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The thing is, Bruce doesn’t talk about Jason.
There’s times when he could. Times when Tim is rummaging through the hollow of a table and finds a page-marked book. Times when Tim declines a ride, and Alfred tells him to at least grab an umbrella, only for Tim to pull out a child-sized rain jacket instead. Times when Tim is reading through old case files and pauses at the signature on the bottom. And there’s the anniversary—where every news outlet and social media platform dredges up memorial stories and posts about Bruce Wayne’s second ward—what an unfortunate accident that was.
But the thing about those times, is that, in the manor, Bruce looks down at whatever object is in front of him, sometimes Tim himself, loses his gaze somewhere else, and changes the subject. In public, Bruce tightens his smile.
Bruce doesn’t talk about Jason.
But Dick does.
The first time Dick sees Tim dressed as Robin, something painful crosses the older man’s face. His smile drags, his eyes turn too-bright, too-damp. He turns first to Bruce, and then Alfred. There’s an exchange of thoughts that Tim knows no one well enough to decode.
And then Dick melts.
He kneels down in front of Tim, like he’s a much younger child.
“You’re going to do great,” Dick promises, and then he pulls Tim into a hug.
Suddenly, Tim is a much younger child. He’s a little boy under a circus tent smelling popcorn-salt and candied treats, being pulled against an older boy for a hug, even as his parents insist he turns to the camera.
Now, Tim puts his nose right back into the crook between Dick’s shoulder and neck. Maybe it shouldn’t feel so right. He barely knows Dick…but doesn’t he?
Dick runs a hand through his hair. “You’re going to make Jason proud,” he says, somewhere near Tim’s ear.
Tim pauses. It’s the first time anyone in the Wayne family has mentioned Jason outside of closed doors and shouting matches. It’s the first time anyone has mentioned Jason to him.
Batman calls for him, already climbing into the Batmobile. Tim breaks away from Dick, only managing to nod.
It’s time for patrol.
Time to make Jason proud.
“Jason would have been good at explaining this,” Dick says as they sit at the island, pouring over Tim’s English homework. “He got straight A’s in this class. I was always better at math.”
Tim hesitates. He doesn’t know what to say—it’s not for him to talk about Jason, is it?
“I think this is a typo though,” Dick says, unbothered by the one-sided conversation. “The apostrophe should be on this side of the ‘s’, since it’s plural?”
“Okay,” Tim says.
He wonders if Jason would say the same. He wonders if Jason would help Tim with his homework to begin with.
“Jason always ordered the neapolitan cone,” Dick says as they stand outside the ice cream shop and Tim continues to drag his feet, indecisive. “He swore by it, but I can never say no to a sundae.”
What should he do? Is Dick telling him to order the neapolitan? Is he telling him not to?
Tim hums, uncommitted. “It all sounds good.”
“Yeah.” Dick drops a hand on Tim’s shoulder. He squeezes. “Whatever you want, okay?”
Tim leans into his side. “A cone sounds good,” he decides. “Maybe the expresso twist? A small’s fine.”
And then Dick orders him a large anyway, and laughs when Tim stares at his mountain of ice cream, eyes wide as saucers.
Tim is at Dick’s apartment, kicking his feet where he sits on the countertop. Dick winds a bandage around his forearm, eyes hard with concentration.
“Sorry,” Tim says. “I should have seen her coming.”
Dick looks up. He carefully wipes something off of Tim’s forehead. Sticky, red. Blood? “It’s okay,” Dick says. “It happens.”
After, they sit on Dick’s couch. Tim has the remote. He’s never been much for movies, or TV, but he picks one that’s hovering in the ‘watch again’ category, figuring at least it’s something Dick likes.
He doesn’t expect Dick to pause. “Oh.”
“Do you want to watch something else?” Tim asks. “I can change it—”
“No,” Dick says. “That’s okay. This was Jason’s favorite.”
Tim rests against the couch, and Dick, and wonders if Jason would have sat on his other side.
Tim is on concussion protocol, staying at the mansion overnight. Except he doesn’t need to be. Bruce is overreacting. He doesn’t want to make Alfred or Bruce worry.
Tim leaves a note and slips out of the window. He’s fine.
He trips on a foothold as he scales the wall.
Dick is there to break his fall with a soft grunt and, as soon as he’s made sure Tim’s no worse off from his fall, a laugh.
“Nice try, Timmy,” Dick says. “Between me and Jason, Bruce has this mansion locked down better than a prison. You’ll need to do better than a window to sneak out.”
Tim wonders if Jason would have caught him too.
“Ugh,” Tim says. “I hate those things.”
They’re loaded into a limousine, picked special for the occasion. This gala was an important one, and Tim socialized and schmoozed much longer than he’d have liked. He’s glad Dick noticed him flagging, and offered Tim’s parents to bring him home. Tim doesn’t know what he said to convince them—he’s just glad he did.
“Yeah,” Dick says, ruffling his hair, disturbing the gelled up hairstyle that makes Tim’s scalp itch. “We all do. Jason used to hide out with the waiters.”
Tim grins. “He was on to something.”
“Robin!” Nightwing shouts, dropping from the rafter s to the warehouse floor. There’s nothing stealthy about his approach. Every hired-hitter in the room turns to the vigilante, guns in hand.
Robin, gagged, arms bound behind his back, chained to metal roof support by a collar, around his neck, like a dog, cries out in alarm. But the noise is muffled, and ignored.
Nightwing bursts into motion. Escrima sticks in hand, he hits kneecaps and collarbones and elbows, aiming for joints and fragile bones that pop and break and send men staggering to the floor in agony. Nightwing spares no one.
“Robin,” Nightwing says as the final man drops, battered and unconscious, to the ground. He crosses to Robin’s side, eyeing the collar pressed around the younger’s throat with a fury that tightens his body and poisons his expression around the domino. Robin’s never been scared of Dick. He isn’t scared—that doesn’t stop him from flinching away from Nightwing.
The older vigilante pauses. “It’s okay,” he says, hands raised. “It’s okay. I’m here. I’m going to get you out—it’s okay.”
And then Nightwing is picking the locks around Tim’s hands, grimacing at the grooves bitten by too-tight metal. He’s undoing the collar, violently casting the chains away from them. He’s lifting Robin against himself, close enough Robin can feel his pulse hammering in his neck as his head is guided to rest there.
“I’m okay,” Robin tells him.
Nightwing nods. “I know, I know. It’s just….”
He doesn’t say anything else.
He doesn't have to—Robin knows this is about Jason.
“Good job,” Dick says, as Tim lands the trick. “You’re catching on quick.”
Tim shrugs. “You’re a good teacher.”
“I’ve had some practice,” Dick says. “Worked all the kinks out.”
Tim hesitates. But Dick has a look on his face, upturned lips, soft eyes. Bitter-sweet. Tim tries his luck. “...you mean with Jason?”
Dick looks over, expression guarded. Tim immediately thinks he’s made a mistake. It’s the first time that Tim’s said Jason’s name since…since convincing Bruce.
But Dick is… Dick. He doesn’t do anything more than melt, regaining his smile. “Yeah,” he says. “It’d been a while since I had to spot someone—I ended up dropping him a few times.”
Tim smiles at that. “I’m sure he loved that.”
“Oh yeah,” and then Dick actually starts to laugh. “Here actually, let me show you.”
And then Dick is crossing to the computer. A few keystrokes brings up a log of training videos, years old. There’s a boy on the screen. Dark hair, red sweats. Jason. He looks young on screen, younger than Tim remembers the Robin he used to trail, camera in hand, through Gotham streets.
Dick starts the video.
They end up camped out in the cave for a few hours. One video turns to one more. At times, Dick laughs, at other’s he has a pained kind of tightness to his neck, his body. Tim watches at his side, as Jason practices flips and cracks jokes and laughs and fills the cold of the cave with a bright charisma Tim can only do his best to copy.
Jason. His Robin. His predecessor.
“Dick,” Tim asks, quiet. “Do you…do you think he would have liked me?”
Dick is immediately pulling Tim into his side. “He would have. He…he was so good with kids, Tim. He would have loved having a little brother.”
But Tim wonders if that would have been him.
Tim is in his room at the Titan’s tower. His eyesight is smudged with sleep deprivation but his heart is still hammering from the latest nightmare. He can’t find it in himself to straighten out the mess of blankets on his bed.
Tim is relatively thirsty—it’s enough of a reason.
He heads to the kitchen.
There’s lighting in the hallways, too many late-night trip ups and accidents on the stairs to do without. Riding the edges of the dim cast, feet socked and silent, Tim doesn’t wake any of the team up as he leaves the bedroom wing and heads down the hall.
Except there’s already someone awake.
A red mask—no helmet—swims in front of Tim’s vision, sharpening with sudden adrenaline. He pulls back, too slow. Gloved hands clutch his shoulders, a punch is delivered to his temple. Tim’s ears ring, black spots crawl in front of his face. He cries out but a glove is already clasping the lower half of his face, so big, swallowing his voice, swallowing him. Tim kicks out at where his assailant is. There’s a grunt, and then a hit to Tim’s diaphragm. Choking on the metallic leather pressed to his teeth, Tim blacks out.
What happens next is a blur.
There’s blood running down his eyes, there’s agony twisting his arm, there’s blinding pain lapping his nerves. Tim thrashes and sinks in and out of a daze.
Then suddenly Tim is breathing. He can see. He can feel —though he wishes he couldn’t. A noise crawls up his throat, involuntary. The helmet swims in front of his vision. Is it smiling? It can’t, can it?
And then the helmet is gone.
Dark hair.
Green eyes.
“Hello,” says an aged distortion. “Replacement.”
An eternity later, Dick is there, holding him tight. “Shh, Timmy,” he says, hushing, cradling, squeezing. “It’s going to be okay—it’s going to be okay.”
Tim swallows the wads of blood collecting in his teeth. He can say it now, can’t he?
Tim curls right into the crook between Dick’s neck, and shoulder.
The only word he mentions is a name.
Batman is Hood this, and Hood that. Dick is gray eyes and frozen everything. Alfred trembles as he wraps the damage to Tim’s body.
“Jason,” Tim says, as they watch the surveillance video. He’s the only one to call him that.
Robin is flightless in crime alley. His suit is torn, his boots and gloves and cape missing. One of his eyes is too swollen to see through and each step is agony on his busted ankle. Something muscular in his leg snaps with each step. Robin stumbles into the alley wall, finding a handhold with doubled vision, except he doesn’t.
Falling to the ground, scattering muck and trash, Robin’s ribs scream. His body oozes pain, his mind works in a forced numbness. He should be cataloging injuries, stopping bleeding, playing damage control. He should be climbing somewhere high and safe to wait it out until Batman finds him.
But Batman isn’t coming.
Robin’s coms are gone. His panic button is gone—cut off his suit. The backup in his boot is gone. His belt and the one built in there is missing too.
No one knows to come find him.
No one knows he’s bleeding out in crime alley, too hurt to know if anyone is coming closer. Too hurt to fight them off. To hurt to do anything more than hope he dies alone—here, dressed as he is, it’s better than the alternative.
The numbness sets into Robin’s bones, the blood soaks into his flesh.
He closes his eyes.
And then there are hands.
Robin can’t even fight them off—the leather, the smell of copper. He barely feels the body that he’s held against, or the swaying of the steps away from the alleyway.
But he sees the red.
He sees the helmet.
“Don’t die yet, Replacement,” Hood says. “I’m not done with you.”
Jason.
“Jason saved me,” Tim says.
Bruce goes cold. He pulls away from the infirmary bed. “Rest up, chum.”
“Very impressive,” Hood says, looking over the building edge, where Robin dangles, one foot caught on a drainage pipe, very much sprained, very much hurting, and very much holding him from plummeting stories to the concrete below.
“Ja—” Robin cuts himself off. Masks. “Hood. Help?”
Hood snorts. “I should be getting paid for this—I didn’t sign up for babysitting. But there’s no way I’m letting you die this easy.”
He reaches down, snatches Robin by the neck of his uniform, and pulls him to the roof—gone before Robin can say much of anything else.
Nightwing is there minutes later. “Robin!”
“I’m okay,” Robin says. “Hood saved me.”
Nightwing pauses. “...Hood.”
Tim is a civilian. He can’t pick locks, he can’t headbutt kidnappers in the nose, or climb to the rafters and jump out the window, rolling to the safest landing one can manage at that height.
But with the bruises on his body, the look in the man’s eyes, Tim wants to.
He wants to be home.
“Let’s send a picture to Daddy,” the man says, grinning. He grabs Tim by his hair, dragging his face up, to show the purpling, the blood crusted under his nose. “Mr. Wayne is going to pay a boatload for you kid, even if you are a bastard.”
Tim blinks as the camera goes off, blinding. He knows the rumors. He doesn’t say anything.
The man drops onto a couch across the room, fiddling with his phone. Tim hopes he has a direct line to Bruce, to the police. The last thing he wants is another picture of him, bleeding, tied up, damaged rolling around social media.
But the man doesn’t get the time to post or send anything.
Window glass shatters, and then a person is dropping the ground lightning-fast, whisper-quiet.
Batman, Tim thinks.
Then he sees the red.
Hood doesn’t hesitate to pull out his gun and fire. One, twice, three times. The man still isn’t dead, but wounds like that, he will be.
Then Hood is across the room, tugging Tim free of ropes, yanking his face this way and that to take in the bruising. Before Tim can say anything, Hood grabs his nose and pulls.
Blinding, splotching pain erupts between his eyes. Tim cries out.
“You could thank me, you know,” Hood points out, lifting him to his feet. “I’m saving you from plastic surgery.”
“Thank you,” Tim says.
Hood looks like he didn’t expect that.
Then, he’s gone.
“Here,” Hood says, throwing Robin the flash drive he came for. “Looking for this?”
Robin frowns. “I don’t really need evidence anymore—you just killed them all.”
Hood snorts. It…it almost sounds like sitting next to Dick, watching old training videos of a cheerful, laughing kid. “Snooze you lose.”
“Leg up,” Hood says, propping Robin’s ankle on a wooden crate. He presses Robin’s own cape against the gash in his upper shoulder, blood still sluicing from the wound, staining.
“Hood,” Robin says. There’s no one around. He grabs Hood’s hand in his own. “Jason.”
Hood freezes. He pulls away. “Hold that,” he says, nodding with his chin to the injury. “Wing’s nearby, he’ll be here soon.”
“He saved me,” Tim says. “He saved me again.”
Dick nods slowly.
“Goddamnnit Robin,” Hood is there, pulling him into his arms. Robin sees that helmet, he sees the green eyes, the dark hair, he sees open, gray, Gotham sky, and hears tires squealing, and then he sees stone. He sees the cave.
Bruce is there. Alfred is there. Dick is there.
And Hood is there.
Robin rolls in and out of consciousness. He reaches out, snatches the smell of copper and the touch of leather, and he holds Hood’s hand and he does not let go.
He’s allowed to say it now.
“Jason,” he says. “Don’t leave.”
Jason stops by the manor. Jason, not Hood. He hovers in the doorway as Alfred all but pulls him inside, yanking away his boots and jacket and holding them hostage as he escorts his grandchild into the home.
Tim is waiting.
“Jason!” he says, sitting at the countertop, papers scattered around him. “Can you check my MLA formatting?”
And then Dick is there, with a grin like wildfire. “I told him you were better at this than me,” Dick says.
Jason hugs himself. “...sure.”
It’s Dick who jimmies the lock on the window and tugs Tim into the apartment. “C’mon,” he says.
“Isn’t this kind of…rude?” Tim asks.
“We’re family,” Dick says dismissively.
“You’re a pain in my ass,” says Jason from further in the living area, cocking a gun in their direction. He’s not wearing a shirt, displaying a mess of bandages and bruising.
Dick’s expression is something he reserves for puppies and kittens. “Little Wing!”
Ignoring the gun, Dick crosses the room, and goes for a hug.
Jason dodges by settling into the couch. He pauses the TV with a sigh. “How’d you find me?”
“Babs,” Dick says adoringly. “Do you need anything? Water? Meds? A blanket?”
Jason shakes his head. “I’m fine. You can leave.”
“I’m not leaving you when you’re injured,” Dick tells him plainly. He settles across from Jason.
“You’ll be here a while then,” Jason says.
Dick looks at him seriously. “I’ll be here a while then.”
Red crawls up the back of Jason’s neck, and in lieu of something to say he resumes the show.
Dick looks over at Tim then and pats the spot beside him invitingly…the spot between him and Jason. “C’mere, Timmy.”
Tim hesitates, but Jason doesn’t say anything. Tim tentatively sits between them, not close enough to touch Jason, but near enough to feel warmth.
Tim shows up at the safehouse he bribed Oracle for the location to. He knocks on the door. Moments later it opens, fast, aggressive. It’s Jason, red sweats, hair shower-damp.
“What—”
“I brought neapolitan,” Tim says.
Jason lets him inside.
Tim climbs out of the infirmary bed, pulling off leads as he goes. Luckily there’s no IV, catheters, or more involved hook-ups to deal with. He stumbles across the cave floor, heading for the R-Cycle. He needs to help.
Except then Jason is there, bedhead and scowl affixed.
“You know we get an alert when you remove those things?”
But Tim is still half-concussion and half-exhaustion. He can only shrug.
Jason sighs. “Where’re you trying to go?”
“Room,” Tim says, because he’s not about to admit he was trying to get to the Robin suit.
“C’mon then.” Jason grabs him under the armpit and hoists him up the stairs. “I never liked the infirmary beds either.”
“Master Jason,” Alfred says disapproving as Jason rummages through a stock of weapons in the cave.
“What?” Jason asks as he pilfers. “It’s not like he’s going to need them.”
“You better hurry,” Dick says, hanging from his bars, suit and all. “Bruce is almost ready.”
“Your hair, Master Grayson,” Alfred scolds.
"Sorry, Alf."
Tim checks his own hair. Still itchy, still gelled. “This sucks,” he moans.
Jason snorts at him. “Which venue is it?”
“The Hall,” Dick says.
Jason’s face twists distastefully. “I hate that place,” he says. “I used to hide in the coat closet.”
Tim is contemplative. Alfred notices.
“I think not, Master Timothy.”
Tim holds his hands up in surrender.
Tim steps out of the cave’s showers, barely able to stand. When did he last sleep? He should grab a coffee. He has a piercing headache, roiling nausea, and aching molars that tell him it’s been too long.
Tim sloths his way to the kitchen, which Alfred has momentarily vacated, luckily. His hands tremble as he battles the coffee maker.
And then there are other hands.
Jason pulls him away with a frown. “Maybe not,” he says.
“Just a cup,” Tim mumbles, gaze fixed on his empty mug.
Jason shakes his head. “I think it’s time for you to hit the hay Timbers.”
“I still have to write my report—”
But Jason isn’t Dick, who pulls Tim away from work with soft sideways hugs and pleases and thank you’s. Jason just grabs Tim by the middle and hoists him over his shoulder.
“Jason!” Tim exclaims. He hits between his shoulder blades, for all that does.
Jason’s back rumbles with a laugh. “You can thank me in the morning.”
“When I have all my work piled up for me?”
“How do you have piles?” Jason says, and Tim can hear the eyeroll. They climb up the stairs and into the wing of bedrooms. “All you do is work.”
Tim huffs and stops trying to escape. He goes boneless and heavy, as spiteful as he can manage. Jason just knees open the door to Tim’s room and chucks him on the bed.
The effect is immediate.
Tim’s eyes close like gravity is yanking on his eyelids. He thoughts swim, languid, relaxed. He barely remembers Jason is in the room.
He barely remembers the hand that tugs his blankets up, patting him on the shoulder. He barely hears the sigh, something fond and quiet and rare.
He barely feels as Jason ruffles his hair and mumbles, “Good job, Robin,” voice pitched how Tim doesn’t know it. “Proud of you.”