Jason knows it’s his fault.
Jason went looking for a parent, and now it’s his fault he has none.
If Bruce had been late, if Bruce hadn’t spent time knocking out the Joker, if Bruce hadn’t un-cuffed Jason and carried him away from the warehouse, if Bruce hadn’t gone back for Jason’s mom and the Joker, if Jason had listened, if Jason had died instead, Bruce would still be alive.
If, if, if.
Jason knows he should have died instead.
Jason also knows that the only reason Dick takes custody of him is because of some unspoken promise to Bruce. He heard them talking when he first came to the manor, about how Dick wanted to take him in because he understood what Jason was going through, how Bruce wanted to take him in for the same reason. But that was before.
Before. Everything is before and after now. Before Bruce died, after Bruce died.
He has nightmares, ones that wake him up screaming and keep him awake crying. Nightmares of that night, how the warehouse went up in flames, how he screamed for Bruce and crawled through the snow to the flaming rubble, how he dug through the burning wood and metal, his hands on fire (and now permanently scarred and disfigured) as he dug up his dead mom and a dead Joker and proceeded to pull Bruce from the mess. How he cradled Bruce’s head in his lap and sobbed, begging him to wake up and apologizing and feeling for a pulse that wasn’t there. How he used Bruce’s communicator to call Alfred, how the man had been so relieved to hear him, only for his voice to waver when Jason cried and cried and cried and told him the Bruce was gone, how he had calmly listened as Jason rattled off their location and begged him to come pick them up in the Batplane, knowing he couldn’t take all four of them back to Gotham with only the Batcycle. How Jason had laid on the ground between Bruce and Sheila, Bruce’s cape covering the three of them from the chill as he waited for Alfred to come, Joker’s body laying at their feet. How he woke up in a hospital, his body covered in bandages and casts, full of tubes and the like, unable to see through the bandages on his eyes, hear through the ringing in his ears, speak through the tube down his throat, move at all. How he lost a week to a coma, and a month to the hospital. How he even lost his hair, how it had to be shaved off for surgery. How everything changed.
Dick and Alfred don’t hear him at night. Their rooms are too far away from each other.
They all grieve, suffer, quietly, on their own.
Jason starts to wear black leather gloves when the casts on his hands are removed, hiding bandages and scars. When he’s forced into a suit, he wears white gloves, the kind Alfred wears.
Bruce and Sheila have separate funerals. Alfred said Joker’s body wasn’t there when he came to get Jason and the others.
After Bruce’s, Dick shows him the Batman suit, on display in a glass case in the Cave. Jason punches him in the face. When Dick tells him that Gotham needs Batman, that he’s taking Bruce’s place, Jason yells at him and punches him again. Jason would love to jump on his motorcycle and drive away,
leaving Dick sitting alone in the Cave, but he can’t even leave the Cave without help, confined to a wheelchair until his broken body heals.
(Bloody noses, blurred vision, dry mouth, chest pains, and trouble breathing and moving are just some of the still present symptoms. He had fractured his skull, shattered various bones and his sternum, collapsed a lung, and burned his hands.)
Dick stays on the ground, listens silently as Jason shouts at him. Eventually, Jason quiets down, staring at his clenched fists on his lap. Dick moves and crouches in front of the wheelchair, wraps one arm around Jason shoulders and buries his other hand the hair that’s still growing back, dragging the boy into his chest.
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