[DC] Home in another country
Title: Home in another country
Fandom: DC
Rating: PG
Summary: Luthor's Tower renders all kinds of realities possible.
Notes: Terrific Table of Robins, Dick meets Pre-Crisis Jay. Set during Infinite Crisis.
The rubble scraped his hands when Dick started pushing, testing their weight as he shifted to get his legs back under himself.
He couldn't be too deep; it was more gravel than rocks, and when he pushed there was none of the ominous grinding he'd learned to listen for. He'd be out in minutes, maybe less than that - cuts through his suit didn't matter at this point, not with the way his entire body was starting to scream and not with Superboy-Prime out there. A couple of shallow scrapes wasn't going to make much of a difference to him, but a handful of seconds might be a distraction that Superboy - Kon - and Wonder Girl could use.
Dick crooked his fingers around the corner of one of the bigger stones and - clenched his teeth and strained and. Pulled, and the heavy rock tumbled free, letting him slip his left leg closer up. He gritted his teeth again when the movement burned through his back. God, he hated that pain. He knew how to take a fall; but plummeting down a Babel-like tower hadn't been part of his training, either at the circus or with Batman.
“Ow,” he said with feeling, shoving away another boulder. Before he could seriously get into straining his muscles, a smaller pair of hands hooked over one of its edges, applying enough combined pressure that it gave away. “Thanks.”
“It's nothing, you looked like you could use a hand, is all!”
Dick's glance up was met with a reassuring smile on a face--
“Jason?”
He looked younger that he'd been when he died, maybe as young as when he'd started being Robin, and he was beaming at Dick like he almost never had at the time.
“Yes! I knew you'd recognize me! Oh, do you need help?”
Dick shook his head as he finished to stand up, and forced his diaphragm to relax. His brain felt like it was moving inside his skull, tremors of pain echoing through his body and threatening to make him vomit. He was going to need a couple of minutes minimum before he could do anything more in a fight than black-out. Hopefully he wouldn't need to.
Jason's hands came up to his arm to steady him. Wearing Robin gloves, Dick noticed through the dizzy spell. Dressed in Robin outfit, even - the old design, with the shorts - and-- Dick squinted against the flare of dizziness. The black spot of Tim's cape instead of the yellow one. What--
“Jason, why are you here?” Dick asked once he could breathe. Yeah, this fall had earned a spot in his personal top ten. Top three if the flashes didn't relent quickly. “Not that I mind, you understand, but generally when you play the Spirit of Robins Past that means I'll get my ass kicked when I wake up. And I don't even feel like I'm unconscious this time.”
And I don't really feel up to taking another ass-whupping if I'm not.
Another smile that was certainly meant to look comforting, but which was enough of a deviation from what Dick was used to picturing on that particular face - on Jason's face, even though he was wearing the domino, Robin's face such as Jason made him - that it only disoriented him further. It wasn't an expression Jason would have had much incentive to use around him. For one they hadn't worked together enough, and never in such situations where it might come up. For another - well, there'd been reasons why they hadn't worked together enough.
For a moment, Dick wondered if maybe it was an expression Bruce might have recognized, maybe expected, from Jason.
Maybe it was the same expression Jason might have used to soothe victims, when patrol threw Batman and him against muggers and assaulters. Jason had been... protective of victims.
Dick remembered Bruce telling him that - speaking to the Case as if it made it easier not to look at Dick while he stumbled over his words, a painful process his entire being seemed to fight.
The words had still come out, in chopped, incomplete sentences, like Bruce had tried to contain them for years and they had finally been able to find a chink in the armor. Dick remembered the night; he and Bruce had been trying to uproot a prostitution ring two gangs were trying to set up between Gotham and Blüdhaven, and they'd stumbled into one of Joker's old hideouts.
There'd been a case - too much like the one in the Cave - with a torn-up Robin suit. There'd been a skeleton inside the suit, and a cardboard sign in front, claiming in horrifyingly childish letters, “THE DAY I WON”.
They hadn't found the managers that night, only some of their underlings and a couple of punks Batman had thought might know something. Their interrogation had turned more vigorous than Batman's usual before Dick could do damage control and play Robin. One broken jaw, one cracked clavicle and none who would be walking without a limb in a cast for several months.
Back in the cave Bruce had stood in front of the Case and told Dick more about Jason than he ever had.
Jason had been protective of victims.
Bruce had repeated the sentence, and Dick had never forgotten it. He had never forgotten either thinking that it was the first time he could remember Bruce say something positive about Jason. And he knew he would never be able to forget Bruce's voice. Fumbling, yet precise - the reality he evoked beyond the words he could use. Bruce's hands, fisting and unclenching as if they didn't know whether to reach out and caress the glass or to punch it, and dared to do neither.
Now probably wasn't a good time to tell Jason that he'd only really understood that Bruce had loved Jason years after Jason had died, one night when Bruce had looked into the Case as though he could see Jason in the costume.
“--you know.”
He'd been so busy reeling in his little vertigo that he'd missed Jason's answer.
“Sorry, what?”
“I said, he wanted me to check up on you. And, well, with all the realities and Earths and stuff, it's easy for me, you know.” Jason considered him with a circumspect eye. “You sure you alright?”
And yes, he sounded sweeter than he'd ever had, but there was still something in his look that bordered on critical - not piercing, simply deep-rooted.
The questions concerning Jason were going to take the back seat. “Who sent you?”
“Bruce, of course.” Jason grinned a very white, apologetic smile. “He would've wanted to come himself, but he couldn't, so I came instead.”
The cape Jason was wearing, Dick could see now he could focus on something out of the aftereffects of the fall, had been made to fit a much bigger teen. The mounting collar was gaping and the cape hung low on his shoulders; on Jason it looked long enough to be Batman's cape. It was Robin's cape, not the one from Dick and Jason's costume; the one Bruce had designed for Tim to be better hidden than Robin had ever been.
“Oh,” he said weakly. Alex Luthor's dabbling with realities made all kinds of things seem to make sense, even when Dick's brains told him they shouldn't. “Well, when you see him you can tell him I'm good, then.”
“I still need to take you back there,” Jason said as he hopped to another rock. It gave a couple of inches down the mound of rubble, but Jason kept his balance as if he was standing on solid ground - only flexing his foot as the rock moved. “It's not too far.”
The Tower looming over them as they descended looked the perfect replica to the one Dick had climbed, but he knew better than to take things at face value. For instance, the Jason Dick remembered from their first meeting would certainly not have been able to ride a skidding boulder so seamlessly.
“Yeah?” Dick mumbled. The piles of rocks weren't getting any steadier, but he knew how to maneuver easily enough - experience acquired in No Man's Land, and then, more recently-
He let Jason take the lead, focusing on the boy's moves, smooth like a practiced routine, underlined by the too-big cape flapping around him. “You wanna let me on the deal?”
And please, feel free to explain why you're suddenly an acrobat.
Dick toyed with the idea of voicing the question, then discarded it. Every time he thought he'd come to terms with Bruce taking Jason as another Robin, his brain dug out something to make him reconsider. He should get used to it.
“You enter the Tower, and it takes you back to where you were. The theory of it is that the Tower is a kind of multidimensional switch between realities, but I'm not the one who worked it out, so don't quote me on it!” Jason landed on a stone where he could fit one foot, straightened, and looked at Dick over his shoulder with a grin. “The gist of it is, Bruce said it's a portal.”
“That's consistent with the rest of it, at least.”
Jason laughed. “Yeah, you know Bruce can make sense out of anything!”
He was speaking lightly, as lightly as the way he vaulted down the last meters of rocks before landing in front of the Tower's door, and the matter-of-fact trust in Jason's words got to Dick, more than Jason's effortlessly showy acrobatics. That took him back.
Dick stepped forward until he could almost feel the tendrils of light coming from the door's frame on his skin, and took a breath to fend off the trepidation. No matter how many times he'd stood in front of similar transdimensional portal homes, the situation still unsettled him. A couple times when the portal home had just been a trapdoor to another, not-home dimension tugged at his memory's strings.
It said too much about his life that he could think that and not fear for his sanity.
Before he closed the rest of the way to the door, Jason stopped him with a hand on his arm, his fingers barely peeking from under the black cape. Through the Robin gauntlets and the suit, torn though it was, Dick could only feel the soft pressure and none of the differences between a bruiser's calluses and those of a gymnast.
“When you're back, it'd be best if you didn't mention me.”
There was a lock of hair before Jason's eyes when he looked up at Dick, and he shook his head to dislodge it, a jab of the head impatient and sharp, familiar in ways the quietness of his tone wasn't.
His hand fell away when Dick held his gaze, clear and unyielding.
“To be honest, Jason, I don't usually mention it when I see you,” he said slowly. He swallowed back the bright grin that wanted to spread, the oldest of his shields. Jason - this Jason - would too easily see through it; a performer's defense. “I don't really need to make Tim or Babs worry about me. And you know Bruce would only drive himself guiltier.”
“Yeah...” His voice trailed off.
He probably didn't realize it, but he was mimicking one of the first stances Bruce had told Dick to watch for when he was questioning someone, his glance sweeping down and to the side. Hiding something - lying, by omission.
Back then, the Jason from Dick's memories, who'd grown in Gotham's streets, could pin you with a stare and lie without flinching.
“What you mean is that this time it'd be worse. Because you're not the Jason we knew.”
Jason smiled - a little crooked like the private smiles Dick remembered, a little subdued like he'd never noticed. A little humorous like an old joke you recall half-way through.
“Oh no, I am, too. I'm just not the one you remember.”
The cape huddled around Jason like an ungainly hug.
Fandom: DC
Rating: PG
Summary: Luthor's Tower renders all kinds of realities possible.
Notes: Terrific Table of Robins, Dick meets Pre-Crisis Jay. Set during Infinite Crisis.
The rubble scraped his hands when Dick started pushing, testing their weight as he shifted to get his legs back under himself.
He couldn't be too deep; it was more gravel than rocks, and when he pushed there was none of the ominous grinding he'd learned to listen for. He'd be out in minutes, maybe less than that - cuts through his suit didn't matter at this point, not with the way his entire body was starting to scream and not with Superboy-Prime out there. A couple of shallow scrapes wasn't going to make much of a difference to him, but a handful of seconds might be a distraction that Superboy - Kon - and Wonder Girl could use.
Dick crooked his fingers around the corner of one of the bigger stones and - clenched his teeth and strained and. Pulled, and the heavy rock tumbled free, letting him slip his left leg closer up. He gritted his teeth again when the movement burned through his back. God, he hated that pain. He knew how to take a fall; but plummeting down a Babel-like tower hadn't been part of his training, either at the circus or with Batman.
“Ow,” he said with feeling, shoving away another boulder. Before he could seriously get into straining his muscles, a smaller pair of hands hooked over one of its edges, applying enough combined pressure that it gave away. “Thanks.”
“It's nothing, you looked like you could use a hand, is all!”
Dick's glance up was met with a reassuring smile on a face--
“Jason?”
He looked younger that he'd been when he died, maybe as young as when he'd started being Robin, and he was beaming at Dick like he almost never had at the time.
“Yes! I knew you'd recognize me! Oh, do you need help?”
Dick shook his head as he finished to stand up, and forced his diaphragm to relax. His brain felt like it was moving inside his skull, tremors of pain echoing through his body and threatening to make him vomit. He was going to need a couple of minutes minimum before he could do anything more in a fight than black-out. Hopefully he wouldn't need to.
Jason's hands came up to his arm to steady him. Wearing Robin gloves, Dick noticed through the dizzy spell. Dressed in Robin outfit, even - the old design, with the shorts - and-- Dick squinted against the flare of dizziness. The black spot of Tim's cape instead of the yellow one. What--
“Jason, why are you here?” Dick asked once he could breathe. Yeah, this fall had earned a spot in his personal top ten. Top three if the flashes didn't relent quickly. “Not that I mind, you understand, but generally when you play the Spirit of Robins Past that means I'll get my ass kicked when I wake up. And I don't even feel like I'm unconscious this time.”
And I don't really feel up to taking another ass-whupping if I'm not.
Another smile that was certainly meant to look comforting, but which was enough of a deviation from what Dick was used to picturing on that particular face - on Jason's face, even though he was wearing the domino, Robin's face such as Jason made him - that it only disoriented him further. It wasn't an expression Jason would have had much incentive to use around him. For one they hadn't worked together enough, and never in such situations where it might come up. For another - well, there'd been reasons why they hadn't worked together enough.
For a moment, Dick wondered if maybe it was an expression Bruce might have recognized, maybe expected, from Jason.
Maybe it was the same expression Jason might have used to soothe victims, when patrol threw Batman and him against muggers and assaulters. Jason had been... protective of victims.
Dick remembered Bruce telling him that - speaking to the Case as if it made it easier not to look at Dick while he stumbled over his words, a painful process his entire being seemed to fight.
The words had still come out, in chopped, incomplete sentences, like Bruce had tried to contain them for years and they had finally been able to find a chink in the armor. Dick remembered the night; he and Bruce had been trying to uproot a prostitution ring two gangs were trying to set up between Gotham and Blüdhaven, and they'd stumbled into one of Joker's old hideouts.
There'd been a case - too much like the one in the Cave - with a torn-up Robin suit. There'd been a skeleton inside the suit, and a cardboard sign in front, claiming in horrifyingly childish letters, “THE DAY I WON”.
They hadn't found the managers that night, only some of their underlings and a couple of punks Batman had thought might know something. Their interrogation had turned more vigorous than Batman's usual before Dick could do damage control and play Robin. One broken jaw, one cracked clavicle and none who would be walking without a limb in a cast for several months.
Back in the cave Bruce had stood in front of the Case and told Dick more about Jason than he ever had.
Jason had been protective of victims.
Bruce had repeated the sentence, and Dick had never forgotten it. He had never forgotten either thinking that it was the first time he could remember Bruce say something positive about Jason. And he knew he would never be able to forget Bruce's voice. Fumbling, yet precise - the reality he evoked beyond the words he could use. Bruce's hands, fisting and unclenching as if they didn't know whether to reach out and caress the glass or to punch it, and dared to do neither.
Now probably wasn't a good time to tell Jason that he'd only really understood that Bruce had loved Jason years after Jason had died, one night when Bruce had looked into the Case as though he could see Jason in the costume.
“--you know.”
He'd been so busy reeling in his little vertigo that he'd missed Jason's answer.
“Sorry, what?”
“I said, he wanted me to check up on you. And, well, with all the realities and Earths and stuff, it's easy for me, you know.” Jason considered him with a circumspect eye. “You sure you alright?”
And yes, he sounded sweeter than he'd ever had, but there was still something in his look that bordered on critical - not piercing, simply deep-rooted.
The questions concerning Jason were going to take the back seat. “Who sent you?”
“Bruce, of course.” Jason grinned a very white, apologetic smile. “He would've wanted to come himself, but he couldn't, so I came instead.”
The cape Jason was wearing, Dick could see now he could focus on something out of the aftereffects of the fall, had been made to fit a much bigger teen. The mounting collar was gaping and the cape hung low on his shoulders; on Jason it looked long enough to be Batman's cape. It was Robin's cape, not the one from Dick and Jason's costume; the one Bruce had designed for Tim to be better hidden than Robin had ever been.
“Oh,” he said weakly. Alex Luthor's dabbling with realities made all kinds of things seem to make sense, even when Dick's brains told him they shouldn't. “Well, when you see him you can tell him I'm good, then.”
“I still need to take you back there,” Jason said as he hopped to another rock. It gave a couple of inches down the mound of rubble, but Jason kept his balance as if he was standing on solid ground - only flexing his foot as the rock moved. “It's not too far.”
The Tower looming over them as they descended looked the perfect replica to the one Dick had climbed, but he knew better than to take things at face value. For instance, the Jason Dick remembered from their first meeting would certainly not have been able to ride a skidding boulder so seamlessly.
“Yeah?” Dick mumbled. The piles of rocks weren't getting any steadier, but he knew how to maneuver easily enough - experience acquired in No Man's Land, and then, more recently-
He let Jason take the lead, focusing on the boy's moves, smooth like a practiced routine, underlined by the too-big cape flapping around him. “You wanna let me on the deal?”
And please, feel free to explain why you're suddenly an acrobat.
Dick toyed with the idea of voicing the question, then discarded it. Every time he thought he'd come to terms with Bruce taking Jason as another Robin, his brain dug out something to make him reconsider. He should get used to it.
“You enter the Tower, and it takes you back to where you were. The theory of it is that the Tower is a kind of multidimensional switch between realities, but I'm not the one who worked it out, so don't quote me on it!” Jason landed on a stone where he could fit one foot, straightened, and looked at Dick over his shoulder with a grin. “The gist of it is, Bruce said it's a portal.”
“That's consistent with the rest of it, at least.”
Jason laughed. “Yeah, you know Bruce can make sense out of anything!”
He was speaking lightly, as lightly as the way he vaulted down the last meters of rocks before landing in front of the Tower's door, and the matter-of-fact trust in Jason's words got to Dick, more than Jason's effortlessly showy acrobatics. That took him back.
Dick stepped forward until he could almost feel the tendrils of light coming from the door's frame on his skin, and took a breath to fend off the trepidation. No matter how many times he'd stood in front of similar transdimensional portal homes, the situation still unsettled him. A couple times when the portal home had just been a trapdoor to another, not-home dimension tugged at his memory's strings.
It said too much about his life that he could think that and not fear for his sanity.
Before he closed the rest of the way to the door, Jason stopped him with a hand on his arm, his fingers barely peeking from under the black cape. Through the Robin gauntlets and the suit, torn though it was, Dick could only feel the soft pressure and none of the differences between a bruiser's calluses and those of a gymnast.
“When you're back, it'd be best if you didn't mention me.”
There was a lock of hair before Jason's eyes when he looked up at Dick, and he shook his head to dislodge it, a jab of the head impatient and sharp, familiar in ways the quietness of his tone wasn't.
His hand fell away when Dick held his gaze, clear and unyielding.
“To be honest, Jason, I don't usually mention it when I see you,” he said slowly. He swallowed back the bright grin that wanted to spread, the oldest of his shields. Jason - this Jason - would too easily see through it; a performer's defense. “I don't really need to make Tim or Babs worry about me. And you know Bruce would only drive himself guiltier.”
“Yeah...” His voice trailed off.
He probably didn't realize it, but he was mimicking one of the first stances Bruce had told Dick to watch for when he was questioning someone, his glance sweeping down and to the side. Hiding something - lying, by omission.
Back then, the Jason from Dick's memories, who'd grown in Gotham's streets, could pin you with a stare and lie without flinching.
“What you mean is that this time it'd be worse. Because you're not the Jason we knew.”
Jason smiled - a little crooked like the private smiles Dick remembered, a little subdued like he'd never noticed. A little humorous like an old joke you recall half-way through.
“Oh no, I am, too. I'm just not the one you remember.”
The cape huddled around Jason like an ungainly hug.