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I had all and then most of you
Some and now none of you
The Night We Met -Lord Huron
All Jason could hear was the Joker’s laugh, echoing through the empty walls of the warehouse.
He couldn’t feel it anymore; he couldn’t feel the hit of the crowbar, and he couldn’t feel the warm blood leaking down his face like the broken faucet in his old apartment.
It was what he kept telling himself, anyway.
“Little birdie!” the voice cried. It was a distant, discordant sound, blurred by the peels of laughter and chuckles. “All alone, without his mother hen. How does it feel?” Spittle flew, landing on Jason’s already wet face. From tears, blood, he wasn’t sure.
His only response was a single gasp, a breath that didn’t deserve its stay for how useless it was. Gone in an instant, and Jason was already starving for the next.
“Where’s Batsy now, birdie?” Through the slits of his eyes, Jason watched the Joker turn his head, this way and that, back and forth back and forth. “Is he not here? Didn’t care enough to save his little sidekick?”
More. Laughter.
Please, came the next thought past the wailing sirens in his mind, the numb and the pain.
He wondered if he would ever be able to speak again.
“What was that? Sorry, couldn’t hear you over the noise—”
The crowbar came again.
Back and forth back and forth back and forth.
“Pleathe.” It was a broken sound, as jaded as the giggles that permeated the stale air. He was begging. Giving in, and Bruce would hate him for it, but he didn’t care.
He just wanted out. He wanted out, he wanted out he wanted out—
“Sorry, but unless Batsy, your little protector,” the word was spat out like a curse, “is going to come save you, I’d save your begging.”
A smile. No, a grin. Another swing. Another taunt and Jason was already beginning to lose consciousness when the last bit of light flickered out, leaving an empty, gaping hole.
Bruce wasn’t coming, not for him.
It was hours, it felt like, before the words began to take shape; he couldn’t feel the crowbar, and he couldn’t feel the blood. But he felt the pain anyway, worse than the tears in his skin, and the tears on his cheeks.
Bruce wasn’t coming. Not for him.
“You’re no fun when you’re quiet,” the thing said. Jason couldn’t see anymore. “Well,” there was the sound of the crowbar switching to another hand, and Jason twitched. “Looks like my job here is done, little birdie! I’ll see you in the next life.”
Feet pattered on the ground. It sounded like rain boots in a puddle.
“Oh! One more thing: if you ever see him,” he paused, snickering, “tell the big man I say hello.”
Minutes, probably only seconds later, Jason opened his eyes, covered in red, to the sight of a bright, ticking timer.
3:52, it read.
Bruce was too late. Batman didn’t save him.
1:45
He was losing time. He’d blink, and the seconds would disappear like dust. Like the little seeds in the old backyard playground of his apartment that would spin and fly away after he would pick them up and let them go.
0:58
He began to crawl. Arm after broken arm. Legs a mangled mess beneath his hips, his mind muddled. Out of the blast radius, he thought, the last truly coherent thing he would conjure up.
Bruce wasn’t coming, not for him. So he had to save himself.
One arm, then the other. Back and forth back and forth…
It wasn’t long before he collapsed. Stopped.
Gave up.
Staring at the stars, a continent away from all he once thought was home, Jason wondered if this was all he was going to get from it. Some knocked out teeth, a dozen broken bones, and no one else but himself, and home, Wayne Manor, as just a dream. A horrible dream that was washed away with laughter and red into a darker, twisted nightmare.
The stars, he thought. Bright. Calming. A glimmer.
And so very far away…
Jason was dead before he could feel the large hands gently picking him up.
“Master Bruce…you know I will always be willing to come with you.”
“Sorry, Alfred.” Bruce tugged on the suit and tried not to pull it too tight. He looked up at the man who’d been with him through everything, and there weren’t words that needed to be spoken; Alfred knew what he would say anyway.
“Of course,” the butler sighed. “I will be right here.”
Bruce nodded. He opened the door, flowers in hand, and made his way out into the cool Gotham air, tugging the fitted suit away from his neck and trying not to think of the past few weeks. The graveyard was empty when he arrived. No one to see Bruce’s downcast eyes, no one to comment on the improper way he held himself.
There was always going to be a hole in Bruce’s heart. He had known it for years—his parents had taken a large portion of it that not even becoming Batman had managed to fill (although he had certainly tried).
He just never thought taking a street kid in would lead to this.
Black hole was probably the better word for it: all consuming, all destructive, all encompassing.
Silently, slow as though the action was draining away everything he had, he placed the flowers on the grave of his son. Felt the weight of the petals leave his hands, like Jason’s life had left—
Stop it, Bruce.
He stood up, fixed his posture, and stared at the words lining the tombstone, trying not to let the thing inside of him out, even though he could feel it crawling up his throat.
Batman didn’t cry, even when he desperately wanted to.
‘I’m sorry, Jay,” he said. (He knew he shouldn’t, but the words came forth. Knew it would only make it worse, but the words were gone before he could take them back.) “For what happened to you. For…everything.”
In the distance, a crow cried and flew away, and Bruce decided it was time to do the same. (Before more than just words crawled out his throat. Before he did more things he could never take back.)
He turned, noting the fog now creeping up behind the other rows of stones and the Gotham clouds above that threatened another downpour. Things had been dreary, ever since that day, and he wasn’t sure if that was because he was looking out for it, or if Gotham itself had realised that it was missing a soldier.
His foot crunched on a dry leaf when he heard the cry.
“Pleathe.”
It echoed throughout the graveyard. Almost imperceptible, but it seemed like the echoes of a bomb to Bruce’s ears.
“You,” the voice said, and this time, Bruce didn’t, couldn't mistake it.
“Jason?” he breathed.
There was only silence in response. His heart was racing, beating so loud and angrily in his chest that he wondered if he was going to burst. I’m imagining things, he told himself, but it did little to ease his mind. There was no easing the panic that was slowly but surely coursing through his veins.
“Jason,” he said again, a whisper just like the voice had been. This was a trick, he knew that. But he also couldn’t mistake the sound of his son’s voice.
His foot backed up, one step and then another.
“Jay—”
“You…you, you, YOU.”
“Me? Jay, what did I—”
There was another chorus of “You,” that Bruce couldn’t decipher.
He couldn’t—
His hand grabbed his waist on instinct, but there was no belt there, just the suit that Alfred insisted he wear to meetings. His hand was shaking, but there was nothing to grab.
Get out of here, he thought, and it was the first one that actually stuck. He glanced around, eyes wide.
“You…” Jason’s voice said.
He ran.
Bruce heard the voice again a week later.
He was in his study, eyes bloodshot from the time he spent holding them open. Just one more sentence, he’d tell himself until the words began to bleed together. Night had fallen hours ago, and the sunrise wasn’t too far away—Alfred would frown when he noticed, but it had been a long patrol, and the night still wasn’t over.
He was finally closing his laptop when he heard it.
It was near indecipherable, a mangled mess of vague human words. A groan, perhaps. Then it—Jay— spoke again.
“Bruce.”
And this time, it was unmistakable.
He stood up out of the chair.
“Jason,” he said, and this time he was prepared. He’d had days to think over the voice, about what it meant. Above him, the lights flickered.
“Jason,” he started again, refusing to run away this time. “Jason, talk to me.”
The only response he got was a gust of wind, and Bruce was already beginning to sigh when he remembered that his window was not open.
He sucked in a breath.
“Okay, Jason. I…”
What should he say? He’d been preparing himself, wondering for days, but his musings had never reached this far. They always stopped at the appearance of the voice. At the proof that maybe Jason wasn’t as dead as he believed.
“Jay…” he whispered, voice hoarse. “Say something.”
There was a moment—a singular moment—when Bruce thought the voice would answer in one distinct sentence.
Then his laptop was flung off his desk, and Bruce was shrouded in darkness once more. And all he was left with was the singular, “You…” trailing through his mind.
Jason didn’t need to speak.
Bruce got the message anyway.
He didn’t tell Alfred. He wasn’t even sure he could—there weren’t words to describe what was happening, not even to himself.
Jason was here.
Bruce wasn’t sure how. Had, a few days ago, given up the idea that it was just a trick because he knew nobody could be that cruel, not for this. Jason had died; Bruce knew that like the belt on his waist.
But Jason was definitely not dead.
He was there, in the dark shadows and corners of his room, in the depths of the Batcave, the endless black expanse that echoed with the shifting of bats and something other. He was in the lights, that before had never malfunctioned, not once, which now flickered with the barest hint of movement from Bruce.
He felt it when he was sitting alone, working on a project or trying to finally get some sleep, and the lights would dim before blinking on again. He would be reading when suddenly, the pages would start to turn, flipping, flipping, flipping, and finally shutting closed with a snap.
No words, though. Not since that night.
But Bruce didn’t need them to know that Jason was watching, Jason was there.
Dick was worried about him, him and Alfred both, yet Bruce didn’t know how to respond to their ignorant questions and pitying looks.
So instead, Bruce ignored them and went out on patrol.
The lights couldn’t flicker if there was no source. Books couldn’t turn if they held no pages. Thugs couldn’t fight back if they had nothing to stand on.
Maybe Dick and Alfred were worried—maybe they had a right to be. But Bruce was fine, and he didn’t need their pity to figure out what he already knew.
He knew it himself just fine.
It was weeks, eons perhaps, before Jason spoke again.
Bruce was so sleep-deprived that he believed, for a moment, that he had simply imagined it. That his brain was filling in the gaps. (The press still hadn’t shut up about it. About the missing son. About the grave. Bruce had no comment—he couldn’t, not when Jason had none either.)
He was trying to build a new system for the Batcomputer—his hands needed something to work on; without it, all they did was shake—when the chill came over him. It was like a tidal wave, a wash of cold as if he’d taken a shower in the arctic, and Bruce stiffened.
Then he dropped his head down. Sat in it, for a moment.
“Please,” he choked out, unsure of where the word came from but knowing why all the same. The voice, for that must have been what it was, Bruce had just been too preoccupied to hear it, did not speak again.
But Bruce sat, waiting, listening just the same.
He stayed until the Batcomputer flicked off, and the cave was washed with darkness.
Bruce woke up to the smell of smoke. He was up and out of bed, mind centering on one thought: Fire.
He was already out of the room and making his way to Alfred when his feet stopped at the top of the staircase.
The smell was gone.
Acrid, burning fire, but outside his room there was nothing.
“Jason,” he said, and there it was again, that thing crawling up his throat like an insect.
There was no response.
Bruce nearly sighed (nearly screamed) before making his way back, feet slow, unsure, and weighted. When he made it to the doorway, where the temperature dropped and the room still sang with the echoes of something lost, he waited with bated breath. Waited for what felt like hours, waited for it to all make sense.
Eventually, he went back to his bed. Forced himself to close his eyes against the empty room, and he ignored the whiffs of acrid smoke, the smell of burning, ignored the way his heart wouldn’t stop beating and his hands shook.
He ignored the sound of breathy, ragged gasps, coming from the furthest corner of the room.
The noises didn’t leave, after that.
Jason only appeared when Bruce was alone. When he was in his study, in his room, in the Batcave, working on another project. (Bruce spent nearly all his days, now, catching up on sleep and at Wayne Enterprises, and all of the nighttime, out in Gotham.)
He didn’t visit the graveyard. Not anymore.
Dick had come over. They’d talked, but Bruce could no longer recall what about.
Bruce worked alone.
But he knew, deep down, that he wasn’t.
“You.”
There was a part of Bruce that ignored that too. But the other part, the weaker one, but the one he chose anyway, began to listen.
“You.”
He had heard it in his dreams so often that the word held little meaning now. He simply tilted his head and kept on working. (He could feel the hole, again. Larger, exhaustive, and always there.)
The voice, then, came quietly, slowly, and all at once.
“You…didn’t save me. You didn’t save me, Bruce. Why? WHY—”
Above him, the lights were on a frenzy. Books on the shelves began to rise, floating out and up and around. There was a cold front coming through, and all Bruce could smell was fire.
“I waited for you. I waited for SO LONG, and where were you?”
There was a childishness to the sound. An almost petulant refusal and Bruce blinked, trying not to choke on the words stuck on his tongue.
The part that he wanted to hide away, the weakest link, found a sort of comfort in the sound. (The part that wanted Jason to stay, if only to hear it one more time.)
“Where were you? I waited…”
Jason’s voice, which before had echoed through the room, trailed away with a faint, near imperceptible whisper.
The echoes left.
Later, when Bruce went to wipe his tired eyes, they came away wet.
The day after Dick came home from Bludhaven, Bruce decided enough was enough. The charade had gone on a lot longer than it should have--too long, if the looks Alred had been giving him were any indication of his concern. So, that night, after hours of guarding over the city he had always held dear, Bruce decided that it was time to let go.
He'd already gone and erased the date of Jason's tombstone a few moments earlier, and he could feel the presence, all the way until the last scratch of stone. He'd done it after Alfred had gone to bed and stopped watching, after everyone stopped watching.
Except for him.
“Jason,” Bruce said. In his room, but not alone. “Jason, I’m…”
However, once he started speaking, he found that the words wouldn’t come. Couldn’t come, but Bruce had said his name. Shouldn’t that mean he would appear? Shouldn’t that mean Jason was listening?
“I—”
A vase flung itself from its table and smashed on the ground, and Bruce didn’t jump, but he did stare. He looked around, but there was nothing there. Like always.
He couldn't deal with this. He couldn’t deal with this.
“Jason, please—”
“DON’T SAY THAT.”
And Bruce exploded.
“What do you want me to say?” He yelled out, voice torn and scratched. “I’m sorry? That I miss you? I fucking—”
The thing, the thing that crawled and creeped and stayed inside, came out. Poured. Consumed, destroyed, encompassed all the words he could never seem to get right, the things he wanted to say, the things that had been swirling inside.
“I wanted to save you. I should have saved you, and I’m sorry, Jaybird.” Tears were trailing down his cheeks like raindrops down a window. “I was too late, is that what you want to hear?”
“You…”
“I tried, Jason. I tried so hard to reach you.” He was gasping, like the air wasn’t sufficient enough for his needs. “But I was too late. I was. It was me.” He breathed. Realised he couldn’t. “I know,” he stumbled out. “I know it was me.”
“You….”
“I know!”
“You…” There was a pause. Even the lights stopped flickering. “You couldn’t save me.”
Bruce stopped, gulping. Tried breathing again, employing the old technique that Alfred had insisted on back when his parents had died.
“You couldn’t have saved me. I was already…”
For a moment, Bruce wondered why Jason couldn’t finish the thought, why he stopped and if he would ever start again. Or if he was stuck with flickering lights and haunted pages.
Then he realised that Jason didn’t know.
“Oh Jaybird,” he breathed. “I’m so sorry.”
The floating books stopped, midair.
The voice of a kid said, “I’m not.”
The part of Bruce. The part that he had been giving in to, all this time, made itself known. And he understood, then, just how selfish it was. How evil it was to hold a kid to this world, when all he deserved was peace.
“You died in my arms, that night. I should have saved you. But I didn’t.”
Bruce took a deep breath.
“You died that night.”
The black hole took a deep breath.
“Jason…”
The thing in the room didn’t breathe.
“...I think it’s time for you to come home.”