Bitterness was not an emotion Tim expected to feel when he noticed Dick and Jason getting closer. He expected to feel wistful, perhaps a little upset that they couldn't have the same relationship had Dick never been turned into a kid. He wanted to feel happy that there was someone who could understand what it was like to go through a giant time skip to the future. He wanted to be pleased when he saw Jason embrace being the eldest brother because it made seemed to make him happy for once. It was like it came naturally to him. However, as Tim watched Jason play tag with their now little brother, he couldn't help but feel bitter. Like he was missing out on something that he couldn't get back but everyone else could. Especially Jason.

When Jason came back, he was vengeful. He broke into Titan's Tower in his own Robin suit and beat Tim up without saying much more after it, leaving him broken in his home. Tim didn't think about that night often. It hurt, more than physically hurt, of course, to be beaten by someone you looked up to so much as a kid and he'd wondered why the hostility towards him was so bad but eventually, they figured out that the Lazarus Pit heightened the anger Jason felt and honestly, who would be in their right mind after coming back to life years after you died? It wasn't unheard of for the brothers to fight rather than roughhouse too so he filed it away as a bad experience that he wouldn't bring up and when Jason apologised for everything he did, not really naming any one particular incident, he guessed that would be the best he got and he was fine with that. You had to be when Bruce was your mentor and everyone around you was emotionally repressed in some way.

He truly hadn't thought about the incident but seeing Jason be so receptive to Dick now tugged that memory to the forefront of his mind. He would've loved it if Jason got to that level with him where they could act like real brothers rather than people who were loosely connected. He wished that he did more so now since Dick was no longer there to fill in that big brother role. It was still something he struggled with as much as he pretended he'd gotten over it all. He found himself texting Dick's number after having a bad day knowing there would be no reply and scrolling through their conversations to find advice that would make him feel better. He dreaded the day the number disconnected. Jason seemed to take all of this in his stride and it made the rest of them look awful for being so resistant to change. How could Jason, the person that beat him up just for wearing the costume after him, be so mellow with this change? How could he slip into the role of big brother so easily when he still berated Tim from time to time?

For some reason, it made him want to shatter the image Jason had made for himself and shine new light on just how broken this family was.

"Careful Dick, if he catches you, you'll be on bedrest for a month!" he shouted out, attempting to be taunting but coming off as bitter as he felt. The pair noticed the odd tone but Dick shrugged it off as a joke that sounded better in his head and continued their game. Jason however seemed to be stuck on it and stopped chasing after the acrobat. 

"Jay?" 

"You wanna do me a favour, Goldie?" he asked with a smile, covering up the worried look he'd had prior.

"I'm not planting a paint bomb in Dami's room again. You're lucky I got away with it last time."

"Not that, we agreed I've got the next one. Could you go to Alfred and get me a beer? He'll grab it but you can bring it to me. Saves his knees." 

"Okie-dokie, artichokie, be back in a jiffy!" He then ran off inside where he'd likely be sidetracked for the next half hour before remembering his original mission. That should buy enough time to work out what the hell was going on with Tim.

"We really need to work on that," Jason muttered to himself. He walked over to the bench Tim was sitting at, the teen reluctantly making room for him to sit down as he played with the tab on his energy drink can. "So?"

"So."

"Obviously there's something going on here."

"Don't know what you're talking about," Tim mumbled. "It was just a joke. Considering how often you and Damian start fights with me, I would've thought you'd got that."

"Didn't sound like a joke though. Plus, it was a weird thing to say in front of the kid." The younger shrugged non-committedly and continued to mess with the pull tab. "I didn't know you still thought about it," Jason said quietly as though approaching a frightened dog. 

Tim wasn't frightened. He hadn't been frightened in a long time because they'd grown to learn that what the former Robin did was partially out of his control due to the residual Lazarus craze. That and when given the chance, Jason hadn't killed him. They'd gone to events together as a family, they worked together closely, and they shared quiet and vulnerable moments together that you could only share with those you had no fear of. They were brothers in his own mind and he truthfully hadn't thought much about their first meeting in a long time. It seemed a Robin trial of passage to fight the previous one or at the very least hold some resentment for the one before themselves and those after. He honestly didn't know why he'd said it. There was just this deep feeling he'd felt seeing them work so well together when he struggled so much to get close to someone he cared for. Seeing him take on change so easily when Tim was sat here struggling still secretly trying to find some secret loophole hidden deep inside DNA. 

"You never apologised," he settled on saying. It wasn't what he wanted to say, not truly, but it was what he settled on. "You beat me black and blue and now we're sitting here like best buds like it never even happened. You sleep in the next room when you stay over."

"I did a lot of stuff I pretend didn't happen. We all have because we can't change it," Jason replied, tentatively taking a seat beside him. "It's what we do to keep moving on. We'd probably go insane concentrating on just that. I know I nearly did."

"I don't want to move on," he replied.

"From that night?"

"No," he muttered. "From losing him. How could he tell us to stop working on getting him back? How could he leave us like that? Is he trying to replay his childhood? Because I get that he struggled but c'mon, it's not fair for the rest of us who depended on him. He didn't live his life in a vacuum."

"Oh, this isn't about me, is it? This is just like what happened with Connor- Tim we're not getting our Dick Grayson back. End of story. You need to learn to accept that sometimes you can't do anything."

"What happened with my clones was simply the inability to accurately replicate my friend, this is completely different!"

"How is it different? We all know that you're still looking for ways to get him back even though we've all told you repeatedly this is it. You only recognise that he won't come back when you fight with Damian and I'm pretty sure that's just to spite him to prove you're not as big as a bitch about this."

"Oh, so you're completely okay with all this? Do you get to play out your little fantasy of not being a shit older brother? Where was that big brother when I was here, huh? You were too busy pretending to be Nightwing, fucking with Bruce's mind because of Joker and putting drug dealers' heads in duffel bags." Jason's hands clenched into fists and for a moment, he thought this would be a repeat of one of their many fights but they relaxed again as he let out a long breath.

"Tim, I'm trying my best here. What the fuck do you want from me? Do you want to talk about it or do you wanna pretend it never happened? You can't have both and either way, you don't get a pass to say that weird shit to Dick. He's got enough going on."

"I don't know what I want," he admitted defeatedly. He rubbed a hand over his face and let out a tired sigh which he seemed to be doing more often than not these days. "I just don't know anymore." Tim was smart, he knew he was and everyone around him also knew that but he was completely lost on this front and it made him feel like the stupidest person on Earth. He should be happy there's a little piece of his big brother left behind even if it's not the person he knew entirely. There'd been some element of nostalgia seeing him so small again given that Tim had spent so much of his youth trying to figure out who he was when he was Robin. Yet, whatever nostalgia was there was joined by a longing for someone else. He didn't want to sit around and hope he'd see that person again but he had no other choice.

"Well, that's something we have in common," Jason commented. "I don't know how I feel about any of this stuff either. I mean, there's a lot of shit I didn't get to say to Dick before this happened. Stuff I should've said sooner but I didn't and it's just another one of those things where you don't say something in time so you regret it with no real way to fix it. With our luck, we should be used to losing each other by now."

"We should be happy at least a little bit, right? I think that's what's supposed to happen when you don't exactly lose someone."

"Let's be honest, there aren't many people who are in our position here and pretending like things are just peachy clearly doesn't help. How do you feel about it?"

"Like shit. I wanna go to my big brother who gives advice and offers to take me for pizza whilst silently judging my pizza choices. I wanna go to Bludhaven and hang out with Nightwing not because I have to but because I want to. I wanna go to his apartment when things get too much here and watch ethically questionable reality TV." He tilted his head to the side as he thought about never doing any of that again or at least not in the same way. "I wanna know that when I get in over my head that no matter what, I can call him to come get me. He'll say some stupid joke or maybe he'll be mad but he won't leave me there and he won't lecture me immediately, he'll make sure I'm okay and then he'll go off about how stupid I am for a smart guy." He smiled to himself as he recalled all the times he'd done just that. "He was always a safe bet."

"He can still be at least some of that."

"I'm not relying on a child to make me feel better or pull me out of danger!"

"Why? Bruce did it." Tim gave him a deadpan stare. "Fair point but you've got plenty of people around you. Your Titans and Young Justice or whatever you called your club. You got us. You got me in your corner if you ever wanna piss off Bruce." As great as all that sounded, it wasn't enough. 

"It's not the same." Jason nodded solemnly.

"I know. God, don't I know it?"

"Why can't we just turn him into a more acrobatic Beast Boy? Why can't we speed up the ageing process, recollect what memories there are left and go from there?"

"Because he said no," Jason responded firmly. He must've said it so much now that the phrase was more reflexive than anything.

"But why? Didn't he care about us? Besides, we heard him say no from this version of Dick, not our version. Who's to say he just didn't want to be mean to a kid?"

"I'm not going to sit here and argue with you. Dick said no and he has been ignored too many times when he's said no so if you think for one second you can convince me otherwise then you're an idiot."

"It's not fair!"

"What's not fair is once again pushing him to do something he never wanted to do! You won't get a medal for bringing him back when he was done in the first place. What you'll get is half the person he was and someone who resents you but won't do fuck all about it. Do you know how that feels? Because I do and let me tell you now, it sucks."

"I don't know the person in there!" Tim defended.

"Nobody but Bruce and Alfred does but that's why we're trying to know him. He wants us to know him not as our big brother but as a part of the family that he thinks we are. If you can't do that then," Jason paused like he was going to regret what he needed to say but he was never good at mincing his words "If you can't do that then don't bother being around him."

"I don't want to leave him," Tim said truthfully. He didn't. He did like this kid running around with this boundless energy and care for everyone even though he knew so little about them. He couldn't leave the kid who trashed his room so if he got kicked out, it would partly in his control. It was just that this kid wasn't Dick Grayson. "I only want my brother back. I want to understand why he'd tell us to stop and why he'd not want to be a little weird if it meant we have him back. I thought he cared about us."

"Don't turn this into him not caring about us because he did. Too much in fact," Jason snapped. "I think that he's been through enough to be justified in not wanting things done to him without his knowledge or consent. He played stupid but he was smart. He probably knew that whatever we could do to bring him back wasn't something he would want," he explained. He put his hand on Tim's shoulder and squeezed comfortingly. "You can be upset, Tim. I'm not saying you can't grieve him. What I am saying is don't take it out on the kid and say shit like you did today if you have a problem with how I'm handling my own grief."

"Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking with that one."

"The kid has a memory like a sieve half the time. He'll probably forget you said anything."

"Or he'll do that thing where he brings it up in front of everyone out of the blue."

They shared a moment of quiet as they both reflected on the conversation. Jealousy and bitterness wouldn't get Dick back but that wouldn't stop those feelings lingering. If he were more honest with himself, this would be the time to think about going to a therapist but he was never good with those. They always took his self-awareness as being fixed when in reality once he was aware of what was wrong and why it was wrong, he didn't know where to go from there. He didn't know where to go from here either. 

"I think you're going about this all wrong. We've all jumped ship onto lifeboats and you're talking like going back on the ship is an option. It isn't. It's sunk and now we're figuring out how to get picked up," Jason began sympathetically. Hopefully, it came from experience rather than simple pity. 

"Then how do I accept the ship has sunk?"

"The same way you accepted you needed to jump ship," he replied. "You know when there's no going back but you don't want that so you keep telling yourself all these what ifs. It doesn't help." Tim knew that. He'd been through this enough times to know that eventually, there would be no feasible alternative and even if there was, Dick didn't want it. He criticised Damian for his inability to get used to the new set-up yet allowed himself to secretly plot on some way to fix it. He let out a deep sigh and rubbed his eyes as though that would stop his brain from coming up with what-ifs. 

"Why has this brought out the best in you but the worst in me?"

"Even though you're not exactly my favourite person in the world," Jason drawled, "you figured out how we needed to get all that vintage shit to make him more comfortable here. The only reason you're obsessed with getting Dick back is because you care about him and want the best. You didn't want the best to be this."

"When did you get so wise?"

"Maybe Dick is possessing me wherever he is." It'd been a joke but Tim rather liked that idea. He had a habit of passing down things. "Are we cool? About the old Robin beef?"

"Yeah, it comes with being Robin," he responded sincerely. "Is it bad I kinda feel happy about him not being Robin again?"

"Nah, we all get possessive over the title." 

"Do you think one day that'll it be easier? Seeing him instead our brother?" Jason tilted his head as he considered it and looked out into the garden he'd just been playing in. He smiled to himself softly.

"Yeah, one day."

"Jay I'm back!" Dick announced as he raced over with the bottle of beer, miraculously not spilling a drop. He handed it over with a grin before his expression changed to something more sheepish as he turned to Tim. He dug into his hoodie pocket and pulled out a canned coffee Tim recognised as his favourite kind. "Alfie said not to give you it but you seemed upset. I thought it'd cheer you up." The teen returned his smile and accepted the can that he was tentatively offered. Somewhere in this new person was the very same person he longed for. He just needed to look harder to find it.

"Thanks, Dick. It'll be our secret yeah?"

"Mhm! Do you wanna play with me n Jason after? We can play manhunt." 

"I'd love to."