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“Is he happy?”
Red Hood said it nonchalantly enough. He was leaning against his—their?—favorite gargoyle, looking down at the city stretched out before them, smoke curling from the cigarette between his fingers. He looked like he couldn’t care less for the answer, as though the question didn’t weigh on him at all.
But Jason knew better. Of course he did.
“I like to think so,” he said, taking a slow drag from his own cigarette. “I mean, he hasn’t said as much, but I haven’t heard him complain.”
“Yet,” Red Hood said, snorting. “Can’t say I saw that coming. I always figured the old bastard would sooner get stabbed by some C-list psycho before he ever gave it up.”
“You could see him, you know,” Jason said mildly. “I could take you to him. If you want.”
“What, so we can sit in awkward silence over tea while he questions my life choices?” Red Hood scoffed. Jason didn’t need to see his eyes to know he was rolling them under the domino mask. “I’d rather swallow glass. Besides, he wouldn’t want to see me anyway.”
Jason could have insisted, could have argued. He could have said that Bruce would drop everything to see his sons, to have any version of them walk through his door alive, whatever shape they came back in—but Jason didn’t. A small, selfish part of him was relieved he didn’t have to find out whether it was true.
And even if Red Hood had said yes . . .
Jason knew an encounter between his father and this violent, bitter stranger would only end in disaster. He didn’t feel particularly keen on playing mediator between them—he’d had enough of that whenever Dick came by the manor.
So instead Jason took another pull from his cigarette and turned his eyes back to the skyline. For a long while, neither of them spoke, smoke drifting up between them and disappearing into the dark overhead.
Jason found himself wondering if the view from here looked anything like the Gotham from that other world. If the same towers still crowded the horizon. If the old brick apartments and lofty skyscrapers stood in the same places. If the streets below still wound through the city in the same crooked lines. If, from up here, this familiar, unfamiliar visitor—this man who proudly bore his murderer’s name—looked out at his Gotham and saw home.
He didn’t dare ask. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the specifics—to know more about this other Jason Todd and his Gotham, past what he’d already gleaned from the handful of things Red Hood had let slip since he’d shown up.
Jason didn’t need the specifics anyway. It required no great leap of imagination to figure out where their paths had diverged. He already knew what it would have done to him, what would have bloomed inside his own chest if he had crawled out of six feet of dirt, had dragged himself back to this city—this beautiful, rotten city—and had found it exactly the same as he had left it.
“How do you stand it?” Red Hood said eventually.
“Stand what?” Jason said.
“You know what,” Red Hood said, an edge creeping into his voice. “How do you sleep at night, sticking to his precious rule? Knowing how many scumbags walk out of Arkham every other Tuesday just to put a bullet in some kid? And you just—what, cuff ‘em, hand ‘em back over, hope for the best?”
All at once, Jason felt a creeping coldness in his stomach. He didn’t turn, but he knew Red Hood was watching him now, his gaze an unpleasant itch on the side of his face.
From a long-buried corner of his mind, he heard Talia’s voice whisper, Breathe.
“You think I like it?” Jason said, trying to keep his voice calm. It wasn’t working. “You think I want this?”
“I think you’re wearing his ears, so you must believe in the sermon,” Red Hood said sardonically. “You actually buy into it? These freaks—you think you can turn them around if you just give them enough soup and a warm cell?”
“No, that’s not—no. I don’t. But I’m not you—”
“Definitely not,” Red Hood snickered. He took a long, deliberate drag before exhaling a thick plume right into the space between them. Jason could hear the smile in his voice, sharp and taunting, as he said, “Don’t you wish you were?”
The smoke rose lazily into the night sky, brushing past Jason’s cheek, filling his nose, his throat. Suddenly it wasn’t Red Hood’s cigarette Jason could see glowing from the corner of his eye. It was Sheila’s, smoke trailing over her shoulder, her fingers flicking ash onto the ground as she turned away. Those same fingers trembling, slippery with panic, as she tried to drag his broken body toward the door. But then came the roar of the explosion, the searing heat, drowning out her terrified sobs. She had been so afraid, he remembered. He’d reached for her, he’d tried to save her—
He had tried to save Gloria too. He could still picture her so clearly, hanging motionless in the shadows. He could still feel the red, blinding fury that had surged through his chest—
He could still hear Felipe Garzonas, his screams as he fell—
Breathe, Talia said, steady and patient, her hand closing over his, that’s it, Jason, just keep—
Jason let out a breath. He pressed his cigarette against the gargoyle, grinding the ember into its weathered wing.
“It doesn’t matter what I want,” he said, as evenly as he could muster. “Gotham needs Batman, and Batman can’t cross that line. The second he does, he’s just another guy with a gun and a good enough reason, and once that’s true, every other line becomes negotiable. Every rule after that is just a matter of time—”
Red Hood gave a harsh bark of laughter. “God, you sound just like him—”
“It’s not about him,” Jason snapped, patience folding. “Batman is a symbol. If I start deciding who lives and who dies because I think it’s right, then the symbol dies. Cops stop trusting the cape. Kids who do might take it as permission—go out there and start making the same calls themselves, with a lot less restraint than I’ve got—” He swallowed hard, turning at last to meet Red Hood’s gaze. “It’s not about Bruce. It’s not about me either. Batman is bigger than that.”
Red Hood’s mouth twisted into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Right. Of course. It’s never about us, is it?”
No. It never was. But what other choice did Jason have? What other option was there? Gotham needed Batman, and Bruce . . .
Bruce couldn’t carry the weight anymore. Jason had seen the reports, the pictures, though Talia had tried to shield him from the worst of them. There had been so much blood, hardly anything recognizable beneath . . . not a corpse so much as a mangled, shapeless mass of meat and bone, so frighteningly still . . .
Sometimes it made Jason’s stomach turn to think about, to know that it had been Bruce who had . . .
It had broken something in Bruce. He couldn’t bear to look at the cowl again after. He’d put it away and, when Dick had refused to do the same with Nightwing, had cut Dick loose along with it. Alfred and Babs and poor, naïve Tim, the League, every ally who tried to reach him—Bruce had turned them away and retreated to his empty manor, little more than a hermit waiting to die.
Jason had returned to Gotham to find it abandoned, its shadows stretching farther, spreading into corners it hadn’t reached before. Bruce had turned his back on the city and left it to fend for itself. Atonement, he’d called it, as though the blood on his hands was something to repent for . . . as though the Joker was worth all that grief, worth throwing away his life’s work . . .
Jason didn’t think he could ever truly forgive Bruce for that, just as Bruce hadn’t fully forgiven him for taking the cowl. Bruce had fought with him over it when he’d come back, worse than Bruce had ever fought with Dick.
But they were better now. Everything was better now, quieter. Bruce kept himself busy running Wayne Foundation, and the work occupied him enough that he didn’t brood as much as he used to. He and Dick were something close to mended these days, and he and Jason were—
They were happy. Really, they were. Jason could see it, how much lighter Bruce was now, how relieved he was that Jason had come home, that the manor wasn’t so empty anymore . . .
But some nights, Jason could feel that old disappointment burning in the back of his throat—that Bruce had left it behind. That he’d let Gotham go, let Dick go. Let it all go. Even now, there were times when Jason caught Bruce flinching whenever he was wearing the suit . . . how quickly he’d turn pale and leave the room whenever Batman’s exploits got featured on the news . . . the way he’d sometimes look at Jason, with that same cold disapproval after Garzonas had—
But it didn’t matter what Bruce wanted. It didn’t matter what Jason wanted.
Because Gotham needed Batman. Nightwing and Robin weren’t enough to keep it from falling apart at the seams, and neither were the new Batgirls. There had been so much blood already . . . and if Batman were to spill any more, to add to the number of the dead . . .
“It isn’t. It never has been,” Jason said softly, carefully. “I made my peace with it a long time ago.”
Red Hood didn’t answer. He looked away, jaw working, turning his eyes back to the rooftops below.
“He loves you,” Jason said, before he could lose his nerve. “Your Bruce. If he’s anything like mine, then he’s shit at showing it but—you’re his son, Jason. Despite everything. You’re still his son. He loves you.”
Red Hood was quiet for a long moment, cigarette burning down between his fingers, forgotten.
“I know,” he said finally, still looking out a city that wasn’t quite home. “I’ve never doubted that part. It’s just not enough.”