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“Again,” Dick said. He kept his breathing slow and deep. “Mind your footwork.” Jason nodded. They were in the makeshift training room Dick had created. Gar and Rachel were at the other end doing strength training. Or they were supposed to be. What they were actually doing was watching Jason and him spar.
Jason went through the moves again and Dick blocked or evaded them. The kid’s technique was good and his moves were varied but it was a very careful sort of random, the kind that falls into its own kind of pattern. Jason had been at this for half an hour now and he still hadn’t reached where Dick knew he could go. It was time to change things up, Dick thought.
“You’re in your head.” Dick said, signaling a break to the sparring. “I know B’s told you before – we let our bodies fight, not our minds. You’ve gotta get out of your head if you’re going to fight on mine or B’s level.”
Jason’s lips curled in a sneer. “In my head? And what about you, Mr. Blabbermouth? You talk more than you fight!” Dick smiled.
“And that’s how I fight – how I fought when I was Robin, anyway. I’m trying to get back into that.” Dick said. Dick had been fighting with rage for what seemed like years now. He took another breath and remembered the smell of the circus, the wind through his hair, the feeling of weightlessness right before a fall. It had been his anchor since he was a child and he was training himself back into it as much as he was training Jay to discover his own.
“I don’t think I can do that.” Jason said. The line of his shoulders was stiff and trembling. Keeping them straight out of pride or anger. “I don’t want – I don’t like talking when I fight.”
“Then we find something else.” Dick said. “But we have to find something. You’re in your head, Jay. Thinking about moves when you should just be acting them out. You know how it is.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Jason said, readying himself. “B says our bodies are weapons …”
“And weapons don’t think, they just do.” Dick finishes. He remembered those lessons well. “B fights with anger. You’ve been fighting angry. That’s the difference.”
“He says that shit all the time,” Jason said. “It doesn't make any fucking sense.”
“Defend.” Dick snaps out and goes through another set of strikes, the kind Deathstroke might use. “Listen, Jay, B uses his anger to fight. It’s what keeps him out of his head, focused on the fight. When you hesitate, you die. When you overthink things, you die.” Dick starts another repetition, faster than before.
“I know that!” Jason yelled. “And it’s bullshit! B’s in his head more than most of those psychos from Arkham.” He’s starting to sweat. Beads of it roll down his forehead, dripping down his face.
“He’s a paranoid bastard who dresses up like a bat, sure.” Dick said. He starts hitting harder, almost as hard as he can. His fists thump into Jay’s blocks and Dick feels the vibration all the way up his arms. “But when he fights, he reacts. He adapts. He’s thinking without thinking, Jay. We need to get you to a point where you can do the same. We just gotta find what works for you.” Jason’s concentration breaks and he shuffles his feet, changing his stance. Dick kicks out, slotting his leg inbetween Jason’s feet. Jason stumbles and falls over.
“Your footwork, Jay. You overthink it. I saw you think about it before you changed up. It broke your concentration.” Dick said. Gar and Rachel have given up any semblance of working out and are watching the show. “You two! Out! And don’t think I haven’t noticed the lack of training today.”
“Yikes,” Gar said under his breath. “Ok, Rach, let’s go watch something better than these two angst.”
“Don’t kill each other!” Rachel called, a sparkle in her voice.
“Right.” Dick said. “Let’s start from the top.” And he runs them through another set.
Dick had been dreading this part of training ever since he had agreed to take Jason in and train him. He knew, even in the beginning, that this was what Bruce had wanted from him. That Bruce had failed to get to the source of Jason’s anger. That Jason himself hasn’t found any other kind of anchor. So here he was, Dick Grayson, boy wonder, cop and acrobat, here to find what made this kid tick and break it open. It would be what kept him alive, Dick knew. But it would hurt.
“Why’d you break that cop’s spine, Jay?” Dick asked. “It wasn’t necessary. And even you aren’t enough of a sadist just to enjoy the pain.”
“He had it coming.” Jason said. And there it was, that bright flare up he’d noticed before when the police were mentioned.
“Yeah? You know him or something? He was just doing his job.” Dick said. Jason’s punches are tighter and his legwork’s shifting and adapting when it needed. Dick’s heart sinks. Anger was going to keep him alive, he told himself.
“He’s a fucking cop, Grayson.” Jason said. “His job is to get in the fucking way. If they were any good they wouldn’t need us, would they?”
“I know what Bruce says.” Dick said. “And he’s not even wrong, really, but that’s not why you crippled a man for life, Jay.” Anger contorts Jason’s face and their careful set gets abandoned for all-out sparring. Dick lets himself sink under, remembers the lights under the tent, his mother’s hair tickling him as they passed mid-air. He can talk through this fight. He likes talking.
“Police beat on you, huh? When you were living on the street? That why you hate them so much?” Dick asked. He worries for a moment that Jason won’t respond but he breaks off suddenly and they circle each other, looking for weaknesses.
“I can take a hit.” Jason said. And the thing is, it’s true. Jason’s clearly used to violence, even his own pain. That’s not what’s bothering him. Oh, kid, Dick thought.
“Yeah? That all you take?” Dick asked. Something awful draws itself across Jason’s face. His fists falter. His legs tremble. And before Jason has so much as another damn thought, Dick hits him in the face. He makes it hurt, too. He throws another punch, then another. And finally, finally on the fourth swipe Jason deflects and starts to hit back.
His moves had been carefully random, so careful they came back around to predictable. Now, it was all Dick could do to block and evade. He still has a height advantage and a longer reach but Jason’s punches hurt and more than a few connect. Now or never, Dick thought.
“Didn’t just lift tires as a kid, did you? Pretty kid like you, smart kid like you, you would’ve used what you had.” Dick taunted. He imagined Jason dead, imagined him bloody, broken on a concrete floor, imagined him crying and busted and dying for no reason at all. “You got caught at it, huh? Maybe pick up a john who was something else? He flash a badge at you?” GCPD’s vice unit was notoriously corrupt.
Jason’s fist lands squarely in his stomach and he rocks back, countering his follow up kick with his leg. His shin aches. He pulls back his punches and focuses on defense. He blocks head blows and rib-breakers but he lets the kid punch him. Like Jason, he can take a hit. Jason puts his leg exactly where he should and Dick falls down hard on the training mat. Jason flows over the fall like water and does his level best to beat the shit out of him. Dick engages his core and brings up his thighs to help flip them over. He pins Jason down hard and puts his arm on his throat, not heavy, and begins to speak.
“He flashed his badge at you and he told you you were going to prison for being a whore. He said he could help you, that only he could help you, but you had to give him something first. Didn’t he?” Dick thought about how Jason is a kid in a costume who fought monsters. He thought about how Two-Face beat him to a pulp in his first year on the job. He thought about aliens and gods and one man’s crusade for justice. “He raped you because he could. Because it was easy.”
He sees the fight go out of Jason’s eyes. Dick’s bloody nose is dripping onto the kid’s training shirt. Square in the chest. It feels like Dick is staining him. And then, finally, at long last, he gets tears. Jason sobs, goes totally limp on the mat, and Dick gathers him up into his arms and puts his head on his chest. Rocks him like a baby.
“No one will ever do that to you again,” Dick said. “You won’t let them. I won’t let them.”
“He said – he said.” Jay sobs. “I could be a whore in prison if I liked, or-or he could do me a favor.”
“I know, Jay, I know.” Dick said. He circled the kids’ shoulder blades with his hands. He had to do something worse than make this kid cry, he knew. He held onto Jay tightly.
“You fought, Jay. You fought like B does, how I do. You didn’t think, you just did.” Dick holds Jason’s face in his hands and brings him face-to-face. Jason’s a mess, covered in snot and blood, eyes red and puffy. “I told you that you could use your anger, your pain, to be a great fighter. It was all I could do to just keep up with you.” This, Dick knew, was a little white lie. Jason still needed lots of training. Needed experience and frankly a few years of growth to be truly formidable. But the hardest part was happening right now. The thing that would burn in him like an ember, sometimes a flame. The thing they all found in themselves, eventually.
“It’s what he uses, isn’t it?” Jason asked. His sobs were stilling, his breath returning. “His-his parents. That’s what he uses?” Jason’s voice is very small, like a little boy’s.
“Yes.” Dick said. “Every patrol. Every fight. It’s what he sees, what he hears, what he feels.”
“I have to … I have to relive that?” Jason asked, voice dull and wrung out. “Every night?” Dick feels sick to his stomach. This, he knew, is why Bruce sent Jason here. He had seen all the signs Dick had.
“Anything can be a weapon, Jay.” Dick said. But it’s not his voice coming out of him, it’s Bruce’s, from a lifetime ago. “And we have to … we have to be willing to use whatever we can to fight. We don’t have superpowers. We don’t have healing factors or flamethrowers for hands. We either use what we have, or we die.” Jay shakes again, a new wave of tears running tracks down his face. Dick puts him back into his shoulder.
“What do you use?” Jason asked, almost sleepy. He looked exhausted.
“Back when I was Robin I used flight.” Dick said, voice gentle. “I remembered flying through the air with my parents. The smell of the circus, the noise of the crowds. There’s a moment right before you begin to fall where you’re weightless. That’s what I used. I’m trying to get back to that.” Dick admitted.
“And now? I mean, you said that’s what you used to use.” Jason asked. Dick cards his hand through Jason’s hair, like Bruce had when he was a little boy. It would keep him alive, Dick thought.
“Blood on straw has a distinct smell.” Dick said.