Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

All things considered, Jason felt like it had been a mostly quiet night, until that man fell out of the air and landed on the Batcave floor. Tim hadn't had enough coffee for his hands to start shaking yet, Steph hadn't glitterbombed anyone during patrol, and Dick was doing handstands again because he was a freak. 

It had been a nice deviation from Dick ribbing Tim about his new (potential) boyfriend and Steph screwing with Bruce because she loved getting him to look like he was a decade older than he was out of sheer annoyance (like that time when he had walked into the dining room to find his chair absolutely covered in Bat stickers). 

Even Alfred had told them he'd be making cookies like he always did on nights that none of them got hurt while out.

It had been fine. 

Well, it had been entirely fine, until a bright, violet purple rip in space split a line across the air several dozen feet above the floor of the Cave before widening into a twisty-looking scar shape the size of a schoolbus. With it came the sound of a loud yell, and a couple of short seconds later, a body tumbled out of the glowing tear in reality and fell hard on the cold cave floor with a heavy thump. 

Dick immediately jumped in front of Jason and Tim. Bruce pulled the mask of his Cowl over his face, and Steph, in between Jason and the Batmobile, grabbed the nearest thing she could use as a weapon: a crowbar. 

The purple tear in reality closed with an echoey zip noise, and the man who'd fallen out of it sat up with a groan. “Fucking ow,” he said through a voice modulator. 

The stranger was huge- practically as big as Bruce, and wore an armored jacket over a tight, armored undershirt. He wore loose, armored cargo pants, steel-toed boots, and had several guns strapped about his person. While the guns were noteworthy, the main flare to his ensemble was the cherry-red helmet on his head. 

“Who are you?” Bruce growled. 

The stranger cradled his own head gently, like he was checking through the metal for a concussion. “I don't have time for interrogations, B; somebody just hit me with a bitch of a spell and I do not feel great. You can yell at me later, okay?” 

Bruce narrowed his eyes. Jason couldn't blame him. 

Steph stepped forwards. “What are you doing here?” she asked. 

The man in the red helmet looked up at her and froze for a split second, before twisting around and pulling himself up into a brawling position. Quietly, dangerously, he growled, “Put down the crowbar, Stephanie.” 

Steph did not. “Fuck you,” she said. “How the hell did you get in here?” 

Helmet Man turned his head slowly, white lenses landing on Bruce, Tim, and Dick, before stopping on Jason. 

Something changed in the way he stood, and he tapped his helmet twice. Nothing happened, and he tried another sequence in another spot. “For the love of God,” he grumbled, eventually. Then, visibly distressed as he looked between Batman and Jason, let out a string of letters and numbers. 

Batman twitched. “ID?” 

Helmet Man folded his arms. “No. I gave you the key and that's all the evidence you should fucking need from me.” 

Tim raised a hand. “Hi, um. Fine, sure, you're entitled to your secrets, but I feel like we still need something? Computers can be hacked and codes can be stolen. Also, we don’t know what that one in particular means.” 

Helmet Guy spoke with an irritated but audible fondness. “Trust you to be annoyingly sensible and shit, Timmy. Fine. For the rest of you, the sequence I dropped means I'm from another reality, I'm an ally – assumin' you all aren't evil – and I would like help returning home. Also, based on Dick's mullet, I'm a few years ahead of you guys.” 

Dick folded his arms, clearly bothered by the familiarity. “How do you know who we are?” 

“Ally,” the guy repeated. “I've known my Batman and his ID since before I hit my teen years, just like you.” 

Dick glared at the nickname, and Jason tugged at his arm to get him to back down. “Were you a Robin? Are you another version of any of us?” 

“I do not exist here,” the man in the red helmet stated firmly.  

“How do you know, you brick-shaped creep?” Steph asked, pointing her crowbar. “Your counterpart might just not be in the Cave.” 

“Stephanie fucking Brown,” the guy growled, “I do not exist here. Do you understand the words coming out of my mouth?”

Steph widened her eyes, disturbed, and lowered the crowbar. “Jesus Christ, take a chill pill. How do you know who I am?” 

“Because I am an ally of my own Bat. You nerds want proof?” He pointed at Steph. "Your dad is a D-tier Riddler ripoff, and you're also Tim's heterosexual phase.” 

Tim choked and Steph snorted. Dick's eyebrows shot into his hairline, Bruce's lowered, and Jason bit back a startled laugh. “You-” Tim started, but was cut off. 

“Tim's parents,” the man continued, tilting his head in their direction, “are neglectful shits, and he's the best out of all of us with tech aside from Oracle. Dickhead lost his parents at the circus and likes to hug people, and you, Bruce, found Jason there stealing your tires to feed himself after Catherine Todd OD'd.”

Jason didn't feel like smiling anymore. He didn't really talk about that, and he didn't know who ‘Oracle' was. Maybe Oracle was what this guy’s Barbara called herself?

Bruce stepped forwards. “If that's all the same across universes,” he growled (refusing to share that they didn't have an Oracle), “how do you know your copy is dead?” 

Helmet Man folded his arms, defensive. “‘Cause. My Stephanie got a construction tool to the skull,” he gestured vaguely at Steph and the crowbar, “and has her own very nice gravestone in the cemetery. I couldn't help her. If she never flatlined here, it means a few things are different. I'm just putting pieces together.” 

Steph blinked owlishly. “Uh, I ain't dead, buddy.” 

Helmet snorted. “No, y'ain't. Hopefully you can continue to avoid that over here.” 

Tim, understandably, looked horrified. “You're saying your counterpart is dead because our Stephanie is alive? That you got beaten to death with a crowbar because she didn't?” 

Helmet Man cracked his knuckles and started glancing around the Cave. “Take from that what you will. Also, damn, this place is different; you guys have the dinosaur on the wrong wall and the penny is backwards.” 

Jason privately agreed on the penny thing – who wants to look at the tails side? – but Bruce folded his arms. “What do you suppose we do with you?” 

The guy in the red helmet shrugged. “If you fuckwits aren't going to be helpful, I'll go find Nabu myself.” 

“Who?” Steph asked. 

Bruce stared incredulously. “Dr. Fate.”

Jason's jaw dropped. “Wait, what? Hold up, man, you- You're allowed to just hit up a freakin’ god?” 

“Under these circumstances, yeah,” the guy said primly. “I've got connections, little bird, and I've dealt with him before, much to my Bruce's annoyance.” 

Bruce pulled the Cowl off with a glare. “Dr. Fate is not someone you can just call at your whim.” 

A snort came from the helmet. “He is if I'm at risk of collapsing the multiverse. Now, y’gonna let me use your fancy-ass supercomputer to call the Justice League, or do I have'ta call Constantine?” 

Bruce looked like he'd bitten into a lemon. “We'll take the Zeta.” 

“That works,” Helmet Man replied easily. He sounded like he was grinning. “Bye, nestlings,” he called back at the rest of them, walking towards the wall with the hidden portal.

Bruce slipped up behind him with a pair of cuffs as if to try and restrain him, only to be casually, smoothly dodged like the dude had seen it coming. He stayed enough out of range that Bruce couldn't grab him, but close enough that nobody could tell if it was deliberate, which meant it probably was. Bruce frowned and pulled his Cowl back on, before typing in the code to allow guest access, and then vanished into the teleport beam with their strange visitor sauntering casually in alongside him. 

Tim pressed his fingertips together like the villain in a bad action movie and stared at the wall where Bruce and the stranger had vanished. Dick grinned at him. “You're gonna spend the rest of the week trying to find out who he is, aren't you?” 

Tim narrowed his eyes, sat down at the Batcomputer, and began the process of pulling up the Watchtower security feeds. “Shush.” 

Jason glanced at Stephanie, who was staring at the crowbar she still held. While Tim and Dick bantered, he stepped up beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Y’alright, Bowery?” 

She frowned. “I don't like this.” Then, looking him in the eyes, “Or him. He bothers me.” 

Jason grinned. “Because he's lying or because he's annoying?” 

Steph hid her own smile. “Both.” 

“C'mon,” he told her. “Let's get upstairs before Tim drags us into his new stalking mission.” 

The two of them slipped quietly away and towards the stairs, Steph setting the crowbar by the Batmobile on the way.

Before long they were in the library. Jason sat on the couch and Stephanie took the short little ottoman in front of him facing away from where he sat, before shaking her hair behind her shoulders at him. Jason rolled his eyes. 

“Sooo…” he prompted, winding his hands into her hair to start untangling it. “What about him bugs you?” 

Steph took a moment to find her words as he started braiding. “He talks like you do when you feel cornered.”

“Oh?” 

“Yeah,” she said. “He's a talker, Jase-” 

“-Wow, thanks.” 

“-But we got nothing out of him during that whole exchange. Something about his wording… I don't think he lied, necessarily, but he definitely misdirected us.” 

Jason had thought the same. The overall way he'd refused to actually say yes or no to any questions, and the way he'd enunciated his phrasing… It was careful. Practiced. It was how street kids talked to gangsters trying to recruit them, like the corner ladies talked to overly pushy clients. He talked like someone who was very carefully walking the line between being polite enough to appease a threat while still drawing a line in the sand. He talked like confirming anything was a death sentence. 

“He's comfortable enough with B to snark at him,” Steph continued, “but not enough to give him even just a first name. He knew about B's distaste for Constantine. He knew how all of us came into the family, he…” 

“He what?” Jason asked, finishing the braid and snapping a hair tie around the end. 

Steph turned to look at him. Her eyes were wide, and Jason suppressed the urge to poke the crease between her eyebrows. “He said I'm dead where he comes from. Or- Or at least implied it. He implied that- that his counterpart here is dead because I'm not, and I don't know how I feel about that.” 

Jason leaned back on the couch and folded his arms. “You don't like the idea that some kid out there is dead because you aren't.” 

“Who would?” she asked, dropping heavily down beside him on the couch. “At least he, theoretically, knew I went out. I have no clue when I apparently traded lives with whoever his doppelganger is.” 

“...Steph,” he started, carefully, “if you didn't know, it's not your fault.” 

Steph hugged her knees to her chest. “I know.” 

“Good,” Jason said, bumping his shoulder into hers. “And again, he seemed to be dancing around the topic, only vaguely painting an idea for us rather than stating a fact. Maybe you did die where he's from, but we don't know if that has anything to do with his counterpart here.” 

“Mm.” Steph leaned sideways and dropped her head on his shoulder. “Thanks.” 

Jason hugged her into his side. “Anytime, Bowery.”