perhaps that it's both revenge and the fact that she thought dick had to know, but either way, here's a little recording slid right under his door. 'you're welcome.' said the note, with a smiley face at the end. they'll be alright.
@himitsai & @vengeanceshot
dick was still half asleep when he sees the little package, there wasn’t even any caffeine in his system yet. slouched on his couch in the middle of the living room, his first cup of coffee of the day in hand, he finally decided to inspect its contents after determining it wasn’t a threat by the handwriting.
a tape. he couldn’t help but wonder what type of prank was luna up to this time. luckily there was recorder included because dick couldn’t possibly remember when was the last time he used a cassette. didn’t take too long for him to recognize the voices in the recording after pressing play: one was luna herself... and jason.
‘ hey, jason... did you have anything you wished you would have told dick... ? how you feel about him, i mean, ‘ luna asked in the tape and dick was just about ready to get mocked by his little brother again, like all those times before. he didn’t. instead jason spoke about admiring him, holding up to great standard that dick didn’t believe he could upkeep then, and certainly not now.
jason mentioned his clear absence during his stay in the manor, and dick felt a pang of shame and regret hit his chest. it had never been about jason, no, jason was good kid. he’d made bruce smile in a way dick hadn’t seen him in years, his presence lit up the whole manor with life. no, it wasn’t jason. it was bruce. he’d taken dick’s name -- the very name his mother had given him -- and handed it over to someone else without even asking. dick didn’t mind being replaced as batman’s partner; by then he’d understood bruce and him were in two completely different paths and it was best for both of them that he left. what hurt was seeing someone else use the name robin. what hurt was that bruce hadn’t learned his lesson and was willing to let other children get hurt in the all the ways he’d been hurt -- plus some new ones -- in the name of his crusade. but at the end of the day, no matter how much dick opposed, jason liked being robin; so dick and jason fought every single time dick went back home from the titans. in the end it’d taken jason life, and dick regretted not opposing bruce all the more.
he spoke about the pit and the rage that came with it; dick remembered how angry jason seemed back then -- and it wasn’t even because he’d died, it was because joker was alive. and that. that brought back memories of dick on top of joker, his hinds around the clowns neck. squeezing. he’d squeezed so hard until he felt the last bit of air leave his lungs. he remembered thinking joker had taken tim, too, and he’d let it happen. he couldn’t let it happen again -- so he squeezed and squeezed. tim was fine after all, but dick had still killed a man. bruce fixed it, like he fixed everything. in the following days dick quickly realized the guilt he felt wasn’t about having killed someone -- in fact, he was sort of glad that if he had to take a life, it was joker’s of all -- the anger and shame came from letting that psychopath take away jason, for hurting barbara and her father, for all the other people he’d hurt.
dick could never tell bruce that; he’d shun him for even thinking about it, then blame himself for the thoughts dick couldn’t control. so he kept that secret to himself to this day. nobody had to know his inner most twisted thoughts.
jason was right, dick cared for him. he’d always cared. jason was going to be his brother until the day he was dead and buried next to his parents and even after, nothing could change that. no matter how many times each of them died again and again. their relationship was rough, full of ups and downs, but in the end they would always be family. if jason meant it -- and dick believed he did -- dick couldn’t have felt more honored by jason admitting he admired him, couldn’t stop himself from smiling. dick was fully aware of his flaws and limitations, and the fact that jason still held him to such high regard despite them... well, he’d never admit it, but it made his inside all warm.
‘ but he probably doesn’t want to hear it from the person who kills criminals to get his point across, anyway, ’ jason’s voice ended and dick detected hint of shame in it. barely there, blink and you’ll miss it sort of thing. that was enough to make his smile die down. he found himself staring at his hands, the same hands that ended joker’s life once, the same hands that helped so many. he wondered if jason saw the same things when he stared at his own two hands. for much as he disagreed with his methods, dick had to admit that they worked. little jason todd had saved exponentially more lives than he had taken, no matter how much he or bruce protested, nothing could change those facts.
but now that he was the one in the cowl, much more in charge of what happened in gotham while bruce was off with the league in god knows what new mission, dick had a choice. he could keep pretending everything was going to be like this forever, or he could let jason in. wasn’t that the whole point of the batman, inc initiative ? binging in all sorts of agents that could go where batman couldn’t. perhaps it was time he called his little brother.
