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Red Hood has Onyx pinned to a stack of crates with a knife clean through her shoulder. They're outside a warehouse full of men he ripped through with a machine gun because she let herself think, however briefly, that he wasn't all that bad a guy.
After her fumbling, awkward attempt to curse him out through pained gasps, he tells her, "I am no one's son."
And Jason Todd doesn't consider himself a liar, 'cause it doesn't count if you make yourself believe it.
Jason Todd is fourteen years and eight months old when he dies of asphyxiation due to smoke.
Jason Todd is fourteen-and-eight-months or fifteen-and-two-months, depending how you count it, when he wakes in his coffin, asphyxiating, and calls out for, in order: Batman, Bruce, dad.
Jason is eighteen years old when a batarang sweeps a clean line through the left side of his throat, back to front, and he bleeds out before the bombs go off this time.
(He's seventeen, depending on how you count it.)
Jason is eight years old when his dad takes him to Robinson Park and treats him to neapolitan ice cream. Catherine Todd is in the hospital, though Jason doesn't know this yet. Their savings are being stretched thin. Jason doesn't know this, either. He does know that his dad spent the past six months in the can, and just got back out this week.
Jason eats his ice cream in a careful order: chocolate, strawberry, vanilla. He peels the flavors off each other with precise twists of the little flat spoon that comes attached to the lid and tastes like splinters. Willis swirls all the colors together until they melt into a gray-brown slush.
"You're eating it wrong," Jason says.
Willis shovels a spoonful of the discolored mass into his mouth, grinning back toothily. "I'm eating my ice cream like God intended, Jace."
"You're gross."
"One day you'll be all grown up and you'll understand, just you wait. You haven't even had neapolitan before, anyway. What do you know about how it's eaten?"
"Mom got us a tub a couple months ago," Jason says. "She ate all the strawberry."
The air freezes between them for a moment before Willis coughs. "Oh. Hm. It is true that your mom's never wrong."
Jason scrunches up his nose. "She likes strawberry better than chocolate."
"Vanilla's my favorite," Willis says, just so he can see Jason level a glare at him that's equal parts petulant and outraged.
"No," he hisses, and then things are okay again until Willis's old brick of a flip phone starts playing a tinny, scratchy ringtone.
Willis grabs it and stalks away from the bench and hisses into the receiver, and Jason watches his dad try to keep it quiet but a kid's ears are always sharp and Willis never learned how to whisper. So Willis says, "Springing this on me last minute… busy hanging out with my kid today… what the hell, I can't just bring him—"
So.
Willis brings Jason with him to a nondescript alley and Jason pretends that he doesn't know that something shifty's going on. It's the same way he pretends his parents' shouting doesn't wake him in the middle of the night, when they start fighting about what his dad needs to do to bring in money.
Jason stands around pleasantly counting bricks as his dad clutches his hand tight and hisses in short clipped tones to a man with a missing front tooth and ratty hair the color of melted neapolitan ice cream. He quietly ignores the man, even when he leans forward to ruffle a hand through Jason's curls and says, "Y'know, Willis, you've got a real pretty boy on your hands here."
It's harder to ignore it when his dad punches the man in the face and snarls, "Don't you dare talk about him like that. And keep your fucking hands off him."
The man reels back, but then shakes himself off even as blood starts to dribble from his nose. "Jeez dude, learn to take a joke."
Willis growls.
"Pal, if you don't want to play nice, we can always call the deal off."
Jason squirms when his dad's hand gets a little too painful on his wrist. Willis doesn't look back, but he does loosen his grip and step forward to shield Jason from view. He grinds out an apology through gritted teeth, burning in the kind of anger that's helpless.
Jason tunes the conversation back out.
Afterwards, they go home, and Willis finds a bag of frozen edamame in the freezer and smashes it against the counter until he doesn't want to put a fist through the wall anymore. He presses them over his bruised knuckles.
Jason enters the kitchen after he's already checked all the rooms to find his mom absent; he knows what that means. He pours himself a glass from their pitcher with its six-months-expired water filter. He's stopped asking when mom will get better, which is good because Willis doesn't know if he'll be able to hold it together for that conversation. It's also bad.
So instead Willis says, "Hey, if anyone lays a hand on you, looks in your direction like that guy did, you let me know."
"Yeah?" Jason says.
"Yeah. And I'll be the shit out of them. Just for you."
"Mom doesn't like it when you swear."
"Yeah, she doesn't. I'm sorry."
The plastic packaging condensates and drips water over Willis's hands. Jason sips his water quietly, legs dangling from his chair. The only light on is the bare bulb over the sink, and it casts them both in harsh, haunted shadows.
Willis leans over the counter and says, "I'm serious, Jace. I'm not gonna let anyone hurt you."
Jason looks at him, eight years old and already with eyes a little too tired for his age. "You're not always here, dad."
"You're right. That's why you need to tell me, okay?" Willis looks at his son and says, "Anyone ever hurts you, I'm not gonna let them get away with it, no matter who it is."
Jason scrunches up his nose at that. "Would you beat up Batman? He's a hero."
"I'd kill Batman, if it came down to it," Willis says a little too quickly and angrily, his knuckles still smarting. He reigns it in and amends himself. "Doesn't matter, kiddo. If he hurts you, he doesn't get to be a hero anymore. And I'd kick his, ah, his butt, anyway."
Jason doesn't know about the bat tattooed on Willis's bicep yet, doesn't know that his dad was in jail because Batman busted the last meeting Willis tried to have in a nondescript alley. He says, anyway, because he's eight and he knows how heroes are supposed to work, "You can't win against Batman."
"You're my son," Willis says, and then, because it's not lying if you make yourself believe it, "That means I can do anything, since it's for you. That's how it works."
"'Kay."
Willis leaves again, two months later. He comes back eventually, until he doesn't.
Jason is fourteen and a half when Felipe Garzonas dies on impact with the sidewalk twenty stories down from his penthouse balcony. Batman asks, "Robin, did Felipe fall, or was he pushed?"
Jason tells Bruce, "I guess I spooked him. He slipped."
Batman doesn't press, but he doesn't believe Jason. It's easier to be Batman and Robin when they pretend otherwise, though.
Things go downhill from there, of course, but before that José Garzonas finds out about Felipe and learns that the GCPD ruled his death an accident.
To José, what precisely happened on that balcony doesn't matter. He is a bereaved father, for his son is dead. For Felipe's sake, he kidnaps Commissioner Gordon and sends Batman a letter. He writes, Bring the boy with you. He intends to kill them both.
Two lives in return for his son's death.
Batman goes alone, but Robin skips school and sneaks out after him. For what it's worth, Robin's presence saves Batman's life. José Garzonas is a diplomat and a rich man who can afford far too many hired guns.
It ends with three dead bodies in the junkyard. José, crushed under fallen cars, and two of his men who shot through each other when they aimed for Batman.
Robin asks what happened, and Batman says, "A lot of stupidity and some deaths, all wrapped up in a father's righteous anger."
Batman says, "His name was José Garzonas. He was Felipe's father, Robin."
Batman says, "Consequences Robin. There is no escaping them."
Jason realizes, when he's on the plane to go find his mom, that there are two dead men who would kill Batman for their son.
Jason spends four months on the street when he is eleven years old after his mom died and there wasn't anyone around to pay rent anymore. In his first week he gets mugged by a kid who's only a little older than him, and is left with a nose that'll never heal right and the knowledge that his dad won't ever be there to save him. He doesn't know that Willis is dead yet.
Robin dies in a warehouse at fourteen, because the bomb was set and the door locked and his dad arrived too late. Batman cradles his dead body in trembling arms.
John Doe #265 spends ten months on the street at vaguely fifteen or sixteen, because he experienced a brain bleed due to his fractured skull, somewhere between his death and the coffin and the twelve mile walk to get hit by a car. He has too much brain damage to remember how to reach his dad, and Bruce doesn't find him either.
Bruce says, "I know I failed you. But… I tried to save you, Jason. I'm… I'm trying to save you now."
Red Hood's nose is bleeding and his mask is half-cracked off and he points his gun at Batman and nearly laughs, because it was never about that.
Jason is seventeen-or-eighteen when his dad kills him.