Chapter Text
In the swamp in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.
Solitary the thrush,
The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,
Sings by himself a song.
Song of the bleeding throat,
Death’s outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know,
If thou wast not granted to sing thou would’st surely die.)
--"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," Walt Whitman
It's hard to tell what a good day in Gotham is. Living in Gotham is living on a knife-edge until you fall asleep, trying to figure out if something else will go wrong in the city. Normal is that balancing act. Good is when you actually make it all the way through without something catastrophically going wrong.
Still, there are levels to Gotham-normal, and Jim can say today edges much nearer to good than it does bad. No murders today, the gangs have been quiet, and no one has broken out of Arkham recently. All told, Jim should probably start getting nervous, because Gotham never lasts on that precipice for very long, but he wants to enjoy it.
It's a Saturday. Jim works half days most Saturdays, and he's just gotten off. The sun finally poked through the clouds sometime mid-morning, another point toward the good end of the scale, and he's decided to go out to eat somewhere he can enjoy the brief pleasant weather.
Of course, it's Gotham, so he doesn't get more than a block and half from the precinct before he hears yelling down a nearby alleyway.
Jim rolls his eyes and peers down the alley.
A man was the one doing the yelling. His back is to Jim, and he's facing off with a smaller figure Jim can't make out as well. The man moves his arm slightly, and Jim sees the knife.
"Just gimme your cash, kid!" the man barks.
Jim swears quietly, reaching to the gun in his holster, but he doesn't have time to pull it before the man lunges--
And the would-be mugging victim dodges, planting his feet against a nearby dumpster to use as a springboard before he slams both hands down on the man's shoulders and, using his momentum, neatly flips the man. He plucks the knife from the man's hand as he falls, almost like an afterthought.
Jim stares.
"GCPD," he manages to say, after the mugger has gotten his breath back and started to flounder around. "What's going--"
The man flees down the alleyway. Jim isn't too concerned with that, though. He rather wanted the man to go away, because the move that put him down on the ground?
That was a Robin move.
Jim works very hard to keep up what plausible deniability with Batman he has, and he thought the man had impressed on his kids the importance of keeping their identities secret. That move, wildly unsubtle and showy as it had been, wouldn't take long for anyone to recognize. At least the kid had the hood of his red sweatshirt pulled up, and hopefully the mugger hadn't seen his face.
The kid is still holding the knife.
"Kid," Jim says, holstering his gun and walking forward. He would have expected Robin (Tim Drake? He's a little short to be Dick) to have run for it by now. Disappeared the way the Bats always do. "You want to give me the knife?" He holds his hand out.
Don't look at his face, don't give up deniability, Jim thinks on a refrain. Pretend everything is normal.
The kid reaches out slowly, drops the knife in his hand, and peers up through his bangs to look vaguely past Jim.
Deniability goes straight out the window.
"Jason? Jason Todd?"
Bruce Wayne's second oldest child -- his dead son -- doesn't seem to hear him. There's maybe a slight flicker in his empty eyes, but it's there and gone too fast to Jim to be sure. Jim knows what stubbornness looks like on this face, and there's none of it here. Jason's not ignoring him, he genuinely doesn't seem to be engaged with the world, a placid expression on his face.
Oh my God.
"Jason," Jim says again. Still no response, and Jim takes a chance.
"Robin," he whispers.
Jason's eyes meet his.
Jim takes Jason back to his apartment with him. It might not be the best option, but so far the only thing the kid has responded to is his codename, and Jim doesn't want that stack of cards to fall down on the Waynes. Plus, as soon as the media find out who Jim just found, it's going to be a frenzy. The Waynes don't deserve that to be the way they find their son/brother again.
Jason follows Jim willingly enough, trailing him back to his car and climbing into the passenger seat. He even does his seatbelt. Then he sits there, completely still, the whole ride back to Jim's, face blank again. It's -- somewhat disturbing, truth be told.
"Okay," Jim says, when he gets Jason inside. "You hungry, kid?"
Jason's head tilts slightly.
Jim heats up some soup. Judging by the state of his clothes, his hair, and how generally thin Jason is, he must have been living on the streets. More than a week, at the very least. He doesn't know how (if) Jason was getting himself food in this state, and he doesn't want to shock the boy's system too badly. Light foods are the best to start out with.
He waits until Jason is done eating before he says, carefully, "Jason, can I check you for injuries?"
No response. Jim doesn't know if Jason can't or won't respond, or if he's simply too out of it to have even heard in the first place.
"How about this?" Jim says. There's nothing for it but to try again. "If you get uncomfortable, you can tell me to stop. Tap my arm, or get up and walk away. Whatever you want. And then you can take a shower and we can get you into some clean clothes. Sound good?"
Jason holds out one hand. The knuckles are scraped but mostly scabbed over. Jim is going to take that as assent.
"All right," Jim says, and reaches out.
There are...a lot of scars. The worst are the silvery ones on Jason's fingertips, the one that Jim almost missed at first, and what is unmistakably an autopsy scar, stark and ugly on the boy's chest. Jim has to stop after that. He hasn't been able to find anything more than minor injuries by that point; if there is something truly wrong with the boy, other than minor scrapes like his knuckles and the clear catatonia, Jim isn't sure he'll be able to find it anyway. It's better if they get a doctor involved at some point.
Honestly? He can't deal with seeing the evidence this boy dragged himself out of his grave any longer. They'll have to deal with that more later. Right now, Jason is fed, but Jim should make sure he's clean as well. It'll give Jim a momentary break, too. It will give him a chance to do some follow up.
After Jim has gotten Jason into the shower, leaving him a pair of old sweatpants and a Gotham Knights T-shirt to change into, he calls his daughter.
"Barbara," he says when she picks up. "I need you to come over here. Now."
"Dad? What's going on?" Barbara sounds worried. Probably because Jim is doing a bad job of modulating his tone, dammit.
A dead kid just came back to life. He's justified in being thrown for a loop.
"Nothing bad," Jim says. I think. "But I need a second opinion."
To make sure he isn't insane. To make this is actually Jason Todd, irrefutably, in every way they can check, before he goes and tells the Waynes that he's alive again. To figure out what the hell happened to this kid.
Because Batman should have caught this. Jim should have caught this. If this is Jason Todd, not some kind of trick --
The evidence is damning.
(a kid who moved like Robin, who responded to the name, who had been autopsied and buried, a kid who Jim recognizes from both in and out of costume)
Jim believes this is truly Jason Todd, but he owes it to the Waynes to make sure before he raises their hopes. He also owes it to them to have at least taken steps toward answers as to how this happened, what they missed.
Jason apparently woke up, found his way out of his grave and onto the streets of Gotham sometime in the last year and a half, and Jim doesn't know how. He'll do what he can from his side of things, but he's aware of his limits. Oracle is the best person to bring onto the case with him. If there's something to be found, his daughter will find it.
"All right," Barbara says, and he can hear shuffling on her side. "Give me thirty minutes."
"And Babs..." Jim says, before she can hang up. "Don't tell the Waynes."
Crackling silence on the other end of the line, and Jim runs his free hand through his hair, turns -- to see Jason Todd standing a few feet behind him, hair dripping wet and dressed in the clothes Jim had left him.
"Shit, kid!" Jim exclaims. "Don't sneak up on me like that!"
Jim should have expected this. It's standard procedure for the Bats to sneak up on anyone and everyone. Jason's muscle memory was good enough for him to pull off a standard Robin takedown; the stealth skills were probably even more ingrained than that.
"Dad?" came Barbara's voice. "What's going on?"
"I need a second opinion," Jim tells her again. "But this isn't something that should be talked about over the phone."
Barbara lets out a slow breath. "Thirty minutes," she says. "See you then." She hangs up.
It's closer to twenty minutes when Jim hears the knock on his door. He's managed to get Jason settled on the couch and turned on the TV for lack of anything better to do. He'd made an executive decision to keep away from the news, instead settling on Animal Planet, though he'd left the remote with Jason in case the kid wanted to watch something else.
He opens the door halfway, keeping Jason blocked by his body. He says, "He doesn't...really seem to be reacting to much of anything. Maybe it's just me he won't respond to, but when you see him -- don't get your hopes up too high. I don't know if he'll recognize you."
Barbara's eyes narrow behind her glasses. "That's not very reassuring, Dad. And I still don't know what you want me here for."
Jim sighs. "In this situation, I don't really know how to be. You'll understand when you see him."
"Great," Barbara says. "Well, you going to let me in so I can meet this mystery kid?"
Jim opens the door, moves out of the way, and lets Barbara roll her way in. He closes the door behind her. Jason is still watching TV -- or maybe just staring at it, it's hard to tell. He doesn't twitch as Barbara rolls closer, and sitting so that Barbara can only see his profile, his daughter must not have put the pieces together yet.
Jim might not have put it together as fast as he did if he wasn't already looking for Robin when he met the kid.
"Hey there," Barbara says, gentle despite whatever mistrust she might have towards this situation.
Jason turns toward the sound of her voice.
Barbara lets out a strangled noise. Even from Jim's spot by the door, he can see the way she goes white. "No," she says. "No, that's impossible, that's -- Jason?"
Jason blinks placidly at her, then seems to lose interest. He looks back toward the TV.
Barbara reaches out as if to grab Jason's hand, but pulls back. She scrubs her hand over her face instead. "Dad, what the hell is this?"
"Good question," Jim says heavily. "He must've been living on the streets; I have no idea for how long. It was chance that I ran into him today. I don't know if, at some level, he recognized me and trusted me or if he simply followed me back..." He shakes his head. "He can follow directions. He has the muscle memory to do plenty of things. I just don't know what's going on in his mind."
"Jesus," Barbara says. She hasn't looked away from Jason up to that point, but she does as she asks, "Is he...is he okay, though?" She looks startlingly young as she does so, nearly pleading with him.
"He should probably be looked over by a real doctor, but from what I could tell, the most severe injuries--" The ones that killed him. Jim never read the autopsy report; he didn't want to know. The Joker has bragged about it before, though. Never too explicitly, but enough. Jim has to take a moment. "They're all healed. Anything else is minor injuries. There is, ah. Some scarring on his fingertips."
Barbara wheels herself over so she's in front of Jason rather than his side. He looks slightly past her the way he did with Jim. "Jason," she says softly. "Can I see your hands?"
Jason lifts them for her.
Barbara looks them over, turning Jason's hands in her own. She traces those damning scars, the ones that Jim is pretty sure provide the answers to how Jason Todd got from his grave to the streets of Gotham. It doesn't take long for Barbara to figure it out, either.
"Please, no," Barbara says, bowing her head over Jason's hands. "Please, don't let us have missed this."
Jim retreats to the kitchen to make some coffee and pretend he doesn't hear his daughter sobbing into Jason's lap.