Bruce says it's been nine and a half weeks, since….

I rub my face, one free of scars and dents from skull fractures. I clench an unbroken jaw with teeth intact. There's no pain, because there are no injuries. Not anymore. It's like he never hurt me. It's been erased from my skin, my bones, my connective tissue and organs.

But not my mind.

Laugher. Cackling, demented, loud, fucking laughter. And blood. Puddles of blood and brains splattered on the floor. A chair. A shoe. While he laughed and laughed.

And kept laughing. I can't shut it up. I cover my ears and rock, because rocking helps. Brings back that shallow calm when Bruce isn't around. He had to go to Wayne Enterprises for a few hours. Only a few, he'll be back. And Tim had to go to school. And Dick…Dick is in the Bat Cave with the new kid. Bruce's kid. Another "D", Damian, who'd been part of the deal Bruce made for me, so I wouldn't die.

Bruce says it's been nine and half weeks, since...

Two weeks spent in a hospital in Benghazi, one spent in Nanda Parbat getting sponge baths in a Lazarus pit, another in the Justice League infirmary, five in the manor as a vegetable. Bruce didn't work till I woke up a week ago, but Tim went to school when it began in August.

It's late August.

I should be trying on a stuffy, new private school uniform and walking into classes like Hostile Takeover 101. I should be practicing how to be the big-big brother because Dickie-bird…

No. I rub my dent-free face some more. No, I don't have to be the bigger brother. Dick is here. He didn't go to Princeton.

Didn't leave me.

Brain fog rolls in. He's…doing something else, but he's here.

Didn't leave me.

I bring my hands down to fist the thick down comforter in my lap. My room—my eyes roam over my things. Video game posters, flat screen TV, computer, desk, dresser, closet, gaming consoles, a new sound system: one that plays soft music, audiobooks and old radio plays that Alfred and Bruce loved a long time ago. I need the sound of people talking around me. When it's quiet, the nothingness creeps in.

The nothingness. That feeling when I faded away. When I died.

I keep forgetting to ask Dick if he knows about it. If he felt it when he died years ago and then slept like the dead after. But I was gone for a much longer time than he was. Was I still dead when I was a vegetable? Dr. Leslie said my brain function was minimal. My lizard brain told my heart to beat and my lungs to breathe, but where was I?

Somewhere too quiet. Gone. Nowhere. And it makes me cold to remember it. Cold and lonely, and I need voices, noise, or it's like I'm gone again. Or I hear it.

It.

The laughing.

Soft knocking on my door, before it opens, and Dick comes in.

He never waits for me to say it's okay. He never pokes his head in to check if I'm busy. He just comes in. I frown at the iPad tucked under his arm.

"Hey." Dick crawls onto the bed, settling beside me, side touching mine. I shut my eyes, remembering us, lying on this bed, talking about him quitting Robin and going to the Olympics. It blurs to us on a beach in Tel Aviv after meeting Sharmin Rosen. I hear Tim and Bruce shouting in the background, playing volleyball, while Dick and I laid in the sand, me thinking how glad I was that he had been with me in the café when I found out there was no way Sharmin could be my mom. That she would have been shitty, if she had been. She'd left after ten minutes of being charmed by Bruce into saying what she probably thought was of no consequence. Bruce and Tim watched me like they thought I'd melt. I'd wanted to…and then Dick reached over and drank half my soda, stole my pastry and had me chasing him down a block to get my mind off the hurt.

He's talking now, and I grab his hands, making him drop his iPad.

"Ja—?"

"Thank you."

He blinks at me, concern and confusion clear in his gaze. His knuckles brush my forehead and he leans in to squint into my eyes. He does this when I—I don't know, get lost recalling stuff when I should be present, listening. Because Dickie had been saying something to me, trying to show me something. Hadn't he?

"Jason?" His voice is so soft. So not Dick. "Are you with me?"

Deep blue eyes, bright with tears. "…be okay. You'll be…"

"Some people want to see that you're awake. But they don't have to right now." He taps the back of his fallen iPad.

Is he Facetiming somebody? I swallow. "Who?"

"Pietro and some people he lives with," Dick says carefully. "You don't remember, but—"

Colorful costumes. Heroes. Robin without a mask.

"You were with people."

"It was the only way I got to you in time," Dick says. He smooths hair out of my eyes. Long hair. It grew while I was gone. A lock of it keeps falling over my forehead. Dickie's face contorts every time he brushes it away. It's a weird look I don't understand. Like something's wrong.

"You wanna say 'hi'?" Dick asks. "For a little bit?"

I don't know what I look like right now. Nobody brings me mirrors. Bruce helps me wash, Alfred lays out fresh pajamas and brushes my hair. After they're through, I crawl back in bed and lie here, listening to music, or words or whoever comes to sit with me, so I don't fall into the nothing. So I don't hear it.

The laughing.

The—

"Jase? Stay with me, bro. Do you want me to hang up? I can." Dick rubs my shoulder, still staring into my eyes that… focus on him. He…

"You're…" Bigger. He's… "You grew."

He chuckles. "Finally, right? I'll catch up to you, huh?"

"Never." I feel the corners of my lips quirk. A smile? Don't think I've done that. Not today, or since I was gone. Dickie's watching me. Why? My eyes go to the iPad he taps in his lap. Oh. Right. "Yes. Yes, I can say 'hi.'" Because he wants me to. He wouldn't have asked if he didn't.

Dick smiles, dimples showing, and turns the iPad over, holding it up until I'm looking into another pair of deep blue eyes. I jerk back and the person on the other side chuckles.

"Don't scare him, Tro!" Dick sounds annoyed.

The person on screen pulls back and I'm looking at Dickie's motormouth cousin. White-haired and grinning, looking absolutely nothing like Dick, except for those eyes. "Hey, Jasie! How are ya? Good to see you looking alive!"

Dick hisses and Pietro chuckles again, then grimaces as fingers pinch the meat of his shoulder. He turns the screen, and suddenly there are three other people in the room, crowding him on all sides. Two girls, one in goth makeup, the other a girl-next-door type. A third person is a guy with blue-black hair and a sharp chin.

"Hi, Jason!" he says, accent thick and Slavic. "You look better!"

"How come nobody's pinching him for saying that?" Pietro scowls.

"Hi!" the girl-next-door waves and smiles, slicking brown side bangs out of her eyes. "It's…uh…nice to meet you awake."

I stare at them. They don't remind me of JV Justice. They have a different vibe than the sidekick squad. They don't seem holier than thou in cutdown rip-offs of their mentors' uniforms. They're just kids. I look to my brother, who smiles at me and shifts the iPad so that we're both in the frame. He leans against my shoulder.

"Jase, this is Kitty, Rogue, and Kurt." Dick points at each person mentioned, Rogue—the goth, Kitty—the girl-next-door, Kurt—thick accent. "There were two more people who came to help."

"Summers and Grey are at university," Pietro says. "But they'd be here if they weren't. We…uh… We're glad you're okay."

They keep smiling, waiting. Like I'm supposed to say something. I should. They were there.

The smiles don't fade, but I do.

I hear them talking, all at once. Panicked. Fast. Smell too much rusty blood. Feel the hard floor under my back. Hot fingers on my jaw.

"Wh-what happened?" I barely hear myself.

Because no one told me and I don't remember.

Dick's arm goes around my shoulders. He's so warm and right here, keeping me from being cold and lonely. Talking so I don't hear it.

The laughing.

"You didn't call," Dick says.

"I didn't." I was supposed to call at six. It was… "It was…nine…oh-eight?"

Dick stares at me, saucer eyes going bright with something I don't like. It's not pity, it's—my stomach clenches as memories of his face as he'd watched Bruce losing to Bane years ago, of him noticing my grapple line snap before I felt it flicker through my thoughts. It's fear. He's afraid. For me.

I said something wrong.

Was it the 'nine-oh-eight'? Couldn't be, because it had been. I'd seen the numbers. But I don't think he wanted me to say that. What should I have said instead? Why don't I know what to say? "What happened?" I ask again.

"Hey, guys, you've seen him. Talk to you later." Dick ends the call and puts the iPad facedown beside him. He touches my cheek, fingers cool, not hot. "You should rest some more. Do you want me to turn on one of your books, or one of Bruce and Alfie's old shows?" He's already moving away from me, sliding off the bed and I grab his arm.

No. I don't want to be lonely. "Stay."

He stops, watching me, waiting. Like I'm about to do something—something wrong. I don't like it. The fear in his eyes intensifies and I hear it.

The laughing.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" My voice is hoarse.

"Like what?" He crawls closer to me, so close I smell Bat Cave and bar soap on his skin and clothes.

"Like…" I don't know. "Like…" I watch him chew his lower lip, a nervous tick. He's nervous. "Like I'm crazy."

"You're hurt," Dick says very slowly. "Your brain is pureed alphabet soup right now. Mine was regular alphabet soup after being in a coma for like a week. I can't imagine what you have to be feeling, Jay. You… you just look so…" He bites his lip again and looks away from me. "I just…" His entire face falls, cracks and, for a split second, I know he's going to cry.

But he doesn't. As fast as it was there, it's gone and he's only bright-eyed again, with tears that won't come. Tears because he's afraid.

"What happened to me? That night, tell me."

Did I die with Sheila Hayward? Did the Joker—no. Robin without a mask had been there. But there was no after. Just nothingness until Bruce's song. They'd taken me to a Lazarus Pit to heal, but aren't those built for dead people? I didn't question Bruce when he said the water fixed what the Joker broke. My bones are knitted, flesh is whole. But I was gone. More than a coma.

Thin arms, hard with lean muscle, wrap around me, pulling me so that my head rests against soft hair, still damp from a shower—the Batcave shampoo smell is fresh. "Jay-bird, you called me that morning and said something was going on with Sheila Hayward. You thought it might be bad, but you weren't sure, and that you wanted to tail her as Falcon. You didn't tell me why you thought that, only that you'd call later, at six. That's when you were supposed to meet her for dinner. You were going to call me when you were on your way to the restaurant."

Shit.

The light, airy sound of Sheila's voice flutters through my mind. She was soft-spoken, and polite. Her bobbed blond hair curly and thick. She was thin but healthy, her skin glowed from obvious self-care. She'd been a nice, normal person. Pretty with a quiet laugh and intelligent green eyes that lit up when I suggested that I could be her kid.

My gut had seized when I first saw her, came close to her, heard her talk, met her gaze. I knew she was the one. She'd known it, too, before I even said it. She said…she said I looked like her late dad and that my voice would mature to sound like his. I think I might have cried a little, because she offered me tissue from her small purse.

We were in a café with Bruce and Tim two tables over, pretending not to spy. Dick was in Istanbul with his circus. God, I wanted him there, ready to snatch pastries and pull stupid faces until I laughed, in case this lady was as bad as Sharmin Rosen. But she wasn't.

She was worse.

"Jase?"

Dick's voice. So close. Something soft behind my back, fingers in my hair.

Not in a café that smells like strong, roasting coffee.

I'm home. With Dick. He's here, meaning I can't be in the other place. He was never in that café. Never went on a walk with Sheila. Never got to see her lab and meet her grouchy co-workers. Wasn't there to accidentally see the document that linked her to him.

I hear it.

The laughing.

The fucking laughing.

The stupid fucking—

"Jay? Jason!"

Dick's louder than it. His arms around me are tighter. His heart's pounding. I feel it. I'm still scaring him. I don't want to. Sorrow fills me. "I'm here."

He rubs my back. "You okay? I should stop—"

"Don't stop." I need to know. I just… "I'll try to be better, but there's a hole in my head. Fill it. What happened?"

"Maybe after you sleep some more, or maybe tomorrow, or—"

"Now, please." I pull away from him, missing his warmth, so I can turn my head and stare at him. "Help me."

If 'don't do this to me' was a person, it'd be my brother. He studies me, obviously not liking what he sees. "Jase, Sheila Hayward was in deep shit—illegally deep shit."

"Working with the Joker. I know." But Dick's shaking his head.

"Even before that." He bites his lower lip and I note the redness, meaning he's been doing it often. I want to reach out and stop him, but he might stop talking. And I need to know more.

"What?" I press. "Before that what?"

"She ran from Gotham, because she botched one of the backroom nip-tuck surgeries she was doing in a basement for extra cash. There was a warrant and everything, and she went overseas and never came back. She left you with Willis."

I picture Sheila, younger, maybe even prettier, pocketing cash for under-the-table procedures. Shit. Is the person she messed up on okay? Did she—? "Dickie, did she kill the person?"

Dick sighs. "The woman had a reaction to the anesthesia and Sheila's basement wasn't equipped to handle it. One of her assistants called it in. I'm…I'm really sorry, Jase."

Fuck. Sheila Hayward worked for the Joker. Sheila Hayward was a bad doctor who killed a patient and ran. Willis was a fucking criminal. My uncles, fucking criminals. What does that mean for me? It's gotta be inherited, right?

I glance at Dick. His lower lip's bleeding. He's not done. "There's more?""

Dick takes a breath. "She was embezzling from the pharmaceutical company she worked for. When the Joker toxin was switched out for those vaccines, she was on-call. It could have been blackmail, or…"

"Maybe she just wanted more money," I mutter. "Fuck." I fist my hair.

She was a bad person, maybe even evil. Why… "Why do you think she even wanted to meet up with me after…after she found out who I was? Why not just say, 'okay, sure,' and blow me off? Or lie and say she didn't have a kid?"

Dick shrugs and offers a weak smile. "Maybe because she saw you and just couldn't deny you. Maybe some maternal instinct kicked in."

I remember the way she looked at me. The way her voice softened.

…brains splattered on the floor, a shoe. Hole in her face. Laugher that won't stop until he calls out to the 'little birdie.'

Deep, blue eyes. Bright costumes. So many voices.

"Jaybird, if you fade out on me again, I'm getting Alfred," Dick says. His hands are on my face, holding my cheeks, making me look him in the eyes.

I bring my hands up to grip his wrists. His pulse thrums under my fingers. I count the beats, anchoring myself to being 'here', before speaking. "How did you save me?"

He quirks a brow. "I tracked you to the vicinity of the warehouse. Your signal went wonky in that area and seemed to come from three different places, but it was enough." He bites his lip again and hisses, touching it and scowling at the blood. He sucks his lip and grabs a tissue off my nightstand to wipe his hand. "I couldn't get a hold of Bruce or Tim. The communication lines were jammed in Bosnia."

In Bosnia. Why were they—oh. The terrorist attacks. They'd left me because Bruce thought I'd be okay on my own, that I would want to spend more time with Sheila. And I did. He left before I found out the Joker was there, that she had something to do with him.

I should have called Bruce when I found out, but I wanted to help Sheila. Bruce might have thrown her in prison with the Joker without asking. I had to ask, to warn her.

Dammit. I should have just called Bruce.

But Dick said he couldn't get through to Bruce.

"The League and Team were off-planet. I had my suit, but I couldn't get to Benghazi fast enough on my own and I knew I needed backup. So, I called Pietro. His 'Uncle Charles' has a jet faster than Bruce's. And he said, 'give me ten,' and then he called back to say they were on the way. I didn't even care that there was a 'they'. Didn't ask. Somebody had my coordinates and they were coming with a jet."

I lean forward in anticipation as Dick scoots closer to me, putting us shoulder to shoulder. "They got there so fast and I jumped in the jet and we were on our way. I-I didn't tell Pietro I would be Robin when they landed, so… totally blew our identities to like five people, but only Bruce gives a shit about that." His tone turns bitter.

Wait. "You…you saved me, and Bruce gave you shit about our identities?"

I feel Dick's forehead on my shoulder. "I wish you would stop saying that I saved you."

"Why? You did—"

"I didn't." His voice is muffled as he talks into my sleeve. "Jase, the Joker beat you so bad. Your… if you could have seen you. I…I didn't save you. You didn't blow up. We got you out and on the jet, and we flew to a hospital. We got you out of uniform, I got out of mine, and I went in with you. Jean—she's a telepath, she worked a mojo on the doctors and nurses and made them think you'd been mugged on the street and that I'd dragged you in and they got to work. But you… The Joker hurt you too bad. You still…"

I feel wetness on my sleeve.

I should… I should be panicking. Freaking out. Comforting Dick. Something. But I just don't. I sit here. Cold. Alone. As my mind spins.

Fades.

Laughter is faint in the background.

"Did I die?"

Dick hugs me, nodding into my collarbone.

I died.

Confirmed.

"For how long?"

"Three times for a few minutes. The third time… the third time you barely came back. The doctor said you would pass in your sleep. And Bruce, he… he started making arrangements. Like you were dead. And Tim, he was… I failed you so bad, failed Tim. And then Talia Al Ghul waltzed in out of the blue and said, 'Let's make a deal.'"

"And Bruce signed you out against medical advice, claiming he was transferring you to a better hospital with a more optimistic medical team, and we loaded you into Talia's plane. God…that flight. You died a fourth time on the flight and Bruce and I did CPR, but… you didn't come back and Talia called us fools for trying so hard. That we should just let you go, because…Lazarus Pit, duh."

Dick's voice is dull, without his usual flair for storytelling. He sounds tired and hurt, lost and hopeless. "We got there, and instead of going straight to the Pit, Talia had you taken to some chamber and made us eat dinner with her…and Damian. He's…"

Bruce's real kid.

"Tim says he's a little shit," I say.

Dick squeezes my shoulders. "He's…tough, but not so bad after a while. You just have to figure out how he ticks."

"You figured it out?"

Dick chuckles. "A little."

"Of course you would." Dickie-bird makes friends easy and kids love him.

I feel Dick's light punch in the shoulder. "Anyway. The deal was…is… that Damian lives here, trains with Bruce, becomes an heir to Wayne Enterprises and we get you back."

I blink. An heir to WE. Bruce's biological son will be his heir.

But I thought… I'm supposed to…

Laughter.

Fucking laughter.

Stuck in my skull on repeat.

Because there's a joke, right?

A joke named Jason Todd with morally corrupt parents and relatives who died three—four—times and…and shouldn't be here. Should be in the nothing. Should go back to the nothing. Because who needs him?

Bruce has a WE heir.

I'm not Falcon. Not taking the business. What do I… Why would he...

Laughter.

Fucking laughter.

"Jase?"

"I'm… Bruce is training me for Wayne Enterprises. I'm supposed to go to GBA. What about…"

Laughter.

Because I shouldn't be here.

Dick's arms fold around me. "When you're better, you'll start GBA. Nothing's changed, Jase. Bruce only made that promise to get you back. He…doesn't know what to do with Damian. He's not even… Jase, he barely interacts with him. It really sucks for the kid, actually. Everything's about you right now. Everything's for you."

His arms squeeze me tight. "God, Jase." His voice breaks. "We let you die and it's not okay." His body trembles as he cries—for me—again. Like I'm dead.

And I'm cold like I shouldn't be if I'm supposed to be alive.

And…

Even though Dick is here, warm and loving, combating the nothing that wants to take me away again, it's still here. Calling to me.

Laughter.

Blood splatters.

9:08.

"Let's put on that book you were listening to, huh? Was it Sherlock Holmes? I want to know how it ends too." Dick's voice cracks as he rambles. I feel his eyes on my face, and I wonder what expression I wear. Something's making him nervous.

"Jay?"

"Hm?" I feel distant, like I'm floating in space, but still here. Detached.

"Did you understand what I said about Bruce and Damian?"

I think about it. Frowning, as a phantom feeling starts to rise inside me.

Dick said Bruce lied to Talia. That I'm still Bruce's heir for his company. I'm not replaced. But…

The phantom is a wispy flame that burns a color so pale I can't distinguish it from gray.

"You with me?" Dick asks. Fingers card through my hair and a lock of it falls in my eyes. I reach up, running my hand through it, staring at it.

It's white.

"You're a skunk." Dick chuckles. "The rest of it's still the same color, but that part's white. Talia said it's a side effect."

White hair. From the skull of a corpse.

A deep voice reads to me in a British accent. Says something about Holmes and Watson and Baker Street, but I can't listen because I'm concentrating on something else. The pale flame.

The one that started when I thought about Damian and Bruce. That becomes more visible as I think about being a corpse, something not meant to be here, about the nothing—because being here might be wrong. I'm wrong.

Wrong.

Laughter.

That won't stop.

I want it to stop. To shut up. To be able to relax in Dick's arms around me, bask in the warmth. Feel what he's trying to give me. Believe that I'm really supposed to be here with him, and Bruce, and Tim and Alfie. That it's right.

Laughter.

Fucking laughter.

That won't stop.

Dick leans against me, so warm, as a comforting voice tells me about a curse that runs in the Baskerville family. But in my head, Baskerville turns to Wayne.

A curse.

Laughter.

Wrongness.

The pale phantom flame that had looked gray burns green.

The green fire that makes me feel…

Laughter.

Fucking laughter.

That won't stop.

Make it stop. Make it shut up.

…that makes me feel…

Laughter.

Rage.