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Willis had been a handsome man once. Tall and broad, with a strong jaw and dark brown eyes. He had a hell of an arm on him, could have been star quarterback if he’d tried. A shoe in for Prom King too, popular with the girls and guys alike.
He was smart. Not A-student smart, but he could get solid B’s without too much stress. “If you just tried, you could be looking at Ivy League.” His teachers had told him. “A bit more effort and you’d be a straight A student.” Willis could have tried harder.
He didn’t.
He wasn’t a troublemaker. Not really. He got the odd detention, but never enough to be known for it. He was friends with most of his high school class, knew people in most social circles. He was polite and laid back and friendly. “Easy on the eye, easy on the soul.” His first girlfriend’s mom had said.
But high school had been easy. Much easier than home. Willis knew which he preferred.
His old man had been a drunk. Not a mean one, just a sad one. He couldn’t get out of bed most days, much less work. Plagued by nightmares and tears and melancholy.
And his momma had been hard. All bitter edges and cold words. Stuck grieving a man she’d known long ago. Reminded of him every morning, when she woke to his empty shell.
Momma resented Willis. Resented his youth and everything that lay before him, growing taller and stronger each week, whilst her husband wasted away. Resented his easy smile and his broad shoulders, the friends who would call on him. How quickly he was becoming the man his father should have been.
Willis didn’t blame her. It wasn’t her fault anymore than it was his. She had been dealt a poor hand, no aces up her sleeves to escape the fold. But it dragged on him. Made his soul feel heavy and tired. Like he was wading through tar. “You’ll never amount to anything, just like that man upstairs.” She’d spit at him, as he tried to do his homework. Not able to bear the possibility that he might become what she had so loved in his father.
Willis didn’t blame her. But it was easier not to try, then. Better to be safe, average. He didn’t want her to hate him more than she already did. It never worked.
He was seventeen when he dropped out of high school. Kissed his old man goodbye before he left, slipped out the kitchen door before momma got home from the store. He hitched a ride from Philadelphia to Gotham, never looked back. Never saw either of them again. Never found out if he made Prom King.
Gotham was different to Philly. It was darker. Colder. Teetering on the edge of an abyss, like the whole city was waiting. Waiting for disaster to fall from the sky, or the ground to swallow them up. Two weeks after Willis arrived, some teenage billionaire who owned half the town went missing. Bruce Wayne presumed dead at 19 said the papers. And not long after, everything in Gotham went to shit.
Willis had left home with fifty dollars in his pocket. Reached the city with only twenty. He worked the docks and the warehouses and the subway tunnels. He’d take jobs on the regeneration projects that would spring up across the city, fronts for money laundering though most of them were, wound up before anyone could realise no buildings would ever materialise. He worked behind bars and on their doors. He drove the buses and the trains and once had a cab share with a friend. But it was never enough. Every month was a choice between food or gas. Electric or water. And just when you thought you were getting somewhere, corruption or crime or the just plain chaos took it away.
Money was tight, and Gotham kept squeezing.
By the time he was twenty four, Willis couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the sun. A friend told him about a job going in Metropolis. Knew a little place by Outlook Park where there was a room share they could stay. South facing. The sun would shine in through their window and they’d be able to sit in the park and enjoy it on their off days. Would have the money to enjoy it, to have off days. LexCorp was offering crazy pay for guys to build their new project. It would be perfect.
Then Willis saw Catherine, and decided maybe the sun could wait.
She was training to be a teacher, she said. A light blush under her freckles, as she sipped from the beer bottle. A small smile on her lips.
For their first date, Willis had taken her up the old clock tower. Still had the keys from the reno project he’d been working, before it had been scrapped.
“What will you teach?” He’d asked, blushing himself when she’d caught him staring.
“Reading.” Catherine had said. “I mean, it’s English really, but I’ll be in elementary school, so it’s reading.” She paused. “I just think it’s the best thing we can do for our kids, at least in this city. You know how many kids leave elementary school unable to read properly?” She said, suddenly serious. “It’s criminal. I’m volunteering at Blackgate too. Helping some of the residents to read there. Can you imagine never being able to have read Great Expectations, or Catcher in the Rye, or Shakespeare?” There was fire in her eyes. “It’d be enough to turn anyone to crime.”
Being with Catherine made Willis feel like he might be Prom King after all. She was damn smart, and fiery, never willing to back down from a fight for what was right. They moved into a little place over a bodega in what used to be Park Row. It wasn’t much, but it was theirs and for the first time in a long time Willis had thought things were starting to look up.
For a year, Willis lived in a dream. Couldn’t remember life ever being so good, since before even high school. Catherine read to him every night, just a page or so from whatever she was reading at the time, and Willis built them a bed from left over pallets he had swiped from the abandoned building sites across Gotham. On Friday’s they would get take out and dance to their elderly neighbour’s violin practice and when it rained they built pillow forts and watched movies. Together they could just about afford the bills. Life was good.
The year Bruce Wayne reappeared in Gotham, Catherine fell pregnant. The same year, Willis had an accident on a job. A broken arm that stopped him working. They needed the money, so Catherine put her studies on pause, picked up shifts at the bodega downstairs, helped make ends meet. A few weeks later she had a fender bender on the way to a baby appointment. Her and the baby were fine, and Willis thanked God everyday for that, but they couldn’t afford to fix the car. Not until he got back to work.
Except work around Gotham was drying up. Wayne was on some social justice crusade, him and his polo club buddy Dent. Shutting down all of the under-the-table jobs that Willis had grown to rely on. He didn’t have a high school diploma and suddenly everyone was asking for one, or wanted two references and a character statement. All Willis had was a string of jobs for a bunch of guys who ended up being crooks.
Catherine was seven months along and they still didn’t have a car. Willis hated the thought of her taking the bus all the way to the hospital, so when a friend mentioned a gig working for Oswald Cobblepot, nothing major, just moving some boxes, Willis agreed.
The money was good, and the work not much different from what Willis had been doing before. It was menial, but it paid. He bought a new car; used, old, and loud as all hell, but it was his. He used it to drive Catherine to the hospital to give birth, the same night that The Batman first appeared in Gotham. Catherine gave birth to a little girl. She came out silent and blue. They named her Marie and drove home without speaking to each other.
In a way that could only ever happen in Gotham, Sheila turned up at their door the following day. Willis barely remembered her. She had worked for Cobblepot too once. They’d been drunk, and Willis didn’t remember even finishing. She didn’t speak when she handed over Jason. She turned on her heel and Willis never saw her again. Catherine didn’t care enough to ask. Just held the tiny baby close to her aching breasts.
Willis remembered holding Jason later that night. A tiny little thing, screaming his tiny little lungs out. A shock of black hair and bright blue eyes. His face red and screwed up, fists flailing. So small, so helpless. Willis had been at sea, in danger of drowning in the swell of love and fear that churned in his gut. This tiny little thing he had made. In this awful city that had been trying to undo him since he arrived.
He’d sworn to himself there and then he’d earn enough money and move them all to Metropolis, like he’d originally planned. Catherine could finish her studies and become a teacher, and he would take Jason out to play ball in Outlook Park, under the sunshine.
A few weeks after Jason was born, Cobblepot got caught by The Batman. A giant freak in black and silk. Willis only just escaped arrest himself. That same week, Willis found Catherine on the roof with the baby, standing on the ledge in her nightdress and slippers.
It took him over an hour to coax her down. She didn’t even look at him when he put her to bed, didn’t see as he watched her with wild eyes, Jason screaming in his arms. Catherine didn’t get up for two months after that. Jason cried the entire time.
Harvey Dent became Two Face and Willis eventually found work with some clown calling himself The Joker. Willis wasn’t averse to breaking the law, God knows Gotham had done it enough. But working for The Joker was different to working for Cobblepot. It was no longer just moving stolen goods, now it was moving bodies.
It weighed on him, what he was doing. He wondered where the bodies were coming from. Why they were being killed. But Willis knew better than to ask. He couldn’t tell Catherine what he was doing. Not that she spoke much those days, but it’d have broken her heart to know it. So Willis pushed it down, locked all the terrible things he saw and heard in a little box, and buried it in a corner of his soul.
It was a Saturday morning, 4am and the sun already risen when he broke. He’d started the night listening to the screams of some poor fool who pissed off The Joker. Finished it by dissolving their body in a vat of acid.
He was desperate to speak to Catherine, to the same fiery, bright woman he met all those years ago. He wanted her to hold him and read to him, tell him it’d be okay. That they’d move to Metropolis and live in the sun. Instead he got home and she hadn’t left the bed all day. Jason was sat in a soiled nappy, over-filled and stinking of shit. Had screamed himself hoarse, and was crying silently on the kitchen floor.
Willis sank an entire bottle of Jack and then threw it at the wall above the bed. Catherine didn’t flinch. Jason started screaming again.
The Batman was being followed around by some kid in gold and green. The papers were calling him Robin and Catherine was finally speaking again. Jason was two and Willis was no longer working for The Joker but the damage was done. His nightmares were no longer Catherine and the baby on the roof. They were darker, colder, and filled with a hideous laugh.
Two Face paid good money, but it wasn’t enough for therapy. Was barely enough for Catherine’s meds. So Willis drank instead, and if Jason cried too much he’d shut the kid in the closet. Willis didn’t want to lose control around his boy. Better to keep him out the way. Keep him safe. It only took a few months before Jason started taking himself to the closet, shutting himself away once he saw Willis open a bottle.
A few years later, The Batman and his little bird put Two Face away, and Willis was out of work again. Catherine’s meds were expensive, but she said she'd found a new doctor who could help them out, if Willis did some work for him. Willis had never been able to refuse Catherine, even if working for Jonathan Crane made his skin crawl.
Jason, meanwhile, was smart, eight years old and sharp as a tack. “He’s gonna be a heart-breaker.” Catherine used to say, when she was half way lucid, looking at their boy the same was she used to look at Willis. Willis couldn’t bear to see it.
Except, then he didn’t have to. Because eventually The Bat caught up to him, The Bat and the little freak who followed him round in the green shorts. Scarecrow’s whole operation was blown wide open and Willis was sent to Blackgate. Three years.
Catherine and Jason visited once. Jason practically dragged her into the visiting hall. Her eyes slid in and out of focus, her smile was lopsided on her face. “You have to help, Willis.” Jason said. He’d never forgotten the closet. Never understood it was for his own good. “She keeps taking the drugs and they cut the power off because we missed the bills.”
Willis couldn’t deal with it. Couldn’t help from where he was. Couldn’t stand the sight of his beautiful Catherine, ruined by this beautiful boy and the little girl that never was. “I can’t help you, Jason.” Willis snarled. Better the kid learned to fend for himself. “You need to figure this out yourself.”
Willis didn’t see him again. When the Warden came to tell him that Catherine had passed, he didn’t mention Jason. Catherine’s only legal child had died years ago and Willis didn’t ask. Jason was smart. He’d have got himself somewhere safe.
As safe as Wayne Manor, it turned out, and Willis was impressed. Much as he hated Wayne, hated how much worse he made Gotham trying to fix her, at least the guy would keep Jason safe. Keep him warm and fed and in school.
Jason died in Ethiopia before Willis was released.
Willis beat the shit out of his cellmate in a rage. Got another eighteen months added to his sentence.
~~
The night that would have been Jason’s twenty-third birthday, Willis is drinking. He’s a large man these days. Years, in and out of prison, with nothing to do but lift weights and ruminate, he’s muscle and rage and bitterness made human.
He’s half way through a bottle of vodka when he decides that he’ll visit Wayne. A birthday gift to Jason, he tells himself. Wayne was meant to keep him safe, revenge is the least that Willis can offer.
He jacks a car from outside the old bodega he and Catherine used to live above. Winds all the windows down to keep him sharp as he drives. The vodka is warm in his veins.
He thinks about how smug Wayne looked, that first time he took Jason out in that little suit. Eleven years old and the kid dressed like some penguin politician. He grinds his teeth as he thinks of the little brat Wayne adopted to replace Jason, once Willis’ boy was dead. His fingers tighten around the steering wheel as he thinks of Wayne’s shit eating grin every time he adopts some new kid. And he feels a break in his heart when he thinks that Wayne has never once mentioned Jason since. Has forgotten him, as though he was an old dog.
It doesn’t take Willis long to get to Wayne Manor. Everyone in Gotham knows where it is. Up on the hill above the river, lording it over the common folk, as though it were a palace. In a twist of fate that could only ever happen in Gotham, a pizza delivery guy is pulling out of the gate just as Willis arrives.
He drives through unannounced. The long, dark gravel drive, crunching beneath stolen tyres.
Against a dark sky, The Manor is an even darker silhouette, lights dotted across various windows, shining out into the night. Willis can hear music. It makes his blood burn with rage. A party. On his boy's birthday.
He takes another swig of vodka as he climbs out of the car. Throws the bottle to the ground as he forces the spirit down his throat. Fuck Bruce Wayne. He thinks savagely and before he knows it, he’s pounding on the giant oak door.
“Wayne!” He roars, “Wayne, I know you’re in there you—“
A hand lands on Willis' shoulder and he cuts himself off. Bruce Wayne stands behind him, his fingers pinching ever so slightly into Willis' flesh.
“Let’s go for a walk Willis.” Wayne says. And Willis narrows his eyes. Shrugs off Wayne’s hand.
“You’re piece of fucking work, Wayne.” Willis snarls. “A party? Really?” He stares the other man down. “Do you even know what day it is?”
Wayne inclines his head towards Willis’ car, begins walking away from the porch. Willis follows.
“Aren’t you even go to say anything?” Willis sneers. “My boy, he was my—“
“I know what day it is.” Wayne says once they reach the car.His voice is even, firm.
Willis spits. “Bullshit.” He seethes. “He was just some accessory to you. Then you just replaced him. Like he was just some fucking dog.”
Wayne takes a step closer and Willis isn’t expecting it, he stumbles back against the car.
“I’d think very carefully about what you’ve come here to say, Mr. Todd.” Wayne says, and there’s something in his voice that fills Willis with an old dread. One he can’t quite place. Like deja-vu. He shoves Wayne back, squares up to him.
“My boy deserved better than you.”
Wayne raises an eyebrow. “Who do you suppose is better than me?” He asks.
Willis swings before he can think about it, let’s out a cry of rage as his fist sails through the air. Wayne side steps it with ease and Willis staggers, falls to one knee. Gravel and stone pressing into his knees. He clambers to his feet, turns on Wayne again. “You let him die.” Willis reaches for Wayne with both hands. Wants to grab him by his overpriced jacket, shake him until he’s limp. Beat him bloody for how he failed Jason. But Wayne dodges again, easy as if Willis were a child.
He gives Willis a pitying look. “I’m going to make you an offer, Mr. Todd.” Wayne says, and he's typing on his phone as he speaks. “One grieving father to another.” He ignores the noise of rage in Willis’ throat. “Leave Gotham. Better yet, leave the country. Forget Jason and go." He puts his phone away. "Name your price, I will pay it.”
“You’re not his father. You were never his father.” Willis snarls. “You’re a fucking fraud. Some rich bastard who uses kids like, Jason. You were never good enough for him, you were never his father—“
Something in Wayne snaps and suddenly Willis is pinned against the car, Wayne’s arm across his throat, their faces inches apart. Behind him, Willis can hear the music from the Manor still playing. “Name your price Todd. Leave Gotham. Forget Jason and this city.” Wayne’s voice is a growl, monstrous and feral. “This is a once in a lifetime off—“
“Hey Bruce!” Willis hears a young man’s voice travel across the drive way. There’s something distantly familiar about it, l. Probably one of the brats Wayne adopted. “B, what’re you doing out here in the dark? It’s meant to be my birthday party.”
Willis watches as something in Wayne’s face changes. The monster is gone. He steps back from Willis, but still keeps him pinned in place. He looks over the roof of the car, clears his throat. “Just a sec, son. I forgot to tip the pizza guy.”
Willis hears the front door close and Wayne changes again. Shifting into something menacing and forboding. “What’ll it be Willis?”
“He was my son, I can’t just forget him.” Willis sneers, but it’s half hearted, because he’s suddenly overcome with dread.
“He’s my son.” Wayne says, with a finality that makes Willis shudder. “You’re leaving Gotham tonight. Don’t be fool enough to come back.”
Willis stares at Wayne, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up, as a strange and terrible scenario begins to present itself. The growl in Wayne's throat, the voice from the Manor... In the distance he can hear a helicopter. “What happens if I come back?” Willis asks.
Wayne barely blinks. “I’ll have your memories of Jason removed and you’ll live out the rest of your life in Blackgate.”
Willis narrows his eyes, the sound of the helicopter is getting louder. “He’s alive, isn’t he?”
Wayne doesn’t respond and suddenly Willis is desperate.
“Jason’s alive isn’t he? Isn’t he?!”
The helicopter is directly above them now, coming into land, all loud noise and bright light.
“Answer me damn it. Was that him? At the door? He’s my son! Answer me!” Willis shouts over the roar of the blades.
Wayne stares at him impassively. “The chopper will take you to an airfield. Just tell my pilot where you want to go.” He says, only slightly nodding as two large men suddenly grab Willis by each arm, drag him towards the chopper.
“Where is he? What have you done with him? Where is my son?” Willis screams, as the men force him into the helicopter.
Wayne follows, stands at the door. “I know all about what kind of a man you are Willis Todd.” He says, somehow still audible over the whirring blades, even without shouting. “What kind of a father you were. Do you think Jason didn’t tell me what it was like growing up for him, with you? Never knowing how long you’d keep him locked away, or what violence you’d cause when you were drunk?”
Willis wants to fight back. Wayne doesn’t know how hard it was, what it was like back then for the normal people of Gotham, who weren’t born with silver spoon in their mouths and fucking helicopters at their beck and call. But he can’t find the words, and the two larger than life men, hold him in his seat.
“You were never a father to him. Jason is my son, will always be my son.” Then Wayne steps back from the helicopter and nods to the pilot. Willis feels his stomach lurch as they rise into the air, and it’s nothing to do with gravity.
~~
Bruce walks back to the Manor as the chopper rises into the sky, sends another text to the security firm employed by Wayne Enterprises. Tells them to come and collect the car in his driveway.
It's not like he's proud of himself. Threatening Willis. Bruce wouldn't have Jason if not for him, afterall. And Bruce knows he himself, isn't perfect. He knows there are times he's let Jason down. But God he loves that kid more than the world. And despite how often the Red Hood has tried to prove otherwise, Jason is far too forgiving. Far too kind to face Willis and not give him another chance.
Bruce has already put Jason back together once, after a life with Willis. Has already heard the horror stories of being locked in a closet for days at a time. Of Jason crying himself to sleep because Catherine was too high and Willis too drunk to feed him.
Bruce won't let that happen again. Willis doesn't deserve a second chance. Not with Jason.
When he gets back through the front door, Jason and Tim are in the foyer, bickering about something or other. Music form the library drifts through the door ways.
“B, what have you been doing?” Tim implores, elbowing past Jason and shoving another slice of pizza into his mouth. “You’ve been gone ages.” He says, crumbs flying everywhere.
“The pizza guy was telling me about how his Grandma is sick over in Metropolis. I was convincing his boss to give him the rest of the night off. Had the chopper fly him over there.”
Jason rolls his eyes. A birthday hat sits at an angle atop his head. “You're such a bleeding heart, old man. Can we get back to the party now? You’re the one who wanted this stupid thing anyway.”
Bruce grins, puts an arm around Jason’s shoulders. “Of course son, anything for you.”