Barbara looks up from her computer, eyes tracking down Jason's body like she still can't quite believe he's back. Maybe she can't. Sometimes Jason has trouble with it.
Maybe she looks at him and wonders why he's not his brother. God knows he does.
"Who?" she asks cautiously, hitting three keys and turning her chair to face him where he sits on a bench.
"Fucking everyone, Babs," Jason replies shortly, leaning his head back against the wall. He hears her wheel over to him, and when he looks down from the ceiling she's watching him with her elbows on her knees. "They stare at me when I walk in a room, and they whisper to each other before I'm even gone. Why do they even care?"
Barbara smiles her wise little smile, patting his knee.
"You're sort of a celebrity, Jaybird," she informs him. "A lot of us knew you when you were a scrappy little kid, trailing after... Well. Everyone knew Team Nightwing. What's not to talk about?"
"So what does it matter that I disappeared for a while?" Jason presses. "Why do they have to fucking stare?"
Jason goes for a sharp retort, then blinks.
"It's... not unheard of," he protests weakly, but Babs shakes her head, picking up his twitching left hand. He finds himself swaying in when her voice drops.
"Jason," she says, squeezing his fingers. "Your copilot died and you still killed a Kaiju. Mauled it. With one arm and no help. You brought Nightwing to shore, to a point where the PPDC could retrieve her -- and you. You went into shock while piloting. The strain should, by all rights, have killed you."
"Yeah it should," Jason mutters, but Barbara yanks on his hand.
"You're a hero, Jay, you're something to look up to. Gardner beats up on you because yeah, he's a jerk, but he's also intimidated. You're..." She sighs, brings his hand into her lap and he shivers when his fingers trace the network of scars up his arm. "You're what we call a Jaegerhund, here in Ops."
Jason frowns, tilting his head and calling upon his high-school level German. Hunter... Hunting dog.
"Wouldn't it be... Jagdhund?" he asks, but Barbara shakes her head.
"It started as a joke, just a slang term ‘cause of the Jaegers. By the time anyone who spoke proper German tried to correct it, everyone was already saying Jaegerhund and nobody gave a crap about petty things like conjugation." She pauses, wrapping both hands around his and giving it a brief squeeze. "The point is, you were meant for this. If your entire career as a pilot didn't prove that then what you did, what you were capable of when you were utterly alone and practically catatonic, what you did on instinct alone -- that does."
There's a dangerous pressure building in his throat, and Jason blinks several times in quick succession.
"I felt him go," he blurts out, then slams his mouth shut. He's never talked to anyone about it, tried not to even think about it, but he forgot how good Barbara's always been about coaxing things out of her bats and birds. "I. Babs, we were still drifting."
He wants to take it back for the look on her face, but then she's hauling him forward and his arms are around her waist and she's sighing into his hair. She hasn't held him like this since he was hospitalized, and before that since he was a kid, but he feels small all over again. He thinks maybe it's just a Babs thing.
"It feels like coming home, being here." His voice is muffled, but he doesn't want to move. "I keep feeling like he's gonna be waiting in the mess hall, or around the next corner..."
"It's strange seeing you walking around alone," Babs admits, long nails scratching lightly at the base of his neck. "It hurts a little, like something missing. The two of you were so inseparable before."
Jason nods, and he knows she understands. It feels like everything kept going and he stopped, like Dick Grayson’s memory has been tucked away in a cabinet somewhere and gotten over. Jason just wants climb into Nightwing's cradle and drag a Kaiju to the base and paint the walls with its blood, drown all the new recruits and trainees in the stinging scent of ammonia and say this, this is what happens, this is what killed my brother. Still wanna be a Ranger, Drake? Is this what you want, kids?
Instead he takes a deep breath, gives Babs's waist one last squeeze before pushing off. The pneumatic doors are opening to admit a Jaeger team, and that’s his cue to leave.
The waves crash around him, furiously confused, and Jason understands the feeling. He's deep in the drift, struggling to stay afloat in a wash of memories -- Dick's and Mia's, and Mia's not even here, she doesn't belong in his head. He can hear the screams of his brother, the screams of the Kaiju, but there's no one. There's nothing here.
The ocean is empty except for Jason, and he knows he's the only living soul in Nightwing's ruined hull. He's alone, and bits of metal crash into the sea around him as the Jaeger crumbles.
He calls out into the oncoming storm, feels Nightwing buckle and try to pull him apart, and the oceans shift around him. He was wrong, he's not alone, the Kaiju is still here and he can't do this alone, Nightwing's too heavy to move on his own, he's utterly paralyzed and the thing is rearing up, category four at least-
"Jason! For Christ’s sake, wake up!"
The Hawaiian shore shatters around him, and Jason finds himself thrashing under small hands. He wrenches himself free of the grip, back slamming against the wall as he rolls -- it's Tim, he recognizes vaguely, and the kid is in sweats and a t-shirt. He looks like he just woke up.
Jason's stomach rises and he bolts off of the bed. He barely reaches the toilet in time to heave into it, shaking fingers gripping the seat and acid burning in his throat. Tim sinks down next to him, somehow making space for himself in the tiny room and keeping Jason from smacking his forehead when he retches.
"The fuck are you doing in my room, again?" he rasps, when his stomach finally backs down. Tim's on his knees, ready with a damp towel for Jason to wipe his face with.
"You woke me up," he says simply, and Jason squints at him in confusion.
"I woke you up," he repeats slowly, and Tim nods. He drops his eyes to his hands, fiddling with the edge of his t-shirt.
"You were screaming." The smaller man's voice is soft, and there's a note in it Jason can't quite define. "I was wandering around, I… heard it. I came in and you were thrashing, I was worried you'd hurt yourself. Here, you've got-..." He takes the towel out of Jason's hand, carefully wiping the corner of his mouth.
"Your little crush is getting out of hand, kid," Jason mumbles sarcastically as he reaches for the flush lever with trembling, twitching fingers. When he gets no snarky reply he stops, looking back at Tim to see the kid clutching the towel in his lap and staring metaphorical holes in it.
"Oh my God," Jason says dumbly, arm falling limp. "You actually have a crush on me. I'm a fucked up pile of scars and anger issues and I just puked and you have a crush on me-"
"Jason, calm down," Tim says, cutting off his rambling, and the kid really seems a little too okay with this revelation, or at least, much more okay with it than Jason is. "You still look a little grey, and I don't think you want to stress yourself into throwing up again."
Jason makes an unintelligible sort of noise, smacking his hand on the lever and watching water rush into the bowl. "Sorry, but I'm a little thrown. Just. Why? Since you met me I've given you about five hundred death-glares, been crazy depressed, beat a guy up, beat you up, practically given a girl a stroke just by drifting with her..." He shakes his head, scrubbing at his face as a helpless chuckle leaks out. This kid’s so much better than he is, what the hell. "Fuck, I want whatever rose-tinted glasses you wear."
"I don't wear any corrective lenses," Tim says primly, folding the towel against his knees and deliberately avoiding Jason's gaze. "I have perfect vision."
Jason scoffs, then jumps out of his skin when someone knocks on his door, chest squeezing so tight for a moment he feels as if his pounding heart will crumple.
"Fuck," he wheezes, just as a muffled voice is saying, "Jason?"
"I can-" Tim starts, but Jason's already up -- painfully -- and limping for the door. He pulls it open, default scowl already in place, to see Roy standing there in pajama pants with his arm raised to knock again.
"Jason!" the redhead exclaims, grabbing him by the biceps and fucking studying his face. "Are you okay? We heard doors slamming and screaming -- Jesus, you look awful-" Fuck, did he wake the whole wing-
"Roy." Jason's rescuer is one of the bombshell pilots of Gamma Starfire, Kory Anders. It takes him a moment to register that she's clad in nothing but the shirt that goes with Roy's pants, but she wears it like an expensive dress as she wraps an arm around Roy's. "Ease up, you're going to break the man."
Jason lets out a relieved breath when he's finally released, absently rubbing his left arm.
"I'm fine, Roy," he says earnestly, tacking on a serviceable (if somewhat bitter) smile when Roy looks dubious. "Everyone has bad dreams sometimes."
Roy opens his mouth to reply, but glances over Jason's shoulder and Jason follows to see Tim slinking out of the bathroom. He gives Roy an awkward wave, then folds himself into the desk chair and starts fiddling with a pen. Jason shakes his head a little -- the kid's like a mildly embarrassed baby bird or something -- and turns back to Roy, putting a carefully steady hand on his shoulder.
"I promise I'm okay," he says, and manages to sound so damn sincere. "I'm not gonna have a heart attack or anything, you two go have your fun and I'll still be here in the morning."
"I just wanted to be sure- I know, but-"
Jason groans, leans his elbow on the doorframe and rubs his eyes. "Chrissakes, Kory, take him."
Kory smiles in a way Jason would almost call dangerous and proceeds to tow Roy back in the direction of his room. Jason, for his part, barely manages to keep his leg from collapsing as he closes door and turns to lean on it, eyes closed and head tipped back against the cool metal.
"I didn't first meet you when you got here," Tim says out of nowhere, and Jason drops his head to look at him.
"That's creepy, give me more," he mumbles, and limps over to flop onto his bed, carefully keeping his eyes away from the pictures on the wall. Tim just smiles a little, turning the chair and reaching over to push Jason's hair out of his eyes. His fingertips are cool; it’s nice.
"I was like... twelve, thirteen," he says, and Jason finds himself tipping his head into the touch. Tim humors him. The little shit's digging his claws into him and Jason's too tired to care. "You guys were on TV. Ellen."
"She was a sweetheart," Jason muses, pulling his knees up. He'd been floored at the time, utterly starstruck at just being in her presence. Tim hums an agreement, fingers working out the knots in Jason's hair.
"You guys came out afterwards and there was a crowd," he continues. "You were rockstars, with your leather jackets and ripped jeans and the way they played Dick's charm off of your rough edges. I was there with my parents -- we didn't know, of course, but we figured it out. I was freaking out, y'know, I was a kid, and my dad shunted me through people's legs to the front-"
Jason sits up abruptly, cracked memories filtering back in.
"You were that one kid," he says, in a fit of eloquence, and Tim smiles again.
"Smacked right into you," he confirms. "My dad came up behind me and asked for a picture, and you and Dick got right down with my shrimpy self, already grinning. And you said, 'keep your chin up, kid, we'll have those Kaiju assholes cleared out soon.'"
Jason can feel the smile forming, pulling his cheeks into an unfamiliar shape. "Dick smacked me right upside the head for swearing around a kid," he murmurs, and he lets the memory sit for a moment before it starts to hurt and he resorts to less painful bitterness. His smile twitches and collapses. "Cut to... what, six years later, doin' real hot on the Kaiju front."
Tim sighs, shakes his head and his hand buries itself in Jason's hair again. Jason, for his part, is finding it way more comforting than he probably should, even when Tim tugs. "Cut to now, and I'm living across the hall from a guy I had a poster of on my wall," he corrects. "I don't particularly mind if he's a little ripped around the edges."
Jason scoffs and shakes his head, but he has no answer to that -- at least, none that don't stick in his throat. So instead of replying he just returns to his half-curled position, absently rubbing the scars that trace up his left arm and shoulder. Tim plays with his hair until Jason's eyes slip shut, but when the feeling stops they snap open again. Tim's setting his feet on the floor, making to stand.
"You gonna be okay until morning?" he asks, and Jason realizes he's starting to panic already at the thought of being left alone, so he reaches out to latch onto the kid's skinny wrist, holding him until Jason can figure out how to talk. Wow, he’s being pathetic tonight.
"No," he says truthfully after a moment. He pauses again before continuing, hesitant and halting. He hasn’t talked to anyone about this shit, except maybe a little bit to Barbara. "I. Usually after a night like this... I get wasted and hit things and choose poor coping methods." Points for self-awareness though, right?
"Well," Tim murmurs carefully, "you can't really do that here, particularly the former." At Jason's nod he settles back in the chair, covering Jason's hand with his own. "You want me to... what, stay with you?"
Suddenly Jason feels like a colossal idiot, and he pulls his hand back, rolling onto his back.
"You don't have to," he says, ears burning. "I mean. It's not really that big of a deal. I mean, I got by three years without a cuddle buddy, y'know? Doesn't-"
"God, you can be high-strung."
Tim shifts, rises, then he's pushing Jason over and curling up next to him on the mattress. He really...doesn't take up much space, does he.
"I'll stay," he says quietly, ignoring Jason's dumbfounded blinking, "but I'm tired. And I'm not gonna sleep on your floor like you did mine."
Jason swallows back a nervous little laugh at that, but then Tim is tugging at the pillow and they're trying to arrange themselves in a way that's convenient for sleeping. Tim ends up on the wall side of the bed with his head on Jason's bum arm, letting Jason keep the pillow and allowing him to curl his back against Jason's side, and it's weird how easy it is. Tim's got astoundingly soft hair, and it smells a little like rain somehow when Jason turns his face into it.
"Thanks for waking me up," he murmurs, and Tim traces a fingertip over a long scar on his bicep.
"Thanks for not calling me a fanboy," he mumbles, and tugs the blanket up a little higher.
