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Your jacket smells like cigarettes and gunpowder. You wonder when did your clothes start smelling like that, when did you get comfortable carrying a gun.
It’s hard to remember life before this. Before you came home, blood from rapists and murderers stained on your shirt and jeans, your pale skin collecting more scars than you can count. You remember some things, yeah. You remember what life was like with Bruce and Alfred, but it’s blurry and you can’t remember all that well. Sometimes your memories come back randomly. Sometimes you’re brushing your teeth and you remember the first time Bruce called you his son. You remember Alfred telling you to put your car knowledge to good use and fix the ones sitting in the garage when you’re tying up your boots, you remember Dick’s laughter and the way he used to ruffle your hair.
Talia, her soft lips and warm thighs, her fingernails pinching tight on your arm, you remember all that clearly. Her brown eyes, the way she says your name, the way her voice can demand your attention. You were dead and most people would cheer at the second chance. But your head’s so clouded up with thoughts of revenge, muddled by anger. Because the closest thing you’ve ever had to a father forgot all about you the day he got a new Robin. You got a dad, and you remember being so damn happy because someone took you in. It hurts like hell because he was so quick to replace you.
You were dead and most people would take it as a sign to live a happy normal life, get a desk job, make car payments, fall in love, get married, have two point five kids, all that bullshit. You don’t think that’s even a choice for you anymore, because really, it wasn’t like you had a happy life before.
You’ll follow this path because anger and hurt is all you’ve ever known.
**
Talia kissed you for the first time the night she threw you into the Pit. All those memories came to you at once, and you remember those years she took care of you.
You’re confused as hell when you finally get your shit together. You feel fear, and you can tell she’s scared too. She just disobeyed her father, and you’re both running. The light from the mansion getting dimmer the farther you run, her hand in a tight grasp around yours. She led the way, her hair swaying against her back as she ran, and you weren’t sure why, but you trusted her. You knew she would keep you safe. You weren’t sure how you knew, but you did. Before she told you to escape, she kissed your lips, pushing your bag to your chest, your eyes wide and shocked.
The next time she kisses you, it’s at your newest place, her hands firm and steady in your shirt, pulling you, pressing the swell of her breasts against your chest. You’ve had sex, but there was nothing romantic about it. You’re no virgin, nothing close to pure, but still, you can’t help but be a little nervous your first time with her. Sure, Talia makes you a little nervous, but you don’t think that’s it.
You’ve had sex before, your brain keeps supplying you that fact, over and over in your head. But it’s different. That’s why you’re so nervous, Talia and her knowing eyes, her lips grazing you ear, whispering how to touch her. She draws a shiver from you when she runs her hands down your spine, her tanned skin and sharp grin, you tug on her long hair, capturing her mouth. Her accent, her full lips whispering against yours, “You came back from the dead.” Says, “You’re a miracle, Jason.”
**
Even before you started taking up Talia’s ideals, they were already inside your head.
They were always there, even when you were Robin. You hated criminals, just not in the way Bruce does. That day you pushed that rapist off the roof; you couldn’t control your anger then. You saw the face of every man that touched you wrong, and you didn’t want that happening to another kid on the street because you saw it happen before, again and again.
Those ideas in your head, Talia just opened a window for you. She hooked you up with the right people, and yeah, you can kill a person with your big, scarred hands. You can blow up warehouses, a blast radius a mile wide. Because of her you’re an expert in surveillance and any illegal firearm. You know hundreds of ways to kill a person. She just made it easier to do the things you always wanted to do.
You lived on the streets long enough to know monsters under the bed isn’t what kids should be afraid of. You lived on the streets long enough to know putting men in prison won’t change them; they’ll just learn how to do it better and not to get caught. You know a drug dealer will only get more careful to who he deals, and he won’t upgrade his beat up Honda to a flashy sports car overnight to draw attention to himself. You know this because you got to see it with your own eyes.
The first time you held a gun in your hands, you were just a kid. You just wanted money to get something to eat. Hunger and desperation led to a gun in your hands. You weren’t supposed to hurt anyone. Chris told you the guns weren’t loaded, but you remember him unloading a clip on some poor woman because she kept screaming. You remember the blood under your fingernails and in the alley floor.
No one was supposed to get hurt was what you kept telling Chris as you beat the shit out of him, only stopping because that cop yanked you away. You didn’t want that innocent lady getting hurt, but you had no problem hurting piece of shit Chris. Later you told yourself he deserved it. He wasn’t innocent, not like that woman was. It was your own brand of justice, but you didn’t feel like a hero.
You tell Talia that one night at the bar after she tells you, “This is becoming a habit.” Said, “You’re learning.” You tell her this story, her lips stretching to a smile, her hard eyes softening, says, “You were meant for this.” You don’t know what this means. You don’t ask.
**
When she sleeps with you, her breath on your skin, your hands mapping out all her curves, her eyes never leave yours. She used to ride you -her fingers spread out on your chest, sinking down on you-, before you began to take charge, and she let you, trusting you with her body. She makes a strangled noise when she comes, husky in her throat, a deep groan. The first time you got scared because you thought you were hurting her, but she clawed at you, fingernails unforgiving on your skin, you could feel her, wet and throbbing, and yeah, you sort of got addicted to that sound.
Her fingers on your rough face, stubble growing there, you can smell her perfume. Her hands tracing over your scars, you swear you can taste the blood on both your lips from all the people you’ve both killed. You’re both so fucked up it’s not even funny.
**
You never thought she was a bad person. Back when you were Robin you used to think she was just confused. You never thought she was mean, or evil. Funny, now she grounds you when you feel like you have nowhere left to stand. Those nights when you could have sworn your body was engulfed in flame, like that night your flesh burned in that warehouse, that night you died, and you could have sworn you felt your lungs collapsing and body breaking, nights when you woke up screaming, Talia was there, whispering your name, her hands sliding in your sweaty hair, holding your skinny, small body as it shook with heavy sobs.
Those nights when she held you, you thought she was the only thing keeping you from falling apart. Those nights when she would bury her nose in your hair, fingers splayed on your back, rubbing between your shoulder blades. With your eyes closed, you held on tightly, called out, “Bruce, Bruce.”
The day you got close to killing Bruce, the time you stopped yourself before you pressed the detonator, she wrapped her arms around you that night. If she noticed the way your hands were shaking, adrenaline still pumping in your veins, the way your breath hitched, she never said anything.
**
Looking at yourself in the mirror, you notice just how much you’ve changed. You’re big enough to intimidate most people. It doesn’t help that you don’t smile anymore. Your voice deep and raspy from years of smoking, you’re thick with muscle, not at all the scrawny kid Talia first took in, back when you didn’t react to her slaps across your face, back when you looked so small and sad.
In the mirror, you look at the man you’ve become. Your bulk, your black hair and blue eyes, your hardened expression, it’s like staring at an alternate younger version of Bruce. You don’t exactly look like him, but you wonder if maybe there’s a small resemblance. Like you could really be his son.
You wonder if that’s the reason why Talia sleeps with you. You, her only ticket to making Bruce love her because she took care of you when you were nothing more than a vegetable, because she was the one who restored your mind when she took a risk and threw you in the Pit. She risked all that because she loves Bruce. I did it for love.
Your black hair and black eyes, the five o’clock shadow on your cheeks, you’re willing to cross a line Bruce won’t. Maybe you’re the closest thing Talia has to the ideal Bruce in her head. Both of you so desperate to get the love from a man who’s moved on, and it makes your grin because it’s so damn funny. And maybe you fuck her out of spite, because now you’re fucking the big man’s ex. Maybe you’re just so dam lonely and with Talia you forget that.
Maybe you’re both suckers.
**
The memories in your head are all jumbled up, all the head trauma by a crow bar to the fucking face, but you remember the way Talia stood up for you, said you were improving even when everyone was telling her you were a lost cause. You didn’t show improvement with your therapy, but Talia believed you were still there. So she talked to you. Some nights she read to you while you stared out your window.
A few times she would say something that made you cry tears of joy and sadness and regret and sorrow, her fingertips gentle on your arm, her voice and eyes softening. The thing is, sometimes you believed she was telling you the truth. You remember crying, tears spilling down your face, Talia saying, “He misses you.”
Maybe she manipulated you, you know she’s lied to you, the way she kept distracting you from your mission to kill Bruce, but you remember the way she didn’t give up on you, the way she protected you from Ra’s, the way her touch sometimes lingered. You remember her by your side those days when you thought of Bruce, thought of your death, those days when it was too much and you cried and screamed through your teeth. You never thought of her as a comforting person, but she never made you feel ashamed after you cried, her eyes lacking judgment. All you can think about is how much calmer you got after she said your name, a hushed whisper in the dark.
This sadness you carry inside you, she’s seen it all. The way she looked at you when you sat at the table, looking at the pictures of the replacement – your replacement-, she asked if you were all right. She knew you weren’t, and she didn’t take offense when you went home alone. That night you stayed up and cried because being replaced hurt more than knowing that murdering psychopath was still alive.
She never tells you she knows what you’re thinking, or points out that she might know you better than you know yourself. The way she smirks, tells you you’re killing more criminals and scum rather than focusing on your plans to get even. You keep telling her it’s not like that. She smiles, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. Her and her knowing eyes, all you can think about is how deeply you sleep when she’s there. You don’t tell her that, and she pretends not to know. She leaves when you’re deep asleep, leaving you to wake up to a cold empty space next to you.
One morning she’s there, and you can’t really wrap your head around it. You lie in bed together, you staring at the woman who has seen you at your very worst. It should make you feel vulnerable, but it doesn’t. Your lips on hers, her mouth that kisses away your pain. Neither of you talk because there is nothing else left to say.
**
Over the years you get better at reading her. Before, you could never tell what she was thinking or feeling. She never tells you. Sometimes when she listens to you talk about Bruce, her eyes look sad, like she remembers being loved by him. You recognize the look. It’s pain from the life you envisioned.
Over the years you learn ways to make her smile. Once in a while you manage to make her laugh. For some reason it makes you proud. You grow comfortable meeting her in shady bars, sharing a few drinks with her. Sometimes when you talk to her, you have to look down to look her in the eyes, and you wonder when did she start looking so small. Her thin wrists and small frame, but you know she can still kick your ass. She catches you looking at her like that sometimes, crossing her legs and smirking, like in a challenge, and you know it’s her way of flirting.
With time you learn to read her expressions, and sometimes you wish you never picked up on her facial quirks. Sometimes you see the way she’s scared of you. When you talk about your plans to kill Bruce, your showdown with your dad and the Joker, her face is calm, but you can tell she’s scared. And, huh, you must be pretty fucked up if you can get Talia to look at you like that.
It bothers her that you don’t care about how you came back. Truth is, you don’t care. You don’t give a shit why you came back, if there was a reason. Because most days, you wish you never came back at all. Sometimes you think you were better off dead.
**
A part of you feels like crying, but you’ve been there, done that. You can cry in front of her, but you won’t. You just don’t want to cry anymore. You’re done shedding tears over your daddy issues, done fighting back all the anger threatening to boil over, threatening to be the end of you. Your short life halted by a violent end. Why should the next time be different?
After seeing Bruce, you just kinda shut down, and you’re tired of being angry, of being hurt. You want to make it stop. Talia’s fingers tender on your cheek, leaning in to kiss you, you kiss her back instinctively, letting your mouth take over. Talia, she thinks you came back for a reason. It’s a sweet idea; you just wish you could believe it yourself.
Talia who firmly believes you were meant for something. She thinks there’s more to you than this anger that consumes you, she tells you this when she cups your face, tells you you’re not a curse on the earth like her father thinks you are. You’re not the street punk you still see yourself as. You’re not the wayward son Bruce sees.
The letter she wrote you, her neat and flowing cursive, she wrote I hope love guides you into what you become. She whispers in your ear, “Punish him.”
If you came back just to punish Bruce, like Talia is telling you to; you will. Because right now, even if you don’t want to kill him, because you still love your dad, you will make him pay. It’s only fair he hurts as much as you do.
If Bruce had been the one to die, you would have made sure he was avenged, because that was how much you loved him. Bruce couldn’t even do that for you. You can’t help but be bitter. It’s laughable, because you thought Bruce would be the one to care. It’s funny because Bruce meant more to you than you meant to him.
When you first took off your helmet, you smiled at Bruce, grinned at his reaction to seeing you alive and breathing, the look on his face making the past years of traveling and training and running from Ra’s all worth it. You smiled at Bruce, but you didn’t feel happy.
You didn’t fail to notice how much he had aged since you were a boy. It should comfort you, because Dick claims he took your death bad. You don’t care though, just like you don’t care how you came back. None of that matters to you, you just blindly hang onto your anger. Talia holds you in her arms, her lips on your neck, your hands lifting her shirt. It calms you down.
You don’t want to let go of your anger. Sometimes you feel its all you have left. Take away your anger and there won’t be anything else. So you stick to your anger, and you’ll follow through with your plans. Desperation that led to a gun in your hands.
All your plans, the sour taste of blood in your mouth, the building scars on your body, Bruce’s eyes when he saw your face, Talia’s hands on you. It’s a fucked up plan, but you can’t help but think everything lead to this.