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Can We Try Again? I'll Do It Right This Time

Summary: Jason Todd fights his entire life to find somewhere he feels safe. All he ever wanted was to be saved.

A character study on Jason pre-Robin to his time as Red Hood, and an ode to my love for the complexity of his character.

Read on AO3 here

This fic is rated M for graphic depictions of (TW) violence.

Jason Todd is just nine years old the first time he realizes the transient nature of human life. His father abandons him after a stint in prison, and his mother takes her last breath before his very eyes. It takes him an hour to notice she’s stopped breathing. He thought she was just taking a nap.

When his father first leaves two years ago, Jason doesn’t understand where he is going. He doesn’t know what prison means or why so many men in blue outfits and funny hats came into their house to take his dad away. His mom cries, throwing herself against the floor, so he does too. He isn’t sure why, but it feels like the right thing to do.

His mother’s health starts going slowly, and Jason almost doesn’t notice that it coincides so perfectly with her increasing addictions. It starts small. She coughs a lot after her cigarette. She smells like smoke and it makes his nose burn, but he loves his mother and hugs her anyways. It was just one cigarette a day, but suddenly she’s smoking the last one in the pack before the night ends. The smell never goes away.

Then, the liquor bottle that sits beside their couch is empty, followed by a dozen more. Jason takes them out every week, and eventually, the bags become too heavy for him and they sit outside the door. His mom acts funny after she drinks, and her hands strike his face. His cheeks burn with her handprints, but he loves his mother and hugs her anyways when she apologizes.

Sometimes, she sits and coughs and vomits on the floor. Jason doesn’t know how to clean it up well, so the hardwood always has a little stickiness to it. He laughs when his feet stick and makes a game of it.

A year passes from the day his father left, and his mom said he would be home months ago. He wonders if that’s why she screams more or sleeps too long and makes him late to school. She looks pale – a new word he learns that week in reading class. He doesn’t know why she doesn’t move much, but one day she tells him to go down the street and grab the doctor. So, he bounds down the pavement towards the dirty door belonging to their doctor friend. He’s not sure what their friend will do, but he leads him back to his home anyways.

“She’s sick,” the doctor says, and Jason could have told him that. He doesn’t say why she’s sick or how he’ll help, but he stops by sometimes to check on her.

His mom begins taking pills, and he assumes they’ll help her get better. She starts taking shots too, but he doesn’t think they’re helping very much because afterwards she lays on her bed and ignores him for hours. He eats cereal for dinner those nights.

The bills start to pool below the door where they come through the mail slot. He doesn’t understand money very well, but he knows they don’t have any. His mom isn’t working. Her medicine is harder to buy now, she says, so he starts mimicking the men his mom brings home sometimes and begins stealing.

At first, it's small things, a candy bar at the store because he’s hungry, a t-shirt he really likes that he knows will actually fit him. He’s not worn a shirt the right size since his dad left, but his mom can’t help that he had such a large growth spurt.

Then, his mom begins hitting him more, crying that she can’t pay the bills and it was all his fault, so he asks the tall guy who hangs around the alleyway how he can make more money. The man tells him to start taking car parts, so he does.

Jason is good at it. The guy gives him a tire iron and never comes back. He wonders where he went, but forgets about it quickly, more interested in what pieces he can take without anyone noticing. It’s a game for him, as all things were. He has fun, and his mom smiles and kisses his forehead when he brings back the money he got from the mechanic in the next neighborhood. He loves his mom, so he takes her kisses and hugs her even though she feels too thin and smells rotten.

He makes a large sum of money one week and excitedly brings it back to his home, where his mom lays on the couch and rasps out a breath. The needle is still stuck in her arm, so he pulls it out and throws it away for her.

He sits with her, hopes she’ll wake up soon so he can tell her about his day, but she never wakes up. She went silent hours ago, so he runs back to their doctor friend and brings him to the apartment. Jason doesn’t know where his mom is going when the funny men in blue return and take his mother away under a sheet. All he knows is that she isn’t coming back, so he runs away. If those men catch him, he’s not sure if he’ll ever get to return either.

No one wants to help the dirty street rat, especially when no one in the neighborhood can take care of themselves. He hopes that Batman will come. He’s seen him flying through the night, helping the needy and defeating the bad guys. Jason’s needy right now. He’s alone and scared and misses his mom, so he really hopes Batman will come.

But one man can’t save every life in the city.

Jason finds himself crawling through the gap of a broken door in a sketchy alley. It's just big enough for his small frame to move through, and the abandoned building behind it seems warm, at least for now. At least until Batman comes.

But Batman doesn’t come to save Jason, so he has to save himself. He steals small things here and there to make a bed and keep his belly from hurting. Yet nothing he can steal will ever be enough for his hunger to go away, and the cold air of Gotham City never seems to cease.

Two years have passed, and Jason is eleven years old. He is cold and hungry and angry, and the man who he sat and prayed would save him every night is once more flying above the streets of Gotham, not a care in the world. Jason feels wronged.

So he pulls the tire iron he keeps tucked underneath his makeshift bed and sets off to the alley Batman came from. He puts the iron to the wheel of the Batmobile, desperate to get back at the man who never came to his rescue.

A shadow looms behind him as he struggles with the lug nuts. He knows it’s Batman. He should be washed over with fear. If he were anyone else, he might, but right now, all he feels is rage. He turns, his tire iron in hand, and goes to strike.

But Batman’s hands rest on his shoulders to hold him back. Even through the gloves, Jason feels the warmth — a warmth he hasn’t known since his dad went to prison and his mom stopped playing with him.

She used to kiss his head before putting him to bed and make soup when he was home with a fever. Her hands were always so warm, just like this, and suddenly he’s crying. Wet, hot tears stream down his face as he sobs into Batman’s chest.

There’s surely snot on his suit, but Batman doesn’t leave. He wraps his arms around the boy and holds him tight. It’s warm and for the first time in a long time, Jason is safe. He feels it down to his bones and the steady melody of his heart, beating ‘safe, safe, safe.’

His anger has subsided and he’s filled with grief. He mourns his family and the home he'll never return to, the boy he couldn’t save and the one that finally will be. He’s safe, so he lets all the emotion bottled up in his tiny body out into Batman’s chest, impossibly broad and strong. No fear will make way outside of the comforting arms of his hero, and he’s okay with that. Jason, for what he’s now sure is the first time in his life, is safe.

–

Jason forcefully tears himself from the ground at the age of seventeen, six years after meeting Bruce and two removed from his untimely death. He does not know where he is or how he got here, but he knows he needs to get away. It’s surely another way the Joker has decided to torture him, and he won’t be defeated so easily. He is Robin, the partner of Batman and he should never feel scared. They are meant to make the bad guys feel scared.

His legs are unsteady as he runs haphazardly from the hole he emerged from. His chest is burning, and he barely notices the large T-shaped scar running down his torso. He didn’t remember Joker doing that, but he also doesn’t remember being buried six feet under.

Talia finds him first. Jason tries to lift his arms into a defensive position, but his limbs feel like jelly and instead, he finds himself falling unceremoniously into her. He feels her grab him before the world goes dark once more.

He’s awake again, and he feels like he’s drowning. He flails around, attempting to grab something, anything to pull himself out of the water. It burns against the T-shaped scar, against his lungs, and rough hands reach in to pull him upwards. They grip against his shoulders, leaving crescent-shaped marks in his flesh. The tension of the water pushes against him, trying to keep him from breaching the surface, but suddenly he’s through and air reaches down his throat against his straining lungs.

Voices indistinctly whisper around him, muttering in a language he cannot understand, but he picks up his own name and Bruce’s. He didn’t need to know the words they were saying to know that something was deeply off.

So he bolts, his legs fighting his will to move. He’s barely made it a few feet away before he’s knocked to the rough cave floor. A foot presses in the center of his spine, and he knows no amount of adrenaline pumping through his body can push back against the weight. He’s somehow done it – made it to Hell. Maybe he’ll see his father. But maybe even the Devil couldn’t find a place for that man.

The days after tell him, surely, that’s where he is right now. Talia is there, haunting the corners of his vision. She never speaks to him, and quite frankly, he’s not sure that she’s actually real. Her skin always emanates a hazy green, just like the water they pulled him from. She could have looked that way naturally, but his scrambled memory whispers otherwise.

Sometimes, she has a shadow. Mostly, it’s indistinguishable from the other shadows dancing along the wall, but every once in a while, he feels his stomach roll looking at it. This is when the shadow looks like Bruce.

The eyes are a different color, shining with the same green he sees around Talia, but the shape of them – those are Bruce’s eyes. He had spent so many years idolizing the man, memorizing every frown line and stray gray hair. He would know this face, and especially those eyes, anywhere. But he knows it must be a trick. Bruce was too stuck in the idea of redemption, for himself and others, to end up in Hell with him.

Jason often hears screams during his waking hours. Some are anguished. Some are gargled. But the screaming only ceases for a moment before it returns with a new voice. It echoes along the walls of the cave he is being kept in, shaking the stalactite dripping in the upper right corner of his field of vision.

That’s another thing – his head remains in the same position day and night. His arms are pinned to his sides and his ankles tied. They haven’t tortured him yet, but whatever demons are bringing those screams to his ears will come to him soon. He has no doubt regarding that, but he can’t be sure who’s face he’ll see above him next.

He hopes it isn’t Dick. He doesn’t think he can survive damnation with his brother’s disappointed eyes staring back at him. Jason knew, no matter what good he did as Robin, this is where he was supposed to end, but Dick never accepted that. He had that same fixation on redemption as their adoptive father, but with a warmth Bruce could never have. Dick made Jason feel like even he deserved a second chance.

Talia comes by the next day, and he knows the moment he sees the bowl in her hands, that he isn’t dead like he thought. He wasn’t lucky enough for that. Instead, he is damned to the clutches of Talia Al Ghul and a bowl of broth. It sits like lead on his stomach as she force feeds him, chiding him for fighting her iron grip on his jaw. He’s sure that at times he did hallucinate her presence, but this time, she is real. Terribly real and dripping with ill intent.

Her shadow takes form now, and he wants to cry when Bruce’s face stares back at him once more. His face is much younger and his skin a deep tan, and there is no care behind these cold green eyes. In fact, he cannot see anything but malice. He feels ashamed to be looked at this way with Bruce’s face. Has Bruce decided to abandon him just like his father?

The voice that comes from this mouth is different, however, and confusion begins swirling with the shame. This voice is high-pitched and no doubt that of a child’s. It tells him, in the same smooth way Talia speaks, that he is a fraud and “Baba was right to leave him to die.”

The rest of its speech returns to what he now realizes is Arabic, but the words won’t translate in his head. All he hears is that one sentence, over and over. Why was Bruce speaking this way? He would never want to see him die.

Right?

Jason’s spirit falls further, despite it having already hit rock bottom days ago, but the shame and confusion now build into anger. He fights against his restraints, knocking the remnants of his meal to the floor. Talia tries to calm him, firmly pressing him back against the seat. He tries to move his head to bite her but to no avail; it’s firmly held by a thick leather strip.

He spits at her instead.

Her face contorts in anger, cheeks flushing red, and she begins berating him. She’s screaming, “What a pathetic little ‘boy wonder!’ You don’t seem to understand the circumstances of your situation.” He stops thrashing around, and her face returns to her usual sultry smile. “Bruce left you to die. When the Joker kidnapped and tortured you, Bruce took his sweet time coming to ‘save’ you. The one man in the world you thought loved you left you to die and buried your body in a shallow grave.”

Jason attempts to shake his head before realizing he’s still trapped.

“Oh, yes. It’s tragic, really. But that’s when I came to save you.”

Talia began to strut across the length of the thin cave.

“See, the world had a little shift that brought a few people back to the living world, you being one of them, but it had some unexpected issues. Your body had already partially decomposed, and you would have never made it off of that mountain without me. I brought you to my home, finished reviving you in the Lazarus Pit, and nursed you back to health. I even brought your baby brother to see you.”

Jason is fumbling out a barely intelligible, “My brother…?”

His eyes trace to the figure now hanging from the ceiling. It’s Bruce, or maybe not. He isn’t sure until the boy speaks. “Damian Al Ghul, the blood son of Batman.”

–

Jason spends the better part of a year recovering and regaining his stamina. It turns out, being revived in the Lazarus Pit is not as easy as Ra’s Al Ghul makes it seem. He learns how to walk for the second in his life before building his motor function back to what it used to be. For the most part, he’s in better shape than he had been before his death, but he’s still only seventeen. He thinks he has been seventeen longer than he should have.

He tries to wear clothing that hides his autopsy scar, and gloves to cover his scarred knuckles. He doesn’t remember where these come from, but he can make some educated guesses. The one thing he can’t seem to hide, though, is the big shock of white that now stained his fringe. The rest of his hair has grown back to his natural ginger, something he used to dye black to match Bruce.

The brother Jason never knew about suddenly tails him everywhere. He’s silent mostly, only speaking to criticize his fighting form. His entire demeanor deceives the fact that he is only seven years old.

And Jason mutters, “I thought my childhood had been screwed up.”

Sometimes, they sit in a room together reading, and Damian asks him about his father. Jason says good things, at first, but as time goes on, he finds he only has angry words to spit about him. The man had abandoned Jason, and now he is abandoning Damian, too. Damian eventually stops asking, sated to sit in silence while they read Shakespeare’s plays.

Jason finds that it only makes him resent Bruce more.

They train together, and eventually Jason is able to brute force his brother into submission during spars. He likes that he now retains muscle mass. His lanky youth had held back any hope of being strong. Damian begins to undergo his own growth spurt, as well.

But their repetitive schedule suddenly comes to an abrupt end when Jason hears of the one thing he dreads most: Batman’s newest Robin. Apparently, the boy appeared on the scene not long after Jason’s death day and was becoming a real concern amongst the League.

Jason leaves without a plan, pushed onward by rage and embarrassment. He doesn’t know what he will do when he arrives in Gotham, but he knows Bruce like the back of his hand and has no doubt he’ll find him. Combined with a healthy stack of guns and ammunition, he could do whatever he wanted. He can get revenge, or he can even take back what is rightfully his.

The fight is a blur. He remembers yelling at Bruce for abandoning him, for never seeking revenge. He doesn’t understand why reformation and revenge can’t co-exist. Bruce is crying underneath the cowl. He hurts the new Robin. He shoots at Dick. Bruce is on the ground.

And he wakes up in his old bed. Not the one in the mansion or the apartment. No, it’s the one he slept in when he was nothing more than a poor orphan on the streets. It’s just as cold as he remembers.

–

Jason spends the next two years making life miserable for Bruce just to spite him. Dick comes to visit him sometimes, usually finding him in the alleyways of Gotham. He tries to talk, brings along meals from Alfred, and Jason walks away from him every time.

He sees the new Robin darting across the night sky. Dick says his name is Tim, and Jason laughs. He’s not sure what is so funny, but he finds he can’t stop. The laughter makes anger bubble in his throat. He cuts Tim’s line that night, and watches him fall before Bruce swings through to save him. That only makes Jason angrier.

He starts wearing a helmet, red like fresh blood, and takes on Joker’s original identity – Red Hood. It’s ironic, becoming the person who ruined his life. But he sees how it makes Bruce’s skin crawl, and decides he likes the name.

Most nights he only commits petty crimes. On nights when the nightmares seem to consume him, he turns to felonies. He particularly likes theft and arson.

Sometimes, when he becomes annoyed with Dick, he dons a makeshift Nightwing costume, and dumps a herd of criminals on the front steps of the police station. He likes to do good things, too, but he truly does it to see how much it frustrates his brother. He knows Dick can’t say anything because Jason is being a hero again, but Nightwing was never meant for anyone else to wear. He knows it was meant to be a slight at Bruce. It was supposed to empower Dick. But now, it’s empowering Jason instead. Dick struggles to stifle his anger.

Jason enjoys his time in the dark belly of Gotham, but he misses his family some nights. Those are the cold and lonely ones, when no amount of fire can make up for the fact that he’s nineteen years old. Nineteen year olds aren’t supposed to be crime lords. Nineteen year olds aren’t supposed to live in alleyways and a rotating chain of safe houses.

He never sleeps in the same place for more than a few days at a time, and he begins to miss the monotony of the mansion. He misses warm meals that weren’t made in a stolen microwave. He misses the things that made him gentle. He misses a time when he didn’t have to feel so angry. He misses Bruce, but he would never say any of this aloud.

His tipping point comes sneaking up on him one night. No formal announcement was made – it never was – that a new Robin was on the scene, but Jason knew the moment this child took his first step out of the cave.

It was Damian, his baby brother, here to finally claim his birthright. The traitor.

And now even he looks at Jason with disappointment. He can’t take it. But he’s suddenly falling into madness the moment the words leave Bruce’s mouth.

“Jason, you were my biggest regret.”

The rest of his speech becomes white noise and red hot anger. There is fighting and blood, and even though Tim stops being the Robin, he is now Red Robin . That’s all the justification Jason needs to beat his face in. He plans to return for Damian another day. Then, Dick. And he wants Bruce to see every single time. He wants to show him what it really means to regret something.

Bruce disappears a few months later. Jason sees it as an opportunity.

His costume is not nearly as high tech as Bruce’s was, but he only really needs the impression of Batman to pull it off. He doesn’t have it. All he gets in return is a set of handcuffs and a trip to Arkham. He had taken so many things from Dick; he supposes it was time he had to give something up.

He tries to count the days he’s been locked up, wonders if this is where they used to keep his father, but he loses track. The time blurs together. At some point, he makes friends with Harley Quinn. They share the burden of having been traumatized by the same men. She sneaks him an extra pillow, claiming that death always gives people a stiff neck. He doesn’t laugh as hard as she does.

When his mood sours, she plays therapist, finally putting her doctorate to good use. She does a decent job, he thinks, and some days, he almost thinks he can forgive Bruce. But then Bruce Wayne returns, and the anger with it.

He says he doesn’t care. Harley knows it is a lie, but she doesn’t dain to say it aloud. She just sneaks him an extra pudding cup that night. Jason cries.

When Bruce appears in his cell the next day, he ignores him, chalking it up to a bit of pit madness. He doesn’t believe that Bruce will ever look at him with those kind eyes again, but he steals glances at the delusion anyways. They sit in silence, and Jason is thankful that his mind isn’t so far gone as to start hearing voices.

Imaginary Bruce returns day after day, sitting in the same rusty chair in the corner of Jason’s cell. Eventually, Jason starts letting himself look at him, and then he’s yelling at him. He curses at him for having given up on him. He pounds his fist on the cell wall, screaming, and Imaginary Bruce stares back at him with a sad smile.

One day, Bruce stops being imaginary. He places a calloused hand on Jason’s shoulder, their eyes meet for just a moment, and everything comes pouring out. Jason cries, tearing at Bruce’s clothes in a desperate attempt to crawl into his arms. He wants to feel safe again. He wants to be eleven years old and do it all over again. He would do it right this time. He would become Batman’s pride instead of a symbol of his greatest regret. This time, Jason could be Bruce’s real son.

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