#i love young and angry and deeply damaging to himself and other people jason i love him | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

pinkcowzz · 1 month

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dick had bruce as a partner. there was a mentorship there yes, but at the end of the day dick & bruce were a team.

jason had bruce as a father. bruce took him and made the extra effort. he actually adopted jay and stayed home when jason was sick.

tim had bruce as a liability.

tim went to bruce- bruce never found him. i just really love the idea that because of the difference in dynamic, tim is one of the few people who can shame bruce into compliance so easily.

dick and bruce will get into shouting matches that neither one of them walk away from being satisfied, bruce is an unmovable object and dick is an unstoppable force. when they meet, its not pretty and there is almost always collateral damage.

jason and bruce are like setting off two firecrackers next to each other when they fight. it's loud, it's bright, but it burns off fast. the anger and righteous fury is there one moment but then gone the next.

tim and bruce fight differently, because a lot of the time, tim understands where bruce is coming from. he saw bruce start on his path to self destruction and managed to get him to switch tracks. bruce was never the same after jason's death (what parent is after seeing their child die) but batman was able to correct himself. after stepping into the role of robin, tim understood. he too lost so many people he cared about because of the weight of the cape he wore.

and i think the first time that damian and bruce go head to head, dick may be the one who comforts damian and assures him of his place in the family, but tim is the one who goes to bruce. it's the first time bruce has ever seen tim this angry. tim is seething with a fury that would put the devil himself to shame. he is so angry that he is shaking and bruce can the restraint that tim is using to keep the discussion from becoming physical. tim tells bruce, or rather lectures him, in all the ways that he has fucked up with dick ('kicking him out, never officially adopting him, forcing him to go through with the spyral mission- you treat him as your partner when its convenient but the moment it's not he is your soldier again. its unfair bruce. he's more of a man, more of a father than you have ever been'), with jason ('do i even need to say it? actually, let me address it. you cannot see the forest past the trees. jason isn't who he was before he died. he never will be. same as you. he lost a lot more than his life when the joker blew him up. he lost his innocence, he lost his faith in you. i'm starting to think he may have been right') and with himself ('i love you bruce. i have always cared so deeply about you and your mission. it's why i came to dick in the first place. but this isn't about me.').

and bruce remembers why his relationship with tim is so different. tim trained overseas, tim got to patrol on his own as robin so much sooner than his other boys did. tim was largely unsupervised during his run with the young justice. tim had made up an entire fake uncle to keep his indepence. tim would never argue with bruce about himself in this way, but he would argue about- ('this is about damian. and i swear to god bruce. if you can't pull that stick out of your ass and find a way to apologize to damian that leaves him feeling properly taken care of. superman himself wouldn't be enough to save you from my wrath.')

and it's only later, after bruce does apologize to damian in a way that leaves dick speechless. when barbra happened upon the cave's security footage that she shares with dick who shares with steph who shares with jason that his family figures out just how fitting of a last name that drake is for tim.

#guilt tripper tim drake #tim drake #dick grayson #bruce wayne #jason todd #batfamily #batman #dc comics #robin #red robin #damian wayne #damian is tims little brother #as god as my witness he would do anything for that boy #manipulative tim drake #angry tim drake

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magdaclaire · 3 years

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febuwhump day 8

can’t promise we’ll always see eye to eye (but i’ll try)

febuwhump day 8 prompt: “hey, hey, this is no time to sleep” @febuwhump

read it on ao3

“Hey, hey, hey, Timbo, this is no time to sleep, buddy, stay with me,” Jason says, tapping on the side of his Replacement’s face, wishing that, for once, Dickbag would pick up his calls. Big Bat is off-world and Stephanie is… Stephanie is useless anyway, in his opinion, but she’s in San Francisco, Jason is pretty sure, so extra useless for today. That’s gotta be why O called him anyway. Fuck. He has Tim curled up in his lap and he looks too goddamn small for words, too small to be a Robin and Jason tried to kill him a few months ago, a few short, short months ago and he doesn’t deserve to be slotting himself back into the family like Dick wants him to so badly. He deserves the way that Stephanie looks at him, the way that Tim usually slides away from him, not the way that Tim is leaning against him now.

“J’son?” Tim slurs, eyes barely open as he tips his head up at Jason reluctantly, but it’s enough. The worry cocktails with the constant backburner rage unpleasantly, makes him want to throw the Pretender and run, cut and leave before he does something drastic and stupid, stupid stupid. Tim is fifteen and he’s gonna have hypothermia if you don’t take him to Alfred, Jason, he’s gonna have permanent damage if you don’t step up, Jason, what are you gonna do, leave him on the street, Jason, let someone else get their hands on him, Jason, let someone else touch him, Jason, let someone else get their dirty hands on your little brother, Jason, would Dick ever-

Dick isn’t here. Jason has to be.

“I’m here, Timbo, you gotta stay with me, bud. Alfie is gonna have my ass if you fall asleep before I get you home,” he says, pressing a kiss to the top of the Pretender’s forehead absentmindedly, because it was the one thing both Catherine and Bruce both did when he was smaller and sicker and so so young. Fuck, he doesn’t have a car. Just the motorcycle. Timbit is only 5’6, maybe a buck fifty, muscle included. He’ll lose the body heat that Jason has recollected him, but he can get him to the manor on the front of the bike. It just won’t be too pretty.

“We’re gonna have to take the bike, babybird. You’re gonna have to get on the bike with me,” Jason coaxes, so much gentler than he thought he knew how to be, and the pit wants to climb the back of his mind, but he pushes it down. He pushes down green, fire, rage, dark in a way that he didn’t think he could because Tim needs him. He has fear crawling up his throat and his leather jacket wrapped around Tim’s shoulders like a blanket (it’s so much bigger than Tim’s shoulders, so much bigger than his tiny, tiny frame can hold), and he can push it down. He can push it down until he can hand Tim over to Alfred and know that Tim is fucking safe and then he can go kill someone and set everything fucking right.

Everything is gonna be fucking fine.

Tim whines when he tries to get the kid up and Jason almost starts crying out of secondhand frustration, but that is neither here nor there. The spike of anger that he has to push down he ignores, because that’s not relevant. He scoops the kid up and grabs his other jacket, because of course it’s November in Gotham when the kid is also hit by Dr. Freeze without Batman (because Batman lets him go on patrols while he’s offworld because Batman is a fucking idiot but if Jason thinks about that at all he’ll have to go kill someone with little Robin in tow).

“J’son,” Tim whines when he sets him down for a second, shivering deeply on the couch while Jason puts on his own jacket. Jason shrugs on his jacket faster than he ever has in his life.

The motorcycle ride across town is unpleasant as Jason worries about his cargo, making sure that Tim is secured against his chest, making sure that Tim is safe, making sure that Tim is warm. His skin is still cold to the touch, which is expected but so, so worrying, and he’s so much smaller than Jason was at that age, and he’s seen pictures of Dick at fifteen and he’s smaller than Dick was too; there’s no reason for him to be so thin. Not and be Robin. But he has to pull out of those thoughts because all roads lead back to the rage because he’ll think about how Bruce let this kid - and no. Not when Tim is right here. Pulling into the Cave entrance is familiar, easy, even when he doesn’t as much as the “family” wants him to, as much as Dick wants him to, at least. If Dick wanted him to do anything, he’d pick up the goddamn phone. Alfred is waiting for him when he comes out of the garage section of the Cave.

“Hey Alf,” Jason greets automatically. Alfred smiles at him just like he did when he was a kid, pure and good and kind, and Jason aches inside. He forgets to address the elephant in the Cave.

“Master Jason, this is unexpected. What brings you - Oh,” recognition washes over him as he realizes exactly what- who rather is wrapped up in Jason’s jacket. “Do come along, then,” Alfred says, bringing him to the medical area.

“He got hit by Dr. Freeze. He’s not frostbitten yet, I found him pretty soon after, but he’s not in good condition; I think he might have fell when he was hit and he might have a concussion. He needs a general looking over, and I don’t know how to do that,” Jason explains, and it hits him all at once that he is very much eighteen years old, despite everything. Despite the bravado, despite dying, despite the Red Hood, despite Batman, despite Robin, he’s eighteen years old. He’s never fallen in love or filed taxes or gone on a date or finished high school or been to a wedding or toured a college or done anything, and he fucking died when he was fifteen and he never got to mourn that and he just carried his little brother home to their Dad’s house because he almost died too and he’s not here.

“I’m gonna call Dick again. And, um. Bruce. I know he’s off world. But uh. I still wanna call him. I’m gonna call him,” he says to Tim and Alfred and the room at large and maybe himself, because his throat just won’t clear, and he feels like he’s gonna cry.

Why does he keep feeling like he’s gonna cry? He hasn’t cried since he died.

Dick doesn’t pick up the fucking phone. How fucking typical.

“Hey Dickie? Um, I just got to the manor. Alfred is taking care of Tim, he’s gonna be okay. I. I just fucking realized that I haven’t dealt with the fact that I fucking died and I kinda need my big brother right now so if you could pick up the phone that would be stellar. Thanks!”

He hangs up with a big smile for no one and doesn’t throw his phone across the room, so he counts that as a big win, thank you very much, counselor from the ninth grade. Fuck you very much indeed. Member of the family. What fucking family? Can’t be a fucking family without anybody fucking here, Dickard. Don’t be angry, don’t be angry. If Dick isn’t here, he can’t be here for the kid. Somebody has to be here for the kid, and Alfie can’t do it alone. Don’t be angry. Can’t afford it.

You already tried to kill him once, Jaybird. Not again.

Then, he calls one of the only people he knows with an off-world phone number.

“Hood? Is Gotham secure?” Hal Jordan says, answering on the first ring, unlike some people. They must be in transit then. Yeah okay.

“Batman around? I figured he wouldn’t answer his own phone,” Jason says, infusing his voice with bravado. Hal doesn’t need to hear his quaking post death realizations (No one else does either, a green voice inside him reminds him, but he pushes it down, reminding himself that he has bigger fish to fry), so he’s gotta pull it together. Hal laughs.

“Don’t I know it. Sometimes can’t even get him on the line for the League. B! Hood’s on the line for you,” Hal says, clearly in better spirits than Jason has heard him in… maybe ever. He doesn’t talk to Hal Jordan much though. There isn’t much reason to. He braces himself to talk to the big man.

“Hood?” Bruce’s timbre cracks through the communicator and it reminds Jason of being a child, just like pretty much everything else that’s happened today. Somehow, he makes Hood sound like Lad, like affection, like something he hasn’t had for Jason since he put him in a pine box in the ground, and god.

“Dad,” Jason whispers despite himself, despite the whispers in his head that always remind him that Bruce let him die, that Bruce let his killer walk, that Bruce never loved him, never wanted him, never saved him. He hears Bruce gasp over the phone. Jason clears his throat.

“Tim got hit by Dr. Freeze. I got him to the manor, Alfred is taking care of him. He’s going to be okay. When you get back on world, we’re going to have a talk about Robin patrolling alone. And we’re going to have a talk about the fact that I - that I died. A real one. For now, I’m gonna go back in and help Alfie take care of my little brother. You come home safe, alright, old man? You die out there, I’ll fuckin’ kill you, okay?” he says, and he grins roughly when Bruce laughs, a ragged but honest sound.

“Yes. Okay. Goodbye, Hood. I will see in Gotham,” Bruce says, as much as he’s willing to say in front of other Leaguers, but enough. Jason swallows down the green and the last bits of rage and the nothing inside of him. It’s enough.

“See you, Bruce.”

#febuwhump #febuwhumpday8 #jason todd #tim drake #bruce wayne #dick grayson #hal jordan #alfred pennyworth #all other characters are just mentioned #mine

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