Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

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Clint Barton

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This looked bad.

Terrible actually.

The tracksuits had cornered him in an alley just behind his building, because of course they knew at what time he got home, and he'd tried calling Kate but she hadn't answered. She’d been angry at him last time they’d seen each other, for something he couldn’t even remember, and had slammed his door as she left. He couldn’t exactly blame her.

He tried reasoning with them, as one did, but they outnumbered him twenty to one and they had their guns out, bats out, and it just seemed like they hadn't come for negotiation this time. No final warnings. No ultimatums. No taking him for a ride with a bag on his head for another boss to explain to him the rules of the game. No - this was it.

Within minutes he was down on his knees, blood pouring from his nose, a rifle touching his forehead.

"We told you, bro."

"Didn't we tell you?"

"Last words, bro?"

A chill went down his spine as he stared at the man holding the gun, and how steady it was, and how he was the only who hadn't spoken or called him 'bro'.

He bit back his tongue, thought of Kate and apologised in his mind for the mess this might leave her with, then he opened his mouth.

But he didn't get the chance to speak.

Something solid flew down from a nearby ceiling — he swore, it freaking flew — and slammed right into the man holding the rifle, sending it careening into the dumpster behind Clint. And there it was. That moment. All hell broke loose.

"Bro."

"Bro!"

The goons were on Clint so fast he couldn’t see who had come down from the roof, who had been the one who had granted him this chance to get clear. Scattered and surprised, some of the goons retreated back to their vans, and the flying figure — a person, a human in tatters and uneven stance — grappled back up to the roof.

Clint didn’t have his bow or any of his gear, so he took the only weapon available (a discarded baseball bat someone had previously hit him with) and made quick work of the remaining tracksuits.

Then he heard the sound of a gun being cocked, a trigger clicking.

When he turned he saw the man, the original shooter, leaning against the dumpster and smiling at him with blood on his teeth.

“Told them all,” he said. “We could kill you ourselves.”

The gun went off at the same moment in which a grapple hook hit the man’s arm, and the shot rang wide. Clint looked up and saw a young man holding the line, perched on the edge of the roof, but he was swaying, footing was unstable. And when the shooter yanked on the grappling line, the man fell to the alley along with it, landing with a dry thud against the cement.

Clint thought he'd hear that sound in nightmares forever.

He swung down the bat against the shooter but didn’t hit him — the man quickly scampered away towards the vans, and soon he was alone save for the unconscious goons.

Then he approached the man in the mask as he lay perfectly still, crumpled next to the dumpster, skin tight dark suit torn in several places with a large hole over his chest like a piece has been cut clean off. A few meters to the left, and the trash bags would've cushioned his fall, but that would've meant things would work out in the end, and they never did, did they? As he got closer Clint could tell the man was breathing, he was alive, but when he tried turning him he was met by dark, black blood pooling under his head. And there was a spot where the hair was matted, and his skull seemed almost… flat.

"Fuck. Fuck!"

He felt a wave of nausea rising up his throat and it took great resolve to keep himself from throwing up.

He stood in front of Grills' apartment on the second floor and banged his door five times in a row with an open hand.

"Grills! Grills, open up!"

The door opened, and a pyjama clad Grills — Gil, his name was Gil — blinked at him. Then his eyes veered down to the blood dripping from Clint's nose and covering his arms.

"Hawkguy! What's going…"

"I'm gonna need your car and a change of clothes."

"What? What about your car?"

"It's in the shop. Keys, come on."

"You're not even my size…"

"Gil!! Concentrate. Keys. I'll get the clothes."

Clint let himself inside Gil's apartment, and rummaged through neat drawers. He picked up sweats and a t-shirt, then he put down a pair of socks - no way he'd get the time to put those on. He rushed out, thinking of the young man he'd left bleeding behind the dumpster, and Grills waved his keys up at him.

"Great. Meet me by the alley."

"What? I'm not…"

"This is life or death, Grills!"

"I'm not even dressed!"

Clint rushed out.

"Life or death!"

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Dick Grayson

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Everything was a blur.

Dick's last clear memory was a bat swinging down towards his face, and in his mind that image blended with a much older one, in which his own arm covering his face was bare and lacking the protection of his Nightwing suit, and his blood soaked into that yellow cape as he lay against the ground.

Some time had happened since that moment, but he couldn't be sure how long. He'd been moved for some indeterminate amount of time in the back of a dark vehicle (whose was it? Two-Face? Or Bane? He didn't know) and somehow, he'd managed to escape. He'd grappled up and ran over unfamiliar rooftops, knowing he was no longer in Gotham but too confused to know exactly where he was or even the direction he was going. He didn't know why he'd been taken, but he felt sure it must have something to do with Bruce.

He needed to call Bruce. It was hard to remember the details but he knew he'd been with him when he was taken, they'd been up on some sort of rooftop, maybe? He couldn't be sure who did it, or how it happened, he didn't even know how badly he was hurt, only that his suit had been slashed across the middle, the Nightwing sigil torn out, and his whole body ached and his head felt oddly heavy and numb. He reached for his belt but it was gone - comms and tracker too. No escrima sticks, no weapons of any kind, nothing except for the single back-up grapple he kept on his boot. He kept turning back but no one was after him, no one had been after him in some time, but then again he had no idea for how long he’d been running. He needed to call Bruce because he must've seen him get taken, he must be looking for him, he needed to get back and get word to him or any of their allies.

Tall buildings dissolved into brownstones with matching fire escapes. Tall stoops leading down to the streets below, and people walking down there. He read the names of the streets: DeKalb, Lafayette. Was this Brooklyn?

A gunshot rang out, interrupting the quiet night, and he rushed on unsteady feet towards the other side of the rooftop he was in.

"Bro! We told you, Bro!"

He reached the top of a building and below, in a dark alley, he saw a group of men wearing matching tracksuits, armed to the teeth, force a man with blond hair to his knees. It was too far to see clearly but there was blood covering the man's face, and the group seemed to mean business.

"Last words, Bro?"

The gun clicked, he heard it clearly, and his hand reached for the grapple. No, he shouldn't do it. He could barely think straight. He couldn't - he shouldn't do this - but how could…? He couldn't just — he HAD to do it.

He jumped.

The grapple held his weight and he flew across the alley, pummelling straight into the man holding the gun and knocking him against a dumpster. He recovered quickly and got to his feet, grappled back up to the roof, but the rest of the men had bats and guns and after a moment he saw the blond guy could still not keep up with all of them. The man he'd knocked started to pull another weapon, and without thinking Dick threw his grapple hook at him, hitting him in the hand, but while he was successful in making he miss the shot, the man grabbed onto the grapple line instead.

And pulled.

In a right state, this would've meant nothing. He would've been able to unhook himself without even thinking about it. But now, the world had a vibrating quality to it, and by the time he felt the yank it was too late. His leg caught in some of the phone wires, but his weight pulled them all down and he fell - fell - fell - a sharp, terrible pain cinching around his right foot. He was going to hit the ground and die in a far away city, and Bruce and his brothers would find out about this in the news.

Then nothing.

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Clint Barton

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Getting the kid's suit off felt… wrong. Clint knew he had to, he was in the business and knew all about secret identities and domino masks, and he couldn't exactly check the guy into hospital wearing… whatever he was wearing. Spandex? Some sort of kevlar? It was all torn to bits anyway, mask hiding a face that looked way too young to be out doing this hero business. A kid, not a man. And why? He looked like he'd already gone through a bear fight even before falling, so why on earth had he risked it? They didn't know each other. Why had he saved him?

He received a boost of electricity when he peeled the mask off, but it was already almost completely torn to begin with and it barely slowed him down. Holding a breath, he finished cutting up the remains of the suit and replaced it with Grills' sweats, hardly daring to look at the exposed, damaged skin. He counted down from three, and then lifted him up, and he was surprised at how heavy the guy felt compared to how slight he had looked.

"Whoa! Hawkguy! Who is that? What happened to him?"

"Don't know. Nearest hospital - floor it!"

"Flooring it!"

Clint sat in the back seat, with the bloody, unconscious body of his unidentified saviour sprawled beside him. He looked messed up all over but the wound on the side of his head seemed the most concerning. Clint kept checking his pulse, and it was fast and erratic. What would he say at the hospital? That he had just found him like this? Would they suspect him? If Kate had to bail him out again he was sure he'd never hear the end of it, and he'd get in serious trouble with Shield on top of that. No. It was better to keep this discreet. Strictly non-superhero activity.

"Can you describe how he obtained these injuries?" an ER doctor asked him during triage. "Sir?"

"Uh… He, uh… Fell. Some three… Three floors."

"Sir? Maybe you should sit down."

He was shaking and hadn't noticed, but the moment he did a wave of dizziness hit him and he stumbled back into a seat someone pulled up for him. Gil placed a wad of toilet paper on his lap and Clint used it to stop the blood coming from his nose. He'd planned on saying the guy had taken a fall fixing the TV antennae, he'd thought that would be believable, but he had forgotten that he also looked like he had been beat up to hell.

And also, he was an Avenger.

"Sir, there is a likely fracture of the skull that will need surgery. There is already significant swelling. Are you his proxy?"

"What?"

"Are you his proxy or do you know his next of kin? We need signed consent for an early intervention."

"Yes," he answered without thinking. "I mean, I am his proxy. Do it. Whatever it takes."

"Please fill in this form for us. We need some personal information, give it to the attending as soon as you're done."

Clint looked at the sheet. Words swirled around the slightly greenish paper.

"I don't… I don't know his blood type…" he muttered, but the doctor had already walked away. He bent his head down, and took out his phone. He saw Kate had called back at some point, and he sent her his location with the hope she'd be alarmed enough to just come over and not ask any questions.

Gently, Gil took the sheet from him as it was about slip from his grasp.

"Hawkguy. I'm going home."

Clint nodded.

"You good?"

"Yeah. Thank you, Gil."

Some time later, how long exactly was impossible to tell, he felt Kate sitting down beside him, her purple tights next to his bloodstained pants.

"You look like crap," she said. She held the green sheet in one of her hands, having picked it up from the floor where it must have slipped from him again. He didn't look up at her, there was no need.

"Thanks," he said. He saw Kate get a pen from the reception, and then return to sit beside him.

"So what's this guy's name?" she asked.

"I don't know. I've never seen him before."

"Well, you told the docs you're his next of kin and authorised major surgery so you better come up with something."

"How do you…?"

"I asked. Jesus, you're out of it. What happened?"

"Tracksuits. All of them, with the big boss this time. This guy came out of nowhere, gave me a chance to fight back. Then he dropped off the roof."

Kate hissed, a wincing sort of sound.

"Why didn't you just drop him off?"

This time, Clint turned. He saw she had make-up on, like he'd dragged her out from a party or something.

"He saved my life," he said. "If I'd dropped him here with what he was wearing, how he was injured, I'd have exposed him."

"How about Shield then? The Avengers?"

“That might’ve been even worse. Besides, I don't wanna call on a favour before I know what I'm dealing with."

"Okay, so. Name. Let's make one up."

"And what do I say, he's my… what? Distant cousin?"

"Let's say he's your brother. They won't ask too much knowing who you are and if they do you can give them the circus sob story."

"No. I already have a brother," Clint muttered. "And the guy looks nothing like me."

"Who's to know? Last name… Barton." She scribbled the name. "We can say he's adopted."

"Kate, this is going to raise flags with several people…" Clint said, and rested his head against his hands. His leg was bouncing up and down on its own accord.

"Get over yourself," Kate said. "The world's got bigger fish to fry. When he gets up we’ll contact his family and switch hospitals and no one’s the wiser. First name? Or do we say he's Barney?"

"God, no! Why can't he just be, like, a long-lost friend or something?"

"Who has a FRIEND as medical proxy?"

"I do," Clint said. "Nat's my proxy."

"Yeah obviously you don't count. A friend is not believable."

"I'm an Avenger!"

"And this is brain surgery, Clint! Time is of the essence."

"Okay! Fine! Not Barney, though. Make up a name."

"John?"

"Like John Doe? Talk about being discreet."

"Abe, then."

"No."

"Tony."

"Kate, come on…"

"Daniel."

"Fine."

“Okay. Daniel Barton. How old would you say he was?" she asked.

"Hard to say, it was dark. Mid-twenties?"

"Okay. Twenty-five, then. Blood type unknown because who knows that sort of thing, and prior conditions none because he's a roof-swinging vigilante. Let's give him a Christmas birthday."

"We're not giving him a Christmas birthday.”

His hands held on tighter to his head. His nose felt swollen and tight, and there was a growing pain in the back of his skull.

"I'm joking! God. You need some food, I think. There's a vending machine, want me to get you a Snickers?"

"No." He swallowed back and tasted metal. "Okay. Yes."

"I knew it."

He laid down across three chairs in the waiting area, holding with one hand the chocolate bar Kate had gotten for him, while she silently drank a coffee. He had taken three bites out of it and then the nausea returned, so now he was just holding on to it while it slowly melted into a mess in his hands. In front of them, doctors and nurses walked back and forth, carrying on with their night, business as usual. Clint remembered when he'd left Lucky in the hands of the vets, and how that had felt like. How this felt like now.

"What if he dies?" he said. Kate looked down at him, half spitting up her coffee.

"What?"

"What happens if he dies?"

"He's not gonna die."

"Am I going to have to sign on it? Make arrangements? Bury him in the family plot?"

"Do you have a family plot?"

"No, but… I mean… Won't they find out then? That he's a stranger?"

"He's not gonna die, Clint, stop with the negative thinking. It's harmful."

"How will we know if he has family? How will we find them? Like, maybe… We can’t list him as a missing person after this. Like, if he dies, they'll never know…"

"When he wakes up, we'll find out. Okay?"

"Okay."

He turned away then, and closed his eyes. What felt like some time later he felt Kate's hand brush against his own as the half melted chocolate was pried from his fingers.

A nurse woke him up sometime after dawn, having to shake him up to rouse him from deep, exhaustion-fuelled sleep, and he was lead to the non-urgent care section of the ER. There, a kind doctor set his nose (for the maybe fourth time in a year?) and let him wash his face and hands. Upon leaving, he was handed a couple of painkillers along with a brochure: "Deviated Septum? There is relief in surgery!"

He walked with stiff, sleep-deprived muscles to the waiting area where Kate was still sitting, legs crossed under herself and headphones on. When she saw him come over she removed one of them.

"Clint. Clint."

She waved at him.

"Yeah, I can hear you," he said.

"Doc was here to talk to you about Dan."

"Who?"

"Dan," Kate hissed. "Your brother?"

"Oh. Right. I thought we'd said—"

"They're over there, go now!"

"Okay, okay."

Clint turned on his spot, feeling a little like a robot given new instructions, and headed towards two doctors standing before the entrance to the ICU.

"I… uhm…"

He suddenly didn't know what to say. The doctors stared at him for a second, before looking down at the chart.

"Are you Mr. Barton?"

"Yeah-yes," Clint said.

"Your brother is out of surgery and in recovery. There was a depressed fracture to his skull and severe swelling…" Clint remembered the red, caved in look of the back and side of the kid's head, and the blood covering every bit of visible skin. He shivered. "…won't know the extent… brain damage… under sedation until… several additional fractures… Most concerning… might not be able to save… use of his right foot…"

"What?" Clint said. "Sorry, I… What did you say?"

"There is extensive damage to his right foot. Looks like it got caught in a wire upon falling. It will require surgery but it will have to wait until he is more stable, and there is a very real chance it will have to be amputated."

"Amputated?"

"Yes."

Clint felt pinpricks around his forehead, like little beads of sweat suddenly sprouting out.

"Uh… okay," he said. "When will he wake up?"

The doctor seemed a little confused.

"Like I said, it is hard to tell with traumatic brain injuries. We cannot give a set timeline for recovery. We have detected brain activity, which is a good sign, but it’s impossible to know the extent of the damage at this point.”

"Okay…"

"ICU visiting hours are from four to six. He'll be moved to a room by then, and you'll be able to see him."

"Okay."

The doctors left, and Clint hoped that his confusion had come out as a normal reaction, shock maybe, or grief. In truth, he wasn't sure what to think or what to feel. He felt numb, like he'd been left to soak in lukewarm water for too long. He just wanted to sleep, but when he closed his eyes he kept seeing the kid's caved-in head.

Kate drove him back to his apartment from the hospital, and when he was done showering and cleaning up, he found she was still there, trash bags out next to the door, bottles gone, counter clean and dishes washed, fresh food and water out for Lucky. He saw the trash bags and thought again of the dumpster in the alley. If the kid had just fallen a little to the left…

"You didn't have to do that," he said, and found his voice was a little hoarse. Kate scoffed.

"Yeah, but I did have to stare at your eyesore apartment."

"I'm sorry."

Kate sat down on his couch, and groaned.

"Don't apologise. God. I didn't mean it like that."

"Okay…" He opened his fridge and took out a beer before sitting down on the other side of the couch. He took a sip before facing her again. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

They sat in silence for a while, with Lucky hovering near one side and then the other, asking for pets and switching if either of them stopped. Clint kept sipping his beer, slowly, even when it got warm and was no longer fizzy, and little by little some of the tension he felt started to ease. Because it was a good thing, he was doing, wasn't it? He'd taken care of his mess. He'd handled things like an adult, and hadn't run away. He could do this.

"You don't have to stay," he said, after some time. Kate didn't turn to look at him.

"Shut up," she said, and leaned forwards to turn the TV on.

Kate came back to his apartment with pizza that evening, and she found him sitting on the floor of the living room, books of all kinds lying around him.

"Have you seen my Lord of the Rings box set?" he asked, looking up at her. She frowned in that sure-of-herself way he loved and also hated sometimes.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm looking for my Lord of the Rings box set."

"Books or movies?"

"Do these look like movies to you?" Clint said, picking up a bunch of paperback thrillers. "It was a limited edition box set, with the elvish inscription in gold around the edges. It's got the Silmarinion in it. I'm sure it was in one of these boxes, I don't remember unpacking it."

"When did you last see it?"

"Wow, Katie, gee, I don't know, but thank you for your very helpful comment."

"Ugh," she threw her head back, and rolled her eyes. "What happened now?"

Clint bit his tongue, and his fingers gripped the book he was holding so tight his nails left a mark on the cover. He wanted to say something, but even opening his mouth felt like something dangerous now, something that could lead to yelling. And saying things he didn't mean. And — God — he might even cry.

"I—I went—"

He had received a call from the doctors. In what sounded more like an order, they had asked him to go back in and make some decisions about the kid he'd passed off as his brother, and since then, Clint hadn't been able to shake off the nausea. As soon as he'd stepped into the ICU room he'd had an overwhelming urge to flee, to just leave, and never return there, forget the whole thing had ever even happened, come clean and just run away. He didn't want to look at the kid. Didn't want to see his own name in his chart. He didn't want to speak to the doctors or the nurses, and he didn't — he didn't — he REALLY didn't — want to TALK to him as if they were family.

"It's good to talk to coma patients," the nurse had said, voice oh so friendly and kind. "Lots of them report remembering familiar voices once they wake up. It's also been linked to speedier recovery."

Except he wasn't a familiar voice. He was a total stranger, so what good would he do?

"—condition is stable for now, but the foot—"

The foot was not covered by the blankets. It was fixed and raised with a sort of metal frame, so mangled and torn it didn't even look like a foot. There was a sort of drainage tube attached to it, and Clint's eyes had followed it under the bed in an effort not to look up at the kid's face. He'd failed.

"Do I need to decide now?" he'd asked, despite already knowing the answer. The doctor had showed him where on the leg the incision would be made, marked with purple lines, and Clint had thought he’d be sick.

"How was he?" Kate asked him, voice softer now, with non of the snark. Clint closed his eyes for a second. The kid - his face - he'd only been able to see half of it through the bandages. Half of his black hair had been shaved off, too, and while the night before he had looked strong, tanned, and healthy, now he had seemed pale and small, the tubes and machines a ghastly reminder of that terrible thud against cement.

SPLAT!

"Clint?"

"I just— they said—" He swallowed back. “Like, they said I should talk to him? And I don’t— I don’t want to do that, I don’t know him, but I can’t not be there because that would look weird, and I thought — I could, you know? Read? And I got that box set when I was with… Bobbi, and… Well I. I just wanted to read that. I never finished it, actually, but I think I could do that now. And it should be here, but— Damn it." He threw the paperback he'd been holding against the door and its spine burst, sending pages flying all over the room. Kate didn't flinch.

"That bad, huh?" she said. Clint let his head hang.

“They wanted me to tell them if they should cut his leg off," he said. “I told them to do it. I did that.”

Kate didn't reply, only stood quietly in front of him for a minute or two. The only sound they could hear was their own breathing.

"You're doing the right thing, Clint." She broke the silence.

“I’ve left him a cripple.”

"No."

"Why would my voice— it shouldn't be me. It should be his family, my voice is probably the last thing he wants to hear.”

"Yeah, well, lucky for him, you're a guy with connections who can have blood and prints run through all sorts of unofficial datasets. Hell, you could even get dental if you call in a few favours. You can find his family."

Clint looked up at her, and biting his tongue he nodded. She was right. There was a chance the guy's family didn't know about his nighttime activities, or that maybe he had no family, but chances were he'd be able to at least work out who he was. And he'd figure things out from there.

Kate cleared a spot on the floor and sat down next to him. She picked up one of the older-looking books, an old western by Zane Grey with cracks on its spine.

"You know…" she said, flicking through the yellowed pages. "I've got a Lord of the Rings box set."

He turned sharply.

"You do?"

She nodded.

"Yep. Illustrated edition."

"Wow," Clint said. "Have you read it?"

She smacked him on the shoulder.

"Of course I've read it," she said. "I've got it back at the house but I can bring it over for tomorrow's visit."

"That would be… Yeah, that would be great."

"You're welcome."

Clint smiled.

"You do know he's in a coma, though, right?" he said. "He's not gonna see the illustrations. Bet yours didn't have the Silmarinion."

She rolled her eyes.

"Then go buy yourself the shitty paperbacks. You ass."

"Thanks, Kate."

She got up, and went back to the counter where she'd left the pizza, which was probably lukewarm by now, and she placed it inside the oven. Watching her, Clint felt a creeping sense of shame — she wasn't supposed to be doing this. She shouldn't have to support him like this. He was supposed to be supporting her.

"You know," she said, turning around with a little bottle filled with oregano. She looked like she could just see right through him. "This is what we do. You and I. I got your back, and you got mine. You know that, right?"

"Yeah. I know."

"Everything's gonna be fine."

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TWO MONTHS LATER

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At four thirty in the afternoon Clint sat down on the now comfier seat of the neuro ward room - a considerable step-up from the ICU. His visits to the ward weren’t all that frequent, but as far as his work related activities went, he had family in the hospital and this allowed him extra time off.  And also, he felt like an asshole when the doctors had to call him for updates.

He opened the book he held to the bookmarked page - Kate had strictly forbidden him from folding page corners - and cleared his throat before starting.

"Okay, quick recap,” he said, and even after so long he still felt stupid. “Sam is trying to rescue Frodo from Barad-dûr," he said. The man occupying the bed, face now fully visible and devoid of any tubing, remained perfectly still. Eyes closed, chest barely moving as he breathed. Even after two months, Clint still found the stillness unnerving.

"It was dark save for an occasional torch flaring at a turn, or beside some opening that led into the higher levels of the Tower. Sam tried to count the steps, but after two hundred he lost his reckoning. He was moving quietly now: for he thought that he could hear the sound of voices talking, still some way above. More than one rat remained alive, it seemed…"

"Mr. Barton?" A nurse popped her head inside, carrying a chart in one hand and pushing a cart with the other. Inside were little cups of orange jello. "Saved some for you."

"Thanks, Julie," Clint said, taking two of the cups just in case Kate made it today. She'd mentioned before that Jello wasn't much of a treat to her, but he guessed the gesture was still valid. The nurse kept staring at him for a moment, and Clint found himself getting nervous.

“Did they talk to you about his last scan?"

“Uh.. yes.”

They hadn’t, because Clint had Kate take care of those conversations, afraid he would be unable to fake it.

The nurse smiled.

"We were very glad to hear the news. We're keeping a close eye for any signs and we promise you'll be the first to know."

"Thank you Julie. You have a good day."

"You too Mr. Barton. Your brother is lucky to have you."

Clint nodded, but his teeth gritted, and when the nurse left he let out a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding. He should feel more at ease now, more ready to deal with all this, but the time that had passed had only increased the anxiety regarding what he would do when “Dan” woke up. It had been too long now. Almost every acquaintance he had now actually believed he had a brother convalescing in a hospital, the nurses all addressed Dan by his made up name, and Kate had even gone as far as arranged a fake ID and birth certificate. How was he going to explain all that to the hospital? How was he going explain that to HIM?

According to Kate, the fact that they hadn't been able to determine the kid's identity meant that he was a total out-of-the-grid mennonite, or, alternatively, incredibly good at covering his tracks. They had scoured the internet for his photo to no avail and through some favours owed to him by Shield, he’d managed to use their system to search prints and DNA through both domestic and foreign databases, civilian and military, missing persons, top secret operatives, among others, and nothing. Not even any hits for distant relatives.

The book marker slipped from the page he was at.

"Hmm, sorry about that," he muttered, but found his mind hadn’t paid attention to what was happening in the last three to four pages. He looked up at the stranger, and searched for a sign that he could hear him. According to Kate, the docs had said there had been an increase in brain activity and reflexive response, and that they were expecting some signs of awakening soon, but so far he'd gotten nothing. Whatever brain activity was going on, it was certainly not responding to The Return of the King.

At six pm, when Kate didn't show up, he ate both of the jellos and called it a day.

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Dick Grayson

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For the longest time he'd been in the dark and had only a passive awareness of his body, just an idea really, a knowledge that he existed in space but with no actual sensation of gravity to confirm that. His universe consisted of sounds — several different voices that occurred at different times. A high and slightly shaky voice, like that of an older woman, came to him as he emerged from the numbness that claimed him most often. He could tell the words she spoke were kind and considerate even as he didn't understand their meaning.

Then, at other times, he heard a graver voice, steady and calming and yet equally unintelligible. And in his mind he saw mountains, huge, towering mountains covered in snow, a group of weary travellers climbing up and leaving a trail. Was he one of them? Was this a memory?

Eventually the sounds began to bleed through into his mind, and he managed to distinguish each of them at once. A constant, beeping sound. Distant horns. Someone whispered terms that sounded technical, and steps clacked on a hard surface.

Words still had no meaning.

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Clint Barton

————————

He got a text from one of the nurses from the hospital (they all had his number, now), while he was in the middle of an Avengers help call.

"Mr. Barton, Dan moved his fingers today."

For like, two seconds, he felt a rush of relief and then a random punch connected with his jaw, sending him flying back from the ledge he'd been perched on.

"What are you doing, looking at your phone!" Natasha called out to him, and offered a quick hand to lift him up.

"Keeping things interesting."

He released three arrows in a row, and then rushed forward to pick up his phone from where the punch had made him drop it. The black screen was cracked in a corner.

"Damn it," he said. "I just had it repaired…"

"Watch it!"

He dodged, and some sort of projectile flew over his head.

"We sort of done here, right?" he asked, unfazed. Nat looked annoyed.

"Got somewhere to be?"

"No, not really…"

She turned, kicked one of the closest goons. She seemed about to make a face, that twisted smile of hers, but then some explosion knocked him off his feet and into a pile of debris. His ears ringed.

"You okay?"

Nat appeared above him, a sort of halo all around her. Man, he was seeing blurry.

"Yeah," he said, holding his head. "Or at least I can get there. You?"

"Yeah."

He didn't get to his phone again — it was probably dead after that blast — until he was sitting in the medbay, awkwardly fiddling with the newest bandage around his nose. It was probably about time to revisit that septum surgery brochure.

“—Barton! It's your sidekick," Bobbi called out. He searched for his phone, a little confused, but found it was indeed turned off. He looked up at Bobbi, who scoffed at him and placed another phone on his hand. "Bishop, dummy. What are you, concussed?"

Clint took the phone that was offered. He could've wondered why on earth Kate was calling him through Bobbi but his mind was slowed, and he didn't think anything of it until she had repeated his name twice. Then he focused on her tone. Her voice.

"Something happened."

He didn't get a new phone until after he'd returned from seeing Gil’s dad in Far Rockaways, and it sat on top of his table in its box, brand new and untouched. He hadn't told Gil's father much. There wasn't much to tell, in any case, because what did he know anyway? He hadn't been there when Gil's body was found up on the roof, right next to his grill, shot clean through the head. Executed. And he couldn't tell his father about the tracksuits, about the mess he’d made trying to help people with their rents, how he was responsible for all this, for Gil, for the kid in the hospital, for everything.

He couldn't tell him who'd done it, either.

Gil's funeral was in less than an hour and Kate was coming over, but he still hadn't gotten dressed, and there were now more bottles littering the floor of his apartment than there had ever been before. He saw on top of the coffee table Kate's copy of The Return of the King, and he remembered he hadn't been to the hospital in over two weeks— it was the longest gap in visits since the start of it all. The kid could be awake by now. He could be telling all the nurses what his real name was, and then they would tell him he no longer had a right leg, and that it was all Clint’s fault.

“Dan moved his fingers.”

Kate was fixing his collar after she'd forced him to get dressed, and, bless her, she had made no comment on the state of his apartment or the bags under his eyes. He blurted the nurse's text after a long silence, and it felt… bitter. This was supposed to be good news but now it seemed far from it.

"When?"

"Yesterday. No, wait — the day before."

"We should give him a medal," she said. "You're gonna visit?”

He looked down. Thought of Gil getting up in the middle of the night, and driving him and a bleeding stranger to the hospital, sitting with him as he waited. How he'd given him tissues for the blood pouring from his nose. How Clint still had his borrowed sweat pants and shirt in a bag he'd gotten from the hospital, both torn to shreds. His fault.

His fault.

"Clint?"

"I don't know," he said. "It might get late."

"I think you should go," she said. "You'll regret it if you're not there when he wakes up."

He turned sharply.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Kate seemed surprised of his reaction.

"Just— Clint, I obviously I didn't mean it like that."

"Then what?"

“I don’t know, maybe you don’t want the guy to wake up alone? Like, you’re a good person?”

“How do you know that’s why I’m doing this?” he said. “Maybe I just want to get our stories straight before he tells anyone who he is. Maybe I’m acting only on self interest."

"Are you?"

Clint wanted to say yes. He actually wanted that to be true.

"I…"

"Are you, Clint?"

"I'm not— I mean. God, Kate… It feels wrong. He's not my brother. He doesn't know me and I don't know him. I don't know anything about him — and Grills, he was— the tracksuits —They warned me— I don't — I don't want to talk about this anymore."

Kate folded the edges of his cuffs, and then stepped back to look at him.

"Let's go be with Gil. Then I'll go with you to the hospital," she said. "If you want."

A week later, Clint dozed against the spare seat of the hospital room, while in the back of his mind he heard Kate narrating the final chapters of The Return of the King. His feet were up on the bed, resting between the bars and over the scratchy sheets, and so even with his eyes closed, even half asleep, he felt the tiny little movement. Bedding scrunching.

"Clint!" Kate hissed, and made a move to kick him in case he didn’t hear her but he straightened before she could connect. He rubbed at his eyes, and saw the kid's eyes, open, for the first time. They were blue. All this time, he'd imagined them to be brown. He quickly leaned forwards as Kate got up to call the doctor.

"Hi," he said, and cleared his throat. Hi? Is that all he could think of? "Can you hear me?"

The eyes moved, blinking very slowly, until they almost met Clint's. His lips twitched, like he wanted to say something, but they didn't fully open and no sound came out.

“Tap if you can hear me," he said, and after a few seconds, he saw one of the fingers twitch against the bedding. "That's good. You're okay. You're in the hospital. You hurt your head but now you're gonna be okay…"

The hand twitched again. Then the leg, the one without a foot, jerked up, and suddenly the monitor was showing heart rhythms in red and it started beeping. The doctor and Kate rushed in then, and both of them were promptly asked to leave.

"Well," Kate said, leaning against the wall outside the hospital room. "That was anti-climatic."

"It's normal," Clint said, with a sigh, though he'd really thought for a moment there that this was the day he would finally wake up. That this would all soon be over. "He could hear me though. He'll probably wake up gradually over a few weeks, but he won't remember much of it."

"How do you know that?"

"I've read it somewhere."

Kate nudged him with her elbow, a smirk on her face.

"Could it be in that article about "Dealing with Traumatic Brain Injury" in your search history?” 

Clint stiffened, then looked back at her and sighed.

"That's it. I'm changing all my passwords.”

————————

Dick Grayson

————————

There was something different about how his hands felt now.

He no longer simply knew they existed, but he felt their weight now, and heat when other hands brushed against them, and cold when a rough surface touched him, spreading something wet over his skin.

And words. He could tell them apart now.

Someone, the same person as before, talked to him directly, but he didn't say who he was, and if he knew, then he couldn't remember. Sounds and beeps and outdoor noises drifted into his mind from time to time, until the state of awareness became too acute and he began to - to be - to FEEL - but in a way that he wasn't ready for, yet. And as soon as the pain began, the darkness returned.

He had no idea how long he'd been in the darkness. There was no sense of time, neither there nor in this half light he was now in. He could remember things that seemed so fantastical that they could not be real, but who was he to say what was real, anyway?

Who was he at all?

He tried to think, but could not come up with a single thing he knew that he could say for sure was real.

He heard strange terms whispered here and there, and slowly put together that he was in the hospital, but it seemed like every time he came back from the dark this realisation returned as if brand new. Why was he there? He felt like he should know, that he did know, but this information was way out of reach for him.

Shrill beeps fed into the panic he felt every time pain reminded him that he had a body. Where was this place? Where was he now? Why couldn't he remember every time?

Why couldn't he think? Feel? See?

A soothing voice cut through the panic and he felt again, as he had before, closer to the surface. It took him a moment, and then he recognised the voice as a familiar one, the rambling one, the one that brought images of mountains to his mind. He focused all of his attention on his hand, and then, for just a moment, he managed to feel it tighten over fabric. He heard a small laugh, and it was comforting in a way that nothing had been so far, at least not since the start of the darkness.

He could only stay in the surface for a little while, but still, he found that when he was next pulled under, it didn't feel as deep as before.

————————

Clint Barton

————————

Really, he should have expected this.

The Internet had warned about it. So had the doctors, but he'd been so caught up with the kid waking up at last, and being able to hear him and communicate through tentative hand movements, that he had allowed himself to be optimistic. Already a month had passed since he first opened his eyes and in every visit, Clint felt sure that this was the day he would talk.

But when he started, he did so with questions rather than answers.

“Where am I?”

He would say it after waking up, in a hoarse and barely audible voice. Clint would answer it, but he could never make the conversation progress beyond this point, as the kid could only manage to maintain awareness for short intervals.

Eventually, ‘where am I’ began to be followed up with ‘what happened’, ‘leg hurts’, and then, most terribly, ‘who are you?’

“Sweetie, he’s your brother,” a nurse filled in, and despite knowing that the kid wouldn’t remember this answer an hour from now, the way he turned to him with blue eyes half open made Clint feel sick.

He looked like he believed it.

On one of his visits he found the kid already awake, and the doctor was doing some sort of brain function test, asking him simple math, and to lift his hand, point to his nose, track a little pen light and stuff like that. He couldn’t answer any question about himself. He couldn’t say his age, or the city where he was born, or even the date of the American independence. The test had to be cut short when he got too tired, and once it was over the doctor went over to talk to Clint.

“Post traumatic amnesia is to be expected in cases like this. We have been seeing steady improvement across the board and within a month he’s gone from a 4 to a 13 in the Glasgow coma scale, so there is a significant chance he’ll recover from this state as he emerges from the coma.”

"So he'll remember then?"

The doctor sighed.

"It's very likely, but we can never know for sure."

No, of course they couldn't.

Nothing was ever for sure.

Clint waited until the kid was awake, and asked his own questions before any of the nurses showed up.

“Hey. Can you hear me?” he said, focusing on his hand in case he couldn’t talk. The kid’s eyes opened a little more, now, and turned towards him.

“Yes,” he said.

Clint cleared his throat.

“Can you tell me your name?”

The kid’s eyes flitted away. His hand stiffened, squeezing the blanket underneath it, and on the monitor his heart rate rose. Clint gulped.

“Do you know who you are?”

The kid closed his eyes, but tightly, so it was clear he was still very much awake.

“I don’t… I don’t…”

“Hey… Hey, it’s fine.”

Out of the corner of his eyes, Clint could see tears starting to form. He placed a hand against his shoulder - he was very skinny now, it felt nothing like the muscled body he’d carried to Grill’s car more than three months ago. This seemed to calm him a little, but the tears came down anyway, and it took him a second to be calm enough to speak again. Clint wanted to abort, and just get out of there.

“Are you my brother?” he asked, voice slurred and hard to make out. Clint again felt the tightness rising within him, and it took all he had for him not to deny it right then and there. Nurses must’ve told him.

“Uh..- yeah,” he said, voice dry and strained. “My name is Clint. Clint Barton.”

He hoped he’d forget this, too.

“What happened to me?”

“You had an accident. But you’re going to be okay.”

The kid’s eyes veered down.

“My leg…”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. They had to, uhm… It’s gone.”

Again, the tears came, but his eyes remained focused on Clint’s.

“It’s gone?”

He moved the leg, folding his knee under the bed sheets.

“Yes. It’s gone.”

“But I… but it still hurts.”

Clint looked down, and bit his tongue.

He felt like an absolute piece of garbage.

Kate came over and found him parked on the couch, bottles opened on the coffee table, TV on to some old western.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “Nat said you were in the hospital.”

“Nope.”

“Then why didn’t you come help? We could’ve used it.”

Clint lifted his head up slightly, turning the metal cap of a bottle around his fingers. His help? Yeah right. Just saying it out loud seemed like a contradiction. Since when did the Avengers need a regular guy’s help?

“If you thought I was in the hospital then why did you come here,” he said. Kate crossed her arms.

“To walk Lucky, you idiot,” she said, and started picking up the bottles from the floor.

“Leave that.”

She kept picking them up.

“I said leave it!” he yelled, and surprised himself at how loud his voice sounded. It reverberated against the walls, and Kate looked as though she’d been struck. He sighed. “Just get Lucky and go.”

She stood her ground.

“You can’t talk to me that way,” she said, voice a little shaken. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

“Sure thing, ‘nothing’. Why didn’t you go to the hospital?”

“I didn’t want to.”

“Why didn’t you go help Nat and the others.”

“I didn’t want to, either.”

Kate groaned in frustration. 

“For God’s sake, Clint. Just for once I’d like for you to be the adult in this relationship!”

“Oh yeah? When were you the adult? When you made me say some random guy in a coma was my brother?”

“‘Made’ you??”

“Well, congratulations, Katie. He’s now out of the coma and fully convinced I am actually his brother. What am I supposed to do now? Keep pretending forever? Make up a whole backstory for us?”

“I didn’t ‘make’ you do anything…”

“We could’ve just waited for the state to appoint a proxy, we could’ve told the truth, come clean, but no, you just had to go ahead and make things complicated, didn’t you?”

Kate dropped the bottles she’d been holding.

“This isn’t my fault! He needed surgery and you’re the one who said you were the proxy! We couldn’t wait for the state to make an appointment, he could’ve ended up brain damaged.”

“Newsflash, Kate, he IS brain damaged. He has no idea who he is.”

“The doctor said he's gonna remember…”

“Yeah and then what? He finds out it’s all a lie? We can’t do this. I won’t do it. I won’t pretend anymore, I can’t do it.”

“So you’d rather tell a fragile, barely conscious coma patient that no one knows who he is or if he has any family?”

“You think it’s better for him to think I’m his only family??”

“He’s already in the hospital, you say that now and they’ll never let us in again,” Kate said.

“Well, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing would it! It will only be worse the longer we delay it.”

“No it won’t! You heard the doctor, he needs to focus on recovery. Do you want to just send him into an existential dread crisis and cut him off from his only non-nurse human interaction because you can’t bear to pretend to act like you care?”

“I do care! Jesus Christ, Kate, how can you even say that? It’s not the same thing as pretending to be his family.”

Kate looked away, and Clint took the chance to stand.

"It's all very easy for you," he added. "…because you don't have to sit there and take that fucking disappointed look from him.”

“Well, then don’t be so disappointing.“

Clint kicked one of the bottles, and it ricocheted against the door behind Kate before smashing into the opposite wall.

“Get out,” he said. Kate crossed her arms, her eyes foggy.

“I’m not going.”

“Get the hell out, Kate.”

“No!”

There was a knock on the dividing wall, and one of the neighbours called out for them to stop the noise or they’d call the police. Clint stared at the glass littering the floor and just flopped into the couch, feeling his chest shaking.

He expected Kate to leave now. Or maybe to start screaming again.

But instead, she sat down beside him.

"I know you won't believe this," she said. "Because you never do. But it wasn't your fault what happened. And you’re not a bad person.”

He wanted to answer her, but his eyes were fixed on the glass remains of the bottle he'd thrown, and it felt oddly difficult to pry them away. He wanted to say she was right. That he didn't believe her, didn’t deserve understanding, or friendship, or whatever reason she still had to believe in him.

But he desperately wanted to.

————————

Dick Grayson

————————

Even now, some indeterminate amount of time after he'd first returned to the real world, awareness still felt like coming up for air after drowning. He opened his eyes as if emerging from a black pond, and before he was able to focus, he heard the voice that had woken him and knew he'd heard it before, but he didn't recognise the person who now sat in the visitor's couch. The girl - young, black hair, loose t-shirt - had one of her legs up on his bed and the other crossed under her, and her face was lit up by the blue light of her phone. He thought he might've been introduced to her before, but he couldn't remember her name.

"Oh! You're awake," she said, and smiled. She put down her phone. "Sorry, I didn't realise."

"Wh—" he tried speaking, but his throat was hoarse. He coughed a little, and then pressed the buttons on the side of the bed to lift himself up. "Where's Clint."

"Oh, uhm…" the girl frowned, and seemed a little surprised. "He had a work thing. So you've got me. I'm Kate, by the way." She thrusted her hand towards him, and he raised his own, shaky hand to meet hers. "Clint's my, uhm… Boss."

"Boss?"

"And friend! I've been to see you here before, though you probably don't remember."

He looked at her, now. And he was sure he knew her voice.

"Did you… know me?" he asked. "From before?"

"Uh… no. Didn't have the pleasure. Hey, so I got this true crime podcast? Thought maybe you were bored and wanted to listen to something."

He kept staring at her. Kept hoping something would just click. Some connection in his mind would realign itself. And yet even less than a minute later, he could no longer recall her name.

"Clint, he… Didn't tell. What he did."

She frowned.

"What do you mean?"

He scrunched his eyes. What was the word? His mind would not supply it, his mouth did not remember.

"What he does?" he said. "Every day? His… his…"

"Job?" she said.

"Yes! That.”

"Oh, well," she seemed to be thinking about the answer. "Well, he's an Avenger. Do you remember what that is?"

"No."

"Well, he's like… He works for the government. Doing good things! Like, saving people. Like…" she smiled, and blushed at the same time. "Like a superhero?"

"So, are you a superhero, too?" he asked. Something was strange about how she had answered, but it had sounded honest to him, so he believed it. He wondered if there was something wrong with him now that he would believe anything anyone said. How would he know otherwise?

The girl laughed at the suggestion.

"I try," she said. He decided to believe her, too, because the alternative awakened the little flutter of panic inside his chest and he hated feeling that. Hated the idea of being so hollow, so devoid of self, that he could cease to exist and it would be just the same to everyone. Clint had reassured him that he would eventually remember, but it still terrified him to think that he could be like this forever.

Like a half-person.

"I'm going to check on your leg. I'll need you on your side," the voice of the doctor spoke, and he was suddenly there right beside the girl.

When had he come in? Had he been speaking before? Time skips like this were not a new thing but still they scared him every time they happened.

"Nurse. Please hold him by the shoulders."

He blinked, and then hands grabbed him and started to turn him to the left, first by the shoulders and then the hips. He could feel a breeze against his lower legs, so he knew the blankets had been pulled back, but he didn't know when that had happened either.

"Now, Dan, this might hurt a little. I'm going to stretch your right leg and check on the stump."

Some part of his right foot began to burn as the man said this, and he felt himself stiffen, and curl inwards. All sound faded but for the faint whistling of his breath, and spots flew around his eyes. His teeth were clenched, but after a few seconds a low groan began to escape them.

"It's okay, Dan."

A girl suddenly appeared right in front of his face, and held his hand in hers.  The warmth felt strange. New, but reassuring. He blinked back tears.

"Who…" he gasped, and then let out a low gasp as something seemed to be tearing right through his foot, sinking in.

"I'm Kate," she said.

"Kate?"

"Yeah." She was very close, and he could see her eyes were red. She looked sad, and he wondered if she knew him from before. He wondered if they were cutting off his leg now. “I’m Clint’s friend. I’m your friend, now, too. Remember? You’re gonna be okay.”

He felt her hand, and squeezed back even though he couldn’t remember who she was. Other voices sounded but they faded beyond his scope of attention and he didn't understand their words.

"Don't go, Kate," he said. In the back of his mind he felt pathetic, but his hand had another to hold now and he needed that, needed that anchor, needed something to focus on other than the pain. Clint said he was his brother, but he had never held his hand.

"Don't worry," she said. "I'll stay."

His eyes began to droop, but before he closed them he saw that she, too, had cried.

And that felt strangely comforting.

Voices reached him in the darkness.

"It's called phantom limb pain. It's probably too early to talk about prosthetics, but the stump has healed well so if the pain can be managed he's an excellent candidate."

"What about physical therapy?"

Steps. A door. A warm hand against his own. He didn’t hear the answer to the question, and now the doctor was gone.

Another time skip.

"Hey. Squeeze if you're awake."

The girl.

He squeezed.

"Good. Can you open your eyes?"

He tried blinking a few times. He felt, for a moment, like he couldn't breathe, couldn't move, he was frozen in that state between dream and wakefulness he'd been in for so long and he had to - he just had to -

He turned his face to the side, finally breaking from his paralysis and breathing easier, and he opened his eyes. He met those of the girl with black hair whose voice he knew. Why did he know her voice?

"Hey," she said. "You're feeling okay? That was intense."

"What?" he said. She looked away, and sighed.

"Oh. Never mind. Do you know who I am?"

He looked at her again. He knew her voice.

"I'm Kate," she said.

Yes. Kate.

She kept holding his hand, and she did so fully, completely covering up his fingers, unlike Clint who sat in that same chair but sometimes acted like he wasn’t even there. Clint, who was a superhero. Why hadn't he told him? Well, maybe he had, and he just didn't remember. He must've told him. And about their family. He must've said that the both of them were all there was, because if not they would've visited by now.

Unless they had, and he had also forgotten them. Maybe they weren’t close. He didn’t feel as if he was close to Clint, either.

But it couldn’t be just them. There had to be others, it didn’t feel right. He felt like there were others.

But what did he remember, anyway?

Clint.

Kate.

A mountain, with snow on top. Men on horseback. A dark tower.

"What happened to Frodo?" he asked. Kate looked up with her eyes wide.

"What did you say?"

"Frodo," he repeated. "His… journey?"

Her face broke into a smile, and then she let out a laugh, big and filling and real. She started searching through her bag and then took out her phone, scrolling fast through what appeared to be a very long text.

"We took turns, reading you that book,” she said. “I can’t believe you remember that. The Lord of the Rings? You probably only heard the story in pieces. What do you say we start from the beginning?"

He felt his face pulling. Maybe this was a smile.

"Yeah,” he said. “I’d like that.”

————————

Kate Bishop

————————

After four months of hospitalisation, Kate managed - with some incentives - to convince the staff of the neuro ward to let her install in Dan’s room a TV set that could support streaming (and that hadn’t been made sometime in the 80s).

“You,” she said, looking at Dan as he lifted the back of the mechanical bed. “Are gonna love this show.”

“Yeah?” Dan said. He looked up at her with a smile - now there were hardly ever days in which he couldn’t remember who she was.

“Oh yeah,” she said, and after setting up the TV, she clicked on the first episode of a true crime documentary.

For the past couple of weeks Clint had been away fulfilling Avenger duties, leaving her in charge of checking in on Dan. She’d managed to exchange that favour for a couple of her favourite trick arrows, but in all honesty, she would’ve done it for nothing, too. She didn’t often manage to spend time binge-watching crime shows anymore, and, really… She had sort of become attached to these visits. To sitting in that room, and stealing pudding from the nurses’ carts, and just being there, in quiet companionship. She felt that she was good at it in a way that was new to her. She knew Clint would describe her as overly confident, but the truth was she hadn’t felt good, like truly good, at anything in a while. And maybe being a good hospital visitor wasn’t a big deal, but hey, she’d take it over nothing.

It was better now that Dan was able to stay awake longer, and speak in a way that sometimes was almost normal.

“Want my jello?” Dan offered. It was the red one - her favourite. She looked back at it.

“You should be having it,” she said.

“Oh I’ve had one,” Dan said. “I got this...” he pointed at the cup, “for you.”

“Oh” Kate said, and took the little cup. “You’re a sly one, aren’t you. How’d you get it?”

“Nurse Maeve.”

“I knew it.”

Dan chuckled.

“I didn’t steal it! I just smiled at her and asked.”

Kate laughed.

“Bet if you’d ask for freaking cake, she’d get it for you.”

“Maybe. Should we try?” he said, and Kate bumped him in the shoulder. She lifted her legs over the railing of Dan’s bed as she rested back in the couch, and turned towards the TV.

“Who do you think did it?” she asked. Dan narrowed his eyes.

“The one who lives next door,” he said.

“The neighbour?” Kate said. “He’s got an alibi.”

“Yeah, but he just signed his name for the class. No one knows if he was there the whole time.”

A couple of days later, he turned out to be right.

“You’re good at this,” she said. He shrugged.

“Maybe.”

————————

There were good days. Great days.

But also very bad days.

“He’s not there. He’s down at rehabilitation,” a nurse told her as she entered the ward, a big bag of mini croissants in her hands.

“Where’s that?”

“Two floors down. But… he’ll be back in an hour, if you want to wait.”

“Can’t I go there?”

“Oh, uh…” The nurse seemed uncomfortable. “You can, but… Are you sure you don’t prefer waiting?”

“Uh, no, thanks. I’ll go,” she said, but the moment she opened the doors to the rehab area, she understood why the nurse had been hesitant.

Dan was up on the parallel bars, his face red with the effort, and his one leg firmly on the floor. He did not immediately notice Kate coming in so she stayed close to the wall and went to sit down on the bench in a corner, where there were other family members waiting.

“You’re doing well. Now let go of the bars and try to hold your balance for a breath,” the therapist was saying, and she could hear Dan’s huffing breath. Out of the corner of her eyes, she could see his weight-bearing leg was shaking.

He let go of the bars with one hand, and then the other, and immediately careened to one side, grabbing on to the bar with his whole upper body. Only then, when he was coming back up, he caught sight of Kate. His face seemed to turn even redder, and he turned away immediately.

“Okay, wanna try again?” the therapist said. Dan nodded, and slowly got back up.

“Just for one breath.”

“I’ve got it.”

He tried again - lasted maybe a second, then lost balance again.

“Good, that was good.”

“Wasn’t,”

“I’m sorry?”

“It wasn’t good.”

The therapist looked away as he helped Dan back up.

“Let’s try just once more.”

He let go. Kate held her breath. One second. Two seconds.

Slam!

This time Dan missed the bars, and hit the floor.

“Okay, I think this is enough for now, we’ve already done extra for the day…”

“No, I want to— Again.”

“Dan—“

“Just— Again.”

Half a second, and he was down again.

“Dan—Dan—“

“No! Just— One more time, I can do it.”

“No, this is enough. Diminishing returns, remember?” The therapist tried to hold him back, and then turned towards Kate. “Look, your friend’s here, and it’s almost dinnertime—“

“Damn it! I’m NOT a child—“ Dan shouted back, but Kate noticed his eyes were glassy, lower lip shaking. The doctor had told her about this, something about TBIs and emotional regulation, outbursts, but in all this time she had never been there when that happened.

“Dan…”

Dan let go of the bars to fall back into the chair, but refused the therapist’s help and stiffly wheeled himself over the to bench. He looked up at Kate, and pointed to his towel with shaking hands. There were drops of sweat rolling down the sides of his face, and they were mixing with his tears.

“Could you pass—“ his voice broke. He swallowed hard, “Could you—“

Kate grabbed the towel.

“The to—“

“DON’T — say it — I wanna say it —“

Dan’s hand kept pointing at the towel but then it began to shake so much he couldn’t hold it up anymore, and he sort of tilted in his chair, like he was visibly deflating. He covered his face, digging his forehead into his lap, and Kate could hear the sharp intake of his breathing as he cried. She stretched a hand towards him but held back from touching him, didn’t know if he’d want that. She didn’t know what to do.

She wanted to cry along with him.

She returned to Clint’s apartment late at night, and when she passed a parked white van she gave it the finger. She’d had a shitty day and she couldn’t bear to go back to her own place, she didn’t want to be alone. She let herself inside the first floor and then began to walk up, but felt a shiver at the lack of noise. It wasn't normal for the building to be so quiet.

On alert, and with the bow out, she reached Clint's floor, but before she could bang on the door one of his neighbours emerged, a woman holding a baby. She had tracks under her eyes like she'd been crying, and Kate felt her throat close up.

"He's not there," the woman said. Kate almost dropped her bow.

"Where is he?" she said. "What happened?"

The woman gulped.

"Grill's killer," she whispered. "He came back. Clint's in the hospital."

Kate gulped. She felt both relief and dread.

"Which hospital?"

Three hours after leaving Dan's room, Kate rushed back inside the hospital and started going through the half open curtains of the ER, peaking inside and searching for Clint. The nurse at the front desk had refused to be forthcoming with the information, even after she had shown her Avengers card (or, okay, her Young Avengers card… which she'd made), and Nat wasn't answering her phone, so she went booth by booth, interrupting kids with broken arms, old people with the flu, drunks and junkies on fluids… And then, finally, Clint Barton. Unconscious. With bandages all around his head.

Proof that no matter how bad things looked… they could always get worse.

She burst out of the building, and then ran straight towards the van that was still parked there. The two men there looked back at her.

“Bro, this crazy broad!”

“Bro, seriously!”

They turned on the engine, and started back up as she knocked on their window. When they tried to turn away, she quickly grabbed on to their rearview mirror and smashed it.

“Bro!”

She took it all out on that mirror, yanking it clear off the van as it drove away, and even once they were gone she kept hitting it, again, again, until the bits of glass lay strewn over the asphalt and reflected back the streetlights.

“He’s deaf?” Dan asked, eyes wide and surprised. He sounded hoarse. Horrified.

Kate nodded, and though she’d been calm as she explained this to Dan, she found herself distressed at his reaction. She forgot some times that for him, Clint and her were the only attachments he had. The only people in the world that he knew. She understood then why Clint had a hard time visiting, especially now that Dan was awake, and why he always asked her to come instead. It suddenly scared her to think what Dan would think of them once he knew Clint was not really his family.

“He’s okay, though,” she said, trying to be reassuring. “He’s not completely deaf. And he can understand sign language. He had an accident as a kid and had to learn it so he already knew. I can teach you a little so you can communicate.”

“As a kid?” he asked. “What? He didn’t tell me. What happened?”

Confusion replaced the sadness, and Kate could see him become more agitated as he tried to reconcile this new information. She didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t tell him about Clint’s deafness, she couldn’t, not without mentioning Clint’s real brother, and his real parents, and what would be the point of adding more messed up drama to this blank of a person, anyway? Clint wouldn’t want that. He never even wanted her to know.

Dan was sitting up in his bed, now, and he lifted his hands to hold his head as if willing himself to remember. His hair was short on one side and longer on the other and he was grabbing on to it, pulling hard. She should talk to the nurses about a haircut.

“Uhm… look it’s okay. It was a long time ago. He’s okay, really. I think it’s best if you ask him yourself. He’s being discharged tomorrow so he’ll be able to visit soon. How—how has therapy been?”

But Dan seemed to be somewhere else, eyes open but mind gone as so often happened, and she fiddled with the cuffs of her jacket. She really hoped he didn’t forget about this conversation — she really didn’t want to go through with it again.

When she headed out and changed floors to visit Clint — and how sad it was that she was visiting two people at the hospital? — she found his room empty, and the nurse told her he’d been discharged early.

“Damn it, Clint!”

She brushed up on her signs on the cab ride back to his apartment, trying to figure out what to say without having to finger spell everything. She had been taught to sign as a toddler - a thing overachiever parents thought made their kids into geniuses - but she hadn’t had to use it in ages.

She shouldn’t have bothered.

She wished it wasn’t such a common thing for her to open the door to Clint’s apartment and feel disappointed. The bottles were back, again, even though he wasn't supposed to drink so soon after his surgery, and even in the short time he’d spent there since being discharged, the mess had creeped from the bedroom into the hallway.

“You left without saying,” she signed, when he looked up at her under the doorway. He simply turned away and didn’t reply. “Clint…”

He rested back against the couch, bandages making his hair stand up. The TV was on but with no volume. She came closer, and gently touched his shoulder.

“I went to see D-A-N,” she signed. She sat down in the other sofa and shifted it under her so it pointed towards him, half obscuring the TV. He twisted his head so he could still watch it. “He can stand up now. Docs are thinking he’ll be getting free wheelchair access soon so he can move around a bit more…” she attempted to sign while enunciating clearly, but dropped her hands when she noticed Clint was not looking at her. Again, she touched his shoulder. “Clint! I know you can understand me.”

He looked up then. Eyes set, hard. And he said nothing.

“He asked about you,” Kate signed, pointing at him emphatically. “I told him. He’s worried.”

Again, nothing. But he didn’t look away.

“I’m worried,” she added, pointing at herself. Her anger suddenly dissipated, and she sunk down on the seat, and rubbed at her eyes. He stayed very still, and remained silent, but after a few minutes passed he slowly leaned in, so that his shoulder touched hers.

She bent down so he had no choice but to make eye contact.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” she said. “We’re partners, I should’ve helped you.”

Clint’s eyes instantly focused on her, her lips. He took a deep breath, then signed.

“My fault. They warned me,” he said. “They’re not stopping.”

“You know, I saw one of their vans when I came up,” she said, speaking slowly while he faced her. “That day? I chased them out.”

He stayed silent, but she could read the question in his eyes.

“Really! I swear to God. I tore off their mirror, smashed it. They were like, ‘oh crazy broad’.”

It was small, but she caught him lifting his eyebrows. Hint of a smile.

“I get this is a fucked up situation and you've got every right to feel whatever you feel, but you should also be proud. Okay? Look at this place. This building. It’s the last holdout in the whole block. You’ve done that.”

Clint simply looked at her then, and she knew he was thinking about Grills.

That rooftop.

She let out a deep, shuddering breath, and her mind called her back to sitting in those two separate hospital rooms. The anxiety and helplessness. How Dan had held her hand and cried and how uncomfortable that had felt, how she had wanted to just run away and never let herself be close to that sort of pain again. How she still wanted to do that right now.

“I need you, Clint,” she said, enunciating every word and signing at the same time. “We all need you. You’ve got this idea inside that you’re a coward, that you have to go it alone, and that’s such bullshit. Okay? You’re the bravest guy I know.”

Clint kept her eyes on her a moment longer, before he nodded, and she smiled softly and grabbed his hand.

A couple of days later, on the cab ride back to his place after his hearing aids appointment, he returned the gesture and held her hand in his.

————————

Dick Grayson

————————

He didn’t tell anyone about the dreams.

The doctors were all very encouraging about his progress, always praising him for doing the most basic of things, like buttoning up a shirt, holding a spoon, or carrying a conversation for more than five minutes. They all seemed to believe that he was some sort of miracle, always improving, always working hard to get moving again. Lifting himself up from the bed. Into the wheelchair. Up from the wheelchair and into the parallel bars. Up into a pair of crutches.

So he didn’t want to speak up about all those inner fantasies. He didn’t want to burst the bubble. Didn’t want them to know how messed up he really was inside, how in his dreams everything looked different, how even he looked different, and how right it felt like to feel wind whipping his hair back while in a controlled free fall, with laughs all around him, with the world lit up in explosive colour.

Today was a Clint day. For a while Clint’s visits had been sporadic, with more of Kate days in between, which was okay with him, really. Kate always brought him shows and movies, indulged in trying to figure out movie murder mysteries ahead of time, and never shied away from telling her things about herself and her life. She was always breaking down her most recent mission, listing everything she’d done to try and pin point if she’d messed something up or not, and she’d ask him for advice and seemed to really take it into account, as if he really knew the first thing about being an “avenger”. Do I suck? she’d say, and then, if I sucked, would you tell me? She even laughed when he attempted stupid jokes.

Whereas Clint got uncomfortable about having to say things that he should already know, never said his name, and always redirected when he asked him something about the person he’d been before. He’d gathered that they’d never had much of a life together, probably were never close and now he’d roped him into a caretaker role he probably never wanted.

Over time, he'd learned to stop asking him about the past, and just try to will whatever self and self image he had into existence. A blank slate. A person with no history and no knowledge except for crime TV shows and an active imagination in which he saw himself flying and leaping over rooftops.

Clint and Kate were teaching him to sign. It wasn’t a necessity, now, as Clint was capable of hearing well enough to communicate with the help of hearing aids, but the doctors had said that maybe it could be helpful for him, and he’d quickly found it easier and much less anxiety-inducing to communicate with his hands instead of constantly searching for words in his mind. It was… better. Faster. More fluid. Suddenly, complex thoughts and expressions were within his grasp, but then so were… so were those other thoughts. The fake thoughts.

“Doc said you can try out prosthetics soon,” Clint told him, while he silently cycled through the hand exercises his therapist had prescribed. His hands and arms, still pale, were a little less frail looking now, and when he saw them they no longer seemed so alien to him. Suddenly, he wanted to look at himself in a mirror. Would that be familiar? Would he be that person in his dreams who could fly, or would his own face feel like that of a stranger?

“Dan?”

The name called him to attention, now, but in his mind it had become, like his hands had at first, increasingly foreign. He felt no connection to it. No belonging. That name wasn’t his just as this room wasn't his, this bed wasn't his, even the sweat pants he wore now weren't his. He wished desperately that he could go home, even without knowing what that was. He wished he felt connected to something. That he belonged somewhere.

Even Clint didn’t really feel like his brother.

“Is that what you’ve always called me?” he said, haltingly. Clint seemed shocked, as if he hadn’t expected him to talk at all - he’d become used to the silence. His face seemed oddly twisted. Scared.

“You mean, ‘Dan’?”

He nodded.

“Uh, yeah,” Clint said. But he didn’t sound sure. “Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

And he didn’t, not really. And it felt terrible, like a hole had opened up inside him, and without even understanding why or what he felt, his eyes began to blur with tears. He rubbed at them, hard enough to leave his skin red and irritated.

He hated this.

“Dan… Dan, come on, don’t do that…”

Dan.

“I don’t want you to call me that anymore,” he said, and felt his voice breaking.

He couldn’t feel like ‘Dan’. Couldn’t look at Clint and imagine himself growing up with him. Couldn’t imagine himself growing up at all except in an elaborate mental fantasy where nothing made sense, where creatures that spoke like men but looked like beasts were something normal, where leaping off the roof of a building didn't cause fear, but excitement. Where nothing was real or could possibly be real.

"I just want to get out of here," he said.

"You will," Clint assured him, but he seemed uncomfortable, and he had stood and was shifting his weight from one foot to another. "You will, very soon. You've been doing great—“

“I’m not a person,” he said, and then rubbed at his eyes again.

“That’s… that’s not true…” Clint said. His voice sounded hoarse. He grabbed on to his hands to stop him from rubbing.

“I’m not… real…” he said. Breathing hard. Becoming dizzy. “I’m not real.”

“You’re real,” Clint said, and this time did not use his name. Somehow, that was better. “Look at your hands. Look at my hands. You’re real. You’re here.”

He couldn’t see anything, his eyes too blurry and swollen, but Clint’s hands firmly gripped his own and his breath matched Clint’s breath.

“Come on, man, just breathe.”

He closed his eyes and let the tears fall, and in his mind he saw his hands but covered in black gloves, thin but grippy ones, similar to those Clint wore when he saw him suited up to go to “work”. And those hands felt more his than the ones he currently had, fighting to scratch at his face.

Chapter Text

————————

Clint Barton

————————

He felt proud of himself that he managed to wait for Kate and not open up a single bottle. She burst through his door and looked around, alarmed, and then seemed to deflate when she saw him, sitting in one of the kitchen stools and nursing a lukewarm coffee that he was drinking directly from the carafe.

“What is it?” she said. “What happened?”

“Nothing happened.” He sagged down against the breakfast table and then looked up at her. “Calm down, no one’s dead. Just sit down.”

“Clint, you’ve just pulled me out of a debrief. You said it was an emergency.”

“I needed to talk to you.”

“And it couldn't wait?"

“Can you please sit down?”

She hesitated by the stool, eyeing it and then Clint in turn.

“What’s going on?” she asked, and after a few seconds, she sat down beside him. Clint took a deep breath.

“Kid’s starting to remember things."

“Why’d you keep calling him ‘kid’? He’s probably older than I am.”

“Did you not hear what I said? He’s remembering.“

Kate stared at him a moment, and then smiled.

"That's… that's good?” she said, then frowned. "Isn't it? It's what we wanted, right? I don't understand, what's the urgency?"

"I spoke to the doctors," he carried on. "They said he's no longer a fall risk now that he's cleared for the crutches, and he can be released for outpatient care in three to four weeks, so long as he doesn't have any more blackouts. So I think it's best we have the talk with him once he's here and not in the hospital.”

Kate blinked a few times.

"What are you talking about?"

"Katie, today he said he didn’t want to be called Dan anymore. He still doesn’t remember but he knows that’s not his name. If we don't tell him soon that we don't actually know who he is, and he remembers more, he's gonna think he's insane."

"Oh," Kate said. Understanding seemed to dawn on her.

"Yeah," Clint said. "So we need to plan for that conversation. The both of us. I've saved the suit he was wearing that night, hoping that sparks something, or at least to help us with credibility."

"So you're bringing him here? To this apartment?" she said, shifting in her seat. "But it… we're on the top floor…”

“Well, what do you suggest, an assisted living facility?”

“No, but—“

“This isn’t a permanent arrangement, Katie, he’s gonna remember.”

“My place has less stairs.”

“It’s a studio, where are you gonna put him, the couch?”

“And where is he going to— and what if he hates us? What if he doesn't want to stay here? What if he remembers he’s a criminal, or if he doesn’t actually have a family? What if takes six more months, what if he never remembers, what then?”

Clint looked up at Kate and saw that her eyes were shiny, and he was reminded once again of how young she really was.

"We always knew that was a possibility," he said softly. “And at his point, honestly, what else can we do? If he wants to leave we can’t stop him but if he wants to stick around, then so be it. We’ll need to make space, tell everyone… The whole thing.”

He remembered the kid back when he'd only recently woken up and his voice was still slurred, asking him if he was his brother. And the comfort it had been to him when he'd said yes. And how he’d noticed he had stopped all his attempts in getting to know more about himself or about Clint, like some part of him already knew that non of it was real.

"I'm not a real person."

The pained, hoarse voice that had uttered those words made him shiver.

"I screwed up," Kate said, and her voice sounded small and devoid of her usual optimism. “I never should’ve suggested this. I’m sorry, Clint."

"It's okay, Kate."

"No, it's… I should've been there to help with the tracksuits. I said I would and then… I was stupid, I left, I'm sorry, I…"

"Stop. Kate. No. You're not responsible for those people and you're not responsible for what happened to me. Okay?"

He wondered how he was able to even say that aloud without feeling like a hypocrite.

"Okay." 

"I know I said some things to you back then," Clint went on. "But that was bullshit. I was the one who lied first. I did it, and whether it was the right decision or not, it doesn't matter anymore, it's done. Okay? None of it is on you."

"Okay," Kate said, and then slowly got up from the stool. She breathed in deep, and looked around the apartment as if seeing it for the first time. She cleared her throat, and the next time she spoke her voice had recovered her customary bluntness. "We've got three weeks to prepare, then, if we're gonna bring him here. We should start by fixing this place up."

"What's wrong with this space?" Clint said.

Kate pointed to… basically every part of the place.

"Stairs. Trip hazards. Wires. Arrows everywhere… You own this building, can't you install an elevator?"

"You can't just install an elevator, Kate, those need to be built in."

"Well, then. Switch to the ground floor?"

“I’d have to evict someone.” 

"Ugh. Well. Then you better get used to hauling a wheelchair up and down every day."

“I’ll manage.”

————————

Tim Drake

————————

Tim Drake wasn't a quitter.

Six months, according to the rest of his siblings, should be long enough to put things to rest. To accept the lack of closure. To begin grieving.

Not for him.

There had been an official funeral, which he had not attended. All the others had been there, even Jason had been there, but the fake-ness of the whole thing, the empty coffin, the speeches by all of his friends… It had been too awful to contemplate. He could stand there with them and share stories about fun times, about how much of a good guy Dick had been, how much he had meant to them and how they missed him. He couldn't pretend he didn't believe, with every fibre of his being, that Dick was still alive.

And it wasn't as though his belief was unfounded. For starters, there was still no body.

Bruce had been there when Dick had been taken, so there was no doubt that this had, indeed, really happened, and despite Bruce's prior deceptions and expertise at masking his emotions, this time Tim was sure that Bruce didn't know where Dick was. That his reaction to his violent kidnapping had been real, and raw, and his revenge in the days that followed, horrifying. No, this time Bruce wasn't in on it. This wasn't an undercover mission, it wasn't a plot. It was real.

But then where was the body?

They had been sent a video feed of a brutal beating with a baseball bat that had Bruce looking like he was going to throw up. When it had cut, Dick had been tossed into a ditch and he had not been moving even to draw a breath, but that still was no confirmation of death. Later, the storming of Bane's bases, his brutal interrogation, and a month long search had yielded no response other than him claiming Nightwing to be dead and buried, never ever to be found — that, he claimed, was the real torture. And they had looked, REALLY looked. Together with Bruce, and Barbara, Jason, Damian, and even Superman, they had looked EVERYWHERE.

And found nothing.

Now, as far as Tim knew, only he remained in the search. He wasn't digging up holes in random fields or asking Superman to fly around Gotham listening for his voice anymore, but his search was wider reaching, always ongoing, and operating on a terminal that not even Bruce was aware of. He had remote AIs combing facial recognition on every bit of live camera feed he could access, all over the world. He had bots with OCR scanning through government agency documents, police reports, vigilante sightings, hospital records, prisons, even schools, live, and at all times. Dick's blood, DNA and dental samples were configured to flag a matching result in all fifty states and most countries processing such information on cloud-based databases, and every couple of days, he manually went through any case involving any person that could, potentially, fit into Dick's description. He personally visited every John Doe in the care of the state all over the East Coast, and combed through any other John Doe present in the system all over the country. He'd gone through enough morgue reports to give him nightmares for the rest of his life, and yet, every time, the person involved wasn't Dick.

He was convinced that if Dick was out there, he would find him, but it was hard not to be discouraged. Every bit of intel he had, massive rooms full of processing power in the lower basements of Wayne Enterprises he'd sworn Lucius into keeping secret, everything pointed to the fact that he was gone. Dead, as determined from the amount of blood that had been found in Bane’s quarters, or perhaps alive but a prisoner in some far off place that not even his grid could reach. Which was why his information system had begun keeping tabs on every sighting and communication it could reach belonging to Bane or anyone associated with him. If Barbara could see the extent of his data mining, the reach, organisation, and sheer power of his system, she would be thoroughly impressed.

Or maybe horrified. It could go either way.

He wasn't getting a lot of sleep, lately. Not that he ever did, but now it was bad enough to affect him - he was missing patrol enough that Bruce was starting to get concerned, and he woke up more often than he cared to admit still sitting in his station, drooling all over his keyboard. His hands ached from typing, his eyes burned from scanning the data, looking for something that was never there. He dreamt, constantly, that he found him, that he spotted him on a traffic camera or that he found his name being mentioned by some incompetent bad guy. That he found him and triumphantly got him home. Those dreams were worse than his morgue ones, because then at least he woke up with some relief.

His phone beeped, and he opened his messages.

Demon Spawn: Pennyworth is asking if you'll have dinner at the Manor tonight.

Demon Spawn: He said you told him you'd come last week.

Tim sighed. It was rare for Damian to text, or even talk to him, but things had changed a lot for him now that Dick was gone, and sometimes he was able to recognise when a request came from Alfred, and when it came from him as some desperate, loneliness fuelled attempt at connection. Bruce had forbidden him from involving Damian in his search, but there was a small part of Damian that was still clinging on to hope for good news, and he occasionally asked him for updates.

Tim: I can't. Busy.

He sent the text, and immediately felt guilty.

Demon Spawn: Whatever.

He put the phone down, and watched his screen compiling daily reports. He actually hadn't eaten all day, and the thought of Alfred's cooking felt like just what he needed to get his energy back, but he also knew that sort of invitation came with strings attached. Like questions on his caffeine consumption, how many hours of sleep he was getting, and how were his other, non-Dick related cases going. Which they weren't, because he didn’t have any. He hadn't even checked in with anyone in his team for… wow, he couldn't even remember.

As he stood, he saw his compilation was finished and gathered about a dozen "events of note". These were alerts he'd set up so that he could manually review anything the system had found suspicious, and they were mostly morgue reports and John Doe hospital entries, so he had them sent to his phone to review later. He was still in time for dinner at the manor.

"Master Timothy, how good of you to join us," Alfred said, and under his formal voice Tim could detect the warmth - and slight fatherly concern - that he hid from the others. When he sat down at the table, Alfred made sure the food plates were placed close enough that he wouldn’t need to move to reach them.

"Tt, you should thank me, I'm the one who reminded him," Damian said, and earned a surprised glance from Bruce.

"Thank you, Damian," he said, and Tim felt uncomfortable with Bruce's attention. He didn't want him to ask if he was still searching, didn't want to get into another fight.

"So, what's for dinner?"

A voice boomed from the passage up from the cave, and Tim jumped in alarm at the suddenness of it. Jason Todd, helmet spinning in one of his hands, walked nonchalantly up to the dining room and dropped a kit bag into the floor before taking a seat.

"Oh my God, Alfred, you've outdone yourself," he said, eyeing the food, and ignored the stares from all around him. He quickly grabbed one of the plates and began to serve himself a generous helping of buttery mashed potatoes.

"What are YOU doing here?" Damian said, breaking the silence. Tim had not been in the manor often lately, but he knew enough to be aware that Jason's presence was not something regular, especially not for dinner. Damian turned to Alfred. "Is anyone else coming?"

"Not that I'm aware of," Alfred replied, and continued serving the food. Bruce, uncharacteristically silent, served himself and did not glance at Tim or Jason.

"I don't need your invitation, short-pants," Jason said with his mouth full, looking at Damian, and then after another bite he turned, with a twisted smile, towards Tim. "I didn't think you'd be here, either, Timbo. Don't you have a computer program to stare at all night?"

Tim flinched, like he'd been punched. How did Jason know about his system? Not even Barbara knew. No one was supposed to know.

Jason guffawed.

“Relax! Jesus. Here, have some potatoes, you look like you need some.” He leaned forwards, and roughly served some mash over Tim’s plate and splattering Damian’s sleeve in the process.

“Control yourself, Todd,” he said, scowling. Tim looked away and slowly picked at his plate.

“So, Tim,” Jason said, ignoring Damian. “You going out tonight?”

Tim frowned.

“Out?”

“Yeah. Out. Patrol. You know, the usual nighttime activity,” he spoke, moving his fork as he did so.

“YOU’RE patrolling with us?” Damian said.

“Yeah,” Jason said. “Right, B?”

Bruce looked up, impassive as ever.

“Yes. That’s right.”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Tim said. “Got some cases to work on. I can be on comms if you want.”

“Oh yeah?” Jason said, eyes narrowing. “Cases, huh? What cases?”

Tim scoffed, and dropped the knife he held.

“I don’t need to share that with you.”

“Why’s that? Are they secret cases?”

“Just drop it.”

“No, I really want to know.”

“Father, tell Todd he’s being disruptive,” Damian said.

“Disruptive?” Jason said, and suddenly his voice was louder - and harsher. “Excuse me for ensuring you all don’t eat in perfect fucking silence! Someone needs to try to force some life into this place now that Dick’s gone.”

A loud snap made them all turn as Jason’s words continued to echo, and Tim saw Damian’s chair hitting the floor as he quickly retreated, running out of the dining room towards the stairs.

They all watched him go.

“Fuck!” Jason said, and smashed a hand against the table. Bruce looked at him then, but there was no telling off, no look of disappointment and no Batman voice. He simply left his napkin, pain clear in his face, and stood up and went after Damian. Tim fiddled a little with his food but could hardly force himself to eat it now.

“You can leave, too, Replacement,” Jason said, still sitting but balling his fists again and again as if trying to recover some control. “I can tell you want to.”

Tim didn’t look up.

“And go where?” he said. Jason huffed.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Ain’t that the question?”

Only Bruce patrolled that night, and it was a violent affair from what Tim could tell from the comms, though nothing he hadn’t seen before. Certainly nothing like the sort of violence and lack of control he’d witnessed before he first became Robin. And that was a comfort of sorts, he guessed. It meant at least one of them had their shit together for once.

Damian’s door remained closed, and after dark, when he tried to open it, he was stopped by Alfred in the darkness of the hallway. The older man squeezed his shoulder, kind as ever.

“I know you give Master Damian… information,” he said, making Tim feel transparent, like a child. “But that’s not what he needs right now.”

“But…”

“I, too, hope like you hope,” he said, and Tim heard the unmistakable crack of grief in the old man’s voice. “But I’m afraid the heart can only take so much.”

Tim stared back up at him, and felt his own face becoming red, his breath hitching.

“I miss him,” he said. Alfred’s gentle touch became a hug, and Tim wrapped his own arms around him, pressing his head to his chest.

“So do I, dear boy,” Alfred said. “So do I.”

He was supposed to get some sleep, but even without coffee or computer access, his mind would not stop going through scenarios. He’d become too used to that, too used to the search, so much so that he thought that if he actually stopped, if he actually allowed himself to believe Dick was dead, then he would break down so completely he wouldn’t be able to function as a person.

He just needed to find him.

He would find him.

He couldn’t be dead.

The events of interest his system had gathered that day were mostly John Does, who he quickly discarded one after the other. There was one morgue file, that he didn’t bother opening so as not to lose what little food he’d managed to ingest, and then he flicked down to the last one.

The last one was a weird one.

It wasn’t a hospital report, but rather an absence of one. His system had flagged a case he’d previously reviewed and discarded, possibly months ago, not that he could remember, and that case had now been deleted from the hospital database, causing the system to flag it again. After his initial review he’d only kept basic data in his system, so now after deletion he didn’t have access to the whole thing again and he couldn’t review it again, but the deletion flag was… strange. Hospitals did not, at random, delete entire files. They archived them, or compiled them, but never just deleted them except maybe on a data protection request, but such a thing he was sure his system wouldn’t have flagged.

No. This was weird.

Accessing the metadata that remained, he could confirm that the file was just over six months old, which placed it under his “ideal” timeframe, and it belonged to a medical centre in Brooklyn. There wasn’t any data on the patient, all of it deleted with the file, but a backlog in his own database indicated it belonged to someone that hadn’t entered the system as a John Doe, so the initial flag was probably based on types of injuries, or maybe keywords. He guessed he must have looked into it and dismissed it before, and back in his own station he could probably recover some of it to check again, but that didn't explain the deletion.

His door cracked open, and he jumped. He’d almost forgotten he was in his old room at the manor and not at home. Blinking to adjust to the darkness again, he say a tall shape entering the room.

“Tim?” Bruce’s voice sounded, low and hesitant. He was out of his suit and in sleep clothes, which meant it was really late. Tim almost dropped his phone as he straightened up from the bed.

“Hey, Bruce,” he said, voice tiny and stomach was fluttering. He was probably here to ask the same thing Alfred had, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to react in the same way.

Bruce approached slowly, then sat at the foot of the bed. Even in the low light a bruise showed in his jaw, and he looked… so old. Much older than Tim ever thought he’d look.

“Tim, I… I know there’s nothing I can do that will make you… stop. Your search,” he started. “And to be honest, there’s a big part of me that doesn’t want you to do that. Because you’ve been right before and I keep hoping you’re right again.” He stopped. Took a breath, and then finally turned his face so their eyes met, and he reached a hand towards Tim’s hair. But, Tim…”

Bruce lightly brushed his fringe away, and Tim shivered.

“I’m worried. I’ve seen your log-in times, and Alfred found the empty five hour energy containers in the bin outdoors. Tim, I received a call from Conner yesterday.”

At that, Tim looked up sharply.

“What?”

Bruce’s face twisted into a ghost of a smile.

“Yeah. He really did call me. Someone patched him to my comms from the Watchtower, you can have a guess who.” He paused, and took a deep breath. “He said he hasn’t heard from you in months. That no one in your team has. And I know I’m not a good example for you in these matters, but… I think Dick would want me to step up. And he wouldn’t want this for you.”

Tim blinked. Everything from Bruce's tone to his face was so shocking his brain couldn’t process it, but tears began to cloud his eyes all the same.

“That isn’t fair,” he said.

“I know,” Bruce whispered. “But I don’t know what else to do.”

This was so wrong. Bruce was never so doubtful. So unsure in his voice and words, so full of grief that was entirely, completely devoid of anger.

He almost sounded like a different person.

He brushed Tim’s hair again, and Tim let him, despite feeling like his electricity was running through his body.

“Conner let me know they’re taking on a mission,” Bruce said. “And they could use your help. They say they’ve been trying to contact you and you haven’t answered. I think it would be good for you to go. ”

Tim’s brain was having a hard time figuring out how, exactly, Conner had evaluated his options and decided to contact the freaking BATMAN. He would laugh about it if he didn’t feel so cornered. Because, he realised, he wasn’t in a position to say no. Saying no would be burning the bridge, and he desperately needed that bridge.

“Okay,” he said, and nodded. “Okay, I’ll call him. I’ll go.”

Bruce squeezed his hand.

“Please get some sleep tonight.”

Tim nodded, but once his hand was released, his first thought was to reach for his phone and boot up his database again, and he felt… guilty. The way Bruce had talked to him, the way Damian had fled from the room at the mere mention of Dick, and how Jason seemed to think it now fell on him to keep them all acting like a family… He hadn't cried before. Hadn't cried when he saw the video, or when they announced the funeral, but now… Now he felt closer to sobs than he had in a long time, but he knew he couldn’t let himself go.

Or he’d never stop.

So he picked up his phone, but didn't boot up the system. Instead, he checked his long forgotten messages, and as soon as he showed signs of life in his Titans group, texts came flooding in.

And he felt warmth, then, and realised how much he'd missed not being alone.

Late in the morning, after what was probably his longest period of continuous sleep in months, Tim gathered his gear to meet the Titans. He hadn't worn his suit in over a week, and though it felt oddly loose in some places and tight in others, it was still a comfort to have it on. He felt instantly stronger.

"Look at you, all dolled up," Jason interrupted, peering into his room. His hair was in a mess, and he was wearing gym clothes - had he stayed the night? He was afraid to ask because this nice act could not be permanent. "You going to a cosplay event? It's daytime."

"Just meeting the team," Tim said. "You working out or something?"

"Yeah, tried to get the little demon to spar with me but no dice."

"I could've told you that…" Tim said, and tried to hide his shock at the fact that Jason had actually tried to spar with Damian. Who was this Jason and what had he done with the Red Hood he knew? He couldn't help but think that Dick would be happy with this development, and then that thought alone sank his mood.

Like lead.

His hands searched for his phone as if it were an antidote for grief. The event of note he’d noticed yesterday was still unresolved — suddenly he didn’t want to leave.

He couldn’t leave.

Not without resolving this .

"…earth to Tim??" Jason waved his hand in front of his eyes, grounding him back in the moment. Tim gulped.

"I…" he started. “I’m supposed to go, soon, but… There was something I really needed to check."

Jason frowned.

"If its part of your little obsessive world-stalking initiative, I want nothing to do with it," he said. "That shit's fucked up and it's messing with your head."

"I just want to check on it and I won't have time before I have to leave. I thought maybe you could—“

“No.”

“Please, I'll owe you one. Big time."

“No!" Jason said, crossing his arms. “I thought Bruce told you to stop.”

But Tim could not even imagine stopping and leaving this question unanswered.

"I swear, if you help me with this," he said. "I'll stop."

Jason scoffed.

"Yeah, right."

"I swear I will. I'll stop monitoring."

"There's nothing you could possibly say to me that would make me believe you," Jason said.

Tim came closer to the door.

"I'll owe you, for real. Any case you got, anyone you gotta find, I can do it. And B doesn't have to know."

“I said NO,” Jason said, and now that there was some anger in his voice, he sounded a lot more like himself. “It doesn’t matter what you offer me, I’m NOT doing it, okay?”

“Why?!”

Jason sputtered.

“Why? You’re really asking why?”

“Yes!”

“Jesus Christ, because there’s nothing to find, Tim! You’re all just living like fucking ghosts, and I’m done enabling this shit. I’m not doing it again.”

Jason tried to walk away but Tim burst forward then, and roughly pulled him back.

“I NEVER ask you for anything!” he yelled, and didn’t care that his voice broke. Jason, shocked didn’t try to free himself. “I always back you up, I’ve forgiven all your bullshit, and you never believe me—

“Tim…”

“—I NEED this, okay? I need it. I need it. Please do this for me.”

“God, Tim…”

“Just do this one thing. Please!“

“Okay! Okay,” Jason says, and the way he was looking at Tim now, it made him want to cry. “I’ll do it. Once. Now please stop blubbering, .”

But despite his harsh tone, he didn’t pull away from Tim, and instead leaned gently against him while Tim struggled to catch his breath, his own breathing deliberately loud and grounding. Almost… Almost like the way Dick would breathe to help him calm down.

“You good?” Jason said, after a minute or two, and Tim nodded, wiping at his eyes even though they were still dry.

“Yeah,” he said. “I… I should get going. I’m gonna be late.”

He turned away but Jason didn’t move from the doorframe, and when Tim picked up his tablet Jason squinted at him, and then let through a hint of a smile.

“Our discussion aside… you know that shit's illegal, right?"

"Everything we do is illegal,” Tim said.

"Yeah, but that…" Jason rolled his eyes. "Is super illegal. And also creepy."

“You had no moral objections to it the last time you asked me to track someone.” 

"Fiiiine," Jason said. “Tell me what I need to do. I'm not going into any morgues, though, I can tell you that already."

"It's not a morgue," Tim said, starting to recover his voice, and he pulled up the deleted file report into the tablet. "It's a medical centre in Brooklyn. A file I kept tabs on there has gone missing. Deleted from the system."

"Brooklyn? I'm taking one of your credit cards.”

"Sure, whatever. I just got the file number, see if you can locate the physical copy."

“Okay… What does this have to do with Dick, though?”

Neither of them acknowledged how Tim flinched at the name.

"That's what I'm trying to find out, I can't know why the system flagged it because it was deleted. Just look for it, okay?"

“Sure. It’s not what I’d spend my one and only favour to you on, but you do you.” 

Steps sounded from the stairs, and they both turned, recognising Alfred's familiar walking pattern.

"And don't tell Bruce!" Tim hissed.

"Duh!"

Tim watched Jason walk away, and he wondered again what Dick would think of this exchange. He hoped desperately that he would be able to tell him about it one day.

————————

Clint Barton

————————

The days leading up to the kid's discharge were quieter than usual.

Whenever Clint visited, he found him hard at work on his physical therapy, doing laps of the neuro ward in his crutches and counting reps in gibberish, filling in IQ-test type workbooks and scrolling through old news on a tablet that Kate had given him. But he never seemed very eager to talk, at least not when Clint was around.

When he came with Kate he always seemed more at ease, and he chatted with her like they were old friends, laughed when she told him the latest Lucky story. Some of his humour had began to emerge - a silly sort of humour that with each day veered closer into pun territory. Kate seemed to find it endearing, but it just made Clint feel a little more guilty, because it never showed when he visited alone.

A certain awkwardness had settled between them. He knew the kid still welcomed his presence, he appeared eager to his release and he was always thankful of his help and reassurance, but whenever he thought Clint wasn't there, his eyes seemed to sag, and he'd appear lost in some inner world that looked painful, and full of anguish. It made Clint dread the discussion to come.

"This is not the final leg. It's simply a fit test for the socket, to see how well you tolerate it," the prosthetist told them, as Dan tried on the bare metal leg over his stump, which was covered in a cushioned liner.

"It looks fine, doc," he said.

Tentatively he placed his weigh on it while in front of the parallel bars, but then raised it again.

"It hurts," he said, looking up at the doctor.

"Putting weight on it is going to be a little uncomfortable to start with, but there should be no sharp pain."

Dan tried again, this time getting through one small step, before he held on to the bars again.

"No. I can't," he said, and returned to the bench where he'd left his crutches. "I'm sorry, I can't do it."

Clint knew that Dan had been pushing himself through pain for a while now, so he had no doubt this had to be severe if he couldn't do it.

"That's okay," the prosthetist said. "It's normal. We'll try another mould. Can you tell me if there are any particular pressure points?"

Dan removed the socket and liner, revealing a well-healed stump halfway up his calf, with only a pale pink line marking the incision. The doctor marked in purple pen the places where the pain was the worst, and Clint shuddered, remembering when another doctor had showed him those dotted lines in purple where they were going to cut the foot off. And then asked him to sign off on it.

“You want the chair or you’re good?” Clint asked, as the session wrapped up and it was time to go back to the neuro ward. As expected, Dan rejected the chair and picked up his crutches from where they rested against the seat. In the last month, he'd upgraded from regular underarm crutches, to forearm crutches as his upper body strength improved, but his legs still looked abnormally thin.

“I’m good,” he said.

They made their way back to Dan’s room in silence, but Clint could see how tense Dan was, like he was struggling to find words to say something.

“You're feeling okay?” he asked, once Dan was back to sitting in his bed. He looked… restless. Anguished. And though it was true that their knowledge of each other was superficial and devoid of history, over the past months Clint had learned to recognise these little changes and shifts in mood.

When Clint spoke Dan turned to him and opened his mouth, but then signed instead.

“You look nothing like me,” he signed.

Clint felt like he’d received a bucket-full of ice over the head. He remembered catching Dan staring at himself in the wall mirror down in rehab, and the way he was looking at him now.

“You’re right,” he said, and it came out a little hoarse.

“You haven’t… ever shown me any pictures.”  He left the rest unsaid: Of me. Of us.

“That’s because I don’t have any," Clint said, and looked away at Dan's disappointment. "Look , my life has been… complicated. I haven't ever… This is probably the longest time I've ever been in one place, settled like this, growing up I…"

"In the circus?" Dan said. Clint froze.

"What?"

Dan stared, and his face trembled as if he thought he'd said something wrong. Clint was sure he'd never mentioned the circus, never even hinted at it.

"Why— How did you know that?" he asked. "Did Kate tell you about that?"

"I… I don't…" Dan shook his head. "I don't know…"

Clint furiously took out his phone, opened a message to Kate.

Clint: DID YOU TELL DAN ABOUT THE CIRCUS????

Clint: KATE. TELL ME NOW.

"Is that… not right?" Dan said, voice a little smaller now. Clint had stood and was pacing around the room.

"Why did you ask about the circus?"

"I said I don't know! I just… did, okay, I don't remember…"

Dan's voice was loud, and pained, and Clint breathed in deep. Calmed himself.

"Okay. Okay, I'm sorry," he said, but Dan wasn't looking at him anymore, just fiddling nervously with a spinner Kate had given him, his breathing loud and fast.

"Look," Clint said. "I know a lot of this is confusing, I know there's a lot we still haven't told you. I promise, I will explain everything, Kate and I, we’re fixing up my place for when you’re released and… It’ll all make sense, it’s gonna be fine, you just gotta trust me.”

Dan shook his head, opened his mouth and then closed it. His eyes kept avoiding Clint's. Trust him? Of course, why would he trust him? He didn’t even trust himself.

"Mr. Barton?" A doctor popped in, and Clint felt guilty at how relieved he was from this interruption. "Can I speak to you for a moment?"

Clint stepped back from Dan's bed.

"Yeah," he said, and then, at Dan, "I'll be right back."

The doctor lead him out into the hallway, where they met of of Dan's regular nurses. They both looked very serious, and Clint's mind instantly starting going through scenarios. Had something changed? Had Dan told them he remembered? Did they know he wasn't really his brother?

"Mr. Barton, on two occasions now, we have found your brother up on the roof of this building."

Wow, that was… Not what he'd been expecting.

"The roof? How did he get there?"

"There's a door in the top floor, but it's a restricted area. We're not sure yet how he opened it."

"What was he doing up there?"

The doctor and nurse looked at each other.

"So far as we can tell," the doctor said. "He was just up there looking down at the street. We've arranged a psych evaluation prior to his discharge."

"But, like, did you ask him at least? Or are we just jumping right into assuming the worst? I mean, he's been in that room for over six months, maybe he just wanted to get some air."

"As a hospital, we have a responsibility to—"

"Okay, okay. Do it, but I'll tell you already, what he needs is to get out of here."

Clint's phone beeped, and he had to fight the urge to wait until the doctor was gone before he checked it.

Kate: I didn't tell him anything!

Clint: You're sure?

Kate: Yes!

Clint: 100%?

Kate: YES.

Kate: Why? What did he say?

Clint: Call u later.

Kate: CLINT!

He put the phone down, and headed back towards Dan’s room, but once inside he found him asleep - a common occurrence after PT. He told the nurse to tell him he’d be back in the morning before he headed out.

“Are you absolutely sure you didn’t mention the circus?” Clint asked. Kate looked up from her label maker and rolled her eyes.

“I swear to God, Clint, ask me one more time and I’ll use you for target practice.”

They were in Clint’s somehow pristine living room. They had just spent hours assembling a basic single bed in what had previously been Clint’s storage room, which now had a bright poster of a mountain landscape in lieu of a window. The bins were all full of wrapping plastic and instructions.

“You think he could, like, tell?” Clint said. “Like maybe because of the arrow thing?”

“Sure, even brain damaged amnesiacs can instantly know you’re a carnie,” Kate said, and then looked up again, face dead serious. “No. I don’t think he made a guess of it.”

“What, then?” Clint asked. Kate shrugged.

“He could’ve read it on the internet.”

“That’s not on the internet. I made sure if it.”

“YOU made sure of it?”

“Okay, I made sure Shield made sure of it.”

“Maybe it’s just a coincidence and he just happens to also be a carnie. The suit and acrobatics certainly fit.”

“That would mean it’s a memory,” Clint said. “So he could be remembering. But what are the odds? I mean… how many other circus people do you know?”

“There’s Ba—“

“Not counting Barney.”

“That guy you stole from.”

“Which one?”

“You know, the fake frenchman, with the moustache? Circus guy.”

“Okay, yeah, but—“

“Oh and there’s that girl, Fifi I think?”

“Those are all—“

“Oh, and the Swordsman, of course! Though I don’t actually, like know know him—“

“Okay!! Fine! It’s not like we’re representative of the average population, anyway.”

“Stop freaking out about this, Clint! It’s good if he’s remembering.”

“I just…” Clint breathed out, and pulled back his hair. “I feel like this is too much of a coincidence, that it’s gotta be something significant. Like it should ring a bell and it’s just… not connecting.”

“Relax. It’s only a couple more days until discharge and then we can ask him.”

“Yeah, about that…”

“What?”

“I’m gonna need you to help out with clean-up.”

Kate dropped the label she’d just peeled off, and stared back at him with her signature deadpan eyes.

“What clean-up?” she asked. She already sounding bored.

“Hospital files. We need to get our names, phones, all the info they have on us and change it to aliases.”

She groaned.

“Doesn’t Shield have people that can do that?”

“You wanna go tell Shield about this whole mess, be my guest.”

“Why do I have to do it? I know I’m cool and super talented and all but I’m not, like, the hacker supreme, if you know what I mean.”

“I’m the one who needs to sign the discharge papers, and then once that’s done and it’s all on file you just go in and change it. Easy peasy.”

Kate raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, like they’re just gonna let me swoop in and use one of their computers.”

“Come on, Katie-Kate. Young Avengers, genius, best Hawkeye ever? You’ll figure it out.”

She groaned again, but Clint could see the flattery getting to her, and he smiled.

“What if I get caught?” she said.

“You won’t.”

“But if I do?”

“I’ll bail you out.”

“Okay,” she said finally. “But you better.”

————————

Kate Bishop

————————

The day of Dan’s discharge was a busy one at the hospital: a storm had hit the coast, and it was snowing hard on top of that, so the ER was packed and the staff was frantic. It made for ideal conditions.

She would’ve preferred to be up there with Clint. This was a big day, and she couldn’t help but be a little emotional about finally quitting her weekly hospital visits. She wouldn’t admit it to Clint, but she had enjoyed those peaceful hours, and even the harrowing, not so peaceful ones, much more than she thought she ever could. Dan was her friend now, and she wanted to be there for him, too.

“Filing room… Here we go.”

Getting the physical copy of the file for Dan proved no problem - after discharge it was left at a temporary tray for proper storage, and she grabbed it from there, right under the nose of one of the nurses manning the desk. It was so easy, actually, that she felt a little guilty to take advantage.

Clint had arranged for Dan to switch to a smaller, more specialised place for PT, and supposedly - though Kate had no idea exactly how - he’d be enlisting help from Stark Industries to get hooked up with another prosthetist as well as a new, state of the art fake leg. This all meant there was no reason for them to return to this now familiar hospital and therefore need his file unless something went really wrong. It was weird, but Kate actually thought she was gonna miss it. It was… cosy, in a way. It would probably take a lot longer to get the nurses from the new place to sneak her chocolate pudding.

The electronic file was much harder to get to. It was a hospital, so there weren’t a lot of spare admin-level computers just lying around in out of the way offices where she could go in and take her time. There were people everywhere - in every room, even in those that looked like broom closets. Kate had to wait discreetly for over an hour before she could access a workstation near the IT area, and even then most of the people working there were off to lunch and would be back sooner rather than later. Clint had come for Dan and was long gone before she managed to access the system. 

She located the file within the hospital network and got through the clearances to access patient information. There, she entered to change the name to John Doe.

UNSPECIFIED ERROR!

Tried again, just changing the last name.

UNSPECIFIED ERROR!

She took out her phone.

Kate: Clint! It’s not letting me change it.

Kate: Clint!

No answer.

“Damn it!”

She tried accessing the system from another workstation, and through the command center rather than from within the filing system, but it still wouldn’t work.

Kate: I’m just gonna delete it.

She waited for an answer, but none came. Footsteps started again up the hallway.

Kate: I’m deleting it.

She located the source folder for the file, and all the metadata associated with it across the hospital database. Names, addresses, records of surgery and medications, scans, a psych evaluation - what? When had Dan had a psych eval?

Voices approached the room.

She selected every file, and deleted them all.

Kate: Ok. I’m on my way back.

Kate: U in the apt? How was it?

Kate: Clint??

She got no answer, and she managed to check that he hadn’t even looked at his phone since leaving the hospital. On the cab back to his apartment, she really hoped things were going smoothly. Clint was supposed to be laying the groundwork before the “Big Talk”, but they had agreed that they would do it together. He better have waited for her.

She got out of the cab in front of Clint’s building, and then past the main door. Though a lift had been structurally impossible, a ramp had been installed next to the stoop, which had now been used for the first time, but Kate was willing to bet Dan had not let Clint drag his chair up. He’d probably gone up himself on the crutches.

She stopped in front of the door and heard no sound inside. She had her own key, but decided in favour of knocking, just in case.

“Clint, it’s me,” she said. After a few seconds without an answer she knocked again and only then did she hear movement. The door opened.

“Hey,” Clint said, and Kate stared at him narrowing her eyes. They had seen each other earlier in the day so she knew that his messy hair, his scrunched up face - that was new.

“Everything okay?” she asked in a whisper. “You didn’t text me back.”

Clint turned back to his living room, which looked empty except for a bottle over the windowsill and the bags of brand new clothes she had helped him buy for Dan ahead of this day.

“He’s in bed,” he said, answering the unasked question. “The stairs and hassle. Besides he’s still on the stronger painkillers, so he’s out  cold.”

Kate entered the living room and Clint closed the door behind her. She fished the file out of her bag and the USB with the backup copy, and placed it on the counter.

“So, the talk?”

Clint sighed.

“It’s too late now. Gonna wait til he’s up tomorrow. Before PT.”

“But didn’t he say anything…? Like, when you got here?”

“Yeah,” Clint said. “He asked about you. Then he asked me where the shower was.”

“That was it?”

“Yeah.”

“Didn’t you talk at all on the way here?”

“Nope.” He sat down on the couch, and took a swig of his beer. The door leading to Dan’s new ‘bedroom’ was closed. “I don’t know if I’m getting the silent treatment. He’s been closed off with me, my guess is he suspects something.”

Kate looked at the couch, then at the open door to Clint’s bedroom. Lucky was sleeping at the foot of the bed.

“Can I stay over?” Kate asked. Clint actually looked relieved.

“Sure,” he said. “There’s some pizza in the oven. I’ll take the couch.”

Sometime in the early morning, she woke up with a start at the sound of crashing glass, and she flung herself out of Clint’s bed and opened the door. The lights were off so for a moment she couldn’t tell what she was seeing, and then she recognised Clint, still sleeping soundly on the couch with his hearing aids off. And huddled against the corner, like a blind man unsure of his location, was Dan, reciting under his breath what sounded like counting, although she didn’t recognise any of the words. The glass belonged to one of bottles, which seemed to have fallen off the window ledge when the door was opened.

“Hey,” she said, walking towards him slowly, and kicking Clint into action as she passed him. Clint jolted awake and scrambled for his hearing aids.

“What?! What is it!”

“Hey, Dan…” Kate kept her voice like a whisper, while pointing at Dan with her eyes. “We’re at Clint’s place, remember?”

Dan’s hands pressed down into the floor, and Kate spotted little drops of blood on the wood panels.

“Watch the glass. Need a hand getting up?” she said, and went to grab his crutches, but he flinched at her movement. He was breathing really fast, and he looked pale and clammy. “Hey, it’s okay. Yesterday you were discharged from the hospital, and you’re staying here for a while. That’s your room.”

She felt weird talking to him like this. She hadn’t before, even in the early days, or maybe she had but it felt different now that he knew him. He wasn’t a child. She wasn’t his caretaker.

“I don’t know this place,” Dan said, voice hoarse.

“That’s okay, you only just got here.”

“I thought…” Dan started, and then his eyes veered away. “I thought… I couldn’t remember…” He lifted his hand to wipe his eyes and ended up leaving a streak of red across his face. Kate felt her throat squeezing — had they made a mistake? Back in the hospital she hadn’t seen Dan lose time in a while, but then again she was never there through the night.

Clint got a little closer.

“Hey, man, need some help stepping out of there?”

Dan seemed hesitant, but after a few seconds he slowly stretched his right hand, where tiny streams of blood were dripping down from his fingers to his elbow, and took one of the crutches Clint offered.

“We should clean up that hand, though,” Clint said.

Dan nodded.

“I’m sorry,” he said. Clint shook his head.

“It wasn’t your fault, I shouldn’t have left that bottle there.”

“It was, I…” Dan paused, and looked up. His eyes switched from Clint to Kate and back to Clint as he raised himself up with the help of the windowsill and the crutch. Once he managed to stand tall, he swallowed hard. “I was trying to get up to the roof.”

“Why?” Clint said. Dan turned away.

“I don’t know, it felt… it feels… Look, it’s not like that, I just… I feel better there,” as he spoke this last few words he stared straight at Clint. “And I feel like maybe you already knew that, but you haven’t been telling me because you wanted me to remember? Because I just… I want to be up there, it feels natural, so it must be something… from before.”

Kate turned to Clint, but he said nothing for a while, face puffy from sleep and stress. After a moment, he sighed, and then retreated to the kitchenette.

“Let's clean that glass off your hands,” he said. “Then the three of us can talk.”

————————

Dick Grayson

————————

He sat in one of the kitchen stools with his hand outstretched, while Kate meticulously went over his fingers with tweezers, picking up tiny shards of glass. She looked nervous, and Clint did too, but he didn't understand why. It was an effort, now, to remember why he was there. To remember what had happened the day before. Even to remember the dream that had woken him — it was like everything had been erased, and now Clint and Kate were staring at each other, and he couldn't help but feel like the floor was about to be swept up from under his feet. Like he wasn't really okay, like they'd bring him back to the hospital, like there was no life to get back to, even if in his dreams he'd began to get glimpses of belonging.

There were no clear images of this dream, it wasn't like that. It was more like stray thoughts. Feelings, and colours, shapes, voices that he wasn't yet able to recognise, but that he felt an affinity to. Like he was automatically reverting to paths he'd gone down before, and he could recognise their familiarity immediately. But it was hard to distinguish memory from fantasy - so much of his dreams and recalls made no sense.   

Like in the rooftop. Like somehow that was a place he knew, and it felt right, but when he’d been up there the impulse to jump had been so strong it had scared him. And that made it all the more frustrating that Clint would never confirm anything, would never fill in the blanks on what was real. The only clear thing in his mind was that memory of flying, but he felt pretty sure that was nothing but a fever dream.

He guessed he should be reassured at the effort they were making, at how they had set him up in this apartment that clearly had never meant to have a second bedroom, and how they had been there, most weeks, ever since he came into awareness. The day before — he was remembering now — he had found a brand new set of toiletries in a little plastic tray, with a post-it note for him that Kate had left, and when he entered the room he'd slept in, he'd had to hold back tears when he saw new clothes there, in bright colours so unlike the drab hospital gowns and sweatpants. It had felt like it was the first time he owned anything, and that happiness had been tainted by the simultaneous thought that this reaction wasn’t normal. That he shouldn’t cry over clothes, or toiletries. That he shouldn’t be sleeping so much.

That he was still damaged.

He guessed that should at least confirm that he meant something to his hosts. He was sure he did - Kate was being so careful, now, with the pieces of glass, so mindful of not causing pain, and her voice, the way she spoke to him - that wasn't fake. Her concern wasn't fake. And though Clint didn’t feel like his brother, and that he'd probably never been a part of his life, still he didn't have to go visit him that much. Didn't have to take care of everything or set him up in his house. That wasn't fake, either.

So why couldn't he completely trust them?

"Stitches?" Clint said, peering over Kate's shoulder at his hand. Kate shook her head.

"No. They're not that deep — just tape."

"I can do that," Clint said, and tried to take over but Kate remained fixed on her spot.

"I got it," she said. "There's some bits left and I got better eyes than you."

"Oh yeah? Some people would disagree."

Kate shrugged.

"Some people would call you Old Hawkeye."

Clint mock-gasped.

"I'm just regular Hawkeye. You're Kid Hawkeye."

"Kid?!"

"Toddler Hawkeye."

Kate chuckled, and then started wrapping some gauze around his hand and fingers. Her hand had calluses over her index, middle and ring fingers of her right hand, and he realised what she had meant when she said she 'worked' for Clint.

"So you are both Hawkeye, then," he said softly. Clint nodded.

"I'm the original, though."

He looked at the both of them for a moment.

“You’ve told me that before, haven’t you?”

Kate nodded.

“Yeah.”

He looked away from them, then, towards the window. It was early in the morning in winter, so it was still completely dark, and streetlights were on. There was nothing familiar about the lights, nothing in them that he felt like he knew, but he felt comfortable in that darkness for some reason. In the hospital, his window had had an inside view, so he guessed it had been a very long time since he'd last seen those night lights.

Kate finished wrapping up his hand, and then walked away from the kitchen towards the little living room. Clint soon followed her, and he guessed he was expected to join them because they kept glancing at each other and then at him, practically shaking in anticipation. He grabbed one of his crutches and hopped over to the single couch, carefully lowering himself down. Clint had said he'd gotten him another appointment with a better prosthetist, but so far he'd found he could get around well enough as it was, as long as the pain didn't spike up.

"Has something happened?" he asked now. Clint and Kate again looked at each other. "You seem…" He tried to think of the word, then when he couldn't he turned to his signs. "Anxious."

"In the hospital," Clint said. "I told you I'd explain things to you once you once you were discharged. The questions you have."

He blinked. He'd expected that conversation, but didn't think it would happen so soon after leaving the hospital. Is that why they looked so nervous?

"What is it?" he said. He felt his heart starting to hammer against his throat — this was it, this was what he'd been dreading. Kate looked at him like she wanted to reach forward, grab his hand, but she held herself back and Clint rubbed at his knees as if psyching himself up. He was wearing the same clothes as yesterday.

"There is no easy way to say this," Clint started. Gritted his teeth, let out air. He braced himself. "Your name is not really Dan. And you're not really my brother."

Darkness flooded into the edges of his vision. He felt like he was going to be sick.

"I think that this isn't all that surprising to you," Clint went on. "Is it?"

He opened his mouth, but couldn't speak. He shook his head, and then nodded, unsure of the right response.

"The day you got hurt, I got involved with some bad people, who wanted control of this building," Clint explained. "They were going to kill me. And… that was the first time I met you. You—"

"Stop," he said, and breathed out loudly. He tried to stand but forgot about the crutches, and toppled back down into the couch. He heard his lungs whistling, and remembered that panic in the hospital, that terrible hollowness when he'd realised he didn't know who he was. How being called 'Dan' had never felt right, but at least it had been something for a while. How Clint had never felt like his brother but he had still felt as though he understood something about him, like he cared about him.

Was all of that fake?

"Hey… Hey, are you okay—" Clint started.

"Just stop."

His voice was louder now, somewhat broken, and it echoed against the walls as a swoosh of pressure filled his brain. He realised Clint hadn’t called him 'Dan' in weeks, and that his own inner search had never extended to his basic identity because he thought that was a given.

"So you don't — so you don't know?" he said, and hated the shrill fear in his voice. "You don't know who I am?"

"We've looked everywhere, I swear," Kate said. "And now that you're here it's going to be easier, there's more that we can do, because—" She stopped when Clint placed a hand on her shoulder. Her eyes were shiny. She looked scared, though he couldn’t understand why.

Clint stood up, and went briefly inside his own room. When he emerged, he had with him a plastic ziplock bag with some black clothing inside. The dog was on his heels, and then he went over to his couch and began to lick his good hand. He knew Kate had talked to him endlessly about this dog, but suddenly he couldn’t remember its name.

"I want to tell you everything I know," Clint said, looking straight at him. "Can I do that?"

He nodded, slowly. His head felt tight and heavy like he still had the bandages on. Clint opened the bag, and took out what looked like a thin, high tech gymnast outfit, with protective plating around the elbows and knees, and completely torn around the chest. Like a huge piece of it had been cut off. It looked sort of like a ninja suit.

"You were wearing this, that day," Clint said, and then took out from the bag a small dark mask, with white screens over the eyes. "Some people I know, some discreet people, have been able to tell me this is all very high tech - untraceable. You must have seen me when they cornered me, you were up on one of the rooftops, and you… you swung down, like Spider-Man or something, and you… saved my life. You managed to knock a couple of those thugs down before getting back to the rooftop, and that's when you fell."

Clint stopped talking for a moment, and his face seemed twisted, wrapped in some awful memory.

He wished this would reveal something. That his mind would receive it and accept it as real. But it all just felt as alien as his fake identity, and the only thing that stuck was the suit. When he looked at his hands, he could see them in that black material. He knew that it was his.

"You were in a bad state and I made the decision…" Clint stopped, breathed in deep. "I made the decision not to take you to the hospital wearing that suit. I didn't want to compromise your identity, but it was a lot worse than we thought once we got you there, and I needed to give certain instructions on your care that required me to be… Your next of kin. So I…"

"We," Kate added.

"We told the hospital you were my brother."

"We had no idea you wouldn't remember," Kate said, voice fast and… ashamed. "I'm so sorry. We're so sorry. It was my idea, Clint never wanted to lie to you, but we couldn't find anything about you and if we'd said we didn't know you then they would've kicked us out and you were still unconscious and…"

"Why am I here, then?" he asked, cutting in. He could hear his own voice sounding thinner, and as the painkillers wore out his missing leg began to throb. His head was getting bad, too, and he balled his fists so tight it hurt.

Clint and Kate were very quick to reassure him.

"This changes nothing, okay?" Clint said. "None of this is for show. We'll help you find out who you are, we'll help you remember."

"Why?" he asked again, and tried to think back on those days in the hospital when he still couldn't open his eyes. The voices. The stories. "Why did you visit me? You could've just left me there."

"Dan…" Kate said, and now he flinched at the name.

"I'm not Dan."

"I'm sorry… I…"

"WHY are you doing all this?"

“We…” Clint said, and gulped. Looked away.

“We care about you,” Kate finished for him, though he had a feeling that wasn’t what Clint had been about to say.

"How can you care about me?" he said, louder now. "You don't even know me! You know nothing about me, I could be a… a… I could be a killer. A criminal, a bad person…"

"You're not," Clint said. "You saved my life. You were hurt, you didn't know me, and you still saved me."

He covered his face with his hands, and bent forward on his seat, shaking.

Nothing made sense.

Why couldn't he remember? How could he even exist in a world, or mean anything to anyone, without knowing who he was?

"So I could…" he said, and he felt ashamed of how his voice wobbled, how he couldn't hold back the tears. "I feel like… I'm missing something, and I could… I still could have a family, but wouldn’t they have looked for me? Someone must’ve known me. Why didn’t they look for me?”

"If they're out there, we'll find them," Clint assured him. “We didn’t match you to any missing persons reports but that doesn’t mean no one’s looking. We’ll have more freedom to search now. It was hard to do before, we didn’t know who had hurt you, we didn’t want you to be exposed.”

It shouldn’t be possible, to mourn for people he didn’t know existed, but he felt like there were holes within him that they had occupied, and without them he didn’t feel complete. Before, he’d believed that they didn’t exist, that it was all just part of the dreams, because if they did then he’d know. They’d be there. Clint would have told him.

But now? Now he ached for them so strongly that he felt sure they were out there. Only maybe they weren’t looking for him anymore.

"What if there's no one?" he asked. Dampness rolled down his eyes and into his hands and he couldn’t stop it.

"Then you'll have us,” Kate said. Clint stayed quiet. 

He kept his eyes covered, and lifted a hand against his forehead, digging his fingers into it as if to ease the pain. He had a sudden urge to flee, to just dive out the window and disappear, but even if he could physically do that, he didn’t think it would be fair to Clint and Kate. He believed them, this time, and it wasn’t like in the hospital when he hadn’t really had a choice. That uniform was his — this was the most certain thing he knew.

“Hey, here, have this,” Kate spoke, much closer to him that she’d been before - and he couldn’t help it but flinch at the sudden time skip. When he rested his hands down, he saw she had a glass of water in one hand, and his pills in the other.

“I’m fine,” he said, on instinct.

“I know you are,” Kate said, her hand still outstretched. Holding his breath, he took the pills and downed them with the water. He then looked up at Clint, who was still holding the torn suit.

“Can I...?”

“Yeah,” Clint said, and handed it to him. He touched the material, and it felt — it felt his. Running his hands along the torn edges, he imagined the centre being bright blue. He imagined himself wearing it, up on some dark rooftop.

And flying.

————————

Clint Barton

————————

Kate left sometime after dawn, and so Clint made breakfast on his own while the kid napped in the couch, out for the world in a haze of medication.

He guessed that the 'talk' had gone well, or at least as well as was possible given the situation, but still he couldn't help but feel a sharp sting of guilt whenever he looked at him. ‘D’. Kate had gotten him to agree to being called 'D' for a while — as it was incredibly impractical to remain nameless and none of them had wanted to propose alternatives. He'd really hoped that D remembered more, but in the brief conversation they'd managed to have after the talk, before he was in too much pain to articulate anything, he'd said that whatever memory he had recovered would not come to the surface on command. That it was all mixed with fantasy.

Clint wasn't sure he believed it.

After dropping him off at PT in the afternoon he figured he'd catch up on sleep, and yet he couldn't really get his mind to stop ruminating, so he wound up just staring at the TV, eyes wide open the whole time and yet not really watching anything. He had long imagined the relief he would feel, once D knew the truth, and yet now that it was over, that dread had simply been replaced by another, separate dread - would things change now? What would his life look like? For how long would he get a pass from not explaining things to the Avengers, to Nat, to Bobbi? Was he even fit to take care of another person?

Had he really done his best to find D's family?

When he returned to the PT centre to get D, he wheeled himself out instead of using the crutches, but wouldn't comment as to why, saying only that he was tired.

"Do you need anything?" he asked him, wheeling him across the street and towards the apartment. They were within reasonable walking distance, and he figured that if D was on the chair already then it would be better to walk than to get a cab. The snow from the previous day's storm had all but melted, and the sun was up.

"What do you mean?" D said.

"I don't know, just stuff," Clint said. "You don't really have anything. Like, toothpaste? Do you have toothpaste?"

D smiled.

"Kate got me toothpaste. And a—" A pause. "Tooth… cleaning… thing."

"Toothbrush.”

"Yeah."

"Well. Can't compete with Kate, except in the archery department."

They reached a crossroads where there was no ramp, and Clint had to lift the chair over to the pavement. Damn New York and its inaccessible streets.

"I meant," he went on. "Maybe some books? Or movies? Puzzles? I don't really know what you're into but…"

"I don't know either," D said, giving Clint pause, but his voice remained light and friendly. "Movies. Movies would be good.”

Christmas was over, but D hadn't really been aware of it, so Clint picked up a regular Christmas movie collection. Starting with Die Hard.

The following day was also a wheelchair day, and Clint felt sore just thinking about hauling  it all the way up again. All through the morning he'd been avoiding messages from Nat and several others, asking him when he'd resume his regular responsibilities, and he finally answered them six hours later, on the waiting room of D's new prosthetist.

Clint: Dealing with some stuff. Need to take leave.

He then turned off his phone, and went inside.

The appointment had not gone well. Through his connections, he'd managed to get D in with a guy who could design state-of-art, AI-controlled, sensor equipped metal limbs, but none of that did any good if D couldn't stand to rest his weight on the stump. The doctor told them about phantom pain and starting out with a knee crutch, and more therapy, and even psychotherapy, but Clint could tell that all D wanted was to just get out of there.

And maybe never see another doctor in his life.

"I can go up," D said, when they reached the apartment. Clint, sweaty and tired, peered up at the numerous stairs.

"You sure?"

D got up, and stood on the crutches.

"I can do it."

"You know…" Clint said, watching D easily manage the first few steps, and then wobble as he lost his balance for a second. "This leg thing, it's only a matter of time."

"I know. It's okay," D said, and kept climbing. Clint wasn't sure, though, if he really believed that, or if he was just saying it for Clint's sake.

Kate: I tried to spook a couple of tracksuit vans in front of your place today, but they just called me ‘crazy broad’ :(

Kate: Hows everything btw

Clint: Honestly I have no idea

Kate: ??

Clint: He always just says 'fine'

Clint: Everythings 'fine'. Some days he talks, some days he doesn't, but he's always 'fine'.

Clint: He says he doesn't need a babysitter but today he left the stove on and almost burned the apartment, so… Yeah.

Clint: Kinda getting the feeling that he resents me a little

Clint: Guess what I found out though

Kate: What?

Clint: He likes Die Hard.

Kate: Well that's cool. You can bond over action heist movies

Clint: Likes it better than your crime podcasts.

Kate: I doubt that.

Clint: It's true! You can ask him.

Clint: Also, got him a phone. You think he remembers what a meme is?

Clint: If not you can explain it to him.

Clint: Also, maybe let him know he can express his wants and I'm not gonna kick him out or something. He's like a neat houseguest, it's weird.

Kate: haha, no, that's on you.

Kate: I’ll send him memes.

Kate: I'll come by tomorrow night!

The following night, they climbed up into the roof, where Gil's dad was grilling hot dogs in Gil's old spot, and neighbours approached to say hello and make small talk.

"Hey, everyone," he said. "This is my friend D. D, everyone…"

"You do this every night?" D asked, as a woman poured him some soda in a disposable red cup. He said hi to everyone as they introduced themselves, and then he promptly forgot all of their names.

“Not that much in the winter, actually, but it’s not that cold today."

D rested against the edge, leaning his weight on the wall, and he looked out at the city. The clothes Kate had bought for him - jeans with one leg held up with a bobby pin, long-sleeved shirts and an insulated brown jacket - fit a little loose, and it was still very strange to see him in anything other than a hospital gown. Even his hair, now trimmed and symmetrical, covered the surgical scar and looked… normal.

"Hey Clint!" a neighbour approached him, a couple of empty bottles in his hands. "Want a rematch?"

"Got a penny?" Clint said, and the man tossed him a coin. They started setting up the bottles along the edge of the building, and Clint smiled. He hadn't done this since before Grills — Gil — had died.

"Hey, kid," another neighbour called out, addressing D. "Wanna give it a try?"

D turned to the group, red cup still in one hand. He cleared his throat and opened his mouth, taking a couple of seconds before the words came out.

"I'm not — exactly — very coordinated," he said. Clint could tell by his face that he wanted to say more, that he was bursting to talk, but his mind would not keep up.

"Come on, kid," Clint said. "I'll teach you. You just gotta snap your fingers, real hard."

Clint grabbed the penny, and held it between his fingers, then snapped them, and the coin tore through one of the bottles like a bullet.

"Show off" one neighbour called out, laughing. "Best of three, then!"

Clint went over to the bottles and fished out the penny, then handed it to D.

"Try it, snap it."

D tried snapping the coin, but it just clattered to the cement. D just… stared at it.

Everyone was silent for a moment, and Clint was afraid he'd royally screwed up, that a meltdown was coming. D's face remained calm, though, and after a few more seconds looked up at Clint and his eyes were wide with more resolve in them than Clint had ever seen.

"Got something…" he said, "heavier?"

"I got a half dollar," someone called out, and presented the much bigger coin. "I'm gonna want it back, though."

D took it, and then stepped back from the group, almost to the far side of the roof.

"Hey, D…" Clint said, frowning but D just looked back at him, and signed 'I got it'.

He let go of his crutches, and used the low wall for balance. He stared right at the bottles, and then tossed the half dollar with a full swing of his arm.

One of the bottles burst.

"That was twice your distance, Hawkguy!" a neighbour said, slapping him in the back, while everyone else cheered. Clint looked back at D and saw that something had clicked in him. He looked… alive.

"That was impressive," he said, once the cheer had died down and everyone was enjoying their meal. D had returned to rest against the wall closest to the door.

"Muscle memory," he said. "It's better than my other memory."

"You like it up here, don't you?" Clint said. “Rooftops?” D looked back at him with a small smile.

"Is that strange?"

Clint chuckled.

"I'm not really the right person to answer that," he said.

They both looked out at the rows of smaller apartment buildings, the quiet Bed-Stuy streets below.

"I don't think I'm from here," D said.

"Brooklyn?"

"New York."

"Why do you say that?"

D shrugged.

"I don't know. Just a feeling," he said. "But maybe I have been here before. I don't know." And then, while looking down: "When I said… that I couldn’t… I do remember some things.” His eyes trailed the edges of a far off building, and Clint waited, frozen. D continued with his voice a little stilted, like he was reading a foreign language. “There are — some clear memories. I just don't know — if they are real."

"What are they?" Clint asked. D rested his hands against the low brick wall, holding on to it.

“Flying,” he said. He seemed to catch a look on Clint’s face because then he looked away, and seemed embarrassed. “It’s just—weird coma dreams I guess.”

“No, I…” Clint said, and swallowed back. “When you swooped down to get the guy, the one that was gonna kill me… that’s what it looked like.”

“What?"

"Like you were flying. When you swung down. So maybe that's what you're remembering."

D nodded, and seemed to be thinking about it. He had that lost, spacey look on that he had whenever he tried to search for something within his mind - words, memories, feelings. After a few minutes, he shook it off.

"You're not from here, either," he said. Clint smiled, surprised.

"Is it that obvious?" he said. "I'm from Iowa. And I actually did spend part of my youth in the circus, though I have no idea how you knew that."

D's face twisted again, in searching.

"Did I say that?" he asked.

"What?"

"About the circus. I don't remember."

"Yeah, at the hospital. I was saying something about me growing up and you asked if it was at the circus."

D considered this for a moment.

"Maybe it was just a lucky guess."

Clint nodded, and walked back towards the crowd, but as soon as he turned he saw D had moved along the wall, and his eyes were fixed on some distant point across the street. For a second, Clint thought he saw a flash of movement there, and then it was gone.

A lucky guess.

Yeah.

He didn't believe that for a second.

“Hey, Clint,” Gil’s dad called out to him. “Dogs are done, want one?“

Clint smiled at the old man, and approached the grill.

“Sure. Thanks,” he said, and started opening a bun for himself.

“What about your friend?” Gil’s dad said, looking over at D. His crutches were down on the floor and he was using the low wall for balance.

“Oh, he’s… Yeah, I’ll get one for him. Five months of hospital diet’s long enough.”

“Coming up!”

While he waited he kept glancing around him, feeling unnerved but not sure why. Once he got the hot dogs, D took his politely and thanked him for it, but he barely took two bites out of it before it just stayed in his hand, growing cold. He looked spacey again, like he was drifting out. Clint wondered if he was thinking of flying right now.

His aids picked up something like glass breaking across the street, and as he turned he noticed D was also looking in the same direction.

“Bro!” they heard a distant shout. “Coulda kill me!”

“Ugh, not this again,” he muttered. A couple of neighbours had also heard it, and they were heading back down to their apartments.

“Were those guys…” D said, and he pointed at his own ears. “The ones that hurt you?“

“Not those ones exactly,” he said. “But they all answer to the same guy.”

“Will you…” a pause. A half-formed sign ‘to fight’. “Again?”

“Depends if they try something,” Clint said. “I’ll watch them for a bit. You can go back down and sleep if you want."

Everyone was slowly dispersing anyway.

D shrugged. The uneaten hot dog was still in his hand.

“I sleep too much,” he said. Clint shook his head.

“It’s not too much… it’s normal, you know, it’s just gonna take some adjustment…”

“It’s not normal,” D cut in, and then he looked away. “I’m sorry. Just… I’ll stay — a little longer.”

“Okay,” Clint said. “That’s fine by me.”

D smiled, like Clint had granted him a wish or something, and then his eyes went back to scanning the opposite streets. Clint followed his line of sight and he thought that, just for a second, he saw a flash of red. 

Chapter Text

————————

Jason Todd

————————

Taking advantage of the fact that he was in New York on Tim's dime, he stopped for breakfast and coffee on his way to the appointed address, and in a public park bathroom, he checked himself out in the mirror to make sure he seemed like a 'normal' civilian. He didn't do a lot of public activities out of uniform, lately, and sometimes the menacing stance was hard to let go of. It wouldn't do to look threatening in a hospital.

He didn't really have enough information to directly ask about the file - he just had a number, and that wasn't supposed to be public knowledge. People didn't ask ER nurses to check their medical records using a 'file' number. If he did that, he'd immediately look suspicious. So instead, he made himself an appointment with an ear doctor under an alias with the free clinic, and while he waited, he mentally tracked and catalogued the comings and goings of nurses carrying files. By the time his consult was done - which he exited with a clear bill of health, no surprises there - he had an approximate idea of how the files were moved, and he set out for the permanent storage area.

He wasn't exactly inconspicuous even in civilian wear - he was too large, too menacing - but it seemed there wasn't anyone around who cared. The place wasn't a bank, and those files, though private, weren't exactly valuable. He even met a clerk as he walked down the stairs of the admin area, and they waved at each other like they were colleagues.

Jason: Okay, Timmy, I'm in. Had to shoot some people, hack into some mainframes, but I made it.

Tim: …

Tim: Very funny.

Tim: Let me know if you find it.

Jason pulled up the file number and then walked around the labeled rows of files. It didn't take him long to locate the section he was looking for, and then he pressed a finger against the numbers, counting. Before he knew it he had skipped over the one he was looking for, and when he looked again, he didn't find it. The numbers skipped it.

Jason: It's not here.

Tim: The physical copy?

Jason: Yep. Gone.

Tim: Maybe it's in consult.

Jason: Yeah, but I have no way to know that without a name.

Tim: I could find that out if I had access to the system, but I'm not in Gotham right now, I’m actually already late for briefing.

Jason: Relax. I'll see what I can do.

He was tempted then, to just head out into the city, kill time for a few hours, and then sell Tim some story about having tried his best but sadly had not found anything. It wasn't as if any of this would make any difference, and not knowing felt a little better than the inevitable disappointment. But he had a feeling that Tim would know if he did that. He would find out through his freakish little device, and then leave whatever he was doing just to cross one more person off his list.

And then this would just keep going, and Tim would keep searching, on and on, forever.

"God, Dickie…" he muttered. "Real bro move, leaving me to deal with the obsessive insomniac."

He began to open the files closest to the missing one, skimming through brain scans and doctor's notes. There seemed to be a lot of brain scans, pretty much a couple in every file - he got another, and another, and yep, more brain scans, of different types and colours. He noticed then that the names of the attending doctors repeated themselves, and after a scan of most of the surrounding files, he was pretty sure all of them were grouped by the same criteria. They were all brain-damage patients.

"Excuse me, could you point me to Dr. Janssen's office?" he asked at the reception.

"Do you have an appointment?"

"No, I'm— I'm following up on something."

"You still need an appointment."

Jason drummed agains the desk, clicking his mouth.

"Okay. Never mind."

He turned back, and searched for a directory somewhere far from view of the reception. He noted the floor for the neurological ward, where he guessed he might be able to find Dr. Janssen, and as he rode the elevator up he thought about how to frame his questions.

"Sir? Visiting hours aren't until after lunch," an orderly told him as he emerged from the elevator into the ward and looked down a long hallway. There were a couple of people walking that looked like patients, and were wearing grey sweatpants or were leaning on IV poles. He imagined, like the stab of an ice-pick, that he saw Dick among them, but then he shook his head. It didn't do well to think of that.

"Hmm, yeah, I'm not a visitor, I was just—" he tried to smile, and make it as charming as possible, while his eyes scanned the board with the names of the doctors and offices. "I’m just here to talk to Dr. Janssen."

"About which patient?"

"Oh, no, nothing like that… We're just friends, he and I."

The orderly squinted at him, but didn't question his motives any further.

"He's at 403," she said, and walked away. Jason straightened up, and nodded politely at another nurse who had been staring at him. He walked towards the office, and entered room 403 without knocking.

"Oh my G—" An older man jumped back in fright, and dropped a couple of papers which scattered all over the floor. He was small and had white hair, but no doctor's robe on. "I’m sorry, who are you?"

"Hey doc, I didn't mean to spook you there," Jason said, and felt a little ridiculous. This whole thing was ridiculous, and he was regretting having agreed to it in the first place. "My name's Kyle Roberts. I'm looking for a patient file, they told me downstairs they couldn't find it."

"That's… strange," the man said. "You sure it was my patient?"

"Yes. I mean, he was admitted here, but his file is missing."

"What's the name? I got my own records here."

As he said this, Jason followed his eyes  to a shelf with numbers identical to those in the storage room. Jason quickly scanned them, and located the matching number. The name was visible on the side: Daniel Barton.

So, not a John Doe. Poor Tim.

"That's the one," he said, pointing at it. “Barton.”

The doctor frowned.

"Oh!" he said. "Clint sent you?"

"Yeah," Jason said. Clint?

"And the file's gone, you say?" the doctor said, and scoffed. "It must be some sort of glitch. I’ll report it to admin.”

He took out the file. Jason almost wanted to rip it from his hands.

"Do you have a slip?" the doctor said.

"I'm sorry?"

"Authorisation. We can't transfer files without a guardian authorisation."

"Oh," Jason said. "I'm sorry. Clint must have forgotten to send it. I'll be right back."

"Okay," the doctor said. "Do tell Clint to keep me updated on Dan's progress. We're all very eager on his recovery, here."

Jason nodded.

"Sure thing, doc."

He got out of the room, and closed the door behind him.

Clint BARTON?

Wasn’t that the guy from the freaking Avengers?

He walked out of the hospital and towards his one and only safehouse in Brooklyn - a tiny upper room floor inside a warehouse. It would soon be dark, but he wasn’t really expecting a need for an active patrol in this area - this was no Crime Alley.

Jason: So, Timmers, bad news first

Jason: It’s not Dick.

Jason: It’s some guy called Dan Barton

Jason: Here’s the good news though

Jason: Or neutral news, whatever

Jason: He’s related to that wannabe Green Arrow Avenger.

Jason: They must’ve been the ones to delete the file. Wouldn’t let me look at it without authorisation but if you really wanna check it out I can break in. The office has an outdoor window.

Jason stared at his stream of messages. All of them received, and read.

Jason: Tim? You there?

Tim: …

Tim: …

Jason: Come on, man, you’re killing me with the suspense here

Tim: …

Jason groaned, and punched in Tim’s number as he walked. Tim picked up at the fourth ring.

“What?” he said, voice hushed. “I’m out, Hood. Heading to a mission.”

“This is your personal number and it’s daytime, you can call me by my name.”

“Okay, Jason, so why are you calling?”

“Because you’re taking forever to write back,” Jason said. “You’ve made me come all this way and now I’m here, so what else do you want?”

“It’s not… it’s not a matter of what I want…” Tim said, and he said it in a voice so sad and crushed that Jason had to rein in his exasperation.

“Okay, I’m sorry. Jeez. I meant, I’m here, okay? So what do you want me to do? Get the file? Stalk the patient? Supposedly the avenger guy lives close by. He’s like a D lister, so I’m not expecting the cavalry here.”

“I…” Tim started, then trailed off.  “It’s stupid. I feel stupid. I don’t know why I thought this time…”

“I’m gonna stop you right there, ‘cause that’s bullshit,” Jason said. “Yeah, we might disagree on this search method, but it’s not stupid, Tim. It’s actually brave as hell.”

Tim was silent on the other end, but Jason could hear his steady breathing. Finally, after some time, he said:

“Just see if you can find the patient. Don’t do anything, though, don’t engage the Avengers—“

“No shit, Replacement.”

“Just get visual. I can get the file on my own once I'm done here.”

“Will do, Tim. And hey?”

“Yeah?”

He let a few seconds pass.

“You still owe me big time," he said, and promptly hung up.

————————

It was harder to hide himself among the brownstones and residential neighbourhoods close to the place where his intel told him the Avenger guy lived. He’d been imagining a luxury, high tech building like that  tower in Manhattan, so he was surprised to see it was just a regular walk-up, with fire escapes down the side and teenagers loitering on the stoops, and even a synagogue two blocks away. It made him feel weird that he was wearing his helmet, if only just so his face wouldn't end up in some security camera and then within a cataloguing system like Tim's. This place was quiet. Too quiet, too safe, for the Red Hood to have any reason to be here.

Except maybe for the white vans.

As he cased the place from a nearby rooftop, he kept track of the comings and goings and noticed vans passing repeatedly in front of the building. They parked across the street and in adjacent buildings, which all had demolition signs, and there were always men inside that seemed content in just hanging out inside their vehicles, glaring at passersby.

The men in those vans all wore tracksuits, like there were a part of some Slavic sports team composed solely of landlords. Jason had seen them spend most of the afternoon throwing furniture out in the pavement from a nearby building, and everywhere they stopped, angry tenants followed, shouting and crying for extensions, and trying to keep their stuff from getting smashed against the cement. The same thing in the building down the block - it was quite the clear-out. Not strictly a criminal action, but damn, it really should be.

Good for nothing bullies, the lot of them. He imagined what it would be like to unleash the full Red Hood treatment on those goons, and smiled. It sounded like good fun.

Through one of the windows, he caught brief glimpses of the Avenger guy on the top floor, but he wasn't close enough to see any details. As the night wore on, though, sound started to sift towards him from the rooftop, and when he got himself to higher ground he saw people gathered there. Lights, some music even, and smoke rising from what looked like a grill.

He took out his scope - he was way too far to make anyone out without it - and he searched for the mark. Clint Barton, expert marksman, was waiting by the grill with a bun cut in half, and Jason watched as he spread mayo and ketchup over it.

Ugh. Mayo?? The heathen.

He knew it was him from his brief research, but he still found himself surprised. He was just a regular guy, in regular jeans and sneakers. Everyone knew his name and his face, and he didn’t seem to care - just out in the open, living the life in Brooklyn. Is that how all of them were? Just people, living normal lives, as if being a vigilante was just like any other job? He wondered if they got salaries.

Or health insurance.

“Earth‘s mightiest heroes, all right,“ he muttered.

The hawk-arrow-guy received his hot dog, and then turned towards a figure with dark hair resting against a low wall in the corner. Jason focused on it. The figure looked back, directly at him.

“Shit!”

Jason jumped back, as if hit by a muscle spasm, and the scope clattered against the edge of the roof and then fell ten stories down. It smashed into the pavement.

He thought he…

He thought he’d seen Dick.

“Bro!” A voice called from below. “What the hell bro! Coulda kill me!”

Jason tried to focus on the guy he’d seen, but he’d moved and without magnification he couldn’t tell him apart from the rest of the strangers up on that roof.

It couldn’t be.

Hell, no. He was just letting Tim get to him. Mess with his mind. Making him see things.

“Never should’ve agreed in the first place…” he muttered again under his breath as he took out his phone.

Jason: You owe me a scope, Replacement.

There was no reply - kid was probably already out on mission.

He raised his eyes back to that distant rooftop, and saw that the crowd was staring to disperse. There was no more barbecue smoke.

Fuck. Okay.

Better get this done.

He grappled across the first street, and then began to carefully ascend the building from behind, so that he could reach the top of the rooftop access door and could look down below from there. He was just doing this to appease Tim.

Yes.

Only for Tim. And maybe this would make him stop, and they could all go back to pretending they were okay.

Yes.

Because it was stupid to even consider otherwise.

He made it all the way to the top, and there he hid behind rows of satellite dishes and AC units, inching towards the edge to get a clear view down. Far off, near the opposite edge, hawk guy was still there, peering down at the street. He seemed to be looking right at the spot where Jason had been, where he’d dropped the scope. Jason noticed he had devices attached to both his ears - comm units?

He crawled a little bit closer, and caught sight of the top of the other guy’s head, right against the wall. Black hair.

Okay. Time to get this over with.

He reached the edge.

And looked down again.

Then several things happened in quick succession.

A scream died in his throat as he stared into the familiar face, and his vision was tinged with green, his mind back to that time he'd met his brother after another faked death, after another period of mourning. He surged forwards and landed on the terrace, and grabbed that not-stranger by the collar and then grappled up, up, up, towards a higher rooftop. A shout called out behind him, and something small and metallic pinged against his helmet — had someone just shot a coin at him?

He landed, and let go of his charge, who simply collapsed in a heap, torn jacket hanging. Jason couldn't look at him, couldn't think of him, couldn't THINK.

"For the sake of the others," he said, turning. "I'm gonna give you FIVE SECONDS to explain yourself, or else I'll kill you for real."

Dick remained on the ground, legs folded back behind, arms holding him up to a sitting position. His eyes were fixed on him, horrified, and his face had lost all colour. He opened his mouth but something unintelligible came out.

"Five… four… three…"

Jason got closer.

"Two…"

Another step.

"One," he said, and then started to remove the helmet. He kept the mask on, but now his voice was real, and raw, and he could feel his fists shaking. It had been a while since he'd felt rage like this.

"Afraid, Dickhead? You should be. "

He saw how tears started coming out of Dick's eyes, his whole face twisted and twitching, his breath coming in fast. Pathetic.

"Tell me, did anyone know, this time?" Another step. "Did Bruce know?"

Dick let out a sound like a groan now, and then his voice sounded — sort of choppy. Hoarse.

"Are you real?" he said.

And Jason.

Just.

Staggered.

He looked down at Dick: saw him, really saw him, now. The tears. The paleness. How he was still down, still not on his feet, and then he saw…

Just… one… shoe.

And the green just drained out of his eyes.

"Are—are you real?" Dick's voice, again, unsure and shaky.

Jason wanted to—

To hit something—

To kill someone—

"I'm— I'm real," he said, and his own voice broke now. He stretched a hand down. "Fuck, Dickie…"

"Step — THE HELL — back!" an unknown voice suddenly yelled at him, and when he looked up the hawk-guy was up on the other side of the roof, with an arrow fully drawn and pointed right at him. Damn - he shouldn't have removed the helmet.

"I wouldn't try that," he said dryly, and placed a hand on the holster against his hip, pointing the gun faster than the guy could move.

"What are you, a freaking quick-draw cowboy?" the guy said. "I've got this arrow drawn, you shoot me, it still flies." The guy then looked down at Dick, who was still on the ground, trembling. "Hey, D, it's all fine. Can you get over here?"

That voice he used - kind, soft even - made Jason's hair stand on end.

"You stay there," he said, at Dick, and then despite the warning, stepped forward, gun still pointed. "What the fuck is going on here? What have you done to him?"

The man's drawing hand shook a little. He looked up at Jason.

"What have I…?" he said, and then his eyes veered to the helmet still on Jason's other hand. “Who are you? Do you know him?”

Jason could see the guy was starting to analyse the situation, trying to place him there. That would compromise them all.

“I’m leaving, is what I’m doing,” he said, and took one more step closer. He was almost in front of Dick now. "We're leaving. And you’ll piss off if you know what’s good for you.”

"Can't let you do that," Hawkguy said.

"Not asking."

He bent down, and holding his helmet with the crook of his arm, reached to pull Dick up, but Dick flinched when he touched his shoulder, and Jason startled at that. Both rage and confusion were having it out within his mind now, and he let his hand hover over him for a moment, unsure about how to proceed.

The other guy noticed.

"Who is he to you?" he asked, and slightly lessened his draw.

Jason gritted his teeth, his interior alarm blaring danger! danger! danger! but he couldn't just… Dick was… He didn't understand what was—

A low twang sounded somewhere behind him and he turned sharply, but he wasn't quick enough to dodge and halfway through the movement he felt sharp pain coming from the top of his shoulder. He was knocked off his feet, landing hard against the cement. Looking down, he saw an arrow cleanly protruding next to his neck, but in front of him the guy's arrow was still in his bow.

"Katie, what did you DO!"

He felt his heart beating fast, and with each heartbeat, he felt the warmth of blood pouring into his jacket. He hadn't worn the kevlar today. Hadn't thought he'd need it for a stakeout in Brooklyn.

"You're welcome! He's a crime lord and had gun to your head!!" the voice of a girl, that he couldn't see. In front of him, the man had let go of his bow and was coming closer - and Dick, Dick was still on the ground. Staring at him. Shaking. He saw his lips moving though no sound came out.

They formed the word:

"Jay."

"It's just a stun arrow!" the girl shouted. The man was now next to him - he grabbed the gun off his hand - took out the bullets - placed them his pocket.

"Stun arrow? It's gone THROUGH his fucking — Oh my God — give me your — scarf, yeah, give it to me."

Something soft and fluffy was pressed against his neck.

"Clint, oh my God, Clint, it said stun on the nock label, I swear, I… I thought he was gonna kill you, I'm so sorry, Clint, I'm so—" The girl mumbled, like she was crying.

"Kate. Kate? Calm down. Okay? I got this. You get D."

"What?"

"Get D back to the apartment."

"Oh my God, Oh my God—"

"Kate, focus! Can you do that? Can you get D downstairs?"

"Yeah. Yes."

She came into his line of vision now - just a girl. Barely old enough to drink, purple pants, purple jacket - she reminded him of Stephanie. There was blood all over her hands. She reached Dick's side, and lifted him up. Jason's eyes trailed that empty bit of his jeans that hung loose, swinging around until he disappeared from view.

"Hey. Hey!" Someone slapped at his face, and he looked up. Everything was blurry - why couldn't he get up? He should get up. It was just one arrow, it shouldn’t have knocked him down. "Stay awake."

He blinked. Stared at the empty spot where Dick had been. Shit, if he returned now, without him, what would he tell Tim?

"Where's Dick?" he said.

"What?"

"Where's… Where's…"

Everything went dark.

————————

Dick Grayson

————————

Everything was a blur.

He was in a room - not the hospital, why wasn’t he in the hospital? Panic flared - and then he started to remember.

Clint. Clint’s apartment. His room. Rehab. The rooftop. That coin toss and that feeling, that powerful, amazing feeling when the bottle had smashed into a thousand little pieces. A flash of red in the distance and then, a blur. He didn’t know how he’d gotten back to the room, but both his head and his leg were throbbing, so bad that he saw black spots when he tried to sit up. It was early morning, he could see the soft blue light out the window, maybe six or seven already - at what time did the sun rise in January? Was it even still January?

He couldn’t remember anything clearly after the coin toss, but somehow he must’ve gotten down from the roof. And into these clothes… What time was it? Had he taken his meds?

“For once,” a voice, Kate’s, seeped in through the closed door. “this is one occasion in which you really should call for help.”

“Actually, for once,” Clint’s voice now. “We should NOT call for help. He’s a criminal!”

“My point exactly!”

“Kate, Kate, this guy knows D. He knows him! He came for him! Do you think we’ll be able to get an explanation from the guy from freaking Ryker’s Island? Or the Raft??”

“So we should just let him off free? He’s chopped people’s heads off!”

“How do you even KNOW that?”

He stumbled out of bed and leaned against the door. Sweat formed against his forehead, then and he breathed in. And out. In. And out. His head felt like it was splitting. He had to get his meds.

“Clint, do you think D pissed off the mob?”

“Kate—“

“He could’ve gotten hurt running away from them, and that’s why no one reported him missing! Or maybe he’s actually from the mob.”

“Let’s just— let’s not jump to conclusions, okay? We’ll know more when the big guy wakes up.”

“Yeah, if he doesn’t murder us immediately.”

“No one’s getting murdered.”

He reached for his pill bottle, and it slipped and clattered against the floor. The voices stopped.

Steps approached. 

“D?”

The door opened, catching him as he tried and failed to pick up the pill bottle.

“Here, I got it,” Clint said, walking in. He didn’t respond, only resting back on the bed. Clint bent down to pick up the bottle, and as he did so D saw blood splattered all over his shirt. He jumped back. “Hey, hey, it’s fine…”

“What happened?” he asked. “Whose blood is that?”

Clint looked at him, as if scanning.

“D, do you remember what happened last night?”

Rehab. Rooftop. Coin-toss.

“We were…” he started. “Upstairs…? The coin… I… I don’t…”

He pressed down on his forehead. Voice, words, they wouldn’t work today. He took the pills Clint offered him, and winced as he swallowed them. He knew it would still be a while before he felt like he could think with how bad his head hurt.

“Someone tried to grab you,” Clint said. “Someone who’s… not good. We don’t know yet if he wanted to hurt you or how he knows you, but… he does seem to know who you are.”

He looked up at Clint, and winced again as his eyes caught the faint morning light.

“Where is…?”

“Kate hit him, hit an artery. He’s still out, but he’s… We don’t know his name but he’s a wanted man, he’s known as a crime boss down South, the, uh… murdering kind. So, yeah, I wanted to ask… if you knew him. If you remembered him.”

He closed his eyes. Thought of last night. Rooftop, coin toss. The flash of red across the street.

Pain flared in his head like the blow of an icepick, and he doubled over. Clint grabbed his shoulders, and then disappeared for a second before returning with a water bottle.

“Here,” he said, placing it on his shaking hands. “Just lie down. I’ll come back later, let the pills do their thing.”

He wanted to say no. He wanted to tell him that he wanted to go out, that he wanted to SEE, and to KNOW and he didn’t need to be treated like an invalid, but already he could feel the information Clint had just given him just…

slipping…

from his mind…

A flash of red.

A red… face.

He knew that face. He knew that voice.

He knew… He knew…

He flinched when Clint touched his shoulder.

“What…? What?” he said. He saw blood on Clint’s sleeves. “What is that? What happened?”

“Yeah, lie down, D. Okay?”

Clint took a few steps back, hands up, as if gauging if he would stay down or not.

He stayed down.

Soon he closed his eyes, and then in his mind the walls of the room morphed into those of the hospital.

————————

Clint Barton

————————

He closed the door, and emerged into the living room, taking in the sight he’d left just a few moments ago - yep, still shocking. He’d left the mob boss slash vigilante lying on the couch but it was too small for him, and his legs hanging over the side made the whole place seem tiny. His right hand was wrapped against his chest, tangled in a bandage covering the side of his neck and top of his shoulder so that he couldn’t move it and aggravate the wounds. The arrow had gone in the back of his shoulder, which would have made for a clean, easy fix, but the guy had turned just in the right moment so it had hit him at an angle and exited out the side of his neck. Clint didn’t think he’d ever get the stains out of… basically every surface from the rooftop to this room.

They’d zip-tied the man’s free hand to the leg of the couch, and now it was hanging there, pale as the rest of him. They’d taken the helmet but Clint had decided to leave the mask on, as that might smooth things over if it turned out to be a sensitive issue - for a guy wearing a full face helmet, it probably was.

“How’s D?” Kate asked him.

She was standing by the kitchen, making coffee, but Clint thought the bags under her eyes were beyond the help of caffeine. And his were probably worse. Her clothes were also stained and when she grabbed a mug, the rusty colour transferred to the white ceramic. It made Clint nauseous.

“Out of it,” Clint said. “Doesn’t remember him.”

“Well, that’s not surprising.”

“No, he doesn’t remember anything about last night, except maybe the coin toss.”

“What coin toss?”

“Oh yeah…” Clint said, and sighed. “You totally missed it. He tossed a coin from like, all the way across the roof and hit a bottle, it was epic.”

“He remembered that and not getting grabbed and swung across the street by a murderer?”

Clint shrugged.

“Like I said, he’s out of it. We can ask again once the meds kick in.”

Clint approached the unconscious mob boss that now occupied his living room. Without the helmet, he certainly didn’t look as intimidating as the stories Kate had spent the morning updating him on - before he’d had only a very surface knowledge. It was shocking to consider now, looking at him like this. He barely seemed a little older than Kate.

Clint noticed his lips were the same colour as his skin.

“He really could use a transfusion,” he said.

“Want me to wake him up and get his blood type?” Kate said. “You can then avenge me when he kills me.”

“He’s not killing anyone,” Clint said, and he pulled from his pocket the bullets he’d taken off the gun last night. He dropped them on the table and they didn’t clatter. “They’re rubber.”

“What?” Kate said.

“They were rubber bullets,” he said. “In his gun.”

Kate surged forward, and grabbed one, twisting it in her fingers.

“What kind of mobster has a handgun with rubber bullets?”

The man’s face twitched, as if he was dreaming. Kate fiddled with her coffee, not looking at either of them.

“The nock really did say stun,” she said, lower voice now.

“I know,” Clint said. His mind supplied the image of the arrow shaft he'd had to pull out of the side of the guy's neck. “You still shouldn’t have shot him without warning.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” Kate said, and then gingerly offered her mug to Clint. “I thought he’d shoot you.”

Clint looked at the mug for a moment, then took it.

“Thanks,” he said. He took a sip, and rested down on the nearest stool. They had set up a drip of saline solution, which was all they had available in their limited first aid kit. It now hung loosely from the coat rack behind the couch, almost completely gone. The wounds themselves - entry and exit - were small and clean, and Clint had been able to stitch them up himself, though Kate had said his stitches looked like embroidery.

“The Red Hood’s from Gotham, so then D’s probably from Gotham too,” Kate said. Clint nodded.

“Makes sense. Gotham’s wild. There are plenty underground vigilantes there.”

“What if he’s the Batman?” Kate said. Clint scoffed.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Why not? Suit was all torn up, it could have been just a piece of it.”

“For one, I’m not entirely sure if he’s real,” Clint said. Kate mock-gasped.

“Of course he’s real!”

“Yeah, I don’t know. He's been active for decades, D's too young. And I don't buy the huge flying bat thing."

"Jeez, with everything you've seen, you're drawing the line at a bat costume? What's next, you don't believe in magic?"

Clint chuckled.

"Well, when you put it like that…"

He started going through the things they'd taken from the Red Hood's belt and pockets - a grapple gun, a disposable cellphone, a regular cellphone, a tiny first aid kit with what looked like fast-clotting powder (which would've been super helpful last night), a second handgun also loaded with rubber bullets, and a taser. He grabbed the cellphones, but both were blocked and displayed no information.

“So what are we going to tell him?” Kate said.

“Everything, I guess.”

“Even about the suit?”

“Look at the guy, don’t you think he already knows?” Clint pointed at the man’s face. “He’s got the same sort of mask and the same grapple hook. They obviously know each other.”

“So they’re, what? Honourable criminals? D saved your life. He’s not a mobster. And if he doesn’t remember that guy then we can’t just take his word for it and let him take him.”

“Well we need to give him something if we want him to tell us who he is.”

"Hmph…"

They both turned towards the prone man on the couch just as he woke up. This was no gentle coming into awareness - a second after opening his eyes he was jerking up right, bandaged arm struggling against the shoulder wrapping, and his other, zip-tied hand jerked so hard the couch skidded on the floor. Both Clint and Kate took a step back.

The man yanked again at the zip tie, and then collapsed back on the couch, pale and sweaty.

"What the hell did you do to me?" the man said in hoarse voice that sort of faded near the end. The weird white lenses of his mask flickered and then came on again, and he started yanking his bandaged arm free.

"You really shouldn't… do that…" Kate said, just as he got the hand and then the arm out, and then took off the IV saline. He straightened up to a sitting position and almost immediately the bandage between neck and shoulder began to bleed.

"You just tore your stitches, genius," Clint said. The man - what was he called? - Red Hood, like that was a name, looked up. Took in his surroundings.

"You shot me," he said.

"Actually," Clint pointed at Kate, "she shot you."

"Where is this—" his face then, if possible, looked even paler. "Where's—Where is he? Why did you bring me here? WHERE IS—"

Clint clapped, stunning him for a second.

"Okay," he said. "Mr. Red Hood? He's behind that door over there. Sleeping, unless you keep this up."

"Or you'll what—?"

"Or you'll wake him, with your screaming? Jesus. What kind of people do you think we are?" Kate said.

"The shooting arrows into necks kind," Red Hood said.

"Okay, fair…"

"Now,” Clint cut in. “You wanna tell us why exactly you decided to come up here from Gotham and add some light kidnapping to your rap sheet?"

Red Hood simply glared at them.

"Piss off."

"Yeah, that's not gonna cut it," Clint said. "You know, we may not look like much for a scary baddie like you, but as you saw last night we are capable of some damage, so.."

Red Hood scoffed, like the whole idea was unimaginable, and then he stilled when he turned again to the closed door. Something like a knock sounded inside, and again he forcefully tried to get himself up from the couch.

“Just— Fuck! This doesn’t concern you!” he roared, and then, after another yank, he seemed to settle. He looked like he was counting his breaths.

“And just how does it concern you?” Clint shot back, but then another sound came from behind the door, and this time, when the Red Hood yanked his hand from the couch, the zip tie flew off and he burst forward towards the door.

————————

Jason Todd

————————

He felt sick.

He felt SICK, and his vision was blurry, his heart was beating so fast against the back of his throat he was dizzy, so loud he couldn’t hear himself think, but he needed to think, he needed to THINK.

It was morning, so if Tim was done with his mission then he would already be aware of his absence and was probably freaking out. Depending on where in the world he’d gone with the Titans, he could probably expect a bailout from him within the next twenty four hours, but how would that even work, with where he was? In a residential apartment. With one, and possibly two agents of order. With his helmet off. He had no doubt that Tim would come for him, if not only just to confirm about the file himself, but he needed to contact him so he wouldn't get compromised. He saw his phones in the table, just out of his reach.

Hell, it would be easier if these people were villains. He’d had no qualms then in leaving them close to death, grab Dick, and book it out of New York in the same breath. But messing with Avengers - or avenger-adjacent people - that was strictly a no-no in his book. Way too much mess and exposure. To be avoided at all costs.

So what was he supposed to do now?

He looked up at the door. Dick was behind it.

Clint Barton and the little girl sidekick were talking to him now, but he couldn’t hear the words, could only stare at that door. Seeing Dick still felt like a dream. Still didn’t seem real. This time he had really believed he was gone. He’d given up. And all this time…

All this time…

He pulled at his hand, felt a creak of wood and then a sharp sting as the tie stretched and then snapped, and he got up and pushed forward guided solely by momentum. He stumbled into the door, pretty much resting his weight on the handle as he turned and pushed it, ignoring the shouting that ensued and the hands that tried to hold him back. He staggered inside, panting, and let the door slam against the other side so hard the whole room seemed to shake.

And he looked at the bed.

It wasn’t a dream.

Dick was on his back but lifting himself up on his elbows, and Jason saw that he was looking at him without fear this time. He looked smaller, and thinner than before, and his face had lost some of its regular tan. Over the table there were dozens of pill bottles, and Jason remembered the other files in the neuro ward and in the doctor's office. Brain damage. Traumatic Brian Injury. Memory Loss. How the doctor had said, so casually, ‘do keep us updated on Dan’s progress’. How Tim had said he’d flagged the file before, and dismissed it for some reason, maybe because it wasn’t a John Doe.

How Tim had still never stopped searching.

ALL. THIS. TIME.

And how he had looked at him yesterday and the first thing he'd thought was that he'd betrayed them again, lied again, faked it.

Jason pushed back an arm that grabbed him, ignoring the pain that flared in his shoulder, and he hit back, hard, then collapsed against the bed. Looked down at the missing leg. Looked up at his missing brother who was staring, bewildered, at the unfolding scene.

Are you real?

Jason took off his mask - because fuck it - he didn’t care anymore. He reached and touched Dick’s forearm.

“Hey, Dickie,” he said, and he tried to sound normal but his voice was choked. “Do you know who I am?”

Dick opened and closed his mouth, once, twice, without speaking, and his eyes looked strangely blank and lost. Jason hadn't felt horror like that in years. His hands shook against Dick's arm, and every sound seemed amplified - his breath, Dick's breath, the ticking of the clock on the nightstand.

"Di—"

Dick took hold of Jason's hands like he was holding on for dear life, and then, in the most typical Dick-move, he stretched up and wrapped his arms around Jason, burying his face against his uninjured shoulder with a force that surprised him. Jason couldn't help it but stiffen for a second before he leaned into it, and then as his own arms wrapped around the impossibly lean frame of his big brother, he felt Dick shake against him. Crying. Loudly.

"You're okay," he said softly, and he removed his glove to place his hand against the back of Dick's head. A grounding touch. “You’re alive.”

"Jay?" The voice, like a rush of air.

"Yeah, it's me," Jason said. His own eyes stung. "It’s me. I'm real."

Chapter Text

————————

Jason Todd

————————

Someone touched his shoulder, some time later, and when he separated himself from Dick a wave of dizziness made him realise he’d began to lean too much on him, practically pushing him back with his weight. Someone began to pull him, balancing him, and Dick stared at him with his eyes puffy and red, but he was no longer shaking. Jason saw he'd left a blood stain on his shirt and it had seeped into some of the bedding.

"You're— you have—“ Dick said, and stuttered a little, like he couldn’t get the words out. Then he pointed at his own neck. "You're bleeding.”

Jason swallowed hard. He had never seen Dick unable to speak before, and it felt… wrong. His whole demeanour, even his expression, it was all wrong.

"I'm fine," he said, despite the lightheadedness, and he tried to make his voice sound less harsh but he wasn’t sure he succeeded. As he turned, though, he noticed Clint Barton was still holding him, pushing the back of his jacket so he didn’t topple off the bed. The girl was also there, standing in the doorway. Her eyes looked as though she’d cried, too.

"No, what happened?" Dick insisted.

"He's gonna be all right, D," Clint cut in. "I'll patch it up. How's the head feeling?"

"It's fine," Dick said, and Clint scoffed.

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “You're fine, he's fine, everyone’s fine.”

Then he grabbed Jason's shoulder and started to lead him away.

"What are you doing—" Jason protested.

"We'll be right back," Clint assured Dick, then looked at Jason, in a whisper. “You’re bleeding all over, man, come on.”

“Get off—“

He felt an arm trying to support his weight as he got off the bed, and when he pushed back against it his vision went dark around the edges and he started to list to one side. He was pushed up and then outside, and the door was closed. The hands that held him released him, and he had to lean back on the wall for support.

"Sit down before you fall down," Clint said. Jason glared at him. "Come on. Pretty sure you don't want me to dump you at the ER if you go into shock or something."

“What happened to him?” Jason asked, and hated the lack of control in his voice. “Why-why is he like that? He — his leg—

“We’ll tell you everything but you really should sit down…”

“Why’d you hide him? Why the fake name? We could’ve found him.”

“Who’s we?” the girl asked.

“His real fucking family.”

Jason looked around him, searching. His breath was coming in so loud he sounded like an animal.

“Where’s my phone?”

He tried to get past Clint, towards the coffee table, but got blocked, and this time he didn’t have the strength to barrel through. The room was spinning.

“I need my phone.”

“Phone’s right there, just…”

Jason reached for it, and then the darkness returned to the edges of his eyes. He saw yellow spots, and then felt his knees hit the ground.

He’d found Dick.

He’d found Dick but he was brain damaged and with a couple of friendly fucking Avengers that didn’t seem too keen on letting either of them go.

He’d found Dick and gotten himself shot, with an ARROW, by a little girl, and now he was about to pass out for the second time and he hadn’t even told Tim.

Tim.

What a fucking disaster.

"What's your blood type?" he heard the girl ask.

"What?"

"I said, what's your blood type?"

He was on the ground now, on his back. Someone was undoing his bandage. He thought about Tim showing up to this shit show. Or hell, Damian showing up. His reaction.

“You got something coming, kid,” he said, and when she pressed down on his shoulder, he closed his eyes.

————————

Kate Bishop

————————

Clint held a little sealed envelope out to her.

“Clotting powder.”

“What?”

“Clotting powder. Found it in his pocket. Use it.”

“What, do I just sprinkle it over him like dusting sugar? How does this even work?”

Clint huffed.

“You really should get a first aid course,” he said, and kneeled down next to her. He opened the packet, and poured half on the entry and half on the exit wound. Kate let go of the unconscious man’s shoulder and crawled back.

“I’m operating on zero sleep here,” she said. “Also the neighbours have been complaining about the noise.”

“When exactly do you think I’ve slept?” Clint said.

“Okay, sorry…”

She rested back against the couch, and watched as Clint meticulously removed the bandage and cut off the torn stitches. This time, he got out a stapler that he’d spent almost twenty minutes searching for among the boxes stuffed into the linen closet. The man didn’t flinch at the first staple.

She wanted to get back to D’s room, but for some reason she felt like she needed to stay there — like Clint would want her to stay. The man’s words kept turning around in her head and she was finding it harder and harder to bear.

If they hadn’t faked the name, they would’ve found him.

His real family.

And she was the one who’d done that. She was the reason so much time had passed. How D had looked at the man -- Jay — and how they had held each other… he could’ve had that before.

If it hadn’t been for her.

“Stop it,” Clint said. He was taking counted breaths as he stitched, while at the same time looking at an instruction video from a medical school in YouTube. So much for the first aid course.

“Stop what?”

“You’re guilt-tripping yourself,” Clint said, sparing a glance at her. “I’m the expert in that, remember? So stop, and help me out here.”

“What do I do?”

“Get the heat up, this place is freezing,” Clint said.

Kate got up, and tried to turn the handle on the radiator. It barely budged. She thought of telling Clint she should have all these changed, he was the landlord after all, but now didn’t seem like the right time.

“I’ll get blankets,” she said, instead.

“Wait,” Clint said. “I’m done here, help me get him up on the couch.“

Kate approached, and grabbed the man’s legs. He wore nondescript cargo pants, and once she‘d helped move him, she undid the laces of his boots and pried them off.

“What if he means it?” she said softly. “That we got something coming?”

Clint looked back at her.

“Better deal with one thing at a time, Katie.”

“Don’t you think we should ask for help?”

Clint sighed.

“If it comes to that,” he said. “Then maybe. But I think calling attention to them will just make them disappear. Big guy at least looked like the sort.”

Kate nodded.

“I’m sorry,” she said, again. Clint shook his head.

“This isn’t on you, Katie,” he said. “And I’m sorry I snapped at you. This is just… messed up.”

“What can I do?” she asked.

“Uh… Maybe check on D,” Clint said. “I’m gonna set up the IV line here again, also see about some food.”

Kate nodded, and retreated to D’s room, slowly opening the door. When she found that he’d fallen asleep again, though, she did not immediately return. Instead she closed the door behind her and sat down on the floor.

She’d been fighting the need to cry ever since she’d let go of that arrow, and now that there was no one to see her, it was too hard to keep it in. She hated the smell of blood on her clothes, and how it had crusted under her nails and she couldn’t get it out even after washing. She remembered that black pool that had formed, that Clint had let her scarf soak up, and she had done that. She had caused that. To a man who probably had never intended to shoot them with rubber bullets anyway.

She just couldn't keep herself from messing up. 

When D had looked at that man his eyes had had more sharpness, more focus, than she had ever seen before. And this should be great news. She should be happy that a person who cared about him had shown up, should be happy that their work, as it were, was now done. She hated that instead all she could think of was how she was going to explain that she’d shot him. And she hated herself, she really did, for the small part of her that resented that soon D would be gone. Like none of this had ever happened. 

“You’re not gonna be mad, are you?” she asked, getting nothing but silence and closed eyes as an answer. "If I suck, would you tell me?"

She saw the bloodstains, on the bedding, and turned away from them.

Yesterday when she’d helped D off the roof and down the stairs, he hadn’t looked at her. He never made eye contact, too out of it to even notice when she took off his shoes and got him in bed. She wondered if he would remember that now. She wondered if maybe that whole time he’d been remembering other things.

She blinked, and wiped at her eyes. Faced D again. Thought back on the hundred-plus hours reading The Lord of the Rings, and sharing jello, and helping him cheat on his therapy puzzles, and how the fondness of those memories was now tainted by the fact that it could’ve been his family there, instead of her.

That maybe he’d even be normal by now.

“I’m sorry, okay?” she said. “I really am.”

Then, after a few deep breaths, she stood back up, straightened her clothes, and returned to the living room.

————————

Tim Drake

————————

He made it back to the tower early in the morning, but did not complete debrief until almost noon, and by then his skin was itching with anticipation. He knew Jason had left him a message, something about his scope, but he hadn’t been able to check again, and also two days without logging in to his system was giving him serious withdrawals.

Wow, he really sounded like an addict.

He got up and raced out towards the room he’d left his stuff in — no longer just his room after his prolonged absence but something like it — and didn’t answer the questions of his teammates, didn’t even look back at them. He’d loved going out with them on mission again, loved the thrill of being in action, of being together, but this. This was more important. 

Once in the room he booted his portable computer and phone at the same time, and ignored the compiled events of note going straight to the missing file — yep, still missing. He then checked Jason’s messages.

Jason: You owe me a scope, Replacement.

And after that, nothing.

Why did he owe him a scope? What the hell did that even mean?

Tim: Hey, RH, you in?

Tim: RH, report.

Tim: Jason!!

He expected immediate teasing, like you’re not B I don’t report to you and that kind of stuff, but got nothing. The messages weren’t read, and he hadn’t even been active since just after the last message. Jason had no tracker, and as far as Tim knew his phone was very well protected, so he couldn’t know where he was.

But he knew where he’d been.

Tim: Barbara, I need a favour.

BG: Anything.

Tim: I need to do some stuff in New York and need you to cover for me with B.

BG: hmm…

BG: It’s not like I meet him every morning for breakfast, Tim, you live with him. What am I supposed to say.

Tim: Just, if he asks. Tell him I’ll be with the Titans. Everyone here will back it up. Also, tell Damian if he asks.

BG: Damian??

Tim: Basically, tell anyone who asks.

Tim: I won’t be doing anything dangerous, I promise. Won’t even wear the suit.

BG: Okay. But keep the tracker on.

BG: And Tim.

BG: …

BG: Take care of yourself, okay?

As he put down the phone, Tim thought that if he’d actually talked with Barbara, he would’ve heard her voice wobble. He could never share any updates of his search with her but he knew that she was aware of it. She found it too painful to hear about it.

He hoped to put an end to that soon.

Though he wasn’t above driving without a licence, he figured that the safest way to get to New York would be to travel as a regular civilian, so he booked a train ticket. He had always liked travelling in trains, and now, as he boarded, he remembered surfing on the backs of passenger cars with Dick, before Jason came back, before Damian. It felt like ages ago.

Tim: Jason, I’m going to check out the Brooklyn apt

Tim: So if you’re alive

Tim: Now’s the time to reply

Tim: Jason?

Tim imagined that Jason could be back in Gotham now, back in Crime Alley dealing with whatever mobster he currently had eyes on. It wasn’t exactly uncommon for him to go radio silent. But it was just… strange that he hadn’t at least sent Tim a message after checking the apartment.

Unless that was what he meant when he said he owed him a scope. Was that it? Did that mean ‘nothing to see here, you owe me?’ Unexpected was the norm, with Jason, so he had to at least consider that.

He had a valid (fake) ID that he used for his tickets and enough cash to not need to use credit, but he made a point to wait until after three pm before he ventured out past the safe house towards the apartment. He couldn’t guarantee he wouldn’t catch a policeman’s attention, and the last thing he needed was to get arrested for truancy and be forced to call Bruce from a precinct. He shuddered just thinking about it.

Jason’s stuff was still in the safe house. He didn’t know Tim was aware of its existence, and so it didn’t have as airtight a security system as some of the others, but then again it was in Brooklyn, and it hardly got any use. A foldable cot was in a corner, untouched, and Jason’s suit and armour was tucked away behind it. A stash of weapons was hidden below, and in the closet, a full first aid kit. Jason must have left his stuff there before going to check out the apartment, and then he had not returned - Tim could tell from the log-in times. And it wasn’t like Jason to just leave his stuff, and everything was there, except…

Except for the helmet.

Why had he worn the helmet?

His mind instantly went to worse case scenarios.

“Jason, what have you done?”

The helmet made Jason recognisable, even away from Gotham. If he’d let himself be seen by an Avenger, he could’ve gotten himself imprisoned. And it wasn’t like those government sanctioned superheroes were above secret prisons or unlawful incarceration, so if Jason had somehow exposed himself, then they could all potentially be blown. He could think of no reason why Jason would ever be vulnerable to something like that, would ever even let himself be seen, except if… if he had actually found something.

He had to stamp down an incredibly strong desire to call Bruce, to tell him everything and call for help. Instead he breathed in deep, shed all he had on him that could potentially identify him, grabbed one of the med kits, and got out of the safe house with his backpack. He looked like a kid who’d just left school.

He headed for the apartment.

————————

Jason Todd

————————

This time he came into awareness gently. There was still pain — in his neck, in his head — but it was not accompanied by nausea, and when he opened his eyes the world was no longer spinning. He was in the same couch as before, but the room was in silence. Something heavy - blankets? - were lying over him but he still felt cold, the weird, sweaty sort of cold you feel when you’re sick. He straightened a little, trying to look around, and he felt the IV line again, now taped to his other arm. He was no longer tied down to anything.

As soon as he managed to sit up he felt faint again, but after a few seconds the sensation passed and his vision cleared. He stared first at the door to the room where he’d seen Dick - closed, silent. Then in the other couch, Clint Barton - sprawled there, blood all over his sleeves, asleep and… snoring. He must really believe that Jason wasn’t a threat to just leave him there and take a nap.

“You’re up,” the girl said, from somewhere out of his field of vision. Kitchen maybe. Jason tried turning but his neck felt too stiff.

“I wouldn’t say up, exactly,” he said. She appeared then, coming in from his left. She held out a mug in her hand.

“You think you can hold this?” she said. He stretched his hand towards it, and if he did so slowly, it didn’t tremble.

“What is it?”

“Tea. Chamomile actually. Caffeine messes up with iron absorption which is no good for anaemia.”

Jason took the mug, and managed to bring it to his lips without spilling. He pressed both palms against it, taking in its warmth.

“Good to know,” he said. A very limited first aid kit was spread over the coffee table in front of him, not the sort he imagined Avengers would have. Then again he also hadn’t expected them to live in run down Brooklyn apartments. “Aren’t you guys supposed to have, like, spaceships and shit?”

The girl shrugged.

“You wouldn’t have appreciated the attention.”

“You got that right,” Jason said. “I’d really appreciate my phones back, though.”

The girl returned to the kitchen as a loud beep sounded, and he heard her curse as smoke began to collect against the ceiling. She opened the windows, and a freezing breeze flowed in.

“Sorry. Don’t know where Clint’s got them.”

Jason pulled the edges of the blanket closer to himself, and cast a glance at Clint.

“Aren’t you gonna wake him?”

“Not yet. I figured at least one of us should get some sleep.”

“Well, yeah, and you shot me, so…” Jason said, and the girl turned her eyes away for a second, looking guilty. “What’s your name?”

“Kate,” she said. “You? ‘Jay’, is it?”

Jason gulped. He remembered he didn’t have a mask on, that he’d said Dick’s name out loud, that Dick had said his own name. That on its own was enough for these people to connect the dots on who they were, and from there it was only a matter of time before they knew everything.

Bruce was gonna have a fit when he found out.

“You can say that, yeah,” he said, still unwilling to supply his full name even if it was inevitable that Dick would say it eventually. Then he looked back at the door. “Why do you call him D?”

“Because his name’s not Dan,” Kate said. “But we had to call him something.”

Jason felt a weight pressing against his throat.

“He couldn’t remember his name?”

Kate shook her head.

“Nope. We don’t know anything about him. You’re the first person he’s recognised in over half a year.”

“What happened to him?” Jason asked, this time without shouting. He no longer had the energy for outrage, and only the sadness remained. Half a year. Six months. Had it really been that long? And all this time…

All this time he had been here, not even knowing his own name.

Kate turned to look at Clint, and hesitated.

“Are you gonna tell us who he is?” she said. “Who you are? I mean, first names should help us figure it out, but you could just tell us, right? We’ve got part of D’s suit. We have some idea of his night job.”

Jason took a sip of the tea, which wasn’t as warm anymore, and leaned back on the couch. He wondered what he would say if he still had the strength to get up and storm out. If he was still able to be simpleminded about this, or angry about this. Would he just grab Dick and leave?

Would Dick want that?

He looked around at the bars that had been installed around the place. The wheelchair by the door. The little schedule pinned with a magnet to the fridge that said “PT”. These people weren’t holding Dick hostage. They were doing what his own family should have been doing.

“You people have been looking out for him,” he said. “Taking… care of him… all this time?” He looked up at Kate. “Why?”

“It’s funny, he asked the same thing,” Kate said. “Apparently it’s so strange? Like we should’ve just let him die or something.”

“No, but you could’ve just left him at—“

On the couch Clint suddenly shuddered, and then he opened his eyes with hands flying straight towards his ears.

“Kate? Kate?” he said, voice way too loud and turning to search for her. Kate stood up and went to him, holding out to him the comm units Jason had seen him wearing.

“Charged them for you,” she said, as he took them. Then, as he put them on, Jason realised they weren’t actually comm units at all.

“You’re deaf?” he asked.

Clint’s eyes searched for Kate’s - ignoring, or possibly not hearing him. “What time is it?”

“It’s half past five,” she told him, making the numbers with her hands. “I left food for you in the microwave, but… it’s a bit burnt.”

“Why didn’t you wake me up? How—why didn’t—“

“Relax,” Kate said, pointing at Jason. “He just woke up, too. You haven’t missed anything.”

“And D?”

“Still out.”

“Hey, man, can you give me my phones back now,” Jason asked. That seemed to snap Clint out of his sleep confusion, and he stood up from the couch and attempted to wipe the dried blood off his clothes, but his shirt was now stiff with it. Then he took the two phones out of his pocket, but did not immediately hand them to Jason.

“Oh yeah,” Clint said. “You were going to tell us who you were.”

“No, I wasn’t,” Jason said. “You were about to tell me what happened to Dick.”

“Dick?”

“Yeah. That’s his name, spare me the commentary.”

“I wasn’t gonna… Whatever. Kate?”

“I didn’t say anything,” she said.

“Okay, umm… Okay. He recognises you. So I guess… Yeah. There’s not a lot to tell,” Clint said, and began to pace. “He just showed up in a rooftop, beat to hell, he saved my ass from those tracksuit-wearing idiots, and then fell off a building,” he stopped. Took a breath. Jason tried to imagined the situation, and then stopped himself. From Clint’s wince, it probably hadn’t been pretty. “He woke up like twelve weeks later with post traumatic amnesia. We did the name thing because of medical proxy issues. We didn’t tell anyone about him, didn’t show anyone the suit. No one else knows.”

“Got it,” Jason said. “Now, my phones?”

“Kate, he tell you anything?” Clint said.

“Nope. Well, his name’s Jay.”

“Jay?” Clint said, smiling. “You’re just a kid, aren’t you, Jay? That helmet a joke to you?”

“Bite me.”

“Well, Jay,  honestly, I don’t give a crap who you are, or what you’ve done, but who is he? I want an answer. You’ve seen him, seen how he is. He’s still not okay. I need to know that if he goes with you, he will be.”

Jason left the mug he was holding over the table, hands still a little shaky, and he let go of the edges of the blanket.

“Look, man,” he said. “I don’t want to appear ungrateful, and I’m clearly not in a great position to negotiate on account of your sidekick there shooting me in the neck—“

“I’m not a sidekick—“

“—but I’ve got people looking out for me who know I was here. Get it? We can talk all you want, but if I don’t check in soon, I’m not gonna be the last thing showing up on your rooftop, and trust me, the others won’t be as understanding.”

Jason imagined what Tim would think of that line, and smiled. Just the idea that he was the understanding one was fucking ridiculous, but then again if he had 20% of his blood back, he probably wouldn’t be.

“That a threat?” Clint said.

“Just a fact.”

“Give me the password and I’ll check in for you.”

“I’m not giving you my fucking password, just give me back the phone!”

“Sorry, man, don’t got a lot of trust for mobsters into beheadings.”

“What did you say?“

Jason stood, and ignored how for a second his vision went black, how the sweat emerging from his forehead felt ice cold. He took a step towards Clint, letting the blankets fall off him. He was beyond the exhaustion. Blood or no blood, this was him operating on pure rage.

“Wanna repeat that?” he said, slowly. Clint seemed to look at him differently now, as if he was only just noticing that he was in another weight class entirely, but he gathered himself within a few seconds and stood his ground.

“You can drop the intimidation tactics,” he said. “You’re one push away from going into shock.”

Jason gritted his teeth, angry enough to make his jaw hurt. Every nerve in his body was telling him to sit back down but he desperately wanted to push forward, sink a fist into a wall. He let out a breath, trying not to look defeated, and then took a step back.

“Yeah, I thought so—“

Clint cut off, and lifted one of his hands as a generic ringtone sounded. He was holding up the flip phone.

“It’s ringing,” Clint said.

Jason frowned. No one knew that number, it was strictly work-stuff. Outgoing calls only, no incoming, no messages, so he’d never bothered disabling the buzzer. Not even Bruce would know to reach him there...

“Oh fuck,” he said. Tim.

“What?” Kate asked, alarmed. Clint kept looking at the phone.

“Who is it? Do I answer it?” he asked Jason, but then the three of them turned away at the sound of three sharp knocks on the door.

“Who is that!” Clint snapped, and went to check through the peep hole. Kate stepped behind the furniture and picked up a bow hanging from the wall, then got an arrow ready. They both looked at Jason as the phone kept ringing, but Jason just smiled back at them.

“You should’ve given me the phones back, man.”

He sank back down on the couch, hands holding up the weight of his head. He thought about yelling through the door, warn Tim so that he wouldn’t expose himself, too, but knowing him that would only encourage him. The knocks sounded again, and Kate readied an arrow.

“Put that down!” he hissed at her.

“Why should I? You just threatened us!”

“I didn’t threaten you, I just told you this was about to happen.”

“Who’s knocking, then?” she asked.

“It’s a freaking kid,” Clint said, and he opened the door.

Tim, dressed like a middle schooler, lowered a hand that had been about to knock on the door again. His eyes were on Jason first, scanning him in that analytic robot-like way that used to infuriate him, and then they flitted back to Clint and Kate, who were somehow not even moving. They were frozen on their spots, as if it was a fantastic creature that stood outside and not a sixteen year old with a backpack.

Jason met Tim’s eyes, and smiled.

“We,” he said. “Are so screwed.”

————————

Dick Grayson

————————

Again he heard voices when he woke up, but as the fog lifted from his mind bit by bit he had the sense not to make any noise, and no one rushed into the room to check on him. The hours before falling asleep returned to him in a trickle:

The man in the red helmet had come for him last night.

He knew him.

The voice that had spoken matched a voice in those weird dreams, a voice that was familiar, friendly… loved. The phantom sense of belonging, the faceless ghosts of people who were his people, people who were his family — this voice belonged to one of them. He’d known the moment he heard it, had felt attached to it just as he’d felt attached to the hospital rooftop, to the idea of growing up in a circus. Even if the rational part of his brain had thought it was a fantasy, a hallucination of some sort, he’d still known.

He had remembered.

“Jason,” he said, trying it out loud.

The name felt right in his mouth.

His mind presented images of a boy with a smirk on his face, a boy who barely reached his shoulders, who said his name in a playful, mocking way while wearing a mask similar to the one Clint had shown him.

“Perfect little Dick. You’re always so perfect, aren’t you?”

That voice with the same mocking, childish disdain. Saying his name.

He was… That was his name.

He felt…

Whole.

The headache had abated and he felt lucid, now, but as he looked at the clock on the nightstand - it was already so late - he suddenly feared he could lose what he had just gained. He had just a piece, just a little fragment of memory from which to build up all the rest, but maybe he would wake up a few hours from now and not know again. He’d lose that piece, and be back in the darkness.

He got up from bed, and reached for the little notepad Kate had bought him for the rehab exercises.

My name is Dick. I have a family. I have a little brother. His name is Jason.

He tore the paper, and repeated the words to himself over and over, paying attention to the images that it brought to the surface.

A red-breasted bird. Bats.

Flying.

He remembered back at the hospital his mind working so fast when he watched those true crime series with Kate, how it felt almost like an instinct to tag and catalogue the clues offered, and how he always guessed right. That wasn’t a coincidence, it wasn’t a knack. It was part of who he was.

He reached for his crutches and stood, and noticed then how there was blood on the bed and on his clothes, even though he was pretty sure he hadn’t been hurt. Had something happened?

Jason.

He changed quickly into something clean, and then grabbed his paper after fastening the crutches to his forearms, careful not to alert anyone outside. He repeated the phrase under his breath a couple more times before facing the door, but paused when he noticed the room on the other side was silent. Where had they gone? Didn’t Jason know he was there? Was Jason the one who was hurt? He pushed and grabbed on to the door handle, suddenly afraid he’d imagined his previous encounter, that it really was a fantasy.

Then he froze as a the door was opened from the other side.

And a new face stared back at him.

————————

Tim Drake

————————

Tim heard voices as he climbed the building’s winding stairs, and his heart began to hammer against his throat.

“What did you say?”

Jason’s voice. Jason was there. Why was Jason still there?

Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod

He took the stairs three at a time and came to stop at a landing with a couple of doors, but he could no longer hear the voices and didn’t know which one to open. Quietly, he took out his phone and rang Jason’s burner.

Panic ensued inside the first door as the ringtone sounded.

Bingo

Tim took a deep breath, and then knocked on the door.

“Who is that?”

“You should’ve given me the phones back, man.”

He recognised Jason’s voice again, and the man’s, who he guessed was Hawkeye. And there was also a woman inside.

Tim started to knock again, and then the door was suddenly opened.

Jason, sitting down. Looking right at him. Blood, bandages, more blood, blood all over the floor and the couch and his clothes. And he was… smiling? He could see that teasing wink in his eyes -- there was no mask. No helmet.

Oh God, they were blown.

Behind Jason, a girl holding a bow and arrow, but not drawn, and next to her, Clint Barton, in civilian clothes, looking like a man who’s had a bit too much the night before and not slept well in some time.

Jason again, laughing at him?

And - his throat caught at the thought - Dick wasn’t even there.

“We,” Jason said. “Are so screwed.”

Tim didn’t step inside.

“I’m sorry, I think I got the wrong place,” he said, abort abort abort running through his head, and he tried to turn around but Clint Barton’s eyes narrowed as they focused on the phone Tim still held, the phone that had called the burner that was still in his hand.

“Sure thing, kid,” he said, and in one swift movement he grabbed him by the edge of his jacket, tugged him inside, and closed the door.

“Hey—“

“You know this guy?” Barton asked, pointing at Jason, who waved at him. Brilliant. That was the last time he’d ask him for help on a recon job.

“No,” he said, which Jason seemed to find amusing.

“You don’t know him?” the man said. “Why were you calling him, then?”

“Must be a mistake,” Tim said, all the while staring at Jason, the blood, how pale he looked. How on earth had he let that happen? “Can I go?”

Barton scoffed.

“No. No, you can’t go,” he said, and then, quick as a magician, he extracted Tim’s wallet from his pocket.

“This is a fake ID if I ever saw one. Eighteen? Give me a break,” he tossed the card Tim had used to buy his train tickets away, and kept riffling through the wallet, pulling out anonymous debit cards and random receipts, then tossing them out into the coffee table.

“Leave the kid be,” Jason spoke. “We’re all just fine here, aren’t we? He can go.”

“You must think we’re idiots,” Clint said to Jason, wheeling around to face him. “And who uses kids? That’s messed up.”

Jason scoffed.

“Yeah? Tell me about it.”

Tim bent down to pick up his wallet and alias documents, carefully scanning the room. The girl still had her eyes on him but her arrow was discarded, bow resting against her hip. He saw Jason’s helmet lying on the floor and figured they knew he was the Red Hood, which was probably why they were so defensive, but how on earth had he gotten himself shot?

“Timmy—-“

“Names!“ Tim hissed as Jason spoke, head fully rested on the back of the couch. He felt the two avengers looking at him and he didn’t know where to turn.

“Oh, quit it, we’re blown anyway,” Jason said. His voice was a little slurred now. “Will you tell these kind people we’re not the bad guys?”

“What’s going… Hood!”

Tim saw Jason’s eyes roll back, and then he slumped, going slack. He kneeled beside the couch and took Jason’s pulse, then gently slapped at his face.

“Hood! Wake up!”

“We know his name is Jay,” the girl said, quietly. Tim’s hands opened the neck of Jason’s jacket revealing two gauze patches over his neck and shoulder. Entry and exit, and probably had hit an artery judging by his paleness. He slapped him again, and this time Jason’s eyes half opened.

“Whu…?”

“Don’t pass out,” Tim said. “I got supplies. What happened?”

“She shot me,” Jason said, and Tim turned back towards the girl, who appeared like she wanted to hide behind the curtains. Tim dropped his backpack, and pulled out the med kit that occupied most of the space within it.

“Why did she see you?” he said, in a low voice, while behind him he heard the girl and Barton muttering what the hell and this is freaky and is that an actual child or a small-looking adult? He tuned them out. Expertly he tore out the bloodied bandages around Jason’s neck, and applied Alfred’s salve on the two wounds before beginning to set up another IV bag. Jason’s eyes veered somewhere behind Tim, where he could sense Barton and the girl staring intently at them.

“—en Boy,” he said.

“What?”

“It’s Golden Boy.”

“What? Hood.” Jason closed his eyes again, his face the colour of dirty chalk. Tim shook him. “Jason.”

Golden boy. Had he thought he was Dick?

His face felt red, hot, and he would’ve immediately called for Bruce despite the risk of exposure if this mess wasn’t all entirely his fault. How could this have happened? Why couldn’t he let it go?

Why was he like this?

“Jason!”

“Okay!” Jason said, voice groggy, eyes a little more open. “I’m up. I’m here.”

“Why’d you call me Golden Boy?”

Jason veered his eyes away, towards a door facing the living room.

“Not you,” he said.

Tim stood, feet wobbly, and turned to the door. Barton and the girl both stepped out of his way when he began to move, and he felt his heart beating so fast against his chest that he felt dizzy.

Golden Boy

He grabbed the handle and opened the door, and Dick’s face was there, so close, so suddenly, that he stepped back and tripped, falling to the stained carpet. He realised then that despite all his fantasies and his obstinate belief, this moment had never felt real in his mind, it had never been devoid of grief. He got up again as Dick simply stared back at him, as if confused, and then Tim burst forward to embrace him. 

————————

Dick Grayson

————————

“I knew it. I knew it! I knew it!“

A boy was in front of him, and he kept coming closer. His voice - not Jason’s, but it was also familiar. The face, though, didn’t exactly click.

“Kid… kid, wait up…” he heard Clint saying, and he tried to hold the boy back as he came towards Dick, but there was no stopping him. Dick felt him collide against him, then wrap his arms around him so tight he couldn’t move.

“I knew you were alive, I knew it, no one believed me but I knew it, oh my God, I missed you so much.”

Dick wanted to hug him back but couldn’t let go of the crutches, and instead he let his chin fall against the kid’s dark hair as he took in the memory of his voice and his smell. He knew immediately that he was precious to him, that he was his family, and that he loved him, but nothing about his appearance fit in with his dreams. He willed the name to come to him but it remained just beyond his grasp.

“Dick?” the kid said, looking up at him after a few seconds glued to each other. “Say something.”

“Hey, Timbo, give him some space,” Jason said.

Tim.

That was not the name he’d been about to say.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

Tim released him from the hug, but his eyes looked up at him huge and searching. They settled on his missing leg, with something like horror in them, and Dick opened his mouth to answer but couldn’t get the words out. Resting against the wall, he lifted his hands and hand spelled.

“R-o-b-i-n-?” Clint translated for him. Both Jason and Tim looked confused.

“Why is he doing that? Can he not speak?”

“I—I can speak,” Dick said, and felt heat rising up to his face. Damn the words that wouldn’t come, damn his brain that wouldn’t work. He needed to do this. He needed to remember. “It’s just —hard.”

My name is Dick. I have a family. I have a brother. Maybe two brothers?

“Robin?“ Kate said, from behind the kitchen counter. “See, Clint, I told you he was—“

“He’s not Batman,” Jason said.

“You’re the bats —”

“Kate — shut up,” Clint said.

My name is Dick. I have a family

“I… I…”

“Dick?” Tim said, hands reaching out to touch his shoulders. It felt… nice. He hadn’t known how much he missed that sort of contact. Tim. His name is Tim.

“Just— I… I know you, I do, but…”

“It’s okay, D,” Clint said. “Take your time.”

He took a deep breath in, and let it out, slowly. The boy still kept his hands on his shoulders, looking at him expectantly, and when he closed his eyes he saw him in red, green and yellow, jumping on top of trains with him. He balanced himself on his leg and then his arms left the crutches, and he finally hugged the boy back. Tim sank against him then, and though he made no sound Dick could feel how his chest shook with sobs, and how his tears soaked through his already bloodstained t-shirt.

I have a family. I have a family. I have a family.

He blinked, and he was sitting down on the couch in front of… the boy and… Jay — Jason. Jason and Tim. His brothers. He wished he had his notebook with him, so he could write the names down and be sure he wouldn’t forget again. Fleetingly he remembered he’d written something down before, but the paper was no longer in his hand, and he couldn’t even be sure how long it had been since he’d come out of the room.

Some time had passed, for sure. A mug with tea that no longer steamed was right in front of him, and the boys who were his family were staring at him as if he was about to explode into a million little pieces. He couldn’t see Kate anymore — or Clint. Jason looked less pale now: a brand new IV bag hung from the top of the couch, and his bandages were no longer bloody.

“Dick?” the younger one said, his voice high and uncertain. “Can you hear me?”

He cleared his throat.

“Yeah—yes.”

The way the boy — Tim, his name’s Tim — kept fidgeting with the hem of his shirt, and how his eyes shined like he was about to cry but never actually did… It was… God, he… He was familiar but he couldn’t be sure if this was something he was remembering or if he was just so desperate to be someone that he was just taking all of this as truth.

He’d once thought Clint was his brother, too.

“Do…” he started, and cleared his throat again. He hated how hard it was to form words. “Do you have pictures?”

The boy frowned.

“Pictures?”

“Uhmm…” he rubbed his forehead, searching. On the bigger couch, Jason straightened up.

“Photos,” he said, and Dick nodded. “Show him photos of us.”

The boy took out a large phone from his pocket, and began to swipe through it. Seconds passed, and with each one Dick found himself breathing faster.

What if they didn’t have any? What if he wasn’t who they were looking for? What if they were lying to him, too?

“Here,” the boy — Tim, remember that — placed the phone in his hands, and Dick felt his breath catch.

His own eyes, the ones he saw in the mirror and that sometimes still felt alien to him, looked back at him through the photo. Beside him, in close familiarity, was Tim, and a younger boy was to his left, scowling as this happier, truer Dick placed a cardboard birthday hat on his black hair. Jason was behind them, holding up rabbit ears over Tim. And far in the background, an older man with white hair and a serious looking black haired middle aged man stared at the group. With slight, but fond smiles.

He knew they were his family - knew it in his heart, even if he couldn’t remember their names. At the same time, though, he felt that there was more. That there were others. That those boys who were his brothers were bound to him in ways different than blood.

“Keep swiping,” Tim said, and this time his name came to Dick’s mind automatically, as if he’d never forgotten it. He swiped, and came to a much older photo.

It took him a second to know what he was looking at.

A little boy with black hair stood proudly in what looked like a gymnastics costume, inside the huge roof of a circus. He was flanked by a man and a woman, equally costumed, and they stood in front a giant banner showing acrobats flying on a trapeze. It read “The Flying Graysons”.

He knew that trapeze.

He knew he’d grown up in that circus.

He knew that that little boy was him, and that man, that woman, they were his parents.

A swinging rope.

A thundering snap and a thud.

The Flying Graysons

The phone fell from his hand, and clattered against the floor. He felt tears tickling his cheeks as they fell down, and his breath came in short bursts. The edges of his vision seemed to fizz.

“Do you remember?” the boy said.

Who was that boy? What was his name? The young man on the couch, the one with the bloody bandages, got up to pick up the phone.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Replacement.”

“I… I’m sorry, I didn’t…”

“Get Barton, now.”

He heard steps moving away, and then felt strong hands holding his own, pulling them away from his face where they were rubbing hard against his eyes.

“Don’t do that, Dickie, please… Just breathe with me.”

“What’s going on?”

Clint’s voice. Then his own sobs, so alien, so not him, and he couldn’t rub at his eyes because the hands were still holding him, and the tears just kept coming.

“…he barely even remembers us, you can’t just open the floodgates like—“

He couldn’t see at all now. He felt like his brain was getting sucked right out of his head.

“I didn’t know it was this bad! I—“

“Dickie, match my breathing. You can do this—“

A snap. A thud. Screaming.

“This has happened before, his doc gave us some meds--“

“No, he’s not gonna want any meds, he—“

“Oh, so you’re just gonna let him be in pain—“

“That’s not—“

“In… and out… You got this.”

The hands around his wrists felt so warm. He let himself focus on that feeling, and he filtered everything else out.

My name is Dick Grayson.

————————

Jason Todd

————————

Jason was still holding Dick’s hands to keep him from scratching at his eyes when he saw Barton coming up behind him with a syringe.

“He won’t want that!” Tim said, coming after him and sounding hysterical, but when Barton paused, he only looked at Jason for confirmation.

Dick, always joking, always so full of grace, was now reduced to a trembling, sobbing mess, and the sounds of sheer agony were making Jason see green. He looked up at Barton.

“Do it.”

“Jason!“ Tim gasped, but Barton moved forwards, and plunged the syringe into Dick’s shoulder. Almost immediately the gasps slowed down, and within a minute Jason was supporting most of Dick’s weight, keeping him from sliding off the couch.

“Let’s get him to bed,” Barton said, and with a nod, Jason stood on still shaky legs and half-carried Dick to the tiny bedroom. He looked oddly peaceful now, and somehow, that felt even worse than the sobbing.

“It’s, uh…” Barton started, looking a little uncomfortable. He closed the door as they both got out of the room. “It’s likely he won’t remember this when he wakes up.”

“Great,” Jason said, gritting his teeth. “So we’ll have a repeat of the trauma reveal.”

Tim was still sitting on the couch, with his legs pressed together and his face between his elbows. He wasn’t making any sound, but Jason knew right away that he was crying.

He suddenly had a very strong urge to run away. Why was he even there? He wasn’t good at this. He’d never wanted to be in charge, never even felt at ease with calling what they all were a family. And then Dick had to get his head bashed in and God, he was being unfair, Tim was just a kid and no kid should have to bear so much responsibility.

He took a deep breath. Bruce should be here.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Tim said between sniffs, his arms still obscuring his face, and Jason went to sit beside him while Barton took the spot Dick had just occupied. Jason wondered what Dick would say to Tim now, if he would just hug him, and if it would even help if Jason attempted to do the same.

Not that he was planning on it.

Dickie this was your thing.

“It’s not your fault, kid,” Barton said, after a few minutes of sniffing, and Jason was immediately relieved. “It’s just something that happens. Starting to remember — it’s confusing. But he’ll be okay.”

Tim sniffed again.

“I flagged his file… months ago,” he said. “If I’d look into it more, if I had— we would’ve been with him, he wouldn’t—“

“That’s not on you, Tim,” Jason said, finally finding his voice. “He was never alone. They’ve been taking care of him. And there’s no guarantee he would’ve been any better with us, you know how B can get.”

This was, apparently, the wrong thing to say, and Tim’s whimpers became even louder. Jason felt intensely inadequate — what would Dick say to him now?

“He didn’t know my name,” Tim said, voice shaky and so young it hurt.

“But he knew you were family,” Barton said. “And he knew he loved you, we could all see it.”

Tim wiped at his eyes and covered his face again, and Jason leaned against him, lightly tapping his shoulder.

“You found him, Timbo,” he said, in a low whisper. “None of us kept looking except for you. You did that. You found him. He’s alive.”

————————

Dick Grayson

————————

He had a digital clock on his nightstand, with big, red numbers that were easy to see even in the dark, and he was watching the minutes roll by while outside the voices got louder. He’d been awake for a while now, but his head and his leg still hurt too much to allow him to think. He’d taken his meds already, he knew that because the little orange container had a timer on it that said how long it had been since he last opened it. Barely thirty minutes ago — should be kicking in soon.

He hated needing them so much. 

He hated this.

Outside, the boys were talking over each other, their tones tense and exasperated. They were his brothers — he believed that now, he remembered fragments of names, voices and gestures, even if events were harder to recall. The memories, though, didn’t feel solid yet. He couldn’t hold on to them, couldn’t keep them close. He kept having these random thoughts about them, things that felt so natural and certain, and then after a moment of distraction, they’d be gone. Every time he closed his eyes, he was afraid to lose them again.

“…no way to keep that quiet, everyone would know." 

"I'm not lying to Bruce—" 

Tim was speaking, and though he wasn’t screaming Dick could feel the emotion in his voice. Tim never got upset — No. Tim never let anyone know he was upset. But Dick knew. Because he knew him.

"We can't just remove him from everything—" 

“We’ll only tell B. No one else, and I mean no one—"

The voices started up again, Jason this time, and then some uncertain amount of time later a large shadow appeared in the door. He held his breath.

“You awake yet, Grayson?”

Grayson.

The Flying Graysons.

He felt a surge of panic and nausea at the thought, but he stamped it down. He couldn’t go there yet. Focus.

Slowly, he turned around and faced the door, unfurling from the tangled blanket cocoon he’d slept in. Jason stood under the frame, his clothes still bloody but his face less pale than it had been before. He never got to ask how he’d gotten hurt, or maybe he had, and then forgotten it. His thoughts had a habit of coming to him, fully formed, as if out of a vacuum, so he could never know if he was actually remembering something, or just imagining it.

Dick pushed himself up to his elbows and tucked his legs underneath him.

Jason smiled.

“You’ve always done that.”

“What?” Dick said.

“Sleep folded up like a croissant. It’s uncanny.”

“Oh…”

Dick looked down at his leg and half leg, and how natural it felt to fold them up like this. At least he still had that.

“Come out, we’re ordering some food,” Jason said. “You gotta be hungry.”

Dick frowned. Back at the hospital he’d had an IV on and nurses waking him up to eat when he had bad days, but now… the last thing he remembered eating was that hot dog up on the roof, though a sports drink by the nightstand told him he’d at least drunk something. No wonder he felt so out of it. It had been weeks since he slept this much in a day.

“I… I’m sorry,” he said, not meeting Jason’s eyes. “About yesterday. Or… today, I don’t know. Sorry I freaked out.”

“Nuh-uh,” Jason said, shaking his head. “You don’t need to apologise. It wasn’t your fault.”

“But I… Tim, he…”

“Hey, I know you, and I know you’re finding ways to feel guilty about this situation, so I want you to listen to me. Absolutely none of this was your fault. Do you understand?”

Dick stayed still for a moment, before nodding and finally meeting Jason’s eyes. For some reason he’d been expecting recriminations, or shouting, or something.

“What you said… up on that roof…” he said, remembering the rage in that voice, how the face behind his mask had twisted. The gun pointed to his head. The memory had been gone to him before but it was clear as day now.

Jason seemed to recoil, and he looked sad all of a sudden.

“Look, things happened between us before,” he said. “Things that I still felt… resentful for. I once thought you were dead and you weren’t, and when I saw you there…”

“I’m sorry,” Dick said. “I don’t remember, but I’m sorry, I really am.”

“No, you don’t need to say that,” Jason said. “I shouldn’t have done that to you. We’re over it. It was a long time ago. I’m the one who’s sorry.”

“You’re being nice to me,” Dick said, the words coming to him without thinking. “I don’t know why that feels strange.”

There was a tension in Jason’s shoulders, and Dick knew right away it was caused by guilt. He hid it quickly though, and smiled again.

“Yeah, it’s weird isn’t it?” Jason said. “Almost like I love you or something.”

Dick laughed, and though he’d laughed before it felt like he hadn’t ever heard that sound coming from his own throat. He picked up his crutches, fastened the straps, and then reached to hold Jason’s arm before he turned away. He opened his mouth but said nothing, just stared at his brother for a few seconds. Thank you, he wanted to say. And I love you too. But Jason’s face seemed to soften without the need for any words, and he gently squeezed Dick’s shoulder as he turned to leave the room.

“Yeah, I know, Dickie,” he said. “I know.”

Chapter Text

————————

Jason Todd

————————

Jason had no memory of it, but he guessed he must’ve fallen asleep because when he opened his eyes it was dark again, and he could hear Tim’s voice coming from the kitchen area. He was still on the couch, and the IV had magically returned — this time to the back of his hand. His neck still hurt, but he no longer felt weak and shaky. Someone had draped a blanket over the lower half of his body, and when he took a deep breath, he noticed a sweet smell.

Was someone… baking?

“They’re done, we should take them out.”

“No, the edges aren’t brown yet.”

“You’re gonna burn them.”

“No, I’m not! They need to be crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside.”

The bandage wouldn’t let him turn his neck, so he straightened up, slowly, and shifted his whole body towards the kitchen. Tim was standing in front of the stove with oven mittens on, and the girl in the purple hoodie leaned against the counter.

“Seriously?” Jason said. “You’re making cookies?”

Tim turned back to him, and he couldn’t hide his blush. Kate crossed her arms.

“They’re from the freezer section.”

Jason looked around, but he couldn’t see Barton. The door to Dick’s room was open.

“Is D—“

“He’s still sleeping,” Tim said. “We left the door open so we’d hear him wake up. You looked like you could use a rest, too.”

“Where’s Discount Green Arrow?”

“Very funny,” Kate said. “He’s got some work stuff. Left me in charge, so don’t try anything.”

“Or what?” Jason said. “You’ll shoot me again?”

“Will you stop?” Tim said. “We’re all on the same side here.” He turned to Kate. “He won’t try anything.”

Kate uncrossed her arms, and then turned on the oven light again.

“See, you burned them.”

Jason smiled as he watched Tim worriedly remove a tray of perfectly baked chocolate chip cookies. He still had dark bags under his eyes, still looked like he could use a week of extra sleep, but the way he moved and spoke was a far cry from the jittery obsessiveness that had been building these past few months.

“Good to see you’re having fun,” he said, picking up a cookie as soon as it was peeled off the tray.

“Hey—!” Kate protested.

“Better enjoy it now because B’s gonna have an absolute fit the moment he checks your tracker.”

“My tracker says I’m with the team,” Tim said confidently. “They’re covering for me. So is O. I just checked in with her ten minutes ago.”

“How long is that good for though? If they’re out patrolling they’ll soon figure out I’m not in Gotham either. We need to think about how we’re gonna tell them, or they’ll storm this place—“

“They’ll what?” Kate said.

“—and then we’ll have an Avenger-size crisis on our hands!”

“No, no, no, Clint and I, we can keep a secret. We’re not gonna tell anyone, I swear.”

“Yeah, that’s not gonna cut it with Dear Old Dad. Or with the little gremlin, for that matter.”

“Half of the things you both say make no sense,” Kate said, shaking her head. She grabbed the cookies that remained on the tray and moved to the living room couch, which was still stained with blood.

Tim picked up two cookies and stuffed them into his mouth at the same time. Then, still chewing, he turned to Jason.

“They’ll want to come here the moment we tell them. We need to take Dick to Gotham first, Kate’s already given me access to his complete medical file.”

“Did you not see what happened earlier?” Jason said. “We can’t just remove him from everything that’s familiar to him and leave him with B, that’s a recipe for disaster. We need to make up some New York mission, buy ourselves some time.”

“You don’t want to tell Bruce?

“Not while Dick’s memory is still so spotty.”

“You want to lie to him? The world’s greatest detective?”

“Is he, though? It was you who found him, this should be a piece of cake in comparison.”

“No. I’m not lying to Bruce.”

“Tim…”

“No! Haven’t you seen him? He’s… he’s broken! He needs to know.”

Jason bit his tongue, and looked away. He’d been dreading making the call, but he knew they wouldn’t be able to keep this from Bruce for much longer, and at least this way he’d be able to control the situation better. He knew they had to tell him, of course they did, but there was absolutely no way that B would simply accept that Barton plus sidekick would keep quiet — no. He’d want to make sure, and it wasn’t like these people would be content with never seeing Dick again. He was pretty sure that Dick wouldn’t want to cut contact either, and none of that was going to go well with the big bad bat.

But they still needed to tell him.

“We’ll only tell B. No one else, and I mean no one. We can let the others know once Dick’s ready to go home and not as fragile.”

On the couch, Kate turned sharply towards them. She didn’t say anything, but her expression was open and honest — Fear. And grief.

He took a deep breath, and began to dial Bruce’s number.

It was picked up almost instantly.

“Hood.”

It was his Batman voice, and from the roaring background Jason could tell he was outside, probably on patrol. He’d picked up through his comms, and was all business-like efficiency.

“Hey B,” he said, and he could almost see how Bruce’s face was changing now. He’d know immediately that it wasn’t the Red Hood who was calling him.

“What’s happened?” he asked, voice clipped but betraying a hidden emotion that Jason had learned to detect. “Tell me.”

“I’m in New York with Tim. You need to come here right away — alone.”

“What have—“

“And B? Lose the suit. I’ll text you the address.”

“Jas—“

He hung up, sent the text, and then snatched Tim’s phone from his hands and turned them all off. Tim look horrified.

“He’’ll freak.”

“Good,” Jason said. “He’ll get here faster.”

————————

Dick Grayson

————————

“So, we can get pizza, but there’s an Indian place close by that looks good too,” Tim said, reading off his ordering app on his phone.

They were sitting around the small dinner table, with Kate labelling nocks on the corner furthest from the door and Jason returning the rubber bullets to his guns. Dick couldn’t see Clint anywhere, but Lucky was resting its big snout on Dick’s lap, whining whenever he stopped giving him attention. 

“I vote Indian,” Kate said. “We have pizza way too often here.”

“Can you imagine,” Jason said, snorting, “If B shows up at the door at the same time as the delivery guy?”

“He’ll think you’ve pranked him,” Tim said.

“Would he still knock?”

“Oh, definitely. If only to give you one of his glares,” Tim kept clicking away on his phone. “Okay, I’m getting three curries, sides of naan and a lamb biryani. Sounds good?”

“Get samosas, too,” Jason said.

“Isn’t it too much?”

“So what if it is? Bruce’s paying for it.”

Dick’s eyes shifted to Jason, focusing on the word. Bruce. It was the first time they’d said the name, every other time just making references to “B”, and though it was immediately familiar, Dick couldn’t place it. From how they talked about him, he sounded like their father. And in the picture Tim had showed him, that man in the background that looked on… stern but also proud and content… that was Bruce. And he was apparently on his way here.

“When do you think he’ll get here?” Tim said. Jason shrugged.

“He’ll probably take the plane or a helicopter, so not that long.”

“You should’ve at least told him what this was about,” Tim said, looking at Jason. “Now he’ll treat this like an ambush.”

“If I’d told him then he would’ve gone into mission mode and you know how he gets. We need him here as Bruce.”

“Yeah, but we don’t know how he’s gonna take—“

“What am I… “ Dick butted in, “…to Bruce?”

Both his brothers turned around to look at him as if they had forgotten that he could talk and understand — Dick had noticed they did that a lot. Just like Kate and Clint, back at the hospital, before he could speak. It was like he was an object right in the middle of their conversation that only required intermittent attention. Like a houseplant. He hated it.

Kate, though, had now taken the opportunity to grab Tim’s phone, and she was adding multiple things to the order. She caught Dick looking, and threw him a sly smile.

“What do you remember about him?” Tim asked, finally gathering himself. “About Bruce.”

“I… I don’t know… it’s hard to tell.”

He guessed it was more like a feeling than a memory, but at least it was something. He couldn’t be sure yet if it was equivalent to how he now felt about Jason and Tim. And what about the other boy, the one in the picture? And what about the old man? They were still almost entirely blanks. He’d seen them, and still couldn’t remember their names, or their voices. How could he know if what he felt was real, or if he felt love just because he’d been told that that’s what he was supposed to feel?

“You’re the one Bruce took in first,” Tim said.

“Yeah. The favourite,” Jason added, and Tim dug an elbow into his side. Dick shook his head.

“I’m sure that’s not true,” he said, and Jason guffawed.

“That’s the most Grayson thing you’ve said so far.”

Dick smiled.

“The delivery guy’s on his way,” Kate announced. “I added some stuff, since we’re having visitors.”

His brothers told him that Bruce would be coming soon, but that he didn’t know about Dick being here. That he still thought he was dead. Briefly, they had explained the circumstances of said “death”, but Dick felt they had glossed over a lot of detail, probably trying to avoid a repeat of that morning. He already knew about the suit, about the flying (or grappling, as they called it), and about Batman, but it was difficult to piece it all together.

It still felt sort of dream-like.

And now Batman - Bruce - was coming here.

“Oh my God” Tim said, looking at his phone as a ding! sounded. “Over a hundred bucks?? Who added six mango lassis?”

“What?“ Kate said. “The order lacked sweetness. You’ll thank me later.”

“I don’t like mango.”

“Who doesn’t like mango?”

Something beeped in the kitchen, and Dick reached for the caddy with the pill holder that Clint kept in the counter. He didn’t say anything, but the moment he popped open the little plastic container all the others turned to look at him, and he felt uneasy. They seemed… guilty. Or ashamed? Or… or maybe it was pity.

He took the pills and swallowed them with a glass of water someone had placed in front of him at some point — he had no idea when. He had a headache, but it wasn’t as bad as earlier, and the cramping in his non-existent foot was finally gone. Soon, he’d meet the rest of his family and return to real life, except he wasn’t that person yet, was he? He wasn’t himself. What if he couldn’t recognise Bruce? What if he stopped remembering? Would his brothers — would his family — would they still want him around?

Like this?

There was a knock on the door. Just one. And both Jason and Tim seemed to freeze.

“Is it…?” Kate whispered, and Tim nodded. He turned to look at Jason, who stood up just as another single knock sounded.

“Yeah, I’ll leave you to it,” Kate said, and moved to retreat towards Clint’s room, taking Lucky with her. Jason and Tim faced each other for little while longer before Jason began to move.

“I’ll get it.”

“You sure?” Tim said. “I could talk to him first and—“

“No,” Jason said. “I’ll handle it. You both stay right here.”

Jason turned to face the door, and Dick felt his heart hammering against his throat, his hands becoming clammy. He heard Jason click the locks open, then peer out the narrow opening. Hushed voices sounded but he couldn’t make them out. Then Jason stepped outside and shut the door behind him.

Dick closed his eyes.

————————

Jason Todd

————————

Despite Bruce’s lifelong habit of concealment and stoicism, the relief in his expression was obvious to Jason as soon as he opened the door. It lasted only a second though, and then his eyes, sharp as ever, were focusing on the bandage on Jason’s neck, his still-pale skin.

“Jason,” he said, by way of a greeting. He was wearing casual clothes, the sort he wore at the manor on off days, but his hair was in disarray and his shirt had an odd button — signs he’d changed out of the suit in a hurry.

Which he probably had if he’d been able to get here this fast.

“Where’s Tim?” Bruce asked, voice harsh and Batman-like. “I know he hacked his tracker signal, but this isn’t one of his safe houses, this whole building is—“

“We know whose place this is,” Jason said, cutting him off. “Tim’s inside.”

Bruce’s face hardened.

“Will you be home for dinner tomorrow?” he said, and Jason was baffled for a second before he recognised one of the code phrases for “Are you able to speak freely?”. He nodded.

“We’re not here against our will. We’re okay.”

With one glance inside, Jason stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind him. Bruce frowned, and when he spoke next his voice was more than halfway there to Batman’s again.

“You asked me to come here. Tell me what’s going on,” he said.

Jason took a deep breath.

Out with it.

“Dick is alive. He’s here, too,” he said, and had barely finished speaking when Bruce tried to move forwards to open the door. Jason cut him off, and held his shoulders.

“Move—“

“No, Bruce, listen—“

“Tim found him didn’t he? I stopped looking, I didn’t—“

“Listen to me! You can beat yourself up all you want later, but this isn’t about you, now, okay? Do you understand?”

Bruce nodded, compliant, and just that gesture made Jason shiver. He didn’t push, didn’t try for the door again, didn’t growl or yell. He just stood there, waiting.

Jason couldn’t remember ever seeing him act like this.

“I understand,” Bruce said.

Jason took a deep breath in, and then quickly explained the basics of what he’d been told about Dick’s early days, as well as his current status. He mentioned Barton, and Kate, and Bruce, thankfully, didn’t dwell on the fact that they’d been exposed, though Jason was sure it would come up eventually.

“Does he know who I am?” Bruce asked, voice hushed, and there was so much emotion in his face that Jason had to look away. He wondered if his own death had also caused pain like this. Dick had always said so, and he’d never believed it.

“We’ve told him, but he doesn’t remember much,” he said. “He’s easily overwhelmed. You can’t force it.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it, old man. I’ll throw you out, you know I can do it.”

“Yes. I understand.”

Jason nodded, and knocked on the closed door. Almost immediately Tim opened up, like he’d been standing just behind it, which he probably had.

Bruce barely even saw him as he came in.

He stood frozen at the entrance, eyes fixed on Dick’s lean frame. He looked like he’d seen a ghost. Dick stayed sitting and didn’t attempt to move or to speak, and after a minute Bruce seemed to remember how to use his legs. He walked stiffly forwards, reached the table, and then knelt down in front of Dick, who was still quiet but breathing in short bursts.

Jason took a step towards Tim, placing himself close enough that their shoulders were touching. He would never admit it, but he was thankful then that Tim didn’t pull away.

————————

Dick Grayson

————————

The man coming towards him was a stranger.

He tried to focus on his face, his eyes, his hair, but it wasn’t like it had been with Jason and Tim. There wasn’t a ghost of an image, a face seen in dreams. He’d heard now, over and over, the man’s full name and yet as he came towards him, slow and trembling, he could no longer recall it.

The man reached his chair, and his eyes made a lap around his leg and his crutches before returning to meet Dick’s eyes. He knelt, so their faces were level, but didn’t try to hug or touch him. Dick wasn’t sure if that was a relief or not.

“I’m Bruce,” he said, in a voice that, in Dick’s mind, didn’t fit his face. "Do you remember me?”

Dick swallowed hard, then shook his head.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“It’s okay,” he said the man said. “I thought I’d never see you again. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“I’m not,” Dick blurted, and looked away. “I’m all messed up.”

Bruce frowned, and Dick immediately felt his headache returning. Why had he said that? He never told anyone when he was in pain, never talked of his anguish, he never—

“Dick,” the man said, and Dick felt like a hole was opening up in his chest just at the sound of his own name. “You’re not messed up. But you don’t have to be okay either. You can lean on us, we can help you.”

“How can you help me?” Dick said, and realised with horror that he was crying. “You don’t even know me. What if—“ he stopped, and rubbed at his eyes. “What if I never become who I was?”

“Chum, you already are,” Bruce said, and it was like the barrier broke down then. He felt sobs coming from up his throat and he couldn’t stop them. He couldn’t believe this was happening again — two minutes ago this man had been a stranger and now — now he — why was he talking to him like that? Why did he feel like this? He was finally remembering — couldn’t he keep it together for an hour?

“I’m not — I’m not that person, I can’t remember — I can’t be—“

“You are,” Bruce said. “You are, you really are. You might not be able to see it, but I see it, your brothers see it. What you remember doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change who you are and it definitely doesn’t change how we feel about you.”

Dick swallowed hard, and tried to keep his eyes wide open so the tears wouldn’t fall, but there was no avoiding it. Bruce inched a little closer.

“Can I hug you, chum?” he said, and Dick felt himself nodding without even thinking about it. Bruce’s head and approached his face, and very gently wiped the tears from his eyes that were still irritated from that morning. Then he got off his knees, and wrapped his arms around Dick.

He wasn’t sure how long it lasted, but a part of him never wanted it to stop. When Bruce finally pulled away he didn’t retreat completely, and just met his eyes again as if trying to verify he was still there.

Dick rubbed at his eyes again.

“I’m scared, Dad,” he said, and Bruce gently pushed his hands off his face, and resumed his embrace.

“It will be okay. I promise.”

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