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‘This is so stupid,’ Jason groaned, landing on the plinth of his favourite gargoyle. Settling down more comfortably and putting his helmet aside, he happily accepted the chilli dog Tim brought to him; this kid was surprisingly quick at memorising what others liked, which in turn made Jason even fonder of him. ‘It is like… the most desperate thing you did in a while, Dickhead.’
‘An incredibly rare thing is happening here, but I agree with Hood,’ Tim, who was sitting not so far, with his knees tucked under his chin, made a dramatic pause to sip on a cup of tea he got for himself. His voice was hoarser than usual, but it didn’t stop him from feigning a familiar, whiny intonation he loved to use when he tried to manipulate his older brothers: ‘Nightwing, please . Don’t do that to us.’
‘Yeah, Wing, spare kid’s peace,’ Jason nodded, his mouth already full of food. ‘He is going to die anytime soon.’
On nights like this, when Gotham was mostly slumbering, despite its usual concentration of the chaos, and Bats seemed to cooperate with Red Hood more willingly than usual, Jason caught himself thinking that life was… good. Slightly more bearable than usual.
‘You two are being unfair. B, little D, say something! I am being bullied over there.’
‘I fail to see how getting a mullet again would help us to like it more, considering that we just admitted that it was a less likeable hairstyle of yours, Nightwing,’ after a beat of awkward silence, Damian hurried to clear up his throat: ‘Respectfully.’
Tim snorted, and leaned to take a bite from Jason’s chilli dog. Jason rolled his eyes, but angled it in a way it would be easier to chump on it without getting all the sauce on his armour. Again. After all, if a little bird wanted to try his food, he would get what he wanted anyway — Jason learned it the hard way.
‘Does he really think adding “respectfully” at the end of the sentence would make it sound less offensive?’ Tim whispered, sniffling a little; it was cold outside, and he turned off the heater in his costume during fights. ‘Alfred should never have taught him that.’
‘I don’t know. I find it hilarious,’ Jason chuckled, finishing the rest of the food in one bite.
‘I can hear you, rascals,’ Damian hissed in their ears, clearly embarrassed.
Jason thought he heard Bruce’s tired sigh in the background, though, he still refused to comment on the whole situation.
‘You all are so mean to me sometimes,’ Dick sighed dramatically. ‘But just so you would know, I will do it anyway.’
‘Oh my God,’ Tim groaned, offering him a few napkins. ‘This is going to be awful.’
‘Yeah,’ Jason snatched it from him, starting to rub blindly on his mouth and chin, before leaning to put his helmet on. ‘I wish this happened while I was dead, honestly.’
‘No, I am glad that you are alive,’ Tim’s sharp elbow hit him under his ribs. ‘I wouldn’t want to suffer alone, would I?’
Jason paused.
His words, as simple as that, made him feel… paralysed. For a second, he did nothing but glared at the empty space before himself, confused, and when he finally managed to turn his head to Tim — to mindlessly swaying his legs in the air, who happened to look as if nothing happened, Tim — he felt even more lost. The conversation in comms was carrying on. The air felt as greasy and chilling as before. No explosions were heard on the background. Nothing happened, nothing changed.
Then why did Jason feel as if he was about to fall?
‘What did you say?’
Tim glanced back at him, a little frown casting on his features.
‘Uh, I said that I am happy you are alive?’
Jason stared back blankly. He was aware of his hands trembling a little now, but he had no idea how to make them stop. It suddenly felt like someone forcefully shoved their hand in his chest, dug out the remainings of his heart — cold and frozen, always soundless — and crushed it in a clenched fist, knocking air out of his lungs, making him feel strangled.
‘Hood?’
Tim seemed alerted now, his hand reaching to touch him freezing mid-air, almost as if fearing that Jason might snap again. Was it a caution in his narrowed eyes? A terror? Or, maybe, worse. Maybe it was pity of all things.
‘Hood, what’s wrong?’
He shut his eyes tightly, painfully aware of all voices in the comms dying down. Listening. Expecting him to blow up, probably. As usual.
‘Nothing is wrong,’ his jaw clenched, and despite the burning pain in his bones, Jason managed to straighten his back like a good soldier he was. ‘I just… No one said that to me before, that’s it.’
And the realisation crushed on him as soon as he said that. It was not a new one, and yet, he felt surprised of being able to put an ugly feeling that hunt him for years now in words, to finally name a disease that was running deep down in his blood, as rotten as his corpse was now.
No one was happy to see him alive.
‘No one?’ Tim’s voice jumped funnily, almost horrified. ‘But that can’t be… I mean…’
His questions, painfully clueless, stomped on Jason’s throat with a fierceness of combat boots. He felt his mouth clasping automatically, folding in a thin line, and something much sharper digging in the gentle skin of his neck, almost challenging him to speak.
It was almost as agonising as when Bruce slit his throat with a batarang. Jason couldn’t speak properly for a month after that, and his attempts to muster out words sounded more like a growl of a wounded animal.
Expect, no one aimed at his throat right now.
‘Little Wing?’ A worried voice in his ear made him flinch.
Oh, Jason really, really needed to leave now.
He jolted on his numb legs, his fingers quickly muting off the comms in a practised motion, before anyone could question him more, or sigh disappointingly, because… because he did ruin the slow, quiet night this family had just now, didn’t he? And he was too tired of playing a role of angry Robin — he didn’t want to be remembered like a one any more; never really — to deal with it now.
‘Thanks for the dinner,’ Jason managed to utter in the calmest, controlled voice he could offer. ‘Bye.’
‘Wait—’
Tim's hand reached out for him, but he managed to leap from the gargoyle faster, disappearing in the thick fog, engulfing the Gotham, hoping, praying that no one followed him tonight.
Because he couldn't do this right now. He swore to God, he couldn't.
On some instinct level, Jason had always known that this feeling was here. An undone, a very unfilled desire. Desire to be wanted.
More often than not, Jason wondered if it was with him from the very beginning. From the moment, Sheila looked at him for the first time, and decided that she wasn’t fit for the role of his mother. And he didn’t blame her — he never did, not even once — but he couldn’t help but ask himself if it wasn’t her indifferent face meeting him in this world after his birth that kept haunting him unconsciously through the years, in the eyes of different parents of his.
Jason couldn’t remember if Willis wanted him. In fact, he didn’t remember his father at all. So, sometimes he imagined him being rude and cruel, like any other man in the Crime Alley was — a snarling dog with clenched fists, always ready to throw a few punches on anyone that seemed like a threat to his fickle authority, even his own kid. But on other days Jason could swear he remembered that man smiling, promising to make his life better before disappearing forever, like another ghost of a past.
And Catherine? Oh, Catherine loved him. In every memory of her that he carefully cradled to his chest, in death and life, she loved him.
But had she wanted him?
He didn't know.
And sometimes Jason didn’t know if Bruce wanted him, too. Even before he died, before he turned into a failed soldier with a blood on his hands. Because sometimes it felt like he wanted to see someone else, someone named Dick; someone with a sweet smile and dimples, not a sick kid from the slums, whose lips curled in toothy scowls.
But that was before Jason returned, and it didn’t matter any more.
What mattered was… Jason was back, and no one wanted him alive. No one wanted him at all.
Because if they were, why would they hiss at him without trying to give him a space to explain himself — without a desire to understand? Because if they were happy that he was alive, then why did he get a batarang thrown in his throat faster than a simple hug? Why?
The answer was obvious, always written on their faces.
No one was happy to have him back.
Whatever Tim said to him… He probably didn’t mean it like that. Not with the same meaning Jason was searching in others for years, anyway.
‘Hey! Can you put the gun away?’
Jason blinked slowly.
Huh. He wasn’t sure when Tim managed to sneak in his apartment, and he was even more lost on how his body managed to register that and reach for the gun before his brain realised what was going on, but it did, anyway.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ He asked, hiding his gun away. ‘I told all of you, punks, my house is not a playground for bats. Stop—’
Tim ignored him as usual, and plopped on the couch by his side, instead.
‘Are you okay?’
It was the middle of the day, and Tim was still in his civilian clothes, even if he decided that sneaking in someone’s place through the window was a good idea. In a way, Jason wasn’t used to see him like this; he mostly met with his family during patrols, not outside of it.
‘Yeah?’ He half-asked, feigning an irritation. ‘Why the hell wouldn’t I be?’
Tim stared at him with his stupid, big eyes that made Jason feel strangely vulnerable.
‘About yesterday—’
‘Fuck, no,’ Jason groaned, running a hand through his hair. ‘Just no.’
Talking about yesterday was the last thing Jason wanted to do. He wasn’t particularly fond of the idea, remembering how he practically collapsed in his home, gasping for air, hurt and panicking as the voices mixed in one in his head, screaming the same repetitive thing — die, die again, and never come back — until Jason hugged himself, and patted his hair as a little kid he used to be once.
‘For the record,’ Tim raised his index finger up, ‘I wanted to follow you right away. But I thought you could use some space.’
‘I would shoot you, if you tried,’ Jason informed as a matter of fact.
‘Of that I thought, too,’ the corner of his lips twitched in an amused smile.
Jason rolled his eyes.
This — a half-bickering session with a little cup of poison shared between two — felt like a more familiar ground than a gentle soothing of a tamed animal that others could offer. Perhaps, that was why Tim was still sitting here, after all.
‘Everyone wanted to talk with you,’ he continued then, laughing a little when Jason scrunched his nose. ‘And they surely will be waiting for that opportunity once you set your foot in the manor. Or on a patrol. But… I thought you might want to hear out someone, who is not going to make your skin crawl in terror and hatred first.’
‘Oh?’ Jason cocked his eyebrow, dramatically twirling his head around the room. ‘You brought Alfred along?’
Tim bumped their shoulders together forcefully.
‘Shut up.’
Jason chuckled. For a while they were just sitting like that, their shoulders pressed against each other in a strangely comforting manner, as their eyes travelled across the shelves in front of them, examining the tons of books, battered but clearly loved by its owner; taken care of gently, despite being half-ruined for years now.
‘I meant what I said,’ Tim broke the silence just as Jason allowed himself to relax a little. ‘I am not sure what you think of all of that… Of your return and everything else, I mean… But I am happy that you are alive.’
He let out an uneven sigh.
It was almost funny how quickly his composure faded under the weight of these words. Just words, not even actions.
‘Even if I did what I did that day in Titan’s Tower?’ What supposed to be a joke, another smart remark of his, came out in a genuinely small whisper.
‘Yeah,’ Tim answered without a second of doubt. And then, partly amused, he mirrored Jason’s old words thrown in the middle of one of their conversations in the past: ‘What is a little fight between brothers like us, right?’
A surprised laughter babbled out from Jason’s chest. Tim used this opportunity to face him properly on the coach, persistent to continue what he started.
‘So, yeah. I mean it. I am happy that you are alive again… Because I got to know what a good person you are personally, not just from snippets of talks I once overheard on rooftops. Or because you taught me how to start the car without a key in it. Or… Or how to analyse texts through different lenses, and some other useful crap that saved my ass several times, which I hate to admit. And because…’
Jason felt his chest tightening in an uneasy knot again, even if this one felt much warmer than usual.
Tim wasn’t saying anything bad, but somehow… somehow, Jason still feared he was going to shatter in small pieces, revealing just how broken, how overly glued back countless amount of time he was, and still without a luck of actually being fixed.
‘...that’s what you do! And because—’
Jason caught him by the thin wrist almost instinctively, desperately trying to look normal.
‘Please,’ he muttered, his voice cracking on its edge. ‘Please, stop.’
He didn’t want him to. Not really.
But his eyes were burning, traitorously so, and his whole body was in a strange fever, almost scorched. Almost as if for a second he had never died at all, and his body wasn’t freezing sometimes, running in temperatures that humans couldn’t handle at all.
‘It is fine,’ Tim snatched his hand away, but only to put it atop of his shoulder, his voice getting much softer, all Robin-like. ‘Cry if you want. I won’t tell anyone.’
And Jason… sobbed.
It was loud and ugly, like everything about him was, and if Jason actually was a bigger person, he would hide himself in the bathroom, not allowing Tim, his little brother, to see all of this. But he wasn't.
He wasn't a bigger person, and then, he wasn't a person at all — just a dog that yearned to be touched and hugged.
That is why when Tim wrapped arms around him, slightly awkward, Jason just sobbed louder.
‘I…’
I am sorry, he wanted to say.
He was sorry all these years. Sorry for not figuring out how to help his mother, and then for not being enough for Sheila. For dying and bringing nothing but grief and disappointment to the people, who believed in him once. And then he was sorry for being alive again, for dragging out the casket the corpse of a boy everyone loved, and turning him into a man they were disgusted of.
But his home felt too small now, and the arms wrapped around him were so warm that Jason didn’t feel regret for once. At least, for not being back.
Because… because if he wasn't then who would help figure out his little brother all this stupid stuff he struggled with? Right?
‘I—’
‘Yeah,’ Tim cut him through, dramatically flippant, patting on his back. ‘I love you, too.’
Jason snorted in his jacket, feeling himself awfully disgusting, but somehow — somehow, peaceful.
‘That is not what I was going to say,’ his words came out muffled from being pressed to Tim's shoulder. ‘Asshole.’
And so what if none of this resolved the countless amount of problems Jason hid in the gardens of his mind? What if he was still a mess, his father was the most complicated person in the world — a cracked mirror Jason hated to face — and his house was haunted by his own ghost? He was wanted. Or, at least, not entirely unwanted.
And that felt like everything.