One question? Great. This was bound to be good. Good for everybody. Sure. As if talking would help. (It did. Sometimes. Probably not here and now, though. Words just didn’t seem like enough, like much at all.) He stayed stone-faced, jaw tight as Tim turned down the easy out. What, exactly, had they established? If Tim had figured fuck all out, in the years since the Red Hood kicked him across the Tower - well, he wouldn’t be here, would he?
Like that would’ve stopped Jason, though. He’d worn the same stupid cape, after all. Should’ve known what wouldn’t be enough to make a Robin quit. (Only Bruce and death seemed to be able to pull that off, and even those results were mixed.) But, Jason hadn’t known much of anything, back then. Too angry. Fucking stupid with it. Stupid and senseless and cruel. Not the Robin he’d been. Not who he was now. Who he was trying to be, at least.
Shit, though. This kid was testing it. Bruce misses you. Jason had sniffed, nose wrinkling, and swallowed around a wasp-sting sort of ache. Sudden, swollen. Bruce missed who, huh? That good little soldier who’d tried so damn hard to do what he was told? Who’d just kept trying, over, and over, and over, to be a better he just never seemed to be? Sure. Yeah, maybe Batman missed that.
(But Bruce? Bruce might miss the rest. It hadn’t always been so fucked, right?)
But the question. That one question. Jason stared it down, for a moment. Hawkish, squinting. Like he was waiting for the punchline. Nothing. So, fine. “Yeah.” A beat, quick as his heart. “I did.” There. Like it was a shock. As if anybody would’ve been surprised when Batman found himself a newer, better sidekick, after that screw-up bit the dust. He’d believed it. Easy. Easier still, with another Robin dead. Two miserable memorials, haunting that cave. “I thought… I wasn’t doing a hell of a lot of thinking, alright, I -” Biting down, Jason took a moment, trying to, yeah, think. Trying to be something more than mad about it. Not other than mad. Not instead of mad. He could be pissed as fuck, and hurt like hell, and be more than that.
And Tim didn’t deserve any of the worst of him. Never had. All Drake had done wrong, in the end, was make the same mistakes. Jason ground to a halt, an adrenaline-shiver all that was left of that cold-hot fury that’d started to scorch up the walls of his chest. “Yeah,” he echoed, blankly. “I did. I still do. I think he’s gonna keep doing what he does, the way he does, and so… we’re gonna keep happening. Don’t you fuckin’ try to tell me different.” Heading that right off, sharply. “I can see him, too. And -” Jason was burning out, now. Of feeling. The last of it limped out, abruptly. “And he can’t do this shit alone.” There. He’d found it. A familiar hollowness. A place he shouldn’t carry on a conversation from. Nothing good ever got said.
“I won’t,” Tim said. "He can’t.”
None of them could. Statistically, a one man army was nothing compared to an army of men with similar attributes. Robin’s ability to recognize necessity varied but even the most obtuse of them could see the bigger picture; Batman can’t do it alone.
Batman was the best, or so the little voice in his head claimed. An attainable standard, but still the best, so it logically followed that if Batman couldn’t do this alone, none of them could.
“I don’t think we can either.” He was beginning to draw back, further into the shadows. “Just something to think about. Everything’s going to get harder before getting better, but you already knew that. Maybe now’s... not a good time to be apart.”
Or to invite a dangerous killer any closer to his family.
He did anyway. Tim had a habit of doing things he knew he shouldn’t thanks to that tiny, whispering voice in his head was the conscience on his shoulder and it, conveniently, had the sympathy and understanding to invite the likes of Jason Peter Todd back home...
... And because Tim, despite the traumas, despite the pain, liked acquiring what the universe had already deemed off limits for him. If that meant a potential ally, or another addition to the family... Tim couldn’t find it in himself to resist.
Then maybe the bad blood wouldn’t be so thick. Maybe Tim could stop seeing the flickers of pain on Bruce’s face every time Jason was brought up. Maybe then they could move on.
Maybe. Tim couldn’t see the future, but he’d be damned if he didn’t at least try to make a difference.