A/N: This is a little drabble I couldn't not write. It's set in the Disturbance universe, but I didn't really know where to put it. I recommend you go read that, but this is pretty self-explanatory. Enjoy!
Bruce has a rule; he doesn't drink when he's emotional. Right now, he really wanted to fuck that rule. He really wanted to pour himself a glass of really strong and really expensive scotch.
Because Batman doesn't fucking drink. Not even when he spent the day burying his son. Not even when he dropped a handful of fucking dirt on the fucking box that held his fucking son. No, Batman can't drink when he's emotional.
God fucking Batman. Batman who isn't fast enough to save a child that he might have loved. But who the hell knows anymore. Now he's just carbon. He remembered the light in the kid's eyes. Dead eyes, now.
He remembered how, for the first few weeks, the poor kid was afraid to touch anything, but touched it all. Just because that's the kind of kid he was.
'Screw fear,' he had said. 'Nothing scares me.'
Now, that was a lie if there ever was one; nevertheless, fear never stopped Jason. Fear always made him stronger. Maybe that's what inspired him to find his mother; maybe that's what inspired him to take on the Joker alone.
Maybe his scorn for fear is what got him killed. His scorn for authority most certainly did.
It wasn't his fault, a little voice in his head said, it was yours.
Bruce, lying awake, staring at the ceiling, shut his eyes tight, trying to fight the voice.
There was nothing I could do, Bruce responded, ...there was nothing I could do.
There was a fresh heat building behind his shut eyelids, and Bruce blinked his eyes open. He stared, and the voice became Jason's.
It started as a chant in Jason's voice, which was somewhere between childhood and manhood. Stuck there for the rest of time. Not a child, never a man.
I'm dead because of you. I'm dead because of you. I'm dead because of you.
Bruce fell asleep to that voice, never quite escaping it.
This chant became the rhythm that Bruce spent his next two years trying to make peace with. And then that voice came back.