Chapter Text
The scream of agony rang loud through the apartment complex as a woman gave birth to her baby on the dirty floor of her apartment's bathtub. With no medication to ease the pain, no house maid to help her, or even hold her hand. Just her boyfriend who was in and out of the room, trying in his own way to help but every time he would try he would have to leave in disgust, occasionally trying to comfort his girlfriend with alcohol.
It took only an hour for it all to be over, but the woman could have sworn it took years. Beads of sweat fell down her face, every small touch felt like a full punch and she was hyper aware of the pain all over her body. Her boyfriend held the wet screaming baby in his arms from the other end of the bathtub.
“It’s a boy, Sheila.” The man looked up at her, the baby wailing in his arms.
“God make it stop.” Sheila groaned, the sound of his screams making it feel like glass was in her ears.
“Don’t you want to hold him?” The man sounded almost uncomfortable moving the screaming infant to another arm not really knowing what to do with him.
Sheila watched him for a moment, she should want to hold him shouldn’t she? But she didn’t, she just wanted to go to sleep and get out of this disgusting bathtub.
“Yeah, hand him over.” She was exhausted.
The man handed her the baby, she winced while taking the red wrinkly thing. Almost as soon as the baby was in her arms he stopped crying. She couldn’t help but feel disgusted looking at the baby.
“Is this it?” She thought, “Is this the thing that every woman felt the need to stop me and swoon and tell me just how wonderful motherhood would be over? What joy should I be feeling when I wasn’t even able to give birth in the comfort of a hospital bed, but instead in the same place that I killed a cockroach only a few hours ago?” The disgust turned to almost disappointment. Her son was just born and she couldn’t feel happy, all she could manage was to look at her boyfriend who was sitting on the toilet lid watching over the two in the tub.
“Can I have a cigarette?” Her voice croaked a bit.
It was August 16th when Jason Peter Todd was born, and all his mother wanted was anything but him.
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Jason Todd grew up most of his life without his mother; as his father would put it, she walked out faster than Jason could suck his own thumb leaving him to his father Willis Todd, common crook and married to Catherine, who he never bothered to learn the last name of, not that it mattered since the two were legally married before Jason even knew she existed.
It was August 16th, and Jason was seven years old. He woke up before the sun had the chance to climb over the city's buildings and before the birds started to sing. He carefully crawled out of his bed, a small mattress on the floor of his bedroom, and tip toed his way out of the room, careful to not step on the creakiest of floor boards to the living room where he snuck to the window, fully opening it and climbed onto the fire escape. Closing the window slowly, he moved just enough out of the way where if one of his parents were to wake up they couldn’t see him. He reached down into a hole in the wall where he kept an old shoe box full of cash.
He learned long ago that if he left his cash out where it could be found or told his parents about it, it would almost immediately go missing and mom would always have a new needles. Jason might have been seven now, but he wasn’t dumb, he knew she would steal it, which is why he hid it on the fire escape. He had a spot under the floor at one point, but it was so loud to open that it was almost instantly found by his father, which led to an unpleasant punishment from him. His father hated it when Jason hid things from him, especially money; to him all Jason’s money was actually his money since he was the one raising him.
The air was still crisp and damp from the early morning, the sun casting the sky in a bright orange and yellow, with the very top of the sky a dark blue, where if they were anywhere but Gotham city, you could see the stars.
Jason pulled out ten dollars and quickly closed the box, sliding it into its hiding spot with ease quietly, climbing his way back into the apartment taking a good check of the living room. When he was only able to hear the sound of his fathers snores, he jumped back into the apartment, struggling for a moment to get the window down quietly. "Good, they didn't wake up. I still have time." He thought before grabbing his coat. It was a gift from one of his elderly neighbors Mrs. Gretta, from when she noticed him running around last fall without a coat. It was worn and old, it was a dark dirty tan color, not his favorite, but he wouldn’t say that to Mrs. Gretta.
He struggled to get his sleeve on for a moment before slipping on his shoes and, as quietly as he could, left his apartment. Making sure to hide his cash in his shoe, even a seven year old can be a victim in Park Row or as locals called it, Crime Alley.
Jason made his way down the many flights of stairs, ignoring the bugs that were yet to be scared off by the traffic of morning life, and made his way past the couple of older men who he could only guess were working at the fish canning factory from the smell of them. Skipping down the street, not allowing himself to get distracted by things on the sidewalk, like an especially strange leaf, or cool rock.
“ No, I have to stay focused and get there in time.” He thought and continued his trek.
After almost two blocks of walking, the sun was now almost fully up, the sky now light blue behind the near constant clouds that shrouded the city, and the day was warming up. He was in front of the corner store, bars on the windows and an overflowing cigarette disposal bin full of random trash that wasn’t cigarettes. He marched his way into the store, not yet tall enough to properly use the door handle. Trying his best not to seem like he was struggling to open the heavy glass door he heaved it open to be greeted by the bell on the frame letting out a loud, Ding, announcing his presence.
“That better be you twerp!” A hard gravelly voice announced from behind the counter.
“You can’t call me twerp anymore Winny! I’m seven now!” He argued puffing his chest out trying to seem bigger.
“Yeah yeah, now we had a deal, you got the money?” A larger man leaned over the counter looking down at the kid from the other side of the counter. Winny was a scruffy and dirty looking man. Constantly wearing a stained white tank top as his only shirt despite the cold weather, and a fat cigar in his teeth. When Jason thought about it he didn’t think he had ever actually seen him without one.
He nodded sitting down on the slightly sticky unwashed floor to pull his shoe off grabbing the ten dollars and handed it to him. Typically, he would ask to see what he wanted first, that's what his dad taught him to do, but Winny always delivered on his promises when you paid him.
“Good to see you still using that trick I taught ya kid. Wait here a second.” The older man laughed something wet, having to take the cigar out of his teeth. He opened the door that was behind the counter and into a room with blue light.
He said to him once that he kept all his filing cabinets and restocking stuff back there but Jason wasn’t allowed back there. It wasn’t long until he came back with an ice cream cone, a real one, the one that was made out of a thin waffle, with one huge scoop of strawberry ice cream on it.
“Here you go kid, happy birthday.” Winny said, reaching over the counter to hand it to him, using his free hand to ruffle Jason's already matted hair.
Jason eagerly took hold of the cone, holding it close and protective. There wasn’t an ice cream shop for another five blocks, well out of Crime Alley, the only ice cream they got were the prepackaged ice cream characters with the gumball eyes or cheaply made popsicles that were always stuck to the bag from thawing out and being refrozen.
Every year since Jason met Winny he would give him ten bucks on his birthday and he would go into the nice neighborhood just to buy Jason a strawberry ice cream on a waffle cone, he looked forward to it every year. He held the cone with both hands smiling and sitting behind the counter enjoying the treat while Winny started to deal with daily traffic.