Chapter Text
A month.
That was how long Alfred expected Jason to stay in bed.
He lasted three days.
But, he used a wheelchair, so was it really a big deal when no matter what he was still on his ass? Or at least, he’d used the wheelchair to get out of the Batcave, into the manor, and check the first floor for his gear. When none of the usual hiding places had what he was looking for he decided to check the second floor, which meant stairs.
Tim found him resting half way up, his head between his knees and his hand pressed to his incision. The jerk just stood there for several moments saying nothing, nudging Jason’s abandoned chair with the toe of his shoe.
“Take a picture,” Jason panted, raising his head long enough to glare at the kid before dropping it back down and swallowing the bile in his throat. “It’ll last longer.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be resting?” Tim finally said.
“-am resting.”
Tim scoffed. “Uh huh, I’m sure Alfred will totally agree with your definition of 'rest'.”
There was another long pause within which Jason’s head stopped spinning enough for him to sit up straight. Tim leaned against the wall, arms loosely crossed, eyebrow cocked. He looked mildly amused at the whole thing.
“Well? You gonna help or…?”
Tim huffed a sound somewhere between annoyance and amusement and came up the stairs, pulled Jason to his feet, slung his arm across Tim’s smaller shoulders, and started helping him limp down the stairs. Or at least tried. Jason dug in his heels, as much as he could with one of them in a cast and his head swimming once more from the sudden change in blood flow.
“Up, not down,” he growled, hoping the bravado would hide how tightly he clutched Tim’s shoulders. Falling down the stair probably wouldn’t kill him, but it certainly wouldn’t help his injuries heal any faster.
Tim glared at him. “What’s so important upstairs?”
Jason clammed up.
“I’m not carrying your fat ass up these stairs without a reason.”
“Rude. I’m not fat. It’s all muscle,” Jason quipped with no real heat. He was too busy trying to come up with a believable lie. The smarter, more rational part of his brain asked why he couldn’t just tell Tim he was looking for his gear. Maybe the kid knew where it was. But the other part of him, the part that had grown up on the street, the lesser, more animal part said admitting he didn’t know where his gear was was weakness. Never show weakness.
As if the fact he couldn’t even walk on his own wasn’t a more damning weakness, but…instincts didn’t always follow logic.
“Dick keeps porn mags under his bed. Figured I’d grab one,” Jason said.
That earned him a disbelieving snort. Yeah, it was a terrible lie anyways.
“I’m looking for my gear,” Jason finally admitted, grinding the words through his teeth.
“So, what? You thought you’d just take a quick stroll around a manor with more than 20 bedrooms until you found it, instead of asking someone, like say, Alfred, who took your gear to wash and repair it and would know exactly where it was?”
“Well, when you say it like that you just make me sound like an idiot.”
Tim sighed and manhandled Jason down the stairs and back into his wheelchair. “You are an idiot, Jason.”
Jason didn’t have a smartass comment for that one.
They lapsed into an awkward silence as Tim pushed him back through the manor.
“When I found you, I-I thought you were dead,” Tim mumbled so quietly Jason wasn’t sure Tim realized he was even speaking out loud. Jason tilted his head back to look at the kid’s face and his heart gave a tight squeeze at the anguish on his face. “There was so much blood and you weren’t moving. Even when I called your name, you didn’t react and…” Tim inhaled shakily. “Why didn’t you call someone? Your phone was in your pocket. If I hadn’t overheard those idiots crowing to the sky over ‘showing that Red Hood asshole who’s boss’ you’d have died in that alley.”
“‘Crowing’?” Jason teased, throat tight.
Tim jerked them to a halt and Jason winced as pain briefly flared in his chest. The kid stomped around the chair until he could glare into Jason’s eyes. His eyes were red and glistening like he was seconds away from crying. “Dammit, Jason, talk to me. Or talk to someone. How long do you think you can keep up this ‘tough guy, nothing fazes me, life’s a joke’ act? Is it so wrong to let your family see you? To help you?”
“‘Cept, we’re not family.” Jason growled, his temper rising up to cover the shame and guilt curling in his gut. “You’re my replacement. I’d barely been cold and in the ground before he’d found another child soldier to enlist in his war. Wasn’t bad enough he’d gotten one kid killed, no he had to go and find another target. That’s what that costume made us, you know, a damn target in bright red and green. Hopping around, mouthing off to the bad guys, drawing the fire. There’s no way the ‘World’s Greatest Detective’ hadn’t known he was going to get one of us killed eventually.” He spat the words like bullets, taking sick pleasure in the small flinch he forced from Tim.
Tim shook his head. “Bruce never asked me to take over as Robin. I practically forced myself into the role. He hadn’t wanted to endanger another kid. He told me no. But I refused to accept that as an answer. I put on the costume and I basically told him I was never taking it off. He needs a Robin, don’t you see that?”
Jason scoffed. “Bullshit.”
“You and him are so much alike, it’s scary sometimes,” Tim continued on as if Jason hadn’t even spoken. “There’s this anger, simmering inside both of you. And most of the time you keep it locked away. But when you died, well, you weren’t the only one who let that anger boil over. I saw it, what losing you did to him. He was slipping, letting the anger make him sloppy. Maybe that was his way of punishing himself for not saving you, I don’t know. But I do know that without Robin there to remind him to be better, it’s too easy for him to lose himself to that anger.
“I see the same thing with you, Jason. You’re angry and you don’t know what to do with it and it’s eating you up inside. But it doesn’t have to. If you would just pull your head out of your ass long enough to let us help you.”
Jason stared at Tim in shock. He’d always assumed, like him and Dick, that Bruce had offered the position to Tim. And that had hurt almost as much as knowing he’d done nothing to avenge Jason. The thought that Bruce had turned right around and filled his spot had cut him deeply. But if Tim was telling the truth then…
Alfred cleared his throat behind Tim, making them both start slightly. “Master Jason, I believe you should be resting. In bed.” He glared down his nose at Jason, making him feel like an unruly fifteen year old again. “Master Timothy, would you be so kind as to see Master Jason back to the cave?”
Jason frowned. The cave was mind numbingly boring during the day. Hell, even at night there wasn’t much going on beside the quiet sounds of Alfred moving about and quietly reporting to Bruce over comms. If he had to spend one more hour staring at the damn ceiling, he’d leave, even if that meant crawling out on his hands and knees.
Tim met his eyes before he flashed Alfred a charming smile. “Maybe we could move Jason to a room up here in the manor? Someplace with a TV and…people?”
Alfred blinked as if the thought surprised him before he nodded. “Of course, I didn’t consider the…monotony of the cave. The west wing family room will be more comfortable. Why don’t you get him settled on the couch and I will retrieve his IV and other supplies?”
Alfred then bustled away, assuming his instructions would be followed, which they were. Tim helped Jason onto the couch before covering him with a large, fluffy blanket. Jason didn’t want to admit it, but his body was happy to be horizontal again. His little adventure had taxed him more than he’d thought it would and as Tim continued to move around the room, exhaustion pulled Jason’s eyes closed.
The faint sound of voices suddenly washed through the room and Jason cracked his eyes open to see Tim had put on an episode of some reality show and had taken the reclining chair beside the couch.
“If you got shit to do,” Jason mumbled, “go do it. Don’t gotta babysit me.”
“And miss my show?” Tim gasped in the most overly dramatic fashion, his hand on his chest and head thrown back in mock disgust.
Jason snorted. Suit himself.
When Jason opened his eyes an indeterminate amount of time later the sun had set and the room was dark except for the light of the TV. A Bruce-shaped figure crouched in front of the couch, his fingers pressed to Jason’s wrist as he took his pulse. He looked up and their eyes met. “Your pulse is a little thready. How do you feel?”
He felt like shit, but there was nothing Bruce could do about that. Jason was just living with the consequences of his choices. “Did you really let a ten year old strong arm you into letting him run around beating up psychos in spandex?” Jason asked instead of answering the question.
Bruce gave him the smallest of smirks. “There was Kevlar under that spandex.”
“And I was twelve,” Tim’s sleepy voice called from the recliner, which was now fully reclined.
Bruce’s hand moved from his wrist to card through his bangs. Jason grimaced. His hair was greasy and stringy after several days without a shower. He’d begrudgingly let Alfred clean the area around his chest wound every day, but he drew the line at a sponge bath. He’d kill for a hot shower.
“Alfred put all your gear in a backpack by the couch,” Bruce said, his tone holding no emotion. Jason couldn’t tell if he was upset Jason had been hunting for his gear in secret or if he just thought it was par for the Jason course. Jason eyed the recliner with mild annoyance. The little snitch.
“Even the guns?” Jason mumbled, forcing himself not to snuggle into the warmth of the blanket over him and the soothing feeling of fingers in his hair.
The fingers paused for the briefest second before they resumed their movement. “Yes, but he decided to keep the ammo.”
Jason hummed sleepily. He could get more ammo simple enough.
“You could’ve just asked, Jaybird.”
Jason let sleep pull him under rather than try to answer. It was easier that way. The last thing he heard was Bruce’s quiet sigh before he drifted off again.
The next time Jason awoke the sun was up once more, the recliner was empty, the TV was off, and his stomach was growling loud enough to wake the house. He realized in his exhaustion last night he hadn’t eaten dinner. Alfred was going to give him one hell of a lecture.
He sat up. His chest twinged but no worse than it had yesterday. He looked around for the wheelchair but it was gone. Great. Someone had decided he’d had enough freedom recently, it seemed. His phone sat on the floor next to the couch, charging, and he thought about texting Alfred to bring him breakfast and then thought better of it.
He swung his legs off the couch, his ankle already throbbing and he paused, Tim’s words from yesterday echoing in his head. Hadn’t they proven by now that, regardless of Jason’s mistakes, they wanted to help? Why was he still so determined to make life harder for himself? Okay, so he knew why. It didn’t take a masters in psychology to diagnose his emotional baggage. Having a druggy mom and a crook dad, both of whom abandoned him one way or another as a kid had made Jason…extra independent. He hated feeling like he needed someone else because what if they weren’t there the next time he was in need? He had to do things himself.
But…
Was breakfast really the hill he wanted to die on? It wasn’t like Alfred hadn’t made him food all the time growing up in the manor. It was his job. Did it really matter if it was because he couldn’t get to the kitchen to make it himself this time? The rolling of his stomach said it did.
The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. Someone was watching him.
He jerked his head up, he hadn’t realized he’d been glaring at his feet, and met Dick’s eyes. There was an infuriatingly knowing smirk on his stupid face as he leaned against the doorway, ankles crossed casually.
“What?” Jason snapped.
“Want me to ask Alfred to bring you some food?” Dick offered. It was a simple thing. Nothing out of the ordinary about it at all, but the intensity of Dick’s eyes said he was guessing at what Jason had been struggling with so desperately a minute ago and he was giving him an out.
Jason huffed and snatched his phone off the floor. “Nah, I got it.” He sent a text to Alfred before his mind could catch up with his fingers.
The smirk on Dick’s face only increased in smugness, the asshole. “Proud of you, Jay.” He then turned and walked away with a wave over his shoulder.
Jason was definitely not blushing from the praise when Alfred came to deliver him breakfast. Nope.