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It’s hot and cold. Spiked. Twisting and nauseating and dizzying.
Mom’s lips are blue. Her skin, gray. Her eyes are relaxed, the same shade as her mouth. They look calm. At peace. Happy.
And Jason is anything but. His skin is flushed with life. His eyes are shut tight, tears rolling down his cheeks in a torrential downpour. His hand shakes, and he drops his mother’s needle. He rips his hand from her cold, waxy face.
Heart ping-ponging against his ribs, Jason shuffles backwards until he’s pressed against the furthest wall. A sob is ripped from his lips, and he drops his forehead onto his knees.
Jason isn’t sure how long he sits there, body trembling and breathing hitched. At least half a day, judging by the darkness outside their little window.
Jason’s body has long gone numb. The tears have stopped. Maybe he ran out. There’s no more hot. No more cold. No more pain or fear or paralysis. He doesn’t even feel hungry, and he can’t remember the last time he wasn’t hungry.
So he doesn’t feel weird when he realizes what he has to do to stay out of the foster system. To stay here, in his home. He just hooks his arms under his mother’s and drags her out of the room. He starts to ease her down the steps when he realizes that he simply isn’t strong enough to hold her weight.
She tumbles down the stairs and makes a loud thump as she crashes into the wall.
“Come on,” Jason says gently, like he’s his classmate Leo’s mom, who spoke softly and kindly when Leo didn’t want her to leave him at school. “Let’s go,” he soothes, like he’s the neighbor Bill, whose voice is low and never angry when his daughter trips and falls.
Jason leaves his mom’s body in the alley outside their apartment. He knows someone will find her, and he hopes it’s later rather than sooner. He wants his mom to be close by. Just a little longer.
After that, Jason runs back upstairs, flushes the needles down the toilet, and sits on his bed in silence. He’s not sure what to do next. He’ll find someone to buy the drugs Mom hadn’t used. That should get him enough cash to buy food. But after that, he’s at a loss. He can’t go back to school, or they’ll figure out that his mom is dead and send him to foster care. He can’t get an adult job.
Jason doesn’t know. Paralyzed with indecision, he lays on his side, hugs his knees, and stares at the spot on the mattress where his mom had been. He falls asleep with sirens in his ears and red lights through his window.
---
The air is hot, thick with moisture. It’s suffocating in a way that infiltrates deep into Jason’s lungs, seeps into his pores. The dim streetlight flickers, its weak glow reflecting off the wet pavement. A fly buzzes past, and he swipes at it, because the fly is an adversary that Jason can fight. An opponent that he at least has a chance in hell of beating.
All the while, Jason stands in the tall, dark shadow of a taller, even darker shadow.
“I said, what are you doing?”
Jason isn't scared of the Batman. He can't even pretend to be fearful. Not when he's seen so many worse things, so many scarier things than a crazy guy dressed like a bat. “Are you stupid?” Jason counters. “I’m boosting your tires.”
The Batman hesitates, like he wasn't expecting that response. Like he thought Jason would tell some half-baked lie to save his hide. But Jason isn't scared of the Bat. He isn't trapped. He's in control of this situation.
“That's theft. I hurt thieves, you know.” The Batman leans closer, and Jason takes the opportunity to smash the tire iron into the Bat’s face. Then he sprints the opposite direction. As much as he hates losing such expensive tires, he’d still rather get out alive than let the Batman beat his ass.
But the Bat takes this like a challenge, swooping after him in a flurry of dark fabric, not unlike the wretched wings of his namesake. Jason has a head start and knows the alleys inside and out, but the Batman is faster, somehow. Jason knows it’s all over when he feels the hand clamp down on his shoulder.
“You can’t run from this, son.”
And he’s right. Jason will never escape fate. Not that he knows this yet.
---
Tension runs through the Batcave, sharp and overgrown, all sinew and broken promises. There’s a heartbroken tragedy to it. The tension doesn’t stem from hate. It stems from something stronger, something deeper, something infinitely more painful.
“How can a twelve-year-old off the street be more capable than an eighteen-year-old you trained for ten years??”
The Teenager has shown up a few times since the adoptions. Bruce’s adoption of Jason. Jason’s adoption of Robin. The Teenager’s adoption of a serious grudge and the inability to mind his own business.
“I won’t have this conversation again!”
Bruce and the Teenager love to fight, apparently. Jason hates it. It makes Bruce upset, and then Bruce wants to be alone to brood. He benches Jason from patrol. Tells him to do his homework.
Jason just wishes the Teenager would go away.
“You seriously think you can train him to be better than me??”
The Teenager seems to want the same of Jason.
“I’m not comparing you! You always think I’m trying to challenge you! Maybe he just belongs here!”
The energy of the Cave shifts. Anger pops and fizzles. Bruce reels back. The Teenager looks at Bruce with the kind of vehemence that only comes from rotted admiration. He breathes slowly, turns away, and hops on his bike.
Even once the Teenager is gone, the Cave still feels wrong. Bruce looks at Jason like he’s a curse. But then he approaches Jason and smiles softly.
“Want to go on patrol?”
A rare dash of light! Hope!
“Would I??” Jason enthuses. He pumps his fist in victory. Out there, as Robin, Jason finally has the chance to do right. He can help, heal, fix. Out there, the grit of Jason’s soul falls into place, smooth as a river rock. Out there, Jason understands his mother’s eyes, so calm and at ease with the world around her.
Out there, Jason is somebody. Out there, Jason is Robin.
Robin helps people. Jason helps people.
(If only he could help himself.)
---
The heat is stifling. Not like the alley with the Batmobile and the tires. Not like a long summer day, forced from the only home he knows and left to bake against the black asphalt.
No, today, the heat is deadly. Sweat drips from Jason’s scalp to his collar. Hot breath on the back of his neck makes him flinch. The warmth of metal in the sun strikes his cheek, whipping his head to the side.
But the temperature is nothing compared to the sounds. The crowbar, scrape, scrape, scraping the cement floor. The sick thwack as it makes contact with Jason’s stomach, his legs, his head. And even worse still, perhaps the worst of anything, is the laugh.
The laugh is constant and odious. It spins circles around him, ringing and chiming to a miasmic melody and a ha-ha-ha harmony. The beat is steady and even, but the laughter denies Jason even the small comfort of consistency. The crowbar falls on the third laugh of the measure. Then it falls on the first. The third. The fourth. The fourth. The fourth. The first. There’s no logic to it. No pattern. No way to properly anticipate the blow. No way to prepare. It simply comes, and Jason must endure it.
Jason thought Batman might come and save him. An hour ago, he had such hope. He thought, yes, Batman always shows up. He’d never let something bad happen to me. But it’s been an hour with no word. No sign. No hope.
Jason is trapped. Tied down. Broken, beaten, bruised, barbarically bound, bitten, and bludgeoned.
He’s dying. He knows he is, deep down, and he knows Batman isn’t coming. He’ll die in this warehouse, in this country he’s spent a full two days in. He’ll die at the hands of a man who he’s met three times prior. A man he doesn’t even know the name of. A man who might not know his name either.
Enemies purely by association. Death by acquaintance.
For a moment, Jason doesn’t think the torture will end. He thinks it will simply continue. Continue after he loses consciousness. Continue after his lungs stop breathing. Continue after the last blood leaves his body. Continue until there’s nothing left but pulp.
But the torture does stop, and Jason (sweet, innocent, hopeful Jason) thinks that perhaps he’s been spared. Maybe Batman has arrived. Or Wonder Woman? (She was always his favorite.) Superman? Or heck, Jason will take Nightwing at this point.
But not one of these people have come to rescue Jason. In fact, no one, not a single soul out of the seven billion on Earth, not one creature from the solar system, the galaxy, the universe, or any of an infinite number of multiverses stops to save him. They carry on with their lives, completely unaffected by the tragic tale of Jason Todd.
No, of all the people in existence, no one saves him. The clown with the crowbar simply loses interest. After two hundred and fourteen hits, he just… stops. Never goes for number two hundred and fifteen. Then a great, hairy centipede of a laugh crawls from his slimy throat and splats on the ground. Saliva sprinkles Jason’s face. He wishes that was his biggest problem.
When Jason opens his eyes again, the heat has become insufferable. So insufferable that it feels cold, his only hope of survival pooling around him like a crimson lake.
“Jason! You're alive??”
The ground is rough and tears at every gash and cut on his body. Even so, he drags himself forward, arms doing all the work and useless legs trailing behind only because they're still attached to his body.
The woman - his mother, his real mother, who abandoned him and betrayed him and maybe killed him - struggles against the ropes that hold her fast to a support beam. She calls for Jason, and the sound is so worried and soft and kind that a sob wells up in his chest. He barely even remembers how she led him into this trap - sold him out for a wad of cash and a pack of cigarettes - because the sound of his mother's concern is simply too sweet - something he's ached for so deeply for a decade and a half - for him to remember the hurt. He needs to save her, and that's all that matters.
“I…” Cough. “I got you, Mom…”
Jason stands on broken legs. Wheezes with punctured lungs. Loosens her bindings with mangled fingers. Every second passes with the muffled, aching thump of his heart. The world is fuzzy and barely real, interspersed with the high-def image of his mother's face.
He has his mother's eyes, he realizes.
There's beeping. An alarm clock, counting down from 2:57. Maybe there was more time on it, once. But all Jason knows is that the dynamite wired to it is a death sentence to them both.
“Can't… defuse it,” Jason groans, because his head is swimming. He can barely differentiate between the battery and the explosives, much less the identical wires. “Get… Get out of here…”
But instead of saving herself, like Jason expected, his mother stoops, draping Jason’s arm over her shoulders and dragging him to the door.
“Oh, no,” Jason hears her say.
“What's wrong?”
“It's locked.”
Jason thinks that death will be a relief. A quick thing that will rob him of his senses, end all his pain.
But he's wrong. So very wrong.
Death crushes, stabs, tears his flesh from his bones. Punches holes in his body. Cooks his skin until there's nothing left. Chokes his lungs and burns him from the inside.
And Jason feels all of it.
---
It's cold. Dark. Heavy with the smell of formaldehyde and earth.
He can't open his eyes. He can't open his mouth. The air is too thin. He can't breathe.
His chest spasms, lungs desperate for oxygen, and something wet pours from his nose like a faucet. It just keeps going until he's soaked in it.
When it finally, finally slows, something buried deep in his consciousness kicks in, and he takes shallow sips of air through his nose. It tastes like beauty. Like pine trees and the ocean and sleep.
He lifts his arms and pushes himself up, but he smacks his forehead on something sturdy. There are walls around him. A low ceiling above him.
He's trapped.
He screams through his lips. Something is holding his jaw shut. It's getting harder and harder to focus.
He punches up. He feels bones snap. He punches again. Again. Again.
And then he hears a crack that isn't his hand. It's the ceiling.
Spurred on by hope, he kicks, he punches, he fights to escape. Wood splinters and then caves in.
And dirt buries him. He can't even breathe through his nose now. All he tastes is salt and worms. Desperation burns his limbs. He digs. He hacks and claws his way up, nails breaking and falling off. Blood pours from his fingers down to his elbows.
And then- Warmth! Space! Air!
He drags his body up and out of the ground, nose taking in as much air as it can. He parts his lips and feels along his teeth. There's something sharp and metal holding his jaw shut. He twists and pulls and rips the wires out with a gush of blood. He opens his mouth to take in great gulps of oxygen.
But instead of air going in, that salty, bitter liquid comes out. He hunches on the ground, legs still buried in the dirt. He hacks, chokes, sobs until it's all gone, evacuated his stomach.
Then he reaches up and scratches at his eyes, digging under his eyelids with bloody, dirt-caked fingers. Plastic and adhesive peel off, and he covers his eyes, the grim sky and its downfall still too bright for dinner plate pupils.
“Blegh,” he says. He should be able to say more, but there's not much more in his head or on his tongue. His thoughts are fuzzy, memories nonexistent. It occurs to him that he should have a name, but he can't think of one and doesn't care enough to assign himself one. He just… He can't focus. Can't think. The world is in static. The pain is neverending. Familiar burns and wheezing and bruises come to life as the rain washes away the makeup, the smoke and mirrors.
He needs help, he realizes, and he stumbles to his feet, walking in an uneven gait, posture like a dead leaf.
He's in pain. Even more, now that he's walking. His bones ache and scream. His skin threatens to fall off under acid rain.
There's a squeal. The smell of burning rubber. Pressure and maybe a bit more pain in his legs. He falls. Gravel digs into his face. The dark is quiet this time, cool and peaceful and void of any sort of suffering.
He welcomes it gladly.
---
The pavement is cold. The cardboard beneath him, damp and salt-stained. Snowflakes float on the breeze, lazily landing on his eyelashes and gloves. A chill runs to the bone. It’s one he hasn’t been able to shake since the blizzard.
“Get out of my spot, punk.”
The words mean nothing to him. He simply hears a voice. Sounds. Garbled nonsense rousing him from a restless half-sleep.
“You listening to me? Get your ass up!”
These noises mean nothing more than the ones before. He closes his eyes, fighting for a few more hours of rest. He’s exhausted and shaky and cold.
“Aw, jeez, man, that ain’t your spot. That ain’t anybody’s spot.”
“And you’re messing with a meal ticket, man. That kid always shares his food. I once saw him steal a nine-pound turkey. Kid’s gifted.”
The words are beginning to fall into a rhythm. They’re soft and gentle, like a lullaby. The restless sleep grips him a bit tighter, holds onto him a bit longer.
“Never gave me a thing! And he’s in my spot!”
Pain. In his stomach. Air forced from his lungs. He’s knocked off his cardboard and onto the salty, frozen asphalt. He screams.
“Quit whining, bitch. Get the hell out of my-!”
He doesn’t think. Doesn’t need to think for this. He rolls to his feet and darts behind his attacker. Grabs a metal trash can and cracks it over the man’s head.
The man swipes. But that’s no problem. An elegant backflip over his head. Like kicking a leg when the doctor taps the knee with a hammer. Immediate. Reactionary. Instinct.
He lands on his attacker’s shoulders and boxes his ears. Then he flips off and drops onto his feet as the man lands on his face.
The voices aren’t talking anymore.
He returns to his cardboard and falls back to sleep.
---
The world is chaotic with motion, fists flying in a frenzy, legs sweeping and kicking. The attackers dance around him like lethal ballerinas, and he simply exists. He dodges. He kicks. He reacts. He always achieves self-defense. Sometimes, he even goes on the offensive. But once the threat has been dealt with - isn’t coming back for more - he stops. He returns to his spot in the room and allows himself to retreat into his mind.
“That’s enough,” a robotic voice calls overhead.
He doesn’t know what this means. He doesn’t care to know, either.
A man and woman approach him. They’re discussing something quietly, though they have no need to whisper. He doesn’t understand a word.
“And you’ve confirmed his identity? He’s not a clone?” The old man with the gray streaks in his hair straightens the green collar of his cloak.
“Blood DNA is a perfect match. No artifacts or false repetition like you’d see in a clone.” The woman looks at him - not the man, but him - with something deeper than curiosity or calculation. Her eyes are familiar. They remind him of someone…
But he doesn’t remember anyone, so that’s simply impossible.
“Jason Todd,” the man says. His words sound like squiggles.
“Jason,” the woman repeats, voice gentler than before. It’s starting to sound like a command. Or maybe a title.
“He doesn’t respond to his name?”
“He only reacts when attacked,” a new voice says. “He eats, he covers himself when he’s cold, but he seems to have no sense of the world. We found scar tissue on his scalp and calcareous abnormalities on his skull, consistent with skull fractures. It’s likely this is a result of major brain damage.”
The woman crouches so she’s at eye level with him. Him-him. He doesn’t look back. Her hair smells nice, but her voice is like daggers. “What are the odds he’ll recover?”
“Little to none, Miss al Ghul.”
He doesn’t care. He doesn’t know what that means. But he feels a little… strange? Empty?
He doesn’t know, but he doesn’t like it.
---
Warm firelight fills the chamber. A warm hand wraps around his wrist. The strange, warm clothes scratch his skin.
“He misses you, Jason.” The woman’s voice, too, is warm. Painful, but warm, like standing too close to a fire. Her nails dig into his hand. He lets them. She’s never meant him harm before. He doesn’t expect her to start now.
“He’s become more violent since you left. I’m… I’m giving you back to him. I need you to be strong.”
He doesn’t know what she means. He just follows behind like a dog, rushing down steps and across cobblestone floors.
“Go.”
There’s a hand at his back, knocking him off his feet. For a moment, he’s weightless, falling, falling, falling-
Collision. And then, his world dissolves into flames.
---
Every inch of Jason burns. The acid, the poison, the tenuous waters of the bath rip into his skin. Destroy cells. Force new ones to grow. His arms and legs are itchy from skin scraped raw. His brain boils and melts. His eyes spin. He throws his head back and screams.
And then it stops. Jason blinks the water from his eyes. He slowly stands up, letting it drip off him in rivulets. His skin is clean and pink, the scars from the burns and cuts scrubbed from his body. His mind is clearer than it’s been in…
He doesn’t remember. How long has it been since he was actually aware of his surroundings? How long since he knew where he was and who he was and what was going on? The last thing he can recall is some shaky memories of his mom and burning.
A hand grabs Jason’s arm and yanks him out of the bath. “You need to go,” the woman orders. “Take the back stairwell and then the first door on the left. Find Bruce.”
Jason frowns. “... Talia?”
“Go. Now.” She pushes him, and he gets a sudden rush of urgency, adrenaline spiking as he runs to the stairs.
“TALIA!!!!!
“AFTER HIM, NOW!”
Jason runs faster. He doesn’t know why he’s here. More importantly, he doesn’t know how he’s here. He was dead. He was dead, and no matter how hellish the scene, this definitely isn’t the afterlife Jason remembers.
Reaching the top of the stairs, Jason busts through the door and tumbles out into the night. He runs and he runs until he finds a town to hide in. He ducks behind a shop and notices the envelope in his pocket.
Well, not his pocket. He’s not sure whose clothes these are. Or how he came to wear them, for that matter.
The envelope is blank, with three things inside: a plane ticket to New Jersey, a passport, and $300.
All in all, Jason has worked with less information and fewer resources. He’ll sort this out on the way.
---
Hollow. Shaky. Desolate.
The lights are too bright. The AC is too loud. The tag on Jason’s shirt is too itchy. For a guy who survived the sensory overload that is escaping his own grave, this is somehow enough to throw him into a frenzy.
Jason paces. He doesn’t usually pace. He’s never really felt a need to. Pacing is for people in movies. Real people don’t pace.
But today, Jason is fake. He paces because it’s the only thing he can think to do. He… He needs to do something. Pacing isn’t the correct answer, but that may be because there is no right answer.
The words float through Jason’s head again. He sees Bruce’s face. And he feels the anger bubble up inside him all over again. The flames creep up the sides of his lungs. The knots twist his gut. A sudden shot of adrenaline rushes to his arms and legs.
Pacing isn’t enough. Nothing is enough to sate the unbridled, soul-shredding fury in Jason’s heart. He screams. He kicks the motel recliner over. He grabs the TV and launches it at the wall. Glass shatters everywhere. Drywall cracks and crumbles.
It’s not enough.
“NO!” Jason screams, punching the bathroom mirror. “NO!” he shouts, flipping the double mattress. “NO!” he wails, tossing a chair through the window. More glass flies. Someone from outside yelps in surprise.
There’s pounding on his door. “Hey! This is the manager! Open the door!”
“No,” Jason sobs, loud enough to hear himself but completely inaudible to the man outside.
With no response, the manager uses the master key to enter. He takes one look at the trashed room and points an angry finger at Jason.
“Oh, hell no! Get the hell out!”
“No.”
The manager is steaming. Maybe (almost, but not quite) as angry as Jason is. “You’re gonna pay for this, you brat!” He seems to understand that the teenager with conduct issues isn’t going to actually pay for the damage. Instead, he goes straight to swinging.
Jason dodges the first punch and doesn’t give the man a chance to try again. He backhands him in the gut, slams his palm under his chin, and drops him with an elbow thrown down onto his shoulder.
The man collapses, and Jason does too, hugging his knees, tears drenching his face, and screaming. Beside him is a newspaper with the day’s headline:
BATMAN RETURNS JOKER TO POLICE CUSTODY