Krunch

Christmas brought the inevitable. 

Jason always approached the winter like an enemy combatant. He had a military biography phase six months ago, and it left him with a permanent sense he was General Custer in real life. December always left him feeling more like Napoleon embarking on a fool’s crusade against Russia in winter, but Jason knew how to learn from other people’s mistakes. He knew how to make the shelter rotations, whose couch to sleep on, which camps were a no-go and which were alright, and which abandoned buildings the fuzz hadn’t discovered yet. Jason knew how to live his own damn life. He always made it through into March’s other side, and that had always been good enough for him.

But not for Bruce Wayne. Because Stephanie Brown and Tim Drake were coming home, and Tim was losing ground to the colonizers. His worst enemies. The infractors.

(Objectively, Jason was the one moving into somebody else’s home. But he definitely wasn’t the colonizer here. He was gaining no resources but Legos and Nerf guns. The territory was up for grabs and he was going to defend it).

Tim Drake wasn’t so bad, if only because he was a known quantity. Known super obnoxious and ultra pretentious quantity. He had come home from MIT a few times (actual MIT!) to conduct mysterious business that seemed to involve a lot of disappearing into the Batcave and getting snippy with Bruce, and although he wasn’t particularly nice to Jason he wasn’t particularly mean either. Jason had bounced through enough group homes that he appreciated that. 

The second time Tim visited - the first time Jason worked up the guts to actually talk with him - was the time to make his move. The opening gambit would be a scouting mission. He decided to push his luck and slither down into the Batcave, even though Bruce discouraged going down there without him. Guy didn’t make a rule about it. If Jason got caught he could pretend he was looking for Bruce in pursuit of following the rules. It was a gamble but Jason knew the odds.

The Batcave had been empty of Batman. There was only Tim Drake, sitting at a work table, bent over the deflated suit and holding a soldering iron. A chunky laptop balanced on the limp knees, and when combined with Tim’s giant goggles it gave him a creepy Young Frankenstein air. Bent over the Batsuit like that, he looked like a mad scientist dissecting Batman’s corpse.

Jason had carefully sidled up to Tim, keeping a healthy distance from the torch. Tim had split the cowl’s casing open like snapping open a skull to fish out the brains with an oyster fork, and he was doing something mysterious to the wiring inside. Jason couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

Tim didn’t say anything until he finished. He pushed up the welding mask, shucking his gloves and shaking out his hair. “Can I help you?”

It wasn’t telling him to go away. Jason would press his luck until he was chased off. He sidled a little bit closer, gawking at the dissected Batsuit. “What’re you doing?”

“Installing some hardware to run a program I coded. Batsuit has facial recognition now. You’re welcome.” Tim took off the welding mask, carelessly dropping it on the floor. “You don’t need anything.”

Jason was baffled for a second before he realized Tim had meant the question literally - that he hadn’t been prompting Jason to talk, but asking if Tim needed to do anything for him. Practical guy who welded Star Trek tech into a superhero costume. But maybe he was right - Jason did need something from him. A measure of the situation.

Jason didn’t slide any closer, but he did tug a little at the hem of his fancy shirt. It was just red, but a fancy red. “Are we chill?”

Tim stared at him blankly. “Chill?”

“Uh. Cool.”

More stares. “Why wouldn’t we be cool?”

Was that a rhetorical question? Jason hadn’t met a normal person in months. “I’m kinda in your house,” Jason pointed out. “Eating your food. Being up in your space.” Being adopted by your legal guardian, but like in the weirdest way possible.

“I don’t really live here anymore,” Tim said slowly, “so…”

Great. Pure confusion. This guy didn’t have normal people emotions. Jason’s shoulders fell in relief. “Dope. I’ll just stay outta your hair. Won’t even know I’m here. Good talk.”

Tim stared at him for another long second, face blank, and a few seconds of hot panic hit Jason before he finally spoke again. “You really aren’t anything like Steph.”

Yeah. Jason fucking got that.

It was always a bad thing. They pretended it wasn’t a bad thing. Oh, nobody ever said it was bad Jason wasn’t Stephanie fucking Brown. But they didn’t need to say it. Jason was a master of tactics and strategy, and he knew he was without resources. 

Resources, in this context, being a goddamn fucking perfect blue eyed blonde haired hot white girl. Being peppy and happy and nice. Apparently being some kind of dumb genius who knew everything and everyone. Jason didn’t have any of that. Without any resources or allies, his idiot new life knocked him flat on his back every time. Jason wasn’t Stephanie Brown, and boy did they let him know it. 

To be fair, Jason was pretty sure Bruce wasn’t doing it on purpose. His emotional intelligence was somewhere between rock bottom and zero. It was tragic, inconvenient, and not his fault, like he was a three legged dog. Jason got that he missed Queen of the Universe, but he didn’t bring up Tim in the same way. Granted, Jason already got the vibes that Bruce knew Tim was not normal whatsoever. Stephanie Brown was the paragon of normality to Bruce. Which was too bad for Jason.

Oh? You live in the East End? What do you mean you don’t know everybody in the East End? Stephanie Brown knows everybody.

Here’s a map, memorize it in fifteen minutes. What do you mean you can’t do that? Stephanie Brown can do that.

Why are you upset over your crook dad and druggie mom? Stephanie has a crook dad and druggie mom, and it doesn’t bother her -

Whatever. So sue him. Jason sucked. He wasn’t a genius mad scientist or perfection incarnate. It didn’t matter. So long as he stayed over the ‘return Jason like a lost puppy’ bar everything was chill. 

They could throw him out if they wanted. Jason didn’t even care. He had blackmail material, he could squeeze them. He was pretty sure Selina would help him out, even if it was only to spite Bruce. That woman played cute and everything, but Jason had her number. Spite was the gas in her engine and she was moving a hundred and twelve miles per hour. 

Jason was a soldier of life, who approached the world with a strategist’s grim mindset. Goal: stay in the semi-heated mansion featuring hot food and a security system at least until March. Impediment: Stephanie Brown and Tim Drake were coming home, highlighting Jason’s innumerable faults and subpar everything. Potential casualties: Stephanie and Tim’s presence could…end up with Jason kicked out for some reason, that part was fuzzy, but it was definitely a danger. Plan of action: be super polite, hope, and pray.

Tim came home first, blown inside with the blustery wind and spears of delicate ice. Jason had been working on homework in the library when he walked through the door, and pretended he couldn’t hear the clumps and noises of suitcases and warm-ish greetings and thumps of feet on hardwood. He waited several hours until he was comfortably pushing the perceptible threshold of purposeful avoidance before emerging from the library. Make an appearance - not avoiding you, look at my chubby cheeks! - and beat it. Plan of action, commence. 

Tim and Bruce were sitting in the fancier family living room - not the one for guests or the more relaxed den, the one for family but in a slightly more formal way and Jason felt like a fucking idiot stringing these words together in this order - on the fancy couches, talking quietly with each other. Jason absently noted that Tim was sitting in an armchair perpendicular from Bruce on the couch. Sitting closer to each other, but not on the same piece of furniture.

They both looked up when Jason stopped at the doorway, absently clutching the doorjamb and wriggling a little. Bruce’s expression lightened, but Tim just blinked sleepily. Guy always looked half-asleep and a million miles away.

“Jason. You finish your homework?”

“He has you doing the Bat-homework?” Tim asked, blinking slowly. He was like a sloth at the zoo. “That’s a throwback. Stephanie did nothing but read those textbooks for months. They’re pretty tough. Frustrated the hell out of her.”

Bruce just smiled faintly - a big grin on anybody else. “I think the first textbook she read since sixth grade was a college textbook on forensic profiling. Finished it in a week and asked for the next one.”

Thirty seconds. It took thirty seconds. That had to be a new record.

“It’s just normal homework. And yeah, I finished for the week.” Jason swung from the doorjamb, gawking at Tim. He hoped it was subtle. Maybe not. It was still weird to see anybody else in here. Tim didn’t exactly come back a lot, and he always acted like they were work trips. Maybe they were? “Hi, Tim.”

“Yo. Settling in alright?” Jason nodded fastidiously. “Good. Tell Bruce if you need anything.” Tim turned back to Bruce, brushing Jason off. “It’s just too research focused. Everybody’s hung up on theoreticals and theorems. It’s not useful, Bruce. I could be five times as productive in industry right now.” Bruce ticked an eyebrow at him. “It’s not the classroom.”

“It’s just a change, Tim. It’s the change that’s bothering you, not the school. You picked MIT specifically for its resources and access. Those are worth suffering your peers.”

“Its resources aren’t being used properly. All they’re doing is diagnosing brain tumors and providing clean drinking water to Bialyans. Dr. Hagelstein just invented a clean superconductor without a turbine. Like, who cares.”

Jason perked up. “Clean drinking water? How are they doing it? Like, in a fancy new way?”

“Dunno. I skipped the grant acceptance speech. The Queen of Bialya was attending, so I used the window to install remote access software in her assistant’s laptop.”

“Uh,” Jason said.

Bruce didn’t even have the decency to be surprised. “Why would you do that?”

Tim gave Bruce an incredulous look, as if he had no idea Bruce could reach such depths of stupidity. “Nobody’s been able to make the human trafficking charges against Queen B stick. This is how I’m finally going to siphon her incriminating signed orders.”

“Do I need to give you the destabilizing foreign governments talk again, Tim -”

“What do I look like, the CIA? I mostly just wanted the link into the Light’s movements.” Bruce opened his mouth. “I swear to god they exist and I know for a fact Ra’s is a founding member. I need the conspiracy dirt so I can finally have some blackmail on that man. I don’t have anything and it’s pissing me off.”

“Don’t destroy the League of Assassins without clearance,” Bruce said absently. He scratched his chin, for all appearances deep in thought. “The signed orders could give the Justice League probable cause to legally assault her underground bunker system.”

“The one obviously filled with illegal Kryptonite? You just want the League to confiscate it before the US government does.”

“That was implied, yes.”

“I’m gonna go help Alfred in the kitchen,” Jason said.

The kitchen: where nobody committed international espionage. Anymore. 

Tim was cool. He didn’t look, talk, act, or behave like a superhero, but he totally was one. Jason wasn’t certain Tim knew what and wasn’t legal, but everything he did was really important in saving Gotham. And becoming a world power. He was larger than life, strong like steel and just as impenetrable. Jason did not feel obligated to understand or bond with him. It felt stupid to even try, like an intern trying to talk about their girl troubles with the CEO. Tim obviously felt the same way, so Jason was really glad they were on the same page. He was a little worried about what happened to people who were not on the same page as Tim. Were they ever seen again?

Despite the questionable supervillain stuff, Tim was navigable. Cassandra Kane was also navigable. Very navigable - apparently she wouldn’t be home this break at all. Jason had never even met the woman, despite her legal status as Bruce’s long lost orphaned cousin.

She went in and out of the manor as she pleased, going wherever she wanted and doing God knows what. Jason was only pretty sure that Cass was a Batman thing and not an actual, legitimate jet-setting foreign cousin. He couldn’t say for sure. He didn’t exactly want to walk up to Kate Kane at a party and ask if Cass was actually her half-sister or if she was a mysterious Bat-byproduct that Kate was in on. Too awkward if he was wrong. 

Apparently she used to stay home a little more often, but since Stephanie and Tim left for college she had left to go do…whatever it was that Cassandra Kane did…by herself. In…Hong Kong? Thailand? Indonesia? It was really unclear. Jason was fine with this. The woman was obviously no threat, even if absolutely nobody had ever explained what her deal was. Bruce and Alfred sounded really fond when they talked about her, and even Tim obviously cared about her. How this translated to ‘Cass is somewhere, doing wherever, she’ll be back who knows when, hope she’s having a blast’, Jason had no idea. Convenient for him, though. It meant he only had to worry about Stephanie Brown.

Apparently Stephanie Brown was coming back to Gotham tomorrow, but she was spending a day with her friends and family in the Bowery before moving into the manor. Jason heard about this at length - from Tim’s long-ass cell phone calls with her to Bruce excitedly talking with the equally excited Tim about their holiday plans together. Excitedly for the both of them looked a little like having a facial expression, but still - excitedly.

Jason’s name was coming up a lot during their plans. This worried him. It might put a crimp into his plans to avoid everybody. 

He could already tell it would be pretty easy to avoid Tim. It wasn’t even that hard to play it cool around him. Cassandra would obviously be a breeze - he wasn’t entirely sure she knew he existed. Cass was another randomly appearing Asian cousin, she’d get it. But he could make no promises around Stephanie. He would stay stone against the chaotic tides of blonde women. He would not be moved. Jason was going to be as polite as Alfred and as saltine cracker as everybody in the house. 

Jason and Bruce had a little ritual. They would hang out in the Batcave for a little while pre-patrol - just Jason spinning around in the chair in front of the Batcomputer as Bruce stretched and got ready for patrol. Then Batman would hop into the car, the revving of engines would scream into the air, and Jason would wave as Batman zoomed off into the night. Alfred would walk Jason back up afterwards - partly because it was his bedtime and partly because Jason still wasn’t allowed in the Batcave by himself. Alfred would get him settled into bed, making sure Jason brushed his teeth. He always forgot.

And when Jason woke up the next morning and brushed his teeth and walked downstairs, Bruce would be there. Every time. Always. 

But Tim sat at the computer that night, doing something extremely scary on five monitors and talking intermittently with Bruce as he prepped for patrol. Jason walked down into the Batcave, saw them, and turned on his heel to walk straight back up again.

“Jason!” Bruce called. Jason froze on the steps. “Why don’t you come down? This is a good time to pick up some of Tim’s programming.”

“Bruce, it’s not going to make any sense to him.”

“He’s a very bright kid,” Bruce told Tim, making Jason flush. “You could teach him a thing or two.”

“I’m terrible at explaining things,” Tim said plainly. “I tried explaining my work to Steph a hundred times and she always checked out two sentences in.”

“Steph has a great attention span.” Bruce paused a beat. “But only for things she cares about. I don’t believe Jason is nearly as ADHD as she is.”

“Jason’s twelve.”

“Can’t stay!” Jason cried. “Making soup with Alfred upstairs! Good night, Bruce!”

He thumped upstairs at lightning speed, taking them three at a time, and narrowly escaped into the dim lights of the study before any more questions could be asked.

Jason had touched a computer, like, twice. Come on, Bruce. Why was he always acting like Jason was capable of doing anything so long as he put his mind to it? What, ‘cause Stephanie Brown could do it?

Jason put himself to bed that night, attacking his teeth with a toothbrush and angrily tucking himself under the covers. By the time Alfred came by to check in on him, Jason was glaring at The Magician’s Nephew and flexing how great he was at going to bed. 

“I remember when that book was released. Created quite a stir among my cousins.” 

“Narnia’s for kids, but sometimes you have to go back to the basics,” Jason said grimly. “Night, Alfred.”

But Alfred didn’t wander away, butler duties satisfied. He just ducked inside instead, walking in to stand by Jason’s bed. Jason curled up tighter with the book.

“Master Bruce has instructed me to subtly discover what you want for Christmas. Truthfully, I understand you would prefer that I propose the question more straightforwardly.”

Jason narrowed his eyes. “Aren’t y’all Jewish?”

“Yes, but far as we understand, you are not. Master Bruce wishes to make you feel welcome.” Jason couldn’t repress the quiet little scoff, immediately embarrassing himself, but Alfred just looked lightly amused. He gestured to the bed. “May I sit?”

Jason nodded and mumbled an apology. “We don’t have to do a whole thing ‘cause of me. That’s totally awkward.” 

“It will be exactly as big of a thing as you want,” Alfred assured him. “Master Bruce is feeling celebratory regardless. This is Master Tim and Miss Stephanie’s first time coming home from college for winter break, and with our new family member I believe Master Bruce will want to make a to-do regardless.” Somewhat cannily, he added, “I also foresee Miss Stephanie forcing a celebratory event in the name of family bonding.”

There it was. “Does that woman control everything that happens in this house?”

Alfred smiled. “Between her and myself, I daresay so. But Miss Stephanie can often lose sight of other’s feelings in light of her enthusiasm, so I wanted to ask you directly what you wanted. All four of us will do our best to make it happen.”

What Jason wanted?

Jason wanted a lot of things. Jason wanted the whole damn world, frankly. Jason had never lost sight of what he wanted, not once - losing sight meant forgetting to work towards what you wanted. Even if Jason wanted a lot of things he’d never have - well, fire and dreams were the only thing that kept a kid warm in a Gotham winter. 

But he couldn’t vocalize any of that. He’d never put any of those desires on his tongue, and he knew they’d stay nestled in his ribcage as long as he lived. What he wanted was no good to anybody but himself, and he wouldn’t devalue them by breathing a word. 

Jason had only ever told one person what he really wanted. That had turned out alright. But it had been really scary too. Jason didn’t want to do it again. He didn’t know what he’d do if he heard ‘no’.

Still, everybody in this house was a dog with a bone, and Jason resolved to give a little just to get the man off his back. “A big dinner on the 25th would be nice,” Jason hesitantly volunteered. And he just knew he’d never shake Bruce from the presents thing, so… “If you want to do presents or whatever, we can do them then.”

Alfred beamed, and Jason gave himself a congratulatory handshake. Successful campaign, total victory, no casualties. Some ground lost, but that was a necessary sacrifice. “It is always nice to have an excuse for a large meal. A suitable celebration of our first year together. Splendid idea, Jason.”

A rousing success! “Oh, no hassle at all.”

But Alfred’s expression just softened, and he carefully smoothed the bedspread near Jason. Jason prepared himself for evasive tactics. “Is there anything you’d like to do with Master Tim and Miss Stephanie?” Jason’s poker face must have said it all, because Alfred gave him another steady look. “Would you be interested in spending any quality time with them while they are home?”

“Uh,” Jason said, internally sweating. “If they…want…?”

“Miss Stephanie will likely insist on it. But you should say no to anything that makes you uncomfortable, Master Jason. She’ll back off if you ask.” Alfred gave Jason a steady eye, making him sweat. “If space and quiet is what you need, Master Jason, you need only ask.”

The prospect was appealing, but Jason was far from lowering the fortifications. Those questions were traps. The last thing Jason wanted to be was trouble. “I’m chill, Alfred! It’s no big deal. Just kinda awkward, ya know? Not used to hearing people in the house.”

“That, I can understand. Adopting Master Tim changed a great deal in this manor. Hearing the sound of young footsteps running down the halls. Music blasting from the den. Messes everywhere. It had been a long time. A very welcome change, I believe.”

“Let me guess,” Jason said flatly. “Tim was super quiet and Stephanie was super loud.”

“Naturally.” Alfred stood up, fixing his slacks a little. “I am excited to see what sort of child you will be, Master Jason. I anticipate meeting the true you. When he is ready to meet me. Have a very good night, Master Jason.”

Alfred turned out the lights and closed the door securely behind him. Jason only rose to lock the door with his personal key that he kept under his mattress, like he did every night, and buried himself under the comforters. 

The enemy hadn’t penetrated his territory. They’d fired a few potshots, but Jason’s fortifications had held strong. Jason was big, tough, impenetrable. Jason couldn’t be seen or touched. You couldn’t even tell if Jason was there or not - he never emerged from his stronghold, and he planned his strategies and tactics from the safety of his base camp. He was not the sort of general who fought on the front lines. 

Jason had thought their goal was to break down his fortifications and overpower his territory. He had assumed them colonizers, trying to take over every inch of Jason’s new life and old heart. He hadn’t known their goal was the general himself. Stupid.

Stupid, stupid, stupid…

*

Today was the day. Huzzah!

Alfred was out picking up Stephanie - apparently her car was still in Jump, so the chauffeur it was - and Jason was left to gawk at Tim thumping away at a laptop in the dining room. He desperately wanted to know if Tim was doing super secret superhero spy stuff, but he couldn’t just ask. Tim never ignored him, but he never paid much attention to him either. The way they both liked it. 

Tim routinely spent most of his time in his study (which Jason had never been inside and would never go inside if he could help it - there were probably lasers). The guy never just sat out in the dining room like this and worked his arcane cybermagic. Jason, sitting at the breakfast bar and steadily decimating an apple, felt trapped. How many times could he flee any room Tim walked into before the guy noticed? It was a toss-up - guy either had Bat-eyes and saw everything, or he only gave a shit about his mysterious computer stuff and didn’t notice anything. Jason was willing to put his non-existent money on Tim pretending the latter when it was really the former. He wouldn’t fall for the tricks.

But maybe he did, because when Tim spoke he was so startled that he almost fell off the chair. 

“I should warn you about Steph.” Tim didn’t look away from his computer, and his typing didn’t slow. “She’s really a lot. Super pushy. Feel free to tell her to fuck off if you want.” Tim paused a beat, undercut by the keyboard rattling. “Am I supposed to curse in front of middle schoolers?”

“I won’t tell Bruce you cursed in front of a twelve year old,” Jason said, faux-loyally. Truthfully, he had the feeling Bruce would ask the same question, but it was good to cultivate a sense of camaraderie. “And yeah, sure. No problem. Super…excited to…meet. Her.” 

“I’m glad it took you two so long to meet. She gave Bruce a really hard time about adopting you. ‘Specially since it was only three months after she left and two months after I did. She said he jumped the gun.” Tim’s fingers froze. “Wait. Did she say it was a good idea or bad idea…?”

That was an important difference, Timothy!

But Jason had no time to interrogate further. The sound of the front doors bursting open resounded through the lobby into the dining room, and Tim bolted to his feet. 

“I’m home!” The voice was impressively loud, and Jason was momentarily taken aback by the thick-ass Bowery accent. That was not a Little Miss Perfect accent. “Wow, Alfie, you put the Ming back out!”

“It was finally safe from you,” Alfred said. “Let me take your bags, Miss -”

“Dope, thanks a million -”

“Steph!” Tim called, moving around the table, and Jason saw to his shock that he was smiling. Actually smiling. Like a normal person. “In here!”

And just like that, Stephanie Brown appeared at the doorway. She grinned brightly, and Tim grinned back, and she wasted no time in tackling Tim in a giant bear hug. Jason - regardless of what he wanted, despite how he felt - was struck dumb.

It was Robin. Robin, in the flesh. He hadn’t really put that together before. He knew obviously but it hadn’t really clicked until he saw her. Jason had seen the pictures and videos of her just like everybody else - seen the graffiti and street art and paintings - listened to every story and heard every tale - but apparently he hadn’t processed that Robin meant Stephanie Brown.  

Seeing her in person hit differently then seeing Bruce in person. Bruce was an idea given a face - Stephanie Brown was a face larger than life, and the idea of Robin in the body of a woman felt like capturing lightning in a bottle. She was wearing low-rise jeans and a purple crop top stamped with a sparkly butterfly that showed off how insanely muscular she was, hair teased into her iconic Robin mane, and she was really super pretty. How could Robin just look like an undergrad? Why did Robin talk like a valley girl?!

Jason had lost before he accepted the challenge. He had lost from day one. He had lost the day Stephanie Brown became a super-smart, super-tough, blue eyed blonde haired hot white girl. And Jason had lost the day he was born. A homeless, go-nowhere kid who would only leave the Narrows when he inevitably went to jail. A brown kid with curly and thick black hair, skinny with an unpleasant and mean face, fucked up forever.

Why did Jason ever think Bruce might let him…

Stephanie Brown hugged Tim so tightly she picked him off the ground, making him wheeze and slap her shoulder. She only dumped him when footsteps came from another hallway on the other side of the dining room, revealing a smiling Bruce. Smiling. Like a guy.

“Stephanie,” Bruce greeted, somehow stiff as ever. “You look…tanned.”

“Six months and that’s what I get?” Stephanie asked loudly. Tim pinched the bridge of his nose. Bruce abruptly looked panicked. “Tanned? I live in California, Bruce, of course I’m tanned! Like, hello! What, no ‘happy to see you’? No ‘welcome home?’”

“Ah,” Bruce said.

“I bulked up! You don’t even care that I totally bulked up!”

Bruce’s panic deepened. “You said it was rude to comment on a woman’s muscles.”

“Muscles are totally in right now, B, keep up.” But Stephanie grinned, smile big and bright. “I can’t believe I missed you so much.”

Jason could only stare in horror as she hugged Bruce, tight and full, and he gently hugged her back. Defcon 5 event. Bruce didn’t hug. Bruce didn’t hug Jason. Well - Jason had told Bruce that he wasn’t allowed to touch him, ever, or he’d cut his hands off with a butter knife. Bruce had stuck to that rule religiously. Jason didn’t really know how to loosen the rule. He had no idea how to ask. 

“He missed you a lot,” Tim snitched, because obviously Bruce wouldn’t. “He missed you so much. It was so embarrassing. I was embarrassed just witnessing it.”

“Say a little less, Timothy.” 

Stephanie separated, unabashedly laughing at the embarrassed Batman, when she finally stopped to see Jason. Jason halted, halfway through eating the core of the apple. They locked eye contact, light blue eyes meeting dark ones, and Jason slowly readied the canons.

His throat was dry. His heart was hammering. The apple core was going down all wrong. Jason…

“Stephanie, I can finally introduce Jason.” Suddenly Bruce was there at his side, smiling encouragingly down at the frozen Jason. “Jason, this is Stephanie Brown. She’s a highly valued partner of mine. Stephanie, don’t overwhelm him.”

“Overwhelming? Me? Never heard of her.” Steph smiled at Tim, warm and happy. This woman did not stop smiling. She had a deadass California valley girl accent and she did not stop smiling. She extended a hand to Jason, who silently thanked God that she didn’t go in for a hug. Did they hug people in California? Californians probably did nothing but hug. “Jason Todd, right? I’ve, like, heard so much about you! I’m super sorry it took so long for us to meet.”

Jason quickly wiped his sticky hand on his jeans before shaking her hand, feeling the rough calluses. “It’s Jason Wayne.” They changed his name with his adoption, on Bruce’s hesitant offer and Jason’s instant acceptance. It was a strategic ploy on Jason’s part - a shared last name would subliminally influence Bruce into thinking of their arrangement as a more long-term, legal one. “Uh - nice to meet you, ma’am.”

“A Wayne with manners! I never thought I’d see the day.” Steph propped her hands on her hips, smile never fading. “Bruce and Tim could stand to learn a thing or two from you. But don’t get formal on me, okay? We’re, like, totes family.”

“Cool,” Jason said. “Thanks.”

Casualties: none. Damage to fortress: negligible. Outcome of first skirmish: rousing success. Jason gave himself a fervent pack on the back. Now he’d stay for five more minutes exactly before running back to the library to work on his workbooks. This family was awesome at forgetting Jason was in the room, if he could just flex that invisibility a bit more -

Steph clapped her hands, drawing the attention of the room. As if it wasn’t already entirely on her. Ugh. “You promised pesto sandwiches for lunch, Alfred! I haven’t had your cooking in six whole months and I’m going insane. Let’s eat as Jason tells me all about himself! Oh, and he’ll totally have to tell us what he wants to do over the break. We have so much family bonding in order. Tim, Bruce, are youse still trying to bite each other’s heads off?”

“Uh,” Bruce said.

“We’re over it?” Tim asked, as if Stephanie needed to tell him.

“Good enough. Holiday planning - go! Oh, but I have the craziest Titans story to tell you guys!”

Wow. They weren’t kidding about the forced bonding. 

Alfred really went all out with lunch, and from Stephanie’s delighted squeals Jason could see that it was all her favorites. They had done Tim’s favorites when he came home too. Jason wondered when they’d do his favorites. Maybe when he went to college? 

College. Hold out for college, Jason. You can make it ‘til college. Maybe Bruce would like him more than Tim by then - Jason wouldn’t try to drop out of Yale.

Jason received the annotated, fast-paced edition of Steph’s life over the next whirlwind twenty minutes. She had something to share about everything - from Jump City weather to how big of a pain it was to do her UC Jump premed college work and lead a superhero team at the same time. She had a mysterious autoimmune illness that let her miss as many classes as she wanted. Very convenient. She and Tim had absolutely no shame in disclosing their rampant lies. Superheroes had no morals. 

Apparently Cyborg was super funky - a jock that could work a computer like magic. Beast Boy was a crazy time and a ton of fun to hang out with, even if he was totally immature. Raven was no fun to hang out with but she was, like, so wild. And Starfire - ha ha, she was super cool, anyway! Her college friends were totally nice too, but the Titans just took up so much of her time. Listen to me recount this entire fight with Mad Mod. Who’s Mad Mod, you ask? I am going to tell you all about it!

The whole table was enthralled. Despite himself, Jason was a little enthralled too. He tried imagining living in a big retooled ex-high rise complex that Tim bought on the cheap with Apple money - whatever that meant - with your four friends as you all fought the weirdest crime with no adult supervision. When your friends were half-demons and half-computers and sometimes-animals and always-aliens. He just couldn’t imagine it - it was a lifestyle too alien from his own. Complete with aliens! No wonder she’d been too busy to visit.

“But the Titans can do without me for one month. Vic needs the practice as a leader. I told them that I haven’t seen my boyfriend in six months and not to comm me for anything short of Raven’s dad picking her up for custody weekend. This month is one hundred percent for my friends, the week my old man is gonna make me spend in Louisiana, and you guys.” Stephanie clapped her hands, smiling broadly. “So! Jason, what do you wanna do? Bruce doesn’t know what money is, we can totally do whatever you want. The world is so your oyster. What are you thinking?”

Jason delicately nibbled at his turkey and cheese sandwich. It had no crusts. His life had gotten so dumb. “I dunno. Whatever youse are down for.”

“Come on, there has to be something. When I was your age I would have sold my left foot to go to Disney World. Bruce would be down for anything anywhere in the world. Or we could go shopping!”

“I have clothes?”

“Do you have clothes from the Disney store? Damn, maybe I was just really into Disney when I was your age. What do you like, Jason, what are you into?”

Jason slowly shredded the sandwich with his teeth. “Um…not much.”

“Jason likes to read,” Bruce volunteered, the traitor. “His reading level is amazing. He’s working on 100 Years of Solitude in Spanish.” Jason had finished that a week ago. He was on a Pablo Neruda collection right now. “But I’m not sure how that translates into an activity.”

“What about sports?” Stephanie asked encouragingly. “You play soccer, Jason?”

Jason mumbled a negative into a tea biscuit. The barrage of cannonballs did not stop.

“What about watching any sports? Bruce could get you tickets to anything.”

“I hate sports,” Tim said.

“This isn’t about you, Timmy.”

‘ “Jason obviously doesn’t care about sports either.”

“Jason cares about something. He’s a twelve year old boy, they’re all brainwashed by commercials and jingles.”

“Not Jason. I’ve never seen him express an opinion on anything.”

“Really?” Bruce asked, surprised. A cannon punctured the outer walls. A watchman pulled the alarm bell. All hands on deck. “Jason’s as opinionated as you, Stephanie.”

Jason’s teeth clenched. Man down. His arm had been blown off by a cannonball. He was bleeding everywhere and screaming bloody murder. The poor man had a daughter. Only five years old. Tragic.

“ ‘Course he is, he’s an East Ender! We’re all grit. I couldn’t believe it when you said you made friends with another kid from my neighborhood. After all that complaining about my accent, too! I’m even going kinda Cali in my civvie ID, it’s super fun. ”

“The Mad Hatter asks you to repeat yourself ‘cause he has no idea what you’re saying,” Tim said, bored. 

“The Mad Hatter’s a punk bitch. The accent’s part of the Robin brand, it’s my whole hometown hero thing. I’m repping me and Jason’s hoods.”

The outer defenses fell, and the enemy streamed in. Screaming, crying, blood. Alarm bells pounded through Jason’s head. His soldiers were dropping like flies, cannonballs blowing their jaws off, and Jason felt the blood build up inside of him. 

That was all Jason had inside of him. Just blood and war. Jason was a brave general who never gave up against the enemy forces, but Jason’s army had been eroded by a long and hard winter that froze most of his men away. The cold had worn parts of Jason down for years, and even when springtime thawed the frost he never saw those parts again. He just couldn’t find them. He was trying so hard to protect himself and Bruce from the blood, but he couldn’t help losing every battle.

“We aren’t from the same hood,” Jason said lowly. A war drum beat in his ears.

Stephanie looked back at him, all wide eyed and innocent and blonde. “Aren’t you an East Ender? I ain’t splitting streets here.”

“You’re from the Bowery,” Jason bit out. “Do I look like I’m from the Bowery? I’m from the Narrows. If I stepped foot in your hood I’d get hate crimed.”

“Ah. Yeah.” Stephanie sombered, putting her sandwich down. “Sorry, kid, I know it’s not the same. Like to think we’re not as bad as we used to be, though.”

“Cool. Awesome. I’ll give your racist-ass Ukranians the ‘not as hate crimey as you could have been’ award.” Jason pushed his chair away from the table and stood up, probably skidding the nice hardwood. “Maybe it’ll finally make up for me not being Doctor fucking Barbie over there.”

Jason ran away from the carved oak dining table sagging with teas and cakes and ices at top speed. Catastrophic defeat. Blame the general’s tactical mistakes. It was all his fault.

He preemptively grounded himself, locking the door to his room and burying himself underneath the covers with a defensive Narnia. When he started hyperventilating he ignored it, and when he cried a little he ignored that too. Jason was super good at ignoring things. He ignored just about everything.

Jason noticed everything. He just ignored it. He’d go crazy if he didn’t. All the shit in the world, all the evils he saw again and again and again. Every woman ever hit and every Mami sliding a needle into her arm.  All the bad guys hurting the guys who ain’t never hurt nobody, just ‘cause they were there…

Jason did want something. He wanted something so damn bad, and he knew he would never ask for it. He wasn’t in the same galaxy as good enough, and there was no point in asking for something you’d never get. Bruce would probably laugh at him if he ever did ask. It didn’t matter that Jason couldn’t ignore bad things happening for one more second, for one more time - it didn’t matter that Jason wanted to do something about it more than anybody in the Narrows had ever wanted it in their whole lives. Jason was the whole damn problem.

He was so embarrassed. His war of attrition hadn’t lasted five seconds. His good streak had been ruined and Bruce was gonna get so pissed at him for being awful. And Bruce and Tim would get mad at him for being rude to Stephanie, and Stephanie probably didn’t feel anger ‘cause she was a saint but Alfred would look so disappointed in him and…

Maybe he should just dip. No, that was stupid. It was literally December. Bruce would give him a hard time but he’d deal with that. Guy wasn’t about to hit him. He was Batman. Batman didn’t do that. End sentence, end of story. 

Batman didn’t hurt kids and Robin always made kids feel safe. Everybody knew that. Even though Stephanie Brown wasn’t making Jason feel too safe right now. But he knew that was his fault - a fault inherent in his own character, in his own heart - and not hers. Jason couldn’t remember what feeling safe felt like. He probably wasn’t sure how anymore.

Nobody came to fetch him or try to talk to him. Jason didn’t know if he was disappointed or not. He just aggressively read and read and read, until the first hints of winter dusk began to fall and he fell asleep much earlier than usual.

*

Bruce liked to tell the story.

He didn’t get a ton of opportunities, since he had to limit himself to people who knew his secret identity. In practicality, this meant that Bruce liked telling the story to his six friends in the Justice League and nobody else. Barry Allen said that Bruce had smiled while telling the story, which had given him a split second heart attack. 

It wasn’t the full story. Jason couldn’t imagine that being the full story - plucky street rat tries to steal the Batman’s tires, the Batman takes pity on him and takes him home forever to live in his house and eat his organic cucumbers, happy ending for everybody. What kind of story was that? Jason would have yelled pedophile in two seconds. Stephanie would have berated Bruce for three hours instead of one. 

 Bruce didn’t mention this part of the story, but the minute Jason’s retaliatory attack with the lead pipe utterly failed he had dropped his weapon and booked it. Jason hadn’t exactly been terrified, but he knew getting caught would mean serious juvie. Worst case scenario, besides all the others. But he had worried his hair out for nothing - Jason ran ten blocks before realizing that Batman wasn’t chasing him at all. A clean escape.

Batman showed up at Jason’s squat the next night. Go fig.

That was the first time they really talked. Batman wasn’t exactly a talkative guy, but Jason had a unique skill for riling Bruce up into an actual argument, and they spent ten pointless minutes going around at each other about how Jason totally had people he was staying with - they’re on vacations, that’s why I’m not staying with them - fine, their pimp had come back and kicked him out - but I stayed with Mrs. Jiminez for three weeks! - well, her son got whooping cough, and I sure as hell couldn’t stick around to catch it - I’ll go back once he’s better, that’s all - yes, obviously I hit up the Church food banks, but you’re more likely to get mugged for food than actually walk away with food, and they prioritize the moms anyway - I don’t need goddamn foster care -

“You can’t keep couch surfing forever,” Batman had said. “You’re spending weeks on the street in-between shelters and friends. It’s not stable.”

“But it’s fine,” Jason had said. He knew it wasn’t great, but things didn’t need to be great when they could be fine. “The Narrows looks out for each other. I’ll just keep like this ‘til I’m old enough for a decent job, that’s all.”

Completely neutrally, Batman had said, “You could drug run.”

“This is entrapment.”

“You could have. You’re the right age for it. Why aren’t you doing that for money?”

“Because I’m not an idiot! That shit shortens your lifespan and lands you in juvie. And I don’t wanna help assholes sell meth to my friends, anyway. Bad enough they’re doing it. I don’t wanna be responsible for that, even a little. Life’s too bad for me to make it worse just for some extra cash.”

Batman had stared at him for a long time. Jason had decided he had won the argument, and thereby had obtained bragging rights forever that he had won an argument with Batman.

Then Batman put him in a foster home. Go fig.

Everybody knew social services was insanely evil and terrible, but Batman had spun half a dozen promises about how he’d personally assure that Jason found a good placement. Apparently he even put in a word with his contact at social services and everything. It landed Jason in a super awesome combo group home/boarding school (See, Jason, an education! Yipee!) under the benevolent hand of a sweet old lady called Ma Gunn. Look, Jason, if you’re so worried, the Batman will take time out of his busy schedule Being Batman to check up on you. Alright? Eat some cookies.

The first day had been fine. Nice, even. That was what he told Batman. He really had come to check up on him, knocking on his window in the middle of the night and helping hoist Jason to the roof so they could sit and talk. He had kept his promise. 

“This doesn’t make you right,” Jason had grumbled. 

Batman’s lip had twitched upwards. “I have it on good authority that I’m not right nearly as often as I think I am.”

“Atticus Finch you are not,” Jason agreed. “More like Odysseus.”

“Why do you think so?”

“Because you know how to beat up mooks, but you obviously like winning your fights through tricking people instead. You’re both, like, theatrical.” Jason had thought about this. Extensively. He’d also gotten into arguments about it, but they were really arguments nobody else wanted to have. “And taking on crime in Gotham’s like taking on the gods. Equal amounts of impossible.”

Batman’s lip twitched up again, a little higher. “Would you call pride my fatal flaw, then?”

“Probably,” Jason said promptly. “You need a lot of pride to take on the gods. But that’s probably the only reason you started doing this at all, so I guess it’s a pretty good thing you have that fatal flaw in the first place. The best fatal flaws are the character’s greatest strengths. That’s when a story is really good.” 

Batman slowly sat down next to Jason. It was pretty weird seeing him like that - sitting down like a guy, cape carefully tucked to his side like any theater performer would do it. Jason could see his jawline. He needed a shave. Batman, shaving! Jason wished he could shave. Maybe he’d be more like Batman if he could.

“What’s your fatal flaw, Jason?”

“Mami always told me I was too angry.” It was one of his clearest memories of her - the disappointment on her face. The way she looked at him. Jason never wanted Mami to look at him like that again. “Too much like my dad. She said I’m gonna lose my temper at the wrong person and get myself hurt one day.” Jason scuffed a battered shoe on the wobbly shingle, making it creak. “But I dunno. The only times in my life I’ve ever really helped people was when I got too angry to see straight. I’m always throwing logic out the door and deciding to do what’s right even if it’s a bad idea. If the trouble I’m always getting into helps other people out, then that’s trouble I’m okay with. Do you know what I mean?”

“I do.”

Jason had the feeling he would.

They talked for hours, long after Jason’s bedtime and probably long into Batman’s own work schedule beating up mooks. They only stopped when Jason couldn’t repress the yawns anymore, and Batman ended up carrying Jason back to bed. Jason had insisted he wasn’t tired, mostly because he wanted to keep talking about Emma and how Jason’s life dream was to be rich and set up all his friends with boyfriends who deserved them, but he fell asleep the minute his head hit the pillow anyway

When he woke up the next morning he thought it might have been a dream. What a weird dream that would be. What a weird and magical dream - one where Batman listened to everything Jason had to say and more, and one where Batman only left him because they couldn’t stay up talking any more. Jason hated himself a little for falling asleep at all. He wanted that night to go on forever. Now that he was in a nice little boarding school he would never see Batman again. For such an obvious sentence it was a little disappointing. 

Two weeks later Jason stood in front of a burning brick building, flanked by a mob of rabid children, tying up an evil old lady and cracking open crate after crate of evil child brainwashing drug and dumping it on the cement sidewalk. 

The police found him very quickly. They didn’t listen to a word he said, no matter how much proof Jason waved in their faces. He had been super careful to dig up a ton of proof, even taking pictures of the secret basement and the kid’s bruises and an audio recorded confession. Nobody wanted to hear it. Jason had to bite his way through a police station and dump his evidence on the Commissioner's desk just to get anything done around here. 

The Commissioner had pinched the bridge of his nose. The bridge of his nose had thumbnail creases. “Kid, you just committed five different felonies.”

“She was brainwashing children!”

“I believe you, kid, I believe you.” Commissioner Gordon grabbed the first sheaf of pictures, flipping through them quickly and squinting at each one. Under his breath, he muttered, “Never thought I’d miss Robin. She’d know what the hell to do with you.”

“Is Robin dead?” Jason asked, freaked. He loved Robin. She was literally Robin!

“What? No, she’s off doing…Batman never said. Either ninja training or college, it’s a toss-up. I think she cried when she hugged me goodbye, I couldn’t believe -”

The landline on the desk rang, and the Commissioner obviously intended to ignore it until he saw the flashing ‘Priority’ button. He picked up the headset, bushy mustache wagging. “Andrea, what - Jesus Christ! How the hell did you - dumb question, never mind.”

Jason perked up. Something told him… “Is that Batman? Is Batman calling you on your phone?”

“Do you see a Gordon signal?” The Commissioner asked him. Jason shrugged, and the Commissioner turned his attention back to the phone. His eyebrows furrowed closer and closer at Batman talked. “Already? What do you - I can drop the charges, but that black mark on his file isn’t going away.” He grimaced apologetically at Jason. Jason, who had no intention of returning to Social Services ever again, shrugged. “He’ll probably have to spend the night in the cells until we drop the charges and find him an emergency placement, but - you can’t be serious.” He was silent for a long moment before exclaiming, “What kind of favor does he owe you - how big is that favor? You can’t be - it’s three in the morning, I - Batman! Batman! Dammit!”

The Commissioner dropped the headset back on the cradle and groaned, falling back into his seat. Jason cautiously sidled backwards from the desk. He was prepared to do a runner. He’d bitten his way into this office and he’d bite his way out. 

“Kid, you sit right down in that chair. You are not moving until your emergency foster placement comes to get you.” The Commissioner kneaded his forehead, groaning. “Out of all the favors for all the Gothamites, why did it have to be this one…”

“Eh?” Jason said.

“You’re a very lucky kid, Jason Todd. And I’m praying for you.”

“Eh?”

It was the only appropriate response. Jason found out an hour later that the emergency placement was Bruce fucking Wayne. Bruce Wayne, who practically crashed into Gordon’s (he had been downgraded - Jason and Gordon were homies in Christ now) office, tie half-done and suit jacket limp over his shoulders. Jason wondered who the hell put on a suit at three am. He also wondered who the hell looked that panicked to be dealing with Jason, of all people. Had he heard about the biting?

“I’m so sorry I’m late, I’ve been having a heart attack for the past hour - you ever get woken up by Batman, Jim? That ever happen to you? How’d he even get my number?” Gordon opened his mouth. “Stupid question, sorry. Is that the kid? Hey, kid!”

Then Bruce Wayne grinned, big and anxious, and held out his hand. Jason shook it. Bruce sat down in the chair next to him, slouching and tucking himself into the chair a bit. It was pretty slick - Jason almost hadn’t noticed how freaking huge the guy was. 

“Uh,” Jason said. “It’s Jason Todd.”

“Well, Batman could have stood to mention that!” Bruce Wayne exclaimed, offended beyond belief. “You know what he told me? He called me up and was all like - you remember the Rose Bowl? Yes, I remember the Rose Bowl, hard to forget - and then he’s like, I’m calling that in. He’s all like, you’re still registered as a foster parent, right? And of course I am, after that whole thing with Tim - Tim’s doing great, Jim, by the way, I would say that he says hello but we kinda aren’t talking right now, but he would say hello if we were talking - which Batman knows about, because he was the one who called me up about Tim in the first place - why me, Jim! Why is it always me!”

“I cannot possibly say,” Gordon said.

Bruce barrelled through, ignoring him. “So he tells me to get here pronto, there’s a kid who needs a roof over their head and apparently I’m the only one he trusts to provide that roof right now. Me! Can you believe it! He said the same thing about Tim! The kid could have had the mob after him - actually, it’s kind of common knowledge I don’t touch the mob, that’s probably why - none of that’s important right now. Oh, and then he hung up on me. Go figure, right? Have you eaten, Jason? I brought you lunch. And some hygiene stuff and a change of clothes. The butler fusses.”

Jason stared at Bruce. Bruce smiled anxiously at Jason.

“No hablo inglés,” Jason decided. 

Without changing his facial expression at all, Bruce repeated the last few sentences in Spanish.

“Hindi ako nagsasalita ng ingles,” Jason rapidly made up. 

Bruce repeated the last few sentences in Tagalog, poker faced. 

“What the fuck,” Jason said.

“Rúguǒ nǐ yuànyì dehuà, wǒ yě huì shuō zhōngwén,” Bruce said, still smiling. “Dàn wǒ hěn quèdìng nǐ de yīngyǔ hěn hǎo, suǒyǐ rúguǒ nǐ yuànyì, wǒmen kěyǐ jìxù shuō yīngyǔ.”

Jason felt his psychological control over the situation slipping away. He had to maintain the upper hand. Establish dominance over rich people. “I’m a gutter child, my English is terrible,” Jason lied in Spanish, completely unapologetic. “If you make me speak English I’m gonna rack up more arson charges.”

“Whatever makes you comfortable, Jason!” Bruce said in Spanish. He turned to Gordon, switching to English. “There’s a lot of papers to sign, right? Just give them to me right now. Actually, can I duck out and grab Jason’s food first? Faking monolingualism takes a lot out of a kid.”

The food was good. It was super fancy rich people sandwiches. Bruce said that one of them had pesto before explaining what pesto was before Jason had to ask. Thoughtful of him?

That was roughly how Jason ended up in the passenger seat of a Porsche, nibbling his third sandwich and staring at the man in the driver’s seat. Gordon had muttered something about how Bruce was “as neurotic and awkward as ever” before giving Jason his business card and telling him to call before set another building on fire. Jason could definitely see the neuroticism: he went over the emergency foster placement papers once, twice, three times. He had detailed to Jason in completely fluent Spanish what exactly was going to happen the next few days and what he could expect, that he was going to get a key for his room and nobody would go inside if he didn’t want them inside, do you have any rules for me and Alfred (the butler - what was this, the Prohibition?) that you’d like us to follow? We can talk about my own later. Understood about touching you, thanks for telling me.

Jason watched Bruce drop the papers in his lap and slowly thunk his forehead on the steering wheel. His index finger was tapping the leather cover repeatedly in a steady staccato, a silent nervous tic. 

Eventually Jason felt too bad for him to bear the silence any longer. In Spanish, he said, “Chill, man. It’s just for a few days, right?”

Bruce raised his head, glaring intently at the steering wheel. He still seemed a little half-manic. “Right. Just a few days. Then we’ll find you a good placement. I know people. It’ll be fine.”

“Oh, I am totally booking it,” Jason said sympathetically. “Nice try, though.”

“Jason, please stop trying to sleep on the sidewalk.”

“Why not?” Jason demanded. “It’s better than foster care. How am I supposed to believe that you’d find decent people, huh? Batman said he’d find decent people and he dumped me in an evil crime boarding school!”

Weirdly enough, that made Bruce outright wince. “Batman fu - Batman messed up. He really, really messed up. There is no excuse for how badly he messed up. Alright? But that’s not happening again. We’ll -”

“Who the hell would take me?” Jason asked, and Bruce quieted. “Who would want me, dude? Nobody in this goddamn city wants me around. I had to do something about that crazy old lady before she started baking kids into pies or something, and now I’m legally an arsonist. And if I meet any more evil people messing with kids then I’d do an arson on them too. I’d do a thousand arsons if I had to! Why the hell would anybody want me in their house?”

“Who wouldn’t!” Bruce cried, and Jason fell silent in bizarre shock. “You - you’re smart and passionate and kind. You took down an entire drug smuggling ring by yourself, Jason, that’s incredible. You’re a good kid. You’re a really good kid. Any parent would be lucky to have you.”

Jason’s eyes were burning, and his stomach was churning in thick knots. He was tired and confused and far away from home - far away from everything he had once considered home, and from everything he knew. He was in unprecedented territory. In a Porsche. As some rich guy told him he was a good kid.

“How would you know, huh?” Jason asked, voice thick. “I’ve never met you before in my life. How would you know something like that?”

“It’s obvious, Jason,” Bruce said quietly. “It’s obvious just looking at you.”

Jason stuffed the rest of his sandwich in his mouth and refused to say anything more. 

An emergency placement. Bruce Wayne said the phrase frequently, almost as a shield - against a very unimpressed butler, during a very heated phone call which left him wincing repeatedly. It’s an emergency placement, I’m not - this has nothing to do with - not everything is about you, you know - it’s not about Tim either! - it’s an emergency placement -

When he hung up he looked haunted. Jason gave him a sympathy banana. 

“That your girlfriend?”

Bruce took the banana, dead eyed. “It’s somebody who you do not want to get on the bad side of.”

“You on her bad side?”

“I might be in the dog house.”

“Ouch.” Jason started unwrapping his own banana, carefully peeling off the strings and dangling them into his mouth. “Hey, you ever read The Fellowship of the Ring? I heard they’re making a live action movie.”

“How on Earth are you supposed to capture the scale of Lord of the Rings in a live action movie?” Bruce asked, appalled. “It’ll be worse than that cartoon I saw as a kid.”

“There was a cartoon? Can we watch it?”

“Sure,” Bruce said. “I don’t have anything else to do right now.”

Even back then Jason knew it was a lie. He didn’t say anything about it. When Bruce took his big stack of scary CEO papers and sat next to Jason in the library, signing papers with a ballpoint pen silently as Jason read East of Eden, Jason didn’t say anything about that either. It always ended up with Bruce getting distracted and asking him about what was happening in the book, and then they would both get distracted as Jason explained the Biblical allegories, and the work would go forgotten. 

He should do his work on time. Guy was always super tired every morning. Jason got in the habit of secretly making him extra-strength coffee and slipping him a big mug when Alfred turned his back. Bruce almost cried the first time he did it. Jason leveraged the gratitude to score free reign in the attic and upper floors. 

That made for an incredible day of digging through heaps and heaps of boxes shoved away in dusty corners, digging his hands into antique World War II memorabilia and 19th century pocketwatches. Every box held the fragments of a dozen stories, and Jason eagerly took notes whenever a new object sparked a new idea. 

This Vietnam soldier’s helmet obviously belonged to a brave soldier who died trying to save innocents during the My Lai massacre…some say that his ghost haunted the perpetrators until their dying breaths and cursed their family lines for a hundred generations. That cuckoo clock was obviously a gift from a baron to a baroness, aching for her love - but she had promised her hand to the baron’s brother, a humble watchmaker born out of wedlock. He made that antique gold pocketwatch stuffed in the bottom of the box, obviously.

He only got a little embarrassed about the whole thing when Bruce asked at dinner where he had gotten the inspiration pocketwatch stuffed in his jeans. He had no idea how to explain how important it was for literary purposes. But Bruce just listened seriously to the story of the baron, the baroness, and the peasant watchmaker. Then he asked if the enamel birds in the watchface had some sort of symbolic meaning between the watchmaker and the baroness, and of course they did, and Bruce listened to everything he had to say for hours on hours.

Jason meant to book it his second night there. But he got distracted staying up reading, and he slept past his escape window. The night after that he didn’t feel like it, and the night after that it was raining way too hard. The night after that Jason didn’t think about it at all.

On the seventh night in Bruce’s house, Jason heard a tapping on the window. His heart leapt, and he eagerly threw off the covers. There was a dark shadow shrouded over his window, and he eagerly unlatched it and worked the creaky wood open until he could shove it all the way to the top and see Batman hanging out on the windowsill, cool as you please. 

“I thought you weren’t coming!” Jason cried, backing up a little in an attempt to give Batman space to swoop inside. He didn’t - he just stayed at the window, expression unreadable in the black night. “After everything that happened you aren’t bothering to check in on me again?”

“I trust Wayne. And I’ve been occupied.” Batman withdrew a file folder from his cape - what, did it have a kangaroo pouch or something? - and passed it to Jason. He flipped it open, squinting at the small text in the darkness. “Dossier of potential foster parents. Most of them are same-sex couples who are being stonewalled for regular adoption. Normal, middle class couples. One couple are both Mexican, and another couple is a Black woman and a South Asian woman. If you’d prefer…same race.” Batman paused, suddenly a bit awkward. “Are any of those the same race as you?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

 Jason did not know. Mami spoke Spanish and that was all he knew. He didn’t look anything like her. Jason was a bit lighter than Dad and had different hair, and Dad had Indian reservation stories from his dad. Scary ones. That was all he knew about that too. The de la Cruces down the hall, who had half-raised him, were certain he was mostly Filipino. They were the first ones to blame for the rampant Taglish, and the Mendezes on the second floor who also half-raised him were to blame for the Spanglish. The foul mouth was all Todd.

Sometimes it left him kind of confused about himself - like he was a lot of things that he wasn’t and some things that he was. That there were a few things that he should be but was not. That there were some things he could never be even if he wanted to. He had a lot missing that everybody else he knew just took for granted - but you could say that about a lot of things in Jason’s life. 

Every family in the dossier looked good. A lot of them were lesbian couples. That was really appealing. Not a single man but Jason in the house. No need to worry about anybody. Nobody to protect anybody from.

Somehow, Jason found himself saying, “Are these emergency placements too?”

“They’d be permanent. If you find no cause to burn down the house.”

“And what if I run away?”

“We’ll find something else,” Batman said. “We’ll keep trying.”

Middle class lesbians in the suburbs. People who’d speak Spanish or Tagalog with him. People who’d stay. It was a nice thought. 

When Jason spoke his throat was dry. He didn’t really know why. Maybe he just didn’t want to know. “Bruce said he’d see Fellowship with me when it came out.”

“You can still do that,” Batman said instantly. “Wayne would keep up contact with you. If that’s what you want.” Batman halted hard before saying, “Is Wayne - satisfactory? As a guardian?”

“He’s not exactly an option,” Jason said, ticked off.

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Why did you ask it?”

“Call it curiosity.” 

“What good does curiosity do?” Jason asked. Man, Batman could be so frustrating. New sentences. “He’s an emergency placement. He’s said it, like, ten times. Nobody’s going to let me stay with the top bajillionaire of Gotham. He only adopted that other kid ‘cause they were neighbors and family friends already. Bruce and I aren’t in the same universe.”

“If you could.” Batman was still perched on his windowsill, a long streak of night in the already absolute darkness. Nothing like the city. Night descended in the suburbs. The city never slept, and Batman never seemed so far away. “If anything was possible. And if you could have anything you wanted. What would you choose, Jason?”

Jason was silent for a long second, but in the end it wasn’t so hard to say. Moments with Batman never felt quite real, and Jason always found himself letting his guard down. He could tell Batman his heart’s desire - something he could barely even admit to himself.

Finally, Jason had to say, “This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever said in my life. But he’s kind of like me, you know? I’ve never met anybody else like me before. Especially not in a mansion in Bristol. Isn’t that weird?” Jason paused, weird and uncertain. He felt new. He wasn’t sure if he liked it or not. “I don’t care about the money. I don’t want any of it. I’ve just never met anybody who thought the same way I do. It’s kinda dumb that we’re so similar…I dunno if I’m ever gonna find that again. I don’t want to ditch it, you know…isn’t that dumb? It’s dumb of me, right?”

Batman was silent for a long second, just long enough to embarrass Jason. Way to go off about how you’re BFFs with a billionaire, Jase. He definitely sounded like he just wanted the money. Like, hello! The money was what made things weird! He would rather they all live in a normal house that still had a butler for some reason. Less walking and better heating. Definitely less ghosts. What would Jason do with a mansion, anyway?

Batman didn’t say anything. He just gestured for Jason to move back a little, and once Jason scrambled back a few steps he effortlessly slid through the window into Jason’s guest bedroom. Jason had never really stood in the same room as Batman - all of their rendezvous were always outside - and it gave him a subtly different air. Less like a byproduct of natural and mystical forces and more like a guy. It fit better. 

“He doesn’t fit the profile of your ideal placement.”

Weird fucking sentences from Batman today. “People aren’t profiles,” Jason said, baffled. “What am I, Robocop?”

“He’s almost completely inexperienced with actual parenting. You’d probably need somebody better suited to helping you process your life so far.”

“I’m pretty inexperienced with being parented, so we’d be even.” Jason was growing more and more confused. But something else was rising in him too - the exact opposite of confusion, small and strange and persistent. He didn’t want to look too closely at it, but he couldn’t turn away. “And I dunno who’d be perfect at dealing with a fuck-up like me. You know ‘em?”

“There has to be somebody.”

“I don’t want to live with somebody,” Jason cried, “I want to live with Bruce! I’m not saying he’d be perfect, but I want to give him a shot. He’s a good guy!”

“You don’t know him well.”

“I can tell just by looking at him,” Jason said. “I dunno what he wants, Batman. Or if he wants me here or not. But I can tell he’s a good person. Can’t you?”

Batman was silent. He was hard to see in the dark, nothing but an outline and smear of black amidst the empty bookshelf and creaky window, and impossible to read. But Jason could feel something in the darkness, something clearer and clearer, and he didn’t need to see it to believe it. 

“Can you turn on the light, Jason?”

Jason silently turned around and walked across the room to the door, flipping the lightswitch and blinking hard as bright white light chased away the shadows. He turned around slowly, heart thumping a hard rhythm in his chest, breath catching.

But there had been no reason to be scared. He saw exactly what he had expected.

Bruce Wayne stood in his bedroom, cowl pulled down. His eyes were rimmed with thick purple bags, and even though his face was implacable stone there was something tight and fragile about the way he stood, like a glass ornament spinning on a Christmas tree. 

“If Bruce Wayne could have anything he wanted,” Bruce rasped, “he would want you to stay. He would like that very much.”

Hot tears pricked at Jason’s eyes, and he knew his heart was burning. He knew Bruce was searching for something in his own face - shock, betrayal, confusion - but he knew Bruce couldn’t find it. Jason mostly just felt kind of overwhelmed. His life had gotten super dumb.

“Bruce Wayne’s a rich asshole who always gets everything he wants. What the hell do I care about that!”

“I’ve never met anybody else like me either,” Bruce said, and for the first time he was calm and sure - as if he’d come to a resolution in the last few seconds, at some invisible tipping point, and there was no turning back now. “Kids like you are one in a million, Jason. I’d hate to let that go.”

Ugh. Ugh! This sucked! This was so embarrassing! Jason wasn’t going to cry! He rubbed hard at his nose, reiterating his point that he was not gonna cry. Teenage boys didn’t do stupid shit like that. 

“I’ll burn down your house if I have to,” Jason warned.

“I would probably deserve it.”

“You’ll have to get your act together.”

“I’ve been meaning to get around to it,” Bruce said, straight faced.

“We aren’t that similar,” Jason insisted, feeling the need to save face for some reason. Batman saying that you were like a mini Batman should have put any kid over the moon. But Bruce Wayne was kind of embarrassing. Miss Jason with that rich boy shit. “Your teeth are too good and you’re super neurotic.”

“Just around children,” the Dark Knight said seriously. “It’s a weakness.”

“I am your second foster placement.”

“If your first exposure to children as an adult were Tim and Stephanie as middle schoolers you would also be frightened of children.”

“Are you calling the Narrows orphan the least scary child you’ve dragged in here?” Jason paused a beat. “Wait. Who’s Stephanie?”

The beginning of the end, mostly. But Jason had no way of knowing that at the time.

*

Jason did not take evasive action. 

That would imply he was avoiding anybody. A retreat. But that was far from the situation. The terrain (Wayne manor, for those following along at home) was an ideal site to take cover from the enemy, and that was exactly what he was doing. If they found Jason in the library then obviously he wasn’t hiding from everybody else. 

That would imply he was scared of anybody. Jason was not scared of anything. He didn’t even know the meaning of the word, despite all of the other words he knew the meanings of. An enemy thinking you were scared (erroneously!) was a weapon in their hands. 

Man, Jason really couldn’t wait until Stephanie and Tim left. He missed Bruce. Jason-and-Bruce, specifically - when Bruce let him read old Batman case reports and they talked for ages about the mistakes made by the bad guy, the cops or the city, Bruce, and Stephanie, and how to avoid making them next time. It was kind of fascinating watching the sheer quantity of mistakes Stephanie made in her first and second years as Robin before they quickly began to taper off into the stupidly competent vigilante everybody knew she was. It was downright funny how many mistakes Batman made. Less than Stephanie by far but still super noticeable in hindsight. Jason knew that the Batman-and-Robin perfection had been a bluff. 

 Bruce hadn’t taken him to the Zen garden in the museum district for ages. Yeah, it was winter, but Jason wanted to feed the koi. He hadn’t exactly asked to go, but what if Bruce was too busy and said no? It’d be super embarrassing. 

Max embarrassment would be Bruce thinking he was scared. He might think Jason was a coward. Imagine Batman thinking you’re a coward. Other kids didn’t have this problem. If their parents thought they were lame then they were probably lame parents. If Batman thought you were lame then that said something about your character. 

Jason set up camp in the library, but he couldn’t really focus on his books. He even lowered himself to check out the shelf of comics and manga (did Bruce buy Stephanie Sailor Moon? All of Sailor Moon!?), but after four volumes of Sailor Moon he was too restless to keep reading. 

A sticky note was used as a bookmark halfway through volume three. It read: GEOMETRY PROBLEMS 1-10; PIAGET BOOK; PARTY DRESS - LAVENDER; MAKE TIM GO OUTSIDE (DATE?)(BRUCE →?)

Ugh. He was reading her Sailor Moon. Whatever, it was Wayne Sailor Moon now. Jason didn’t know what Stephanie was doing with the foundations of child psychology, but he didn’t want to find out. 

The only times Jason outright asked Bruce if they could go outside and have fun was when he noticed Bruce hadn’t really gone outside and had fun in a while. He did not like sharing this trait. But that was mostly because Jason got kind of shy about asking for things, and he could only really summon up the grit if it was for the other person’s own good. Who spent so much time and energy on other people’s Vitamin D? She was obviously busy enough. Had she done all the emotional labor? No wonder everybody acted like she was in charge - they couldn’t really be bothered to do her ‘job’ themselves.

Jason was not Stephanie Brown. He quietly resolved not to go above and beyond doing emotional labor for Bruce. It wasn’t the kid’s job to take care of the parent. Stephanie was his partner, she could do that all she wanted. Jason wondered if she was a partner before she was a kid. 

The library had a computer, a stocky PC with a chunky mouse and keyboard attached. A big tower sat next to it, and there was a little binder leaning against the side. Jason had always avoided the computer out of obscure fear and confusion, but he found himself reassessing now. He used to hang out in internet cafes. He’d seen people use computers, even if he’d barely touched one himself. He could figure it out, right?

Turned out the hardest part was looking for the letters on the keyboard. It took a few minutes, but figuring out the mouse and the menus were pretty easy. He wiggled his mouse around the Windows XP, pressing on a little picture of a spiky ball and opening up a game called Minesweeper. He messed around with it for a while, but he couldn’t really figure out the rules, so he quickly closed it out. 

He considered clicking on the ‘N’ picture and using the internet. The last time he’d used a computer was to check the internet - he had asked Bruce to search the news to see what people were saying about his adoption. He quickly regretted it. Jason didn’t really want to go on the internet again. 

On impulse, Jason grabbed the binder leaning on the computer tower and opened it. He was surprised to see that it was full of CDs, tucked neatly inside sleeve after sleeve. He flipped through the binder, the sheer quantity of CDs shocking him. He had no idea rich people loved computer games so much! 

Jason picked out the first CD he saw with people on it - The Sims - and fed it into the computer. He wiggled the mouse impatiently as the screen froze for a few seconds before it went dark. Just when he thought he’d broken it the screen lit up again, showing a menu and blasting a jazzy tune through the speakers.

You could make your own people? You could build them a house and make them get married? You could make them cheat on each other? This was like writing a story, but if the characters could move themselves around and start beating each other up. This was great. Jason wished he’d had a computer way earlier. 

The weak winter sunlight shining through the windows dimmed, and eventually extinguished itself completely. Jason, wrapped up in discovering the easiest ways to murder your own Sims to facilitate a Hamlet-esque plotline (the key was a swimming pool and a deleted ladder), didn’t notice until he heard the echo of footsteps down the aisle. He frantically tried to close his book before remembering he was using a computer, and he wasted precious moments trying to figure out how to do the computer equivalent of closing your book before realizing it was too late. 

“Alfred says it’s time to wash up for dinner.” Unsaid: you did not skip dinner. Jason ‘Malnourishment’ Wayne did not skip anything, under literal doctor orders.

Jason startled, looking around the library for the first time and realizing that hours had passed. He hadn’t even noticed. Tim walked forward, moving to stand a few feet behind Jason. Bruce had given him the personal space talk. Saved Jason the effort.

“Sorry,” Jason said, half-defensively. “Lost track of time.”

“Yeah, Bruce said you normally weren’t in here for so long.” Tim squinted at the computer monitor, watching Bella Goth cry at her abandoned wedding altar as her ex-fiance ran away with his mistress. “Is that my old copy of the Sims?”

“What, do you want it back?” Jason snapped.

“I only really played Sim City and Civ. Do you hate me?”

Jason choked on his spit, the sheer whiplash sending his head spinning. Tim just blinked at him, expression neutral and posture loose with his arms folded against his chest. He said it like he was asking if Jason preferred cheese or pepperoni. As if he didn’t give two shits about the answer. 

“Of course I don’t hate you!” Jason cried, solely on reflex. Tim squinted dubiously, silently asking if he had said that solely on reflex. “I mean - look, man, we ain’t beefing! We’re cool!”

“You refuse to be in the same room as me.” Tim didn’t seem particularly offended by this. “It’s fine if you do. I just think Bruce wants to know.”

“I don’t! Jeez, who just asks that! Who’s gonna say ‘yeah, I hate you!’. Just take a hint or something!”

“Sorry,” Tim said, not sounding altogether that apologetic. “I don’t like beating around the bush on things. Steph says I’m straightforward. You aren’t. If there’s a miscommunication we ought to clear it up.”

God. He was worse than Bruce. Jason didn’t know that was possible. He rolled his eyes, going back to his game and refusing to look at Tim. It made the whole conversation a lot easier. He made Bella go flirt with the neighbor, just to help her feel something. “There’s no miscommunication. We talked about this ages ago. Remember? I asked if it was cool that I was playing your video games, you said you didn’t live here so it was whatever? There was an understanding, dude.”

Judging by Tim’s face he didn’t remember that at all, and he may in fact not actually understand, but that wasn’t Jason’s problem. Tim’s terrible memory was his own fault. “Sure. But that doesn’t answer my question.” 

Bella Goth was rejected. Her snotty tears grossed out the other Sim. The realism in this game was off the chain.“I answered your question. I don’t hate you. Can you drop this? I know you’re only bugging me ‘cause Steph told you to.”

“She told me to leave you be, actually. I honestly have no idea where she is right now.” So he had gone rogue. Great. “She told me months ago that you were probably avoiding me because you were worried that I would make Bruce kick you out or something. I thought you wanted some space to figure out the reality of the situation on your own, but I guess you didn’t. Maybe I should have said something.”

Frankly, Jason couldn’t believe that Tim had strung five thoughts together regarding Jason at all. “And what would you have said, huh?” Jason asked. He couldn’t muster the energy to be polite or diffuse or distract anymore. He was just kind of tired. Life couldn’t be a war on all fronts. It wore you down too far. “You’re such a big fat genius. What would you have said to make me feel better and convince me that you aren’t a threat?”

“I used to blow up buildings.”

Jason stared at Tim. Tim stared at him. 

“Uh,” Jason said.

“Can I sit down?”

Jason dumbly nodded. Tim shrugged and sat down next to him, keeping the careful foot of distance between them. Sitting closer like this, Jason could see the bags under his eyes and tired lines around his mouth clearly. A guy that young shouldn’t have frown lines. 

“I won’t go into it,” Tim continued, even and easy. “It’s not really a time in my life I like to remember. It was only a few months after the mob gunned down my parents and I came to live with Bruce.” Jason’s eyes widened, and he couldn’t help sucking in a breath. Tim looked distantly amused. “You don’t remember? It was big news five years ago.”

“I was, like, seven. I wasn’t really watching the news.” But it did sound pretty familiar. Tim had to have been Jason’s age. The thought made Jason’s stomach churn uncomfortably. “Sorry that happened. Must have sucked.”

“It happens to a lot of kids in this city. I’m probably the luckiest.” That was one way to look at it, but kind of a weird one. “I was angry. So angry I couldn’t see or think straight. I wanted to hurt them back. I started out doing smaller stuff, hacking into accounts and setting the IRS on people and everything. But it wasn’t violent enough. What had happened to me was violent, and I wanted to be violent too. Started blowing up warehouses. Fucking miracle I didn’t kill anybody. I almost killed a lot of people. Almost killed Steph.”

If Jason had been scared of this guy before, he was pants-shittingly terrified now. Holy shit. He didn’t know Tim could get scarier. Or more criminal. 

He knew Tim was ashamed of it. It was obvious just from the look on his face. But it was really only when he mentioned hurting Stephanie that he actually seemed pained. 

“All that to say, Jason,” Tim said, “Bruce still adopted me. The adoption hadn’t even gone through. He could still back out. But he barely even punished me. Steph was unconscious, I was sitting at her bedside - and he told me I’d already learned my lesson. I had.” He paused a beat. “He also said that Steph herself was punishment enough. Which was also true.”

Wow. Batman and Robin were family members with a domestic terrorist. And they just, like, kinda gave him a hard time about it. It was incredible. It’s like being superheroes made their standards lower somehow. It definitely explained why Bruce saw a homeless asshole like Jason and randomly decided he was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Tim Drake-Wayne had put the bar on the ground. 

He could be the good kid. 

“Bruce is the most stubborn person you’ll ever meet. He’s Steph with a rich white man’s confidence. He’s implacable and I’ve never seen him change his mind on anything. If he makes a decision, he does it. There is literally nothing you can do that would jeopardize your place in the house, up to and including domestic terrorism.” Tim paused a beat. “And he’s already way more attached to you than he was to me at that point. I can’t think of a reason to worry.”

Jason mumbled something vague and incoherent about how Steph could probably change Bruce’s mind.

“Why would she do that?”

Jason made garbled noises about how he had been a jerk at dinner, so…

“When you think of an actual reason why Steph or I would want you gone let me know so I can refute it.” Tim paused, pointedly waiting for Jason to summon up an actual halfway decent logical reason why Stephanie Brown or Tim Drake-Wayne would somehow want him dead, gone, and onto the street. He completely failed. Tim didn’t seem surprised. “Cool. Stop flipping over nothing. Bruce likes you ten times as much as he likes me. You’re fine.”

Tim didn’t sound resentful or upset about it, but he was hard to read. The words struck Jason oddly - that even as Jason sat there stressing over being the expendable one, Tim was already writing Jason off as the favorite. Were any of them on the same page? Did Stephanie secretly think that Tim was the golden kid? Did anybody in this family actually understand it, or were they all blindly stumbling around, desperately trying to find the right way to love each other?

It didn’t cohere with Jason’s militaristic viewpoint. There was an enemy. There had to be. Otherwise nobody knew what was going on. It felt like a worst case scenario.

Jason found himself shifting uncomfortably on the very comfortable chair. He stared hard at the screen, aimlessly clicking his Sims around and watching them set food on fire. He pretended hard that he wasn’t talking to Tim. He was just doing what he always did and speaking to himself, playing with the figures in his head and keeping them neatly tucked inside his own mind, where nobody had to see and nobody had to know.

“What’s you and Bruce’s relationship anyway?” Jason hoped to god the question sounded casual. He was aware it probably didn’t. “He never refers to you as his kid.”

“I’m not,” Tim said shortly. Jason wondered how often he’d had to say it. Maybe people were typically too polite to ask? “I had a father. When I came to live with him I wasn’t exactly in the market for a new one, and I never decided I needed one.”

“So what are you, then?”

Tim hesitated.

Jason knew more about how Bruce’s guardianship of Tim ended than how it began. Alfred had really only shared two things about it: that Tim and Bruce loved each other but didn’t always get along, and that they had a gigantic blow-out fight that ended up in Tim packing his bags and leaving for Boston two months early, the week he turned eighteen. The subject of the fight was uncertain. It was either about everything or nothing, or maybe a lot of little things blown up in everyone’s face. They never really stopped working together on Batman stuff, but Bruce and Tim stopped talking as much.

They had chilled out. They still argued a bit, but it had never really felt like father-son arguing. They always sounded exasperated with each other, as if they were mutually shocked that they were telling each other what to do. From the sounds of it they always thought the other person was trying to make them do the stupidest thing on Earth. 

“I don’t know if I can describe it in a word,” Tim said finally. Jason didn’t fight the weird satisfaction that Tim had taken the question seriously enough to stop and think about it. “Definitely not a dad. More like a much older brother, I guess, but not really that either. Not a teacher and responsibility like he is for Steph. A friend on some level, maybe. Batman and Red Robin are teammates, so there’s that element. I don’t know. I guess we never put a name to it. Do we need to?”

“I guess not.” 

Jason had a lot of people in his life who he couldn’t dredge up the right names for. ‘Neighbor’ or ‘babysitter’ or ‘friend’ rarely cut it when the neighbor fed you when Mom was too high to put together a meal or grocery shop, and friends didn’t let you couch surf when you were turned out on the street. Sometimes people are more important than words.

But Jason found himself hesitating anyway. Despite that - despite all of that, despite everything he knew and everything he had convinced himself he didn’t care about - he couldn’t help but ask. It shouldn’t have mattered. But it did, at least to Jason. 

“What are you and me, then?” Jason asked. He hoped it sounded casual. He knew that it didn’t.

He couldn’t see Tim’s face, which was very much on purpose. He didn’t know what Tim was thinking, and he couldn’t tell the look on his face. Maybe he looked like Jason had dropped a dead rat on his table and asked him to love it. Not that Jason had asked him to love it. Jason wouldn’t do that. That would be a really weird thing to ask someone who destabilized foreign dictatorships. He just…he just…

Sometimes you asked a question you didn’t want to know the answer to. You had to ask the question anyway. You just couldn’t stand not knowing - you couldn’t stand living in a world where you hadn’t even asked, where you hadn’t even tried. 

Jason was always scared. But he always waged the war anyway. He couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t. 

“What do you want us to be?”

Why did Jason always choose to wage the war? Why did he always take up arms? Why did he always fight for it?

“Whatever you want, I guess,” Jason said. “But it’s kind of a pain in the ass stressing out about you all the time.”

Tim was silent again. Whatever. Jason played in silence next to him, heroically attempting to drown as many Sims as possible. It was a hard world out there. Sometimes you drowned in swimming pools. That was life.

“So,” Tim said, somewhat awkwardly and very much on purpose, “you made a house yet?”

Jason glanced over at Tim for the first time. He was leaning forward a little, arms folded on the table as he watched Jason play. Had he been watching the whole time? “Yeah, duh. I’m doing a practice house right now with five bathrooms and a room that’s just windows.” Jason halted, considering everything before tossing it out the window. “The library has a ton of architecture books. I'm going to borrow the ancient Rome one and make an exact replica of a Roman senator’s villa.”

“That’s…incredibly cool.” Tim looked a little surprised to say it, as if he hadn’t expected to say the words and mean them. “You’ll have problems finding Sims with enough money to live in it, though. Do you know about the cheat codes?”

“The what?!”

“Here, click over to the Goths. I’ll show you. Can I see your five bathroom house?”

“Yeah! Look, I made a statue garden!”

Jason scooted his chair to the right, beckoning Tim in to bring his own chair closer so they were sitting next to each other. It was necessary for a better view of the screen and mouse access. 

“I like the way you placed the statues. Lots of feng shui.” Tim took the mouse as Jason nodded ardently. He had worked hard on it. “Here, let me show you how to access the debug menu. We can put your Sims in funny NPC costumes too.”

“Seriously?! How do you do that?”

“Look,” Tim said, “I’ll show you.”

Jason looked, and saw…

Jason saw…

*

They missed dinner, but somehow they got away with it. Tim was clearly kind of embarrassed about it, and kept on muttering to himself about bad influences, but Jason figured that Tim should probably focus on dealing with his more important character flaws that he shouldn’t pass onto children, e.g. domestic terrorism. 

Domestic terrorism. 

God, he was cool. 

Alfred barely twitched an eyebrow when he saw them again, settling for telling them that dinner itself had been postponed. Tim looked shocked, so Jason guessed that this wasn’t a very common occurrence. Come to think of it, if Bruce refused to come up from the Cave for dinner Jason usually just made himself a plate and went downstairs to sit at the desk next to the Batcomputer and munch potatoes as Bruce worked. He tried to munch quietly, but other times he couldn’t stop himself from asking questions about the case. He liked to think it helped - sometimes asking Bruce to explain the case helped him take a step back and catch things he would have otherwise missed. Bruce always told him ‘good job’, as if Jason had really done anything. Bruce had done all the work. But Bruce always acted like he had single handedly cracked the case anyway. What a dork. 

“Master Bruce is concerning himself with a case downstairs,” Alfred said, confirming one suspicion. “You two were otherwise occupied and we couldn’t find Miss Stephanie, so we agreed to postpone the meal for a few hours. Master Timothy, I believe Master Bruce would like your help tracking some financial statements for this case.”

“You couldn’t find Steph?” Tim said, surprised. “You tried calling her?”

“The call was declined.” Alfred raised an eyebrow and silently interrogated Tim and Jason in tandem. “Would you two know anything about that?”

Tim just shrugged. “Last I saw her, she was working out while I was installing the software updates for the Batcomputer. I went upstairs for lunch and didn’t come with me. And Jason’s been in the library all day. She seriously didn’t even come out for dinner?”

“It’s unlike her,” Alfred agreed. “Master Tim, would you -”

“I’ll go find her!” Jason piped up. He remembered too late that it was rude to interrupt Alfred, but he was forced to ignore the skyrocketing eyebrow and dazed blink anyway. “I’ll go grab her so we can eat dinner. Be right back!”

With that heroic proclamation, Paul Revere accepted his sacred duty and set his horse off at a sprint, galloping through dangerous territory mired in darkness so he could share his life saving rhetoric with the village. With words themselves - ‘The British are coming!’ - and a fast horse, the tides of war could be turned.

Or maybe he was more like Pheidippides? A simple messenger’s twenty five mile sprint carrying news of a vital victory towards Athens, a hero from Herodotus given recognition in -

Jason tripped over the stair runner.

“Master Jason, please do not run in the halls!”

Every Greek hero had his tragedy.

Stephanie wasn’t in her room, which Jason definitely had never peeked inside and which for sure wasn’t painted a garish shade of purple. That was no surprise - it was definitely the first place Alfred would have looked. Similarly, she wasn’t in any of the common areas. The door to Tim’s study was locked too. She wasn’t in the library, and Bruce was already in the Batcave. It was weird. Had she wanted to be alone or something? 

For a brief red-hot irrational second, Jason wondered if he had hurt her feelings. Nope. No way. Stephanie Brown didn’t a) sulk, and b) get her feelings hurt by rude gutter children. Adults who let kids hurt their feelings were super embarrassing, and everybody knew Stephanie Brown wasn’t embarrassing. 

Well, if she was sulking, she could get over it. The minute Jason got up from the computer he realized he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and his stomach was seriously rumbling. All these regular meals and big portions were turning his body seriously whiny, but Jason liked to view it as the opposite of storing fat for the winter. If Stephanie was actually a fellow gutter child then she knew the hustle.

Jason aimlessly poked his head inside rooms and wandered into random hallways for a few minutes, but it wasn’t until he stumbled inside an actual small dance studio that he realized he had to be methodical about this. The Manor could probably eat an unsuspecting gutter child who let his guard down. He was already working on a short story with that premise - it was a metaphor for capitalism - but he really didn’t feel like making it a reality. The world was weird enough already. He didn’t want to accidentally speak anything into existence. 

Maybe he should check his own favorite hiding spots? Jason wasn’t dumb - he always saw little initials or doodles carved into the wooden frames in his hiding spots left by generations of delinquent children. Some D.W. really wanted you to know that A.W. was ugly. A.W. was four feet two inches tall - or so a post proudly proclaimed. R.W., U.W., and T.W. were, indeed, there. 

Jason secretly loved it a little. He had started keeping a log of every little piece of switchblade graffiti he found, marking its contents and location. Maybe he could sit down and match them all up with the ridiculous genealogies he found. 

He always wondered how Abraham to Uriah Wayne would feel about him sitting in their hidey holes, tracing his fingers over their initials. He knew they had not been writing to him. People like him only went inside Wayne Manor to clean. Whatever future generations of Waynes they had been writing to, Jason had never been in that picture.

So Jason wrote it large. He had grabbed an awl from the Batcave and found the most popular graffiti spots, the ones crowded with generations of names. He wrote his own, big and blocky and loud, right at the top.

J.W. ESTUVO AQUI. It was the first thing anybody would see when looking at it. He wrote it again and again, wherever he saw everybody else leaving their mark. J.W. ESTUVO AQUI. Jason Wayne was here. 

Even if he left - even if he was kicked out - Jason had been there. For those strange few months, Jason had been there. You’d have to chop down the house to tear him away from it.

Bruce hadn’t kicked out Tim. Tim was a domestic terrorist who wanted to drop out of MIT. They hated each other half the time and Tim couldn’t even name their relationship. 

Bruce had told Jason that he wanted him to stay. What had he meant? It had seemed so complicated at the time - that there was a secret message in those words that Jason had to divine, that it couldn’t possibly be that simple. And obviously the reality of the situation was hideously complex. But what Bruce said - Bruce’s feelings, somehow just the same as Jason's - Jason couldn’t figure out a way to complicate it.  

No matter how hard Jason looked, he could only find one recent-ish B.W. - tucked high in the eaves of the popular hide-away attic, the initials gashed into the wood before the graffiti artist surrendered all pretense and started gouging the wood with a switchblade in long, straight lines. The marks were made over and over again, so methodical that parts of the post were almost carved out. Nothing to say. Just anger. Nothing to tell the world - just a desire to gouge it all out.

Jason didn’t know at what point Bruce decided to become a superhero, but the world probably dodged a bullet on a pretty insane supervillain when he did.

Jason thought about those marks as he climbed up his favorite hidden stairwell to the favorite hideaway attic, clutching his Power Ranges flashlight in one clammy hand as he crept into its heights. There were easily three different attics (maybe the house had eaten two smaller houses?), but the smallest one had the best spot - a view straight out of the round window at the front of the house, tucked under the highest eave, giving you an unmatched vantage point over the grounds. Somebody had set up a large armchair underneath that window a long time ago, complete with battery powered lantern, and the windowsill was covered in initials and graffiti. Even Jason had left his own. But Stephanie Brown was the only one sitting on the armchair, curled up with her chin on her knees as she stared at a Polaroid picture.

The battery powered lamp was turned on, casting a soft circle of light around Jason and Steph, and Jason cautiously flicked off his own flashlight and stuffed it in his pocket. Stephanie had undoubtedly noticed him approaching, but she didn’t really pay him any mind. She just stared at the picture, mane of blonde hair wild around her face, eyes far away.

Jason opened his mouth to tell her that dinner was ready. 

“What are you looking at?”

Stephanie glanced at him for the first time, smiling faintly. She bent a finger inwards, and Jason trotted over to look. “Just a picture we took at our post-mission pizza place. See?”

The polaroid was small, but Stephanie tilted it slightly so he could get a better look. There was a blue blur at the corner of the frame, as if someone had leaned back very quickly so they would be out of the shot. Jason could see most of a tall Black guy, skin half-covered by glowing blue metal, holding up a piece of pizza threateningly and shaking a finger at the photographer. There was a big bite taken out of the pizza. Environmental storytelling.

But most of the picture was taken up by two figures talking to each other. Robin, sitting tall and happy, mouth open as she said something probably very funny to the giggling girl next to her. The girl was nuts - giant hair, half a foot taller than Robin sitting, with burnt orange skin and glowing green eyes creased in laughter. Their bodies were angled towards each other, a private moment between two women frozen onto film. 

“Wow,” Jason said.

“I know, right? That’s everyone’s reaction to Kory. She thinks it’s funny. Apparently nobody on Tamaran really thought she was anything special. Crazy planet.” Steph smiled softly. She hadn’t taken her eyes off the photograph. “We were so excited to introduce her to pizza. First time she has it, she loves it - eats a whole pie. Then an hour later she’s in the bathroom yelling about how we poisoned her. Turns out she’s lactose intolerant. Now we’re practically the mascots of the weird yuppie California vegan pizza places. Gar’s, like, so smug about it.”

“Vegan food? Like for hippies?” Jason was appalled. “There’s restaurants that just sell vegan food? Who goes there?”

“Californians, I guess! Those people are insane. It’s like another world over there. It’s, like, sunny and shit. Vic says I’m a bigger baby about different cultures than the actual aliens and extradimensional witches.”

“Right.” Jason hesitated, stomach boiling awkwardly. “Um. I’m sorry for…”

“You’re fine. I deserved that one. It made me think, anyway. And I don’t do that nearly enough.” Stephanie didn’t look up from the picture. Jason was worried that she couldn’t. “Hey, squirt. You’re smart, right? What do you do when…when you aren’t the person you thought you were?”

 Since when was Jason the smart one? Why was an adult asking him for advice? Jason didn’t know. But he thought about it anyway, hopping on the carved oak back leg of the armchair and hanging off the winged back. “Uh…I don’t know. You change your opinion about yourself, I guess.”

But Stephanie just shook her head. “Who you are is, like, a thing. It’s always been a thing to me. Steph or Robin or…whatever. But what if you - you do something, or you think things, and they aren’t something Steph or Robin would ever do or think? Are you something else now?”

Jason really didn’t understand this woman’s psychology. “You’re Steph. You’re thinking it. So it’s a thing Steph would think. I’m not following you.”

“Steph’s always been this. She can’t start being that.” Jason began experimentally climbing up the chair, digging his feet onto the arms and scrambling up to the top. “Robin’s always been Robin. She’s always been the girl I wanted to be. Robin can’t be…that isn’t really what I anticipated for her.” Quickly she added, “Not that there’s anything wrong with being…that. Some of my best friends are that. But Robin’s not that. She’s not an alien or a mute assassin or anything. Robin’s a normal person, not a - more interesting person. Her relationships aren’t really where she always thought they would be. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

“I’m not really where I thought I’d be six months ago either,” Jason said philosophically. He hoisted himself up until he was gripping the back of the chair, elbows locked straight as he swung his feet. He could see straight down onto the top of Stephanie’s head from this vantage point. He could see from the very top of the window - from the very top of the world, with everything spread out underneath his feet in harmony. Undisturbed and eternal. Simple, if only when viewed from high above. “Things change. That’s not bad. Maybe who you wanted to be when you were my age isn’t who you want to be when you’re an adult. Shocker.”

Stephanie was quiet. Jason experimentally tilted himself forward, leaning over the back of the chair until his legs were high in the air too.

“You’re going to fall off.”

“I’m not gonna fall off,” Jason lied. “Look, I got balance.”

“I’m a gymnast. You’re going to fall off.”

“How can you tell? You ain’t even looking up.”

Stephanie sighed. She waited three seconds before getting off the armchair, almost at the precise moment that Jason over-balanced and fell ass over teakettle onto the overstuffed cushion. He bounced, blinking hard to clear his spinning vision, and when his eyes finally rightened themselves he saw Stephanie Brown standing in front of him, arms crossed and amused. 

“Right,” Jason muttered, world spinning. “Big damn superhero.”

“I think the proper term is ‘Wonder Girl’, thank you very much.” Stephanie crouched in front of him, expression softening. “Jason. Is there something you want to tell me?” Her tone was kind and gentle, and it abruptly panicked Jason. He shook his head. “Are you sure? There’s nothing you want to talk to me about? It can be anything.”

“I’m fine!” Jason did not break under torture. “I just came up about dinner, honest!”

“Is that what Alfred said?” What did that mean? But Stephanie just sighed, looking at Jason intently. Her gaze could be surprisingly intense - as if she was really looking at you, ready to crack you open and read the future from your entrails. “The boys warned me about overwhelming you about five different times, you know. I think they were worried I’d try to force you into family togetherness before you were cool with that.”

Jason mumbled something about how Steph obviously, like, didn’t even want Bruce to adopt him, so…

“Seriously? Who told you that?”

“You yelled at him for, like, an hour,” Jason said, desperately uncomfortable. “Look, it’s fine. I don’t care. Water under the bridge. Everything’s cool. I don’t want to make it into a thing.”

“A thing? I don’t - oh, man.” Stephanie sighed again, putting her elbow on her knees and propping her hand on her chin. Jason squirmed uncomfortably. But she didn’t seem upset or frustrated - just a little exasperated, as if her day was long enough without dealing with this too. “Jason, Bruce is…I dunno if you’ve noticed, but he’s kinda fragile.”

“He’s actually Batman?!”

“I’ve been watching Batman’s back and taking care of Bruce for ages. I was so worried about leaving him. I needed to get out of Gotham, I knew the guys needed me out in Jump, but…I was so worried I was ditching the people that needed me here. And then he and Tim had that blow up a month after I moved out, which totally felt like my fault, and…” Stephanie sighed, blowing a strand of hair out of her face. “I was stressing out over him constantly. And then he’s calling me in a panic over emergency placements and I’m sitting here like - he needs me to help take care of him, what makes him think he can take care of a special needs kid! He’s already called me for parenting advice three times in the first week, again, before I told him he was on his own with this one and - ugh. It was seriously like - I turn my back for two seconds…I was just worried about him, Jason. That’s all.”

Jason couldn’t believe this. Well, he could - he had kinda gotten a picture of this just from listening around - but it was still ridiculous. “Bro. He’s, like, thirty. He’s on the Justice League. He has a company. And I’m the houseplant of adoptees. It’s chill.”

“It would have been fine if I had just been here,” Stephanie sighed. Jason couldn’t believe that this was the woman’s beef with him. Did this even count as beef? Was it more like tofu? Had Californian soy byproducts rotted her mind? “But I just had to run off to lead an undergrad superhero team. I hadn’t meant to start A League of Her Own or anything. They just needed me, that’s all. I wouldn’t have left if I thought Bruce would randomly start adopting children…I’m sorry, Jason. It really has nothing to do with you.”

With a slow and creeping horror, Jason realized that his new older sister was stupid.

He had to set this record straight. What the hell. He couldn’t let things continue like this. This was the most ridiculous thing Jason had seen in his entire life, and he once saw a homeless guy climb a gargoyle to try and eat a pigeon. 

Jason took a deep breath. He pinched the bridge of his nose. Stephanie stared at him, somewhat incredulously. Finally, like a teacher delivering the lesson of their short life, Jason said, “You are not Queen of the Universe. You are an actual teenager. You can’t control everything that happens in Gotham, and it’s dumb to try and control everything that happens in Bruce’s life. Why don’t you trust him? Why do you think he’s not good enough?”

Steph looked away, somewhat awkwardly, and muttered something about how he had literally been calling for parenting advice again, so…

“And you stopped helping him, and he did just fine! You’re an adult. Adults are supposed to leave him and go to college and start superhero teams.” Or they did in his books and Fresh Prince, which Jason had to assume was what the world was ‘meant’ to be like. Jason firmly believed that his life wasn’t the way lives should be. He had to believe that really, really badly. “It’s stupid as hell to try and give that up so you could keep babysitting a guy who doesn’t need it. It’s not your job to take care of him.” 

“It totally is, though,” Steph complained weakly. She was powerless in the face of Jason’s rhetoric and she knew it. “I’m Robin, of ‘Batman and’. We’re partners, we cover each other’s bases. Even if Steph doesn’t have to take care of Bruce, Batman needs Robin.”

“You live in California. You can’t exactly do that anymore. If Steph’s thinking things that Steph doesn’t think, then maybe Steph isn’t who she thought she was. And if Batman’s partner is doing her own thing with her own friends now, then maybe she’s gotta take Robin back to the drawing board. And, like, stop mothering Batman.” Jason shrugged, crossing his arms and scooting back into the armchair until he could fold his legs up. “But what do I know, right?”

Steph stared at him for a little while, just enough to make Jason feel awkward. And enough for him to start kicking himself. What was he on about? This wasn’t a parking lot fight with the other street kids over if Robin could beat up Green Lantern (“She hasn’t tried, but she took down Oliver in two minutes. I have footage. Why do you ask, Jason?”). He couldn’t exactly sit here and tell the actual Robin who and what Robin was. What did he know about it?

What did he know about Bruce? What did he know about this family? He knew where Steph was coming from. Jason had heard more than enough stories to grok that Steph had kept Bruce on the straight and narrow for a long time. She was the one who had taken Batman from a monster into a hero. Apparently she was the one who defused what probably would have been a super messy first meeting between Batman and Superman. Batman said that it was only because of Robin that he understood the importance of the Justice League in the first place. 

And that was just Batman. Bruce himself could be kind of a disaster sometimes. Jason could already tell that she always mediated Tim and Bruce. And Bruce got sad sometimes, and other times he obviously couldn’t find it within himself to talk to people or to take off Batman and go back to being Bruce Wayne. Jason didn’t know how to handle all that. If he did know, if he could do something - then wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t he do whatever he can, to help the guy who helped him out the most?

But it still wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to Bruce, who believe it or not hadn’t actually adopted Jason on impulse. And it wasn’t fair to Steph. Just because you were the only girl in the house didn’t mean you had to do your job and take care of all the guys too. She hadn’t been much older than Jason when she took up vigilantism. Other people should have been taking care of her. She hadn’t looked out for Steph first for a really long time - had she ever? 

“Can I sit?”

Jason startled, and he quickly scooched to the side to make room for Steph. He was still pretty small and the armchair was obviously super big, so they fit together just fine. Her bare arm brushed against Jason’s chunky red sweater, but she didn’t act awkward about it. She just settled in with him, pulling her own legs underneath her. She smelled like strawberries. Jason tried extremely hard not to notice.

It was hard to read her. Her expression was blank and controlled. It made Jason sweat a bit. Was she mad at him? Was this when the prophesied Stephanie Brown hatred campaign against Jason began? Why was she sitting next to him? Should he make a run for it?

“If you could decide who Robin was,” Steph said quietly, and Jason stiffened. “If you were in complete control of that. Who would you want Robin to be?”

What a weird question. What a weird question for Robin herself to ask him. Maybe she was having a bit of an identity crisis. Jason probably wasn’t helping there. The least he could do was give her an answer. Maybe he should pretend to think about it first. He really didn’t have to think about it at all, obviously, but maybe he should pretend. But he ended up saying it immediately anyway.

“He’s like Robin now,” Jason confessed. “I mean - he or she or whatever. Gender doesn’t matter. Uh, they’re a kid, though. Not that there’s anything wrong with being an adult. I mean - I have a really good imagination, Bruce says so, so -”

“You can just go for it, squirt.”

“Oh. Okay.” Why was Jason on fire? Why did even thinking of this set something deep in Jason aflame? “He’s like Robin now, ‘cause when he saves people he always makes them feel safe. People trust him. But he’s really different too. Because he’s really strong and powerful, and everybody’s scared of how powerful he is. When people look at him, they see…they see that he’ll save them no matter what. That he’ll never stop until everybody in the Narrows is safe. If he dies, that wouldn’t stop him - he’d just get back up again, ready for round two. He’s the most stubborn son of a gun in all’a Gotham.”

Jason took a deep, shuddering breath. The oxygen stoked the fire in him, but he couldn’t stop for the life of him. 

“He’s not really who you think of when you think of a hero. He doesn’t care about glory or fairy tale endings. But people - people who have nothing, they have him. People who have nothing in their pockets have Robin. Kids, the babies on the street - they’d have a big brother in Robin. He saves the unsaveable kids.” Jason’s breath hitched, hot tears pricking at his eyes. “Robin would have saved me. He wouldn’t have stopped until he saved me.”

The image was clear in his mind. He’d imagined it a thousand times. He had a good imagination, and Jason never had anything fun to do but read and think. He knew what Robin’s costume looked like - he couldn’t have the same costume as a girl, come on - and he knew the shape of his domino mask. He had the skin of anybody in the Narrows, so the people who needed him most knew that he was always on their side. 

When people had nothing, they would have Robin. They would know that they hadn’t been abandoned by God. That they could be saved. That any of them, any one, could save themselves. They could save each other.

A warm weight fell around his shoulders, and he realized Steph had slung her arm around him. She was soft and warm, and for a crushing moment Jason could almost feel his own mother’s hugs. 

She’d never hug him again. Not ever. Jason didn’t know how many more hugs he’d receive over the course of his life, but none of them would ever feel like Mami. There was no getting that back. There was no going backwards. 

Where could he go from here?

“Jason,” Steph said softly, “what do you want?”

What did he want? He wanted Mami, obviously. He wanted to stay in Wayne Manor forever. He wanted to read every book and go to that fancy prep school and he wanted Tim to play the Sims with him again just like he promised.

Jason could admit all of that. He’d been pretty insistent about the Gotham Academy thing, despite Bruce’s reservations. The one thing he couldn’t admit -

How could he admit it? How could he begin? He couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t tell her that the figure in his beautiful picture holding out his hand to Jason, the figure so tall and strong and smiling with bright teeth, who wore her own costume and wore it proudly, only ever looked like himself. That Jason never once daydreamed of Batman and Robin saving him - not once in all those long and lonely years. That he had only ever imagined himself, wearing a coat of many colors, holding a hand out to a boy with nothing. That he had saved himself. He couldn’t imagine anybody else doing it. 

“I dunno,” Jason lied. “I dunno…”

“That’s fine.” Steph squeezed his shoulder a little, and despite himself Jason leaned against her side. It was nice. When Steph spoke again her voice was tight and hoarse, and Jason couldn’t figure out why for the life of him. “Jason…who you are is who you’re meant to be. Okay? There’s nobody else in the world like you. There’s nobody else as thoughtful and heroic and insightful as you are. Jason Todd or Jason Wayne - you’re amazing. You’re wonderful. Just as you are.”

“Shut up!” Jason said, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes hard. “You don’t even know me!”

  “I’m a pretty good judge of people, you know. And I know there’s people in this world who need someone like you. Someone who keeps people safe.” Jason’s chest hitched a little, making him hate God and all of his creation. Crying. In front of Stephanie Brown. Dante never visited this circle of hell. “I want you to have whatever you want, Jason. Whatever that is. I want you to have what you want.”

Jason wanted to push her away. He wanted to stop crying. He meant to. But somehow he could only lean against Steph and cry, and could only let her hug him, and he thought maybe he didn’t really know what he wanted at all.

*

Bruce stayed with Jason that night, foregoing their usual goodbyes in the Batcave so he could see him to bed instead. Jason knew it had been his own idea  - he thought Jason might have been avoiding him that day. Jason had solemnly told Bruce that it was a military maneuver, and that he didn’t understand the rules of engagement. Bruce had agreed, if only out of confusion.  

He reminded Jason to brush his teeth and helped him clean up his scattered room. Jason carefully placed a tin Green Army Man he found at the bottom of a dusty box at his headboard right behind him, so he could read over Jason’s shoulder. He pulled up an armchair next to Jason’s bed, and Jason settled in at the corner with a copy of Edith Hamilton’s Mythology. He had spent ten minutes recapping his favorite chapters from the book, sprinkled with some creative zest. Bruce was very interested in the story of the Golden Fleece and Jason and the Argonauts, but Jason thought maybe he might be making fun of him.

Batman was a formidable foe, and Jason was forced to surrender eventually. Jason dropped the book, throwing his hands up. “Fine! I was named after the movie! Happy? You finished interrogating me, officer?”

“What interrogation? I never asked.” The man’s poker face was impressive, but Jason couldn’t be fooled. “I didn’t even imply it.”

“There were no ulterior motives,” Jason hissed, jabbing a finger at the faux-innocent Bruce. “She liked the zombie skeletons. She thought they were cool and creepy, and she liked the name Jason, and that was it. Don’t read into it!”

“So your namesake has nothing to do with why you have that book memorized?”

Jason threw his book at Bruce. He caught it effortlessly. Damn him.

Dinner had been nice. Everybody finally sat around a table and talked like real people, even if Jason was flip-flopping at lightspeed between feeling extremely awkward and silently threatening to kill Steph if she ever let on that she saw him crying. She had mimed zipping her lips shut, but Jason didn’t trust like that. It was no good for siblings to have blackmail on you so quickly. 

At least they were chill now. They had shook on it and everything. Steph said that Jason had given her a lot to think about. Jason really didn’t know what that meant. He was a little worried he might find out. 

She had promised to teach him how to backflip before she left. And Tim had promised to play the Sims with him tomorrow. Jason interpreted the promises as white flags. He wasn’t sure if he was victorious or not. 

Jason quietly took the Green Army Man off his headboard. He rubbed his thumb over it, feeling the worn tin and letting the shard of rifle poke into his thumb, before carefully putting it back in his nightstand drawer. Bruce noticed, but he didn’t comment on it. 

The clock chimed eventually, and Jason’s eyelids were growing heavy. Bruce stood up from the armchair, carefully pulling it back to the side, and told Jason goodnight. He turned off Jason’s nightstand lamp, and his hand half-raised before he let it fall. 

“I’ll see you in the morning, Jason,” Bruce said. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight…”

Jason hadn’t really meant to say it. But he didn’t want to leave it on his tongue anymore - unspoken and unknown. He opened his mouth, trying to say it, but the words stuck in his throat. But Bruce turned his back to him and opened the door, light tumbling into the room, and the rise of a deep well of courage in Jason’s heart punctured the intangible barrier between them.

“Bruce?” Jason piped up quietly. Bruce stopped at the door, turning around. The dim yellow glow of the hallway cast light over Bruce and crept into Jason’s bedroom. Jason found himself wishing it would stay away just a little bit longer - that Bruce would remain in the darkness for just a little while. “...can you stay?”

Bruce halted, looking at him with a shadowed expression for only a second, before he closed the door again. “I have to prepare for patrol soon. And you do have a bedtime.”

“Steph’s home. Can Robin patrol by herself? Just for a little bit?”

Jason felt his courage dwindle. He felt like a spoiled, selfish idiot for asking. But he didn’t feel like an idiot for wanting Bruce to stay. It felt like the most natural thing in the world.

But Bruce just shrugged and turned around, as if the ask was nothing at all. “You’re right. She’s more than capable.” Bruce walked back to Jason’s bed, and Jason daringly patted the space next to him. Bruce stopped, surprised. “You’re sure?”

“Steph’s a hugger. The dam’s been broken.” It was different with a girl than with a man - much, much different - but it was easier to blame it on her. Bruce cautiously sat down next to him on the bed, motions careful and precise as only Batman could make them. Something in Jason loved that - that Batman helped Bruce care about him. “You know, in Percy Jackson I’d be a son of Nike.”

“For victory? Wouldn’t you rather be the child of an Olympian?” Bruce settled in next to him, and Jason was suddenly acutely aware of the heat of Bruce’s body. He was tall and strong, but he wasn’t so strange. 

“Nah. I wouldn’t want anybody going around saying I only won fights ‘cause my parent’s a powerhouse. I’d win fights for my parent. And it would psych everybody out. Like - oh, we’ll lose against Jason, he’s victory himself! That kind of thing. I got it all planned out. So Nike would be my secret Mom, except she would have had me with Mami, because she’s a god and gods can do that.”

“Congratulations on your mother’s bisexuality.”

“Nike would have turned into a guy. Or something. She can be gay if she wants. Jeez, Bruce.” Jason shifted a little until he was pressed against Bruce, warm and strong. “There’d be this whole secret love affair thing. They met because the Louvre put the Nike statue on tour, and Mami went to go see it at the Gotham Museum of Fine Arts - they had a free museum day. And she saw the statue and she fell in love with it instantly. 

“And Nike saw her looking, and fell in love with her too. So Nike uses her power and makes the statue move right in front of Mami. Mami sees its headless body turning to look at her, and she knows that it can see her clearly even with no eyes and no face. But it’s still beautiful to her. The statue steps off the pedestal, wings beating, and walks towards Mami. Nike’s thinking that Mami can’t love an old statue with no head, so she tries to turn the statue into something beautiful that Mami could love. A really attractive man or a cute woman if Mami’s bisexual or something. But Mami tells Nike that nothing’s as beautiful as the ancient statue. It’s the most beautiful statue in the world. She doesn’t need to see Nike’s face to love her. Then they fall in love together.”

“That’s a beautiful story,” Bruce said gravely. “How does it end?”

“With me, obviously,” Jason said. “Mom and Nike never met again. But Mami gave me magic, and that means I’ll always be okay. This is where I’m going to start my own memoir. I’m working on that, by the way. It’s more of a diary now, but it’s pretty good. You aren’t reading it.”

“Wouldn’t dare,” Bruce said. “But why start it here? Not during your life in the Narrows? I know it’s important to you.”

“That’s in flashbacks,” Jason said condescendingly. “It’s a literary device. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Clearly I do not.”

Obviously. Jason settled back in bed, leaning against Bruce just a little more. Little by little. “It starts here because here is where it starts. This is when it begins.”

“Here?” Bruce asked. He sounded a little surprised. Jason didn’t know why. It was obvious. “Right now?”

“Sure,” Jason said. “Right here.”

Jason fell asleep like that, warm and safe with somebody who loved him, and for a brief moment as he slid from consciousness to sleep he thought that he might have something he wanted.

He would get the one other thing he wanted soon. Stephanie was changing, and Jason was fulfilling his potential. Batman needed a Robin. They’d see.