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Chapter Text

Father Michael often wandered through Gotham Cemetery.

To most people, cemeteries were grim reminders of loss—gravestones looming, dates carved into crumbling gray rocks like cursed brands. Life and death and life and death. Suffocating cycles of finality.

To most people, cemeteries were the epitome of endings. 

But to Father Michael, they were never creepy, nor eerie. He never felt like he waded between the headstones, ankles deep in blood, skeletal fingers brushing against his cassock.

To him, cemeteries were devoted to love and rest and memory and humanity. Not an end, but a beginning. The crossing of a threshold—from this life to the next. 

Besides, the headstones themselves were for the living. A reminder to all that there was love here, and despite the loss, that love remains. The dead have no use for mourning.

Do not stand at my grave and weep…

The moonless night was dark and chilly. Father Michael pulled his wool shawl tighter around his shoulders as he navigated the older section of the cemetery, grass wild beneath his feet, tendrils sprouting between the aging stones like stringy locks of unruly green hair.

He paused, placing his hand gently against a cool, weathered stone. He whispered a prayer for the soul beneath.

Then, he continued on, weaving carefully between gravestones rather than keeping to the regular path. This way, he could better read the names—become acquainted with the life the stone held. He often had to squint to read the words; the dark and the ivy didn’t help his old eyes.

The wind smelled of earth and grass and sweet flowers. Around him, silence reigned—as if the city itself was muted the second he stepped through the wrought iron gates.

The air was heavy with history, settling around him like an old friend. Generations of families were reunited here. Father Michael had officiated many of those funerals, often burying the very babies he himself christened.

Up ahead, he spotted the wings of a tall stone angel standing out against the inky sky. The scent of fresh earth lingered in the air.

He smiled softly. Someone must have loved you very much.

Turning away from the statue, he moved deeper into the older parts of the cemetery, where the gravestones were so worn there were no names or dates—only moss covered mounds and rough, rounded stones. 

These were his favorite. He wandered among them, whispering soft prayers and humming hymns.

You are remembered. You are loved. I ask that you are safe.

A cold wind stirred the branches of the great oaks scattered across the grounds. An owl hooted somewhere overhead. Father Michael shivered, his joints stiff and aching. It was probably time to start heading back to St. Luke’s.

He turned to go, then—

A sound.

A sob, sharp and raw and pained.

He paused, straining his old ears. 

Shallow, ragged breathing.

Someone was here. Someone was here and they were hurt.

“Hello?” he called tentatively. In the stillness of the cemetery, it echoed like a shout.

A groan, somewhere off to his left.

Without hesitation, Father Michael moved toward it, as quickly as his aging legs allowed.

Most people wouldn’t dare go chasing strange noises in a graveyard after dark (or ever). Most people would be a healthy splash of holy water home by now, salt-loaded shotgun tucked under their pillow for good measure.

But Father Michael had Almighty God on speed dial. So naturally, Father Michael wasn’t scared of anything this mortal coil could throw at him—because why would he be scared of graveyard rustlings when he had divine backup.

Besides, Father Michael hadn’t been a priest his whole life.

“Hello?” he called again, eyes scanning in the dim, darting from headstone to headstone. “Is anyone there?”

The wind whistled once more, and the old oaks creaked in response. Dead leaves scraped across the grass.

He opened his mouth to call again—

There!

Movement.

A dark shape, low in the grass between two crumbling red granite gravestones.

Father Michael raced toward it. His heart pounded—not with fear, but urgency.

A mourner out this late wasn’t safe. 

Someone hurt out this late wasn’t safe.

This was Gotham, after all.

(Father Michael’s different—he’s got divine backup and a .22 tucked safely beneath his cassock. This was Gotham, after all).

He rounded the corner, and—

“Oh, sweet Lord,” he breathed. His stomach jumped into tight knots.

A boy.

A boy, barely more than a child—fifteen, maybe sixteen—covered in dirt. He lay curled in on himself, clawing at the grass with ruined, bloody hands. Wet sobs tore out of him, labored and pained and wrong.

Someone—someone wicked had hurt this boy.

His clothes were in tatters, his skin scraped raw. Father Michael could see deep, angry lacerations, both new and old, cutting across his small body. His limbs jutted out at sickening angles. Blood—there was a lot of blood. Fresh crimson weeping from gashes. Dark brown caked in old wounds.

Father Michael dropped to his knees beside him, heedless of the cold or the damp.

“It’s alright now,” Father Michael said gently. “You’re safe now. You’re alright.”

The boy flinched at the sound, lips moving—but whatever he was trying to say came out as a broken, wheezing gasp.

Father Michael reached out slowly, careful not to frighten him further. He brushed gently against his cheek, damp with tears and dirt and blood.

Cold. The boy’s skin was ice cold.

But he was alive. Miraculously, he was alive. 

Father Michael laid a hand on his trembling shoulder. The boy’s eyes fluttered open, bloodshot and wild. A striking blue, but dim, like the light behind them had nearly gone out.

“Help,” he rasped. Blood dripped from his mouth and nose—it pooled dark on the grass beneath him.

“You have it,” Father Michael said firmly. “I’m here. You hear me? I’m here.”

The boy’s eyes rolled back, broken, bloody fingers twitching a few times before going still.

Panic squeezed Father Michael’s lungs, cold and gripping. Please, Lord, he’s not—

The boy’s mangled chest rose and fell—a horrid, awful sound that had Father Michael swallowing hard to keep his dinner down—but it was breath.

Shaking, Father Michael fumbled for his pocket and pulled out his phone. His fingers didn’t feel like his own, but he managed to dial.

“Ambulance,” he said into the receiver, barely able to keep his voice calm. “Gotham Cemetery. West side. A boy—please he’s—just hurry.”

It could have been hours or mere minutes he knelt there, the silence of the cemetery broken by the boy’s shallow breaths. Father Michael’s old bones protested the cold, but he ignored them. This boy needed him. That was reason enough.

Into the silence, into the uncertainty, the unknown—Father Michael did as Paul and Silas did inside that prison:

Old hymns rose softly in the night air, songs from a lifetime of liturgy comforting them both.

Do not be afraid, I am with you.

I have called you each by name.

Come and follow Me,

I will bring you home.

I love you and you are Mine.

“‘While He was passing by, He noticed a man who had been blind from birth. His disciples asked Him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he would be born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but it was so that the works of God might be displayed and illustrated in him. ’’”

Father Michael sighed, rubbing his tired eyes. When he’d first arrived, the afternoon sun had bathed the hospital room in warm, golden light. Now it was dark, the room dim, shadows cast long across the cold tile floor.

It was quiet, save for the soft beeping of the heart monitor and the rhythmic whirring of the ventilator. Father Michael stood slowly, old joints creaking. He didn’t mind it, though. He’d told the boy he’d help. He’d promised the boy that he was here—and here he’d stay.

The boy looked impossibly small in the wide, white bed. Numerous tubes snaked from his body, connecting him to a host of machines. A transparent line of IV fluid caught the dim overhead light, glimmering faintly like a thread of glass.

Someone had wound a rosary through his scarred hands. One of the nuns who often visited, probably. They loved him—him, and his unshakable determination to live. 

Father Michael’s heart ached as he remembered those first few days, that first night after they’d found him—body marred by injuries no child should ever have to endure.

We only see this kind of trauma in torture victims, the paramedics had said, faces grave.

But the boy had fought with a will that made even the doctors shake their heads. He lived through the night. He lived through the next week. He’d made it three months.

Father Michael remembered how he looked when they wheeled him into the room after his final surgery—covered in bandages, stitches, and bruising. He was successfully stabilized, but his prognosis was uncertain: the doctors were unsure if he’d ever wake up.

Father Michael and others who’d visited had taken to calling him Jay—because the “John Doe” printed cold and clinical across his chart felt far too indifferent for their little miracle boy.

Police had come, smudging black across his fingertips and promising updates if the prints found any matches.

They never returned.

After his pleas to the GCPD fell on deaf ears, Father Michael had taken matters into his own hands: he’d tracked down the security guards on duty the night he’d found Jay. What they’d shown him made his stomach turn, even now.

They’d led him to a simple grave—a stone jutting from the earth like a loose tooth. There was no name, no date, nothing to help identify the boy buried beneath it. The ground around it had been disturbed. Clumps of fresh dirt lay scattered, as if something—someone—had clawed their way up. A crooked trail of soil led away from the grave; no doubt from where Jay had dragged himself out.

Kneeling in the grass, they could see the torn edges of the coffin through the gap in the earth—splintered wood, a ragged whole punched through the lid from the inside out. The interior had been shredded, desperate claw marks gouged deep into the lining.

There was no simple stone rolled aside.

“Alright, my boy,” Father Michael said, pulling himself from memory and gently resting his hands on Jay’s scarred ones, still holding the glass-bead rosary. “Shall we continue?”

Father Michael knew that’s not where they stopped. The scars—some deep and gouging, others thin and long—marked his whole body. Even his young face was not sparred; a particularly nasty one carved its way from his lip to his cheek, then up through his brow and back into his dark curls.

Father Michael returned to the hospital chair and reopened his Bible, something he’d done hundreds of times in this small room. 

“‘We must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the Light of the world, giving guidance through My word and works…’”

Pale morning light dusted the hospital room. Dew sparkled in the sun on the grass far below the window. Nearby, a bird chirped—a cheerful, question-and-answer rhythm, breaking through the humming and beeping machinery.

Father Michael sat vigil in his chair next to Jay’s bed. Despite the picturesque morning, he was not at peace.

Three days ago marked the six month anniversary of when Father Michael found Jay. 

While gracious donations from parishioners had proved more than enough, decision time was coming.

What did they do now?

They’d risked taking him off the ventilator, a gamble that had paid off—Jason had been breathing on his own for two months. The boy had fought so hard—and yet, he still laid unconscious in a too-big hospital bed, machines keeping him alive.

This was no life for a child.

In the months that Jay had spent comatose, Father Michael had been there—reading, humming, praying over this boy whose spirit was so strong. 

He had no children of his own; his calling as a priest required full dedication to his ministry. But with Jay, he’d come to see him almost as a grandson. He’d spent months with the boy. So much so, that he’d wondered what he was like. 

Was he from Gotham? How did his laugh sound? Did he play sports? Has he ever swam in the ocean?

Who was his father? His mother? Is someone missing him right now? Wondering where their little boy is?

That last one always made Father Michael’s eyes misty. The thought of parents out there, worried sick over their little boy who laid here silent in a hospital bed. 

What if he is so close, but so far?

Father Michael was startled out of his thoughts by the nurse opening the door.

“Good morning, Jay,” she said, rubbing sanitizer on her hands. “Good morning, Father Michael.”

“Good morning, Teresa.”

She ran through her routine check of Jay’s charts and vitals. As usual, they were all the same.

She signed something on the door and turned to face Father Michael before she left.

“Can I get you anything, Father?”

“Thank you, Teresa, but I’m alright.”

She smiled knowingly, as if she expected the answer. 

It was the one he always gave, anyways.

“Okay, Father. See you at noon.”

Father Michael nodded, smiling at her as she went.

Old bones protested as he rose from his chair and shuffled closer to Jay’s bedside.

“My dear boy,” he said softly. “Our little Jaybird—"

Wait.

There was a flicker. A tiny shift beneath his eyelids.

“Jay?”

He stood, heart thudding, unsure if he’d imagined it. And then, just when Father Michael thought maybe he does need better glasses—

A twitch, the smallest movement of Jay’s scarred little fingers.

The boy’s eyes fluttered open—a vibrant teal, so different from the dim blue Father Michael had seen in the graveyard all those months ago.

Alive.

Father Michael flung open the door. 

“Teresa!” he called into the hall. “Teresa! He’s awake!”

“Jay is awake!”

Once Jay was deemed stable enough, Father Michael brought him back to St. Luke’s.

It wasn’t hard, really. Gotham’s CPS department was swamped to hell and back—and Father Michael never clarified whose “father” he actually was. The GCPD had bigger fires to put out than a recently awakened John Doe they never cared about in the first place. Father Michael hoped St. Luke’s Catholic Church might offer some kind of peace for a boy whose life had been defined, so far, by violence.

It was…slow, at first. Jay’s mind was fractured, his body weak from months of lying unconscious in a bed. He was awkward and withdrawn, hesitant to adjust to the rhythms of church life.

Father Michael started simple: short walks around the church garden. He would talk to Jay about anything and everything, the same way he had beside the boy’s bed. When Jay grew stronger, he began running in the early mornings, jogging quiet laps around the church grounds.

It took weeks for Jay to speak, and even longer for him to speak to anyone besides Father Michael.

He liked to read, Father Michael had discovered. He often found Jay in a corner of the church library, curled up in a chair near the fire, thick volumes piled high on either side.

The nightmares, though, the child will probably never escape. Almost every night, Father Michael was awoken by screams—awful, heart-wrenching cries of pure terror. He’d race to Jay’s room to find him tangled in sweat-soaked sheets, breathing erratic, face twisted in fear. Sometimes, the boy ran to him instead, scarred face wet with tears, a single name falling from his lips in a rasped whisper.

Bruce.

That always broke Father Michael’s heart.

To help his mind recover, Father Michael tutored him personally. That’s when the memories began to surface. 

One day, while they were studying Romans, Jay paused.

“My name.”

“Yes?” Father Michael asked, glancing up from his worn Bible.

Jay frowned, nibbling on the end of his pencil.

“My name is Jason.”

Father Michael nodded slowly. “Okay,” he said softly. “Okay, Jason.”

Jason studied him with his teal eyes, as if testing the truth of the name. With a small, decisive nod, he returned to his reading.

Father Francis taught Jason sign language for days when he couldn’t find his voice. Sister Dymphna led him through morning and evening stretches and slow, careful breathing to help rebuild his body. He worked in the gardens with Sister Thérèse. During Sunday Mass, Jason would sit in the back, silent but engaged.

As the months passed, Father Michael watched the boy emerge. Jason was gentle and kind. He was thoughtful, immensely so. He liked helping people. He was smart. 

But he was also haunted. And like with his mind, as his body grew stronger, the memories came back quicker. 

One morning, during their usual stroll through the church gardens, someone had dropped a wrench. It was innocuous, an accident—Father Joseph was building a new bench after a rough storm had brought down one of the old trees. The metal tool had simply slipped from his grip, landing with a metallic clatter that echoed across the courtyard.

Jason had froze, his entire body going rigid.

“Jason?” Father Michael said, stopping beside him.

Terror, pure and raw, spread across the boy’s face. He limbs trembled. His breath hitched in uneven bursts. There was a faraway look in his teal eyes. 

“Jason?” Father Michael tried again, softer this time.

Jason’s breathing kicked up, his chest shuddering, too-short breaths panicked.

“No,” he whispered. “No. No, I—please—"

“Jay,” Father Michael reached out, gently taking Jason’s shaking hands. “You’re here, you hear me? You’re not…you’re not there.” Father Michael didn’t know where there was, but he had a deep, sinking feeling it was a horrific place.

Jason shook his head violently, so hard Father Michael worried he’d hurt himself. He pulled away, breaths coming faster.

“Jay—” Father Michael started again.

Jason bolted. 

“Jay!”

Father Michael spent the next half hour scouring the grounds, the church, the rectory, the convent—calling his name, heart frantic. 

He’d found Jason wedged between two bookshelves in the library.

“Jay?” he said gently, worried Jason might bolt again. His heart broke at the sound of wet sniffles.

Jason’s eyes were red and swollen, his cheeks blotchy, knuckles white from his clenched fists.

Father Michael knelt in front of the boy, though his old joints disagreed heavily with the action.

“Do you want to stay there,” he asked softly, “or come out?”

Jason swallowed thickly. He unclenched his hands.

Stay, he signed with shaky fingers.

Okay, Father Michael signed back.

They sat like that for a while, until Jason’s breathing evened out and the tears dried on his cheeks. Eventually, he’d climbed out of the narrow space and collapsed onto a nearby couch, body limp with exhaustion. Father Michael sat beside him.

If Jay wanted to talk, he’ll talk.

After a long silence, Jay had finally spoken.

“Murdered,” he said, voice hoarse. “I—I was murdered.”

Father Michael nodded slowly, recalling the ruined coffin he’d discovered all those months ago.

“It—" Jason could barely get the words out. “It was—" He hiccuped, sobs threatening to return full force. His fingers traced absent circles on the worn leather of the couch, eyes still so far away, staring into the fire crackling gently in the hearth.

“It’s alright, Jay,” Father Michael said gently. “You don’t have to—"

Jason shook his head, swallowing hard. No, he signed. He scrubbed his face, sniffing. He took a shaky breath, as if preparing himself for what he was about to say.

His voice dropped to a whisper, barely audiable. “Joker.”

Father Michael’s heart leapt into his throat and he swallowed it back down. With great effort, he hid the rising tide of fury with a nod.

“There was…a crowbar,” Jason continued, voice quiet, like he could barely speak the words aloud. He peeled his eyes away from the fire and turned his full gaze on Father Michael. “And he—he—" Jason broke off, tears filling his eyes and spilling over onto his just-dried cheeks. Father Michael placed a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulder as he sobbed.

Returning from the dead—for Father Michael, at least—was the miracle of his faith. The foundation upon which he’d built his life.

But this boy—this child, really—had died. And he’d clawed his way out of his own grave with broken limbs—carving upward through wood and earth until his shattered body reached the surface. And he would have died (again) if Father Michael hadn’t found him.

Was that not a miracle, too?

And besides, this was Gotham. A city of monsters and men. If there can be villains who control plants with a whisper and beings from other planets who flew through the sky like angels, then yes—Father Michael can believe in many kinds of miracles.

As Jason’s mind returned, Father Michael began to suspect that the boy wasn’t telling him everything about what he remembered. Jason seemed to harbor a deep hatred for Batman and Robin. Sometimes, he’d see Jason with a newspaper, fury burning in his eyes. Then, later, he’d find the boy in his hiding spot—in the library, wedged between the two bookshelves, sobbing.

Jason’s tangled mix of emotions surrounding the caped pair was…complicated, as far as Father Michael could tell. There was something there, but Jason wouldn’t tell him. And Father Michael didn’t want to push the boy away; he hoped, with time and healing, Jason could surrender that hurt.

So, Father Michael gave Jason direction: he enrolled him in St. Luke’s seminary school. Jason had taken to his studies well; Father Michael hoped more official schooling would help both his psyche and his emotional distress. Though he was younger than all his other peers, he quickly rose to the top of his class.

Father Michael was proud. 

This quiet, kind-hearted boy—scarred both physically and mentally by a violent past—had survived. 

Suffering, in and of itself, is not beautiful. It’s brutal. It’s raw and unfair and often silent. Just because you fear no evil doesn’t mean you’ll never walk through the valley of the shadow of death. But survival—survival is defiant. It’s miraculous and holy. It’s a constant cycle of failure and forgiveness and growth. What you learn from suffering are the flowers that grow in the valley—and God holds the watering can.

Chapter Text

Five years later…

The door clicked shut behind Jason, muffling the murmur of the lingering congregation outside. Jason breathed out slowly. The scent of incense clung to the air and wrapped around him like a familiar cloak.

He reached up, scarred fingers brushing the heavy brocade of the chasuble; it mussed his curls as he lifted it over his head. The gold embroidery caught the light for a moment before he folded it carefully and set it on the linen-draped table beside him.

He ran a hand through his hair, stubborn white streak planted firmly at the front and center. He huffed a small laugh at the memory of the nuns’ relentless teasing.

Next came the stole. The long band hanging across his shoulders was green—it was ordinary time. He unfastened it and laid it atop the chasuble, smoothing it with absent fingers as his mind drifted elsewhere.

It was hard for Jason not to wonder what people thought—a priest, young as he was, standing before them, body marred. What did they think of the marked hands that prepared their communion? Of the scars that didn’t end there, but wrapped their way around his entire body? What did they see in his face, in the jagged line that cut from lip to cheek, across the eye, up to the temple? The ropey Y carved into his chest? Were the marks a testament to his faith, or a sign of pity?

(Sometimes, Jason wondered this, too).

He pulled loose the cincture with a tug, letting the alb fall freely around him. The long white garment rustled as he stepped back, fingers slipping under the hem to pull it over his head and lay it on the table.

Beneath it all, he stood in his black clerical shirt, the white collar stiff against his neck. Sometimes, the stark contrast felt jarring—exposed, almost, as if Jason had just took off armor. His hands hovered at the edge of the collar for a moment, then dropped.

A knock echoed from the outer door. “Father Peter?”

Ah. Father Augustine.

Jason didn’t answer right away. His gaze lingered to the vestments laid out before him—symbols of his calling, of the man he had become. Of the man he’d made himself into.

When he’d been ordained, he’d chosen a new name: Peter. It reminded him of his mother (not because he was scared of being found by Bru—).

But now, stripped down, he was only Jason again. What that meant, well, he wasn’t exactly sure.

And wasn’t that a paradox?

“Coming,” he said softly, voice slightly hoarse from conducting three Masses.

He stepped out of the sacristy, sounds of the parishioners echoing off the high, vaulted ceilings of the church. Father Augustine awaited him, already changed into the same clerical garments as Jason.

Evening sunlight streamed in through the stained glass windows, glowing like molten jewels and casting kaleidoscopic patterns across the wooden pews and stone floors. Candles lined side altars, tucked into nooks, small flames dancing.

The two of them waded through the crowd of church goers, chatting and shaking hands. Jason blushed as several of them told him he was doing great. Father Augustine squeezed his shoulder.

It was an open secret, Jason’s past (as if the scars weren’t a visible litany of tragedy). The community—the regulars, the nuns, the priests—knew, but they didn’t know. 

They knew Jason’s past was marked by great violence. They knew he suffered, and suffered horribly. They knew that five years ago, Father Michael had found him in Gotham Cemetery, bleeding and covered in fresh dirt. They knew he’d spent six months comatose before miraculously waking up.

But that was the extent of it.

They didn’t know that in another life, he’d been Robin—they Boy Wonder, punching goons and flying through the Gotham night alongside the Dark Knight himself.

They didn’t know that his father would drop him off at school mere hours after shedding the red, yellow, and green.

They didn’t know he’d been beaten, tortured, and murdered—and that his killer still walked free.

(They didn’t know that his father hadn’t buried him in the family plot, but under an unmarked grave.)

(They didn’t know that Jason had carved and clawed and dug himself out of said grave.)

(They didn’t know that his father had simply moved on, taking in another bird and discarding him completely.)

After seeing the rest of the congregation out of the Nave, Jason and Father Augustine pulled the heavy doors closed. Jason paused for a moment, leaning against the ornately carved wood.

His body ached, and he hated it. 

After waking up, his body was weak. And Jason, never one to like being weak (at least, not anymore—getting killed changes your priorities), had worked incredibly hard to build it back, muscle and all.

But still—there were some days when he just hurt. 

Beside him, Father Augustine sighed. “There’s storms forecasted all week,” he said, sympathy lacing his voice.

Jason huffed a laugh. “That’ll do it.”

Father Augustine offered him a small smile. “Why don’t you go. Sister Martha is still sick, so dinner’s on your own tonight.”

Jason opened his mouth to protest, but Father Augustine raised a hand. “It’s alright, Jay. Go get some rest. You’re scheduled for the confessionals tomorrow, anyways.”

Now, it was Jason’s turn to smile, the scar tissue around his lip and cheek tightening slightly. “Thank you, Father A.” Jason pushed up off the door and walked toward the hall that lead to the rectory, steps echoing in the cavernous space. 

“As long as you choose Giovanni’s for dinner and pick me up an Italian—"

“With no banana peppers?” Jason called back, not bothering to turn around.

“That’s a good lad!”

The night was dark as Jason made his way back to St. Luke’s, a light mist already falling. Cradled safely in his arms were two warm subs—one Italian, one turkey—the smell making Jason’s stomach rumble even more.

The church sat quietly at the edge of the Narrows, and Jason loved it. He could do real work. Right outside his door.

This was his home, in another life—the one before Robin. And when he’d put on that domino mask, he’d made a promise: I see you. I am going to help you. And he had. He worked in the shadows of the night, protecting victims and delivering justice alongside his da—

Even then, it never felt like enough. Living in the opulence of the Manor was…hard sometimes, when he knew what it was like to go painfully without. When he knew people still were going painfully without.

But now, he could do something. He’d created outreach groups for young kids. He’d started peer-tutoring groups and youth weekend retreats. He’d organized clothing drives and school supplies donations. This was his city, these were his people. And he could help them. He didn’t need the cape. He didn’t need B—

Sometimes, Jason wondered what would happen if he just showed up at the Manor. If, one random day, he knocked on those great wrought-iron doors and said Hello, Bruce. I’m back.

Did you miss me? Did you grieve me?

Was I ever your son? Did you love me?

Jason had to remind his fists to unclench, lest he squish his and Father Augustine’s dinner. He ran a hand through his damp curls, trying to shake the thought.

Jason’s bones ached, his joints sore. The weather always did this to him. Father Michael had once thought it was the flu before they’d figured out the root cause: pressure changes in the atmosphere irritating his many, many (though now healed) injuries.

Jason felt a pang of sadness—he missed Father Michael. The aging priest had passed the past year, and the loss had gutted him. It felt like losing a father all over again—

A disturbance up ahead yanked him from his thoughts.

Beneath a grimy streetlight, a large man gripped a working girl by the arm, another towering over her short frame. She tried to pull away, but the second man grabbed her other arm and dragged her toward the alley.

A familiar anger ignited in Jason’s gut—not one from this life, not exactly. Though it must have followed him from the grave.

This was the anger of a boy who cared so deeply for others that his love couldn’t help but spill over into fury at injustice. A boy whose heart burned, not with hatred, but with the desperate fire of a child who simply wanted the world to be gentler than it was.

The kind of anger that put in in little green pixie boots and got him k—

Jason stashed the sandwiches on a dry windowsill to retrieve later. He approached quietly, assessing.

Two assaliants. No obvious lumps in their coats—unarmed, probably. Drunk, most definitely.

Jason scanned the dark street.

No backup. No getaway car

Probably just some drunk assholes not getting what they want.

For being such a big guy, Jason possessed the uncanny ability to be utterly silent. The two men never heard him approach. He stepped into the flickering streetlight.

“Let go of her. Now.”

The men turned, still gripping the woman’s arms. Jason moved forward, clam and slow. He was about a head taller than both scumbags, and twice as broad. If either of them had a singular functioning brain cell, they’d turn tail and run.

“Mind yer damn business,” the pudgy man on the right slurred. Jason could smell the reek of alcohol on his breath.

Guess that’s a negative on the functioning brain cell. 

Jason’s voice hardened. “This is your one warning. Walk away, now.”

The man to his left—thinner and more wirey than his buddy—laughed, and Jason risked a glance at the working girl. Her face was drawn tight, but there was an undercurrent of fear in her eyes. 

So, not the first time. But they still scare her.

“This bitch thinks she’s the shit or somethin’,” Skinny spat, digging his nails into the woman’s arm. “Won’t take me up on my offer.”

“You’re drunk, Tony,” the woman said. “And I told you—"

Pudgy's hand twitched toward his coat, and Jason moved instinctively.

He struck Pudgy in the jaw and he dropped the woman’s arm with a grunt. He threw out a foot and kicked Skinny in the groin, sending him to the dirty alley floor with a cut-off scream.

Pudgy recovered and threw a sloppy punch—Jason grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the woman, spinning him around and delivering a swift kick to his backside. The man skidded across the ground. As soon as he stopped rolling, he ran without looking back.

Jason whirled and cast a quick glance to Skinny—Tony, the woman had called him. Thankfully, he was still curled in a groaning heap.

For a singular, split second, habit seized Jason—a traitorous hand reached up to his ear for a comm that hadn’t been there in five years. All sound faded out and he froze, mind drifting between then and now. 

B, I just took down two Johns on Third. Where’s the rendezvous?

He could almost see the swish of black cape, hear the crackle of his father’s voice in his ear—

“…thanks.”

Jason blinked.

Oh. Right. 

He straightened, shaking out his hand and turning to the woman. She was at least twice his age. Her hands trembled slightly, thick eyeliner smudged where a few tears had escaped. Long platinum hair cascaded down her shoulders, shot through with streaks of various neon colors. Her sheer outfit was soaked through—Jason looked away, pulling off his coat and handing it to her.

“Are you alright?” he asked once she’d pulled the coat around her shoulders.

She studied him, eyes catching his priest collar. She stiffened and looked away.

“Yeah,” she muttered, rubbing at the spot where Tony had gripped her. Her numerous bracelets clinked and jingled.

A beat passed. Tony whimpered from where he was piled on the floor.

They needed to leave.

“Do you want me to walk you somewhere safe? There’s a women’s shelter on Sixth—“

Her gaze snapped to his, flinty. “Why? So you can tell your church buddies about the poor little hooker you rescued?”

She laughed, sharp and bitter. “Or maybe get your turn in first?”

Something ugly squeezed Jason heart—not at her words, but at what must’ve been done to her to make her think that way.

“No,” he said gently. “I just thought you might not want to be alone right now.”

“That’s not the first time some fuckin’ drunk has tried to get me,” she scoffed. “Won’t be the last, either.”

“Okay,” Jason said. “Still. I can take you—"

“You don’t even know me!” She snapped. “And don’t think I know what you people think about people like me. You don’t gotta pretend, Father.”

Another beat passed, this one charged and tense.

“You’re right,” Jason said at last.

She blinked, caught off guard.

“You’re right. I don’t know you. What’s your name?”

“What are you getting at?” she spat, throwing up her hands. “Like seriously. You think I’m that fuckin’ stupid?”

Jason kept his face neutral and shrugged. “Just asking.”

The woman stared at him, a dumbfounded look on her face, as if her anger slowly evaporated in the face of her confusion. She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

“…Roxanne,” she said at last, deflated.

A lie, Jason thought. But fair.

“Okay, Roxanne. If you don’t want me to walk you, at least let me give you the address.”

“I can handle myself.”

“I know. Still offering.”

She studied him again, shaking her head. There was less apprehension in her eyes—like this time, she was really looking.

“What happened to your face?” She asked, gesturing to him. “No offense—you’re a good-lookin’ guy—but damn.”

Jason felt a flush creep up his neck. He’d been getting that question for the past five years. And every time, it still threw him. He ran a self-conscious hand through his hair—the stubborn white streak probably painfully obvious in the lighting—and drummed up the half-truth he always gave.

“A Gotham rogue. I don’t remember which one. A priest found me and brought me back to St. Luke’s,” he recited. It came out a little more robotic than he’d planned.

Roxanne raised a painted brow, but let the lie slide.

“Alright,” she said, turning. “Which way’s the shelter? ‘Posed to start rainin’ harder soon, and I don’t wanna get caught in that shit. Out here, once you get wet, you stay wet for days.”

Jason huffed a laugh, a little bittersweet nostalgia wiggling around in his chest. I know all about that.

She glanced back at that. “You from the Alley, kid?”

Jason nodded.

She scanned him, something soft flickering behind her eyes. “You’re weird for a priest.”

Jason smiled. “You know, I actually get that a lot.”

Jason hoped Father Augustine wouldn’t be too upset at his lukewarm sandwich. 

He’d dropped Roxane off at the women’s shelter, promising he’d always be available at St. Luke’s if she ever needed anything.

“‘Preciate it, Father Peter,” she’d said. “But you’ll never catch me in a church.”

Jason just shrugged. “The doors are always open.”

“Not for people like me.”

Jason gave her a soft smile. “Especially for people like you,” he’d said, and he’d meant it.

Jason felt cold as he made his way home, and it wasn’t because he’d left his coat with Roxanne.

It had been easy—so easy it terrified him. So easy to slip back into that mindset. So easy for Robin to show his little colors.

That bird was dead. That bird had been murdered. That bird had been buried, alone. 

And yet Jason was able to flex his wings like he’d never tasted the metal of a crowbar—never felt his bones snap, his vocal chords burst, his lungs drown in his own blood.

The horrid feeling—of being that bird again, even if it was just in habit—felt like frost spreading from his heart, spiderwebbing across his ribcage and into his hands. The chill ran through his blood, his lungs, until all he felt was cold. Cold like death. Cold like the grave.

He wasn’t—he wasn’t that kid anymore.

He wasn’t that son anymore. 

To be the person he was now, Jason knew he could not hate the experiences that had shaped him. But what had shaped Jason was no simple mountain he had to climb—it was being beaten, tortured, and murdered. It was being abandoned and rejected. It was death. 

So yes, Jason would always hate his death.

Of course would. It ruined his life. 

So, instead, should he be “be at peace” with the experiences that have shaped him? But how—how—can Jason be at peace with his death? It was a severance, one he was never supposed to wake from. There was a before, and a during, but never did Jason ever think there was going to be an after. 

Should he “accept” it? But acceptance danced too close to defeat, to complacency. Jason didn’t want to accept his death! It had been wrong! He wanted to scream and rage and fight against it! 

Why? Why did you do this to me? Did I deserve it?

 And who would he be asking—God, the Joker, or Bruce?

And if he could go back, would he hold his younger self in his arms? Comfort the child, knowing his death was already divinely planned? Inescapable? A wretched fixed point in time?

Or did he sit Robin down and tell him you are going to suffer. You are going to suffer and it is going to be brutal and terrible and ugly in all ways it possibly could be.

But—you are going to survive .

By the grace of God, you are going to survive.

Maybe peace wasn’t stillness or the absence of suffering, but a blessed assurance in victory? Because stillness is stagnancy. Being afraid—and continuing to step forward anyways—wasn’t that its own kind of peace? Knowing you have suffered, and that it was wrong and unjust and unfair, yet choosing goodness and kindness and mercy every single day? Was that not also peace?

Thunder rumbled in the sky, pulling Jason from his thoughts. As of late, it felt like he’d been spending a lot of time there. The soft glow of the church cast long shadows along the sidewalk. Jason hustled inside, grateful to be out of the rain. His hand ached from where he’d punched Pudgy, bruises already blooming across his scarred knuckles. He really needed to take some Tylenol.

He knocked on Father Augustine’s door, slightly damp, slightly cold sandwich in hand, apology already on his lips.

Father Augustine grumbled from behind the door, but his eyes lit up the second he saw Jason.

“Jay! My Italian—"

“With no banana peppers,” Jason finished for him, holding out the sub with his uninjured hand. A warm feeling blossomed in his chest, chasing away the coldness of his thoughts.

Father Michael told him of the nickname—how they used to call him Jay when he was in his coma. How John Doe wasn’t enough for their little fighter. Jason felt fuzzy every time someone said it. Jay. There was always such fondness there, and it always filled him up.

“Sorry if it’s a little cold,” he said with a sheepish grin. “And damp. I got—uh, caught up—"

“Nonsense!” Father Augustine said jovially, taking the sandwich. “Thank you, Jay.”

“Now, get some sleep. There’s Tylenol on your desk.”

The warmth in his chest expanded and he couldn’t help but smile.

“Thank you, Father Augustine,” he said, almost shy.

Father Augustine patted him on the shoulder and retreated into his room.

The rest of Jason’s night was quiet. He ate his sandwich in his room. He took a hot shower. He gulped down a double dose of Tylenol and threw some ice on his hand. He went to bed.

This was his life now.

Chapter Text

The evening’s violent tempest reflected Bruce’s internal storm quite well.

It pounded on the arched roof of the church, a steady drumming that seemed to press in on all sides.

Three days ago.

Three days ago marked the five-year anniversary of the death of his son.

Bruce hadn’t been to church in a long, long time.

Never, actually. Bruce wasn’t Catholic.

His mother had been Jewish, and while they weren’t devout, he still knew more about that faith than this one (his parents had died before his bar mitzvah. He never got to chose the faith on his own; it will always remain his mother’s).

Jason had been Catholic.

Incense hung in the air, thick and reverent. It was quiet. The lights were low, candles flickering along the walls. The stained glass windows loomed on either side—dark, now that it was night.

The smooth oak pew creaked loudly as Bruce sat down. Just sitting felt…wrong. Not enough, somehow. He knelt instead. Still, it felt insufficient. The only thing that could ever really atone would be to join his son in the ground—

At the front of the church, there was no crucifixion. Instead, above the gold and white marble altar was a breathtaking mosaic of Christ Risen, arms stretched wide, light pouring out from either side.

It should have been comforting. Welcoming, open arms, full of forgiveness and mercy and love.

But to Bruce, it felt suffocating. A stranglehold. Guilt upon guilt upon guilt.

What have you done? The mosaic seemed to ask him.

I know what you did.

Something hot and ugly and terrible squeezed Bruce’s chest. He shut his eyes, folding his hands out in front of him to stop them from trembling.

Guilt upon guilt upon guilt.

He started to pray, but he did not have the words. He brought his hands to his face, pressing his fingers into his tired eyes until he saw stars. There wasn’t much left of him now. Jason had taken so much when he died. He’d wiggled his way past every wall, every defense and taken root right between Bruce’s fifth and sixth ribs. And then he’d died, and all that was left was a wretched, bleeding hole. Infected and ugly and vast.

Bruce’s hollow legs moved of their own accord, pulling him up from the pew and out of the nave. The confessionals were wooden and intricately carved, tucked away in a little alcove near the back of the church.

Bruce had never been in one before.

He stood outside the door, bones empty, heart heavy, lungs tight. A shaking hand reached out and pulled the door open. He stepped inside and knelt again, knees creaking as he sat down, door swinging shut behind him.

“Bless me Father,” he said, voice hoarse. “It’s been many years since my last confession.”

“Peace be with you, my son,” came a gentle voice from the other side of the screen. “What weighs heavy upon your soul tonight?”

A bell, deep in Bruce’s mind, rung. But it was smothered by grief and guilt, so he did not hear it.

“It’s been five years since I buried my son.”

Jason knew the voice instantly.

It echoed throughout the chambers of his racing heart. It rattled around his spinning head.

His hands tightened, air vanishing in his lungs. 

He’s here. He’s here. He’s here.

And just like that, Jason’s whole world shifted. Anger simmered beneath his skin, stoked by years of abandonment and jealousy—fuel for the righteous fire of his fury. But there was something else tangled in the heat, too. A longing. Bone deep and almost instinctual, it sank its claws in his ribs and pulled. 

This life—that of a priest, the stability and love his faith had given him—had eased Jason’s weary soul. It was a balm to his hurt and anger, reminding that he is more than what has been done to him. He is more than his death. He is more than Robin. He is someone’s son—the Holy Father’s.

And he’d healed. Through prayer and faith and utter determination, Jason had healed. He was at peace, maybe not with his death, but with where he was now.

And all this time, he had operated under the complete assumption that he’d never have to see his father again. Now that he sat on the other side of the screen, Jason was not so sure of his peace, his healing. The bitterness and the anger and the hurt were awfully loud.

He was never supposed to see Bruce again.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to break.

His soul felt like it was in free fall.

The boy inside him—the one trapped in that warehouse with the bomb, bleeding and broken and still hoping for his dad to show up—howled. He wanted justice. He wanted to make Bruce hurt, the way he had hurt.

Tell him, the boy whispered. Tell him it’s you. Tell him it’s you and he’ll never be forgiven.

Tell him you know he didn’t even bury you in the family plot.

The part of Jason that felt betrayed by his father—for doubting him, for being too late, for sparing his murderer, for burying him alone and unwanted, for taking in another bird—was still angry. Would always be angry. And no measure of faith—no matter how many times Jason knelt and prayed Father, I give this to You. I release my anger and my bitterness to You—he could never make peace with it. Because that felt like acceptance. And Jason could never accept what had happened to him.

It took a monumental effort for Jason to tell himself to come back. He clenched his hands tight to keep them from shaking—glass beads of the rosary digging into his palms, forcing the pain to ground him. He took a deep, silent breath, willing his pounding heart to settle. Swallowing down the anger was like swallowing hot blood, but he did it anyway.

The red stole around his shoulders felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.

“I am deeply sorry for your loss,” he said, gritting the words out, layering sympathy over a voice that trembled at the edges. “Tell me about him.”

There was a loaded pause. Jason heard it—a sharp intake of breath, an uncertain hesitation.

Absently, Jason wondered what Bruce looked like on the other side of the screen.

(Jason had seen Bruce stagger back into the Cave after tough patrols—fists tight, dark eyes heavy with what they’d seen, the weight of the world pressing upon his father’s broad shoulders. Sometimes, Jason worried it might crush him.)

Did he look like that now?

The boy in Jason who’d died and demanded justice wanted Bruce to be absolutely broken. Shattered by his death. Jason wanted Bruce to mourn and never stop mourning. Jason wanted Bruce to grieve forever (just as Jason was grieving forever).

A certain kind of…bitterness took root in Jason’s heart. It spread through his veins like an infection, leaving his mouth tasting like copper.

Tell me about him. Did you love him? Did you grieve him? Was he ever your son?

Was he reckless? Foolish? Disobedient and rash—wholly deserving of his fate? Of the death you led him to?

Tell me, Bruce. What has you so guilty?

Because I know.

I know what you did.

“I—" Bruce began, voice cracking. “He…he was magic. My boy.”

Really? Jason almost said, but he caught himself. “Tell me more,” he said, voice smooth as silk, hiding the edges of the blade beneath it.

Yes, Bruce. Tell me.

Bruce cleared his throat. “He…he was—"

Bruce seemed to be choking. The angry, hurt part of Jason reveled in it. 

Yes, Bruce. What was I? A mistake? Your greatest failure?

A small flicker of guilt poked at Jason’s heart. It reminded him that Bruce had lost, too. It whispered that this wasn’t fair, to either of you. 

After an eternity, Bruce began again. “He had a big heart,” he said, voice hoarse.

Jason desperately tried to cling to the confessional’s purpose, the sacred oaths he was bound by: listen, offer grace, reflect, and guide.

I’m not that son anymore. I’m not that son anymore. I’m not that son anymore.

“That’s not a bad thing,” Jason said softly.

He remained silent, allowing Bruce time to work through the constipated mess of whatever he was about to say. Lord knew he needed it.

“My magic boy,” he whispered, so much fondness in his voice it made Jason’s teeth rot.

“He was angry at the world—for its injustice. For the way it…hurt people. For no reason.”

Jason nodded, though he knew Bruce couldn’t see him. Jason tried to cling to his anger, to hold it like a righteous sword of protection. Protection from the pain. Protection from the hurt.

Protection from the truth.

“I—I thought I was helping him. By…giving him a way to help others,” Bruce’s voice wavered. Jason wondered if he was crying.

If he could cry. If Jason was worthy of his tears (he wanted to, dear God Jason wanted to be worthy of his father’s tears. He wanted something—anything to show Bruce cared about him, even just a small piece).

“And I—"

The anger was getting harder to hold on to. Jason held his breath. He felt frozen in place where he sat a thin screen away from his dad. The rosary shook in his hands. When had he started crying?

“I—"

There was a hitch in Bruce’s breath. Jason swallowed a shudder. He had been with Bruce long enough to know that the man may never let himself feel—

But he was crying on the other side of that screen.

This was wrong. Jason felt wrong. He shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be listening to this. Shouldn’t be hearing Bruce rip his heart out of his chest and hand it to him. The vulnerability singed him like a wave of heat—Jason had to stop himself from physically curling up on the other side of the confessional.

There were so many emotions inside of him—so much anger and bitterness and longing. They swirled around like oil and water, clinging to his lungs, his heart, his throat—thick and suffocating. He didn’t know what to feel. He didn’t know how to feel. All he knew was that he felt, and it was messy and confusing and it hurt.

“I just pointed him toward his death.”

Jason covered his mouth with his hands. He tipped his head back and rested it against the wood of the confessional, tears falling from his eyes.

“And in my grief,” Bruce continued, unaware he was handing his beating heart to his dead son, “I wanted people to hurt. I—"

Bruce’s voice cracked.

Jason peeled his trembling hands away from his mouth. “Take your time, my son,” he said gently, surprised he could even find his voice. That was not his life—this was his life now. I’m not that son anymore. I’m not that son anymore. I’m not that son anymore.

(He pointedly did not look at the bruises on his knuckles.)

There was a pause.

“I almost broke the very morals I built my life upon. I wanted vengeance.”

Jason felt like someone had taken a hot knife to his ribs. He felt wrong and sad and angry and regretful.

“I wanted blood. I became someone—something I did not recognize.”

Jason hadn’t known that.

He let the silence stretch for a moment, gathering himself, trying to silence the storm inside him. His duty was sacred. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet—careful.

“Grief…distorts us,” Jason said. “It changes the shape of who we are. It makes anger feel like truth. Vengeance like justice.”

He swallowed hard, heartbeat pounding so loud he wondered if his father could hear it.

“But there’s a difference between wanting to become someone else, and choosing to. And the fact that you’re here—confessing—means you didn’t lose yourself completely.” 

Jason’s breath hitched, but he pushed through it. He wasn’t that son anymore. That wasn’t his life.

“You’re not beyond redemption.”

On the other side of the screen, Bruce let out a long, shuddering breath. Jason didn’t know if it was relief or sorrow (maybe both).

“I didn’t know who I was without him,” Bruce said in a shaky whisper, like he could barely admit it to himself. “I still don’t.”

The hot knife in his ribs twisted. He stared at the curled the rosary around his fingers, hoping the glass beads—the reminder of his little miracle—would anchor him to the present.

“Loss creates an emptiness that’s hard to fill,” Jason said. “You hold them close. You let them wrap around your soul, plant themselves in your heart. Where there is great grief, there was also once great love.”

“But the people we lose—they don’t want us to become hollow because of them.”

He paused, searching for the words.

“They want us to remember who we are. And if we’ve forgotten…they’d want us to find our way back.”

Bruce was silent for a long time. That betrayed piece of Jason’s heart still sang, but it was quieter now. The anger was all but cold. It was jarring.

Jason could hear the faint rustle of movement on the other side of the screen—his father shifting, maybe leaning forward, maybe bracing himself.

“I came here,” Bruce said finally, “Because I didn’t know where else to go.”

“I’ve done…things. I’ve hurt people. I—"

Bruce took another shuddering breath.

“I buried my boy. Alone. I didn’t put him—I couldn’t bear to—"

Bruce seemed to be choking again.

When he finally spoke, his voice was broken. 

“I buried my boy,” he whispered. “And sometimes I think it should have been me.”

Jason wanted to scream. He wanted to tear the screen away and grab Bruce by the collar and ask why? Why didn’t you come sooner? Why did you let me rot?

But he didn’t.

Because he wasn’t that boy anymore.

Because Bruce didn’t know.

“Do you seek forgiveness?” Jason asked, and his voice cracked.

He cleared his throat, tried again, softer, steadier.

“Do you want absolution?”

Another long pause.

“Yes,” Bruce said. “God, yes.”

Jason’s hands trembled, clutching the rosary.

He had always dreamed of an apology. A groveling that he could reject.

How easy it would be to deny him.

To tell him no—you don’t deserve it.

To be the voice of justice the world had never been for him.

Now that he was here, he wasn’t so sure anymore. 

Jason had chosen a different life. A better one. One that demanded he chose mercy every single day.

He took a slow, steadying breath. Pushed it out.

“You carry a heavy grief,” Jason said at last. “One that is laden with an even heavier guilt. God doesn’t ask you to be perfect. He asks you to return. Again, and again, and again.”

Another heavy silence.

“Your sin is real,” Jason said quietly. “But so too, is your sorrow. And if you seek mercy…then mercy is yours.”

Bruce breathed on the other side of the screen, shaky and slow. Jason could almost hear him press his hand to his face. He knew that sound. He remembered it from nights in the Manor, when Bruce thought no one was there.

Another eternity passed.

“Thank you, Father,” Bruce whispered. 

Jason said nothing. He could not trust himself to say any more.

Because Jason doesn’t know if he has forgiven his father.

Jason watched Bruce walk away from the steps of the church. His body felt hollow, as if everything inside of him had been carved out.

In all honesty, it had.

Part of Jason wanted Bruce to turn around and see him standing there.

Another part wanted Bruce to walk away and never come back.

What—what did he do now?

Keep going, as if this never happened? As if his father had never walked into his confessional and handed Jason his grieving heart? Letting go of that anger, that betrayal was…scary. It felt like letting go a part of himself.

God and Jason had gone around in many a circle with this: Jason would surrender the anger and the jealousy and the hurt, giving it all to the Lord. And then, he would see a newspaper article about the new Robin, or the Batman rescuing a school bus of kids, or the Joker escaping Arkham, and he would take it all right back.

He just…couldn’t.

Because letting go—releasing this heavy, heavy burden to God—felt like defeat. It felt like accepting.

And Jason could never accept what had happened to him.

Jason hadn’t known his father had fallen apart after he’d died. Waking up in a pauper’s grave to a new Robin and a breathing Joker had, in Jason’s opinion, made the message pretty clear: I was never his son.

But now…what did he do?

Bruce’s dark coat fluttered behind him as he walked away; he looked like he was in a trance. Jason wondered if Bruce’s soul felt like it had been wrung out by rough hands, just as his did. The storm hadn’t dissipated, the clouds and the rain still making Jason’s body ache.

If Bruce turned around and saw him standing there, what would he do?

If Bruce walked away and never came back, what would he do?

Jason…Jason didn’t know.

Before he could get an answer, Jason shut the doors of the church, leaving him alone with the flickering candles and incense. It was late, and there was no one else in the nave, but it still felt to open. His body carried him without thinking toward the ancient stone chapel.

Jason stumbled into the small space in a daze. Here, the room smelled more of wax than incense from the dozens of little red candles lining the cobblestone walls. Small stained glass slits sat dark.

He sank into a pew, hollow legs giving out beneath him. His hands shook. His breath came shallow. Too much. Everything was too much.

Jason felt overwhelmed—the tidal wave of emotions receding and then crashing into him again. Just as he did in the confessional, he didn’t know how to feel. He didn’t know what to feel.

He looked up at statue of Mary—hands outstretched, eyes cast down—with tears in his eyes.

Why? He pleaded.

Why him? Why now?

One time, Jason remembered, he had been sick with the flu. He’d been able to completely suit up, coughing, sneezing, fever and all, before Bruce (spurred on by Alfred, the traitor) had shut him down. If Jason had had any energy, he would’ve been furious.

He’d stumbled back up the stairs to the Manor—still fully suited up—and had collapsed onto the couch. He’d felt terrible—both in body and mind. He felt like he was letting Bruce down. He felt like he got hit by a bus.

Then, a warm figure had sat down beside him. The familiar smell of bergamot and leather filled his nose.

Dad.

And Bruce had stayed—the two of them had fallen asleep on the couch together, in the middle of The Lion King 2.

Jason had felt so loved—his father had chosen him over his sacred mission.

His father had chosen him.

Jason didn’t know what Bruce chose now.

He rested his head in his hands, knees pained from kneeling.

Why? He asked again.

Tell me why? I don’t understand.

Rain began to drum on stone ceiling, tapping against the stained glass.

Jason stayed kneeling for a long time, until his toes went numb and his legs ached. 

Only when he realized that silence was the only answer he was going to get did Jason rise on unsteady legs and made his way back to his room.

The rain had let up for a moment as Bruce stepped out of the church. 

Young.

The priest on the other side of the screen had sounded so young.

Bruce felt like someone had cracked him open, and everything—his vulnerable, his ugly, his guilt and his shame—were now on full display.

How did he put himself back together?

He walked down the sidewalk, night dark, feeling floaty. Exposed. Exhausted.

The young priest’s words echoed in his head:

“Grief distorts us.”

“Do you want absolution?”

“If you seek mercy…then mercy is yours.”

Bruce had been distorted by grief—warped and wrecked by it, changed into someone he did not know. Almost crossed every line he’d sworn he never would.

Maybe receiving absolution from Jason’s God was the closest thing he could get to receiving absolution from Jason himself.

Mercy…could Bruce really…? Could he really…even after what he’s done? Even after sending his little boy off to die? Even after laying him to rest alone, in a pauper’s grave, one he couldn’t even find?

Bruce has no idea where his little boy was.

 Guilt upon guilt upon guilt—

The hairs on Bruce’s neck stood up—someone was watching him. Bruce kept walking, and the eyes kept following. He paused, risking a glance back at the church.

The great wooden doors were closed.

Chapter Text

Jason awoke to a pounding headache, Bruce’s words echoing in his throbbing skull.

“My magic boy.”

“I didn’t know who I was without him. I still don’t”

“I buried my boy. And sometimes, I think it should have been me.”

Jason hadn’t known that.

He’d figured—assumed, more like—that Bruce had just…moved on. Deemed him a fallen soldier and continued his righteous crusade.

What other conclusion was Jason supposed to come to? He wasn’t buried in the Wayne family plot. The Joker still lived. Bruce had another son now, prettier and smarter and better than he—

Jason pulled himself out of bed and dressed, pulling on his black clerics and roman collar. His body still ached from the weather—that, or his fitful night of sleep.

Guilt and anger. Betrayal. Grief and longing. These things were heavy.

Jason knew he wasn’t supposed to carry them. But he could not let them go.

Once finished, he stepped toward the mirror. 

After he’d…come back to himself, as Father Michael had called it, Jason had spent a lot of time making sure he was never small again. He hadn’t been small as Robin, exactly—he was still a vigilante, after all—but he would never forget the horrid, crushing feeling of being absolutely helpless at the hands of the Joker. Since coming back, Jason had gotten bigger: more muscular, stronger, faster. Never again would he be a bird caught in a trap. He would never be a bird again, actually—

He took in the white collar, the scars. They were numerous, all of varying depth and width, but the one on his face—the one that cut from his lip, through his cheek, up through his eye and brow and into his temple—was the worst. It looked like some sort of sick J. 

It had taken years for Jason to not feel sick when he remembered that knowing the Joker, it probably was.

When he had confided this harrowing tidbit with Father Michael, the man had rejected it outright.

“No,” he’d said. “J, for Jay.”

“Our Jay. Our beloved little miracle boy.”

The white streak at the front of his curls had always been a point of good-natured teasing from the nuns.

He’d always wondered what it meant.

The scars that littered his body—he knew exactly what those meant. Some, he could tell precisely which hits had had created them.

(“What hurts more? Forehand? Or backhand? A? Or B?”

This one across his ribs was from the crowbar. Joker had used the hooked end to pull, and Jason had never felt pain like that before.

That one across his shoulder was from the white-hot piece of warehouse roof that had landed on him after the bomb blew up.

That spray of ruined skin across his back was from shrapnel.

Those rings around his wrists and ankles were from the barbed-wire that Joker had used to bind him.

That ropey Y across his chest was from the autopsy.

Those thin slits that littered his hands were from trying to get his mother out of her binds.

There were more—infinitely more, some even from his time as Robin—but Jason couldn’t name them all. There were just too many. The memories often found him here, and strangled him.)

Jason took a deep breath, held it, and breathed out slowly.

“He didn’t know me,” he said. “I’m not that son anymore.”

He repeated it like a mantra—like he could make it true.

Please, God, he prayed silently, frozen in the mirror, taking in the man he was never supposed to grow up to be, please tell me he doesn’t know.

A quiet fear took root in Jason’s heart.

What happens if Bruce comes back?

The church bells tolled. 7:00 a.m.

It was time for him to start his day.

Jason knelt before the Crucifix in his room, whispering the Liturgy of the Hours. 

His head was heavy. His heart was heavier.

Into the silence, he whispered a prayer: I don’t know what to do.

Jason remembered one of the very first times he’d been hit with fear gas. It hadn’t been a full canister—just some mist on the wind from the harbor, blown from where Bruce had been fighting Scarecrow a few warehouses over. 

Jason had cleared the final warehouse of squatters when it’d hit.

Suddenly, he couldn’t see. And it had been terrifying.

“What—what do I do?” he’d whispered into the dark, hands flailing blindly about him. Jason’s heart had never beat that fast in his life. “What do I do?”

It had been Dick, not Bruce, that had answered.

“Hey, Little Wing,” his older brother’s voice crackled in his comm. “Can you tell me what’s up? What do you see?”

“I—I can’t,” he’d all but sobbed.

“Hey—it’s gonna be okay, alright? I can’t get to you right now. But I can tell you where to go. Do you trust me?”

Of course. Of course Jason trusted his big brother. 

Dick had led him out of the warehouse and right into his embrace.

Twenty minutes later, head still buzzing, Jason pulled out his notebook filled with scribbled homily drafts and half-finished youth retreat plans.

He still had his sacred duty. He was still Father Peter.

This was his life now.

The same hollow legs that had pulled him into the confessional had led him right back to St Luke’s.

The church was less…looming, in the day time. It wasn’t as foreboding as it’d been just hours before when Bruce had stumbled through those great wooden doors.

Bruce faltered on the stone steps. He wasn’t even entirely sure how he’d gotten here. He hadn’t slept. The morning had passed in a blur. And now that he was here…what did he do?

A lifetime ago, he’d been to synagogue with his parents. He had vague memories of a bimah, and rows of wooden pews, but the rest was lost. This only further exacerbated the hollow ache that was slowly beginning to consume him—one he’d thought he’d beaten in to submission long ago.

He put one heavy foot in front of the other as he walked up the steps.

Could he just…walk in?

And then what?

Maybe he could find the priest he’d talked with last night. He’d sounded so young.

He’d reminded Bruce of Jason.

Words and feelings spun around Bruce’s head. It made him dizzy, made his limbs feel staticky and thick.

Do you want absolution?

Yes. God, Yes.

But there was another question there. One unsaid, yet still rotting away in Bruce’s heart.

Do you deserve it?

Fear gripped Bruce, so sudden and so cold he nearly stumbled.

Because he didn’t. 

He didn’t deserve it.

Bruce turned around and walked back down the steps.

Here he was again.

Do you want absolution?

Rain pattered softly on his umbrella and splashed onto the stones at his feet.

He didn’t deserve it.

He walked away.

“Mister, are you just gonna stand there, or go in?”

Bruce turned, startled. There was a woman standing next to him, raising a painted brow behind a pair of sunglasses.

This was the third day he’d come to St. Luke’s. 

Well, the third day he’d come to stand outside St. Luke’s

“Well?”

Bruce stood there dumbly. He felt like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Finally, he found his voice. 

“What?”

The woman leveled him with a serious gaze. “Look—I’m the last person you’d ever think to see in one of these”—her jewelry clinked as she gestured toward the doors— “but I saw you here yesterday, and you were just kinda…standin’ there.”

As Bruce’s brain slowly came back online, he noticed a few things.

Like how the woman’s sunglasses, though large and dark, did not completely cover what looked like a nasty bruise on her right eye. Neither did the platinum-and-neon hair she let hang close to her cheeks hide the purple bruising around her jaw. The black turtle neck she was wearing did not hide all the yellow and green around her neck.

“So I suggest you go in, mister. You got a lotta nice stuff on you.” She shrugged. “You’re umbrella’s fuckin’ Gucci. Folks ‘round here notice stuff like that.”

Bruce glanced down at his closed umbrella. It’s Gucci…?

He felt…weird. First the young priest, and now this random woman—seeing him cracked open and exposed. Well, maybe not literally, but the rawness from what he’d confessed three nights ago still felt like it was on full display. He was surprised no one saw the gaping hole in his chest where he’d ripped out his heart.

He couldn’t be Brucie Wayne out here (he was entirely fake, anyways). He most certainly couldn’t be the Batman. 

So…what was left?

“Okay,” he said at last.

Welp. He had no choice now.

Puppeted feet carried him up the steps of the church. He opened the heavy wooden door for the woman, and stepped inside.

As soon as the door closed behind him, the entire world seemed to hush. The smell of incense returned. Water babbled gently from a white and gold marble basin. An organ—tall golden pipes lined up across the wall behind the mosaic of Christ Risen—glinted in the dim light. Bruce absently wondered what the huge stained glass windows would look like if it were sunny.

Bruce nearly jumped when something clattered nearby. He quickly scanned the otherwise peaceful church—there weren’t many people, save for a few parishioners kneeling in pews near the altar. He blamed his jumpiness on the severe lack of sleep (and absolutely nothing else) and placed his umbrella and coat on the rack. 

And then he…continued standing. Awkwardly. He looked around for the woman, but she was gone.

He didn’t remember much from when he’d come three nights ago. He’d been so blinded by grief, so suffocated by his own guilt that he’d simply found himself here. Everything in between was a blur.

Bruce tried to gather his thoughts.

Okay. There’s people kneeling at the front. I’ll go…do that too. That’s what I did last night, anyways. 

An older couple walked in; Bruce followed them toward the pews. He copied them as they dipped their fingers in the marble basin and touched their foreheads, both shoulders, and chest. He mimicked their little kneel before sitting down in a pew a few rows back.

Bruce felt incredibly fake. A playactor. These people—this was their whole life. 

Bruce was just…here. Because he couldn’t stay away. Because he needed to breathe again. Because this had been Jason’s faith. And maybe, just maybe, he could find some piece of his little boy here. If he fell to his knees and begged for forgiveness, if he confessed what he’d done to this God, then maybe it would be the same as confessing it to Jason himself. 

He had asked for forgiveness. For absolution.

And he didn’t deserve it.

The others were kneeling. So Bruce did too.

High above, rain drummed steadily on the roof. Candles flickered in their small alcoves. Atop the gold cloth draped over the altar sat a what looked like an ornate golden sun on a stick. At the center of the sunburst was something round and white—Communion, Bruce’s brain supplied, though he wasn’t exactly sure what that was.

He cast his eyes back up toward the mosaic. The outstretched arms still felt too much like strangling. 

Bruce had done a terrible thing. Bruce had done many terrible things.

And now he was kneeling here, asking for absolution from a God that was not his, begging for forgiveness from his son who could not hear him.

Jason was carrying a basket full of chalices he’d just finished cleaning.

He rounded the corner, planning on taking them back up to the altar, when he saw—

His entire body went rigid. The blood in his veins turned to ice. The chalices slipped from his arms, clattering to the ground and echoing throughout the church.

Jason ducked back into the hallway, hand over his mouth to hide the sound of his ragged breathing. His veins, once frozen, now coursed hot with adrenaline. His mind spun. 

What is he doing here?

Did he see me?

If he saw me—

Tears prickled at Jason’s eyes as he sagged against the wall, legs unsteady. He tried to swallow down the mounting panic rising in his throat. He no longer had the screen of the confessional to protect him. His heart threatened to beat right out of his chest.

Bruce is here. He’s here. He’s here and he’s right on the other side of that wall.

He doesn’t want you. He never wanted you. You were never his son. He abandoned you.

“You need help with that, Father Peter?”

Jason’s head jerked in the direction of the voice. There, in Playboy Bunny sweatpants and a black turtleneck, stood—

“Roxanne?”

She huffed a laugh. “I scare you?” When she spoke, her voice was painfully hoarse.

Jason pushed himself up off the wall, running a shaking hand through his hair and swallowing hard. He tried to ignore the rising tide of BruceBruceBruceisrightontheothersideofthatwallohmyGod. Tried to tamper down the gripping panic in his chest, his throat. Adrenaline left him feeling strung out, heart still pounding wildly in his ribcage.

Roxanne crossed her arms. Beneath the sunglasses, Jason was sure she was giving him a look—

Wait.

Sunglasses?

Jason opened his mouth to ask, but then remembered.

Sometimes, his mom would wear sunglasses after Willis got…rough.

Roxanne scoffed and looked away. “Don’t be too shocked, Father. You know the company I keep.” She absently rubbed at the spot on her arm where Tony had grabbed her.

“I just—" she huffed, working her jaw. “I just didn’t have anywhere else to go, okay? So you can gloat all you want but you told me I could come here if I needed help—"

“I’m glad your here, Roxanne,” Jason said, and he meant it.

Roxanne looked down at the dropped chalices. “Just—whatever. You need help with these?”

“Uh—" Right. Jason had forgotten about those. Guess he’ll have to wash them. Again. 

“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks.”

They knelt and gathered the chalices. Jason stole a glance at Roxanne—he could see dark bruises underneath thick layers of makeup, a few peeking above the high neck of her sweater.

After they’d gathered up all the chalices, Jason led Roxanne to the kitchen to rewash them. Anything to put more space between him and Bruce—

He’d glanced over his shoulder the whole way, half expecting Batman to melt from the shadows. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jason asked gently as he dipped another chalice in warm, soapy water.

Beside him, Roxanne shrugged, pointedly staring at the towel he’d handed to her. “Client got a little rough. Some of ‘em like it that way.

“This one though…” She wrung the towel in her hands, still not looking at him. “Well, I told him to fuck off with some of that shit, n’ he didn’t like it, so…”

Roxanne heaved a resigned sigh. With a begrudging hand, she removed her sunglasses.

Jason’s heart twisted in his chest. Her right eye and cheek were horribly swollen, so much so that Jason could barely see her red-flooded sclera. Bruising—a painful amalgamation of purples, greens, and yellows—extended from her cheek to above her brow. There was a nasty gash covered in butterfly bandages just below her eye.

“You didn’t deserve that, Roxanne,” Jason said, putting as much sincerity into his voice as he could.

“Don’t go feelin’ no pity for me, Father P. Comes with the job description.”

They fell into silence again—Jason washing chalices and handing them to her for drying. When he’d handed Roxanne the sixth chalice, she finally spoke again.

“I didn’t wanna be this, you know.”

Jason hummed as he squeezed more soap onto a sponge.

“People think I was born, never met my daddy, and decided I wanted to be a hooker.”

“People can be judgmental,” Jason said, slipping back into Father Peter mode. “They often level others with labels based on their own experiences, regardless of how true those labels are.”

She flicked him with the damp towel.

“Point taken, Father P. I just…I had no choice, you know? And I know—I know a lot of people say shit like that. ‘I had no choice. I did what I had to do.’ And it’s like, whatever, right? Because you know some of those people, deep down, were always gonna choose that.”

She shook her head, jewelry clinking. “And sometimes—sometimes I wonder what my life would be like if I did have a choice, you know? If my mom didn’t have me at fourteen with a fuckin’ pedo three times her age.

“Sometimes I wonder if she ever thought that—‘I wonder what my life could’ve been like.’ I always wondered—for her. What she could’ve been, you know? My mom—she was a really good artist. Before things got bad—like, worse than they already were—she would leave little doodles for me on post-its in my lunchbox. Flowers, butterflies, stuff like that. My favorites were always the sea animals. Dolphins, whales n’ shit. She always did those ones the most. She must’ve known I liked ‘em or somethin’.”

A fond smile tugged at her lips.

“And she was good. Really good. I could tell she loved doin’ it, too. It made her happy.”

The smile fell, her look going distant.

“We were both just kids. Just a couple a fuckin’ kids.”

It was quiet in the kitchen, save for the gentle tolling of the bell and the quiet hum of the ancient heater in the corner.

Jason remained silent. She might clam up if he accidentally started giving her a sermon.

Roxanne sniffed, swallowing hard, hands picking at a spare thread on the towel.

“Well—uh, one day she left for work. And she never came back. I had no idea what happened. I was only eleven. It wasn’t until later did I realize she was a sex worker. Then I put two and two together and figured out she’d probably been killed by some John and dumped in the Harbor.”

Tears welled up in her eyes.

“And I waited—I waited for her, for so long.” Her voice sharpened. “And I got angry. So fuckin’ angry. Because didn’t she know? That I was waiting? That I was still here? That I—“

Her voice cracked. She swallowed hard. 

“That I needed her?”

Jason set his chalice down, turning to face her. “You were a child, Roxanne,” he said softly. “She was your mom. You wanted her to come back. And she didn’t. That’s not wrong—you didn’t know what else to do.”

She swiped at her eyes and cleared her throat. “Well, you get hungry enough, you get cold enough, you’ll do just ‘bout anything.”

She rubbed at the spot on her arm again. 

“That was the winter we had that freeze.”

Jason nodded. It had been before he was born, but he’d heard the way the homeless vets had talked about that one winter. Where the power had gone out and it stayed in the negatives for weeks. Where the windchill was so bad it burned your face. There was no food and no water. People fought in the streets for blankets, jackets, socks—anything for survival. Just about every homeless person had lost an appendage to frostbite—if they hadn’t died of hypothermia first.

“And…” she trailed off, hoarse voice faltering. Jason heard the organ in the nave, a soft melody floating down the hall. He wondered if Bruce was still there.

“Well, I got really fuckin’ hungry. And I got really fuckin’ cold. And some guy in a nice suit with a warm car and some money came by, and—

“And…well, I—"

She brought her hands to her face, shoulders shaking with sobs. Jason placed a gentle hand on her shoulder as she cried. He sat down next to her as she sank to the floor.

They sat like that for a while—Roxanne sobbing, Jason beside her, trying his best to be a steady presence.

After some time, Roxanne’s sobs petered out and they sat in silence. Jason winced internally—the crying had only exacerbated the swelling of the black eye.

Rain fell on the roof, thunder rumbling somewhere in the distance. The heater hummed in the corner. The organ had long since fallen silent.

It was Jason, not Roxanne, who broke the quiet this time.

“What did you want to be?”

She sniffed wetly and looked up. 

“Huh?”

“When you were little. What did you want to be?”

She cast him a sideways glance and wiped her nose with her sleeve.

“A marine biologist.” She huffed a wet laugh and looked out into the kitchen, resting her head against the cabinets. “I wanted to be a marine biologist.”

Jason smiled. “Your mom must’ve caught on.”

“Yeah. She must have.”

It fell quiet again.

“You know,” Roxanne said, after the church bell had chimed eight-thirty. “My name’s not actually Roxanne.”

Jason raised a brow

“You knew.”

Jason shrugged. “Call it divine intuition.”

“Well,” she said, crossing her arms. “For the record, I picked Roxanne because of that one song by The Police. My mom loved ‘em. Always dreamed of goin’ to one of their concerts.”

“What’s your real name?”

Roxanne hesitated, gnawing on her bottom lip. She turned to face him fully where they were sitting. 

“You’re weird for a priest, you know that, Father P?”

“You told me that already.”

“Well, it’s true,” she said, gesturing to him, as if it explained everything.

She flopped back against the cupboards, and fell silent again.

At long last, she whispered:

“Mary. My name is Mary.”

It was late. Jason’s feet ached, but his heart was full.

Jason had always loved youth group.

He loved the opportunity to be a steady presence for kids whose lives were anything but. He loved being someone that younger him—the one who’d lived on the streets—could rely on.

Padre Pete, they called him.

Jason was at the altar, cleaning up from First Communion practice. The second graders took the sacrament next week, and it was a huge deal for all of them. They were so excited.

After their chat yesterday, he’d been able to convince Mary to attend the Thursday night women’s group. He hadn’t told her about making a call to Giovanni’s and convincing them they needed a new waitress—he was still a little worried he’d spook her.

He had his back to the door, humming a soft hymn as he piled grape juice and club crackers in baskets to take back to the kitchen.

And then, he heard it.

A door creaking open.

You see, Jason had lived at St. Luke’s for five years. He knew which pews creaked when you sat down. He knew which kneelers had pads and which didn’t.

He knew what each door sounded like when it opened.

And that particular creak was the groan of a big, heavy, wooden door. 

Jason turned, prepared to greet a stranger or a lost soul, when—

Bruce. 

Bruce. Was standing. Right. There.

Jason’s lungs seized. Time fractured. The long aisle stretched endlessly before him, every nerve screaming to flee, to vanish—yet some force rooted him to the altar. The world narrowed until it was just the two of them. Father and son.

Bruce shook out his umbrella. 

He hasn’t seen me yet.

Jason’s heart pounded a frantic drum in his chest as Bruce looked up.

Their eyes met for a single second. The entire world froze.

And then, Jason walked away.

The sacristy—I’ll go to the sacristy.

It took all of Jason’s self restraint to walk slow and deliberate, as not to expose the fear rushing through his veins. Every fiber of his being screamed at him to run, hide, run!

So as soon as he rounded the corner, Jason bolted.

His thundering pulse drowned out all sound. His sight blurred, breath becoming ragged gasps against a suffocating tide of fear.

Did he see me? Does he know?

Is he coming after me?

Jason whipped his head around—

Nothing. The hallway was empty

His legs kept moving, desperately putting as many walls between him and his father as possible.

Every one of his ribs felt pointed inwards. His heart was going to explode in his chest.

The word twisted and slipped beneath him, reality flickering in and out like a broken light.

He was a ghost—running from a ghost.

Only when Jason was able to take a full breath and his mind clawed its back to focus did he realize where he was:

Wedged between two bookcases in the library.

He felt like someone had put all his hollow bones in a bag and shook. He couldn’t stop trembling, couldn’t get his flighty heart to settle. He jumped at every creak, every groan as the old church shifted in the rain.

Then, Jason began to cry.

Bruce stood in front of the church again. It was almost as late as the night he’d gone into the confessional. Rain drummed against his umbrella.

Do you want absolution?

Today had not been a good day.

He did not deserve it.

Bruce was exhausted, his eyes swollen and puffy, guilt tightened around his neck like a noose.

He’d called Tim Jason today.

It had been entirely on accident.

“You don’t get to take risks like that,” Bruce had told him, low and firm as he wrapped a bandage around Tim’s arm. “Not when backup is ten seconds away.”

Tim didn’t answer, and Bruce knew why—the risk had paid off. Bruce was just…scared.

His hands shook the whole time he wrapped the gauze. He just couldn’t get them to stop.

And he didn’t know why. 

Tim had been fine. Grazed by a bullet, yes, but the wound hadn’t even needed stitches. But after talking about Jason so much, he’d just—

“Don’t do that to me again, Jason,” he’d murmured.

The name had dropped like a stone in a still pond.

And Tim—with his big blue eyes—had blinked up at him slowly. He didn’t say anything.

Bruce hadn’t even realized. He reached for the medical scissors—then stopped.

Tim had gone still. Very, very still.

“Tim,” he’d croaked. “I’m—I didn’t mean—"

“I know,” Tim had said softly. “It’s okay.”

But it wasn’t. It would never be.

Bruce’s legs had nearly given out right there. He sat back on the stool and buried a his face in his hand.

“I’m sorry,” he’d whispered.

Tim had just nodded.

Bruce’s eyes prickled as he remembered the look on Tim’s face. There was an understanding there, yes. But there was also…disappointment. And something else, too—almost like a…longing.

A hot, heavy, horrid feeling burned away in Bruce’s chest, up his throat. A kind of living acid that bubbled up into his mouth, bitter with guilt and impossible to swallow. It scorched him from the inside out. It corroded at his very soul.

Tim was his son. Tim was every bit his boy.

And in a moment of weakness, Bruce had ruined it all.

So here he was again: standing in front of a church that housed Jason’s God.

But the people we lose—they don’t want us to become hollow because of them.

Would Jason be angry with him? For calling Tim by his name?

For taking in another Robin?

(For hurting people? Oh, God, Bruce had hurt people— )

Oh. He was standing at the doors now (when had he walked up the steps?).

A hand reached out and pulled the doors open. Incense met his nose when he stepped over the threshold. The world hushed as the door closed behind him.

Just as he’d watched the couple do yesterday, Bruce shook out his umbrella and turned to dip his fingers in the marble basin, glancing up at the mosaic—

For a single, horrifying, heart-seizing second, Bruce could’ve sworn he saw—

No. His son was dead.

The priest at the altar was tall and broad, curls dark—even all the way across the dim lighting of the nave, Bruce could see the scars. The cut their way across his face like dried riverbeds. 

God—he couldn’t be older than twenty.

And God did he remind Bruce of Ja—

A look flashed across the young priest’s face.

And then he turned and walked out.

A bolt of desperation shot through Bruce—his hand twitched in an irrational instinct to reach out, to call him back. His mouth was half parted, unsaid words heavy on his lips.

Bruce was positive that was the priest he’d spoken with that night in the confessional.

He stumbled through the rows of pews as if in a trance. He barely remembered to kneel before he sat down. Just as he’d seen others do the previous night, Bruce kneeled and crossed himself. Tonight, there was no golden starburst statue (a monstrance, he’d found out). Just baskets of crackers and grape juice.

The rain had intensified, a damp earthy scent accompanying the incense. 

Jason—Jason was everywhere, yet he was nowhere. Bruce saw him—in a young priest’s face, in his own son—yet could not hold Jason in his arms.

The last time he’d cradled his baby boy in his arms, he’d been cold and broken and d—

And Bruce hadn’t even buried him with—

A tear slipped from his closed lids.

Because the truth is, Bruce was a coward. 

Jason’s death had been his undoing. After he’d initially found Jason, lying bloody and mangled in the rubble of the warehouse, Bruce had been unable to look. He couldn’t bear to see his little Jaybin so brutalized. Couldn’t bring himself to see what horrific torture the Joker had inflicted upon his child.

So he just…didn’t. He’d allowed Alfred to deal with the funeral preparations. But when the time came, Bruce just…couldn’t do it.

Because if he watched Jason’s casket lower, he just might’ve followed his son into the ground.

So instead, he chose the route of a coward: he’d built a monument—a tall, grand angel, smiling down upon empty ground.

Jason had been buried somewhere else.

Somewhere Bruce didn’t know.

Bruce pressed his hands into his eyes, stifling a sob. His little boy was cold and alone and dead.

And Bruce had put him there.

He stayed kneeling until his whole body went numb.

And then he left.

Chapter Text

It had been five days since Bruce had walked into that confessional. Five days since he carved his heart out of his chest and unknowingly handed it to his dead son.

Since then, Jason’s peace had shattered. His sanctuary—St. Luke’s, the only place that ever felt like home since he came back—was collapsing around him.

It felt like an invasion. Like someone had opened his chest (again) and left his ribs ajar.

Now he moved like prey—peeking around corners, softening his footsteps over the floorboards he knew creaked. Every sound, a warning. Every shadow, a threat.

Just in case. 

Just in case his father was there. Waiting. Lurking.

Even the Nave, once his refuge, now loomed too vast and hollow. There was nowhere to hide in its cavernous hall. No alcove deep enough, no chapel sacred enough to keep out the ghost of his past.

He was bone-tired. His nerves hummed like frayed wires, and the inside of his skull felt too small for all the thoughts scraping at it. 

And worse—Father Augustine noticed. Of course he had. 

“Jay! Are—are you alright?”

Jason barely heard him. The world had turned to static. His hands shook, wild and uneven, and he couldn’t make them stop. His heart pounded so loudly it drowned everything else out.

Father Augustine had come around the corner. Jason had been carrying a crystal bowl.

Now it was shattered at his feet, shards glittering on the stone floor, and he didn’t even remember dropping it.

“Jay?”

But Jason wasn’t here. Not really.

What if—what if that had been Bruce?

What if he had come around that corner?

His breath hitched. His vision blurred. The hallway twisted around him like it was folding inward, the walls pressing in, his beloved sanctuary becoming a trap.

What would I have done? 

Run? He’d catch me.

Hide? He’d find me.

“Jay? Jay, can you hear me?”

Jason’s lungs worked like bellows, but no air was getting in. His chest burned. He clenched his fists so tight his fingernails dug into his palms, as if he could dig his way out of the impending spiral.

What if he heard? What if he’s coming?

His mouth filled with a bitter, metallic taste. His skin was too tight, his frayed nerves sizzling like defunct live wires.

Why am I so scared?

He’s my—

I shouldn’t be—

A warm hand was placed on his shoulder. Jason flinched hard, but the hand didn’t leave.

“Jay. I need you to look at me, son. Can you do that?”

Jason blinked, eyes burning. His breath came in short, shuddering bursts. Slowly, he raised his gaze and met Father Augustine’s. The priest’s green eyes were soft with worry.

“There’s a good lad. Now, can you take a deep breath with me?”

Father Augustine took a patient, exaggerated breath. Jason tried to follow—his breath caught at first, skipping and suttering. But he tried again. And again.

The world didn’t fully come back—panic still coiled at the edges of his vision—but the fear coursing through Jason’s system loosened its icy grip.

Father Augustine’s white brows drew together, his wrinkled face tender with concern. He let go of Jason’s shoulder to gently take both his hands.

“Something’s upset your spirit,” he said softly, searching Jason’s face. “You haven’t been yourself, not for days now.”

He gave Jason’s trembling hands a small squeeze.

“What is it, son?” He asked, voice gentle. “What’s hurting you?”

The answer rose in Jason’s throat—but it was choked there. Hot tears poked the corners of his eyes. His chest ached with the pressure of things he desperately wanted to say, but could not.

I wish Father Michael was here. He would understand. I could tell him.

Jason bit down on a rising sob. A singular tear slipped free.

He shook his head.

“Okay,” Father Augustine said, nodding like he’d heard everything Jason hadn’t said aloud. He squeezed his hands once more.

“Why don’t you take a break? Go sit in the library. I’ll make sure no one disturbs you.”

Jason’s eyes slid down, the glass mess at his feet blurred by unshed tears.

“Don’t worry about that, Jay,” Father Augustine said kindly. “I’ll sweep it up.”

Jason would’ve thanked him, but he couldn’t find his voice. Instead, he hoped he could convey his immense gratitude and sincerest apologies in a single nod.

Father Augustine smiled, but it did not reach his eyes.

Jason paced a hole in the rug of the library.

The atmosphere oozed calm—a soft fire crackled in the hearth, filling the room with soft flickering light and a gentle smokey smell—but Jason felt none of it. He was too busy unraveling.

I was never supposed to see him again.

He was never supposed to find me.

Will I ever find peace?

At that last question, his chest hitched again, more tears threatening to spill from his tired eyes.

He was sick and tired of crying. Of walking through his own home like every shadow was reaching out to drag him away.

Why am I so scared?

Well, that answer was simple.

…

Okay, maybe it wasn’t.

He wasn’t…scared, exactly. It was…more a feeling he couldn’t name.

It was having his world ended and rebuilt by the same man, over and over again.

Bruce had taken him from the streets. Given him a home—a purpose. Called him son, and loved him like one.

Then, Bruce had been too late.

He’d then went and buried Jason in an unmarked grave. Taken in another son and put him in the very colors stained red by his blood—the very colors Jason had died in. 

Jason wondered if he ever called that boy by his name—if, sometimes, memory and muscle were too great and Jason slipped out, no matter how deep Bruce had tried to bury him.

And then, one innocuous, rainy Monday night, Bruce had walked into Jason’s confessional and uttered things Jason never thought he’d hear—the most intimate facets of Bruce’s grief, the very things that kept his father awake at night.

“My magic boy.”

Jason shuddered. He wanted to put the pieces of himself back together, but he couldn’t. Not with Bruce still holding so many.

So yes, the feeling was fear. But also no, it wasn’t. 

A gentle thunder echoed off the stone walls of the library. Rain softly drummed against the slated roof. The church bells tolled eight p.m.

A quiet voice, deep in Jason’s mind, offered a too-simple solution: forgive. 

Forgive your father, it whispered. Tell him you’re alive.

He loves you. He misses you. He will welcome you back.

The boy in Jason—the one bound to that wretched warehouse by barbed wire and blind, righteous anger—shouted in response.

No! he cried. He abandoned you! He replaced you! 

He couldn’t even bury you with his own family. What do you think that meant?

Tears prickled Jason’s gritty eyes. He swiped them away with trembling hands.

Jason, like Bruce, was also guilty. 

Because Jason was alive. He was alive and could’ve gone back to the Manor at any point during the past five years. Knocked on those great wrought-iron doors and said Hello, Bruce. I’m back.

Part of Jason knew he could—because part of Jason was sure his father had loved him.

But part of Jason never wanted to—he was so blinded by anger, so scarred by abandonment, so hurt by the utter brutality of what had happened to him that he could never allow himself back there. Could never face Bruce. 

But now, after hearing Bruce lay himself bare, that guilt had expanded tenfold. It ate away at Jason’s heart like rot, spreading across his ribs and coursing through his veins.

All this time—Bruce was imploding.

“I didn’t know who I was without him. I still don’t”

Bruce had been shattered by Jason’s death (it did not feel as gratifying as Jason once thought).

“I buried my boy. And sometimes, I think it should have been me.”

Bruce was mourning. It’d been five years and he’d never stopped, not once. He was going to grieve forever.

(But now, Jason was starting to…not want that. For Bruce.

Bruce had become hollow. And Jason was starting to want him to find his way back.)

Jason worried his lip until he tasted blood. More thunder cracked across the sky. The fireplace still crackled gently, though it had died down significantly since he first took refuge in the library. In the dim light, the tall bookcases cast long shadows across the floor.

Would he take me back?

Even after all this time. Would he take me back?

When he figures out I’ve been alive—that I’ve known—what then?

What if he doesn’t—

A voice echoed up the hallway.

“Holy shit—ah fuck, my bad can’t say that in here—wait, dammit. Gah!”

Jason paused his pacing with a frown.

“This place is a maze. ‘Go up those stairs, take a right, a left, and another right, then you’ll come across five damn doors and go through the archway. Where the hell am I?”

Who—

Wait. 

Jason crossed the room to the stone archway that doubled as the door to the library. He peeked out into the hallway and came face to face with—

“Mary?”

“Thank God, Father P. Father Augustine gave me directions—and to be honest, he did a very bad job—and this place is huge. And, well, I’ve never been in one of these before this week, so…”

Her jewelry jangled as she gestured around.

Despite himself—despite the near panic attack, the guilt in his blood, the exhaustion pulling at his limbs—he smiled.

She looked better today—the bruising around her eye was still bad, but the butterfly bandages had been changed and the cut looked cleaned. She still wore a high collared shirt to hide the ones around her neck. Jason could still see a little yellow poking out, but it wasn’t as bad as before. The neon in her platinum hair seemed to glow in the candlelit hallway. 

She took his smile as an invitation and strolled passed him toward the couch in front of the fireplace. Jason followed behind her, only slightly exasperated.

“I feel like this place should give me the creeps,” she said, eyeing the tall statue of Saint Jerome in the corner. “But it doesn’t. Like even though the church is big, it’s also like…full.” She turned to face him.

Jason opened his mouth to speak.

“Oh, and don’t get mad at Father Augustine,” Mary said before he could. “He really didn’t wanna send me up here. But I told him I knew what was going on with you and that I wanted to help.”

A look crossed her faced. Almost…maternal. 

“He’s really worried about you,” she said softly.

That feeling—that same warmth that often filled him up every time someone called him Jay—bloomed in his chest. Father Augustine is worried about me?

Hold on—

“But you don’t know what’s going on with me,” he said with a frown.

She plopped down on the worn leather couch.

“So tell me.”

Jason gazed into the fire and shook his head.

“I can’t.”

“Look,” she said, leaning forward. “I just lied to a priest to get up here. And I know I only met you a couple days ago, but you kicked two guys’ asses for me, and you didn’t even know me.” She shrugged.

“I guess what I’m tryin’ to say, Father P, is that I like you. You’re a good kid. Even with all of—" she gestured at her face “—that.”

Jason rolled his eyes with a huffed a laugh.

“And plus, I think I already know.”

Jason raised a brow. It pulled at his scars.

“That guy down there—he’s your father, ain’t he?”

What.

Jason.exe has crashed.

Jason stared at her, eyes wide, lips slightly parted.

What?

How—huh?

Wait.

“He’s—he’s down there? Right now?”

The panic that had been flitting about the edges of his senses returned. It seeped into his bones. Suddenly, it was a little harder to breathe, as if the air got thinner.

Jason swallowed thickly. Every instinct screamed to flee, to hide. He desperately wanted to crawl back between those two bookshelves.

Does he know where I am?

Did he follow Mary up here?

Why am I so scared?

Jason ran a trembling hand through his hair. Thunder rumbled. He resumed his pacing, a million things running through his spinning mind. 

Wait—

“How’d you know he was my dad?”

Mary shrugged again from her place on the couch.

“You guys look alike.”

“I’m adopted.”

“My point still stands, Father P.”

Jason shook his head as he ran another hand through his curls. The walls seemed to point inwards, the library becoming smaller and smaller until—

“I take it you guys got some bad blood?”

Jason shot her a look. The understatement of the century.

“So tell me.”

“Mary—"

“Nuh-uh,” she held up a heavily braceleted hand. “I told you about all my dirty laundry back in that kitchen. And you know what? It actually made me feel…better. Like all that shit—sorry—stuff I’d dealt with wasn’t all…mine anymore. Like someone was carryin’ it all with me.”

She leveled him with a serious gaze.

“What I’m tryin’ to say Father P, is you’ve been through some stuff. That much is obvious—no offense. But you shouldn’t have to…” She paused, searching for the words.

“You shouldn’t have to carry it all. Not if it hurts you, which I can tell it does. And I might be new to all this ‘God stuff’ but from that mosaic down there, I can tell someone is waitin’ to take it from you. With pretty big open arms, from what I can see.”

Jason weighed her words.

Guilt and anger. Betrayal. Grief and longing. These things were heavy.

He took a very deep breath. Gazed into the fire. Took another.

He turned and sat at the other end of the couch.

And began to talk.

“Remember how I said I was from the Alley?”

When Jason finished talking, the storm had intensified, the constant drum of rain filling the silence of the library.

Jason had told her—well, everything.

He’d framed it like this:

He’d been adopted by Bruce Wayne after he’d tried to steal the man’s tires. When he was fifteen, he was attacked by a Gotham rogue (who, he didn’t remember). He was in a coma, presumed missing and dead. His father never came for him—instead, he buried an empty casket and adopted another son. Father Michael had found him, and brought him to St. Luke’s.

Jason felt a pang of guilt—but the lie was necessary.

Jason told her about the confessional. About seeing Bruce, about hearing his side of things.

“Damn,” she said, staring into the dying embers of the hearth. She rubbed a hand over her uninjured eye. “Damn, kid.”

“Can’t you see?” He said, a sliver of hysteria in his tired voice. “I can’t go to him. I just—I just can’t. And he’s not even Catholic. I don’t understand why he’s even here—"

Mary’s head whipped to face him.

“He’s not Catholic.”

Jason ran a hand down his face. His cheeks were gritty from the tears.

“No.”

“Are…you Catholic?” she asked.

“I mean, well—"

“No—not now, dummy. Obviously," she huffed. “Whatever. Before, is what I’m askin’. Were you Catholic before all this.”

Jason nodded slowly, confused.

Mary’s eyebrows climbed so high Jason wondered if it hurt her bruised eye.

“So—lemme get this straight: your daddy—who’s not Catholic—is sittin’ down there in a pew, thinkin’ you’re dead.”

Jason nodded again, still lost.

“He’s been comin’ here. To sit in a pew. Thinkin’ your dead.”

Jason frowned.

“…Yes?”

She blinked at him.

“And you think he would turn you away? That he didn’t love you? That he doesn’t love you?

Jason sighed. “Mary, it’s a little more complicated than that—"

“Father P, your daddy is on his knees down there in that pew, beggin’ for forgiveness from your God because it’s the only way he thinks he can get forgiveness from you.

It was Jason’s turn to blink.

“Listen. When my mom died, I was so fuckin’ pissed at her. So fuckin’ pissed. But when I finally got over that stupid anger, all that was left was the missing. Damn, kid, I missed my mom. When it got cold, or I got hungry, or I just needed someone to touch me without wantin’ anything more, I missed my fuckin’ mom. I missed those stupid drawings in my lunchbox. I missed her voice, the way her shampoo smelled. I missed when she would get mad at me for not doin’ my homework, because it meant that someone gave a damn about my future. I missed someone thinkin’ I could be somethin’. That was thirty years ago, kid, and there’s still times when I would give anythin’ to talk to her.

“Kid, your daddy is downstairs right now dying of guilt over what happened to you. You told me when he was in the booth that he didn’t know who he was without you. That he shoulda followed you into the ground. Now, I ain’t never had no kids of my own, but damn, kid—if that ain’t a clear sign I don’t know what is.

“Your daddy loves you, Father P. He misses you, and it’s killing him. And you’re up here, scared he doesn’t want you anymore.”

Jason opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Closed it.

She sighed heavily. The room smelled faintly of incense and mostly of damp earth.

“I don’t know about you, but if that was my momma down there, you best believe I’d be runnin’ back into her arms right now.”

Jason felt frozen in place. The choice before him—this choice between truth and falsehood—felt like a matter of life and death.

And death had already had its way with Jason.

Maybe, just maybe, it was about time that life finally got a say.

Bruce stood in front of the mosaic. Jesus’ arms were stretched wide, His eyes soft. Bruce knew he should sit, but his legs felt cemented to the floor of the aisle. So he just…stood.

Rain drummed steadily on the high roof overhead. Candles flickered gently in their alcoves. Wall sconces burned low.

Bruce felt very small in the nave. He’d been cracked wide opent the night he’d walked into that confessional—now, he felt constantly exposed, the gaping hole in his chest pinned open on display for all to see.

Dick had come to stay at the Manor for a few days. Although Tim would never admit it, Bruce knew he was the one who called him. Bruce could never hide much from his boy’s detective mind.

Tim was worried about him—he could see Bruce crumbling.

And that only compounded the guilt.

He had failed one son. Now, he was failing another—

A heavy creak echoed off the stone walls of the church. Bruce turned quickly, a flicker of hope passing through him. Maybe it was that young priest—

A woman entered—the same one he’d met outside the church a few days ago. She shut the door behind her and peeled off her wet coat. Bruce watched as she exchanged hushed words with an elderly priest by the door. After some-back-and forth, a long sigh, and a pointed finger down a hallway, she vanished into the church.

Bruce turned back to the mosaic. Thunder rumbled. Lightning flashed behind the stained glass. He took a deep breath, squeezing his clasped hands together.

His thoughts turned once more to that young priest and the scars that crossed his face. His heart ached—for a moment, he had looked so much like his boy. A cruel hope had ignited in Bruce’s heart, only to be doused by the cold water of reality.

Everyday Bruce woke up and lost his son again.

Bruce knew he would mourn forever. His son, his magic boy, had planted himself between Bruce’s fifth and sixth ribs. He had entwined himself around the very strings of Bruce’s heart. And now that he was gone, all that remained was a gaping, consuming hole. It ached and bled and festered. It twisted and rotted and ripped. 

Sometimes, Bruce tortured himself. Sometimes, he wondered who his son would be today.

Still Robin? Or would he forge his own mantle?

Would he have given it up altogether? Gone to college, gotten a doctorate?

Jason would’ve made a great teacher.

Bruce’s chest hitched with a swallowed sob. He squeezed his eyes shut to stop the hot tears from slipping down his cheeks.

It did little.

A family, maybe? 

Jason was always so good with kids. Did he ever want his own?

Bruce didn’t know. He’ll never know. Because he can’t ask. Because his son was d—

“Are you alright, my son?”

Bruce’s head jerked in the direction of the voice.

The aging priest—who Bruce recognized as Father Augustine—had come up beside him. Bruce schooled his expression quickly, wiping his wet cheeks with unsteady hands.

“Um—" Bruce cleared his throat. “Yes—thank you, Father.”

Father Augustine's watery green eyes searched Bruce’s face, taking in his bloodshot eyes and clearly disheveled appearance. That small feeling increased tenfold—as if this priest was peeking into that gaping hole and inspecting the cracks in his chest.

“Would you sit?” He asked gently, pointing at the pews beside them.

Bruce hesitated. But the weight of the moment pressed forward—he filed in beside the priest, hands clasped loosely in his lap. It was quiet for a moment. Bruce stared at Christ Risen—still feeling suffocated instead of redeemed. 

“You’ve been coming here often,” Father Augustine said, neither accusing nor curious. Just…observant. “But something tells me you’re not a regular.”

Bruce didn’t know how to respond.

Father Augustine chuckled softly. “It’s not every day Bruce Wayne walks into my church. Not when I was personally invited to his mother’s bat mitzvah many years ago.”

That caught Bruce’s attention. He studied the aging man’s face—there was something knowing behind his kind eyes. 

Father Augustine held his gaze.

“What is weighing so heavy on you, my son?”

Bruce looked back out toward the mosiac. 

Your sin is real.

Bruce had done terrible, terrible things—the worst of which to the people he loved most. He’d pointed his beloved son in the direction of his death, allowing him to die brutally and alone, all the while thinking he was abandonded and unloved. He’d buried his little boy in an unmarked grave because he couldn’t contend with his failure. 

But so too, is your sorrow.

He’d allowed his guilt to twist him into a monster until he couldn’t even meet his own eyes. He’d hurt people—desperate, regular, hurting people. He’d nearly killed so many because the wound in his heart had poisoned his blood.

Do you seek forgiveness?

Yes. God, yes.

Bruce swallowed thickly.

“Um, my—" Bruce cleared his throat. He kept his eyes on the mosaic, for fear he might cry and never stop if he looked into Father Augustine’s soft face.

“My son d—" Bruce bit his lip. Took a breath, and tried again.

“My son was murdered five years ago.” Because that’s what happened. Jason didn’t just die—he was killed. Beaten and tortured to death. Unfairly. Wrongfully. Undeservedly.

It was about time Bruce started saying it.

“And it—it was my fault.”

From the corner of his eye, Father Augustine nodded thoughtfully.

“I don’t believe you.”

Bruce turned to face him with a frown.

“No,” Bruce began, slightly uncertain, slightly desperate to get the priest to understand. “You don’t understand.”

“Then tell me.”

You carry a heavy grief. One that is laden with an even heavier guilt.

Bruce opened his mouth but no words came out.

Father Augustine spoke instead. 

“You come here. You kneel before Christ,” he said, nodding toward the mosaic, “and you seek absolution. Do you not?”

Bruce could only nod.

“The greater the sinner, the greater the right he has to His mercy.”

Bruce ran a hand through his hair, desperation clawing at his guilty heart.

“No, Father—respectfully—but you don’t understand.”

“Then tell me, my son. This burden is not for you to carry.”

Bruce huffed, lungs constricting. The incense was choking him. Outside, the rain hummed like static as thunder boomed. Lightning flashed again.

What Bruce had done was inexcusable. He’d let his son die thinking he was unloved. He’d chosen a coward’s path by burying him alone.

He’d denied Jason his life because he couldn’t face his death.

“I let my son die alone,” Bruce said quietly. “I buried him, alone.”

His voice dropped to a whisper. He couldn’t look up. “I ripped out what was left of him when he died. Because I couldn’t bear him not being there.”

A long moment passed. Bruce heard the soft tolling of the church bells. It was late.

Finally, Father Augustine spoke.

“God has forgiven your inexcusable,” he said simply. “Now, you must forgive the inexcusable in yourself.”

Do you seek forgiveness?

Do you want absolution?

“I don’t deserve it,” Bruce whispered. He stared at his hands. They were soaked in blood.

Father Augustine shrugged. “None of us do. That’s why it’s grace. It’s why we have Christ. God never tires of forgiving us; we are the ones who tire of seeking his mercy.”

“He died thinking I didn’t love him,” Bruce countered, voice cracking. “And maybe he was right. Maybe I didn’t show him enough, or say it the right way. Maybe—” His voice broke off.

“Do you believe he hated you?” Father Augustine asked softly.

Bruce’s face contorted.

Did he? Did Jason hate me? As he laid there bleeding and broken on that warehouse floor—when he finally realized I wasn’t coming, that I was too late—did he hate me?

“I don’t know,” Bruce breathed. Tears blurred his vision as he stared at his hands. Hands that had failed. Horribly. Irreprably. 

“Sometimes,” Father Augustine said slowly, “the pain we carry doesn’t come from our failures. It comes from the inability to make them right. The dead don’t leave us. We love them so much we think we can hold onto them forever.”

If love could have saved Jason, he would have lived until the heat death of the universe.

But the people we lose—they don’t want us to become hollow because of them. They want us to remember who we are. And if we’ve forgotten…they’d want us to find our way back.

“The ache of their absence never leaves us, either,” Father Augustine continued. “We learn to grow around it, but it’s always there.”

Bruce pressed his fingers between his fifth and sixth ribs. 

“It never goes away,” he whispered.

“And that’s not a bad thing,” Father Augustine said gently. “It’s proof of love. Proof of life. For there to be great grief, there must first have been great love.”

Father Augustine placed a warm hand on Bruce’s knee and found his eyes.

“And if you let it, that ache becomes a path.”

“To what?”

Father Augustine’s lips twitched with a sad smile. “To healing.”

A beat passed.

“If your son were here right now, listening—just as God is—what would you say to him?” Father Augustine asked.

Another pause.

“If heaven had a landline, Bruce…what would you tell your son?”

With that, Father Augustine stood and shuffled quietly out of the pew.

Chapter Text

Mary had left Jason alone with her words and his thoughts. He stayed on the couch, body exhausted, staring into the dying fire and listening to the low hum of rain.

I don’t know about you, but if that was my momma down there, you best believe I’d be runnin’ back into her arms right now.

Jason blinked tears from his eyes.

His dad. 

His dad was down there right now.

Jason leaned forward, folded his hands, and began to pray.

“What do I do?”

He pressed his clasped hands to his forehead.

“Please, Lord. What do I do? Because I can’t keep doing this. I have no peace. I don’t know where to go.”

Jason swallowed down the lump in his throat, chest tightening.

“I’m lost and I don’t know what to do.”

And then he waited. For an answer, for a sign, for something.

Absently, Jason remembered the first time he’d fallen asleep in the Batmobile.

Patrol had been rough, and they’d gotten back much later than they’d ever had.

The Batmobile had been warm; Jason had been exhausted. The gentle roar of the engine and the smooth rocking as the car weaved between side streets (and the knowledge that his dad was here, and he would always be safe with his dad) lulled Jason into a soft doze.

By the time they’d reached the Manor, he’d been out like a light.

Distantly, Jason remembered a soft chuckle. Strong, sure arms had scooping him up—the smell of bergamot and leather surrounded him. Through the haze of his gentle doze, Jason had felt the rumble of his dad’s voice beneath his ear:

“Good night, son. I love you.”

It was the first time Bruce had ever said that to him.

It was the first time anyone had said that to him in a long, long time.

Back on the couch, tears slipped from Jason’s closed eyes. A sob escaped his shuddering chest.

True to what Mary had said, the anger—the anger that Jason had wielded like a righteous sword, the anger that had kept him from knocking on the Manor’s doors, the anger that kept him away from his dad—began to ebb away. A glacier slowly melting in the spring sun.

And all that was left was the missing. 

And God, did Jason miss his dad.

And it was that little boy—the one lying broken, bloody, and bruised on that wretched warehouse floor—who missed his dad the most.

And maybe that’s why Jason was so angry. Because he wanted his dad. But what he’d seen when he came back—the new Robin, the Joker escaping Arkham for the millionth time, an unmarked grave at his head—had told him the harshest truth:

His dad hadn’t wanted him.

So Jason had let himself burn. Let the rage take root and grow wild, choking out the grief. Used the anger as a weapon, the rage as armor, to protect himself from the pain.

Because deep down, Jason knew the truth. He would’ve done anything to go back. To be chosen. To be loved the way he still, in spite of everything, loved his father.

But his father hadn’t chosen him. Not in the same way.

He’d turned his back on his boy who, even in death, was still waiting for him.

And fury, no matter how justified, can blind.

So Jason white-knuckled his rage and heartbreak and rejection. Gripped them so tightly their thorns bit him back.

Because, truthfully, the little boy inside of him didn’t want vengeance. He didn’t even want justice, no matter how much he demanded it.

He just wanted to run into his father’s arms. To be held, wrapped in blankets and bergamot and the promise that this time, he was safe.

Your daddy is on his knees down there in that pew, beggin’ for forgiveness from your God because it’s the only way he thinks he can get forgiveness from you.

Jason could walk down those stairs and forgive his father.

But.

There was someone else he needed to forgive first.

Jason sighed deeply. Outside, the bell tower tolled ten p.m.

Jason reached deep into his mind. Past his anger. Past his abandonment and betrayal and hurt and longing. He reached back to a place he never wanted to go.

And there he was. A little boy, bleeding and angry and trapped.

His tearful eyes were blazing with fury. But beneath it was terror. An aching loneliness. A wound no child should have to bear.

Jason knelt down, his scarred hands reaching out, trembling slightly as they closed around smaller bloodied ones.

The boy stared up at him. His throat was raw. His breath came in sharp, shallow gulps.

“You were scared,” Jason said softly. “You were scared, and that’s okay. You didn’t know how to protect yourself, so you got angry. Because it made it hurt less.”

The boy’s face scrunched up in defiant fury.

“He left us!” he cried. “He didn’t love us! We died, and he forgot about us!”

Jason didn’t flinch. He held the boy’s hands tighter.

“No,” he said, voice quiet. “He didn’t forget. He loved us. He still loves us.”

The boy sniffled and hiccuped. Blood dripped from his lips, his ears, a gash carved into his cheek.

“Then—then why?”

Jason paused. He remembered the truths his father had laid bare in his confessional.

“He was scared, too,” Jason said.

The boy looked away, jaw clenched, like he was trying not to believe him.

Jason continued to hold him.

After a long silence, the boy spoke.

“Was it always that way?” he whispered. “Did we ever…mean anything? To him?”

Jason took a deep breath.

“Our death broke him, too,” he said. “I think…that’s why he did what he did.”

The boy looked up. For the first time, there was a flicker of hope in his bruised features, in his cracked voice.

“You do?”

Jason nodded. “Yes. I do.”

The boy began to sob. Jason felt tears roll down his own cheeks.

Jason pulled the boy close.

“I forgive you,” he said softly. “For being angry. For being scared. For staying away. For running, for hiding. For not wanting to go back.”

Jason felt something lift off his shoulders. Chains uncoiling in his chest. 

“I forgive you, Jay.”

Jason mumbled an amen and opened his eyes slowly. He was still in the library, the rain still tapping on the roof. He ran a rand through his hair and down his face, rubbing the tear tracks from his cheeks. The weight of the Roman collar around his neck and the stole around his shoulders made his head hurt (or maybe that was all the crying. Hard to tell).

Jason wanted his peace back. He wanted his sanctuary back.

Jason didn’t know where to go.

Maybe peace wasn’t stillness or the absence of suffering, but a blessed assurance in victory?

If Jason were to stay—if he were to hide in this library forever—that wouldn’t be peace. It would never be peace. That would be stagnancy. That would be stillness. Paralysis born of fear and a refusal to change. And God didn’t do stagnancy. God didn’t do stillness. He would never let Jason hide from his calling and keep his peace.

Jason could take a step forward. Jason could take a step forward.

He already knew the direction. He’d known ever since Bruce stepped into his confessional all those nights ago, even if everything in him had resisted. So despite the fear—despite the fury and the ache and the wounds that little boy carried—Jason would walk.

He would walk through the shadow, through the valley.

Because peace didn’t lie in running from his past. It never laid in hiding from his father. It would never be found in hiding or silence or allowing his anger to fester.

Peace lay in motion—in obedience. In knowing the next step was guided. That even if Jason had no idea where he was going—no matter or dark the shadow or deep the valley—that God did.

Jason rose from the couch, muscles stiff and aching from the storm still raging outside. He squared his shoulders and stepped out of the silence of the library.

He descended the stairs to for the Nave, almost dreamlike.

When he rounded the corner, he froze. 

Bruce. 

He was right there—sitting in a pew, head bowed to his clasped hands in his lap.

Jason’s breathing kicked up ever so slightly. His heart went flighty in his chest. He clenched his hands into fists to stop them from shaking.

Forgiving Bruce felt like a monumental task—one that ended with Jason making peace with the harrowing truth of what had happened to him:

Jason had been tortured to death. His father had been too late.

And then, in death, his father had abandoned him.

God and Jason had gone around in many a circle with this.

If Jason were to forgive Bruce, what then? It won’t undo what happened. It won’t magically heal it, either. It can’t erase the scars—physical or emotional. Forgiveness can’t change the past. It can’t take back years of anger and betrayal. It can’t stitch up hurts and heal wounds.

But maybe forgiveness did not mean ignoring the wrong done. Maybe it didn’t mean the betrayal and the hurt and the pain weren’t real. Maybe, forgiveness meant transformation. Maybe it was the refusal to let the wound define him—to refuse to be controlled by the same tragedy that broke him. If Jason forgave his father, he wouldn’t be erasing the wrong. He would be confronting it, head on, and still choosing love. Because that is what he is called to do. Because forgiveness doesn’t flow from human willpower. It flows from an encounter with Christ—a love that sees sin for what it is, names it, grieves it…and then overcomes it. It is not weakness, nor denial. It is a holy defiance in the face of anger and rejection and hate. Forgiveness affirms the humanity of both the trespasser and the trespassed—declaring that neither are beyond redemption. That grace will always overcome.

Jason glanced at the mural of Christ Risen, its gold tiles sparkling in the dim light. Thunder rumbled gently. Lightning flashed behind the stained glass.

Christ did not forget nor ignore His wounds—yet He forgave all those who hung Him on the cross.

Christ never pretended evil didn’t matter. Rather, He bore it Himself to bring healing and reconciliation.

Jason wrung out his trembling hands. He worried his raw lip.

But forgiveness always costs something—it demands sorrow, humility, pain. A dying to bitterness, pride and the right to stay angry. But most importantly, it requires that you enter into the logic of the Cross. Because forgiveness—real forgiveness—is cruciform. It calls you into the truth of who you are and demands a change of heart. It stretches, it breaks open. Forgiveness is not passive, but an act of great courage. Of great obedience. Of great surrender. True forgiveness refuses to leave anyone unchanged. It transforms both the one who receives it and the one who gives it. Unforgiveness, by contrast, binds the soul—it’s a chain that promises control but delivers only captivity. Real forgiveness is a gift. It is setting the prisoner free, and realizing that all along the prisoner was you.

Maybe, by forgiving his father, Jason wouldn’t be accepting his wounds—rather, he would be letting Christ transform them.

He wold be setting himself free. He would be setting Bruce free.

Unforgiveness had chained that bleeding little boy to that cold warehouse floor for five years. It had saddled Jason with a hurt and an anger that burned only those he cared about most. He’d had control—but in the end, he’d lost his peace. 

And by remaining stagnant, Jason had trapped Bruce in that warehouse, too. Clutching his little boy with his too-still chest in his arms one last time.

And he just might lose his dad. Again.

Jason swallowed, throat tight.

What would he even say?

Hello, Bruce. Yes, it’s me, your dead son. Surprise! I’m alive. Crazy, I know. Listen, you did some whack stuff after I died, but I forgive you. So whaddya say we grab a ball and go play some catch on the lawn?

Yeah, no. That wouldn’t work.

He shifted his weight from foot to foot. More thunder echoed off the high ceilings. Incense was still burning somewhere in the Church.

Would Bruce even recognize him?

Would Bruce even take him back—?

That not-quite-fear sensation seized Jason by the throat.

What if—what if Bruce didn’t take him back? What if he didn’t forgive Jason for staying away all these years?

What if it was all true?

What if Jason was never really his son?

Stupid, hot tears threatened to make a reappearance. Jason swiped them away, eyes burning from rubbing them so much lately. He breathed deeply, trying to calm his heart, his lungs, his mind.

I walk because I know Who directs my steps. And that is peace enough.

Jason stepped out from behind the pillar and made his way toward his father.

Bruce sat in the pew for a long time.

“If heaven had a landline, Bruce…what would you tell your son?”

A thousand words rose to his lips.

If heaven had a landline, Bruce would find every reason to call up his little Jaybird.

First, he’d tell Jason he was sorry. Sorry that he didn’t make it on time. Sorry that he’d ever doubted. Sorry that he didn’t say I love you enough. The words would never do enough—they were quite empty, as Bruce could do nothing to change what had happened. But he needed his little bird to know—know that his death was not on him, but Bruce. That Bruce had failed. Had pointed Jason in the direction of his death and watched every step he took, never once taking his hand and gently leading him away. Bruce knew there was nothing he could do to atone, because nothing here could ever measure up to what Jason’s life had meant to him.

Second, he tell his little Jaybin that if he never forgave him…

Bruce swallowed down the glass in his throat. 

He’d tell his Jaybin that if he never forgave him…

That Bruce would understand. He would understand and accept it because that is what Bruce deserved. 

Bruce would never forgive himself for what happened, and he would never expect Jason to, either.

Third, he’d ask a question he wasn’t sure if he ever wanted the answer to—but he’d ask anyway.

Did you hate me? When I was too late—when you finally realized I wasn’t going to make it—did you hate me?

If heaven had a landline, Bruce would be be white-knuckling the receiver waiting for a response, winding the curled cord around his neck like a noose.

Because if Jason never forgave Bruce, he would understand.

But if his son—his precious little boy that had taken root between his fifth and sixth ribs and refused to be cut out—hated him—

Bruce didn’t know if he could survive the answer to that question.

And maybe, it wasn’t even that answer that would kill him.

But the reality of what it meant.

Because if Jason rightfully hated Bruce and rightfully never forgave him, it would mean that he’d failed. 

A father had failed his son.

Batman had failed his Robin.

And Jason didn’t deserve to be failed. 

Jason—with his big heart and his contempt at injustice—didn’t deserve to be murdered. 

He was fifteen.

The Joker had ruined Jason. To spite Bruce.

More tears slipped down Bruce’s face. He clenched his hands tightly in his lap.

“God,” he prayed, unsure if He was even listening, “Please—"

“If—if there’s a way. If he’s here—please just let me talk to him.”

Bruce was going to mourn forever. He was going to grieve and atone and grieve and atone until he ended up in the ground. He would find where his son was buried, even if he had to dig up every grave in Gotham cemetery with his bare hands. He’d find his son’s coffin and hold him one last time—broken bones and rotting flesh and death death death. Bruce would find his son and bury himself right beside him. 

The back of Bruce’s neck prickled; there was someone else here. Watching. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Bruce saw a shadow flicker behind a pillar.

The young priest.

That feeling returned—the strange, gripping one that made him want to reach out and call.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he turned his eyes back to Christ Risen. Arms wide, stretching out toward him. Toward Bruce.

Bruce could want absolution. Could want forgiveness. Could want his son to not hate him, even in his final moments.

But he did not deserve it.

He scrubbed a hand over his face. The church bells tolled again. He should probably get going. Tim was going to start worrying, more than he already did—

Footsteps behind him, soft on red carpet of the aisle. Soft as someone trained to be quiet.

Bruce froze in place, his stomach somersaulting. There was someone behind him.

“Is this what you call penance, old man?”

Bruce knew the voice instantly. It echoed throughout the chambers of his racing heart. It rattled around his spinning head.

Jason.

Bruce stood so fast Jason was surprised he didn’t fall right over.

And there he was. Eye to eye with his father.

Jason wasn’t breathing. He was pretty sure Bruce wasn’t, either.

Bruce’s face was white—like he’d seen a ghost.

Well, in his defense, he had.

Jason, on the other hand, was standing there, trying to tamper down the rising tide of fear threatening to pull him under. It tugged on his limbs, pulling him back to the library, back between those two bookshelves, back to hiding.

Just one step. Jason can take just one step.

He took a measured breath and swallowed hard, clenching and unclenching his fists at his sides.

Bruce remained frozen, an unreadable expression on his face—a constipated mixture of shock and grief and utter disbelief.

Bruce searched his face, no doubt taking in his scars. His father’s red-rimmed eyes traveled down to his clerics, the stole around his shoulders, the roman collar at his neck. The white in his curls.

Jason didn’t know what to do with all this…emotion on his father’s face. It made him feel weird. Like someone was pulling apart his soul like tissue paper and stuffing it back inside him, crinkled and ripped and never the same no matter how much he tried to smooth it out.

The rain intensified, a constant drum on the high of the roof. But it seemed to far. Everything seemed so far, actually. The world was him and his father and him and his father and—

Just when Jason thought the silence might shatter him, Bruce spoke.

“Jason?” he breathed.

Bruce raised a shaky, almost reverent hand. Like Jason was a mirage that might dissipate at the slightest movement. 

Jason took a step back. 

He wasn’t ready for that yet.

Bruce’s hand froze midair. After a moment, he brought it back down.

Jason’s tongue finally unstuck itself from the roof of his mouth.

“Yeah. It’s me, Bruce.”

Bruce’s lips parted, a shuddering breath escaping him.

“Are—are you real?” he whispered, his voice almost inaudible.

Jason…didn’t know how to answer that.

Well, the answer was yes, obviously, but the Frankenstein’s mess of emotion inside him felt like a jumbled ball of yarn—of which he could not find either end no matter how many times he turned it over in his palms.

He was angry he was scared he wanted to shout at his father he wanted to hug him—

He deserved to be angry. But he also deserved peace. 

And he could not have both.

Jason nodded. “Yes.”

Bruce put a hand on the pew to steady himself. 

Realization hit Jason like a brick.

His dad looked old.

His dark hair was streaked with gray. Crows feet that Jason didn’t remember crinkled at his eyes. The bags beneath his eyes were darker than Jason had ever seen them. In the dim light of the Nave, Jason could see the pale discoloration of a new scar on his chin—one Jason hadn’t been there for.

That tangled yarn of emotion turned to lead. It warped and expanded, pressing upon his lungs and his heart. When it reached for his throat, Jason swallowed it back down.

Bruce ran a hand down his face, through his hair, shock and grief and utter disbelief still written across his features.

“How—“

“I knew you were gonna ask that,” Jason said, cutting him off (why? He didn’t know. Maybe he wanted to be in control of the conversation. Maybe he wanted to be the one determining who gave what). “And let me tell you right now: I don’t know. I don’t know, okay? So put your analytical brain to bed for one second and just—"

Just what?

Talk to me?

Yell at me?

Scream? Cry?

Be my dad?

Bruce was still staring at him—like this was all a dream, like Jason might disappear if he so much as breathed wrong.

“Okay,” he said.

They stared at each other again. Jason wished he knew what was going on in his father’s head.

He wondered how much he should tell Bruce. How much of his past he should divulge, how much his father deserved to know. Jason knew it would kill Bruce if he didn’t have all the information. His stupid detective brain, always wanting evidence and proof and intel. It would eat Bruce alive if he didn’t know—and he’d find out either way. There was no going back now, anyways.

“Father—" his voice came out strained. He cleared his throat and tried again.

“Father Michael found me, five years ago”—Bruce’s expression morphed into complete shock. He stopped moving completely (Jason didn’t even know if he was still breathing)—“and brought me to a hospital. They told me I was in a coma for six months. Then they brought me back here.”

Jason fidgeted with the sleeves of his clerics. He couldn’t look his father in the eye, instead focusing on a dark knot of wood on a pew.

“I…I don’t really remember much. From the beginning. They enrolled me in seminary school to help with my…”

He risked a quick glance at Bruce. Somehow, he’d gone even paler than before. Jason could see a thousand gears spinning in his mind, a hundred thoughts moving behind those blue eyes. But written on his face, in addition to the shock, was something else—pain.

Jason refocused on the knot and kept talking. 

“Well I started…remembering. And then I…”

Didn’t want to come home.

Thought you abandoned me.

Thought you replaced me.

Thought you didn’t love me. That I was never your son.

Jason searched frantically for the words. His brain felt slow—syrupy and sticky in the presence of his father and sheer tide of emotion rolling off him. Jason swallowed thickly, suddenly feeling choked.

Even though Bruce had hardly spoke, Jason felt like he had to defend himself. 

“I found my calling,” he said at last. He glanced at Bruce.

There was longing etched into his father’s aging features. 

“Why didn’t you come home?”

The absurdity of the question slapped Jason clean across the face.

Jason gaped at him. Anger flared in his chest, hot and spiky. He grit his teeth. His fingers twitched at his sides. Fury poked at his heart like a stick to a wasp nest. The boy chained to that warehouse floor roared.

Jason had forgiven his younger self. He had not rejected him, nor invalidated his anger.

Yes, Bruce was grieving too.

Yes, Jason’s death had broke both of them.

But god dammit, Bruce.

“Why—why didn’t I come home?” Jason shook his head in utter disbelief. Despite his immense self control, a bitter laugh escaped him.

Jason had forgiven his younger self. The child inside of him that deserved better.

Jason had not, however, forgiven his father just yet. 

(Fury, no matter how justified, can blind.)

“Well, Bruce,” Jason said, acid in his voice. “I clawed my way out of the dirt, and guess what I found?”

Bruce looked like someone had punched him in the gut. His face twisted like he was going to be sick.

“Nothing. Not even a name. Not ‘beloved son’. Not ‘Jason Todd’. Not anything.”

Yes, the anger was definitely easier. Because beneath the fury hid the question: why? Why did you do this to me? 

So Jason took hold of the anger. Gripped it and its thorns tight, even when they cut his palms.

His rage hoped they cut his father. Made him bleed as Jason had.

Jason could finally ask.

“Why? Why did you do that to me?”

Tears, honest to God tears dripped from Bruce’s eyes. If Jason wasn’t so angry, he’d be startled.

“Jason—" he all but pleaded.

“What was I, huh? Some stray you fed for a while and forgot to put a bowl down for?’

Five years. Jason had five years worth and anger and bitterness and hurt and betrayal cocked and loaded, Bruce’s heart in the crosshairs. Jason was feeling trigger happy.

(He hadn’t been, though. He was ready to come down here and forgive.

But forgiveness always costs something. It stretches, it breaks open.

And Jason was about as fragile as a bomb.)

He steamrolled ahead.

“You know, Bruce, I never blamed you for my death,” Jason’s voice trembled only slightly. He curled his hands into fists.

Bruce looked like he’d been kicked. He finally opened his mouth, but no words came out. 

“I would’ve understood,” he said, softer now but no less sharp. “I would’ve understood if you were too wrecked to stand by my grave. If you couldn’t say the eulogy or throw the dirt on my casket or whatever.”

Jason shook his head, voice tight. The incense was so poignant he could taste it.

“But to bury me like I never existed? Like I was never your son? You erased me, Bruce. Because you couldn’t face it. Couldn’t face me.”

Saying it out loud…hurt. Like he’d always held out a secret, desperate hope that it was all a mistake. That his body got switched in the morgue (he was never supposed to wake up, so it wouldn’t have mattered, anyways). That his father had full intentions of putting him with the rest of his family. But speaking it made it seem…real.

And when all Bruce could do was flinch and clutch the edge of the pew, it cemented it as reality.

Jason tried and failed to blink tears away. They slipped down his cheeks.

God, he always hated that he was an angry crier.

A quiet voice crept up inside him.

He never stopped grieving. This is what it did to him.

He will mourn forever.

But Jason was angry. And he finally had the man in front of him. He silenced the voice. He aimed. And he fired.

“How long did you wait before replacing me, huh?” Jason said, locking eyes with Bruce.

He needs to look at me. To see.

“A month? A week? I trusted you!” The shout echoed off the stone walls.

His traitorous voice broke off. Jason swallowed and soldiered on.

“Was I ever your son? Or was I just some soldier you dressed up to die in your righteous campaign? I didn’t deserve to be murdered, Bruce! What kind of righteousness is that?”

Bruce looked like he’d been shot.

“Jason, please—" he rasped.

No.

“You couldn’t bear to put a name on my grave,” Jason spat. The words were like fire on his tongue. “But you put another kid in that cape before I’d even gone cold. You denied me my life because you couldn’t face my death. You turned me into what happened to me.”

Bruce’s knees gave out slightly. He sat, slow and heavy, on the pew like his body could no longer hold itself up.

Jason stayed standing. He had to. If he sat, he’d break.

The storm howled outside through the stained glass.

“And I don’t even mean Robin, Bruce. I mean me. Jason Todd. Because I was him first.”

He stared at the man who’d once been his father. The man who’d let him die. The man who’d mourned so violently he tried to erase the proof that Jason had ever been alive.

Turned his back on his boy who, in death, was still waiting for him.

“I was your son first. Or at least, I thought I was. You were my father, Bruce. If that ever meant anything to you.”

Past his abandonment and betrayal and hurt and longing, back in that place he never wanted to go, a jagged piece of his ribs pierced his heart.

I still want him to love me. I always wanted him to love me.

Our death broke him, too. I think…that’s why he did what he did.

He clenched his jaw. His throat burned. That tangled ball of leaden yarn bounced around his insides, knocking painfully into his lungs, his ribs, his head.

Peace didn’t lie in running from his past.

Even if Jason had no idea where he was going—no matter or dark the shadow or deep the valley—that God did.

A refusal to let the wound define him. 

Jason took a deep breath, the heat of his wounds still smoldering between them. The church bells chimed midnight.

If Jason forgave his father, he wouldn’t be erasing the wrong. He would be confronting it, head on, and still choosing love.

Because that is what he is called to do

“I deserved better,” he said quietly. “From you.”

Bruce bowed his head. When he finally looked up, there were tear tracks on both his cheeks. But still—he said nothing.

Jason didn’t know what he wanted him to say.

Forgiveness is not passive, but an act of great courage.

Jason closed his eyes. He unclenched his fists. He took another deep breath.

He had let his heart burn with anger. He had let it shackle him to the past, dying in that warehouse over and over and over. Wounds still bleeding, bones still breaking. A little boy waiting for his dad to come save him.

Do you want absolution?

Do you seek forgiveness?

I deserved better. From you.

He did. His son, his little boy. 

He was alive.

Bruce knew, he always knew, deep down, Jason had a little bit of magic in him.

He sat frozen in the pew, staring into his son’s face.

Realization hit Bruce like a brick.

His son was older. And Bruce never got to watch it happen. Never got to watch his little boy grow up.

His curls had tightened, the white streak slashed down the middle standing in sharp contrast to the rest of his dark locks. He was taller now—almost as tall as Bruce. His teal eyes were the exact same shade they used to be. The baby fat had melted off his cheeks, replaced by a strong, scarred jaw.

Oh God, the scars.

The last time Bruce had seen them, he’d been fifty feet away. But now, close up, Bruce could see them all. The one across his lip. The one running jagged from his mouth, up through his cheek and brow, across his temple and back into his hair. The ones on his hands.

Of course, Bruce had no doubt that more crisscrossed and marred his skin.

He’d seen them all.

Just once, when he’d first pulled his baby from the wreckage of that burning warehouse.

Bruce felt something crack inside of him. A rib, maybe. His fifth, or his sixth? He didn’t know. All he knew was that a shard of bone was pointed inwards, piercing his heart where it sat in his chest.

He was supposed to protect Jason from all of this. That was his job. 

And he had failed.

The air in Bruce’s lungs felt thick and heavy with guilt. As if every breath was a reminder of what he’d done.

If heaven had a landline, Bruce…what would you tell your son?

Jason had every right to say what he’d said. Bruce had nothing to offer in return—no justification that wouldn’t reek of cowardice.

And now that he sat here, in the house of Jason’s God, pinned under those teal eyes, every apology that rose to his lips felt empty—too small and too not enough for all the hurt that he’d caused.

He’d buried his son like a secret failure. Like a shame. He’d tried, desperately, to pour cement into the gaping whole in his chest. He’d failed Jason in life and in death and in mourning.

He’d turned his back on his boy who, in death, is still waiting for him.

The silence stretched taut, but it wasn’t completely empty. Bruce could feel Jason’s pain like a physical thing. It hung in the air between, crackling like the lightning behind the stained glass of the church.

As they sat there—years of pain and guilt and abandonment charged between them—that wretched question knocked on Bruce’s heart.

Did you hate me? When I was too late—when you finally realized I wasn’t going to make it—did you hate me?

Did you think I didn’t care? That I didn’t love you? That you were never my son?

Bruce squeezed his eyes shut. He pressed the palms of his hands into his sockets.

He’d lived that moment a thousand times. Nightmare after nightmare, he heard Jason’s voice calling out for him. He had arrived seconds late. And Jason had died believing that no one was coming. Believing his father had left him to die.

No wonder he’s angry.

He should be.

That. That is what Bruce deserved.

Bruce had failed to reach him. In that damn warehouse. When his magic little boy had clawed his way back. Through earth and wood and utter impossibility.

And what had Bruce done?

Pretended he never existed.

His throat tightened, an invisible hand reaching up through his lungs and squeezing. 

He had been afraid. 

Afraid to see his son’s name permanently etched into some damned granite. Afraid that if he saw it, if he so much as spoke it aloud, that he would shatter. That the myth of the Batman would break under the gravity of a father’s grief. So he ran—ran from the name, from the grave, from the very boy himself.

Jason had never stopped being Bruce’s son. Bruce had just stopped being Jason’s father.

He opened his eyes. They burned with tears. He stood, though his legs were hollow and unsteady. He faced his son, who stood before him like a blazing knight of righteous fury. But there was something else there, too. Something hidden in Jason’s teal eyes that only a father could see.

Longing. 

The rain pounded on the church roof. The space smelled of incense and damp earth.

“Jason,” bruce said, voice hoarse.

Words are so dual-natured. When looking back, they are completely empty. Useless vessels of what-ifs, could’ve-beens, and regret. Words cannot change the past—only define it. And it is in this sense they are hollow.

But when looking forward, they are carriers of the greatest power. Of change. Of potential and opportunity and growth.

Bruce knew his simple “I’m sorry” would do very, very, very little. But it was all he had.

“I was a coward,” he said simply. He felt like he hadn’t spoken in years.

Not these words, maybe. Just turned them over and over in his mind until they ran smooth like river stones.

“I couldn’t—couldn’t face my failure. I couldn’t face you. So I convinced myself…”

What Bruce was about to say filled his mouth like bile.

“I convinced myself it was mercy to…remove your name. To remove you. I told myself it would help me survive.”

Bruce dropped his eyes. He couldn’t bear to see the look on his son’s face.

“It wasn’t mercy, Jay,” he said softly. “It was fear.”

“I failed you. Over and over and over I failed you. And when—“

Bruce cleared his throat, voice thick.

“And when you’d…died. I couldn’t—I couldn’t—"

A shuddering breath escaped him. His looked into his son’s eyes.

“I couldn’t bear it, Jason. I couldn’t contend with your absence. I couldn’t handle how I’d led you to your death.”

A stray tear slipped down Jason’s scarred cheek. Bruce wanted nothing more than to reach out and gently brush it away.

But he couldn’t, because his son—

“Did you hate me?” The question slipped out of Bruce before he could pull it back.

He didn’t answer immediately. Several emotions flickered across Jason’s face, too quickly for Bruce to name. Jason’s eyes searched Bruce’s, brows taught, lips slightly parted.

“Because I would have,” he whispered. “I would have hated me.”

He swallowed hard, shame clogging his throat. He pressed his hand to his face.

“I wanted to be your father,” he said. “I meant to be.”

That was a confession in its own right.

He wanted to take his son’s hand. But he couldn’t. So he settled for standing, just a few feet away, hoping that Jason could feel every ounce of emotion and regret and sorrow and guilt that Bruce put into these words:

“I’m sorry, Jason. You never stopped being my son—I stopped being your father.”

The words hung there, heavy and honest and straight from the gaping hole in Bruce’s chest. Although, the hole wasn't only just in his chest now—it was everywhere. It had expanded and warped and torn Bruce right open.

Jason looked away this time. He ran a shaking hand through his hair. 

He always does that, Bruce thought absently as the muffled bells tolled again, when he gets nervous.

Finally Jason spoke. His voice was raw.

“I never hated you,” he said quietly, still not looking at Bruce.

Bruce was sure one of the guilty chains coiled around his ribs loosened. Just a hair.

“Never.”

When Jason met his eyes, the fury that had dominated his features had lessened. Bruce didn’t know if he should feel grateful or guilty. Maybe both.

Jason swallowed, as if he was about to say something incredibly difficult.

“Bruce—" his voice cracked. He took a breath and tried again.

“I forgive you, Bruce. For not—for not saving me.”

He didn’t deserve it. Bruce didn’t deserve it. Not after everything he’d done—

Bruce felt dismantled. Like someone had taken every single piece of him and laid him bare. Every emotion, every action, every facet of his grief on display. There were no more walls hiding the ugliest, rawest, most broken parts of him away. His grief had seen the light. So had his guilt, and his shame.

And Jason had—?

“But that doesn’t make any of this right. It doesn’t excuse what you did, Bruce. It—it doesn’t. You messed up. You messed up bad, Bruce. And I—"

He faltered again, running his fingers over the bottom of the red stole.

Oh my God, Bruce thought. He looks so young. 

The thought nearly strangled him. It wound its hands around his neck, traveling down into his chest. It gripped his heart in its cold fingers, pulling and tugging on his brittle heartstrings until they nearly snapped. His boy. His little boy who wasn’t little anymore and Bruce didn’t get to see any of it.

“And I’m still angry at you,” he said, voice low. “I’m still…upset. I’m still hurt by what you’ve done. This…this isn’t for you. This is for me, okay? Because I—"

His voice cracked, cut off by an almost-sob. His eyes welled with tears. They coated his thick lashes, a few spilling onto his cheeks.

“Because I deserved better.”

Jason took another deep breath, like he was trying to physically expel something off his shoulders. 

“But I forgive you. My death was not your fault. Neither was what happened when I came back. You didn’t know. I didn’t—“

His voice dropped to a whisper. He looked away from Bruce again, focusing on his fingers gently tracing over the embroidered golden cross on the red fabric.

“I didn’t come home.”

Silence. Even the rain seemed drowned out. Bruce felt…

Well, he felt. What he felt was entirely up for debate. A tide of pure emotion was rising—Bruce could feel himself getting pulled in the undertow.

Jason sniffed and looked back up. Bruce could see the walls climbing behind his eyes, defenses rising.

“My home is here now,” he said. “I—I have a life here. Now.”

“Okay,” Bruce said softly.

Jason nodded, worrying his raw lip. They fell into another silence—this one still charged and heavy, but less…heated.

The church bells tolled again. One a.m.

Jason sighed. “You can go,” he said at last.

“Jason—"

“You can go.” His voice took on a slight edge. He turned to leave, but he didn’t take a step.

Bruce didn’t want to leave. He wanted to hold his son in his arms and never let go. He wanted to be the father we was supposed to be. 

But was it too late? Was it too late for him? For Jason? For them?

Bruce desperately didn’t want it to be too late.

Mechanical arms shrugged on his coat. He felt his phone buzz in the pocket.

Tim.

He suppressed a wince. The poor kid was probably freaking out. 

Well…he’d been preoccupied—

“Is that him?” Jason said without turning around. 

Everything between them snapped cold.

Bruce didn’t know how to answer. He didn’t know what to say without breaking the fragile…something between him and his long-lost little boy.

So he told the truth.

“Yes.”

Jason didn’t answer. He walked up the aisle and out of the Nave.

He did not turn around. 

Chapter Text

Jason’s knees ached from kneeling in pews of the stone chapel. He’d gone back to his room in the rectory after his conversation with Bruce, but sleep would not come. His tired legs had carried him to the chapel when it was still dark. It was morning now, light filtering through the thin stained-glass slits, casting living colors across the small space. Dust particles danced in the kaleidoscopic rays.

He might’ve noticed the beauty, if his head and heart weren’t such a hopeless tangle.

The chapel itself was older than the church—some say even older than Gotham herself. The stones were worn down with age, the pews, though newer, worn smooth by reverent parishioners in search of quiet and peace. Cobwebs glinted in the corners. Along the walls, dozens of red candles flickered, filling the space with a warm, waxy smell. A statue of Mary sat at the front: Our Lady of Grace, palms upturned, a gentle smile on her carved face.

Jason rubbed his thumb over the rosary in his hands, the smooth beads catching in the divots of his scars. 

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…

Jason had always liked Mary.

He’d often wondered what measure of faith she must’ve had. The valley was dark—the literal shadow of death itself hanging over her—and yet, she walked. Even with no light, she walked. Because she knew Who directed her steps. What measure of faith she had to have to sit at the foot of the cross and know that this was not the end. That her little boy was not only going to die, but also was going to rise again—and take the whole world with Him.

And the only proof of that truth was faith. Jesus told Mary He would rise again on the third day. Mary trusted Him. And she walked.

Jason reached up and rubbed his gritty, swollen eyes. There were no tears left in him—of that he was positive. His limbs hung heavy. A headache throbbed at his temples.

Did you hate me?

The question ricocheted around his mind like a stray bullet.

I wanted to be your father. I meant to be.

Jason pressed his fingers into his eyes, ignoring how the rosary beads bit into his cheek.

I never hated you.

His chest shuddered with another swallowed sob. He pulled his hands away from his face, bleary eyes gazing up at the statue of Mary. 

Jason never hated his father. Jason could never hate his father.

If he wanted peace, he couldn’t hate the life that had shaped him. But maybe—just maybe—he could hate the way it ended. Hate the pain, the betrayal, the abandonment. Hate the torture that had cleaved his life in two. Hate everything that came after. Hate what he and his father were now.

He hadn’t deserved it. He was good.

Maybe Jason’s suffering wasn’t beautiful—but his survival was. Not the rain or the valley, but the flowers.

And wasn’t God a master Gardner?

Jason’s stomach rumbled.

Right. He hadn’t eaten since last night.

Jason grimaced. For some reason, the thought of food wasn’t appealing in the slightest.

He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with incense and the waxy smell of candles. The church bells tolled. 

Bruce knows I’m alive. He knows where I am.

He felt…lighter, almost. Like he’d just released himself of a deep dark secret. Did it get scarier the more he thought about it? Terrifyingly so. But was it also…freeing, to know that he no longer had to hide like he used to?

Absolutely. 

Jason thought of Father Michael. He wondered what the old priest would think of him now.

Do not be afraid, I am with you.

I have called you each by name.

Come and follow Me,

I will bring you home.

I love you and you are Mine.

Jason almost startled as an old floorboard creaked behind him. 

There was someone else here.

“May I sit with you?”

Here he was again. But this time, it was different.

I forgive you, Bruce. For not—for not saving me.

The chill of the early morning nipped at his cheeks and nose.

My death was never your fault.

Every time Bruce turned the words over in his mind, a cord tightened around his ribs. He had walked into the house of his dead son’s God—and in a miraculous twist, had recieved absolution from the boy himself. 

For the rest of the night—because Bruce could not sleep, hardly even close his eyes without seeing Jason's scarred face—Bruce had worried he was dreaming. That this was all some sick nightmare—that he’d have to wake and lose his son all over again. But morning came, and the revelation was still true.

Jason was alive.

His little magic boy was alive.

Bruce’s feet were cemented to the stones on the steps on the church. The dewy grass sparkled in the morning sun. 

He should go.

Jason had told him to go.

If he pushed too hard now, he could lose Jason forever.

If he walked away now, he could lose Jason forever. 

Bruce did not want to go.

Too long—he had spent too long running from his son. From his death. From his life.

Bruce had filled up the whole his boy had left with cement—and Jason had grown through it like dandelions in sidewalk cracks.

The church bells tolled. Bruce shifted his weight from foot to foot. He stood before the big wooden doors now, a little unsure of how he got there.

If he stayed outside, he would be giving Jason his space. But maybe Jason didn’t need space. Maybe, he needed proof.

Maybe his son needed proof that his father still loved him—even after everything.

“May I sit with you?”

Jason froze.

Hearing his father’s voice was still…unnatural.

He swallowed hard and hastily scrubbed his face, turning slowly.

Bruce stood in the doorway of the chapel, looking about as worse as Jason felt.

Jason’s first instinct was to say no. Was to tell Bruce to get out, old man. He clenched his jaw to stop himself, the dying embers of his anger rising to his lips. 

But…

Our death broke him, too. I think…that’s why he did what he did.

Was this Bruce’s olive branch?

Jason clutched the beads of the rosary so tightly they bit into his fingers. He swallowed again before saying nodding. Jason did not trust his voice. 

Bruce approached slowly, his footsteps echoing in the small space. Jason knew the man could move silently—he was doing that on purpose.

For Jason. To show that this was Bruce, and not the Batman.

Bruce slid into the end of Jason’s pew, making a point to not get to close. Jason was silently grateful. He still…wasn’t ready. For that.

Bruce cleared his throat. Jason felt a flare of irritation. He looked away, focusing on the multicolored reds, yellows, and greens of the adjacent stained glass window.

So we’re just gonna sit in silence? And be awkward?

After an agonizing five minutes, Jason finally decided to break the silence.

“Thought I told you to get out,” he said, voice hoarse. There was little heat to his words.

Bruce’s head snapped his. His eyes were wide—red-rimmed and weary. In fact, Jason realized, all of Bruce looked completely exhausted. His suit was rumpled, his hair sticking up in odd directions like he’d hastily ran a hand through it instead of a comb.

Jason wondered how he looked right now. Probably not much better.

“Jason—" Bruce began, voice wrecked. His whole body was tense. “I—I can leave—"

“No, it’s—" Jason huffed a tired sigh. “You can stay.”

Bruce relaxed into the pew, though there was still tension in his shoulders. It got quiet again.

Jason refocused on Our Lady of Grace. He whispered a few more Hail Mary’s, slipping the beads of the rosary between his fingers, trying to ground himself. Being in his father’s presence was just so…

Well, weird was honestly the only way he could describe it.

He had always dreamed of an apology. A groveling that he could reject.

Jason had gotten what he’d wanted, in a sense. His death shattered Bruce—it tore his father open and he’d been a bleeding, festering wound ever since. That didn’t excuse what he’d done, and it never will, but still—Jason didn’t…want his father to mourn forever. 

At some point, Jason hoped his father could heal.

(Jason knew he was a little hypocritical in this aspect—even he hadn’t healed from what he’d endured, or what Bruce had done.

But maybe, it was time to walk. To step forward, even with the uncertainty.)

Jason finished praying and slipped the rosary into his pocket. He sat back in the pew and ran a hand through his hair, feeling Bruce’s eyes on him. He turned—

And Bruce didn’t look away. There was something raw in his expression, something unguarded and open and grieving. His eyes searched Jason’s scars, his hair, his clothes—as if he still couldn’t quite believe Jason was really there. The intensity of it made Jason squirm.

He shifted in the pew, uncomfortable “What?”

Bruce didn’t answer. He blinked slowly, like coming out of a daze.

“Jason,” he said at last, voice rough. He stared down at his hands, clasped so tightly in his lap his knuckles had gone white. “I—I know I’ve hurt you.”

Jason’s spine went rigid, every muscle tensing. He had to remind himself to keep breathing.

“And I know,” Bruce continued, quieter this time, “I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”

Jason opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. His throat burned, his mind filled with the same syrupy thickness from the previous night. All he could do was feel.

“But you’re alive.” Bruce looked up again. His eyes glistened. Again, Jason felt unprepared for the sheer amount of emotion rolling off his father. “And I…”

He broke off, swallowing hard.

“If you want me to leave,” he said, voice splintering, “and never come back—then I will. I’ll do whatever you need me to. But if there’s even the smallest chance…if there’s any way you could ever let me—"

Jason felt like the air had been knocked out of his lungs. The only proof he had that this wasn’t a dream was the ache that had settled in his chest.

Bruce’s next words came out as a whisper.

“I know I don’t deserve it,” he repeated. Something inside of Jason cracked and broke open. For the second time, he felt his soul in free fall. “But I want to be your father again.”

Jason stared at him, completely frozen. His body wouldn’t move. His tongue felt too big for his mouth. That tangled mess inside him—the rage, the abandonment, the bitterness—it all folded in on itself like a collapsing star. He’d couldn’t untangle it—maybe he never would.

A second chance.

Bruce was asking for a second chance.

Bruce looked away, blinking rapidly. A tear slipped down his cheek. Jason had absolutely no idea what to do—he still wasn’t used to seeing Bruce cry.

Every part of him wanted something different. He was torn to bits, pulled in a thousand different directions.

How easy it would be to deny him.

To tell him no—you don’t deserve it.

Jason had chosen a different life. A better one. One that demanded he chose mercy every single day.

Jason knew he couldn’t stay angry forever. He would never have peace—but more importantly, the forgiveness he offered Bruce would never be true. But still—allowing his wounds to be transformed…hurt. And still danced too perilously close acceptance. To defeat.

(Maybe accepting Bruce’s love—much like accepting the love of Christ—would not be defeat, but surrender.)

Healing took time, and Jason knew this (more intimately than most, he liked to think). But the in between bits—the painful, slow steps toward healing that often required great sacrifice—were proving to be immensely difficult.

But Jason could have everything he’d ever wanted.

He wasn’t that son anymore—but maybe he could be.

But the cost was his anger. The cost was his hurt and his pain—the wounds he carried on his heart, carved into his soul just like his scars.

Real forgiveness is a gift. It is setting the prisoner free, and realizing that all along the prisoner was you.

Jason blinked tears out of his own eyes.

“I—I’m not…him, anymore,” he choked out, voice rough around the edges. And now he couldn’t meet his father’s eyes.

Because he wasn’t. That little boy had been murdered, and a part of Jason was left in the ground when he came back.

He leveled Bruce with a hard gaze, voice sharpening.

“And if you’re looking for him,” he said, voice like steel, “Then do us both a favor—get out like I’d told you. And stay out.”

The retort was flimsy, fear doing the talking. If Bruce turned away now, Jason didn’t think he’d survive it this time. He’d fought death and won—but he couldn’t fight his father abandoning him. Again. He couldn’t fight being nameless and unwanted by the very man around which his whole world had once orbited. Not a second time.

Bruce neither flinched nor looked away.

“I’m looking for you, Jay.”

Each word landed like a punch to the gut. Jason’s breath froze in his lungs. He looked down, jaw clenched, shoulders rigid. The multicolored beams of the stained glass no longer felt peaceful. They felt like spotlights—Jason was center stage and he couldn’t remember his lines. 

Several minutes passed.

Jason breathed out slowly, eyes still trained on the worn wood of the pew. 

“Well, if you’re gonna keep showing up, you better start pulling your weight. You’ve got deep pockets, old man, and there’s a lot of people here who need help.”

Jason tentatively glanced up.

Bruce’s lips twitched in a faint smile. He nodded.

By remaining stagnant, Jason had trapped Bruce in that warehouse, too. Clutching his little boy with his too-still chest in his arms one last time.

And death had already had its way with Jason.

Maybe, just maybe, it was about time that life finally got a say.

Soft afternoon sun filtered through the trees of the church gardens. Children’s giggles echoed off the stone walls as they ran through the grass, followed by mothers chiding their youngins about green stains on their Sunday best. Picnic tables lined with food accompanied the gentle floral scent of blooming spring flowers. Jason and Father Augustine stood off to the side, organizing the dessert table as more families showed up with food.

The gold embroidery of their white chasubles sparkled in the sun. It was a special day, after all. The second graders had taken their First Communion—now, it was time for celebration.

Despite the joy around him, Jason’s emotions were no less tangled than when he’d last spoke with Bruce in the chapel the previous morning. If anything, the storm inside him had only intensified—leaving him feeling jittery and exposed.

Father Augustine, of course, had noticed.

Jason watched a gaggle of children sprint by as Father Augustine took a decadent looking cheesecake.

“Jay,” he said, voice soft as he handed Jason the dessert, “What’s on your mind, dear boy? You—you’ve been troubled as of late.”

Jason set the cheesecake down between the brownies and the cross-shaped sugar cookies. His eyes flicked to where Bruce was standing across the garden—pushing two kids on swings alongside Mary. 

It seemed so…normal. So domestic, so regular and mundane. It that tangled knot tightened around Jason’s heart.

Bruce had come to mass today.

Jason hadn’t seen him at first—he was too busy directing the children to their places and running through last-minute reminders of the procession. It wasn’t until he’d turned to join the entrance procession that he’d seen a tall, dark figure walk through the doors and dip their fingers in the holy water.

Jason had froze where he stood (he was really starting to hate how he did that), eyes following Bruce as he knelt and filed into a pew. Then the music had begun, and Jason was forced to compartmentalize the hell out of everything that had happened the past week.

It was Jason’s first First Communion.

He’d watched Father Michael baptize most of these children.

They were counting on him.

“Jay?”

Jason blinked and shook his head. He was back in the garden. He took a deep, steadying breath.

“Sorry Father Augustine,” he said, running a sheepish, almost-trembling hand through his hair.

Father Augustine’s white brows knit tight, concern lining his aging features. His eyes followed to where Jason had just been looking. Something crossed his face—an expression Jason couldn’t quite read.

“It’s because of him, isn’t it?”

Jason busied his hands with the napkins that had been ruffled in the breeze. He found himself blinking tears out of his eyes, a lump forming in his throat.

“Jay…who is he?”

Jason bit his lip, blinking as rapidly as he could to dispel the tears. Without looking up, he said, “an old friend.”

He didn’t need to see Father Augustine to tell the aging priest didn’t believe him in the slightest. That open, exposed feeling burned in Jason’s chest. He didn’t like it.

To Jason’s surprise, Father Augustine didn’t respond right away. He simply stood beside Jason, watching the children laugh and stumble across the grass, lips and teeth stained various shades of popsicle. They waved at Jason with sticky hands. Jason smiled and waved back.

An old woman—Mrs. Perkins—dropped off a series of poundcakes so dense Jason was surprised she could carry them all. Father Augustine set them on the table.

Mrs. Perkins placed a warm, wrinkled hand his shoulder.

“You did very well today, Father Peter,” she said with a kind smile. “My granddaughter told me all about how you helped her remember where she was supposed to go. She gets nervous about these things, sometimes. You made her feel safe.”

Jason felt a flush creep up his cheeks. He meant to say thank you, but the words got stuck in his throat. He nodded instead. 

Mrs. Perkins leaned in closer. “Also—I didn’t know Bruce Wayne was Catholic. When did that happen?”

All Jason could do was shrug.

“Oh well,” she said. “Maybe you can convince him to donate to that book drive of yours. Isn’t there a library in Wayne Manor? There’s no way he spends a lot of time in there.”

Jason had to remind himself to keep breathing.

Yes—there is a library in Wayne Manor. It has an expansive first edition collection—curated by me.

Thankfully, Father Augustine took over.

“Well, Amelia, it was lovely, as always. Any way I could convince you to part with this recipe?” he asked, gesturing to the poundcake he was plating.

Mrs. Perkins huffed. “Family secret, Father. Just like the last time I told you.”

They parted ways with a chuckle, and it fell silent again.

“I trust you know the parable of the Prodigal Son?” Father Augustine said at last, casting Jason a glance. He added a plastic knife to each plate for slicing.

Jason huffed a laugh through his nose. A bit on the nose there, Father, don’t you think?

He liked to think Father Augustine didn’t know. But Mary had figured it out before she really even knew Jason. And Father Augustine seemed to know everything. 

As if reading his mind, the old priest chuckled. “I’ve been alive a great many years, Jay.”

There was a twinkle in his eye when he added, “And I’ve never seen a father who looked so much like his son.”

“I’m adopted,” Jason replied automatically. He reached for a knife and began cutting the cheesecake into slices. A gentle breeze ruffled his hair. He tried to swallow the stubborn lump in his throat, tried to ignore how badly he wanted to run back to the library.

All Father Augustine did was shrug.

“But you do know the Parable, yes?”

Jason kept his eyes on the table. His hands shook so badly he had to put the knife down. Instead, he returned to organizing the (already organized) napkins with a focus that bordered on obsessive. 

“I didn’t run off with an inheritance and blow it all on wine and casinos.”

“No,” Father Augustine said, tone warm and even. “You were taken. And the house—the man—was never the same without you.”

Jason’s hands froze. Slowly, he looked up, meeting watery green eyes.

Father Augustine continued, voice lower now, for Jason alone. “But he never stopped waiting for you. Never stopped loving you, never stopped grieving you. He loved you so much he thought he could hold on to you forever. You never left him, Jay, and the door never locked behind you.”

Jason looked back across the garden where Bruce stood. One of the kids had thrown an arm around his waist; Bruce accepted it with a tentative, awkward pat on the shoulder. Mary was snickering from where she now sat in the grass, allowing a young girl to braid flowers in her neon hair.

“It’s different,” Jason said quietly. “He’s not the father from the story. And I’m not…I can’t be the son who came crawling back. I just…I can’t.”

“No,” Father Augustine agreed. “You’re the son who survived the famine. The son who found shelter in another land. Who built something from the ashes of his life. Something good, in the face of all the violence he’s endured.

“That son, Jay. You’re that son.”

Jason blinked—throat tight, chest tighter.

“And him?” Jason nodded toward Bruce. “What does that make him?”

There was a long pause. Father Augustine brushed his hands of crumbs. Someone had opened a bottle of bubbles—several children ran by, chasing the largest.

Finally, Father Augustine said, “A man who carries a lot of pain. A man who has yet to allow that pain to lead him to healing. He doesn’t…he doesn’t know how to love without fear. So he loves with regret.”

Jason stared.

“I spoke to him, a few nights ago,” Father Augustine said, once again reading Jason’s silence. “He didn’t say much, and neither did I. But before I left, I asked him one question: If heaven had a landline, what would you tell your son?”

Jason’s breath caught in his chest. His hands were shaking again—he felt for the comfortable weight of his rosary in his pocket. The storm inside him intensified into a hurricane. Around him, the wind blew and the water rose, threatening to drown him. And he was unmoored, his little boat doomed to capsize.

“I don’t know what he would’ve said,” Father Augustine went on. His voice was gentle but firm, and he held Jason’s gaze.

Father Augustine nodded in Bruce’s direction. “But I know what he did.”

He came back. He came back when I pushed him away. Even when I was still angry. He met me where I was. He’s trying to, at least. 

Despite everything—he came back.

Jason wondered what Bruce would’ve done if he’d seen Jason a long way off, just like the father in the story. Would he have run out to meet Jason in the field? Hug him and kiss him like he’d never left? Like he’d never been taken? Would he rejoice now that his lost son his home? “‘For this son of mine was [as good as] dead and is alive again; he was lost and has been found.’”

“You don’t owe him anything,” Father Augustine said. “But grace isn’t about what’s owed, is it?”

Forgiveness affirms the humanity of both the trespasser and the trespassed—declaring that neither are beyond redemption.

That grace will always overcome.

“No,” Jason said. “I guess not.”

Father Augustine placed a warm hand on Jason’s shoulder.

“Give him a second chance, Jay. If not for him…then for the little boy inside you who misses his dad.”

Jason didn’t trust himself to speak. He just nodded, with a tight jaw and shining eyes, looking back out over the garden

Another breeze stirred the white and gold of his vestments. A birdsong floated in the air, a cheery question-and-answer rhythm. Bruce was back to pushing a child on the swings beneath the wide spring sky, his face soft and…

nostalgic.

A woman—the same woman who’d convinced him to walk into St. Luke’s all those nights ago—stood beside him.

Her bruises had nearly faded now—only a faint scab just below her eye remained. Her many bracelets clinked as she pushed a young blonde girl on the swings. Bruce had been meaning to ask her name, but he couldn’t tear his eyes from Jason—who stood across the garden, helping Father Augustine set up the dessert table.

He looked…different today. Older, in his priestly attire. The chasuble lent him a kind of quiet authority Bruce wasn’t prepared for. Would never be prepared for, actually.

Pride swelled in Bruce’s chest. But beneath the warmth was something...else. Something heavier and much harder to name (grief—it's grief).

He had no idea today was so special. He didn’t know what a “First Communion” was, nor did he know that all the families would gather in the church gardens afterward for celebration and a picnic. But he’d been hoping to talk to Jason after the mass—so he’d stayed. 

Jason, however, had been occupied—and Bruce wasn’t so naive to pretend Jason wasn’t avoiding him. He’d let Jason have his space. Bruce just desperately hoped being here was enough.

Somehow, he’d ended up on kid duty. Or rather, he’d been drafted—dragged off to the swings by a bold little girl and her more hesitant brother.

“You’re tall,” the girl had said. “And strong. You’ll be good at pushing.”

“Yeah,” the little boy had echoed, his tiny fingers wrapping around Bruce’s calloused hand. Bruce’s heart squeezed painfully in the open wound that was his ribcage. 

“Higher, Mr. Wayne!”

Bruce chuckled softly, the sound strange in his chest.

The day was beautiful—sunny and warm, with a gentle breeze ruffling the flowering trees. The scent of grilled food, Mac and cheese, and something sweet wafted through the air.

“He’s a good kid,” the woman beside him said suddenly.

Bruce blinked. “Sorry?”

She nodded toward Jason. “Father Peter. He’s done a lot of good for the people here. Me included.”

Right. Father Peter. The name Jason had chosen. Who he was now.

Needing more time (probably forever) to process that, Bruce asked the woman her name.

“Mary.”

“Nice to meet you, Mary. I’m—“

She cut him off with a laugh. “I know who you are,” she said. “Between the Gucci umbrella and the blacked out Audi you pulled up in, it wasn’t hard. Oh, and you’re fu—freakin’ Bruce Wayne.”

Bruce gave a faint, wry smile, internally cursing himself. Of course the Audi wasn’t subtle—he should’ve known better. Jason had told him as much many, many years ago.

His gaze drifted back to Jason again. Children ran by, waving at him. Parishioners dropped off their desserts and greeted him like family.

Bruce’s chest ached with a kind of quiet awe. He wasn’t surprised, of course. That’s his little boy, after all.

He turned to Mary, about to say something when the little girl piped up first.

“Hey!” 

Mary slowed her swing.

“You want a flower crown?” the girl said, her big brown eyes scanning Mary’s neon streaks with deep, serious interest.

“Do I want a flower crown?” Mary scoffed. “Hell—heck yeah, I want a flower crown.”

The little girl giggled and tugged Mary into the soft grass.

“Wait here,” she instructed. “I’m gonna go get some flowers!”

Mary nodded, amused, and the girl ran off.

Bruce hesitated, then asked quietly, “How did he help you?”

Mary looked up at him, then away. It was quiet for a moment—a gentle breeze drifting through the large cherry oak above them, several pink petals falling from its branches and fluttering down near Bruce’s feet. Somewhere in the distance, the little boy’s mother called for him, and he ran off toward her without complaint.

Finally, Mary spoke.

“I did what I had to do to get by,” she began with a shrug, fiddling with a few blades of grass. “And that required some…less than saintly nighttime gigs.”

Bruce nodded, already putting it together.

Mary’s hands stilled. “One night, some assholes cornered me. Some big fu—freakin’ guys, too. And Tony usually carries, be he wasn’t that night, thank God. Still, I was pretty sure I was screwed. They were gettin’ rough ‘cause I wasn’t givin’ ‘em what they wanted. Then this priest—this kid—walks up. Didn’t even know who I was, or why I was out that late, and he didn’t ask, either.

“He just put himself between me and them. Told them to back off. And when they didn’t…well, Mr. Wayne, I can tell ya: I ain’t ever seen anything like it. He took ‘em down. All quick and stuff. No fear, no second thoughts, nothin’. He moved like he knew exactly what had to be done.”

She looked up at Bruce now, something raw and grateful in her eyes. “Then he gave me his jacket and dropped me off at the shelter on Sixth. Two days later later, he hands me clothes and tells me ‘You got work at five.’”

She shook her head, a soft laughter escaping her. “I didn’t get it, at first. Come to find out, he’d gotten me a job down at Giovanni’s. It pays well, and the hours are flexible. He even said the church could help with rent, but I drew the line there. I’m not a charity case.”

Her eyes found his again.

“He’s got a good heart, Mr. Wayne. Real good. He doesn’t talk about it, ’n he doesn’t expect anything in return. He just…helps. You don’t find a lotta people like that in general, let alone in Gotham.”

Bruce’s throat tightened. He already knew all this, of course. He’d seen it, firsthand, just as Mary had.

Jason was angry at the world—for its injustice. For the way it…hurt people. For no reason.

Bruce felt a pang of…something in his chest—a tight, jumbled knot of pride and grief. It both soothed and stung the hole between his fifth and sixth ribs. A complicated bittersweet feeling that left him feeling very full and very empty.

You may not be that boy anymore, Jay, Bruce thought, a small smile tugging at his lips as he blinked hard against the burn in his eyes, but you’ve still got his heart.

The little girl returned then, her arms overflowing with different flowers. She sat beside Mary and began gently weaving the blossoms into her hair.

Bruce opened his mouth, unsure of what to say—all the feelings inside him were too tangled to name—but before he could speak, another small arm wrapped around his waist.

He stiffened, glancing down.

The boy from earlier had returned, hugging him tightly, face smooshed into his side.

“My mom told me to say thank you for pushing me, Mr. Wayne.”

Bruce…really didn’t know what to do. He gazed at the small, earnest face pressed against his side. Slowly, awkwardly, he freed his arm and gave the boy a hesitant pat on the shoulder. Mary smothered a laugh beside him.

“Uh—you’re welcome, chum,” Bruce managed, still patting.

The kid grinned and peeled his arms away. “Okay! Bye!”

He took off once more to where his mother was standing, her face bright red with embarrassment.

Sorry, she mouthed.

Bruce gave her a small wave and a smile.

He missed when his kids were that small—back when their arms still reached for him without hesitation.

Mary tilted her face toward Bruce again. “I think you care about him. A lot.” She leaned forward, plucking a stray flower from the ground and twirling it in her fingers. “But if you’re gonna be here—if you’re gonna show up in the way he deserves—you better be ready to prove it.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Bruce said, and he didn’t think he’d ever meant anything more in his entire life.

Mary studied him like she was trying to decide if she believed him.

After a beat, she nodded. “Good.”

The little girl beamed and declared Mary’s hair “finished.” Mary gave her a dramatic bow from where she sat in the grass and tucked the flower she was holding behind the child’s ear. The little girl giggled before skipping off to join her mother and brother.

Bruce watched the girl go, then looked back over toward the dessert table—Jason still stood in deep conversation with Father Augustine. For a second, Bruce didn’t see Father Peter. 

He saw a little boy with a gleam in his eye and a fire in his chest unlike anything he’d ever seen before. He saw his boy—his Jaybird.

Another faint smile pulled at his lips. He’d been doing that a lot today. It was…nice. 

Maybe it was because of Jason.

A small hand tugged on his sleeve.

Bruce looked down. A new child—a boy with curls and chocolate smeared on one cheek—stood beside him, clutching a toy airplane in one small hand.

“Can you push me?” he asked, eyes wide and hopeful. “Please?”

“Sure,” Bruce said quietly. “Hop up.”

The boy cheered and scrambled into the swing. Bruce stepped up behind him and gave him a gentle push. The sun warmed his shoulders, a nearby bird chirping a cheerful question-and-answer rhythm. Flower petals danced across his shoes. Bubbles drifted through the air, catching the light.

Nostalgia hit him full force in the chest. Bruce blinked rapidly, dispelling both the tears and the memories. Another little boy with a head full of curls who trusted him with his whole world.

Do you seek forgiveness?

Do you want absolution?

Maybe he didn’t deserve it. 

Maybe that was the whole point.

Chapter Text

Look. Tim doesn’t care about Bruce’s love life, okay? What he does in his free time is one-hundred percent his business. Yuck, barf, whatever.

But…y’know, Tim’s a good son who cares about his dad. If someone’s going to break his heart, Tim’s at least going to have enough dirt on them to make them regret their entire existence (as well as the existence of any loved ones. Tim’s blackmail was polyamorous like that). 

So when Bruce started sneaking off, ghosting him, and not returning for hours? Well, Tim did what he did best.

He wasn’t obvious about it, of course. He just tailed Bruce.

Followed him to…church?

And then went right back home, guilt buzzing beneath his skin like a hive of angry bees.

So Tim had put the issue to rest. He wasn’t going to call Bruce out on trying to heal after…

Well, Lord knows he needed some kind of coping mechanism. Better church than beating the shit out of pickpockets.

And, to Tim, Bruce had been getting…better. The burden he so valiantly (read: stupidly) refused to let anyone else even see seemed to get lighter, even if by pebbles, in the months since he’d started going to St. Luke’s.

Tim thought it had something to do with Jason (because everything always had something to do with Jason). St. Luke’s bordered the Narrows, and had several notable outreach programs in the area. Maybe Bruce was trying to find Jason—in where he used to be, in what he left behind.

(Tim knew Bruce didn’t bury Jason in the Wayne Family plot. But Tim would rather spend Halloween night in Arkham than risk bringing him up—he already got called the kid’s name enough.)

Did Tim want to dig up the social security numbers of every single soul who’d ever stepped foot inside that church? Yes. Yes he did.

Did he refrain from doing that, out of respect for his father and his grief? With immense grumblings.

But when Bruce mentioned there’d be a guest at this Sunday’s family dinner, Tim wished he’d done his due diligence.

Alfred flitted about the dining room, adding the finishing touches to the fifth and final placemat. The roast resting in the center of the table filled the air with rosemary and thyme, making Tim's stomach rumble as he placed a glass at each plate. The oven beeped faintly from the other room.

“Right,” Alfred said, taking a step toward the swinging doors that lead to the kitchen. “That’s the potatoes. Why don’t you get settled, Master Tim—“

 A resounding CRASH echoed from the foyer.

Alfred heaved a heavy, long-suffering sigh. The oven beeped again.

“Well, I trust we’re making a phenomenal first impression on our guest. Master Tim, would you be a good lad and go check on them for me? I don’t want the potatoes to burn.”

“Sure thing, Alf,” Tim replied, setting down the last glass. 

Tim made his way to the foyer, absently wondering what kind of potatoes Alfred had made. He hoped it was the cheesy ones. Those were always—

Flight or fight was an odd fear response. Or at least, Tim always thought it was. What your body chose—whether you put your dukes up or jumped out of your skin—depended entirely on both nature and nurture. And Tim, being a vigilante, had trained himself out of flight and into fight.

But there was a third option: freeze.

To say Tim froze felt like the understatement of the century. Every single molecule in his body just…stopped. His blood stopped flowing in his veins. His heart stopped beating in his chest. His lungs stopped taking in oxygen.

Because Bruce stood in the foyer. He was taking off his coat.

Dick was there.

And beside him stood—

stood—

“Oh my God.”

When Dick pulled into the driveway, Bruce’s car was already there.

Must’ve gone to the earlier mass, Dick thought, pulling the bottle of white wine he’d gotten for Alfred out of the passenger seat of his car.

Dick wasn’t…upset that Bruce had started going to Catholic Mass. In fact, he was very happy that Bruce was starting to heal. He was just…surprised. 

Wasn’t Martha Jewish?

But Dick wasn’t judging. Actually, he was overjoyed his father was really starting to do better. Bruce had been different as of late—like the weight of the world was slowly lifting off his shoulders. Dick could see it with Tim, with Alfred—hell, he and Bruce repaired a damn near decade of tension between the two of them in four months.

Deep down, Dick knew why Bruce went to St. Luke’s.

Jason had been Catholic.

You see, no one knew Bruce Wayne like Dick Grayson knew Bruce Wayne—he’s the only one who remembered Bruce before Jason. Hell, Dick is the only one who really knew him during Jason. Everyone else—especially Tim, the poor kid—only knew of after. And what Bruce had done after Jason—well, it made the Bruce that Dick had grown up with seem like a different person entirely.

And maybe he was. A stranger, broken and angry and sick with grief, wearing the face of his father.

Dick had always known Bruce felt guilty. Guilty for not saving Jason—but even guiltier for not burying him in the family plot. The screaming match that ensued after Dick found out had nearly driven Alfred to tears.

Maybe Bruce was finally turning to face Jason. Finally ready to remember his son—Dick’s little brother—in the way he deserved. 

Dick pulled open the great wrought-iron doors and stepped into the foyer.

The bottle of wine slipped clean through his fingers and shattered on the hardwood.

A lot had changed since Jason had been gone. But then again, familiarity settled around him like a well-loved winter coat—pulled from the closet once more, warming Jason as he realized it still fit.

The ride from St. Luke’s back to the Manor was almost dreamlike. The August day was softly falling into the twilight’s golden dust. Outside the car window, the evening sky was awash with peach, apricot, cream; tender little ice cream clouds in a wide orange sky.

It had been four months since Bruce had walked into Jason’s confessional. Since then, Bruce and Jason had walked together, toward healing. It wasn’t perfect, and it certainly wasn’t the way it had been, but they’d walked. And now, when Jason looked back, he had a lovely valley of flowers behind him.

Jason was an aching jumble of many things. Nerves pulled him taught in his seat next to Bruce as they drove down the familiar roads towards Bristol; an entire migration of Monarch butterflies flitted about his stomach. He kept fiddling with the smooth beads of his rosary, running the glass pearls over the divots of his scarred hands.

He didn’t mean to be nervous. In all honesty, he really shouldn’t have been.

It was just dinner. Family dinner. With Bruce.

And Dick. And Alfred. And Tim.

He didn’t even know why he was so nervous. He’d been fine at the church. But the closer they’d gotten to the Manor, the more agitated those Monarchs had grown. 

I hope Dick forgives me.

I hope Alfred forgives me.

I hope they understand why. Why I had to…stay away. For so long.

They turned onto the winding neighborhood road, and that ache inside Jason solidified into something else entirely. 

For Jason, bittersweet was never a good word to describe nostalgia. It implied that the feeling was both: half bitter, half sweet. But it’s not. Nostalgia is one of those funny, deeply dual-natured feelings that is both completely one thing and, at the same time, completely something else.

Nostalgia, for Jason, is wholly bitter: he misses the people he loves, but also the person he was—because he’ll never be him again. He’ll never be the little boy that walked these halls again. He sees him around all the time, but even then—that son doesn’t exist anymore.

But maybe…he does. A chapter in the book of Jason’s life. A chapter is not the whole book, of course, but the book wouldn’t be itself without the chapters inside. Is a tree that grows still the seed that was planted? Well, yes. But also, no. 

That’s the bitter of nostalgia. Mourning something that once was, and can never be again (but why does he mourn? Because it mattered; there is no mourning without love first).

At the very same time, nostalgia was sweet. Why? Because it happened. Nostalgia is proof Jason had lived a life worth living. Or—two lives. The before and the after.

So yes, many things had changed—including Jason. But some things were damned to stay the same forever.

Like the exact squeak of the gates as they opened. Alfred’s impeccable rose bushes adorning the front lawn. The warm, homey smell of the foyer.

And Bruce’s terrible, terrible communication skills.

Jason was sure Dick had neither blinked nor breathed since he dropped the wine, the bottle shattering on the floor and echoing like a gunshot. No one acknowledged it.

Obviously and completely unsurprisingly, Bruce hadn’t informed anyone of Jason’s joining of family dinner.

The air in the foyer was completely still. Jason was rooted to the hardwood, his muscles locked, his lungs quiet. He was also neither breathing nor blinking, his eyes trained fully on Dick.

His brother looked…older, and not just in years. Gone was the angsty, freshly-twenty kid that Jason remembered. Dick carried something heavy in his cerulean blue eyes. They had a weathered depth now—one that wasn’t there before. This stolen passage of time stabbed a bitter knife in Jason’s heart.

Dick’s mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. His breaths came in shallow pulls, his chest hardly moving with each one—like if he breathed to quick or too loud, Jason might crumble to ash before him. A thousand emotions flickered across his face. Shock, disbelief, grief, and something else—hope, almost. Maybe. 

Then, slowly, reverently, Dick reached out a trembling hand and pressed two fingers against Jason’s chest, just over his heart. He was positive Dick could feel the thudding beats beneath his touch.

Jason unstuck his too-large tongue from his dry mouth and managed a hoarse, “Hi, Dick.”

Something broke inside Dick. His face crumpled, eyes brimming, then overflowing with tears streaking silently down his cheeks. He glanced behind Jason—at Bruce, who hadn’t said a single word since the door opened. They exchanged a look in a silent, loaded language Jason had never quite been able to understand. He didn’t try to understand it now.

When Dick looked back at him, his eyes were glassy and wide with a thousand unsaid questions. Still, Dick couldn’t find his voice.

Instead, he stepped forward, lifted his other hand, and folded Jason into a hug.

Dick held his younger brother like Death might come steal him away again.

Then, Jason began to cry.

Never—never did he think he’d ever be able to hug his older brother again. Now, he never wanted to leave his embrace.

Some things never changed—a hug from his big brother was one of them. He smelled like blueberry shampoo and vanilla soap. No matter how big he got, Jason could always fit his head perfectly in the crook of Dick’s neck and shoulder. No matter how much time passed, Jason would always feel safe in the strong arms his big brother.

When Dick pulled away, his teary eyes searched Jason’s face, his scars. They traveled down to his cassock and back up to the white streak in his curls. A thousand more emotions flickered across his features. He gently wiped away Jason’s steady stream of tears with his thumbs.

“Little Wing,” he breathed. He was still crying, still breathing is if this was all a dream.

Jason opened his mouth to speak, when—

“Oh my God.”

Both boys turned to Tim, who stood in the shadow of the grand staircase.

His blue eyes were wide as saucers, his mouth agape.

A complicated mixture of emotions swirled inside Jason (and since when would his emotions be anything but). 

Jason never hated Tim. 

Okay—maybe he did, a little, in the beginning. When he was still reeling and bleeding and burning with anger. He just—couldn’t believe that Bruce had just…erased him. Jealousy had infected his rage, ensuring it lingered with a festering intensity.

Over time, those molten, messy feelings had cooled into something else—recognition.

Tim was never the thief Jason had first accused him of being in his mind. He was, like Jason, just another kid. Another kid with a heart too big for his little chest. A heart too heavy with with the need to do good, to be good. Another kid trying to prove he was worthy of love from a man who could only love with regret—a man who shoved those he loved inside his heart so they stuck out like splinters and it hurt any time he felt anything.

And seeing Tim now—standing in the shadow of the grand staircase the same way he always stood in Jason’s—it just…clicked.

Jason wasn’t looking at his replacement, because Tim wasn’t Jason’s replacement. Tim would never be Jason’s replacement.

Jason was looking at his reflection.

Tim’s throat bobbed as he swallowed, a flush creeping up his cheeks.

“I—uh,” he said, voice quiet. “I’m…Tim.”

“Hello, Tim,” Jason answered softly. “I’m Jason.”

They were already well acquainted with each other; they both knew it. In the four months since Bruce walked into Jason’s confessional, Jason had learned a lot about Tim:

Like how Bruce thought Tim was a better detective than Bruce could ever be.

How Bruce loved Tim like a son.

How Bruce was absolutely terrified he’d lose Tim the same way he’d lost Jason—though he’d never say it outright. But Jason could tell. Jason could always tell.

Tim opened his mouth to say something—

—but before he could, Alfred’s voice echoed from the hallway.

“Do you children ever greet each other without breaking something first—“

The old butler rounded the grand staircase. He stepped into the foyer—and froze.

There was a beat of silence. Then another. And another.

Alfred’s gaze landed on Jason. Shock, then disbelief, then grief so poignant Jason was rendered momentarily speechless all passed over Alfred’s aged features. 

Jason felt guilt wiggle in his stomach. He was pinned like a butterfly under Alfred’s gaze. 

Then, something else flickered across Alfred’s face: something Jason’s almost didn’t recognize, until he did—because he’d seen the same look on Bruce. 

Guilt. Insurmountable, overwhelming guilt.

For a second, Jason wondered why—his death certainly wasn’t Alfred’s fault. But then, he remembered.

“I convinced myself it was mercy to…remove your name. To remove you. I told myself it would help me survive.”

Oh. So Alfred had…oh. Okay.

In order to protect Bruce, Alfred had allowed him to bury Jason under an unmarked grave. 

“It wasn’t mercy, Jay. It was fear.”

The guilt inside him wanted to sharpen into betrayal. Jason didn’t let it. He had fought too hard for his peace. 

“Our death broke him, too. I think…that’s why he did what he did.”

He had released that burden to the One who could carry it so Jason didn’t have to—because Jason wasn’t made to. Because peace wasn’t the absence of pain and sadness, but the having the heart posture of this does not move me.

So Jason stepped forward.

“Hi, Alfred.”

Alfred’s breath caught, but he didn’t speak—still processing the fact that Jason was here, alive. His hand came up slowly, like he was reaching toward a ghost, then stopped midair, trembling slightly. His lined face remained composed, but just barely. The hairline fractures in his cracked expression may have been invisible to the others, but Jason saw them all.

“Master Jason,” Alfred said, voice impossibly soft. His hand still remained midair, as if just touching Jason would ruin the fragile hope building in Alfred’s chest.

Jason swallowed hard, more tears in his eyes. “Yeah. It’s…it’s me.”

Another beat of silence. Then Alfred—who had raised four boys, who had buried this one—closed the distance and folded Jason into a hug so firm it nearly knocked the breath from his lungs. Jason stood frozen for a half second, then melted into it.

This hug wasn’t like Dick’s hug. That had been pure emotion at full volume—tears and shaking and utter disbelief. Alfred’s hug was more…quiet, in a way. One of hope and wrongs that might finally have a chance to be made right. One of coming home.

“You stupid, brave, infuriating boy,” Alfred said. The next time Death came for Jason, he’d have to fight Alfred Pennyworth first.

Jason huffed a teary laugh. “Missed you too, Alfie.”

Alfred finally pulled back, still gripping Jason’s arms as if to keep him tethered to this mortal plane.

“Bruce Thomas Wayne,” Alfred said, in a tone Jason hoped to never incur on himself. “We will discuss you’re inability to communicate after dinner.”

The only sound in the dining room was the scrape of utensils against plates and the chewing of Alfred’s delectable roast. No one had spoken since the teary reunion in the foyer.

Talking about the past—about the time with Jason, before he was killed, was hard. Talking about the after—the time without Jason, the grief and the violence that followed his passing, was worse. There was really…nothing for anyone to say, because there was too much.

Bruce had meant to tell the others about Jason—he really had.

…

Okay, no he didn’t. He genuinely had no idea how to bring it up to them.

Hey Tim? Dick? Alfred? Yeah, listen up—Jason’s alive. Yep. Dead son Jason? He got better. He’s coming over for dinner Sunday, ‘kay? Awesome. Great talk.

That was a bit out of his emotional depth. So he just…didn’t. He’d planned to rip off the proverbial bandaid by simply bringing Jason to the Manor for Sunday night family dinner.

In Bruce’s opinion, it could have gone much worse. He even had a contingency plan just in case Alfred had a heart attack upon seeing his undead grandson.

It took every ounce of Bruce’s self control to not shift in his seat (again). The weight of unasked questions was nearly suffocating. The thick, emotional tension could nearly be cut with a knife—and the way Tim had been laser focused on his roast for the entire meal, Bruce thought he just might.

Seeing Jason sitting across from him again—dressed in his black cassock, the Roman collar around his neck—well, weird was honestly the only way he could describe it.

Jason wasn’t small anymore. He no longer talked loudly with Bruce at dinner about anything and everything—from the plot of the book they were reading in English class to the weird looking bird he’d seen on patrol the night before. But the young man sitting at his dining room table was still Jason, through and through. 

(Is a tree that grows still the seed that was planted? Well, yes. But also, no.)

Bruce’s heart twisted in his chest. 

His boy. His little boy who wasn’t little anymore and Bruce didn’t get to see any of it.

Sometimes, even he couldn’t believe it—that his little boy was home again. Bruce never wanted him to leave—he wanted to gather his Jaybird in his arms and hold him until the end of time. If Death were ever to come for Jason again, Bruce would be ready.

After nearly twenty-five minutes of painful silence, Dick—bless him—finally spoke.

“Out of all of us, you’re the last one I thought would end up a priest, Jay.”

Jason snorted. “You and me both.”

Bruce could tell he meant it.

It got quiet again, the awkwardness stifling like late summer humidity.

Jason cleared his throat.

“So Tim,” Tim’s head snapped up like he’d been called to attention. He turned slowly, meeting Jason’s soft gaze. “I see you like Alfred’s cheesy potatoes,” Jason said, gesturing to the hearty helping on his plate. 

Tim went bright red. He swallowed.

“Yeah,” he said, voice small. 

Bruce winced internally. He opened his mouth to say something, but—

“Me too. They were always my favorite. I don’t know what he puts in there, but we’ve gotta figure it out. The nuns at St. Luke’s don’t make anything nearly as good,” Jason said with a small chuckle. “I can’t keep living like this.”

Tim stared at Jason for a beat before a smile tugged at his lips.

“It’s probably crack, or crack-adjacent,” he said, voice small.

“Master Jason,” Alfred said, handing him the pan of said potatoes, “you are sorely mistaken if you think I’d ever relinquish a single one of our family recipes.”

Jason scooped more potatoes onto his plate. “Well, at least host a cooking class. Some of them need…real help.”

Dick snorted a laugh from across the table.

“Speaking of being on crack”—Bruce sighed and Alfred raised a brow, both bracing for the absurdity about to come out of Dick’s mouth—“Jase, do you remember that time you snuck into the cave and hotwired the Batmobile?”

Tim’s head snapped to Dick.

“Tha’ rea’y ‘appened?” he said around a mouthful cheesy potato.

“Master Tim,” Alfred tutted.

The tips of Tim’s ears turned pink and he swallowed, muttering a hasty sorry Alf.

“Oh yeah,” Dick said, leaning forward.

A smile pulled on Bruce’s lips. He remembered this story quite fondly. He glanced at Jason—his brow was furrowed, eyes averted, as if trying to recall.

The fondness wilted. Bruce never understood how Jason was brought back—and it nearly killed him. He’d wanted, desperately, to test. To do what he did best: be a detective. Gather evidence, test hypothesis, and come to a conclusion. Why was my son brought back? How can I ensure he never leaves again?

But Jason—his son, his magic, miracle boy—had asked him not to. Jason had sat Bruce down and told him to just…accept. Accept that sometimes, unexplainable things happen. There are mysteries of faith. Jason didn’t need to know—he was at peace. And he’d asked Bruce to be at peace with it, too.

Doing what he did best had always been being a detective.

But now, doing what he did best was being a father. 

So Bruce had relented. He had released his iron grip on his desperate, all consuming need to know, to control—and let himself have peace in the knowledge that his son was back, and that was all that mattered.

But now—sitting here, wondering if memories from Jason’s past had been stolen from him—Bruce wished he would’ve…bent his promise. Just a little.

Even Dick noticed the hesitation. Something flickered across his face—guilt possibly, grief most definitely—and his eyes searched Jason’s face. Something heavy settled around the table, something different from the tension earlier. The weight of that awkwardness was focused on the outside—this heaviness, in contrast, Bruce felt in his soul. 

Dick shot a quick glance at Bruce—who could only shrug minutely. Dick gave a ghost of a nod, eyes returning to Jason.

“Jay,” Dick began, tone soft and cautious, “it’s—“

“I was what—like twelve?” Jason said, breaking from his thoughts.

Bruce wanted to feel relieved. And by the tension in his frame and the hope on his face, he could tell Dick did, too.

Dick swallowed hard, voice barely a whisper. “Yeah. Yeah, Jay.”

“Sometimes, I still can’t believe I managed to hotwire that thing. I mean, it was the Batmobile, for crying out loud. But then I thought ‘how different can this be from the beaters in the alley?’” Jason huffed a soft laugh. “Not different at all, it turns out.”

Slowly, the internal heaviness began to lift. Dick relaxed, his usual mischievousness replacing the complicated mess of emotions on his face. Bruce felt himself also unwinding, like a thick metal cord was unwrapping itself from his ribs. He sat back in his chair. He hid the shake in his hands by wringing out the dinner napkin in his lap.

“And so I’m in the cave, right,” Dick said, flashing his eyes around the table, cheeky grin returning to his face. “And Jay’s there, and he’s training, and I’m like, ‘Jay, wanna go for ice cream?’ And he’s like ‘I can’t.’ Which, loud buzzer! Is something Jason would never say in his life. So I ask him why, and he tells me he’s grounded.”

Jason rolled his eyes, but there was no heat behind the gesture. 

“Which, if you know Jason, is more a suggestion than a punishment.”

Across the table, Bruce smiled. Tim sat in rapt attention, cheesy potatoes forgotten, eyes fixed on Dick.

“So me—being the great big brother I am—I ask him what he did.”

“No,” Jason interjected, shaking his head. “You first told me, and I quote: 'Robin Rule Number One: ask forgiveness not permission. So get in the car.’”

Wait. 

Bruce cast Dick a betrayed look.

“You taught him that?”

Dick only shrugged. “It’s a Robin Rule, B. Or I guess, in Jason’s case now, a Cardinal Rule.”

Everyone at the table groaned. Dick reveled in it.

“Okay—so I ask him what he did, right? And he says, completely straight faced: ‘I hotwired the Batmobile and took it downtown.’ And, first of all, I’m like wow, kid’s only been here two months and he’s already testing Bruce in ways I never did. And second, I’m like call me next time! Because are you kidding? I wanna go! Could you imagine B tryna chase us down at three a.m.?” Dick laughed, a tender look in his crinkling eyes.

Bruce opened his mouth to say something—to tell Dick that he’d just pretend he didn’t notice and wait for them to come back, because when the two of them were together they managed to share a single functioning braincell—but realization hit him in the gut: he hadn’t heard Dick laugh in a long, long time. So instead of speaking, Bruce just listened. It was nice.

Tim turned to Jason, eyes wide, mouth agape—not in shock this time, but awe.

“You actually did that?”

Jason nodded, sporting his own mischievous grin.

Tim shook his head in disbelief. ‘I thought that was just like…Robin Lore. I—“

His head snapped to Alfred.

“Is that why—“

“Why the Batmobile has facial recognition software for the driver’s seat? Yes, Master Tim. That is why,” Alfred said, exasperated, though there was a warm look in his eyes.

“I didn’t even know how to drive,” Jason chuckled. “But once I got that cat purring, I figured I was always a learn-by-doing kind of person anyways.”

“Well, B completely overhauled the Batmobile design after that,” Dick said with a disappointed huff. He leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms in mock petulance.

“You could still make it work,” Tim piped up. Bruce could see his mind at work on his face.

Both Dick and Jason leaned forward.

Tim opened his mouth to continue with his genius and no-doubt foolproof plan, but Bruce spoke first (because it’s Tim—whatever he was about to say would probably most definitely work, and he can’t have Dick or Jason getting any ideas).

“While I appreciate you all working together, I can’t keep redesigning the car every time—“

“Speaking of car,” Dick said, barely containing a giggle. “Jay, you remember what Two-Face’s car used to look like, right?”

“That monstrosity?” Jason said with a raised brow.

Dick nodded, eyes bright. “Well, you’ll never guess—“

Nostalgia is funny, Bruce thought, sitting at the table, watching his sons laugh as they recounted old memories. It’s like wanting to save time in a bottle, and knowing you can’t. So instead, you look back. It’s like a candle in a long dark hallway. When you stand in front of the candle—the memory—it is bright and warm. The flames dance, golden and alive and clear. But then, you walk forward (because you have no choice; time marches on) and the candle gets dimmer. And you start to wonder: was the candle ever that bright? Or have years just made the hallway darker?

“Time is like wax dripping from a candle flame. In the moment, it is molten and falling, with the capability to transform into any shape. Then the moment passes and the wax hits the table top and solidifies into the shape it will always be. It becomes the past. A solid, single record of what happened, still holding in its wild curves and contours the potential of every shape it could have held.”

It is impossible to not think of all the wild forms that wax will never take.

Chapter Text

Jason was standing on the terrace overlooking the beautiful Manor grounds. The sun had just set, painting the sky in a stunning Monet of soft violets and fading oranges in broad brushstrokes. 

Bruce watched him through the window, a warm feeling filling his chest. He couldn’t help the smile that tugged at his lips.

"'For this son of mine was as good as dead and is alive again; he was lost and has been found.’”

Bruce slid open the glass door and joined his son on the terrace. They stood in quiet for a while, the wind ruffling the long grasses and late-summer green leaves.

Bruce had forgotten how much his second son filled his home.

“Thank you,” he said softly, still looking out at the property. “For coming today.”

Jason smiled.

“I missed it.”

They’ve missed you, Bruce thought.

It got quiet again. Father and son, reunited at last—healing and growing. Walking even when they do not know the way. But they walk together, hand in scarred hand.

You’re not beyond redemption, that young priest had told him. Maybe he was right.

Beside him, something shifted in Jason. When he spoke again, his voice was small.

“I hope they…I hope they forgive me. For staying away.”

Bruce turned to face Jason fully. His eyes were focused on his scarred finger tracing idle circles on the balcony.

“I just know that grief…distorts you. It hollows you out. And I never wanted that for them—to feel guilt for what happened to me. Because it wasn’t their fault. It was never their fault. And I know Dick and Alfred—they feel everything. I didn’t want to hurt them. I never meant to.”

Jason took a small, shaky sigh. “I—I just couldn’t…come back. I—"

“You needed time,” Bruce said gently. “Plain and simple. You needed to heal. I may not have understood that at first, but trust me, Jason—I do now. Don’t feel guilty for that. They missed you. And they’re glad you’re back.”

Jason swallowed hard. He raised his misty eyes to Bruce and nodded. They both turned back out to the yard, the hangnail of a crescent moon hanging low in the darkening sky. Trees rustled as the wind blew again, ruffling Jason’s two-toned curls. The faint smell of incense wafted off his cassock.

Something dawned on Bruce. Something he’d put in the back of his mind for months. Something so drowned in the waters of his grief he’d nearly forgotten it.

“Grief…distorts us. It changes the shape of who we are. It makes anger feel like truth. Vengeance like justice.”

“But the people we lose—they don’t want us to become hollow because of them.”

“It was you,” he whispered.

Jason turned to face him, confused.

“It was you.”

Jason frowned. He opened his mouth to speak, but Bruce beat him to it.

“In the—it was—that’s—"

All Bruce could do is sputter as he put the final pieces together.

All those months ago—it had been his own son on the other side of that screen. He had ripped out his own ugly bleeding heart and handed it to the very person who had always held it anyways.

Tears welled in Bruce’s eyes, and he didn’t exactly know why. Jason was looking at him like he doubted Bruce’s sanity. He didn’t know whether to feel relieved or horrified—he settled on a confusing, hot-cold mixture of both.

Slowly, realization crossed Jason’s face, too.

“Y—yeah, Bruce,” he whispered. “That…that was me.”

So many different emotions rose up inside Bruce he didn’t know how to process them all.

Instead, he reached out a gentle hand.

And pulled his little magic boy into a hug.

Do not be afraid, I am with you.

I have called you each by name.

Come and follow Me,

I will bring you home.

I love you and you are Mine.