Once upon a time...

Jack loved Bruce.

As a teacher, this love is forbidden and yet, night after night, he sneaks into Bruce Wayne's private dorms and they sneak kisses and touches.

They were both young. Jack graduated from college early, was assigned to teach at Princeton and, at the age of twenty four, was only four years older than Bruce.

Yet over time, Bruce's false gentleness faded. He was angry, angry with the world and his past, despite how much luckier he was than so many others that suffered, and whenever Jack ( Bruce never called him professor, just Jack.) asked questions about his parents Bruce would lose his mid and shouted and ranted at Jack so Jack never asks again.

Bruce is always angry and threatening towards Jack nearing the time of his parents death. Jack reasoned that it was his fault. He triggered Bruce Wayne's crippling survivour's guilt. He convinces himself that he deserves this punishment. He hits Jack, beating him with his hard fists and cruel words.

He never fought back.

The other teachers and his students asks, concerned, but Jack smiles it off as if this was nothing, and cries himself to sleep in an empty apartment, unsure or too tired to see the reason, and tells himself that he loves Bruce and everything will be all right, like in the fairy tales. Jack loved fairy tales. They gave him hope, that he will be accepted and loved one day. He never asked why all the people he loved in his life, his parents, friends and now Bruce, never loved him back. He is isolated. Lonely. And the most tragic of all things is that he does not realise this.

Bruce graduated. That night, he was angry. Full of rage for no reason. He scared Jack. The beatings are worse than before, and Bruce throws down Jack's body and stares into his eyes.

Something in Jack snapped.

He kicked and screamed and struggled until Bruce left, and he fell silent.

Rushing to the bathroom, Jack stared at his reflection. The people around him commented on his smile. Or lack thereof. Jack tried to smile, but it looked twisted. Wrong. Everything about him was wrong.

Jack grabbed a razor. And he smiled. He really, really smiled.

And then he laughed.

He absent-mindedly grabbed a pack of cards Bruce gave him, and laughed as the cards spilled onto the floor. He swiped the joker card and laughed again, blood raining down his cheeks like grotesque tears, dripping onto the card and staining the jester's grin. But he laughed.

Once upon a time, Jack fell out of love with Bruce.