Bruce didn't understand why he was so determined to reach Kit before the Joker got his hands on her. He thought his reason was because he desired to kill the son of a bitch for all the pain and suffering he caused.
The old man wasn't entirely wrong in that assumption.
Unfortunately, he thought as he programmed his plane's autopilot to take over for a little while.
He did want to put a bullet in that pasty-faced clown. He wanted to put a dozen bullets in him. Was it all about him, though? About what the Clown Prince had done to him?
No.
The Joker was threatening every man, woman, and child within a hundred square mile radius for no reason other than to force her to call Batman. That obsession started after the Joker attempted to kill Tim — the acting Robin at the time — and Kit refused to call Batman so he'd come see what he had done. She dared to defy the pasty-faced freak, told him no, and said he'd have to kill her before she ever gave him what he wanted.
Sixteen years ago, almost to the day, the Joker murdered Kit's husband, Ethan. He left his broken and battered body hanging on the chain link fence that surrounded the GCPD parking garage with a poem carved into the flesh of his chest and abdomen. Jason had seen many sick and depraved things — most of them done by the Joker — but that took the cake. I know how Ethan felt throughout every inch of that beating, he thought as his fingers curled around his armrest. I remember every blow from that crowbar.
And every bit of the pain it left in its wake.
More than two decades might have passed since that ill-fated night, but the memories never faded. The only difference between what the Joker did to him and what was done to Ethan was that he detonated a bomb to finish him off.
Ethan was simply left to slowly bleed to death.
Everything changed the morning of Ethan's funeral. That was when Kit revealed a secret to him that left him flayed to the depths of his soul…
...
Gotham, sixteen years ago
"I'm pregnant, Jason."
It took a couple of seconds for her quiet words to register. He whipped around to look at her, mouth hanging agape, and gut churning with a mixture of grief and disbelief. Kit wasn't looking at him, however. No, her gaze slowly swept the fog-shrouded cemetery. Looking at all the other people crowded around a freshly dug grave and mourning their own loved one.
"Pregnant?" He sounded as dumb as he felt. "Did you say you're pregnant?"
He saw her nod. Ah, goddamn it, was his only rational and clear thought. A baby. She's having a baby.
"Did...?" he asked the question slowly, choosing his words carefully. "Did Ethan know?"
"About the baby?" She shook her head. "No."
"Kit…" Jason trailed off into a sigh. "How could you not tell him you're pregnant?"
"There was never a chance for me to tell him." She folded her arms around her middle. "Things have been a little crazy since Conner's death."
Things were always crazy in his opinion. The nights when something wasn't going on were the ones they most feared.
"You should've told him, Kit. He had a right to know he was gonna be a father."
"I know he did."
"Then why didn't you tell him?"
"I wanted to be absolutely sure that this time wasn't like all the other times where we got our hopes up only to have them dashed when the test came back negative."
The other times when they thought they were expecting a baby, Jason thought as he moved to set his hands on her shoulders. And ended up with empty boxes of Kleenex instead.
"How could you keep something so important from him?"
"There just wasn't a good time to tell him about the baby," she said quietly. "Not when the Joker started sending us invitations to what he called your Deathiversary."
"He's always playing some sort of game with us."
"I know he's always playing some sort of a game with us..." She trailed off into a weary sigh. "But there just never seemed to be a good time to tell Ethan about the baby."
"Goddamn it, Kit..." he started, but she surprised him when she spun towards him.
"Don't you goddamn it, Kit, me, Jason Todd!" she hissed in a low, emotionally charged voice. "What the hell was I supposed to do? Huh? What?"
"You should have told him he was gonna be a father!" Jason felt like a louse for losing his temper. It wasn't fair to yell at her. Not after everything she had been through. He just didn't have any control over his rapid-fire mouth. Like always. "He had..."
"Twenty cops and over three dozen civilians were barely cold in the ground when Dr. Thompkins called me to confirm I was pregnant."
It wasn't a growl. No, Kit just sounded exhausted. She sounds more than tired, he realized, worry replacing his earlier burst of anger. She sounded defeated. And that, more than anything, scared him shitless.
"Kit…"
"It seemed like a really bad time to tell Ethan he was about to become a father."
"Yeah, maybe it was," he agreed. "Or maybe it was just what he needed to hear."
"He was mourning the loss of twenty of his closest friends and fellow officers."
"What about after that?" He ached to pull her into his arms, to offer the comfort pride forbid her to ask him for. More than anything he wanted to lift away the sorrow rimming her eyes. "Why didn't you tell him about the baby after the Joker was caught and put back in Arkham?"
"What afterward are you referring to here, Jason?" The words came out wearily. "One of those infrequent moments that came before a fight? Or one of those even more rare times that came between the bouts of silence?"
His eyebrows winged up.
"You and Ethan were fighting?"
"The last three months of our marriage he lived more at the GCPD than he did with me in our apartment."
Her body vibrated with a combination of grief and fatigue. She wouldn't lean on him, though. She'd stand on her own. Stubborn as the old man…
"Why didn't you tell any of us that you and Ethan were having problems?" He steadied himself as she lifted those ravaged eyes to his. "Why didn't you come to me or any of the others for help?"
"You all had enough going on in your own lives. You didn't need my drama on top of yours."
"Kit..." He uttered her name before heaving a long, drawn-out sigh. "You have gotta be the most pig-headed and prideful woman I have ever met." His fingers gripped her upper arms in a gentle, but firm grip. "I'd have been there for you. No questions asked. Same as you've been there for me. You just had to reach out and ask."
"I know you would have been there if I asked." Her head inclined slightly. "I do know any of you would have been there had I asked."
"Why didn't you then?"
"I don't know." Her shoulders drooped. "Maybe because you had just gotten your memories back..."
"So..." he gritted. "I still would have been there."
"You just barely survived your fight with Ra's and were dealing with your own issues. I didn't..."
"It doesn't matter, Kit," he interjected in a hard voice. "I'd have been there for you."
"What's done is done." Her breath steamed the moist air. "I can't undo the past."
No matter how much she might have wanted too.
"No, you can't undo the past, you're right," he agreed. "All you can do is move forward."
"I know."
He ran his hands up and down her arms to impart some warmth and comfort to her. "So, what're you planning on doing?"
"Well, Ethan wanted us to get away from Gotham." A frown knit her brow. "He started talking about us moving somewhere where no psychopaths would try to kill us on a daily basis."
Jason could understand, hell, he could empathize with Ethan for wanting to get the hell out of Gotham. Any sane person would abandon the city.
"What're you gonna do then?"
"I don't know."
"Yes, you do." He smiled when she harrumphed. "You know what to do."
"No, I really don't, Jason." Frustration and something more coated every syllable. "I don't have a clue about what to do."
"Well, what would Ethan want you to do?"
"Well," she said slowly. "He'd want me to focus on the baby first and foremost."
"And?"
"And he'd want me to raise him or her somewhere far away from Gotham."
Away from the psychopaths, gang bangers, mafia members, and other scum, he added silently.
"So, where are you going to go?"
"I don't know."
"Any options?"
"Yes." She straightened the collar of his shirt. A nervous habit. Jason didn't call her out on it, though. Last thing he wanted was a fat lip. "The Los Angeles police department have tried to recruit me for a while. So has Atlanta and New York."
"Is police work what you wanna do?"
"Yes— no, I don't know." She looked down and away as a light mist started to fall. "I'd prefer to work somewhere that'd allow me to use all the skills I have acquired."
"Not all cities are as open to having costumed heroes running around and saving the day," he pointed out. "Many view vigilantism as criminal behavior."
"I know." Her lips curved slightly. More a grimace than actual smile. "Dick found that out when he moved to Chicago for that short time."
"Where can you go then that would make you feel you're using all your skills?"
"Well, the FBI has wanted me to join the Behavioral Analysis Unit for years. I received a call from the director a few days ago, in fact."
"But is that what you want to do?" He stared at her intently. "Is profiling people like the Joker and Scarecrow what you want to keep doing for the rest of your life?"
She shrugged. "It's what I am good at doing."
"But is it what you want to do?"
"No," she finally admitted. "It isn't."
"What do you want to do then?"
"I don't know. Not yet. But I will get it figured out, I promise." She leaned up, brushed her lips against his cheek. Held there a moment. "Promise that you'll take care of yourself, Jason. And please, please," she begged in a hoarse voice. "Get the hell out of this city before the Joker has a chance to get his hands on you."
"Kit…" He pulled her into a hard embrace. "Why are you being so damn stubborn?"
"How am I being stubborn?"
"By refusing to let any of us take care of you."
"I don't want to be a burden."
He buried his nose into her hair, smelled the faint hint of jasmine and was soothed by it.
"Alfie would sting your eardrums if he was here to hear you say that."
"Alfred has enough on his hands with Bruce. He doesn't need me and a new baby."
He let out a long, weary breath. "Then why don'tcha stay with me for a while? Or with Dickie and Timbo? At least until the bab..."
She cut him off with a shake of her head. "You have your own lives to live and don't need me or a baby underfoot." She leaned back to look at him. "And Tim has his hands full with restructuring the Titans."
"Jesus Christ, Kit," he said on one long breath. "You just buried your husband. And you're having a baby. You shouldn't be alone. Not now."
"Women have been having babies for centuries." She took his hands and squeezed them gently. "And many of them without husbands around to hold their hands during the delivery process."
"Most of 'em don't have sickos like the Scarecrow and the Joker stalking 'em."
She gave him a reassuring smile. "I'll be okay, Jason. I promise."
"At least stay at the Manor for a few days."
"No." She shook her head. "No, I need to leave here. Get as far away from Gotham as I can. At least for a few days."
"Let me call Dickie," he urged. "Get him to go with you."
"No, he's needed here to help with cleaning up the rest of the Joker's mess."
"Kit…"
"Jason, I'll be fine."
He went to say something; anything to try to convince her to either stay or let one of them go with her, but she stepped back, turned. A second later she sunk to the wet ground without uttering a sound. Jason spit out a curse and knelt beside her.
"Hold onto me, Kit."
She made no reply, just buried her face in the crook of his neck as she gently wept. Jason held her, vowing silently that the Joker would pay. Somehow, someway, he'd dispense justice.
His justice.
…
He took Kit to the Manor, despite her heated protests, figuring that Alfred would manage to convince her to stay there until her head was clearer. Of course, he agreed to stay, as well, because Alfred pointedly reminded him how family, "always sticks together in times of tragedy."
Not like he could say no, anyway. Not when Kit needed someone to watch over her while the others handled the rest of whatever the Joker had planned. They had no idea that night would be the one the Joker would choose to begin the last part of his plan. We should have figured it out, he thought as he reclined his seat to grab some shut-eye. Bruce repeatedly told us that we should expect the unexpected. Especially when someone like that pasty-faced freak is involved.
It was a mistake that almost became as costly as the one other time he didn't expect the unexpected. He not only got to revisit that warehouse in Ethiopia, but he got to relive every moment in excruciating detail. That night was about revenge. A righting of a perceived wrong. It was a game the Joker started playing after Batman took on Robin as his partner.
At first, he was content with merely terrorizing Robin.
That all changed when he realized Robin wasn't afraid of him. He couldn't traumatize him the same way he could other kids his age. Every time he did something to Robin, he came back stronger and better than before.
So, the Joker changed the game.
He decided that the best way to teach Robin a lesson was to get rid of him.
Of course, eliminating Robin served a dual purpose.
Kill Robin and you also strike at the heart of Batman.
Breaking Batman was that demented clown's ultimate goal. The point of the game was to show the Dark Knight how he was no better than those he locked up. In the opinion of the Joker — who Jason tended to believe about as much as he believed the Earth orbited Pluto in reverse — Batman was just as insane as the rest of the crazies, he just tended to mask his insanity beneath a set of what the clown called, "pesky principles."
The two perceived the world according to differing points of view. The Joker found Batman's interpretation stale and boring, of course. The Clown Prince interpreted things through jokes and colorful displays of violence. Why see the world in black and white when you could see it as a bunch of different colors?
What better joke was there in proving that beneath Batman's rigid and righteous moral code there was a killer just waiting for the right moment to spring forth and unleash a torrent of urban violence upon a city coated in its moral nihilism.
However, when he failed to kill the first Robin, he decided to up the ante.
To make the stakes even higher.
He started by choosing him to become the second Robin.
Jason freely admitted — to the disagreement of the rest of his family and teammates — that he should never have been made Robin. There was nothing about him that made him suitable for the role. He lacked the patience, the moral fiber, the restraint necessary.
His formative years were not spent in the same environment as Bruce and Dick. He didn't have a loving family to teach him right from wrong. He developed his own moral code. He learned to survive on Gotham's streets by using his wits and his fists. Sure, he got his ass kicked more times than not, but he always gave as good as he got. Stealing was the way of life on the streets. Medicine, food, he lifted whatever he and his mom needed. Boosting the tires off the Batmobile was insane, he readily acknowledged it was, but it was a means to an end for him.
A means that gave the Joker exactly what he wanted but he hadn't known that at the time. The tires would fetch enough money to pay the rent on their crummy apartment and put enough food on the table to last for a couple of days. They ended up becoming his damnation. Nobody was surprised when he ended up getting himself killed. It was bound to happen whether he was Robin or not.
However, it almost achieved the Joker's goal of breaking Batman.
The only thing that stopped him from killing the Joker was a reminder about why Batman did not murder.
The person who issued that reminder?
The same woman who refused to call Batman when the Joker demanded it.
A decade later he'd seek his revenge on her, first by murdering Ethan, as well as a handful of others, and then by recreating the night that almost broke Batman the first time.
Only this time, it wasn't Batman who almost broke the Golden Rule.
Bruce wonders why I'm hellbent on reaching Kit before the Joker can get his hands on her, Jason thought as he closed his eyes. Well, that's why.
It wasn't simply because he desired to kill the son of a bitch for all the pain and suffering he caused.
No, it was because he wanted to keep the Clown Prince from pushing her into killing him.
Or him from killing her.
A/N: Hello, all! Hope this finds you well!