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Sometimes, he wishes the crowbar had hit just a little harder, so that he wouldn’t have to remember.
Of course, he feels terrible for thinking that, because he should be grateful; grateful for the fact the door of the warehouse was open, grateful for the fact the brain damage was minimal, grateful for Sheila who carried him out of the door moments before it exploded. He was left with broken bones, acute tinnitus, burns on his back, a dark spot in a corner of his vision that is slowly receding and the knowledge that it could have been much, much worse if his mother hadn’t gotten him out when she did.
And yet, he really wishes she would stop smoking in front of him.
They’re sitting at a table outside a coffee shop south of Old Gotham, the afternoon air warm and humid with the thick grey cloud of pollution weighing over them. She’s twirling her spoon in her coffee cup with one finger, the metal clinking against the ceramic. She’s saying something. He’s trying to focus, but he can’t look away from the smoke rising between her fingertips. The smell of nicotine clogs his lungs. She bought him a milkshake.
“Jason? Jason, are you listening to me?”
She leans over the table, hand reaching out, and he can’t help it; he flinches back, chair scraping against the pavement with an insupportable rattling noise. He braces himself, holding his breath like a kid playing hide-and-seek, as if, by staying quietly enough, he would become invisible and unnoticed. Her hand overs in front of his face, nails sharp enough that she could scratch his skin off, leaning closer to his eye in the corner of the view where he cannot see her. She pulls back with a sigh, something heavy in her gaze that makes his stomach churn.
“Oh, Jason, again? You’re still stuck on that?”
He swallows, staring at his shoes.
“It’s not -I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”
She looks away, twirling the cigarette between her fingers, mouth pinched.
“I mean, I understand. You’re at a complicated age, going through a lot of changes; especially with your special, um, hobbies. Teenagers are not known to be resentful; besides, I know I’ve made mistakes. I haven’t been a very good mother, haven’t I?”
“N-no, I- I didn’t mean to imply-”
“It’s okay, kid,” she smiles. With the way she’s sitting, he can’t see her left eye, like a shadow weighing over her face. Absurdly, he his reminded of the villain who killed his father.
“I can understand being weary, after all that you’ve been through. You know I didn’t have a choice, leaving Gotham, but of course, a boy needs his mother. It must have been so hard…”
It was, he thinks, but doesn’t say. It was cold, and exhausting, and lonely. He wants Willis’ hands ruffling his hair, Catherine’s hand holding his own, Bruce’s warm hand over his shoulder. He wants Sheila to lean over the table and hug him.
“Perhaps this was a mistake, meeting like this.”
“What? No, please -how can you say that? Come on, I’ll get over it, I didn’t mean to!”
“Jason, it’s been months, and you’re still not comfortable with me. I don’t want to be impatient, but sometimes it feels like I’m the only one who’s trying here.”
“But I am! I mean, I’ll try harder, I just -come on, mom. I just got you back!”
“Yes… It was very kind of your father, to help me come back with you, wasn’t it? I’m very grateful for this chance.”
He is, too. He is, he is.
“Wait, can I still call him your father?”
“I -what?”
“Mr Wayne. I mean, he told me he adopted you, but between what’s on paper… Especially after what happened. I mean, you still haven’t, er, gone out at night since then, have you? I wouldn’t want to misspeak.”
They haven’t. Bruce says he needs time to heal, to focus on physical therapy and re-education for his head, get to learn to know his mom in the meantime. There was a strange shine in his eye as he said that, something sad and loving and painful and warm; he was reminded, leaning into the man’s touch, of how lucky he truly is. After Catherine died, he thought he was lost forever, that he would never be able to get a hug from his mother again. And of course, his mom is still gone, and he misses her like a limb, but to find Sheila again? How many people get that kind of chance? Bruce and Dick certainly didn’t. And now he’s messing it all up, because he couldn’t follow orders and wait for Bruce before going in the warehouse, being all ungrateful because he can’t get over his mom making one bad decision under stress; god, what would Dick say if he knew? What would Bruce say?
“He’ still my dad”, he says. The wind picks up and a cloud of smoke hits his face; he feels numb, farther away, like the world is far away and his body weighs a ton. Again, louder. “He’s still my dad.” Sheila takes a drag of the cigarette. “And you’re still my mom.”
She leans over the table, pressing her hand in his, and he holds on tight as he can like a lifeline.
“Thank you, Jason. You’re a good kid.”
“I want to be.”
She tips the cigarette over the ashtray, washes the ashes and extinguishing embers dropping in. For a wild second, he has the absurd urge to put his wrist underneath, and let it burn his skin.
Sharp as ever, she studies him.
“Something is still bothering you, though. Wanna tell me about it?”
“I just… I have a question, about that time. You don’t have to, I swear I’m not mad or anything, is just, I wanted to know…”
“It’s okay, ask away. If it can help us move forward, I don’t mind talking about it.”
“Okay. Okay.” He takes a deep breath. “Do you regret it?”
“Oh, Jason. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but carrying you out of that warehouse? That’s the one thing I’ll never doubt. Of course I don’t regret saving you, Jason.”
That’s not what I asked, he wants to say, but bites his lip at the last second. His mother is right, after all; this is what really matters. She was the one to carry him out of that warehouse; the rest is inconsequent.
After all, she saved his life.
*****
Cutlery scrapes against the porcelain like Jason is determined to dig a hole into his plate. His face is closed off, focused on reducing the steak in front of him into tiny chunks, glaring at the blood seeping out of the meat like it has offended him.
“So, how was your day? You saw your mother this morning, right?”
The knife drops on the plate with a loud metallic noise as his son takes a large gulp of water. He doesn’t meet his eyes.
“Jay?”
“Yeah, sorry B. Yeah, I saw her. It was fine.”
“Just fine?”
The boy jolts up, eyes wide and mouth agape like a deer in headlights, before dropping his heads down, cheeks flushing.
“No really, it was good. I just- ‘m a bit tired, is all.” He shoves a bite in his life, chews it for far too long, follows it down with a large sip of water like a hard to swallow pill. His wrist flexes around the glass, bonier than the last time he noticed. Jason had lost weight after Ethiopia, going in and out of the hospital for a while, but it’s been months now, and he’s never shied away from Alfred’s food before (nor from the secret stash in his room Bruce pretends not to know about).
“Are you sleeping alright? Do we need to adjust your medicine?”
“No, no, it’s okay! I’m alright, really, B, I don’t need anything. I’m glad, really I am. Mom’s nice.”
He leans over, reaching to hold the boy’s shoulder and steady him, and freezes when Jason flinches away.
“I’m- nevermind. Y’know what, I’m not hungry anymore. I’m gonna go work out.”
He leaves, fists clenched and gaze fixed on his shoes, without adding anything else.
Bruce stares at the torn chunks of meat scattered across the plate and for a second, the aftermath of ash and smoke lingers on his mouth. A couple of months ago, while looking for his mother in Ethiopia, his son was kidnapped by a Joker henchman (though the details of that are lacking, due to Jason’s discomfort talking about the traumatic event) while Bruce was tracking down aid supplies crate that had been substituted with venom. It’s hard to tell what exactly went down in the warehouse, but when he found the boy in his mother’s arms, a couple of feet away from the explosion that almost killed them both, he was covered in bruises, ribs fractured and limbs broken and ankle snapped and was bleeding from a wound to the back of the head. Eight months later, his son’s vision has progressed greatly, he’s reading and moving and breezing through physical therapy with a toothy grin, excited to take up the mantle again. The first months had been difficult, of course, but he’d been doing better -or he thought he did. His brave little boy, digging himself out of horrors that haunted their nightlife with a raised chin and broken nails, through dirt and rubble and the corpses he never knew how to shield him from.
Bruce stares down at his hand, flexing his fist as if monstrous claws or bloodstains would appear out of thin air to explain why his son is suddenly afraid of him.
Jason hadn’t flinched in years.
******
The kid has been throwing glances at him for ten minutes now.
At first he thought it might be teenage infatuation, that puppy crush he's had since Speedy that Roy pretends not to know about, but the kid isn't blushing or staring, mouth agape, at his biceps in fascination. (And Dick's little brother is not stealthy with his emotions; he might be too shy to do anything about it, thankfully, but his face is an open book despite his best efforts.) No, this looks more like attempts at catching his attention, bracing himself to start a conversation he doesn't know how to begin. Roy looks him up and down, considering the boy's locked jaw and trembling knees, nails digging into the skin of his wrist. The other Titans won't be back from their mission until late at night, and he still has over an hour before he leaves to pick up Lian at the nursery. He jumps off the treadmill, emptying his bottle in a way that hopefully makes him look cool and approachable, and plops down next to the kid with his best hero grin.
"Hey kid. You doing okay?"
"Huh? Oh I- yeah, I'm fine."
"Gotcha." A pause; he avoids looking at the kid, doesn't want him to feel cornered. "Something you wanna talk about?"
"Um, I, uh. Maybe. I mean, I was just wondering..."
"Yeah?"
"Can you keep a secret?"
Ah, shit.
"Well, that depends. What's going on? Is someone in danger?"
"Oh no, no, don't worry, everything's fine, it's just, I have a dumb question and I don't want Bruce to find out about it cause then he'll think I'm ungrateful and disobedient and..."
"Well kid, it's as I always tell my girl," he ruffles his hair despite the kid's protest, "no such thing as a dumb question."
"I'm not a toddler, Arsenal!"
"Sure you're not. What's going on, kid? Promise I won't tell Bruce." (Nothing about not telling Dick, though; if something actually bad is going on with the little Robin, he's not letting him go back to Gotham without the knowledge somebody will take care of it.)
"Well, it's just. There's this thing that happened a while ago and I should be over it by now and I'm not, and it's pissing me off and making B worried and my mom uncomfortable and I'm not sure what do about it. Cause like, I keep thinking about it and acting weird even though it's dumb and I'm Robin, we're heroes we've all done worse, I don't know why this one time it's messing me up all of a sudden."
"Yeah", he hums, "brain stuff is weird like that. As heroes, we see a lot of stuff, y'know? And it doesn't always feel rational, what sticks and what doesn't. Wanna tell me about it?"
"I mean, it's embarrassing." Jason worries his lip with his teeth, and Roy has to hold himself back from gently chiding him about it. "You heard how I've been benched because I got got by a villain last April?"
"Yeah, when the Joker kidnapped you and your mom in Ethiopia, right?"
"Yeah, well, that's the thing. He didn't really kidnap me."
"What do you mean?"
"Uh- god this is so dumb... So, I was in Ethiopia to find my bio-mom, y'know- cause I just found out Catherine wasn't, well she's my mom but, anyway- so I get there and Bruce is also there because the Joker is plotting something. And we find Sheila and she recognizes me and it's cool, but the thing is, the Joker he was there, and I find out he's been blackmailing her. So I try to tell her that we can help her, but she was scared, obviously, so I -god it was so dumb- I told her B and I could help, that I was Robin. And I showed her the costume."
"Uh huh", Roy nods, ignoring the bad feeling that slides up his back like ice under the skin.
"And then, later B and I had found the warehouse Joker had set up his operation in, but he had to track down the supplies that had been poisoned, so he, well, he left and told me not to go on my own. I wasn't about to try and take down Joker on my own, I'm not dumb, and he told me to wait. I'm such a moron."
Jason shoves his fist into his mouth and bites down like he's trying to reign down something terrible. This time, Roy does take his wrist, hands slow and careful, and lowers it down slowly. Unwittingly, his mind conjures images of Lian's tiny little fingers with those indents in them, and his breath catches.
"She came to me, she talked me into going in the warehouse. She said the Joker was gone. She needed my help and I thought he wasn't in the warehouse anymore - I know I should have followed orders..."
For fuck's sake.
"What happened then?"
"She lied," he whispers, eyes downcast, like it's something shameful. Like he is, somehow, to blame for his situation. "He was in the warehouse, with his men. I tried to run but um, she pointed a gun to my head and said I had trusted the wrong person. And then well, they beat me up and then he took a crowbar and hit me in the back of my head, and then a bunch of times everywhere else. And she was there and -it's -it's dumb that I can't stop thinking about it, she was just standing right there and smoking. She wasn't looking at me. She just smoked."
He shuts his eyes, willing away the images crawling inside his mind- a gun in his hands, his baby staring at him with her wide brown eyes, beaten bloody with a crowbar- not the time. Compartmentalize, Arsenal. Focus on the victim.
Jason is still talking, hands shaking, eyes shaking slightly over a corner of the room like he's staring at something that's not there.
"And then he thought he'd killed me, so he tied her up and set up a bomb to cover it up and left. I couldn't defuse it in that state, so I untied her, and then I couldn't walk but she- she carried me and we had so little time but she got me out. She got me out, right before it exploded." He's smiling, somehow, and there's an almost manic energy to it, tugging on his hair with that horrible forced smile and a feverish glint in his eye. "That's what matters, right? She saved my life. She carried me out of the warehouse."
A dozen emotions twirl around in Roy's stomach, disgust, horror, indignation, before crystallizing into rage. He knows, rationally, he shouldn't take it so personally; it's far from the first time he's dealt with child abusers and all forms of horrible parents and he's always dealt well, it's just- he only just got Lian for a couple of months and -fuck, just to imagine pointing a gun- he doesn't understand. It's just this profound, intense sentiment of revolt: he doesn't understand. How could she? How could anyone? He is suddenly pressed with the desire to hold his baby in his arms and make sure she is safe.
He takes a deep breath, flexes his fists once, leashes his temper for now.
"Jason", he says, I'm gonna say something, and I need you to listen carefully. "What happened in Ethiopia- what these people did to you, in that warehouse? That wasn't your fault."
The kid hums, eyes wide, but doesn't look at him.
Very slowly, like approaching a spooked cat, he raises his chin and leads him to face him, to look him in the eyes.
"Jason. It wasn't your fault."
Something cracks, like an egg, in the boy's expression.
"She says it's my fault, though. Cause I didn't listen. She says I'm being ungrateful, cause she's trying and it's like I'm not because I can't get over it and I'm still scared but I am, I'm trying, I swear I'm not ungrateful it's just, it's just she keeps smoking and I can't stop thinking about how she smoked and it's so dumb..."
Wait.
"You're still in contact with her?"
"Yeah?" The kid blinks, like he hadn't anticipated his surprise. "We meet at a cafe once a week." He tilts his head to the side like a bird. "She's my mom."
"Okay. Okay. Okay."
He throws on shoes and a jacket, hauls the kid up, ushers him into doing the same.
"Okay, new plan."
"Uh, what?"
"We're going to pick my daughter at the nursery, and you're coming with me. And then, we're going back to the tower, all three of us, and I'm gonna make you a hot cocoa and then we'll wait for your brother to come back, okay?"
"What? Wait, no, you can't tell Nightwing! He's gonna be so disappointed, you can't -"
"Jason, Dick isn't gonna be mad at you, I promise. You trust me, right? I'm telling you, Dick is one of my best friends. He thinks you're a good Robin, kid. Your mom's actions won't change that."
He doesn't tell the kid that right now, his options are wait for Dick to come back and talk about it, or hit the streets and shoot down the first asshole he sees looking at a kid wrong.
"How about that: when she brought you to that warehouse, she told you you'd been wrong to trust her, right?"
"Uh-huh."
"So maybe she isn't all that trustworthy, right?"
"I mean -but she said -she said-"
"Hey, it's okay, Robin," he lays a hand on his arm, telegraphing his movement so the boy doesn't flinch. "I'll stay with you the whole time, and we can talk to Nightwing together, okay? They can't hurt you anymore. You're here now. You're safe."
The kid swallows audibly, eyes downcast, like he's confessing to some terrible dark sin.
"I still got this dark spot in my eyesight, from when he hit me in the head. I've been doing re-education, but I'm afraid it's never gonna go away totally." Then, quietly: "I'm scared."
"It's okay to be scared. Fuck, I'm scared all the time, kid."
Jason's mouth curls up in disbelief.
"Really, it's true." His fingers close on the hem of his sleeve, covering the shadows of an illness that will never truly stop frightening him. "Come on now, let's go get Lian."
"Okay."
They're quiet the whole ride. At some point, Jason stops shivering.