One Shot
AN Major character death. VERY IMPORTANT. PLEASE READ. A few things are changing for this fic to work, first off, Jason doesn't die in this, Tim becomes Robin when Jason is taken by the Joker, per canon, but instead of being blown up, Bruce gets there in the nick of time and saves him. Jason wasn't able to return to being Robin for at least a year because of the damage that the Joker did, Bruce tells Jason when he decides to allow Tim to become Robin, and they both agree with the decision. After that Jason becomes Red Hood, but non-lethal. Damian enters the story as per canon. There is death and some suicidal thoughts, so yeah. That's everything you'll need to know for this fic. I hope someone enjoys this. :)
"Hey Elliot, how come nobody knows anything about your childhood?" Hardison asks all of a sudden, bumping his shoulder into mine.
"Because I don't want anyone to know" I answer stonily, wishing that the topic of family was never brought up, considering that before it was I was actually having fun.
"Why not man? Got some deep dark secrets?" he asks teasingly, but all it does is sour my already ruined mood.
"Yes" I answer simply, bringing the beer bottle to my lips and taking a long drag, savouring the burn of the whiskey that no one knew I had replaced the watery beer with.
I look around the room, seeing the once smiling faces of Parker, Hardison, Nate and Sophie being replaced with concerned ones.
We had all decided that after the last run of shit jobs that we've had, that it was time for a break, and some time to wind down, although it felt a lot more like the 'team bonding' that Dick used to do all the time with the Young Justice Team.
"So what kind of shit was it? Foster care? Absent parents? Street? Abuse? Or just shitty in general, although I doubt that, something had to have happened that you ended up in the uh, lifestyle, that you had." Hardison rambles, once again not knowing when i'm at my wits end.
"All of the above" I answer shortly, drawn into memories that I had long since buried.
"Um, what?" he asks, but i'm done with them constantly trying to draw my life story out of me, and I also might be just a little bit tipsy.
"No dad, druggie mom, druggie mom's boyfriend was abusive, it was easier to live on the streets than that fucking apartment, got caught stealing tires, got put in foster care for a while, then Juvie when they didn't have any open fosters." I tell them, bringing the bottle to my lips once more, hoping to chase away the memories of that time, but instead of the turn I was hoping for, I get tossed into my happiest memories. The Manor, Bruce, Dick, Tim, Damian, especially Alfred. My life, my family, my home.
"Stop, stop, please stop" I mutter, squeezing my eyes shut and hoping to drive away the thoughts before they go any further, when my happiest memories suddenly turn to the worst point in my life, before i'm sucked back into the grief of those first few years. The grief hasn't ever gone, it's just, less sharp, less all-consuming.
My eyes snap open when I feel a soft hand slide into mine, squeezing softly. I look down to see Parker sitting cross legged on the floor in front of me, concern radiating off of her.
"You can tell us" she says softly, and I nod my head, willing back the tears that threaten to fall.
"I had a druggie mom, and she had an abusive boyfriend. I ran away and decided to live on the streets when I was 10, I made enough to feed myself boosting tires, but one night I boosted the wrong tires, this guy was rich, and powerful, and nowhere near as dumb as everyone thought him to be. Either way, foster care, juvie, Gotham Social Services suck, Blah Blah Blah. It took awhile, but the guy I boosted the tires from got custody of me, as his ward. He had already taken in another orphan, Dick, he was… well, he was Dick. he was bouncy, and excitable, and an acrobat, and he loved sugar, and hugs, and absolutely lording it over me that he was a few months older, and that made him my big brother. He listened to me, and he knew what it was like to all of a sudden be thrown into high society, in everything but blood, he was my brother. Alfred was the butler, but he was so much more than that, he was our grandfather, and he was the boss. He made the best cookies in the world, and he's the one that taught me how to cook, he taught me manners and how to act in high society, he taught me so many things that nobody else had ever even tried to, him and dick were the first people that I let in, in all my years I had never trusted anyone as I trusted them, I loved my mom, but I knew that I couldn't trust her to have my, well, anything. Bruce, he was weird at first, distant and aloof, but he had his reasons, previous traumas and shit, but so was I, eventually we figured it out, he became my dad, just like he was Dick's, he was mine. He was there for nightmares and broken bones, picture day and homework, the smallest and biggest things, and everything in between. He was there for me like no one was before. When I was about 15, Dick, my older brother, moved to Bludhaven to become a cop, him and Bruce had been fighting more and more often and he wanted to go be his own person. Anyway, about a year after that there was this kid, Tim, he was our neighbor, and he had always been friendly with me and Dick in school, his parents were never home, kid practically raised himself, a shame, seeing as he was a virtual genius, better hacker than Hardison, science genius, mechanical whiz, addicted to coffee, and the tendency to forget to sleep for days at a time. Either way, his parents left on one of their months long trips, but something happened and his mom was killed, his dad put into a coma, nobody stepped up for the kid, so after consulting me, Bruce did. The kid moved in, Ward number three for Bruce, although he had adopted Dick and was working on mine. We had a few rough patches, but the kid fit in, he might have been raised all hoity toity but he was just as lost as me and Dick when we got taken in, as lost as Bruce when his parents died.
He was another broken puzzle piece to our jagged little family.
Dick came home all the time to see me and Tim, and with a little space him and Bruce went back to their less fighty selves, they hugged and made up, it was sappy, Dick yanked us all into a group hug. Back to being a happy little family." i'm interrupted then when Hardison speaks up.
"That sounds like paradise man, I was wondering how you ended up in this job, how you became a hitter, this doesn't sound like a lead up to how you became a hitter, it sounds like a happy ending kind of thing." he tells me, the confusion evident on his face.
"You have all been fucking bugging me for my 'life story' for at least 2 years now, don't worry, there is a fucked up ending." I tell him, the growl in my voice reminding me of my family.
"Bruce eventually did adopt me and Timmers, and when I was applying to colleges, a surprise was dropped off at the doorstep of the Manor. A ten year old kid with a temper and Bruce's DNA. Damian was the most fucked up out of us, his mom had a fling with Bruce years before and then moved away, knowing that she was pregnant, she had Damian and raised him in a gang" A gang seems like the most plausible replacement for the League of Assassins. "The kid was raised super strict, and i'm pretty sure he had a god complex, see, his grandfather was the gang leader, and he was being groomed to take over, but his mother figured out that the grandfather was actually gonna kill the kid, so he sent him off to live with his dad, and neither of them knew the other existed. Dami was a violent little thing, he was raised that way, but he also saw me, Tim, and Dick as threats to his place by his father's side, he kept calling himself the 'rightful heir' and he tried to get rid of us more than a few times. He wanted to take over the company when he came of age, and he thought that we stood in his way. Long story short, the kid was super insecure, he needed someone to love him, and to teach him how to love, he needed a family more than anything. Dick got through to him first, then Alfred, me and Tim followed, and it took Bruce the longest to get through to his own son.
So same as every other time, we shifted power positions, we made room for another person, and same as before, his jagged pieces fit ours, and he was one of us.
He was, stoic, and a brave little thing, he actually loved animals, more than anyone i've ever met before. He had a dog and a cow, a chicken and a cat, among other various animals that he had rescued, he got that from his father I guess, taking in strays. He loved all of us, but he never would have told us that, he was much more prone to using his actions to show it, and then denying it later.
That's when everything goes downhill. We had a few good years, all of us, Dickie, Bruce, Alfred, Timmy, Dami, and me. We were 'a happy little family'
Everyone always came home for Christmas, and that year was no different. I had found some work in New York, Timmy had his own apartment, Dick was a detective in Bludhaven, and Damian was still in school.
Christmas Eve, me and the boys always went out, but that night I had been angry, I don't even remember why anymore, everything else is so fucking vivid, but I can't remember why I said what I did to them.
They kept asking me when I was gonna be ready to leave, and I snapped at them, I told them to fuck off and leave me the hell alone, that I didn't want to fucking see them right then, and to just leave without me, that I wasn't going with them.
Later that night Bruce came into my room to tell me that they had gotten caught up in an attack by the Joker, and that they had all been killed.
That night changed everything. My brothers were blown up, and my father fell to fucking pieces. You see, he had been broken before, but he found us, and he built himself a family, he surrounded himself with people who had been hurt like he had been, and he took care of them, he raised them, and we were fucking happy.
But with one click of a button, he shattered, because the people that were the glue holding him together, were gone, and the three of us? We couldn't hold each other together, hell, we couldn't even hold ourselves together.
I needed them, he needed them, and we were never going to be enough for each other. I left home, I left Bruce and Alfred in that empty fucking house, and I joined the military, and I got dark, what was the purpose of finding a family, if they can be ripped away from you, just like that. I snapped, everything that had happened to me in the past, it compounded into that one feeling, rage. I was angry, so angry, I didn't care who I hurt, or what I was being ordered to do, I just wanted the pain to go away. I hurt people, and I didn't give a shit, as long as nobody got close enough to hurt me like that again, I was going to pretend that I was okay. So yeah, that's the whole story, I had a shitty childhood, then one full of love and family, and then it all got ripped away again, later one of my employers had a shrink analyse me, he told me that I had had a mental breakdown, or, more of a mental shutdown. And now I have you guys, but I didn't want you guys, I didn't want to care about anyone, but all of you just shoved yourselves into my life, you didn't care about what I wanted. I don't hate you for it, I wish I did, because if something happens to you guys, i'm not sure what's gonna happen." I finished, downing the now warm beverage in my bottle and standing from the couch, tossing the bottle into the trashcan and walking up the stairs to my bedroom, not caring to stay around for what my team has to say about my life.
They might take a car service home, but the most likely response is that they will all crash here and then bombard me with questions in the morning.
I lean back against my door when it's finally shut behind me, finally letting myself fall into what really happened that night.
"Jason, come on, we've been waiting almost an hour, we want to get out there for patrol and rooftop tag" Dick says, bounding into my room once more, Tim and Damian behind him.
"Fuck off guys. Just leave me the fuck alone, just go without me, i'm not coming along to play fucking rooftop tag, it's a dumb game anyway. Just fucking leave." I bark, throwing my cell phone across the room, not caring in the least when it shatters on the opposite room, or when I catch the hurt looks flashing across my brothers faces, or the slumped shoulders as they all turn and exit my room.
I huff out a sigh and flop face down on my bed, trying not to think about the operation that went belly up in New York, the kids I had set up to get taken to a safe group home that died in the explosion that was set too fucking early, even though I said specifically not to do anything until the kids were out.
i'm not able to sleep, feeling the guilt churning in my stomach as I think about my brothers reactions to my harsh words earlier that night, how I really was looking forward to patrol with them, but had just gotten the call that the kids were dead, and I was too angry to not be a total dick to my family.
So instead of doing something, like suiting up and joining them out on patrol, and apologising, I simply lay on my bed, letting the anger, and the guilt, swirl around in my stomach and my head.
It's only a few hours later that I hear a knock on my door, and I call out a muffled come in, hoping that it's Dick so that I can apologise and explain why I was angry. Instead Bruce walks into my room, and the pain and grief that I can see in his eyes instantly has me ready to breakdown, because that look means something happened to them, the only people that matter.
"What happened?" I croak out through the lump in my throat.
"The Joker broke out, no one knew until it was too late, he ran into them while they were playing rooftop tag, he had this bomb, it wasn't adhesive, it was burrowing, he pulled it out while he was fighting with Tim. Dick and Damian were on their way, but he knocked Tim down and activated it, it was unlike anything i've seen before, he stabbed it into his back, it sliced through the kevlar like it was nothing. When it was all the way in it spun and almost tightened into him, there was no way for them to get it off, the Joker was gone by the time Dick and Damian got there. Tim was half conscious and Dick and Damian tried their best to get it off him, if they pulled it out it would have instantly killed him, so they tried to defuse it. They didn't have any experience with this type of Bomb, nobody does. They are all gone." Bruce finishes as the tears stream down his face, during his explanation he had moved closer so that he was sitting next to me on my bed.
The tears were streaming down my face since about halfway through it, and the sob that was lodged in my chest breaks free at the words that confirm my worst fears.
I clutch at my chest as I try to ease the tight pain residing there, and I barely register when Bruce hauls my body into his, even though i'm almost as tall as he is.
I clutch onto his lapels as it really sinks in, burying my face into his neck like I used to after nightmares when I was younger.
I feel his tears wetting the shoulder of my shirt as he grieves for the children he's lost tonight.
We stay like that for the rest of the night, although at some point I drift off into oblivion and Bruce moves us so that we are propped up at the head of the bed, i'm not sure how though, considering I never loosened my grip on his shirt the entire time.
When I wake up in the middle of the night, i'm hit with the thought that I had a really bad nightmare, that my brothers were dead, and then I register the still wet shoulder that my head is laying on, and the shuddering body that is supporting mine, and I break once more.
The next day is the worst, I wake up before Bruce does this time, and I extract myself from his grip, no matter how much I want to bury my head into his chest and hide from the world like when I was a child, I know what I need to do.
So I sneak downstairs, all the way to the Batcave, and there in the middle of the room I see what I need, the Batcomputer.
I quickly open up what I need, the cowl cam from all three of my brothers from the night before.
I decide to watch Tim's first, seeing as it should have the most information on it.
I watch as they play tag, as Tim pulls ahead of the others, as the Joker comes out of the shadows when he pauses on one roof, and then I watch the fight unfold, I watch as Tim kicks ass, although not before he alerts Dick and Damian that he needs backup. And then I watch as he trips, he fucking trips over a rock on the ground, and the Joker takes advantage of the momentary loss of balance, he pulls a circular device from his coat pocket, clicking a button on it and as five sharp claws extend from the other side of it, he embeds them into Timmy's back, and Bruce was right, they cleanly cut through the Kevlar and I feel hot tears stream down my face as Timmy screams, and the Joker laughs.
The laughter fades away as I hear the frantic voices of my brothers drawing closer.
They try pulling the thing from his back, but he screams, and Damian suddenly yells that it's attached to his spine.
They deduce fairly quickly that it's a bomb, and then they start trying to defuse it, as the time ticks down Tim gets more and more frantic, trying to make them leave. Screaming at them that if they don't leave they will all die.
"Then we all die" Damian tells him gravely.
With five seconds left on the timer, Dick knows that they aren't going to make it, that he hasn't made any progress, and that he refuses to leave his baby brother to die alone.
He pulls the two of them into a tight hug.
"I love you guys" is the last thing Dick says before white light envelopes the screen, destroying the camera.
I watch the video over and over, each time picking up more audio than I had previously, just enough that I can hear Damian murmuring "I love you" over and over again, lower than Dick was, and when I watch Damian and Dick's cowl cam's, I can see Tim mouthing the same thing.
Each time I watch my heart breaks into smaller pieces, and it isn't until a few hours later that Bruce finds me there, in the same spot, curled in his chair as I watch the footage over and over again, alternating their cowl cam's every time, tears streaming down my face and my body shaking in grief.
When he tries to gently pull me from the chair I lash out, not wanting to leave them, like I did before, because if I hadn't let them go alone last night, none of this would have happened, or at least I would be with them, instead of here, feeling like my chest is tearing into pieces everytime I delve into my thoughts, knowing that I won't ever see them again, won't ever hug, or tease, or lecture, or steal cookies with again.
So I lash out, and I push Bruce away from me, but after a short struggle, I find myself once again pushing closer into his embrace, not caring about the cold floor, that my leg is splayed at an awkward angle, or that we have landed in a heap on the floor a few feet from the computer. All I care about it is that when I tilt my head up, I can rest my head on Bruce's chest and watch the replaying footage at the same time. When Alfred, somehow still dressed in his suit, but with tear streaks over his face and red rimmed eyes enters the cave, I feel a small amount of guilt when a small sound of distress escapes his mouth when he catches the end of the video, which is replaying again, as he stares at Tim and Damian's faces as they all mutter I love you, with Dick's voice the dominant sound and then the white nothingness that passes for a few seconds before the same footage from Damian's point of view starts up.
I'm the one who lets out a distressed whimper when Alfred, his shoulders hunched and a lone tear making its way down his face, walks to the terminal and shuts the whole thing down.
He looks down at me with grief in his eyes and sorrow on his face before he simply sits down in Bruce's abandoned chair, the weight of a million years on his shoulders, and I watch as the most composed, calm, and collected man i've ever met breaks down in front of me.
The three of us, the only family any of us have left, Alfred's last bit of family in England had passed last year, we had all gone to the funeral to support him.
Now our family is half of a whole, we were loud, and excitable, and happy, and healthy, and above all, we loved each other.
Now that half of them are gone, the family is broken. The Joker succeeded, he shattered Batman, Bruce. He took his family from him, and left him with the broken remnants, three people who won't figure out how to put the essential pieces of themselves together for years to come.
It took weeks for either me or Bruce to be able to sleep without being in the same room as each other, the nightmares never ceased, but having something real to turn to and hold onto when you woke up with the thought that that's all it was, a nightmare.
During those weeks Bruce pulled away more and more from me and Alfred than ever before, more often than not the two of us simply crashed into cots in the batcave after returning from our fact finding missions.
The press was informed that three of four of the Wayne boys had been killed in an explosion set off by the Joker on Christmas Eve, and nobody expected to see me or Bruce out of the Manor until the funeral's.
That left us more time to hunt the Joker down, and about a week later we found him. We were getting ready to leave to his location when Bruce injected me with a sedative. When I woke up next I was furious with him, he came back a few hours after I woke, bloody and bruised, when I asked him if it was done all I got was a nod, and when I later hacked into the Cowl Cam it was confirmed. Batman broke his number one rule, and he slaughtered the Joker, part of me was aching that the structured and morally ridgid person that Bruce was, was now gone, but the other part, the one screaming in agony at the loss of my brothers was satisfied, so satisfied.
It didn't last though, none of it lasted, because while I could be satisfied that The Joker wasn't ever going to hurt someone again, I also knew that it changed nothing, I still had to wake up tomorrow and put on a suit, and go to my brother's funeral. We decided to have them at the same time, closed casket, and they were all getting buried next to each other.
It was a few weeks after the funeral that I left, I knew that I couldn't stay in that empty house any longer, I hadn't spoken a word to Bruce since the funeral, I saw him on his way out of his room and down to the Batcave, all I got when I tried to talk to him were guilty and grief ridden eyes, that stared down at me for a few moments before he would slink off to work on whatever case he was solving at that moment.
Every single time I saw Alfred he looked older than he did the last time I saw him, and although he tried, he tried to be there for me, he was slowly breaking apart too. All of us were.
Bruce banned me from being the Red Hood, and I knew that he had vowed to never have another Robin, no matter what.
Bruce and Alfred were slowly falling to pieces, Bruce refused to let me out on patrol, or talk to me, or look at me for longer than a few moments at a time. Alfred made food, but he never baked cookies, and if I ever caught him off guard I would catch a glimpse of the tears in his eyes, the slump in his shoulders and the pure, unadulterated grief rolling off of him in waves.
So one night I was laying in bed, my eyes dry for once, and I thought of how Bruce avoided me, and how Alfred was hiding his grief, for me. Then I stood up, and I pulled the stack of pictures from my drawer, the ones with all of us in them, happy. I took my pictures, and I stuffed them in my pocket along with a handful of emergency cash and I slipped out the window, down the side of the Manor, I walked the distance to the gate, and I slipped over that as well. Then I walked, for miles and miles, I walked until I saw something worth stopping for. Military sign up.
So I do, I sign up, and then I catch the next bus to boot camp.
I never fly again, at least not if I don't have to. Because it hurts, I've tried to fly, I watch on with an aching need to soar through the air when Parker straps on one of her harnesses and jumps off a building, and I want to follow her, but I don't, because it feels like a betrayal. Me and my family flew, and they are gone, and doing it without them, feels like maybe I just shouldn't catch that railing, like maybe if I just kept falling everything would be okay again.
So I suppose it's a good thing that the only time i've had to go soaring through the air it was when Parker strapped a harness on me and pushed me off a roof, because if it was up to me, I don't think I would catch myself.
I look up at the alarm clock on my bedside table as it beeps, and I realise that i've been sitting here for hours now, and I know that at this time of night/morning is when Bruce is finally finished with Patrol.
So with my mind made up, and tears streaming down my face like I haven't allowed in years, I pull my phone from my pocket and dial a familiar number.
"Bruce" I greet when he picks up the phone.
"Jason?" he asks, sounding both scared and hopeful.
"Yeah, it's me dad" I confirm, letting out a heavy sigh and wiping the tears from my face.
AN Thoughts? Good? Bad? Meh? Lemme know what you think. :)