Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Oliver Building has an excellent view of Crime Alley: the fizzling neon pink sign of the bodega, the abandoned city bus up on blocks, the immaculately clean sidewalk in front of Golden Noodle House. This far up the wind is high enough it’s almost cold and the garbage heaped in the gutter doesn’t smell. It must be Wednesday– Waste Management will come along in a few hours– but for the time being Jason has an unobstructed view.

He sits crouched, hugging his knees because no one’s there to look at him and comment on it. Molly’s got finals, Dick’s screwing around in San Francisco with his little scout troop, Bruce has fucked off to Metropolis for whatever League shit that’s so important it can’t wait. Jason figures the pigeons won’t begrudge him a rooftop brooding sesh. They’re probably waiting to see if he falls– he’s seen them fight to the death over a hotdog. His eyeballs are pigeon filet mignon.

Robin’s cape can double as a glider, under the right circumstances, if not being worn by a complete moron. Jason Todd’s hoodie, not so much.

The idea wears smoother and smoother each time he turns it over. He isn’t anyone– just another junkie’s busted condom fuckup, en route from juvie to prison to grave– Jason’s just made more stops along the way than most.

He flicks a pebble off the ledge– it clears the fire-escape and vanishes into the dark street. 

“The undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveler returns, puzzles the will,” he mutters.

He remembers it so vividly: crouched just like this, on light rigging. in bare feet for traction, watching some kid sat on the boards of that Midtown High School theater in cheap polyester velvet addressing a plastic skull. It was a moving soliloquy. Singularly spectacular, especially for a junior. He wonders if the kid’s on Broadway now, in college, or just trying to make ends meet somewhere in Gotham. It’s anyone’s guess which. Jason’s resigned to never knowing.

He picks at the mortar between the bricks under his feet and breaks off a chunk, turning it over in his fingers before pitching it over into the open air.

He knows it scared him, the freefall, the vomit-smear of streetlights over tinted glass, traffic booming up from below at the speed of a falling stone, the cold feeling of his empty hand reaching for Dick’s. He knows it at arm’s length like he knows lava is hot and the Marianas Trench is deep.

It used to scare him. 

Now, mostly, he just wants to see what happens next.

Suddenly there’s someone sitting beside him on the ledge. “I mean, Hamlet decided he’d rather not find out yet.” 

Jason reaches for a gun he isn’t wearing– it’s a good thing he isn’t. It’s just some kid sat beside him, brand new sneakers kicking against the side of the Oliver Building. He has a fade. He’s wearing a Golden Noodle House windbreaker– and he’s holding chopsticks and a bowl out to Jason.

“Want a dumpling? They’re the best in Gotham.” 

Jason spends a long moment debating the merits of jumping down to the fire escape– but if he breaks his leg, there’s not one to call to help him deal with it. He takes the chopsticks and shoves a dumpling into his mouth. 

It’s a damn good dumpling. 

He stuffs two more into his cheek for good measure and asks, “The fuck do you want?”

“Robin’s on top of a building quoting Hamlet,” the kid watches the street below like what he’s saying isn’t a big deal, “I wasn’t just gonna let him kill himself.” 

“I’m not fuckin’ Robin. You think you know me?” 

“Nah, not really, you just looked hungry and like you had a shitty day. So, dumplings.” 

“What, you’re a good samaritan giving out free food to whichever bastard looks the saddest that day?” 

He shrugs, “Word of mouth is good advertising. It’s also the fastest way to get cops off your case. People like food.” 

“These dumplings are pretty great.” Jason figures it’s bait, they’ve gotta be drugged and he’s about to get sold for spare parts or to some lab other. But if this is how he’s gonna go, at least it tastes good. 

“I’m Tim, by the way. Tim Drake. The dumplings are my mom’s recipe– she runs Golden Noodle House,” Tim points to the restaurant below. “It’s been in our family for a couple generations. You should come by sometime. Capes get free vermicelli bowls. No one’s ever actually taken us up on that offer, you’d be the first.”

“I’m busy.” 

“Soliloquizing alone on rooftops?” 

“Fuck you, it was one line and I didn’t even get it right. You don’t know shit.” 

Tim looks at him, finally, and the back of his smile grows serious. “I know Jonathan Crane’s  gonna screw you over. And I know that you’re gonna need a lot of help getting clean when he does. You don’t seem to have a lot of friends.” 

The half-chewed dumpling in Jason’s mouth suddenly feels cold. He spits it out. “Yeah, okay, no. Stay the fuck away from me, kid.” He drops the bowl and chopsticks off the rooftop–

Tim protests– “C’mon, bro, don’t be like that, those are perfectly good dumplings!” –

Jason drops off the roof. 

The fire escape catches him as loudly as it possibly can because he can’t catch a break. But the dumpsters are full and the alley isn’t lit. A few more strategic leaps and he’s in the wind.

For the next two months, Jason refuses to let himself think about Tim Drake.

“Best high you’ve ever had in your life,” Jason promises, and just like that the last of the inhalers are gone into eager hands. There’s something about street life in Gotham that makes bouncing from one escape to the next especially appealing. 

Courage-on-demand is more like ennui-on-demand. It comes with the desperate itch to do whatever it takes to maybe feel something. The comedown’s a bitch between the dehydration and the muscle spasms and the roller coaster of feelings– but no one needs to know those parts. They just need to get the first wave over with. The sooner that’s done, the sooner he can get around to fixing Gotham the right way.

Of course, he’ll have to deal with Crane in the meantime. 

Later, when the Courage wears off, he’ll feel worse about things. He knows that. But for now the facts sit pretty coldly in the palm of his hand: he’s now defied Crane’s overall plan. Sure, it’s good to demonstrate demand for a new product with a pilot study, but given the stakes, Crane thinks subtlety is the better part of valor. 

Crane’s got the upper hand. 

He has from the start because Jason is too weak to pass up being treated like he means something to somebody– even if all he means is a biddable, live body. That’s about all he’s ever amounted to, really. And he tends to outlive his usefulness pretty fucking fast because he’s too stupid to stop chasing his own ideas about how things should be and too weak to keep a handle on his feelings.

Jason shakes his head to clear it, hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket. It’s zipped up to his chin– a fit of paranoia on the way out of the factory had insisted he’d need armor, just in case. After all, he’s playing with fire. 

Body armor used to make him feel bigger than this.

Maybe it just needs a different color scheme. 

He’s in the middle of contemplating spray paint colors– it’s a good thought to chase, a fairly neutral idea– when he turns up Crime Alley. In a flash, he recognizes the black-masked men shouldering their way into Golden Noodle House on the corner of 6th and Hyacinth with its pristinely swept sidewalk.

That place has the best dumplings in Gotham.

Jason’s body moves without his meaning for it to, breaking into a sprint. A gun goes off.

The first guy, Bradley or some stupid shit like that, is the only one whose parents have enough money that he owns a gun. Jason breaks his shoulder like he’s deboning a chicken– knife into the joint and a good hard yank until it cracks loose. 

Consequences are problems for Jason-in-the-future.

He uses Bradley’s gun to bludgeon the second idiot, Lawrence-something, high out of his mind on Jason’s product and the misguided notion that he can hit Jason hard enough to make him stop. 

The third, Cooper-dumb-name-junior, Jason chases into the kitchen at a dead run then shoves– mostly by accident– face-first into a fry vat. 

Then it’s over. 

Jason stands in the kitchen of the Golden Noodle House trying not to hurl now that he knows what it looks like when someone’s face gets deep-fried.

The silence is only broken by pained noises from Bradley and his friends. The woman behind the counter and the cook both order them to stillness in Cantonese and English.

Jason can’t catch his breath. Running is good, usually, right about now, running will help, but his legs are numb. He feels like he’s falling as he stumbles into movement. He opens the kitchen door too hard– even with its soft-close hinges it slams into the wall.

The woman behind the counter rounds on him. She’s wide-eyed and brandishing a metal serving tray– but even so she has a kind face. She’s uninjured. 

The man on the floor in front of the counter, not so much.  He’s breathing, but the gunshot wound in his chest is going to create some major problems. Collapsed lungs hurt and have a slow recovery, never mind the terror of suffocating that comes with them.

“Mrs. Drake,” Jason says in a voice he doesn’t recognize– he sounds calm, like he knows what he’s doing, like he’s trustworthy, “Call 9-1-1 then bring me your first aid kit and a tampon.” 

Then he’s on the floor, knees slipping a little in blood, tearing at t-shirt fabric and assessing damage. “Mr. Drake, hi, I’m Jason. I’m gonna try to keep you from bleeding any more. Is that okay?” 

And suddenly he remembers why this part is so easy: Alfred coached him through this script so many times. Robin, the Boy Wonder, had a resume that was equal parts decoy, shock weapon, and first responder. 

“Hell yes, it’s okay, son.” 

“Great.” Jason starts with the biggest wad of napkins he can get his hands around and straight up pressure. Keep the inside bits on the inside, keep the outside bits from moving too much. “Are you hurt anywhere else?” There’s only the one bleed he can see– it doesn’t look like a through-shot, either, which is so much worse– but it never hurts to ask.

Mr. Drake shakes his head.

Packing the wound hurts like hell– Jason knows it does and he says, “Sorry, but it’s better than dying,” before inserting the tampon.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Mr. Drake tells him, wincing.

“Nah, it’s totally legit, these were originally invented for plugging bullet wounds during the Civil War. Try to talk less, though, the slower you breathe the less shitty this is gonna feel.” 

At least, until someone competent can patch him up, drain his chest cavity. Jason doesn’t have the equipment for that, would be too scared to think about trying to do that .

Sirens pull up outside the restaurant as he finishes tying off the pressure bandage– the external bleeding isn’t getting worse, but it’s the lung he’s most worried about, whatever’s going on inside that he can’t see and doesn’t know enough to fix. 

Under the hot red light of the black and white flashing through the storefront, Jason flinches. “Mrs. Drake, keep pressure on this. I have to go. Good luck.” 

He flees through the kitchen, leaping over Cooper as he goes.

When he’s far enough from Crime Alley that he can’t hear sirens any more, he vomits.

As he slinks back into Snowy Cones, he realizes there’s still blood on his hands, drying tacky to the insides of his jacket pockets. He veers hard into an old employee restroom. It’s filthy and the water comes out freezing cold. 

Jason bangs his hand into the SoftSoap dispenser and scrubs for a full minute. The lather comes away rusty and in the blinding blue light he can see where he missed places: the lines around his wrists and crossing his palms, the backs of his knuckles. 

So he gets another handful of soap. 

The water splashing from the busted faucet into the streaked basin is no less freezing. He gets his nails in there, scouring like he means it.

Eventually the dispenser runs out of soap and his lifeline is still bloody red.

Chapter Text

The after always gets him. 

Jason gives Dick his superhero moment, lets Bruce get his closure, then ditches Wayne Manor for good. It’s easy to do, walking away from the wreckage he’s created. Reliable as clockwork, that’s Jason’s penchant for wrecking shit. Biting off his mom’s dealer’s fingers, following his dad to that last meeting with Harvey fucking Dent, taking stolen bolt cutters to the chains on his foster mom’s cupboards, rigging the behavior management controls to shock juvie guards. It always starts with a haze of fury, coagulated red into courage and stupid choices. 

And the after – getting the shit beat out of him, sleeping on the streets, getting arrested, solitary confinement– the after always catches him flat-footed. Staying alive, he’s good at that part. But living with himself after? 

Pulls his bike to a stop on the corner of Arlington and Vine and just stands there, feeling the hot asphalt under his boots. It’s a warm day. The trees are starting to bloom, despite everything. Or maybe it’s the Lazarus Pit goo in the water table encouraging them to live to their full potential– fuck if he knows the first thing about it.

The running inventory in his head reassures him he has the clothes on his back and the contents of his bike’s saddlebags: leather polish, a few boxes of shells, his two favorite Rugers, body armor, some broken granola bars, a Bowie knife. There’s a change of clothes and two copies of Shakespeare’s Collected Works in his backpack– one is battered and coming away from its spine, because he lifted it from a thrift store years ago and keeps rereading it. The other is new, hollow, and filled with hundred dollar bills.

He’d bet half of the money Bruce doesn’t even notice being robbed. There’s too much other shit to keep him busy.

The sedan behind Jason finally honks. The light at the intersection is green, after all.

Jason considers using his helmet to bust in the guy’s windshield.

Instead, he stands there, grinding his teeth, bike idling and boots planted on the pavement, until the light turns red again. 

Then he pulls into his left-hand turn.

April Adler hates the entrance to the Foundation drop-in center. Mostly because it reeks of urine and mildew, no matter how many times she gets the fire department to hose blast the whole dang thing. How her grandmother managed to keep any Adler Programs running in Gotham all these years– when as far as April can tell, Gotham is a cesspit full of nuts and trash– is completely beyond her.

Then she remembers Ruby, and Javi, and the rest of the kids at the Center, and she takes a deep breath and gets back to work. Twenty-four is too young to be cynical . She can hear Kat Adler’s voice in her head, kvetching about cynicism causing wrinkles. 

She’s been standing idle on the sidewalk staring at the entrance to the Center for long enough that passing pedestrians have started staring at her. She tightens her ponytail, turns and steps back into the street toward the cargo van. There’s a whole heap of donations she’s ecstatic to offload to PS’s 101 through 143. Backpacks, notebooks, pens, pencils, and an array of art supplies that the school district sorely needs. 

She doesn’t even notice the motorcycle engine until it’s upon her and she’s hauling ass over teakettle further into the street with a box of Bic pens raining down around her like a particularly aggressive and pointy rainstorm.

The string of expletives she lets loose is lengthy, creative, and would probably get her a stern look from Rabbi Lehrer. There’s a run in her pantyhose and – “Dangit, I just got these at th’department store.” KMart was expensive . 

The thick molasses of her drawl sticks out in the smog-laden streets of Gotham. As if the golden blonde hair– ringing her head in a high ponytail of rain-frizzed curls– or the penchant for leopard print didn’t do that all by itself.

“Are you even old enough t’be operatin’ that thing?”

And Jason, he reasons he could just swerve around the chick sprawled in the street and get on with his life. She’s not injured, inasmuch as a person would be injured by the barest jostle by a mirror . But doing that would mean the guy in the sedan could, potentially, get where he’s going a bit faster.

So he brakes and shouts back, “You gonna get outta the street or are you gonna cry about it?” 

The stem of one heel is holding on by the barest bit of shoe leather and glue. She swivels to narrow her eyes at him and stomps over, one heel stem flapping like a partially amputated limb, “Y’all weren’t even payin’ attention!”  But then she deflates and sighs at him.

April didn’t pick her profession for nothing – if one could argue that running a charity youth center was a profession. Her Mama didn’t seem inclined to think so, but her mama could also go suck dust.

“Why ain’t you park that hellbeast and come inside for somethin’ t’eat and some hot cocoa? City’s done been runnin’ on crazy th’last few months, take th’peace an’ quiet where it comes.” She remembers she might at least have a pair of tennis shoes in her office. Ugh. Flat shoes.

The sedan’s engine revs and it veers around the motorcycle, half in the opposite lane.

Quick as a flash, April whips off her good shoe and hocks it into the sedan’s windshield. Its heel lodges firmly in the glass, spider-webbing cracks out from the center. Sedan guy brakes hard enough he almost headbutts his steering wheel.

Jason shouts at him, too, for good measure. “This is how pile ups happen, jackass! Wait your fuckin’ turn!” He kicks the sedan’s door hard enough to dent it.

He squints between the busted windshield beside him and April. She’s so short . “What are you, some kind of homicidal muppet? Shoes aren’t weapons.” It’s not the cleverest thing he’s ever said but, then, he’s had a long winter.

Half barefoot and scowling at sedan guy, she raises a hand and gestures at him, hollering something in Hebrew before turning back to Jason. 

“Anything can be a weapon you know how to use it.” She casts her eyes skyward before blowing out a breath, “Now y’all’re definitely comin’ in otherwise I’ll havta call Moishe --” her whole face scrunched up in annoyance, “And he’ll bring halfa Jewish Gotham down on us an’ if we’re lucky he won’t bring Dmitri.”  She gestured, “Quit starin’ at me and turn off th’engine. You did practically run me over.”

“Dmitri Khadym?” Jason wrinkles his nose and hopes he’s wrong about that bit of word association. It’s just his luck, pissing off someone with Khadym connections the same day he officially moves out of Wayne Manor. “Fine, whatever.” 

April hauls after him as he veers onto the sidewalk, pausing to yank the cargo door of the van closed. She doesn't bother locking it because that would absolutely invite trouble. The run in her pantyhose gets worse with every step. 

Jason dismounts and doesn't fidget with his keys, just shoves his hands in his pockets. "What do you want? I can replace your shoes if it's that big a deal." 

She gives the kid a once over, re-estimates his age, decides she doesn’t care about her shoes that much, and ushers him down the urine-reeking stairwell. The sign taped to the inside of the door is new and promises that it hosts the Bowery location of The Adler Foundation Youth Center.

“I got more shoes, it’s fine, just come inside.” 

Jason trails after her, hanging back near the door and fully aware of just how much he's telegraphing "ready to run away as fast as physically possible"-- but then he gets through the door. 

“Welcome to the Adler Foundation; I’m April Adler,” she tells him.

The basement unit sprawls below ground. It’s as well-lit as a basement in Gotham can be and the carpeting is new, patterned subtly like grass. The other kids lounging around the space pause to take note of him with varying degrees of interested suspicion from perches on squashy chairs and couches along the far wall. Tables lined the center of the room, stacked with activities, textbooks, craft projects. The massive boxy television by the sofas was lavender and had a chartreuse yellow cable box atop it like a jaunty, bugeyed hat and a collection of vintage game consoles. A western was playing quietly to a group of teenagers– who shirked the sofas to sprawl on an especially plush shag rug.

Jason pauses to scan the bookshelves and notes the sheer volume of Jane Austen, feeling something like optimism.

April gestures toward a cased doorway leading to a kitchen straight out of the fifties.  

“In here. I’m still workin’ on updates.” She lifts a shoulder and fetched out a Pyrex filled with latkes and offers them to the boy. “Gentiles round here call’em hash brown squares -” she rolles her eyes, “They’re latkes, try’em with th’applesauce,” and good as her word she set to work making him some hot cocoa.

The kitchen is weirdly homey, even with its stained ceiling and yellow light. It's big-ish -- maybe this place used to be a restaurant, or a church? Jason will have to hit up the library to know for sure. There are a few chairs in haphazard stacks that look like they came from a catering wholesaler.

He takes the dish from her and just sort of holds it stupidly for the second. Not for the first-- or even thirtieth-- time he wonders if he's about to get drugged. It says a number of truly stunning things that between his years of foster care and homelessness that's his knee-jerk reaction to free food. It's the sort of thing he'd've thought therapists were supposed to fix. 

He settles in the region of "fuck it" and eats a latke, shoving the whole thing in his mouth without ceremony.

Between the crisp texture, the perfect balance of potato and onion and salt, all warm, and the fact that he's pretty confident it's been two days since he last ate-- he's not responsible for the sound he makes. 

"I don't care what they're called," he says, chews, swallows. "They're good." He tries one with the applesauce– because he's all in now, he might as well enjoy his last meal– and he has to sit down in the nearest ancient-ass diner chair, it’s so good. Hunger is the best seasoning.

The cocoa came together pretty quickly on the stove while he was stuffing his face. As much as April would like to shell out for fancy cocoa, they’re all on a budget and anyway Swiss Miss is halal, so it isn’t cheating and they have heaps of the stuff. She mixes in a little powdered milk for some extra creaminess and sneaks a handful of colorful generic marshmallows into the cups. 

“Thank you,” she says, pleased at the compliment. She sets a mug before him and gets one for herself, snagging a latke from him. She hasn’t quite mastered the art of sitting quietly without it being a little awkward, and she’s more aware than ever that she’s currently without shoes. 

The next moment, she’s up. Her office is just off the end of the kitchen. She slips into the worn in Chucks from behind her office door, shoving her feet into them before she runs a higher risk of contracting tetanus or gangrene.

When she comes back, Jason asks, “You own this place?” 

“You could say that. My Grandmama started the Foundation in the 50’s.” Satisfied that her feet are now safe, she blows out a breath, “Any of th’kids’ll tell you it’s mine but it’s more it was her baby and when she died I told myself I was gonna make sure it weren’t completely run into th’ground. I’m a hands-on sorta person I guess.”

Jason doesn’t offer up any platitudes like I’m sorry for your loss because he’s still a little too busy eating. Still, it comes out harsher than he expects when he says, “So, what, you’re runnin’ a shelter? That’s gonna do a lotta good cleanin’ Khadym money, at least.”

It throws her for a moment, what he’s asking, and then she lets out a laugh like a gunshot. Loud as hell with a weird braying noise like a muffler that has a balloon attached.

“Dimi knows better’n to try that around here,” she shakes her head. “It’s sorta a catch-all shelter, drop-in center an’ youth club. We offer counselin', access to social workers, secondary and post secondary education, alternative school programs,” she ticks each program and service off on her fingers. “Eventually we’re gonna move into th’larger buildin’ down by th’docks but I ain’t got the patience just yet for dealin’ with Roman Sionis an’ his penchant for playin’ grab ass with every pair walks past his nose.” 

She pointed a finger at him, “Don’t even think about doin’ nothin’ about it, neither. I mightn’ta grown up in Gotham, but that don’t mean I ain’t wise t’how y’all folk operate.”

During her tangent a tall girl in mint green wandered past them to pour mugs of cocoa for herself and several other kids besides. Ruby’s got a penchant for something she calls “pastel goth” and does drag in her free time. 

Ruby pauses to say, “Doc… you’re weird as hell for coming to Gotham in the first place. Most of us are dying to get outta here.” Her smirk is toothy and full of piercings before she disappears back around the kitchen doorway back into the main room.

“Wild horses couldn’t keep me away, Ruby,” April grins.

Jason raises his eyebrows at the exchange and waits until they’re alone again to say, “I don’t know shit about Roman Sionis–” He lies mostly because the assumption irritates him. He’s not even officially freelance but it must be written on his face, Gun for Hire, Guaranteed Pathetic and Will Work for Minimal Compensation . It’s cold consolation that Crane’s back in Arkham– “And you couldn’t afford to pay me to learn.” 

She blinks at him. Blinks again, “Probably for th’best. Sionis likes’em pretty.” She gags, “Lord I cain’t believe I just made those sounds with my mouth. My mama were around she’d be threatenin’ me with soap.” 

Jason pulls a face. Pretty isn’t the look he’s going for, it’s not a look he’s ever gone for. “Fuck that guy, seriously.” 

Maybe he’ll sniff around Black Mask’s operation anyway, just to see if there’s anything he can break. He stashes that idea for later and watches more kids filter through the kitchen to pick off the thrift store’s worth of mismatched mugs. 

“The Adler Foundation ever need interns?” He rushes to add, “Not me, I have a friend. She’s trying to get into grad school. For social work shit.” 

She pointed a finger at him, “I can do you one better. I’m hiring staff here for th’center. Pay ain’t great, s’about two dollars above Federal minimum wage. But you don’t pay for meals around here-” she gestured. 

She leaned forward, “For you or your friend. Whichever.”

“My friend. Molly Jensen,” he clarifies. “She’s…” the best compliment he can reach for is, “She’s going places. Hopefully places that aren’t Gotham.” Rumor has it, though, she’s still in town and there’s at least a slim chance that finding her any kind of paid internship will convince her to talk to him again. 

April blinks, thinking for a moment, then grins, “Molly Jensen already works for th’Adler Foundation.” She leans back to sip her cocoa, delighted by the fact that, “You’re a good kid ain’t you?” Then she holds up a hand, “Don’t answer that actually. Since your friend don’t need help, why don’t you hang around for a bit? I gotta finish unloadin’ th’van and take inventory but th’center is open all night.”

Jason sighs, kicking himself for not knowing that already– he could have figured out as much if he’d waited a while, got hands on an employee roster. He’ll just have to text Molly the next time he got on a phone and hope for the best.

“I don’t exactly have papers,” he tells her, “I can’t work. Sorry.” 

That’s the thing about being legally dead– all the money in the world won’t make the Department of Vital Statistics work faster. Last he’d overheard Bruce chatting with his lawyer, Jason’s resurrection application had already been denied. Then there was the fact that if he was alive, he was also responsible for his laundry list of crimes. God bless American bureaucracy. 

“Th’whole point of th’foundation is helpin’ out kids. We can figure out gettin’ you papers whenever y’all’re ready– and ‘til then, ain’t no reason t’put yourself out.” She pauses, mug halfway to her mouth, “ If you want to. Ain’t no rules say you gotta accept. Or be nice about turnin’ me down. But th’offer is there.”

Suddenly, the kitchen lights are too bright and he needs to get outside, to see the sky.

“I’ll, uh, think about it,” he says. “Hey, thanks for the food, but I gotta make sure my bike didn’t wander off.” He stands to leave and, as an afterthought, chugs most of his now-lukewarm hot chocolate. “See you around, April.”

Jason absolutely did not run away from the Alder Foundation. He just has to do some research first. Namely finding answers to some important questions: Who is April Adler? What’s she doing talking to Dmitri Khadym? What real business is her “Foundation” a front for? 

He scores a rent-controlled apartment in the Bowery, by virtue of it being unfortunately upwind of a foundry. He figures he’ll get an air filter for its one air vent and be fine. Buying out the kid who inherited the studio takes most of the money from his hollowed out Shakespeare volume, but it’s worth it to have somewhere to sleep where the door locks and there’s a garage to keep his bike in. 

He spends a couple weeks scaring up whatever he can find on April Adler.

TMZ and People have a wealth of articles of April Adler– the estranged daughter of General James Miller and beauty queen Eva Mae Miller, granddaughter of Hollywood’s golden age darling, Katherine Adler. There are a fair number of businesses across Gotham still making money off the framed photos of Kat Adler behind their registers because she visited once upon a time. April has a sister in the White House. Another one married into Markovian royalty. The other four are up to who-knows-what.

So, she comes from old money, by American standards. Not to be confused , Alfred points out in his memory, with nobility . Rich people got testy about that kind of thing.

He winds up at a coffee shop with Dmitri Khadym who asks him, serious as death, “Why would you turn Dr. Adler down? She’s good people; she has always done honest work.” 

It turns out the Adler Foundation’s projects in the last two years have included interfaith youth events with Bowery synagogues and mosques, both. Because of course they have. She and Dmitri got acquainted over hors d’ouevres. 

Even the shitty basement she’s renting has an above board history– it was, in fact, an old restaurant. The address – both the basement and the building above it– are unnoticed in the news. He reads microfiche until his eyes go blurry confirming as much.

This chick’s so squeaky clean she belongs in Metropolis, not Gotham.

Jason counts the cash he’s got left– stashed under the loose window seat in his studio– and makes a decision.

The Adler Foundation’s drop in center has had work done in the last couple of weeks– the stairwell smells less like a urinal and isn’t flooding with the rain. Jason walks in and pushes his hood off. To the receptionist, he says, “Hi. April had said I could come back if I wanted a job, so, uh, is she here?” 

Chapter Text

Ruby’s suspicious.

There’s a new kid pretty much constantly following Dr. Adler around. Her side of the story is he’s her new assistant, although he doesn’t seem to do much except skulk. He’s twitchy around the edges– scanning exit routes and sight lines every time he walks into a room– and the fact that Doc lets him carry weapons into the Foundation building is a whole series of questions. 

Doc’s been known to allow certain concessions for kids who are older or sleeping rough. Hell, Ruby’s got a baseball bat in every room she’s set foot in and carries another one with her for good measure. This kid’s not one of those freaks who has to keep his hand on his gun like he’s worried it’ll wander off– he’s very obviously not a cop– but it’s not well concealed either, in the holster at the small of his back. He forgets it’s there sometimes and  takes off the ridiculously heavy leather jacket he’s always got in arm’s reach. 

He’s good to the littler kids, though. 

Awkward in the same way a poorly socialized dog might skirt the edges of a room. Rude and hostile with adults who come in looking for the Doc  but he’s gentle enough when the little kids approach him directly to ask for snacks or trivia or an escort to the bus stop. Sometimes he even slouches against the reception desk, at the end of the day when the Center is clearing out, watching the oversized analog TV in the far corner of the room.

Ruby watches him pretend not to be invested in the movie for several minutes. She can’t fault him for being curious; the entire Galactic Gunslingers series is a modern masterpiece.

She picks up her bat and sidles over to him. He doesn’t take his eyes off the movie– Galactic Gunslingers 5 is the most common Mallard Studios rerun, she’s seen it a dozen times, it’s not like it’s the fabled Galactic Gunslingers 7– but as she gets closer every muscle in his body responds to her approach in microscopic increments of tension and relaxation, preparing to move. He slips his hands into his pockets. She’ll bet he carries a knife or three, too. 

She doesn’t blame him– the bat comes with her pretty much everywhere and she’s not exactly short. The go-go boots turn her six-foot-even into a cool six-foot-four.

She doesn’t get close enough to loom which leaves her leaning up against the far end of the old wooden desk. “You’re new,” she says, fidgeting with the bat. “Rumor has it you’re Dr. Adler’s bodyguard.” 

In an instant his sidelong, suspicious glance morphs into laughter– a startled, bright burst of it that seems to startle him even more because it happened at all. He turns to her, “ What ? What’s she need a bodyguard for?” 

Ruby shrugs, “That’s what I said! She’s a badass, she doesn’t need protection!” After they’ve both gotten more laughing in, she holds out her hand, “I’m Ruby. I think I saw you, your first day?” 

“Yeah, you grabbed hot chocolate for everybody in the rec room, balancing all the mugs on your forearms– that takes serious skills.” He shakes her hand– and pauses to admire her manicure. “Temperature responsive? That’s nice; your artist knows their shit. ” 

“I do them myself,” she smiles, offering her other hand for his admiration, too. “What’s your name?” 

He hesitates between answering her and staying focused on her nail art– he seems to make a decision before he says, “Jason. It’s nice to meet you, Ruby.” 

“Good with kids, responsible, and he has manners, too?” She presses a hand to her heart, feigning surprise. “Where did Doc find you?” 

“She’ll say I hit her with my bike,” he starts.

“Oh, stop there. There goes my glowing image of you, Jason, angelface, I’m so disappointed–” 

“Hey! No, that’s what she’ll say , but she just walked into my mirror. The asshole in the sedan whose window she busted, though? He was gonna hit somebody.” 

“Ooh, did she use her shoe?” 

“Yeah, actually. Busted in his window with it. What’s with that? She has so much she could improvise with and she always goes for the shoes– they’re not cheap.” 

“ I know ! I keep telling her that, but what do I know?” 

Jason peers down at her bat, “I’d say you shouldn’t judge, you also clearly have a weapon of choice.” 

“Oh, but you get to judge?” 

“Hell yeah, I get to judge. I’m great at improvised weapons.” 

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, really.” 

“Okay, so, robber walks in right now, says “stick ‘em up, kid!” –” 

“C’mon, no one says that in a robbery– why’d they even wanna rip this place off anyway–” 

“It’s my hypothetical and my robber says “stick’em up,kid,” she repeats, emphatically, “and you only get to use what’s on this desk. What do you do?” 

Jason clicks his tongue against his teeth, “ Too easy .” 

“Really.” 

“ Yeah . See, the intake forms are all loose, so,” he picks up the stack and pantomimes throwing it like a frisbee with one hand, “step one: distract. And while bozo’s trying not to shoot himself in the foot, because most people don’t ever actually wanna shoot anybody, step two–” 

In his free hand he grabs one of the Bics that are always rolling around every flat surface at the Center and shows it to her, wiggling it a little with a smirk. In two quick strides he steps in front of the imaginary rober, tossing the pen up and catching it so the point juts out the bottom of his fist. 

He explains as he demonstrates on empty air, “Steps three: get in close and fast, knee to the groin, while he’s bent over crying, step four: pen between C4 and C5.” 

He straightens and returns to the table, capping the pen and dropping it back into the mason jar with its compatriots. “ Easy .” 

At this point in her long nineteen years, Ruby is great at pretending she isn’t impressed or bothered by things that should really leave an impression or a lingering aftertaste of concern. “And you’re totally cool with being the reason some dipshit hoping to get enough money to get high is gonna be paralyzed from the neck down forever?” 

Jason looks at her. Looks back at the body he’s clearly imagining on the floor. Frowns a little, “Dipshit picked the wrong place– there’s kids in here.” 

“Even though you said most people don’t actually wanna have to shoot anybody?” 

“Don’t draw a weapon if you’re not intending to fire it.” 

“And if this was, like, the bodega across the street, you’d’ve not paralyzed the guy?” 

Jason folds his arms across his chest. “If you didn’t wanna know what I’d do, why’d you ask?” 

“Oh, no, I wanted to know– and you’re definitely good at improvising. I just have some followup questions about your reasoning, is all.” She shrugs, “It’s no big deal. C’mon,” she pats his shoulder as she passes him, “Galactic Gunslingers is paused, let’s go finish it. Javier’s gonna make popcorn when the kiddos show up.”

On the oversized, lavender television, the black and white movie set is empty but not frozen. Wind blows tumbleweeds across it and a horse stands in the background, flicking its tail. A character sits in a folding chair, eating from a can of peanuts, waiting for the audience to return like that’s something normal for pre=recorded television movies to do– for a Mallard Studios production, it is.

Jason doesn’t move until she’s a few steps in front of him– then he makes his wary way to the movie rug with its beanbags and sectionals. He sits where he can see all entrances to the rec room, even if it does mean he has to watch the movie out of the corner of his eye. He even eats some of the popcorn.

The studio apartment is a steal, considering the location and the lack of roaches. Jason hangs curtains and builds himself furniture with stolen milk crates and zip ties. The Adler Foundation Youth Center work just barely pays rent and utilities but its kitchen feeds him during the day and lets him take home toiletries– facts that he refuses to think too hard about. He keeps brand name snacks in the kitchenette because he’s a spoiled little shit who can’t stand to compromise on petty things. 

Most days he spends at the Center. 

April has him file a lot of paperwork, which is boring as shit but left to his own devices he gets that stuff done in about an hour on Fridays. Which is how it becomes his job to answer the phones in the mornings, to keep the kitchen inventory updated, to escort the little kids to their bus stops when the after-school program ended. 

She pays him overtime without him having to ask after it, cash under the table like it's water under a bridge. Either he or Hank– Hank Yun , her actual PA, who’s alive, well. Not to be confused with either the very dead Hank Hall or her part-time assistant charity case Jason Todd– sticks around the office until she finally gives up trying to work herself to death and goes home for the night.

After work things are a little harder.

It’s like an itch. 

At first he lays in bed staring at the ceiling all night, counting divots in the popcorn and trying to work out what, exactly, his fucking problem is. Why he can’t sleep.

He isn’t blacking out. He isn’t scared. He isn’t having new or more dreams than usual and there’s no one around to bother when he wakes up screaming. A thorough dismantling and reconstruction of the baseboards and cabinets confirms he’s not being surveilled. His neighbors certainly don’t give a shit what he’s up to.

He counts the cash he has left in the hole under the windowseat and buys himself a laptop and a wifi router. 

That’s a hobby project in and of itself, figuring out how to duplicate the Batcomputer’s operating system without actually using any Bat-brand bullshit. He eats up a whole month of spare time replacing hardware and cobbling together an OS with his rudimentary knowledge of programming and bad memory. The library keeps him in enough manuals that he figures out an approximation of what he wants on Linux.

It’s nice to have the internet again. It lets him access the Sex Offenders’ Registry.

There aren’t a lot of people who are universally considered to be disposable by every level of society but Jason’s confident no one will begrudge him taking out a few pedophiles. He reads court transcripts, too, just to be sure he’s not going to erase anyone from the census who was just stupid enough to take a leak in the wrong bush. 

Dearest, dead Hank would be so proud.

It’s not quite what he needs– and he knows it’s warped to think that. Shooting pedos in the middle of the night and stringing them up for the cops to pick up, if they’re lucky enough to show up before the monsters bleed out, isn’t good enough for him. It doesn’t make him feel alive enough. 

He notices it all at once one muggy afternoon in June. 

He’s sat on the floor of April’s office labeling files for the new fiscal year and it hits him with perfect clarity that it’s been 97 days since someone last punched him in the face. 

It pisses him off . Gets him thinking about how April wants a nice new building down on the docks, if only Black Mask would fuck off to greener pastures and let a charity move into one of the shittier warehouses down there. He thinks he could maybe do something to help get the ball rolling on that one.

And Jason, he might be stupid, sure, everyone knows he is– but he knows a thing or three about being an addict. 

So he says it out loud: “It’s been 97 days since someone punched me in the face.”

“You don’t sound pleased about that, Jay,” April replies without looking up from the account ledger open before her. There’s a little line between her eyebrows, a marker of concentration, as she punches figures into an adding machine with her pencil’s eraser.

He makes a few more labels and lines them up on their manila folders and smoothes them out with both his thumbs. He bites out, “I’m not.” 

“What do you wanna do about it?” 

He looks up at her. “What, it doesn’t bug you that I’m not happy about not being punched in the face?” 

“Of course not. I know some folks in town into MMA, I could give you some phone numbers.” 

She’s as nonplussed and kind as ever and it’s going to make him sick. It forces him to admit, “MMA has rules; I don’t really do good with rules.”

“So, call Oskar and ask if you can do some one-on-one training. He’s a sturdy fella, see if you can practice your rule-following on him.” 

She writes a phone number on a sticky note for him and draws a dinosaur in one corner.

“You are one of April’s? You should have said that first.” 

Oskar Popov is a felon, technically reformed. A lot of his tattoos suggest Bratva but none of them read as the sort of thing that would land him on Jason’s personal shit list. He owns a whole-ass fighting gym and runs a gambling ring. 

“Only honest fights,” Oskar assures Jason, during the tour of the gym, “No drugs, no weapons, no metas.” When he smiles, several of his teeth are gold. “We are old fashioned people with old fashioned tastes.” 

It’s a nice gym, given that it's being run out of an old garage at the end of a row of shotgun houses in the old Bowery. The entire exterior is wrapped in a mural of a psychedelic forest, waves of deer and insects and wolves overtaking each other. 

The explanation for it comes in a wave of pride from Oskar: “My niece, Rita, she paints– all over the city you can find her art. She is much better at keeping her nose clean than I am. She has gallery show this weekend– if you join the gym, you will go to support her, yes? 

“You do not have to buy her art, is expensive, but she will appreciate people her age being there. She gets so upset, tells me, Uncle you cannot only invite your friends, it isn’t authentic if I’m not reaching people organically – she does not want criminals at the gallery. But you are a good boy.”

And Jason figures, fuck it . He’s been involved with worse people. Oskar’s a nice enough guy and Jason doesn’t need to know his whole tragic backstory to get that.

Oskar is also built like a bear and hits about as hard. 

That first day, they both come away from the mat with a collection of bruises– Oskar more so than Jason. But even so, Oskar still put him down with a solid kick and the sudden impact of vinyl and foam against his back. He pulls Jason to his feet with one massive, tattooed hand. 

If the point is to learn self-control, Jason’s got a long way to go.

“Don’t worry,” Oskar teases him– his lip is busted but he isn’t the slightest bit mad about it, “You will learn to be as graceful as me someday if you try very hard. Your ugly duckling ass will become a swan .”

“If you’re a swan, I’m the Mayor of Gotham.” 

“I would vote for you, if it were legal, boychik.” 

Jason goes home and sleeps for twelve hours straight.

A couple weeks in, though, Jason fucks up and  gets his stupid feelings everywhere. 

They’ve been working on drills, just simple by-rote shit designed to overwrite Jason’s muscle memory for severe maiming. As easy as it technically is, it’s exhausting. The focus it takes not to slip into the most efficient means of permanently disabling an opponent takes it out of him.

So they take breaks. Sweating and drinking water and shooting the shit.

Oskar asks him, “You can’t pick a style and stick with it. Where did you learn to fight, boychik?”

“Here in Gotham,” comes Jason’s non-answer. “From my… brother, I guess … and our dad, mostly.” 

Oskar doesn’t miss a beat, “Ah, a family business.” 

Jason wants to correct him– Bruce isn’t running a crime family, this isn’t the mafia, it’s not lucrative and they do a lot of good . But that doesn’t feel like the truth, either, so instead he settles on, “Something like that, yeah.”

And suddenly some switch flips and his mouth keeps making noise without his permission, “Our dad, he had this cabin on the border, up on the preserve. He’d lock us out in winter so we could learn to survive.” 

Oskar keeps working on wrapping his hands– after drills, when Jason’s tired, comes the sparring. The running theory is that the more tired Jason is, the more he’ll fall back on his lazy habit of viciousness, and that is where Oskar wants to focus his re-training. He says, somewhere between neutral and pleasant, “There are elks on the preserve. It’s good hunting, if you can get license and avoid bears.” 

“There’s wolves, too.” Jason’s quiet for a long moment then shrugs, “We didn’t use guns. My brother used to tell me about how it went for him. He got into a fight with a wolf the second night, ‘cause, y’know, wolves in winter’re gonna be wolves in winter. Territorial, hungry. He got too close to her den– so he killed her. When he was done, he cut her head off and brought it back to dad.” 

“The wolf attacked him, no?” 

“Wolves are endangered, he shouldn’t’ve been there in the first place,” Jason says, as if posthumously coming to its defense is going to do anything. “He could’ve just injured her, she would’ve run away! Or left her there. Or lied. Or just not told me about it .” 

He remembered the look on Dick’s face as they sat up too late staring out at the sprawl of San Francisco below the Tower. He’d seemed so proud of himself— and cagey, like he wanted Jason to challenge him about it, to dare to tell him he’d done wrong. All Jason could picture was the wolf’s severed head– it explained the blood stain on the table– and the cubs in her den.

Oskar places one warm, steadying hand on Jason’s shoulder, “He did not have to behead her,” he agrees.

Jason startles at the tear drop that rolls off his nose and plops onto the mat between his feet. “Shit. Sorry, man, I don’t know what my problem is.” 

Oskar pats his shoulder. “Did you meet a wolf in the woods when your father took you there?” 

“Yeah.” He scrubs at his face and stands to pace.

“What did you do?”

He remembers how much the cold had hurt in such a cutting way– the air was lighter in the mountains. It cut . The wolf had caught him by surprise.

Faced with a pissed-off mother wolf in the middle of a national forest in Northern Appalachia, Jason had simply chosen cowardice . He skinned his palms up scrambling up the nearest pine in terrified silence, frost scouring his lungs, hunting knife falling and bouncing off the wolf’s back to puncture the snow below.

He’d picked his way through the treetops for more an hour– finding sturdy boughs and timing each jump with as much caution as he could manage– until the wolf lost interest in tracking him. 

“I ran away,” Jason confesses, “I’m always running away from shit– failing everything ‘cause I’m scared .” 

There’s still a scar around his left leg, where the wolf had gotten a tooth into his calf at the last second, tearing across the muscle as he kicked her snout hard enough to break something, hauling himself up onto a branch. He’d left scant smears of blood in the packed snow all the way back to the cabin. A trail, Bruce handily pointed out, which was easily followed– by the wolves or bloodhounds or anyone with eyes– and obvious evidence that could be used to identify him in minutes. He was already in the juvenile detention system. He needed to be much more careful than the rest of them.

Oskar shakes his head. “Hm, no, I disagree. Your purpose at the cabin, why your father locked you out, was to survive, yes?” 

“Yeah, and then to break back in, but yeah, basically.” 

“Did you?” 

“Yeah, that part was easy. I’m – I used to be really good at busting into places.” 

Oskar takes this fact in with the same unruffled acceptance that he has everything else Jason’s ever had to say. “Then you succeeded. You survived the woods and the wolves and you returned to safety.” 

Jason takes a steadying breath, feeling nauseous and folding his arms. “Yeah, I guess.” 

“Fear is not a bad thing,” Oskar tells him, “It keeps you alive.” 

“Lotta fuckin’ good it’s doin’ me now.” 

“Ah,” Oskar smiles at the sudden wash of understanding, “ This is why we train. You must not be scared, like an American in horror movie, breaking things and hurting people because you are clumsy and unfocused. You must be scared like a– a squirrel – graceful and spiteful, with a nest to return to that motivates you.” 

Jason barks out a laugh, “I thought you were gonna turn me into a swan?” 

“No, squirrel suits you much more.” 

“You like animal metaphors too much, it’s fuckin’ weird, man.” 

“It keeps you from feeling sorry for yourself– you get feelings and you are like squirrel, pulling out its own fur and scolding everyone who walks by the tree.” He whistles through his teeth to mimic an angry squirrel’s beeping and Jason loses it.

He comes unglued laughing at the image, because even his fragile ego has to admit it's funny, “You’re saying it wrong! It’s squirrel , Oskar, one syllable, not two.” 

Oskar chuckles, done wrapping his hands. “What are you going to do about it, squirrel-boy?”

“I’ll show you a fuckin’ squirrel!” Jason launches himself at Oskar.

Chapter Text

August falls on Gotham in an exhausted and graceless slump of humidity and Jason is forced to reckon with the one downside to his apartment: the building has no air conditioning. 

The walls are sticky. The two windows catch afternoon sun because he can’t catch a break. He papers them over with tin foil and blackout curtains during the day– and throws them open at night. He has a modest fleet of box fans. One for the big window, one for his kitchenette’s counter, one for the bathroom window, and one posted up on a milk crate pointing at his bed. In theory, he’s got a nice through-current to suck in less-miserably-hot air between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. before closing the windows and keeping it all inside.

In practice, the air refuses to budge, weighed down with excess water that remembers its glory days as a hurricane and won’t stop weighing down everything in Gotham until it manages to recapture those aforementioned glory days.

He lays wide awake and sticking to his bed’s fitted sheet with sweat. He stuffed his comforter into the top of the closet a week ago– he couldn’t stand to look at it any more. Thinking about blankets makes him too hot. Every hair on his head feels damp. Each follicle feels tight and prickly. He can’t remember the last time his hair got wholly dry after a shower but he’d have to be insane to bust out a blow dryer.

No one deserves that kind of suffering, not even him.

Resigned, Jason drags on the least amount of clothing he can legally get away with and makes his way down to the bodega on the corner, to see if they have any ice left. Sleeping in a bathtub full of ice seems like the best possible solution to his problems.

The bodega is out of ice.

Javi and Ruby take turns texting him pictures of the empty Adler Foundation freezer drawers, colorful and sticky residue drying on the sidewalk, the torn detritus of popsicle boxes piled in the recycling bin.

supplies critically low

need sugar cannot go on

jason save me

And, 

bring more otterpops when u come in pls :*

the kiddos are gonna turn into otters if they keep this up i s2g 

Jason scrolls through the messages, bleary and sweating into his eyes already. He can feel the sun beating on the window above his bed despite the blackout curtains. The novelty flying saucer alarm clock on his nightstand– Javier insisted Jason needed one for some insane reason– tells him it’s 11:37.

He texts them both: ur not my boss, figure it out without me

An hour later, Jason has no fewer than a dozen boxes of Otterpops between his saddlebags and the milk crate bungee-corded onto the bike’s pillion seat. They’ll take a few hours to freeze them, but they’ll be a good after-dinner treat for everyone who stops in the kitchen. He’s not worried about the Otterpops. It’s the box of Fudgescicles slowly melting in the insulated pocket of his backpack that has him weaving between lanes of traffic and breaking speed limits to get to the Foundation. 

He parks around back in the scant alley shade. He slings the saddlebags over one shoulder and hefts the milk crate up onto the other. “Jason, you’re late!” Javi accuses, but opens the door for him. He looks as miserable as everyone else in the city’s dog days heat wave, sweating through his undershirt with nothing to wipe his glasses clean on. 

It’s solely the employee safety dress code that requires Javi to keep a shirt on; he’s about as allergic to the heat as Jason is and his relationship with the tags in the backs of his shirts is even more contentious. 

One of these days, Jason’s going to teach him how to use a seam ripper and change his entire life.

“Ingratitude’s stronger than a traitor’s arms, Javi!” Jason drops his haul onto the kitchen counter and strips off his helmet. “I brought you Fudgescicles, fucker, I didn’t have to do that! I’m bein’ nice to you!” 

The Adler Foundation Youth Center has AC. It chugs steadily, if a little loud, and the only thing keeping Jason from living there all summer is his dubious sense of ethics. He has an apartment to sleep at, even if it is too hot to exist, and most of the kids at the Center don’t.

The flush of cold, less-muggy air is such a relief that it takes him a second to realize Javi is staring at him.

Ruby walks in and does a double-take and gasps, “Angelface! What did you do?” 

Jason shrugs, “It was too hot. Wha’d’you care?” 

“I mean… it is buzzcut season,” Javi says, already over his shock enough to rummage in Jason’s backpack for the bright yellow box of Fudgescicles. He hugs the box, “Sweet, delicious salvation.” He rips open the first one he grabs with his teeth. It’s a little melted to the plastic but he just peels it loose.

Jason side-eyes him. “You good, man?” 

“The pharmacy’s out of Adderall again,” he explains.

Jason winces in sympathy, “Again, seriously?” 

“Sugar makes your brain produce dopamine. I need sugar to live and to finish my degree.” 

“It’s the lesser of evils–” Ruby starts to unbox the melted otterpops, dumping them into clear plastic bins for easy distribution. She’s got on her summer heels, the towering wedges that cover as little of her foot as humanly possible– “‘cause it’s this or else he gives himself kidney stones again with those bougie energy drinks he can afford with that  fancy student loan money.” 

She finishes with the Otterpops and turns to cock her head at Jason, “Well, it’s not like you were taking care of your curls anyway.” 

“I’m too busy for that shit.” 

Javier snorts, “Doing what? Impersonating the Nightstalker?” 

Ruby sighs, “They were so dehydrated– I just wish I’d been there for the funeral, I’d’ve delivered such a touching eulogy about the suffering they endured in life–” 

She goes on until Jason gives her a playful shove– then she reaches up to pet the soft fuzz of hair left on his scalp again. Her hands are cool and Jason revels in the realization that shaving off the bulk of his hair has had two fantastic results: he can sleep better and people he likes want to touch him . It’s more than a little freakish, when he thinks about it in so many words, so he stows the realization and just lets himself enjoy being petted. 

“This is good, though,” she concludes, “I can make you take care of ‘em as your hair grows back in.” 

“You look like a literal, actual kid. A baby, even,” Javier tells him, chewing melting ice cream like the freak he is. He deftly sidesteps the punch Jason levels at his shoulder. “Jayby, baby, you’re so good to me, you bring me Fudgescicles, show up on time to work and only beat me sometimes! I’m so lucky!” 

“It’s a good look for you, angleface,” Ruby declares. “With those big green eyes, no one’s ever gonna suspect you of anything more criminal than jaywalking ever again.” 

Javi takes Jason by the hands and says very seriously, “With great power comes great responsibility. I need you to promise me you’re going to use your newfound abilities for good, Jason.” 

“Y’know, Javi,” Jason leans in, making eye contact, smiling with as much innocent sincerity as he can muster, “just because you asked me so nice ? I’m gonna see if I can pull off assassinating the mayor next.” 

Javi’s face falls. “Oh my god, no . His evil increases at a rate proportionate to his cuteness. We’re so fucked. Who’s gonna tell the Doc?” 

“I’m pretty sure April already knows.”

“Yup. Them’s the brakes,” Jason shoves the Fudgescicle box back into Javi’s hands, denting it. “Put your ice cream in the fridge before it melts everywhere. We gotta job to do.”

The job in question is setting up the after school program’s craft of the day. Javier’s walking the kids through making collages as part of his practicum– and because they got a massive donation of old National Geographic issues to use up.

The three of them work in tandem to set up folding tables with stations for pictures, paint, and glittery bits and pieces in paper bowls and a small army’s worth of glue sticks. Each of the glue sticks has a name written on it in sharpie marker. The Center’s most regular and vocal attendee, Little Lisa likes naming objects. (Not to be confused with Big Lisa, the GRTD bus driver who somehow got her boss’s boss’s boss to put in a stop right in front of the Center.) Jason had sat with her one bright June Saturday letting her tell him what to write on every single glue stick and a few pieces of furniture, too. 

“Okay, now, scram,” Javi shoos the both of them away as the afternoon bus pulls up. “These are now my teaching degree program hours. I don’t want any help unless it’s a crisis.” 

“I don’t need to be told twice,” Ruby retreats to the movie corner. Yet another installment of Galactic Gunslingers is playing on the TV– as far as Jason’s been able to tell, there are at least seven movies in the series. Ruby’s on a quest to catalog all of them.

Jason updates the inventory clipboard hung in the Crafts Closet when they’re done setting up– the rhinestones are almost guaranteed to be gone by the end of the day, which will make everyone really sad next week when collage day comes around again. Of course, he’s still got a little of Bruce’s cash burning a hole in the floor of his apartment, so maybe he’ll go buy out Hobby Village’s entire stock of sparkly shit and make an anonymous donation to the Foundation. 

Spending it on anything after the computer feels like too much of a risk– knowing Bruce, the bills are probably trackable, somehow. Jason comes by his paranoia honestly– but craft supplies for charity seems like a good way to stay under the radar.

When he joins her on the designated comfy couch, Ruby flops the bulk of her current project into his lap. “Start sewing, I need to get all these sequins on the bodice by the end of the week.” 

Jason gently shoves at the heavy pile of satin fabric until he can get a better look at what she’s working on. The dress is one they’d picked out weeks ago for a drag competition. While he’s unclear on the overall theming, he knows that Ruby’s vision has something to do with the Chicxulub meteor, the one that killed the dinosaurs, but that’s all.

Jason picks through the sewing box balanced on the low back of the couch until he comes up with the right color of thread. “You could have started this literally any time before now and been done already.” 

“Coulda, woulda, shoulda. Didn’t .” Ruby flaps a dismissive hand. “What matters is I’m gonna look amazing.” 

He carefully lines up sequins to run a straight stitch through, overlapping them just enough to create a scaled effect. “Did you manage to get the wig done?” 

She scoffs. “What kind of a procrastinating high school dropout do you take me for? I’m a productive dropout, Jason, of course the wig is done.” 

“And the volcano works?” 

She holds up a hand and wiggles it back and forth, “I couldn’t exactly test it. We’re just going to have to light the sparklers and hope for the best when I go on.” 

They work shoulder-to-shoulder in silence for a while, occasionally glancing up to watch Javier wrangle the kids, or comment on the movie– or in Jason’s case, to scrutinize every person who walks in for potential threats.

They make decent progress before Ruby asks, “Where’d you even learn to embroider shit, anyway? You don’t seem like the Home Ec type.” 

Jason snorts, “Yeah, nah, I didn’t go to high school. My, uh…” It takes him a second to settle on a word because butler is just not the right one, “My grandpa? He taught me.” 

“ Really ?” She doesn’t look impressed. “He anything like your dad? Either one of ‘em?” 

Her contempt, for both Bruce Wayne and Willis Todd, is palpable– even though he hasn’t told her the half of it, or even their names. It’s so startling that Jason narrowly misses stabbing himself. “What? No, he was. He was great. He taught me to sew, to cook, to get blood stains out, to place an IV. He had this garden he’d make me weed when I was bein’ a little shit, so I learned a lot about how to grow food. Y’know, the basics.” 

“One of these things is not like the others, Angelface. I’m pretty sure IVs aren’t basic life skills.” 

There’s a yelp from the craft tables. Javier shouts, “I’m fine, it’s fine! This is definitely not a PVA glue crisis!” 

Jason raises an eyebrow. “Think he’s okay?” 

Ruby flaps a hand, “He says it's not a crisis. You’re not getting out of explaining why knowing EMT shit was basic life skills for you.” 

He sighs. “It just was for us. Alfred was in the secret service, whatever the British have for that, so he had to know a lot of weird shit. He also taught me how to use Excel and serve tea, though, so, like,” he shrugs, “it was a little bit of everything. Way more useful than school. Alfred didn’t let me slack but it was okay ‘cause he was nice about it. He had this way of getting you to do shit that was good for you without realizing you were even doing it because you were just helping him out. I dunno where I’d be without him.” 

Her voice is soft when she says, “It sounds like you really loved him.” 

“Yeah.” Jason tugs the needle from the fabric with a little more force than necessary, “I did.” 

Saturday night comes in a blur of bodies, loud music, and a suppressed desire to keep making sure his typical assortment of weapons is still in place. The diner’s crowded. 

In a bid to blend in, Jason had been convinced to let Ruby paint his scalp while he put the finishing touches on her wig. The scattered rhinestones and Lisa Frank leopard print of temporary dye are eye-catching on the street– but no one looks at him twice in a drag club. 

It’s close enough to a mask that he can relax a fraction. Pretend he’s undercover as a kid stepping out to support his friends for the night. He lets April and Javi sandwich him between them in a sticky red booth at center stage. He counts all of his breaths– in for four, out for four– and tells himself no one else can notice that he’s glancing at the exits.

Ruby comes in second, which is bullshit because her act absolutely killed it. Jason tells her as much once they’re all piled safely back into the kitchen with their diner leftovers and a pot of coffee percolating on the stove.

Javi sits beside Jason, feet kicking against the cabinets. “What were the judges thinking, not giving you first place?” 

“Well it definitely wasn’t my dress,” she tells him, rummaging in the freezer. “It turned out absolutely perfect, thanks to Jason.” 

Jason scoffs, “It wasn’t her anything! Taluhah didn’t even stick to the theme– an alien time traveler visiting the “past” isn’t a historical figure! It’s a cop-out– a boring, overplayed, Dr. Who ripoff that’s so creatively bankrupt it gives me vertigo fucking cop-out! Her jokes sucked and her wig was shedding !” 

April cackles over the coffee. “Oh, c’mon, now, don’t sugarcoat it for our benefit!”

“Yeah,” Javier laughs, “Tell us how you really feel, Jason!” 

Ruby finishes her rummaging and turns back toward them with a flourish. She uses her Zippo to light the bunch of sparklers she’s stuffed into a bouquet of Otterpops– banded together with several of scrunchies. Jason stares dumbly at the sparklers spitting embers and glitter all over the kitchen.

Then Ruby starts singing Happy Birthday at him. 

April and Javier join her.

Crawling into one of the cupboards to hide until it's over isn’t really an option so Jason has to sit there, getting progressively redder the whole time they’re singing. 

Finally, Ruby hands him the fizzling bundle of popsicles while April applauds and Javier takes pictures. 

“Make a wish, birthday boy!”  

Jason takes a deep breath, and, despite his best interests, does.

Chapter Text

April grew up the middle child of seven. All girls. Having siblings is nothing new to her, however the sudden, deep affection and fierce protectiveness she experiences upon meeting Jason Todd is rather unlike any she's experienced for her own sisters– save perhaps Mia who is, even now, barely out of single digits.

She gives him a job. And, by the sheer uncanny alchemy of exposure and human kindness, she becomes friends with him. It isn't difficult, he's an easy kid to grow to love, no matter how much he impersonates a cactus, and if there is anything she's learned from therapy, it's to take the wins when she gets them.

Time in Gotham doesn't pass any differently than the rest of the world but Gotham is a strange bubble of fear, and pride, and irrepressible will to survive that makes time run strange all the same. Eight months pass before it occurs to April that she does, indeed, view Jason as a brother. 

It comes to her all at once when she’s watching him watch the after school program parents. She tries to explain it to her oldest sister, Jezebel, on the phone when she’s closing up that night. 

“He’s just so… suspicious of the parents. All of’em, don’t matter if they decent or not. He’s like th’livestock dogs on Uncle Orly’s ranch? Boy’s almost indistinguishable from th’sheep when  y’look at ‘im quick; but I’ll be damned if he won’t disembowel a coyote the second he smells one. With enthusiasm. And I swear t’god, Jezzy, a coyote ever takes a bite outta Jason I’m libel t’skin ‘em alive.” 

Jez laughs at her– and keeps going until she’s wheezing and the phone speaker runs tinny. April waits, arms folded and foot tapping even though there’s no one around to see her being disapproving.

“Here I thought,” Jez pants, trying to get her breath back, “you was dead set on Gotham bein’ a cesspit fulla nothin’ but nuts’n trash?” 

April doesn’t find it quite so funny, but it’s also not entirely not funny either. “Nuts’n trash’n our new little brother, Jason.” 

And, she thinks to herself, all the kids who’ve ever set foot in the Center and at least 60% of Foundation staff and her academic advisor and the office administrator who helped her submit her thesis on time. But this is what she gets for having called Jez once when the cynical mean reds struck: endless teasing whenever she softens up. It’s fair.

“You ask him his opinion on that?” They both know the Adler-Miller family is overflowing with nuts.

She scoffs, “You don’t choose your family. He’s stuck with us now.” 

“You even take him to Temple yet?” 

“I’m gettin’ there. One a th’ladies who organizes th’potluck, Miriam Lezoff, lives in his building.” 

“Excuses, excuses. You’re gonna be the one who gets t’explain him to mama.” 

“Lord help us all.”

“Pff. From your lips t’God’s ears.”

One September Saturday morning, April turns up at Jason's apartment. 

When he answers the door he’s wearing the dinosaur sweater she’d knitted him for his birthday, over sweatpants. He clearly hasn’t slept, bags under his eyes fit for packing a picnic in, and he isn’t making any effort to hide the fact he’s got a gun in hand– until he registers who’s standing in front of him. He stands a little straighter and hides the gun at the small of his back, eyes widening. 

“What’s goin’ on? Is everyone at the Center okay?” 

“Everything’s fine, I didn’t mean to scare you–” 

“--I’m not scared–” 

Rather than argue a useless point she launches into an explanation, “Remember how last week you said you wanted to argue with Rabbi Lehrer about how that Talmud scholar I was readin’ proposed that sufferin’ seasons people like salt?” 

He blinks at her several times– she can see his brain slowly come online as his expression shifts from confusion, to surprise, to irritation. “Yeah, so?” 

“It’s time for Temple.” 

“The sun isn’t up yet.”

“There’s coffee an’ bagels in it for you– and you’ll get to argue with an old man about the nature of human sufferin’ after. It’ll be fun. Jus’ leave the guns at home, okay?” 

Jason’s jaw works like he wants to tell her to fuck off– which is well within his rights as both a little brother and a fully functional adult with a wide array of illegal hobbies. 

He does close the door in her face. It’s fair enough, really, and April tells herself she’s not disappointed. She takes a steadying breath through her nose and resolves to try again in a few months.

But then Jason emerges in jeans, boots on, still in the dinosaur-hooded sweater. His hair, growing back now that it's autumn, is damp and combed. It’s obvious he stuck his head under the faucet to try to convince it to lay flat– it’s already unruly. “The bagels better be good.” 

She can’t tell for sure if he’s armed or not but she’ll take what she can get. “The best,” April promises.

Of course, it’s only later, after he's already shaken Rabbi Lehrer's hand, that he finds out the food comes after the service.

The sweater, when she’d given it to him, had caught him off guard the way any kind of major, non-violent show of affection always does. She was especially proud of that. It wasn’t often that she could get an unfiltered, unaggressive reaction out of Jason. It might have been his birthday, but she felt like it was a gift for her.

Sat there on the butcher block counter in the Foundation kitchen, lit by a bunch of sparklers pulled out of Ruby’s wig, his smile was bright enough to power half of Gotham. And then April’d handed him the box, wrapped in layer after layer of old newspaper and taped every which way from Sunday.

Jason took a moment to look over the package and, finding no obvious means of easily tearing the tape, produced a butterfly knife from his pocket, opening it with a flourish. The blade was sharp and slipped quietly through the thick layers of wrapping. 

“Everybody’s a comedian until the knife comes out,” Jason said, triumphant, the plastic of a half-finished Otterpop clenched in his teeth.

Ruby swatted him with the burnt out sparklers.

He husked the box like a corn cob and yanked open the cardboard without ceremony. Then he stopped cold. He stared at what laid inside of it. 

Then he looked at April. Even in the washed out, industrial kitchen light his eyes were a brilliant green with shock. Like a secret, he asked, “This was for me? The whole time?” 

Six months of her free time went into that box. 

The sweater was a soft mohair in several shades of dark green, almost black. Its kangaroo pocket was reinforced. The extra long sleeves and an oversized, detachable hood shaped like a dinosaur head were carefully measured against Jason’s current wardrobe– that’d been a pretty trick to manage without his noticing. The velociraptor hood even had knitted teeth. It’d taken April carrying it with her, shoved into a purse, and working during meetings, on the train, every spare moment, to finish in time.

“I seen how you dress and guessed you might like th'hood an' alla that – especially now since you done shaved your head all bald." 

He had his fingers wrapped up in the soft, textured knit, squashing it inside the box in a delighted and hungry gesture that was at odds with his tone when he declared: “I fuckin’ knew it. You’ve been planning to kill me this whole time. It’s a million degrees out and you give me a sweater.” 

She rubbed a hand through his short hair and tugged him in to press a kiss to his temple. "Happy Birthday, Jason."

Javier cooed and lightning-quick snapped a photo of them – they glared at him in unison.

Ruby just cackled, "Aw, Jayby-baby, you guys match! Even with your curls all gone you two could be siblings!"

April huffed, "I'm gonna piss on all your shoes."

Javi crowed, “They’re twins!” 

The Center is housed in the basement of a modest apartment building. For four years running the building manager has let Foundation staff take the kids up to the roof every week to develop the rooftop garden. They get a tax break for the urban green space and all the residents get to benefit from the bumper crops after the kids have taken their shares home. Everybody wins.

The roof is home to row after row of raised beds. The children have assembled a wide variety of scarecrows and set up a dedicated bat house– painted, of course, with the ridiculous Batman logo in bright yellow and black. A big square plot of the roof it marked off with chalk where Gotham University’s botany department agreed to partner with them to build a greenhouse. 

The smell of damp soil and green is pervasive under the sunshades and even out in the open air. At dusk the fairy lights kick on with a quiet hum that accents the traffic below. 

That’s where she finds Jason, sitting crosslegged on the edge of the roof’s retaining wall and looking out over the city. 

“I ain’t gotta worry about you jumpin’, do I?”

“Nah, been there, done that.”

She hands him the plate of mini-bagel pizzas she’s brought up then hops to sit beside him— but facing the garden. It’s no less precarious but it makes her feel safer to see something other than a sheer drop. “What’s got you hiding up here, then? The haunted house was a hit! Staff party’s still goin’ downstairs an’ they gotta a bottle a Martinelli’s with your name on it.”

It’s late enough that there’s a bite to the breeze– there’s snow coming. He’s wearing the sweater she made him, fidgeting with the ribbed cuffs. The zombie make-up Ruby shellacked onto half his face for the haunted house is smudged around the inside of the neck and the inside of the hood. 

“Ooh, Martinelli’s. You know it’s a party when they bust out the fizzy apple juice. What’s the vintage?”

She leans in close and enunciates in her best posh English accent, “Two thousand nineteen, Master Jason, a fine vintage with notes of cinnamon and d’anjou pear.”

That gets a laugh out of him and she sits back satisfied. 

“I just needed air, I guess.” 

“The kiddos can get pretty loud.” 

Jason picks at one of the pizza bagels, peeling its cheese layer off.  “I just. I like it here. But.” He’s looking everywhere but at her; his voice is almost lost in the din rising from the traffic below. “I fuck everything up, eventually. And I can’t. I don’t wanna fuck this up.”

“You think anyone down there’s gonna care if you make a mistake? That I’m gonna care?” 

“It’s never just “mistakes”, April!” He turns back to her, eyes searching, “It’s never little shit like dropping out or, or joyriding, or, ooh, a secret weed stash– I – I’m not safe to be around. For anyone.” 

“I know, Jason. I’m ain’t stupid– nobody goes ‘round in a kevlar-lined jacket with a small arsenal under their bedroom floorboards ‘cause they’re normal and healthy.” 

“I don’t think you really get it, April. Someone always gets hurt–” 

“Why don’t I get it, ‘cause I ain’t fired you and told you I never wanna see your baby face again?” 

He glares at her. “I kill people, April.” 

She snorts, “I know. You think I don’t watch the news? You think I don’t know you’re up to especially ill-advised an’ violent hobbies in your spare time? Why d’you think I sent you to Oskar Popov for trainin’? That Red Hood fella operates exclusively in your neighborhood, with special attention to pickin’ off creeps within a ten mile radius of any Adler Foundation properties. I watch the Sex Offenders Registry, too, so I know who to warn the kiddos about. Y’ain’t exactly subtle, darlin’.” 

“It’s not just fuckin’ criminals, April! I killed one of my friends!” 

Unimpressed, she asks, “Were you high?” 

He looks at her like she’s slapped him.

“You’re not the first addict to work at the Center, certainly not the first one I’ve ever met and decided t’love anyway– remind me to tell you about my daddy sometime.” 

She takes one of the pizza bagels off his plate– if he doesn’t want the hors d'oeuvres the kids put together, at least someone’s going to enjoy them. She finishes chewing and wipes her hands on her skirt. 

Serious as a heart attack, she tells him, “Everyone fucks up sometimes, Jason. An’ sometimes the fuckups are truly monumen’al. D’you wanna know exactly what’s gonna happen if you monumentally fuck up with me or anybody else downstairs that cares about you?” 

He doesn’t answer her. She reaches over and takes his hand, lacing their fingers together.

“If you really fuck up– say you get back on whatever poison was your drug of choice, or you hurt somebody we love real bad, or you rob the Center, or all three– we’re gonna get mad as hell. There’s gonna be a lot of yellin’, probably cryin’, an’for a while no one will wanna talk with you ‘cause when people are hurt they need space. I know you know that.” 

He stares hard at the traffic below and tries to extricate his hand from hers. She doesn’t let him go.

“I need you to listen, Jason, ‘cause this is the important part: when all that noise is done? I’m gonna come sit down with you, wherever you got yourself holed up t’feel bad about it ‘cause you think you’re a lost cause, an’ we’re gonna talk about what happened. Whatever it is you need that you didn’t get, whatever coulda helped you feel safe enough t’avoid doin’ that awful thing? We’re gonna get it. And whatever you gotta do to make amends for what you did? We’re gonna figure out what that is, too, I’ll help you do it. D’you know why?” 

She waits until he responds. It takes him more than a minute– he’s breathing carefully, shakily, staring at the blank windows of the office building across the street. 

Eventually, he shakes his head.

“Because you’re my little brother now and that’s what family does.”

Jason takes a deep breath all at once. “Holy shit, you can’t just say that.” He cranes his head back to look at the sky, to keep himself from crying. Facepaint stings like a motherfucker when it gets in the eyes, even Ruby’s fancy theater stuff, no matter how much she insists otherwise.

“I’m pretty sure I can, because I just did.” 

“Fuck off. ” His voice cracks.

“Nah, I think I’m gonna keep eatin’ alla your pizza bagels.” She lets go of his hand to steal another one.

Jason finally eats the bagel he’d picked apart, sniffling. The two of them watch the sky– the wind is high in the atmosphere, pushing the low-lying clouds into a flowing topography of colors reflecting off them from the city below.  

“What am I supposed to do now?” 

“Eat bagels and come down to drink fizzy apple juice with your friends.” 

“Seriously?” 

“If you want. I can’t make you, but I also can’t promise Ruby and Javi won’t just bring ever’one up here t’harass you.” 

He laughs, disbelieving, “This is fuckin’ wild,” nd shakes his head. “last time I was on a roof blubbering it went real different.” 

April raises an eyebrow, “Do I wanna know?” 

“Not tonight. It’ll kill the mood.”

“And I thought you was a stone cold killer,” she nudges him with her elbow. He doesn’t laugh but she does. “Too soon?” 

Jason swings his legs around and hops off the retaining wall. He’s smiling. “C’mon, let’s see how far I can get into Merry Wives of Windsor during the toast before anyone notices.” 

It’s a Saturday morning when he tells her everything, at least the parts he’s confident she hasn’t inferred yet. They sit shoulder to shoulder in the synagogue garden watching the rain come down and eating bagels smothered with cream cheese and lox. It’s winter and neither of them can feel their fingertips but it’s easier to hide from Mrs. Lezoff’s pungent borscht outside. She doesn’t want to risk the life of her perm by getting it wet.

Apropos of nothing, Jason unrolls the whole thing: Robin’s probation and Deathstroke, Dick and Jericho, Rose and his brief delusions about domesticity, the Joker and Crane, Hank and Dawn. April hears it all with quiet patience and a marked lack of questions. The potluck winds down while he talks and the rain slows to a quiet patter on the roof of the wooden gazebo.

“Let me just back up a bit,” she tells him, when he’s done, “make sure I understand this right.” 

She gestures as she speaks, “You were standing on the roof of a skyscraper fixin’ to throw yourself off it an’ your brother– who to that point couldn’t care less about who you are or what you got goin’ on ‘cause he figured you was usurpin’ him– tells you he can magically fix your whole entire life by confessing to a murder he didn’t commit? And the last thing he said to you was that he had to literally die to muster up the brainpower to try to understand where you was coming from?” 

Laid out that simply, it makes his ribs ache. “That’s skipping a lot but that’s how things are with Dick, I guess, yeah.” 

“Of all the self-centered, myopic, megalomaniacal–” She huffs, “Your brother’s a moron. Don’t even get me started on your daddy, good lord, him and mine’d get along like a house on fire.” 

“Didn’t your dad make you wrestle alligators when you were twelve?” 

“I said what I said.” 

“And, what, that’s it? All that’s fine?” 

“It’s already done, ain’t it?” 

“I feel like shit about it.” 

“That means you’re still human.” 

Jason sits back to slouch against the bench. “Being human sucks.” 

“You could try apologizing,” she suggests, then clarifies, “to Dawn, not Dick. That friend of yours, Gar, he sounds like he’d appreciate hearing from you. Molly, too, she works at the Foundation office in Bludhaven, I know she’ll be thrilled to know you’re a’right.”

The constipated look on Jason’s face is one April’s seen plenty of times. It’s the one that means he knows he’s hearing good advice– he’s just embarrassed about how long it’s taken him to find the courage to follow it. But instead of snapping at her over it he says, “Maybe.” 

“Just think about it for me.” 

“Sure.” 

And if that ain’t progress, April doesn’t know what is.

Chapter Text

Galactic Gunslingers, as far as Jason can tell, is in fact a real movie series. He's seen the Wiki for it-- Ruby built it, but at least a hundred people contribute to it on a semi-regular basis. She spends at least five minutes fiddling with the TV's dial whenever she walks into the rec room to try to find the frequency the current rerun is playing on.

"So the whole issue in this one is the White Dwarf gang ran a transport heist for a whole collection of Martian ice sculptures bound for a gallery on Jupiter. Sheriff Miller's gotta get it all back, obviously." 

Ruby has stopped working on her latest costume to explain it to Jason. He keeps diligently gathering tulle while she talks– her Snow Queen ball gown isn’t going to magically make itself fluffy and having something to do with his hands helps him focus.

They sit across from each other, on sections divorced from the sofa so that Jason doesn't have to have his back to the room.

The windows of the Center are set with battery operated candles. Every corner of the rec room hosts a different set of decorations for the winter holidays-- as many as the after school program kids wanted to include. The whole place smells like pine boughs from the garland.

"Only, the problem is, Sheriff Miller promised her paramour, James Jupiter, she'd turn up for Hanukkah. And that's kind of a big deal, even in the future, because James is actually a time traveler from another Earth where they still celebrate holidays-- and his whole family's dead because he's trapped in the future. The emotional thrust of this movie is Sheriff Miller grappling with her duty to the galaxy to keep the peace-- even when she has to deal with petty shit like ice sculptures that are gonna melt anyway-- balanced with how real and important her human relationships are--" 

She stops abruptly because Jason's not sewing or even looking at her. He's staring behind her, at the entrance to the Center. All the color has drained from his face and he’s stopped breathing. 

That's enough for her.

 She's picked up her bat and jumped over the back of the sectional before he says a word.

The guy is easy to spot. He breezed past Javier at the reception desk. He's tall and working on at least a full day's worth of blonde stubble. Between the layers of plaid and denim over workboots, it reminds her a little too much of her hometown.

She walks right up to him, bat swaying light in her grip, and without preamble demands, "What do you want?" 

"I wanna talk to Jason." 

"Jason?" She pretends to think, "No, I don't know a Jason." 

He tries to step around her-- she steps with him, the plastic goldfish inside her boots' platforms bobbing violently with each stomp. 

"I don't think you heard me," she tells him, a little louder and a little firmer, "there's no one named Jason here."

"Okay, I don't care what name he goes by, that kid," he points past Ruby, "I need to talk to him." 

She hears Jason come up behind her, having finally got over whatever species of shock had hit him. He puts a hand on her arm, pulling her away, warm and gentle. "Ruby, it's fine, I – I know Hank." 

"Obviously you know the guy –I saw your face when you saw him! I'm not gonna let anyone talk to you who scares you that much." 

"I wasn't scared! I thought he was dead until he walked in here!" 

Her eyes narrow. "What do you want, Hank?"

"Last year, that little shit,” he jabs a finger in Jason’s direction, “tried to kill me 'cause his dealer thought it was a fun party trick. I wanna know if he’s doing any better these days." 

"Yeah, that fails the gut check. Whatever you gotta say to him, you can say with me standing here," Ruby refuses to be moved.

Javier comes over, having checked in the last of the after school program kids. There's a decidedly agitated set to his thick glasses. "Doc's on her way. You gonna need me to call the cops?" 

"No cops," Jason and Ruby say in unison.

"You got yourself some good friends, Jason," Hank says. "You treatin'em well enough to deserve this kinda loyalty?" 

Ruby flips her grip on her bat and taps it against Hank's sternum, "Why don't we go outside and talk about how well Jason treats his friends?" 

Hank, unfazed, leans into her bat, "I thought you didn't know anyone named Jason?" 

"This is the exact opposite of de-escalation, Ruby," Jason says, exasperated. "Can the both of you just fuckin' quit it? The kids're all starin’, you're gonna give 'em a trauma." 

Chagrined, Hank takes a step back from Ruby. Ruby lowers her bat.

"Great, okay, good, thank you." Jason sighs, "C'mon, we're going to the--" he casts around– "the kitchen. I gotta go get snacks ready for the little guys. Ruby, show Hank where the kitchen is, go." He shoves at Hank and Ruby both until they start toward the hallway off the back of the rec room. "Javi, can you handle the kids alone while I ... deal with this?" 

"Yeah, I guess, but only if you bring me one of the big macaroni cups." 

"It'll be a few minutes, but, yeah, I'll do that." He drags his hands through his hair and just stays like that for a second.

In an undertone Javier asks, "You're sure you don't want me to call the cops? They always really like me, I think it's the poindexter glasses and I might as well use my weedy, harmless nerd privileges for good." 

Jason extracts his hands from his hair. "Yeah, man, I'm sure. The worst Hank'll do is punch me – after what I did to him, I deserve it if he does. I’ll be fine. If shit gets outta hand, I got Ruby." 

From the craft tables, Little Lisa shouts, "Swear jar!" 

Jason pulls a five dollar bill out of his wallet and makes a point of shoving it into the gallon pickle jar on the library shelf labeled Jason Todd’s Sin Bin beside the much smaller mason jar of spare change labeled Swear Jar. Mollified, Little Lisa returns to her craft project.

Hank and Ruby stand on opposite sides of the kitchen, glaring at each other.

"Wow, guys, the sexual tension in here's so thick I could cut it with a knife," Jason announces, throwing a pot of water on to boil in a series of careless gestures that barely avoid tipping the whole thing over. "Just kiss already." 

Ruby pulls a face like she's trying to retract her head into her neck, "Jason you are nasty! I'd rather lick the toilet at the Texaco." 

"Hey, lady," Hank sounds genuinely hurt, "I know I'm not everyone's cup of tea, but you don't have to be mean about it. I didn’t do nothin’ t’you."

Jason pulls a box of instant macaroni out of the cupboard and starts dumping packets of noodles and neon orange dehydrated cheese powder into mugs. "You want macaroni, Hank?" 

"What?" 

"That's probably a yes," Jason mutters. Then pauses and realizes it's better to explain, "April-- Doctor Adler, she runs this place, she's nuts– but she's got this rule where you don't do feelings bullshit when you're hungry. So I'm makin' macaroni. Siddown. The chairs're old but they’ll hold you." 

Hank sits and tries to square what he’s seeing with his last memory of Jason Todd.

"Take a picture, it'll last longer," Jason tells him, not breaking his stare.

"Sorry, sorry." Hank finally looks away, around the kitchen. "So… what is this, you're volunteering now?" 

"I work here, actually. I'm an "Administrative Assistant'' for the Center." He shrugs, watching the pot on the stove simmer. "I just do what needs to be done: paperwork, setting' up tables, buyin’ snacks, whatever."

"And they got you to care about de-escalation?" 

Jason snorts, "Yeah. There's this shrink from Hope Springs, fuckin' Connecticut, comes up to teach peer mediation to the kids and adults that got records then she turns 'em loose on the city. It's a good program, keeps people from gettin' shot as much." 

Ruby chimes in, "Dr. Fairweather deputized Jason, he's gotta shiny peer mediator nametag and everything. Not that he ever wears it," she adds pointedly. 

"Everybody already knows who I am, they don't need to be reminded." He flicks the stove off and pours precisely six ounces of water into each mug in the most haphazard way possible, splashing it across the counter. He plunks a compostable plastic spoon into each mug. 

He hands one to Hank, "Mix it yourself," then carries two to where Ruby's loitering at the door. "The big cup is for Javi. Bring it to ‘im before he starves, I'll be fine." 

“You need anything, Jayby-baby, you shout, I’ll be here faster than you can say “boo”.” 

“Yeah, whatever, get outta my hair.” 

The din of the after school program filters into the kitchen. By the sound of it, Javi has given up on craft hour and is rounding everyone up for a game of Red Rover.

Jason sits down across from Hank, mixing his own cup of instant macaroni with vigor-- then consumes each bite with purposeful slowness. When he's halfway done he sets the mug on the table, the spoon balanced across the top. He takes a breath and holds it for exactly four seconds before he speaks.

"Letting Crane put that bomb in you was the stupidest, most fucked up thing I've ever done and there was no excuse for it. Letting him do it after I let you think you were gonna be helpin’ me out was... It was a betrayal and I think it was outright fuckin' evil. I'm sorry, Hank. I don't know where to start making it right. I'm– I’m glad you lived, though." 

Hank blinks at him, shocked, spoon still in his mouth. Of all the things he’d expected walking into The Adler Foundation, Jason being forthcoming and contrite wasn’t even on the list. He licks the spoon clean. "How long did you practice that one in the mirror?"

"I workshopped it in group therapy, actually. For a whole month." 

"Group therapy? No shit?" 

"No shit. The Center hosts a couple different groups. Dr. Fairweather's is a lot of kids who got into henching and gang shit young, so it wasn't the weirdest thing anyone'd heard, either." 

"You apologize to Dawn, too?" 

Jason winces. "Not yet. I thought you were dead. I, uh. I didn't think she'd wanna hear from me, seein' as how I gave her the detonator. That was... a bad choice." 

"That’s one way to understate it, yeah." Hank leans forward, elbows on the table, "You gonna apologize to her now?" 

"If she'll talk to me. I guess I could send her a letter if she doesn't," he mutters, looking at his hands. He avoids making a joke about Hallmark cards.

"Good. Making amends is a big part of it." 

"Of what, “recovery”? I'm pretty sure there's not an AA chapter for people who deal designer fear toxin derivatives." 

"Sure there is: Narcotics Anonymous, kid, they'll take you." 

Jason snorts. "Thanks but my schedule's full between the regular group therapy, the volunteering with “troubled youths”, and actual work." 

"That mean you’re clean? Don't roll your eyes at me, asshole, I gotta ask." 

"You don't gotta do shit, Hank. I don’t know why you care but yeah , I'm clean. I didn't even drink on my birthday-- we just had fries at a drag bar and Ruby gave me a buncha Otterpops. It was fuckin' wholesome." He huffs. "I can't even smoke any more-- Crane replaced one of the inhalers with this nasty shit the last time, mustard gas lite or somethin’. Thought I was gonna die again. My lungs're still fucked."

"How long ago was the last one?" 

Jason slouches back, looking up to count backward in his memory. "Nine months ago? It's not a big deal. I wasn't even on the shit for that long. Like, a year and a half, tops." 

"Nine months is a long time. You should be proud of yourself, Jay." 

It's obvious that the sudden sincerity freaks Jason out from how he pulls his feet up onto his chair and goes back to shoveling spoonfuls of macaroni into his face. Mouth full, he asks, "How'd you survive, anyway?" 

"Conner disarmed it--" 

"-- Good ol’ Superboy to the rescue--" 

"-- He's a good kid. Fast as hell. He figured out how to do this electrical current stuff... And then I had a few heart attacks in a row. Had to have surgery to dig that shit outta my chest cavity. I was in a coma for a while ‘cause my brain got pissed about bein’ left outta the melodrama. They put a pacemaker in," he flicks a spot on the top of his chest a couple of times where the implant sits, regulating his heartbeat. "Now my orthopedist wants to replace my hip-- and both my knees. I'm basically gonna be a Millenium Man." 

Jason snorts. "Bullshit, you're just a millenium- old man." 

"An old man who can kick your ass." 

"Try it, any time, see what happens."

It's more familiar territory, the bickering. Jason looks relieved to be back somewhere he recognizes. He's a good kid, at the end of the day. Prone to bouts of the stupids like any other kid-- and vulnerable as hell to people who like to take advantage of that sort of thing. The snowy sunlight through the kitchen windows illuminates him. He's got a healthier look to him than he's had in years, though. He's a little taller, a little broader than he was during his brief sojourn as a Titan. Less strained about the eyes, although he obviously isn't sleeping quite as much as he should. But who does? 

Hank sits back. "I'm glad you lived, Jason. I'm serious, even with all the bullshit you did. There's a million things you coulda done other than gettin' clean and instead you picked this," he gestures at the kitchen, the Center, “you picked living and that takes guts. I'm proud of you." 

Jason scrapes the last of his macaroni out of the bottom of his mug, not looking at him. "Okay, alright that's enough feelings shit, food's gone. I gotta job to do. If you're gonna stay, you’re allowed, but you gotta fill out a volunteer form and pass a background check and I'm gonna make you scrub the toilets." 

Hank doesn't expect to stick around once he's figured out that's where Jason has been spending his time– except he does. The need to keep an eye out jumps him in the kitchen as soon as Jason’s fled. Call it what you will, but he's still worried about the kid. A person doesn't just decide one day to go to the fucking Scarecrow for drugs if they aren't dealing with a lot of shit.

And it isn't like the vigilante lifestyle is all that healthy to begin with.

So Hank fills out a volunteer application in his shitty, shaky block print and passes his background check with flying colors. Dr. Adler herself interview him and when she asks, “What makes you want to spend your time volunteering here, of all places?”

He tells her the truth, “Jason Todd’s a good kid. Gotham isn’t exactly kind to good kids. I wanna keep an eye on him. In case he ever needs anything.” 

That Jason has made actual friends with his coworkers is another thing entirely. And they’re not even the shallow friendships he was half faking his way through for the Titans either, trying to insulate people from how rough he was around the edges.

True to threat, Hank winds up assigned to janitorial sorts of tasks and more or less immediately assigns himself to maintenance, too. It’s not hard to replace tube lights that need it and fix shaky table legs. It irritates him that no one’s bothered to do it until now. The graffiti on the side of the building’s the most irritating– no one’s bothered to scrub it off in years and  Dr. Adler doesn't care all that much about it, calls that shit "art". One unseasonably temperate day in January– there’s a huge storm coming, that’s the only explanation for the sudden thaw– he decides to remove it.

Javier drops off a clean bucket of hot water for him, sloshing a good quarter of it onto the pavement. He’s a good kid, too, if a little too skinny– it makes Hank wonder if he’s got a thyroid thing, Hank’s gotta cousin with a thyroid thing and she always felt awful.

Javier surveys what’s left of the layers of spray paint, “If it was pretty, or at least colorful, I could get behind it, bu there’s no control over the medium. There’s no intentionality. Doc’s got the wrong idea.” 

Hank scrubs and, just for the sake of contrariness, repeats something Dawn asked him once, “Does art have to be pretty?” 

Javier thinks about it. “Nah, but I think it does have to be done with intent.”

“I’m pretty sure whoever did this was marking Horsemen territory on purpose.” 

“No, no, I mean artistic intent. They could’ve at least made the logo look good– this is just sloppy.” 

Javier is a good kid, Hank decides to start teaching him a little self-defense. Which is how he ends up teaching an entire class of middle-school aged kids how to get away from kidnappers.

"Now when someone grabs you like this-" he's demonstrating on Dr. Adler because she wouldn't let him volunteer anyone else.

Hank's pretty sure the real reason is that she just doesn't trust him around Jason.

Or maybe Jason around him.

Jason who catcalls from the sidelines, "Don't grope my boss now Hall. She pays all our bills." 

It's enough of a distraction that it lets Dr. Adler shift her grip and suddenly he's airborne getting flipped over her fucking shoulder like a soccer ball or something.

"Holy shit fuck cheese balls!" The wind is knocked out of Hank, and the ceiling spins a little, "Did someone catch the license plate on that semi?"

Dr. Adler laughs and holds a hand out to him, "You mighta been a cop darlin', but my daddy was twice th'size a you and he had me an' my sisters runnin' drills as soon as we could hold our heads upright."

Hank clambers to his feet and squints at the blonde woman, "I see why Jason stuck around."

From the sidelines Jason scoffs, "I stuck around because she blinded me with food and kindness."

"So you're saying we shoulda put snacks in your fanny pack?"

"Fuck you Hall."

Little Lisa's voice interrupts everyone, "That's like... a whole ice cream party of swear words you know."

“Y’all better can it, I want the Doc to show us how she threw his big butt over her teeny tiny shoulder.” Ruby’s voice is a booming entity into the space.

“I just used his own size against’im.”

“Ok yes. But how-”

Hank steps forward, “How about we walk everyone through it again, and this time I’ll have some warning as well.”

“Aw c’mon darlin’, I thought y’all liked gettin’ manhandled by women smaller’n you.”

There’s a joke there that Hank misses, he knows this as sure as he knows he’s going to his the mat again, but he steps forward anyway while Jason and Ruby start placing bets on how quickly it’s going to happen.

He meets Dr. Adler’s eyes and is for a moment arrested by how weirdly goddamn green they are. Her smile is all teeth.

“Usually I’m a third date kind of boy Doc.”

“Call me April, we’re gettin’ t’know eachother real good.”

Hank resigns himself to eating ibuprofen for the rest of the week.