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“Polluted by crimes, and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death?”
Jason tosses Bruce the gun. Bruce—Batman—catches the thing with revulsion, like he’s been given a radioactive turd.
“This is it,” Jason says, his voice catching. Everything is going exactly the way he planned it to. This is all he’s been living for. This moment. This test. “This is the time you decide. If you won’t kill this psychotic piece of filth, I will.” He presses the barrel of his own gun to the Joker’s temple. “You want to stop me? You’re going to have to kill me.”
“Stop this,” Bruce says, infuriatingly steady. “Enough. You know I won’t—”
Jason pulls the Joker tighter against him. “All you’ve got is a head-shot. I’m going to blow his addled, deranged brains out—and if you want to stop it…” The tears start to fall. “You’re going to have to shoot me. Right in my face.”
The Joker, predictably, shows no fear of being used as a sacrifice. He giggles. “This is turning out so much better than I thought.”
“Stop this,” Bruce orders. He still hasn’t dropped the gun. That’s just like him, though, isn’t it? He’s too much of a stubborn coward to pull the trigger himself, but he can’t let it go, either. He just watches. Waits.
Jason pulls back the hammer. “It’s him or me. You have to decide.”
Did Bruce look this distraught when he came across his son’s crispy, mangled corpse?
“I’ll count to three.”
“Put the gun down.”
“One.”
The Joker laughs and laughs and laughs. Jason can feel his Adam’s apple bobbing against his arm. God, his twisted laughter. It’s all Jason’s heard since the day he woke up in the coffin. It’s all he hears now. It’s all there is.
Jason doesn’t bother finishing the countdown. He pulls the trigger.
“No!”
The laughter stops like a book slamming shut. Jason’s ears are left ringing with the echoes of the gunshot so close to him. For a moment, no one living moves. The Joker’s body slumps in Jason’s hold. There’s blood on Jason’s face, fresh and warm.
Bruce flings the batarang, but he’s too late. He knew he’d be too late. Maybe he doesn’t care. Maybe he wishes he’d fired the gun instead. It doesn’t matter. He’s always too late when it comes to Jason.
The batarang slices right through Jason’s jugular. He collapses to the floor, laughing hysterically beside the Joker’s silent, headless corpse. Blood spurts from his neck with every heave. He chokes on it.
Isn’t this a fitting ending? Killed twice, but not by the Joker’s hand this time. We’ve come full circle, folks.
Bruce is kneeling at Jason’s side now, grabbing him, trying to turn him over. He’s pulled gauze from his belt to staunch Jason’s bleeding neck. Blood spurts from the wound Bruce gave him. “Get—get—” Jason chokes out between his bloody teeth. He fights the hands off until the blood loss gets the better of him, and his body goes limp.
He hopes he doesn’t wake up this time.
“All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us."
When Jason wakes up, for a split second, he’s sure that he’s back in the coffin. The Red Hood/Batman/Joker showdown was all a hallucination and he never left the grave. He’s the hanged man at Owl Creek Bridge. He’s still suffocating on the stale air. Maggots are crawling inside of his funeral suit. He’s alone.
The panic attack takes him like an undertow. He feels the weight on his neck—chains, a collar, he doesn’t know what, but it’s squeezing, cutting off the oxygen he couldn’t suck in if he tried, but he has to—he needs it off. He needs it all gone. He has to get out, he’s gonna die again if he doesn’t— He needs— Where is his dad?
There are hands on Jason’s wrists, tugging them away from his neck. “Jason, stop it! Look at me. You’re all right, my boy. Breathe.”
“Get away from him,” another, deeper voice says from somewhere far away, like he’s throwing commands through glass. “He’s dangerous, Alfred.”
“Oh, hush.” To Jason: “Breathe, lad. It took a long time to stitch that up, and I won’t have you ruining my hard work.”
Jason forces his eyes open, squinting at the ghost before him. There is blood on Alfred’s warm, wrinkled hands. They’re both on the ground, Alfred kneeling in front of Jason where he’s sprawled on the cold cement floor.
Jason ripped out his stitches. Blood dribbles down over his neck, into his shirt collar. He’s—he was—
Bruce.
Jason sits up, scrambling away from Alfred’s touch. He clutches his bleeding throat. Alfred looks exactly how Jason remembered him. Kind. Patient. Still reaching for Jason’s neck with those healing hands, trying to help the boy who could never be helped. And then, over his head, past the small cell in the Batcave that Jason’s been thrown into like a rabid animal, Bruce stands outside the bulletproof glass, watching. Cowl-less. Heartless.
Jason shoves Alfred off of him. Hard. “Get off’a me!”
“Lad, your stitches—”
“Leave me alone!” He only feels slightly bad about how rude he’s being. Alfred was the only person in the world who Jason knew he could always trust, who would never hurt him, never betray him. He used to think the same about Bruce, though, and look how that turned out. Now they’ve locked him away like the psychopath they think he is. They’ve made him a prisoner in his own home. “I don’t need your help. I don’t need you.”
Alfred has always masked his emotions well. Bruce learned it from the best. He doesn’t argue with Jason, doesn’t trample his boundaries any more than they’ve already been trampled. He backs off. He leaves. It hurts worse than the fucking crowbar.
Bruce doesn’t say a word to Jason. He just watches him through the glass—a spectator in front of the lion’s den at the zoo.
Jason turns away. Alfred left behind a stack of cloth pads and bandages. Jason presses one to his bleeding neck and makes himself as small as he can in the corner.
“‘Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?’”
It could be worse, Jason decides. He could be in Arkham. He’d rather be dead, but this is an acceptable second option.
The cell has a bed, at least. Toilet. A couple of books. Alfred is the only one allowed in, per some unspoken agreement that Jason had no representation in. He understands it, though. He’ll attack anyone else who tries to come in.
Alfred cleans the wound on Jason’s neck as needed. Re-stitches what Jason clawed out on the first day. That same night while Batman and Robin patrolled and Alfred slept, Jason ripped out every painstaking stitch with his fingernails and laid down to bleed the fuck out.
He woke up the next morning tragically alive with fresh sutures and his nails filed down. A surveillance camera was promptly installed in his cell so Bruce could monitor him as needed.
Alfred brings food that Jason doesn’t eat and books he doesn’t read. Kisses his forehead each time before he leaves and promises he’ll check on him again in a few hours. Jason doesn’t say a word to him. He picks at the food only enough to keep his body functioning, but not enough to give them the satisfaction of knowing he’s assimilated.
Bruce doesn’t come to see Jason as the days go on and Jason is forced to breathe against his will. He can just see the edge of the batcomputer from the farthest corner of his cell. Bruce is close enough that he could hear it if Jason called for him, not that Jason ever does. He can come and see the entrails of the mess he made any time he wants, but he doesn’t. He can’t even look at Jason outside of the creepy camera.
Jason wishes they at least had the decency to leave a knife with his meal trays. A fork. Hell, he could kill himself with a spoon if he got creative, but they know him too well to risk it. They took the drawstrings out of his borrowed sweatpants. Maybe they were Bruce’s, or Dick’s. All of the clothes in Jason’s old bedroom would be too small for him now—if they’re even still there. He hopes they gutted the tomb by now, but Jason knows Bruce just as well as Bruce knows him. The stupid dick is too sentimental for that. He can’t get over anything.
Speaking of dicks, Dick is alive and well, turns out. Alfred is the one to tell him about the crater in the earth that used to be Blüdhaven. Jason doesn’t feel any type of way about that. Likewise, Dick doesn’t come to see Jason. He’s gotta be somewhere in the cave, or at least in the manor, now that his home is a radioactive wasteland, but Jason never sees his face. Too guilty, or too resigned? It doesn’t matter. Jason has nothing to say to him.
A small shadow edges around Jason’s cell every day to the point where it’s getting annoying. The new bird is young, curious. He’s only ever met Jason the one time when Jason beat him to a bloody pulp in Titans Tower. Sometimes Jason will wake up and see Tim standing a distance away from the cell, studying him cautiously like he’s expecting the ex-Robin to burst through the bulletproof glass and bite his throat out.
Jason gets fed up after a week. “How’s that dislocated shoulder doing?” he calls through the thick glass. He watches the shadow flinch. “Talk a big game when you’re getting your ass beaten, but now that I’m the one in the trap, suddenly you’re too scared to make conversation?”
Silence.
Jason smiles. “They don’t know what to do with me, do they? It’s the only reason I’m still here. He can’t bring me to Arkham, but he won’t let me loose, either. Didn’t have the balls to let the batarang kill me, so here we are. Stalemate.”
“...What did you think was going to happen?” the shadow says. He still doesn’t inch any closer. Coward.
“Does it matter? This is the reality. I forced him to make a choice, and this is what he chose.”
“You chose. You’re the one who pulled the trigger.”
Jason guffaws. “He’s really got you brainwashed, huh? Fine. Y’know why I did it?” He doesn’t wait for a guess. “Because I saw it in his eyes. I knew the ending before the fight even started. He was always gonna pick the clown over me.”
If Jason hadn’t pulled the trigger before the countdown finished, he still would have ended up with his throat slit either way. The Joker would have walked away without a scratch. Bruce was never going to let Jason have what he needed. He may love Jason, but not enough. Not more than his so-called morals. He would not compromise what he believed in for anyone—not even for the child he lost.
The shadow starts to slink away.
Jason pounds a fist on the glass. “He’ll kill you, too, you know!”
For a moment, he thinks the kid won’t take the bait, but then Tim appears in front of him. It’s the first time Jason has seen him face-to-face since the Titans Tower fight. Bruce wouldn’t let his precious new sidekick anywhere near the Red Hood’s wrath. It’s a real shame he didn’t protect Jason like that when he was the one in the tights.
“He killed me. He’ll kill you. Then he’ll find another dumb kid to idolize him and kill that one, too. It’s what he does.”
“He loved you,” Tim says. Loved. Past tense.
“You can kill what you love. Look at Othello.” Jason laughs to himself. He braces his forearms against the glass keeping him contained. “If you were as smart as they say you are, you’d be gone already.”
“I’m in this because I want to help people. You used to want that, too, right? You used to be a hero. Now you’re just a murderer.”
“Just? Who got the Joker off the streets? It wasn’t Daddy Warbucks, now, was it? How many people did the clown kill after he got me? That’s on Batman. He chose to let a monster go free. He chose to let him keep ruining lives because he loved the game too much to stop.”
“He tried—”
“He chose to put a target on your back! And you just let him. It’s pathetic. What, the little boy was so desperate for a happy family that you’d die for it?” He smiles at the clench of Tim’s jaw. “Yeah, I did my research. Mommy and Daddy didn’t love you? Boo-fucking-hoo. You’ve got Stockholm Syndrome. You’re his pet.”
Tim’s hands are balled into fists. Jason punches the glass just to see the twerp flinch again. He doesn’t.
“He loves you,” Tim repeats quietly. And he leaves.
“I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.”
Jason stops eating. Then, when that doesn’t change anything, he trashes the cell. He tears the bed apart and rips the pages out of all his favorite books, screaming obscenities at Big Brother overhead. He punches the concrete floor until blood pours from his hands. He bashes his face into the walls and spits out a bloody tooth.
Finally, Bruce shows up.
Jason snorts. “So, this is what it takes to get you to talk to me?” He’s sprawled on the floor at the front of his prison, blotting the stains on his face with his sleeve and sucking on his scraped knuckles. “You’re a real class act.”
“Well, I’m here,” Bruce says, his expression unreadable. He’s shown up in a simple button-down and trousers, like Jason caught him on the way to a meeting. “Are you happy now?”
Are you happy?
Jason succeeded in everything he set out to do when he left the grave. Seize control of Gotham’s gangs. Execute the bastard who killed him. Beat up the new kid who stole Jason’s name.
Check, check, check.
He did it all. He finished the mission, and everything is still terrible. He feels the exact same as he did before, except now he has no goal to keep him moving forward, so…what now? What more does he need? What is missing?
Jason smiles cruelly at his cursed creator. “Don’t I look happy?”
“No.”
“Well, darn.” Jason never expected to feel so powerful once he got Bruce in front of him, forced to look upon the monster he created. Jason’s the one in the cell, but Bruce is caught on the hook. “If I kill myself, do you think I’ll wake up a second time?”
Bruce’s eyes narrow the smallest bit. “How did you do it the first time?”
“None of your beeswax.”
“It is my business that the boy I raised came back from the dead a raging sociopath.”
Jason snorts. “And he says he’s not judgmental.”
“You’ve killed people. You decapitated human beings. You shot a man in the head ten feet away from me, and you expect me to turn the other way?”
Jason shoots up to his feet. He gets as close to Bruce as he can, until his battered nose touches the glass. “That’s what we’re calling him now? What happened to monster? What happened to devil? Don’t tell me you feel bad for that sack of horse shit now. Are you planning a funeral? I didn’t get an invite. Did you cry over his splattered brain matter?”
“Don’t twist my words, Jason. Just because I hold regard for human life doesn’t mean I have sympathy for the Joker. The world is better off without him.”
Jason slams his palms against the glass so hard and so suddenly that Batman—the Batman—jumps. “Ha! Ha-ha!” Jason smashes his fist next. He feels his third knuckle crack. “You stupid hypocrite. I should’ve shoved a screwdriver through your eyeball and into your useless fucking brain when I had a chance. I should have buried you alive and made you crawl through six feet of death dirt. Fuck you.”
Bruce waits patiently. “Are you finished?”
Jason spits on the glass.
Calmly, Bruce says, “Do you know how many nights I lay awake hoping the Joker would get cancer? I prayed to God that he would trip into a vat of corrosive acid and die, slowly, because then it would be no one’s fault. I wouldn’t have to live with the guilt of not putting him down myself. I would not have to compromise everything I stand for to put him down. My son could rest in peace knowing that his killer would never touch anyone else again.”
Jason spreads his bloody hands. “Do I look peaceful to you?”
“I don’t think you’ve ever had peace, and I take full responsibility for that. Instead of helping you work through your pain, I gave you an outlet to take it out on others. I pointed you at Gotham like a weapon when I should have gotten you professional help.”
“I don’t know, Dad, taking my pain out on others feels pretty great to me. You should try it. Father-son bonding. We can hold hands and stab Joe Chill in the heart together.”
Bruce’s infuriating facade doesn’t crack. “No matter how much you think it will solve your problems, taking a life leaves a stain on your soul. It spreads. It corrodes. It’s easy to kill a spider when you’ve already killed a fly. What’s to stop you from killing a bird when you’ve already killed a spider? On and on.”
Jason rolls his eyes. “Oh, shut up. You don’t get to lecture me like I’m your fucking kid anymore. I’m a grown man.”
“All I see is a traumatized teenage boy.” Bruce lays a hand on the glass. Jason backs away like he can reach through and get him. “You can still recover from this. We can find a way to help you.”
“Ha! And then what? You’ll let me back into your life with open arms? Kick the kid to the curb and give me back the red and yellow?”
“I don’t know.”
Jason chuckles like a madman. “You have no idea where to go from here. Admit it. You’re just gonna keep me prisoner here until something forces your hand. Give me a gun and a minute alone, and I can solve all of your problems for you. Would that make you feel better? Would it assuage your guilt to know that your precious boy is resting in peace for good this time? Careful, though, Brucie. Better nail the coffin shut, just in case. Who knows what could happen?”
“I won’t let you hurt yourself, Jay. I love you.”
“Oh, shut up. You never loved me. You killed me. You killed me,” he snarls.
The first go-around wasn’t Bruce’s fault. He raced to save Jason. He couldn’t help being too late, but this? The after part? Jason’s physical and mental wounds have Bruce Wayne written all over them. Bruce slaughtered any small part of Jason that still believed in goodness. He chose the Joker’s life over Jason’s justice. He chose to let Jason’s death be for nothing.
Why couldn’t Bruce just play the game? He didn’t even have to do anything. Just let Jason pull the trigger without a fight, and they could have gone home together. It would have been the easiest thing in the world. If Bruce truly loved Jason like he said, then he would prove it by allowing Jason to avenge himself. Hell, he’d have done the job himself like any decent parent would if their child was murdered.
Bruce couldn’t even manage the bare minimum. And now Jason’s got what he wanted: The clown is dead, Jason and Bruce are reunited, and yet he’s filled with nothing but tar and hatred. What is he still waiting for?
Jason’s breath hitches. A child throwing a tantrum, he whispers, “I hate you. I wish you’d gone for the head-shot instead.”
“You knew I wouldn’t. Be honest with yourself, Jason. You know me. You knew I couldn’t let you kill him, and I could never kill you. What did you really want?”
“Maybe I didn’t know you as well as I thought I did.”
“Jay—”
“Go away. I’m done talking to brain-dead bastards.”
“No. You wanted to talk, so we’re talking. Talk, Jason.”
“Fuck you.”
“Son—”
“Don’t you fucking call me that!” Jason snarls, hurling himself at the glass again, wishing he could pound Bruce’s teeth through the back of his skull. “You lost that right when you slit my throat! You don’t get to call me that!” He screams. He curses. Then, for the first time since they locked him up in this damn prison cell, Jason cries.
The ugly truth? Jason just wanted to see the look in Bruce’s eyes. He needed to see Bruce’s face while Jason dealt out the options, and then he would know whether Bruce really loved him at all. And he did. That’s the worst part of it. Jason knows he was loved, but it wasn’t enough.
Jason was important. He was a hero. He was loved. But he wasn’t important enough to retire the Robin mantle for. He wasn’t enough of a hero to be remembered. He wasn’t loved enough to justify taking one worthless life to save hundreds of other little boys who just wanted to go home to their dads, who wanted to grow up and live.
Bruce thinks it was an impulsive test—emotion warring with reason, but Jason knew exactly what he was doing. He set those explosives for a good reason. He knew from the beginning how it would end. He just needed to see the truth for himself so he could go out with closure. He and Bruce would play out the performance he planned, and then they would die together, all three of them. Wouldn’t it be poetic? The monster and creators taken out all at once.
“He beat me,” Jason cries pitifully. “He licked my blood off his fingers. He knocked the teeth out of my head and kept ‘em as souvenirs, and you let him walk away.” Jason shudders, muffling his sobs in his elbow.
“Jason…”
“Why couldn’t you just let me do it? You didn’t even have to help. Just—just stand there and watch. You could even lie to everyone after and say you tried to save him. I don’t fucking care, ‘cause he’d still be dead. I suffocated to death under ten tons of rubble. My bones were shattered. My skin melted. I laid there for so long, crying and choking on smoke until I died, and you still wanted to save him? It was so quick, too. He didn’t feel a thing. He died painlessly, and you slit my fucking throat.”
He can’t see Bruce’s wobbly image through the tears. He can’t breathe past the sobs. He’s a child again, wailing for Batman to come save him, crying as he suffocates in the wreckage of that warehouse.
He hears the dull thud of a lock disengaging, and suddenly Bruce is invading the cell. He pulls Jason into his arms. It only makes Jason cry harder. He shoves Bruce hard enough that if he weren’t Batman, the force would knock him right off his feet. “Don’t fucking touch me! Fuck you! Fuck you!”
Bruce doesn’t back down. He yanks Jason back into a hug, and this time he doesn’t let himself be pushed off no matter how hard Jason struggles. He’s shaking. “I’m sorry this happened, Jason. I’m sorry it turned out this way. I wish I could go back and undo it.”
Not undo the showdown with Joker. Not change things so that Batman had put the batarang in the Joker’s neck instead. No, farther back. He knows Bruce too well. Jason would laugh if he weren’t so drained of every emotion he ever had. “You’d rather I stayed dead than become a murderer?”
Bruce is silent for a moment. “Yes,” he confesses finally. “I’d rather you were dead.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, then.”
“‘Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator, would tear me to pieces, and triumph; remember that, and tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me?’”
Bruce doesn’t come to see Jason again after that. He cradled Jason in his arms until the tears dried and exhaustion set in. Alfred was sent in after to care for Jason’s self-inflicted wounds and sort out the mess he made of the cell.
“You shouldn’t bother,” Jason told Alfred dully as he wrapped Jason’s knuckles. “It doesn’t matter if I heal or not.”
Alfred cupped his cheek tenderly. “It does matter.”
Jason dismissed him soon after that. He couldn’t take the kindness. He can’t.
He can’t take the pitying look in Alfred’s eyes any longer, nor the absence of Bruce’s shadow in the cave. He can’t be around the people who used to love him, but he can’t lay a finger on them, either, so…what, then? What is there to wait for? What is there to do except seethe and sob as the days drag on?
In the middle of the night, waking Jason from a dreamless sleep, the cell’s lock disengages, but it isn’t Alfred this time. It isn’t Bruce.
Tim Drake is not wearing his Robin uniform. He has no armor. If Jason wanted to, he could break the kid’s neck right now, and Tim would be helpless to stop it. Tim knows it, too, which explains why he immediately steps back from the open doorway, waiting. He hasn’t brought Jason’s guns or the rest of his weapons, but he’s holding the Red Hood’s helmet.
Jason doesn’t leave yet. He watches Tim’s face for a sign of deceit. “Why?”
“You were never going to stop haunting him if you stayed here, and he couldn’t put you someplace else. If you escape on your own, it’s no one’s fault. Maybe this way, after some time apart, you can both find a way to heal.”
Jason steps outside of the only home he’s known for weeks. He snatches the helmet from Tim’s hands. “You’ll die doing this job.”
“Probably,” the kid agrees, but he’s not bitter about it. Fuckin’ freak. “Try not to make me regret this, please? I can’t take seeing Alfred cry anymore.”
Jason steals one of Bruce’s motorcycles on his way out—one last fuck you. Bruce will worry for a while. He’ll assume that Jason went and killed himself, but Jason won’t give the bastard the satisfaction.
Red Hood will live. He’ll raze the rest of Joker’s operations. He’ll kill Black Mask, and anyone else who stands in the way of him cleansing Gotham. He will become a better Batman than Batman ever was, and Bruce will have to watch it all knowing he’s the reason for all of it. He’ll choke on it.
“If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear.”
— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein