tethered to you - jason todd
summery: Bruce made him a soldier. Death made him a ghost. But Dick? Dick made him belong. Bruce taught him how to survive the fall. Dick taught him why it was worth climbing back up. They were never the same age, never meant to mirror each other, but they did anyway — one laugh, one heartbeat, one rhythm. Jason doesn’t call anyone else his brother. He doesn’t have to. Dick Grayson was the only one who ever felt like home.
Author's notes: I’ve had this sitting in my drafts for so long, but I could never bring myself to post it. I’m so happy I finally did — this version honestly has me in tears with how well it turned out. I’m just… really, really happy with it. 🥹💖 you can also find me on ao3 (here!) and hope you enjoy this job! English is not my native language, so please be kind. love u ⋆˚✿˖°.
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The thing about coming back from the dead is that nobody tells you what to do with all the noise.
Jason had thought dying would be silence — the kind that erases, the kind that means rest. He had pictured it like a book closing, the last page turned, the weight of it final and clean. But death wasn’t silence. It was a pause — a thin membrane between breaths, between heartbeats — and when he broke through it, there was nothing but sound.
A body screaming to exist again. Blood roaring like static in his ears. A heart pounding with someone else’s rhythm. He came back wrong, alive but offbeat, haunted by echoes that didn’t belong to him. Somewhere in the chaos, he swore he heard laughter — soft, familiar, devastatingly kind.
It had sounded like Dick.
He told himself it was memory. That ghosts don’t talk, that echoes fade. But sometimes he wondered if Dick’s voice had been the one thing that pulled him back — a tether too strong to cut, even by death.
He saw Dick again months after his return. The city was gray that day, sky heavy, air thick with rain. He’d braced himself for anger, for that sharp edge of disappointment that used to live in Bruce’s eyes. But what Dick gave him was worse. It wasn’t anger. It was pity — soft, open, raw.
Jason had wanted a fight. He’d wanted something clean and brutal, something to make the ache shut up. Instead, Dick looked at him like he was twelve again — bruised, too small for the weight he carried. It broke something Jason didn’t even realize was still intact.
He told himself he didn’t think about that day anymore. But he did. He always did.
There were nights when Gotham went quiet — a silence so fragile it felt like glass — and Jason found himself on rooftops, staring toward Blüdhaven. He told himself it was habit, that he wasn’t looking for anything. But his eyes always found that faint glow on the horizon, that distant pulse of light, and he thought of Dick — of laughter under streetlights, of steady hands and warmer nights.
He’d always done that — followed the light. Even as a kid, Jason had orbited Dick like gravity. Dick was motion, rhythm, certainty; Jason was raw nerve and unspent fury. But Dick had never made him feel smaller for it. Never made him feel like a stray trying to fit in. Bruce had taken him in. Dick had made him belong.
He remembered the first time Dick called him little brother. It was after patrol, the air thick with sweat and adrenaline. Dick had grinned — careless, bright — and the words slipped out between breaths: Good work, little brother. Jason had rolled his eyes, pretended it didn’t matter, but the words had stuck. They’d rooted deep, a promise he never forgot.
He died still carrying that promise.
It wasn’t Bruce he thought of at the end. It wasn’t the man who trained him, who gave him a name and a mask. It was Dick. The memory of Dick’s hand closing around his wrist mid-leap. The echo of Dick’s voice saying You’ve got this, Little Wing. The rhythm of two shadows moving as one.
He’d believed — foolishly, maybe — that Dick would come for him. That he’d swing out of the smoke like he always did, laughing that ridiculous circus laugh, and pull him free. But the hand never came. The world went white, then black, then gone.
When Jason woke again — years later, body remade, soul scraped thin — that absence was still there. A space where Dick should’ve been.
He told himself he hated him for it. For not saving him. For moving on. For smiling again. But hate was too small a word for what he felt. What lived in his chest was something bigger, messier — grief wearing the shape of love.
He could still feel Dick in his bones. The way he fought, the way he breathed, the way he moved. When Jason fought now, sometimes his body betrayed him — shifting into Dick’s rhythm mid-brawl. He’d slip into it without thinking: the weight distribution, the sweep of an arm, the spin of a kick. Smooth, deliberate, perfect. For a second, he’d feel whole again — two halves, one motion. Then he’d remember he was alone, and the air would rush out of him like a punch to the chest.
He never told anyone about that. It felt sacred. Private. Like betraying a ghost.
He still organizes his gear the way Dick used to, lining things up in neat rows, a small nod to a habit learned years ago in a messy room filled with laughter and late-night training. Sometimes, when he’s tired, he catches himself humming under his breath — not a song, exactly, but a rhythm. One Dick used to drum against the table when they waited for Alfred to serve dinner before going out during the night as Nightwing and Robin.
They were supposed to be different. Dick, the golden son. Jason, the reckless one. But in the quiet corners of the Manor, in the space between missions, they had been the same — two boys who learned to move through the world as one heartbeat. Two halves of the same shadow, growing in opposite directions but tethered to the same center.
Jason sometimes wonders if Bruce ever saw it — how alike they were, how much they blurred into each other when no one was watching. The same sharp wit, the same reckless loyalty, the same unspoken understanding. Bruce had trained soldiers. But he’d raised two people as the same one.
Now, when Jason moves through Gotham, he can still feel it — that tether stretching between them, unseen but unbroken. He likes to imagine Dick feels it too. Maybe he’s out there on his own rooftop, eyes tilted toward Gotham, thinking about the boy who once mirrored his every step.
Probably not. Dick was good at moving forward. He always had been. But Jason… Jason carried everything.
Sometimes, he thinks that’s what brothers are for — to carry the weight the other can’t.
He remembers Dick’s voice. Not the one that said his name in anger or disbelief after he came back, but the one from before: soft, steady, endless. You did good, Little Wing. He remembers the way Dick’s hand steadied him after every fall. The way Dick laughed — bright, stupid, contagious — when Jason tried too hard and tripped over his own feet. The way he never made Jason feel like a replacement, but a partner.
Dick had been the first person to see Jason not as a second Robin, but as Jason — even before Bruce or Alfred. That’s why it hurt so much when everything fell apart. Because it wasn’t just losing a mentor, or a team, or a life. It was losing the one person who had ever made him feel real. It was losing a brother, losing a family.
The city hums below him now — neon and noise, life moving on. Jason leans back on the rooftop, the wind brushing against his armor, and lets the memories come. He can almost hear the sound of Dick landing beside him — soft, balanced, effortless.
He doesn’t need to open his eyes to see it. He knows exactly what it would look like: the easy grin, the quiet warmth, the unspoken understanding.
They don’t need words. They never did.
Jason drags a gloved hand across the edge of his helmet, tracing the dents and the scars on his neck. Each one a memory, each one a mark of survival. He thinks of the nights they trained, of the rhythm they built together, of the life they shared that no one else could touch.
Bruce’s love had saved him once. But Dick’s love had taught him how to live.
There are things Bruce will never understand about them — about the way they were built not as mentor and student, not even as brothers, but as halves of the same story. Dick, the first light in the dark; Jason, the flame that burned too bright, too fast.
Jason doesn’t call anyone else his brother. Not Tim. Not Damian. Not any of them. They’re Bruce’s family. Dick is his.
And maybe that’s enough.
On nights when Gotham feels smaller, Jason can almost sense him — out there in Blüdhaven, moving across his own rooftops, laughing into the wind. Two sons of the same shadow, breathing the same air, carrying the same ghosts.
They don’t need to speak. They don’t need to meet. The bond holds, even now.
Jason exhales, smoke curling like memory into the night. His gloved fingers trace the dents on his helmet — each one a scar, each one a story.
Some bonds don’t need words. Some loves don’t need saving. Some brothers don’t need to share blood — only rhythm.
Dick Grayson was his brother. His twin in every way that mattered. The other half of a story that death couldn’t finish.
And that — that was enough.
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