Everyone starts watching Bruce when the dead start coming back.
(There are some, of course, that are occupied by their own demons—particularly Aqualad, thinking back on Aquagirl—but for the most part, the superhero world is staring at Batman.)
Dick makes a point to visit Jason's grave as soon as the first reports about dead bodies wandering around come in. All the people to have come back were teenagers, ages thirteen to seventeen, and Dick tries not to hear this and think that Jason is the perfect age, the perfect median for this miracle to happen because he can't help thinking about what if Jason doesn't come back, what if hoping and praying and all the collective power that Batman and Robin and Dick and Bruce have isn't enough to bring back Little Wing, isn't enough for coming back to life to happen to them—
Bruce gets a new Robin.
It hasn't even been a full year.
"Life goes on, Dick," Bruce tells the first Robin. "Just because Jason-"
And he can't finish, because he doesn't know if he's trying to say "Just because Jason died" or "Just because Jason might come back" or "Just because Jason hasn't come back yet" or a million other things just because Jason did or has done or will do or might do.
(Just because Jason happened, just because Batman had to bring Robin back in the game, just because Jason's father was murdered, just because Jason needed to find his mother, just because Jason couldn't have waited for Bruce back in Ethiopia, just because Jason has never been able to wait for anyone, if it were for two minutes or for thirty seconds or for an hour or for five more years to get their act together.)
Dick keeps visiting Jason's grave. He puts flowers there sometimes, because he's hoping against hope, praying beyond prayer, that Jason will come back, that he will wake up, that he'll crawl out of his grave and the first thing he'll see will be a bouquet of flowers, and the first thing he'll know is that they didn't forget about him.
And Jason stays dead.
Tim Drake has been Robin for a little over four months now, and Dick has been putting flowers on Jason's grave for all that time. Tim doesn't ask Dick why he keeps putting flowers on the grave, but the kid isn't stupid, and Dick figures he'll figure it out eventually, if he hasn't already. Tim's seen the costume that Bruce keeps in the cave, he's heard the catches in everyone's voice when he does something dangerous or the Joker is on the loose, he's seen the hologram in Mount Justice.
Even if he doesn't ask about the grave with the concrete angel on it, even if he doesn't want to hear about the Robin between him and Dick, even if he doesn't know why Beast Boy and Blue Beetle and Wonder Girl are always staring at him, or through him, like they see him but they're looking behind him for someone else to show up.
Tim better know something about Jason at this point, Dick thinks to himself, or Bruce might be wasting his fucking time training the kid.
(Aquagirl is found floating in the Atlantic, the waves constantly bringing her closer to the Happy Harbor shore.)
Nightwing has to go into Mount Justice to talk to Aquagirl about everything that she missed and everything that's going to change now that she's back, even with Beast Boy staring at her and Blue Beetle leaning over to Superboy to ask if this means that Aqualad is coming back.
"Aquagirl," Nightwing says softly. "Tula. What do you remember?"
"I…...remember…," Tula says slowly, and Nightwing tries to be patient. The dead, he has seen, move slowly, talk slower, and you can't rush them, no matter what you try. "I…..remem….ber….being….buried."
Nightwing nods. "That's right. After you defeated Tiamat, you were buried under rubble. Do you remember how you got back? Or between your death and coming back?"
"I…..re…..member…...waking….up…," Tula murmurs. "I was….out….in the…...ocean. Nothing…..before that."
"Okay," Nightwing says, furiously scribbling on his notepad. "Thank you very much, Tula. Now that you're back, we're going to conduct some medical exams on you, and then you'll be either getting used to doing information duty here at the mountain or going back to Poseidonis, depending on what Aquaman thinks. If you need anything, don't hesitate to call." With that, Nightwing clicks his pen and stands up out of his chair, striding across the room. He's already nearly at the door when Tula calls for him to wait.
"Has….Robin…...come…...back?" She asks. Tim looks mildly affronted for a moment, before he remembers the boy between him and Dick and the Looks everyone on the team gives him when he refuses to stop being Tim.
Nightwing forces a smile. "Not yet," he replies. "But we haven't given up hope yet."
Tula nods. "Tell me….when…..he gets…...back," she orders him.
"I will," Nightwing agrees, already eager to flee. The room has started to smell like rotten fish, and it makes him nauseous.
(He has forgotten how Jason was Tula's favorite, how she loved to dote on him and he loved to joke with her in return. He has forgotten how the two always paired up for missions, forgotten how Jason would go out to duo missions with Tula flushing red and he would come back pale and thoughtful, looking more like a superhero than a teenage boy with a crush.)
It's funny, Dick thinks, how Tula was twenty-one when she died but she still came back, how she's broken the entire age barrier for when the dead can come back and when they can't and when people should give up hope.
Jason is on the younger end of the spectrum, now that Tula's back, but Dick isn't giving up hope. He's heard rumors from the midwest, from Ma and Pa Clark when Connor goes to visit, about kids as young as twelve coming back from the dead.
As soon as Dick makes it out of Mount Justice, he books it back down to Gotham. It's getting late by the time he makes it all the way back, but he's still in time to lay a bouquet of flowers on Jason's grave before the moon rises.
Dick chooses a different type of flower every time he visits Jason's grave, in case he can tell what kind of flower is resting on the soil above him and he's waiting for Dick to crack the code so that he can finally come back. Today's flower is the peach blossom.
The peach blossom symbolizes long life and generosity.
(It also symbolizes bridal hope, or so the florist's card claimed. Dick isn't sure if somehow this little gag will be enough for Jason to wake up, to crawl out of his grave and chuck the flowers at Dick and say "Bridal hope my ass, Dickface. How're things?")
(Dick knows, objectively, that when Jason comes back he won't be able to move very fast, be able to talk very fast. Dick is pretty sure that Jason will barely be able to throw anything at all, like he's going to come out of his grave and he's going to just sit down and stare at nothing with his mouth wide open, not listening to anyone or seeing anyone, the same way Bruce was when he came back from Ethiopia.)
(Dick wishes, in the deep dark part of himself that knows he wasn't a very good older brother the first time around and that he probably won't be a very good older brother the second first time around, no matter how much practice he's had with Tim, wishes that Jason will come back the way he should have come back from Ethiopia: shrugging off everything that happened, going back to being Robin and talking to Bruce and apologizing for acting like such a little prick. Dick wishes that he didn't have to think about what would happen to Jason when he comes back, that he didn't have to own up to everything he did that contributed to Jason dying, that he didn't have to think about how it seemed like everyone but him and Tula were done worrying about Jason coming back.)
(Fuck character development.)
On a Sunday in mid-June, Dick is joined at Jason's grave by Alfred, of all people.
"Alfred," Dick greets the elder man with a nod. "Never expected to see you here."
"Master Richard," Alfred returns in kind. "Much as you may doubt it, sir, you are not the only person lamenting the loss of Master Jason."
"But am I the only person who's hoping for his return?" Dick snipes, immediately wishing he hadn't when he sees the look on the butler's face.
"Master Richard, you have no idea. Every meal, I set out an extra plate, in case Master Jason is about to come blustering in with mud on his face. No matter how many times Master Bruce has told me that I have set an extra place, I never remove it. Indeed, Master Bruce has requested that I do nothing in regards to moving the objects in Master Jason's room, for fear that when he returns he won't be able to maneuver."
"I'm sorry, Alfred," Dick says, even though there's more words in his mouth and more apologies he wants to make. "I—I had no idea."
"No, how could you have," Alfred sighed. "Though I do wonder why you use a different type of flower each time you visit Master Jason's grave."
Dick smiles slightly at Alfred's delicate verbal deflection. "I feel like maybe he's waiting for a special type," he replies. "Like, he hasn't come back yet because I haven't been able to guess which flower he wants to see."
Alfred hums noncommittally. "I do hope you discover it soon, sir," he says. "And if I may offer you some advice, Master Jason's favorite flower was the sunflower."
"Thank you, Alfred," Dick says to the butler, who is already leaving the scene. "Maybe Jason will come back next week."
"Maybe so," Alfred replies. "I do hope so."
Alfred walks back to the manor, while Dick stays at the grave for several minutes more before finally walking off-grounds to his motorcycle.
(Jason always used to beg Dick to let him ride on the cycle with him, and Dick thinks he probably should have given in more. If the kid held on tight, if he wore Dick's helmet, if he didn't tell Alfred, if he stayed safe.)
(After he turned fifteen, Jason started begging Dick to teach him how to drive the thing, and Dick knew that that was a death trap waiting to happen.)
(If Jason would come back right now, Dick would just hand him the keys and tell him to go wild. You can't die twice, Dick doesn't think.)
Dick is doing paperwork at the manor when Tim shyly walks in and settles in the armchair behind Dick.
"Can I help you?" Dick asks, not looking up. You need to be a hell of a lot sneakier than Drake to sneak up on Dick Grayson, the original Boy Wonder.
"Hey, Dick," Tim says, instead of answering. He pauses for a few moments before speaking again. "Can you tell me about Jason Todd?"
Dick drops his pen and listens to it roll across the desk and fall to the floor. He takes a deep breath, tries to remember how careful Tim is, how cautious he is, how patiently he will wait for Batman's signal, and puts his papers down on the desk.
"What do you want to know?" Dick asks softly, carefully enunciating each word.
"I want to know what happened to him, why no one ever talks about him, not even Babs, and why you get him a different kind of flower every week," Tim says, without hesitating. Dick's almost surprised at how neat Tim's requests seem, except for the overlap that some of them have—Tim should realize that if he just asked the first question, the rest of his answers would follow in a landslide.
"Jason Todd," Dick begins, "was the second Robin. He was more hotheaded than you, and he came off the streets, in Crime Alley. He worked with Batman for three years.
"When he was fifteen, he set out to find his birth mother. After checking two women in Iran and Saudi Arabia, he went out to Ethiopia to talk to Sheila Haywood. Sheila was Jason's birth mother. She was siphoning funds from her refugee camp and working with the Joker while she did it. She lured Jason into a trap in a warehouse, and the Joker beat him viciously. Then, he set a bomb in the building, but Jason still tried to escape. He tried to take Sheila with him, and if he hadn't done that, he might have lived."
Dick stops talking, waiting to see how this has affected Tim. His breathing hasn't changed, at the very least, but that might just be because Tim has extraordinary breathing control.
"So, why the flowers?"
Dick smiles to himself. Can't be Robin with a delicate stomach.
"When Jason wakes up, I want the first thing he sees to be flowers, so he knows that we haven't forgotten about him."
Tim is quiet now, probably contemplating what Dick has said.
"Do you think Jason would mind if I started visiting his grave with you?"
Dick smiles wider. "Not at all," he tells Tim. "I think Jason would be thrilled to find out he's an older brother."
(Jason doesn't have very much time to wake up if he wants to keep being an older brother, though. Tim's fifteenth birthday is coming up in a couple months.)
(Dick starts when he realizes that Jason is never going to be the older brother forever, the way Dick will. Jason will have a few months, then, later—because Batman will never stop adopting children and turning them into heroes—a few years, until they're the same age, and then Jason is younger, and then even younger. Now that Jason has died, he might finally get to live forever.)
A Sunday later, when Dick has placed a bouquet of Baby's Breath and Stephanotis flowers (everlasting purity and-slash-or innocence and good luck) on Jason's grave, Tim walks up behind him and greets the angel statue.
"Hi, Jason," he says. "My name is Tim Drake-Wayne. It's nice to finally introduce myself to you. I'm your younger brother, technically."
Dick is surprised at Tim, if not for the idea of speaking to Jason's grave, for the fact that Tim did it before Dick.
"Why are you talking to him?" Dick asks Tim. Tim looks surprised at Dick's question.
"Well, plants and flowers grow faster when you talk to them," Tim shrugs. "Why should Jason be any different?"
And Dick realizes that Tim is probably right, that Jason probably is dormant, the way he used to get after patrol, and a good shake-up will probably wake him up.
"Hey, Little Wing," Dick says to Jason's grave. "It's me, Dick. Or Dickface, if you're still feeling hostile. We're all ready for you to come back, up here."
"We brought you flowers," Tim adds. "Well, Dick did. It's Baby's Breath and something else."
"Stephanotis," Dick interjects. "They stand for good luck and the Baby's Breath is for preservation of innocence. Not that you were that innocent to begin with, but it's the thought that counts, I think."
"Did he really call you Dickface?" Tim asks Dick. "Like, for real?"
"Yeah," Dick chuckles. "It didn't really do much for me, but I think he liked the reaction he got out of Alfred. Alfred hates swearing."
Tim snorts. "I've noticed. He yelled at Bruce for saying dammit the other day."
"I believe it," Dick agrees. "Jason used to sprint through the manor trying to get out of getting his mouth washed out with soap. He couldn't stop swearing if you paid him."
"That's mildly hilarious," Tim says.
"Not to Alfred," Dick says. "I think he sees every swear word as floating through the air and coating the walls of the manor with mud. Jason was probably his worst nightmare come to life."
(Dick tries not to think too hard about Jason being anybody's anything come to life. He tries not to consider that maybe the Jason that they knew—the Jason who was small and light and wild and ridiculous—was Jason come to life, that maybe Jason only got one shot and that had been it, and they had all screwed it up because Dick was busy with the Titans and Bruce was busy with saving people and neither of them considered that they could stop telling him to just wait for fifteen minutes.)
(But now, now that Jason knows he has a younger brother, now that Jason can be the one telling people to wait—not that Tim needs to be told, but it would make Jason feel better, at least—maybe Jason can be come to life again.)
(Jason would be a good older brother, Dick thinks. Not good in the way Dick was/is, in the responsible way, in the willing-to-give-you-the-sex-talk way. Jason would be the kind of older brother who would beat up your bullies, the kind that you wouldn't always like but you would always, always love. The fun older brother, to contrast Dick's stark father figure of a big brother.)
A week into July, Barbara calls Dick.
"Hey, Dick," she says, too casual for Babs. "So."
"So what?" Dick asks warily.
"So," Barbara says again, "it's almost the one year mark."
And Dick suddenly understands why Barbara's calling, when Barbara and Dick usually have a strict keyboard–only relationship. And he knows why it couldn't be Steph, why Robin couldn't be the person to talk to Dick about this.
"Yeah," Dick agrees. "What are we going to do?"
"Well," Babs says, "If you can convince Bruce, I was thinking a picnic, maybe. Either in the park, or."
"Or," Dick agrees. "Or, on the grave. Why do I have to convince Bruce?" He asks quickly, so Barbara doesn't have to listen to the emptiness of maybe having a picnic on the grave.
"Because you're closest?" Barbara guesses. "Because you know full damn well that he barely lets me in the Batcave, much less talk to him about having a picnic on his dead son's grave."
"It is a little morbid, Babs. Kind of disrespectful."
Barbara is quiet for a moment before she responds. "Or," she says, "maybe it'll be what Jason finally needs to wake up."
"Maybe," Dick says. "Is it. Will it be just us, or should we invite some of Jason's friends from Young Justice?"
Dick can hear Babs's shrug over the phone. "Tula, maybe," she says. "Jason used to tell me that he felt like he was still trying to fill your shoes on the team, so maybe not everyone."
"Yeah," Dick says. "Maybe not everyone. Wonder Girl, though. She and Jason were friends. And Beast Boy, maybe."
"Maybe," Babs agrees. "Your job is to get Bruce to come, Boy Wonder. You do that and then call me."
"Will do," Dick says. "Over and out."
Dick hangs up the phone and lays a bouquet of sunflowers (loyalty, admiration, longevity) on Jason's grave.
"Wake up, kid," he says to the ground. "You don't wanna miss your own party."
Dick walks off to his motorcycle, and tries not to think about the promises he used to make the air if Jason would just come back.
("If Jason comes back," he would say, "then I'll let him ride the cycle with me whenever he wants. Hell, I'll let him ride it by himself. If Jason comes back, I'll never fight with Bruce again. God, I'll just trade Bruce for Jason. If Jason comes back, I'll stop keeping secrets from my team. If Jason comes back, if Jason comes back, if Jason comes back.")
(It didn't help that he could hear Bruce sobbing down the hall, screaming "Just let him come back, I'll do anything. I'll stop fighting. I'll quit the League. Please, God, just give me back my son and I'll do anything you want. Just give me back my son. Please, I need my son more than I need Dick.")
(And they would both get up in the morning, bags under bloodshot eyes, pillows damp, barely holding it together through breakfast. Bruce never tried to talk to him about it, and Dick didn't either. They would both lock themselves in their bedrooms and beg for promises that they didn't deserve for the son and the brother they didn't deserve and then they would both wake up and both pretend to be over it.)
"Bruce," Dick says, when the two of them are both eating breakfast together, "Babs and I were thinking, since the anniversary of Jason is coming up—"
Bruce stands from the table abruptly, dropping his newspaper. "I," he begins, "I have plans, that day. I'm sorry."
Bruce leaves the room (he doesn't flee, Batman doesn't flee, and Bruce Wayne sure as hell doesn't either) and Dick can't help feeling like he's failed Jason in some way.
Dick knows that Bruce doesn't like to visit Jason's grave under any circumstances, doesn't like to be reminded of what happened and how he failed his son.
Dick sighs inwardly. He knows that Bruce has his reasons for not going to Jason's grave, but he also knows that Bruce coming to visit would mean the world to Jason.
Dick has already texted Tula and Garfield about joining the Batfamily for the picnic. Tula had agreed easily (Dick thinks—texting is easier for the dead than some things, but it still takes them forever. The pause between Dick's text and Tula's could mean many different things) but Garfield told Dick that he has to think about it.
Dick knows that this will be hard for everybody on the team. He's half a mind to tell them all to take the day off on Jason's birthday, but he knows that most of them wouldn't stand for that.
What he really wants to do is talk to Wally, but Wally is—
Wally is one of the people that everyone knows isn't coming back, isn't ever coming back. You have to have a body to be able to be revived, and even though Tula's body was hidden under rubble and almost in another dimension and burned out of magic, it was still a body.
If Wally came back, he would be a ghost, if that. He would be intangible and impossible to speak with, but he would still be Wally, he would still be here.
Dick sees Artemis in Mount Justice sometimes, where she's wandering around with empty-looking eyes. If Dick didn't know better, he might have seen her and thought that she was one of the dead kids, with her shuffling gait and how hollow she looks.
The last time that she and Dick had spoken, she had been hopeful about the idea of Wally coming back to life.
"Just because he was a little too old—" she had began.
"He's not coming back," Dick had reprimanded harshly, still hurting from losing his brother and his best friend. "There's no body, Tigress. Wally is dead, and he's not coming back."
Artemis had glared at Dick. "I hate you," she had said shakily. Then, she had fled and locked herself in her bedroom, the house she and Wally used to share forgotten since Wally's death.
Dick hadn't known how he could have made it up to her, hadn't understood that when he lost a brother and a best friend, Artemis had lost a teammate and a husband (and if not yet, then they would have been within the next few months) and that she was hurting just as much as Dick was, if not more.
'hey,' Dick texts Artemis. 'the bats and tula are having an anniversary picnic jasons grave. you in?'
He really hopes that Artemis hasn't blocked his number, that he's still allowed to text her and to reach out an olive branch and let her back in.
'i'm in,' she texts back, around an hour later. 'it's what jason would want.'
Dick agrees.
(Dick hopes that what Jason would want isn't the only reason that Artemis is coming. He hopes that she's seen the arm Dick's extending towards her, and that she's willing to take it. He hopes that Artemis hasn't already forgotten about what good friends they used to be, hopes that she's willing to be friends again.)
(Dick decides that if Artemis can be ready to forgive and remember, then Bruce better damn well get ready to forgive and commemorate, too.)
While Dick is trying his best to get everyone back together for Jason's anniversary, Duela Dent shows up in the middle of a Titans operation, shuffling and moaning and clawing at anyone on the team.
"I'm…...back," she'd said to Cyborg. "Please, I'm…..back. Let…..me…...come…..back."
Dick heads up to Jump City to talk to her, to debrief her, the same way he had with Tula, even if he doesn't like Duela that much.
"Duela," he says. "You died, correct?"
"I…...died," Duela repeats. "Got…...back…..up."
"Yes," Nightwing says. "You got back up. What are your plans for the future, now that you're alive again?"
"Back…...on….the team," Duela told him. "Re…...join."
Nightwing nods at this. "Duela, with your new condition, I don't think that it would be wise for you to rejoin the team on active duty. However, I do think that it would be possible for you to join the team in a strictly intelligence role. Aquagirl is doing something similar in Happy Harbor."
Duela slowly shakes her head back and forth. "Active…..duty….or bust," she tells him.
Dick sighs. "Ultimately, it is Cyborg's decision, since he's in charge here. However, I think it would be smarter for you to join the team on passive duty."
Duela rolls her eyes. "Then…..I'll ask….Cyborg," she snarks. "You don't…...control….me."
"Okay," Dick sighs again. "Thats your decision, Duela, and I can't tell you what to do."
Dick leaves the room without talking to Duela again.
(So far, the superheroes who have come back are Duela Dent, Aquagirl, Kid Devil, Marvin White, Match, Omen, Power Boy, Skyman, and Terra. Batman could name even more, could tell you how they died, when they came back, what their new unliving arrangements are, how long they stayed dead. Batman has memorized the death records of all the returned superheroes, has read the files over and over, has never stopped punishing himself for why Jason still hasn't come back when Aquagirl has started going on missions again, when Terra has started to be able to levitate pebbles in the suburbs of Kansas.)
(Bruce has stared at the files for hours without moving. When he and Tim get back from patrol, Bruce goes into his study, sinks into his armchair, and holds the manila folders in clenched fists while he searches for a difference between Skyman and Robin, between Eddie Bloomberg and Jason Todd. Whether or not Tim has searched through these files too, whether Tim even knows enough about Jason to be able to draw any conclusions that Bruce and Dick haven't, nobody can tell. Until Tim knows something for certain, he won't say anything at all to anybody.)
Dick talks to every superhero that comes back, usually because he knew them, sometimes because he knows that even if they didn't know him, seeing the great Robin, the first sidekick, might inspire them to live their lives as heroes again.
Most of the returnees have been demanding to be let back in the field, even before they're ready. Some have barely been able to stand up by themselves, but they still glare at Dick and demand, slowly, haltingly, that he let them be back on active duty. Dick always tells them that they should start on info duty, on watch duty, on things that don't involve too much danger or physical strain. They always take this as an affront to their dignity, always hearing Dick saying "You're too weak, you're too stupid, you aren't good enough for active duty yet," when Dick is always saying "Please don't do this to me, please don't make me send you out into the field again, please don't make me be responsible for you dying again." These kids have heard too much hate from villains that sounds exactly like Dick's love for them to be able to tell the difference.
Despite the overwhelming majority demanding, pleading, and threatening their way back into field duty, there are some who demand that superheroes just leave them the hell alone. Terra refuses to see Dick after her primary debriefing, and barely even lets Garfield talk to her after that.
"Gar, this…...killed….me. Can't…..keep…...going."
"Come on, Terra, please. You're like, my number one best friend around here, and I so don't want you to leave!"
"Have…...to. Sorry."
"Please, Terra! Come on, I'll protect you on missions, and, like, I'll stand up to everyone for you, and—"
"Please…...leave."
"What?"
"Please….leave….Gar."
"Fine. Fine, I'll leave. See who you have on your side now. I thought we were friends, Terra."
Dick tries to pretend that he wasn't listening to Garfield's and Terra's conversation, tries to pretend that Garfield's anger is a complete mystery to him, like he couldn't possibly comprehend the hurt that Garfield is feeling after he tried to tell Terra "I love you" and all Terra heard was "You failed me."
"Nightwing," Garfield says, mildly out of breath. "Jason's anniversary is in three weeks? I'll be there."
Dick nods. "Thank you, Beast Boy," he says. "Jason would appreciate it."
Beast Boy looks disgusted with Nightwing. "I'm not doing this for what Jason would appreciate," he snaps. "I'm doing this because me and Jason were friends, and I want him to know that I haven't given up on him when he gets back."
"Well, then," Dick says, resting his hand on Garfield's shoulder, "I appreciate it, Beast Boy."
Garfield shrugs Dick's hand off his shoulder. "Yeah, whatever," he mumbles. There's a brief pause between the two, and then— "I really miss him," Garfield continues. "I just wish he would come back already."
"Yeah, me too, kid," Dick tells him. "Don't worry. We'll be waiting for him when he finally wakes up."
Garfield smiles weakly at Dick. "Totally, dude."
(Terra moves to Kansas, like some of the rest have been doing, because Clark keeps talking about how Ma and Pa Kent are such empty nesters, how lonely Connor gets when he has to go home and visit and only has Kara for company, and Kara is at least seven years older than Connor, and Bruce finally threw up his hands and told Clark that if Ma and Pa are so lonely, they can have all the people who aren't going back to superheroing.)
(Dick knows that Connor doesn't really get along with any of the people who got sent back to the Kent farm. Living with the Kents means hard work in the fields when you don't have school or homework or friends over for one hour every day or until they decide to help, and Connor has repeatedly referred to people as 'city slickers' when they don't do their fair share. Dick still thinks it's hilarious how Connor has started taking on Kansas affectations and slang, until Connor stares him down and asks when he's gonna come visit the farm. Dick never has had very much time for anything, and even less now that he's so busy hoping for Jason to come back in three weeks.)
("You know," Superboy said once, eyes burning with anger, hands clenched into fists at his sides, "he was my teammate too, Robin. He was my teammate, even if he was your brother, I miss him, too."
Dick thinks that maybe it might be worse for Connor, since Dick can always grow up and change and one day when he looks in the mirror he won't be surprised to not see Jason ducking under his cape, won't be shocked when he takes a picture of himself and Jason isn't in the background making faces.
Connor, though, Connor is always going to be seeing the same face in the mirror, the same face that Jason once doodled over when Connor passed out in the Bioship after a mission, the same face that Jason used to mold into ridiculous masks to match with, the same face that laughed with Jason and laughed at Jason and got laughed at by Jason and the same face that's in the team picture, the one that has Jason and Tula (back when she was alive, back when her heart still beat) and Garfield and Wonder Girl and everyone.
Dick invites Connor to Jason's anniversary, and isn't really surprised when Connor accepts within a minute of receiving the text.)
"Who have you invited so far?" Connor asks, when he and Dick are both working on college homework together.
"Tula," Dick tells him, keeping his focus on his Criminal Law textbook, "Artemis. Beast Boy. Wonder Girl. You. It was Oracle's idea in the first place, so she better be coming. I'm working on getting Batman to come, but he's being tough about it."
Dick can see Connor nod out of the corner of his vision. "You should invite Donna," he says. "She got back the other week, and she and Todd used to be friends. And M'gann. M'gann needs to be there."
Dick laughs. "Should I just invite the entire League? Connor, it's the anniversary of his death, not a block party."
"I know that," Connor replies, miffed. "But it's still Jason. Jason was the loudest bastard in the world, and if you show up to his grave with seven people, a eulogy, and a basket of cheese sandwiches, he's going to rise out of his grave to beat your ass himself."
"Connor, you always know just what to say," Dick says, shaking his head. He pulls out his cell phone and texts Donna and M'gann to let them know about the anniversary. "You do know that it's only supposed to be a picnic."
"Of course I know," Connor says, rolling his eyes. "That doesn't mean it has to be a small picnic. Ma Kent always says, more people means less ants."
"Hm," Dick says. "That sounds like a Ma Kent euphemism if I ever heard one."
Connor rolls his eyes. "Just plan the picnic, Nightwing. Some of us have homework to do that we can't get out of for being rich."
"I do all my homework, Connor," Dick informs him. "Just because you have trouble keeping up, doesn't mean that the rest of us do."
Connor chucks his biology textbook at Dick's head, and Dick ducks very quickly to avoid a very serious concussion.
(Even though Dick knows that Connor is probably right, that he probably should be inviting as many people as possible, it's just so hard. The anniversary is on a Sunday, and Sundays are always when Dick would put the new flowers on Jason's grave, in a private ceremony, the kind of thing that you just don't want other people to see, except for your other younger brother, because he's one of the only people that gets it. Jason probably would try to kick Dick's ass if Dick brought as few people as possible, because Jason loved it when people would come over just to see him, when people were paying attention to him and praising him for his hard work and how smart he was instead of for what a good deal he was getting them on tires or for how good he was at surviving on the streets. Jason loved, loved, loved people and being around them.)
(Dick knows who Jason's favorites in the League were: Wonder Woman, who was Jason's personal idol because she has a rope that makes people tell the truth, Dick, how cool is that, and Booster Gold, for god knows what reason besides he has cool hair and a robot, and Billy Batson, for having so much in common with Jason in life, and Hawkgirl, for having so much in common with Jason in personality and morals, and Superman, probably because Superman was Connor's favorite, and Jason used to have a stupid crush on Connor, and Batman, because all Jason was ever doing when he was Robin was desperately seeking Batman's approval, seeking a father's love for all the times when he'd been abandoned before. Stupid Jason and his stupid issues and his stupid falling in love with everyone with a pulse and now, probably even some without.)
(Dick sighs and pulls out his cell phone. He has Billy Batson on it, all pictures of dogs Billy'd seen on the streets, and Booster Gold, no texts or messages, and Wonder Woman, with several embarrassing texts where Dick calls her 'aunt diana,' and Hawkgirl, zero messages and 'DO NOT CONTACT' written after her name, and Superman, with an extreme amount of embarrassing texts talking to uncle Clark. Batman is on speed dial, and so is Bruce, but Dick can't bring himself to contact either right now, because he's anxiously waiting on Hawkgirl's and Superman's replies, since Hawkgirl is always so tense since the Thanagarian invasion, and Superman is always so busy since ever, and he's not sure what he's going to do if either of them refuse. Billy and Booster had both responded eagerly within minutes of Dick texting them, and Wonder Woman had responded thoughtfully some time later, telling Dick that she'd be sure to make it and to bring an Amazonian good luck charm, too.)
(Dick has two and a half weeks to get a response from Hawkgirl and from Superman and to somehow convince Batman that it's a good idea to come to Jason's one-year anniversary death party, and he still has to bring flowers for in between, besides.)
"Master Dick," Alfred greets him the following Sunday, two weeks out from Jason's party.
"Alfred," Dick acknowledges. He had been having a conversation with Jason, talking to him about planning for the party and about how all his friends are going to be there.
He is silent, now that Alfred is here. Had it been Tim, Dick probably would have kept speaking, but Alfred scares him, a little.
"I have heard tell of an anniversary party you are planning for Master Jason," Alfred says. "Reportedly, it is in precisely two weeks."
"Yes," Dick agrees warily, because he can't always tell where Alfred is going with a conversation.
"I do hope you are planning on inviting Master Bruce," Alfred tells him. Before Dick can open his mouth to launch into a tirade about Bruce's emotional constipation and how he's already been shot down, Alfred continues. "Despite anything Master Bruce may say, he is still mourning the loss of his young ward. Anything he says about Master Jason's anniversary must be taken with several grains of salt, as you should well know. You must keep trying."
"I will, Alfred," Dick says. "Thank you."
"You are most welcome, Master Richard. And let me remind you, if you find yourself in need of food for your celebration, please come to me first, rather than attempting to cook by yourself."
Dick chuckles to himself. "Will do, Alfred. Thanks a ton."
"It's no problem, Master Richard."
And then Dick is left alone with Jason again, left to mull over what Alfred said about Bruce over and over and over again.
(Hawkgirl finally texts back and tells Dick that she'll be there. 'I always liked Jason,' she tells him in text. 'He was wise beyond his years and he knew how to deal with villains.' Dick is glad that at least one of Jason's favorite Leaguers will be coming to see Jason's grave, a year after the fact. Superman still hasn't replied.)
(Wonder Girl tells Dick that she'll come, but only if he sets up some of Jason's music. She claims it's because she loved Jason's music and now she doesn't understand how to set up her iPod, but Dick thinks it's because she and Jason used to listen to music together when they came back from missions and she thinks that if she hears Jason's music, she'll also hear his steady breathing and his heartbeat and his living.)
Dick is in Jason's old room, trying to breathe deeply so that when he leaves he'll still have Jason in his lungs, with Jason's stupid thing about Axe and his stupid obsession with old books and his stupid thing about how he had to keep flowers in his room because otherwise there was too much inside around him and he had to bring in some of the outside.
The flowers that were in the window are dead now, no matter how regularly Alfred waters them. Maybe it's because the windows are closed all the time now, or maybe it's because the soil isn't right anymore, or maybe it's because the plants actually miss Jason because damn if Jason wasn't the only person in the house who could take care of his own plants, always talking to them about his day and watering them the perfect amount and even buying plant food out of his own allowance.
Jason used to give Poison Ivy a run for her money in plant loving, and Dick remembers how Jason and Poison Ivy used to have the same kind of relationship that Dick and Catwoman did, back in the day.
But that's not what's important right now, Dick remembers. What's important right now is finding Jason's iPod so that he can find some music to play at the funeral that isn't full of swearing or full orchestral.
Except Dick had forgotten how goddamn messy Jason was, how he couldn't keep his things neatly organized on his desk, how he always had a million pounds of clothes on the floor and half of the valuable stuff he owned was hidden in those piles, because he never did get over being a street kid and needing to know where to hide and how to hide the most valuable things that he owned.
Dick starts digging through the mounds of clothes on the floor. That pile yields nothing except for Jason's sketchbook, which Dick respectfully keeps closed. It's not his to look at.
The second pile, a smaller one consisting mainly of socks and underwear, yields slightly better results. Dick finds Jason's iPod speakers there, if not the actual machine itself, and Dick has a feeling he's getting closer.
And he is, because when he starts rummaging under Jason's bed to go through his next hiding place he finds the iPod within seconds. Beneath the iPod though, is something else, a different one of Jason's treasures.
It's a Hallmark card, one for new babies, which says 'Welcome to the family, Baby Bird!'. The card has an illustration of a robin on the front, and on the inside, Dick had scrawled 'Good to have a new member of the family, Little Wing. Congrats on finally making it to Robin. Good luck.'
Dick's heart thumps heavily with the realization this carries. This stupid card, this stupid dollar ninety-nine card that Dick bought at Walgreens and scribbled a note in with a dying pen that used orange ink, was one of the most important things in the world to Jason, no matter how insincere it had actually been. Jason had saved Dick's stupid duty-bound congratulations card, and he had hidden it, too, so that no one would ever steal it from him.
Dick carefully places the card on top of Jason's desk, and leaves the room with Jason's iPod and speakers.
(Dick can't choose the music to play by himself, but he can't really ask anyone else who knew Jason to. He can't make himself listen to Jason's music, to hear what Jason used to play whenever he was at the manor with the volume turned up so high that Dick could barely hear himself think, so loud that Alfred and Bruce and Dick would all start banging on Jason's door and begging him to turn his music down.)
(Dick tries to find whatever playlist Jason used to use to annoy the crap out of him and Bruce and Alfred, but all his playlists are labelled either "hhhhhhhhhhhgg" or "gongk" and Dick doesn't know what that means. Dick would think that Jason would have at least one playlist plainly labeled in some kind of recognizable language, but apparently Jason thought that words were for squares and all the cool kids were using seventeen of the same letter all in a row and onomatopoeia for labeling their music.)
(Dick puts his head down in his arms and nearly cries when he thinks about how dumb Jason was, with calling people squares and using words like 'tubular' and always being so obtuse about the way he did things—and no matter how hard Dick has hoped, how hard Dick has prayed, Dick still thinks did, was, used to be when he thinks of Jason.)
The picnic is a week away by the time Dick settles on playing "hhhhhhhhhhhgg," because the playlist is three hours long and Dick figures that that's long enough for anyone who's coming to the ceremony to get the gist of Jason, if they didn't know him very well before that—people like Hawkgirl and Booster Gold and all of them.
It has a lot of those songs that Dick can remember screaming at Jason to turn the fuck down, like when he was trying to sleep and Jason was trying to figure out how all the instruments fit together and if he could figure out how to put them together with some computer software that Bruce had bought him for Christmas the year that Jason became Robin. Lots of George Watsky, a bunch of songs from old rock musicals like Grease and Hairspray, boy bands like N'Sync and Backstreet Boys, just a whole bunch of dumb teen music that Jason claimed he liked ironically but everyone could hear him singing along with under his breath.
The closer the anniversary comes, the more sad and more scared Dick gets whenever he thinks about Jason and what Jason used to be and what Jason used to do. Even the smallest things, like thinking about how Jason used to fight as Robin, like thinking about how Jason used to manage to use up all the hot water in the manor in the span of fifteen minutes, like thinking about how loud and alive Jason used to be, how in color Jason used to be in comparison to Tim, who's still alive, but more muted, like he's in sepia in comparison to Jason's technicolor, but that might just be because of how quiet and muted Tim is.
Tim uses headphones whenever he's listening to anything electronic, while Jason always had his speakers hooked up, usually to an ungodly volume. You could always tell where Jason was, just based off on how loud his music was in different sections of the manor.
Dick hopes that when Jason comes back, he gets along with his younger brother. He hopes that Jason can figure out how to live through Tim and all their differences, the same way Dick had to with Jason.
Dick hopes that Jason is going to want to figure out how to live through Tim, and isn't going to be like one of the returned who just sit in a chair all day and don't speak and stare off into space, like they're still dead and they're still looking at the light at the end of the tunnel. Dick's seen the returnees that are like that—Power Boy and Omen had been off even when Dick was debriefing them, and from what he's heard, they've only gotten worse. Power Boy is still at Titan Tower East, because he doesn't have anywhere to go back to, but all he ever does is sit in the corner of the common room and stare at everyone. He doesn't respond to any stimuli, according to the experiments Titans East have done, and he doesn't move at all. Omen—Lilith—is still in the Watchtower. She just sits in her hospital bed and stares at the opposite wall. Reports have been made about visitors feeling an invading force in their minds when they are alone with her, but nothing substantiated. Nothing to prove that Lilith isn't dead anymore.
When Jason comes back, Dick wants to be able to look him in the eyes and see the wildfire that Jason used to have. Dick wants Jason to wake up fighting, wants him to claw his way out of the earth with all the spirit and fight Jason had when he was alive.
Dick has been trying to stop thinking about if Jason comes back still looking dead, still acting dead, even when he's already out of his grave. All Dick has been trying to stop thinking about for the past three hundred days has been what if Jason doesn't wake up like the boy that Dick used to know, and yet all Dick has been able to think about was if Jason wakes up and he's dead inside and out.
(Dick can't decide whether he would rather talk to Batman about Jason's anniversary, or think about what's going to happen after Jason comes back. Dick has too many thoughts in his head about Jason, for being a year after the fact and Jason still not back yet. His brain is too full of noise and talking and little brothers and what he needs to know and what he wants to think, and the only time when he can finally focus normally is when he puts Jason's earbuds in his ears and listens to stupid rap music and stupid pop music and all of Jason's stupid, stupid music way too loud.)
(That's how Bruce finds him an hour and a half later, curled up in a ball and sitting in Jason's old armchair. Dick doesn't know how long Bruce stands by him, listening to the tinny music leaking out of Dick's ears, but he can feel Bruce tapping his shoes along to the beat. Dick wants to say that after that experience, he's sure that Batman is coming to Jason's anniversary celebration, but you can never be sure with Bruce. You can never be sure of anything, in regards to Gotham's prodigal son and her worst enemy.)
(Dick feels his phone vibrate in his jacket pocket a half hour after Bruce leaves the room, and when he checks it, he has a text from Bruce. It's written with all proper grammar, all perfect spelling, because Bruce could never figure out how to use chat speak to make it easier to type, no matter how many times Jason tried to explain it to the old man.
"I'll be at Jason's anniversary," the text reads, and Dick's heart begins to thump with hope.
His brain finally feels calm and empty, so he removes the earbuds and sets to work on setting up how the whole anniversary will go.)
(Donna and M'gann and Superman have officially confirmed their arrivals.)
Dick has most of the invitees confirmed by the end of Wednesday, and at that point he only has four more days until the anniversary. He carries out two picnic tables, all set up near the grave—but not on top of it, in case Jason wakes up in the middle of the celebration. By the time Dick's coming back to the shed for the third, Bruce has put on an old white t-shirt and decided to help him.
Dick isn't complaining. Picnic tables are heavy, and Bruce isn't exactly scrawny. That besides, the picnic tables are the first time that Dick is aware of that Bruce has visited Jason's grave without five other people with him.
(Dick's pretty sure that the last time Bruce was at Jason's grave was during the funeral.)
"So," Bruce asks, forty-five minutes and two picnic tables later, wiping sweat off his forehead, "should we get Tim down here to help? I've heard that he's been visiting Jason, and Jason probably misses his little brother."
Dick smiles at the fondness in Bruce's voice, the same tone he used to use when he would see Jason and Dick getting along just like brothers, the same tone he used to use when Jason would whine about Dick cheating in anything and everything. It's Bruce's family voice, and he hasn't been using it enough lately.
"Sure," Dick says. "Do you want to get him, or should I?"
Bruce hesitates for half a second, enough for Dick to know that Bruce really wants to go get his son himself, but he thinks that Tim would rather go with Dick than with Bruce.
"You go get him," Dick tells Bruce, making the decision for him. "I'll get out all the table cloths and balloons and stuff. Tim can decide where everything'll go."
"Sure," Bruce says. As he's leaving, he lays his hand on Dick's shoulder. "I really appreciate everything you've been doing for the past year, Dick. You know that, right?"
Dick nods. "Thanks, Bruce."
Bruce nods back at Dick, then turns and exits.
Dick runs his fingers through his hair and sighs. He gazes forlornly at Jason's gravestone, then goes back to the shed to grab all the old decorations that Bruce got for one of Jason's birthday parties. Jason would get a kick out of that, Dick figures.
By the time Bruce and Tim return, Dick's gotten at least five boxes of old birthday decorations out of the shed—and either Bruce is a ridiculous pack rat (probable) or he thought that he should get Jason as many decorations as the local Target had in stock (also probable). Tim looks ridiculously excited at the idea of using five boxes worth of old party decorations, though, so Dick keeps his ribbing to a minimum.
"So," Tim says, waving his arms dramatically, "I think we should use the pink tablecloths, 'cause Dick said that pink is Jason's favorite color. We can use red and green balloons for the centerpieces, with some flowers around them to help hold them down and to make it more colorful! Alfred says that sunflowers are Jason's favorites, but I don't know if we could make sunflowers into centerpieces and tie balloons to them? But I think it would be really great if we could have like, tons of flowers. And we should probably, like, hang the banners on like, the tables, because otherwise we would have to hang them on, like gravestones? And that might be kind of disrespectful."
Tim pauses for breath, staring at Bruce and Dick for their approval.
"Sounds great, bud," Dick tells him, ruffling his hair. "I'm sure Jason will love it."
Tim nods at Dick's compliment, but refocuses on Bruce for his reaction. And if that isn't a surefire way to make sure someone is really Robin, checking Bruce for his approval or disapproval, making sure that you're doing the right thing.
"It sounds fantastic, Tim," Bruce says to Tim. "I couldn't have done it better myself."
Tim straight-up glows at that, like Bruce just issued him the greatest compliment anyone can ever achieve.
"Jason's gonna love it," Tim says to himself, grinning.
(Dick tries not to think about how they are all using definitive future tense, tries not to think about how they're all saying that Jason is definitely coming back this Sunday, like it was all prophesied the same way Hawkgirl and Hawkman were. He still wants Jason to come back, and if he comes back this Sunday, all the better, but he's afraid of what will happen if Jason doesn't come back. Will Bruce relapse into post-Ethiopia? Will Bruce take out his anger on Alfred? Will Bruce take out his bitterness on Tim?
Will Dick?)
That Sunday dawns bright and clear, surprisingly cool for mid-August, with a high of 79 and a low of 69—and if Jason does come back today, won't that be a kick in the pants for him, coming back on a day when the low is sixty-nine degrees.
Dick goes down to Jason's grave early, at maybe six A.M. Before Tim is up to do his morning exercises, before even Bruce is too far awake, but still a bit after Alfred had to get up today in order to make food for the picnic. He has a bouquet of black Rain Lilies and Bells of Ireland (rebirth and luck, respectively) which he lays down reverently at the head of Jason's grave.
"Hey, Little Wing," Dick says quietly. "So, I'm not sure if you've heard or not, but today's your celebration. It's been a year since Ethiopia, so we're having a get together. Some of your friends from Young Justice are coming—Aquagirl for sure, and Beast Boy, and Superboy, and Wonder Girl, and Artemis. And some people from the League are coming, too, like Superman and Wonder Woman and Shazam and Hawkgirl and Booster Gold—I still don't get why you like that guy, by the way, he seems like a real jerk to me. And Batman is coming, and Tim, and me, duh, and Babs, and Steph, who you haven't met but you would probably love. It's gonna be great. So many people you love are gonna be there." Dick kicks at the grass. "So if you were gonna come back any time soon, I think today would be the day. It would be perfect, you know? Like how it happens in the movies."
Dick squints at the horizon and he thinks that he can see Superman and Superboy coming in together.
"Gotta go, Little Wing," he says, quietly, in case Superman is listening to him. "I hope I see you soon."
Dick walks back to the manor to get ready.
(He thinks that he needs Jason to come back today. He thinks that if Jason doesn't come back today, no matter how often Dick and Tim and Bruce talk about Jason coming back today like it's a guaranteed absolute, that Dick's going to just keep getting harder and tougher if Jason doesn't come back today. Like he'll turn into Batman, but without all the parts of Bruce that are mixed in, the parts that make Batman seem human, the parts that will take care of villains when they're in a bad place, the parts that Dick has always wanted to live up to. But if Jason doesn't come back today, he thinks that he and Bruce will grow old and grow tougher and harder and meaner and if that happens, Dick thinks that Bruce might just discontinue Robin.)
(When Bruce adopted Jason, Wonder Woman said that Bruce without a kid following him around was like Ares without a spear. Bruce had said that he'd only had two kids so far, and Wonder Woman had said "Like you aren't already planning on kidnapping at least four more."
Bruce hadn't denied it.)
Bruce has decided that since most of the people attending Jason's anniversary are people who are already in the know about most secret identities, masks and capes and et cetera aren't necessary. Dick comes out of his room wearing a nice short-sleeved black button-down and a pair of black dress pants.
Bruce looks pained at his oldest son's choice of fashion, or that might just be how overheated he is in his own tuxedo—Dick bet five dollars against Connor that Bruce would be down to a shirt and the pants by before four o'clock. Tim had apparently chosen a sensible mix between Dick's fashion and Bruce's—he's wearing a formal white button-down with some black dress pants that are really getting much too short for him at this point.
Dick has always thought it was a marvel how fast Robins grew. Jason had shot up six inches in his first eight months of being Robin, and had kept growing steadily after that. He was about five foot seven when he died.
Jason's gonna be pissed when he realizes that the tallest he's gonna get is five foot seven.
"Well," Bruce says, "are we ready?"
Dick grins. "As ready as we're gonna get, old man."
Bruce grins back at Dick and tousles his hair. "We better get a move on. We don't want to be late for Jason's return party."
Dick nods, and starts running down the stairs like an avalanche. After a minor hesitation, Tim follows him. Bruce comes behind the two boys, at a much more sedated pace.
(It's not until noon that all the invitees have showed up. Most sit at picnic tables and drink lemonade, talking amongst themselves about things that aren't really relevant to the anniversary. Wonder Girl is swaying gently with Aquagirl next to the speakers, and Superboy is talking patiently about Jason with Tim, and Beast Boy is hiding behind the gravestone with Artemis.)
(Bruce is out entertaining guests, with his stupid society face on and using his society voice that makes him sound mildly interested in whatever anybody is talking about. Everyone in the League can tell when Bruce is using his society voice, but none of them call him on it on the anniversary of his son's death. All the official Leaguers are clapping him on the back or talking to him quietly on the edges of the scene, and Bruce just smiles and nods his way through it.)
(Dick thinks that Billy is probably helping Bruce the most, just by being Billy. Billy Batson is vaguely reminiscent of Jason, with how he grew up and how he can make Batman laugh and how loud and outrageous he is. Billy didn't even come as Captain Marvel today, and that just makes the comparison that more perfect.)
Dick and Tim bring out the food at around one thirty, when most of the conversation has devolved into awkward questions about emotional states. There's only cheese sandwiches and chocolate muffins, but everyone calls them amazing like it's the first food they've eaten in a hundred years. After everybody descends on the food, conversation picks back up and everyone sounds like they're doing fine.
At two o'clock, when hhhhhhhhhhhgg has run out of music and Dick is about to start eulogizing, something different happens.
Aquagirl and Wonder Girl, who had ended up being the closest to the grave, noticed it first. It started out fairly subtly, with low moans coming from beneath the soil that was easily masked by the music. Then, when the music was over, and the moans were finally quieting, the dirt of the grave began heaving up and down, slowly at first, then faster and faster. Wonder Girl and Aquagirl finally noticed when the ground broke open beneath their feet.
"Diiiiick?" Wonder Girl calls, pulling Aquagirl away from the grave. "Dick, I think you should come over here! Jason's waking up!"
Dick, Bruce, and Tim all snap their heads towards Jason's grave to see if it's true, and when they see the wet, moist dirt being pulled up over the grass, they all run.
"Dig, you idiots!" Dick screams. "Dig! He can't get out by himself!"
Bruce and Tim are already digging along with Dick, both of them getting their outfits ruined—Bruce will have to throw away this suit, now, since Dick is losing his bet with Connor.
Most of the guests hesitate, but Artemis and Beast Boy are on their knees immediately, and Aquagirl follows as fast as she can. Next is Superman and Wonder Woman, soon followed by Booster Gold, Hawkgirl, and Shazam. M'gann is helping with her telekinesis, and Connor and Wonder Girl are heaving out enormous loads of dirt, one trip at a time.
Donna is the only one not digging, and that's mostly because she was too far away from the grave when the dirt first started moving, and no matter how fast she moves, she still can't get close enough to help.
With everyone digging at once, the coffin is quickly in sight, and it's clawed nearly all the way open from the inside. Superboy heaves off the lid, and there's Jason, lying in the coffin with his fingers clawed nearly down to stubs, his eyes wide and frightened, looking pale as a ghost.
"Jason!" Dick screams. He grabs Jason, pulls him close to his chest, and starts sobbing. "Jason, you're back, you're finally back, oh my god."
Jason doesn't move while Dick holds him close, doesn't move when everyone starts surrounding him and touching him and laughing and crying.
"Dick," Superman says, some number of minutes after Jason has woken up and the grave has been excavated, "we need to take Jason in for his medical evaluation. You're going to have to let go."
Jason stares at the man of steel without flinching, and holds his brother even that much closer. "I'm not letting him go," he says huskily. "You can't make me."
"I don't want to, Dick," Superman says, kneeling next to the two boys. "There's just two things that need to happen. You need to let go of Jason, and he needs to come in for his medical exam. You can even come with him, if you want, but you can't bear hug him all the way to the Watchtower."
Dick glares up at Superman, but he also loosens his grip on his brother. "Fine," he says. He puts his own arms down at his sides, and Jason nearly collapses. "Here, Jason, I'm going to grab your shoulder so you can stand up, okay?"
Jason doesn't react to Dick's statement, or to Dick grabbing his shoulders, but he stands up when Dick does, and stumbles along with Dick while he climbs out of the crater that used to be Jason's grave. Everyone has cleared a path for them, but their eyes stay focused on Jason—even Donna, who can barely focus her eyes on anything.
Clark leads the both of them up to the manor, through the secret passage in the living room and down the stairs—slowly, though, so very slowly, because Jason can barely move faster than crawling speed and even that's a stretch for him. It takes the three of them nearly twenty minutes to get down to the Batcave, all without Jason reacting to either of their words or anything else going on around him.
He doesn't follow the light when Dick shines his penlight in his eyes, and he doesn't turn his head or cough. He doesn't do much of anything, and Dick's heart is sinking in his chest when he realizes that Jason is turning out to be much more of a Lilith Clay than a Duela Dent, not much fighting spirit in him at all, and more dead on the inside than dead on the outside.
If Dick could trade this dead on the inside mannequin-type Jason for Jason who had half his face rotted away but just as much fire and spirit as the old street Jason, he'd do it in half a second. But he guesses that most people would, too, that most people who got a loved one back would wish for their spirit back, their speed back, even if it meant trading the perfection their bodies endured.
"Jason," Bruce says, half an hour after Jason and Dick and Clark got to the Batcave, "do you know where you are? Do you—do you know what happened?"
Clark lays a heavy hand on Bruce's shoulder. "Bruce," he says, and it seems like that's all he needs to say, since Bruce just collapses at Clark's tone of voice and what he's saying.
"He didn't come back all the way, did he?" Tim asks, emerging from the shadows behind Bruce. "It's still Jason, but he's not back all the way, is he."
Dick looks at Tim sadly. "He's—he's not back all the way, Tim, no."
Tim doesn't let Dick's tone, Bruce's tears, or the general atmosphere of the room stop him from walking up to Jason and grabbing his hand.
"Hello, Jason," Tim says softly. "I'm not sure if you heard me before, when I used to talk to you, but I'm Tim. Timothy Drake-Wayne. I'm your younger brother."
Dick stares at Jason and Tim and smiles. He grabs Jason and Tim around the shoulders. "Come on, Tim," he says. "Let's go get Jason settled back in his room."
Tim grins up at his two older brothers. "Yeah," he says. "Let's go."
Tim and Dick begin pulling Jason up the stairs, all three supporting each other, leaving Clark behind to pick up all of Bruce's pieces.
(Jason stumbles when he's walking up the stairs, down the halls, up the stairs again. When Dick opens the door to his room, though, where—despite Dick's digging around for Jason's iPod and his speakers—everything is unchanged, where everything is how it was when Jason left for Ethiopia, Jason moves around almost naturally. He's slower than he was, so much slower, but he doesn't trip over anything. He turns instinctively to avoid the mounds of dirty laundry and old knickknacks, and he moves just like alive Jason did when he was injured.)
Tim and Dick guide Jason onto his bed together, then stare at each other in uncomfortable silence when Jason falls back on his bed without moving.
"You know," Tim begins, "almost everybody is still here. Only Donna, Wonder Girl, M'Gann, Tula, Beast Boy, and Shazam left."
Dick sighs. "I know. What are we supposed to do?"
Tim shrugs. "We could always go back out and talk to them. Or we could encourage them to all go home."
Dick sighs again. "We should probably get them to leave," he mumbles. "I'll take care of it. You stay here with Jason."
Tim nods as Dick exits the room.
It turns out, being near your dead older brother is a hell of a lot different when he's inhabiting physical space and you can see his face and you can see how Bruce used to see this kid as Robin.
Tim sits down on the bed next to Jason and stares at him. Jason is about an inch shorter than him, even though Jason is about a year older than him. Or, that is, he was, when he died.
Jason is still staring at the ceiling, his eyes wide open and dry.
"So," Tim says, "how was your death, Mr. Todd?"
Jason doesn't respond, the same way he hasn't responded to anything else since he's woken up.
"Anyway, it's cool to finally meet you. I'm Robin now, if you haven't heard. And I'm on Young Justice now, so there's that. Everyone on the team keeps talking about you, and how you used to act when you were Robin. Superboy and Aquagirl miss you a lot. Or, well, they used to miss you, now that you're back," Tim knows that he's rambling, but he can't really do anything about it. He's just now met his older brother for the first time, his older brother who came back from the dead, and his older brother is a complete and total zombie.
Tim leans over and carefully pulls Jason's eyelids down. It feels like what Bruce does whenever he and Tim find a corpse while they're on patrol, like Tim's giving Jason some final peace, so that he can move on to the afterlife.
Except Jason has already been to the afterlife. He was there, and then he came back, and Tim still doesn't know if he's acting right. He doesn't know if he's supposed to close Jason's eyelids so that his eye's don't completely dry out, or if he's supposed to talk to Jason if he isn't sure that Jason can understand him, or if he's just supposed to be quiet and let Jason lie still on the bed.
"Hey," Dick says, coming back into the room. "How're you guys doing?"
"We're good," Tim says. "I closed Jason's eyes, because I wasn't sure if he should keep them open, in case his eyeballs dry out?"
Dick nods. "Yeah, I think you probably did the right thing." Dick sits on Jason's other side and gazes at his younger brother. "This is exactly what I was afraid of, you know. I was scared that when Jason would come back, he would be, just. Empty. Like he left his soul behind after he died."
Tim quietly contemplates this for a moment. "I don't think he's empty," he finally tells Dick. "I mean, it might seem like that now, 'cause he isn't reacting to anything, or talking to us, but I think that he's just trying to get used to being alive again, but I think he'll be back to normal before long, once he's used to not being underground anymore. I think that he'll turn back into how he used to be, back when he was Robin, but he just needs time to get back to it."
Dick smiles at Tim. "That's a nice thought, Tim. I hope you're right."
(Tim isn't really sure if he's right. He doesn't even think that he's right. He's pretty sure that he's just saying all of this to make Dick feel better about his kid brother coming back from the dead and still acting dead.)
(Tim falls asleep next to Jason, and Dick follows suit soon after. Alfred sticks his head through the door an hour or so after that, and stifles a gasp when he sees the three boys all lying together on the bed, the way Jason and Dick used to when Jason had his nightmares, then the way Tim and Dick did when they both fell asleep after studying late into the night, the way Tim and Jason never got to whenever Jason would support his younger brother.)
(Bruce stays in his office all night, wide awake and staring at nothing on his desk. Clark had left some time after all the other party guests did, leaving Bruce to stare at the Batcomputer for a good two hours before Alfred dutifully guided him up to a more habitable room.)
(All Dick's worst fears about Jason's return are coming true.)
When Dick wakes up in the morning, Tim and Jason are gone and Dick almost panics. He just got his brother back from the dead, he can't lose him again. He can't lose both his brothers.
"Pardon me, Master Richard," Alfred says, ducking into the room. "I thought that you may wish to be informed that Masters Tim and Jason are taking a walk in the garden, and have not been kidnapped nor killed. Master Tim seemed to be under the impression that you were concerned about that."
Dick relaxes, even though he totally knew his worrying was ridiculous. Definitely. "Thanks, Alfred," he says. "It's just, Jason's back. I can't lose him again."
Alfred smiles at Dick. "I quite understand, Master Richard," he says. "I almost can't believe it, myself."
Dick stands up and stretches. "I think I'll go join them," he says. "See you later, Alfred."
"See you in a bit, Master Richard," Alfred says, stepping out of Dick's way. "Do make sure you eat something, eventually. You haven't eaten since yesterday."
"Sure, Alfred," Dick says, patting the butler on the shoulder. "Bye."
Tim is walking Jason through the paths next to the hyacinth plants by the time Dick gets to the garden, and he's patiently talking through the meaning behind the flowers.
"...Supposedly, hyacinths symbolize playfulness, and activity. Isn't that neat, Jason? But Dick tells me that you used to be a real plant head, so you probably already knew that, though. I think it's pretty interesting, don't you?"
Dick watches Tim guide Jason along the narrow garden paths, carefully stepping around any and all plants that Jason might stumble over.
"I guess you do, though. When me and Dick brought you to your room last night, I saw your window garden. What kind of plants did you grow there?"
Tim leaves pauses after all of his questions, in case Jason decides suddenly that speech is probably the way to go this time. When Jason remains silent, Tim continues on.
"I bet you used to grow snapdragons. I mean, I don't know exactly what they symbolize, but you seem like a snapdragon kind of guy. Those are mostly only springtime, though. Did you ever grow morning glories?" Pause. "I used to love morning glories. I'd wake up early in the morning to watch them bloom at my old house. Not so much now that I'm with Bruce, though, since most of the time it's not so much waking up early as staying up late from being on patrol."
Tim keeps chattering away about flowers and plants and how quiet Bruce is and everything else that he seems to think Jason may be vaguely interested in.
Dick quietly returns to the house and eats breakfast.
(The thing is though, now that Jason's back all of Dick's memories are like a rubber band in his brain. He remembers the first time they teamed up as Nightwing and Robin, how brash and stupid Jason was and how Dick thought that he was too young for this business. He remembers how Jason used to eat at least twelve pancakes a sitting until he finally put on some weight. He remembers Jason loving to do his homework, he remembers how excited Jason was to do extra credit for history, he remembers Jason laughing when he told Dick about getting kidnapped by Two-Face and then making a pun at the expense of Dent's vehicle, he remembers how proud he was when he heard about Jason sparing Two-Face. It's all there, ricocheting around in his brain and his heat.)
(He remembers when Bruce called him in a panic, saying that Jason had run away and taken some of Bruce's credit cards and did Dick know where he was? He remembers when Bruce called back, a week later, saying that he had found Jason and that they were looking for Jason's birth mother together. He remembers how he didn't get another phone call until two weeks after that, three days before Jason's funeral, and how Bruce couldn't even talk about it, how he broke down in the middle of a phone call, even when he started using his society voice, and then, even when he started using his Batman voice.)
(Bruce is still in his office, probably with his eyes half-lidded and a bottle of whiskey in front of him. Dick can imagine the setting, plain as day, the same way Bruce was the day after the first funeral.)
When Jason and Tim come back in, Tim is laughing at one of his own jokes. He carefully guides Jason into his old chair (how could he know, how could he tell, how did he realize that Jason always sat in the chair closest to the window) and then sits down next to him.
"So," Dick says, "how was the walk?"
Tim pauses again, glancing over at Jason. When Jason doesn't respond—unless he's creating his own language out of different angles of leaning forward—Tim answers for the both of them. "It was pretty cool. I saw the flowerbeds in Jason's window the other day, so I thought that the gardens would be good for him."
Dick is about to ask the Tim if he wants any pancakes when Bruce apparently finally decides that he's ready to see post-death Jason again and he walks into the kitchen.
Bruce is steady, compared to what Dick thought he would be.
"Good morning," he says. He unfolds the newspaper and begins perusing the business section.
"Morning, Bruce," Dick replies. "Sleep well?"
"Fine," Bruce answers in monotone. "Yourself?"
"You know me, Bruce, I'm out like a light. How about you, Tim?"
"I actually didn't get to sleep until midnight, last night," Tim replies. "I think maybe it's because I stay out all night doing patrol so often. Not that I want to stop!" He adds hastily. "It's just inconvenient."
"We may have to cut back on your hours, anyway," Bruce says. "Your school starts in a week, and I don't want you falling asleep in class."
"Nah, Bruce, that was all me," Dick chips in. "Tim and Jason wer—are the kind of kids who would rather stay up late watching documentaries and then quiz their teachers later. I was always the troublemaker at school. Too much sitting."
Bruce smiles slightly at the memory of all of Dick's demerit slips for sleeping in class. Dick smiles too, but more at his correction of tense—Jason is now, is so brightly the same way he was before he died. He is, is, is, and Dick is going to write a love letter to linking verbs, even when he isn't linking them to anything except being.
Breakfast keeps going for the next twenty minutes like that, Bruce and Dick and Tim making average small talk and Tim tossing questions to Jason that always go unanswered every few minutes.
Bruce checks his watch at about twenty minutes to ten, and declares that he has a meeting that he can't miss and he has to leave in twenty minutes if he wants to make it even close to on time. When he comes down later, he's fully dressed but with his toothbrush stuck in his mouth.
"Got distracted," he explains through his toothbrush. He tucks the toothbrush in the dishrack on the counter, and Alfred heaves a bodily sigh.
"Sir, I do wish you would make use of the wondrous invention known as a toothbrush holder. I do believe we may possess one or two of them, in fact."
"Sorry, Alfred," Bruce says, still rushing. "Gotta go. Love you Dick, love you Tim, love you Jay." He pauses next to Jason's chair, stoops down, and hugs him awkwardly. "I missed you, Jay."
He lingers for a moment, and then begins to move on.
"Buh," Jason says. Bruce turns around and stares at him.
"Jason?"
"Buh…..Br...Bruce," Jason finally says, sounding like a baby learning to talk. "Bruce. Bye."
Bruce's eyes would probably have welled up, if he were a normal person. His face softens minutely instead. "Goodbye, Jason," he says, then carries on his tornado out the front door.
Jason looks at Dick. "Dick…..face," he says, pausing just long enough for Dick to wonder if Jason was going to leave off the old moniker.
"Hey, little wing," Dick says, grinning.
Jason's eyes travel to across the kitchen, finally focusing on Alfred. "Al... ," he says.
"Master Jason," Alfred says, voice choked, "it is so wonderful to have you back."
Finally, Jason's eyes focus on Tim. "Tim," he says, slowly.
"Hi, Jason," Tim replies. "Good to finally have a real conversation with you."
And slowly, steadily, Jason grins in that wild way that Dick remembers.
(It's still slow, though, and it might be for a million reasons. Because Jason died so violently, because Jason was being held back by old magic, because Jason is a lazy bastard, because Jason used to smoke, because Jason was undergoing supernatural therapy, because Jason was searching for his mother in the afterlife, because Jason didn't understand what had happened to him, because Jason, because Jason, because Jason because Jason because Jason. That's what it all boils down to, because Jason was, wasn't, is, because damn if Jason is gonna stop a little thing like dying keep him down.)
(He asks to spar right after he says everyone's name, and Dick refuses. He refuses a month later, when Jason can walk up and down stairs by himself, and he refuses six months later, when Jason just starts sparring with Tim instead, and when Dick bans Tim from sparring with Jason, Jason just blitz attacks Dick in the kitchen to prove that he's ready already, okay, Dick, I know you're scared, but I'm fine, I'm great, even Aquagirl says so, even Duela says so, even Connor and Wonder Girl say so, and they're still alive so there! And that's when Dick finally acquiesces to Jason because they both know he's being overprotective, the same way he's been overprotective to all the returned, because Dick is everyone's big brother, basically, and this is the first time anyone has asked to go back into training because Dick is a big brother inherent. This is the first person to ask who was Dick's little brother before they started superheroing.)
(Bruce refuses Jason any active duty of any kind, and Jason doesn't protest him. Jason only wanted to know that he wasn't completely useless now, and sparring apparently does that for him. Bruce doesn't say anything when he sees Dick sneaking Jason out of the cave to spar with the sidekick team, and that probably helps.)
(The first time they all see him, it's almost a panic. Wonder Girl grabs him around the waist and twirls him around, Connor noogies him, M'gann hugs him tightly enough to have crushed his lungs if he still used them. Because if Dick is big brother born and bred, Jason is the long lost brother, even when he was right next to everyone.)
The dead are slowing, now, the dead that Dick has to make visits to, at the very least. Either they're killing fewer kids or all the dead ones that can still come back have come back, but either way Dick feels satisfied. Maybe this is closure, or whatever.
Dick doesn't buy flowers weekly anymore, either. Jason's green thumb is back in force, and Dick borrows some from Jason's section of the garden whenever he feels like visiting the old gravestone.
Jason always hollers at him for doing it, and that's what makes the experience complete for Dick.