Title: Rinse and repeat.
Author: Nemesi.
Fandom: Batman (pre-Battle for the Cowl)/Red Robin (Search for a Hero)/Outlaws.
Genre: Family. Some action, some "emo" stuff.
Word Count:
Characters: Jason and Tim centric. No real pairings, but hey, who am I to stop you...? Cameos by Alfred, Roy and Kory.
Rating: mostly PG-13.
Disclaimer: All characters and themes herein portrayed belong to DC comics. No copyright infringement intended, no profit was made, and no Robin was harmed (permanently) during the composition of this story.
Notes: This ties the old continuity with the reboot. It's not a conscious effort on my part to merge the two; neither is it a likely theory on how Jason is welcomed back to the fold. This is just me playing around with a sudden (and impelling) bout of inspiration.
Summary: Jason is having a bad day. And then another. And another. And another. Actually, it's always the same day.
There is an explosion.
A clumsy thug has managed to hit the gas tank with a stray bullet (million-to-one shot), and a bystander's car goes ka-boom.
Jason knew it'd happen.
He knew.
Tim is slapped backwards by the detonation, and Jason knows – he knows – exactly where to put himself to grasp Tim and save him from a concussion. Or three fractured ribs. Or a dislocated shoulder. Or...
Tim barrels into his chest, and Jason uses Red Robin's own momentum to duck backwards and roll to safety. Tim wheezes. Gasps once, twice. Tilts his face up towards Jason, soot dusting his cheeks and forehead. He's frowning, and when he opens his mouth, Jason growls at him – a real growl, something like an angry animal, and gives him a good shake.
"I swear, if you say, 'it's all your fault' one more time I'll-"
"I never told you anything like that," Tim cuts him off, voice clipped. He purses his lips, then blurts: "But it is all your fault."
"God-DAMN!"
Then darkness comes.
There is an explosion. The usual (million-to-one shot) one.
Jason contemplates for a moment not to save Robin, but he knows better, by now.
He dives.
He grabs the kid around the waist and pushes him out of harm's way.
A moment too late.
He almost doesn't feel the wall of fire when it hits him.
He does hear the scream, though.
It's not his own.
There comes the explosion, right on cue.
Jason tried to shoot the thug in the head this time. But, surprise, surprise! Tim didn't let him. And now they're hanging from the side of the building, twenty-something feet from the ground.
Jason twines the zip-strip securely around his wrist, scrapes for purchase with his boots against the uneven wall, and as soon as he has enough leverage, he yanks Tim up and against his uninjured side.
The kid ducks under his armpit and glares up at him, head tilted like an angry puppy.
"It's all your fault," he snaps, and in a flash of darkness, the cursed day begins again.
And again.
And again.
It doesn't always end with the explosion and Tim saying "I told you so".
Sometimes Jason manages not to be an asshole for five minutes, so Red Robin doesn't follow him on the streets in a fit of pique, and no one gets hurt.
Sometimes, Jason dies.
Sometimes he runs away.
Sometimes he saves the day.
Once – just once – he let the kid die in front of his very own two eyes.
Jason thinks he ought to have nightmares about that one. Letting another Robin get crowbarred almost to death and blown to pieces? Hell, he sure as fuck will have nightmares. For, like, months.
Or rather, he would have them; if only, you know, he wasn't stuck repeating the same twenty-four-fucking-hours over and over and over again.
He never goes to sleep, but he can't seem to wake.
Nightmares are his god-damned reality.
Welcome to his world.
The day doesn't always end with the explosion and Tim saying "I told you so". But it always starts the same way.
Jason is yanked from sleep by one of the guards rattling the bars of his cell with a baton.
The guard is a Hobbit-like little thing, short and plump and with a bald head that gleams like a polished bowling ball. He glares at Jason from behind his wine-flushed nose, pig-like eyes narrowed and shifty; he glares like he was so much better. Like the uniform he wears (and disgraces, if Jason's sources are to be believed), was enough to put him into another league as Jason. To make him a good man, rather than a fluke.
The first few (dozen) times Jason woke to that hateful glare, he reacted. Sometimes violently; other times, he just yanked the guard's chain until the guy pissed off, bawling like a scared child.
But Jason lost interest pretty soon. What was the point, anyway? How can you teach a lesson, if it's not remembered? Violence implemented as a means, is one thing. Reckless violence. Bloody sports. It's all good, if it gets the point through – that Gotham's got a new defender, and he won't let anyone deface her. But pointless bullying is not to Jason's taste. He's spent his whole childhood fighting bullies.
It makes him sick to think he might turn into one if provoked.
The guard is surprised when Jason gets up from his cot with just a weary sigh as commentary.
But that is exactly what Jason does: he sees the guard, gets up without prompting, and strides past him and into the corridor without a single glance to his Hobbit-shaped wannabe tormentor.
He moves slowly, but purposefully. He just wants this to be over with, he guesses. But the "this" he means is not just the meeting with Tim, whom he knows is waiting for him in the visiting area.
The chains rattle as he move, an odd, uneven staccato of ching! Ka-chung! Ching! Ka-chung that echoes hollowly against the bare walls. Jason moves with an odd gait, his injured leg throbbing, flaming with pain. He knows without looking (or rather, he looked at it dozens of times already) that his right side is tender and hot to the touch, a purple bruise spreading across his torso like oil over water.
But he keeps walking.
What else can he do?
Do, or don't. It doesn't change anything, in the end.
Does it?
When they reach the visiting area, the guard pushes the door open for Jason and motions him inside with a jerk of his chin. His eyes are narrowed still, but when he looks Jason over, he does so with worry, rather than hateful fear.
It's a change from the usual routine, but Jason knows better than to take it as a sign that his plight is about to end.
It never does.
Behind the glass wall, Tim's face is bursting with pride.
He just single-handedly took down one of his worst arch-enemies, foiled that same guy's evil masterplan, took the Red Robin costume for himself, and cleaned up a good portion of the city.
Hell, even Jason is impressed.
He's been from the first time over, and he thinks he won't stop feeling this way anytime soon.
Once or twice (okay, exactly twenty-three times over, but who's counting?) - once or twice, he even cracked and told the kid to his face that he'd made a good job, and that he Jason was damn proud of him.
Even as he tells Tim this for the twenty-fourth time, Jason is still caught off guard by how happy his words make Tim.
His face, brimming with pride; his grin, wide and dimpled; the drumming of his fingers; the way he can't sit still, as if he were charged with energy – this is another thing Jason might have filed away to dream of.
He might still, if he ever makes it out of this funk.
It's not often that he makes someone feel good about themselves – or that the act itself gratifies him, in turn.
It's not often that he gets to play the proud older brother, but the role seems to agree with him.
Just this once.
Tim leaves with a cheeky wave over his shoulder, as per usual.
As per usual, the last thing he tells Jason is his ticket to freedom: an emergency code to override the JLA teleporter.
A grand total of three times, Jason decided not to use it.
The first time, he went to bed in his cell, and woke up the morning before, with Tim waiting to give him the code.
The second time, he hacked the teleporter, and rather than get out himself he opened a channel to talk with Talia. As expected, he barely managed to explain everything to her, that he was waking up in his cell the morning before, with Tim waiting outside to give him that same trice-damned code.
The third time, Jason waited a couple of hours, then called the Manor. Alfred answered the phone, listened intently for a minute, then promised Jason he was on his way.
He never got to the prison.
Jason never again tried not to escape.
The rumours of the car-crash he didn't quite hear before falling asleep that night still gnaw at his conscience.
He's out.
'Out of the frying pan and into the fire', one might argue.
But out he is.
Out of the prison.
And into the Batcave.
Jason has tried skipping the not-so-tearful family reunion part before; but whenever he does that, it usually ends with either him or Red Robin (if not both) barely clinging to life in the wake of an explosion (to think that exploding a car with one hit to the fuel tank is a million-to-one shot. Jason has seen it happen... how many times, already? Fifty-seven? Fifty-eight?)
Tim is sitting at his computer, having what looks like an intense glaring-contest with the flickering monitor. Jason knows he's being purposefully ignored and... and fuck, but he's too tired to play this game.
He moves dutifully towards the chamber Tim directed him to, and takes a deep breath before entering.
Jason has listened to the message Bruce recorder for him one-hundred and three times before. He might say – and with some truth to his words – that he's come to terms with what Bruce tells him.
It still stings, though.
'It' also contains a deeper meaning, a message-hidden-within-the-message, something made out of subtle clues - a shift of the eye here, a nod there, an aborted gesture taken straight from signed language, but too unobtrusive to be noticed on the first watching.
Jason has long decoded the second message, and while it's damn better than the out-for-everyone-to-hear thing, it still leaves an after-taste of ashes and regret inside his mouth.
A flavour like the one coating his mouth when he woke up in his coffin all those years ago.
Tim is still gazing at the monitor when Jason emerges from the chamber.
He plays with the notion of scaring the kid, but he tried it before, and it never works.
He briefly considers leaving, but truly: where can he go? He's fated to be back inside his cell in but a few hours.
He contemplates challenging Tim to a fight, but in the end he does nothing.
Nothing he's not done before, at least.
He comes to a stop in front of the glass case holding his old Robin costume, pristine like he doesn't remember it ever being. Not for the first time, he feels Tim's gaze bear into the back of his skull, focused and hot like a laser. He would wonder at it, perhaps; and its meaning. If only he wasn't so much tired.
And he's fucking tired.
He wants to stop – stop this madness, lie still and breathe – just breathe – and then he thinks: who says he has to look for a way out, anyway?
He can do that tomorrow, and the day after that. He can take a break for one night, and—and yes, yes, this is exactly what he's going to do, he decides, as he hobbles on the suspended platform and drops onto the chair facing Tim's own.
The kid startles, eyes wide and questioning in a face that's much too haunted, much too pale, and why hadn't Jason noticed before?
Oh yes, it occurs to him now – the whole arch-Nemesis-I-won't-be-your-Robin-ever-trapped-in-a-Groundhog-Day-funk might have something to do with him not noticing that Tim looks ready too keel over and into the nearest open tomb.
He brushes the back of a gloved hand across Tim's protruding cheekbone, no clear intent behind the motion. Tim tenses, then relaxes, confused when the hand on his face brings him no pain. Jason's knuckles slide slowly down Tim's cheek, the cracked leather impossibly soft, the smell of it familiar and comforting in ways it shouldn't be.
"Talk to me," Jason orders suddenly, and Tim jumps an inch off his chair.
His eyes are wide, behind the mask. Jason can tell, but he can't see – so he just reaches off and peels off the mask, careful not to inflict any damage.
Behind Robin's façade, Tim looks twice as confused, twice as fragile. His cheeks are not hollowed, but skull-like and Jason studies the sharp angles of his face like it's something he never saw before.
Well, it's not.
The kid looks like shit.
"Talk to me," Jason orders again, growling, eyes narrowed into slits, and Tim regains enough of his senses to knock Jason's hand away from his face.
He crosses his arms in a defensive pose, but he's got nowhere to run. Jason blocks his only escape route with his own chair and body; so Tim does the only plausible thing – and sinks against the back of his chair, shoulders hunched protectively.
"I don't have anything to say to you."
Jason makes a non-committal sound in the back of his throat – if only that were true, he thinks, then shakes his head.
"I can beat it out of you, so spill."
Tim narrows his eyes, gains some colour around the cheeks thanks to a sudden rush of anger.
"You wish."
"To beat you to a pulp? Surprisingly, no. But I can do it, if that's what it takes."
The honesty surprises Tim, but he recovers quickly.
"You're wounded. You can't possibly think you can take me on. "
"Said the chickling who's lost... how many pounds off his already skinny frame, exactly?"
Tim's eyes narrow even more. The anger gives an illusion of healthiness to his face, but underneath the flush he's all protruding bones and hollow cheeks and wane skin.
Jason think he looks ready to pull off a royal pout, and grins at the mental image.
"Okay, seriously, you're scaring me."
"As opposed to usual, when I only just terrify you?"
"Ah-ah," Tim barks back with a fake laugh. "Since when do you care?"
Since one-hundred-and-eighty-todays ago, Jason thinks.
Aloud he says:
"Since you started to look like death on feet. Since this morning. Since you bailed me out of jail." Without barely a pause, he barrels on: "Since I decided you were a worthy Robin. Since I realized it wouldn't be so bad to have you as my working partner. Since I decided that I wanted to replace you the way you replaced me." He shrugs. "Take you pick. Or make up a reason. I don't care, as long as you spill."
Tim eyes him dubiously. If Jason was lying, or presenting a front – Tim would know, like he always does.
But Jason is exhausted. Worn out. Beat into a corner and waiting for the killing (crowbar) bow to be delivered. He honestly wants nothing more than to talk with Tim, now. And with no hidden agenda, surprisingly enough.
Tim licks his lips, a nervous gesture. He visibly steels himself, filling his lugs to capacity with a long, soundless breath. In a rush, he admits:
"Bruce is alive."
Tying his words with a glare, a defiant tilt to his chin as if daring Jason to call him crazy.
One lifetime ago – well, more like six months of days all cast in the same mould, six months of the two of them, going through thick and thin with no fallback but each other – Jason might have laughed at Tim in the face.
Now? Not so much, kiddies.
He leans back in his own chair, eyes shifting closed as he takes a deep breath of his own.
He's still got five, six hours and counting. Then he's going to be back to square one.
And... it isn't like Tim is usually wrong, anyway.
Fuckin' kid is a fuckin' genius. His hunches are gold.
He ought to know what he is talking about.
Jason breathes in. Breathes out.
"Okay. From the start, Little Red. Give me facts. Clues. Gut-feelings. Whatever you've got."
The tremulous hope dawning behind Tim's shadowed eyes is almost too much to look at. It is so desperate. Hungry.
"You... believe me?"
Jason snorts.
"Don't get ahead of yourself, here. I won't be sold so easily. C'mon, genius kid. Do your worst." He waves a hand between them. "Lay down the evidence. Knock me out."
And if there is a "please" hidden somewhere at the end of that phrase, no one is the wiser.
Tim shouldn't be surprised he isn't the only Robin who wants Bruce back.
But surprised he is.
Tim lays down the fact.
The clues.
The gut-feelings.
As Jason put it, he "does his worst", with Jason occasionally nodding where required, snorting to prove he is paying attention, and offering his own viewpoint and pieces of knowledge to the puzzle Tim is constructing.
Tim alternates between putting a good three feet between them (Red Hood – enemy – danger) and all but leaning into Jason's space, touching his arm and chest (Robin – ally – brother – role model – hope) in counterpoint with his excited musings.
Jason watches him as he moves animatedly, frowning in thought and then lighting up with sudden inspiration; caving briefly under the weight of self-doubt and exhaustion, lips quivering with despair; and then straightening with renewed purpose, growing larger than life under Jason's own eyes, blazing with determination, excited and prideful, galvanized by the way Jason listens to him, says: yes, it's feasible, yes, I can buy that, yes, I can help look into it, yes, yes, supporting him the way Dick hadn't been able to support him, and Jason wonders at that, wonders at this fluttering, clenching feeling in his stomach, this tender, fleetly thing that is beating under his rib cage, and he wonders if it is hope.
He wonders if it is family.
He wonders if this is how it feels to have a younger brother; wonders if Dick ever felt this way about him, or what would have been of their life (and death) if he ever had.
He wonders.
He wonders.
One, two hours and counting.
And just like that, he falls asleep.
He wakes up with Red Robin's cape draped over his chest, the weight of it familiar, the smell not much so – peachy soap and blood and the dry touch of something chalky.
He wakes up to Tim's blue eyes, wide and wondering and not three inches from his own, staring at him as if they could peel off the layers or hurt and doubt that comprise him, and reach straight to the core of him, where a little Robin still flies above shadowy rooftops, laughter streaming clear from his lips.
He wakes up to the delicate chink of china being set on the table, to Alfred's polite enquiry of "Tea, Master Jason?" and to his heart giving a painful pang at the old, now undeserved, title.
Jason rubs his face as he straightens, tossing the cape and its motley of scents away from himself. His internal clock is fucked up – it's been working funny ever since he got trapped in the infernal day, but now it is completely haywire, chiming midnight and mid-morning all at once.
"'time is it?" he mutters, rubbing the crink in his neck as if he could beat the pain into submission.
Tim's voice is hollow and subdued, a sharp contrast to the array of emotions he was displaying before.
"Do you have somewhere you've got to be?"
Jason glances at him, studies the tense line of his shoulders, the pinched cheeks and his eyes, which are dark and hollowed all over again.
He shrugs.
"Perhaps. Depends. What hour is it, anyway?"
Alfred places a cup of tea in Jason's hands, then steps back.
"That would be seven 'o clock."
Jason frowns.
"That can't be right. Little Red and me must've talked for a good five hours, it's..."
"Seven o' clock in the morning, sir." Alfred supplies smoothly, eyebrow arching. "You slept the whole night through."
It takes Jason's brain a second or two to correctly decode the information.
Tomorrow has finally come.
Jason isn't wont to displays of emotion.
Not positive emotion, at least.
So he doesn't shout.
Doesn't laugh.
Doesn't drop to his knees and thanks the heavens, doesn't pick Tim and Alfred up and spins them around until their eyes cross and their stomach turn and they pound on Jason's shoulders demanding to be let down (though the image is surprisingly vivid in Jason's mind, with audio commentary and all).
Tomorrow has come.
Jason closes his mouth, because gaping like a fish is something else he is not wont to do.
He takes a sip of tea, giving his brain and heart-rate enough time to slow down.
He lowers the cup, clears his throat.
"Oh," is his rather unintelligent comment.
Given the situation, he's glad he's managed as much.
"Oh. Uhm. Well." He hastily puts the cup down, goes on his feet smoothly, but so quickly that it looks like he's fleeing, panicking. He doesn't dare hope, but he needs to check with his own two eyes. "Turns out I really have to go. Kinda forgot something I had to do and-"
-and Tim's eyes are hollow and wrong. Dead eyes in a dead face, blank and pulled taut, like the page of an old, old book, whose meaning has been long lost, weathered away. And it's been six months of me-and-you-through-thick-and-thin, and big brothers don't let crowbars hit their younger siblings, anyway.
"-you coming or what, Tim?"
Tim starts. In an startling, almost sickeningly display, the statue of him gains sudden life, his eyes growing wide and confused over his suddenly-slack mouth.
"I... what?"
"You deaf now, Little Red? Coming. Along. I wanna check with a couple contacts of mine, and perhaps investigate on – you know, thing you yapped about all last evening? That." And damn, he doesn't even sound like himself, the insults are wrong, the scorn behind them is lukewarm at most and not witty in the slightest, but he's not used to play big brother and Bruce might be alive and tomorrow has come, after one-hundred-and-eighty todays, tomorrow has come, at last, and he's not going to let it slip through his fingers.
"Go get changed," he adds gruffly, gesturing at Tim's caked, soiled uniform as if it personally offended him. "Can't be seen around with one of the Bats, it'd ruin my image."
Tim grins at him, eyes doing this odd twinkle trick that lights up his whole face from within and damn, but feeling useful and brotherly and protective is like a god-damn high. Who would've guessed?
"Bat, uh?" Tim throws over his shoulder as he disappears upstairs, cheeks dimpled in a grin way too huge to be legal. "Takes one to know one, Jason."
Him? A Bat?
Well, that was
(nice)
(good)
(like returning to the nest after too long a journey)
a bit far-fetched, wasn't it?
Coda
Jason only ever checks his personal voicemail after a mission.
No one would leave a job-related message to this number; and it wouldn't do to engage battle with whomever with his mind distracted by this or that personal news.
The sand is hot under his bare feet, it crunches like sugar as he makes his way to the shore, phone cradled to his ear. His hair is still wet from the shower; it drips water down his back. He shivers when the wind blows against his slowly-soaking shirt, making it cling to his skin.
Tim's voice comes at him from a world's away, distressed and needy. He says that he knows that Jason's busy, that he's out on a mission and all that, but truly, is it too much to ask him to come back home every once in a while? Dick and Damian are teaming against Tim, and he'd really appreciate the help – appreciate, he stresses, because even if Jason does tend to team up with Damian on Tim's expenses every once in a while, he's sure Jason will be with him on this one, and he just misses him, and Alfred says hi, and Bruce wonders is Jay knows anything about the missing prototype for the new Bat-bike? Not that it wasn't meant for Jason in the first place, but still...
Tim's voice goes high and low, like the tide. It mixes with the sound of the waves, the way they crash ashore and reel back, murmuring incessantly, sometime laughing, sometimes mourning, broken notes entering the low lullaby.
Jason hums something low in his throat, an half-broken tune; something that used to be cheerful perhaps, a long, long time ago; but that his smoke-rusty voice turns melancholy and soft and sensuous.
When he closes the communication, he glances up. He sees Roy's shape in the distance, perched high on a nearby boulder, his profile stark against the sun. Kory's skin gleams in the russet glow, it looks polished like metal and soft like peach, all at once. The curve of her lower back looks damp, and when she turns to look at him, her pupil-less eyes are as moist and warm as her skin is, and her smile is indulgent and carefree.
Jason holds up a hand in salute.
He doesn't need to watch the keys as he composes Tim's number.
His two companions straighten and wave back, grinning and proud after a successful mission.
The sound of ringing tickles Jason's ear.
Kory dips her head back, laughs long and low, and Roy engages her in a fight, milling up water with both arms, showering droplets everywhere.
Tim's voice is sudden and low and welcome. It is familiar and warm and sweet, it counterpoints perfectly the sound of laughter and splashing water and shrieked mirth.
"Hello, Jay."
He smiles at his family, all three of them.
Hello.
Hello.
~End