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Sometime around five in the afternoon, the drizzle turns into a downpour.
“That’ll be forty-one fifty-two,” the cashier says monotonously, not looking up from his phone. From where he’s standing, Jason can just make out the little candies and bursts of confetti as the guy levels up in Candy Crush.
Jason looks at the pile of gauze and the bottle of rubbing alcohol he dumped on the counter. The alcohol costs five bucks. The gauze costs twelve. There’s a suspiciously rosy hue to the rainwater currently forming a puddle at his feet, his stomach can’t decide whether it has freezer burn or fire burn, and to make matters worse, he has a headache.
He also has a gun.
“That’s a hefty tax for a corner store on Marches Avenue,” Jason says, placing the unfortunately empty (though no less effective) gun on the counter. The cashier’s eyes zero in on the weapon, and then widen. “Want to try that again?”
The bell above the door dings, rainwater flooding in as a man and a boy step into the store. The kid is wearing a very wet, very big hoodie, arms rolled up and large letters printed on the front: MIT. The man is wearing much better fitted clothes, a canvas jacket covering his broad shoulders and a hood pulled up to obscure his face. Jason moves the gun back to his pocket, keeping the telltale bulge very visible to the man across the counter, but hidden from the other occupants of the store. The cashier swallows, turns back to register, and starts punching in the numbers again.
Voices rise from the front of the shop.
“Please?”
“No.”
“Aww.”
“No.”
“I get it, I didn’t even -”
“I said no.”
“You’re no fun.”
“Go pick out a yogurt.”
“But -”
“No!”
The kid sulks his way to the dairy section, and the man starts filling his arms with canned beans and spaghettios.
The cashier clears his throat, and says, “That’ll be twenty-three oh-three.”
Jason gives him a patronizing smile, and pulls out the cash.
“Hey mister. Hey, psst!” A head of waterlogged brown hair pops up at his elbow, and a hand darts forward, shoving a bag of Swedish fish onto the counter. “Please? I’ll pay you back, I swear, but these are like my favorite candy, and Mr. Barnes says I can’t, but I really really want them, and my aunt says you should eat what you want when you want, so please? Pretty please?”
Jason’s hand spasms around his gun, and he takes a halting step back, eyes trained on those pleading brown eyes. The kid is good. Better than Tim, but no one has puppy-eyes like Dick, and Jason has built up somewhat of a tolerance over the last few years. Still. The kid is good. And Jason might not have caved, he might have stood his ground, he might have glared and sent the kid packing, except.
Except the kid has a black eye. Two days, maybe three days old, the bruising standing out in alarming shades of purple and black. The swelling is gone, and probably most of the tenderness with it, but the bruising is as glorious as ever. Jason’s eyes slide down to the hand pushing the candy across the counter, and he sees a scrap of cloth peeking out from under the rolled cuff of the sleeve, wrapped firmly around the skinny wrist - a makeshift brace, maybe? From the way he’s using it the wrist isn’t broken, but maybe sprained, an injury resulting from being yanked too hard, from being twisted - he can see more bruises peeking out from under the impromptu bandage, blood hemorrhaging in spots all the way to the fingertips. It’s impossible to tell if the initial bruise is in the shape of a hand or not.
It must be a testament to how much blood he’s lost - to how much blood he’s losing - that he doesn’t notice the man (Mr. Barnes?) approaching until it’s too late.
“My apologies,” Barnes says, reaching out to drag the kid away, sliding him neatly behind him with an indeterminable look before turning back to Jason. “Ignore him,” he continues, and there’s something about his voice, the careful calm with which he speaks, that Jason doesn’t trust one bit. “My son doesn’t know the meaning of personal boundaries.”
“It’s okay, I’ve got it,” Jason says, and pushes the candy towards the cashier.
There’s a moment of tense silence, in which the kid starts picking at his bandage, Barnes’ easy smile goes from relaxed to threatening, and Jason comes to the conclusion that he’s just come face to face with an abusive asshole, and a kid who’s probably being trafficked, and is in absolutely no position to do anything about it.
In his condition, Barnes would have him laid out in twenty seconds flat.
“Ahem. Your total comes to thirty-seven eighty-six.”
So he pushes the cash over, tosses the candy at the kid (it hurts, to see the look of absolute delight as he catches it, reaching out to snag the bag out of the air and beaming beneath that bruise) and then Jason turns without another word, and walks back out into the pouring rain.
He manages to limp a block before he pulls his phone out of his pocket, blinking spots from his eyes as he dials Dick’s number. It rings once before the line picks up.
“Yo,” Dick says, “What’s up?”
“I need your help,” Jason says, and then, trying to keep his voice steady as he sinks down next to a dumpster, “Corner store on Marches Ave., there’s a kid in trouble.”
“I’m on my way, headed there now,” Dick says, instantly alert. “What about you? Where are you?”
“I’m okay,” Jason says, shifting to crack the alcohol open with his free hand. Then he lifts up his shirt, and stares down at the still-bleeding bullet hole in his rib cage. Nothing vital hit, clean exit and entrance. It just won’t stop bleeding. “I’m fine.”
There’s a pause, and then Dick says, slowly, “That wasn’t the question, Little Wing.”
“Fuck off,” Jason manages, biting his tongue as he pours the alcohol over his wound, and then reaches for the bandages. They’re already soaked through, like everything else in this godforsaken city. “How far out are you?”
“Ten minutes,” Dick says, “I’m in plainclothes, but I’ll take care of it, don’t worry. Where are you?”
Jason hangs up. He finishes tying the bandages, and then heaves himself to his feet, vision swimming as he puts a steadying hand against the wall. Right. Sugar, fluids, rest. He’ll probably skip that last bit. And then it’s back to the streets to hunt down Barnes, and suckerpunch him in the face.
By the time Jason turns on the news, Dick has already sent him a text, telling him that Barnes got away. Police already there, Dick writes, No sign of the kid. Reported robbery. Sorry.
Where are you?
Jason loads his guns, puts on his helmet, and limps out the door.
He spots them again a week later, completely by chance.
He’s skulking around the Upper East Side, hiding from Dick and trying to decide whether to go for four chili-dogs in one hour (he’s already eaten three, and they’re so good) when he hears a cheer go up from the direction of Robinson Park. And sure enough when he rounds the corner (there’s the chili-dog stand, he’s definitely getting another one) he’s met by the sight of a crowd of people, standing excitedly around a bench across the street.
On the bench is the candy kid, still wearing his too-big MIT hoodie, and grinning from cheek to cheek.
“What do you bet,” he says, just audible over the roar of traffic, “that I can do a backflip into a handstand?”
“Do it onto the back of the bench,” an onlooker shouts, “and I’ll give you ten bucks!”
There’s no sign of Barnes. Jason waits for the traffic light at the corner to turn red, and then jogs through the waiting cars, ignoring the raised fingers and dark looks as he crosses the street. He has more important things to focus on: namely, the nameless kid about to break his neck for ten dollars and a smile.
“Hey!” Jason yells, jogging up and waving. The kid hesitates, and then beams when he sees who it is, raising a hand to wave enthusiastically back. “Hey, wait -”
The kid doesn’t wait. In fact, he does the equivalent of making a run for it, only he does so vertically, and far more successfully than Jason had expected.
The crowd disperses as Jason finally comes even, clutching his side and glaring even as the onlooker offers his ten bucks and then hurriedly leaves, sending one last nervous look at Jason.
“You’re the one that bought me candy,” the kid says, lowering himself to the ground. He reaches into the pocket of his sweater and pulls out a crumpled wad of cash. “Look, I can pay you back now! The price was three dollars, but I think that cashier rang it up for fourteen eighty-three, so, um...” he stares down at the bills (a twenty dollar sum) and then reluctantly holds out fifteen.
“You can keep the change,” he says, eyes still fixed on his six remaining dollars. “I’m sorry about Mr. Barnes, he was just a little stressed.”
“What?” Jason asks, and then says, louder. “No.”
“You - do you want it all?” the kid asks, resignation slowly drowning out the confusion. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for it to be such a hassle, I shouldn’t have asked -”
“No, jesus, keep the goddamn money!” Jason says, holding up his hands. “That’s not what I’m here for, it was a gift. My treat. Listen.”
He’s out of practice. He realizes this as the kid falters, brow furrowing in confusion even as he tucks the money back safely in his pocket. He’s wearing the same clothes he was a week ago, just dirtier and looser. He must be around the same age as Tim, but he looks so much more fragile, and it makes Jason’s head hurt to think about. The bruising is gone, and when Jason looks, he doesn’t see anything new; that doesn’t mean anything, though, he would know. It’s not a relief, because now that the bruising is gone, Jason can see just how skinny the kid is. Not enough to eat, then. That - paired with the money and the dirty jeans and hoodie - brings Jason to the conclusion that A) Barnes is even more of an asshole than he’d thought (this is probably true anyways) or B) that they’re homeless.
“Listen,” Jason tries again, trying to remember how to be kind. “You look like you could use something to eat. You want to grab a chili-dog with me?”
“Really?” the kid asks, instantly perking up (see, it isn’t that hard after all, Jason’s just overreacting). “Oh, sure! Yeah, I’ll get a chili-dog. What’s a chili-dog?”
Jason gets them both two chili-dogs, loading each with relish and mustard and chili-sauce until it’s all dripping over the bun, running together in a sweet-and-sour mess.
“I’m Jason,” Jason says, passing the kid his two chili-dogs. “What’s your name?”
“Th’ssso goo’” the kid says, mouth full within a second of receiving the food. “Phhmrk.”
“Didn’t quite catch that.”
“Peter,” the kid says, swallowing the second half of his chili-dog in one bite and reaching up to lick his fingers before starting in on the next one. “Thanks for the chili-dogs, mister - uh. Mr...”
“It’s just Jason,” Jason says, and then, throwing caution to the winds - “Is your wrist healed up? Looked nasty the last time I saw it.”
“My wrist?” Peter asks, and then pulls up his sleeve to examine it, as though it hadn’t occurred to him to do so before. “It’s fine. Oh! You mean because I sprained it. Yeah, all healed up, see?”
He flaps his hand, demonstrating.
“How’d it happen, anyway?” Jason asks. He expects a lie. He expects Peter to fabricate some elaborate explanation, some excuse to explain away what really happened. He expects Peter to withdraw, to become quiet and defensive, and maybe put on a fake smile or forced cheer. It’s what Jason would have done, if their positions were reversed.
What he does not expect is for Peter to sound like he actually believes himself when he says, with no small amount of embarrassment: “I tripped down the stairs. There was a puppy, I got distracted!”
“And the black eye? Did you faceplant the banister or something?”
“No, that happened after I landed. I was holding a really fragile, uh... machine, and I crashed into Mr. Barnes, see -”
At the worst possible time, Jason’s phone starts buzzing in his pocket. Three sharp bursts, pause, three sharp bursts: emergency. Peter trails off, looking at him expectantly, and after the third ring, Jason fishes his phone out of his pocket and answers.
“What?” he hisses, just barely managing not to yell. It’s Dick, because of course it is.
“Where are you?” Dick gasps, audibly out of breath. There’s the sound of traffic in the background, and despite himself Jason straightens, already scanning the area.
“I’m busy,” he growls, “This had better be an emergency.”
“It’s Tim, he was working undercover, we just lost contact - there were gunshots. Addison and Third, that old laundromat. Jason, please. Where are you?”
“Fucking shit timing,” Jason mutters under his breath, standing abruptly. He doesn’t have his armor, but his bike is just around the block, his helmet and spare guns locked safely in the cargo carriers.
“Ja-”
“Ten minutes,” Jason snaps, and hangs up. Peter is watching him with a strangely curious expression, and Jason had wanted to do this delicately, he had wanted to do this right - but then the Replacement had to go and get himself shot at, and Dick had to go panic, and now here Jason is, being forced to choose. It’s not fair. It’s not right, because he knows what he’s going to do, and he can already guess what’s going to happen.
He doesn’t have enough time.
“Come with me,” he says, and he tries to make it a command, he tries to make it an order, but somehow between here and there it becomes a plea. Don’t make me choose, because I can’t choose you.
He wonders, a feeling like ice prickling up his spine, if this is what Bruce had felt, choosing to abandon him in a desert in Ethiopia. If he had stood before Jason, asking him to wait, and knowing the choice was really no choice at all. (He wonders if fate is real and if, like history, it is bound to repeat itself to the end of time).
And true to form, in some sort of perverse reflection, Peter offers him a small smile, and says: “Mr. Barnes is coming home in an hour, and I need to be there when he gets back or he’ll blow a gasket. It sounds really important though, what you’re doing. Thank you for the chili-dogs.”
Jason runs. He chooses the fucking Replacement like he knew he would, with no hesitation. And he leaves a kid he barely knows, he abandons another of Gotham’s lost children, and he doesn’t even look back.
He will not become his father. The next time he sees Barnes, he will do what Bruce never did, and he will put a bullet in the man’s fucking skull.
When Jason gets to the laundromat, there’s not a bullet wasted. His replacement is tied up and locked in an old washing-machine, with a broken ankle and bruised ribs. Jason drags him out by the scruff of his neck, and blows the place up just in time for Nightwing and Batman to arrive, fashionably late as always.
“That was unnecessary,” Bruce monologues.
Considering how short his fuse is at the moment, Jason begs to differ.
The Upper West Side isn’t part of Jason’s territory. It’s not anywhere near Jason’s territory, but one of his employees had come running five days ago to tell him that there was a drug ring kidnapping kids for mules, and that they were growing, and Jason hadn’t hesitated. For the last four days he’s done nothing but track and catalog their movements and operations, and now he’s finally ready to raze them into the ground. He has the explosives planted, he has the kids rescued and the ringleaders all in place - except two. Except the two he’s carefully following, watching them hurry down the streets, shoulders hunched against the rain and growing wind.
He loses them for a few minutes when they take a shortcut through a construction site, and when he finds them again two blocks over, they’re not alone.
“How much you asking for ‘im?”
“Excuse me?”
It’s not a voice he recognizes immediately. But then he creeps to the edge of the roof, and peers down, and he sees them. He sees Barnes, standing square in the middle of the old alley. He sees the men he’d been following, one holding out his hand in an invitation, the other reaching behind him to pull out a gun. And he sees Peter, standing frozen behind Barnes, eyes wide in his pale face as he watches his life be sold away like a piece of fucking property.
Jason hooks his grapple and jumps in one smooth motion, and starts shooting before his feet have touched the ground.
The goons go down like flies. They’re easy, and he half expects Barnes to be easy too, and therein lies his mistake. Therein lies his failure, and the sole reason for what happens next.
He fires the gun, pointed with debilitating precision. Barnes moves, faster than humanly possible, his arm - his metal arm - crossing in front of him to shield his stomach from the bullet. And while Jason is expecting his bullet to hit home, while he’s being stupid and naive and overconfident (while he’s busy being all the things that got him killed the first time around) Barnes attacks. He swings and Jason dodges, and then out of nowhere a fist slams into Jason’s side - his injured side, fuck - and alarm bells are screaming in Jason’s head, screaming at him that he’s in over his head, he’s injured, he should initiate a panic beacon because Barnes is a fucking metahuman -
The next fist is to the temple, cracking his helmet and sending an explosion of stars across his vision just before everything goes black.
Dick: your vitals spiked, Tim’s worried
Dick: where are you?
Jason wakes to a parched throat and a headache and a side that burns like fire. He opens his eyes to dust and cobwebs and struggling light, the taste of iron thick on his tongue.
He’s tied to a metal support beam, zip-ties digging into his wrists and looped in a chain around the cool steel. His feet are free, and his mouth clear of obstruction - if he can get his wits about him, he could be out in ten minutes.
He tries to sit up, and only just manages, nausea sweeping over him like a tide as the pain in his side ramps up a notch or ten, fire digging teeth into his ribcage and a dull ache wrapping around his torso. (The wound is infected. It should have healed weeks ago, but after ripping the stitches several dozen times and not getting it the proper attention, it’s been taking a lot longer than it should, and Jason knows this, he just - it hadn’t been a problem. Not a big one, at least, not until Barnes had gone and punched it).
“Hey, mister! Uh, Jason. Hey, can you look at me? I wanna check for a concussion.”
He blinks, and Peter is crouching in front of him, holding a flashlight and looking almost scared as he holds it up to shine in Jason’s eyes. Jason flinches back, squinting and cursing at the way the motion pulls at his injury.
“Sorry,” Peter whispers, lowering the light. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but you weren’t waking up and I was worried and Mr. Barnes insisted, and...” he takes a big breath, hands moving to twist together before him. “I’m sorry.”
“Where - where are we?” Jason asks, twisting his wrists experimentally. It’ll hurt. The plastic will probably cut into his wrists, but if he’s quick about it, if he can pull at just the right angle, it’ll work. The bindings will break, and he’ll be free, and both he and Peter can escape.
Peter looks up at the dusty ceiling, then sends a quick glance over his shoulder, to the dusty window and the weak light shining through. “Abandoned office building,” he says, sitting back and looking down to examine the flashlight in his hands. “Um. Saint Jacobs and Madison. Look, I can - I’ll ask him to cut the ties for you. I’m really sorry, I don’t think you’re a bad person, but you did shoot at us and Mr. Barnes wanted to wait and talk to you first, and - it’s my fault, I wanted to make sure you were okay, so he brought you here but - he won’t be happy, but I’ll make him cut you free. I’m sorry.”
Saint Jacobs and Madison. It rings a bell, although Jason can’t place yet just where he heard the address. Maybe home to an operation he’d taken over? Not one of his, or he would have known of the interlopers. Maybe an old haunt of one of the Rogues -
“Have you been here the whole time?”
“Yeah,” Peter says, reaching up to rub a rolled up cuff against his cheek, just under his left eye. He looks tired, Jason notices. He looks tired and upset and hungry, exhausted in a way that Jason remembers all too well from his own shitty childhood.
“Hey,” he says, twisting his wrists again, testing his range of motion - “We’ll get out of this, I can get us out -”
Peter’s head snaps up, and a second later Jason hears the faint sound of approaching footsteps. He pulls, twists, and the bindings stretch - and don’t break. The plastic bites into his wrists, and the next thing - the only thing - he can do is push himself shakily to his feet, trying to gather his bearings as the room swims around him and his head bursts with pain. Peter jumps to his feet as well, making alarmed noises and reaching out to catch Jason’s elbow as he stumbles (ow, fuck, his side, his head, he must be more concussed than he thought - ) and then Barnes enters the room, hood pulled up and a plastic bag draped over his left elbow.
He freezes when he sees the two of them standing there, dark eyes flicking from Peter to Jason and back again. Jason draws his lips into a snarl, and tries to move in such a way that he can pull Peter behind him. It doesn’t really work, and then Peter steps away, he steps towards Barnes -
“You’re awake,” Barnes observes, setting the bag down on the floor as he steps forward. There’s a gun in his belt. There’s a knife in his boot, and another in his sleeve, and then there’s that weird metal arm, and - and he’s a metahuman.
Jason is wounded and restrained, but he’s faced worse odds. He’s - he hadn’t survived, but that’s not the point. The point is that his odds aren’t great, but they could be worse, and if Bruce has taught him anything it’s that gods are fallible, and men even more so.
“Fuck you,” Jason spits, bracing himself against the pole. If Barnes moves close enough, then maybe he can use his legs, he can kick him and Peter can grab the knives and cut him free, and then they can both get away.
Barnes stops short, a puzzled look crossing his face. “Excuse me?” he says, the same way he’d said it in that alley - disbelieving, like he doesn’t think he’s heard right, or like he thinks Jason might have said something by accident.
It’s kind of the opposite reaction Jason is going for, but before he can keep going, before he can really start egging Barnes on, Peter interrupts, stepping forward again with a concerned look.
“He has a mild concussion, and I think we should take a look at his side - Mr. Barnes, he’s not gonna hurt us. I think it was just a misunderstanding.” Peter looks up at Barnes with the same wide-eyed expression he’d sprung on Jason in that corner store, and even from three feet away it pulls something at Jason’s heart (fuck, the kid’s good). “Can we please untie him now? He’s not a threat.”
Jason would beg to differ, but Barnes doesn’t need to know that.
“You shot at me,” Barnes points out, nodding at Peter but not taking his eyes off of Jason.
“You were about to fucking sell a kid,” Jason snaps back, beginning to slowly twist his wrists again. The cuts hurt like hell, but he needs to get free.
“What?” Peter blurts out, “No he - oh.” He blinks, and then reaches forward to grab Barnes’ arm. “Oh! No, Mr. Barnes isn’t - sorry, that’s not what I meant! I mean, he would never - oh god. Mr. Barnes, I swear -”
Barnes has gone completely still, first at Jason’s words and then at Peter’s touch. He takes a slow, deliberate step away from Peter, and then says, still with that quiet calm that sets Jason’s teeth on edge “I think you may be under the wrong impression. I am not in the business of selling one man to another, let alone selling a child.” He takes a small step forward, still just out of reach. “Do you believe me?”
Jason doesn’t know what to believe. It’s... possible, maybe, that he doesn’t have the full picture. He thinks of the corner store - of the bruises, of the questions, of the way Barnes had pushed Peter behind him. Possessive, Jason had thought. Protective, another voice whispers. He thinks of the park bench, and the meager money Peter had managed to earn, and his insistence on meeting Barnes on time. Strict, Jason had surmised. Scared, he grudgingly allows. And in that alley, he had assumed. The man had asked a question, Barnes had answered, and Jason had made an assumption and gone in guns blazing, ready to shoot first and ask questions later.
Dick had yelled at Jason (really yelled, not the shouting that carries through the manor all hours of the day) a grand total of once over the course of both his lives. It had been a rainy night, visibility at zero, and Dick had been visiting and decided to take a turn patrolling with Robin. So out they’d gone, and Jason had thought it would be fun to run ahead, and between one step and the next he’d found himself tumbling off a twelve-storey building.
Nightwing had saved him, but only just. And over the next ten minutes, after the initial hug and check-over, Jason had become intimately acquainted with exactly how impulsive, rash, and overconfident he was.
To this day, it would seem, the lesson has yet to sink in. He’s not good at reading people, not like Dick is; he doesn’t have the patience Bruce had tried to instill in him, he has no interest in the hunt - only in the chase, and the kill. The Replacement is a better detective than he will ever be, and Jason knows this is what got him killed the first time around. And it might very well be what gets him killed the second.
He doesn’t know if he believes Barnes. Looking at the evidence, though, really looking at the way Peter moves around him, he thinks he might just have to.
“If I say yes will you untie me?” he finally manages to grind out, because like hell is he going to admit that he was wrong.
Barnes steps forward and snaps the restraints without further question, leaving Jason to scowl and rub his wrists and wince his way two steps from the pole before stopping abruptly, hand moving to his side.
“It’s infected,” Barnes says, eyes tracking Jason’s movements. He takes a step back and beckons. “I’ve brought antiseptic and bandages. Let’s get you patched up.”
Jason almost refuses the help on principle, but in his current state there’s really no point. He can feel how bad it is, he doesn’t want to imagine what it looks like; granted, it’s half Barnes’ fault for punching him there, but if he brings that up Barnes will just bring up the attempted homicide, and they’ll be back to square one.
“Ooh, mashed potatoes!” Peter exclaims, bending over to examine the contents of the bag. He holds a box of dried potato mix up in the air triumphantly, waving it in the air. “I knew I should have shot down that pigeon, we could’ve had a real feast.”
“We’re making soup,” Barnes says, pulling out a little brown bottle and a cloth as Jason tries not to hobble on his way over. “But first we’re cleaning Jason’s wound - I’m Bucky, by the way. I guess you’ve met Peter?”
“Yeah,” Jason grunts, lowering himself to the floor as Peter materializes what turns out to be a gas stove, handmade by the looks of it. A bowl of water is placed on the rickety supports, and then the rag is thrown in, and it really dawns on Jason that he messed up. That Bucky isn’t an abusive asshole, and Peter isn’t being trafficked - that even though they’re both homeless, even though they both hold a distinct New York accent, even though winter is drawing near - things could be worse.
Just this once, Jason is glad to have been proven wrong.
Dick: trackers are dark, just need a sign of life, swear I’ll leave you alone
Dick: where are you J
“So what are you doing all the way in Gotham?” Jason asks, staring at his bowl of mashed potato soup and trying to figure out if he can politely refuse. It probably tastes fine. It’s probably great, actually, considering the way Peter just siphoned up his own bowl, but Jason isn’t the one who’s starving. He’s not the one who needs it, but Bucky seems to be on to him, and any time Jason moves to discreetly pass the bowl to the kid on his left, Bucky sends him a glare that makes Jason reconsider all his previous assumptions.
“Surprise vacation,” Bucky says, just as Peter says, around a mouthful of soup: “Ti’ machn brk ‘n ‘uppds dimenshn.”
“Sorry, what?”
Bucky sighs, Peter swallows, and says “Time machine broke and hopped us over a dimension.”
Jason stares.
“Kid tripped while carrying a highly sensitive machine,” Bucky elaborates, setting his empty bowl down and reaching for the water. “Just luck he tripped into me.”
“But did you see that puppy?” Peter asks, cheeks tinged red in the dusty light. “I mean, who wouldn’t have tripped?”
Jason could argue. He could point out that dimension travel is the most outlandish thing he’s ever heard, that no way these two are from another dimension. But he doesn’t, because the thing is, Jason grew up in Gotham. Jason grew up in a city with its own micro-climate, he’s seen men turn into monsters and monsters into men, he’s watched the impossible thrive. Strange shit happens all the time, and never more so than in Gotham.
Jason is alive; in his books, nothing is stranger than this.
So he nods like the words that just came out of Peter’s mouth make any sense, and he says “You must have shit luck to end up in a place like Gotham.”
“The worst,” Peter instantly confirms, before hesitating. “I mean, not that Gotham’s all bad! It has some great things about it, like... well, for instance...”
“Don’t strain yourself,” Jason says, “This place is fucked.”
“No, I didn’t mean... do you guys feel that?”
Bucky frowns, straightening. “Feel what?”
“Like - like a wind, but not - I don’t know...”
Jason sets his half empty bowl down, not liking how tense Peter suddenly is. “Did you hear somethi-”
The world explodes.
Dick: stop messing around
Dick: where are you?
There’s dust on his face. His side hurts again, coal slowly kindling to burning flame against his ribs. There’s a noise like gears grinding, and the earth trembles minutely every time another slap of concrete shifts, tips, and crashes to the ground above them. His ears are ringing, sound muddled and heightened and coming in waves, not particularly loud but surrounding, pressing in from the darkness.
“Peter!”
That’s Bucky, yelling in Jason’s ear. Jason flinches, bringing his hands up, lifting, searching for - there. Concrete, immovable, not two feet above his head.
“H-here, I’m here.”
It’s not a coffin. It’s not dirt on his fingers, it’s not silk threading through his fingernails, it’s not hard wood splintering at his frantic touch. (Fire burns his skin, broken bones shift, and Jason can’t breathe.)
“Jason?”
He can’t breathe.
“Jason!”
A hand on his shoulder, and he reaches up, wrapping shaking fingers around it. “Fuck,” he whispers, and another hand finds its way to his face, and then his chest. It’s Peter, patting him down, making sure he’s still alive when he thinks he might be dead.
“I can get us out, I - it’s going to be okay, it’ll be alright, just - I can get us out, I can save us, it’s okay.”
It doesn’t sound like it’s okay. For all that he’s trying to be reassuring, Jason can hear how Peter’s voice is shaking; he can feel the tremor in the light touch against his dust-stained skin, he can hear how his breath comes thin and shallow through the dark.
“Anyone injured?” Bucky asks after a heartbeat, and Jason grunts in the negative. Nothing new, at least, nothing that will hinder their expedient exit.
Peter hesitates just a second too long before contributing his own slightly muffled “... No.”
“Bullshit,” Jason calls, just as Bucky lets out a huff of air that could be considered a laugh, and Peter makes a small noise of indignation. The ringing in his ears is slowly clearing, and he’s feeling more grounded than he had a second ago. He’s not alone. He’s not in Ethiopia - there was an explosion, sure, he’s in a collapsed building, and that sucks, but - it’s not like he’s dying. And he’s not dead, and listening to Peter sputter some excuse about being fine, and nothing to worry about, and totally okay allows him to catch his breath and really assess the situation like he knows how.
Saint Jacobs and Madison. The recollection comes too late, an old office building on the outskirts of the Bowery, set for demolition. Out of use for upwards of ten years, it had been a hotspot for crime, and the mayor had just last November decided to tear it down. It had played host to Black Mask, the Riddler, Scarecrow - even the Joker had left his mark, painting a red smile across the west facing wall. Even now, years later, Jason can still make out the red stain, too far absorbed into the bricks to be washed away by the rain and snow.
It takes a minute before Jason can draw up the courage to move, rolling over and pushing with his hands until he’s on his knees. He’s unfathomably grateful when nothing obstructs the motion, and he manages to maneuver himself into a half-crouched position before his head hits the slap of concrete above them and he freezes, holding out his hands to test his full range of motion.
Bucky and Peter are still arguing about Peter’s injuries.
“It’s just a dislocation!” Peter protests, and then, at Bucky’s judgmental silence: “Look, it’s practically almost healed, it could’ve been a lot worse!”
Something buzzes in the dark, and Jason startles so bad he hits his head against the low ceiling. Peter lets out a surprised squeak, and then there’s a hurried shuffling, the shifting of fabric and the crunch of loose gravel, and light.
Peter is kneeling three feet away, face and torso bathed in blue light as he holds the cracked screen of a phone to his face. His right arm is cradled awkwardly to his side, and the entire right half of his face is covered in blood - the only reason Jason doesn’t immediately panic is because he can see the shallow cut just above his ear, and he knows how much head wounds bleed. Bucky is crouched to the left, blinking owlishly in the sudden light, shoulders and back braced against the ceiling. He doesn’t appear to be injured, and it takes Jason a second to realize why he isn’t moving. It takes him a minute to figure out that it’s Bucky holding up the ceiling, that it’s Bucky who’s keeping them from being crushed alive.
“Someone’s calling you,” Peter says, frowning, and just as Jason realizes that that’s his phone in Peter’s hand (before he can say don’t you fucking dare -), the kid puts his finger to the screen and swipes up.
“Jason, thank god, why haven’t you been answering my texts?” Dick’s voice echoes through the enclosed space, and Jason has the sudden, irrational urge to punch something.
“Why the hell was that stalker tracking my vitals?” Jason snaps, instead of anything remotely useful (yes, he’s read the texts, no it’s not any of their damn business). “No, you know what, how does he have my vitals?! Because I sure as hell didn’t give him access to my trackers.” Only Bruce and Alfred have access to those, and this only because Alfred had sprung the idea on him while Jason was halfway through one of Alfred’s heavenly jumbo-berry pies.
“Not important right now!” Bucky snaps, and just like that reality comes crashing back down. Peter holds the phone out silently and Jason accepts it, trying not to imagine how smug Dick is going to be when he learns that Jason actually is in need of a rescue.
God, he’s never going to live this down.
“You know that old office complex on the corner of Saint Jacobs and Madison,” he begins. “The one that was set for demolition?”
There are two seconds of awful silence before Dick lets out a quiet curse. “We’re on our way. I’ve called B, he and Robin will be there with the Batmobile as soon as they can. Are you injured? Who else is there?”
Jason lists off the information, staring at the floor as Peter starts poking around the debris and Bucky watches in silence from the shadows, eyes never leaving him.
“Stay on the line,” Dick instructs once he’s run out of questions, and Jason gives an affirmative grunt before holding the phone away from his face, squinting to make out the little icons: seventeen percent, because he’s an idiot who doesn’t charge his phone before going on death-defying missions.
“Might be a little hard,” he admits, “my phone’s gonna be dead in a few minutes.”
“What about comms?”
“Comms are gone,” Jason says, sending a narrow-eyed look at Peter. “Unless you got something else in those pockets of yours?”
Peter actually checks his pockets before coming up empty, sending a guilty, apologetic look at Jason.
“Do you hear that?” Bucky asks suddenly, from his place in the corner. He doesn’t seem to be struggling with the weight, and Jason has so far opted to ignore him rather than question the fact that he’s some sort of metahuman, but as soon as he speaks up Jason tenses, swiveling to face the other man even as he cocks his head to the side, listening. Peter has gone completely still, eyes fluttering shut as he too listens.
Gravel shifts, falling through cracks as the wreckage settles. There’s water dripping somewhere nearby, the soft pat-spat echoing strangely through the rubble. If he really concentrates, Jason thinks he might be able to hear the faint sounds of traffic, but that could also be his imagination, and not something he’s willing to bet on.
“What?” he asks.
“Someone - a voice -” Bucky grunts, shifting slightly so he can reach up and rub at his ears. The whole ceiling shudders, and Peter flinches, instantly jerking upright to raise a bracing hand. Like that will do anything if Bucky decides to give up the goat and drop the sky on their heads.
“What’s going on?” Dick asks, voice strangely muffled - almost as though he’s speaking through cotton - and that’s when Jason hears it. That’s when something cuts through the background noise, through the tap-tip-taping of the water, through the scrape of iron rebar on dusty concrete -
The faint sound of laughter.
Only years of Bruce’s training - years of Willis punching silence into him - keeps Jason from screaming. Even as the blood drains from his face, even as everything becomes numb and cold, even as he registers that he’s coming perilously close to fleeing his own mind, Jason manages to remain silent, to remain still and collected (although this might have more to do with the freeze response than anything he ever learned as Robin). His heart is beating in triple-time, so fast and sudden it feels like it’s going to burst out of his chest, and he hopes, suddenly and viciously, that this time he might stay dead.
“I don’t hear anything, I don’t know -”
That’s Peter, speaking frantically into the phone -
“Someone’s here - someone -” Bucky looks exactly how Jason feels, bone white and about as sturdy as a leaf (which doesn’t bode well for the man currently keeping them all from being crushed alive). His voice sounds odd, off in some fundamental way, the vowels shaping to form a faintly Slavic accent - as though his thoughts are sliding to a foreign language even as he speaks to them in one they will understand. He’s begun to tremble slightly, although Jason doesn’t think it’s from the weight of the concrete - he’s been holding it effortlessly for the past few minutes, and even now there’s nothing about fatigue in the way his muscles tense under the weight.
“JASON!”
And that’s Dick, shouting for Jason’s attention. “Listen, I think I know what’s going on, it’s not real, it’s not - we’re on our way, I promise you, just stay where you are and don’t - the Scarecrow! Crane, Jason, he was the last to -”
Dick’s voice cuts off as the phone dims and then darkens, plunging them into darkness.
“Uh. Okay, okay - let’s not panic, guys? Okay?”
It’s fear toxin. It’s Crane’s fucking gas, stored in an abandoned building for who knows how long, released as the building came crashing down upon it. It’s not very potent, because Jason can still think, he can still rationalize, but it’s potent enough that he hears the tap-tap of hard soles on concrete, the whistle of metal through air, that godawful cackle. It’s potent enough that his heart is in his throat, ears ringing and hands shaking; it’s strong enough for him to be terrified.
“Fear toxin,” Jason manages, trying to keep his voice under control. “It’s not real, it’s not - it’s not real, jesus fucking christ it’s not real!”
“Okay, okay,” Peter repeats, voice barely above a frightened whisper. “I - yeah, that makes sense. So - so we’ll wait for your friend to come get us, okay? I think there’s too much above us, if I move it you might be crushed, but I could try -”
“No,” Bucky suddenly interjects, voice dull and flat in a way that sends goosebumps crawling over Jason’s skin. Jason is about to speak up when Bucky speaks again, voice rising, and Jason realizes that Bucky isn’t talking to them.
“No, no, shut up, NO!”
“Mr. Barnes, wait - no it’s not real, wait - !”
Jason doesn’t know what’s happening, but the next instant the entire structure they’re trapped within shudders and shifts, and there’s a deafening crash to his right as Peter lets out a strangled yell and Bucky gives an incoherent shout. And then there’s another sound, clang!, the distinct sound of metal hitting concrete, and Jason thinks he might throw up, because he is not imagining it. And again, and again, and it sounds like Peter’s trying not to cry to his left and Bucky’s punching and scraping at the wall to his right, and it’s not a crowbar but to Jason’s toxin-addled brain, it sure as hell sounds like one.
He doesn’t stand a chance against a metahuman like Bucky. Maybe if he had his gear, maybe if he had his helmet and a friendly voice in his ear, but not now, not when he can’t even sit up straight, not when he’s blind and panicked and struggling to distinguish nightmare from reality. So no, he can’t subdue Bucky with actions, but maybe he can calm him with words. Jason knows how to deescalate; it’s just that there’s usually not much point. Not until he’s trapped under a building that wants to crush him alive, not until there’s a meta panicking not three feet away.
“Barnes!” he cries hoarsely, “Bucky, hey! It’s me, it’s - Jason. And Peter. It’s just the gas, it’s not real -”
Something moves in the corner of his eye, something white and red and green, and Jason squeezes his eyes shut, flinching even as he continues trying to talk Bucky down. It’s not real, it’s not fucking real, but god what if it is -
He remembers being Robin, being twelve years old and being invincible. He remembers running without thought, flying without form, daring without limit, and he remembers crashing into Scarecrow’s lab, and he remembers being captured. He remembers listening as Crane kept spouting out all his evil plans, how Robin was the bait and Batman the catch, and he remembers that first inkling of fear, that twinge of something akin to mortality. And then Batman had come, and Batman had fought and he had won like Jason knew he would, pushing through all of Scarecrow's traps, wading through a hellish fog of nightmares to be by Jason’s side.
How’d you do it? Jason had asked, when it was over. How’d you overcome your fear?
I replaced it with one of my own design, Bruce had said, hand on Jason’s shoulder, something soulless and haunted slinking away behind his eyes. Fear is a tool, Jason; one you must master lest it be turned against you.
Jason hadn’t understood at the time, not really, but he sure as hell understands now. He understands taking the name of his murderer, he understands wielding the weapon of his death, and he understands becoming that which he most fears. (He understands, maybe, why Bruce does what he does, and why he became the man he is today.)
“Bucky!” Jason yells again, hating how loud his voice is in the small space but raising it anyway. “C’mon, talk to me, what are you hearing?”
Laughter. Just behind him, just to his left, a footfall next to his ear. A little louder, lamb chop -
“No.” Bucky gasps, but he’s stopped punching the wall, so Jason will take that as a win. “Please, please, please no -”
“What. Do you hear?”
... you’re being awful quiet...
“Longing,” Bucky croaks, and Jason understands just enough Russian to know the meaning of the word. Peter is concerningly quiet to his left, but he can only focus on one catastrophe at a time (two, if he includes the one currently playing out behind his closed lids). Bucky continues unprompted, voice shattering the darkness. “Rusted. Seven- seventeen.”
“It’s not real, Mr. Barnes,” Peter suddenly speaks up, voice tight and pained, and it occurs to Jason, slowly, that Bucky isn’t holding up the roof anymore. “And even if it were, you wouldn’t hurt us, I - I trust you. I wouldn’t let you, anyway.”
If Bucky isn’t holding up the roof, and if Jason isn’t squashed like an ant under a boot, then that means -
That means that Peter is somehow holding up a building’s worth of rubble. That means that Peter, the malnourished kid with the dislocated shoulder, is shouldering who knows how much weight just to keep them alive. That means that Peter is another fucking meta.
If Jason weren’t in the middle of staving off a severe panic attack, he would definitely have thoughts on this. As it is, he’s trying to drown out the Joker’s voice with Bucky’s, with minimal success.
He doesn’t know what the words mean to Bucky. But he can hazard a guess, and he can guess that it’s not the meaning of the words that Bucky is afraid of, but rather the words themselves.
“Keep talking,” he says, reaching out blindly, stupidly, searching for human contact. “Just keep talking, tell me what you hear.”
His hand finds a knee, and then a calloused hand wraps around his forearm, fingers bruisingly tight. He doesn’t try to pull away, and Bucky doesn’t let go.
“Daybreak.” The words come out in fractured fragments, each one falling into the darkness with a terrible heaviness. “Furnace. Nine. Benign. H-homecoming... One.” And then, barely more than a terrified breath - “Freight car.”
Peter’s muffled breaths sound like laughter in Jason’s ears. Bucky’s fingers feel like iron against his skin, and his tears feel like blood on his cheeks. The air smells of hot sand and cigarette smoke, and his words taste of death and betrayal and loneliness.
“Make it yours,” he whispers, afraid of what’s coming next, terrified because the toxin isn’t strong but it’s getting stronger, collecting and settling in the wreckage around them. “It can’t hurt you if it’s yours, become what you fear and you’ll never be afraid again. Don’t be afraid, don’t - don’t be scared.”
“We just have to wait,” Peter puts in, “We just have to - um. S-someone’s coming. Someone is , Jason’s friend - Bucky?” Peter’s voice rises at the end, and it occurs to Jason that Peter has been remarkably calm so far. Almost as though he weren’t affected, almost as though his enhancements were slowing the effect of the gas - but the gas is getting stronger, and maybe the enhancements aren’t enough anymore. “Mr. Barnes, I - I don’t feel so good, I think -”
It’s not fair. It’s not fair that they’re trapped under a mountain of rubble, driven slowly and agonizingly mad by their worst nightmares. It’s not fair that between the three of them, it’s up to Peter to do the saving, and it’s not fair that it’s up to Jason to explain this. It’s not fair that when he opens his eyes he sees the Joker smiling mockingly above him, and it’s not fair that the next words out of his mouth are honest and cruel, exactly the sort of thing Batman would say in a situation like this:
“If you let go, we’re dead. Tell me you aren’t going to panic.”
“I’m trying, I’m sorry,” Peter sobs, “I know it’s not real, I know that, I’m s-sorry, I - no. No, Mr. Barnes please, please why is she here, why is - May? Wake up, wake up please, I’m sorry -”
When Jason sees the blinking red in the corner of his eye, all he feels is numb relief. He knows this part, he knows how it goes and he knows it’s almost over, he’s almost done. He doesn’t need to be scared anymore; he knows death, and he knows it’s nothing to be afraid of.
Bucky is muttering to his right, syllables spilling in an incoherent stream from his mouth, ten words repeated on loop over and over and over. Peter is still crying to his left, but he’s fallen silent, only his shaking breaths audible as he does what he’s told, and keeps them alive.
On some level of his subconscience, Jason knows it’s all a drug-induced hallucination. He knows the increased heart-rate is a direct result of the chemicals, he knows the shaking isn’t as bad as it feels, he knows that when he smells his own blood and feels his bones shift and break and tastes ash on his tongue, it’s not real. And still it doesn’t prepare him for what comes next, it doesn’t prepare him for the sound of Alfred’s voice - calm and reassuring in a nightmare of all his worst imaginings - and it doesn’t prepare him for the familiarity of the words as Alfred reads them quietly into the darkness:
... theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die. Into the Valley of Death...
When Jason opens his eyes, the slab of concrete that had been covering them is gone. Beams of light filter through the dark, bending and bouncing and reflecting strangely through the thick air, and distantly he recognizes that there are voices speaking, different than before. The light jumps across the cracked concrete, flashing across the blood and tears mixing down Peter’s cheeks and glancing over Bucky’s arms, raised to press into his ears. It finally comes to a halt on Jason, pooling around him and illuminating the small space in a strange mirage of color.
... they that had fought so well came through the jaws of Death - back from the mouth of hell.
Jason has always been a bit of a hypocrite. It was never the Joker that terrified him, his death had never been the problem because Jason isn’t afraid of death, not anymore. He might fear the pain and violence that precedes it, he might never want to experience that again, but that’s not what makes him a coward - that’s not what truly haunts him.
Water drips plick-plack, a burst pipe filling their little hollow, and when Jason looks, when the beam strikes the water and disperses through its murky depths, the color of the water is poisoned, violent, and decayed. The color of rage, the color of jealousy, the color of life in place of death.
Green.
Jason screams.
He comes back slowly in bits and pieces, a tide returning to the shore. Voices fade in and out, too fast, too far, too young. Talia sings through the silence, green fills his vision, and Jason retreats, tucking himself away where he can’t hurt anyone - where no one can hurt him.
It’s fear toxin, a small part of him points out. So fucking what? Jason decides, too exhausted to fight. It feels real, and that’s all that matters.
He blinks, and a cavernous ceiling meets his gaze, swallowing the darkness like the mouth of a jagged beast. More voices fill his periphery, and a hand lands somewhere near his head, almost touching, almost reassuring. The Joker laughs, and he closes his eyes.
When he really wakes, it’s Bucky who greets him, standing like a ghost at the foot of his bed. He’s dressed in a large black shirt - something belonging to Bruce, Jason hazards - and his metal arm glints in the dim lights. His face is pale, his eyes shadowed, but when he meets Jason’s gaze they’re alert, steady and assessing.
“It’s been six hours,” Bucky says softly, and Jason nods slowly. Everything hurts - it feels like he’s run a marathon, muscles sore and aching and throat parched, mentally and physically exhausted. When he raises a hand to push at his sweat-soaked hair, he sees that his fingers are shaking.
Dick is curled up in a chair next to him, brows pulled tight even in sleep. He’s still wearing Nightwing’s suit, and Jason wonders if he’s left his side at all. Probably not. He’s probably settled on a stupidly selfless course of action, believing that Jason would somehow be comforted by his presence, even in the midst of delirium.
It irks Jason just how much it means to him that Dick is still here.
“Peter?” he asks, tearing his eyes away from his older brother.
“Completely, one-hundred percent fine,” Bucky says, raising his fingers in quotes. “Making friends, scaring the shit out of whoever’s supervising him. For the first time in about a month, that’s not me.”
Jason can’t help the soft snort that escapes. “Is this what it feels like to be old?” he asks, instead of is this what it feels like to be weak? He knows it’s not fair to compare himself to enhanced individuals, he knows he’s at a disadvantage; but maybe he’s more like his old man than he’ll ever admit, because there’s a small voice in the back of his head that whispers that being human isn’t an excuse.
“You’re not old,” Bucky says, and he sounds weary, tired in a way that speaks of more than sleeplessness. “You’re not much older than Peter, are you?”
“I’m twenty,” Jason protests.
“That’s five years,” Bucky says, “That’s younger than I was when I went to war.”
“War?”
“It’s a long story,” Bucky looks down, and Jason doesn’t know what he expects, but the look on Bucky’s face isn’t bitter or haunted - it’s thoughtful, contemplative, and when he does look back up there’s a faint trace of a smile across his lips. “Thank you,” he says, “for what you said down there. For giving me control. You saved me.”
“Peter saved us,” Jason points out, feeling strangely disconcerted. Maybe it’s the aftereffects of the toxin (in the corner of his eye, green water laps steadily at silent sands; somewhere not so distant, someone is still laughing). Maybe he isn’t used to receiving recognition, and maybe he doesn’t like it now that he has. Maybe he simply doesn’t like the idea of a child having to save two full-grown adults, who should have known how to save themselves.
“Thank you,” Bucky repeats, gaze steady. “That’s all I wanted to say.”
The next morning, Jason makes it up the stairs, grumbling as Dick hovers behind him, and making a face when Alfred ambushes him with chamomile tea and antibiotics and a lecture on the proper care of bullet wounds.
“You’re becoming just like your father,” Alfred remarks, and Jason resolves to never let another wound fester ever again.
Peter is at the table when Jason finally makes it to the kitchen, shoulder to shoulder with Tim as the two of them fiddle with some sort of weird looking machine thing. Peter has a screwdriver in one hand and knife tucked behind his ear, and a pristine, never-before-opened physics textbook tucked under his left elbow as he dictates the “they’re-more-like-suggestions” laws of physics and the evolutionary danger of puppies.
Tim has his crutches propped up next to him, and his computer open in front of him (in complete violation to Alfred’s no-work-in-the-kitchen rule) and has it hooked up to the machine, his fingers flying over the keys even as he half listens to Peter’s rambling. Jason can already tell he’s had way too much coffee; he’s looking forward to the resulting crash, in the sort of horrified way in which one looks forward to the climax of a horror movie.
And then there’s Bruce, eating the last bowl of Lucky Charms over a first edition copy of All Quiet on the Western Front, dark circles under his eyes and a mug of coffee steaming at his elbow. Bucky is seated just across from him, looking not much better but at least like he knows what sleep is. They’re both studiously ignoring the two teenagers, with varying degrees of success.
Jason kind of expects a lecture. He expects Bruce to stand up and ask him what happened, and he expects to give the honest truth (I messed up, I made a mistake, I jumped without looking, I didn’t wait) and he expects Bruce to tell him to do better, to be all the things he isn’t, all the things that Robin is that Jason can never be.
Bruce stands, and Jason tenses, and then -
Peter stutters mid sentence, words tripping over each other in distraction as Jason’s heart trips and stumbles in confusion. Because this isn’t cold, this isn’t stern, this isn’t fear turned into loathing. This is a hug, Bruce’s arms wrapping around his shoulders, and this is Jason hugging him back, too startled and confused to do anything else.
Dick makes a cooing sound, Peter gives Jason a quick wave from across the table, and Jason pushes himself away, scowling as he tries to maintain some dignity. Bruce lets him go with a tired smile, and it occurs to Jason, abruptly, that he will never win.
“How are you feeling?” Bruce asks, eyes moving over every inch of Jason and making his skin crawl.
“Like crap,” Jason says honestly. “You’re slowing down in your old age.”
And that wipes the smile right off Bruce’s face. It’s not as satisfying as it should be.
Dick sighs loudly, Alfred makes a tutting noise from the corner of the room, and Jason grits his teeth and grinds out, with immense effort: “Thank you.”
Bruce raises a hand to drag down his face, sending a frown in Alfred’s direction. “You don’t need to thank me for saving your life, Jason,” he says tiredly. “Is it still affecting you? The toxin.”
He still feels weak, shaky simply from the effort of climbing the stairs from the cave to the study. He thinks if he closes his eyes, he might still hear hard soles on concrete, he might still feel blood sticking his fingers together. He’s still afraid, but it’s not that paralyzing fear, the one that takes control of mind and body, the kind that kills. It’s faint, the memory of terror, an echo fading to nothing.
“I’m fine,” he says, hesitating just a beat too long. Bruce nods once in acceptance, although the way his brows pinch briefly indicate he doesn’t buy it for a second.
Jason’s fine. He’s alive, and so are Peter and Bucky, and maybe there’s an echo in his ears and maybe there’s a bit of green behind his eyes, but he’s creative, he can adapt. He can roll with the punches, and find an easy distraction, and get out from under Bruce’s heavy gaze.
“Replacement!” he says loudly, spinning on his heel and pinning Tim in place with a malicious glare. “I want to know why the hell you had access to my trackers.” Tim goes white, and then red. He makes a blind grab for his crutches, but Jason gets there first. “Nuh-uh. Spill.”
It takes Peter two weeks with the right materials to build a portal to another dimension. At first Jason tries to attribute this to the fact that Peter is only fixing a preexisting model - he isn’t building it from scratch, the technology already exists. And then he walks into the Batcave to see Tim skeptically watching a video on baby manatees, and Peter dismantling the machine with a hammer, and Jason is forced to reevaluate. Maybe teenagers from other dimensions are just smarter, maybe they can do this sort of thing in their sleep (then again, Peter’s hitting the thing with a hammer, so maybe not).
Whatever the process, it takes two weeks, and by the end of those two weeks Jason is frankly surprised the house is still standing.
Dick is in his element, flapping from person to person and room to room like an overexcited albatross. If he’s not draped across the couch Jason is trying to read on, he’s ambushing Tim and Peter in the hallways, dropping from the ceiling and popping out from behind tapestries to sneak-attack them with hugs and candy. And Jason already knows Tim’s quiet awe, the way he goes absolutely still at the touch as he tries to make himself as huggable as possible, he knows that the kid is a neglected little shit who validates everything Dick does without even realizing it. And then Dick hugs Peter, and Peter goes a little wide-eyed, a goofy grin spreading across his face as he returns the hug with all enthusiasm, and Jason comes to the slightly horrifying conclusion that Dick has just found a protege.
Bucky tries to help with the machine for a solid hour before giving up. And then he starts trailing Alfred around the house like a particularly menacing shadow, taking turns at watering the roses and washing the dishes, relaxing inch by inch as the days pass and nothing happens. And then he finds Jason hiding in the kitchen, making his way by sheer force of will through a recipe for chocolate croissants, and Jason learns that he’s not the only one who likes the bake (he’s not the only one who likes to stress bake).
And then Bucky lets slip that he’s actually over a hundred years old, and Bruce joins them in the kitchen, asking quiet, careful questions about the Great Depression, the second World War, and the mechanism by which Bucky became a ‘supersoldier.’ And Bucky answers, stilted at first, a little suspiciously (and Jason isn’t known for his subtlety, but sometimes he thinks Bruce might be an entirely different species for all that he knows of tact) but at some point, as Bruce listens with open curiosity, never pushing too far and always finding the right words, Bucky stops holding back, the answers to the questions flowing smoothly and confidently through the flour-filled air.
“Do you wish you had done anything differently?” Bruce asks at one point.
“I wish I had locked Steve in a basement - I wish I had never let him join the war.”
And Bruce looks at Jason, and before that look can speak, before that look can take on any sort of meaning, Jason shoves a plateful of cookies at him and orders “Stop being useless and bring these to the Terrible Two. And then go mope with Alfred, I don’t want any of your bullshit nonsense.”
On Monday of the second week, Bruce introduces Peter to their modest chemistry lab, and Peter introduces them to Spider-Man.
“I could have told you this was a bad idea,” Bucky says benignly, clutching a mug of tea and watching as Dick takes a turn with the web-shooters, diving from the stalagmites and cackling as the laws of gravity promptly retire.
Bruce has a bit of the webbing between his fingers, and is rubbing it with a thoughtful look, a look that Jason doesn’t like one bit.
“Bruce -”
There’s a sudden yell, an alarmed shout, and Jason looks up just in time to see Dick go careening into the giant animatronic dinosaur that Bruce has yet to explain the origins of. Bruce flinches slightly, and then reaches up to pinch the bridge of his nose with a look of mild irritation. “Excuse me,” he says, a little stiffly, “It seems Dick has lost his common sense. I’ll be back.” And then he marches off to where Dick is laughing and Peter is fretting and Tim is collecting blackmail with a camera Jason thought he’d chucked into the abyss long ago.
And then week two comes to an end, and Peter comes in to lunch with his machine clutched under his arm and Tim on his heels, and a strangely reluctant look on his face.
“It’s finished,” he says, placing it on the table. Jason looks up from his book (A Tale of Two Cities, first edition signed), and Bucky turns away from the game of chess that Bruce has been patiently teaching him to play. (Jason has a suspicion that Bucky already knows how to play chess; he has a suspicion that he’s actually quite good, and for some unfathomable reason simply doesn’t want to win.)
“How do you know it will work?” Bruce asks, standing up to better examine the thing.
Peter looks confused. “Physics?”
“He means how do you know you’ll survive,” Jason translates, setting his book to the side and pushing himself to his feet to join them.
“According to our models,” Tim speaks up, “Transdimensional mortality rates are at an all time low of two-point-two percent.”
Bruce’s expression spasms, and Peter says, voice slightly panicked, “No! No, you’re forgetting significant figures, it’s two percent, and even then that doesn’t take into account the fact that we’ve done this before, which gives us an inherent advantage -”
“When the risks are less than one percent - when the risks are zero,” Bruce interrupts, raising his voice, “then, you may make the journey.”
“Tim,” Peter says, scowling and crossing his arms. “Run the program again.”
It only takes another eight hours for Bruce and Peter to whittle the percentage down to zero-point-three-four percent (“Zero percent, significant figures!”), and by then Bucky and Dick have gathered their meager belongings from around the manor. Alfred has a bag of food packed and ready to go, and Jason is trying to come to terms with the fact that he will never see Peter or Bucky ever again.
“Hey.”
Jason looks to his left, to where Peter has materialized, an earnest smile on his face as he tosses a pen absentmindedly between his hands.
“You ready?” Jason asks.
“Yeah,” Peter says, and then “Thank you, for - you know. Looking out for us. For me. Even before everything, even when you thought Mr. Barnes was... yeah. Thanks.”
“Yeah,” Jason says, shrugging and looking away. This sucks. It’s been two weeks, and they’ve been to hell and back together, and people shouldn’t have to say goodbye. “It was the least I could do.”
“Anyway,” Peter continues, reaching out lightning quick to wrap his arms around Jason (he’s been practicing, there’s something very familiar about this) and Jason, without thought, without hesitation, reaches over and hugs him back.
And then Peter and Bucky are lining up with the machine held between them, Peter shooting a crooked smile and a thumbs-up at Tim, and Bucky looking like a man about to face the music. Bucky wraps an arm around Peter’s shoulders, Peter drops the machine on the floor, and they both disappear in a swirling vortex of blue and white sparks.
“How do we know they made it?” Jason asks into the awful silence that follows. Dick wraps his arms around his stomach, lips pulled down in a frown as he considers the now-empty platform. Bruce is at the computer, running Tim’s model again and monitoring atmospheric fluxes - they all know he won’t find anything.
And then Tim’s phone chimes, and Tim’s face lights up into the biggest grin Jason has ever seen, and he lets out a whoop, punching the air with his fist.
“They made it!” he shouts, and Jason is by his side in an instant, snatching the phone from his hands.
Peter: *sparkler emoji* we made it! *confetti emoji*
Peter: *selfie holding a puppy*
Peter: ISNT SHE THE CUTEST
“What the fuck,” Jason snaps, shooting out a hand to smack the back of Tim’s head. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me you have interdimensional cell coverage?!”