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Jason couldn’t stay in Gotham, that is the first thing that came to his mind the moment he regained his senses and when he actually was able to breathe again.
‘Fuck Bruce, what did you do to me?’ Oh, Jason knew, Bruce had told him, but Jason’s not even sure Bruce really knew the extent of the damage that it would cause.
Yes Jason was perfectly calm, but he still felt his heart beating like it would come out of his chest and he didn’t know how to deal with it.
Jason was scared, he was scared of getting up, because he knew he would panic, he didn’t know how he would react if he saw anyone right now. He didn’t know if the lazarus pit would act up. He didn’t know if his heart would take it, so he laid there in a corner of Gotham, coming up with a plan of action that he eventually threw out of the window, because he couldn’t stay close to Bruce after what he did, but he wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of doing what he wanted.
He clearly wasn't going to Metropolis to to start a new life.
He would leave and Bruce would never hear from him again unless he crawled to him begging for his forgiveness, unless he stopped being Batman, unless he became his father again.
As he got up, things started happening in a blur. He went to buy some clothes. He took his motorcycles and he left.
The landscape was moving, he was driving on instinct, he didn’t care where the road led him. He changed highways and took some exits. He apparently had his passeport, because he went through the customs to get in Canada, then he went to get some fuel and continued his road. He didn’t know where he would stop, but he still didn’t feel far enough.
At the end of the day he got to a small village in the North of Ontario, a small touristic village, where he was able to book a hotel room for the night.
It was at the start of April and they were still trying to find some employees. Jason got a job at the Front Desk and he felt good again. He was learning to handle stress again as the summer went on, he befriended the older peoples in the village. He jumped in the Channel in front of the hotel quite a few times. He did a lot of hiking. He also enlisted with the volunteer firefighters to help himself deal with higher levels of stress.
He received quite a few messages from Damian who was worried about him and that is how he eventually learned that Damian had left Bruce and went to live with Dick and not long after he was asked to come pick them up from Gotham to go to the John F. Kennedy Airport and the hotel close to it, because they were spending the weekend having fun between brothers and that included Damian and Tim Drake doing plane spotting.
During that time Jason realised something. He missed flying, he missed being robin. Because for him being robin was magic. He didn’t know if it was his own memories being clouded by nostalgia, but being Robin he felt so free. During the weekend, while watching those planes, he felt an inch of that magic.
As he got back to his small town in the middle of the forest, in the middle of nowhere and everywhere, he started thinking about the after the summer and for some reason he felt like he would pilot those planes.
That is how he ended up signing up in a program to get his pilot license in a school in Quebec. Why? Because he felt like being in the states would have been way too close to Bruce. Here, he can go unnoticed, he can get a citizenship pretty easily, because he is dead and he knows how to hack systems and dead people are hardly noticed.
He did feel terrible about leaving Crime Alley, but that didn’t mean he was giving up on it. He had eyes and people who were able to act in his place and he still had a good amount of crime lord money he could put back into making Crime Alley better.
Crime Alley and Gotham were his home, but he couldn’t feel home anymore. It felt like if he returned, the only thing he would see would be his dad, trying to change him without Jason wanting, his dad violating him and his boundaries once too many times.
It took 3 years to get his licence. He learned everything from weather and how it could affect planes, magnetism, physics and mathematics for flight. He learned to fly by night and by day, with other pilots and with a crew.
He also had a general formation where he did a few literature classes and philosophy.
Jason worked hard, really hard during those three years.
It was very rewarding.
Then came the moment where Jason had to leave Chicoutimi and try to find work.
It had been three years since he went back to Gotham, since they went to New York, him and his brothers.
After that he hadn’t dared to make the road back. He was busy learning a new job and he couldn’t be distracted.
They kept giving each other news. He and Alfred had taken the tea regularly in New York. They had gone to see Shakespeare plays and a lot of musicals together.
So before getting in anything serious, Jason wanted to go back to Gotham. He was going to hide in plain sight for a month, he wanted to see the few contacts he had,watching over Crime Alley and he wanted to see what he could do for them, for those people who still needed him. He was going to figure out how to keep taking care of crime alleys while living outside of Gotham.
He sure as hell wasn’t going to be having a normal life, he wasn’t going to give the old man that satisfaction.
In the end, he had applied for a company in Quebec and he got the Job. (Jason had perfect French and he was good in multiple other languages)
His plan was to go back to Gotham once a month and spend an entire day with the kids in crime alley, bringing them food, helping at shelters and reinvesting his paycheck in the community. If he could go back more then that to gotham to help the children, he won't mind, but he had his old lieutenants, thrustworthy people he could count on to watch over them.