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Bruce remembers how it felt, when his parents died.
There was a hole. Some deep, vicious cavern carved out of him, a void where something warm and safe and loving had once been. It felt like his heart had been ripped from his chest, like his very being was torn in two, left mutilated and mangled inside of him. Irreparable. Broken.
He hadn't eaten more than a small snack for weeks. His stomach would tie itself into knots every time he thought about it, splashes of blood and pearls and his own screams echoing around his head. He hadn't gotten back to a healthy weight for a year. Until he threw himself into his obsessions and goals, and determined that an underweight kid would not make due for what he was planning.
He doubts he would have survived, if not for Alfred. The old beta's endless patience and understanding was truly a blessing, one that Bruce feels he'll never truly deserve.
Pups without packs were dangerous- to themselves and others. Left feeling out of control and unsafe at every moment, with no protection from what was perceived to be a world full of threats, they lashed out irrationally and forgot to care for themselves. Too many cases of feral, starving children were found these days. Without Alfred's thread of stability and comfort he knows he would have fallen down a pit that would be impossible to escape.
Eventually, through time and revelations and rebirths, Bruce had pulled himself back together, piece by piece. Built himself into something stronger. Better. Something to protect pups from experiencing the same pain he had, something to keep others safe, so no one ever had to feel as irrevocably wrong as he had again. To feel that rip- that vicious wound that you couldn't touch with your fingers or see with your eyes but you could feel, ruining you, damning you, leaving you to fester in the emptiness that had once been so full.
Bruce remembers how it felt, even after all these years, to have pack bonds broken. He doubts he could ever forget. No pain he knows has come close to it, no cruelty or crime that could challenge the memory of its desecration.
Yet still, somehow, this hurts so much more, than anything could have ever prepared him for.
He's fallen asleep every night in this room, for the past- however long. He didn't like to think about it. Didn't like to think about how long he'd been-
Bruce has fallen asleep every night in this room, clutching worn blankets and pillows close to his chest, feeling that deep, empty hole in him throb, and every time, that hole grew just a little bit deeper. It festers, something biting and cold, with every glance, the sight of old tennis shoes in the corner, homework that would remain unfinished on the desk, the creak of the school bus as it rattles on past the Manor. Moving on.
He doesn't understand how people do it. How people can move on. He feels like he'd be betraying him, if he did. It feels like betrayal. A sin. Then again, nothing feels right anymore. (He doesn't know if anything ever will.)
Bruce falls asleep clutching old blankets to his chest. When he wakes he can pretend, if only for a fleeting, fluttering moment, that the scent and warmth radiating off of them was something real and not the cruel remains of a ghost. Convince himself that none of it was real, that he'd just awoken from some hellish, demented nightmare, and while it makes that slow realization of reality all the more shattering, Bruce can't stop himself. Because that miniscule moment of relief is the only thing keeping him going. It's the only time he can breathe, anymore.
Some foolish, naive part of him thought it might be easier, this time.
With his parents he'd had no one besides Alfred to help him recover. Even then, the butler had started off as just a family friend before eventually growing into something irreplaceable. He'd been alone, back then. Foolishly, he'd thought that since he wasn't now, it would be easier. That since he had a new pack, one with Dick and Alfred, however small it may be, it wouldn't hurt so much. It would make up for it, somehow, he wouldn't feel so alone, so empty, because he wouldn't be.
Maybe it did help. Maybe this would feel a thousand times worse without all those pack bonds he could feel, vibrating with similar feelings of grief and concern. Maybe the hole in him would feel all the more bigger, and he would feel all the more emptier, without the threads that took up the remaining space of his heart.
But Bruce can't bring himself to reach for his pack even if they could somehow, someway, help.
(A dark part of him curses at that. It screeches that nothing could help this, nothing could make it better, the world would never be right again, because someone hurt his pack, someone hurt his baby, his s-)
Every time he thinks about reaching for those bonds he feels what's not there, feels the missing string of recklessness and hope and love, and ends up heaving into the nearest toilet. The bonds feel wrong without it there, something mangled and deformed, not the warmth it was supposed to represent. Instead of safety and comfort all he felt was hopeless. Powerless.
Bruce cries himself to sleep every night with the scent of milk and honey, a distinctly young and pup scent, clutched to his chest.
And he can't, for the life of him, remember why anything else in the world had ever mattered besides his son.
His son. Buried in a child's coffin, six feet under ground, closed casket.
His son.
Who had died.
The sirens of the ambulance wail in the night.
Bruce stands on a nearby rooftop, watching the paramedics scuttle around, shouting out different commands as they work on the man bleeding out on the pavement.
He was just a low level crook. Didn't even work for criminals like Two-Face or Penguin, just preyed on people dumb enough to wander into dark alleys on their lonesome in Gotham. He'd been pushing a woman up against the wall, knife to her throat, when Batman found him.
The man now had mild concussion, a broken collarbone, cracked rib, punctured lung, and broken wrist. The medics work to stabilize him in the alleyway. Batman's fists shake in the aftermath, even though it had been no real fight. There's something different than adrenaline running through his veins. Something dark, and angry.
"Damn, B. Almost makes you feel bad for the guy," a ghost laughs. The sound reminds him of rusty door hinges and twinkling bells, distantly.
Bruce ignores it. Tries to. It's hard. Hard, when it just won't go away, and it looks just like-
"I think I've done worse stuff than that guy. Really makes you think about the double-standard, huh?" Jason says, the familiar Park Row accent just slightly off, leaving Bruce on edge. He felt like his memory was already being tainted. Like he was already beginning to forgetting the exact cadence of his laugh, the name of his eighth grade science teacher, the part he got in the school play-
But this wasn't Jason. Because Jason was-
His pup was dead.
But the imposter is right there, sitting next to Bruce on the rooftop, swinging his legs childishly in the familiar (now gut-wrenching) red, yellow, and green uniform. Bruce remembered Jason complaining about it for the first few months, saying 'how am I supposed to save Gotham if I look like a traffic light' and Bruce would smile and Jason would wear the uniform anyway. His stomach gives a violent lurch at every glance of it now.
"Aw, don't worry, B. I don't hold it against you. The guy lacked my boyish charm," not-Jason grinned, flashing white teeth the alpha's way in a familiar smirk, full of youth and arrogance and rebellion. The domino mask sits strangely on the pup's face, hiding the deep blue eyes from view. Bruce is thankful for that, in a sick and selfish sort of way. Thinks about the vacant, lifeless eyes of the body he'd clung to, clutched to his chest for hours, sobbing, why did it have to be his son-
Bruce breathes out a sigh, his chest aching with the effort. His fists twitch at his sides.
"Leave me alone," he murmurs, hoarse. He knows the boy isn't real. He's hallucinating (an emotionless, monotone version of his voice tells him it was common among people who'd just went through a loss in their pack). But he can't bring himself to stop talking to the ghost, can't bring himself to ignore any version of his son, even if it was fake. It felt wrong. Everything did.
Bruce turns away from the crime scene, gut twisting violently. He thinks about going home. Calling it a night. Falling into bed to try and get the rest that he needed but could never obtain, sleep hardly registering in his mind as a necessity anymore.
"Oh, c'mon, Bruce. We both know you'd never do that," the ghost says, suddenly much closer, leaning into his side to whisper in his ear. But not touching, never touching, because that would ruin the illusion.
"Too many guilty to condemn, second-rate criminals to beat into comas. You could never go a night without punishing them," a breath, and then an achingly familiar giggle that makes the darkness festering in Bruce's chest burn.
"Or maybe you're just punishing yourself."
Bruce growls something unintelligible before taking off, the cry of the police siren growing distant.
He won't go home. Not yet.
(Not to an empty home, even if he should be used to it. He's experienced it before, hasn't he? An empty home. But maybe now that he knows what its like, for it not to be empty, instead filled with warmth and the echoing laugh of a pup, the imprints of him left everywhere, from the crack in the kitchen island to the vacant chair in the library. Where he still sees the ghost of his son, lingering in the corner of his vision, making it impossible to breathe just right.
Bruce can't bare to be home, knowing that something was missing, and would remain that way.
Forever.)
Ash floats through the air, flickering and crumbling in the sun. Raining down, stuffing his throat with smoke, burning his lungs from the inside out. There's so much of it. It feels endless, the fluttering fire and debris around him, feels like something surreal.
But it's not. Because however much he hopes and prays and begs for this all to just be some twisted nightmare, some hallucination, it never is.
This is real.
He clutches the- the thing closer to himself. Can't think about what. Can't. No, all he knows is that he needs to protect it, keep it safe, it was his-
The growl rumbling from his chest starts to drift off into a low whine. The scent of distress permeates the air, heavy over the smoke and sand, suffocating him under it's tide. He rocks back and forth, soothing, trying to calm and protect. He needs to. He needs to. He needs to.
But the thing in his arms doesn't move. Doesn't relax. Doesn't even breath, because his baby is-
He clutches the corpse impossibly closer to his chest, feeling the broken bones shift and fracture beneath his grasping hands, the wet crimson that seemed to cover every inch of his boy slipping between his fingers. Bruce looks at the face of his pup, broken and bruised, eyes empty and a scream tears itself out of his throat, bloody and ragged and painful, because that's his boy, his baby, how could someone do this to his son-
"Bruce,"
And Bruce can't breath, can't find the strength to, not when his child is dead and buried, murdered at the hands of some lunatic, some evil being-
"Bruce."
He'd lost him, he'd lost his Jay, his son. His child. Child, he was a child, a god-damned child. A child, murdered, beaten to death, a child that Bruce was supposed to protect. God, Jason had been so small. Even when he'd first found him in Crime Alley, that small, tiny little pup that tried to lift the tires off the Batmobile, positively exuding hunger and pain and loneliness. Jason had always been something precious, fragile, in a way that Dick had never been. Because Dick was his pup too, his son, but he was so different than Jason.
Dick had soaked up the physical contact, had adapted easy to the life him and Alfred provided, filling a blank space Bruce didn't know he had. He'd been so loving and trusting from the get-go, falling into place perfectly, never once looking back. But Jason had been so cautious, and scared, and paranoid. Life in Park Row had left him distrustful, full of suspicion, unable to understand the act of giving without expecting something in return. It had taken months for them to gain his trust, for him to finally crawl into their nest and let himself be fret over by the older pack members. And by then Jason had a space of his own in Bruce's chest, distinctly different from Dick's, but still loved and protected viciously.
Jason liked books. The classics- Pride and Prejudice, The Old Man and the Sea, he'd seen the boy reading an entire copy of William Shakespeare's Best Works once. He'd been greeted with the sight of the pup curled up in the library upon returning home more times than he could remember. Jason liked cooking with Alfred, or simply perching on the counter while the old Beta worked, talking listlessly about whatever came to mind. Jason liked when Bruce ruffled his hair, leaning into his hand eagerly, touch-starved after years without a pack on the streets.
"Bruce!"
Jason had carved himself into Bruce, whether he intended to or not. He was something Bruce had wanted to protect, something that was distinctly his own, something prescious, and Bruce had failed. Failed.
Because that's his boy, that's his son in his arms, so small and so hurt, broken and still warm with his honey-milk pup scent covered by layers and layers of blood and grime and blood and blood and god, there's so much blood. Because that's his son, that's his pup-
"Bruce!"
Bruce jolts awake, heart hammering in his chest. He pulls on the pack bonds on instinct, feeling the concern and worry rippling across the bonds. But then he feels that missing piece, that sends off a jolt of ice-cold-despair down his spine and leaves him empty.
Dick hovers cautiously above him, Alfred lingering in the doorway, a firm grimace set into the lines of his face. The scent of distress is thick in the air.
Bruce pants, hands clenching the sweat drenched blankets around him. He croaks and coughs, Dick hurriedly grabbing a glass of water on the bedstand and handing it to the detective. Bruce takes it, drinking it all in one long swig. He starts on a query before his eyes widen, a feeling of terror and despair seeping into his chest.
He pries himself off of the blankets and pillows, smoothing them over with trembling hands. The alpha brings the pillows to his face and inhales, and then he's sobbing, clutching the fabric closer, feeling his still aching chest get ripped open all over again.
"No, no, no-"
"Are you okay?" Dick asks, worry clear in his voice, pitching forward slightly as if to touch him before falling back. The younger man is fidgeting unsteadily on the bed, eyes flickering around to the posters on the walls, full of Jason's favorite bands and comics.
Bruce ignores him. He grabs another blanket, sniffing it as he had the pillow, letting out a desperate noise when it garners the same results. He keeps snatching blankets and pillows towards him, chest heaving as if he was twelve years old again, screaming as he took in his mother's bloody form and father's emotionless eyes.
Dick and Alfred watch on with grimaces, sharing questioning and sad looks over their shoulders. His son reaches out hesitantly at a particularly loud sob, resting his hand lightly on Bruce's shoulder.
"B, what's wrong-"
"It's gone," Bruce moans miserably, clutching at the pillows and gripping them tight enough to hear the fabric creak in protest. Bruce scents another blanket, but it's gone, it's all gone, covered up by Bruce's own scent, all the sweet-pup scent buried and god, please don't take this from him too, he doesn't have anything left,
Dick makes a hurt noise, shuffling forwards till the other alpha was wrapping his arms around Bruce, burying his face into his father's shoulder. Alfred turns away from the scene, frame shaking suspiciously.
"It's gone," Bruce cries again, "it's gone, it's gone, he's gone-"
"Shh," Dick shushes gently, trying to put out comforting scents, failing miserably when his own distress just makes Bruce sob harder. His son was gone, how could anything ever be alright again?
Bruce starts to cling to his other son (now his only son, he thinks with despair) desperately, wrapping his arms around him and and burying his face in his hair, clutching at the alpha with that empty hole in him itching underneath his skin, the mangled edges of a cut bond searing into his flesh. He can't let anyone hurt them. He can't let anyone touch them, his pack, never again, he'd kill anyone who tried-
Dick just sinks further into his embrace, dampening his father's shoulder with his own tears.
"They say you've been brutal, lately."
Commissioner Gordon stands on the GCPD rooftop, trenchcoat wrapped tight around his shoulders to shield from the type of vicious cold Gotham seemed to specialize in. The older alpha stamped out his cigarette on the ground after taking one last drag.
"Got four men beat black and blue in the ER this week. One of 'em has a future of liquid diets to look forward to."
Bruce grunts noncommittally.
The Commissioner studies him for a moment, before giving a sigh, long and drawn out, and looking off to the side. The man has bags under his eyes, glasses pushed into his coat pocket as he rubbed his eyes tiredly.
"I don't know what's gotten into you lately, but I'm telling you this more for my sake than yours. Calm down," the alpha demands, flashing his eyes towards the vigilante. "The people of Gotham want a hero, not some guy who'll beat them braindead over J-walking."
"Ha!" Not-Jason laughs, hanging upside down from the railing on the roof. If Bruce looks at him for more than a second blood starts to drip from his lips.
"They need a hero, haha! Guess they have shitty luck," the ghost hops down from the railing, walking over to hover near Bruce's side, where he still hasn't moved to respond to Gordon, frozen to the spot. The feeling is becoming increasingly familiar.
"After all, what kind of hero can't even save his own son."
Bruce flinches, a barely there movement that you could only catch if you were looking for it, but the Commissioner's eyebrows pinch in concern all the same.
"Batman? You all right?"
Not-Jason giggles from his side, and Bruce has to swallow back bile when he looks down at him to see the way the left side of his chest is caved in, the tattered bits of his uniform doing little to hide the blood and bone beneath.
"Yeah, Batman," it sing-songs. "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine, Gordon," Bruce growls. The Commissioner sends him a suspicious look but thankfully drops it. Not-Jason just pouts by his side, with lips that start to tinge blue and drip red and Bruce forces himself to look away, something sour lingering in the back of his throat.
Gordon shuffles around, looking nervous, before turning back to the vigilante. He lights another cigarette, taking a long drag before releasing the smoke from his lips.
"Don't really know how to bring this up without seeming like an asshole," the man grunts, taking a deep breath as he looks into the other alpha's eyes. Or at least, the vacant lenses of the cowl. It was difficult to have conversations with a brick wall.
"There's rumors floating around that The Joker got your kid."
Not-Jason appears at Gordon's side, leaning in close to him with a smirk playing at his dead lips. Bruce hates how much it looks like his son. Hates how the way the hallucination moves taints his memories of Jason's restlessness, his inability to stay still during stake-outs. The way the left side of his mouth would quirk up more than his right, the way he'd look up at Bruce with this awe in his eyes, and Bruce would always try his best to live up to that look, to be something that Jason could be proud of. Now it was just this imposters lifeless eyes and bleeding lips. Now Bruce knew he had failed. He really was undeserving of his son.
"Wonder where they got that idea from," his dead son gives a theatric gasp. "Couldn't possibly be from that lunatic you've let roam free, could it?" It says with an ugly sneer, tearing up his pup's face with something hateful and disgusted.
Bruce feels rage course through his veins, starts to tell him that he's been searching for the bastard for days and nights, trying to track him down in every corner of the earth, tries to explain, that once he found the son of a bitch that hurt his pup he doesn't know if he'd be able to hold back, to keep from beating the man into a pulp. If he'd be able to keep to the rules he lived his life by.
(Why should he even care anymore? His pup was dead. At the hands of the same criminals he'd promised to never kill, butchered, massacred, his innocent son. Something as trivial as morals shouldn't stop him from ripping The Joker's throat open with his teeth.)
He freezes when he sees Gordon's eyes watching him expectantly. A cold feeling washes over him, Not-Jason swinging his legs idly on the edge of the roof.
Bruce can't bring himself to answer, but Gordon seems to take his silence as one anyway.
The Commissioner looks much older a second later, dragging a hand through his hair and cursing under his breath. Bruce stands in stoic silence. A cold type of numb envelopes his chest.
"For what it's worth, I'm sorry for your loss," Gordon says. "I liked the kid. He had a mouth on him, but he really cared about the people of Gotham. I could tell."
The vigilante stares at the other man for a moment. Eyes trying their best not to flicker to the ghost humming some tune unknown to him next to the alpha, bloody legs dangling, the bone of his right ankle showing, left lung caved in, hands a mangled mess, a couple ribs showing through the bits of his uniform that did nothing to cover him. And that damn smile that used to make Bruce melt with love and protectiveness, now just a cold feeling of wrongness that seems to be taking him over.
"Do you miss me, dad?" the thing whispers, blood dripping from his teeth and his eyes and ears and everywhere. "Do you care?"
Batman flees from the rooftop, hunting for more criminals to beat to relieve that darkness growing in him. The Commissioner stares after him, a tired sigh leaving his lips as he turns back inside.
Bruce sips his coffee slowly, the warmth from the mug contrasting with the ice-cold feeling in his chest. Alfred is chopping vegetables in silence on the other side of the kitchen.
Bruce can't remember the last time he saw him. Lately he'd hadn't been returning from patrol till sunrise, falling asleep for a few hours before returning to the cave to search for cases. He hadn't had a conversation with the old butler in weeks. He feels guilty for that. There's not much he doesn't feel guilty for.
His body is close to giving up. Old and new bruises linger, exhaustion threatening to take hold every minute he goes without sleep. But Bruce is as self-destructive as they come, a martyr through-and-through. So he sips on his fourth cup of coffee that day.
"Alfred," he croaks hesitantly, not sure where he was going before he started to speak. The beta pauses, turning towards Bruce after a moment. He looks older than Bruce remembered. Eyes sadder than his memories recall.
"Yes, Master Bruce?" He asks, starting back on chopping the handful of onions as he waits for a response.
Bruce opens his mouth, to say something meaningless, unimportant, that would make Alfred sigh and give his own montone answer, and Bruce could go back to sitting in his own misery, seeing flashes of a youthful smirk every time he closed his eyes, the blue eyes that threatened to drown him in their depths.
"I still see him."
Alfred freezes, grip slacking on the knife, shoulders hunching forwards. The beta makes no other move, so Bruce continues.
"He's- he's everywhere I look. I'll be patrolling Gotham and nearly fall midair because I think I saw his uniform on a rooftop, or nearly let a criminal get the jump on me because I saw a kid in a red hoodie near the Batmobile.
"I don't know if I'm going crazy or- or-" Bruce stutters off, burying his face in his palms.
The butler is silent for a long moment, where Bruce bites his lip and trembles with the force of keeping his sobs at bay. Bruce feels a gentle hand on his shoulder and jerks. He looks up to find sorrow filled eyes looking down at him.
"I understand, Master Bruce," he says, his tone wet and full of emotion. "It's hard to clean the Manor without the young Master trailing behind me. I miss him incredibly."
Bruce swallows past the lump in his throat, grounding himself with Alfred's touch. The old beta's eyes harden slightly in the next moment.
"But I doubt Master Jason would appreciate you tearing yourself apart as you have been. I believe he'd have a few choice words for you, in fact."
And that makes Bruce freeze, eyes flickering to the ghost at his side who gives him a lopsided grin and no further confirmation.
"You need to move on, Master Bruce."
Bruce chokes on a sob, gripping Alfred's hand desperately. "But I can't," he pleads. "I can't, I don't want to. I- I need him. I can't let him go-"
"Yes you can," Alfred grips both his shoulders now, his own eyes watering with unshed tears. "Moving on isn't the same as forgetting, Master Bruce. None of us will ever forget Master Jason. I doubt it would be possible.
"But you must let him rest."
Bruce sobs into the beta's arms, clutching onto him desperately. He can't, he just can't, it's not possible. How was he supposed to move on, how could he? His son was dead, that's not something he could move on from, ever-
"You need to let me go," Not-Jason says. The crooked domino starts to slip off the side of his face as Bruce stares, wide eyed, over Alfred's shoulder. "Bruce, please. I want to sleep."
Bruce heart breaks, burying himself into Alfred's shoulder in a way he hadn't done since he was a pup. He cries into the older man for hours, long enough to smell the diner he had been preparing start to burn, but Bruce just kept crying.
When he looked up again, the ghost was gone.
"I found this book in the library sitting out the other day, near your favorite chair.
"It had a bookmark in it about halfway through. It was one of those ones you made yourself, with the bats and birds you thought were funny. You and Alfred laminated them a few months ago, gave them to the whole family. You made one for Clark too, and the look on his face when I gave him the one with bats on it made me laugh. I should've told you that, I think. You would've liked it. I don't know why I didn't."
"Anyway, the bookmark, it made me think of you. Everything does, now. You'd left the book only half-way through, and I-. And it feels like you were only half-way finished, too. You- you hadn't even presented. You were going to go to college, and finish that prototype with Lucius, and Dick was going to teach you some of his acrobatic tricks-. You were unfinished, Jay. You are unfinished."
A pause.
"Alfred, he made steak the other night. And all I could think about was the first time you ate dinner with all of us and you couldn't stop talking about how much food it was, and you snuck extra bread rolls in your pocket when you thought I wasn't looking. You always ate like someone was going to try to take it away from you- but I guess people did, before you came to live with us. I didn't mind. I know you think I did, but I really didn't.
"... I couldn't eat it. I think you would've resented me, for that. You always complained about people who wasted food. But I couldn't-"
A shaky breath.
"...I miss you, y'know."
"I miss you more than should be possible. I see you everywhere I go, and everything I do just winds up reminding me of you, how you would react to it, whether or not you'd hate it."
...
"Whether or not you'd hate me."
A minute passes. Then two.
"I don't think you'd like your gravestone. It's got one of those big angels above it you told me you thought were creepy. I remember one time, you told me that you didn't see the point in graves. If someone was dead they weren't around to complain about the state of their resting place. I think I said that it was more for the people they'd left behind, so they could remember them, honor them.
"I don't think you'd like it much. But I wanted to-... I wanted to be a little selfish. So you have an angel. Watching over you, like you watched over me.
"Parents like to talk about how they raise their children, how they protect and watch over them, but I always felt like you were the one that raised me. You taught me so much, Jason. You changed me, made me happy, made me feel like I had a full home and pack and-"
...
"And I miss you. So much."
He sniffles, wiping a hand across his face.
"I just wanted you to know that I love you, Jason. No matter where you are. I love you. And- and no one can ever change that. I'm never going to be the same without you, y'know. It feels like a part of me is just missing now. Lost. It's hard, to go out there and be a hero, a symbol of protection and safety, when I couldn't even protect you.
"But I think you'd kick my ass if I just gave up," he chuckles wetly. "So I'm going to keep going. For you. And I'm never going to forget you, no matter what happens."
"...I love you. Goodbye, Jay."