"I don't know." Jason shrugged and stared down at his feet. "Started off an only child. Had a dad who sucked at his job--all of his jobs--and a mom who tried but couldn't seem to figure life out. Sure, I imagined what it would be like to have a brother or sister, but I never thought it'd happen. My dad went to jail. My mom got sick. That's not a recipe for making more kids. And then my mom died, and my dad, and there definitely weren't going to be any new Todds." If Castiel had trouble understanding the Bat family structure, he was about to get a lesson in it.
"Bruce didn't adopt me unitl Dick had already moved out of the house. Dick tried to be around. Trouble was, the two of the were fighting. So yeah, I got a brother, but not a live-in one. And then there was the whole dying thing, coming back from the grave, Lazarus Pit, attempted murder. Kind of puts a dent in developing family ties. I wasn't home when Bruce adopted Cass or Tim, or when he found out about Damian. Which is a longwinded way of saying that having siblings happened, whether I wanted it to or not." He didn't know if the angel understood the concept of adoption, but Jason could get to that later if it needed to be explained. The point was that having brothers and sisters was something entirely out of Jason's hands. Bruce seemed to be in competition with Selina to outpace her cat adoptions with his orphan adoptions.
Jason might have continued if Castiel's attention hadn't strayed. He raised an eyebrow, wondering what the angel saw in his dog. Ace had a violent history that, in retrospect, had foreshadowed Jason's own. Unlike Jason, however, Ace didn't worry every small detail like a stone between restless fingers. When Ace had become violent, he'd done it to survive. That was all. He'd had no other choice. Jason had.