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Tim is shaking, furious, so, so mad.He wipes at his cheeks as the winter chill that bites at them. Each swipe causes them to sting more. Blood pulses underneath the delicate skin. His lips are chapped so hard that they crack and leave a metallic taste in his mouth. Hiscamera sits around his neck, dead weight, like a noose that’s not tighten yet.
Batman’s gauntlets are red.
Batman looks down at Two-Face, beaten into the floor of a condemned casino. The old floorboards are stained with blood, Two-Face isn’t moving, just laying there, barely breathing through a broken nose and a messed up jaw. His breath whistles through the shattered nasal cavity. The ragged intake of air from downed generals are the only other sound in the room. They arewet shaky pulls of air that are a fight to get in.
Batman’s gauntlets are red.
Two-Face had said the wrong fucking thing.
Something snide about Robin. About how the little birdy finally flown the nest like the first one. About how Batman kept losing children left and right, slipping through his fingers like sand.
About how Two-Face had heard an interesting rumor from Joker. About how Robin sounded more like a canary.About how the kid had screamed out Batman’s secrets as he died.
Batman’s gauntlets are red.
So is the floor. So are the walls. Parts of the fucking ceiling. There’s red on the old washed out black and white carpet, like a bad joke. What’s black and white and red all over?
You suppose it could be poetic?
No— instead you’d think it is just sad.
Tim doesn’t look, he just turns around. He can’t bear to see how far his hero has fallen. Not today. Fuck this.
Fuck everything.
Two-Face had said atrocious things, truly disgusting things. Accusing Batman of being all sorts of messed up in the head to turn his own sidekicks against him— or dead even. The words that Two-Face had taunted with just made Batman mad.
They made Tim want to cry.
Because those taunts? Those words about the dead kid’s last moments? Those were a person, once.
Words are the only things left, after everything.
Most people, after they pass, get kind words. Gentle ones. They get words like gracious, like caring and fun and determined and a joy to have known.
Robin gets words that aren’t going to be repeated. He gets accusations that would put a man away for life then make the prisoners shiv him in the yard once they get a glance at what he’s done. Robin gets slurs and swears, gets halfhearted taunts and gets barbed bullets.
Most people had a softer ending, after everything.
Not this nothingness.
Jason Todd had an Obituary, in the paper, that’s how Tim had gotten the news, the news about Jason’s passing. About the small funeral held and the picture in the front page about how Bruce had worn something designer to his son’s graveside service.
Tim turns away from where Batman stands over Two-Face. The drip-drip-drip of that terrible, rancid, red down the gauntlets isn’t something that’s appealing to look at anymore. Tim’s gotten his pictures, he can leave-
Well. After he does one more thing.
--
Robin was an Alley Rat
The spraypaint had to be bought from one of those convenience stores, the ones that are open even at almost one in the morning and raise their prices in exchange of being the only game on the block. The spray paint was in a neon green, not the right sort of forest that the Robin costume was, but hey, close enough to count.
Tim sprays the first lettering across an underpass. Covering old tags while he does so. He’s small, and not afraid to get into places that most other people would balk at. It’s not hard to cover up the previous names and write across the well traveled underpass in Park Row.
The words aren’t nice.
Not to Tim.
But they don’t have to be nice to matter here.
Tim finishes the final t, crossing it with a little curl, a flick of his wrist. His shirt is covered with neon dots where the splatter kicked back. His mother is going to be furious.
But who cares.
Tim moves on to the next location.
Robin was an Alley Rat.
A phrase that people that Tim went to school with would spit out, alley rat, what they considered the people of the poorest, crime ridden part of the city.
Written on the edge of Park Row and Hillside, on an apartment building’s corner. Another popular graffiti spot. This one’s a little harder to cover- but it’s worth it.
Robin was an Alley Rat.
The entrance to amusement mile.
A phrase that’s used by the middle class to talk with a wince about the people that they might have been, once.
Robin was an Alley Rat.
On the back of a bus stop that leads to the financial district, Diamond District, on the other side of Park Row.
The term that the children of Crime Alley would laughably refer to themselves as. It’s a phrase that Tim could never, ever, call somebody to their face but it’s a phrase that has the most impact here. A phrase that would get taken the most serious out of all the words that could have been chosen.
Robin was an Alley Rat.
Written across a billboard by the old stadium, where the Gotham Knights play, the one in old town that people have been trying to tear down for years.
Robin was an Alley Rat.
Written with the last of the paint on the bus stop that will lead Tim back to Bristol.
--
“Did you hear?” Jerome says, looking up to the side of his apartment building. The paint is so new it is still tacky, but it’s impact has already begun to inspire whispers in Gotham. It’s interesting. It’s new. It’s something fun to talk about while Jerome is running an errand for his mother to get eggs and milk for pancakes. “Robin was an Alley Rat.”
Sun-Wei, the man at the counter, makes a scoffing noise. He’s on his phone and ringing up the groceries at the same time. He’s seen the graffiti already, how can he miss it when it’s across the street from the little store his parents own? “No he wasn’t, kiddo. Robin isn’t real.”
Jerome rolls his eyes, and hands over the twenty. “Yes he is.”
“If he was real, then it’s was, little dude. Past tense.” Sun-Wei counts out change, he’s done this more than once, Jerome is a regular little shopper on Sunday mornings.is mom always runs out of eggs and milk for pancakes by the end of the week.
Sun-Wei nods to the tacky neon green paint.
“That, right there? That’s as good a gravestone as we’re gonna get.”
--
“Did you see?” Maddison twists around in the seat of her little vee-doubleyou bug.
“Focused on the road here!” James says, through gritted teeth as he navigates traffic. He’s cramped in the small space of the car, focusing on both the road and the people on it. Everyone has a deathwish apparently because they keep walking into the middle of the street, heads down and faces illuminated by phone screen. They hardly look up as James screeches to halt after various halt.
“What did that new sign say?” Maddison rotates compeltely in her seat , pressing her head to the window. “Something about Robin?”
“The … Batman kid?” James asks, distracted.
Maddison nods, like James is even looking at her. “Yeah! It was green. I wonder if it’s another Riddler attack?”
“It better not be.” James hisses, gripping the wheel even tighter. “If we are late to even one more of these stupid pregnancy classes…”
--
“Did you hear?” The kids whisper at school on Wednesday, crowded around at the lunch table. “Did you hear that Robin died?”
The group wears green, some wear red. One kid named Duke wears yellow.
“Did you hear?” The kids whisper to each other at the library as they wait to be picked up after school. “Did you hear that Robin could have been one of us?”
--
“Did you hear?” Falcone asks, almost casually but that’s not fooling anybody. “Did you hear that Robin was a street rat?”
The man sitting across from Falcone doesn’t laugh. His face is mostly immobile. His skin tone is a washed out gray color, with these very visible veins. Honestly, Falcone is creeped out by him, but this kind of contact is needed to be anything in this town, is needed to do anything in a town like Gotham. It’s ruled in the day time by the shining Wayne family but in the night it falls into the talons of the Owls.
“Good riddance.” Flacone tries to break the tension again, but the man continues to idly, almost mechanically, look through the files that Flacone had handed him on arrival. “The brat was a pain in the ass to deal with.”
This gets the metal tipped fingers to stop, just for a brief hesitation.
Falcone stops talking for the rest of the meeting.
It’s the first smart decision he’s made all day.
--
“There’s certainly a popular saying catching on across the streets!” Viki Vale’s smile is bright, but as fake as it ever is.
She’s standing inPark Row, her microphone is black in the evening sun. “For the past month, we’ve been seeing an interesting piece of graffiti pop up. It seems to have originated in our very own Park Row andspread to most parts of Gotham! I’m here today to ask some locals about what they think about it!”
She turns the microphone in her snow white hands to a local man. He’sroundwith a thick mustache and kind eyes. His green shirt is bright on the screen andstained with the sweat of a long day.
“Sir! What are your thoughts about the new cool thing to litter Gotham’s beautiful streets with?” She asks. “How do you feel about turning our historic bricks into a very neon green?”
The man raises his eyebrows, looking at Vikki like a grandfather looks at a particularly stupid child.
“I think that it’s a lot of things.” The man begins, his voice is deep, rich. His accent runs rampant with every word when he begins to speak. It’s like auditory cursive, every syllable a characteristic little swoop. “I think that it could have been a cruel joke.I think it might have been meant as such, but I also think that the kids can relate to it.t makes them feel-” He pausesto think. “It makes the children feel like they are a part of something bigger than themselves.”
Viki’s smile doesn’t leave her face once. She turns back to the camera.
“That’s what we’re hearing about it out here! Back to you, Thomas.”
The TV cuts from Viki to a man in a sharp suit, sitting next to a woman wearing red. The man’s smile is also fake, his hair is too, but that’s not as obvious. “Thank you for the field interview, Viki, always a pleasure.”
He turns to look at the woman sitting next to him.
“Well! They certainly have a different opinion than we did, Rebecca!” Thomas laughs that perfect sort of laugh.
“They certainly did!” She replies before launching into a story about a new entertainment district that is set to replace low-end housing sectors in the East Side.
--
“Did you hear?” A teenager asks another, smoking in their work bathroom. “That Robin was a street rat?”
The taller one laughs. It’s cruel, but much more real than the perfect on one the news that’s playing inside. “You think that Robin was one of us?” The taller teenager’s got a name tag that reads Charlie. “No way. Robin was one of those secret spy kids the government made.”
The original one laughs, a sharp bell sound. Their name tag has a bundle of colorful flags on it to match Charlie’s. “Not this theory again-” “It makes sense!”
The two laugh between a shared cigarette in the cold.
--
“Did you hear?” A mother says to another, a baby on her hip. “Did you hear? Robin was one of them.”
The group of moms look down to the pack of children that scream in the playground across the street.
“Don’t you say that.” Another woman spits, pulling her bag close. “Robin can’t have been one of them.” She gestures to the children, the youngest out there is three, the oldest is sixteen. “They’re children.” She says.
“Wasn’t Robin?” A larger woman chides. “Wasn’t Robin also a child?”
“Not like them.” The bag groans under the pressure of the grip. The mothers have been vigilant these past few weeks. The self defense classes at the community center have never been so full. “Not like my babies.”
The larger woman tsks. Her teeth have a gap in them, it makes the sound particularly loud. Four children in the play area perk up at it.hey’re replicas of the woman herself, even if they’re all boys. They see that their mother isn’t calling them and go back to playing heroes. One of them screams about wanting to be Batman this round.
“All children are children.” The large woman says. “You’re downright stupid if you don’t think so.”
--
“He can’t have been.” A girl dismisses. She’s getting a tattoo. “We would have known he was one of us. He was probably one of those Bristol kids playing hero.”
It’s a bird, taking off from her shoulder blade.
“ Didn’t you notice that the street kids stopped going missing all the time after the second Robin popped up?” The artist asks, idly as they trace the lines they’ve already put onto the skin. “You notice after the second Robin came to be that the Batactually started givin’ a shit and patrolling here? You notice that life here got better?”
The tattoo’s wing comes into shape.The wing is a mess of feathers caught in an explosion.
--
“Was he?’ A man asks, covered in dirt and soot and splattered red from less lucky coworkers. “Was he?”
Batman stops, half in the shadows and half out. He’s more myth than man, even now with grief and death written into the lines of his mouth. The urban legend he embodies has shaped him so much that doesn’t seem real even from five feet away.
Penguin has held a bunch of poor dock workers hostage, made them play a twisted chess game before Batman had shown up. To save them. To damn them.
Who knows.
Who cares?
“I need to know.” The man says again, moving forward. He’s got skinny hands.The bones on the back of them are stark as he reaches towards the shadows where Batman’s almost disappeared into.
“Was Robin-”
A swallow. He’s nervous.
“Was Robin an alley rat?”
Batman turns his face fully into the shadows.The only thing visible is the white of his lenses.
The man, in his white coveralls, covered with black soot and the red of what remains of some of his coworkers, his friends, taken by the bombs strapped to their chests in a twisted game, thinks he’s not going to get an answer for a second-
But there, carefully, gently, more fragile than what should be possible from a man this large and legendary, comes-
“Robin was many things, but above all else, he was my son.”
--
Words are what you are after you leave.
You can’t cook another meal. You can’t share another laugh. You can’t hold another hand. You can’t run another race.ou can’t tell another story.You can’t make another mistake, another achievement.You can’t kiss anybody else. You can’t cry in the rain anymore.
You can’t make another thing.You can’t destroy in the same vein.
You can’t change.
Unchanging, still, fixed, permanent, unvarying, unmoving.
You are a static thing, that is not able to contribute another soft inhale to the world around you.
Words are all that is left.
The cruelest part of the whole situation is that those words don’t even get to be your own.
--
“He was one of us.” The children chant, holding onto one another, thinking like Icarus, about being freed from the place where they are to soar above.
“He was one of us.” The mothers chant, trying to protect their children from the same fate that befell the one who flew too high.
“He was one of us.” The workers chant, looking at what they’ve scraped together and what one of them could achieve given enough hard work and wax.
--
“Robin was a son!”
Her name was Catherine. She had thick fingers and wore a green skirt that was a size too small but she wore it out to the club with her best friends anyway.
The club was taken over by a gang in familiar white greasepaint.Their makeup is sloppy, hastily put on by an uncaring hand.
“Robin was a child!” She had screamed as she held a knife she had gotten from her grandfather.The knife had been polished and shaped by hands like hers, just as thick but with three times the wisdom. She carried it everywhere for protection and to honour.
The Joker had just stepped back into American soil with a tacky red tourist shirt on and red lipstick that had been smeared over his entire face.
“Robin was an alley rat!”
Catherine had taken the pocketknife that had been given to her by her grandfather, and while the Joker was distracting Batman with the club as a backdrop to his black and white televised games of life and death, Catherine had had enough.
The people around her fled as she screamed.
As she charged.
Joker was dead on arrival to Gotham General.
Catherine had been wearing a green skirt a size too small with a knife that was so full of red.
When the Joker had died, on that club floor, laughing as he bled out, he had screamed out his final joke.
Her name was Catherine, and she killed the Joker.Then, when that damn fucking gas started to effect her mind andtwist it to start whispering the ravings of a madman, she killed herself.
--
Joker was cremated, at the end of everything, almost a full year after Jason Todd had died in a warehouse in Ethiopia.
The man does not get a funeral.
The Joker gets mixed into cement,wrapped in a trash bag, and put into storage of the GCPD.
--
Catherine De Santis gets a funeral. She’s also been cremated, but the service is attended by over half of the city andbroadcasted on the news. They say she is a hero. They say her final moments were a service to the entire city. The mayor talks beside her mother.The Senator consoles her father.
Bruce Wayne pays for everything.
He’s wearing a green skirt. It’s not too tight, no. But he’s wearing one.
He’s not the only one.
Crowds and crowds of people, wearing a green skirt, green shorts, some people are even wearing Robin costumes.
They hold candles, lookup into the night sky that is covered with smog and they sing.
They sing hymns, and they sing their favorite songs, and they sing about Robins.
About how, just maybe, Robin was one of them all along.
--
Batman’s gauntlets are still red.
Batman still gets a knock on the door three months after the year anniversary of the death of his son. A small child wearing a black shirt, freckled with neon green paint that his mother didn’t even notice, hadn’t even seen yet. She hadn’t been home to see it. Not once in the months that it kept getting spattered and resplattered.
Batman takes a deep breath, and looks down at the kid at his doorstep, so determined, and asks:
“Did you hear?”