Archive of Our Own ^beta

Jason Todd grew up on the streets, and thus he grew up surrounded by more poor influences than good ones. It was no surprise to Bruce when he adopted him that Jason was a drinker and a smoker. Bruce discouraged him from both, of course, but he knew that Jason still did both behind his back.

Jason was a good kid at heart despite the horrors he’d experienced in the past, so Bruce never had much of a problem with Jason for the brief time that he was allowed to have him. He was a responsible boy and a trustworthy partner. Bruce occasionally caught Jay smoking on the balcony or sneaking champagne at parties, but that was the worst of it. He died before Bruce could brave the minefield of his teenage years.

Now Jason is alive again, but he’s grown up since Bruce lost him. The young boy turned into a young man, changed himself almost completely with Bruce none the wiser. He and Bruce have slowly settled the worst of their issues over time, but their relationship may never be the same as it was. Most days it’s a miracle that Jason doesn’t make an attempt on Bruce’s life right there and then.

Bruce misses the sweet boy Jason used to be. He misses his son.

Tonight Bruce is awoken by his phone ringing on his nightstand. He’s awake and upright in seconds at the familiar tone. It’s the emergency cell phone he keeps on his person at all times, fully charged and the ringer always on in case he’s needed. Only his family has the number.

Bruce doesn’t give it the chance to ring twice. “Hello?”

“Do you hate me?” comes in through the other end, the voice both familiar and unfamiliar to him. But he’d know it anywhere. Bruce wasn’t aware that Jason even still knew this number, let alone that he would call it.

Jason is quiet long enough for Bruce to remember that he’s expecting an answer from Bruce. “No,” Bruce says, his throat dry all of a sudden. “I don’t hate you.”

Jason snorts, even though there is nothing remotely funny here. “Liar.”

“Why would you ask me if you won’t believe my answer?”

“Fuck you,” Jason says, and Bruce can hear now that there’s a slur to his words. “You’re a—a liar. Always fuckin’ lying.”

“You’ve been drinking,” Bruce deduces. Not like it’s hard.

“Fuck you,” Jason says again. There’s a clatter on his end—a bottle, Bruce thinks. He can’t hear a noisy bar in the background, so Jason must be drinking alone tonight. It’s a sadder picture than Bruce would like, especially at—he checks the clock on the nightstand—two-thirty in the morning. He hasn’t seen Jason out of his Red Hood armor since he came back from the dead. Always a mask with them.

Bruce risks, “Are you all right?” Images burst in his mind of Jason’s corpse lying in the warehouse rubble, bleeding from too many wounds to staunch, broken in all the ways that would hurt. His eyes were closed, a single tear cutting through the ash.

Jason laughs without a trace of humor. “Does it matter? Already died. How much worse can happen to me? You’ve got nothin’ left to worry about.”

“I’ll always worry about you, Jay.” The familiar nickname slips out without him meaning it to. He hears Jason’s breath hitch on the other end of the line.

“Don’t call me that. Don’t pretend you care.”

“I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true,” Bruce tells him. “You know I wouldn’t.”

“You would,” Jason says with such contempt that, not for the first time and certainly not for the last, Bruce wonders what parts of his son stayed in the grave and what rose up to take their place. “Y’always pull this shit. Pretendin’ you care, making people think they can trust you. And when they actually need a hero, where the hell are you? Where? I’ll tell you, fucking nowhere.”

Bruce says nothing for a long time. The only sounds to be heard are his calm breathing and Jason’s ragged rendition. “Why did you call me, Jason?”

“My mom’s gone.”

Bruce’s heart pangs. “Yes.”

“No, she’s gone. The fucking—fucking cemetery. Some asshole’s building a Walmart. They…they took all the unclaimed graves and piled ‘em somewhere else. They moved her.”

Oh. Jason talked about his mother often after Bruce adopted him. For all Catherine Todd’s faults, she was a loving mother to Jason and did her best with what she had. Bruce took Jason to her grave sometimes on holidays and anniversaries, stood beside the boy while he mourned again and again.

Bruce visited her alone only once. After Jason’s funeral. He told Catherine, if she even heard him, that he was sorry he lost their boy, that he failed him so completely. He left one of Jason’s books on her grave, one that Jason told Bruce the two of them read together frequently. As if that could ever make up for it.

“I can help,” Bruce offers. “If you give me the name of—”

“Fuck off,” Jason cuts him off. “I don’t need your help. Weren’t you listening? I don’t fucking need you. Came back to life. You didn’t help. I did it. Not you. Fuckin’ useless old man.”

“What can I do?” Bruce tries. He can hear Jason’s breath shuddering. The clink of a bottle. “Jay?”

“You hate me. I know you do.”

“I could never hate you, Jason. You’re my son.”

“Then you’re an idiot,” Jason hisses. “I kill people. And I don’t even feel bad about it. It’s fun. I love blowin’ people’s brains to smithereens.”

Bruce is undeterred. “If I gave up on everyone who made a mistake, I wouldn’t be here right now,” he says. “I’m trying to fix my own mistakes. That’s why I’m still talking to you.” That, and Bruce has always been talentless at letting go. His parents’ ghosts haunt him even now, far into adulthood. And his love for Jason will always haunt him tenfold.

“Fuck you.”

“You have every right to be angry with me, Jay. You should be angry. I’ve failed you so many times.” And even now, he keeps failing him. Keeps making Jason think he’s unloved, unwanted, as if he ever could be either of those things. “It’s okay if you hate me. But you’ll never stop being my son, Jason.”

Jason is silent for a long time. Bruce starts to worry that he’s drowned himself in whatever it is he’s been drinking. “Jay?”

“I hate you.”

“Okay,” Bruce says patiently.

“I do,” Jason insists, but his voice is weak, dragging from the alcohol and from the emotion.

“Okay.”

“‘Kay.” Jason hangs up.