Work Text:
It takes Dick a few days to get the story out of Bruce, but eventually, the story he gets is this:
Batman shows up at the warehouse where Robin’s tracker last pinged. He finds the Joker standing over Robin’s bloody, broken body, crowbar raised over his head mid-swing, and Sheila Haywood tied up in the corner. He fights the Joker viciously, all the while thinking Robin is dead on the floor only a few feet away.
He’s not. Batman drags Dr. Haywood and the Joker, bound and unconscious, out of the building and contacts the Ethiopian authorities. Only then does he go back in for Robin’s body, but instead finds a bomb ticking down and Robin barely clinging to life.
Batman carries Robin back to the Batplane and flies home on autopilot because one of Robin’s lungs has collapsed and Batman has to help him breathe manually.
At some point, the bomb explodes and the Joker escapes in the chaos, but this is only a footnote.
Robin goes into surgery the moment Batman lands and doesn’t come out for forty hours. His injuries are extensive, Dr. Thompkins tells him, massive internal bleeding and bones so shattered they have to pick shards out of his muscles. His right hand and the right side of his face will both require further reconstructive surgery, but that is for after he’s stabilized. She shows him CT scans of Jason’s swollen brain and warns him of the possibility of neurological damage.
Dick gets back from off-world after Jason’s surgery and rushes to his post-op room in the Manor. Jason is asleep, Bruce sitting in a chair at his side. Most of his body is swaddled in bandages, a nasal cannula feeding him oxygen and an IV in his less-damaged left arm. He’s breathing on his own, though, which Dick takes as a good sign.
Alfred appears in the doorway at Dick’s back with tea and sandwiches, and they three gather around Jason’s bed in silent vigil. Dick isn’t sure they will survive it if he dies now.
Bruce Wayne has access to the best cosmetic surgeons in the world. It only takes one surgery to reconstruct his face and three for the fine bones of his hand. They tell Bruce that scarring is inevitable but later, after the wounds have healed, they can do another surgery to reduce their appearance. Dick hopes they’re right; under the bandage on Jason’s left cheek is a crooked red J that makes him ill to look at.
For the first week after Ethiopia, Jason can’t stay awake for longer than a few minutes at a time. Dick stays in his room with him for most of it, talking to him about nothing important because the silence makes him nervous. Jason looks very small in his bed, dwarfed on either side by monitors and mummified in casts and bandages.
When he is awake, his usually sharp mind is muddled by morphine and whatever vestiges of pain can sneak through his opiate armor. He asks for Bruce in those moments, looking at Dick like he doesn’t recognize him. When Bruce is there, Jason doesn’t recognize him either.
He gets more lucid the longer he stays awake. He doesn’t talk much; Dick hopes it’s because his face hurts because the alternative is terrifying.
He can’t have solid food, but once he’s allowed to sit up Alfred brings him his favorite tea and they sit together, alone. Jason seems happier after, as does Alfred. It’s no secret that they are each other’s favorites.
During one of their tea times, Jason asks Alfred what kind of tea it is. He can’t tell, he says when Alfred asks, because he can’t smell it.
A CT scan reveals damage to his frontal lobe. It’s too soon to say if the loss of his sense of smell will be the only result of it. None of them cry, but that is only because Jason is in the room.
Six weeks after the final surgery, Dr. Thompkins is the one to deliver the prognosis, if only for the hope that Jason won’t react as badly if a familiar face says the words. He is clear for physiotherapy, but it’s unlikely he’ll ever walk unaided again. This means a lot of things, but mostly it means Jason will never be Robin again. None of them say it, but Jason knows.
But, she interrupts them, nothing is certain. Jason is young and his body isn’t fully developed. It’s possible that further development will heal the damage more so than what physical therapy can do on its own, and that goes doubly so for the neurological damage. It doesn't do much to reassure Jason though. He asks to be alone, and when Dick comes back hours later tears are still drying on Jason’s sleeping face.
Jason is prescribed muscle relaxants and opioids for the pain he’ll be in for the rest of his life. He tells Alfred he won’t take opiates, not since his mom, so Bruce gets him a prescription for ibuprofen and Dick does research on natural painkillers. Jason watches him look up recipes for willow bark and turmeric tea, then turns to face the window and doesn’t talk to Dick again for the rest of the day.
He starts physical therapy the next Monday and it’s—hard, on all of them. Jason shakes and trembles and yells through it, gripping his therapist with one hand and Alfred with the other. Dick plays the smiling fool through it all because it’s what he’s always done, what he’s good at, but Jason sees through it. Dick’s not sure if it’s because Jason knows him too well or because Jason was, for years, stuck between Dick and Bruce’s fights and can see the act for what it is.
Jason’s right leg is held together by pins and plates and screws. Dick makes a joke once about Jason replacing Cyborg on the Titans, but Dick is reminded of how badly Jason gets along with them and his own fault in that by Jason’s icy rebuff. Still, Dick keeps smiling, keeps reminding himself that at least Jason is still here, at least the Joker didn’t take him away from them.
Bruce never goes to therapy with Jason. He can hardly look at his youngest son anymore, guilt-ridden as he is. Jason is a reminder of Batman’s failure, a living, breathing monument to everything Bruce has lost. Dick thinks it makes Bruce a coward because Jason isn’t lost, Jason is right here. Jason must see it too; every time Bruce turns away from him, every time his eyes darken with misery, Jason gets angry—and God, he is so angry.
Jason has always been an angry child and Dick supposes that it makes sense; Jason grew up in a place where being anything less than fucking enraged would get him swallowed up and disappeared. He had to be angry to survive. There isn’t much difference now, Dick thinks, except there is. Where Jason was angry because he wanted to live, it seems like now he’s angry to be alive.
He lashes out at everyone, even Alfred. There’s not much he can do with his body, not now that walking the length of his bedroom exhausts him, so he uses words to hurt them. Alfred, always Alfred, handles him when he gets this angry the best, takes the onslaught until Jason is collapsed on his bed and sobbing, soothes his cracking, shaking apologies until he’s asleep.
These days are better than the ones where Jason is quiet, refuses to leave his temporary ground floor room that all of them know is not temporary. On those days, he sinks so deeply into his depression that Dick wonders if they won’t lose Jason to himself.
While talking to Dr. Thompkins, Dick brings up how Jason’s emotions are out of control, how he swings abruptly from apathy to rage to deep sadness like he used to swing between buildings. She tells him that it’s a common symptom of frontal lobe injuries, and suggests another therapist, one who specializes in traumatic brain injuries. It’s helpful, except Jason is already seeing two therapists and will hate another, will resent the implication that there’s something wrong with him.
A few months into PT, Bruce asks Jason if he wants to get rid of his scars, offers the number of the cosmetic surgeon who fixed his hand. Jason reacts with open fury, and it’s a horrible, ugly fight. Dick doesn’t understand why Jason wants to keep his scars when he can’t stand to look at his own face because of them. He thinks maybe it’s the same reason Jason won’t talk to Barbara when she visits him.
Despite how bad it gets, Jason is making progress. PT gets easier, slowly. Alfred gets him a cane for his birthday and, defying all expectations, Jason grins and accepts it graciously. When he’s finally strong enough to use it, Dick teases that he looks like the Penguin. Instead of lashing out, Jason hooks a finger in front of his nose and squawks. They laugh together and, for the first time with any sort of conviction, Dick thinks their family will survive.
And then Tim Drake happens, and it nearly destroys them.
He becomes Robin and it’s like all of Jason’s wounds have been reopened. He becomes a Wayne and it’s like Jason’s wounds never healed. Dick tries to play peacemaker, but nothing he says makes Jason less angry. Tim seems to understand better than Dick, though, and keeps his distance. He tells them to let Jason work through his anger and takes the accusations of being Jason’s replacement without complaint. He’s so patient, so kind that Dick believes that Jason will have to come around.
He doesn’t. Instead, Jason pulls further away from them. He refuses to stay in the same room as Tim, takes to sneering and limping out of the room whenever Tim appears. Dick asks Alfred to talk to him, but Alfred tells him that Jason’s problems with Tim aren’t actually with Tim. Dick tries to talk to Bruce, but Bruce retreats to his study, and Dick is left to worry about his brothers alone.
They stay in this stalemate for years. As Jason improves physically, he starts leaving the house more often. Alfred always goes with him because Jason doesn’t have the muscle control in his right leg needed to drive. Dick sees less and less of them both, then less of everyone because he moves to Bludhaven and becomes a cop.
Shortly after Jason’s seventeenth birthday, Barbara calls him and tells him that Jason asked Jim Gordon to teach him how to use a gun. It sends a rush of fear through him comparable to the one he felt when Alfred called him about Ethiopia.
He confronts Jim first, who tells Dick that he taught Jason how to shoot for two reasons: Jason is going to learn one way or another and it’s safer if it’s Jim; and Jason deserves to be able to defend himself, he deserves to feel safe. It kills the argument before it can even start and, though Dick doesn’t like it, he lets it go.
Neither of them tells Bruce but of course, Bruce finds out anyway.
Their argument takes place in the Batcave, Bruce half in the Batsuit and Jason, so small in Batman’s shadow, screaming louder than Dick has ever heard him. It puts every one of Dick and Bruce’s shouting matches to shame, makes Tim shrink against the wall. Dick prepares himself to break it up because Alfred isn’t here, jerks forward when Bruce raises his hand, but all he does is pull the cowl over his face and walk away.
Jason stares after him, face wet, and tells his back that he wouldn’t need a gun if his dad could protect him.
Batman’s stride falters, and Dick feels something in the air break. It feels like the end of—he doesn’t know what it’s the end of, because nothing obvious changes. Well, nothing until Damian.
Damian gets along with exactly no one but of them all, he tolerates Jason the most. Dick doesn’t get it at first, but then he sees Damian watching Jason struggle down the stairs into the backyard and realizes that Jason is the only person Damian doesn’t see as a threat. It’s infuriating, makes Dick want to scream for the unfairness of it all.
Jason knows, though. They coexist in something like peace, each a bastion of neutrality for the other. Jason wants nothing to do with Bruce’s legacy, Damian has no qualms about letting Jason do whatever he wants; they mean nothing to one another and it’s the closest to camaraderie anyone in Wayne Manor has gotten since Tim arrived.
It’s a hopeless endeavor, trying to help Jason, so Dick focuses on himself. He has a life in Bludhaven, friends and a job, and a vigilante life outside of Batman. He’s still friends with the older Titans, still gets communications from Kori and Roy every so often. He’s happy without his family, even if he feels a little empty. He wants them, but he doesn’t need them.
It’s his day off and he’s watching TV, a bowl of cereal propped up on his chest, when the movie he’s watching cuts away to a Breaking News bulletin. The Joker is a little figure in the middle of the screen, standing in front of Wayne Enterprises with a detonator remote in one hand and a gun in the other.
Dick grabs his phone from the coffee table and calls Bruce. It goes straight to voicemail, so he dials the Batline. After a moment and a click, Batman tells him that Joker has a bomb on a bus in Wayne Tower’s underground parking garage and that he, Robin, and Red Robin are en route.
On-screen a gunshot rings out. People scream as Joker drops to one knee, then falls over completely when the shooter takes out the other. The Joker is laughing at something off-screen and drops both the gun and the detonator just as a familiar figure limps on screen.
Dick tells Batman to hurry because Jason just showed up and he has a gun. Bruce starts growling something, but Dick can’t hear it over the rushing in his ears. Jason is walking without his cane and the crowd gathered behind the camera is silent.
The camera is too far away to see Jason’s face clearly, but he’s holding himself tense and as upright as he physically can like he hasn’t since he was Robin. He doesn’t stop until he’s right in front of the Joker. He says something that the camera doesn’t pick up, but it makes the Joker smile. Jason shoots him.
The gunshot breaks the spell the crowd is under and they start cheering. The police are shouting, trying to wrest back control. Jason raises his hands slowly then bends at the waist to put the gun on the ground. The police shout at him to get on the ground, but he can’t because the Joker destroyed the mobility in his right leg nearly six years ago. Instead, he puts his hands behind his head and turns slowly to face them. The crooked red J on his cheek is visible to the camera now as it pushes in on his face. He steps away from the blood pooling around Joker’s head and goes peacefully.
The people of Gotham are celebrating but Dick can only watch in horror. Jason won’t be punished for this, not by the city. The police will treat him gently and his trial will be short. He’ll get the shortest possible sentence if he’s even found guilty, but will definitely never spend a moment in prison. People will be thanking Jason for the rest of his life. Dick can’t blame them.
But still Dick cries because Bruce will never forgive Jason for this. Jason will never come home again.
In the end, the Joker takes Jason Todd away from them, it just takes a while to happen.