A/N: Whoops! This one'll be continued. Also, my continuity involves Nightwing's fingerstripes. DEAL WITH IT.
Jason raises an eyebrow to the fingerstriped costume before him. He's standing firmly—too firmly, Jason thinks, too much like Bruce—and it's all too easy to see the black band on the upper arm of his costume.
"It's been long enough I actually almost thought you'd gone back the 'Haven," he comments with a smirk, leaning back against the water tower. "What? Time for the bird's rabies shot?"
Dick's eyes narrow in just the way that gets under Jason's skin. And the asshole knows it too, he does it on purpose, Jason swears. "I called you," he says in a pinched voice.
"The cell doesn't exist anymore," he dismisses with a wave of his hand.
"No," comes his brother's voice again, even more strained if such a thing could even exist. "I mean, I called you." He taps his left ear and the weird band on his arm catches Jason's eye again. He narrows his eyes at the anomaly very pointedly, but shakes his head.
"I don't wear the comm-link anymore," he says, voice dropping to match Dick's mood. Something was wrong, and he hadn't tried to kill anyone of them in nearly a year. "There's a reason Alfred's got the forty-eight hour rule for concussions, Goldie. If you got hit on the head you should be sleeping at home, not wandering around the streets," he half-jokes, wholly unprepared to drag Nightwing's ass back to the Manor.
"The funeral was today," Dick cuts in suddenly, shoulders finally slumping, however slightly, and it signifies a helluva lot, because the circus freak has muscles like rubber bands that defy the laws of Physics and nothing weighs him down.
Mine? Jason almost asks. He doesn't understand his first reaction, but thinks that it's only because he knows he's had a funeral, has a familiar mental image of Bruce and Alfred and not many other people standing over his coffin (Dick had been away at college) and he's imagined it a few times at least. His second thought is a simple and resounding Damian? Not much logic's required to know why. Damian's Robin, and Robins—especially those with anger-management problems, evidently—seem to have a problem with dying.
A small hum comes from the surface of his chest, so quiet that he's afraid Dick didn't hear him. He doesn't think he can make another sound, let alone open his mouth and speak. Justifying not showing up to the funeral is battling with the blunt fact that it isn't right. He didn't have ties to that family, not anymore, he'd worked so hard to cut them and cut them all. There was no reason that he should feel guilty, especially for that little shit. But…he'd be lying if he told anyone that he wasn't hurt when he found out that Dick hadn't gone to his funeral. Sure, they hadn't known each other well, and Dick and Bruce weren't on good terms…but…
"Tim," Dick reveals in a hoarse whisper, breaking through the veil of Jason's thoughts like a pickaxe through ice. Either he'd understood the humming inquiry or had gotten tired of waiting for a response. Since when does Dick use names in the field? Even if the situations bad, he doesn't. He hates Tim (hated, he reminds himself), and he's tried—honest-to-God tried his hardest—to kill the Replacement, but this is different. Because it's not Jason's success, but Bruce's failure that got him killed.And Jason's brain is being pulled into a million different directions so he doesn't even realizes he's spoken until the words are gone:
"What happened?" Because Tim's a genius and not a bad fighter. He even had Ra's al Ghul pushing for him to be his heir. That just doesn't happen because you're weak.
Dick's giving him this look, like he wants to give him a hug or something, to reach out, but he thinks better of it and Jason's glad. He's glad because thoughts of crowbars and ripped Kevlar and splinters under his fingernails (there's a reason that's a torture technique, and also a reason Jason's never had the heart to utilize it) in his head and there's the shadow of claustrophobia and the sensation of running out of oxygen underground. More than that though, if Dick were to touch him he thinks he might just revert to the Pit and freak out. What he needs right now is to know. Some part of him that really hates Bruce because his methods are unproductive tells him that what he really needs is to imagine, but he shuts it up. Tells his whole brain to shut the fuck up, because Dick is talking and Jason needs to here so he can know so he can imagine.
"We're not quite sure…" Dick shakes his head, and Jason can see him trying to shake off thoughts of their dead brother just long enough to talk about said dead brother. Jason's lucky he's not close to them. "I mean, we know, but not specifics, and God knows Bruce," another name in-costume, Jason notes, "hasn't slept since the news. He was working on some…some plan of his." He shakes his head again, and an incredulous laugh comes with it, but it sounds wrong. Not like light-Dick laughter. "He had a fucking reign on everything that was happening, so he was working contingency plans up for anything and everything. The files on that kid's computer…" Another dark chuckle.
"The plans didn't go according to plan?" Jason queries and flinches because damn, that boy died with some major irony.
"…Yeah."
Jason nods, shoves his hands into his pockets. They get quiet for a few minutes; Dick's grieving and Jason's lost in thought, feeling slightly sick. The Pit's gotten loud, so he doesn't dare open his mouth for fear that it'll start talking instead of him. Finally, he says something he's about…eighty percent sure isn't the Pit. In fact, it sounds like Jason from before.
"Look, Dick…" he starts. Not 'Goldie,' not even 'Nightwing' or 'Fingerstripes.' Dick's eyes snap back from a memory, and it looks painful. And that does it for Jason. "Dick, go back to Bruce," he says, only a little sharply. "I don't think he can really do it twice. The whole losing Robin thing…"
Dick looks taken aback, and it's bizarre to see on Nightwing's controlled face. Jason's not supposed to say those things, it's not like him. He hated Tim. He shouldn't be wishing anyone well, part of him is really pissed off that they would mourn as vigilantes for the fallen as long as it was Red Robin, more than a little offended that Dick was here to grieve for this brother, but… he couldn't hold it against Tim that he was he was cared for. No, he didn't wish that end on anybody.
Bruce's failure.
"Jason," he says, voice tighter than ever, and Jason wonders what he was thinking of a moment before. He clears his voice before trying again. "It's time, Little Wing. Come home."
There's a tugging in his heart, at everything in him. But not for the Manor, not for Bruce or anything more than Alfred cookies. A part of him wants to relinquish all responsibility, wants things the way they were before, but going back won't change it. He can't live like Bruce wants—demands—and it won't work. It would only remind them both that Tim wasn't there, about failure and all the ways you can't change a person.
"No, Nightwing," he replies, reverting back to business names. "It's really not." Jason kicks off the wall where his body had frozen and walks to the edge of the roof, putting a hand on Dick's padded shoulder as he passes. The black band catches his eye, and he thinks for a moment about asking if Dick has a spare—he's sure he does, sure he's got two on, just in case—but doesn't.
Not yet.
He grapples away, the line's hissing drowning out whatever noise might have been made behind him. If Jason knows anything, he knows where Bruce would have Tim buried, what Tim's will surely said.
It takes nearly a half an hour of numb flying across the Gotham skyline until he reaches the cemetery, shovel in hand that he picked up from a garage on the way. He finds his grave first. Two rows over and five peoples down is Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne. Right next to Jack.
Jason stoops next to the freshly-laid sod as he reads the epitaph, some bullshit Bruce had scribbled on the expensive stone. About as meaningful as his own. Looking down, he scoops up some of the moist dirt and wipes a couple of lines across the hood. The dirt's always been pretty here in the rich bastard cemetery, dark enough to be called black, it looked like charcoal. It wasn't a band, but he wasn't a part of the Bat Clan.
Straightening up again and using the shovel as a cane of sorts, he appraises the sight before him that is the Pretender.
"Well, well, well, Alvin Draper,* what have you gotten yourself into this time?" he says to the dead-quiet.
And he starts digging with though thought that Jesus Christ, this is much easier when you're not in the ground.
*Alvin Draper's one of Tim's aliases. No judging though, Jason's also known as John Doe B) I don't remember the comic (tell me if you do) in which Tim visits Jason in prison and they joke about their terrible taste in names. But it's almost a brotherly moment, so I had to include it.