Work Text:
Undertow
There’s a wave coming over him. He doesn’t know what it is, but it’s sweeping him away. Jason doesn’t know what it is, but he’s going to be gone, and something else, someone else, will take his place.
It will have his name and his face, but not his history.
And…and that’s not acceptable. Not for him, not for Robin, not for– not for Bruce. Bruce would never understand, not unless he gets rewritten too, and Jason–
Jason can’t imagine a world where Bruce isn’t Batman, the man who protects all of Gotham city.
The wave washes over him, and even as he knows, to the very depths of his being that he isn’t moving at all, Jason struggles against it and swims towards the surface. He’s not going to be washed away. He’s lost so much already: his parents, his Circus…
He won’t lose his past. He won’t lose his present. He won’t lose his life.
He won’t let Bruce lose him. Batman…Batman needs Robin.
So Jason fights, and the wave fights back, threatening to drown him, but Jason fights more, and breathes, and hopes, and prays.
The wave passes, and he rides it out until it’s gone. Standing alone in the middle of the Cave, the surreal feeling that an eternity passed in the blink of one second, Jason Todd Wayne, last of the Flying Todds, wonders if he has low blood sugar. That would account for the momentary sense of vertigo.
Then he decides that, whether he does or not, it’s a great excuse to get Alfred to let him have a cookie before dinner.
Maybe two.