He'd been such a lively boy, this second Robin to take his place at Batman's side. Talia remembers those few times she'd seen him in person, his small face peeking out from behind his mentor's cape, warning off both her and Catwoman. It hadn't worked, but it had certainly been endearing.
Far more common were the times she'd seen only the aftermath of his passing, incapacitated criminals and enemies of Gotham, recordings the league of shadows had managed to obtain when assessing the threat level this boy might have come to pose.
An orphaned street child from the darkest niche of Gotham City, many had written him off, concluding that he would never match the standing of his predecessor. Started his training too young, his breeding too inferior. No one had looked further, all who had an interest simply waited for the detective to realize what they had of his partner and find himself another.
They hadn't noticed the finer details, the parts that glimpsed beyond the circumstances into which the boy had been born. Talia had barely done so herself, not until after it had been too late to take an interest, until after a sociopath and an explosion in the desert had buried the light straining against his seams.
School photographs of a grinning child proudly holding plastic trophies proclaiming his quick scholarly advancement aloft. A lively child following his parent at social events, playing as much the fool as Bruce, and charming other attendees with his apparent youthful naïveté. The brutal nature of his combat style belied the sharpness of his eyes. Hidden by a mask when in battle, they were on full display when he believed himself out of public view.
No one had taken the time to look past the veneer they had constructed for themselves, and in time, those lowered expectations could have become a great weapon in the arsenal of a man whose skills would have otherwise made them weary from the start. Talia had believed the mistake would never bring about their ruin.
Then she'd received word from one of the men she'd stationed in Gotham.
They boy they bring back to her is not lively. He walks mutely after whoever leads him, dead eyes and unresponsive to all but displays of violence committed on his person. Those, he springs to deal with quick as his emaciated body will allow. Talia, to her surprise, finds herself despairing for what might have been.
As he grows stronger, that reaction time quickens. Sometimes, when the perceived danger his high enough, she can see something of that glint, a long buried part of him rises to search for success. It doesn't happen often.
When she collects him from his rooms, he follows along without prompting, likely without the barest inkling of who she is. If she initiates a spar, he refuses to react, whatever part of him reacting to danger remaining dormant. He grows stronger, his reaction time near doubling seemingly overnight.
He likes books, though he can't read, he will turn the pages over one by one, pausing on those with brightly colored pictures. If he's read to, no matter the language, he will sit and listen, something Talia pins as near frustration as he gets playing on his otherwise blank features. He wants to learn, somewhere within his fractured mind, that part of him lives on.
She speaks to him, of Gotham and the world. Of the violent, self-destructive hole his father his spiraling into. Bruce misses the boy, she can tell, he will never recover from the loss, not even as others rally around him. The Batman has become cold, unforgiving. When she speaks like this, Jason cries, silent, slow tears that her paltry attempts at comfort do little to ease, so she speaks to him of other things.
Its progress, he's healing, a crawling stilted place, and perhaps, Talia thinks, he will never be that bright, lively boy again. Will never become a fearsome warrior, or a master tactician, but he is healing, and to Talia, the sweet child running his hands along the crumbling petals of dead flower shines brightly enough. The doctors, practitioners of other arts her father brings in to examine the boy disagree.
They, as before, look only to the surface. His brain activity has barely changed. His strength is only the result of the care they've given him, of food, and shelter, and medicine, since arriving at the compound.
Ras al Ghul is growing impatient, he wants results, wants Jason to speak to them, reveal the nature behind his resurrection, behind the shards of wood doctors had dug from his fingernails.
That he smiles when Talia hands him a meat pastry and comes close to scowling at the cucumber sandwiches she knows Alfred Pennyworth favored means nothing to them. That he moves closer to her when a large assembly of the men they'd been using to test his reaction times means nothing to them. That the cries he lets out in his sleep are only calmed when she pulls his covers tightly about him and runs her fingers through his dark curls means nothing to them.
To them, an innocent, sweet child means nothing.
Even the bright, lively boy, she doubts would mean much more.
Her father wants him sent away, where he will be cared for out of respect for his father, but by impersonal caretakers who would care nothing for him. Under such circumstances, he will not only cease to progress, but that already gained will be lost.
She will not be allowed to keep Jason herself, she knows her father will never allow it, he's already become frustrated with the time she's put into the child and he won't be swayed. Her sweet child is lost to her, from the moment the Demon's Head has made his decision, but perhaps, perhaps there is something else she can do for him.
Perhaps there is the chance that the lively boy who fought at Batman's side may make a return. Perhaps the best she can do for her child is to give Jason Todd back the life the cruelties of the world have taken from him. Perhaps this way, just as there had been hints of the lively one before, there will be hits of the innocent in him.
While her father bathes in the Lazarus pits that rejuvenate his youth, Talia sneak her charge past the guards posted to keep other out. She drops him into the pit.
When her father tells her she's unleashed a curse, that the pits will saturate the boys mind and drive him mad, though she knows there to be truth in the observation, she feels no remorse.
So long as Jason Todd lives, Talia believes, as she has from the start, that he will continue progressing. Someday he will become something great and something of the boy she had cared for will remain within him to be a part of that liveliness.