So…. Here's another chapter. Not like anyone is still reading though, right? Sorry guys, but this is the best I can do right now. Summer is coming up so hopefully I'll be back on top of this as soon as it arrives… cross your fingers?

Thank you so much to all of my faithful reviewers! To LuVySoNY: I hadn't actually considered making him Wingman, but it's a good idea…. Hee hee I've considered several different avenues for the little idget, but that hadn't been included in my master plans. In answer: we'll see.

Glimare: yes I will be concluding soon, I'm thinking at least two or three more chapters now, one for Dami and Tim, one fore Bruce and Alfie, and maybe one conclusive chapter to sum everything up. Then again, you all know how horrible I am with keeping my plans….

Anyway, enjoy the chapter. If all goes well I will update within the next two weeks!

Chapter 19

Ever since his unenlightened return to Gotham four short weeks ago, Jason's head had been throbbing. Headaches had often plagued him as a child living in Crime Alley, though he'd always assumed that was more from the asbestos in the walls than anything inherently biological. Now though, his head pulsed painfully in time with his heartbeat; with the same rhythm and the same constancy. Hazard of living, he supposed. Still, he couldn't quite recall having them this frequently when he'd worn the hood.

There was something unutterably, unintelligibly, and unmistakably wrong with the way the city looked without the red haze of his mask – or the disillusioned heat of his anger. Gotham had never been a particularly beautiful city to begin with, but she was gritty and bruised and full to the brim with childish hope for the future, just like her people. She never really slumbered and, though Gotham was separated into districts based on wealth, the rich CEOs that tirelessly toiled behind fancy desks were really no different from the youth that vigorously worked the streets: neither got any sleep. The darkness that came with the moon and stars made friends out of enemies and traitors out of the desperate. That, at least, had not changed. Jason had to doubt whether it ever would. These subtle truths had been real since he had been a child, and attempting to grow up as a normal kid was only successful by a handful of the most affluent of the city. Even then your existence could be marred by the cuts and scrapes that were just Gotham.

"Did you miss it?" Jason started out of his thoughts. Grayson stands at his side all at once, tall and proud in his black-and-blue uniform. Arrogance practically shines in his voice as he continues, "As the heroes of this city, we do try our best to keep her safe and clean." He adds a little grin as well.

Jason gives the older man a tight-lipped smile before sobering. "Every time I come back here it always just feels like I'm picking up where I left off."

"Being a hero?" Dick hazards.

"Just being here." And Jason sighs because Dick is glancing at him sideways and his head is still throbbing. "Even when I was here as Robin it was the same."

His older brother seems to catch up here. "You mean a crime-infested piece of shit?"

Jason snaps his fingers to add effect, "Exactly!"

"At least it's consistent."

"At least it's consistent," He agrees.

A police siren sounds in the distance and Jason has the undeniable urge to stand and leap toward the danger. He doesn't though. His brother snaps to attention and Jason half expects the man to leave without another word. He doesn't follow that urge either, surprisingly. The Bat family isn't exactly renowned for its abilities at curbing impatience, and the younger man turns inquisitive eyes on the idiot acrobat.

"The police can handle it," he says by way of explanation.

An uncomfortable silence falls between them before Jason's hand slams open-palmed on Dick's back. The idiot is so anxious that he releases a small squeak of anticipation – fucking liar wasn't fooling Jason Todd. "Get the fuck down there, Nightwing."

To this, he brother seems to react immediately and without superficial pride. He looks down at himself as though he's just realized which suit he's wearing. He swears in a language that Jason doesn't recognize, but stays rooted to the spot two feet from the younger Bat. "Jason, I'm not leaving you here."

And by here, he means Crime Alley.

Where Jason is perched on the roof of his old home – the rundown apartment building where his father had abandoned them and his mother had overdosed.

Comfortably watching arrests in progress, arrests about to be in progress, and arrests already completed (with no less than three small time criminals already loaded into squad cars in under an hour).

Perhaps he did present an odd sight to those that knew him well enough. "You afraid I'll get snatched by a madman and shrunk down to pipsqueak level again?" Jason even added a little dramatic pause, just for shits. "Oh wait."

Grayson rolls his eyes, likely considers tossing his erstwhile little brother over the edge, and then promptly lands on his ass next to Jason. "Good point. Lightning never strikes the same place twice, right?" That smugness creeps back into Dick's voice and Jason actually finds himself yearning for the relative quiet of the constant sirens and screams of Crime Alley.

After a moment, Jason had fully acclimated to his older brother's presence. Like his headaches, Dick Grayson was a newly acquired and somewhat endurable symptom of his existence. Thus far, he had managed to play nice with the other members of the brood – but that was bound to change sooner or later; Jason's patience was running thinner and thinner. For some reason, however, Grayson had managed to keep up with the younger. He had a way of picking at sore topics – like Jason's wellbeing – without digging too deeply. Perhaps it was there shared history. Or perhaps, as Jason suspected, it was because Dick Grayson was put on Earth as a goddamn piece of-

"How's your head?" the elder Wayne interrupted.

"Getting worse."

"Been sleeping?"

"Trying to."

"More than three hours?"

"Little under two."

Dick let out a low whistle to the response. "Even on Bruce's busiest nights he gets at least three," he glanced at Jason peripherally. "Pills still not working?"

"Nope," Jason said, popping the p.

Below them, a young man joined the list of the already arrested. Kids were getting sloppy these days. The boy slammed his fist into the police officer's jaw only to turn into the waiting cuffs of the man's partner. The dumbass went down fighting, kicking out whenever he could as the cops wrestled him into the squad car. Maybe it wasn't sloppiness after all. Maybe it was just reckless arrogance.

"I'm worried about you."

The kid gave one last screeching protest before the car door was closed and the noise ceased.

"I'm worried about me too," Jason responded seriously. As a child, drugs had been hard to come by without the proper incentives and he'd never been desperate enough to sink low enough for them. He had always preferred to grin and bear it, even when access to ibuprofen and other medication had become more easily attainable. Usually his headaches would leave him after a good night's rest, but the sudden episodes of insomnia were only prolonging his symptoms. After much protest, Jason had finally agreed to take a few sleeping pills only to find, to his dismay, that they had no effect whatsoever. If anything, the pills had made his nights more restless and the shadows that clung to his eyes had grown with each day. Worse still, the lack of sleep was making his life a living hell.

He was getting enough rest to keep his body functioning fairly well, but the lack of truly restorative sleep was causing him to have mild hallucinations. They were spurts of his mind's anger, desperately attempting to insert fantastical happenings into the waking world to make up for the lack of REM in the past nights. Jason would lay awake for hours, waiting to fall into a dream – and that was all he could experience now, his mind bypassing other sleep stages immediately.

That was a troublesome matter all to itself.

For someone trying to move forward, the disorienting visions of his past were the number one roadblock. Perhaps if none of this had happened to begin with, the troublesome dreams wouldn't be a problem. As the Red Hood, Jason had lived most of his days dwelling on the past – fueling his rage and despair before moving to take it out on some poor bastard, like the kid in the alley below them. Now, though, the endless stream of nightmares was simply exhausting. How can a person think of moving forward when the past haunts ever blink of the eye?

And his eyelids felt like they were rubbing sand all around each time he did blink.

Every once in a while he'd hear the incessant beeping of a bomb, the heated metal of a crowbar, and the manic laughter of his murderer. Still, it was better than the image behind his eyes; a vision of pasty white skin or sometimes simply the darkness of a casket. A choice between hearing chunks of his murder to actually reliving it was no choice at all.

"Jason?" his mind snaps to the present. "You still there, bro? I've been calling your name for a while now."

Of course he has. When had he started? "I heard you," he lies effortlessly, "I have no answer."

His brother gives him an incredulous look, but he responds just the same. "There must be something we can do. Have you talked to Leslie?"

"That's where I got the sleeping pills."

He continues to talk like Jason has said the expected response. "Maybe she can induce sleep… like with an anesthetic?"

Jason's heart slows for a moment and he feels each individual beat as it speeds up, rising alongside some long-settled fear. Maybe it's the exhaustion and fear that makes him speak truthfully, or maybe he's just grown more and more senseless in the past month. "There's a reason I used to take amphetamines when I wore the Hood, Dick."

"Because you are an egomaniac perfectionist…?" He offers sardonically.

"Because I couldn't sleep."

Now his brother looks at him as though he's grown a second head. "I'm pretty sure that powerful stimulants would have the opposite of the intended effect, Jaybird." He says this as though he's coaxing a dangerous wild animal in an unfamiliar environment.

And the unfamiliarity of actually having someone try to talk to him is dizzying enough for that particular animal. "You think I don't know that? Couldn't sleep as in I didn't want to close my eyes," Jason snaps.

"oh."

"Yeah, 'oh.'"

Jason isn't looking at Dick's blue eyes anymore, but he knows what's there; Disappointment isn't that common on Officer Grayson's face, but when it is present it's one hell of a b-

He isn't sure when it happened, but one minute Dick is fully two feet away and the next his arms are up around Jason. The younger man has no choice but to squirm under the contact. "What the fuck, Grayson!"

His older brother isn't letting go, though. Physical contact in their world is so often simply a gateway to pain that Jason just stands stock still for a solid minute, relaxing slowly when his overtired mind finally catches up with what was going on. This is meant as a source of comfort. Not a prerequisite for more bruises. "Jason," he says the word like he's still whispering to that wild animal, "You have a family."

Goddamnit all. The statement is so simple and spoken so quietly, but Jason's head throbs just trying to keep up with it. The implication is complex – one that he hasn't actually been considering. Just a month ago he had chosen to have a father again. Now, as he was finally realizing, that choice had opened a whole host of other possibilities.

Jason Todd has brothers that do, in fact, give a shit.

"All of us have bad nights. A lot of mine have revolved around you. I think about how you died, how you came back. If you were scared, lonely, tired, in agony…" Grayson's voice is still low and desperate, Jason chooses not to interrupt. "Tim has nightmares about his parents. Damian is afraid of losing his father like he lost Talia. Alfred worries about all of us. Bruce… Bruce is afraid for us. We take care of each other because we know what it's like." Jason manages the courage to look at his brother, only to see that his royal blue eyes are blazing with intensity and focus he's never actually seen directed at him.

"You have a family, Jason," He repeats.

Jason can't see. Everything looks blurry. Maybe it's the persistent migraine, or maybe it's the dust in the air; or maybe it's the way he feels his brother's emotions in his words. There's really no reason for his tears. He hadn't cried when the Joker had broken his bones, nor when he'd returned to find that his murder had gone unavenged. He hadn't cried over the exaggerated reports of Bruce's death.

But he was crying now.

Whatever he had been using to dam up those emotions before had just been washed away by the floodwaters; the same as with Bruce, but different because Dick was here now.

All at once he was glad for his choice to come to Crime Alley. None of her streets were well lit, no one but his brother would see him. And no one should see the Red Hood breaking down in a tense embrace with Nightwing.

Think of the news story that would create.

Dick's arms drew him in closer and they stayed like that until at last, after weeks of exhausted and useless attempts, Jason's eyes closed. His migraine subsided momentarily, the sand behind his eyes dispersed as tears washed them away.

And Jason Todd fell into a deep sleep, one that wasn't interrupted when his big brother brought him back home.