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The safehouse was too quiet.
Jason hated quiet. Quiet meant waiting. Quiet meant danger was holding its breath. It meant fate hadn’t decided yet whether to let you live or let you die. He’d spent too much of his life braced for the hit he couldn’t see coming. Too much of his life under this oppressive, suffocating quiet.
His boots had thudded the same rhythm across the warped floorboards for the better part of an hour. Dust lifted in the dim lamplight with every step. The air was stale, tainted slightly with cigarette smoke and the faint tang of disinfectant, the kind you could never really get out of old wood.
Finally, Jason caught himself, breath sharp in his chest. As he finally forced his legs still, exhaled hard, and dropped onto the battered sofa shoved against the wall. The springs groaned under him like even the furniture was tired.
Across from him, Kon was sprawled in a chair that looked far too fragile to hold his weight. His long legs stretched out, combat boots planted wide, arms folded loose across his stomach. He looked like he’d grown into the shape of comfort itself with his head tipped back, eyes shut. For a second, Jason really thought he’d nodded off.
Then Kon spoke, voice low and even.
“You’re gonna wear a hole in the floor.”
Jason snorted, sharp and humourless. “Better than letting my legs cramp up.”
Slowly, Kon cracked open one eye. The lamp between them drowned half of his face in light: sharp cheekbones, shadowed jaw, the faint curl at the corner of his mouth. He looked unnaturally calm. He always looked calm. Jason hated that about him.
“Could’ve fooled me,” Kon yawned. “You looked about ready to put a hole in the wall.”
Jason leaned back, arms folding tight across his chest. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
The silence slunk back in between them, heavier this time. Outside, Gotham groaned in the distance: the distant grind of a subway, a siren warbling a few blocks over, some drunk shouting down an alley. Inside the safehouse, only the buzz of the lamp and the faint creak of old wood settling.
Jason picked at the seam of his glove, tongue pressed against the inside of his cheek. He didn’t want to say it. Didn’t want to drag it out, give it air, make it real. But the words clawed at his ribs, and they’d been gnawing at him since the mission, since Kon had gone down in the street with a grunt that sounded far too human. Since Jason had seen him bleed.
“You scared the shit out of me today.”
Both of Kon’s eyes were open now. He shifted in his chair, sat forward a little, as if meeting Jason halfway, like bringing his presence closer could ease Jason's restless twitching. “I’m fine, Jay.”
Jason’s jaw tightened around the nickname. He hated the way it lodged under his ribs, hated that he didn’t hate it enough to spit it back. His throat worked before he forced the words out.
“You went down,” he said flatly. “One hit, and you folded like a paper cutout. You think that doesn’t leave a mark?”
Kon looked away, jaw hard, shoulders set; he resembled a statue more than a living being. The silence stretched on long enough for Jason to catch his own reflection in the dark window behind him. Worn leather jacket, hair a messy shadow with that streak of white like a scar of its own. He looked older than he should. He looked wrong.
Kon’s voice, when it finally came, was quieter, sombre almost. “It’s not the first time I’ve gone down.”
Jason almost barked a laugh, but it caught rough in his throat. “Yeah. Same.”
Kon’s gaze snapped back to him, sharp, almost startled. Blue eyes lit by the lamplight. “You mean—”
Jason tapped two fingers against the centre of his chest. “Yeah. That. Grave dirt under the nails, lungs burning, whole nine yards.” His smirk was sharp, humourless as he tilted his head. “What, you thought you had a monopoly on dying young?”
Kon’s mouth opened, shut. He looked like someone had knocked the air right out of him. Jason let the weight of it settle.
“…I don’t talk about it,” Kon said finally, quietly, like saying it made it real.
Jason tilted his head. “Neither do I.”
This silence wasn’t empty anymore. It pressed on both of them, heavy and brittle, like a pane of glass just before it shatters. Jason felt his own pulse hammering at the base of his throat, in his skull. He never let himself remember too closely, not the crowbar, not the explosion, not the sudden absence of everything. Not the scraping sound that came after, inside his skull, when he realised whatever had clawed its way back into his body wasn’t the boy Bruce, no, Batman had buried.
Kon’s voice cut in soft, frayed, talking to himself more than to Jason. “I don’t even know what I am. What came back. Doesn't really feel like Conner Kent anymore.”
Jason’s head snapped toward him. The words landed like they’d been stolen out of his chest, too close. He had to force himself to breathe.
“You ever wake up and feel like you’re wearing someone else’s skin?” Jason asked. His voice was rougher than he wanted, the words forced out too quickly like they'd been fermenting in his lungs. “Like you’re playing at being the guy everyone remembers, but he’s not in here anymore. Not really.”
Kon’s breath hitched. His hands curled tight against his knees. “Yes.”
No hesitation. No shield. Just raw honesty. Jason wasn’t ready for it.
He leaned forward, elbows braced on his thighs, eyes fixed on the scuffed floorboards. “I came back wrong. I know I did. Bruce knows it too. He’ll never say it, but it’s in his eyes every time. I’m not Robin anymore. I’m not his soldier. I’m just… something that should have stayed buried.”
Kon’s boots scraped against the floor as he shifted. His voice was tight, like the words were being pulled from him by force. “Clark looks at me like that, too. Sometimes I think it's the way he's always looked at me, I don't think I can tell the difference anymore.”
Jason’s head snapped up.
Kon stared down at his own hands. “I'm supposed to be his clone. I'm Superboy, or I'm meant to be... But I’m not him. I’m not Kryptonian enough. Not human enough. Just some mistake. He doesn’t say it, he looks at me like I'm wrong, but I can feel it. Everyone can.”
Jason studied him across the short space. For once, the bitterness in his chest wasn’t aimed at Bruce. And it wasn’t aimed at Kon either.
“You’re not a mistake,” Jason said. The words came out rough, like gravel in his throat.
Kon let out a hollow laugh. “And you're not his greatest failure, huh?”
Jason wanted to spit something back, cut the softness out of the moment. He wanted to sneer, to remind Kon who the hell he was talking to. But he couldn't; the words wouldn’t come. He tipped his head back against the couch, eyes fixed on the water stain spreading across the ceiling.
“I don’t know what I am,” he admitted under his breath. It was the first time he'd said it aloud, the first time he'd ever admitted to it. “But I know I’m not the same kid who went into the ground. And maybe that’s fine. Maybe he deserved to stay buried. I don't think he deserved to be... this.”
The silence that followed wasn’t fragile. It was solid, like a floor they were both standing on. Jason half expected Kon to leave without another word, to cover it with some grin and pretend the cracks weren’t there. But when he glanced sideways, Kon was still watching him, really watching.
“You’re the first person I’ve said that to,” Kon murmured.
Jason’s throat felt too tight, like the truth was threatening to choke him. “…Me too.”
The air shifted. Not trust, not yet, but the shape of something close. Recognition. Two ghosts circling the same truth.
Kon leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees, mirroring Jason’s posture. “Maybe we don’t have to carry it alone.”
Jason’s lips twitched, caught between a smirk and something softer. He pulled the pack of cigarettes from his jacket, tapped one free, and lit it with a flick of his lighter. The flame threw his face into brief, sharp relief before dying back. He inhaled, let the smoke curl into the stale air, then held the pack out wordlessly.
Kon hesitated, then took one. His fingers brushed Jason’s hand, and he let the touch linger a second too long.
And for the first time that night, if only for a fleeting moment, the silence didn’t feel like a threat. It felt like a truce.
The cigarette burned down slowly, a faint ember in the dimly lit safehouse. Jason took another drag, smoke stinging his lungs, and watched Kon fumble with his. Too much air, too fast, coughing on the first inhale. He was stubborn about it, though, determined to mirror Jason until he got it right, which to his credit, he eventually did.
Jason couldn’t help the smirk tugging at his mouth. “You look like a kid trying to impress the older boys under the bleachers.”
Kon glared through a puff of smoke. “Shut up, we're like the same age... sort of.”
Jason barked a laugh before he could stop himself. It startled him, sharp in his own ears. He hadn’t laughed in weeks, but it felt like years.
Kon rolled his eyes, leaned back, cigarette dangling clumsily between his fingers. “You shouldn’t be laughing when you’re the one corrupting me, Mr.Red Hood.”
Jason flicked ash into a chipped mug on the table. “Please. You’ve probably done worse. You’re a Titan. I’ve seen the press clippings.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No?”
Kon’s gaze dropped to his hands. The cigarette smouldered, ash threatening to spill. “I was meant to be better. Stronger. I was made for it. And I’m not. I screw up. I let people down. Every time I fall, it just proves Clark right.”
Jason leaned forward, plucked the cigarette from his hand before the ash burned him, and stubbed it out right beside his own. He exhaled smoke with a bitter snort.
“You think Clark’s opinion is gospel?”
Kon blinked dumbly, then muttered. “…He’s Superman,”
“Yeah, and Bruce is Batman,” Jason shot back. “They’re just men. They bleed, well, I think Superman bleeds, they fail, and they don’t know what the hell to do with kids like us.”
Kon’s head lifted sharply, eyes wide.
Jason shrugged. “We remind them of the parts they don’t want to admit exist. The cracks in their armour. The ways they fucked up. So they call us mistakes. Or, well, they don’t call us anything at all. That's probably worse.” He admitted.
The words landed hard. Jason hadn’t meant to spill that much, hadn't meant to say much of anything really. But Kon was still watching him like he was dragging marrow out of Jason’s bones.
“Jason,” Kon said softly, hesitant. “Do you ever… hate him? Bruce? Or I guess Batman... or both?”
Jason’s laugh was low and sharp, bitter. “Every day.” His head tipped back against the couch again, eyes tracing the ceiling cracks. “And I love him too. Which is the real joke.”
Kon leaned, mirroring him again without realising it. “I feel the same about Clark, I think. I want him to look at me and see someone worth keeping. But half the time, I think he’d rather I didn’t exist at all.”
Jason lowered his gaze. No masks, no costumes between them, just another kid who’d clawed his way out of the ground and found the world colder than he remembered it ever being.
“I used to think dying meant I got to rest or something,” Jason sighed. “That it was over. But then I woke up, and it was like the universe spat me back out just to see what would happen. I still don’t know why, I mean, not really.”
Kon swallowed hard. “I know that feeling, it's like you’re here on borrowed time, someone else's time. Like if people look too close, they’ll realise you don’t belong here anymore.”
Jason’s fists curled tight, nails biting into his palms. He forced them open. “You do belong,” he said, sharper than he meant. He caught Kon’s startled look, and his voice softened. “…You’re still here. That’s gotta count for something, right?”
For a long moment, Kon didn’t answer. Then he pushed up from his chair and crossed to the couch. He didn’t sit too close, but close enough that Jason felt the heat off his arm and his leg that was bouncing incessantly.
Jason arched a brow at him. “What are you doing?”
Kon shrugged, cheeks faintly flushed. “You looked like you needed someone to sit with you.”
Jason scoffed, half-heartedly. The warmth seeping across the small space grounded him more than the cigarette ever had. He didn’t move. Minutes passed. A siren wailed and faded outside again. The lamp buzzed, steady and constant, and Jason closed his eyes, a moment of reprieve.
“You ever remember it?” he murmured.
“…Remember what?”
“Dying, I mean. The way it felt.”
Kon shifted. His voice was low, uneasy. “Sometimes, mostly in dreams. Or when I get hit hard enough. It all sort of comes back, the emptiness, the cold. And then waking up in a body that doesn’t feel like mine.”
Jason opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling again. His throat was raw. “Yeah. Same.”
Their shoulders brushed. Neither of them moved.
“You know,” Kon said after a pause, “if we both came back different… maybe that’s not a bad thing? Maybe it means we get to choose what we are now.”
Jason huffed out an empty laugh. “You sound like Dick.”
“Bet he doesn’t smoke with you though.”
Jason glanced sideways. Kon’s grin was small, crooked, and honest. His chest ached with something he didn't want to name.
“No,” he admitted with a sigh. “He doesn’t.”
Kon’s knee brushed Jason’s. Jason didn’t move away.
“Jason?”
“Yeah?”
“…Thanks. For talking. For not, I don't know.” Kon hesitated. “For not looking at me like I’m broken.”
Jason let out a breath that landed somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “You’re not broken, Kon. Neither of us are.”
Kon’s shoulder pressed into his, firm and warm. The contact made something rise in his chest. “Then maybe that’s enough.”
Jason didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.
For the first time in a long while, he let himself rest.