Chapter Text
The family, understandably, wants to find him after Peter’s death. They give him a grace period, a few days to decompress and unwind, using Barbara as a go between to gently ask Jason to meet.
Jason withdraws. Ignores them. Avoids them if it comes to that--and it does, because he’s never known Dick or Bruce to know when to leave well enough alone. He does anything he can to pour as much distance between himself and the others. He needs room to think. To breathe. To grieve.
To figure out what the fuck to do about the ghosts in his head, and the fucking nightmare he has to deal with now. Because he knows about Thanos, and he knows Thanos is on his way here. Eventually. Maybe.
That orange place where he spoke to Dr. Strange is becoming less clear by the day. The details of their conversation are growing fuzzy. Jason details out what he can remember, scribbling out exact words from Dr. Strange’s mouth, but the overall idea is still losing definition, and he’s left with nothing more than a burning sense of urgency. He finds himself following Peter’s old patrol routes in an attempt to think like him. That helps. Sometimes.
Like tonight, after several hours of hard work (he’s strong, but Peter is--was--preternaturally strong, maybe Kryptonian strong). He finally clicks with the orange-gold presence inside himself (ugh) and the ghosts flicker in at the edge of his vision, just when he’s about to call it quits for the night. There's a dizzying amount of them, and he tenses when he sees them. He wonders how Peter could possibly tolerate having so many people constantly around him.
“Okay. So, you need me to stop this Ebony Maw guy,” Jason says, pacing the length of the rooftop. He’s speaking aloud; the ghosts have indicated Peter managed to talk to them inside his own head, but fuck if he’s figured out how to do that. “Tell me you know how exactly I’m going to pull that off.”
“You’ll need to focus on Gotham first,” Dr. Strange says. “If you can’t save Gotham, then the universe is out of the question.”
“Save Gotham, right,” Jason scoffs. He lets out a bitter laugh. “This place is a lost cause, doc. You should know that.”
“Not what I meant,” Strange replies dryly. “We’re losing time.”
“Fine, then tell me what to do,” Jason snaps, the last word practically a shout. Not that it matters; he’s high enough that no one on the street can hear him. And even if they did, they’d write it off as the standard after dark shouts that take place in Crime Alley.
Hopefully.
“Talk to your brother,” Dr. Strange says, nodding towards the darkened shadows behind Jason.
And then he disappears, along with the rest of the ghosts. Jason stiffens, closes his eyes, and lets out a long breath. He turns to glower at the shadows, crossing his arms over his chest, fuming at Strange. The man set him up. Jason has to speak to be heard by the ghosts, but the ghosts are as silent as the wind when they reply. Someone just got a front row view of Jason yelling at himself.
“Alright. Come out,” Jason says.
He isn’t surprised when Nightwing drops down from a gargoyle hidden in the shadows, but he is annoyed.
“Hey,” Nightwing says, all too casually for someone who just saw their half estranged brother having an argument with himself on a random rooftop.
“I’m not crazy.”
“Didn’t say you were,” Nightwing says, shrugging. He’s using that tone. That leader of the Titans tone that sounds so much like Superman it’s almost uncanny. Jason’s annoyance ratchets up another few degrees. “But I didn’t see who you were talking to.”
Jason hesitates, briefly wondering how to answer that unspoken question. Lying won’t work; they know each other’s tells too well. Truth won’t make him look any less crazy, but it’s all he has.
Fuck it.
“The ghosts inside my head.”
Nightwing tilts his head, idly rocking back and forth on his heels while he thinks. He always has to move when he thinks. It’s practically a tic.
“Peter?” he asks, still with his head tilted.
“No, other people. He wasn’t dusted,” Jason says. “Turns out the kid was an Avenger--that’s the little A on your suit--and he was one of the only survivors of a fucktastic end of the world fight. The ones that didn’t make it were stuck inside his head.”
Nightwing’s idle fidgeting stops and he gives Jason one of those carefully neutral looks he uses on particularly unwell people. Whether he’s doing that because he knows Jason is expecting it or because he’s truly been thrown for a loop is questionable.
“Why were you following me?” Jason asks, suddenly tired. He finally managed to talk with the ghosts and got fuck all from it. The frustration from that combined with his overly strenuous patrol is draining him. What a waste of a night.
“We’re putting the headstone on Peter’s grave. I thought I’d let you know, since you didn’t come to the funeral,” Nightwing says. “And Batman wants to have a talk about everything that’s happened.”
There’s no judgement there in his tone. If anything, there’s just...understanding. That annoys Jason too, but he’s frankly in the mood to be annoyed, and his grief is still sharp and furious. He stares at Nightwing for a long moment, clenching and unclenching his fists, before turning away to settle his thoughts.
“I’ll go. But I’ll want to be alone with him,” Jason says after a long pause. “So keep the rest of them away from me.”
“I can do that,” Nightwing says, relieved. “And when you’re done, maybe you can come by the cave and explain what an Infinity Stone is.”
Jason whips his head around to stare at Nightwing.
Nightwing shrugs. “You aren’t the only one seeing ghosts these days.”
“Who else?” Jason asks.
“The Signal. He can see them trailing after you when you’re on patrol,” Nightwing says. He jerks his head in the vague direction of the Batcave. “Wanna come home and talk it out now?”
Jason mulls it over for a moment, before giving a short, jerky nod. Nightwing is too disciplined to let his relief show, but he can sense it regardless.
“I’ve got to grab something from my place first,” Jason says. “I’ll meet you there.”
Nightwing gives him a quick salute and leaps into the shadows.
* * *
He hasn’t been staying at the apartment. He can’t. The few times he goes there, just to pick up some weapon or tool he needs, he keeps imagining he hears Peter scuttling along the walls and roof in the apartment above his. Like tonight, when he’s left with no choice but to go to the apartment to grab something from his workshop. He swears he hears the quiet thumping of Peter crawling along the walls, and follows the sound up to his apartment, hesitatingly pushing the door open.
It’s empty, of course. One of the windows is cracked, letting in cool air to compensate for the radiator overworking itself. His school books and backpack cover the small dining table tucked into the kitchenette, and he’s left clothes, books, and tools strewn across the floor. It looks so perfectly lived in, as if the kid is going to just climb in through the window with a snarky comment about Jason’s mother hen bullshit.
He stares at it for a long moment, and feels the heavy golden pressure inside his chest shift and ache.
He slams the door shut and leaves.
* * *
He uses one of the abandoned subway tunnels to travel through the city unseen, arriving in the cave roughly an hour after he and Nightwing talked. He cuts the engine on his bike, parking it next to Signal's.
The others give him space, barely acknowledging him when he stalks towards the weapons lockers. Which means they really don't want him to leave. Nobody in this family cares about each other’s feelings when it comes to a case. They're treating him with kid gloves.
“Or maybe they're worried about you,” a dry voice says. An image forms in the back of his mind: a tall man, brown hair, with a metal arm.
“Fuck off, Casper,” he mutters back
He gets the feeling that the man is rolling his eyes at him in response, but still walking beside him.
“Hey, Ghostbuster,” Duke says, sliding over to walk with him.
Leave it to the Narrows kid to break the unspoken ‘don't bother the unstable black sheep’ rule. Jason smirks under his helmet. He’s always liked Duke.
“Hey, flashlight,” he retorts.
Duke grins. He’s never seen Jason at his worst, and utterly lacks the wary caution the rest of the family has around him. To him, Jason is another part of the family, just a more distant one. It's a nice change of pace.
Peter lacked that wariness, too.
“You brought the whole crowd,” Duke says, looking around Jason. “Hey, Sam.”
“Hey, Duke.”
Jason ignores that voice. “It's weird you can see them, you know.”
“Try taking your finals with an entire clown car of ghosts sitting in front of you,” Duke replies.
His tone is light, joking, but there’s a heavy undercurrent of grief. No matter what Peter was to Jason, he was Duke and Tim’s friend first. Jason feels a sharp pang of guilt that gradually grows. If Peter hadn't been a moron and saved him--
“Thinking like that won’t help anyone,” the man with the metal arm says. He’s keeping his voice low, quiet, so that Duke doesn't hear.
Jason’s annoyed by it anyway. Even if he’s right.
“You handled yourself admirably,” a young woman says. Her accent is light, hinting at Africa, and her tone is teasing and smug.
“Despite you second guessing my work,” Duke retorts to some unseen person to Jason’s left. He turns back to Jason. “Bruce isn't back yet. He’s on his way.”
“How long?”
“An hour. Maybe longer.”
An hour. He debates on leaving, but ultimately drops the idea. He'll barely settle into one of his safehouses by the time he has to leave to come back to the cave. He veers away from Duke.
“Got it. I'll be in the weapons lock up.”
He sits down in the far corner of the weapons workshop, watching the others, musing over how strange everything feels now. A part of it is the grief, sure. And the anger, he supposes, but he’s been angry on some level ever since clawing himself out of his own grave. He wears it like armor, and he’s comforted by its presence. It's just a lot more guilt driven these days.
Why the fuck did Peter save him?
No one answers him this time, because the answer is obvious: Peter was a hero, and that's what heroes do. Even if it kills them.
Jason chases that particular thought around and around. Eventually, the exhaustion catches up to him, despite his best efforts. He falls into a doze, propped up against a locker. His sleep is usually either dreamless and restless, or one long slice of nothing. He prefers the former. The latter reminds him too much of being dead to be anything but uncomfortable. Tonight, barely a week after Peter shoved the soul stone onto him, he’s exhausted enough to go into a deep sleep. But it isn’t like that slice of nothing.
He blinks, finds himself standing in a strange orange tinged void, surrounded by heroes. He recognizes Dr. Strange by sight, but the others are a mystery.
“Hello, Jason,” Dr. Strange says.
“Oh, what the fuck,” Jason replies. “In my dreams, too? Come on.”
The man with the metal arm stalks forward.
“We aren't going to do this often. You just need to know a few things. Consider it a mission briefing,” he says.
“Okay, who are you?”
“Bucky. The Winter Soldier,” Bucky says. “We’ll make it quick, but you aren’t going to be happy.”
“Great, at least you’re honest,” Jason says, pinching the bridge of his nose.
The most uncomfortable part of this is that the walls of this orange place-that-isn’t shifts from that flat orange color to orange tinged images and projections. Memories. His memories. His life on the street, his life as Robin, his death. Everything that came after. He can tell most of the ghosts are doing their best to not look, but it’s a futile effort. These people are going to him inside and out now.
Fucking great.
“Make it quick,” he says sourly. “I’d like to keep some thoughts to myself.”
“That won’t happen until you get rid of us,” Bucky says. “This is what you need to do--”
Jason learns quite a bit during that little debrief. The ghosts’ names, their pasts, what exactly happened to them, what’s happening to Gotham now, the mind altering magic seeping into the city and muffling the minds of his family. That last one horrifies him, makes him sick to his stomach. Sure, his personal feelings on them wax and wane depending on his current mood, but the moment someone else fucks with them, they’ve fucked with him. They’re the only family he’s known, and that counts for more than he’s willing to admit.
Thanos. The Infinity Stones. The Gauntlet. How to fix it all. And what that requires of him.
A soul for a soul.
Jason mulls over that one. None of the ghosts look happy.
“Okay, what the--”
“No time,” Bucky says. “We’ve kept you here too long.”
He shoves Jason over, hard enough to send him flying.
* * *
“--fuck!” Jason shouts, snapping awake before he finishes the word.
The cave goes silent, and he can feel the eyes of everyone fall on him as he startles awake. Their faces are unreadable, but he can imagine their thoughts nonetheless: stressed, not sleeping, nightmares.
Oh, fuck you, Bucky.
To his shock, he hears a response:
“Sorry, kid.”
Bruce is the first to approach him, because of course he is.
“Red Hood, are you ready for a debrief?” he asks.
The fact that he’s asking at all is baffling. Jason looks up at him, really looks at him, and sets his jaw. Now that he knows what to look for, he can see the muffling effect of the Mind Stone on Bruce. His stomach clenches, and his anger at this whole nightmare situation rachets up another degree.
“How long did you let me sleep?” he asks, standing up and stretching.
“Four hours.”
Fuck me, they really are acting out of character, Jason thinks. There is no way Bruce would let him get away with that shit in any other circumstance. This is worse than he thought.
“Too long. You should’ve kicked me awake the moment you got back,” he says sourly. “You aren’t thinking right, old man.”
Bruce staggers for half a step, an anomaly in itself. For a moment, his eyes sharpen, and that suspicious glint that’s always present when he speaks with Jason flares fully to life. It dims the next moment, but not completely. It burns just a bit brighter.
Good, he’s working against it now. Jason starts a countdown in the back of his mind.
“Let’s get this over with,” Jason says. “We have a problem in Crime Alley, and we all need to deal with it before the city falls apart.”
“We’re listening,” Dick says.
Jason lays it out for them: the smuggled kryptonite, the attacks on the power stations, the weird cooperation between the Rogues, and Peter’s connection to it all. The others look mildly confused at first, but work against the intelligence muffling effect of the mind stone as Jason speaks. By the time he finishes, they're almost back to normal.
“We need to handle this tonight,” Bruce says. “Team effort. Black Bat, Spoiler, can you scout ahead--”
Jason should be surprised by how quickly a plan comes together, but he isn’t. The others get their assignments, make their plans, and slip out of the cave like shadows, moving with a purpose. They leave in teams, until its just Jason and Bruce left.
Bruce looks at him. He pauses for a moment, and says, “I need time to adjust my utility belt. If there is any business you need to see to...”
“Got it,” Jason says.
He turns and leaves, stopping at the weapons locker to grab a few things before heading upstairs.
He didn't quite tell them everything. They would never let him near Crime Alley if he did. If they weren't being fucked with, they might have realized that.
* * *
He takes a moment to visit Peter’s grave, like he said he would. It’s very well appointed, all things being equal. Smooth granite, neatly carved, with just Peter’s name etched into it, resting in its own separate portion of the memorial garden Bruce has cultivated on the Wayne manor grounds. He died alone in a world that isn’t his own, but at least he’ll be remembered as the hero he is. Even if it’s just here.
“Why can’t I hear him?” Jason asks aloud.
“We aren’t actually dead,” Bucky says. “Just elsewhere. That’s why Duke can see us.”
He mulls over that. Over the whole situation, really. What's been done. What needs to happen. And how he plans on doing it. The others are going to lose their shit once they realize what he's doing.
They'll get over it. They moved on just fine the first time he died.
He keeps a hand pressed to the special package he pulled out of the weapons locker, stares at Peter’s grave.
After a few minutes, he stalks back towards the manor.
* * *
Hijacking an alien multidimensional teleporter isn’t exactly normal for Jason, but it’s not as weird as he expects. At the end of the day, Bucky is right: this is a mission. A fucking weird one, but stealth and skill serves him here as well as it did in the past.
They find Selina's adoptee chained up in the tower. Catwoman prefers to work on her own, but she happily joins the swarm of bats and birds flooding into the tower to rescue her charge. Jason feels a pang of regret for what he's about to do.
If the others were on their A-game, they'd realize something is wrong the moment he falls into place beside Batman and Nightwing. They aren't, so they don't. And Jason never told them what he planned to do once he got to the machine.
He swings past it, hanging back behind Batman and Nightwing. Once he reaches the right angle, he drops like a rock, flinging himself for the twisted black steel and kryptonite monstrosity on the roof of the spire. His path brings him alongside Felicia, who startles, and then gives out a strangled cry of alarm when he grabs her and bodily flings her into the portal. She flies through the trembling pool of golden light, so shocked she barely has time to realize what's happened.
Batman is, of course, the first to realize he’s gone off script.
“Red Hood, stand down!” he shouts. Jason swears he hears panic under the anger.
“What the hell are you doing?” Nightwing shouts at him.
“Ending this,” he says.
He drops onto the machine just as it hits its fever pitch. He slaps the bomb he grabbed out of the weapons lockers onto it.
It's less bomb and more slow burning slag. He doesn't want to risk blowing up the kryptonite. It would flatten half of Gotham if he did.
Regardless, he sets it off. Bright, furious sparks melt through the strange metal and wires holding the portal aperture open, causing them to collapse. He leaps in just before the portal fails completely, barely dodging Batman’s desperate grab.
The portal is nothing but sound, pain, and a sensation of being stretched to an impossible degree. The stone in his chest flickers to life, and he’s vaguely aware of the ghosts around him, protecting him, pushing him through. He twists in the air, falls, and hits the ground hard.
He wakes up on a desolate, wind bitten plain, laying on a rock that seems to be made of only jagged edges and nothing else.
“Where’s Felicia?” he asks, his voice strained. He feels fucking terrible, and he had the ghosts to help him. If he hurt her--
“Safe, at home. Where she belongs,” Dr. Strange says. “Though Selina might kill you for that little stunt if she ever finds you.”
He regrets that. Selina isn't a friend, exactly, but she's never been an enemy either. He pushes himself up, sways, and nearly collapses again.
“Give yourself time to breathe,” Shuri says.
Jason ignores her. He pushes himself up onto knees, then onto his feet, fighting back the exhaustion.
“You’re sure Felicia’s okay? If I'm this fucked up when I had you guys to help...”
“The trip through is supposed to be done one at a time,” Dr. Strange says patiently. “Her trip wasn't anything like yours.”
That's a relief. At least he didn’t fling her into the ass end of some other universe, at least. He rolls his shoulders, sighs, stretches.
“How long until they get here?” he asks.
“An hour,” Dr. Strange says.
Well, that’s convenient.
* * *
He knows what to expect.
He sits and waits, and when a red haired woman appears on the planet beside to a man with the most fucked up haircut he's ever seen in front of him, he stands. They both eye him warily, shifting into graceful stalking steps so in tune with one another that Jason is reminded of his family in Gotham. A strange pang of regret follows.
They look suspicious but not entirely hostile. Judging by their body language, he can guess that they aren’t going to attack him yet. Unless he fucks this up on a monumental scale, at least.
“I guess we have to fight you to get the stone?” the man asks, casually strolling towards Jason.
The woman says nothing, slinking towards his blindside the way Cass does.
“Nope,” Jason says.
They stop at that.
“You have to take me with you back to your time,” Jason explains. “You won’t be able to get the stone off of me.”
Well, not unless they kill him, and he’s not going to say that.
They look at one another, communicating without actually communicating, and Jason has the vague inkling that he’d struggle to keep them from killing him if it came to that. He could probably take these two on by himself, but he’d be hurt like hell in the process. Thankfully, it’s not necessary.
Plus, these two look more than capable of killing people, and he’s not eager to take on two professional killers on his own. Especially when one reminds him of an older, more experienced Cass.
“Smart,” Fury says. “Get me to Natasha.”
“Yeah, that’s not happening,” the man says, turning to face Jason. “Just give us the stone, pal--”
“Won't work,” Jason says. “It's stuck to me.”
He shrugs, confidently striding towards Jason. “I'd like to give it a shot anyway.”
Jason flicks the stone at the woman. She catches it on instinct, clearly taken off guard. He timed the throw to interrupt whatever she planned on doing to him while the man kept him distracted. He’s not in the mood to get punched in the face today.
She looks at the stone, frowns, staring at it. Then she goes very still and pale. A second later the stone flashes out of her fist and lands in Jason’s open hand. The man eyes him warily, hands drifting towards his weapons.
“Clint,” Natasha says stiffly. “He needs to come with us. He’s telling the truth.”
The guy blinks, pauses, and shrugs. “Okay.”
“That’s it? Just ‘okay’?” Jason asks.
“If she says we need to do it that way, then yes,” Clint says. “Come on, we’re going to have to figure out how to take you back with us.”
They close in on him, crossing the distance to reach him with surprising coordination and speed. They settle on grabbing his arms and stretching their separate time travel devices over his wrists and theirs. It’s a tight fit. And he feels entirely superfluous to the situation, as the two Avengers banter back and forth over how to transport him back to their home.
“How many people have you two kidnapped to make this feel routine?” he asks.
Clint smirks at him in response. Natasha winks.
They hit the return button at the exact same time, disappearing with Jason between them.
The two Avengers land gracefully.
Jason slams into the floor with all of the grace of a sack of flour, cursing viciously as he tries to stagger back onto his feet. Vertigo hits him and he drops smack onto his face with a muffled grunt of pain, followed by a supremely frustrated sigh.
“I thought Robins were supposed to be graceful,” Shuri says innocently.
Jason imagines a massive middle finger at her. She snickers.
“Okay, so, most of the class finished their assignment just fine. But you two had to be special,” a man says, his tone a veneer of sarcasm laid thin over anxious frustration. “We were looking for the Soul Stone, not some emo hitchhiker.”
“The stone’s stuck to this guy,” Clint says, dropping back onto his heels. “Ugh. That sucked.”
“Yeah, these devices are one per person. You’re lucky you didn’t get splattered across the timeline,” the man retorts. “And what do you mean stuck to him?”
A hand reaches down and turns Jason over onto his back. He finds himself staring up at a blonde man in a blue suit. Steve Rogers, if the description Bucky gave him is anything to go by.
“You alright, son?” he asks.
“No,” Jason deadpans. “My soul hurts.”
“Not sure my first aid skills can help with that,” the man retorts, smirking a bit before offering Jason a hand up.
Jason is distinctly reminded of Superman as he takes the offered hand. And he’s reminded of him again when the guy effortlessly lifts him up off of the ground and onto his feet. Jason sways, but is steadied by the man.
“I notice that no one is answering me,” the first man says.
“Give me a second to recover, Stark,” Natasha says wearily. She’s handling the vertigo better than Clint or Jason, but only barely. “He tried to give us the stone, but it flashed back into his hand.”
And then an actual fucking raccoon starts talking.
“We used our one tool for removing stones on Thor’s girlfriend. Not sure we can pry another one out of this guy.” He pauses, shrugs, and adds, “Unless it’s the old fashioned way. Anyone got a knife?”
“Try it and I’ll punt you back into the forest where you belong, you furry asshole,” Jason says.
“No one is trying anything,” a man says, sounding tired. He’s huge; muscle on top of muscle, and green. “Hi, I’m Bruce Banner. Who are you?”
“Jason Todd. Red Hood, if we’re going by our made up names,” he says. Tony Stark’s eyes shoot towards him, staring at him with an expression caught between annoyance and wary curiosity.
“How’d you end up with the Soul Stone?” Banner asks.
“It was given to me,” he says. “I was told to protect it, keep it from Thanos.”
“Stellar job,” Tony says.
“Peter is the one who gave it to me,” Jason says.
That gets Tony’s full attention. The man’s head snaps towards him and he storms towards Jason, jaw tight and eyes flaring with equal parts anger and curiosity. “What did you just say?”
“Peter gave it to me after saving my life. He didn’t disappear like the others,” Jason says, swaying dizzily. Natasha catches his arm and, with a look to the tall blonde man, guides him over to a chair. “It took too long for him. Remember? Everyone else fell apart in less than a second. He lasted thirty.”
The other Avengers look sick at the thought, most of them shifting uncomfortably. Clint in particular glances at Tony out of the corner of his eye. Tony, for his part, chews on the toothpick sticking out of the corner of his mouth, frustrated tension pouring off of him in waves.
“Yes. I know. I was there.”
“Your Dr. Strange did something to him, sent him over to my universe,” Jason says. He makes the stone appear in the palm of his hand. It fills the room with an eerie golden orange light. “Apparently he broke off part of the stone when you were fighting on Titan. Or it chose him. I dunno, one of the two. Either way, he was in my universe.”
“Was or is?” Tony asks.
Jason isn’t looking forward to this part.
“Was. He died. Gave me the stone. Told me to protect it. I found my way here.”
Questions and accusations are written across Tony’s expression. Jason can tell this blunt, brief description isn’t going to be enough for Tony. A quick glance around the room and he knows, with a sinking feeling, that it won’t be enough for the other Avengers either.
“It might be best if you told us everything,” Steve says mildly. “Start from the beginning.”
He doesn’t want to do that.
But the Avengers are clearly not interested in giving him a choice.
* * *
In the end, it’s not that bad of an interrogation. He’s not surprised when Clint and Natasha take the lead on it, and he’s even less surprised that they’re good at it. He doesn’t tell them everything, of course. He’s just as good as they are, if not better. But in the end, they know the broad strokes where it matters, and the small details where it counts. When he finishes, the room is utterly silent save for Tony Stark’s agitated, furious prowling in the back of the room, hands clenched and shoved deep into his pockets while he grinds his teeth.
Rhodey watches Tony with frank concern, staying near but not crowding him. Steve frowns at the middle distance, his stance and expression so like Superman’s that it’s eerie as hell for Jason to see. Bruce Banner is thoughtful, quiet. The Ant guy--Scott, something or other--looks utterly lost and confused.
Natasha gives Jason a frank look.
“You know how we plan to bring everyone back?” At his nod, she continues. “How exactly do we do that with the stone stuck to you?”
“You either kill me and I hand it off, or I use your gauntlet,” Jason says simply.
“No,” Tony says, not stopping his pacing. “No one else dies. We figure out another way.”
“You don’t have a choice, Stark,” Jason says.
“There’s always a choice--”
Jason isn’t surprised by the man's denial or anger.
“That’s not how this stone works. A soul for a soul,” Jason says. “I was dead the moment I picked up the stone and there’s no changing that. You want your universe fixed? Give me the gauntlet.”
This isn’t him. He shouldn’t be doing the big sacrifice play. It’s not what he does. And then some homeless dweeb with the world’s worst attitude problem caught his attention during one of Joker’s bullshit schemes and now he’s here, playing the big hero when he has no business doing that. Trying it in the past earned him nothing better than a grave and an empty suit in the cave. A distant part of him wonders why he never bothered to explain everything to his family. Another, quieter part answers that one easily enough: they would have found a way to save him. And he’d have to live with the fact that Peter gave his life for him forever.
“You're human,” Tony points out. “This could kill Thor. It will kill you. There’s no way you survive this.”
“You want this universe fixed or not, Stark?” Jason asks.
Tony hesitates, eyes darting towards the gauntlet. Finally, he says, stiffly, “He wouldn't want it to happen like this. He wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”
“Yeah, well, we don’t always get what we want, and he’s not here to stop me,” Jason says, pushing past him. Tony doesn’t try to stop him after that, merely stares after him with a grim look in his eye.
The other Avengers give him space, but most look distinctly unhappy with the situation. Which is fair enough. These guys are capes, and even the most fucked up cape in any universe would be disturbed to see someone essentially sacrifice themselves. Let alone someone who looks to be a decade younger than the rest. Older heroes always get a little weird about younger ones being asked to do what they consider too much.
“Like you with Peter?” Sam asks.
“Oh, shut up, Sam,” he mutters.
Steve’s head snaps up at that, and he frowns at Jason in confusion. Jason ignores him, taking the gauntlet in hand. The other stones glitter and shift inside their places, rattling with barely contained power inside their places within the titanium gauntlet. He can feel the odd heat from here.
“Everyone snapped away--we’re just bringing them back here. Today. Don’t try to think of anything else while you’ve got that thing on. All right?” At Jason’s nod, Tony sighs. For a moment, he looks like he’s going to step in and stop this. He settles for cursing viciously, and willing his suit to activate. His helmet flashes over his head, hiding his face.
“Everyone comes back,” Jason says quietly.
He shoves his hand inside the gauntlet. He has a split second of panicked regret, followed by an overwhelming sense of white hot pain cutting through to the bone. Every layer of skin, every bone, every nerve burns all at once. The smell of burning skin mingles with scorched kevlar and leather fills the room. He drops to one knee, aware of the burning sensation etching its way up his arm, crawling across his chest, dragging down his leg. Someone is biting back a furious scream. Other voices are calling out to him, unfamiliar but horrified and worried.
For a moment, he steps out of himself, into a memory:
“You need to focus. No matter what’s happening around you,” Bruce says. “Hesitation and distraction will kill you, Jason. Never forget that.”
Right.
He clenches his jaw, fights through the pain, and snaps--
A force, more thought than voice probes his mind.
Everyone comes back?
Everyone, Jason thinks. He doesn’t know what primal force he’s speaking--or thinking--to but he thinks they understand.
A soul for a soul, the presence responds. There’s a heavy shift in his chest, a piece of him leaving himself. The soul stone flashes into its proper place on the gauntlet.
He snaps his fingers.
Light fills his vision.
The burning sensation ebbs, and he’s distinctly aware of two things: the smell of his own burning flesh, and the cool relief of a numbing gel being spread across his ruined body. He lets out a wheezing sound, trying to speak. The sound he produces is more wounded animal than intelligible speech. Clint kicks the gauntlet away Jason’s ruined hand, sending it flying. An expression of horror more than anything useful.
“Stay still,” Tony orders, his helmet rolling back. He looks sick to his soul, the gauntlet on his suit trembling slightly as he pours on another layer of gel. “That should help, but you can’t move, kid. Okay?”
Jason ignores him. The medication numbs the pain enough to clear his head, to let him rasp out the start of a question. “D-did--”
“It worked,” Clint says, stepping back towards them and hanging up his phone. He looks awed. Happy. Horrified. In disbelief. “People are coming back. He did it. You did it.”
“Yay.”
Clint laughs, actually laughs. It comes out short and harsh and bitter. He squeezes Jason’s good shoulder, keeps his hand there. “You just did the impossible. Thank you.”
And that’s when the building explodes.
* * *
He tries to stand, his body reacting instinctively to the sound of explosions. He manages to flop like a fish, paralyzed by scorched muscles. Monsters flood into the remnants of the building. Clint and Banner drag him out of reach of the monsters, hauling him up and out of the wreckage. Jason isn’t awake for most of it. He’s only vaguely aware of a vicious fight happening around him, the smell of smoke and blood, and screams from unseen warriors. He has snatches of consciousness, flashes of the final fight. He feels disconnected from it all. When the golden portals open, he blinks, forces himself to turn to look.
The battle kicks off from there.
Every Avenger takes a moment to protect him. Even the dead ones newly returned from the stone. The first is Clint, using his bow and sword to beat back a tide of viciously fanged creatures surging towards Jason. The next is Natasha, covering Clint’s flank, before the tide of battle pulls both of them away. One of the larger monsters charges towards Jason, seeing an easy meal or kill. The Hulk roars, leaping forward to catch it in the middle of its charge, pushing them both into a crowd monsters and warriors. Iron Man stops to check on him, reapplying the cooling gel to his wounded half, while simultaneously blasting apart anything that gets too close to them.
And then the Avengers from the Soul Stone appear. Sam flashes by, distracting and killing Thanos’ monsters. Bucky comes into view, looks at him, clenches his jaw.
“This is gonna hurt,” he tells Jason, hauling him up off of the ground and over his shoulders. Jason’s vision goes white with pain, and he’s only able to let out a choked, dying wheeze instead of the scream he intends. Bucky doesn’t quite flinch. “I know. Hang on.”
“Ass. Hole,” Jason wheezes.
Bucky grins, but it’s faint, and his eyes are troubled. “Tell me something I don’t know, Red.”
“Is he--”
“He’s here. He just stole the gauntlet and sprinted across the damn battlefield with it to keep it from Thanos.”
“Moron.”
“Agreed,” Bucky says easily. He stops, kneels, carefully sets Jason down against a piece of wreckage far behind the battle lines. The movement is torture, no matter how gentle Bucky is. “This is as safe as it’s gonna get.”
Jason doesn’t answer, slumping back against the wreckage of the Avenger’s Compound.
“Stay awake, Red Hood,” Bucky says sharply.
He grunts. “Why?”
“Peter hasn’t seen you yet,” Bucky says quietly. “He should get to say goodbye.”
Right. Because he’s dying. There’s no fixing everything that just happened to him. No healing. Not unless they have a Lazarus Pit somewhere in this universe, anyway. Jason fights back the pain, the exhaustion, the strange cold feeling drifting in at the edges of his consciousness. He wheezes, blinks up at Bucky with his one good eye, then over the battlefield.
“Won’t make it,” Jason says. “Sorry.
Bucky shouts, grabs his good shoulder, gently shakes him. Jason closes his eyes.
He opens them an eternity later, standing inside a golden-orange space. He blinks, looks down at himself, and pats himself down. His armor is whole. His body is whole. And he doesn’t feel any pain.
In the end, that’s the part that convinces him he’s dead.
Weird. It’s not like last time.
Well, now what?
* * *
“Okay,” Tony says, appearing out of nowhere. He’s younger here, by about a decade, and moves quickly. His sudden appearance startles Jason so much that he doesn’t have a chance to yelp. “Quick update while we still have time. So. A few things went well, a few went...not so well.”
Jason stares at him. “What the fuck?”
“No time. We’ve only got a few seconds. Two things: the kid is safe, but I’m dying. You’re also, technically, dead but only barely,” Tony explains.
Jason frowns. “Guess the fight ended badly.”
“Not at all,” Tony says. “Not even a little. We won. But I had to use the Gauntlet to make it happen.”
Jason pauses, takes in the full meaning of that, and frowns. “That sucks.”
“Sure does. But there’s good news,” Tony says.
“What’s that?”
“A soul for a soul. I made sure to include you in my wish when I snapped,” Tony says. He smirks, all smug self confidence, and snaps his fingers.
* * *
Jason jolts awake, gasping and coughing, his entire right side screaming in pain from every slight movement. He can’t see out of his right eye, his arm is a patchwork of unsettling deadness and searing, burning pain. He wheezes, fights back a moan of pain.
“Oh, fuck off, Stark,” Jason says. It comes out a pained groan, and he regrets speaking the moment the air hits raw nerves exposed by the deep burns.
Natasha and Clint are at his side the moment he makes a sound. They’re on him so quickly that he’s startled.
“Hold still,” Natasha says firmly, bracing the good half of his body. “Don’t move. No matter how much it hurts, you have to hold still.”
“Medic!” Clint shouts.
To his surprise, Shuri answers the call.
“Hold still, Red Hood,” Shuri says, directing Natasha, Clint, and a few Wakandan soldiers to lift Jason up onto a litter. A golden portal swirls open in front of them, and they start to run, jarring Jason’s wounded side. “We’re taking you to Wakanda’s best hospital. We owe you that much.”
Jason is startled that Shuri remembers him, let alone feels the need to help him. That must show on the side of his face that isn't scorched to shit.
She places a hand on his shoulder and says, “You helped save us. Of course we will help you. Stay strong.”
* * *
The arm can’t be saved. The doctors in Wakanda lop it off the moment they knock him out. But they get him a replacement, almost exactly like the one Bucky uses. The tech behind it is miraculous, but at the end of the day, it’s still a prosthetic. One with near natural movements and muted feeling along the ‘skin’ of the vibranium metal, but a prosthetic nonetheless. He struggles with it, pushing through the frustration and alien feeling of it while the rest of him gradually heals from burns so deep that the Wakandan doctors are actively inventing his treatment as he goes along.
“It is good that you are stubborn,” Shuri tells him. “Most would not be able to withstand this pain, even with the pain medication.”
“I've been dead. Twice. I'm not impressed by the experience,” Jason replies.
Shuri smirks.
* * *
Clint visits him at one point, with thank you cards from his children and wife, and a standing invitation to come to his farm whenever he wants. Dr. Strange checks in on him every now and then, giving him books. Sam appears once, mostly to thank Jason. The ghosts from the Stone all make an appearance in his hospital room, in fact.
Bucky visits him the most, and Jason is secretly glad their camaraderie from before still holds. He helps Jason adjust to the arm, walks him through the maintenance, teaches him the small annoyances and setbacks he’ll have to adjust to now that his arm is a high tech prosthetic and not flesh and blood.
“Copycat,” Bucky says. “I did it first.”
“I did it better,” Jason retorts.
Bucky smirks.
“Don’t be a stranger, Red Hood,” he says.
“Try not to go missing for once in your life,” Jason retorts.
* * *
Peter bursts through the door. He has the look of someone who just walked through a war, all shocked grief and confusion. When he sees Jason, he actually manages a small grin, losing that traumatized glint for a moment.
“So, about that rent I owe you--”
“I’m going to throw the bedpan at you, asshole,” Jason retorts. Peter grins again, this one brighter and natural. He drops into a seat beside Jason’s bed.
His eyes have shifted from the eerie green of the Lazarus Pit to a brownish hazel color, a mix of what Jason remembers of him in Gotham and what he’s always looked like in this universe. He’s lost that half dead pallor that marks every pit survivor. He looks healthy. Happy, despite the grief and confusion.
“Holding up okay?” he asks. He knows the kid hasn’t taken Tony’s death particularly well. For good reason.
Peter shrugs in response. “Yeah. Fine. Just getting used to being here.”
Liar, Jason thinks. He scoffs. “Yeah, me too. Gotham doesn’t even exist here, so I’m not sure where I’m going to go once Shuri and T’Challa let me out of this place.”
Peter gets a thoughtful look at that. “Yeah. You need a place, right?”
“I'll figure it out. I have a few weeks until my treatment ends.”
* * *
It actually takes months for him to get better. And better is a spectrum that Jason wanders up and down the length of. He limps when he walks now, but on good days, he can walk so smoothly that it’s almost hidden. On bad days, he has to rely on practically dragging his half dead leg along with a cane. A difficult prospect when his arm is just as touchy as his leg; it’s taking time to get used to the prosthetic arm. There are some days where he can’t even manage that, where the whole right side of him goes stiff with pain. He ends up laying in bed during those days, fuming at his own helplessness.
Peter always helps him. No matter what.
And to Jason’s eternal shock, May does as well. She visits him one late afternoon, sitting at his bedside. She's a beautiful woman, and reminds him so strongly of Leslie that he becomes homesick.
At first, she's not entirely sure what to make of him, still off kilter from the Snap, but Peter trusts Jason, tells her he saved Peter’s life, that he left his family and home behind to do it. That’s more than enough for her to take him in.
“Peter says you need a place to stay.”
Jason shrugs. “I'm working on it.”
He kind of isn't. He's mostly focused on walking with his cane without falling on his ass. But what else is he going to say?
May tilts her head, watching him.
“We chose a three bedroom place,” she says casually. “Peter’s already hauling the furniture inside. He said to tell you he found something better than a couch?”
It takes a moment for him to parse the meaning behind the words, and he’s left stunned. He scoffs. “Your nephew is a smart ass.”
May smirks, her eyes twinkling with wry humor. “He comes by it honestly.” She sets a hand on his forearm. “You’re welcome to stay with us, Jason. I know you took Peter in. Let me repay the favor.”
Jason doesn’t mention he started this whole insane idea because Peter decided to throw himself in front of a bullet meant for him. May doesn’t need to know how stupid her nephew is. She probably already knows. May Parker does not look like someone who is easily fooled.
“Okay,” he says. “I won't stay long. Promise.”
* * *
Life in the Parker apartment isn't anywhere close to the chaos he’s used to. There are times where he feels like he's intruding on their life, like a stranger renting a room. That doesn't last long. He always has a place at dinner. He's looped into their family chat. He's asked for his opinion on dinner, what show or movie to watch, what restaurant to go to.
When he’s more firmly placed on his feet, May comes to him with an offer.
“Come to FEAST with me,” she says. “I could use the help, and I think you'd be great at it.”
Well. What was he supposed to say? No?
To his shock, she was right. FEAST fits him perfectly.
* * *
One night, he stops to examine himself in the mirror hanging on the door in his room.
I look like Two-Face, he thinks. He idly wonders how Bruce will handle that particular change, then decides that he’d rather not give himself a recreational headache. If Bruce ever finds him--and he probably will, he’s fucking insane--he’ll have his answer.
And it isn’t entirely true, either. Two-Face is a mass of twisted scar tissue that’s pulled his face into a permanent sneer. Jason’s face is scarred, but it isn’t nearly as severe as Harvey Dent’s. Scorch lines trace up from his neck along his jaw and up to his right eye, tracing the right side of his face, but Wakanda’s surgeons were able to heal the burns. The skin along the scorch lines is regular silvery white scar tissue, nothing like the Two Face’s scorched flesh. Annoyingly, his right eye does leak tears every now and then when the scar tissue gets inflamed, but he gets used to that. There are days his eye is too sensitive to handle the light, and he opts for an eyepatch. No one mentions it or seems to care at FEAST. May and Peter never mention it at all. May sometimes gives him eyedrops sometimes. The small gesture is oddly touching.
His room is gradually filling up with things. The cards from Clint’s family. A letter from Natasha inviting him to lunch to meet her sister. A small vibranium bat, a gift from Shuri and T'Challa both. A weird ass cell phone from the Guardians of the Galaxy where he can take and get calls from the depths of space. A much slimmer phone from Nick Fury with a note: call when you need me. A broken webshooter that Jason is fixing for Peter. Spare keys to the FEAST building and the safe inside May's office. A sleek toolkit from Bucky, with notes on how to adjust his prosthetic arm, which is itself resting across the desk.
Somehow, he’s made himself a home here.
He quietly boggles at that for a moment.
Something passes by his bedroom window. He isn’t entirely surprised when he sees a heavy shadow outside. He struggles to open it with only one good arm, but he manages. Nightwing waits patiently, crawling inside when Jason waves him in.
“Took you guys long enough,” Jason says dryly.
“This universe was a bit harder to find than most,” Nightwing says. He smiles, genuine and full, but pauses when he sees Jason’s arm and the scars running down the length of his face and neck. “Rough time?”
“Rougher than usual,” Jason says, shrugging. “Worth it.”
“Ready to come back? You won't be able to come back for awhile if you say no,” Nightwing says. “This universe is really far from ours. There's a kind of universal orbit. We won't be able to come get you for another year if you stay.”
Jason pauses. He looks at his room, thinks of May and FEAST. Peter on his patrol. His grief and confusion, the upheaval that Thanos left behind, and what that means for Spider-Man.
What Jason's disappearance would do to him if he left now, without even saying goodbye.
“No. Tell the others I'm fine.”
Nightwing smirks. “That won’t do anything to convince Bruce, but I’ll do my best. Think I can get a status report and briefing to take back to him to keep him from losing it completely?”
“He’s already lost it, hasn’t he.”
“Oh, you have no idea,” Nightwing says.
“Fine, sit down. This’ll take awhile.”