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Bruce has a problem.
A terrible, haunting problem.
It's been several years since Jason's death, and it is safe to say that Bruce misses him; devastatingly so. There are mornings where he wakes up and wishes he hadn't. There are nights where he puts on the cowl and hopes that an upstart of a thug gets a lucky shot with their pistol. There are evenings where, at a gala, he doesn't check to see if the drink he's been served has been poisoned.
This passive apathy for his own life has followed him ever since that dreadful night. He doesn't go out of his way to harm himself, no. His mission is to keep Gotham safe. He can't do that from the grave. That said, if it so happens that a rogue succeeds in their plans to finally defeat him, he wouldn't particularly mind. Dick has grown to be a great vigilante and an even greater man — greater than Bruce could ever be. In the unlikely circumstance of his death, he could take Tim under his wing and look out for the young boy.
Tim is a bright boy with a bright future. He's a little stubborn and a little uppity, but so was he at his age; as was Dick and as was Jason. He would do fine without Bruce.
Bruce has a problem.
A spunky, teenager-shaped problem.
It first happened a month after Jason died. Bruce was on patrol alone on the north-side of Gotham. He was jumping from the rooftops of building to building with ease (with an additional lack of care for if he fell) and taking down the local gang that decided to act too big for its boots. While swinging remarkably close to skyscraper with his grapple hook, Bruce chanced a glance at the vast window to his right and saw his reflection.
He looked miserable, even in his suit. He visibly looked thinner and the small window of skin he could see was a sickly kind of pale that he would liken to the vampiric creatures he is usually compared to by his city's residents. Simply put, he looked like death. Felt like it, too.
Perhaps it was a trick of the light, perhaps it was his mind playing tricks on him in his exhaustion and dehydration (Alfred begged him to take better care of himself for the sake of Gotham, but he did not have the will to then and doesn't now), but there was an odd shaft of light that appeared next to him. The form was smoky and lacked any substance, as if a light wind would force it to dissipate into thin air as soon as it arrived. It seemed to follow Bruce, though. It kept pace with him, and if he focused he could perhaps make out a face. A boy-ish, grinning face filled with mirth and glee. At such a fast speed while zipping through Gotham,however, and with the reflection of the windows dripping with rain under moonlight, Bruce could not be sure. He blinked, trying to make out more, but it disappeared, leaving the Batman to wonder if he really was going crazy.
He chalked it up to his own exhaustion and carried out the rest of his patrol without hindrance. He never mentioned what he saw to Alfred nor to Dick. Why would he? They already think he's falling off the deep end after Jason's death. How would they react after saying he saw a ghost? A poltergeist? Admittedly, the three of them have come across things more peculiar than that, so it wouldn't be too insane to consider, but Alfred and Dick would ask for evidence like true detectives; evidence that Bruce did not have.
Bruce has a problem.
A nightmare-ish, gaunt-like problem.
The second time happened after Bruce startled awake after a particularly nasty dream filled with explosions and dead children being pulled out of rubble. He shot up, chest heaving and breath dangerously close to hyperventilation. His eyes snapped to and fro in his bed, his room feeling much smaller and suffocating than before he went to sleep. His shoulders shook and his eyes shone with a salty wetness in his waterline.
His eyes shot to the window, left open by Alfred several hours ago to let a breeze in as an attempt to help Bruce sleep (It didn't work. He barely slept for more than two hours on a good day, but the thought was still appreciated). A soft wind made the curtains sway gently and the moon from the surprisingly clear night shot strips of dancing moonlight across his room. It glinted in the mirror of the vanity on the opposite side of his room.
Bruce followed the path of the light to the mirror and he stared with wide eyes at his reflection. He didn't look any better from the week prior on that patrol, though he did look more emaciated. His shirtless torso did maintain the muscle he requires for his work but it looked like his bulk was beginning to atrophy from the lack of sustenance he gave himself.
He was a mess.
He continued to stare (or is it now a glare?) at himself for several long moments before something in the reflection shifted to the right. He tore his pointed gaze from the mirror and looked in that direction and his previously shaking form froze.
Next to his bed, beside the nightstand and the neglected glass of water provided by Alfred, was that same smoky form he saw previously. The twisting form was grey in the darkness surrounding them and looked as if it had a weight to it that was jarring to the depressed man. It had grown more human features since he last saw it, the beginnings of a head and shoulders forming at the top of it. The face was more structured, too. A pair of white eyes bore holes into Bruce's own, and it was as if it could see directly into his soul, as if it knew of Bruce's sins and came to force him to atone. It did not grin so heartily now, instead staring at him with contempt.
The two stared at each other for nearly ten minutes. He could not move - would not move - an inch, afraid that the figure would disappear in a poof of smoke should he breathe too harshly. They were at an impasse, or perhaps a stand-off. Two haunted beings too engrossed to take any notice of their surroundings. Is this what night terrors are? No, Bruce has had night terrors ever since his parents died. This was not the same thing. A sleep-paralysis demon perhaps? That made more sense, but Bruce was entirely sure he was awake and could move should he want to. What is this thing?
Those eyes, even without their usual blue colour, were unrecognisable. As Bruce's eyes fully acclimated to the dark room, he could not be mistaken.
"Jason?"
He whipped around to the opposing nightstand to turn his lamp on in an attempt to get a better look at the boy. With a click, a warm orange glow casts the room in light. Twisting back around, the figure was gone without a trace. Bruce looks around his bedroom wildly, even getting out of bed and looking where the light did not reach: under his bed, in his closet, hell, he even opened the door to the corridor outside and looked in both directions as if he would be able to notice the trail of a fleeing spirit.
He saw nothing, obviously, so he retreated back into his room. He strode to his window, promptly closed it, and closed his curtains. He crawled back into his bed and sat up, the wooden headboard digging into his back uncomfortably.
He did not fall asleep again that night, or again in the next several nights for that matter.
Bruce has a problem.
A monstrous, horrifying problem.
It has been three years since the death of Jason Todd. Bruce has since replaced him with Tim as the new Robin and Dick has officially abdicated to Bludhaven. The Joker is in and out of Arkham Asylum as per usual, and Bruce still wants him dead. He wouldn't do it; he knows that. Even in the hypothetical of having no legal or ethical repercussions, he still would not do it. He has a code and a refuses to break it for his own health (is that not an ethical repercussion?). It's maddening.
That ghastly figure has appeared to Bruce several dozen times. While reading in his study, while brushing his teeth, whilst on patrol, everywhere. The events vary in length of time. Sometimes he appears for a mere few seconds out of the corner of Bruce's eye, sometimes (more often) he stands menacingly at the man for hours at a time at various places in the Manor. In the corner of his bedroom while Bruce fails to fall asleep (curse his resistance to poisons and drugs - melatonin has no effect on him), on the other side of his computer in his study while he discusses business growth over email, beside him while Bruce has the cowl on at the Batcomputer. It is driving him insane.
The Bat refuses to tell anyone about it. Dick is away too much to take any real notice, Tim is too focused on his own training to become aware, but Bruce has some suspicions that he knows that something is wrong, and Alfred probably knows that Jason haunts his mind, but he doubts he knows how literal that actually is.
Jason's form has now been solidified. There is no longer any smokiness to his form. The boy is the spitting image of how he looked before he died, previous injuries inflicted immediately beforehand included. It stands before him now while Bruce sits in a chair in his library, Jane Austen in hand. Deep bruises paint Jason's face in disgusting shades of purple, green, and yellow and swelling force his right eye to close. His back is bent at an angle that isn't natural, several of his thoracic vertebrae piercing the skin of his back at sharp angles. The occasional grimace graces Bruce with bared, chipped teeth and black blood seeping from Jason's mouth, down his neck, onto his Robin costume.
The outfit itself is in tatters. Rips and tears replicated in an almost perfect mirroring the state Bruce first found him when he pulled his second son from the debris of that warehouse. Open fractures break through the fabric of the costume, his dislocated shoulder force the seams of it to split, and the claw-like marks of what could only be the nails of the Joker ripping it apart haunt Bruce's eyes whenever the boy appears.
Jason stands there, silent as he always is, in front of his father with utter rage and disgust in his expression. It is a visage familiar to the man. The only time Jason looks "at peace" (as much as he could be at peace) was when he "accompanied" Bruce on patrol. He often followed Batman across the Gotham skies, even as Bruce attempted to flee at break-neck speeds from the phantom boy.
He now knows, after several trials, that he is the only one can see the boy. There have been times where Jason stood directly in front Alfred while he made Bruce his morning coffee in the kitchen, staring as he usually does, and the butler appeared none the wiser. There have even be several times where he appeared next to Tim on patrol, the vision a sick comparison between the dead and the living. Bright and sunny Tim Drake next to haggard and gaunt Jason Todd. The sight made the eyes of his cowl widen with his eyes, and Tim, ever observant as he is, asked about his well-being with concern painting his face.
This is making him go insane. Has made him insane. The nights he manages to fall asleep are few and far between, and the days he can stomach a meal without throwing it up an hour later even less so. It's becoming apparent that the Big Bad Bat of Gotham is growing weaker as a result. Thugs are getting braver with their petty crimes, the Rogues getting bolder and gutsier with their schemes, hoping that one day the Gotham Knight will succumb to his obvious lack of health.
Even his fellow members of the Justice League are beginning to notice. The amount of times that Clark has placed a warm, comforting hand on his shoulder and murmured his words of condescending comfort can not be counted on both of Bruce's hands. He has caught Jonn in the act of staring intensely at him for several moments, face betraying no emotion, before walking away briskly through the nearest wall. Bruce really ought to add a "no mind reading" rule to the Justice League handbook. Diana has looked at him oddly at least a dozen times over the past few months, and recently Bruce catches her rubbing her fingers over her lasso contemplatively.
This dead fifteen-year-old boy is haunting him, has been haunting him, for so long that Bruce has almost grown accustomed to him. It is horrifying, obviously, and every time Jason appears Bruce can feel the tether in his brain that keeps him sane thinning.
Now, in his library, Jason continues to stare at him, gaze unblinking. Bruce looks over the pages of his book to stare back. Bruce sighs, utterly exasperated and exhausted, and puts the book on the end table to the right of him.
"What do you want from me, Jason?" It's the first thing the man says to the boy since he first figured out his identity. The boy remains silent as per usual.
"Do you want to kill me? Drive me to the point of insanity where I do it with my own hands? Is that what you want?" he interrogates, desperation bleeding into his tone.
At Jason's lack of response, Bruce shoots up from where he stands, striding over to the ghostly boy. He half-expects him to dissipate like he usually does, but he doesn't. He lifts his chin up and continues his glaring with white eyes. It makes Bruce deeply uncomfortable whenever they maintain this eye contact, but he pushes through it and attempts to ignore the anxiety crawling up his throat. "Is this some kind of punishment sent by some greater being? Does my dead son haunting me count towards some kind of recompense? What in God's name are you?"
Bruce continues his scared ramblings for many minutes. He looms over the young boy with a mixture of anger, fear, and guilt on his face. His cadence quickens over time as the past months finally begin to properly catch up to him. Suddenly, after a while, he pauses. He abruptly halts his words mid-sentence and stares down at the undead boy. A thought has snuck into his head, and he can't help but consider it.
"Are you- are you even my boy? Is Jason really here?"
Bruce could of imagined it, but he swears he just saw Jason's hostile gaze soften. The crease between his eyebrows smoothen out and the corner of his mouth quirks up into a sad smile.
For the first time ever, Jason responds.
"Not anymore."
With that, a blinding green flash forces Bruce to cover his eyes, and when it disappears, as does Jason. Something finally breaks in Bruce and he sinks to the floor. His knees hit the wooden ground, and his body curls in on itself. An earth-shattering sob rips through him and he breaks into tears.
Goodbye, Bruce.