Chapter Three

The Batmobile stops at sunset.

Jason lifts his head from the wall and watches as Bruce and Tim hit a series of controls, shutting down the engine, closing the exhaust ports, locking the car’s shields in place. Blood-orange light streams through the windshield.

Tim leaves the cockpit first. He climbs back into the cabin, and then he stands looking down at Jason. Jason looks back at him.

“Um,” Tim says. “Do you want to get up?”

“Tim,” Bruce says. It’s the first word he’s said in hours.

Tim rolls his eyes. “We’re stopped for the day,” he says. “We usually eat outside. With everyone. You can… come outside with me? If you want?”

Jason just looks at him. He doesn’t know what Tim wants him to say. He doesn’t have any more words of his own; those are gone. He pushed them down and buried them to keep himself quiet. To keep himself safe. Now he can’t find them anymore.

“There’ll be food,” Tim says. “You’re hungry, right?”

Jason is hungry. He is almost always hungry. He’s used to ignoring it. But he doesn’t have to ignore it, here, because here he gets food for free.

He just has to go with Tim.

“Yes,” he says. “Okay.”

Tim nods. He looks… relieved. “Cool,” he says.

Jason stands up. His bad leg cramps. It buckles. Jason grabs for the wall, scrabbling to regain his balance before he falls, before Tim gets annoyed and leaves him, before Bruce—

“Oh, here’s your cane,” Tim says. He holds it out. Jason takes it and braces it against the ground. He takes a deep breath.

“Thank you,” he says.

“No problem.”

Jason follows Tim out of the Batmobile, into the open air.

Red-orange light streams across the sky. Jason squints. He lifts his free hand to shade his face, and then he sees everything at once.

Two large trucks and three motorcycles are parked across from the Batmobile. All of the vehicles together form a loose perimeter around the campsite. The whole area is a hive of activity—several adults and at least three teenagers, tending the fire, unpacking food, setting up crates and folding chairs, talking.

There were never this many people before. Jason doesn't remember much, but he remembers that.

“So this is everybody,” Tim says. “I know it’s a lot, but you don’t have to worry. Nobody here is going to hurt you.”

He starts walking left, around the edge of the camp. Jason follows close behind.

At the center of camp, an old man stokes the fire, prodding logs and kindling into place. He has thinning grey hair, a neat mustache, and heavy lines in his face. He moves with energy and ease, despite his age.

“That’s Alfred,” Tim says. “He’s… kind of like Bruce’s dad. Don’t tell them I said that, though.”

Jason knows Alfred. Remembers his steady hands, his quiet presence, his keen words. He was just as smart as Bruce, just as protective, and he was always there. He always cared about Jason, even when Bruce—

Jason looks away. He shouldn’t stare. He looks at the ground instead.

“That’s Lucius Fox,” Tim says. He gestures at another older man, dressed in plain dark clothes, his dark hair just starting to turn silver. “He’s an inventor. And the best mechanic I’ve ever met. He works with B.”

Jason thinks he remembers the man. The name, Fox, is familiar, at least.

“That’s his wife, Tanya,” Tim goes on. “And their daughter, Tam. All their kids travel with us—that’s Tiffany, and Luke, and that’s Jace. He doesn’t always stick with us, but he’s here now. That’s his motorcycle.”

He remembers Jace. Jace has almost the same name as him. He’s almost the same age. Jason thinks they met once—at least once—when Bruce visited the Fox family. They lived—Jason tries to think. They lived in one place. They were settled. Probably in Gotham.

He wonders if he and Jace could have been friends.

“Hey! Tim!”

Jason startles. Tim just sighs, a long and suffering sigh, as a girl in bright-colored clothes jumps down from the truck next to them.

“Is that the new guy? He tell you his name yet?”

“And this is Steph. Short for Stephanie,” Tim says, turning so the girl can see him roll his eyes. “Leslie’s apprentice.”

“Oh,” Jason says. He didn’t know Leslie had an apprentice. It must be a recent thing—or maybe he forgot, but the girl doesn’t seem to recognize him either. She’s about Tim’s size, about Tim’s age, her blonde hair caught in a headband.

“Yeah,” Stephanie says. “Only ’cause the Bat is a stupid asshole who won’t let me fight.”

Jason flinches. He looks over his shoulder, suddenly scared that Bruce heard, that he’s going to—do something.

Bruce is by the fire, talking to Alfred. He doesn’t look like he heard.

“That’s not fair,” Tim says, “He just wants you to be safe—”

“He wants me out of the way,” Steph says. She turns to Jason and hooks her thumb at Tim. “He wants me out of the way too, he’s just too much of a wuss to say it.”

“I do not—that’s not—neither of those things is true!”

Tim splutters. Jason feels himself smiling and looks at the ground to hide it. Stephanie laughs.

Laughing and laughing and laughing so loud he can barely hear himself scream—

“Okay, that’s enough from Steph,” Tim says. He takes Jason’s arm and pulls him away from the truck, towards the camp center. “Let’s get some food.”

A large pot sits over the fire, steaming into the air. As they get closer, Jason smells meat and root vegetables—onions, garlic—thick on the air. His stomach feels suddenly empty.

Bruce stands by the fire, ladling soup into a bowl.

Jason stops. He hangs back, behind Tim, trying to stay out of the way. He knows how this works. Bruce will get his food. Then Bruce’s favorites—his family—Alfred, Tim, Cassandra, will get their food. Then the rest of the group, and then, after that, there will still be food left over, because Bruce is resource-rich, and he takes care of his people.

Jason takes a deep breath. The smell of stew floods his senses, and his mouth fills with water. Soon, he thinks. He’ll eat soon. Much sooner than he would anywhere else. He doesn’t have to worry. He just has to be patient.

“Tim,” Bruce says. It sounds different from how he said it in the car. It sounds warm. He hands Tim a bowl of soup. “And Ja—”

He stops. He stares at Jason for a second, his mouth half-open. Jason stares back.

Do you know, he thinks, do you know do you know have you known this whole time—

Bruce shoves a bowl into his free hand. Jason stumbles back, startled, and Bruce turns away from the fire.

“Jace!” He strides away.

Jason stands by the fire, frozen.

What was that?

“Hey,” Tim says. He nudges Jason—just slightly. Jason tenses. He has his cane in one hand and his food in the other and it would be easy to knock him over. “Let’s go sit down.”

Tim leads him over to a few empty crates and they sit together on the edge of the camp. Tim starts eating. After a second’s hesitation, Jason does the same.

It tastes just as good as it smells.

“So,” Tim says. “Sorry about that. It’s not your fault. Bruce is just… Bruce.” He shrugs. “Sometimes he gets sad.”

Jason looks across camp. He watches Bruce move between the other groups clustered around the fire. Lucius Fox, his wife, their sons; Leslie and Alfred, sitting with the woman from the battlefield, the huntress; Stephanie and Cassandra and the Fox sisters, laughing together. Bruce stops next to each of them, exchanges words, but never stays more than a minute or so.

You’re such a mother hen, B.

Jason squeezes his eye shut. The memory is fractured, incomplete. He can’t remember where they were, or why he said that. Past-him sounds raspy and broken, like Jason’s voice now, even though he knows he sounded different then.

You just don’t want to admit it.

“Why?” Jason says. Bruce has more people with him now than he ever did before. He has a family. What does he have to be sad about?

“He….” Tim hesitates. He glances at Jason. His voice lowers. “I think you remind him of someone.”

A hysterical laugh bubbles up in Jason’s throat. Me? I remind him of someone? Me? I’ll bet I fucking remind him of someone—

He swallows. “Who?” he says, even though he knows, he knows, and the words are only salt in the wound.

“His son,” Tim says. “Before me and Cass. He had another son.”

I was his son. I was his son!

“Well, two other sons, actually,” Tim says. “There’s Dick, the oldest—you haven’t met him yet. He doesn’t travel with us. He runs the Titans, up by the coast—maybe you’ve heard of them?”

Jason nods, shaky, distant, his mind stuck on faint memories of Dick—a bright smile, warm arms—a voice saying you don’t have to do everything he says and Jay he doesn’t own you—

“But, um,” Tim says. He looks down at his bowl. “He had another adopted son, before me, and… he died. Suddenly. It was—it was really bad.”

They thought he was dead. Of course they didn’t come after him. They thought he was dead.

“His name was Jason,” Tim says. “And… I guess he kind of looked like you. I think Bruce just… forgot. For a second.”

Bruce still thinks he’s dead.

“Bruce doesn’t like to talk about it,” Tim says. He looks up from his soup. He avoids Jason’s gaze. “But I thought you should know, if Bruce acts kind of weird around you—that’s why.”

Jason nods.

He eats some more of his soup, though it weighs on his stomach like lead. His hand shakes as it holds the spoon. For months, he dreamed that Bruce would find him. He dreamed of sitting in this very camp, eating Alfred’s soup, letting the Bat—his dad—protect him. For months, he held onto those dreams. Now he sits here, in Bruce’s camp, eating Alfred’s soup, and they don’t know him, and he is a stranger. It doesn’t feel real.

Nothing feels real anymore.

“How did he die?”

He wants to know what this child who never even met him thinks he knows. He wants to know what Bruce told him. If Bruce told him anything. Maybe Tim worked out the story on his own.

“In the wasteland,” Tim says. “He went off by himself, and… he never came back. We don’t really know what happened, but. You know.” Tim shrugs. The look on his face is troubled. “Eventually you have to stop looking.”

“You—” Jason chokes. The last bit of soup burns in his throat. “You told him that?”

“Yeah,” Tim says. Now he looks amused. Something in Jason’s brain, something buried very deep, wants to punch him. “That didn’t go well. But—I had to. He kept looking for months. Years. It was killing him. And he didn’t have anyone—to help him, or to talk to, he just—he just kept getting worse.”

Months. Years. Bruce did look for him. While Jason huddled in the dark and prayed for his dad to find him, Bruce searched. And this kid, this fucking child, told him to stop.

“He listened to you?”

“Yeah. Eventually. Me, and Alfred, and Mr. Fox, and everyone else trying to help him.” Tim tips his bowl back to drink the broth.

Alfred? Alfred said that? Jason’s knuckles whiten around the edge of his bowl. He thought Alfred cared. Even if Bruce didn’t, he thought Alfred—he thought—

“He thought it was his fault,” Tim says. “He blamed himself. For a long time. But it wasn’t. Jason is the one who ran away.”

Jason can’t breathe.

“He went off by himself,” Tim says. “He didn’t stay with a group, he didn’t even tell anyone where he was going, he just ran away. The one thing you’re not supposed to do. And he knew better. It wasn’t Bruce’s fault—”

“That’s a lie!”

Tim starts back. Suddenly Jason is standing up. Suddenly he’s looming over Tim, clutching his cane in one hand, balling the other into a fist. His heart slams in his chest and his body feels hot all over and his chest aches with the strain of breathing. He wants to cry. He wants to scream.

This time he doesn’t bury it.

“Did he tell you that? Is that what he said? That it wasn’t his fault? That I, that I ran away and I got myself killed, and he had nothing to do with it?”

Tim’s eyes are wider than an owl’s. He looks past Jason, then back at his face, and then he tries to stand up. Pure anger sears through Jason’s body. He smacks his cane into Tim’s chest, knocking him back.

“That’s a lie,” Jason snarls. Then something else occurs to him. Something worse. “Did you tell him that? Is that what you said when you told him to give up, so he would stop looking, so—so he would make you Robin?”

Tim stares at him. The hesitation, the amusement, the cunning, all of it is gone from his face. He just stares.

“Tell me!” Jason lashes out with his cane.

“That’s enough!”

Bruce’s voice fills the camp. Deep, commanding, angry. It sounds nothing like Jason’s dad. It sounds like the Bat.

Jason slams back into reality.

He hit Tim.

He lost control of himself. He stood up and yelled and screamed and lashed out with the gift that they gave him just a few hours ago and he hit Tim across the face with his cane.

He hit Tim.

Tim is Bruce’s son. His Robin. Jason is a slave he stole in a skirmish, only Bruce doesn’t keep slaves, so what does that make Jason?

A burden. A pet. He has no right to even touch Tim, to even speak to him, but Tim got him food and treated him like a person and Jason repaid him by yelling and screaming and hurting him.

Suddenly Jason is on the ground. He bows as low as he can with his twisted leg. He presses his forehead to the dirt.

“Please—” He cringes. He has no right to beg. He knows what he did. Everyone knows. Everyone in the camp saw him lose his mind and attack Tim and now Bruce is going to punish him. Bruce is going to pick him up by the throat and hammer a spiked gauntlet into his mangled ribs—

“Please,” he says. “Please, I’m sorry, please, I won’t, I, I’m not—”

He has nothing to offer. Nothing to give. He already proved how disobedient and dangerous he is. He can’t hide anymore. He’s already dead.

“I’m sorry, I don’t, I, I can’t. I—please.”

His last words are a hoarse gasp against the ground.

“I don’t want to die again.”

A pair of hands close around his arms. Jason flinches. The hands stay. He waits for them to grip tighter, to grab and shove and hit.

The hands lift him up onto his feet. Jason looks up and sees Alfred.

Alfred, his eyes filled with tears.

“My dear boy—” His voice is soft. Close to breaking. “My dear, dear boy.”

He pulls Jason into his arms. He wraps him in a warm, soft hug, and then he’s crying and Jason is crying and nothing matters but Alfred holding him.

“I’m sorry,” he says, because he has dirt mixing with tears and snot on his face and all of it is soaking into Alfred’s clean shirt. “I’m sorry—”

“Sh, sh.” Alfred tucks him closer against his chest. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

That doesn’t sound right. Jason has a lot to apologize for. Running away. Getting caught. Lying to them. Calling Bruce a liar. Hurting Tim. But he hasn’t seen Alfred in years, he thought he would never see Alfred again, and he doesn’t want this to end. He doesn’t want to face the punishment waiting for him.

He just wants to be safe. Just for a little longer.

Soon Alfred steps back. His hands drift to Jason’s shoulders, and Jason leans into the touch. Alfred smiles, a small, sad smile.

“There you are,” he says. His eyes well with tears, but the urge to cry seems to have left him. “My dear boy. How we’ve missed you.”

Jason almost starts crying again, but with Alfred holding him at arm’s length, he can see Bruce—and Tim—and Cass, all standing in a little cluster, watching him. Jason turns toward them.

“Jason,” Bruce says. He stares at Jason. His face is almost blank.

“I’m sorry,” Jason says. A small, cowardly part of him still wants to kneel, but with Alfred’s hand on his shoulder, that part is easier to ignore. “I—Bruce—I’m sorry.”

“No,” Bruce says. He steps forward, one hand extended; then he stops. His eyes never leave Jason’s face. “You—shouldn’t apologize. You—” He stops. Shakes his head. “I—”

A loud sigh rises from the camp behind them.

“Bruce, you idiot,” the huntress says. “Give your son a hug.”

Bruce looks stricken. “I,” he says. He takes another halting step. “If you—aren’t uncomfortable—”

Suddenly Jason is moving. He walks up to Bruce, like he did so many times before, and he lets his dad catch him.

For a second, Bruce is stiff and unresponsive. Then his shoulders drop, his arms loop around Jason’s shoulders, and he leans his head down to rest on top of Jason’s.

“You’re so tall,” Jason mutters. Then he catches himself, flinches a little, but Bruce just laughs, a heavy, wet laugh. He pulls Jason closer.

“Jay, lad,” he whispers. His embrace is warm. He smells like woodsmoke and sweat and ash. “Jason.” He tucks his chin down and murmurs into Jason’s hair. “Jay. My son. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“’M sorry too,” Jason says. Bruce pulls away from him, probably to argue. “For—not telling you. I don’t…”

He doesn’t know why he did it, or didn’t do it—why he couldn’t just tell them who he was. The last two days are a haze, blurring like a charcoal sign in rain. Now it all seems so simple. Before—he was scared. He knows that. He was so scared.

He can’t remember why.

“Doesn’t matter,” Bruce says. He seems to be getting his words back, slowly pulling himself together. “You didn’t—shouldn’t have needed to.”

“My face is all fucked up,” Jason mutters.

“You’re my son,” Bruce says. “I should have known you. I’m so sorry.”

Jason pulls back a little and looks past him, at Tim. The kid watches them with keen interest. Cass watches, too, but Tim is the only one with a red mark across his face.

“I’m sorry,” Jason says again.

“That’s okay,” Tim says. He looks like he might actually mean it. The cane missed both of his eyes. Jason sends up a silent prayer of thanks. “It’s not everyday you get smacked in the face by a dead guy.”

“Seriously, Tim?” Stephanie says.

After that, the rest of the camp comes alive around them. They flood in to fuss over Jason and Tim and Bruce alike. Jason meets all of them again, Leslie and Lucius and Jace and Tamara and Stephanie and Helena, the huntress, telling him old memories and stories about Bruce that range from humorous to melancholy. Alfred serves up more food for everyone. Bruce refuses to let either Jason or Tim out of his reach, tugging them back into a protective hug whenever they try to slip away. Tim rolls his eyes at Jason behind Bruce’s back. It feels almost like forgiveness.

After his second bowl of soup, after Tim finally escapes into one of the trucks, Jason drifts. He finds himself sitting on a log near the fire, leaning against someone’s shoulder. It’s not Bruce. It’s someone smaller than him.

Jason pulls himself upright and blinks at the sight of Cassandra sitting next to him. She blinks once in return. Firelight dances in her eyes.

“Hi,” Jason says softly. They haven’t talked. Cass doesn’t talk. Although she seems to enjoy the energy of the camp and the many conversations floating around her, Cass is quiet. Jason wonders what happened to make her that way.

“Hi,” Cass says. She breathes out with the word, as though she isn’t used to saying it. She tilts her head. “Little brother.”

Jason smiles. The motion tugs at the scarred brand under his eye. It feels good. “Sorry,” he says. “I think you’re the little one.”

Cass’s brow furrows. Her lips move silently as she stares at him. Her eyes are sharp, piercing, but somehow comforting. Jason remembers seeing her on the battlefield. How she attacked and forced him to his knees. How she helped him stand up after. How she helped him walk.

“No,” Cass says. Her lips form the “oh” for a second after she says it. Then she smiles, a bright, mischievous smile that lights up her whole face. “Little brother.”

Jason laughs. For the first time in three years, his own laughter doesn’t scare him.

Someone sits down on his other side—his blind side—and Jason flinches out of habit.

“It’s just me,” Bruce says. Jason still has to turn and look, to make sure it’s him. “It’s alright.”

Jason takes a deep breath and pushes the tension out of his body. In slow, awkward movements, he leans sideways and lets his head rest on Bruce’s shoulder. Bruce puts an arm around him.

If Bruce and Cass notice the tears dripping off of Jason’s face, they’re kind enough not to say anything.