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Gun – Jason ducks under, slamming his hand up so the man’s aim goes wide but not up. What goes up must come down. The shot is painfully loud even with the special ear plugs that’s part of their gear, but he grits his teeth through it, twists the guy’s wrist to make him drop the gun, then turns back to shove himself against him, using his heels for leverage. The man grunts under his weight, from the shock in the seconds it took for Jason to take him down.
“Robin!”
“I’m fine,” Jason pants. His ears are ringing. There’s the sound of distant gunshots on the other street, screaming and shouting, the crackle of fire, the loud blaring of car alarms. He ties the man’s wrists together before dragging him off the road and onto the sidewalk under an alcove. “I’m good.”
He arranges the guy into a slouch, hopes it’s as comfortable as it looks, then presses the antidote to this stupid rage gas against his neck, listens for the hiss-click that indicates it was all used up. The empty injector goes in a special pouch, he pats a sticker on the guy’s face, slides the L-shaped key to the cuffs into his limp hands.
There are four other people leaning or laying on the sidewalk, all passed out, all cuffed just in case, and all sporting shiny holographic stickers of various robins – the bird, not the hero vigilante.
Jason checks them over one more time – airways are clear, hearts are steady, limbs tucked away in case someone else comes charging down the street. Leaving them here rankles him, but at least he gave them a way to free themselves.
And he’s done. He straightens up and the world sorta…sways. Speckles black on the edges of his vision. He swallows down the sudden nausea. Okay, less than fine. Jason takes stock of himself, trying to remember if he’s been grievously injured in the last twelve hours – oh, right. Shit. He checks the time and swears again. It really has been twelve hours since this whole thing started. He’s basically running on fumes.
Jason aims his grapple for a nearby roof, intent on taking at least a fifteen, when he hears it –
Crying.
Now, that’s not unusual. The rage gas doesn’t incite everyone into violence. It just makes them angry. Some people are angry criers. Some people self-harm when they’re angry. It really has been a whole spectrum of reactions and Jason’s pretty sure he’s going to have nightmares for weeks after this.
The biggest issue is that it sounds like a kid.
The gas hasn’t been affecting most kids.
Jason doesn’t hesitate. He re-holsters his grapple and turns down the alley that sounds like the source of the crying. The rioting goes distant the moment he enters the alley, darkness enveloping him and welcoming him home. Even before Batman, Jason was never afraid of the dark. His footsteps are sure and light, his cape whispers near-silent. The only thing he hears is Batman and Batgirl over the comms and the crying. It’s tired and scared sobbing, choked off like they’ve been going at it for so long they just want to stop but they can’t and, and –
“Mama,” a little voice sobs in Spanish. “Papa. Help me. Please.”
Jason swallows and hangs left towards the faint outline of a dumpster. The gas hadn’t been a surprise for the Gothamites. An alert had been made; the sirens had gone out. People hid and donned on their Wayne Enterprises rebreathers.
Not everyone had been fast enough.
He can imagine parents hearing the sirens, seeing the oncoming cloud, realizing their rebreathers were nowhere to be seen because they remembered their kid’s but not their own. They buckle it on, soft assurances that everything’s going to be okay, tuck the kid in a nice hiding spot, then run before the rage takes over.
(and he remembers hiding under the kitchen table, his dad trying to find their rebreathers as the fear gas alert blared from their tiny radio. His mom found Jason’s and slotted it over his face, smiling comfortingly as his dad tore a cabinet door off in his haste.
They never did find the rebreathers – it was only afterwards that Catherine remembered giving them to the neighbors. The neighbords were new to Gotham, didn’t know what to expect. Hadn’t built up any immunity at all.
Jason was locked in the bathroom all night, curled up in their old tub, listening to his parents cry and sob in fear before a city-wide antidote was dispersed in the air.
It’d been one of the longest nights of his life.)
Jason stands on his toes and peers inside the dumpster. It’s relatively clean of trash and under the shadow of the closed half-lid, a little girl is pulled as small as she can make herself in the corner. She sobs quietly into her knees, murmuring prayers under her breath.
He clears his throat. “Hello! Are you hurt?” he calls in Spanish. She startles, eyes wide over her tiny rebreather, and stares at him, not saying a word. Even her cries have quieted. She reminds Jason of a startled rabbit. “Can I come closer?” She shakes her head, curling tighter. “That’s fine. Can you tell me your name?”
There’s a very long pause, and just as Jason starts thinking of a different question to ask, he hears a whispered, “Catalina.”
Jason beams even though she’s not looking. “That’s a very pretty name,” he tells her. She buries her face deeper into the comfort of her arms and knees. “My name’s Robin. Are you hurt?” he asks again.
She shakes her head. He lets out a breath. Okay. Okay, that’s good.
He waffles back and forth about what to do. There are designated safety locations all around Gotham for situations like this. There, people will find out who she is, register her as a lost kid, and reunite her with her parents. When Jason had been on the streets, he’d gone to one of those places because it was literally the safest he could be after an Arkham breakout. It took a lot of dodging to keep the volunteers from realizing he hadn’t registered as a lost kid, but it worked out in the end.
He was luckier than some of the other street kids.
Jason sighs and climbs up the edge of the dumpster, not dropping down yet. “I can help you find your parents,” he says softly.
Catalina shakes her head again. “I’m scared,” she whispers. “Everyone’s so mad.”
“Yeah,” is all he can say – heavy and exhausted before he can rein it in. Catalina looks up, and her hair is a mess, her clothes dirty from the dumpster. She’s, what, eight or nine? She looks younger right now. “Everyone’s going to be fine! We have it handled.”
She sniffles, wipes her face. “I wish – I wish I could – ” and the tears come again like they’d never left.
Jason gets it. He really does. Those nights – those days, hours, minutes – where everything is just too much, and the tears don’t stop even though you really, really want them to.
He drops down finally, his landing soft. She doesn’t flinch at the sudden closeness. Jason inches closer and plops down right then and there, legs crossed, the steel toes of his boots nudging her casual flats.
“I’m so scared.”
And she launches herself at Jason. He catches her with an audible oomph!, wrapping his arms around her and holding her tight. He rocks her back and forth, lets her cry into his shoulder even though the rebreather is stabbing him in the neck. After a minute he pulls her back, hands on her shoulders.
“It’s okay to be scared,” he tells her like he’s telling some big secret. “It’s pretty scary.”
“You’re not scared,” she says all wobbly-like. “You’re a superhero. They don’t get scared.”
In any other moment, the story would go oh but heroes do get scared, but they fight through it and that’s what makes them heroes, courage in the face of fear, bravery when all seems lost. But Jason knows that story. Jason’s told that story.
He doesn’t tell it this time.
“It’s because I’m Robin,” he says – and this time he really is telling her a secret. “And being Robin gives me magic. Can’t be scared when I’m magic, right?”
She stares at him. He can see her chin tremble behind the plastic of the rebreather. Jason hesitates for only a second before he carefully starts to peel off his domino, wincing when the adhesive sticks just a bit too well. He has remover in his belt, but that’ll ruin the adhesive completely and make this whole thing useless.
Catalina is watching him as he takes off the mask and blinks rapidly at the change from night-vision to almost dark. He fiddles with the tech inside, disabling a few things and taking some completely out, before he turns the mask around and presses it to her face. It’s a little big, probably won’t last that long honestly, but whatever. It just has to last long enough to get the job done.
“See, and now you’re Robin.” He smiles brightly and she gives him a tentative one in return. “And now you’re magic. Can’t be scared when you’re magic.”
“Can’t be scared when I’m magic,” she echoes, reaching up to touch the domino in awe.
Jason nods then stands, unhooking his cape so he can drape it over his head in a half-cloak in an attempt to hide his face. He holds out a hand and Cataline grabs it silently. Before he picks her up though, he gives her a look, realizing something important is missing.
He pops open a pouch and picks the robin sticker he’d been saving for himself – the entire pack (two-hundred and fifty stickers!) had robins of mostly natural colors doing non-robin things like sitting in a pool inflatable or drinking a smoothie.
But there’s this one robin on the very last page – and it’s probably made for a joke because the company that makes these are New Jersey based. It’s a medium-sized robin, still colored somewhat naturally, but dressed as a Robin. Capital R and everything.
The mask is red. The date on the batch is from a year after he became Robin. That’s him.
So, he was going to keep it.
Instead, he sticks it to Catalina’s forehead, feeling only a little sad about it and even less so when she touches it gently and she smiles so hard he can see it around the mask. He flushes pink, so thankful she can’t see it, and offers his back. She climbs on easily.
“Let’s go, Miss. Magic.”
Catalina tightens her arms, letting out a breath. Very quietly, she says, “Thank you. Mister Robin.”
Jason swallows. “Any time. That’s what I’m here for.”
—
Graffiti is a staple of Gotham like most cities. Tim has a full album dedicated to the various murals and arts scattered around the city and even more memory cards of the ones he didn’t print. He’s been tempted to set up an online portfolio – or even a shop – but hasn’t bothered with that thought since he became Robin. Too busy.
He’s actually been taking less pictures in the last few years, he realized a couple weeks ago. He’s been doing a lot less of his hobbies in general. The only reason his skateboard hasn’t been collecting dust is because he ducks getting rides to school and takes the bus, getting off a couple blocks before the building and skateboarding the rest of the way.
Right here, right now, in East End, it really smacks him again, how few picture he’s taken because right now, he’s balancing of an apartment building across the street from an apartment turned brewery. The side facing him has bricked windows from the ground all the way to the seventh floor, only the top two floors have glass windows. It leaves plenty of space for a massive mural spanning two and a half floors.
Tim makes sure his domino is recording as he makes his way down to be eye level with it. The quality kind of sucks, but it’s better than risking the mural disappearing during the day – either through more graffiti or clean up.
It’s – Tim doesn’t know what to think about the mural. It’s beautiful, no doubt about it. But…
Robin is Magic, it says.
And he knows that phrase.
He shouldn’t.
Bruce carefully hid every Cave and cowl footage of Jason Todd behind an almost impenetrable shield of firewalls and passcodes. He’s heard Babs complain about it frequently when she’s following a code-trail and runs into them. She knows it’s going to take hours to get through because even though Bruce made sure than any important information about the cases he and Jason Todd worked on are available, sometimes little details slip through. So, she usually goes directly to Bruce to get whatever she needs. With the combined nagging of both Tim and Babs and Alfred, it takes way less time
But almost impenetrable is the key right there.
Babs can and has broken through before, in the early weeks after Jason’s death, pulled a few videos and saved them off site. She never left herself a backdoor, though. Tim hadn’t asked why – and then didn’t need to when, one day, he came to the Clock Tower and found her bundled up, watching them silently.
It’d been Jason’s birthday. Two years gone. Bruce canceled anything related to Wayne and Batman.
“Check this out! I’m Robin! And being Robin gives me magic. This is the best day of my life!”
Robin is Magic, is basically what Jason said. And right in front of him is a beautiful, vibrant mural that says the exact same thing.
He could write it off. Pretend that it’s a phrase made up by civilians –
If it weren’t for the bird in the corner. Natural robin colors, maybe a little more vibrant than they would be, wearing red, green, and yellow like him and the two Robins before.
Except the mask is red.
Only Jason wore a red domino.
Tim swallows thickly and drops a pin on his location, alerting Oracle.
She clicks in immediately. “Is everything okay?” He wants to take it back. Wants to shove the cowl footage into a little folder and hope that Barbara never finds it. That Bruce never finds it. But Tim’s here now. It’s already too late. “Robin, report.”
He takes a deep breath. “You need to see this, O,” he whispers, heart hammering in his chest, palms sweaty.
The only indication she’s looking is the sharp gasp that echoes loudly across the line. He closes his eyes, tries to keep his head still so the picture remains steady. She doesn’t mute herself fast enough. A sob crackles out before it cuts off abruptly.
Tim stays quiet for a while until the Gotham air starts to seep through his suit. “Sorry.”
A beat then the line clicks. “Don’t be,” Babs says roughly. “Thanks…Thank for showing me, Robin.”