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The deceptively gentle swing of Gloria's body is vivid in Jason's mind when he flees the scene. She'd still been warm when they pulled her down, and the bruising around her throat from the rope was a lurid, dark color that blended and contrasted with the rest of the marks left across it by the man who violated her.
The man who murdered her.
Because this was murder, Jason reminds himself as he recovers from retching the meager contents of his stomach into a nearby alley. This was a murder by a man who knew he would get away with it. Knew, and looked them in the eyes with a cruel, satisfied gleam as he spoke her execution into action in the middle of a room filled with the most powerless people-with-power in Gotham. Murder.
Upstairs, Batman is busy with the cops in her apartment and had let Jason have a moment to recuperate in private. He isn't sure if he was grateful for that or not. He'd slipped out while Batman made the call to the morgue because he needed the fresh air, but even here it isn't enough.
He knows, intellectually, that he should stay here, or wait for Batman. Work the case properly.
He also knows it won't do a damned thing to stop Gloria's murderer anyways. He'll be sent away, back to his home country, where he'll go on to do this to other women there, or somewhere else, this cycle that would never end. More people would be hurt. More women like Gloria, like Kate Babcock and Linda Koslosky, like-
Jason wants this bastard to get what was coming to him, bad. There had to be something, anything that they could use. Something that could be done so that his cruelty could be stopped. Jason isn't thinking about where he was going or what he was going to find there until he was staring at the building where the murderer lives. The door to the balcony was still shattered from their first visit, though it appears that the glass had been cleaned up.
Gloria Stanson's rapist steps through the sharp, jagged edges unharmed, just like how he'd stepped past the consequences of breaking her in the first place. That horrible man- No, that filthy animal, that mad dog. That monster.
The name Jason spits from his lips was vile, like sewage. Like the cruel mix of blood and muck and come.
In return, the son of a bitch smiles with the bright stain of his sharp teeth gleaming. He raises his glass of rank booze to his lips and takes a swig without a care. "Well, well, little bird. What can I do for you today? How's my lovely lady Gloria doing?"
For a split second, Jason sees red. A snarl tears from his lips as he snaps, "You bastard, you killed her!"
The brief, mocking 'o' of surprise that crosses the beast's face did nothing to hide the satisfied contentment that the man felt hearing that news. "She's dead, is she? Well, Robin, you'll find I've done no such thing. How could I?" He asks, setting his glass down on the railing to make a sweeping gesture towards the rest of his apartment that Jason has to fight the urge to flinch from. "I came straight here once I was released from the department's tender custody. You'll find I have made no wrongdoing in that time."
This is where Jason makes his mistake. The anger and bristling urge to get in the rotten slime ball's face and scream about how wrong, how awful he is leads Jason to step forward, and that put him within that animal's reach. Jason may have had speed and agility over Gloria's monster, but it has a greater size and strength over him. And this time, Jason was alone.
He was too in his own head, a flash of remembered panic bleeding into now. His hands clawed at the fingers of the larger man who'd grabbed him by the collar, pushing him back against the unbroken parts of the window behind him. With a tremble in his legs that barely supported his weight, Jason spat in the man's face. He wasn't Robin here, even in the costume there was something too raw in his chest for him to be anything more than a child.
"Are you scared, boy? You shouldn't have come here. But you know, since you are…" The violator's breath was thick with the scent of alcohol.
Teeth, bright and stained and sharp. The memory of hands. The choke of fear, the sobs, the taste. Is it Gloria's monster? Or was it his own?
Jason gets his legs up to kick the terror in the chest and off of him, and it laughs as it hits the railing. The force knocks the glass off the edge, shattering across the ground between them. That cuts the laughing off. Instead, the beast frowns and glares. "Now you've done it, you little shit. That was a real crystal glass, you know? And the booze, too, that shit doesn't come cheap."
The rapist moves forward, closer to where Jason was crouched, defensive and frozen and scared. But the murderer wasn't looking. He steps on a large piece of broken glass which cracks beneath his weight and slides, the smooth tread of the asshole's fancy shoes having no other grip to rely on. A drunken lack of coordination means that the man can't correct himself, and suddenly the railing of the balcony was low, so low. It became a startling revelation across his face that the center of gravity in someone of his stature was simply higher than the top of the bars meant to prevent this very thing, and then all that was left was for him to be afraid of the drop.
So then, as Jason watches, Gloria Stanson's murderer falls back, toppling over the edge and down, down… down.
It takes all of Robin's willpower for Jason to step over to the edge, picking his way carefully around the shattered remnants of the man's drink and look down. Remembered terror and shock grips at his heart as he looks down at the bloody smear of gore across the pavement below.
Gloria had been like cracked crystal. Beautiful, but someone you'd be afraid to touch for fear of shattering her. Too fragile for a world filled with monsters. And it was those shattered fragments left behind that led to this.
Jason isn't sure how long it is before he hears the thump of a large body landing on the balcony next to him, and barely hears the frantic words that follows it. "Robin, what happened?!"
The boy looks up at Batman, his head swimming and unclear. A flash of shame crosses the fear he's yet to shake, and he can not find the words.
"Robin, did ###### fall… or was he pushed?"
It takes longer than Jason is willing to admit for the words to register in his mind, and more for him to process the meanings behind them. The implication. Revulsion crawls up his gut, and indignation straightens his spine. How can he- How dare he ask that? Of all things?
He swallows the bile he could feel in the back of his throat for the second time in as many hours. The last expression that filthy animal had made before the fall was as vivid as the limp sway of her body when they'd found her earlier. "I guess I spooked him," the words were ash on his tongue. As if he wasn't the one who'd been truly afraid. "He slipped."
Unable to keep looking at Batman, his partner, his father and the accusation in the hardness of his lips and endure the weight of distrust in his stare, Jason leaves.