Okay but imagine Jason Todd with a narrative foil who grew up on the streets with him only to be taken under Catwoman swing instead of Batman’s. Imagine knowing that every choice they chose the other chose differently and imagine them loving eachother because sometimes starcrossed doesn’t mean dead it just means being at two diffrent ends of the spectrum
Jason is twelve and his palms are bloody and his ribs are bruised and he wishes he could just give up, because jail or death has to be better than this constant fighting, this constant running, this constant uncertainty, but there’s a girl and she’s good, beneath it all, and she’s something worth surviving for.
You’re twelve and your face is bruised from a man who didn’t want his wallet stolen, but the shopping bag you carry has a loaf of yesterday’s bread in it and some deli meat, and Jason said he’d be waiting for you under the overpass, and he is, and he smiles when he sees you.
Jason is thirteen and a bat falls from the sky and takes him under its wing, and he wants her there — wants her there more than anything — but he waits to see if the rug is going to be pulled out from under him, if Bruce Wayne is secretly more dangerous than the streets were, and by the time he’s sure that he isn’t, by the time he goes back to find her and beg Bruce to save her, too, she’s gone.
You’re thirteen and Jason is gone and the sound of sirens is still echoing around in your skull when Catwoman gets down to your eye level and says that she’s been watching you, that she knows about the wallets and the jewelry and money, that she thinks you’re special, and she promises that if you wake her hand and trust her a little, she’ll give you a place to sleep and food you don’t have to steal.
Jason is fifteen and he knows that the girl perched gracefully on the windowsill is her; he can recognize her voice despite the smoothness she now forces onto it, and an awful feeling turns in his stomach because he knows this is the moment he’s supposed to catch her, because he’s a hero and she’s a criminal and there’s a hard line between them, or else he should at least beg her to drop the necklace in her hand or ask her why she’s doing what she’s doing, but her face is fuller now, her skin less bruised and broken, and he can’t blame her, not for any of it.
You’re fifteen and Jason is staring at you like you’re a ghost, and you think to yourself that that isn’t true — you’re not the ghost, you’re not the one who changed, you’re not the one who appears and disappears at will, you’re here, you’re alive, you’re doing what you need to do to be alive, and you’re not gonna let some little bird make you feel bad about putting your needs first when he’s the one who left you behind to go live in a place with servants.
Jason is seventeen and he is dead.
You’re seventeen and Jason is dead and the Joker is dead and Catgirl is dead; Selina’s one line was murder and you crossed it and there’s no coming back from that, so she protects you by saying that her daughter was killed in a car accident but she never wants to see you again, and you respect that.
Jason is twenty and he’s in Gotham again, guns ablaze and heart broken, because the two people he came back to this hell hole for — the girl he loved and the man who killed him — are dead and there’s nothing for him, but he can do something, he can clean up Gotham the way his father mentor never could, he can get rid of the druglords and the traffickers and the hitmen and he can be damn good at it.
You’re twenty and you’ve gotten used to the smell of blood; it isn’t a job you’d say you enjoy but the pay is good and you’re damn talented, and college was out of the question the day your mother buried an empty casket, and hell — being the hero was Jason’s gig, not yours.