Hi Jason
Long time, eh? Yeah, I know, I know, too long. I try to make it at least a couple of times a year, honest. Hope you didn't wait up for me, wherever you are. I was just passing through town, it's near dawn, and thought I'd drop by, say hello, have a talk, spill my guts, the usual.
How am I doing? Well, I'm still dating Barbara, thanks for asking (Yeah, I know you had a bit of a crush on her too, so I hope you don't mind me moving in on your girl) and I'm now a proper Policeman in Bludhaven, doing my bit for the thin blue line, when I'm not doing my bit with the thin jump- line. Sorry, sometimes the Robin of old comes out in me, especially when I'm talking to one of the others.
Actually, one of the reasons I came out here is so that I can finally do something that I never did, I can call you brother, properly and legally.
Yup, Bruce finally adopted me too. Formally. Well, as formally as you can when the guy you're adopting is in his twenties. But I am now officially his son, which makes me, equally formally, your big brother.
Oh, I call Tim "little bro'" all the time, but it's not the same. He's a good kid, but he gets lonely sometimes and Bruce isn't big on empathy when he's in the suit (Which is when Tim sees him most), so it makes him feel special to have a big brother, but it's nothing formal, nothing set down in ink and paper, not like us. This whole adoption thing shouldn't make a difference to me, and I try to make out to Bruce it doesn't, but sometimes it just plain does, as you well know.
I've been thinking about you lately little brother, for reasons we'll go into later, when something struck me. I don't know how many times I met you.
I mean REALLY met you that is, met you with only my own thoughts in charge. Finding out that Brother Blood had been twisting my mind for over two years, including the whole time when I stopped being Robin and first became Nightwing, and the first time I met you, makes my memories of that whole period. somewhere between painful and unreliable, at best.
I can't believe someone like Blood wouldn't have tried to boost any resentment towards you I might have, to make me that much easier to control when he wanted to. So any early memories I have of you may well have been clouded by him.
You were with the Titans when you pulled my butt out of the fire Blood-wise though, and I was genuinely grateful for that. You came through for me when I needed it, and that's despite the attitude I'd given you in the past, and if I didn't say it properly at the time, I want it to be clear now.
Looking back at it, that whole part of my life seems to be defined by what I lost. I'd lost my parents years before, and though it still hurt, I had Bruce to help me get through that. Then he turned his back on me, or so it seemed, and I'd lost my mentor and father figure all over again, and then I lost my identity as Robin too.
THAT was the part that really hurt. Robin was MY identity, MY name, I chose the name because it was the family nickname Mom and Dad used to call me.
My, I mean, _our_ costume was based on my old circus gear. So every time anyone saw Robin, or used the name Robin, even the crooks, it was honouring my Mom and Dad. Bruce had no right to take that from me, no right to usurp my heritage that way without my permission.
You can't imagine how I felt when Bruce gave that name to someone else. After firing me, who he'd raised as a son, he gave it to you, a complete stranger who he'd just found on the street one night (No offence), and decided to adopt. No, on second thoughts don't try to imagine it, you don't want to go there, I know I don't.
The name Robin wasn't mine anymore, and I hadn't been allowed any say in what happened to it, and that hurt, that was a betrayal of our whole relationship as guardian and ward, as hero and sidekick, as father and son, if you like.
So when I met you I was really predisposed to dislike you, a lot! But I found that I couldn't, not as completely as a part of me would have liked to. Oh, you were cocky and overconfident as all get out (Was I ever that bad?) and I could tell that you lacked the discipline that Bruce had spent months drilling into me before even letting me think about wearing the suit, but there was a similarity there between us, no matter how reluctant I was to admit it. I could see maybe why Bruce had given you the chance to be Robin.
I could see it in your eyes, even through the mask. You wanted to be Robin, you really did. Perhaps you saw it as an escape ticket out of the world you lived in, not an easy ticket certainly, but the only one life had ever offered you, and you grabbed it with both hands.
I also think that it got the better of you in the end. Being Robin means you live outside the law and within the law at the same time, and a really hard balance to keep, like walking the high wire blindfold, and believe me, I have been both been there, and done that, literally.
The life has challenges, but it isn't the life for someone who feels they have something to prove, the way you did. I saw that, Alfred saw that, but if Bruce saw then he never said, never would. That's always been his way.
I gave you my blessing to be Robin, and I think I helped damn you in the process. I gave you a costume you didn't live to grow into. Maybe, if I had been firmer about not letting you be Robin, Bruce would have listened and you'd still be alive. Though that would require Bruce to listen, and we all know how often _that_ happens.
It was meeting you that first time that made me realise I couldn't be Robin again, ever. I had outgrown Robin, but the role of Robin had outgrown me too, in a way. It had become more than just my name, it had become the other half of "Batman and.", it was his balance, and I'd become too much my own person to be that balance any more.
That little self-realisation came as a shock, let me tell you. Paradigms shifting _all_ over the place!
After you died, I tried to pretend to myself that Bruce was going to be fine all by himself, not that I was in the best mood to care about that at the time. We've worked it out since then, but it was uphill all the way, but it just got a lot steeper.
Tim helped a lot, just by coming into our lives. He didn't want to be Robin, he wanted ME to be Robin again, which was nice, in a naïve kind of way. He soon realised though, that just because I couldn't and wouldn't do it again, it didn't mean that there wasn't the need for a Robin, and for a completely different reason to you or me. He saw, better than either you or I, or even Bruce, ever had that Batman needs a Robin. Someone to be his innocence, his conscience, a reminder of why he does what he does, and what the limits are he must impose on himself.
I've tried to be look out for Tim, probably more than I should. He's taken to the life really well, he's a lot more mature than I was at his age, but he's still just a kid, and Bruce and Barbara and I are really aware of that, after what happened to you, it's not been easy, for any of us.
I thought we were all growing past the pain too, but just lately.. Oh God Jason, lately I killed the Joker..
You have no idea how hard it is for me to say that. I killed the Joker. I took his life. I fell off that highwire we were talking about a minute ago.
Oh, there are all sorts of reasons I could give you why I did it, justifications and excuses. The most creative one involves a sick little metahuman brat calling himself "Rancor".
What? No, not the one in "Jedi", "rancor" means "anger". Geez where were you in English class kid? Oh yeah right, you played hookey to go see "Jedi", didn't you? How did I know that? Come on Jason, I'm your big brother, I know everything.. Oh all right, it's because I did the same thing with "Empire" a few years before. Happy now? Sorry, you know how I deflect worry with humour sometimes, this time the worry is burning a hole in my gut.
Anyway, this kid was hanging around with the Joker at the time, and the Joker hadn't got around to killing him yet (With the Joker, it's a "when", not an "if" situation any more). Rancors powers let him amplify anger and rage somehow, so perhaps he pushed me over the edge. Or even more scary, maybe he didn't need to.
God knows I have reason enough to hate the Joker, so does half the world, I'm not the only person to lose a little brother because of him, I'm probably not even in the low hundreds on that score, but I am probably better trained than any of them in ways to get revenge.
I have to make something really clear to you right now, part of the reason I felt so guilty when I heard you'd been killed, and by the Joker, was because I knew that part of the reason the Joker killed you was because of me, because of what I'd done to him in the past.
He wasn't (or wasn't just) taking his sick fantasy out on you, or playing head games with Batman, he was taking it out on Robin, and that means that it was partly my fault, I was Robin for longer than you, so most of the actions that made him want to kill Robin were mine, not yours. And still you were the one to suffer for it.
My therapist (Yeah, I saw a therapist, wanna make something of it squirt?) says that that was a weird kind of survivor guilt and transference. Believe me, I've known survivor guilt since I was eight years old, and have the finest known case study of it as a father-figure. This was something more. I got over it, I didn't forget you, but I learned to live with that.
The Joker was holed up in Arkham, he thought he was going to die of a brain tumour, so he'd infected all the bad guys he could find with his own Joker venom and suddenly the country was awash with white skinned, green haired supervillain loons. It was the entire Bat-family's worst nightmare, come to clown-coloured life.
I was sneaking around Arkham solo when I heard a message from Batman to Oracle. He and some of the rest of the clan were coming in via the sewers and they'd found the remains of a human skeleton who'd been picked clean by Killer Croc, and who had scraps of the Robin costume on him.
Try to imagine how I felt when I heard that Tim had been killed because of the Joker. Any control I might have had just vaporised. I'd lost another little brother to his insanity. I lost control in a way that terrifies me. When I came face to face with him, I just let rip, I used every skill that Batman taught me except self control, and I beat him and I beat him, I felt flesh part under my fists and bones snap under my boots, and I enjoyed it. Some small, ashamed part of me enjoyed seeing that smile falter, even of only for a moment.
I found out later that Batman had somehow mistaken the skeleton of a guy in his mid-thirties who'd been dead for a month, for Tim. No, I can't think why that happened either. He was stressed-out probably, the Joker does that to him. It'd almost be funny if it weren't so grotesque. Which actually more or less summarises the Joker's entire career in a single sentence.
And it ended as a part of me hoped it would. The Joker stopped breathing, I had hurt him so badly that he just stopped breathing. And I did nothing about it, I was happy to let that happen. I felt exultant, and that feeling will haunt me for the rest of my life, not least because I suddenly had to wonder if that's what the Joker feels like when he kills someone. That thought alone almost had me puking my guts up right there and then.
It was a moment after that that Batman and the rest showed up and I saw the looks in their eyes, the shock from Black Canary, the almost satisfied look on the Huntress (Which was really scary, let me tell you). If I didn't have experience reading body language I wouldn't have been able to tell what Spoiler was thinking because she wears a full mask, and Batman was, well he was Batman.
And then it hit me, looking at him looking at me, it hit me fully what I'd done. I'd crossed the line that must never be crossed. EVER.
I don't want to remember having to revive him. Batman was there in an instant, checking his vital signs, starting mouth to mouth. A part of me switched to autopilot, and I moved over to be ready to start the CPR. Can you believe that?
Batman just looked at me for a moment, as if he wasn't sure he trusted me to do anything, but then he just let me help. I think he saw it as the start of my penance, or my redemption, or something. I don't want to think about what happened
The Joker recovered, doesn't he always, but only because Batman intervened and saved his life. They're redefining the term "maximum security" on him now, even he will have a hard time escaping that place.
Everyone has tried to be nice about it, about how I was only acting the way the entire population of Gotham would do in the same situation, that what I did was a natural reaction to fear and grief. Like that's supposed to make me feel better, I crossed the line I built my entire life respecting, and nothing will ever be the same again.
And that's one of the reasons I'm here. I need help, and I have a great circle of friends who'll help me out, as soon as I feel brave enough to let them. But that's not going to be enough for me. I need something more, and it's not something I can ask Barbara about, she has too many of her own issues on this front, and I can't ask her to take this on too. And it's far too much to ask Tim to deal with, I could never do that to him. What I need is a guardian angel, someone to be MY balance, my conscience watching out for me.
Someone who can remind me of why I does what I do, and what the limits are I must impose on myself
Even my new Dad, the ultimate Big Brother, can't be watching me all the time, even he's not that good, but I'd appreciate it if my little brother would give it a try.
Thanks Bro.
Fin (Again)
Long time, eh? Yeah, I know, I know, too long. I try to make it at least a couple of times a year, honest. Hope you didn't wait up for me, wherever you are. I was just passing through town, it's near dawn, and thought I'd drop by, say hello, have a talk, spill my guts, the usual.
How am I doing? Well, I'm still dating Barbara, thanks for asking (Yeah, I know you had a bit of a crush on her too, so I hope you don't mind me moving in on your girl) and I'm now a proper Policeman in Bludhaven, doing my bit for the thin blue line, when I'm not doing my bit with the thin jump- line. Sorry, sometimes the Robin of old comes out in me, especially when I'm talking to one of the others.
Actually, one of the reasons I came out here is so that I can finally do something that I never did, I can call you brother, properly and legally.
Yup, Bruce finally adopted me too. Formally. Well, as formally as you can when the guy you're adopting is in his twenties. But I am now officially his son, which makes me, equally formally, your big brother.
Oh, I call Tim "little bro'" all the time, but it's not the same. He's a good kid, but he gets lonely sometimes and Bruce isn't big on empathy when he's in the suit (Which is when Tim sees him most), so it makes him feel special to have a big brother, but it's nothing formal, nothing set down in ink and paper, not like us. This whole adoption thing shouldn't make a difference to me, and I try to make out to Bruce it doesn't, but sometimes it just plain does, as you well know.
I've been thinking about you lately little brother, for reasons we'll go into later, when something struck me. I don't know how many times I met you.
I mean REALLY met you that is, met you with only my own thoughts in charge. Finding out that Brother Blood had been twisting my mind for over two years, including the whole time when I stopped being Robin and first became Nightwing, and the first time I met you, makes my memories of that whole period. somewhere between painful and unreliable, at best.
I can't believe someone like Blood wouldn't have tried to boost any resentment towards you I might have, to make me that much easier to control when he wanted to. So any early memories I have of you may well have been clouded by him.
You were with the Titans when you pulled my butt out of the fire Blood-wise though, and I was genuinely grateful for that. You came through for me when I needed it, and that's despite the attitude I'd given you in the past, and if I didn't say it properly at the time, I want it to be clear now.
Looking back at it, that whole part of my life seems to be defined by what I lost. I'd lost my parents years before, and though it still hurt, I had Bruce to help me get through that. Then he turned his back on me, or so it seemed, and I'd lost my mentor and father figure all over again, and then I lost my identity as Robin too.
THAT was the part that really hurt. Robin was MY identity, MY name, I chose the name because it was the family nickname Mom and Dad used to call me.
My, I mean, _our_ costume was based on my old circus gear. So every time anyone saw Robin, or used the name Robin, even the crooks, it was honouring my Mom and Dad. Bruce had no right to take that from me, no right to usurp my heritage that way without my permission.
You can't imagine how I felt when Bruce gave that name to someone else. After firing me, who he'd raised as a son, he gave it to you, a complete stranger who he'd just found on the street one night (No offence), and decided to adopt. No, on second thoughts don't try to imagine it, you don't want to go there, I know I don't.
The name Robin wasn't mine anymore, and I hadn't been allowed any say in what happened to it, and that hurt, that was a betrayal of our whole relationship as guardian and ward, as hero and sidekick, as father and son, if you like.
So when I met you I was really predisposed to dislike you, a lot! But I found that I couldn't, not as completely as a part of me would have liked to. Oh, you were cocky and overconfident as all get out (Was I ever that bad?) and I could tell that you lacked the discipline that Bruce had spent months drilling into me before even letting me think about wearing the suit, but there was a similarity there between us, no matter how reluctant I was to admit it. I could see maybe why Bruce had given you the chance to be Robin.
I could see it in your eyes, even through the mask. You wanted to be Robin, you really did. Perhaps you saw it as an escape ticket out of the world you lived in, not an easy ticket certainly, but the only one life had ever offered you, and you grabbed it with both hands.
I also think that it got the better of you in the end. Being Robin means you live outside the law and within the law at the same time, and a really hard balance to keep, like walking the high wire blindfold, and believe me, I have been both been there, and done that, literally.
The life has challenges, but it isn't the life for someone who feels they have something to prove, the way you did. I saw that, Alfred saw that, but if Bruce saw then he never said, never would. That's always been his way.
I gave you my blessing to be Robin, and I think I helped damn you in the process. I gave you a costume you didn't live to grow into. Maybe, if I had been firmer about not letting you be Robin, Bruce would have listened and you'd still be alive. Though that would require Bruce to listen, and we all know how often _that_ happens.
It was meeting you that first time that made me realise I couldn't be Robin again, ever. I had outgrown Robin, but the role of Robin had outgrown me too, in a way. It had become more than just my name, it had become the other half of "Batman and.", it was his balance, and I'd become too much my own person to be that balance any more.
That little self-realisation came as a shock, let me tell you. Paradigms shifting _all_ over the place!
After you died, I tried to pretend to myself that Bruce was going to be fine all by himself, not that I was in the best mood to care about that at the time. We've worked it out since then, but it was uphill all the way, but it just got a lot steeper.
Tim helped a lot, just by coming into our lives. He didn't want to be Robin, he wanted ME to be Robin again, which was nice, in a naïve kind of way. He soon realised though, that just because I couldn't and wouldn't do it again, it didn't mean that there wasn't the need for a Robin, and for a completely different reason to you or me. He saw, better than either you or I, or even Bruce, ever had that Batman needs a Robin. Someone to be his innocence, his conscience, a reminder of why he does what he does, and what the limits are he must impose on himself.
I've tried to be look out for Tim, probably more than I should. He's taken to the life really well, he's a lot more mature than I was at his age, but he's still just a kid, and Bruce and Barbara and I are really aware of that, after what happened to you, it's not been easy, for any of us.
I thought we were all growing past the pain too, but just lately.. Oh God Jason, lately I killed the Joker..
You have no idea how hard it is for me to say that. I killed the Joker. I took his life. I fell off that highwire we were talking about a minute ago.
Oh, there are all sorts of reasons I could give you why I did it, justifications and excuses. The most creative one involves a sick little metahuman brat calling himself "Rancor".
What? No, not the one in "Jedi", "rancor" means "anger". Geez where were you in English class kid? Oh yeah right, you played hookey to go see "Jedi", didn't you? How did I know that? Come on Jason, I'm your big brother, I know everything.. Oh all right, it's because I did the same thing with "Empire" a few years before. Happy now? Sorry, you know how I deflect worry with humour sometimes, this time the worry is burning a hole in my gut.
Anyway, this kid was hanging around with the Joker at the time, and the Joker hadn't got around to killing him yet (With the Joker, it's a "when", not an "if" situation any more). Rancors powers let him amplify anger and rage somehow, so perhaps he pushed me over the edge. Or even more scary, maybe he didn't need to.
God knows I have reason enough to hate the Joker, so does half the world, I'm not the only person to lose a little brother because of him, I'm probably not even in the low hundreds on that score, but I am probably better trained than any of them in ways to get revenge.
I have to make something really clear to you right now, part of the reason I felt so guilty when I heard you'd been killed, and by the Joker, was because I knew that part of the reason the Joker killed you was because of me, because of what I'd done to him in the past.
He wasn't (or wasn't just) taking his sick fantasy out on you, or playing head games with Batman, he was taking it out on Robin, and that means that it was partly my fault, I was Robin for longer than you, so most of the actions that made him want to kill Robin were mine, not yours. And still you were the one to suffer for it.
My therapist (Yeah, I saw a therapist, wanna make something of it squirt?) says that that was a weird kind of survivor guilt and transference. Believe me, I've known survivor guilt since I was eight years old, and have the finest known case study of it as a father-figure. This was something more. I got over it, I didn't forget you, but I learned to live with that.
The Joker was holed up in Arkham, he thought he was going to die of a brain tumour, so he'd infected all the bad guys he could find with his own Joker venom and suddenly the country was awash with white skinned, green haired supervillain loons. It was the entire Bat-family's worst nightmare, come to clown-coloured life.
I was sneaking around Arkham solo when I heard a message from Batman to Oracle. He and some of the rest of the clan were coming in via the sewers and they'd found the remains of a human skeleton who'd been picked clean by Killer Croc, and who had scraps of the Robin costume on him.
Try to imagine how I felt when I heard that Tim had been killed because of the Joker. Any control I might have had just vaporised. I'd lost another little brother to his insanity. I lost control in a way that terrifies me. When I came face to face with him, I just let rip, I used every skill that Batman taught me except self control, and I beat him and I beat him, I felt flesh part under my fists and bones snap under my boots, and I enjoyed it. Some small, ashamed part of me enjoyed seeing that smile falter, even of only for a moment.
I found out later that Batman had somehow mistaken the skeleton of a guy in his mid-thirties who'd been dead for a month, for Tim. No, I can't think why that happened either. He was stressed-out probably, the Joker does that to him. It'd almost be funny if it weren't so grotesque. Which actually more or less summarises the Joker's entire career in a single sentence.
And it ended as a part of me hoped it would. The Joker stopped breathing, I had hurt him so badly that he just stopped breathing. And I did nothing about it, I was happy to let that happen. I felt exultant, and that feeling will haunt me for the rest of my life, not least because I suddenly had to wonder if that's what the Joker feels like when he kills someone. That thought alone almost had me puking my guts up right there and then.
It was a moment after that that Batman and the rest showed up and I saw the looks in their eyes, the shock from Black Canary, the almost satisfied look on the Huntress (Which was really scary, let me tell you). If I didn't have experience reading body language I wouldn't have been able to tell what Spoiler was thinking because she wears a full mask, and Batman was, well he was Batman.
And then it hit me, looking at him looking at me, it hit me fully what I'd done. I'd crossed the line that must never be crossed. EVER.
I don't want to remember having to revive him. Batman was there in an instant, checking his vital signs, starting mouth to mouth. A part of me switched to autopilot, and I moved over to be ready to start the CPR. Can you believe that?
Batman just looked at me for a moment, as if he wasn't sure he trusted me to do anything, but then he just let me help. I think he saw it as the start of my penance, or my redemption, or something. I don't want to think about what happened
The Joker recovered, doesn't he always, but only because Batman intervened and saved his life. They're redefining the term "maximum security" on him now, even he will have a hard time escaping that place.
Everyone has tried to be nice about it, about how I was only acting the way the entire population of Gotham would do in the same situation, that what I did was a natural reaction to fear and grief. Like that's supposed to make me feel better, I crossed the line I built my entire life respecting, and nothing will ever be the same again.
And that's one of the reasons I'm here. I need help, and I have a great circle of friends who'll help me out, as soon as I feel brave enough to let them. But that's not going to be enough for me. I need something more, and it's not something I can ask Barbara about, she has too many of her own issues on this front, and I can't ask her to take this on too. And it's far too much to ask Tim to deal with, I could never do that to him. What I need is a guardian angel, someone to be MY balance, my conscience watching out for me.
Someone who can remind me of why I does what I do, and what the limits are I must impose on myself
Even my new Dad, the ultimate Big Brother, can't be watching me all the time, even he's not that good, but I'd appreciate it if my little brother would give it a try.
Thanks Bro.
Fin (Again)