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Jason lives his life in firsts. Some, he doesn’t actually remember: first step, first word, first beating, first time his stepmom got high. His first mom. Still, he remembers more than most, at a younger age. Like the first puddle he jumped in himself, how the water splashed and got him wet and dirty. His first allowance and what it felt like to hand the fistful of coins to the shop keep and how the mustached man initially told him he didn’t have enough, but then looked down at him and slid the Snickers bar over anyway.
It’s not that he doesn’t recall the second and third time, or the fifth and tenth times. But the first guide him and they’ve taught him when to fight and when to flee, when to stay and when to leave. A first tells him whether to trust or to hide, whether to bury a want deep inside. It gives him a gut instinct; if the promise be broken, if they let him down.
His firsts have taught him to only rely on himself. That in Gotham, one boy, one child, doesn’t matter. Not even a Robin.
~~~
Jason’s first kiss was on a dare. The boys at the public elementary school – the one with the chain link fence and half a soccer field – often teased him because Jason hated recess. He’d rather stay inside, with the teacher, Mrs. Stein, with a book, than swing the old metal bats around or risk scuffed knees from the roughhousing. It wasn’t that he couldn’t. Jason played with the neighborhood kids in back alleys and rough patches of grass. But his mom always scolded him when he came home dirty, moaning that she couldn’t afford any more clothes for him; he was expensive, didn’t he know?
Sometimes, Mrs. Stein brought him pieces of clothing she said her boys outgrew. His favorite was a soft red hoodie that proudly proclaimed GAP on it; the hottest brand. His mom never noticed those, only the holes.
But one sunny day, she gently pushed him outside, looking at him soft over her thick glasses, twisting her darkly curly hair up into its bun. That was another reason he liked her; her hair looked like his, but even curlier. She told him he needed vitamin D.
The boys and girls had separated, and Jason wondered why, because he didn’t really like the boys that much, but, resigned, went to join their kickball game. They caught him looking at the girls, and began to make kissy faces at him, taunting him about crushes and girl cooties.
“Jason, if you like them so much, why don’t you kiss one?” Charles, the biggest and meanest boy sneered.
The girls tittered as the group of boys backed Jason into a corner, and a more outgoing girl with long blonde hair stepped forward and joined in the teasing. “Yeah, why don’t you kiss us? Or are you gay?”
Jason remembers turning as red as his hoodie, from embarrassment and shame, and leaning forward, fast as lightening, to smack her lips with his. It was the kiss of a fumbling eight-year-old with another, but it stands out in his memory because the girl yelled out a loud “Ew!” after and maybe the laughter wasn’t all directed at him, but it seemed like it. That day, he decided he didn’t much like girls, either.
Mrs. Stein never made him go out to recess again.
~~~
The first time he has sex, Jason cries. He’s utterly silent, wet face pressed into the brick wall, pants around his ankles as a big, rough body breathes down his neck, causes his back to break out in sweat where they touch. He doesn’t get hard; not even a little.
He walks away with fifty bucks.
~~~
He finds the book lying in a puddle in uptown. Aside from the water clinging to it, a few smudges of text, it looks new and Jason suspects someone probably had just bought it – maybe for themselves, maybe for their kid’s required school reading.
Jason gets bored easily, in between jobs, especially when his mom is sleeping off the downside of her high. So, he takes the book and brings it back to the shabby one-bedroom apartment, hiding it under his mattress. His mom wouldn’t understand.
He forgets about it, actually, until one of those lows where his mom can’t afford another hit and is suffering withdrawals, puking and sleeping in a cycle. She doesn’t need him, but he doesn’t have anywhere else to go right then, so instead he lifts his mattress and sits down to read.
'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife'.
Jason snorts and almost gives up on the book right then, but his mom is still snoring in her bedroom and he’s got nothing else to do.
Three hours later, he’s about fifty pages in and has gone to find a pen and paper, writing down the words he doesn’t know. It’s too late that day, but the next time he doesn’t have a job and his mom is out, Jason plans to make a trip to the public library and use the free internet.
It’s sappy and he knows the other kids would probably beat him up for reading about a bunch of rich people from centuries ago. But there’s something about the language the author uses that’s romantic and kind. More important, it’s actually kind of funny? He can’t think of the last thing that made him laugh.
Pride and Prejudice becomes his favorite book.
~~~
The first time he sees the Dynamic Duo in the skies, it’s raining, and he’s huddled under the awning of a small convenience store, trying to stay warm and dry. His stepmother died two days before.
It’s barely more than a glimpse of a perfectly executed synchronous flight over two buildings. But he knows, he knows in that moment, that he’s safe for the night. No one’s going to touch him.
Batman and Robin are there. They’re real.
Jason sleeps.
~~~
Jason’s been stealing since he was five. It figures that the first time Jason ups his game – moving from petty thefts at the mall, the small boutiques in midtown, or the occasional rich-looking tourist – but the first time he decides to get into the car-jacking trade, knowing how lucrative it is from the older kids in the Narrows, especially the chop shops run by the Mexican cartel in Gotham, he’s caught by Batman.
He didn’t mean to. Hell, he didn’t start out that night thinking ‘I’m going to steal the Batman’s tires.’ It’s just…the Batmobile is right there. Batman doesn’t seem to be around. It’s kismet. He’s hard up on cash, hasn’t eaten in two days, and he knows the militarized tires will catch a fair price at the chop shop. Even after the cartel takes its cut.
So, Jason figures – why the fuck not? If Batman is dumb enough to leave his car unattended and without security, then he’s dumb enough to deserve it. Besides. A car like that – Batman, whoever he is, clearly has money.
He’s on the third tire when he feels a heavy presence behind him. Fuck.
“You do realize that’s the Batmobile, right?” says Batman’s looming presence once Jason turns around. His voice is deep, gruff, and a bit mechanical.
Jason wipes his hands on his jeans, cleaning off some of the grease. He adopts a nonchalant manner and responds, “Duh. You do realize you parked your car in Crime Alley, right?”
It’s all posture because, despite having seen the Bat once before, you don’t really think, until he’s right there, that he’s coming after you. Jason does what he always does then, what he’s learned on the streets – he lashes out.
Anger and fear drive his fight complex and he moves to strike Batman with the tire iron in his hand.
Batman stops it, of course. One grim look and a heavy thunk of the tool hitting armored gloves that are definitely more than leather clad and Jason’s about to piss himself as Batman looms closer and picks him up by the collar on his red hoodie.
There’s a tense moment where Jason gets the strange urge to lash out with his fists and call Batman names before he reassesses and quashes that impulse because Jason might also have been dumb to try to steal the Batmobile’s tires, but he’s not that fucking dumb.
He threatens instead, “You want to beat up on a kid, go enlist in the GCPD like every other bully in this city.”
And then, something unexpected happens.
Batman laughs. Like, a deep chuckle that sounds entirely human, masculine, and rich in tone.
Jason’s mouth falls open and when Batman drops him, he’s so stunned, he doesn’t even try to run. He just stares up at the behemoth of a man dressed in a furry suit and listens to the laugh that’s oddly calming, and he ends up sitting on his ass in the street, next to the Batmobile missing two tires, elbows on his knees.
Then Batman asks him, once he’s stopped chuckling – still amused, though – if he’s hungry, in a voice that’s more baritone than bass, and then proceeds to assist Jason in putting the tires back on his car. They go through a drive-thru, causing a scene as the staff all end up leaning out the window to get a look at the Batman ordering five burgers, two large fries, and two milkshakes. Then he takes Jason out to Riverview Point and Jason has the thought that maybe Batman wants something in exchange for the food, just like all the other creeps who try to ‘save’ someone in Crime Alley, because Jason’s been around long enough to know Riverview is where kids from the public school go for romance and he knows the darker side that operates later at night – the johns and the pedos.
But Batman just hops on the hood of his car and doesn’t wait to see if Jason will sit next to him or not, he simply digs in and grabs one of the fries and milkshakes and begins to eat. Eventually, Jason climbs up next to him and they eat in relative silence until Jason’s finished both burgers and everything else. He eyes the third burger and then frowns when Batman hands it to him, unasked, and without prompting.
“Save it for later,” the big man says, voice still unmasked. Jason shoves it in his hoodie pocket. Batman gives a small smile and takes Jason back into the city proper. It’s only when Jason tells him to drop him off right where he was found, that the scary Batman comes back, all with the quick flip of his lips into a frown.
“You know, there’s an orphanage. A friend of mine, he sponsors it. I could—”
Jason vehemently shakes his head. “Nope. I’m not going to an orphanage or into a foster home. Big Belly Burger aside, I’m not someone’s charity case, Batman. I’m my own man. Cared for my mom before she OD’d, and I’ve been on my own ever since.”
Batman’s lips turn down even further, but he doesn’t protest. He asks, “What about school?”
Jason sneers and takes a slightly smooshed cigarette out of his jean pocket, lighting it. “I graduated a long time ago from the streets of Crime Alley.”
Batman looks at him and Jason feels like a bug under a microscope, but he continues smoking and maintains the façade that he’s not a bit scared. Eventually, Batman pushes a button and the Batmobile door opens for Jason. He climbs out and is about to walk away when Batman calls after him.
“You want a job, Jason Todd, meet me here tomorrow night. I’ve had an opening recently and I think you just might do.”
With that, the door on the car closes and Batman is gone.
Jason never even told the guy his name. He takes the last drag on his cigarette and laughs. Batman is way scarier than the cartel. It’ll do.
~~~
His first crush is Robin. The day he meets Dick Grayson – the actual, original Boy Wonder – he’s thirteen and only two months into training with Batman. Dick is seventeen. It’s nothing like he expected. No shared moment of brotherhood, no kind, welcoming words. He gets a once over and a grunt, hears a muttered, “Scrawny kid,” and then Dick storms out of the Batcave, long hair spinning out behind him, a brunet Axl Rose.
He’s so flippin’ cool.
From then on, he does everything he can to try to make Dick see him. He trains harder than he has previously, and even more so on the days when Dick deigns to visit Bruce – which is usually to argue over something. He works the rings, executing one of Dick’s famous pieces from when he was a circus boy. He lands strong on his feet, chest heaving, but flushed with pride.
Dick and Bruce both look at him, faces expressionless, then give a humph and mutter a hmm, respectively.
They’re more alike than they want to think, Jason decides.
That thought is there every time Dick comes over and he and Bruce fight; they’re alike, they’re like a real father and son, Dick has something Jason never will.
He grows moody, depressed, lashing out extra hard at the Gotham villains. Bruce scolds him and it only reaffirms how Jason can never measure up to the Golden Boy, the first Robin.
Until the day Dick comes by, after Jason’s done with school, and invites him to the Titans Tower in San Francisco. He says, don’t tell Bruce, just come with me, in a hushed, excited whisper and Jason doesn’t care he’ll catch flack about it later – he goes.
Once there, Dick shows him off like a shiny new toy. Donna and Koriand’r – a real space princess! – coo over him and Roy ruffles his hair, Garth smiles big and wide and does a few water tricks, and Wally carries him on his back as he zips up and down the hills of the city in thirty seconds flat. Jason’s accepted into the group of the coolest teenagers in the whole world, maybe the whole galaxy, and it’s all because of Dick.
He catches Dick’s smile at one point; wide, bright, and happy. He watches while Dick shows off and actual metas and princesses praise a human who can stand toe-to-toe with them all because of some training and a stubborn streak.
It’s the first time Jason thinks, I can do that, too.
It’s the first time Jason maybe falls a little in love with Dick Grayson.
~~~
Jason’s first ballet is with Bruce Wayne. He spent a solid hour fidgeting under both Alfred and Bruce’s attention as the butler smoothed his hair back with gel and Bruce adjusted his bowtie. He feels strangely claustrophobic in the suit, though it is not ill-fitting. Rather, it is perfectly tailored, courtesy of the small, thin man who does Bruce’s suits. But in it, Jason in an imposter: a Todd, not a Wayne, simply dressed up like a show pony.
Alfred accompanies them. Jason is told the butler prefers the theatre, having once been an actor – at which he squints a little and reassesses the old man – but that he enjoys a quiet night to the ballet as well. Alfred doesn’t sit with them, though, instead greeting a handsome woman who appears to be about his age and whisking her away to a different balcony seating.
It’s the first time he’s seen men – besides Batman and the original Robin – move gracefully, without violence in their actions. Even when Romeo strikes down Tybalt, Jason can see the anguish on the dancer’s face, the shuddering fragility at what he’s just done, executed through a series of leaps and rapid footwork. The casual strength of the dancers, the flexing muscles, the orchestral swells; well, it moves something inside the teen. His heart breaks with Romeo’s as Juliet’s body remains limp in his arms, and once more with Juliet’s in the final act.
He looks down at his knuckles, where they are bruised a shade of purple and he wonders if he could do anything so beautiful.
As they leave, Jason catches Bruce looking at him, a soft, ambiguous expression on his face. “Did you enjoy it, Jaylad?” he asks when he’s discovered.
Jason bites his lip and nods his head.
“Perhaps, then, when the Metropolis Opera House opens once more, I can take you there. They had quite the line-up of ballets and concertos planned before the recent dust up between Superman and Parasite caused the need for repairs.”
Bruce is then distracted by the press and Jason climbs into the waiting limo, pulling out a Game Boy to entertain himself. Alfred doesn’t come back with them.
~~~
The first time Jason saves Batman is in a cold fortress that belongs to Superman. He doesn’t recall the long journey back to Gotham in the Batmobile, only that when they’ve returned home to the Cave, Batman’s silence is palpable. He’s clearly thinking about his brief time under the hold of the Black Mercy.
Jason is too.
Once he changes out of the Robin suit, he begins to engage in a series of exercises involving planks and the pommel horse. He’s more than half through when he casually he asks, “So you had a daughter? What was her name?”
“Helena,” Batman responds, distracted as he stares at the big Batcomputer screen above the desk. There’s nothing to look at, the screen blank.
“And was I there?”
Bruce’s refusal to look at him is answer enough.
Jason executes a flip down and off the horse. He nods and smiles brightly, fake, “Well, without Batman, I guess you don’t need a Robin!”
Batman does look at him then, pushing down his cowl to reveal Bruce. His handsome features are lined with sorrow. Jason doesn’t know if it's for him or the loss of his deepest desire.
“It’s all good, big guy,” he says, forcing his smile a little bigger, a little more Robin-esque. It seems to satisfy the man who blinks and wipes his face blank, turning back to the computer once more, this time actually turning it on and opening a dossier they have on one of the low-level gang-bangers working for the Yakuza in Gotham, and beginning to delve into one of the cases they were working on before Superman’s birthday.
Inside, Jason knows something’s changed. Not with Bruce, but in him. He knows, now, he’ll never quite fit in. He doesn’t ask about Dick’s presence in Bruce’s dream because he doesn’t want to find out the first Robin showed up somewhere, maybe dating Bruce’s daughter. And if he wasn’t in Bruce’s dream, Bruce should get to keep that to himself; Jason doesn’t want Dick to feel like he does.
Dick is special.
~~~
Jason’s first death is not exactly a ringing endorsement – either for living or actually dying.
He finds his birth mother – Sheila Haywood, a doctor, someone he could look up, to call his own – and for five minutes, Jason is the happiest teenager in the world. Everything was a misunderstanding in the past; Sheila wants him. Wants Jason as her son, in a way Bruce never has. She welcomes him, cradles him in her arms despite the fact that he’s already as tall as her now.
Only a day later, Jason discovers she is working with Joker, willing to give him medical supplies and the words as he tells Bruce sting like acid as they spill from his mouth.
Jason doesn’t deserve goodness. As Bruce has said to him, times over, Jason only wants blood, he likes hurting people, he’s unruly and ill-tempered and he takes unreasonable risks. It’s all he deserves when Joker takes a crowbar to him, says, “This is going to hurt you a lot more than it does me,” and he doesn’t stop and he won’t stop and Jason—
>Whack<
Jason sees his mother, a flash of her curly blonde hair—
>Whack<
–brow furrowed as she looks away—
>Whack<
--smoking, while Jason is beat.
Jason first blacks out.
Jason remembers coming too, his vision blurry, his body nothing but a mass of aches, a strange beeping in his head.
Then his mother’s words, “The bomb, Jason! Deactivate it!” and he realizes the beeping isn’t from the concussion but from a bomb Joker’s left behind.
He tries to move, blood pooling under him, trickling down his face. He’s slow but he can manage. Just another foot to crawl. Then the last of his strength to pull himself from the floor, to untie the ropes. Words on an exhale, “I’ll save you…mom. You’re free. Run…for it…go…”
Only forty seconds left. He collapses.
Someone lifts him. He tries to move his feet; they drag but they go. Blood is rushing in his ears, counting down with the bomb’s beeping.
The door is locked; Joker gets the last laugh.
It’s the first time he tries to save his family. The first time he hasn’t diffused a bomb. The first time he doesn’t make it.
And his firsts all become a final bow.