Authors Note: Before it's brought up - yes, Catherine (aka Bruce) is slightly out of character in this chapter - but I'm proceeding under the assumption that she's not going to be so frigid as Bruce is in normal world. Don't worry, she's not a ball of sunshine or a chatter box and so way out of character that she's more of an OFC, then Bruce in female form - but for my purposes, she's a little bit more expressive. And hell, she's a woman in this story, things aren't normal. Once again, this has been un-BETA'ed - but subject to my own little half-assed grammar check, so excuse the mistakes that you might find and be nice about them. Enjoy!

Chapter One

My relationship with Jason was different than with Dick and Tim – it was much different.

Dick was my partner, completely and utterly – I'd guided out of the most traumatic event of his life, and raised him to be a fine man. However, as Dick would say, he had a mother, he had his parents and while I did finish their job, I wasn't really a parent to him as much as I was a mentor, a teacher. Our bond was similar to that of a parent to a child, but it wasn't that – and even now, I wouldn't call Dick my son and he wouldn't call me his mother, I was his guardian and he was my ward. The relationship that we had cultivated throughout the early years had waned, and was put to the test in his final year as Robin – when he was seventeen, growing not only into his self and his independence, but into his body as well. The only reason that I had even begun to consider firing Dick was the fact that I found myself growing more and more attracted to him as each day passed. It was wrong, it shouldn't have happened – and more and more, I searched hard to try and find the excuse to remove him, to keep him at arm's length and prevent an attraction, that shouldn't happen, from growing any larger. Then he was shot by the Joker and I finally had my good reason. I fired him, we had a falling out and we didn't speak for a year.

That was until I decided to train Jason to be Robin and even then, our relationship didn't improve all that much.

I was stubborn, not wanting to change a thing, and I was scared, keeping Dick as far away from me as possible.

When he came back into the fold as Nightwing, he was antagonistic to Jason, obviously, and I should have protected Jason from it and I should have let Dick know why I had been hostile towards him.

Tim was more in line with Jason and I considered the boy my son, even if he didn't right now – I'd do anything for him, much like I would for Jason and Dick. If the boy wanted me to adopt him, I would and if he wanted to start calling me Mom, I'd let him. I was determined, in regards to Tim at least, to not make the same mistakes that I made with Jason and give him a mother, as well as a mentor. I'd support him, meet his girlfriends, babysit his children, co-sign on a house, anything really.

If I could, I'd do that for Jason now, because as I padded silently into the room and saw him sitting in the too-large arm chair, brooding by the fire, I knew that Jason was on a perilous course. If I didn't pull him back over the cliff, he would be foist on a path in life that I never wanted for him – he didn't have to return to fighting crime if he didn't want to, but I didn't want him to end up like the rest of his family, or to go back out on the streets. I wanted him to take advantage of what I had to offer and get more out of life, if he wanted to go to college, I'd pay for it, and if he wanted to rejoin the fight, I'd help him every step out of the way. Anything to keep him from falling back into the life he had before I found him, anything to get that damned look off of his face – no child of mine, biological or not, would ever look like that. Barbara Gordon would call that overbearing, but at the end of the day, and maybe years from now even, I hoped they understood my motivations for doing it.

Placing my hands on the back of the opposite armchair, my eyes softened at the slight pout that the seventeen, going on eighteen, year old boy had and I struggled to find words, "Jason…I-… I don't know what to say…"

"Good to see you too Mom," He looked back up to me and I was struck by his teal eyes, a pair of remarkably distinctive eyes that I genuinely believed I would never see again, "Why aren't you freakin' out? I'd be, hell, I did."

Scowling faintly at his language and pushing back the urge to chastise him for it, I sighed and walked around to the front of the chair and gingerly sat down, crossing my legs and smoothing my dress down. He looked great, he didn't look like he had been dead at all, but I knew better, I had observed the effects of the Lazarus Pit on certain individuals before and I knew that there had to be something wrong with him. I wasn't going to lie, I contemplated asking the al Ghul's for the favor – but I had assumed that because of the injuries that Jason had sustained to his skull from the damned crowbar, he'd be mentally unstable when he was revived. That instantly brought up the biggest question in my mind, was he unstable? Did he have nightmares of his death, resurrection and subsequent return to the world of the living? Had the pit revealed something about Jason that he had kept hidden from me? I dreaded the answer and I swore to myself right then and there that I'd fix him, no matter the costs.

"I had my reaction on my way up here," I replied quietly, not being able to take my eyes off of his face, though I could only see his profile, as he had only looked at me once, "I-I thought that they were lying to me, I was sure…"

"That I was dead!" He hissed back at me and I recoiled slightly, this was not the place to fall into the persona of Batwoman, he needed a target if he was ever going to get better, "You never even noticed, a year! An entire year and you didn't see!"

"Your coffin had proximity detectors to alert me if someone opened it from the outside, not the inside," I wasn't going to fight him on this particular subject, yes, it was terribly shortsighted of me, but how could I have possibly known about it? I couldn't have, "Now as far as me not noticing, you're right – I had no reason at all to suspect that you were alive, I was just at your grave last week to replace the flowers and there was no indication, none at all, that you weren't there – so please try to forgive me for that at least."

He sneered and turned defiantly at me and I knew what that look signified – he had lost on the first two points, but he knew he had me beat on the new one, "I've been replaced."

"I-…" My defense died on my lips and I found that I was speechless.

When Jason snorted and turned back to the fire, I tried to find some way to justify it – I tried someway to cobble something together that would pacify him and not make him outright hate Tim, but I knew that it was of no use at all. There was not a single thing that I could say to lessen his anger at myself, or Tim on that part. When I chose him to become the second Robin and replace Dick – he'd made it quite clear that it was the best day of his entire life and that being Robin was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Feeling a pang of sadness welling up within me, I looked at Jason and tried to hold back the tears as I finally understood and absorbed the implications of his replacement. He grew up with nothing, on the streets, doing whatever he could do to survive out there – and then one night, the brave little punk had the balls to try and steal the tires off of a car, and not just anyone's car, but Batwoman's car. From that moment on, his life changed for the better. Suddenly he no longer had to worry about food, warmth, shelter and his health – the life he had come into was a life where he could want for literally nothing, I made sure of that, and perhaps he felt that he had finally found his happiness.

But then he died, and I'd failed to protect him and he died because of my failure.

And when he managed to come back to life, he found that the life he had found himself enjoying was taken away, by none other than that obsessive-compulsive neighbor boy.

"And Mom, I could forgive and do forgive all of that – every single bit of it," He turned to me and my heart broke to see his lower lip trembling, I didn't think he even realized that he was doing it, "But why is the Joker still alive? After what he did?"

"Was I worth it?" He seethed at me, his voice seeming to drop in octave as he growled, "God forbid what would have happened to him if it had been Dick and not me – you would have butchered him – but not for me right? You let him live."

Everything he was saying was both right and wrong at the same time – what he was saying about Dick was true, but he what he was saying about himself was so wrong.

So, that, above all of the disastrous mistakes that had come in the wake of his death, this would be the biggest demon to tackle – I knew my answer and it was not going to be one that Jason could stomach. We had always had our disagreements on this particular subject, but they never really damaged our relationship. I'd always believed that the root of his disagreements came from, where he came from, the poor neighborhoods of Gotham. Where if you went to the police, you were a snitch and if you turned someone in, you signed your death warrant. He grew up in a place where violence, and perhaps even murder, was warranted and expected and it just wasn't possible to remove that belief or change it completely in the time we had. There was nothing I could do at this point, but be honest, perhaps honesty and the truth of my awful confrontation with the Joker would placate him, or at least make him understand that I almost did it, that I was bent on making his murder suffer.

"About three months after your death," I let out a shuddering sigh as I let myself drift back into the memory, "I had developed a fixation on finding the Joker, because – I was so destroyed by your death that I wanted to take it out on someone, all of the rage, anger, sadness, guilt, all of it. He'd gone into hiding after he murder you – and when I finally tracked him back here to Gotham, I drugged him. I tied him to a chair, locked him in a closet out in those depilated apartment buildings outside of the Port District. When he woke up, I proceeded to beat him, I beat him for hours, all day – I-…I had brought a crow bar with me, I beat him with that for a good half hour – and then I pointed a gun at him and I swear to you, I would killed him. In that moment, I could see nothing but putting a bullet in his head – nothing at all…"

It took a lot for me to admit this – because it was perhaps the one and only time that I was going to murder someone.

By this point, when I looked back to Jason, he was looking at me with a guarded expression, something that brought a guarded, and cautious hope to me, "…I would have done it too – I was prepared to get rid of the body, hide all evidence that I had done it, but Dick managed to alert Clark, and Clark, knowing exactly what I was doing, came to Gotham, found us and stopped me. The only reason that I didn't do it was because Superman himself pulled me back, I was going to avenge you."

'But he's right, if the Joker had killed Dick, you would have shoved the Kryptonite down Clark's throat with one hand and blew the Joker's brains out with the other,' My traitorous inner voice replied and squashed it down, even as it sneered at me in disgust. 'Hypocrite'

I refused to believe in Jason's insecurity issues when it came to Dick. In the earlier months of our relationship, I would admit that I did nothing to quell it – always comparing him to Dick. However, that did not mean that I would act any differently in that awful scenario then I did when Jason died. I loved Dick in other ways, ways that I did not love Jason, but that did not mean that I loved Jason less. I loved Jason like a son and I would go to any lengths, raise heaven and earth to protect him.

When his expression began to melt, I took the opportunity to stand up from my chair, and walk over to his, sit on the arm and lock eyes with him, "I grieved and missed you every single day, and don't blame Clark or Dick for them stopping me. I'm telling you now, if I had done that, there would have been nothing stopping me from going out and killing everyone who had the nerve to hurt something I loved and that was important to me. Even after, I was still so swallowed up by it all and then Tim came along. I want this on the record now, I didn't want another Robin, I wouldn't risk going through what happened to you again – but he's a clever boy, and persistent and I decided that if I was ever going to move on – I needed to have another Robin with me."

Leaning closer, I got into his face to convey my point, "But I never stopped loving you, or missing you – you weren't replaced or forgotten. Hell, Tim worships you, not Dick – you."

And that was all I had to say on the matter – that was fact, that was how I felt and I wouldn't deviate from that. If Jason couldn't accept that, then we'd either have to work through that in our relationship and get past it, or the next couple of weeks would be rough. In all of my life, other than myself, I don't think that I'd ever met someone who could hold a grudge like Jason Todd could and considering what had happened, it was a fairly big thing to ask him to just move past it. What else could I do though? I could smoother him with all of the love and comfort in the world, but it didn't matter if he was unreceptive to it. However, when I looked over into his eyes, I saw something in them that told me exactly one thing, I was not forgiven, not by a longshot, but we could work on it, he was willing to. It was the only opening that I needed. I wouldn't smother him with the constant need to win his forgiveness, even though that was my natural reaction, but I'd make him see the truth.

As I stood up from the arm of the chair, turned and walked around to face him, I sunk to my haunches and grasped his chin, pulling his face up to look at me, "I'm so happy to see you."

Reaching forward and pulling the boy into a hug, I smiled slightly as I felt him begin to silently sob against my neck.

"Welcome home son," I whispered in his ear as I rubbed comforting circles on his back.

This was his home – Jason had to see that.

Pressing the button under my bedside table, I looked up to the wall directly beside the door to the bathroom and watched it slide back and reveal the bank of monitors for all of the cameras in the house. The top row of five was devoted to the front of the manor, all of the entrances and exits, including windows, the doors to Dick, Tim and Jason's bedrooms, as well as Alfred's – and there was a feed covering the entrance to the cave. The second row was the feed to the security cameras that were placed throughout the grounds, at all potential entrances and exits, including the exits from the Batcave at the back of the grounds. The third and final bank was the reason that I was even looking at these seldom used monitors and the sight of Jason laying in his bed, sound asleep made me relax. I'd been so convinced that Jason was going to run – but none of the cameras, or any of the alarms had been tripped and I was fairly confident that he was still in there, even without seeing it with my own eyes. Even so, I'd been so concerned about it that I'd stayed up for hours after the party sitting out front in a chair, looking at the window to Jason's bedroom – waiting for the moment that he'd try to run away from the manor and me.

It never came, and as I looked back at the clock over the door to my bedroom – I grimaced at the results of my paranoia, it was two thirty in the morning. I stayed up this late every night, but on nights when I didn't go on patrol, I liked to at least attempt to catch up on my sleep. Looking back at the full panoramic window of my bedroom and repressing an urge to go suit up at the sight of the glittering city, I sighed, tied my robe tighter around my waist and reached down to reach inside my bedside table drawer and withdrew a communicator. I was tired, too tired to go down to the cave and contact the Titans directly. Waking Barbara up now and having her patch me through to Tim and Dick directly was the most attractive option.

Inserting the earpiece, I sighed, pressed it and waited to be flogged for waking Oracle up, and I couldn't help but smile as Barbara Gordon's disgruntled, tired voice came through, "Boss, I thought you were taking the night off, I know I was."

With Dick and Tim running point with the Titan's in New York this weekend, and Clark so chivalrously deciding that he'd handle patrol tonight, even after I offered to take it over after the party, I'd informed her that I was taking a rare night to myself.

"Well, I just need a couple of favors and then you can go right back to bed," I tried to soothe her.

She sighed dramatically, but I knew I'd won, "What is it that you need?"

"I want you to get into the security systems around the manor and in the cave," I told her, putting my free hand on my hip, "If someone attempts to get into the cave tonight, or off the grounds, I want all the alarms set off – automatically."

"Trying to keep Alfred from breaking curfew?" Barbara replied with rhetorical wryness as she obeyed my order, "Done – if anything tries to get in the cave, as well as the grounds – it'll set off all alarms and security procedures will be activated."

Good, I thought, with a glance back at the sleeping form of Jason on the monitor – I'd updated the security measures around the manor and in the cave since Jason died, about three times actually. If he tried to leave in the middle of the night, he might get through most of them, I trained him to do that, but he was probably a little rusty, and it was a matter of practicality, as well as statistics that he'd never get through all of them. Turning my focus back to Barbara, I turned on my bare heels back towards the city and tried to find the next thing to say. Perhaps it would be best to return to routine and save the surprise for later, "Good – as to my second favor, any word from the Titans – or more specifically from Nightwing and Robin?"

"Dick called me about a half hour ago, he told me that the mission was a success," I smiled, very pleased, "And after asking him why he decided to wake me up – he told me that Robin and the Titans were going on patrol and he was taking a nap."

I scowled slightly, how un-Dick-like – ever since he was a boy, he couldn't imagine doing anything else and I'd always trained him that work came first, maybe I wasn't the only one cutting lose tonight. I hated to wake him up, even Barbara, but I had to make sure that he and Tim would come back tomorrow, regardless if it were in the morning, afternoon or night. Jason had to be interacting with them again and as soon as possible, "Can you patch me through and make sure he wakes up?"

There was a sound of malicious satisfaction in her voice as she obeyed the order without question.

And to think, at one time Dick wanted to date this girl.

Rolling my eyes as the patch went through – I realized that I probably wouldn't be any better for him.

Rubbing my eyes and inserting the communicator into my ear and quickly pressing it, I settled down as the loud, obnoxious noise that awoke me stopped, and with a yawn, I propped myself up on my arm, "Is this payback for waking you up?"

"I don't know what you're talking about Dick, you didn't wake me up, I woke you up," Catherine's wry voice came through to my ear and in my sleep-deprived, just-woken up, defenseless state – I let the goofy grin come to my face.

If I were to describe my feelings towards Catherine, most people would be blow out of the water to find that they were not the ones that sons felt towards their mothers. In the aftermath of my parent's death, and in probably the first two years of our relationship, I'd considered her a mother – but when I hit puberty and hormones became my best friend, all of that changed. People would probably be surprised to find that she was the first girl that I ever had a crush on and she was the first girl that I genuinely fell in love with. It wasn't that weird to me, I was an eleven year old boy and I got to be around the most amazing person ever. I still loved her, and yes – like that, and no, it was due to any issues that I had with the maternal figures in my life. If anything, she was just old enough to be my big sister – I was nine when she brought me into her home and she was twenty five. Now, eleven years later – I was a twenty year old man, pining after my thirty six year old, former guardian. That didn't make me weird, she had that effect on the people she let into her life, sure, she also had the ability to make people want to hit her and then hug her, but that was a part of her charm, the part of her that made her Catherine.

So, I'd say my goofy smile was justified, "What can I do for you at this time a night boss?"

"I'm sorry to cut your trip short," She didn't sound all that sorry, I realized with a silent snort, "But I need you and Tim back here in Gotham tomorrow, as soon as possible – I'm sending the plane in the morning."

"But Catherine, it's a three hour drive," I replied, utterly confused by this point.

"But you'd be here in a half hour if you took the plane," Her tone brokered no room for argument and I sighed inwardly, it wasn't a bad thing, it just seemed so unnecessary, what could be so important? I didn't like not knowing.

"And what, pray tell, is so important that you want us back there so quickly?" I asked her, rolling over and laying my head down on the pillow.

"I'll explain when you get here, just please do it," She sighed and I felt my eyes narrow in concern, something was definitely up, "And no before you ask, it's nothing life threatening, or anything to do with any trouble, it's just so… I-I just need you."

And that shouldn't have sounded so satisfying as it did, but then I remembered that she couldn't see my face, and that let loose the small smirk, "Tim and I will get to the airport in the morning."

"Good," She sounded pleased and I knew that she had just nodded her head, "Alfred will be waiting at the private hanger – you'll pick up Barbara, because I want her here too and then you all will come here for my big surprise."

Narrowing my eyes, I was genuinely curious at this point, because there were not many things to make Batwoman herself become this emotional, literally plead with me to come home and break her cardinal rule of not using names in the field or on the communicator and there was nothing, absolutely nothing pointing to what the reason was. It was because of this that I almost shot up and started packing now, whatever was bothering her was something she shouldn't handle alone.

Deciding to sit up straight, I pressed the communicator again, "Seriously this time, what's bothering you so much that you'd act like this?"

Then I grew really concerned when I heard a distinctly shuddered sigh over the line, "I-It's something you need to see for yourself Dick, because if I tell you now, you won't believe me. Just come home, bring Tim and Barbara and see for yourself."