Chapter Text
Jason opened his eyes, and found he was somewhere else.
His hands were wrapped so tight around a railing in front of him, he could feel the iron digging into his palm through his gloves. Green gloves. Thick gauntlets that covered his forearms. Not black with metal studs on the knuckles. A cape tugged at his neck, and his legs were cold. He looked over the ledge of the balcony, not through a helmet but a domino mask.
A body was broken on the pavement below.
He knew where he was.
“Robin. Did Felipe fall, or was he pushed?”
Bruce came home alone after Felipe’s death, because Jason swung off on his own, grim and without explanation. He didn’t see him come back to the cave, or hear him returning to his room for the night.
Bruce paced in the master bedroom, his mind stuck in dark alleys and cold pavements. He had tried and failed to sleep. He could feel that he wasn’t going to be quieting his mind any time soon. His dressing gown flapped around his legs as he walked the length of the room.
The last time he walked down Crime Alley he took a tire iron to the stomach and got called a big boob. It had made him laugh then. It seemed so removed from the rest of the world. The reality where Bruce’s parents bled out on dirty concrete.
It was foolish of him. Jason was a product of that world. In a way even Bruce was not.
Maybe it was a mistake to put the boy in a costume.
Just because he had survived terrible things already, didn’t mean he was suited to it. As his training had already proven, many of the habits he developed to survive the streets worked against him in the field. The happy, bubbly schoolboy was swallowed whole by the brutality of Gotham’s boy wonder.
Bruce dragged his hand down his face.
He never felt so ill equipped for anything as he did when it came to parenting. He almost wished there would be some emergency in the city that would demand his focus. It might even give Jason some time to calm down.
He shook his head against the thought, and marched to the door. The criminal class had never bowed to his convenience before, if they started tonight it would be purely to make him regret wishing for it.
He opened the door.
Jason stood in the hallway. He was paused in front of his own open bedroom, looking in. Bruce recognised the baggy brightly coloured clothes he wore as something Dick had forgotten in the cave. Odd.
Bruce watched him, searchingly. He didn’t know what for.
Jason stared back at him.
The yellow light of Bruce’s room streamed out, painting his long shadow along the length of the hall. The stripes of shadow rested on Jason’s blank face. He looked tired. More tired than his fifteen years should be able to produce. His eyes were hard.
The hardness of a killer?
It certainly wasn’t regret.
He might not have done it. Maybe he was telling the truth when he said Felipe slipped. But Bruce suspected, and that was condemnation enough. How could he work with a partner he didn’t trust?
“You got something to say, old man?”
Bruce pulled his door shut.
Bruce didn’t see him much for a couple of days. He didn’t come down to the cave. The batcomputer logged sporadic use from Jason’s account, and there was evidence of him using the training equipment when Bruce wasn’t looking. The books he had started and left throughout the manor went untouched.
At dinner, Jason watched him carefully. He had done that back when he first came to the manor, but it had eased off as they learned to trust each other. It was back to full tilt, with a sharpness that was all robin.
Alfred told him he had stopped sleeping in his room. He was using the empty room one door down. It annoyed Alfred more than anything else, but the pointed comments on the subject Bruce overheard did not provoke any explanation.
It was odd.
Jason had never been a grim child before. Even when he was upset or guilty, he was a firecracker. HIs emotions were too big for his child’s body, Bruce always thought, and they burst out of him with or without his permission.
Now he was a brick wall. Whatever was happening in there wasn’t getting out.
A quiet descended over the manor. Bruce missed the bright eyed kid sitting in his office, chattering away about the latest thing he was learning at school.
The change was so drastic he started keeping notes. Alfred suspected it was unresolved trauma from his parent’s death. That seemed plausible. Bruce suspected it was shock over realising his own capacity for harm. Alfred didn’t think that was likely, as Jason had been getting more reckless and violent for months. Self destructive.
He and Alfred did agree that he was too unstable to be working.
He wished that Dick was here. He was much more perceptive about this sort of thing, and about dealing with other people’s emotions sensitively. But not only was he not in Gotham, he wasn’t even on the planet.
After a dinner he ate alone, Bruce tracked him down to the manor roof. He wondered if he was smoking again.
Jason was leaning with his elbows on the edge of a parapet. The wind tousled his hair.
The sun was setting. Vibrant orange danced over the treetops that hid most of Gotham from here. The towers of the commercial sector could still be seen, a cluster of spikes of glass and concrete soaked in blood red light.
Batman would be setting off into the city soon, alone.
Tense over what was sure to be a fight, he walked quietly over the roof. He stopped some distance away, downwind from him and out of sight. He couldn’t smell any smoke. Maybe he hadn’t lit up yet.
Jason looked wistful. From this angle Gotham was beautiful. You couldn’t smell the filth, or see the enemy at this distance.
Jason lowered his head. His expression turned sad. It ached in Bruce’s chest.
Maybe Alfred was right. This was grief.
“It feels like nothing ever changes up here,” Jason said suddenly, still looking at the view.
Good awareness of his surroundings, Bruce thought with a melancholy pride. He didn’t even notice when Jason had spotted him. What potential he had. What a waste.
“Like I could come back in a thousand years and it’d be exactly the same,” Jason muttered, more to himself than any audience. “Go back to your grandparent’s time… and not even notice.”
“It used to be farmland,” Bruce said. He joined him at the low parapet. The grounds below were murky in the shadow of the trees. He nodded at the neighbouring Drake manor to the south. “We were surrounded by orchards when I was a boy.”
“You come up here much as a kid?”
“Only once. We were having the gutters cleaned. I followed the workers up the stairs and watched them from that landing, until my father called me down.”
“Hn.” Jason looked out across the grounds again. The burning disk of the sun had disappeared, and the wells of shadow were taking ground.
Bruce looked at him long and hard.
You know, I was scared of heights,” he admitted.
Jason snorted. “Were you?”
“I was determined to stay up on the roof until it didn’t scare me anymore.”
“How long did that take?”
He shook his head. “It didn’t. When my father told me to come down, it was a relief… to have permission to go easier on myself.”
“Shame you didn’t learn anything.”
“...Jason–”
“I don’t want to be Robin anymore.”
Bruce shut his mouth, gobsmacked. Relief followed hot on the heels of shock.
He put a hand on Jason’s shoulder. “I think that’s for the best, son.”
Jason looked at his hand, then up at his face. Searching.
“I know,” he said, coldly. He scoffed and looked away again. “I’d rather jump than get pushed.”
Bruce furrowed his brow and took his hand back. “What’s important is having your feet firmly on the ground again.”
“Uh-huh.”
Jason ducked past him back to the door.
Bruce stood alone at the edge for a moment. The last of the red light had leached from the sky. The shadows clawed ever higher.
His relief settled into the silts of suspicion.
Dick would have never willingly given up Robin. And Jason loved it. He always held onto what was his with dogged determination, it was what made him so good at it in the first place. And so volatile when it went wrong.
Bruce looked over the edge. The grass below was too dark to see.
I’d rather jump than get pushed.
Suspicion soured into concern. He looked back at the door that had closed silently behind the boy.
He resolved to check on Jason again over the next month, once he had had time to calm down. He might lock up the Robin suit too in the meantime. He didn’t like this.
He descended down into the bowls of the manor, and set off into the night.
Gotham was quiet.
Gordon had been on a rampage since Barbara’s paralysis six months earlier. The Joker hadn’t been seen since, and all the other usual trouble makers were keeping their heads down.
Batman perched on a gargoyle overlooking a main road. He was tracking movement from a cartel that was trying to get a foothold in Gotham, but it seemed even they weren’t up to much tonight.
With no Robin, no Batgirl, no Nightwing, it was just him and the wind.
He used to prefer it that way. It didn’t feel like missing a limb in those days. He scowled. He would just have to get used to it. It was better this way and he knew it.
He hoped Jason was doing his homework right now. Maybe he had finished his work and was reading. He would scrunch up his forehead and stick his tongue out the side of his mouth when he was really focused. He was so happy to learn.
The wind howled by.
He launched his grapple gun and swung away.
His route took him near Gordon’s house, where he knew Barbara was grudgingly staying. He stopped on the rooftop of a nearby building and peered over. He visited her as often as she allowed. It wasn’t very often anymore. She had locked herself down, simmering away in her own head while the ruins of her life fell through her fingers.
It was a travesty.
He caught sight of her through the blinds. She sat at a desk, sketching something. Her jaw jutted out to the side and her eyes were narrowed: a habit she had had even as Batgirl whenever she was working on something that refused to cooperate. Her shoulders were tense.
That was what Jason reminded him of, he realised with a jolt. The simmering fury. Locking everyone out.
How dramatic of him. Babs had suffered a catastrophic loss. Jason… Jason had his wounds, but Babs’ life was never going to be the same. There wasn’t the same excuse for his anger. It had always concerned Bruce, the way he simmered, then exploded.
I’d rather jump than get pushed.
Maybe he should check on Jason sooner than planned.
It never seemed like a good time.
But crime arrived, on its own time as it always did, and Batman went out to meet it.
Felipe Gazronas’ father died in pursuit of vengeance for his son. Only Robin wasn’t there to be avenged upon and Batman wasn’t going to give him the pleasure.
He couldn’t rescue Jose Garzonas from the wreckage he toppled over onto himself in time. The father died crushed under a wrecked car not a week after his son fell to his death.
Batman wished Jason was there to see it. Maybe it would have gotten through to him: there were consequences for every action.
Maybe it would have been just one more traumatic thing a hurting child would have to reckon with.
He should never have been Robin.
Bruce wandered into the kitchen one morning for a late breakfast.
Alfred was staring into a cream coloured batter in a silver bowl with a contemplative expression.
Bruce looked at him curiously while pulling a green smoothie from the fridge. He sat at the table and opened the day’s newspaper with a noisy ruffle of the pages. Alfred shook himself at the sound, and started spooning the mixture into a cake tin.
“Good morning, sir,” he greeted, somewhat belatedly, Bruce thought.
“Morning, alfred. Something on your mind?”
He pursed his lips and levelled out the top of the cake. “I am worried about that boy.”
Bruce stared at the words on the page without really seeing them. Friday 26th of April the cursive script read.
“What’s he done?”
He had checked the three latest robin suits just last night. None of them had been taken from the locker. There were no rumours on the street of a new, short, vigilante.
Alfred looked pensively into the depths of raw cake.
“While helping prepare breakfast this morning he asked me why he didn’t have a will.”
“What?”
“He said for someone risking his life on Gotham’s streets, surely it was arrogant to assume nothing would go wrong.”
Bruce’s brow furrowed. He laid the paper down flat on the table.
“What did you say?”
“I confess I was taken by surprise and didn’t take the query seriously. I asked if he had any plans for his estate upon his passing that needed recording. He grinned and said he wanted to be cremated.”
There was a long silence.
“He’s benched, Alfred,” Bruce choked out. “He told me himself he didn’t want to do it anymore.”
“And thank heavens for that,” Alfred said with a sigh but no real relief. “I’m not sure I trust him with a kitchen knife let alone a grapple gun at present.”
“I don’t think he’s going to hurt himself. Jay’s stronger than that.”
Alfred gave him a reprimanding look. “It isn’t always a matter of strength, Master Bruce.”
Bruce looked away. He knew some of Alfred’s friends from his airforce days had… not survived civilian life.
“Where is he anyway?”
“Visiting Miss Gordan, I believe.”
“Good. She’ll remind him of what’s important.”
“One would think.”
On April 27th, Bruce caught Jason coming out of the spare room he had claimed as his own with his backpack slung over his shoulder. Bruce stopped, eyes rising from his coffee to note the jacket, shoes, and bulging pockets.
“Where are you going?”
“Visiting Dick,” Jason said, casual as anything, without stopping.
“Dick’s in space.”
“Gonna water his house plants.”
“Chum– Dick doesn’t have any house plants.” He drowned the Japanese peace lily Alfred gave him when he first moved out within a month. “Where are you actually going?”
“I’m getting out of your hair, old man, stop complaining. Also, the Joker’s in Ethiopia poisoning aid workers.”
“What?”
“Check the computer,” Jason called, descending the stairs. “Alert came through this morning.”
Bruce moved into pursuit.
“Jason, stop.” He grabbed his arm. “What are you talking about?”
The teenager tensed, then very intentionally made himself relax. “You wanna go stop him or you wanna stay here and argue about something you don’t really care about?”
“Enough. Enough, Jason.” He let go of him and held his hands up. “What’s really going on, son?”
“Nothing Bruce. Look around. Nothing is happening.”
“Is this about Robin?”
“No.” His lip curled into something that might have been a smile, or might have been a sneer. “It’s about Jason.” He kept walking.
Bruce scowled.
“Then I’ll drive you.”
“Don’t you have a lunatic to track down?”
Yes, he did. Jim would never forgive him if he let this lead go.
He hesitated.
“Be seeing you, Bruce,” Jason called. A door closed noisily behind him.
Why would Joker be in Ethiopia? Bruce walked towards the cave entrance, possibilities presenting themselves to him. There had been some noise about a warhead in Lebanon but it sounded too much like fear mongering to him so he disregarded it. Ethiopia was a long way from Lebanon.
Why did Jason hear about it first?
He stopped at the clock entrance from the second story drawing room. He glanced out the window at the front of the house.
Jason was walking down the gravel driveway, with the fence slowly closing behind him.
When Dick left, he didn’t come back for two years.
A fear settled into Bruce’s heart.
Jason was very different from Dick. But he was no less stubborn.
This was different, he and Dick had been fighting. Bruce told him to leave. He wasn’t fighting with Jason.
Was he?
No, he wasn’t. Jason lashed out when he was hurt, he didn’t slink away quietly. If he and Bruce were fighting there would be broken vases and screaming matches, not… not this resignation.
He disappeared beyond the shrubs that lined the driveway.
The fear in him seized up, that if he didn’t go out and get him right now, he would never come back at all.
He rushed down to the garage. He hopped into the first car in the row and peeled off of the property. The driveway was clear. He saw Jason walking at a clip down the long road to the city.
Bruce pulled up next to him.
He leaned over and opened the door.
Jason stared, sighed, and got in.
“I’m heading to the alley first,” he said, throwing his backpack into the back.
Bruce nodded. Now he had Jay in the car where he could see him, he didn’t really mind where he took him. He wanted to say something but wasn’t sure what. Jason so clearly didn’t want to talk to him, staring out the window, shoulders hunched in. He shut down any attempts to talk. Bruce settled into observation and assessment.
They arrived in the rotting old neighbourhood before he could deduce anything beyond that Jason was tense.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Bruce offered, when Jason directed him to stop outside his old house.
He shook his head. “I won’t be long.”
He climbed out of the car and disappeared up the stairs to the apartment he once shared with his parents.
He came back out five minutes later with a cardboard box. He carried it to a rusted metal drum on the corner. On winter nights there was normally a fire in its base and homeless people warming their hands around it. In the daytime on an unseasonably hot April day it was just a place to throw rubbish.
Jason balanced the box on the drum’s ledge and pulled out a sheet of paper. Bruce couldn’t make it out at the distance, but it looked like official documentation of some form. Jason held it up gingerly and set fire to the corner with a zippo. He let it burn for a moment, then dropped it into the drum.
He looked into the box, considering, then folded it up and came back to the car, bringing it with him.
“What was that?” Bruce asked.
Jason shut the door and put on his seat belt.
“Dick’s place next.”
“Left something in Bludhaven you need to burn too?”
“Can’t burn anything as bad as his attempts at cooking,” he replied, leaning back with an annoying arrogant ease he couldn’t quite pull off.
“Something your parents left for you?” Bruce asked quietly. He turned back onto the main road. The tenements of Crime Alley disappeared behind them.
“I don’t have parents, Bruce, that’s very insensitive.”
“Me neither. Why don’t you tell me about it?”
“Cute.“
Bruce’s lips thinned. If Jason didn’t want him to ask questions he wouldn’t have done that where Bruce could see. Or he burned the document right in front of him purely to let him know he was never going to find out. The kid had his petty side.
He had gone quiet. He was rarely quiet. Or, it used to be rare.
He needed to focus, Bruce thought, glancing at his son from his peripheral for just a moment. What were the facts? Bruce had never been good at dealing with people, not when it came to the important things. He got caught up in his own head, in the emotions he didn’t want to feel and failed to sort meaningfully. It was why Robin made such a difference. His boys were so good at connecting with people where he just wasn’t.
“Why did you want to stop being Robin?”
“I’m not Dick, and I’m never going to be. No point kidding myself.”
“He’s a good standard to hold yourself to. Falling short of your goals isn’t any reason to–” Bruce cut himself off. Jason sat tense beside him, but not actually upset. “That’s not why.”
“How do you figure?”
“...You aren’t quitting.”
“I clearly am. Already have, in fact.”
“No, you have a new goal in mind that has superseded it. I’ve never known you to give up on something important. And I know what Robin means to you.”
“No, you don’t,” he replied quietly.
“Are you in trouble?”
“Yeah.” Jason looked straight ahead out the windscreen. “Two-Face wants revenge for that black eye I gave him. Gonna go the way of my old man.”
Bruce froze for a microsecond. Then he forced himself to relax. A burst of anger flashed in him at the flippancy, but he set it aside to assess the situation. A belligerent opponent demanded a clear head.
“No, he isn’t. No, you’re not.”
“Sure I am,” Jason drawled. “You always knew it was gonna be this way, Bruce. Doomed to a life of crime.”
“You are no such thing.” Bruce refused to allow it.
“Isn’t that why you wanted to save me?” Jason looked at him, sharp blue eyes narrowed. “One less criminal on the streets?”
“You needed help. If you don’t want–”
“Take this right.”
Bruce turned off onto a side street. Industrial buildings surrounded them, then were replaced with a towering wall with coils of barbed wire at the top.
“Where are we going?”
“Blackgate. Figured I’d save you the runaround.”
Bruce whirled on him, anger flaring. He pulled over.
Jason leaned his cheek on his fist, elbow resting on the door.
Bruce stared at him. Jason didn’t even flinch.
Bruce took a deep breath. He thought about kicking the kid out of the car for being a brat. It was exactly what he deserved with his little games. It was exactly what he wanted Bruce to do.
He indicated a u-turn, and turned back towards the route to Bludhaven. Traffic outside the max-security prison was low.
“If you’re going to be smart then we won’t talk.”
“That’s too bad,” Jason drawled.
They left Gotham behind. The busy highway turned into a cracked old route with a ditch on one side and weed-ridden fields on the other. There weren’t many other cars around.
Bruce percolated through the facts.
Jason excelled at riling criminals into acting against their own interests. Where Dick had a disarming charm that made them not take him seriously, Jason had a knack for being insufferable that made people not care about the risks. Bruce was angry, and Jason was happy with that.
It was well executed. And it stung.
He had always been a good kid, even when desperate and afraid. He had wanted to make Bruce proud. This remorseless bite was wholly new.
Or was it?
A man fell from his balcony to sudden death.
I’d rather jump than get pushed.
“You’re not doomed,” Bruce said into the silence.
“You don’t believe that.”
“Why would I take you in if I did?”
“You left it too long to apologise to Dick and you can’t stand your own loneliness.”
Bruce bit his tongue. “Given how vicious you’re being, I assume I’m getting closer to the heart of the matter. Your discussion with Alfred yesterday confirms it.”
“Confirms what?”
“...You’re thinking about dying.”
He felt like he was outside of his body as he said it. The horror of it couldn’t reach him, it hovered, just out of reach.
Jason laughed.
“Alright Miss Marple. Was it the directions on what to do with my corpse or the settling of my affairs that tipped you off?”
Bruce slammed back into himself, then slammed on the breaks. He pulled onto the curb. Someone honked at him. His heart pounded in his chest. He stared at Jason like he might evaporate if he looked away.
“Where is this coming from?”
“Was it ever real?” Jason asked, thoughtfully, wistfully, like Bruce hadn’t said anything. Like they weren’t talking about this at all. “Was this just… filling the hole Dick left behind? You needed a kid to stand next to you and I was enough of a blank slate?”
“It was always real, Jason,” Bruce said. His voice came out low and rough. “I wanted to help you. I have always only wanted to help you.”
Jason smiled bitterly.
“I wish your word meant a damn thing. I wish my word meant something to you.”
“I don’t know what you want from me.”
“I shouldn’t have to do this, Bruce,” he said, the smile swallowed by bitterness. “You shouldn’t need me to tell you that– that– You can’t just take in a kid and then give up when you get disappointed. Or bored. This is my life , Bruce! If you don’t fucking mean it, don’t string me along like this!”
“I’m not–”
“You gave up on me.”
“Never.”
“Don’t fucking lie to me!” Jason pointed a finger in his face. “You decided! I’m a killer, a criminal, a problem for you to solve, anything but your son. Who cares if it’s even true? You made up your mind and gave up. ”
“I will never give up on you,” Bruce said through a dry throat.
Jason got out of the car. The door slammed shut and he stormed away.
Bruce chased him. They were alone on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.
“Jason!” Stop. Please. Come back. He couldn’t force the words out. “I… I don’t know what you need to hear.”
Jason stopped, his back to Bruce.
“I’m not good at this, but I haven’t given up. You are my son. You’ll always be my son.”
Jason looked back with dark eyes and a hard face. The tears running down his cheeks broke the illusion.
“You don’t have to jump, Jay. Lad. I’m not going to push you. I want you to stay. Please.”
“What if you can never fix me?”
Bruce stopped. An instinctual insistence that he would stick with him no matter how long it took died on his tongue.
“You’re not broken,” he said.
Jason sneered. “Pull the other one.”
Bruce swallowed hard. Guilt flooded him. His first thought had been an honest one.
“I’m broken too,” he said. “It’s okay. It’s okay to be broken.”
“ I know that. Do you know that?”
“Do you, Jay? I don’t want to lose you. I only want you to be happy. I’m sorry I haven’t made that clear.” Bruce stepped closer. Emotion choked him and he wanted to turn away from its sting, but he forced himself forward. “...I thought you knew I love you.”
“I thought you did,” Jason said. He sounded so small.
“Lad.”
Bruce wrapped him up in a hug. Jason clung to him.
He seemed so grown up, but there was so little of him in his arms. Tears wet his shirt. Jason trembled with the force of his emotions. Bruce pressed a kiss to his temple.
“What’s happened to us?” Bruce muttered and held onto his boy. His son. His son!
He closed his eyes and held him as close to his heart as he could.
Jason hauled in a deep, hitching breath. Bruce’s arms always felt like they could fend off the entire world. He didn’t want to let go.
He opened his eyes, and he was somewhere else.
He looked down at his arms, his own arms, wrapped in brown leather, black gloves, and holding up a vase in one hand.
Bruce, the scarred and greying old mountain of a man, was hunched on the other side of the manor library, holding his arms above his head. Smashed fragments of other decorations and a few upturned books were scattered around him.
“Hey,” Jason said, lowering his arm. “I got this for Alfred last year.”
“Jason!” Bruce lowered his arms and relief flooded his face. “You’re back?”
“What did you do, old man? Pick a fight with a fifteen year old?”
Bruce vaulted a couch, and hugged him.
Jason, still wrung out, allowed it. He blinked back tears. He tentatively wrapped his arms back around Bruce. His Bruce. Who knew why the gulf between was there.
Who hadn’t said any of those things.
Jason swallowed. “Is it still the April 27th?”
“Yes,” Bruce croaked, and held him tighter.