The Till-Then From The Ever-Since

Chapter 1

It began, or seemed to begin, with Jason.

Usually that would have meant something in the order of fire and explosion and probably at least one gunshot wound, but for once (as Tim said, sourly), it wasn't actually Jason's fault.

But that is the story getting ahead of itself. Somewhere closer to the beginning is:

Dick was home for the evening, when it started. 'Home' in this case being defined as 'in Wayne Manor, helping Damian with his homework.' Damian did not normally accept help with anything if he could possible avoid it, nor did he often have any difficulty with eighth grade assignments, but today he had (ungraciously) accepted Dick's pro-forma offer of assistance with his science research project. Dick had been almost too surprised to agree.

The project was supposed to be partnered; Damian had been the odd man out in his class and rejected the teacher's offer to attach him to a pair and make it a trio…his little brother had no interest in being friends with his classmates, whom he had long ago dismissed as imbeciles, but that didn't mean he didn't get lonely. And Dick wasn't in Gotham all that often, really; they weren't as close as they'd been during those long months Dick had been Batman to Damian's Robin and tried his best as surrogate parent, although he still tried to be brothers. To bond.

It wasn't always easy. So there was no way, if Damian was actually reaching out, that Dick would not move Heaven and Earth, let alone any competing schedule requirements up to and including a Justice League rotation, to meet him halfway.

It was half an hour past sunset, now. Batman was patrolling. Alfred was out running some sort of evening errands. (Dick wasn't sure what these were, and had long since decided to subscribe to the theory that they involved visiting vampire tailors and similar persons who could not be called upon in daylight.) Damian was in his room, fetching his tablet computer to which the assignment had been uploaded. (His teacher aspired to a paperless classroom.) Dick had set up milk and cookies on one of the library tables to simultaneously tease Damian and give them study fuel, and was actually looking forward to homework. (It helped that it wasn't his.)

So needless to say, he wasn't thrilled when the doorbell chimed. When he reached the front door and opened the video channel to see who was at the gate, displeasure turned into cold, roiling tension.

Looking into the camera was the intent, unmasked face of a very young Jason Todd.

"Jason?" Dick said cautiously, because what else was there to say?

Once, he would have been happy. Untrusting, worried out of his mind, a little frightened, but delighted to see a healthy, living Jason. Now he wasn't sure what to feel, but apart from a small, stupid part of his brain that leapt at this restoration because it couldn't understand things like context, it...wasn't joy. Because Jason had already come back.

The kid—younger than he'd been when he died, probably Damian's age, not even halfway through his time as Robin—lit up with recognition and relief at the sound of his voice from the little speaker. "Dick! Let me in, would you?

"See, I told you," he added, swinging away from the camera slightly, allowing a view of…the low-profile version of the Red Hood, brown leather jacket and red domino mask and only one visible gun, standing some ten feet back, forehead resting in the palm of his hand. There was no sign of a vehicle. "Home's still there, you creep. Even if the city's a little off, that doesn't mean I have to believe you."

Dick had forgotten just how readily Jason used to talk. Well, he could talk a lot now, too, but villain monologues were different. Red Hood had been fairly stable lately, and Dick was glad to see 'exasperation' was more his reaction of the day so far than 'murderous rage.'

"I'll buzz you in," he said, trying for something between cheerful and soothing. He managed pretty well. "So just come downstairs right away, okay?" If this came to blows in the end or the middle, as it very likely would, the Batcave could take a lot more violence than Wayne Manor could.

"What about him?" Jason, their long-lost and unreturning Jason, asked, jabbing a jaunty thumb over his shoulder. "I…kind of can't get more than fifty yards from him. I've tried. A lot."

"He can come too," Dick allowed, hoping his voice gave nothing away. "Leave your guns by the door," he added, more loudly, for the ears of the figure in the background.

The Red Hood scoffed, not looking at the camera even though he knew exactly where it was. "Not a chance, goldie," he said.

"What have you told him?" Dick asked, and got simultaneous replies of

"Nothing!" from little Jason and

"Nothing he believed," from the adult one.

"You are not me," Jason snapped at the Red Hood. The boy was in civvies, for whatever reason, a red T-shirt, and Dick wasn't sure whether that was better or worse than seeing him in the costume in which he'd died. Thinking of him as Robin would probably have helped, though; there had been several Robins since Dick first turned the name into an alias, but only one Jason.

"We can talk inside," he said, pushed the button to open the gate, and closed the video channel just as a look of unease swept across his oldest little brother's too-young face.

He darted across the foyer to the old storage closet under the front stairs, which had been converted long ago into the electronic security hub, to view both Jasons' vital stats as monitored by the gate as they passed through it (normal, both of them; the adult had a slightly higher core temperature but he also had more muscle mass to produce heat, so that was to be expected) and then to intercom up to the library. "Dami?" he asked.

"Grayson," was the flat reply. Damian had already found him not waiting.

"I'm sorry, little bird, something really weird just came up and I have to deal with it. You stay there and get the project out of the way, okay? Don't come down to the cave for a while. I'll join you as soon as I possibly can."

"I'll help," Damian stated. No complaints about being abandoned, of course, but Dick knew that didn't mean it didn't hurt. Their family was built on broken promises, it sometimes seemed like.

"No!" he said. Red Hood with his guns was never something he wanted Damian near if he could help it, even if it had been years since Jason had really tried to kill him; this was already an explosive situation, and Damian and Jason were both prone to escalation. And given how the resurrected Jason had reacted to Tim, he wanted to indefinitely postpone introducing the time-travelling-or-whatever Robin to the current holder of the office. "No, I don't want you in the middle of this if we can help it. The homework needs to get done, and I really wanted to be there but I know you can handle it without me."

"Fine," his littlest brother bit out grudgingly. He'd stay in the library for a little while at least, though it was anyone's guess whether he'd actually compile any sources on a marine mammal of his choice.

"You're a little red angel," Dick told him, and closed the channel to the musical sound of thirteen-year-old grumbling.

That done, he dashed to the study, hurried down to the Batcave, and changed into Nightwing before the Jasons could make it halfway up the long front drive. He felt more secure dealing with something like this in full kit, especially with adult Jason involved. It was a sad thing that he felt more comfortable facing his brother with a layer of body armor on and at least three weapons to hand, but things were what they were.

After opening a security-footage window in one corner of the main Batcomputer screen to track the Jasons' bickering progress toward the manor, he busied himself assembling a list of possible causes for this phenomenon, with a focus, based on Jason's comment about the fifty-yard limit, on magical phenomena and objects.

When the guests reached the study above, he minimized his minimal progress on that and closed the surveillance feed. No need to upset anyone more than necessary. He wasn't Bruce.

The secret door opened, and he turned to face both Jasons with an easy smile.

"How does he know how to get into the Cave?" little Jason demanded, shoving his counterpart in the side as he wriggled past, and bounding down the steps toward the cave floor. "How does he know about the Manor, even?"

"I told you, brat," interjected Red Hood, following him down at a less energetic pace. "I'm Jason Todd, age twenty-four."

"Like hell!"

Damn. Dick was staggered, for a second. Jason had died almost ten years ago, now. It seemed longer, but it also seemed like yesterday. He looked involuntarily toward the Robin suit where it still hung in its glass case—a memorial less painful than looking at either of the living versions. Jason's death hadn't hurt this much in a long time.

He knew both Jasons had followed his gaze. "Sorry, Little Wing," he said, watching, out of the corner of his eye, little Jason's face grow more and more strained as he took in the many changes to the Cave over the last twelve years. "He's telling the truth."

He didn't know how else to say it. Little Jason went dead white. He'd already been strung tight with enduring the weirdness-of-the-day but now his hands made fists and his sneakered feet shifted into a combat-ready stance. "This is the future?" he said, angry, incredulous. Raked his eyes over Dick, who knew himself at thirty to be very much visually distinguishable from himself at eighteen, even through the mask. For one thing, he'd grown another third of an inch by the time he hit twenty, and bulked up significantly since, though he'd never be built like Bruce. (Thank God.) For another, his suit design had streamlined.

Having taken these facts in, Jason declared, "What the fuck," which had the virtue of being succinct. "And who's he?" he demanded, stabbing a finger at the cave behind Dick.

Dick turned to look, expecting Tim to have come in through one of the tunnels and not relishing the prospect of explaining him, only to find a small figure in a Robin costume there, standing jauntily on the stone with his hands on his hips. "Dami," he began, impressed despite himself that the kid had somehow snuck into the Cave and into costume that quickly, but also very frustrated. Then he checked himself.

This kid wasn't Damian: the skin tone was wrong, the whole face was wrong; he was at least an inch shorter; he was considerably more slim, with no sign of the incredibly excessive strength training Damian insisted on working into his routine.

And, most tellingly, the Robin costume was completely wrong. Dick hadn't seen those green scales outside a memorial case in…well. Almost ten years.

"More like who are all of you," the new boy retorted, eyebrows raised, toe tapping, incredulous crooked smile pulling just a little at his mouth. "Who let you into our Cave?"

A/N: This is a Robin story. Set in that elusive post-canon non-Flashpoint period, with stray details here and there pinched from the new universe. Title from Rainer Maria Rilke's 'Requiem for a Friend.'

The cover image, by the way, is a panel of Dick trying to stop Tim from being reckless during the Zero Hour event, during which time was thoroughly screwed up and most of which hadn't happened once it was over. ^^ Oh, and despite the K+ rating the Jasons are going to keep swearing, sorry. They have minds of their own.