Chapter Text
Jason isn’t really sure what he’s looking at.
Or- well. He is. Objectively, he knows exactly what’s in front of him. It just isn’t really making any sense.
He had a plan. One way or another, he was going to beat the shit out of the new Robin, and force B’s eyes on Red Hood as an immediate threat. Then he’d snag the Joker, launch into his ultimatum, and profit. Or die. One or the other, as long as the bastard that killed him was dragged down with him. He had everything primed and ready, had a strict schedule to follow and contingencies for every small thing.
This is not in any of his contingencies.
On paper, Timothy Drake is easy to hate. Excellent grades, perfect pedigree, rich and talented and gifted and so on. No wonder Bruce decided to upgrade to a better model. Depression or suicidal tendencies really did not appear anywhere in Jason’s observations.
And yet, there is currently the body of a 15 year old kid tucked into bed, a bottle of pills that faintly smell of almonds on the bedside table, and a note on top of a neatly folded Robin suit that says ‘Please don’t worry.’
He isn’t breathing. Jason checked.
Fifteen years old. The same age Jason was when he died. And now the new kid is dead as well, by his own hands no less. Jason doesn’t know how to feel. The green nags at him to be angry, to be enraged, because how dare his replacement be this weak, this cowardly, to taint the Robin name with a suicide-
He blinks slowly.
Because that’s what this is. A suicide.
The green fades. It’s hard to be angry at a dead kid. Even one like Tim Drake.
Distantly, Jason wonders if this is why Tim became Robin. If he had taken on the suit as a way to kill himself indirectly, uncaring of the consequences it would have. The anger rises again, but this time, it isn’t tinged green. Instead, he’s furious on Bruce’s behalf, even as his brain pauses and tries to understand why.
If Tim purposefully chose to become Robin to die, then he’s a cruel motherfucker. Doing that to Bruce, Dick, Alfred-
God, Alfred.
Jason sinks to the floor beside the bed, and tries to make sense of the world.
He didn’t want the kid dead. Beaten up and scared, sure, but dead? That didn’t prove anything. Though now he’s thinking about it, he isn’t sure what attacking the boy would have achieved either. It had all made sense before, the emerald-tinted anger egging him on and making him see things clearly.
Now he just feels tired.
He knows Tim, if only from afar. Knows that he has good grades and likes to skateboard and take pictures. Knows that he plays violin for his sister and dances with her. Knows that he cracks jokes with his blonde friend until she snorts milk through her nose. Knows that Dick ruffles his hair and does backflips with him. Knows that he helps Alfred with his chores, chattering to him while the old man waters the roses. Knows that he tinkers with Bruce, and tugs him to bed when the night has gone on for too long.
Before, when everything was tinged green, all of that knowledge had built a picture of a spoiled and arrogant rich kid who thought he was the smartest person ever.
Jason knows better now.
Looking back, he can see all the little things he missed, whether on purpose or out of rage. The flight tickets that never had a return date. The empty mansion and boarding schools. The abnormal maturity for someone his age. The cool distance that B tries to keep with him. The dead mother and brain-dead father. A kid too smart for his own good, but too young to really understand anything, caught under the weight of responsibility and isolation and depression until it finally became too much.
“Christ, kid,” he chokes out, “Why the fuck are you making me pity you?”
All of a sudden, his helmet is cloying, choking him, and he yanks it off, throwing it against the wall. His helmet lands with a loud bang, bouncing off the cold walls and rolling back towards him, paint barely even chipped despite the force it had been thrown with.
Tim doesn’t stir.
Of course he doesn’t.
Jason swallows through his dry throat and tries to gather up the lingering remnants of his green rage, tries to feel something other than exhaustion and dull grief. He didn’t know Tim, not really. He didn’t want to know him as anything other than his replacement.
Except now he’s dead, tucked into bed with a bottle of pills lying close by, pyjamas on and wrapped in comfort as he let himself die.
Jason doesn’t want to feel regret or pity for some miserable kid who decided to off himself.
He doesn’t want to think about his family’s reactions.
And for some reason, it’s that thought that causes him to break.
Because in a kinder world, they could have been brothers. In a kinder world, maybe Jason would have been skateboarding beside the kid, would have watched him play violin alongside their sister. Maybe Jason would have laughed just as hard as the blonde girl, or would have heckled Dick from the sidelines while he showed off, distracting Tim and making him laugh. Maybe he would have ruffled Tim’s hair while they helped Alfred in the kitchen, would have ganged up together to nag Bruce out of the cave.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
There’s no chance of that ever happening now.
But he can do one thing for his never-brother, one thing he can do to save the others the grief of having to walk in here just like he did and be confronted with the cold body of a teenage boy.
Throat dry, Jason picks up his phone and dials a number he’s never been able to forget.
“Wayne residence,” Alfred’s calm voice rings out, and he tries not to choke on his heavy tongue.
“Alfie,” Jason croaks out, “Alfie, I don’t-”
“Master Jason?”
His name is spoken hesitantly and with such hopeful sorrow that he has force himself not to flinch. Even after everything, even after he attacked Bruce and tricked him and, and, and; the old man still greets him with warmth and longing.
And he hates that he’s about to shatter Alfred’s world again.
“Alf,” he whispers again, voice tightening under the dry crack of his throat. “Alf, I’m- I don’t-,”
He swallows. Forces himself to suck in a shuddering breath.
“Tim’s dead,” Jason says, words tasting like almonds on his tongue. “I went to the San Francisco and Tim is- He’s dead, Alfred. I got there, and he was already dead with a note- a note saying not to worry.”
There is silence on the other end as he clutches the phone like a lifeline, fingers trembling around the cool plastic. And then sound rushes in with the sharp breath Alfred takes, the dull thud of something dropping to the floor.
“Are you certain? Are you- Are you absolutely sure?”
There’s a desperation in his grandfather’s voice that Jason wishes he never had to put there. And despite himself, he hates Tim for making him do this, despises him for a reason beyond being replaced.
Tim chose this. He chose to do this. And it must be Jason’s penance to bear the grief of his- their family.
“There’s no pulse and he’s- he’s cold, Alf,” Jason murmurs, and a choked noise echoes in his ears.
“I see,” he rasps out, voice trembling. “I see. I shall- I shall alert Master Bruce immediately. Stay on the line please, Jason.”
Jason has never seen or heard Alfred lose his composure. But through the muffled speakers of the phone, he thinks he can hear sobbing. It’s short and quiet, but it’s enough to make Jason feel sick. And despite Alfred’s request, he hangs up.
He can’t do this. He can’t stick around for a dead kid, can’t watch his family realise that they’ve lost another child. He wants to yank on his helmet and run as far away as possible, wants to run until he collapses into the dirt and can barely breathe. But he knows that if he doesn’t, there’s a chance they’ll think he did it. That he snuck up while Tim was sleeping and pressed pill after pill into his mouth, forcing him to swallow and watching him convulse-
He retches, but all that surfaces is bile, bitter and sour as it coats his tongue. He chokes it down, the sting of it burning, and his heart pounds violently, fingers still trembling as he chances a glance back at the quiet body of Tim.
Tim doesn’t move.
Of course he doesn’t.
He’s dead after all.
And all of a sudden, Jason is furious.
“You stupid motherfucker,” he spits out, fists clenched as he stands up to look at the small boy tucked into bed. “I hope you suffered, you miserable, selfish bastard! Taking Robin wasn’t enough, huh? You just had to go all the way!”
Distantly, he knows that screaming at a corpse won’t exactly prove his innocence. But Jason can’t bring himself to care. Not when he’s left Jason to clean up this mess. Not when Alfred is probably preparing a body bag for another dead grandson while Tim lies there unaware and uncaring of what he’s done.
Distantly, he knows that Tim couldn’t have known that Jason was coming. There’s no way. And yet, it still feels targeted.
‘Look,’ his slack face seems to say, ‘look at how much they’ll care at my death, when they walked away from yours. Weigh up two dead kids, and see who passes the test.’
He’s still screaming at the kid when the door slams open, a hulking figure in black sweeping in with such desperation that Jason’s shouts stick in his throat and die down. And all of a sudden, he can’t help but wonder if Bruce had the same expression on his face when Jason died. Bruce doesn’t hesitate at the sight of Jason. He doesn’t pause or do a double-take, or demand answers.
All he does is stare at the folded Robin suit, the note, the unmoving body in the bed.
Jason swallows, the soft childhood hope that he thought he had crushed so long ago crying for his father, hoping, believing that he’ll make everything okay again. Robin is magic, it sobs out.
Robin fucking killed himself, he screams back.
He watches Bruce pick up Tim’s note with steady hands. Watches him read it. Turn to look at Tim. He watches him tear off a gauntlet and glove with something that could be mistaken as ease, rather than desperation.
With bare fingers, Bruce reaches down to feel for a pulse that isn’t there.
The cowl is good at hiding his face, and Jason feels bare without his helmet hiding his own roiling rage and despair. But Bruce’s smooth, cold expression twitches as he finds nothing but cold, dull skin.
Jason wants to start screaming at him too.
“He was like that when I came in,” he says instead, voice hoarse from yelling.
Bruce doesn’t move. Just keeps staring at the boy below him, fingers still pressed to a silent wrist.
“No intruders. Well, except for me. But no signs of forced entry or staging. No blood. No marks of a struggle.”
Silence. And Jason suddenly can’t stop the rabid words that froth beneath his tongue, can’t stop the bitter bile from dripping free and burning everything nearby.
“You get it, old man? The kid fucking killed himself. Wrote a shitty little note, tucked himself into bed, and then popped some cyanide pills like candy.”
The hand wrapped around Tim’s small wrist trembles, knuckles whitening in a way that would bruise a living body. But still, he doesn’t say a word. And Jason- Jason can’t handle the silence anymore.
“Say something!” he screams, storming up to him and punching his face. “Another dead fucking Robin, and you don’t even have the Joker to blame for it. What the fuck happened, Bruce? Why did a 15 year old kid under your protection choose to off himself?”
Bruce barely flinches from the force of the hit, allowing his fist to connect with dull acceptance. He doesn’t even look at Jason, even as he finally begins to move, carefully bending down to gather Tim’s cold body into his arms and cradling him close.
He looks so small in his father’s arms. He thinks Bruce sees it too, because the older man begins to shake, head ducked into feathery hair.
“I don’t know, Jason,” he finally says, voice thick with something Jason can’t quite place. “I don’t know.”
Jason steps back, throat burning as he watches a father carry a dead boy back home once again. Automatically, he follows.
“Code Black confirmed. Returning back now,” Bruce says quietly into his com, before switching it off and entering the zeta. Even with the cowl on, he seems unfocused, and Jason wonders if Bruce is actually seeing anything or just moving on autopilot.
Alfred is waiting for them in the Cave, and he trembles at the sight of Tim. His cheeks are sallow and eyes rimmed with red, and as he begins to speak, a crack splits through his words and forces him to pause. Jason can barely hear him. It’s silent when Dick tears into the Cave, face blotchy and desperate as he tears off his helmet and throws it with force to the floor.
Jason watches the other man sprint towards the metal gurney Tim was placed on, watches as he stares at the cold, waxy skin of a boy he openly proclaimed brother, and begins to wail. He stalks up to Bruce and screams, hateful words of blame and rage, and Bruce takes it all, even when he begins to hit him. Alfred tries to pry them apart, but breaks down at the sight of Tim’s note still clutched in Bruce’s hand. When Babs and her girls arrive, Dick is sobbing against his father’s Kevlar vest.
The Asian girl, Cassandra, shrieks at the sight of Tim. She shrieks and shrieks and shrieks, fingers digging into dead skin as she tries to wake him up, tears pouring down her face and voice shrill and loud. The blonde girl, Stephanie, looks shell-shocked, eyes wide and unseeing, even as she reaches out to touch a cold cheek.
Babs is the calmest. Her face is so pale, her freckles are barely visible, but she doesn’t make a scene. She wheels over to the gurney, gently prying Cassandra and Stephanie away.
“Bruce,” she calls out, voice as hard as diamond, “put him away.”
He watches as Tim is gently placed into a body bag, and he wonders if Bruce had handled Jason’s own corpse with such tenderness and grief.
Wonders if Alfred’s face was as devastated as it is now, if he wept silent tears at the sight of his mangled body.
Wonders if Dick had sobbed so loudly that it echoed against the cold Cave walls.
Wonders if they grieved him with the same love and devastation so long ago.
It hurts to think about. So he doesn’t.
The scene Tim wakes up to is not an unfamiliar one. Despite the bleariness of his eyes, he’s immediately aware and exasperated with the stifling plastic of a body bag, skin sticking uncomfortably to the sides from the heat of his own skin. In the distance, he hears muffled shouting.
Well.
He has royally fucked up, hasn’t he?
Tim wriggles softly, wincing at the way his stomach continues to churn from the poison he ingested, his limbs stiff and aching from the hard surface he’s been placed on. Compared to gentle softness of his mattress when he first fell asleep, this is an unwelcome change. Waking up in a body bag isn’t exactly a novel experience, but it’s not one he often finds himself in. Normally, some well-meaning Samaritan reports him in, he gets taken while still dead, and then has to figure out how to escape without anyone noticing.
It’s fairly easy. The Gotham morgue is overpopulated on the best of days, and missing bodies are rarely reported on, if noticed at all. It’s normally just assumed that one of the gangs has tried their luck in gaining a new body for some fresh organs to sell, and succeeded for once, if said body hadn’t been sold by a corrupt mortician in the first place.
Regardless, Tim knows how to escape from a body bag. Despite the thick plastic meant to keep out pests and keep in the stench of decay, it’s still zipped with a zipper, and that is an immediate weakness.
Tim is just thankful he’s still wearing clothes and hasn’t been autopsied yet.
It is not an experience he wants to repeat.
He fumbles for the seam of his pyjama pants, picking open a weakened thread to tug out the hidden scalpel he sewed in there not so long ago. It’s capped, of course, because he’s not an idiot. He wriggles his arms back up, and tries not to grimace at the dull pain in the crook of his elbow where they must have drawn blood. He quickly uncaps the scalpel and shoves the sharp edge into the teeth of the zipper, metal scraping against metal as he pries a hole open.
Cool air floods in, fresh despite his location, and he gives the plastic another hard yank. He wriggles again, shoving one arm out and trying not to sigh in relief at the feeling of cold morgue air against his skin. He reaches up with his other arm, scalpel still in his hand, and finally tears open a hole large enough to stick his upper torso through, squirming in some macabre imitation of a birth scene until his head pops out and is greeted with fresh and familiar air.
He wonders who found him this time; the last thing he remembers is-
Uh oh.
Uh oh.
Uh oh.
He had made sure the Tower would be empty for the next couple of days. Had ensured that both Bruce and Dick were busy with a particularly frustrating case. Had been certain that Cass and Steph were working with Babs.
He had gone to bed with the knowledge that no-one would find him until he woke up, well-rested and alive again.
Instead, he blinks at the bright lights of the BatCave, and turns to look to his side.
Jason Todd stares at him, mouth hanging open.
In the distance, he hears Barbara scream something derogatory, while Dick yells back.
Tim swallows.
“Please be some figment of my imagination left over from my recent death experience.”
Jason doesn’t reply. He just keeps looking at him, face frozen in incredulous disbelief. Tim licks his lips nervously.
“I’m guessing that’s a no?”
Jason lunges at him.
“You little shit!” Jason knows he’s shouting loud enough to bounce off the walls of the Cave, but he can’t bring himself to care. Not after the source of his most recent agony popped out his fucking body bag like the world’s most annoying butterfly, his gormless face looking at him like an idiot. The past few hours have been a second sort of hell to Jason, and Timothy Drake is acting as though he’s awoken from a particularly nice nap.
Jason thinks strangling him is the best course of action.
Tim wheezes beneath him, eyes popping out as he smacks his arm, yelling in a distinctly alive way.
“Oi, oi, oi!” he hollers out. “I can explain!”
Jason is pulled off of Tim by a strong set of arms, and he throws out his elbow to smack against a hard nose, body jolting at the surprised grunt of pain from his attacker.
Bruce however, has always been a stubborn fucker, and doesn’t let go.
Not until he sees Tim.
Then his grip weakens drastically, face paling as he takes in the sight of the son who only minutes before was very much dead.
“Tim?” he croaks out, stretching out a hand with trembling fingers.
Said boy hunkers down sheepishly.
“Yeah. Uh, recognition code four-three-six-zero-seven-eight-nine,” he rattles off, and Bruce collapses forward, sweeping him into his arms as he clutches him close.
“How? How is this possible?”
A broken cry slices through Jason, and he turns just as Dick sprints inside, long limbs wrapping around his baby brother and weeping into his hair. A black blur weaves past him, and clings to Tim as well, Cass’ face buried into the crook of his neck and openly crying. Stephanie shrieks as she comes in as well, tossing herself into the pile and loudly sobbing and calling Tim various names.
Jason swallows uncomfortably, and takes a step back, uncertain what to do. Bruce seems just as lost, hovering close but never quite touching.
“Tim,” he rasps out, “how is this... how are you alive?”
The question cuts through the stunned jubilation like a hot knife, dampening any sort of relief and bringing the memory of Tim’s lifeless body back to mind. Stephanie’s grip around Tim tightens as she glares at Bruce.
“Does that really matter right now?” she demands, voice cracking from her earlier grief. “He’s back, isn’t he?”
But surprisingly, it’s Dick who also steps back, eyes red and swollen.
“He is but... it might be temporary,” he reluctantly acknowledges, shoulders shuddering at the thought. Tim just blinks.
“Which part?” he asks bluntly.
Jason wonders how he ever thought the kid was smart.
“You being alive,” he grits out, finally stalking over. Tim doesn’t even flinch, despite his previous throttling. “Your toxicology report was pretty clear. Cyanide poisoning. And even if it wasn’t, well, your little suicide note helped a lot.”
Cassandra whines at the reminder, hands reaching up to grab Tim’s face and hold it tightly.
“No dying,” she whispers, “no leaving me on purpose. Never, never, never!”
Tim looks confused.
“Suicide note? What are you-?”
Bruce thrusts out the note left by Tim’s side, crumpled and torn from his continued grip. Not once has he let it go. Even when they tested it for residual poison or something that could explain Tim’s sudden suicide.
Except that’s immediately dashed by Tim’s next sentence.
“What? That’s not a suicide note.” He sounds absolutely baffled, eyebrows furrowed as he carefully plucks the note from Bruce’s hand and stares at it.
“Then what the hell is it?” Stephanie asks waspishly, eyes narrowed. Jason would like to know as well.
“It’s... a contingency?” he explains confusedly. “Like, it said not to worry. If someone finds me, like you guys did, then you shouldn’t worry. Why are you guys acting so...?”
Jason lunges at him again, and is barely held back by Dick’s sudden grip around his shoulders.
“In hindsight, I should have been clearer,” Tim finally admits, “but I’ve never really... uh, openly discussed it.”
Bruce swallows.
“It’s okay, son. We can get you the help you need. All of us... all of us will support you, no matter what. We care about you, and to know that you...” he chokes towards the last sentence, lips trembling.
Tim blinks.
“Bruce, what the hell are you talking about?”
“Your suicide attempt, Timothy,” Alfred murmurs with a shaky voice as he approaches the metal gurney. He reaches out with knobbly fingers to clutch the younger boy’s shoulder, eyes still red and glassy.
The confusion doesn’t go away. If anything, the boy looks even more baffled.
“What?”
“Tim,” Barbara finally says as she wheels in, mouth pressed in a thin line. “You were found next to cyanide pills. Pills commonly associated with suicide. Your suit was folded and you left a note trying to reassure us.”
“Oh.”
Silence falls between them, Tim’s face paling at the realisation of what he’s put them through. Jason wants to shake him, wants to punch and choke him, wants to force him to realise just how badly his death could have damaged everyone.
How badly it already has damaged them.
“That wasn’t- It wasn’t a suicide attempt,” Tim eventually blurts out, cheeks blotchy. “I know how it looks, but- I can’t die.”
And that gets Jason’s attention.
“What?”
Tim swallows.
“This isn’t... the first time. I’ve died, I mean. It’s not even the second, or third, or even tenth. If I die, I just... come back. Eventually.”
The room is utterly silent. Something in Jason’s chest twitches and writhes, bitter fear and horror squirming through his insides as he processes the younger boy’s words.
“Tim,” he demands gently, “when did you first die?”
Because Tim is barely fifteen. Because he has died more than ten times, and Jason doesn’t know what’s worse; if he’s been dying only once a year since he was a toddler, or if he’s been dying over and over in the span of a few months.
It’s worse. It’s so much worse.
“Technically, uh, I found out when I was five. Drowned in the pool. After that, I began to run some... tests.”
Jason has to swallow down bile.
Dick makes a wounded noise, falling forward to grab Tim and hold him close. Cass is silent, but digs her fingers into Tim’s shirt. Babs swears, her eyes wide and desperate. Even Bruce sucks in a horrified breath, while Alfred whispers a soft, distraught prayer.
“I can’t hear this,” Stephanie says, voice trembling. “I.. I need to step out. Don’t wait for me.”
Tim watches her go, face tight with dismay, but he doesn’t stop her. No-one does.
No-one goes after her either.
“How many times?” Bruce finally asks, and he sounds devastated. “How many times have you died-?”
Tim shrugs, trying for nonchalant, but the way he’s shrunk back and ducked his head betrays his unease.
“I lost count,” he admits in such a quiet voice that Jason has to strain himself to hear. “But never as Robin! I can promise that.”
He says it like it makes everything better. Like that’s the part everyone was worried about. Like dying as Robin is a stain on the name.
And Jason can't stay for another second. He turns on his heel and stalks out, uncaring of Dick's calls after him.
It doesn't matter.
Jason's always the failure, after all.