Hino Residence
Tokyo, Japan
Bruce had never been a fan of the man of the house, a headstrong Japanese man whose only love seemed to be his career and how far his career would go. The man was beyond wealthy, much of his wealth coming from his mother's side of the family, a woman who had been friends with the Wayne family.
As a child, Alfred had forced him to come to Japan and stay for a few months at a time. Of course, his butler had always stayed by his side but back then, it was to improve Bruce's horrible social skills due to his childhood trauma. The young man walked out the cab, his eyes downcast, feeling as if he'd lose it as he walked up the steps of the mansion front.
The last time he had felt this way had been years ago.. back when he had lost his own parents. He could only imagine that small little girl that his associate had, and how she had to be dealing with the situation. He'd heard from some people that she wouldn't leave her mother's bedside, and she was always praying beside her, begging God to save her mother.
He looked at his beeper and saw a message from Tonosuke Hino, the man of the house, the powerful politician who didn't find it fit to take some time away from his office for his family. "So, it looks like he won't be here... not tonight..."
Knocking on the door, it didn't take but a moment before one of the servants of the house came to the door, taking off his business jacket, offering tea and doing the usual necessary things that he had never grown accustomed to even after all these years of coming to this land.
Bruce found himself feeling dizzy, the smell of roses clouding his senses, bringing back the memories of the last time that he had gathered with people for this kind of occasion, but this person wasn't dead. Not yet.
Sakio Hino was alive, and soon, she'd be strong. Bruce had met her the same day that Tonosuke had met her; they both had eyes for the Japanese beauty - he could remember when her child was born, he laughed because the little girl had the same quality that he joked she would.
Bruce had honestly believed it even if Sakio thought he was a fool for the joke, saying that he was too kind. Why did it have to her - why did she have to be the one struggling to live? She had always had this ability to make people believe in themselves and when she smiled, for one time in his life, he believed that life wasn't so cold and dirty.
'Wayne-oneesan, thank you so much for always being by my side.' She would always call him 'big brother' and was always so happy to see him. Of course, he'd never said anything about how he felt about her, at least, not seriously.
'What if I said that I love you, always have?' He remembered saying to her before she had gotten married. The young man could remember the smile on her face, her exotic violet eyes widening and her cheeks slightly red. The look on her face was priceless; if he could've, he would've taken a picture of it and kept it with him forever.
'I would leave everything, and I would follow you to the end of the Earth where we'd find out that the planet really was flat.' Her giggle was so melodic like a beautiful song that could never be replayed exactly the same. It was dorky and didn't fit her image, but he loved it. 'We'd be the idiots to fall off the side of the world, but I'd be okay because even if we fell into a dark abyss, I'd know you'll be by my side.'
He always wondered if he had actually admitted his feelings if she really would've left Tonosuke, and if she were with him, would she be in this position now? Sakio was supposed to always be there, just like his parents.
Imagining a world without her was like imagining a night where he didn't dream of his parents. There were some things in this world that he knew he couldn't deal with.
"MOMMMMY!" The sound of a young child's voice broke him out of his reminiscing as he ran up the stairs to where he heard the little girl's voice.
"Mommy!" He looked down and saw a small six year old little girl knocking on the door master bedroom. "Open the door, open it please!" The little girl shrieked, tears in her eyes. "Please, Mommy, let me... in, tell them that you don't want to be alone."
Bruce ran over to her, "Rei-chan, what is wrong?" The little girl was shaking, her eyes were puffy and pink around the edges. He ran his hair through her hair the way that Alfred did when he was a child.
"M-Mommy.. she can't be alone.." She sobbed as she moved out of his grasp, "I need to get in... there.. Daddy won't be here so she needs me!"
:"Rei-chan, calm down." Bruce found himself struggling against her as he watched tears stream down her cheeks. He could see Sakio in her even more than ever as she screamed and kicked against him as he pulled her into a hug.
"Mommy ... eyes. She said ... see Papa- Wayne onemoretime," Bruce couldn't understand what she was saying, not completely. She was speaking so fast, and his mind was unable to translate her fast enough. He could feel his chest damp from her tears as she kept speaking, her speed only getting faster with time.
"Then she closed her eyes... she said she was so lonely. Mommy needs me... She needs me. She's so cold!" Bruce held her tightly against his chest, trying to still her, trying with all he could to keep her calm.
"Rei-chan, the doctors will help her."
"Wayne-san, they can't... they won't... she's gone." the little girl whimpered into his chest. As the words hit him, everything became cold. He felt numb, and everything seemed to go black at those words. She was wrong. Sakio was going to be okay, no, she was going to get better and be the same strong girl again. She wouldn't leave before he could get to her.
He wasn't sure when he let her go and began to cry, but it happened. He wasn't supposed to cry; he was supposed to be there to encourage Tono and his daughter, but at that moment, it felt like what he feared would happen again.
The nurse came outside, shaking her head, saying that she was gone but to him, it sounded like she was doing sign language. He heard nothing.
"Papa never came home..." It had been an entire day since he had seen Rei, and it was the first thing that she said. "He still doesn't know Mama died. Or maybe does, maybe he just didn't care."
Bruce watched the little girl carefully, seeing himself all over again. Her eyes were cold and steeled and looked like an adult as she stood there talking to him. "Rei-chan," he paused, unsure what to say, "do you want to walk with me?"
The little girl looked up with her sad little eyes and nodded. "Yes, but... I need to stay here for the guest." She sounded so adult. Bruce had to wonder how long she had been alone before this, how long she had taken care of her mother, and how long had it been that she'd been comforted by her own father.
"They'll be fine," he said kindly, "come with me, little Rei-chan."
She looked around and behind her then nodded and followed him outside.
They walked for some time without walking, the little ravenette not looking at him but at the oceanfront, her little shoulders looking so weak and frail, so tiny and lonely. When he was younger, he remembered taking a stroll with Alfred and neither one spoke, neither one looked at the other. They had both been so drowned in the sadness of what happened, and again, it was repeating.
How was he to help her through this?
"Mommy always talked about you."
Bruce's eyes widened. "Oh? Did she tell you bad stories about me?"
Rei didn't say anything.
The young man unintentionally scowled. "Your mother loved you a lot.."
The little girl bit her lip and stopped walking. "I-I thought I could help her."
"You did. I'm sure that you gave her some, if not, all her strength in her last days." he consoled. It was cliche, but it was the best that he could come up with at the moment.
"No, you're wrong." Rei sighed. "She wanted Papa and you there... and she slowly stopped smiling."
Bruce kneeled down to her height.
"Wayne-san, you came... and you called, and when you did, she smiled." Rei's fist tightened. "Papa never came home.. never called, never even checked on her... he left her to die when she got sick."
"Rei-chan... I'm sure that Tono..."
"Papa hates us."
Bruce looked into the little girl's softened eyes, the cold steel gone and now misty and broken. "Mama died all alone.. she died all alone, and she was crying. I was in there and she kept crying, and she stopped taking in food, stopped responding to treatment, and she told me that she wanted to die. She was tired of being lonely but she wanted me to live a long life."
Bruce fell silent. He felt choked up. In the past few months, he had also stopped calling, figuring that she would understand. He couldn't imagine Sakio having those kind of feelings. Every part of him wanted to tell the little girl that she was wrong. Her mother wasn't that weak.
Instead, he said nothing and just held her in his arms as she cried and cried like she was supposed to do in her father's arms. For one moment, he kept his promise to Sakio that he would be there for Rei no matter what - even if he couldn't take their position.
For that one moment, he was the father that she needed.
Thirty Years Later
Gotham City
Bruce Wayne's Funeral
The funeral procession had been long over, the church choir no longer sung their beautiful song, and no longer did the celebrities and world leaders pretend to mourn over the man before Jason Todd. There was silence, nothing but complete quiet for six hours as he waited there for the old man to wake up. He was no child and knew that after death, there was nothing, no thoughts, no heartbeats, nothing.
Bruce was dead, and Jason knew that, but he didn't like it. "You know, Bruce, this is your coldest act," the former Robin whispered through gritted teeth as he stared at the smiling face of a dead man. Why the hell was he smiling, so proud to leave this world when there were others who needed him?
Crossing his arms, he sat back in a metal chair as he stared down at the coffin, mentally bent on choking the smile off his face though he knew, even at that moment, it wouldn't change anything. "If you want me to cry, Bruce-y," his sarcasm wrapped his tongue, "I'm not doing that shit. I didn't do it when my own mom betrayed me... I didn't cry when you chose Tim Drake as a replacement for me. I'm not gonna cry for you, not today, not ever so just get up." His whispered voice sounded hoarse in the air.
Why the hell did he have to die? Jason threw his hands through his raven-colored hair, his eyes feeling heavy; he hadn't slept since the day that he got the news that his "father" was dead and even now, he was waiting for Superman to punch a hole into the timeline and for him to wake up so that he could kill him, himself for allowing himself to die from a fricking heart attack. Hell, he could've fallen down a stairs for all Jason cared, but a heart attack, he wanted to punch Tim and Dick in the face for not making up a lie to make his life seem more - like him.
Bruce wasn't "him." He was Batman, and Bruce was the disguise. Jason held his head in anger, remembering that he had just talked to the old man a few days before his death. Hell, he wasn't even all that old... barely fifty-something or whatever.
Then again, it wasn't exactly talking; it was more like crude arguing, and Bruce telling him that his methods were wrong and he could change.
'You're no better than the Joker if you let these thugs live, Bats!' Jason could remember his last words to the old man, anger and resentment had flashed through him and although he wanted to say more, he couldn't Bruce was always cold and calculating. He remembered that although he didn't show it, he had been worried that Batman had a trick up his sleeves.
"Damn! Damn! You're so damn stupid... stop smiling!" Jason yelled at the top of his lungs, remembering everything. This wasn't how it was supposed to end! He could remembering seeing Bruce for the first time, the old man putting him into a place for children like him then rescuing him from the same place. He could remember being allowed to be Robin for the first time, and the excitement that he felt being alongside that old man, the only person he considered to be like a father.
He looked around and could see the large church windows were darkening, but the blue and yellow and green hues filled the church and the light touched his skin. It's vibrancy danced all over him, the light of the world shining happily on the man whose smile said that he died a happy man.
"You know what?" Jason hollered, standing up, looking down at the man. "When I was in that factory, you know the one.. the one you didn't bother trying to save me from - that one! I remember believing in you, wanting you to be there. I didn't care if you would yell at me for that, but I wanted you there. I wanted you to be my father and cradle me into your arms, and say that it was alright.." He could feel pressure behind his eyes. His fist shook angrily.
His body felt hot as he bit his bottom lip so hard that it bled. "I wanted one person to believe in... and I didn't die with a smile on my face. I had to die with my face unrecognizable, in dire pain, numbed on the outside but inside, I was feeling everything because as time ran out, I realized you never cared. I was just a charity case, and though I knew I did bad things, I didn't think that you'd be done with me, but you were and so I cried in my last moments."
There was silence. The memory repeated in his mind and despite it being many years ago, the feelings were still there. The feeling of watching his mother betray him, the cold metal striking his skin, each hit worse than the last, each scream for worse and worse, the sticky red liquid that seeped out of his body until everything became cold - then the worse feeling, the feeling of being rejected one final time.
For years, he ran away from that past, ran away because it made no sense to him to why Batman hadn't come for him and yet, every time Red Hood even thought about hurting a villain, he was always willing to save them. "I hate you. I freaking hate you..." His bitterness filled the church, echoing throughout.,
That wasn't true. He knew it wasn't. It was the lie that caged his heart up like a lion so that he could protect himself. Truthfully, whenever he saw Batman, whenever the old man tried to correct him, his heart leapt for joy. It was proof that he cared.
It was the only proof that Tim hadn't taken his place, that time hadn't healed the wound that was created in his death. Jason caged himself in a lie that he hated Bruce, and now the tears were coming, they were proof that the lion hadn't been tamed. They were proof of his true nature, and despite it all, he was still that young man, waiting for Batman to save him. Now, it was from himself.
Silence, nothing but sheer silence. Jason didn't know how long he sat there, trying to stop his heart from remembering every moment with his "father." Every part of him wanted to hate him - no, not even that. He wanted to be oblivious to his existence, to be nonchalant because then he could stop feeling anything. If he could forget, he wouldn't be standing there, trying to figure everything out and unable to get answers.
The tears had dried on his face, and he was sure someone was going to see him; that was something that he didn't want. What if it happened to that idiot Tim or Dick? What would they try to do? Quickly, he got up and walked towards the bathroom to wash his face. He didn't need anybody pitying him.
Jason heard the sound of the church doors opening as he got up but didn't turn to see who it was.
A few minutes later, he came out the bathroom after having washed his face and smoking some marijuana, wanting to clear his mind.
It didn't help. It only made him hungry despite his not wanting to leave Bruce alone in this church. He turned to the right where he saw a woman sitting in his seat that he had set up to look Bruce in the face. He recognized her immediately; she had one of those faces that people didn't forget with fair skin and violet eyes that belonged to a royal.
He had expected to see her during the funeral when all the other aristocrats and celebrities had come, but she didn't make an appearance - didn't even leave a note as far as he could tell.
Jason walked over to her, his muscles tenses, his face tight and angered. "Yo! Good afternoon." he said carefully, taking a seat and setting it up on the other side of the coffin.
She looked up in silence, her eyes glistening as she smiled softly. "Good afternoon, are you a friend of his?" she asked in a soft tone, almost melodic.
"No, not at all." Jason didn't want to bother with small talk.
She pouted. "You must be family then." Her voice was full of conviction - like she had the answers for everything. Jason hated people who talked like her. Know-it-alls, they were just like Batman but worse because they never said anything for anyone's benefit.
"Hn."
"I'd been in Gotham for a few weeks after I heard Mr. Wayne had died," she said softly, her face slightly red as she looked away from the man before her and into the face of the last member of the Wayne family. "I wanted to find a man that he had talked to me about since I was a child - a boy that he said reminded him of myself."
Jason crossed his arms in disinterest but humored her, anyway. "Oh really? Why is that?"
"I figured that he was probably more broken than the rest of them, I guess - his children, I mean." She looked up as if she were deep in thought, the same light that danced on Bruce's face seemed dim and hateful to her face. "I'd met two of them, but the middle child, I wanted to meet - I wanted to meet the young man that he quietly waited for and told me so many stories about when he came to Japan."
Jason stayed silent, trying to imagine Bruce's relationship with this young girl. No one ever knew much about him outside of those worked with him in being a vigilante, and even then, he could never sat that he truly knew and understood him.
"I guess I'm just a bit weird, trying to find him.." she said, fumbling with her hands, "I guess I figured we're kindred spirits since we both lost our father's after spending so long hating our fathers."
Jason's eyebrow lifted. He was sure that Damian hadn't hated Bruce, and no one could convince him otherwise. She must've been mistaken. The former Robin wasn't surprised that he had spent so much time talking about his only child as he looked away from her, his tears slid down his cheek, unable to stop it anymore. "That's not weird. I'd probably do the same thing." Probably wouldn't... not even in the slightest.
The girl looked up at him and smiled.
Rei looked at the young man before her and it was at his last statement that she realized that she had found him. It never occurred to look in the most obvious place, the same place that she'd been hours after the funeral.
Only Bruce would be able to see the subtle similarities and understand that the two of them were of the same pod, two people who had fallen, one who grew up in fine soil while the other was tossed about on the gravel, dirtied and forced to live a hard life. This was definitely Jason Todd, the boy that Bruce had spoken so much about since she had met the billionaire.
The first time that she'd met Bruce, she had been a young girl, back when her mother was still alive. Even as a child, she remembered thinking that the man was similar to her, his eyes were just so lonely like her own and her mother's. Growing up, he didn't come around all the time, but when he did, he gradually changed.
When she was fourteen, she remembered looking him up online and seeing the reports about him supposedly was a drunk and a lazy man, notions that she had never known him to be.
"Wayne-san, why haven't you spoken against the news reports?" Rei could remember asking, and he only smiled but said nothing.
"Rei-san, is it possible that the 'me' that you think you know is the false one?" She remembered reading a letter that he had sent her a few months after the question had been posed. Rei had probably read the letter one hundred times, trying to understand the man behind the letter, the man who cared enough about the question to answer it that long after.
She had always known that his life had always been a lie. He was too similar to her, too lonely, too okay with lies being told as the truth and faking a smile for the camera and the people. It didn't matter to her because by that time, she had become Sailor Mars, lived her normal, everyday life without feeling bad for the image she portrayed, understanding that there had to be a mask if she were to be able to protect her world. This life. If she were to keep being able to be the perfect governor's daughter, this had to be done. It wasn't a choice. It was necessity.
Rei never cared about what lie that he had been telling, in fact, all she wanted was a friend in him so she always wrote letters to him even though she knew she could easily send an email, and it would get to him much faster. It would've been cheaper, too. He almost never sent a letter back. In the many years that she'd known him, she had sent him enough to fill a seventy-two gallon trash can and some and yet he had only sent her back five letters in total.
However, he always made sure to answer her letters when he would come to Japan for a business meeting as he would always ask her father to allow him a day with Rei so that he could buy her dinner, take her shopping, and go to a movie. The movie idea never went through because the priestess had never been interested in watching the cinemas but would rather spend that time talking to him.
He would always mention the longest movie, and she would always say, "Wayne-san, let's just pretend we saw it, and we can continue talking until the movie is over." It literally meant, 'let's talk about those letters... you're giving me a time limit, and I will get my answers answered in that time limit.'
They both understood that. It was their secret, and for Rei, it felt good to have someone outside of the senshi that she kept a secret with - someone older, someone who her own father could never live up to even in his wildest dreams. Bruce was kind in real life, and she felt like whatever mask that he wore in real life, it was taken off and so was her's. Together, they could be themselves even if only for a few hours.
"You're a lot like Jason..." She remembered him whispering after every conversation - it was always under his breath, and there was always a sad smile that followed it.
Staring at the man before her, she couldn't understand what it was that made Bruce see her in him. That is, if this was the man that she thought he was. Rei had never seen a picture of Jason before so everything she had been doing had been based off her intuition.
"Y'know, you and I are a lot alike," Rei turned away from Jason and Bruce and looked towards the wall that Jason had staring at while trying to avoid her seeing his tears.
"You don't know anything about me!" Jason stood up, knocking his chair over, his leg hitting the wooden coffin, nearly knocking it over to which both he and Rei placed their hand down to settle it down.
Rei's eyes narrowed as she walked over to him. "You're just as Bruce described you, angry and not forgiving - even when it comes to yourself."
Jason's eyes grew hot with fury. Who the hell did she think she was? Did she really think that because of some stupid conversations, she knew him? Was she really that bat-shit crazy? "Don't tell me that you were some young girl that Pops tricked into sleeping with him, and you honestly thought he loved you?!" He smirked as he walked over to her, grabbing her wrist, "And now you think that I inherited his fortune." His muscles tensed as he grabbed both her wrist, wanting to scare the woman away from him, his heart in a flurry of emotions that he couldn't understand.
The girl's eyes steeled. "Don't touch me."
"Why? Isn't this what you came to do... to get close to the boy.." Jason whispered into her ear while staring into her eyes. His hold on her wrist tightened. Why wasn't she scared of him? Girls like him were supposed to be terrified of him, this hood boy from the worst part of Gotham City, and yet, she looked at him as if she could kill him without a second thought.
"Touch me, and I can promise you, I will burn you."
Jason loosened his hold on her and walked away, picked up his chair then turned his back to her. "You still don't know a damn thing about me." He watched her as she stood up, staring at her wrist and rubbing them lightly, her eyes dangerously serious. She had this look that he swore said that she really could do horrible things to him if she really wanted to.
There was silence and neither moved nor said a word. Jason had been watching her the entire time, waiting for her to either stubbornly scream profanities at him then try to attack him or leave, crying. Instead she sat down after a few minutes, staring at the man before them.
"I hated him too."
What the hell? Now, she's come here to say what she really felt about him. She didn't even know Bruce.
"My father, I mean... I thought I hated him up until his death, I just knew that I hated him. I respected him, did everything he asked of me, but I hated him with every fiber of my being." The Japanese woman looked up at him with a finality to her words, anger still seething in her words, her cheeks puffed up in annoyance. "After my mother died, I blamed him because she died alone, and I was home alone and scared when she took her last breath. I remember crying out for her and the maids and other servants were there trying to calm me down."
Jason looked up and turned his chair around. He could remember being with the parents who had raised him as a child, their taking him on their drug deals. The young man remembered being beaten until he was black and blue, bleeding on the carpet because his mom couldn't get her fix.
He knew all about bad parents, but looking at the woman before him, what did she know about that kind of life? There was one time when his father had gotten a bad batch of cocaine, and he nearly died; there was so much blood that poured out through his pores.
Back then, he remembered wanting his father to die, tired of living the way they did. Jason had always thought that if his mother didn't have his mother around that it might force her to change her way, to see that she was hurting him with the stupid things that they were doing. It was weird because he loved them both, but back then, he was so used to death - it was all around him. His best friend had been killed in a drive-by and every other week, children from school were hurt, their family members killed, raped.
Death wasn't a big deal. Then again, back then, if someone would've threatened his life, he was sure that he wouldn't have cared. There was nothing worth living that life.. but then he met Bruce. How was he supposed to know back then that he would give him a reason to be afraid of death?
How was he supposed to know that being Robin would be the most precious thing in the world for him? How could he hate someone who had given him his only happy memories? Bruce had given him his happiest and saddest memories. In his heart, he imagined that if tried his best that one day, Bruce would look at him and smile the smile that he had never gotten his entire life.
"Bruce had told me to not be so bitter towards my father and learn to see past his imperfections." Rei's mention of the Bat broke Jason out of his mental trance. "He always said that one day that I may regret it, but sadly, I don't think I ever will... does that make me a bad person?"
Author's Note:
This was meant to be an one-shot, but I'm going to turn it into a two or three-part story. I realized that my muse wants to heavily develop the relationships.
I was also wondering if I should make the story into a much larger story. Lemme know. Please review... hope you all like it!
My muse wants to make a story more about Sakio and Bruce.