Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jason Todd was dead, was the thing.

That was what Roy thought when his shitty clock radio woke him up an hour too early with a DJ saying “...new rumors circulating that Bruce Wayne’s adoptive son, who was tragically murdered six years ago, might actually be alive.”

That was what he thought when he turned on the TV for background noise while he shaved and got dressed and listened to a supposed expert—on what, Roy wondered—explain to a couple of slack-jawed morning show hosts how Jason Todd could have secretly survived.

That was what he thought standing in line at Sundollars to spend too much money on mediocre coffee and scrolling through the trending topics on social media: #JasonToddIsAlive; #JasonToddIsDead; #ISawJason; #WayneConspiracy; #GothamJustBeLikeThat.

“Fucking ghouls,” he muttered.

“I’m sorry?” the barista asked.

Shit, it was his turn to order. “Not you. Twitter,” he said, giving her enough of a smile to be friendly but hopefully not enough that she would remember him. He ordered and holed up in a corner, with two solid walls to his back and a good view of the street and the door. He’d have to wait a while for his contact, but that was the point of getting here early—knowing he’d have time to assess the situation and bail if it looked hairy. He probably wouldn’t need to today, but it was a hard habit to break.

He scrolled through his phone while he waited; he was only half paying attention to what was on the screen, but it looked more normal than a weirdo sitting in the corner staring at nothing. His inbox was overflowing with unpaid bills, but there was nothing he could do about them until this job was done, so he switched apps and found his newsfeed full of the Wayne story.

The whole thing was fucking disgusting. It was a six-year-old tragedy, and the family had already been forced to suffer through an international media circus while they grieved. Roy would have hoped people could have a little bit of compassion for them, even if they hadn’t known the family like Roy had. Hadn’t known Jason. But then, Roy didn’t have a lot of faith in the average person’s compassion anymore.

Then his eyes caught a headline: Bruce Wayne Offers Reward of $5 Million for Adopted Son’s Safe Return.

Roy pursed his lips in a silent whistle. That was...shit. There had been a time when Roy wouldn’t have considered it to be that much money; sure, he’d always known intellectually that it was a lot, but nothing that couldn’t be spent or even lost without much worry. But now...five million dollars would solve, well, pretty much every problem he had.

Bruce was no fool, either. If he was offering a reward, there had to be a convincing reason he thought someone might be able to claim it.

Could Jason really be alive after all these years?

For a minute Roy let himself imagine it, being the one to discover the lost Wayne heir. Finding that sweet-faced kid—Jason would be twenty-one now if he was alive, but Roy couldn’t picture it—and pulling him out of whatever hellhole he’d been stuck in all these years. Bringing him to that big old house in Bristol and ringing the bell. The look on Bruce’s face. God, seeing Dick again.

Just because Roy couldn’t ever go home again didn’t mean Jason didn’t deserve to.

Roy dragged himself out of the fantasy. It didn’t matter. Jason Todd was dead. Had to be, or he would have been found six years ago. And dreaming about a world Roy had left behind before Jason had even been taken wouldn’t do a damn thing about those bills in his inbox.

He glanced up and saw Santos walking into the Sundollars. Right. Game time. Roy nodded at him and waited while Santos bought himself a drink, then ambled over to Roy’s table. Just friends, meeting for a cup of coffee.

Right.

“Hey, buddy, how’s it going?” Santos asked.

“Not bad. How’s the wife and kids?” Roy replied. Santos didn’t wince, but Roy knew the dig had landed. There had been a time they had actually been friends, back before toeing the party line meant more to Santos than having his CIs’ backs.

“Hanging in there. School keeping you busy?” Santos took a sip of his coffee. “Made any new friends?”

“Oh, I’ve been hanging out with some interesting people,” Roy said.

“Yeah? You think I’d like them?”

“Buddy,” Roy said, throwing the nickname back at him, “you’d love them.”

He could see the interest in Santos’s eyes; Roy had been working this angle for weeks, and this was the closest he’d gotten to anything actionable. “Yeah?” he said. “Well, maybe the next time you hang out with them, you can invite me.”

“Maybe,” Roy said. “You got that money you owe me?”

“Ah.” Santos coughed. “Shit, Roy, you know they’re cutting back on the freelance budget.”

“Unbelievable.” Even though Roy had half expected it. “What are we looking at?”

Santos wouldn’t meet his eyes. “They’re cutting the fee by thirty percent.”

“Thirty percent—!” Roy said, a little too loud, then lowered his voice again. “This is fucking bullshit, Martin. I’m putting myself in danger out there—”

Santos probably hadn’t meant to roll his eyes, but there it was. “You’re auditing a bunch of college classes for the nineteenth time, Roy. You’re not exactly an agent.”

“Which is the whole fucking problem,” Roy said, voice low but tight. “If I was an agent, I’d be getting paid a fucking salary, with benefits, but instead you keep jerking me around with these increasingly tiny finder’s fees!” Santos opened his mouth to reply, but Roy cut him off. “Tell me one thing, Mart: they cut the budget for all of your CIs? Or just me?”

Santos looked away for a second, which was answer enough. “Look, if you would just give them more names…”

“Same rules it’s always been: I give them the dealers at the top. I’m not giving them victims just so they can meet their monthly quotas.” Roy stood up. “You want my intel? Tell them to pay me the full fee.”

“Roy…” Santos said, but Roy was already walking out the door.

He got about three blocks away before he started kicking himself for his stupidity. Once again, he’d let his temper get the best of him. Yes, what the DEA was doing to him was bullshit, but seventy percent of what he was supposed to get paid was better than not getting paid at all. It wasn’t like he had any savings to fall back on, and he couldn’t eat integrity.

And it wasn’t like he had better options. He didn’t have a high school diploma or even a GED. He had a record—juvenile, but still. He had no training in anything, and no skills except playing the drums and fucking up his own life. He didn’t even have the mostly full cup of coffee he’d just spent money he couldn’t spare on.

He’d give it a few days. Santos would probably call, hopefully with an offer of more money, and if not...well, if not, Roy would have to eat crow. He wasn’t the only one he had to think about, after all.

But shit, that five million bucks was looking better every minute.

*

One Week Later

There was a strange man staring at Jay.

Jay’s shoulders rolled forward instinctively. The stranger was doing a pretty good job of being discreet, keeping his body turned towards the grill, where Luis was making him a fried egg sandwich. But he kept darting glances over at Jay, and his responses to Luis’s small talk were slow to come and mostly empty. Although that could’ve just been because he clearly fucking sucked at Spanish.

Jay kept walking through the aisles of the bodega, picking up what he needed and pretending he hadn’t noticed. Some guys just liked knowing they were unsettling you, although Jay hadn’t really been the target for that kind of attention for a few years now, not since his last growth spurt.

And the stranger didn’t necessarily give off a creepy vibe, aside from the whole “staring at Jay for five full minutes” thing. He was honestly someone Jay might have noticed appreciatively on his own—tall and broad-shouldered and lean, with an appealing flash of a smile when he spoke to Luis. His red hair needed cutting, but in a way that worked for him, and the way his jeans fit was...yeah.

But it wasn’t always the obviously creepy ones you had to look out for. Jay had learned that lesson early.

Jay paid for his groceries, watching the redhead in the reflection of the plexiglass cigarette case behind the cashier. Luis finished the sandwich—no, sandwiches, two—and handed them over to the redhead, who moved to stand behind Jay at the register. Jay accepted his change and got the fuck out of there.

A block away, he pretended to tie his shoe so that he could look discreetly behind him. Yeah. The redhead was coming his way.

Fuck that. Jay wasn’t a scared little homeless kid anymore, he didn’t have to put up with whatever crap this asshole was trying to pull. He stood up and started walking again at a slower pace, letting the redhead catch up, then turned off into an alley, set his groceries to the side, and waited.

When the redhead came around the corner, Jay slammed him up against the wall and put a forearm across his windpipe. The bag with the breakfast sandwiches fell to the ground.

“Hey, asshole,” Jay said. “I don’t know why you’re following me, but you picked the wrong guy, so how about you leave me the fuck alone?”

The redhead looked startled but not alarmed, letting his hands dangle at his sides rather than trying to push Jay off. “You’re kind of the one holding me here,” he pointed out.

Jay pushed down with his forearm—not hard enough to do any real damage, just to make a point. “Fuck you, pervert.”

Now those hands came up, but in a palms-out gesture of surrender. “Sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be creepy. You just looked a lot like someone I knew.”

Well, that was a new one. “Yeah? Who?”

The redhead’s blue eyes met his. “Jason Todd,” he said. All serious, like it meant something.

Jay frowned. Why did that name sound familiar…? “Who—wait. The dead kid?”

A quirk of an eyebrow. “Might not be dead.”

It took a minute to sink in, and when it did, Jay had to let go of the guy, he was laughing so hard. “Holy shit,” he wheezed when he could breathe again. “You think I’m this dead—sorry, possibly dead—rich kid? That Wayne guy’s like a billionaire, right? And I’m just, what, living on ramen in this shitty-ass neighborhood for fun? You were watching me, you know what I just bought.”

The redhead’s mouth twitched, and then he was laughing too. “Okay, yeah, it was stupid,” he said. “Sorry. It’s been...an epically shitty week. Maybe I lost it for a minute there. Didn’t mean to drag someone else into it.” He raked his hair back from his forehead and then held out a hand. “I’m Roy Harper.”

Ah, what the fuck. Harper hadn’t put up any kind of a fight—if he wound up turning creepy, Jay could probably take him. “Jay,” he said, shaking the offered hand.

That eyebrow went up again. “Just Jay?”

“Just Jay.” Harper would probably assume Jay simply didn’t want to share his last name. He didn’t have to know Jay didn’t have one.

“Fair enough,” Harper said. “Can I buy you an apology cup of coffee, Jay?”

Jay gave him a wary look. Harper held up his hands again. “Nothing fancy, just from the cart on the corner there. I’m broke as shit.”

He smiled again. Jay couldn’t quite tell if there was interest in his expression or just polite friendliness, but this was the weirdest and most entertaining conversation he’d had in months, and hell, the way Harper filled out those jeans wasn’t getting any worse.

“Yeah, all right,” he said, and picked his groceries back up.

They ended up on a park bench with two strong and cheap cups of coffee. Jay pointed to Harper’s sandwiches. “Those are gonna get cold.”

“In this weather?” Harper asked, and Jay had to give him the point. The July sun wasn’t exactly gentle today. Hot coffee maybe wasn’t the best beverage to be drinking, but Harper had gotten it light and sweet and Jay had learned years ago never to turn down free calories.

“So you always tell people you’re friends with dead guys on magazine covers?” Jay asked between sips. At Harper’s puzzled look, he clarified: “You said you knew Jason Todd.”

“Oh. Ah.” Harper ran his fingers through his hair again. “I did. Before he died. Uh, obviously.”

Jay’s eyebrows lifted. “You’re a pretty good liar, dude, but it helps if the story’s actually convincing.”

“I know how it sounds, but it’s true.” Harper dug his phone out and scrolled for a minute, then handed it to Jay. He’d pulled up a picture of what was clearly him as a teenager, round-cheeked and smiling, his copper hair cut short and neatly side-parted. His arm was slung around the shoulders of a strikingly handsome boy his age with black hair and startlingly blue eyes even brighter than Harper’s.

“That’s not Jason Todd.” Jay hadn’t really been paying attention to the story except to sneer at it. Kids went missing every day, but only the rich white ones got their faces plastered all over the news and tabloids for years afterwards. But because Todd’s stupid face was in the newsstands again, even Jay knew this guy wasn’t him.

His eyes lingered on that face, though, as a headache crawled up the back of his skull.

“No, it’s Dick Grayson. He’s Bruce Wayne’s oldest son,” Harper said. He took the phone back and typed something, then showed Jay a Google Image Search result. It was a photo Jay had seen plenty of times on tabloid covers but never paid much attention to: a man and two teenage boys, all with dark hair and blue eyes. The man was presumably Bruce Wayne; the younger boy was Jason Todd, big-eared and dorky. The older boy was unmistakably the same kid from the photo with Harper.

Jay’s headache got worse.

He ignored it. He was good at ignoring pain. “So what was that first picture?” he asked, nodding towards the phone. “Charity event? Get your picture taken with the rich and soulless and their matching collectable children?”

Harper shook his head. “Dick was my best friend in high school,” he said. “Until I dropped out, at least.”

“Yeah? Why’d you drop out?” Jay asked before he could catch himself.

Harper gave him a look. “What’s your last name?”

Okay, another point to Harper. “So you went to high school with Rich Boy Number One. We’re talking about Rich Boy Number Two.”

“Jason.” Harper shrugged. “I mean, to be honest, I never paid that much attention to him. He was just a kid, you know? He was three years younger than us and kind of a brat because he’d had a shitty home life before Bruce adopted him, and he always wanted to hang out with Dick but also wouldn’t admit that he wanted to hang out with Dick, so he’d pick fights with him instead. I dunno.” He shook his head. “Someone dies tragically, they always want to talk about him like he was a saint. They never want to admit that he was kind of an annoying little shit. Funny, and smart as hell, but…”

He scrubbed a hand over his face, clearly upset. Or maybe he was just the good liar Jay had pegged him for, although he couldn’t see the point of this particular lie.

“But…?” Jay asked.

“He didn’t deserve to die,” Harper said. “He was only fifteen, and he went from having nothing to having everything, and some motherfuckers took it away from him again. It pisses me off.” He looked down at the phone in his hand, still with the family portrait up, and then back at Jay. “You really do look a hell of a lot like him.”

“The kid you just described as an annoying little shit? Thanks.”

Harper laughed a little. “Every fourteen-year-old is an annoying little shit. But you’ve got the same eyes, the same bone structure. Same mouth.”

Jay smirked at him. He didn’t necessarily want to be compared to some dorky dead teenager, but he didn’t mind Harper paying attention to his mouth, either.

“I’m just saying, you can’t blame me for asking,” Harper said. “You’re even right around the same age as he would be. How old are you?”

Jay’s smile fell away.

Harper noticed. “Shit, you’re not underage, are you?” he asked.

“No,” Jay said, and bit his lip. “At least...I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so,” Harper repeated blankly.

“I don’t know how old I am,” Jay said. “I don’t know my last name. Jay’s not even…” He spread his hands. “It’s what they called me when I woke up in the hospital. I don’t know why. As good a name as any for the kid with amnesia, right?”

Harper blinked. “Amnesia.”

“I know, it sounds like some soap opera bullshit, but hey, sometimes that’s just what you get with massive head trauma.”

“And how did you get the massive he—oh.” Harper caught himself. “You don’t know. Because amnesia.”

“My earliest memory is lying in a hospital bed and everything hurting.” Jay didn’t know why he was saying any of this. He didn’t make a habit of talking about his past—or anything—even to people he knew, let alone someone he’d caught gawking at him in a bodega twenty minutes prior.

But Harper had been all broken up about some kid he’d barely known and didn’t seem to have liked much at all. And though those blue eyes had gone wide as Jay spoke, he wasn’t laughing at the implausible narrative that was Jay’s life.

“I think I’m at least twenty. Definitely under twenty-five. That’s as close as I can get,” Jay said.

“How long ago was...I mean, how many years back can you remember?” Harper asked.

Jay squinted. “Six...ish?” His memories of the beginning weren’t very clear; he didn’t know if it was weeks or months before he’d felt lucid on an ongoing basis.

Harper rubbed at his chin. “So you’re saying you look like a grown-up Jason Todd, you’re approximately the same age as he would be, and you’re an amnesiac whose memory only dates back to when he disappeared. Oh, and the only name you go by just happens to be the nickname his adoptive father and brother used.”

Jay stared at him. “You’re still on this shit? You really think I’m actually Jason Todd.”

“I’m just saying, it’s an awful lot of coincidences,” Harper argued.

“How rich is Bruce Wayne?” Jay asked. “Richer than god, right? He had to have looked when Todd went missing.”

“Yeah, he spent like two years searching,” Harper said. “At least that’s what I read.”

“You’re telling me that a guy like that, spends two years spending all the money in the world to find one kid, and he fails?” Jay asked. “If I was Jason Todd, he would have found me. Jason Todd is dead.”

Harper scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah. Shit.” He gave Jay a rueful smile. “Would have been nice, though. There’s a five million dollar reward for finding him.”

Jay blinked. “Never mind, just kidding, I’m definitely Jason Todd.”

Harper laughed and stood up. “I should get home. Thanks for indulging me. And not kicking my ass.”

It turned out they were heading in the same direction, so they walked together. Jay wasn’t sure if the note of interest he thought he’d detected in Harper before had disappeared after the whole weird amnesia confession, or if he’d imagined it in the first place. He also couldn’t decide if he was disappointed or not.

“This is me,” Harper said with a nod towards an apartment building. His cell phone pinged in his pocket and he took it out and glanced at the screen, then swore. “Godfuckingdammit, Santos…”

Whatever the text had been, it couldn’t have been good. Jay watched Harper’s fingers tighten on the phone, watched him take a few angry paces, curse again and press his fist to his mouth.

“Uh,” he said, a little at a loss. “Bad news?”

Harper looked at him, and suddenly something desperate and determined came over his face. “Hey,” he said. “Okay. You’re not Jason Todd. But what if you were?”

“What?”

“Can you prove that you’re not him?”

“Considering that I have no memory, family, or documentation, no, obviously not. What’s your point?”

Harper bit his lip. “Can Bruce Wayne prove that you’re not him?”

Jay stared at him. “You mean, show up on some millionaire’s doorstep and lie that I’m his long-lost son?”

“Technically you don’t know that it’s a lie.” Harper put his hands on Jay’s shoulders, and Jay was too startled by this insane idea to shake him off the way he normally would. Or punch him in the teeth. “You don’t even have to lie. Just say you woke up with amnesia six years ago! That face of yours’ll do the rest.”

“Yeah, right.”

“So I’ll help you!” Harper said. He was nearly shouting. “Whatever you need to know about Gotham, about Bruce and Dick and what life was like there seven years ago, I can tell you enough to convince them. Anything I can’t answer, we chalk up to the amnesia.” His hands tightened on Jay’s shoulders, and Jay tensed. “You’d be an heir to a fortune. You’d never have to eat thirty-cent ramen again.”

“Is that so?” Jay asked, bristling. “And what do you get out of this, good samaritan? Because it smells like five million dollars.”

Harper had the grace to look at least a little ashamed. “I’d split it with you.”

Jay shook Harper’s hands off. “Fuck all the way off, Harper. Jason Todd didn’t deserve to die, but you’re fine making a profit off his memory, huh?” Off of Jason Todd’s memory and whatever had happened to Jay to leave him without one.

Harper took a step back. “Look, I just…”

“No.” Jay shook his head. “I was right the first time. Leave me the fuck alone.”

He walked away before Harper could respond.

*

Three Days Later

With every day that passed, Jay resented Roy Harper more.

He knew intellectually that it wasn’t Harper’s fault that he saw references to the Jason Todd story everywhere: on the covers of magazines, on the TV playing in the diner on the corner, on the internet at the library. That was the fault of the stupid reward putting it back into the news cycle again.

It was Harper’s fault that he couldn’t stop thinking about the reward every time he had to kick his door to get it to shut properly, or stomp at a roach skittering across his floor. Or do a job.

And it was Harper’s fault that he was wondering about the missing places in his memory more than he had in years. He hadn’t been a millionaire’s kid, but he’d been someone. Was there someone out there who missed the boy Jay had been as much as Bruce Wayne seemed to miss Jason?

There wasn’t any point in thinking about it. He’d never know the answers. But it was like the curiosity about his past had been dormant in the back of his brain, and the hope in Harper’s blue eyes had brought it roaring back to life.

He even went so far as to shoplift a magazine with a story about Jason Todd, and was faintly pleased to see his fingers were still as light as they’d ever been. Standing in his bathroom, he’d compared his own face to the one in the photos.

Even taking into account the fact that Jason was fifteen or younger in all of the pictures and Jay was probably in his early twenties, he didn’t see the resemblance. Jason’s hair was a deep auburn, and Jay’s was almost black, except for the white streak in the front that he’d had for as long as he could remember. Jason was pale, and Jay was tan. And Jason didn’t have Jay’s scars—cutting through his right eyebrow, nicking his chin, a fainter one across his neck. Not to mention all of the ones lower down.

Of course, Jay’s hair had darkened over the past five years or so. And the tan came from the Southern California sun, because he was paler everywhere his clothes normally hid. And the scars could have been—were probably from—whatever had happened to leave him with no memory, which meant they wouldn’t be in the pictures of Jason.

Which was proof of exactly nothing, and Jay threw the magazine into the garbage in disgust—with himself, with this predatory media circus, and especially with Roy Harper.

Fucking Harper.

But he was still thinking about it a few days later, on his way home from running a couple of errands. As he approached his front door, he saw a hulking figure leaning against it. Anatoli. Shit.

“Hello, Jay.”

Jay kept his expression neutral. “Anatoli.”

“Dreadful weather we are having, no?”

“Yeah, it’s hot.” Jay raised his eyebrows in the direction of his door. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all.” Anatoli unfolded himself from the door. Jay was tall, but Anatoli had a couple of inches and a lot of weight on him, all of it muscle. “Perhaps it will be cooler in your apartment.”

Shit. “I doubt it. I can’t afford AC,” Jay said, but he unlocked the door and stepped aside to let Anatoli through first. He couldn’t stop Anatoli from coming up to his apartment, but that didn’t mean he had to leave Anatoli at his unprotected back.

Inside the apartment, Anatoli gave it a dismissive once-over, and Jay bristled. He knew objectively that it was a rathole, but it was his, and he’d worked his ass off to be able to afford it.

“Speaking of money,” Anatoli said, as if there’d been no pause in the conversation, “where is mine?”

“I already gave it to you.”

“Ah, no, I express myself badly. You gave me the amount you were directed to get out of that lecherous fool Dover, yes,” Anatoli said. “But you did not get it in the way you were instructed to get it. And so I have this month’s money, but how am I to get next month’s, and the month after that?”

Jay’s jaw clenched. Stanley Dover was a city councilman with all sorts of unsavory tastes—including one for barely legal boys, despite his wife and three children at home and family values platform. Jay didn’t actually know if he was barely legal, but he could pass for it.

Anatoli’s plan had been for Jay to get Dover in a compromising position, take some pictures, and blackmail the shit out of him. Jay had no qualms about blackmailing a turd like Dover, but he was not interested in doing anything that would make for a truly effective photo. So much easier to follow the councilman to the kind of place where one found said barely legal boys, lift his wallet, and then pretend to be a good samaritan virtuously returning a dropped wallet and absolutely gobsmacked to recognize his elected official in such a scandalous locale.

It had been enough to panic Dover into handing over a cash reward big enough to buy Jay’s silence. And, actually, bigger than the amount Anatoli had sent Jay to get—Jay had cheerfully skimmed the excess off the top as a commission. But it wouldn’t scare Dover into making regular payments the way photos of him with his tongue down Jay’s throat would.

No sex, Anatoli had said. He knew Jay’s lines. Just a kiss. That was all.

But Jay’s mouth wasn’t Anatoli’s to sell.

“You’re a smart guy, Anatoli,” Jay drawed. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”

Even as he said it, he knew he was being an idiot. It was more profitable to work for Anatoli than the pickpocketing and shoplifting Jay had been getting by on when he first got out of the hospital, enough that Jay had a roof over his head now and rarely went hungry. But Anatoli was a bad man to cross, and mouthing off to him wouldn’t make this situation any better. Jay’s temper had always been faster than his brain, though.

Well, for as long as he could remember, anyway.

“I have already figured something out,” Anatoli said. “The plan I originally gave to you to execute. It was a good plan. A long-term plan. You will follow this plan.”

“Yeah, that’s not gonna work,” Jay said. “He’s already paid me hush money once, he’s not going to mistake me for some random twink looking for a hookup.”

“You are too tall for twink,” Anatoli said dismissively. “As for the rest...I suppose you will have to offer him more than a kiss, then.”

“I don’t do that—”

“What you do is what I tell you to do!” Anatoli suddenly roared, kicking over the milk crate that served as Jay’s coffee table and sending books sliding across the floor. Jay stepped back hastily, but there was nowhere to go and Anatoli was already in his space. “I want this man in my hand, do you understand? I want to bleed him dry, and I want him voting as I say, and for that, you are going to have to do something better with that pretty mouth of yours than make excuses!”

Jay put his hands up—slowly, soothingly. He could scrap—he’d had to learn, and quickly—but Anatoli was bigger and meaner than him. Jay already had enough firsthand experience to not want any more. “Okay, okay, I hear you,” he said. “I’ll get it done. When do you want me to go back? I think it should wait a few days.” A few days would give him time to think of a way out of this. Maybe.

“I agree,” Anatoli said, surprising Jay. Anatoli was not a patient man.

“Really?”

“You are not so good at remembering directions,” Anatoli said. “Perhaps I can help you to keep them in mind. But you will not be so pretty for a little while.” His fist closed around Jay’s throat. “I can wait.”

Chapter Text

Roy stared at the bills spread out on the kitchen table, then back at the bank balance pulled up on his phone, as if it might somehow have tripled since he last looked at it thirty seconds ago. Fuck. Fuck.

He’d taken the smaller amount Santos had offered. He’d had no choice, at the end of the day. But it had barely made a dent, and the debt kept piling up, and things were just going to get more expensive as time went on, not less…

Fuck, he was screwing everything up. Well, of course he was—that was what he did, wasn’t it? That was how he’d ended up here, still awake close to midnight, calculating and recalculating numbers that would never add up to survival.

He’d even screwed up with Jay the other day, with his insane, impulsive idea of passing some random stranger off as the long-lost Jason Todd. Even with all the other shit going on in his life, he hadn’t been able to shake the look of disgust on Jay’s face before he walked away.

The last person who’d looked at him that way had been Ollie.

Roy scrubbed his hands across his face. Shit. If he was thinking about Ollie, things were really bad. Maybe he should go looking for a fix, just to really drive home that he would never, ever be able to turn things around…

The doorbell was a welcome distraction from his spiraling thoughts, even if late-night callers rarely meant anything good for Roy. It was probably Santos coming to tell him they were cutting his fee again. Or one of the dealers from the college, having somehow figured out that he was working for the DEA and here to kick Roy’s ass. He made sure the chain was on the door and looked through the peephole.

It was Jay. And shit, was that…?

Roy took off the chain and opened the door. Yeah, that was a black eye.

“Hey,” he said.

Jay’s hands were stuffed in his pockets, his shoulders hunched forward defensively. He didn’t meet Roy’s eyes. “Hey,” he replied. “What was that you were saying about a five million dollar reward?”

Roy chewed on the inside of his cheek. “Come in,” he said finally. “But be quiet.”

He stepped back and let Jay in, then locked the door behind him. The apartment was only a studio, so it didn’t take long for Jay’s gaze to fall on the tiny body curled up on the kid-sized bed in the corner.

“Oh,” he said, very quietly.

“My daughter. Lian.” Roy kept his voice soft, too. Lian was a heavy sleeper—she had to be, growing up in this neighborhood—but there were limits.

Jay’s eyes went to the table covered in bills, then back to Lian. “She’s why you needed the money. I thought…”

“I know what you thought.” Roy swept the bills into a pile. “I don’t want money for the sake of money. I’ve had that. I want to keep my daughter. I want her to go to college. I don’t ever want her to be hungry.”

He wasn’t sure if Jay heard him. He was still watching Lian, and there was something so pained in his expression Roy felt a little guilty for seeing it, like he’d opened a door onto something private.

He wondered, suddenly, what Jay’s childhood had been like. Then he wondered if Jay was asking himself the same question.

Jay seemed to catch himself and tore his eyes away from Lian. “So,” he said, his voice much more brisk, if still quiet. “If we do this...how would it work?”

“You weren’t too into the idea the other day,” Roy pointed out. “This have anything to do with whoever beat you up?”

“It was a draw, and also, none of your business.”

“Bullshit,” Roy said, and Jay looked startled. “You tell me I’m the scum of the earth and flounce off, then you show up totally on board with the idea? I get to know why. Especially if you’re bringing violence around my house.” He nodded in Lian’s direction.

Jay crossed his arms. “I’ll quit being cryptic when you do, Mr. I Used To Hang Out With Millionaires.”

Roy sighed. “Fine.” He sat down on the couch, which was just about the only place to sit in the whole place besides the kitchen table. At night he unfolded it into the world’s least comfortable bed. Lian’s bed and a fridge that buzzed like an outboard motor rounded out his furniture.

Jay hovered for a minute, then sat next to him, far enough to keep a full couch cushion between them. Roy chewed his lip, thinking about where to start.

“My folks died when I was little. I don’t remember my mom at all; I barely remember my dad. I moved in with my mom’s parents after that, on the Navajo reservation in Arizona, and they took care of me. Well, I guess we took care of each other, because they weren’t in the best health, and after they died…” He shrugged. “The rez took care of me. Then, when I was ten...you ever heard of Queen Industries?” At Jay’s blank look, Roy added: “They own Q-Core.”

“The hippie phone company?”

Roy snorted. Ollie would’ve loved hearing that. “Yeah, that’s the one. Turns out my dad was fraternity brothers with Oliver Queen, the owner, and had named him my godfather when I was born. He came by the rez to make sure I was doing okay, and…” He shrugged. “Maybe I reminded him of my dad. Maybe he felt guilty he hadn’t come earlier. Either way, turns out you can push through adoption paperwork real fucking fast when your net worth’s in the eight digits.”

“He just…took you?” Jay said.

Roy shrugged. “I wanted to go. Ollie was...I mean, when he turns it on, he’s the most charismatic person I’ve ever met. And it was…” He dragged his hand through his hair. He hadn’t talked this much about Ollie in...ever, really. “I loved it, living with him. He’d pull me out of school to go camping in the woods for a week, or take me with him to Tokyo and blow off his business meetings so we could hang out in karaoke bars. We went to three dozen different countries together. He taught me how to shave and drive and pick up chicks.” He felt the corner of his mouth curl up. “I had to teach myself how to pick up boys, but the principle’s basically the same.”

Was that a flush hitting Jay’s cheeks? Roy caught himself and reset his expression back to a neutral one. Flirting with the amnesiac who nearly beat him up in an alley a few days ago was a bad idea for so many reasons, but it was basically instinct when he was looking at eyes that pretty. Ollie had taught him how to flirt, but he hadn’t bothered to teach him how to switch it off.

“Anyway, that’s how I met Dick—Ollie and Bruce ran in the same circles,” he continued. “We hit it off right away. He was adopted too, had all the same weird culture shock I did. No one wants to hear a poor little rich boy’s problems except another poor little rich boy, right?”

“Shit, I don’t want to hear your problems now,” Jay muttered, and Roy laughed.

“Yeah, well…tough.” He looked down at his hands again. “Ollie was fun, but he wasn’t around much. He didn’t notice when I started doing drugs. Didn’t notice all the time I spent in the bathroom or that I dropped thirty pounds when I was supposed to be growing. Didn’t notice anything until he walked in on me with a needle in my arm.” Roy still wasn’t sure if he’d waited until he knew Ollie was home to shoot up on purpose, if he’d been trying to get caught, or if he’d just been so desperate and stupid that it would never have occured to him to close his bedroom door all the way.

“Did he even care?” Jay asked. “Don’t all those rich guys spend half their time doing lines?”

“Not Ollie,” Roy said. “He backhanded me across the face, called me a lousy junkie, and threw me out of the house. I was seventeen.”

Jay was silent. Roy kept staring at his hands; he didn’t want to see that disgusted expression on his face again.

“...What an asshole,” Jay said finally, and Roy chanced a look up. Jay’s storm-blue eyes were sparking with anger.

Something tense in Roy’s stomach eased a little. “Yeah,” he said. “Anyway. I pretty much cut off contact with anyone I’d known after that. Got clean on my own, got my feet under me on my own. Dated the wrong person for a while and ended up raising a kid on my own.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “But the work you can get with a record and no GED doesn’t pay so hot, and all it takes is one visit from CPS to decide I’m an unfit father. I can’t let that happen. Lian...she’s the only good thing I’ve ever done in my life.” He’d always meant to take the GED, but between work and Lian and all their moving around he’d never gotten around to it. He wasn’t even sure he could still pass it at this point, after so many years out of school.

Jay lifted a shoulder and dropped it. “At least you’ve got one thing,” he said.

Roy didn’t know how to answer that, so he sidestepped it, nodding at Jay’s eye instead. “Your turn,” he said. “Tell me about the shiner.”

“Eh. This shithead named Anatoli. I do jobs for him sometimes. He didn’t like how I handled the last one.” It was Jay’s turn to avoid eye contact, apparently.

“What kind of jobs?” Roy asked.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes, because if it’s drugs, we can forget this whole thing right now.”

“No! Jesus,” Jay said. He looked at the ceiling. “I…can be very convincing when I want to be. About...opportunities that may or may not exist. Or debts people may or may not owe.”

Roy stared at him. “You’re a grifter.”

“That is a word for it, yes.”

Unfuckingbelievable. Roy had to fight to keep from raising his voice enough to wake Lian. “You’re a fucking grifter and you had the gall to give me shit because I suggested we tell Bruce the goddamn truth about you not being able to remember anything—”

“No, you suggested fucking selling me to Bruce Wayne, and I don’t do that,” Jay said, his eyes flashing. “Not ever. And if I have to do some grifting to keep me from doing that, or from going back to picking pockets and sleeping rough, then yeah, I’ll run a game or three. I won’t apologize for it, either.”

“That is not at all what I—look, you know what? Fine,” Roy said. It wasn’t worth arguing about. Either they made this work now or they didn’t. Clearly neither of them was walking away with the moral high ground. “Again: why’d you change your mind?”

“Like I said. Anatoli and I had a disagreement. And he has a forceful way of expressing his views.” Roy’s face must have done something, because Jay held up a hand to forestall him. “I’m fine. But I don’t particularly feel like dealing with him when I could be claiming an inheritance from some asshole too rich to know what to do with it. And…”

“And?”

Jay lifted his chin. Roy knew that tell. That was someone pretending he wasn’t admitting a vulnerability. “Gotham’s on the other side of the country, and this might not be a bad time for me to get out of town.”

“Okay,” Roy said. He didn’t press on what the job had been. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“This was your idea, and you know the family, so you get to run the show,” Jay said. “Recite the Wayne family tree to me, teach me what fork to use, what the fuck ever. But you and I need to get something clear: I am not Jason Todd.”

Roy blinked. “Uh...you might have misunderstood what the reward is for.”

“No, I got it,” Jay said. “We can tell Wayne I have amnesia or I can memorize whatever bullshit I need to memorize to convince him, but it is an act. I con other people. I don’t do it to myself, and you’re not gonna try. Remember that or I walk.”

Roy held up his hands. “Fine. Whatever.” He would have felt better if he could have convinced himself that there was a possibility he was reuniting a lost son with his father, but Jay was probably right. Jason Todd was dead, Jay No Last Name was a very convincing fake, and the clearer both of them were on that fact, the better.

“Great. When do we leave?”

Whoever Anatoli was, he’d obviously scared the shit out of Jay. “I don’t know. I’ll have to see if I can find plane tickets I can afford…”

But Jay shook his head. “You need ID to fly, right?”

“Yeah, why—oh.” Roy considered his options. “Road trip it is. You know how to drive?”

“If I did once, I don’t now.”

Roy sighed. “Great. Road trip where I drive all three thousand miles myself it is.” He glanced over at his sleeping child. “And we’re gonna have to take Lian, I can’t leave her with a babysitter for a week or however long this takes. Hope you like listening to the Frozen 2 soundtrack.”

“I can honestly say I’ve never had the pleasure,” Jay said dryly.

“Shit, I gotta get me some amnesia,” Roy said. Jay’s mouth twisted like he was fighting a smile. “Okay, well if we’re driving, that gives us three or four days on the road to prep you, so we can leave whenever. Couple of days work for you? I have some things I need to tie up.”

“Fine,” Jay said. He still seemed antsy, but there was nothing Roy could do about that.

They exchanged numbers. Jay’s phone was a cheap flipphone, little more than a burner, but the look in his eyes dared Roy to make a comment about it, which Roy was not stupid enough to do. He walked Jay to the door with a promise to keep him updated on when exactly they were leaving.

Then he hesitated. “Uh, listen...if you’re worried about this Anatoli guy and want to crash here for the night…” He had no idea where he would put Jay, and he didn’t want Anatoli coming around his home. But he didn’t feel good sending Jay out into the night, either.

Jay gave him a crooked smile, one Roy recognized all too well. The false bravado in it was like looking in a mirror.

“Nah, I’ll be fine,” Jay said. “Get some sleep. You’ve got a lot of driving to do soon.”

*

Two Days Later

When Roy answered his phone, Jay sounded a little frantic. “Yeah, hi, I know we said we were leaving at noon, but could we go a bit sooner? Like, uh, now?”

“Whoa, what?” It was only eight a.m.; Roy wasn’t packed, and they were still in the middle of breakfast. Lian had grape jelly all over her face. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing!” Jay’s breezy tone was so unconvincing Roy had to wonder how good of a grifter he actually was. “I just thought it made more sense to get on the road early, you know? Cover more ground.”

“Bullshit,” Roy said, and Lian gave him an accusing look. Whoops. Oh well, it wasn’t like she hadn’t heard him say worse. “What’s really going on?”

There was a pause on the other end, then a sigh. “Anatoli just called to say he’s on his way over.”

Shit. “How long?”

“I don’t know. An hour, tops?”

Roy scrubbed a hand over his face. “Okay, I’ll be there as soon as possible. Be ready to go when I get there.”

“I will. Uh...thanks.”

“Yeah. See you soon.” Roy hung up.

“Daddy, you said a bad word!” Lian informed him.

“I know, princess, sorry about that.” Roy stood up. “Listen, remember how I said we were going on a long car trip with Daddy’s friend Jay today?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, we’re going to go pick him up real soon, so I need you to finish breakfast quick while I pack our things, okay?”

Lian stuffed half a slice of toast in her mouth, apparently taking his directive to eat quickly to heart. Great. “Ofay.”

“Smaller bites, please, and chew before you swallow!” Roy said, opening the closet and pulling out his suitcase and Lian’s tiny backpack. He started chucking things in haphazardly: clothes for both of them for at least two weeks, toothbrushes and hairbrushes, enough books and toys to keep Lian entertained in the backseat and hotel rooms for however long this took.

Christ, what was he doing, upending his daughter’s life on a whim like this? Not that they didn’t move plenty, going to wherever the DEA sent Roy, but usually he had more time to get her used to the idea. He didn’t love the fact that he hadn’t gotten to introduce her to Jay before subjecting her to extended time in a confined space with him, either. Not that he thought Jay would do anything to upset her, not after the shattered look on his face as he watched her sleep, but new people could be overwhelming for a five-year-old.

It would all be worth it if he got the money, though. She’d never have to worry again.

Lian was done eating by the time he was packed. He wiped her face clean with a damp paper towel (“Daddy, no!”), stuck the last piece of toast between his teeth, threw the dirty dishes in the sink, tossed the backpack over his shoulder, scooped up Lian (“Daddy, She-Ra!”), squatted low enough that she could pick up her She-Ra toy from the couch, grabbed the suitcase, and staggered out the door.

At least the car was parked close by. As he buckled Lian into the booster seat in the back, he accidentally bit through the toast still sticking out of his mouth, and it fell into the street, butter side down. Well, there went breakfast.

“That’s why you’re s’posed to eat at the table,” Lian informed him with a superior air.

“Yeah, Daddy learned his lesson,” Roy sighed. “Okay, let’s go!”

Jay lived only a few blocks away. There were no spots, so Roy double parked and honked the horn. No one came out, so he honked again.

His phone rang. Jay. He swiped to answer. “You coming down?”

“...all this packing, it makes me think you are going somewhere,” said a voice he didn’t recognize, one with a heavy Russian accent. He sounded like he was far away from the phone, not talking into it.

“Just for the weekend.” That was Jay, closer to the phone, his tone low and coaxing. “I’ll be back in time to handle Dover.”

“Ah, but this is my concern, Jay.” Anatoli—Roy was assuming it was him—didn’t sound concerned, or at least not concerned with anything but being as menacing as possible. “To others, who are not as understanding as I am, it looks as if you are running out on what you owe me. This affects my reputation. I cannot have this.”

“I told you, I’ve got a bigger fish on the hook,” Jay said. “You know Queen Industries? This guy’s the owner’s son.”

The words hit Roy like a punch to the gut. Jay was scamming him. Of course he was scamming him. He was a grifter. Roy didn’t know which landed harder, the fact that Jay was running a game on him or hearing himself called Oliver Queen’s son. Even Ollie had never used that word.

“Give me the weekend,” Jay went on. “I’ll bring you back the PIN to his trust fund.”

Except...Roy didn’t have a trust fund. He didn’t have anything from Ollie.

And Jay knew that.

Roy blinked, pushed down the hurt over Ollie, and started using his brain. Jay had called him. It could have been a butt dial...or Jay could have wanted him to hear. Hear the lie that he was spinning for Anatoli. Hear that Anatoli was there in the first place.

Hear that Jay needed help.

Roy glanced in the rearview mirror and met Lian’s big, innocent eyes. Fuck. Fuck, this was such a bad idea, but he didn’t see any other way.

“He’s probably outside already,” Jay said, and Roy honked again to let Jay know he was there. “See? I bet that’s him.”

A dark head popped out of a window and an arm waved. Roy started counting windows as he unbuckled his seatbelt, so he could find the apartment from inside the building. Jay was one story up and three windows over.

“Lian, I need you to stay here and be very quiet and very good, okay?” he said, rolling down all the windows an inch and taking the key out of the ignition. “Daddy’s going inside to help Jay get his things and then we’re going to go on our trip. Can you stay right here?”

“I want to come!” she said, reaching for the buckle of her seatbelt. Oh, for the days that she couldn’t get out of her car seat.

“No!” he snapped, and steeled himself against the surprised hurt in her eyes. “Stay here. I’m locking the doors, and I’ll be right back. Okay?”

She nodded, subdued. Feeling like the world’s worst father, Roy got out of the car, locked the doors behind him, and went to save a con artist from himself.

*

Harper had better be on his way up, or Jay was fucked.

He didn’t know what had tipped Anatoli off that Jay was getting ready to run, but he clearly didn’t believe anything Jay was saying. Jay’d been bracing himself for another beating when the sound of a car horn in the street outside had rung out like a blessing from heaven. Calling Harper under the guise of sending a text and leaving the line open in the hopes that he would figure out what was going on had been the longest of long shots, but Jay hadn’t had a lot of options.

“I should go meet him,” Jay said. His backpack strap was hooked over his fingers but he didn’t dare shoulder it and risk setting Anatoli off. “Want to keep him happy, you know?”

“Who? This imaginary trust fund baby you have invented out of the sound of a traffic jam outside?” Anatoli asked.

Yeah, Anatoli definitely didn’t believe him.

A perfectly timed knock on the door saved Jay from having to come up with an answer. He smiled at Anatoli, trying to hit the perfect balance between “smug triumph” and “not so smug as to get punched in the face for it” and started for the door.

Anatoli held up a hand to stop him and opened it, keeping himself between Jay and the exit. Sure enough, it was Harper, and something tight in Jay’s chest eased. He didn’t exactly look like a millionaire’s son in his ratty jeans and faded T-shirt, but maybe Anatoli would think it was a deliberate shabby chic aesthetic.

And—holy shit, bless him, the look of blank friendliness on his face was fucking perfect. “Oh, um, hi!” he said. Even his voice was different; he somehow sounded much richer and much stupider. “Do I have the right place? Is Jay here?”

Looking bemused, Anatoli stepped aside and gestured to Jay, who took the opportunity to actually sling his backpack onto his shoulder. “Hey, baby,” he said as Harper got within reach, and then pulled him in to kiss him.

He felt the split second of surprised tension in Harper’s frame—and then Harper melted into it, his hands coming up to cup Jay’s face gently as he kissed him back. He was a distractingly good kisser, and when Jay pulled away for his own self preservation, it wasn’t just because of Anatoli’s looming presence.

Harper swept some loose curls off Jay’s temple, his fingers carefully skating around Jay’s still-healing black eye. “You gotta stop walking into doors, beautiful,” he said, still in the rich idiot voice. Reaching down to take Jay’s hand, he beamed that goofy-ass smile at Anatoli. “This guy, right? So clumsy!” He offered his other hand to Anatoli. “I’m Roy. Are you a friend of Jay’s?”

“Oh, yes, a very good friend,” Anatoli said, enclosing Roy’s hand in his own meaty fist. To Roy’s credit, his idiotic grin didn’t falter. “My name is Anatoli. I didn’t know Jay had...a special friend.”

“Well, it’s kind of still in the honeymoon phase, right, baby?” Roy scrunched up his nose cutesily at Jay and actually chucked him under the chin, which Jay would have kicked him for if it hadn’t been part of the act. “But what are you doing having friends over when we’re heading out of town, you knucklehead?”

“Is that so? And where are you two off to?” Anatoli asked.

“Oh, I’ve got a beach house a couple hours down the coast. Well, my dad does, but he’s in Saint-Tropez, so it’ll be just the two of us.” He gave Jay a look so heated it made the back of Jay’s neck go warm. “Ready to go?”

“Always,” Jay said, and tugged Harper toward the door, winking at Anatoli as they passed him.

“I will walk you down,” Anatoli said. He was still eyeing Harper like he might be a marionette Jay was discreetly operating behind his back. “So that you can lock the door.”

Shit. Although yeah, Jay probably should lock up in case this insane plan didn’t work and he had to come back. He locked the door with his free hand, feeling the weight of Harper’s ridiculous cow eyes on his back.

“So tell me about this father of yours, the one in Saint-Tropez,” Anatoli said as they walked down the stairs. “That is a nice place for vacation, I am told.”

“Eh, it’s all right,” Harper said with such entitled dismissiveness that even Jay wanted to smack him. “A little dull. I like Biarritz. But why fly across an ocean to go to the beach when you’re not even planning on getting out of bed?” He gave Jay another one of those scorching glances.

“It is strange,” Anatoli said. “I have known Jay a long time and he is usually more...shy than this.”

“Is that true?” Harper asked, smiling. “Are you shy, baby?”

Jay pressed closer to him as they walked and fired one of those heated looks back his way, mildly surprised to see a flush rise in Harper’s cheeks in response. “Guess I was just waiting for the right guy.”

They exited the building and Jay swallowed a curse at the sight of Harper’s car. Anatoli’s eyebrows went up. “I mean no offense, but I would have expected the heir to Queen Industries to drive something a little more…impressive.”

But either Harper thought as fast as Jay did, or he’d already come up with an explanation. “I like to restore cars,” he said with an air of humble pride, as if anyone would bother to restore a 2006 Toyota Corolla.

“Daddy!” Lian called from the backseat, and Jay caught a flicker of distress on Harper’s face as Anatoli took note of her.

“I thought it was just going to be the two of you?” Anatoli asked.

Harper recovered his equilibrium quickly. “That’s what the au pair’s for,” he said, unlocking the car. “Anyway, we’d better get going. It was nice to meet you!”

“Indeed,” Anatoli said. He fixed Jay with a level stare. “I will see you when you return, Jay.”

Oh, he was not happy. Shit. “Count on it,” Jay said, fighting for a smile, and then he was safely in the passenger seat and Harper was turning on the car and pulling away from the curb.

“Why’s he still watching us?” Harper asked, glancing in the rearview mirror.

Jay winced. “Taking down the license plate number, probably.”

“Goddammit, Jay!” Harper snapped. “You might have mentioned that your friend Anatoli was Anatoli freaking Knyazev!”

Jay took a deep breath so that he wouldn’t snap back—Harper had just saved his ass, after all. “I didn’t know it would ring a bell.”

“I work for the DEA and he’s one of the biggest dealers in the city, of course it rings a bell! You could have warned me I might have to deal with a crime boss!”

“You work for the DEA?” Jay asked.

Harper glanced at him, then quickly back at the road. “Uh. Yeah. Undercover stuff, schools and things.” He shrugged. “I look young. It’s the freckles.”

“Undercover...you’re a fucking narc?” Jay asked.

“Watch your language,” Harper snapped.

Which was when Jay remembered the little girl sitting in the backseat. Crap.

He turned around to see her staring at him. “Uh...hi,” he said. “Lian, right? I’m Jay.”

“You should put on your seatbelt,” she replied.

“Uh…”

“Put it on,” Harper said. Jay rolled his eyes but obeyed.

“What’s a narc?” Lian asked.

Jay sighed and closed his eyes. This was going to be a long trip.

Chapter Text

By the time they got outside the city limits, Roy felt less like kicking Jay out the passenger-side door. Really, it was his own fault for not putting two and two together. Anatoli wasn’t exactly a common name in Southern California, and he was well aware of how far the man’s reach extended. But they were leaving his territory, and with any luck they’d never have to deal with him again. Time to put it in the past, and start strategizing about how they were going to get that reward.

Lian was distracted with a picture book, and Jay was staring out the window at the desert. He looked rapt. “See anything interesting?” Roy asked.

“I’ve never been outside Coast City,” Jay said, still turning his head like he was trying to take it all in at once. “At least, not that I remember.”

Roy felt his chest tighten the way it did when Lian did something particularly sweet. He shook it off. “I’ll try to take a slightly more scenic route,” he said. “Anyway. I’ve been doing some thinking, and we need to lean on the amnesia thing. With Bruce, I mean.”

Jay finally looked at him. “Why?”

Roy raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know if you know this, O Confidence Man, but fraud is illegal.”

“Well then I’ve been a very naughty boy.”

The way he said it made Roy think of the way Jay had looked at him when they’d been in his apartment with Anatoli. Not to mention the way Jay had kissed him, which had been… He shook that off, too.

“If we show up and say that we know for a fact that you are definitely Jason Todd, and they have some way of proving you’re not, we’re in deep…” He glanced at Lian in the rearview mirror. “...doody. But if we say we’re not sure, but gosh almighty you really do look like him, and isn’t the timing funny…”

“...Then at worst it’s just an honest mistake,” Jay concluded. “Whoops, silly us.”

“Exactly.”

Jay shook his head, smiling faintly. “If we don’t get the reward, you might have a real future in grifting,” he said. “Speaking of which: what was that voice you did for Anatoli? That was priceless.”

Roy laughed. “You liked that? That was everyone I hated in that stupid prep school Ollie sent me to. Morons, every single one of them.”

“Yeah? Did Dick Grayson talk like that?”

Roy’s smile faded. “No,” he said. “No, Dick didn’t talk like that.”

Jay leaned back against his seat, his head turned to watch Roy. Apparently Roy now rated higher than the landscape. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that. “What’s he like?”

God. “You have to remember, I haven’t seen him in seven years,” Roy said. “But when we were kids...I mean, he could be super weird. He grew up in the circus, you know. He was a professional acrobat as a kid, before Bruce adopted him.”

“No shi—” Jay glanced at the backseat and caught himself. “No kidding?”

“Yeah, with his folks. They were called...oh god, what was it. The Fantastic Graysons? No, the Flying Graysons, that was it. He wore this funny little leotard and everything. And even when we were in high school, years later, he was always climbing on everything, walking on his hands, doing all sorts of crazy stunts. You could dare him to do anything, and he would. No fear. Plus he was super competitive.” Roy made a wry face. “I mean, so am I, which was maybe not the best combination. Broke my arm sophomore year trying to walk a fence because Dick had done it. In his defense, he felt really bad about it.”

“Sounds like you were a dumb kid,” Jay said with a faint smile on his face.

“I was an incredibly dumb kid,” Roy agreed. “Dick was really smart, though. And charming. Everyone liked him. Homecoming king two years running, and probably three, but I wasn’t around senior year, so I don’t know.”

“So, basically perfect.” Jay’s smile had faded. He looked a little like he was biting into something sour.

“Oh, definitely not,” Roy said. “Like I said, he could be really competitive. Super bossy, and also kind of...obsessive sometimes? Like one minute he’s this really fun guy and suddenly he’s sort of angry and intense and pushing everyone away. I don’t know if that was a him thing or something he picked up from Bruce or what, but it was always like...you don’t have to be like this, man. If you just tell us what the problem is, your friends will help you.”

“Maybe he couldn’t,” Jay said. The sound of his voice had changed slightly, and when Roy glanced over, Jay was facing front again, looking out the windshield. His expression was distant. “Maybe he thought if he told you, you wouldn’t like him anymore. Sometimes there’s stuff that you can’t share.”

“That’s not how friendship works,” Roy said. “Not for me. I mean, hell, I’ve gone through it myself, I wasn’t gonna stop being friends with Dick just because he was having a bad day.”

“But you did, didn’t you?” Jay asked, looking back at him. “Stop being friends with him, I mean.”

“I… That was different. That wasn’t him, that was me.” Roy focused very hard on the road ahead of him. “Bad enough I let everyone down; I didn’t need to drag them down, too.”

“So if it had been Dick who’d started doing drugs instead of you, you would have just let him get clean on his own?”

Roy’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. There was an answer to that question, he just...didn’t have it right now. “Are you hungry?” he asked finally. “Looks like there’s a rest stop coming up, we might as well stop for lunch.”

“I want chicken nuggets!” Lian announced from the backseat.

So that settled that.

They found a McDonald’s, which wasn’t Roy’s favorite option for Lian, but at least Happy Meals came with apple slices now. There was a drive-through, but Roy opted to park and have them eat inside. They all needed the bathroom, and if the ambiance of a roadside McDonald’s wasn’t much, at least it would give him a half hour’s break from driving.

Lian ignored her food entirely in favor of rooting out the toy, which appeared to be some kind of purple bean bag cat in a protective plastic bag. “Daddy, open it!”

“First of all, I didn’t hear the magic word, and second of all, gotta eat your lunch before you can play with the toy,” Roy said. “You were the one who wanted chicken nuggets in the first place, remember?”

Lian scowled and ate exactly half of a chicken nugget before pushing the cat towards Jay with a sweet smile. “Jay, will you open this, please?”

Roy tried not to laugh, which got harder when Jay threw him a panicked look. “Nice try, kiddo,” he said. “Finish all of the nuggets and all of the apple slices. You don’t have to eat the fries if you don’t want to.”

Lian’s scowl returned. “You are a narc.” Jay choked on his soda.

“You don’t even know what that word means.” Roy sighed and pulled her onto his lap. “Hey. I know I was cranky this morning, and I’m sorry. Jay and I had a problem we had to deal with, but that didn’t mean it was okay for me to yell at you. It’s all right if you’re mad at me.”

Lian pushed her face into his chest. “Sitting in the car is boring,” she grumbled.

“I know, baby girl, I’m sorry. We’ll play some games this afternoon and make it more fun.”

He held her for a couple more minutes, petting her hair and not pushing her to respond, until she finally said, “Can I have my chicken nuggets, please?”

“Of course, princess.” He slid the little paper container over so she could reach it.

Jay swallowed the bite he’d been chewing. “You know, uh...your dad really helped me out this morning,” he said. “I was in a lot of trouble and he got me out of it. So, uh, if you’re going to be mad at anyone, it should be me.”

“What did you do?” Lian asked.

“What?”

“To get in trouble. Did you need a time out?”

Jay gave Roy a helpless look. “It wasn’t that kind of trouble,” Roy said. “Jay just needed help getting something out of his apartment.”

“Oh.” Lian took another bite of nugget. “What’s an-nesia?”

Roy and Jay exchanged glances again. “Amnesia,” Roy corrected. “Why do you want to know about that?”

“You and Jay keep talking about how Jay has it. Is Jay sick?”

“Not exactly,” Jay said. “Amnesia means that I have trouble remembering some things.”

“Like how Daddy forgot he was supposed to take Cynthia who works at the diner to the movies and now we can’t go there for pancakes anymore?”

“Oh great, we’re telling that story now,” Roy muttered.

“Um, no,” Jay said, but he shot an amused look in Roy’s direction. “I can’t remember things from when I was younger. Like where I grew up, or who my family is. So we’re going to see if we can, um. If we can find my family.”

Lian seemed to consider that as she finished her last nugget. “If you can’t find one, I guess you can be in ours,” she finally offered grudgingly. “But you can’t play with my She-Ra doll or my crayons or my Legos. Those are mine.”

Roy couldn’t help laughing now, and this time it was definitely mostly for the look on Jay’s face. “You drive a hard bargain, baby girl,” he said. “Sorry, Jay. We’ll have to get you your own crayons.”

Jay made a face at him. “Yeah, and I know just where I can stick ‘em,” he said, and Roy grinned at him.

Maybe this wouldn’t be such a bad trip after all.

*

After an interminable afternoon of seeing who could find the most red cars and listening to Frozen 2 until even Jay knew all the words to “Into the Unknown,” they found a reasonably cheap motel to spend the night, although not so cheap they didn’t end up having to share a double-bedded room. Which was awkward but survivable; everyone could change in the bathroom, and Roy could share with Lian. More importantly, the place had a strip of grass and a swing set behind it, so Lian could tear around for a bit and burn off some of the energy built up after a day of doing nothing but sitting.

Sure enough, she conked out soon after dinner, which was a relief, but did leave Roy and Jay stuck in the motel room with a couple hours to kill before grown-up bedtime and unable to turn on the TV and risk waking her. Jay dug a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo out his backpack. Roy could see at least three other books crammed in there, stuffed in with changes of clothes.

He could also see bruises on Jay’s side when he bent over to get the book and his shirt rode up. Which, given the black eye, wasn’t terribly surprising, but still left Roy with some questions.

“You like to read, huh?” he asked, starting with the easier ones.

Jay rolled his eyes. “Yes, believe it or not, I am literate.”

“No, I mean…” Roy thought back to his brief glimpse of Jay’s apartment, which had been even smaller than his own. But there had been books everywhere; next to the bed, on the table, stacked in neat rows against the wall. All different genres and subjects, it had looked like. “You had a lot of books back at your place.”

Jay shrugged. “Yeah, well, I didn’t finish high school and I can’t remember anything I did read before...you know. Can’t go to school without paperwork and can’t afford the internet, but you can always find someone selling used books for a nickel on the street if you look hard enough.”

“Fair enough.” Roy hadn’t tried very hard to continue his education after dropping out of high school. He’d been less than a year from graduating, anyway, and he’d never been much of a student.

Dick had probably finished college a couple years ago, might have even gone to grad school. He was that kind. He’d already been applying to colleges when Roy had last seen him. Roy had been too focused on his next fix by then to worry about something a year and a half away, and Ollie had never even suggested it. Maybe he’d figured he could eventually buy Roy’s way into his old alma mater, just to check it off the list. From the stories he’d told, it didn’t sound like Ollie had done much at college besides crew meets and frat parties.

Fuck, Roy was thinking too much about Ollie lately.

“Looks like you’re almost finished with that one,” Roy said, nodding towards the book. It was a doorstop, but Jay had it open nearly to the end.

“Yeah,” Jay said. “I wanted to bring a few more, but I didn’t have time with…well.”

“About that,” Roy said. “It kind of sounded like...I mean, I know you said you’re a grifter, but it’s pretty clear that Anatoli worked you over, and...uh, the way you were in your apartment, with me…”

Jay’s expression went even more closed off than usual, which was saying something. “Yeah?”

Roy dragged his hair back from his forehead. There was no delicate way to say this. “If you...Jay, if you’re a sex worker, you can tell me. I’m not gonna judge you for it. I know it’s not my business, I wouldn’t even be asking except if it comes out after we talk to Bruce…”

“I’m not,” Jay snapped, loud enough that they both glanced at Lian, who was thankfully still sleeping soundly. “I’m not. Anatoli didn’t...he just hit me. Which is whatever, I’ve been hit before. And the thing with you...” He glanced at Roy, then sighed and looked away again. “Okay, yeah. There’s this guy. City councilman. Anatoli wanted me to do a whole honeypot...thing. I said no.” He gestured to his black eye.

“That’s fucked up,” Roy said, because, well, what else could he say?

“A lot of people wanted me to whore for them when I got out of the hospital. Guess I was a cute kid,” Jay said, as if it was matter-of-fact. “It wouldn’t be so bad now, I guess, now that I can take care of myself. Set some boundaries. But back then I would have been easy pickings and…” He shrugged. “I made myself a promise I wouldn’t ever have to. But Anatoli’s got a bug up his butt about this fucking councilman, so I told him I would. Figured if he thought it I was getting on my knees for you for money, I’d do it a second time. Not that you’re not a hell of a lot more attractive than Stanley Dover.”

“Dover? I know that guy,” Roy said, because it was that or think about Jay on his knees, and that was really inappropriate right now. “Gross.”

“Yeah. But if I go back to Coast City, Anatoli made it pretty clear...I’m not gonna have a choice.” Jay gave Roy a level stare. “How many more days to Gotham?”

Roy thought. “At this rate? Two, two and a half.”

“Yeah, well, you better turn me into Jason fucking Todd by then, because I am not going back,” Jay said.

Roy met Jay’s stare with one of his own. Lost heir or not, no way in hell was he sending Jay back to Anatoli Knyazev. “Deal.”

*

Roy bolted upright to the sound of screaming.

At first he thought it was him, and that he was back on Dinah’s bathroom floor, shaking and crying between bouts of vomiting as he detoxed. For a moment he couldn’t move, unmoored in time and space, dragged back down to a purgatory he thought he’d escaped years ago.

Then Lian said “Daddy!” in a voice of absolute terror, and he realized where he was.

The motel room. On the way to Gotham. Lian was clinging to him, her eyes wide with fear.

And Jay was screaming in his sleep.

Horrible, painful screams, like they were being ripped out of him. Twisted in the sheets and fighting them like he was afraid for his life.

“It’s okay, Lian,” Roy said, even though it obviously wasn’t. “It’s okay. Jay’s just having a nightmare. I’m going to wake him up. Stay here.”

“Daddy, he sounds scary!” Lian said.

“I know, baby girl, but he’s more scared than we are right now,” Roy said, and then shook his head at himself. Jay wasn’t a wild bear who’d stumbled upon their campsite, he was just a guy having a bad dream. A gut-wrenchingly awful bad dream, it sounded like, but still just a bad dream.

He slipped out of bed and leaned over Jay. “Jay. Jay! Wake up!”

No change in the screaming. Roy switched over to the method he’d used when Lian had gone through a bout of frequent nightmares last year. He sat on the edge of the bed and put one hand on Jay’s shoulder, gentle but firm, while the other caught his flailing wrist. “Jay,” he said in a low, coaxing voice. “Shhh, Jay, it’s okay. You’re safe. You’re here with me and Lian. You’re okay.”

Lian had always eventually calmed when he’d done that, and sunk back into quiet sleep. But Jay’s eyes flew open and he gasped like he couldn’t breathe. “Let me go!” he cried.

Roy immediately released his grip but kept his hands close in case Jay started flailing again. “Hey. Hey, it’s okay. I’m right here.”

“Let me go, let me go, I want to go home!” Jay screamed.

“Daddy!” Lian said. She was kneeling up on the other bed, clutching the battered old stuffed dog they’d brought along. She still looked terrified.

“I know, honey,” Roy said, and took Jay’s hands. “Jay, please. You’re scaring Lian.”

“I—” Jay took a long, choking breath, and his eyes seemed to focus. “Roy?”

Shit, he sounded so young. “Yeah,” Roy said, sagging a little with relief. “We’re in the motel on the way to Gotham. Do you remember?”

“I...yeah.” Jay looked around the room. His face fell when he spotted Lian, kneeling on the bed and crying silently. “Oh no. Oh, shi—crud, I didn’t mean to scare her.”

“I know.” Roy could feel Jay trembling where his hip was pressed up against Jay’s side. He didn’t want to leave him like this, but he couldn’t leave Lian crying, so he let Jay’s wrists go and opened his arms, forcing false cheer into his voice. “Come here, baby girl.”

Lian scrambled out of bed and flung herself into his lap. Roy held her tight and kissed the top of her head. “That was pretty loud, huh?” Lian nodded. “You know what I think?” Lian shook her head. Roy smiled. “I think Jay’s gonna have to sing ‘Into the Unknown’ extra loud in the car tomorrow, since he’s so good at being noisy.”

Roy winked at Jay and patted his hip through the sheet. Lian looked up with a teary little smile. “We should teach him ‘Let It Go,’ too, that’s a good loud one.”

Oh boy, Roy was going to have a headache tomorrow. Jay was not a good singer. “Definitely. We’ll teach him all the Elsa songs. What do you think, Jay?”

“I don’t think I make a very good Disney princess, but if that’s what you guys want I guess I can fake it,” Jay said. He still looked pale and shaken, but he was also managing to look sort of mortified at the thought of singing, which was…

Well, it was kind of adorable.

“I used to have nightmares, when I was little,” Lian informed Jay. “But then I got big and now I don’t. Except sometimes when there’s something too scary on TV. Did you see something scary?”

Jay rubbed his face. “No. I mean, I don’t think so. I don’t know what the dream was about.” He gave her an apologetic look. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

“Were you scared of forgetting?” Lian asked.

“What?”

“Because of your an-nesia. Were you scared you’re gonna forget more stuff? Like me and Daddy?”

Jay stared at her, and even Roy blinked at her in surprise. “Honey, Jay might not want to talk about his amnesia…” he started gently, but Jay sat up a little, interrupting him.

“I’m scared about a lot of stuff,” he said, in the softest voice Roy had ever heard from him. “But I promise that I am never going to forget you, Lian Harper.”

Something in Roy’s chest squeezed very tight. He swallowed hard. “Lian, are you ready to go lie down now?” She shook her head. “What do you need to help you be ready?”

She looked up at him. “Tell me the story about Cheii and the sun.”

“Aw, you’ve heard that story a hundred times.”

“Jay hasn’t,” she pointed out.

Trust Roy to have a five-year-old who could outsmart him. He sighed. “Okay, fine,” he said. “Can you tell Jay who Cheii is?”

“The horned toad!” she said. “Also grandfather except I don’t have any grandfathers.”

“Cheii means grandfather in Navajo. Well, maternal grandfather,” Roy explained to Jay. “We have a little horned toad figure in the car, I don’t know if you noticed it.” Jay nodded, and Roy turned back to Lian. “And what do we keep in the car with Cheii?”

“The arrowhead, and the bag of corn pollen,” she said.

“Mm-hmm. How come?”

“Because we’re supposed to follow the corn pollen path, like the holy people,” she said. “The arrowhead protects us. And Cheii points in the right direction.”

“That’s right,” he said, smoothing her hair and trying to ignore the pulse of guilt. He hadn’t prayed since he’d left the reservation so long ago. It was only when Lian was tiny and he’d started trying to tell her bedtime stories that he’d dredged up what he remembered from his own childhood; it had felt important again, something he wanted to share with her. He didn’t know what he believed anymore, really, but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel like he’d lost the path most days. But maybe he could share enough with Lian to keep her on it.

He couldn’t help wondering if this road they were traveling back east was the right path, or straying wildly from it. After all, they were running a con. And like Lian had said, she didn’t have any real grandfathers to show her the way. All of Roy’s close biological relatives were gone, and…

No. He wasn’t thinking about Ollie.

He stopped woolgathering and focused on the story Lian loved as much as he had when he was small, of how the sun grew jealous of Cheii the horned toad and tried to destroy him with lightning, but only succeeded in chipping away at the rock beneath him until it formed an arrowhead. As he spoke, Lian’s weight grew heavier and sleepier in his lap. He held her up with one arm, the other hand resting on Jay’s hip. He didn’t know why he felt like he needed to keep contact with Jay, even through the sheet, but it was like as long as he was touching him, Jay couldn’t slip back into wherever he’d been that had terrified him so deeply.

At any rate, Jay didn’t object, and so Roy left his hand there, pressed to Jay’s body heat, the too-prominent hipbone. Jay was big but skinny, and Roy couldn’t help wondering what he’d look like if he hadn’t gone so many years in which he’d probably never gotten enough to eat.

Once Lian was unmistakably asleep, Roy stopped the story. Jay’s face was hard to read in the darkness. “Was that something you learned on the reservation?” he said.

Roy nodded. “Mostly.”

“I’m sorry I woke her.”

“Oh, but me you don’t mind waking up?” Roy asked, smiling to show he was kidding.

Jay’s laugh was a low vibration through him. “I like her better.”

“That’s fair.” Roy paused. “Do you really not remember the dream, or did you just not want to tell her about it?”

Jay’s good humor fell away. “No, I don’t remember it. I never remember them.”

Them. “You have a lot of nightmares?”

There was a long pause. “I guess.”

“Hey.” Roy tried to keep his tone soft. “No judgment. You want to talk nightmares, try detoxing from heroin.”

“No thanks.” Jay paused. “I think I’m all right now. You should probably get some rest. A lot of driving tomorrow.”

“Yeah.” Roy was exhausted, but he didn’t want to stand up. He felt comfortable here, pressed against Jay’s side, Lian a comforting weight against him. Still, he forced himself to his feet. “You get some sleep too.”

“Obviously,” Jay scoffed as Roy tucked Lian back into bed and then climbed in after her.

But as he rolled onto his side he noticed that Jay had turned the little bedside light on, the tiny one that wouldn’t disturb him or Lian, and picked up The Count of Monte Cristo again.

Oh, well. Jay wasn’t driving tomorrow. He didn’t need to go back to sleep if he didn’t want to.

Still, Roy worried.

Chapter Text

The next morning was miserable. No one had gotten enough sleep, least of all Jay, who had finally dropped off with the book still in his hands and had woken what felt like only minutes later when Roy shook him and told him they needed to get back on the road. Even Lian seemed too tired to enforce last night’s Frozen-based musical threats. Jay slumped with his cheek against the passenger-side window, a paper cup of coffee clutched in his hands, dully watching the landscape slowly get greener and flatter over Cheii’s bumpy silhouette on the dashboard.

Eventually, Roy seemed to remember he was supposed to be multitasking, or maybe his own coffee had finally kicked in. “Ugh. Okay. I’m supposed to be coaching you. What do you know about Jason Todd?”

Jay sighed. “Bruce Wayne’s second adopted son. Kidnapped six years ago for ransom. Probably dead. His older brother had some loser friend in high school who won’t let a guy take a nap.”

Roy grinned without taking his eyes off the road. “Yeah, that’s the basics,” he said. “Now I don’t know everything, I didn’t live in Wayne Manor, but like I said, whatever I can’t fill in we’ll blame on the amnesia.”

“Wayne Manor?” Jay repeated incredulously.

“Oh, yes, stately Wayne Manor, where you spent your halcyon youth,” Roy said. “Technically it’s in Bristol, which is a suburb of Gotham. Right across the river from Gotham Heights. Dick and I went to Gotham Academy, which is in Gotham Heights, and I’m assuming you did too, although you would have started after I dropped out.”

Jay shifted in his seat. “He.”

“What?”

“He. Jason,” Jay said. “He went to Gotham Academy. I didn’t.”

Now Roy glanced at him. “You better get used to using the first person before we talk to Bruce.”

Jay frowned. It felt ghoulish and upsetting in ways he couldn’t quantify to even pretend to think of himself as Jason Todd, but he couldn’t argue with Roy’s logic. “Fine,” he said. “I went to Gotham Academy. I was president of the glee club. I have the school motto tattooed on my ass. What else?”

“I’ve been trying to separate what I know is true from the crap they print in the tabloids,” Roy said. “This part is definitely true, because Dick talked about it sometimes. You know Bruce is also an orphan? His parents were shot right in front of him when he was a kid. They were on the way home from the movies. They call it the First Wayne Tragedy now.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Ollie’s an orphan too. It’s funny, I guess. The coincidence.” He paused. “Well, not funny.”

Jay stared at his coffee cup. “No,” he said, although he knew what Roy meant. “Not funny.”

“Yeah.” Roy blew out a breath of air. “Anyway. I guess Bruce used to make this annual pilgrimage to the street where his parents were murdered. Maybe he still does. But one year he drives down there, he parks his Rolls or his Bugatti or what the hell ever and is leaving flowers where they died...and some little brat tries to steal the hubcaps off the car while he’s standing there grieving ten feet away! And guess who the little brat was?” He pointed at Jay with a gleeful look on his face. “How’s that for a meet cute?”

“It was a Jaguar.”

“What?”

Jay blinked. He didn’t know why he’d said that. It just felt like he could picture the car, the dark sleek lines of it, the smell of the leather seats. How it would feel to sit in it and marvel at the luxury. “I don’t know, I just...guy like that, sounds like it would be a Jag.”

“Yeah, I guess. Maybe. He had like a dozen cars in that garage of his. Not that Dick and I ever went joyriding or anything.” Roy’s tone was light with false innocence and it helped Jay move past his sudden feeling of being unsettled.

“I’ll bet.” Jay smirked. “Okay, so I tried to steal Bruce’s hubcaps and I’m guessing he thought that was just adorable. How old was I? What happened to, uh.” There was no reason for Jay to stumble over the sentence. “To my parents?”

Roy rubbed his chin. “Let’s see, Dick and I were freshmen, so you would have been...eleven? Thereabouts? You looked younger, though, I remember that. Dick used to worry about how skinny you were. Your parents…” He sighed. “I don’t know, sorry. I don’t think it was good.”

“You don’t have to be sorry. They weren’t really my parents,” Jay pointed out.

“Right. Yeah.”

An awkward silence descended. Jay picked at the edge of the cardboard sleeve around his coffee cup. “What, um. What was Bruce like?”

“Nothing like Ollie, that’s for sure,” Roy said with a little laugh that sounded awfully hollow. “Honestly, he kind of intimidated me. He always seemed very...severe. Sort of grim. Like he always knew when you’d done something you weren’t supposed to do, and since that was me seventy percent of the time, I could never really relax around him. But Dick loved him, and Jason…”

Jay focused very hard on the coffee cup. “Yeah?”

“He just lit up around the guy. He had such a little tough-guy front, but with Bruce, it was like…” Roy paused. “It was like Bruce made it safe for him to be a kid again.”

There was something very hard and uncomfortable in Jay’s throat. Safe. He couldn’t remember a time he’d ever felt safe. Had he been, as a kid, during those years he’d forgotten? What had it been like? Was there someone who’d made it that way, like Bruce Wayne had for Jason Todd? Like Roy did for Lian?

He could imagine it, even if he couldn’t remember it. Someone big enough to hold him, to stand between him and all the world’s dangers. Someone who smiled and made him laugh. Someone who kept him warm and fed…

“What about Alfred?” he asked.

Roy took his eyes off the road to give Jay a startled look. “How do you know about Alfred?”

Jay shrugged. He wasn’t actually even sure who Alfred was, just that someone with that name was involved in the story somehow. It had probably been in an article, or on a news story that Jay had overheard. Roy didn’t need to make a big deal out of Jay retaining it—it didn’t mean anything.

It didn’t.

“Must’ve read it somewhere,” Jay said, pushing down another feeling of discomfort. “Was he like an uncle or something?”

“He was the butler. Probably still is, he always seemed immortal to me. But he was really more like Dick’s grandpa or something,” Roy said. “English guy. I always used to try to wrangle a dinner invitation on Sundays because he’d make a Sunday roast. You know, the whole British cholesterol bomb approach to meals: side of beef, potatoes, peas, everything drowning in gravy…”

“Yorkshire pudding,” Jay volunteered.

Roy gave him another sidelong look. “Yeah. You’ve had it?”

“No.” But Jay could imagine the rich, buttery taste of it, the way the crisp edges would shatter beneath his teeth. It made the egg sandwich he’d had for breakfast an hour ago sit like lead in his stomach.

“Yeah, well, if I’d thought this whole thing out better I would have arranged for us to arrive on Sunday,” Roy said. “Hopefully they’ll feed us either way. I’d eat anything that man cooks.”

They lapsed into silence. Jay felt...strange. He had a good imagination, could always envision the things he read about in books, but this was different. It was as if he knew what it was like when the scent of a roast filled the house and drew everyone down the stairs and into the kitchen, when he’d never cooked anything that couldn’t be microwaved. Like he knew how polished antique bannisters felt under his hands, and the comforting rumble of a bass voice that meant home.

He pushed it away. Daydreaming never helped anyone.

“So this Alfred guy will be there, I guess, and Bruce, obviously,” he said. “Probably not Dick, right? He’s...what are you, twenty-four? Is he still living at home?”

“I have no idea,” Roy said. “He might be, it’s a nice home. And I think the others are still underage.”

Jay frowned. “The others?”

“Yeah, I did some research, Bruce adopted a couple more kids after you disappeared. Jason disappeared. Whoever,” Roy said. “Plus there’s a bio kid now, too. Not sure what happened there, because he wasn’t around last time I was at the manor, and he’s definitely older than seven. No wife, though.”

“So...so it’s not just Dick,” Jay said, thinking back to the picture Roy had shown him, the one of Bruce and Dick and Jason. A small family, but a happy one. Complete.

Roy shook his head. “Nope. There’s a boy named Tim, that was pretty soon after you disappeared. And then a couple years later a girl named Cassandra. I think they’re both seventeen-ish? The bio son’s younger, like middle school age. Named Diablo or something like that.”

“...He has three other kids?” Jay said.

“Mm-hmm. Damian! That’s it, that’s the little one’s name,” Roy said, smacking the steering wheel lightly. He pulled his phone from where it had been resting in the cupholder next to him and used his thumbprint to unlock it, then handed it to Jay. “Look it up, there’s tons of paparazzi photos of the whole family.”

Not the whole family if Jason was dead, Jay thought, but he did a search. Pictures filled the screen: Bruce Wayne with an older Dick Grayson, and two other boys and a girl. The girl was Asian or maybe biracial, pretty, hiding in the back of group shots and never looking directly at the camera. The younger boy was clearly mixed race as well, with light brown skin, but it wasn’t hard to see the resemblance to Bruce if you looked. And the other boy…

The other boy didn’t look all that different from the photos of Jason Todd, the same way Jason hadn’t looked all that different from Dick Grayson.

“What’s the older one’s name?” Jay asked. “Tim?” But he was already searching tim bruce wayne son.

Tim Drake. The first search result directed Jay to Bruce’s Wikipedia page. He skimmed past Bruce’s tragic childhood and philanthropic efforts, past Dick and Jason, searching for one date in particular. The math was easy, once he found it.

Bruce Wayne had adopted Tim Drake eight months after Jason Todd’s death.

There was a ringing in Jay’s ears, like a scream but higher-pitched. The phone screen swam in front of his eyes.

“Jay?” Roy asked. He sounded very far away.

“Eight months,” Jay said. He wasn’t talking to Roy. He wasn’t sure who he was talking to. “He adopted a new son eight months after Jason died.”

“Jeez, really?” Roy asked. “That was fast.”

Jay laughed. He didn’t know why it made Roy give him such an alarmed look. “Fast? It’s fucking light speed.”

“Hey, language, remember?” Roy said, tilting his head towards the backseat.

“I’m sorry,” Jay said, his voice getting louder. “Should I be more delicate about the fact that a child died and this piece of shit millionaire just went out and found another one who looked just like him to complete the matching goddamn set? Is that not an excuse for a little fucking bad language?”

“Daddy?” Lian asked.

“It’s okay, Lian,” Roy said. “Jay, you gotta calm down.”

“Calm down?” Jay repeated. He wanted to throw Roy’s phone through the windshield. He wanted to kick his way out of the moving car and scream. “You want me to calm down? Bruce said he loved me and I died and he fucking replaced me less than a year later! Why the hell should I calm down?”

“Because he didn’t do it to you!” Roy snapped. “You’re not Jason Todd, remember?”

Jay’s teeth clicked together. The phone case creaked in his hand.

“It’s a con. You’re not Jason Todd. You’re just a random guy who looks like him. That’s what you said.” Roy glanced sideways at him. “Unless there’s something you want to tell me.”

That stupid egg sandwich churned in Jay’s stomach. “Pull over.”

“What?”

“Pull over!”

Roy signaled and veered into the shoulder, causing a few angry honks as cars sped past them. The second the car came to a stop, Jay opened the door, leaned out, and threw up.

“...Gross,” Lian declared from the backseat.

*

Another evening, another cheap motel. Jay wanted nothing more than to curl up on his side and finish his book, but he suspected he wouldn’t be allowed to.

Sure enough, as soon as Lian was off to sleep, Roy came over and patted the bed next to Jay. “Okay if I sit?”

“Whatever,” Jay said, but he scooted over to make room.

He waited for Roy to snap at him, to demand to know what was wrong with him. Not that Jay had any real answers. If Roy decided to forget this whole plan, Jay wouldn’t blame him.

But Roy just leaned back against the headboard and was quiet for a long moment. And when he did speak, it wasn’t anything Jay would have expected.

“Did you ever try to find out who you were?”

“What?” Jay asked, even though he’d heard Roy perfectly well.

“Before the amnesia. Your real name, your parents,” Roy said. “You’re smart, and I bet you were plenty resourceful even as a kid. You could have gone to the cops, social services...even the news, really. Or at least looked at missing persons stories online. But I get the feeling you didn’t do any of that.”

“Yeah, well, pretty much the first thing you learn on the streets is that the cops aren’t your friends,” Jay said with a snort. “As for the rest…”

He looked down at the book in his lap, still closed. Roy waited.

“I was pretty out of it for a long time. In the hospital and for a while after I left,” Jay said. “I only stayed until they took the casts off because I knew I couldn’t get them off on my own. But I had a broken arm, broken ankle, three broken fingers. Broken nose. Two black eyes and three cracked ribs. I’m missing a molar back here.” He tapped his right lower jaw. “Burns all over my body. Plus, you know, a head injury so severe I couldn’t remember any of my life before.” He paused. “Well, almost anything.”

Roy opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but then stopped. He waited for Jay to go on.

“There’s nothing clear,” Jay said, looking back down at the book. “I remember being little and being under a table. I think I was hiding. I remember a dog. I think...someone teaching me how to float on my back, holding me up. A woman crying.”

He took a deep breath. “And I remember someone hitting me. I don’t...I don’t remember his face. But I was little. Really little, I think.”

“Jay,” Roy breathed. His voice was too soft. Jay couldn’t look at him.

“I don’t know,” Jay said. “Not for sure. Some of the memories are good. Learning to swim. The dog.” He swallowed. “But who else would have put me in the hospital? And if that’s what home was...why would I want to go back?”

“...Fair enough,” Roy said after a long moment.

Jay fanned the pages of his book with his thumb. They’d been avoiding this part. Maybe Roy hadn’t wanted to talk about it in front of Lian.

“What happened to Jason Todd?” he asked.

Roy’s sigh sounded like he knew they’d been putting it off too. “I only know what I’ve read, or seen on the news,” he reminded Jay. “And some of it is probably sensationalist bullshit.”

Jay bit his lip. “Just tell me.”

“Right. Okay.” Roy tilted his head back against the headboard and closed his eyes. “According to most reports, Jason didn’t go to school that day. Alfred dropped him off as usual, but no one saw him inside the school, and his teachers all agree that he didn’t attend any classes.” Jay wasn’t sure if Roy was referring to Jason in the third person again because he’d forgotten that they were supposed to be getting Jay used to thinking of himself as Jason, or because it was too weird to describe Jay’s own supposed death to him, but either way Jay was grateful.

“He took out a thousand dollars from a bank four blocks away a little after nine a.m.,” Roy continued. “It’s possible his kidnappers made him do it, but there’s security footage that shows Jason by himself. He was still wearing his school uniform.”

Jason was wearing that uniform in one of the photos they always put in the tabloids, on TV. Gray blazer, blue sweater vest. Jay could imagine the way the blazer would itch against his neck, the smell of the wool.

Roy’s voice was relentless. His eyes were still closed. “That footage is the last confirmed sighting of Jason Todd. The ransom note came by encrypted text the next day. Bruce went to the media. He said that he’d called the GCPD, the FBI, Interpol. There was an international manhunt, although there were theories that they’d never left the city. Then, three days later, there was an explosion at a Gotham warehouse on the river.”

Jay closed his eyes, too.

“Nothing in the warehouse was incendiary. GCFD said an explosive device had to have been used deliberately. The theory is that the kidnappers realized they weren’t going to get away with it and decided to cut their losses, since Jason could have identified them in court. No bodies were found, but.” Roy paused. “They found a crowbar in the wreckage with blood on it. It matched Jason’s.”

Stop, Jay wanted to say, but if he did he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to ask Roy about the rest. His hands clenched the sheets.

A warm, heavy hand covered his. He stared at it, the freckles on the back of it, unable to look up and meet Roy’s eyes.

“Since there was no body, Bruce insisted that Jason was still alive,” Roy continued. “There were sightings everywhere, for months. I think the strongest leads were in Ethiopia and Qurac, of all places. Even today there are truthers who say Jason is living in one of those countries, hiding from Bruce for some nefarious reason. But the most likely answer is that his body went into the water. They were up at Hell Point, the current there is too strong to drag the river. That or it...that he was so close to the center of the explosion that there was...that there was nothing left.”

Jay finally found his voice. “Either way, he’s gone,” he said. “Jason. I mean, they never found him in those other places, right? He’s dead.”

“Like I said, that’s the most likely answer.”

Something in Roy’s voice made Jay look up. His expression was curious and...worried.

No one had looked worried about Jay in as long as he could remember.

“I’m not him,” he said, a little louder, remembering at the last minute not to wake Lian. “I’m not.”

“I know,” Roy said.

But he didn’t sound convinced.

*

Everything in Jay’s world was fire and pain. He screamed, screamed his rage and terror, screamed for anyone to help him, to find him, to bring him home—

And then Roy’s voice cut through the horror, Roy’s hands were on his shoulders, and Jay opened his eyes to find Roy leaning over him, pleading with him to wake up, promising that he was safe.

Jay sucked in a ragged breath, and then another. The nightmare was receding into something murky and indistinct, and he focused on Roy’s eyes, the worried line between his brows, the strength in his hands. Those were real. The nightmare was just a dream, but Roy was real.

“It happened again, didn’t it?” he asked. He looked over at the other bed. Sure enough, Lian was sitting up, although she didn’t look as scared as she had the night before. “I’m sorry, Lian.”

“You’re bad at sleeping,” she informed him. “You gotta stop reading scary books.”

“Jay’s okay now, sweetheart,” Roy said. “Can you lie down and try to go back to sleep?”

Lian gave the weary sigh of someone much older than her and lay back down, facing away from them. Jay winced and looked back up at Roy. “How bad was it?”

“Not as bad as last time,” Roy said. He shifted back but kept one hand on Jay’s thigh, like he thought Jay needed the contact. He wasn’t wrong. “I mean, you were just as loud, but I figured out what was happening faster. I take it you don’t remember this dream, either?”

Jay shook his head. “I never remember them.”

“Yeah, you said. Probably for the best. God knows I’d rather not remember mine.” Roy’s voice was low, and Jay remembered Lian probably wasn’t asleep yet.

She probably didn’t need to know the details of her father’s nightmares—or his past—but god, Jay was so fucking tired of being the only one who was broken. “What do you dream about?” he asked, keeping his voice soft as well. “I mean, the nightmares.”

“Jesus.”

Jay opened his mouth to apologize for prying, then closed it. He felt like he’d spent half this road trip apologizing, which was not something he usually did.

And besides, Roy was actually answering him. “The detox nightmares are usually just bad trips,” he said. “Nothing coherent. Or they were—I don’t have them much anymore.”

Jay raised an eyebrow at him. “Sounds like there are non-detox ones.”

“I don’t have a lot of those either,” Roy said. Jay waited, and finally Roy sighed. “Okay, yeah. Sometimes I dream that something’s happened to Lian, or I can’t find her, that kind of thing. I bet every parent has those dreams. And…” He looked at the floor. “I dream about Ollie.”

He wore the shamed, wistful expression he got every time he talked about Ollie, like he’d been the one in the wrong instead of that asshole. It made Jay want to hit something. “You were a kid. You made a mistake,” he said. “You don’t need to give that fucker space in your nightmares.”

The corner of Roy’s mouth curled up. “They’re not nightmares,” he said. “The problem isn’t the dream. It’s when I wake up.”

Then he blinked and rubbed his hands over his face. “Shit, that was maudlin,” he said, his tone a little more brisk. “I need sleep.”

Jay bit back another apology. Roy squeezed his thigh gently and stood up. Jay’s leg felt cold where Roy had been pressed against it.

“One more day,” he said. “I’ll see you in the morning, Jay. Get some sleep.”

“Yeah,” Jay said, and reached for his book.

Chapter Text

The third full day of driving wasn’t much more fun than the second or third, although thankfully there were no more histrionics and no more vomiting. It helped that they’d pretty much exhausted what Roy had to share about the Waynes and Jason Todd’s history. Jay would have to sell the rest on his own.

Roy got another large coffee every time they stopped, kept the windows rolled down to get some fresh air on his face, and tried to keep Lian entertained with easy games she could play from the backseat and no real ability to read license plates yet. Jay alternated between reading and staring blankly out the window.

Road trips with Ollie hadn’t been like this. They’d taken them regularly—across the familiar sepia landscape of the Southwest to see the Grand Canyon, up the winding hairpin turns of the Alps, along the endless narrow bridges that connected the Florida Keys. And so many times up into the green mountains to the northeast of Star City for camping trips, surrounded by hawks and deer and the crisp scent of pine; back home to the city after a few days while evening fell, and Roy could still remember the feeling of being half-asleep and gently lifted from the passenger seat, of being carried back into the house and tucked into bed.

There had never been this kind of rush, this need to get the whole thing over and done with. Ollie drove like a demon but he was never in a hurry to get anywhere in particular, and their trips had been filled with detours and long stops anywhere that looked interesting. They’d had the money to meander with, and all the time in the world, and each other.

Fuck, he was thinking too much about Ollie lately.

Evening brought them to another motel, another disappointing fast food dinner, another night of putting Lian to bed and the awkward silence that fell once she was asleep. Jay had finished The Count of Monte Cristo and moved on to Anna Karenina. Roy took out his phone to try to deal with some of the emails he’d let pile up, but soon found himself just looking at Jay instead.

It was funny—the longer Roy spent with Jay, the less the man looked like Jason Todd to him. He was becoming familiar on his own and not for the resemblance—the shifting green blue of his eyes, the strong angle of his jaw, the guarded cast to his expressions and the startling softness the rare times he dropped it. Three days ago he’d been a possible paycheck, that was all. Now he was Jay, prickly and stubborn and funny. Whatever else he might be.

And that was the question, wasn’t it? The resemblance and the timing were one thing, but some of the things Jay had said yesterday…it was like he’d been remembering. And the way he had reacted when he’d found out that Bruce had replaced him...no. Replaced Jason. Shit, now Roy was doing it.

“Something I can help you with?” Jay asked without looking up from his book. He always seemed aware of Roy’s eyes on him, which Roy supposed made sense after his time on the streets—it was a defense mechanism. It reminded Roy not to look at Jay as much as he’d like.

He probably shouldn’t want to look at Jay as much as he did.

From Jay’s repeated insistence that he was not the real Jason Todd, Roy knew better than to open that conversational door again. Instead, he moved to sit on the edge of Jay’s bed so that they could keep their voices low and not disturb Lian. “I was thinking about your nightmares,” he said.

Jay winced and put his book down. “Yeah?”

“I know you can’t control them or predict them. I know it’s not your fault,” Roy said. “But I really need a decent night’s sleep tonight if I’m not going to drive us off the road before we reach Gotham tomorrow, and Lian can’t keep having her sleep disturbed like this, either. She’s only five, she needs rest.”

“Yeah. Makes sense.” Jay closed his book and stood up. “You got the car keys? The backseat’s big enough, it’ll be fine.”

Roy stared at him until he got it, and then again once it clicked. “What—I’m not asking you to sleep in the car, Jay, that’s insane,” he said, reaching across the bed to snag Jay’s wrist as if he was about to bolt out of the room. “Don’t be stupid.”

Jay let Roy tug him back down to sit on the bed. He looked both puzzled and annoyed. “Okay, so what’s your solution? Because like you said, I don’t really have any control over the situation.”

Roy bit his lip. “This might be weird,” he said, and Jay gave him an annoyed look that told him it was already weird. “Yeah, yeah, okay. But you calm down pretty fast when I’m touching you. I thought maybe…” He just needed to say it. “Maybe if there was someone else in the bed with you, it would keep you from having a nightmare. And even if it didn’t, I would be closer and could wake you up faster, maybe even before Lian wakes up.”

Jay’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead, and his gaze dropped to Roy’s hand, still around his wrist. Roy let go hastily.

“I didn’t mean—just sleeping!” he said, hands up between them. “Sorry, yeah, it was a stupid idea, I just thought—”

“All right.”

Roy stopped. “What?”

Jay’s face was as guarded as he’d ever seen it. “It’s not a bad idea. I don’t want to scare Lian again, and I really don’t want you crashing the car tomorrow. So sure.” He shrugged. “Just don’t be too disappointed if it doesn’t work.”

Roy...hadn’t actually thought Jay would go for it. “Oh,” he said. “Okay. Good. I mean, fine. Then I’ll just…” He indicated the bed they were sitting on. “Stay here.”

The look on Jay’s face suggested that Roy was an idiot. He was probably right. “Great,” Jay said, and opened his book again. “I’m going to read a bit more.”

“Great,” Roy echoed dully, and picked up his phone again.

After a half an hour in which Roy processed exactly zero of the things on his phone screen, he said, “I’m going to try to sleep. You can leave the light on your side on if you’re still reading.”

“Okay,” Jay said after a slight pause, so slight Roy might have imagined it. He didn’t look up from his book, and Roy didn’t look directly at him.

Instead, he turned off his own light, plugged his phone charger into the wall, and lay down on his side, facing away from Jay. Lian was curled up in the other bed, a tiny crescent shape, and Roy had his eighth or ninth surge of misgivings. What if she woke up and wondered why her daddy was in bed with another man?

But no, she was too young to realize there might be anything untoward about it. Not that there was anything untoward about it, Roy reminded himself. It was a probably futile attempt to keep Jay’s nightmares at bay, that was all. Anything else, even if Jay had been interested, would be colossally stupid even if Roy’s daughter hadn’t been sleeping in the next bed. Not when they would be in Gotham tomorrow and needed to stay focused on their goal.

And after that…

Well, if everything went well, it was entirely possible that Roy would never see Jay again after tomorrow. After all, it would be Bruce’s lawyer or accountant or someone who paid over the reward. There’d be no reason for Roy to stick around. He could take the money and find a place for him and Lian to settle down, somewhere to build a life where she had everything she needed.

Not where they’d just come from, that was for damn sure. And not in Gotham—Roy hadn’t liked it back in high school, and he didn’t think he’d like it any better now. But maybe Star City…

No. Not Star City.

It didn’t matter, he told himself. Two and a half million dollars could buy them a home wherever he chose to make it. And Lian would be provided for, which was the only thing that mattered.

He felt the mattress shift as Jay moved, and then the other light clicked off. “Night,” Jay said softly, swallowed up in the darkness.

“Night,” Roy said, and lay with his eyes open for a long time.

*

It was happening again, the fire and the pain and Jay was alone, alone except for when they came to hurt him again, and there was no one who would help him, no one who knew—

“Shh.” A familiar voice. “Shh, you’re okay.”

“No,” Jay said, even as the usual horrors shattered around him. “No, I can’t…”

“You’re safe,” Roy said, and he was warm and solid and real. “Go back to sleep.”

“Roy…”

A hand in his hair, big and reassuring. “Sleep. I won’t let anything hurt you.”

He said it like there was no room for doubt, and so there wasn’t. Jay curled into the warmth of him, and slept.

*

Jay woke with his face mashed into Roy’s collarbone and morning wood. For a minute he wondered wildly if he’d made some kind of insane pass at Roy last night, and then remembered Roy’s suggestion of sharing a bed to stave off his nightmares. It seemed to have worked—Jay had no memory of waking up screaming. It was depressing how refreshing that was, but a lot of things about Jay’s life were depressing.

He tried to extract himself from Roy’s iron grip without waking him, to no avail. Roy let out a low grumble of protest, then opened his eyes. “...time is it?” he mumbled.

“Dunno,” Jay said, keeping his voice low. “You won’t let me look at the clock.”

Roy blinked and seemed to slowly realize who he was holding, and where. He let Jay go, but Jay didn’t move back or try to check the time. It should have been awkward—it should have been mortifying—but maybe it was too early in the morning for it to be anything but oddly dreamlike.

“How’d you sleep?” Roy asked. His eyes were still muzzy, red-gold lashes drooping over those summer-sky irises. This close, Jay could pick out every freckle; the nearly invisible fair stubble on his cheeks; a faint scar on his forehead, long since healed.

“Okay, I guess,” Jay said. “Did I wake you at all?”

“Only a little.”

Jay cringed. Well, there went the hope that he’d gone at least one night without fucking everything up. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. It was just for a minute.” Roy glanced down between them. “I think this was a good idea.”

“Yeah?” Jay’s voice was barely a sound, but Roy clearly heard it. A pink flush rose across his cheekbones.

“I mean, uh, you know. It worked,” he said. His brow furrowed minutely. “Listen, Jay...do you think that maybe…”

“Yes,” Jay said without quite meaning to.

Roy’s brow furrowed further. “Yes?”

“I mean…” Now Jay felt his own cheeks heating up, and hoped it wasn’t as noticeable on him. “What were you going to say?”

“It was about the con. The Jason Todd thing,” Roy said. “Why, what did you think I was going to say?”

Oh god. Jay’s mouth opened, but he couldn’t bring himself to make a sound. It didn’t seem to matter, because he could read the realization unfolding on Roy’s face as clearly as words in a book.

“Oh,” Roy said, very softly. His hand came up to cup Jay’s cheek, and Jay couldn’t help turning into it, just a little. “Jay…”

The alarm went off.

Jay tensed, and he could feel Roy doing the same. Then a little voice said, “Daddy?”

Jay distinctly saw Roy mouth the word “shit” before he popped out of bed. “Morning, princess!”

“Why were you over there?”

“Oh, Jay and I were just talking and we didn’t want to wake you up.” Roy turned the alarm off. “You ready for a big day? We’re going to go see some people Daddy used to know a long time ago.”

Jay sat up and grabbed a change of clothes out of his backpack. “That sounds boring,” Lian said behind him, and he tried not to crack up audibly. He was gonna miss that kid.

...Right. He was gonna miss that kid because if this worked, he was staying in Gotham. Hell, if it didn’t work, he was probably staying in Gotham—he couldn’t go back to Anatoli’s territory now. And either way, Lian was going back to Coast City.

Roy was going back to Coast City.

Jay cleared his throat. “Okay if I take the bathroom first?” he asked, and didn’t wait for Roy’s answer to lock himself in.

*

Gotham was a beautiful city, from a distance.

Up close, it was a different story. The streets were narrower than Jay was used to, and seemed to follow no discernible pattern—Roy got lost three times trying to find the business district. Even on a sunny summer day, the buildings did their best to blot out the sun, and it was so humid and fetid with the windows rolled down—Roy’s car didn’t have working AC—that Jay felt vaguely choked. He lived in a shitty neighborhood in Coast City, but they passed through multiple districts that gave his stomping grounds back home a run for their money.

Still, he couldn’t stop craning his neck to see the gargoyles and grotesques leering out from seemingly every other rooftop. They gave him a strange feeling. He didn’t like them, exactly, but it almost felt like they were welcoming him.

“I know we said we’d go to Wayne Manor, but I think going to Bruce’s office makes more sense,” Roy said as he searched fruitlessly for a parking spot. “Technically, this is a business meeting. Besides, at the manor you’d have to get past Alfred and maybe Dick and…” He glanced sidelong at Jay. “Uh. Whoever else is there.”

“The others didn’t know Jason,” Jay pointed out. “You could be Jason, as far as they know.”

“Yeah,” Roy said. “But I don’t want you freaking out again if Tim Drake’s there.”

Jay rolled his eyes. “I told you. It had nothing to do with him. I had food poisoning.”

Roy looked like he maybe wanted to argue, but a parking space opened up in front of him and distracted him.

Five minutes later, they were walking into the lobby of Wayne Enterprises, and Jay was realizing what a colossal miscalculation they’d made. The WE building was all sleek glass and chrome, possibly the tallest in the Gotham skyline, and every single person inside was dressed in sharp, elegant, visibly expensive business wear. Jay and Roy would have stood out like sore thumbs in their jeans and T-shirts even if they hadn’t had a five-year-old with them.

Well, this was all Jay owned, so it would have to do.

“Now what?” Jay asked. “I take it we don’t have an appointment?”

“You take it accurately.”

“So how do we get to Bruce Wayne’s office?”

“I hadn’t planned that far ahead,” Roy said. “You’re the con artist, you think of something.”

Jay scanned the lobby, working out the system. There were futuristic-looking turnstiles in front of the elevator banks, with security guards positioned on either side. Most people, clearly employees, approached the turnstiles and swiped what must have been ID cards over the scanner on top, and the turnstiles opened. A handful went to the front desk, where they were issued passes.

Jay had been a fair pickpocket, but a brightly lit lobby full of guards and probably security cameras wasn’t the place to see if his fingers were still light. Better to sweet talk the receptionist into letting them in.

“Pull up that picture of you and Dick Grayson again and give me your phone,” he said. Roy looked confused, but obeyed. Jay promptly set the picture as Roy’s lockscreen, overwriting a truly adorable photo of Lian.

“Hey!” Roy said.

“You can switch it back when I’m done. Wait here.”

Jay walked over to the front desk and gave the receptionist his most charming and harmless smile. He’d had to work on the harmless bit when he started running cons; apparently the smile he’d originally developed on the streets had been borderline feral.

“Hi,” he said, trying to echo some of Roy’s “rich idiot” voice without going full doofus. “This is so embarrassing, but my daughter really needs to, well. Use the potty.” He pointed at Lian and mentally apologized to her for the indignity.

“I’m sorry, but only employees can—” the receptionist started.

“No, no, I totally get it,” Jay said. “It’s just…” He paused apologetically. “Okay, this is going to sound really obnoxious, but my husband is friends with Mr. Wayne’s son, and he said as long as we were downtown we should just pop in and ask for a pass. I told Roy that bathroom nepotism is weird, but apparently Dick said it would be fine.”

“Dick...oh, Mr. Grayson?” the receptionist asked.

“Yeah, they’re old high school friends.” He showed her Roy’s newly changed lockscreen. “They’re even his lockscreen. What do you think, should I be jealous?” He kept up the smile; this needed to stay playful banter and not weird imaginary marital problems.

“It’s just, unless you have an appointment…” the receptionist said, but she was clearly thawing.

“I can try to call Dick, but I don’t know if he’ll be able to answer right away, and she really has to go,” Jay said. “I promise, we’ll be in and out.”

The receptionist bit her lip. “Well…”

A minute later, Jay returned to Roy and Lian with guest passes for Roy, Lian, and Jay Harper. “Do I want to know?” Roy murmured as Jay handed him his phone back.

“Probably not,” Jay replied. “Any idea what floor we’re going to?”

“Yeah, I was here a few times with Dick, it’s the top,” Roy said. “Ollie’s building too. It’s a weird CEO thing, I guess.”

“Looking down on the little people.”

“Exactly.”

In the elevator, Roy hoisted Lian up to push the very top button, and they shot upwards so fast it made Jay’s ears pop. He found himself staring at the numbers indicating what floor they were passing as they flickered ever higher. This was it. This was when he found out if he was a good enough liar to actually turn his life around, once and for all.

This was when he found out if he could lie his way into a family.

Roy was holding Lian’s hand, but his free hand slipped into Jay’s and gave it a squeeze. “Hey,” he said. “It’s gonna work.”

Jay tried to look like he didn’t care, but he didn’t drop Roy’s hand, either. “Yeah, and if it doesn’t, I’m no worse off than I was before, right?”

“It’s going to work,” Roy said. “Listen, Jay, I know we’ve talked about this, but I think you might really be—”

The elevator doors opened.

This was it.

*

The penthouse reception area of Wayne Enterprises looked so much like that of Queen Industries that Roy was momentarily thrown off by an intense sense of deja vu. How many afternoons had he spent pestering Ollie’s PA while Ollie was stuck in meetings he didn’t want to attend? How many times had he and Ollie goofed off in his office when Roy was supposed to be in school, two little boys playing hooky from the real world?

He pushed the memories away. Again. Instead, he focused on the two hands he was still holding: Lian’s, tiny and so trusting; Jay’s, gripping a little too tight and clammy with sweat. He was doing this for them.

There was a desk in front of them with a woman seated behind it, presumably Bruce’s personal assistant. To her left was a closed door with Bruce Wayne, CEO embossed on it in gold.

She raised an eyebrow as they stepped out of the elevator. “Can I help you?”

“Yes, hi,” Roy said, letting go of Lian and Jay’s hands and stepping forward. “I’m here to see Bruce Wayne.”

The eyebrow stayed up. “Do you have an appointment?”

“No, but it’s important,” Roy said. “Please tell him Roy Harper is here. If he doesn’t remember me, say I was Dick’s friend, and...” He swallowed. “Tell him it’s Oliver Queen’s son.”

Her expression didn’t get any less skeptical, but she picked up the phone and pressed a button. “Mr. Wayne, there’s a young man here to see you, a Roy Harper. He says he knows Mr. Grayson and Oliver Queen… Really? Well, all right.” She hung up. “You have five minutes.”

Right. “Thank you,” Roy said, and turned to Jay. “Let me go in first, okay? I’ll explain, and then…”

Jay nodded. He looked pale, even faintly green, and Roy wanted to tell him it was okay, tell him how sure he was, but there wasn’t time to make him believe.

Instead, he squatted down to Lian’s level. “Lian, honey, I need you to stay out here with Jay for five minutes while I go talk to someone. Can you be very good and patient for me?”

“And then can we go do something fun?” she asked, long-suffering, and he smiled.

“Yeah. Then we can do something fun.” He ruffled her hair and straightened up. Jay led her over to a couple of chairs against the wall, and Roy turned around, walked over to Bruce Wayne’s office door, and took a deep breath.

Then he let himself in, and closed the door behind him.

Bruce’s office had the same sleek, airy glass-and-chrome aesthetic as the rest of the building. Roy felt about thirteen years old again as he crossed the unnecessarily long expanse between the door and where Bruce sat at his massive, gleaming desk.

“Thank you for seeing me, sir,” he said, holding out a hand.

Bruce took it in a surprisingly firm grip, standing as he did. He looked just as Roy remembered him: big and square-jawed and imposing, albeit with a touch of gray at his temples now and some additional lines around his eyes. Roy wondered if Ollie looked older, too.

Not the time, he reminded himself.

“I’ll admit I was surprised to hear your name,” Bruce said, sitting down and indicating that Roy should do the same. Roy must have looked startled, because Bruce said, “Oh, I recognized it. You and Dick were very close, before…” He cleared his throat. “What do you need?”

The phrasing struck Roy as odd until he noticed the assessing look Bruce was giving him. Particularly his forearms. His jaw tightened.

“The scars are old,” he said, holding his arms out for inspection. “But I can take a drug test if that will convince you I didn’t come here for a handout.” The sarcasm wasn’t going to do him any favors here, but he was in no mood to deal with whatever judgmental version of his history Bruce had absorbed from Dick or Ollie.

Bruce held up his hands. “My apologies. I’m glad to see you’re doing better. But I assume there is something I can do for you…?”

“Well, more like something I can do for you,” Roy said, then winced. “Shit, that sounded like a used car salesman. Also, sorry for cursing.” He took another deep breath. “I found Jason.”

Bruce’s face shuttered.

Well, that wasn’t a good sign. “I wasn’t looking,” Roy said, pushing on. If he could just get to who Jay was, to the things he knew that he shouldn’t know, and the nightmares; if he could just get Bruce to look at him… “I thought what everyone thought, that he was...you know, gone. But about a week ago I was in a bodega and I saw this guy, and—”

“A week ago,” Bruce echoed. “That would be after I announced that there was a reward for his safe return, correct?”

“Well...yes,” Roy admitted. “But I swear, it was just coincidence, or maybe the fact that the story was in the news again was what made me notice the resemblance, because if you look at him—”

“I made that announcement two weeks ago,” Bruce said, his voice getting louder to steamroll over Roy’s flailing. “In those two weeks I have been contacted by one hundred and fifty-six people claiming to either be my son, or to be speaking for him. That does not include the thirty-four imposters who approached me in the six years between Jason’s disappearance and my announcement.”

Roy’s mouth was dry. “That’s...that’s awful,” he managed.

And it was, was the thing. He’d thought the media vultures circling endlessly around the Jason Todd story were soulless, but at least Bruce and Dick and the rest of them could turn off the TV. Could decline to give interviews. How much worse was it to lie your way past their front door, pretending to have found the child they’d lost? To come peddling false hope for a seven-figure payout?

And that was exactly what Roy had been doing at the start of this. He’d lied to himself, told himself that it was acceptable because he was doing it to secure Lian’s future. That anything could be sacrificed for her happiness, even his own conscience. But the truth was, he was no different than any other selfish, dishonest dirtbag trying to grub a fortune out of a family that was still grieving.

But Jay was different.

“I believe your five minutes are up, Mr. Harper,” Bruce said.

“No,” Roy said without thinking.

“Excuse me?”

“I know how it sounds,” Roy said. “Ollie’s junkie kid shows up out of nowhere with a wild story about running into your long-lost son out of nowhere. And I’m not gonna lie, I could use the money. But if you talk to him, if you listen to his story and do the math—if you just look at him, he’s right outside and I’m not just some rando off the streets, I knew Jason, I remember how he looked and—”

“Don’t say his name!” Bruce snapped, standing up, and for a spoonfed millionaire he suddenly looked very imposing. “The only reason I haven’t already called security is because you used to mean something to Dick. But if you don’t leave my building and take whatever…person you have waiting out there with you immediately, I will have you both arrested for fraud.”

“It’s not a fraud!” Roy protested, even as Bruce marched across his office and yanked the door open, even as Roy reluctantly followed. “I’m telling you, Bruce, he’s the real thing!”

In the reception area, everyone was standing: the assistant with the phone in her hand, clearly ready to call for help; Lian looking frightened. Roy could barely take in Jay’s face, strained and pale.

Bruce’s face, meanwhile, could have been carved from granite. “Get out,” he said. He barely glanced at Jay, just a contemptuous flick of his eyes. “Both of you. Caroline, if they don’t leave immediately, call security.”

And he slammed his office door shut.

Chapter Text

Jay had no memory of leaving the Wayne Enterprises building. He supposed he should be worried about that—he hadn’t lost time in years. But one minute Bruce Wayne was pinning him in place with the coldest voice and most contemptuous look he’d ever been on the receiving end of, and the next they were standing on the sidewalk, and it was anyone’s guess whether Roy or Lian looked more lost.

“He wouldn’t even look at you,” Roy said.

Jay hadn’t cared what anyone thought of him for...well, he’d never cared what anyone thought of him. But he couldn’t shake the memory of dismissive loathing on Bruce’s face. Somehow it made him feel small again; a lost, hungry kid on the streets, with no memory and no home.

“If he had just given you a chance...if he had just talked to you…!”

Jay forced himself to move, to speak, to climb out of the pit that scathing look had thrown him into. It wasn’t doing any of them any good to stand here, and if they made a scene Wayne would just call the cops, like he’d threatened. “Well, we knew this might happen, right?” he asked, and his own voice sounded strange and hollow. “We shot our shot, and we missed.”

“We didn’t miss,” Roy snapped. “I don’t—” He shook his head. “This is bullshit. You’re Jason Todd.”

It had always hurt a little to hear that, like pressing on a faded bruise, but now it landed like a blow. “Enough, Roy. It didn’t work, okay? Let’s just go back to the car.”

He started walking back toward where they’d parked, although really, at this point what was there for him to do with Roy’s car but take his backpack out of the trunk and try to find somewhere to sleep while he figured out how Gotham worked? Maybe Roy would let him use his phone to find a cheap hostel before he headed back on the road with Lian.

Roy followed, Lian’s hand in his. “I’m not talking about the stupid con,” he said. “You’re him. You’re not...it’s true, Jay. It really is. I’ve been trying to tell you all day.”

“Don’t.”

Roy’s hand landed on his shoulder. “Jason…”

Jay shook it off. “Don’t fucking call me that!” he spat. “I told you when we started this that I wasn’t Jason Todd. If you got high on your own supply, that’s not my problem, and it’s certainly not going to get you that reward from Bruce Wayne.”

Roy looked stung. Maybe the dig about getting high had been too much, but right now Jason couldn’t care. “It’s not about the reward—”

Jay started walking again. “Yeah, right.”

“You look just like Jason,” Roy said, following, scooping up Lian so that he could match Jay’s pace. “You’re the right age. Your amnesia and your injuries happened around the same time he disappeared. You woke up in the hospital with burns all over your body! What if you were in that warehouse that exploded?”

“Yeah? And how did I get to a hospital on the other side of the country, huh?”

Roy faltered at that. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But Jay, you remembered Alfred. You didn’t read that anywhere. Why would the butler’s first name be in the news? You remembered him. You remembered the car was a Jaguar, you told me what Sunday roasts were like at Wayne Manor. You threw up when you felt like Bruce replaced you!”

“Not me,” Jay said through gritted teeth. “Jason.”

“You didn’t say Jason the other day,” Roy said. “You said ‘me.’ ‘He replaced me.’”

“Because you told me to talk about Jason in the first person! For the con!”

“Jay.” Roy put his hand on Jay’s arm again, and this time Jay stopped walking and let him keep it there. “Last night, when you woke up, before I calmed you down…you were calling for Bruce.”

The pit was there, it was at Jay’s feet, and there was nowhere to step that wouldn’t drop him in it. “...No.”

“You did,” Roy said. “Every night you scream for...whoever, to let you go, to let you go home, but last night you called for Bruce specifically, maybe because we’ve been talking about him so much. I think the dreams are you reliving whatever happened with the kidnappers. I think you can’t remember them because your brain is protecting you from the trauma, but—”

“Shut up!” Jay knew he was shouting, but he couldn’t stop, not even when he saw the alarmed look on Lian’s face. “Did I ask you to fucking psychoanalyze me? No! So just shut the fuck up!”

“Jay, this is your past,” Roy said. “This is your family, don’t you want to get that back? I’m trying to help you!”

“You’re full of shit, Harper!” Jay snapped. “You wouldn’t be here any more than I would if it wasn’t for that reward.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t want to get you home,” Roy said.

“No, you want to get you home!” Jay said. “Every other word of your mouth is Ollie this or Ollie that. I don’t care if you fucked up your own life, but I’m not going to be your redemption.”

If he’d been trying to make Roy feel as sick and wounded as he did, he’d succeeded, if Roy’s expression was anything to go by. Jay turned away. They’d reached the car, anyway.

“Just pop the trunk, would you?” he asked, staring at the sidewalk. “Let me get my stuff and we can end this whole stupid charade. I’m not going back to California, so we don’t have to deal with each other for another second.”

Roy was silent for a minute. “Hang on,” he said finally. He unlocked the car, opened the backseat, and buckled Lian in. Then he closed the door and stood with his hand on the key fob, but he didn’t pop the trunk.

“Roy, come on,” Jay said. He couldn’t stand here any longer. He couldn’t be so close to Wayne Enterprises. He couldn’t be so close to Roy.

“No,” Roy said suddenly.

Jay finally looked directly at him. “What?”

“Maybe you’re right,” Roy said. He looked wild, like he was begging someone to take a swing at him. Maybe Jay. “Maybe I’m just a selfish asshole who was only in it for the money. Maybe I’m projecting. But you are Jason Todd, and we’re not done.”

“Jesus, Roy, what’s the point?” Jay demanded. “Bruce threw us out! Even if I was really Jason, he’s not going to listen to either of us!”

“Then we’ll find someone who will.” Roy yanked open the passenger-side door.

“This is pointless.”

“Yeah?” Roy said. “You got something better to do? Get in the fucking car.”

Jay glared at him for a long moment.

Then he got in the car.

Roy got in on the other side and pulled into traffic. After a few blocks, Lian broke the silence.

“Daddy?” she asked. “Are you and Jay still fighting?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” he said. “We’re sorry we upset you.”

“Why was that man so angry?”

“He thought I told him a lie.” Roy’s eyes met Jay’s in the rearview mirror. “But I didn’t.”

Jay gritted his teeth. “So what’s your big plan now?” he asked.

“We go to the manor,” Roy said. “If Dick’s not there, we ask Alfred where he lives. Dick will listen to me.”

“If Bruce hasn’t already called him and told him what his old buddy is up to,” Jay pointed out.

Roy’s hands tightened visibly on the steering wheel. “Dick will listen to me,” he repeated.

He drove out of the heart of the city, over a bridge and into a neighborhood that was all storybook houses set back on green, manicured lawns. The farther he drove, the bigger and more ornate the houses got, the more sprawling the lawns, until the houses—mansions—finally hid themselves behind towering hedges and walls.

They came to a fork in the road, and the GPS on Roy’s phone spat out confusing directions. Roy frowned and aimed for the right fork.

“No, it’s left,” Jay said before he realized he was about to speak.

Roy shot him a knowing look.

“It was a guess,” Jay said, but Roy was already turning to the left. The GPS seemed to figure itself out after that, and barely two minutes later they were pulling up the drive of the biggest house Jay had ever seen. It was more like a castle, really, complete with turrets and crenellations. Something behind Jay’s right eye started to throb dully as he looked at it.

Roy pulled right up to the front door and got out of the car, then circled around to the back to get Lian out. Jay sighed, then climbed out as well.

“You know this is insane, right?” he asked.

“It’s been insane from the beginning,” Roy said, and that seemed to sum it up.

Roy marched to the front door, Lian in tow, and rang the bell. It reverberated like a gong, low and familiar. Jay had a sensation like rushing down the stairs, sliding down a bannister that went on forever. Someone with dark hair and a quick smile racing him to the bottom.

They didn’t have to wait long before the door was opened by an older, balding man with a narrow mustache. The pounding in Jay’s head got louder.

“Can I help you, gentlem—Mr. Harper?” the man asked. English. Tuxedo. This was the butler. This was Alfred.

Earl grey tea in the kitchen on a rainy day and someone bandaging up his knees when he skinned them falling out of a tree in the backyard…

Jay shook his head to clear it, and stayed behind Roy. Not that it helped very much, since he was slightly taller and just as broad. He saw Alfred glance at him once and then again, his eyes widening slightly before the implacable butler mask Jason had thought only existed in English murder mysteries descended.

Roy must have missed it all, because he had a smile in his voice when he said, “Thanks for remembering me, Alfred. Is Dick here, by any chance?”

“Why yes, he is,” Alfred said, his expression as unperturbed as if his employers’ friends turned up after seven years of no contact with a strange man and a child every day. But Jason saw Alfred’s eyes dart back to him before he stepped back to let them in. “I’ll show you to him.”

They entered the house, their footsteps echoing on the polished floor of the front hall. It smelled like cedar and pine inside. It felt like walking through a crowd of ghosts.

Alfred led them down a long, branching hall into a room about eight times the size of Jay’s entire apartment back in California. There was a man sitting on a couch watching a TV as big as a double mattress, two German shepherds curled up by his feet. All three looked up when Alfred showed Roy and Jay into the room.

“Master Richard, you have visitors,” Alfred said.

The man was unmistakably an older Dick Grayson, and he was staring. “Roy?”

Roy gave an awkward wave. “Hey, Dickie.”

One of the dogs pranced over to greet them, its tail waving like a flag. The other, clearly an older dog, got creakily to its feet and followed more slowly.

Lian gasped as the first one nosed at her hands. “Can I pet him, Daddy?”

“Daddy?” Dick echoed.

Roy spread his hands. “Surprise?”

“Jesus. Um, yeah, go ahead—Titus loves kids, he’s very gentle.”

“Hi, Titus!” Lian said, burying her hands in the dog’s fur and dissolving into giggles as he started licking her face.

“Roy, not that I’m not happy to see you, but what are you doing here?” Dick asked. “And who’s your friend?” His gaze landed on Jay, and his expression went from mildly confused to shocked. Jay fought the urge to hide behind Roy again. “Wait—”

“Yes, Mr. Harper, what are you doing here?” asked a voice behind them, and everything in Jay tensed. He’d heard that voice just a half hour ago. It wasn’t any friendlier now.

“Bruce?” Dick asked. “What’s going on?”

Bruce Wayne pushed past them into the living room and stood glowering at Roy. “What’s going on is that your old friend here decided he could use five million dollars.”

The older dog had reached them and sniffed politely at Roy and Lian in turn. When it got to Jay, though, it didn’t move on, but kept sniffing, its nose cold and wet against his fingers. Jay pulled his hand away.

“Oh, no,” Dick said, looking back and forth between Roy and Jay. The faint glimmer of something—hope, maybe?—that had been on his face when he’d seen Jay was gone, replaced by something halfway between devastation and betrayal. “Roy, you didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t,” Roy said. “I’m not here to trick anyone. I don’t even fucking care about the reward anymore.” He put a hand on Jay’s back. Jay wondered which one of them was shaking. “This is the real Jason Todd.”

There was a gasp behind them. Great, so Alfred was still in the room, too. Jay edged a little closer to Roy, as if it would get him away from all the scrutiny. He felt guilty, and dirty, and that damn dog was still sniffing at him, its tail wagging slowly at first and then faster. Jay pushed it away.

There was one pair of eyes that wasn’t on him. Bruce wouldn’t even look at him, and that was the most humiliating part in all of this.

“Every single imposter over the past six years has claimed to be the real Jason Todd,” Bruce said. “But not one of them has had the gall to walk into my house, so you have managed to stand out from the crowd there. Congratulations.”

The dog started to whine, pawing at Jay. He pushed it back again. What was this thing’s problem?

“Dick, come on, it’s me,” Roy said. “You know me. You know I wouldn’t do this to you. I know how much you loved Jason.”

Dick looked at Jay and back at Roy. “Bruce, maybe…”

“No!” Bruce snapped. “Harper, I told you at the office that I’d have you arrested if you didn’t leave, and I meant it.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and started to dial.

“Mr. Wayne—” Roy tried.

“Master Bruce—” Alfred started.

“Bruce!” Dick said, loud enough that Bruce looked up from his phone. “Look at Ace.”

And for the first time, Bruce Wayne turned to Jay—or really, to the damn dog, who was trying to climb him, barking and whining by turns, tail wagging so hard its whole hindquarters shook with it. “Ace!” Bruce said. “Come here, boy!”

Ace glanced over at him but didn’t leave Jay’s side, didn’t stop crying or pushing his head into Jay’s hands. And Jay...the shape of that head, the smooth fur giving way to the longer neck fluff, he knew them.

“Ace?” Jay whispered, his hands sliding into that soft coat, and the dog barked gleefully, trying his best to jump up and lick Jay’s face.

Now even Roy was staring. “Jay…?”

“I don’t…” Jay started, but it was there, faintly. This room. The fireplace was empty and cold, but he could imagine being much smaller, lying in front of it and watching the flames dance until he dozed off, his head pillowed on Ace’s warm side.

But was he imagining or remembering?

“Titus wouldn’t know him. We only got him three years ago,” Dick said. “But Ace would.”

“He’s a dog, not a forensics investigator,” Bruce said, but for the first time he sounded less than certain.

Dick took a step closer to Jay. That concerned expression was so familiar. “Are you really Jason Todd?”

“I don’t,” Jay said again, and his voice cracked. “I don’t know. I had a head injury about six years ago. I don’t remember anything from before that. But Roy says I look like him and I…” He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know.”

“Well, you two have come up with an extremely convenient story, but I’m about finished entertaining this,” Bruce said. “I hope you’ve enjoyed yourselves, making a mockery of our grief. Alfred, show them out.”

He was glaring at Jay, now, and if Dick’s concerned face had been familiar, Bruce’s glare hit Jay like flint against steel. It should have cowed him. It just pissed him off.

“Fuck you.”

“...Excuse me?” Bruce echoed.

“You heard me.” Dimly, Jay was aware that he was digging his own grave, that he was probably going to find himself spending the night behind bars at police headquarters if he kept this up, but he was done listening to this man who had everything try to make him feel ashamed. “Fuck you. You’ve been grieving? How sad for you. But if your millions couldn’t console you, maybe all the shiny new kids you adopted to replace the dead one could. I’m shocked you even remember Jason’s name.”

Bruce’s face went harder, more impassive. Jay hated it. He wanted Bruce as angry as he was. He wanted Bruce as hurt as he was. “How dare you—”

“How dare you?” Jay snapped back. “How dare you sit in your glass tower or your fucking castle and look at me like I’m dirt under your feet while you tell me how much you suffered. You lost a son? I lost my whole goddamn life! I don’t know who the hell I am or where I’m from or who my parents are or even how old I am. I spent the first year I can remember sleeping on the street. But oh no, I’m sorry, you were grieving.” He spat the last word out. “Cry me a fucking river.”

“If even a word of your story is true, which I highly doubt, then I am sorry for what you’ve been through,” Bruce said. “But that doesn’t give you the right to try to deceive me, or pull Dick and Alfred into your little game, and it certainly doesn’t give you the right to judge me or my family.”

“Family? Some fucking family. A bunch of disposable matching kids and the king of the assholes at the top,” Jay scoffed. His head was pounding. He felt like he’d said all these words before, even though that didn’t even make sense.

“You don’t even—” Bruce started, but Jay cut him off.

“No, you know what? I’ve decided I’m not Jason Todd, because I don’t want to spend another second dealing with you. Come on, Roy.” He turned on his heel.

“Don’t you walk away while I’m talking to you!” Bruce snapped.

And Jason froze.

Froze because he’d heard that before. Those words, from this man, in this room.

“We had a fight,” he said, and heard his own voice as if from very far away.

“What?”

“We had a fight.” Jay had been shouting before, but now he could barely push himself past a whisper. “You...I found my mother. Or at least she said she was my mother, my real mother, and I wanted to believe her, but you didn’t trust her. You thought she was after my inheritance.”

“Jay?” Roy said again.

Jay shook his head. “I said you couldn’t keep me from her, that you weren’t…” He swallowed. “That you weren’t my real father.”

He turned around. Bruce was staring at him, all the anger gone from his face. Behind him, Dick and Alfred looked equally stunned.

“Bruce,” Dick said. “We never told the media about Sheila. Bruce.”

Jay just kept talking. He knew how this story went. He remembered.

“You said that you were at least legally my father and that gave you the right to protect me from people who didn’t have my best interests at heart,” he said. “I said that you were keeping me from her because you knew no one would stick around you if they had a choice. I said I hated you.” Bruce went blurry, and it took a minute for Jay to realize it was because he was crying. “I lied.”

“Jason…?” Bruce asked, his voice breaking.

“I took out the money from the bank that day because I was going to meet her, but she was working with the kidnappers, and they took me, they…” Jay shook his head. He thought he could pull that memory out of the darkness if he tried, but it hurt too much. “It was my fault. I was a stupid kid and I ran away and I’m so sorry, Bruce. It was all my fault.”

“Jason, no,” Bruce said, and then he moved, then he was holding Jay and the familiar scent of wool and cedar was in Jay’s nose and the doors to his memory blew open.

“Bruce,” he managed, clutching at his back.

“Jason,” Bruce said again. He was holding too tight and Jay didn’t ever want him to stop. “I’m sorry, I should have listened, I should have understood.”

“I lied, I lied, I never hated you.” Jay had to get it out, had to say it before his memory betrayed him again. “I wanted you to be my real dad. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” There were tears against Jay’s neck. “Jason, my boy, my baby, it wasn’t your fault.”

Jay looked up at Bruce, and there was the face he remembered, the one that had taken him in when he had nothing and given him a home. Stern and stoic in his memories, but he had never doubted he was loved—and looking at Bruce now, he knew it was still true.

“Oh my god, Jason,” Dick said, and Jay caught just a glimpse of his tearstained face before Dick was hugging him too, and then Alfred, his family all clinging to him at once. His brother. His grandfather. His father.

“Welcome home,” Bruce said as they held each other and cried, the dogs going crazy at their feet, and in the sweet, heady rush of Jay finally finding his way back to himself, of them finding each other, it was a very long time before anyone realized that Roy and Lian were gone.

Chapter Text

Being Jason Todd again was strange.

The next three days were a barrage of tests and scans and check-ups. Jay hadn’t seen a medical professional since he’d left the hospital six years ago, so he probably needed it all, but it was exhausting. The dentist visit was an especially miserable experience, and a CAT scan and MRI in the same day was something he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy.

Coming out of it with a reasonably clean bill of health—aside from a worrying amount of scar tissue and some minor malnutrition—made it worth it, though. Bruce’s obvious relief that Jay was basically okay made it more worth it.

He was getting more memories back every day. There were still occasional gaps, like when he couldn’t figure out how to get to the manor’s library or recall the name of the street he’d lived on before his parents had died—well, his father and the woman who had raised him, even if she hadn’t been his birth mother—but the important stuff was there. He remembered Dick teaching him how to ride a bike, wobbling his way up and down Wayne Manor’s long drive. He remembered pestering Alfred with questions while watching him cook. He remembered the first time Bruce had introduced Jay to someone as his son.

He remembered his parents, his father’s drunken swaggering and his mother’s quiet neglect. He couldn’t believe he’d conflated his father and Bruce in the few distant memories that had been left to him all those years.

But he couldn’t think about the time that had been lost, what he could have avoided if he hadn’t been hiding, because that way lay despair. It was over and done with, and Jay had to find happiness in the life he had now.

Besides, a small part of him couldn’t help thinking, if Bruce had recovered him years ago, Jay and Roy would never have found each other again.

But he tried not to think about Roy too much.

There was plenty to distract him between doctors’ visits—like getting to know his new siblings. Tim, he reluctantly had to admit, was actually pretty okay. It had helped with the feeling of having been replaced to know that Bruce had already known Tim before his adoption, that he’d lived in the house next door and been orphaned shortly after Jay’s kidnapping. Jay could even remember Tim, now—the scrawny neighbor kid, always tagging along after Dick and Jay and talking about his new camera or chemistry set. He was still scrawny, even at seventeen, but way less of a pest, and he had a dry sense of humor Jay appreciated.

Cassandra—Cass—was quiet and a bit hard to read, but Dick assured Jay that she was just shy. And Damian, Bruce’s actual kid, was...well, Jay had to admit to himself that he sort of wanted to smack the brat at least once a day, but he was trying. With both of them. With all of them. Jay didn’t usually try very hard with other people, but this was his family. He wasn’t going to take it for granted.

The press conference was probably the weirdest part. Bruce called it as soon as Jay completed the medical gauntlet, to stem any rumors before they could get started. Alfred dressed Jay up in a new suit that cost more than Jay’s rent in Coast City, and Dick stood behind Jay while the cameras flashed and kept a steadying hand on his elbow. Jay remembering yawning through the occasional press conference with Bruce in the past, had grown mostly inured to photographers snapping pictures of him at galas and on the street as a child, but after six years of laying strategically low, the sudden scrutiny was a lot to take.

Bruce kept things short and dry, which was a relief—Jay didn’t want the entire world knowing what he’d been through in those years, and he certainly didn’t want them to know what he’d done to survive. All Bruce said, really, was that Jay had suffered some memory loss, that he had been found by a family friend, and that they were thankful to have him home.

“I’m very happy to be back with my family, and I’m grateful that Bruce never stopped looking for me,” Jay mumbled into the microphone when it was his turn to speak, and then backed away quickly from the surge of questions.

Watching the footage later online, he couldn’t believe that he’d ever managed to con anyone into anything; the Jay onscreen was surly and cagey and said the word “happy” like it was the first time he’d ever encountered the term. But maybe that was the difference between running a game and talking about things that actually mattered.

Part of why they didn’t answer very many questions was because in some cases, they didn’t have the answers. Like how Jay had ended up in Coast City after the warehouse explosion in Gotham. Most of the fuzzy spots in his memory centered around his kidnapping, and he had no desire to force them into focus, but he had a dim recollection of a woman moving him when he was barely conscious and everything hurt, a terrified expression on her face and blood trickling from her temple; of the rumble of a train beneath him. He thought, too, that he remembered that same woman trying to stop the others from beating him, arguing against killing him when they’d finally realized they were never going to get away with the ransom.

Sheila Haywood. His mother.

Had she really tried to protect him? Or was Jay just imagining it to soothe the sting of her betrayal? And where was she now? Jay remembered her looking badly injured; she might not even be alive.

That was usually when he pushed his thoughts in a different direction.

Knowing where Jay had ended up had solved a few mysteries. Tim, it turned out, was weirdly good at digging up information, and he’d managed to find a couple of hospital staffers who had cared for Jay when he was injured. He’d been found in a freight car, apparently, barely clinging to life, which lent credence to Jay’s memories of his mother putting him on a train. They’d never connected him to the stories about Jason Todd because Gotham was so far away, and because the beaten and burned teenager they’d cared for had looked nothing like the photos on the news. No one was quite sure where “Jay” had come from as a name, but it was the only thing he’d responded to, and the only thing he’d retained when he ran away from the hospital.

It wasn’t much. But it was something.

Jay didn’t want to think about it too much. Instead, he focused on relearning the manor, reconnecting with his family, exploring Gotham. The last he had to do discreetly, because the couple of times he managed to get out after the press conference, the paparazzi were everywhere—shoving microphones and cameras into his face, crowding him, shouting questions at him. Why had it taken so long for him to come home? What had the kidnappers done to him? Where was this mysterious “family friend” who had found him?

Jay wanted to know the answer to that last one, too.

He’d texted Roy the day after his memories had come back: come over for dinner. bruce wants to apologize and alfred’s making a roast for you even though its not sunday. There was no answer.

He’d tried again the next day: dick really wants to see you. come by whenever. No answer.

are you still in gotham?

at least come get the reward. I told them it’s for lian, no one’s gonna hold it against you.

you don't have to see any of us if you don't want to. just go to the office and tell them who you are. please take it.

at least tell me you’re okay.

That last one was passive aggressive and he knew it—Bruce’s lawyers had called Roy at the number Jay had given them to coordinate the payment of the reward, and Roy had apparently politely declined. But Jay couldn’t understand why Roy wouldn’t at least answer his calls or texts, if only to say goodbye.

Well, no, he could. Jay had said some horrible things to Roy that last day. He’d told him he was done with him. Could he blame Roy for believing him?

He was lying on his bed, staring at the string of unanswered texts on his shiny new smartphone, when Dick knocked on the frame of his open door. “Hey, Little Wing. Can I come in?”

“That nickname doesn’t even make sense,” Jay said, but he sat up a little and scooted over, giving Dick space to come in and sit on the side of the bed.

“Deal with it,” Dick said, but he was smiling, and Jay had to fight to keep up his expression of faux annoyance. Dick had been calling Jay “Little Wing” since Jay had actually been little, and the fact that Jay remembered that, that he could sit here in his own bedroom and pretend to be annoyed by Dick saying it again, still seemed unreal.

“What’s up?” Jay asked, setting his phone aside.

“You okay?” Dick asked. “You seem a little...I don’t know. A little down.”

Jay raised an eyebrow. “Sorry, was there a way I was supposed to act after recovering from six years of amnesia?” Dick just looked at him. “I’m fine.”

“Okay, okay.” Dick glanced at Jay’s phone. “Heard from Roy yet?”

“No.” Jay shrugged. “His loss. Literally.”

“Sure.” Dick’s expression was more knowing than Jay was comfortable with. “What’s the deal with you two anyway?”

“There’s no deal,” Jay said. “I mean, besides what I already told you. We ran into each other, he thought I looked like...me, we agreed to con you guys and split the reward.” There hadn’t seemed to be any point in lying about their original intentions, not after everything. “It was basically a business partnership.”

Except the parts where Roy had calmed him every time he’d woken screaming, and never seemed to judge or blame him for it. Except that last morning, Roy’s eyes so soft in the growing light, his hand on Jay’s cheek. Except for Roy refusing to take the money.

“Really,” Dick said. It wasn’t a question.

Jay rolled his eyes. “I knew him for a week, Dick. I mean, not counting when we were kids. And most of it was him telling me your zodiac sign and SAT scores and shit so I could lie to you better, or entertaining a five-year-old. That’s it.”

“Okay,” Dick said again. But he didn’t leave.

Jay wanted to pick up his phone, but he made himself leave it where it was. It wasn’t like it had buzzed with a notification or anything. “Dick?”

“Yeah?”

“Why did you stop being friends with Roy when he was doing drugs?”

Dick blinked, looking surprised. “I didn’t. Is that what he said?”

Jay thought back to the conversation where Roy had told him about his past. It seemed so long ago. “He said...he said he wasn’t in contact with anyone from his old life. And that Oliver Queen threw him out.”

Dick’s lip curled. “Oh, that asshole. Yeah.” He was quiet for a minute, then sighed. “I dunno, Jay, maybe I did stop being friends with Roy when he was using. Not the way you meant, but...we were drifting apart, and I didn’t know why. He missed a lot of school, his grades started to slip, he was partying with kids he didn’t even like. And he started acting like a real jerk, but I just…” He shrugged. “I fought with him about it, but I didn’t ask myself why he’d changed. I knew he was smoking, he smelled like pot basically constantly, but I didn’t know about the other shit he was taking, or…” He shook his head. “I should have known. I should have seen that something was wrong.”

“And after Queen threw him out?” Jay asked.

“I tried,” Dick said. “You gotta believe me, Jay, I tried. Roy wouldn’t answer his phone or any emails, not from any of his friends, and since he wasn’t at Ollie’s anymore no one knew where to find him. He stayed in touch with Ollie’s girlfriend long enough to get clean—that’s the only way any of us even knew he was alive.”

He glanced at Jay’s phone again. “When Roy feels like he’s screwed up, he runs. I wish I’d chased him, if only to tell him I was still there for him.” He stood up, putting a hand on his shoulder as he did. “If there’s something you need to tell him, you’re going to have to do more than just wait for him to call.”

*

When Jay’s phone finally rang, it wasn’t Roy.

“What do you want, Anatoli?” Jay asked, although he could guess. The press conference had been yesterday, and if Anatoli hadn’t seen it himself, someone who worked for him would have.

“Now is that any way to be speaking to an old friend?” Anatoli asked. “Although not so good of a friend that you told me who you really are, no?”

“I’m not your friend, asshole,” Jay said. “Oh, and it looks like you’re going to have to suck Stanley Dover’s dick yourself. Sorry about that.”

“Oh, that was just a little misunderstanding between you and me,” Anatoli said. “We will forget all about it. Unfortunately, there are many things you did working for me that I cannot forget about. I wonder what your father, Mr. Bruce Wayne, would think of such things if I told him?”

Jay laughed bitterly. “Are you seriously trying to blackmail me? Tell him whatever you want. He already knows.” Not every detail of every con—Jay wasn’t built for that kind of honesty—but Bruce knew how Jay had supported himself while he was lost.

“I wish you hadn’t been reduced to that,” he’d told Jay. “But you stayed alive. That’s all that matters to me now.”

Jay could hear the anger in Anatoli’s voice, in the thickening of his accent. “This is not finished, Jay or Jason, whatever your name is. You owe me money, and you will pay it.”

“I owe you jack shit,” Jay said, his own temper rising. “You made me shill for you since I was a kid, and I had to pretend to be grateful that you left me enough to live on. Well, you can go fuck yourself, Anatoli. Lose my number, and know that the only reason I’m not going to the cops or the FBI with everything I know about your business is because I don’t want to think about you ever again after I end this call.”

“You will regret this,” Anatoli warned.

And Jay laughed again, safe on the other side of the country, in a mansion built like a castle. “Go to hell,” he said, and hung up the phone.

*

Roy stayed in Gotham for nearly a week.

Every morning he lay in bed in their shitty hotel room and thought that he should really get back on the road, should see what job Santos had lined up for him next. But instead he stayed, spending money he couldn’t afford to spend, taking Lian to the zoo and the aquarium and the natural history museum to make up for all those miserable long hours in the car.

He didn’t keep up as good a front as he’d hoped, though, which he realized when Lian looked away from the antics of a red panda at the Gotham Zoo and asked, “Daddy, are you sad because you miss Jay?”

“I...no, I don’t...I mean, I’m not sad,” Roy said, taken aback.

She gave him a look that was too withering for her young age. “You’re sad. Your face is sad.”

“No, it’s not.” Roy pointed at his smile. “I’m happy because I’m with my best girl.”

“You’re sad at night,” she said. “And when you’re not talking to me. You stop smiling then.”

Roy sighed. He was glad his daughter was smart, but did she have to be this perceptive? “I’m just thinking about grownup things, sweetheart,” he said. “And wishing I didn’t do some things I did. But it’s not anything you need to worry about, okay?” He ruffled her hair. “Being with you, seeing you have a nice time, that makes me happy. Believe me?”

“I guess,” she said. “Is Jay driving back with us when we go home?”

Roy bit the inside of his lip. “No,” he said. “He’s going to stay in that big house we went to, with the dogs. He lives with them now.”

“And the mean man?”

“He’s not usually mean. He just…” Roy paused. “He was sad for a very long time. And sometimes when that happens, people are scared to stop being sad, because they get used to it. Does that make sense?”

“Not really.” Lian went back to looking at the red panda, but her heart didn’t seem to be in it.

Roy squatted down beside her. “Lian, honey...do you miss Jay?”

“No,” she said. “He was grumpy and he woke me up and you two yelled all the time.” But the little furrow between her brows, so much like her mother’s, gave her away.

“Hey,” Roy said, and when she looked over at him, he opened his arms. She fell into them, burying her face against his chest.

“I don’t like it when people go away,” she said, muffled.

He gave her a squeeze and rested his chin on the top of her head. “I know, baby girl,” he said. “Me neither.”

*

Two days after the press conference found Roy sitting on his hotel room bed half an hour before the alarm was set to go off, wide awake. He hadn’t been sleeping well, lately—ironic, with no one there to disturb his dreams anymore.

He scrolled through the unanswered texts on his phone for the hundredth time—from Jay and from Dick, who’d apparently gotten his number from Jay. He felt bad ignoring them, but he would have felt worse sticking around to fuck up their lives again. Their family had a chance to get back the happiness that had been stolen from them all these years. Roy wasn’t going to get in the way of that.

Thinking of family made him glance over at Lian, asleep with her thumb in her mouth on the next bed. Was he being an idiot, again? Jay and Dick and the Wayne lawyers had assured him that the five million dollar reward was his in its entirety, no strings and no hard feelings. It would have left his daughter set for life.

But he’d set out to get that money by defrauding his former best friend and profiting off of his family’s grief. By exploiting the man who he’d come to—

Roy cut that thought off. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that Lian didn’t one day look around and realize she was ashamed of the way her father had secured her future. He’d find another way to take care of her. Somehow.

And that meant it was time to stop moping around Gotham like being here would change anything. He’d been lingering, knowing he had to move on but unwilling to pull the plug. But it was over now.

It had to be over.

By the time the alarm woke Lian, Roy was showered and dressed and had all of their belongings packed. “Rise and shine, pumpkin!” he said. “We’re heading home today.”

“Are we stopping to say goodbye to Jay and the dogs first?” she asked as they walked out of the hotel.

Roy pasted on a smile. “Nope, sorry. Gotta hit the road. But we’re going to get a special breakfast that we can eat in the car.”

“Ice cream?” she asked.

“Uh, since when is ice cream breakfast? Donuts, silly,” he said, as if there was any real difference.

“Yay!” she cheered, and swung their linked hands happily all the way to the car, where they both stopped short.

Anatoli Knyazev was sitting on the hood.

“Good morning,” he said. “It is good to see you again, Roy Harper. And what is this little one’s name?”

Roy pushed Lian slightly behind him with a warning look in her direction. “What are you doing here, Knyazev?” he asked.

Anatoli smiled. “Ah, you know who I am. That makes this easier. I am here to discuss our mutual friend, whose apartment we met in so recently. Our friend who just came into a very impressive windfall.”

“I don’t have anything to say to you,” Roy said tightly.

“But there is so much news to talk about!” Anatoli said. “It seems my dear friend Jay is actually Jason Todd, son of the millionaire Bruce Wayne. Which I imagine you would know something about, being the son of Oliver Queen...though perhaps Jay misled me about your financial status.”

“I haven’t spoken to Oliver in seven years, and I barely know Jay,” Roy said. He didn’t like how much research Anatoli had apparently done on him. “And we have a long drive ahead of us, so if you don’t mind getting off of my car…”

“Oh, I don’t think that is the case,” Anatoli said. “You were extremely friendly with Jay when I saw you together. And then you drove off together in this car and the next thing I know, my old friend is on the news.” He patted the car. “Isn’t it good that I have other friends, ones who can trace a license plate?”

Shit, shit, shit. “What do you want?” Roy asked, although he had a feeling he knew the answer.

Anatoli smiled. “Only what is mine,” he said. “Jay owes me money, but he is so busy with his family that he seems to have forgotten his old acquaintances. As I’m sure you can appreciate, staying in a place like this and not a mansion.”

“No reason I would be in a mansion,” Roy replied. “Like I said. Jay and I aren’t as good friends as you seem to think we are.”

“Perhaps that is true, although I do not think you are a very honest man, Mr. Harper,” Anatoli said. “But I have known Jay a long time, and I know of his—what is the phrase? Bleeding heart. He may care nothing for you, but he would not leave a little girl in danger.”

He moved the front of his jacket, just enough to let Roy see the gun in its shoulder holster. Roy’s blood went cold in his veins.

“Now,” Anatoli said. “Why don’t we go back to your hotel room and wait for Jay to come join us?”

Chapter Text

Jay twitched the curtains aside and squinted down the drive. The front gate to the Wayne property was closed, but he could still see the cars lined up on either side of it. Paparazzi. They’d been staking out the manor since the press conference. “They’re still out there.”

“You get used to it,” said Tim without looking up from his phone. “Also they’ll get bored of you eventually. I mean, there’s always a couple, but you should have seen the circus when the demon brat came along. Bruce Wayne had sex, news at eleven!”

“I will stab you,” Damian said from the other side of the living room, where he was attempting to teach Titus to roll over, with limited success.

“But now they know he’s horrible, so they’ve mostly stopped caring,” Tim continued as if Damian hadn’t spoken. “They’ll get over you, too. It’s only been a couple of days.”

Jay’s phone buzzed in his pocket before he could answer. He pulled it out, telling himself not to hope that Roy was finally texting him back.

At first he thought it was Roy, because it was a picture of Lian. But then he clocked the frightened expression on her face, and then he noticed the name of the sender: Anatoli.

“Fuck.”

“What’s wrong?”

Jay looked up from his phone. Tim and Damian were both watching him with curious expressions.

“Nothing,” he said. “Uh, I gotta make a phone call.” Ignoring the way their faces went from curious to skeptical, he hurried out of the room.

Once he was safely in his own room with the door shut and locked, he called Anatoli, who answered right away.

“Ah, Jay, there you are,” he said. Jay could hear the unctuous smile in his voice.

“Leave them alone,” Jay snapped.

“Oh, but we are having such a pleasant time together,” Anatoli said.

Jay’s phone vibrated again with another text, and Jay switched to speaker phone to look at it. Another photo, this time of Roy sitting on what looked like a hotel room bed with Lian in his lap. Roy was glowering and Lian looked near tears, but at least neither of them seemed hurt. Still, Jay couldn’t imagine they were there willingly.

“What do you want?” he snapped.

“Well, at first I simply wanted the money you would have earned me from Stanley Dover, but you tried my patience,” Anatoli said. “The other day you promised me this man’s trust fund, but it seems that you have mistaken me for one of your marks. He has no trust fund. So I will take yours.”

“I can’t just liquidate it,” Jay pointed out. “Bruce will notice.” He didn’t care about the money, would happily pour it into Anatoli’s hands if it got Roy and Lian to safety, but forking over a sum that enormous wasn’t the same as emptying his pockets.

“I did not intend for you to pay all at once,” Anatoli said. “You have never understood business, Jay. You will withdraw a certain sum now—let us say ten thousand, as a show of good faith. You can do at least this much, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Good. You will bring it to this address, in cash, and your friend and his adorable daughter will leave in good health.” There was that audible smile again. “And the next time I tell you to deliver money to me or my associates, you will do so without delay or complaints, and they will remain in good health. Do you understand?”

Jay’s hand tightened on the phone. “Yes.”

“Excellent. I will text you the address. And I am sure you understand this, but you are not to tell your newfound father or any of his friends in the police what you are doing.”

“I understand,” Jay said.

“Good. Then we will see you in an hour. Do not be late.”

The line went dead. A few seconds later, a new text arrived with an address.

Jay threw the phone at the bed. Shit! What the hell was he supposed to do? He had to get Roy and Lian out of there, but he was not going to spend the rest of his life under Anatoli’s thumb.

And how was he even supposed to get there? He still didn’t know how to drive, and he couldn’t exactly ask Alfred to drive him to the bank and then to a hotel to meet the crime boss who’d kidnapped Roy and Lian.

Kidnapped. Jay’s stomach lurched. It was happening again. Sneaking out of the house, taking out cash, going to meet someone he knew he shouldn’t...it was like stepping willingly into one of his nightmares. He couldn’t shake the feeling that it would all end the same way: the warehouse. The beating. The fire. And god only knew how many years lost this time.

But he didn’t have a choice. He wasn’t leaving Lian in danger. He wasn’t leaving either of them in danger.

He glanced toward the window as he tried to figure out how to make it to the assigned location with the cash in time—and suddenly he knew. How to get there. How to get Roy and Lian out without paying Anatoli a cent. How to keep him off their backs, at least until Jay could come up with a more permanent solution.

This wasn’t anything like last time. Last time he’d been running away. This time he was running to someone.

“Okay, Anatoli,” he said, picking up his phone and checking the address again. “You had your fun fucking with Jay. Time for you to meet Jason Todd.”

*

Roy hated this. He hated being stuck in this dingy hotel room. He hated Anatoli’s smug complacency. He hated that he hadn’t been able to figure out a way to keep Jay from being dragged into all of this bullshit all over again.

Most of all, he hated how scared his little girl was. He was pretty sure she hadn’t seen the gun and didn’t realize the exact danger they were in, but she could tell he was upset and was reflecting that.

And so he did his best to stay calm, because after all, what else could he do? If she hadn’t been there, he might have tried discreetly calling for help on his phone, or even taking a swing at Anatoli while his guard was down. But with Lian there, he couldn’t risk it.

According to the clock on the nightstand, it was about forty-five minutes after Anatoli got off the phone with Jay that they heard a knock on the door. “Don’t move,” Anatoli warned Roy, and moved closer to the door. “Who is it?”

“Who do you think? Let me in, Anatoli.”

Jay. Roy didn’t know whether to be relieved or guilty.

Anatoli opened the door a crack and peered out to make sure Jay was alone, then stepped back. Jay walked in, and Roy wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been a shit-eating grin and a swagger.

“Hi, Lian! Hey, Roy,” he said, walking past Anatoli to stand next to them. “Sorry about all of this.”

“Not your fault,” Roy mumbled, shifting Lian in his lap. “Should have left town sooner.”

Jay rolled his eyes. “It’s a little my fault. Learn to share the blame once in a while, would you, Harper?”

Roy blinked in surprise at his flippant tone, and Anatoli’s eyebrows went up. “You are in a better mood than you were on the phone,” he said, with the air of a man who smells a rat but doesn’t know where. “I hope this doesn’t mean you are about to attempt some foolish trick. You do have my money, do you not?”

“Oh, sure,” Jay said, pulling a bank envelope out of his back pocket and opening it so that everyone could see the stack of bills inside. “But I’ve decided not to give it to you.”

Roy stiffened. “Jay…”

Anatoli shook his head. “I should have expected this sort of nonsense. You always did need to have obedience beaten into you.”

“Yeah, my dad tried that. Didn’t take,” Jay said, putting the money away. Anatoli took a step forward and Jay held up a hand. “Before you try anything, you might want to check Twitter.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Anatoli asked.

“Don’t have it? Don’t worry, I reactivated my old account. Would you believe I remembered the password? Love that! Hang on.” Jay pulled out his phone, opened an app, and read out loud: “‘Long-Lost Wayne Heir Leaves Manor Alone for First Time Since Press Conference.’ ‘Bruce Wayne’s Missing Son Makes Mysterious Visit to Seedy Motel.’ ‘Who Is Jason Todd’s Secret Lover?’” He turned the screen to face Anatoli, even though it was too far away for him to read. “That’s just a few of the latest hits if you search my name.”

“What is this, what is this bullshit you are talking?” Anatoli demanded.

“Oh, did I not mention there are like two dozen paparazzi in the parking lot right now?” Jay asked. “My bad.”

Anatoli’s brows lowered. “I told you not to tell—”

“Bruce, or the police. I didn’t.” Jay slipped his phone back into his pocket. “You need to check TMZ more often, Anatoli. I can’t fart right now without the paps reporting on it. They followed me from the manor. I literally couldn’t have shaken them if I’d tried.”

“It doesn’t matter—” Anatoli started to say.

“Doesn’t it?” Jay shook his head. “I dunno, bud, that’s a lot of witnesses with cameras. And sure, they’re hardly Pulitzer winners, but damn are they good at digging things up. Do you really want them paying special attention to you? Leave now and you’re just an ordinary guest—they won’t look at you twice. Make a scene, and you can be damn sure they’ll figure out who you are within twenty-four hours.”

Roy stared at him. Holy shit. This just might work.

But Anatoli pulled back his jacket and put his hand on the grip of his gun. Lian made a frightened noise. Fuck—she’d definitely seen it this time.

“Do you really think it wise to defy me, Jay?”

Jay immediately moved to stand between Anatoli and the Harpers. Roy couldn’t see his face like this, but he heard the steel in his voice.

“First of all, if you want to hurt them, you’ll have to go through me, and there’s no point in killing the goose that laid the golden egg,” Jay said. “Second, if that gun goes off, every pap in Gotham will hear it, and there’s no way you’re slipping out unnoticed after that. You know they’ve already paid off the cleaning and kitchen staff to cover all the exits. It’s what they do.”

There was no sound from Anatoli. Roy prayed he was taking his hand off the gun.

“Leave,” Jay said. “Leave now, and this is done. Go near either of the Harpers again, and I will spend the Wayne fortune like water until your ass is locked up in a federal prison for life.”

“It is not done,” Anatoli snapped.

“It is,” Jay said. “Go back to California. I don’t want you in my city.”

There was another pause, then a sudden burst of furious Russian. Anatoli stormed toward the door, threw one livid glare back in their direction, then slammed out of the room. Roy’s heart started beating again.

Jay sank down onto the bed next to Roy. “Holy shit,” he said.

“Jay!” Lian flung herself into his lap. “Jay, you came back! And you said bad words!”

“Hi, kiddo,” he said, ruffling her hair. “I missed you, too.”

Roy couldn’t stop staring at Jay. Jay, who looked pale and shaky but triumphant. Jay, who’d just faced down his own personal bogeyman for Roy.

“Thank you,” he managed.

Jay made a face. “It’s not done yet,” he said. Shifting Lian to the side, he pulled out his phone again and dialed. “Hi, Alfred. I know, I know, I’m sorry I left the manor without telling anyone, but it was an emergency. I’ll explain at home. Can you come pick us up?” He smiled. “You’re the best, Alfie. I’ll text you the address. See you soon.”

He hung up and sent a text. Then he glanced at Roy and sent a second one. Roy’s phone buzzed in his pocket.

“Oh, look at that,” Jay said. “Your phone does work.”

“I…” Roy started, and then stopped. What could he say?

Jay gave him an unimpressed look. “Dick’s gonna nag you so hard, and I’m not going to protect you,” he said, before turning to Lian. “What have you guys been up to since I saw you?”

“We went to the zoo!” she said. “And the ac-rarian!”

Jay looked at Roy, who mouthed “aquarium” at him.

“Cool!” he said, turning back to Lian. “Did you see penguins?”

“Yeah!”

Her exhaustive descriptions of all the animals they’d seen over the past few days—and some they hadn’t, although Roy was pretty sure Jay hadn’t believed her claim that they’d seen pterodactyls—saved Roy from having to say anything for the next ten minutes, until Alfred texted that he was in the parking lot. Lian refused to let go of Jay, so he shifted her to his hip while Roy carried their bags.

Jay paused when they reached the front door of the hotel. “Hey,” he said, “sorry about this.”

Roy frowned. “Sorry about what?”

Jay just raised his eyebrows, then grabbed Roy’s free hand with his own and bumped the door open with his hip.

The second they stepped outside, they were surrounded. Cameras and microphones were shoved in their faces as they were pelted with questions. Roy blinked, momentarily stunned.

“Jason! Jason, over here!”

“Jason, who’s this?”

“Is this your boyfriend, Jason?”

“Jason, does Bruce know you’re gay?”

“Does Bruce know about your love child?”

“Do you know where babies come from?” Roy muttered, ducking his head and letting Jay tow him through the swarm of paparazzi to where Alfred was waiting in a gleaming black Mercedes. Lian, the little ham, smiled and waved.

Alfred had popped the trunk and Roy let go of Jay’s hand to throw their bags in while Jay held the door open, which only gave the paps more time to get another couple hundred good clear photos of him and Lian. Scowling, Roy slid across the backseat, Jay climbing in after him. Lian blew a final kiss at her adoring audience, Jay closed the door, and Alfred peeled out of the lot.

“What the hell,” Roy said.

“It’s nice to see you again, Mr. Harper, Miss Harper,” Alfred said as Roy buckled Lian into the middle seat and then pulled on his own seatbelt. “Master Jason, you have caused no small amount of concern at home.”

“I know, I know,” Jay said. “It was an emergency.”

Alfred shot a glance at Roy in the rearview mirror. “So I see.”

“What the hell,” Roy said again. “Jay, I work undercover! No one’s going to believe I’m a random undergrad looking to score some E if they just saw me on TMZ!” Walking out of the motel with Jay would have led to speculation no matter what, but by taking Roy’s hand, Jay had guaranteed Roy weeks in the news cycle.

He’d also left Roy feeling humiliatingly transparent, but Roy wasn’t about to bring that up. Especially not in front of Alfred.

“Yeah, the paps are going to figure out who you are in about…” Jay looked at his wrist, where he was not wearing a watch. “...ten seconds ago. And they’re gonna be following you for a while.”

“Jay.”

“Which means Anatoli isn’t going to be able to get near you or Lian,” Jay continued. “At least for long enough for me to tell the feds everything I know about his operation. Or your DEA contacts, whoever. The paparazzi have been making money off of me for years; it was about time I used them back.” The blithe look was gone from his face. “I needed you two to be safe from him. I’m not going to apologize for that.”

Roy opened his mouth, then closed it.

“Yeah,” he said finally, and then had to turn away, because looking at Jay’s face was too much. “Thanks.”

*

There were a lot of frantic Waynes waiting when they returned to the manor, which just made Roy feel worse for inadvertently sending this family into another tailspin. Jay and Bruce had another screaming match, this time over how reckless Jay had been in going to confront Anatoli alone, and Roy caught Dick watching with a misty smile on his face.

“What?” Roy murmured.

“Nothing. It’s just, it’s like old times.” Dick gave him a look. “Speaking of which, c’mere.”

He pulled Roy into the relative quiet of the hall. Roy sighed and opened his mouth to forestall the coming lecture. “Listen, I’m sorry I—oof!” he said as Dick suddenly hugged him. “What’s happening right now?”

“I missed you, you idiot,” Dick said, pulling back. Then he punched him in the arm.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“Are you kidding?” Dick asked. “I haven’t seen you in seven years and then you show up out of nowhere, throw my long-lost brother at me, and run off into the night? What’s wrong with you?”

“It was daytime,” Roy muttered, rubbing his arm.

“Why didn’t you answer any of my texts?” And oh no, Dick had that earnest expression on his face, the one Roy remembered from high school. His “Vote for me for class president!” face.

“Why did you bother texting me?” Roy asked. “Dick, come on. I know Jay told you the truth. I came here to scam five million dollars out of your dad. It was hardly out of the goodness of my heart.”

“You found him,” Dick said. “You made Bruce listen, and he doesn’t listen to anyone. I personally heard you say that you didn’t care about the reward, which, by the way, you refuse to take. I don’t give a damn if your motives weren’t pure at the start.” There was that watery smile again. “You gave me my brother back. That more than makes up for it.”

Roy shoved his hands into his pockets. He needed out of this house, but his car was still stranded at the motel. Not to mention Lian would probably never leave now that she knew there was a cat as well as the two dogs. “Yeah, well, I guess we can agree to disagree on that.”

“Jesus Christ, Roy,” Dick said. “You made a mistake. Are you going to beat yourself up about it forever?”

Roy raised an eyebrow. “We still talking about the reward?”

Dick tilted his head, an acknowledgment that the subject had changed. “You were a kid. A kid who was supposed to have someone looking out for you.” He paused. “Who was supposed to have friends looking out for you.”

“Oh, no, that won’t fly,” Roy said. “If it wasn’t my fault, it definitely wasn’t yours.”

“Yeah, well...we all have things we regret. I wish I’d been a better friend to you,” Dick said. Roy opened his mouth and Dick held up a hand to forestall him. “Shut up. I can still wish it. Jason wishes he’d listened to Bruce. Bruce wishes...oh, a lot of things. I bet even Ollie has regrets.”

Roy looked away.

“The point is, do you want to wallow in it forever?” Dick went on. “Or do you want to live your freaking life, and accept that maybe, just maybe, you’re allowed to forgive yourself? Because you’re the only one who hasn’t.”

Roy chewed the inside of his cheek. “...Yeah, maybe. Whatever,” he said finally.

“Ugh. Good enough, I guess,” Dick said, giving him another punch—a much softer one this time. A knowing smile spread over his face. “On another note...what’s the deal with you and my brother? Because he won’t tell me.”

Roy rolled his eyes. “God, I forgot how annoying you were.”

“You love me.”

“I’m going to go find my kid.”

“She loves me too.”

“That’s just because you have dogs.”

“I’ll take it.”

*

It seemed like they were going to be stuck here a while. At least Jay’s siblings were being really nice to Lian. Cassandra had taken her out into the backyard and was trying to teach her how to do a headstand, and Tim kept promising to show her their pet cow. Roy wasn’t totally sure if that was a joke or not—Tim had a deadpan sense of humor that he was still learning how to read—but he didn’t have the heart to break it up and call a cab when his kid was finally having fun for the first time in over a week.

Somehow he found his way to the library, which wasn’t quite Beauty and the Beast-style opulent, but still made Roy let out a low, impressed whistle when he saw it. And unlike the dusty old library Ollie had inherited from his father, this room looked like people occasionally sat in it, took the books off the shelves, and read them. Roy stood on the plush Turkish rug in the center of the room, breathing in the smell of old books, and remembered the tattered paperbacks stacked along the walls in Jay’s apartment in California.

This was where Jay belonged. This library, this house. He could be happy here.

“There you are,” said a familiar voice behind Roy. Speak of the devil.

Roy turned around. “Hey,” he said, trying to keep his tone light. “Think there’s enough reading material for you here?”

Jay shrugged a shoulder. He looked good in a way Roy hadn’t had the capacity to process back at the motel, in his new, subtly expensive clothing, a healthier glow to his cheeks. He looked too good, really. Roy had never been built to withstand temptation, and after the past few days he was just about at his breaking point.

“Eh, for a week or two.” And then, sure enough, Jay held something out. “Here, this is from...well, Bruce, really. Take it.”

Roy barely glanced at the check. “Jay, no. I already told the lawyers—”

“Look at it first, would you?”

Rolling his eyes, Roy took the check. Yep. Five million dollars from Bruce Wayne. He prepared to rip it in half—

—and saw who it was made out to. Lian Harper.

“Call it a trust fund,” Jay said. “A scholarship, whatever. But you can’t rip it up, because it’s not yours. And are you really going to refuse it on her behalf?”

Roy swallowed. “I can’t accept this.”

Jay’s eyes met his, so blue against those dark lashes. “You have to.”

Roy stared at the check for a long time. Jay was right. He could have refused the money for himself, even if it was for Lian’s benefit, too. But he couldn’t refuse a check made out in her name. Not when it had been handed to him by the man who’d saved her life.

“Thank you,” he said finally. His voice came out a little rough. “I can’t...I don’t know how to repay this.”

“I’m the one in debt,” Jay said.

Roy put the check in his wallet and put his wallet back in his pocket, then took a deep breath and nodded. He couldn’t be in this room anymore, alone with Jay, not when he was feeling this raw. Not when Jay was looking at him like that.

“I should find Lian, see about getting back to my car,” he said. “We’ve still got a cross-country drive ahead of us.”

“Yeah,” Jay said. And then, just as Roy reached the doorway: “You know, I remember you too.”

Roy knew he shouldn’t stop. He couldn’t help himself. “What?”

“It’s mostly back. My memory,” Jay said. “I mean, there are gaps, but the doctors say that’s normal. But I remember my parents. I remember Bruce adopting me. And I remember you coming over to hang out with Dick back in high school.” The corner of his mouth turned up. “You were right. I did tag along after you guys. Trying to get you to pay attention to me.”

“Yeah, well, you hero-worshipped Dick. It was cute,” Roy said, trying to hide his surprise. Of all the things he’d expected Jay to remember, he’d somehow never considered himself to potentially be one of them.

But Jay gave him a look like he was stupid. “I was trying to get you to pay attention to me. Not Dick.”

Roy blinked. “...Oh.” That was...also really damn cute, but Roy wasn’t sure what else it was. So Jay had had a crush on him when he was in middle school. That was a long time ago. It didn’t mean anything.

But then why would Jay have brought it up?

Jay took a step toward him, tilting his head like he was trying to figure something out. “Roy...why are you still in Gotham?”

“Uh...because my car’s back at the motel?” Roy said.

“It’s been nearly a week.” Jay moved even closer. Roy resisted the urge to step back. “You could have headed back west days ago. They have aquariums in California.”

Roy shrugged, looking away. “Vacation?”

Jay’s sardonic smile, the one Roy would miss so much, stole his focus back. “No one vacations in Gotham.”

“Yeah, well…”

“Roy.” Jay closed the distance between them. They were close enough to touch, close enough that Roy had to lift his chin to meet Jay’s eyes. “Why didn’t you go home?”

There was a reason. There had to be a good reason, or at least a good lie. But when Roy opened his mouth, all that came out was: “I couldn’t.”

This close, Roy could see all the different shades in Jay’s eyes, the flecks of gray and green swimming in a sea of Pacific blue. It made him oddly homesick. Not for Coast City, or Star, or any other place that was real, but three days of a miserable road trip, of all things; three days made less miserable by sharing them with someone as lost as he was. A liminal space they never could have kept.

Maybe Jay was feeling the same way, because he said, “You remember that last morning?”

It wasn’t the most specific reference, but Roy knew what he meant, because part of him hadn’t stopped thinking about it since it happened. The conspiratorial hush of trying not to wake Lian; the soft way Jay had looked at him after Roy had helped him keep the nightmares at bay. How Jay had turned his face into Roy’s palm. “Yeah.”

“I kind of thought you were going to kiss me,” Jay said.

Roy swallowed. “I was,” he admitted.

There was a challenge in those unforgettable eyes now, and Roy had never been able to back down from a challenge. He’d told Jay that. “You should have,” Jay said.

So Roy did.

He kissed Jay, because this was probably goodbye, and because Roy had been stealing what affection he could get since he was a child. He was used to being held, and then being let go.

But Jay’s hands sank into his hair like they wanted to stay there, and the heat of his mouth when he kissed Roy back burned like a brand. He pulled Roy back into the room, pulled him in close until he was hanging on that wiry strength, the strength that had kept Jay alive when the whole world thought he was dead.

Back in Coast City, Jay No Last Name had kissed Roy for a con that had gotten out of hand almost as soon as they’d conceived of it, and that careless kiss alone had nearly undone him. But there was nothing careless about this kiss. Jason Todd kissed like he meant it, like he’d been holding back. Like he’d been thinking about it as long as Roy had. A few days or forever, Roy didn’t know anymore.

Even when Jay broke the kiss to pant against Roy’s mouth, he didn’t let him go. “Stay,” he said, and no one had ever said that word to Roy before and meant it. “Or let me come with you.”

“You just got here,” Roy pointed out, but he didn’t pull away.

“I’m getting my GED,” Jay said. “I’m going to go to college. I could go anywhere. No university on the planet is turning down Bruce Wayne’s famous dead kid.” He smiled when he got the laugh he’d been angling for out of Roy. “Bruce isn’t going anywhere. You’re the one who runs.”

“I...I don’t…” Roy tried, but Jay had him dead to rights. So he tried something else. “I’m an ex-junkie single dad and professional narc. You’re...whatever the boy version of an heiress is.”

“Heir?”

“It doesn’t have the same connotations. You know what I mean.” Roy pulled back enough to look at him. “What are you doing, Jay?”

Jay squinted at him. “Jesus, you really are a fucking drama queen, aren’t you?” he asked. “Okay, so you used to do drugs, so you work for the DEA. Oh no, you have a wonderful daughter who adores you, what a monster.” He rolled his eyes. “I have brain damage and PTSD, I don’t know why you’re acting like I’m such a catch outside of my dad’s bank account.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Life isn’t fucking fair. Get over it,” Jay scoffed, but somewhere in there Roy had learned to see the vulnerability behind his irritated facade. “If you don’t want me, just say so.”

Roy had to kiss him again at that, pulling him back in with hands that had never managed to let go in the first place. “I do,” he said against the softness of Jay’s mouth. “I do. I just…”

“If you run, I’ll chase you,” Jay said. “You might as well stay.”

Roy closed his eyes, then pushed away. He couldn’t think when Jay was touching him, when he was pulling Jay’s scent into his lungs with every breath. But he didn’t flee the library either, just walked over to the window and stared out, thinking. He could feel Jay watching him, the warmth of Jay’s gaze on his neck.

Maybe Jay had liked him as a kid and maybe he’d liked him when they’d met again two weeks ago, but it was still just two weeks ago. This was probably all misplaced gratitude and a childhood crush, and those would both dissipate soon enough. It was insane to make a major life decision over it.

But he hadn’t been planning to stay in Coast City anyway. He’d needed a change—he and Lian both did. And god, he wanted this so badly.

After all, his last Hail Mary pass had worked, despite everything—despite him. Maybe this one could, too.

He turned back around. “You’re not just going to get your GED overnight,” he pointed out. “You only got halfway through your sophomore year. Do you know any math?”

“Hey, fuck you,” Jay said, but without any heat.

“I’m just saying. You talk like you can go wherever, whenever, but it’s gonna be a while before you can apply to colleges. Maybe a couple of years.”

“Okay, yeah, probably,” Jay admitted. “Where are you going with this?”

Roy bit the inside of his lip. “It’s almost September,” he said. “How are the kindergartens in Gotham?”

And when Jay gave him one of his rare smiles, Roy knew some rewards made five million dollars seem like nothing at all.

*

Three Months Later

It was getting chilly as the days shortened, but Roy kept the windows open as he drove. The familiar scents rushed past his face and filled the car: pine, rain, a hint of salt from the ocean just out of sight.

It smelled like home. Somehow it made him feel calmer and more nervous at the same time.

In the passenger seat, Jay couldn’t stop craning his neck to take it all in: the skyline of Star City proper below them, the dripping pine forests, the distant mountains. Even with his memories restored, Jay had never really been anywhere but Coast City and Gotham. Alfred was teaching him to drive, but when they went outside the city Roy always took the wheel so that Jay could concentrate on seeing everything he could. They were back on the West Coast, but this landscape was nothing like Coast City, and Jay was clearly fascinated. It was as adorable now as it had been when they’d first set out for Gotham.

Besides, Roy knew the way.

Ollie had a house uptown and a penthouse apartment downtown, but he’d always spent the most time in his hunting lodge on a hill overlooking the city. Roy had loved it too: the proximity to the woods; the big stone fireplace in the den; the office that Ollie had soundproofed and turned into a room for Roy to practice drums in when he was fifteen and convinced he was destined to be a rock star. More than any other place he’d lived, even the cozy two-bedroom apartment he now shared with Lian—and Jay, most nights—the lodge had been home.

It had been Dick’s idea to visit, of course. Good or bad, he’d said, seeing Ollie again would give Roy closure. Roy couldn’t deny that it would be nice to know Ollie’s most recent mental image of him was no longer a too-skinny kid in tears, his hands shaking so bad he could barely hold the needle. Still, it had taken him weeks to agree, and another couple weeks after that before he worked up the nerve to buy a planet ticket. He’d left Lian at Wayne Manor for the weekend, where she was surely being spoiled rotten by Alfred. Just in case things went badly.

Jay had insisted on coming along. Roy didn’t tell him how grateful he was, because Jay rolled his eyes and walked out of the room whenever he tried. But now, when he took his hand off the gear shift and reached for Jay’s hand, Jay let him.

Too soon, they pulled up in front of the lodge. Jay made a face at it.

“Be honest,” he said. “How many dead animal heads are mounted on the walls in there?”

“Zero,” Roy said, getting out of the rental car. “Ollie hunts—so did I, with him and before him—but not very often, and only for game, not trophies.”

“Millionaire can’t buy his own venison?” Jay asked, raising an eyebrow.

“What, factory farming is more ethical?”

Jay shrugged, letting the argument go, and shut his door. Roy turned and looked at the house.

And looked.

And looked.

“You’re never gonna know if you don’t ring the doorbell,” Jay finally said.

“I know,” Roy said. He still didn’t move.

“If he’s an asshole to you, I will absolutely kick him in the balls, I don’t care how old he is. You know that,” Jay said. “Or if you want to get back in the car, we can get back in the car. It’s up to you.”

Roy took a deep breath. “No, we’re here,” he said. “I’m gonna do it.”

Jay nodded and leaned against the hood of the car. Roy walked up to the front door and closed his eyes, just for a minute.

Then he wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans and rang the bell.

He heard the familiar rumble of heavy footsteps almost immediately and his heart leapt into his throat. Half a minute later, the door swung open.

And there was Ollie—his blond hair faded a couple shades closer to gray, his face more deeply lined than before, but Ollie. He was wearing one of his beloved fisherman’s sweaters and holding a cup of coffee—or at least he had been, because when he saw Roy, the mug slipped from his fingers to shatter against the stone doorstep.

“Roy?” he said.

Roy tried a smile and prepared himself to be thrown off the property. “Hey, Ollie.”

“Roy!” Ollie shouted, and hurled himself forward to fling his arms around Roy. “Ow! Shit!”

“What?” Roy asked, still not totally sure what was going on.

“Stepped on the mug. Don’t care.” Ollie was holding a little too tight and his mustache was tickling Roy’s neck and he smelled like coffee and cayenne pepper just like he always had, and oh no, oh shit, Roy was crying. He clung to Ollie like he was ten years old again and wept into the shoulder of that stupid sweater.

“Ah, Jesus, kid, I missed you,” Ollie said, and from the quaver in his voice, Roy knew he was crying, too. “Dinah!” he bellowed back towards the house, so close to Roy’s ear it hurt, and that made Roy cry harder because Ollie hadn’t changed a bit. “Dinah, get out here! Wait, put shoes on first!”

Roy pulled back far enough to swipe at his face, as if it would do any good. “I didn’t know if you’d want to see me,” he said.

Ollie stared at him. “What are you, nuts? Of course I wanted to see you! You’re my son.”

Shit. Shit, Roy needed to stop crying. “But you never...you never called, or looked for me…”

Ollie let go of him, took a step back, and winced. “Fucking mug. I...ah, Christ, Roy, I didn’t think you wanted to see me. I fucked up pretty bad that last time.”

“You had a right to be mad…” Roy started, but Ollie held up a hand.

“No. I was supposed to protect you, and I was too busy with my own bullshit to pay attention. I let you down, and…” He shook his head. “I didn’t try to find you because I was too ashamed of myself to face you. So I guess I let you down twice.”

“No,” Roy tried, but Ollie shook his head again.

“I did, but you’re here, and jeez, let me look at you.” He grabbed Roy’s arms, holding him at arm’s length. “You look great, kid. Holy crap, you’re taller than me now.”

Another familiar voice drifted out of the doorway. “Oliver, what on earth are you yelling ab—Roy!”

Roy had just a second to see Dinah running towards him before she was hugging him, less burly than Ollie but just as painfully tight. He squeezed his eyes shut against more tears. “Hey, mama bird.”

“Roy, oh my god, sweetie, what are you doing here? Look at you!” she said, pulling back. “We saw you on TV with the Wayne boy, what the hell is going on? Who was that little girl?” She glanced down. “And why is Oliver bleeding?”

“Oh, uh, yeah, I, um...I have a daughter,” Roy said, putting his shoulders back. “Lian. She’s five, and she’s amazing. She’s back in Gotham right now. But, uh…” He took a step back and gestured to Jay, still leaning against the hood of the car. At his gesture, Jay stood up and walked over. “This is Jason.”

When Jay reached them, he paused and gave Roy a look that Roy recognized as uncertain, even if most people wouldn’t. Roy took his hand, twining their fingers together, and waited.

Dinah smiled, but Ollie squinted at Jay appraisingly. “This isn’t the one you used to run around with, right?” he asked Roy. “This is the dead one.”

“Oliver!” Dinah said, elbowing him.

Jay lifted his chin. “Yeah, I’m the dead one,” he said. “Roy dug me up and brought me home. You the guy who kicked Roy out of the house when he was still underage?”

Ollie squinted at him harder. “You got a mouth on you, kid,” he said. “You talk back to Bruce like that?”

“Yeah.”

“Good,” Ollie said unexpectedly, and Jay blinked. “Old Doom and Gloom needs a good verbal kick in the pants every now and then. And so do I.” He gestured to the door. “It sounds like you boys have quite a story. Why don’t we go inside before I get tetanus and you can tell us all about it? And I better see some pictures of my granddaughter, Roy.”

He turned and led the way back inside, leaning on Dinah so he didn’t get too much blood on the floor. Roy looked at Jay, trying to swallow back the lump in his throat. His granddaughter.

“Are you going to keep telling people I dug you out of your grave?” he asked when he could speak.

“Yes, because it’s hilarious,” Jay retorted. “I told you it would be fine.”

“Yeah,” Roy said, and squeezed Jay’s hand. “Thanks for bringing me home.”

“Ugh, don’t be cheesy,” Jay said, as if he wasn’t smiling. “But likewise.”

Roy glanced at the towering firs around them, the blue-green peaks of the mountains in the distance, the summits just barely dusted with white for fall. Home was here, in the pine-crisp air filling his lungs and the family waiting for him inside the lodge—the family that had always been waiting for him, if only he’d been brave enough to ask.

But home was also the scorching heat and bitter cold of the desert, the red and ochre rocks and the winding canyons and a bag of corn pollen in his car. Home was his daughter’s laughter; her tiny clothes folded in brand-new dresser drawers and little shoes lined up in rows on a closet floor; pencil marks on the freshly painted wall of their apartment to mark her height.

And home was Jay’s impatient scowls and changeable eyes, the furrow in his brow when he was curled around a book. The softness of his face in the morning light, when it was just the two of them, before they let the world in, and anyone Jay could look at like that was someone Roy thought he might be okay with being.

Roy might have helped Jay find his way back to himself, but it went both ways.

But Jay would just roll his eyes if Roy said any of that, so he just smiled, and squeezed Jason’s hand again, and knew that would say enough of what he felt. At least for now.

And they walked into the house together.