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“Excuse me, Mr. Red Hood!”
Jason Todd cocks an eyebrow beneath his infamous red helmet and smirks. It doesn’t surprise him that a kid born and bred in the Bowery is willing to march up to him. The girl’s probably twelve or thirteen, skinnier than she should be — he’ll see about getting groceries delivered to her family later; he wishes he could help them all — with dishwater blonde hair, more freckles than he’s ever seen on one face, and wary brown eyes.
Clutching a composition notebook with a torn cover in one hand, and a pencil that’s been sharpened so much it’s less than half its original size in the other, she says, “I have to write about my hero for English class.”
Jason stills.
He knows that she’s probably not talking about him, but, hell, it sounds like she is. Still, it makes more sense to think that she wants him to contact Batman or Nightwing or one of the others. Maybe even Spoiler.
“So, I need you to answer some questions, Mr. Red Hood,” she says.
The smirk on his face grows. She reminds him so much of himself as a kid. Cocksure and brave, or faking it like a professional. Because that wasn’t a question.
Kids from Crime Alley know it’s easier to take something than it is to ask for it.
Jason crouches down and fiddles with the catches until he can get his helmet off. He balances it on his knee and asks, “What’s your name, kid?”
He should probably let Oracle know he’s off-line for now, but he’s not going to do that. The Bats can deal with anything that crops up for the next little while. Jason’s never forgotten that individuals are important and what matters to one person doesn’t to another.
Sometimes, patrol isn’t about fighting and winning or untangling criminal plots. Sometimes, apparently, it’s letting a kid interview him for a school report so the kid can get a good grade.
“Emily.”
Jason offers her the smile he gave out freely to anyone and everyone back when he was Robin. He ignores the swiftly indrawn breath from the nearest rooftop. Whatever whoever is up there wants, it’ll keep.
“Five minutes, Emily, then I have to—”
“Go save people. I know,” Emily says. Her shoulders, which she had hunched up nearly to her ears, relax.
It feels like Jason’s heart is in his throat. Because she’s calling him a hero, even though his particular brand of heroism is bloody and permanent these days. She isn’t calling him an anti-hero, or a vigilante, or a villain. She says he saves people as casually as if she thinks his name belongs right up there next to Big Blue’s.
Hell, Jason loves the kids from the Bowery.
Even when news outlets and heroes and villains alike vilify him, the kids don’t.
Jason’s seen kids from the Bowery run away from Batman and Robin and Nightwing. He’s watched a few even manage to give the Replacement the slip a time or two. But he’s proud as hell that none of the kids have ever fled from him.
The Red Hood — murderer — with a body count that makes the Bats cringe, is a safe haven for those who have little to nothing.
“Why do you do this?” is the first question Emily asks.
“It’s complicated,” Jason says because it is. He can’t remember the last time that his life wasn’t complicated. “But mostly … because I have the power to do something. I don’t want any of you to suffer what I suffered.”
If Jason can keep even one kid safe — one will never, ever be enough; he wants to save them all — that’s one kid that doesn’t have to deal with everything he dealt with. That’s one kid who doesn’t have to scrounge for the next meal. That’s one kid who makes it home safely. That’s one kid who, temporarily, at least, isn’t stuck in a vicious nightmare.
If he could single-handedly save them all, Jason would. No matter what it cost him.
It wounds something deep inside of him that he can’t. Every kid without a roof over their head, every kid that’s lean and malnourished with hunger painted across a too-thin face, every kid that has more bruises than dirt on them is a crowbar to the heart.
“Even heroes have to be afraid sometimes. What scares you?” Emily asks.
There’s a scuff of a boot against the rooftop above as if whoever’s up there physically couldn’t stop themself from lurching forward at the question. It’s no surprise as to why. Whoever’s up there is expecting him to say the Joker; perhaps, is expecting him to lose control of his temper at being reminded of what happened in that warehouse in Ethiopia all those years ago.
He could say the Joker.
It would be easy. It would also be a cop-out and a blatant lie.
Jason doesn’t fear anyone or anything that can hurt him physically. Not anymore. Not after … well, his entire life and death and everything. (Not after he beat the Joker to death with a crowbar before shoving a lit stick of dynamite down his throat. If B ever figures out where the Joker vanished to, uncovers that Joker’s dead and not just plotting his next scheme, B’s going to be livid with Jason.)
Broken bones and stab wounds and bruises heal.
He could say something joking, something flippant. He could say that he’s scared of spiders or flying in an airplane or getting stuck at the top of a Ferris wheel.
Jason could, maybe — if it wouldn’t potentially compromise his identity — if he could force the words past his lips, whisper, “The taste of worms and mud in my mouth from crawling out of my own grave.”
“Mr. Red Hood?” Emily prompts, frowning slightly.
He swallows down the phantom taste of mud and worms and forces himself to focus. She was brave enough to hunt him down at night for this. Jason’s not going to let her down. He won’t give Emily a frivolous answer. Hell, she wouldn’t believe it anyway. Something like that would be nothing more than a demeaning insult to her intelligence.
Physical pain? Jason is a professional at handling that. Things that can hurt him emotionally? That’s a whole other ballpark.
So, really, there’s only one honest answer to her question that he can give.
“Robin.”
There’s a thirteen-year-old assassin kid who looks at Jason like he thinks Jason is the ideal role model. He followed Jason everywhere when they were living in Nanda Parbat. He learned how to use guns because Jason knows how to use guns. He practices an hour a day with his sword when healthy enough to because he wants to cross blades with Jason in a duel and not get disarmed in the first twenty seconds.
A little brat of a brother with dark-golden skin, cutting green eyes, and pitch dark hair who calls Jason “Akhi” when none of the other Bats are around to hear and question it.
The rooftop above them is painfully, intensely quiet as Emily asks, her lips parted in shock, “Robin?”
If anything ever happens to Damian al Ghul Wayne … if Jason is ever too late to save him … it’ll destroy him.
Unlike when Jason was a kid and Dick Grayson was … less than welcoming, Jason doesn’t need a blood tie to know that Damian is his baby brother. Life gave Jason a second chance, let him come back from the dead, and made him an older brother in the process. He’s not going to waste the opportunity.
Nothing terrifies him more than the thought of Damian dying. Again.
Jason almost lost it before they got Damian back from Darkseid. If they hadn’t successfully brought him back, that “villain” taunt that gets thrown his way would have become his reality. Without his baby brother’s love to temper Jason’s rage and remind him that he’s human and matters to someone, Jason doesn’t doubt that he would be even more unhinged.
“Robin,” Jason confirms.
Emily narrows her eyes at him but doesn’t ask him to clarify. It’s smart of her to realize she won’t be getting anything except that single word on the subject.
“Three minutes left,” Jason says.
The next few questions are softball, surprising him. It also makes him wary. There’s no way Emily isn’t building up to a hardball question. Or, at least, one that Jason probably isn’t going to want to answer.
But—
He promised her five minutes; Jason refuses to be one more person in her life who lies and lets her down.
When her time is almost up, Emily bites into her bottom lip hard enough to turn it almost white. She stares down at her toes, which she’s wiggling in her shoes, the canvas tops of them moving and rolling. Then she looks right at him with determination and asks, “Is it worth it?”
The question hits him like a punch to the face from a three-hundred-pound man wearing brass knuckles.
Jason thinks of the countless bones he’s broken. The times he’s been shot and stabbed.
He thinks of his birth mother betraying him to the Joker. He remembers the warehouse in Ethiopia, the “HA-HA-HA!” as he was systematically shattered by a crowbar. He recalls the taste of blood on his tongue as he coughed it out of his lungs, drowning in his own fluids as he crawled toward a door that wouldn’t open.
The flashfire agony of the bomb: shrapnel and flames.
Jason remembers waking up in his coffin. Of screaming uselessly for B to let him out, to get him out, to save him. Of destroying his hands in his efforts to escape a second death via oxygen deprivation and carbon dioxide poisoning in his own coffin. The splinters in his wrecked, bleeding hands. The wet squelch of the mud between his fingers, then between his lips as his need to breathe overcame his common sense. The freezing chill of the rain against his skin, like needles of ice getting him high on hypothermia.
He remembers … the Lazarus Pit.
“Mr. Red Hood?” Emily asks before nibbling her lip.
Jason inhales the unmistakable stench of Gotham.
He glances up at the sound of a boot scuffing against a rooftop. He can just make out the edge of Robin’s cape. The sight eases the panic strangling his lungs in his chest.
Memories flash through his mind one after the other: Damian crawling in his bed during a thunderstorm to comfort Jason, the first time Damian ever called him “Akhi” and hugged him, Damian pouting at being told he couldn’t go on a mission with Jason, Damian grinning when Jason brought him a souvenir from his latest training trip, Damian laughing until he cried as Jason pinned him down and tickled him mercilessly.
If Jason was never Robin, if he never died, if he never came back, if Talia al Ghul hadn’t rescued and healed him and given him a home … Jason wouldn’t have a precious baby brother that he’s willing to do absolutely anything for.
“Yes,” he answers, emotions choking him, “it’s worth it.”
Emily tucks her pencil inside the spine of the pages and slams the composition notebook shut with a soft thump. “I owe you a piece of intel,” she says, before walking off.
A soft smile curls Jason’s lips as he pulls his helmet back on and tails her to a nearby apartment building to make sure she gets home safe. Kids from the Bowery know better than to say “thank you” to anyone. None of them are foolish enough to believe that anything in life is free. “Thank you” is for gifts.
There are no gifts in the Bowery.
There’s only a network of favors, trading debts paid and owed.
Someday, Emily will find him again. When she does, it’ll be because she’s learned something she thinks is good enough to repay him. He’s ousted several dealers selling their drugs around schoolyards to kids that way. It’s common knowledge that he always wants to know when that happens against his explicit rules.
Jason walks into the nearest alley, jumps up to catch the bottom rung of the fire escape, and then clambers up to the rooftop. As he expected, the rooftop lurker followed him as he kept an eye on Emily until she got safely home.
Robin steps from the shadows of the ductwork with a smug grin on his face. “I’m honored to be what scares you, Hood.”
“Whatever, brat,” Jason says, before sitting near the edge of the roof, hanging his feet over the side of the building and leaning back against his hands.
Damian walks over, the smarmy grin still stretching his lips. He sits down next to Jason close enough that their shoulders bump in the process. His elbow to the ribs when Jason ruffles his hair and slings an arm around him in a pseudo-hug is barely more than a tap.
And if Jason’s heart jumps back into his throat when Damian whispers, “The thought of losing you terrifies me as well, Brother,” in the al Ghul League Dialect … well, that’s his business, and no one else’s.