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Bruce is crouched over a box of nesting material, hugging a soft quilt to his chest when Alfred finds him. The tub in front of him is nearly full, awaiting the last article before it’s sealed and stored away. The scent on the bedding is still thick and warm with milky honey pup scent.
Bruce can’t bring himself to release the quilt. Packing it away, putting that lid on is too final. It reminds him of another lid, far too small, that had covered something far more precious.
“Master Bruce.” Alfred murmurs and rests a hand on his shoulder, but doesn't do more.
With a shuddering breath, Bruce sets the quilt down and smooths it into place. Then he seals the lid. He stands and looks around his room at anything else. “Would you put that away in my closet. I have to... I have to... papers. A meeting. Something .”
“I will see to it.” Alfred agrees, somber in a way that he hasn’t been since Bruce became the sole survivor of the Wayne family.
He’s hurting too, Bruce knows. He should stay and grieve with his father, should call Dick and make sure his eldest is okay, but he can’t. He can’t stay in these walls that ring with delighted laughter and poetry and shattered dreams.
He needs to escape.
And he does. He escapes into a mask of violence. He stops a drug deal and then has to call an ambulance for the carnage after. He stands on the rooftop and watches them wheel the broken body away.
“What a hypocrite, B.” A young omega giggles by his side, legs swinging over the edge. “I got grounded, for like, two days when I tried that.”
Once upon a time he had chided Jason for breaking the man’s collarbone. Jason had known the dealer. It was the man who’d... the man who had started Jason on his first night job.
Bruce hadn’t realized who the man was until after he’d swooped down. He hadn’t realized what happened until after it was over and he had split gloves and knuckles from shattered teeth.
Even though he’s on the rooftop, Bruce tugs his cowl down and lets the chilly air dry some of the cold sweat clinging to his face. He knows that Jason isn’t really there, but he answers him anyway.
“I’d take it back if I could.”
God above, Bruce would do anything to take it all back if that’s what it took to divert Jason from the path to Ethiopia.
The little boy stubs his cigarette out on the roof. His smile is sad, too understanding. “I know, B.”
Bruce vomits.
There’s nothing but bile.
He hasn’t been able to force himself into eating. How can he eat when his baby can’t anymore? Alfred has been cooking Jason’s favorites and if that comforts the man then Bruce won’t take that away but he can’t stomach it himself.
The next time Bruce is really aware of anything, he’s at the manor’s cemetery sans batsuit. A sweet marble angel he’d commissioned watches over the grave. Nearby, Sheila is buried a few plots over. Bruce was going to bury her next to her son but... he’s selfish. Jason was his, for however short a time. She gave him up. She didn’t deserve him.
Bruce got his son killed, so really, he doesn’t deserve him either.
Father. Mother.
Bruce touches their headstones as he passes. He still grieves for them. Yet somehow Jason’s loss hurts more than theirs did even in the first days after their passing. Next to them are the plots that were reserved for Bruce and his mate.
Bruce isn’t getting married. He’d briefly considered it before he lost the reason for his life. Now there’s no chance for it. Even if he were to choose a mate, he’s sure they’d understand. Bruce hadn't wanted Jason to be scared or alone. Even though they’d never met, he was sure that Jason would have loved his grandparents. Now, they can watch over him until Bruce takes his place in the row.
Jason Todd, beloved son. “ From the very first moment I beheld him, my heart was irrevocably gone.”
They’ve replaced the grass over the small mound from his last visit and Bruce is irrationally angry. He rips up chunks of the sod, digging down through the soil with his bare hands. By the time he reaches the too-small coffin, made of smoothly polished wood, Bruce’s hands are cracked and bleeding.
He never cracks it open, he can’t bear to see the result of decomposition, but he presses his forehead to the wood. “I’m here, Jay. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t before but I’m here now.”
The wood doesn’t answer, it never does.
“Alfred made your favorite lasagna again. I’m sorry I didn’t think to bring any. Maybe next time.” He breathes out. He imagines that he’s sitting at Jason’s bedside and that’s why Jason isn’t responding. He’s asleep. “I... I almost messaged Talia today. I know you don’t like her much, but she’s not as bad as her father. I think that if you’d met you would have liked her.“
“Don’t hate me for this, Jay.” Another shaky breath. It’s a good thing his eyes are shut because he doesn’t think he could see through the tears. “I wanted to ask her for a pit. I know... I know there are consequences, but I could have... we could work through them. I would be with you. We have research and Talia knows how to fight the madness. She wouldn’t let us struggle blindly.”
“Could, could you be happy here with me?”
There’s no answer.
For the first time that night Bruce lets go of the sobs. They shake his body with the force of their leaving. It hurts. Everything hurts. He just wants to hold his baby again.
“Bruce?”
He startles to find Dick looking down at him worriedly. Clark stands at the edge next to him, no doubt the cause of his eldest’s miraculous appearance.
“Dick... he’s... we could bring him back.”
“We need to let him rest.” And Dick is crying too as he helps Bruce up out of the hole. He holds Bruce up and they rock with the grief of it. “You can’t keep digging him up, B. We need to let him rest.”
He’s right. Damn him, but he’s right. Jason wouldn’t want to come back, not like that. His little boy deserves his mansion in heaven filled with every novel ever written and the company of his mothers.
Bruce can’t take him from that. No matter how selfishly he wants to.
Clark finishes filling up the grave and joins them. Superman didn’t like the street fighter Robin, didn’t think he had a place among the heroes, but Clark had been fond of the scrappy boy underneath it all.
“C’mon, Bruce. Your pa’s waiting for you at the manor.”
Without another word, Bruce lets them carry him back up to the manor. He falls asleep clutching a first edition of Emma to his chest with the promise that he won’t revisit the grave until he can do so and let Jason rest.
One week later, a strange little boy in a suit, calling for his dad, is checked into the hospital under John Doe.
The groundskeepers fill in the grave that next morning and cluck to themselves sadly. It would seem that not even money can soothe the grief of a lost child. Reporters hound them for any information on the suddenly reclusive billionaire.
The articles all blame poor Mr. Wayne, asking what people thought would happen when the single playboy was allowed to adopt a child of such... questionable origins.
If it had been any other member of the Gotham Elite, they might have been willing to tell the tale of a man so consumed by sorrow he spent his nights digging up his son’s grave. If the boy had been any other rich Gothamite killed in the crossfire of the gangs, he wouldn’t have earned their silence. But Crime Alley takes care of its own and so the groundskeepers gently replace the sod and the maids scrub the mud from the floors and no one breathes a word.
Shielded by the sympathetic parents of the Narrows, Bowery, and Park Row, Bruce Wayne is left to grieve in peace.