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Jason had been upset when Talia showed him news of the new Robin.
Okay. Jason had been fucking devastated. Whatever.
None of it had prepared him for what it would be like to come back to Gotham and see them. See Robin, flying with Batman, like nothing had changed. Like none of it had mattered. Like Jason's death meant nothing.
Seeing it in person, it made Jason angry.
Clearly, the lesson hadn't stuck the first time. Jason needed to remind them. He needed to make it sink into Batman's thick skull that no kid wearing that suit was safe.
That was why Jason was at Titan’s Tower. The Bat and his new Robin were about to get a wake up call.
Jason used the thermal setting in his helmet to track down the bird. When he entered, Robin was in the security room, probably trying to circumvent the damage Jason had done to the Tower’s systems. Then he started running, heading upstairs towards Robin's room. The one that both Dick and Jason had used, too. The one where his main costume would be stored.
Jason headed him off before he could get there.
Jason stood in a hallway and let Robin come to him. The kid skidded around a corner and to a sudden stop, nearly losing his balance by slipping in his socks. He was wearing a large black t-shirt and pajama pants patterned with red and gold superman logos. He recovered, trying to stand straight and dignified; Jason almost wanted to tell him not to bother. It wasn't like he'd had any respect for the bird in the first place.
“You're the Red Hood,” Robin said aloud, both a deduction and a greeting. His voice was cold when he added, “You're cleaning up Gotham the easy way.”
“Easy?" Jason snarled. “What do you know about easy, Robin? Is it so difficult for you, hiding under Batman's wing?” Jason lifted his hands to the back of his helmet, breaking its airtight seal. “I'll show you just what–”
Jason scented the air in the hall for the first time, and paused.
At first, he thought that there must be someone else close by, which didn't make any sense. The rest of the titans were incapacitated, he'd made absolutely sure of that, and there was no way for Robin to get a signal out to call for backup. But the way the air in the hall smelled didn't make any sense to him.
People described scents differently, but to Jason, Alphas tended to smell earthy, like spices and musk, Betas had light, fresh scents, and Omegas were sweet, like baked goods. Jason thought his own scent was a bit like Alfred's apple turnovers.
The scent around him was almost like… curry? Spices and savory undertones, sweet sugar and cinnamon that lingered on the palate. It made Jason think that there must be an alpha and an omega somewhere close, until he took a deeper breath and found that he couldn't separate the contrasting notes into two different, complete scents. They'd be too thin alone, not the complexity that made up the scent identity of a whole person. That smell must be Robin, but Jason simply couldn't place it.
“What's your designation?” Jason blurted out before he could think better of it. Jason felt like he should know that, but learning about the kid himself hadn't felt all that important, not when all he wanted was to beat him into the ground. He thought his name was Tom, or something.
Robin went from performatively determined and calculating to closed off (and… upset?) in less than a second. “None of your business,” he said, defensive but more quiet than before.
Jason tilted his helmeted head to one side. “You aren't wearing scent blockers,” he argued.
Robin glared and said, “Yeah, because I didn't know someone was going to break into my house.”
“This isn't your house,” Jason pointed out.
“I live here!” Robin said, and actually stomped his foot like a little pup.
Jason snorted. “C'mon, kid, it's not a hard question.”
Robin crossed his arms and looked away. Which was not a very good combat position to take when a crime lord broke into your tower. “I don't have a designation,” Robin said flatly.
Jason felt his forehead wrinkle in confusion. “You're a Beta?” he asked. Sometimes people were weird about considering Beta a “real” designation. But that didn't match the scent, either.
“No,” Robin said, his glare venomous.
“You're… unpresented?” Jason tried. It was possible at his age, even if it didn't make any sense.
“No!” Robin snarled. “I'm nontrinary, okay!? I don't have a designation. I take hormones that alter my scent so it smells the way I want. Happy?”
“Oh shit,” Jason realized, “You're trans.” Now he felt like a real heel. “Fuck, sorry, that was shitty of me. I guess– I guess I haven't been keeping up with the terminology. That's my bad.” In his defense, he had been pretty distracted. And dead. Jason scratched awkwardly at the top of his helmet, and promptly felt extremely stupid. “Look, I swear I wasn't trying to pick at it,” he said, and unadvisedly added, “I'm trans, too. Transgender, not transdesignation.”
“Oh,” Robin said. He looked mildly less tense, but his stare was burrowing uncomfortably into Jason. Under his breath, he said, “Diversity win.”
“What?” Jason asked.
“Nothing,” Robin said. “I'm, um, also transgender. Nonbinary, I mean. No gender either. Enby and entri.” They put up a peace sign, apparently reflexively, and then quickly put their hand back down.
“Cool,” Jason said. “Pronouns?”
“He/him or they/them,” Robin answered.
Jason nodded. “He/him for me,” he clarified.
Robin nodded back. There were a few awkward seconds of silence.
“Uh, Red Hood?” Robin asked.
“Yeah?” Jason said.
“What are you doing here?”
Jason sighed. “Honesty, I was gonna beat the shit out of you,” he said. “But I think that ship sailed.”
Actually, what had Jason been thinking? Why had he thought that was a good idea? He was generally not cool with grown men attacking fifteen year olds. But it had seemed so important, before.
Finally, Jason pulled off his helmet, wanting to get some air. He ran a hand through his hair and breathed in the kid's interesting curry scent.
Robin gaped at him. “Jason!?” they asked.
“Uh, yeah?” Jason hadn't expected the bird to immediately recognize him. He'd changed a lot, and surely Bruce wasn't eager to show off pictures of his failed Robin.
They shouted, “You're trans!?”
Huh. Bruce hadn't outed him. Not even to his next trans kid, who might’ve found it validating, or whatever. Huh.
Robin was muttering to themself. “How the fuck didn't I know that? I know everything about Jason Todd. I followed him around Gotham for years, and I didn't know my idol was trans?”
“You did what?” Jason asked. There was a lot to unpack there.
Wide eyes snapped back onto Jason. “Wait,” they said, “aren't you dead? Did you not die? Was the body fake? Did you fake your death? What else did I miss?” They went back to mumbling under their breath, dropping their gaze away from Jason and pacing the short path from one side of the hall to the other.
Jason cleared his throat. “Hey, so I'm gonna go,” he said, throwing a thumb over his shoulder. “All your little superfriends are fine, and the tower security should be back up in an hour or so.”
Robin's head whipped towards him. “You're leaving?” they asked. “But what about–”
Jason flipped a card onto the ground – one of the ones he handed out in the alley to people who needed some help. “You can call the number on there if you wanna talk, Birdie, but I've got to get out of here and sort my shit out.”
Robin gazed down at the card. “Jason Todd's phone number,” they said reverently.
Yeah, the kid was fuckin’ weird. Seemed alright, though. “Don't get murdered by any clowns,” Jason warned.
“Oh my God, the Joker is transphobic.”
Jason laughed, a good, hard laugh, with no malice, for the first time in a very, very long while. He waved at the bird and was gone.