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They meet at almost three in the morning, in a dark alleyway about a block from the actual Crime Alley. Jason’s leaning against the filthy wall of some random apartment building trying to stop the bleeding from a bullet graze on his leg, courtesy of some random drug dealer.
He can feel bruises blooming all over his body. His eye throbs, and he knows it going to be black tomorrow, which makes his recent safe house switch a blessing—his last one had had neighbors who had been born on the streets and took notice of tall, muscular guys that carried firearms and whose faces were generally fucked up ninety percent of the time.
The fact that it was for their survival didn’t change the fact that if the Batman came in snooping they’d point him out in a heartbeat. If anything, it emphasized it. not that he blamed them.
Now all he has to do it wait for this graze—little more than a paper cut, he tells himself—to clot so he can be on his way. He glances up as a shape appears from absolutely nowhere, which is feat in itself, seeing as Jason can tell when Bruce is lurking. Jason automatically reaches for the gun strapped to his leg before remembering he’d forgotten to reload it in favor of retreating and general keeping alive purposes.
His helmet had been shattered back at the warehouse he’d been shooting in, and so he was only in a red domino. He wishes he wasn’t, because he feels exposed now, bare to whatever has just crept up to him. The shape solidifies into a man after a few seconds—and okay, so the graze was a little more severe than Jason had thought, sue him—who comes forward, reaching out to Jason like he’s about to grab onto his arm.
Jason jerks away on instinct, a harsh back the fuck up on his lips, but he moves too fast and the world goes soft and dark for a second.
He comes around to the sight of the guy, whoever he is, putting professional pressure on Jason’s graze with a blank expression. He’s had medical training, then.
His hair is short, lopped off unevenly, like it was done in a rush and without any particular care what it looked like, as long as it was gone. Jason bares his teeth. “Fuck off.” he snarls, panting, and the guy looks at him with empty eyes that spark something in Jason, vague flashes of fear and graves and green. Bile slithers up his throat, but when the guy reaches out to pick him up, Jason forces out the address to his newest safe house before passing out.
Little does he know, three months later the good Captain and his friends would be on his doorstep, and then in his entire goddamned life.
Xxxxxxxx
But before then, Jason discovers a lot of things about his new roommate, like how he’s got a metal arm and wicked nightmares that are somehow soothed when Jason speaks his admittedly rusty Russian, and that he doesn’t talk and flinches at the television whenever Captain America or the Black Widow come on the television. Any of the Avengers, really, but especially those two.
He can handle both a gun and stays with Jason, for whatever reason, and most importantly, also isn’t brain-dead like Jason was.
This is good, because quite frankly Jason isn’t sure if he could look at something that close to himself every day, and anyway, he’s out all night and most of the day on a regular basis. He couldn’t conceivably care for his new friend if the guy wasn’t able to care for himself to some extent.
Leaning across his roommate—and Jason really needs to think of something to call the guy, but just naming him seems too much like naming a pet—Jason grabs a pan to heat up some soup. Casually, he says, “Hey, I’m heading over to the library today, switching out some books. Wanna come?” Jason is fairly sure it’s a gesture only, as the guy hadn’t left the apartment since dragging Jason here a month ago.
His roommate glances up, eyes wide but no longer quite dead, a room and food and sleep seeming to have helped him un-shut down, even if it was only showing in the little ways. Jason is careful not to let his surprise show when the guy actually nods, agreeing to leave. Whatever his past or problem was, it’s stopped preventing him from leaving, which was….good.
Really good, actually, though Jason was no shrink.
“Okay, then, we’ll go in a little bit.”
xxxxxx
About an hour later they’re both walking past Wayne Tower, the humid Gotham sun out for once, illuminating the slightly less disgusting streets around the wealthier district. The library was a few blocks behind them, but Jason’s hoping that the air will help his companion, at least a little.
It had for him, at least, Talia’s care and wealth improving him enough to make her want to dunk him in the Pit.
And while his roommate’s situation is clearly different, Jason had seen girls who’d locked themselves up after a night of desperation when rent was due, and men who curled up behind masks and never left a cave unless it was absolutely necessary. Being alone and hurt was never a good thing. He should know. The other Bats still refused to have anything to do with him, which was more than slightly mutual.
Hell, his mom had locked down in their apartment and drugs, belly swollen, to the point where even if he isn’t sure if he’s truly remembering her being pregnant or is just fucked in the head, he truly hopes she wasn’t. Jason knows the risks of being a fetus when the mother is a drug addict, and absolutely no one would want to be related to him.
He has plenty of examples for that one.
And Jason knows she wouldn’t have gotten an abortion. His mother had been many things, but practical or sensible hadn’t ever been one of them.
“I’m leaving,” says his roommate.
“What?” Jason says, feeling like someone’s slapped him, though it’s more from the guy suddenly declaring his intentions than from Jason snapping out of his musings.
The guy still doesn’t look at him, eyes on the Tower. “I have…business. And I need to hide, keep moving. You understand.”
Jason did, but he still frowned. “You sure? I can….” The words die on his lips. He could leave Gotham, go with someone he barely knew to god knows where, on whatever mission he had?
And Jason knows he would do it, too, but the look he gets is more fear than reproach or warning, wide eyed and shell shocked, and Jason is expecting the violent “No!” when it comes.
The man beside him shudders visibly. “No, you’re not following me.”
“Okay,” Jason says, hollowly, the rejection stinging, even if Jason can understand it. If someone had offered to help him take down Bruce two years ago, he would have reacted the exact same way. But, Jason helps his friends. He feels dirty not doing so now, but forcing himself on his roommate would be even worse.
The man walks away without another word, blending into the crowd. Jason watches for a second, then walks in the opposite direction.
Unseen by Jason, Tony Stark makes a very hurried phone call in the middle of Timothy Drake-Wayne’s presentation, staring out of a board room above him and beginning both a frankly impressive professional rivalry between himself and the teenager as well as the beginning of the end of Jason Todd’s life as he knew it.
Xxxxxx
What is seen by Jason, however, is the little redhead following him everywhere. He ignores her for a few days, assuming she’s been sent by Oracle or Talia, but when he contacts the two of them they deny sponsoring her, which leaves his more…estranged family.
He knows she can’t be sent by a gang or any of the big bads because one, all she’s done is skillfully, silently shadow him and two, she’s followed both his nighttime and civilian personas. No one but the Bats and al Guhl’s know both. Well, and most of the League, too, but they were too uptight to stoop so low as to spy on little old him. His not being attacked also rules out whatever made his mysterious roommate leave, going by the fact the guy had to move so fast.
In short, she was either a freelancer or Bruce’s girl, and either way he had to put a stop to whatever the hell she was doing. Briskly, he tugs on a few extra toys for whenever this little meeting gets violent and swings out his window.
He leaves his hood and suit, though, wearing his faded YOLO shirt instead, trying to appear non-threatening. The inside joke never hurts, either.
God, he really doesn’t feel like a fight tonight.
Jason makes a point of not swinging to the roof or heading out to Crime Alleys even seeder sections like usual, instead sitting and waiting on his crap fire escape, lighting a cigarette. Eventually it burns to nothing without her approaching, so he calls out, “I know you’re there, Little Red. I’m not the big bad wolf, I won’t eat you.” Despite what everyone probably told you he thinks darkly.
She swings down directly across from him, in a black cat suit, of all the things, and he fleetingly wonders if maybe Catwoman had somehow gotten a protégé without him hearing, then loaned her to Bruce. He snorts. Even in a world where Lazarus Pits existed and the Joker was alive, that was lunacy.
He’s tired, though, deeply, completely and utterly done with whatever Batman or who the hell ever has decided he needs. He knows how this will go, too, the same as it has with the newest Batgirl, or Robin, or Nightwing—a sanctimonious lecture on rules and the value of human life or some other bullshit, he’ll tell them to back off and let him actually protect the damn city in a way that’s not nearly as bloody as it was when he had fucking Pit madness. They’ll ignore him and his remission into sanity, and in response Jason will lose his temper and say something his mother would have smacked him for, and probably washed his mouth out with soap, too, when she’d been sober. Or if she wasn’t a new Bat, then it would just go straight to a fistfight.
The girl—woman he corrects himself, she looks almost a decade older than him—straightens up, and Jason sighs. Then he sees her face. It’s the Black Widow.
Shit. This was bad. He’d been found out, and by the Black Widow. Shit. Now the whole family was in danger. She was known for being thourogh.
“Who sent you?” Because she had been sent, she was an assassin and a spy, she wouldn’t seek someone who’d never even seen her in person out with no orders. And that phrase really shouldn’t bring déjà vu, but whatever, he’d come back from the dead and been a teen sidekick in pixie boots and short-shorts.
Life was weird.
She raises and eyebrow and smiles sweetly. Something about it makes Jason’s spine tingle. He’s seen that expression on Babs and Steph enough that he knows to be scared. “Hey, man,” he says holding up his hands, “I’ve got no beef with you or your boss, okay? Let’s be adults about this.” He slips back and slides his hand into his pocket., fingering the remote hidden there
She steps forward, and before Jason can really start to say anything else or switch the detonator in his pocket to put her on the street with a few broken bones and fairly severe burns, someone grabs him from behind and shoves him against the brick of his apartment like a simple street thug.
Jason lets them. He’s got plenty of options to end this, and proximity helps most of them a hell of a lot. Then he gets a good look at his attackers face, and—
“Holy fuck,” he says, genuinely thrown through a fucking loop, because holy fuck.
Captain goddamned America is holding him by his throat, and is somehow an inch or so shorter than Jason, which, yeah. His growth spurt had done wonders.
Jason’s wider too, he catalogues automatically, broader in the shoulders and hips, and equally if not more so muscular. He knows physical size won’t matter if they throw down, though.
Supersoldiers and metas defy even that basic rule.
They don’t defy Tasers, though, or gas, or a number of things Jason’s ready to unleash if this continues. But he’s curious, now. Why the hell would Captain America be sent with the Widow on any mission? Wasn’t that overkill? And for Jason, of all people? Why go to the Red Hood and try and start a fight?
“Where is he.” Snarls Cap, and Jason calmly says, “What?”
“Where the hell is Bucky,” Cap counters, and yeah, Jason is curious, but the big guy here is squeezing, just a little, and speaking gibberish. He goes for the switch again is his pocket but before he can press it, the Widow and someone else--and Jesus, his fire escape can barely hold just Jason, this is really pushing it, and also where the hell are all these people coming from--yanks the good Captain back. “Calm down, Steve,” says the new guy, and Jason would offer some sarcasm here if he wasn’t busy massaging his throat and regaining basic speech. “We don’t even know if he knows anything.”
“I doubt he doesn’t,” Cap snarls, but he stops straining to reach Jason. Jason leans back but keeps his hands in his pockets. “Listen,” he croaks, wincing before he continues, “Let’s get somewhere solid before we all die, alright?”
The fire escape creaks alarmingly as if to prove his point. Cap’s friends both look at him, somewhat surprised, but Jason isn’t doing this from kindness in his heart—he has infinitely more weapons in his house than the escape. He knows he’ll need them if he’s going to win whatever fight is coming.
He climbs in first without saying anything else. He’s followed a few seconds later, the black man muttering, “Is this normal now? Do all you guys climb through windows? There’s a ladder to the ground right there.”
Jason likes him immediately.
The Widow he’s wary of. She’s too much like Cass and Babs, combined together in what he’s certain is a hell-raising, absolutely unstoppable combination.
Only an absolute idiot would be anything less than terrified of her.
Cap crosses his arms over his chest, ignoring the empty apartment. “Where is he,” he snaps, and Jason sighs lazily. “Gonna have to be a little more specific, sweetheart.” Absently, he lets himself lean against a wall and observe how Cap’s friends settle beside him, the Widow left, the man right, all in the middle of the room. Cap snaps, “Bucky,” and Jason says coldly, “Yeah, I’d love to tell you, but I’ve never heard that name outside of history books.”
“The man that was with you a few weeks ago,” the Widow says, sounding as bored as Jason is making himself look. “Dark hair, metal arm? This ringing any bells, or is that helmet a little too tight for you?”
Okay, so Jason likes her too. But he remembers how apparently-Bucky had said something about hiding, or at least implied it. Jason decides to tell the partial truth, for now. Only location would matter to someone looking for Bucky, especially after a months.
“Yeah, he hauled me out of an alley after I got shot by some gangbanger piece of thrash.” No point in lying about his night life, either. They clearly know.
“Do you know where he went?” Cap glances at his left, to the man who spoke. “I’m Sam, by the way.” They’re also clearly letting down their guard, probably because of the surroundings, or even Jason’s age. Mistake, but not one he wants to make them pay for right now.
Jason sighs and drops the act, letting his exhaustion show. He rubs the bridge of his nose, slowly. He’s getting a migraine, and hasn’t slept more than two hours in the past two days. But his r—Bucky had said he needed to hide, and Jason would go to hell before he gave him away, so he says the most confusing thing he can think of—the truth, again. “No. I didn’t even know his name. All I know is food and somewhere to sleep helped him out a hell of a lot.” Jason looks at all three of them, slow and steady, pulling himself up to his full height and baring his teeth.
“And if you do anything to fuck him up again, or had a hand in doing so in the first place, I’ll make your worst nightmare look like a fucking dream. Sir.”
There’s a shocked silence, then they all relax. Jason doesn’t. He may like them, but he sure as hell trusts none of them. “Okay,” Sam says, wary but sounding relived for whatever reason, like he can change Jason’s mind, “Let’s start at the beginning…”
A few hours later, and Jason’s promised to keep an eye out for Bucky. He doesn't bother to make his position clear—that if Bucky wanted to have a reunion, he would’ve seeked them out. Bucky needed his own time, and Jason would make damn sure he got it. Something told Jason they would all have understood, bar Cap.
xxxx
“Little wing. Why aren’t you sleeping—“
An often repeated, “Fuck off, Dick.”
A sigh, then.
Blessed, lonely silence.
Xxx
Wincing, Jason hauls himself into his apartment, broken leg heavy in the cast the docs had insisted on. It's throbbing, hard, and it’s a relief to pass out on the couch. Fucking Killer Croc.
He wakes up to the Widow perched above him, eating popcorn. He fails a bit, surprised, then hisses and grabs his leg in pain when it flares. She doesn’t look at him, but holds out a few small, yellow pills.
It takes him a second to realize they’re the ones from his prescription. He takes them and dry swallows him—if she’d wanted to kill him, he’d be dead. Besides, her and Sam have been coming over, checking in on him. He can tell it’s because of his age as much as any desire to find Bucky—if anything, they seem to be on his side, wanting to let the guy heal in peace. Steve doesn’t. Jason wishes he could make sense of it. Friends want what’s best for friends, right? So why keep at this?
A few minutes of silence, bar trash television and Natasha’s shifting, and everything goes a little soft around the edges. Jason’s eyes close, and gently, he feels her hand in his hair. He peels his eyes open, and distantly hears the question, “You won’t tell us if you find him, will you.”
“Nuh.” Jason slurs, pushing his head into her hand. It’s been so long since someone touched him outside of a good fuck or a bad fight, and the former was scarce. “He’s g’tta figure it out…’n ‘is own. C’nt get better…with us…”
A hum comes from somewhere far away. Jason is drifting when he hears again, “Oh, and how are you sleeping?” Jason mutters, “Not g’d. Keep…dreaming of the clown.” Another hum, and the hand is removed from his hair—Jason flaps his hand in its direction and somehow catches it. “Keep it there, mom,” he sighs, and passes out before he can see the shock on Natasha Romanov’s face.
She keeps her hand there.
X
“He’s having nightmares.”
“Well, with the bags under his eyes, I’m not surprised.”
“He was pretty out of it, but he said something about a clown before he passed out.”
“In Gotham?...Shit.”
“We need more info on him to help.”
“Sam, the Bats are secretive, at best—“
“And he’s a kid, Natasha.”
“You think I like this? We’ll keep an eye out for him, see if he gets hurt again. Worst comes to worst, another human in the Avengers wouldn’t be the end of the world.”
X
Jason finds both pamphlets to various war veteran/PTSD help meetings and tickets to Shakespeare’s plays on his doorstep when it comes Christmas time. He only uses the later.
But, he holds on to the former.
x
When it comes down to it though, Bucky’s once again the one who hauls Jason’s ass to safety, not the other way around.
Jason’s drunk, and nineteen today.
It’s hard to believe it’s been five years since he dug himself out of his own grave, but it has, and he’s hasn’t slept in days.
Jason has never claimed to have the healthiest coping methods.
He hoping that he’ll pass out soon, though. The world is spinning and he’s stumbling along in an alley, hand coved in grime from holding himself up.
He hears her, then, a girl his age named Rose, who’s one of his best informants, a tiny, five-foot prostitute who knows seemingly everything.
They’re friends, in a way, as close as the Red Hood got, and Jason takes care of his friends. He forces his way towards her voice, and sees a scene that’s excruciatingly familiar, and not just because rape was common thing to stop as a vigilante. His mother had needed money for rent and food somehow, and she spent all her own on drugs.
Rose is being held down by two men, and a third is straddling her, shoving his pants down and her little skirt up, laughing at her when she struggles.
Jason heaves forward and slams into the first guy. Later, Jason won’t recall their faces, everything reduced to a watery, green-tinted blur, but he remember kicks and knives and refusing to go down, staggering up again and again—remembers Rose hitting one over the head with her purse, and metallic shape appearing out of nowhere, and it’s about then that everything Jason remembers stops.
xxxxx
He wakes up in his apartment, covered in ice and surrounded by this weird ass group of friends he somehow acquired. “Rule one,” Sam says immediately, holding aspirin hostage. Jason grimaces in anger and frustration. This was reminding his too much of Bruce’s callousness, his way of assuming he knew best and ignoring Jason’s opinions. “No more drinking.”
“Fuck off,” Jason snaps, “I don’t need rules—“
“This isn’t an option,” Natasha says coolly. “It’s common sense.”
Bucky – and yeah, Jason was relieved to see him, and even more so to see him this much better, Jason can see why he’d felt ready to come back to his friends—says, “You scared me.” He looks at Jason calmly. “It’s not going to happen again.” Jason blinks at him for a second, adjusting to seeing him again, so suddenly, and after him saving Jason’s ass. Again. And now he’s trying to dictate Jason’s life. Like hell.
“Yeah, it will,” Jason hisses when he recovers, “because none of you are my parents, and this is my life. Fuck, you’re all just as bad as Bruce.”
“Who?” Asks Sam, and Jason snaps out, “No one. Listen, I was stupid last night, I’m fine now, get out.”
“No, see, you need help, Jason.” Sam says firmly. “I don’t know what you’ve been through, and you’re clearly capable of caring for yourself and your city, but you need help all the same.” Sam sighs again. “Listen, I was stupid with the rules, but would you just hear me out?”
Jason looks around him, at these people who want to help him, who care, like his other adopted family never truly had. Something inside him eases, a little, and stops resisting.
”Fine.” he says, and it feels like a beginning.