A/N: So it's pretty late and I'm too lazy to reread it. I simply haven't updated in a week and you guys deserve better. Also, my documents don't seem to want to pass along the italic message, so I'm sorry about that also.

O/O/O/O/O/O/O/O

Tim's having a horrible night already by the time his predecessor catches up with him. It's been a long few weeks, filled with dead ends on his list and the little Demon Spawn changed the passcodes to the Cave so he couldn't even have any Alfred-brew coffee. The Folgers was starting to fray his nerves.

Don't get that mixed up though, 'horrible night' does not equate 'sloppy mistakes;' it's been just as awful an evening for Gotham's scum as it has for the Teen Wonder. Just because he's strung out doesn't mean he takes wild, blind swings—just the opposite. His focus pinpoints like a laser and he catapults his frustrations into red-faced, drug-peddling idiots, his smirk a little harsher than normal. He's broken a few more bones than he necessarily needed to. In fact, he's pretty sure that he's tweaked his left wrist punching a thug. He'd have Alfred look at it, but the passcodes. It's not like he can just call Bruce and have him change them back. Ra's al Ghul calls him the "young Detective" and there's no way in hell he can just let Damian win.

Tim's cheap coffee-concentration allows him the awareness of his surroundings to at least know when the Red Hood is coming for him. Red Robin's got enough sense left to lead him to an empty alleyway when a knife lodges itself into the brick three inches to the right of his head. The smirk is effectively wiped from his face and his eyes narrow under the domino.

"The fuck, Pretender?" Jason hisses, clearly not amused by something, though Tim can't imagine what. "The kid—my runner? You broke his legs, both of 'em!" Come to think of it, Tim has a vague recollection from a few hours ago that seems to fit the bill… "So I repeat: The fuck is wrong with you?"

It takes Tim a moment to respond, mostly because dirty little street thief doesn't match up with the kid in his mind. But that's the thing about Jason, street kids matter. In short, he gives a shit in a way that no other member of their 'family' does. Jason Todd is willing to spill blood, get his hands dirty, even run major drug deals and bully around big-time dealers. But no dealing to kids or you die.

Red Robin's mouth presses into a hard line because he has no real reason for why he broke that kid's legs. "Misplaced frustration," he apologizes after a beat. He can pretty much feel Jason's eyes widening under the hood.

"Babybird's got steam to let off?" he takes a precarious step forward so that he's completely and unforgivingly in Tim's space. "Who knew?"

Tim's foot shifts to take a step back and he realizes too late that his back's literally against the alley wall. Jason's face lights up—if that's even possible with the mask—and he takes it as his invitation, leaping forward the rest of the way. Tim's airway is closed where Jason's forearm is pressed against it.

With wide eyes, his voice makes a hissing noise rather than any coherent words.

"Well I was having a bad night before you fucked that kid up…" Jason curls over him, his form overpowering and it blocks out the moon just enough to make Tim feel claustrophobic. A literal knee-jerk reaction frees him from the leather grip and he leaps up to a fire escape.

"And here I thought we'd been getting along so well," Red Robin jokes, though it doesn't sound as confident as he'd like due to the soft rattle in his voice and the guilt sawing away at the remainder of his nerves.

"I don't give a shit about you," Jason says, quieter. "But knock it off with the whole Straighten Out This City act. Batman's not as deserving of the flattery as you think."

"I'm not mimicking B." Tim rolls his eyes.

"Pah-lease," he groans. "That kid, the one in the hospital with multiple fractures in both legs? He's a good kid. He doesn't want to be a fuck-up, in fact, he desperately wants to do good things. Remind you of anyone?"

Only anyone who's ever been Robin, he doesn't say. "Look, I didn't mean to hurt your runner, 'kay? I got carried away." The words are more ground out than spoken sincerely, but his caffeine is starting to decline, and he's going to crash any second.

"But I didn't give him a cape and make him swear an oath," Jason continues as if Tim hasn't just swallowed the remainder of his pride.

Tim bristles because he knows the general direction this conversation is going, and it's not a great one.

"B's ways aren't the only ones, Red," he says seriously.

"I kno—"

"You're way too much like him, more every day." It's then that it occurs to Tim that Jason's not even talking with him anymore, he's talking at him, telling him what needs to be said. It's not doing any good to interrupt, so he gives it up. "You can't give kids masks. I know it's the precedent he's set, but. Just don't. It doesn't work unless you were raised in a circus." There's a pause in the monologue, and it's obviously Tim's turn to talk now.

"It worked with me," is his eloquent response.

Jason's head turns from where it's been staring into space to give Tim a long-suffering look. "Yeah? Then what are you doing breaking teenagers legs without provocation?" The question's rhetorical and loaded, so Tim steps away from it. "You're about as screwed up as I am, and you weren't even dumped in a Lazarus pit. Nightwing's an exception, not a rule, and even he falls apart sometimes. And you're way too much like the Bat for my liking. So I'm warning you now, no kids-in-capes," he says, ripping his knife out of the wall like punctuation.

A half-idea makes Tim flick his fingers and pull up the display in his lenses. The date makes him flinch and he flinches, noting that Jason even looks like a ghost bathed in moonlight from where Tim's watching above in a fire escape. And Tim also knows why Bruce asked him to make the routes for him tonight, why he didn't ask Dick. He also suddenly has no idea of what to say.

"I wish I'd never been Robin," he blurts out before thinking. Obviously.

"…Right. That's why you're calling yourself Red Robin now." The hesitation marks surprise in the Hood, and Tim's surprised at himself. He has no idea what he's talking about, but he keeps going. Talking through it, because it needs to be said, and it's the first year they've been on I'm-not-going-out-of-my-way-to-kill-you terms.

He shakes his head. "No, I mean it. I wish Bruce hadn't had to lose a son, I wish Alfred had never had to lose you, and I can't even imagine what a Pit is like. What it does." He levels his eyes with Jason's for just a second before flipping over the railing and landing a few yards in front of him. "I'd be okay trailing behind with a camera."

Jason's head is cocked to the side, like he's trying to decide if he really does mean it. "And you're right, anyway. I'm too much like B to be a good Robin at all. The purpose is to lighten the Dark Knight, not add to the shadow."

There are a good five minutes of silence that pass where they simply regard one another with thoughtful eyes. They both have a point, and it's been a civil conversation thus far, and Tim thinks that they're going to walk away with some sort of new understanding until he realizes how ridiculous that sounds even in his own head.

The next words out of Jason's invisible mouth are "Pity's not going to save you, Babybird," because Bruce never avenged him and he'll be damned if he doesn't avenge this kid and he pulls his little brother closer like he's going to give him a nuggie.

And that's why Tim's standing on the Manor's front porch at three-thirty A.M. with a flannel shirt and jeans pulled over his costume and clutching his now-broken wrist against his chest when Alfred comes to the door, more than a little confused as to why the boy's not come in through the Cave entrances. He thanks God for small mercies when there's no sign of Damian. He agrees to stay the night, but only because Alfred won't make him coffee until morning and his wrist has just been set, which is exhausting in and of itself.

If he sees Bruce in the morning, he thinks he'll get in a word of how he saw his brother, how he didn't look so bad for it being the anniversary of his death. With his head hitting a strangely unfamiliar pillow—when he'd lived here, the only time he ever slept seemed to be during unconsciousness or in his desk chair—he thinks that maybe the small bones in his hand and wrist were broken so he could relay the message as well as remind him that dirty little street rats are sometimes good kids.