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He tapped his heel rapidly against the worn roof top as he watched another tendril of smoke drift slowly off and fade away into the smoggy Gotham sky. Jason had been waiting for over an hour now working his way through almost half a pack of Silk Cut. It wasn't like Tim to be late, even in the state Jason had been seeing him in recently.
The last couple of months had been bad - true to form, Jason tried to stay out of the most of it, but it was kind of hard to ignore when the bottom completely falls out of everything. Bruce was gone, pretty much everyone was saying dead, but Jason still wasn't sure how much stock he'd put in that. As stubborn as that man was, there would have to be a body to remove all doubt, until then… well… Jason took everything with a healthy grain of salt.
On top of that, Dick had taken up the cape which as far as Jason could remember was something he'd never wanted to do. And that came with a whole slew of other problems while Dickiebird tried to figure out how all of this was going to work. One of the first casualties of the new regime had been Tim, and his rather unceremonious removal from his position as Robin. The after effects of that hadn't been pretty…
Though it would seem that he was the only one to notice any of that.
Tim had been getting in increasingly reckless and sloppy lately, to the point even Jason had to stop and take notice. So he'd spent the better part of a week following Babybird around before he finally confronted him. It hadn't been pretty.
Tim had taken a couple swings at him when Jason accidentally said something that cut too close to home. They duked it out for a while; mostly Jason just dancing around and letting the younger boy work off most of his anger and frustration until he ran out of steam. Which was immediately followed by Tim just laying everything out to him while Jason just sat there and tried to awkwardly comfort him.
Seriously though, the emotional shit was not his area of expertise.
After an impromptu therapy session and a couple of beers, Jason let Tim sleep it off on the couch in the latest place he'd decided to haul himself up in. Not too long after that, the Replacement started reaching out to him on the regular.
It still wasn't something Jason was used to, or felt he was really all that good at; but if talking to him meant the kid wasn't going to do anything else risky or arguably more dangerous, then he was willing to deal with it. Which is what led him here: standing on top of an old warehouse down by the docks, well into the areas Tim usually patrolled, chain smoking and wondering just where in the hell the kid was.
Stomping out his last cigarette under his boot, Jason growled, pulling his helmet on and punching a couple buttons to open a connection to the main line all the bats used to communicate.
"Red Hood to all points. Sound off, who's on?"
"This is Batgirl," Stephanie's voice answered almost immediately, "I'm here with Black Bat. Is something wrong Hood?"
"I was supposed to meet up with T- Red Robin an hour ago, but it's starting to look like I've been stood up." Jason said as casually as possible, glancing around him once more, "Anybody happen to have eyes on him?"
"Dick didn- I mean Ni- Batman didn't tell… well I guess that makes sense actually…" Stephanie sounded frazzled and it set Jason even more on edge than the lack of sense her rambling was making, "Look, we shouldn't be talking about this on the coms. Can you meet us in midtown?"
"Bryant Hotel, I'll be there in thirty." He hit the button to cut off the com and started running all in one motion.
-
Dick was leaning on the console of the bat computer when it happened. Jason grabbed him by the shoulders from behind, swinging him around and slamming him into one of the support pillars with enough force to leave him dazed and feeling like his brain was rattling around in his skull.
"What the fuck Dick?!"
"Grayson!"
Jason snarled, glaring over his shoulder as Damian came skidding in at the sound of the commotion, "Stay out of this runt."
"Todd…" If the circumstances were different, Jason might have been a little impressed by just how menacing someone under four feet tall could make themselves look. But right now the kid was just proving to be more trouble than he was worth.
As usual.
"I said butt the fuck out punk." Jason growled again, leveling the full potency of his sneer back on Dick, "This ain't got nothing to do with you right now."
Damian started to argue back, but having regained some awareness Dick quickly waved him off, "Damian, it's fine. Go."
"But-"
"I said it's fine." Dick turned his head to give the much younger boy a pointed look, not turning back to Jason until the other was completely gone from sight, "Now… was there a particular reason you came here Jason?"
"I don't know Dick, you tell me," He ground out, grip on the other man's shoulders tightening, "Is there a particular reason I'd be coming to see you?"
"I'm not a mind reader little wing-"
"Don't you fucking dare!" Jason snarled, barely fighting down the urge to slam the acrobat into the pillar again, "You don't get to stand there and call me that and act like the benevolent big brother after the way you fucked Tim over."
"Tim?" Dick frowned, shaking his head, "Jason, what are you talking about?"
"Arkham, you stupid bastard!" Jason yelled, ripping himself away from the other man, kicking the chair behind him to stop from lashing out at Dick in his frustration, "I'm talking about the fact you gave up and decided to throw him to Arkham instead of fixing this."
"Jason, Tim isn't ok right now-"
"Yeah, no shit Dick!"
"He needs help! What else was I supposed to do?!"
"Help him you incompetent jackass!" Jason really was going to deck him, "You do whatever you need to, to help him. You don't just give up because you made a bigger mess than you know how to fix and chuck him in the same loony bin as whatever fucked up coot we scraped off the streets this week!"
"Tim needs a professional!" Dick snapped back, clearly getting angry now himself, "There's nothing any of us could have done, he needs some one who knows what they're doing!"
"It doesn't matter how many doctorates they throw at him, they can't help him if he has to keep his identity secret!" Jason growled, raking a hand roughly through his hair, "You really don't think anything through, do you?! Just whatever solution makes your life easiest."
"This isn't my fault Jason!"
"The hell is isn't Dick… He wasn't dealing with B well, and you damn well knew it, and then you went and took everything from him so you can run around with the hellspawn like everything is normal." Jason shook his head, "You shat the bed Dick, you know it, I know it. And now you have to live with the fact you failed another brother. Oh-and-two… odds aren't looking so good for baby bat, now are they?"
Dick actually did take a swing at him for that but Jason only dodged and used it as his excuse to get the hell out of there.
-
Tim could never hate Dick. Even as much as he wanted to right now, Dick was still his brother and that was never going to change.
It didn't lessen the urge to punch him square in the nose though. And Tim was probably going to follow through at the first given opportunity.
Arkham. His own brother had thrown him in Arkham because, 'You need help Tim, more help than I can give you right now.' Just replaying the situation made his blood boil. It had been almost a week, and things definitely weren't getting any better.
Tim threw the wadded up paper ball up at the ceiling again, catching it just before it fell back and hit him in the face. This was the third time the doctors had left him a questionnaire to fill out, and Tim had instead turned it into the only kind of stimulation the too sterile room he'd been assigned had to offer.
If they wanted to pick his brain and study him, they could work for it. There was no way in hell he was going to make the job easy for them.
"Well don't you look cheery, Replacement."
Tim sat bold up right, looking around wildly before noticing Jason through the little window looking into his room. He scrambled quickly up, making his way over to the door, shaking his head, "Jason? What are you doing here?"
"Really?" The older man shook his head, looking down for a moment, "The fuck do you think?"
There was the loud thunk of the lock bolt retracting and then the door swung open, "It's a jailbreak, babybird. Let's go."
Tim didn't even hesitate, grabbing his shoes and following Jason out the way he'd snuck in.
-
"So where are we going anyway?"
Jason glanced over at Tim as he drove, the kid was slouched down in his seat, knees propped up against the dash as he ate his way though his third or fourth burger.
"Well, considering I just broke you out of a mental hospital, I thought getting out of Gotham might be a good starting point." Jason said as he wedged his way though traffic to get them off at the right exit. The chorus of horns behind him went unacknowledged by either of them, "I have cabin on the river out side Claymon, figured it would be a good place to lay low for a bit."
"Claymont… Delaware?" Tim looked back at him clearly confused.
"Well, Dickiebird knows I've got a couple diffrent safe houses in upstate New York, and I figured that's the first place he'd start looking." Jason shrugged, reaching into the bag in between them to steal another burger from himself before the replacement could eat all of them. From what he remembered the runt never ate much, so for him to be on number four, he must not have been getting fed almost at all…
Jason clenched the steering wheel a little harder, but fought down the rest of the anger response, "I have told anybody about this place though, so there shouldn't be any reason for them to even consider Delaware."
Tim was quiet for a while, finally seeming to relax a bit as the full stomach and finally being out of that place started to catch up to him.
"So why'd you do it?" The question was barely above a whisper, but Jason heard him all the same, "Why'd you pull me out?"
Jason frowned, staring out at the road in front of him as he drove.
"... because you're not ok Tim." He finally admitted, glancing over at him as he spoke, "And for whatever godforsaken reason, I seem to be the only worried about actually trying to help you….
"Which, if we're being honest here, probably means you're fucked. I mean," Jason rolled his eyes gesturing to himself, "C'mon. I'm not exactly a poster boy for mental stability here."
"No,you're not." Tim chuckled, and it was hard to miss the exhaustion in his tone, "But you care, enough to try and do something at least. And that says a lot."
Jason hummed noncommittally, glancing over at him again before reaching out to ruffle Tim hair, "Get some sleep baby bird, we still got like an hour and a half. I'll wake you when we get there."