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Jason Todd’s love is a wretched and terrible thing to be on the receiving end of. It’s an obsession, something that tears you apart from the intensity of it—but it’s just as easy to miss.
Because how do you say – I’ve assembled the gun and now I refuse to shoot it – how do you say – I’ve had a chance to kill you but I want you to look me in the eyes and know who your killer is before I pull the trigger – how do you say this is an act of love?
How do you say – I will go to your city and steal your name, dirty it with blood, become a wicked shadow of you – you’re the only person from my old life who still treats me like I’m alive, not a revenant, a vengeful ghost of the kid I used to be.
How do you say – I trained for years and killed for more – I built this empire from the blood of our enemies just to prove you wrong.
How do you say – kill him, kill him, please – kill him not for the hundreds of lives he’s taken – kill him for you, kill him for me – because he took me away from you – isn’t that enough? – how can you say this is love?
He cannot say the words because he is a son, a brother first. He is a bat. He cannot say – I love you I am obsessed with you I want you to love me as terribly as I love you I want you to bleed for the magnitude of my love I love you.
If his love is a terrible thing, then his grief is incapacitating.
How do you say – I think when you held me last, your rib fused with mine and my marrow now creates your blood, my heart beats in tandem with yours – bones of my bones and flesh of my flesh, brother. How do you say – when the world took you from me so suddenly the crack of my bone is deafening. How do you say – I’m missing a rib – how do you say this to a man buried six feet under?
How do you say – you were the landscape and now that you’re gone, it seems like the world has stopped turning. The map of stars will always be the same every night, but one day a supernova makes a constellation incomplete and now I cannot see anything else but the absence in what was once complete. How do you say – you were supposed to be infallible, as permanent as a burning giant in the depths of space, a bright mark in the sky. I never imagined a world without you in it and now that it’s come I am missing a rib.
How do you say – do you remember your nameplate on your door? I laughed when I first saw it, but it’s been there for years. How do you say – it fell off and Alfred put it away somewhere, but the hallway looks like an unfamiliar place without the staple of what we shared in our childhood. How do you say – this house is dead. It is no longer a home.
How do you say – the circus came to town but you didn’t go. I made red velvet brownies because you’re the only one who likes them, but I forgot you’re not here anymore so I have to throw it out because no one else eats it. We were supposed to buy pumpkin spice lattes together because you teased me about my ‘hipster lifestyle’ and I wanted you to eat your words. I won’t ever know if you like them or not now.
How do you say – I don’t want winter to end because then spring will come without you. I step outside and my throat closes up because snow reminds me of the last trip we went on before I died. Birdsong reminds me of the one thing that ties us together other than our dad. We no longer buy Cheerios.
How do you say – I hate you because you left. I want you to feel this pain, but maybe you already did when I left you first. I want you to hurt but I know what it's like to be woken from the peace of death, and I cannot do that to you. Clerval tells me, ‘He can no longer be a subject for pity; we must reserve that for his miserable survivors’ and I have survived worse things than this.
How do you say – you would never want me to kill your murderer, but I don’t care because you’re not alive to be disappointed in me. How do you say – killing them won’t bring you back, nothing will bring you back – but that also means nothing is stopping me from killing them.
How do you say – some days I don’t think of you at all. Some days it feels like I never stopped.
How do you say – you’re alive, god you’re alive. You were never dead and I hate you I hate you I hate you. I want to hurt you for hurting me but – I want my rib back.
How do you say – I’m missing a rib. I can breathe again.