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“What’s eatin’ at’cha Narrows?”
Duke startles and looks up from where he’s sitting on the roof to see Jason settling down next to him, lighting a cigarette.
“Someone needs to get you a bell, man. Can’t believe you’re the largest guy here and somehow the quietest too,” Duke complains, and Jason huffs a breath that all the birds know basically translates to a laugh. He takes a drag from the cigarette, flicking the ashes off the end.
“Dick tried once, back when it was jus’ me ‘n him,” Jason offers, and Duke barks out a laugh, startled at this new information.
“Where’s it then?” He asks, and Jason shakes his head, smiling to himself.
“Didn’t work.”
“How’s you end up livin’ with the richest man on the East Coast and ya get a defective bell?” Duke doesn’t usually let his accent slip—he’s from the Narrows, and he’s not ashamed of it, but he finds conversing with Damian and Cass easier when he uses the Central Gothamite accent.
Jason brings it out of him, though. He tends to somehow pull everyone’s native accents out—his, Steph’s, Dick’s, and Damian’s. He’s got a weird talent for it.
Somehow, Duke feels like the East End accent is something tangible—nostalgic, maybe. Like a childhood home you’ve moved out of that you can never go back to. It’s a distressing type of soothing, he thinks.
“I learnt how ‘ta be silent ‘fore I could walk, Narrows.” Jason comments, and Duke doesn’t get it—not exactly, but it must show on his face because Jason elaborates further. “My pops, Willis, wasn’t a gentle man, an’ my Ma—Catherine, would get upset whenever she caught me stealin’ her needles from her. Had ‘ta be silent a lot back then. ‘Sides, you do it too, ya’ know. Quiet as a mouse when ya need’ta be. When it’s necessary.”
Duke doesn’t know what to say to that, in all honesty. He doesn’t think he gets it—he lived a pretty happy home life with his parents in the suburbs of the Narrows for most of his life after all. Least, before everything went to shit. He tells Jason as much, and Jason smiles sadly.
“Nah, you get it—ya’ lived on the streets for a time ain’t ‘ya?” Duke nods, and Jason nods along with him, watching the plume of smoke drift away in the wind.
“Ya walk the streets at night—no armor, no gear, no weapons—jus’ the clothes on your back an’ empty pockets. Ya’ prolly had a backpack of things—maybe you were able ta’ keep yours longer than I did—but ya’ walk past all them other street kids and adults in the alleys in the East End in the dead of night? C’mon, Duke. I know ya’ know how ta’ be silent. You just ain’t ever realize that’s what it was.”
Duke’s quiet for a long moment as he turns Jason’s words over in his head. Watches Jason exhale the cigarette smoke as he thinks.
He’s right—Jason usually is, when it comes to things like this.
Duke recalls instinctively knowing how to muffle sound coming from a backpack full of things—food or water, or clothes. Books from school or medical supplies he took from the CVS on Crestwood, and suddenly, he understands what Jason’s talking about.
He and Jason—Steph too, probably—all cut from the same cloth. They knew how to be silent from the get-go. Nothing learned from Batman there, only how to utilize it in the right ways.
“Huh. Guess you’re right, Jay.”
“Course I am. Now tell me why you’re up ‘ere all ‘lone an’ not with the others participating in the Wii Sports tournament in the Den.”
It was a rough week for the Bats, everyone having had a long week of their own team missions and individual missions in and out of Gotham. Diana and Clark suggested that the immediate Batfamily have a week-long break from missions and patrolling.
Obviously, this meant that the birds decided that this was the opportune time to find who would replace Jason as the reigning Wii Sports champion of the family.
In true Alfred-fashion, everything must be fair, so reigning winners were not allowed to compete for the title in the tournament following their win. Which is why Jason is not currently wrecking Timbit’s shit in tennis right now.
It was also Duke’s first Wii Sports tournament, which is why Jason was concerned that the younger had snuck off to the roof by himself.
“I lost in baseball like four rounds ago, man,” Duke replies, and Jason shakes his head.
“Kay, first of all, it’s a tournament—so you getta have a lot more chances than you think you have to win the tourney. Second, I know that’s not all, Duke. Somethin’’s been eatin’ at ‘ya since before ya lost in baseball, I can see it on your face.”
“I just—” Duke stops. He doesn’t know how to say this, not in a way that Jason would understand. “I don’ know how to put it inta words.”
Jason nods, quiet understanding shining in his blue-green eyes, and even though Duke wasn’t a part of the family when Jason was pit-crazy, he’s read reports, and he’s always been able to see that acidic green in Jason’s eyes.
It makes him sick to think about the first time he met Jason, and how he was initially so uncomfortable with his eyes because of that green glow that mirrored Joker’s green so well.
Duke is so incredibly thankful he had never once said anything about it before Tim read him in on the “inter-bat-office essential need-to-know list,” which included practically everything, from a most likely very, very abridged version of Jason’s death, to what foods you should not feed Damian’s animals unless you would like to experience a stabby evening with the youngest member of the family.
“You guys are just really close, I think.” Duke thinks about how easy the ribbing, friendly competition, and banter are between the others, and he feels displaced. Like a broken branch grafted onto a different family tree.
Like he doesn’t belong.
“I just don’t—” He sighs, “I just don’t know where I fit into all of that, I guess.”
Duke shrugs and tries to fight the chill of the night, trying not to tremble, but Jason has already shrugged his worn leather jacket off and dropped it onto Duke’s shoulders. Jason is a tall man—he’s the biggest of all the bats, with only Bruce holding a candle to Jason’s post-pit bulk, but Duke isn’t small by any means, and so the Jacket doesn’t drown him the way he’s seen it drown Damian and Tim before. He still burrows himself into the jacket instantly.
It’s a warm jacket, especially with Jason’s residual body heat. It smells like cigarettes and Alfred’s chicken pot pie and the tea that Damian’s mom sends them every month.
Duke has seen this jacket on every bird he can think of in the immediate family, and yet he can’t think of any specific moment where Jason actually willingly takes it off to let someone else use it. It's usually shrugged off after someone else complains about how cold they are as a manipulation tactic and whines at Jason until he hands over the single most comforting article of clothing in the family.
Duke feels a little embarrassed about it all of a sudden. He didn’t mean to have Jason shred his jacket just because he was a little cold.
Jason takes a drag of his cigarette and thinks back to a time when Dick hated Bruce and took it out on him, and when he hated Bruce and took it out on Tim, and when Tim hated Bruce, and—you know what, he’s starting to see a pattern. Fortunately for Duke, no one was in their “actively hating Bruce stage,” so Duke probably gets to be exempt from that particular little initiation tradition.
And Dick is better at this stuff—the mushy, emotionally charged stuff, because Dick is an empath and has to feel everything everyone feels all the time, but Jason can suck it up just once and play the emotionally competent big brother for a change. Give a Dick a break once in a while.
“You don’t need ‘ta know where, Duke. You already fit in it all. You have since you donned the Robin colors.” Jason says, and Duke ducks his head, feeling awkward.
Duke takes a couple of minutes to try to formulate his next sentence, but it just comes out as a bunch of aborted inhales and exhales.
They sit in the quiet of the night for a bit, and Jason exhales another puff of smoke as they hear the others shouting, something about how Tim definitely cheated, and neither of them can really make out Damian’s words exactly, but they both know he’s most likely threatening bodily harm. There’s a sudden quiet that suggests that Alfred has intervened in the argument, and Jason flicks more ash onto the roof.
“You’re allowed to feel weird about it.” He says, and Duke glances at him in a silent question.
“You had a happy family and a whole ass life before you came to us, Duke. The good, the bad—all that doesn’t go away just ‘cause you got roped into our special brand of chaos. You can have both, Nightlight. You’ll always have people in your corner—whether it's us, or your peoples from before you came to be with us. You don’t stop existing just ‘cause you remove yourself from one situation or another. The people you knew before us are always gonna know you, and we will now, too. You’re a part’a everyone you’ve ever known, and everyone you will know. You’re allowed to be happy and have fun with us, and be sad about the life you might’a left behind, but nothing’s ever gone, Duke. All ya gotta do is talk about it. Even the things you don’t talk about live on in your head and eventually find their way back to ya.”
Jason’s not exactly sure what he wants to say, or what he’s trying to get at, and he will always insist that Dick is better at this kinda thing, but he must be doing something right, because Duke is staring in the direction of West Mercy Hospital, and tears are rolling down his cheeks.
Jason’s cigarette has burned itself down to the filter while he was talking, so he stubs it out on the roof and wraps his arm around Duke’s shoulder, tucking the younger boy into his side, the way Dick did for him once upon a time, and the way he does for Damian and Tim, sometimes.
He lets his head drop on top of Duke’s and sighs.
“It’s okay to feel lonely and lost. But never let anyone make you feel like you don’ belong, Duke. Not even yourself. You’ll carve out your own space in the world soon enough, and you already have one here, with us. You can come and go as you please,” Jason exhales a slightly shaky breath, “but the Manor is always a home to come back to, okay?”
Duke nods and sniffles, wiping his tear tracks with his hand. “Thanks, Jay.”
Jason reaches into the pocket of his jacket and snags the pack of cigarettes, “No problem, man, happens to everyone. You should head back inside, though, think they’re lookin’ for ya.” He can hear Tim yelling their names up the stairs. Jason shakes the cigarette box, “Im’a smoke another one for a bit.”
Duke nods and stands up to make his way back inside when he pauses, “Did’ja call me Nightlight—earlier?”
Jason side-eyes him as he lights the cigarette, shielding the lighter’s flame from the night breeze. “Ya glow in the dark, man.”
Duke thinks back to his mom and how she used to call Duke her nightlight—right after his powers had manifested, before he could control them. He thought about how he constantly lit up in the dark for a while.
Perhaps everything does find its way back to you.
“Duke, Jay? We’re starting the bowling section, get off the roof already!” Tim yells from the open window they all use for roof access, and Duke laughs and hops down into the attic, telling Tim that Jason was taking a smoke break.
“Come back in when you’re done, Jay! Ya gotta crown the next winner of the tourney! Pass the torch and all that.” Duke shouts at him from the window, and Jason replies with an unconcerned affirmative.
Jason looks out at the moon and shuts his eyes. He can feel the shift in the air that tells him his big brother has found him. Dick was never that great at being silent.
Dick comes out onto the roof and settles down next to Jason, snagging the cigarette from his cold fingers. “Let him use your jacket, I see,” Dick says, taking a small drag, and Jason huffs, fake-annoyed as he steals the cig back.
“Shut up Dickie. You shoulda came out here instead of me. I don’t know how to talk all feelings and emotions like you.”
Dick laughs and bumps his shoulder with Jason’s. “I think you did pretty well for yourself, Little Wing. Duke looked lighter. Happier. Seriously, though, I can’t remember the last time you let anyone else borrow that jacket without sufficient whining and injuries.”
Jason, similarly, can’t recall lending out his jacket unprompted before, and he thinks Duke has nothing to worry about. He’s already one-upped everyone else, after all.
He smokes the rest of the cigarette with Dick, and it’s—soothing, somehow. Nostalgic, maybe. In a muted and quietly distressing way.
They haven’t shared a cigarette since before Jason died, and from the way Dick is trying to control his sporadic coughs, he hasn’t smoked since then either. Dick was never the smoker between the two of them, though. He just knew that Jason was still the same little brother he had lost all those years ago, and still appreciated the company Dick provided when they shared a cigarette on the roof.
And suddenly it's like they’re 18 and 12 again, 19 and 13, 20 and 14, 21 and 15—hiding up on this same rooftop, bitching about Bruce to each other.
22 and—dead.
23 and alone.
28 and 22, finally—picking up right where they left off. Passing a cigarette back and forth as if that was their biggest secret in the world.
They both know when they go back inside, they’ll have Bruce on both their asses, because they haven’t both come back inside smelling like smoke in so long, and Bruce had been so visibly lighter when he thought Dick kicked the habit after Jason’s death, even though it was never his habit to kick. And Jason never usually smokes at the manor, so he knows when Alfred catches a whiff of them, he’ll be just as exasperated.
For now, though, they had to watch Damian thoroughly kick Tim’s ass at Wii bowling because Jason didn’t teach the youngest how to get strike after strike and not get to see it in action.
They go back inside to watch Duke get a Turkey as Tim, Damian, Cass, and Steph all watch in poorly-concealed disbelief. Turns out Duke was holding out on everyone.
Maybe somehow you're always meant to find your own way back to your home, one way or another.
(Maybe they can stay.)