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When Jason dies, the last thought that crosses his mind is simply, ‘I’m sorry’.
There’s some glory in war, he has come to learn, that if you’re a good enough soldier, and can deliver results, and have the snappy wit and quick reflexes and punchiness that Jason does, that you can have glory in simply being a good soldier. Typically it’s a gruff, “you did good” from Bruce, or even the occasional hair ruffling if Dick joined them, but there was glory in being able to say, and understand, that they were a team. The dynamic duo– the ferocious night stalker, world’s best detective, the Gotham city knight Batman, and his tenacious sidekick Robin.
For most of his time at Robin, Jason believed there would be glory if, for some reason, fate would have stolen him, cutting his life’s string short. That there was glory in defending the innocent, in risking his life to Batman’s mission, to protecting the Gothamite civilians.
And then Jason gets himself pulverized with a crowbar. He gets himself locked up in a remote warehouse by the Joker, gets the living shit beat out of him, but still manages to smile and crack open his eyes despite the deranged man’s taunts. He fucking managed to endure longer than the old wheezer expected, despite every inch of him protesting in pain, howling and writhing agony twisting his insides out and setting every nerve on fire. He managed.
But there was no glory in that kind of death. There was no glory in being defeated, alone, in an abandoned place. No glory getting his life robbed while not even in Gotham.
And there certainly was no glory in knowing, even deep inside, that Bruce would be the one to find his ragged and lifeless body within the rubble.
At first, Jason thinks his life is flashing and replaying before his eyes.
It’s like in those movies, where people get the montage of their highs and lows before fading away. Or when Ebenezer Scrooge witnesses the effects his life and decisions have had on others.
But this is far different from any of that.
Jason doesn’t know why, or how, or when, or anything really. All he knows is that he is looking down at a tombstone in a graveyard he recognizes.
“Jason Todd. Ally. Friend.”
“No,” Jason breathes out, crouching down, placing a hand on the cold stone. It doesn’t take long for him to realize however that it’s not the tombstone that’s cold, it’s him. The tombstone is neither smooth nor rough, and when he runs a finger over a small crack on the side of the stone, most likely damaged upon inscription, he cannot feel the difference in the texture the gap brings.
He can’t feel the freshly upturned soil beneath his knees. He cannot even feel the weight of his body as he presses his palms flat into the ground beneath him.
He feels nothing. No weight, no temperature, no texture. He just feels cold, the kind that is emanating from deep within his bones.
Jason, struck with the sudden thought, despite the deep chill, realizes that his bones feel… fine. Certainly not smashed in with a large amount of steel. He looks down, and his hands look normal– his fingers are all in their correct, anatomically aligned positions, rather than bent at awkward and disjointed angles. His ribcage feels like usual, and when he takes a deep breath, his chest doesn’t sting with the flare of a million fires inside of him.
He feels perfectly fine, his body intact and whole and not smashed to bits. But he cannot feel the world that has grown so cold and grey around him.
He cannot understand the grave that lies beneath him. The gravestone before him.
With a huff, Jason gets up, and feels no difference in his body. The movement is fluid, but off– his back doesn’t crack, his knees don't protest despite the cold.
As he looks in the distance, the looming and imperial Wayne Manor stands before him, overshadowing any other thoughts he may have.
It’s fine, it’s fine, Jason tells himself. The grave is a diversion– make the world think you’re dead, and when Robin shatters their glass roof and lands a kick to their sternum, it’ll bewilder them. That must be it, right? Right?
As it turns out, that was not the plan. In fact, there was no plan.
It takes Jason all of 0.3 seconds to realize he cannot turn the doorknob. When he tries to grab it and violently shake the presumed stuck handle, his hand halfly phases through the door.
It takes Jason all of 0.2 seconds to realize despite the lit candelabras and chandeliers, the kinds that always reminded him of Wuthering Heights, that he, in fact, does not have a shadow.
It takes Jason all of 0.1 seconds to realize that Bruce is sulking in the living room, whiskey in hand, staring at a large portrait of Martha and Thomas Wayne.
Bruce’s stubble has grown out significantly. The bags under his eyes aren’t from his usual late nights filing Wayne Enterprise paperwork and doing follow-ups on leads. The amount of whiskey in his glass is more than Jason has ever seen the man take, even for a quiet night without vigilante crime-fighting.
Jason simply observes the scene, quiet, sticking to the shadows though he knows Bruce will see him. Well, he would if it weren’t for the fact, as he slowly pieces it together, that there is no other person in the room with Bruce for him to notice.
No other living person, that is.
At first, he doesn’t know what to feel. But the choice gets decided for him, regardless of what he logically wants.
It’s pure, unfiltered, unadulterated desperation.
He had died. Bruce had let him die.
Sure, the job always came with the risk, but Bruce had promised him he would cover for him. Batman would protect Robin, as the partnership always goes. Batman would step up, save the day, use those good ol’ detective skills to use and piece things out before Robin’s body is utterly destroyed.
Yet here Bruce was, alive, with a Robin who was very much not.
Though his being wasn’t corporeal, Jason wasn’t exactly in the headspace to puzzle together what exactly he was made of. Instead, he was too busy trying to stub his toes in the furniture, ripping paintings he couldn’t grip off the wall, and knocking the vases off the decorative tables in the never-ending corridors.
These halls had never seemed so vast to him before. So hollow, so empty. Even when he first arrived, the traces and imprints of Dick, of another kid, could be found tucked away in the corners of this place. Now, it felt like no soul had ever breathed life into this manor.
Jason did quickly realize though that his intense bits of trying to be noticed, of needing to be seen, is when he could get things to move as if he were touching it. Not often nor consistently, but enough so that his every instinct was to follow Bruce, to wake him up, to call to him.
He first managed when he was able to shatter some nice porcelain vase he had on a side table with an ear-splitting smash, that quickly drew Batman’s attention to the somehow shattered vase.
It took him a while to get more of his attention– again, it wasn’t consistent as he quickly found– but he could do it in small increments. He moved the pen by half an inch after obsessing over getting something smaller to move. He thought he could even put a dent in one of the pillows.
It wasn’t until, tired and weary and ineffective in getting the moping bachelor to move from his little depression rut, that he walked into the kitchen, that he heard the radio left unattended by an Alfred he assumed was off elsewhere.
“ – Local authorities have reported that the Joker, now back in Arkham Asylum with the aid of the Batman, has an increased security presence, with updated measures to ensure that his escape will not happen again….”
At that, all that came rushing back was blind, pure rage.
Bruce was here moping over his dead son. Bruce found his son’s killer. Bruce let his son’s killer, his arch-nemesis, his biggest enemy in Gotham, go back to Arkham. And very much alive.
Bruce had let his killer live.
Jason didn’t know how many days had passed since his passing. All he knew was that Bruce was pissed, constantly throwing hissy fits despite being the one still alive, still kicking it, and that poor Alfred was trying his best to keep the family going strong.
As if Bruce had any right to be angry. As if he owed it to himself.
After that, the more minor and occasional bits of physical alterations in the material world become more drastic.
Jason Todd punches a mirror in the foyer and the mirror shattered, with no culprit in sight to the ones who still roamed the manor. He threw a photo off Bruce’s business-work desk in the middle of the night, after the old man fell asleep over some legal documents, abruptly waking him up to see the cracked frame of the family, of him, Dick, and Jason. Jason twice had even managed to throw his voice into the radio when Alfred was searching for the classical music channel, switching it from the local news, letting his scream of frustration be heard for the briefest of moments.
He punched every object, wailed against whatever he could get his fists on in the manor, hell, even wrote in the fogged up mirror of Bruce’s bathroom after a particularly long and steamy shower. Bruce, with a towel wrapped around his waist, went deathly pale at the sight of the words ‘Finish what you started’ haphazardly written in his bathroom mirror.
Since then, Bruce has elected to use a different bathroom in the house, despite the en-suite being far more convenient.
Jason couldn’t escape the rage, either. It blew like a billowing wildfire inside of him, a stampede of horses trampling logic and reason and leaving crushed grass and devastation where he could manage in its wake.
And then another black-haired boy started showing up around the place.
At first, Jason could have sworn he was in some sort of weird time-loop that might have been restarting, that this boy could have been him, hell maybe even Dick. But Dick, even from a young age apparently, was always bouncy and confident, and Jason, though yes, incredibly apprehensive when he first came to the manor, never looked as well-groomed as this kid did, who reeked of old money that Jason got so used to identifying at galas.
So, Bruce decided he needed another soldier to teach about the glories of war and fighting and to uphold his no-killing honor code like the Boy Scout that he decided he was.
It was easy to torment him– Jason had gotten plenty of practice, and was fairly used to clattering the silverware and tilting the paintings in the halls. But this kid– this Timothy Drake as he learned from Alfred– was used to the rich kid lifestyle, and old, creaky, haunted buildings didn’t scare or disturb him one bit.
Not even when Alfred brought Timothy cookies, the kind that he knew were Jason’s favorite, and said he might find them perfectly suited for the taste of a young Robin. Even then, when Jason in retaliation threw a piece of ancient pottery across the dining room, obliterating it into a dusty stain upon the wall.
Perhaps, the only good thing about nobody being able to see him, Jason realized, is that nobody could hear the sound of his sobbing, as if he were a boy again, just eight years old and tucking himself into the side of his mother who would not recognize her boy was right there. As if nobody could see that he still existed.
Jason notices Tim comes back more and more often. Tim goes down into the cave, gets to breathe the life of Robin, but Jason isn’t blind. Nobody who gets raised by the master logician is.
Tim always leaves at the end of the training sessions or patrols and goes home. No matter how many times Alfred insists, the young boy always leaves, or makes a polite excuse about his parents wanting him back for the early morning.
It doesn’t take the adopted son of a master logician to realize that Bruce has changed too. When he had Dick, Jason had heard about how Bruce was figuring out the reigns, how to mentor, how far to push. When Jason came along, he got the benefit of a lot of those problems ironed out. Sure he was pushed, but from some of the late-night stores Dick used to tell him, he knows he got away lucky.
Tim? Tim didn’t stand a chance against the brooding shell of a man.
Bruce was curt. Sure, he was always direct and a man of few words, but he was rude, and demeaning, and ruthless. Every word was a cut, a weakness pointed out to be corrected.
There was no touch between them that wasn’t from a blow or kick. Bruce never patted him on the head, never put a comforting hand on his shoulder. He barely even looked him in the eyes outside of combat training.
There’s a lot Jason hates about Tim– the list mostly starting and ending with being replaced– but there’s a lot he hates about Bruce, too. How cold he can be. How cold he was to Jason and his legacy, for having his killer and letting him live. For finding another black-haired young boy to match his collection, to train and kick and use as a thinly veiled punching bag for his anger in the name of physical and mental toughness. How he was able to move on so quickly from Jason.
Jason, who is still there trying to claw his way back into his life one way or another.
As if one new trainee wasn’t enough, there’s a sudden new addition to keep Jason on his barely-existent toes.
He has to be in some sort of Hell, seeing his supposed family like this.
The new perky blonde girl is brash, can pack a punch, and doesn’t take no for an answer. She’s determined and loyal, and speaks up. While Tim tends to cower and not push Batman’s buttons (probably the wise decision in most cases, Jason tends to think to himself), she doesn’t. She fights right back, and the mouth on her is impressive.
She’s loyal, speaks up loudly, and doesn’t accept anyone’s bullshit.
Stephanie Brown has so much in common with him, it makes Jason’s heart sink a bit.
He knows that Bruce must see it too, based on the way he gets snappy with her. He sees the exasperated looks on his face and it’s one he’s seen a thousand times before. Dick could always play along with whatever Bruce threw his way, Timothy seemed to know his place, but Jason and Stephanie? They were both winners of being front row to witness Bruce’s fraying last bit of thread he seemed to be clutching onto some nights.
They both get VIP access to some of Bruce’s harshest remarks and fights. God, how he must see some of Jason in her, Jason realizes after one particularly brutal exchange.
At least she’s determined to make friends to some degree. Her infectious upbeat and extraverted attitude must be a breath of fresh air for Alfred, who seemed to have somehow aged ten years since Jason knew him when he was alive, despite it not being that long ago, he realized.
She even manages to get along with Tim, and convinces him to stay over at the Manor, since, as she seemed to often play it off, she didn’t want to wake up in the creepy old estate all alone, knowing Alfred and Bruce would be busy.
Based on what he even observes down in the Cave, she seems to get along plenty well with Oracle too– more so than anybody else. Huh.
Jason, for his part, is tired.
He’s tired of trying to punch and scratch and wail at the furniture. He’s tired of trying to shake the chandeliers and rustle with the silverware and breathe down their necks (literally, he might add). He’s tired of trying and trying and trying to get someone, anyone, to notice him. It’s become so much easier to watch and observe the others.
Besides, he found out where Alfred keeps his hidden stash of treats, meant specifically to keep away from Bruce, but that he indulges Tim and Steph in once in a while. So maybe observing has its perks.
But that still leaves Jason with not being able to touch much, and with nothing to do. He tried running out as far as he could go, exerting something he could no longer really feel, but he finds that he cannot leave the edge of the property. He’s trapped on the Wayne Estate, and doesn’t even get the pleasure of company from all the Wayne ghosts buried in the graveyard, go figure. The only ghost haunting this old manor wasn’t even technically a Wayne.
He wishes for more than anything else to be able to leave– to snatch up a crowbar, and run off to Arkham and finish Joker off himself. Maybe even take the Batmobile, feel the wind through his hair one more time that way. Maybe he’d even take it out on Bruce. The first time that thought crosses his mind, he nearly feels sick at the thought of it. But is it biting the hand that feeds you if they had all the power and time and money in the world and couldn’t save you, don’t even bother to avenge you? As if you’re just another pawn to them?
He hates to admit it, but that’s what he’s worried about most with Tim and Steph. They don’t see that they’re just his pawns to do his night-time bidding. Sure, when they ask about the last Robin, Alfred doesn’t really indulge them but still hints at a tragedy taking place (would Bruce even see it that way?), but it’s not the same. They don’t understand.
Until they feel it for themselves, they never will.
Jason is leaning, arms crossed, against one of the kitchen walls, eyes closed, keeping his breathing slow and even when a bright light catches him off guard and startles his eyes open.
Bruce’s silhouette is rummaging through the fridge, the bright fluorescent light of it swaddling the room in stark white light.
When he stands from his hunched over position, Jason takes in the looming man, his broad shoulders, his square jaw, the way his face seems to sag under the weight of … well, must be everything.
Jason takes a few steps closer, watching more closely as Bruce keeps looking around for something, and proves himself victorious in the freezer– a pint of vanilla and dulce de leche ice cream. He closes it, turns on one lamp, and sits in the mostly dark, just Bruce sitting on a stool, his sad ice cream on the island, and Jason, who takes a seat directly next to Bruce.
He doesn’t know why he’s compelled to do it. All this time, he’s seen Bruce lash out, frustrated, angry, as if he knows what any of those truly mean. Jason was the one who was trapped in a home he couldn’t touch, watching the world tick by day by day without any way to truly pass it. His anger flared up and died down, messed with his head, made him want to burn the whole place down and sometimes just threw him into the midst of a panic attack by how overwhelming everything felt when you can feel nothing.
But here he was, a son by his tentative father’s side.
He isn’t sure why he should be there, why he’s even bothering, and just when Jason wants to get his ghost ass up and leave the room, Bruce’s voice finally speaks up.
“It’s weird Jason,” he starts, and Jason whips around as fast as possible to face the man, unsure if he heard him correctly.
“It’s like you’re still here, taunting me. When I see the stubborn look on Tim’s face, when Steph gets all riled up, when I call Dick and he makes another excuse about the Teen Titans having to be off-world for a trip, it’s all like your fingers are puppeting them. I still see Dick, he swings by for patrol sometimes, but he won’t ever take the invitation to come to dinner. I know he can’t face the pain of seeing an empty seat at the table.”
Jason just watches the face of the older man, seeing up close now just how much Bruce has changed in small ways. The way his face seems so tight, as if struggling not to cry or to keep it all in, the way the lines around his eyes make him seem older. The way he has new grey hairs speckling his hairline.
“Alfred always knew what to say after my parents died– knew that pulling me into a hug and making french onion soup would help me feel a little less lonely. And he’s here still, but you aren’t, and you were like a son to him too. Now, neither of us know what to say or do about it.”
Brue takes a deep breath, and steadies himself.
“I’m sorry, Jason. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there in time, I’m sorry I couldn’t be there to bandage your wounds, I’m sorry you were… brutalized, like that. By him. Every day I think about what I could have done differently, what I missed, if I arrived just a couple minutes faster. But as much as I can ruminate, that doesn’t change the fact that I had to bury my son.”
Jason doesn’t know how to feel– his pulse quickens beneath his skin, and he wants to shout, but he just whispers back furiously as Bruce takes a spoonful of his ice cream.
“You don’t know what it’s like,” Jason starts, “You have no clue what it’s fucking like! To have to roam these halls and know, and fucking know, that he’s still alive! That you had the opportunity and you let him live! Was I not worth it to you, that extra effort? Did I not mean enough for you to break your code? Was I ever even good enough to be the exception?!”
Jason, by the end, is livid, screaming. He slams his fast against the kitchen island counter, and Bruce’s ice cream jumps slightly.
Bruce only sighs, pushing the food away from himself, setting the spoon down, looking straight ahead.
“Answer me, dammit! Please! If I could just have an answer– if you could just tell! Me! Why!” Jason places both of his hands on Bruce’s shoulder, and the man is visibly startled, looking directly at Jason.
Jason, for the first time, is able to look Bruce in the eyes. He shifts his hands, places one on each shoulder, knowing that with his anger that Bruce can feel the ghost of him right in front of him.
“Why did you let him live? Why did I have to die and he still gets to be alive?!”
“Jason,” Bruce murmurs, barely a whisper, eyes darting, trying to find what is in front of him that he cannot see.
Jason, too focused on the other’s face, nearly jumps himself when Bruce places a hand on top of his. Or, what Bruce would consider on top of Jason’s.
“Jason, I’m sorry. You don’t realize how much your death has broken me, broken this house down. There’s not a day that goes by where I wouldn’t take it all back if I could. I know I’m tough on the others, but I can’t bear to see them succumb like you did. You did nothing wrong– I’m the one who should have been there for you. I just hope I can teach them to not make the same mistakes I did.”
Bruce stares straight at him, and then lets his head sag down, chin towards his chest. His hands fall into his lap, contemplative, clearly focused on the thoughts that must be like a storm brewing through the other’s mind.
Jason crouches, unsure what to say, how to react. He reaches out, one hand on top of Bruce’s, and with his other he gingerly cups Bruce’s jaw, and tilts his head up. He cannot bear to see the man he looked up to his whole life look so defeated, so empty, so hollow.
“Come on B, I know you were trying to reach me. I don’t blame you for that. I don’t blame you for not getting to me on time– not anymore.” Jason swallows his pride back, and continues, “I just wish I knew why you let him go. Why I was so easy to move on from.”
He doesn’t get a reply. He knows he won’t. They stay like that for one minute, then two, then three. The ice cream, barely touched, is abandoned by the older man, and Jason is scared that he cannot see what Bruce is thinking about behind his eyes.
“Jason…” Bruce whispers, but nothing else follows. A single tear falls down Bruce’s face, and with Jason’s heart hammering, he realizes he has never seen the man cry before.
There’s nothing else that follows. Eventually Bruce gets up, his face a mask, void of any emotion other than dulled pain. Jason watches as he robotically puts away the pint, puts the spoon in the sink. Jason watches with a heavy heart, a coiling, sinking snake in his stomach, as Bruce looks around for a boy that is not there, and turns off the light, leaving Jason in total darkness.