Chapter Text
5 years later
He was awake but he never moved from the bed. He just kept watching the man next to him, every twitch or noise he made was mesmerizing. Everything about him was just so fascinating. He didn’t want to move from his spot, where the man is wrapped around his arms at peace with the world while he sleeps. He couldn’t dare to move and destroy such a beautiful sight, but then…..
‘BEEP…BEEP…BEEP’
‘’Shit!.. I’m gonna be late’’
Dick got up so fast he might have been as fast as Wally when he smells food cooking. He stumbled and ran into walls while trying to put pants on and packing his briefcase at the same time. Jason just watched him fail so many times at trying to stay off the ground. It was so cute and hilarious
‘’Why the HELL are you laughing? You got a job to go to too!’’
‘’I quit remember’’
‘’No, I found you a new one remember’’
The new one, yeah the one Dick found in the newspaper after he got a call from Jason’s boss that he was nowhere to be found and that he was fired. It was called quitting at the time for Jason, but Dick wasn’t going to let him go that easy from trying to become a househusband. He ranged the first number he could find in the newspaper that offered jobs. And straight away they had accepted Jason in even without an interview. Jason thought the place was too desperate if they were willing to take anyone in with just a phone call. And besides he will never lower himself to working at a place so….. Irrelevant to him.
‘’You know, I can’t seem to recall you getting me another job’’
‘’Stop it Jay, I need you get ready. It’s a bloody toy shop it’s not that degrading’’
‘’But you admit it is degrading’’
Dick just gave him the death stare, the look that Jason both loves and hates to see on him. It’s so cute to see him piss but it usually means he’s not gonna get lucky that night if he doesn’t stop what he’s doing. Finally Jason gets up and starts getting ready for the forsaken toy shop, he and Dick eventually ran to the car with Jason in the passenger seat.
Dick drives to the toy store and parks near an alleyway, Jason’s about to open the door until he finds that it’s lock by the drivers end.
‘’ahhh…. how do you expect me to get out of the car, Dick?’’
Dick stays silent for a while, he doesn’t move and his hair starts to crowd around his eyes. Jason gets the sense that this is one of Dick’s angsty moments when things don’t seem to go as he likes. So Jason just slips his hand through his hair and grabs his cheek gently, pulling Dick towards his face to give him a gentle kiss on the lips.
‘’You know, you don’t have to keep pulling the emo look whenever you want to have a in depth talk with your husband’’
‘’It’s just… are you happy Jason? Are you just quitting your job on purpose because you’re bored?’’
‘’well it’s fun to annoy the crap out of my Bosses’’
‘’Please… just tell me… if there’s something missing you can just----‘’
Dick was interrupted by another one of Jason’s surprise kisses, he had enough of Dick mopping around for no reason. He was happy with Dick, what more does he need.
‘’I love you, idiot. So stop acting as if I’m getting bored of you, I just like to screw with people you know that’’
Jason moves closer to the drivers controls and unlocks the car.
‘’Besides your Dick Grayson, who can ever get bored while loving you’’
Dick started to blush, Jason knew that Dick always loves it when he reminds him just how much he loves being with only him. It doesn’t matter if he’s a beta or whatever caste he is, Jason just loves Dick Grayson and Dick loves being reminded of that.
Dick started to fidget after he checked his watch. He then burst out with the cutest voice Jason ever heard ring through his hears. ‘’Shit! I’m really late now, thanks a lot Jason’’
With that Dick screeched the car wheels as he zoomed out of the alleyway. How ironic that a cop/vigilante is breaking traffic laws. Jason started walking to the toy store the moment Dick was out of sight. Oh how he loved watching that beta every day and just knowing that he has him forever. Nothing’s gonna keep him away from loving that beta, not even after all that trouble with Tahlia 5 years back. Everything’s changed now, he’s married to Dick, Bruce and Clark have are happily raising their little girl Lemon, who has just started primary school, Damian learnt to stop being so much of a brat (well most of the time, but not as big as a brat as before) and Tim and Kon are still together there’s no doubt they’ll probably marry soon since now their old enough.
Tim and Kon. Their old enough to marry, have KIDS, eventually might even start a new pack if they choose. It’s normal for some members of the pack to leave to start a new one once they plan on having kids. It’s how packs become bigger, some leave to form a new one, then may eventually come back to the old one. That’s once the kids are old enough to start bonding more, that the new packs eventually merge back to the old. It’s almost no difference to what he and Dick were doing right now. They didn’t exactly leave the pack but they got married and are now trying to live a life the way couples do after marriage. They live together, work to provide for each other, and strengthens their bonds every day, always loving each other. Pretty much the exact thing Tim and Kon will do once they marry.
Except. Dick and Jason can’t really form a bond together, well a mate bond exactly but they can still at least have a pack bound. And they can’t have kids together, which makes the whole moving out of the old pack to create a new one POINTLESS, since there can’t be any new members to join the old pack once they go back.
Jason knew that, he knew straight away that he won’t be able to have a mate bond or kids with Dick. But it didn’t matter anyway, nothing was going to stop him from being with Dick. He never needed bonds to love someone, he never truly believed in it after all the shit that happened with his Dad and both his ‘fake’ mom and ‘real’ mom. Those bonds were worthless to him, even the current bonds he has now with the pack still doesn’t feel as secure as they were when he was so young. That was until they were just crashed and shattered in front of him the moment his Dad almost killed him and his ‘fake’ mom just stayed still, drugged up in the corner. That was the first time his bond with a pack, with his FAMILY, was broken and never restored. But there were moments where he did thought that even the smallest speck of a bond was enough for him. The bond for Catherine Todd, his ‘fake’ mother or more really adoptive mother, was a drug addicted omega. Yet when she wasn’t so high that she was pretty much a vegetable, she did give signs that she had somewhat cared for him. She always looked sad the moment she was normal and saw the bruises on him, she did give him moments where she hugged him and tried to comfort him whenever Willis came through the doors, pissed and ready to throw all his anger against him or Catherine.
If he really wants to explain what bond actually lasted in that forsaken home, is a bond out of fear. A fear bond he could call it, ironic that after all the bonds that was either absent or destroyed, was the only bond that actually existed to him, even if it doesn’t exactly exist. The constant fear is what had created his bond with Catherine, what drived him to keep trying to find any means necessary to keep himself and Catherine alive after Willis left them for dead. Because of his bond with Catherine, he wanted her to keep on living. So when her addiction become more and more rapid, and she started to turn numb. Could you really not expect him to hold on to that corrupt form of a bond and try to keep her alive while she was practically gone. Besides for a time, she was all he had.
Until she was gone.
Then he was on his own. He didn’t have money to arrange a funeral for her or to even keep the apartment. So, his last moment with her was when he wrapped himself around her arms, having his ear close to her chest to hear her heartbeat. The last time he heard it beat, hearing what he only had left in the world. Knowing that she was ok. Then, the next day came and she was nothing from ok. There was no heartbeat, no warmth, and no light in her eyes. He had lost her, despite his every effort to save her.
Because he had no money for that funeral, his only chance to say goodbye was when she was wrapped in a corps bag. As she was being taken away from his life by the ambulance and forever gone. He didn’t even have enough time to finish his goodbye, she was just gone so fast, and Jason was alone entirely. Left in the apartment with the drugs that took her from him and the walls stained with either his or Catherine’s blood from Willis’ beatings. He got rid of all the drugs in the apartment, it was evil and corrupt that it must be destroyed completely, so it can never hurt anyone again. He burnt it all through the fireplace so no-one else can be victim to it if he had thrown it in the trash. Eventually his apartment was gone after crooks found out he was on his own and took it for themselves. He didn’t even have shelter while he was still mourning for Catherine. Not a place where he could be alone to accept it all, no where he could go where time could just stop, no refuge.
There was nowhere for him, and for a long time that’s how it had stayed. Until his encounter in crime alley. His meeting with ‘The Batman’, the spark that had lit his candle to a new life, to a life worth living for. A life where time didn’t matter and he was happy.
Even then Bruce still never formed a bond with him. He kept shoving him as a child whenever a chance for a bond arouse, keeping him away from ever forming a connection. From ever feeling connected. But he didn’t need the bond anyway. He knew that Bruce loved him, would fight for him, protect him. He knew that without a bond it was enough, because he knew that Bruce loved him. Not out of fear but pure love. It was real and not a burden, a real family, with real trust and real love for each other. Alfred and Dick where around but Dick was always gone to the titans then, he never even stood a chance to bond with Dick at the time, and Alfred was still a mystery to him since the idea of a butler who would do everything you ordered with consent, was very much out of the ordinary to Jason’s view of the world. He just didn’t understand that relationship between Bruce and Alfred. But Bruce was always a miracle to him, he gave him a chance to a better world, he was his idol by default, a hero as Bruce Wayne, not as the Batman. It was Bruce Wayne that saved him from his corrupt world. For a long time, Jason only ever wanted to make sure nothing happened to Bruce, he wanted to make sure he would never lose Bruce the same way he lost Catherine.
He vowed to protect him during patrols, believing that he must fight to keep him alive. He believed his life as Robin was the same life with Catherine. If he died during a mission would mean Bruce is left on his own to die too, just like how if he died, Catherine would die without him. He saw it that he must live so that Catherine could live, so that Bruce lives. Bruce was is source to keep living just as Catherine was, and this time he couldn’t afford to lose Bruce. Not like Catherine, NEVER AGAIN.
And he believed it all without a parent bond with Bruce, without a real pack bond with him. He didn’t need it, because he knew, he knew that he still mattered enough to Bruce without one. He knew that no matter what, he stilled mattered.
Then another spark of hope had emerged, the spark of another family out there for him. Another person who could join him with his new path of a better life. Someone who without a doubt will have a bond with him. Sheila Haywood, his real mother. He loved Catharine but that didn’t erase the fact that there was a possibility of another mother out there to love him. To bond with him, and actually start a better life with someone who should actually love him. Suddenly Bruce didn’t have to be his only source to happiness, he could have that with another person, with his real family! It’s not that he needed a bond but the idea that he can actually have one with Sheila, he could finally have a real bond with someone who actually cares about him other than Bruce. He can have a real family again. It brought him hope. That he stilled mattered to people, to a family.
He believed in that thought so much, that his torture by that devil clown, his laughter, the crowbar, the bomb, the betrayal. All of it, meant nothing to him. He was going to die, and it didn’t matter. His want to bond with someone even when he told himself that he didn’t need it, is what led him bloody next to his mother as the ticking kept indicating their deaths. But he didn’t care, because this would mean that Bruce would live. He would live and find his body the same why he found Catharine’s, Bruce would take his place this time, he would destroy the evil and corrupt thing that had taken everything important away, so that it can never take another victim. The Joker was just like those drugs, as long as it’s there it can keep hurting people. Because he cared for Catharine so much he had to destroy the drugs. Bruce cares for him, he is the only person that believes Jason mattered enough to end this evil, to save its next victims. Jason mattered enough to Bruce, to do what is best for everyone. To be the last person Bruce would ever let him hurt. His death would not be for nothing and it would most certainly will not be an excuse for revenge from those who cared about him. It would be a change for a better world. Jason’s death would be the end to the Joker, the end to Gotham’s most feared man. It will allow Gotham to have a better future, it would allow Gotham to have the miracle they need just as how Bruce was his miracle. Yes it hurts, yes it’s sad, he didn’t want to die, and he wasn’t ready. But because of it he will give Gotham what Bruce gave to him, a chance for a better world. It would be for the best, even if it’s not how he thought it would happen.
That was his last thought, before it all went numb. Before it was all gone, but at least the war is over. And justice won.
Or he thought it did. He was awake, alive, breathing. But he wasn’t him. The only thing he remembers was waking up in the Lazarus Pit. But he wasn’t himself, he wasn’t really Jason. Then after the Al-ghul’s had finally gone through to him. His world was not only shattered but was engulfed with one thought.
All the living are dead and the dead are all living.
The people of Gotham he thought he had saved are dead, and the people who should be dead are living. And why is that? Because Batman didn’t destroy the evil and corrupt. He didn’t get rid of what he saw to the world as the drugs that claims victims. He allowed them to exist and murder whoever it has entered in their lives. Bruce didn’t do anything about it, he didn’t do it what was needed for the people of Gotham and he didn’t do it for Jason. He didn’t matter enough to make him want to do it, to convince what was needed to be done.
He wasn’t enough. He was never enough to Bruce, because he wasn’t a son or even a pack member. He never bonded with him. He never wanted anything from him. Except to be one thing, he was his solider, his pawn to fight his war. And he gave the Joker the privileged of being a player. That was all Bruce saw him as. A chess piece in a delusional game that leads him blind from seeing what is the game and what is reality. Whose life is he risking when he moves a chess piece? That was Bruce’s world, the Batman’s world. And he was done with it.
So to recount Jason’s view of the world and bonding, his first and only bond he had before he died was out of fear, the one thing that bright light back to his life just reminded him how he was never enough to anyone, never enough to bond with anyone and the only reason he died/ learnt all this was because even though he thought he didn’t need a bond, his secret want of bonding lead him to his demise. Bonding does NOT have a good history with Jason that’s for sure. Even though now he has a pack bond, it still doesn’t feel…secure to Jason. He has this sense that it will eventually be taken from him in some way. But when he’s with Dick the bond doesn’t matter, what mattered was that Dick actually wanted him, loved him without needing some kind of bond or even have romantic relations with him before he announces his love for Jason. Before Jason even knew Dick had any for him, Dick loved him. He was enough for Dick, and that was enough for Jason. A mate bond isn’t needed between them. Because what they have is beyond their caste, beyond what they are. There bond is who they are together, a true love bond. Yeah sure people can say that a love bond isn’t a real bond, but god dammit it’s real to Jason. It is the most real bond Jason had felt, because it was Dick. And this time he knows for sure that this source to his happiness is genuine. Not like his source from Catharine and not like from Bruce. What he had with Dick is beyond what he felt for them, because it wasn’t from a drive to live or appreciation from a saviour. It was complete knowledge that Dick, loved him for what he does, what he looks like, how he speaks, how he acts, whatever else there is that makes Jason. Not out of pity and not to become a protégé, but just being whoever he is (even if who he is, is a little messed up) and sure as hell not just out of his caste. Dick wasn’t an Omega, he wouldn’t use Jason for his Alpha caste and his love for Jason was entirely out of love from the….. Soul? Nothing to do with biological needs but the needs from a soul mate…. At this rate Jason was thinking too mushy for… well… Jason. But these thoughts comfort him. As they remind him that after all shit that has happened in his life, what he really needed to give him a good life… was Dick. He doesn’t need an Omega or even wants one, and he sure doesn’t need a mate bond to know that he and Dick have something strong together.
So Tim and Kon will probably marry, move out, strengthen their mate bond then have a few pups and come back to the pack. It will be no differences to what Dick and he is doing now. Dick and Jason have strengthen whatever bond they have now and will merge back, but they just won’t have any pups. Exactly the same of what Tim and Kon will do, but with no pups. Dick was more than enough for Jason, and maybe more than he deserves. But pups? He never wanted that and he sure never thought of ever having any, but what about Dick? Did he ever wanted pups?
Dick is 32 now! And Jason is 29? But he died for a year which makes him 28, and his mind was not stable till a few years later which means he’s mentally 25? Shit Jason doesn’t even know for sure what age he is exactly but he’s still young compared to Dick. If Dick ever wanted pups he’ll have to have them now so he’ll at least be 50 something when the pups are old enough to marry for themselves. And knowing Dick he would actually want to be young enough to watch their weddings and even see the grandkids.
Shit! If Dick ever wanted pups he REALLY needs to have them NOW! Jason minds was fluctuating between Dick actually wanting pups and the realisation that they can’t have any biologically.
‘’Shit… Shit… Shit’’ Jason just kept repeating those words quietly. Not wanting bystanders to notice a strange Alpha is standing in one spot swearing.
That wasn’t until a kid actually walked by with a toy in his hand.
‘’Shit, the toy store!’’