Chapter Text
Things start to very quickly go out of order in a way that Khalid does not particularly enjoy.
There is an order to things in Khalid's head, neat and simple and right.
In his head, this is what should happen:
Jay will stay in the hospital, healing. His body's been pushed through far too much, and the risk of further damage if he stresses himself is too great. The hospital will also give him emotional space to recover himself, allowing for a string of teary reunions with the rest of his increasingly extensive family. He'll reconcile, which will mean he's no longer pretending to be asleep for much of the day, meaning Khalid won't have to be in his room quite as much, because he's starting to run out of things to do to fill the time.
When it's time for him to be discharged, Khalid will go on ahead, moving into the manor (a fact which he feels he has little say in—unless he wins the lottery, Bruce is not going to take no for an answer). Jay will follow shortly behind, discharged into Alfred's doting care. Khalid will return one day to a letter from his school, telling him he's back in good standing, the last semester never happened, and he can resume his studies at the start of next term.
Jay will get therapy, both physical and mental. He will see an endless string of specialists for the myriad of issues he's no doubt been left with. Khalid, he supposes, will probably also see a therapist, because the number of people he's gotten pointed looks from on the subject seems to grow each and every day.
He'll go back to school. Jay will recover. Life will resume.
What happens instead is almost unrecognizable when placed side by side with Khalid's neatly ordered plan.
Jay does not meet with Bruce first—it's Barbara who next catches him while he's awake (Khalid seriously doubts he's sleeping half as much anyone things, but doesn't want to push the issue). There is a teary reunion no one else gets to see, and Barbara happily lets them know when Jay's fallen back asleep again.
She admits to them, much later, some hesitation.
"He isn't the boy I remember," she says, her expression serious. "I guess it makes sense... he would have changed no matter what. It's just a bit jarring, getting used to that."
It's a sentiment repeated over and over. None of them blame Jason for it, or even go as far as to imply they're unhappy with it, but it's a near-universal expression that each and every one of them has at some point been struck by how different Jay is from the happy, outgoing boy that lives in their memories.
Khalid has to wonder just how happy Jay really was, when he was a boy. He knows the power of nostalgia, rose-tinted glasses forever coloring the way they view the past. People in general have a tendency to think of those who have died in only the kindest, most angelic terms, and the tendency to scrub any negativity from the histories of the dead feels pervasive.
Jay was not the boy they remember. Even if he has changed, Khalid simply cannot reconcile the saintly boy they describe with the man he sees each day.
No one can be that perfect, and Khalid feels a slowly growing dread as a result. No matter how many times people say that there isn't anything bad about how much he's changed, the implication is there just the same. He can't even blame them for it, because how could they not feel that way? It's all just normal, an ordinary human reaction to an extraordinary circumstance.
And even so, Jay is still being set up to fail.
Jay has not yet spoken to Bruce when Doctor Thompkins declares that he's announced he's being discharged. He still has plenty more healing to go—no one is under any illusions about that—but there's no reason he can't do his healing at home, away from the constant need to take up a whole section of the hospital. Khalid knows the media is chomping at the bit to learn more, but the hospital's done a good enough job keeping them away that he's personally seen almost none of it.
He's worked in enough hospitals to imagine the logistical nightmare they must be dealing with, and in truth he's surprised they didn't discharge Jay sooner, just out of desperation to be as far from the blast radius as possible when the media finally does catch wind of it.
Because the public still doesn't know that the Joker's dead, and Khalid know that the moment they do, that will be all the news is going to care about. He still doesn't have even the faintest idea how the police are going to handle it, and he isn't looking forward to finding out.
Even so, he still tries to prepare himself for it. He makes a point of sitting down, working his way through the myriad press conferences and interviews that Bruce has done, trying to follow along on what the public does or doesn't know.
By the time he reaches interview four, Khalid decides there's no point in watching any more, because questions keep getting asked that don't make any sense. He recognizes the pattern, takes a guess, and opts to simply head online, reading instead what the public is saying about things.
What the public thinks and what Bruce wants them to think not necessarily the same thing, after all.
The story, as Khalid understands it, is equal parts completely wrong and completely right.
Despite the story Bruce has given to the public, they've figured out that Jason Todd was the second Robin. Jason's history is suddenly everywhere, even things that Khalid had no idea about. Feeling like a voyeur, he learns about Jason's parents (poor drug addicts, who wind up dead on Jason's thirteenth birthday), about the areas he used to travel through, about his early education (nearly nonexistent). There are interviews with people who used to live in his area, who used to see him as a kid running around, committing petty crimes and making himself a problem.
There are rumors—unconfirmed, of course—that he was involved in a fight between Batman and the Joker at fifteen. After that, the rumors become much more solid: a juvenile arrest record for illegal weapons, and for robbery. If he'd been alive, the records would already been scrubbed, hidden from the public forever, only his death had put a stop to that.
Khalid can see the arc of Jay's life, but he can't decide if that's where things go up or down.
He spends almost no time in jail, part of a juvenile offender outreach program. Robin appears on the scene for the first time. Jason starts attending—and living at—a private boarding school. He excels. His life comes together. Almost a year after his first arrest, he's adopted by Bruce Wayne. The details are less clear, but also contemporary; Jay's adoption is a public interest story, and Bruce—so much younger, and looking so much more full of life—does several interviews talking about the importance of supporting disadvantaged youth, like the whole thing is some kind of PR stunt. There is speculation that it's just that, both in the past and the present, but reading between the lines makes it clear that it isn't. He shows clear, obvious affection for Jay, doting on the boy and taking him everywhere with him.
What Bruce says happen in interviews and what the public believes deviates most heavily there. The story Bruce says leaves him firmly in the dark until it's far too late. The public at large, however, has a very different understanding: one of a man aware of Jay's involvement but choosing to look the other way. The idea that being Robin set Jason Todd straight is brought up again and again, an idea that turns Khalid's stomach. He hates the idea that putting on armor and going out to fight criminals suddenly made Jay good.
When he starts to feel too cynical, he digs back, finds interviews with Jay's teachers that were written when he first went missing. He reads what they say about him, listens to an old recording of his history teacher describing Jason Todd as the smartest, most dedicated student he's ever known, someone who was going to make something of his life, even though he had a truly awful start.
Maybe, in another life, Jason would be starting pre-med. He'd be training to become a doctor, or maybe an engineer, and he'd be making a difference in people's lives.
Jay looks so small in the photographs of him at the time. Poor nutrition has stunted his growth, and in the year-and-a-bit he spends with Bruce, Khalid can watch his growth. He feels like he could chart Jay's height from the photos, only then it just stops, never quite reaching the height in Khalid's head.
The public's understanding of what happened to Jay next is more murky. There's a lot of speculation, and most of it is unfortunately close to the truth. For the most part, people think that something happened, and Jay ended up captured by the Joker. They don't know about the tape being sent, but the public records tell a clear enough story. Everyone thought Jason was dead. Probably, people speculate, the Joker provided some kind of proof, but what people think that proof is varies.
A body part—fingers or toes especially—is common speculation.
Bruce has already owned up to funding Batman, so the narratives slide together, meshing perfectly at last. Bruce funds Batman. The new Robin is recruited (an actual adult, for once). The partnership is fruitful, but never quite reaches the objective that Bruce never says but always implies: finding Jason's body.
And then, of course, Tim gets involved. Tim's connection to Bruce is a public fact, but he wasn't adopted. A few people, it seem, make the connection, but they are few and far between, shouted down by the statements made by Bruce. There's no reason, people realize, for Bruce to own up to anything if Tim were Robin. Why admit to the Joker taking him at all? Why don't things make sense?
What happened at Arkham is a confused muddle, and no one has anything even approximating a clear understanding. The more Khalid reads, the less he understands, and he is one of the few people who knows.
His involvement, on the other hand, is more clear. Even if the public doesn't know what exactly he did, Bruce has explained the role he played over and over and over again, until no one even considers anything else: Khalid Nassour is a hero who saved both Jason Todd and Tim Drake. Bruce has put a lot of effort into discouraging people from digging into him, but people have dug into him anyway. Family friends do short interviews, and there's something surreal about seeing someone he knows, who he used to spend holidays with, describing him as 'smart as a whip' or 'a dedicated student' or, by one particularly generous childhood friend, 'the kind of person who'd give you the shirt off his back'. His parents are both mentioned briefly, but neither makes any public statement.
The fact that he'd dropped out of medical school—or been kicked out, depending on how you look at it—is never mentioned. Either no one knows, or Bruce has shut down the rumors so harshly that no one dares bring it up.
When he mentions, however briefly, that he's looked into things, Bruce gets a funny look on his face and opts to call in an expert. Within an hour, Khalid's in a private room (used by the hospital's legal team, but temporarily on loan to Bruce and his legal team) for what Khalid expects to be a very prolonged, very serious sit down chat.
Instead, it takes all of two minutes.
"I'll keep this simple," the man says, prim and proper in a suit that looks like it was pressed only hours before. "You know too much. You've seen too much, you've been told too much, you've experienced too much. You are also a student who has zero media training. So here's what you're going to say to the public..." He levels his gaze, and Khalid braces himself.
"Absolutely fucking nothing," the man snaps, and Khalid jumps. "Did you think even for a second you'd be doing interviews? Absolutely not. I have my one allotted curse per week, and I saved it for this conversation, just for you. Do not say anything. Do not do interviews. Do not answer questions. Do not speak to anyone about anything. If someone calls you on the phone and says 'is this Khalid Nassour?' your answer is not 'yes', it should be 'who's calling?'. If someone you care about asks you something about it, you look at them and say 'My lawyer has forbidden me from speaking about it'. If you really like them, you can include a 'sorry' out front. But otherwise, nothing. So, lets be clear here. If someone from the media walks up and asks you how you know Jason, you say..."
He stares, pointedly, and Khalid opens his mouth to reply before second guessing himself.
He closes his mouth hard enough his teeth click, feeling very strongly that he's failing some kind of a test.
The moment he does, though, the lawyer's face lights up, looking downright delighted.
"Well, that was much easier than it was with Bruce. You, unlike him, realize that the best thing to say is absolutely nothing, and so I will count on you to do exactly that, and I won't waste any more of your time."
He collects himself, stands up, and offers a flabbergasted Khalid his hand to shake, which Khalid eventually takes, feeling more than a little bit thrown off by... well, everything. He's expecting another test, or more reminders, but he doesn't get either—instead, the lawyer is actually done, having apparently decided he's left enough of an impression on Khalid that he'll keep his mouth shut.
He's right, because Khalid does not want to get a visit from Bruce's very angry lawyers because he said too much.