Chapter Text
Six Months Ago
Tim calls Jason at four in the afternoon Hong Kong time, no-longer-night-but-not-yet-dawn in Gotham. Jason ignores the first three dials and picks up on the fourth.
“I told you not to call me here.”
“I know,” Tim says. Immediately, Jason knows something’s wrong. Tim’s voice is rough and uneven, like he’s been shouting. “It’s important.”
“Bruce made it pretty clear I’m not welcome in Gotham anymore, whether it’s ‘important’ or not, so if you wouldn’t mind fucking off—”
“It’s not Bruce.” Tim doesn’t rise to the bait. “It’s Dick.”
The sheer irony of that statement swells in Jason’s chest. He barks out a laugh. “What’s the fucking difference, Drake?”
“He’s been shot.”
“And?”
“He—” Tim’s voice catches. “He’s been shot in the head. The bullet fractured his skull and damaged part of his temporal lobe. The doctors don’t know when he’ll wake up. If he’ll wake up.”
For a moment, Jason just stares blankly at the opposite wall. Then he stands, walks away from the weapons he’s been cleaning at the kitchen table, and braces himself against the counter. The only coherent thought he can conjure up is that he doesn’t know why he’s so shocked. It was only a matter of time, before something like this happened. This isn’t even the first time Dick has been shot in the head. This isn’t even the first time Dick has died.
“And…Jason,” Tim says. Jason doesn’t know how he didn’t notice it before, how helpless Tim sounds. “They don’t know how much of him is going to be left if he does.”
Jason bows his head. He draws in a steadying breath and does not think about the last time he saw Dick: At the edge of Gotham’s boundary, in the lashing rain, only ice and venom between them. “What do you want from me, Tim?”
There’s a long moment of silence from the other end. “I thought you’d want to come. Say goodbye.”
Jason closes his eyes. You shot him! Dick screamed, that night, as the storm broke with shattering force over Gotham. You shot Cobblepot in the eye, on national television. What’s Bruce supposed to do? What am I supposed to do?
They were almost there, before that night. After years of dancing around each other, Dick was almost ready; they were both almost ready. Jason almost had him.
And then Jason shot Penguin on a live broadcast. And then Batman kicked Red Hood out of his city. And then it was all gone.
The plastic of the phone creaks in the vice of Jason’s grip. “Call me if he wakes up,” he says. “Or if he dies.”
“Jason—”
He hangs up.
Two Months Ago
Jason’s first stop upon returning to Gotham after three months is a dive bar in the Narrows, where the beer is almost as cheap as the trouble. The smoke in the air is so thick it blurs edges and corners together, but even then, he doesn’t have any trouble making out the slim figure bent over the pool table, thin frame hidden under baggy, oversized sweats, shorn head covered by a beanie. Jason arms himself with a beer and makes his way over to the game, keeping to the shadows along the wall.
“Yuk it up, Grayson,” a lofty, heavyset man in a pinstriped shirt is saying, voice sour. “I’ll win that fifty back offa you, just you wait.”
The player in the beanie throws a grin over his shoulder, and Jason feels something catch in his chest. Despite the lost weight and shabby clothing, the elegant features and starburst eyes are unmistakable. Jason stands against the wall, watching the game over the big man’s shoulder. Dick practically looks straight at him and sees nothing.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that, Fred.” Dick delivers his shot, the cue darting forward in his hand with lightning speed and precision. Three balls roll into three different pockets: First the striped eleven, then the fourteen, and then the eight-ball, dropping neatly into the pocket in the far right corner. The spectators around the table crow uproariously; Fred growls out a curse, throws a bill in Dick’s direction, and stomps off, presumably to make more effective investments at the bar.
Jason waits until Dick’s admirers have dissipated, still hooting back congratulations, before approaching. Dick’s eyes flick up at him as he counts the modest stack of bills in his hands. The corner of his mouth curls up, friendly. “Evening, stranger.”
The greeting is familiar enough; at least, the playfulness is. But there’s no recognition in Dick’s eyes, no tension in his posture or questioning in his gaze. Dick is utterly relaxed looking back at him, an open book. Either he’s so deep undercover that he won’t even acknowledge Jason, or…
Or Tim was right.
Jason swallows. He casts around for a distraction and finds one in the pool table. “You’re pretty good at that. Better than anyone else here, seems like.”
Dick shrugs. “It’s just a game.”
“I meant the hustling,” Jason says, because he knows it’d make Dick chuckle.
It does. But then Dick folds the bills away and offers a hand and says, like he doesn’t have a care in the world, “I’m Ric”—and something in Jason freezes, goes hard and cold with dread.
He clears his throat, takes the hand. “Jason.”
“Nice to meetcha, Jason.” Dick nods at the beer in Jason’s hand. “Can I buy you another one of those? I’ve got a little extra cash to blow tonight.”
“Sure,” Jason says. His mouth is still too dry. “Lead the way.”
Dick refers to the bartender by name, ordering cheap whiskey for himself and “another round of whatever he’s having for my new friend.” He toasts Jason when they’ve both got a drink in hand, eyes twinkling. “To the game,” he says, jovial.
“To easy targets,” Jason returns. Dick laughs, exposing the long line of his throat, and downs half of his drink in one swallow. His hoodie, zipped too low, exposes the stark line of his collarbone, the narrow plane of his chest.
“You new in town, Jason?”
Jason lifts his gaze. He finds Dick taking him in from top to bottom, appraising him. “Why do you ask?”
Dick shrugs, and there—there’s a keenness to his eyes, that hyperintuitive people-sense that not even a bullet to the brain can suppress. “You seem like you’re not quite settled, somehow. Figured it might be the jumpiness of someone new to Gotham.”
“It’s not an easy city to adjust to,” Jason agrees. “But no, I’m a local. Though I’ve been away for a while.”
“Yeah? What brings you back?”
Jason swallows, takes in Dick’s cocked head and empty eyes. “Unfinished business,” he says, and takes a swig of his own drink. “What about you?”
“Me?”
“You new to this shithole?”
Dick’s eyes go distant. He hesitates, then shrugs again, reaching up to adjust his beanie in a nervous gesture. “In a way.”
“And that means…?”
“I’m a native, too,” Dick says. “But I got in a…an accident, a while back. Don’t remember much from my life before it. So I guess I’m not new to the city so much as the city is new to me.”
Jason widens his eyes, grimaces. The picture of casual sympathy. “At least you’ve still got your people, don’t you? That doesn’t change.”
Dick smiles a little, tight. “They’re looking for the person I was,” he says. “That person doesn’t exist anymore.”
Something twists in Jason’s chest, just left of his ribcage. “Who took his place?”
The smile slips off Dick’s face. He looks at Jason as if seeing him for the first time. “I don’t know,” he says, finally, honest for the first time that night.
It hurts in a way Jason didn’t expect, to hear Dick talk about himself like he’s alone, unable to tell even a stranger in a bar who he is with any certainty. For as long as Jason’s known him, Dick has always been sure of who he is, his purpose in life. Above his joy, above his anger, above even his compassion and morality, a Dick Grayson without purpose is not Dick Grayson. At least, not the one Jason knows.
Dick’s lips twist. His expression darkens. “I knew it,” he says. He pushes himself off the bar stool, stumbles back and away. “You’re one of them, aren’t you? The fucking Bats .”
Jason puffs briefly with indignation, but Dick looks so betrayed that he deflates immediately after. He sighs, resists the urge to fist a hand in his hair. “Dick—”
Dick’s entire face changes, morphing from hurt to anger in a blink. “It’s Ric, ” he snarls. “Not that it’s any of your concern. Or any of your crew’s.”
Jason’s jaw clenches. He knows Dick has a talent for running from the people who want to help him, but this is something else altogether. Dick is practically trembling, eyes bright with anger, teeth bared in a snarl. Looking at him feels like looking at an animal in a trap, ready to chew its own leg off. “They just want to help you,” he grits out.
“I don’t want their help,” Dick snaps. “And I don’t need it. So tell your people that the next person they send after me is getting a pool cue through the eye.”
Dick turns, shoulders up to his ears, toward the exit. “Grayson,” Jason growls out. “They’re not my people. They’re yours.”
Dick doesn’t turn back, but he glances over his shoulder, just enough for Jason to catch the flash of blue through the smoke. “They’re his ,” Dick hisses. “And he’s dead.”
Then he’s gone, out of the bar and into the night, a wounded animal dragging itself into the forest.
Jason emerges some time later, when he’s swallowed enough bourbon to drown out most of his nerve endings. The night air is cool and sharp against his face, cutting through his alcohol-induced haze just enough for it to hurt. He lists into the alley next to the bar and braces himself against the wall, the rough brick scraping against his palms.
The comm at his belt chirps, insistent. Jason groans, snatches it off, and presses it against his ear. “ What .”
“You saw him?”
“Yeah, Drake, I fucking saw him.”
“And?” Tim asks.
“And he’s gone , Tim.” Jases closes his eyes, breaths against the roiling nausea. “Whoever that was back there, that wasn’t Dick Grayson.”
Tim huffs, as if Jason is being a minor inconvenience. “Jason, come on, there must have been something—”
“Tim, listen to me. Dick is gone. Dead. We’re not getting him back.”
Silence, vast and weighted. When Tim speaks again, it’s quiet, verging on anger. “You’re wrong, Jason,” he says. “He’ll come back. He always does.”
Present Day
Tim summons Jason to the Edison Hotel in uptown Gotham with a cryptic text, containing only the address, room number, and a time. Jason ignores it, of course, chucking it onto the kitchen table in favor of the pot of ropa vieja he’s working on.
Tim calls an hour later. Jason ignores that, too, but the call picks itself up and puts itself on speakerphone. “Why are you still at your safehouse?”
Jason narrows a glare at the phone. “Babs taught you that trick, didn’t she?”
“Didn’t you get my message?”
“I did, but luckily for me, I’m not a trained dog.”
“It’s important, Jason.”
“Then I’m sure Bruce wouldn’t want me anywhere near it.”
“It’s about Dick.”
“Don’t you mean Ric?”
Tim makes a disgruntled noise. “I think we found a way to bring him back.”
Jason stills. Manipulative bastard. “Who’s ‘we’?”
“Just come to the meet spot.” Click.
Jason snarls, venomous. God, he hates this fucking family.
Thirty minutes later, Jason is striding into the Edison’s glossy, turn-of-the-century-styled lobby, ignoring the receptionists and bellhops trying to help him and heading straight for the elevator. When he knocks on the door of suite 1302, Tim answers looking like he hasn’t slept in a week.
“You’re late.” He turns and strides back into the suite, leaving the door open.
Jason takes a moment to count back from ten before following.
What he doesn’t expect to find is Zatanna Zatara sitting cross-legged on the king-sized bed, dressed in jeans and a slouchy sweater instead of her usual magician’s ensemble. She looks up as he enters and smiles. “You must be Jason. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Uh…” Jason darts a glance at Tim, but he just sits at the desk at a laptop, expression betraying nothing. “Pleasure.”
“Thanks for coming on such short notice.” Zatanna swings herself off the bed and crosses the room. “If we’re going to bring him back, we’re going to have to start as soon as possible; his mind has already been broken too long—”
“Wait, wait.” Jason holds up a hand. “Would either of you like to tell me what the sweet fuck is going on?”
Tim sighs. He gestures at the bed. “You might want to sit. This is kind of a long story.”
Warily, Jason obliges. Zatanna purses her lips, but leans against the wall without protest. Tim turns to Jason. In the suite’s pleasant ambient lighting, the bags under his eyes are even more pronounced.
“Right after Dick was first shot a few months ago, Barbara and Damian and I—we thought the amnesia was just temporary. Like, you know, we could snap him out of it if we just said the right trigger word or something. And then we realized that…that it wasn’t just amnesia. It was brain damage.” Tim swallows, jaw clenching. “And that Dick—the Dick we knew—was gone.”
Jason grimaces as he remembers his own words to Tim the night he met Ric. It was an asshole move, throwing something like that in the kid’s face, when he knew how much Dick meant to him.
“So, you know. We tried to move on. To get to know Dick as he is now—as Ric. But…he didn’t want anything to do with us. Or Nightwing. Or anything else from his past life. All he wanted was to be left alone.”
Jason watches Tim. “But…?”
Tim flinches. “But I couldn’t just leave him like that. You’ve seen him. He’s not taking care of himself, he’s drinking and fighting—he doesn’t even have his own place.”
Jason tries not to think about Dick the last time he saw him, bony under his ill-fitting clothes and swallowing whiskey like water. “He took a bullet to the head , Tim. You should be glad he’s even capable of spending his nights binge-drinking, instead of drooling into his nightie in a long-term care ward somewhere.”
“But that’s the thing,” Tim starts, urgent. “I know he looks different and acts different and goes by a different name, but we were wrong. He’s not gone, not completely. It’s still Dick, under there—or if not Dick, then Nightwing . I’ve been keeping an eye on him, we all have, and he’s still got everything: The training, the languages, the instincts. He’s stopped muggings and assaults, he helped the BPD take down Scarecrow last month.”
Jason frowns. “I thought Nightwing hasn’t been seen in months.”
“Not as Nightwing,” Tim says. “Just as…himself. Whoever he is, right now—he still can’t stop himself from helping people.”
Jason swallows. If there’s one thing that would never change, it’s that. Dick Grayson, always needing to save the world. “And you think that means you can bring him back.”
“Not at first, no. Then I just…couldn’t leave it alone. But I knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere with just therapy or conventional medicine.”
“That’s when Tim reached out to me,” Zatanna says. “I wanted to help. I’ve known Dick a long time, and, well. Let’s just say the entire capes collective took it hard when we heard what happened to him. I figured a little magic couldn’t make things any worse than they already were. Tim got me close, and I took a little, uh, peek inside Dick’s head.”
Jason’s brows rocket upwards. Great: He loves a timely reminder for why he hates magic. “And how the fuck did you manage that?”
Tim winces. “Let’s just say that Ric is not quite as vigilant as Dick. Especially when he’s passed out in the back of a dive bar.”
Jason just shakes his head. “Well? What did you find?”
Zatanna sombers. “There was definitely a lot of damage. Most of his memories were still there, but it was like they had been…shattered. Like they were in pieces, floating in a void, instead of grounded into one cohesive narrative. With nothing to tie them together anymore—no identity, no sense of self.”
Jason looks away, jaw clenched. “Yeah,” he says, finally, when he can get his voice to work again. “That’s what I found, too.”
“It wasn’t anything that just time or some cognitive therapy could fix,” Zatanna agrees. “But seeing the damage laid out before me gave me some ideas. So Tim and I spent the last month researching in between missions, and…” She turns her hand up and unfurls her fingers to reveal a clay medallion in her palm, dusty and chipped with age. A simple sigil of a sun glints in lines of silver on its surface, with a large, glittering blue gemstone nestled in the center of the rays.
“I pulled some strings with John and got my hands on this,” Zatanna says. “It’s an ancient Egyptian sunstone amulet. The gem in the middle can store magic—or in this case, a spell.”
Jason eyes the amulet warily. “A spell to bring back Dick’s memories?”
Zatanna and Tim exchange a glance. “Not quite,” Zatanna sighs. “With Dick’s mind in the state it’s in…it’s not possible to just command the memories to return. They’re fragmented, adrift. They need a common thread to tie them together again and return them to their rightful narrative.”
“Let me guess,” Jason says. “You’re going to build that thread.”
Zatanna looks pleased. “Very good. If we can plant a recurring—motif, or anchor, or whatever you want to call it throughout all of Dick’s most important memories, I can use those touchstones to reunite the fractured pieces into a whole again. To heal what the bullet shattered, irreparably, in Dick’s mind.”
“What do you need me for?”
Zatanna hesitates. It’s Tim who speaks up. “We can’t just…insert the motif into Dick’s mind,” he says, carefully, eyes never leaving Jason. “It has to be implanted, in the actual events of Dick’s memories. As they occurred in the past.”
Jason stares at them. “You’re not suggesting—?”
“The sun sigil is the motif that we’ll use,” Zatanna says, holding out the amulet. “And the spell in the gem…will bring you back through time, to some of the most pivotal moments in Dick’s life.”
The next thing Jason knows, he’s on his feet, as if his body is mounting its protest independent of his thoughts. “You’ve got to be shitting me. You want me to time travel? ”
“Zatanna has already engineered the key periods of Dick’s life into the spell,” Tim says, as if that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to say. “All you would have to do is go where the amulet takes you and introduce the motif to Dick’s awareness without tipping him off. Low risk, low involvement. Think of it as an undercover mission.”
Jason bares his teeth at him. “If it’s so casual, then why don’t you go, replacement? I’d have thought you’d jump at the chance to be Dick Grayson’s knight in shining armor.”
Tim blinks impassively back at him. “I can’t,” he says. “Neither can Zatanna. Or most other people in the world, for that matter. There’s a reason why enchanters don’t use this spell all the time to go back into their lives and fix their past mistakes. Crossing back into your own timeline can have disastrous effects—paradox-sprouting, dimension-destroying effects. But you—when you died and then came back, you effectively bisected your existence into two separate timelines. You’re exempt from the paradox.”
Jason barks out an incredulous laugh. “Okay. Do you hear yourself? You know that’s all gibberish, right?”
“It’s all true, Jason,” Zatanna says, rueful. “It’s long been in the spell’s history that only those who have been ‘resurrected from the grave of their past life’ can make use of it. So you can imagine it’s had a somewhat limited run. Until now.”
“No.” Jason shakes his head. “There has to be another way to do this other than fucking traveling through time .”
“Believe it or not, this is the safest solution we could find,” Zatanna says.
Tim holds Jason’s gaze. “And the one most likely to work.”
Jason wants to say no. He wants to get up and walk out the door, back to the life where he was only beholden to himself, back to the life where Dick Grayson meant nothing to him. He stares at the amulet Zatanna is offering him and thinks about all the ways magic has fucked him over in the past, all the ways time travel could go horribly, catastrophically wrong.
Then he thinks of Dick, slouched at a bar with bruises under his eyes, looking at Jason like he’s a stranger.
“So,” Zatanna says. “Are you in?”