#todd.

“The family requested no autopsy.” 

“He died in an explosion connected to terrorists and no one was on the scene for three hours. He’s getting an autopsy.” Cattrice settles herself into Torres’ office, sliding the body out of the fridge. The body is tiny and pale, and it’s nothing she hasn’t seen before. But it always hurts to see how small kids are. How fragile.

The body is so broken and ragdolled that it takes both of them a full minute gently transfer him to a stretcher and then the table.

There’s fractures up and down his legs. Forearms are bent at odd angles, folded awkwardly across his chest so he would fit in the cooler. Left fibula is practically bone dust. Ribcage is sunken-- hell, the entire torso is deflated. Left zygomatic arch, temporal & pareital lobe are smashed inward, the left side of his face is stomach-churningly concave, eye squished deep in it’s socket. His right temple is cracked, another crater in the boy’s face.

Distal phalanges are splinters, bones of the wrist click oddly as they arrange his hands prone on the table. Bones groan as his left arm is gently re-set into something more human. He’s burned, bruised, broken. His mouth is open, jaw pulverized. He died screaming, and his face is still half-contorted in pain.

Jesus, the poor kid.

“The hell happened to him?”

“Bruce Wayne’s his parent. Brought him to us after we picked him up Ethiopia and claimed it was an explosion by some terrorist group.” Cattrice’s tone shows that she doesn’t believe a word of it.

“That can’t be all it was.” Torres is from Gotham. She knows what an explosion looks like, after dealing with the aftermath of dozens of Penguin’s attacks. This was something more. There’s burns but it’s-- something’s not right. “These marks are too random to be an explosion. Even with shrapnel.”

“You read my mind. Think Bruce did it? Doesn’t have a history of abuse, but he’s also rich. Never know. Maybe the explosion was a way to cover it up.”

Torres shakes her head. “I hope not.” A pause. “His eyes. What’s that mark?” Cattrice looks confused and Torress points. A finger traces it a few inches above the skin. Deep red sunken lines, something pressed into the skin hard enough to leave impressions that last after rigor mortus.

“Something under his eye.” Cattrice points out. Black fabric peeks out of Jason’s eyelid. Tweezers gently pry out some plastic material that had been lodged in there. Then, a puzzle clicking into place, Torres realizes the strange wounds around his eyes were from a mask. A domino mask, pressed deep into the skin with each blow.

“This kid’s Robin.” Torres whispers. “Bruce Wayne’s a maniac, letting his kid go out with-- Wait. That means Batman’s--”

“Focus, Jess.” Cattrice is bent over, looking at the boy’s mouth with a penlight. “There’s burning in the back of his throat. He survived these beating through the explosion.”

“That explains why Batman’s so angry.” Torres points out, Cattrice glares at her again. “Sorry. No cape talk. Got it.”

Cattrice continued to move downward, examining bruises and fractures. “He’s already got a y-incision. Is that why his chest’s concave?”

“He requested no autopsy because one’s already been done by Batman.” Cattrice huffed, cutting open the sutures. “I’m not going to be able to use any of this as evidence if the body’s already been tampered with.”

“He did an autopsy on his own kid? Jesus.”

“Grief makes people do strange things. Hand me the forceps.” She digs in the burn over his right chest, scraping away the ashes. “Kevlar melted to the skin.” A singed yellow and black R shines in the morgue’s lights. He’d died as Robin, and he’s still Robin even now.

“Do you think he liked it?”

“Jess.”

“No, really. Do you think he liked being Robin? He died as Robin. At least he was doing something he liked, right?”

“I think I already hated the idea of Robin and now I’m even more against it. He’s dead. It’s not our place to put thoughts in his head.”

Torres nods. “I know that. It’s still hard.”

“It’s always hard. That’s why we do this job, so others who can’t do have to. You can do this, right?” Cattrice looks up at her partner, taking stock of how she’s holding up. Just barely.

It’s harder when they’re kids, it always is.

She continues poking at the boy’s calves, noting down each injury. “It was a pipe, or rebar. Something with a sharp edge. See these?” There are two large gashes in his outer calf, skin curling back to show muscles beneath. “Something the attacker used caught in the skin and yanked away to pry open these.” She stands, turning the recorder on.

“This is Dr. Will Cattrice, forensic pathologist with the GCPD. Assisting is Dr. Jess Torres. External survey shows--” She pauses, taking a breath. “External survey shows burns covering the right side of the body. The left side is covered in broken bones and bruises. Starting at the head, fractures are found in:

“Pareital, frontal, occipital, all from some sort of blunt force trauma. Nasal cavity is destroyed. Black leather was found lodged under his eyelid. There’s bruising around the eyes that suggests--”

“Will!”

Cattrice shuts the recording device off. “We have to give a full report.”

“His kid just died. He doesn’t need the public clamoring about Robin.”

“This isn’t going to go to the public. But we can’t just leave out evidence.” Recorder flicks back on.

“There’s bruising around the eye in the shape of a domino mask. Yellow and red fragments embedded in the chest and green fabric under the fingernails that suggest Todd wore some sort of brightly colored kevlar costume during death. There’s... There’s a high probability that Batman’s Robin is the one laying on our table. Seems to be no neck injuries. Burn damage to the maxilla and back of throat, suggesting he was breathing at the time of the explosion.

“Further down, the chest already has a Y-incision, suggesting organs were removed before the body was released to us. The nature of that can only be speculated on, but it appears that Batman did an autopsy on Robin himself. All findings will be inadmissible in court, but will still help us discover cause of death.