Prompt: Blackest Night
Thanks to Kalin for the beta!
Timeline: Immediately following the "Under the Hood" arc
Absalom
The signs had all been there, staring him in the face. The moves, the gestures, the methods, though not the M.O.—all should have tipped him off. The voice, well he couldn't be blamed for not recognizing that one. The red hood muffled it, distorted it enough so that it sounded different from the voice that he still heard sometimes, just before he drifted off to sleep. Besides, when Jason died—he paused with a frown—died? Yes, died—he'd checked the body himself—his voice hadn't yet fully reached its adult timbre. He couldn't fathom how the boy, no, he corrected, how the young man could be back now, but he had died in Iran over four years ago. Or was it Qurac? The borders in that region had shifted in the interim…
Batman stopped. He was getting distracted by minutiae, the vagaries of international boundaries, the sound of a voice, the recognition of a fighting style. It was easier to kick himself for missing the clues than to face the true horror of it.
Bruce slumped in his chair. The boy that he'd adopted was a murderer. And it would fall to Batman to bring him to justice. His son… was a killer. And Bruce wished, yet again, that it had been he who had fallen those years ago. Better to have died than to have witnessed this betrayal. Better… by far.