A/N - This is part 3 of my Soulworld series and I strongly recommend that you read the other two first. Won't matter so much for this first chapter, but this fic is multi-chapter and the rest of the story ties directly into the first two fics. Soulword #1 - My Soulmate is a Green-Eyed Monster. Soulworld #2 - Love is a One-Eyed Monster.

Slightish TW - canonical character death and associated violence. Spoiler alert - they won't stay dead forever ;)

Cass is not Bruce's kid in this series.

Oh, and, Ch. 1 is for the Tumblr fyeahjaysteph prompt fill for September - "Meet Ugly". It's ugly, all right. And platonic, in this universe.

Chapter 1

He heard the screams first.

A girl, by the sound of it, probably not all that much younger than he was, shrieking with the tell-tale notes of torture.

Fuckfuckfuckfuck

Jason knew Black Mask was scum. Jason knew it and manipulated it to his advantage in Red Hood's crusade to clean the streets up, get drugs out of the hands of kids, keep working girls safe, and generally make life in the Narrows more livable for the ordinary people like he'd once been.

Jason knew Roman Sionis was about as bad as they come, but he'd never caught him torturing anyone before.

Red Hood had been dropping by one of Sionis's warehouses to discuss some new terms on their mutually beneficial kryptonite theft, and Jason thanked God that he wasn't in the habit of using the door.

If it had been someone who deserved the torture - a guy, maybe, and a definite villain - well, Jason still would have put a bullet through the poor schmuck's head to end their misery, but he wouldn't have taken it out on Roman. Business was business, after all, and Black Mask was good for Red Hood's.

And Roman could call Jason a chauvinist, although he preferred to think of himself as a gentleman, but torturing a lady crossed Red Hood's sometimes blurry line in the sand. Made him think of his mom crying in misery when her drugs ran out, and the working girls he'd see as a kid on the corner getting the shit beat out of them by bad pimps and drunk johns, and Jason wasn't having it.

This wasn't only a girl, though, which would have been bad enough. This was a fellow teenager. A kid.

Roman didn't know it yet, but Red Hood and Black Mask's business collusion had just gone up in smoke.

Jason drew his guns as he silently stalked down the hallway towards the blood-curdling screams. From the corner of the shadows, he glanced out to see who exactly Sionis had chosen as his last and final victim and -

Holy shit.

It was Spoiler.

The new girl Robin. The blonde. Why - why was Robin back in the Spoiler costume? Did Bruce - oh, shit. Her costume was stained with more brown than purple due to how much she'd already bled, and fresh red blood stains were oozing from small wounds and her suit was tattered, falling away from larger cuts that were partially crusted over and - oh fuck oh fuckohfuck Roman was going in with a power drill.

Gunshots rang out over Spoiler's screams, the first bullet blowing Black Mask's brains out and the following flurry of fire taking down the guards and casual on-lookers and whoever else had made the very bad mistake this morning of walking into a warehouse where a motherfuckin ROBIN was being tortured -

And Red Hood was shoving his guns back in their holsters and running over to Spoiler and sawing through her ropes with his knife and her head was hanging down so limply and the holes - God, she had so many holes drilled into her in some very bad places, and huge swaths of jagged cuts carved out over her chest and stomach and legs and her breath sounded wet and rattly, fuckfuckfuck, don't die don'tdiedon'tdiedon'tdie -

"Tell B," she rasped out urgently as Jason cut the last rope and she collapsed into his arm from the metal grate that she'd been tied to like a strung-out scarecrow, "Tell B I didn't talk," she gurgled out around lungfuls of blood.

"Tell him yourself, Robin," Red Hood said shortly as he sat her down on the floor and tried to calm his panicking brain into figuring out if he should put tourniquets on or try to stop some of the bleeding or just get her to Leslie as fast as he could - don'tdiedon'tdiedon'tdie - "you're gonna be fine," Red Hood hoped.

Jason's eyes were covered by his hood and he was only getting a digital video feed, but he couldn't mistake the sad, knowing look of pity that Robin gave him. He knew she heard the sniff as he scooped her up and ran out of the warehouse for his bike, seating her on the front of it facing backwards so he wouldn't have to grip her by the worst of her wounds before slinging himself on behind her and taking off as fast as he could for Leslie's clinic.

The only prayer that came to Jason's mind from his abandoned Catholic upbringing was the Hail Mary, and given Jason's experience with mothers, the words that wouldn't stop rattling through his freaking out brain felt as ominous as a cemetery bell tolling out a dirge over mourners.

Please don't let her die, Jason tried to pray over the clanging jumble of mothers and rituals and funerals scrambling up his mind. pleasepleasepleaseplease

"Tell my mom I'm sorry," Robin mumbled against his chest, and the tears were falling faster from Jason's eyes now under the cover of his hood as he sped along.

"Ok," Red Hood said instead of telling Robin to save her strength.

Why did people always say that when someone was dying? Don'tdiedon'tdiedon'tdiedon'tdie It would bring her more comfort to get her final messages out but please God, don't let her die.

"Tim," Robin coughed out a minute later with some blood mixed in, "and Cass. Love them," she muttered, starting to fade out.

"I'll tell them," Jason swore, hanging onto her tight with one arm and steering with the other, skimming through the darkened streets of Gotham not nearly fast enough.

"Leslie!" Jason screamed, banging through the doors of her clinic with Robin barely breathing in his arms. "LESLIE LESLIE -"

"Oh, my God," he heard the elderly doctor say in absolute horror as he set blonde Robin down as carefully as he could on the medical table in the empty room where Dr. Thompkins was going over charts.

"Does he know?" Leslie said curtly, quickly snatching up needles and IV tubes and trying to find a place somewhere on the girl's arm that wasn't drilled through so she could get a line started.

"No," Jason uttered hoarsely before taking his hood off and staring at Steph with ghosted eyes through his red domino. Pleasedon'tdiedon'tdiedon'tdie

"Call him," Leslie said in a clipped voice. "Tell him to hurry," she said shortly.

Jason blinked through his tears as he nodded, pausing to lay a gentle hand on Robin's blonde head before leaving the room.

"I'll be right back," he promised.

"Thank you, Robin," she whispered up at him with the tiniest smile, and a sob broke loose from Jason's throat.

He slammed his way out into the hallway and into a darkened exam room, kicking the door shut behind him as he dialed the phone number that he still knew by heart but refused to save in his phone.

"Who is this?" the Bat growled in a short-tempered voice laced with the kind of irritation that Jason knew meant that he had caught Bruce at a really, really bad moment.

"Spoiler's dying," Jason spat into the phone.

A beat of silence, and then -

"Jason?" wispy and confused before, "What happened?" snarled tight and low.

Jason heard Batman running, like that would do any good now.

Maybe if he'd run a little sooner, and how the fuck did he lose her, anyway, and, "Why the fuck was she in the Spoiler suit?" Jason yelled into the phone.

"She's dying, Bruce - Black Mask tortured her for days from the looks of it, drilled her fucking organs, you motherfucking asshole, where were you, why wasn't she dressed as Robin?" Jason screamed.

"I fired her," Bruce said in an even tighter voice, laced with guilt.

Always guilty too late, that was Bruce, wasn't it. Too slow, too late, too stupid, too -

"She's at Leslie's?" he was asking.

"Not for much longer," Jason said with a hysterical laugh. "Think you can get here in time to say good-bye to this Robin, Bruce?" he hissed sarcastically before hanging up on his father.

Jason was through the door and back at Robin's side in an instant. Leslie met his eyes with her lips pressed together in a flat line and shook her head slightly.

"Bruce is on his way," Jason said to the girl whose real name he didn't even know.

Did it matter now? She was Robin and she was dying and Jason was crying and holding the few fingers he could find that weren't broken.

Her chest sounded thick and soupy with every breath but she was still taking them and she was struggling to open her eyes again.

"Baby," she managed to get out.

Jason cracked a grin, just for her, his special brave blonde Robin who deserved to be dazzled in her last few moments of life with a signature Jason Todd smile.

"I love you, too, sweetheart," he told her very seriously, "I'm so glad we found each other."

"Stupid," Robin wheezed out with a tiny chuckle lighting up her fading face, making Jason's tears run harder even though his cheeks hurt from how hard he was beaming back at her.

"Had a baby," she mumbled. "Love her too."

"I'll tell her," Jason promised. "I'll tell her how brave you were and I'll make sure nobody ever fucks with her, ok?"

"K," Robin whispered. "B knows," she said. "'dopted."

"Ok," Jason said. "We'll take care of her. Well, I will," he said after a pause. "Bruce sucks at taking care of people, in case you hadn't noticed."

"No shit, Sherlock," his sassy Robin fired back, a smile still tickling her lips that had blood on them that Leslie hadn't had a chance to clean up yet.

The doctor was working around Jason and Spoiler's intertwined hands trying to patch wounds, even though there was no damn point and they all knew it, but Jason had a feeling that keeping busy was keeping the elderly Dr. Thompkins from breaking down into tears in front of Blondie.

"S death bad?" Robin said softly.

"I went to heaven," Jason said, squeezing her fingers a little tighter. "It was good."

"M I gonna go to heaven?" Robin wanted to know.

"Are you Catholic?" Jason teased, making her laugh again, which made Leslie have to turn away to cover her mouth in a sob.

"'piscopalian," Robin murmured. "Dad din' like the pope."

"I think you'll be ok," Jason smiled. "Just, um, pray to Jesus like they taught you real quick and apologize for all the bad stuff you did and say you're not gonna do it anymore. He'll forgive you."

"Not gonna do nothin' anymore," Steph wheezed with a grin, but she shut her eyes and began moving her lips.

The front door to the clinic banged open and the Bat's heavy boots were running down the hall before he burst into the room.

"Steph -" Batman started to say but Jason held his hand up.

"Shut up, she's praying," he growled. "Let her make her peace before you pretend to make yours."

Batman looked at his son with haunted eyes, but he sat down quietly and tugged his gloves off before picking up Robin's other hand.

"Hey, B," she said a few seconds later, her eyes fluttering back open, although the lids seemed heavier now.

"I'm so sorry," Batman rasped out, his chest heaving with the tears that he was trying to hold back.

"My fault," Robin said faintly.

"It fucking was not," Jason snarled even as Batman said, "No, Steph. It wasn't."

Robin started struggling to get words out and Batman was about to try to shush her when Jason growled, "Let her talk."

"S'any of it real, B?" blonde Robin asked with supreme effort. "S'I ever really Robin?"

"Of course you were," Batman choked out. "It wasn't - it wasn't a trick, Steph. I promise."

"Good," the girl mumbled with a little smile as her eyes started to close. "Then I was really part of it - part of the legend," she said with satisfaction.

Her breathing began to increase and get raspier and Leslie came over and laid a gentle hand on her head and began smoothing her hair back.

"Even if," Robin coughed in a strangled voice, "even s'only for a lil' while," she finished with maximum effort, her head falling back down on the pillow as her heart rate monitor slowed and blood pressure dropped.

Her chest slowly rose and fell, once, twice, three times more.

And then the monitor was coding and Leslie took a sharp inhale and Bruce sobbed and Jason was screaming and on his feet and punching his hand straight through the exam room's storage cabinets in the cardboard boxes of exam gloves and tongue depressors before pulling his fist out and beating on the remaining upper doors with the flat of his hand while kicking holes in the lower ones and Leslie had barely cut the machine off before Jason was whirling around and punching Bruce square in the jaw.

Batman fell backwards off his chair onto his ass with the force of Jason's unexpected blow and Red Hood was kicking him in the ribs before he had a chance to get up.

"You killed her!" Jason screamed at him. "You killed her, you killed another Robin, you fucking bastard!"

Batman grabbed Jason's still kicking foot and flipped it up and backwards but Red Hood caught himself in a back flip and was back on his feet pummeling Batman again, who had quickly hopped to his feet and taken a defensive stance but seemed too stunned to fight back.

"Stop, stop! Jason, stop!" he dimly heard Leslie screaming at him but he'd be damned if he was going to stop beating the man who had lost another Robin.

She was a kid, a kid, a kid, not much older than Jason had been when he'd died, and she'd been so brave, so fucking brave -

"Do you know the first words out of her mouth to me when I found her?" Jason shrieked at Bruce while landing another blow that Bruce didn't quite block.

"She said, 'Tell B I didn't talk,'" Jason screamed, catching a strong uppercut onto Bruce's jaw. "He drilled into her fucking organs, you fucking bastard, and she still didn't fucking talk and the World's Greatest Detective fucking lost track of her!" Jason raged.

His arm automatically flew back at the sharp pinprick in his shoulder and he accidentally knocked Leslie sideways before quickly catching her before she fell.

"Sorry," he muttered, righting her on her feet. "Sorry, Leslie. What the fuck did you give me?" he asked her with a frown, looking down at the empty syringe in her hand.

"Pentothal," Leslie said. "I doubt it'll knock you out, but it might knock some of that green out of your eyes," she said seriously.

Jason blinked, realizing that his heart rate was indeed beginning to slow and the ringing in his ears was quieting and he felt a little less out of control.

"Please don't kill him," Leslie said quietly, meeting Jason's eyes compassionately and not even bothering to look at Batman. "I can't take another death right now," she said in a shaky voice.

"I'll go," Jason muttered.

Leslie reached up and laid a wrinkly hand softly on his cheek, blinking away her tears. Jason leaned forward and kissed her temple before grabbing his hood off the counter and brushing past Bruce without another word.

"You are no longer welcome in this clinic," Leslie said to the boy she'd once co-parented with a soft steel in her voice. "And don't ever let me see another child wearing a cape in this town," she hissed.

"Leslie -" Batman started to say.

"Get out," she said.

A/N - Thanks for reading! Comments are life!

I'd suggest looping back and reading the other two fics in this series soon as more chapters are coming that tie in directly to those fics.

You can follow me on Tumblr as River9Noble. Come say hi!