I'm so sorry about the long wait! I seriously had this done months ago but as I went to upload it, everything was deleted instead and I had a really hard time getting around to rewriting it. It of course didn't help that I discovered Harry Potter fanfiction. That pretty much ruined my life I've read just about every Harry and Draco fic on here, even the slash ones. I even wrote a like, thirty pages outline for a plot I may or may not attempt to write.

Anyway... Here's the next chapter. I figured I should probably getting my butt in gear after like the fourth message asking me if I'd abandoned this story. But don't expect anything new soon because I didn't write down where I wanted to go exactly with this and aren't really sure where to take it. Apologies in advance.

But thanks you for all the favorites and follows in the meantime and support. It's awesome and I love you all! Even the flames, got my first if anyone noticed.

Please, please review!

The Batcave looked almost exactly what he'd always pictured it would: from the stalactites threatening to fall on you down to the excessive tech and cars filling the different levels. **Just don't track mud in the floor.** Roy couldn't help but smile when the voice came into his head. It happened a lot, something Jason had said or would have said would echo in his mind and he'd have to laugh. He's pretty sure there are romantic couples together for years that have gotten over the loss of their partner better than Roy has. Jason wasn't his boyfriend but Roy owed him everything, the bastard was his best friend. Even in death he wouldn't leave the archer alone.

Which was why he followed Robin through the cave and into the elevator from every claustrophob's worst nightmare with out protest. This was about Jason.

Having seen 'downstairs' and knowing previously that the Bat clan had to have some serious money backing them and not just for vigilante purposes -Jason had always had the latest games and devices, so it had to be personal also and enough to rival even that of the wealth of Oliver Queen- he wasn't surprised when they were let out into a posh, sophisticated office decorated with vases and artifacts worth probably more than most people's houses.

What did surprise him though was that they had stepped out of a grandfather clock. All the comments Jason had made about the old clock in Ollie's living room suddenly made sense.

Robin didn't waste any time with a tour, instead striding with a purpose out the door and down the hall and obviously expecting Roy to keep up. But he did pause with his hand on the knob once they had reached the front entrance.

"Just... Don't mention death, dying, or crowbars. Or anything like that, okay?" With out really understanding, Roy nodded. The hacker took a deep breath and pulled open the door.

It was indeed raining. Hard. That couldn't see far past the step was the first thing Tim noticed. Which shouldn't have be because Jason was supposed to be standing there with a scowl on his face and telling him that it was about time he showed up quite colorfully. But all that greeted Tim when he opened the door was rain.

" 'bout damn time," Jason's disembodied voice said finally, sounding distracted. Tim had to stick his head out the door to see him, leaning against the wall beside it.

"What are you doing there?"

Jason just raised an eyebrow at him. "Five... Four... Three.. T-" Water suddenly came crashing down on Tim's head, plastering his hair to his head and soaking the back of his sweatshirt. "Hmm. Filled faster that time."

Something about Jason always made his moods extremely contagious. If he was excited so were you, if he was relaxed you kicked back as well, if he was half-dead and half-not-there-at-all you didn't really have a choice but to be at least subdued as well. Which was why Tim just stood there until the torrent was over instead of jumping back with a cry and frowned instead.

"Really? No warning?"

"Where's the fun in that?" Jason didn't sound like he was having fun at all.

"Whatever. Get in here, we had a guest." Tim grabbed Jason's jacket and tugged him inside. As a testimony to exactly how off his game the second Robin was, he actually stumbled a bit.

Inside, Roy just gasped.

When Robin started talking to whoever was outside, Roy's stomach had gradually wound itself into a tight knot. That voice was unmistakable, even the tone was that out of place from the last few months he'd seen his best friend, but that was impossible. Jason was dead. Had been murdered. Roy was at the funeral, he saw him buried. There was no way...

But then Robin was pulling the mystery person inside and even with the stumble and new stock of white hair on his forehead, the build, the height, even his face was unmistakeable. Jason looked the same he had the day he died.

He stared. Jason stared back, tension suddenly skidding off him like water and falling into that real, casual stance they only really used around each other. Roy didn't know if he wanted to laugh or cry or scream bloody murder. So, he moved instead. Pinning his best friend's look-alike to the wall, an arm against his trachea, before Robin could react.

"Is this real?" He was staring intently at his captive but the question wasn't for him.

"He's not a clone," Robin said. Roy still wasn't convinced.

"Off," he ordered harshly, tugging violently at the jacket he wore. If this was Jason, he'd understand the treatment; if it wasn't, this was nothing compared to what he'd do. The dobbleganger complied without protest.

"Shirt too?"

"Yes." When the material was off and thrown on the floor, Roy spun the teen around and threw him against the wall. He arranged his limbs so that his hands were flat against the wall, feet almost two feet away from the base of the wall, all a shoulder's width a part and ready for a pat down. But Roy wasn't looking for weapons, he was looking for scars.

Roy's train of logic was simple and complex at the same time. Clones were the same as their originals in practically every way. DNA gave them the same eye color, hair color, height, body mass, and brain chemistry -if nothing was tampered with or enhanced- so thus the good chance that they would have very similar personalities. Then G-Gnomes gave them the same memories. Clones were always a perfect blank canvas to paint a perfect copy or one in your image, but things like scars were the original's own. They weren't sorted in DNA and they couldn't be carried over with memories. And nothing scared the same way twice, so recreating them wasn't an option.

So that's what Roy focused on, scars. Not his voice, not his eyes, just the naturally unnatural imperfection on his skin. There was a long, thick one running across his shoulder blade, Roy had stitched that up himself. It looked exactly as he remembered it but that still didn't satisfy him.

So he didn't look **exactly** the same as when he died, there were more scars that had been added to the collection but that didn't matter, Roy knew what to look for. They had once spent an entire afternoon comparing scars and sharing stories, like every other teenage boy does at least once in their life time. But some of the stories Jason had shared had burned the image of the corresponding scar into his memory.

The one on the back of his arm, cut it on the inside of a dumpster looking for food. A crescent one on the small of his back, carved by some gang thug he'd stolen from as punishment, never finished because Jason had slammed a trash can lie into his head and run like hell. They all matched up on his back.

Roy spun him around again and moved on to his chest. There was a cluster of short, faint ones up his right side from glass shrapnel from when a bomb had gone off out side his apartment.

It was all right but that didn't make any sense.

He purposefully refused to acknowledge the faint, Y-shaped scar on his chest that had never been there before.

Tim wasn't quite sure what to do as Roy Harper practically strip searched Jason. If he had been struggling and protesting, tim would have intervened immediately. That wasn't the case though, Jason was letting him do it. Didn't put up any resistance at all, acting more docile and compliant that he'd ever seen. So all the third Robin could do was stand back and hope he hadn't just made a huge mistake.

He watched them intently, noting the scars as well and trying to figure if they had happened on the streets, as Robin, or after his resection, and waited for any sign that he was needed. If Roy suddenly decided that Jason wasn't really Jason, things could go very bad very quickly.

Distantly, Tim realized he really could have handled the introductions first. Like at least warning Roy, "hey, you know Jason? Your best friend who's death I'm just now realizing you never got over? Yeah, he's kinda back. Has been for a while."

Yes. That would have gone over excellently. But at least he would have been prepared. Tim resisted the urge to slap his forehead, this felt like the type of situations where sudden movements might set something off.

So he just quietly observed. Roy was pushing on Jason's jaw, who titled his head back obediently. Tim noticed a nick of a scar right over the jugular vein. The kind from either someone standing behind you, holding a knife to your throat, and applying pressure or an attempt to slit your own throat. The angle indicated the former, Tim almost wasn't sure if that was necessarily better.

Roy moved his head to the side and Tim caught sight of what must have been a deep gasp behind and almost below his predecessor's right ear.

With a breath breath, Roy stepped back to study Jason from a distance. Jason, for his part, stayed perfectly still and uncharacteristically allowed himself to be examined like a museum artifact. Finally, Roy let out that breath in a long exhale and spoke. "What? Got bored in heaven?"

That seemed to flick a switch and suddenly Jason was the person Tim could recognize. "Ya know, paradise and halos can only hold my interest for so long."

Roy laughed, natural and contended sounding, as Jason stooped to pick up his discarded garments. Tim still couldn't believe he'd let his precious jacket be thrown to the floor.

"Well, now that you're done molesting me, I'm showering. I just stent three hours out in the rain and I'm freezing. Tim can play host. I'll see you both in a hour." With that, Jason sauntered casually off towards his room. As if he hadn't just pulled a coming back from the death on his best friend.

Even if they kept him in the dark about his murder, Tim knew that Jason understood something big had happened involving him during the time he can't remember. But Tim also knew that he hadn't thought of death as a possible explanation of it, because honestly? How does one fathom their own death?

And he also knew that this reunion had gone entirely too smoothly. Roy, in his experience, was not the kind to take thing smoothly. He ranted and raged and made it known to everyone that he wasn't going to take it. The original Roy Harper did not stand stoically as his world was flipped upside down and inside out. Again.

"How long as he been back?" Roy asked emotionlessly, not looking at him.

Tim didn't know what to say. He couldn't say that Jason had been back for almost three years now, the majority of which was spent with him as the enemy. It wasn't his place and Roy would be, understandably, angry at not having been told. But he also couldn't say that Jason had been back with them for months now, for that very same, last reason.

His silence though must have been answer enough, because Roy finally looked at him and frowned deeply. And Tim knew that was the moment that everything lined up to hit the fan.

The second Robin sagged with relief when Roy followed after Jason.

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoined it. Sorry it's kind of short. Review please!