Chapter Text
Jason remembers every single person he has killed in Gotham.
Even if Bruce’s kill count is wrong, he knows every single time he has killed someone, ever since that one push
He wants to blame the Lazarus pit (and sure, some of it has to do with it) but he knows it's only a part of it. He knows, at the very core of it all, he wanted to prove that taking a life is, in fact, easy.
One doesn't become a crime lord with just nine heads. Violence and guilt are so similar in those regards. Each head grows two, like a hydra, and the never-ending cycle starts just like that.
Jason knows he killed innocent lives before. Kids, the elderly, and college students, just to say a few.
Chickens, when thrown into a pen with nothing to eat except for each other, kill and consume each other. Desperate times grow rage and Jason desperately wants to say that he was merely a chicken with broken wings with nothing but other birds around him to eat.
He knows that's how Bruce sees him.
But he knows. He knows he wasn't the chicken or the pen or the experiment itself. He was the scientist that conducted the amoral experiment. He remembers how it feels to snap necks, bash skulls, and recoil from his guns. He can’t blame it all on the Lazarus pit. Every word, step, action, plan, and idea was all him. Lazarus pit only brings up something that already exists. To only blame the pit would be to ignore all the violence he unleashed upon people.
It might not be a popular thought - but not everyone wants to be alive.
But that doesn't mean more innocent deaths should happen.
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The first death Jason has ever felt guilty about after his death (and his change of heart) was Sarah Lee. Of course, back then, he didn't know her name. She was a nameless college student that happened to stumble on him when- when-
Jason doesn't deserve to censor his own violence to himself. But he still does.
She was a nameless little punk until he got a slice on his neck with a Batarang and spent some time with the outlaws.
Bruce always kept his knives sharp and steady.
Today, however, isn't about Bruce or the weird bat bitch on the rooftops with kids. It isn't about the ex-serial killer (well. serial killer with purpose now. That's kind of better, right?) with a weird red helmet and it's not about 146 innocent people he killed, innocent or not, in Gotham. It's about a Jason Todd and Sarah Lee.
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The Red Hood has killed 146 innocent people and attempted 1 in Gotham alone four years ago. The 147th kill was supposed to be Bruce Wayne to remind Bruce that he is forever stuck in a moment of time: 10:47 PM, the moment his parents were killed on that fateful February night.
(He knows it’s wrong to think of Bruce as someone innocent, since none of this would’ve happened if he never met his dad Bruce in that ally. If he wasn’t a robin, he would’ve been dead somewhere buried in snow and he sometimes wishes that’s what happened to him.)
Red Hood has killed since, but after that disastrous attempt of murder (if you could call it that), he decided to have a break from Gotham by rescuing a guy he knew years ago that became a terrorist or something. That asshole’s name is Roy Harper.
Ever since, he really cleaned up his act. He got best friends (four rides or dies, which is more than he has ever had), a tropical island, a spaceship, and some money. He’s had some time thinking (which honestly is miraculous considering his brain was, at one point in time, a bloody pink goo).
After learning some therapy methods from Roy ("Hey man, I think you need my rehab therapy workbook more than me”) and encouragements from Artemis (“If you’re going to be strong, at least be fucking smart about it, idiot.”) he thought:
“Damn. I’m fucked up.”
(“Talia was right about that but I’m never going to acknowledge that she was right.”)
Starfire was doing things with titans. Roy was going through rehab with Waylon. (It was weird becoming first name basis with a crocodile-man that he fought almost every night only a few years ago.) Bizarro was trying to learn how to speak with Superboy (“Respect our club, dude.”) and Artemis was, well, she was doing something with her sword of hers at all times. So this, honestly, was the perfect time to do anything that could change his life because if he made a stupid mistake, his associates would not have to know about that. Bats also don’t know that he’s back, unless Bruce is pointedly ignoring him after the whole ordeal.
So he started trauma journaling.
(He’s not sure if he wants to call them traumas. Traumas feel like they should’ve impacted him. Traumas sounds like his life changed course due to them.
He’s not sure if without any of these events, he still would’ve become a good man.
But that’s not a thought he wants to dwell on.)
Trauma journaling gave him more structure than the journaling he used to do. He wrote down every single moment of his life that was upsetting to him.
Then, he wrote down how much of his belief in himself was his perception of himself and not the accurate portrayal of the said events that he went through and he came to one conclusion:
He was too used to violence and with time, he came to be desensitized to them.
Blood was now merely a red paint that covered lonely alleys to him, not something that keeps someone alive by coursing through their veins. His actions, no matter how small to him, have changed families, friends, communities, and schools.
He wants to prove to himself that he's different now. He only kills when necessary and he doesn't kill children. He vows to keep Crime Alley safe and he chooses to acknowledge that he fucked up and the world was unforgiving to him. He hasn't forgiven the world and the world hasn't forgiven him but the least he can do for Crime Alley, which has been forgotten by the public since his death, is to prove that he is a different person and he wants to make things right again.
He is not a fucking coward, unlike someone who refuses to acknowledge the world changing.
(He doesn't want to think about how a part of him still thinks about Bruce's opinion of his actions.
And how sometimes when he's stressed, the scar on his neck aches like it's been slashed through again.
And how more of his hair became whiter and how he avoided Gotham only to avoid the people he once called family, even if dysfunctional, and-
And how even then, he cannot blame the events that happened in Ethiopia, even though he desperately wants to.)
That's how Jason Todd, part-time crime lord (read as unemployed), part-time local anti-hero, and part-time Bruce Wayne's dead son, ends up at Gotham PAWZ Animal Shelter, once Sarah Lee's workplace.