Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The funeral has a big turnout. There’s tons of heroes, all out of costume, who stand grimly around the memorial that’s been constructed in a quiet field outside of the city. Since the fire was huge, there was really no body to bury, and the bones left aren’t put at the memorial. Everyone acts as if they are anyway, and Jason shows up for only a few brief moments before he has to leave. He can’t stand the sight of unfamiliar faces weeping, can’t stand the way Bruce’s shoulders are drawn up as if he’s in agony. So Jason goes to the funeral, but he doesn’t stay. His goodbyes are said afterwards.

Afterwards, where the remains actually rest in an immaculate wooden box under a headstone constructed in Bruce’s own personal graveyard. The funeral was for everyone who knew Nightwing, but this private ceremony with Bruce, Tim, Alfred, Jason, Cass, and Barbara is for the people who knew him beyond the mask. The family.

“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!” Damian shrieks at the headstone, aiming a well-placed kick into the center where the words ‘Beloved son, brother, and friend’ are carved. It’s childish and full of misplaced anger, but Jason can understand where it’s coming from completely. He almost wants to do the same thing, because how could Dick have died such a mundane, useless death?

It wasn’t useless, a voice whispers in the back of Jason’s mind, but he shoves the voice away and focuses a sharp glare on the tombstone, hoping Dick can feel the look from the grave. Not even a body left, which is the real kicker because if there was, there was the possibility that Dick could’ve used the Lazarus Pit. Jason mentally flips off all of fate, before turning his attention to the broken remnants of the family.

Barbara has her head bowed and her fingers dug into the grips of her chair, blood bleeding where she’s caught her lower lip in her teeth. Jason had vaguely heard something about how Barbara and Dick’s on-again-off-again relationship was in an on-again phase, and he thinks the way her eyes shimmer with unshed, angry tears might prove it. Though even when they were in their off-again phase, they were still all moony-eyed over each other.

Cass stands beside Babs, frozen stock still, and not a single movement gives away what she’s thinking. Jason can guess anyway, because he knows she loved Dick’s bigger-than-life persona and the way Dick was one of the very few people who said exactly what he felt. He doesn’t know if Cass has ever really lost someone so close—he knows she lost a few short-lived friendships in the Bludhaven disaster—but now definitely isn’t the time to ask.

Bruce is watching Damian with a weary, defeated expression, and the hand Alfred has on his shoulder seems like it’s holding him up from collapsing. Dick had become independent from Bruce with his own persona, but Bruce was still obviously wracked with guilt over the fact that he’d brought the kid into the lifestyle. Alfred, for his part, isn’t bothering to wipe the tears leaking down his face as he grieves like he’s the only normal, functional person left.

Tim has one hand over his face and is taking deep, shuddering breaths, and it’s to Tim that Jason finally makes his way over to, slapping a hand on the back of Tim’s neck while the boy tries not to break down. For all his analytical, brilliant mind, Jason can see Tim’s having a hard time dealing with the fact that his hero is gone and turned to dust. It hasn’t even been a week and the dust’s already settled into the ground, as if the world just expects them to move on after something like this.

Jason observes all of this with a distant, odd feeling, as if he’s no longer inside his own body. He can feel dark anger simmering just beneath the surface, but he’s too far away for it to take hold of him yet. All he knows is that the one person who knew how to comfort each and every member of the bat family is no longer there to comfort them, and isn’t it ironic that that’s the person they’re grieving?

Jason squeezes the back of Tim’s neck lightly, then picks his way over the tombstone. He crouches on the balls of his feet, ignoring the harsh look Damian’s shooting his way, then reaches out to brush his fingers over the dates. Dick hadn’t even hit twenty-eight.

“You screwed up this time, Golden Boy,” Jason murmurs, grimacing. “Left us all here alone without you. That’s pretty fucked up for someone who’s usually concerned about other people’s feelings.”

There’s no answer but the wind, and Jason reaches out to tap a fist against the rough, cold stone.

“You’re lucky you have me to clean up after you.”

---

He robbed Ra’s’ secret stash a couple of years ago, grabbing whatever he could get his hands on because you never knew when the random shit Ra’s kept stored would be useful. It hadn’t been heavily guarded, and he’d managed to be in and out with four or five freaky looking boxes before anyone even noticed he was there. When he’d opened them, he’d found out why the creepy warehouse wasn’t too guarded; though all the artifacts had interesting powers, they were labelled ‘Broken’ and pretty much tossed away like useless junk.

All the better for Jason, who’s now sliding what looks like a trashy watch onto his wrist. There are a few buttons you can use to adjust the time and it looks pretty basic, but the archaic writing it’s taken Jason a year to crack says it’s anything but. It’s some interdimensional, time-bending watch from who the fuck knows where, and it’s what Jason’s going to use to stop Dick Grayson from dying. It should be easy—the instructions say all you have to do is punch what universe and time you want into the watch, and the watch will bring you there. You’ll be standing exactly where you were when you set the watch, and you can do whatever you want in the space of an hour. After an hour, you’re brought back to your own time and universe where you can see what effects your actions had.

Jason ignores the niggling voice in his mind that sounds suspiciously like Dick, which is telling him there’s probably a reason the watch was labelled broken. He doesn’t give a shit if the world’s broken, he’s going to bring Dick home no matter what it takes.

Standing in front of the scattered ashes where he last saw Dick, he has to take a deep breath. It only gets stuck in his throat for a second as he remembers the desperation in Dick’s eyes, damp strands of hair clinging to his face as he yells ‘There’s still a kid in there!’ Then he pushes the thought away, because that’s not a reality that’s going to exist soon. Jason will stop the fire before it happens, and Dick won’t sacrifice himself to save one little blind girl.

He starts punching the numbers into the watch. Six days ago, at ten in the morning, in universe number zero—he doesn’t know what the instructions mean by other universes, but zero is the default for the universe of whoever’s using the watch, and he has no desire to check into other worlds. When he finishes, he waits, and for a moment nothing happens. It’s like a punch to the gut; what if ‘Broken’ meant it didn’t work at all, and now he’s stuck in a world without the ray of sunshine that’s Dick’s smile?

But then, things begin to distort, and Jason experiences the weirdest feeling of being in two places at once. Before the houses around him fade away, the ashes in front of him begin to morph into an orphanage, and the world as he knows it disappears.

Chapter Text

This is… not right. Jason knows it immediately, as he looks around and sees just how much has changed. The orphanage is standing the way it had been before the fire, but it looks different. The sign of above it is much newer, the colour of the bricks is vibrant, and the chalk drawings the kids did around it are gone. It looks like it’s only a couple of years old, and it’s not the only thing that makes Jason suddenly begin to really, really worry.

“Are you lost, young man?” a kindly voice asks, and Jason jumps to see an old woman smiling at him with the sort of smile that makes flowers grow and birds sing merrily. It’s a smile he recognizes, and suddenly he feels faint, shaken to his very core.

“N-no,” he stammers out, holding up both hands and stumbling back out into the street as his eyes stay fixed on an old face that he’s seen the obituary for in hundreds of newspapers. This old woman is someone who once changed the face of Gotham by taking in all the orphans whose parents were killed by violent crimes, and Jason knows her from more than just newspapers.

When he was younger, kicking it from orphanage to orphanage for bad behaviour, he’d made his way into this one once. It’s part of the reason for the fire, but Jason pushes the thought away as he stares at the old woman who had once attempted to raise him before he ended up in a different, darker orphanage. It hadn’t been that he hadn’t liked her, it was just that her kindness was too much. As it is now, when she cocks her head to one side and regards him curiously.

“You look sad,” she observes, her wrinkled old face reminding him somehow of Dick’s, if only because Dick is the only other person’s who’s ever looked at him that way. “And that stripe in your hair… you’ve been through a lot, haven’t you? Lost someone?”

A car’s horn blares and Jason blinks in shock, cursing as he’s forced to leap out of the way when the car doesn’t swerve. Technically, it was his fault for standing in the middle of the road, but that doesn’t change the fact that Gothamites are assholes. Which is somewhat comforting, because that, at least, is familiar ground.

“Listen, lady,” Jason says, then pauses as he tries to think about what to say. He could theoretically change his entire life if he tells her about the future of a young boy named Jason Todd, but that’s not why he’s here. It could save Dick, or it could make the Golden Boy whose ass Jason has saved on more than a few occasions die faster. No, he doesn’t want to change his own life, even though it’s royally fucked up and little him is going to face a world of hardships.

“You’re doing a great job, keep it up,” he offers rather gruffly, because he’s not good at this mushy shit and he’s got a mission to do anyways. One hour, if things are functioning like they should. Somehow, he’s ended up way further back than he’s planned, but maybe he can use that to his advantage. He bolts down the street before the woman can get another word out, skidding around the corner and trying to hail a taxi as he runs down the sidewalk. When he finally does, his watch lets out a weird, sci-fi type beep to let him know he’s already wasted ten minutes.

“Wayne Manor,” he gasps hurriedly, and when the cab driver turns to stare at him in disbelief, Jason has to roll his eyes. He has no time or patience for this shit, so he does the least logical thing he can possibly do. He pulls his gun, presses it into the side of the cabbie’s neck, and snarls, “Step on it.”

He’s a vigilante who’s only half hero, and he’s in a completely different time, so it’s not that bad, right? Besides, it’s Gotham. Cabbies probably have things like this happen to them on a daily basis. Sweat trickling down his neck, the cab driver nods and floors the car, surging towards Wayne Manor with a speed that still sets Jason’s teeth on edge. He keeps checking his watch, and when he sees another ten minutes wasted, he presses the gun into the driver’s neck hard enough to leave a painful red ring.

Forty minutes to change Dick’s fate. Forty minutes to do something worthwhile in a timeline he has no right to actually exist in. He doesn’t even know if Dick’s there; the sun’s rapidly sinking because he obviously wasn’t taken back to ten in the morning, and it’s probable that Dick’s suiting up for a night of being Robin. In fact, judging by the fact that the orphanage is only a couple of years old, Jason feels like he knows exactly what year he’s in, and that means the only logical place for Dick to be is out fighting crime right now. Shit, shit, shit, if he’d stayed in the city he might’ve been able to stir something up to find Dick, but since he wasn’t thinking straight—

There’s a thump on top of the car and the cabbie swerves, letting out a scream likes he’s afraid Jason’s going to cap him, and Jason has half a mind to do it out of pure frustration. Who the hell’s causing problems now? When the car rumbles to a halt, Jason swears loudly because he’s just realized exactly who it is and this totally isn’t a good position to try and talk calmly in. Jason reaches into his jacket and pulls out a familiar crimson mask, sliding it over his face before Bruce can catch a glimpse of him. He’s pretty sure his future self doesn’t need the weird questions about why he resembles a criminal Bruce tried to catch ten years earlier.

Bruce—Batman, really, because Jason shouldn’t know who he is—yanks the door open and Jason wonders what he’s done to deserve getting his ass kicked by his previous mentor. Dick should be nearby at least, so…

He lashes out with one foot to distract Bruce while his other hand fumbles with the door handle on the other side of the car. When he gets the door open, he slips out of the car with practised ease and starts running, because a confrontation with Bruce isn’t something he wants at the moment. There’s a possibility he can convince Bruce he’s genuinely from the future, but he feels like yelling Bruce’s and Dick’s identities at the top of his lungs to stop a fight just isn’t going to cut it.

“Fuck off!” he yells over his shoulder when he sees Bruce pursuing him with that single-minded determinedness he always has. Of all the days—!

He waits for the inevitable little ball of red, green, and yellow to appear in front of him, but something’s clearly wrong. Dick isn’t here. What the hell? Wasn’t Dick Grayson always kicking ass and dropping the world’s worst puns back in the day? Why is it just Bruce then, who’s paused and is looking back at the cabbie with something akin to suspicion?

The reason Bruce looks so suspicious clicks and Jason can’t stop a smirk from spreading across his face as Bruce hesitates, then runs after the fleeing cabbie instead of Jason. Oh yeah, there was a case where someone was parading as a cabbie once, wasn’t there? But then, instead of being a cabbie, they turned out to be a swindler kidnapping whoever got in the cab for ransom?

His watch beeps and when he sees the time, another loud stream of curses issues from his mouth. He has half an hour to find out where the first Robin is, and if Dick’s not with Bruce Jason has no idea what to think. The only plan he has left is going to Wayne Manor, because it’s the only other place he’s sure young Dick could be. Stealing the cab is an option, but there’s a possibility Bruce will come back for him if he does, and with only thirty minutes left he doesn’t have time to deal with the Batman.

So he runs. He runs harder than he ever has in his life, legs a blur as he pushes himself faster than he’s ever gone before so he can save Dick’s life. It isn’t too far, but he still only has twenty minutes left by the time he crests the hill nearest to Wayne Manor. Shoulders heaving and sweat running a marathon down his body, Jason starts running again until he’s right near the front door. His fingers fumble with his mask and he strips it off (it might look suspicious if he knocks on the door dressed like a criminal), tucking it back into his coat as he jogs up the door and begins pounding on it.

There’s a hundred speeches running through his head about what to say to Alfred to get the information he wants, but when the door cracks open they all fly away because the strong, tanned hand resting casually against the doorframe isn’t Alfred’s. Jason’s heart comes stuttering to a stop as the door opens wider, and he finds he’s too stunned to even curse when a tiny Dick opens the door and blinks curiously up at him.

“Hiya,” Dick greets, blue eyes just as warm and friendly as Jason remembers them. “What can I do for you?”

Jason forgets how to breathe for a second, and tears of relief fill his eyes to such a degree that they actually threaten to spill over. With an angry huff, Jason scrapes them away then tries to compose himself, but he… can’t. It feels like he’s been floating ever since Dick died, like someone cut the strings tethering his soul to earth and set him drifting away, and seeing Dick again is too much. The relief he feels is a bigger emotion than he’s ever felt in his life, and the next thing he knows he’s actually almost most bowled Dick over with a hug.

“Free hug brigade?” Dick asks in surprise, but he seems happy enough with the contact even though Jason’s a complete stranger, and he actually has the audacity to hug Jason back. The kid’s like… twelve, and he’s not Jason’s Dick, but someday he will be, and right now that’s enough. Jason’s way bigger, but somehow it feels like Dick’s comforting him as the blue-eyed boy pats him on the back in a way that only Dick can make seem non-awkward.

“I’m sorry,” Jason rasps out as he leans back, reluctant to release the acrobat. There’s so much more he wants to say, and he’s apologizing for things that haven’t even happened yet, but he can’t stop himself. “I’m so sorry. I… you… fuck, I’m not good at this.”

“That’s a-okay!” Dick chirps cheerfully, peering out the door behind Jason before shutting it and tilting a pretty, boyish head at the man who’s eventually going to succeed him as Robin. “I get it; sometimes people just need hugs. Although it seems like you need more than a hug. It’s totally cool if that’s all you needed, but is there something you want to talk about?”

His ability to set people at ease and make them feel unjudged is as uncanny as usual, despite his youth. Jason jams his hands in his pockets and nods, then follows Dick into the mansion, unable to stop a spike of curiosity as he looks around. It’s similar to how he remembers it, but it seems a little… sparser. As if it’s more unused than usual, unlived in. He guesses that it must be because it’s only Bruce, Alfred, and Dick right now; the rest of the fam aren’t here yet.

“Is it just you home?” Jason asks, then feels uncomfortable asking because what if he sounds like some weird pervert? It’s not like Dick actually knows him, and he knows tons of people have made unwanted passes at the attractive man when he’s older, so it goes to reason he still got some of those passes when he was younger. Even at twelve, his body is starting to shape itself like a man, with his shoulders beginning to broaden and his hips narrowing over the ass that’s destined to become perfect.

Thinking that way begins to make Jason more uncomfortable, because holy fuck, he is not interested in boys and though he’d have to be blind, dumb, and deaf not to notice Dick’s attractiveness, he’s not supposed to be interested in Dick Grayson either. Dick is Babs’ man, always has been, and though Jason maybe accidentally gasped out Dick’s name during a few hot, sticky nights when he went through puberty, he’s pretty much accepted the fact that Dick belongs to someone else. But… that’s not true, is it? Not now, at least.

Stop it, you fucking weird ass pedo! Jason mentally shouts at himself, feeling his cheeks heat up. Dick’s an attractive kid, sure, but Jason’s not interested in kids and he shouldn’t be considering dropping into a timeline with a maybe seventeen-year-old Dick who isn’t with Barbara yet. No. Not happening.

“—and he’s gone out shopping!” Dick finishes happily, and Jason realizes that the whole time he’s been having a sexuality crisis over Dick fucking Grayson, the kid’s been blathering on about how Alfred is out of the house shopping with Bruce. Man, Jason’s going to get laid when this is over. It’s been too long and he’s getting too worked up over nothing.

“Huh,” he manages to get out as Dick leads him to… the bedroom. What. The. Fuck. Grayson. When Jason gets back to his normal timeline, he’s going to punch Dick in the face for being such a naïve, dumb kid. Who leads random men to their bedroom in the middle of the night when they’re twelve years old?

“Aren’t you afraid I’m going to try something?” Jason finally grits out, unable to hold back his anger anymore. How many people has Dick done this with, that he seems so comfortable doing it now?

“Nuh-uh. You’re a good guy; I can see it in your eyes,” Dick laughs as he kicks his door open. The room is large, but only one corner is occupied at the moment—a desk full of complicated calculations and homework, with a report card all scribbled red pinned over it. “Besides, if you try anything weird, I can kick your butt.”

Now that’s a typical Dick thing to say, and Jason has to roll his eyes as Dick climbs into the desk chair and settles cross-legged into it, somehow making an uncomfortable position look comfortable.

“So, what’s up? You obviously have business with either me, Bruce, or Alfred, since this place is pretty out of the way.”

Jason hesitates at the door, his arms crossed over his chest, then slowly loses his defensive position as he walks over to take a seat on Dick’s bed across from the desk chair. He tries to ignore the fact that he’s seated on the bed of a man he once had wet dreams about, and focuses instead on the fact that he’s here to save a life. He glances quickly at his watch—ten minutes left—then meets young Dick’s eyes.

“In the future, you’re going to meet someone who looks like me. He’s… a relative. And bad news. If there ever comes a time when you have to save him after someone’s birthday… don’t.”

The confused look on Dick’s face is priceless, features still soft with baby fat contorted so his whole face is a question mark.

“Are you from the future?” Dick asks, rising from his chair and coming towards Jason. Somehow, the nearness is making Jason nervous, and he leans back as Dick leans forward. He’s so close Jason can see every eyelash in detail, and there are these fascinating little gold flecks deep in Dick’s eyes that Jason’s never noticed before. Mostly because he tries to never get so close.

“Mm…” Dick says, his voice rumbling through his throat. “You don’t look familiar. Do you know me in a little while from now?”

Jason’s throat is dry as his eyes dart between both of Dick’s eyes, and the only movement between the two of them is the dart of Jason’s tongue as he flicks it over his lips. Then, when Jason doesn’t answer, Dick shrugs and leans back and Christ on a bike that was fucking tense, though Jason doesn’t exactly know why. All he knows is that if it were his Dick Grayson, who was older and more accustomed to Jason’s mood swings, he might’ve closed the distance between them. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he needs out, because once Dick is alive in his timeline again he doesn’t need things feeling awkward between them.

“Holy Cats!” young Dick exclaims now, pretty blues going as wide as saucers. “You’re fading away!”

Jason blinks in surprise and looks down to see his fingers looking pretty transparent. Wait, he’s going back to his timeline now, right? He better not just be fading away into some abyss because the shitty watch is broken. When he looks back up again, Dick is looking worried even though he’s only known Jason for a total of five minutes, and Jason actually feels a smirk making its way on his face. He reaches out and rests a hand on Dick’s head for just one minute, the obsidian locks feeling as silky as they look.

“Hey listen, don’t you dare make that ‘Holy Cats’ phrase a thing, okay? It grates on people’s nerves later.”

“What’s your name?” Dick yelps out, but Jason shakes his head as the scene completely disappears, satisfied that he’s changed things. Dick doesn’t need to know his name; all he needs to know is that he shouldn’t hurt himself trying to save everyone this time. Jason’s done it, he’s sure of it.

---

“Think you’re pretty tough, huh, Red Hood?” the thug asks, and Jason sneers as he wipes blood from the corner of his lips. Getting shot by your average, garden-variety thug isn’t very appealing, but then not much about Jason’s life is appealing. The thug pistol-whips him with the gun, having fun to the very end, and Jason points his own gun between the thug’s eyes.

“Bang,” he laughs as he pulls the trigger and hears the click of the firing pin hitting an empty chamber. He’s out of bullets, out of breath, and out of time. The thug whips him upside the head one more time, sending his ears ringing, then steps back and levels the gun at Jason’s head.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jason sees a flash of black and blue, and then there’s the loud pop of a pistol being fired in close proximity. Jason instinctively winces, but when he opens his eyes he isn’t seeing the great almighty light. He’s seeing his favourite ass in spandex as Dick Grayson kicks the thug’s gun from his hand, his leg swinging so high Jason wonders how he doesn’t split himself in half.

“What’s red and black and blue all over?” Dick asks, waggling his eyebrows. Jason is about to spit out a sarcastic retort, when he notices a scarlet trail sliding down one of Dick’s legs. It stands out so bright on the black, and Jason narrows his eyes as he follows the stream up to see a bullet wound in the fleshy part of Dick’s thigh. Dick winces a little when he sets his foot back down, but they’re both accustomed to bullets in the extremities and Jason isn’t all that worried.

“Both of us,” Dick teases the criminal as he spins to knock the man’s feet out from under him. The man’s head hits the pavement with a sickening crunch, and his eyes go all dazed as he gets the concussion of his life. Dick straightens up, experimenting with his leg by doing small hops on his toes, and shakes his head with a long sigh.

“Might be out of commission for a little while,” he says as he turns to offer Jason a hand up. Just as he’s hauling Jason up, they both catch the sound of the sirens. Jason frowns but says nothing as Dick springs away, lithe as a cat, to go investigate. He only follows, thinking Dick’s a complete idiot, but he doesn’t call out to stop the hero from doing his thing. Why didn’t he call out?

---

Jason wakes with a start to find himself curled on Dick’s bed, right where he had been when he was talking to young Dick. He jerks himself up and looks around, relieved to see that everything’s as it had been back when Dick was alive. The report card is gone, the messy desk full of homework, and the pages of complicated maths. All that’s left is a sparse, superficial room that Bruce lets Dick sleep in when he needs a place to stay in Gotham.

Stretching, Jason eases to his feet and then freezes when the door creaks open. Babs stares, open-mouthed, as she looks between Jason and Dick’s bed. Well this is awkward. He doesn’t exactly know how to explain what he’s doing in her boyfriend’s bed, so he opts with a shrug because why the fuck not. It’s not like he’s been caught in a very compromising position—he can just say he fell asleep in the wrong room.

“He behind you?” Jason asks, wondering rather uncomfortably if alive and well Dick is just behind Barbara, waiting for Jason to leave so the two of them can… well, Jason doesn’t like thinking about that. But instead of rolling her eyes with a gentle chastisement, Babs gets a disgusted look on her face.

“That’s not funny,” she snaps, then abruptly slams the door. Jason stares, startled, then gets a horrible feeling. He runs to the door, wrenches it open, then bolts down the steps of the mansion two at a time. He blows past Alfred, who’s looking tired, and Bruce, who’s looking a little shell-shocked, to come back to the graveyard he’d been in before he’d gone to the ashes of the orphanage. And, right there just as it had been last time, is a headstone.

Jason drops to his knees, paling. He doesn’t understand. He told Dick not to save him those few days after Tim’s birthday, and that should’ve been enough. Unless… Unless Dick pulled his usual Dick Grayson act and went ahead to save Jason anyway. Now that he thinks of it, he realizes that if Dick didn’t save him, he wouldn’t even be alive. He’d been totally okay with that, but—of course Dick wouldn’t listen. That stupid, soft-hearted little shit would put his life in danger to save a puppy, so of course he’d save Jason even after being explicitly told not to. Jason grits his teeth, setting his hand against the broken time watch.

He’d just have to do it again. This time, he’d get it right.

Chapter Text

This time, when Jason goes back, he has a plan. He stands in the training room in Bruce’s house, and he sets the watch to the same day he set it last time, only a few hours earlier. Theoretically, it should bring him back to twelve-year-old Dick’s timeline, since even if it was broken it should be somewhat predictable, right? So he’s going to show up in Bruce’s training room, find Bruce or Alfred, and take the hour to explain everything. If Bruce knows what’s going to happen, he’ll definitely stop it. And if he decides not to take Jason in… well, at least Dick will still be alive and happy with Babs.

He experiences the same odd feeling of reality being bent, and then he’s standing in the middle of a familiar room. The dummies, the weapons lining the walls, the high ceilings where all sorts of acrobatic things Dick had begged Bruce to put up… they all make Jason feel like he’s come home. This place has changed probably the least of the whole house.

“HOLY CATS!” a voice screeches behind him and Jason turns just in time to see Dick drop from his place on a trapeze, arms flailing as he goes crashing headfirst towards the ground. Without a safety net to catch him. Of course Grayson wouldn’t put the safety net up, of course he’d pick now to do something stupidly dangerous.

Jason lunges and catches the idiotic acrobat moments before he hits the ground, rolling to bring them to a stop where neither of them would get too badly hurt. He ends up on top of Dick, a head on each side of Dick’s hand and his knees on each side of the boy’s slim hips.

“What the fuck are you doing with no safety net?” Jason snaps before he can stop himself, because he’s pissed on every level there is to be pissed. Not only did Dick still die after all that effort, but he’s needlessly putting himself in danger even when he’s training.

“It wouldn’t have been a problem if you hadn’t randomly appeared in the middle of the room,” Dick points out, looking exasperated. “I mean, if you want to visit you can use the front door like everyone else; I won’t mind. In fact, I love visitors! When they use the front door.”

“You’re so…”

Jason trails off, frustrated with how much of a shit young Dick is, and that’s when he notices that young Dick is a little older than the last time they met. Last time Jason had figured he was about twelve, but this time he’s gotta be fourteen or fifteen. He’s starting to look hot now, not just cute, and Jason is suddenly acutely aware of the compromising position they’re in. Dick’s face is flushed with the exertion of having just completed training, and he’s breathing quicker than normal as he arches an eyebrow that’s one hundred percent sassy humour at Jason. And, of course, he keeps squirming because he’s never good at being still, and having Dick Grayson hot, flushed, and squirming under him is starting to do things to his mind and body that he can’t handle.

Jason rolls off and springs to his feet, turning away so he’s no longer looking at Dick in that tight little training uniform.

Fifteen, Jason, he yells at himself in his head. At the most!

“Are you going to finish that sentence or has that sentence finished you?” Dick asks, and Jason wants to punch him in the mouth as he feels himself heat up. Oh. So this was the age Dick started to realize he was attractive as fuck, and this was the age he started teasing people about it. Jason wants to go back to the twelve-year-old kid doing homework, but since he’s already here he has to forge on. He should really tell Bruce, but Dick is old enough to understand the gravity of the situation, right?

“I’m here to tell you not to save—”

“Someone who looks like you? You mentioned that last time,” Dick laughs, sounding amused. “Pretty stuck on that one, aren’t you?”

“Yeah well, you obviously haven’t been listening,” Jason snaps, ignoring the sounds of Dick approaching from behind him. What is it with the little acrobat and invading personal space? “I also told you to stop saying ‘Holy Cats’ and you haven’t done that, have you?”

“You have cat to be kitten me right meow,” Dick teases, and Jason’s entire body stiffens up as he feels Dick’s chin on his shoulder. WHY. “Crying over that little phrase is like crying over spilled milk.”

“What are you doing?!” Jason yelps, tearing himself away from Dick and cringing as he throws his hands up in defense. “Stop that!”

Dick just chuckles, folding his hands behind his head and watching Jason with gentle, amused eyes. Jason’s so flustered he can barely speak, which is a really bad thing because he only has one hour, but Dick being such a huge flirt is completely throwing him off. Yes, Dick flirted outrageously with everyone even when he was older, but it was never as serious as this. He didn’t invade Jason’s personal space, look Jason up and down with an appreciative, smouldering glance, and nod as if he was pleased with what he saw.

“I’m curious,” Dick offers with a shrug. “You’re obviously attracted me and you know me when I’m older, so I’m trying to find out what kind of relationship we have. It would be cool if we’re lovers when we’re older, because you’re not half bad.”

“You’re fifteen,” Jason says in a half-whisper, reaching up to massage his temple. “I’m not attracted to you.”

“Your tight pants say otherwise,” Dick taunts, and there go the eyebrows again. Jason stares in shock, then looks down, pretty sure he’s managed to calm himself so he isn’t half-hard over a fifteen-year-old boy. And he isn’t. But Dick’s snort tells him that this entire thing was a manipulation and the fact that Jason looked down instead of immediately protesting just proved his point. Fucking Dick Grayson.

“We need to talk, Grayson, so can you stop being a shit for five minutes so I can tell you how to not die?”

He expects Dick to be nonplussed by that, to stop with his ridiculous, hormonal behaviour so that Jason can explain just how dire the situation is. But Dick isn’t even phased; he deliberates, tapping his lower lip with a thoughtful finger, before shrugging.

“Alright. But only on one condition.”

“What.” It’s a statement more than a question, because Dick is really trying his patience now and he has half a mind to start screaming his head off for Bruce.

Dick sidles up to him slyly, and it takes every muscle in Jason’s body not to throw himself away from the underage kid who’s obviously trying to seduce him. Everything in his body is screaming to run away, because this is really dangerous, but he’s here to save a life. Even if he is tempted to fucking kill Grayson for these little games, because he’s done everything he could not to fall for the bubbly, joyful acrobat, taking every precaution, and Dick’s forcing him to throw all those precautions to the wind for this.

“Kiss me?” Dick says almost shyly, and there’s a mischievous glint in his eye as if he thinks Jason wouldn’t possibly do something like that, but he wants to tease Jason anyway. Jason’s just about had enough, and though Dick can’t possibly know how much this is fucking with Jason’s feelings, he still feels a little resentful. It’s so easy for this boy who’s probably had every one of his crushes returned with an almost obsessive interest. In the future, he just has to crook one finger towards any man or woman and they’ll come to him, though he usually doesn’t because he’s not one to play with people’s feelings. But still, he’s probably kissed more people in a week than Jason’s kissed in his life, and that’s not fair, because Jason isn’t one of those people.

With a low growl escaping from his lips, Jason grabs the shorter boy by the shoulders and spins him around to slam him against the wall, satisfied when Dick’s eyes widen in surprise. Before Dick can make another snarky, sexual quip, Jason leans forward and presses his lips against Dick’s, doing the thing he’s only dared to do in dreams before.

There’s a long pause, where they breathe together, mouth to mouth, until Dick brings those ridiculously flexible legs up and wraps them around Jason’s waist so Jason is forced to hold all of his weight up. Then Dick, the cheeky little brat, takes the initiative and forces Jason’s mouth open with his tongue, reaching up and digging both hands into Jason’s hair to drag him down almost desperately.

This is so wrong, one part of Jason says, while another goes Oh God, I’ve wanted this for so fucking long.

He deepens the kiss with a ferocity that even Dick can’t match, sliding his tongue into the kid’s mouth and pressing Dick harder into the wall until it feels like they’re almost one person and there’s just heat, and heat, and heat. When he finally breaks the kiss, he can’t even remember why they’re in the training room or how they got there, because his mind has completely short-circuited. He presses his forehead against Dick’s, panting, and it’s only when he looks up to see Dick smiling at him, wide-eyed, that he feels a rush of shame. Fifteen. Shit. He’s taking advantage of a fifteen-year-old kid, who’s Barbara’s by all rights.

“Will you listen now?” Jason rasps out, and it takes every ounce of self-control he has not to start grinding into Dick’s hips when the boy makes a little groan of disappointment deep in his throat. Dick’s just a horny kid, and this is just a one-time thing, because even if Jason knows Dick’s experimented with just about every sexuality under the sun, he’s pretty sure Dick’s straight. The guy never looked at other guys the way he looked at girls, and he never surreptitiously stole glances at Jason in the communal showers the way Jason once had for him.

“Yeah,” Dick sighs as he slowly unwraps himself from Jason. Jason has to swallow back disappointment as they separate and shift their clothes, Jason avoiding Dick’s eyes while Dick watches his every move.

“Good,” Jason grumbles, and then he finally proceeds to tell Dick everything. It’s probably not something you’re supposed to do—tell someone their future and how they die—but Jason doesn’t care. He tells Dick about the gun wound, the fire, everything, and by the time he’s done Dick is looking actually scared. Well, good. Maybe now he won’t get himself killed.

“So I leave you behind?” Dick asks and… what? Jason’s mouth flops open helplessly.

“I mean, I’d definitely sacrifice myself for the person I loved, but I’d try not to leave you behind if I could help it. It’s pretty selfish, especially since it’s obviously messed you up.”

“We’re not—I don’t know what you’re thinking, but it’s not like that,” Jason says once he gets a hold of himself. “You’re with… I shouldn’t tell you this, but fuck it… you’re with Barbara Gordon. The two of you make—”

The words are like acid in Jason’s mouth, but he spits them out anyway.

“—a really great couple.”

Dick stares, looking as if he doesn’t know how to respond, and Jason is relieved when he checks his watch to see he only has ten minutes left. Even if he’s going back to his reality and can’t get in trouble with the law here, he has standards. Mainly, that he doesn’t make out with anyone under the age of eighteen. Even Dick. Hell, especially Dick, because that’s more dangerous than playing roulette with the Joker.

“Why?” Dick asks suddenly, and Jason doesn’t understand the question.

“Why what?” he asks, itching for a cigarette to calm himself down. But he hasn’t smoked since the fire, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to light up again after what happened.

“Why am I with Babs when I have someone like you in love with me?”

Jason’s face flames immediately, and he spits out about seventeen thousand denials in the space of one minute. Why can’t Dick play the part of oblivious love interest, like he always has? Unless… the idea that maybe Dick knew all along but kindly didn’t point it out so their relationship wouldn’t deteriorate is almost humiliating. It’s such a him thing to do, and now that Jason knows he wonders what else Dick conveniently overlooked. The lingering stares? The way Jason bit a hole through his lip when Dick tried a new type of chocolate then tipped his head back to groan in ecstasy? The time Jason was younger and had maybe stolen one of Dick’s sweaters because he liked the smell? It’s mortifying, and Jason absolutely didn’t need to know this particular piece of information.

“I think you fell in love with her before we even met,” Jason mutters finally, examining his finger nails as if there’s something incredibly interesting on them. “And I mean… you’re straight, right?”

“Straight?!” Dick asks, actually looking offended. “Of course not. I like guys and girls. And sure, Babs is amazing and smart and kickass, but we’re just friends. We’ve already tried dating a couple of times, and it always ends because we like each other more as friends than lovers.”

“That changes, though,” Jason says, yet suddenly he’s not so sure. It’s true that even in the future Dick and Barbara’s relationship is always off-again-on-again, and he knows sometimes the two even pretend to be together just to ward off the unwanted advances they’re both always getting. He’d been so sure that this time, it was more than platonic, but was it really? It wasn’t like Jason had been hanging around the two much, because the sight of them lightheartedly fooling around always drove him up the wall.

“Does it?” Dick asks almost breathily. His smile is sunshine and mischief, as if he can read Jason’s mind. Jason glares stubbornly, and Dick reaches up to touch the fluff of white in Jason’s hair, once again invading Jason’s personal bubble. This time, the desire to jump away is less though, and it doesn’t feel like as much of a betrayal to Barbara.

“What’s your name?”

“I can’t—”

“How am I supposed to not save you if I don’t even know your name?”

Jason closes his mouth, checks to make sure he’s almost out of time, then rolls his eyes towards the ceiling.

“You’re going to meet me eventually, and when you do you’d better not fuck with me the way you are now. No telling me about the future—”

“Won’t tell past you I made out with future you. Got it,” Dick quips.

“—and don’t try to get with me just because I like you in the future. That’s a completely shitty reason, and I’m be damn pissed if I find out you’re only with me because you thought we were together in the future.”

“Name?” Dick prompts, waving Jason’s speech off as if it doesn’t even matter.

“Jason Todd.”

Dick’s eyes light up and his excitement has him on his toes, bouncing as if he’s so excited he can’t bear to keep still.

“Jason. I like it. Jason, Jay, it’s a great name to call out during—”

Dick pauses, his smile turning wicked, and Jason is tempted to bang his head against the wall.

“—a sports game. Go, Jay, go! Right? Just don’t be a Blue Jay, because it’s sad when you’re sad.”

“I hate you,” Jason sighs as he begins to fade away. Dick just keeps on grinning, and it’s not a bad picture to disappear to. It’ll be an even better picture when he sees older Dick grinning, though, and this time better be when he gets to see that.

---

It’s Two-Face, of course, and he’s holding one of Jason’s old orphanages hostage. Jason knows Two-Face is still sore about that one time Jason almost strangled him to death, so it doesn’t come as a surprise that the man’s trying to draw him out. What is a surprise, however, is the fact that Two-Face has deduced a piece of Jason’s identity. In hindsight, it’s not too hard to figure out when you think a little; Gotham’s full of angry, self-righteous orphans, and it’s not too much of a stretch to think a lot of the vigilantes and villains come from orphanages. And since this one has the largest population, it’s the most logical choice.

“Oh,” Dick says in surprise, and when Jason turns to look he’s surprised to see something akin to fear on the acrobat’s face. He vaguely remembers hearing something about Harvey beating a young Dick so bad Dick almost quit as Robin, but before he can ask if Dick’s alright the man’s already flinging himself across rooftops with an effortless grace. Jason follows less effortlessly, grumbling all the way.

“Where are you, Red Hood?” Two-Face yells out from a window with a bullet hole through it, and Jason narrows his eyes. Two-Face is an asshole he should’ve killed a long time ago, and this only proves that Bruce’s methods of dealing gently with killers is wrong. No more kid-gloves—this time Jason’s actually going to put a bullet into Harvey Dent’s head.

He sets down on a roof where he has a good view of Two-Face, and he crouches down to aim for the man’s ugly mug. Two-Face has a kid in his arms with a gun pressed into her temple, and if Jason is even an inch too low the girl could die. It sucks big time, but he has confidence in his abilities, and as he lines up he’s sure that this time he’ll actually take down one of Gotham’s most wanted. His finger hovers on the trigger. Deep breath in, and out. On the next breath, pull the trigger. Deep breath in—

Dick crashes through the window, toes pointed and arms pulled to his sides to streamline himself as he plows right into Two-Face, and Jason swears loudly. Now is not the time for Grayson to get involved, not when Jason had Two-Face in his sights. But there Dick is, straddling Harvey and throwing punch after punch as the children back away. Jason waits impatiently for Dick to stop so he can get a clear shot, but the kind, gentle man keeps punching. He’s so focused on it that he doesn’t even notice the kids scampering away, and even from where he is Jason can see blood splattering across Dick’s face. Ooooookay, so apparently the Golden Boy has some fucking issues.

Jason holsters his gun and jumps across a few roofs until he’s close enough to crash through the window into the room. The first thing that hits him is a weird smell—it’s pretty strong, and it gives him an instant headache—but he ignores it as he pads across the room to stand beside Dick and watch the impressive display of Boy Wonder about to kill someone with brute strength, which is absolutely not his way.

“Look, not that I want to interrupt—because I completely agree with your actions—but killing isn’t really your field, Nightwing,” Jason says. At Jason’s voice, Dick finally seems to come back to himself, and the hand that he uses to push his hair back is slick with blood. When he looks up, he’s clearly regretting what he just did, and Jason thinks that’s the biggest difference between them. Jason wouldn’t mind pounding Harvey into oblivion and then into hell, but Dick would probably cry himself to sleep every night with guilt.

“Alright, buddy?” Jason asks, crouching so he can frown at Two-Face. He can’t even tell which side is the bad side because right now they both look like shit. Two-Face mutters something unintelligible that sounds like some curses and the name ‘Red Hood’ but Jason ignores him as he narrows his eyes at Dick.

“Let me take care of him,” he says carefully, and is only slightly disappointed when Dick shakes his head in a negative. Dark, but not dark enough to kill or let someone else kill for him.

“I’ll handle it,” Dick says, lips twitching in the semblance of a smile. “You should trust I can, Little Wing, since I already put a dent in his head.”

Jason actually hits Dick for that, balling up his fist and punching the top of Dick’s head, but Dick only laughs with a bright smile that tugs at Jason’s heart. No, Dick belongs to Barbara, he’s being stupid thinking that Dick’s smile is all for him. But he needs to tell Dick how he feels, needs to tell him soon so he can get the rejection over with and move on. He can’t bring himself to be with anyone anymore—not that he hasn’t tried—because he’s too tied up in Dick’s grins.

“Listen—”

“Heads… or tails…” Harvey’s garbled voice says, and Jason frowns in annoyance as he looks down at the man holding… wait, is that Jason’s fucking lighter? Oh no, no way is he letting Harvey fuck with his—

Dick is suddenly throwing him like a professional football champ, and Jason can only gape as he goes crashing through the window again and out into the street. He’s dimly aware of children filtering out of the orphanage on the floor below them, but he’s too shocked by how unexpected Dick’s betrayal is to do much more than shoot a grappling hook to the next building and swing himself away. It’s only when Two-Face lets out an angry shout and flicks the lighter on that Jason realizes why Dick acted that way. Because the funky smell in the room that the hole in the window hadn’t gotten rid of wasn’t some sewage problem or garbage that hadn’t been taken out in ages.

It was gas.

---

Jason is lying on the floor of the training room, looking up at a variety of ridiculous things only a trapeze artist would request. He sits up and blinks blearily, rubbing his eyes and wondering what’s changed now. His feelings haven’t, that’s for damn sure; they’ve only intensified to the point where he has to actively stop himself from calling out for Dick. They made out in the past. Great. Would that affect their relationship in the future too?

“Jay!” a female voice calls, and Jason picks himself off the ground to stumble to the training room door. He pulls it open, expecting to see Babs or maybe Cass waiting for him. Instead, it’s some dark-haired chick who’s looking at Jason like he’s her whole world. When she catches sight of Jason’s confusion, bright blue eyes fill with tears and she flings herself into Jason’s arms, sobbing into his shoulder.

“I’m so sorry, I know he was a good friend,” she says, and Jason doesn’t have the presence of mind to hug her back. Instead, he grabs her by the shoulders and pulls her away from him perhaps more roughly than he needs to, because he likes personal space and some random chick messing with it is definitely not what he needs right now.

“The fuck do you mean?” he demands, scared but needing to know the answer. The girl shifts, looking nervous as if she thinks he’s lost his mind. He shakes her, digging his fingers into her arms, and she flinches, avoiding his eyes.

“Dick Grayson,” she whispers, and Jason’s grip loosens. Why? How could Dick be dead when Jason had explicitly told him not to put himself in danger?

“What happened?” he asks jaggedly, because somehow this is hurting more and more each time. Though he logically knows he can go back and try to change it again, he’s beginning to wonder if Dick is destined to die and it can’t be changed. The girl tilts her head at him, looking even more scared as she reaches up to grab his fingers and pull them away from her arms. Then she threads them with her own fingers, and gives a light sigh.

“I don’t know, something about trying to rescue orphans in a fire? Are you repressing the memory, Jay? He was just over at our house before it happened, remember? You two got into an argument over something, he left and you stayed, and somehow he ended up in a fight with Harvey Dent. It’s all over the news… he’s a true hero.”

There’s just too much information there to process. So, what Jason had changed was the fact that Dick went out alone that day instead of going with Jason? Why the hell would he do that? And what the fuck did this chick mean by ‘our house’?

“Who…” Jason finally takes a good look at the girl, and he’s shocked to see how much she resembles Dick. If Dick was a girl, he’d look almost exactly like this, with the long black hair swept up into a messy bun, the bright blue eyes glittering, and a rare jawline strength that most women didn’t have. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Jay!” she gasps, looking instantly hurt as she drops their fingers, putting one hand over her mouth. “If this is a joke, it’s not funny.”

“I’m not joking,” he snaps, crossing his arms and stepping away so she can’t reach for him anymore. “I’ve never seen you in my life. Just who the hell do you think you are?”

“It’s me, Jay,” she whispers, looking as if she’s about to burst into tears again. “Don’t you remember me? We’ve been engaged for the past two years.”

Chapter Text

Jason has truly outdone himself this time. Not only has he somehow managed to alienate Dick, but he’s also somehow managed to get himself a female fiancée despite the fact that he’s most certainly not into women. After wrenching away from her and stalking off, Jason manages to find Babs and gets more or less the whole story. The parts Babs doesn’t supply, Jason can pretty much fill in himself.

Dick, the overenthusiastic asshole that he was, had been way too overeager about meeting ‘Jason Todd’ and had managed to push Jason further away than ever with subtle advances that Jason just knows his younger self would take as cruel jokes. Even now, he still can’t quite believe Dick is serious about him, so when the stunning, joyful acrobat had flirted with his younger self Jason’s betting he thought Dick was just another straight asshole who liked messing with people’s feelings. He probably hadn’t given Dick a chance to show him his true personality, so he’d never realized that Dick wasn’t like that.

And then he’d met a girl who was the mirror image of Dick, and with her he’d been able to pretend because he could believe a female Dick would like him. How sad and pathetic he’d been, his esteem at such an all-time low that he’d been unable to see that Dick really cared. Because how could Golden Boy, who shone brighter than anything in the world, like dark, chip-on-his-shoulder Jason, a hoodlum Bruce had picked up to replace a Robin that was much better on pretty much all levels?

Fuck, to think that one conversation can change the future this much. Jason knew he should be careful, but being around Dick made him throw caution to the wind and now he’s fucked up more lives than just his own. Babs was miserable because Dick had been, Bruce was confused about the whole situation, Tim pretty much hated Jason, and Alfred kept giving these long-suffering sighs as if he was disappointed in the way life had turned out. So. Third time’s the charm, or at least that’s how the saying goes.

Jason is hopelessly confused about how this watch works, because it’s obviously not doing anything even remotely predictable outside of putting him where he’s standing, but it’s not like he can make things worse, right?

This time he goes to the front door of the Manor and sets it for the exact same time, wondering how this one’ll turn out. A bend in reality, an odd sensation, the world around him changing rapidly, and then Jason’s on the front porch, shivering in anticipation. He reaches out and presses the doorbell, hopeful, nervous, and excited all at once. This is fucking stupid. He feels like a schoolboy about to confess to his crush, but he can’t make the butterflies in his stomach go away. When the door creaks open, though, Dick’s name dies on Jason’s lips because of course Dick answering the door is a one-time thing.

“Master Jason,” Alfred says in surprise, looking genuinely shocked. Oh shit, Jason hopes this isn’t the era where he’s supposed to be dead, because explaining that is going to take longer than an hour. But Alfred’s shock seems to be only limited to the fact that Jason’s there, because he opens the door further with a polite ‘Would you like to come in?’

“I’m looking for Grayson,” Jason says, cutting to the chase even though he knows he’s dropping proper etiquette. “He around?”

“Master Dick? Why no, I should think not,” Alfred exclaims, looking Jason up and down curiously. “He has his own residence in Bludhaven.”

Well there goes that idea. Jason doubts he can meet up with Dick in one hour, but luckily, he’s more prepared this time around. He pulls a letter out of his jacket detailing everything (or almost everything, because there was no way in hell he’s telling grim, overprotective Bruce that he’d made out with an underage Dick) and hands it over to Alfred. Alfred merely raises an eyebrow, waiting for Jason to speak before he does anything else.

“Read it, then get Bruce to read it,” Jason says, and Alfred nods in affirmation, tucking the letter securely into his pocket and patting it. Jason bites his lip, worried that somehow the letter will get lost, but he has to trust Alfred with it. He should probably stay and explain more about the situation, but he’s not exactly a patient man and he has no desire to explain something that’s happening for a third time, so instead he lifts his hand in a farewell wave then sprints away, leaving Alfred looking like he’s one hundred percent fed up with bat fam shit.

Now, Jason has done his fair share of stupid things in his life, but what he chooses to do in that moment actually takes the fucking cake because it’s so absolutely stupid that Jason’s almost proud of himself. He steals a car. And not just any car, but a car from Bruce’s massive garage of them, which means it’s almost one hundred percent guaranteed to have a tracker and a camera so Bruce can see it’s him stealing the car. Ah well. He’ll be gone in an hour anyway, so he may as well leave a trail of figurative bodies behind him for Bruce to clean up. Bruce deserves that much, if you ask Jason, because somehow the Joker’s still alive after everything he’s done and that’s just not cool.

Tires screeching, the lovely smell of burning rubber scenting the air, Jason lets his whims take him where they may. And his whims have him using the built-in phone in Bruce’s sweet ass car has to call a number he knows by heart, even though he’s never actually called it. He’s thought about it though; he’s had long nights where he’s sat curled in a cheap, crappy motel, hesitating after dialing seven of eight numbers.

“Hello, hello, baby you’ve called I can’t hear a thing!” a familiar voice sings out, and Jason doesn’t know whether to be relieved that’s it not as weird as he thought, or exasperated that Dick’s singing Lady Gaga songs as a greeting before he even knows who it is.

“Wha-wha-what did you say? Oh you’re breaking up on me,” Dick is continuing, and in the background Jason can hear the sound of running water and the clatter of dishes. The sudden image of Dick wearing nothing but an apron while he dances around to Lady Gaga songs in the kitchen almost makes Jason get into an accident, narrowly avoiding a car that’s actually on the right side of the road.

“Shut up, Boy Wonder,” he says loudly, and Dick’s singing abruptly cuts off.

“Jay? Wow, it’s not like you to call me. What’s up?”

“How old are you?”

There’s a long pause, then an, “Uhh, what?”

“You fucking heard me, Grayson,” he growls out, hands tight on the steering wheel. Another pause, and then it’s like he can hear a click on the other end when Dick figures out it isn’t this timeline’s Jason he’s talking to.

“Twenty-one,” Dick says, sounding much more alert now as the sound of pouring water shuts off. Twenty-one. So he’s two years younger than Jason is now. Jason had expected to come back to sixteen or eighteen, but it seems like his broken watch is getting exponentially closer to the time Jason wants it to be at. He checks it now, a quick glance, and frowns. He has thirty minutes left, and he’s only just passing the sign that says ‘Welcome to Bludhaven.’

“Do you want me to meet you somewhere?” Dick asks, and Jason yells a curse out the window as some driver cuts him off and starts driving like less than zero because Jason feels like he’s actually going back in time.

“Shit, sorry, no. Just… I’ll be there soon.”

Jason hangs up abruptly, then completely ditches the shiny car that’s now become useless, leaving it open in the middle of the street. Horns are honking angrily all around him, but he ignores them and the sound of Bruce’s car being jacked to bolt down the street. He’s running like his life depends on it, and Dick better fucking appreciate this because Jason Todd hates running when he doesn’t need to.

He’s skids around a corner, almost runs into some chick, then continues down the street until he’s standing outside a familiar set of condos. He’s up to the right one in thirty seconds flat, forgoing the elevator for quicker stairs. Twenty-three minutes left.

Blowing sticky hair from his face, he adjusts his jacket, smooths his hair back, and raises one fist to pound at the door. It opens before his hand can move and he’s dragged inside by a very mussed looking Dick Grayson who was obviously not naked in an apron. It’s disappointing, but only for a second. Because Dick kicks the door shut behind him, and then his hands are on Jason’s face and he’s searching Jason’s eyes with a tenderness that makes Jason want to cry for no real reason.

“So it’s other timeline you,” Dick says, eyes crinkling merrily with a smile. “Even if the you from my own timeline is the one I fell in love with, you’re the one who started this whole mess, and I guess in the end you’re both still the same guy, aren’t you?”

“I personally wouldn’t get engaged to a chick who looks like you when I could have the real you, but that’s just me,” Jason huffs, and though he says it casually it’s probably the most terrifying thing he’s ever done. He still half-expects Grayson to laugh at him, pound his thigh in mirth and say he’s been joking this entire time, that him and Barbara are actually together and snickering about Jason behind his back.

But Dick’s small laugh isn’t a teasing one, and the hands he slides up Jason’s neck aren’t a joke. He tugs Jason closer until they’re close enough that their breaths are mingling, and then he kisses Jason with a finesse no one’s ever kissed him with before, his tongue teasing, seductive, and fucking hot all at once. Jason reaches up and fists his hand in Dick’s shirt, shoving him almost violently away for a second.

“You been practising, Grayson?” Jason growls, and somehow the thought makes him angry beyond belief. It shouldn’t, because Dick’s always liked fooling around, but now that there’s a possibility Dick can be his, and they can be together in a future where Dick survives…

“I’m an acrobat, Jay,” Dick says, as if that’s supposed to make any sense. Jason can probably figure it out if he puts his mind to it, but hearing Dick say his name in that sexy, amused voice makes most of his intelligent side fizzle out, and he’s back on Dick’s mouth, kissing with bruising passion because finally. He’s been waiting years for this, and of course he’s had tons of dreams, but the sex in those dreams can’t even compare to the kissing in reality.

Dick drags him further into the condo, and Jason thinks they’re heading for bed, but of course that’s not the way Dick rolls because he avoids the bedroom completely to drag Jason into the kitchen. It’s immaculate, as if someone has spent all day cleaning, but Jason barely notices as Dick presses him up against the counter and starts shrugging out of an oversized shirt that shows nothing off. They have to pause for a second as Jason tugs his own tee over his head, dropping it to the floor, then spins until he has Dick pressed against the counter instead of the other way around.

His hands find purchase on Dick’s perfect ass, and he lifts Dick to set the man on the counter, shoving Dick’s knees apart and stepping between his legs. He’s so hard he’s aching—Dick’s only been kissing him and he’s already at the edge—but he takes his time now, running his hands over the muscles on the acrobat’s chest, wanting his fingers to graze every part of Dick’s body. When his hands trace up Dick’s neck to the man’s jawline, Dick smirks and turns his head slightly to take Jason’s finger into his mouth, tongue swirling against the delicate tip with a skill that makes Jason’s cock twitch and strain for release.

“Holy fuck,” Jason gasps out, pulling his finger from Dick’s mouth with an obscene pop. “I don’t know how much more we can do before I cream myself just from looking at you.”

Dick winks, then basically tackles him, leaping off the counter and wrapping himself around Jason like a baby koala or some shit, and Jason’s lucky he’s strong because the extra weight is threatening to knock him over.

“Come on, Jay,” Dick purrs into Jason’s ear as he begins grinding against Jason in midair. Fucking acrobats. “There’s way more we can do to get you to cream yourself. I’ll bet you have a kinky side, don’t you?”

Jason releases a breathy moan as Dick starts rolling his hips, bringing their clothed cocks together creating a friction that’s driving Jason up the wall.

“God, Dick, yes,” Jason groans, whimpering slightly when Dick lessens the friction just as a tease.

“So much we could do with ropes and bars,” Dick whispers, and Jason nods frantically because he’d agree to pretty much anything Dick is saying if only the acrobat stops changing his pace, alternating between quick and then slow when he feels Jason’s cock twitching like he’s just about to come. Jason isn’t even sure how he’s supporting both of their weights when his knees feel so weak he doesn’t think he can support his own, but physics and gravity don’t matter anymore.

“Or even if you just want to be conventional, I could suck your cock,” Dick breathes almost conversationally, his tongue curling up the shell of Jason’s ear suggestively. Precum is soaking Jason’s pants and he doesn’t care—all he wants is the friction Dick’s not giving him, and Dick’s words have him thrusting desperately at something that always seems just out of reach.

“Dick, please,” he practically begs, and he stumbles back until he hits a couch and collapses into it, sitting up with Dick’s hips hovering just over him. Dick smiles, then reaches down and fumbles with his own pants, pulling the sweats down over his hips just low enough so that everything’s exposed. Jason watches in a daze, unable to believe he’s actually seeing every part of Dick without having to sneak a peek, and Dick licks his lips as he lowers his ass onto Jason’s clothed crotch, grinding down while he starts jerking himself off.

Their eyes meet for a second Jason barely has time to think ‘So this is what gets him off, huh’ before he decides he’s had enough teasing and he wraps his hands around Dick’s thighs, holding the bouncy acrobat firmly as he starts thrusting upwards with a pace that isn’t so tortuously slow. Dick is rapidly coming undone with Jason watching him, and instead of murmuring amused sentences into Jason’s ear, he’s now moaning in time with Jason.

“Fuck, you’re perfect,” Jason pants out, and Dick’s eyes flutter closed as if Jason’s words are a physical caress. “God, Dick, you’re so goddamn—yeah, keep… ahh… touching yourself…”

Dick’s cock leaps at Jason’s words and probably the feeling of being watched, and when Dick tilts his neck back to let out a long moan of ecstasy, Jason can’t hold back anymore. He comes harder than he ever has in his life, hot spurts of mind-numbing bliss making his back arch up as he thrusts in time with each pleasurable leap of his cock. He half-cracks his eyes to see Dick coming in time with him, lips pressed together as he lets out a muffled whine of pure rapture, rolling his hips around and around with every thick surge of cum, and Jason swears to shit this must be heaven because he’s never felt so satisfied in his whole goddamn life.

When Dick rolls off of him to collapse beside him on the couch, looking lazily content, Jason almost doesn’t want to go back to his own timeline. He knows there’s another version of him here and having two of him would be confusing as fuck, but in this timeline he can have Dick Grayson all to himself without Dick chasing after Babs, and that’s a beautiful thing. He wonders, as he idly runs his hands through Dick’s hair, whether this will change whether or not he’s engaged in the future, but it doesn’t really matter. When he gets back, he’s breaking off the engagement regardless of whether Dick still feels the same or not.

“Now what was that you were saying about getting engaged?” Dick asks as he gets up to grab some cloths from the kitchen so they can get cleaned up. Jason’s happy to watch, finally able to stare without fear of being discovered, and fuck, he could watch Dick walk all day.

“This timeline me,” Jason sighs, frowning as he realizes that ninety percent of the mess is on him. “You did exactly what I told you not to, pushed me away, and then I end up engaged to some chick who looks like you. Maybe I haven’t met her yet but—”

“I didn’t push you away,” Dick says, sounding surprised as comes back and starts wiping the stickiness off of Jason’s chest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but that definitely sounds wrong. Jay, in this timeline… you and I… we’re together.”

“What?” Jason asks, completely thrown off by this bit of information.

“I mean, obviously not completely yet—you’re only sixteen right now—but I promised you I’d wait for you. Since I know how sexy you are when you’re older.”

Dick winks, but Jason’s mind is whirling. What the hell is going on? As far as Jason knows, they never made a promise like that in Jason’s original timeline, or else Jason sure as shit wouldn’t be engaged to some random girl. Plus, Babs would’ve known since she’s brilliant as all hell and could ferret out just about any secret Dick had. So why is it that things just aren’t lining up?

“You’re fading,” Dick points out, sounding disappointed. “I guess I’ll be seeing you in the future though, right?”

Jason wants to say yes, but he’s not sure anymore. Is he really just in the past here? Things are changing in his timeline from his actions, so all other clues point to yes, but…

“S-sure,” he stammers out as he backs up to the door, still shirtless and pretty messy, but he doesn’t want to wake up in some random person’s condo. Dick follows him into the hall and Jason’s still trying to figure it out, studying Dick to see if there’s anything different—was that tiny scar on his jaw always there?—when he’s wracked with a sudden pain. He gasps out, clutching his midsection as it starts feeling like someone’s stabbing him, and Dick’s face creases in concern.

“Jaybird, are you alright?” Dick asks, springing to his side and wrapping warm arms around Jason as Jason’s legs give out and he almost collapses. The pain hits him again like a wave, and he grits back a yell, reaching up to dig his fingers into Dick’s shoulder as it starts coming in spasms, making his entire body jerk. Not good. Really fucking bad. Shit, shit, shit, it hurt.

“Jay, what’s going on?” Dick’s asking frantically, but his voice is sounding further away by the second and his face is swimming in and out of focus. Jason looks down and draws in a sharp breath at the sight of blood on his stomach, and his hand goes through Dick’s shoulder as he fades more until it lands on his stomach and he’s holding a gaping wound. He chokes on a scream as there’s more, more, more pain and holy fuck stop, someone just stop this!

Then icy fingers touch his consciousness, the pain begins to fade too, and everything goes black as Jason dies.

---

“Nightwing!” Jason screams as a plume of fire engulfs the room that Two-Face and Dick had just been in. It mushrooms out from the center, expanding so that it blows every remaining shard of glass from the window in a whoosh of blue flame. And in the center of that flame, singed but grimly triumphant, is Dick Grayson in all his blue-black glory. Jason releases a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding and runs to greet him.

“I should’ve been paying attention,” Dick pants, patting a sizzling ember off of his arm as he lands awkwardly, favouring his non-wounded leg. Using his wounded one has obviously made it worse, because Dick never lands awkwardly, and Jason decides then and there that he’s not letting Dick showboat anymore and try fancy acrobatic moves when he’s injured.

“It’s my lighter he stole,” Jason grumbles, glancing at the flames licking the ceiling and wrapping their way through the window and up to the roof. The entire building seems shaky, as if it wasn’t structurally sound to begin with, and Jason can see that the second story floor is about to collapse into the first floor soon. Well, whatever, the kids are all fine and out so there’s no problem.

Except for a woman who looks to be in charged of the kids, who’s screaming bloody murder, shrieking and grabbing a cop’s arm as she gestures wildly to the burning building. Jason and Dick exchange glances, and Jason lets out a heartfelt sigh as Dick swings down to land near the hysterical woman, looking confident as self-assured, as always. By the time Jason’s gotten down, Dick’s already coaxed the entire story out of her, and he’s looking grim.

“Problem?” Jason asks loudly to be heard, though of course there’s a fucking problem because this is Gotham, and the city never leaves them in peace.

“There’s still a kid in there!” Dick yells over the roar of the blaze, his eyes wide with horror as he looks the raging inferno. “She’s blind and the other kids were too scared to help her out, so she got left behind!”

Wow, great spirit these orphans were showing, truly. Jason glances back at the building with a frown; the ceiling is about to collapse at any second, and there’s no way the firefighters will get here in time. Jason has a feeling the girl’s already dead, since if she’s blind it would probably have been too hard for her to feel her way to stairs, and the entire second floor has become a mass of flame. But Dick doesn’t see it that way; of course he doesn’t. There’s still hope in his eyes, and he springs into action.

Jason grabs his arm a second before he’s out of reach, eyeing the blaze in consternation. He knows Dick can fit into places he can’t and react with reflexes better than anyone else’s, but the building is beyond dangerous right now and why should Dick risk his life if the chances of the girl being alive are so slim?

“You shouldn’t go,” Jason yells, and even the cop looks like he won’t blame Dick for not trying. But Dick shakes his head, stubborn determination on his face as the light of the flame is reflected in his features.

“I have to, Jaybird,” he says softly, so that only Jason can hear the sound of his name. “If there’s even the slightest chance I can do something, I have to. Let me go.”

“But—”

Jason struggles with the desire to protect the man he’s fallen for and the right thing to do. He knows there’s a tiny chance, but he still doesn’t get why it has to be Dick who’s always risking his life. Jason wants to go, but for him it’s almost certain death since he doesn’t have the reflexes of a cat.

“You have to let me go, Jason,” Dick repeats, and for the first time in a long time he’s serious. Jason swallows past an angry lump in his throat and gives one rough nod before releasing Dick’s arm. The last he sees of Dick is the man’s back plunging into fiery light, shoulders set in determination and eyes facing ever forward.

---

Jason’s not dead. He’s waking up on the floor of the condo building’s hallway, and though there’s still the occasional twinge in his stomach, it’s nothing compared to the crippling pain he’d been experiencing before. With a groan, he drags himself up from the floor, shaking his head, and looks around. Things have changed drastically, and it’s not just that the building has aged. This goes beyond how a building can age in a few years, because the paint’s peeling from the walls, the carpet that had been kept so well maintained is grungy and torn, and the door he’s just left is blasted off of its hinges, laying in a wreck on the opposite side of the room.

“What the hell?” Jason mutters as he stumbles into Dick’s old condo, looking around. There’s still stuff in here, as if someone had abandoned it in a haste, and Jason is confused beyond belief. Old, desiccated food is crumbling away on the table, men’s clothes are thrown all over the floor, and the kitchen that had been so immaculate a few years ago is destroyed, gouges taken out of the walls and cupboards.

Jason grabs some of the clothes off the floor and quickly changes out of his dirty ones, throwing on jeans and a scratchy wool turtleneck that looks suspiciously like something Dick would wear. But that can’t be right, because Dick should’ve moved out of Bludhaven a long time ago to go back to Gotham. Something is very clearly not right, and the feeling only intensifies when Jason slams a fist against the down button on the elevator and nothing happens. He narrows his eyes, then turns and jogs down the stairs, violently shoving the door open and freezing in the entrance way.

The entire condo looks like the hallway had, peeling paint, destroyed furniture, the glass doors leading into the building shattered. Jason picks his way over the glass and steps out into the street, where his eyes rest upon pure chaos. It’s an overcast day, a light drizzle falling down over the city, and there’s not a single light anywhere to make the place less dark. Windows are smashed out of every building on the ground level, cars are all piled up into each other all over the road, and the streets are so abruptly empty that Jason wonders if he’s stumbled into an apocalyptic wasteland.

The most disturbing things are the large blue smiley faces spray-painted on almost every building, grinning menacingly out at the chaos as if laughing at it. And underneath them all, in messy scrawled letters…

LONG LIVE THE JOKER.

Chapter Text

Jason’s had nightmares about a world like this, ever since he came back from the Pit. A world where the Joker ruled, cackling on massive billboards and posters, huge eyes on screens high above turning to look at him. This world isn’t the exact same, but it’s pretty damn close sans electricity. The eerie, horrifying vibe of the place is enough that Jason’s lungs tighten and he has to bend over, drawing deep gasps, until the feeling passes.

Out of a thousand scenarios he’s played in his mind about what could happen if he changes the past, this isn’t one of them. He wonders if he’s having a nightmare, and he’s tempted to take his gun and blow his brains out to check, but if this is reality he needs to find out what the fuck is going on and how he can fix it. Straightening, trying to ignore the panic in his chest, he slowly starts walking down the road.

Glass crunches underfoot and when Jason looks down, the sight of blood pools make him wince. Something incredibly bad has happened here, and there’s no way it all has to do with Dick surviving or not.

Jason’s not sure precisely where he’s heading, but when his feet stop and he takes a good look around it makes sense. He’s standing outside the precinct Dick worked at before the Bludhaven disaster, and his eyes desperately rove over the building for any sign of normalcy. There’s none—the station is just as bad as the rest of the place, those disgusting words still painted all over it, and the only thing he can see that’s different is the fact that there’s something nailed to the heavy wooden doors out front.

Step by shaky step, he gets closer, praying it isn’t what he thinks he is. His prayers go unanswered; the newspaper pinned to the door is depicting exactly what he’d thought he’d seen.

BATMAN AND CO. KILLED IN FIGHT AGAINST JOKER.

Jason stares numbly at the headline, then at the picture of bodies being collected underneath it. Written in blue all over the picture is the word ‘Hero’ over and over again, running down the page until it becomes ‘Ha-ro,’ then ‘Ha-ho,’ then ‘Ha-ha,’ then the words ‘Hahahahaha’ are scribbled over the article so that the actual script is illegible.

Jason clenches his teeth, his hand trembling, and rips the paper from the door, tearing it up into thousands of tiny pieces then crushing the pieces under his boot as he lets them flutter to the ground. He reaches into the jeans he’d grabbed from Dick’s condo and pulls out the holster he’d transferred from his old clothes to his new, checking to make sure his gun is fully loaded. Someone’s going to die for this.

“Hey-ho, a he-ro!” a deep voice chuckles from behind him, and when he turns around he sees what looks like one of the Joker’s cronies coming out of a dark alleyway. The man’s head is completely bald, with a cerulean smiley face painted onto it. Jason cocks his gun and points it at the laughing man. Dick Grayson wouldn’t approve of him pulling the trigger. But fuck Dick, because he’s managed to get himself killed in this timeline too and now not only is the guy Jason’s sort of maybe in love with dead, but the person he hates most in the world has taken everything over. It’s possible this is a message from the universe saying that Dick is supposed to stay dead, but Jason’s never been the brains of an operation so he elects to ignore the message. And he pulls the trigger.

The bullet strikes hard and true, knocking the Joker’s crony over and leaving a smoking hole in the middle of his forehead. Which isn’t exactly subtle, and of course ends up calling nearly half a city of the Joker’s minions down on him. Why, Jason wonders, is the Joker operating in Bludhaven of all places?

It isn’t the Joker’s usual territory; in fact, it’s not even really on the Joker’s map. The clown’s main reason for living lately seems like it’s to torment Batman, so why would the Joker be here in Dick’s old territory? Jason gives up trying to think for the moment as men and women rush him with baseball bats and he’s forced to defend himself. He shoots a few of them outright, because he’s not listening to the goddamn rules when the world’s being ruled by the man who tortured and killed him, and then he starts using his pistol as a blunt weapon while he uses the rest of his body to fight.

He’s limber, less tense than he’s been since he was a kid even though this the worst possible situation he can be in, and he manages to take down quite a few people. It’s not enough though, and soon he’s swamped by criminals, his gun clattering to the ground as he drops and curls in on himself so the bats won’t damage his head. As bats bruise his flesh and well-aimed kicks make blood line his teeth, he still thinks vehemently to himself, I don’t fucking regret it. Because he’s going to go back, and he’s going to make Dick live if it’s the last thing he does, even though the consequences seem to be worsening.

If he can survive, of course, which isn’t seeming like a likely thing now that there’s six big people all beating on him. He tries to get his finger to the watch, but just as he’s about to punch numbers in, one of the guys beating him goes flying. Then another, and soon the Joker’s cronies are being taken down in a whirlwind of black and gold, and Jason can only stare, open-mouthed, as a familiar figure takes down all six brutes with ease.

Then turns to level a frown at Jason.

“How are you… alive?”

Jason opens his mouth to respond but the figure waves an impatient hand.

“No, don’t answer yet. Back to the Cave. Come on.”

Then Cassandra Cain offers her hand, and Jason tentatively takes it to follow her back to a familiar Batplane.

---

The cave Cass takes him to isn’t Bruce’s Bat Cave. In fact, instead of a cave it’s more of a scraggly cliff carved into a rock bluff that allows just enough room for the Plane and some equipment. The entire way there, Jason struggles with words he can say to Cass to find out what’s happened, but he’s been throwing himself headlong into this without thought and thinking of what’s going on now, after all that he’s done, just isn’t appealing. So he fingers his watch and decides he’s going back just as soon as he finds out what’s gone wrong in this world.

“Cass, you’re back,” a tired voice calls out as Cass exits the Bat Plane ahead of Jason. The voice is familiar in the way only family’s can be, and Jason is surprised to find that he’s actually moved almost to tears to hear it. ‘Batman and Co. killed’ must mean something completely different to the press, because not all of the ‘and Co.’ part is really killed.

“Yes, and I brought… someone,” Cass says, casting a critical glance back at Jason. He can’t blame the girl for her suspicions—he’s supposed to be dead, after all—but her silence and narrowed glances all the way to the cave have worn him down. Brushing a hand over his face and doing his best to look semi-presentable, Jason saunters down the steps to a very shocked, very pale looking face.

“How…” Tim begins, stumbling back a few steps. He looks way different than the last time Jason saw him; he’s scrawnier, dark circles making his eyes looked bruised, and there’s a sharp definition to his cheeks that speak of how well he’s been eating. Which is not well. The look in his eyes is the absolute worst part, of course, with an aching hollowness where before had been a bright curiosity, and a dim lack of hope where before had been still a hint of innocence. Fuck. This timeline’s not been treating Jason’s little brother well.

“You look like shit,” Jason says with grace and eloquence, stepping forward to slap a hand to the back of Tim’s neck. The strong sense of déjà vu that washes over him from doing it is almost as big a punch to the gut as the pain, and he quickly drops his hand and steps back. Don’t think about it. That’s become his motto and he knows it. Losing himself in hasty embraces with Dick and rushing headlong into timeline after timeline is only a mechanism.

Shut the fuck up, he thinks at himself vehemently. You don’t need to think about it because he’s coming back.

Aloud, he asks: “So what’s the deal with this world?”

Tim looks Jason up and down, noting everything from his usual holsters to an outfit that looks like Dick’s, then frowns helplessly as Cass as if asking whether or not to believe Jason’s real. Cass gives him the tiniest nod in confirmation, looking still slightly confused but more confident now that she’s seen Jason’s reaction to Tim. They can both tell it’s him, Jason sees it in their eyes, but they can’t understand how.

“First tell us how you’re alive,” Tim says, brushing back long, greasy locks from his eyes. He’s let his hair go completely, and there’s not much left of Jason’s Tim there. Jason looks around the small cave, sucking a breath in through his teeth, before grabbing a small swivelling chair situated near some high-tech computers, and gesturing for Tim and Cass to do the same. They do, albeit hesitantly, and Jason gives them the rundown of what’s going on. He glosses over a few parts, sure—the kiddos don’t need to hear he jerked it to their other older brother (is that weird, that him and Dick are like brothers to the same people? He thinks it might be, but oh well), and he doesn’t go into much detail about Dick’s death because it won’t matter eventually—but he manages to get through the whole story fairly rapidly.

“So you’re saying this whole thing is the product of you changing our timeline?” Tim asks, and there’s something in his voice that Jason doesn’t like. Immediately, Jason gets defensive, standing from his chair to pace like a tiger in front of his siblings. It doesn’t help much; with Cass’s entirely-too-observant eyes on him, he still feels like his bones are shivering under his skin, but the movement calms him slightly. It reminds him of the way Dick is always moving, never still for even a second. Is that why he always manages to be so happy? Because he can find ways to outpace his troubles?

“Pretty much,” Jason grunts, and Tim shakes his head, as weary as Bruce.

“I’m glad you’re not dead, Jason. I’m too tired to really process it, but deep down I’m happy.”

Tim says it like an excuse he’s not jumping for joy and throwing his arms around Jason, and Jason shakes his head impatiently. He doesn’t need excuses. He needs to know what went wrong so he can change it while still searching for a way to save Dick.

“Your turn.”

“Where do I even start?” Tim asks, his eyes going distant and still as he gets lost in some memory. When he comes back to himself, there’s a hard determination in him, as if he’s finally found something he can live for. He opens his mouth to speak and Jason pauses in his pacing, eyes totally focused on Tim, until Cass intervenes.

“Tell him what he needs to know,” she says quietly, and her eyes are a warning Jason can’t interpret. Tim shoots her a glare, and the two seem to get into an argument with their eyes before Tim sighs, nodding grimly. It’s weird, seeing how easily Cass and Tim can read each other now, and Jason can’t say he enjoys the feeling of being left out of whatever their argument was. Especially when Tim casts his eyes to the floor and shifts as he begins to speak, like he’s telling some goddamn lie while he makes his story all choppy.

“Dick didn’t die in this timeline, not when he did in yours,” Tim opens with, and Jason’s heart squeezes a little. It’s a start, right?

“There was a fire, but only Two-Face and a little girl were killed. The girl because she didn’t get out, and Two-Face because…”

Tim glances at Cass, who shakes her head threateningly.

“…he was indisposed. Dick lived, though he wasn’t… he wasn’t right afterwards. You know how he was, always blaming himself, and he started having these dreams—”

“Bruce,” Cass says sharply, and Tim cuts off, his face going even more sallow.

“Right, yeah, the dreams aren’t important. What’s important is that afterwards, Bruce tried to help Dick. We all did, you especially. I’ve never seen you so gentle.”

Jason has to look away at that, unable to picture Dick being broken to the point where fucked-up, unstable Jason has to help him. It’s always been Dick gently guiding Jason through the darkest points in his life, not the other way around. The image of himself having to treat Dick like a breakable thing makes him want to tear his hair from his roots and scream at the world. What the fuck is with the universe and breaking everything good?

“He kept getting worse, though,” Tim says, and his voice fractures for a second. Cass steadies him, and when she sees he can’t go on, she continues in an emotionless, studiously blank voice that somehow only seems to make her pain more pronounced.

“He slipped up and was caught by the Joker. You know how those things end. You did and… so did Bruce. You both tried to save him but it was a trap. Ended with Bruce stabbed through the heart. You through the stomach.”

So that was why Jason had felt like he’d been killed. In this timeline, he actually had. But things still aren’t adding up, because shouldn’t he be dead if he’d been killed? The whole thing is giving him a pounding headache.

“The Joker found out who Bruce was and came after the rest of us. He burned most of the Manor down, thought we were all inside. Damian, Alfred, and Babs were. Tim and I weren’t.”

Her face twisted into a grimace, Cass dips her head so her hair hides her face. Jason is still frozen mid-stride in the middle of the room, the whole thing playing through his head, and his brain is refusing to cooperate anymore. That such a cruel curveball could be thrown in simply because of one letter just isn’t right, and Jason’s mind Will. Not. Accept. It.

“You mentioned dreams,” Jason says hoarsely to continue distracting himself. He wants another round with his watch, to go back and kill Two-Face or something before the man can do anything. That would help, right? Killing Two-Face?

“Ask me how Dick died,” Tim says quietly, and Jason turns his back on his siblings. “Ask me, Jason.”

“What dreams?” Jason asks.

“Ask me how he died!” Tim yells, and Jason can hear him rising from his chair in fury. He knows Tim is angry because of the story and the guilt he must feel over being a survivor, that it’s making Tim lash out uncharacteristically, that Tim doesn’t really mean he wants Jason to know the gory details after Jason himself has been brutally killed by the Joker. No, Tim doesn’t want Jason to imagine everything he went through multiplied back on Dick, who apparently hadn’t died before the rest of the family and likely thought they were all gone before he was killed.

“Do it, Timmy,” Cass whispers. “Tell him about the dreams.”

There’s a long pause, and Jason suddenly realizes he doesn’t want to hear about those either. He needs to go back now, while there’s still time, and he needs to keep figuring shit out about how to keep Dick alive, and his hands are on the watch, and—

“He dreamt about other realities. Other worlds, infinite possibilities, some where he was himself and others where he… wasn’t. The dreams started bleeding into reality, and he didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t anymore. I did everything to try and figure it out—at first I thought it was mental illness, but that obviously wasn’t right because there was a time when even I saw a glimpse of another reality, where his eyes flashed gold—and I couldn’t. You know why, Jason? Do you understand now? I didn’t have the last piece in the puzzle, but now I do.”

“I only changed our timeline,” Jason says, his hands fisted into white-knuckles. “I set the watch to zero, and I went back in ours. How could ours be affected if I was in another universe?”

“The watch is broken,” Tim mumbles, and when Jason finally looks back he can’t bring himself to finish setting the watch. He drops his hand and it dangles uselessly at his side as he thinks of all the discrepancies he’s been noticing. The first time, he changed nothing. The second time, he got engaged in his timeline but not in the one he’d changed. The third time… this was the third time, and he has no idea what he’d find if he goes back now.

 “You’ve been going to a different universe and then coming back to ours. I don’t know enough about multiverse travelling, but theoretically you’re tearing holes in one reality to go to another, and that’s messed up everything up, because the holes you’re making are forcing all of the universes to mix. Somewhere, there’s a universe where we’re all dead, where Dick has golden eyes, where he becomes—”

“No more travelling,” Cass interrupts, and Jason is glad because he had a very, very bad feeling about what Tim was about to say.

“If I don’t go back, I can’t fix this,” Jason snaps. “And your theories don’t explain a goddamn thing. If that’s really true, why is this universe’s me not dead?”

Tim narrows his eyes thoughtfully, then holds out one hand. It takes Jason a second to realize what Tim’s asking for, and when he does he stumbles back a couple feet, whipping his head from side to side so fast he thinks he’s going to get whiplash.

“I just want to look at it,” Tim says, almost gently, and the expression of pity on Cass’s face makes Jason want to scream. He knows Tim will be fine with the watch, that Tim will play it safe the way Jason never does. But if the watch breaks, Jason loses… everything. The magnitude hits him all at once and he feels the same panicky feeling in his chest that he felt when he first realized what this place was. He draws in huge, gulping breaths but it’s not helping—it feels as if none of the air he’s dragging in is getting to his lungs.

“It’s okay,” a kind voice is crooning his ear, and Cass eases him back into the chair while Tim loses some of his self-righteousness to sorrow. “Deep breaths. Think about something else. Think about something happy.”

He thinks about the time he came back from the dead, about how lost he was for so long. When he’d found himself and decided to reveal himself, things between him and the rest of the family had been rocky as all hell and for a long time he’d been totally alone. Until Dick had started to find him, to ask him for help on things Dick Grayson could easily do with one hand tied behind his back. Things that genuinely helped patch up broken relationships and form new ones. Had he ever thanked Dick for that?

“Good,” Cass says, and Jason realizes the feeling is gone and he feels like he’s back in his body again. Fuck, this is pathetic. He’s supposed to be playing the part of the hero, but he feels more like a supporting side character messing everything up. Without another word, he slowly removes the watch and offers it to Tim.

The next better part of an hour is spent with Tim tinkering over the watch and Cass giving Jason more information about this world he’s basically created. The Joker started gathering people up after killing Bruce, hell-bent on destroying the foundations of Gotham and Bludhaven for reasons Cass won’t tell him. Something about corruption, though that doesn’t really sound like the Joker. There was apparently an entire war between villains, citizens, and cops where all three fought each other and the cities went crazy. Whether it was an effect of realities bleeding into each other or the fact that Bruce wasn’t left to mediate between the three, even Cass doesn’t know.

“I’ve got it!” Tim shouts, sounding almost excited as he swivels back and holds up the watch triumphantly. Cass and Jason stare and wait for him to explain, Cass patiently and Jason less so.

“I’ve fixed it, so it should work properly now,” Tim says less exuberantly, turning the watch over and inspecting it. “And I’ve studied the way it works, too. It’s dangerous, Jay. You’ve been going into a different universe because the setting is broken, but by changing that universe you’re not just making things end up differently; you’re creating timeline divergences that are essentially entire new universes. It’s having a ripple effect—a Butterfly Effect, if you will—which is starting to spin out of control and rebound on everything.

“You can fix it, too, since you’ve only done three timelines, and all it’ll take is make sure you stop the divergences from happening. It’s simple quantum mechanics, and if you disregard the Copenhagen interpretation in favour of the many-worlds interpretation of Schrödinger's cat, you’ll find it actually—”

“Timmy. English, please,” Jason says in exasperation before the boy can go off on a three-hour lecture about cats or whateverthelivingfuck he’s talking about. “How do I fix it?”

“Right. Well, basically… you have to go back and stop yourself from changing things. Then never, ever use the watch again, because you’ve already made the fabric dividing worlds too fragile.”

“Okaaaay. And how the hell is that gunna save Dick?”

Tim blinks, cutting his gaze to Cass as if asking for help. She shakes her head slightly before turning to Jason and pressing her lips together as if trying to hold words in. When she finally speaks, her voice is strained.

“You can’t.”

There a lot of two-word phrases that have made Jason go stir-crazy before. Second rate. No good. Useless orphan. Bad idea. Jay, I—

They’ve all hurt him in varying degrees, cut him up bad so his soul shook with anger until he had to use his fists to speak, but this time it’s worse. This time there’s so much weight behind those words that it brings Jason to his knees, and he can’t think past ‘Use the watch, go back and save him.’ He hasn’t asked himself what he’d do if Dick actually has to die. He hasn’t allowed himself to consider the possibilities, not even once. In his mind, Dick’s still alive because there’s still worlds out there where he’s living.

“You can break grief down into five stages,” Timmy says softly, crouching beside Jason. “You’re still on the first one, but with time…”

“Fuck that,” Jason growls abruptly, cutting Tim off so he doesn’t have to hear anymore. “Even if you don’t believe it, I’m not stopping. Not until I bring him home.”

Tim gets angry, Jason’s already angry, and the tension sizzling between them is going to end with someone’s bloody nose, Jason can feel it. Until Cass cuts through the charged silence with a soft, “You love him, don’t you?”

Tim looks surprised at that, and though Jason doesn’t answer, he doesn’t deny it either, which is just the same.

“If you love him,” Cass says, “You have to let him go.”

You have to let me go, Jason.

“No.”

“He’s suffering because of it. If you won’t…” Cass sighs. “We’ll need to make you accept it.”

She nods to Tim, who’s gone ashy, and then takes Jason’s arm to haul him up. Jason shrugs her off angrily, but follows her when she and Tim go into the Bat Plane. He should go back. He should turn away and never think of this again, subtly set the time to when he needs it now that Timmy’s fixed the watch. But he doesn’t. Why the fuck not, he can’t tell you, but so help him he needs to see this through for Dick’s sake.

---

In the end, it’s the Manor they go to. Of course it is; the Manor is where it all started, where Bruce once brought a grieving orphan from a circus and told him he was going to be a hero. It’s where this world ended too, where Bruce’s legacy was made dust in the space of a few hours. All that stands where the Manor once was is a burned-out husk, walls licked black and doors reduced to twisted metal hinges.

“Be careful,” Tim had whispered when he’d landed the Plane in a copse of trees to hide it. “This is where the Joker’s taken up residence.”

Jason didn’t ask why the Joker’s living here. He didn’t ask anything. He’s still convinced he can make it out if things go bad; he’s got the watch set so he only has to punch in one number for it to take him back to the day he met a twelve-year-old Dick Grayson. He’s going to stop himself from changing things, yes, but after that he’s going to continue until he gets it right.

When he follows Cass through the busted door of the Manor, he has to stop for almost a full minute. He’s not quite sure what he expected, but it wasn’t this. The Manor’s interior still has the basic layout it used to, except everything’s scorched and dark. Everything that was wood is gone, but the marble columns and a few statues remain standing, though there are smiley faces imposed over their usual stoic expressions. Jason at first finds it strange that none of the portraits are burned, but when he takes a closer look he realizes that these aren’t the same portraits he once liked to examine.

The first one looks like a child’s drawing, a bunch of stick figures waving out from the portrait. The second one is slightly more detailed, but still artistically ugly, depicting a burning house with a tiny female stick figure and a red splotch sketched over half a man. The third one is showing someone who’s more than a stick figure but who has no face—a blue man scrubbing his hands under the tap. The fourth is similar, again more detailed than the previous, but instead of the blue man scrubbing white hands, there’s crimson all over them that’s leaking down the page.

Jason starts walking quicker down the hallway with the pictures, and bile rises higher in his throat with each one. They show the story Cass and Tim told him, ending with the Manor burning in detail that looks so realistic Jason can believe he was actually there. He stops at the bend in the hallway, thinking he’s done, but something catches his eye. There are more pictures going down the hall connected to the one he’s in. With cautious, hesitant steps, he goes into that hallway.

The first picture is Dick screaming and the Joker laughing. The next one is Dick lunging at the Joker, his face twisted like Jason’s never seen it before. The third and final one is red. Just the colour, painted over and over with angry brushstrokes so hard the canvas is ripped in some places. Jason reaches out and presses a light finger against the canvas, and when he pulls his hand away it’s wet with red, as if he’s just ran his fingers through blood.

“Hm. Not well ‘read’ I see, because if you were you’d know you’re not supposed to touch wet paint. Because really, doing that is just silly. Trying to get that colour out of your skin will make you see red.”

Jason doesn’t turn around. He searches for Cass’s presence with his senses, but he realizes after a second that he’d stopped feeling it a long time ago. Now it’s just him and someone else. The ‘Joker.’ He knows before he turns, but knowing and actually seeing are two different things, so he doesn’t turn. He only keeps his eyes focused on the last painting, his hand moving towards his watch. It’s stopped a second before he can press the button, and when he looks down the sight of a hand scarred by burned marks, he thinks maybe he should’ve just blown his brains out while he had the chance. This. Is. Not. Real.

“Oh, my hand? Yeahh, I got the same colour as you on it. It just… it wouldn’t come out! And then I realized, since I’ve had tons of dreams about it, that there’s really only one way to wash the blood from your hands. You have to purify it in fire. Don’t you think that’s hot, Jaybird?”

At the pet name, Jason flinches, and his eyes turn themselves unwillingly towards the man gripping his wrist. The ‘Joker’s’ eyes have changed—the golden flecks Jason once saw in them have now almost completely taken over, leaving only blotches of blue—and there’s a madness lurking back there that makes Jason wonder if it’s just his own reflected back, because to see this he must truly be mad.

“Jason,” Dick Grayson says, lips painted blue tilting up in a smile that’s almost loving. “I think you’ve broken our reality.”

Chapter Text

“Let me go,” Jason gasps out, trying to get his hand to the watch. He doesn’t want to see this. He doesn’t want to see Dick’s usually golden-lush skin painted over in chalky white, his lips carved up in blue since he apparently doesn’t like the colour red, his dark hair slicked back with green. He also doesn’t want to be thinking about how this is all his fault, and that he can put an end to things like this with a few little changes to make things how they were.

“Little Wing,” Dick chastises, tsking under his breath. “I know there’s something up with this watch. You wouldn’t be using it if there weren’t.”

“Let me show you, then,” Jason almost pleads, trying to wrench his arm free. It does absolutely nothing; Dick’s hands are used to having to hold onto things for dear life, and his strong fingers only dig deeper into Jason’s arm.

“I knew the Jason that died wasn’t mine,” Dick murmurs, tugging Jason close. He keeps his hand encircling Jason’s wrist so that Jason can’t do anything with that hand, but Jason manages to get the other hand to the spare pistol he’s been keeping for an emergency. He whips it up before Dick has time to react, and presses the metal against Dick’s temple. Then there’s a long pause as they stand there, searching each other for the next move, two Robins trying to anticipate an enemy’s actions.

“Can you do it?” Dick asks, his golden eyes mesmerizing. “Will you do it?”

“Let me go,” Jason snarls, and Dick laughs, light and musical, for turning his face into the gun. Jason can pull the trigger at any time—they both know that—but Dick doesn’t seem to care. He turns so the gun is now pressed into his forehead, then tilts his jaw up so the gun slides almost into his mouth.

“Let’s see…” Dick whispers, his eyes turned to Jason the entire time as he reaches up to wrap his hand around the one Jason is using to hold the gun. Jason knows he’s lost since Dick can wrench the gun free easily now, but Dick doesn’t do that. Instead, he exerts the slightest pressure to bring the gun to his mouth, and his fingers slide down to where Jason’s finger rests on the trigger.

Jason realizes what Dick’s going to do before it happens, and he puts every last ounce of power he has into his arm to turn the gun away as Dick forces him to pull the trigger. The gunshot echoes down the hall, so loud in the space that it sends Jason’s ears ringing harshly, but he barely notices. There’s a trickle of blood running down Dick’s cheek from where the bullet grazed him, and his pupils have almost engulfed his irises as they track down to the smoking gun just beside his ear. Jesus fuck.

“What the hell… is wrong with you…” Jason manages to get out, feeling sick. He quickly tosses his gun out of reach, ignoring the way it slides across the floor and into the darkness, then balls his hand into a fist.

“Why do you have such a huge fucking death wish?”

He throws his fist at the same time he throws the words, and the blow knocks Dick flat on his ass. Jason can fiddle around with the watch now, but he’s so overcome with anger that he doesn’t even care; he strides over to Dick, grabs him by the front of the shirt to haul him up, then throws another punch. And another. And another. Dick’s head is snapping from side to side, and he has the nerve to actually start laughing as his teeth are knocked around in his mouth and the cuts they make in his cheeks have him spitting blood.

“It’s not fucking funny, Grayson!” Jason yells, his throat thick with emotion. Dick’s blood is all over his fists now, all over his hands, and suddenly he can’t throw another punch and his hand drops weakly to the purple coat Dick should never, ever wear. His other hand takes up residence on the other side of Dick’s coat, and he starts shaking Dick over and over, his eyes blurring with frustrated tears as words come pouring out of him.

“Why do you always have to treat everything like a joke? Why can’t you be serious for five fucking minutes, so we can talk, so I can find some way to save you? No more of this Joker shit, no more fucking around with each other, just… Every goddamn timeline you die, and I’m sick of it! Why can’t I stop it? Why do you always have to be such a self-sacrificing asshole who leaves your family to play the hero? Do you even realize how much you’ve hurt everyone? Why did you leave us alone? Why did you die?”

The last question, the one that’s been hovering just at the back of Jason’s throat ever since the fire, finally makes its way out in the torrent, and actually saying it aloud is what breaks him. He can’t help it, because he’s been holding back this entire time so he didn’t have to feel this way, and now that’s out in the open he can’t hold back anymore. He throws a punch that lands just beside Dick’s head, against the wall he’s backed Dick into.

“Why did you die?” he asks again, and now his voice is soft and pleading, and his head drops down to hit Dick’s shoulder with a thump as the sobs finally come. They wrack his body, making him shudder with grief as he sobs into Dick’s shoulder, his voice low and guttural as all of the aching hollowness that’s been winding up in his gut comes out. No matter how much he’s tried, no matter what he changes, his Grayson is gone and never coming back.

He’s been running away from the fact for so long, been so scared of how much it’ll hurt, and he knows he had every right to because the pain is bowling him over and the only thing keeping him up now is Dick’s arms. Yet somehow… it’s cathartic. Letting it out is freeing him from a cage he didn’t even realize he’s been trapped in, and when he looks up Dick’s face is creased in a gentle, familiar smile, all trace of the Joker gone from him.

“I’m sorry, Jay,” Dick says, eyes blue as the sky taking in Jason’s tear-streaked face with a sorrowful kind of fondness. “But these things just happen, you know? It sucks and I wish I could’ve stuck around longer, but that’s not how it works.”

Jason is confused, upset, and hurt beyond belief, so it takes a second for his brain to realize that what he’s seeing doesn’t really make sense. How can Dick be normal again when he was just the Joker? And the halls around him are changing too, the fear-filled, angry images dissolving into other, happier ones from Jason’s timeline. He steps away from Dick for a second, wiping his eyes as he stares at a picture of Catwoman smirking out from a portrait. That one had just been red, so how…

“This is going to hurt, but you have to think outside the box,” Dick says as he strides over to Catwoman’s portrait. He hefts it off the wall and gives Jason a meaningful look. “If you don’t, you’ll never know what’s happening.”

He turns the portrait around and sets it back on the wall so that only the back of the canvas is showing, Catwoman hidden on the other side. There’s something bothering him about what Dick just said, but he can’t put his finger on it. Dick skips back over to him, seemingly unaware of how much he’s just confused Jason and grabs Jason’s wrist where the watch is. The amount of confusion Jason experiences when Dick presses the gun into his other hand is bullshit it’s so overwhelming. How did Dick get the gun when it was down the hall? Come to think of it, shouldn’t Tim and Cass have heard the gunshot and came out to see what was going on?

“Wake up, Jason,” Dick says, and Jason is jolted out of his thoughts. For a second, the blue of the Nightwing crest on Dick’s new outfit reminds him of another blue, one mixed with red that’s flashing around and around. He experiences a wave of dizziness and he has to grab his head as he almost falls over, Dick’s warm arm wrapping itself around his shoulder keeping him grounded.

“What…” Jason mutters, bewildered as all fuck, but he lets Dick lead him through the mansion to the front door. Things are beginning to change, flickering from Bruce’s normally undamaged mansion to the one Dick had taken up in as the Joker, and Jason jumps as the clock in the main foyer peals loudly before falling silent. He blinks sluggishly, squinting. It’s…

11:59.

Dick had run into the building at 11:59. Jason knew because the clock had struck twelve as the building was collapsing, and he had distantly registered it as part of his Robin training. Always remain aware of your surroundings. He frowns blearily at the clock, suddenly feeling exhausted, but Dick drags him away until they’re out on the steps leading into the Manor.

“Listen, Little Wing, we’ve gotta do it,” Dick says resolutely, though what in the flying fuck he’s talking about Jason has no idea. Dick continues to half-drag him until they’re hidden behind one of the trees outside of the mansion. Then Dick turns to him, eyes determined as they’d been when he plunged into the fire, and gives him one small nod. Jason doesn’t know how he knows, but he instinctively understands what Dick wants and he shifts the gun in his hand to reach down and set his watch. He sets it to the first time he went back to change things, and the surroundings flicker before changing yet again.

He knows it’s not the best idea he’s ever had, doing what he’s planning, but his mind is all foggy and he needs support, so he reaches out and grips Dick’s hand. They both end up in the past, silently staring at each other before turning to the Manor. It seems to take no time at all for future-but-now-also-past Jason to show up. He comes running down the hill, and it’s so goddamn weird to watch himself that Jason wants to turn away. But Dick gently spins him towards his old self, then stands behind him and reaches around to lift Jason’s arm. The two of them take aim at past-future Jason, and all Jason can feel is Dick’s heart beating against his back.

“Don’t,” Jason whispers even as his own fingers betray him, and together they squeeze the trigger. It’s the best damn shot Jason’s ever made in his life, the bullet striking hard and true into his past-future self’s watch. He sees his own surprise, then horror, as past-future him fades away with no watch to keep him in another universe.

The door to the Manor opens. Young Dick Grayson peers out, eyes wide as saucers, and searches the grounds frantically to no avail.

“Hey, anybody out here?” he yells, looking rather terrified. Jason aches to comfort him, but his Grayson holds him fast, and after a moment young Dick flees inside, probably to call Bruce and let him know someone’s shooting up the property.

“Good job,” Dick breathes into Jason’s neck, stirring the delicate hairs there. Jason shivers and turns to reply, but the words die in his throat as he notices Dick seems to be less… there. It’s as if he’s blurred at the edges, not quite distinct or something.

“Dick, you’re—”

“Onto the next one,” Dick says, and he bolts away. Jason runs after him, cursing, as the world begins to change around him yet again. He didn’t even set the watch, though! He glances down, then decides he doesn’t want to look again, because the watch is reading 11:59 and he hates that time. He ends up chasing Dick into the Manor, down and down until they reach the doors of the training room. Dick eases the doors open, quiet as a mouse, then beckons Jason over.

Jason creeps over and peers in, narrowing his eyes at another version of himself, this one just finished catching a fifteen-year-old Dick. He watches the tiny Robin stare in confusion at past-future him—wow, no wonder Dick had realized Jason was in love with him; did Jason always wear that sickeningly adoring expression?—then finds himself raising the gun again, the acrobat he brought with him lifting his arms for him.

“Please don’t,” he whispers, but his fingers betray him and pull the trigger anyway. The bullet shatters the watch and past-future him lets out a loud swear as the shards of the watch’s glass face slice into his wrist. Blood splatters across the first Robin’s blue training uniform, and Jason sways, a feeling of vertigo coming over him at those two colours again.

“Don’t know what’s—”

“Smoke inhalation! Come on, we need to get those lungs working!”

Red-and-blue lights flashing overhead.

“Breathe, Jason! Goddammit—”

“Breathe,” Dick says, and Jason’s out of Bruce’s mansion again, though he’s not quite sure how he got there. Dick is translucent now; Jason can see right through him, though the hands on his shoulders feel solid enough.

“Something’s wrong,” Jason breathes, and Dick just shakes his head as if to say there’s nothing wrong. He points instead to the mansion door, where Alfred is arching an eyebrow at the third and final past-future Jason. This is it, the one thing Jason has left to do.

“Don’t make me,” he begs Dick, but Dick shushes him and gestures for him to get on with it. Jason is helpless against his own body, none of his muscles obeying him as he raises the gun at the last watch. He knows with sudden clarity how this ends, and though he’s accepted it, it doesn’t mean he has to like it. He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and pulls the trigger. He can hear the watch shatter, though logically that doesn’t make sense, and when he opens his eyes he chokes on a cry.

Dick had stepped in front of the bullet, and now there’s red blooming out across his blue Nightwing symbol, and Jason can feel the distance between him and the horrible thing that’s happened finally begin to close.

“Fuck, no, I didn’t mean it!” Jason yells, dropping the gun and reaching for Dick. But his fingers go right through the acrobat as if he isn’t even there, and then Dick’s fading completely away.

“Come back, goddamn you!” Jason’s screaming, and there’s blue and red and red and blue and sirens, sirens, sirens—

“Jay…” Dick says, and when he smiles Jason can see the sun shining through him. “See you later.”

Then he winks, and Jason’s whole world is gone.

---

“Hey Alfred,” Jason says, yawning as he tosses a book on the floor. “You ever heard of this cat-in-a-box thing?”

“Pick up your book, Master Jason,” Alfred chastises gently as he sets a tray of tea down on the table. Jason rolls his eyes and bites back a swear—he doesn’t think Alfred will swat him the way Bruce does, but you can bet Bruce would hear about it—before picking up the stupid physics book he has to read and setting it down on the table.

Alfred smiles approvingly, and his smile turns thoughtful as he begins pouring the tea.

“If by cat-in-a-box you’re talking about Schrödinger's cat, then indeed I have. An interesting theory, that, although it’s all hogwash by a scientist trying to prove another scientist wrong. I don’t much care for the physics part. In my personal opinion, it presents a better philosophical argument.”

“Ain’t it the same thing?” Jason asks, because he’s only just started this school stuff and he has a lot to catch up on. He loves reading fiction, but man is the rest of the shit they do dry.

“No, no,” Alfred sighs, setting the tea down and taking a seat on the couch beside Jason. “Let’s focus on the experiment first. A cat is placed inside a box with a flask of poison, some radioactive material, and a monitor. The monitor will break the flask of poison as soon as it detects the radioactive material decaying, and the cat will die.”

“Yeah, I get the whole part Einstein and that Schrödinger guy were arguing about. Something about how someone else’s theory doesn’t make sense because a cat can’t be alive and dead at once and blah, blah, blah,” Jason says, waving a dismissive hand. He shouldn’t have asked Alfred, because of course Alfred would give him a lecture and he couldn’t go back to reading books he ought not to be. But Alfred chuckles instead of getting discouraged, his eyes sparkling with old-guy mirth.

“I’m sure you do. That’s from the point of view of physics, though. Now let’s imagine it from philosophy. It’s sort of like that old saying, ‘If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?’ Because although logically the cat can’t be alive and dead, before we open the box we don’t know. And if we haven’t experienced it yet, has it really happened?”

Jason stares at Alfred like he’s grown three heads, not quite understanding. Alfred laughs again, scooping up his teacup.

“Ah, Master Bruce isn’t a fan of these theories either. But to me, they’re very interesting. If you don’t whether the cat’s alive or dead, then—to you at least—the cat is both. If it’s dead, it’s still alive to you until you open the box.”

“So what you’re saying is, the cat’s basically immortal if you don’t open the box?” Jason asks, getting sort of excited because this line of thinking is actually sort of interesting. If you don’t know someone’s dead, they’re not. At least that’s what it sounds like Alfred’s saying.

“In a thought experiment, theoretically the answer is yes. But this is reality,” Alfred says, settling comfortably into the couch. “At one point or another, you’ll end up opening the box.”

“I wouldn’t do it. Curiosity killed the cat!” Jason jokes, ignoring the fact that it’s something that asshole other Robin Bruce’s been talking about would say. He’s his own Robin so the other one can fuck off and die, jokes and all.

“And satisfaction brought it back,” Bruce huffs from the doorway. “Speaking of, Catwoman’s stealing jewels again. Suit up, Jason. I might need you on this one.”

---

“Jason. Please wake up, son.”

He knows that voice. The desperation and brokenness in it is unfamiliar—he’s never heard that tone in this voice—but the voice itself is familiar.

“I don’t know why he won’t wake up,” another familiar voice sobs. This one is female, and the tone is the same as the other. Jason should wake up, but he’s never been good at obeying others, and there’s still one last thing he needs to remember. He doesn’t want to. It’s fucking cruel, that he has to go through it again, but he knows he has to in order to wake up.

…you have to think outside the box.

Wouldn’t that kill the cat? Dick’s died in his dreams, but reality… reality is something else entirely. He doesn’t want to face it.

He does anyway.

---

The last thing he saw wasn’t Dick plunging into the fire. Dick said Jason had to let him go, but fuck that. Dick couldn’t go plunging into the fire alone; he worked best with backup, and even if Dick had wanted to be let go, he hadn’t explicitly said Jason couldn’t follow him. So Jason snatched that tiny misstep of Dick’s, and he ran in anyway.

The heat is intense, a wall of suffocating hot air that scorches Jason’s lungs and makes his skin uncomfortable. He chokes on smoke—his own smoking habits haven’t exactly given him good lungs to deal with this—then ducks so he’s not walking in the worst of it. He sees Dick’s boots soft on the ground ahead of him, Dick picking his way down a thin strip of uneven floor not on fire, and he follows.

“Anybody here?” Dick calls out, holding an arm up over his mouth.

“Yo!” Jason yells as loud as he can, though he figures it’s a lost cause. Until they both pause at the sound of a wavering, choking sob of ‘Help me.’

Dick’s quicker than Jason, leaping over a burning couch that Jason can’t possibly hope to get over without getting singed, and Jason utters a low oath as he waits anxiously. He can hear the roof creaking above him, and he has to dodge to the side as beam comes smashing down towards him. It almost completely closes off the small non-flaming area Dick’s just gone through, and Jason searches the room for anything he can use to move the couch away.

“Jason!” Dick yells from the other side, and Jason abandons his search to stand a few feet away from the couch, holding an arm up so the heat isn’t burning his face so much. He can see Dick doing nearly the same thing, except Dick’s got a little girl behind him, who’s eyes are roving the fire sightlessly. “You alright?”

“Fine, I’m fine, but how the fuck are you supposed to get over here?” he calls, spinning to see if there’s anything he missed. The roof shifts above him again, and he knows they probably have a minute at most before it collapses.

“I found her looking for the fire safety box, and then we found it afterwards. It had a fire blanket, so I’m going to wrap it around her and throw her out to you. Afterwards, I’ll come through—I can get through fine on my own.”

Well, it’s not like they have many other options. Jason nods, then calls out a ‘I can manage’ when Dick doesn’t see it. It takes a bit of manoeuvering and Jason thinks he loses his eyebrows in the process, but Dick manages to launch the girl through the fire and safely into Jason’s arms. Holding her close so she doesn’t get lost, Jason waits impatiently for Dick to jump too.

“Hurry up, the structure is collapsing!” he shouts, and he gets a nod before Dick backs up then takes a flying leap over the couch. They sure as hell didn’t call his family the Flying Graysons for nothing; he manages to clear the fire and land relatively unharmed, though he seems to be in some pain after he lands on his injured leg.

The roof creaks above them, and then starts to fall. They’re in luck that it’s the back going first, where the fire had gone down the far wall, and Jason picks up the girl to start sprinting for the exit. He’s too high up now, and he’s dragging in deep mouthfuls of smoke that he can feel clog his lungs even despite the mask, but there’s no other options than to keep moving. He glances back once to see Dick hard on heels, quick as lightning even limping. Dick mouths something but the roar of the blaze is too much, and Jason only catches the last of the sentence. Which, by then, is too late.

“—IN FRONT OF YOU!!” Dick screams, then launches himself at Jason and the girl. The roof buckles then caves in above Jason, and he only has time to bend himself protectively over the girl before the roof strikes them. But it doesn’t strike them at all—Dick’s strength has managed to push them just a few feet farther, only about a metre away from the exit. Jason shoves the girl blindly towards it and makes sure she’s out before turning back.

“GRAYSON!” he cries at the sight behind him, horror and panic clawing their way up his throat. Dick’s still alive, but the burning part of the roof that had collapsed is on top of his legs, pinning him as the fire starts eating at his Nightwing costume. Jason wants to go to him—he can see shock and fear in Dick’s eyes as he stares dumbly at the wreckage of his lower body—but suddenly strong arms are hauling him backwards, forcing him to leave Dick burning. He struggles and the panic in his throat leaps out into a wordless howl, but the arms don’t let up.

He catches Dick’s eyes one more time, and what he sees makes him fight even harder. Dick’s fear has faded into weary acceptance, and he offers Jason a tired smile, his mouth forming a word.

Sorry.

For what? It’s Jason’s fault Dick wasn’t fast enough to get out. If Dick wouldn’t have been injured, Jason knows he would’ve been fast enough to save them and get himself out.

“Jason, let me get you out!” Bruce is yelling into Jason’s ear, and though Jason is still struggling, the lack of oxygen and damage the smoke has done to his lungs is weakening him.

“Dick,” Jason gasps out, black spots dancing in his vision. “Trapped. Bruce.”

He feels even more tension in Bruce’s hands as the man realizes what he’s saying, but Bruce keeps dragging him until he’s completely out.

“Save him,” Jason wheezes, his hand finding purchase on Bruce’s shoulder. He doesn’t care that it’s too late, that the roof has almost completely flattened the orphanage. The only thing he cares about is Bruce’s agreement, and even though he sees the lack of hope in Bruce’s eyes as the Batman grimly nods, he can’t hold onto his consciousness. The old church bell down the street starts ringing twelve o'clock.

His last thought as the blue and red flashes of the ambulance carry his mind away is if Dick doesn’t wake up, he doesn’t want to either.

Chapter Text

Jason wakes to a familiar, warm place, and for a second his groggy mind whispers ‘Home’ to him. Then, as his awareness grows, he dismisses that thought and focuses instead on the unfamiliar. The quiet beeps of a heart monitor, a slight sterile tang in the air, and directly to his left… breathing. He cracks his eyelids weakly and turns his head slowly to where he hears it, careful not to let the first word that had popped into his head out. Bruce is Bruce now, not Dad.

“What…” he gets out, but his voice is hoarse and scratchy and speaking makes his throat ache. Bruce, who’d been sitting quietly with his head in his hands, looks up immediately, and the amount of relief Jason sees in his eyes is so much Jason has to look away. He doesn’t want to think of Bruce as fragile—the man’s always seemed to be unshakeable—but fragility is all Jason can see etched into his face right now.

“You’re awake,” Bruce breathes, and Jason sets his jaw stubbornly, because he’s not letting Bruce fucking Wayne see how shaken he is. He tries to think of how he got here—things are still all fuzzy—and then it hits him like a punch to the gut and he’s struggling to get up, pulling some clamp off his finger and trying to leap out of the bed he’s in. He ignores the fact that it’s his old room and that Bruce hasn’t touched a thing save to wheel in some hospital equipment, ignores how sentimental a gesture that is, and struggles as Bruce grabs him and shoves him back down.

“Stop struggling, you need rest,” Bruce snaps, as if Jason hasn’t been lying in a goddamn bed for the past however long he’s been there.

“Where is he? Is he…?” Jason can’t finish the sentence, can’t even say the name, but he knows Bruce understands. Bruce firmly pushes Jason back down and refuses to answer, glaring daggers until Jason finally mutters ‘Asshole’ and sinks back onto the bed. He can’t tell from Bruce’s face what the right answer is and he’s absolutely terrified, but before Bruce can tell him the door to the room bursts open.

“What’s going on? Bruce, what—”

Leslie pauses, looking between the two of them, then lets out a long sigh and rolls her eyes to the ceiling.

“I’m happy everything’s alright, but next time you decide to remove the clamp checking your vitals, could you please let me know first so I don’t have a heart attack thinking you’ve flat-lined?”

Jason blinks a couple of times, nonplussed by the appearance of Bruce’s personal doctor, then shakes his surprise away and turns back to Bruce. They can deal with all of this later, right now he just needs to know—

“Is he awake?”

“Master Tim, right now’s not the best—”

“Let us through, Alfred, we have every right to be there!”

“Master Damian, all of you can’t—”

“It’s fine. I’ll look after them.”

Then there’s no more arguing as the sound of three highly-trained people running on light feet echoes down the hall. Jason doesn’t even have time to get out a groan of frustration before Damian, Tim, and Cass burst in, Alfred hard on their heels.

“Jay!” “We were worried.” “Idiot!”

And then he’s swamped in hugs from his family, buried under a pile of bat kids. It’s disconcerting, that they’ve been this worried about him of all people, and it takes a few seconds for him to compose himself. He draws in a breath that burns a little on the way down, then tries to disentangle himself from his siblings. Bruce, Alfred, and Leslie help, chastising all the while, and then finally, finally everyone calms down enough for Jason to ask the question into the silence.

“Where’s Dick?”

It dims their eyes, and he can physically see a heaviness settle over them, but he needs to know. He focuses on the only person there who doesn’t look like the carpet’s been pulled out from under their feet, narrowing his eyes.

“Damian?”

“Grayson is fine,” Damian says archly, and everyone erupts into angry speech all at once. Tim is saying something about ‘false hope,’ Cass is shaking her head, Bruce is growling that nobody knows that, Alfred is frowning worriedly at Damian, and Leslie is just shaking her head.

“He’s alive?” Jason whispers, and the room quiets down again. The entire time Jason had been out, he’d thought Dick died. From the weird time-travelling dream to his own subconscious forcing him to accept it, he’d been absolutely sure he’d have to wake to a world without Dick Grayson. He’d seen the fire, seen Dick accept death, and his own brain had decided that he had to accept that before anything else. But if Dick really is alive…

The hope hurts more than almost anything, because if he starts clinging to it again he knows he’ll get fucking obliterated when it’s crushed for a second time. He hopes anyway, though, and damn the consequences because if his hope helps even a little he’ll take it.

“He’s sleeping.” Damian again. “I said we could let him rest for now since he’s been through a lot, but he’ll get up soon. I just need to order him to wake up.”

“Damian, I’m afraid that’s not the case,” Leslie says gently. “You’re not understanding—”

“I understand perfectly, you ignorant simpleton!” Damian yells, but his voice wobbles as he backs away. “What do you know? I haven’t seen your credentials! For all I know, you’re just a glorified nurse! I don’t believe you! I absolutely refuse.”

With that, he turns and runs out again, leaving everyone staring after him forlornly.

“What. The. Fuck. Is. Going. On?” Jason grits out, finally reaching the end of his fuse. “If I don’t get a straight answer within the next twenty seconds, someone’s gunna die.”

He isn’t sure exactly who he’s threatening—there’s not a single person in the room he’d kill—but his tone must be enough, because Leslie finally comes over to sit down on his bed and give him one of those cold-pity-doctor-looks. She’s probably not aware she’s doing it, but it still annoys him so much he kind of wants to punch her.

“Dick is in a coma,” Leslie says softly, folding her hands in her lap. “Bruce managed to get him out using the fire blanket that little girl you saved had, and there was minimal burn damage. However, he breathed in quite a bit of smoke and another chunk of the roof collapsed before Bruce could get to him. He had a collapsed lung, and no oxygen was getting to the brain. There was clinical death.”

“Clinical dea—but he’s in a coma, so he’s still alive, right?” Jason asks, scarcely noticing himself straining against the arm Bruce has put out to hold him back. Leslie lets out a small sigh and removes her reading glasses, reaching up to massage the bridge of her nose.

“Yes, they managed to resuscitate him. His vitals are good and his condition is stable—no sign of worsening. The issue is that there’s no way of determining what kind of damage was done when his brain lacked oxygen. It’s possible none was done, but it’s just as possible that his brain is damaged to the point where he’ll never wake up. Even if he does, he might not be the same person. At this point, you should hope for the best and prepare for the worst.”

Jason swallows, knotting his hands in the bed sheets and glaring stubbornly at the childish pattern on them. This is… unexpected. So it’s basically a waiting game, where they all have to wait and see what happens when Dick wakes up. If he wakes up. Something like this is almost worse than death, because what if he wakes up and it’s not him anymore?

“I want to see him,” Jason whispers, and it takes a lot of arguing before he’s finally allowed. Luckily, Cass is on his side, and since the girl is one of the best damn arguers in the entire universe when she wants to be, Jason is soon making his way to Dick’s room. He has to stop at the doorway and gather himself before he goes in, and when he finally does he sees what Damian meant by asleep.

Besides a few tubes hooked up to some simplistic machines, Dick looks like he fell into a peaceful slumber. His face is smoothed of any stress lines, his hair is smoothed back from his face, and a blanket hides all but the very tips of two leg casts. His chest rises and falls in a casual, slow rhythm, and Jason feels like if he just calls out Dick’s name, the acrobat will bolt up and smile sheepishly, laughing about falling asleep.

He doesn’t say a word however—he crosses the room alone to where Barbara is sitting quietly at Dick’s side in her wheelchair, holding Dick’s hand, and kneels down.

“He looks peaceful, at least,” Babs states after a moment, her face impassive. “He’s not in any pain.”

“That’s… good,” Jason chokes out, trying to play it cool and not show Babs how much he cares. She drags her eyes from Dick’s face to look at Jason, and suddenly they’re both trying not to cry, as Babs eases Dick’s hand down then reaches out to grab Jason’s and squeeze.

“I love him,” she says, her voice breaking a little, before she resolutely continues on. “He’s my best friend, and I love him, and once I loved him the way you do.”

“I don—”

“Don’t try to deny it, Jay. I’m not angry. I said once—I’ve gotten over it and now I just love him like a brother from the bottom of my heart. But even though I don’t love him that way anymore, I know how you feel. And I’m sorry.”

Then she pulls Jason to her and they hug tightly, the two of them clinging to each other as the man they’ve both loved more than life lays in fate’s uncertain hands.

“He knows, too,” Babs murmurs into Jason’s shoulder. “You know that, right? He knows you love him, but he never tried anything with you because he’s so careful when it comes to that. He doesn’t want to push you away. He’s been waiting for you to say it first, I think. He’s been waiting a long time. So even though I shouldn’t be telling you because he doesn’t want you knowing and feeling pressured, I have to—and I want to ask you something on his behalf.”

Babs starts crying, and Jason can’t say anything as one of the women he respects most in the world hugs him to her like he’s her dying hope. Jason nods numbly, wondering how it is that anyone can trust him with Dick’s heart like this, wondering when it was that he developed such a genuine bond with his family that they trust him again. Or has it always been this way, and he’s just noticing now because he’s forcing himself to accept all of the things he hasn’t wanted to?

“Please wait for him,” Babs sobs quietly, her arms strong on Jason’s shoulders. “Just a little while longer, please wait for him, even though it probably feels like you’ve both been waiting forever.”

“I will,” Jason vows, his eyes turning to Dick’s prone form. “I promise.”

---

A week passes by, and Jason gets stronger after he gets more fluids into him and starts taking small walks. He spends most of his time with Babs and other bat kids by Dick’s bed, only leaving to get meals. It’s weird, knowing that he’s shared the same feelings as Babs, but since there’s no animosity between them over it; it actually brings them closer. Babs tells him stories of stupid dates Dick’s taken her on, and Jason isn’t jealous for the first time. He only thinks he falls a little more in love with the ridiculous acrobat, and even a little with Babs when she tells him that when Dick wakes up Jason might have to put up with those kinds of dates too. It’s terrible to play the waiting game with no end in sight, but the routine grounds Jason in a way nothing ever has.

---

Another week passes, and Jason finds himself wandering into the Bat Cave more often, where Tim is keeping busy researching neurology and what someone can do to improve cognitive function in patients who’ve been clinically dead. It’s pretty dry stuff to read over, but when Tim explains it to Jason he turns it more understandable and Jason finds he doesn’t mind learning this way. Timmy’s a pretty good teacher, especially when he’s not all Doomsday Timmy from Jason’s dreams. He also keeps showing Jason these statistics about people who have made full recoveries, and he seems excited all the time because he says Dick has excellent chances since he’s a healthy young man. Jason isn’t a hundred percent sure if that’s the correct way to interpret things, but Tim’s attitude is infectious and soon Jason finds himself repeating the stats to anyone who will listen. Staying positive is surprisingly easy when he’s surrounded by the family.

---

A month later and Jason’s getting impatient, but Cass comes in and starts distracting him. They play poker at Dick’s bedside and Jason finds himself getting decimated every game, at which point Cass starts laughing then talking to Dick as if he’s sitting up watching the game.

“Only idiots play poker with me,” Cass says to Dick, smirking as Jason fumes. “When you wake up, I’m sure you’ll join us.”

Her confidence is infectious, and when she tells him she’s pretty sure Dick’s listening to what’s going on around him because he’s nosy like that, Jason starts talking to him too. Cass and Jason carry on whole conversations with the comatose acrobat, Cass supplying with unsettling accuracy exactly what Dick would answer when they start joking around. It’s calming, and the anger Jason’s been feeling for 99% of his life starts drifting away as him and Cass play the next hand.

---

A month and a half in, Stephanie unexpectedly shows up, taking a break from her missionary work in Africa, where she’d been working while recovering from a severe injury. Her presence is what completely cements the fact that Jason is in reality and not some dream—in his somber dreams, the bubbly blonde didn’t even make an appearance. Mostly because even his mind couldn’t conjure up a picture of her grim-faced or sobbing, not when her smile is nearly as bright as Dick’s.

“Jason!” she yelps when she comes into the room, all sunshine-y and warm as she throws her arms around Jason in a huge, dumb hug that makes Jason feel younger than he is. He hugs her back just a little, because he knows she won’t let go if he doesn’t, and then she drops into a chair beside the bed and starts chatting with Dick like it’s no big deal. Then she turns to Jason all mischievous and includes him in the conversation as she starts giving them dating advice. Jason has to leave the room, but not before he laughs so hard at Steph’s suggestive eyebrow waggle that the milk he’s been sipping on comes out his nose.

---

Three months later, Jason finally speaks to Damian, who’s been lurking around but always eyeing Jason suspiciously. Damian is confrontational and angry, but Jason senses real fear under all that bravado, and since putting up a front is something he understands he lets Damian be angry at him. He lets Damian yell at him for not protecting ‘his Grayson,’ and then he lets Damian mutter apologies and fall asleep in the chair beside Dick’s bed, whimpering occasionally in his sleep. When Damian finally realizes that Jason’s around to stay, he sort of accepts it, but says Jason better not hurt Dick.

They remain wary of each other for another month, with winter edging around the corner, but in the end it’s hard to be frigid with a scared kid whose hero may or may not wake up. Jason walks in to find Damian frantically shaking Dick, whispering “Wake up, Grayson, I insist you wake up,” and decides what the fuck. He marches up beside Damian, startling the youngest Wayne kid, and leans over Dick’s face, which is beginning to thin out since all he’s on is a high calorie liquid.

“Yo, Dickie Bird,” Jason says loudly, pretending to completely ignore Damian’s presence. “Up. Get that pasty ass outta bed before there’s no summer sun left.”

“Did you hear that, Grayson?” Damian asks, crossing his arms. “That tan you brag like a fool about will completely gone if you don’t stop with this ‘coma’ nonsense. We’re all waiting for you.”

There’s nothing. And then… Jason can’t be sure he saw it, but he swears he saw a finger twitch. He stares at Damian who’s staring at him back, wide-eyed in wonder, and then the two of them start yelling at the top of their (very voluminous) lungs. It brings everyone running (or wheeling) in, and everyone crowds around as Jason and Damian excitedly explain what they’d seen. Leslie frowns dubiously, then waves them out so she can check everything.

It’s only when they’re in the hall, all anxiously waiting outside the door, that Jason realizes Damian is clinging to his arm with wide eyes. Jason opens his mouth to make a smart remark, then closes it and opts for a small smirk. Damian doesn’t even know he’s doing it, and Jason isn’t going to make fun of him this time. Maybe when they’re close enough that Damian won’t lose his mind in anger, but not yet. For now, they wait.

---

Dick doesn’t wake up that day or the next. Even Bruce is getting worried now; he’s flitting in and out of Dick’s room like a… well, like a bat, and he even accidentally stumbles in while Jason is there. They’ve been making it a point to avoid each other because Jason’s made it clear that he’s not a fan of Bruce, but instead of glaring Bruce out of the room this time Jason lets out a small sigh under his breath and gestures for Bruce to come sit. The man does, and the air in the room gets awkward as they both perch beside a guy who’s changed their lives.

“What was he like?” Jason suddenly asks, then cringes as soon as the question is out of his mouth. He hadn’t meant to speak it aloud, but he kept thinking about the time travel dreams and wondering if he’d been seeing Dick as he really was. Bruce looks just as startled as Jason at the question, but he recovers more quickly and he steeples his fingers over his knees, examining Dick thoughtfully.

“Difficult,” Bruce says succinctly, his jaw twitching as if holding something back. Then he sighs and his posture loosens as he turns to face Jason. “He still liked his puns, but he had a stubborn streak a mile long. The first few years we were together, he must’ve gotten shot seven times doing something careless. I’d tell him not to put himself in dangerous situations, but I suppose our definition of ‘dangerous situations’ wasn’t the same.”

Jason thinks of the young acrobat in his dreams letting a complete stranger into the house and smirks a little; he got that one right, at least. He nods for Bruce to go on, and Bruce’s grim expression gets a little wistful as he rubs his chin.

“Hm, what else… He was quite the womanizer when he was older, especially when it came to Babs. He had a huge crush on her and was always trying to impress her, though since she was Batgirl and had her own extensive set of skills, he often failed. He kept his good humour though, all throughout it, and he learned how to use flirting as a weapon. Which wasn’t very potent in his Robin career, I must say. It was much more effective as a weapon of Dick Grayson, ward of Bruce Wayne.”

The Dick in Jason’s dreams had been a little different from that, still flirtatious but more from being a horny kid than from learning it to use at Bruce’s many galas and grand affairs. He wondered if it had been tiring, all the flirting, all the trying, and it was an odd thought to think that Dick hadn’t been born with the desire to use smooth moves and charm on everyone he met. He’d been so convinced Dick was born perfect at everything that he hadn’t stopped to wonder if the whole façade took effort.

“He wasn’t perfect, Jason,” Bruce sighs, as if reading Jason’s mind. “I know the two of you fought a lot because you believed I found him to be a better Robin than you, but he had his faults too. One of his major weaknesses was trying to take everything on himself, which is why I had to let him go. Turned out it didn’t matter—he took up his own mantle anyway—but he’s always pushed himself too far. You always went too far with punishing criminals, but you know when you can’t push yourself more.”

“What’s all this leading to?” Jason asks, narrowing his eyes as he senses something coming. He doesn’t know what, but this sounds like one of Bruce’s large life lectures where he ends with something like ‘and you need to always bring criminals in, no killing.’ If Bruce gives him that same speech one more time—

“If he wakes up, he’ll need you,” Bruce says, which totally throws Jason for a loop. “He needs someone to tell him—firmly—when to stop. I’m not asking you to do it if you don’t want to, but Barbara mentioned that the two of you might… Well, just look after him. He’s not invulnerable.”

“Wait, wait, wait, lemme get this fucking straight,” Jason says incredulously, searching Bruce’s face. “What you’re basically trying to say in this roundabout, beat-around-the-bush way, is that you don’t mind if we like… do couple stuff, or whatever?”

“Date?” Bruce asks, looking rather amused. Jason flushes, waving a hand dismissively at the embarrassing word. Coming from Bruce, it’s just plain weird, and besides, Dick is in a coma and hasn’t even said he likes Jason. Sure, Babs may claim it’s true, but hell if Jason’s going to believe it until Golden Boy wakes up to tell him himself.

“I’m not worried about that right now, anyway,” Jason mutters, setting a foot on the bed and leaning back in his chair. “Jesus, it sounds like you’re giving your daughter away or something. Everyone’s going around deciding this shit, and I haven’t even said I want to date the idiot. He’s annoying, first of all, we fight a lot over the whole Robin thing, he’s probably got six STDs because we all know what he does when—”

“Nah,” Bruce says in a completely flippant tone that’s completely at odds with his personality. Jason stares, his brain wondering if it should use the emergency exit, because how did Bruce talk without moving his mouth? And then… And then…

“Un… less… by S…TDs… you meant, Sexy… Trampoline Devices… but that’s… pretty kinky… even for… me.”

“You…” Jason says, rising from his seat. “…dick.”

Then he forgets about Bruce sitting right beside him, forgets about the monitors and tubes, forgets it all except for every dark, horrible moment he’s spent wandering his own mindscapes, trying to find a way for this to happen. And he fucking punches Dick Grayson right in that pretty little mouth.

“Ow!” Dick yelps, but before he can say anything else Jason grabs the front of his shirt and pulls Dick up, crushing their mouths together without a moment’s hesitation. This is their first real kiss, and it actually sucks because Dick is all loopy, Jason is shaking like a leaf, and Bruce doesn’t know what the hell to do, and it’s actually the best because Dick is alive. He’s genuinely alive, and when Jason pulls back the exasperated, confused expression on Dick’s face is one hundred percent an alive person’s expression.

“You are the biggest asshole in the world,” Jason snaps through tears that threaten to spill over, shaking Dick by the front of his shirt. “What kind of person stays in a coma for months, making everyone worry? What kind of person runs into a fire with a bullet wound? What kind of person makes me wait for so long?”

“Is this a trick question?” Dick asks, looking dazed. A helpless, hysterical snort of laughter makes its way out of Jason’s mouth, and then he’s crying tears of real happiness, laughing and crying while Dick shakes his head with a smile. “If it is, you’ve already said the answer. A… Dick.”

Then even Bruce is laughing helplessly, which is such a rare sound that it brings everyone else in the house running—or wheeling, in Babs’ case—and suddenly the whole family is in the room, surrounding the bed. When things like this have happened, Jason’s usually found himself pushed to the edge of the crowd like the black sheep he is, but this time is different. He’s pressed forward in the crowd, stumbling until he falls practically into Dick’s lap, and everyone is yelling all at once.

“—knew you’d wake up!” “Stupid, careless—” “—chances of this happening—” “—probably an idiot now—” “—be with Jay!”

The last one silences everyone, and in the silence Jason is suddenly acutely aware that he—the bad child—is still sitting in the lap of Dick Grayson—the favourite child. He tries to get up but a weak, warm arm encircles his waist and Jason doesn’t have the heart to shake it off.

“Oh no you don’t,” Dick chuckles as Jason’s face starts to heat up. “I’ve waited long enough to kiss you properly, and that first one just wasn’t fair.”

“Wait!” a voice cuts through, and Jason freezes as Damian shoves his way to the bedside, his face scrunched up in consideration. Somehow, it makes Jason nervous, because everyone else looks completely fine with what’s going on, but Damian looks critical and Jason knows Dick respects the young Robin’s opinion.

“Dami—” Dick begins, but the youngest Wayne silences him by levelling an angry finger. At… Dick.

“You’ve already made us all worried once,” he sniffs, scrubbing a quick hand across his nose as if he doesn’t want anyone to know he was bawling a few seconds ago. “Todd especially. So I’m only going to say this once, but if you can’t agree, I won’t allow you to go out with him.”

Jason gapes at the boy who loves his mentor more than almost anything else, moved beyond belief that Damian is stepping up for his sake. If it were anyone else, Jason probably would’ve told them to fuck off, that he doesn’t need protecting, but somehow this feels like a victory with the kid. More than a victory; it kind of feels like they’re family.

“I understand,” Dick says, and his voice is completely solemn. “But you see… I love Jay probably even more than you do, so I’m not planning on hurting him any time soon.”

Damian accepts this with a slight nod, then gestures for Dick to get on with it. Jason, for his part, is still staring at Dick with wide-eyed shock.

“Fuck off,” he says offhandedly, almost reflexively, simply because he can’t believe Dick just openly admitted his love. And then, in the next breath, he’s also saying, “Iloveyoutoo,” because somehow he just needed to say it, and then Dick tugs at him to bend down and they’re kissing. For real. It’s not even the desperate, raging passion Jason had dreamt about; it’s slow, gentle, and full of promise for the future.

In the background, the entire family (is that Bruce’s voice Jason hears? No way) cheers, and Jason finally realizes what he’s been fighting not to accept the entire time. It isn’t Dick’s death, or his feelings for the acrobat, or his anger at the world. It’s the fact that he doesn’t actually want to be alone. He’d been trying to convince himself ever since he came back from the Pit that he’d be stronger alone, that he didn’t care if the world took anything else from him, that he could just be a faceless vigilante who needed nothing and no one.

He’d been wrong. The other realities he’d seen had forced him to accept that, and now… fine, he may as well admit it, he’s happy as hell. Kissing the guy he’s been pining over forever and having the approval of a family he’d tried to convince himself had given up on him… Yeah, it’s pretty damn good. So maybe he’s not his imagined version of a pistol in the night swooping down for vengeance on those who wronged him, returning to ratty motel because he doesn’t belong anywhere else. It doesn’t matter anymore.

He’s Jason fucking Todd, and right here, with his family and his lover, is where he belongs.