A/N: Well, this has been on hiatus a lot longer than intended! Haha bet no one thought it was getting a second chapter ever. :}

Police got there before any bad people.

An adult would have been able to say it wasn't surprising; the neighborhood might be headed sharply downhill, but northern Park Row was still a nerve center of Gotham's non-red-light entertainment district, and there were still a lot of tourists and uptown folks strolling around feeling safe when they really shouldn't.

A lot of residents not yet jaded enough to not bother calling in a trio of gunshots. A lot of police, patrolling not too far away.

The flashing lights scintillated over Bruce and Jason and dazzled them blind for a second, so that the cops as they came swarming up seemed to appear out of nowhere. "Dispatch, we've got a triple homicide around 300 Park," one of them was saying, to a radio that crackled back at him.

Two of them had high-powered flashlights, and Bruce squinted into the glare and hated light, or at least this much of it. He'd seen better in the dark. "Kids," said one of the policemen, voice hard, like maybe he was identifying them for listeners, not talking to them. Bruce hadn't exactly been looking forward to police arriving, but if he had he wouldn't have expected them to look—were they scared? Or angry?

"Easy, now, copper," drawled Jason, raising both hands, open-palmed and empty.

Bruce mimicked him. Maybe he shouldn't have. Blood dripped off his hands. He was red-handed.

One of the policemen with a flashlight pulled his gun and the one who'd said 'kids' raised his, and Bruce's throat closed completely at the sight of them rising, pointing at him, at Jason.

It didn't feel like being afraid, though. More like too angry to speak. Like when the teacher was wrong and wouldn't listen to him and told him to stop disrupting the class, times a million.

"Okay, kids. Just keep your hands where we can see them," soothed the officer in front. His gun at least was pointing at the ground. Out in the street, another set of lights arrived.

"Sure, sure," said Jason, when Bruce still couldn't speak. He sounded calm, and he stood up nice and slow, hands still high, everything about him agreeable and obedient and still managing to sound flip and scornful and defiant.

Bruce wasn't sure how he knew, but he realized Jason was planning to bolt. It made sense. He'd killed a person. The knife was probably in his pocket and definitely had his fingerprints. It wasn't fair, because he'd only done it to save Bruce, but the cops might not get that. So of course he wanted to run. Bruce should have made him leave before. He would have been fine, staying alone. It was his parents.

If Jason tried to run away, they might shoot him.

No way he was going to watch anybody he cared about get shot, ever again.

"Bruce Wayne," he said sharply, loudly, standing up. He untied Jason's sweatshirt, not caring anymore if he got blood on the sleeves, bundled it off and shoved it back at its owner without looking. More than one policeman did a double take at his tuxedo, and the guns sank further. "I'm Bruce Wayne, and these are my parents. That man shot them."

He pointed. It wasn't even a man, anymore. Just a crumpled thing. "He was going to kill me, too, but my friend here helped. Don't hurt him. Please don't hurt him."

Please hurt coming out, but it was worth it. He owed Jason, had to fight for him with everything he had, and right now his best weapon was his age, and what Alfred called his stature, which he had never understood until now, until the way Jason's voice had scraped over your killing dog and the way the police had lowered their weapons at the sight of his neat little bespoke suit.

"Hey, now, of course we're not going to hurt him, son," said one officer—he was one whose flashlight was pointed at the ground, who hadn't taken his gun out at all, and one of the others snapped,

"Shut up, Gordon."

"With respect, Lieutenant, I think we can handle a couple of elementary-school kids without holding them at gunpoint. And," he lowered his voice but Bruce could still hear him, "if that's really Thomas and Martha Wayne, you're threatening a gun crimes victim who just inherited billions."

The look on the lieutenant's face was like fear, and his gun came down. Bruce turned toward Jason at once, to find that he'd slung the sweatshirt over his own shoulders and gone back to holding his open hands out to both sides, stealing glances between Bruce and the police. Bruce didn't know him well enough to guess what the look on his face meant.

Had he heard what Gordon said? Did he realize it meant Bruce might be able to protect him, or did he think it meant he wouldn't really try?

"It's going to be okay," Bruce promised. Which was such a lie, with Mom and Dad dead at his feet, but. But when the worst possible thing had happened, Jason had been there. He had to help him.

The look Jason shot back at him was tense and puzzled and sort of annoyed, like maybe he thought being reassuring was his job and Bruce was butting in.

"I'm coming over there," said the cop called Gordon, before he did. He tried to step around the blood but he couldn't, really, when his goal was clearly touching Mom and Dad, and then their killer. He made a face when he reached for the side of the murderer's neck, and Bruce realized he'd been going for a place Jason had opened with his knife, and realized at the last second before he touched the cut. "All three dead on the scene," he said.

"Yeah," said the lieutenant impatiently. "Stop messing things up for forensics and get the kids out."

Gordon looked at Bruce before he stood up, then over at Jason. "You ready to come with us?" he asked.

It was the fact that he'd looked at Jason too that did it. Bruce's fists closed tighter, drying blood tacky where skin tried to shift against skin, and nodded.

They let Gordon lift them across the edge of the blood pool even though it was too late to keep them out of it, and he gave Bruce a pat between the shoulder blades after he set him down. "Come on," he said. "This way."

Bruce turned to look back at his parents as the policeman led them out of the alleyway, and Jason and Gordon both waited for him. Finally, he turned away.

The police separated Bruce and Jason to ask them what had happened, but when Bruce started to get upset about it, they stopped before they lost sight of each other. That meant that when Bruce got to the part where Jason jumped out of the pile of cardboard, he had already heard Jason say that he tried to make the man drop his gun, so he made it sound like the time between when Jason jumped and when the man fell took a little longer than he remembered. It had been long enough for the light to get shot out. Jason probably had wrestled with the man, it was just…Bruce didn't want there to be any doubt, was all.

During the questions they gave him a blanket, which wasn't bloody and didn't smell like garbage but wasn't as good as the hoodie anyway. He dropped it on the ground as soon as the people asking the questions stopped paying attention. Maybe somebody else who lived in the garbage would find it.

Bruce got into the police car when Officer Gordon asked him to, and didn't realize he maybe shouldn't have until he saw Jason balk. After that, he noticed there weren't any handles on the inside of the doors, but Jason was already throwing his shoulders back and his chin up and climbing in next to him.

"It'll be alright, son," Gordon said, before he closed the door on them and got in the front seat.

The policeman driving the car turned it on, and Bruce looked over at Jason. There was a closed window between the front and the back of the car that made the back seat seem more private than they usually did, like they'd been given their own room. (Or locked in a cell together. Bruce had definitely noticed there weren't any handles on the inside of the doors, and wasn't likely to stop noticing.)

"Jason?" he whispered.

"Did—do you—" Jason, who'd been so confident and firm in the dark surrounded by death, was having a hard time putting a sentence together. He looked small in the backseat, his feet hanging above the floor—closer to it than Bruce's, but nowhere near touching. Bruce wished one of them had sat in the middle, so he could lean over and bump their shoulders again.

"You're really rich?" Jason settled for blurting. Then didn't give Bruce a chance to answer. "I mean, you were picking up all those pearls, I guess they were real ones, huh? I guess I should've figured." The way he said it—there was a tight grin on his lips, but he didn't sound just annoyed with himself for not guessing something, it was worse than that.

"Dad always says—said that money isn't worth anything except what good you can accomplish with it," Bruce said.

"That's the kind of thing only people who have too much money get to say," Jason told him. He didn't sound angry, and normally Bruce might have considered getting angry himself, because that was his father's opinion that had just gotten disrespected, but he was too tired now.

He decided he didn't care how babyish it looked, and pulled his legs up so he could put his face on his knees.

"…shit," Jason muttered. "Listen. Bruce. We're in the back of a cop car. I'm in some real goddamn trouble here. So if that money is good for accomplishing things, see if it can keep me outta jail, huh?"

Bruce had realized his knees were as tacky with blood as his hands, maybe worse, and scrubbed the inside of his elbow across his forehead trying to get it clean again. "They don't send kids to jail. Do they?"

"They send 'em to kid jail. I mean, no matter what they're not going to let me just leave, but if they send me to a shit foster home I can always run away."

Bruce guessed he'd known Jason didn't have anywhere to go home to. Still. "You were living in the trash on purpose?"

Jason flushed. "I don't live in the goddamn—I got a place. I just couldn't get back there tonight because some guys have it out for me, and they were watching the street. I just had to lay low a couple of days and it'd blow over." He swung his heels into the front of the seat, making tiny muffled thuds. "Not so good at keeping my head down. Obviously."

"Do you like where you live?"

"Uh…" The look Jason shot him was weird, sideways and thoughtful. Deciding why Bruce was asking, maybe. "It's pretty good, four walls and a roof and all of 'em dry. Like I said, I don't live in the garbage, kid, I was just napping there."

"I believe you," Bruce said, even though he thought it had made perfect sense for him to think Jason lived where he'd been sleeping.

Still. When he was bragging about home being an actual room it made Bruce feel almost bad about his room at home, with action figures lined up along the back of the desk and so many toys in the chest under the window there were some he'd never played with at all, and his favorite books on the shelf over the bed, and the stuffed dog hidden behind the wardrobe because he was too old for it but it seemed mean to get rid of it yet, and his bed with Grey Ghost sheets.

He suddenly wanted to be there, so he could hide under the covers and wake up the next morning and it could all have been a nightmare. Except it wasn't. He knew that.

Home suddenly didn't seem as comforting.

Home, which wouldn't exactly be empty now, because there was Mrs. Rochefort who cooked most dinners and Judy and Anna who came in to clean, and Alfred, but. Home where his parents were supposed to be, and he'd be able to go from room to room to room to room forever, looking for them, and they'd never ever be there again.

There were so many rooms you could imagine they'd always just left the one you were in. But they wouldn't have. Mom wasn't ever going to be in the music room playing piano. Dad wasn't ever going to be in the study studying papers. They weren't ever going to sit together reading, or play Scrabble with him in the evenings, or cards, or sit at dinner and try to make him think of something interesting he'd learned at school today. He would get to go home after this and his parents wouldn't be there.

He wondered if Jason's place with four dry walls was the same as where he'd lived with his mom, before she died. Looked over, and noticed Jason was wearing his red hoodie knotted around his shoulders now. It looked like a cape, and there was a big dark stain on one side where Bruce had grabbed it to give it back.

"Do you want to come live with me?" he asked. It came out small and raspy enough, and Jason blinked at him confused enough, that he tried again, louder. His hands rubbed together, and in some places the blood stuck but around the edges it had dried out and sifted over his knees in powder. "You should come stay with me. My house is too big."

Jason laughed at that, a weird confused little sound like air bubbling up through water.

"My house is too big for one person," Bruce clarified, and that made Jason stop laughing at least.

"I don't think they'll let me," said Jason. "But…thanks." Bruce frowned, and Jason gave a sigh. "You're killin' me here, kid. Look, if they stick me somewhere I can get out of, I'll hike out and stop by, how's that? If you still want to by then you can loan me a room, have me over for lunch, whatever."

Bruce's teeth hurt. "What do you mean if I still want to?" he asked. "I'm not a little kid, I don't just—say things! I thought we were friends." Which was a stupid thing to say, or think, when they'd just met tonight, when everything was awful.

"…having somebody move into your house is a little much for new friends."

"It's a big house," Bruce repeated. Folded his arms, tucking his cold bloody hands under them. "And anyway, you saved my life, right? I owe you." He swallowed, and looked out the window. He wasn't tall enough to see down to sidewalk level, which was good because it meant he didn't have to look at people, just theatre marquee and windows with the blinds shut. "Whatever. I guess I'll figure out how to make police not send somebody to jail."

"…the puppy face worked pretty well earlier," offered Jason. "What do rich kids learn that kind of face for? Getting away with joy-riding in the family jet? Going on vacation to Europe?"

Bruce snorted. "Why would we have our own jet." And he didn't really care about vacations. Maybe by the time you were grown up home was boring. Though Dad always said there were no boring subjects only boring people, but Mom didn't agree that Dad managed to make the phylogeny of mold interesting, especially at dinner.

He bit his tongue hard so he wouldn't start crying again about slime mold. "…mostly I guess to get extra dessert, I dunno." He did know, though. His throat was all closed up again and he bit his tongue some more because it worked. "And…to get my parents to spend time with me."

Jason was quiet for a second longer than normal. "…fuck."

Bruce couldn't exactly disagree.

A/N: POV shift next chapter. ^^