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Tim Drake cannot save Jason Todd.
It is, all things considered, an easy lesson to learn. It only takes one attempt— one failure— to know the truth; it takes far more than that for Tim to give up.
The first time is an easy, obvious solution.
Tim walks his way up to Wayne manor and knocks on the door. “Jason’s in trouble,” he says. “Jason’s going to die.”
But he must have timed himself wrong— must have put a wrong number in the machine somewhere— because Jason Todd is still at home. Chubby-cheeked and bright-eyed, even despite his grounding over Felipe Garzonas and the way he must be fighting with Bruce. He folds his arms over his chest and talks like everybody’s going to forget he’s there if he doesn’t pitch his voice quite right.
“I’m not in any trouble.” Chin up, head tilted just barely to the side, chest puffed out. His lower lip is stuck between his teeth, chapped and bitten and rough. “The hell are you talking about?”
Tim falters. He stutters and stumbles over his words. He doesn’t know the specifics— Jason went to Ethiopia. Jason died. That’s all he can tell them. All he knows.
Jason laughs and Alfred looks only mildly concerned. Bruce Wayne does not bother to make an appearance. They offer him cookies and games and then shoo him out of the manor. By the time Tim figures out his next steps, Jason is in a warehouse.
So he tries again; he marches up to the front door and demands to talk to Jason. Jason with his chin up and head tilted to the side, arms over his puffed out chest and military straight soldiers.
“Who the hell are you?” he demands.
“You’re going to die,” Tim tells him. His voice cracks in on itself, wavers, fades out like the end of a song. “Please listen.”
And Jason laughs at him. Offers him cookies. Sends him home. Tim Drake fails for a second time.
And then a third. A fourth. Fifth, sixth, seventh. He does not succeed.
It takes thirty loops for Booster Gold to intervene.
Tim is sitting in bed, legs dangling off the edge, after yet another failure. He had tried to sabotage the Batplane this time— after a good five loops spent figuring out how to get into the cave in the first place— only for Jason to take a regular travel plane. Apparently that had been the plan all along.
The walls are white. Sterile. Even moreso in the spots he’s torn down his posters; he can’t stand to see Robin’s smiling face peer down at him, accusations hidden behind his mask.
“Don’t.” A plea. Tim can’t look up from the floor, waiting until gold boots make their way into his line of sight to peer up through his bangs.
Michael Carter— Booster Gold now, because he can only be here in his official capacity— watches him for a long minute. He doesn’t say a word. He stares at Tim for what must be eternity and then kneels down to meet his eyes.
Tim doesn’t say anything as Booster Gold smooths his bangs back out of his face. Away from his eyes, no more shield between the two of them. And then he keeps staring. He makes a sound like he’s swallowing glass before he gets back up.
The space on the bed next to Tim dips, pressing him shoulder to hip with the older hero.
“I’m sorry,” Booster Gold says, hands clasped in his lap like a prayer. It settles in the dark corners of Tim’s room like a ghost— like Jason Todd’s dead eyes screaming, begging, save me, save me, save me. Like Batman’s bloody knuckles against a man’s already broken face. “It was always going to end like this.”
Tim swallows the words. They cut him, burrow into the space behind his ribs and inside his lungs where they don’t leave room for him to keep breathing.
“I can.” He bites his tongue bloody to stop from screaming it. “I will.”
Booster Gold does not stop him.
So Tim keeps going. He tries to call Superman. Wonder Woman. Hell, he even tries to call Green Lantern. Nobody responds, nobody steps in, Jason Todd still dies.
On his more desperate attempts, Tim dogs Jason’s steps. He steps between Jason and his mom. Pretends to be Robin to take Jason’s place. Disarms the bomb. Fights tooth and nail to break the Joker’s dominant hand. Nothing ever works.
Jason chews him out for interrupting. He follows them to the warehouse. He dies from his injuries. The Joker uses his other hand, his mouth, his feet; he uses whatever he can to beat Jason Todd senseless, and he always succeeds.
“The first time I tried to save him,” Booster Gold tells Tim, “I told Batman.”
“I tried that,” Tim says.
“He wouldn’t listen to you.” It’s not unkind, just a fact. Booster Gold wraps a bandage around Tim’s bloodied arm. “He listened to me. Jason died in the hospital from an infection instead.”
Tim tries killing the Joker, at one point. He brings one of the many, many knives his parents bring home from their digs and digs the point right into the Joker’s chest. The tip of the knife breaks and Jason Todd still dies. Tim brings a gun next time and only ends up shooting Jason himself.
“You could stop me.” Tim says. His throat feels scraped raw and bloody. There’s iron heavy on his tongue, thick and cloying. “You could stop— this.”
Booster Gold smooths Tim’s bangs back out of his face again. “I couldn’t. You’d just try again.”
Tim spends one iteration breaking every glass object in the house. What does it matter? His parents aren’t here to yell at him about it; it’ll all reset the next time.
He shatters the windows and mirrors. He takes a baseball bat to their favorite paintings, hung up in protective glass cases. He throws vases down the stairs. The kitchen ends up covered in glass shards and the food inside: pickles, olives, one big jar of sauerkraut. Tim cuts himself on it, staining the floor with bloody footprints. He makes sure to get some on his parents’ favorite rug— one they brought back from Russia, just as sterile and white as the rest of the house.
“Batman needs him.” Tim begs, pleads, presses his forehead to the ground at Booster Gold’s feet.
Booster Gold helps him up, smooths his bangs back once more, and says, “The world keeps going anyway, kid.”
He’s the one who cleans up the mess. Tim sits on the couch, feet wrapped in bandages, as Booster Gold sweeps up glass and pickled food in his house. Skeets makes some kind of comment Tim can’t fully parse— it sounds like it’s coming from underwater, and Tim thinks maybe Skeets is broken but then Booster Gold sounds like that, too. Maybe Tim is broken.
Tim tries one more time. He calls in a bomb threat to the plane Jason is going to take. They lock it down, they delay it, they check; they laugh at his squeaky voice that’s started cracking in places. The plane is only delayed, and Jason Todd still dies.
“It was always going to end like this,” Tim says. Booster’s hand ruffles his hair, lips quirked into a smile that won’t quite reach his eyes.
“It was always going to end like this,” he echoes.
And Tim Drake cannot save Jason Todd.
But Tim Drake can save Batman. This is the best he can do.