Chapter Text
Just when I thought my life couldn’t get any worse, I got hit with a steel pipe. I should probably backtrack to explain the circumstances that led to me lying in a pool of blood in what was definitely a brutal crime scene. And by the feeling on the back of my hair and neck, I could tell the blood was fresh. But I need to backtrack… Right?
My time as Robin felt like it was coming to an end, and I think I just wanted to bow out as gracefully as I could. For me, that meant going back to my life as if he were never part of it. I figured I had a few months before I turned sixteen, and I thought that I could try to survive on the money Bruce put in an account for me until I could get a real job and support myself. When I went back to the old apartment, one of my mom and dad’s friends told me all about this box of things she had for me. A lot of it was water-damaged, but it was enough for me to find out that the woman that I always saw as my mom didn’t give birth to me. So, I decided to take my dad’s little black book with me on a search to find my birth mother. Unfortunately, I didn’t get that far. I made it as far as Philadelphia and got stuck there on the layover. I was almost lucky enough to get a key card from some lady who got into an argument with her boyfriend, and she told me to run up the charges on room service. My flight got cancelled altogether, and I got my money back. I booked a different flight for the earliest day possible, and I settled into her room. She lied to the people at the front desk and said I was her kid so that I could stay there a while. She didn’t have to do it, but it was nice that she did. I left the room once in the middle of the night.
I heard something strange that woke me out of my sleep, like a bone popping out of its socket. It was a peculiar and distinct noise that I had the misfortune to know well. Then, I heard a low noise like a groan, and I went out to see what was going on. It was pitch black, and it took my eyes a second too long to adjust. I heard the noise that knocked me unconscious. Steel meets skull. The back of my head meets hotel floor.
So, that’s how I got here. The TV blared rock music, and I was so overwhelmed by the concussion, the smell of blood, and the loud music that I threw up. It was the first thing I did when I woke up, and that was my fourth mistake. I’ll explain each of those mistakes in a minute, but currently, my fourth mistake was the most obvious one. Throwing up at a crime scene meant leaving behind DNA. That part couldn’t really be helped because of whatever drugs I had in my system that kept me out cold, and all the different things attacking my senses. The smell of copper, the loud music, the blood in my hair, and those flashing lights on the TV. It was awful. And of course, just when you think things can’t get EVEN worse… The cleaning lady came in, turned on the lights, and saw me sitting in a puddle of blood, and then she saw the bodies. She screamed before I could say anything, and I ran past her out of the room. I was lucky that the hotel had a twenty-four-hour laundry room, and it was empty when I got there. I quickly changed into whatever I could find, and I left the hotel. I got a little place at one of those ‘no questions’ motels, and I was lucky enough to buy some clothes somebody left behind. They were baggy, but they gave me something to change into after my shower. I had to keep moving until I found a secure little place to hide out and figure out what they were doing to me.
I turned the news on and left it playing while I got dressed. Eventually, I nodded off and woke up to hotel footage of me running past the cleaning lady covered in blood. Then, I heard a voice that caught my attention around seven that morning.
“Jason is not a criminal,” Bruce stated. He didn’t say murderer, and he didn’t call me his son, so I wasn’t sure if he thought I did it or not. I looked at the screen, and the bottom said that I was a person of interest in a triple murder. “He’s a scared fifteen-year-old boy, and if he’s out there listening, I just want him to come home.”
“But Mr. Wayne, what was he doing in Philadelphia in the first place?” one of the journalists asked.
“Well, I don’t know for sure—” They started bombarding him with questions, and I knew from what they asked that I was already guilty in their eyes. They used words like ‘gruesome’ and ‘slayings’. They talked about my parents’ history. It was some weird, sensationalized story before I could even get a handle on what happened. It was like the whole world was waiting for an excuse to call me a criminal.
That calls my first mistake to attention. If there was anything my dad taught me, it was to never fully depend on anyone. I should’ve been preparing my way out all that time, but I got comfortable. I felt too secure in my place there, but Bruce didn’t really want me. He wanted his son back. And there he was on TV, pretending to be a loving father, when all he wanted was for me to turn myself in.
I never killed anybody, even when they probably deserved it. Bruce had no right to think I’d do something like that to three people I didn’t even know. I had to change up my look, so I went to a beauty supply store and bought some lightener, developer, color contacts, scissors, and clippers. I took the bus to another little hole-in-the-wall place, and I got a motel room. I went to a store shortly afterward for foil, a few changes of clothes, and some travel toothbrushes, and I ended up spending a week hopping places while I was slowly changing my look. I ended up in a little town just outside Opal City.
I started resorting to my old occupation of boosting tires and cars, even though I really didn’t want to. I had to eat, though. I didn’t eat well off the money or anything. I just made enough to stay in a crumby hotel and eat from the value menu at an even worse restaurant. Deep down, I thought I might’ve deserved it.
I mean, I wasn’t the best Robin. I wasn’t the best kid. I might’ve cleaned myself up when I was with Bruce, but I was still the same kid from Crime Alley underneath it all. At least that’s what I tried to convince myself of, because why in the world would all of this be happening to me?