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Never once in their relationship has Jason consistently or comfortably referred to Bruce as Dad. It’s there, of course, as an obvious option, but it feels weird in his head and in his mouth, like a suit that doesn’t fits It slips out sometimes, in moments when Jason is losing it, when he’s scared, when he’s excited, but not in the day to day. Not when they greet each other, not when he thinks about him, not when they get ready for patrol.
Bruce is a lot of people, every single day.
He’s Bruce Wayne.
He’s the Batman.
He’s Bruce.
He’s Batman.
But only sometimes, in the deepest recesses of Jason’s mind in his most vulnerable moments, is he “dad.”
Bruce calls Jason his son all the time.
xxx
The seeds of a plan seem to take root in Jason and Dick at the exact same time, and, if they’re being honest, they’d have to say it’s Stephanie who’s been watering them. Of course, they don’t talk about any of this. Jason tries to, that day, when he and Dick talk about Talia, about how she’s alive, about how Damian, who’s lived through so much, hasn’t lived through that, yet. Jason opens his mouth and tries to say it, but all he can get out is: “what if Damian’s the fresh start. What if it’s not too late,” but when he looks at Dick, he thinks Dick knows what he’s not able to say.
What if it’s not too late.
Anyways, the idea is growing. Bruce’s knee is continuing to deteriorate. Damian is hanging out with them more and more and is starting to pick the games they play. They’ve started allowing Tim to play with them at all. Stephanie stops asking them if they’re okay all the time and starts just napping on the ground while they play FIFA.
It’s not too late, Jason is realizing. They’ve can keep it from being too late.
xxx
Jason once saw Batman get thrown off a goddamn building. He was fourteen, and he’d only just started patrolling, and he watched Bruce fight off two men before being shoved off by a building by three.
DAD, his mind screamed. DAD. And it echoed that until they reunited, alive and whole.
Dad.
xxx
Jason can feel them working towards a conversation, and it makes him a little nauseous, for reasons he can’t define. He’s had a dozen versions of this conversation with Stephanie already, and Dick has broached it with him before. For some reason, though, he can’t help but feel that the next conversation he has with either of them will be final, that they won’t be able to keep pretending it’s inconsequential. And so Jason does the natural thing and starts avoiding being alone with either of them.
What he’s not ready for (what he’s NEVER fucking ready for) is fucking Tim.
One late morning, when almost everyone is still sleeping after patrol, Jason is alone in the Cave, replacing his bike tires. It’s quiet, and he likes it, and he’s starting to realize that what he really likes about this quiet is knowing that there are people asleep in the Manor above him; that the quiet isn’t an absence of presence but a reassurance of rest.
Jason has been having way too many thoughts, recently.
Tim walks in, ruining the quiet by letting his slides scuff the floor, throws a bag of breakfast biscuits at Jason’s face, and says: “I got you breakfast. Stephanie says you’re the next Batman.” He blinks at Jason and then throws himself into the computer chair. “So what’s that about?”
Jason scrubs the grime off his hands with a towel before taking a biscuit and chucking it back at Tim’s head. Smiling at the thunk sound it makes when it lands, he grabs a second biscuit for himself. He bites into it.
“It’s not real,” he says, talking around the food. He swallows. He’s beginning to notice his inability to control what he says to Tim—it’s always been there, for some reason, this thing that makes his brain disconnect from whatever he’s about to open his mouth and say. It’s why some of the worst things he’s ever said have been to Tim. It’s why Tim knows some of his deepest secrets. It’s why he tries to avoid getting cornered in conversations like this with Tim. “It’s not real,” he repeats. “Stephanie just really wants to be Red Hood.”
Tim points a finger gun at him. “Almost a good deflection, but not quite, because Steph already told me she wants ME to be Hood.” Jason freezes. “Annnnndddd,” Tim adds, suddenly interested in unwrapping his biscuit, “I can tell by your face that you didn’t know that part yet, so let’s not get in the weeds. But long story short she wants you to be Bats, me and her to split up Hood. We’ve got time, of course. But what’s up with you as Bats?”
We’ve got time, Jason thinks, and another voice screams: it doesn’t have to be too late.
He shakes his head. “I don’t…it’s Steph’s plan. It’s not mine. I-“
“Do you want it?”
What was it, that Jason’s always said? Anyone but fucking Tim. But now, shit. He’s looking at Tim, and fuck, what if it is Tim? What if it’s not Dick? Why would Jason, of all people, every think it could be him, when Tim and Dick are alive and running around? Why-
“Jason. Stop staring. Answer.” Tim swallows a chunk of biscuit. “Do you want it?”
“I don’t know,” Jason says finally. “Do you want it?”
“Obviously,” Tim says. He leans forward. “But I’m starting to think being Batman isn’t about wanting it. And you won’t live forever. Shit, you may not make it to the end of the year if you keep letting people kidnap you. Besides, Steph’s pitch of us all round-robining identities all the time makes this…I don’t know. I’m interested, I guess is what I’m saying.” He looks into Jason’s eyes one beat too long. “So, yeah. Fuck the question do you want it, I take that question back. Now I’m asking. Are you gonna do it?”
“I don’t know,” Jason repeats. He can’t talk about it, not even to Tim, can’t look directly at the great looming darkness that hangs over him when he thinks about being Batman. “I don’t know.”
“Okay,” Tim says. He leans back. “You should probably figure that out. ‘Cause we’re building plans around you.”
xxx
Jason is fifteen and sometimes Bruce has to go to movie premieres and NBA games and smile at reporters to prove he’s still alive and he’s still an idiot. It’s bizarre, to Jason, to sit at home and watch the man he lives with plaster on a drunk smile and make coy comments to blonde reporters and be so convincing even Jason believes him.
He’s watching Bruce Wayne on TV, at some red carpet for a movie Wayne Entertainment produced. It’s a romcom, apparently, about some billionaire who marries his assistant and adopts her two children. It looks like a dumb movie.
“Any inspiration for you?” The reporter asks, absolutely oozing over Bruce Wayne. “Feeling like maybe it’s time to settle down?”
“Settle down?” Bruce Wayne repeats, and he laughs and winks at the camera. “I’m exactly as settled as I need to be.” He pauses, licks his teeth. “I have everything I need at home.”
Holy shit, Jason thinks. His dad is talking about him.
xxx
“Remember when I said ‘stop telling people I’m Batman’?” Jason asks Stephanie one afternoon in the middle of a 2K game. Somehow, it’s just the two of them in here. The world has gotten a lot easier, recently, even as everything has gotten more painful, and Jason finds it easy, now, to be in a room with Dick, with Damian, and even with Tim; he doesn’t tense up when he’s forced into proximity with his siblings, he doesn’t grit his teeth until he learns what awful question someone is going to ask him next. Even now, though, nothing is as easy as being alone in a room with Steph.
“Vaguely,” she mutters. She’s laying on the floor—she always lays on the floor to game. They’ve all been assigned seats, though Jason doesn’t know how or when—he sits on the left corner of the couch, Dick on the right, unless Damian is there, in which case he takes the right and Dick takes the middle. Steph and Tim sprawl on the floor at their feet, even if seats are open. “Why?”
“‘Cause it feels like maybe you didn’t hear me,” Jason says. “‘Cause why the fuck am I having to talk to Tim about this?”
Stephanie pretends to gag. “Oh my god, can we get over the fake Tim outrage? I told him so that I could soft launch the Tim as Red Hood idea. Next question.”
“Okay, yeah. Why the fuck would Tim be Red Hood.”
She pauses the game and sits up, which means that this is about to be a nauseatingly serious conversation. Jason holds back a groan and fights the urge to leave the the room. “Are you upset?” she asks. “Because when you say it out loud I’m realizing maybe it was another overstep.”
Goddamn them and their self awareness about oversteps. It makes it hard to be mad when she’s trying so fucking hard.
He holds back a sigh. His hands fiddle with the game controller, even though there’s no game to play. “Everything you do is an overstep, Steph. I’m just trying to figure out why the fuck this was one you wanted.”
She tilts her head, obviously trying to find the words. “Because I fucking love Hood,” she says finally. “And I want to do him justice. And I don’t think…I think it’s gotta be Tim. And me. Obviously. But for Hood to be Hood, I think… I’m not doing this because I love Tim more than you. I’m doing this because of how much I love Hood.”
Jason’s heart skips for a second, and he schools his face and body to be so, so still, to have no reaction. Has she ever said love to him before? And fuck, right. She’s right. He does love her. It makes sense she’d love him back, then, right? But, no, historically there hasn’t been a wild amount of correlation between Jason loving someone and them loving him back, and even though he KNEW she loved him, he’s never thought about it before, and- shit. He forgot that normal people move, usually. He tries to relax his body in a normal way. “Steph. Stop telling people I’m Batman. I’m…Bruce is Batman.”
“Right now,” she corrects. “Bruce is Batman right now. But he’s right. We’ve gotta…we’ve gotta be ready.”
There it is again. That fucking suffocating darkness on the edge of Jason’s mind. He shakes his head. “It’s Dick,” he says, a tired refrain, and Stephanie frowns.
“Jason,” she says quietly. “No, it’s not. He’s not…he’s fucking tired, Jason. He’d only do to save us, you know?”
“And why would I do it?” Jason asks, looking at the ceiling.
There’s a long pause. And then, even quieter: “Because you love Gotham.”
xxx
“Do I have to call you dad now?”
It takes Jason three weeks post adoption to ask, but it’s been weighing on him.
Bruce blinks at him. “Do you want to?”
Jason shakes his head silently, and Bruce nods. “Call me whatever you want, Jay. You’re my son. That’s all that matters.”
xxx
In the weeks after Talia’s visit, Damian moves through life in a way that’s quieter and angrier than even Jason is used to. Everything they do seems to annoy him—he cuts his eyes at them whenever they say something too loudly, he sighs audibly whenever Tim dares to laugh. Sometimes he refuses to be acknowledged by them; he just looks off into the distance as Dick asks him what he wants for lunch or Steph asks how his friends are.
The worst of it is when Bruce is around.
Bruce is not often around anymore. This is Jason’s fault, probably. Batman is still patrolling with them, but Batman is also still terrorizing Gotham on solo nights, and Bruce is… well, there’s only so much time in the day. A person can’t be Bruce and Batman at the same time.
And yeah, Jason blames himself, because it’s a generally understood thing that he had triggered this renewed rage in Batman when he confessed everything to Bruce, and then his kidnapping had only made it all worse, and then… he hadn’t been able to look Bruce in the eyes, for so long, after the torture. And now…he still hasn’t been alone in a room with Bruce, is the thing, since Steph had spilled about the Talia gun comment and they hadn’t been able to look at each other. It’s been nine days, and Jason can’t tell who’s avoiding who anymore.
Bruce lurks quietly in the background of rooms and conversations, clearly trying not to upset anyone. This only serves to further irritate Damian, who has clearly decided Bruce is to blame for most of his problems. Whenever Bruce speaks, Damian huffs loudly and rolls his eyes. Whenever Bruce doesn’t speak, he grows increasingly tense until he snaps out: “oh so you have nothing to say?”
If Damian weren’t being such a terror to all of them, it would be funny.
Throughout it all, though, Damian does not leave them. He’s so irritable that it takes a couple of days to notice, but once Tim points it out—outside of Damian’s earshot, of course—it’s impossible to miss. Since Talia left, Damian has not been alone for anything other than sleep. He stays in whatever room the majority of the people are in, even as their presence seemingly drives him insane.
It’s stupid. Jason finds it much harder to leave the Manor for some reason.
One morning, at breakfast, when it’s somehow just Dick, Jason, and Damian, Bruce walks in. He pours himself a cup of coffee as they all chew quietly, clearly trying to assess his best point of entry.
Finally, Bruce says: “how was your patrol?”
Damian throws his fork down onto his plate with a clatter, his face arranged into a look of pure disgust. He stands up, already looking to the door. “I am going to find Drake and go to Stephanie’s house,” he says. “There’s less noise there.” And then he storms out.
The silence, for a moment, is devastating.
Jason can’t help it- he laughs. “Oh my god,” he whispers. “What a little bitch.”
Dick snorts. “Oh my god,” he echoes, and then he and Jason look at Bruce’s dejected face and they both burst out in laughter again.
Bruce sighs and slumps into a seat, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“You know,” Dick says, breathing heavily to dissipate his laughter, “I’ve been reading some parenting books recently-“
“The fuck you have!” interjects Jason, laughing even harder.
“Fine! I was on Reddit. BUT- wait.” Dick buries his face in his hand for a second, physically repelling the laughter. “Okay. Look. Apparently this is totally normal. He’s having conflict with the unstable parent, right? So he lashes out at the parent that’s stable enough to take it. It’s a sign of trust, B. He knows you won’t leave him. So he’s mad at you instead of Talia ‘cause it’s safer.”
Bruce has never looked more unimpressed in his life.
“Oh my god,” hisses Jason, “please tell me you posted on Reddit for help. I’m begging you to tell me there’s gonna be a TMZ report on Bruce Wayne’s family conflict later this week.”
“Shut up.” Dick swats at Jason without looking at him. “Bruce. Listen. I think…I think you kind of coasted, with me and J, because we were just pretty psyched to have a parent, you know? And now you have to actually coparent, and it’s…it seems worse.”
That finally gets a reaction out of Bruce, though the reaction is just a slow tilt of the head and a long, tired look. Finally, right when Jason thinks he’s committed to silence for the rest of the night, Bruce says, in a voice that’s a little too honest: “nothing felt like coasting with you and Jason.”
Jason and Dick glance at each other, considering this. For a moment, Jason feels some sort of childhood guilt try to creep in—see? You’re difficult. You are a burden to those forced to raise you. You-
“Were we difficult to raise?” Jason asks quietly, the laughter gone.
“No,” Bruce says immediately. “You weren’t difficult at all. I just…” he looks at the doorway where Damian left. “I wasn’t very good at it.”
“You can say we’re difficult,” Dick says. “I spent most of my late teens screaming at you. Jason had to be talked out of running away once a week. We’re not… we know, B.”
“You weren’t difficult,” Bruce repeats, more firmly. “Having you two…when I think about…” he inhales sharply, stared at his cup of coffee. “Your presence,” he says slowly, “could never be more difficult than your absence. I just wish I had been better at it.”
“You weren’t a bad dad, B,” Dick says softly, and then he looks to Jason, a question in his eyes, and Jason finds himself nodding.
“You weren’t,” Jason echoes. He clears his throat. “And Damian…look. We’re going to help you with him.”
Bruce raises his eyebrows at that. “What?”
Dick nods. “Yeah. We’ve been talking. Fresh slate, new chance, all that shit. Damian is our baby brother, okay? We’re all doing this. Together.”
“Yeah,” Jason says, the confidence in his voice shocking even him. “Together.”
xxx
Jason sometimes lies and tells his first grade teachers he doesn’t have a dad. It’s easier, he finds, than explaining who his dad is or what his dad does or where his dad it. Lots of kids in his classes don’t have dads, and lots of them have dads like his dad, and lots of kids lie about their dads, too. It’s just easier.
One day, though, he shows up to school with a black eye, and his teacher looks sad when she looks at him and she says: “your dad back in town?”
And for some reason, the shame of knowing she knows he lied is worse than the shame of the black eye.
xxx
Jason starts going to Stephanie’s apartment, sometimes. Apparently, Tim goes through phases where he practically lives here, depending on how much he and Steph can stand each other and how easy he is to drag away from the Cave at any point. Damian has started hiding out here too, which is bizarre, but he needs a place where he isn’t worried about running into Bruce. And so, somehow, Jason ends up there, too.
The first thing that hits him is that Stephanie lives in a certain level of mess he was unprepared for. Ever since he came back, he’s been obsessed with cleanliness, at a level even he knows clearly stems back to his childhood. Whatever. He just hates there being dirt in his apartment; he can’t sleep if he knows there’s dishes in the sink.
Stephanie is unburdened by such concerns.
Looking at her apartment, actually, it’s becoming increasingly clear that she comes home from patrol, sleeps, wakes up, and leaves. There’s clothes in a pile at the foot of her bed where she undresses every day. There’s a row of coffee mugs by the sink with varying levels of coffee in them. There are shoes scattered by the door.
Jason fucking loves this apartment.
Currently, Tim and Damian are sprawled on the couch watching cartoons while Jason does the dishes. He doesn’t need to do the dishes; he knows this. He doesn’t even know if Stephanie notices they’re getting done. He just wants to do it.
Stephanie is sitting on the counter next to him, monologuing.
“Apparently Damian hasn’t seen any episodes of Scooby Doo, so that’s what we have lined up for him next. Right now, obviously, we’re working through Johnny Bravo, and then after Scooby-Doo we’re going to hit Ben 10. I wanted to show him Totally Spies, but Tim’s not sure he’s ready for it. Not because it’s girls, because he fucking loved Kim Possible, but we’re worried the British butler and the gadgets hit a little too close to home. He told us you showed him Surf’s Up, but apparently that was too childish, which is crazy, because that’s a classic.”
“Yeah,” Jason says, “how the fuck did you guys get him to watch Johnny Bravo?”
“The key, we found, is to just start watching it without him and wait for him to sit down. If you ask him to watch something he only wants to watch horror. Which is, you know. Fine. But there’s a time and a place for when I’m prepared to see a girl’s entrails spilled.”
Jason nods, putting up the last mug. She grins at him.
“He really likes you now, too.”
Jason shakes his head. “He’s just as annoyed with me as he is with the rest of you.”
“No, he’s not. He keeps mentioning how you know his mom. I think…I think it helps to have someone who gets it.”
“She’s not my mom,” Jason protests halfheartedly, not wanting to take that from Damian, and Stephanie nods.
“Yeah. She’s not. But it still helps.” She side eyes him. “Like. It helps me that you had a shitty dad. Even though we had different dads. It’s just…it’s good to know.”
Jason turns this over in his head. Johnny Bravo blares behind him. “He wasn’t always bad,” Jason says finally. “My dad. I mean. He sucked. But he didn’t…it wasn’t always bad.”
“I know,” Stephanie says quietly. “Neither was mine.” There’s a long pause, where she clearly weighs her next words. “He hit you, right?”
It’s not like it’s a secret. Jason is sure it’s written all over him; he knows that after his death Dick probably blabbed some stuff he would have kept private in Jason’s life. But the bluntness of it still takes him back for a second.
“Yeah,” he says, and she nods.
“Yeah.” She cuts her eyes to Tim and Damian. “They don’t always get that. So it helps.”
He looks at her for a long moment. She’s so perfect, is the thing. She’s so kind and she’s so funny and she’s so smart and she cares so much and she had a shitty dad and she’s still all of those things. Maybe it’s not too late.
“I’m worried about Bruce,” he says, so quietly he’s worried she may not hear him. He doesn’t mean to say it, it just comes out as a confession he can’t keep silent anymore.
“Yeah,” she whispers, and she reaches out to nudge his shoulder. “I know.”
xxx
Jason is thirteen and he’s alone in a room with Dick, which he HATES, and Bruce is mad right now, because of fucking Dick, which Jason hates even more, and they’re waiting for Bruce to get home from some gala so that he and Dick can continue shouting at each other and Jason actually feels like he’s about to crawl out of his own skin.
They’re supposed to be watching a movie, but he can’t stop moving. His leg bounces, his hand twitch, he keeps licking his lips. He knows he’s annoying Dick. It used to drive his dad nuts when he got like this. But Bruce is about to come home mad, and Dick doesn’t care at all, and-
“Holy shit, Jason. Stop. Stop moving. Oh my god. Take a breath.”
Jason freezes.
Dick side eyes him. “Jesus. What…what are you so keyed up about?”
Jason mumbles something under his breath, and Dick squints. “What?”
“You pissed Bruce off,” Jason repeats, a little louder, ignoring that his hands are shaking. “And now…and now I’m gonna have to deal with it. So fuck you. That’s what I’m keyed up about.”
“Deal with it? You’ll have to- WHAT are you talking about?”
“You pissed Bruce off,” Jason says again, agonizingly. “He’s gonna come home mad.”
“So what?” Dick says. “He comes home mad all the time.”
“Yeah,” Jason says, “but not at me.”
Dick just stares. “He’s mad at me.”
“It’s all the same,” Jason says, struggling to find the words for what he means. A mad man is a mad man. It doesn’t matter if it’s him or if it’s his mom or if it’s some guy on the street or if it’s Dick. If someone makes a man mad and he comes home to Jason, he’ll be mad at Jason. It is what it is.
Dick is being weird. He seems confused, and something else, which is confusing to Jason. Dick pauses the movie. “Jason,” he says slowly, “Bruce is like your dad now. He’s not going to get mad at you because he’s mad at me.”
Jason scoffs. “Yeah. Because that’s how dads work.”
Dick squints again. “Jason.” Jason would pay money for him to stop saying Jason’s name. “Did your dad…your dad get mad a lot?”
“Fuck you.”
“He…did your dad hit you?”
“Shut up,” Jason says. “He was a dad. Of course he hit me.”
xxx
Dick makes him go on a run together. Jason fucking hates this, but it’s more annoying to get Dick to stop than it is to just go on the run, so he caves.
The Manor is surrounded by small roads and beautiful views, places where the Gotham skyline can only be seen on hilltop, and they run there, and the air is cold enough that it bites when they breeze but warm enough that the sweat feels good. They end at the base of the Manor driveway, and stop there, unwilling to make the trek all the way to the house. They both sprawl out on the grass, perfectly manicured as always, shirts soaked in sweat. For a few minutes, Jason just breathes. The sun is bright. When was the last time he laid in the sun?
“We need to talk, I think, Jay,” Dick says, and just by the way he’s speaking, lazy and low, Jason can tell his eyes are closed. “I talked to Tim.”
Jason closed his eyes, too, can feel the brightness of the sun through them. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.”
There’s a slow, steady inhale of breath next to him. “He says he talked to you. About being Batman. And you said…you said you didn’t know.”
“Sounds familiar.”
A long pause. The wind picks up a little, catches at Jason’s side where his shirt had ridden up. “Jason. I won’t…you know you could leave it all now, right? And I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t mind? I don’t want…you don’t have to be Batman. To be here. You don’t have to be…you don’t have to be anything at all. I just want you here.”
Jason considers this. He considers how many video games they’ve played together; how long Dick stopped being Nightwing and kept being Dick; how it feels to eat breakfast with Dick. “Yeah,” he says, after he’s mulled this over. “I know.”
“Okay. And you…you really don’t know? You don’t know if you want this?”
The cloud encroaches on the edge of his mind again. He’s silent.
Dick sighs next to him. “I’m gonna say something,” he says, clearly unsure, “and if I’m wrong, you can get mad, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Okay. When you were a kid, I…” Jason immediately tenses, and then commands his body to calm down. “When you told me. Bruce was adopting you. You were scared. You didn’t…you didn’t want to admit you wanted it. And I…I thought about that, all the time. And I think now, that…that maybe you didn’t want to admit you wanted it. Because then…then it would be real.” Dick picks at the grass absentmindedly, his hand occasionally bumping into Jason’s shoulder. “And if it was real, you could…you could lose it.”
Well goddamn. Jason swallows. “Sure,” he says, trying to keep his voice neutral, “let’s say it was that.”
“And now,” Dick continues, “you can’t say you want it. Because…then it’s real.”
The wind stops again, and the sun shines down, and the tops of Jason’s knees are warm. “Yeah,” he whispers. “It’s real.” He sits up, refusing to let himself look at Dick. “Do you remember? The conversation that started all this? In the cave?”
Back before so much fucking stuff. Back before he and Tim entered a cold war, back before he and Dick could bear to be in the same room, back before he and Steph were friends, back before he told Bruce everything, back before he told Tim everything, back before he got kidnapped, back before he and Damian had conversations with each other, back before he and Tim joked together. Back before back before back before.
“Vaguely,” Dick admits, and Jason shakes his head.
“It can’t be real, man. Not yet.”
xxx
He is told, later, that one of the first coherent words he says to Talia is “dad.” Talia demonstrates mixed feelings about this.
xxx
There’s a patrol, one night, where Bruce keeps not telling them what the fuck he’s doing and so they keep stumbling onto the aftermath of something he’s done.
“He is so stupid,” Damian says through gritted teeth.
Jason side eyes him. “Yeah?” He and Damian are patrolling together, mostly because Damian’s been following him and acting like it was planned. Jason hasn’t called him out on it.
“Yes,” Damian hisses. “Red Robin is right. He is going to kill himself. And why? Because he cannot bear to tell us where he is? He is an imbecile. If we behaved this way he would ground us.”
Jason considers pointing out that the only person still eligible for grounding is Damian, and then reconsiders. “He’s fine, Robin,” he says, even as he’s not sure he believes it. “He’s the Batman.”
Damian’s look is withering. “Hood,” he says sternly. “You cannot be that stupid. He is a man.”
xxx
He comes back to Gotham. He comes home. It’s to get revenge; it’s to avenge his death; it’s to see the city that raised him and demand an answer.
It’s to see his dad.
xxx
Dick offers to be the one to talk to Bruce, but Jason knows.
It has to be him.
He goes to Bruce when he’s in his study. It’s the same room where Jason once laid his soul bare, and he finds that that helps, somehow, the knowledge that he can say unsayable things in this room and live through it.
Bruce is working on something, and Jason clears his throat in the doorway.
“Bruce,” he says quietly, and then, before he can chicken out: “Dad.”
That gets Bruce’s attention. His head snaps up, and he seems to go through four stages of grief before realizing that Jason is, in fact, not actively dying. God, they’ve done a number on this man.
Jason takes a seat. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to say first; not sure if he should have had Dick come with him. He twists his hands into his hoodie pocket and tries to settle on what feels the most true, the most pressing.
“You’re scaring Damian,” he says, and Bruce’s face shutters. Jason clears his throat, and adds, in a near whisper: “you’re scaring me.”
Bruce looks devastated, and he stares down at his hands. “Okay,” he says quietly. “How…what am I doing?”
“You’re gonna fucking kill yourself, B,” Jason says, and to his surprise, his voice cracks. Well. This wasn’t how any of this was supposed to go. He takes a deep breath, steadies himself. “The Batman. Batman. You…you’re getting old. And you’re not slowing down. And maybe…Maybe you should.”
Bruce stares at him. “Okay,” he says. “So I’ve scared you and Damian by…”
“Dude, we think we’re gonna watch you die,” Jason says in a rush.
Something mellows in Bruce’s face, though it’s replaced by something new that Jason can’t pin down. “Jay,” he says slowly, “I know you may worry, but I…I will be okay.”
“Your knee is so fucked,” Jason says, still in a rush, “and you…dude, you asked US what we should do when you die. So we…we know. And it…Bruce. Fuck. I don’t know how to say any of this shit. Give me a second.” He taps his knee, licks his lips. Fuck. For just a moment, he puts his hands in his face, grinding the heels of his palms into this eyes, and then he looks back up at Bruce, who still has that awful look on his face.
“Bruce. Look. Everyone keeps telling me I’m going to be Batman.”
Bruce nods hesitantly. This, at least, is something they’ve talked about before.
“And they keep asking me if. If I want it. If I’m going to do it. And the truth is…I can’t…I can’t even think about it, Bruce. Because…because I know if I’m Batman, it means you’re dead.”
Bruce has no facial reaction to this, but his body stills in a way that Jason usually only sees when Batman is in surveillance. Jason wonders if he’s even breathing.
“And I think…look, I’ve been hanging out with…well, with everyone, really. But Damian. I’ve been hanging out with Damian. And…Bruce, he’s the only one left who hasn’t lost a parent. And…look, we’ve got to keep Talia around, we know that. But the other part is…” he inhales shakily. “It’s you. You have to be around. He can’t…you can’t make him watch you die, Bruce.” He can feel himself blinking back tears, and he shakes his head. “You can’t do that to us, man, we can’t do it again. We can’t…we can’t watch another parent…Bruce. Please.” He can’t even look at Bruce. “You can’t do that to Dick,” he says quietly. “It’s not…we want you alive, man.” A shuddering breath. “We want you to stay. We want you to be our dad.”
Jason isn’t looking at Bruce, so he can’t see his reaction. But he hears the hands shuffling, the short breath, and the click of his jaw shutting. “Jason.” Bruce’s voice is shaky, too. “I have to…I have to do this. To…to protect you. I have to keep…I have to keep you safe. I couldn’t…if I stopped, and something…”
“Bruce, you can’t.” It’s harsher than he intends it to be, and his voice cracks again. He risks it: he looks at Bruce. “We can keep ourselves safe, okay? And we are. We’re…we’re fri- we’re a family, okay? We’re keeping ourselves safe. We’re all in this. And we don’t need…shit. We don’t need you to be Batman. Stephanie doesn’t need you to be Batman. We need…please, Bruce. Please just be our dad.”
There are two tears on Bruce’s face. “Jason. What are you…what are you asking me to do?”
Jason inhales as deeply as he can. “I’m asking you to step down. I’m asking you to let me be Batman. Without you having to die. I’m asking you to…to be my dad. Tim’s dad. Damian’s dad. I’m asking you to…stay alive. For us. Please.”
Bruce looks down. “Jason… I don’t know… I don’t know if I…”
“I know,” Jason whispers. “It took me a while to figure it out, too. But I…we don’t love you like a fucking gun, Bruce. You’re our dad. So just…think about it.” He sniffs. “Please.”
“Okay,” Bruce promises. “I will.”
And Jason believes him.
xxx
Jason is thirteen, and he’s getting brave enough to ask Bruce the questions that matter.
“Why do you do it?” he asks, watching Alfred wrap Bruce’s shoulder with packs of ice.
Bruce looks at him with tired eyes. “Because Gotham deserves it, Jason.”
xxx
Dick finds him in the library, a few days later, rereading The Man in the Iron Mask.
“What’d you do to Bruce?” Dick asks, flopping onto a couch. “He’s acting like a freak.”
Jason hums. “I asked him to stop being Batman.” He exhales in a way that completely clears the air from his lungs. “Asked him not to make us watch him die.”
“Oh,” Dick says, laying down. “Shit. Yeah, that’d do it.” He settles in to the couch. “What did he say?”
Jason puts down his book and lays down on the floor, knowing this conversation will not be short. “Said he’d think about it.”
“Well. That’s better than I thought you’d get.”
“Yeah.” Jason shifts so that his shoulder blades rub against the carpet. “Tim said that, too.” He pauses. “Is it—was it wrong? To ask him that? I mean. Would you do it?”
Dick thinks this over. “I think so. But I’m not Bruce. I mean, he built this. But…but I don’t have a kid. I just have Damian. And I think…I think I’d do anything Damian asked. But I’m not…I’m not Bruce.” He wiggles his foot. “Would you?”
“I don’t know,” Jason says. He’s been thinking about this a lot, actually. “Maybe. I don’t know if I’d do it for Damian.” He swallows. “I think I’d do it for you.”
Dick doesn’t respond at first. Jason braves a look at him and sees a single tear on his face and immediately looks away. “Okay,” Dick says. “Good to know. For future reference.”
“Yeah.”
Dick taps his hand against his chest. “I wish…I know you’re probably sick of talking about this. But I wish…I wish I’d been fucking better, man. At all of it. From the minute you showed up. I just wish…I wish I’d been good at it.”
“Me too,” Jason breathes. “I wish…I wish I’d known how to do any of this.” He works his jaw. “But we…Damian. We’ll be better this time.”
“Yeah.”
They lay there for a few minutes, and Jason knows what he needs to say, even as he has to work up to it.
“Hey Dick?”
“Yeah, man?”
“I love you.”
The response takes a minute, but the quiet is easy; it’s still.
“Love you too, Jay.”
xxx
Jason is in the Batmobile, and he’s terrified, and he’s just eaten a burger and he’s not hungry for the first time in what feels like months and he’s just screamed at an adult man who didn’t immediately try to kill him and he’s just tried to steal from the Batman and nothing has happened to him yet and he’s staring outside of the car as Batman speeds him to SOMEWHERE.
“Where are we going?” he asks, trying to keep the panic out of his voice.
“Somewhere safe,” Batman responds. “Somewhere you’ll be safe.”
xxx
Bruce has been having a lot of private conversations, recently, with everyone except Jason. Jason is okay with this. He’s kind of tired of crying, to be honest, and he can’t look at Bruce right now without trying to decide what they’ll do with Damian after Bruce dies.
A month goes by. Nothing changes. Jason accepts, at some level, that it wasn’t enough. Maybe he knew that, going in. Maybe he knew that Bruce was never going to give it up. Maybe he knew it was unfair to ask.
Bruce calls a Bat meeting.
They all pile into the Cave, scattered into their favorite spots. Tim is in the computer chair, Jason is leaning against a work shelf; Steph in on the floor. Damian is hovering next to a wall near Duke and Cass. Even Barbara is here, in person, at Dick’s side. Alfred is there.
Bruce looks out at all of them, that same unknown emotion carving lines into his face.
“This meeting is short,” he says, “and I’ve talked to most of you.” He gives Jason a look and Jason realizes he’s the only one Bruce hasn’t talked to. Shit. “At the end of this year, I will step down as Batman. Jason-“ Jason stops breathing. “Jason will be the new Batman. I will still work with all of you, but in an…an operative role. I won’t be patrolling. I…I’ll be here.” He clears his throat. “I’ll be at home.”
There is a ringing in Jason’s ears. He’s aware, vaguely, that all eyes are on him, but he can’t look away from Bruce. He should probably say something, but the words aren’t coming.
Bruce gives him a nod. “Are there any questions?”
Tim raises his hand.
“You’re not in school,” Steph says under her breath.
“Yeah, I’ve got one. End of year? Calendar or fiscal?”
“Fiscal?” Dick echoes.
“January 1st,” Bruce said. Jason swallows. “Three months. That will give us time to…to prepare.”
“Okay.” Tim turns to Jason. “Stop looking so scared, big guy. If you suck at it I’m just going to take over for you.”
“Fuck you,” Jason rasps. He’s still looking at Bruce.
“I also have a question,” Damian says from the corner, and if Jason didn’t know better, he’d think Damian was emotional. “I will be Jason’s Robin, yes?”
All eyes are on Jason again. He nods slowly, feeling like his head is made of lead. “Yeah,” he says, “you’ll be my Robin.”
“Very well.”
Somewhere, someone sniffs, clearly crying. Fucking Dick.
Bruce nods one last time at Jason. “Alright, then. If that’s all.”
No one moves. Jason knows he’s supposed to say something, he knows he’s supposed to do something, he knows he needs to inspire confidence right now, but what…
He surges forwards. He hugs his dad.
His dad whispers: “I love you, Jay,” and Jason whispers back: “thank you, I love you, thank you.”
And then there’s hands on his back and in his hair and cheering and whoops going up around him and he’s in a huddle, with his family. Jason is Batman. And he’s with his family.