Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

After Jason’s ill-fated trip home to Gotham goes sideways—still reeling from the pit and the discovery that his death didn’t change a damn thing, hadn’t mattered at all— he finds himself scampering back to Talia so fast his head is proverbially spinning. It’s not, he supposes, a shining endorsement of his self-preservation skills.

There’s absolutely no reason to trust Talia, no real reason for her to help him, and every reason for her to use him for her own gain. But he has to make Batman see, one way or another. And he can’t help but fixate on the thought that Talia helped him once—even if he’s too terrified to ask her how, just what, exactly, she did.  

She says she’ll help him again, so back Jason goes—the phantom weight of an untripped detonator heavy in his hand—this time to a League training base loyal to the demon’s daughter. Tadrib Almawt is carefully hidden on a remote island in the Persian Gulf. Among other things, Jason notes, it’s well-equipped for training League assassins while keeping them isolated and corralled.  

Training with the League, where there’s no option to tap out of a fight, means that every day, either he gets better or he gets dead. Rage, desperation, and a constant flood of green see him through the first month. Heartsick and shell-shocked, he just leans into it. He didn’t stay dead the first time; Jason sure as fuck isn’t going to take his chances with a second round. 

And apparently, all those catatonic hours of League training left a hell of an imprint because once his shock wears off, it isn’t as hard as he thought.

If he lets it, Jason’s body moves differently now. It isn’t just his still-growing height and reach or the accompanying strength. Without any conscious thought on his part, if he just lets go, when he fights, it’s all swift, sharp movements that are viciously efficient and, if he lets them be, lethal. 

If he allows himself to think about it, thinks back to Br— before. Thinks back to dark stone walls, training mats, and gentle hands, he can pull muscle memory to the forefront and move like—move differently. He can still flip and dodge and roll with an agility that leaves a sick feeling of loss shivering through his gut.

But now, when instinct takes over, or he’s scared and desperate, he moves like an assassin. And, apparently, he’s fucking good at being an assassin. 

Somewhere along the way, Jason realizes there are reasons to be grateful for his time at the compound. Talia’s painfully enforced meditation program starts to quiet his mind, and exhaustion keeps the green pummeled into submission the rest of the time. The sun and heat are constant, and they steadily melt away the echoing terror of the pit and the cold creep of the grave that seems to lurk deep in his bones. 

Finally, after three months of training, Talia judges he’s proficient enough to be released into the world under her sponsorship. She keeps her promise and arranges for the training he’d asked for, the training he needs.

The teacher she’s sending him to is based somewhere in Romania. Jason will be making the first leg of the journey via a resupply plane, setting out from Tadrib Amawt and landing in Europe. He has the address of a safe house in Bucharest, and Talia promised that instructions for the next steps are waiting there. 

The morning of his flight, when he makes it to the airstrip outside the base just before dawn, Talia’s waiting in the gloomy half-light. She looks him up and down dispassionately as he jogs forward. 

“It is still your wish to pursue this training, Jason?” Talia asks. Her lips compress down into a tight line as she waits for his answer.

“Yeah,” he bites out, annoyed that she might decide to throw up roadblocks now. “I need it,” he says shortly, leaving the ‘if I want to take out the Bat’ part unsaid. 

And he does. Because when he’d had the opportunity before, he didn’t - he couldn’t—he needs to be able to follow through. Talia’s eyes narrow slightly, and Jason lifts his chin, squaring his shoulders in response. 

“I said I would help you, Jason, and I will.” Talia pauses, glancing to the side. Her gaze grows distant. A series of microexpressions flicker across her face, too quick for Jason to parse. Her face is smooth and emotionless again when she looks back at him a moment later, and his eyes snap involuntarily back to hers as his spine straightens a little further.

“Learn well, Jason,” she says. With a last inscrutable look, Talia slips away.

Jason gets on the plane.

Egon isn’t the first teacher Talia sends him to, but three months into his tour of trainers, he is the start of something new. 

At first, Jason isn’t sure what more Egon is supposed to teach him. Jason knows he still fights with the ghost of the Bat on his shoulder, but after his time with the League, he can move like a shadow now. 

Egon is an assassin, but it’s quickly apparent he operates differently than the League. He teaches Jason a hand-to-hand combat style that combines mixed martial arts with unvarnished street fighting. It’s unpredictable, opportunistic, and absolutely brutal. 

It’s so reminiscent of the Alley, of home— before the move to goddamn Bristol that eventually led to everything going to shit—that Jason spends the first two weeks sick to his stomach and barely able to eat. The fighting though, after he concentrates on that, the fighting is something he can do. Jason recognizes the lack of efficiency and subtlety in Egon’s style, but there’s something freeing to being able to just plow through someone.

Holding a smile while beating the shit out of his opponent is something Jason learned a long time ago. If his smile is more feral and not all bright now, he thinks he’s okay with that.

That’s the good part of the training. Then there’s Egon himself. He makes Jason’s skin crawl when they first meet, setting off all of his internal alarms with shrieking intensity. 

A month later, when Jason finds the kids being trafficked, it all makes sense. The next part is almost too easy. 

After, while he’s watching the warehouse burn, Egon’s body turning to ash inside, he swears he can hear Batman’s voice over his shoulder, punctuated by the fire’s crackle and pop. 

We don’t kill, Jason. We can’t be judge, jury, and executioner.

Well, Jason thinks - I do, now. I can be, when it’s needed. 

He’s pretty sure he’s okay with that. He’s pretty sure it feels right.

Winter gives way to spring, and Jason changes teachers along with it. He’s in Dublin now, learning the ins and outs of network penetration from a hacker whose biggest crimes seem to be poor posture and a willingness to work for the League of Assassins. 

When March bleeds into April, he looks away from the calendar and tells himself not to think about it. Jason doesn’t know how he spent his first death anniversary. Other than catatonic, obviously. The second time around, he’s firmly back in the land of living.

By the time mid-April rolls around, the panic attacks are increasingly unpredictable and escalating in intensity. 

The morning starts out like any other. He’s making an omelet for breakfast, when he happens to glance at the expiration date on his milk, worried that it’s gone off. One minute, he’s there squeezing the carton tightly, heartbeat rushing in his ears, and the next, his awareness just … fades away. 

Jason comes back to awareness to sunlight shining brightly across his face. He’s lying on the floor of his safe house. The apartment is in shambles around him, piles of broken furniture and crumbled drywall litter the floor. There’s blood and glass everywhere. 

He’s covered in bruises and lacerations, and his limbs are stiff and painful. There’s a slowly seeping wound on his calf that looks like it's from a gunshot graze. Jason’s head pulses like it’s been crushed in a fucking vice, and something dark and painful claws at his throat. 

Sounds ebb in and out, sharp and muddy in alternating waves. From somewhere far off, he thinks he can hear someone screaming. They sound like they’re in pain, he thinks. They sound like they need help.

He doesn’t have any to give, Jason realizes with regret. He can’t even help himself.

He lays on the floor for a long time and just breathes. Green pulses violently at the edge of his vision and then slowly starts to fade, growing fainter and fainter with every slow exhale.

Finally, he sits up and takes stock.

The worst of the wounds need a few sutures. Jason works on relaxing his shaking hands as he ties the knots, the slight tugging pain easing more and more with each stitch he throws. The more shallow wounds are easily closed with butterfly bandages. He swallows a handful of painkillers and a couple of antibiotics while he ices the bruising to his face.

Glancing around his apartment, the calendar on his refrigerator stares back at him mockingly. Alright, he thinks. Time to take the fucking hint.

His phone buzzes in his pocket while he’s bleaching down the apartment. Peeling off the disposable gloves he’d dug out from under the sink, Jason pulls it out to see Talia’s number. He declines the call.

The phone buzzes again.

Jason shoves the phone deep in his pocket and gathers his gear. The apartment door clicks quietly closed behind him as he leaves.

After sneaking onto the airfield at Dublin International, he stops at the first plane he finds with a heated cargo hold and lax security. It’s headed to Iceland. It’s child’s play for Jason to slip aboard undetected and hunker down for the flight. 

Five hours later, he’s back on the ground, making his way through Reykjavík. He hits up a sporting goods store, throws together a pack, grabs a trail map, and starts walking. 

Jason spends six days out in the wilderness. During the day, he hikes until his muscles shiver with exhaustion. At night, he sits outside his tent, an insulated blanket pulled tightly around his shoulders, and stares up into the velvet black of the night sky. He watches as the electric green trails of the aurora borealis twist lazily through the darkness. The colors dance and shimmer eerily, like the bubbling ripples of the pit’s waters. 

He thinks about what it used to feel like when he had a home, when he felt safe. He thinks about all the things he’ll never have again.

He sits in silence, watching as the iridescent glow lights up the dark, as the tear tracks freeze on his cheeks. 

On the seventh day, Jason wakes up and feels like he can breathe again. It’s April 28th. I’m still here, he thinks. It’s not much, but it’s all he has. 

I’m still here.

He picks himself up and starts the trek back to Reykjavík. 

He’s still a couple of hours out from the city when he crosses back into a service area. His phone immediately starts pinging with missed notifications and alerts. The most recent message is from Talia, sent just a few hours prior. It’s a set of flight details from Reykjavík to Doha, already booked under his current alias. There’s a brief message.

I’ll meet you on arrival. Don’t be late.

He leaves her on read, but he gets on the plane.

After a short stay in Doha, Talia sends him to train with a close combat expert in Israel. Jason spends three weeks there before circumstances force him to call Talia for another relocation. She’s short with him over the phone, but he thinks he hears amusement underneath her sharp words. 

After another brief stopover in Doha, she sends him to Manila to study with a triad leader there who’s also a Kali master. The escrima sticks littered around his dojo send shivers of something unpleasant twisting through Jason’s gut. He tries not to look at them and focuses on knives instead.

May gives way to June, and with it comes the Philippines’ rainy season. The first storm hits late in the evening, halfway through his commute home for the day. Thunder rumbles in the distance, then rain starts to fall, floating and light, like petals on the wind. Then harder and faster.

By the time Jason makes it back to his safe house, he’s soaked through and shaking.

A hot shower and some dry clothes later, he’s at least warm now. But the shaking hasn’t stopped. His hands ache, and his fingertips feel like they’re on fire. Thunder growls through the apartment. Long seconds later, light illuminates the dark room around him.

Jason can’t move, he can’t breathe, he can’t—

Not enough air in a cold dark space. He can’t get out, can’t get out, can’t breathe. 

Alone, all alone. Why is he alone? His hands desperately beat against something hard and unyielding, a crack, crack, crack, pressure, shifting and pressing, and pain - so much pain - wet, gritty dirt in his eyes, his nose, his mouth.

Jason gasps, stumbling and tripping over a chair. His hip and shoulder hit hard against the floor.

Rain, thunder, lightning flickering all around. Gasping for breath, crying, calling for help, screaming.

No one, no one comes.

Jason shakes. He’s lying twisted on the floor, his shoulder wedged between the kitchen table and the wall. His phone is in his hand, an outgoing call trying to connect. He doesn’t even remember picking it up.

The ringing gives way to an expectant silence as the connection clicks into place. 

“—Jason?”

“Talia,” His voice cracks on her name as he shifts uncomfortably. He clears his throat and tries again. “Talia.”

“Do you require extraction?” The question comes across curtly, punctuated by a soft rustling that’s just audible across the connection.

“No, no, I - I …”

The rustling stops. 

“Jason?”

“Tal—”

Jason’s voice fails him.

A cold, dark space - dirt, dirt, so much dirt. No one comes.

“Jason, الموقف.” It cracks through his head, the same tone he’d heard on countless nights. 

Robin, report. 

“Now, Jason.”

“I, I - the rain. It was raining. I - what, I dug, I - I - Talia. Talia. How - how did I get here, what happened?” It’s ripped out of him, a steady stream of words, raw and painful.

He looks at the hand not holding his phone. There’s a phantom feeling of cold, hard metal squeezed tightly against his palm, hard enough to bruise. He looks away.

There’s a pause, and when Talia speaks again, her words are unusually clipped. “This is not a conversation to be had over the phone. Are you safe?”

Jason thinks it over. His body is quieter now, Talia’s familiar voice settling something inside of him.

“Yes. But I - I want,” and suddenly, it’s clear. “I need answers, Talia. Whatever you know.”

“The townhouse in Doha, the codes are the same,” Jason wonders if he’s imagining the pleased note to her voice now. “I’ll meet you there in two days.”

The call disconnects. 

Thirty-six hours later, Jason is standing in the shadows of the townhouse’s garden. Golden light glows warmly from the kitchen windows, spilling out onto the terrace. Jason shifts uncomfortably, sliding further behind the tree he’s been using for cover. The scent of jasmine is thick in his nose.

The back door opens and Talia steps out onto the flagstones, a tea set on a tray in her hands. She glides over to the table, setting the tray down carefully before sliding into a chair.

She looks up, her eyes finding Jason unerringly in the darkness.

“Were you planning to stand out there all night, or would you like to join me for tea?” Talia asks.

Jason huffs, stalking across the garden and up onto the terrace to slide into the seat across from her.

“Alright, Jason,” she says steadily. “Tell me what you know.”

It’s an old thought exercise repeated over and over while he was training at Tadrib Almawt. 

Tell me what you know. Tell me what you need. Tell me where you go from here.

Talia’s using it to ground him, Jason realizes. He finds he doesn’t really mind.

“I died,” he starts out haltingly. “I came back. You put me in the pit.” 

“Alright,” Talia says again. “Now, tell me what you need.”

That part is easy.

“The truth,” Jason says sharply. “It doesn’t - I don’t - I’m missing time. I don’t understand—” he hesitates.

Talia waits patiently, sipping gingerly from her teacup. 

“What - what came between?” He asks finally.

Talia regards him seriously for a long moment before beginning to speak. “League agents found you in Gotham,” she starts, her voice dispassionate. “You were living on the street, catatonic and unaware. You’d been like that for months. We brought you to a safe place and helped you recover. I found out later that you’d spent time at Mercy Hospital before ending up on the street. Before that, well.” Talia stops, her green eyes assessing.

Jason looks down, clenching his hands into fists, fighting against the ache that radiates down his fingers. “I remember,” he says shortly. “The grave. I don’t want to talk about that.”

After a moment, he asks haltingly, “So you don’t know how I…?”

“No,” Talia says. “It remains a mystery.” She pauses before continuing carefully, “When you called, I thought perhaps you were remembering something.”

He swallows roughly around his rapidly tightening throat and shakes his head. “No, no, I remember the - the bomb, and then the - the,” he grinds to a stop.

“It’s all right, Jason,” Talia dismisses. 

Jason shakes his head again, avoiding Talia’s gaze. The question comes out in a raspy hush, “Why - when I was in - didn’t he know? Why didn’t he find me?”

“I’m not the person that can answer that for you,” Talia responds evenly.

“And you never tried to contact him? Why didn’t you send me back?” 

Talia considers him for a moment, her mouth forming into the slightest grimace.

“That,” she says at last, “is complicated. My father learned of your existence at the same time as I did. He was very determined in our approach to your situation. It took some time before I was able to extract you.”

“After you put me in the pit,” Jason says tightly. The confusion, the agony, of waking up in its churning waters washes over him briefly.

“Yes, a Lazarus pit.” Talia looks away. Her fingertip traces the rim of her teacup in a slow circle. “You were not regaining your consciousness quickly enough. Now—” Talia lifts her hand, waving it gracefully in Jason’s direction. 

“Well, thanks for that, I guess,” Jason mutters, not feeling very thankful at all.

“I had a responsibility to you, Jason,” Talia says severely. “And since returning to yourself, you’ve made it very clear that you do not wish for a happy reunion with your father.”

The word echoes through his head, drowned about by the roar of rushing blood in an escalating beat.

Father.

A real father wouldn’t abandon his son, Jason thinks viciously, brushing angrily at a tickle of wetness on his cheek. A real father wouldn’t leave his son’s murderer loose in the world and watch as he killed again and again and again.

Out loud, he says, “It’s not like he would have wanted me back anyway. He’d already benched me. I was too angry to be Robin, too emotionally unstable.” Jason’s head throbs. The tears won’t stop falling, hot and fast. “And in Ethiopia, all I did was prove just how much of a failure I really was.”

Talia frowns, tilting her head slightly.

Jason hears his own words from far away, like listening to someone shout from underwater. “I couldn’t defuse the—I couldn’t get out—I couldn’t save—” He tries to swallow, but his throat is tight and his chest - his chest hurts.

The sudden clink of Talia’s teacup hitting her saucer is startling in the silence. 

“You were thrown into a war without adequate preparation, without the necessary tools to protect yourself,” Talia says, lips curling slightly. “It was hardly your fault.” 

“No,” Jason protests harshly, unsure what he’s even trying to say at first. But he thinks of blond hair and cigarette smoke, and he remembers. Jason closes his eyes, and, for a moment, he feels very far away.

“It was my fault,” he murmurs. “My stupid mistake. I went with her. He told me to wait, but I believed her when she said the Joker was gone.”

When he opens his eyes, Talia is staring at him, her eyes hard. “Who, Jason?” She demands. “Who did you go with?”

The words sit in his throat, burning like bile, putrid and bubbling. 

“Sheila,” he gasps at last. “Haywood. My biological mother. We found her in Ethiopia. I told her I was Robin, and she sold me out to the Joker to save her own skin. She stood there the whole time, smoking a cigarette, watching.”

Shouldn’t it feel better now, Jason wonders. The words, poisonous and festering, are free now. But he doesn’t feel anything like the aching relief of pressure that comes after lancing pus from a wound. He doesn’t feel better at all.

Jason glances briefly at Talia again, wishing he’d never started this conversation, that he could curl up somewhere and hide. The feeling of being small and ashamed is overwhelming.

“Sheila Haywood,” Talia repeats sharply. “Your biological mother, she gave you to the Joker.”

Jason nods mechanically. He feels like he’s floating, untethered in space. “He killed her too, in the end.” 

Across from him, Talia relaxes minutely and shifts in her chair, her expression unreadable.

“Did you know they buried me next to her?” Jason asks abruptly. “Saw it during my field trip to Gotham last fall. Wrote ‘Beloved Mother’ on the tombstone and everything.” 

Talia raises an eyebrow at the abrupt segue. 

Jason scuffs in disgust. “He couldn’t even be bothered to figure out what really happened. That’s how much he cared.”

Jason knows it’s true before he says it. He’s carried it inside himself like rot since a hotel room in Paris and an alleyway in Gotham. “The - he took everything, Talia. I lost everything. It’s like there’s nothing left of me.” 

Hearing the words out loud solidifies it. Like a bone bruise, calcified into permanence. The anger that ripples through him is hot and familiar. Green pulses in front of his eyes briefly, burning away the tears, the fear, the pain. The rage feels good, like armor against the world, hard and unyielding.

Talia’s cool voice interrupts his thoughts. “You lost much. But was all of it worth keeping? Losing something doesn’t mean you can’t build something new. Something better.”

Talia wraps her knuckles sharply against the tabletop, leaning forward slightly to hold Jason’s gaze. There’s a Cheshire grin hiding in the faint tilt of her lips, her words come out precise and exact, like chess pieces moved across a board.  “This time around, Jason, you will know everything you need, have everything you need, to keep yourself safe.” 

Her voice softens uncharacteristically as she leans back again. “You may have died, Jason, but it was not your fault. You are not a failure.”

Jason swallows thickly and looks away. He thinks about a cold black sky and the twisting green tails of the aurora borealis. 

I’m still here, he thinks.

Chapter Text

Jason finds himself hauled back to Tadrib Almawt for the first time since leaving after he botches an attempt to take out the countersurveillance expert he’s been learning from. 

The asshole turns out to be a blackmailing pedophile, and while he’s not much of a fighter, he’s more paranoid than Jason accounted for. He gets in a lucky hit with a baseball bat to Jason’s head early on and nearly knocks Jason out. From there, it’s no better than a barroom brawl, crashing into walls and furniture, as Jason fights through his ringing ears and blurry vision. 

The asshole still ends up very, very dead, but Jason has a concussion and a nearly collapsed trachea to show for it. 

He manages to crawl away from the scene to a bolthole he’d set up across the city and then promptly passes the fuck out. When he comes to again, there’s a man in League robes hovering next to him. He’s barking into a phone in Arabic and holding a mask over Jason’s mouth and nose. There’s a portable oxygen tank hissing quietly next to him.

Jason looks down at where his cell phone is still clenched in his fist and thinks, huh. 

The next thing he knows, he’s back at Tadrib Amawt, lying on a cot in the infirmary, the smell of the sea tickling his nose. A sandy breeze blows in the open window and scratches against his skin. Movement at the edge of his vision catches his attention, and he turns his head groggily to the side. 

Talia’s standing over him with folded arms, and her face is pissed. Jason can’t remember a time he’s ever seen her look quite like this. Up until now, she’s tolerated his self-appointed missions, even been darkly amused by them, but this is the first time one has left Jason neck-deep in shit.

Talia’s eyes narrow and her lips press together even tighter, and then she sweeps out of the room.

For two weeks, he’s restricted in his room. Talia’s standing orders, apparently. He’s to spend his time recovering and nothing else. His only visitor is a League physician who keeps track of his blood oxygen levels as the swelling in his neck and throat slowly goes down. The inaction itches at his bones. 

In the absence of anything to keep him occupied, he worries. Worries that Talia intends to retract her offer of help. That he's finally proven just how worthless he is. That he has nowhere else to go.

On the fifteenth day, Talia shows up in his room at dawn.

“Up!” she snaps, shoving a pile of gear into his arms. Then, she drags him to the training grounds and points him toward the obstacle course. 

Two hours and twenty runs through the course later, he’s hunched on his knees in the sand, vomiting up bile. Sweat runs down his face, stinging his eyes. 

Talia looks on impassively, her face smooth and still like carved granite. The sun has risen high enough in the sky now, it’s just visible over the hills behind the compound. On anyone else, Jason might call the halo of light surrounding her angelic.

“Again,” Talia says, her voice unmoved.

Jason staggers to his feet, and starts again. That night, lying alone in his room, dizzy and nauseous from heat exhaustion, every time he closes his eyes, Talia’s glare stares back at him. 

She keeps him at Tadrib Almawt for another week, most of it spent running the obstacle course or sparring in the practice ring. Jason does his best to stay out of Talia’s way, creeping down lesser-used corridors and taking the long way around the compound. 

When Talia finally releases him, instead of sending him out to train with another mercenary, she ships Jason off to Japan for supervised training with a League operative. On the long flight there, tucked uncomfortably into a jump seat in the cargo plane’s hold, it finally occurs to him that while Talia is definitely angry with him, he’s pretty sure there was also concern lurking in her eyes. The thought squirms uncomfortably in his gut.

Jason had thought he was starting to get a handle on learning from assassins and mercenaries, but Japan is an experience. If Jason thought Talia was harsh, Jesus, she has nothing on Lady Shiva. 

Jason isn’t sure if Shiva recognizes him from their brief meeting before he toddled off to die in Ethiopia or if Talia told her who Jason is, but when she goads him during a particularly painful session in hand-to-hand, telling him she expects more from the Dark Knight’s prodigal son, it’s pretty damn clear Shiva knows who she’s dealing with. 

Prodigal son.

The room goes a little too green at that, and when Jason comes to, he’s flat on his back on the wooden floor. There’s a harsh buzzing in both his ears, and he can’t see out of his right eye. His left arm and hand are numb, and his shoulder feels halfway to separated.

A thin line of blood trails from Shiva’s nose, and her eyes are black with rage. A drop of her blood falls and splatters on the floor next to his face.

“Be thankful you have her protection, little lost bird,” she hisses before she’s gone. 

Jason exhales shakily, checking absently for broken bones before hauling himself to his feet. He stands there and breathes for a second, forcing the green away. Then, he makes another go at stumbling through the combination she’d been trying to teach him. His hands shake the entire time.

The next morning, he’s waiting in the dojo for Shiva, well ahead of their lesson time. He bows in apology and then executes the combination flawlessly. Shiva looks at him for a long minute before she speaks, her eyes narrowed.

“The Bat holds something that belongs to me. You’re lucky I enjoy the irony.” 

Then she snaps her figures and points, “Begin.” Jason slides into a ready stance, almost giddy with relief, and tries to put the cryptic remark out of his mind. 

He spends two months in Japan training with Shiva. At some point during his stay, Jason notices the date on his phone and realizes he’s eighteen now. 

Eighteen. 

For a moment, he thinks about what life could have been. A driver’s license, prom, graduation, college. Then he closes his eyes and sees ripples of electric green arcing across an ink-blank canvas.

Jason opens his eyes and goes back to work.

When Talia finally summons him back to Tadrib Almawt, his body aches in ways he didn’t know were possible, but he can move and fight - and kill - in ways he’d never imagined.

Storm clouds out over the sea obscure the horizon when Jason lands back at Tadrib Almawt. The helicopter’s blades whip up a harsh wind, sending a sharp spray of sand against his skin as he jogs away from the landing pad. Talia is nowhere in sight, but Jason can see light glowing from the windows of her rooms in the compound. 

Jason looks back briefly over his shoulder at the Blackhawk behind him. The helicopter shudders, vibrating as the rotors pick up speed again, and then lifts gracefully into the air. He watches it for another moment, and then turns and stalks toward the compound.

Jason spends most of the next day on the training grounds, facing down a relentless stream of assassins-in-training with nothing but his bare hands. After he dispatches the last of the recruits, the instructors step in. Hours later, with the edges of his vision flickering green, Jason’s contemplating his chances of making a break for it and burning the whole fucking place to the ground when Talia finally steps out of the shadows and calls a halt.

Talia looks him up and down, the ghost of a satisfied smile curling her lips before she turns to leave. 

“مقبول.” The soft murmur of Arabic drifts over her shoulder as she walks away. 

It settles deep in his chest, smothering some of his anger. Acceptable my ass, Jason thinks, that was fucking awesome. He fights a grin the entire walk back to his quarters.

His sleep that night is dreamless and sound.

He wakes up to the sound of a text message while the sky is still gray with predawn light. It’s from Talia. Flight details to Somalia and the name of a mercenary who specializes in combat transportation. 

Talia is waiting, still and silent in the shadows under an olive tree when he emerges from the compound into the front courtyard. The sun isn’t visible yet over the horizon, and the smell of night-blooming flowers hangs heavy in the air.

“Jason,” Talia says, her face impassive, “you are still committed to this course?”

Jason grimaces in response, ducking his head reflexively to try and hide the expression. Instead, he says, “I’m not ready—I’m not done. There’s more I need to learn.”

Talia nods once slowly, not looking entirely convinced.

“Shiva,” he says to deflect attention as much as address an issue that’s been bothering him since the near disaster between the two of them in her dojo. “Will she…” He trails off, unwilling to even voice the possibility. The thought of being discovered now slides like ice down his spine.

“No,” Talia answers firmly. “She and I have an understanding.” 

Jason swallows dryly and nods, looking out over the cliffside beyond the compound to where he can hear waves breaking against the island’s rocky shore. Talia’s been good to her word so far, and he has no choice except to keep trusting her.

They stand together quietly for a moment, the whine of jet engines building in the distance.

“The past is the past, Jason,” Talia murmurs finally. “Find your way forward.” 

Jason looks up, but Talia’s already moving back into the compound, her silhouette fading in the gloom.

Curled into his seat on the plane as it heads out over the Arabian Peninsula, he turns a thought over and over through his mind, worrying at the edges of it. It’s almost like Talia cares.

After leaving Tadrib Amawt for the second time, Jason doesn’t think about Batman as much as he used to. When he was fresh out of the pit, every waking moment that he wasn’t training, he spent plotting. Plotting a return to Gotham, a way to make Batman see, a way to finish things. 

When he first returned to her, Jason told Talia that he was going to kill Batman, and he’d meant it at the time. He still means it. He thinks.

Now, though, things are different. The rage, the drive to do something, is still there, but it’s more … distant.

Jason’s not sure if it’s the meditation routine Talia drilled into him—her voice admonishing him, “Your anger does not control you, Jason, you control it,” plays on a loop through his head until he swears it follows him into his dreams—or her uncomfortably prescient habit of making contact when things are starting to go a little too green. 

Maybe it’s his progress in his training or the self-imposed missions he sets himself on when the circumstances call for it. He’s been busy, after all.

Hell, maybe it’s just time. 

Whatever it is, Jason doesn’t think about Batman as much as he used to.

That is, until Talia summons him to a meeting at a little bar outside London and pulls out a manilla folder full of large, glossy photos.

“Are you all right?” he hears her say. It’s faint, as though coming across a distance greater than the small table separating them.

“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be all right?” he responds. 

Why, he thinks, but he doesn’t say.  

Why did you do this—why did he do this? Why was I so easy to throw away? Why does it hurt so goddamn much? Why—

He mumbles an excuse and gets up from the table, stumbling out of the bar. He can feel Talia’s hard gaze on his back until he clears the door.

When he blinks again, he’s back at his safe house, the pictures taped up on the wall in front of him. Red-yellow-green and a gold ‘R’ stare back at him. 

Red, yellow, green. 

One of the pictures wrinkles slightly under his hand as he braces himself against the wall.

Red, yellow, green. 

Red. Yellow. Green.

His chest is too tight, his throat is clogged, his head hurts, his - his cheeks are wet.

He looks over at the burner phone on his bedside table. His body feels far away as he watches his hand reach for it.

“Jason.” Talia’s voice is calm. “I didn’t think I’d hear from you again so soon. What do you need?”

He tries to stay centered, holding his emotions in check with all the techniques he’s learned and every bit of will he can muster. A ragged breath gives him away.

“Oh, Jason.” The sorrow seeping into her voice almost feels real. “If you had been honest before, we could have had this conversation over the rest of that lovely Bordeaux.”

Her attempt at humor is so unexpected that it surprises a huff out of him before he remembers.

“Why the pictures, Talia?” Once the words start, it's hard to get them to stop, and it all tumbles out. The numbness is fading, and anger rushes in to take its place. “Why now? I’d’ve found out eventually on my own. Just needed to remind me exactly how forgettable I was? How fucking replaceable?”

“Jason,” her tone is faintly chiding, and it only makes him angrier. “You sell yourself short. Your death … it broke something in him.”

Jason snorts.

“Well, he fucking got over it, didn’t he?”

“Jason—”

“Don’t fucking lie to me, Talia. You tracked me down to rub this in my face. At least be honest with me now.”

“I’ve never lied to you, Jason. I’m not going to start now.” Talia says sharply. 

Jason can feel the tension in his body ratcheting higher and higher. His muscles are tightening, limbs coiling to spring. But there’s no one to fight, nowhere to go, nothing to do.

“Then fucking tell me I’m wrong,” he says instead. “That he didn’t just go right out and find another kid to fill that goddamn suit. He got the fuck over it— over me.” He breaks off as he strangles back another sob.

Talia, never one to back down from a fight, clicks her tongue in annoyance before conceding. “You’re not wrong, Jason.”

“How long, Talia.” Her name ends on a sob that claws its way past his clenched jaw. No matter how much he hates himself for it, he can’t keep in. “Just fucking tell me. How long was I worth?”

He hears the echo of her words in the silence. I’ve never lied to you, Jason. I’m not going to start now.

Finally, Talia lets out a long exhale, slow and soft.

“Six months, Jason. The first sighting was a little less than six months after your death.”

“Six months,” Jason repeats incredulously, his voice cracks. “He replaced me in six fucking months.”

“Yes.”

And for a moment, Jason is speechless.

There’s a roaring coming from somewhere far away, growing closer with every breath, reverberating through his head. The room blurs a little for a moment, and everything just stops, and it’s green and staticy, and Jason is - Jason is just gone. 

When he comes back to himself, his ears are ringing, and his cheeks itch. The safe house is in shambles around him. He looks down dreamily, rubbing the blood oozing from the split skin over his broken knuckles into his jeans. 

Jason still has the burner clenched in his other hand, the plastic case cracked through down the side from his grip. Talia’s low voice murmurs from the speaker. It takes him a minute to parse the sounds out into words. She’s reading what sounds like poetry in Arabic, the words musical and strangely soothing.

It tickles a memory that feels tucked away, old and unused, like furniture covered in dust clothes. 

The room is dark around him. His body slumps awkwardly in his chair, heavy and unmovable. From somewhere out of sight comes Talia’s steady voice. She’s murmuring quiet, soothing words. 

Strong fingers are cupped gently around the nape of his neck, and the smooth edge of a thumb rubs along the knob of his spine.

The phone’s housing creaking ominously in his grip brings him back to the present. Talia pauses.

“Jason, are you back with me?”

“Yeah,” he manages hoarsely. “Yeah, I’m here.”

“Jason,” and when she speaks again, it’s firm in a way that tells him that whatever comes next, it’s going to hurt.

“I told you once that your father mourned you. That you were the light to his darkness, and without it, he was failing. That he missed you. Missed you so much it was consuming him.”

Jason thinks faintly of a rising sun glowing in a purple sky and a cliff high above the sea. He can almost feel the smooth, sun-warmed rock beneath him and the cool, steady presence at this shoulder. He remembers the first feeling of weightlessness, relief after being pulled out from beneath suffocating pressure.

He misses you.

“I still believe that, Jason. But—” and even across a sterile phone connection, he can hear the contempt in her words now, as thick as mud, “Batman has a … a weakness - a need in him. In his compulsion to carry out his mission, he filled that need.”

Talia pauses again before exhaling sharply. It buzzes through the cracked speaker, tinny and harsh. “You were worth more than that, Jason. You are worth more than that.”

For a moment, Jason is too tangled up in shock and grief to form any kind of response, the pain so sharp he can barely breathe, much less think. 

And then the words spill out.

“I died, I fucking died, in those colors, Talia. That monster killed me to get to him. And then he just - he just - he buried me and replaced me with a newer model like it didn’t mean anything. Like it didn’t change anything. I was supposed to be his - his son.” He wants to sound angry, but it comes out gasping and weak. Heartbroken.

“I know, Jason. I know. I’m sorry.” 

Talia is one of the best liars Jason has ever met. She weaves manipulations so seamlessly it’s practically her natural state. Jason doesn’t think he’s ever heard her sound so honest.

The phone line is quiet now. With an ocean of what feels like understanding between him and Talia, it’s heavy and expectant. 

In that pregnant space, it occurs to Jason that Talia has been with him almost since the beginning, his second beginning. She put him back together when he was more broken than whole. She’s shown him how to harness his anger, that he can be more than just the cracks between missing pieces. 

He doesn’t regret the choices he’s made, the path he’s choosing. He can’t help but wonder, though, if it will always be this hard. If this is what he was brought back for. If this is all that’s left for him. 

If the loss will ever get any easier to bear. 

Because for everything Talia’s done for him, there are things she can’t do. 

There’s nothing she can do to change the fact that when Jason returned, no one was there waiting to bring him home. That his family had moved on so completely, it was like he’d never been there in the first place. Talia can’t tell him how much she missed him, how happy she is to have him back, because she never lost him in the first place.

She gave him a second chance at life, but she can’t restore the life he’d lost, the life he’d loved. All the petty, adolescent drama aside, he’d been so goddamn happy living that life. 

He wants it back.

He wants it back.

He’ll never get it back. 

He’ll never be that boy again.

That boy had deserved better, but he hadn’t gotten it. And all the second chances in the world aren’t going to change that. 

That boy still deserves better, Jason thinks bitterly. Deserves to be remembered. Deserves to be avenged. And there’s no one who cares enough to do that for him, except Jason himself.

Minutes tick by before Talia finally breaks the silence. “Where will you go from here, Jason?” 

It reminds Jason of when he saw her last at Tadrib Almawt, their conversation in the courtyard before he left. Talia had sounded the same then, serious and intent.

The past is the past, Jason. Find your way forward.

And, abruptly, the haze of emotion clears.

“Forward,” he snaps and hangs up the phone.

Chapter Text

Two Months Later

Jason’s phone rings an hour after he purchases a one-way ticket from Heathrow to LAX. 

“Hey, Tals,” he says, picking up the phone without bothering to look at the caller ID. All of his funds still trace back to Talia in some way, so it’s not really a surprise. Even for her, though, this is pretty quick.

“Jason,” Talia greets him dryly. She lets the silence hang briefly. “I see you’re planning a trip stateside.”

No beating around this bush, then, Jason thinks. He hums noncommittally anyway, just to be difficult.

“What’s in Los Angeles, Jason?” Talia questions sharply.

Jason holds out for as long as he can, his simmering temper at odds with his twisting stomach.

“I have a lead,” he says finally. “A lead on - on him. The clown. I’m going to LA to take care of it.” 

“And how do you plan to take care of it?” 

“By ending it - ending him,” Jason forces out roughly. “For good.”

Talia’s quiet for a long moment. “Do you require—”

“No!” Jason interrupts. “No.”

“Alright,” Talia says slowly.

There’s an expectant pause. Jason bites his tongue and waits.

“Well,” Talia says at last, her tone noticeably colder, “it’s unlikely your current passport will make it through US customs. I’ll have another sent over. Expect a package at your location in time for your flight tomorrow.” 

Jason blinks. “How—?”

The call disconnects as Talia hangs up. Jason looks at the phone in his hand and sighs. That could have gone better.

A large box is waiting on Jason’s fire escape the next morning when he wakes up. Much too large for just a passport. Jason finds a small stamp of the al Ghul crest on one side and brings it gingerly inside.

Affixed to the underside of the box’s lid is a padded manila envelope. Jason reaches inside, pulling out a British passport, an envelope full of cash—US currency, Jason notes, flipping through it—and a small folded piece of paper. The passport has Jason’s picture and a new alias. The paper contains a note written in Talia’s neat script:

I intended to give this to you when we met next. Consider it an early Christmas gift. T

Jason frowns slightly, absently adding up the weeks in his head. He got the tip from the Russian mobster in mid-November. It’s taken him nearly a month to track the Joker’s movements to LA. Christmas is in a couple of weeks, he realizes.

He looks back at the note, reading it through a second time. He didn’t think Talia observed Christian holidays. He’s not even sure she celebrates any holidays, and she’s certainly never given him a present before. Money, sure, but a gift?

Setting the note aside, Jason reaches into the box and pulls out a bulky package wrapped neatly in brown butcher paper. Gingerly unwrapping it, he uncovers a large rucksack. The pack is constructed out of heavy, waxed canvas over a lightweight frame. The canvas is dyed a deep gray, so dark it’s almost black. Sturdy black leather covers the pack’s base, and matching leather strapping closes off its rolled top and several external pockets.

Jason runs his hands over the rucksack carefully, his eyes straying to his stained Jansport hanging on a hook by the door. There’s a seam at the bottom of the bag that keeps splitting. He’d finally resorted to reinforcing it with a staple gun and duct tape.

Sliding the rucksack onto his shoulders, Jason adjusts the straps until the pack sits comfortably across his upper back. When he moves, there’s a shift in weight as something inside the pack moves within it.

Sitting back down again, he pulls the pack into his lap and unbuckles the top, peering inside curiously.

There’s a smaller dry bag tucked into the main compartment of the rucksack. Pulling it out, he finds three slim books inside. Jason lifts them out gently. They’re each bound in leather, the covers sturdy but buttery soft to the touch.

The first book he takes out is The Count of Monte Cristo. Jason’s throat catches as he remembers reading it for the first time, curled in an armchair in the manor’s library. For the next week, he and Alfred sat together daily over Biscoffs and cups of Earl Grey, deep in discussion about Dumas.

Jason shudders, and his eyes prickle uncomfortably as he tries to shake off the smell of bergamot and the sense of longing. He reaches hastily for the second book. It’s bound in green leather, and the cover is finely tooled with patterns lined in gold foil. Jason brushes an unsteady hand lightly over the title. The Hobbit. 

Tolkien was one of Catherine’s favorites. Some of his earliest memories, the happy ones at least, are of the two of them curled together on his bed, his mom’s finger tracing over the page as he sounded out the words.

“What the fuck, Talia,” Jason murmurs into the silence, staring at the book blindly for a moment longer before setting it aside.

The third book is different. The cover is well-worn, and the pages are soft with age. It’s embossed with a title in Arabic, The Mu'allaqat. There’s a strip of velvet tucked between the pages, and Jason flips the book open to the marked spot. A passage catches his eye immediately: 

قِفَا نَبْكِ مِن ذِكْرَى حَبِيبٍ وَمَنْزِلِ

بِسِقْطِ اللِّوَى بَيْنَ الدَّخُولِ فَحَوْمَلِ

فَتُوضَحُ فَالْمُقْرَاةُ لَمْ يَعْفُ رَسْمُهَا

لِمَا نَسَجَتْهُ مِنْ جَنُوبٍ وَشَمْأَلِ

As he reads it over, he can hear Talia’s voice, lilting and melodic, reciting the words. Jason blinks, caught once again in the vague memory of a dark room and soothing words, the phantom feeling of a hand cupped gently around his neck.

Jason snaps the book shut, standing abruptly and pacing away from the table. He circles the apartment restlessly before looking back at the books sitting unassumingly on the table. The fingers of one hand tap agitatedly against his leg.

“Get it together,” he growls harshly into the empty apartment.

Finally, he grabs his new rucksack and begins stowing his gear. The Jansport goes in the trash. The books get repacked in the dry bag and carefully placed into one of the pack’s smaller compartments.

Jason reaches for his cell phone, thumbs hovering over the screen. Finally, he taps out:

Got the passport

He presses send and pauses again, torn, before rapidly typing out a second message. He hits send before he can change his mind. 

I’ll let you know when it’s done

He pockets the phone and leaves for the airport.

Talia doesn’t respond.

Los Angeles starts out badly and only gets worse. 

His redeye flight lands at LAX in the late afternoon. Jason gets off the plane nauseous and short-tempered. His left hip aches dully, and there’s a sharp pain below his right eye that won’t let up. He tells himself it's just jet lag. 

A day later, after a little hands-on persuasion and the placement of some illegal surveillance equipment, Jason’s listening in on a meeting between the Joker and a group of arms traffickers selling chemical weapons.

The Joker’s plan is to poison Gotham’s water supply. Again. Jason holds his breath, keeping a stranglehold on his temper, as his bug picks up the details of the buy. The chemicals are being loaded into a tanker truck at the port of Los Angeles in four hours. It’s just enough time for him to get set up.

His plan is good, but it all goes to shit as soon as he crashes the deal. 

The gas takes the traffickers down initially, but they’re not amateurs, and they have gas masks on hand. They're up again much too quickly.

The clown makes like the cockroach he is and pulls a runner. Jason puts a bullet into his leg that brings him down, but it comes at the cost of a dozen high-powered rounds to Jason’s back. His armor holds, just barely.

He’d been planning to move the clown to a secondary location, but the route’s blown now, and there’s no time to adjust. Swearing, Jason ducks inside a nearby fueling station, the Joker bound and slung over his shoulder, and barricades the door. 

He’ll have to make do with what’s available on hand, he thinks, dumping the clown onto the floor.

It’s a concrete floor. Rough and cracked.

Jason’s stomach flips over as he douses the clown in gasoline. The fumes rise sharply around them. The clown, predictably, won’t shut up. 

”If I knew that it was gonna get so hot, I would have worn shorts!” 

“Shut up. Just shut up,” Jason bites out, staring down. The Joker stares back, his rictus smile gaping obscenely.

The Joker is right there, at his feet. The lighter is clenched tightly in his hand. He thumbs the top back with a click, and the lighter’s flame burns brightly. 

a grotesque smile, a crowbar arcing down 

Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha

thud!

splintering, shattering, pain 

Batman will come. Batman— 

arcing down

Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha

will—

thud!

The Joker is right there. The lighter is in hand. The flame burns bright

hard concrete, bloody fingers

shifting-shifting-shifting bones

“Well…?” the Joker cackles.

just a little - a little farther

Bruce— Please— I can’t, I can’t

The lighter is in his hand. The flame burns

00:02 - 00:01 - 00:0— Bruce—

The lighter is

Heat— Noise— Pressure— boiling, searing, burning, burning, burning

The flame

choking

just breathe 

Dad—

breathe

chok— bre— D—

With a click, the flame goes out.

The floor is made of gray rubber, patterned with flecks of white and black. It’s old and worn. It vibrates subtly underneath his feet. There’s a window, milky with age and smeared with dust and dirt, across from him. Beyond it, buildings rush by. Jason looks out, confused. 

He’s not at the port anymore.

He’s huddled in a seat on a train. The light rail, he realizes. The A-line, a sign overhead proclaims. 

The Joker is gone. 

But not gone.

He has no idea where he’s going. 

The sky outside is still dark. The overhead lights ripple, sending out irregular halos of light that glare painfully against his eyes. He feels cold and tired. His body sags gracelessly against the hard plastic seat. 

Jason’s not wearing his armor anymore. His weapons are gone, too. He looks at his rucksack at his feet and tries to remember when he picked it up from the abandoned building where he’d stashed it. The leather of its straps is smooth under his fingers. He sweeps the thumb of one hand back and forth against the rough canvas. Maybe his gear is inside.

There’s a buzzing against his leg. His phone. It’s in his pocket.

The buzzing comes again. 

His eyes fall closed and then spring open again. The sun is hovering over the hills now, it casts a yellow haze through the smog. Jason looks down at the phone clutched in his hand. There’s a text from an unknown number visible on the lock screen:

The Ritz-Carlton, suite 4709

He puts the phone back in his pocket. He knows who the message is from.

At the next stop, he gets off the train.

Jason stands at the base of a towering building in downtown Los Angeles, staring up. It’s dark again, he realizes, but he can’t see the stars. The world feels soft and blurry at the edges. He doesn’t remember where the day went. He doesn’t remember how he got here. 

He can feel his anger building, though. It writhes just below his skin, slowly burning away the apathy surrounding him.

The Ritz-Carlton, he remembers, looking up at the building again. He was going to the Ritz-Carlton. 

Jason pushes slowly through the revolving door and crosses the lobby. There’s an envelope waiting for him at the front desk with a room card inside. He pockets it and heads out of the lobby, moving deeper into the hotel. Across from the elevators, a fountain bubbles in an atrium decorated with tropical plants. The splashing water is jarringly loud.

The elevator doors slide open, and Jason slips inside. It’s a large elevator with glass on three sides, providing a view out into the atrium. Jason hits the button for the forty-seventh floor and waits for the elevator to ascend. Old-time soul music croons gently from the speakers in the ceiling. 

Ooh child

Things are gonna get easier

Ooh child

Things'll get brighter

Jason tilts his head back in recognition, breathing heavily in and out through his nose. It’s a song Catherine used to listen to while she did the dishes. When he closes his eyes, he can see her swaying around their apartment’s small kitchen, dancing to the rhythm. She had a nice voice, but she always sang just a little bit off-key.

Some day, yeah

We'll put it together and we'll get it undone

Some day

When your head is much lighter

Jason opens his eyes, letting his head fall forward again. The fountain on the ground floor is getting smaller and smaller as the elevator slowly rises. He looks at the glass surrounding him and imagines putting his fist through it. Will the glass get in the fountain, he wonders, when it breaks? His rucksack shifts as he draws his shoulder back. 

Some day, yeah

We'll walk in the rays of a beautiful sun

Some day

When the world is much brighter  

There’s a soft chime, and the elevator doors slide smoothly open. Jason stands frozen for a moment before jerking forward, stumbling slightly as he steps out of the elevator. 

Ooh child

Things—

The elevator doors slide closed. 

A long, still hallway stretches out in front of Jason. The soft lighting pulses faintly. Jason’s feet carry him forward, the plush wall-to-wall carpet brushing softly against his boots. At the end of the hall, the door to 4207 swings open before he can hold his keycard up to the lock.

Talia looks Jason up and down, her face stony, before stepping back, holding the door open.

The present roars back into focus. Jason licks his lips carefully, swallowing hard against a dry throat. His ribs grate inside his chest with every ragged breath he takes. The rush of his heartbeat is loud in his ears.

Forward, Jason thinks. Forward.

He slides carefully past Talia, shrugging off his rucksack and setting it by the door before prowling further into the suite. The far wall of the main room is made of floor-to-ceiling glass. Neon smears of color from the Los Angeles skyline light up the night.

“Jason,” Talia starts, her voice forcibly calm. 

Jason’s tenuous control fractures.

“Don’t!” he growls, spinning back around to glare at her. “I could have done it, I could have!” 

It’s a lie, and they both know it.

“I could have, but I shouldn’t have to!”

Jason’s voice is rising now into a shout. He’s panting. There’s a glass tumbler in his hand that he doesn’t remember picking up. Its heavy base slips slightly in the sweat collecting in his palm. 

“I shouldn't have to!” He cries again desperately. If his anger falters now, the avalanche of fear fueling it will bury him. “Why wouldn't he— he—”

Glass shatters against the wall, ice skittering wildly across the floor.

“Jason!” Talia commands sharply.

His hands are shaking uncontrollably. 

“It’s not right,” he shouts. “It’s not right! I have to make him see, make him realize that he should have— he should never have—”

Talia’s hand slams down onto a side table, the glass and metal top rattling dangerously. Jason jumps, startled, backing up a step.

“Jason,” Talia says again firmly, “listen to me.” 

Her eyes flicker over his face as she steps closer. 

“You should be angry about what happened to you. It’s worth getting angry about. There’s nothing wrong with you or with what you want.”

Jason’s chest heaves as he rocks back on his heels, caught fast in Talia’s steely gaze. Her words slowly puncture through his panic. 

“But, believe me when I tell you, whatever you do—” 

Jason turns sharply, Talia's voice cuts off abruptly as he moves away to stand in front of the window. His spine is so rigid it feels like he’s going to snap apart. He stutters in a painful breath. 

For a moment, the room is silent, and then Talia’s reflection in the glass sharpens as she follows. She steps up beside him and looks out over the skyline. When she speaks, it’s quieter but just as intense.

“No matter what you do, Bruce will not give you what you want.” 

“He has to!” Jason says harshly. “I can’t— I need—”

“He won’t.”

The words hang in the air, awful and true. 

But, really, Jason had known that already, hadn’t he? 

Jason had known since the moment he came back and it was clear that nothing had changed. That his death hadn’t mattered enough to Bruce to do a goddamn thing. Had known again when he was confronted with another Robin’s flashing grin and bright colors. 

And really, if it hadn’t mattered enough to Bruce when he was literally lowering Jason into the ground, how exactly was Jason coming back now going to change things?

He wanted Bruce to prove him wrong. He needed it so fucking badly he could feel it eating away inside of him. But when had Jason ever really gotten what he needed? Did he really have to prove all over again just how little he’d mattered? 

Talia’s words cut through him like a scalpel excising rot from a wound. “You were - you are - worth avenging. But he - he is not capable.” 

Talia reaches up slowly, laying her hand gently on his shoulder. Jason hesitates, his muscles twitching under her hand, before turning to face her. His hands keep clenching rhythmically into fists at his sides. Talia’s cool fingers slide up and cradle the nape of his neck, squeezing gently.

“The clown, Batman - they’re your past, Jason. They tried to bury you once already, but you’re still here.” 

Jason squeezes his eyes shut, fighting the tears that want to fall. Green tails of shimmering light dance across the darkness of his closed lids. Behind them, memories swirl, a riot of color and sound, of feeling. 

Gotham, the manor, Alfred. Family. 

A dark shadow and its red-green-yellow light. Purpose. 

And then he thinks about the Joker, and Timothy Drake, and Jason Todd’s gravestone in a public cemetery standing watch over a casket buried next to Shelia Hayworth’s. 

He can hear laughter building in the distance, the dull scrape of a broken body against concrete, the ticking of a clock. His hands spasm at his sides as he fights the urge to reach up and cover his ears.

When she speaks again, Talia’s voice drowns it all out. “You being here is a miracle, my miracle.”

Jason opens his eyes, and Talia is there, a solid presence in front of him. The skyline’s neon lights glitter brightly in her eyes.

“T,” His voice comes out roughly, like he swallowed gravel. “T,” he tries again. It’s a denial, and a plea. 

Jason isn’t sure when he first starting thinking of Talia as T in his mind. 

He knows that when she first plucked him from Gotham, while she was trying to bring him back to himself, it was really all about Bruce. A twisted attempt at getting back in her ‘Beloved’s’ good graces. And after that, it was about protecting Bruce from Jason, keeping Jason contained long enough for her to tame him. 

But, somewhere along the line, things changed. She’d changed. Talia’s motives have always been her own, and he’d be a fool to take everything she’s said and done at face value. But maybe it’s enough, Jason thinks, to be wanted. Wanted for who he is here and now.

“They’ve taken too much from you already, Jason,” Talia murmurs. “I can give you a future.”

He thinks back to a morning twelve months ago on an airstrip in the Persian Gulf, when all he could feel was rage. He made a choice then. He made the same choice again not so long ago, standing in a gloomy courtyard surrounded by night-blooming flowers. Talia stood before him both times and let him choose. Let him go. 

But she’s here, Jason thinks. She’s still here, and she’s asking.

The thought, at first poisonous and ephemeral, has been slowly solidifying in his mind into something real and true. 

Catherine promised she’d get clean. Willis promised he’d stay out of jail. Sheila promised she was alone. And Bruce, Bruce promised that he’d keep Jason safe.

Talia hasn’t promised him anything at all. She just keeps showing up. For more than a year now, every single fucking time Jason’s called, and even when he hasn’t, Talia’s been there. 

“Let me give it to you,” Talia says again. 

Jason’s head feels heavy, almost too much for his body to carry. He can’t help leaning into Talia’s hand, grounding himself in the feeling of it firm against his neck.

“Yeah,” he sighs, “yeah, okay.”

This time, when Talia takes him back to Tadrib Almawt, it’s the start of something new.

Chapter Text

Jason hasn’t fought side by side with someone, hasn’t trusted someone else to watch his back, since his days in the short pants. It feels like years ago. It was years ago, Jason realizes. The time adds up in his head. Almost three years have gone by now.

He’s trained with Talia a lot in that time, though. 

The first time she took him to Tadrib Almawt, she mostly left the day-to-day work to the League instructors. They took what he already knew and layered the League’s fighting style over top of it. Talia was there, though, a shadow in the corner, watching. 

Jason never ended up more bruised and bloodied than on the days she summoned him for an individual session. They were few and far between, but the lessons stuck.

Now, though, they spar together every night that they’re both at Tadrib Almawt. It’s the last thing Jason does every day. 

Talia’s green eyes, cutting and sharp, watch him like a hawk while she beats him back. Her quick, snake-like movements are backed up with blows that impact like an anvil. Her silver blade weaves fast and sure, tempering lethal strikes with careful control. 

The al Ghul fighting style is old and intricate, but with time, Jason learns. First, it’s less time being pushed back, less time on his back foot. Then, for brief moments, he starts being the one to push forward. Slowly, the proportion of matches that end with him laid out on his back drops. 

What Jason lacks in skill and experience with a sword, he makes up for with unpredictability. He knows his strengths, and his ability to fall back on numerous styles, to pick and choose what suits him best, is one of them. The first time he scores a hit, and, instead of smiling faintly, Talia responds with a frown and hits back harder, he feels like he shot the moon.

After two months together, working one-on-one, he can move with Talia in what feels like a mostly even dance. Back and forth, give and take, strike and block, until they’re both worn and gasping for breath. 

But for all the time training, he’s never seen Talia in action, never stood by her side with his life on the line.

The first time he and Talia fight together, really fight, it’s in the middle of the night on the runway of a remote airport outside Athens. They were traveling covertly from Tadrib Almawt to one of her bases in the Baltics, stopping over briefly in Greece to change planes. 

A group of assassins is waiting for them there. They’re fast and quiet, but not nearly quiet enough. 

Jason doesn’t know if the group is from a different faction or just plain rogue, but it doesn’t really matter. The crossbow bolt aimed directly at him is a pretty clear message that they’re not here for a friendly chat. He ducks, and it plinks harmlessly off the side of the plane.

In a nod to stealth, Jason draws his knives and leaves his gun holstered. Beside him, Talia unsheathes her katana. He has his own secured across his back, but the knives feel right in a way he doesn’t hesitate to fall back on.

And then it starts.

Out in the wild with something more than his pride at stake, Jason feels what it is to fight with Talia for real, like an al Ghul, free and unencumbered. Spinning through fluid, deadly movements, knives flashing, he moves with Talia in a rhythm that thrums through his bones and beats in his ears. 

It’s the closest he’s come to joy since his whole life was torn away from him.

At least a dozen assassins are still bearing down on them, coming in from all sides. They’ve managed to separate him and Talia in the thick of the fight, but Jason can feel Talia spiraling slowly back towards him through the chaos. It’s like there’s a tether joining them, drawing them together like two magnetic halves of a whole.

Jason leaps back to avoid the blade aimed at his gut, then launches himself forward again. The upward pull of his back leg propels him off the ground in a spin as his other leg pushes up, the heel whipping around to slam into the assassin's face.

There’s a crack as the man’s jaw breaks under his foot.

Jason lands, whipping his shoulders back around to complete the movement, and sinks his knife into the assassin's chest. His momentum rips it free again a second later as he turns smoothly to meet his next attacker. 

As he sinks deeper into his stance, Jason’s breath catches in his throat as memory overwhelms him.

A bright room. A smooth wooden floor.

His body slides through movements that are both old and new. 

Sweat-slicked skin, loose muscles, soft breath. 

A feeling of warmth as the lithe figure a half step in front of him moves sinuously through the forms, her motions showing him the way.

The dreamlike quality of the memory tells him that it comes from those lost days when his mind was too broken to heal, but his body still knew how to move, how to learn. 

A fiery line of pain from a blade scoring lightly across his shoulder brings him back to the present.

Pivoting away from the follow-up strike aimed at his knees, Jason slides to the side, finally making it back to Talia’s side for the first time since the attack began. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her blade pierce through the chest of the assassin trying to flank him as she whirls sinuously, moving into his blind spot with her guard up.

Déjà vu rolls through him so strongly it leaves him breathless.

A tight flip propels him over the shoulder of a large shadow, his green-booted heel striking an unsuspecting chin. 

A dark cape flares up around him, shielding him from a spray of incoming bullets. 

It’s dark. He’s safe. He’s protected.

And then Jason’s back on the tarmac, jet fuel in his nose, the whine of an aircraft powering up in his ears. 

Ducking under Talia’s outstretched arm, he blocks an oncoming strike with his forearm while his free hand slips in and drives four inches of steel into the assassin's throat.

A blade whistles quietly through the air, its tip millimeters from his ear, and takes off the head of the last attacker standing.

Jason turns cautiously. Talia’s grin is sharp, her glittering emerald eyes feral, but her quiet laugh is light and pleased as she steps over the bodies laid out on the asphalt.

“Well done, Habibi.”

Talia’s eyes run over him critically as she cleans her katana on the shirt of one of the downed assailants and then sheathes it neatly at her hip. Apparently satisfied at his lack of obvious injuries, she gestures to the plane’s descending staircase.

“After you.”

Memory batters him in waves as he sheathes his own blades and moves to ascend the steps.

“Good job, Robin.” 

A deep rumble accompanied by the brief, firm squeeze of a large hand atop his shoulder.

Jason breathes quietly, pushing the feeling aside as he ducks into the plane’s interior. He moves slowly down the aisle and lets himself fall into one of the jet’s deep seats, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. 

Talia’s hand cups lightly against the back of his neck and then slides away as she folds gracefully into the seat across the aisle.

Blinking slowly in the dimming cabin lights, Jason settles back as the plane taxis down the runway.

He learned the consequences of relying on someone else’s protection the hard way his first time around, but as Jason holds Talia’s calm gaze with his own, he can’t shake the feeling of warmth curling through his belly.

They’re somewhere over the Carpathians when Jason finally finds the words for what he wants to say. It’s been almost three months since Los Angeles, and he still doesn’t understand what Talia’s expecting from him. 

“I don’t want to be part of the League, Talia. I’m not going to be one of Ra’s’ assassins.”

Talia doesn’t look up from her tablet, her fingers tapping away silently at the keyboard.

“Of course not, Jason, don’t be ridiculous.”

“Well, I’m not going to be one of your assassins, either.”

Talia looks up at him finally, eyes scanning over his black League uniform and accompanying weaponry. The eyebrow she quirks is distinctly amused.

“Fuck you, Talia,” Jason huffs. “You know what I mean.”

Talia sets her tablet down deliberately on the seat next to her.

“Sorry,” he mutters quickly before she can say anything. Her frown smooths out slightly, but her eyes are still narrowed and displeased.

Jason ducks his head, cowed. He hates that face. 

The bitch of it is that Talia does seem to know what he means. Considering the missions she’s sent him on, she appears to have a pretty good handle on where his lines are. Assassinating heads of state, no. Dismantling international sex traffickers with extreme prejudice, hell yes.

“I don’t need another assassin, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want you.”

“Want me!” Jason snorts in disbelief. “For what, Talia? What can I possibly do for you?”

“Jason.” Talia draws out his name slowly until he reluctantly looks up to meet her gaze. 

Talia purses her lips. When she speaks, her tone is measured.

“I do not need you to do anything for me. Whatever choices you make from here, whatever your actions, you will have a place at my side.”

Jason stares, taken aback.

“Umm, okay,” He flounders awkwardly. “But … I can’t just keep blindly doing … whatever this is,” he finishes lamely, waving a hand in a vague motion encompassing the plane and the both of them.

Talia crosses one leg smoothly over the other and considers Jason seriously, her eyes tracing his face. Finally, she slips her hand into her bag, pulling out another tablet and offering it to him.

Jason reaches out hesitantly, taking it.

Talia picks up her own tablet again, flicking the screen back on. “When you’re ready to talk,” she says, “we’ll talk.”

Jason stares out of the jet's window. The dark expanse of the Bay of Riga stretches out below them. His mind whirls, turning the contents of the tablet over again and again. 

File after file of intel. Organizational hierarchies. Known associates. Bank accounts and financial transactions. Supply chains and travel plans. Tactical analyses and strategy maps.

Finally, he looks away from the window and refocuses on Talia.

“You’re making a move against Ra’s,” he says into the silence. “You’re going to try and take over the League.”

Talia looks up from her tablet, her eyes assessing. She doesn’t deny it.

“Holy fuck, Talia!” Jason exclaims, gaping. After a moment, he shuts his mouth and asks more seriously.

“Why, T? Why now?”

Talia shifts in her seat, giving away a rare sign of discomfort. 

“Ra’s has become … irrational,” she says at last. “He won’t be reasoned with and won’t be swayed from certain … paths.”

Jason leans forward in his seat, surprised that Talia’s answering him. She usually keeps her cards much closer to her chest. She’s sitting rigidly, her tablet clenched in one hand. Her eyes are hard and angry.

Jason thinks back to the few times he’s seen her this affected.

“It has something to do with Damian,” he guesses.

Talia’s eyes narrow, her lips compressing together into a flat line.

Jason smirks and leans back again. “Didn’t think I knew about him, did you?”

Talia stares hard at him, her eyes glinting sharply in the jet’s artificial light. And then her face shifts minutely. “Well,” she says, and Jason shivers slightly at her tone. “You were raised by the World’s Greatest Detective.”

Jason’s stomach cramps painfully as he looks away, muttering grumpily, “Touché.”

When he looks back, Talia is still watching him.

“If you go after Ra’s, won’t it make Damian more of a target?”

Talia sighs. “Jason,” she starts carefully.

Jason freezes, and then his hands curl into fists, his nails biting painfully into his palms.

“You’re sending him to Gotham, to him.”

This time, it’s Talia who looks away. When she speaks, her voice is uncharacteristically rough.

“It’s the one place Ra’s will not dare to interfere. And, Damian, he wishes to know his father.”

Jason swallows and wills himself not to throw up. “You know what will happen, eventually,” he grits out.

Red-yellow-green and a dark shadow standing over it. Everything always comes back to that, Jason thinks with disgust.

“Yes,” Talia allows tightly. “He wishes for that too.”

Jason closes his eyes. It’s not for him to judge. He doesn’t even know the kid. It doesn’t concern him. It doesn’t.

“But it’s not just Damian who’s at risk,” Talia says at last, her voice catching slightly on her son’s name.

Jason thinks back to the assassins on the runway. To the crossbolt aimed at him that started the fight. The tip was barbed, the kind usually covered in some type of poison or drug. 

When she sent him away from Tadrib Almawt the first time, Talia warned him about Ra’s. To stay away from him. That he wasn’t pleased about Jason having been in the pit.

When he opens his eyes again, Talia stares back, her face drawn. 

“Ra’s wants me.”

Talia nods soberly. 

Jason looks away, staring out the jet’s small window. The run is rising in the east, wispy clouds bathed in pink and gold float below them.

Is it too much to ask for a fucking break, Jason wonders. It’s always out of one frying pan, right into another fire. 

Well, he muses finally, he’s never been afraid of getting burned before—no reason to start now.

“I’ll help,” he says. “I want to help.”

Talia looks at him, unblinking and silent for a long moment. Jason wonders if he’s more tired than he realizes because he thinks she seems proud. And also sad. The moment passes, and Talia’s face is smooth and expressionless again.

“Alright, Jason. Tell me what you know.”

Jason taps his fingers on his armrest and considers. He thinks about the areas of the League that are most vulnerable. Areas where he can make a difference.

“Ra’s is working with a network of shadow governments and terrorist groups throughout Southeast Asia. He doesn’t care about the drugs and the human trafficking, and they’re happy to take his money in exchange for supporting his work there.”

Talia hums in agreement.

“Multiple locations in that region are strategically valuable to the League,” Jason continues, “and he’s funneling a lot of money through local economies.”

The corners of Talia’s lips lift into the barest smile. “Tell me what you need.” 

Jason thinks for another moment, his gaze catching on the pictures frozen on the tablet’s screen. Pictures of terrified children. Trafficked children whose futures are being sacrificed for Ra’s’ ambitions.

“A plane ticket,” he growls.

He glances down at his knives and gun, at his katana in its sheath resting on the seat next to him.

“And a grenade launcher.”

Talia raises her eyebrows. She doesn’t need to speak for Jason to hear the words.

Tell me where you go from here.

“I’m going to Myanmar,” he says. “I’ll start with the traffickers in Naypyidaw.” A grin stretches sharply across his face. “I’m going to burn it all down.”

After two weeks in Myanmar, Jason heads back to Tadrib Almawt for a resupply. He’s exhausted, a little scorched, and really fucking satisfied.

The traffickers’ organization was easy to take out, just a couple of covert assassinations and then a straightforward infiltration and extermination op. Making a sizable dent in Ra’s network throughout Southeast Asia, though, will take more planning and effort.

The first step, Jason decides, is building an identity beyond just a rogue assassin. He needs a reputation that spreads beyond his actions for the type of campaign he’s planning. He needs fear.

Talia makes a face he’s never seen before when she sees his initial uniform sketches. He kind of wants to die of embarrassment.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Tried to go with the classic conquer your fears and all,” he mutters darkly, willing Talia not to comment on the obvious inspiration for that idea. He casts his eye critically over the red, skull-like helmet—hood he’s designing.

“Jason,” Talia says witheringly, “try again.”

He’ll admit there’s no way he could effectively act as a shadow in the shiny monstrosity he’s creating. But, still, dramatic effect and all.

A week later, he still hasn’t made any progress on his design for the hood, but he’s at least settled on a suit of black body armor for the base layer. He’s neck-deep in planning and itching to get back out in the field.

When he returns to his room for the night, he’s surprised to see two boxes waiting for him on his bed.

The larger of the two contains what looks like typical black League robes at first glance, except the top is tighter fitting and stretchy, almost like a compression garment. On closer inspection, he finds sturdy armor plates integrated over the legs, abdomen, and chest. The plates are located strategically where a knife or bullet wound would be immediately lethal, and they’re a high enough grade to stop anything short of armor-piercing rounds. They’re amazingly light, though, with enough space between the various panels that he knows he’ll still be able to move freely. 

There’s a matching set of vambraces, shin guards, sheaths for his various blades, and a shoulder harness for his katana.

Packed carefully at the bottom of the box is a pair of SIG Sauer P320s and a set of thigh holsters that match the rest of the gear. The SIGs have been customized with match-grade barrels, extended magazines, and a Cerakote finish. Jason snorts softly. Trust Talia to have clocked his handgun preferences.

Jason sets the uniform and gear aside and moves on to the smaller box, curious about what else it could contain.

The jacket inside smells of leather and Kevlar and just a hint of Talia’s perfume. The style is a cross between a classic motorcycle jacket and hooded League robes but with more structured seams to account for the armor panels sewn throughout. The attached hood is deep, the material lighter, blended with something like silk. There’s a balaclava folded neatly beneath the jacket.  

A ripple across the fabric catches his eye as Jason shifts nearer to the lamp and pulls the jacket out, intending to try it on. 

Holding it up more fully to the light, Jason can’t hold back a harsh bark of laughter. In the dimmer light, the ensemble is black, but when the direct light hits it, the inside of the hood glows, reflecting light like the lining of a shell. It shines a deep ruby red.

Red Hood, indeed. 

The jacket fits perfectly.

Chapter Text

Jason climbs through the window of his safe house, hissing sharply in pain as his shoulder bumps against the frame, jarring the open wound from a bullet graze to his upper arm. The thick, humid air of Phnom Penh presses in around him.

The safe house is dark and silent as Jason stumbles through it. He pulled a muscle in his calf and bruised the hip of the same leg on a bad landing earlier in the night. With the bullet wound in his other leg and the stab wound to his side still healing, walking is increasingly difficult.

His fingers slide against the light switch in the bathroom, leaving a smear of blood on the wall. The drone of the old fluorescent light fixture fills the room. Jason digs through the cabinet, finally finding an unopened suture packet and a vial of lidocaine that’s only half empty.

Jason pauses briefly, his good arm braced against the countertop. His ragged breaths slowly grow more even. 

Tonight was close, closer than he’s comfortable with. After working in Cambodia for almost a month, Red Hood’s reputation has grown substantially. Enough that the traffickers he took out tonight came to their buy prepared for an ambush, too prepared. 

Finally, Jason pushes himself back upright and heads back to the kitchen, dumping his medkit and the suture supplies on the counter. Neon light from a nearby billboard floods through the open window over the sink, bathing the room in pink and green. Jason shucks his jacket and peels off his top layer, reaching out with his good arm to flip on the faucet. Leaning forward carefully, he runs his arm under the weak stream of tepid water.

“You disappoint me, Jason. You’ve been taught better than this.”

Jason yelps, surging upright. His injured arm scrapes painfully against the faucet as he whirls. His other hand reaches down, pulling a gun from his thigh holster and leveling it in the direction of the voice.

A light clicks on in the living space.

Talia is sitting in one of the only chairs in the room, back straight, one leg crossed over the other. The manicured nails of one hand are tapping out a silent staccato rhythm against her knee. She sniffs haughtily.

“This recklessness is unbecoming for an al Ghul.”

Jason snorts, tucking his gun back into its holster. “Well, it’s good that I’m not an al Ghul then.”

Talia raises one eyebrow, her jaw tightening almost imperceptibly.

“What are you doing here, Talia?” Jason sighs, turning back to shut off the faucet and reaching for the medkit. “I have everything under control.”

“Of course you do, Jason,” Talia retorts scathingly. “That is why you are attempting to stitch yourself back together one-handed.”

Talia snaps to her feet, striding across the room to where Jason is leaning against the counter. She reaches out, hands surprisingly gentle, and pulls the syringe out of his hand. 

Jason doesn’t fight her. He’s not so proud that he can’t admit he’s grateful for the help. He moves over to a nearby bar stool and looks away from the needle in her hand. There’s a series of sharp pinches as Talia carefully injects lidocaine around the edges of the gash. She pulls a suture from its pack and starts neatly stitching the ragged edges of skin together.

“This is unacceptable, جرو,” Talia says, the strain in her voice undercutting the harsh words.

جرو, Jason thinks, kit. It jostles a memory loose from one of the murky, broken places in his mind.

Gentle hands sweep tangled hair off his sweaty brow.

A familiar voice murmurs soothing words.

‘Peace, جرو, it was just a dream.’  

His body shakes and shivers uncontrollably. 

‘أنت في أمان معي يا ثعلبي الصغير,’ whispers the voice.

Talia’s hands slide away as she cuts the suture off after the final knot. A shudder races down Jason’s spine. You are safe with me, little fox.

“It does no good to put yourself at such risk, Jason. You know this,” Talia states firmly. She tucks the scissors and needle driver back into his medkit and then moves to the sink to wash her hands.

Jason shudders again, pushing the memory firmly away. “What do you expect me to do, T?” he mutters in exasperation. “It’s not just opium. They’re trafficking women and children, too. They need my help.”

Talia clicks her tongue irritably, “Still, I expect more from you.”

“I’m just tired, T,” Jason says more quietly. “This time of year, it’s just—” 

Jason cuts himself off, his stomach roiling unpleasantly. Fucking April, he thinks. Next year he’s fucking off to Antarctica for the whole goddamn month.

“It’s time we established a permanent identity for you, Jason.” 

Jason looks up, confused by the abrupt change in topic. Talia is standing at the sink still, staring out the window, one hand curling tight against the counter. Jason shifts on the stool uncomfortably, the wooden legs scraping softly against the tile floor.

Talia turns back to him.

“You are not dead. You need something to—to ground you.”

He frowns, even more confused now. 

“If you wish to be Jason Todd-Wayne again, it is not out of reach.” 

Jason’s eyes widen and he slides off the stool, backing up a step. 

“Although, eventually, it may draw … attention.” 

“No,” he gets out thickly. “No, I don’t want that. He died.”  

Pain lances through Jason, and he tries to push it away, out of reach. Will it always hurt, he wonders, to want what he can’t have back? 

“He died,” he says more firmly, “and he didn’t come back.”

Because even though death hadn’t been the end for him, it had still been an ending. 

He’d held onto the name Todd for a long time. It tied him to Catherine, and she was worth holding on to. His life had been good while Catherine was happy and strong and present. When she used to dance in the kitchen while she did the dishes. 

But Jason also remembers fear, the sound of screaming, breaking glass, and bruises. 

He remembers, too, a headstone in a public cemetery and the taste of dirt. Jason swallows thickly. 

Here lies Jason Peter Todd.

“He didn’t come back,” he says again, shaking his head. 

Talia hums softly in agreement, but her voice when she speaks is tempered. “Perhaps.” 

Not enough air in a cold dark space. He can’t get out, can’t get out, can’t breathe. 

Alone, all alone. Why is he alone? His hands desperately beat against something hard and unyielding.

‘BATMAAAN!!??’

A crack, crack, crack, pressure, shifting and pressing, and pain - so much pain - wet, gritty dirt in his eyes, his nose, his mouth.

Cold, wet ground. Mud, mud in his face, under his hands, between his fingers.

A figure leans over him, hands reaching. A gaping, grotesque grin.

‘This is going to hurt you a lot more than it does me!’

Hands push him down, back into the earth. 

Lightning arcs across the dark sky, illuminating a dark silhouette.

Two pointed ears, two heavy hands. Pushing him down, down, down.

‘Here lies Jason Todd.’

‘No, no, B—please!’

Down, down, down into fire, into swirling acidic green flames.

Jason startles awake for the third time that night, his scream dying on his lips. He sits up in bed slowly, the sweat-damp sheet falling away, and braces his forearms on his raised knees, slumping forward to brace his forehead. 

Talia left Phnom Penh after three days, having extracted a promise from Jason to be more careful. He agreed to meet up with her at Tadrib Almawt after routing out the last of the Mekong Serpents. 

The Serpents are long gone, but Jason is lingering in Cambodia, and April keeps marching on. 

The nightmares haven’t let up since Talia left, but he can’t stand the thought of facing the understanding in her eyes. It feels too much like pity.

He thought he was over this, that he had made peace with what happened and with the way things are now. With the way they have to be. He faced the Joker, and even though it didn’t turn out the way Jason wanted, he didn’t end up dead in another warehouse.

“I’m still here,” Jason whispers to himself.

Finally, he drags himself out of bed. Jason moves around his safehouse, packing his rucksack absently, his motions route and mechanical. Slipping silently out the door, he heads to his storage unit to secure his gear.

The next thing he knows, he’s at the airport with no clear idea of how he got there. The ticket agent at the desk in front of Jason clears her throat impatiently, glancing at the line growing behind him. 

For a moment, he thinks about going h— going back to Tadrib Almawt. But the Persian Gulf doesn’t feel nearly far enough away. 

Behind the agent’s shoulder, there’s a series of travel posters covering the wall. A white sand beach and crystal clear water catches his eye. ‘Visit Costa Rica. Pura Vida!’ the poster proclaims.

Pure life, Jason thinks. It sounds nice. Unreal but nice.

His phone rings while he’s at the gate waiting to board, T’s number flashing on the screen. He stares at it until the call goes to voicemail, and the phone is quiet again. The phone chimes as a text notification pops up on the screen. Jason thinks about pitching the thing in the nearest garbage, but in the end, he just turns the phone off and slides it back into his pocket.

Four days later, Jason is sitting on the beach of a sheltered cove off the Gulf of Nicoya, digging his toes into white sand strewn with tiny pebbles and bits of shell. The beach backs up to an isolated patch of Costa Rican jungle. At the very edge of the tree line sits a rustic cabana. It belongs to a local living in a small village a day's hike through the jungle away.

Jason had pulled out more US dollars than the man probably saw in a typical year and had been assured he could stay as long as he wanted. 

The green water ripples up onto the beach and over his feet as he sits in the sand and counts the waves. The crash of the water drowns out the voices in his head.

The days pass, and the count in Jason’s head ticks ever forward. 24. 25. 26.

It’s the same thing every night when he closes his eyes. A looming figure that fades in and out like mist, shifting between a rictus grin and a dark cowl. Laughter, darkness, and a swirling pit of green dissolving him from the inside out. His body aches with phantom pains from shattered bones and burning lungs.

He’s so tired. 

Night is falling as Jason sits slumped in the sand outside the cabana, back against the trunk of a palm tree. He watches the sun slip below the horizon as cool air rushes inland off the bay. His gun is a heavy, familiar weight against his palm. He doesn’t remember why he brought it outside, but his fingers ache from squeezing tight around the grip.

The sky slowly darkens, and stars wink into existence overhead. Dark waves roll up onto the beach as the tide comes gradually in.

I’m still here, Jason thinks. 

It doesn’t feel like a promise anymore. It feels like penance.

Jason wakes up to someone else moving around in the cabana. When he cracks open his eyes, his fingers curling tight around the knife under his pillow, he sees Talia in the kitchenette. 

Jason sighs, letting his eyes slip shut again. He doesn’t bother to say anything, to ask how she found him or why she came. 

By the time Jason drags himself out of bed and into some clothes, Talia’s sitting at the small table on the covered porch, sipping tea from a mug. She doesn’t say anything when he drops into the seat next to her, but he can feel her eyes on him.

Minutes tick by, marked by the steady crashing of the waves. In, out. In, out. The rising sun inches up above the trees.

When he finally glances over, Talia holds his gaze as she places something deliberately onto the table between them.

Jason runs his fingers hesitantly over the kris’ handle. Jason left his own kris with the rest of his gear, locked in secure storage in Cambodia. But the etching under the al Ghul crest that’s stamped under the blade guard of this knife marks it undeniably as his. 

The blade is dark with dried blood.

Talia’s steady, clear green eyes stare back at him when he looks up at her. She doesn’t break eye contact as she lifts a folded silk scarf from her lap and shakes it out over the table. A lock of hair falls gently atop the kris’ blade. The hair is twisted and gummy with clotted blood. It’s nearly unrecognizable. 

Nearly.

Jason looks away. His throat works convulsively as he tries to swallow around the thick heat clogging it. His chest spasms and clenches tight. 

In his peripheral vision, Talia’s hands unfold a newspaper, laying it across the table. Jason doesn’t look back; he stares resolutely at the waves breaking against the beach. His heartbeat slams against his ribs.

In, out. In, out. 

Talia’s voice, when she speaks, is smoke and suffocating heat. It’s a dark void and molten green. 

It's absolution.

“It was intolerable, Jason, for you to live any longer in a world where he still drew breath.”

The headline blurs and dances before his eyes.

JOKER FOUND DEAD IN PARK ROW ALLEY

Jason looks up to meet Talia’s verdant gaze once more. 

It’s - it’s. He can’t - he doesn’t—

Under that table, Jason rubs his hands lightly against the bumpy linen of his pants. The rough material catches against the calluses on his palms. This is real.

“I didn’t ask you for this, Talia.” His voice cracks on her name.

How can it be real? Something wild and panicked claws inside his breast.

“No,” she agrees.

Talia’s eyes slide away from Jason’s toward the ocean for a long moment before she sighs and looks back. An animalistic screech echoes through the trees behind them, coming from deeper within the jungle. 

“Your father was never going to fulfill his responsibility.”

Jason’s face twists, pressure and heat building at the back of his eyes. 

“It has been my failing, as well. I waited longer than I should have to do what was needed, to make things right. It was time.”

Jason looks back at the newspaper once more. His hand reaches out almost involuntarily, fingertips tracing over the headline. The paper is soft and damp in the humid air.

“He will never hurt you again.” Talia’s voice softens slightly. “You, or anyone else.”

Jason surges out of his chair and stumbles away through the sand toward the water line. He falls roughly to his knees when he hits the water’s edge. 

A pod of pelicans glides across the cove, their bodies skimming just above the swelling waves. The ocean shimmers, blue waves rolling in and out. 

In, out. In, out.

When Jason comes back to himself, the tide has fallen. Damp sand stretches out in front of him. Talia is sitting cross-legged beside him. Her arm is curled around his back, her hand firmly cupping the nape of his neck.

This is real. 

A thought slowly crystallizes in Jason’s mind. 

He died alone, thousands of miles away from his home, only to come back to pain and loss, to nothing. Nothing had come of his death. Nothing had changed at all. 

He’ll never forget suffocating in cold darkness, clawing his way desperately to freedom. He’ll never forget waking up drowning in green fire, every nerve ending ablaze. But maybe all of that was worth it, Jason thinks. It brought him here, to this moment.

What happened to him - it mattered. It finally mattered. 

Jason shifts slowly over, tucking his shoulder against Talia’s side.

He’s gone, Jason realizes. He’s gone, and he’ll never hurt anyone again. He’s gone, and I’m still here. 

The warm, salt-laden air brushes over his sweaty skin, and for a moment, Jason struggles to place the curious feeling curling around him. It feels soft, soothing.

It feels like he’s safe. 

When he glances over, Talia is watching the water. The fingers of her free hand are tracing idle patterns in the wet sand. She’s squinting slightly in the bright sunlight, and he can see where the tips of her lips are turned up in a smile.

“Can we get out of here, T?” He asks, tired and overwhelmed, and so light inside he’s almost dizzy with it.

“Of course, Habibi.” Her hand squeezes once firmly against the back of his neck before falling away as she stands smoothly and gestures to the path leading into the surrounding jungle. “After you.”

The lightness doesn’t last. 

Slowly, emptiness creeps in until Jason can't feel anything at all. He gets up and moves about his day, but everything is distant. The world is out of focus.

The Joker’s dead, but it doesn’t change what he lost. He wasn’t really expecting it to. It hurts, though, to let go of the possibility. The kind of hurt you keep pressing on harder and harder and harder until there’s only numbness left behind. 

It’s Talia, of course, who puts a name to it. 

They’re working through a cool-down set together after a morning spar. He’s got blood dripping from a dozen shallow cuts, and his shoulder aches from when Talia twisted it during a pin. But she’s breathing hard, and sweat dampens her clothes, so Jason’s calling it a draw. 

He thinks he might feel satisfied if he wasn’t so fucking numb.

Talia straightens up from her downward dog pose elegantly and turns to make eye contact with him.

“You are mourning, Jason,” she states, stillness settling over her like mist in a valley. “Don’t let it trouble you so. It is natural, and it will pass.”

“Mourning?" He can’t help the disbelief on his face or the scorn twisting his voice.

“Yes,” she answers calmly, reaching out to grip his arm with one hand, “Mourning.”

Talia lets her hand fall away as she steps back. The spot on his arm where her hand had gripped feels hot and tight in its absence. 

“While that pestilence was still alive, there was still a chance that your father would do the right thing. That chance is gone now.” 

He starts, “He’s not my—”

Talia huffs lightly and doesn’t let him finish. “Whatever Bruce did or didn’t do, Jason. Whatever he feels, you will always be his son. It is a part of you. It can not be undone.”

Talia turns away, moving to grab a soft cloth from the bench nearby and wiping it over her face. 

“It is the part of you that brought you to me, Habibi. And that is worth holding on to.”

Jason can feel his face go slack with shock at her words. Her back is still turned to Jason when she continues, and her words are uncharacteristically rough.

“Our families, our fathers - they fail us in life. They are, after all, only human.” Her smile is wry when she turns back again. “Well, mostly at least—some less so than others.” 

She turns to drop the cloth into a basket and then reaches out again, gripping both of his shoulders firmly. Her clear green eyes pin him in place.

“You wished for your father to save you - to see you and show you that what happened to you, it meant something to him. I’m sorry that I couldn’t give that to you.”

Jason stands utterly still, sweat dampening his palms. Talia’s words settle like lead in his gut. 

“Why did you really do it, Talia,” he whispers. “I don’t—”

“Jason,” Talia cuts him off. “It is my responsibility, my right, to keep you safe. In all things.”

Talia firmly grasps his chin with her hand, forcing his eyes to meet hers. 

Jason struggles to find any words and fails, “T, I-I… T—”  It’s rough, guttural, and so painful. 

“T,” he repeats helplessly.

“Yes,” she says simply, sliding her hands down to his forearms, squeezing once more firmly before letting go. When she moves to exit the room, her departing footsteps are silent against the polished wood floor.

Just before she reaches the door, Jason manages to croak out, “Thank you.” 

It’s cracked and broken and not nearly enough. He wants to say so much more, but the words stay strangled deep in his chest. 

Thank you for saving me, he doesn’t say. 

Thank you for killing him. Thank you for making me safe. You showed me a way forward, that I’m enough, that I matter. That what happened to me meant something.

He can’t say any of it. 

Talia, her spine ramrod straight, pauses at the threshold briefly. He thinks she might hear him anyway.

“I will always do what’s best for you, Jason,” Talia says softly, then she’s gone.

A week later, Jason’s preparing to leave Tadrib Almawt again. He needs to get back to Cambodia. There are still loose ends to tie up in Phnom Penh, and his plans for the Golden Triangle Syndicates in Thailand and Laos are starting to come together. 

There’s a thick dossier he doesn’t recognize on his desk when he gets back to his room for the night. He pages through the contents slowly, his fingers stiff and clumsy.

The largest bundle looks like documentation for a primary identity. There are several passports (apparently, he’s a dual citizen of Qatar and the United States, and isn’t that an absolute trip), driver’s licenses, a social security card, a series of very fat offshore banking accounts spanning multiple judiciaries, and more. There’s even a freaking childhood vaccination record. 

When he reads the name on the identification, he has to blink and look again.

Jason al Ghul stares back at him in black typeface.

The passport blurs slightly in his hand before coming back into focus.

He sets it aside.

There’s a similar set of documents for an alias, Jason Head.

A document catches his eye in the al Ghul folio. He picks it up. Puts it down. Picks it up. Swallows. Puts it down again.

It doesn’t matter. Really. They’re just words on paper.

But a dark, angry voice in Jason’s head that hisses about how he’s alone, unworthy, abandoned, is silent for the first time since he hauled himself out of the pit, choking and gasping for air.

The next morning, Talia is pouring tea at the table in the breakfast room when he finds her. His hair is still wet from his shower, and he swipes the white locks of his bangs irritably off his forehead, mixing them with the surrounding darker locks.

“Do the documents meet with your satisfaction, Jason?” Talia murmurs without looking up.

Swallowing dryly, he sits down across from her. He sets the court order overturning his death certificate and the second-parent adoption petition for freaking Jason Todd-Wayne on the table in front of him. The dates, nineteen months ago, stare back at him. The silence stretches. 

When he finally looks up, Talia is sipping calmly from her cup. 

Jason doesn’t think he’ll ever really understand Talia, but things have been changing between them for a while now, since well before LA. He’s seen it in how she looks at him, in the warmth in her sharp, emerald eyes. He’s heard it in her voice, in her calm honesty. He felt it in the gift of a bloody knife.

It is my responsibility, my right, to keep you safe. 

Looking at Talia now, Jason wonders if what he’s seeing fully for the first time has been there all along.

“Why - How did you - really, T?”

Talia smiles, her real smile, pleased and self-satisfied.

“They’ll know,” he continues hastily. “They could already know. They have search algorithms for—”

“Jason,” she interrupts, “have I ever given you reason to doubt me? Some things are out of reach, even for Batman and his Oracle.”

Talia pauses until she has his full attention. 

“International courts and sealed records do help in that effort,” she allows. Talia’s smile slides into something resembling a smirk. “An NSA cryptographer with a past and debts to be paid helps too,” she murmurs.

Jason’s mouth opens, but his tongue is slow and uncoordinated, and no words come out.

Talia narrows her eyes at him, tilting her head to the side. “I could make it less secure if you prefer. Leave a trail of breadcrumbs.” Her smile is shark-like now.

Jason chokes slightly, reaching hastily for his cup and taking a too-large sip of hot tea.

“That sure looks like my signature on the petitions,” he finally manages in return. “You didn’t think to ask first?”

Talia huffs lightly, amusement clear, and reaches out to pour them both more tea.

“I’m not a fucking replacement for Damian, Talia,” Jason tries to growl, but he’s pretty sure the thickness in his voice gives him away. 

“Of course not.”

“And I’m not a pawn in whatever long game you’re playing with Bruce!”

Talia doesn’t even dignify that outburst with a response.

He wants to give up, let go, and just be, let the feelings wash over him. But still—

“So why…?” He trails off. 

Whether or not he voices the words, Talia always seems to hear what matters.

“Have you ever known me to be insincere in my offers?” Her emerald eyes flare bright, holding his gaze and refusing to look away. 

“No.” His voice comes out like he’s been gargling glass. “But, I don’t have the best record—”

Talia stands silently, pacing around the table to his side, laying her hand gently across the back of his neck. 

“It is good, then, ثعلبي الصغير, that I know how to keep track of my sons.”

Jason bows his head, fighting against the burn of tears in his eyes. It’s pathetic and weak, and he can’t find it in himself to care. Talia’s hand, familiar and grounding, doesn’t pull away.

“Do you understand now, جرو?”

“Yeah,” Jason says. “I think I do.”

Chapter Text

Jason resettles his grip on his sniper rifle and exhales deliberately while counting to four. He’s stretched out on his stomach on the roof of a high rise in the business district of Kuala Lumpur. The three highest-ranking members of the Jalur Gelap Triad are meeting tonight in a building down the street. 

He can see all three of them through the scope of his rifle. 

Jason lines up his first shot and lets his finger slip down around the trigger.

Pop!  

Even with the suppressor, the shot is loud. Glass explodes, and the first target drops with a spray of red mist.

Pop! 

The second target is down. 

Pop!  

His third shot misses as the remaining triad leader falls to his hands and knees, scuttling across the room toward the door.

“Shit,” Jason murmurs.

Movement in the sky catches his eye, and Jason looks up to see a helicopter descending toward the roof of the Triad’s building.

“Shit,” he hisses again. There’s an internal stairwell leading up to the roof that he doesn’t have any visibility to. He’ll have to take his remaining target out after they exit the rooftop access door and before they reach the helicopter.

A crackle of automatic gunfire echoes between the buildings. Jason tilts his head slightly, it sounds like it's coming from ground level. He pans his scope down, surprised to see an explosion of activity around the building’s previously quiet main entrance. Jason can see a cluster of Triad members and the distinctive flicker of muzzle flash lighting up the darkness. 

There’s an explosion of green light. When it clears, the Triad members are all on the ground. Jason zooms the scope’s field of view out just in time to catch two figures dropping down to hover in the air over the fallen men. Jason recognizes Green Lantern’s uniform, along with Hawkgirl’s distinctive wings.

“What the ever-loving fuck,” Jason swears vehemently. This night is rapidly spiraling out of control. He sweeps his scope back up and refocuses on the building’s roof where the helicopter is just touching down. 

Jason finds a clear sight line and waits. The rooftop around him is still and silent. Jason lifts his head, something tickling his senses. He cocks his head slightly and listens. 

He’s not alone. 

Kicking out with his foot, he sends a spray of gravel shooting out towards the shadows to this right. A second later, the pebbles clatter down harmlessly onto the rooftop, not a single trajectory disturbed.

A small throwing knife whizzes past his cheek, hitting the cement in front of his face and skittering away.

Jason doesn’t flinch. He shifts slightly on his stomach and looks through his scope again.

“No fair retaliating with a bladed object,” he calls out.

“Disrespectful children get treated as such,” a smooth voice answers in Arabic. 

Jason laughs lowly. “I take it you know why the JLA is crashing my op.”

Talia steps lightly out of the shadows, crossing the roof to crouch beside Jason.

“It seems the Jalur Gelap Triad has dipped its hands into the alien weapons trade.”

Jason snorts sharply. “Your influence, I assume?” 

It’s Talia’s turn to laugh now. “Come, Jason,” she says lightly. “It’s time to go.”

“Just a sec,” Jason mutters.

Through his scope, Jason sees his last target emerge from the rooftop doorway and sprint toward the helicopter. 

Pop! The body falls. 

A blur of red and blue lands on the roof and bends over the body.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Jason exclaims, jumping to his feet, already dissembling his rifle. “Now we really have to go.”

A black Escalade is waiting in the alley when he and Talia exit the back of the building. Jason slides into its cool, dark interior, and the sounds of the city at night cut off as the door shuts smoothly behind him.

The SUV eases out of the alley and glides deeper into the city. Jason pushes back his hood, pulling off his balaclava and running a hand through his sweaty hair.

Beside him, Talia is tapping rapidly at her phone. 

“It’s good to see you, T,” he says quietly.

Talia looks up. “And you, جرو,” she says, her voice pleased. “You have been gone from Tadrib Almawt for too long.”

Jason hums softly in agreement. It’s been almost two months since they were last together. They communicate regularly, but Jason’s been moving around Southeast Asia almost constantly since he left Tadrib Almawt.

“How’s Damian,” he asks hesitantly. 

Talia’s face tightens. “We have not spoken,” she says shortly. “Your father is displeased with me. But from the reports I’ve received, he is … adjusting.”

“Yeah,” Jason huffs, “that tracks.” It’d be a hard transition from growing up in the League of Assassins to living with the bats in Bristol.

For a moment, his own memories well up and overwhelm him. Jason inhales roughly, pushing the thoughts, the longing, down.

Talia’s eyes narrow briefly, her eyes search his face, before she looks away.

“Do you wish to go back, Jason?” Talia asks, her gaze focused somewhere past the Escalade’s tinted window. “To Gotham?”

Jason shifts in his seat, the smooth leather creaking softly underneath him.

Gotham used to be his home. He’d been happy there once. 

There’s a memory that comes to him at night sometimes, in that brief time when he’s no longer fully awake but not yet asleep. Jason closes his eyes, and he can feel it hovering at the edge of his awareness.

He’s standing on the corner of a busy street, his small hand held securely in a much larger one. 

A city bus rumbles past, splashing puddled rainwater up onto the curb.

Jason laughs, leaping lightly to the side to avoid the spray.

Across the street, the white columns of a courthouse stretch up in front of him. 

The hand wrapped around his squeezes gently. He looks up into warm blue-gray eyes.

‘Ready?’ asks a deep, familiar voice.

Jason smiles widely, Robin-bright.

“No,” Jason says, his eyes on his hands in his lap, one finger tracing the webbing of his thigh holster as he tries to tuck the memory away, out of reach. He wonders vaguely what sin he committed in his first life that he can’t forget what he can’t get back. 

He left Gotham behind a long time ago. He doesn’t need Bruce anymore, not the way he did before Talia stepped in. Before she backed up her words with actions. 

Still, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want— 

Jason crushes the thought before it can go any further.

“He gave up on me long before I died, Talia. And even if he wanted the boy I used to be back, he’d never accept who I am now.” 

He makes monsters disappear permanently. So they can never hurt anyone again. So their victims can feel safe. He does it because it’s what’s needed, it’s what’s right.

Talia isn’t the family Jason ever thought he’d have, but she loves him unconditionally. She’s the family he needs. 

“I belong here,” he finishes.

He looks over at Talia. There’s a gentleness to her face that Jason rarely sees. She reaches up, brushing an errant lock of white hair off his forehand. 

“Hm,” she says softly. “Alright.”

A week later, Jason’s in Indonesia surveilling the new shipping routes the Garuda Syndicate’s been using when he hears from Talia again. The email comes from one of her lesser-used but still heavily encrypted addresses. It’s a set of flight details, coordinates, and a time, two days from now. 

The flight is from Jakarta to Nicosia, and Jason recognizes the coordinates for a private island off the eastern coast of Cyprus. Talia has a villa there that she uses occasionally to meet with League associates. 

Jason rolls his eyes at the implicit command, even though he knows he’ll go as ordered. Usually, Talia just shows up when she wants something. She rarely summons him to meet her. Maybe there’s been a development in their shadow war with Ra’s.

Jason looks over the flight details again and wrinkles his nose. Just because he plans to show up, he doesn’t have to do it as expected. 

A sliver of the sun is just visible above the horizon as Jason guides a small speedboat up to the island’s dock. Talia’s villa sits overhead, perched atop a large bluff overlooking the sea. He’d hopped a well-timed cargo plane out of Jakarta and landed in Nicosia at least eight hours ahead of schedule.

Rocky hills and sheer cliff faces cover most of the island, but the eastern shore sports a small beach thick with white sand. A winding path of crushed limestone that’s lined with olive trees and oleander bushes dripping with clustered blooms leads from the dock up to the villa.

Jason ties up the boat and slips silently up the path and through the villa’s front door. The house is dark and quiet. He’s been to the villa enough that there’s a room in the eastern wing he thinks of as his own. Peeking inside, Jason frowns at the lamp glowing on the bedside table and the tray of nuts and fruit set out in the small sitting area. 

Maybe his travel plans aren’t a surprise after all, he thinks ruefully. 

Jason drops his rucksack on the bed and wanders out onto the balcony. The Mediterranean’s azure waters stretch out in front of him, slowly growing brighter in the first rays of the morning sun.

Too wired to try and sleep, Jason heads back inside to change into workout gear and then pads quietly back out of the villa again. There’s a trail that wanders through the island’s hills before ending on the beach below that’s good for running.

The sun is still low in the sky, but the day is heating up by the time he reaches the beach. Sweat drips off his face and his shirt has long since been soaked through. 

Jason shades his eyes against the glare off the ocean, and gazes up at the villa. The sun reflects brightly off the pristine white columns of a wide veranda that wraps around the back of the house. There’s a table there where Talia likes to have tea in the morning.

Jason studies the cliff face carefully, a grin stretching over his face. It’s not quite the gothic architecture he grew up with, but the villa is only about fifty feet up, and it looks like a good climb. Striding to the base of the cliff, he finds an initial handhold, and pulls himself up. His feet find easy purchase against the rough rock wall.

Jason works his way carefully up the cliffside. The smell of hibiscus floats on the sea breeze, growing stronger with every foot closer to the top he ascends. As he hauls himself up the last few feet, an abstract corner of Jason’s mind identifies the sounds of two people engaged in a tense conversation. By the time he finally rolls over the edge at the top, the voices have stopped.

Jason flops onto his back, sprawling momentarily in the warm dirt as he pants in satisfaction, blinking his eyes against the harsh sunlight. A shadow falls over his face, and he looks up to see Talia standing over him.

“An unconventional entrance as usual,” she says with exasperation. But the tilt of her lips is fond.

Jason flips up easily to his feet and grins. “You having breakfast, T? I’m starving,” he says, moving to duck around her.

Talia pivots and slides over a step, halting his progress.

“Jason,” she says seriously. Jason draws back, suddenly unsure. He hears the faint sounds of someone standing, followed by the barely there tread of footsteps drawing closer.

Talia’s gaze catches his own and holds it as Jason rolls his shoulders uncomfortably, trying to ignore the feeling of sweat mixed with dirt drying against his skin.

“I need you to listen to me now,” Talia continues in Arabic. 

A figure moves into view at the very periphery of Jason’s vision, pausing in the shadow of the veranda’s outermost column. 

Talia’s expression softens almost imperceptibly as she says, “I told you once, Jason, that everything I’d done, I’d done for love. That I hoped it would guide you into what you would become.” 

“Talia,” Jason interrupts, his throat dry and tight. “What’s going on?” He can’t look away from her green eyes. 

Talia reaches up with both hands and grasps his shoulders. Her cool, dry palms press soothingly against his tight muscles.

“I had always intended to give you back, Jason,” Talia answers softly. 

“Give me - what? T,” he tries again. 

“But then I didn’t want to lose you,” Talia continues levelly, “and that was my weakness.” 

You being here is a miracle, my miracle, Jason remembers, from a night when they stood together in front of a neon skyline.

“Wait, don’t - stop,” he stammers.

Talia’s hands hold his shoulders firmly as she steps back. “I don’t regret my choices—”

“T - T, please,” he interrupts again as Talia’s face blurs in front of his eyes. 

 The figure in his peripheral vision shifts forward slightly.

“—but it’s past time I helped you regain some of what you lost.” 

I will always do what’s best for you, Jason remembers, from a morning when they stood together in a sun-drenched training room. 

A dark shadow stretches over Talia’s shoulder, and Jason’s eyes close reflexively as he ducks his head down.

“Jason?” A stunned voice asks roughly. 

“Jason,” the voice says again, stronger this time. A calloused palm slides against Jason’s cheek. 

“Jaylad.” The voice cracks on the words, and then there are arms encircling Jason, and he can’t move. He’s frozen in place, feet glued to the ground beneath him.

There’s an arm wrapped around his shoulders and a large hand cradling the back of his head, tucking him against a broad shoulder. Wetness tickles Jason’s scalp, spreading from where he can feel a face buried in his hair. The scent of sandalwood and leather swirls around him. 

He misses you, Jason remembers, from a day when he sat with Talia underneath a purple sky.

The blunt edges of Jason’s nails dig into his palms as he starts to push his fists against the hard planes of the chest in front of him. He should be angry, he should be furious, he should—

When he tips his head back to look up, blue-gray eyes gaze back.

Bruce, Jason’s mind finally supplies. Bruce is here. 

Bruce’s expression is shattered. It’s open and raw, and wet with tears, but his eyes are full of hope. Jason stares back, his fingers moving to twist smooth cotton into a desperate grip. 

He should push Bruce away, he should—

Bruce’s eyes squeeze shut briefly before lifting skyward. “Thank you,” he whispers, pressing dry lips against Jason’s temple. “Thank you.”

Bruce’s arms tighten around Jason again, holding him like something precious, like something wanted. 

Oh, Jason’s heart remembers. Dad. 

The sun blazes in the sky overhead, its heat flooding into Jason, warming him all the way down to his bones. 

“Thank you,” Bruce breathes again, his hand carding gently through Jason’s hair. 

A step away, Talia stands watching them both, her green gaze fierce. The smile curving her lips is faint but real.

You are safe with me, little fox, Jason remembers, from a time without memories.

Nothing will ever be like it was before, but maybe things that are old and broken can also be part of something new. 

This feels like home, Jason realizes. I think I’m home.

Chapter Text

Jason creeps down one of Tadrib Almawt’s lesser used passages, moving from one shadow to the next as he works his way steadily toward the back entrance to his suite of rooms.

Rounding the last corner, he stops short at the sight of the figure waiting for him outside his door.

“Ibn al Shayṭānah, welcome home.”

Jason hikes his rucksack up higher on his shoulders and sighs. Ibn al Shayṭānah. Son of the Demoness. Ever since Costa Rica, the title has been popping up more and more often among Talia’s faction of the League.

“Oh, hey, Muna. You know, just ‘Jason’ is fine.” Jason tries unsuccessfully to suppress the smile tugging at the corner of his lips. 

Muna has been Tadrib Almawt’s steward since long before Jason's initial arrival. At first she seemed to barely tolerate his presence, but she’s warmed up significantly since Jason officially accepted Talia’s adoption. 

Muna raises an eyebrow. “Your mother sends her greetings. She would have been here to meet you, had she been aware of your impending arrival.”

Jason snorts. “Yeah, I bet she would have,” he murmurs under his breath.

In the aftermath of Talia’s little stunt in Cyprus, he’s been hopping erratically between safe houses in Europe and Southeast Asia in order to avoid her. He isn’t quite ready to call a truce yet.

Judging by Talia’s increasingly irritated texts, she’s not amused.

“Lady Talia will be here by nightfall. She requests that you wait to receive her.” Muna glares sternly at Jason.

Jason sighs again, counting quickly in his head. He was going to have to move up his timetable significantly.

“Of course, Muna. I’m not leaving anytime soon,” he says, lying through his teeth. “I’m just going to go and clean up.”

“As you wish, Ibn al Shayṭānah. I shall notify Lady Talia of your safe arrival.”

“Great,” Jason mutters, slipping into his room. So much for a day to relax. Between dodging Talia and trying to keep Bruce out of his hair, Jason was in serious need of a vacation. Preferably on a beach somewhere without cell service.

Clicking on the television in the main room, he flips quickly through the channels before settling on Al Jazeera, leaving it to play on mute. Moving over to the bed, he dumps out his rucksack and starts pulling clothes and gear from his closet to repack it with. 

A flash of color on the television catches Jason’s attention as he’s changing out of his travel worn clothing. A bright red banner flashes at the bottom of the screen, white text scrolling across it.

CRISIS IN QURAC. INTERIM GOVERNMENT TO EXECUTE AMERICAN CITIZEN.

Jason squints, taking in a familiar face framed by a shock of red hair. 

Huh, Jason thinks, wasn’t expecting that. 

He watches the screen for a moment more before grabbing his tablet and launching Talia's backdoor into the JLA’s system. The one he’s not supposed to know about. 

There’s nothing. No mission plans, no chatter, no intel.

After a moment of deliberation, Jason peels off the jeans he’d just pulled on and reaches for his Red Hood gear.

Jason presses his body tightly against the outer wall of Tadrib Almawt, his hands and feet finding purchase in the natural crevices of the compound’s weathered facade as he works his way carefully westward around the compound.

The hapless League trainee stationed in the hallway outside Jason’s room had forced him to take the long way around.

The waves crashing rhythmically against the rocky shore several hundred feet below punctuate the sound of Jason’s steady breathing and the occasional scrape of his boots against the stone. 

Finally, he rounds the last corner and drops down to land lightly on the balcony attached to Talia’s suite. Jason slips easily through the French doors. The room on the other side is dark and still. Grabbing a piece of paper off the writing desk in the corner, Jason scratches down a quick note.

Borrowing one of the Blackhawks to run an errand. Don’t wait up. J

Taping the note prominently on the mirror above Talia’s bureau, Jason heads to the suite’s main entrance. The corridor looks deserted when he cautiously pokes his head out. Jason closes the door quietly behind him and runs lightly down the hall.

One parent down, Jason thinks, pulling his phone out of his pocket as he bounds up a flight of stairs. One semi-estranged, semi-reconciled, sort-of-parent to go.

Despite an ocean and several continents between them, Bruce’s ability to hover has been annoyingly impressive, Jason thinks grumpily. After several blow-up arguments, they’ve reached a tentative compromise. Provided there are no further attempts to discuss a return to Gotham, Jason’s career choices, or contact with any blue-eyed, black-haired not-brothers, Jason has stopped blocking Bruce’s numbers, and, in return, Bruce has stopped trying to constantly track Jason’s movements.

It’s working, sort of.

Jason pauses before the access door leading out to the rooftop helipad, and rummages around in his bag for a spare SIM card. He swaps it out quickly for the one in his cell phone, and then types out a short text message:

Going dark for a while

After a moment of deliberation, he adds:

T knows the details

Jason smirks, pulling the SIM card and battery out of his phone just as it starts to ring. Serves them both right.

Tucking the phone and its pieces back into his pocket, Jason ducks out the access door, and sprints across the rooftop, staying low to the ground. 

He climbs hurriedly into the Blackhawk’s cockpit, strapping himself in with one hand while he engages the ignition with the other. There’s a low whirring sound as the engine comes to life that gradually intensifies into a roar. 

The rotor blades are almost at speed, dust and debris whipping across the rooftop, when the access door bursts open. Two figures rush out, one turning back to hold the door open against the wind. Muna appears in the threshold, a cell phone pressed to her ear. There’s a pulsing throb as the Blackhawk quivers in place before lifting gracefully off the ground, ascending vertically. 

A grin lights up Jason’s face as he gives Muna a two-fingered salute. Even across the distance and looking through the helicopter’s dusty window, he can make out her scowl. 

The Blackhawk gains altitude, and then tilts and accelerates forward as Jason sets a course eastward, toward the rising sun.

Jason laughs brightly, glancing over at the compound bow he’d grabbed from the armory on his way out. His grenade launcher is propped up against the seat next to it.

It’s going to be a good day.