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Jason returns to Gotham for the first time in four years, and he gets distracted. Years of training, gone because he lets the green seething rage think for him instead of using his whole fucking brain.
Everything is just–too much all at once and it makes Jason a little bit stupid.
His revenge plan goes off the rails and in all the wrong directions and he doesn't care. All he cares about is himself, and Bruce, and everything wrong with their relationship. Somehow, someway, Jason manages to make the whole thing about Jason.
And then he runs into Penelope Murrillo, a woman two years his senior who used to watch him for his mama before she moved two streets away. He doesn't recognize her at first; it's been over a decade since he last saw her.
She's smiling, and she'll never be able to stop.
A year. It takes a year in Gotham and one chance encounter for Jason to remember:
Barbara Gordon isn't the only person in the world who was a victim of the Joker and has to live with what he did to her for the rest of her life.
And Jason Todd sure as hell wasn't the Clown's first child casualty.
So, it is about Jason, a little bit. The Joker spent three hours torturing him with a crowbar while the woman who claimed to be his biological mother stood back and chain smoked, thinking she was saving her ass, only to get blown up with him anyway. None of it is about Sheila Haywood, because 15-year-old Jason tried to save her even though he was already mostly a corpse, but 20-year-old Jason could not give less of a shit. It's a little bit about Barbara Gordon, too, because her only mistake was thinking she was safe in her own home, and now she'll never really be able to feel that way again.
Mostly, it's about every single other living, breathing person in Gotham, and every single soul Death has had to collect in between the Joker breaking himself out of Arkham and the Bat putting him back, again. And again and again and again.
Mostly, it's about the Bat, and how he puts the Joker on one side of a scale, and he puts Gotham's living population on the other, and somehow– somehow –the scale is always balanced.
Except when his 15 year old son was the victim. Then the Clown stays right where he is after the briefest of unbalancings, and a third side is added to the scale that holds the livelihoods and wellbeings and 'second-chances' of all of Gotham's petty criminals and lowest ranking gang members, and that side of the scale dips and keeps dipping and stays down until a 12-year-old child has to drag a grown man out of his suicide spiral before he kills himself or finally takes it too far and kills someone else.
It takes him a year. He had most of four years to learn and train with the green seething rage that is entirely his and not the Pit's. But coming back to Gotham, seeing everything he knew from all his information gathering in real time…it distracted him. He became distracted.
His teachers–every single one of them–would be so disappointed. He was disappointed.
The best training in the world, and Jason loses his mind because he got distracted .
So he leaves. He eventually realizes what the fuck happened and instead of wallowing in his self-recrimination and personal failures, he leaves. Makes some friends, kills some people who really don't deserve to keep breathing. Gets blown up and shot and stabbed and repeatedly has his ass handed to him by one of the most badass immortal women warriors he's ever met.
And when his friends leave, to space or to give their families another try or both, he goes back to the Himalayas. Jason needs a reminder of who he is, of all of the things and all of the people who made him, who helped him make himself.
Ducra kicks his ass, too. It's good for him.
And then she sits him down for one of the longest and most horrible conversations of his life, and Jason is entirely honest with her and with himself, because he respects Ducra too much not to be.
When they're done, she takes him for a walk around the buildings that make up the compound. They end their walk at the shrine on the edge of the Fields of All and Ducra tells him to sit, to meditate and to pray. She tells him to stay however long he needs.
Jason kind of wants to cry. Not very many people have ever been sincere in their offers to let him stay as long as he pleases. Even fewer were honest about always welcoming him back.
Jason trusts Ducra with everything that he is, and everything that he will be. He believes every word she says.
Jason stays. He accepts some truths about himself and about the people he loves. It takes him a while. When he has a difficult time, or is just being difficult, other members of the All-Caste are perfectly willing to try to beat his head in–violently, and with care. He happily returns the favour.
He spends three months with the All-Caste before Ducra hands him a packed bag and a beautifully decorated box containing a matching set of knives. She tells him to leave before his pacing wears another path in her garden, and accepts the hug he gives her before he leaves.
He debates travelling for another while longer before discarding the thought and making his way back to Gotham. His city needs him, and as much as he sometimes hates it, he loves his city too much to turn his back on her again.
He needed a break, so he took it. But he's ready to go again. And again and again and again.
Starting with that fucking clown.