sixthiterationlogs | come to my house, and we'll pick bones.

Steph is the kind of person who’ll look for companionship from just just about anyone—or she used to be. There aren’t nearly so many people she’s comfortable letting her guard down around these days. But she and Jason share something. It may be a terrible thing, but they share it. So when 3AM rolls around and she still can’t sleep she climbs out her window and wanders to his house to knock on the door.

Sharing something means a lot to Jason, even if it's terrible - maybe because it's terrible. It's one thing to find yourself on a strange island with someone from the same home city, but it's something else entirely to find that person was also killed and resurrected. Those odds are astronomical, and Jason doesn't really care about the math - the fact that the connection exists is significant enough for him.

He's awake when she knocks - had been dozing earlier on the uncomfortable antique couch in the living room, but woke up entirely because he'd heard a noise, or thought he heard a noise. Maybe what he heard was only her footsteps; whatever the case, he's wide awake by the time she arrives. There are only so many likely candidates for knocking on his door at this time of night, but a little voice in the back of his head whispers what if loud enough that he grabs the broken-off chair leg he's turned into a makeshift bludgeon and set near the door as he unlocks and cracks the door to see who's on the other side. Of course it's Steph.

"Hey." He nods a greeting and sets the chair leg back against the wall, then swings the door open wide and waves Steph inside. "Come on in."

Steph smiles, the less-familiar face a comfort after an evening spent in memories. The bludgeon doesn’t worry her- she has a much less makeshift one of her own hidden at her back.

“Hey. Thanks.”

She takes a step inside before her amiable smile falls away. Looking around the house all she sees is shadows, little squares of low light through the window and the outlines of furniture. It’s too dark, with too many places for nightmares to hide. She takes a step back.

“Um, could we maybe stay outside instead? There’s more light.”

Jason’s spent so much of his life in the shadows, the dark feels natural to him. But Steph’s not like him in that respect, he thinks, so it makes sense she’d be drawn to the light instead. “Yeah, sure,” he says, following her back out onto the porch and pulling the door shut behind him. “I could use some fresh air.”

He takes a seat on the ledge of the porch with his back to the post, gesturing for Steph to sit too, if she wants. “I should probably look into getting some chairs for out here,” he says, half to himself. Home ownership isn’t really something he’s ever considered as part of his future (what future), and yet here he is with a house to inhabit and company to consider.

Jason mentally files that note away for later. Right now, Steph’s here, and, he guesses, something’s on her mind. He could ask her straight out what’s keeping her awake tonight, but he senses that may not be the best approach. She may simply want company, not to talk about what’s bothering her. Maybe a sideways approach is better here.

“You know,” he starts, glancing out toward the street, “it’s been months since I was in Gotham last, and I still can’t get used to how quiet it is out here. I keep expecting to hear city noise, and it’s just not there. Weird how you don’t really notice something like that ‘til it’s gone, huh?”

"Thanks," she says again with considerable relief. The shadows are where her old life lives, and all the dangers that came with it.

She makes herself comfortable on the steps, happy to sit in silence for a few moments. She has a lot on her mind but she's not sure how to articulate it, much less whether she ought to.

She glances over at him when he starts to talk, then smiles.

"Yeah, I noticed that too. And the smell. Everything smells so clean and fresh here. It's weird. I like it."

“Yeah,” he says with a nod of his head, “almost a little too nice.” And he’s been more or less conditioned through experience to think he doesn’t deserve nice things. It’s a strange thought to hold, that the place you’ve been unceremoniously spirited off to might be better than where you should’ve landed.

They’re not really here to talk about Jason’s diminished sense of self-worth, though, and Jason isn’t really sure that talking is going to solve anything, even if it’s a conversation about nothing. Actions speak louder than words, but there’s no action for him to take at the moment, so words may be the best he can do. Maybe the correct action here is to share some more of himself with Steph, give her something he doesn’t typically give most people. It’s not much, but it’s something he can do, and doing something is better than doing nothing.

“I used to get scared about being out in the open like this. Nowhere to take cover, y’know?” He shrugs, shifts to sit with a leg pulled up on the ledge, folded in front of him. “Old habits. I lived on the streets for a bit when I was a kid, after my parents were gone.” Before he crossed paths with Batman - that part goes without saying, so he doesn’t mention it. “Scavenged what I could, hustled when I had to. This place ... it kinda reminds me of that, in some ways.”

Steph nods her understanding and sympathy. She's listening well, but she's also distracted. Too many memories are haunting her tonight.

"It's not the open spaces, it's just... I don't like being in the dark anymore. At least in-" my attic, she almost says, but realizes that sounds a little bad. "-my room, I can put the furniture away and stay by the window."

She takes a deep breath, not quite a sigh, and looks down into her lap. She can give a better explanation. She kind of owes it to him, and... he's killed people, right? Maybe he'll be able to help.

"There was a gang war," she begins, quietly, almost dully. "A bad one. City wide, state of emergency. The hospitals were so full they had to start turning people away. I saw plenty of ambulances turned over in the street. There were fires... at some point the power went out." She shivers a little thinking of that basement, of the generator, of being in a spotlight in the center of the room so that every time Sionis arrived it was out of the shadows.

But that's not really the reason she's here, not tonight. She may as well get on with it.

"I was looking for help," she decides after a moment's consideration. Better to go with a vague version of the truth than try to make something up that she might get confused later.

"I found a guy, Orpheus, who was supposed to have worked with Batman a few times. He was just turning to talk to me when... Black Mask cut his throat." She stares at the ground for a moment, eyes unfocused.

"I keep seeing his face. And feeling his blood on me." She rubs absently at her cheek, like it's still there on her.

Well. As it turns out, his approach was the right one after all, because she takes the oblique opening he offers. And no wonder she can't sleep. Not only was she tortured and murdered, she witnessed someone else's murder at close range. You never quite forget how it feels, the first time you get a good amount of someone else's blood on you, no matter the circumstances. Jason's killed more times than he cares to count, and not all from a distance. Those eight heads he delivered in a duffel bag to that meeting of Gotham's street-dealing elite? A messy piece of business. But they were scum, not people - certainly not someone who was trying to help fight the sickness that infects Gotham City right down to the steel beams and subway tunnels. And Jason doesn't bat an eye at spilt blood, but he knows he's - defective. Normal people should be horrified at seeing someone's throat slit, and Jason still assumes that's what Stephanie is - normal.

With a sickening knot of guilt settling hard in his stomach, Jason swears under his breath and rubs a hand over his face. Now more than ever, he's convinced he's right, that lunatics like Black Mask shouldn't be given a second chance to ruin lives, or a third, or a fourth. That familiar build of anger against Bruce and his stupid fucking moral line he refuses to cross sparks in his chest and sits there, blazing like a bonfire. Jason carefully climbs down from his perch and moves to take a seat closer to Steph on the stairs, mindful not to crowd her but close enough to signal his support.

"Steph ... I'm so sorry you saw that." His mouth purses into a tight frown, and he shakes his head. "You shouldn't've been in that position in the first place. Gang war, state of emergency - doesn't matter. Someone should've been there for you - someone should've stopped it before it got that bad."

She makes no move to pull away, even leaning a little more in his direction when he comes closer. She could use the comfort, something solid to remind her that the world is real and she isn’t a ghost of her own memories.

When he starts to talk about someone stopping it all, though, she starts to curl in on herself. He’s right. It never should have gotten that bad. It never should have happened at all. And all those people, not just Orpheus but every civilian she saw gunned down in the street, every gangster who was just some kid with no one else to rely on, all of those deaths are on her head.

“Yeah,” she agrees softly, nothing but guilt and grief in her voice. “Someone... should have stopped it.” She wishes there was someone else she could blame. Batman, for leaving the computer on. Alfred, for giving her space before making her leave. Tim’s dad, for making him quit and giving her the opportunity to be Robin in the first place. Even her own dad, for being such a shitty criminal that she could take him down herself and convince herself she could actually make a difference.

He recognizes that tone her words take, the shift in her body language. He’s spent enough hours beating himself up for his own stupid goddamn mistake, chasing after the Joker without backup and getting himself killed, to recognize the same in her, and that recognition resonates deeply in him. She’d tried to help, and her efforts went sideways. She’s just a kid - a civilian, he thinks, so what action could she have possibly taken to stop or prevent such a thing from happening?

“Hey,” he says, gently, “there’s nothing you could’ve done. Don’t blame yourself, OK? If you wanna blame someone, put the blame where it belongs.” Easier said than done, he knows that, and much easier said to someone else than himself.

She turns her face away, hoping that’s enough to keep him from knowing how sick to her stomach those words make her.

“You don’t know that.” There’s plenty she could have done. She could have just gone home like she was told, or found Batman and owned up to her mistake, or asked Cassandra for help, or never put a goddamned mask on in the first place. If she’d even just stayed put at Selina’s place, maybe Orpheus at least would still be alive. She was the distraction Sionis needed to catch the experienced fighter off guard. She was the selfish, immature, stubborn fucking idiot who started the whole mess in the first place.

That’s the complete opposite of the reaction he was aiming for. Puzzled, he studies her silently for a moment. Clearly there’s more to this story than what he knows, but it doesn’t make a difference to him. She was murdered, a victim of the city-wide smog of injustice he’s seen up close and personal for nearly his entire life. That single fact outweighs any possible complicity she could possibly have in what happened, in his mind.

“You on the GCPD payroll? Or maybe forget to mention you’re Batman? ‘Cause I gotta say - if you are, you’re a lot shorter than I remember.” A joke, obviously; his mouth twists into a wry half-smile. Attempting to redirect using humor usually works for tense situations like this. “Point is, there’s people who’re supposed to protect people like you from crap like this, and they all failed you.” Hell, Jason counts himself among them; he would remember a gang war on a scale this big, so either they’re not from the same Gotham, or she’s from his future, and his choice to not take Black Mask out permanently had a hand in what happened to her. He assumes, naturally, that it’s the latter.

“Maybe they tried,” she grumbles miserably, “maybe I just didn’t listen.” It kills her that he’s trying so hard, that he really seems to believe in her and she has to sit here and lie to him. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe she shouldn’t have tried to keep him for a friend.

She's putting a lot of effort into refuting his consolation attempts, and a voice in the back of Jason's mind whispers sharply that he shouldn't even try, because he's simply no good at relating to other people. He gets caught in a moment of self-doubt and considers letting the subject drop, but Jason is also incredibly stubborn, and his gut instinct tells him that backing away would be the wrong move.

"I don't believe that," he says, shaking his head as he folds his arms against his chest. "You're smart, Steph - I can tell, and anyone who's lived in Gotham knows you don't go looking for trouble unless you mean to find it. Now, I wasn't there and I don't know what all went down, but I don't need to know unless you wanna tell me all the details. Nothing you may or may not've done changes the fact that what's wrong with that city is bigger than you or me or - hell, even Batman. The conditions that led to that situation are a symptom of the sickness that has been left to fester for years - a lot longer than I've been alive." And part of the problem rests in the simple fact that - in Jason's mind - Batman doesn't understand that sickness, not the way Jason does, and without fully understanding it, you can't fix what's wrong with any real efficacy.

"Now, from what you've said, it sounds like you think you made a mistake, tracking down this Orpheus guy. And yeah, it's real screwed up that you had to watch him get murdered right in front of you, but that was Black Mask's doing, not yours. You were trying to help. And trying to help is never a mistake, Steph. Trust me." He was Robin, after all.

"So if you want someone to beat you up for whatever mistakes you think you've made - I dunno, you seem like you've got that pretty well handled all on your own. Y'don't really need my help, and honestly? I'm the last guy, on this planet or any other, who would."

Dammit. Dammit, dammit, dammit. He's trying so hard, and she wants so badly to believe him, and she just can't. She drops her head in her hands as she feels the tears start to fall. She can't do this. She can't keep taking advantage of him like this, using him for her own comfort and lying about it, if only by omission. She can't take him being so damned nice to her without knowing how little she deserves it.

"What," she starts, but her voice is so weak and congested that she swallows and tries again.

"What if it wasn't a symptom. What if... if it was my doing."

Boy howdy, he is just only making this worse, alarmingly so. Maybe what he said in his pep talk was wrong - maybe trying to help is a mistake, or at least maybe it is for him.

But maybe not. Steph's visible distress, the way her voice wavers - it all makes Jason's heart ache for her. Whatever terrible secret she's been carrying around with her must be eating her alive, and Jason understands that, too. He shifts on the steps, leaning slightly forward, fingers wrapped around the edge of the porch, his expression a mix of confusion and concern.

"What do you mean, 'your doing'? You didn't break Gotham, Steph - it's been broken for a really long time."

“I... I kinda did.” She only curls in on herself more. She isn’t pulling away from him, really, just instinctively trying to find safety in what’s essentially fetal position.

“I- it was my fault. I started it. The gang war. It was me.”

There. She said it. Either he’ll hate her or he won’t. All she can do is wait and see.

Oh. That’s one hell of a terrible secret to keep, even if Jason still doesn’t quite understand yet how it could be true. The important thing is that Steph believes it’s true, and that’s an awful lot of responsibility to shoulder.

“How could you start a gang war?” he asks, scowling in confusion. Something isn’t adding up; there’s a vital missing piece he’s failing to grasp. “You assassinate any archdukes lately?”

Another attempt at humor, a default tactic Jason reaches for on this uncertain ground where he’s found himself. Still, he isn’t horrified or repulse by her confession - he remains seated on the stairs next to her, reaching for understanding.

The humor feels like cruelty, but only because that’s what Steph is expecting. She has to clear her throat a few times to get through the abridged explanation. She leaves out details not for the sake of secrecy, but because they feel like excuses. She has to take responsibility for what she did, with Jason more than anyone.

“I... stole a file off of Batman’s computer. I thought I knew what it was, but I was wrong,” she explains miserably. “I sent the messages where it said, to get every major gang leader in the city together for talks. And when they starting freaking out and shooting each other I just stood there and watched.” Like a fucking idiot, she thinks, pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes as she remembers that particular shootout.

... OK, in the hindsight of what she says next, Jason can see that his joke is an extremely bad one. Again, trying to help is turning out to have the opposite effect of what he intends, and he feels incredibly stupid for trying. Frowning, he watches her fall farther into her misery, reliving what must have been one particularly awful night. Jason's taken part in his fair share of gunfights and he's managed to walk away from them all more or less in one piece, but a shootout of the magnitude she describes would be overwhelming, even (probably) for him. There are sharp noises in an enclosed space, the smell of gunpowder and blood, confusion, and for a civilian -

Jason's mind applies the brakes at a sharp screech. There's still a piece of this story that's missing, and Jason thinks he knows what it is in that same wordless, instinctive way he knew he was dead before the timer on the explosives finished ticking down to zero. Rapid-cycling puzzlement and understanding fight for dominance in his expression as he stares at Steph with the picture of her witnessing all of the main gang leaders in Gotham gunning each other down lodged firmly in his mind.

"How did you get a file off Batman's computer?" For that matter, how did she get near Batman's computer? That thing's probably more secure than the Pentagon. "Steph - were you working with him?"

She knew he would ask, and made the effort to quiet herself enough to answer him when he does.

“He... left me alone for a while, after he fired me?” She shouldn’t have done it. She should have gone home. But it was still logged in, and neither he nor Alfred seemed to care much what she did with herself at that point.

“I didn’t want to hide it from you, I just... I couldn’t. I’m sorry.” Now her shoulders start to shake with sobs that for now at least are silent.

“I’m so sorry. I’m—“ Stop, Steph.

She gives up on saving face and curls entirely into a tight ball of despair, the staff tied at her back pulling at her shirt as it moves.

Edited (details) 2018-09-16 04:48 (UTC)

“You worked with him.” Jason repeats it, confirming it to himself, like saying the words will make them take a more solid shape in his mildly stunned mind. She worked with Batman. He fired her. And -

“And he let you die, too.”

He failed her. One more way she and Jason are alike, and the second he makes that connection, any anger he might’ve felt for her concealment of the entire truth from him immediately dissipates, swallowed up in the wave of intense sympathy that overtakes him. He can’t be angry with her over this, with how genuinely miserable she looks and sounds.

Jason doesn’t know if she’ll appreciate the comfort he can try to offer her, but he knows when he was in a similar situation, it’s what he would’ve wanted, so he takes a gamble. Carefully, with a murmured c’mere, he shifts closer toward her and gently wraps his arms around her to collect her in a sideways hug.

“I’m gonna punch his teeth in if I ever see him again,” he says over the top of her shoulder. How dare Bruce abandon her like this. The desire to protect her blazes hot in his chest, a concurrent rhythm with the beat of his heart.

He let her die? What could he have done? What could anyone have done that they didn't try, and keep trying? She wants to argue, or defend Batman, or at least just ask that question, but when she opens her mouth to speak all that comes out is a strangled sob.

She hesitates only a moment, but the offered hug is a very clear message. He isn't angry, or disgusted, or even disappointed in her. All of the emotion she's been pushing down for weeks comes surging to the forefront. Her shredded confidence, the guilt, the injustice of it all, the desperate fear that she could never be forgiven, all so carefully tucked underneath the fear and anger leftover from being so thoroughly physically beaten-- all of it rises to the surface in that one simple moment.

Another sob escapes her before she turns to press her face into his shoulder. She clings to him like a life-preserver as she starts to sob in earnest, loud and unrestrained. She even carefully keeps her chin tucked so that his shirt might at least be saved some of the soaking her face is getting.

He doesn't shy away from her sobbing, and he doesn't try to tell her what most people probably would in a situation like this - It's OK. They both know it's not OK, any of it - what Gotham is, what Batman did, what happened to her at Black Mask's hands. It's not OK, and there's nothing Jason can do to make it OK. Some battles leave scars that never fully heal.

There's so much Jason doesn't know about her, but he still feels closer with Steph than anyone else he can remember. Their similarities weigh heavily on his heart, but it's a weight he is content to accept. One hand gently presses against the back of her head, and the other slides across the back of her shoulders to reassure her that he's not going anywhere.

"I've got you, Steph."

It’s not okay, but it’s maybe a little more okay than it was a few minutes ago. She stays like that for a long time, longer than most people would be comfortable with, crying her entire broken heart out. When she finally slows then stops it’s more from sheer physical exhaustion than anything else. She had to start breathing through her mouth.

At long last she pulls a little away to start trying to dry her face. She only has so much to work with and has no choice but to start using her shirt as a tissue.

It’s hard for Jason to let her go when she starts to pull away - his instinct is to keep holding her close, like he could shield her from harm, or transfer her own grief to himself by osmosis. But he recognizes she likely needs space to collect herself, pull the pieces back and stick them together with whatever resolve she has. So he loosens his hold around her and sits back on the stair. After a long moment of silence, he finally speaks up.

“You didn’t have to hide that from me, y’know.” It’s said gently - not scolding her, because Jason assumes the reason she didn’t say anything to him before now is because he must’ve given her the impression he wouldn’t understand, because surely he did something to make her think he was unapproachable. He offers her a faint, rueful smile. “If anyone would understand what all that’s like, it’s me.”

He’s lived with Bruce, worked by his side night after night, loved and admired and hated him, been hurt by him like no one else in his life has managed to hurt him. Maybe Jason hadn’t been fired like Steph was, but they were both abandoned.

“I’m serious about punching his teeth in, by the way.” Jason makes a fist and mimes a slow right hook at the air in front of him, whispering pow! for comedic effect when he brings his fist to a halt.

She sniffles as she tries to get to a point where she can breathe normally again. Once she's gotten as much as she can off her face she pulls her shirt back down in its proper place.

"If I told you he was training me I knew I'd have to tell you the rest. And if I told you the rest..." She looks down and away. The shame is still there, a weight like an anvil pressing on her chest. Just because Jason doesn't hate her for what she did doesn't mean no one will.

"I was afraid you'd hate me. I hate me."

She looks up again when he starts talking about punching Batman in the teeth, and expression of mixed amusement and concern on her face.

"It isn't his fault, you know. If I'd just gone home like he told me none of this would have happened. And it's not like he knew I was in trouble. No one did."

Just in case it needs to be said aloud, Jason gives her the words, short and to the point: "I don't hate you."

He knows that feeling of hating yourself for making a mistake and living - or not - with the consequences, though. It's all too familiar, a bitter tang of bile in the back of his throat every time his thoughts stray to his own death, his arrogance in thinking he could take the Joker on all by himself. If he'd only been smarter, more patient, less impulsive -

But there's no changing the past, is there. And now they both have to live with their respective aftermaths, try to find a way to cope and continue living with the damages done.

"Steph, wearing a mask and fighting crime isn't a business. Batman's not some CEO at a board meeting." Bruce Wayne, maybe, but not Batman, and maybe that's the problem, an area where one mask bleeds through the other. "He can't just fire someone 'cause they're not doing what he wants. There's a responsibility to look out for people in what he does - not just the people on the street, but his own people, too. You. Me." Barbara. Tim. His own son, Damian. "Working with him comes with risks, but he still has a responsibility to do what he can to protect us, and he didn't. That's what I mean when I say he let you die. If he hadn't fired you - if he'd worked with you instead of shutting you out and throwing you to the wolves, maybe he could've prevented what happened to you."

Oh. Something in what he said resonates, but it takes some time to penetrate the shame and grief that's settled around her heart.

"That was the deal I agreed to," she counters distractedly. Batman can definitely fire you if you're training to be Robin. "Break the rules, no more Robin."

Ah, there it is. 'Shutting you out.' That was exactly what he did. Even as Spoiler she'd had ways of getting in touch with Oracle or Robin if she really needed to. But Tim wasn't Robin anymore, she'd been cut off from Oracle's comm line and running into Batgirl just ended in more insistence that she go home.

She died alone, unwanted, unmissed, but wasn't that only because Batman had erased her from his vigilante community? They didn't know she was in trouble, but should they have known she was missing? Should they at least have kept track of her? It wasn't like they didn't know her, didn't know that she was going to be a vigilante with or without Batman's approval. So why wasn't anyone looking for her? Why hadn't Oracle at least gotten in touch with her?

Jason zeroes in on only one of her words: Robin. It takes his brain a clumsy moment to wrap around the significance of what she says, to finally string it all together, nearly dumbstruck by the revelation: "You were Robin, too."

The belief that Bruce did her an incredibly disservice and the understanding of the parallels between his story and Steph's solidify in his mind like quick-dry cement. He laughs - quiet, dry, bitter. "How many of you are there, anyway? What, did he set up some kind of school for plucky young sidekicks-in-training?"

There's more that he wants to say, more sharp words that want to slice at his tongue while they spill out of his mouth, but Jason clamps his jaw shut with a heavy breath out and drops his face into his open hands. It's not Steph's fault that Bruce replaced him with other Robins. He's not angry with her - he's angry it happened. His fingers push up into his hair, tightly curled while he waits for the flicker of anger at the base of his spine to fade.

"Sorry," he whispers, finally pulling his fingers out of his hair and clasping his hands together in front of him. "I'm just - so pissed at him."

"I would have been the fourth, I think." She didn't get to hear all the stories, but she'd seen only two Robin costumes in the cave and not Tim's. "If I hadn't flunked out." She wasn't Robin, that message had been heard loud and clear. And after everything that happened she could see why.

"How can you be mad at him," she asks, only a touch of desperation in her voice. She's used up most of her emotion for the night, she guesses.

"I'm the one that practically destroyed the city."

The list of reasons for Jason's anger with Bruce is long and varied, and some of it has to do with Batman's responsibility to protect the city, and some of it has to do with Bruce's unswerving moral code. But the more immediate reasons, the reasons pushing to the forefront of Jason's battered heart - those are personal.

"Because I died," he says, "and he didn't care. It's like I didn't matter at all." Jason closes his eyes and inhales a deep, steadying breath. "Y'know, the first Boy Wonder, he left. Moved on to doing something else. But me? I get beat to a bloody pulp and blown up, and Batman didn't do a damn thing to the maniac who did it." He took me away from you. It's been months, and Jason still clearly remembers just how fragile his own voice sounded speaking those words. An all-too-familiar stinging sensation that heralds tears pricks at his eyes, and Jason unclasps his hands to rub the heel of his palm against one closed eye, then the other. Another deep breath in, and he opens his eyes again and turns his head to Steph.

"If it'd been the other way around - if someone took him out, I would've stopped at nothing to find whoever was responsible and make sure they never got the chance to do it again. But not only did he not stop the Joker, permanently, he just ... replaced me." And that's a fresh wave of hurt that he'd only learned about in Wonderland, because whoever became Robin after Jason either hadn't been chosen yet or had already come and gone.

"He just picked someone else to take my place, some other kid to be a soldier in his damn war, and - I mean, did he even tell you about what happened to me, or whoever was unlucky enough to be Robin number three? Or was it just like - 'Here, your number's up, time to strap on the cape and tights now'?"

Edited 2018-10-20 22:36 (UTC)

Her heart aches for him when he talks about Batman's refusal to act. She knows well that he would never. He even lectured her for being too hard on Zsasz, of all people. Does that mean he doesn't care? Or does it just mean he's a little naive? Black Mask sure as shit deserves to die, and all things considered she really wishes she had done it. Nobody else was going to.

She wants to reach out to him, but isn't really sure what would be appropriate. The only guy she's ever had to comfort was her boyfriend. She settles for a hand on his knee.

"No, but I wasn't allowed to ask about that kind of thing. I kind of just... barged in and said 'hey, I'm Robin now'. But I know whenever I brought it up before that nobody wanted to talk about it. For O at least it seemed like it was just too soon." Batman never wanted to talk about anything, and Tim was always so careful about what he'd share with her.

Deep down, Jason knows Bruce wouldn't kill the Joker, not even for what he did to Jason - maybe especially not for what he did to Jason. It's been apparent to Jason for years that he cared a hell of a lot more for Bruce than the other way around, and yet - some small part of his heart held onto a shred of hope that Bruce would prove him wrong.

So much for that. Bruce made his stance perfectly clear back in Gotham, and every day since, Jason's tried to tell himself that it shouldn't have been a surprise, but that mental mantra does nothing to soothe the sting of the truth.

"So - what, you're saying you volunteered? You weren't recruited for this gig? And he didn't tell you anything about the Robins before you?" Jason shakes his head in disgust. "That sounds pretty damn irresponsible to me."

Steph shrugs a little sheepishly. She didn't 'volunteer' so much as 'demand'.

"I was kinda sorta dating the last Robin? And his dad found out about his extracurricular activities, so I knew there was, you know, an opening." And she took advantage of her boyfriend's problems at home. It was not her finest moment, but she never did seem to be her best around Tim. He had a way of getting in her head without even meaning to.

"I'd worked with him before as Spoiler, so it's not like we didn't know each other. In so far as anyone knows Batman."

"I don't even know that Batman knows Batman," he deadpans in reply. Bruce tended to keep everyone at arm's length, most of the time, which makes it difficult to get in close enough to break through walls and get to know someone. Jason's a lot like him in that respect, though good luck ever getting him to admit it. For Jason, it's a survival strategy he's learned and refined over the years, though he's still willing to try to let the right people in sometimes, as evidenced from his conversations with Steph.

"So ... you were doing the whole capes and masks thing on your own already." But he doesn't have to ask why she'd give that up in favor of being Robin, because he remembers how thrilling it felt to put on those colors for the first time: This is the best day of my life. "Spoiler's not a bad name. Hell of a lot better than Condiment King, at least." He offers her a small grin over that.

The bit about dating the previous Robin is interesting, too. "Which one were you dating? Was it Tim, or Damian?" Jason didn't really get to know Tim or Damian well enough for dating talk, but he's guessing it wasn't Damian, because not only was the boy he met way too young for dating, his personality was far too abrasive.

She gives a small chuckle at the mention of Condiment King. What a loser that guy was.

"Thanks." Batman liked her codename too. She was pretty proud of it, considering she hadn't given too much thought to what to call herself when she first put it on. She hadn't intended to keep it up any more than she intended to be caught leaving clues to sabotage her father.

"Tim," she answers simply, glancing up at him with mild surprise. Were they supposed to be talking codenames like this? Well, if she had permission...

"Is Damian Nightwing?"

Aha. Tim, as he'd guessed. "He's lucky to know you," he says, with a faint smile. "I didn't meet Tim until I got whisked off to Wonderland. Seems like a good kid. I wasn't very nice to him when he told me who he was." To Jason's credit, he only threatened to punch the boy's face in - he hadn't followed through with it.

In Jason's mind, it's complete bullshit that Steph had been given the uniform while having the information about the previous Robins withheld from her. They're not in Gotham, and even if anyone else is eavesdropping on their conversation, there's not much anyone can do with that information. If she was part of Batman's team, she deserves to know who was behind those masks.

"No, Damian's Robin, too," he answers, with a shake of his head. "Son of Batman, and a real jerk about it. Guessing he gets that from his dad. Maybe he's after your time - he knew who I was, but I'd never heard of him. Nightwing's Grayson - first Robin, before me." Jason's mouth flattens into a tight frown. His feelings about Dick have always been complicated.

She flushes at the compliment, but splotchy as her face is from crying it’s probably hard to tell.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” she assures him with some amusement. “The first time I met him I hit him in the face with a brick.” And that had worked out really nicely for them. She misses him. She misses being comfortable around him, meshing, not arguing or hiding things from each other.

“Grayson,” she repeats, committing the name to memory. “And Damian. I never really got the chance to talk to Nightwing. I heard a lot about him from Tim, though. Seems like they’re pretty close.” So Grayson is probably nice enough. Probably. She wonders what he’d think of her now. Come to think of it, she wonders what he thought when he found out she was pregnant. Barbara never brought it up but there’s no way they didn’t know about it.

“So... Batman has a kid?” She’s skeptical for obvious reasons.

Jason laughs quietly at the mental image of Tim taking a brick to the face. There must be a good story there, and he makes a mental note to ask Steph about it another time.

That glimpse of mirth is fleeting; Jason’s expression sours when Steph reveals that Tim and Dick are close. It’s not terribly surprising - Tim’s an amicable enough kid, and hadn’t he called Dick a friend when he’d introduced himself to Jason, back in Wonderland? Not surprising in fact, but undeniably and unexpectedly painful to think that the Robin who succeeded him was better liked by the original Boy Wonder.

Dick hadn’t always been enthusiastically accepting of Jason as his own successor to the stoplight-colored uniform, and Jason felt like he had too much to prove from underneath Dick’s shadow to allow him any real degree of closeness. Jason liked to pretend he didn’t care what anyone thought of him, but in his own estimation, he always came up short in comparison to Bruce’s golden boy. If he could see he was an inferior Robin, certainly so could Dick, and that thorn of self-doubt never truly worked its way out of his heart.

Luckily, Steph’s question pulls Jason from his thoughts before he can fall too far down that rabbit hole. “Yeah, apparently,” he affirms, with a light shrug. “I didn’t get too many details out of him, so I dunno who his mom is. The few times we talked, he was a little more interested in cramming as many insults as he could manage into every breath.”

They've both gone through so many emotions in such a short time that Steph's given up on trying to interpret her own, let alone read Jason's. She manages a small smile as he describes the boy. She can't even picture who might sleep with Batman. Catwoman? Maybe. But she kind of thinks Selina has better taste than that.

"Somehow that sounds appropriate." Batman may have been quieter about it, but he could be terribly cruel.

come to my house, and we'll pick bones.

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