Archive of Our Own

Waking up at dawn is the first sign that something is wrong. 

Bruce had only gotten into bed two hours ago. Patrol hadn’t been anything out of the ordinary, and the worst of the injuries between him and Jason were some scratches on Jason’s arms. Bruce had sent him to bed before checking over case files that Gordon had sent over, eyes squinting at the print on the screen. 

God, he had thought. Maybe it really was time to get some reading glasses. He’d checked in on Jason at some point in the night, tucking him in after finding him starfished on the mattress with the blanket pooled at his ankle. Bruce had moved slowly, avoiding the parts of the floor he knew creaked. Jason was a notoriously light sleeper. 

He had also sent Dick a goodnight text, to which Dick had sent back a “Gn” and the emoji of a thumbs up. Bruce held back from telling Dick to go to sleep, that it was late, and that he’d be exhausted the next morning, no matter how much it would make him look like a hypocrite. 

Then he had gone to sleep, content with the knowledge that he did not have to be up early the next morning to eat breakfast with Jason before he left for school. It was a weekend, which meant that brunch would be prepared instead, and even though Jason didn’t necessarily sleep in the way Bruce did, he liked spending Saturday mornings reading books he had stowed away and hidden under his pillow. 

Bruce thinks that Jason hasn’t picked up yet that Bruce knows he has been squirreling away books from the library to hide in his room, and Bruce is willing to let him believe that for as long as he wants. Later, when Jason trusts Bruce enough to bring it up, Bruce already has plans to propose that they get him his own bookshelf. 

None of this, however, explains why Bruce feels consciousness tugging at him, his body subconsciously telling him that it’s still too early to be up. Sure enough, when he lifts his head to check the clock, it reads that it’s barely seven in the morning. 

He groans softly, already sensing that trying to go back to sleep will be fruitless.

There’s a twinge in Bruce’s back when he sits up, and a sharp pain in his shoulders from an old injury reminding him of its existence. He stretches his arms out in front of him, testing how sore the muscles are. He almost debates lying down and staring at the wall even if he can’t go to sleep, but then there’s a crash from the room next over that rids him of his exhaustion entirely. 

He practically trips over his sheets to see what had caused it. The only place it could have come from was Jason’s room. 

Did someone break in? Did Jason fall off the bed? Did he hit his head? Did—

The door to Jason’s room opens before Bruce can get his hand on the knob. 

Jason is there looking up at him, and a quick scan tells Bruce that there’s no visible injury. Bruce looks behind him. There’s no broken window, no signs of a fight that could lead him to believe that a robber had smashed their way in. 

And then Bruce looks at Jason. Really looks at him.

“Jason?”

Bruce isn’t sure Jason’s even blinking. 

Wrong. Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong and Bruce doesn’t know what it is. 

Bruce takes a step forward. Jason flinches. Jason hadn’t flinched in reaction to Bruce like this in months. “Jason? What’s wrong? Do you feel sick?”

“No,” Jason mumbles. “No, no no no. What the fuck? What the fuck is this?”

“I think you had a nightmare,” Bruce says cautiously, careful not to take another step forward.

Bruce briefly thinks that Jason might be hallucinating, but he dismisses the thought as quickly as it comes. They didn’t encounter Scarecrow last night. Scarecrow had been in Arkham for the better part of the month, and Bruce could only pray it would stay that way. Either way, it couldn’t be fear gas affecting Jason, or even some sort of belated effect of fear gas. And Jason had been fine when he had gone to sleep last night. 

“Yeah,” Jason says weakly, but Bruce isn’t convinced that that’s all there is, even with Jason’s admittance.

“Do you want to try and sleep some more?” Bruce asks. “It’s still early.”

After a beat of Jason still staring at him, Bruce repeats the question. Jason blinks, and then shakes his head. 

“It must have been bad, huh?” Bruce says, heart squeezing in sympathy. In slow movements, he crouches down in front of Jason and puts a hand on his cheek. No fever, he thinks. 

Jason leans into his hand instinctively, like he always does. And then he freezes, head snapping straight up. Bruce drops his hand. Another warning sign. Of what, though, Bruce is no closer to figuring out.

“Jay,” Bruce says softly. “Tell me what happened.”

“Don’t call me that,” Jason says. 

“Okay,” Bruce agrees immediately. “But you have to talk to me.”

“ Don’t,” Jason snaps. 

Bruce nods, fighting the urge to prod and pry until he knows what happened. “Okay, Jason. We don’t have to talk about it now,” he says, keeping his voice light and unthreatening. “Do you want to come down for breakfast, then? I don’t think Alfred has woken up yet, but maybe you can show me how to make those omelets? I know you were helping Alfred when he was making them last week, weren’t you? Alfred sounded really proud of you for mastering it.”

Bruce is rambling now, but Jason’s eyes are still clouded over with something. Not in the way fear gas affects someone. And not the way other types of drugs do, either. It’s something made up of pure emotion that Bruce has no idea how to begin parsing through. 

“Does that sound good to you?”

Mutely, Jason nods. 

“Okay,” Bruce says. “I’ll see you down in ten?”

Jason nods again, still silent, and takes a step backward, back into his room.  

The door slams back shut. 

-

Patrol is strange, to say the least. The whole day is strange, with Jason walking around and staring at everyone and everything like it’s the first time he’s ever seen them, but patrol is where Bruce notices it especially.

Jason was a quick learner when it came to being Robin. Bruce knows he loves being Robin, and while not as aerial and acrobatic as Dick for obvious reasons, had adapted his fighting styles to incorporate large, sweeping movements, jumps with his arms outstretched and feet tucked underneath him, and quick, flighty movements to keep his opponents from landing a hit. A different type of Robin than Dick was, but undoubtedly coming into his own as a true robin despite the fact. 

Tonight though, Jason is... clumsy. While he doesn’t falter in his movements, there’s a stiffness to him that Bruce isn’t quite sure what to attribute to. If Bruce had to describe it, Jason moves like he’s not used to his body.  

Bruce’s first guess is puberty. Jason is at that age, after all. But Bruce had thought that it was still too early. Jason’s voice is still as sweet and high-pitched as ever, his height still stunted despite the minuscule growth he’s had since Bruce had taken him in, and they were still working on keeping Jason on a meal plan that would bring his weight to something approaching healthy. Bruce’s other guess is a hidden injury. Although he already knows that there is a slim chance that Jason had managed to hide an injury from him that could have affected him this much. 

Bruce keeps extra tabs on Jason throughout the night, careful to check whether or not Jason was favoring one side of his body over another, or if there was any particular body part Jason was being careful not to move. 

He decides to cut the whole night short when Jason almost trips right into the line of fire in the middle of stopping a robbery and causes Bruce twelve heart attacks at the same time. 

“Just get some rest tonight,” Bruce tells him once they’re back in the cave. “Take a shower and head upstairs. You did well tonight, Robin.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Jason says tightly. “Yell at me or bench me. But don’t fucking lie.”

Bruce sighs. “I’m not doing either of those things.” As much as he knows his dreams tonight will be haunted by the worst-case scenario, and as much as he wants to bench Jason until Jason’s old and senile, he knows how benching a Robin will go. He’s a little too familiar with it, actually. “We can patrol again tomorrow. We’re stopping for tonight though, because you could have gotten hurt.”

Jason’s jaw is clenched. He looks everywhere except at Bruce. “I could always get hurt,” he says.

Bruce ignores the point, as fair as it is. Had the day been any other day, Bruce would have acquiesced to it. Hell, they might not even be in this situation if it had been any other day. 

“That doesn’t mean you didn’t do well tonight, Jaylad,” Bruce continues. “You did just fine. You tried hard, and we were able to stop the robbery in the end. We’re just taking a break tonight so we can do even better tomorrow.”

Jason scoffs, and Bruce can see the agitation roll off of him in waves. “You? Take a break?” He asks, tone mocking. 

“Just for tonight,” Bruce says, not rising to the bait. “If you don’t want to rest just yet, you can meet me in the lounge and we can watch a movie.”

“And if I want to go to sleep?” Jason asks, fists clenched. 

“Then you can go to sleep. And Jason?”

“What?”

“Can you look at me?”

Jason looks up, reluctant. 

“Don’t worry about tonight, okay? I know you’re a capable Robin. Having an off day doesn’t change that.”

“Whatever,” Jason says, and goes upstairs without another word. 

-

Something is wrong with Jason. 

This is as much as Bruce can gather, and it’s what he’s known since the beginning. It’s frustrating enough to make him want to tear his hair out. 

Because there's nothing. No toxin or external factor controlling Jason. Nothing that could lend itself to explaining why Jason has practically changed overnight. 

Jason is quieter now, keeping to himself much like he did when Bruce had first taken him in.

He looks at Bruce and Alfred like they’re ghosts come back to life. 

Bruce is tempted to test him for toxins, even though he knows there’s absolutely nothing that he could have been exposed to without either Bruce or Alfred knowing about it. Or at the very least, Bruce getting hit with it too. He would test Jason anyways, if Jason didn’t start to keep his distance from him like his life depended on it. No more curling next to Bruce on the couch, or putting his head in Bruce’s lap to take naps, sunlight filtering in from the window as though he was an overgrown cat. 

Bruce didn’t realize how keenly he would feel the absence of it. The last time Jason had kept his distance like this, it was when he and Dick were still fighting. Things have been better now, with him and Dick approaching a relationship that’s only mildly strained now that Bruce had apologized several times over for how he acted, but it’s like at some point without him realizing it, the world had reverted itself to that period of time where he and Dick were at their worst and Jason had ended up in the middle, scared and uncomfortable with both of them. 

Jason doesn’t smile anymore, either. 

Or, not as much. 

Jason usually smiles with all teeth, ranging from snarky grins when Alfred scolds Bruce for sleeping in until the early afternoon, or genuine smiles when Bruce tells him he has signed copies of the books Jason wants to read in the library. 

There’s a gap between his two front teeth, and a chip in one of his canines. He’ll probably need braces at some point. Bruce would have taken Jason by now to get them, but Jason is still terrified of visiting the dentist, so the farthest they’ve been able to get is routine teeth cleanings. Bruce doesn’t want to push for too much too quickly, so for now, Bruce contents himself with making sure Jason brushes his teeth twice a day and flosses regularly. And indulge in how cute the gap in his smile makes him look. 

Bruce misses seeing it. Every time it happens, Bruce feels as though he can’t be any happier himself. Cute is the only word to describe it, even though he knows that Jason would likely try and punch him in the stomach if he ever told him so to his face. 

He asks Alfred privately if he’s noticed anything that could have upset Jason to this point. 

“I don’t know, Master Bruce,” Alfred says, a thoughtful look on his face. “But I’ve noticed his behavior as well. I’ll keep an eye out, sir.”

Jason is also tense. Apprehensive. The only conclusion Bruce can reach is that the fault must lie with him. He must have made a mistake somewhere. Done something to make Jason take ten steps backward in his progress. 

But if it’s that, Bruce can’t imagine where the trigger point is. Bruce will keep catching him relaxing, settling into an armchair in the library, or walking down the hallways making turns with ease. But then, it’s as though Jason realizes something, god knows what, and stops himself from relaxing all together. 

It’s like Jason is trying to force himself not to be comfortable in Wayne Manor, even when he already is. 

Bruce doesn’t know what to do.

-

“Jaylad, can we talk?”

Jason doesn’t look up from his notebook, scribbling something so quickly that the pen is barely touching the paper. When Bruce moves closer, Jason tugs the notebook closer to him, draping an arm over the text so that Bruce can’t read it. “I’m a little busy.”

“It’s just a quick question. I do want an honest answer, though.”

“Sure,” Jason says distractedly. 

“Is someone bothering you at school?” It’s Bruce’s next theory, albeit a weak one. 

Jason doesn’t look up. “No,” he says simply. 

“Are you sure? No one is saying anything mean to you? Or hurting you?”

And Bruce knows that at the very least, if someone is bothering him at school, it’s not physically. Bruce had started being extra vigilant about noting down Robin’s injuries on the field, and making sure there were no additional bruises that didn’t align with what happened on patrol the night before, ones that look like they could have come from a classmate, or a senior, or even worse, an adult. 

He had read a parenting article about bullying around the time that Dick had first started going to school. He’d read more than just one. It was Dick’s first time in a traditional schooling system, and Bruce knew that the children of the Gotham elite might not take kindly to a child who didn’t fit a background that they were used to. And while he hadn’t known who exactly would test their luck on Bruce Wayne’s ward, he wasn’t taking any chances. Children were mean. They didn’t think about things like their parents’ businesses and status when hurting a child they didn’t like. 

The articles listed dozens of ways to deal with what to do if you suspected that your child was being bullied. Nearly all of them had emphasized not to push them for a response, but to create an environment where they’d feel safe enough to come to you. 

“If you’re sure,” Bruce says, making a mental note to ask one of Jason’s teachers if they’ve noticed anything. “If you want to share anything with me, I’ll listen to you, okay? I’ll always believe you.”

The pen stills in its movement for a moment. “Okay,” Jason says, and then keeps on writing. Always writing these days. Bruce has no idea of what. It’s not homework, because Jason likes to talk to him about all of his written assignments, likes to bounce ideas off of Bruce, regardless of whether or not he agrees with Bruce’s suggestions or comments. Bruce doesn’t think it’s Jason’s self-proclaimed “future bestseller” either. Because Jason liked to talk about that too, and had this endearing habit of getting offended by actions his own characters were taking.

(“B, be serious about this! Why would Athanasia do something like this? It fits her character and all but does she know how much more writing I have to do to fix this for Isabelle?” Jason rants, pacing back and forth in Bruce’s study, waving his pen around as he does. 

“I don’t know why she would do something like this,” Bruce says, dryly. “ You created her.”

“To be Isabelle’s foil!” Jason says, puffing up indignantly. “Not to steal her husband away from him!”

Bruce rolls his eyes, chest filling with fondness. “You do understand that you have the ability to make her not do that, right?”

Jason just shakes his head. “That’s not how this works, B. Ugh. You just don’t get me!”)

Bruce doesn’t try to look at the contents of the notebook, doesn’t try to look for it even though his brain subconsciously starts to catalog all the places Jason could be hiding it at night before he goes to sleep. The only word he manages to ever see is a small ‘TIMELINE’ written in all caps at the top corner of the page. But Bruce won’t pry further than that, even if he itches to know what that means. Jason’s trust is fragile, Bruce knows, especially now when there’s obviously something Jason is keeping from him. 

Maybe it really is a book, and Jason wants to plan it out in-depth before coming to Bruce with it. Maybe it revolves around a sensitive topic, and that is why Jason is being so careful with it. 

Maybe.

-

Jason’s eyebags are getting deeper. He hasn’t been sleeping well, if at all. 

Bruce doesn’t sleep either, desperately searching for an answer. 

-

Fear gas ends up actually being a problem two weeks later, when Bruce is still no closer to understanding what happened to Jason. 

Jason is the only one to get caught in it, and Bruce had nearly broken his own record with how quickly he’d been able to drive the two of them back to the cave and administer the antidote. 

But the antidote still takes ten minutes to properly run through a person’s system. 

Unlike fear gas, whose effects are near immediate. 

“ BATMAN,” Jason screams again, eyes wide and seeing something that isn’t there. “Help me. Fuck. Help me. Someone, please. I can’t get out. I can’t do this again. Please, not again. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. Dad, DAD!”

There’s still so much unknown about Scarecrow’s fear gas, despite Bruce and Alfred finally learning how to configure a rudimentary version of an antidote. Bruce still isn’t certain if at its core, it twists your worst fears into something else to drive you insane, or if it has the ability to prod deep into your subconscious to pull even worse fears out. 

Because Bruce doesn’t understand, loses understanding entirely as Jason’s screams delve into more nonsensical things, to Jason crying about bombs and crowbars and that he doesn’t want to see green anymore, of all things.

Bruce hasn't felt this helpless in a long time. Still, he clutches Jason close to him, trying to shield his small body with Bruce’s own from the pains of the external world, trying to hold him as close as possible as if touch alone could transfer the effects of the toxin to Bruce instead. Bruce can count on one hand the number of times Jason had called him ‘dad’ and each time had been a memory held close to his chest. He doesn’t need it to be said to know that that’s what he is to Jason, and to Dick too, but each time is a balm to the piece of him still grieving that he’d lost over half of his family in a single night in an alleyway. 

“I’m here,” Bruce says, lips pressed against Jason’s forehead. “Dad’s right here. It’s okay, Jason. You’re in the Batcave. You’re safe. No one can hurt you here.”

He can taste sweat against his lips, and Jason’s yell makes his ears ring, but he doesn’t care. He talks until his own voice is hoarse, until Jason goes limp against him and the antidote finally takes effect.

-

Bruce finds Jason by chance. 

He’d been ready to go to bed the moment his back hit the mattress, feeling sleep tug at his eyelids, but something had stopped him. Something had forced him back up to check on Jason one last time, and had creaked the door to Jason’s bedroom open only to see that there was no one occupying the bed. 

At first, Bruce hadn’t worried, checking all of Jason’s usual haunts when he knew the boy couldn’t sleep. It was only after he didn’t spot Jason in the kitchen, the library, or the tiny “reading nook” Jason had insisted on creating in one of the spare bedrooms, that he started to panic. Methodically, he had checked each and every room of the manor, ignoring the way his heart rate had picked up every time he had opened the door to a room to see no one inside. 

Until he had reached his study. The door being left slightly open was already a dead giveaway, and when Bruce had looked inside, the hands of the grandfather clock had been turned to 10:48 with the entrance to the cave still visible. 

And that’s where he finds Jason, turned away from him, staring at a point on the wall just to the right of the computer. 

There’s nothing there, so Bruce doesn’t know why that’s the point he chooses to stare at. 

Bruce looks again, more closely just in case there’s something he’s missing. 

But he’s right. There’s nothing there. And Bruce is certain nothing’s ever been there. What is Jason looking at? Bruce wants to get down on his knees and beg for an answer. For this, and for everything else. 

Bruce doesn’t want to think about what might have happened if he had ignored the pull to go check on Jason. How long would Jason have stood here, staring at nothing, dressed only in his thin pajamas and left alone with his thoughts? 

“Bruce,” Jason says, not showing any signs of surprise at hearing Bruce’s approach from behind him. 

“Jason, what are you doing here?”

“Why did you take me in?” Jason asks.

“What brought this on?” Bruce asks. “What’s wrong?” He doesn’t know how many times he’s asked that question by now. Too many times, with too few answers to show for it. 

Jason doesn’t answer him. 

“Let’s talk about this upstairs, okay?” Bruce says. 

“Don’t talk to me like I’m a fucking victim, Bruce,” Jason snaps. 

Bruce puts both his hands up, even though Jason can’t see him do it. “Okay, Jason. I’m sorry. I just thought that this might not be the best place for a conversation like this.”

“I don’t care,” Jason growls. “Answer the damn question already and stop stalling.”

“Okay.” Bruce swallows. “You asked why I took you in? I don’t know why you think there was any other option for me. I can't imagine a life without you. I couldn’t imagine any other option when I saw you for the first time. You’re my son.”

Bruce can only watch as Jason’s fists clench up at his sides. 

“If I died, what would you do?”

Bruce doesn’t know what to do with this. What had happened ? What could have affected his little boy this much, practically overnight, to make him think of questions like this?

He knows, lord does he know, that what they do isn’t safe. Inherently, when Dick and Jason are out there, they are in danger. He does his best to shield them from the worst of it, even when the voice at the back of his brain tells him he’s not trying hard enough. 

“ Jason. What’s happened? You can tell me. Anything. If someone’s threatening you, or hurting you, just tell me, okay? I can fix it.”

“Answer the question, old man.”

Bruce doesn’t want to. He can’t bear to think about it, the thought of Jason...

“I don’t think I ever thought about it,” Bruce says honestly. 

“What does that mean?” Jason asks, and the question sounds so innocent when Bruce doesn’t think about the question that had just preceded it. 

“It means,” Bruce says, trying to figure out how to even begin an explanation for something he’s never thought about. Because there is no part of his brain that can fathom seeing his children die before him, and Bruce— Batman — for all his contingencies and all his plans and all his paranoia, this is one future Bruce can not even begin to plan for. “That I can’t imagine a world without you.” 

The words don’t even begin to encapsulate how Bruce is feeling, and he prays the emotions can at least come through in his voice. He doesn’t know how else to explain it. 

He omits the fact that if Jason died, it wouldn’t be long before Bruce joined him. 

It’s inconceivable to think about. It goes against nature. There’s nothing left on the planet that could stop Bruce from opening the casket his children are lying in and lying down right there next to them. 

Should anything ever happen to Jason or Dick, something fatal that they couldn’t recover from, Bruce can honestly say that he’s not sure he’d recover from it. Bruce would have rather wished for his own painful, gruesome death ten million times over. 

Bruce doesn’t tell Jason that, because no matter how much Jason has still lived and experienced, both in his time on the streets and as Robin, there are some things a father shouldn’t burden his son with. 

“I have another question,” Jason says, and Bruce almost wants to beg him to stop, because he doesn’t understand where these kinds of questions are coming from.

“What is it?” 

Bruce can hear Jason’s hesitance as he continues. ”You can’t think about the answer, okay? You need to spit it out right after I ask.”

“I can accept that,” Bruce says, mind already moving at lightning speed to try and understand the situation in front of him. 

“If I killed someone, would you forgive me?”

True to his word, Bruce doesn’t think about the answer before he says it: “Yes.”

Jason spins around. “ Liar. ”

Jason looks devastated, completely disbelieving. 

“I would,” Bruce insists. Is that what happened? Did Jason— But when ? When did anything happen? Jason goes to sleep one night fine, and he wakes up... different. What happened in those few hours in between? “I promise you, Jaylad. There’s nothing on this planet that you could do that I wouldn’t forgive you for. Jason, where is this coming from?”

“Bullshit,” Jason snarls.

“I don’t know how to make you believe me,” Bruce says helplessly.

Jason glares at him. “I told you not to lie to me. You really think that if I told you that I killed someone in cold blood today, you could just accept it.”

“Jason, I love you,” Bruce says. “You’ll always have that, no matter what you do. You don’t have to believe it now, but I’ll prove it to you, okay? And I’ll keep proving it to you, even if you decide that you do believe me.”

Jason stares at him silently for a moment. Assessing, just like Bruce had taught him to do when trying to judge a statement as false or fiction.

“You better,” Jason says finally, voice shaking. “Or I’ll beat your ass.”

“I’ll let you,” Bruce promises. “Do you want to try and get some sleep now?”

Jason nods, and lets Bruce lead the way. 

-

It would be wrong to describe the changing of Jason’s behavior after that night as the flipping of a switch. It’s not accurate. 

Jason still acts like there’s a weight attached to his ankles that no one else can see, but slowly, surely, over the course of the next few weeks, behaviors of the Jason that Bruce had gotten used to start coming back. Bruce had to press a hand to his mouth to trap his emotions inward when he had seen Jason smile after Alfred had smacked his hand for trying to sneak a cookie off of the cooling tack. 

Bruce doesn’t know what deity or god he has to thank for it, but he doesn’t question it. Tries not to let Jason notice that he’s noticed the change, only sharing meaningful looks with Alfred every time something happens that sends waves of relief through Bruce.  

That isn't to say some of Jason’s odder habits don’t continue. 

The writing in his notebook continues. The notebook is practically attached to Jason’s hand with how much he carries it around. There’s still caution to all of Jason’s movements, and still moments in time where Jason stares at something in the manor with something approaching nostalgia, and even if nostalgia doesn’t make any sense, Bruce lets it happen. At least until he understands more. 

Jason’s eyebags have also lost the worst of their deep purple color, but aren’t gone completely. 

But Bruce is a patient man. He can wait it out. 

-

Things start to change further, when Bruce comes home after a meeting and a new person is waiting for him by the foyer. 

“My name is Timothy Drake,” a small voice tells him, and the small person who it comes from holds a hand out to be shaken. 

Bruce bends down and shakes it, a small hand dwarfed in his own. “My name is Bruce Wayne. It’s nice to meet you, Timothy. What are you doing here?”

“Jason invited me.”

Jason, who’s standing behind Timothy, nods. “His parents aren’t home. Or his nanny. And also he knows who we are. And he’s been following us for a few weeks now. He has photos, but he promised not to blackmail us for money or anything. He’s staying over tonight.”

Bruce doesn’t know what part to question first. 

“Also, he likes to be called Tim,” Jason adds. 

And so Tim starts spending his days and most of his nights at Wayne Manor. Bruce almost questions it, but he sees Jason smile one day after Tim asks him a question about being Robin, and decides not to. 

-

When Dick stops by for a visit, Jason interacts with him differently, too.

Jason’s more confident. There’s no more of the hesitance that used to exist between them, at least on Jason’s part. Dick looks about as confused as Bruce feels. Although Bruce would like to think he wears it better now, after weeks of constantly feeling it. 

Dinner is amicable, lively even, and Jason jumps headfirst into the conversations, whereas before, during dinners with Dick, Jason had opted to only speak when spoken to. After dinner, Bruce goes to his study to do more research.

The real surprise, though, comes later, when Dick pulls Bruce aside after Jason had gone to his room to take a nap before patrol and hugs him tightly. Bruce doesn’t remember Dick hugging him like this since before they started fighting. 

Bruce, stunned, hugs back.

“I’ll call more,” Dick tells him once he pulls back. “And visit more. So you don’t miss me too much.”

I’ll always miss you, Bruce doesn’t say, but Dick glances at him. He must see something in his expression that Bruce doesn't realize he’s making, because suddenly, Bruce is being hugged again. 

-

“I’m not sure what you said to him,” Bruce tells Jason as the two of them land on a rooftop.

Jason tries for nonchalance, but it doesn’t land. “I didn’t say anything.”

Bruce bites back a smile. “Sure. In that case, for what you didn’t say, thank you.”

-

For the first time in weeks, Jason agrees to watch a movie with him. 

They play one neither of them have seen before, a Western with mediocre ratings. Jason sits next to him, but leaves an inch of space between them that feels like miles to Bruce. Still, Bruce can feel the warmth from Jason’s body this close, and he convinces himself that this is enough. 

Halfway through, though, without any preamble, Jason tells him, “Catherine is my mom.”

“I know,” Bruce says, without missing a beat. 

“I don’t give a fuck if I biologically came from her, or Willis knocked someone else up before meeting her, or if she found me in a duffel bag in a dumpster. She’s my mom. No one else.”

“Okay,” Bruce says. “I know that already, Jaylad. Catherine is your mom.” Then, a realization comes to him. “Jason... Did someone come and tell you that they were your real mother?”

A lot of things would fall into place if that were the case. The strange behavior, the fear of being left behind, the questions. Maybe the woman who came and told him was an unsavory character, and that’s why he had asked Bruce what would happen if Jason ever killed someone. 

Except. The same question Bruce had been asking himself comes back in full force. 

When?

There are body cameras on the Robin suit that Bruce goes through personally. And Gotham Academy’s security would have prevented a strange, unapproved person to get that close to Jason without Bruce or Alfred hearing about it. 

Jason shakes his head. “Nothing. Just making sure you knew,” he says simply. 

Bruce nods slowly, the answer clearing up absolutely nothing for him. “Okay. I know Catherine is your mom.”

“Okay,” Jason says, and drops his head on Bruce’s shoulder, and Bruce’s eyes feel hot. This is the first time Jason had taken the first steps for physical contact with him since that fateful morning. 

Bruce, carefully, rests a hand on Jason’s hair, softly running his fingers through the dark curls. Jason burrows his head in further, turning so that his entire face is hidden in the fabric of Bruce’s hoodie. 

“Do you want me to turn the television off?” Bruce asks quietly. 

Jason shakes his head. 

“Is everything okay?”

Jason doesn’t answer, just adjusts himself so that he’s practically on Bruce’s lap now, and Bruce lets him, wrapping his free arm around Jason’s legs and pulling him closer. 

“Jaylad?”

“Don’t talk now, B,” Jason says, and Bruce feels him exhale shakily.

Bruce sighs, but resumes the motions of petting Jason’s hair. Jason melts against him. 

He’ll let Jason hold all his secrets, just for a little while longer, until Jason can trust him enough to tell him what put an additional weight of grief on his small shoulders that should have never been there in the first place. 

For now, he’ll content himself with just holding Jason instead.