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“Go to Gotham, he said,” Jason hisses into the dark, very pointedly glaring at Peters restrained body beside him. “It’ll be fun, he said.”
“For the last time,” Peter says, his voice tired and annoyed. “We were requested by the state, Neal. I didn’t say we should go anywhere. We legally could not refuse without a valid reason.”
“Not wanting to be near Gotham is the valid reason,” Jason bit back. Peter stayed quiet, likely agreeing to Jason’s totally valid and true point but too proud to say it.
They were in the backroom of some warehouse– probably near the south docks, if Jason had to guess. Cement floors, a empty rotting shelf to his right, dirty brick patchwork on all sides. Both Peter and Jason’s arms were tied tightly behind the wood chairs they were sat on with rough rope that scratched at his wrists when he tried to move, and they sat three feet away from each other, facing the same heavy wooden door.
Jason’s real glad this is his first time back in almost ten years. Really missed the Gotham welcome experience.
If Neal Caffrey wasn’t so nonviolent, they wouldn’t be in this mess. If Neal Caffrey wasn’t so nonviolent, they could’ve arrived at the GCPD on time, authenticated the painting, arrested the perp, and Jason could’ve been far, far away from this hell hole.
But no, Jason had to be a genius. Jason had to take the anger simmering under his skin as enough of a threat to say that Neal Caffrey didn’t know how to wield a knife. Smart move.
(He knows why he did it. He knows it was to keep everyone, himself, safe. He knows it was the best choice whenever green creeps into his vision and Neal Caffrey is kept far away from a gun).
So when the ski masked people blew their tires and pointed their guns at the front seat windows, Neal put his hands up and shot Peter a glare instead of grabbing the closet gun and firing until there weren’t anymore bullets in the chamber. See? He’s getting better.
But now they’re here, in a warehouse storage room somewhere, probably waiting on some wannabe villain upstart to barge in and demand information, money, or death. Its always a toss up.
They’re also waiting for a vigilante to show up and save their asses, not that Peter knows that. Jason desperately hopes there’s a gang war by some docks on the opposite end of town somewhere that’ll keep them distracted. Last thing he needs is one of batman’s sacrifices to show up and ruin his perfectly good ‘dead at fifteen’ legacy.
(He ignored the chance of Batman finding them. That wouldn’t happen. Couldn’t happen. Who knows what he would do if he saw Bruce, even after a decade).
“Can you get out of the ropes?” Peter asked lamely. Jason scowled at the door. He was trying, but the goons had piled five different knots on top of each other, and somehow managed to make each of them slightly skewed or entirely backwards.
“Work in progress,” he settled on. Can’t admit struggle to anyone, god forbid.
“Aren’t you supposed to be good at these types of things?”
“I’m a con man, Peter, not an escape artist.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
One knot down, four to go. Great.
Jason tried to focus on the knots, on keeping calm and keeping his fingers steady because if he didn’t the warehouse would feel colder and darker and a manic cackle would start to wrap around his head. Shelves would morph into crates and his arms tied behind the chair would start to feel tighter and sore and broken and the scrape of a crowbar on concrete would plague him and which hurts more, little birdie? Forehand or backhand? A or–
“Neal?” Peter asked hesitantly.
“Yeah, Peter?” Jason answered. He ignored how his voice shook, shaking his head and clearing his throat. He was fine. He was okay. He shifted to the left, getting a better angle for slipping the next knot.
“Are you alright?” Peter paused, considering his next words. “You’re breathing heavy. And shaking. Bad.”
Jason blinked, and, huh, yeah he was. There wasn’t enough air going into his lungs and there was a tremor going through his arms and leaving his fingers to tremble against the ropes without control. He breathed in deep from his nose, held it in for five seconds, then breathed out. He repeated that until he felt like his lungs could expand and only the slightest shaking lingered in his fingers. Shout out to wikihow for those top notch panic attack prevention techniques.
“Right,” he said. “Sorry.”
“You’re allowed to be scared,” Peter said, like Jason was a kindergartener that needed his feelings validated. “We got kidnapped in the crime city of all crime cities. Within five minutes of passing the welcome sign. You’re allowed to be scared.”
Jason went to answer, to say that he wasn’t scared, just mildly traumatized from past events that ended in him dying and this overall situation was not helping him forget, but it felt like that would’ve caused more questions than it answered, so.
The Joker hadn’t be seen in months. He repeated it to himself like a mantra. The Joker hadn’t been seen in months– years, even– he had disappeared and no one had seen him and he wasn’t in Gotham and he wasn’t in this fucking warehouse–
“Right,” Jason said again, cutting himself off and forcing a soft smile. The second knot came loose, but the third knot was made completely on an angle. Honestly, what the fuck was this shit? His wrists were starting to get raw from how much he was rubbing against the course ropes. “Thanks, Peter.”
Peter turned, gave him an understanding smile and firm nod and Jason– Jason didn’t know what to do with the warmth that came with that. He reminded Jason of Bruce in so many ways, sometimes it was hard to remind himself one of them hated him, and the other didn’t know his real name.
There was a loud bang, suddenly, from outside of the door. Indiscernible shouts, followed by the unmistakable sound of gunfire and the crackle of concentrated electricity. Peter’s head snapped up at the same time Jason froze. Fuck. That didn’t sound good.
The door smashed in a minute later, splintered wood barely missing Peter and Jason. Nightwing walked in. Double fuck.
He was a taller than when Jason had last seen him, back when he was freshly eighteen and just coming into his adulthood. His hair was shorter– thank god there was no mullet– and there was a slight slump in his shoulders that came from a world of responsibilities, but it was still Dick under it all. The same Dick that would take him for ice cream and jump rooftops with him whenever Bruce go to be too much. The same Dick that would wrap an arm around his shoulder like it was the simplest thing and put batman themed bandaids on his knees when he scratched them up climbing out of trees.
Jason had spent so long staying away, catching glimpses through the sparing headlines, brief discussions on news channels, that he had separated the Dick he saw from the Dick he knew. Suddenly that mentally collapsed, and all there was was Nightwing, Dick Grayson, his brother.
His brother, staring at him blankly, frozen. There’s a device in his hand, probably an updated batphone, with Jasons luck. A female voice is quietly talking about some activity near the bowery. Oracle.
Jason stared back. “That was a very dramatic entrance.”
“Neal,” Peter scolded. “Don’t antagonize our recuser.”
Nightwing stared some more. His voice was strained. “You’re real.”
“Of course I’m real,” Jason scoffed despite himself. “You'd think I’d want to be tied up in some dingy warehouse if I had the choice?”
“Jesus, Neal.”
“Nightwing? Status?” Oracles worried voice came through.
“So, good and bad news,” the vigilante starts, looking from his phone to Peter and Jason tied up.
“Oh, god.”
“I found our missing authenticator and his handler,” he says slowly, eyes drifting between Peter and Jason. Focusing on Jason. “I also found my dead brother.”
“What.”
Jason could see Peter turn and stare at him from the corner of his eye, but he didn’t take his eyes off Nightwing. The vigilante disconnected the call with a low beep. Huh.
“You’re older,” his brother said eventually, lamely. There was something tense about him, dangerous. “Twenty-four?”
“Thirty-two,” Jason says. It’s the fake age that Peter knows by heart. He is twenty-four (or twenty-three– the six months he spent in a grave make time iffy) and he decides not to think about why Dick immediately knew how old Jason should’ve been.
“Even I'm not thirty-two,” Nightwing scoffs.
“I look good for my age,” Jason shrugged.
His jaw clenched. “And you’re–“
“He’s Neal Caffrey,” Peter cut in, for some unknowing but loveable reason, “my CI.”
“Your CI,” Nightwing repeated flatly.
“His CI,” Jason echoed because he’s a little stupid idiot who doesn’t know when to shut the fuck up, apparently.
Nightwing’s expression hardens. Jason can tell by the way his eyebrows drop and his mouth shifts that he’s pissed. He clenches his teeth more on the right, which Jason idly discovered while watching one of his and Bruce’s weekly yelling matches over the kitchen table all those years ago. It hasn’t changed.
“How long?”
Jason frowned, cocked his head to the side. “How long, what?”
“He’s been working for me for the last year,” Peter supplied, glancing between the two warily. “He was in jail for four years before that, though. And the year before that when he was busy becoming the reason art is so strongly protected.”
“Jesus,” Neal hissed. “Wanna tell him my middle name and the pets I had growing up while you’re at it?”
“If I knew anything about you from before you turned eighteen, I would’ve,” Peter shot back. Which, ouch. “He’s a hero, Neal.”
Right. Peter took the seminar on how laws in Gotham worked, and how vigilantes were at the top of the list. His loyalty to the law transferred over. Sometimes Jason hated Peter and his blind trust in law. Mainly Peter.
“So you’ve been using my dead brothers face for over six years,” Nightwing said, voice void and low. Which, what? What a theory. What a stupid fucking theory.
“I’ve been what?”
“Neal’s been what?!”
Nightwing’s face twisted onto a snarl. “Don’t pretend you aren’t. So, who are you? What do you want?”
Jason stared. What the fuck. “I’m Neal Caffrey,” He said firmly. “Neal, if I’m feeling friendly. I’m not, by the way.”
“I would recognize my brother’s face,” Nightwing hissed, taking a step forward. “Don’t lie to me.”
Jason laughed, bitter and cold. Peter frowned from the corner of his eye.
“Oh, so now you want to call us brothers. That’s funny.” There was something bitter and twisted about Dick calling him his brother after all these years. Even after Dick got over his shit he never once called Jason his brother. Maybe a friend at best.
He managed to get his finger underneath the third knot and wiggle it until it came free. The second one came off easily. Loosely. One left.
Maybe if he got through it fast enough, and if he ran fast enough, he could leave this town and pray Nightwing’s had a big enough fight with Batman to not mention Jason’s aliveness for a few months.
Nightwing took another step forward, cutting off any of Jason’s direct lines of escape. Like he knew Jason was considering it. Fuck him, honestly. What a bitch.
“Last time I checked, I was just the street rat B replaced you with, right?” Jason couldn’t keep the venom out of his voice if he tried. Nightwing flinched back
Part of him felt bad for saying that. At the end Dick had been getting better. Had been trying. Had been calling every other night and coming over on the weekends to help with his homework and take him to the arcade and the library. Had been making Jason feel like he had an older brother for the first time in his life.
But at the start, Dick Grayson– Bruce Wayne’s ward and Batman's Robin, everything Jason thought he had to be to stay at the manor– had taken one look at Jason and said “What, did Bruce just pick up the first poor street rat he saw to replace me?”
And Jason– eleven-year-old, not used to a soft mattress or stable meals, Jason– had felt tears in his eyes for the first time since he found his mother’s body cold on a moldy bathroom floor, and had run. And every night for three years Dick Grayson's golden boy's condescending words would slip inbetween the nightmares of wandering hands and freezing nights.
Those words never truly left Jason, even now. There’s a part of him that will always be stuck as an eleven-yead-old boy, promised an older brother to protect him when he’s only had himself for so long, watching his idol wrinkle his nose and call him a street rat like it was its own kind of venom.
Nightwing froze, connecting the dots because of course no one but the two of them would’ve heard Dick say that. No, the Golden boy was much to thorough. “Jason?”
“Neal,” Jason corrected firmly. He ignored the twist behind his ribs of being called his name– his real name– after years of being Neal. Its not important. Dick isn’t important. The last knot loosened, and Jason stood up, rubbing his rubbed-raw wrists.
“Jason–“
“Whats happening?” Peter cut in, looking between. The brothers, “Who– Neal, how do you know a vigilante from Gotham. You hate Gotham.”
“There’s good reason,” Jason grumbled. No use keeping the façade going now. “He’s my brother.”
“You died,” Nightwing said, his voice pained.
Peter whirled on Jason. “You faked your death?!”
“You faked your–?!” Nightwing screeched, pain and panic filling his voice entirely.
“No! Jesus Christ, you think I’d fake that? I was fifteen!”
“Then how are you–“
“I don’t know, Dickface. Believe me, no one wants to know why I woke up half a year later in a casket six feet under more than me.”
Nightwing’s face paled. “You woke up underground?”
Peter was swinging his head back and forth between the two of them, still tied to the chair, and honestly Jason wanted it out of this room and out of this warehouse and out of this fucking city. Two out of three isn’t bad right now.
“You haven’t seen my grave,” Jason said. It wasn’t a question. He pushed down the hurt at that fact. The knowledge that even in death, Dick hadn’t considered it worth his time to honor him. “It was completely upturned. I crawled out with my hands. Dirt and wood everywhere.”
Nightwing looked away. “I used too.” He hesitated. “All the time. Alfred said it wasn’t healthy. And then– Bruce and I hadn’t exactly been getting along. Not enough for me to ever be in Gotham, really. And by the time we figured out shit out, any memory of you hurt too bad to revisit. I’m so sorry, Little Wing.”
Jason rolled his eyes. He remembered the fights Dick and Bruce would get into every time Dick came over, ranging from legacies to what to have for dinner. Of course not even Jason dying would’ve stopped that. “What, did daddy bats get upset you went over the speed limit?”
“Little Wing, I killed the Joker.”
It was like a bucket of cold water had been thrown on him, and then he had been shoved into a freezer. Jason froze, and a strange ringing filled his ears because what? The Joker was missing, not dead. Had been missing for.. years, now. Jason had stayed far away from any mention of the Joker while with the White Collar, too scared of all the pain and fear and laughter, but he was dead now.
The Joker was dead and Dick killed him.
“You what?” Jason repeated numbly. He didn’t know how to react, honestly. It was like he had been carrying the weight of Joker's life on his shoulders for so long he had grown accustomed to it. And now that it was gone, he felt unbalanced, uneasy. It was the kind of relief that came with unresolved grief. A part of him doubted it, couldn’t imagine a world where the Joker wasn’t alive and breathing and vain. Where his family had done something about a murdered fifteen year old boy they said they loved.
“I killed him,” Nightwing– Dick repeated, voice firm. “He didn’t– after what he did. To you. He didn’t deserve to live. B didn’t exactly, uh, agree with my opinion. It was bad for a long time but I’d do it a thousand times over if I had the chance to save you.”
Dick had killed a man. For him. For Jason. Dick had killed his murderer. Dick had avenged him, just like he had prayed Bruce would done for years. Dick had killed the Joker for Jason and for every other person affected by that madman’s cruelty.
Dick had killed the Joker for Jason.
Jason jerked forward, feeling unsteady. Wrong footed. There was this sort of ecstatic– half disbelieving– relief that made him want to thank Dick and hug him and shake him and ask why he hadn’t shouted it from the rooftops so Jason had known but at the same time none of those actions felt like enough.
Dick had killed the Joker. For Jason. For his brother.
Dick seemed to understand, in that magical, Dick Grayson way he always had. Even when he was fourteen, Dick had understood. Had known when Jason needed someone to hold him close and not let go, or when he needed three feet of space to be able to take a proper breath.
His brother made a face, something filled with grief and happiness and longing, and opened his arms. Jason crashed onto him a second later.
There was something humbling about being taller and bigger and older but feeling fourteen as soon as his older brother held him. Something that made tears prick into the corner of his eyes and his heart clench painfully. Something that made his fingers tighten around Dick, like his muscles themselves were terrified of loosing the familiar warmth.
“Thank you,” he whispered into Dick’s hair. His voice sounded wet, filled with unresolved emotions and unshed tears, but he ignored it. It felt like a prayer. “Thank you.”
Dick carded a hand through his hair, just like he used to when Jason would lean against him on the couch while they watched shitty sitcoms, and Jason let his eyes flutter close, holding onto the moment for as long as he could. He had a brother. He had his brother.
“Always,” Dick whispered back, clutching him tighter, two fingers pressing against the steady rhythm of the pulse point at Jason's neck. It sounded like a promise.
“Neal?” Peter called, breaking the moment. “What the fuck?”
Peter. Right. Fuck. He backed away slightly, but Dick followed like a leech, the hand in Jason’s hair dragged down to grip the back of Jason’s– Neal’s– suit jacket, and the other hand pressed harder against the pulse point.
Jason huffed, and wrapped his arms around Dick’s shoulders, peering over Dick’s head. “Uh. Sorry? N, this is Peter Burke, my handler.”
Peter stared at him in bafflement, still tied to the chair, and Jason shifted awkwardly underneath the analytical stare. Sometimes he was too alike Bruce to be comfortable.
“No, Neal, what the fuck,” Peter repeated. “Murder? Dying? Crawling out of graves? What?”
Jason ducked his head. It was one thing to talk about it with Dick– who knew, who had been there, who understood– but with someone who would need the full story, the birth certificate that started it and the glowing green pit that just made it worse? There were some things that happened that Jason would rather never talk about again. Some things even he hadn’t come to terms with.
Plus, it would also ruin his whole ‘Neal Caffrey, non-violent art criminal’ identity. So.
Dick squeezed him once before letting go, turning to Peter with that support-the-victim smile he taught Jason to master. “It’s all very complicated. Not something we should discuss fresh out of a hostage situation, no matter how poorly executed it was. Everyone’s had a lot of emotions today.”
He sliced the ropes tying Peter to the chair, and he stood up slowly, regarding both Nightwing and Jason suspiciously. “Then when? And I want answers. I’m not exactly just going to forget about all of this.”
Jason nodded, no matter how much the thought of explaining his past life to Peter made him want to shrivel and die. He wasn’t getting out of this. “Well, we have all the time in the world, really– you and I could talk–“
“Two days from now,” Nightwing cut in. “At Jason’s apartment. You have one of those, right?”
Jason blinked. “Yeah, obviously, but–“
“–I have some questions I’d like answered too,” he said firmly. “Lots, actually. Mainly how you’re alive and why you didn’t come home. We can do it all at once. Just text me the address.”
Jason narrowed his eyes and crossed his arms. “You just want my phone number.”
Dick held up his hands innocently. “Would you rather I ask Oracle and risk the entire family finding out?”
“I can just tell you the address right now.”
“Yeah, sure,” Nightwing huffed. “Lots of things have changed, Little Wing, but my twisted relationship with google maps has not.”
Jason shuddered. Whenever Dick decided they needed to go to a new place together, whether it be a freshly opened attraction or a ice cream shop that wasn’t their usual, Dick managed to get lost so badly they would have to pull over and retrace their turns. Every time.
Give him a grapple gun and he could find a bad guys lair in under ten minutes. Put him in a car with state of the art navigation and you’ll be lucky if you see him within the hour. There were a lot of reasons the Batmobile had automatic steering, and only half of them were the perks of hands-free driving.
“Jesus Christ,” Jason scowled. He patted his pockets until he found his phone– front pocket of his blazer, right where he left it. Honestly, at this point, it was just embarrassing for the kidnappers– and tossed it to Dick. “If you send me a bunch of funny animal compilations every night , you’re getting blocked.”
“Duly noted,” Dick said, committing the number to memory. “Just one a night, then. Tough limit.”
Jason groaned dramatically and Dick laughed, a bright cheerful sound that made some small long-thought-dead part of Jason’s heart clench with reminisce.
He smiled at Jason, warm and sad, and wrapped him in another hug, guiding Jason’s head into his neck like Jason wasn’t 6’3 and bulky, like he was fourteen and growing into his limbs. “I’m glad you’re back, Jason.”
“Yeah,” Jason forced out. He tried to sound nonchalant, uncaring, but the words came out filled with grief and love. His arms wrapped around Dick’s back, gripping tighter than he had control of. “I’m glad I am, too.”
“What the actual fuck,” Peter said numbly from the corner.