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It doesn’t feel real. Not until you stand at his grave.
It’s a dreary sort of day. The kind of day where you find yourself waiting for it to end; the kind of day that lingers and lasts and drags like nails on a chalkboard. The day may nearly be over now, but the feeling remains: regret.
You regret, and you regret, and you hate yourself all the more for it.
It has taken you six wretched, utterly unfair months to work up the courage—the damn responsibility—to visit his grave. You stewed in your own damn regrets so long that you only ended up adding another to the pile: you didn’t pay Jason his due respects. You didn’t accept his death, didn’t allow it—not in a world where you had the power to change it. But by clinging to your selfish wishes, you left the Robin you once admired to rot—forgotten, denied, waiting.
It reminded you of yourself.
And you would want—
Someone to show up, at the very least. To put in the effort. To—acknowledge your existence, even after it had ended. So, you packed up your regrets, your wishes, your sorrow and anger and everything else churning around inside you, and left for the cemetery.
When you kneeled on his grave, hands buried in the dirt—memories buried in the dirt—you let the (unnecessarily gentle, unfairly gentle) sprinkle of rain wash away your tears. Even as it began to pour, a bare brush of mist on your skin turned harsh and unrelenting, you practically had to drag yourself from his grave.
Maybe you’ll return another day, a sunny one, like how his smile used to shine—but your feet are rooted to the spot.
Terror. Unadulterated, unforgiving—you drop back to your knees, clutching at your throat, unable to breathe beneath the strain. I’m going to suffocate—I’m going to die down here, again—again again again—
That’s not your fear. But it’s not a remnant, either—it’s fresh. It’s new. It’s happening right now, right here, just below you: six feet deep.
You start digging.
May Tim forgive you for your sins—your grief has brought Jason back. And now he’s going to die yet again in his own coffin.
You’re clawing through the layers of mud and packed earth, barely able to think about—do anything else. The magic and blood at your fingertips help to speed up the process, but it may still be in vain. Jason’s fear is muted beneath his own determination, the numbing adrenaline of tearing his way out of unforgiving wood and more than his body weight in dirt pumps through your veins in tandem.
The earth shudders.
A pale hand marred by blood and dirt and rainwater bursts from the ground, the grave, and the silent flash of lightning illuminates rows and rows of headstones, the splintered shadows of his arm cast in every direction. You latch onto his hand without a second thought and pull.
The idea that he could be a zombie, or a revenant, or anything other than himself doesn’t cross your mind. You only know that he was desperately, terribly afraid, and you could help him. So, you did.
By the time you get Jason fully out of the ground, a muddy hole seeping into the earth in his wake, you’ve both collapsed out of exhaustion. Where you’re heaving for air, the deluge of rain making it especially difficult to catch your breath, Jason is only shallowly breathing—you think he may have gone into shock. It could also be from the oxygen deprivation; after six months, the coffin may not have had any left in it, if he was unlucky. Even then, the dirt between him and the surface certainly didn’t have any breathing room—for all that you both dug from either direction, there was a significant strand of time where he was suffocating.
Your mind is running through all of the possible consequences this could have. Blindness. Brain damage. Death. You roll over and grab his mangled hand with your own, willing that faint spark of magic within yourself to its job, to heal him. If it brought him back—if you brought him back—you’ll never forgive yourself if you let him slip away again.
Jason’s breathing evens out, still somewhat worse off than you want it to be, but better than before. You breathe your own sigh of relief, spluttering as some rain finds its way into your mouth. You both need to get out of here before you catch your deaths. Hah, you laugh, a stifled sob breaking past your defenses.
Jason is alive. Jason is alive.
Tim is going to—Tim is…
Tim. Bruce. Jason.
You have to get him out of this cemetery and to one of them, either of them, right away. You don’t—shit, you don’t want to think about how Tim is going to react. Your first thought was how elated he would be, how much of a weight off his shoulders this could be, how—how… He’ll be so angry, that you went behind his back. That, no matter how you didn’t mean to do it, it was you. It was you.
Was it really, though? You stare at his grave. Empty. Devoid of necromantic magic. The lightning flares quickly, quietly, and there is no taste of darkness, no scent in the air save for blood and ozone.
All of it is washed away by the rain, in the end.
You need to get out of here, you think, turning away from both the grave and that train of thought to look at Jason once more. He’s limp in the mud, unmoving. Unseeing, despite his eyes being wide open. He’ll be of no use like this. He’ll be deadweight.
You slap your own cheek, the pain stinging. You huff, unable to even laugh. Why are you making jokes at a time like this? Why are you messing this up so badly?
It takes enough effort to force him up and into a sitting position for you to get your shoulder under one of his arms, and then, legs trembling, muscles straining, lift. Your footing gives way to the mud and rain; you both fall in a heap of limbs and soreness.
You just want to—to cry, and call for help, and not deal with this by yourself. But all you have is yourself right now, just like how it used to be—just like how it’s been with Tim away, Constantine gone, and your parents always, always at an unreachable distance, out of touch, untouchable. Jason is here, though, for all that he also isn’t.
The steady weight of his presence inspires you to move. Compels you to. For him and you both, you find your footing and magic the weight of it all—the physical, the emotional—a little bit lighter.
After several paces of dragging his feet through the mud, Jason catches onto the idea of walking. You have to slow your strides to allow him to work with you, but it lightens the load you have to bear. By the time the cemetery gate comes into view, the lightning has become more frequent, lancing across the sky in snaking lines of white afterimages. In a silent flash of light, the gate appears: half-open and swinging in the wind, a shadow stood before it.
The light fades, then flashes again, and the shadow is gone.
You’re shivering now, but not from the rain.
“C’mon,” you mutter to Jason, but mostly for yourself. “We need to… We need to get out of here.”
Another strike of lightning pierces through the night, the buzzing of ozone and fear thrumming in your ears, swallowing you whole—and you can’t help but clench your eyes shut, waiting. A crack of thunder follows far too soon, too close, and then—
Nothing.
You come to in a room that… remarkably looks like yours. Your first thought is that you must be dreaming because there are enough details that are just slightly off—the walls, a shade too dark; the size of the room, too big; the bed, a large, canopy-styled one with blankets and sheets and pillows a touch too soft; the window, spilling honeyed light from a different angle than you expect it to—each culminating in a familiar sight that nevertheless rubs you wrong. It’s uncanny. It’s real.
A man you’ve never met before steps into your room. You didn’t even hear the door open.
You sit up, hand shooting out—to what? Curse him? Tell him to stop?
But he does. Stop. Waiting patiently, an uncomfortable, nerve-wracking smile upon his lips. He stands out as the one verifiably unfamiliar thing in this room; a new factor to consider. Forced to consider, despite—or precisely because of—how he indulges you. You know, without a shred of doubt, that you have no power in this place.
“I see that you are awake, young witch.” Your face twists at the title. Witch, magician, freak of nature—you’ve never put a name to your abilities. Ignoring that, though, his voice is… low, and removed, almost, like he considers himself above—well, everything. Not just you, but this place, this plane of existence. You already don’t like him, and that’s not even considering the very obvious case of kidnapping happening here.
His hands are clasped behind his back in a mockery of passivity. Everything about him seems calculated to come off as one way while no less radiating the truth of the situation: you are at his mercy.
“I have been keeping an eye on you for some time, now,” he continues, the admission spoken so easily, so uncaringly, yet it chills you down to the bone. What? “And, oh, how fortunate a sequence of events such as these—without having known of you and your magical exploits, hidden, incredibly, from the detective throughout these years—that allowed for us to find not one, but two miracles in need of a helping hand.”
You blink, perhaps still affected by whatever was used to knock you out and bring you here. The last thing you remember is the storm, Jason, and a long stretch of nothingness.
Years, he said. He’s either known about you for years or made an educated guess. Based on the presumptuous recreation of your bedroom, devoid of all your small, personal touches—it’s more likely the former than the latter.
You swallow, sitting up—slowly, carefully, your muscles like lead and tar. Too stiff, unwilling, yet also melting into the wretched comfort of a bed, ridiculously plush, the last dredges of a drugged, or concussive, haze refusing to let you go.
“What d’you want from me?” you say, fingers spasming in the sheets, reluctantly terrified. Pissed off. “What have you—What’ve you done to Jason?” you breathe, eyes widening. They have him.
“The boy is being cared for as we speak,” he answers, strangely free with information. “His resurrection was perfect save for the slight brain damage he received—” your heart stalls, stuttering, raging in your chest, “—from the traumatic awakening and prolonged oxygen deprivation.” His gaze is considering. “It was not as terrible as it could have been. Your actions to help him, both in escaping his burial and assisting his breathing thereafter, have allowed him the chance to fully recover physically.”
“But mentally?” you press, desperate. Pleading.
“He has shown no signs of critical thinking; for all intents and purposes, he is mentally catatonic.” His tone is clinical. Almost—playful, as if this were all some grand joke to him. As if he is indulging in child’s play, catering to your and Jason’s needs.
For all that you are a fool, this is not a joke you can partake in. It’s not one you can outright defy, either, though—not with Jason’s safety in question.
“You mean… He’s still not talking? Moving around, but not… Not…”
Smiling. Laughing. Himself.
“No.” It’s succinct. No less hard to accept. Impossible, for you. You should never have gone to his grave. But the man continues: “Your effort was admirable. Perfect, as I said, and shall stand by; the boy is at fault for his condition. With time and the will to do so, he may break through on his own, because only he can truly overcome the blockages of his mind.” And even lower, magnetic, practically: “Your resurrection, however, for a first attempt…? Marvelous. With proper training, you could be capable of grand achievements, unlike any seen before.”
“I don’t—I don’t understand,” you confess. “I didn’t—I thought I did, maybe, but that wasn’t me. I didn’t bring Jason back.” It was a terrible yet lucky coincidence. No, perhaps lucky was no longer applicable; you caused this whole mess.
The man looks unimpressed, condescending. “But of course you did,” he says, certain. “You were not wrong to convince yourself of such innocence, given that there were no traces of dark arts left at the scene, but who else could have done it? What else would have broken the laws of life and death for one boy incompetent enough to die alone and disgraced?”
“He was not—a disgrace, or alone. He was—” Robin. Oh, fuck. He knows. “You know,” you say, simple, horrified. Of course he knows. He knows about you, and Jason, and—the detective. Is this…? “You’re Ra’s al Ghul,” you realize.
A slow clap. “Bravo,” he drawls, tilting his head. “It only took you several minutes, and while drugged, no less.” So it was drugs. Damn, you got roofied in a graveyard. You can add that to your list of weird, dangerous situations that no one else has experienced aside from you. “That said, even if you were not the one to resurrect him—” and he pauses as if to drive home the fact that he does not, and will not, believe this, “—you were still drawn to the site of his resurrection… by that necromantic, siren call of death. You have the power within you to become great .”
A hundred different rejections sit on your tongue. A shout. A poisonous concoction of swears and insults and curses.
“I want to see Jason,” you say instead.
It’s not until after he leaves, until you’re alone once again, that you remember Tim. Tim, who will undoubtedly find out about Jason’s grave being upturned and empty; Tim, who will realize Jason is not the only one missing.
You want to believe that he will look for you. You cannot bring yourself to do so.
It’s bearable. Hospitable, even. You want for naught—given food, allowed to come and go as you please—all at your own risk. You don’t leave your—the room despite this. An attendant took you see Jason that first day. He was unresponsive, like Ra’s said. You couldn’t cross the door’s threshold. Couldn’t make yourself speak to him when you knew he wouldn’t—couldn’t—respond back.
Days pass in silence. You find a book of spells on your bedside table.
It gathers dust.
At your request, you’re brought to see Jason again. He’s fighting a room full of trained assassins with that same blank, unbothered look on his face. Talia, Ra’s daughter, the woman who was the true reason behind your and Jason’s abduction, for all that Ra’s held an… interest in you, steps into the room and tries to goad him into fighting her. He refuses. It makes you think, hope, that there truly is some spark of Jason Todd, the second Robin, still simmering beneath that cold, barren surface. Like spring flowers hiding, biding their time beneath frozen earth.
She slaps him and you flinch. A hand curls over your shoulder, unexpected, and it is not an act of comfort. It’s Ra’s.
“You know what you must do,” he says, the snake. “To continue staying here, you must make a choice: learn, as the boy does, mindless though he is—or leave.”
Leave him here, he says, a threat. You would not be able to take Jason with you. You don’t even know if that would be good for him. Is there anything in the world that can help him, now?
As much as you may want to go home, to shout from the rooftops that Robin is alive, you cannot, in good faith, leave him to the machinations of the League. Of Ra’s. Of Talia, for all that she seems to care—about Bruce, at the very least.
“Where do I start?”
You’ll beg Tim for his forgiveness when you return. But for now, you have to focus on keeping Jason alive—not his body, but his mind. What makes him Jason.
Because it may very well be your fault that he’s like this.
(You are sent in to train with Jason, once. To fight him with the moves that have been drilled into you through repetition and pain. He refuses you too, much like he had with Talia; it makes your heart soar. It drops back to your stomach, to your feet, and remains there.
You start visiting Jason more often after that and try to reach out to him. Reach in, to wherever his mind went away. You speak to him like he can hear you, like he’s responding aloud, and tell him stories: memories of you and Tim, your so-called birdwatching, of Constantine and his strange, funny ways. You hadn’t heard from him in a while, before you were abruptly ripped from Gotham; you wonder if he’s looking for you. If anyone is.)
You learn that you do, in fact, have an affinity for necromancy. It’s a thrilling, heady realization.
It doesn’t last.
Ra’s shows you the Pits. What they’re capable of. You get sick on the floor of your new bedroom that evening and clean it up yourself. You don’t touch the well of magic within you. No, you get on your hands and knees—a parody of what started this all, of an apology that you may never have the chance to give.
One day, several months into your training, into Jason’s slow, unchanging recovery, a tear rolls down his cheek as you spin stories of what you recall of Batman and Robin, flying through the night.
He doesn’t cry again after that, no matter how hard you try to reach him—Robin—once more.
If anything, he grows colder.
(You don’t think about the Pits. You don’t think about the—)
Your dreams have long stopped showing you hints of the past, present, or future; instead, you see glimpses of other worlds, possibilities—dreams that are merely dreams, unreachable.
In one, every person you bring back crumbles to salt when you turn your gaze on them.
Jason, though, goes cold—so cold his limbs lock up, eyes glazed over, and his heart stops beating.
It is the natural order of things, Tim whispers, but it’s Ra’s voice that slithers from his mouth.
The shadow of Batman looming over you is what rips you from the dream, the nightmare, and as you gasp awake—wretched, dry-eyed, the tremors long drilled out of you (it reveals your weakness, your—)
It all drifts away, set loose, abandoned. It’s the only real lesson you’ve managed to take to heart, after all this wasted time.
The first time you kill is not your last. The less said about it—thought about it, even—the better.
Everything continues to change, and yet Jason stays the same.
Perhaps that would have been a comfort, at some point in time, under any other circumstances; the Jason of back then, of before, is long-gone—and the Jason of now, whom you are tasked with (or have, in reality, tasked yourself with) drawing out from whatever depths he has sunk to… That Jason, this Jason, is—
Gone.
You can’t find him. No one will take you to him. He was last seen with Talia, taken away for—for—more training? Another attempt on her part to remind him of what once was, of the man she is doing this for? Jason never reacts anymore, no matter who or what you talk about. It’s as though, in those scant few times he did shed a tear or twitch or—or, or, or… It’s as though he was saying his final farewells, rather than ever trying to imagine himself saying a greeting to them again.
You can’t imagine yourself saying anything to Tim at this point, either. Not goodbye, not, Hey, did you miss me?
Not any of it, not a single thing, not—
Maybe you convinced Jason to feel this way, with your own damned regrets, your own insurmountable hesitance.
You pause at that. Reconsider. Hesitate, so damningly, at whether or not you should be looking for Jason. He’s with Talia. He’s safe. If anyone here has his—well, not his best interests in mind, but certainly better interests, you think, than the rest—but your point, your point being, it’s—
An excuse, really. That even when you’re forced to acknowledge it, you can bring yourself to care. Jason will turn back up before long.
You don’t think about the Pits. You don’t—You don’t think—You don’t ever want to—
Here is your honest, unmitigated truth: you trusted Talia to care for Jason in the only way she could begin to understand—through the tunnel vision of her self-serving love, that longing for the affection of a man she had concocted a false image of; you trusted that she would, under the delusion that Bruce would ever receive her actions with anything other than his own reserved, paranoid nature, continue to care for Jason to the best of her capability.
What you underestimated, rather than overestimated, is her willingness—that capability. Because within her grasp is the potent, undeniable fix to her most stubborn problem: the one thing Bruce could ever want more than Jason alive—Jason alive and well. Jason, alive, and not a shell of himself. Even if that meant—
Don’t, please don’t—
Unceremoniously dropping him in a Lazarus Pit.
(You dreamt, for this first time in ages of whispers, of echoes, of a conversation held in confidence, the words shared between Talia and Ra’s, the truth—)
Jason emerges from the Pit with his heart bared raw—his wants, his permission, all disregarded in entirety; his mind and emotions are ripped from the depths he stowed them deep, six feet and buried, far away from the world that hurt him so—hid in a last, harrowing attempt at protecting himself.
And because Talia could not find it in herself to wait for him to heal on his own time, she put him under the thumb of her own, all in the name of some misguided… love.
And because of that, of Talia, Jason awakens without any sense of love himself. He is anger: righteous, burning, agonizing, unrestrained. He is a monster in the eyes of both Ra’s al Ghul and his daughter, and you…
You…
You can’t find it within yourself to blame him.
You see him, only once, from afar after everything is said and done; his gaze lingers for a second and no longer—and just like that, he is gone from your life, your stowed-away presence in a society of assassins and killers and—
You say that like you aren’t one of them.
In the end, it doesn’t matter. Jason leaves for training. You stay.
When he visits (and oh, you really didn’t think you would ever see him again) you talk to him exactly as you did before. Before…
His face is still cold. Uncaring. You avoid talking about Bruce, and Robin, and—everything else related to the life he lived and died. It’s—you’ve seen the devastation he wreaks. Instead, you tell him more stories of you and Tim, of you and Constantine, of—
You run out of stories.
But… Jason always, always makes sure to see you before he leaves. You take it for what it is—whatever that may be.
“You killed someone?” The whisper comes out appalled, an undue amount of emphasis on the word kill, but really, it was the first word—the person who committed the act—that deserved the weight of your disbelief. Jason has killed a man. Robin has killed a man.
He gives you a dirty look, yet still so frustratingly cold. “Are you going to be a hypocrite about this? You’ve killed plenty since coming here.”
And, for all that you have not once allowed yourself to feel bad—to feel anything—about what you’ve had to do while being kept here, you feel your breaths start to rattle in your chest, heating up. “I did not come here. I was taken because I was stupid enough to mourn you.”
You don’t—You don’t mean it. You don’t. Not really.
But at the moment, it sure feels like you do. Sounds like it.
Jason’s expression shutters, his mask of anger collapsing into surprised hurt for a split-second before sliding back into place, stronger, more resilient. Not a mask, not anymore.
You want to backtrack. You do.
“Wait—I’m—” He’s going to leave. He’s going to leave. It repeats on loop in your head, a nightmare cycle of four jumbled words. He’s going to leave you here to rot and decay and become unrecognizable—a disfigured, walking, talking corpse of yourself. It would be irony at its finest; it would only be fair. “I’m sorry, you’re right. I was just—caught off-guard.” Your guard is never raised high enough these days. You’ll have to become better. Stronger, like him.
Jason pulled himself back together from the influence of the Pit, not quite reviving that old version of himself, but working with what was left, what was placed in his hands: he recreated himself despite the odds, the circumstances, the hell he went through—and you?
You keep spinning around in circles, caught in a whirlpool of repressed emotions and thoughts and—actions, unacted. Choices, unmade and undone.
(I can’t go back. Not yet. I can’t go back until I’ve—
—What? Fixed things? Fixed Jason?
…Myself?)
You don’t see Jason much after that. He goes through teachers like he goes through bullets, a mess of empty shells and gunpowder left in his wake. But when you do, it’s…
It’s not great, to say the least.
Ra’s dies. Or so the story goes.
You doubt it will last for long, no matter how much you’d like to make it permanent.
“You slept with Talia? Jason, she’s more than twice your age—for fuck’s sake, she slept with your dad—”
“He is NOT my dad!” Jason explodes, fists clenched at his sides, the green of his eyes flaming. You stumble backward, but he meets you step-for-step, enraged. Blind with it. “She understands me, unlike you. You’ve only ever spoken of going home—as if that’s even possible. The past is dead and gone; I’m no longer the Robin that you failed to bring back.”
“That’s not—” Your words choke. Isn’t that exactly what you wanted? What you dream of now, instead of reality? “You’re…” You’re scaring me, you want to say. But showing weakness is a death sentence in this place. Jason wouldn’t care anyway, you reason to yourself. “You’re acting irrationally,” you spit, throwing on anger as a shroud of confidence just as easily as him. “Maybe you’re not the person you once were, Jason, but you’re forgetting who you are in the name of—what? Vengeance?” You laugh. “You’re not angry. You’re upset. You’re funneling all your pain into—”
You’re facing the wall to your right, a shrill ringing in your ears. Your cheek is numb—so hot it’s cold. You spit out something solid and thickly wet. A bloody tooth.
Jason’s fist is shaking, held out. Not to help you back up. Not to help you at all. He just hit me, you think, dazed. As fast as his arm shot out and caught you unaware, he withdraws it. As if startled by his own actions, or—uncharacteristic for him and a damn life sentence for you—regretful.
You doubt it.
Twisting on his heel, back turned to you, he leaves the room without another word.
Finally alone yet again, you let the trembles you were suppressing rise and, humoring them for only but a moment, dissipate. You feel like you’ve been put in a blender. You feel every riotous heartbeat in the throb of your cheek.
You feel like—you’ll never feel anything ever again. You sink into the feeling—the absence of it, of them all—and don’t resurface.
Jason dons a red helmet, the name, the very legacy of the Red Hood.
He kills on his own terms. He—He slits a Robin’s throat in a graveyard, the newest Robin, his… replacement, as he calls him. A boy. He can’t be any older than you—he’s…
Familiar. And by the time you think to look further—
The Red Hood, Jason, that mirage of a boy you thought you once understood, who you thought you could have the chance (the miracle) to begin to know—he beats a Robin, his successor, a boy who doesn’t waver in the face of a ghost come home to haunt, a dead bird come home to roost—the Red Hood beats him unconscious, and—
It’s Tim’s blood that he uses to write his message on the walls of Titan’s Tower.
Nobody told you. You were left unaware, the entire time, just like they wanted. Well, what they want, no longer.
You slip from the lingering grasp of Ra’s al Ghul, the blind with grief Talia, the familiarity of the League—the Red Hood—and go home.
(Except, that’s a lie—there is no home waiting for you to return to. If Jason was right about anything, it’s that.)
You can’t just—go see Tim, no matter how much you may want to. Instead, you take a page out of his books and stalk him from afar.
The sight of him, all battered and bruised and… not broken, no, not with his tenacity. But you see it, hidden behind the determination he cloaks himself with, that undeniable hurt and betrayal. It unsettles you like nothing else ever has. Not the dead bodies under your hands—lives either taken or given at your will, never, ever the same as they once were—that, at least, for certain—nor the permanent regret named Jason Todd etched into your very soul. No, this—this is like all of those combined, times a thousand, and still, somehow, worse.
You shadow your Robin, just as the two of you once did for Jason. Except, it’s not just as Robin; he’s hardly out while recovering, while the Red Hood is still a threat. No, no… You watch Tim Drake, your once-friend, and allow yourself to mourn for the first time in years.
(Would he have made that same expression, hidden his hurt and betrayal at your actions—?)
It’s—hard, what with the guillotine of responsibility hanging over your head, ready to drop and remind you of just what you’re capable of. You’re still certain it wasn’t you, that day. Jason Todd is no longer your guilt to harbor; he could have ripped himself from the hands of Death for all you care.
And yet. Still, you foster a cruel, joyless hope; that damned bird in a cage. The second Robin may be gone forever, and the Jason that once was is no longer, but maybe—maybe the Red Hood is still redeemable.
(Not in your heart, no, he can’t—not when he—)
Are you redeemable? If you aren’t, if he isn’t, if no one is—? Then, was Batman wrong all along? If no one can be redeemed, if these actions of his, of yours, have doomed you both, then… Is Jason, the League, right to kill?
It’s a line of thinking, of questioning, that you don’t want to entertain any further.
(After everything you told him, the stories you held dear to your heart, the memories—how Tim only ever looked up to him, wanted to capture a small piece of that light he radiated like Gotham’s own personal sun—and he still…?
He still let Talia feed him with information—and she must have, you reason to yourself, unable to even… begin to wrap your mind around the idea that Jason could’ve just—not cared. That he knew, and listened, and still didn’t believe a word you said, spilled to him, confessed in some desperate bid to help him.
To right your wrongs.
At the end of all things, you only make more wrongs. Maybe you should just stop altogether.)
And that is where it—you—should end.
You leave without looking back.
Years pass.
You hear a rumor, that—
You—
You’re investigating a case on behalf of Constantine, who, as you have come to learn, has been in and out of Hell for several years now and unreachable because of that—there’s not a lot of reception down there, unsurprisingly—and how, exactly, this became evident to you, a necromancer who has had your sticky-fingers in the whole “soul business” for far too long now, is a rather obvious question that doesn’t merit your current attention.
No, you’re fully focused on remaining out of sight and mind of what looks to be a handful of League members, laughing and joking and—getting along frightfully well. You knew a few decent ones during your stay, but, much like yourself, they didn’t stick around for long; their… retirements, so to say, were not quite of their own volition, unlike you.
There’s a stranger in their midst. A spot of color amongst the darkness. Red.
The suit is—vaguely familiar. Like you saw it once, in a dream. A dream of a memory, you realize: it’s the Red Robin suit that Jason wore. It’s been reimagined slightly, a different touch taken to it, a different sort of boy slipping into its place.
A similar story, retold: a boy that you knew, replacing another. Except, he’s not replacing anything; he’s striking out on his own.
Tim.
You abandon your mission, instead following them through the desert, undetectable even for those trained in the art of it—for someone trained to meet a certain Bat’s impossibly high standards, even. You’ve become very, very good at hiding yourself—you’re practically a ghost at this point.
And yet, for the first time in years, you would give anything to be seen.
There’s blood in the sand, sifting through your fingers…
Your breath catches. Was that—a vision? You shake your head. No, it couldn’t have been. Tim will be fine; he is fine. You’re just trying to create a reason to stay.
Constantine will be expecting you to finish this up fast. You cast one last glance back at Tim, the Robin you never got to stick around for—the Robin you didn’t get the chance to cheer for. Not in the way that mattered. Not in the way you wanted to.
Your stare lingers, and as if sensing the weight of your thoughts, Tim’s head turns your way. He can’t see you, of that you’re certain. And yet. Somehow, his gaze is piercing, directly cast your way; there isn’t a single other thing set in his sights, not in this vast and empty desert. Not even the endless cascade of stars wheeling overhead can pull his eyes from you.
And yet. You still leave him behind.
You return the next night.
Tim lies unconscious on the ground, surrounded by the aftermath of carnage. Surrounded by sand darkened by blood.
His blood.
It sifts through your fingers as you drop to your knees by his side, uselessly pleading for him to wake up. You rip off his cowl, desperate to see his face. His eyes are closed. He looks—lifeless, drained of it. He has to wake up. He has to. If he doesn’t, if he can’t—you don’t know what you’ll do—you know exactly what you’ll do—
He stirs. Groans. You quickly apply pressure to his wound, ignoring the way he gasps and struggles beneath your hands, lips twisting in agony. Your fingers dig into the ruined flesh and you beg a little more, for his forgiveness, for him to let you do this. Against all of his training, his instincts, he relaxes under the cruel, caring intrusion of your fingers in his abdomen.
You would make this as painless as possible if you could, but there’s no time; there’s never enough time. You will his organs—his spleen, your mind confirms—to remain in a healing stasis that will prevent any further damage. It’s already on the edge of too-far gone, and if you had only stuck around, stayed, maybe it wouldn’t be this bad. Maybe nothing would’ve happened at all if you had stepped in. Fought for him.
There’s rain blurring your sight, and your fingers are buried in the wet earth, digging, trying and failing to help mitigate the damage of a disaster you caused, you brought about, you—
The raindrops hit Tim’s face, and you violently snap back to the present, back into your body. It’s not rain. It’s just you, crying over your half-dead friend.
You withdraw your fingers, having done as much as you can; he’s stable for now. But a hand snaps out to wrap around your wrist, tight. Tim’s eyes are cracked open, bleary with pain and blood loss. Despite this, his gaze is frightfully clear as he searches your face—memorizing it. Remembering it. Remembering you.
“Are you real?”
And the denial sits on your tongue, waiting. Patient. Cruel, yet caring; it would be a mercy to tell him, No, Tim. I’m gone. I’ve been gone for some time now.
But he is nothing if not stubborn. Terribly, horribly, caring in his own cruel way. “If you’re real,” he says, and the words sound like hope, like determination. “I’ll find you. I’m going to find you, just like I found B,” he slurs, adrenaline ebbing with his loosening grip. Still, his fingers cling to your skin, unwilling to let go. “That’s… a promise. And I don’t break my promises, ever.”
It’s an echo of a time long gone, left behind. Ripped from you. Kept alive only in your memories, the stories you told Jason on those lonely nights spent clinging to the past. Except… maybe they survived with Tim, too, all along. You survived. That version of you, from before—before everything.
You gently pry his hand from your wrist, taking it in both of yours, cradling it. Him. You give his hand one last squeeze and—the coward you are—run away.
(For your own sanity, for the continued health of your heart, you try not to hold him to that promise. But of course you can’t do a single thing right.)
After a year and nothing, you finally manage to worm your way out of the stranglehold that was hope, that was the belief in your best friend to do anything he set out to do.
You were, perhaps, being unfair. A year spent on the run, cleaning up Constantine’s messes, only to return to Gotham and hide yourself away yet again in a safe house of your design—it would be difficult for anyone to find you when you didn’t want to be found, Tim included.
So, when someone begins to pound at your door like there’s a fire raging in the streets, you don’t think much of it. You don’t think anything at all, secluded in your delusions of abandonment: Tim, Tim, Tim, your brain rings like a bell, a clarion call for your attention. You shrug it off as you always do these days, every day.
And once you do—once you’ve rid him from your mind, finally put your foot down and made your stance firmly in the present, in the real, the true—you open the door. You open the door to Tim Drake, in all his out-of-breath, windswept glory; Tim Drake, standing on the doorstep to the safe house you warded with him firmly in mind, the unfaltering constant of your thoughts.
“I told you I would find you.”
His grin is—
You slam the door shut in his face. Slide down to the floor, unable to catch your breath. It’s silent on the other side for a moment, a single, terrible moment where reality catches up to him and you both; he starts to talk, to reason with you, saying something, it doesn’t matter what—you wouldn’t know. You aren’t listening.
The same. His grin is exactly the same as you remember.
You bite down on your hand, stifling the sobs that break free. Tim quiets, and you faintly hear him moving, settling low to the ground. He knocks softly on the door close to where your head would rest if it wasn’t buried between your knees.
“How did you even find me?” you grumble, roughly wiping away your tear tracks.
Tim hesitates before answering. His voice is muffled through the door. “Jason.”
“Jason?” you repeat back, stunned. “He—?” The last time you spoke to him, saw him, even, was more than a year ago—years, you think, with a touch of disbelief. When you blew up at him—worried, sure, but reacting in a way that was totally uncalled for. When he hit you, and you…
You were terrified of him. Not nearly as much as you were furious with his actions against Tim, though. That was the lowest point of your friendship. You’re not sure if you ever… forgave him, for that. Not for hitting you. Not for how he scared you. But… how he betrayed that trust you placed in him, in those memories that you shared. You couldn’t forgive him for ruining the only glimpse of happiness you had left—for taking the very last thing you loved. Could love.
“You’re on speaking terms?” you whisper, a trembling note to your voice that you can’t place. You don’t know how you feel. How you’re supposed to feel. Not about Tim, not about Jason, not about… any of it. Nothing. You don’t want to think about how you feel, or could feel, or simply… don’t. Because where Jason stands in your heart, it is in that dark and unfathomable shadow of nothingness; if you shine a light on it, you’re afraid to find that it may quietly fade away as if there was never any place for him to begin with.
“Not… Not really?” Tim says, uncertain himself. “But he… He’s been doing better, with the Outlaws, and he—” A pause worth reflecting on. A pause that is less of a relief than it is torturous. “He said a lot, about you. About what he would want to say to you, if given the chance. If you would give him the chance.”
You hate the way you look into that dark expansive abyss of your soul, your bleeding heart, and find a space carved out for him.
You don’t say anything.
Tim continues, gentle, almost painfully so. “He told me where you’d be most likely to set up if you returned to Gotham. How to identify your wards and bypass them.”
It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. You wrote Tim as an exception to every ward you’ve ever created, whether or not you ever thought he might be affected; even the slightest possibility was more than enough for you.
You didn’t lie, earlier: he was on your mind when you made them. You just didn’t make them with the intention to keep him out—just with him in mind. It was habitual, instinctual.
He’s always in your plans, in your heart, in your thoughts: Tim, Tim, Tim. And now he’s here, on the other side of this door—on the other side of your door, mirroring you, your backs to each other—the closest you’ve been in years.
He’s not bleeding out in the desert. You’re not watching from afar. Both of you, here, and speaking just like old times; the door to a home opened and shut, once the beginning of your relationship, and now again, a new start to something that never quite ended. It’s your choice. He’s already made his.
You rise to your feet, leaving behind your defenses, your excuses. Your hand reaches for the doorknob.
His grin greets you, the exact same. When you stare long enough, though, you think there may be a few years’ worth of differences there for you to find, to discover.
Maybe there are some stories still left to tell, after all.