Chapter Text
There was a safety in isolation.
If a lone man were to die, no one would be waiting for him. If his body were to crumple in an empty street, carcass now belonging to the still larvae water of the back alley and the starving rats that would lay a more possessive claim over his certain mortal form soon enough, no one would care. The memory of him would simply be washed away by the next rainfall, blood with it, the oozing layer of epidermis that had been sloughed by the mounting humidity next. The feral cats would come and feast on both the diseased vermin and his own deteriorating fat and muscle. The stray dogs would soon hunt the felines and take with them the last of the bones. The mongrels would eventually die, some in this rotten urban hellscape, some having wandered out of Gotham’s city limits. Regardless, all would return to the soil, all parts of the man to be ravaged by invertebrates.
Thankfully, the worms never remembered.
However, as much as he had desperately clung to the ideals of a proverbial Nobody-man, as much as he tried like a frenzied hound to bite every hand close to him, Bruce Wayne had never been alone.
And as he stared into the neatly excavated hole, fingernails dirtied with dried blood biting into his cold flesh once again only for him to feel nothing, he saw those damned worms. The man wished in that moment that those ugly creatures were his only ties to this earth.
However, he was reminded of his selfishness, as the casket was lowered, containing a boy who would never again have to carry the burden of remembering his failure of a father.
Bruce spoke some words — pretty words probably yet unremembered even now — but all he was aware of was how heavy his tongue was in his mouth and how sad Jim Gordon’s pitying stare was on him.
It should have been odd to have the Commissioner here with Gotham’s Prince, when their relationship was much deeper under the eerie glow of the Bat-signal. Yet, Jim had been there at his parents’ funeral, standing at a young boy’s shoulder like a guard dog; now, clasping Barbara’s wheelchair handles with a white-knuckled grip, he watched a grieving father from across the chasm of his dead son’s grave.
Bruce simply thought, Good, he should know that all that surrounds me is death. Meanwhile, he could not even look to Barbara; she already knew how close she had come.
Whatever pathetic eulogy he had mustered was thrown into the hole with his son and the casket and the dirt and the worms. He could feel Alfred’s shaky breath on the back of his neck, as his butler and admittedly pseudo-father tried with a coldly trained restraint to hold back a wet cough — maybe even tears, if he would so allow.
Alfred had been the only thing in this awful world that had held Bruce even remotely together over the last few days since his return from Ethiopia. He had arranged for Jason’s body to be sent stateside, he had personally spoken to the funeral director to arrange the private viewing, he had triple-checked security measures and tracked data leaks to ensure there was absolutely no word of this reaching the press’s predatory ears…he had held Bruce as he silently collapsed after deplaning, he had tucked his ward into bed for the first time in years, he had watched over Jason’s room like an angry mother hawk.
Bruce simply clenched his fists further, blood beginning to streak down his hands once more, scarlet against porcelain. He stepped back once, just to ensure Jason’s tomb would not be sullied by the cursed discharge flowing from his self-inflicted wounds. He would not allow that, not again.
Never again, in fact, because his son was dead, and he had killed him.
“Mr. Wayne, we could start an investigation —”
Bruce pushed his sunglasses further up the bridge of his nose for the third time in the last ten minutes, but they could not rise any further. All that he accomplished was sinking the stabbing nose pieces further into the skin by his eyes, tender from hours of lonely sobbing. While the sterile lights of the police station could not be mitigated, at least he could distract himself from his throbbing headache. How many hours had he been awake for at this point?
Bruce shook his head. It doesn’t matter how many. Jason won’t ever open his eyes again.
He placed a hand on the commissioner’s shoulder, momentarily halting the man busying himself with case files and inane paperwork. He still wore his black suit from earlier in the day, dark rings circling under his aging eyes. Gordon had only been able to pause his work for a couple of hours; he told himself he could at least spare the time for the funeral of a boy he barely knew.
“Jim,” Bruce curled his fingers tighter around his coat, and for a moment, Gordon saw the scared eight-year-old that had clung tightly to the lapels of his jacket in that desolate alleyway. “I appreciate all that you’ve done, but please,” His voice hitched, a rare moment of transparency and vulnerability bubbling through his chest.
“I could hardly handle the autopsy after he was flown back. I won’t — I can’t handle anything more than that.” His hand dropped suddenly, and he stuffed it quickly into his pocket, needing to pick at his skin more. “Joe Chill, Tony Zucco…I’ve dealt with justice enough.”
Jim Gordon stared at Bruce. He had watched this boy grow into a man from the sidelines, his entire life horrendously and nakedly publicized: a boy that constantly had to regurgitate his trauma to the face of camera lenses, an angry teen that did nothing but lash out, a young man that disappeared from Gotham to travel through Europe and Asia for several years, the maddenly broken man that returned just to smile and saunter in front of the very press he should have despised, and the father that quieted his affairs ever so slightly. Bruce Wayne was a complicated man, although many would think the contrary. Still, even with that, the man in front of Jim seemed to be none of these entities, and he was left only with quiet confusion.
“Doesn’t Jason deserve that justice, though?” He asked, voice hoarse.
Bruce simply chuckled lightly under his breath. Terrifying grey eyes found Jim behind tipped sunglasses, and that upward tick of Bruce’s lips served not as a kind gesture but as a warning. “Jason deserved a longer life. Justice cost him too much.”
With that, the heir of the Wayne estate turned and left.
Jim remembered the fear that surged through his body when he found Barbara irrevocably beaten. He could not imagine what it was like to lose a piece of your heart like Bruce had just done. So he did not rush after Bruce. He did not entertain the hidden meaning of his statements further. He simply and quietly shuffled papers together and neatly tucked them into a manila folder labelled Todd, Jason, a folder that would gather dust at the back of a rusty cabinet. What a legacy to have.