Archive of Our Own

"Ollie, look, I'm just saying: If Coltin was trying to hide right now, do you really think we woulda found those leads so easy?"

" 'Easy'?" Ollie repeated with a chuckle. "You must have missed the part where I nearly had to pull shrapnel out of my ass."

Not this again. Roy heaved out a sigh. "I know, I know. That didn't go as smoothly—"

"Kinda like how you missed that mine until I was nearly on top of it," Ollie added, swinging around to point a finger at Roy as they continued down the Watchtower hall.

Roy found his jaw and fists alike clenching as he worked to keep his temper under control. "I was keeping an eye on the eastern quadrant," he answered, forcing his voice to stay calm and light.

"Too bad that's not where I was. Just saying—seems like you've been real distracted lately, huh?"

The hell would you know about how anything has been for me lately? "Look, maybe if you hadn't insisted on making the approach that quickly, I would've been able to split my focus better. But I had to prioritize—if you were gonna take a run at it like that, I was better off keeping my coverage wide and counting on you to keep an eye out for the shit in front of you." Then again, Ollie's pretty good at missing shit right in front of him.… Okay, so maybe I am an idiot still, in that case.

Oliver didn't reply, simply biting the inside of his cheek and folding his arms as he continued to walk backwards.

Roy felt his temper flaring as the pointed silence dragged on. I already gave you my explanation, jackass. Where the hell's yours? And worse, he had a nasty inkling what Ollie really meant by distracted. "Look, if you fuckin' have something to say, then—"

"What the hell's that?"

"What do you mean, what's—"

"Is that smoke?"

Roy paused, frowning. "…Yeah, shit, I think you're—" He stopped short and suppressed the urge to wince.

"Ahh, shit. Maintenance isn't gonna be happy about this." Ollie was already off down the hallway as Roy followed behind him at an easier pace.

Unfortunately, the younger archer was pretty sure he recognized that exact flavor of smoke. This ain't gonna be fun.

Maintenance was now the least of his worries.

"Well, son of a bitch."

"Yeah, I'm aware," a young voice retorted, the light rasp and Jersey drawl making him sound a little older than he actually was.

Oliver tilted his head, looking downright incredulous as he took in the scene. "I thought Flash was just B.S.-ing. Bats actually left his kid here for us to babysit while he just…gallavants halfway across the galaxy?"

"Must be spending too much time with you," Roy grumbled, prompting a smirk from Jason, who was sporting full Robin regalia still as he kicked back in an office chair, feet propped up on a large L-shaped desk.

"More like the old man left me here to make sure none of you blows the Watchtower to Kingdom Come while he's gone."

"Funny," Ollie said in a flat voice, before lifting a brow. "Not sure how you plan on supervising everyone from a storage room with no surveillance hookups in sight." He gestured to the room, which lay dotted with stacks of crates, the multilingual labels declaring various bits and pieces of electronics and machinery.

The advanced filtration in even spillover spaces of the 'Tower had prevented the layer of dust that would typically accumulate in such places, and it was a safe enough bet that everything there would turn out to be meticulously organized if Roy checked the manifests.

It was pretty much a treasure trove, and the engineer in Roy was already itching to crack open a few boxes and start raiding the contents—but Ollie had a point: it was indeed a far cry from any of the actual surveillance centers the 'Tower bore.

Yet Jason only snorted. "Oh, Olls. I'm always connected."

"And yet you let us ambush you," Roy said in a pointed but saccharine tone, the sarcastic grin and comment prompting an eyeroll from Jason (seriously though, was the kid trying to get himself in trouble?).

"It's not an ambush if I know you're coming, Harper. By fucking definition."

…Okay, great, he was trying to get himself in trouble, then. Dandy.

Ollie seemed to read his mind (…which was a disturbing thought all on its own, ugh). "So you wanted us to find you back here taking a smoke break? I'm pretty sure the staff is going be pissed about that, by the way."

Jason shook his head. "Nah, filtration here's good. It’ll be fine. 'Sides," he added, grinning as he swept his arms out in an exaggerated yet somehow more elegant mimicry of Oliver's earlier gesture, "the atmosphere here is great."

Roy had to swallow down a grin of his own at the slickly delivered in-joke; Jason wasn't the first kid to work out that the carefully adjusted and maintained balance of nitrogen and oxygen needed to accommodate the mixed-species crew of the Watchtower also came with a few side benefits. Such as the little fact that cigs could stay lit forever and a damned day up here.

"So you do this a lot?" Oliver said, a sharp note of challenge entering his voice.

Uh-oh and here we go.

"Pretty sure you're not supposed to be using those at all, kid."

Said kid shot Oliver a scornful look, though it wasn't enough to mask the hunch to his shoulders. Still—"Pretty sure that's none of your fucking business."

Points for diplomacy, dude. Roy suppressed both a snort and the urge to roll his eyes. Maybe the reply hadn't been a wise one, but it was always fun watching Ollie get bitched out.

Especially by a teenager.

Ollie's arms folded across a broad chest. "Yeah, well maybe we should see what your 'old man' thinks of that. I have a little inkling he might be interested in your extracurricular activities here."

"Is that so?" Jason asked slowly, something dark coming into his voice as he narrowed faintly reddened eyes. The anger that quietly burned in them then was something Roy was pretty happy not to be on the receiving end of just yet. If the kid had been anything like Kent, the Jolly Green Asshole would've been ashes quicker than the damn cigarette.

"Oh, I think so," Ollie answered quickly, unfazed by the evident aggravation.

"Hunh." Jason gave a small nod then, placing the cigarette between his lips to free his hands as he riffled through his utility belt in what Roy highly suspected to be a stalling tactic—or, better yet, show. Jason could be a cliché teenager in a lot of ways, but disorganization wasn't one of them.

"Shit," Jason finally said, taking the cigarette out with one hand as another continued rooting around. He finally lifted the empty hand in apparent despair. "I'm all out of fucks to give, I guess."

…Jason did live up to the drama part of being a cliché teenager.

Roy didn't even suppress the laugh this time, snickering in the background.

But even as he enjoyed the moment, he didn't miss the tightness that strung its way across the broad set of shoulders in front of him.

If Oliver decided to do anything stupid (again), Roy would Goddamned drop him (and that wasn't drama speaking—just an icy resolve dictated by experience. Fuck him if he was gonna let Jason experience Ollie's idea of an intervention).

For now, though? Yeah, this was entertaining.

The glimmer in Jason's eye just then seemed to agree. "I do have this, though," the teen added before Ollie could say anything, a thumb drive manifested in his right hand like a vulpine kind of magic before he tossed it over to the green-clad vigilante.

Jason turned athwart to the man then and kicked his legs on top of the desk, crossing them at the ankles as he leaned back to gaze at the ceiling.

"The hell is this?" Ollie demanded, making no move to actually use the item.

"It's called"—he took another draught of smoke—"evidence, old-timer. If you're asking me what a U.S.B. stick is, though, you're past my help. But maybe try putting it into that smooth, shiny thing? The one on your wrist, not your shoulders."

Roy had a good angle to see Ollie's lips press into a thin line, the older man staring at the item in naked distaste. To be fair…he had reason to be cautious.

While Jason didn't really consider it a strength of his, he was in reality a very competent hacker, and most definitely knew how to use that to his advantage, wielding it with the same combo of barehanded ferocity and switchblade cunning that he would any other part of his arsenal.

"What, you scared?" Jason scoffed. "It's clean, I promise. Bat's honor." The cheeky grin he added probably didn't do much to inspire Oliver's confidence.

"Says the brat sneaking tobacco."

Yeah, that probably doesn't help, either.

Jason shrugged. "I'll wait," he said simply, words muffled by the cancer stick left pointedly dangling at his lips as his gaze turned back to the ceiling.

"Not like I got anywhere else to be," he added in a mumble as Oliver finally took the bait and plugged the U.S.B. drive into the computer system embedded in his gauntlet.

The words were spoken quietly, but to Roy they seemed much louder than any preceding.

He wasn't sure Ollie had caught them at all.

"What the fuck is this?" The hiss came less than a minute later.

"Like I said"—another cloud of smoke was pointedly blown in Oliver's direction—"evidence. And if I recall…you swore up and down that you weren't the one who broke that. Boss Man isn't the only one who can tell when you're lying, by the way."

Oliver swung around to glare in Roy's direction then.

Roy cocked a brow in response, folding his arms. "What? It's my fault you decided to lie to the expert detective and his protégé? Cool, great. Add it to the fuckin' list, right?"

"If Batman couldn't find this, no way in hell did he. Which means—"

"Bold of you to assume B couldn't find it. Bold…and stupid. Guess that's why we're the detectives, though. B didn't find it because he didn't have time to find it; I found it because I made it my business to find it." The cigarette was half gone and the smile would've made King Shark proud. A curious tilt to his head then. "I can probably get that sit-down with B still, if you want it."

"You Goddamned—"

"Jersey Devil. Bona fide. And don't you fucking forget it, Valley Boy."

Roy's grin matched Jason's then, if only for a moment as Oliver whirled on him again.

"You know what? Why the hell am I even doing this?" Oliver punctuated his point with an aggressive shrug. "Shouldn't you be the one doing something about the rugrat?"

Roy huffed, but decided to play the game anyways. "Like what, exactly?"

"Like fucking telling him to stop!"

…The game lasted for all of two more seconds before Roy ended it with an easy shrug. "Think you already tried that, man."

Jason snickered in the background.

"Isn't this your kind of shit, anyways? If you're gonna be here, the least you could do—"

"I'm not your sidekick anymore, Ollie," Roy snapped, finally straightening from his slouch. "I'm sure as fuck not about to start being your errand boy."

"Really? You sure as hell follow me around a lot for someone who's not a sidekick, Red Arrow."

Roy clenched his jaw. "Yeah, because maybe one of us is trying not to be a complete asshole about this? Maybe we don't get along great anymore, but I'm not trying to have a blood feud with you or something. I just—"

Oliver chuckled then. "Ohh, I get it." The tone wasn't a pleasant one. "Want to make sure I still like you just enough that you'll have someone left to call next time you shoot up and need someone to scrape your pathetic ass out of an alley somewhere. That's the trick. I'm probably your best backup plan for when you can't leech from Dinah."

Roy clenched his fists, but it was Jason who snapped. "Hey!"

Ollie turned his glare on the boy, and was met with an equally unwavering one from the teenager, who had already left the chair and drawn himself to his full small height.

"You don't talk to him like that," Jason began, his words slow and measured even with the unmistakable attempt at a Batman growl in his voice. "He's a better person than you'll ever be, you shitty excuse for a father."

"That's because he's not my kid!"

Roy knew this. This wasn't the first time Ollie had said it, or the only way, either. And it still felt like something inside of him cracked just a little further each time.

"Spoken like a true deadbeat. I told B I didn't get why anyone would think they could count on you when your own kid couldn't." And there was Jason, drawing the fire towards himself and away from Roy.

And he felt guilty as shit for it, but damned if he wasn't grateful right about now.

"He was my ward. I don't know why nobody seems to understand that."

Jason bared his teeth, every word spat like fire. "You're a billionaire who picked up a kid that you could use, and then got rid of him once he wasn't shiny and new anymore and you'd have to actually do stuff that wasn't fun. Calling him your ward instead of your son doesn't change shit. It's not supposed to.

"And I think…we're getting off-track here. We can go talk to Batman right the fuck now, but that ain't gonna go well for you."

"You know what, kid? Fine, I'm over it; keep the damned cancer sticks. You and Batman deserve each other, God. But this conversation is no longer any of your fucking business. Isn't that what you were just saying?"

Jason cocked a brow, his hands still in loose fists at his sides as he kept his shoulders square and his weight carefully balanced. "Didn't stop you."

"Nice try, but I know you're not gonna waste blackmail material like this just to keep me from bitching him out."

"Shit," Jason breathed. "You really are stupid.

"I just told you I made it my business to find that. You really think that's all I got? Fuck, maybe we should play 3-card monte next."

"You little shit," Ollie growled then.

"I'm a street rat. Unlike you, Queen of Hearts…I know how to hoard the good stuff."

Queen stared first at one boy and then at the other before finally storming off, throwing over his shoulder, "You know what? Screw you and screw that jackass for making everyone else deal with you. We're not your damned babysitters."

"Didn't ask you to be!" Jason shouted after him before throwing himself back down in the chair.

Roy stared after Oliver's retreating back, considering but quickly discarding the option of chasing after the man. Whatever fits he wanted to pitch could be done solo.

Which left Roy instead observing his friend for a moment longer before moseying over.

"I don't know how you lasted as long with him as you did," Jason grumbled, the pseudo-Batman menace gone and replaced with classic teen sulking.

Roy snorted, raking a hand through hair that he still kept cropped. It felt strange sometimes, even as much as he'd gotten used to it, but a deep unease set in if he contemplated letting it grow again in earnest. The time hadn't come yet. "Me neither. Wasn't even that long, but it sure feels like it. Didn't exactly end well, though, so…maybe I should've left a little sooner. Didn't have a lot of places to go, though." And even now he was adrift in many ways; he'd ended one part of his life but couldn't truly say he had found the next. At least whatever life he had, it was going to be sober now. "It is what it is." He didn't really see the use of agonizing over it more than he had already.

But Jason winced. "Sorry. I shoulda asked B—"

Roy just lifted a brow.

"Yeah…heard it as soon as I said it." He blew out a breath before lifting the tobacco.

Which Roy promptly plucked from his fingertips.

"Hey!"

"Yeah, think you've had enough of this; you're saying crazy shit now. You really want to subject me to another insufferable asshole? That's just cold, man."

"Roy…!" Jason made a halfhearted grab for the cigarette, his previous snarl reduced to something more like a whine.

"Nope," Roy replied, taking full advantage of Jason's tiny size to play keep-away. "Hey…room's clean, right?"

"The fuck do you think?" Jason hissed as he stared Roy down like a pissed-off German Shepherd, focus unwavering even with the change in topic. "And I already saw you scanning for shit yourself."

Roy shrugged. He'd known from the moment Jason had used his and Ollie's real names so openly. "Never hurts to triple check," he offered simply, wresting himself free when Jason switched tactics and snagged one of the looser belts on his uniform for leverage. A fix to consider for future versions.

Another day it might've still escalated from there into a full-on grappling match (and truth be told, the stocky little monster was unnervingly strong for his size), but Jason's heart clearly wasn't in it and he quickly slumped down and resorted to more sulking. And an unreasonably hard shin kick.

Unfazed, Roy took a triumphant draught. Before immediately grimacing. "Damn. I forgot how shit these taste. Thought you knew how to hoard the good stuff?"

Jason snorted, rolling his eyes. "Yeah, because you're definitely shelling out money for Cuban cigars or some shit. Honestly, even if you were dumb enough to pay out the nose for that, doesn't mean I'd be. I'd just get 'em offa you.

"And I wasn't talking about the cigs, anyways, dumbass."

Roy ignored the pricking at his eyes. Another day he might've played along and made a crack about the blackmail, but maybe Jason wasn't the only one too tired for it all today. Instead he just said, "I know."

"Those aren't even bad," Jason added with a huff. "The ones my dad used to smoke were awful."

Roy made himself suffer through one inhale more before finally leaning against the chair, arms folded. "So."

Jason waited.

"Unlike a certain someone, I know that you and the six-foot furry do not, in fact, deserve each other."

Jason scoffed, but it was clearly a noise of agreement. "Yeah, so?"

"So what the hell did he do this time?"

Jason shrugged, but it was a spastic, unsure movement of up and down, the smooth nonchalance he'd displayed for Ollie gone. "Nothing. He just…he's just being an idiot, I guess."

Roy arched a brow. "Pretty sure we've established that as his baseline," he noted tartly.

"Damn it, do you have to be such a fucking know-it-all? This shit isn't funny to me, Harper."

"And you don't see me laughing. Last I checked, you don't do this shit anymore"—he gestured to the cigarette—"so I already know it has to be heavy if you're back here again. I'm just tryin' to get a handle on exactly what Wayne deserves to look like 24 hours from now." Roy leveled a steady gaze his way. "So far I'm thinkin' he's about to lose his pretty-boy status."

"I don't—it's—fuck." Jason growled, both hands raking through his hair and clenching the wavy strands in frustration as he tried to organize words and thoughts. "And I knew this shit was gonna happen! I should've known, but I thought—" He swallowed hard, turning his gaze to the floor as he bit his lip. "I was stupid."

"Hey. Look." Roy rounded the chair then, crouching down in front of Jason to better meet his eyes. "You know the score, Jaybird—whatever happens, I got your six. I promise. He messed up? I'll help you kick his ass. You both messed up? I'll help you fix it. Whatever you need, so take it from the top. What'd the bastard do?"

"Ain't shit to fix this time, Red," Jason said, his tone harsh but his eyes dulled with pain when he finally met Roy's gaze. "He's going to get rid of me."

Roy choked before forcefully clearing his throat, ruthlessly crushing the panic that had stabbed through his gut at the statement. Clarify now, panic later; maybe he'd just misunderstood, misheard. "Uh…ha, I'm gonna need you to run that one by me again."

"The fuck do you think I said, Harper?" Jason shouted, Roy forced back as the younger boy sprang to his feet. "He's going to fucking get rid of me, and the only thing I don't know is how long he's gonna wait before he says it."

"What, you had a fight again and now the asshole's firing you?"

Jason laughed at that, but it was an awful, broken sound. "Firing isn't gonna be good enough this time, Roy."

"Holy shit, what else would—Jason. …No." Roy shook his head. "No fucking way would he do that. You don't just get rid of a kid because you can't be bothered with them any—" Roy cut himself off, but the look Jason gave him then made it clear it didn't matter. Roy paused, swallowed. "That would be really fucked up, Jay," he whispered.

"I know," the other boy said in a voice nearly as soft. "Funny how it never stops anyone, huh?"

The room seemed to crumple and collapse in on itself then, as twisted and inescapable now as the simple truth supporting the words. Roy watched numbly as Jason leaned back against a stack of supply crates, gaze turned skywards again as shiny trails of liquid glinted their way down a black domino.

"I thought it was over," he rasped. "I didn't think he was gonna make me go back. Not now, after.… I can't—I don't want to do that shit again, Roy." He sank to the floor then, biting down on a gauntleted fist as trembles rattled his frame. "He promised I wouldn't have to," he added in a whisper, his voice laced with agony. "He promised."

"Hey, easy, easy," Roy murmured, coming to kneel beside him and carefully but firmly encircling the younger boy within his arms. "There's no way that's gonna happen. It's not"—Roy swallowed past something painful wedged in his throat—"it's not like me and Ollie. Bruce adopted you. He's not gonna just give you up like that."

Jason let out a choked sound then, eyes shutting out the world as the shudders grew more violent and his breaths started to pick up in tandem.

"Shh, it's okay, it's okay." Worrying more by the minute that Jason was going to hurt himself just to stay quiet, Roy handed the cigarette back in hopes of distraction, relieved when Jason disengaged from the gauntlet, and more relieved still when he seemed more interested in fidgeting with the cigarette after taking one last, almost desperate hit of it.

"You don't know that," Jason rasped at last, his voice no longer trembling but instead worn and hoarse in a way it'd never been left by smoke alone. "You don't know him, not like I do." Jason clenched his teeth, finally stubbing the cigarette out with shaking hands. "And if there's one thing I know about B, he's really fucking good at finding loopholes." That laugh again, raw and pained.

"You know what's really funny, though?" he asked, licking the salt from his lips with a grimace. "Back when he first picked me up, I was so fucking scared to mess up. I figured I was already on borrowed time and as soon as he really got sick of me, that'd be it. But I didn't even do shit this time, and it's still gonna end that way after all."

Heart squeezing, he pressed Jason closer then, relieved when the younger boy accepted the comfort and relaxed into the embrace, head nestled against Roy's shoulder as Roy held him tight in reassurance and gently carded his fingers through tangled waves and curls a glossy black so deep that it shone almost blue under the harsh lights.

They stayed that way for a long time, the space between breaths lengthening, and heartbeats slowing into a single rhythm in that eerie way science still couldn't fully explain. So fiercely that it hurt, Roy wished they could've just stayed there, bathed in that odd peace from the center of the storm, instead of searching for answers when the truth was ugly and any lies he told would be uglier still, in the way that betrayal always was. But at 19 he was still the elder and he was the only one there now to help, which meant it was his job to shatter the stillness, as gently as he was able. "Jaybird…everyone knows who you are—that Jason Todd-Wayne is Bruce Wayne's son. Even if he wanted to give you up, he couldn't do that now without the public asking questions." Thank fuck for those stupid tabloids.

Jason looked up at him then, a look in his eyes that could only be described as desolate. When he spoke, he started slowly, the words trembling on each syllable. "Roy, he thinks—he thinks that I…that I killed Garzonas. On purpose."

Years later, and Roy would still remember the dread that had emptied him of breath in those few moments between one declaration and the next.

"He will find a way."

"Fuck."

A few moments after the events of this story, Roy Harper receives a call that will change his life forever.

"Hello, Agent Harper."

"…Jade?"

"There's something I should tell you, I suppose. You didn't quite disappear without a trace after all."

A few minutes later, Roy returns to his friend, apologies and promises tumbling into each other in something that feels more like a car crash than an explanation.

"Jason, I…listen, some…pretty big stuff has come up and I need to go. I'm sorry, I know you needed.…" He growls in frustration. "Look, I know the timing is absolute shit right now, but just give me like two weeks, and I'll be back, okay? We'll handle the stuff with Bruce together, I promise."

Jason looks up at him then with stormcloud eyes, fear and a heartbreaking weariness warring against the quiet hope there as well. "Yeah. Okay, Harper," he says at last, as the hope somehow wins out. "Guess I'll wait."

"Thank you. It means a lot. We'll figure this out, kid."

And a few weeks later, Roy once more receives a phone call that sends the world spinning off its axis, the angles of his reality shifting with each word.

Agony haunts his footsteps again as he comes to kneel on a churned Earth below an overcast sky, infant daughter held tight to a chest lanced through with horror and stopped up with grief. The pain spikes with each breath.

"I'm sorry, Jay," he whispers past the salt water trailing his lips and falling into a head of soft, glossy black hair. "I'm so fucking sorry."

This time, there's no answer.