#red Robin!jason todd

[msfcatlover]

Y’know what? Jason deserves one non-traumatic win in my Reverse!Robins AU. I’m tying saving Eddie into the immediate follow-up to the Red Robin/”Bruce is ‘dead’” arc, and I’m using it to fully cement Jay’s relationship with Steph.

(Somehow this ended up a full overview of that relationship. Oops. Anyway, CW for allusions to the Tower fight, the Joker, & the Red Robin arc, and all the traumas one can expect to accompany those.)

After the fight at the Tower, Jason was a mess and trying to hide it. He could admit to Cass (can’t lie to Cass anyway) that Steph scared him, could admit to Damian that Jason wanted more training to ensure his own safety, could even admit (haltingly) to Duke that Steph wasn’t what Jason thought she’d be. But… Jason’s never been good at handling vulnerability, and on top of everything else there’s this irrational sense of betrayal, that the other batkids kept telling Jason how much he & Steph would’ve gotten along, how proud Steph would be of Jason, and it turns out that actually she hates him. Jason’s hero doesn’t care if he lives or dies, even if it’s by her hand. All of Jason’s siblings are fucking liars.  (Also, Jason doesn’t know what it’ll do to him if he opens up about his hurt, his conflicting feelings, his trauma, and gets brushed off. Everyone’s missed Steph so much, and it’s easy for Jason to imagine his pain being brushed off or downplayed as being at most a barrier to Steph’s return. It’s easier to just put on a brave face than find out the exact limits of his family’s love for him.)

Even after Gotham settles back into an uneasy peace, Steph the new power player & sometimes-villain reigning over Crime Alley, Jason avoids her. It takes Jason a few weeks to realize nobody seems to trust Steph around Jason; he hardly ever patrols alone anymore, and those patrols never go near her turf, someone always meets up with him if a chase takes Jason within spitting distance of the Alley, he’s not allowed on the few team-ups they have with her… and Steph is avoiding Jason too.

They do become more civil over a few accidental meetings. A few unexpected run-ins on patrol, where she basically ignores him. A few more where they have to work together, at least to win the fight. Jason decides to crash at a safehouse, Steph is already there (and a complete mess from a fight that went very, very wrong earlier in the evening), and Steph groans that she’s too tired to do this right now and can they please just ignore eachother and then never mention this again? A handful of times she rescued Jason from kidnappers, seemingly by accident, with slightly less plausible deniability each time. Once or twice Jason’s case found Steph in a rough spot and he jumped in to rescue her. The ear infection incident.  They can just about pass for friendly work acquaintances who’ve never beaten eachother so badly one of them threw up and then required emergency medical care.

(Steph does try to apologize at one point, when they were both getting a midnight snack from the same food vendor, getting as far as, “I refuse to let Batman & Nightwing set the standard for emotional honesty in my life, so I’m—” then a shootout started up a few streets over. She swore, shoved her burrito into Jason’s hands, and took off. Jay had to get Tim to tell him Steph didn’t fucking die, because she never even checked back in.) (Too busy doing emergency surgery on her own leg, and cursing that she absolutely is taking her emotional cues from Damian, because the idea of having that conversation when she can’t just disappear the second it’s awkward is more than she can deal with right now.)

Then the Joker happens. Steph stays at Jason’s side until he can walk on his own again. They have several tough conversations during that time, and there are moments when they both need space from eachother, but Steph rescuing Jason has basically turned her into a mental safety blanket for him, and Jason’s situation was close enough to Steph’s death that she needs to make sure he doesn’t die the same miserable way she did. She does go back to avoiding Jason for a while once he’s off his crutches, but only for a couple weeks (during which everyone guilts her for it,) before Jason tracks her down and shows up in civvies like, “Look, you can never see me again if you want, I just wanted to make sure we’re good. I mean, we’re cool now, right?”  (They both definitely still have hang ups & issues in their relationship, but yeah, they’re cool now. Or maybe it’d be more accurate to say they’ve been cool for a while, they’re just on the same page about it now.)

Bruce “dies.” The Red Robin arc happens. Jason gets stabbed, takes a dip in the Pit, calls Steph to ask her how to manage Pit Madness, which is why she was already on her way and in time to save him from… y’know, the other big traumatic thing that arc is known for.  I am going to cut Jason some slack and end the arc there. He already has his proof, Steph takes him back to Gotham, he crashes at her place while the Justice League tracks down Bruce. They have a Disney marathon and don’t talk about it over the most ridiculous ice cream sundaes they can make from supermarket supplies.  (Damian does find out, because he walked in on them talking around it when he stopped by to make sure they were both okay. Dami & Steph also end up having a heart to heart when he puts the pieces together and she runs after him to remind him not to take his anger out on the local criminals when he’s worked up like this. It’s only then, in the hall of a run-down apartment building at 4am, reassuring Damian that both Steph & Jason are going to be okay, that Steph realizes for the first time how small her big brother looks from her new perspective.) (Tank!Damian supporters DNI, that boy’s a beanpole, and Steph is already like 6ft tall without a Lazarus upgrade, she’s like 6′6 or something here.)

Jason reaches out to the Titans after Bruce comes home, and finds out that thanks to all Eddie’s dimension-hopping (and probably some weird timeloop/travel story arcs at some point, if we’re being real, it is comics after all,) even though Eddie & Jason were the same age when they met and Jason’s only just celebrated his 18th birthday, Eddie had apparently passed 20yrs of life at some point while Jason was gone and got dragged to Hell.

Jason will absolutely not stand for this. He calls Steph up and asks if she wants to help him bully the fucking Devil Himself.

13hrs later, Jason has his best friend back.  (Eddie’s just like, “Jay??? When’d you turn into a fucking giant? How long was I gone?!”)

[flyrobinflyy]

NOBODY FUCKING MOVE.

[starspilli]

a little comic for jasons birthday. on being robin & batman and being brave & scared

[jellllllo-bowl]

gotham rainy nights

i firmly believe in Duke doing silly things with his power

hiding under your dad's cape when it's pouring outside can be something very special + bat-rain-poncho, several years later

[boombaux]

[ashrayus]

some jasons and damians thats been piling up :]

(and tim and alfred the cat)

[itsdabatt]

when your crime lord son has glow in the dark eyes

[sunaddicted]

I love the idea of all the batkids kinda being weird with Bruce's money - Dick doesn't want it; Tim has his own money; Damian was born in luxury and doesn't really comprehend Bruce showing affection with money. And then there's Jason texting Bruce something like "put a couple of hundreds on my bank account" or just forwarding Bruce his bills because goddamn, that boy has pride but he's not stupid: if the old man wants to pay, let him fucking pay.

[paintedimagery]

This is stupid, I spent too long on this lmao

[boundbyreading]

Simone Di Meo batboys

[everwalldigan]

Bruce: who are you? A new crime lord?

Jason: *takes off his helmet*

Bruce: *squints suspiciously* a new crime lord who looks like a grown up version of my dead son?

Jason: *sighs in annoyance and forces a bright smile*

Bruce: JASON THE NEW CRIME LORD???

[msfcatlover]

Realizing that even though I generally headcanon Jason to be 6’3”-6’4”, I don’t want that for Reverse!Robins Jason. Even post-growth spurt, I don’t want that for him. Comics!Jason has been through enough, he’s earned being at least one full inch taller than his dad. An absolute, monstrous mountain of a man. Looms without even trying. Everyone needs to look up to make eye contact, and he’s insufferably smug about it.

RR!Jason has been through enough, I think he’s earned still being able to curl up under his dad’s cape—just barely fitting, but still being able to feel sheltered & safe if it comes to that. Still having family he can turn to, hide behind, and know they can protect him. He doesn’t have to, but he can.

(So, 6ft even.)

[amorkuku]

[mantareidraws]

Giving battinson the big birb hug he so desperately needs 🫂

[glitter-stained]

Random goon: Hey boss, were you the one to pick that name as an alias? And why this one?

Red Hood : I used to have another name, before... A long time ago. But that person is dead now. I get to choose for myself now, they can't take that from me. I won't let them.

Goon: Huh.

***

Random Goon: Say boss, why do you never take off your shirt in front of us?

Red Hood: Well uh, I actually have that really fucked scar on my chest and I'm not comfortable with...

Random Goon: Don't worry boss, we get it, you don't have to explain yourself to us.

***

Red Hood, high on some toxin: God, I wish my family...

Random Goon (on boss-sitting duty): why not try reaching out to them?

Red Hood: They would never accept me as I am now... They wouldn't agree with my so-called "life choices". Besides, they don't miss me, they miss the person they think I used to be... I wasn't even a man when I last saw them.

Random Goon: Damn boss, that sucks.

***

And then the goons throw the Red Hood a party on trans visibility day and Jason is so confused he straight up cries.

[this-canadian-girl]

I genuinely love how in batfam fanfics….

Dick is like: little D (Damian), Timmy Tim, little wing (Jason) I’m on my way my baby bros!!!

And then in canon….

Dick: *perpetually perturbed by his codependent siblings but knows he’ll never not answer cause who else is gonna pull their dumbassses out the gutter*