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Due to the shockingly high number of literal, actual supervillains that regularly attempt to travel by air under their supervillain identity rather than their legal name, Gotham International Airport’s TSA checks every passenger who boards – and who disembarks. Missing passengers are noted in a federal database, and security is on-hand to immediately detain anyone whose identity does not match.
On this particularly dreary Gotham day, one Oliver Richardson, perpetually underpaid and overworked, takes the IDs the latest passenger hands him blearily, scans them, registers the flash of green on his computer screen, and only then glances down at the identification he is currently holding.
He reads the name on the first one. Freezes. Re-reads.
Looks up.
The man standing in front of him is Gotham-pale, although by Gotham standards he’s actually deeply tanned. He’s got a mess of black hair, a shock of white smack dab in the middle of his forehead like a weirdo, blue-green eyes, and is built like a fucking tank. The kid scowling at his elbow is comedically smaller in comparison, with matching black hair and blue eyes and darker skin. The woman bouncing excitedly at the man’s other side is also Gotham-pale, black hair, black eyes, comedically petite compared to the fuck-you sized man standing next to her.
“Is this a joke?” Oliver Richardson, perpetually underpaid and overworked TSA agent, asks.
“Excuse me?” The man asks, expression twisting with confusion.
“Jason Todd’s dead. You ain’t him.” Oliver says, and subtly taps the alarm button hidden beneath his desk – the one that alerts security to a discrepancy in identification.
“Is that a threat?” The man demands, hostile.
The kid yanks out a knife.
X
“You need to leave.”
Jason looks up slowly from his book. Raises an eyebrow. Talia, hands on her hips, continues staring down at him in mild irritation. Damian looks up from where he is hunched over his sketchpad, and shoots Jason a vicious grin.
“You too. Out. Shoo.” Talia flaps her hands at the two of them like they are pests.
“…Where exactly do you think we’re going?”
“Every boy needs to leave the nest at some point – I do not care, take your brother and leave. Pack your bags.”
Damian is immediately shouting in protest, horrified and offended, but Jason just narrows his eyes.
She wants them out of the facility she’s effectively hoarded them in the last couple years. She wouldn’t be doing that without good reason – Talia’s more paranoid about their safety than Batman tripping on fear gas. Which means she does not think they’ll stay safe here.
Which means she’s about to instigate some shit, and the only person she’d instigate shit with that is an actual threat –
Is Ra’s.
Which.
Yeah, okay, but she wants him to take the kid so that rules out the Fields of All, and Jason’s an asshole but he’s not gonna play with his little brother’s safety so –
“And take your sister with you!” Talia adds, turning away from her youngest son to point threateningly at Jason, and – that cinches it.
Jason could probably keep the lot of them safe wherever they go – but there’s only two place he’s certain of. And Cass and Damian can’t go to the Fields.
So.
“How much of a mess can I make?” He asks, interrupting Damian’s rapid-fire Arabic response to Talia’s sudden ultimatum. Talia sneers dismissively, more concerned with wrestling down her youngest’s deep-seated abandonment issues.
Jason’s grin is all teeth.
X
Jason Todd-Wayne comes back to life on a dreary Tuesday.
The boy has been dead for six years. Murdered overseas in a terrorist attack, while visiting an aide camp funded by Wayne Tech with his father. Bruce Wayne broke in the aftermath. The snap an enterprising photographer had taken of him just after his parent’s death – pale and hollow-eyed, his parent’s blood on his cheek and hands and pants, a broken pearl necklace clutched in one hand and a then-detective’s coat draped too-big and too-heavy over his shoulders – which had been, to that point, the single most famous picture ever taken in Gotham ever, had quickly been replaced by a new one. Bruce Wayne catatonic in a graveyard, while family friends lower his son’s casket into the earth, unresponsive and crying without seeming to realize it, his adoptive father weeping just as openly on his arm.
Everyone knows of the Gotham-bred, Gotham-born boy Bruce Wayne brought into his heart and home; the Gotham elite may have sneered at the boy’s poverty and poor parentage but they had approved more of a local child than the first, some out-of-towner circus brat that had long since fled the city. Jason had been Gotham’s – had been Crime Alley’s and Wayne’s all in one. The whole city had mourned his death, not just his adoptive family.
For the boy to walk into the Gotham International Airport like it’s nothing, to be genuinely baffled and enraged by the apparent fiction of his death –
“He faked my death?!” His outrage carries his voice out of the holding room he and his companions have been ushered into.
“Sir – “
“Mom got custody and his response was to pretend I got fucking murdered?!”
Phones are recording this. Bloggers blogging this. At least three sleep-deprived interns with various Gotham media outlets are transcribing the entire event and already dialing their bosses. Vicki Vale is speeding through downtown Gotham traffic on a technically-borrowed moped in a desperate bid to arrive before the clusterfuck is over.
This – this – is a scandal worthy of Gotham proper.
X
The man who claims to be Jason Todd-Wayne has all of the identification paperwork he could possibly need to prove himself. He’s got the paperwork for his companions – my siblings, thought I’d show them the home town while Mom’s on a business trip, what the fuck is wrong with Bruce – ready as well. There’s nothing to arrest him for, nothing to accuse him of. The police are uneasy and confused and deeply weirded out, but he submits to a blood test – to prove that his DNA, at least, matches; not a typical security test but under the circumstances one he’s quick to agree to – without complaint.
Well. With complaint, but without resisting it. Which probably rules out aliens and shapeshifters and plastic surgery or whatever.
It takes four hours, but security lets him and his companions go.
And then, as one, swing their attention towards Bruce Wayne.
X
What proves to have been Bruce’s fatal mistake – is the Justice League.
They don’t undergo Bat training, they don’t act with a keen eye for the media or public perception.
They are the weak link.
X
It’s so easy to get the ball rolling.
Jason’s loud. He answers questions. He’s furious and horrified and upset, and when somebody brings up that there was a body, he asks whose, asks if the child’s family knows.
How do you not know we thought you were dead? Vicki Vale asks. And that’s easy; he’s lived with his mother or grandmother since he left Bruce, both of whom live in such rural areas that internet was little more than a dream.
“We had a fight before I left. He – I figured if there was something I needed to know he’d call Mom. And Mom was laid up pretty bad after the accident – her dad never approved of Bruce.” One hand curls protectively over Damian’s shoulder as he speaks. It’s just a vague enough statement – Vicki Vale looks at him with stars in her eyes.
So.
The media looks to the body.
Look to who identified the body. Who did the autopsy.
Who Bruce Wayne interviewed with in the aftermath.
And this is what spells Bruce’s doom.
X
Gotham, as a city, has had a single-minded hate-on for one Clark Kent since the fucker first start buzzing around their ditzy billionaire. Gotham media has wanted Clark Kent dead with the kind of seething obsession best found in childhood-lovers-turned-arch-nemeses since Bruce Wayne first spurned local outlets to do interviews exclusively with that fucking hack from the Daily Planet – from fucking Metropolis. The same fucknut who rides off Lane’s coattails – doesn’t even do his own work and Wayne chose him?!
Clark Kent is the only reporter to have ever done an interview with Bruce Wayne solely about the death of his young son, Jason Todd. Clark Kent had been at the funeral; had been a pallbearer when Wayne himself was too shattered to do so. Had stayed with Wayne and his adoptive father, Alfred Pennyworth, for weeks after.
Someone posits the question; did Kent know?
And if he did – did Bruce?
X
The coroner is the next fuck-up. From Kent, intrepid reporters dig into the whole sordid affair with a mania so vicious and thorough it’s almost as if someone left crumbs for them. Just enough, mind you, to link things they might not otherwise have been able to. To offer proof.
Allen’s not local. He’s not from Metropolis either. Another friend of the family, this time from Central City. And he’s not a coroner by trade, he’s a forensic chemist, but somebody signed off on it, the autopsy he did of Jason Todd’s body, and that alone should’ve brought the proverbial legal hammer down on the whole thing.
With this, of course, comes the autopsy report, and the full list of damage done to the poor boy’s body. The trauma consistent with the story Bruce Wayne has told the public – but also the evidence of torture, prolonged torture.
Whoever this boy was, he died slowly. He died in agony.
X
And from there – the GCPD rolls on up to the grave.
They find an empty coffin.
Vale’s right there to see it. She doesn’t even bother writing up a whole article; she tweets it.
X
It is, at this point, that Wayne Manor begins to wake. The previous night had been long and draining, and everyone is laid up due to some combination of physical exhaustion or physical injury. Alfred is only just making himself his morning cup of tea when Timothy Drake staggers into the kitchen. Just throwing the sausages on when Dick Grayson slides in.
They are only just sitting down for a lazy breakfast when Bruce stumbles in.
They are, collectively, only just putting the first bite of perfectly prepared French toast in their mouths when Bruce produces his work work-phone and turns it off airplane mode – to better prevent disruptions to his already poor sleep habits.
And the calls begin flooding in.
X
“And this is the best fucking hotdog in the city.” Jason finishes, with a dramatic sweep of his arm. The old man running the cart grins toothlessly at the three of them, looking pleased as all hells. Damian looks like he doesn’t quite believe him; Cassandra is nodding, wide-eyed.
She, at least, accepts the dog with all the reverence it is due. Damian at least doesn’t look disgusted when he gets his own vegan dog.
Kid thinks Gotham’s a cesspit, but this is also where his brother is from, where his father reigns, and watching him trying so desperately not to insult the city is adorable. Jason’s touched. Wants to pinch his cheeks but that’d be one stab-worthy offense too much.
“American food is weird.” Damian announces after his first bite, but he immediately takes a second, so. Cass signs her agreement, but she looks more enthusiastic.
“We’re going to a bakery next.” Jason assures the both of them, and Cassandra makes a high-pitched sound of excitement.
X
Jason’s story is simple and heartbreaking and – mostly – true.
He and Bruce had been fighting, he tells Vicki Vale, and Bruce – said some things. Jason never specifies what, but confesses he’d decided that if Bruce was going to get rid of him, he’d decided to get rid of Bruce first, and run away.
Here is the lie; that he went to his stepmother, not his biological mother. She and Bruce had a fight; he fled again – and he hasn’t seen or heard from Bruce after that. Talia had been the one to find him and take him home. She’d handled custody, given that she already had Damian and Cass – and heartbroken at his adoptive father’s apparent abandonment, Jason had stayed.
“Stepmother?” Vicki questions, eyes wide. And for Talia’s sake, Jason lays it on thick. His trap is simple, and elegant, and when Bruce falls right into it – Jason laughs so hard he very nearly bruises his ribs.
See, the marriage.
Talia and Bruce had been married in the custom of the League. That marriage is legal, and binding – in Nanda Parbat’s eyes, permanent no matter the state of their current relationship.
But America doesn’t legally recognize Nanda Parbat as a country given Ra’s whole secretive bullshit.
So, cornered by reporters outside Wayne Tower on his way to meet with his PR crew and lawyers, when Vicki shouts out her questions – Bruce’s mind latches onto the logical inconsistency in front of him. Incensed and upset like no other, he bites out too-sharp to be Brucie Wayne, that in the eyes of the United States, he was never married to Miss al Ghul.
Twitter digs up Talia’s professional social media accounts – she does operate legally, after all – and within thirty seconds is slamming Bruce for being racist, colonialist, a predator, the whole works.
It sets the tone for the rest of Bruce’s public response beautifully.
X
Bruce weasels his way out of it, of course. He fails at shunting the blame off on some convoluted plot by his ex, mostly because Jason had figured he’d do that and prepared for it accordingly – created his own social media accounts documenting his various travels over the years, family photos, tourist traps and the like. The pictures were even honest; he’d taken them for Cass and Damian, when they couldn’t or wouldn’t join him on his training stints. Talia hadn’t been holding them hostage in some compound, and there’s the proof.
It's the JL members who’d helped cover up the truth of Jason’s death that fall on the sword. Clark gets cleared of any charges, but Gotham remains unconvinced, and Allen has to pull some favors with Constantine to keep from blowing his whole career and identity out of the water.
The conspiracy theories paint Bruce as a victim, which is a little shitty, but – that’s fine. Jason milks it.
“He still hasn’t even called me.” He snaps, just agitated enough, when a reporter asks.
“Father has never cared about any of us before, why would he begin now?” Damian asks, lower lip trembling and eyes downcast, and Cassandra sweeps him into a hug with her own cow eyes in full effect.
It doesn’t look good, Bruce Wayne abandoning his disabled daughter and visibly non-white son born to a foreign non-white mother whose first language isn’t English, and being involved however marginally in the faking of the death of his other child. As silly as those stereotypes are applied to Talia, their undercurrent shapes the public discourse unavoidably, and Talia’s never above manipulating the shit out of people who think she’s soft.
It’s a stain that will linger permanently on Bruce’s cute little himbo reputation.
And on the ruthless genius reputation he’s cultivated as the Bat too.
That’s what Jason’s most proud of, honestly.
X
It takes about a week before the Bats manage to track them down, which is fairly sad. Jason hasn’t even been hiding, not really – Damian’s accustom to luxury and that’s a fight Jason’s not about to have with the kid, so fancy penthouse it is, and there’s only so many of them available even in Gotham with appropriate security.
Cass is trying to teach him some sort of fucked up torture stretch while Damian practices drawing anatomy when the alarm goes off.
“Should we be concerned?” Damian asks idly, not looking up from his sketchpad.
“You? Naw, we’re too public for them to try kidnapping. Might try to kill me, but you two should be fine.”
Cass twists uncomfortably around to frown disapprovingly at him. Jason eases his leg back down and rolls his eyes towards the bank of windows behind her, to the big black lump hanging outside, hissing in pain as his muscles burn in protest.
“Ow.”
“I told you to include yoga in your daily exercise regime.” Damian sniffs. Jason lunges for the kid, and Damian neatly flips himself over the back of the couch. There’s a sword or two stuffed back there – Jason leaves it, doesn’t go after him, because now at least the kid’s armed. Just in time, too, because Bruce apparently gets tired of being ignored and punches out the glass.
Not with his hand, he pulled something from the belt for that, but –
“Thanks, jackass. Now I’ll have to go file a police report.” Jason snarks. That is, surprisingly, apparently enough to draw B’s black rage up short.
The incredulous Jason that comes out of his mouth –
“Oh come the fuck on – “