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The first rotation Bruce ever did during his medical school residency was pediatrics.
It was supposed to be just two weeks. If only he was fortunate enough to not be a hero.
The first day, he finds himself covered in a kid’s snot and sneezes.
The second day, he finds himself trying to stop a kid’s nosebleed after taking out a firetruck the kid stuck in their own nose.
However, those were the tamer days.
On the third day, Bruce Wayne, the 1% of his class, finds himself questioning his career choice when he’s aiding the pediatric intensive care unit, at 3 AM, with a kid dying in his arms.
And there’s no parent in sight. They’re not reachable at the moment.
Bruce wonders how Thomas went through his rotations and keeps on going. Head straight, posture upright, Bruce Wayne is supposed to plow through anything and everything the world gives to him. So Bruce aids as best as he can to get this kid to survive.
The kid disappears a few days after, with IV yanked out. The only thing on the bed is a note written with a purple crayon on a crumpled receipt of McDonald’s from weeks earlier:
“I can’t pay for this shit!!! Fuck you doctors”
(The kid surprisingly has good penmanship.)
He meets the same kid a couple of years later at the very alleys he lost his parents, exactly 15 years before. The kid is struggling to get the third tire when he notices and all Bruce can think is that the kid is alive.
In sentiment, Bruce almost loses all four of his tires. At the end of the night, he gains a son.
(Jason doesn’t remember Bruce from the hospital. After all, he was unconscious most of the time.)
———————
Bruce Wayne has never been one to fear blood.
He was one to step closer to it; curiosity pushed him outside of the box.
When he got into Gotham U’s medical school, he knows he’s perfect for this role. He loves caring for the community. He wants to help out Gotham like his parents once did and despite the media’s attention on him 24/7, he worships Gotham like a follower to a god.
It’s a strange cult. Gotham is ruthless yet forgiving.
Bruce doesn’t know that Gotham loves him. It’s the world that’s unforgiving.
Gotham weeps for the young boy trapped in a man.
———————
Bruce Wayne isn’t a religious man.
His father was. Thomas Wayne was one for the traditions of the Jewish religion. Before his death, Thomas Wayne took his son to the synagogue and practiced holidays like Yom Kippur.
Does one need a significant day to atone for their sins if they live every day like they carry the sins of the world? (The answer, to Bruce Wayne, is yes. He desperately wants to say yes but he feels incompetent.)
But he never got to have his Bar Mitzvah. He never got to continue the tradition of Passover, especially after fighting with Dick until almost no-contact, Jason’s death, Tim’s denial in this part of the family, the sudden appearance of Damian and the boy’s lack of knowledge of tradition, and-
It was to be expected. Bruce rarely ever got what he wanted from the world and to ask for forgiveness from the world that should beg for forgiveness from him surely was unexpected.
But Bruce Wayne was a man with no expectations. He begged for forgiveness when he had no one to beg for, hoping his penance towards the world would fix something. He was too beyond fixing. Bruce Wayne had nothing to lose and so much to lose at the same time.
He refuses to acknowledge that the biggest reason why is because he is afraid to touch something too sacred, something that preserves his memory with his parents, with him. Happiness feels too expensive to him, even with billions of dollars sitting in his bank account.
———————
Bruce rarely goes to visit his parent’s graves anymore.
It feels wrong to see a third grave nearby.
It feels wrong to be older than Thomas ever could be.
It feels wrong to see the gravestone age along with him, knowing that the corpses of his parents have long lost composed its skin, veins, and muscles.
However, the part that rips his heart apart is the fact that Jason, his son, is alive right now only because Bruce decided his boy would have a traditional Jewish funeral for him. (It’s the only form of funeral Bruce knew at the time.) He sometimes wonders if it would’ve been better for both if Jason stayed dead.
(What a fucked up thing to even think about as the parent of the said child. Bruce's ever-growing guilt grinds his heart into ashes.)
Because, in a way, Jason is still dead. Bruce knows that they both have unreachable expectations towards each other and they will never be able to meet them. Jason will never understand that the Joker is still alive because Bruce, in a fucked up way, doesn’t want to become equal by committing the same atrocity. Jason will also never understand that Bruce doesn’t want Jason to kill because a death, no matter how justifiable it is, weighs on one’s mind for the rest of their life. Blood is hard to wash off. He knows from the suit he still keeps in the back of his closet, from the day he saw his parents killed.
Bruce will also never understand what Jason went through. As much as he wants to fault Talia for this, he knows. He knows that things would have been worse if he knew and even now, he knows Talia did not want Red Hood’s existence in Gotham because they both care for the boy. Bruce will never know how it feels to die.
But Bruce understands the rage Jason feels. Bruce understands the sorrow of having everything taken away and wanting to fault someone tangible to blame for everything that just happened and to beat the shit out of the person.
Bruce, however, also knows that rage is often the worst fuel to life. Rage, when died down, is unforgivingly cold, just like Gotham’s winter night. It weighs your heart like no other. It drags you down and will become a reminder for the rest of your life. Bruce just wants his son home.
But it’ll never happen. It will never happen because he fucked it all up when he couldn’t save Jason in Ethiopia. He should’ve checked his grave every day to make sure that the coffin wasn’t empty and he should’ve made sure that the Joker was in Arkham and-
And he should’ve concentrated better so even if his hands were shaking, he would’ve his Jason’s gun, not the side of his throat, the night they met as the Batman and the Red Hood.
Fuck. What good was medical school if he couldn’t even keep his hand straight at the most crucial point of his life?
Bruce Wayne is not a religious man.
If he were to be, he doesn’t think he could continue his crusade because then, he would have someone else to blame. He needs to be better. He needs to be smarter, faster, and stronger. That’s what keeps Bruce alive, after all. The need to punish and repent.
———————
(Jason watches his once father figure sitting in front of his grave far away.
No one else is watching. Dick is in Blüdhaven, Tim is fucked off to wherever his team is, and Damian is also doing something with the Superkid. Cass is in Hong Kong and he knows Duke and Steph, even if nearby, would not touch sad Bruce Wayne even with a 10ft pole.
He doesn’t know that Bruce knows that he’s there.
It’s the only reason Bruce Wayne is not entirely crumbled up less like a man and more like a handful of sand, in front of his grave.
But Jason’s not stupid.
The grass is yellower right in front of his grave.)