Archive of Our Own ^beta

Jason Peter Todd was born on a cold January night four blocks away from the Park Row Emergency Clinic. 

He would never know which night in particular, only that it had been cold, snow falling in frozen flurries, contrasting stark white with the dark of the city. No birth certificate when you’re born in an alley, after all.

The first thing Jason ever saw was the sky.

Jason looked up from his mother’s arms, up into the night sky, the clouds of pollution over Gotham briefly parting to let a shard of silver moon peek through, stars reflecting nebulas into robin’s-egg eyes.

He didn’t cry. Maybe he knew, even at the tender age of sixteen minutes, that crying would never do him any good. Maybe he already knew that it would be seen as a weakness. 

So he looked up to the sky, content with the shifting smoke and falling snow.

The first thing that registered to his ears was a distant hiss, almost hidden in the sound of a car driving past. A dark shadow leapt across a rooftop, unaware that it’s second son had just been born.

~~~

The last thing Jason ever saw was the sky. It was a tiny sliver, just enough to highlight a bloodstained silver crowbar through the small warehouse skylight, mounted high in the roof.

The moon was full the night he died, hanging large in the sky, so bright it was nearly golden. He had been grateful for the light as he raced to the warehouse. Now, he wanted it to go away. It felt like the soft, gentle moonlight was stabbing his eyes. Blood ran down his face, tinting the world in red, scarlet, deep garnet, ruby, crimson shades, as he desperately tried to back away, scrabbling for purchase on the smooth floor of the warehouse. Behind him, he heard high-pitched laughter as he pulled himself into an almost-sitting position against the wall, slumped in pain over the tattered remains of his cloak.

For some reason, all he could think about was how hard it would be for Alfred to clean all this blood off his costume. He looked up towards the skylight, wishing with all his heart that Batman would get here, that he would hear the swish of a cloak in the night before his father dropped down and saved him.

(He was Robin, after all. Robins gave people hope in the darkest times, beacons in the Gotham night, so what would he be if he couldn’t hold on to hope for a little bit longer?)

He didn’t realize where the Joker had gone until a brutal swing of metal hit his side. Jason would have screamed if he could, but all that came out was a mouth full of blood and a gargled moan. 

The Joker hit again and again.

Again and again.

Jason faded.

“No no no little bird! No sleeping yet,” the man in the purple suit cried, eyes twisted in sadistic glee as he leaned over the broken child on the smooth warehouse floor. “I haven’t gotten to the best part yet! 

Jason felt whatever was left of his insides twist with dread as the Joker pulled a syringe from his breast pocket. It nearly glowed, an ominous orange that made Jason try to get away, futilely attempting to drag himself with one arm.

“Do you know what this is, little birdie?”

No. no. No no, he didn’t know, and he didn’t want to learn, either. 

The Joker leaned forwards, popping the cap off the syringe as he did so revealing a needle, and ran his finger over Jason’s lips. Jason tried to flinch away, but he couldn’t move. Something had gone wrong and he couldn’t feel his spine. The Joker pulled his hand back, stained in blood, and examined it. 

“Lovely, isn’t it!” He laughed, cackling and cruel, a sound that no person should ever make, and brought the blood-stained hand closer to his face. The skylight made it look white and black instead of red.

The Joker licked his lips before running his tongue up along the side of his hand, lapping up Jason’s blood like it was a delicacy.

“You taste very sweet, you know,” he said, rather conversationally, an abrupt change from his previous self. “I think you need one more thing to bring out the flavor though.” The clown grabbed Jason's arm, twisting the broken bones at a sickening angle.

He didn’t receive any warning when the man plunged the syringe into his arm, far deeper than was advised, and pushed the top down suddenly, flooding his  veins in liquid fire. Jason struggled, choking on his blood and making a noise that passed for a passable scream.

“It’s a new recipe too! Scarecrow helped me make it. And you get to be the very first person to test it.”

Jason looked up through tears falling down without his permission, mingling with the pain on his cheeks and the blood on his tongue.

The Joker was gone and in his place was Batman. 

Jason was relieved. He had come. His father had made it and he was safe and they could go home to the manor.

The relief was squashed by cold, mind-numbing terror when he realized that Batman was twirling a silver crowbar.

He saw his father stalk towards him.

He coughed. It hurt, aggravating the pain in his right side where he was fairly certain his ribs had punctured his lung.

He pulled himself together and uttered a single word.

“Dad.”

There was silence. Batman stopped walking. Nothing moved, not the clouds not the moon not the stars not the cloud not the blood on Jaosn’s cloak.

Then Batman’s neutral face twisted into a scowl.

“Didn’t you know, Jason? I was never your father. WHy would I, Bruce WAYNE, protector of Gotham, want you, a dirty little street rat.”

And Jason.

Felt.

Himself.

Break.

Into.

Tiny. 

Little.

Pieces.

And the crowbar came down and Batman smiled like the Joker, wide and unnatural, and Jason saw that the smile was bloody. Bloody with his blood, stained by Robin scarlet in liquid. By the time the fear toxin was over, all that remained of Jason Peter Todd was a ripped uniform, a broken body, and a Jane Austen book, 6958 miles away, tucked into a nightstand drawer in a room that would never again house the young boy.

~~~

The first thing Jason sees is green.

Green, green, green.

Green, dripping in acid rivulets from his body. 

Green, clouding his eyes like the blood clouded them before he died.

Green, reflecting off cave ceilings, glistening rock. 

Green, green, green.

There is a rocky ledge, a rough-hewn staircase. No one is standing there. It is just Jason, in a giant pool of neon green, in a giant cave.

The first thing he smells is death. 

Death doesn’t exactly have a smell, Jason has learned. Rather, it is a combination of a thousand little scents mixing together into one. 

The green recedes and he smells death.

He smells something like rotten fruit, sickly sweet and disgusting.

He smells decayed flesh. That’s a big part of this death-smell.

He looks down at himself and nearly vomits.

His skin is peeling off, strips of it, revealing muscle and bone, tendons and veins writhing and reconnecting as he watches. 

It is as disgusting as it is enthralling. 

The green comes back, calling to him.

Not done yet, go back to sleep. 

Jason obeys. He has no reason not to. He doesn’t know his name, or his age, or that he was Batman’s Robin. He sinks back beneath the surface of the nameless green liquid.

~~~

He awakens two weeks later, the Lazarus Pit having finished the laborious process of patching back his rotted flesh and reviving him and healing the autopsy scars and broken ribs and fractured bones and bringing him up to an adult size.

And the first thing he sees when he leaves the cave, the endless green, is the night sky, spread like a tapestry of stars across the heavens, with a sliver of a moon, shining out over an assassin’s compound hidden deep in the mountains.