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For as long as he’s known Jason, Dick has been wasting his time.
When Jason first came to them, Dick was so angry, so young, so fucking mad at Bruce, that he ended up wasting too much time thinking that Jason was trying to replace him, thinking that Jason wasn’t going to be there forever, thinking that it was Bruce’s job to take care of Jason, not his.
When Jason dies, Dick is so angry, and he hates Bruce so much, and he wastes a lot of time raging at Bruce and not enough time understanding what’s happened. And then, when he has accepted it, he spends his time grieving. But this is a waste of time, too, because it turns out Jason is actually out there somewhere, and he’s being trained and healed by Talia while Dick is just trying to tell himself that Tim will end up differently.
When Jason comes back, and he’s Hood, Dick wastes time thinking he can make this Jason the Jason he knows, that he’ll do or say the right thing and Jason will be Robin again, with a grin and a joke and light on his feet. And once they get Jason back, once he starts being with them again, Dick wastes so much time WORRYING, and being scared, and being terrified that something will go wrong. And he wastes time trying to find out every secret Jason’s ever kept, trying to understand what he could have done differently to save Jason, and… but then Jason goes missing. And when they find him, just before he’s killed, after he’s got blood on his teeth and is shying away from Bruce, it kind of all clicks in.
Dick can’t afford to waste any more time with Jason. He has to take every single minute for what it is: another minute with Jason. He has to just love Jason, right now. It’s his only option.
xxx
In the aftermath of Jason’s abduction and what Jason refuses to refer to as anything other than “not awful” and Tim keeps calling “light torture,” Dick finds himself unable to leave Jason’s side. A lot of them offer to take over his spot—all of them, actually, except for Bruce and Steph; Bruce, because Jason can’t even look at him without having obvious heart palpitations, and Stephanie, because one night she says really quietly “he wants it to be you, even if he’s not saying it. He’s glad that it’s you.”
At first, he just watched Jason sleep, like a freak, and then he starts learning to sleep when Jason sleeps, wake up when Jason wakes up. He let Jason get abducted—that’s fucked, isn’t it? After all those promises to himself, that he’d be better, that he’d be different, that no one would die this time, and he didn’t know when his brother went missing? It’s fucked. It’s all he thinks about at first. But then, when they start playing video games, when Jason starts talking again, when they start laughing together, Dick realizes it’s pointless, all the thinking about what he should have done. How much time has he wasted, really? Thinking about what he could have done? How many times has he wasted the opportunity to sit next to his brother and play SuperSmash while they both try to think of alternative names for the Batmobile? He can’t do it anymore. It’s not worth it, in the end. There’s too much time lost.
xxx
Jason is small, when Bruce first brings him home. Dick comes back from Bludhaven to meet this kid that Bruce effectively kidnapped and he’s ready to see this kid and accuse Bruce of having a complex, the kid of being a scammer, Alfred of being irresponsible, and it all wastes away when he sees this thirteen year old with scarred, knobby knees and elbows and too-big hands and a chipped tooth and his first thought is: he’s too small. His second thought: he looks like Bruce. His third thought: shit.
The kid gapes at him for a moment, with a glare that Dick will soon learn is just his default face, and then says, in an odd tone: “you’re Robin.”
And it’s still bitter, it still hurts, and this kid is a stranger who knows one of Dick’s closest secrets, and Dick accidentally snaps: “not anymore.” And he says it too angry, and he’s not sure who he’s angry at—if it’s this kid, or if it’s Bruce, or if it’s himself, and something in the kid’s face shutters completely, what little openness there was turning off like a light.
And that sort of sets the tone for the first year.
xxx
Dick knows it’s inevitable that Jason is going to go back on patrol. And he knows it’s going to happen before he’s ready for it to, and he knows it’s going to make him sick, and he also knows, to a degree, that he just can’t be there when it happens. He’s spent all this time with Jason, but the idea of going out with him on his first night back, of trying to watch Jason be Hood when they’re 48 hours off of Jason admitting to him that sometimes he still has nightmares, feels like it could kill him. Maybe this is the wrong choice, but then he looks out at Tim, and Stephanie, and Bruce, and he knows—they’re all as equally dedicated to never letting anything happen to Jason ever again. And he trusts them. Sometimes, he trusts them more than he trusts himself. And he trusts Jason. He has to. And so he stays behind.
He spends the first three hours silently listening to them all talk on the comms, like a freak, until he gets a text from Barbara that says: I know you’re listening. They’re ok. Take a rest.
He listens for five more minutes anyways, and he hears Stephanie roast the shit out of Tim about his dress shoes and Tim responds “they’re supposed to be shiny, Spoiler, Jesus, read a single book,” and for some reason, this settles him enough that he can finally sleep.
They watch a movie when they get back—Jason and Bruce slouched in opposite chairs, Dick taking up the entire couch, Steph and Tim in a tangle on the floor, and, except for Bruce and Dick, they all fall asleep like this. Stephanie and Tim both snore, and Jason is, for once, still. Bruce catches Dick’s eye, and there’s something there—some unbelievable emotion, one of those things that no one would ever believe Bruce or Batman was capable of, something so raw it makes Dick’s stomach clench, and he thinks he gets it. Bruce was 22 when he adopted Dick. Jesus Christ.
Dick gets up as quietly as he can manage, clearing his throat. “They’ll want coffee, when they wake up,” he whispers. “I’ll make some.” He pauses, knowing that he wants to say something but suddenly lacking the language for it. “Do you want any?”
“Sure,” Bruce says, equally quietly, and maybe it’s wishful thinking, but Dick thinks that Bruce gets it, the things Dick doesn’t have words for. “Thanks, Dick.”
xxx
Jason starts growing so fast it’s upsetting. Every time Dick sees this kid, he’s almost like a new person. He’s getting taller, yeah, but it’s not just that, it’s like his entire bone structure is expanding, and his shoulders are getting wider and his jaw is jutting out more and his knees don’t look like a giraffe’s anymore.
When Dick mentions this to Alfred, Alfred just sighs and says, with visible disappointment, “Richard, are you trying to describe a growth spurt right now?”
It makes Dick feel sick, though, because Jason at thirteen is different than Dick was. Because Jason…it’s almost like the sudden access to nourishment is only making it more obvious how bad the malnourishment was. His face is starting to fill out and his cheeks are red now, and his hair—which used to be dull—is dark and shiny, and his eyes are bright. Dick can tell, just from the sporadic training sessions he’s seen, that Jason is getting stronger at a rate that has to be attributed to more than just Bruce’s training, and the kid, in general, seems more lively.
It’s one of those things that Dick knows, logically, is happening everywhere, but something in him feels nauseous when he looks at Jason. Because a year ago, Jason was hungry somewhere, and he and Bruce were in here, with enough food to last a lifetime. Jason was hungry, and Dick was Robin, and he had thought that was enough. But it wasn’t. And how many more kids were there, who he had missed?
He still rarely talks to Jason, because he’s done a pretty good job of never being here, but that means that he knows shit about this kid, because for some reason, Bruce has decided that safeguarding Jason’s privacy is actually his life’s goal. (Bruce hadn’t let the paparazzi say anything about Dick for years. Every time news broke, that paper went under. It’s who Bruce is, Dick knows that, he had just thought maybe it was a trait specifically related to Dick). He wants to know Jason, though, because it’s become apparent that he’s not going anywhere, and he also can’t help but wonder how Jason fell through the gaps, how Robin had missed him. He wants to know where the kids like Jason are and how he can prevent this again, he never wants to look at a kid’s collarbones and feel this ashamed again.
“So what’s your deal?” He asks one night at dinner when he’s in town, while Bruce is at some sort of event where he needs to prove Bruce Wayne is still alive and charming and bumbling around. It’s the wrong tone, yeah, but it doesn’t seem like Jason is the sort of kid who’s going to respond to any heartfelt advances.
Alfred’s head snaps towards Dick, but Jason’s scowl just deepens. Dick clears his throat and tries again.
“What’s your deal? What did you do before us?”
The silence is caustic for a second, and then Jason says, through gritted teeth and with flat eyes: “my parents were circus performers. They were killed by the mob.”
“Fuck off,” Dick spits out instinctively so quickly it surprises even him, and Alfred snaps, much harsher than he usually is: “Mind your language, Richard.”
Dick ignores him, anger creeping up his neck. “Come on, Jason, where are YOUR parents? Why are you living in MY house?”
Jason and Alfred both stand in unison, and Jason looks furious, face red like he’s holding himself back from something, arms braced on the table. He looks at Alfred frantically, and Alfred nods, and then Jason darts out of the room, his footsteps echoing down the hall.
Alfred turns to Dick, his jaw set. “This may be difficult for you, Dick,” he says sternly, “I am not unsympathetic to that. But I will not…” he stops for a second, recomposing himself, and his next words are with less emotion: “I will not tolerate cruelty in this house. Especially from you. It’s not natural on you.”
All of Dick’s anger washes away immediately, and he feels shame rush over him. Jesus Christ. He’d just taunted a thirteen year old kid over his absent parents. Who does that? What kind of person does that? What kind of adult lets a kid, with a single line, goad him into being mean to a kid who just now got access to food? Why had he called it HIS house? The Manor was huge, too big to turn away anyone in need. What kind of person-
He clears his throat, looks up at Alfred. “I’ll do the dishes,” he offers quietly. “If you want…if you want to go check on him.”
Alfred’s face softens. “Thank you, Dick.”
xxx
Jason doesn’t move out as soon as he starts patrolling again, which feels like it’s more for Dick’s sake than anyone else’s. Dick moves out of Jason’s room, even though he doesn’t want to, and returns to his childhood bedroom, which still feels somewhat haunted, somehow. It’s not even the bad haunting, really; it’s just the haunting of twenty years worth of memories. He was eight years old in this room—how is that possible? He was eight and he was twelve and he was seventeen and he was thousands of staying over instead of going home after patrol years old and he’s twenty eight, now, and he still feels like a kid in this room with this too big bed.
Tim appears in his doorway one night, in the underwater of his uniform, mouth twisting. “You gonna patrol tonight?” He asks, and the words are loaded, because for once in his life, Tim isn’t stating the obvious, which is: Dick hasn’t patrolled since the day they rescued Jason.
“I probably should,” Dick admits. “They’re gonna…they’re gonna start rumors that Nightwing’s dead.”
“Yeah,” Tim nods, then grins. “Though, if you want, we could just make Steph be you, too. Seems to be her specialty at the moment.”
Dick smiles. “Are we…. Are we overworking her?”
“What? No, she loves this shit.” Tim’s grin grows wider. “She’s probably…she’s probably plotting how to incapacitate more of us, actually, so that eventually this whole gig can be hers.”
“She’s doing costume changes in the alley.”
“She’s morphing all the uniforms into, just. The ugliest thing you’ve ever seen.”
They both grin at that, but the question lingers. Dick clears his throat. “I’ll come out tomorrow,” he says, and Tim nods like he knows Dick is lying. “Sounds good. We’ll see you then.”
xxx
When Jason is fourteen, he has a habit of lifting weights whenever there’s nothing else to do, which obviously overlaps with Dick’s habit of doing calisthenics when there’s nothing else to do. This leads to some days where they’re both in the gym working out silently, acting like they don’t see each other.
For what it’s worth, things are getting better between the two of them. Yes, Dick makes Jason fly into a rage almost every time he’s home, and yes, Dick and Bruce still have to scream at each other about Jason at least once a month, but the moments in between are getting easier and softer. Jason is getting funnier, with little barbs thrown out at any one close enough, even, sometimes, Bruce. It means something, Dick can tell, that Jason feels comfortable being mean to Bruce now, even as a joke, and Bruce always looks so adoring whenever these moments happen.
The weight of Jason’s eyes are heavy on his back, violating their unspoken agreement to each pretend the other isn’t there. Dick sighs. “Why are you watching me, Little Wing?” The nickname—not one he ever meant to be long lasting—was born out of the inability he has to actually say the word Robin to anyone else, how hard it is for him to use his mother’s nickname on another person. The added bonus, of course, is how obviously Jason dislikes being called “Little.”
Jason doesn’t snap as a response, though, which Dick had anticipated, and this turn of events is so surprising that Dick actually stops what he was doing to stand upright and look at Jason, who’s staring at him with open curiosity. “You-“ he starts, but then his ears flush red and he looks at the ground.
“Yeah?” Dick prods, hoping it’s not too unkindly.
“How’d you do it?” Jason blurts out. “You’re huge, and you don’t even lift weights, you just do…yoga and shit. And Bruce. Bruce is huge, and Batman’s bigger, and…how did you guys do it?”
“Well, we’re not fourteen,” Dick blinks, and Jason scowls.
“Whatever,” Jason starts to turn away, “fuck you.”
“Wait, wait,” Dick says with a half laugh. “I actually…that wasn’t me being an asshole on purpose. I mean that…dude, you’re just playing catch up and your metabolism is probably insane right now. You’re working out, it’ll come. I…I don’t lift weights anymore, yeah, but I was a monster about it at your age, and I’m a gymnast and I’m…I mean, I’m Nightwing, so it’s all…all maintenance now.” His face scrunches up. “Is that what you want? Mass?”
Jason mimics his face back to him. “Isn’t that what everyone fucking wants?”
“I think I cared more about being flexible.”
Jason rolls his eyes. “You would,” he says derisively, but for some reason, it just makes Dick grin.
“I can teach you B’s old workout routine, if you want,” he offers. “I must’ve watched it, like. A billion times.”
For just a moment, Jason’s whole face lights up, but then it shuts back down in a panic, and he says coolly: “yeah, sure.”
And Dick can’t help the smile on his own face, and, not for the first time, he thinks: shit.
xxx
One day Dick makes everyone lunch—it’s just sandwiches, it’s not like he’s fucking Gordon Ramsey, but he thinks they’re pretty good—and then, once they’ve all eaten, he wanders back up to his room, where he finds Stephanie, lounging on his bed and reading the Scottie Pippen biography he got for his tenth birthday.
“Oh, hey Dick,” she says lightly, as if she’s surprised to see him here, in his room.
“Oh, hey Steph,” he chirps back in an identical cadence, raising his eyebrows.
She slides over and pats the bed beside her, and he sits next to her shoulder while she looks up at him. “This is a wellness check,” she explains, and he sighs dramatically.
“Steph, what did we talk about? Remember?” He says it like he’s talking to a three year old, and she rolls her eyes.
“I know, I know,” she says, and she drops her voice into an upsettingly accurate approximation of his voice. “I need to stop taking care of everyone else instead of myself, because I have hard things too, and only Dick should be allowed to be a martyr, and bleh bleh bleh.” She sighs and drops the voice. “The truth is, though, I’ve been elected by a minor coalition of people, who all love you, and are all a little concerned that Nightwing is. You know. Inactive.”
“Who’s in the coalition?” He settles down more so that they’re laying side by side instead of him lurking over her.
She shrugs. “Tim. Babs. Damian. Bruce, I think—he said something excessively cryptic and vague but I counted it. Alfred.”
“Not Jason?”
“Not Jason,” she says. “God, if we had a Bechdel test just for him, we’d never pass, would we?”
“Not true,” Dick fights back. “Remember that time you and I watched Spirit together last week?”
“Yeah, I remember you said the horse with the blue circle eye reminded you of Jason.” She pauses. “The nonverbal horse.”
“Okay, and? It’s not like Spirit would remind me of him. That one’s obviously me.”
“Yeah, and the military horse they break out is Tim,” she says, and sighs. “So, are you okay, or what?”
He shrugs as well as he can while still laying down. “I’m fine, actually. Like, better than usual, actually. I’m…I’m gonna be fine.”
“Okay, sweet. Then why aren’t you kicking ass with us?”
There’s a spot of discoloration on Dick’s ceiling from when he was ten years old and threw a sticky hand up there that didn’t come down until he was sixteen, when it fell on his face while he was asleep and made him scream so loudly that Bruce ran in. He stares at it now. “I don’t know if I can explain it,” he admits. “It’s just so nice, having Jason here, being here with all of you, and… and it was so awful not knowing where he was. It was so…” he chokes back on an emotion, and squints his eyes against the tears. “It was fucking scary, Steph. And I know…Jesus, you were there, it’s not like this is unique to me. But I… if I go back out there, and something happens to one of you, I…. I don’t know. And it’s not like me staying here will help. The opposite, I know. But… I can’t watch any of you get hurt. I can’t. I can’t fucking see that.”
“Wow,” she says softly, “spoken like someone who really is fine.”
“No, see, that’s the thing,” he replies, opening his eyes and refocusing on the splotch on the ceiling, “I really am okay. I’m not…I’m not spiraling out, ya know? Not this time. I think… I think I know what I’m supposed to be doing, now. I think I get it, finally. I just… I’m just not ready to go back out yet.”
“Okay, then,” she say, ”I trust you.” She scrambles into a sitting position now, sitting so that she’s facing him, her knees tucked up to her chest and her arms encircling them. “Change of topics, then, if you’re good. This isn’t a part of the coalition, this is me, okay? I have a pitch that I’ve been soft launching to Tim and Jason and hard launching to Bruce and I need you in on.” She takes a deep breath. “The next Batman. After Bruce. It needs to be Jason. It…it has to be.”
Steph looks so serious, so earnest, and something in Dick’s stomach flips and he pushes into a sitting position, too, suddenly feeling his heart in his throat. “Steph, no. It…it CAN’T be, Steph, it can’t. Don’t…no.” There’s a panic creeping up in him, a sort of terror that makes him feel eight years old.
She leans back, confused and maybe hurt, eyes squinting. “What? Why? Dick, it…it makes sense.”
He shakes his head. “No, no it doesn’t… it can’t be him.” He swallows, and there’s about six million things he needs to say, but all he gets out is: “it has to be me.”
It’s definitely hurt, now, that’s sprawling on Stephanie’s face, and she opens her mouth and then shuts it without saying anything. Her eyes briefly land on the same spot on the ceiling Dick’s been watching, and then she silently climbs off the bed. “Okay, then,” she says, already on her way out. “Let me know if you need anything from me, Dick. I mean it.”
xxx
Dick has never been a huge fan of Oliver Queen. He knows that he’s cultivated an image as someone who likes everyone, but that’s just as tactical as Bruce’s decision to appear to hate everyone, because there’s some people he can’t fucking stand. And one of them is Oliver Queen.
In his opinion, there’s a lot to hate: the superhero name, the superhero uniform, the stupid skill that, actually, both Dick and Bruce are pretty good at anyways. The heart of it though, is easy: it’s Roy. Roy doesn’t talk about Oliver a whole lot, and he rarely says anything outright negative. But there’s little hints, here and there, and Dick really likes Roy, he really cares about him, and sometimes he can’t help but look at his friend and think: I probably could’ve raised you better. It’s an insane thing to think about someone his own age, he knows that, but he still feels like it’s probably true.
The point is, he knows how to be civil, but he’s not Queen’s biggest fan. And from the way Clark sometimes will cut his eyes at Bruce when Queen is talking, Dick can tell Bruce isn’t, either.
One day, there’s something going on—Dick can’t even remember what it is, years later, just knows it seemed vaguely life altering at the time—that has all the Teen Titans and all the Justice League in the Titans Tower at the same time, and everyone is yelling about something that Dick already knows Bruce and Diana are going to solve and he can tell Roy knows, too, because he’s in a corner looking bored.
And Jason, who is here in the fucking Robin uniform for unknown reasons, even though he’s not actually Robin yet, probably because Bruce wanted to teach him about diplomacy or some shit, but then decided the kid may be too rattled by screaming adults with superpowers and had left him in some weird lobby somewhere to play someone’s old games, wanders in.
And Oliver, heated by the surrounding argument and the fact that no one is fucking listening to him, looks at him and snaps: “who the fuck is that?”
And Jason takes a step back, already angry, and Bruce stands quickly, but Dick beats them both by half yelling: “he’s my fucking brother, so watch your fucking mouth.” It’s the first time he’s ever used that word himself, really, but he finds it doesn’t feel weird leaving his mouth.
Jason’s mouth twists in a sardonic smile, and shit, he looks like Robin. “Yeah, I’m his fucking brother. Who the fuck are you?”
In the corner, Roy coughs to cover a laugh.
xxx
One early morning, after everyone is back from patrol, Dick finds Jason making coffee in the kitchen. He looks tired, though not unhappy, and he runs a hand over his face and offers Dick a small smile.
Wordlessly, Dick goes to the fridge and grabs an egg carton, some milk, some butter. Jason grabs a pan and lights the burner while Dick mixes the eggs and milk with salt and pepper, and he hands the butter to Jason so that he can grease the skillet. Jason never uses enough butter, but it is what it is. The eggs sizzle when they hit the pan, and Dick let’s them sit for a few minutes before he begins to scramble them, turning the burner off before they’re quite done so that he can fold some cheese in. It’s only once they’re both sitting at the table with a mug of coffee and a plate of eggs that they actually say anything.
“I know people are on your ass about not patrolling,” Jason says, “but I don’t give a shit. You seem fine to me.”
“I am,” Dick says with a nod, and Jason takes a bite of eggs.
Tim walks in, yawning and scrubbing at his face, still wearing part of his uniform. Jason snorts at the sight, and Tim frowns. “I fell asleep changing,” he admits, and he looks lazily towards the stovetop.
“We made enough for you,” Dick says, and Tim looks actually grateful.
He sits down with his own plate and mug between them, and they all pick lazily at their food until Tim says, sounding a little younger than usual:
“Look, I need to ask you something, Dick, and I think I already know that answer, but I need to hear it, ya know?”
“Yes, that’s his real name,” Jason says immediately, but Tim doesn’t even acknowledge the joke, just sighs when Dick nods.
“Are you mad at me? That I didn’t find Jason earlier? That I didn’t…I didn’t know he was missing?”
Dick is speechless for a second, and Jason slams down his fork, annoyed. “Are you stupid?” Jason asks. “Don’t answer that. I—how would that even make sense? How many concussions do you have?”
“Oh, shut up, everyone knows I run ally surveillance-“
“What the FUCK is ally surveillance, just PICK UP A PHONE-“
“I’m not mad,” Dick blurts out, trying to deescalate and reassure, all at once. “Jason’s right, that’s…well, Jason phrased all of it wrong, but that’s not your job. We don’t expect that of you.”
“Okay,” Tim says, and he looks genuinely relieved. He blinks for one second too long. “I thought you’d say that. I just…weird week, ya know?”
“We know,” they say together. Jason shoots Dick a look.
“Dick says he’s fine, though.”
“I believe him,” Tim says resolutely, and Jason nods.
“Yeah, me too.”
xxx
Dick is nineteen and has just completed a mission he was helping Bruce with, and so now he’s completing his favorite pastime: stealing food to take back to Bludhaven.
“Bruce said he’ll adopt me.”
“Jesus FUCK, kid!” Dick jumps about half a foot in the air, turning to see Jason at his shoulder, face arranged blankly. “You can’t just…I didn’t know you were HERE.”
“You and Bruce do it all the time to everyone,” Jason says, taking a seat at the kitchen table, “so I don’t see the problem.”
And yeah, well. Fair enough. His brain starts rewinding, putting together the important stuff. He takes a seat across from Jason. “He said he’d adopt you?”
Jason nods, and Dick can’t help but notice that he doesn’t look happy, he doesn’t look relieved. He used to be so fucking small, Dick’s brain screams, and he sighs.
“What are you going to do?”
“Why didn’t he adopt you?” Jason asks instead of answering, his eyes searching Dick for something.
“Because I didn’t want him to,” Dick says quietly, and Jason nods again, like he’d already known this.
“Why…why not?”
Jesus Christ, the kid looks terrified. Dick wants to hug him. He finds it hard to believe how angry this kid makes him sometimes, when he sitting here like this—carefully poised to be calm, eyes moving rapidly, arms folded with his fingers gripping his biceps too tightly. Shit. He used to be so small.
“Because I…” Dick searches for the right words, the ones that won’t spook this kid. “I wasn’t ready to let go of that. With my parents. And Bruce got that. I…I know we never talk about this stuff, but I, I loved my parents, man.”
“I love my parents,” Jason snaps back immediately, sounding offended, and Dick can’t even look at him.
“I know,” he says softly. “I’m not saying you don’t.” The truth is, he has no idea how Jason felt about his parents. What he wants to ask, what he can’t ask, is if they loved Jason, but he could never ask, because it would be too unfathomably cruel to ask this kid that. But he’s had friends, before, who loved parents who maybe didn’t love them back. He thinks about the friends he wishes he had raised. He thinks about how Jason used to tense up when Bruce entered a room, how Jason used to flinch when Dick raised his voice. How small he used to be. And maybe Jason’s parents did love him, maybe they were wonderful and it wasn’t their fault and this city squeezed the life out of them like it does to so many. Dick doesn’t KNOW, and he wants to, so badly.
Jason looks at him with genuine guilt, a face he almost never sees on this kid. “Do you…you think I should say no? Because of my…because of my parents.”
“No!” Dick says a little too quickly, and then reins himself in when he sees Jason start. “That was ME, Jay, not you. I…I Don’t know your parents, man, but…my parents would have been okay if Bruce had adopted me. I was the one who…who couldn’t do it. So this is…it’s about you. Do you want this?”
Jason cuts his eyes to Dick, who’s alarmed to see they’re shining. Jason blinks rapidly and looks away, and he opens his mouth to speak but his chin wobbles and he snaps his mouth shut. Ever so minutely, Jason nods, as if he’s afraid to admit it, and Dick feels his heart break.
“Then do it, Jay. You’re not…you should do it. If that’s what you want.”
“Okay,” Jason whispers, and his chin wobbles again, and he pushes up from the kitchen table and storms out, clearly overwhelmed.
Dick sticks around the Manor for longer than he planned to, waiting for the chance to speak to Bruce. He finds it that night, on patrol, when he finds himself on a roof he’s been on a million times.
“You’re gonna adopt the kid,” he says without preamble, and Bruce pauses.
“Yeah,” he finally says. “I am. I didn’t realize he…I didn’t know he would tell you.”
“Yeah? So you were never going to mention it?”
“No,” Bruce snaps. “I was waiting for…to be honest, I was going to tell you on A’s birthday.”
Dick scoffs. “That’s manipulative as hell, B.”
“Yeah,” Bruce says with a laugh, “I thought so.” He cuts his eyes at Dick, and tentatively says: “Just so you know, your paperwork…I still have all of it. I keep it updated, in case. I…never think that offer has been rescinded.”
“I know,” Dick responds quietly. “Thanks.” He looks at his hands, bounces on the balls go his feet. “The kid is…it’s a good move, B.”
“I thought so,” Bruce admits. “He hasn’t given me an answer yet. Actually, he hasn’t said a word to me since I asked.”
“He’s scared,” Dick says. “He talked to me.”
Bruce stares at him. “And he told you he was scared?”
“Obviously not,” Dick says with a small smile. “But I…I know it’s taken me a while, B, but I…I get it. He’ll say yes. And then…you gotta take care of him, B. You have to. He…God, he used to be so small, I… this is a good move. But you…you gotta take care of him.”
Bruce nods in silence, looks out at the horizon of his city. “I know. I know.”
xxx
Dick monitors Spoiler’s patrol one night, like a creep, and then, once everyone is out and no one will notice him, he suits up and goes out to the rooftop where she’s camped. She doesn’t see him at first, but when she does, she grins like she’s honestly glad to see him, and he grins back and motions for her to cut her comms if they’re on, and she gives him a thumbs up.
“Well, well, well, look who’s not dead.”
“Back and better than ever,” he says with a little spin, even though it’s not true, this still feels wrong.
She’s still smiling, but there’s a question there, and he nods.
“I’m here,” he says, “to actually hear the pitch. I’ll…I’ll listen this time, not just…I’m here.”
“Okay,” she says slowly. “You sure?”
“Yeah.” He takes a seat on the edge of the rooftop, feet kicking. “I’m sure. Go for it.”
“Okay.” She sits down next to him, swinging her feet in the same cadence. “I want to open by saying that I heard YOU say this, one time, when B accosted us to ask us who it should be, so. I had no idea you’d switched.”
“I know,” he says, “and that’s my bad. I…when Hood went missing, I…I reconsidered some stuff. But it wasn’t fair to you. To do that and not explain. So you go first. And then I’ll…explain.”
“Okay.” She holds up four fingers. “One. Hood LOOKS like B. Two. Hood FIGHTS like B. So if the idea is a seamless transition, we’re there. Three. Gotham is…no one loves Gotham like Hood. Except maybe me. But he gets it. He gets this shit. This is HIS city. Four. He already knows how to be an icon, already knows what he needs to be, he…when you grow up on the streets, here, Batman is something different than it is when you grow up safe. Batman MEANS something different, and Hood, he…he gets that, too. He knows what it is he’d have to be. And he can do that.”
Dick breathes through his nose, tries not to let the panic creep back up. “And Hood? What happens to that symbol? It’s just you?”
She shrugs. “We don’t need the Hood transition to be seamless, he’s a different thing. So yeah. Sometimes, it’s me.” She glances at him. “And sometimes, it’s Red.” He raises his eyebrows, and she grins. “Haven’t told anyone that part yet. But Red, he…he gets shit that people don’t think he does, and me? I get Hood. So if we split it, then Batman can jump back in as Hood whenever he wants to, and me and Red can keep up our stuff, too.”
Batman- she’d just referred to Jason as Batman. He tries to wrap his head around it, tries to imagine that world.
Steph nudges his shoulder. “Your turn. Why am I wrong? Why does it have to be you? Why are you better?”
He shakes his head immediately, looking down at the street below. “I’m not better,” he says resolutely. “It’s not that. It’s that Hood….Hood, Red, you, ALL of you… you’ve never gotten to rest, not once. And whoever Batman is, they’ll…they’ll never rest. You know that. B is…” he chokes on the honesty of it for a second, then pushes through. “B is probably going to die as Batman. I…I can’t watch any of you do that. I just want…at the end of Hood’s life, I want him….I want him to rest. That’s all I want.”
She leans into him for a minute, not quite a hug but still feeling like one. “Maybe,” she admits quietly. “But is that what he wants?”
The words hit like a freight train. “When have any of us ever known what he wants?” he asks, and neither of them are able to answer.
xxx
When Jason dies, it’s awful. The things he and Bruce say to each other, the fights they have, the quietness that falls over the Manor, the near constant look in Bruce’s eyes—it’s all awful. It’s fucking unbearable, and Dick would do…he would do almost anything to make it stop, to make everything stop, to not have to do this anymore. And so one night, in an attempt to make, for even one minute, ANY of it stop, he drinks way too much whiskey until, eventually, Alfred finds him in the library.
“I don’t think I can do this,” he says as Alfred tries to move him onto his feet, and he’s sobbing, and it’s ugly, and he can’t breathe. “I can’t do this, Alfred, I can’t do this again, I can’t.”
“Oh, Richard,” Alfred says, taking his face in his hands, and he realizes Alfred is crying, too. “None of us can. But we have to.”
And Dick cries harder, his breath hitching, and he admits: “I don’t think I ever even told him I loved him.”
“He knew, Dick, he knew.” But even then, Dick knows it’s a lie.
xxx
Jason brings him a coffee in the Cave after his first time back on patrol. Jason brewed it himself; Dick can tell because it’s a little too strong, a little too bitter because he didn’t cut it with any salt. He accepts it gratefully, and, to his surprise, Jason sits down next to him. For a second, all he can do is appreciate how common these moments where Jason chooses to be near them, where he seems like he wants to be, and how rare and precious they used to be. They’re still precious, he tells himself. He can’t let himself get used to this.
“I talked to Steph tonight,” he starts, and Jason gets the smile he always does when people mention Steph.
“Yeah? Did she tell you how Tim fell on his face the other day? Because that’s…that’s been a pretty big topic of conversation for us recently.”
“Shockingly, no, that didn’t come up.”
Jason winces. “Yeah, he…I mean, there’s not much to say. Steph is better at explaining it. He just—it was good.”
Dick grins, tapping his coffee mug. He takes a sip. “Dude, do you…do you wanna be Batman?”
Something passes over Jason’s face, and he takes a sip of coffee, too. “Told her to stop telling people that,” he mutters. He looks at Dick, gnaws on his lower lip for a second. “I don’t know. Do you…you think it’s a bad idea?”
“Not a bad idea. I just…I just don’t know.”
“Yeah, me neither.” Jason is staring into his mug now, and Dick resists the urge to reach out and grab him.
“Look, I’ve been thinking a lot recently. About when you were a kid.”
“Ew,” Jason mumbles, flinching. “Don’t…wouldn’t recommend doing that.”
“I was so fucking mean to you,” Dick says in a burst. “You were right. I…God, I sucked. And I’ve…ever since you died, man, I’ve been trying to figure out why I was so mean, and…there’s no excuse, I just…you were so small, Jay.”
Jason actually looks affronted by this, leaning back from the table. “You were mean to me because I was small?” He repeats, and Dick backtracks rapidly.
“No, I mean… you scared the shit out of me.”
“You were SCARED of me because I was sma-“
“NO. I’m trying to say that, Jesus, man, I still don’t know how to explain. I’d just look at you and think SHIT, ya know?”
“No,” Jason groans, “I have NO idea what you’re trying to-“
“I didn’t want us to hurt you. I didn’t want us to—it was just the three of us, me, B, and Alfred, for so long, and…I didn’t know if we could do it. Have another person. Without…without fucking them up. And I was kind of pissed that Bruce would even try. Because you…God, Jason, you were so small.”
“Please stop repeating that.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay, I just mean… always, Jay. You’ve always scared the shit out of me. And I…I’ve always handled it wrong. This whole time. And I…look, if you want to be Batman, I…”
He trails off, realizing he really should have planned what he was going to say, and Jason is still staring at him with a slightly open mouth and squinted eyes.
“I love you,” Dick says finally. “I don’t think I say that. And I…yeah. I love you. That’s it.”
Jason keeps staring for a minute, and then he swirls his coffee a couple of time, taking a sip and wincing. He stands up and goes to the table where Tim keeps all his coffee supplies and dumps in too much sugar, and winces again when he tries the new mixture. Finally, he says, so quietly Dick has to strain to hear it: “I know, man. I know.”
And Dick realizes he thinks it’s true.