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Jason sinks deeper into his crouch as he watches the fight in the alleyway below him wind down. Half a dozen gang members are already sprawled out across the ground and groaning. The Bat is making quick work of the last two men standing while Robin darts about, zip-tying ankles and wrists.
Jason ducks back from his vantage point as the vigilantes straighten up and look around. It's unlikely that even Batman could pick him out—he’s on a deeply shadowed rooftop several stories up from the ground. The full moon is making for an unusually bright night in Gotham, though, and Jason isn’t taking any chances.
He’s seen enough.
Pulling his hood forward, Jason turns and makes his way across the rooftop. A stiff breeze rolling in off the coast gently buffets him as he leaps from one building to the next, chilling the sweat lingering damply against his skin in the thick summer humidity.
Jason keeps a watchful eye on the skyline. He’s not interested in entertaining any drop-ins tonight.
His phone vibrates softly while he’s still en route back to the Alley. It’s a text from an unknown number with just a time, thirty minutes from now. Jason sends back the address to the abandoned building he’s been squatting in and picks up his pace.
“So, that’s it? There’s nothing you can do?” Jason asks, tension roughening his voice.
Contantine’s brow wrinkles. The occultist is leaning against the wall, his rumpled trench coat hanging loosely around him. “Yeah, mate. That’s it.”
Constantine takes a drag on his cigarette. “I checked with one of the speedsters. We could send you back, well forward, into your original timeline. But the duplicate version of you…”
Constantine pauses to take another drag before continuing, his tone vaguely apologetic. “Well, the original version of you, actually, he’s still in that timeline. He never left. He probably doesn’t even realize anything happened.”
That’s … good, at least. He’s been worried about what Roy would get up to trying to track him down.
“So … I’m what? A clone?”
“Eh,” Constantine tilts a hand from side to side. “Not really. It’s more like the timestream made a photocopy of the original you and then accidentally printed it out several years in the past.”
“What if you break the spell?” Jason stares at Constantine, his face flushing hot and cold in alternating waves. “Wouldn’t that undo everything?”
“Sure, I could try and break it,” Constantine agrees cautiously, the hand with his cigarette falling to his side.
Jason watches it burn for a moment, his lips twisting. He can guess where this is going.
Constantine sighs and continues, “But if I did, you’d just … you’d cease to exist.” Constantine waves his hand through the air, smoke trailing in its wake. “Poof. Gone.”
Jason looks away. Part of him wonders if maybe that’s for the best.
“You’re here now. You’re as real as I am. I figured you’d want to stay that way.”
“If I stay, won’t it create some kind of paradox? Two of me in the same timeline or whatever, even if it has branched off from the one I came from originally?”
“Well, that’s the thing,” Constantine says thoughtfully. “You’re special, mate. You were created outside of time. That’s the kind of thing that happens when you mix good ‘ole Earth magic with alien artifacts. You might remember your past, but technically, you haven’t lived it. There’s no paradox.”
Constantine eyes him, his gaze far too speculative for Jason’s comfort. “You could use what you know from the life you remember to alter events here, and it’ll be like any other ripple in the timestream.”
Jason stiffens as Constantine winks. “Just remember, once you start to meddle, things have a way of unraveling.
“So make it count while I can?” Jason scoffs.
“Now you’re getting it.” Constantine’s grin widens. “But you didn’t hear it from me, mate.”
Jason scoffs again and switches tracks.
“What happens when the spell breaks down?”
“It won’t,” Constantine supplies immediately. “It doesn’t work that way. But I can create a ward to reinforce it if you’re worried about it.”
Jason nods slowly as he turns away, staring out the grimy window. Across the river, the lights from Gotham’s skyline shine dimly through the clouds.
“Alright,” Jason says at last. “I guess that’s it.”
He pulls his burner phone from his pocket and taps briefly at the screen. “I just wired the rest of what we agreed on.”
Jason taps his phone idly against his thigh. Talia is going to be fucking pissed when she discovers someone emptied that particular account.
Constantine sobers and straightens up from his slouch against the wall.
“You still haven’t answered my question, kid. That spell wasn’t messing around with the multiverse willy-nilly. It popped you into existence at a very specific point seven days ago … Something special about the 9th?”
Jason looks away again. The memory of the witches’ rhythmic chant swirls around him in the silence. For a second, all he can see is green, green, green as liquid fire burns through his lungs. Then Jason blinks, and the apartment is quiet.
“Yeah," Jason whispers, “something special.”
He looks back over his shoulder and bites out, “Don’t forget about our deal, Constantine.”
Constantine shrugs and sketches a rough salute with the two fingers holding his cigarette. “Yeah, yeah, I know. You paid extra for the covert package. Your secret’s safe. That broody bastard doesn’t scare me.”
“That goes for the rest of the pointy-eared gang, too,” Jason reminds him sharply.
Constantine just laughs.
There’s a shower of golden sparks and a whirl of wind, and then the occultist is gone.
Jason turns in a slow circle, surveying the broken-down apartment that’s apparently going to be home for quite a bit longer than he planned.
Well, fuck.
Jason wakes up to aching muscles and stiff joints from too many days spent sleeping on nothing but a thin sleeping bag on the hardwood floor. He drags himself to the kitchenette and sets water to boil on the only burner on that stove that still works.
Constantine, asshole that he is, is right. If he’s stuck here, he might as well make the most of it.
By his count, he has less than two weeks until the first point on the timeline he drew up last night after Constantine left. Then it’s another eleven days until the second point—that’s the important one. After that, who knows how things will change.
He needs money and supplies. And he needs them fast. He has some of his Red Hood gear with him from when he first landed in this timeline, but he doesn’t want to be spotted around town in it.
Luckily, this is Gotham. There’s plenty of easy money if you know where to look.
Jason packs his gear into a large duffle bag and heads out at midday. He goes on foot into Newton, winding his way through back alleys to avoid security cameras, and then hops a bus headed to Mercy Island. On the island, he gets off at the stop for the sewage treatment plant along with a handful of workers. No one looks twice at another twenty-something male in coveralls with a ball cap pulled down low over their forehead.
Jason waits until the crowd of workers outside the plant thins out, and then he turns and heads back up the drive. Once he reaches the main road, he ducks into the overgrown grass of the easement running under the freeway overpass that bisects the island from north to south. He starts hiking south, ignoring the sweat dripping down his back from the midday sun. The whine and buzz of insects in the long grass waxes and wanes around him. Overhead, there’s a constant rumble of traffic on the overpass.
Finding the column with the best vantage point looking east that still has enough cover to the south and north takes an hour. His gloved hands and boots scrape softly against the concrete as he climbs steadily upward. The beams supporting the car deck are more than wide enough for him to swing up onto and stretch out on his stomach.
Jason squints and can just make out a cluster of dark turrets and sloped roofs atop a hill half a mile to the east.
Long shadows stretch across the island as afternoon fades quickly into evening. Behind him, the sun slowly sinks below the horizon. He pops in an earpiece and tunes it to the police band.
An hour later, reports of shots fired in the Diamond District start trickling in over the radio.
He unzips his duffle, pulls out his rifle pieces, and starts setting up.
Ten minutes later, reports of the Batmobile spotted near the scene and a car chase through the Fashion District buzz through the earpiece.
Jason shifts slightly, wiggling a piece of gravel loose that’s digging into his stomach. Shifting his hips carefully to test his stability, he presses his knee firmly against the metal beam beneath him and pulls his rifle tighter against his shoulder.
Dispatch reports a widening path of destruction in the chase’s wake, but, all in all, it's over relatively quickly.
Jason flips on his scope’s night vision and adjusts his sights.
Before long, a caravan of flashing red lights makes its way down the freeway exit to the north of Jason and starts heading east across the island. At the center of the line of vehicles is a large, armored police van.
Jason ducks his head down and looks through his scope. Eight hundred meters away, the wide circle drive in front of Arkham Asylum comes into view.
Jason waits.
Minutes later, the convoy pulls up to the drive. The police van stops near the crowd of orderlies waiting outside the asylum’s main door.
He breathes in deeply, counting slowly to four.
A cluster of officers pull a slim figure from the van and start shuffling forward.
Jason breathes out. Just before his count hits four, his finger tightens on the trigger.
A heavy mist of blood explodes out from tangled green hair, and the figure falls, slumping into the surrounding officers.
Jason looks up, lifting up on his elbows and stretching out the kinks in his neck and back.
For a moment, he can feel it like it was yesterday, the horror and disbelief ripping through his body as he lay curled in a ball on the floor of a hotel room in Paris, surrounded by blood and destruction, wailing in anguish—the newspaper with its damning headline scattered on the floor around him.
Batman Returns Joker to Police Custody
The pain of betrayal had been unbearable.
Jason smiles grimly. This time around, the newspapers will have a second headline to print.
Jason makes his way up the decaying wood staircase, testing his weight gingerly on each dilapidated step. It’s been years since he set foot in the building. The familiarity steals his breath away nonetheless.
He remembers how alone he felt the first time he was here—how cold, creeping apathy was eating at the edges of him, threatening to consume him.
He reaches what remains of the building’s third floor and slips down the hallway toward the southwest corner of the building.
A small figure stands motionless in front of the window overlooking the alley. The kid is still wearing most of the wetsuit, the discarded hood is on the floor near his feet. The detonator is clenched tightly in his hand, even though the Batmobile is long gone.
Jason clears his throat.
The kid whirls, dropping into a fighting stance that Jason remembers learning nearly a decade ago. The brightly lit training mats and gentle, guiding hands feel like a lifetime ago. Jason reaches up, pushing back his hood.
The kid’s breathing hitches.
Jason looks back into teal eyes that mirror his own, and it feels like his heart is cracking. ”Hey, Jason,” he murmurs as he raises his hands slowly, palms out. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
The kid is quick to recover, quick to put the puzzle pieces together.
“You—You’re me.”
“Yeah.” Jason nods slowly. “I am.”
The kid licks his lips, biting down sharply on the lower one. Jason catches himself as he’s starting to mirror the action. It’s an old nervous tick that a couple years with the League and a half-dozen sociopathic trainers beat out of him.
“You’re older. Time travel or alternate universe?”
“Something like that,” Jason agrees vaguely.
“You shouldn’t be here, you shouldn’t be talking to me,” the kid accuses. “You’ll mess up the timeline.”
Jason’s eyebrows shoot up. “You just tried to blow up Batman and you’re worried about the timeline?"
The kid blanches and then goes red. “I didn’t try. I decided not to!”
Jason huffs out a soft laugh despite himself. “Maybe don’t go advertising that around, kiddo.”
His younger self gapes. Jason can see the anger starting to tighten the defensive curl of the kid’s shoulders.
“Look, kid, I’m your ghost of Christmas future. Only I’m here a little more permanently.” One corner of Jason’s mouth twitches upward. “Through the unfortunate combination of science and witchcraft, I only really exist within this timeline. You’re not risking anything by talking to me or hearing what I say.”
The kid glares back at him. “Why should I believe you?”
Jason crouches down, letting the kid have the high ground.
“You trust yourself, right? You wouldn’t risk the timeline?”
The kid nods tentatively.
“Well, neither would I, and you and I, we’re the same.” Jason let his hands sink to his thighs, his heart aching as his younger self regards him suspiciously.
“I know you, kid. I know where you’ve been. I know about the hell you clawed your way out of. I know about what Talia did after. And I know that you strapped a bomb to the Batmobile’s undercarriage with Batman none the wiser, but you couldn’t make yourself pull the trigger.”
The kid’s eyes are as wide as saucers. “I didn’t lose my nerve! I just couldn’t let him off that easy!”
Jason smiles again, small and sad. He ignores the crushing pressure in his chest. “I know, I understand,” he soothes. “I lived through it, same as you.”
The kid’s trembling now, his hands shaking with fine tremors. The detonator falls and rolls gently across the floor. Jason tracks the motion until it stops and then looks back up into watery teal eyes.
“I also know what happens if you keep going down this path.”
The kid wraps his arms around himself, his lips pressing together until they’re bone white.
“You’re angry at him because he didn’t avenge you, and you think he needs to pay for that. It feels like your life and death meant nothing. It feels like you meant nothing. You’re right about some things, kid, and wrong about others, but in the end … It doesn’t really make a difference.”
Jason sighs softly.
“Bruce—” He chokes a little as the name catches in his throat. “He’ll never give you what you need … He’ll never pick you over his mission.”
The kid lets out a low, broken sound.
Jason swallows past the hot lump in his throat and looks at the ceiling. When the pressure behind his eyes recedes enough, he looks down again and refocuses on his younger self.
“One day, kid, years from now, when you think you’re ready, once you can’t wait any longer, you’ll force a confrontation, and you’ll try to make your Dad prove to you that you matter more to him. And—”
Jason’s voice cracks as he pulls down on the neck of his hoodie, baring the silvery scar wrapping around his throat.
“And Batman will make a different choice.”
The kid has been motionless for the last few minutes, but at that, his face crumples. His whole body seems to slowly cave in on itself. Jason springs forward, catching the smaller body as the kid's knees give out from underneath him.
“I’m sorry, kid. I’m so goddamn sorry.”
The kid sags bonelessly in his arms, soundless cries wracking through his frame. Jason wraps his arms tighter around his younger self and holds on.
If his own tears drip down, bouncing off the kid’s wetsuit to fall to the ground, no one else is around to see them.
“It’s okay, Jason,” he murmurs after a while, once the tide has stemmed. “You’re going to be okay.”
The dawn finds them still sitting curled together on the damp, rotted floor. Sunlight peeks through the boarded-up window and catches on the dust motes dancing in the air. The kid has long since gone quiet, his face tucked into Jason’s shoulder.
“Whatever you need,” Jason says, his fingers carding lightly through the messy waves of the kid’s dark hair. “You’re not alone anymore.”
The kid is quiet for a moment longer, and then he tilts his head just enough that Jason can make out the corner of one teal eye.
“I don’t—what do I do?”
“You live,” Jason murmurs, and then, “I’ll help you.”