Chapter Text
Time passes. Dick carries on: work, gym, rest. He develops a minor obsession with Korean dramas and a slightly more concerning obsession with popcorn - he saves up and splurges on an absurdly large popcorn machine and delights in trying new and increasingly odd flavour combinations. He picks up a second job just to fill in some of his free time. Part time at a flower shop, of all things. His cash stash blooms, healthier and healthier, and with each added note he finds himself farther from the soul-crushing terror of looming desolation.
He will not lose everything for a third time. He will not.
And if he does, he’ll be prepared for it.
He settles into his apartment, even going so far as to paint one wall. Earthy green, which goes nicely with the navy of his treasured weighted blanket and the gold of his few bits of decor. He lives light, still, but he lets himself have harmless treats when he wants them, just for the novelty of being able to afford it without relying on someone else. The independence is intoxicating.
After a while, Jason texts again. As promised, Dick hasn’t changed his number. Without having to promise it, Jason hasn’t told Bruce. Dick can tell, and somehow he’d known from the very first message the kid had sent that he wouldn’t betray his trust like that.
He doesn’t really know Jason, but for some reason he knows that he wouldn’t sell him out to a parent.
JASON: B asked me if a hundred dollars was enough for a tip this morning
JASON: We only spent like fifteen dollars btw
ME: That sounds like B. What’d you say?
JASON: I said no, obviously not. A thousand minimum.
Dick chuckles. Kid after his own heart.
ME: Did he apologise to the server?
JASON: You know it
JASON: Any fun stories from your day?
It’s a little clunky, at first. A little awkward, trying to find a way to fit their individual halves of the conversation into place while dancing around the elephant that is Bruce looming in the corner. But Jason doesn’t ask where Dick is or where he’s been, doesn’t try to weasel clues out of him, and Dick takes the very first hint to not ask about Jason’s past and doesn’t even approach that line again, and it works out. Jason’s a smart kid, quick as a thrown knife and twice as sharp, and his humour is the perfect blend of dry and self-aware to match with Dick’s. He sends emojis or gifs of rolling eyes at some of Dick’s puns, but then he also sends him a photo of a cat playing with a leaf on the sidewalk outside a Starbucks - Dick recognises the one closest to Gotham Academy - and the caption, I’ve bean here ten minutes. She won’t leaf it alone.
And with every message he receives, with every headline he reads calling Jason’s behaviour or background unbecoming, with every smiley face and song recommendation and new joke referencing an old one that’s somehow, without him noticing, become an in-joke with a kid he wasn’t supposed to grow attached to -
With every message, Dick finds himself falling further.
He likes the little life he’s carved out for himself here. He likes his coworkers, and his sh*tty little apartment, and his Korean dramas and weird popcorn, and he’d give it all up in a heartbeat if this kid asked him to.
It terrifies him.
It terrifies him so much so that, when his phone rings in the dairy aisle of the grocery store one afternoon at random and he sees Jason’s name on the caller ID, he freezes.
Dick barely manages to gather himself enough to answer before it goes to voicemail.
His mouth works for a moment, and then the words burst forth like they’ve been stoppered in his mouth. “Jason? What’s wrong? Are you okay? Are you safe?”
For a moment, he thinks the kid’s hung up. Called by accident, maybe, because for all that they’ve exchanged messages they’ve never called.
Then there’s a sniffle. “I’m safe,” comes a small voice. “I’m okay.”
Dick slumps. Both hands clutch his phone to his ear, his shopping cart abandoned next to him by the cheeses. “What’s wrong, little wing?”
“Um. Uh - I’m really sorry, I didn’t - you’re probably -”
“Jay,” Dick says to stop him. “It’s okay. I’m not busy. Take a breath and tell me what happened.”
He hears him do so. A long breath down the line, then another. When he speaks again, Jason’s voice is a little steadier.
“B got hurt on patrol,” he tells him. Dick isn’t sure what to name the emotion making his chest feel cold. “He’s - he’s - and I’m - I’m really f*ckin’ scared.”
It’s nearing midnight. Dick often ends up grocery shopping late at night on his days off, because he’s used to keeping a mostly nocturnal schedule for work, and because he likes the quiet of it. The store is nearly empty, an eerie liminal space in which he can catch his breath. Just him and his brother’s voice over the phone line, caught between Mississippi and New Jersey, caught between love for their father and fear for him as he in turn is caught in a limbo between hurt-but-okay and hurt-and-dying. To Dick, it’s Schrödinger’s cat. Dick won’t know if Bruce will be okay unless he asks.
He doesn’t ask.
In Gotham it’ll be nearly one, which is right in the middle of patrol time. Bruce must have dragged himself back to get patched up, so he’s probably fine. Dick tries not to imagine Jason waiting for him in the Cave, stumbling out of his seat in panic when the door of the Batmobile opened.
“You’re okay, Jason,” Dick says firmly. “Where are you?”
“At - at the Manor. The Cave.”
So, yes. Bruce has either received or is receiving treatment. Likely the former, and Jason’s panicking now because of his adrenaline comedown. Dick can work with that.
“Is Alfred with you?”
“No,” Jason says. He sniffs again. “He went to make some soup. I’m watching Bruce.”
Abruptly, Dick is filled with a dizzying, nauseating horror. B is in a hospital bed right now, injured or sick or something, and Dick had no idea. He’d been picking out butter a minute ago.
He knows it’s silly to believe that he’d somehow just know if something happened to Bruce, but he can’t help it. He’d been Robin for eight years, so attuned to his partner that more than once he’d identified an injury on the man before he himself had. But just now, Bruce could have died and Dick wouldn’t have known a thing.
If not for Jason’s call, Dick still wouldn’t know he’d been hurt.
Dick pushes the nausea away. He swallows a few times.
“Okay,” Dick says. He wants to ask what happened to Bruce, if he’ll be okay, if he’ll live, but Bruce isn’t his priority any more. Bruce hasn’t been his priority since he showed Dick how little it meant to be Bruce’s priority. “How about you? Are you hurt?”
Jason sobs. Then, shamefully, he admits, “No, I’m okay.”
“Good.” Dick sighs with relief. His knees feel weak. “Good, Jay, that’s great. I’m glad. So what can I do? Why’d you call?”
“I don’t know,” Jason mumbles, in a way that tells Dick he definitely does know. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters,” Dick says. He tucks his phone between his shoulder and cheek and continues down the aisle. “Talk to me, kiddo. I’m right here.”
“No you’re not,” Jason bursts out. He sobs again. “You’re not here, I am, and Bruce is hurt.”
“Do you need me to come?”
Dick doesn’t even think about what he’s offering. He doesn’t second guess it once he’s said it either.
He hears Jason’s breath catch. “Would you?”
“I meant what I told you. If you need me, I’ll be there. Just say the word.”
A long few seconds pass. “No,” Jason says softly. “No, it’s okay. Thank you, Dick.”
It’s the first time Dick’s ever heard his name from his little brother’s mouth. Somehow, it feels more right than any other time he’s ever heard it. Maybe it’s just how long he’s gone without hearing his real name now, but the way Jason says it, the way his accent curls around the sounds, the softness of the first letter to the sharp kick of the final K - it feels like being born again, being named anew. Like he’d never really been called for by name until he heard it in his brother’s voice.
It feels like the first time Bruce had called him Robin. A name that was once his, once him, ripped away from him and now restored. Like Jason is gifting his name to him again.
“Anytime, Jay,” Dick says. “Anything. What do you need?”
“Just - talk? Talk to me?”
So Dick does. He keeps his phone pressed where it is and brings his brother through the store with him, chattering the whole time. It’s so long since he just talked for the sake of talking. Not to be amicable to his coworkers or to spot someone at the gym or to pay rent, but just because someone wanted to listen to him. In fact, he’s not sure it’s ever happened.
That’s not true. He and Wally would talk for this like hours. Back and forth, hopping from topic to topic until one or the other of them dropped off into sleep. But Wally’s not here anymore.
Dick’s throat closes up and he disguises it by coughing into his elbow at the till. He takes a breath to start up his stream of chatter once again as he heads off for home, but Jason gets there first.
“I watched my mom die,” Jason says quietly. Dick can’t breathe. “She was sick. She was real sick, and - and. Yeah. I watched her die.”
There’s something defensive in Jason’s tone, something careful and wounded, and Dick intuits that he’s not being told everything, but that doesn’t mean he’s being lied to. If he were, would it matter? He’d still believe him.
Dick doesn’t know for sure which response will hit right with Jason in this moment, so he takes a chance. He thinks he knows him well enough by now to get it right.
He does.
“Me too,” Dick says softly. “It never leaves you, does it?”
“No.”
Jason takes a breath. “I can’t sit and watch another parent die,” he says. His voice is trembling. Dick’s heart breaks for him.
“B won’t die,” Dick says, still soft as feather down. “He’s way too stubborn for that.”
He is. That’s one thing Dick’s certain of: Bruce is too stubborn to die like this. When the Bat dies, it’ll be during an alien invasion or the Joker’s latest attempt to burn the city to the ground or a shootout over the docks as warehouses explode in the background or something. It’ll be in the thick of things, not after the matter in the Cave under blue blankets with a heart monitor beeping over him. If he can survive a wound long enough to get care, Bruce will out-stubborn the wound until it becomes outright survival, no time frame attached.
“He’ll be okay,” Dick says. “And so will you.”
“Yeah.” Jason sniffles. More determinedly, he repeats, “Yeah. I will. I’m fine.”
“You don’t have to be fine, but you’re going to be,” Dick quickly amends. Jason huffs.
“Thanks for the greetings card message, Dickface,” he says. “I dunno why I called you. Shoulda gone to f*cking Hallmark instead.”
Dick laughs. By the time he’s home, Alfred’s just returned. Jason explains away the call as a school friend stressing over exams, without a hint of deception or hesitation in his delivery, and then says goodbye in a far less familiar way than Dick would’ve hoped. But he gets it. A school friend wouldn’t be addressed so fondly as they’ve been talking to each other tonight.
So he doesn’t get a “Goodnight, Dick,” or a “Night, Dickface,” or even a perfunctory “Later, loser.” He just gets a, “See you tomorrow,” and the beep of an ended call.
But a minute later, a message comes through that makes him smile.
JAYBIRD: Thanks again, dickhe*d. Sleep tight
ME: Anytime, little wing. Don’t let the bedbugs bite!
Dick falls asleep still smiling.
Not a month later, Dick wakes up to a new headline from Gotham.
Boy Wonder Spotted After Lengthy Absence! Is There a New Bird in Town?
The photo under the clickbait-y title is a side-by-side comparison. The difference is not as obvious as it should be given the age difference; Jason’s only twelve (thirteen? No, still twelve for now) but he’s not a tiny kid, at least not now that Bruce has had half a year to get some good food into him, whereas Dick had until more recently than he’d like to admit been what might be politely termed a late bloomer. Even at sixteen, as he is in the photo, he doesn’t look wholly different to how he did when he first joined the team. At thirteen. Now, at eighteen, he’s finally in the middle of that growth spurt he’d been praying for and his voice seems to have maybe fully settled. Looking at a photo of him from two years ago, all he can think is that he looks like a child.
He was a child. He was a child fighting an unwinnable war.
The photo next to his is Jason’s. He’s in the same suit. The same war.
Dick packs his things into bags - a whole four this time without even counting his popcorn machine which, if he were less empty and unfeeling right now, he thinks might have brought either a smile or a tear from him - and leaves them on his bed while he counts his cash, briefly mourns, and then forks out enough for the cheapest car for sale down the block at the garage Denise’s uncle or cousin or somebody owns. He parks it at the bottom of his building, checks his studio one more time for anything he’s left behind, and ferries his belongings down in three trips (his popcorn machine really is unnecessarily big considering it only ever feeds him, and takes a whole trip by itself) before he locks the door, slides his key and his last rent payment under the landlord’s door on the floor above, and gets in his new old car.
It’s nine in the morning. He’s been at work all night, and tossed and turned through nightmares the whole morning until he gave up earlier than he really should’ve. He doesn’t get far before he pulls into a gas station and heads inside to buy a Pepsi and half a dozen newspapers.
He scours each of them from the driver’s seat, headlights and engine off.
There he is: the new Robin, with a uniform a little changed from the last one Dick had worn, but still immediately recognisable. Dick ended his career in a variation of the suit that was somewhere between the one he adopted when he first joined the team and the one he had when he first started out, pixie boots and all. He kept the design from his later years, but brought more of the green back in, into his pants and his gloves and his sleeves. He turned his cape back to pure sunshine-yellow, without the black.
Jason - or maybe Bruce; Dick isn’t sure how much the kid’s actually had to do with this - has removed the green again, turning the outfit almost entirely red and black except for the cape, and even in the single photo someone’s managed to catch, Dick can tell it’s far more heavily and thoroughly armoured than any of his suits ever were.
There are also a couple articles on Jason Wayne or, as one of them calls him, Jason Todd-Wayne. Dick doesn’t know what Jason calls himself. He’s never asked. He looks just like he does in all the articles online: a little boy with blue eyes, dark curls and a bright smile. Only one of the papers maintains a neutral tone while reporting on him; the others range from dismissive to scathing, and one of them goes so far as to call him - or, more accurately, his adoption - adoption, B? Adoption? It’s been all of seven months. Dick lived there for eight f*cking years - an attempt at rehabilitation. Rehabilitation. Jason is twelve, and growing up poor doesn’t make him damaged or sick or a criminal. Dick’s blood boils.
It isn’t until he’s pulling onto the interstate that he realises he’s been deciding between fleeing for Austin or going back to Gotham, and that he’s already decided.
When the road begins to blur before his eyes, Dick starts to look for a motel. He sleeps til mid-afternoon (not much later than his usual sleep schedule calls for, considering his job…that he may have just quit without entirely meaning to; he calls up and uses up a sick day, then gives his boss the heads up that he might be gone a while. Family emergency.) and then he gets back in the car and drives through the night. Another motel through the day, and he reaches New Jersey in the early morning of the next day.
He holes up in another motel. Sleeps only a few hours, until late morning, and then he drives to Gotham Academy.
It’s a Tuesday in June. Bar any illness or injury, Jason should be in attendance.
Dick goes to the receptionist’s office. “Hi,” he says, with a smile perfectly balanced between effortlessly charming and uncharacteristically ruffled. It’s the same receptionist who’d been here when he was a student, and he knows within an instant that she recognises him. “Would you mind calling Jason up, please? Our dad sent me to pick him up. Family emergency.”
He injects his voice with just enough distress to come across as an attempt to cover it up and hopes she’s as sympathetic as he remembers.
“Of course,” she says, already reaching for the intercom button. Dick gives her a relieved smile and pulls out his phone, sending off a couple harried texts. Pretending to, in any case.
When she puts it down, she asks, hesitantly, “Richard?”
Dick glances between her and his phone, which he’s tapping with a nervous finger. “Hmm?”
“When did you get back?”
A confused furrow of his brow, smoothing into understanding. He doesn’t actually know what story Bruce went with for the public, if he went with anything rather than just letting his unwanted ward disappear from the tabloids as easily and quickly as he’d disappeared from his life, so he tries to be vague. The inclusion of a “back” implies a trip of some sort, maybe? Did Bruce tell people he went to college early or took a gap year backpacking around Europe or something?
He told Jason he was dead. Dick’s not sure how he got to that conclusion, given Bruce would definitely be able to track down his car and put together that he - or someone else, he guesses - packed everything from inside it before leaving it. And then used his credit card at least twice more. None of that really suggests “dead” to him.
“Not long ago,” he tells her. “I didn’t want to be bombarded the moment I got back, though.”
She smiles at that and he almost thinks he sees some relief in her face. It’s touching, in a way.
Before either of them have to think of any other way to fill the silence, a set of running footsteps echoes up the hallway from around the corner. After a moment, a boy follows them.
He looks just like the photos, and yet nothing like them at the same time. In person, he looks so much older yet so much younger at once. Smaller, but worn down in a way not many children are. Dick can see the shine of makeup on his face; he’d bet everything he has that the kid got a real shiner on the streets last night. His hair is wild and windswept, so unlike the slicked-back style Dick knows is still enforced here, and his tie is looser than it should be.
Already, Dick feels himself falling for the kid.
Jason comes to a screeching stop in front of him, eyes wide and bag clutched in slack hands. He stares up at Dick, mouth parted just enough so Dick can make out that one of his front teeth is missing.
“Dick?” Jason asks. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Dad sent me to pick you up,” Dick lies easily. He wraps an arm round Jason’s shoulders like it’s the most natural thing in the world and the boy allows it, only tilting his head to keep those wide eyes on Dick’s face. “Emergency at home. You got everything?”
“Yeah.”
When they’re outside, Jason looks around. “Alfred’s not here? Is he okay?”
“He’s fine,” Dick reassures him. “There’s no emergency, no one’s hurt. I just needed to get you out of there.”
Jason gives him a puzzled look. His hands on his bag have turned white-knuckled rather than slack.
“Get in, kiddo,” Dick says. Jason does.
Peeling out of the school driveway, Dick keeps one eye on the kid in his passenger seat. Jason’s nervous, his eyes moving fast and his knees pressed together. But he got in the car without hesitation, Dick reminds himself; he’s nervous, not scared.
He doesn’t know what he’d do if he scared his little brother.
They’re silent for the five minutes it takes for Dick to drive them to Caiola Ice, where the two of them get out and head inside. Jason picks a booth in the corner and Dick orders for them.
“There we go,” he says, grinning as he slides Jason’s toward him over the table. Jason gives him a hesitant smile in return. “One mango and vanilla, with strawberries on the side. Bon appétit.”
“What’d you go for?”
Dick grimaces. “I’m a traitor,” he says, holding up his own. “I went for ice cream.”
Jason peers at his bowl. “Toffee?”
“Banoffee.”
He waits until Jason’s got half his granita down before he says anything more. He licks the back of his spoon and twirls it in one hand. Jason’s eyes follow the movement even as he keeps scooping up his own dessert.
“So,” Dick says, “I saw a little something in the paper a couple days ago.”
Jason’s shoulders go stiff. His eyes move down to his granita and stay there.
“Are you angry?” he asks, voice small. Dick doesn’t say anything, so he continues after a moment. “Because B - B said you’d want me to have it if you were here, but he still thinks you’re dead so I - I couldn’t exactly tell him, hey, hold on a second while I call and ask, and then I just - I didn’t know how to ask so I didn’t -”
“Jason,” Dick says. “I’m not angry with you.”
The kid’s eyes are wide and blue. He looks moments away from either yelling or crying and Dick isn’t sure which would hurt more.
“I’m not,” he promises.
He sits back and pulls the hem of his shirt up. Just enough to show Jason the scar there, without drawing attention from the rest of the establishment. He shifts back upright and lets his shirt fall when he’s sure the kid’s realised what he’s looking at.
“Batman shot me,” Dick tells him. “It took weeks to heal over, months to regain full movement. It still hurts so much some nights that I can’t sleep without help.”
Jason startles. “B? B shot you?”
Dick waves a hand dismissively but doesn’t look him in the eye. “Mind control. It happens.”
He turns his head and lifts his hair - still blond, though he’s been considering going brown next - to show the undercut. Just above and behind his right ear is a patch of raised pink skin where no hair will grow.
“A building collapsed on a mission when I was fourteen. We were on evac for an earthquake somewhere in Japan, but Walls and me - you know who Wally was?”
Jason nods.
“We got caught in a collapse. He was knocked out. I covered him. I was impaled through the thigh by a rebar and almost crushed to death before our team got us out. I have chronic migraines now and likely will for the rest of my life.”
He extends his leg out from the booth and tugs his jeans up over his knee - his knee that is surrounded by ugly, twisted scar tissue and, when looked at head on, bent just a little inwards. His leg had been all but shattered, so a little unevenness is more than he really could’ve asked for.
“Two-Face beat me with a baseball bat,” he tells Jason. “For hours. I thought I was going to die. He broke this leg in four separate places, and the knee was impossible to fully repair. It hurts when it’s cold or when it rains or when I keep it too still or when I move it too much. Every time I feel it, I’m reminded of how lucky I was to escape at all.”
Jason’s eyes are huge, his face pale. Dick doesn’t want to scare him. He just needs him to understand.
He reaches forward and takes the hand Jason has on the table between both of his own.
“I was a child when I started out,” he says, “and I was still a child when it ended. It never should have happened.”
“But,” Jason says, and wets his lips. He stares at their hands, clasped on the table between them. His granita is melting. “But it’s important. It’s saving people.”
Dick gives him a look. “So is firefighting,” he says. “So do doctors and nurses and helpline operators and librarians. There are lots of ways to save people and, trust me, none of them include sending kids out to fight at night in spandex.”
“It’s mostly leather, rubber and Kevlar,” Jason responds automatically. He blinks. “That’s not normal, is it?”
Dick shakes his head. “I didn’t realise until I was gone just how wrong it was. B - B means well, but he hurt me. I don’t want to see him hurt you too.”
“He loves me.”
“A lot of parents do,” Dick says. “That doesn’t mean they’re right.”
Jason bites his lip. Like Dick thought, that he can understand.
Quietly, he says, “What if he gets hurt because no one’s there to watch his back?”
What if he dies?
Dick squeezes his brother’s hand. “It wouldn’t be your fault,” he says firmly. “Not in any way. He’s the adult. He’s supposed to take care of you, not the other way round.”
“I don’t know how not to -”
How not to what? How not to take care of a parent? Jason cuts himself off, but Dick’s heart clenches in his chest.
How could B do this? How could he take this bright, beautiful boy who’s so full of hurt and care, who watched his mother die, and make him so afraid he’ll have to live through it again? How could he?
“It’s not your fault. And it’s not your job. B is a grown man and can make his own choices about what he does in the name of justice or whatever. You’re a kid. You deserve to have someone take care of you.”
Jason’s lip wobbles. He steels his expression into something cold. He doesn’t speak.
It just makes Dick’s voice warmer, his face more open. He looks into his brother’s eyes and begs him to understand, to agree.
“I told you,” he says. “I promised. Anything you need. Just ask.”
It takes several long seconds of silence, of waiting and hoping and praying and -
“Take me with you.”
Dick doesn’t hesitate. “Do you need to pick up anything from the Manor?”
“Will Alfred send it to me?”
“Probably,” Dick says. “Give him a call. I’ll go get us some more ice to go. Same again?”
By the time he gets back, Jason’s eyes are red-rimmed and his phone is back in his pocket. His fingers drum on the table. He looks up when Dick’s shadow falls over him and takes his new granita with a smile that trembles.
“He promised to send my stuff over when he has an address,” he tells him. “And he says - he says to call. He misses you.”
“Did he say he’d tell Bruce?”
Jason shakes his head.
“Alright. Let’s go, then.”
They stop at a mall on the outskirts of Gotham. Dick takes Jason into a clothing store and helps him pick out necessities - “Just enough for the trip, I promise I’ll take you for a proper shopping montage experience when we’re out of this city” - and then into the drugstore to get toiletries for him, and then into a coffee shop to get them both drinks for the drive. Dick stays away from the coffee, though. He’s hardly had any sleep today and he intends to drive for as long as he can tonight to get them far from Gotham before Bruce realises his kid is gone, and ADHD plus caffeine plus exhaustion sounds like solving for a car crash.
He also takes him into a bookstore, because the drive is going to be a long one.
When Jason seems reluctant to buy any books, Dick coaxes him with a, “How often do you get a reason to read for nine hours straight?” and that does it.
In the car, Dick waits until Jason’s settled in the passenger seat with his new sweats on and his shoes off, headphones around his neck and a novel in one hand and a Frappuccino in the other. Then he leans over and gently, carefully, wipes the makeup from around Jason’s eye with the pad of his thumb. The mark is deep purple and huge. Dick strokes over the kid’s cheekbone once with his thumb, then leans down and presses a kiss to his eyelid, right in the centre of the bruise there.
“You’ll be okay,” Dick says. “I promise, you’ll be okay.”
And, somehow, Jason looks like he’s starting to believe it.
