Chapter Text
There’s a moment, when the craft punched through Earth’s atmosphere, blue of the oceans and green of the land falling away, that Jason thinks, ‘I’ve made a terrible mistake.’ His little closet of a room shakes around him and he thinks of Artie and Biz, maybe lost somewhere, more than likely dead, thinks about how he’s running away instead of finding them.
He’s used to suffering through his awful mistakes, so he let’s the thought go.
He flops onto the short, narrow cot bolted to the wall and lays the torn photos of Artie and Biz, Roy and Kori on the pillow. He curls on his side, eyes tracing over his teams.
Roy in the picture stands out, because Roy in life has always stood out to Jason, but this time around (fuck, for the past year) it’s because he keeps getting caught on the square of his jaw (hers is softer, still the same shape though), the arch of his brow (hers is just the slightest bit flatter, dark hair not as bushy), the way the apples of his cheeks round up around his grin (hers are perpetually round, even around a scowl).
He hasn’t been able to look at Roy without seeing Lian, feeling that burning jealousy hearing them over the phone, together. That week in his apartment, post finding her, an irrational rage had built in him, a constant soundtrack of “Why not me? Why can’t my father be happy I’m alive?”
He’d been humiliated to realize, two days in, that he was bitterly jealous of a reunion between father and daughter. The kid had followed him around his apartment, wary around Roy, and Jason had to count down from thirty, forty, one hundred to control his anger.
He wanted to crawl back into his grave, wanted to track Bruce down, wanted to scream.
He wanted someone to love him. He kicked Roy and his kid out, instead.
The thought comes back, though, when he wakes up, and brings more friends with it, more anxiety choked wonderings over his fucking plan here.
He’s stupid. He’s so. Fucking. Stupid. A moron of the highest degree. The ship’s gonna touch down, and he’s gonna be face to face with fucking Rayner, pissed that he’s had to leave Earth during his down time because Jason got his feelings hurt.
He lays in his cot, lumpy and smelling vaguely of dirt and unwashed feet, heart thumping faster and faster to the beat of “Coward” as he watches streaks of light pass by his window.
There’s a disbelieving laugh bubbling up inside him. He just wasted thousands of dollars and someone else’s time on a fucking tantrum.
How many other Lanterns is Rayner gonna drag with him to collect his ass? How many important missions is he disrupting by being a child?
He’s going to be dragged back to Gotham, humiliated.
Park Row is unprotected. He doesn’t know why it took so long for him to realize that.
Like, sure, Duke and Steph had hopped their scrawny asses into the day to day grind of the empire he was creating there, occasionally helping, mostly being hard to shake off annoyances. They could fill the void he left, they know the lay of the land and that the people there are worth bleeding for, but.
But Gotham is big. Gotham is big, and she is made of cruelty. The Signal has all of her to watch in the daylight, and, no matter how many of them there are, Batgirl belongs to all of Gotham, not just a tiny portion of it. They have their own territories and cases and people to protect, and Jason just shoved all of his onto them.
He curls unto his side, pulls the itchy blanket over his head and lets out a heartfelt “Fuck.”
He abandoned his neighborhood. Batman had popped him across his cheek, and instead of just scurrying off, tail between his legs to lick his wounds, he caught the first train out, problems left in a heap for someone else to deal with.
It’s no wonder Bruce hates him.
Although, now that he isn’t there to be hated, who’s gonna fill that role? Bruce needs someone close to butt heads with, some member of his team to buck at his every command so that he can assert his dominance.
When Jason had been Robin, it had been Dick, leaving the nest and Bruce’s protection to carve a life out on his own. Part of Jason’s training had been to review old Robin and current Nightwing cases for failures, for holes in Dick’s defense, weeks spent picking apart his big brother’s every deficiency. Bruce had been adamant that Jason learn and avoid Dick’s mistakes.
It’ll be Steph or Damian, he thinks with a sigh, that will get the brunt of Bruce’s emotional outbursts.
He sits up, rubs his face and stares out of his window.
He’s such a fucking jackass.
Two weeks in space is longer than two weeks on Earth. For one, Jason can’t just step outside when he needs a breather from the cramped quarters, the overwhelming scents and sounds of other people. There’s an Astonian on board who narrates every fucking thing she does, endless loops of “Walking down the hall, seven steps, turn, walking down the hall, seven steps turn,” that makes Jason wish he could shoot her out of the airlock. All of his extensive and intensive meditation training cannot save him from hearing her voice at all hours.
He’s trying to change, though, to stop being the hair trigger asshole so that maybe this time he can have a good life, so he smiles at her when he sees her in the cramped galleys, when they eat together in the mess hall.
It lasts for about three days before he starts taking his meals in his room. He can’t be expected to suffer through “Lift fork, open mouth, chew.”
He’s lonely. He didn’t expect to miss his home this much, and he didn’t expect to be reminded of Bruce so much by the vast blackness of space. He sleeps with his window screens up, light from passing stars and planets washing over his face as he beats himself up over this stupid decision.
It wasn’t that bad, being under Batman’s thumb. It was workable. He should have stayed, he shouldn’t have abandoned his home and his life.
He sits on the cot in his room, banging his fists against his head, wisps of planetary nebula swirling against his window and misses what he threw away.
It’s the same when they eventually land on Belit, the loneliness and boredom. He explores the rain forests, samples the local cuisine, and then every night he makes his way up to the metal roof of the tiny house he’s renting and misses home.
He was supposed to hitch a ride after touching down, hop a few planets to actually cover his trail, but by the time he dropped his duffles into the dirt, he was too tired to be thorough. There was no contingent of angry Green Lanterns waiting for him when they landed, pissed that they had go out of their way to wrangle a wayward Bat.
So, no one is coming for him. But that’s OK, and that’s fine, because now he doesn’t have to waste anymore money planet hopping. He can settle in here, plot out the rest of his life.
In his more maudlin moments, he imagines Bruce and Alfred, shocked that they had run him off, begging him to come home, Dick’s big watery eyes and soft voice murmuring “Little Wing…”. His father and his grandfather would apologize, wrap him in their arms and finally welcome him home.
That fantasy falls apart though. What, would the team discover Bruce and Alfred were infected by space parasites that made them hate the recently risen dead? Or that they were imperfectly made clones, not implanted with the right memories of Jason before his death?
Maybe Jason is the one wrong here. Maybe he’s not remembering his childhood right, maybe Bruce and Alfred have always held him in low regard.
Or maybe he should just stop fucking thinking about it, finally fucking just let it go and stop being a fucking bitch about it.
When he really wants to pick at his scabs, he imagines that no one other than Duke noticed he was gone, rest of the team unbothered, safe houses picked clean and resources scattered. That’s the most likely scenario here. There wasn’t any bad blood between him and Duke, Jason worked hard to make sure sure he had just one uncomplicated relationship with a brother, with a hero.
The kid is probably worried about him, and stressed, and there’s Jason, flushing three years of a budding, easy tie to another person over nothing but the same old, same old.
Being so far away from everything is really putting into perspective exactly why Jason was never anyone’s first call for anything.
He wakes up every morning, Bruce’s baritone voice in his head leading him through his work out. He eats his breakfast, elbows off the table, and straightens his crash pad. He explores more of the planet, imagining the chittering and scuffling in the underbrush are his estranged siblings. It makes him feel incredibly idiotic and a lot less lonely.
It was easier on Earth, he’s finding, to go out into a crowded space and shake the isolation. He doesn’t understand much of the language here, and none of the social customs. He’s a clearly marked outsider, towering over the locals by a good foot, and that eats into his brain more than he thought it would. They avoid him, hurry him along when he stops in the village square to buy food.
He rebuilds his stamina with daily hikes, with hunting his own food to avoid the locals suspicious stares, gets a tan, tries to get a hold on his loneliness. Every time he goes outdoors, he scans the horizon for a streak of rocketing green light. The sky stays perfectly blue.
He’s here, on Belit, the first stop of the transport, living openly. If Rayner was looking for him, he would have found him already.
No one’s looking for him, he thinks as he picks little green berries that surround the small shack he’s staying in. He assumed too much.
Two months in, and he has to leave. He’s not getting any better in the local dialect, no one to practice it with since the only thing he regularly speaks to is his reflection in the spotty mirror in the bathroom. In his dreams, he’s trapped in a cell at Blackgate, stuck in solitary confinement, and he’s worried what that says about his mental state, about how close he is to breaking under his isolation. He’s too highly trained and dangerous to go psychotic freak on the people living here. He’s got to find a place where he can actually blend in with the locals, can actually make conversation with a sentient creature before he commits genocide.
He secures another transport, packs up most of his shit in his little shack, leaving just enough behind to show that he was there. He fucks back off into space.
Being able to talk to other people, Jason finds, is not the balm he needed for his slowly unraveling mental health. He has coworkers now, people he sees most days. They take breaks together, roll their eyes over the truly ridiculous shit the universe’s wealthy get up to, and he feels absolutely nothing for them. They just exist in a vague orbit around him, wearing the same uniform as him and speaking the same language, but they are, essentially, as expendable to him as he is to them.
He starts getting worried over money about five weeks in, learning enough of the language to pick up a day laborer gig at a resort on Terminus. He spends every day re-potting plants, fixing divots on the golf course, smoothing down sand, and every night lying on the tile roof of his tiny home outside the resort proper. The sky is so clear, the stars so bright, he forgets to be lonely.
The truth of his situation smacks him in the face on a bright, cool day, breeze from the ocean curling the scent of salt around him. He’s walking the beach, picking up the guest’s trash when he hears, in soft Received English, “And that, right there, is why you will apply yourself when you get back to Eton.”
He shifts his gaze from the clean white sand to a severe looking woman, blunt bangs hanging above designer sunglasses. There’s a pre-teen boy on the towel next to her, both of them scowling at him.
“Do you want to spend your days picking up other’s trash, Henry? Your father and I spent a lot of money to get you where you are.”
And it’s funny, being light years away from Earth, from Park Row, and still getting sniffed out as white trash.
That night, on the roof, he thinks about his suitcase full of money, how it’s much easier to carry now. He thinks about his minimum wage job, and all the other minimum wage jobs he’s likely to find on other planets. He thinks about growing to seventy, to eighty, to ninety, and what in the fuck is he supposed to live on if he makes it that far?
The only marketable skills he has are the brutal kind.
“Goddammit,” he mutters. “I left my good boots on Earth.”
There’s a mercenary group, staffed almost exclusively with humans operating off of the nearby planet of Smertrios. Could be something.
Bright Grass is run by an unassuming looking ex Navy Seal named Beck Sanders from Arkansas that was dishonorably discharged after his sixth tour in Kabul. Jason bypasses the public accounting of his crimes, digs into his actual military file while he sips from his water bottle on break. Seems Lieutenant Sanders didn’t take kindly to his men displaying the heads of enemy combatants, and was run out of service.
The rest of the crew’s background checks are similar: most kicked out of the military or police for not being psychopathic pieces of shit. Except for Lyle Smith. Apparently that guy just likes to fight.
Jason taps his tablet on his thigh, thinking. If this doesn’t meet his expectations, he can bolt, find something else. He has nothing better to do, and a steadily empting reserve of money.
Jason packs his shit, again leaving hopeful little bread crumbs behind, and hops the first transport.
“You’re young,” Beck says, sitting behind an empty desk top.
“But trained,” Jason responds. This is a mercenary group unlike any Jason has ever come across before. He walked in, said he was looking for work, and was lead to this office. There is no fighting ring in the building specs he pored over, just barracks, an armory, a cafeteria, and a common room.
“By the League of Assassins.” Beck frowns at him, rocking back in his rolling chair. “I assume that’s who you’re on the run from?”
“Yes,” Jason lies. It’s a good lie, speaking to his desperation, his abilities at such a young age.
Beck sighs. “We don’t hurt people who don’t deserve it. The pay is shit, but most of the time, grateful locals will feed and house us.” He leans forward, fixing Jason with a hard stare. “Follow the rules, don’t be a dick, and you’ll get your paycheck.”
The other mercs, when he meets them at chow time, call him ‘Kid’. After his first mission with them, they start calling him ‘Swiss’. Kermit, a thin blade of a man with one eye and a deadly right hook, laughs when Jason looks put out by it, irritated that he can’t figure out the joke.
“I’m American,” he hisses, hackles raised. He’s being made fun of, he knows it, being pushed to the outskirts by a bunch of strangers he doesn’t even like anyway.
Kermit grasps his shoulder, shaking him lightly. “You need to unclench, kid. The world isn’t out to get you.”
Jason shoves him off, headed to the roof of the building.
Kermit catches up to him on the stairs. “Hey, stop. ‘Swiss’ like swiss army knife, kid.” He smiles, reaches his foot up to kick at Jason’s boot on the riser above his. “Dead useful in all situations. Stop with the pity party, and come play charades in the common room.”
Jason doesn’t know how to feel about the nickname. He was useful in Gotham, too. But charades is pretty easy to win when you’ve been heavily trained in reading people.
The crew is not gracious in defeat, throwing a shameful amount of popcorn at Jason as he crows his victory.
Callie stretches out. “You ever have fun, kid?”
Jason hunches even further over the fire, ignoring her. They are on a camping trip disguised as a training exercise. Beck had given Callie a meaningful look about twenty minutes ago, then pulled Kermit off to the side. The rest of the crew had followed suit unconvincingly, leaving Jason and Callie alone in the clearing.
“You know, for three months after hooking up with Beck and this merry crew of assholes, I slept with a gun under my pillow, wasn’t gonna let what happened to me on Earth happen again.” She pauses, seemingly going through a complex calculation on what to share.
She sighs. “I was a Navy Seal, one of three women at the time. Mother, Maiden, and Crone, they called us.” She rolls her eyes. “Real progressive bunch. I was Crone cuz I was the oldest, Mother was smart as hell, and Maiden was the sweetest dang girl you ever met, and a crack shot to boot. I’m sure you can guess what it was like for us, or maybe you’re a jackass who thinks like they did that we ‘Were a danger to unit cohesion.’” Her smile is bitter in the firelight. “Mother got herself swept up in some New Age scam or another when she was let go, and Maiden shot herself in the forehead in her barracks.” Callie pauses. “I met Beck, back in ‘05, in a support group for those ‘dishonorably discharged’ before I could end up like others. So I get that trust comes slow, for some people.
“This is all just a convoluted way of saying this: It’s understandable, with whatever your background is, that you wouldn’t trust any of us.” She fixes him with a stare. “But we really don’t care enough about you to want to screw you over.”
“Wow,” Jason says, sardonic. “Hell of a pep talk. You got anything else you wanna critique about me?”
“Yeah,” Callie says. “The helmet’s fucking dumb. Doubt the Justice League’s is gonna be stopping by the shit holes we go into.”
Jason hunches lower, muttering, “The helmet’s fucking smart.”
He knew joining up with the Bright Grass mercs would put him in close proximity to the Green Lanterns, and eventually the JLA. There’s always a megalomaniac or three bumming around in space, he was always going to run the risk of fighting along side people he used to know.
And yeah, maybe he fantasizes about being found, about teary but happy reunions, but he knows what would really happen instead: some dumb shit asshole saying “Oh shit! What’s Jason Todd doing in space?”
He just didn’t expect it four months into his contract.
When Beck told their crew Rann, nukes, Kroloteans, Justice League, Jason replaced the laces that were wearing out in his nice, new boots, and checked every inch of his tac suit for wear and tear. He turned the vocal distortion way down on his vocoder, until it sounded like he was a machine in the shape of a person. He still hadn’t gained back all of his lost muscle mass. No one would recognize him. He be just another blank face in a crew of unfamiliar faces.
Kermit sits next to him on the transport ship, knocking Jason’s knee with his own. “You ever fight alongside Superman, kid?”
“No,” Jason lies.
“Well, you’ll be underground for most of it, so you’re gonna miss the majesty and power of the Man of Steel.”
Jason raises a brow. “I didn’t figure you for a Superman fanboy, Kermit.”
“Oh, yeah. Got caught up on the wrong side of a hostage situation in Luhansk back Earth side couple years ago. He got all of us out, no casualties. I owe that man my life.”
Jason shifts, uncomfortable. He’s met Superman a handful of times, Clark Kent a handful more. He was a nice enough guy, but somehow Jason could tell, every time Superman looked at Robin, he was expecting someone else. All of the Justice League had back when Jason was Robin. He had been called Dick more often than Jason after the battles were done. It had hurt then, feeling like a subpar replacement for his older brother. It hurts less now, knowing he was.
“Who are you looking forward to meeting?”
“None of them,” Jason says, digging the toe of his boot into the grating of the ship’s floor, helmet safely stored under his jump seat.
“I find it hard to believe that a kid as young as you, from Earth no less, didn’t idolize any superhero. Come on, you can tell me.” He waggles his brows and pouches his lips out. “Did ya have a poster on your ceiling of Black Canary?”
Jason gags at the thought of lusting over Roy’s mom. “Gross. Don’t let Callie hear you.”
Callie rolls her eyes from across the small aisle. “I’d rather hear about Black Canary than anything else he has to say about Superman.” She leans forward. “Do not get him started, Swiss. He will never shut up.”
“I, for one, cannot wait for Green Arrow’s after battle rager,” Lyle says, nudging Jason’s foot. “I’ll sneak you in, it’s always a hoot.”
Callie laughs, snide. “You, for one, are looking forward to seeing Green Arrow’s arms.”
Lyle hums, eyes going hazy. “The heart wants what the heart wants, Callie.”
Jason let’s the motion of the ship rock his head back and forth on the metal wall behind them. “Wasn’t really interested in heroics, as a kid.”
“Yeah, I’m calling bullshit on that, Swiss.” Kermit nudges a padded elbow into his side. “We’ll see who makes you stutter once we land.”
Kermit laughs when, once they land in a clearing twenty miles from where Green Lantern’s intel places the Kroloteans base, Jason volunteers to stay behind with the ship.
“Fine, kid,” he says as the rest of the crew disembarks, “keep your secrets.”
He does a last minute weapons check as the Bright Grass crew marches off in the direction of the two landed JLA cruisers, Titan’s cruiser hovering in the sky over them, looking for a place to land. He watches, though the open bay door, as it touches down, as a clump of blue and black, purple and yellow, gray and red, troop out, headed towards the makeshift JLA headquarters.
He goes back to sorting ammo.
The debrief runs long, and Jason gets antsy waiting. He runs the perimeter, sweeping the underbrush surrounding their ship when he hears Dick and Duke, and he’s flung back to Belit, to pretending his daily hikes weren’t so lonely. He stills, straining to hear their conversation though the speakers in his helmet.
“You’re not worried, are you?” Dick asks. Jason can see, from the branches of the tree he’s hiding in, Dick slugging Duke’s arm.
Duke spins from the weak blow, dancing around Dick, fists raised, shadow boxing as they walk. “I don’t know how I feel about being separate from y’all. I mean, I get why I’m on Black Canary’s team, but it’s weird, not having my team back me up.”
Dick tosses some fake punches of his own. “You’re one of the heavies now, Signal. Gonna have to get used to going off with the metas who can benefit from you in big battles.” He back flips, sweeps his leg out. Duke hops over it, like a jump rope. “Us weak humans are utterly un-hyped from your hype-man powers.”
Duke drops his defensive posture. “Still.”
Dick straightens. “Hey, come on, kiddo. It’s your first space battle. You’ll kick some ass, then we’ll all go home, celebrate it. Hookers and whiskey on me.”
Duke rolls his eyes, flaps out a hand to smack Dick in the bicep. “OK, alright, but only if the hooch is a hundred years old.”
“Attaboy! Let’s go round up the rest of the crew, get sorted before we get rolling.”
They march off, back in the direction of the headquarters, and Jason drops silently out of the tree.
It’s good that Duke has someone watching out for him. This is a good thing.
The crew Jason’s on is one prong of a two prong infiltration, Batman leading. Jason gears up, Jason follows his team to their transport rovers. Jason doesn’t look over at the Justice League, the full or part time members. He keeps his eyes straight ahead.