#alyramble

Jason remembers in fragmented razor sharp shards of sensory: the contrast of the bright shock of green hair against the white white white of his skin, the sharp whistled singing of the crowbar through the air, the softly curious questions underscored with the jagged hyena giggles.

--forehand or backhand?--

The green of his Robin suit turning black from the dark red red red of his blood.

Green hair, green eyes, green little Robins outclassed in the field. Green pits.

++

“Dick,” someone is whispering in his ear, and he feels himself repress a violent instinct to being unexpectedly disturbed while he’s sleeping. “Dick?”

“Rachel,” he says, eyes cracking open and his senses reaching out. He can hear an owl outside the window, the wind through the leaves of the trees. A quiet hour, then, if he can’t hear the nervous prattle of Gar’s voice or the mostly friendly sniping little digs between Kory and Donna. A witching hour, if Rachel is crouched at his bedside, eyes more terrified than he’s seen in months. “What’s wrong?”

“Do you remember that other Robin, who came to the penthouse?”

Dick will never forget there’s another Robin, even if his own suit is cast off and the name is dead in his own mouth. He frowns. “Did he make contact?” Dick hasn’t reached out, but he shouldn’t have to. None of his codes work anymore, his bioscans locked out of all of Bruce’s hidey holes. He’s stayed out of Gotham, and it’s been radio silence, even from Alfred.

“I can hear him,” Rachel says. In her pajamas, she looks just as young as she did when Dick first met her in the police station, nevermind she’s hit a growth spurt since then and lost the last of the baby fat that clung to her cheekbones. “He’s screaming.”

Dick goes to Donna’s room first. She’s still in the community, active in a way that’s not as removed as she likes to pretend it is. She’s the clear first choice for this--she can fly, she’s got more capes in her phone than Dick does, and she understands Robin in a way Kory can’t.

Donna isn’t there, but the bed is made and the window is open; off doing mundane heroics, or supered heroics and pretending they’re mundane. She comes and she goes; Dick knows this isn’t the only safehouse she touches base with. Undeterred, he goes further down the hall, Raven nervously hanging on his heels, and raps his knuckles against the frame of Kory’s closed doors. The knock is rapid enough to express that time may be a factor; Kory only takes a minute to let them in.

Her eyes flick over Dick, dismiss him, and focus on Rachel. She opens her arms and Rachel ducks by him to tuck into her side. Usually Dick would crack a joke and maybe risk a careful touch to Rachel’s hair, maybe lean some of his weight on Kory’s shoulder. The fact that he hasn’t makes Kory frown, her hand cupping protectively against the back of Rachel’s head. “Dick?”

“I need to go to Gotham,” he says, and the word is ash on his tongue.

++

Kory makes coffee while Dick packs a bag. Gar stumbles out within thirty seconds of Kory spooning out the grounds, sniffing curiously at the air. “What’s going on? Something bad?” He turns big sad eyes on Dick. “Something to eat?”

Dick doesn’t answer. His phone is clenched in one fist, he’s looping possible scenarios over and over in his head on repeat, following all the possible branches to all the possible conclusions.

Kory hands Gar a box of Captain Crunch. He pops the top open and starts eating by the fistful. “Something bad.” His tone is noticeably tight, even as he more noticeably tries to hide it. His worry comes through the muffled chewing. “Do we have to run again?”

“No,” Dick says, jolted out of his own thoughts. He’d promised them, on bended knee. A home they wouldn’t have to flee, floors that have never seen blood. Their own rooms and family dinners on Sunday. The promise hasn’t stopped any of them from having go bags under the bed and in the front closets, but Dick’s never lived without the looming shadow of impermanence, even before he put on pixie boots and a yellow cape and started hanging out on rooftops in Crime Alley. “No, we’re okay. We’re not compromised.”

Some of the tension eases out of Gar’s shoulders. “Good. Because I think the tomatoes are almost ready.” He turns, leaving the cereal on the counter. “Do you wanna see?”

“It’s five in the morning,” Rachel reminds him.

“Go look at the tomatoes.” Kory’s tone brokes no arguments, and the kids leave, the screen door squeaking open and shut behind them. “I’m coming with you,” she says, turning on the faucet to make it more difficult for Gar to eavesdrop.

“No.” The refusal is so automatic that Dick doesn’t cognitively realize he’s made the decision. “None of you can come.”

Kory raises a single judgmental eyebrow. “Not even Donna?”

Dick winces. “Donna’s… different.” Gotham knows Donna, tolerates her.

Kory’s lips purse.

“Rachel can heal,” she offers hesitantly, “if--”

“No.” His second refusal comes from somewhere deep in his chest, ripped out from where the little boy watches his parents fall away. “I don’t know what he’d do to her.”

Her breath catches, a fist curling up before she relaxes it, an automatic reaction to a threat. “You said he doesn’t kill.”

Dick’s mouth twists in an unhappy smile. “He says he doesn’t kill. Rachel--he’ll see her as a threat.” His smile flattens further. “And I don’t know if I can predict him anymore.”

“And how would he see me?” Her eyes glow.

Dick’s smile turns almost real. “You are a threat.”

“Damn right,” she mutters, the glow fading. She takes down two mugs from the cabinet: hers is a pale cornflower blue, his features the crest of the House of El. Donna thought it was funny, Dick suspects Gar was hoping for a few stories of back in the good old days.

He pours the coffee. Neither of them take milk or sugar. They stand at the kitchen window and look out past the ragged front lawn, at the hill rising at the back of the side garden. Rachel has her head on Gar’s shoulder, Gar’s hair is totally flat on one side and spiked raggedly on the other in a mess of bedheaded cowlicks; they’re watching the sun rise.

“A week,” Kory says, “and then I come after you. And they’ll follow, if there’s no one left to tell them to stay.”