They’re not happy. Jason’s not the Robin they want, but he’s seen/heard too much once Shiela tricks him into the meeting, and they might as well get something out of this meeting. They fake Jason’s death with Shiela, the bomb, flesh too charred to get a DNA reading off of, a dangerous amount of blood, and hack off one of Jason’s arms before pumping him full of experimental healing drugs so they can stick a new one on and don’t end up with a one-armed Talon. (It never connects quite right, and Jason is always a little clumsier and a little bit number on that side.)

Jason wakes up in the labyrinth, fighting off the drugs & shock, with an arm that looks dead, doesn’t move right, and that he knows he should not have anymore. He’s not ready, his body isn’t chemically prepared for the procedure, so they keep dragging him back to the medical area, talking over him like he’s not there, and when Jason fights back, the punishments are brutal. There’s also plenty of classical conditioning, trying to train him to do what they want one step at a time. (He loses fingernails & teeth, because those are easy sources of extreme pain that won’t damage him in the long term, but he does piss them off worse. Jason learns that broken bones hurt worse when forced to heal too quickly. Spitting in one of the doctors’ masks cost him color in his right eye. The shock collar was just to make him put on the hood originally, but eventually they just… left it on. Food can be bought only with cooperation, and it’s a hefty price indeed.)

Jason does hold out for an impressively long time. First it’s because he thinks he needs to wait to be saved; they break that hope by showing him his own funeral. Then it’s because he needs to escape, though his attempts all come to naught. In the end, Jason hangs on because he listened when the Owls talked over him, and he knows they’re just using Jason as a trial run; he knows they’re planning to go after Dick. The longer Jason holds on, the longer his big brother will be safe. Conditioning corrupts that, though. Memories fade, names slip through his fingers, he’s… he knows he’s here for a purpose. Protecting someone. Someone the Court will also make Talon if he fails—no one should go through this, and that person is (warmth & sunshine, bright smiles & sky blue) is important, and he can’t… he can’t fail. He can’t let them down.

If he can just be a good enough Talon, that person will be safe. (This is what carries him through the training, the treatment, the cold, humiliation, and death, death, death, death, death. He can do it. He can be good enough. He’ll keep them safe.)

And then. The Court gets what they want.

Jason doesn’t realize it at first (of course not, who tells a Talon anything?) He doesn’t realize it until the base is under attack, all the Talons are woken up and sent to defensive positions, and he finds their newest prisoner in the middle of an escape attempt. He freezes for just a second, hands on his knives, trying to make sense of this. His voice is still hoarse from scarring and flat from disuse when, for the first time in well over five years, he says, “Dick Grayson?” (He didn’t even know he still knew that name.) Dick has been fighting Talons since he got here (and is pretty drugged up himself,) and acts on instinct. Dick strikes out, and it’s not until he knocks the Talon down that he realizes it’s only fighting defensively—and only because it stops fighting altogether. It just lays there on the floor, staring at him through that blank hood. “Dick Grayson,” the Talon says again, and this time Dick can make out what almost sounds like confusion in its voice, “You shouldn’t be here.”

Dick doesn’t know what to make of the Talon that helps him escape. Dick does try to help the Talon back (raiding a bat-safehouse to check both of them for trackers and to change their clothes. The Talon seems hesitant to change out of the uniform, even when Dick turns away and promises not to look. Dick still catches just a glimpse of the old scarring on the Talon’s neck out of the corner of his eye, thinks of how hoarse the Talon’s voice was, and feels sick.)

The Talon stays with Dick all the way to the back entrance of the Batcave, but when Dick turns to ask if they want to come in, the Talon is gone.

(When Dick tries to explain everything that happened to the rest of the family will be the first time he realizes: “The other Talons, they were very formal, full names only. ‘Richard Grayson, the Court of Owls commands’ blah-blah-blah. The Owls just called me Grayson. But the Talon who helped me called me Dick.” “Do you think it was someone you knew?” Tim asks. Dick manages a weak, humorless laugh. “I don’t know, Tim. Maybe?” Dick thinks of the scars again, the breathy rasp of the Talon’s voice, and swallows. “Gods, I hope not.”)

It’s not the last time they meet, though. Not by a long shot.

(The Talon cannot go back to the Court, not after having the greatest failure possible dangled in front of its face, stealing the Court’s prisoner, and… and what if they try to take Dick again? No, no, can’t let that happen, can’t let this happen to Dick too, not after everything. Never, ever, ever again.)

(And gradually, the Talon begins to find Jason Todd in the graveyard of his own mind.)

.

I have several scenes I really, really love drafted (the moment when Dick convinces the other bats to see Jason as an ally. The moment Jason realizes what his connection to Dick actually is. The entire sequence where Dick finally realizes who Jason is, who Jason has been this whole time.) I also have a few concepts that won’t seem to go right on paper, like a final confrontation with Cobb, and Bruce finally seeing his second son face-to-face for the first time in years.