I got this idea from @theactorbat on tik tok and thought it would be fun to write 

TW: HALLUCINATIONS 

It had meant to be a joke—one that was maybe a little cruel but nothing more than a joke between brothers. Besides, everyone played the prank of pretending someone wasn't real to piss someone off. Their prank of choice put a spin on the classic. For the whole day, the brothers were going to pretend that Jason wasn't real but only Dick wasn't in on the prank. Alfred warned that if the acrobat asked him then he'd tell him about the prank and Bruce was way too tired to put a stop to them, he simply requested they leave him alone to sleep until dinner. Part of the reason he went down so easily had been them insisting this would be good training for lying if and when they had to on missions. Maybe if he'd been a bit more on the ball he would've mentioned something rather important.

Dick poured himself his second cup of coffee for the day, feeling rather proud of himself that he was cutting back. It'd been a recommendation from Leslie, something about caffeine making his anxiety worse so he should try to manage his lifestyle whilst on whatever medication she'd given him. He probably shouldn't be so readily accepting of pills he couldn't even pronounce but he doubted she'd try to pull something with them considering their night gig. He was just about done when Jason strolled into the room and hopped up onto the counter beside him. 

"Hey Jay, did I miss anything whilst I was out?" he asked.

"I wouldn't know," the younger replied with a bored expression. No surprises there. They didn't gravitate to the Manor as much as they used to although for different reasons they were still avoiding the same person. They only came together a few times when Alfred demanded to see the kids he considered grandchildren and there was no denying the butler's wish. He shrugged to himself and picked up his coffee taking a sip. Hopefully, that meant that Damian hadn't been instigated by Tim yet or vice versa. He really didn't want to spend an hour explaining how to be civil with one another. 

"Just get here, did you?"

"Got here the same time as you did. You're the reason I'm here." He tilted his head curiously, wondering what that meant. It certainly wasn't said with the usual tone Jason used when he admitted someone was important to him. The tone sounded too bored but not sarcastic enough to be a joke either. The statement itself was just that. A statement. It just didn't make sense because why would he be the reason for coming here? If Jason wanted help with something then it would be said so in a text.

"What do you mean?"

"You're the one who made me," Jason answered. What? 

"Is this some dig about Robin? I'm really not in the mood to have another argument about it, I thought we laid it to rest."

"Like you laid me to rest?"

"If I really made you, then you'd know I was in space for your funeral," he deadpanned. There was a brief look of shock on his brother's face before being replaced with a neutral expression and a shrug to match. "What're you playing at? Did you get hit on the head on patrol? You really should be careful of head injuries they get easier to get over time."

"Who're you talking to?" Tim asked, strolling into the room and going straight for the coffee. No surprises there but what did he mean by who he was talking to? Was there a gas leak or something? 

"Uh Jay," he answered. The teen gave him a funny look before checking the room and then turning back to him with the same confused expression. 

"Jason isn't here. He's not supposed to arrive till later. You know how he hates family dinners so he puts them off." Dick felt a pit form in the bottom of his stomach and swallowed thickly. He could feel the colour drain from his face so he quickly turned to put the cup back on the countertop.

"You really got me there. C'mon, you can see him, he's right there," he replied smoothly. 

"I'm not lying. Jason isn't here. I'm sure he would've already made a replacement joke if he was." He took a deep breath then turned back around and forced his body language to remain casual even if he felt far from it. The hallucination looked so real, he almost forgot how real it had felt. He thought he was over this. Sure it had gone on for a while but it happened since Jason returned. No, the real Jason covered his hallucinations job at berating him pretty well. That did raise the question of why this Jason wasn't being so rude this time and was casually sitting around the place. Maybe he'd worked through some issue that made him calmer but surely if he worked through the issue then he shouldn't be seeing him in the first place. He smiled despite himself.

"Heh, there's just no fooling you, is there?" he stated with a fake smile he hoped didn't look as plastic as it felt. "Welp, I'm gonna go do some work in the Cave. You coming?"

"I'll be down in a bit." He nodded and groaned under his breath when he heard a set of footsteps following him. 

Once out of earshot, Dick paused and stared at the hallucination. It looked so real. He could feel the warmth of someone else being there and he could hear breathing but if Tim didn't see him then his imagination was a little too active. Even so, there had always been something mildly uncanny about the hallucination especially when it was mad. Did he just get better at hallucinating? Was that a skill he'd unknowingly honed in on? 

"Okay so I'm hallucinating but why am I doing it? We're good now. I mean as good as we can be and definitely better than we were," he pondered aloud although he didn't see much point in it. If this were his hallucination surely it would be able to hear his thoughts already. He shook his head at himself and continued walking with Jason following after him. 

"You won't be getting much out of me," Jason answered with a shrug. "Maybe we're not good. You probably pissed me off."

"Maybe. I really thought we were okay though. When you came back you hated me and the other hallucination wasn't comforting in the least but you're just chilling with me like we're hanging out. No, I've got to be missing something. Maybe this isn't even a Jason issue?"

"Can we roll that back a minute? There's been another version of me?" The acrobat thought it was odd his mind conjured up such a clueless hallucination but then again his mind was never his best friend. Maybe it was trying to be cryptic to make him work for the answer to make it stop. It didn't stop until Jason came back to life though. Did Jason die again? No, that's stupid. He was hallucinating, he wasn't Constantine although he had considered the possibility previously. 

"Yeah. You were this tiny kid wearing the Robin suit. Granted you always looked slightly off like I didn't remember you correctly or there'd be a black shadow covering your face. You're a lot more, how do I say it, life-like?" he answered. There was no real point in entertaining his figment of imagination but he did like talking so he continued. "You're not blaming me for not being there or saying I'm a horrible person. It's a nice change but completely unwarranted."

"You hallucinated me? For real?"

"You should know this, you're my mind. It's funny actually. When you came back, I thought you weren't real. I thought my mind had fucked up and projected you onto this guy who looked similar to you and had a past with Joker." He laughed to himself but the hallucination was anything but amused by his admission. Weird. "It's nice you're one of the talking ones and you're pretty tame. You're not talking over people or ominously staring at me from the corner of rooms."

"You were that torn up about me?"

"Of course I was. I felt awful for not being there for you because Bruce and I were rocky and I felt even worse when nobody told me you died. I came back from space and you were gone and Bruce couldn't even look at me. Didn't even tell me until I pushed for it. I think I needed to hear it from him and then we didn't talk till Tim came into the picture. You uh, you're part of the reason I insisted on being a good brother to him." He then thought back to the question at hand and went over what he'd said. "This could be a Bruce issue actually. I could be having issues with him and you're how I'm dealing with this? I'm not sure."

"Dick wait, no, I really don't feel right fucking with you right now. I'm not a hallucination," Jason told him. Although he sounded sincere, surely that's what a hallucination would tell him? Or maybe they wouldn't? Again, his previous experiences were limited to yelling about him being a failure or getting his little brother murdered. Oh, those countless lights of no sleep because he was kept awake by the screaming in his ear that nobody else could hear. There was something morbidly nostalgic about it. 

"Look, I'm not in the mood for hallucination humour right now. What I'm going to do is what I did last time."

"That is?"

"Ignore you until you leave me alone and then inevitably break down because I can't hear myself think."

"Oh my God, you're hopeless."

"See, that's more like the old you."

The joke was decidedly not funny anymore and Jason was seriously regretting coming up with it. Of course, Dick had hallucinated him. With his wicked guilt complex and frankly concerning untreated mental health issues, there was no real surprise that his mind had played tricks on him. There was also no real surprise that he hadn't told anyone about it. Jason kept saying that he wasn't some kind of hallucination and he reached out, poking and pressing but not even that convinced Dick because apparently, he'd had hallucinations in the past where he got physically hurt years ago. Considering how much of a stalker Tim had and still was, he clearly didn't do his research well enough if he didn't know this little detail when they agreed to the prank. 

"I'm being serious right now, I am real! Real person. One of the little trolls you call family is going to come down and you'll see that we were pranking you," he insisted. Dick hummed half listening and continued typing away at the computer without even sparing him a glance. He was way too experienced at pretending things were fine when they weren't. It would be impressive if it weren't so ultimately depressing. "Goldie, I promise, I'm real."

"I don't miss your constant chatter that's for sure," the acrobat muttered under his breath. He glanced over to the cave entrance, overhearing the bickering pair that was Tim and Damian then sighed to himself. "I'm gonna need so much Tylenol to get through today."

"You need therapy and a prescription of some kind," Jason huffed. "Maybe some fatherly praise for your raging daddy issues."

"If we're talking about things that won't happen then I'd like to get a side of love and appreciation from my brothers," he replied. The younger had to wonder if bantering with hallucinations was a new occurrence or if this was just how Dick coped with it.

"Grayson, did you say something?" Damian asked, walking straight past Jason as though he wasn't there which would be great if the prank hadn't spiralled.

"Guys pranks off," Jason insisted. "Turns out he's hallucinated me before and just never told me."

"I'm sorry, he's done what before?" Tim asked. 

"I'm sorry you can see him?" Dick asked.

There was a tense few moments as they all said nothing until Dick decided to be the one to break the silence. 

"I think it was a pretty good prank all things considered," he stated. It really was, they had him going and probably would've continued to until Alfred saw him. Perhaps that's why he hadn't seen the butler lately. They might've been able to convince him to play along until actually asked about hallucination Jason. Dick pursed his lips when he realised they probably expected that he'd take a little more convincing to believe the prank. That was a little embarrassing admittedly. "Did you get Dami in on it too? That's a great improvement on both parts," he asked, changing the subject as fast as he could. They were going to ask, he could guarantee that, but that didn't mean he was looking forward to it. 

"You hallucinated Jason? Were you drugged? You never once told me that you did that," Tim asked.

"It could be PTSD, he does display plenty of symptoms and he could be mistaking the flashbacks as hallucinations," Damian suggested. "Your mental health has always been rather concerning."

"He hasn't seen a therapist in years, it wouldn't be surprising if there's something underlying that. Do you have your family's medical history? It might be genetic?"

"Or it could be exacerbated?" 

"Okay well I'm not too big of a fan of this conversation so I'm going to use the technique of ignoring it," he announced, turning back to his work. 

"We can't ignore that you hallucinated Todd when he died. Did you hallucinate me when I died? When Father died?" He didn't reply as he typed up some random report that he definitely wasn't making up on the spot. "Grayson?"

"You can't just ignore us," Tim huffed.

"Yeah this is actually super serious for once I'm not willing to joke about it," Jason added.

"Grayson we're serious, you have concerning mental health issues that should be addressed."

"I'm telling Alfred-"

"DON'T TELL ALFRED!"