#pt7

He could feel Danny’s quiet presence behind him on the couch. Waiting for him to continue.

“He noticed,” Jason said, his voice low, not turning around.

“Who? Nightwing?” Danny asked, setting aside his sketchpad.

“Yeah.” Jason finally turned, leaning against the wall. “He said I looked… lighter.”

He pushed off the wall and started pacing, a restless energy needing an outlet. “And he was right” He stopped, running a hand through his hair in a gesture of frustrated confusion. “It’s not… it’s not that the Pit is gone. It’s still there. I can feel it, like a green, gruesome monster sleeping in my gut. But… it’s not… driving the car anymore. I’m in the driver’s seat and it is the annoying kid asking every two minutes if we are there already. And I don’t know how the hell I got here.” He huffed.

He looked at his hands, the hands that had dealt so much violence, and still. “For so long, the anger was the only thing that felt real. The only thing that felt strong. Without it… I thought I’d be nothing. I’d be weak.”

Danny watched him, his expression soft and understanding. “You’re doing the work, Jason. You always have been. You just… you said you  are driving now, yeah? then now you finally have a map.”

“A map?” Jason let out a short, humorless laugh. “What map?”

“The one that says you don’t have to blow up every bridge you cross,” Danny said simply. “The one that says it’s okay to just sit on a rooftop and eat a burger without planning your next war. That strength isn't about how much you can destroy, but how much you can hold together. Especially yourself.”

Jason stared at him. It sounded so simple when Danny said it. But it had felt like an impossible, lifelong war.

“How?” The word was ripped from him, raw and honest. “How do you do it? You were… you were literally in pieces. And you were humming. You make puns about your own near-death. I would have torn the city apart looking for revenge. You just… got back up.”

Danny’s gaze drifted to the window, a shadow of old pain crossing his face. He was quiet for a long moment, choosing his words.

“I guess… I had to learn early that the world doesn’t stop for your pain,” he began, his voice softer. “My parents were… absent, in their own way. Brilliant, but obsessed with things I couldn’t be a part of. It was mostly me and my older sister, Jazz. She practically raised me.” A faint, fond smile touched his lips. “She’s a psychologist. Wants to be one, anyway. She was always trying to get me to ‘process my emotions in a healthy manner’.” He said it with a gentle mockery that was full of love. “She drilled it into my head that being strong didn’t mean not feeling things. It meant feeling them, and then deciding what to do next. That you could be scared and still be brave. That you could be hurt and still choose to be kind.”

He looked back at Jason, his blue eyes clear and direct. “You may think my puns are just jokes. But, to me, they’re… pressure valves. If I can laugh at the monster, it means I still have the strength to get back up. If I can make a stupid joke while my guts are falling out, it means I’m still in charge, not the pain, not the fear. You… you taught yourself to answer every problem with a bullet. I taught myself to answer mine with a really bad punchline. It’s the same skill, just a different tool.” He shrugged looking to the side.

It… made sense. It made that annoying kid in the back of his mind get angry and start throwing a tantrum. But Danny was right, the world wont stop because of your pain, and he seemed very well prepared to deal with it just fine. And Jason was starting to think that maybe, and just maybe, he could too.

“It’s easier to breathe in here,” Jason admitted, gesturing around the safehouse. “With you. The static… it just fades.”

“It’s not me, Jason,” Danny said gently. “It’s you. I’m just… a quiet room. You’re the one who’s finally letting yourself sit down and rest in it. You’re the one choosing not to listen to the static.”

Jason fell silent, absorbing that. The weight of it—the responsibility and the liberation of it—was immense. He had spent years blaming the Pit, Batman, the Joker, the world for the rage inside him. But this change, this peace… he had built that himself. He had chosen to pick up a different tool.

Danny leaned forward, his voice dropping into a more serious, confiding tone. "And Jason... relying on other people? That's not weakness. That's a different kind of strength. The strongest kind, maybe. Because it means you trust someone to have your back." He paused, choosing his next words carefully. "And sometimes... sometimes the people who have your back the best aren't your parents” 

Jason looked up, meeting his gaze.

"Parents..." Danny continued, a knowing look in his eyes, "...they look down from their level. They have this... plan for you. A path they think is right. But siblings? They're right there in the trenches with you. They're on the same level. They get the stuff that parents can't even see, because they're living it too. They understand the fights you're fighting in a way a parent never will. Having a sibling at your side... it means you're not alone in the mess. It means there's someone who speaks your language."

The words struck a chord so deep in Jason it felt like a physical vibration. He thought of Dick, not as the perfect heir, but as the brother who had just sat with him on a rooftop, trying to speak his language. He thought of Tim, the replacement, who had looked up to him despite everything. 

He and Dick, back in the early days, always had this tense, competitive relationship, but they still were undeniably a team. He’d never admit it out loud, but he’d always been proud of being able to read Dick like a book. The subtle shift in his stance before a disarming move, the almost imperceptible tilt of his head that meant ‘cover me’. Even when Jason was convinced Dick hated him for stealing his legacy, he’d never once doubted that in a fight, his back was safe with Nightwing. 

And Tim… their language was different, quieter. It was in the case files left open on the Batcomputer with a specific detail circled, a silent invitation to collaborate. It was in the way Tim, the brilliant detective, would sometimes look at him not with fear or judgment, but with a grudging respect for the brutal, practical solutions Jason offered—solutions Batman would never condone. He was the replacement, yes, but he was also the one who had seen the value in the Red Hood’s methods, even as he fought against them.

They had all, at one point or another, been allies in the shadow of the Bat. He remembered stifled laughter during briefings, shared eye-rolls at Bruce’s more obsessive mandates. He remembered a prank involving Batmobile seat warmers and a whoopee cushion placed just so on the throne-like chair in the Cave—a joint operation between him and Dick that had left a young Tim trying desperately not to giggle.

Danny was right. They were in the trenches together, and they always had been. He’d just tried so much to fight his way out of the trench on his own, that he didn't even notice he wasn't alone.

“Dick… he asked how I was doing,” Jason murmured, the memory now feeling less jarring now. “And I told him. I told him that I felt better.”

He looked at Danny, and for the first time, the resolve in his eyes wasn't fragile or tentative. It was solid, a foundation he had built himself. The map was in his hands.

“You’re right,” Jason said, the words feeling both foreign and frighteningly true. 

The firm clarity was gone, replaced by a vulnerable, almost bewildered honesty. He looked down at his hands, then back at Danny, his brow slightly furrowed. “I’ve… I’ve been so alone in this. This war inside my head. For too long.”

He let out a slow breath, the sound shaky. The admission cost him something, but it also lifted a weight he hadn't fully acknowledged was there.

“I forgot…” he continued, his voice softer, “what it was even supposed to feel like. To not be alone in it.” The yearning in his own voice surprised him. It was a feeling he’d beaten down and buried for years, and now it was surfacing, aching and real.

He wasn’t mapping out a strategy. He was staring at a door he’d welded shut long ago and wondering, for the first time, if he had the courage to try the handle.

“Maybe…” he started, the word tentative, almost a question. “Maybe I could… try. Just… try. Not with… not with him. God, not yet. That’s… too much.” He swallowed, the thought of Bruce a cold stone in his gut. “But the others… Dick… Tim… Maybe if the comm chirps, I could… answer. Sometimes. Just to see. Just to… I don’t know.”

He trailed off, looking at Danny, his expression lost. He was admitting a hope so fragile he was almost afraid to hold it. He was tired. So tired of the isolation. And this kid, with his stupid puns and his unshakable calm, had made him remember that there could be something else.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he confessed, the words a quiet surrender to the unknown. But for the first time, that unknown felt more like a possibility than a threat.

A slow, understanding smile spread across Danny’s face, devoid of pressure, just full of an unwavering support he didn't think could be possible to find in Gotham. “You don’t have to know. You just have to be willing to find out. That’s the first step, and it’s the bravest one.”

Jason nodded, the motion small but decisive. He didn't have a plan. He had a direction. And for now, for the first time in a very, very long time, that was enough.

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And we are getting to Jason actually acknowledging his feelings and reality, yay! maybe now things will be better for him, maybe he finally gets to have a more stable relationship :)

Ok, no. Jokes aside, he is getting there chat, he is really trying, ok? but like with Bruce, our boy had never had any form of a stable living situation, first his Father always absent for being arrested, and his mother lost in drugs, then the streets, and then a completely knew environment that never felt real and ended up w a fight and then an explosion. All that just to come back in a cult where he was treated as a weapon being polished instead of an actual human, sent all over places, never having the chance to actually get settled. Until now, with a kid he found out gutted and singing a way too sugary song for the situation.

So yeah, our man isnt getting a magical healing treatment, he is actually getting the chance to dealt with the built up emotions he had and also a safe place to do so.