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It started with Damian.
He was with Jason on a rooftop, overlooking an office building that was a couple stories shorter. Everything was dressed up like a legitimate business, but the official paperwork on the movement of funds wasn't quite adding up.
The others were off across town, staking out a warehouse at the docks where something was rumored to be going down. Oracle suspected these two things were connected.
Regardless, Red Hood and Robin would be breaking into an office building to steal some files, and that required careful planning, stealth, and waiting for the last employees to finally pack up and leave.
This was Jason's sixth time working with the Bats on an op, though he hadn't been intentionally counting. He was trying very hard, actually, to not know what the number was anymore, because it was embarrassing to know that kind of information off the cuff.
"Robin," Jason said. "You do not have the blueprints memorized."
"Yes I do, Hood."
"Really? Five minutes in the Cave is all you need?"
"Yes. Based on the pattern of light in the windows, the floors we need to access should already be empty. We could already be done with our part."
Jason reviewed the blueprints to find that this was, in an unfortunate turn of events, true. Show-off. "We wait until everyone leaves, Robin. Batman's orders."
Damian's mouth tightened into a displeased frown. "We can't act now because of your presence."
"How so?"
"Batman is not nearly as precise in his instructions unless you are working with us. He is concerned about your recklessness."
Jason was fairly confident that the difference in treatment could be attributed to the time Jason had killed a bunch of people and carved a bloody warpath through Gotham, but Damian hadn't been around for that. "My recklessness? You're the one who wants to jump in ahead of schedule."
Banter was one of those things Jason needed to carefully balance, like everything else. No threatening, no matter how teasing, never do it over comms, things like that. Damian tended to be a safe target for light teasing.
The kid must have been in an unusually bad mood today though, because his eyes narrowed and he said, "Tt. Must I remind you that you died because you pursued an enemy alone after explicit instructions not to do so? "
Jason's death was one of those things the others carefully talked around and Jason didn't think about very much anymore. Damian's sheer audacity in saying it so bluntly nearly shocked Jason into forgetting how to speak. As it was, his barbed retort was less than impressive. "I didn't—what?"
"The circumstances of your death are no secret, Hood. Considering that it was your recklessness that caused your death, it's reasonable that I would not want you to repeat the same mistakes."
Distantly, Jason identified the core concept in that statement as one of care. Damian didn't want him to die again. That was nice. He was succeeding at the awkward half-estranged big brother thing. On the other hand:
"Bruce told you I died because I went after the Joker alone," Jason said, just to clarify.
There was a burst of static, followed by Tim's strained voice—that little voyeur—as he said, "Hood, your comms are open."
"No names in the field," Damian snapped at the same time.
"Whoops," Jason said, addressed to both of them, before he raised his hand and muted his end of the comm. "Let me rephrase. Batman told you the Joker murdered me because I went after him alone."
Wow, the first version of that sentence was embarrassing. His high school English teacher would have failed him for that kind of passive voice use. Well, it was hardly his fault he'd died before he could finish the semester.
…Okay, maybe not the best argument in the middle of discussion about how it was totally his fault he died—got murdered—the Joker murdered him.
Ugh, language.
"—a ridiculous and foolish thing to do," Damian was saying.
"Aw, come on Robin, don't tell me you haven't disobeyed B before."
Damian didn't quite snarl, but he did bare his teeth in a way that reminded Jason of a small puppy. "Yes I have, when it was necessary. Chasing after an enemy without intel or resources while left alone in a foreign country was not necessary, it was stupid."
That was so not what happened, but this also… made sense, actually? He hadn't exactly argued against the claims that he was reckless impulsive violent etc. etc. because that meant the Bats underestimated him and that was a rare privilege, something that meant he wouldn't be utterly doomed if Batman decided to stop playing along with Jason's fumbling attempts at truces and compromises and maybe bonus reconciliation.
Yeah, he could see where those kinds of accusations would be coming from if he did go after the Joker without intel or resources while alone in a foreign country. It also seemed like exactly the sort of thing Damian would do, but Jason didn't know enough about the kid to actually argue that point.
"Suppose so," Jason said instead, acquiescing. "Don't worry, kiddo. I learned my lesson from that one. I'm not interested in a repeat performance, either."
Damian lost some of the tension in his shoulders, but his frown only grew deeper. "Do not call me that, Hood."
"Got it, bat baby."
Then Damian nearly ran Jason through with a sword, and it was good and nice and fun until the building finally went dark and they could sneak in without incident. Jason was absolutely fantastic at compartmentalizing, which meant he did not think about their conversation until the files were obtained and Oracle was in their ear telling Robin that the other Bats needed backup at the docks. Read: Get bailed out of whatever mess they'd gotten themselves into.
Barbie's commands to him were a little different. "Hood, please stop by the Batcave to drop the files off."
Which. On one hand, great, this was an additional extension of trust, and suggested a shifting of the status quo to the point where he would be welcome in the Cave. That was very very good. On the other hand, this was… unusual, when Robin was right there and far more trusted.
He was not about to question good things, though. Instead, he chose a nice and unobtrusive, open-ended question. "Sure. Is there anything specific I need to do?"
She, alas, picked up on what he was actually asking about. "Your old codes are back in the system, Hood, don't worry about it."
"Oh," he said, then muted himself before he could let something awkward and vulnerable slip.
He was halfway towards the edge of the roof, USB stick of downloaded information safely stowed away, when he noticed that Damian was staring at him. "What?"
He got a pair of pursed lips in response.
"There are, what, three other vigilantes out here tonight waiting on a teenager to save them. Shouldn't you get going?"
"It is obvious that Oracle does not want you there because the others are in a warehouse, Hood. Don't be stupid."
Aw. Look at that. They did care.
This was followed by the horrifying realization that Tim hadn't been the only one on comms to hear Jason discussing his death with Damian. Followed by the realization that none of them except Tim decided to speak up? So maybe Jason needed to revise his inner monologue to be a little more cordial with the guy.
It was kind of nice that they heard the discussion of his death and they—or maybe just Barbie, really—decided to keep him away from the warehouse because the Joker murdered him in one. He didn't really get it—warehouses were literally everywhere—but the gesture meant something, surely.
Then his thoughts skidded to a stop, rewinded through the past six missions with the Bats, and discovered that he'd never been assigned to a warehouse, ever, and even with the whole reckless impulsive etc. thing he'd been entrusted with a stealth mission.
Did they think warehouses were secretly terribly traumatizing for him? Dick had used a crowbar to take down a guy two months ago after his escrima sticks got tossed out a window, though, so that was somewhat inconsistent.
Perhaps they were intentionally aiming for a balance, then. Shielding him from some associations with his death while shoving others in his face, as some sort of… power play? One that would work better if he was actually scared of warehouses or crowbars.
More proof they were underestimating him. That was a good thing. Unless they were only doing all this to trick him into believing that they underestimated him, so he'd underestimate them. Barbie would be smart enough to pull that off.
He was alone on the rooftop.
Hm.
Trying to puzzle out the Bats' motivations always made his head hurt. He decided to stop thinking about that and just get to the Cave.
Jason went to the Cave. His codes worked without issue. It was empty, which seemed like a bit of an oversight for the current level of trust that existed between him and the Bats.
He stared at the glass case with the Robin suit that the Joker had murdered him in suspended inside, and he looked at the little plaque that said, IN MEMORY OF JASON TODD, followed by ROBIN surrounded by little tildes, and then A GOOD SOLDIER. He thought about how tying his full legal name to the Robin mantle seemed like a massive oversight, if Batman ever invited allies who weren't in the know about secret identities into the Batcave.
Dick had told him about the case, two months ago, while they were looking for his escrima sticks and debating if they were capable of surviving a fifteen story fall. "Just so you're aware, if you ever decide you're comfortable going back to the Cave," he had said. Knowing about it was different from seeing it, though.
He allowed himself five minutes of looking at the case and carefully not thinking, before dropping the USB off and escaping from the Cave before Batman could emerge from the shadows and jumpscare him, or whatever.
He spent the night in a safehouse he had in the East End. A quick sweep through it found three bugs and a small camera perched in the corner, which he crushed and threw out. He did this every time, but the surveillance devices unerringly turned up again.
He was pretty sure they were meant to be reminders that his safehouses weren't hidden from the Bats rather than actual attempts to spy on him.
The place was bare, without even a fridge, and the stock of nutrition bars in the cupboards was getting low. He slept on a bare mattress.
The next day, he left his safehouse with the intent of heading towards a grocery store to restock, only for his feet to carry him to the Gotham Cemetery. From there, it was disturbingly easy to find his grave, backtracking through stumbling steps he remembered taking on a rainy night years ago.
It was Damian's fault. It was the memorial in the Cave's fault. It was like being reminded that he had died had awakened a compulsive need to see proof of it.
HERE LIES JASON TODD, said the pedestal of a stone angel, hands together in prayer and wings outstretched. The ground in front of it was grassy and undisturbed. He could almost pretend there was a coffin with a body down there.
"Hey," Jason told the pedestal. "Dying sucks."
He thought about it for a bit, then amended his words. "Getting murdered sucks. The Joker murdering me? Yeah, that sucked."
It felt like an important distinction, somehow, beyond the opinion of his former English teacher. People died all the time. It was different from people getting killed, which was different from people being murdered. He had not spontaneously passed away in Magdala Valley. It had very much been murder.
Manslaughter? It hadn't been premeditated. It had only happened because his mom—
His mom.
Jason hadn't thought about Sheila much, after coming back. Maybe he hadn't ever let himself wonder, because he was scared of the answer. He could let her live in his mind—one last person he had managed to save.
There were a lot of messy things she would have needed to sort out. Batman would have found out about the embezzling, of course, and the reason she had to leave Gotham in the first place, and the whole thing with the Joker, but perhaps he would have helped her due to some leftover goodwill for Jason. There would be legal consequences, but Batman would understand, just like how Jason understood.
She would have been heartbroken for a while maybe, losing her son again so soon, but she'd move on. She would have recognized that embezzling funds from a famine relief organization was not a nice thing to do, maybe. She would have become a better person.
She would have had the rest of her life ahead of her, because of Jason, because he'd saved her.
He had seen it though, on the way to his own grave. He couldn't keep ignoring it. He shifted his eyes away from the stone angel, already forgetting whatever he had come here to say. Just a few feet to the right was a headstone that declared SHEILA HAYWOOD, BELOVED MOTHER. The date of her death was the same as his own.
He didn't save her.
He couldn't do even that.
"Hey mom," Jason said, finally. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I couldn't save you."
He wondered how long she had lived. Not very long, clearly, but he had tried to shield her, and she'd been by the door, about as far away from the bomb as she could be.
He remembered Sheila as blond curls, the lit cigarette with its curling smoke, and the pistol in her hand, pointed at his back. That bothered him, suddenly, the fact that he couldn't remember her face. Was she smiling? She wasn't looking at him when the—with the crowbar—he remembered how her hair fell across her face. She was looking away. She had cried, maybe—she was so happy to see him—
He couldn't remember.
His mother's face and—but he didn't remember his dad either, did he? Or the mother that had raised him—Catherine Todd, Catherine Johnson, Sheila had called her…
Memories faded with time. It did that to everyone. Jason had only known her for a couple hours, had talked to her for only minutes anyway, it made sense that he didn't remember very much of the specifics.
He did know that Sheila wasn't a perfect person. She didn't really qualify as a good person either, honestly. Embezzling from a charity organization was all kinds of scummy, and he could see why she was so desperate to cover it up. Lying to Jason, leading him straight to the Joker, he could see why she had done it, in some desperate bid to save herself from scrutiny.
It hurt that she chose herself over Jason, but not nearly as much as it probably should. Batman had done a similar sort of thing.
And… despite all that, after the beating and the world turned into a pain-blurred thing, he had felt her hands on him, gently helping him up after he had told her to run through his swollen face and bloodied teeth. She had slung his arm over her shoulders and said, "We'll both get out of here, together."
After everything, she had tried to save him too. Maybe that had doomed them both.
"Thank you," Jason said quietly. "Thank you for trying, in the end. I wish we had more time to get to know each other. I was serious, you know, when I showed you I was Robin. I could have helped you, with the Joker. I know you were… doing things that weren't great, but we could have figured it out."
There wasn't much point in lingering on the what-ifs, but he couldn't stop.
Batman would have listened to Jason. Batman would have helped her out of the hole she had dug herself into with the skimming money and the felony charges waiting for her back in Gotham, if Jason asked him to.
If Jason wasn't there, would he have done the same thing?
Would he have looked at Sheila, with all her awful parts and bad choices, and seen what Jason had? He did bury her next to Jason, in the end. BELOVED MOTHER.
But.
There was something itching at the back of Jason's brain.
Damian, last night. Batman had told Damian that the Joker murdered Jason because he'd gone after him alone. Not that Jason had been betrayed by his mom, that Jason had only gone into the warehouse because she had told him they were alone.
Batman was a detective. The World's Greatest Detective, even. He would know that Jason wouldn't have chosen to take on the Joker by himself. He would have taken the time to figure out exactly what led to Jason's death. He was meticulous about things like that, would have deconstructed the entire scenario to figure out what went wrong.
So why lie to Damian about what happened? Damian had said it like everyone knew, Tim interrupting—so this was how all the Bats thought it happened? Why lie to everyone?
Not lying, lying was—assuming that Batman was lying was really just Jason choosing to see him in the worst light. Things could have simply been lost in translation. After all, Batman, before telling Jason not to go after the Joker alone, had also told him to stay put in general.
Jason had approached the warehouse to help his mother, with no intention to actually approach the Joker alone, but that had technically been an order disobeyed.
The nuances could have been lost with time. That was more reasonable. Something lost in translation, in the game of telephone between the Bats as they all learned about Jason's death.
Jason looked at Sheila's grave.
BELOVED MOTHER.
He found himself talking again. "You're the only parent of mine that got a funeral, I think."
His dad, Willis, had always been presumed dead, which meant there wasn't a body, which meant the body was probably at the bottom of Gotham Bay. After his mom—Catherine—had overdosed for the last time, she had likely been cremated, her ashes left sitting on a shelf at the morgue until they were inevitably thrown out in the decade since.
Sheila got something physical, to remember her by, but maybe it didn't matter. It felt a bit like she'd been forgotten by the world, anyway.
Damian hadn't mentioned her—did he even know? Jason himself had let himself pretend that she was far off, alive and well, for the longest time. He hadn't thought about her. He hadn't wanted to know, even though he knew, even back then, in every one of his shattered bones, that the bomb in the warehouse wasn't survivable.
Her hands had been so, so gentle. The assurances as she led him to the warehouse door, before they learned it was locked, before they realized how they were already dead.
She had tried to save him. Sheila had betrayed him, at first, but then she'd chosen to help him when she still believed she had the chance to run. Jason hadn't known her for a very long time at all, and she still put him first at the end.
It made something in his chest ache.
"I'm sorry I got to come back and you didn't," Jason said, quiet enough that the words died before they escaped his lips.
His head was spinning. He was hungry. He had been planning—the grocery store. Protein bars. For the safehouse.
Right.
He left the cemetery in a daze.
Jason had codes to the Batcave. He had been explicitly invited there, the night before. Jason had codes to the Batcave. He was allowed in there. Jason—
The air was chilly, biting into his skin between the sleeves of his jacket and his gloves. He clutched the handlebars of his motorcycle, hovering at the edge of the road near the entrance to the Batcave as he tried desperately to think.
It was nearly five in the morning, the air dim and painfully quiet. The latest patrols only ever dragged on until four. Everyone would be asleep. The Cave would be empty. The Cave had been empty the last time he was there. He was allowed in there. He had his codes, they had added his codes back to the system, Oracle had said, he could go in.
This was a bad idea. This was going to mess up the balance he had with the Bats, somehow, but he had returned to his safehouse and the fact he couldn't remember his mom's face was haunting him, and his death kept replaying over and over in his head.
He just—
He needed to know.
He didn't know what exactly he needed to know, but the Batcomputer had everything and it was right there in the Batcave, which he was allowed in. If he wasn't, he could spin this as a miscommunication. If he was contrite enough, Batman might be willing to overlook this transgression. Red Robin was generally receptive to apologies.
He gritted his teeth, sucked in a breath, and let himself in.
The place was empty. It was as well-lit as ever. It hadn't changed at all since his visit the previous night, and he nearly let himself get dragged into staring at the memorial again before he forced himself towards the Batcomputer.
It let him in with his old codes as well. That was good, right? That meant they were okay with him using it too.
Everything was organized like he remembered. The filing system had grown more complex, more detailed, but the underlying structure was the same. He navigated back to the date of his death, scrolling through cowl footage and Batman's notes.
There was… less than he thought there would be. There was the cowl footage of the day and a summary of what Bruce had done, but no case file for the murders themselves—murders, plural, because there were two, Sheila had died with Jason.
The days after had more—contingencies upon contingencies, notes about funerals and the story woven for the Ethiopian police and a bit about Batman's pursuit of the Joker. Apparently the Joker had somehow gotten himself diplomatic immunity, which Jason would have laughed himself to tears about—the parallels to Garzonas, his English teacher would have a field day—if thinking about it too hard didn't threaten to rouse his anger.
He wasn't here for the Joker, anyway.
He clicked on Sheila's profile. It was all the basic overview, with a couple of annotations from Bruce noting her as Jason's biological mother and that she'd been working with the Joker prior to her death.
There was something missing here, something that was itching at Jason's brain again, but then his eyes skimmed over mentions of her last words and he was fumbling his way back over to the cowl footage.
Batman arrived just as the warehouse exploded—seconds too late, and wasn't that a painful thing to realize? He'd only been gone around thirty-five minutes, and that made it even worse.
If Jason had just waited half an hour, if the convoy Batman had been chasing hadn't shot down the Batcopter, if the bomb's timer had just been a little longer…
If, if, if.
Then Batman came across Sheila. She was still alive.
…She managed to say so many words.
Calling Jason a good boy. Murmuring about how he had tried to save her, how he must have really loved his mother. Then she was dead and Bruce came across his body next and—
Jason rewinded. Watched her whisper the same weak words. Watched her die.
He rewinded again.
…all his problems… and he… still… turned out good…
Again.
…he's… much better…than I deserve…
Again.
The first hitch of his breath was loud enough to make him jump, yanking him out of his stupor of mechanically rewinding the footage. He realized he was crying, tears welling in his domino mask.
He took off his helmet, then the mask, the latter in fumbling, quick motions that tore at his face. The footage rolled onto his own body and he pulled it back, again.
He watched Sheila die, again.
Batman had come in time to find her alive. It wasn't enough to save her. Her last words had been for him. She was dying and that was what she felt she needed to say.
…he took… the main brunt… of the blast…
He did. He remembered propelling himself as well as he could off the crate he was leaning against, putting himself between her and the bomb as the timer hit zero.
It hadn't been enough.
He could have done so much more. If he'd focused on defusing the bomb—he had two minutes, when he woke. He thought he couldn't have, but Batman had trained him to defuse bombs with less time, and he had the dexterity to untie Sheila's ropes—maybe they both could have lived.
If he had thought to bring the bomb to a corner of the warehouse, shelter her in the other, she could have survived her injuries. If he'd just waited, Batman had only been away for thirty-five minutes—
If he just never reached out to her at all, she wouldn't have had to choose between him and the security of her own life.
If, if, if.
If he was better, stronger, smarter, if he had ever actually deserved to be Robin, he would have saved her.
He had failed, and she had still been there. She had helped him up so gently and led him towards the door and she had said together like leaving him behind was never an option. And after, she had called him good.
He set the video on a loop of that section. He pulled up her profile again, and stared at her face. Blonde hair, blue eyes. She had a smile that leaned more towards a smirk, like she knew a secret she'd never share.
Blue eyes. Blue eyes, like—
His eyes had changed colors since. They'd flared gold ever since Talia pushed him in a Lazarus Pit, but the Batcomputer had pictures of him from before. He dug those up, ignored how seeing his own face softened with baby fat and curled into bright smiles made him feel.
He had her eyes.
…such a…good boy…
He used to have her eyes. He had lost that, now.
Bruce found him there long past sunrise, looping through the video again and again, dried tear tracks crusted on his cheeks.
"Jason," he said. He didn't have the suit on—of course he wouldn't. It was morning. He didn't say anything else, which meant it was up to Jason to push this conversation forward.
Jason clenched his hands together, muting the video. He needed to put together an apology or explanation or something, but what came out of his mouth was, "How'd you cover up my death, anyway?"
Bruce's face spasmed.
Okay. Not the plan, but that was fine. This was a safe topic. Or, well, it wasn't really, but Bruce was good at giving detached, impersonal information, and that was exactly what Jason needed to hear at the moment.
Bruce was not giving any information. "I think I deserve to know," Jason said, quietly. He was looking at Sheila's profile again. Something was itching away in his brain, something was missing. "I want to… understand."
So Bruce talked through it. He remembered a surprising amount, not even looking through the Batcomputer to check things. He talked about removing the Robin costume, about what he told the authorities, the fabrication of Jason's death certificate, organizing the funeral and putting together the story for the press.
It was all very well put together. Sheila was appended to everything—it was all Jason, Jason, Jason and Sheila, never her separately. Bruce didn't know how to contact any friends she might have had, and he didn't try.
"How did you know the Joker murdered us?" Jason asked eventually, pushing the topic more towards the actual investigation. "How did you figure that out?"
"Dr. Haywood said as much. The Joker then confirmed it."
That was it? As Bruce spoke, Jason glanced back at the Batcomputer and—
Something clicked. There wasn't an investigation at all.
"I meant what I said back then, you know? I forgive you for not saving me." Jason paused, mustered up as much casual dismissiveness as he could manage in his tone, and said, "It was my fault anyway, going after the Joker when you told me not to."
Bruce… did not contest this. He made a grunt that wasn't in his vocabulary back when Jason was Robin.
It never really died, the hero worship Jason had for Batman, for Bruce. The man had been his everything for three years, and then the center of his obsessive revenge plotting for quite a while afterwards. Bruce was the sun and Jason was a comet inexorably pulled back into his orbit.
Jason knew, intellectually, that Batman was ultimately human and fallible.
It was just odd to see proof of it.
Bruce didn't know. Batman didn't know. He'd simply assumed that Jason hadn't listened, that Jason had decided to—to what? Confront the Joker alone?
Sheila's file had nothing about the embezzling. She was one person, she couldn't have covered her tracks well at all. She had betrayed Jason because she knew the barest scrutiny would have been enough to catch her. Bruce didn't know.
Which meant he hadn't looked.
No autopsy, only looking through the scene so he could hide evidence that Jason was Robin—Bruce probably didn't even know about the crowbar.
Jason almost asked why. Then he realized he was holding something important, proof that Jason wasn't reckless, impulsive, violent, wasn't what Damian thought of him. That it hadn't been his fault the Joker murdered him—
His thoughts stuttered to a halt.
Of course it wasn't his fault the Joker murdered him. It wasn't Sheila's fault the Joker murdered her either. Fault, when it came to murder, was entirely on the murderer.
Jason had tried to help his mother instead of trying to take down a mass murderer alone, but it shouldn't matter. They shouldn't be blaming him—or the fifteen year old kid he had been—for getting murdered. The Joker murdered me, he had been thinking, on repeat, for the past day. It wasn't Jason's fault at all. It would never be Jason's fault, no matter what.
And yet. Damian said Jason's recklessness caused his death. Bruce listened to Jason say it was my fault anyway, and didn't correct him.
He looked at Sheila's face, at the knowing smile, hiding a secret. A secret shared between mother and son, and one he suddenly, desperately, didn't want anyone else to know.
This was useful, he reminded himself. Batman knew where all his safehouses were, and Oracle could always squeeze her way into his comms and tech, and he couldn't hide from them ever but at least he had this to himself. He had the truth, he had knowledge, for sure now, that they were underestimating him. This was a good thing. It didn't hurt.
Jason found himself staring at the loop of Sheila's death again. Bruce hadn't stopped him from zoning out. He hadn't stepped forward to interrupt Jason's swirling thoughts at all.
"I'm sorry for coming in without notice and—" Jason waved his hand vaguely at the screens. "All this. Sorry."
Bruce blinked, slow, then said, "You're always welcome in the Cave."
Oh.
That was nice. That was—good. Confirmation was good. He was permitted in the Cave. He was allowed to use the Batcomputer without supervision. This was the part where he thanked Bruce, where he excused himself, where he offered some sort of concession of his own to balance the scales.
He said, "I love her. I haven't thought about her in so long. I didn't think I'd miss her this much, when I didn't even know her."
After a long, stretching moment, Bruce said, "She didn't know you for very long either, but she clearly loved you very much."
"Yeah," Jason agreed easily. "She did."