Original Author's Note

I was going to give Jason one day/POV chapter, like everyone else got, and then this scene got really long. There will be more from Jason, but I wanted this to be its own chapter.

Chapter 5: Day 5.5 (Jason)

Jason wakes up with somebody staring at him.

He grabs the knife under his pillow before he opens his eyes. He swings his feet off the side of the couch to land in a ready position. He looks across the room—at little Dickie Grayson, who stands next to the TV, wearing slightly oversized pajamas, staring at him.

Jason relaxes and slips the knife back into its sheath on his ankle.

“Hey,” he says, because the kid sure isn’t saying anything. “You startled me.”

Dickie just stares. In the ambient light slanting through the window, Jason can just barely see his eyes.

What time is it?

The sky outside is dark, the clouds glowing with reflected city light. It was 6 p.m. when they arrived at Dick’s apartment. It was midnight when Jason shook out a blanket and crashed on Dick’s couch. It can’t be any later than 3 a.m. now.

Dickie should be asleep. Or if not asleep, at least holed up in the spare bedroom with Damian and little Jay, watching them sleep. Jason can’t imagine what would motivate him to leave the relative safety of the bedroom with the locked door.

Scratch that. He can imagine. None of the possibilities are good.

“Is something wrong?” Jason says. “You have a nightmare or something?”

That used to happen with Sasha. She never slept well. Neither of them did, so Jason would wake up at all hours and see her sitting in the corner just staring at him with that godawful mask—

“Who are you?”

Dickie’s voice is a cracked whisper. Jason huffs out a breath and rubs a hand over his eyes. It is too late at night to be asking existential questions. Or too early. Whatever.

“Jason Todd.” He looks out at the kid between his fingers. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

No answer.

Jason lets his hand drop. “I’d show you my ID,” he says, “but I don’t have one.” One of the perks of being dead, he almost adds, but bites his tongue. He’ll have to explain the whole death-and-resurrection saga to the new kids eventually, but he’d rather not start at three in the morning. He’s not even sure if Dickie is fully awake.

“What do you want?”

His voice pierces something deep in Jason’s chest. He can hear the strain, the artificial calm just barely hiding panic and terror. Jason understands. Everyone wants something. He learned that lesson early and he learned it well. There’s always a catch. If he doesn’t give Dickie an answer, the kid will jump to the worst possible conclusion.

That’s what Jason did, once upon a time.

“Right now? Hot chocolate.” Jason stands up and rolls his shoulders back, keeping his movements slow. He walks into the kitchen, deliberately turning his back to Dickie. “I’m gonna make some. You want any?”

He opens and closes cabinets until he finds a couple of mugs, and then repeats the process until he finds a drum of powdered hot chocolate mix. The half-gallon of oat milk in the fridge is almost empty, so Jason leaves it and fills the kettle with water instead. It’s powdered hot chocolate mix. He can be fussy about the recipe some other time that isn’t three in the morning.

When he turns around to set the mugs on the counter, Dickie has moved to the side of the island. He looks at Jason like he’s looking through him. Maybe he is. Jason sets the kettle on the stove and opens the drum to spoon some powder into his mug. Dickie’s eyes follow his hands.

“You want some?” Jason pushes the drum across the counter, towards Dickie. Grabs a spoon from the drawer and sets it in the empty mug. Dickie looks down at the container, then at the mug, then up at Jason’s face. He won’t make eye contact.

“What…” He seems to reconsider, or maybe he loses his nerve; Jason watches his throat work for a few seconds before his voice comes back. “What do I have to do?”

Jason’s knuckles tighten around his spoon.

“Nothing,” he says. Dickie flinches a little, pressing against the island like it might be able to hide him. Jason takes a breath and deliberately loosens his grip.

He doesn’t want to have this conversation. He never wants to have this conversation, with anyone, but especially not with Dick. Dick Grayson is—so many things. The original Robin. Bruce’s golden child. Jason’s big brother. Dick Grayson is strong, smart, quick-witted and humorous, always ready with a joke and a brilliant plan to get himself out of trouble. He’s never been desperate. He never had to trade sex for food or shelter or safety. Not like the teenagers that Jason pulls off the streets of Gotham. Not like Jason.

Not in this world. But the teenager standing in front of him made that trade—made it over and over again—so Jason has to say this now. Putting it off will only make everything worse.

“Listen.” He meets the kid’s eyes. Deep blue eyes, so dark they almost look black. He waits until Dickie looks back at him. “I am not going to have sex with you.”

Something flickers behind those eyes. Jason lets it go for now. “Dick is not going to have sex with you. No one is going to have sex with you. No one is going to touch you without your consent. If anyone tries, I’ll kill them.”

Usually, that’s all he needs to say. Street kids know who the Red Hood is. They know what he does to predators. When he says he won’t touch them, they believe him. Dickie, on the other hand, looks at Jason like he just started reciting poetry in Arabic.

“Any questions?” Jason says. He can try and guess what’s going on in that head, but this will go easier for both of them if he can get the kid talking.

Dickie glances towards the hall. “Jason,” he says, “I mean—Jay, he’s just a kid, please, you—I can take it, please, I can take anything—”

“Stop,” Jason says, more tired than angry. Dickie flinches, anyway. “I’m not going to hurt him either. No one is. If anyone tries to hurt you, or Jay, if anyone touches either of you without your consent, I will put a bullet in their head. Clear?”

Dickie stares at him for a minute. He has a deer-in-the-headlights look to him—eyes a little too wide, body a little too still, shoulders pulled back like he’s bracing to take a hit.

“Okay,” he whispers.

Jason nods. “Okay.” He pushes the container of chocolate powder across the counter. “You can have some,” he says. “If you want. I’m already heating up the water.”

The kettle hisses and burbles behind him. Dickie’s eyes cut over to it.

“Okay.” He whispers again. He’s quiet, in a way that Jason has never known Dick to be.

With careful, precise movements, Dickie adds a few tablespoons of chocolate mix into the other mug. The water boils in the kettle and Jason lifts it off the heat and stirs the water into the mugs, all without incident. Dickie watches him. When the chocolate is ready, Jason carries his mug over to the table and sits with his back to the living area. Dickie hesitates for a few seconds before he slinks over and sits down across from Jason. He has his back to the wall, that way.

He doesn’t touch the hot chocolate. He sits with his shoulders curled in and his hands in his lap, staring alternately at the table or at Jason’s face. When Jason looks back at him, his eyes slide away. He wraps his hands around the warm mug, but makes no move to drink from it.

“What about,” he starts, but the question peters out. Dickie stares into space for awhile, clutching the mug, before he finds the words he needs. “What about Bruce.”

Anger flares like quills digging into Jason’s spine. “Did he touch you?”

Bruce never hurt Jason. Never so much as raised a hand to him. He knew what Jason had been through. Some of the things he had been through. He knew to ask before he offered a comforting touch, to explain every bandage and stitch ahead of time, to back off when Jason said no. He was the first man that Jason ever trusted, and in this moment none of that matters. If Dickie says yes, Jason will put Bruce down like a fucking dog.

“He…” Again Dickie’s voice trails away. Jason’s stomach clenches. “He picked me up.” Dickie looks Jason in the face, with uncertainty in his eyes. “He gave me a blanket and—picked me up and put me—put me in the guest room.”

Like he would do for any scared child, some part of his brain whispers, but Jason isn’t quite convinced. “Did he hurt you?”

Dickie hesitates for a long moment.

“It didn’t hurt,” he says, at last. “I couldn’t—get him to—to fuck me. I tried.”

I tried. Like it’s a maneuver he couldn’t get the hang of. A plan he made that just didn’t work out. Jason takes a long drink of his chocolate, like that will stop his hands from shaking.

He tries to think of what else to say. What will get this kid to believe him. Bruce must have said that he wouldn’t hurt them. Bruce took them from a monster, and he’s not actually that oblivious—he must have seen that they were scared. He would have tried to reassure them. Dick would have tried to reassure them, and Alfred, and maybe some of the others.

Jason doesn’t know what Bruce said, or Dick, or Alfred. No one deigned to tell him. Whatever it was, Dickie obviously didn’t believe it.

Jason used to be good with victims. He used to know exactly how to comfort and reassure, but ever since—ever since the Pit and the League he’s all sharp edges, all deep voice and hulking shape. A protector, not a comforter. He eliminates the threat; he leaves comfort and recovery to the others. Robin, Spoiler, Orphan.

And Nightwing. Maybe Dick should be the one having this conversation, but Jason saw the way the kids looked at him when they arrived at the apartment, as he fed them and tried to explain the rules without using the word rules. The kids don’t trust Dick either.

And why should they? his thoughts whisper. Dick would roll over for Bruce in a heartbeat.

Well. If that’s the problem, Jason is exactly the right person for the job.

“Bruce isn’t here,” he says.

Dickie’s eyes get wider. They dart around the room before settling on Jason again.

“Okay,” he says. It sounds almost like a question.

“He isn’t going to come here. This is Dick’s apartment. Dick pays for it, it’s his name on the lease. It’s safe.” Jason looks the kid straight in the eyes. “If Bruce comes here. If he ever does anything you don’t want him to. I’ll kill him.”

Dickie laughs. It seems to startle him as much as it startles Jason. He covers his mouth with one hand, eyes wary. He looks at Jason.

“You—you’re serious.”

“Yes. I am.”

“You can’t,” Dickie says. He sounds lost, disbelieving. “He—he’s Batman.”

“And I’m the Red Hood,” Jason says, before he remembers that that name probably means nothing to Dickie. “I can. And if he touches you—if he ever does anything to you without your consent—I will.”

Dickie stares at him for a long moment. “Why?” he whispers. “You—” He breaks off. Jason waits for him to finish, but this time he truly seems to have run out of words.

“To keep you safe,” Jason says. This, at least, is familiar. “You deserve to be safe.”

Dickie’s breath hitches.

He ducks his head. He lifts his cup, as if to hide his face. He takes a sip—and then he breaks.

Jason knew this was coming. Delayed reactions can be the worst, and this reaction has been delayed to hell and back. When Dickie breaks, he shatters. His whole posture collapses like a dying star. He curls in on himself, clutching his mug to his chest, as tears drip down his chin, falling into his hot chocolate.

He never makes a sound.

Jason feels his fingers tighten around his own mug. He wonders if he could break it. If he could just keep tightening his grip until he shattered the ceramic, like he wants to shatter the windpipe of the man who taught a teenager to cry completely fucking silently.

“I’m sorry,” Dickie gasps. He scrapes away tears with the edge of his sleeve, clearly trying to compose himself. Jason can still see him sobbing.

“It’s okay,” he says. His own voice sounds far away, flat and detached from the anger shrieking through his veins. “Let it out.”

You need to let it out.

He needs to kill something. Someone. He needs to find the evil motherfucker who did this and paint the walls with his blood. You should have taken me with you, Bruce, you should have let me rip him apart and feed him his own fucking fingers—

Dickie’s voice pulls him back to the present moment. He blinks and sees Dickie rubbing his face again. He isn’t sobbing anymore.

“I won’t—” Dickie swallows. He taps his fingers against his mug. Stops. Starts again. Stops. Like he’s trying to hold himself still. “Do that. Again. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t,” Jason says. “You don’t need to apologize. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

Dickie won’t look at him. His fingers stutter against the mug. His knuckles whiten.

“You don’t have to do anything.” Jason doesn’t look at him, either. He looks out the window, at the dull lights of Blüdhaven. He wonders if Dick would be angry with him for leaving in the middle of the night. “You can do—whatever you want. Cry. Don’t cry. Whatever.” Just don’t hurt anyone.

Jason wants to hurt someone.

He holds himself still. He sits on the edge of his seat, drinking watery hot chocolate, and he watches Dickie methodically pull himself back from the edge of a breakdown.

“You should get some sleep,” he says. His voice sounds rote, placid, cut off from the anger welling up within him. Dickie looks at him with glassy eyes. “You don’t have to sleep in the bedroom. If you don’t want to.”

Dickie inhales. It’s silent, but Jason sees the movement of his chest. “It doesn’t matter,” he says, before Dickie can take the suggestion as an order. “It’s up to you.”

Dickie looks at the table. Jason forces himself to drink his hot chocolate, until he’s down to the dregs of powder stuck to the bottom of the mug.

“I want to sleep in the bedroom,” Dickie whispers. He looks up as soon as he says it, watching for a reaction. Jason feels the weight of his gaze.

He holds himself still.

“Okay,” he says. “That’s fine.”

Dickie breathes out. Some of the tension drops from his shoulders. “Okay,” he says. He sets his mug down on the table—picks it up again, stands, and carries it to the kitchen sink. He glances back at Jason, nervous and wary.

“Good night,” Jason says.

Dickie nods once. Then he leaves the room, quickly and quietly, through the kitchen and back down the hallway. Jason sits still and listens until he hears the ever-so-soft click of a door latching. Then the apartment is quiet.

Jason leaves his mug in the sink. He switches off the kitchen light. Then he stands in the living room for a while, counting his breaths, following a meditative pattern.

He can’t stay here. He moves toward the door, grabbing an orange scarf off the back of Dick’s couch as he goes. It’s not red, and it’s not a hood, but it’ll have to do. He needs to go. He needs to get out of the apartment, go somewhere far away, and vent his anger on someone who deserves it.

He locks the apartment door behind him.

⁂