Chapter Text
It had been six months since Jason returned to Gotham. Six months since he donned a red helmet and stole a former moniker of the deranged psycho who’d tortured and murdered him. Six months since he realized that his original plan of forcing Batman to choose between him and his murderer was actually completely fucking pointless.
Jason had come to that last particular conclusion seemingly out of nowhere. He’d been in the middle of planning out the timeline of his whole prodigal return—you know, become a crime lord, behead a couple of people, teach the Pretender a lesson, force your father mentor to make an impossible decision—when it hit him. There were only two potential outcomes to the little showdown he’d been anticipating for so long.
Outcome One: Batman allows Jason to kill the Joker.
Originally, Jason had thought that this was what he needed for his resurrection to make sense, what he needed to add meaning to his doomed-from-the-start existence. But was it? Would it really satisfy him if he forced Bruce to be complicit and watch as Jason put a bullet through that monster's skull?
No, that wouldn’t be enough. Jason would never be able to stomach the fact that Bruce hadn't put that maniac in the ground immediately after what happened in Ethiopia. He would never be able to live with knowing that he wasn't the last person the clown had ever been able to hurt. No, there had been so many others. And still, as the Joker continued to ruin lives, Jason had remained unavenged by the man who once claimed Jason as his own son. So, no, Outcome One would not achieve anything besides breeding hostility between Jason and Bruce. And that was if Outcome One even happened.
Which left Outcome Two: Batman chooses the Joker.
At first Jason hadn't even considered that there was a second possible outcome. He’d been so sure that Bruce would have to choose him; that Bruce loved him too much to consider any other option.
And then he’d laid eyes on the Pretender for the first time. Timothy goddamn Drake.
When it happened, it was one of Jason's first nights back in Gotham, and he’d found himself lounging on the roof of one of his safehouses at the unholy hour of 3:00 AM with a cigarette hanging loosely from his fingers, smoke curling lazily around him.
It was funny, he’d actually quit smoking during his time at the manor—Alfred had disapproved of the habit, and, well, there was no arguing with Alfred. However, the minute he was back in Gotham after his time with the League, breathing the heavily polluted air, there was nothing he craved more than a pack of Camels. So, that was what he got. There were no disappointed or judging looks thrown his way as deeply inhaled the carcinogenic fumes.
Jason wasn't too worried about the long-term effects smoking could cause; he'd already died once, and he'd take lung cancer over fucking crowbars and bombs every day of the week. Not that Jason thought he would live long enough for cigarettes to pose a real threat anyway. He had, however, been worried that the smoke would remind him of a certain explosion, and from there, a certain warehouse and a certain crazy fucking clown, but upon his first cigarette in years, he was pleasantly surprised to find that at least one thing hadn't been tainted by his time in Ethiopia.
Just as he’d gone to take another drag, he spotted a familiar flash of red and green a couple buildings over. He’d immediately perked up, tracking the movement with his eyes as Robin 3.0 flitted in between buildings and over rooftops.
Jason hastily stood, not even hesitating for a second before racing off to follow his replacement.
There had been a chance that the Big Bad Bat was close by, but Jason could be stealthy, so he wasn't overly concerned with being spotted. After all, stealth was ingrained in his every step after the League; Talia had made sure of it.
He darted silently over rooftops until he was perched on one adjacent to the Pretender's. Crouching down behind a rusted water tank that creaked with the wind, he’d listened as Robin paced and spoke to what seemed like thin air to Jason, but was most likely whoever was running comms. Perhaps it was Alfred, or maybe Barbara; he had heard that she recently transitioned from running around as Batgirl to the being the omniscient hacker Oracle. Just another thing that had changed while Jason was gone.
"...lost them over on 15th, they went down into the subway and I couldn't follow without being made," Jason heard Robin recounting to his invisible audience. There was a moment's silence, as Robin presumably received a reply, before he responded: "Understood, heading back now. Tell 'Wing I'll race him!" Robin punctuated his last statement with a sharp laugh before grappling away in the direction Jason knew the Cave to be.
Jason was frozen for a second, processing what he’d just heard. It wasn't much, but it was enough. Enough for Jason to understand just how truly he had been replaced. Enough for Jason to realize that his replacement was loved more than he ever was.
Tell 'Wing I'll race him!
Clearly, the Pretender wasn't hated by the great Dick Grayson in the way that Jason had been.
Dick loathed Jason the minute Bruce brought him to the Manor. Jason had been so excited to meet the original Robin, to meet his childhood hero, but he’d quickly learned that the feeling was anything but mutual.
In the beginning, Dick had constantly been in screaming matches with Bruce, and in the rare moments he wasn't yelling, he was giving Jason a nasty side-eye before leaving for Bludhaven. Then he hadn't been around for a while, avoiding Gotham and Jason and Bruce like the plague.
Ironically, Dick ended up coming around in Jason's final months, occasionally taking him out for ice cream and even giving Jason his number. "If you ever want to talk or complain about B," he’d said. Jason never actually had the chance to use the number, as it was only a few months later that he had run off to find his birth mother not knowing he would never return.
Honestly, Jason was glad he hadn't used the number. Glad he hadn't fed into whatever trick the Golden Boy had been playing—and there was most definitely a trick, because Dick had clearly never cared about him in the slightest. Why else would he have skipped Jason's funeral? It obviously hadn't been worth his time. Jason had never been worth his time.
Jason would admit, learning about Dick's absence at the funeral had been almost as painful as realizing he had been replaced. Almost.
And now he knew that it hadn't been his being Robin that was the problem—Dick clearly liked the new one if the playful banter was anything to go by. No, the problem had always been Jason himself. Jason was the reckless Robin, the charity case, the violent street rat. Even Bruce had begun to express his judgments on Jason towards the end. "Did Felipe fall? Or was he pushed?"
Bruce's words had echoed through Jason's mind as he made his way back to his safehouse.
It became clear to him that everyone else had already moved on; probably the very minute Jason was pronounced dead to the world.
So why couldn't he? Why couldn't Jason move on, too? It would be easier for everyone; Jason wouldn't get his hopes up, and they wouldn't have to go through the effort of telling him he wasn't good enough for them—that he never would be. It would save Jason a colossal amount of time and energy that could be better spent literally anywhere else—like cleaning up Crime Alley, something Batman had never been able to do, or maybe he’d never really cared enough to try.
The dawn of this realization felt as though a weight Jason never realized he was carrying had been lifted from his shoulders. For the first time, he could be free from the life he lived before his death. He didn't have to be tied down by someone he had once been; held back by a family that would never accept him. He could follow his own rules and forge his own path without anyone standing in his way.
As Jason had entered his safehouse that night, he gazed upon it with new eyes; eyes that saw countless opportunities for his future—opportunities which didn't involve petty revenge or evil machinations that would accomplish nothing more than tearing himself and his former family apart.
He’d allowed a smile to creep upon his face. For the very first time since Jason had woken up six feet under, he could finally live.