DA Meadow: The Sinner and the Sadist (A Jason Todd/Red Hood Fanfiction) BOOK 1

Thirty Two: Words

As mentioned before I am mostly following the storyline of Batman: Under The Red Hood. However to suit this fanfiction I have changed the background ever so slightly. It makes no massive difference in the overall outcome of Jason Todd's life.

~

He can count on one hand the amount of times someone had told him those three words.

Growing up it had been him, his father and his stepmother. They struggled often, but Jason remembers that despite this he cared for the man.

But then, he ended up in jail.

Even when Willis Todd was released, he did not return to his son. Jason was left with his drug addict step mother. Left to fend for himself, hocking stolen car parts.

When she died from an overdose, he collected some final things from the house and ran off, to find his real mother. He would live with her.

Odd letters had shown up throughout his life. Three, promising that one day they would see each other. He could have his real mother; the one who he was sure held him as a baby.

The twelve year old searched. Then he searched some more. But no matter what, he could find her nowhere in Gotham city.

Until he did. He hadn't expected it- not really. A deal went down with some fine wheels he took of a Lancer. 

He had made an offhand comment involving his mother's name. It got a gang member's attention. Jason will never forget that conversation.

"Todd?... You talkin' 'bout Sarah, kid?"

"So what if I am?"

"Chill out. Last we seen of her she was running around with Two Face's lieutenant. Willem or somethin'. Til some foreign gang wiped out the entire operation. Some vigilante shot her face up."

Everything had clicked at that moment. His father had been released from prison and he had found the mother of his son. Jason was sure they would come to get him afterwards...but they had died too soon.

And so months of living on the mean streets ensued. Stealing more car parts, learning to fight rough and sleeping in alleyways.

Then the chance of a lifetime came along. He attempted to take the wheels of the infamous Batmobile. 

Something that is in Jason's list of 'Best Decisions Ever'. 

Taken under the wing of the vigilante Batman. Adopted by the billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne. Jason thought himself the luckiest man alive, for the first time.

Then he felt the unluckiest. Beaten and broken on the floor, bomb ticking down its last three seconds. He had thought of his regrets.

Never would he rip out the throat of his parent's killers.

The words 'I love you' were never even present on his lips in his past years. Not to his father, Bruce, Dick. No one. He had never told anyone he loved them.

And more importantly... No one had told him. Not his father, stepmother, Dick, Bruce. He'd seen it written by his mother, but that was it.

The words were foreign. Perhaps that is why he could not even say it out loud in English. Had to be Arabic. It had to be cryptic. 

For a second time, he felt something like luck when his once lifeless body breathed their air again. Oxygen had been allowed to his lungs and a second chance given.