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In the silence, the sea of turmoil is heavy, and she can feel it on her heart like no other force in the world. It's drowning her, shoving it's sorrow down her throat and she just can't breathe. The Silence -that might be the worst of the two - shrouds her ears, and is just so loud. It's stiff and tense, until the ululating of one little girl peirces the air like a knife.
Her eyes are clenched tight, fingers curled into the cold arms that imprison her as she tries to suppress the heart-aching sobs into petty whimpers. Her body bows until her head nearly touches her knees, but she still tilts her head to look up at the gravestone. It's almost like she and it are the only to things that exist.
They're not.
Behind her stands a single man, but he doesn't offer a word of condolence. He knows very well that she is inconsolable a this point, and he probably shouldn't have brought her here but, she had to see it, before...
There's nothing held back as she sobs. She sobs until she gasps for breath, and then she sobs even more.
He had been bereaved, torn from her grasp and heart. The terrible attempt of amputation had splintered her heart beyond repair. Now, it was a desolate wasteland, existng of only sorrow and loneliness.
"J-Jason." Her voice trembles as she keens, and her hands are pressed harshly to her chest, as if to purge it from the intense heartbreak that was ripping through her. Her eyes open, and meet the grave, clouded with tears. "I'm so- I'm so sorry, Jason. I'm so, so stupid. I just wanted-" She stops, the words rising to a cry as the wave of woe crashes down upon her once again.
Her eyes clench tight again, and a few more tears rip down her face. "It's not fair!" She howls, and thrashes, throwing her arms. They collide and clang against the chair she will be bound to for the next few months. It must hurt, but she doesn't even notice, because she rushes onwards, eyes trained on the grave. Bruce sees it in her eyes, she has to do this.
The sky above them is even a forlorn, grave, gray lighting that can only be given to those with the most heart-felt sorrows. It is just as sad as the girl before him, back arched to curl into herself in the wheel chair. The sky threatens to cry alongside them both.
"Why does he always get away? He's always killing people, and then he took you-!" She curls into hersef again, teeth gritted viciously, and her shoulders wrack. "I wanted it to be him, for once! Is that so bad?!"
The way her shoulders shook was pitiful, but this was the calamitous effect Jason's death had heartlessly thrown onto her. She was in a stage of grief, Bruce knew, But he also knew she wouldn't go through the other stages.
"I hate Gotham, Jason." Her voice is so low, so indistinct, that most people would have missed it entirely. "I hate it!" Her low whisper rises to a miserable moan, and it's easy to bet anyone on the Wayne grounds could hear her, then. "How far is it that everyone has to suffer because some- some-." The sentences withers, it dies, right off her lips, and the hurt is clearly sprawled across her face.
She cranes her head to regard the grave sky. "I was going to kill him." She admits with a totally lost look, and then bows her head back to the grave. "I want to. I want to, but I can't. Do you know why?" She laughs bitterly, but it mixes with the sobs until it's become some kind of unearthly wail. "Because they locked him up in Arkham! They think he can still get better! Did you hear that? He- he killed you, and they don't care -nobody does."
Her hands scrub at her face, trying to tear away all the stupid tears that keep ripping trails down her cheeks, but every time she wipes one away, another stupid tear is shed.
"I'm in a wheel chair." She confesses. "He got me- He got me because I got distracted, and... and then I get shot!" She laughs bitterly again, and it sounds like a loon; It's too high. "Then he stood over me, and he mocked me- he taunted me with details about the day you-" Her voice falls apart on the word, and she looks a little lost again. The tears still steal down her cheeks, and her hands clench until her knuckles are white.
"He said he wondered what it would be like, if he could beat me with a crowbar. If he hit me just like he hit you, and how much I would cry at that." Bruce's eyes snap to her, but he can't say a word, not yet. He has that much promised to the heart-sick girl. "He tried to tell me that you cried, that you begged, but you wouldn't do that; You wouldn't give him the satisfaction. I told him that, and then I told him, if he was ever in a room with me and a crowbar, I'd lodge the damn thing through his forehead."
It's silent again, it's so quiet that he can hear every single breath she takes as she tries to slow her breathing. Her anger seems to have subsided, but that liquid anguish is still pouring from her eyes, joining the sorrow-some puddle on her lap. Then, she throws herself out of the wheel chair, and sprawls before his grave, sobbing hard.
The first of the rain hits her cheek, when she tilts her head back for a desperate gulp of air. It blends with her tears, preforming some strange dance as it twirls down her cheek. Her head tilts back down, and she hoists herself up to where she's sitting the best she can on useless legs.
It'd be uncomfortable, but she can't feel the stupid things, anyway.
The next words she forces out are too muddled with the devestation that wrecks her, then. Not even Bruce can distinguish what she's saying, though he bets he already knows.
Bruce is still quiet, even when he helps her back into the wheel chair. He understands how she feels, and it's the wordless solace he gives that mends her heart, even if it was only a little.
"No one did anything, Bruce!" Jason snarls, and he whirls to face that masked man. Anger swirls in his own eyes, but they're also hidden by a mask. "No one! Not even-"
"Jason, That's not true." Bruce interrupts. Jason turn away from him, muttering or laughing bitterly. The image of her sprawled uselessly above Jason's grave flashes about his mind. "She went after him."
Jason whirls back to face the Dark knight. Bruce has definitely caught his attention. The Joker still ruled Gotham, but she went after him..? "What happened? Where is she?"
"The Joker paralyzed her, Jason." Batman's voice is a tone softer than it normally is, but it's still firm. "She died of a heart disease three months later. We buried her next to you."
Rage overtakes the boy in the red mask, and he wants to yell at Bruce, "Why didn't you stop her?"
or:
"Why didn't you save her? You're supposed to be the fucking Dark Knight, and you can't save one girl?"
But, that's why he'd been against Batman for so long. He wanted for someone to try and avenge him - That was all he wanted.
He got his wish.
It's with quiet steps that Jason approaches, as if a prince trying not to disturb their sleeping beauty -but his beauty is not sleeping, and he knows he is no prince charming.
The tombstone glares at him accusingly, with her name scrawled across it in fancy letters. Her death date is exactly three months after Jason originally died.
His heart aches, just a little, but he feels nothing else.
Jason hates himself for that.
"I'm dying, Jason. I love you. I love you, and you're dead, and I'm dying. Isn't it tragic?"