ahhhhh

Like Jason shields Duke from some massive explosion or something, and Duke is horrified because he thinks Jason just pointlessly sacrificed himself for someone who would've been fine anyway - only for Jason to very casually come back from the dead, look at a completely unscathed Duke Thomas, and go, "Hey, what the fuck."

And Duke should look at a freshly revived Jason Todd and be like, "Me what the fuck? No you what the fuck."

And they end up both agreeing to not say a word about this to the rest of the Bats. Which poses issues. Because here you have a pair of unhinged vigilante siblings that do not fear death, that additionally now know they don't have to fear each other's deaths either, both unwilling to give anything less than everything they have to do what they think is right (and/or what they really, really want to).

So. Some things that happen in consequence:

Duke throws Jason off a fifty-story building in pursuit of some shoplifting rich asshole that was caught on camera insulting Duke's favorite metal band and being a classist fuck about it. This does, incidentally, re-traumatize Nightwing, who was ten feet away and not prepared to see his little brother yeeted off the side of a building, no grapple in sight - but it also traumatizes the shoplifter when Jason lands right in front of him, grotesquely knits himself back together, and rises from the ground in a distinctly horrifying fashion just to beat the shit out of him. So Duke takes the win.

Jason shoots Duke in the head to get him to stop shining light in his eyes in the middle of a gunfight. He does stop, but only because Batman shows up out of nowhere, and now Duke gets to pretend to be grievously injured while Batman yells at Jason about "self-control" and "maturity" and "putting teammates at risk." Meanwhile Duke is playing up this horrible concussion that he doesn't even have. Jason is seething. (Duke gets checked out at Leslie's. They convince her to lie for them by appealing to her inner petty bitch.)

Jason gets his payback a few months later by poisoning himself at an undercover op and subsequently forcing Duke to drag his dead body around a mob-owned nightclub for like half an hour trying to convince seasoned criminals that this brick shithouse of a man sprawled awkwardly across his back is just... really wasted. Totally not a corpse.

Both Jason and Duke get caught in many, many, many explosions after that initial reveal, and it's always terrifying for the rest of the Bats. It gets to a point where Batman refuses to partner Duke and Jason together for literally anything, because they always act fucking insane. Big metal vehicle moving hundreds of miles an hour towards an unsuspecting civilian? That's okay! Jason will just throw Duke in front if it. Unknown, volatile substance potentially being used by a notorious serial killer to murder his victims? No lab testing required! Duke will just pour a whole pint of the stuff on Jason's bare arm to see how it reacts. Bomb that can't be disarmed? Why wait for backup when these two* can just grab the thing and jump into the harbor? Like, genuinely. The stress. Bruce is one particularly traumatic incident away from actually considering therapy.

- No batarang to the throat/implied second ressurection + to escape from batarang to the throat they made Jason into a compelte idiot;

- Jason frees the Joker for his revenge scheme, which goes against the Joker *already being free* as in the comic (which actually reinforces Jason's points)

- No unexplained resurrection/Talia ressurecting him using the Lazarus Pit

jason fans:

DADDY’S NO. 1 SACRIFICIAL LAMB

FATHER’S FAVOURITE PUNCHING BAG

PAPA’S DEFAULT SCAPEGOAT

(Batman 411 by Max Collins with art by Dave Cockrum)

And btw for an exact shot of Two-Face (albeit, not Harvey) getting full-body slammed into feet first by a Gotham vigilante during Jason's Robin, can I interest you in:

(Detective Comics 581 by Mike W. Barr with art by Jim Baikie and Pablo Marcos)

The 60s Teen Titans run has a habit of using name riffs or nicknames rather than proper titles a lot, and one of the most common ones (especially by Dick) is Wonder Chick. Obviously, the intention was to add variety to the dialogue, and chick means girl, ergo.

But to me, when I see “chick”, my first association is “baby bird”. So our Wonder Twins, Dick and Donna, become Robin and Wonder Chick. Robin, a bird often used to signify youth or innocence due to the spring connection, and chick, a baby bird. They’re two little birds.

They’re twin baby birds, and it makes my heart ache more than a bit.

And let me tell you why, because Jason didn’t die because he was reckless and went after the Joker, he didn’t die because he was disobedient and didn’t want to listen to Bruce. He did that because he trusts Sheila. Because he trusts his mother. So he followed Sheila and followed his mother and followed her into the warehouse because his mom told him to. And because he loves his mother, and he was trying to help her and he was trying to save her. He died because he put his trust in the wrong person, he died because Joker beat him up so bad that he could only crawl, he died because Joker placed a bomb, he died because he was trying to save someone he loved, he died because in his last moment he tried to cover her from the explosion and took most of the blast. That’s why.

I started thinking about it because of these two panels. Bruce is (rightfully) chastizing Jason about not letting his anger control him, when Jason points out the hypocrisy of that. It's a fair point, considering Bruce just tried to kill the Joker a few issues ago due to a lost temper. This conversation seemed like a good opportunity to discuss their similarities, how Bruce deals with it, morality in general and etc.

But instead, Bruce just... deflects.

Later, they briefly talk about it in the cave. But it's framed more as Jason letting his pesky emotions about Two Face interrupt their crimefighting, rather than the complex grief that it is.

Not to mention that other than the confrontation when Jason discovered Bruce keeping his dad's death a secret, they really haven't talked about how Jason feels over his parents. We see it, like when Jason is crying in bed all day, but there's no real conversation, at least not that I've gotten to yet.

(The photos in question:)