Chapter 1: Now Everybody, Do the Propaganda
Chapter Text
He doesn’t say it out loud. Not yet.
But the words live under his skin like a bruise. Every time Bruce orders instead of asks. Every time the cowl turns to look at him and there’s no person behind it, only expectation. Every time they stand over a body and Bruce just... stares, like death is a hypothesis he keeps failing to disprove.
Dick doesn’t want to be like that.
He’s eighteen now. Legally an adult. Not that it matters. The Batsuit has always been a kind of legal override, a system of rules that has nothing to do with laws. If you wear the symbol, you follow Bruce. Even if it kills you.
And sometimes, Dick thinks it might.
They fight more often now. Not about anything big. Not usually.
Sometimes it’s logistics. Strategy. Whether or not Dick should have chased Penguin into the alley without backup. (He should have. He won. That’s not the point.)
Sometimes it’s timing. Patience. Bruce says he’s rushing. Dick says Bruce is hesitating. They both mean: I’m not you.
Sometimes it’s nothing at all.
Just a shift in the air between them. A fracture they can’t name.
The cave feels smaller lately.
It’s not the space—there’s plenty of that. Cavernous ceilings, walls that swallow echoes, the whir of a thousand machines always humming like white noise. But something has closed in. Something tightens around Dick’s chest when he walks through the training floor or sits at the terminal, hands ghosting over keys, waiting for Bruce to speak.
It’s like they forgot how to talk to each other.
Bruce has always been quiet. Controlled. But when Dick was younger, that silence had warmth. It was a kind of gravity—distant, yes, but steady. Now it feels like static. Like distance for the sake of distance.
Like Bruce is already pulling away.
And Dick—he’s not a kid anymore. He sees it clearly now: Bruce doesn’t need a partner. He needs a mirror. Someone to reflect the mission back at him. Someone to absorb it, obey it, become it.
But Dick is starting to crack.
He doesn’t want to become anything Bruce designed.
He lies in bed at the Manor, awake at 3:17 a.m., staring at the ceiling with his fists clenched around the sheet.
He’d just gotten back from patrol—solo, this time, because Bruce “had League business.” It had been a long night. A body in the Narrows. A hostage situation in Burnley. Nothing he couldn’t handle. Nothing he didn’t handle.
And still Bruce looked at him like he was twelve again when he got home.
“Sloppy,” was all he said.
Dick didn’t respond. Just walked past him, jaw tight, heart pounding. He wanted to scream, I saved four people tonight. I stopped a man from killing himself. I did that. Alone.
But Bruce didn’t care about wins. Only rules.
Only control.
It’s different now, being Robin.
When he was younger, the suit felt like a second skin. A badge. A promise. Gotham was a puzzle and he was the piece that made it make sense. He could smile, flip, fight, save people, matter.
Now?
Now the yellow feels too bright. The green too thin. The mask like a lie.
He wears it and hears Bruce in his head. Stay quiet. Don’t deviate. Focus on the objective. This isn’t about you.
But sometimes it is about him.
It’s about the ache in his chest after he holds a child whose parents just died. It’s about the fear that one day he’ll be the body in the alley and Bruce won’t even blink. It’s about how much he wants to help and how little Bruce seems to feel anything anymore.
He’s still Robin. But he’s not sure he believes in the title anymore.
He’s starting to dream of escape.
Not in the literal way—not yet. He still comes back after every mission. Still patches up his wounds at the cave. Still listens when Alfred tells him to eat.
But his thoughts wander.
Blüdhaven. College. His own apartment. A job that doesn’t involve blood on his boots.
A name that doesn’t belong to Bruce.
Bruce catches him in the gym one morning, training barefoot and shirtless, sweat slicking down his spine.
He doesn’t say anything for a long time. Just watches from the stairs.
Dick pretends he doesn’t see him. He runs the kata again. Sharp. Perfect. Let him watch.
When he finally speaks, Bruce says, “You’re distracted.”
Dick breathes out through his nose. “I’m eighteen.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got.”
Bruce steps forward. He’s still in his suit. Not Batman—just Bruce. Which somehow makes it worse. “If you’re going to start phoning it in—”
“I’m not phoning anything in.” Dick turns, towel slung over his shoulder. “I just don’t want to be you.”
Silence.
Bruce’s face doesn’t change. Not visibly. But something shifts behind the eyes. Something subtle and sharp.
“I never asked you to.”
“You didn’t have to.” Dick tosses the towel on the bench. “You designed the mask, Bruce. You trained me. You made the rules. You built the damn path. What did you think I’d become?”
“I thought you’d be better.”
That lands like a slap.
Dick nods, slow and bitter. “Right. Better.”
He leaves before Bruce can say anything else.
That night, he doesn’t wear the Robin suit.
He goes out in civvies. Hoodie. Jeans. Grapple tucked into his sleeve. He stops a mugging, checks on a homeless camp in Chinatown, helps a drunk woman get home safe. No mask. No cameras.
No Bruce.
And for the first time in months, he feels real.
Back at the Manor, he finds Alfred waiting in the kitchen.
The butler doesn’t scold. Just sets a cup of tea down in front of him and nods like he already knows.
“You won’t win by opposing him directly,” Alfred says quietly. “You’ll only hurt yourself.”
Dick wraps his hands around the mug. They’re still trembling, just a little. “What if I’m already hurting?”
Alfred looks at him for a long time. “Then you must decide whether this pain is growing you… or killing you.”
He lies in bed again, later, staring at the same ceiling.
This time, the words come clearer.
I don’t want to be Batman.
Not just Bruce. Not just the cowl. The idea.
The martyrdom. The violence. The loneliness.
He doesn’t want to grow into that armour. Doesn’t want to die by inches in the name of justice.
He wants something else.
He just doesn’t know what it is yet.
***
Jason is fifteen and furious.
The kind of fury that buzzes in his bones. The kind that makes his hands itch when there’s nothing to punch. The kind that builds and builds and builds because no one ever taught him how to let it out the right way.
Bruce thinks he’s helping. He gives Jason structure, discipline, routine. “Purpose.” But what he really gives is silence. Cold words. Training until his arms go numb. Orders like gospel and punishments that never feel quite fair.
Jason’s used to unfair. He was raised in it.
But he didn’t come here to be moulded. He came here to matter.
Robin. That’s the name they gave him.
Not a name—the name. He’s the second to wear it, and he can feel the weight of it every time he steps into the cave. Every time he puts on the suit. Every time Bruce looks at him and doesn’t see Jason, just Robin—a mantle, a mission, a replacement.
He doesn’t talk about it.
He doesn’t have the words.
But it builds. In his throat. In his fists. In the way he hits harder than he needs to. In the way he talks back when Bruce gives commands like goddamn scripture.
“You’re not listening.”
“You’re not explaining.”
“You’re reckless.”
“You’re cold.”
They spar until they bruise. Until Bruce walks away. Until Jason’s chest heaves and his teeth grind and he thinks, Maybe I’m not the problem. Maybe this whole fucking system is.
Gotham smells like piss and blood and old rot, and Jason knows it better than anyone.
He came from it. The alleys. The corners. The cold. The hunger. He learned early how to take hits and how to throw them back harder. How to run fast and lie smooth. How to keep a switchblade close and trust no one, ever.
He never thought he’d leave it.
Then Bruce came, and for a while, it felt like salvation. A warm bed. A locked door. Books. Food. Attention. Conditional, sure, but real.
Jason never thought he’d get used to soft things.
He never thought he’d lose them, either.
At first, he loved being Robin.
He loved the movement, the rush. The way people looked at him like he was hope made flesh. He loved swinging through the air and landing on rooftops with a grin. He loved being someone.
He even loved Bruce, in a way. In the way a dog loves a master who sometimes kicks too hard but still feeds you. That kind of love. Desperate. Messy. Rooted in survival.
But the longer he wore the mask, the more it itched.
The more it felt like a coffin.
He’s not like Dick.
He knows it. Bruce knows it. The city knows it.
Dick was light. Acrobatics. Smiles. Polished boots and practiced ease.
Jason is fire. Blood. A wild snarl in an alley, a punch that leaves bruises on his own knuckles. He doesn’t move with grace—he moves like he’s fighting gravity itself. Like he's angry at the air.
Bruce hates it.
Jason sees it in the clenched jaw, the sharp reprimands, the comparisons he never makes out loud but still hang in the room like poison gas.
“Dick wouldn’t have—”
“Don’t fight like that.”
“Control yourself.”
Control what?
His whole life has been about not having control. Of his home. His body. His name. Now even his rage doesn’t belong to him—it’s another thing Bruce wants to suppress.
Sometimes, when he’s alone in the cave, Jason walks up to the case with Dick’s old suit in it.
It’s still there, displayed like a shrine. Like a warning.
The yellow cape, the green gloves. Clean. Perfect. Untouchable.
Jason wants to burn it.
He wants to smash the glass and tear the fabric and scream at the ghost of the boy who wore it first. He wants to ask, How did you survive this? How did you come out the other side still smiling?
He never does.
He just stands there, watching his reflection in the case, and wonders how much longer he can wear someone else’s name before he forgets his own.
There’s a girl in Ethiopia.
He doesn’t know her name.
She’s maybe seven, maybe eight. Skin and bones and hollow eyes, standing in the middle of a marketplace explosion, holding a blood-soaked doll.
Jason sees her after the fight is over, after the arms dealer’s convoy is ash and Bruce is already moving on.
He kneels, tries to offer her something—his water, his cowl, something, anything.
She doesn’t take it.
She just looks at him like he’s the monster.
Jason doesn’t sleep for three days.
They kill him in Ethiopia.
It’s not clean. Nothing in his life ever was.
It starts with a lead. A trail. A whisper about his mother. Not Catherine—his real mother, the one he never knew. The one who maybe didn’t sell his toys for drug money. The one who maybe might’ve noticed when the fridge was empty.
He wants to believe in her. Wants to believe there’s someone out there who could have loved him right.
Bruce doesn’t approve of the side trip. Doesn’t say it, but Jason sees it in his eyes: This isn’t the mission.
Jason goes anyway.
He finds her in the desert. Smiles like his. Eyes like his. She hugs him. She tells him she’s sorry. She gives him hope.
Then she gives him to the Joker.
It’s quick.
Joker doesn’t waste time. He wants blood. He wants to break something that belongs to Bruce. And Jason—Jason has always been just breakable enough to make it fun.
They chain him. Beat him. Laugh.
Jason doesn’t scream. He spits blood and curses and rage. Fuck you, he thinks. Fuck you for thinking you can end me.
He thinks Bruce will come. He pleads. Please just this once he wants to be saved. He’s sorry. God he’s so fucking sorry. He wants to be home. He wants to drink Alfred’s hot chocolate and pretend it’s all a bad dream. He knows Bruce will save him. He promised he always would.
He’s wrong.
Jason tries to protect his mother. He drapes his small body over her thin frame. He watches the time tick down. He knows Bruce will come. He closes his eyes and he imagines he’s home in his bed at the manor. He hears Catherine’s voice in his ear. He prays to a God who has only ever hurt him. He lets himself rest. He knows Bruce will come.
The warehouse explodes at 7:43 p.m.
There’s no dramatic last words. No final thoughts.
Just fire.
And silence.
He dies wearing someone else’s name.
The last thing he feels is cheated.
Jason Todd wanted to be good.
That’s the part no one ever understands.
Under the snarl, under the fists, under the rebellion—he wanted to matter. He wanted to make things better. He wanted to make Bruce proud.
He just didn’t know how to be what Bruce wanted.
Didn’t know how to silence the parts of him that were too loud, too angry, too human.
So they broke him.
And when they put him back together, they made something worse.
But that comes later.
For now, he is fifteen, and he is dead.
And the world keeps spinning without him.
***
Tim Drake doesn’t remember the first time he saw Robin. But he remembers the first time Robin looked back.
It wasn’t Dick. It wasn’t Jason.
It was himself.
And it was Batman.
And beside him, a space that had once been full of colour. Empty now.
Robin was dead. Gotham was mourning. And Tim, thirteen years old and sleepless in a dark room full of flickering screens, whispered into the silence:
You need him. You need Robin. I can be Robin.
He doesn’t know if he meant Batman or himself. It doesn’t matter now. Because the moment the words left his mouth, they never stopped.
I can be Robin.
I can be Robin.
I can be Robin.
He clawed his way into the cave with cracked knuckles and clean theory. Solved puzzles no one asked him to solve. Offered himself like a sacrifice and called it strategy.
He was not chosen. He volunteered.
And he’s been bleeding for it ever since.
The suit fits. Technically.
It was redesigned for him—black and red, reinforced armour, sleek. Tactical. Practical. Precise. Like he is. Like he tries to be.
But it’s not a second skin. It’s a scalpel.
Every time he puts it on, it cuts something away. Fear. Doubt. Weakness. Feeling.
He carves himself into what the role demands. Into something useful. Into someone Bruce can trust.
Into a good soldier.
Tim doesn’t dream about flying. Not like Dick did. He dreams about falling.
Hard. Fast. Over and over. No bottom. No end. Just the wind screaming past his ears and the feeling that someone should have caught him, but didn’t.
Being Robin is all about weight.
The weight of legacy—Dick, the acrobat-turned-saviour, golden and bright, always moving forward. Jason, the soldier who died in the uniform, angry and loud and gone too soon.
Tim is neither. He knows that.
He isn’t the first or the lost or the beloved.
He’s the one who put himself in the suit and has spent every minute since trying to earn it.
Bruce doesn’t say much. He never does. But Tim has learned to read the silence. The nods. The stillness. The rare, razor-edged approval that flickers like a lighter in the dark.
Sometimes it’s enough to keep him going.
Sometimes it makes it worse.
People say he’s obsessed.
He hears it. From Steph. From Kon. From his reflection in the cave monitors.
He doesn’t deny it.
There’s comfort in the obsession. In schedules, mission reports, pattern analysis, gear maintenance. In knowing every detail, every file, every heartbeat on the team.
Obsession is just control with better branding.
And control is the only thing keeping him from falling apart.
He doesn’t laugh the way Dick does. Doesn’t scream like Jason. He endures.
He wears the mission like armour and the silence like a wound. He stares at the bat symbol until it burns into his eyes and hopes one day it’ll brand something permanent in him—proof that he belonged here.
Proof that he was more than a kid with good timing and a better theory.
The others make it look easy.
Dick smiles. Even when he’s exhausted. He smiles like the world might still be saved.
Jason fought like he wanted to die, but at least he fought with his whole chest. Unapologetic. Wild.
Tim is methodical. Clean. Sharp.
When he lands a blow, it’s silent. When he makes a call, it’s accurate.
When he bleeds, no one sees it.
He tried to quit once.
After his father died. After Steph died. After Conner.
After all the pieces cracked and none of them came back the way they were supposed to.
He handed over the cape. Tried to be “just Tim.” Tried to go back to school. Go home. Live a “normal life.”
He lasted three weeks.
The world didn’t make sense without the mission. Without the grid of crime reports and the tangibility of consequence.
Without Batman.
Without Robin.
He came back. Of course he did.
But something stayed gone.
Now when he looks in the mirror, he doesn’t see a boy. He sees a weapon.
He built himself into one. Sharpened by grief. Hardened by legacy. Forged in someone else’s shadow.
He wears the R like a blade pressed to his chest.
Sometimes, he thinks about who he’d be if Bruce had said no.
Would he be safe? Soft? Normal?
Would he still have Kon?
Would he still have Steph?
Would he still have himself?
He doesn’t think Bruce ever truly saw him.
Not the way he wanted to be seen. Not like a son. Not even like a partner.
Bruce saw potential. A tool. A utility belt that could walk and think and plan six moves ahead.
And Tim made peace with that. He tried to convince himself that it was enough.
It had to be.
But then Damian came.
And suddenly, there was a son.
A real one. With blood and name and legacy stitched into him like silk thread. A prince of Gotham, angry and lethal and carved straight from Bruce’s ribs.
Tim pretended it didn’t matter. He said all the right things. Helped train him. Showed him maps and mission reports.
But deep down, something broke.
Because Tim had clawed and bled and burned for every inch of trust.
And Damian inherited it with his first breath.
The cape is heavier now.
Not physically. Not in any way that shows up on scales.
But it pulls on him.
Reminds him that no matter how many criminals he takes down, no matter how many patterns he maps, he’ll never be the Robin. Not like the others.
Dick was the beginning. Jason was the tragedy. Damian is the heir.
Tim is the placeholder.
He doesn’t want to be like Batman.
Not exactly.
But he doesn’t know who else to be.
He’s fifteen the first time he looks Bruce in the eye and says, “What happens to me when I’m not useful anymore?”
Bruce says nothing.
Tim nods. Pretends that’s an answer.
Later, he doesn’t cry.
He catalogues mission data instead.
The city blurs.
He stops noticing the people he saves. Stops counting the bruises. Stops wondering if he’s ever going to grow out of this uniform or die in it.
He stops feeling much of anything at all.
But every once in a while, when the streets are quiet and the sky is clear, and there’s a second of stillness between patrols…
He remembers why he started.
He remembers the first time he saw Batman and Robin, dancing across rooftops like something out of myth. How it felt like hope. How it made the world seem survivable.
And he remembers thinking: I want to help.
Not fight. Not win. Help.
That boy is gone now. Lost somewhere between gunshots and funerals and silent Batcave glances.
But the wish is still in him. Buried deep. Flickering like a dying signal.
He holds onto it. Just barely.
Because if he lets it go, he’s not sure what’s left.
Chapter 2: No One Ever Died For My Sins in Hell, As Far As I Can Tell
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Jason Todd was born in a city that eats its children.
Not all at once. Not clean. Gotham doesn’t take you in a single bite. It chews. Slowly. Starts with your home, your hope, your mother’s voice. Then it goes for your ribs, your spine, the soft part of your skull. By the time it gets to your heart, there’s barely anything left.
Jason doesn’t remember the exact moment Gotham started swallowing him. He just knows that by the time he was five, he had already learned how to flinch. How to lie. How to spot a twitch in someone’s fingers and calculate whether it would end in a slap or a cigarette burn.
He was the son of Catherine and Willis Todd.
He was the son of heroin and fists.
Of broken promises and busted TVs.
The love was real, at first.
He remembers it. The way his mother used to stroke his hair when she was high but soft. The way she’d hum Elvis songs in the dark when there was no power. She called him her little miracle, even when they were both coughing from the mould.
His father loved him, too. Somewhere under the temper and the shame and the bruises. He’d bring home candy bars when there was extra cash. Read to him while chain-smoking. Once, he stole a pair of used sneakers for Jason, just so he wouldn’t get beat up at school anymore.
But rage is louder than love. More consistent. More permanent.
Jason learned that the hard way.
When Bruce found him, he was halfway under the Batmobile with a wrench in one hand and a tire iron in his waistband.
He expected a broken wrist. He got a sandwich.
Then a bed.
Then the cave.
Then the cape.
Then a grave.
Jason didn’t know what to do with kindness. With structure. With rules that didn’t involve screaming.
He tested them all. Pushed. Talked back. Swung too hard. Asked too many questions.
Bruce never flinched. He didn’t coddle, but he didn’t hit. He trained. He corrected. He gave Jason something sharp to become.
“You don’t have to be angry all the time,” Bruce said once, during their third month of training.
Jason had laughed in his face. “Don’t worry. I’m not. I save that for the people who deserve it.”
Jason loved being Robin.
He loved it too much.
The adrenaline. The heat of it. The way people looked at him like he was justice incarnate. Not a mistake. Not a kid from Crime Alley. Not a Todd.
Just Robin.
But under the love, the rage festered. Grew.
He wasn’t Dick. He wasn’t quiet or obedient or easy to love. He questioned things. When Bruce told him not to hit too hard, Jason asked why not. When Bruce told him to stand down, Jason stood up taller.
He was loud. Emotional. Unforgiving.
The city didn’t forgive either.
Jason died in a warehouse with a mother who betrayed him and a man who laughed while swinging a crowbar.
It was messy. Undignified. Slow.
The Pit doesn’t give you back your soul.
It gives you back your rage.
Jason screams the moment he wakes.
He claws out of the mud like a thing reborn and broken. Everything is too loud. Too sharp. His skin buzzes like static. His hands twitch.
And in his chest: a hole. Where love used to be. Where Bruce used to live.
Jason had trusted Bruce to save him.
He hadn’t said it. Not aloud.
But in that last moment, curled around a dying heartbeat, he thought: He’ll come for me. He always comes for me.
He didn’t.
And now the part of Jason that believed in him is dead. Drowned somewhere in the ashes.
The Pit spits out something new.
Something jagged.
The son of rage and love comes home to a grave with his name on it.
They mourned him. Briefly.
He sees it in newspaper clippings, in Batcave records he later hacks through blurred vision and trembling fingers. There’s a plaque. A memorial. A sealed file.
There’s even a case in the cave.
The old suit, behind glass. His old suit.
Tidy. Reverent.
A shrine to failure.
Jason punches the case until his knuckles split.
He doesn’t go to Bruce. Not yet.
He watches from rooftops, shadows, from alley corners like he used to. Bruce hasn’t changed. He’s still stalking, silent. Still alone.
Except now he’s not alone.
Now there’s another Robin.
Tim Drake.
Sharp. Polished. Surgical.
Jason wants to hate him. He tries.
But mostly, he just feels replaced.
Tim’s voice crackles on the comms. Steady. Confident. The kind of voice Bruce likes. The kind that obeys.
Jason grits his teeth.
He never asked to be a martyr. Never wanted to die for the mission. And now he watches a stranger wear his name like it means nothing.
Far above, on a rooftop overlooking Bristol, Dick Grayson stares into the rain.
His gloves are off. His eyes burn.
He sees movement in the corner of his vision — red. A blur. Gone before he can be sure.
He’s been seeing it more lately.
Jason. Jason’s face in car windows. In reflections. In old footage.
He told Bruce. Bruce said nothing.
Maybe it’s grief.
Maybe it’s guilt.
Maybe it’s him.
Dick closes his eyes. Feels the weight of the city settle into his lungs.
He’s back in a land of make-believe that doesn’t believe in him. That hasn’t in a long time.
Jason watches from a neighbouring rooftop.
He doesn’t speak.
Doesn’t blink.
Just watches the man who used to call him little brother stare into nothing and not see him.
Jason knows he’s not a saviour.
He’s not pure. Not holy. Not right.
But he was someone. Once.
And now he’s a ghost in a city that moved on without him.
Now he’s a weapon without a war.
Now he’s the part of the myth no one wants to talk about.
He lights a cigarette he doesn’t smoke and lets it burn between his fingers.
He’s not angry tonight.
Not yet.
Just empty.
The rage comes later.
It’s nearly midnight when Bruce visits the grave.
No cape. No armour. Just him, in charcoal wool and shadows, standing before the headstone like a sinner before a god that stopped listening long ago.
Jason watches from the tree line. It's the third night in a row Bruce has come, but he still looks like he doesn't know why he’s here. Like he’s hoping the wind will whisper forgiveness, or the soil might shift and offer up a second chance.
Jason waits until Bruce turns to leave. Until the silence has thickened into something unbearable.
Then he steps out of the dark.
Bruce doesn’t flinch.
He never does.
But his eyes widen, just slightly, and it’s enough.
Jason knows Bruce hasn’t seen him like this since he came back.
Not Red Hood. Not a name in a file or a blur on the rooftops.
Jason.
They stand there for a moment. Long enough for the crickets to go quiet. Long enough for the cold to settle into Jason’s teeth.
Bruce sits with Jason at his grave. They don’t talk. Jason likes to imagine that this is the first time Bruce has visited since he dies, it makes it easier that way, makes his pain feel more real.
The headstone stares back at them both. Still. Indifferent.
Jason Peter Todd
Loving Son
Beloved Always
Right beside it, smaller. Cracked.
Sheila Haywood
Beloved Mother
Taken Too Soon
Jason’s lip curls.
“Where’s my name, Bruce?” Jason asks, he tries to sound threatening but weakness wavers in every word.
Bruce doesn’t answer for a moment. Then, “Your name is there,” he says quietly.
“That’s not my name.”
Bruce’s eyes close. His shoulders tighten like a man preparing for war.
“I—“
Jason steps forward. Rage vibrating just beneath his skin.
“I took yours, remember? I hated you so much when you took me in, god I hated you. I think I was just scared. Why me? Y’know? What made me so special that someone so perfect, who already had a perfect child, would want me?”
“Jason…”
Jason steps forward. Rage vibrating just beneath his skin. He crouches down in front of the grave. Runs a finger over the letters.
What a joke. Loving son. He wonders who picked the inscription. Alfred, probably. Not Bruce. Bruce doesn’t believe in eulogies.
“But you took me in,” Jason says, almost to himself now. “You adopted me. Gave me your name. Gave me a home. A family. Everything I’d ever wanted. And then I died, and you ripped it all away. Was I not good enough to be buried with it too?”
“Jason—”
“Was I not your son anymore? Is that it? Did dying void the adoption clause?”
His voice cracks. It shatters. He wishes it didn’t.
Bruce kneels beside him. Not close. Not touching.
But lower now. Level.
He looks at the stone, not Jason.
“I never wanted to bury you,” Bruce says.
Jason doesn’t respond.
He can’t.
His fists are clenched so tight they’ve gone white.
“What was it that you said to me? ‘I didn’t sign up for this teenage rebellion’?”
Bruce closes his eyes. “I was angry.”
“And I was a child!” The pain in his voice reverberates around the graveyard, so obvious that it feels as though he’s bleeding out in front of the man who used to be his father.
Jason’s voice rises. Birds scatter from the trees. Something small and sharp cracks in his chest.
“If—if that had never happened then none of that other stuff would’ve happened. I would be home right now. I’d be in college. I wouldn’t be sat here staring at my own grave. You keep insisting that I’m not your son, that I wouldn’t have turned out like this, that I’m better than this, but you made me this way.”
He gestures at himself. The coat. The scars. The gun under his belt.
“You did this to me Bruce, not Sheila, not Joker, not Talia, you did this. I bet you still don’t believe that I didn’t kill Garzonas. If you could go back… If you could do it all over again, would you do it differently? Would you take back what you said? Would you make sure I never died, or are Tim and Cass too high a price for you to pay just for a son you didn’t love?”
Bruce doesn’t speak.
Jason’s heart caves in.
“That’s what I thought.”
They fall into silence.
Bruce’s breath fogs in the cold air. Jason stares at the headstone like it might blink.
Bruce’s voice breaks. Finally.
“You did matter. You matter. You were my child in every way that mattered.”
Jason wants to believe it. Wants to hope it’s true.
He does.
But hope is a thing he lost in the dirt.
“I did love you Jason— I do love you. You were my child in every way but blood. Dick already had his parents, already had people he loved, and I could never replace them and I would never dare try. But you came along, and you loved me and you trusted me and you made me fight like hell to earn it but I did. Until Damian came along you were the only one who called me Dad, even then he calls me Father,” Bruce let out a shaky laugh, more akin to a sob.
“I would do anything,” he says, “if it meant I could have you back.”
Jason breathes in. Deep. Sharp.
“I’m already back,” he says.
His voice is small. Wrecked.
He leans forward, rests his hand on the grave. The stone is cold. His palm is warm. He presses it there anyway.
“I’m right here, Dad.”
Notes:
The essays I could write on Jason, Tim, and Dick as the archetypes in this musical are insane.
Chapter Text
Gotham doesn’t look different.
That’s the worst part.
Jason comes back from the dead with dirt in his teeth and his mind on fire and finds out the city is exactly the same. Still coughing black smoke. Still bleeding kids into gutters. Still pretending its gargoyles aren’t just cracked statues holding up broken buildings.
He’s different.
Gotham? Gotham never changes.
He walks streets that used to know his name.
Kids on corners nod at the Red Hood, flinch at the glint of his guns. But no one remembers Robin. No one remembers Jason.
Graffiti scrawls up the walls of Robinson Park:
WHO WATCHES THE BAT?
FUCK THE SYSTEM
JOKER STILL LAUGHS
No one cleaned it off.
Not even him.
Once, Jason believed in this city.
He really did. Believed that it could be saved. That it just needed a little help. A little light. A little faith.
He doesn’t believe anymore.
Now he sees the truth.
Gotham is a city of the damned.
You don’t save this place. You survive it.
His safehouses are still where he left them.
Stale water. Canned food. Weapons under the floorboards. The walls are yellowed and cracked, with mould creeping like veins from the corners.
He doesn’t clean. Doesn’t fix.
He lies on the mattress like a corpse trying to remember what it felt like to be human.
The nightmares make sure he doesn’t forget.
In the dark, he sees Joker’s face. Hears the laugh. The thud of steel on bone. His mother’s voice, wet and choking.
He wakes up choking, too.
Most nights, he doesn’t sleep at all.
He doesn’t put on the domino mask again.
That kid is dead. The one who called himself Robin. The one who thought Batman would always come for him. The one who died with his name on someone else’s fists.
Now there’s the Hood.
No cape. No catchphrase.
Just bullets and silence and a city that deserves neither.
Home is where the heart is.
That’s what people say.
Jason’s heart doesn’t beat right anymore. Not since the Pit. Not since Bruce let him rot under rubble and made another kid wear his costume.
Home is where the rot is.
And Gotham is gangrenous.
He walks the alleys.
Finds the worst of them. Dirty cops. Dealers. Traffickers. The kind who never see a courtroom. The kind Bruce lets live.
Jason doesn’t.
He kneels over a man with blood pooling beneath his ribs and asks, “What do you think you were worth? To them? To this city?”
The man gurgles. Jason doesn’t wait for an answer.
Sometimes, when he gets back to the safehouse, he’s still holding the gun.
He doesn’t remember pulling the trigger. Doesn’t remember the names.
Only the blood.
He paints the helmet himself.
Red. Glossy. Reflective.
Like a wound that never scabbed.
When he pulls it on, the world goes quiet.
He doesn’t have to hear himself think. Doesn’t have to feel anything at all.
The news calls him a vigilante. A terrorist. A monster.
They’re not wrong.
The Bat doesn’t come.
Jason makes noise. Leaves bodies. Sends a message loud enough for anyone with ears to hear.
But Bruce stays in the shadows. Watching. Waiting. As if Jason’s a phase that might burn itself out.
He doesn’t come.
Not until Jason forces him to.
The trap is simple.
He rigs a warehouse with explosives, ties a crime boss to a chair in the middle, and waits for Batman to come running like he always used to.
This time, he does.
Jason watches him land — quiet, cloaked, all that Bat-drama — and feels something bitter rise in his throat, right behind the scar Batman left him.
Grief. Rage. Love.
He can’t tell them apart anymore.
“Nice of you to finally show up,” Jason says, voice crackling through the modulator in his helmet. “I was starting to think I’d have to blow up another building.”
Bruce’s cape shifts, but he doesn’t move forward. Doesn’t speak.
Of course not.
The silent treatment. The stoic disappointment.
Jason hates it.
He rips off the helmet.
“Say something!”
Bruce’s mouth tightens. His voice is gravel.
“Let him go.”
Jason glances at the man strapped to the chair.
“Why? So you can arrest him? Put him in Blackgate for a few months until his lawyer gets him off on technicalities?”
Jason’s voice rises, sharp with disgust.
“You’re not gonna change anything, Bruce. You never did.”
Bruce takes a step forward. “Killing him won’t either.”
“I’m not trying to change the world,” Jason snaps. “I’m trying to stop the rot. You think justice is waiting for the court system to catch up. I think it’s putting a bullet in the head of the bastard who sells girls like cigarettes.”
Bruce says nothing.
Jason laughs — harsh, hollow.
“Of course. You still don’t get it.”
They circle each other now, quiet as a storm about to break.
Jason’s grip tightens around the gun.
“You know what really pisses me off?” he says. “It’s not that you didn’t save me. It’s not even that you replaced me. It’s that when I came back, you still didn’t see for me.”
“I did.”
“Bullshit. You grieved. You moved on. You polished my headstone and gave Tim the job. You didn’t even care that I was back.”
“I buried you.”
“You buried a body, Bruce. I’m still right here!”
The silence between them stretches like a noose.
Jason can hear the blood in his ears.
“You know what I learned when I died?” he says. “That you don’t care. Not really. Not when it’s messy. Not when it’s me.”
Bruce’s voice is quiet. “You’re wrong.”
“Am I?”
Jason steps forward. He’s breathing too hard. His hands won’t stop shaking.
“You want to know what the worst part is?” he hisses. “It’s not the Pit. It’s not the Joker. It’s not even dying.”
He looks Bruce straight in the eyes.
“It’s that I came back wrong, and I know it — and you looked me in the face and told me I didn’t belong. That I wasn’t your son anymore.”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Jason backs away.
His throat burns. His chest aches like the Pit never really left.
“I don’t care if you don’t care,” he spits.
Bruce flinches.
“I don’t care if you’re disappointed, if I broke your rules, if I’m not the good soldier you trained. I’m done trying to be something you can be proud of.”
He raises the gun. Doesn’t aim it. Just holds it between them.
“From now on, I do this my way. No more masks. No more Batcave. No more pretending I didn’t die in that uniform and stay dead to you.”
“You were never dead to me.”
Jason’s voice breaks.
“Then why did it feel like it?”
The fire catches at the edges of the warehouse. Explosives smoulder. Sirens wail somewhere far off.
Jason doesn’t stay to see what Bruce does with the man in the chair.
He’s already gone by the time the building goes up in smoke.
***
The thing about Crime Alley—the awful, sad thing about it—is that nobody really cares.
Not really.
They call it that like it’s a cautionary tale, like it’s some mythic place etched in blood and tragedy. Thomas and Martha Wayne died here, that’s what the tourists say. That’s what the plaques say. That’s what he says, when he wants to tug the heartstrings of city council or donors or the GCPD.
But no one gives a damn about the rest of the people who died here. The ones who keep dying. The ones still alive and just waiting to.
No one cares about the kids living in the alleys with dirt on their faces and scabs on their knees and rage curled up like a second heart inside their chests. Nobody sees them, except when they’re caught stealing food or breaking into corner stores for warmth. And even then, they’re not seen—just booked, thrown into juvie, tossed aside like they were born broken and not made that way.
No one cares about the mothers. The single women who had children when they were still children themselves. Girls who didn’t get a choice. Girls who gave everything and still weren’t enough. The world moves on without them. Services dry up. Clinics close. Shelters fill. So they stay. They survive. And that’s supposed to be enough.
No one cares about the fathers either. The ones who try. Who hustle. Who love their families. The ones who sell drugs or run messages or move guns because that’s the only way they can put formula on the shelf or pay rent before the gas is shut off. They die early, die often, and nobody ever tells their kids that they were trying. That they were good. That they were human.
No one cares about the girls on the corners. The strippers and the sex workers and the ones too young to be either, who stand under broken streetlights with cracked lips and sharper minds than most kids at Gotham U. Girls who once dreamed of being astronauts or poets or painters, who now take whatever bills are crumpled in greasy fists, who get arrested before they get help.
The cops don’t help. They show up when it’s convenient, when it’s headline-worthy, when a man in a suit gets mugged or a Wayne Foundation intern gets her purse snatched on the wrong block. The rest of the time, they leave Crime Alley to rot. Or worse—they show up to sweep it out like trash. Arrest the girls. Rough up the boys. Knock in doors. Plant shit. Kill.
No one cares about them.
Except Jason.
That’s his fatal flaw, maybe.
Caring.
Achilles had his heel, Jason has his heart.
It’s a funny thing to say about the Red Hood, he knows. About the kid with the guns and the temper and the body count they always drag out on the news. But it’s the truth.
He died for Gotham once.
He lived for it twice.
And every time he tries to stop caring, every time he hardens his edges and tells himself it’s just about the mission, just about the work—he sees someone with a face like his used to be, a mom like his used to have, a situation that feels just a little too close to the bone.
And he breaks again.
He doesn’t kill the goons anymore. Not unless he has to. Not unless they’ve done something they can’t come back from.
He tells himself it’s strategy. Mercy makes people talk. Mercy opens doors. That’s true.
But it’s also that he remembers what it felt like to visit his dad in Blackgate. The way the guards looked at him. The way the other kids whispered. The way his mom used to flinch when Jason said he wanted to go.
It was hard enough when Willis Todd died in prison.
Jason can’t imagine what it would’ve felt like if some vigilante had killed him outright, like he was nothing more than a street thug, a problem to solve with a bullet.
He’s not saying his dad was a good man. But he was his dad. And there’s something sacred in that, something Jason tries not to forget when he’s got his knee in someone’s spine and a gun pressed to their temple.
So he knocks them out.
Leaves them tied up.
Files anonymous tips if he can stomach it.
And then he walks away, hoping he didn’t just turn some kid into the next version of him.
He tries.
God, he tries.
And it breaks his heart every single time he fails.
Every time a girl he helped disappears again.
Every time a safehouse he built gets raided.
Every time he sees a familiar face show up in an obituary.
Some nights, he goes back to his apartment, sits on the floor, and stares at his hands. Wonders how much blood it takes to drown a man.
Other nights, he watches the news. Sees his name dragged through headlines. Sees the Bat on rooftops, clean and silent and unbothered. Sees Commissioner Gordon shaking his head like the city’s finally lost its mind.
They all talk about Jason like he’s the disease.
None of them talk about the rot that made him.
And then there’s Bruce.
God.
Bruce.
The fight never ends with him. It just changes shape. A new topic, a new grudge, a new failure to speak the same language.
Jason shouts, Bruce says nothing. Jason weeps, Bruce clenches his jaw. Jason begs, and Bruce—always—looks disappointed.
The worst part?
It’s not hatred. It’s not rage.
It’s indifference.
Bruce doesn't care.
Not about Jason. Not really.
Not about the people Jason loves.
He’s never cared about Crime Alley, not beyond what it did to him. Not beyond what it gave him to avenge. It’s a chapter in his origin story, a scar he lets define him, but he never went back for anyone else. Never stayed to dig anyone out.
He built an empire on the backs of orphans and addicts and corpses, and then looked Jason in the eye and asked him to play clean.
To be better.
To live in the world like it’s fair.
Jason can’t do it.
Doesn’t want to.
Not when the world looks like this.
Not when the alleys still eat children. When the mothers still cry themselves to sleep. When the only time the Bat shows up is when blood’s already been spilled.
Jason knows he’s not perfect.
He’s not trying to be.
But he’s there. Every night. On the ground. In the alleyways. With the people no one else wants to look at.
He buys groceries when he can. He gives kids burner phones with his number pre-loaded. He delivers Plan B and clean needles and food bank addresses and sometimes just stands outside for ten minutes while a girl cries and tells him she has no one left.
He listens.
And then he goes out and finds the men who made her cry and makes sure they never hurt another girl again.
He’s not Batman.
He never wanted to be.
He just wanted to be good.
Good enough.
For his city.
For his people.
For his dad.
It might kill him. Again.
But Jason doesn’t stop caring.
That’s the whole point.
That's what makes him dangerous.
That’s what makes him human.
Notes:
Please I beg you brilliant other fanfic writers stop doing in-text dialect because I want to read some fics so bad but it actually causes me severe distress to have to read in-text dialect just tell me they have an accent please.
Chapter 4: And I Leave Behind This Hurricane of Fucking Lies
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Everyone talks about legacy like it’s something you inherit. Like it’s passed down, neat and clean, with a smile and a hand on your shoulder.
What they don’t say is that it cuts.
Legacy is a chain made of guilt and expectation. It's what’s left of you when your bones have already been broken into someone else’s mould.
Jason’s sick of choking on it.
He walks the city like a ghost now. Still Red Hood. Still the big bad. But he feels hollow in the armour. Rage gets tired eventually. Even revenge runs out of momentum.
He’s surrounded by people who say they want to fix things. Clean the streets. Make Gotham better. But none of them care about the bodies that already hit the floor. None of them want to dig through the wreckage to find out who they were.
They care about order.
Jason cares about justice.
Not the Bat’s idea of it, with capes and cuffs and empty platitudes. Real justice. The kind that costs you something.
He was born in a gutter, crawled out of it with dirt under his nails, and what did he get for it?
A new name.
A new home.
A new lie.
Bruce built a family of broken boys and expected them to heal each other like trauma was transferable.
He raised soldiers. Sons. Saviours.
And he never bled for them the way they bled for him.
Jason can still feel the Pit in his bones. The Lazarus inside him thrums like a second heartbeat, pulsing under his skin every time someone calls him Robin like it still fits. Like it wasn’t buried with him in Ethiopia and replaced a week later by a better model.
He can still see the moment it broke. The second he realized Bruce wasn’t coming.
Not for him.
Not ever.
“Everyone’s so full of shit,” Jason mutters, voice muffled through his helmet.
There’s no one to hear him except the corpse bleeding out at his feet.
He doesn’t remember pulling the trigger.
But he doesn’t regret it either.
***
Dick used to believe in control.
Balance. Training. Grace.
He used to believe that if he just kept smiling, kept moving, he’d be fine. That grief couldn’t catch him if he danced fast enough.
Now he spends too long staring at his reflection, wondering if the person in the mirror is real.
He hasn’t been sleeping. Not well.
He wakes up drenched in sweat, Jason’s face flickering in and out of reality like a glitch in a dying video feed. Sometimes the hallucination talks. Sometimes he just watches. Jason, the way he was — fifteen, scowling, alive — like time doesn’t exist in dreams.
Dick keeps trying to fix it. Therapy, vitamins, grounding exercises. He meditates. He journals. He repeats his mantras like gospel.
He doesn’t know how to stop pretending.
Everyone else gets to be miserable. Gets to scream. Break things. Burn down cities.
But when Dick slips, people panic. They expect him to be the glue. The light.
Robin, the Boy Wonder. Nightwing, the Golden Son.
If he falters, the whole damn house of cards falls.
He’s not allowed to fall.
He sees Bruce sometimes, in the shadows.
Wonders if Bruce sees the cracks. The way Dick can’t quite hold his shape anymore.
Wonders if he cares.
***
Bruce finds him again.
On the edge of Gotham, in a half-collapsed apartment building where they used to do community patrols when Jason still wore red and yellow and green.
He doesn’t sneak up.
Jason hears the quiet breath, the soft scuff of boots on concrete.
He doesn’t bother turning around.
“You here to stop me?” Jason asks, voice cold.
“No,” Bruce says. “I’m here to talk.”
Jason scoffs. “Since when?”
Bruce doesn't answer.
Jason finally turns. He’s not in the Red Hood armour tonight — just a worn leather jacket, boots, and blood on his knuckles.
“You think this is fixable?” Jason asks, low. “After everything?”
Bruce’s eyes are tired. So, so tired.
“I think you’re still my son.”
Jason laughs. It’s ugly. Cracked open. “You’ve got plenty of those. Try again.”
Silence.
They don’t fight.
Not physically.
It’s worse than that.
They just stare at each other, the weight of ten years of silence between them. Death. Resurrection. Abandonment. All of it thick in the air.
“I used to want to be like you,” Jason says. “God, I wanted it so bad. Wanted to be worthy. Wanted to matter. But I don’t think you ever saw me. Not really.”
“I saw you,” Bruce says.
“Then why’d you leave me there?”
No answer.
“Why’d you let me rot?”
Jason walks away first.
***
Steph is across the street. They’re not together anymore. Not like that. But they still orbit each other like satellites — the kind that used to share a planet before it exploded.
She’s laughing with Cass, her smile too bright for Gotham, and Tim feels like he’s watching someone else’s life through a window he’s not allowed to open.
He remembers loving her. Still does, in some quiet, bruised way.
But something in him cracked a while ago. Maybe it was Jason coming back. Maybe it was Bruce dying. Maybe it was every time he looked in the mirror and didn’t see a person — just a role.
Robin.
Red Robin.
The Smart One.
The Good Soldier.
He can’t remember when he last felt real.
Sometimes he thinks about quitting.
Really quitting.
Walking away. Changing his name. Moving to a city that doesn’t know what a cape is. Starting over.
But then what?
Who is he if he’s not Robin?
He enlisted. No one picked him. He forced his way in. Took the mantle like it was a lifeline and has been drowning in it ever since.
And now?
Now he watches the family fall apart.
Jason on the warpath. Dick unravelling. Damian sharpening knives in the shadows. Cass pulling away. Steph smiling too brightly.
And Bruce—
Bruce is always just out of reach.
Tim used to think he was the glue. Now he just feels like residue. Something left behind.
***
“Therapy,” Babs says.
Her voice is gentle. But firm.
“You’re slipping, Dick.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
He sighs. Runs a hand through his hair. They’re on the clock tower roof. The city hums below them like a lullaby.
“You think I don’t know?” he says. “I know I’m falling apart. I just don’t know how to stop.”
“You don’t have to stop. You just have to ask for help.”
“I’m not allowed to fall, Babs. I don’t get to be miserable. That’s Jason’s role. Tim’s. Even Bruce’s. But me?”
He forces a grin.
“I’m the happy one, remember?”
He goes to therapy.
Again.
He talks.
Sort of.
He says things like “I’m fine” and “I’m just tired” and “I’m trying to be better,” and his therapist nods like that’s enough.
But there’s a void inside him the size of a city.
He doesn’t know how to fill it.
He doesn’t even know where to start.
***
The clocktower burns in the distance.
Smoke curls into the Gotham skyline, just one more ghost among many.
Jason doesn’t look back.
He’s bleeding. Again. He can’t remember where from. His knuckles are raw. His ribs ache. His helmet’s cracked and tossed onto the pavement like it betrayed him.
He doesn’t need it tonight.
He already knows who he is.
Jason fucking Todd.
Robin.
The one who died.
The one who came back wrong.
The one who never belonged.
Bruce finds him in the Narrows, right where it started. Same cracked pavement. Same streetlight stuttering above them. A block from where Jason tried to steal the tires off the Batmobile.
Of course he remembers.
Jason was twelve.
Bruce was a god.
Now they’re just two men who’ve failed each other one too many times.
“Don’t follow me,” Jason says without turning around.
Bruce doesn’t answer.
Jason clenches his fists. He tastes blood at the back of his throat, and it doesn’t even matter whose it is anymore.
“You think you can fix this?” he asks. “Think you can swoop in with your cape and your silence and make it all disappear?”
“I didn’t come to fight,” Bruce says.
Jason whirls around.
His eyes are feverish. Red with fury. With hurt.
“No,” he snarls. “Of course not. You never come to fight. You just show up after the war’s over, when there’s nothing left but bodies and smoke, and you act like that makes you noble.”
Bruce’s mouth is a line.
Jason steps closer.
“You let me die.”
“I’ve told you—”
“You let me die.” Jason’s voice cracks. “And when I came back, you let me rot. You didn’t look for me. You didn’t save me. You put a fucking child in my costume and went on like I was just some—some chapter you could turn the page on.”
“I mourned you, Jason. Every day.”
“Then why did you bury me like a secret?”
The wind howls through the alley like it’s mourning something, too.
Jason’s breathing hard now.
“I crawled out of my grave, Bruce. Crawled. With dirt in my mouth and glass in my veins. And I came home expecting—I don’t even know what. Love? Anger? Anything but indifference. But you looked at me like I was something to be ashamed of. Like I was broken.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“From what?” Jason’s laugh is hollow. “From the truth? From the fact that I’m not your perfect son, that I don’t play by your rules? That I don’t treat criminals like they’re chess pieces in your fucked-up moral game?”
Jason steps closer until they’re inches apart.
“You made me. Don’t you get that? You trained me. You shaped me. And when I did exactly what you taught me to do—survive—you punished me for it.”
“I didn’t want this for you.”
“Bullshit.” Jason’s voice drops. Quiet. Dangerous. “You wanted an army. And when I stopped marching, you left me behind.”
Silence.
Jason’s hands shake.
He wants to hit something.
He wants to fall to his knees.
He wants Bruce to say something, anything, that makes it hurt less.
But he’s done waiting for that.
He’s done.
“I’ve walked this road too many times,” Jason says softly. “Back and forth, trying to figure out if I’m the villain or just the reject. And I finally figured it out.”
He looks Bruce in the eye.
“I’m neither. I’m not broken. I’m not yours. And I don’t owe you a damn thing.”
Bruce flinches. Barely. But Jason sees it.
It makes something deep inside him unravel.
“I used to want your approval so bad it made me sick,” Jason says. “I used to dream about you showing up, about you telling me I mattered, that I was still your kid. But you know what?”
He takes a shaky breath.
“I don’t want it anymore.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Bruce says finally. His voice is low, rough. Not pleading. Not commanding. Just there.
Jason hates it.
He hates how much he wants to believe it’s real.
“I do have to do this,” Jason replies. “Because if I stay, I’ll die here. Not like before. Not in a blaze of glory or at the Joker’s hands. I’ll rot.”
He gestures around them.
“This city doesn’t care about people like me. This family doesn’t care. You think throwing me scraps of forgiveness every few years is love? You think letting me crash in the cave when I’m bleeding out is family?”
Jason shakes his head.
“I needed a father. Not a fucking warden.”
Bruce doesn’t argue.
He just stands there, unmoving. As always. The immovable object to Jason’s unstoppable force.
Jason thinks maybe that’s the problem.
“I’m leaving.”
“I know.”
“And I’m not coming back.”
Bruce nods. Just once.
Jason wants to scream.
He wants to make him care.
But there’s nothing left to scream.
“I won’t apologize,” Jason says, quieter now. “Not for who I became. Not for surviving. Not for being angry. I’ve spent too long carrying shame that wasn’t mine. That was yours.”
He steps back.
“You can keep it.”
The streetlight flickers again. It casts Bruce in silhouette—tall, alone, silent.
Jason doesn’t look back as he walks away.
Not this time.
He leaves Gotham at dawn.
The city doesn’t cry for him. The skyline doesn’t crack. There’s no dramatic thunder, no signal in the sky.
Just the sound of an engine revving. A helmet locking into place.
And a boy who died too young finally driving himself free.
The road ahead is empty.
Jason doesn’t know where he’s going.
He just knows it won’t be here.
He leaves behind the grave they put his name on.
He leaves behind the cave.
The lies.
The guilt.
He leaves behind Bruce Wayne.
And maybe, if he’s lucky—
He leaves behind the hurricane inside his chest too.
Some homes don’t want you.
Some you have to burn down yourself.
He doesn’t cry.
He doesn’t scream.
He just drives.
Fast. Free. Alive.
Notes:
I'm so fucking excited for a very specific chapter of this fic so expect the speediest updates ever
Denila_1 (Guest) on Chapter 1 Fri 11 Jul 2025 11:40PM UTC
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tigrislilium on Chapter 4 Sun 03 Aug 2025 02:26AM UTC
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