Work Text:
The first time Tim dabbles in necromancy, it’s in the back alley of a street he can’t pronounce. He doesn’t throw up, but it’s a close thing and Constantine eyes him like he might anyway. He’ll probably have nightmares for a while.
But it’s fine because he just wants Jason back.
“It isn’t–” he swallows, eyeing the contorting body, eyes black as it gurgled and fell limp, its soul leaving it once again after it was done giving them their lead. “It isn’t always like this, right?”
Tim wanted Jason back as a whole. He wanted him back living and breathing. Not… whatever that was.
“Necromancy is about exchange,” Constantine tells him, “The more you want, the more you must give. It isn’t even the same each time, it’s bargaining.”
Bargaining. Tim has grown up watching his parents bargain. He’s had the word instilled in his brain. He thinks of Janet Drake’s eyes, cold like steel, posture steady, infallible. He remembers her teachings.
“I can do bargaining,” Tim says aloud.
Constantine hums.
***
The thing was, it didn’t matter where Jason went. It didn’t matter if Jason went to heaven, or hell, or the fucking Fields of Asphodel, if Tim wanted to bring him back, he was going to have to bargain with his life on the line. That’s just how it worked. Petty usages of necromancy were one thing, he’d never had to deal in years-of-life, or God-forbid, souls, in all his excursions with Constantine (not truly). But Constantine had forewarned him well, knowing exactly what Tim’s end goal was. To bring back a soul permanently? That required bartering. With his life.
“Hope you know what you’re doing kid,” Constantine had murmured, eyes pinning him with a weighted look. The most serious he had been in all the time Tim had been with him.
Tim knows he’s doing. He’s bringing Jason back.
He’s going to end up in hell.
Tim knew what he had to do. He didn’t come all this way, and spend five fucking months training with John Constantine in shitty motels across Europe, just to back out at the thought that he’d have to make a deal with the devil.
A deal that would likely land him in hell.
He swallows.
He can do this.
***
Time, Tim finds, moves very differently in Hell.
(He capitalizes it now.)
As it turns out, torture makes it very difficult for one to keep track of time. Tim wasn’t a genius for nothing though. His contingencies had contingencies. He knew how much time he’d spent in Hell.
Didn’t make it any easier to withstand half a year with the Demons of Hell as your best friends though.
Jason had spent six months in a grave. Tim had to spend six to get him out. Honestly, Tim thought it was a great deal. He’d gone there expecting worse, but his parents raised him for business, and apparently that translated into discount deals with Demons. He wasn’t complaining. Granted he’d assumed he’d have at least a minute with Jason before being dragged down, but still. In the grand scheme of things, it was a good deal.
The landscape around him starts to shift and he shuts his eyes tightly. In some ways, the mental torture was worse than the physical.
But that’s okay. Jason is alive now, living and breathing up above, and that’s the only thing that mattered.
Nobody would miss Tim anyway. Not like they missed Jason.
***
Tim is fifteen and he’s bargained with demons twice. Once to get Jason out, and once to get the snake-tongued bastard to let him out as per their agreement. He’s done his time, no more, no less.
The first thing he does is steal a newspaper and go home.
He’d probably end up in Hell again anyway, a little thievery probably wouldn’t change that.
(He’d donate something to the store later)
Sure enough, there wasn’t anybody home. He reads the paper and updates himself on the news and confirms the lack of a missing person report out for him. He’d taken care of school, forging emails from his parents about homeschooling until further notice. When he went to the grave that night, he hadn’t known if he’d be leaving immediately, or how long he’d be gone for, but Tim had prepared regardless. Luckily, he’d returned right in summer break so he’d just rejoin when the school year restarted in a month.
Perfect timing. Perfect everything.
Except.
There was no news on Jason Todd.
No news on Robin.
His computer starts loading up everything he’s missed of Gotham nightlife while he was gone. It was no Batcomputer, but Tim thinks he’s done well for himself.
He swivels his chair. Ah, how he’s missed PB&J sandwiches.
***
If anyone asked Tim, he honestly had no idea how it happened.
Somewhere in between trying to figure out what had happened to Jason–
He was alive goddamit, he had to be, Tim would know.
–and trying to keep Batman from doing something drastically stupid and gruesomely violent, he had suddenly become Robin.
He wouldn’t say he hated it. Robin was everything to him, and if had to take it on to keep the legacy alive for the people of Gotham? For the children who looked up at night and saw Robin as a symbol of hope? Then he would.
But it wasn’t right. Robin was Dick’s. Robin was Jason’s.
And Tim had gone to hell and back, literally, to give it back to him, and for some fucking reason, Jason wasn’t there.
He doesn’t capitalize it anymore. He refuses to give it importance. Or whatever that self-help therapy book had said.
He couldn’t tell Bruce, or Dick, or even Alfred. How could he? What if he hadn’t done it right? What if Jason had never come back at all? What if he’d just let the devil play him like a fiddle? How could he give them that hope that their son, their brother, their grandson, was back and then crush it all at once just because he was a stupid, foolish, child?
There were many things that Tim hadn’t fully thought through when he went to Jason’s grave that night. He had accounted for going to hell. But he hadn’t realised how immediate it’d be. He hadn’t wanted to risk bringing someone like Bruce with him, not with the chance that it wouldn’t work. But now he wonders, if Jason had come back, did he wake up in his coffin? Was anyone there for him when he woke up? Did he remember how to get to the Manor? Did he run away? Was he kidnapped? Did he just… spawn somewhere?
Please, please, don’t let him have woken up in Ethiopia.
He wishes he’d had a bit of time. So that someone could’ve found Jason, explained it to him.
Now he has no idea where Jason was. He just knew it wasn’t where he was supposed to be.
He sighs and tilts his coffee mug to get the last dregs as he swivels in his chair. His computer pulls up his current cases on one screen while informing him of new potential threats on the other.
Hm. Red Hood. Tim scrunches his nose. Who would willingly name themselves after the Joker?
He absent-mindedly reaches for his mug again then sighs wearily. Why did he leave the coffee machine so far from his desk?
***
Tim was bleeding from his slit throat, his arm was on fire, and the smell of blood was so pungent that he thought he was back in hell for a second.
“Not today, Satan,” he hisses through his teeth.
Then he catches sight of his broken bo staff. Red Hood, you dumb fuck, his mind supplies helpfully, before he passes out.
Jason. Tim thinks, later in the medbay of the Cave. It was Jason. And his eyes were green, not blue, and Tim knows that whatever had happened, it was his fault.
Make a deal with the devil, it’ll be easy, he’d thought. He wonders if Constantine would tell him “I told you so”. He probably would, the fucking bastard. Tim missed him sometimes.
He had a problem with attachment.
No time for sentiment though. He needed everything he could find about the Lazurus Pits.
But God, he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t just so fucking happy to know that Jason was breathing.
***
He’s bleeding out in a fucking desert. He can taste the blood on his tongue, and he ignores it with practice as he drags Pru across the sand.
Z, Owens, would they go to hell?
He can hear the Devil’s voice laughing in his ears.
Not today, he thinks. You’re not getting me back until the day I fucking die.
He wakes up with Ra’s having ownership of his spleen, but when push came to shove, making deals with the Demon Head was a joke after bargaining with the demons of hell.
He wins. He fucking wins. He ran the League, torched their bases, crippled the Council of Spiders, saved Wayne Enterprises, and kept everyone safe. No compromises, he thinks, as he freefalls from the window of a skyscraper.
***
He never explains it to Jason. Doesn’t see the point in hashing over old things when Jason seemed to be getting better, seemed to be getting along more with Bruce and Dick, and Damian, the new Robin.
Admittedly, he was a coward too. Jason had suffered so much because of Tim’s shortsightedness. If only he had planned better, if he had just thought for a second that maybe he would’ve been taken to hell immediately, maybe Jason wouldn’t have had to wake up in his fucking grave. Maybe he wouldn’t have been kidnapped by fucking Talia Al Ghul and maybe he wouldn’t have ever had to be acquainted with the Lazarus Pits.
Who has a hundred and one contingencies for dealing with the literal devil, but was still naive enough to assume he’d get a minute of peace with the person he was bringing back from the dead? Tim, that’s who.
Just as Tim had assumed, Constantine did in fact tell Tim “I told you so”.
Somewhere between Bruce getting trapped in a time stream and Tim bringing him back after rebranding himself–
A placeholder that got too comfortable. That’s all he ever was.
–he’d met up with Constatine briefly, just in time to pull the man out past a hellmouth that had no place being opened in the cellar of a roadside diner in the middle of Quebec. That made three times. He’s seventeen now, emancipated, CEO of Wayne Enterprises, and that’s three times he’s been faced with hell, and twice that he’s told his demons (he has personal ones, isn’t that nice?) to fuck off.
Because Tim’s done his time goddammit.
He wasn’t the same kid that climbed through the motel window demanding to learn how to raise the dead. He’d gone to hell and back. He had carried the weight of Jason’s Robin on his shoulders, and now he wears the weight of Jason’s Red Robin.
He’d gotten rid of the cowl though. “You’re not a cowl guy,” Kon had said. Tim thinks he had a point.
Kon. What a surprise that had been. Tim didn’t even need to do any fancy death magic this time.
He used to sit up at night and wonder what kind of person it made him that he didn’t face hell for Kon and Bart, but he had for Jason.
Kon would throw a pillow at him for that one.
Somewhere between them hashing out the whole I-Tried-To-Clone-You-Because-You-Died thing, and the I-Am-So-Fucking-In-Love-With-You thing, Tim had let the whole story spill out. Jason dying, his trips with Constantine, his vacation in hell, and Tim had to admit that allowing himself to have a support system, between Kon, Bart, and Cassie, was actually pretty nice.
Allowing himself to have friends.
Even Pru drops by sometimes. It was hard to tell who was sneakier between her and Cass. That brought the total of people who knew up to six. It was perhaps starting to get to the point that it was weird that the rest of the Bats didn’t know.
But how could he tell them? How could he tell Jason? He was responsible for so much suffering.
***
And then a hellmouth opens on the lay lines of where Gotham meets Metropolis, because of course it does. There’s a global-scale emergency alert out and Tim is grateful for it because he knows that whatever’s happening, Constantine would be right in the middle of it, and he’d rather deal with it as YJ’s Red Robin, and not Batman’s Red Robin. He abandons Redbird in an alley, jumps up a roof, then flies into the centre of action flanked by Superboy and Wondergirl, while Impulse dashes in below them. They clear a path for him and Tim swoops down just past Batman.
His eyes sweep across the area, now a battlefield.
“Red Robin!” Batman barks, clearly confused.
“Where’s Constantine?” Red Robin cuts across. He doesn’t have time for this.
He throws a birdarang to his left, nailing a demon without looking.
“Those won’t—” Batman cuts off his instinctive comment as the demon wails and crumples. His eyes snap back to Red Robin. “What was that?” He demands.
“I—” He’s cut off by Nightwing and Red Hood landing near them.
Red Hood’s wielding swords that cut through the demons like sliced bread. All-Caste blades, Tim notes, with respect.
“What’s going on? Red?” Nightwing looks at him.
“Take cover!” Red Hood yells, interrupting.
They dive towards the woods, hiding behind a patch of trees. Tim swears as he takes note of the fucking flying, fire-breathing demon that’s just entered the battlefield. They were getting stronger.
He spins around towards Batman. “Where is Constantine?” He demands.
“What?” Nightwing asks, bewildered.
“The fuck you need to see Constantine for?” Hood says, at the same time.
Red Robin lets out a noise of frustration. “I don’t have time for this,” he curses.
“Red—"
“Sprog? That you? Took your damn time!”
Red Robin spins around, relief flooding and tensing his muscles all at once. “Fuck off,” he says, instinctively, eyes locking with the older man. “You better have a good explanation for this, old man.”
“I’m sorry,” Nightwing interrupts, “do you two know each other?”
“I—”
“They don’t know?” Constantine interrupts, fixing Tim with a LookTM. What an asshole.
Tim glares at him. His eyes can’t be seen behind the domino, so he scowls for good measure. “No.” He says shortly.
Constantine’s eyes drift behind him to where Hood was standing.
“What?” Hood growls through the modulated voice of the helmet.
“Not even—”
“Johnathan Fucking Constantine, I swear—”
Constantine raises his arms in surrender. “Alright, dropping it, damn!” He grumbles under his breath. “You take a birdie under your wing, teach ‘em all you know, and get nothin’ but disrespect.”
“Teach them?” Batman demands.
“Oh my god, would you shut the fuck up?” Red Robin says to Constantine, exasperated. “What do you need?”
“Tether me, I’m going in there,” Constantine says, getting back on track immediately.
“Aw man, I hate being anchor,” Red Robin complains. “I should’ve stayed in bed.”
“Too bad,” Constantine grunts, “here, catch.”
Red Robin catches the flying projectile instinctively. One of Constantine’s rings, something for Tim to hold on to when he holds Constantine like an anchor to their world. Suddenly, he’s flanked by Wonder Girl, Superboy, and Impulse.
“Um, is he allowed to do that Mr. Constantine, sir?” Impulse raises his hand.
“Yeah, I mean, considering the proximity and all–”
Constantine raises his eyebrow again. “But they know?” Again. Asshole.
Red Robin points his thumb over his shoulder at Superboy, “Boyfriend,” then he points at the other two, “practically family. They know everything about me,” then he points up a tree where Black Bat had suddenly appeared, “and she just knows everything in general.”
Constantine jumps and swears when he notices Cass.
“Am I not practically family?”
“Not until you propose babe.”
“Wow, rude.”
Constantine looks back at them. “All cards on the table, I need the kid. No options. But,” he fixes Tim with a stern look. “If anything, anything, happens, you drop the fucking thing, understand?”
Red Robin’s breath hitches. “But—”
“No. Forget about me, I’ll figure it out,” Constantine turns to Tim’s team. “You make him drop it, are we clear?”
“Crystal.”
Suddenly, Tim’s eyes start to burn. He blinks it back. The next thing he knows, he’s moved forward and wrapped his arms around Constantine in a hug.
“You better make it back, old man.” He mutters. “I fucking missed you.”
Constatine’s arms rest on his back, practiced after all the time of knowing Tim, despite the fact that he wasn’t exactly the kind of person to be handing out hugs.
“Missed you too kiddo. Sorry I wasn’t there for you during your whole showdown.”
The man was surprisingly communicative as a person (or maybe Tim was just too used to the ways of adults like Bruce, Jack, and Janet). He would be lying if he said that he didn’t wish Constantine had been there when he had to deal with Ra’s, but Tim had wished for a lot of people back then. And in fairness, there were a lot of people who showed up in that final moment.
Tim lets out a wet laugh. “You were fighting your personal demons. Literally. I think I can excuse you.”
Constantine pulls away and ruffles his hair. “Alright, ‘nuff of that. You ready?”
Red Robin rolls his shoulders back. “Nothing I enjoy more than telling demons to fuck off.”
Constantine claps him on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit.”
***
Acting as an anchor was a generally boring job, for all the technicality that it involved. For the most part, Tim has to sit down in front of an opened portal, hold on to the physical, symbolic, anchor, and act as a spiritual anchor to guide Constantine back. Also helpful for him to close the portal on Constantine’s behalf when they’re on time-sensitive operations (read: Constantine pissed off an unknown entity and Tim is the equivalent of a getaway driver). Mostly, Tim was there to ward off anything trying to cross over, lest there be another Quebec incident. He’s also there to make sure that nobody gets too curious and step inside.
“Impulse, I swear if you take one step closer–” Red Robin lets the threat hang there.
“Sorrysorry,” He raises his hands and backs off.
The team was doing a pretty remarkable job of making sure no demons get near Tim while he handles pushing back anything approaching the portal. (Has he mentioned he hates being an anchor to hell-related portals?) Batman also refused to go anywhere, and by extension, a whole group of the Bats. Tim would admit he was grateful for Hood sticking around though, because those blades of his were quite literally life-saving. What he was less grateful for was Batman’s barrage of questions.
Wonder Girl steps between them before Batman could cross over into Red Robin’s space.
“He’s here under my leadership, as part of my team.” She says firmly. “You handle your numbers, I’ll handle mine, understand?” Her whip cracks against the ground.
God, Tim loves her.
Batman backs off.
And then, because Tim can never catch a break, the very same demon that Tim had sold off years of his life to appears.
“Well, hello old friend,” he purrs.
Ugh.
“Hi.” Red Robin deadpans. He doesn’t name him, not even in his mind, names had far too much power for that.
“Come to rejoin the party?”
“Please,” Tim scoffs. “The Devil extend your leash, or something?”
The demon scoffs. “Don’t play coy, little boy.”
Tim hates him. “I’ve done my time,” he says coolly. “You’re not getting me back. Ever.”
It would probably bite him in the ass if he ever ended up there.
(He wonders when he stopped thinking “when” and starting thinking “if”)
“Hmm. So you say. As it happened, I sensed a few interesting presences out here.”
Tim follows his line of sight.
Jason.
He moves, blocking Hood from view. He bares his teeth and stretches out a hand in a gesture that was meant to ward off evil. It wouldn’t do much long-term damage to someone as high up as him, but it would cause a little bit of cursory pain if nothing else.
“Back the fuck off.” He hisses. “You don’t get to touch him. He’s not yours.”
“Our agreement–”
“Don’t fucking test me,” Red Robin growls. “Six months for his life, that was our agreement. I’ve done my time in hell. You come near him and I’ll rip you to shreds so small that there’s nothing but your remnants to throw into Masak Mavdil.”
The demon laughs, an ugly, screechy thing.
Tim can feel the tug, pulling at his limbs, his soul. There were only so many party tricks he could do to keep it away. He wasn’t stupid enough to believe he could actually hurt it. He stands his ground.
“We had a pact, and I kept it,” he ground out. “You have no claim to me. You have no right to my soul or his.”
The tugging gets stronger. “Are you sure? I–” He pauses, mid-sentence.
Red Robin forces his gaze to look past the demon and smirks. “Something wrong?”
He glares at Tim and disappears without word, not that Tim would’ve heard it because the look has him crashing to his knees with a grunt, his arm flaring in a phantom pain. He just about has the presence of mind to recognise the sounds of concern behind him and Superboy’s hand on his back.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he grinds out, “back up SB, it’s okay.”
There’s a moment of hesitation and the hand moves to squeeze his shoulder lightly before Superboy backed away. Tim forces his eyes open and takes a deep breath. He pulls himself to his feet just in time to hear the yells. He looks up to see a frenzied Constantine legging it towards him. Ah, familiar sights.
“The fuck took you so long, old man?” Red Robin yells.
“Didn’t I tell you to fucking drop it?” Constantine shouts back. “Catch! I’ll close the portal!”
Red Robin stretches out his arms instinctively, ring dropping in favour of a gem landing safely in his palms. He blinks for a moment. “Holy fuck!”
“Fucking destroy it!” Constantine jumps out of the portal and turns around, moving to shut the portal.
Red Robin throws the gem in the air. “SB!” He breathes in, feels his chest burn, then breathes out, a fan of flames leaving his mouth and hitting the gem at the same time as Superboy’s heat vision. The gem shatters.
NO! YOU ARE NOT ESCAPING AGAIN LITTLE BIRD!
Red Robin falls back to his knees at the force of the tug. Sometimes he forgets the power of demons. Rather ironic, really. “I think I am, actually,” he grunts out, unable to stop himself.
YOU CANNOT LEAVE, TRESPASSER. YOU SPILLED YOUR BLOOD, YOUR LIFE IS MINE
Red Robin screams, but holds on. “My life is mine! I fulfilled the contract, you fucking bastard! You don’t get to have me!”
I–
The portal closes. Tim’s vision swims and he lurches from the sudden freedom. Constantine’s hand is a solid weight on his back and Superboy is suddenly at his side.
“It’s fine, I’m fine,” Red Robin reassures reflexively. “I’ll be fine,” he corrects, “just… give me a second.”
“You can have all the time you need, Rob,” Superboy mutters, hand rubbing up and down his arm.
Red Robin steadies his breath and then picks himself up off the ground. He turns to Constantine.
“Next time, we catch up over burgers and a milkshake.”
Constantine snorts. “Whatever you say, kiddo.” He reaches out and squeezes Tim’s shoulder.
***
Tim is definitely supposed to be at the Batcave right now, undergoing some form of interrogation no doubt. Especially seeing as he’d told the Bats that he’d see them there and answer their questions.
It’s not like he told them when. He’d just had a fairly close call with literal hell. It was fourth time bargaining with a fucking demon of hell. He’s allowed to take a breather, sue him.
He had Impulse carry him to his primary safe house in San Francisco. There were only two places that Tim really thought of as ‘home’ these days, and it was this and his Nest in Gotham.
On worse days, he wondered if he could call Gotham a home at all. But when push came to shove, he loved that city worse than a drug.
***
“You went to hell for me.”
Naturally, it was an emergency alert that brought him back to Gotham a week later.
“Now?” Red Robin hisses back, “you want to do this now?”
He was creeping through the halls of an abandoned building. Batgirl and Signal were covering the usual patrol routes while Batman, Red Robin, Nightwing, and Red Hood had split up to check potential locations of where Robin could be. Because the baby Robin had missed his last two check-ins. His beacon hadn’t gone off, but that was possibly more foreboding than if it had. Damian was more than capable of handling himself, but a missing Robin never boded well for anyone. They were all a little on edge, and Tim figured that Jason interrogating him was at least partially to distract himself. Didn’t mean Tim had to like it.
“Actually, I’d like to know about this myself,” Nightwing chimes in over the comms pleasantly.
Red Robin sighs heavily. “Oh for– B, would you tell them to focus?”
There’s a pointed silence. Because of course, Batman was just as curious.
“...self-serving, hypocritical, bastard.”
“This is what happens when you ditch debriefing.” Hood informs him cheerfully.
“You mean interrogation?” Red Robin snarks back. “I don’t regret going home first.”
A sudden hush descends over the comms, but Tim is distracted before he could figure out what it was that he said.
A scrap of green cloth nailed to the wall. Red Robin walks over and pulls at it slowly. There’s a symbol under it. The League of Assassins. He lets the cloth fall back. He was right. Well, he knew he would be, had all his plans set in place as soon as he got the alert, but it was always nice to have confirmation.
“Ra’s send you?” He asks conversationally. He ignores the burst of noise in his comms. “I gotta say, Gotham isn’t exactly my idea of a vacation city.”
“The Demon Head requests your presence.”
“What’s new?” Red Robin says drily as he turns around. He raises an eyebrow. “All of you, for little ‘ole me? I’m almost flattered.”
“We were told you have a… difficult reputation.”
Red Robin snorts. “New recruit? You seem new. Tell me, is Robin with Ra’s?”
They exchange uncertain looks, clearly under orders not to tell, but equally wary of him. Then one steps forward in irritation.
“Enough of this! The Demon Head requests–”
They don’t get to finish their sentence before Red Robin has them sprawled on the ground.
“I suggest someone answer my questions,” His voice is cold, none of that lightness from earlier, “or you’ll find out exactly why the League respects and fears me the way that they do.”
“The child is there.” One says quickly.
Red Robin inclines his head in acknowledgement. “Then I’ll come willingly. See how easy that was?” The voices in his comm get louder and he deliberately tunes it out. “Someone might want to carry that one.” He nods at the still sprawled body in front of his feet.
***
Red Robin has incapacitated a dozen assassins and spins on his heel to take down another three with a swift kick. He holds back a sigh; his hamstrings were going to kill him tomorrow. Just because he did his stretches it didn’t mean he had to like high kicks.
A window shatters.
“Someone called for backup?”
He grins at Pru’s holler.
“About damn time!”
Pru scoffs and he hears three shots go off behind him. “Upgrade my bike and maybe I’ll be quicker, Princess.”
“Your bike has better specs than mine,” Red Robin scoffs then ricochets himself off a wall and hauls himself up onto rafters. “Get on comms, I’m going up top.”
“Yes, sir.”
Red Robin climbs out of the shattered window and, in a move that really would’ve impressed his nine-year-old self, he launches himself on to the roof one building over. “Aw come on Ra’s, all this trouble and you’re leaving so soon?”
His comm crackles in his ear. “You’re a crazy son of a bitch, Boss, taunting the big man like that.”
“Who is this? Why does she have access to private lines?”
Ah, so Damian has been retrieved and comm’d. Safe and snarky. Perfect. Red Robin ignores him.
“I’ve done worse,” he says casually, then he raises his voice, “isn’t that right, Ra’s?” He turns on his heel and smirks at Ra’s. “How’d you like my present?”
“You did a very…” Ra’s pauses, distaste all over his words, “thorough job.”
“Clearly not thorough enough.”
“Come now Detective, you must have known it wouldn’t be that easy. You’re smarter than that.”
“Hmm. You’re right. I am smarter.” Red Robing takes a step closer to the man and his voice drops. “Let’s be real here, you didn’t lose because you underestimated me. You knew exactly what I was capable of, I won because you overestimated yourself.”
He can see the way that angers the man, and he hears Pru’s low whistle in his ear.
“In position Boss-man.” She mutters.
Red Robin turns one foot in acknowledgement.
“But I didn’t come up here for a fight.” He straightens. “I came here to tell you two things.”
“And here I thought you missed me,” Ra’s drawls.
He doesn’t let it distract him, tamping down on his shudder and bile at the man’s tone.
“You should know by now that I don’t play your games.”
Tim doesn’t do half-assed jobs–
Not anymore, not when that’s what got Jason thrown into a Pit.
–he knew he hadn’t fully destroyed the League, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to keep at it. His movements were noticed, inevitably, and it was just like Ra’s to threaten people that Tim cared about in an attempt to distract him.
“Excuse me?”
Right on cue, there’s an explosion in the distance. Then another one. Ra’s pales.
Lucky for Tim, he’s learnt to lean on his friends.
“I’ve become rather fond of explosives.” Red Robin smirks. “If you enjoyed my thoroughness before, you’ll definitely appreciate it this time.”
There’s a beep in his ear and then the cacophony of voices come to a halt, signaling that Pru has switched his comm line out of the one with the Bats. Just in time. His posture shifts slightly. He wasn’t the Bats’ Red Robin anymore, he was YJ’s Red Robin.
“Impulse reporting, Operation Ken-Barbie done and done, locations five to nine!”
“SB reporting, Operation Ken-Barbie a success for locations ten to sixteen, which, by the way, is more than Imp, not that it’s a competition.”
“Wonder Girl reporting, locations seventeen to twenty-one are cleared. And it’s not a competition because Rob literally told us exactly which ones to handle so you did exactly your job. Also, when did we agree on Ken-Barbie?”
Red Robin starts backing away to the edge of the roof. “And that’s the other thing. Touch my people one more time? I’ll fucking destroy you.”
He falls backwards, twisting in a variation of a flip to shoot his grapple line in a way that definitely would never pass Bruce’s safety checks.
“Talk about dramatic,” Pru snorts.
“Oh yeah, Rob is a total theatre kid, don’t let him tell you any different,” Superboy jumps in immediately.
“Oh my god, stop telling people I’m a theatre kid, I’m not the theatre kid, that’s Hood,” Red Robin defends, instinctively from the age-old argument.
“Are you going to tell you didn’t become a theatre kid just because your lifelong role model and hero–”
“– cough, AlsoKnownAsRedHood, cough –” Impulse interjects.
“–is also a theatre kid?” Cassie teases.
There’s a slight pause. “Dude. Why would you say that to me?” He complains.
“Co-leader responsibilities,” Wonder Girl says pleasantly.
“This is easily the best part of my night.” Pru cackles. “Hood is your hero-slash-role model?”
“Oh yeah, Rob has, like, a problem, I’m surprised you didn’t know.”
“Oh my god,” Red Robin repeats. “Listen, it’s not a problem, I was a kid obsessed with Robin and Batman, and I thought he was cool or whatever, and now he’s Hood, and I carry a healthy amount of respect for the man.”
“Literally just last week he told a demon he’d rip it apart and toss it into hell’s hell because he eyed up Hood the wrong way.”
“You did not!” Pru chokes on her own laughs. “Didn’t he try to kill you?”
“...okay so I have a problem.” He could admit that. “But like, listen, I’m not saying I liked getting beat up, but he’s—he had a reason! And it’s hardly his fault he hated me. I’d prefer to blame the League of Assassins for that.”
There’s a whine, a wheeze, and he’s pretty sure Pru is actually crying with laughter at this point.
“You can't keep making excuses for your would-be-murderers, dude!”
“Look, was it an ideal situation? Not really. But I was just happy to see him, so I’m taking it as a win.”
He’d been starting to think that Jason was still dead, that he’d gone to hell and still failed Robin. The pain was nothing compared to the relief of seeing him alive.
Overlapping protests and heckles flood the comms.
“Nobody thinks the way that I do,” he sighs.
“Soft spot so big, you'd go to hell and back for him.” Impulse snickers.
“Been there, done that,” Red Robin jokes flippantly.
“So can we talk about your sixty-two-step plan to become ‘totally certified brothers’ with him?”
“Sixty-two?” Pru wheezes.
“I was a Pit trigger!” Tim protests, “we need to work up to it! I’m in it for the long haul, and no we cannot talk about it, you’re going to jinx it and he’ll never want to be my brother.”
“A problem.” Superboy stage-whispers.
Red Robin ignores him. “Speaking of, I’m almost at the cave, so I’ll be switching my comms back to the Bat line.” His voice switches into something more serious, “good work tonight everyone. Upload the mission reports within two days, please. If any of the Bats bother you about the mission or your presence in Gotham, send them my way, I’ll handle them. You were here under my orders.”
He waits until the “copy that”s start flooding in.
“Superboy, signing off.”
“Impulse, signing off.”
“Your favourite assassin, signing off.”
“Wonder Girl, signing off.”
“Red Robin, signing off.”
***
In hindsight, neglecting to account for Oracle was a mistake. One that he resolves to never make again as he tries to speedrun the stages of grief into acceptance at the knowledge that the Bats were listening in on his comm line with YJ (and Pru) the entire time. They’d done a good job of cutting out the incoming audio, but hadn’t realised the backup program running for outgoing audio. He really needs to take a day just to tinker with the comms and figure out how many fail-safes it was programmed with.
(No more half-assed jobs indeed).
“This is fine,” he says out loud.
“A problem,” Jason repeats, an odd mixture of emotions on his face.
Ah, the familiar feeling of Tim eating his words. “Wow, would you look at the time!” He announces loudly, “I think I should–”
He’s hardly taken a step when he’s tugged backwards and Tim twists to regain his balance.
“This is why Edna Mode said no capes,” he mutters, shoving Jason’s hand off his cape.
Jason looks at him, unimpressed. “Mhm. Start talking, kid.”
Tim looks away, rubbing at his neck awkwardly. “It’s a long story, I–”
“How about we start with the Hell thing?” Dick says pleasantly.
“And how you know Constantine.”
His nervousness gives way for a second as he gives Bruce a deadpan look. That would be his question. Bruce just raises his eyebrows. Tim points a finger at him.
“You talk big for the most secretive yet predictable man of the century,” he accuses.
“Tim,” Jason cuts Bruce off before he could reply, “please.”
Tim immediately wilts at the plea. He really needs to get a grip on this whole ‘Jason ProblemTM’ thing. He sighs then pulls himself together.
“It was a month after you died, I wasn’t– it– you were my hero, and let’s just say I wasn’t exactly handling the news of your death… well. I don’t think anybody was, it–”
Tim remembers the dark look on Bruce’s face. The distance between Batman and Nightwing when the Bird had returned from space. The darkness of a Gotham with no Robin. With no Jason. He blinks himself back to present. Like a mission report, he tells himself, taking a breath.
“I did my research and I took a flight to Hungary where I demanded that Constantine teach me necromancy.”
Sharp intakes everywhere.
“How the fuck did you get him to agree to that?” Jason chokes out.
Tim shrugs. “Trust-fund kid, remember?”
Except Tim didn’t have access to his trust fund. He’d used his saved allowance, skimped on meals, taken the shittiest Ryan Air flight he could find, and handed Constantine fifty dollars and an ancient artifact that he’d stolen from his parents’ stores.
Bruce seems to realise that there was something he wasn’t saying, but to Tim’s relief, he doesn’t call him up on it.
“I spent five months training with him,” which mostly meant following the man around the world and acting like an unpaid intern, “and then I came back to Gotham. Necromancy, in a nutshell, is about negotiating for the best deal with demons. It doesn’t necessarily mean selling your soul or going to hell, but I wanted Jason back, fully, none of that half-assed Walking Dead bullshit, and I wanted him to be released with no debts. It was a big ask, so I had to spend some time in hell.”
“How much time?” Dick asks.
“I don’t–”
“Half a year.”
Tim turns to Jason in surprise.
“Half a year,” Jason repeats, voice hollow. He drops into a seat and huffs bitterly. “That’s what he told that fork-tailed demon while we were at the fucking gates of hell.”
“Portal,” Tim corrects, “please don’t mention the Gates.” He winces. Then continues quickly, “Anyway, you were dead for six months, it was a good deal! I went there fully expecting worse, I think he thought he could trap me for longer, but I knew my contracts better than that. And it all worked out! Jason’s alive, and okay yeah, I’m not exactly popular in Hell, but it’s fine.”
“He said you spilled blood,” Jason doesn’t seem very reassured. Tim really needs to work on his comforting skills.
“Well, yes, it was a blood pact, it’s not actually as dramatic as it sounds, necromancy is actually kind of boring when it comes down to it, just kind of… tedious.” Tim shrugs.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Dick interrupts. “I don’t get it, when you came back you– I don’t–”
Here it was, the part that Tim was really dreading. Except, if there was anyone that deserved to know the truth of Tim’s failures, it was the Waynes. Especially after all that he’d done to cause them so much misery. Tim takes a deep breath and steels himself.
“I fucked up.” That… wasn’t what he’d meant to say. He shakes his head. “I accounted for a lot of things, but there was a lot I didn’t account for. When I came back, and there was no news of Jason anywhere, and Batman was more destructive than ever, I knew that something had gone wrong. I messed up.” He grits his teeth. “I didn’t tell you because… there was the risk that I didn’t do it right, how could I tell you that Jason might be alive, but he might not be?”
“I was kidnapped by the League, Timbo,” Jason’s brows furrow, “when you saw that I was alive, you never said–”
“It’s my fault! ” Tim bursts out. “It never would’ve happened if I’d just– planned, had more contingencies!”
“How the fuck is it your fault?” Jason presses back.
“I– I’d only done small things up till then. Spill some blood on a corpse so it can spare a couple seconds to give us a lead, things like that.”
“Small things,” Dick repeats faintly.
Tim crosses his arms in an attempt to keep himself together. “I didn’t bring anyone with me that night. I didn’t know how to explain to you that I wanted to dig up your son’s coffin on the off chance that I could bring him back.”
“Dig me up?” Jason interrupts, confusion in his voice. “But I had to–”
He doesn’t finish the sentence, but Tim knows what he’d been about to say.
“Demons like to play games,” Tim grits his teeth then slams a fist on the table, his eyes slipping shut. A dormant, burning rage boils up in the depths of his gut. “I should’ve known better. That fucking bastard of a—” He cuts himself off and breathes out carefully through his nose, deliberately relaxing his fist and pressing it flat against the table.
“I should’ve– I was so stupid.” He opens his eyes, his shoulders tremble with internally-directed anger, “I’d planned everything, but I thought I’d have time. I knew I’d be going to hell, I knew there was a chance it would even happen that night. But I thought I’d be able to talk to you, to– to, I don’t know, tell you something, have enough time to press the panic button so Batman would come for you, I don’t know.”
“You had a panic button?” Bruce finally says something, something perplexed in his voice.
Tim waves his hand. “Robi– Jason gave it to me. A long time ago. Never used it, but I figured I could press it and you’d be alerted. Instead, I went to hell, and Jason had to fucking dig himself out of his own grave, and he was kidnapped by the fucking League of Assassins and thrown into a Lazarus Pit and it was my fault, and I didn’t know how to tell you that, so I didn’t.”
“You were that kid,” Jason definitely was focusing on the wrong bit here. “The little stalker that fell off the fire-escape. That’s– You– They said I was – am – your hero.”
Tim flushes. One day he’ll learn to keep his mouth shut.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
Tim looks away, which is probably why he doesn’t see Jason cross the distance between them to pull him into a crushing hug.
“Listen to me Tim. It’s not your fault. And thank you.”
Tim can’t believe him, not just yet, but he blinks back tears and allows his hands to curl into the fabric of Jason’s shirt. Allows himself to just sink into the moment he had dreamed of for so long.