Title: tempered in blood
Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Beowulf
Warnings: references to violence; AU
Pairings: possibly unrequited Jason/Bruce
Rating: PG
Wordcount:345
Point of view: third
Prompt: Batman comics, Bruce Wayne/Jason Todd or /Dick Grayson,
in the interest of poetry
and the cowboy movie
that's you and me
i'm back on the horse now
and i'm riding
i am striding so effortlessly
what i mean is
it's late
much too late for us
"You'll always think of me as your failure," Jason snarls, twisting away, "and you'll always think of me as that little boy so desperate for your approval." He glances from Batman to the mob goons still cowering, one of them bleeding out. "Would you have gotten tired of me?" he demands, ducking back, and Batman is better than this.
"Jason," Batman says gruffly, "the only one clinging to the past is you."
And that's the biggest crock of shit Bruce has ever tried to feed him.
Jason is still desperate for his approval, and he's come to accept that he always will be. So he says, calmly as he can, "Fuck you, old man." And then he shoots each mob goon before Batman can react and takes one of his shortcut routes to a hideout Batman has yet to find, where he calmly and rationally argues with himself about the best thing to do.
By the end of his calm and rational argument, his place is trashed but he has a decision he can live with.
...
On a rainy day, Jason Todd leaves Gotham. He'll always want Bruce's approval, always want Bruce to love him. Always want back into the family.
But wanting that killed him once. He's still going to deal with criminals the way he thinks is best, but there are millions of cities he can do it in, and he still wants to clean up Gotham -
But he's young. And he's alive. And he's got time.
He wants a lot of things. But he learned when he was young that wanting and getting aren't the same, and he's been given a second chance.
Once he's across the bridge, he looks back. This isn't him running, and he won't be hiding, and he's not a kid anymore. He's not a soldier in someone else's war.
He's not living in the past when he's got a whole future spread out before him, so he turns back to the bike he traded his old, surely-tracked-by-Batman ride in for, and he doesn't look over his shoulder again.
