Archive of Our Own

You left a dent inside my soul, 

(We can’t stay forever)

I’m on edge, where do I go? 

What comes after me? 

(We can’t stay forever) 

Jason was eight years old the first time he smoked. 

It had made his eyes water and his throat sting, his dad’s laughter echoing in the background. He’d forced the smoke into Jason’s mouth, and Willis Todd was nothing if not mean. Got his kicks watching his eight year old son splutter as smoke billowed out of his mouth. For years before that night, Willis had made a routine of putting his cigarettes out on whatever part of Jason was in reach. 

That night his mother had scooped him up into her shaking arms, and sat with him until he could breathe without his throat burning. She grabbed a dirty rag and made an attempt to clean up the burns his dad had left behind, but they both knew it wouldn’t do much. It never did. But infection was just as likely to kill him as everything else in Crime Alley, so doing this felt like he was doing something in the least. Like he wasn’t just letting it happen. 

Jason was fifteen years old the last time he smoked. 

It was a familiar taste and a welcome release. Willis Todd had been dead for years, but some things time can’t erase, beyond the circle burns on the back of his neck. He snuck out to the roof to smoke, both Bruce and Alfred hated it. He’d been terrified the first time Bruce caught him smoking. Now he wished Bruce was coming to catch him now. Bruce had kicked him out, just like he had Dickhead all those years ago and while Jason had known it wouldn’t last forever, he hadn’t thought it would end so soon. 

He’d never been able to kick the habit, because smoking meant the cigarettes weren’t only for burning his skin and haunting his dreams. If he smoked then it made it his own. Not Willis, and not anybody else. The crowbar cracks him open, and in a sadistic way the blood covering his arms warms him up. Comforts him. The cement floor of the warehouse beneath him is cold and harsh and looking up he can’t help but think this is always how it was going to end. Just another Crime Alley kid dead in an abandoned warehouse, happened twice a week. He was stupid for thinking he’d ever be anything more. He was an idiot for believing Robin gives me magic. Shivers racked his body as he pushed Sheila towards the exit on legs that could barely hold his weight. It’s the rubble, the last thing he sees. Smoke burns his lungs for the first time since he was eight years old, and Jason Todd dies with the taste of nicotine on his tongue. 

Jason was seventeen years old and nicotine painted his tongue. 

Somehow the taste of Nicotine doesn’t send him back to warehouses and crowbars. Perhaps that’s why he leans back into it like he’d never stopped. Talia hadn’t commented on all the packets he brought back, but he did make a point to stuff them somewhere Damian would never find them. It’s an odd thing to send him so completely spiralling, but it’s the first glimpse of home he’s had. It reminds him of the smell in the city when it was about to rain, and how that would mix with smoke. It reminds him of Alfred’s disapproval everytime he smelt the nicotine on him, of Bruce’s silent judgement and the way Dick would refuse to meet his eyes. He knows logically that it hadn’t only ever been that, but it’s far easier to remember the hurt than it is to remember the good, however brief it had been. The cigarette is all he has now, and he isn’t going to throw that away. 

For the first time it isn’t about Willis Todd, and the power of that more than anything is what knocks Jason off his feet. The true reclaiming of something that had haunted him his entire life is more than he expected. Willis is an old ghost, overshadowed and hidden but still there nonetheless. Somehow the nicotine makes that feel a little less daunting. Even though those same cigarette burns from when he was eight mark his skin now, it doesn’t feel as all encompassing as it once had. He doesn’t recognise himself in the mirror, but the scars and the smoke are something so intimately familiar that it tethers Jason down to earth. He twists the cigarette between his fingers, and wonders if maybe he can reclaim more than just a box of smokes. 

Jason is eighteen when he smokes in Gotham again. 

Stepping into Gotham knocks all the air from his lungs. It was mostly the same as he remembered it, from the polluted harbour to the overarching sky rises. It’s a city full of ghosts, he’d known that for a long time, but coming back after the last few years and facing it, is something completely different. A part of him longs for the manor, another the condemned apartment in the middle of crime alley. For a moment he’s not sure why he came back, but then news about the newest Arkham breakout echoes through the streets and he knows . It’s gut-wrenching, the knowledge that his death hadn’t made a fucking difference displayed so clearly. He’d known it for a long time now, but standing in Gotham makes it something else entirely. A new bird dances on the horizon, no mind paid to the one left behind to die with his broken wings. 

He visits his grave. His grave, that isn’t even in the Wayne family plot, and Bruce’s last words to him echo in his mind. ‘Your not my son’. What a fucking idiot, believing he finally had something worthwhile. Believing that he had a real, proper family. Now, he knew that family was Catherine Todd and her glazed over eyes. Family was a little boy with too green eyes and a too familiar face. Family was Willis Todd and his fucking cigarettes . Family was six feet underground and too far out of reach. For a little while he’d thought it could be Bruce and Alfred, and even Dick towards the end there. The grave is covered in grime, only dead flowers around it. The grave, next to a headstone that reads ‘Sheila Haywood’ made it true in a way no words ever could. He can’t help but feel bad for the kid that had died in that warehouse, resigned to the knowledge that no one was coming. No one would ever come. No one had ever come. He looks at it one last time, before heading out the rusted gates. No one had ever saved Jason, but maybe there was still one thing he could do for himself. 

It’s raining the next time Jason smokes. 

“I can’t believe you set this whole thing up for little old me” The Joker chirps, smiling with blood-coated teeth, not concerned at all with the fact his hostages had been let loose.

“I’ve been wanting to meet you Hood, and I have a feeling you’ve been wanting to meet me too. I mean the name, it just speaks for itself doesn't it?” He cackles, like nails down a chalkboard, a laugh that had echoed in Jason’s head for years now. One that never stopped .

“It was never about you” Jason snarls, and before the Joker can even open his mouth to speak he pulls the trigger.

It’s a quiet affair. A single bullet and the laughter that never stopped ringing in his head finally went quiet. One single second, and the end of years of terror. Where the Joker had been loud and attention grabbing, his death had been subdued and menial. It’s reclaiming in a way he never imagined. The Joker dies without a smile on his face, and that more than anything feels like justice. The Joker dies like any other man, messy and quick and final. He may have had his graveyards and his broken wings, but the Joker would never have his death. That belonged to Jason. 

“It was never about him” he spits, kicking the corpse and letting the relief flood through him at the knowledge that it’s true. That he’d finally fucking done it. 

“It was never about him” and this time it finally feels true. 

Jason kills the Joker with nicotine in his teeth, and the green finally recedes. The rage falls quiet and maybe this is all he ever needed. His boogeyman in the ground. He leaves a crowbar next to the body, a tribute to the boy who finally got his revenge. He waits until the body is cold, and puts a few rounds of bullets in his head to be sure, before he leaves. A cigarette dangles between his teeth, because it was Jason Todd that killed the Joker, not the red hood. He leaves the Joker cold and rotting on the floor of a warehouse. When he looks back, a ghost in a bloodstained red and green suit waves at him, a smoke between his fingers. He watches the ghost flicker out of sight, and the weight in his chest that had been there since he crawled out of his own grave finally recedes. 

Jason is eighteen years old, the Joker is dead, and he smokes . 

Smoke curls out of his bloody teeth and he feels like he can breathe. He almost wants to leave, step out of this cursed city and never look back, but that was never going to work. He’d always come back, he’d already proved that.  He looks in the mirror, at the J carved into his cheek and for once doesn't feel like throwing up at the sight of it. 

Jason is eighteen years old, and Robin continues to soar.

Jason is nineteen years old, and Gotham hasn’t changed a bit.

It’s different, without the shadow of the Joker hanging over his head. He feels like he’s fifteen again, head stuck in a book and making stupid jokes to get Bruce to laugh. He goes past his old library. Even after moving into the manor, he never had been able to give it up. It had raised him as much as the rest of the streets of Crime Alley had. His first escape, one he’d held onto with tight fists until he breathed one last rattling breath on the cold floor of that stupid warehouse. He never did get to read Frankenstein . 

An old watch sits heavy in his pocket, no longer cracked and split open. 

( Unlike him) 

Slowly the streets change, like a highlight reel of his greatest hits. His motorbike rumbles through the built up streets, and for a moment he’s fourteen, and Dick is letting him on the back of his bike. It was the only time he ever did, but Jason never forgot. And fuck did he wish he could. Would make all of this easier. Still, he knew it wasn’t coming back, because that wasn’t how it worked. He couldn’t come back, not really. He could do this, but nothing more ever again. 

There’s a whole new flock. He’d watched them a few times now, hiding just far enough away to not be spotted. Big bird had a bunch of chicks. Robin. Spoiler. Black Bat. Red Robin. Signal. There’s a part of him that’s so fucking angry. A part of him that wants to storm up and yell at Dick until he’s deaf. There’s five kids running around Gotham’s rooftops. There’s five kids in suits highlighting the skyline. He wants to scream. 

Turns out one dead bird wasn’t enough. 

His death wasn’t enough to make a lick of difference. 

He wasn’t enough. 

Really, that’s what hurts the most. Beyond not killing the Joker. Beyond putting him in a random graveyard. Beyond the erasure of the fact that there was ever a second Robin between the first and the third. Beyond the fact that he’d died as just another caught in the crossfire between the Joker and Batman. Beyond all the terror and bloodshed and nights waking in a cold sweat, another kid in the suit is the final punch to the gut. It knocks the air from his lungs, and it makes him mad. Fire licks at his skin, flashing red numbers dance across his vision and fuck, he never really left that fucking warehouse, did he? Because he was killed, and they didn’t even wait six months to shove somebody new into the suit. Didn’t wait to keep sending kids out to die. 

Jason hadn’t wanted to believe it, hadn’t really, not until he tailed Batman and Robin (Tim Drake) on patrol. He watched them, listened to Bruce giving him tips and information. He’d watched them all night, well, until Bruce said the one thing he could to shatter any belief Jason still held in him, which was in tatters already. 

“Don’t run in head first, take time to stake out the place first, don’t make the mistakes Robin did”

“Don’t get too angry, control yourself, don’t be like Robin”

“Stay away from any of the higher level Arkham breakouts, don’t get in over your head and get yourself killed. Don’t be like Robin”

“You’ve got to listen to me Robin, that’s how Jason died!”

Jason spends the next five minutes emptying his stomach in the nearest dumpster. Of all the things. Of all the memories Bruce could share. Of all the stories. Of all the legacies he could give him. The voice of his twelve year old self echoes in his mind, telling him not to believe Bruce. Turns out he never fucking should’ve. 

A cautionary fucking tale. Just a cautionary fucking tale. 

He’s wrong . Jason listened. He never went after anybody Bruce told him not to. He was bright and he was funny and he jumped around saying “Robin gives me magic”. He had been good. He had been smart. He made Bruce laugh. He had done everything he was meant to do. He hadn’t even gone after the Joker . He had never even tried to go after the Joker. He never wanted to. Then Sheila had put a gun to his head, the Joker had pulled out a crowbar, and well, the story was already written from there. 

Nothing more than a bird with broken wings. Maybe he never had been in the first place. 

The manor is nothing like how he expects it to be. He can see Dick’s bike parked out the front, which at least some things don’t change. Most of it looks the same actually. It’s more off-putting than he thought it would be. How much has changed, and how much hasn’t. Seemed his death really didn’t make a difference at all. There is one notable difference though, one Jason can’t look past. The Manor is bright. And it’s that, that pushes him over the edge and has him punching a code into the gate that he’d long since hoped to forget. It still works, and silently the gates swing open. Seems Bruce was a little more sentimental then he’d given him credit for. He stays carefully out of view of the camera’s, even though there’s not much reason for a ghost to hide. 

Dick’s bike isn’t alone. There’s two others next to it, one red and one yellow. There’s laughter echoing so loudly he can hear it from outside. There’s lights around the outside, illuminating Alfred’s spotless garden. It looks more like a home than it ever had when Jason had been the one running through those halls. The curtains are open wide on the windows, and he can faintly make out the sound of a movie playing inside. Snow covers the ground, trickling down softly as Jason manages his first proper look inside. He looks, and he can’t fight down the way his throat burns at the sight. 

There’s so many people.  

Alfred’s holding a tray of steaming mugs, looking exasperatedly fond at the group scattered around the room. Dick is there, front and centre like he’d always been. He’s shining like the golden boy Jason had always sneered at him for being, but he can’t help but notice it’s the first time he’s seen him look truly happy. He looks lighter than any image his memories can scrounge up, and it makes him fond in a way he’d thought had died on the floor of that warehouse. Tim’s not far behind, mug in his hand and sharp blue eyes scanning the room as he laughs. There’s two girls looking over his shoulder, ones he recognises as Stephanie and Cassandra. And fuck if he can’t help but think about all those kids in the Alley that never made it out, how good it is that at least they’ve got this. There’s another kid, Duke, the newest, who's hanging further back with a slight shadow over his expression, one Jason recognises all too well. He takes a mug from Alfred, sitting next to Bruce on the lounge and laughing when he tries to ruffle his hair, the tension bleeding from his shoulders.

It’s the last person his eyes land on, that makes him freeze. 

Because that’s Damian . Little Dami who’d trotted around with a sword too big for his body and cried when anybody tried to help. Little Dami, who’d sat on his lap as he recited stories he could only half remember. Dami who had made the pit fade. Dami, who had cried every time Jason took a punishment meant for him. Dami, who’s hand was so small it could barely get around three of his fingers when he tried to cling to Jason. Dami, who Jason had raised from the moment he woke up screaming and Dami had been the only one who could get close. Dami who had been left behind when Talia had sent him back to Gotham. Dami who he hadn’t seen in years . 

Some time in the last few years since he’d seen him, the kid had gone and grown up on him. He was smiling, it was small and reserved but bright nonetheless. He looked happy . He looked free in a way the League had tried to smother. He looked like he was home . He’d gotten out and he found a home and Jason couldn’t be fucking prouder of the kid. He’d done it, he’d made it, and if this is what came from Jason leaving? Well then he could live with it. 

Even if his chest ached at the idea of walking away, of leaving Dami again, he knows it’s the only way Dami gets to keep this. He can leave, if it means Dami will live and thrive and be so much better than he ever got the chance to be. 

It’s a home now. When Jason had entered its halls, Wayne Manor had been little more than a haunted house. A clock with hands that didn’t move, ghosts lingering around every corner, and the echo of fights lasting late into the night. It had been cold and big and nothing he could ever truly settle with. There was too much space, too much silence and someone had always been fighting. Now it’s a polar opposite to that, everyone gathered around with mugs in their hands watching a movie on TV as they laugh and lean into one another. And he knows, god does he know that it wouldn’t always be this. Bruce was too stubborn and too emotionally stunted for things to always be like this. He’d fumble, but somehow it didn’t seem like it would be the death sentence it had been all those years ago. 

He’d never seen so many presents under a Christmas tree before. 

After forty years, the ghosts had finally left and Jason couldn’t bring it upon himself to change that.

He was simply one of the ghosts now, left watching through windows with snow in his hair instead of curled near the fire with the rest. He didn’t get the hot chocolate and the hair ruffles. He didn’t get the gentle nudges and friendly laughter. He was a ghost, holding a crowbar and covered in blood. The lost son. The cautionary tale. But maybe that didn’t need to change. Maybe Jason Todd never had to be anything more than a mouldy headstone ever again. He looks one last time, and he can’t stop the smile that paints his face. 

They’re warm and laughing and home . They are a family, they’re whole , and who is he to shatter that? 

If being little more than a ghost only seen in dusted over pictures and books nobody reads is what gives these kids this, then he can live with it. If walking away means these kids get to still laugh like that, then he can leave with a smile on his face. If being a cautionary tale means these kids keep getting nights like this, warm and safe and home, then Jason can wear it on the chin. He hadn’t thought it’d be this easy to let go, but one look at Damian laughing with the others, at him smiling at Tim , and he’d never made an easier choice. 

Never to be anything more than the stain on the family portrait ever again. 

It wasn’t his story anymore. 

Still, he’s a sentimental bastard, so he has got one last parting gift before drifting away to be nothing more than a glimpse in flickering light. He trudges through the snow with a purpose, his boots tracking a path he’s long since had memorised. It’s nostalgic, a path weaved by a boy in a red and green costume, one that danced over rooftops crowing ‘Robin gives me magic’. For the first time since he came back, the memory doesn’t immediately send his vision green. Maybe this whole goodbye thing is doing something for him too. 

It’s a little like closure, stepping into the batcave again. It’s also a little like stepping back in time, except there wasn’t this many suits around or this many dedicated weapons. It certainly hadn’t been this when he used to frequent it. It’s amazing how alive the dreary cave looks with brightly coloured suits sprawled over the place and different colour coded equipment covering it. Still, it’s not long before something in particular draws his attention, and knocks the breath from his lungs. 

His Robin suit, one he’d thought he’d never see again, stands proudly in front of him. It’s in a glass case, displayed against a wall in clear view from almost all parts of the cave, or at least all the parts he remembers. The suit is a punch to the gut, but it’s the inscription beyond it all that shatters him. He’d known. Fuck, he’d know Bruce was marketing him as a cautionary tale. He knew he’d become nothing more than a warning sign to any of them that tried to stray too far from the nest. He knew . That doesn’t change what it’s like to actually read his memorial inscription, or the way it rips his heart out. 

‘A good soldier’

As if that wasn’t the biggest fucking mockery of his life. His life, his death, his legacy reduced down to nothing but a good fucking soldier. Bruce probably never even spoke about him. He knew he’d never be part of all this again, that his space upstairs had long since faded, but none of it had stung quite like this does. He’d thought maybe his memory could be nice, at least, even if nothing else in or about his life had ever been. He’d thought maybe his memory could still matter, beyond a warning sign. He’d thought he’d been more to Bruce , more to Dick , more to Alfred than a disobedient soldier who’d gotten himself killed. Maybe he should’ve already known, considering he was buried next to Sheila Fucking Haywood. Jason Todd, the good soldier. What a fucking legacy . 

Still he walks over, placing the small, neatly wrapped box on the bottom of the case resting against the glass. It’s more fitting then he could’ve hoped for. It’s not an olive branch, and it’s certainly not an attempt at coming back. As far as they know Jason is six feet underground, and he’d prefer it left that way. It’s an ode to himself really, in the end. It’s the present he never got to give. It’s the project he’d only just managed to finish before he died. It had lost its way for a little while, but it had always been meant to come back, and now it finally had. He’d been so excited to finally give it to Bruce, to finally finish it after so long. He hadn’t quite expected the years that would get in the way, but they’d made it all the same. It was the last link, one last loose thread and after all this time, he’d finally managed to stitch it up. 

Jason leaves, and somehow he feels lighter than he has in years. It's not the goodbye he’d intended for, and it’s not the one he’d hoped for either, but it’s enough. They’d healed and come together and made a family sometime while he was gone, and that was more than any made up confrontation in Jason’s mind. It’s fucking freezing, the wind biting even through his leather jacket, and it’s been four years. Four long fucking years, where he’d ended up back in Gotham because nobody ever really left this city. He’d never truly managed to leave it behind, despite his best efforts. Seven years since Bruce had picked him up off the street, but somehow it didn’t feel like anything had changed. Seven years of fighting, laughter, death and a resurrection, and still nothing changed. He’d lived up to every expectation people had of him. Nothing more than a kid with a tire iron, in the end. 

Jason is nineteen, nicotine curling around his teeth as he finally walks away from the home that was never his to haunt. 

I’ve dealt with my ghosts

And I’ve faced all my demons

Finally content with a past I regret

Gotham is. 

There’s no true way to encapsulate everything it is, far more feeling and impressionistic than words could ever hope to express. It’s a time capsule, memories and trinkets from a time long since passed still buried deep within the cracks of the city. It thrummed through his veins, dancing through his eyes and brushing over his skin. His scars run as deep as the ones lining the streets, and that’s not something he’d ever been able to forget. 

It’s something entirely different however, to see all those scars displayed back at him. A long, jagged Y shaped scar covers his chest and torso. An autopsy scar. There’s a scar through his right eye, starting in his eyebrow and going down to his cheek. His eye had been healed by the pit, but the scars hadn’t. Part of him wondered if that was because they were already as healed as they would ever be. There’s a j carved into the left side of his face, jagged and harsh and completely covering the whole side of his face. It starts at the corner of his mouth, goes up and finishes at the base of his ear. He could remember every second of when the Joker had done it. He remembered his eye had gone blind by then, remembered how his faith in Batman had been hanging by a thread. A taut, fraying thread that snapped as the red numbers counted down for a final time. 

Somehow, it’s all the smaller scars littered between that haunt him the most. The burn on the back of his neck, the first time a cigarette had been put out on his skin, but far from the last. A long, thin line on his bicep from when he was seven and some guy he was robbing got a lucky swipe in. A whole lifetime was mapped out by his scars, and well, Jason couldn’t find it in himself to resent that. He would never be that tiny kid with a tire iron again, but he lived on anyway. 

The deepest scars live on in the form of a run down apartment in the middle of crime alley, an apartment in a building that had no right to still be standing. It looks the same, like even though it was close to ten years ago now, not a single thing had changed. It’s a different type of hurt, seeing it now. He still knows every curve and every dent like the back of his hand. He knew every spot that he’d bled in this apartment. It’s reminded that some things would only ever be haunted. The phantom of memories he’d long since buried danced across the room. Flashes of his mum's shaky smile and the smell of his dads cigarettes echo through his mind. It’s a faded, dull ache, aged in a way the other things have yet to be given the chance to. 

A part of him almost liked his scars, the unhealed and rough edges to his skin, a reminder that he’d made it out. 

A reminder that he was still alive. 

The apartment is like a punch to the gut. It felt like a lifetime ago that he had existed almost solely inside these walls. It had been a lifetime. There’s a lot of chips in the paint and cracks in the walls, more that can’t be seen than ones that can. Memories of his mother’s dealers, their harsh words and harsher fists. He remembered the screaming. He remembers the fighting. He remembered being sent to get his dads cigarettes with glass embedded in his heels. He remembered the smell of the beer his dad used to drink. The smell. He remembered how his mum's eyes would look when she was high, but when she wasn’t is foggy. He remembered how calloused his dads fist had been. He remembered having to hold his mother up so she didn’t drown in her own vomit. He remembered the day his dad was sent to prison. He remembered the smile on his mum's face when she went cold, lost to the last high she’d ever be able to chase. A high she’s never come back down from. 

It had left Jason to the cold, dark earth. Ten and alone and only a pack of smokes to his name, he’d been left to try carve out his place in the world. The alleys were harsh but the corners were harsher, and a small mercy came from the fact he knew these streets like the back of his hand. He’d fought in these streets, bled in them. It’s almost worse, how easy he finds it. He was raised by harsh hands and dark streets and bitten and bruised and burnt until he greeted everything with a snarl on his lips, but the anger was the only thing that always stood by his side. He didn't know how to be anything but skittish and defensive and mean. He hadn’t had a choice. 

To this day, anger is still the easiest language to understand. It comes as easy as breathing, the fighting. It’s natural, the snarl on his lips and the bite in his words. He’d been softening slightly, towards the end. The Garzonas happened every worry he’d had since B had taken him had been proven right. Even B had believed he was nothing more than a violent street rat. He’d done his fucking best to temper it down, and to cling to the magic that swinging between building and saving people and being robin gave. It hadn’t been enough, and Robin was gone, a new little birdy in place of the old and the anger is all that’s left. It thrums through his veins, curling under his skin like the embrace of an old friend.  

An anger that now burned green instead of red. 

It feels like moving on, closing the apartment door behind him. He never got to say goodbye, not really, not before. He never got to make his peace with it all. Make his peace with the needles and the bloody knuckles and the glass in the back of his heel. Now, finally saying goodbye to something that had held onto him for so long, it feels like relief. It could all just be scar tissue now. The memories and all the parts of his soul that had been carved out, it was all scarred over now. It was stiff and tight and sometimes it ached with the phantom of injuries long ago, but it wasn’t raw anymore. It wasn’t open and bleeding and draining. It was healed, in as much as it ever would be. All that’s left of his entire life is the scar tissue. 

The lights make the city look pretty. They covered up all the dirty and ugly parts of the city. Snow covers the rooftops, and the cold biting at him through his Kevlar is grounding. It tethers him down in a way too few things do these days. He’d always loved the city like this. He grapples between buildings, letting his attention drift to the decorated trees and garish lights hanging off every corner. The chatter and excitement of the city dances off his skin in a way it hasn’t since he was fifteen. It propels him forward, the spark of magic that had long since been laid to rest waking once more. Gotham had watched him go, and now she welcomed him back with open arms. She would always welcome him back. 

Perhaps that’s why he makes the call. 

“Jason, I was beginning to think you wouldn’t call” Talia’s bored drawl comes through the speaker, but she doesn’t sound annoyed.

“Yeah, I just had a few thing left to do” 

“I saw the news, you’ve been busy”

“It should’ve been done long time ago”

“I’m not disagreeing with you Habibi, I was simply surprised by the manner you went about it”

“He didn’t deserve the fanfare, to be made a spectacle of. He would’ve enjoyed that. He died alone, with no witness and no final show. He got everything else Thalia, I wasn’t about to let him have his death too”

“You’ve grown Jason”

“Suppose it was bound to happen. Though I don’t think you called me just to talk about the clown”

“Do you remember the mission I told you about, in Budapest?”

“Yeah, why?”

“It has yet to be assigned. It’s yours, if you want it” 

“How long until I’d have to go?”

“I will have a jet in Gotham by tomorrow”

“Alright, I’ll do it. I just have one last thing left to do”

“I’ll see you soon Habibi” 

There’s something so raw and soul-searching about the memories. About the travel through the different times he existed in and the fragments of him that would only ever exist to that time. He was a patchwork quilt of half-remembered moments and all the people he’d ever met. He wasn’t the person he had been the night that warehouse blew up. He’d come out of that with scars covering his face, unnatural green eyes and burning anger that threaten to consume everything in its path. He wasn’t not who he was. In a way, the him that had died in that warehouse had never crawled out of the grave. There was a part of him forever frozen in time, a part of him that never made it out of that warehouse. A part of him belonged to the cold floor and the smoke seizing his lungs and the burn of the explosion. He’d never get back the blood he spilt on that floor. Maybe he didn’t need to. 

Maybe he never had to be that person again.

The graveyard is quiet, but he hadn’t expected it to be busy. The old gate groans and creaks as he nudges it open, the coating of snow covering it falling loose. It had been a year since he came here, years since he’d dug his way out of the ground, but somehow it still feels like the first time he’s seeing it. It feels like he’s finally actually seeing it, no vision tainted green and that fucking laughter was no longer echoing in his ears. There’s two headstones next to each other, already grown over with moss and weathered away, in worse disrepair than they had been just twelve months ago, but the names inscribed in the stones are still visible. 

Jason Todd. Sheila Haywood. 

Fuck he hated her. She would never, could never come close to the mother Catherine had been. If he had to be buried next to anyone, he would’ve wanted it to be her. It’s clear Bruce hadn’t bothered investigating, but he knew that already. Seems he didn’t bother to visit much either, there’s no evidence that anyone ever did. There’s not even dead flowers, which would at least mean someone had visited. There’s nothing at all. He is almost as relieved as he is hurt.

Stopping in front of Sheila’s grave, Jason takes a moment to breathe. 

He’s still not sure how he feels about her, really. He’d been devastated when it happened, when she’d turned and held the gun to his head, but he also hadn’t been all that optimistic about it in the first place. He’d thought maybe she’d care. Maybe he should’ve just cut his losses after what Bruce said, but he never had been good at walking away. That was one thing that had never changed. He hated her for what she did, but she didn’t hurt in the way the others did. She didn’t hurt the way Bruce’s dismissal and Alfred’s disappointment and Dick’s anger and his mother’s glazed over eyes did. He didn’t care about her enough for it to hold a candle to the others. In the end he’d barely known her, yet she’d still been able to wreck him. She had only been his biological mother, that was true. She had been the one to get him killed, that’s also true. He’s begun to realise that everything is much more nuanced than simply anger or indifference. 

So, for the child she put in the ground, he lets the bar in his hand swing at the stone. Crack after crack after fucking crack until it’s nothing but rubble at his feet. For the kid that just wanted someone to choose him. For the kid that had thought that this would maybe be his chance. For the kid that had thought he could be more. For the kid that believed in magic, he raises the headstone to rubble. She doesn’t deserve to be remembered, and certainly not intertwined with himself. Then again, since when had his legacy been at all like he wanted it to be? 

It’s hard because he knows he’ll carry it forever. It’s carved into his soul, the pain and the blood and the tears. It’s not something time can make fade, that he’s sure of. But maybe it doesn’t have to be a death sentence any longer. Maybe it doesn’t have to be the noose around his neck. He’s on the edge of something, and there’s only two ways this can go. He didn’t want to make a wrong choice again, not when the last one ended with a Bataarang in his neck. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to stitch himself back together this time. 

Jason lets the pipe hit the ground, with tears on his face and a smile on his lips. He carried the blame and the weight of his parents for far too long. He’d been born with anger in his veins and nicotine in his blood. He’d always been a fighter, he’d never been anything more than a fighter. He’d had calloused knuckles and bloody teeth since he was eight years old. Stripped bare and laid raw, that was him. He’d always be his Crime Alley accent, and his anger and his mum's smiles. He’d be his dads cigarettes and the whine of his old dog and the blurred out face in the family portraits. He had become the voice they couldn’t remember quite right anymore, a face slowly going fuzzy as time went on. He’d always be the kid that died, to them. He’d always be what they lost.

He smiles, and he knows he’d look insane to anyone walking past, but he smiles because he finally gets it. He finally can. He loved Bruce, he’d loved him before he died and he loved him now. He loved him like he loved Catherine. He found he couldn’t quite remember how Bruce sounded, or how he’d smile. He couldn’t remember much at all. But he had loved him, and he’d had his time. He’d gotten his glory years in the sun, burning brighter and faster than anyone could’ve guessed. And so he’d burnt out, gone down in a spectacular crash of flames and screams. A little robin straying too far from the nest. It hadn’t been his fault. He knew that now. He knew sometimes a tragedy was nothing more than a fucking tragedy, and no amount of blame could change anything. He’d always thought of Icarus as a tragedy . 

It’s the goodbye he never got to say, as the sun begins to rise over Gotham. 

He’d done his time. He’d been living in the past, letting it direct him like a puppet on a string. He’d shouldered the blame for something that wasn’t his fault in the first place. He’d watched as he was paraded as a cautionary tale, his life twisted into a warning sign for every kid to come after him and put on the suit. He wore the past like branding, every scar and every wound etched across his skin, because the pit didn’t erase anything. It healed, but it didn’t erase. Robin wasn’t his anymore, it hadn’t been for a long time, if it had ever really been his in the first place. He was finally moving on. 

He wasn’t sure falling back to the League was the right choice, but then again he’d never been sure. He didn’t think it would last, he’d be more surprised if it did, but he was willing to wait and see. His bridges had been burnt and his flame put out a long time ago. He was the memory of a fifteen year old kid that believed in magic, even through his nicotine stained teeth. He was a ghost, the missing face in every photo and the empty seat at the table. Coming back from the dead didn’t change that. Sometimes it’s just as easy to mourn the living. Sometimes that space grows smaller as time grows longer and suddenly it’s not the gaping hole it used to be. Sometimes life keeps going. 

He can’t help but think of the manor, full and lively and home in a way it had never been when he’d graced its halls. There was a family now, after so long. Full and happy and bright. Maybe he’d done everything he was supposed to. Maybe he was always meant to die. Maybe that was okay, because it meant little Timbit from next door had gone charging through the manor gates and started something. He’d made a home, and that was something Jason could salute. Tim had been a pretty good Robin after all, even if it had taken him some time to see that. Even if he’d blamed him for things that were never on him. 

Perhaps that’s the hardest part of it all, the truth. The knowledge that there had been happiness in between the fights and the screaming and all the harsh words spat in anger. Jason had always known how to make his words cut, just like he knew how to turn his fist to make it hurt. He’d always been good at making people hurt. All snarling anger and biting remarks. He’d been prickly and defensive and always prepared for a fight. The truth was he hadn’t been some golden child. The alley had left him with a laundry list of issues long before a clown started haunting his dreams. He’d never been easy. But despite that, he’d thought he’d been good too, for a little while there. He’d made Bruce laugh, and helped Alfie in the kitchen and practiced every trick he could so he could make Dick proud. 

He may not have been Dick Grayson , but maybe he’d been something pretty good all on his own.

Maybe he’d done enough. 

Maybe it had always been enough. 

There’s only room for the truth now. It’s the only thing he’s got the energy left for. The only truth he knows is that it wasn’t his fault. No matter what any of them said, only he knew the truth of what he went down in that warehouse. Only he knew the truth of his death, and maybe he was the only one that needed to. He was done haunting, and he was done waiting for something that was never going to change. A hero that was never going to come. He’d saved himself, he’d always saved himself. Now, he was doing it again. He’d given Bruce another chance to make his choice, and he had, and once again it had led to Jason bleeding out on the floor of a blown up building. 

He also knows Bruce hasn’t told anyone he’s alive. It’s as relieving as much as it is infuriating. A part of him wants to see their reactions, but another, stronger part of him replays the image of everyone inside the manor and he knows. Knows that once again, he’s the one who’s going to walk away. The Bruce he’d known, the Bruce that had brought him in off the streets was not the same as the one under the cowl now. He’d changed, and in one way it almost seemed for the better. In another, well, the scar along his neck is still angry and raised and pulling at his skin. Bruce had moved on, he’d made a family and worked out how to live beyond Jason, just like he always knew he would. Jason had never doubted that Bruce would move on if he left, but he just hadn't expected it to sting quite this much. He didn’t think Bruce would completely leave him behind, nothing more than a glass case collecting dust. There was a difference, he had found, between moving on and leaving something behind. It wasn’t something he thought he’d be able to forgive Bruce for, and he thought he was allowed his anger at that in the least. 

He knew, deep in his bones he knew he’d be back. Maybe months, maybe years. He wasn’t sure yet, but he knew he’d be back. The city is as a part of him as the scars on his body and the blood in his veins. A part of him would always be tied to it. But he needed to get his head on straight now that the green had receded, and he couldn’t do that here, with ghosts of the past lurking round every corner. It wouldn’t get better, and he was aware enough to recognise that at least. 

He wouldn’t be gone long, only a moment really . 

He’d made it as far as the drive away, but he wasn’t ready to step through the door yet. Not when he was only just finding his feet, and not when they all seemed like they had finally settled. The city looked exactly the fucking same, the Manor looked the same, but everything had changed. He was the chip in the paint, the crack in the wall and stain on the old photos. Always there, but never really. 

Smoke curls from his mouth, nicotine dancing on his tongue as Jason bids one last farewell to the city that had seen him live and die. Talia’s jet would be here soon. 

For a long time he’d resented everything that came after him. Now, rose stained glasses shattered on the floor and nicotine in his teeth, he lets it go. Because it wasn’t about him, in the end. None of it had ever been about him. None of it ever would be again. Now there were Christmas lights and hot chocolates and nights around the fire, and fuck, how could he try and change that? 

Jason had his ending, his story was written and the book slammed shut. It wasn’t his story anymore, and maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it’s enough. Maybe he’d finally get the chance to read frankenstein. 

Jason is nineteen when he leaves again, cigarette in his teeth as Robin grapples over the skyline. 

Maybe Robin had been magic after all. 

I’m sat in the driveway but I can’t go in, 

The green fence is faded but it’s sinking in,

I wish I was younger, so I knew the end