prodigaljaybird | [backdated]

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bruce

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It's taken so long to find him that for the short moment Jason pauses to look, he doesn't trust his own eyes. There's sweat in his eyes, exacerbating an already present sting, perspiration running down his arms to fight Jason for his grip on the batline, but it doesn't falter, aim desperately sure and grip too tight to let him fall, but now.

But now he's found him, Bruce's back to him in the jungle as he gathers wood for purposes Jason's wired too tight to understand. In all the hours he's spent searching, Jason hasn't figured out a damn thing to say, crawling out of his skin ever since he left Cass's side, the depth of it, the weight of it too much to untangle and put into anything like words.

He could die here. In the shape he's in, Jason doesn't have a prayer if Damian's lurking close by, but he doesn't give a fuck. Of all the things he's decided he can live with, live through, he's not sure this is one of them.

Leaving the trees at last, Jason hits the ground on legs almost too tired to hold him, but he stays upright, a croaked sound all that escapes him but for his labored breaths.

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"For the better."

It feels strange to glance at him huddled on the ground, so I drop myself to a crouch, glancing in his direction. This doesn't feel like a boy about to aim a gun at my chest, though a part of me wouldn't blame him if he did. If he has a punishment to mete, one with my name on it, I'm not always certain that I would stop him. (Were Damian not here, I probably wouldn't.)

It's the others I worry about. In that sense, he's hit around the ballpark. Am I worried for the others? Of course. But no more or less than I do for him. It's just—

It's just that I feel I have more to offer to the rest of them. Jason's happier like this. With a life. The one he missed out on as a child.

"You have friends here, Jason. Friends who've done a better job of giving you a life than I ever have."

Bruce doesn't get it. That much is old news, but somehow, body aching and ass in the dirt, it hurts like a brand new wound. Jason's already lost the life he really wanted, the miraculous, glorious life at Batman's side, and no matter what turns his life take now, he may never stop lamenting the loss of that first blissful existence.

"I was happy then," he murmurs, quiet as if to save his breath. "Had everything I ever wanted."

"Not your mother," I remind him. Maybe it's cruel. Maybe it's necessary. Sometimes things can be both. But the thing that he wanted, unquestionably, that I couldn't have managed to give him in a thousands years, was to be a parent who had made the choice to bring him into the world, and wanted him in spite of everything. A mentor wasn't enough. What child doesn't want to know his parents? Or believe that he or she was brought to complete another person's life?

"You couldn't have been so happy if you wanted... a parent. I wasn't enough of one for you."

"It's easier if you believe that," Jason murmurs, the realization bringing with it no comfort. He sets his cheek to his kneecap, the skin there dirty beneath the simple shorts he'd chosen to wear that day. He hadn't known he'd be hunting.

"I'd only just found out she was even alive. Some mother. You know, she watched. Smoked a cigarette."

"I'm not arguing that she was a good mother. I should have intercepted more firmly than I did. But you wanted a mother, you wanted that idea of a parent who was connected to you," I reason, because it's the only answer that makes sense. I've taken care of him as well as I knew how over the years, and it's my shortcoming to have thought that he would have been fine with an equal amount of attention as Dick. Clearly, that wasn't the case. Their backgrounds were different, their dispositions.

I'm a man of habit, and the need to break it never occurred to me here until it was too late.

Jason's not so far gone he doesn't notice Bruce isn't arguing the first of what he'd said, either.

"I was happy. With you. I don't care if you don't believe me." Busted Robin, costume in a case, a living yet undead reminder of Bruce's disappointments every time Bruce looks at him.

Jason heaves a sigh so tremulous, it could only come from a teenager's throat. "You were all I thought about when I came back. It doesn't fucking matter, does it?"

There are words that ring in the background in spite of Jason's own. I can hear a derisive snort from Damian's side. I can hear silence in the air from Cassandra, confused about how to progress, or Stephanie berating me for not offering Jason a more forgiving hand. I can hear Barnes, ready with accusations. Dropping to a crouch by Jason's side, I think in the end, the voice that sounds the loudest is in fact Alfred's, urging me to determine just how much of a father I still need to be, because Jason's need for guidance may never go away.

I think Alfred was resigned as I was in Gotham, but here, I imagine that things would be different.

"Jason, what do you want me to do? What do you want?"

Jason shudders, forehead pressed to his knees and eyes closed tight, but it doesn't stop new tears tracking hot down his cheeks. Maybe he just wants to cry and shake his fists, but he's not a fucking toddler, no matter what he feels like.

"I don't know," he says, voice miserable and clogged, "I don't know, I don't. Want to be a fucking case with a plaque on it." Your biggest failure. "I'm all bad memories."

The past cannot be forgotten. We cannot allow ourselves to let go of mistakes. We hold fast to them in order to keep from making the same ones a second a time, and this needs to still be the case with Jason. Could I step back and simply chase after the way things were years ago? Potentially. But that wouldn't solve anything.

"Then things need to change," I conclude. "I never know where exactly to stand with you, Jason. I do know that plenty of people have reservations about the two of us maintaining contact."

Jason swallows. Now that the adrenaline that'd carried him here is gone, he's exhausted, the effort it takes to lift his head almost too much. But like any teen, Jason has a fair amount of defiance in him, and still worse for any parent, conviction.

"You mean I have to change," he says quietly. "Don't you? You think I'm crazy." His fingers find the scar beneath the streak of white in his hair, aching in time with every beat of his heart. "Maybe I am. But I'm not gonna change my mind about him."

In a way, the answer is yes. If we have any hope of regaining what we had back then, or if he wants to move past the mental picture that I've already formed of him, of a young man whose life passed far too soon and left only anger in its wake, he has to change. He has to accept what's happened and move beyond it, rather than allowing that obsession to consume him. I think there is madness in him; at the same time, I don't think it's all of him.

"I think all of us have issues we need to work past and that we are fighting every day. But that the only way to work past them is to agree to some level of change. Whether or not he deserved to die, I don't think killing him would have helped any one of us in the long run."

Jason shakes his head, his smile when he lifts it grim and somehow still amused. "All the graveyards he's filled since me? Kids orphaned, wives widowed? Wouldn't it have helped them?"

As he turns his head, it occurs to him that this is the first time since he arrived in the clearing that he's looked Bruce in the eye. "That's not madness, Bruce, that's the math."

"These people aren't afraid of dying, Jason. One dies, the others all see him as an example, see a thrill in chasing after the legacy. The only way to stop them is to contain it," I explain, feeling an edge of conviction in my voice. "If we kill them, we lower ourselves to that same destructive rage. I killed him, I wouldn't be capable of..."

I turn, staring into the distance.

"I wouldn't be capable of saving anyone."

We've had this talk before, but it doesn't make my conclusion any less true. There might be people capable of making calculated strikes and keeping their mental distance. I've never been great at it.

"Soldiers do it all the time," says Jason. "We're not heroes, Bruce. I know you know that."

Scrubbing the tears from his face, Jason finds himself steadier. "We're just crazy people in costumes. We always were."

"So why didn't the soldiers come to Gotham?" I ask him, because something in his words makes me think of another individual on the island. It makes me think of Captain America. I know that the two are close, and were that enough to keep Jason sated, I might leave it at that.

It's clearly not, however.

"Why have all of the efforts of the police been in vain? Why, in spite of the potential we have to bolster the nation's economy, does the government turn on us and leave us to fade away? Not all problems can be solved by the soldiers, Jason. That's the point. I'm not a hero, no. But there's still a job that I need to do."

"I did come back," breathes Jason. Quiet. Spent. "I came back for her, for Gotham. For you. I never wanted either of you to fall, but I can't fight like you do."

His fingers trace a different scar now. "Do you love me anyway?"

"Yes," I reply, which isn't the same as of course, which isn't the same as saying those three words back in his direction, but it's the most accurate reaction of all the possibilities. I love him anyway, I will continue to love him in spite of and for everything else.

My frown deepens.

"Came back for her?"

Jason sighs, almost dizzy with relief. Had he the opportunity, he'd define every part of what Bruce feels for him, but he can't, and on some days, he'll take what few miracles are offered him.

He nods in answer. He'd meant the city, not Talia, and oddly, now that he has the opportunity, Jason doesn't want to twist the knife.

"Gotham. I belong to her. She could be so much better."

"She could, but it'll be a fight for many years to come," I say, voice quiet. I'm not sure whether or not it's in deference, or if it's the result of that slow-burning fear that I always have, that the day we return to Gotham will be a day too late, our skills atrophied, the city without a champion.

Or with the wrong people trying to support her.

"Someday, Gotham will be peaceful, and as free of crime as any city of its size. Today's not that day."

"You really think we'd see that day in our lifetimes?" Jason grunts. "I doubt it. Not unless I'm gonna get resurrected more than once." He sighs, not as morose as he sounds, just resigned. Accepting. You can't stop crime, you can only control it.

"I should go home."

"I have to believe that we will," I tell him, with my words carefully arranged and chosen. This hope, however vain or futile it may seem to most people, is the only force which drags me forward on some days. The one constant in my life that has no chance of disappearing, so long as I keep my chin up and my resolve firm.

Exhaling through my teeth, I glance up and in the direction of Jason's hut.

"I'll walk you back."

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