Chapter Text
Jason was in a bad mood. He couldn’t figure out exactly why, he just knew something was off. Then he looked at the date, April 19th. In his defense he’d just lost track of time. When you don’t work a standard 9-5, Monday-Friday job it’s really easy to just lose track of what day of the week it is, much less the specific date. This was going to suck though. He usually took the few days around April 21st off from vigilante activity, sometimes even went out of town. Having those kind of thoughts distracting him while people were pointing guns at him? Not a good idea.
So here Jason was, taking a day off from patrolling. He had turned his phone off, he didn’t especially want to talk to anyone. Most of all Bruce and his crew. He knew they were blowing up his phone, probably they would send someone to his apartment to “check on him”. Jason didn’t want to see them, but also didn’t want to deal with them trying to track him down, so he had just opted to stay at home and get thoroughly drunk.
That is to say, when he heard the knock at the door, Jason was 2 beers deep, and not exactly surprised. They never really trusted him. Jason wanted to blame it on his behavior since he came back. It makes sense to not trust someone who had been pointing a gun at your head last week. But he knew that wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny. Even when he was just the kid Bruce had pulled off the street, everything he did was under scrutiny. Jason had thought everything had been good for the first few years, until the incident with the diplomat’s son.
Dick walked in while he was still ruminating on it. “Hey, I didn’t see you out there tonight, just wanted to make sure you’re not, you know, dying or anything.”
“Nah, not this year.” Jason gave a morose chuckle. “Just thinking about the Garzones case.”
“Huh?”
Jason looked at Dick, “Did Bruce ever tell you about that case back when I was Robin? Felipe Garzones? He fell from the top floor balcony of his hotel. But Bruce assumed I pushed him. It didn’t matter to Bruce what I said. He knew I was angry, he saw the guy fall, case closed, Jason killed him. I don’t know how long before that he didn’t trust me, but that’s when I learned how he felt. I guess I was just thinking about it, since it’s that time of year, and that was the beginning of the end, the first domino to fall that led me to look for Sheila and ending up in that warehouse.”
“No, I don’t think he ever told me about that one. What do you mean it was the first domino? How could one bad case lead to you…” Dick trailed off, like he didn’t want to say it.
“Dying? Getting blown up? You can say it Dick, it was years ago.” Jason huffed. “Bruce was gonna bench me after that, I overheard him talking to Alfred about it. I thought that meant I was also gonna lose Bruce, and the manor. I went out to think about my next move and ended wandering through my old neighborhood, where I lived with my parents.” Jason smiled, remembering the simpler times when they had been alive. Then he shook his head, like he was trying to shake away the comfort. “Anyways, one of our old neighbors recognized me, said she had some old stuff from our apartment. One of the things was my birth certificate, it was pretty water damaged, but the first letter of the mother’s name was ‘S’. My mother’s name was Catherine. Since I thought I was about to lose everything, I decided to try and track down my birth mother, see if I could find one person who might be on my side. That search led me to the middle east. The rest, as they say, is history.”
“What do you mean you thought you were going to lose everything? You said Bruce was planning to bench you, that didn’t mean he was gonna kick you out.” Dick looked confused.
Jason looked kind of mad, “I didn’t know that!” he snapped, turning to Dick, looking angry, “There you go, turning it on me too! As far as I knew my staying at the manor was dependent on me being Robin!”
Dick was a little surprised at the anger. He knew Jason could get angry, hell all of them had felt the knife sharp edge of that anger in the last few years. But this felt different. This was not the honed, sharp anger of a long held grudge. This was the explosive, defensive anger of a child, who felt they were being blamed unfairly. This was the anger of a wild animal that thought it was going to be attacked. This anger was a lot more dangerous, as anyone can tell you, it’s the caged rat that fights the hardest. Dick wanted to snap back, but he needed to deescalate, so he calmed his voice. “Help me understand then. Why did you think that?”
If anything Jason looked angrier. “Don’t use that patronizing voice on me Dick. I’m not a child, and I’m not gonna bite your head off.”
Dick very pointedly didn’t say that’s exactly what Jason had been doing. He kept repeating to himself that he was trying to calm Jason down. That at least for right now, he was on Jason’s side.
Jason did calm down though, or at least he wasn’t snapping, “I was Robin first you know.” As if he realized how that sounded, he quickly followed up, “Not the first person to be Robin, obviously. But I was Robin before I came to the manor. I met Batman before I met Bruce. The first time I met Batman was when I was stealing the batmobiles tires. I was living on my own at that point. It wasn’t a great first impression, I hit him in the gut with a tire iron and ran away. Bruce tracked me down, made me give him back the tires, and put me in a group home, Ma Gunn’s School for Boys. I realized the ‘school’ was actually a front, and tried to warn Batman. I didn’t think he believed me, so I went by myself to stop them. Apparently he either thought we made a good team that night or got really bad empty nest syndrome, but that night he offered me Robin. Well to be more accurate he offered me a ride outta there. When I accepted and asked him to not turn me over to social services, since I wouldn’t be able to find a good placement at my age, he just responded with, ‘don’t count on it Robin’. I guess in my head that meant I was staying in the manor as Robin, not as Jason Todd.”
“Huh. I feel like I’m missing some stuff here. Pass me a beer?” As Jason handed one over Dick continued. “You said you were looking for your mother? I was always told you went after the Joker? How did he even get involved if you were there to find Sheila?”
Jason let out a dry laugh, “Of course that’s the story you were fed, I wonder if my body was even cold by the time they started telling it. Would you believe me if I said him being there was pure coincidence? He was trying to offload a nuke, and figured the middle east was a good place to do it. That’s actually the only reason Bruce was even there, we ran into each other on our respective hunts. When we got to the refugee camp Sheila was working at and found out she was my mother, Bruce left us to go find the Joker. I guess he found the perfect person to dump me on. Anyways, it turns out the Joker was blackmailing Sheila, so I offered to help her. When she didn’t believe I could, I told her I was Robin.” Jason took a long drink from his beer, like he was steeling himself. “She said we shouldn’t talk in public, and brought me to a warehouse. The Joker was waiting for us there.” Jason used a visible effort to put some lightness in his voice “You know the rest, I got beat with a crowbar, he tied me up, I saw the time bomb and tried to get me and Sheila out of there, the door was locked, the building exploded with us in it, and I used my body to try and shield her. I don’t know what eventually did me in, all I remember from there is how much it hurt, and then, the next thing I knew I was underground, buried alive. I dug my way out, Thalia found me, basically brain dead, and dunked me in the Lazarus Pit, and I found out nothing changed.” Now Jason looked angry again, “The funniest part, looking back, was that Bruce called it righteous when Felipe’s father tried to kill me, because I had ‘killed’ his son, but when I was killed he turned me into a cautionary tale. There was no righteous anger there. In the back of my mind I knew I wasn’t his son in the weeks leading up to my death, that I was just some kid he brought in as your replacement. But when I woke up and nothing had changed, that’s what sealed the deal.”
Dick just nodded, looking pensive. He didn’t know what to say to that. He tried to put some joviality into his voice, “Anyways, I only came here to make sure you were fine, since you weren’t patrolling. I’ll get out of your hair.” With that he tossed his empty can in the trash and left, still lost in thought. That didn’t match up at all with what he knew of the events leading up to Jason’s death. He figured he should go and talk to the one other person who had been there. Dick had to go track down Bruce.
Jason just watched his back as he left and laughed quietly to himself. “Yeah, good talk.”