Chapter Text
Wrecked. It’s a word that Jason often thinks when he’s thinking about himself, after, once he’s able to think at all. His body’s a wreck. His mind’s a wreck. He pictures himself as wreckage, as a ragged mess that’s been blown back to Gotham by some random tide, after the storm that was Bruce and the clown and the crowbar and the Pit blew him sky-high. He’s all holes and hollow places and rage blows through him day and night like a high wind.
“Nice,” the replacement Robin says appreciatively, from his bloody place at Jason’s feet. “Kind of — dramatic — but I get it. It’s like a metaphor, right?”
Jason didn’t come here to kill this kid but that was before he started eavesdropping on Jason’s thoughts and offering commentary. He actually thinks killing him might be a reasonable idea at this point.
The replacement spits out some more blood.
“Sorry,” he says. “It was a compliment, jeez. B always said you were really good at literature and stuff.”
The kick to his broken arm makes him scream but it’s not very satisfying. This whole night has been unsatisfying. Whatever bullshit tech gave the Replacement this temporary telepathy completely ruined the whole element of surprise that was a crucial part of the plan. He yelled out, “Wait, the Red Hood is Jason Todd?” before Jason could even utter a word of his speech and then the actual fight was made a lot harder by the Replacement’s ability to predict and evade his moves. Jason still won, obviously, he’s stronger and angrier and the Replacement was distracted, but it’s not the humiliating beatdown that he planned.
“Feels pretty humiliating to me,” the Replacement mutters and Jason knocks him out cold and then screams in frustration. He can’t leave him here now, bloody and bruised and broken, a message for Bruce. Who knows how much the brat has overheard of Jason’s plans and goals, how much more he might have guessed from what he overheard. For all Jason knows, he’s got a picture-perfect mental map of every part of Crime Alley currently under Jason’s control, gathered from the back of Jason’s mind while he was distracting Jason with bullshit about how Bruce misses him and stupid jokes about metaphors and tights and the fit of the Robin costume. Jason has no idea how this telepathy thing works and so he has no choice but to turn the beatdown into his least favorite type of crime to get involved in, a kidnapping.
The telepathy is weird. He can’t read the Replacement’s mind but he feels it like a little itch in his own brain when the Replacement wakes up and starts to rifle through Jason’s thoughts again. He turns around and grabs the Replacement by the chin and then he realises that the face he’s holding is almost black with bruising. Jason doesn’t remember hitting him that hard and, just for a moment, before he remembers who this kid is and what he’s done, it sends an uneasy twitch through him. He hates feeling out of control and he didn’t—did he set out to break Robin’s cheekbone? To bloody his mouth? To —
“It’s not broken,” Robin interrupts. “My arm’s broken, I think, but not my face.”
He says it so flatly and calmly that it sends a fresh surge of rage through Jason. The kid is always, always showing off—Jason remembers that from watching him in Gotham, his little quips and smirks, the way Dick grins at him and he grins back—but you’d think he’d have the self-preservation to tone it down when he’s been locked in a basement by a guy who beat him bloody, when he’s manacled by the ankle to a wall and his broken arm hasn’t been splinted but is dangling, swollen and useless, by his side. Rich kid, Bristol kid, never known a day’s hardship in his life kid, but even so. Surely even rich Bristol kids who are willing to put on the Robin colors aren’t this dumb.
The Replacement looks very pale, suddenly, under his black and blue. He bites his lip.
“What?” Jason snaps at him and he shakes his head once, quickly, and then winces.
”I didn’t,” he says. “I wasn’t trying to—I just thought you should know.”
”That I broke your arm not your face,” Jason says. “Got it.” He grabs the broken arm, roughly, and the kid goes so white then that it looks like he might faint. Jason splints the arm as quickly as he can, trying not to imagine what other damage he could do, trying not to imagine smashing, stamping, cracking, twisting. The deepening wariness on the Replacement’s face makes it obvious that the images are getting through loud and clear. He’s very, very still now under Jason’s touch and he’s doing a controlled breathing exercise that seems to be taking up a lot of his concentration. At least he’s finally taking Jason seriously and that soothes some of his rage and gives him enough of a sense of distance that he can step back again, mentally, and look at what he’s done and think what he’s going to do next.
He’s got the Replacement in a basement, injured. He’s not going to be able to let him go until the telepathy shit has turned off and whatever secrets he’s got out of Jason’s mind are obsolete. He doesn’t, actually, want to torture some snot-nosed Bristol brat to death just for the crime of putting on Bruce’s stupid child soldier uniform. So. He’s going to have to keep him here, fed and clothed and minimally cared for, until he’s ready to let him go. This sucks.
“Sorry,” the Replacement mutters and Jason almost backhands him but it’s—it’s not sarcastic. It’s low and grim and weirdly sincere.
“What are you sorry for?”
There’s a right answer to that question. It involves stealing Jason’s life and becoming a stupid little child soldier and being a spoiled brat. The kid looks at him with his tired blue eyes and doesn’t say any of that.
”Sorry you’re stuck with me,” he says wearily and, again, it’s not sarcastic. It’s sincere. Something odd happens in Jason’s chest then. It feels like the words knock into a hollow resonant spot in his own heart. The kid says those words — stuck with me — in a tone that doesn’t quite align with who he is, who Jason knows him to be. Tim Drake is a trust fund kid, Bruce Wayne’s neighbor. His parents are millionaires. He goes to an incredibly fancy boarding school. He’s spoiled to the bone. But he doesn’t. He’s not behaving like he should.
”I don’t—what do you want from me?” Tim asks cautiously and it’s a factual question—he wants to know—but Jason has no answer. Just that funny echo of unease in his body at the way the kid looks now, curled up there, cradling his bad arm, and looking up at the guy who beat him and kicked him and kidnapped him and is now all riled up about being stuck with him. Tim looks. The thing is. The thing is that Tim seems so resigned to all this. There’s no indignation. There’s not that much fear. Like getting beaten bloody and kidnapped and stuck in the care of someone who hates him is all in a day’s work. He hasn’t been Robin that long. And those words — sorry you’re stuck with me — stick in his mind like a burr. They’re not. It’s just. It’s not a very Robin thing to say.
Tim flinches like he’s been hit, though Jason hasn’t touched him. It takes a second to realize why. Okay. Maybe the telepathy thing has its downsides for Tim too.
”Uh, yeah,” Tim says. “Your head is a scary fucking place.”
“Then stay out of it,” Jason snarls and Tim runs his one good hand over his tired face.
”I’d love to,” he says gloomily and okay. It sounds like the telepathy is just an on switch, Tim receiving Jason’s thoughts whether he wants to or not, no filters. That doesn’t sound so risky actually, in terms of what secrets the kid might have picked up. He hasn’t enough control over it to go searching out secrets, it sounds like. Unless, of course, that’s just what he wants Jason to think.
”No,” Tim says. “I mean, yeah, I have no control over it. That’s why I was benched. I couldn’t tune out anyone who was less than two feet away. I got overwhelmed pretty quickly. Not great in a fight.”
His voice is hoarse and rasping. He swallows a couple of times. Jason sighs. He hates being a responsible kidnapper.
”I’ll grab you some water,” he says reluctantly. “You allergic to anything?”
Tim blinks at him.
”No?” he says uncertainly, like he honestly doesn’t know, and then pulls it together when Jason raises his eyebrows. “No. No allergies.”
There’s bottled water in the fridge and some packaged sandwiches and some tins of soup and pasta. This safehouse is for emergencies only, stocked with basic supplies and ammunition, but there’s enough here to keep a kidnapped hostage going for several weeks. Whoop-de-do. He hates having a hostage.
”Thanks,” Tim says when he’s handed the water and then he looks at it and his face falls. He can’t open it one-handed and he can’t use his right hand. There’s one mean moment where Jason wants to laugh at the defeated look on his face but then he takes the bottle and opens it and hands it over. Tim drinks without another word, a long gasping pull on the bottle, then another, then another.
”Easy,” Jason says and wonders at himself when he hears it. Dick used to talk to him like that, back in the day, when he was playing pretend big brother. Go slow. Take it easy. You can do this. Fucking bullshit.
Tim’s looking at him again, the bottle lowered, his expression unreadable.
”Stop staring at me like that and get out of my head,” Jason snarls and Tim makes this tiny intolerable facial expression—something too close to an eye-roll—and then he gasps as his head bangs against the wall and Jason’s hand closes around his throat.
”Shut the fuck up,” Jason says and Tim closes his eyes and pinches his lips together. He’s dropped the bottle, clean water spilling out onto the dank basement floor. He’s brought his good hand up to grip Jason’s wrist but there’s nowhere close to enough strength there to break the strangling hold on his throat. Jason drops his hand. Tim wheezes for a few seconds and then sits back down and puts his face into the crook of his arm.
”What are you doing?” Jason demands and Tim looks back up.
”You,” he says and pauses. “You don’t like my face.”
“I don’t,” Jason agrees and hands him a ham sandwich, ripping open the packaging for him as he does so. “But you’re gonna have to eat, so just. Eat, and don’t look at me while you do it. Okay?”
”Okay,” Tim says and again something just rings wrong in his tone. When Jason was Robin, he wouldn’t have said okay like that to some douchebag kidnapper whose rule was don’t look at me. Dick wouldn’t have either. Tim’s hand goes slack on the sandwich. He’s staring down at it as if there’s some code he needs to decrypt to save his own life baked into the bread.
”I get it, okay,” he says in a dry little voice. “I’m the worst Robin. You’ve made that very clear.”
He bites into the sandwich. Chews. Swallows. It obviously hurts to eat with the way his face is all banged up like that. Tim Drake is, what, fourteen? Fifteen? And Jason’s got him struggling to swallow down a ham sandwich, like any mugging victim on the streets of the Alley. Tim doesn’t look at him again, eating his sandwich one-handed with meticulous care, not spilling a crumb. Fourteen years old. Shit.
”I’m fifteen,” Tim says blandly, not looking up from his sandwich. Jason snorts.
”Because that makes it so much better,” he says. “It makes perfect sense to send a fifteen year old out to fight the worst freaks in Gotham. No one could blame the old man for that.”
”You’re not the worst freak in Gotham,” Tim says politely, still eating, and Jason almost, almost laughs. Sue him. The kid is annoying beyond belief and the sight of him is like chewing on broken glass but. He is a little bit funny.
Tim finishes his sandwich and folds the packaging up very tight, in a tidy narrow square, with his single good hand. He hands the empty cardboard square to Jason, still not looking at him. He looks unbelievably tired, hollow, emptied out. Jason remembers that there are some sleeping bag upstairs, basic but warm enough.
”Thank you,” Tim says in response to the thought, still not looking at him, and Jason waits for the anger at the mind-reading to rise up in him again but it just doesn’t. It’s late. He’s tired. Tim’s tired. Everything’s gone to shit and his plans feel suddenly meaningless and he just doesn’t want to think any more. He just wants some sleep. The image of the wreck comes back to him, a blackened ragged husk of a ship, drifting empty and aimless on a black sea. Full fathom five thy father lies. Those are pearls that were his eyes.
“Wow,” Tim says under his breath, like he can’t help himself.
“Shut up,” Jason says but there’s no heat in it. He’s beyond tired. Tonight has been the worst. He lugs a sleeping bag down for his hostage and manages to get Tim into it without dislodging his ankle from its chain or jolting his broken arm more than once.
“Here,” he says, shoving the painkillers at him, and Tim takes them dry and curls up small in the sleeping bag.
“Good night, Jason,” he says softly and his voice cracks in the middle of Jason’s name. Jason’s breath catches but Tim has his bruised face turned away and he’s steadily not looking at Jason and it’s not, he can’t. Obviously the Replacement knows who he replaced and he knows now that he shouldn’t have done it. That’s what’s important. Jason is all rags and bone and holes and rage but he remembers the boy who was replaced and he hates the boy who replaced him and that’s all he’s got. He’s not solid enough, not enough of a person, to deal with whatever else is going on under Tim’s voice when he says Jason’s name. He doesn’t say good night back when he leaves.