Chapter Text
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
– from Macbeth
i. to wish impossible things–
Once upon a dark and fateful night, not really so long ago, Batman catches a scrawny street kid jacking his tires in Crime Alley. Regardless of what would become of the two after this night, Jason can’t ever help but look back at it with tongue-in-cheek fondness. The memory, simmering low and warm in his chest these handful of years, goes something like this:
Batman, for all his silent bravado and feared reputation, returns to his parked Batmobile to find missing two tires. Nobody, in all his eight years of being Batman, had ever dared to attempt anything like this. A bit bewildered, he rounds the car, where the offender is currently halfway through removing the back right tire. The kid–who appears no more than eleven or twelve–scrambles backward upon his approach, attempting to hide the tire iron behind him. His face contorts awkwardly between fear and agitation before settling on a wavering glower.
“You’re going to give me back my tires,” Batman informs him, evenly.
The edge of the boy’s mouth curls into a more confident sneer as he instantly rises to the challenge. “Who says I took ‘em?”
The Dark Knight, with presumably the patience of a hundred saints and the pursed lips and tone of a practiced father, settles a hand on his hip and stares him down. “What else is the tire iron for?”
Unexpectedly, the kid swings the object in question with all his might. It strikes home right between Batman’s fifth and sixth ribs, knocking the patience and wind right out of him. He wheezes openly in pain and surprise, and the boy takes this as his golden window of opportunity to high-tail it out of there.
(Coincidentally and unbeknownst to either of them at the time, Batman would carve out a home for the tire thief in his chest. The boy would settle there like he owned the fragile cavity, filling Batman’s life with magic and untempered Crime Alley mettle. And on another fateful day far less beneficent as this one, when that magic was cruelly snuffed out through torture and flame, Batman would feel the tender and unending ache between his fifth and sixth ribs for years to come.)
“You little son of a gun–” Batman grates through clenched teeth, holding his spasming and bruising side.
The boy is halfway down the alley, a quick little thing. “Try and catch me now, you big boob!”
The story goes that Batman had indeed caught him, despite his valiant escape efforts, but it had ended in Bruce Wayne taking in Jason Todd (the little thieving badass) as his ward, then as his son, and it had been great, until–
“You did call me a big boob,” Batman wheezes out, and though he seems to be laughing, Red Hood is decidedly not. “Thankfully, Dick never found out. I think he would have come home just to laugh at me.”
Jason’s hands tremble as he presses down to apply pressure to the wound, his father’s blood quickly seeping through the leather of his gloves and staining his skin. His teeth chatter against his wishes. “This was stupid. Reckless. We would all be getting at least a two-hour-long lecture from you on safety and smart field decisions if this was one of us.”
Beneath him, Batman hums noncommittally.
“What were you thinking , B?” Jason demands.
Bruce huffs weakly. “I was thinking …I couldn’t let my son die again.”
“Will you cut it out,” Jason snipes. “You don’t do sentimentality. Not like this.”
Bruce smiles, a small and private thing reserved for his children. It does nothing to soothe Jason’s anxiety. In fact, considering the faraway look in Bruce’s eyes, it only serves to further his agonizing. “I should. I’m sorry for worrying you, Jay.”
And Jason hates him for that sometimes, because Bruce has always been able to see right through Jason after he’d gotten to know him. “Who says I’m worried about you?”
He knows that he’s always tended to show his upset through anger, the two emotions often being shaken up inside him like some kind of freak Molotov cocktail of fervor. Right about now, he’s got nothing but a tenuous grip on those explosive feelings. Bruce shouldn’t fault him for it too harshly considering the situation at hand.
“Yeah, well,” he replies with no heat, “worrying about you is my job, old man.”
“Now who’s being sentimental?”
“No, I’m upset because you made me listen to Enya earlier when I specifically requested Cheap Trick. You led me astray with delusions of music grandeur,” Jason sniffs derisively. “It felt like punishment. Tim is the one who likes Enya.”
Bruce is still smiling that wistful smile. “You also like Enya.”
Jason does. Instead of agreeing, he says, “What happened to the intransigent Batman that used to argue with me about everything? You’re not even rising to the occasion despite the numerous opportunities I’ve granted you to yell at me.”
“Not in the mood tonight,” his father replies, eyes fluttering. Then he mutters, “Don’t yell at you that much…”
Jason’s voice shakes, and he doesn’t know if he can even do anything to stop it. “I have a long list of grievances, and you need to stay awake and hear them all out.”
“Okay,” Bruce agrees and opens his eyes a little more.
Clearing his throat, the former infamous crime lord continues. “Like I said, I’m mad that you ignored my request to listen to that Cheap Trick album that came out in 2009. I missed that one for obvious reasons.”
“Nothing beats their first album,” Bruce deigns to respond, with great difficulty.
He’s inclined to agree. The wild and controversial song themes crafted with a twisted sense of humor tend to appeal to him. “‘Don’t Be Cruel’ is on every karaoke list ever, for some unknown reason. That’s from ‘88, mind you. I thought you liked Rockford the best?”
“Hn, you like the ‘77 release,” his father informs him slowly, as if it’s the obvious answer.
A bit mystified, he checks the ETA of their medevac–Nightwing driving like a bat out of hell in the Batmobile with Robin in tow. They’d been on some boring stake-out in Tricorner, but Batman had insisted on accompanying Red Hood tonight in the Bowery. Nightwing and Robin were still ten minutes out, and Red Robin was home on comms with a broken arm, Black Bat and Spoiler had been out doing something for Oracle, and Batman is bleeding out after taking a bullet meant for Red Hood.
See, herein lies the problem–his father with his unshakable no killing rule, which Jason had found himself falling back into like a second skin over a year ago, was the very reason any of this was happening. If Red Hood had just killed Black Mask like he had originally intended instead of royally pissing him off and invoking a deep-rooted and sanguinary grudge, they wouldn’t even be here right now.
Jason doesn’t dare take his hands away to mute all the yelling over his comm line, so he does his best to ignore it. It’s not going so well.
“Cheap Trick and double cheeseburgers was my promise,” Jason reminds him. “Like…like the night we met.”
“So glad you never wanted a mullet,” Bruce mutters, his gaze faraway again, on some train of thought he hasn’t deemed necessary to share with the audience.
Jason scoffs. “Uh, no. Hard pass. Besides, ‘Wing did it first, remember? That’s another thing–I really think we should never let that embarrassing era die. I propose we bring it up every fourteen to sixteen business days. Also in front of anyone whose approval he vies for every chance we get.”
Worse than the hair itself had been Dick’s maddening ability to pull it off. Not that Jason had ever—or would ever–confess this to him.
Bruce’s eyes are fluttering, again–dangerous, dangerous –and Jason’s gloves and knees are soaked through. His father who’s always been larger than life since the night Jason whacked him with a tire iron is now pale and eerily still. He’d had to know how this would end. The two of them would always end in tragedy, one way or another.
“Listen here,” Jason falters, “you don’t get to die on me and then crawl back out of your grave later or something. Been there, done that. We all know how much I hate sequels. No need for you to be a follow-up act to me, because we all know I did it best.”
Bruce touches him, a ghost of a thing, between his fifth and sixth ribs. Jason is going to be sick. “I’d do it again.”
He says it as if he’s summing up all their years now twice cut-short together. It sounds too much like goodbye to be a comfort. I’d do it all again. Jason never got to say goodbye when he’d died, but this doesn’t make him feel any better.
“Do it now,” Jason chokes, pleading, begging. “Goddammit, Bruce.”
And then–
Then–
Jason’s hands are still shaking when Nightwing and Robin arrive on scene. He wants to tell Dick to keep Damian away so he doesn't have to see his beloved Father like this. Faintly, he recognizes gasping, heaving breaths. It sounds like someone crying without actually crying. The comm chatter is nothing but buzzing and static in his ears. Dick is trying to gently pull Jason away from Bruce. He’s murmuring something– oh, Jay, here –but Jason barely even registers his older brother’s words.
It’s all his fault.
It’s all his fault.
Bruce is dead for real this time–not lost in the timestream. He’s dead because of Jason. It should be Jason lying there, again. Everything begins to fall apart around him.
“ Breathe , Jason,” Dick is pleading with him, voice wavering but alarmed. “Just– oh my god , you’re hit–”
And oh, it’s him that’s heaving.
Time. He needs more time. Even five minutes more. If he’d had five minutes more, he could have fixed this somehow. Five more minutes, dad , he’d begged through his teenage years until the ripe age of fifteen. Please dad, just five more minutes.
Jason doesn’t know what to do with that eternal missing even though it’s only just begun. Grief feels too much like fear, and it’s washing over him like waves trying to drown him. That darkness wrenches through him, cleaving his chest open and leaving his heart a gaping wound. It aches like none other. The space between his fifth and sixth ribs burns where Bruce had touched it. His stomach is fluttering, soul already restless. He feels concussed. He can’t focus. Maybe he is afraid. He can’t seem to catch his breath because his lungs feel like they’re collapsing in on themselves.
I need more time.
He gasps, reaching for Bruce again.
Just five more fucking minutes, goddammit. Let me have just–
The last thing he registers is Dick’s panic. “ Jas– ”
“–on?”
Jason wakes up, heart in his throat.
He doesn’t remember falling asleep. Had Dick tranqed him so they could get him back to the Cave? He looks around his room at Wayne Manor and feels like he’s going to vomit. It must have taken his family quite the herculean effort to get him settled in bed. Stranger still is the way that the room looks inhabited. The cherry red electric Fender that Bruce got him for his birthday sits in the corner, surrounded by books on how to play guitar. His old baseball glove, which looks significantly less used, lies discarded on the floor–as if he’d carelessly tossed it there after a game of catch with Bruce. It isn’t Alfred-tidy. It’s Jason lived-in. The most damning evidence of all is the lamp with the thatched shade sitting innocently atop his nightstand. He and Dick had accidentally knocked it off one night during an unbrotherly wrestling match when Jason had come off patrol and found his older brother passed out in his bed. The lamp had shattered into five and thirty-seven pieces, and much to Alfred’s dismay, could not be salvaged.
The edge of a book peeks at him from behind the covers he’d thrown back. Jason carefully pulls out a worn copy of Jack London’s The Call of the Wild and his notes for the book report due on it. He’s read it all, of course, but he’s read it all at this very moment, too.
He vividly remembers this day. Outside his door, Bruce is knocking, trying to rouse him because later this afternoon they’re heading to a Gotham Knights game. Jason Todd is thirteen-years-old, it is Saturday, and he is late to breakfast, which has prompted his father to come check on him. Patrol the night before had been rather uneventful, and Jason had gotten a little too into his school reading, and had stayed up finishing the book, which had in turn caused him to oversleep.
He will wear a mustard-colored sweater that Alfred had deemed suitable for the weather over a white button-down, and a red baseball cap. The media will capture a photo of him juggling a chili dog, a bucket of popcorn, and a soda–cheeks packed full of chili dog and turned to Bruce, who is intently watching the game. Bruce had also extended an invitation to Dick, and had hopefully bought him a ticket, but the older boy had basically screened Bruce’s call. At the time, Jason hadn’t really minded–it was his first Knights game, after all, and he’d been far too excited. Looking back now, he wishes that Dick could have put his and Bruce’s differences aside for a handful of hours and tagged along.
No, Jason could never forget this day–not when it’s one of his most cherished memories.
What he doesn’t understand is how he can be here. This is an eight-year-old memory of happier times–before he died and came back as the worst parts of himself, before Bruce died–where he is thirteen instead of twenty-one. It all feels too realistic. He can feel the sheets beneath his fingers, smell the comforting scent of Alfred’s choice of laundry detergent emanating from his pajamas and bedding, and even breathe in that old Wayne Manor redolence.
Bruce gently opens the door and peeks through. He’s even in that old magenta housecoat with the dark velvet floral print. It had been his favorite, once. Jason can’t recall seeing it in years.
(“A dressing gown ,” his father had grumbled, when Jason had prodded him about it.
Jason had proceeded to ask if Bruce was aware it wasn’t the fifties anymore, to which Bruce had only rolled his eyes.)
He’s aware that grief is a cycle. Jason has heard it all before. The only conclusion that he comes to is that he must be in extreme denial. Perhaps he’s finally snapped and rejected reality altogether, and he’s actually locked up in Arkham. That, or he’s died again somehow and is reliving his best hits. He doesn’t quite remember that from the first go-round with death, and he’d definitely been more deserving of heaven then–if it even existed. All he can do is stare at his father who had just bled out beneath his hands about ten minutes ago, alive and well and around thirty-five in his ghastly pink dressing gown.
He still feels the phantom sensation of Bruce’s blood–warm and criminal–staining his hands.
“Are you feeling alright, Jay?” Bruce queries, brow furrowing.
He has foamed milk stuck in the five o’clock scruff above his upper lip. Jason does not stop staring. His throat feels uncharacteristically hoarse when he responds. “Uh, yeah. Just…just had a…a weird dream, is all.”
Bruce eases into the room and settles on the foot of Jason’s bed, sweeping his housecoat behind him. “Do you want to talk about it?”
He never did, not even back then–or now? Whenever, or wherever, he is. However, this never stopped Bruce from asking.
Jason can only shake his head and attempt to swallow down the lump in his throat.
“Who do you think will win today?” Bruce asks him instead of pressing the matter.
“The Knights, of course. Duh, Bruce. They’re top in the Eastern Division for the American League right now. ‘Get out the rye bread and the mustard, grandma. It’s grand salami time!” Jason replies, citing himself from years ago. He knows that the Knights lose 9-8 to the Star City Rockets. Bruce will be crabby over it because Green Arrow will needle him about it at the next Justice League meeting. He also still seemed to care more about sports when Jason was thirteen as opposed to when he’s twenty-one.
Bruce smiles–an easy thing. He smiles that Real Bruce Smile, the very one specifically reserved for his children. It’s full of amusement and maybe even a little pride, if Jason can be so bold as to claim. He'd seen it only a few minutes prior before Bruce died beneath his hands. Jason knows the words that are coming next, but still they bring a smile to his own face. “Don’t lose your marbles, Niehaus.” He reaches over and ruffles Jason’s bed head curls. “Now that I know you’re awake, why don’t you accompany me downstairs for pancakes? Alfred is worried about you.”
Somewhat warily, Jason extricates himself from his covers and follows his father further into the memory.
“‘ But behind’s behind, the worst you can do is set me back a little more behind. I sha’n’t catch up in this world, anyway. I’d rather you’d not go unless you must ,’” Jason mutters, tentatively in step behind Bruce.
“What was that, Jay-lad?”
Jason swallows, out of script with the anamnesis. “Nothing, B.”
He says the best way out is always through.
And I agree to that, or in so far, as that I can see no way out but through.
He goes through.