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He can see it in her, the recognition of what her brother has done. He knows the feeling himself. The empty pit in your stomach. The shaking. The awful yawing dip and lurch of knowing that someone you loved had done something terrible, and had done it not just once, but over and over.
She whispers, so so quietly, “A few years ago-. He was eighteen. She was seventeen. He didn't know.”
And what her brother had done more recently-. He was a lot older than eighteen. And the girl was a lot younger than seventeen.
There's nothing he can say to make that better.
She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath. “He's my brother. He's kind.”
Jason believes her. He doesn't know her brother, not personally, but she does. And he does know this: he acknowledges, “He is capable of kindness. He is capable of being good.
"But people aren't just one thing. Wholly good, or wholly not. They are capable of many things.
"And your brother is also capable of being awful.”
Not as awful as others, though. He tells her, “She didn't want him dead. She just wanted him to stop. And to never be able to do it to anyone else. She asked for him to go to prison. Not to die.”
She presses her hands to her eyes. “I'm so fucking mad at him. I'm so-. How could he? How could he?”
He stays quiet.
She swallows, sniffs. Wipes her eyes roughly.
“I'm so fucking angry at him, but I don't want him dead, and I don't want him to be in prison either.”
He asks, “Would he have stopped if I hadn't made him?”
She goes a little grey. “I don't-. I don't know.” She hadn't even known what he'd been doing until he told her, just now.
She says half-heartedly, “He doesn't deserve to be in prison.”
“Maybe so.” But it wasn't up to her where her brother ends up.
That's apparently not the right answer.
She gets angry suddenly, hisses “Do you know what it's like there? I have a political science degree from Gotham U, what do you think I studied? You say you're against rape, but what do you think happens in prisons?”
…What?
“I've seen the statistics, okay? I looked it up.”
He looks at her. She doesn't look completely sure of herself, and she said she looked it up. He thinks: recently. She looked it up recently. When it became relevant to her. He doesn't blame her. It's hard to know these things, and it's a lot easier to look away. God knows he'd like to sometimes. God knows he does. At the very least, he doesn't always look in the first place. (Like this, apparently. Right here, right now.)
“There’s not a study on Blackgate, nor on any prison near Gotham, but if you think that people don't get raped in prison-. Sometimes it's the staff, sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's because the victim was a rapist, sometimes it's because the person raping them can , with no repercussions. It shouldn't happen, not anywhere. It shouldn't be like this. And- Blackgate is an all male facility, next to Gotham-. I don't know what exactly does happen in there, I haven't asked, but somehow I don't think that your little decree applies to them!”
No. It doesn't. Blackgate isn't part of Uptown. If what she's saying is true, then he's made a mess. Or helped make one. … Fuck.
She keeps talking, “And that's not even going into how prisons don't help. If you want someone to come out the other side even remotely a better person, you don't send them to prison! It's not good for their families outside, and it's definitely not good for anyone in there! There have been studies on that too, ever since prisons first got built!”
He takes a moment to think. Willis had been to prison. He'd been in prison again when his mom had died too. And-. Jason doesn't remember too much about him before he'd been sentenced the first time, but he remembers him coming out. And he does remember how Catherine had reacted to him. To the changes she'd seen in him.
…He'll have to ask around about this. See if he can find the studies that she's talking about. If she's right-. (If she's right, then fuck. He hadn't even thought about it. He'd known that prison wasn't exactly great, but he just-. B sent people to prison. And O did as well. He'd just-. Done it automatically. He'd assumed it was the best way. But if it isn't-. Shit. He'll really have to think about it.)
He says, low, “And how do you want me to help this situation?” He means it.
“What- you're one of Hood's men, and you want me to suggest how to deal with it? I've told you there's a problem, you deal with it! Do something about it!”
And that's the fucking problem with people. They always see that there's a problem that's bigger than them, then they shrug and walk away. Jason doesn't. He won't let anyone else either. If he can get enough people to realise that if they see a problem, they should try and help, and if they all just pulled together, they could make real change-.
He says, “You say it shouldn't be like this? You say there's something that should be done about it?
"Then you do it.”
She gapes at him.
“Don't say it shouldn't have to be you. Don't say can't anyone else do it. Don't back away.
"You're here, you've seen that there's a problem, you want it fixed.
"So fix it. It's up to you.”
She's looking at him, eyes round.
…He'd maybe come on a little strong there. She didn't actually volunteer for this, the way Jason has. This isn't why she's here.
He stops leaning forward, but before he can say anything to take it back, she says “Fine. I'll do it. But you've made this problem too. You don't get to just wash your hands of it.”
Yeah okay. That's fair. He hadn't thought about it, and he should have done.
But- “I will help fund it. I will find people to help you with it. But I will not be hands on, not with this.”
She starts to bristle.
“No. I don't want anything to do with these people. You might, I don't. Besides which, I doubt they'll want anything to do with me.”
She subsides at his last point.
She is right though. And even though he doesn't want anything to do with these people, that doesn't matter. Or- shouldn't matter.
(He couldn't say: It's not his fault. He couldn't say: It's not his responsibility. He could say (had to say): I will deal with this. He might not want to, but that didn't matter. He should still have to do it.)
But the thing is-. Jason shouldn't have anything to do with this. He's pretty sure B is still watching him, and if they want this to actually work, Jason cannot have anything to do with this. Bruce Wayne still has a lot of pull, and he believes, absurdly, that Blackgate works. At least, he still dumps money into it like he believes it works. Whatever Pip comes up with, he's pretty sure it will challenge what B believes in, will challenge Blackgate, even if only by implication. And if B connects it with Jason, he'll stop it in its tracks.
So Jason must not be connected with it.
He can fund whatever she decides, and give her access to whatever she needs to carry it out. But he cannot do it himself, not personally. He doesn't have time anyway - not enough to give it as much time and dedication as it deserves: he's pretty sure that whatever she decides on, it will take a lifetime dedicated to it, and he just doesn't have that kind of time. He won't be around for a lifetime, not anywhere close. So he can't do this, not the way it would need to be done.
But delegation is a thing- trusting someone else to handle it. That'll have to be enough.
But this could be a good thing, whatever Pip decides to do.
(Like Aunty has told him before: restorative, not punitive. He thinks Pip might say: rehabilitative, not punitive; but that's just as good.)
Yes. This will be a good thing, what Pip is going to do. He can already tell. She's stepped up, and she wasn't afraid to get in his face about it. She believes, and she wants to make it better.
(He just…might have to deliberately not know what she's told him. Or he'd get crippled by that knowledge, and never do anything again, even if people needed him to.
But: for what a lot of cops would arrest people and send them to prison-, Hood does not. He only has three rules, and for one of them he doesn't send any of them to prison, he just kills them. He isn't going around getting people arrested and sent to prison. That's not what he does. And that will just have to be enough.)
Still. Whatever consequences his decisions have brought, he'll have to deal with it. And he'll just have to trust that Pip is working on this.