The North Wind Doth Blow, a young justice fanfic

The North Wind Doth Blow.

By Portrait of a Scribe

"The north wind doth blow,
And we shall have snow,
And what will poor robin do then,
Poor thing? He'll sit in a barn,
To keep himself warm,
And hide his head under his wing,
Poor thing!"

You're beating yourself up, again. You know, in your head, that it wasn't entirely your fault, but you feel in your heart that, if you hadn't frozen up, you wouldn't be in this situation, right now. At least you aren't in an enclosed space, anymore, right?

Still, it's been months since the incident that ended with you locked in a coffin, buried alive, choking, suffocating slowly-

Don't go there.

But it's difficult not to. Sitting in your room at home, you know that nothing can hurt you, at least, nothing physical. But oftentimes, it's the intangible things that hurt the most, and you know that very well. The disappointment in Bruce's eyes when he found out why the mission failed, the silent, wondering accusations in your team's stares, the pity in Alfred's… It's nearly unbearable. You know you can't really be blamed, but still, you feel (know) that you can do so much better.

Maybe you should just go out and chase down Killer Croc yourself (Maybe he can finish the job the Joker started all those months ago).

Yeah. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea, doesn't it?

Wait, no, no, that doesn't sound like a good idea. Just don't even go there. Having Croc finish the Joker's handiwork would be a very bad thing and it's so unlike you to even think about it that it makes you stop and wonder for a second.

Are you going crazy?

But maybe facing your fears and tracking him down would be a good thing. Right?

Within half an hour, you're standing (alone, alone, so alone) at the entrance to Gotham's old subway system, the last place you saw Killer Croc before the mission failed (before you froze, before you panicked, before your team had to save your bacon because you couldn't handle the heat). You gaze into the yawning darkness (you've been there before) and wonder: Did it ever look that ominous when you ventured in before?

You wish you had Batman, Wally, or even Conner there to cover or spot for you. This might be a little easier if they were here (being irritatingly silent or tatingly chatty) to take your mind off of things. Then again (knowing how you froze last time), maybe not.

At least you have your communicator on hand if things "go to shit," as Jason would say.

The thought of your little brother brings tears to your eyes again behind the white lenses of your mask, but you push them away, away, away and try to pretend that you don't miss him as much (even though it still feels like a knife in your gut after a year and a half). Now to find Killer Croc before he can find some new victims.

The thought of Croc's potential vics galvanizes you into motion. You creep forward into the darkness, your heart pounding, your mouth dry, your every muscle trembling in sheer terror.

You swallow vainly, and plunge into hell.

It was another mission in Gotham, one of the ones that only you and Batman (and Jason, but that was a moot point by then) seemed to be able to accomplish with any level of success. It was one of the ones that your team, despite all their experience (or lack thereof), seemed to botch more often than not. Still, the six of you took it, because they were feeling bored and antsy, and because you wanted to prove to them that you could still function on missions even after that nightmare so many months ago and the subsequent physical recovery. It wouldn't necessarily be an easy mission. Killer Croc had escaped from Arkham yet again, and your job was to find and stop him before he killed anybody.

It was just your luck (and, of course, lack thereof) that he had headed underground, like he usually did.

The first few steps pass, and you think to yourself, hey, this isn't so bad. Then you look up, and there's a ceiling there: a ceiling made of old, crumbling brick and mortar, heavy, dark, dense stone that you know supports thousands of pounds of rock and dirt and, probably, corpses. After all, Gotham is one big graveyard-

No, no, you can't think like that.

But it's still difficult not to when the damp smell of wet earth hits your nostrils, mixed liberally in with the stench of the raw sewage left by the homeless. The whole place seems to begin closing in around you.

Your feet refuse to carry you any further.

You tracked Croc down to the old subway, the one that had been out of use since before you were born. The rest of the team looked over your shoulder as you gave them a schematic displaying most of Croc's usual haunts, the layout of the old subway system, the places where it had collapsed, and even the location where a cave-in had opened it to the old cistern that Croc seemed to be particularly fond of. They were all confident despite your words of caution. You, however, were not. You had faced Croc down before. Yes, you were a mere human. No, you had no superpowers. But you were one of the best-trained fighters on the planet, and your mentor was even better than you, and even though you knew the criminal in question, knew his moves and routines and how he would act, he regularly gave the two of you some serious trouble. In fact, just a year prior, Batman had nearly been killed when Croc bit him in the shoulder, opening the subclavian artery. Batman had almost bled to death before you finally managed to cauterize the wound. You could still see the scar every time the two of you worked out together, or played basketball, or any time Bruce just dressed down to relax. It was a terrible reminder to you of just how quickly a life could end.

Your team knew you knew what you were talking about, but it still took a sobering reminder of that incident before they would take you seriously for a moment. You thought, off-handedly, that they still sometimes thought of you as that thirteen-year-old kid you were when you first joined the team.

After you were sure that they knew everything there was to know about your quarry and your hunting ground, you gave the go-ahead.

The seven of you plunged into the old subway system.

Your heart pounds in your throat, and you swallow with a suddenly dry mouth. You can't breathe.

Oh, God, you can't move. At all. The fear is completely paralyzing, and you don't even know what, exactly, it is that you're actually afraid of. All you know is that you're terrified, and your feet feel like they've been Bat-glued to the floor.

For an instant, you're back in that coffin, back in the suffocating darkness, the cramped dimensions of the box, and you can't breathe because it's already been hours and you've used up all the oxygen with your screaming that nobody heard.

"Stop being such a pussy, Dick," Jason's voice teases in your head, and you suck in a surprised gasp, glancing around habitually. It sounded so real that, for a second, you think that you actually heard him. Then your hand brushes the pouch of your utility belt, the third one on the left, and you're reminded painfully that all you have left of him is a plastic photo keychain, and there's no way you could be hearing him.

Still, his voice is a comfort, and the barb, real or imagined, is enough to galvanize you into hesitant motion.

After all, let it never be said that Dick Grayson was too pussy to go into an old, dark subway tunnel. That would just be too juvenile for words.

You take a step forward. Then another. Then another, and another, and before you know it, you're a hundred feet in, and you hear something crunch beneath your foot. You don't even look down; it's probably too disgusting for words. But you do close your eyes against the darkness, trying to avoid thinking about how it feels like the world is closing in on you, how it feels as though the walls could come tumbling down at any moment to bury you alive yet again. Taking a deep, deep breath, you open your eyes again, reaching up to switch your mask's vision mode to night-vision. The world turns green.

And you suck in a gasp of air just before a massive hand clamps around your throat.

By the time you and your team located Killer Croc, you were close to hyperventilating. You tried to hide it from your friends, but you knew that they could tell something was up. At any rate, they forgot about your own troubles the instant Conner was suddenly slammed through a wall by a meaty, scaled fist, closely followed by M'gann. Artemis took a half-second to react while that happened, but even she was too slow.

And you? You were too frozen by the sight of the tumbling bricks and mortar to move. Your breath came quickly, too quickly, as Aqualad leaped out of Croc's reach, his hands going for his water bearers. Kid Flash zipped around Croc in circles, a blur of black and red. And still you could not move. You thought you heard someone shouting your name before you realized that it was Kaldur who was doing so. It was then that the ceiling finally collapsed atop you, and you thought your heart might have stopped.

A brick impacted with your head, and you knew no more.

You can't breathe, and it's actually not through any fault of your own, this time. Killer Croc's ugly, scarred visage snarls at you through the green-tinged gloom as your hand instinctively clutches at his arm. Your other hand fumbles at your waist for a birdarang while his free hand rises to cover your head.

He's going to snap your neck, and you both know it.

Croc hisses something reptilian at you that you can't understand beneath the sound of the blood rushing through your ears. He puts pressure on your head; you feel your neck strain, feel a vertebra crack. Your hand finds what you were looking for. A second later, you whip a birdarang at Croc's face. It explodes into a cloud of gas and shrapnel that makes Croc drop you, howling with pain as the pepper spray eats away at his eyeballs. You don't waste time trying to suck in a breath; you don't try to play the hero. You know you're outclassed, and the space is confined. You can't jump around to gain an advantage over Croc.

So you run.

You sneak a tracer into the waistband of his shorts as you dart past him, fleeing further into the tunnels that you so hate. The howls of the monster are at your heels, and you know he can smell you. You just need to throw Croc off your scent, find a good area to lay a trap, find a good spot to hide in. You did what you came to do, after all. Now Batman can track Croc and take him down before he murders again.

That is, if he doesn't murder you, first.

The disappointment in Batman's eyes when you came to was gut-wrenching. He asked you what went wrong, and you couldn't answer. It was self-explanatory, and you were sure that the team had already reported on the mission, anyway. Batman already knew, too, because Batman knew everything. He was Batman.

Still, the disappointment in Bruce's eyes spoke the words that he didn't have to.

It was worse when the team finally came to see you. You had a broken arm, a minor concussion, and were wearing a neck brace because one of your cervical vertebrae had gotten fractured, so you weren't allowed to leave the infirmary. Their sympathetic words made you want to hit something, and the curious, pitying disappointment in their eyes made you want to throw up. But you did neither. You just endured their presence until you could take no more, at which time you pleaded weariness and they left. It was only when they were gone that you turned away from the door, curled up into as much of a ball as you could manage, and struggled not to cry. Your utility belt was draped over a chair.

You managed to reach over, pull out your photo of your family, and toss the belt back to its previous spot before you started shivering.

"I was scared, Jay," you confessed, your voice shaky. "I've never been scared of the dark, before. What's wrong with me?"

Jason's smiling face stared innocuously up at you from the picture, and even though he didn't answer, you could well imagine what he would say if he was there with you. He'd tell you to suck it up, recover, and get back out there so you could kick Croc's ass.

'What are you, a pansy?' he'd ask, and you would tell him where he could shove his words, but you would both be smiling because neither of you actually meant it to hurt.

"You always were a jerk," you murmured to the picture in your hands, wondering absently why you were talking to it at all. After all, the dead didn't care for the problems of the living.

Right?

Your breath is coming short as you hurtle around a corner, your rubber-soled boots pounding against the old cement. You gasp as the stone crumbles under your feet, and jump out of the way, rolling to absorb the shock of your landing. For a long moment, you're unable to move for the pain. It feels like the vertebra in your neck has been re-fractured, possibly worse than before. But you can't allow it to stop you: Croc's rancid breath is practically drifting across the back of your neck.

Grimacing, holding back a shout of pain, you struggle to your feet and, stumbling once, twice, you make your agonizing way onward.

You finally make it to the old cistern, and dive in without hesitation, fixing in your rebreather and swimming as quickly as you can for one of the outflow pipes. You know it heads east, but you don't care. The point is that it's a narrow fit for you, never mind Croc. He won't be able to follow you into the pipe. You hear the dull thud as Croc splashes into the cistern, and pull yourself along further into the pipe. The water around you is still and stagnant. Your throat aches violently as you pull in another filtered breath through your rebreather. Croc obviously damaged something when he was holding you.

You guess the adrenaline must have masked the pain, earlier, because it's becoming positively agonizing, now.

But the pain in your neck is forgotten when a massive hand clamps down around your leg, tugging, pulling insistently, claws gouging the flesh and muscles of your left calf. For a second, you choke, your mouth going wide with your alarm, and you suck in water around your rebreather. Step one: you contort as best you can, kicking the side of your boot against Croc's meaty paw to eject the blade hidden in the heel of the shoe. Step two: you drive it into the nerve center in the web of his hand.

A garbled, warbling howl of pain travels sluggishly through the water, and he lets go. You clamp your teeth shut around your rebreather, exhaling forcefully to clear your lungs before you suck in another breath through the apparatus. While you have a moment, you pull yourself far enough into the tunnel that Croc can't reach you.

This is proven a second later when the screech of claws tearing through steel hurts your ears even underwater. However, he doesn't catch you: you're past his reach.

You just take a difficult breath through the device in your mouth, and forge onward.

"Are you scared?" Jason's voice was teasing in your ears. The two of you were standing over a manhole in the East Side, which he had triple-dog-dared you to enter. You were on duty, and it was Jason's fourth patrol. His Robin outfit, the same as yours, gleamed dully in the light of a neon-purple "Live Nudes" sign hanging across the way.

"Of course not!" you protested, swallowing silently before you looked back down into the manhole, took a deep breath, and shook your head. "You're crazy."

"You're just chicken."

"Am not!" You glared at your brother for a moment, and then sighed and took the plunge.

When the two of you arrived at the point you'd agreed to meet Bruce at three hours later, his raised eyebrows were evident even behind his cowl, and you didn't want to know what the two of you looked like. Of course, cleaning the excrement and other sewer souvenirs from your suits took most of the evening.

A week later, Jason was dead, and you never went to the East Side again.

The tunnel lets out in the sewers. You nearly take a graceless tumble into the slow-moving stream of raw waste, but you manage to grapple to a stable spot at the last minute, breathing a sigh of relief when you think of all the things that could have gotten into your open wounds had you missed. Still, you're not out of the woods, yet: You're sure Croc knows where the tunnel leads, as well as all the shortcuts to where you are now. There's no time to waste. You have to get out of here, get to safety. You have to contact Batman.

Staggering as you get to your feet, you nearly collapse as pain flares from your nearly-broken neck; your mauled leg crumples beneath you. Gasping through the agony, you double over, trying to push past the white-hot blaze so that you can get to a place where your life won't be endangered.

Still, the disappointment in Bruce's eyes spoke the words that he didn't have to.

"I know what happened." The soft words brought your shamed stare back to Bruce's, only to find that he was as unreadable as he had been for the past half-hour since you had woken. "You froze."

You looked away.

"Why?" he asked. "Was it because of Croc, or was it because you were in an enclosed space?"

You gasped, eyes widening, and looked back at him, surprised that he knew the truth of it. You thought you had hidden it well enough that he would not have noticed. Bruce sighed just a little and turned to go.

"We'll work on it. Until then, you're off the team."

That got your attention, and a spike of fear flew through your heart, making your chest ache.

"Why?" you demanded. "I can function just fine!"

He glanced over his shoulder at you, and his gaze was so cold that it took your breath away.

"You're off the team because I say so," he replied evenly. You swallowed, fighting back tears, and bowed your head, unable to look him in the eye any longer.

"You're a liability, Dick," he continued, and you clenched your hands in your blanket and turned away, tuning out his next words. You didn't want to hear them, didn't want to hear the next condemning statement.

"And I can't-"

You're brought back to the present by the sound of splashing water somewhere far behind you. Your heart pounds in your throat even as you glance around at your surroundings, your claustrophobia long since forgotten in favor of the more immediate threat. You aren't even entirely sure how in the world you made it to where you are, but you know that you're somewhere between Park Row and the old church. You can see the manhole from where you stand, the same manhole that you and Jason jumped through a year and a half ago, a week before he died.

You never wanted to come back here. Still, necessity breeds action, and this is about as necessary as things get.

Your heart pounds in your throat as you grapple up to the manhole cover, take hold of the ladder, and shoulder it open with some effort. The blood loss is starting to make your head spin, and the pain from your broken vertebra isn't helping things at all. Your arm, too, is still weak from when it was broken during your last encounter with Croc. All of this is combining to make it so that you barely manage to slip the manhole cover back into place before you begin swaying on your feet.

But you're not safe, yet. You're close to Park Row. Crime Alley is just the next street over. In other words, this is a bad (terrible) part of town, and anyone who sees you here won't hesitate a second to shoot you dead (dead, dead, dead) rather than help you. You have to find a quiet corner to take cover, to hide, and contact Batman or Alfred or, heck, even the team. You just need help.

Gasping, staggering and swaying so hard you can't limp in a straight line, you head for the nearest hidey-hole, one you remember Jason telling you about so long ago. It's little more than a deep-set doorway, but it's far enough from the manhole that you think that maybe, maybe, you can take a few minutes to rest and call for an extraction.

It's the middle of winter, almost Christmas. The temperature has been dropping steadily for the past week. So it's no surprise to you that there's nearly a foot of snow on the ground, though you curse it quietly as you struggle to avoid leaving a too-obvious blood trail behind you. Add to that your wet suit and hair, and even the thermal wires running through your suit aren't going to keep you warm for long. As it is, your teeth are already starting to chatter.

You're shaking almost uncontrollably by the time you reach your hiding spot and collapse to the ground, coughing slightly. Your vision is swimming, and your breath is coming short. It takes you a moment to realize that you need to activate your commlink to call for help. You raise a shaking hand to your left wrist, intent on sending out your emergency signal in the hopes that someone will receive it in time to save your life.

But the world swirls before your eyes, and suddenly, you can't feel your hands. They fall to your sides, nerveless, as you slump against the wall, fighting to stay awake. The blood flows sluggishly from your leg; you can smell its strong scent even though your nose burns with every inhalation.

Maybe Croc will finish the Joker's job, after all.

You take a difficult breath and roll your eyes up towards the sky, searching for a hint of sunlight to no avail. The snow clouds are thick, heavy, and grey, blotting out the light so that you don't even have that small comfort. Well, at least you got that tracer on Croc. At least you'll die in the line of duty, helping others in some small way.

Your only regret is that you couldn't tell Bruce that you're sorry for failing him.

It takes you a few minutes to realize that someone is shaking you. You crack your eyes open (they must weigh eight tons) to try to identify your visitor. All you can see is a large, indistinct, dark blur. It takes even longer for what they're saying to push through the fog in your mind and actually register.

"Hey! Hey, wake up!" It's a boy, who punctuates his exclamation with another jarring shake that sends a wave of pain through your battered body. "Come on, look at me! You can't die on me! I need to know where you keep your emergency beacon."

You shiver a little, blinking slowly to bring your vision back into focus. It's not working very well. Finally, you roll your head over so that you can look down at your left wrist.

"L-L-Left wrist," you stammer out. "H-Hatch… gauntlet… R-Red b-b-button, yellow… t-t-triangle."

The boy swears softly, and you feel and see him grab your wrist, tugging at your gauntlet. A second later, you hear the distant beep as he activates your emergency beacon. You know that it'll send a distress signal straight to the Batcave, the Batmobile, and to Mount Justice. Hopefully, someone will get it and find you before you die.

The spark of hope that lights in your heart dies as your neck gives another throb. You're so, so tired.

Something hits your cheek, and you blink open your eyes again to find that the boy is leaning over you. You can see that his teeth are bared in a snarl.

"If you think I'm going to let you die, here, you've got another thing coming," he growls. He slaps you again as your eyelids begin to droop once more. You briefly wonder how he can see through your mask's lenses, but you brush it off as unimportant. "Sit up. I need to borrow your cape."

You don't have the strength to do so. Between your leg wound, your hypothermic state, and your cracked vertebra, you lack any sort of ability to move under your own power now that the adrenaline has left your bloodstream. He swears again, pulling your unresponsive body forward, and drags your sodden cape out from behind you, tearing a strip from the bottom of it before throwing the rest of it across your legs. The strip of cape, he makes into a tourniquet, cinching it tightly down around your left leg above your knee. You don't feel the pain as it cuts off your circulation.

You do, however, feel it as he throws himself down beside you and wraps his arms around you, tugging your cape more securely around your shoulders and over your legs.

The situation feels uncannily familiar, as though you've been in it before. It's mostly due to the position you're in. The way he's holding you feels just like how Jason used to cling to you when he would come to your room during thunderstorms, shaking and shivering and asking for you to read him a story or play a game, anything to take his mind off of the source of his fear.

Still, you can't seem to focus long enough to find out who the boy is. All you manage to do is lean your head against his. Even your shivers have stopped, by now, your body too cold and weak to even try to warm you again. The boy swears quietly, and his hands begin moving, rubbing your arms to try to chafe some heat back into your frigid skin.

"Hey, you gotta stay awake," he murmurs to you. "You can't fall asleep here, or you'll never wake up again."

The words register dimly in your mind, and you struggle to formulate an answer, a question, anything to keep him talking.

"W-Whass yur name?" Your words are terribly slurred, even to your ears, but he seems to understand.

"Jason," he replies. "Jason Todd. And you need to stay awake, Dickhead."

His words take an eternity and a half to punch through the fog in your brain, but when they do, their meaning is enough to make you crack open your eyes again and look down at him.

This close, all he is to your sight is a blur of black, white, and flesh tones, but this close, you can smell the scent of his hair, feel the warmth of his skin, and it's enough to make you believe the lie, at least for the moment. You sigh tiredly and lay your head back down, unable to think straight.

"How're you… alive?" you slur, having the vague sense that you need to keep awake, and talking with this specter is enough to keep you occupied for the moment.

"I woke up in a coffin about a year and a half ago," he replies, chafing your arms again. "Dug myself out, but I was… damaged. I must've wandered the streets for a year or more before Talia Al Ghul found me and dumped me into a Lazarus Pit. It restored my mind to its previous state, but I still can't remember much from when I died."

You struggle to translate the mass of words, which seem garbled to your sluggish mind. Everything's growing dark.

"It was… th' Joker," you manage to get out. "He… killed you. Year 'n' a haffago. Dad… broke ev'ry bone in 'is body… 'n' the on'y reas'n Joker's still alive… 's 'cause Dad was tryin'a save you… 'n' after ya died… Dad could'na care 'bout much'a anythin'… too… d'stroy'd… by… by…"

It's too difficult to formulate the rest of your sentence. You can't even remember what it was you were going to say. Everything's getting hazy, and you're so cold you can't feel anything else. Your breathing's getting slow. "Jason" swears profusely and moves his hands from your arms to your sides, rubbing vigorously against your stomach and back.

"Wake up!" he yells at you, but it seems like he's calling to you from outside a soundproof room. His words are muddied and garbled at best. "Wake up, you big idiot! You can't die on me, not now when I've just found you again!"

But everything's gone dark, now, and you can't even really hear what he's saying.

"K-Keep… talkin'," you manage to dazedly whisper just before you lose the grip on your thoughts entirely.

He's silent a moment, but then the murmur of his voice enters your mind again, comforting even though you can't make out his words at all. You hold onto the sound of his voice, using it as a lifeline to anchor yourself to him.

You don't know how much time passes before another voice invades your consciousness, but it's the sensation of being lifted that wakes you enough that you blearily blink your eyes open, your nerveless hand scrabbling weakly for Jason's arm.

"J-Jase," you moan, the only word you can think of tearing itself from your lips in a plea. You feel a dull pressure as he grabs onto you, neither of you willing to let go.

"You're safe," he says, and you're moving. "Just don't fall asleep on us, okay? You're going to be fine, as long as you stay awake. Your friends are here, and Batman's got you."

Batman? Who's that, again? …Oh yeah. Bruce.

"Ba'man," you slur. There's something you need to tell him. Now, if only you could remember what it is…

"Stay with us, Robin," orders a deep, familiar voice. You groan faintly when something wet hits your cheek.

That's right. Croc.

"Croc," you get out. "Sewers… Tracer… 'E got me good."

There's a second of silence, and then his grip on you tightens briefly before you feel him set you down on something. A heartbeat later, a smaller body wedges itself against you, its warmth a tenuous thing at best.

Bruce sighed just a little and turned to go.

"We'll work on it. Until then, you're off the team."

That got your attention, and a spike of fear flew through your heart, making your chest ache.

"Why?" you demanded. "I can function just fine!"

He glanced over his shoulder at you, and his gaze was so cold that it took your breath away.

"You're off the team because I say so," he replied evenly. You swallowed, fighting back tears, and bowed your head, unable to look him in the eye any longer.

"And I can't lose you, too, Dick. I just can't."

The next thing you know, there's pain in your leg, and pain in your neck, but you're warmer than you were. You take a deep, shaky breath and crack open your eyes.

You're in your room at the Manor, a mountain of blankets piled on top of you and something warm curled up against your side. That warm thing turns out to be a young teenager, his hair black save for a single white streak that falls over his forehead. His breathing is deep and even, and though his eyes are closed, you know that they're bright green.

For a long moment, all you can do is stare at him, wondering if you're hallucinating.

A rustle of clothing draws your attention to where Bruce is sitting in a chair to your right. His blue eyes are concerned as he gazes down at you.

"Dick?" he asks softly, and when a pressure squeezes your hand, you realize that he's got it in a death-grip. You blink slowly, tiredly, at him for a long time, until he frowns and tightens his grip again.

"…Bruce?" you croak, and a relieved smile breaks out across his face. "Did… Did you get Croc?"

He sighs, and shakes his head. "No. The tracer signal vanished before I could chase him down."

A harsh pang of shame streaks through you, and you look away, trying to keep your expression neutral.

"Oh."

A warm hand lands on your forehead, and you blink in confusion before you turn your stare up to Bruce.

"What you did was reckless and irrational," he states with a frown. "You nearly died."

You swallow, looking away from him again, unable to bear his disappointment. However, his hand has not left your forehead.

"But I'm proud of you."

The statement shocks you momentarily, and you turn an astonished stare up to your adoptive father again to see that he's smiling slightly.

"You had the courage to face your fears, fight off Croc, and make an escape even though you were wounded," he continues. "And you're alive, which is more important than anything. I don't say it often, but I'm proud of you, Dick."

You grin brilliantly at him, spirits bolstered by his praise. Then your gaze drifts back over to Jason.

"'m not… hallucinating… am I?" you ask softly, studying the gaunt face of your little brother, the white streak in his hair, the hair-thin white scar running down the side of his jaw. "Izzit really… Jase?"

You hear Bruce sigh, and the bed dips as he perches on its edge. His hand leaves your forehead, reentering your vision a second later as he brushes a few strands of hair behind Jason's ear.

"Yeah, it really is," he replies. "I ran a DNA scan and everything. Full match, and his story checks out. About six months ago, a clinic down in the East Side picked up a John Doe matching his description, and he stayed with them until he was taken away by a woman matching Talia's description. She retrieved him under the name of one of her aliases, but we can make a pretty accurate guess as to what happened after that."

You grunt, and the two of you are silent a moment, simply listening to each other's breathing and the soft, deep inhale-exhale rhythm of Jason's respiration. It's such a miracle to have him back that you're still having trouble believing you're not dreaming.

You close your eyes, and thank God for the gift you've been given. Sure, Jason might have some hang-ups (being dead and then revived can do that to a person), but you'll help him work past those just like you worked past your claustrophobia.

Bruce smiles at you.

"Get some sleep," he tells you as he settles back down into his chair. You give him a weak grin.

"Good t' be alive," you reply. The last thing you see before you fall asleep is the rare sight of your adoptive father's blue eyes tearing up just a little.

And for the first time in a year and a half, you find yourself actually looking forward to the future.

Disclaimer: If I owned Young Justice, this little arc wouldn't be FANfiction, now would it?

I hope that this lessens my shit-ass-ness just a little, though I'll understand if y'all are still a little mad at me. I did make you wait 3 months and 20 days for this, after all. In my defense, I've been rather busy with my job, reading Inheritance, playing Assassin's Creed and Zelda, and working on my other stories. PLUS, this is literally twice the length of Kagome, Kagome. I haven't had much inspiration to finish this one. It's literally been a paragraph away from completion since the end of October (at which time I was sick enough that I actually had to stay out of work AND go on an antibiotics regimen. PLUS codeine cough syrup).

You can thank Batman: Mask of the Phantasm for this one-shot. Young happy!Bruce was inspiration enough for me to tack on the last half a page or so of this. Still, I hope it didn't scar you too badly, or seem too forced or out of character. I can always change it later if I want...

Here's the original prompt at http:/ yj-anon-meme. livejournal. com/ 4423. html? thread= 10387271#t10387271 - take out the spaces.

Hope you liked it. Please send me a review, also: It helps me to improve, and I always love hearing what everyone thought of my work.

Thank you to everyone who read and reviewed Kagome, Kagome: MyLittleBird, Isabella, Scotty 1609, FuzzyBee013, AllBlueChaser, Blood of the Dawn, and Callette. You all are utterly AMAZING! To Callette: I'm ecstatic that Kagome, Kagome had that effect. I was especially trying for "heart-wrenching" when conveying his attachment to Jason. After all, Jason was his little brother, and to have him suddenly ripped away would be traumatizing to anyone, let alone a kid who's already lost both his parents (to say the very least).

The relationship between Dick and Jason, here, is one of deep affection with a dose of sibling rivalry mixed in, among other things. They're closer than brothers, but without it being anything but platonic. Bromance? Is that the word I'm looking for? At any rate, they're family. I hope that about sums it up.

Thank you for reading!

-Portrait of a Scribe