Chapter 3
“Jason, are you even listening?”
The honest answer was no, he had not been listening to Dick complain about his boring job, because Natasha had taken it upon herself to send him a thousand outfit ideas for Tony’s party, which was not really what he would have expected from being friends with the Black Widow.
He didn’t really see the point of buying any of the really expensive things she was suggesting, since he did actually own dressy clothes. Sure, he used them mostly for undercover work, but they were still nice clothes! He was fairly certain she was just doing it to make sure he committed to going to the party, but she was just as good as Jason at being unreadable and unpredictable, so maybe it was just that she didn’t want to be embarrassed to be seen with him in public. He supposed he should probably accept any help trying to make him look good enough to be on their level.
“Sure, you hate your asshole coworkers as if you weren’t aware cops are the fucking worst when you got the job,” Jason guessed, rolling his eyes at Dick immediately trying to argue about it, proving him right. “Yay for you tryna clean up the Bludhaven police department, but any cop that’s not doing anything about the shitty cops is not a good person and that’s that.”
It was quiet for a second, both of them watching the apartment they were staking out. “You’re kind of an asshole about it, but I guess I can see your point,” Dick finally said, breaking the silence and shocking Jason by that response. These days he got along much better with Tim than he did with Dick, so had the admission been by him instead, Jason might have been less surprised by him admitting that. Contrary to what he tried to get people to believe, Dick had a very difficult time conceding any argument, much less one with Jason. “Do you really think my efforts are futile or whatever?”
Jason took a second to think about it, honestly just hoping they could have a serious conversation without it ending in a fight. “I wouldn’t say it’s futile. I think you’re definitely making a difference, but it’s naive to think that once you clear out all of the corrupt cops everything will be wonderful. Cops, especially in Bludhaven and Gotham, are never going to be as good of people as you want them to be. Even the best of them are easily corruptible and always going to protect the elite before they would even think about helping the people who actually need it. You and Gordon are probably the only exceptions, and I think you know that under all that denial.”
“I guess I should ask you about this stuff more often,” Dick said after another moment of contemplation. When Jason shot him a confused look, he thankfully elaborated. “It doesn’t make me feel better at all, but none of us have the same background as you. None of us had exactly happy childhoods, but you know better than all of us how everything affects your neighborhoods.”
This night was becoming Salvador Dali levels of surreal. Having a civil conversation with his older brother that didn’t make him feel shitty about himself was rare, and he hoped this was a sign things would get better between them. He felt his phone buzz again and checked it to see it was just a meme Clint sent in their group chat, and he smiled at all of the wildly different responses from everyone.
The Avengers were the first people to actually like him with no judgement or fucked up history to make things complicated, and he found himself looking forward to the party. He hadn’t seen most of them in a while, though they all texted fairly regularly (Thor was the exception, since he apparently didn’t have a phone). He even felt like he knew the Spider-Kid and the rest of the Avengers he’d never even met yet.
“Who have you been texting all night?” Dick asked, clearly trying to play it off like he wasn’t insanely curious. Jason wasn’t quite ready for the complications that came with his family knowing about his connection to the Avengers. There would probably be fighting, and yelling, and probably some broken bones, and then Jason wouldn’t have anyone at all. Who knows, maybe the bats will find a way to turn some of them against him. He doubted Nat, Clint, or Bucky would abandon him, but the others… he knew if any of the bats really tried they’d be able to convince some of them. Plant seeds of distrust so he would be confined in Gotham once again, painfully alone. All of them were master manipulators, himself included. Which means you have a tendency to overthink, asshole!
Realizing he’d been silent for a bit too long, he opened his mouth to try to deflect, but was saved by the sight of someone new entering the apartment. “Our guy’s got a visitor,” Jason alerted Dick, quickly putting his phone away to focus completely on the mission.
x x x x x x x x x x
Overall, lately Jason had been doing pretty good, and he tried not to voice the hope that the universe was finally giving him a break in fear that he’d jinx it. He’d convinced Roy to cover his patrol for a couple days so he could stay in the Tower the night before the party, since Natasha wanted him to try on all of the outfits, and Tony promised him a total upgrade if he let him take a look at his Hood. He wasn’t even on their team, but all of them kept doing things like this, reminders that these people actually wanted him around for a long time.
He hadn’t felt actually wanted since Bruce had given him a home, and just like then Jason didn’t really know what to do with that. Unlike when he was a twelve year old homeless kid getting to live with a billionaire, this didn’t feel like it was all gonna get taken away if he did or said the wrong thing, because he weirdly felt like he actually fit in with these people. All the expensive gifts, going out of their way to spend time with him, and near daily texts made him feel like he was a part of something.
In reality, Jason was actually a part of the bats, but he still felt like he was still on a sort of probation. He’d been getting along with his siblings fairly well these past couple weeks, especially Tim and Cass, but Bruce was another story. Truthfully, Jason didn’t know if their relationship was even salvageable; there was way too much baggage between them to really trust or forgive each other completely, on both sides. They were still family- still loved each other- but maybe that wasn’t enough.
Jason tried to shake off his thoughts centering around the remaining tatters of his connection to Bruce. He was about to enter the Tower and spend time with some of his favorite people, and for once he wasn’t injured, in danger, or sleep deprived. As always, he drove his bike into the Avengers Garage™ and was greeted by the AI, which was always pretty fascinating, not that he’d ever tell Tony that.
“Welcome back, Mr. Todd.”
“ Thanks, JARVIS,” Jason responded, walking straight to the elevator. Like usual, he didn’t have to say anything or push any buttons before the elevator took him where he needed to go. “Just call me Jason, by the way,” he added after a second, not really liking the whole ‘Mr. Todd’ thing, though it did feel weird to correct an AI about anything.
“Of course, Jason.”
When the elevator stopped and the doors opened, he was definitely surprised that the floor he was taken to clearly wasn’t the common room he was expecting. “JARVIS, where am I?” Jason asked, cautiously stepping out of the elevator. It had the same layout as the common room, with a living room area and a kitchen and dining room, but the kitchen was much smaller and it was decorated more understated and neat. h
Instead of the AI answering, Natasha entered the living room from the hallway next to him and gave him a genuine smile. “It’s our floor,” she told him.
“Yours and Clint’s?” Jason asked, looking closer at the room.
“Yours now too,” she responded, and he looked back at her sharply, silently asking for elaboration. “We all pitched in to put your room together on this floor. A permanent room.”
Honestly, knowing he was sharing a floor with Natasha and Clint, that they were including him in their little family… it was a lot. “You know I can’t live here, right?” he asked, because that’s definitely what she was implying.
“Clint lives between here and Brooklyn, and Vision and Wanda have a place an hour away they stay at fairly often. You can split the time between here and Gotham if you want.”
“Seriously?” Jason asked, kind of bewildered. They’d been getting along and he liked them all a lot, but they were still The Avengers , and he was still just a vigilante, and not even one of the more well-known ones. Spending time with him was one thing, asking him to live with them was something entirely different.
She nodded, dead serious, and looked more fond than he’d ever seen her when he was clearly taken aback. “I’m giving you an official invite to the Team,” she explained, which had Jason completely stunned. “We trust you, you seem to trust us, and your skills would definitely be an asset to the team. I know you’re keeping this from your family, so don’t worry; you won’t have to do an official announcement until you’re ready, and we will only have you on less public missions unless it’s a world ending emergency.”
It took Jason less time than he would have thought to make up his mind, for something so monumentally life changing, but he knew Natasha of all people wouldn’t be extending this offer if she didn’t truly mean that they really wanted him fighting by their side. If it had been anyone else, he might have been more skeptical, but she definitely wouldn’t deceive him about this. He knew despite the short amount of time they’d known each other, he’d always have their backs and he’d trust them to have his. It was that simple.
“I’m in,” he answered finally.
She grinned at him, stepping forward to shake his hand. “Welcome to the Avengers, Jason.”
Jason smiled back and shook her hand, feeling a little disconnected. He was now a fucking Avenger, which is the last thing he expected from this trip, not that he was complaining. This might be his first real chance to start over, without his past hanging over his head complicating everything. So many heroes still were not his biggest fans, especially after the duffel bag thing got around, but here that wouldn’t be a problem. Almost all of the Avengers had messy, gruesome backgrounds and long body counts, but they were all given second chances and accepted into this group despite all of that. They knew who he was now and what he stood for, and that was enough.
“Come on, you’re gonna love your room.” With that, Natasha turned and led him down the hallway past a few doors (the one painted entirely purple clearly Clint’s) until they reached the last door to the left. Before they could open it, Clint beat them to it, throwing the door open dramatically and poking his head out.
“Jason! Everyone went all out, I’m jealous,” he told him, and as soon as Jason was close enough he was unsurprised by the archer grabbing his arm and dragging him into the room. The first thing he noticed was the entire wall painted beautifully to look like the Gotham skyline, and the one he loved, not the way artists outside Gotham usually made it look, which was either pristine or over exaggeratedly dark and depressing. This one didn’t even have the batsymbol on or Batman, which was revolutionary, but did have the addition of himself and his brothers hanging out on a rooftop.
“Steve worked with a team of artists and made sure they got it right for you,” Natasha explained. “He did you and your brothers himself.”
“He also stopped them from adding a big batsymbol in the sky about ten times,” Clint informed him, and Jason didn’t even try to hide his grin at that. Captain America fucking painted his room, and knew exactly what he would and wouldn’t want; his life was fucking insane. The other walls were painted red and adorned with cool framed vintage horror movie posters, and aside from a huge bookshelf and a sweet PC setup, he apparently had a walk-in closet with a designated space to keep all of his gear.
It really was perfect, and he figured he could definitely live in this room forever. “Shit, if you’d shown me the room first, you wouldn’t have had to give that whole pitch back there,” Jason said, getting a genuine grin from Natasha and a laugh from Clint.
“Welcome to the Avengers, Jace!” Clint exclaimed, before pulling him into a hug that could rival Dick Grayson’s any day. “How does it feel?”
“I’ve been an Avenger for five minutes, gonna probably need more time to figure that out,” Jason responded, feeling too happy to put up any resistance, so he hugged back just as tight.
“Would telling you Tony got you some new toys change that answer?” Natasha asked, clearly amused. Jason let go and stepped back to give her a look. “I hear they’re pretty special.”
“Then being an Avenger feels awesome.”
x x x x x x x x x x
The afternoon before the party had Jason heading to Tony’s lab for whatever ‘toys’ were waiting for him there. He figured he might as well bring his Hood with him, since he did promise to let Tony look at it.
“Natasha said you had stuff for me,” Jason said once JARVIS let him in the lab.
“Hey, Jason, just gimme a sec,” Tony responded, buried in the circuitry of one of his robots. “Welcome to the Avengers by the way.”
“Thanks,” Jason responded dryly, glancing around the place to see pretty much exactly what he pictured Iron Man’s lab to look like. He set his Hood down on the nearest table that wasn’t covered in tech he didn’t even really recognize and walked over to get a closer look at the robot Tony was so focused on. He had a feeling Tim would love to be in his place right now, since he was the little tech genius in the family, excluding Babs.
“You really must have made an impression on your three fellow assassins, by the way,” Tony commented, still keeping his attention on the bot, which definitely piqued his curiosity.
“What do you mean?”
“After they helped you out, they came back and all strongly advocated for you to be on the Avengers. Even Barnes was arguing with Fury for like half an hour over it, and the most he ever talks during meetings with him is just occasional scathing comments the rest of us try not to laugh at. I would have expected that from Clint, who imprints on pretty much anyone with a tragic backstory, but the other two usually aren’t so,” Tony paused to do a vague hand gesture, like that explained anything. They’d worked well together, and had a great time hanging out at Clint’s apartment afterwards, but Jason didn’t think he did anything special enough for them to react like that. “Of course, the three of them could really convince anyone of anything, especially with Captain America giving them the disappointed glare the entire time. Fury had no chance.”
Yeah, Jason couldn’t really imagine anyone remaining unshakable in the face of that combination. The whole idea started to come together of how this got started, now that he knew who first brought it up. Bucky could undoubtedly get Steve on his side for pretty much anything- they really were the ride or die type- and Sam would probably follow. Clint could probably get Wanda on his side for most things, which would get Vision considering it, and Natasha had sway over pretty much all of them.
Tony finally finished putting the thing back together, and led him over to the far wall, which had about ten tall compartments next to one another, most labeled with an Avenger’s name. “And what about you?” Jason asked, eyeing his own name on a compartment between Bucky’s and an unlabeled one. “Where did you stand on me joining?”
“Of course I was on board, that combo is terrifying,” Tony answered, pulling out the compartment to reveal a fucking goldmine.
The first thing to catch his eye was the rack of three different versions of his Hood he was immediately in love with, then the armor hanging next to them, which kept the sort of motorcycle jacket style, only all black and red and clearly well armored. There were about a million places to hold weapons, which was perfect since the rest of the compartment was filled with pretty much every kind of weapon he could ever dream of, all with the same red and black aesthetic. The suit, the three different helmets, and the custom weapons would definitely have taken more than a couple days to make, which meant they were already in production before anyone had officially proposed the idea of him on the team. Jason eyed the red Avengers symbols on the shoulders of the black leather jacket, and any insecurity about the others not wanting him there was laid to rest.
“So, most of this is pretty straightforward, but I’ll tell you the cool bits. These two pistols can be assembled into a sniper rifle, for the grenade launcher there’s explosive, smoke, flash, and acid rounds, we made you a taser gun that can be set on different modes depending on how you wanna electrocute people, these throwing knives are ceramic so you can get past metal detectors, and now you have your very own AI and HUD in your helmets.”
That last part had him finally tearing his eyes off all the gear to give Tony a look. “Did you make me an AI?” he asked incredulously, because that felt a little like overkill.
“Actually, the kid was asking me a bunch of questions about how to make AI last week, so I used the opportunity to show him how it all worked. Kid’s a natural; he was the one who did most of the work on it,” Tony explained, as if that wasn’t fucking surreal. Jason knew Spidey was a genius, but making AI in less than a week at sixteen years old was damn impressive. “He’ll be at the party tonight, so you can finally meet him and bond over swinging around cities as masked vigilantes.”
“Yeah, that and the whole ‘eccentric billionaire mentor’ thing we can complain about together,” Jason responded, smirking at the glare he got for that one.
“I’m going to ignore that,” Tony told him, looking offended at even being compared to Bruce Wayne, which would probably be mutual since Bruce wasn’t exactly Tony’s biggest fan either. “That keycard on the shelf is your Avengers ID, by the way. JARVIS will recognize your biometrics to get anywhere in the building, but if you’re bringing anyone else with you, you gotta use the keycard. Plus, it’s pretty good for getting out of sticky situations.”
Jason picked up the card, raising an eyebrow when he saw it was just a plain black card with his name on it in gold letters. Sure there was more to it than that, he looked closer and spotted a near invisible button, and when he pressed it, the card suddenly changed. It was like the black just cleared away to reveal a more detailed ID, with Red Hood written above the large ‘Avengers’ taking up most of the space. “Alright, I’ll give it to you: this is sick as fuck,” Jason said, pressing the button again to turn it back to the simple black design. He had no idea how it even fucking worked, but he’d be keeping this card on him until the day he died again.
“I know, I designed it,” Tony responded, annoyingly smug, and completely ignored Jason’s raised eyebrow. “Now go take your new uniform and helmets, get acquainted with your AI and let me know if you need anything changed. Leave your Hood here, I’m gonna hook it up to JARVIS in case of emergencies.”
He really hoped that was all he was gonna do to it, but he glanced at all of his new toys and figured he should probably start trusting Tony with his gear if these were the kinds of upgrades he would get. Yeah, so far being an Avenger was amazing.