Work Text:
It's a heart-wrenching feeling of betrayal.
There's not much that can make someone like Jason Todd feel betrayed. For a long time he has made it a point not to trust anyone. Why should he? Why would he? Everyone lets him down. Everyone allows him to settle, for a long enough moment to catch his breath, and then finds some kind of sick and twisted pleasure in tearing the rug right out from under him and watching him struggle to get back to his feet. Someday he'll figure out the perfect formula to make that rug un-pullable. He hasn't gotten there yet.
The list of adults that have the honor of pulling one over on Jason Todd is growing ever-longer. Next he gets the chance to collect that notebook from what was once his room, he'll have to add Talia Al Ghul and Bruce Wayne to the list. The first for choosing him for... some god-knows-what reason. The second for replacing a perfectly good son with another one so damn fast. Who cares that it's been three years since he left this world with a bang . Bruce should have waited. Even Jason knows that.
Next, he'll have to add Batman in big, sparkly letters. Who cares that they might be one and the same. Jason doesn't. The bastard deserves to be on the list twice. Once for bringing in a replacement. As though a son is really something that can be replaced , and twice for what Jason sees before wide eyes right now.
A fight. Transpiring far below him, on the streets of Gotham. Jason, normally, would have continued on his merry way. Bruce has yet to find out that he's alive, and Jason would like to keep it that way, just a little longer. Being a crime lord is a nice life. The moment Bruce finds out that the infamous new crime lord – Red Hood, what a stupid way to acknowledge the man who set that damn bomb – is his dearly departed son is the moment that Jason loses all his freedom, and the moment that what little relationship he can claim to have with his father crumbles to pieces.
A fight. Transpiring on the street below him. It's really nothing but chance, that Jason has stumbled across it, but something tells him that none of this was chance at all. No matter how angry he might feel, no matter how much his chest burns and his fingers itch for the guns at his sides, Jason is smart enough to hold back and wonder why . Why is this particular fight happening tonight. Here. Jason was on his way back to the shithole apartment that he rents with the little money he makes... slightly more legitimately, and it's just a coincidence that this particular fight, between these particular people is happening here? Just two blocks away?
Yeah, Jason doesn't buy it. Someone's pulling some strings here. Someone wanted him to see it. He's got an idea about who, but that doesn't matter right now. He makes a mental note to write Talia Al Ghul at least two more times on that list of his. For now, there's a lot of other things to deal with. The tightening of his chest. The pain in his gut. Not physical. Not real. No one's punched him. Not recently, anyway. And yet he feels it. A digging, stabbing pain in the pit of his stomach that demands attention. Immediate attention. That makes him long to jump in. To raise his gun. To pull the trigger–
The Batman stands on one end. Jason has seen him already, in the time since his return. It isn't as though he hasn't been keeping tabs on dear old dad since then. He can't afford not to, really. Crime lords have to be aware of the local vigilantes, and Jason knows more than most. Though, admittedly, he's a bit rusty on that front. Three years in the grave will do that to a man.
It's the other side of the fight that really has him seizing. Suddenly breathing becomes so difficult. A man. A man that Jason never thought he would have to see again, for as long as Talia Al Ghul's magical pit could grant him.
Bright green hair, purple suit, wild grin, Jason will never forget that laugh for as long as his second life lasts.
( What hurts more? )
(Flinch.)
( A? )
(Hit.)
( Or B? )
It's never going to slip away like it should.
He's alive.
Jason snarls. No one's around to see it, but he snarls nonetheless. The bastard is alive. Alive and well and perfectly capable of holding a fight with Batman. Batman, who seems to have no interest in the one thing that Jason would have trusted him to do in his own absence. Jason has never asked for much, in the time since he was swept off the street like the charity case that he would soon become. He asked for food. For Alfred to stay out of his room. For the occasional hug, and a video game every now and then. He never asked for all that much. He had thought it would raise his chances of being kept around. It didn't matter in the end. It wasn't Bruce that dragged him from the household kicking and screaming.
Jason had done that himself, and received his just desserts for his own stupidity. It's alright. He knows that. He can't blame Bruce for that much. What he can blame Bruce for–
He knows Batman doesn't kill. He knows that. He's always known that. He thought it was stupid when he was a kid. Why leave them alive? If you leave them, then they can escape. Then they can be released. Then they can come back. Hurt more people. Do even worse–
Maybe Jason was just stupid.
Stupid. Stupid to assume that anything would make Batman break that damned rule. Stupid, to think the man he almost dared to call his father would feel anything similar for a scrappy little rat who he dragged off the street for the sole purpose of keeping his mouth shut .
Perhaps he just hoped that he meant more than that.
His killer is still alive.
Jason will just have to accept the fact that his father couldn't be bothered to avenge him.