Chapter Text
He thought he’d gone deaf.
His ears rang with a high-pitched whine, his vision flickered like a dying lightbulb. Clutching at the stair rail with trembling fingers, he tried to lift himself, but his body refused. With a sickening thud, he collapsed forward onto his chest.
The scent of gunpowder and smoke wrapped around him like a memory he couldn’t escape.
That smell. So familiar smell.
He was back there again. The timer blinking down to zero. No exits. Laughter echoed beyond the door—twisted, unholy laughter. His personal song to Hell.
There was no way out.
No way out.
He was going to die.
He was going to die again.
“—son!” A voice. A scream. Someone calling out. But he couldn’t make out the words. All he could see was death, staring him down with cruel eyes, and he begged it, begged it not to take him again. Not yet. Not like this.
“I don’t want to die, Bruce…” A broken sob tore from his throat. He couldn’t open his eyes. He couldn’t breathe. His chest felt like it was caving in, burning from the inside out, like the smoke had filled his lungs.
A sharp jolt of pain snapped him back. His eyes flew open, wild and confused, locking with a face behind a black mask.
Lips moved, someone was speaking, but the world was still muffled and distant. Then a hand gripped his, grounding him with its warmth, and for a second, just a second, he remembered how to breathe.
“Jason. Jason, look at me,” the voice cut through the fog like a lifeline. Blinking furiously, Jason found himself staring into familiar blue eyes. Tim.
When had he taken off his mask?
“You’re okay. You’re going to be okay. We’re here. Just breathe. Look at me and breathe,” Tim’s voice was steady, controlled, but there was urgency beneath it, a quiet panic disguised as calm.
Jason couldn’t fight. He just obeyed, sucking in a sharp breath that immediately turned into a coughing fit. It sounded pathetic and broken. But the hand in his squeezed tighter, anchoring him.
“Just breathe,” Tim whispered again. “Don’t speak. Just breathe.”
Jason nodded weakly, his entire body aching with exhaustion. He just wanted to sleep. And maybe he could close his eyes. Just for a while…
“No. Don’t sleep,” came a soft voice near his ear.
Turning his head, Jason found himself staring into Cass’s furrowed brows, her expression etched with worry. She was still holding his hand, gently squeezing and releasing in a steady rhythm, as if keeping time with his heartbeat.
“Wha… what happened?” he rasped through dry lips, another bout of coughing shaking his frame, but he didn’t miss the way Tim's mouth tightened, his eyes flicking away. Something was wrong.
Jason turned his head and his blood turned cold.
At the top of the stairs stood Bruce, arms wrapped tightly around a limp, broken figure.
Dick.
His suit was torn in places and charred. Blood dripped from his exposed arm. His chest… It wasn’t moving.
He wasn’t breathing.
“Dick!” Jason’s hand shot out, bracing against the wall as he tried to stand, but Tim was there, stopping him with a firm grip. His eyes held no emotion. None. And in that emptiness, Jason saw something worse than fear.
He saw the abyss. And the abyss stared back at him through those black pupils.
“He… is he okay?” Jason asked, voice cracking, and this time eyes locked on Bruce’s masked face. He couldn’t read him, couldn’t see if there was hope.
But the way Bruce clutched Dick to his chest… The way he moved quickly but silently down the stairs, ignoring everyone else, like the rest of the world no longer mattered…
Jason knew. It was bad. Really bad.
And the Joker was to blame.
“He’s going to be okay… right?” Jason whispered, desperation leaking through every word. He sounded pathetic, even to himself, but he couldn’t stop.
Dick wasn’t just his brother. He was a father now too. This couldn’t be the end.
It couldn’t.
But Tim lowered his gaze, eyes dark with sorrow and doubt.
He didn’t answer.
And Jason felt his heart stop. Because Tim always told the truth. But this time…
Tim said nothing.
The ride back to the cave felt endless. Despite Tim ignoring every traffic rule in the book, speeding through red lights and barely grazing corners, it wasn’t fast enough. Not for Jason. Not when every second counted.
Jason hadn’t even fought Tim for the bike. He didn’t have strength. But the moment they burst through the Batcave entrance, he was moving.
Standing on his shaking knees and stumbling forward, Jason rushed straight to the medical bay and stopped cold.
There he was.
Dick.
Motionless on the cot, face pale and ghostlike, lips tinged a sickly blue. Tiny cuts crisscrossed his cheeks, but it was the blood—so much blood—that painted the horror.
Alfred’s scissors sliced through the charred remains of his suit, peeling it away with grim precision. Every layer revealed more wounds, more crimson. Jason’s stomach churned. His mind screamed do something, but his body refused to move.
Bruce stood at the bedside like a statue carved from grief. He wasn’t in the suit anymore, mask removed, cape draped over his shoulders like dead weight. But Jason saw everything now.
His eyes.
They weren’t Batman’s.
They were a father’s.
His hand stroked Dick’s hair, ash clinging to the strands like soot from a ruined memory. His expression was raw and unguarded. And in it, Jason saw everything he never understood.
Hopelessness.
Guilt.
Rage.
This wasn’t the unshakable Batman who always had a plan. Not the Dark Knight who haunted Gotham’s streets with quiet certainty.
This was Bruce Wayne.
A father watching his son die in front of him.
And suddenly, Jason understood. He understood why Bruce never crossed that line. Why he clung to those suffocating rules. That damn moral code.
Jason had always thought Bruce didn’t love him. That he’d been replaced. Discarded. That he’d been the biggest mistake. Failure.
But maybe… Maybe it wasn’t Batman everyone should’ve feared. It was Bruce. The man behind the cowl. The man who had already lost too much. The man who could lose it all again.
And in that moment, Jason saw what vengeance could do to love. What it had already done.
Alfred’s voice cut through the silence like a scalpel, steady, but urgent.
“Master Tim, please, tend to Master Jason’s wounds. Immediately.”
He didn’t even look up from Dick’s back, hands stained red as he worked to stop the bleeding. There was nothing Jason could do. No fists to throw. No weapons to draw. No enemy to tear apart—yet.
They were helpless. They were just children watching their world bleed out.
“Come on,” Tim said gently, gripping Jason’s arm with practiced steadiness and guiding him toward the med table. Jason let himself be led, too numb to resist. The moment he sat down, Duke was there, medkit in hand.
“Dizziness? Nausea? Chest pain?” Tim’s voice was clinical, efficient, but underneath, Jason could hear it. The tightness. The worry.
But he couldn’t focus.
His eyes kept drifting back to the cot. Back to Dick. Unmoving. Too still.
“Jason, hey—” Tim snapped his fingers in front of his face, pulling him back. “I need to assess the damage. Talk to me.”
Jason opened his mouth. The sound that came out was barely more than a whisper—
“I’m fine.”
“That’s not what he asked, Todd,” Damian’s voice cut in from behind Duke. Arms crossed, chin raised in his usual arrogant pose. But something was wrong, his tone didn’t match his posture. There was no bite in it. No disdain.
Only fear. Cold, quiet fear.
Jason leaned forward, bowing his head, throat thick and raw. He swallowed hard, but it didn’t help. Nothing did.
It all felt… muted. Like his senses were smothered under a heavy, suffocating grief.
“I’m not fine,” he finally croaked, voice breaking as a single tear slipped down his cheek, unwelcome and unforgiving. The realization kept slicing deeper: Dick saved him, but at the cost of his own life.
No.
Jason couldn’t—wouldn’t—believe that. But why the hell did it hurt so much? Why did it feel so final?
Tim sat beside him, close but not smothering, resting a steady palm against his back. His voice was barely above a whisper.
“None of us are fine.”
Jason let out a breathless laugh, more of a gasp, cracking under the weight of it. “You suck at comforting, Baby Bird.”
“I’m not trying to comfort you,” Tim’s gaze was distant, fixed on the cot across the cave. His voice was too calm, leaving Jason wondering what was going on inside his brother’s head. “But you’re not alone, Jason. We’re all scared.”
Jason lifted his head. And in Tim’s eyes, he saw it. The honesty. The sorrow. The unspoken terror.
Damian was still silent, face turned away, arms tightly folded—not out of pride, but protection. Duke tried to smile, but it came out crooked. A painful twitch that failed to hide the horror in his expression. Cass stood quietly in the shadows, her watchful eyes never leaving Alfred’s hands as he worked desperately to keep Dick breathing. And across the room, Stephanie sat at the computer, her face carved from stone, fingers flying as she scoured every channel, every feed, chasing the only lead that mattered: Where the Joker was now.
Jason blinked.
He’d forgotten. He’d forgotten who stood behind that blonde hair and too-bright smile. He’d forgotten that Stephanie was Spoiler long before she took Robin’s cape.
Duke flipped open the med kit, handing supplies off to Tim in practiced rhythm. They worked in tandem, disinfecting Jason’s wounds, taping the bruised flesh with quiet urgency. But Jason didn’t feel any of it.
He felt nothing. Just a hollow echo where his heart used to be. Because Dick had promised.
He promised.
Damn it, he promised.
Jason’s voice was barely a whisper, hoarse and cracked with pain.
“He promised I’d be Peter’s Godfather…”
A broken oath.
Tears clung to his jaw, sliding silently down his chin. His fists clenched so tightly, his knuckles turned bone white.
He wanted to scream. Break something. Burn the world down.
He couldn’t just sit there. Not when his world was bleeding out across the room.
With a sudden motion, his arm swept across the table. The med kit crashed to the floor with a violent clang, scattering gauze and bottles like shrapnel. Jason was on his feet in a heartbeat, kicking the stool aside so hard it clattered across the cave floor.
“He promised!” He slammed his fist into the steel table, voice raw and cracking. “He fucking promised!”
Everyone turned to look at him, but he didn’t care. Not about their looks. Not about their concern. Because rage was safer than grief. Because if he let the sorrow in, even for a second, he’d drown.
“You promised, Dick…” His voice broke entirely, trembling with helplessness.
Then—
A heavy, gloved hand rested over his clenched fist.
Jason flinched, gaze snapping up like a wounded animal ready to strike. Bruce. Standing close and steady. His eyes shadowed with something ancient, something broken.
Not Batman, the symbol of justice. Not the cold strategist.
But Bruce Wayne, a father fraying at the seams. And in his voice, there were no orders. No commands. Just a quiet promise.
“He’s going to be okay, Jaybird. He’s going to be okay.”
That did it.
Jason collapsed against him, fingers twisting into the kevlar of Bruce’s suit as he buried his face into the broad chest. Loud sobs tore out of his throat, unfiltered and helpless. He didn’t care anymore.
Bruce held him tightly, protectively, like he’d never let him go again. As if by doing so, he could hold back death itself.
“He’s going to be okay,” Bruce whispered again, over and over, grounding Jason with those few fragile words.
And for the first time, Jason believed him.
Not because Bruce was Batman. But because beneath the cowl, beneath the grief, beneath the armor—
Bruce Wayne never forgave himself for losing his son. And he would tear apart the world before letting it happen again.
Now Jason understood that.
Alfred exhaled heavily as he approached the group, his eyes sweeping over them with practiced precision and quiet worry. No one else—aside from Dick and Jason—had sustained serious injuries, but that did little to ease the ache in the old man’s heart. Sometimes emotional pain was more painful and serious than physical.
Clearing his throat, he began in his usual calm and composed tone.
“Thanks to the reinforced suit, Master Dick has sustained only minor burns.”
A wave of relief visibly washed over the room. Shoulders sagged. Breaths were finally drawn. Jason felt his knees falter with the weight of that one sentence, and Bruce, still standing at his side, gently guided him back down into the chair. No words. Just a firm hand on his shoulder and a look that said sit.
Alfred, ever the pillar of composure, continued.
“Unfortunately, many of his other injuries were caused by the blast impact itself. Shrapnel wounds, deep lacerations, considerable blood loss…” He paused, letting the gravity settle in the silence. And then—almost impossibly—his lips curled into the faintest, most hopeful of smiles. “But rest assured, Master Dick will recover. He must avoid any… nocturnal activity for the coming weeks.”
A beat.
Everyone looked at each other, the smallest flickers of amusement cutting through the tension. Because everyone knew how futile that request was. Asking Dick Grayson to stay still was like asking the sun not to rise.
Still, they’d tie him down if they had to. Jason would sit by his bed every damn night if that’s what it took.
But the moment of reprieve didn’t last long. The heavy metal door creaked open with a sound that sliced through the quiet like a blade and soft and cautious footsteps followed.
All heads turned, where at the top of the stairs stood Peter.
He was small in the frame of the massive cave, wrapped tightly in Dick’s favorite blanket—the one Alfred had knitted himself. The fabric hung from his narrow shoulders like armor too big, a shield against the world that suddenly felt terrifying.
He wasn’t moving. Just standing there, staring at the bed where Dick lay. Frozen.
The air changed. No one dared breathe. Jason’s stomach twisted. He saw it first, the slight tremble in Peter’s grip on the blanket. The look in his eyes: glassy, wide, and unreadable. He felt Bruce tense beside him. Shoulders stiffening. Brow furrowing. The lines around his mouth deepened, but he didn’t step forward.
No one did.
Because no one knew if the antidote had fully worn off. And if it had... no one knew where that left them in Peter’s eyes.
Friends?
Family?
Or enemies?
Jason rubbed his forehead, trying to banish the sudden wave of dizziness. His fingers pressed hard against his temple. It drew Tim’s attention immediately, who narrowed his eyes and silently studied him from head to toe, but he said nothing.
Peter stepped down the first stair like a broken puppet. One foot. Then the other. He paused again halfway down, stealing a glance at the rest of them, testing the air like a frightened animal. No one moved. They were all just… watching, waiting for something to happen.
Jason’s eyes flicked to Cass. Her face remained unreadable, expression flat and that was what worried him the most. Cass only shut down like that when something really got to her.
And that something was Peter.
Damian looked like a coil wound too tight, seconds away from lunging forward and slapping a leash around the kid’s neck, but Bruce’s firm gaze kept him in check. No one moved. No one breathed. They all watched as Peter slowly made his way across the room, inching toward Dick, who lay unconscious, his chest wrapped in a thick layer of white bandages.
Peter stopped at the bedside, still clutching Dick’s favorite knit blanket around his shoulders. His small hands gripped it like a lifeline. His whole posture screamed vulnerability, raw and exposed.
Jason wanted nothing more than to pull him close, wrap his arms around him, and promise that everything would be okay. That Dick would wake up, and they’d be back in the kitchen tomorrow morning, eating cereal from the box and arguing about what M&M taste the best.
But then the sharp trill of a video call cut through the silence, making them all flinch.
Barbara’s face flickered onto the monitor. She looked one breath away from collapse, eyes red-rimmed, voice trembling.
“How is he?”
“He’s going to be okay,” Bruce answered, and Jason felt that strange comfort again. How many times had Bruce said those same words today? And yet every time he did, Jason felt the weight in his chest ease, just a little. Because Bruce didn’t lie, not when it came to life-or-death question.
“Good. That’s… good. God…” Barbara’s voice cracked, her eyes flicking toward Dick in the medical bay. “What the hell happened?”
Jason wiped his dry face, trying to hide the leftover trace of tears. But the way Tim was looking at him told him he’d failed.
“We cleared the lower wing,” Jason began, voice low. “Then headed to the roof. Dick thought the Joker might be there. But instead… we found hostages.” He stopped. His eyes widened. He turned slowly to Bruce, searching for some kind of denial, anything.
“The hostages… They… they didn’t make it, did they?”
Silence answered him. And the dizziness hit again, this time heavier. Not from exhaustion, but from memory.
From guilt.
“They’re dead. And Dick…” Jason’s voice broke. “Dick…”
He looked at Bruce, empty and lost, like a child begging his father to fix the impossible. But there was no fixing this.
“I’ve received confirmation,” Barbara said, voice steadier now. “Joker’s broken Jonathan Crane out of Arkham. My guess is… the hostages were just a distraction.”
Jason barely processed her words, but the rest of them did.
“Joker and Scarecrow are working together?” Duke muttered, voicing what everyone else was thinking. If that was true—if those two monsters were teaming up—then whatever they were planning was going to be far worse than they’d anticipated.
No leads.
No strategy.
They had nothing.
And they had nearly lost Dick.
No. It was worse than that.
They had nearly lost Dick and Peter.
Then, just as the tension reached a breaking point, a quiet, childlike voice cut through the room.
“Who’s the Joker?”
They all turned—again—to Peter. He was seated beside Dick, elbows resting on his knees, eyes focused on the sleeping man like the rest of the world didn’t exist. No one knew what to say. No one wanted to say anything.
There was a chill in the kid’s voice, the kind that only comes after you've endured too much. And when no answer came, Peter’s deep brown eyes—filled with something far too close to agony—locked onto them.
And in that moment… Jason didn’t see Peter anymore. He saw Dick.
Not the flirtatious showman. Not the endlessly smiling big brother. But the real Dick—the one who had lost everything. Dick who knew what it meant to be alone. Dick who pulled on the Robin suit not for justice, but for revenge.
“Who is the Joker.”
It wasn’t a question anymore. Peter’s voice had sharpened, becoming ice-cold and full with disgust.
Jason’s lips parted, ready to answer… but nothing came out. What could he say?
Peter’s gaze swept across the room like a predator stalking prey, pausing on Cass. She hadn’t moved, her mask of calm perfectly in place, but something in her posture must’ve shifted, something imperceptible to the rest of them. Peter noticed. Somehow, he noticed.
Then he turned back to Dick. He took a deep breath. Full. Grounding. Final. Then gently reached out, slipping his hand into Dick’s dark hair, stroking it with a tenderness that mirrored exactly how Dick had soothed him just a night before.
Like father. Like son.
Heavy silence fell over the cave. Even Barbara, still visible on the monitor, seemed to vanish into the stillness, her breath caught, her wide eyes following Peter’s every move. And in any other world—any other day—Jason might’ve cracked a joke. Might’ve snorted at the way Bruce’s face had gone stone-pale. Maybe even filmed it, if he were in the mood.
But not now. Not after what Peter said next. And when the words came out, they didn't sound like they belonged to a child.
“I’ll find him, tata,” there was no trembling, no hesitation. Just calm… terrifying in its clarity. The kind of calm that came not from peace, but from something cracked and reshaped in fire. Peter’s small fingers curled tighter into the blanket and his voice dropped lower. “I’ll find him. And I’ll make him pay.”
The words echoed in the cave, like a vow written in blood. Jason felt his chest tighten. This wasn’t just grief speaking. It was a purpose. Cold, forged-in-pain purpose.
Robin was back. But not the one full of hope.