason shakes his head, still grinning. “Never mind. I’m here to answer all your pressing questions and then ask some of my own.” He steps aside, letting her wheel through until they make it to the sidewalk beside the library. “I bet you’re wondering how I get to be so big and handsome—”

“Time travel. Obviously,” Babs shoots him an unimpressive glare. “Don’t let it get to your head. I’m still processing.”

“Right.”

“How old are you right now?”

“Twenty. Your Jason and I got switched. He’s over in 2022 while I’m here.”

She blows out a sigh, eyes narrowed in concentration. Jason can practically see the gears whirring around in her head. Getting Oracle started would be a piece of cake with the mind Babs has. “That’s probably why things are more or less stable. Bruce knows about this, I’m guessing?”

“Dick too. You’re believing me much faster than either of them did,” Jason tacks on, mostly out of curiosity.  

“That’s because I know my intel. Your story checks out with the strange readings I’m getting from the Watch Tower.”

Jason’s mouth falls. Maybe he doesn’t need to help Babs get on the Oracle project. “You have access to the Watch Tower’s systems?”

Babs twirls her hair because she fucking can. “What, like it’s hard?”

“Barbara Gordon, you are my hero.”

“Ah, well,” Barbara says with a light shrug and a cheeky smile, “that, paired with a certain Nightwing swinging by with some updates, it wasn’t too hard to piece it together.”

Jason rolls his eyes. Nightwing never knew how to keep his mouth shut, especially around Barbara. It’s costed him more embarrassing moments than he’d like to admit, but Jason remembers laughing at his misery. “Alright, that’s a little less impressive.”

Barbara rubs at her ear in the most dramatic way that leaves Jason scoffing. “Sorry, I thought you said something about having access to the Justice League’s personal satellite not being impressive?”

“Yeah, okay, fine, you win that one. That’s fucking cool and I need you to tell me how you did it later. But first, let’s work on keeping peace between time and space, yeah?”

Babs nods once and stops, turning herself around to face him, all the jokes gone. She watches him with bright green eyes, determined, focused, and if Jason were to be honest, a little scary. “Tell me what you need from me,” she says.

For a moment, Jason falters. Barbara uses that same line on the field during their patrols. As Oracle. Tell me what you need from me. And everyone would chime in, requesting coordinates, backup, some obscure piece of information that Oracle always found herself. It sounds so much like his Barbara that Jason has to blinks a couple times.

Man, he really wants to go home.

“For starters, what do you think of the name Oracle?”

He spends the afternoon with Barbara, hinting at just how important she is to the future and telling her about his time travel situation. Barbara took it all with patience and calculation up until she asked, “How long do we have before things get too unstable?”

Jason had to dig his fingernails into his palms. “The end of the week.”

“Can I ask why?”

Jason shook his head but said, “Whatever is about to happen…it has to happen.”

Barbara had pried his palms open and squeezed his hand gently. She didn’t know – couldn’t have known of Jason’s fiery death in a few more days – but she’s always been more perspective than them all. Always read between the lines. She held his hand all the way back to the library.

“I’ll do what I can,” she says as they begin to depart. “I’ll send whatever I find over to Bruce.”

Jason nods, painfully aware of how shiny her new wheelchair is. How new it is. “Yeah. Yeah, thanks, Barbie.”

Barbara smiles wryly at that, tired features brightening up just a little and Jason feels ache in his chest. A part of him is glad that the Joker is already in Ethiopia because had he been in Gotham now, not much is stopping Jason from hunting that piece of shit down and filling him with bullets.

“Hey. It’s alright,” Barbara says before she disappears back inside. “Whatever it is, you make it. We make it, right? So, head up, Boy Wonder. We’re all going to be okay.”

Jason wipes at his nose. “I should be telling you that, being from the future and everything.”

Barbara shrugs. “Does it make a difference if I’m telling you?”

Jason feels his lips tug upward. “No. No, I guess not.”

“Tell Alfred I said hello.”

And then she’s gone.

Jason swallows hard. Tries to ignore vengeance calling his name in Barbara’s voice.

*

Tim leaves the manor before the sun is fully beneath the horizon. The quiet of his room, and then eventually the silence of the house, got too loud and unnerving and he needed to get out. It always takes him a while to cross through the city to get towards Midtown and the Belfry, so he figures he could walk a little slower tonight. Maybe he’ll catch Batman before his patrol.

And Robin. He hopes to catch Robin again, too. It’s been a couple days without the flash of green and red, and Tim, curious as ever, had started to wonder where the young boy had gone.

When he does get to the Belfry, sitting at the top of the tower with a leg dangling into the busy city streets below, Tim pulls out his camera, the sun gone and the yellow glow of the city blinking prettily in the night.

Gotham is a pretty city, Tim thinks. Hazy, busy, a city of iron wrought beams, gargoyles, clock towers, all silhouetted by city lights. It’s moody, graphic, and no other city in the world is like it, but Tim likes it from a photography point of view.

He lifts his camera, working out the lenses, as he aims it at the sky-rise buildings piercing the clouds across him. With the roofs disappearing into the grey skies, Tim gets a beautiful shot of warm orange lights dotting the windows, fuzzed out from the high fog.

With a small smile, proud of himself, he swings his camera over towards the bridge. Graceful swoops of the bridge center in his view, standing tall and mighty. Cars stuck in the normal traffic merge in and out of lanes, the street lamps casting them all into a dim gold. Tim snaps another picture.

And then twists over to the other side, searching for one of the blimps that sail by on occasion. Instead, he finds a camera-view of a shiny, red helmet.

“Heya, Timbers,” the helmet says.

Tim screams, jerking backwards off the windowsill he was perched on until he lands on the floor of the tower on his elbows. The impact rattles him but he barely gives himself a second to feel the ache in his body because the man in the helmet is inside now.

“No, no, no…” he gasps, scooting backwards on his elbows. “I-I’m sorry, I-I’m probably not allowed up here, I’ll j-just go, I’m sorry, please don’t hurt me,” he babbles, aware he looks like a terrified child right now, but damn everything if he isn’t going to use that to his advantage.

“Woah! Hey, kid, I’m not going to hurt you.” Hood says, fanning his hands out to show that he’s unarmed. Tim can’t help but notice the gun holsters. Empty, which is a huge relief, but that doesn’t mean he’s not carrying something else. “Well…” Hood sets his fists on his hips. “Not yet, at least. Don’t worry about it. I’m not going to hurt you right now.”

“What?” Tim tries to understand but his mind is spinning faster than he can keep up.

“In hindsight, maybe that was the wrong thing to say,” Hood mutters to himself. “Okay, listen. I’m not going to hurt you, Tim.”

“H-how do you know my name?” Tim stammers.

“That’s not important.” Hood waves a dismissive hand. “I got a question for ya.”

Tim blinks rapidly. A question for him? What answers could he possibly have? “Is this about the other night in the Narrows?” he breathes out, shakily, before he can take the words back. Internally, he winces. He was almost caught that night, one of the goons creeping up behind him while Tim tried to get pictures of some of their faces. Robin had saved him that night, but in the midst of running away, Tim had caught some of the goons talking about the infamous Red Hood Gang.

And…well, there was a man in a red helmet standing just a few feet away from him.

He connected some dots.

Hood tilts his head. “What happened in the Narrows?”

Tim swallows, trying to get his dry tongue to move. “They – some bad guys w-were talking about the Red Hood Gang. I-I got them on m-my camera. Their faces, I mean.”

“Oh, yeah?” Hood says, and he almost sounds amused. “Can I see?”

“Um…” Tim backs up even more, all his senses on hyper alert. Does he want to see them as one last laugh before he takes Tim out? Is he looking for a picture of himself? But before he can snatch his camera back, Hood swipes it up and flips through his pictures. “I p-promise I won’t show anyone,” Tim chokes out, his back hitting the wall behind him.

“Jesus, kid,” Hood groans. “The paranoia only gets worse, so do yourself a favor and relax, alright?” He pulls his brown jacket off his chest and steps into the sliver of light. “See? I’m one of the good guys. Tragically.”

Tim has to squint, but he can make out the shape of a bat, colored a blood red, stretched out across his chest. “You…you’re a bat?”

“I don’t like calling myself that, but yeah. Whatever.” He pulls his jacket close again, tossing Tim his camera back.

“But…” Tim racks his brain, trying to figure out what he missed. He knows Batman’s identity, and by extension, Nightwing’s and Robin’s. How did he miss a whole other member? Is he a Wayne, too? Someone else entirely? “Why haven’t I seen you around before?” he asks carefully.

“Oh, what a tiny detective you are!” Hood croons and, somehow, Tim knows that it’s not malicious. It sounds more like…teasing. “I’m new here, and I’m not staying for long.”

“Who are you?”

“That’s a complicated answer.” Hood drops to a squat to get eye-level with Tim. “I’ve still got my question, Timmy.”

Tim presses his lips into a thin line but nods. “O-okay. What do you want to know?”

“What’s the fastest way to make a time travel portal. Say, oh, I don’t know, something to push me five years into the future.”

Tim’s brain pauses for a second. “Time travel? That’s not–”

“Oh, it’s very possible, Baby Bird! You’ll find out soon enough, but for now, I’m in a bit of a pickle and I need an answer.”

Tim shakes his head. He doesn’t know anything about time travel. It’s not scientifically grounded! Not by earth’s standards, anyway. “There’s…it won’t work without alien technology or something way more advanced,” Tim says. “The closest thing that possesses that kind of power is the…um…the Boom Tubes the Justice League uses.”

“Boom Tubes!” Hood nearly cheers. “Tim, you are an evil, little mastermind.”

Tim frowns a little at that. “Evil?”

“Dastardly.” Hood shifts on his feet. “Okay, now I’ve got another question for you, but you have to answer honestly. And I’ll know if you’re lying, so tell the truth.”  He tilts his head again, but this time, Tim thinks it more predatory than curious. He nods quickly. “When are your parents coming back?”

It takes Tim back. He wasn’t expecting that question. “Um…not for another week?” They were supposed to be home a week ago at first, but new developments in their archeological project took them from Egypt to Bolivia, where they were supposed to stay until next week.

“Shit,” Hood swears. “And you’ve been alone this whole time?”

“I’m used to it,” Tim defends.

“Yeah, that’s not a good thing, kid.”

“I’m capable of taking care of myself.”

“I’m sure,” Hood says dryly and it only prickles Tim. “Listen. There’s going to be an elderly gentleman coming to Drake Manor tomorrow, alright? His name is Alfred. I’m sure you know him and Bruce Wayne, huh?”

Tim is careful to not even look at his camera.

“It’s cool, Timmy,” Hood shrugs easily. “Your secret is safe with me.” He stands to his full height with a groan and stretches his back. “Anyway, when Alfred comes over, you are going to let him in. And he’ll insist that you attend lunch with him at Wayne Manor, so you will go, because one, no one says ‘no’ to Alfred, and two, I’m telling you to go.”

Tim doesn’t even know what to say. Who is this man and why is he telling him to intrude Mr. Wayne’s house? “I’m not going to bother them—”

“Trust me, kid, they’re going to want you to stay. You won’t be a bother. Don’t fight it.” Hood steps up to the windowsill Tim was once sitting on. “And if you don’t, Alfred will just come back that night. You can’t escape him, so don’t try.”

“But--!”

“Later, Timbo! Keep doing…whatever it is you do.” Hood flashes him a thumbs up. “And…uh…” he pauses and Tim watches intently. “Fuck me,” Hood sighs, dropping his head in defeat before turning back to Tim. “You’ve got my blessing, or whatever. You make a decent enough replacement. And I’m – fuck – I’m sorry, all right? I don’t hate you, I just think you’re annoying.”

“What does that even mean?” Tim asks.

“It’ll make sense later. Be careful out there and stay out of the Narrows tonight.”

“Why?”

Hood fires his grappling gun into the city. “You’ll see in the morning.”

By the time Tim scampers back up to his feet with his camera in hand, and makes it to the window, he barely catches the glimpse of a red helmet swinging across Gotham’s pretty backdrop.

And when he wakes up the next day, the news headlines read: Batman strikes down the beginnings of the notorious Red Hood Gang last night in the Narrows. It is safe to say that the gang’s resurgence is put down for good.

And there, listed in the collection of criminal photos in the paper, is the same one Tim took a few nights ago.

The same one Hood had seen the night before.

Tim stands in his living room, alone, trying to digest what all this meant, what their conversation meant last night, when there is a polite knock on his front door.

“Master Timothy,” Alfred the butler greets, standing prim and proper before him. Tim stands with his mouth hung wide open. “We have some extra lunch today, and I thought it best that you join us at Wayne Manor.”

Tim, for the first time in his life, struck and shocked, can only nod.

*

Bruce spends his day at WE zoning in and out of meetings.

His fingers hover over his keyboard, just resting there as the empty draft of his email stares right back at him.

But, he’s not looking at the email. Or his computer. His gaze had drifted to a framed photo sitting on his desk. One that Alfred took the night the three of them went to see Macbeth at the opera house. It’s Bruce’s favorite play and Jason liked to tease him mercilessly about it.

You know they only win the battle because they all dress up like trees and no one notices, right?

It’s strategy, Jason. And it worked.

It’s ridiculous, is what it is, B!

Bruce and Jason are dressed in stiff tuxedos, Bruce with a straight black tie down his white shirt, and Jason with a little bowtie around his collars. In the photo, Bruce is carrying Jason in his arms, smiling at the camera with the opera house behind them.

In the photo, Jason is watching Bruce, a grin on his freckled face, and wonder in his eyes. He’s watching Bruce like there was nothing else in the world, in the universe, that brought Jason the most amount of happiness. And in that moment, frozen in time of that picture, Bruce sees just how safe, how perfect, Jason’s life is.

What changes?

What makes his son a tortured soul? What wipes away that gleam of wonder in his eye, and replaces it with a hollowed green, simmering with darkness beneath? What makes Jason look at Bruce like he’s the reason of that darkness?

Bruce picks up the frame, leaning back in his leather office chair. His finger traces Jason’s face, and he smile a little. His curls used to be so untamable. No amount of gel could keep them slicked back. And damn, did he try. Dick’s hair worked that way, and Jason used copious amounts to try to get his to match, but with no luck. Bruce always liked his curls. Thought they made Jason look younger. Besides, neither Willis nor Catherine had curly hair. Bruce liked to think it was a reminder that Jason is his own person, not defined by his parents’ decisions.

Bruce blinks.

Neither Willis nor Catherine had curly hair.

Neither…Willis nor Catherine…

Bruce blinks again, staring hard at the photo. Neither Willis nor Catherine had freckles. Jason might have Willis’ nose, but his eyes were dark brown. Jason’s…his Jason’s eyes are a steel blue, striking, like the hubcaps his son had tried to steal that very first night.

He has a new window open on his computer a second later. It could be nothing. It could just be something from his grandparents. It could be absolutely nothing.

He keys in Sheila Haywood.

It could be everything.

When Jason brought up his birth mother a couple weeks ago, Bruce’s initial reaction was maybe not what he should have led with. He’d be lying if he hadn’t felt that prick of fear: will Jason want to be with her over him? Will another one of his children leave him? So, while Jason dug through information on Shelia (an aid worker in Ethiopia. Of all the ways this could have been revealed, it was more than tame), Bruce watched on wearily.

It would have been wrong of him to shut the whole thing down. Jason was so excited about finding his mother, and it’s not like Bruce had his mother to share the sentiment, but he could imagine. And maybe, if the roles were reversed, he would be doing the same thing.

With things already so tense between them, Bruce held back on voicing the unsettling feeling he’d been having on the woman.

He has Sheila’s file open a second later, noticing with a silent wince her sandy blonde curls, the freckles splayed over the bridge of her nose. Bruce takes one look at her steel-grey eyes, like the metal of tires, and starts digging.

Four hours later, Bruce is near sprinting out of his office, tapping on his car keys to unlock his BMW rapidly.

Four hours later, Bruce inhales once he’s inside his car, dialing Jim Gordon’s number with shaking fingers.

Four hours later, Bruce speaks his first words when Gordon picks up.

“Where is the Joker?”

“Bruce? What—”

“The Joker, Jim. Where is he?”

“Arkham. Where he has been.”

“Check again.”

“Bruce, I don’t—”

“Jim, just check again.”

“Give me a couple minutes.”

Four hours and twenty minutes later, Bruce is speeding into his cave, repeating Jim Gordon’s words over and over in his head. He…Joker….he escaped. He’s – my people are saying he’s not in the country. They’re saying – how the hell? – they’re saying Ethiopia.

Four hours and thirty minutes later, Bruce is swinging open Jason’s desk drawer and…there. He pulls out an envelope, already knowing what’s inside before he opens it. Bruce stares at a single plane ticket in his hand. Departure from Gotham International Airport, arrival at Ethiopia. He reads the dates. April 25^th, 2017.

That’s…later this week. This week.

A memory flashes by, one from a couple days ago when he first met older Jason. Something happens in a week, he had said, something big. We can’t stop it.

Bruce remembers how stricken Jason had looked when he said it. Remembers seeing fear, anguish, hurt, and regret all over his face then. Remembers feeling haunted by something that wasn’t there.

Oh, Jaylad, what happens to us?

Bruce shuts his eyes. No. No. If…if what he thinks is going to happen, then there is no way…timeline be damned, Bruce will not. He won’t. The ticket crumples in his hands a little as he braces a fist against Jason’s desk.

Worst-case scenario, he tells himself. This has to be the worst-case scenario. He’s just jumping to conclusions. Jason doesn’t die in Ethiopia, right? Not his Jason. Surely not. Bruce was always there to save him in years past. He can’t – he wouldn’t – fail this time.

Bruce was never the hopeful kind.

Four more hours later, Jason – twenty-year-old Jason – returns to the Cave.

Bruce watches him from the Batcomputer tersely.

Jason gives him a one-over. “Work that rough today, old man?” Jason asks, taking off some of his gear at the workbench.

Bruce doesn’t say anything.

Jason notices. (Jason always noticed). He clears his throat and leans back against the table casually. “I, uh, went to see Babs today. She’s kept up in the loop with this whole time travel situation. Had a little tip slid my way about using Boom Tube tech, so…” Jason clears his throat again and Bruce watches on. “So…um…she and Dick are working on it now. Alfred should stop by the Drake’s place tomorrow, too.” Bruce doesn’t move. Jason presses his lips into a thin line. “Okay, you wanna tell me what’s going on? I’m starting to feel like you’re about to ground me.”

Bruce silently stands up and crosses the Cave until he gets within a few feet of Jason.

“Bruce, man, I was kidding about the grounding thing. I’m twenty, now. You can’t really ground me anymore,” Jason says, frowning at him. Bruce sees his eyes. Not just steel blue anymore. Not Sheila’s eyes anymore. The green speckled through is new. Bruce’s heart strains in his chest. No, no, please, not that.

He sets the ticket down on the table beside Jason. “What happens at the end of the week,” he says hoarsely.

Jason eyes the ticket with his brows furrowed, and there – Bruce sees the same flash of hurt, pain, cross his face.

“What happens to us, Jaylad?”

Jason’s hand closes into a fist. “I can’t tell you,” he says softly.

“No.” Bruce steps closer, placing a hand on his son’s shoulder. “No. Right now, I’m thinking of the unthinkable. I need you to tell me that’s not the case.”

“Do you want to doom the entire universe?” Jason snips.

“Jason.” Bruce squeezes his shoulder. “I knew you bought that ticket hours after you made the purchase. I knew you would go anyway. I was ready to follow you.”

Jason peers into his eyes, unblinking. A little unsteady but more still than Bruce in that moment. When did his son get to be stronger than him? How? “You do follow me there,” Jason says carefully. “As…as Batman.”

Bruce feels like he’s been punched, and all the air has been pushed right out of his lungs. “Because the Joker is in Ethiopia.” At that, Jason looks away. Right at the empty spot on the second floor. “Jason,” Bruce breathes, aware of how hard his heart is beating. “Jason, look at me.” Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I’m jumped to the worst conclusion. Tell me I’m paranoid.

When Jason drags his gaze back to Bruce, there’s so much sorrow and grief in them that Bruce’s knees wobble. “Bruce, don’t make me say it…” Jason whispers. Pleads.

But Bruce needs to know. He needs to know. “Does the Joker get you?” His voice feels so brittle. One wrong breath and he might start choking. “Shelia…your mom…she’s running a drug ring for the Joker. Both…both of them are in Ethiopia.”

Jason drops his head, wetness on his lashes.

Bruce’s heart falls flat at his feet.

“You are supposed to be there, too, at the end of this week.” Bruce is shaking. He’s shaking. No, he couldn’t…how… how does he fail? How does he not save him? How?

But…maybe not entirely. Because Jason is still here. Because this is his son, and he is alive and breathing. There is air in his lungs, so…Bruce does save him. Bruce must have saved him. Maybe…

Jason scrubs at his face, swearing beneath his breath. “Sit,” he commands gently. Exhausted. “I have a story to tell you.” Jason scoffs to himself as Bruce retreats to his seat. “Let’s hope the time-space continuum doesn’t destroy itself by the end of this,” he murmurs.

Somehow, Bruce thinks there’s something worse.  

Chapter Text

They got the wormhole open.

This is it, little guy. Remember everything I told you. You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be more than you could ever imagine. It’ll suck and you’ll want it to all stop forever, but it’s so important that you keep going.

Keep fighting. Never stop fighting.

Head up, Jay. You’re so brave for everything you do. You’re going to be okay.

Take care of yourself. Take care of the others. Even if you don’t want to. They’re all a bunch of idiots who can’t take care of themselves, so sometimes you’re going to have to step in and be the mature one. It’s all part of being a family. You look out for each other.

Bare your teeth, spit out the blood, watch the timer. Remember that timer. And then let it go. Don’t let it hold onto you. Okay? You’re more than all that. Know it. Believe it. When it all starts to get bad and awful, think about those stars in your room. The ones Bruce hung up by himself. Think about how you are his universe. No matter what.

Keep fighting. Don’t let that piece of shit win.

Jason Todd, 2022

2022

It’s raining in Gotham.

A dull and heavy thrum of water spilling ceaselessly from the sky, pouring down over Jason’s shoulders and the gargoyle’s stone back. The only difference between the two figures, seated high above Gotham’s puddles below, is that Jason’s shoulders are shaking.

He’s going to die. He’s supposed to die. Fate looked at him and decided that his time was over in whatever way she deemed, and Jason could only stare, gutted, terrified, and…and…he doesn’t know. Resigned? Begrudgingly accept it?

No. Not that. He doesn’t want to go. He knows that much. But…death had been on his heels since his Crime Alley days. It almost doesn’t come as a surprise.

Almost. Almost because he could have made it. He had a home now, a real one with lots of food, blankets, warmth and love. Bruce was his Dad. Bruce took him to see the stars, Bruce held his hand to cross the street (never mind he was Robin at night), Bruce was there in ways Willis was not, and Jason had grown into that trust.

He doesn’t want to go.

Not now. Not when he was just starting to live.

Rain falls and time moves.

“Thought I might find you up here, Little Wing,” a voice comes out behind him. Jason only pushes himself further into the little alcove created by the wings of the gargoyle and buries his wet face into his arms. “Did you think I’d forget about your favorite gargoyle?”

Jason grits his teeth, wanting to be left alone even longer. Though, he’s surprised that Dick managed to restrain himself from following him out here for at least an hour. “Go away, Dick!” he shouts, muffled by the rain and his sleeves.

He hears Dick sigh. And on soundless Grayson feet, Jason misses Dick’s movement until his older (older) brother is crouched down beside him, a large umbrella casted over himself and the gargoyle.

“Bartholomew, is it?” Dick asks. “The gargoyle?”

“Matthew,” Jason retorts. “Go away.”

“You wanna come out from beneath there?”

“No.” Jason shakes his head. “Go away.”

“How about we make a deal? Sound okay with you?” And great, now he’s sitting.

“How about I push you off this building, Dickwad.”

“Jay—”

“I don’t want to go.”

And then…silence. Dick doesn’t move. Doesn’t say anything else. Jason pulls his knees closer to his chest and rests his chin on them, watching rain splash around them. Silence stronger than Matthew the Gargoyle behind him. Silence solid enough to break bones, shatter teeth, and rip and tear from the inside out.

And when Dick speaks again, Jason hears the rawness in his voice. The pain in his words, the ache on his tongue, like he’s speaking around flames and swords. “You know, I pride myself on knowing how to handle unexpected situations. But…there isn’t really a handbook or a manual on how to handle something like this. Even Bruce couldn’t have prepared me for this.”

Jason sniffles, stares at the puddles through his tears.

“My point is,” Dick says, angling the umbrella over Jason anyway, “is that whatever I’m about to say is coming from me. I’m running on instincts, and they might come off bitter and angry, but I won’t pretend to know how to talk about something I know nothing about. You deserve the truth, Jay. You always have.”

Jason doesn’t even know what to say. So, he sits, leans over until his head leans against Dick’s shoulder – both so that Dick wouldn’t see his face, and because maybe he wanted someone to hold onto right now. Matthew the Gargoyle isn’t exactly the warmest being.

Dick heaves in a breath, and Jason feels his chest rise and fall slowly. “First of all, you die as a hero.”

The words barely leave Dick’s mouth, and Jason’s chest feels like it’s being hammered already. He shuts his eyes and tries to focus on the rain hitting the umbrella in thick, wet, drops.

“You were – are – so brave, Little Wing. Braver than me, or Bruce, or anyone we have ever known. You don’t die because you disobeyed an order. Do you hear me? It’s not your fault what happened to you happened. It’s not. You did the right thing in the end, and it was not fair that you paid for that decision with your life, but it happened.”

“Dick,” Jason says slowly, eyes still shut. He takes in a shuddering breath. “How does it happen?” He feels Dick stiffen beneath him. “The truth, Dick. You promised,” Jason adds.

“Yeah,” Dick sighs sadly. “Your birth mom, Shelia Haywood, worked for the Joker. She – she sells you out.”

Jason swallows hard. In his time, he had found out about Shelia just a week or so ago. Over the moon excited about his birth mom, he had tried to get Bruce to go to Ethiopia to find her, but Bruce was…so hesitant about it. He guesses that hunch was right. “What happens?” he asks, quieter than before.

“Jason—”

“You promised. I deserve to know.”

Dick nods once, setting his jaw. “Joker – he, um, uses a – a crowbar.” Jason pretends to miss the voice crack. “And it’s awful, Jay. He does a real number on you. I’m so sorry.”

Jason squeezes his hands into fists. “Is that…is that how it—”

“No,” Dick says. “There’s…there’s an explosion. You try to save your mom, even at that moment. At the end, that’s what the doctors say…”

He trails off, but Jason gets it. “What…what happens next?”

Dick sucks in another breath. “You wake up in your coffin.”

“My coffin.” The words don’t sound real. It can’t be real. How could it? Jason is just supposed to stop existing in a few days, and then come back like it’s nothing later?  

“Yeah, Little Wing.” Dick sniffles a little this time. “But you fight, like you have always, and you dig yourself out. And then—” he cuts himself off quickly. “Jason, I don’t know if you’ll remember any of this when you get back to your time, but I really need you to know that none of this was your fault.”

“None of what?” Jason challenges because it’s all he has left.

“What happens next in your story isn’t your fault. You get in with a bunch of bad people. Manipulative people who twist everything you have ever known to make you feel like you’re one of them. But you’re not, Jay. You’re not one of them, okay?” Dick shifts so he’s facing Jason now, peering into his eyes.

Blue has never looked sadder, Jason thinks.

“Look at me, Jason.”

Jason does not. He keeps his gaze at the grey street below him, idly tracing a yellow cab pull up in front of the hotel across the street. A speck of color in the iron.

“Jason. Look at me. I need you to know this in your heart.”

Jason looks. Blue has never looked sadder.

“You are not one of them. You are one of us. You are a Wayne through and through, and there is nothing that Bruce can say to change that fact. You will be his son first. Always. I’m always going to be your older brother. There is nothing you can do to change that.”

Jason barely stops himself from asking his question. “What do I do that changes it?”

Dick blinks. “What?”

“You keep saying it,” Jason mumbles, trying to keep his voice from hitching. “There’s nothing I can do to change it, but something must happen for you to keep reminding me of it.” He pauses. Doesn’t hold back. “I try to change it. I try to leave all this behind.” He stares down at his wrinkled, cold fingers. “He pushes me away, doesn’t he?”

Dick hesitates and Jason knows.

“I knew it,” he hisses, shooting up to his feet. Dick calls for him, but Jason stomps back up onto the roof, away from the shelter of Dick’s umbrella. “I knew it. I do something that finally makes Bruce turn away, right? He’ll finally see that I don’t belong in a manor with him, I don’t understand justice like he does, and he’ll finally know that I was some…some lucky case.”

Dick stands up and comes back to him. “Jason, listen—”

Jason only scoffs, nearing hysteria. “Some random kid is stupid enough to try to steal the tires from the Batmobile one night and where does that get him?”

“Jay—”

“Dead.” Jason whirls around to face Dick, rain flying off his soaked hair. “And…and even when I come back to life, he’s not going to see me any different, is he? I’ll always be second-best, the lucky kid, the Robin who killed a rapist, but it wasn’t good enough!”

“You didn’t kill him,” Dick says quietly, but firmly. “That was a mistake on Bruce’s side, but deep down he knows you more than you think. He knew you never would have done something like that then.”

“What, so I do something like that now?”

Every part of Jason is trembling, either from the rain, the cold, or the rage and misery pooling around his fingertips like dark tendrils of vicious shadows. He doesn’t know, doesn’t care, he just wants to turn back time to the night he found the damned Batmobile and make it so that he simply turned around and walked away.

Dick’s chewing on his lip, so clearly holding back. For all the showman he is, Dick is awful at lying to Jason. Always has been. Even back then, when Dick stared at him with contempt, a cruel So, this is the new Robin? locked and loaded on his tongue. At least Jason knew what Dick really thought of him behind the forced smiles and careful encounters.

“Say it, Dick!” Jason shouts. “What happens next?”

And Dick, his older brother, folds for him like he has always done.

“So, this is the new Robin?”

“My name is Jason Todd, you mammoth.”

A scornful look, but then, “Wear the colors with pride, Jason.”

“After you come back, you become the Red Hood,” Dick states, but now, he speaks with less delicacy and more…Jason doesn’t know. Understanding? Trust? “This is the Jason we know now. Everything in between is a dirty fight, but you are a part of this family, Jason.”

Jason rewinds the words. “The Red Hood.” Cass had said something about it earlier before Tim whisked her away. “Like…like the Red Hood gang? Joker’s old gang?”

Dick nods once and when he takes a tentative step forward, Jason doesn’t retreat. After all, where else is going to go? It won’t stop any of this from happening. “You pick it to reclaim what is yours, Jay. You pick it to show everyone that the Joker did not break you. That you are not afraid of that clown.”

And Jason has no idea where the thought comes from, absolutely no anticipation for the sickening punch he feels in his gut that comes with it. “Is he dead?”

“What?”

“The Joker. Is he dead?” Dick’s chest heaves as he breathes in slowly, calculating. Jason’s feels like screaming until his throat is raw. “Dick,” he begins shakily, “if that piece of shit is still alive after…after everything that…that’s supposed to happen—”

Dick finally looks away, stricken. Jason feels like screaming. “Let’s go back to the Cave, alright? You need to hear it from him.”

“Where is he?”

Rain falls even harder. Thunder rumbles too far away.

“Arkham,” Dick answers. Rain slides off his umbrella. Rain spills into Jason’s eyes. It doesn’t stop falling. “He’s been in Arkham for a long while now.”

Jason breathes in deeply, the scent of pennies and dampness taking over his senses. “He should have died after what happened to Babs.”

“I know.”

“He should be dead after what happens to me.”

“I know.”

“Then,” Jason seethes, broken and exhausted, “why isn’t he?”

“Because it is the only line Bruce won’t cross.” Dick sighs and when he crosses the roof, the umbrella finally shielding Jason from the thrumming rain again, Jason doesn’t dart backwards. He doesn’t move away. Dick wraps a hand around the back of his neck and pulls him close to his chest. Jason numbly lets him. “I wish there was another reason, Jason. I wish I had something justifiable to say, but…it’s just that. He’s never going to cross it.”

“It would be so easy,” Jason murmurs, pressing his tear-stained face into Dick’s jacket.

Dick’s grip on him tightens gently. “It’s what he’s afraid of. Killing him would be so easy, but he isn’t important to this story, Jason. And I’m going to say this until it gets through to your giant head.” Dick lightly rubs Jason’s head at that. “Whether the Joker is alive, or dead has nothing to do with Bruce wanting you to come home, okay? Those are two separate things, and even if the Joker lives, after all the pain he has caused, you are still alive. You – we – get a second chance and there is nothing else we want than you to come home.”

Jason’s heart aches. He can press his face into Dick’s jacket all he wants, but he knows that he can’t just disappear into the folds. Reality isn’t as merciful. Reality has never been merciful. How many times has he admitted that he was running on borrowed time? The days with Willis, with his mother, his time on the streets, where it was either hypothermia that seized the air from his lungs, or the newest drug dealer he had scammed. All he had was borrowed time.

 He takes in a deep breath, breathing in Dick’s unfamiliar cologne. He needs to…he doesn’t know. Unfamiliar. Everything is so unfamiliar. He needs to go home.

He hiccups, breath hitching. Home. How is just supposed to go home?

“I’m sorry, Jason,” Dick near-whispers, voice hoarse. Cracked. Torn straight through. He drops to his knees, the umbrella dropped out of his fingers. And then both of Dick’s arms are pulling Jason impossibly closer towards him. “I’m – God, I’m so sorry.”

And Jason’s crying. Sobbing into Dick’s soaked through sweater. Dick’s body is shaking, and it all feels too much, too fast. How much more is he supposed to take? Hasn’t he taken enough?

“I don’t want to go, Dickie,” Jason manages, shutting his eyes. All he sees is red. Like his blood. Like an explosion. Like the shine of a red helmet.

Dick, his older brother, right here on his knees, rain spilling in floods arounds them, hugs him like it’s all he has. And it might be. It might be all any of them have left.

“We tried, Jay. I swear on my life, we tried,” Dick chokes. “I…I can’t risk the possibility of a world where we never get you back.”

If Jason squints, that’s his silver lining. Pretty shitty, but it’s…light. It’s the glow of his stars in his room, protecting him from the dark. His story isn’t over. He might not even know it, but for now – yes, for now, he can know, he can believe, that his story isn’t the end.

“It’s not the end,” he whispers, mostly to himself, but Dick’s soft gasp tells him that he heard it too. Jason says it again, truly feeling the weight in his chest. “It’s not the end.”

Dick runs a hand through Jason’s hair, soft, gentle, a little desperate. “It’s not the end, Jason. It’s not over until you say it’s over.”

Jason sinks into his brother’s arms, exhausted, terrified, but his mind sharply on alert. It’s not the end. It’s not the end. It’s not. The. End.

*

The kitchen, Bruce thinks, is more than just a hive for lost Robins in the dead of night, searching for comfort in sugary snacks. It’s more than Alfred’s haven, more than scant presences using its services with a glance, and it’s more than a resting haunt for the ghosts of this mansion.

Jason used to sit on that counter and roll out pie crusts with Alfred around Thanksgiving. Dick used to store his favorite protein bars in that cabinet. Did Tim always plug in the coffee machine into that outlet? Damian keeps Titus’ treats below the sink. Cass’s leftover milkshake is still in the fridge.

The kitchen is more than the useless bits of information Bruce’s brain spits out.

The kitchen is a cry for help. It’s for a lost Batman, an even more lost Bruce, to wander in aimlessly with no plans on using any of its commodities. He’s lost. Bewildered. Bitter. He’s in the kitchen. Why?

“Master Bruce. What can I help you with, sir?”

Alfred asks it so naturally, Bruce almost follows up with his usual, “have a great day, Alfred.” Truly, it’s just a testament to all the years he’s come down to the kitchen, not in search for sugary snacks, but in search of help in the form of a tall butler.

“I don’t know what to do,” Bruce gets out, dragging a hand down his face. “I don’t…do I call someone? What am I — please, tell me what to do.”

Nights bleeding into years of resolutely chasing down justice until Bruce knew of nothing else. But how was that justice when all it brought was pain? How was any of this good?

It must be his fault. It usually is. After all, it’s because of him that his sweet, precious, fifteen-year-old son dies in the most sinister way possible. It was his fault. It’s why he had paid for forgiveness every single, damn, day since then. The amount of his payment got spat back at him in the form of his son. The son that he loses because Bruce was the one with a stake in this war. Not Jason. Not a Robin.

“Alfred, it’s all gone so wrong.” Bruce presses the heels of his palms into his eyes and slides down to the ground, back pressed against the fridge. “What am I supposed to do?”

For a moment, Alfred doesn’t say anything, though he does stop rummaging around the dishwasher. Bruce drops his head into his arms, pulling his knees closer to his chest. The ghosts of the manor must be having a riot right about now. Bruce Wayne, on the kitchen’s floor, dressed in an old pair of sweats and hoodie, on the brink of sobbing.

Wetness lines his eyes, Bruce realizes when he blinks.

No, not on the brink of sobbing. He’s already doing it.

“Master Bruce,” Alfred finally says, and Bruce instantly hates the way his voice sounds raw. Unrestrained. Wary beyond his old age if that were even possible. “No one in his house knows how familiar you are with adversary than me. And thus, no one in his house knows how that has made you strong than me.”

“Alfred—”

“Listen to me.” Alfred stands with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and he near slams down the towel he was using to clean onto the counter. “Master Bruce, I have loved you as my own son. I have loved – I do love the others as my own grandchildren. I have seen all of you grow to be the men and women you are today, and…and yes, there have been tragedies lining our lives, but it is not where the story ends.”

Bruce’s throat runs dry. “Alfred, did you see how small he was?” In the grand scheme of things, that little detail could easily be lost to discussions on fate and justice, but Bruce could describe how his heart slammed down into his stomach when he had seen just how small Jason once was in the dining room this morning.

How small he was when he died.

Bruce shuts his eyes, letting his fingers get tangled in his hair. “For the second time in my life, I have to let Jason go. I have to be late again. He has to suffer because of my decisions again. Hasn’t he suffered enough?”

Alfred regards him with pained eyes. Were the wrinkles always around his eyes? Why is Bruce noticing that now? How much time had truly passed? Has any? “I believe you all have suffered great and many. More than deserved, if any suffering is deserved.” Alfred pauses, settling his gaze back onto the counter where a finger digs into the marble. “Yes, I do believe Master Jason was the least deserving of his fate. But, like you, his hardships have made him stronger than you know. Braver than you will ever know.”

“Do you…” Bruce begins and wonders if he even wants to know, “do you remember what happened just before Jay took off?” It’s not that Bruce forgot every little instance of that day. It’s that he only knows it from his perspective: angry, irrational, hurt.

Alfred shakes his head slowly. “As far as I am aware, whatever disagreement was settling in the manor was inconsequential. And in the light of the following events, it should be.”

“Inconsequential?” The butler nods and Bruce feels like he can see the weights hanging around Alfred’s neck. Bruce forces his head up, resting it back against the fridge. “When…when it happened, and I called you from Ethiopia…” he trails off for a moment, lost in the moments when his bloody fingers (Jason’s blood) dialed the number from his personal phone, and with every breath wrecking his body with tremors, waited for Alfred to pick up that late night in Gotham. He remembers frantically trying to switch Jason’s Robin costume out with something civil, trying to beat the sirens just a little too far away, trying to beat the sun rising just a little too fast.

He had his phone pressed between his ear and shoulder, buttoning up a shirt on Jason’s mangled chest when Alfred picked up.

Alfred, he had sobbed, undignified, desperate, I was too late. I…he’s gone. I was too late. I didn’t make it. He’s gone. He’s gone.

After that, Bruce was so wrapped up in his own blind rage of pain that only now does he realize that it was Alfred who instructed him through the phone to notify the embassy. It was Alfred who made arrangements to bring Jason back to Gotham. In the end, it was Alfred who handled the press, who held the funeral, who told Dick himself because Bruce was too much of a coward to face his remaining son.

“What did you do after I called you?” Bruce asks.

Alfred swallows and, in an unreal moment, he too sinks to the ground, resting against the cabinets below the sink, facing Bruce from across the kitchen. Alfred, ever the proper and upright butler, sitting on the floor, apron still tied around his waist. Bruce might have laughed once.

“After your call, Master Bruce, I believe I set out to find a suit for Master Jason.”

“God, Alfred.” Bruce rubs at his face.

“I recall going into his room first, and…well, it was like he had just left for school. I think I went in with the intention to clean a little, perhaps do his laundry, but…” Alfred clears his throat, tugging on the ends of the dish towel with weathered hands. “But I sat on his bed until the sun rose again.”

Once, that used to be Bruce and Alfred. Sitting on his parents’ bed, Alfred beside him like a sturdy rock. Unwavering. His only constant. He sat next to Bruce, sometimes humming a sad tune, sometimes rubbing a soothing hand down his back, but he didn’t leave Bruce’s side once. Looking at Alfred now, streaks of grey in his hair, wrinkles around his eyes, and bony fingers twisting over themselves, Bruce finds himself in the same exact position.

Alfred with him. Alfred not leaving him.

“I feel like I’ve done everything wrong,” Bruce admits quietly. “I feel like I messed up once and I never…never stopped messing up.” He can’t pinpoint that exact moment, but he has a few ideas. Blaming Jason for Filipe. Fighting with Dick. Ignoring Alfred. Or…or asking his parents to go to the movies one night many years ago.

Alfred smiles watery at him. “We mustn’t dwell on the things of the past, Master Bruce. Only on things we can control.”

“What else is left, Alfred? What else is there for me to control?”

“How you carry on.” Alfred stands up.

“How do I carry on?” Bruce takes Alfred’s outstretched hand. Pulls himself up to his feet.

“You can start by telling your miracle son that you love him. That you will wait for him. And that you are proud of the man he becomes, no matter the carnage, no matter the technicalities. You tell him that because he is your son and everything else falls second.” Alfred squeezes his hand, rests his other on Bruce’s shoulder. “You remember your grief?”

Bruce nods shakily, swallowing hard.

“Then you will remember how nothing else in this world was relevant other than making sure Master Jason comes back home,” Alfred says fiercely. “You will remember that, even though we face down unspeakable tragedy in the coming days, you get a second chance because your son comes back.”

Come home, Jason. We can fix everything, just please come home.

“And, yes, Master Jason comes back different. He was angry and you fought to move past your grief, but you must remember that this rift is mended. You must remember that Master Jason remains in Gotham, not because he is in debt, but because he wants what he used to have with you.” Alfred looks at Bruce with pleading, but beneath it, he sees hope. Promise. “Things will get better. Nothing stays stagnant.”

Bruce reaches up and holds Alfred’s hand on his shoulder. “I need to see him again,” he whispers, but a lot more confident in his voice than before.

Alfred nods. “Yes, I suspect you have some things you’d like to say to him.”

“I do, but I don’t know…what could I even say?”

“You do not just say.” Alfred’s voice comes out strong. “You promise him. You make a promise that you will wait for him. You thank him for the memories, for his presence in your life. And you promise him that you will love him always. There is nothing that can make you stop loving him.”

Bruce sniffles, smiling a little when Alfred fixes his disheveled hair for him. “Is that enough?”

“It will have to be, Master Bruce. It is all we have left.”

*

Tim reads the notepad one more time, just to make sure he’s seeing it correctly. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God!” He whips around, pen triumphantly raised to meet an extraordinarily bored looking Damian lounging in the batcomputer’s chair, Alfred the cat looking just as unamused in his lap. “I got it! I know how to get the wormhole open!”

“Congratulations, Drake,” Damian says dryly. “Now, get out of the house and attend MIT.”

Well, at least Damian picked MIT. Small wins. He waves a hand towards Damian. “Call Dick. Tell him we can send Jason home now.” Tim turns his attention to setting the time back five years and…his fingers stall over the knob.

“Richard, state your location immediately,” Damian demands behind him.

“Hey, Dames. We’re, um, we’re still up around the Clocktower. The rain cleared up, so…” Even Tim hears Dick’s scratchy voice, the huff of sad laughter.

Damian, to his credit, looks like he has to force himself remain blank faced. “Drake can open the wormhole now. You and Todd must return immediately.”

“Tim figured it out?” Dick asks, and Tim stiffens unwillingly. Why does he feel responsible for what has to happen?

Because he is, in every technical sense, sending Jason back to die all over again. The worst part? He’s been entertaining the thought of his life without Jason’s death. Lonely, empty, unremarkable, sitting in Drake manor while his parents continued their lives without him. While the world continues their lives without him.

Save his childhood hero from years of fighting and pain and become just another face at another school. Or establish the timeline and be everything that he is now.

It’s the start to a shitty riddle.

“I knew Timmy could do it,” Dick praises sincerely and Tim’s shoulders drop with a sigh. “Well…we’ll be over as soon as we can.”

“How…how is Todd faring?” Damian asks, sitting upright in the chair now.

“Exhausted. He’s a fighter, though. He’s okay. He’s going to be okay. How’s Bruce?”

Tim’s finger hovers over the knob.

“Father went up into the Manor shortly after you left. He has not yet returned,” Damian dutifully informs him. Tim knows that the kid would have gone after Bruce a long while ago, but only held himself back when Dick asked him to give Bruce some space – explaining why he was bored out of his mind down in the Cave while Tim tried open a wormhole.

“Dami, do me a favor and bring him to the Cave for me?” Dick asks. “He’s going to want to talk to Jay when we get there.”

Damian scowls petulantly. “Make Drake do it, since you are so insistent that I give him space.”

“Damian. Don’t…don’t fight me on this, buddy. Not on this one.” Tim hates how much pleading gets into Dick’s voice.

Damian rolls his eyes. “Fine,” he snips, sliding off the chair. “Arrive quickly.” With a jab to his phone screen, he cuts the call. “This house is full of miscreants,” he hisses like an angry cat before storming up into the manor.

And then it’s just Tim. Tim and this knob.

Tim is far from perfect, he knows. He knows he has great too many flaws, and he isn’t arrogant or prideful about his abilities. He isn’t delusional to claim absolutes in his life, but of one thing, he is sure: he is smart.

It’s not arrogance to think so (know so) and he is always quick to assure that he is pretty subpar at everything else. If he really wanted to sit there with his thoughts, he’d even admit that his intelligence is all that he has to offer, so he holds on to it, hones it into a near-perfect weapon, if only to be useful.

He is smart. He knows it. So why, he thinks with something tight and ugly pooling around in his chest, why does it feel so hard to trust his mind? To trust his decisions?

Tim stalls.

He could send Jason a day after. On April 28^th. Skip the Ethiopia trip, maybe buy them some time so the Joker can leave the country, or so Bruce plots a way to find the madman himself, or something. Something to save everyone the pain and suffering that is sure to follow. Tim stepped into the role of Robin, into the role of a Wayne, to do more than give Batman a partner. He did what he could to help Dick, Bruce, and Alfred. He let Dick go all big-brother mode on him, let Dick mourn quietly, watched Dick’s back for him. Tim took Alfred out on walks, ran grocery errands with him, filled the space with mindless chatter when Alfred went days without speaking.

And Bruce. In no way did Tim ever try to replace Jason as Bruce’s son. He knew that he and Bruce would never have that same kind of relationship, and Tim wasn’t upset by it. But he did try. He tried when he brought down coffee to share in the Cave while Bruce worked some midnight case. He tried when he was Robin, quickly dismantling henchmen before Batman could land them all into body casts. Tim tried again and again, tried some more after the first time Bruce called him son and patted his head with something like a sad smile.

Save Jason and…he loses it all.

It’s a cruel thought, one that Tim is convinced that he would never think of. It’s so wrong. So terrible. He dismisses it as soon as he hears its whisperings. 

No. Absolutely not. Tim twists the knob, brows furrowed. He can’t afford to think like that. He can’t be the judge in things of the past. It’s not his place. Yes, tragedy befalls them, and yes, being Robin brings Tim his own share of heartache, pain, trauma, but Tim won’t change what has already happened.

Because I’m scared of the alternative.

The insidious whisper brushes up against his ear and he physically flinches. Okay, more admissions. Yes, the thought of being stuck in his manor without his family, without the friends he has now, without anything he has right now, terrifies him. All he’d have is his stupid little camera. All he’d do is run around Gotham at night, pretending to be Robin. All he ever would be is the lonely kid obsessed with a legacy that was never his to take.

He reads the screen. April 22^nd, 2017. Exactly five years ago. He was twelve then. Vaguely, Tim wonders if older Jason managed to run into little Tim yet.

“The date doesn’t seem real, does it?”

Tim flinches again, shoulders rising to his ears as he whips around. Bruce stands, a little hunched over, red rimming his eyes and his hair carefully patted down. Alfred. It must have been Alfred. The old man has a habit of combing down messy hair when he had the chance.

“I was thinking about how I was only twelve back then,” Tim says, moving over so Bruce could stand by the computer as well.

Bruce smiles fondly, gaze a little unfocused at the screen. “I was twenty-eight.” He laughs bitterly. Tim hates it. “God, I was way in over my head. Raising two boys, being Batman…why did I ever think I could have done it?” He whispers.

“You are doing it,” Tim says, almost automatically. “Four boys and a daughter, now. But…yeah, you’re still Batman. You’ve still got us.”

“I just…I thought I’d have figured it out by now,” Bruce sighs, dropping his head.

Tim thinks about an empty Drake manor. “B, I promise you, no one ever has it figured out.” He steps forward, watching the man with concern. Bruce doesn’t normally show emotion, let alone something like distress. When he does, it puts everyone on guard. If it is affecting Batman, then it was definitely going to affect them.

“Hey, B,” Tim says softly, “You did everything you could. For all of us. You were there when we needed you the most.”

“I wasn’t,” Bruce chokes out. “The one time I wasn’t…”

Tim swallows. “You gave him a home, Bruce. Before Robin, before it all, you gave him a home. You were – are – his father. Our father. You can’t take that back. Jason knows it too. You were there for us when no one else was, and you made us understand what it was to turn loneliness into family.”

Tim has no idea where the words are coming from, but this, at least, feels right in his chest. So, he keeps going.

“You made this family, Bruce. I…I know we’re more than dysfunctional, but – I wouldn’t trade it for the world.” He puts a hand on his shoulder. “None of us would.”

“I don’t deserve any of you,” Bruce says quietly. “You all are my gift. I am so thankful for each and every one of you, and I don’t…I don’t deserve you.”

Somewhere, Tim’s heart is breaking. This man who is far from perfect, but damn it all if he didn’t try, being so open and vulnerable…it’s unpracticed territory for Tim.

“People say this all the time,” Tim begins, moving a little closer to him, “but hear it from me: you are good, Bruce. You are a good man. A better father than you give yourself credit for. Far from perfect,” Tim says with a light laugh when Bruce finally straightens, “but we need you.”

Bruce smiles a little and Tim internally pumps his fist triumphantly. “Thank you, Tim. I needed that. How are you doing?” Tim is swept up into a hug as Bruce talks, and for a moment, he shuts his eyes and breathes out slowly, feeling protected and loved right there in his arms.

“’m okay,” he answers, muffled by the hug. “I can get the wormhole open. Just waiting on Dick and Jason to get here. They’ll be here soon.”

Tim feels Bruce stiffen for just a moment. Then they pull away. “You are a genius, Tim,” Bruce praises. “Tell me what you did to get the wormhole open.”

Tim nods once before launching into his explanation, hoping Jason and Dick don’t arrive too quickly.

No one in that Cave is ready to say goodbye.

(How could they be?)

*

Todd walks into the Cave with his head held high.

It’s the first thing Damian notices when he and Richard finally enter.

Something swells inside of him. Something like…pride? Relief? Perhaps because, despite the unfortunate news, Todd is managing to hold an anger about him that Damian is more familiar with. It’s a sign of normalcy. The timeline is still in place. At least, it feels like it.

Damian had the foresight to slink up into the rafters of the Cave before Todd arrived. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t curious about how Father would interact with the boy. He wanted to compare it to the hostility between Batman and the Red Hood that he’s grown up with. And maybe he wouldn’t admit it aloud, but if everyone was damning the timeline by exposing big secrets and crucial moments of history, then…Damian slipping some insider information about Talia al Ghul and the League to the boy can’t damage what is already damaged.

He watches from his vantage point above everyone’s heads as Richard strides past, reaching Bruce first and muttering a few hushed words. Damian barely catches a desperate Please tell him that you’ll love him forever. Don’t make it worse, B. I won’t be able to handle it.

Father says nothing but, in a rare moment, pulls his eldest son into a short, but tight, embrace. Richard pulls away with a small smile and motions to Drake to follow him across the Cave. No doubt for the same reason Damian decided to linger around.

They all think they can’t damage the timeline any more.

Damian watches the scene before him like it’s a movie.

“Jaylad,” Father breaks the silence first. “I—”

“I know you tried, Dad.”

Damian clenches his jaw. Todd’s voice comes out stronger than he could have imagined from the small frame of a fifteen-year-old boy. And the word Dad. From Todd. It’s hard to believe there was ever a time where Todd had seen them in a father-son light.

Father falls silent for a moment. “I’m…I’m sorry,” he finally admits. “You don’t know it yet, but I’ve said that thousands of times since…since Ethiopia. It’s not enough. It won’t ever be enough, but if it’s worth anything in this whole world, son, I’m sorry.” Father’s words get caught in his throat and Damian feels an uneasy spool in his gut.

Todd’s lips quiver and his eyes water, but they don’t spill. “I know you tried,” he repeats with a shaky breath. “You wanna know how I know?”

There’s just enough of a mischievous lilt in his voice that has Damian squinting down at him and Father staring at him with a puzzled expression. “How?” Father utters.

“Do you know how insane it is to tape up over a hundred plastic, glow in the dark stars into accurate constellations onto my ceiling? All by yourself? How long did that take you?”

Father shakes his head, clearly still confused. “I – I don’t remember. Probably eight hours? I did it while you were at school all day.”

“Yeah, old man,” Todd says, crossing his arms over his chest haughtily. “That’s insane. But I know why you did that, too.”

“Why?”

“Because your love has always overpowered logic.”

And…yes, Damian can understand that, too. Father was always irrational when it came to his children’s dealings (case and point: Hood and Batman verbally spearing each other in the name of family and love). He always seemed to flounder when faced with expressing love. Damian had never experienced someone else taking a bullet meant for him until Father threw himself in the line of fire. Illogical. Damian wasn’t going to die from a shoulder wound, but Father took the hit instead, slowing him and the operation down. By all accounts, it was illogical.

But…later, when Damian had asked him point-blank why he’d done that, Father had rested his giant hand on Damian’s head and said, Because you are my son, Damian. I love you so much. I’d do it again, and again, and again.

Perhaps love is a force to wield. Perhaps it’s a force that can maim - that can kill.

“I know you’d burn down this whole world if I asked you to, Bruce,” Todd says, taking a step closer. “You’d do it because you love me. I have never once doubted that. And…and I’m sorry if there were moments where I made it seem it wasn’t that way, but it’s the truth. I never stopped believing in you, and I know myself enough to say that I won’t stop in the future. Even if I don’t make it seem that way.” 

Father takes several deep breaths, blinking in the sight of Todd, so small yet somehow towering over the man in front of him. “Did Dick tell you about the future?” he asks.

Todd nods once. “Yeah. Five years is a long time, isn’t it?”

“Too long,” Father sighs somberly.

“I don’t want to die, Dad,” Todd says, and Damian can hear Father’s breath hitch in his throat, “but the only thing that is getting me through this is that I come back to you. You find me again and what’s in the past is in the past.”

Father runs a hand through his hair. “I want nothing more than for you to come back to me. I just…I hope you come back sooner this time.”

Todd grins and it makes him look younger, Damian thinks. “Find me faster, old man.”

Then Father slumps to his knees, arms outstretched. Todd fills the space and for a long moment, they stay there, sniffles, hiccups, breathy whispers of I will always love you, being passed between them. Damian looks away, feeling like he is intruding on their moment.

He doesn’t know what will happen once the Todds switch back. He doesn’t know if everything will become just as cold and hostile as it once was. Part of Damian is expecting it. After all, it’s all he’s known. The other part, the part that convinces him to sneak glances down at the pair, hopes that maybe things will be different.

“Bruce?” Dick stands on the outer edge of the Cave looking more than apologetic. “I’m sorry, but we need you for the portal.”

Damian sees Todd flinch in Father’s embrace, but with a few resolved breaths, he pulls away first. “Go on,” the boy tells him.

“Jason—”

“Dick suggested that I write a letter for my older self. I think I’m going to do that while you work on it.”

Damian has never seen Father so pained. Not even after taking that bullet for him. “You are a good boy,” he says, voice raspy. “You hear me? You are good.” He holds Todd’s face gently and presses a kiss to his forehead. “You are my son, now, in the future, and until those stars stop glowing, you will always be mine.”

Todd swipes at his eyes, at his tear-stained cheeks, but he holds Father’s gaze bravely. “I know,” he whispers. Father hugs him one more time before attending to the computer beside Drake.

“Dames, you can come down now.”

Damian startles and glares down. Richard. Of course, he had known. He scowls down at him but stalks through the rafters until he lands gracefully onto the Cave’s floor. “How’d you know I was up there?” he demands mostly to avoid Todd’s watery gaze.

Richard pats his shoulder. “Old habits. You want to give Jay company while I help out with the portal?”

Damian scoffs. “Why would I waste time with—”

Richard gives him a look that reads that wasn’t a real question and Damian presses his lips into a thin line. “Fine. Fine.”

“Thanks, Little D.” Richard ruffles his hair with a small smile and Damian swats him away like he always does. When he leaves, Damian is left facing Todd’s back, hunched over a desk, already writing out his letter. With a sigh, he approaches.

“When you awake again,” Damian declares and Todd lifts his head to greet him, “you and I will briefly meet before your return to Gotham.”

“Really?” Todd’s brows lift into his hair.

“Yes. We meet in less than fortunate circumstances, but I have advice to perhaps…help you navigate those circumstances.”

Todd sits up and turns to him entirely then. “I’m all ears.”

So, Damian tells him. It’s strangely easy to let it all out, every single helpful and cautionary tale he could spare.

When you are fighting, look out for your left side. Stay away from members with green and gold brooches, they report to Grandfather, and they are merciless. There is a hidden, abandoned apothecary beneath the West Tower when you want to heal and recover without anyone knowing. Choose daggers as your weapon of choice – you’re better with them than the swords.

Talia is looking out for you even if it seems she is only out to sabotage you. Go to her for everything. Trust her warily, but she is a friend.

That last bit leaves Damian with a sour taste in his mouth, but he knows it’s the truth. Mother had patched Todd up time and time again, and even in her rarest moments, spent nights watching the stars with him when neither could sleep. There are no friends in the League, but Talia, against all things, centers her motives around Father and his interests. It’s why she sent Damian away, and while Damian didn’t understand at first, he sees that it was his mother’s love and hope that let her send her son far away from Ra’s.

Todd looks nervous but he stays brave. Damian is impressed. “Thanks, Damian. I hope you’ll be a familiar face soon.”

It’s all Damian can offer. Truth be told, his story and this one don’t mesh very much. He arrived at the manor after his demise and Todd’s return to Gotham had the least amount impact on Damian. But he’d seen how much it affected Father, Richard, even Drake and Pennyworth. And if this whole experience had taught him anything, it’s that this family holds on. This family holds on to each other, to the past, to the reminders and to the hope that they will be happy.

“I guess I owe you some advice, too,” Drake says with a sheepish grin.

This family also holds onto parasites. Damian rolls his eyes as Drake crouches down next to Todd, but he stays.

“First, I don’t blame you for anything you will do,” Drake says fiercely. “It is never your fault, okay?” Todd pales but nods silently. “Secondly, you are my hero. I never meant to replace you, and I never meant to force myself into the role that you left behind. I wanted to be a fraction of what you were to me, and I’m okay with never reaching the standard you’ve set, but you inspired me to help others.” Drake grasps Todd’s hand and squeezes. “And even after you come back, and after all these years, you still are one my biggest inspirations. You are such a fighter, and you stand up for the little guy in ways no one else can. You’re my hero, Jay. I hope you remember this if nothing else, but I picked up Robin to honor you.”

Todd smiles faintly even as Drake has to hastily wipe at his eyes. “If you wanted my blessing, you could’ve just asked, Timmy.”

Drake, the imbecile, flounders at the words. “I…you, uh, you don’t have to – but I guess the timeline…no, but you really don’t have to if – if you—”

Damian rolls his eyes. “Yes, Todd, give him the blessing. Stop this embarrassment.”

Todd grins wider. “I hereby declare you, Timothy Drake, Robin Number Three in my honor.” He touches Drake’s shoulders with the pen he writes the letter with like it’s a knighting ceremony. “Now, go. Kick bad guys in the balls and tell them Robin Two sends his regards.”

Drake twists his lips to the side and salutes with two fingers. “Will do, Robin.”

Behind them, something whirrs loudly. A bright light flashes and when Damian turns, the cube glows a chemical blue. The portal is open again.

For a moment, no one moves. Not even Damian. They all stare into the light, unblinking. Wishing to pause the world if only for a few more minutes.

In the end, it’s Todd who rises first, folding his letter neatly. “Okay,” he says without an ounce of fear. “Let’s fix this.” He walks up to Richard first and holds out the letter. “Can you give this to him? When he gets here?”

Richard’s blue eyes look so muted now. Dampened. “Yeah, of course, Little Wing,” he manages. He gently takes the letter and tucks it away into a pocket and takes a deep breath. “I - I guess this is good-bye?”

Todd launches himself into his arms. “It’s a see you soon, Dickie.”

“Oh, Jason,” Richard weeps, burying his face into Todd’s back. “If we could switch places—”

“Don’t say that.” Todd intervenes before Damian can even begin to imagine a world where it is Richard who suffers at the hand of the maniacal clown and later at the League. “You are this family’s rock, Dick. They all need you and you need to be there for them. And…I’ll need you, too. I need you, Dick. Please be there for me.”

Richard wraps his arms around Todd once more and shuts his eyes with a wince. “Always. I’m never going to stop being right beside you.” He tilts Todd’s head up to meet his eyes and there’s water in his own when he says, “head up, Jay. You’re coming back to us.”

It’s with great reluctance that Richard finally lets go. When he comes to Damian and silently hoists him up onto his shoulders, Damian doesn’t protest. He sits there, resting his chin on top of his older brother’s head and watches as Father and Todd face each other for the last time.

“Don’t make this harder than it already is,” Todd says first, quietly, sadly.

Father laughs out a defeated breath. “Not sure how else to do this, Jaylad. Come here.” He opens his arms and again, Todd slips right into them, his arms too small to reach each other across Father’s wide back. “I want you to know that you brought me so much joy. Thank you for our lovely memories. Thank you for your smile, and your care, for being my son and letting me be a father. Thank you for just being yourself, Jay. You’ve taught me so much back then, and even when you come back, I keep learning from the incredible man you grow up to be. And that’s what I want you to remember, Jason. You grow up. You – we – get a second chance and yes, we’ll have bumps in the road, but it will never make me love you any less.”

“Oh, come on, old man,” Jason cries into Father’s shoulder, “you’re making this harder than it needs to be.”

“Listen to me, Jason.” And…and Father is crying, too. Damian sits so frozen on Richard’s shoulders, clenching his jaw. Grayson must have noticed because his hand comes up and gently takes Damian’s and holds it tightly. Even Drake hovers nearby, grasping his other hand, half hidden by Richard’s shoulder.

Father continues. “When it happens, I was running so fast to you. I was almost there, but it wasn’t enough, and that…that is something that I will forever live with. But I want you to know that I was coming. It was close. I was coming for you.” He swallows audibly, lips trembling. “You…you probably felt so alone and hopeless, but I never stopped trying to save you. If…if you remember anything from this time…please, know that Dad was coming to save the day.”

Todd hiccups over a sob. “Only insane people run towards an explosive warehouse, B.”

“Well, extra insane people tape up Hercules’s constellation in glow in the dark stars.” Todd manages a laugh and Father brightens up by a fraction. “I guess we’re all a little insane, huh?”

Behind them, the portal pulses, the light throbbing in pushes and pulls of light. If Damian squints, he can see the space around the cube start to ripple. He’s about to point it out when Drake speaks. “Older Jason is about to come through,” he says around a locked throat. “We…you…” he clears his throat and hides back behind Richard when he can’t say the words.

Richard does. He says it. “It’s time.” Damian is set onto the ground and Richard walks by the portal, peering through it as if he could see five years into the past. “It’s now or never.”

Jason wipes at his nose. “Okay,” he says. “Okay. I’m…I’m ready.”

“Jason,” Father chokes, hugging him one last time like Todd would disappear in his grasp. “I love you. I love you so much, please believe that.”

“Just…just wait for me, okay?”

“Always.” And even Damian hears the promise ringing in the single word.

“Okay,” Jason repeats, peeling away. He glances around at everyone. Drake is scrubbing at his cheeks until they’re red. Grayson isn’t bothering to stop the tears on his own face, and Father…Father looked a mess. Damian is half surprised to feel his own chest constrict.

He never knew young Todd, but it’s clear that his demise was far from deserved. He’s just a child. Damian would turn fifteen in two more years, and to face a death as grisly as his…Damian feels a surge of pride. That is his older brother. That is a survivor. He couldn’t be prouder than to share a roof, share a name, with Todd.

Damian looks away when Todd’s red rimmed eyes meet his own.

“Hey, I’ll be back bigger and stronger,” Todd says in an attempt to alleviate the situation. “Then I’ll kick all your assses.” He steps up to the portal and takes in three deep breaths. “I’m Robin,” he says, mostly to himself, but every soul listens – every star high up above them leans in to listen to this young boy and his hope.

“I’m Robin.” More conviction this time. “And Robin gives me magic. Magic.” Damian watches him square his shoulders, lift his chin in utter defiance to fate, to death. “See you guys soon,” he says with a bright smile and a small wave.

And then…Jason Todd walks forward to greet Fate wearing Robin’s colors.

*

Bruce is on his knees in the center of the Cave.

Tim scribbles stars onto a notepad aimlessly and Dick slumps down in the chair by the batcomputer, his head burrowed into his arms. Damian has his hands on a sword and is already on the training mats.

When Jason surfaces from the light he felt like he was drowning in, this is the scene that greets him.

He sits up and absolutely no one pays attention to him. Fine. They asked for this. “Jeez, who died and haunted you guys?”

Dick’s head snaps up at the speed of light, Jason thinks he might have broken it. “Jason?” he begins hesitantly, rising to his feet. “Is that you?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” Jason groans. “Don’t cream your pants.” He rubs at his head which is still lancing from traveling through time. His stomach roils unpleasantly and he gauges where the closest trashcan is. Just in case. He just makes it up to his feet before someone latches onto his back. He jerks backwards, struggling to find his footing. “What the— Tim?”

Timmy, that parasite, clings onto him harder like a koala. Far less cute and far less fuzzy. “Please, never touch alien tech ever again or I will strangle you with my cape.”

Ah, yes. Tim affection. “Can you even reach my neck, you squirt,” Jason grunts, hoisting the kid on his back to a more comfortable position.

“Don’t test me, asshole.”

Jason rolls his eyes when Dick approaches, eyes wide and sunken in. Jason lifts a brow. “What’s your deal? Did little me insult your haircut?”

Dick breaks out into a sob and flings himself around Jason’s neck and Jason swears, staggering back. “N-no. I’m just…” Dick sniffles. “I’ve always got you, Little Wing. Always.”

Jason blinks. Yeah, okay, so the good-bye was emotional for him, too, but seriously? A week ago, Dick yelled at him for leaving Cheeto stains over his PlayStation controller. “That’s…uh, that’s great, Dickie-bird,” Jason begins, starting to feel the weight of two of his brothers clutching onto him like a lifeline. “Um, why don’t you—”

Something tugs on his sleeve, and he only manages to bite back a groan when Damian glares up at him. “Todd,” is all he says.  

“What,” Jason grounds out, knowing he looks ridiculous with Tim and Dick on him like this. Damian doesn’t say anything, but Jason’s picked up a pattern. He sighs in defeat. “Fine. Get up here.”

And, damn, the kid is wicked fast. He scales up the side of Jason’s leg, steps on Tim’s head, avoids Dick entirely, and settles down on Jason’s shoulders. “Great,” Jason says sarcastically, “operation suffocate Jason is accomplished. Can you people get off?”

In response, every single one only holds on tighter. “You suck.”

“Jaylad.”

Jason wobbles around and there stands Bruce. Bruce with the shorter hair, the wearier eyes, the frown etched on his face like he was born with it. His Bruce. Not the…the late twenties, fresh off the parental boat, Bruce. For a moment, neither of them says anything, and it feels like Bruce is scouting out every single detail on Jason just like he is.

Like always, it’s Jason who shatters the silence. “I am not carrying you.”

Bruce stares at him, piercing blue meeting glowing green and Jason somehow knows exactly what the man wants to say to him. But he waits. Lets Bruce collect his thoughts. Swallows down his thumping heart and forces himself to hold eye-contact.

“Jason.” His voice is botched. Hoarse, raspy, still locked. “Jason, come home.”

And this time, Jason realizes, this time he feels it. Come home to me. Come home to Dad.

He swallows and nods jerkily. “Yeah,” he breathes, chest twisting in all sorts of ways. “Yeah. I…I want to come home.”

Bruce steps close enough and Jason moves first, dropping his forehead to Bruce’s still wet shoulder. A hand comes up and gently rests on Jason’s nape and his breath gets caught in his throat. “I don’t blame you,” he whispers, eyes shut, “I never blamed you.”

“I know, son,” Bruce’s rumble passes right through Jason’s whole body. “I never blamed you either.”

Jason smiles. “I know, Dad.” Bruce huffs a happy breath and then he’s pressing his body into Jason as well. “Okay, now it’s overkill,” he grunts around his family. “Get off.” He elbows Dick in his ribs, shoulders off Tim, and Damian has the sense to spring off his shoulders before Jason could drop him. Bruce peels away last and when he does, he has water in his eyes but a smile on his lips.

“Backyard in twenty minutes.” He squeezes Jason’s shoulder one more time before heading up into the mansion. Jason watches him go, confused with the instructions.

“Is that code, or…?”

Dick shakes his head. “Here. This is for you.” He holds out a neatly folded piece of paper in his palm. Jason barks out a laugh when he realizes what it is. “What is it?” Dick asks at his reaction.

“You told me to write a letter, too. I left it with you to give mini-me when he got there.” Jason pockets the letter for now. He’d read it when he felt like it was the right time.

Dick shrugs, a little of his glow returning to him. “Old habits or something like that. Come on. Let’s see what Bruce wants in the backyard.” He beckons Damian and Tim to come with and herds everyone upstairs.

Turns out, Bruce is a sentimental bastard.

A couple of blankets are laid out on the grass of the yard, a few pillows scattered here and there. Nothing graceful or planned about it. Bruce and Alfred look so proud. “Bruce, man, you really don’t have to,” Jason begins, but Alfred cuts in.

“Nonsense, Master Jason,” he chides. “I’m told you will be returning to the manor. For that, we will celebrate as necessary.”

Jason grins, unable to help himself. “Whatever you say, Alfie. By the way, you should consider growing out your hair.”

“If I had any, sir, I would,” Alfred sighs. “I am thrilled to have you back, Master Jason, but please do try to refrain from commenting on my head.”

Bruce is smiling through it all. “Come on,” he urges, and it’s no surprise that Jason finds himself sitting beside him, knees drawn to his chest, while Bruce splays his legs out. Both have their heads tipped back to watch the stars high, high, up above them, twinkling, dazzling, alive.

Some time ago, Dick’s snoring had filled the space, Tim nuzzled into one side, Damian curled like a cat on Dick’s chest. Alfred had excused himself to bed a while ago, too, because he’s proper like that. And that just leaves Jason and Bruce.

For a while, Jason is fifteen. He’s just had a nightmare and he and Bruce are stargazing until he finally falls back asleep feeling safe and grounded.

“For what it’s worth,” Jason begins after some more time, “the stars in my room are just as perfect.”

Bruce slides closer and wraps an arm around his shoulders. Jason is fifteen again. He rests his head on Bruce’s shoulder. He’s safe. Loved. Nothing will take this away from him.

“For what it’s worth,” Bruce says, voice deep and soft, “these nights were my favorite.”

Jason is fifteen again, the stars are still shining down on him, and when he wakes again, he’ll see the glow in the dark stars watching over him.

Chapter Text

I think they got the portal working again.

I’ve got to go soon. This is about to get really emotional, and I know how much we hate emotional things. But they’re family. We’re just going to have to do it, right?

I don’t know what other advice I could give you here. Give us time to heal and forgive. The Manor is your home. If nothing else, come by once in a while for Alfred. He misses you a lot.

Give Dick a hand with his stuff when you can. It’s like he dove headfirst into all things ‘big brother’ and it’s a little stifling. But he does it out of love and because he cares a lot. Carry some of his load for him. He carries a giant one and no one else would be able to handle it.

I think we do something really bad to Tim. Try not to do that anymore? He says he doesn’t blame you, but…he’s our younger brother, too. Watch his back for him. Give him our blessing, too, you idiot. You were never going to be Robin forever, and Tim isn’t too shabby himself.

Damian says we meet him at the League. I think he carries a lot of awful memories from his time there. Kind of like us, I guess. We’re similar in a lot of ways. So, watch out for him, too. We’ll be the only ones who know what happens inside League walls and Damian will never admit it, but he needs someone who understands him.

Bruce gets super messed up after the whole Ethiopia thing. Like…super messed up. I hope we find each other faster in my time.

But, he is going to find you. Us. And he wants to hold on to his guilt because it makes it a little easier to deal with, but, Jason, you know it wasn’t his fault. Don’t hold it over him. He can’t take it. He won’t be able to.

He loves you. And if you ever need a reminder of that, think about the stars in our room. Bruce put them up there for us, so that we could feel safe when we sleep. He put up a universe on our roof for us, but we are his universe. He looks at us the same way we look at the stars. Don’t ever forget it.

Keep them safe, Jason. All of them. They love us. Unconditionally. Don’t ever think you’re alone. Not with a family like this one. We’re not alone. We’re going to kick ass because we have a family that has our back.

Okay, now I’m really out of time. I’m excited to get super jacked! It’s going to be awesome. We’re going to do a lot of good. I know it. I hope this letter helps when you need it to help the most. Take care of us, Jason. Take care of our family.

Let’s get to the rise of the Red Hood.

- Jason Todd, 2017

“Okay,” Jason says for the fifteenth time. Bruce has never looked so…distraught. Slumped in his chair, knee bouncing with anxiety, watching Jason repeat the word ‘okay’ over and over again while he tries to figure out the best way to map out an explanation of his death.

He thought about being gentle, but figured Bruce would get all emotional, and then he’d get all emotional, and that’s the last thing Jason wants right now.

He considered just dumping everything in one big breath. Or maybe even just…writing it out. But something told him that Bruce was going to need a verbal explanation. And who better to tell this story than Jason himself?

“Okay,” Jason says again, raking his fingers through his hair. “I’m just going to do it.”

Bruce nods encouragingly, and for a moment, the humor hits Jason. It’s like he’s about to sing a song for his dad, and Bruce is ready to go, paying close attention with his phone set to the video setting. The innocence behind it makes Jason’s chest squeeze.

“Right. So. Yeah, the Joker gets me,” he starts, rubbing the back of his neck. “You told me to stay put, but Sheila tells me this sob story and I fall for it, hook, line, and sinker.” Part of him wants to blame himself for being so stupid to actually believe that woman despite Bruce’s warnings and suspicions that whole trip. The other part of him, perhaps the foolish part, wanted so desperately to have a mother again.

In the end, desperation makes everyone do stupid things.

Bruce sucks in a breath. “She sells you out?”

Jason nods. “To cover her own ass.”

“Oh, Jason…”

Jason pushes on, trying to veer off the emotional path this was eventually going to end on anyway. Anything to stop the waterworks from running for as long as he can.

“This part is not as fun,” he grimaces, leaning back against the table. He glances up at the spot where his uniform would be hoisted up in a couple weeks. He knows it will still be blood-stained, torn, burned, and carry the scent of sulfur and ash. “That stupid clown uses a crowbar.”

Bruce looks like he’s trembling, and Jason holds back a scoff.

“He brings that thing down over and over again and he laughs and taunts, and he made all sorts of dumb jokes.” Jason bites out a harsh laugh, remembering so clearly the whistle of the metal swinging in its arc before agony tore through his skin. He remembers wanting it all to end, wanting himself to go unconscious. “What hurts more? Forehand or backhand?” he murmurs, feeling a little hysterical. For all the memories the Lazarus Pit altered, it left those intact.

“Is…is that how he…” Bruce can’t finish the sentence and Jason swoops in with the story, blinking away glistening red metal and pasty white faces with cruel smiles.

“No. No, there are these bombs loaded up in this warehouse.” Ticktickticktick…ticking away at life. Jason shuts his eyes, laughter echoing from somewhere.

“Do you find cover?” Bruce asks and the hope in his voice…Jason inhales.

“Yeah, it’s sort of hard to move when every single bone in your body is smashed,” he says lightly and is only met with a horrified stare. “And…and…” Jason doesn’t really know why this detail is important, but he needs Bruce to know that even with his dying breaths, he did what Bruce taught him. “And Sheila didn’t deserve to cry that day, but I tried to…to save her.”

Jason remembers in his delirium of pain and agony that his best idea was to just cover Sheila with his body. Not that his mangled, shrimp-sized self could have managed much protection, but Bruce taught him the importance of life. And there was a lot going on in his head back then, but instinct in the voice of Batman told him to help. So, he did.

Jason clenches his jaw. “I watched the timer tick down to zero. I watched the door for you to kick down.” He laughs bitterly. “I even imagined a scene where Nightwing would somehow be here. Or…or even Alfred. But you’ll never guess what happened next!”

Bruce does not seem to be enjoying his storytelling.

“The bomb goes off,” Jason says, resisting jazz hands. It’s a miserable story, he’s allowed to make it less so. “Yeah, it’s pretty fuckin’ awful. It hurt like a bitch. But, hey! It was over and I’m not too sure on what you did after, but…I don’t know, just don’t buy an expensive ass coffin that feels impossible to dig out of, alright?”

Bruce’s jaw hangs wide open. “D-dig? You…you have to dig out of your coffin?”

Jason rubs his thumb over his knuckles, over the scars that faintly litter his skin there. Thankfully, this part is a little blurrier to him. All he remembers is being in a lot of pain. Like every broken bone in his body (and he had a lot) were fusing back together, the gashes that hadn’t healed all the way stitching over themselves. He remembers somehow slipping off his belt and using the metal buckle to start punching through the wood.

He remembers managing to snap his mouth shut just before the wood broke, earning him a lungful of oxygen and dirt in his eyes. He doesn’t know how long it took, or how he did it, but he remembers feeling rain, cold as ice, over his skin and he had never felt more relieved. From there, he’s got flashes, memories, just bits and pieces of Gotham’s backroads where he must have been stumbling around, filthy in his expensive suit.

Jason blinks a few times, seeing Bruce’s mouth move but not hearing anything. “What?”

“Your coffin,” Bruce chokes. “You…you climb out of it?”

Jason bites his cheek, refraining from making a comment about being worm food. “Yeah. Don’t sweat it, I make it out. What really matters is what comes next.”

Bruce scrubs at his face and sighs.

Jason goes on, clapping his hands. “Right! So, somehow, the universe decided that my time wasn’t up yet, and it spits me right back into this hellhole. I’ll wander around Gotham like an idiot because my body is here, but my mind – my mind’s on LSD or something. Comatose, essentially.”

“And I don’t find you? If you’re just walking around Gotham…I – I don’t ever find you?” Bruce asks, and it’s a question Jason can’t even answer because he doesn’t remember. He might have seen Batman swing right over him, or maybe he was Crime Alley the same time Batman was taking down a gang, but he really doesn’t know.

“No, no,” Jason shakes his head. “No, you see, I get pretty bored of kicking it with the Gothamites and a couple of your friends take me in for a couple years. A really special friend of yours, actually.”

Bruce pauses and Jason sees him think through those words. “Talia,” he eventually breathes. “Talia? You…the League takes you in?”

And because Jason stopped caring about this damned timeline a long time ago, he says, “You’ve got a son over there. Damian. He’ll get here in, uh, about another two years or so.”

“My son? Talia’s his mother?” And now, Bruce has something other than misery on his face. Jason stares down a bristling anger, can already see him planning out the fastest way to find Talia and get Damian out.

“Oh, yeah,” Jason nods. “You can’t get Damian right now – Talia ends up bringing him to you, so just…hang on? The little squirt’s doing just fine. Trust me.”

“I have a son,” Bruce says, but he sinks back into his chair. “With Talia.”

Jason rolls his eyes. “Yeah, the kid’s cute, a little psychotic, but anyway. At some point, Ra’s gets tired of seeing my pretty catatonic face and decides that I have outlived my usefulness.” Not even a chuckle from the old man at the joke. Talk about a tough crowd. “Talia, for whatever reason, ignores him and throws me into one of those Lazarus Pits.”

“The green in your eyes…” Bruce murmurs, peering up into them. “You used to have these steely blue ones. I couldn’t…I didn’t know where the green came from.”

“Don’t beat yourself over it,” Jason shrugs, resisting the urge to shut his eyes so everyone could maybe forget about the leftovers the field trip into that vat of acid left him. “No one would have guessed giant pool of green Kool-Aid.”

“And if I couldn’t remember much from before this point, then I really don’t remember what happens next. I never wanted to try, so…it’s just there. None of it concerns you, so let’s fast forward a little.” Jason pauses mid-sentence for a second, some of those memories bleeding back into his brain. “You…you’ll probably won’t have any memory of this, so it probably doesn’t matter, but…Talia was good to me. She…she keeps both me and Damian safe while we’re there because she cares for you.”

Bruce swallows and taps a finger against his knee. “I still have you boys with me in the future, right?” The way he asks it sounds so…broken. So desperate, wary. His love for his children takes Jason a second to wrap his mind around, but Jason shouldn’t be surprised. Bruce’s love for his kids has always overpowered his logic – his greatest weapon. He knows this. He knows just how much love Bruce had for him.

“Yeah, Bruce,” Jason says, offering a tiny smile up this time. “You get all of us at the end. And…and it takes a whole lot of fighting and arguing, but I think everyone is happy with it. Everyone is happy with you.”

The relief, no matter how brief, that strikes across Bruce’s face is nothing short of heartbreaking. “Well, that’s something to look forward to.”

Jason nods. “Before that,” he begins again with a new tone of conviction, because no matter what timeline he’s in, he will never regret his work as the Red Hood, “Talia isn’t just a mother. She’s manipulative, violent, and has her own agenda. She tells me a bunch of things about you, the family, about Gotham, and in my messed-up head, I think she’s right.”

He gestures dramatically. “So, I make my grand return to Gotham as the Red Hood. Get it? It’s a ‘suck my dick’ moment for Joker’s old name.”

Bruce cringes a little. “Yeah. Yeah, I got it.”

Jason smirks. “I go after crime lords. Bad guys, predators, anyone who laid a finger on a child or made anyone else feel unsafe, I…I took care of them.”

Bruce’s eyes flash down to Jason’s empty holsters. Jason beat him to it. “Yes, I killed them.” Jason is long past feeling anything at that revelation, but Bruce…Bruce still shuts his eyes. Jason waits for the inevitable explosion. The how could you, Jason? How could you ruin yourself like that?

He’s heard it a million times. It’ll hurt like it always has. But he’ll brave it, like he always has.

But when Bruce opens his watery eyes, he just nods in his direction. “Then what?” he croaks.

Jason blinks, not expecting that. “Really?” He asks before he can swallow his disbelief. “You...you’re not…mad?”

“Jason, you just told me you die and it’s my fault that it happens,” Bruce says, haggard. “I don’t think I have much of a right to tell you what is right and wrong.”

Something in Jason’s chest loosens and his shoulders visibly slump. Hearing that from him…hearing Bruce give him utter autonomy without the fighting and screaming he’s so used to…Jason doesn’t know what to do. “I…um…a lot of the kids and the girls down in Crime Alley are safe from those drug and sex rings,” he says, just because he thinks he should still justify his actions. “A lot of the kids have a roof over their heads, too. I bring them food and…and stuff,” he trails off, unsure of what else to say.

Bruce smiles and it looks unforced. Genuine. “You’ve always been a good boy, Jason. You are so good.”

Oh, shit. Here come the tears. Jason sniffles, using every bit of willpower to stop those tears from falling. “Eventually,” he begins again, his voice thick, “I get on your radar. You and I do a little dance around Gotham for a while which ends with us in a complicated love triangle with the Joker.”

That’s the worst of it, Jason thinks. His whole plan of bringing Batman and the Joker to the same place, forcing Batman to make a choice. Not just because it was the right thing to do, but to see what Batman – Bruce – would do when faced with his biggest failures in the same room. He remembers the words they’d thrown at each other.

I’m asking you to do it because he took me away from you! Can’t do you do that? Can’t you do that for me? He took me away from you!

And that stupid cowl had only scowled and glared and had not moved from the nuzzle of Jason’s gun. All while Jason’s heart was being shredded apart mercilessly. It’s not fair. None of this was fair. Because Jason has always tried to be good. He has always done good. He never wanted anyone to hurt, never wanted to hurt other people, and he had tried so damn hard to be the best son, the best Robin, he could be. And the world, a viciously cruel thing, kept on taking and taking and taking from people like him who had nothing else to give.

And yes, Jason grew from that. Yes, he made himself into something more than the boy born into the gutters of Gotham. But isn’t he allowed to feel tired? Isn’t he allowed some grace? Some mercy? He was fifteen when everything was ripped from him. He knows fifteen-year-olds from Crime Alley now, doing what they can to support their families, and Jason does everything in his power to make sure they stay away from the pimps, the drugs, the things that could kill them. Didn’t he deserve someone who looked out for him like that?

His hands are shaking. Since when did his hands start shaking?

“Jason.” Bruce’s voice pierces through.

Jason gasps a little, looking up to see Bruce almost half out of his chair, concern all over his face. “I’m…I’m okay,” he says, hoping he doesn’t sound as brittle as he feels. He clears his throat. “Yeah, so that showdown is just as dramatic as you think it is. I’ll spare you the details, but just know that we all make decisions that we think are right. But sometimes, we’re wrong. We just don’t know it.”

“Yet,” Bruce says gently. “We don’t know it yet, but we will learn. Right? We learn, and we come back around to fix things because nothing is ever broken forever. Rifts are always mended.”

Jason quirks up an eyebrow. “Alfie teach you that one?”

Bruce’s lips twist to the side. “Yeah. Alfred taught me that nothing ever stays stagnant. That no matter how we may feel at one point, that feeling won’t last. And if we care enough, we’ll do what we can to move forward.” He stands up slowly and crosses over the space, getting close enough to wrap his arms around Jason. “And I think we will forever care enough,” he says into Jason’s hair.

Jason shuts his eyes, sinking his forehead into Bruce’s shoulder. He can’t remember the last time he had even gotten this close to Bruce. He can’t remember the last time he even had a conversation this long with just him. We fix things because nothing is ever broken forever. It carries some truth to it. In his timeline, it’s not fixed completely – Jason doesn’t live at the Manor with the others, he keeps Bat business away from his own, he and Bruce don’t…talk. Not unless they have to, and they’re never in the same room alone for very long. But…he’s fixing it. Bruce is fixing it, too. They do missions together, they call in Jason for backup because they trust him, he and Bruce can work on cases together, no matter how stuffy the room gets.

It's not fixed. It might never be fixed. But Jason can hope and believe that maybe they can build something new. Start over. Be a son to the man who gave him a new life once before.

He thinks he cares enough to try at least.

He hugs Bruce back, biting on his lip to stop the sob from coming out, but he doesn’t bother to stop the tears this time. “I care, Bruce,” Jason chokes. “I want to fix it.”

Bruce’s grip tightens. “We’re going to fix it, Jason. I promise you.”

“I don’t blame you. Neither will little me.”

“Hm?”

“What happens isn’t your fault. It’s not mine, either.” Jason pulls himself together enough to look Bruce in the eye when he says this. Emerald green meets icy blue in fierce determination and pain. “It’s just a series of unfair events. And it sucks and it’s terrible, but I don’t ever blame you for what happened.”

Bruce’s face crumples and now they’re both mirroring each other in soft gasps and choked back sobs. “Oh, son.”

“Dad,” Jason gets out, the word that should feel foreign to him, but only sounds right. 

Bruce is trembling and for some reason, that upsets Jason even more. “You’re my son. Do you hear me?” Bruce nearly demands. “I don’t care what happens in life or in death, and I don’t care what sends you back into my life, but through it all, Jason, you are my son. You are my boy, and I can’t…I don’t have the words to tell you how sorry I am that I couldn’t save you. I’m sorry that I push you away in moments where I should have held you close.”

For a moment, Jason is fifteen-years-old again. He’s fifteen, just woken up from a nightmare he already can't remember because he’s nestled into Bruce’s side on his bed, big, strong arms protecting him, warding off every awful and scary thing. He’s sniffling, exhausted, but he is being held close – close enough to hear a heartbeat. Steady, strong, and alive.

“Please,” Bruce begs, and Jason’s breath hitches, “I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but please know that I will love you always. No matter what. I love you, Jay. If nothing else, know that.”

Jason grounds his jaw, feeling more than grateful. More than what the word love entails. He feels like he’s eleven, sitting across Bruce Wayne with his first hot meal in months in front of him. He’s eleven when he wears Robin’s colors for the first time (It feels awesome! Check me out! I’m Robin, the Boy Wonder!) And then Jason is twelve, coming home from school to see stars on his ceiling, glowing when the sun set below the hills of the estate.

Thirteen-years-old and Jason beams when Bruce tells him how much he loves his Father’s Day card, even though Jason gave the nicer card to Alfred. He’s fourteen when he and Dick are teasing Bruce for being too slow while they swing through Gotham one night.

And then Jason is fifteen. Reeling from his discovery of Shelia Haywood, his birth mother, and telling Bruce about it. He’s fifteen, crawling into Bruce’s lap one night, sleepily telling him, “She could be my mom, B, but you’re my dad. She wasn’t there at my first baseball game. You were. She was never there to put stars on my ceiling to help me sleep. You did. I don’t even know for sure if she’s my mom. But you’ll always be my dad, right?”

Jason swallows, his throat constricting and his chest feeling a million pounds lighter all in the same moment. “Don’t give up on me, okay? Just…don’t give up on me.”

Bruce hugs him fiercely. “Never.” And it sounds more like a promise-held than a promise hoped.

*

Dick nearly flies into the Cave, his phone held high up into the air. “All of you owe Babs a shopping weekend,” he declares as he steps in. “She could be a supervillain if she wanted to. Luckily for us, she likes napping too much to – oh…bad time?”

Bruce and…older Jason are hugging, soft sniffles and red-rimmed eyes. It puts him on alert. What emotional conversation just happened? Did Bruce say something he shouldn’t have? Did Jason get hurt? Why wasn’t Dick there to help?

Dick lowers his phone and hurries over. “Hey, is everything okay?” he asks gently.

Bruce has his head buried into Jason’s shoulder, so it’s his younger (older?) brother who offers an apologetic smile. “No, not really. But they will be. Things will be okay. Right, B?”

Dick watches, short of horrified, as the man peels himself away, looking wretched, and when he speaks, sounds even worse. “Yeah. I’m going to make things more than okay for you boys.” He stretches out an arm, and it’s almost instinct that Dick slides himself in, standing in a three-way-hug that…well, with the way things were, Dick never imagined it.

“I love you both,” Bruce is saying through a locked throat. Dick hears the pressure in his voice, the amount of force it takes just to vocalize something that isn’t a…a sob.

Suddenly, Dick’s on high alert.

“I love you both so, so, much. You are my sons, and I have never been more honored to have been a part of your wonderful lives,” Bruce goes on while Dick’s heart hammers in his chest. What is going on? All those years of trying to get Bruce to show an inch of emotion and he’s falling apart so easily in his arms. “You are my sons. Mine. I’m sorry for being a less than mediocre father, but I’m going to try to be better. I will be better. For you both.”

“Bruce, you were never less than mediocre,” Dick says immediately, frowning. Where is he getting all of this from? What had Jason said? “You took us in when we needed someone the most. You taught us to be something more than lonely – you made this family, B. And you’re still holding on. All of it amounts to something.”

Bruce pulls away, a sad smile on his lips as he watches Dick through watery eyes. Dick doesn’t know why his eyes are also watering, but he blinks furiously. “I want it to amount to more, Dick.” He leans forward as Dick closes his eyes and presses a kiss to his head. Like he is ten years old again and is heading off to Gotham Prep for his first day in fourth grade.

Dad, he used to whine, sitting in the car when Bruce used to drop him off, you’re embarrassing me in front of all my friends.

Bruce would shake his head. I’m only unlocking this door if you let me say good-bye.

I’ll be back in a few hours. I’m not leaving the country or anything!

Come here.

Dad…

Dick.

And Dick would sigh dramatically, lean over, and shut his eyes. Bruce would plant a kiss to his head and with that, Dick used to hurry out of the car, a quick see you later, old man, following him at his heels.

But he’s not leaving for Gotham Prep, he’s not ten-years-old, and Bruce and Jason have been crying.

“Someone needs to tell me what’s going on. Right now,” he demands, stepping back. He eyes both of them with worry gnawing on his ribs. Neither seem eager to start speaking and that only makes Dick worry more. “Guys. Give me something,” he nearly begs.

Jason rubs at his arm before lifting his head and meeting Dick with shiny eyes. “There’s something you need to know about the future,” he begins somberly.

And as Jason tells his story, Dick listens with horror, grief, and bitterness. That’s his little brother. His brother. Dying in the same colors, the same damn uniform, Dick created.

That should have been you, something sinister whispers in the curl of his ear. Dick visibly flinches. It’s your uniform, the whisper continues, he looks just like you, right? Small, scrawny, black-haired, blue-eyed orphaned boy Bruce picked up from the streets. That should have been you.

Dick flinches again.

“Don’t beat yourself up,” Jason jokes after he finishes. He claps Dick on his shoulder like they’re celebrating a ball game. “There was nothing you could have done anyway.”

“Nothing I could have done?” Dick repeats backing up. “What are you talking about? I could…I could…” he stammers before enclosing his fist around his phone. “I could save you now, right? Make sure you never get to Ethiopia, or – or come with you, or –" He fishes his phone out, frantic, desperate. “I – I know how to switch you back. Babs – she helped program this code, and once little you comes back, we could…I can…”

“Woah! Hey, Dick,” Jason startles, coming to him with hands open and Dick is half aware of how hard he’s breathing. “You gotta chill out, Big Bird. Look at me.”

Dick’s still shaking, but he focuses on Jason’s hands on his shoulders. Vaguely, he wonders if Jason can feel the tremors tearing through his body.

“There was nothing you could do,” Jason says softly. He looks Dick in the eye, unblinking, with furrowed brows. “Alright? I never blamed you for anything either.”

Dick’s lungs feel twisted, his palms sweaty. “Let me save you,” he breathes.

Jason shakes his head a little defeated. “You can’t.”

Behind them, Bruce makes a noise from the back of his throat and Dick feels like he’s about to explode. Like hell he can’t do anything. He’s fucking Dick Grayson. Nightwing. A hero. How can he be all those things and not be able to save his little brother from that fate?

A strange surge of anger swells in his chest. “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do,” he hisses, suddenly on the offensive. “Do you think I care about anything else when I have a chance to save you?”

“Dick, the future is good. This house so many people in it, and everyone is happy and alive. Things are…things are good. Things are okay.” Jason tilts his head so he can meet Dick’s eyes again. “But for that to happen, you need to let this happen.”

Dick steps away with a groan. “I was such an asshole to you when you first got here,” he says, burying his head into his hands. “I gave you so much hell, but I didn’t…I didn’t know…” All those times he had looked at Jason as nothing more than a street kid, another project for Bruce to work on since he moved away…all of that for a kid who was bleeding out love and forgiveness for a world that did not offer him either.

But how was he supposed to know?

“Look, Dickie, we can sit here and think about how we could have done anything different. Trust me, I think about it a whole lot. But I also think about how there’s nothing we can do to change the past. I think about fixing what we can, so we have a future where we are all alive and happy.” Jason speaks like he’s lived several lifetimes, and in a way, Dick supposes, he has.

He'd make a great big brother, Dick thinks vaguely.

“He’s right, Dick,” Bruce finally speaks. “We can’t interfere with time. What’s done is done. Besides,” he adds with a sorrowful look towards Jason, “I don’t want to risk a timeline where we never get Jason back.”

Dick inhales sharply. Somehow, that thought is far more terrifying than what is already in front of them. “So, there’s nothing.”

Jason sets his jaw. “Nothing,” he confirms. “We have to let it happen.”

Dick nods, dropping his gaze to his phone in his hands. The code that would start up the portal to switch them back. The code that would ruin first and then…then fix everything. If Dick can’t stop Jason’s death, then the least he can do is offer an ounce of courage. “Bruce and I are going to set this up to send you back to your time,” he says, voice a little more determined. “Write a letter to your younger self. I have no idea if any of us will even remember this after we set the timeline straight again, but I will not let our Jason face his death without knowing that he’ll be okay. He needs to know that he will always have a family, no matter what, and that we will never give up on him.”

Jason nods mutely.

Dick’s heart breaks.

“Okay,” he sighs, waving Bruce over to the computer. “Give us half an hour.”

*

Bruce spends his next thirty minutes sparing his glances from the computer to Jason, hunched over a workbench, writing his letter.

He wishes he could treat this as another one of his cases. Completely detached. Just a task ahead of him and a deadline to meet. Get the wormhole open and get his little boy back.

He wishes it felt a little less like a father digging a grave for his own son. In every sense of the phrase.

But, he thinks with another glance at his son at the table, in five years, everyone – Bruce gets the implication that there will be more hearts beating in this house – will be together. Happy. Safe as they can be. And he knows it won’t be enough to erase his guilt or stop the inevitable nightmares and painful reminders of his failure as a father, but that’s a battle Bruce will just fight on his own. He can handle it. Especially after knowing that Jason, his lovely, brilliant, son comes back to him. He could handle anything after that.

Bruce gets a second chance in the form of a miracle. He will not be foolish to see it go to waste.

He taps out a few more commands and when Dick comes to stand behind him, Bruce flips on a switch. The portal whirrs to life, an electric blue glowing from somewhere inside.

Bruce hates the sight of it.

For a moment, neither he nor Dick move. They stare into the portal, flashes of terrible and great things no doubt reflected off their eyes. Bruce wrings his fingers in front of him out of nervousness. Out of revulsion. Why him? Why Jason? Why Bruce and his parents? Why Batman and Robin, why give so much and have some more taken from him? How much more are they supposed to take without bending or breaking? Or do they bend and break, only to reform so they can do it again, and again, and again? Why is that expected of them?

Bruce cracks his knuckles.

Jason strides over to them, folding his letter neatly. “Okay,” he says first. “It’s time.”

And if silence could be louder, it grows to be an unbearable volume after he speaks.

Bruce glances over at him and hates what he sees. The unholy motley of green and blue casting hollowed shadows on Jason’s face. Bruce watches him become paler by the second. He hates it.

He watches Jason square his shoulders and walk up to Dick. “Give this to the kid, will you? At the right time.”

Dick snatches the letter out of his hands and flings himself forward, hugging Jason tightly. He presses his lips into a thin line, holding back his tears. Bruce looks away, but he hears Dick say to him, “I’m sorry for everything, Little Wing. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you needed it, I’m sorry this has to happen to you, and I’m sorry I can’t take your place.” 

Jason is big enough now to easily wrap his arms around Dick’s body and Bruce watches him pull his oldest son close against his chest. “No, come on,” Jason says, voice a little muffled, “don’t say that. This family needs you. You’re its rock, the thing that keeps everyone steady. Bruce and Alfred are going to need you. So will every new kid that makes the Manor home.” Jason winks at Dick at that comment. “And…and I’m going to need you, too. So, don’t go around moping like your girlfriend dumped you, alright?” he chuckles a little. “I’m going to need you. Got that? Be there for me.”

Dick’s smile is watery but it’s enough for him to stand back, wipe his nose, and promise with every inch of his heart, “always, Little Wing. I’m always going to be there for you.”

Jason nods once, and Bruce sees just how much his little boy has grown. How much of a man, a responsible, intelligent, brave young man Jason grows up to be. There’s pride in Bruce’s chest. Enough of it to let him cast his own smile when Jason approaches him.

“I’m so proud of you, Jay,” Bruce breathes and this time, his voice doesn’t shake.

Jason blinks and scoffs, a little red creeping up to his cheeks. “For what, old man? I didn’t really do anything other than…you know…” he gestures vaguely.

Bruce lifts a brow. “Disappoint me?”

Jason scuffs up the front of his boot, kicking at the ground. “Yeah.”

“I don’t know what future me has said to you, son, but you could never disappoint me enough to push you away. You could never disappoint me enough.”

“Wanna bet on it?” Jason taunts and for a minute, Bruce sees his fifteen-year-old son, in the Robin suit, getting ready to take out Riddler’s goons at the Gotham Art Museum.

I can take out more bad guys than you, Jason would say, hushed, while crouched behind the window of the building.

Bruce would grunt, keeping a careful eye on the men below. This isn’t a competition, Robin.

Then, let’s make it into a game.

It is not a game, either.

Jason would smirk at him, all defiant, all brave. Wanna bet on it?

Bruce steps forward and pulls Jason into his own hug. One last time. “You are my son,” he whispers fiercely. “Always. No matter what.”

Jason buries his head into his shoulder and Bruce, on instinct, cards a hand through his hair. “Okay, Dad. I believe you,” his son chokes out. Bruce shuts his eyes and lets the tears spill out. Dad. Dad, dad, dad.

Is that who you call for in your last moments?

Bruce hugs harder.

“I’m sorry, too. It’s not fair, and I need you to know that I would do everything I possibly can to make sure you come out okay. I promise. I’ll be there. I’ll wait for you.” Bruce pulls away, meets Jason’s red eyes, sees his tear-stained cheeks, hears his sniffles, and holds his shaking hands. “I promise, Jason, I’ll wait for you. Forever, if that’s what it takes. I’ll find you.”

Jason nods shakily. “Find me soon, okay?”

Bruce has to reach up instead of bending down this time, but he plants a kiss onto Jason’s head anyway. “I will. I promise.”

When Jason’s hands finally leave his, and cold air freezes over Bruce’s palms and fingers, he holds them tightly in front of him as Jason steps up into the portal. “There’s going to be a kid around here more often,” Jason tells them. “A new Robin. A replacement.” Bruce thinks that final word carries some bitterness with it. “He’s a good kid. A better Robin. He’s going to be the reason you get back into the game, so…look out for him. Especially you, Dick. He’s going to need you.”

Dick sniffles, wipes at his eyes. “I’ll be on the lookout, Jay.”

Jason smiles softly. He turns to Bruce, emerald green flashing around the corners of his eyes. Bruce stares. “Hey, B?”

“Yes, Jason?”

“Thanks for the stars in my room.”

Jason winks at them, spins on his heel, straightens up, and marches forward into the wormhole.

They’ll always be there for you to come back to, Bruce thinks as the light shines so bright, he shields his eyes. He squints to see a tall silhouette give way to a much smaller one, a more familiar one.

Bruce squeezes his eyes shut.

I’ll always be there for you to come back to.

*

When Jason wakes up the next morning, everything feels strange.

Everything except for the glow in the dark stars on his ceiling. For some reason, the stars feel oddly familiar. More than usual.

In his desk sits his plane ticket to Ethiopia.

The flight leaves in four hours.

*

The strange feeling he has is just nerves.

Or so he tells himself.

Bruce puts a hand on his shoulder. “Are you sure about this? I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

Jason swallows his uneasiness and sets his jaw. “I’m not running off with her, you know. I never wanted to lose everything you and I had. Never.” He gives Bruce his bravest smile, all teeth, and no fear. “You’re never giving up on me, right?”

“Never,” Bruce says, and if it sounds a little emotional for some reason, Jason doesn’t push.

Jason sets his eyes on the aid camp set up in the desert. “It’s more of a promise than she ever made.”

With Bruce’s hand in his, and a letter addressed to him that Dick gave him before his mission crumpled in his other hand, Jason walks forward to meet his mother.

*

So, that’s why everything felt weird.

It’s a hysterical thought, one that shouldn’t even cross his mind given his current situation. But, at least, he’s not as deranged or as far gone as the stupid clown and his stupid crowbar. He has the little note in his pocket to thank for that.

A letter from his future self? Maybe if he could think a little clearer past the raging red of ache and pain, he would laugh at the dumb prank Dick obviously played on him. But he can’t think that clearly. He can’t really think, for that matter, not with the warehouse spinning in a million different ways and his heart tearing right through his chest.

So, Jason pretends the letter is real. That an older Jason somehow came back here to warn him about this. To tell little Jason that he’s supposed to survive tonight, that he’ll grow up to be big and strong, and do a lot of good for a lot of people.

An older Jason coming back in time to tell little Jason who knows his time is almost up (and thank God) that despite all this, Bruce will still love him. That Bruce is racing across the desert to save him now, that when Jason magically comes back, Bruce – Dad – will be waiting for him.

Joker leaves at some point. Jason doesn’t know, doesn’t really care. He hears the ticking and knows that the place is lined with bombs and explosives before he sees the timer, already at a low number. He tries, and only because a voice in his head that sounds a lot like Bruce’s says good or bad, it does not matter. If someone is in danger and needs help, you help them, to shield his stranger of a mother.

And then, feeling every single gash, cut, and shattered bone, he lies on the ground of the warehouse.

“Robin is magic,” he breathes, rattled and shaky.

The timer ticks relentlessly. Somewhere, Sheila starts crying.

“Robin is magic,” Jason repeats, shutting his eyes. And for some reason, he isn’t afraid. Maybe it’s because he knows his time isn’t up yet. Maybe he knows that he has family waiting for him at the end of all this. Maybe it’s because he just knows he’s going to be okay.

His eyes are shut when the bomb goes off, seeing the timer hit zero before closing them.

Maybe, he thinks when all the ringing and the pain and all the lights and exhaustion stop, maybe he isn’t afraid because he’s surrounded by glow in the dark stars.

Just like the ones at home.