Chapter Text
Jason learns Leonard Snart’s tells before he ever learns his real name. Snart pretends not to care, but he always checks the exits first. Always positions himself between Jason and the door. Always keeps his voice level, even when Jason wakes up choking on air, nails digging into his own arms like he’s still restrained. Snart doesn’t touch him unless Jason asks. That matters more than Jason can explain. Barry is different—too fast, too loud, too there. But he tries. He brings food Jason doesn’t eat, talks too much when the silence gets sharp, and sleeps on the floor anyway, even when Jason insists he doesn’t have to. Jason wakes up one night to quiet arguing.
“…you don’t get to decide that,” Barry hisses. Jason doesn’t move. He’s learned that pretending to sleep keeps people honest. “I was his guardian,” Bruce says. His voice is wrecked. “I failed him. I won’t fail him again.” “You already did,” Barry snaps, and Jason hears the sound of something breaking—maybe Bruce, maybe Barry. “You don’t get to swoop in now and play savior. He panics when he hears your voice.” Silence. Then Snart, calm and lethal: “You want to help? Leave.”
Jason closes his eyes harder. Bruce leaves. Jason finds out about the bomb by accident. Barry is pacing. Talking too fast. Guilt leaking out of him like radiation. “The explosion—I mean—we barely got out. Joker rigged the whole place. Timed detonation. You were still—” Jason sits up. “What explosion?” Barry freezes. Snart swears softly. Jason’s hands start shaking before his brain catches up. “You said—you said the tank broke. You didn’t say—” Barry’s eyes are glassy. “Jason…” “He was going to blow it anyway,” Jason whispers. “Even if I said it. Even if I broke.”
No one corrects him. Jason laughs—a short, ugly sound—and then he can’t breathe again. Snart grounds him. One hand on the table. One word at a time. “Here. Now. Alive.” Jason clings to that. Dick Grayson shows up two days later. Jason recognizes the footsteps before the voice. That hurts more than he expects. “Jay,” Dick says softly, like he’s approaching a skittish animal. Jason doesn’t look at him. “You shouldn’t be here,” Jason says. Dick exhales. “Bruce told me—”
Jason’s head snaps up. “Of course he did.”
They argue quietly at first. Then louder. Then it cracks open.
“You were dead,” Dick says, voice breaking. “I buried you.” “And I drowned,” Jason shoots back. “Guess we’re both traumatized.” Dick flinches. “Bruce never stopped looking.” Jason stands. He’s shaking, but he stands. “He stopped coming.” That ends it. Dick leaves with tears in his eyes and no answers. Jason doesn’t feel bad. He feels done. The name comes later
It’s Snart, of all people, who asks the question. “You gonna keep wearing someone else’s shadow,” he says mildly, cleaning his gun, “or you picking something that’s yours?” Jason thinks about Robin. About red, green, bright colors meant to be seen. About crowbars. About water. About fire. “I don’t want Gotham,” Jason says slowly. “I don’t want his rules. Or his city.” Barry watches him carefully. “Then who do you want to be?” Jason thinks of ashes. Of things that burn and don’t stay dead
Barry pretends not to hear. Jason hears anyway.
That night, Jason doesn’t sleep. He decides on the name when the nightmares start looping. It isn’t about the helmet at first—though he remembers the glass, the water, the laughter. It’s about the way Joker kept saying red like it was a joke only they shared. Blood. Stage lights. Punchlines. Red Hood. If the Joker wanted it as a joke, Jason would take it as a warning. Snart helps him build—not a suit meant to be a symbol, but armor meant to keep him breathing. Barry argues about guns. Jason doesn’t budge. They compromise on rules, not ideals. “No killing,” Barry says, hands shaking a little. “Not like this.” Jason nods. “I don’t want to be him.” It’s the first time he says it out loud. His first night back isn’t Gotham. It’s a port city two states over, where smugglers think the Bat doesn’t look and where Joker’s shadow still buys silence. Jason keeps his helmet on even when the panic claws up his spine. Keeps breathing the way Snart taught him—short, grounded, present. When it hits—when the echo of laughter catches him wrong—he ducks into an alley and waits it out. Lets the tremor burn itself empty. No crowbars. No tanks. Just brick and rain and the thud of his heart. Red Hood moves through the docks like a rumor with teeth. He leaves criminals zip-tied and confused. Leaves evidence neat. Leaves before the sirens. He doesn’t feel victorious. He feels alive.
Bruce watches from a rooftop he doesn’t mean to be on. He isn’t supposed to be here. He tells himself that. Tells himself it’s coincidence, that he felt something shift and followed it like a bad habit. Then he sees the helmet. Red. Jason’s stance is different. Broader. More guarded. There’s a hitch when he turns too fast, a pause before he steps into shadows. Bruce catalogs it all and hates himself for knowing what it means. PTSD. Bruce’s chest tightens. He remembers the warehouse. The silence. The weight of being late. Jason freezes suddenly, hand braced against a wall, breath stuttering. Bruce nearly moves—nearly breaks every promise he’s made to stay away. Then Jason grounds himself. Breath in. Breath out. Steady. He straightens and disappears into the night without looking backBruce doesn’t follow. He can’t. Later, when the Joker’s name hits the news again—some half-baked plot, a laugh track of a threat—Jason goes cold. The memories don’t come like a movie. They come like smells, like pressure, like the way his skin crawls when someone stands too close. He doesn’t say everything. He doesn’t need to.
Barry doesn’t ask for details. Snart doesn’t push. They know enough. Some wounds don’t like light. Jason sits on the floor with his back to the couch, helmet beside him, fingers shaking just a little. “If he ever comes near me again,” he says quietly, “I don’t know if I’ll be able to breathe.” Snart’s voice is even. “Then we make sure he doesn’t.” Jason swallows. “Thanks,” he says. And means it. Nightwing sends a message he never sends. I’m proud of you. Jason deletes it. Then restores it. Then deletes it again. Red Hood isn’t a replacement. He’s a continuation.
And this time, when the laughter echoes in his head, Jason answers it with something stronger than fear.
He answers it with choice.