Chapter Text
“Don’t sit like that.”
”Why not.”
”Cause it's not appropriate.”
"You're sitting the same way."
"I'm a man, you're a girl."
Jason scowled. There was something deeply wrong with that statement. Just like there was something deeply wrong with Jason, or with how people treated him anyway. He never asked to be a girl, so why does he have to follow all these rules and act a certain way? It was like everything he did was wrong. ‘Girls don’t do that,’ ‘girls don’t behave that way,’ ‘that wasn’t very ladylike of you.’ Maybe it's 'cause he didn’t give a shit, he never wanted to be a girl, he wasn’t a girl! Jason Todd was not a girl. He didn’t feel comfortable in girl clothes, he didn’t feel comfortable with his long hair or makeup or barbie’s or whatever girls liked. Most of all though, he didn't feel comfortable in his girl body, and it made him queasy.
He was friendless, so why was he even here? He couldn’t roughhouse with the other boys cause, ‘boys were too rough,’ and he couldn’t relate to girls cause they seemed so comfortable being girls.
All the girls were playing outside, it was one of the kids birthdays so the neighborhood gathered all their daughters and threw a party for her, but girls made him feel how different he was, so he was sat next to his mom while the parents socialized inside.
Jason was still glowering at his fathers head long after he turned away and got dragged into another conversation. He huffed and got up.
”What’s wrong baby?” His mother asked.
”I gotta pee.” Jason replied before marching to the bathroom.
He stared into his reflection for a long while, pressure building behind his eyes before the tears spilled down his face without his permission. He quickly wiped them away, but fresh one’s kept replacing the streams he soaked up into his sleeves. He wanted to pull his hair out so he could feel somehow normal.
He spotted a pair of scissors in one of the drawers.
Before he knew what he was doing, the scissors already snipped through a chunk of his hair, smooth as butter. A spike of adrenaline coursed through him and he couldn’t stop himself from chopping the rest of it off. A tentative smile overtook his face.
He left the bathroom after cleaning up his mess with his chest puffed out, confident and proud of himself.
As the adults came into view there was a series of gasps.
“Oh my god, Catherine…”
His mothers face contorted into that of pure anguish, she rushed over to him and touched what was left of his hair.
”Oh baby girl, what did you do, how could you- why-“
“Sorry Jim, looks like we have to leave early, give Cassidy her gift for us.” Dad was smiling, but Jason could tell he was furious. He was gonna get the beating of his life if he survived the car ride.
He grabbed Jason by the arm with a bruising grip and dragged him to the car.
”What’s wrong with ya, huh?! Do ya just enjoy embarrassing us? Do ya not think of the consequences of your fucking actions? We let you get away with so much shit, but this is the last straw-“
”Willis-“
”What the fuck are we gonna do about her hair?! The neighborhood already thinks badly of us, we don’t need another goddamn reason! She can’t even pass for a girl!”
“I’m not a girl.” Jason whispered under his breath.
”What’d you say? Go ahead, speak up.” He said in a way that gave Jason reason to believe he was not, in fact, supposed to speak up.
”I’m not a girl!” He exclaimed anyway, consequences be damned. His cheeks were flushed and the dried up tear tracks were becoming wet once more.
”What the fuck else are ya? A fucking alien?”
”I’m a guy!”
”This shit again- you’re not a boy, Jess, you’re a girl!”
”I’m not a girl!”
”Oh, so you ain't, I’ll fuckin show ya-“ He pulled the car over and slammed on the breaks before getting out and dragging Jason out of the car, “I’ll fuckin show ya what bein a man’s like, you think you’re a boy-“ Jason’s world was spinning and he found himself face to concrete, “I’ll treat you like a boy! Get the fuck up.”
Jason got back up on shaky legs, and as soon as he was stable, Willis hit him again, and again, and again. He didn’t fall again until Willis kicked him in his side and kept kicking him while he was down.
”You can walk the rest of the way home, you good for nothing piece of shit.”
Jason stayed there for a while, with his face throbbing and his abdomen hurting, he waited for the pain to stop, and when he was still hurting by sundown, he got up and his head spun. He immediately fell to his knees and threw up into the grass. Treat me like a boy my ass, you were gonna whoop my ass anyway.
He coughed and spit out whatever was left in his mouth before trying again. He looked around to see where he was and where to go and trudged back home. As soon as he opened the front door, his mother was all over him.
”Oh, my baby, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.” She apologized over and over as she held him and cried into his hair, rocking him back and forth and kissing his head all over.
”I believe you sweetheart, you can be a boy if you want, just not around your dad, okay?” Jason nodded numbly. The sentiment was nice, but what exactly did that mean? That she’d call him a boy when they were alone at home together?
The weirdest thing was, despite the split lip and swollen eye, he felt vindicated. He couldn’t help smirking when all was said and done because his beatings were usually slaps in the face and spankings, he never got his shit rocked like that before. He didn’t treat him like he was delicate, he didn’t hold back, didn’t humiliate him. It felt like acceptance. When Willis got back, drunk out of his mind and tripping all over the place, he grabbed the top of Jason’s head and shook him around in a way that he supposed was meant to be affectionate.
“Ya took that beating like a champ kid, you wanna be a boy, go ahead, but I ain’t getting you drugs or nothin’.”
Jason might’ve been insane the way he grinned at the man who just beat the shit out of him just hours before. Willis grinned back and fell face first into his bed.
”That’s great, sweetheart,” his mom said but there was an ache in her chest, and Jason could tell, “you know, if you were gonna be a boy, your dad wanted your name to be Jason. What do you think?”
Catherine cried herself to sleep that night, silent and unnoticeable as can be. She never really had a daughter, and on some level she always knew that, but it still crushed her to know that her little girl thought so too.
Jason on the other hand, fell asleep with a smile on his aching face. He pressed on the bruises that were sure to form by the next morning as a weird sort of reminder of his dad’s approval. Willis was a piece of shit, but he was a piece of shit who knew what Jason was, and he earned that.
There were whispers of Jason’s deadname and his sex, but it was kept far away from him by his dad. Willis would play catch with him when he wasn’t out jacking cars, and eventually he taught Jason how to do the same. He taught him how cars worked, what was worth the most, and what was useless. Tires were the easiest.
Sometimes Jason himself would forget the sex he was saddled with, but he every time he had to go to the bathroom, every time he took a shower, every time he changed he felt broken all over again. Sometimes he’d avoid going to the bathroom at all to avoid the feeling of wrongness that came over him when he saw his body.
But Jason’s gender soon took the passenger seat in his life, his dad forgot he was ever a girl most of the time and his mom never mentioned it, and they transferred him out of his old school as soon as he started transitioning— socially; any asshole who tries saying the governments giving kids hormones is a lying piece of shit— so no one who knew him knew his secret.
And once the euphoria wore off, the old problems became more prevalent. His dad often came home drunk and violent and his mom was getting thinner by the day. Jason didn’t used to find old needles in the trash, but it seemed like he was finding them every day now.
It was like his mom was never really there, like she was possessed or like she’d been replaced by an empty headed alien. When she was present, she was miserable, and her misery bled into Jason even when he tried to ignore it like he was supposed to. Willis’ misery became her misery became Jason’s, the cycle of misery never ended. Even when her life did.
He would always remember that day like it was yesterday, he came home from school one day, clothes covered in dirt from recess and a smile beaming, and immediately went to find his mom to tell her about the A he got on his spelling test. When he didn’t find her passed out in her room, he ventured into the bathroom, where he found her collapsed over the toilet bowl with the sour stench of vomit wafting through the air. He poked her at first, then shook her until she fell off the toilet bowl and he saw her eyes. They were lidded and gazing into nothingness.
That’s when he began to panic, shaking her and calling for her, begging for her to say something, do something, anything! But she was unresponsive. He could hear her shallow breaths getting slower, he grabbed his hair and pulled.
Jason ran to the house phone and dialed 911, he knew he wasn’t supposed to call the cops no matter what, but he didn’t know what else to do! His mama was dying, dammit, what else was he supposed to do?!
She didn’t even make it to the hospital, she was dead by the time the paramedics got there.
The funeral was small and cost them everything they had, except for his dads drinking money of course, and with no buffer to protect him, Jason was getting beatings on the daily. With how inebriated Willis was when he was dishing them out, he was in no state to be thinking about being careful about where he was hitting Jason. Jason missed so much school they had to go to court to argue about whether or not Willis could keep him, and of course he could. Why wouldn’t he be able to?
Jason was glad when Willis went and got himself shot, good riddance, right? But foster care proved to be the worst, cutting insults were being thrown at him left and right. He got foster parents trying to dress him in skirts, thinking he was only dressed that way because he was too poor to afford nice girl clothes. They all blamed his whole deal on being poor, she was never taught how to be a proper girl because, you know… Can you blame them, it's tough in that area of Gotham.Comments on how he should act like a girl, how he was just street trash they graciously took in when he refused to play along, all that crap. He wished they would just hit him and shut up.
So, he ran away. He packed all his shit into a little backpack and snuck out the window. He managed to make a living off what his dad taught him, even if people did jip him cause he was a kid, at least it was something.
But nights were getting colder, he was getting desperate. He had a whole thing about not targeting rich people cars, rich people were always trouble… but rich people were also, well, rich. And he wasn't. He looked at the shiny car, barely covered by tarp, then turned his pockets inside out just to check, just in case he discovered dinner money to convince himself he didn't actually want to do this.
Alas, his hunger outweighed his reason, shiny hub caps would feed him for a month, they were probably real silver too…
There was a flutter behind him, he froze. Food was not worth juvie. He swung the tire iron and ran. He shouldn't've looked behind him, he knew he felt the blow connect, but he looked anyway, there was nothing there. His heart dropped, this was a one way alley, there were no other escape routes besides the fire escape and he ran past it. Almost inevitably he ran into what felt like a brick wall.
"Fuck…" fucking Batman, the motherfucker, "isn't there some serious crime you should be addressing around here? Seems lazy to go after lil ol' me." He got up and brushed himself off. Batman wasn't harsh on kids, not every kid knew that, but he did. What he didn't know is if Batman would send him back into foster care.
"Sure, but that happens to be my car."
Jason looked back.
"That's your car? You oughta have some branding on there, fancy car like that, what are ya, dumb?"
Batman stared back at him.
"Dumber than dumb, huh. Look I'll be on my way, I promise not to steal any more, it's clearly not my forte." Jason went to walk past him. Batman blocked him. He started to panic a little, maybe he wasn't as sure about Batman's stance on alley kids anymore. Maybe he was protective of his car, rich fucks always are, and hey apparently Batman's a rich fuck.
"What, you take joy in intimidating children?"
"Where are your parents, do they know you're doing this?"
"Who do you think put me up to it?" Jason scoffed and rolled his eyes. Realizing he wasn't getting past the Batman, he crossed his arms and glared.
"You don't have to do this if you don't want to, there are resources—"
"Fuck you and your resources, what do you want from me? I don't got much to give."
"Tell me the truth, where are you're parents?"
"With the fishes, it's none of your business anyways."
"You ever been inside one of those 'fancy cars'?" Batman smirked, which wasn't as unsettling as you'd expect from a supposed creature of the night. Jason may be cautious on the best of days, but if he was safe anywhere it was with Batman, and he had not, in fact, ever been allowed inside any sort of fancy car.