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oh-mother-of-darkness · 2 years

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“Howdy,” said Jason, dropping from the ceiling. He gave the man in the top hat a little wave. “Can I have a minute?”

The Mad Hatter bolted for the exit so fast that Jason considered a white rabbit joke, then decided against it. The Wonderland bit was, in his opinion, overplayed. Instead, he hit the release switch on the nearest piece of equipment.

A pile of netting fell out of the machine claw, directly onto Hatter as he attempted to flee. Tetch dropped immediately, hopelessly entangled in the mess of knots and unable to get up again. Jason sauntered over, not bothering to wait on backup; Tim would get there when he got there.

He did, however, remove his helmet when he got within Tetch’s reach, just in case. He had a domino mask on underneath, same as always, so his identity wasn’t at stake. Jason reached his free hand through a gap in the nets and grabbed Tetch by the collar.

“Hi,” he said. “Let’s chat.”

“About?” “About the twenty-three people that claim that they wore some form of headgear this week,” Tim interjected, from behind, “and then became trapped in their own brains. Sound familiar?”

“No.”

“I can give you a list of names, if that might spark your memory.”

“It won’t.”

“Uh huh. The thing that really interests me,” said Tim, “are the four instances where non-victims— people that weren’t wearing the hats with your tech in them— say that they got dragged into the, I’m quoting, ‘mindscapes’ of the hatted folks regardless. How did you do that? How do you put one person in a different person’s brain?”

“I don’t.”

“It would be pretty cool if you did,” said Jason.

“Pretty evil,” said Tim.

“It can be both.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Hatter.

“Whatever.” Jason released his grip on Tetch’s collar. He wasn’t learning anything new.

“Wait!” said Tim, as Jason turned away, sliding his helmet back over his face.

Too late. Jason caught a half-second glimpse of something metallic stuck to his hood, and then the world spun, and the room went hazy. He blinked, and his vision cleared. He was standing in the same spot in the same room that felt, somehow, profoundly different.

Jason reached a hand up to swipe away Hatter’s machine, but the place that he had seen the metal was empty now— just smooth helmet. Jason froze.

Tim swore quietly from his place a few steps away. “Hood?” he asked.

“I’m fine.”

“No, we’re not. Look around.”

Jason did, from Tim and Tetch to the rest of the warehouse. A small sound from the ceiling caused him to look up long enough to see a semi-translucent image of himself blink in and out of being, up in the rafters, where Tim and Jason had been minutes before.

“What was that?” he asked. “Did you see that?”

“Yeah.”

“A memory,” said Tetch, smiling from the floor. “I’ll answer the first question free.”

“You’ll answer all the questions,” Jason growled, stepping toward him again.

“Don’t,” said Tim, pulling him backwards. He pointed at a door that would lead them outside. “Let’s go.”

“I’ll—”

“Not in front of him,” said Tim shortly. “Let’s go.”

For a half-moment, Jason expected the door to stick and trap them inside, but it didn’t, and they walked through it into the last rays of afternoon sunlight. The river lapped gently against a line of abandoned docks. A few pigeons hopped over the cracked pavement, then scattered at the sudden presence of people.

The door closed behind them with a very realistic-sounding thump, and as Jason turned away from it, everything seemed… almost normal.

Another translucent figure appeared on the concrete a half-dozen steps away— a kid that Jason recognized as himself, aged eleven, bundled in a winter coat, arms outstretched and spinning in a phantom snowfall. The apparition skipped carefully over the cracks in the sidewalk. Jason could hear it—himself— humming quietly.

It was… odd to see himself like that. Jason shook back a wave of apprehension and turned to find Tim glaring at him through the slits of his domino mask.

“Well?”

“Well what?” Jason asked, suddenly defensive.

“Get us out of here.”

“How?”

“You know as much as I do,” snapped Tim, crossing his arms. “Some Hatter victims broke out of their mindscapes through force of will. Just… concentrate and see if you can do it.”

Jason didn’t care for the if, or Tim’s tone, or Tim’s expression, but he closed his eyes anyway and tried to… breathe? Meditate? Search his feelings? Ridiculous. He didn’t feel anything except foolish, and the pressure of Tim’s eyes on him while he visibly failed.

“I don’t know what I’m looking for,” he said, eyes still closed.

“Do you feel any different?”

“No,” said Jason. He tried his best to empty everything from his head: images, thoughts, emotions. As far as he could tell, he did fine pushing it all away.

He opened his eyes. No effect. The younger him on the sidewalk stared up at the sky, translucent cheeks flushed slightly more opaque in the cold.

“Try again,” said Tim.

“You try! Maybe this is your mindscape. How would we know any different?”

“I wasn’t wearing a helmet around the Mad Hatter,” Tim said, rolling his eyes, “and that isn’t my memory dancing in the snow.”

“Fine.” Jason closed his eyes again, trying for blankness. He leaned back against the brickwork for a moment, concentrating.

Nothing happened. He could hear Tim shifting beside him, and some birds in the distance. Jason was calm, he was, and it wasn’t working.

Experimentally, Jason let the calm drop away. It wasn’t difficult, not while he was trapped in his own head and he couldn’t control anything and Tim was watching while Jason stood like an idiot and—

Several things happened at once. Somewhere to Jason’s side, Tim gasped. Gunshots went off at a distance Jason couldn’t pinpoint. He yanked open his eyes to find the space in front of them crowded with grayed-out apparitions that shifted in and out of being in a confused mess— a couple staring at the river replaced by a woman screaming in fear while a group of men blinked into being. One pointed ahead, down the concrete sidewalk. Jason’s younger self took off running.

“What did you—” Tim began, and then cut off immediately as the world began to dissolve around them, fragmenting like a bad powerpoint transition. When it finished, they were standing somewhere else.

“Oh,” said Jason. “Yeah, I feel it now. It’s like knowing you’re dreaming, trying to open your eyes.”

“So wake up.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?” “I just— I can’t.”

“You have to,” said Tim. “Where are we?”

“Old hideout,” said Jason. He took a moment to look it over— the cracks in the familiar green walls, the overladen shelf, the mattress on the floor, and the few ratty posters barely hanging upright. The whole place smelled aggressively like cigarette smoke. As the thought entered his head, a younger version of himself blinked into view on the mattress, blowing a stream of smoke up to the ceiling. Another paced at the other end of the tiny room.

Tim appeared to look them over.

“What were you thinking about,” he asked, “when the warehouse disappeared?”

“Uh.” It took Jason a few seconds of searching before he had an answer. “I was watching that— memory, whatever, of myself— running away, and I thought about being that age and somewhere safe. Then we were here.”

“Okay.” Tim reached out a hand for the pacing, younger Jason, like he intended to grab him. The apparition flickered into nothing before he could make contact. “That’s good. That makes sense. You thought of going somewhere safe, and we went there. You’ve got some control over whatever… this is.”

“Control seems like a strong word.”

“Try moving us again,” said Tim. He peeled the corner of a skull poster— Poison Idea— away from the wall, staring intently in a way that Jason hated. Jason hated that Tim was around in the first place— he didn’t want him in his head or his old room. Those were private spaces.

He tried thinking of the warehouse door again, how he felt standing outside it, watching the river and the docks. Nothing happened. The world stayed solid.

“Did you try?” asked Tim.

“Yeah.”

“Did it work?”

Jason glared at him. Of all the obvious questions—

“Just checking,” said Tim, shrugging. “Alright, you can’t do it on purpose. What if I started talking about another place, like that safehouse on Fifth Street that you set up last— oh, perfect.”

Jason’s old room shattered into pieces, replaced by a half-constructed Ikea dresser and a twin bed. Jason nearly tripped over the bucket of paint he’d left on the floor.

“You’re not supposed to know about this place,” he grumbled, unsure in the moment whether he was mad at Tim for finding a safehouse or for moving them when Jason couldn’t.

“Right,” said Tim. He sat down on the bed, reaching for the abandoned instruction booklet.

“Get out of my room, Tim, before I—”

He cut off with a curse as the world dissolved again, spinning slightly into a red-walled bedroom that he didn’t need to look over to recognize: Wayne Manor, years ago. The much larger bed was unmade, dresser covered in empty mugs and half-read books. A younger Jason, maybe fourteen years old, flickered into transparent being, rifling through drawers.

Tim smiled in what looked like triumph. “Stay there,” he told Jason, before taking off himself— he ducked through the door into the hallway, outside of Jason’s line of vision. He came back within a minute, still so smug that Jason really considered taking a swing at him.

“What?” Jason asked.

“Nothing,” said Tim. A door slammed somewhere on a floor beneath them. “Wonder who that is.”

“Stop trying to make me think things.” Jason shook his head as reality began to splinter again, pulling away to reveal the same room, just blanker. The drawers were clean, pillows straightened, not a trace of dirt on the floor. For a brief moment, he saw himself sitting at the end of the now-made bed— not a translucent memory of his past but a solid, grownup person who half-waved at him before falling back on the blankets.

Jason gritted his teeth and fought the shards back together until he was standing again in his messy childhood bedroom, back when he was the child that lived in it. He looked over at Tim, feeling vindicated.

“Wait,” said Tim. “What was that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Go back. I need to see.”

“Stop telling me what to—”

“I’m stuck here too, you know.”

“I don’t give a shit, it’s my mind, and—”

“That last you was solid, and it acknowledged us. The others haven’t done that, so—”

“I couldn’t go back even if I wanted to!” Jason snapped.

“Just think about the manor,” Tim shot back. “Wayne Manor, Wayne Manor, Wayne—”

“Shut up,” Jason tried, but he was too late. His bedroom fell away for the second time, replaced by another reality.

It wasn’t the last vision. They were outside the grounds this time, looking through the iron gates at the front garden while shapes flickered in and out of existence along the path and in the lawn. Jason spotted a cloudy version of his adult self climbing through a window, but most of the figures were much smaller— Damian lying in the grass, chasing his dog across the garden, stabbing the tip of a sword into the ground in apparent frustration, waving a knife at a stray Tim that backed away down the garden path.

“Come on,” said the real Tim. He pushed through the gate and marched up to the doorway. Jason followed him through and back up the stairs to the red-painted bedroom.

The other him was still lying flat on the bed. He didn’t seem perturbed by the company— just gave Jason another wave and Tim a vaguely irritated look.

“Do you mind closing the door?” he asked.

Tim ignored the question. “If I try to touch you, will you disappear?”

“That’s kind of a rude line of questioning,” said Other-Jason, sitting upright. He raised an eyebrow at Jason, nodding in Tim’s direction. “Can we not do something about him?”

“Not that I can figure out,” said Jason, “but maybe you know more than me.”

“He’s a figment of your imagination,” said Tim. “He can’t know more than you.”

“You sound confident,” Other-Jason noted.

“Am I wrong?”

Other-Jason shrugged, stretching.

“You aren’t a memory,” said Tim, “and we’re in his brain, which means you’re his representation of something. So what is it? What are you supposed to be?”

“Why are you asking him,” Jason put in, “if it’s the same as talking to me?”

“Because I—” Tim appeared to think for a moment. Jason took the opportunity to take control of the conversation himself.

“So?” he asked the Other-Jason.

“I’m you,” said Other-Jason. “Part of you, anyway.”

“But not all of me?”

“More like a specific version.”

“Which version?”

“The one that’s here,” said Other-Jason, gesturing around the room with a finger. Jason heard a door open somewhere down the hall. A translucent version of Dick drifted past the open doorway to Jason’s bedroom.

“My condolences,” said Jason.

“I said I wanted that shut,” Other-Jason muttered. “Look, have you ever felt like… like you’re one person in some environments and another when you’re out?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s like that. The part of you that’s in this house— the me part— is a distinct section of yourself.”

“Is that why I can’t get out of here?”

“Sort of,” said Other-Jason, grimacing. “Not exactly.”

“Well?” said Tim. “Explain the problem, then.”

“Can you shut up?” Jason asked.

“God, please,” said Other-Jason, rolling his eyes. “I’m seconds from stabbing you.”

“Would that work?” asked Jason.

“Worth a try.”

Tim produced a knife from somewhere in his uniform and held it out in front of him— a clear threat.

“Yeah?” Other-Jason asked, pulling his own blade. “Why don’t you come over here and—”

“Enough,” said Jason. “That’s enough, we’re leaving, don’t worry. Come on, Tim.”

“I still need to know how—”

“Come on,” Jason repeated. He grabbed Tim by his non-knife arm and hauled him into the hallway, shutting the door behind them.

“We should look in the cave,” said Tim.

“No.”

“There might be another version of you down there.”

“I said no.” Jason peered carefully over the banister, checking the path to the door. It all looked empty. He didn’t see any sign of—

The world began to dissolve into fragments again. Fuck.

The second reality resolved into a dark alley, Jason sprinted towards the mouth, boots slipping on wet cobblestones. He made a left and kept going, dodging around buildings and whatever memories popped up around him. It seemed rude to run through them.

He skidded to a stop a few blocks over and dropped onto an empty bench. Tim took the other seat moments later, panting a little, presumably from chasing after him.

“Crime Alley?” Tim asked.

“Yeah.” Jason didn’t want to talk about it.

The sun had gone down. The last of the skyscrapers lit up one by one. As Jason stared at the rooftops, cloudy figures began to appear, then disappear all over them: Batgirls and Robins of all kinds, Nightwing crouched on top of a chimney, Black Bat turning a cartwheel on a narrow ledge.

A translucent Stephanie wandered by their bench, chattering into her intercom while Oracle’s voice answered. She faded away a few paces later.

More gunfire drew Jason’s attention to the top of a tower across the way; a fully solid figure in a red helmet waved to him from the rooftop, then bounded out of sight.

“That’s another one,” said Tim, pointing at where the other Jason had vanished.

“I saw.”

“That you was in uniform. I bet it’s like, Red Hood, the concept.”

“Whatever.”

“You get that we have to problem-solve to get out of here, right? You could be more helpful.”

Jason leaned forward on his bench, scowling. “Do you think you’re being helpful right now?”

Tim ignored him. “The shadow-people are memories, but there are multiple versions of you running around that are pieces of your identity, like that asshole in the manor and the Red Hood on the rooftops. You can’t control the mindscape on purpose, but your unconscious thoughts can move us around and create the shadow-memories. What am I missing?”

“I don’t know, a brain?”

“You know what I’m missing, don’t you?”

“No.”

“Why’d you run from the alley?”

Jason gave Tim his best, flattest mind-your-own-business stare. Tim ignored that too.

“Do you want to break the mindscape?”

“Yes.”

“Then you need to figure out what’s making you—” Tim hesitated, like he was picking his next words carefully. “—unable to pull yourself together, and—”

“Hey!” said Jason.

“—and fix it! So if there’s something you’re avoiding, stop avoiding it.”

“What are you, my goddamn therapist?”

“If I have to be!”

“You don’t! Leave me alone!”

“While I would love to do that,” Tim snapped, “I am, regrettably, stuck in your brain. Trust me when I say I’m not thrilled about it either! I want to go home, so suck it up and stop fighting whatever the hell it is you’re trying to hide.”

“Go to hell,” said Jason.

“Coward,” said Tim.

They sat in silence for a few moments.

“Fine,” said Jason. He wrenched off his helmet as the night air around them began to shift and shatter into pieces. “Just— fine, whatever, let’s fucking go.”

They materialized at the top of Wayne Tower. That part was unexpected.

“I thought… Ethiopia,” said Tim, softly. “Is it not—?”

“No,” said Jason. “Not Ethiopia.”

He shoved away the image of smoke trailing up into a blue sky. Now wasn’t the time. It wasn’t Ethiopia. He had known that beforehand.

The Tower was still confusing. Jason hadn’t been at the Tower for this. He remembered a small room at a League base somewhere far away, but he supposed it didn’t really matter. He was in his own mind, not the past, so if he had been thinking about Gotham at the time—

“I don’t get it,” said Tim.

“Yeah,” said Jason. He made his way across the rooftop, towards the figure sitting crosslegged a few feet from the edge.

“Hey,” Jason told him.

“Hey,” said the figure. He gave Jason the briefest of glances, then went back to staring out over the city.

Jason took a few steps backwards, to give him some space, then beckoned Tim over.

“I don’t get it,” Tim repeated, once he stopped a little behind where Jason stood. “Who is that supposed to be?”

“Me.”

“He’s younger.”

“Yeah.”

“The you at the manor was your age.”

“Yeah.”

“And the Red Hood we saw had the current costume.”

“Right.”

“So if that’s one of your… identity pieces, or whatever, he shouldn’t be younger than you.”

“Well he is,” said Jason.

“Helpful.”

They both stared for a moment at the Jason on the edge— younger, maybe seventeen, depending on how you counted, but definitely and visibly different.

“Okay,” said Tim finally. “That’s good. That helps us. This is the thing that’s wrong. There’s part of you that’s not… moving on?”

“Yeah.”

“But moving on from what?” Tim asked. “What is he doing?”

“Deciding,” said Jason. He didn’t feel like elaborating much. “He got some news.”

“What are you—”

They both stepped back as reality flickered for a moment, from the top of the Tower to a dim gray room with a handful of photographs tacked to the wall— five shots of a kid in a yellow cape.

They weren’t pictures of Jason.

“Oh shit,” muttered Tim.

“Yeah,” said Jason, as neutrally as he could. “Shit.”

Jason gave it awhile before he turned around. When he did, he found Tim watching him cautiously, like he was expecting an attack. That was fair, Jason supposed, all things considered.

Tim pointed at the Jason near the edge. “He just found out about—?”

“You, yeah,” said Jason. “He knows that Bruce got another Robin.”

“Well that’s—” Tim cut off for a moment. “That’s why we’re stuck? That’s the thing you can’t get past?”

“Fuck off.”

“So what, this is my fault?”

“Yes,” hissed the Jason at the edge.

“No,” said Jason. “Well, not— It doesn’t matter.”

“What do you want from me?” asked Tim, glaring. “If you’re waiting on an apology, keep waiting. I don’t intend to—”

“Will you shut up?”

“No, and you can stop asking! I’m sure you’d love some sympathy right now, but if you want me to stand here and say that I was wrong, that Bruce was wrong—”

“Shut up!”

“Does it not occur to you that you died? You were supposed to be dead, and neither of us knew any different, so pardon me if I didn’t consider the optics from the perspective of someone who was buried in Bruce’s backyard—”

“Oh my god.”

“I’m not sorry for what I did. I was helping Bruce, and it sucks that you got hurt, but I would do it again, and—”

Another see-through memory appeared in the space between them: a translucent Jason holding a metal staff over the crumpled shape of a translucent Tim lying on the ground.

“—and that!” finished Tim. “You almost killed me, you self-righteous, arrogant piece of—”

“I’m sorry,” said Jason.

“What?”

“I said I’m sorry.”

“Oh.” Tim fell silent for a moment. “Well, thanks.”

“Yeah.”

“Look,” Tim said. “I don’t know what it looked like to you, but it wasn’t Bruce’s fault. I asked to be Robin. I was the one that convinced him that… you know.”

“Batman needs a Robin,” said Jason, bitterly. “I know.”

“I’m still not sorry for that, but I… promise that none of it happened because Bruce didn’t… love you or anything.”

The Jason at the edge laughed at that, but Jason shrugged. “I know,” he said again.

“If you just understood what happened—”

“I know what happened.”

“You don’t.”

“Shut up.”

“No, I won’t,” said Tim. “I’m in your head, I can see your thoughts, and I can tell you right now that your reality is warped.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s holes everywhere, Jason. Do you not see them?”

“What are you fucking talking—”

“Look,” said Tim, pointing at the concrete beneath their feet.

Jason didn’t see anything— just a few cracks and the outside surface of a skylight. It all looked normal to him.

He blinked. The cracks shifted.

“What was—?” Another blink, and the cracks were gone, the concrete smooth under his boots. The skylight shifted away, towards the other side of the roof.

“Why is it moving?” Jason asked.

“It’s been moving the whole time,” said Tim. “Did you not notice?”

“No.”

“The contradictions? The empty space?” Tim pointed again, out over the city this time. Jason looked— at the skyscrapers across the way, then the light of the houses in the Narrows, then…

Then nothing. The world beyond was blacked out into nothingness.

Oh.

A translucent memory appeared at the far edge of the rooftop: a smaller Jason with his Robin cape flapping in non-existent wind. When Jason looked at it— really looked at it— there was something… wrong.

It wasn’t as complete as the others he had seen. The face was blurred away, the shape of his nose and mouth barely distinguishable. It shifted weirdly as he tried to focus on it.

“Have they all been like that?” he asked quietly.

“Most of them,” said Tim. “Some of them are better than others. I think it’s just… how well you remember.”

“Right.”

“Things move around a lot, and sometimes it’s like— like you’re filling in the gaps with things I know are wrong. The manor was like that. Most of the rooms were empty or in the wrong order, and the newer parts of the house were just these sort of… abstract walls.”

“Interesting,” said Jason. He meant “leave me alone,” but he didn’t think now was a good time to say it outright.

“You’re not seeing things as they are,” said Tim. “You don’t get it.”

“I do get it,” Jason ground out. “You know damn well how human memory works. This is normal. It’s going to look shaky.”

“If you understood what really happened—” Tim began again, and Jason well and truly lost his temper.

“I know what happened.”

“Your memories—”

“My memories are fine!”

“Oh yeah?” Tim came forward a step, arms crossed. “You aren’t missing anything?”

“Shut up.”

“No,” said Tim. “Where’s Bruce? You’ve got all these shadow people running around, but I haven’t seen Bruce once, and you ran out of the alley like you knew it was—”

“God! Please shut up!”

“He’s not the monster you think he is,” said Tim.

“I don’t think he’s a— you don’t know anything about what I think.”

“I’m in your brain.”

“You’re an idiot,” said Jason, too angry to think of anything better.

“Prove me wrong, then.”

“Fine!” Jason kicked at a crack in the cement as it rematerialized by his foot. “Fine, I will!”

God, he felt like he was going to explode. Jason was enraged and exhausted and so, so tired of being stuck under Tim’s microscope, of being stuck in his own head while he tried desperately to hold himself together. Fine, fine! He would stop trying. Tim could have what he wanted.

The memories appeared as soon as he wasn’t consciously holding them back: a slew of Bruces on the tower top. A translucent Bruce surveyed the city while a Bruce turned away from an invisible screen, towards the pair of them. Bruce laughing in the alley. Bruce in a tuxedo, holding a champagne glass. Bruce smiling, disappointed, in pain, mouthing Jason’s name, in costume and out of it. Bruce’s face when he was amused and trying to hide it. Bruce looking at them with pride, then in pride. Bruce angry. Bruce dripping phantom blood on the floor.

A Bruce held Damian’s limp body. Jason blinked, and then it was his own corpse in Bruce’s hands. He looked away hurriedly, focusing in turn on the other apparitions. Even under close inspection, they all looked… whole.

“Satisfied?” Jason asked.

The him at the edge of the rooftop laughed again. For the first time, the younger Jason turned fully away from the cityscape and fixed his eyes on Tim instead.

“Well?” he said.

“Fine,” said Tim. “That’s— fine, okay.”

“I think I have a pretty nuanced view of Bruce,” Jason told him. “I like to think I’m fair about it.”

“Then why are you still stuck here? Are you just… mad at me?”

“I don’t give a shit about you,” said Jason. It was a lie, but he didn’t mind lying.

Tim nodded. “I just… wanted to tell you what it was like the first few years, before you appeared again. He was always… everything was always about you. He didn’t come back from losing you.”

“So they tell me.”

“I think it sort of— I don’t know, I think he loved you more than he can love anyone now.”

Jason took a few seconds to stare at Tim, to let the words sink in and make sure that he heard them right. “Are you… blaming me for that?”

“What?”

“Are you blaming me for Bruce not loving you enough?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“It is,” put in the Jason at the edge.

“It’s not!” said Tim.

“Jesus Christ,” said Jason.

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“How else could you mean it? It’s not my fault if Bruce treats you or anyone else like shit. That’s his problem. That’s what he does.”

“He doesn’t—” Tim began, glaring.

“What do you get out of taking his side? Wake up, Tim! He’s not a good father.”

“What, because he took me on and he didn’t kill the Joker?”

“Yeah, actually.”

“Grow up,” said Tim, rolling his eyes. “Batman doesn’t kill people.”

“He should,” said the younger Jason. “Would, if he cared.”

“He does care,” said Jason, “but who gives a damn.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Tim spat.

Jason shrugged. “I know he loves me. That’s not the issue.” Why did people always assume that was the issue? Jason was so, so tired of talking about it.

“Then what do you want? Why does it matter if he kills the clown?”

“I want—” Jason began the sentence and then found that he didn’t know how to finish it, so he stopped and tried again. “It’s— I know that Bruce has a code. We all have a code. I have a code.”

“Fine.”

“I just wish I wasn’t— It’s like he has his morals in place and his worldview locked down, and I wish that— I wish that when I was in pain, it was enough to change his mind.”

Jason watched the cracks in the concrete shift for a moment. “To change him, I guess,” he added. “I wish I mattered enough to change him.”

“Whatever,” said Tim.

“Yeah? How did it feel when Dick forced you out of being Robin? He was doing the right thing, wasn’t he? For Damian, anyway.”

“Shut up.”

“Did it matter that it hurt you in the process? Or were you just the cost of doing business?”

“Shut up!”

“How does it feel to be a price worth paying?” asked Jason. He set his face in his best imitation of Damian’s sarcastic smile and adopted the kid’s intonation. “An acceptable outcome.”

The Jason at the edge whistled.

“Fuck you,” said Tim, quietly.

“See? You get it.”

Jason rubbed at his own eyes with the hand that wasn’t holding his helmet. It didn’t do much with the domino mask still in place. “It is what it is,” he said. “It happened. It’s not changing. Bruce isn’t changing. I’ll deal with it.”

“You aren’t dealing with it,” said Tim. “That’s why we’re stuck here. Address it.”

“No. I’m tired of playing shrink.” Jason walked forward, closer to his younger self. “I’m not interested in spending the rest of my life litigating my childhood, and I’ve had enough of obsessing over Bruce-fucking-Wayne. This isn’t about him. He’s not my problem, and he sure as hell isn’t the solution.”

The Jason at the edge raised an eyebrow. “Who then?”

“You,” said Jason. He knelt carefully in front of his younger self, mindful of the ledge.

Odd, he thought again. It was odd to look at himself, especially when himself was a child in an oversized hoodie. For a moment he was very aware of the weight of his gun in its holster, and he wondered what would happen if he brought it out and shot his younger self in the head. He wanted to— not out of hatred, but out of pity. If he didn’t, the child would become…

Well, him. Maybe he did hate himself. Jason pushed the idea aside.

“You’re a kid,” he told his younger self.

“I guess.”

“You’re in pain, and you’re overwhelmed, and you think that you’re about to die, so nothing matters.”

The Jason at the edge nodded.

“That’s not how it goes,” Jason told him. He held out his helmet. The kid took it. “If you— when you decide to wear this, it’s not the end. You come back to Gotham, you see Bruce again, and the Joker. You survive, and then you have to keep living and living, and it just… goes on.”

“Okay,” said his younger self.

“I’m sorry you’re in pain, but you have to… you have to find a place to put it down, because if you don’t, you’ll be stuck like this forever. I don’t want that for you.” Jason shrugged, half-embarrassed. “You don’t deserve it.”

For a few moments, they watched each other in silence. Then, slowly, the younger Jason handed back the helmet.

Jason took it, and the mindscape shattered around him.

-----

Happy New Year, my loves

TWs I can’t put in the tags anymore: mental illness, suicidal ideation, guns, depression, unreality

#CANNOT overstate how much time and effort this took #it's 6:13AM and I've been writing nonstop since 1 last afternoon #i'm so exhausted i no longer care if it's good or bad #I really hope putting the warnings at the bottom works but tellme if it doesn't and I'll figure something else out #jason todd #tim drake #bruce wayne #batfamily #fanfiction #original

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