Chapter Text
Jason staggers two steps forward and collapses to his knees on the concrete floor.
He wrenches his helmet off and gags at the smell of sulfur and ash surrounding him. He slams his fist hard against the floor and chokes back a sob.
“Why’d you do it, B?” he whispers, no one to hear him other than the wood pallets in the warehouse.
He failed. He knows he’s in the past… Twenty years. Completely stranded.
Jason kneels on the warehouse floor while he tries to slow down his breathing, already well on his way to a full panic attack. His breaths are shaky and he wipes at his face. He needs a plan.
Tim would gather his resources. Cass would lay low until she got her bearings. Dick would… probably do a backflip.
Jason goes home.
--
He tucks his helmet under an arm so it looks like a motorcycle helmet and he uses his thick jacket to hide the shape of the guns in his shoulder holsters. It’s December in Gotham and no one gives him a second look as they try to hurry home before nightfall. Jason makes his way through slush covered streets, turning his collar up higher against the wind.
He’s working off memory and instinct, finding the right building just as the snowfall picks up. He stamps out his heavy boots inside before climbing the stairs up to the fifth floor.
Jason holds his breath and knocks at the door.
The door pulls open and he sees her. For a moment, all they do is stare.
Catherine Todd doesn’t look a day over thirty. Her long red hair is tied back messily and pieces fall around her face. She’s shorter than Jason now which surprises him because she always seemed so much larger in his memories.
“Jay?” she asks with confusion and he falls to pieces.
He takes a step forward and his mom’s thin arms wrap around him. She gets onto her tiptoes to pull him in. Despite the angle, her hug feels like a memory.
She brings him over to the worn green sofa in the living room and Jason tells her absolutely everything. From her overdose to living on the streets, getting adopted by a billionaire vigilante and then getting fired as his sidekick. Dying. Coming back. Going off the fucking rails. And now time travel.
It sounds absolutely insane. But Catherine rubs a hand over his back and listens to every word.
“It’s okay, baby,” she says.
She goes to the kitchen and warms him up a glass of milk. Jason is well into adulthood, only a few years younger than her now. But something about sipping on a mug of microwaved milk reminds him of being a kid again.
“It’s going to be okay,” Catherine says again.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now,” Jason admits.
In the future he left, he’d been mending things with his family. Red Hood worked as a vigilante with the Bats more often than not. He established his own base of operations in Crime Alley and he did good work there. Now, he feels adrift.
“You’re going to stay here with us,” Catherine says firmly. “I’m going—I’m going to get myself together.” If the news of her overdose rattles her, she hides it well. Jason sees nothing on her face but grim determination.
Jason is exhausted. If Catherine kicked him out, he wouldn’t have anywhere else to go. Just knowing he has somewhere to spend the night eases some of the pressure on his chest, even if it doesn’t answer what he’s going to do in the long term.
“Mom?” a small voice says from the hallway.
Catherine and Jason both look up to see a young child. “Jay, it is way past your bedtime,” Catherine scolds softly, getting to her feet.
“Who’s that?” Jason watches his younger self ask. The kid is only nine years old but he knows seeing a random adult in the apartment at night is wrong.
Catherine looks at him. They didn’t have time to come up with a cover story. Jason is about to start talking when Catherine cuts him off. “That’s your Uncle Jason,” she says. “You’re named after him, baby. He’s going to be staying with us for a little while to get back on his feet.”
“Was he in prison with Daddy?” Jay asks as Catherine leads him back to his bedroom.
Jason counts his blessings that Willis Todd is still in prison. He sits on the couch and listens to Catherine put the younger version of himself to bed. He finishes his mug of milk and washes it up in the kitchen.
“Okay, he should be down for the night,” Catherine says, arms full of blankets and a spare pillow from her bed. “I’ll make up the couch for you.”
--
Jason jerks awake to the sound of a car backfiring outside. He looks around, disoriented, before he remembers where he is. His childhood apartment, the last one he lived in before his mom died. Jason needs several deep breaths to keep himself calm before he gets up to distract himself.
The clock on the stove reads just past 6am so Jason opens the fridge to get started on breakfast. He frowns at the contents. Half a gallon of milk and some dubious take-out containers are all that clutters the shelves. He starts opening cabinets looking for anything to eat but most of them are empty.
Jason remembers skipping breakfast most days but it was always because Catherine was running late, trying to get him out the door and off to school before heading to the restaurant where she picked up shifts as a waitress. Jason begins to realize that maybe their perpetual hurry was a ruse to keep him distracted until he got lunch at school.
He closes up the cabinets and gets started on the dishes piled up in the sink.
“Jay, you don’t gotta do that,” his mother says, tying up her hair as she enters the kitchen.
“It’s fine,” he shrugs it off, elbow deep in the sink. Catherine has dark circles under her eyes and her skin looks pale, like she might have a cold coming on. “You should probably call me Jason. Keep it simple for the kid.”
His mom always called him Jay. It’s why it was so hard for him to go by that nickname later when Bruce adopted him.
Catherine gives a steady nod and puts a hand on his shoulder. “It must be strange to see him around.”
Jason shrugs. It was twenty years ago. Most of his memories from this time are hazy, overwritten in his mind with memories of finding Catherine passed out on the kitchen floor or in the bathtub or on the couch, red notices piling up on the table, and angry banging at the door.
“It’s fine,” Jason says again.
Catherine frowns and pulls her hand away. “I meant what I said before, Jason. I’m going to clean myself up.”
Jason believes that she believes it. But it’s hard to have the same confidence. He nods towards the clock on the stove. “Jay’s gonna be late for school.”
Catherine swears under her breath and starts walking quickly back towards the bedrooms. “Jason Peter Todd! You better be up and dressed or so help me if you miss this bus—”
Jason smiles to himself, remembering many a morning beginning in the same way. Just like he remembers his own scramble to get his shoes and coat on.
“I’m taking Jay down to the bus stop,” Catherine says, wrapping a scarf around her neck. She looks at Jason expectantly. “Spare key is by the door. Will you be here when I get back?”
Jason dries his hands on a thin dish towel. “I’ll be around.”
She gives him a sharp nod before hustling a half-asleep Jay toward the door.
“Moooom, you don’t need to wait with me at the bus stop!” he whines.
“No son of mine is getting snatched up by Killer Croc for a morning snack,” Catherine states, pulling the door shut behind them and turning the lock.
The apartment quiets with the two of them out the door. Jason considers going back to the couch to wallow in sorrow but the fridge is empty and the cupboards are bare and he’ll be damned if doesn’t do something about it.
--
Jason walks the streets of Gotham with a borrowed scarf pulled up over the lower half of his face. The wind cuts through his leather jacket so he tugs the collar higher.
It takes him a few hours to find the kind of place he’s looking for—somewhere that won’t ask questions. He scopes out the pawn shop before dropping in, tugging his scarf down as he approaches the counter.
Jason sells one of his handguns for a couple hundred bucks. He’s not willing to sell both his firearms, but they’re the only assets he has worth something in the past. The gun itself is customized and nondescript enough it shouldn’t raise any red flags as being from the future. Jason knows what an untraceable weapon is worth and the broker looks him up and down before settling on a price that, while not wholly fair, is fair enough.
He takes the cash and looks for a second-hand shop. Jason takes a single moment to mourn the loss of his smartphone. It’s bricked out completely, along with his helmet, and he sorely misses the maps feature. The layout of the streets is etched into his bones, but the shops and businesses lining them are unfamiliar.
He finally sees a Chinese restaurant he remembers from his youth and stops in for a cup of wonton soup.
“Any idea where a guy can buy a spare coat around here?” he asks, handing over some cash.
The owner gives him some directions to a nearby store and Jason sips on the styrofoam cup of soup. The taste of it hits him with a wave of nostalgia.
Is this what his life is going to be like now? Everything reminds him of a memory.
He throws a couple extra bills in the tip jar and waves as he heads back onto the streets.
He acquires several shirts and two pairs of pants at the second-hand store. Jason also finds a pair of work boots in good enough condition he splurges on them. He lingers at the wire racks of used books for a while. Jason kept a running tally of his expenses in his mind and he’s acutely aware of how much money he has left. But the paperbacks are only a dollar and he remembers as a kid how tight things got around the holidays.
--
Jason is in the kitchen when he hears the front door open behind him.
Jay freezes in the doorway with his backpack halfway off his shoulder. He looks at Jason like he forgot someone would be there when he got home.
“Where’s your mom?” Jason asks.
“She won’t be home til later,” Jay shrugs, toeing off his shoes by the door.
He and Jason stare each other down for a long moment before Jay’s eyes go to the kitchen behind him.
“Are you… cooking something?”
Jason grins and nods at the table. “Yeah. Rice and beans. Want some?”
Jay scrambles to his chair at the table and watches him warily as Jason serves a heaping portion into a bowl for him. Jay is a growing boy and takes to it ravenously. It’s a simple meal, one Jason prepared plenty of times when he was first starting out as Red Hood and needed quick meals with plenty of protein. Hard to pursue revenge on an empty stomach.
“If you’re still hungry when your mom gets home, I’ll get you some more,” Jason promises, clearing his empty bowl off the table.
Jay gets his backpack and starts to open up his homework. Jason glances over at it to see him struggling through a multiplication worksheet. He knows better than to offer himself help without being asked, even if multiples of seven are a bitch. Jason remembers how he would start his least favorite subjects first, saving the best ones for last.
Jay bites at the top of his pencil and methodically works line by line until the sheet is finished. Then he opens his Independent Reading book and Jason can’t help but snort when he sees the title.
“What?” Jay demands, clutching the library copy of A Wrinkle in Time closer to himself, the plastic cover crinkling in his grip.
“Nothing,” Jason says, turning back to cleaning up the kitchen. “That’s a pretty good one.”
Jay relaxes incrementally, going back to his book once more.
Jason scrubs a counter down with vinegar and thinks about what his other siblings are doing. He does the math while he cleans. Dick will be fourteen and just starting to feel the friction in his relationship with Bruce. Which means Tim will be seven and probably assembling his very first pinhole camera. Cass is deep in her assassin training. Jason’s grip on his rag stutters when he realizes Damian is just a baby.
Catherine makes it home around 8PM, just as Jason is starting to consider sending Jay to bed. It’s a school night and Jay is already nodding off on the couch while the TV plays a show about animals at an Australian zoo.
Jay startles awake at the sound of the door, relaxing as Catherine walks in, a plastic bag of takeout from the diner in hand.
“Hi, Mom,” he says from the couch.
“Something smells good in here,” she says with tired cheer.
“Uncle Jason made dinner,” Jay says, stretching with a yawn.
Jason pulls himself up and takes the bag from Catherine to put the food away in the fridge. “It’s just some beans and rice. I can heat you up a bowl if you want.”
“I ate at work,” she shakes her head. “Come on, Jay, time for bed.”
Jay whines. “But you just got home,” he protests.
“And you, young man, have school tomorrow,” Catherine sighs. “Did you finish your homework?”
“Yep, can we read together?” Jay wheedles.
Jason is torn. Because, on one hand, reading with Catherine is one of his fondest memories of childhood. But his mother is clearly exhausted and she just walked in the door. The look Catherine shoots him is a plea for help.
“I can read to you tonight,” Jason offers.
Jay pouts because it’s clearly not what he wants, which is to spend time with his mother. But reading with Jason is better than the alternative of going to bed without any reading time at all.
Catherine puts her hands on her hips. “Final offer, Jay. Take it or leave it.”
“Fine,” Jay says, getting up to brush his teeth.
Once he’s gone, Catherine gives Jason a grateful look. “Thanks. He’s a good kid—I mean, you know he’s a good kid, obviously.”
“Hey, it’s okay,” Jason says. “I’ll handle bed time tonight. Just take a second to relax.”
Something about his words strike a chord and Catherine’s eyes go glassy. Jason freezes, afraid he’s done something wrong. “Mom?” he says softly.
“I’m fine, it’s fine,” she says, waving him off. “I just--- I forgot how nice it is to have help sometimes.” She laughs and fans at her eyes. “Sorry I don’t know why I’m such a mess.”
Jason approaches her slowly and holds his arms out from his sides. Catherine blinks hard and leans in for a hug. She’s small enough Jason can tuck her head under his chin. He holds her tightly, squeezing once before letting her go when he hears Jay finish up in the bathroom.
“One chapter and then bed time,” Catherine calls back to Jay. She wipes at her eyes. “Thanks for that, baby.”
“You don’t have to do it alone anymore,” Jason promises her. Catherine briefly looks like she might cry again but her smile is genuine.
Maybe this is all she needed. Some help.
--
Jason knocks at the door to his childhood bedroom and Jay shouts for him to come in. He’s already in pajamas with the covers pulled up, a book in his lap.
“Your mom said you guys are reading The Hobbit together,” Jason says but the book Jay picked out doesn’t have the familiar green cover Jason remembers from his mother’s copy.
“Yeah, but that’s for mom and me,” Jay says, holding out the book for him with it’s glossy plastic cover from the library.
Jason takes a copy of Holes by Louis Sachar. He remembers liking this one. It was formative in the way the kids at Camp Greenlake might have committed crimes but they weren’t the bad guys of the story. It helped Jason think of his dad’s time in prison as something less scary.
“Okay, mom said just one chapter before bed. But if we’re quiet, we can probably do two,” he says, opening up the book.
Jay smiles, an eager accomplice against bedtime. “Maybe even three.”
“Don’t push it,” Jason grins, cracking the book open to the starting page.
--
Jason spends a few weeks fixing up the apartment and cooking dinners for Catherine and Jay. He walks with Jay to the bus stop in the morning and waits for him to hop onto the city bus that takes him closest to his fifth-grade classes.
He budgets his money sparingly, but it doesn’t take long for the cash from selling his gun to dry up. Jason heavily considers selling the second handgun, the one he stored under a floorboard in the living room where Jay won’t accidentally get to it, but it would only be a short-term fix.
Two adults and a child are a lot to support on waitressing and tips and Jason sees the stress settling along his mother’s shoulders.
He needs a job.
But to get a job, he needs an identity.
In the future, Jason had contacts for this sort of thing. There were passports stored in safe houses across Gotham, half a dozen identities scattered along with cash and weapons in case of emergency. But none of that helps him now.
The cheapest thing to do would be to find someone who can get him an out-of-state driver’s license but Jason doesn’t have any criminal contacts. He’s also unwilling to get in too deep with the criminal side of Gotham while still staying with Catherine and Jay.
Inspiration strikes at the Gotham Public Library.
Jason is returning a stack of books for Jay when he sees a flyer advertising the new library computer lab—a generous gift from the Wayne Foundation. The colorful computers are state of the art, but to Jason they look ancient. Tech changes so much in the next twenty years…
But while Jason’s computer skills might be merely passable in the future, he’s years ahead of the tech in the present. He picked up enough from Tim and Barbara to scrape together the right skills.
Bruce always said the real thing is better than any forgery.
Jason gets to work establishing his new identity.
He breaks into the Gotham City Public Records Office in the dead of night and files the right forms. Next, his applies for his “lost” driver’s license and waits for the legitimate replacement to arrive in the mail. Jason considers whether or not it’s worth breaking into the GCPD computer system to give himself a criminal record before deciding it’s easier to start a small fire in the archive—destroying the non-digitized records.
Barabara taught him how to make his story believable. No one is going to look at Jason and think he hasn’t been to prison. But he can fake an expunged record. He even makes sure to use a shitty photo for his driver’s license.
--
Jason spends the weeks waiting for his identity to solidify by taking odd jobs around the city. He does some repairs for Catherine’s neighbors and picks up some off-the-books work at the diner. But he needs something with hours that don’t conflict with Catherine’s so Jay won’t be home alone for hours, meaning he needs something at night.
He helps haul crates down at the docks and it’s back-breaking labor but it pays cash. A couple of guys offer to introduce Jason to some friends who can find him something more permanent. Jason would rank gang-work higher than rogue-work but only just barely. He says he’ll keep it in mind and politely declines. But when Jason counts up their funds at the end of every month, he sees more and more appeal in getting hired into the Gotham underbelly.
Catherine says sober for three months—the longest stretch Jason can remember. The extra money means they can make rent without eating beans and rice for every meal. Just every other meal.
Jason Thomas Johnson springs into existence fully formed, high school diploma and all. Jason is happy to take his mother’s maiden name to corroborate the story she’s spread about him being her younger brother. Jay goes with him to sign up for a library card the day his paperwork arrives.
The holidays pass and Jay gets a used copy of The Three Musketeers with faded gold edges. When Catherine finishes The Hobbit with him, Jason sends him to bed on stories of D’Artagnan and his yellow horse.
--
Jay catches a cold at school and coughs so much during the night, no one in the apartment is getting any sleep. Catherine gives him the last of the cough medicine and Jason goes to buy a new bottle before his next dose in four hours.
He feels like a zombie at the bodega, paying for the child cough syrup and the adult aspirin they’re going to need in the morning. He’s walking home when he hears a sound coming from an alley.
Two assailants are trying to take an old man’s shopping bag. The man pulls back sharply and the contents go spilling out over the alley floor. Jason sees one of the muggers pull a knife.
“Hey!” he shouts, stepping into the alley. “Get the fuck off him!”
He drops his own shopping bag and swings at the closer of the two, cracking a punch into his face hard enough to feel his nose break. He drops the knife and Jason kicks it away. Pain shoots up Jason’s knuckles but he grabs the back of the guy’s jacket and throws him out of the alley.
The old man manages to punch the second mugger square in the jaw and the goon takes off running. Jason shouts after him as he turns a corner but decides some two-bit criminal isn’t worth the chase.
“Where’s Batman when you need him, eh?” Jason says, bending to help the older man up.
“Thank you,” the man says, clearly shaken.
“Did they take anything? Phone? Wallet?”
“Phone?” the guy repeats confused and Jason swears under his breath. Some people carry cellphones, but they are far from commonplace. “They didn’t get my wallet.”
Jason sees the guy regard him with suspicion, worried Jason only jumped in to finish what the muggers started. “Hey, it’s okay,” he says, taking a step back to give the guy some breathing room. “Let me help you with your groceries.”
He bends down and picks up some of the groceries but the plastic bag is completely shredded. Jason ends up helping him carry an armful of slightly dented cans and bruised produce back to his apartment. He introduces himself as Harold Smalls and says he owns a boxing gym. It explains why he was able to pop his mugger in the face.
“That was a helluva punch you threw back there, kid,” Harold says. Jason chuckles because it’s been a long time since someone called him kid.
“You weren’t too bad yourself. Sorry about your oranges,” Jason says again because some of the fruit got trampled during the alley scuffle.
“Iris is going to be beside herself. She keeps telling me I can’t be walking home so late,” Harold says as they get to the door. He chuckles to himself. “I haven’t thrown a punch like that since the 50s.” Jason can’t tell if he’s referring to his age or the decade. “Would you like to stay for dinner? It’s the least we can do.”
Jason shakes his head and holds up his bag of cough medicine. “Sorry, my sister’s kid is sick. I should be getting back.”
“At least swing by the gym some time,” Harold says, rummaging in his jacket until he pulls out his grocery list. He writes the address for the gym in graceful script on the back of it.
Which is how Jason gets a job at the boxing gym.
--
Jason reflects on how he’s never had a normal job before. There’s something novel about the experience. His job at the gym mainly consists of re-racking abandoned free weights and wiping down equipment. At the end of the day, he mops all the floors and locks up the doors. Harold, who Jason now calls Mr. Smalls to his chagrin, opens the place up in the morning so it means he can still see Jay off to school most days.
There’s also the unforeseen benefit that Jay thinks boxing is the coolest thing in the whole world and wants Jason to teach him to do it. He begs Jason to take him to the boxing gym. Jason tells him if he gets straight A’s on his report card, he’ll do it. Jay waves his report card triumphantly at the kitchen table when he manages it.
Jason brings in a little extra money sparring with boxers and keeping them warm for fights. It feels good to move his body and fight again, even with the constrained rules of the ring. And when things are slow, Harold doesn’t mind if Jason beats up on the heavy bag in the corner.
It’s summer which means the gym is sweltering, even with the side garage doors open and glass windows popped to tempt a breeze. Jason drips sweat but he knows better than to take his shirt off. He has too many scars that can’t be explained away. He knows the other guys at the gym talk and there are already rumors on where he learned to fight.
Jason’s been in the past over six months. He knows he’s made a good life for himself.
He's wary of being too hopeful, but things are going okay. Jay is a happy kid. Catherine is still clean. It’s starting to feel like they’re through the worse of it. Things are stable enough Jason begins to think about vigilante work again.
He pounds another combo of hits into the punching bag, spinning on one leg to catch it with a shin before resuming his steady cadence of hits. Jason breathes out hard and pushes through the fatigue.
He seriously considered leaving behind vigilante work. After all, it’s what got him into this mess anyway. And making a good life takes almost all his energy.
But then he thinks about his siblings.
Dick and Duke are safe. Dick is still Robin and Duke is just a baby, probably learning colors and shapes with his perfectly-alive parents. Damian is more of an unknown. Any upbringing in the League is scarring but Jason knows Talia cares deeply for her son, and he’s still just a baby.
Tim and Cassandra are problems. Cass is probably still in assassin homeschool with her father. She’s beyond Jason’s reach until he develops some extensive criminal contacts. Tim Drake, on the other hand, is well within reach. Jason knows now how much of Tim’s childhood was spent totally alone. He and Catherine don’t like leaving Jay at home for more than an hour on his own. The idea of Tim spending years by himself in Drake Manor twists something in his chest.
Jason hits the punching bag again and begins to form a plan in his mind. He is stuck in the past. No technology or magic is ever going to get him back to the life he once had in the future. But even if no one remembers him, Jason still feels responsible for the people he cares about.
He wants to make a better Gotham for them.
Dick is already Robin, but maybe he’ll be the only Robin. Jason’s might not remember all the specifics but he lived through this period of Gotham history once. If he focuses his vigilante work to avoid the worst of the destabilizing events, he should be able to keep the city from getting bad enough to necessitate his entire family going into vigilantism.
Jason finishes against the heavy bag with a final punch. His hair is plastered to his face but he feels focused.
The Joker will escape Arkham and poison the water supply on Halloween. Which means Jason has four months to prepare to eliminate the clown for good.
He’s going to need some gear.