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Jason’s hands have gone numb and he's in the middle of a Frankenstein reread, which is proving to be a terrible combination.
He's sitting on the edge of his shitty couch, staring at the buckles of his boots that have been halfway undone. He should be shedding himself of scuffed leather and damp socks, but he—can't. His fingers won't cooperate, sitting listlessly in his lap. For a second, Jason has to pay attention to the rise and fall of his chest, just to make sure it's still working the way it's supposed to.
‘Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.’
It's the line that Jason liked the most, the first time around. His ninth grade copy was beat to hell, the spine cracked, the pages bloated and warped from water damage from when he'd dropped it in a puddle after smacking headfirst into a streetlight, too distracted to look where he was going.
By then, he knew despondency inside and out, wore it like a second skin, and for a long time thought that he wouldn't really have anything else—and then this ugly, hated monster shows up on the page, this thing everyone looks at like it’s the worst mistake in the world, and it says, no, it’s still worth it. That even in the marrow-deep misery of existence, life is something precious and worth defending. Worth holding on to.
Jason, even as bitter as he already was, believed him.
It's almost a shame that those scraps of faith were buried six feet under in Gotham soil. What came back wasn’t the same Jason, not really. Flesh knitted itself over bones that had been broken, lungs dragged in air that tasted like smoke and rot, but there was no miracle in it.
He carries himself like the Creature, shambling through Gotham’s alleys and shadows, but he's not him. It'd be almost egotistical to say so. He's lesser. The punchline written into every scar: you had a life worth fighting for, and you lost it.
It shows, too. For months, now, Jason’s body has been progressively mutinying against him: joints that hold when they shouldn’t, skin that doesn’t flush. The smell, sometimes, and right now, he's only eighty-percent sure that his arms will still be attached to his body in the next thirty seconds. He's still staring at them, only now they're coated in a thick layer of his own blood. Jason blinks, and the blood has turned to mold. He blinks again, and it's rot beneath his skin, creeping up his arms. Maybe, he reasons, it'll all go numb and I'll finally—
“Jason?”
That would be Dick with the pizza. Jason blinks for the third time, and his hands are back to normal. When he closes his fist, his fingers obediently curl inwards.
Dick rounds the corner. His hands drop back to where they belong, at his sides, and Jason is somewhat relieved to see that they don't fall off to stain the hardwood. That would definitely ruin this tentative pizza-and-sex-traffickers bonanza they've got going on. “Large meat lovers,” Dick says dreamily. If he were a cartoon character, he'd be the kind that floats when he smells food, or the kind with hearts popping out of his eyes. Maybe both at once. Jason's pretty sure he remembers a character like that from Looney Tunes, but he last watched that show an entire lifetime ago, so his memory is a little wonky. Also, now he's imagining Dick's eyeballs popping out of his head.
“Cool,” Jason lies. It's not fully a lie since he does enjoy a good meat lover's, but right now all he's thinking about are popping eyeballs. Dick, blissfully unaware that eyeballs are anywhere in the equation, nods his head in vehement agreement. His dirty gloves are touching everything in Jason's apartment. This is the nice apartment, but by virtue of being in his nice apartment, Jason is also being nice, so he doesn't say anything. What he does do is double-check to make sure his hands aren't falling off before he joins Dick at the kitchen counter.
“Okay, so—” Dick speaks around the slice stuffed in his mouth, the animal. There’s a flurry of papers flying as he shuffles through the mess on the counter.
(He came in from Blüd about an hour ago, on Oracle’s request, since she's got no feet on the ground in Gotham now that Cass is gallivanting around on her own and the others are scattered all over. Jason insisted about a dozen times that he didn't need the help, but arguing with Babs has a spectacular fail rate, so here they are.)
“Bell’s guys have made some sort of truce with Volchek’s. They get to move through the East End, and in return, Volchek skims a cut off the top. Everybody plays nice, nobody gets shot, yeah? So with the girls—” he presses a greasy finger to the map and Jason’s eye twitches, just slightly. Dick catches it anyway. His lip quirks, but he graciously doesn't say anything, instead very primly and pointedly wiping his hands off on a napkin.
“—they're unloading in the warehouse district, so that Bell can bring them in the armored cars to the docks. The cars that we will have commandeered," he adds, leaning his elbows against the granite. His fingers lace loosely together, his right index tapping a nonsensical rhythm. Jason feels his heartbeat skip to match it, which is—not normal. Probably.
“I thought you'd have new info,” Jason frowns. “What was the pizza for?”
Dick spreads his hands. His expression slips into something sheepish—I know this is going to annoy you and I'm gonna say it anyway—which usually has the hairs on Jason’s neck standing up, but he can't really bring himself to give a shit. Whatever bullshit Dick’s about to pull, it’s not Jason’s circus after tomorrow.
(If he said that out loud, Dick would laugh with him. He's not going to say that out loud.)
“You've lost weight,” is what he says, and Jason—
Well.
Factually, that’s true. Jason’s been busy and he doesn't always remember, but it's so far out of left field that he actually flounders for a second. There’s just—no conceivable reason for him to notice that, and even less of one to say it out loud. Dick does this thing where he tricks you into thinking he's the hemming-and-hawing type of person, when he really couldn't be further from it. He plays it well, all crooked smiles and awkward shrugs, and even now, when Jason knows better, when he’s had years to learn the difference, Dick’s bluntness still surprises him.
It’s disarming.
“I haven't,” Jason says finally, lying through his teeth. “You're such a creep, Dick. Taking after Timmy?”
Dick rolls his eyes, but he isn't deterred. Not that Jason really expected him to be. “I'm not stalking you. Just—have some pizza, okay?”
He says it like it's a problem. It’s not, but Jason doesn't know how to articulate that on his list of priorities, eating has dropped to near dead-last because what does a dead boy need to eat? It even sounds ridiculous. ‘Oh, hey, my appendages are rotting off and last week I looked in the mirror to see my face all grossly shriveled and white as a sheet, could you pass the gravy while I decompose from the inside out?’ Come on.
Just to get Dick off his back, Jason takes a slice. Whatever. If it eases his brother’s massive guilty conscience, Jason will throw him a bone. He's real generous like that.
“I gotta bounce,” Dick tells him, patting down his sides for the phone that Jason knows he left back at the balcony overlooking 2nd and Marrion. It’s pretty perfect timing, because Jason’s fingers are starting to go all cold and stiff again, and it would be really awkward for them both if Dick had to see it. “By the way, your boots are only halfway unbuckled.”
“Silly me,” Jason says flatly. He waves him off, all but shooing Dick out the door with the implicit promise to polish off the rest of the pizza. He's got no problem with that. Really and truly, Jason will eat whatever’s put in front of him. Force of habit, if nothing else.
For a moment, Jason is viciously and irrationally angry with Dick. He just—he says some shit like you've lost weight with that earnest fucking boy-scout look in his eyes, and then he just leaves because he can't be bothered to stick around. He leaves, always, expecting the people he cares about to still be there when he deigns to circle back. Lucky him.
The anger dissipates as quick as it came, and this—this Jason can admit is strange. His working theory is that emotions just don't take to this body, this walking corpse of a body. A flawed hypothesis, because emotions certainly used to take, used to dig deep and leave marks. Hate comes so easily, only now, it just doesn't stick. Jason doesn't think his body has much of anything left to hold onto.
He finishes the pizza. It's good, he supposes, so long as he carefully doesn't think about if his digestive enzymes will stop functioning and leave the food he eats to slowly but surely build up in his stomach.
He throws the empty box into the recycling and pretends the full, heavy feeling in his gut isn’t uncomfortable. Alfred had made sure there was always food in the house, always something waiting in the kitchen no matter what ungodly hour Jason came skulking through. That was when he first learned what it meant to be fed—to not just eat, but to eat until he didn't want to. The privilege still makes his stomach turn, sometimes.
On occasion, his dad would bring home enough of a haul for the three of them to eat out, like a proper family, and Jason would eat himself sick. Willis always warned him against it, but he never stopped him. Only now is Jason recognizing that for what it was: fear. Willis had been afraid of his boy going hungry again, afraid of when the next meal might come, or if it would even come at all. He’d let Jason gorge because he couldn’t promise tomorrow.
Jason peels his gear off on his way to bed, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror. His breath stutters at the pallid, corpse-like complexion he sees out of the corner of his eye. That isn't him. It can't be him, except that it is, and no amount of delusion will dispel the image of those blank, unseeing eyes.
The body staring back at him is not his own. The flesh he inhabits is not his. If things had gone the way they were supposed to, if he’d grown up in Gotham’s gutters and the Pit hadn’t spat him back out, his body wouldn’t look like this. He would’ve shown the marks of it, years of hunger written into his bones the way they’re written into so many other kids who never got a second chance. The malnourishment should’ve left a permanent stamp on him. Instead, the Lazarus Pit had scrubbed him clean of it. Given him bulk where there should have been a lack of it, strength where there should have been years of atrophy. It’s—wrong. It's unnatural, as if someone had gone in and airbrushed the history right off his skin.
He wonders, detached, if Catherine would even recognize him now. If Willis would see his son in the hulking set of his shoulders.
I had fifteen years, Jason thinks. I had fifteen good years. That's more than enough.
Jason wakes up at two in the afternoon, his muscles stiff and his skin sticky with sweat from a nightmare he can't remember. Everything is—sluggish. It takes him fifteen minutes to get out of bed, and when he does, he just sort of stares at his wall for a bit. The only notifications on his phone are two motion sensor alerts he had forgotten to swipe away the night before. He could vanish into the cracks of this city like smoke, as if he was never here to begin with, and the machine would just keep grinding on.
Jason drags himself into the kitchen, bare feet shuffling against the floor. He fills a glass of water and downs it in three gulps, but it does nothing to clear the fog clinging to him. He can’t remember the last time he cracked a window.
He scrambles some eggs, just because the image of Dick’s stupid little frown won't leave him. Whatever. After tonight—well, after tonight nothing will really change. He keeps thinking about this upcoming operation like the minute it’s over, something will shift. The curtain will drop, the stage lights will go out, and he’ll finally get to disappear backstage for a while. That’s the fantasy.
The truth is that it will never end. There’s no last bell, no last-day-before-break waiting to cut him loose for what feels like forever. It’s a life sentence. The alternative, he supposes, is lying down and not getting up again. Putting himself right back into the grave where he's meant to be. If he were to go back to that long since refilled plot of earth, that wouldn’t be him making a choice, it’d just be fate correcting itself, the story snapping back to its natural ending.
The Lazarus Pit wouldn't be on trial. Bruce wouldn't be on trial. Just Jason.
“Passive voice,” Jason murmurs to himself, rinsing off his plate. “The true perpetrators erased.”
(He’d gotten points docked off in his Honors Lit class for that. Funny how he’s still making the same mistakes.)
The guy fixing the opposite building’s roof waves at Jason as he steps out onto the fire escape. His name’s Fisher, Jason’s pretty sure, or something equally ridiculous. Stand-up guy, though. On his break last Thursday, he let Jason bum a cigarette and didn't even say anything about how violently his fingers were trembling. Jason waves back at him now, jealous of the layering he's got going on. It’s cold as balls out here and he didn't really think it through, stepping out barefoot and in only his boxers.
“¿Estás bien, chico?”
He glances sideways, finding Ms-Alvelo-call-me-Alba leaning out her bedroom window, her nightrobe pulled tight around her shoulders.
(She told him once that she doesn’t care if people call her miss or missus anymore. Either way, she’s reminded that the love of her life was taken from her. She's nobody's wife anymore.)
“Muy, Alba,” Jason lies, and of course Alba sees right through him, looking at him over the rim of her glasses, all: I'm not gonna let you think I fell for that. But she doesn't call him out on it, just sniffs a little.
“It's cold, you know, and you are wearing very little. Go inside, I bring you guiso.”
Alarmed, Jason takes a step forward. “You don't have to—”
Nope, she's gone. Well, it's not like Jason will ever turn down Alba's cooking, it's just unfortunate she feels like she has to feed it to him. Jason heads back in, grabbing sweats and the Gotham Aquarium hoodie that's been strewn over his couch, and kicks all his scattered Red Hood gear into the hall closet. He's fairly certain that Alba knows—she always shows up with flan after a particularly rough night—but there are pretenses to maintain and whatnot.
Alba is so quick to knock that Jason is half convinced she already had the stew portioned out into a tupperware. She's wearing the same ratty slippers that she's had ever since Jason moved in. He makes himself smile at her as she comes in, and it's not as difficult as he thought it might be. Alba's only child lives across the country, so Jason's pretty much a stand-in, but he doesn't mind because when her wrinkly fingers grasp his own, he feels warm all the way down to his core.
“You have manza, no?”
Jason does. He makes her a mug as she inspects the living room, empty of trinkets and photos and furniture he didn't get off of Facebook marketplace. He makes one for himself, too; Jason likes tea and sometimes he can even stomach it.
They sit at his tiny, chipped table, hardly big enough for three people, and Alba tells him about how somebody on the third floor’s been letting their dog piss in the stairwell. Jason realizes, as she moves onto the bodega around the corner charging an extra twenty cents for plastic bags, that Alba is the only person in his building he talks to. He knows the sound of their arguments, the way the pipes knock when the upstairs neighbor takes a shower, but he doesn't know them. If not for Alba, he wouldn't really speak to anyone at all.
And this is—this is his nice apartment. It's the one that isn't just a safehouse to him. He doesn't bring allies here because it's just Jason's, not the Red Hood's, and yet with Alba sitting at his rickety dining table it all feels so—bare. His walls are devoid of pictures or paintings or anything that might say: this is a home. Someone lives here. Someone real lives here.
This place is a husk. It wears the shape of something that should feel full but doesn’t.
“So I said—”
Jason can't get up. The warmth from his mug seeps into his palms but refuses to make it past his fingers. He watches Alba's mouth move as she speaks, and that's about all he can do, stuck in his seat with cold, stiff limbs, shivering violently. His knee spasms, knocking into the corner of the table. Jason stares at his mug, at the steam curling up and dissipating into the air, and wonders how long he can sit like this before she notices her company is only play-acting as a living thing.
Alba reaches over suddenly, grasping his hand, and it jerks him back just enough. “Estás enfermo,” she says, concern creasing her forehead. “I bring more tomorrow. Don’t let it sit in the fridge all week.”
Jason nods, a puppet’s gesture, and forces himself to drink down the sludge of oversteeped chamomile in front of him. When Alba leaves, she does so with a fond pat to his cheek and a ‘it will pass, hijo,’ that Jason pretends he doesn't hear.
He tries lying down for a bit because anyone else would need the rest if they were going to be up all night. Only sleep doesn't come, and Jason ends up staring unblinkingly at his ceiling until his eyes prickle with dryness. Sometimes his body forgets that it's playing house and sometimes it doesn't know the difference. He’ll wake up some mornings with his hands trembling and his mouth dry, desperate for water, but other times he can go thirty hours without so much as a sip and feel nothing at all.
It leaves him caught in this uncanny middle ground—not starving, not sated, not dead, not living. At least when you're dead you're dead.
Jason gets up and opens the fridge, staring inside for a long time without taking anything out. He thinks about calling someone, but the thought withers before it even forms fully. Who would he call, anyway?
He cleans his guns, though they don’t really need it. He sharpens his knives, though they’re plenty sharp enough. He sits on the couch and tries watching the muted flicker of the television, cycling through channels without registering any of them.
By the time dusk creeps in, Jason feels wrung out and jittery all at once. His fingers tremble as he holsters his guns and pulls on his helmet, staring at his reflection in the window until the clock hits precisely ten, and then he's leaving via fire escape to meet up with Nightwing.
At night, Gotham has a pulse that echoes inside Jason's own body. The city stretches around him with neon veins, lights flickering sickly against the black expanse of the river. He knows these streets like he knows the lines of his own palm, and for a moment, Jason breathes the smog into his lungs and can almost feel his heart beating again.
Dick is already waiting when Jason arrives, perched across the street from their target with binoculars pressed to his face. He's balancing on the balls of his feet, a hair's breadth from tipping forward and braining himself on the concrete below. Ever a performer, Dick.
“They’re late,” Dick murmurs when Jason touches down beside him, voice pitched low. His eyes don’t leave the street. From their overlook just beyond the warehouse perimeter, the sour tang of Gotham Harbor drifts thick and clinging, seeping even through the filters of Jason’s helmet. He wonders how Dick can stand it, whether the smell grates at him too—but if it does, nothing in his posture betrays it.
Dick Grayson, golden boy, carved from stone.
“They’ll come,” Jason says. Bell’s men never miss a payday.
He's right, naturally, because at his core Jason is no different from them. Not really. He knows how they work, knows that they're prepared for interference from Volchek's men, but not from Gotham's vigilante force, who are rumored to be preemptively containing an Arkham breakout. His old crew might wear new colors now, answer to different names, but once, they were his. Rumors are child’s play to start if you know who will talk.
“There,” Dick whispers, hushed, jutting his chin out towards the armored vans snaking their way down the street, their headlights out. Jason looks down at the convoy inching toward the warehouse gate, and for a split second, he sees the glint of his helmet in the moonlight. He looks ghoulish with it on, even more so than he does with it off. An omen of death. The herald and heralded all at once.
“Let’s get this over with,” he mutters, voice distorted through the helmet’s filter.
It's easy to fight when you think yourself invulnerable. Jason wouldn't call it that, necessarily, but it's certainly some sort of bastardized immortality flowing through his veins, and that is what drives him as he plows through the thugs that pour from the vans. He ignores the bullet that lodges in his thigh and the cut from a serrated knife. It tears the skin of his shoulder open, the spot covered by sturdy leather and nothing else. Once he catches sight of the thick blood dripping down his chest, Dick swears from beside him, hurling an escrima at the man coming up on Jason's left.
“Where's your head at, Hood?” He shouts, frustrated. Jason almost feels bad for him. It's difficult enough to watch your own back during a brawl, and watching someone else's too is just more trouble than it's worth.
These men have families and it scares them. Jason is animated by will and will alone, fighting without so much as the pretense of self-preservation.
He doesn't care. Let it be over and done with.
Someone gets a garotte around his neck and Jason pushes against it just to feel it cut into his neck, until he sees the horror twisting Dick's features. Maybe he feels a little guilty for putting that look on his brother's face, because he sighs inwardly and lets himself go limp, falling back onto the man with a grunt. He hears the crack of the guy's ribs. “Ouch,” Jason remarks sympathetically. “Don't strangle me next time, dude, what the fuck.”
He gets a warble of agreement for his trouble, which is good enough for him. The moment Dick drops the last of them, he appears at Jason's side with pursed lips, his hands fluttering over Jason's various open wounds. “I'm fine, Dick,” Jason tells him. He doesn't get scolded for the name, so it's probably kind of serious, then. Whoops. “We gotta go.”
Either Jason is real brilliant at distractions or Dick is planning to wrap this up fast. He nods once, a jerky movement, and pivots on his heel without so much as another word. Seems it'll be a third degree cold shoulder until this gig is finished. Jason doesn't know how to explain to Dick that his death would be a non-issue, so he keeps his mouth shut. That conversation would be like pulling teeth, anyway, so best to just let sleeping dogs lie.
Jason's lucky that Barbara isn't listening in. God knows that woman has never let a sleeping dog lie in her life.
By the time the girls are dropped off, Jason and Dick have dragged the heaps of unconscious men across the street and changed into nondescript black overcoats and baseball caps. Jason's fingers flex around the wheel of his van as the girls are loaded into the back. He keeps his gaze fixed on the cracked windshield as he pulls onto the road, every vibration of the engine sending spikes of pain rippling through him.
His bullet wound will have to be treated, theoretically. It's dangerous to leave lead inside the body, but from the angle and depth of where it hit, Jason's not sure they'll be able to pluck it out. If it's embedded as deep as it feels, it might be easier to leave it be. The shredded shoulder can be wrapped and left alone, no matter how much Dick whines about it.
“Take the next right,” Dick says in his ear. Once he does, Jason spots the silhouette waiting at the end of the alley, the flash of a whip at her side unmistakable. Selina steps into the light, a cigarette dangling between her lips, and meets Jason's eyes through the tinted glass. He dips his chin, flicking the switch to unlock the doors.
Dick gets out of his own van to help transfer the girls, speaking to Selina in low tones as she tucks the youngest up against her side, rubbing soothing circles into her back. Together, the two of them get the girls up onto the roof, where they'll be picked up by the Batplane, remote-controlled via Oracle. Jason watches the mouth of the alley for anything amiss, his index fingers steady on their triggers, but there's nothing.
Once the last of them have disappeared into the night, Dick gets back into his van and they push forward to the rendezvous spot at the docks. Jason drives with one hand on the wheel, the other pressed absently against his thigh where blood still seeps hot and steady. It’s a good thing Dick’s not here to fret over it or the mess of his shoulder. It’s going to scar like hell if Jason makes it out of this.
“This is it,” Dick says, as if Jason isn't seeing the shipping containers and skeletal cranes looming up ahead. “Bell and Volchek should be waiting. If we move fast, we can box them in before they realize the girls are gone.”
The van rattles over cracked asphalt, headlights killed as Jason eases it into the shadow of a row of stacked containers. From here, the sprawl of the docks unfolds before them, lit in pale slashes of floodlight. Too many figures move in the open, rifles slung over their shoulders. Jason counts them automatically, tallying under his breath, and feels his jaw tighten.
Seven men in Bell’s colors split off from the rest, fanning across the cracked pavement in front of the vans, and Jason feels Dick stiffen beside him as one of them barks out an order. “Pop the doors, both of ‘em.”
Jason’s grip tightens on the concealed pistols beneath his coat, but there’s no choice; two of the guards circle to the rear of each van and wrench the doors wide. The echo of the metal slamming open reverberates in Jason’s chest.
The guards hesitate, blinking at the hollow dark where the girls should be. Jason moves in that gap of disbelief, guns snapping up, and Dick is already in motion beside him, shedding the easy slump of his disguise. There’s a bout of muffled gunfire, the wet sound of bodies hitting cement, and by the time the seventh man goes down with a grunt, Jason’s chest is heaving and Dick is stripping off his coat, the false civility of their cover left on the ground.
Across the dockyard, the rest of the men pause mid-motion, heads turning toward the silent vans, confusion bleeding into rage. A shout cracks through the fog, which is roughly when all hell breaks loose.
Dick vaults from the shadows first, electricity flaring from his escrima as he carves a path through the chaos, Jason hot on his heels. His bullets are rubber, so he doesn't bother with precision, not when it's fifteen-to-one and their bullets aren't rubber. For every man Nightwing knocks unconscious, Jason leaves another broken and bleeding on the ground.
One thug tries to flank Dick from the side, so Jason sends a bullet rocketing against his temple without hesitation, dropping him before he can fire. Another lunges at Jason with a glinting knife only to be met with the butt of Jason’s pistol to the jaw, teeth scattering against the asphalt.
“They're using the barrels for cover!” Dick shouts, twisting mid-leap to knock two rifles out of line, and Jason resists the urge to snap back a childish I know. Dick lands catlike, sweat glinting on his temple, eyes darting to the stacks of fuel lining the pier.
Jason doesn’t miss the way Bell himself has retreated toward the rear trucks, shouting over his shoulder as his men light fuses and chuck Molotovs into the night.
Oh. Not for cover, then.
One of Bell’s men, wild-eyed and snarling, kicks over a barrel of gasoline and hurls his lighter into the spreading slick.
It's—slow motion, almost. Blink: he sees the arc of the lighter in the air. Blink: the docks have erupted into flames. Blink: Dick's face, the whites of his domino illuminated with fire. Jason takes a breath, testing the weight on his bad leg, and sprints towards Nightwing. The fear stiffening his spine makes it hard to feel anything else, and so Jason moves without thinking—always without thinking—throwing himself between Dick and the rapidly swelling wall of heat.
In the split second that Jason curls around his brother, he almost feels invincible, made of flesh and blood—an oxymoron, except when it's him. Then the dock tears itself apart and the world swallows him whole.
Jason is lifted, weightless, tossed like a ragdoll across the docks. For a heartbeat, he feels nothing at all, before a piece of jagged rebar greets him with a terrible intimacy; it's a spearhead punching through flesh and muscle, anchoring him to the ruins of Gotham’s harbor.
Jason blinks up at the sky, ragged breaths tearing through his lungs, the coppery tang of blood already thick at the back of his throat. Flames lick along the edges of the pier, casting the destroyed docks in molten orange, and beyond them lies the harbor. Gotham’s black water stretches out vast and endless, glimmering faintly where the firelight meets its waves.
Every inhale is thinner than the last. He feels blood sliding warm down his abdomen, pooling at his navel, the steel holding him fast. Distantly, Jason hears Dick calling his name, his voice ragged and wretched, threatening to crack right through the middle. Jason blinks slowly, turning his head just in time for his brother to kneel beside him. He's—his arm is badly burned, skin melted into the fabric of his suit, wax-like. Jason tries to reach out, but he doesn't have the strength.
“God, Jason,” Dick croaks. His gloved hands are frantic against Jason’s chest, trying to stem the flow of blood that gushes hot and steady through torn kevlar. Jason watches with clouded eyes. In the dark, his blood looks almost black, until the fire behind them swells into a roar, painting him in stark, searing crimson. Dick’s fingers slip, slick with it, and he presses harder. His hands are shaking. “Hey, hey—hey. Eyes on me, bud, come on.”
Jason drags his gaze upward, lashes sticky with soot and ash. The burning docks groan and splinter around them, air thick with smoke that scratches at his throat, but all he sees is Dick’s face hovering above his, pale under the smear of grime. “‘M okay, Dickie,” Jason tells him.
“Yeah, kiddo. You'll be okay, just—”
“No,” Jason mumbles. His eyes roll toward the harbor, black water lapping against the burning wood of the dock. Relentless. “I didn’t—I didn’t come back—alive.”
“Stop it.”
“I've been—been waiting, Dickie—
“Stop.”
“Walking around like this. Nobody even noticed.”
Dick's face crumples. His mask is peeling at the edges from the mixture of sweat and blood staining his skin. Jason should tell him to fix that, in case someone sees them. “Why would you—you’re not—Jason, you’re not dead, you’re here, with me, you’re—”
It doesn't even hurt anymore. He feels untethered, as though he’s slipped sideways out of himself. The scene plays out before him in fragments: blood pouring thickly around them, dripping down the steel, soaking into Dick’s gloves, splattering Jason’s own torn apart body. It ripples outward in widening circles and it might as well be paint spilled from someone else’s veins.
Jason tries again to lift his hand, and this time he's able to grasp Dick's fingers where they're pressed against his chest. His eyes flutter, half-lidded. “Can’t you feel it?” he whispers, his words a shaky rasp. “That my heart isn’t—beating?”
Dick lets out something between a sob and a curse, tearing off one of his gloves to press bare fingers against Jason’s sternum, searching desperately for what Jason knows he won't find. “You can't do this to me,” he begs, voice breaking. “I don’t care what you think, I don’t care why you came back, or even how. You're here, Jason. You’re alive. You're alive, Jay.”
Jason’s lips part, but no words come. All he can manage is a shallow breath, rattling in his throat, as his eyes slip once more toward the dark horizon, the black expanse of Gotham Harbor yawning before him like a casket.
It's funny. He died to fire the first time, smoke filling his lungs and blistering his skin, but here—the heat recedes, and he is hollow without it.
-
‘Why did I not die? More miserable than man ever was before, why did I not sink into forgetfulness and rest? Death snatches away many blooming children, the only hopes of their doting parents: how many brides and youthful lovers have been one day in the bloom of health and hope, and the next a prey for worms and the decay of the tomb! Of what materials was I made, that I could thus resist so many shocks, which, like the turning of the wheel, continually renewed the torture?
But I was doomed to live;’
-
The first time Jason cracks his eyes open, he's not entirely sure that he's awake or if this is some bizarre dream sequence, because Kyle Rayner's face is what's looming over him, blurred by the wetness collecting at his waterline. “Christ, dude,” he says, his voice all weird and warbly as if Jason's hearing him from underwater. “You got your ass kicked six shades of black and blue.”
Jason can barely manage to wet his lips, much less offer any semblance of a response. Kyle cranes his neck back, searching for something behind him. “Wally! Wall—there you are. Get Grayson, he's—”
Jason doesn't get to find out if Dick shows up or not, because his eyes slide shut once again and their overlapping voices fade to white noise.
The second time, Jason wakes to incessant fucking beeping. Instinct has him stiffening automatically, fingers clenching into a fist, before forcing himself to relax. He doesn't recognize the ceiling above him, but the sound of a heart monitor is more than familiar—just as familiar is the silhouette slouched in the chair beside his bed: Dick, keeping vigil. Elbows braced on his knees, Dick's hair hangs limp around his face, but it can't quite obscure the watery, red-rimmed eyes locked onto Jason. He coughs—it hurts, everything fucking hurts—and tilts his head a fraction to the left towards his brother.
“‘Dick,” he rasps. Dick exhales shakily, his eyelids falling shut for a beat before he finds Jason’s hand, turning it over to fit their palms together. His skin is burning to the touch.
(Jason used to run hot, before.)
He stares down at their hands and can't bring himself to so much as twitch a finger. Jason lays there, lifeless, his flesh sallow and waxen. If Dick notices the stark contrast to his own brown, flushed skin, he doesn't say anything. “Where are we?”
“Watchtower,” Dick replies, clipped. “You were—the Cave wouldn't cut it.”
There’s something awful and angry simmering beneath his skin; Jason can see it in the way his jaw clenches, the not fully repressed bite to his words. Jason shuts his eyes, too exhausted to deal with all that shit, and yet finds himself asking anyway: “Spit it out, Dick.”
“I'm not getting into this right now,” Dick replies evenly. Fucking rehearsed. Jesus christ, Jason could scream. He dislodges his hand from Dick’s grip, resisting the urge to roll over and show him his back like a child. Dick’s mouth twists, but he gives him that modicum of space, leaning back in his chair.
“Whatever’s up your ass this time, I don't give a fuck,” Jason says finally. “So don't bother and spare us both the waste of time.”
“You—” Dick swallows down what he was going to say next, pinching the bridge of his nose instead like he's being real magnanimous by holding off on the lecture. Jason’s teeth grind. He's so fucking patronizing that Jason can't stand him sometimes. “We are not doing this. You're hurt and stuck in bed, I'm not gonna—I'm just gonna sit here, Jay, okay? Is that fine?”
Condescending cunt, Jason wants to seethe, except he knows his asshole brother and he knows when he's being genuine. He really does just want to sit at Jason’s bedside and he really is asking for permission, even though they're both one nasty look away from ripping each other a new one. Jason grunts, the extent of his verbal approval.
Even through the haze of painkillers, Jason's entire body aches and burns. He takes stock, piece by piece, the way he used to catalogue bruises after patrols as Robin. He'd been fucking insane back then, puffing out his chest with every broken bone, proud of the hits he'd taken. Unbelievable. Now, it's more like Jason's taking inventory of what's left of him.
There’s a weight at the crook of his arm, tugging at the skin when he shifts even slightly. An IV line taped down, the plastic catheter burrowed under his skin. Jason follows the tube with his eyes until it disappears into a hanging bag clear as glass, the slow drip-drip-drip steady as a metronome.
Another tube trails out from under the blanket at his side, taped down along his ribs. Chest drain. Yeah, no shit. Rebar that size wasn’t exactly gonna politely swerve around his lungs. His stomach is bound tight, and higher up, he can feel fresh bandaging looped across his shoulder and down his side, tight enough that his arm rests stiffly against the mattress.
‘Six shades of black and blue’ was right, goddamn. Every part of him is claimed—pierced, stitched, bound, observed. It's weird and gross and a complete farce. Jason doesn't want this. He feels like those dummy dolls they use for CPR practice, someone trying desperately to keep his plastic heart pumping. He imagines unseen hands pressing down on his sternum again and again—two inches, Bruce had directed. For an adult, you must press two inches deep. It's difficult, right? Deeper than you'd think. You have to have the strength and stamina to administer effective treatment. Bad technique could kill a person.
Jason swallows against the dryness in his throat and stares at the sterile ceiling above him. “Dick,” he starts, trying to keep the tremor from his voice. “Is that heart monitor for me?”
For one terrible moment, Jason could swear the machine falters, and with it, dread settles in his gut. In the few seconds it takes Dick to formulate a response to that—that nonsensical question, Jason convinces himself that he's made it all the fuck up, that he’s delusional for even pretending there’s something left inside him to monitor.
His heart thuds once, or maybe it doesn’t, and the uncertainty makes his breath hitch.
“What?” Dick sounds so genuinely befuddled it's almost comical. “Who else’s would it—”
“Can you just—please.”
And it's so fucking embarrassing, the way that monitor speeds up, Jason’s fingers curling and uncurling against the bedsheets. Dick blinks at him, perplexed, but maybe it’s the pathetic wobble in Jason’s voice, because his face does something weird and all of a sudden he's moving to sit on the edge of the bed, eyebrows creased with worry. “Jason,” he says slowly. “You said—when you were hurt, you said that you…didn't come back alive. You told me your heart wasn't beating.”
“I'm—”
“The heart monitor is yours, Jason. It's your heart. You have to know that.”
Jason’s jaw locks and he exhales sharp through his nose, eyes fixing back on the ceiling so he doesn’t have to see the look on Dick’s face. “I don't,” he says, hushed. “It doesn’t feel that way. Most of the time, I don’t—it’s like muscle memory. All I am is muscle memory. You've seen it, Dick, you must have.”
“Jason,” Dick manages. “I haven't seen anything, I have no idea what you mean. Talk to me, bud.”
Jason licks his cracked lips, tongue catching on a cut along his gums. The metallic taste of blood has been ever-present in his mouth for months, it feels like. “My body doesn't work right. It doesn't move when I want it to and sometimes my hands go grey and numb—sometimes I stop breathing in my sleep. I can’t—I can’t trust it, not like you do yours. Fuck's sake, I don't even have the same scars that I used to.”
He juts his chin out, showing Dick the smooth underside of his jaw. “Remember when I cracked my chin open at the park? It's gone, Dick, there’s nothing left.”
(They did an autopsy on him, Jason read the reports. Dick must be remembering the same thing, because his eyes are tracing a Y over Jason's chest where it should be.)
“How could I know that it's mine? I'm not in the ground anymore but I'm still—I'm rotting.”
Even before he finishes speaking, Jason knows he's gone and fucked it all up. Dick looks—afraid. Afraid and vaguely ill. By tomorrow, a mental institute will have a bed with his name on it, padded walls and four-point restraints and orderlies who’ll nod sagely when Jason tries to explain how sometimes there is dirt shoved down his esophagus. There’s a sick pull in his chest that wants to see the exact moment Dick calls it quits—only it doesn't come, and instead they're just left staring at each other like a pair of fools.
If Jason could move without tearing open half his stitches, he’d laugh. Rendering Dick Grayson speechless is quite a feat.
“Wait here,” is what his brother finally says. Jason blinks, but Dick is already halfway out the door before he can verbalize the what the fuck on the tip of his tongue. ‘Wait here.’ As if Jason could be going anywhere else, the asshole. His lip twitches up, despite himself. It only takes Dick a moment, and when he comes back, he's holding up a—
“You're kidding,” Jason says incredulously.
Triumphantly—which is just so ridiculous at this moment Jason doesn't know what to say—Dick hands him the stethoscope he just procured out of nowhere. When Jason doesn't make any move to use it, he makes an impatient noise and practically shoves the earpieces into his ears, thwapping the diaphragm against his chest. It hits directly on his collarbone, so it actually kind of hurts, leaving Jason scowling as he snatches it for himself, pulling the earpieces out to hang around his neck. “What is wrong with you?” He demands—or tries to, because Dick is already shaking his head.
“I know, I know. It’s stupid, right? I know. You're going to say that it's the same as that heart monitor—”
“Because it is.”
“—and it’s not, Jay. Look, that thing is—it’s impersonal. Just try this, okay? Please.”
Jason does, but only because Dick is looking at him so hopefully it's making him sick. He sticks the earpieces back in, the rubber tips cold against his overheated ears. The diaphragm feels clumsy in his hand as he drags it across his chest, metal disk sliding over gauze and bruised flesh until he can hear the steady thump of his own heart.
The stethoscope is better than the machine, he’ll give Dick that much. It’s different hearing his own heartbeat thrumming stubbornly beneath skin and scar tissue, loud in the cavern of his skull. Dick is watching him, perched on the edge of the mattress with his elbows on his knees, and Jason closes his eyes, grateful for the heat of Dick beside him, but it's—it’s not a fix. It’s just not.
Jason knows, at his core, what he is—what he isn't. There is no fixing it, not while he still walks.
“Thank you,” Jason says quietly, his eyes still closed. “I mean it, Dick, but—”
“Hey, it’s okay,” Dick interjects. His smile is painfully sincere when Jason cracks his eyes open. “I know it's not some kind of magic cure. I just—if you think it will help even a little bit when things get—when things get shitty, take it with you. And if this doesn't work, then call me. I'll come for you, Jase, if you call.”
I want to help you. He's practically screaming himself hoarse with it. He says it like it's something written into his gene code—it probably is. Dick’s always been like that, he couldn't stop if he tried. It’s a fact; like the law of gravity, like lungs need oxygen to breathe, Dick Grayson wants to help.
“It’s a waste of time.”
They both know it. Jason’s got nothing left in him, and sooner or later, someone’s going to get a lucky shot, and he won't fight it.
“Don't be an idiot,” Dick chides. “If I get to know you're okay, even for just five minutes, it's not a waste.”
Jason doesn't know if that's noble or stupid, but either way, he can't bring himself to meet Dick's eyes, instead tracing the tiles of the ceiling above him. He clutches the stethoscope to his chest, tapping the rhythm of his pulse against the bedspread, and swallows thickly. “It's not that simple.”
And, well. He probably should've expected the way Dick would smile, his eyes crinkling at the corners, almost grey under the fluorescent lights of the medbay. “Sure it is. Fake it ‘til you make it, buddy. Rule twenty-seven of Robin Training, don't you remember?”
“That's not a thing,” Jason huffs, trying and failing to hide the amusement in his voice.
“I just made it up, so you're wrong. Robin bylaws, subsection C—” he taps his temple. “Filed and notarized up here. You got an issue with it, take it up with the founder.”
“Which would be you.”
“Which would be me,” Dick agrees. “So don't bother. Hey, you want jell-o? They've got lime and raspberry and cherry and blue.”
Jason picks blue and Dick picks cherry, even though he's not technically allowed to choose one for himself and also cherry tastes like crap. He makes Jason budge over on the tiny little cot that they've stuffed him in until they're shoulder to shoulder, eating with weird paper spoons out of weird paper cups. He gives Jason a gatorade too, blue to match his jell-o. It's ridiculous. This whole thing is ridiculous, that Dick knows how screwed up Jason's brain is and isn't just—putting him down like a lame horse. It'd be easier for them both.
As if he can read Jason's mind, Dick nudges their shoulders together, graciously tilting his cup so Jason can taste a spoonful of cherry. It's shit, like he knew it would be.
"When did this start?" Dick asks abruptly. Jason's been half-expecting this line of questioning, or at least something adjacent, but there isn't the patented analytical tone you usually hear from Bat affiliates. He's curious, and Jason even feels like being charitable enough to let the carefully neutral affect slide.
"Dunno," he says. Dick gives him a look, but Jason only lifts a shoulder. "I'm being serious, I dunno. Recent. Not recent recent, but it's not been years, or anything. I remember—the first time I ever—it was in March, after—"
He cuts off, but the look on Dick’s face tells him he remembers. After the last time Jason and Bruce spoke outside of the nightlife. It went fine, really, and maybe that's the problem. Maybe rage and hate and grief was all he was, and without it, there's just—nothing left.
He doesn’t say any of that, though, because Dick already looks like he’s thinking too hard about what Jason did say, which was hardly anything. Jason twitches uncomfortably, but Dick just gives a little hum and starts up again in a completely sideways direction.
“By the way,” he says, poking Jason's cheek. “You're wrong. You have laugh lines, did you know that? Those don't show up overnight. Something did carry over.”
“I am not that old,” Jason denies, aghast, but Dick is shaking his head all mock rueful.
“It's the smoking,” he scolds. “You’re going to be a decrepit old man by thirty, while I—” he gestures grandly to himself “—shall remain radiant, youthful, and positively jubilant until the day I keel over. Tough luck, bud.”
Truthfully, Jason usually sees it as his skin sagging off the bone like pork ribs left too long in the smoker, but he finds he likes Dick’s version better.
(Both Catherine and Willis had laugh lines. Hell, even Bruce does.)
“I am going to tell Gotham Gazette that you're a piece of shit," Jason grumbles. "And then I'll personally send editorial thank you chocolates when they burn you at the stake." He eats a spoon of jell-o to hide his smile when Dick laughs, delighted. For a minute they're just sitting there, flicking jell-o at each other to catch in their mouths. Dick whoops like a sport's announcer every time he makes it, which isn't that often, so Jason's fine with him being annoying.
“I'm not going anywhere,” Dick tells him after they've exhausted their ammunition. He doesn't look up from his empty cup, scraping his spoon along the edges. “I'm just not. Okay? You're not a fake, Jason. You're as alive as anyone.”
It's the furthest thing from fucking okay, but Jason feels himself dip his chin in a nod anyway. “‘Kay,” he mutters. It's Dick's funeral.
(If he said that out loud, Dick would laugh with him. He's not going to say that out loud.)