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It wasn't supposed to go like this. It was supposed to be a quick in and out, it wasn't meant to end this way.
The last time Jason had been squashed under a chunk of debris he had been fifteen and praying, hoping, pleading for his dad to come save him. Even if he knew it wouldn't happen, that the man who had become his surrogate father wouldn't come and rescue him just this one last time, he still had hope.
At fifteen he was Robin. At fifteen he had a second family, a set up for a good education and a good life.
At fifteen he was a hero. At fifteen he had saved his mother, even if she had never done the same for him.
At fifteen he had made peace with his death.
He was a different person now. Older. Angrier. So full of twisted up emotions that often spilled out of him like hate, words pouring out of his mouth no matter how much he tried to contain them. Throwing venomous, spiteful phrases aimed to hurt, to cut deep, infect and fester, to make their hearts bleed just as his did.
Jason had wanted them to feel like he does. To know even just a fraction of the burden, the hurt, that he carried.
He didn't want them to hate him, he just wanted everything to stop hurting.
And yet this is where he found himself. Alone. Dying.
Again.
He doesn't remember it burning this bad last time, doesn't remember exactly how it felt when blood swelled in his lungs and dribbled from his lips. Choking, gasping, but only sucking in more of that sickly thick iron.
Jason knows the only person who didn't hate him yet was safe, somewhere. Somewhere far, far away, where he couldn't hurt them.
Yet.
It was stupid, and he laughed, more blood bubbling up this throat and past his lips as the action jostled his body. Shattered ribs like razor blades cutting into his chest, ripping and tearing him from the inside out. Just as the grief had been doing to him for years now.
What had it all been for? Setting up his own chunk of organized crime, taking out Black Mask, running others out of his territory. Terrorizing his family. Reuniting with a childhood friend, falling in love with them.
Just to throw it all away a second time.
Last time he had gone out in a blaze of glory, the last time he choked on his final breaths he had died a hero.
Now he would go out a broken, angry man. Someone criminals feared and everyone else pitied. And he hadn't even been able to make much of a change, had he? A few years was nothing in the great history of Gotham. A city that fed on the hurt and pain and suffering of its citizens.
He was nothing.
He had always been nothing, and tonight's recklessness would only seal that fact as a finality.
Oh Batman would be so disappointed in him. Again. Not only was he the first kid to die, the first failure, but he continued to be one after he was revived. Jason had been given a second chance, and he had thrown it away just like the first.
Bruce would be disappointed in him, and Jason would understand it this time. He had done this to himself after all, hadn't he? He broke the golden rule, constantly pushed and pushed and pushed until someone gave and broke. But it didn't make the hurt lessen.
It never did.
So why did he do it? Why did he continue to lash out at anyone who came too close? Damian, the little shit—affectionately, in all honesty—, had been right. He was the emotional one, the one who acted in impulse and felt too much. Launched himself into the stratosphere at every chance he got, only to plummet back to earth when his feelings led him astray once again.
Bruce would be disappointed, Dick would probably skip his funeral again—if there even was one—, would have more time to focus on greater problems than his stupid, reckless little brother (if the man he ever thought of him as such. Jason did). Tim would be relieved and slip perfectly into the family seamlessly again just like the first time around. Damian would have less competition.
Really, his death would do more good for the family than living ever did. He should have never come back in the first place.
He did nothing but cause grief and heartache to everyone, everything, around him no matter where he went.
With that in mind, Jason’s final words this time around wouldn't be a cry for help. They wouldn't be a declaration of love, or some other grand spectacle like his first death.
He wasn't dying to save anyone this time around. Jason would die a nobody in a helmet, with too many scars and weird hair. With a family that hated him and a partner who would be left alone to grieve.
His final words weren't reverent. They were simple, an admission of guilt.
As he sucked in his final, strangled breaths, laid in a pool of his own blood, eyes glazing over, he would utter,
“I deserved this.”
And in his own opinion, those words would ring true.
Another garbled laugh, soundless as he asphyxiated on his own bloody lungs. Bitter. Knowing. Full of hate and self-deprecation.
Nevermind the voices calling out his name in the dark, screaming and hoping they wouldn't have to lose a brother, a son, for a second time around. Please, not again, they would shout. Not like this, they would plead.
Voices overlapping, warm bodies surrounding a cold, still one. Hands on his face, his wounds, helplessly trying to stop the bleeding. A heavy, scarred hand closing unseeing, clouded eyes when that all proved futile.
Shrill, hiccupping sobs torn from a young boy's throat, the smallest hands of the group tugging and pulling at the martyr’s clothes, his arms, mourning the death of a loved one for the first time.
The eldest was stunned, forcing himself to look away, to choke on his own cries silently, a hand over his mouth. Shoulders shaking.
The middle son, frozen in disbelief, that genius brain trying its best to rationalize, to look at the scene logically. Already plotting revenge- and further, a way to fix this. Again.
A sister, cradling her little brother's head in her lap, brushing away damp, blood slicked hair. White now dyed red. Her focus on him and nothing else.
And finally, the father, surrounded by his mourning children but seeing none of them. The dust has settled, but the blood keeps running. Absently pulling his youngest to his chest, a comforting hand on his back, even as he burrowed the grief stricken boy right up against his own shattered heart.
At twenty-one Jason died surrounded by family, believing he was hated.
At fifteen the same boy died alone, knowing he was loved.