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Red Hood has been too calm recently—that's what leads Bruce to follow him. Jason's smart, he knows how to fly under the radar, but this time he pulls back too much, is too obvious. He's refusing joint patrols, he's turning down the few attempts the others make to see him outside of work when normally he jumps at the opportunities; he isn't fighting Bruce at all.
Several nights in a row lead to nothing. Hood barely patrols, barely leaves his safehouse—the place can't be his primary apartment, doesn't have anything in it that would imply long term use, it's practically empty—which is suspect in and of itself; Bruce doesn't think Jason's made him, but why else is he staying in near squalor?
Bruce sets up surveillance to minimize time wasted, and waits.
It's convenient, incredibly—possibly suspiciously—so, that Bruce is already out as Batman the evening his cameras show Red Hood on the move, seemingly with a mission—certainly moving with a vigor he hasn't shown in months.
It takes Bruce more time than he anticipates to extricate himself from the crime scene, courtesy of the officers he is assisting, but he manages to get away and lay chase.
Unfortunately belatedly, he locates and clears the area around the last building he can place Hood entering—a condemned walk-up. Bruce hardly has to slink through any rooms before he finds a familiar, horrifying sight.
Joker escaped months ago; had gone completely underground. Yet here he is, tied up, gagged, maniacal as ever. And here, too, is Jason, gun in hand, spinning around. His face falls.
"What are you—you aren't supposed to be here."
This isn't a set up, there's nothing elaborate about it.
Jason kicks the clown so his back faces them, and Bruce circles the room. Jason willingly gives up ground, lets Bruce position himself as a point on the triangle they make up.
"Fuck," Jason curses under his breath; he closes his eyes, pressing the muzzle of his gun to the bridge of his nose—the picture of exasperation. Bruce's pulse skyrockets and Jason heaves a breath. "Okay. Okay, so." He looks up.
Jason isn't wearing his helmet; isn't even wearing a mask. Joker mumbles through the gag gleefully, but it's muffled enough to be background noise. Jason looks like he's lost weight; like he hasn't been sleeping.
"Hood," and Bruce knows he sounds callous, to mask the undercurrent of fear in his voice.
"No, see, actually—" Jason gestures at himself with the gun. "Just Jason. Just Jason doing what Jason—"
"Jason."
He winces.
"Yeah, no, I hear it. Third person is a bozo move, for sure." He takes a shaky breath and Joker titters in the background. "B, I need you to leave. I'm not—you weren't supposed to be here. This has nothing to do with you."
"Jason, I can't let you—"
"Please? Please just, just leave. I—you're not supposed to be here." The setting, the begging—Bruce can't do this again. "You don't have to kill me this time, I'm not—please, Dad. Just. Please. Let me do this. I need to do this."
Bruce swallows, heart in his throat. Furious at his son for asking this of him; furious with himself for not being able to prevent it.
"You know I can't."
Jason laughs, sharp, then muffles a scream in the palms of his hands.
"Okay, so, how about this." He presses the gun to his temple; he's crying. "You need to leave, or I'm going to blow my fucking brains out. Okay? You don't get to claim it's an accident, you don't get to misunderstand—there is no third option. You leave or I die; right here, right now."
Bruce wants to vomit. That Jason can even threaten this is beyond vile—he needs help. If Jason doesn't agree to professional help after this, Arkham may be the best chance he has.
"Jason," Bruce tries to soothe. "Jason, I'm sorry that you feel like you have to do this, but you don't have to."
Bruce knows the way a body drops.
No momentum—like a puppet with its strings cut: a phrase so accurate it loses the full weight of its own viscerality.
Bruce remembers how surprised he was, in a calm numb layer of his mind, that his parents did not fly back from the impact of the bullets; instead, they simply…dropped. As though all the Person had left them; that scared him the most. And even as he cried and hit and begged, he knew: they were empty now.
Bruce knows the sound of a gun, deafeningly loud and the hushed whine after. He knows what being shot sounds like; what it feels like. He knows bones shattering. He knows wet flesh.
The pounding in Bruce's chest begins to slow as he takes glacial steps forward; until he is between Jason and Joker. Until he is in front of the mass-murdering psychopath he has to protect from his son; the Murderer Of His Son he has to protect his son from murdering. This time he does not have to fight his son. This time his son is giving up, is listening; might understand.
Bruce's heart breaks where he stands, hands up and palms out; breaks as he sees Jason's body language crumble, shoulders slump, folding in on himself.
Jason looks away from Bruce, looks at the ground, and Bruce nearly sighs with relief, nearly falls in upon himself, too. Jason doesn't stop weeping, taking great big shuddering breaths, and Bruce needs to hold him—needs to slip forward and take the. Gun.
Bruce isn't braced for the shot; he never reacts like this anymore, never jolts, but he isn't—wasn't. He isn't expecting it. He. Jason…said. But Bruce is not—didn't…
Bruce knows the way a body drops.
His cowl suppresses sounds over a certain decibel, but the tinny whine persists, fading in and out. Joker cackles through the gag. He doesn't even know—but he's laughing. Any outcome from the gun going off would be humorous to him, after all.
Bruce is better than this, in emergency situations. He's trained for this. For emergency situations. Has trained. Did train. Is trained. An emergency situation happened to him; that's why he.
There is wet on his jaw and he thinks it might be tears and he hopes it's not his son.
"Jay?"
Jason didn't look up again. He didn't say anything else. Jason loves to monologue. He loves to. He gives Bruce more chances, than this. He always gives Bruce more chances.
Breathing is—if he wasn't seeing—it feels like Bruce got shot. Bruce knows what it feels like to be shot. Has been shot. Wishes he was shot, now.
There's this sound, this sound—this grating, awful, distracting sound.
Bruce flings a foot back, hitting the thing that's laughing and it stops laughing. And then it's so quiet. Everything is so quiet.
"Jay, lad?"
Bruce falls. To his knees, perhaps, though there is no pain. He is looking but he can't quite. Parse. The image in front of him.
Bruce knows the way a body drops. He knows how to judge entrance and exit wounds. Trajectory. Spray. He has seen the inside of someone's head before. He has seen the inside of Jason's head before.
Jason is so quiet. He can't be comfortable in that position. Bad for his neck.
"Sweetheart?"
Bruce's hands are separate from his body; he has never been this lumbering. He is crawling forward. He is patting, rearranging his boy.
"Right here, sweetheart, that's right," he hushes. Jason fits in his lap so nicely still, and it's. It's a shame, it's really a shame, that he hasn't held Jason like this since he. Since he came back. He needs to hold Jason like this more.
It is difficult for Bruce's eyes to focus, or maybe they are blurry, but he reaches out and picks up the parts that—the pieces—Jason's—
"It's okay, Jay, it's okay, let me," and Bruce scoops, and pats, and scoops and tries to gently place and he tries to wipe the blood off Jason's cheek where the skin is still smooth. "Here, sweetheart, that's—just like that, just let Dad—"
Jason is still warm, but the pieces Bruce needs to put back are cool, now; surface area and ambient temperature and.
Bruce tries to cup Jason's cheek but his gloves are too bulky, too covered in blood, so he removes them. Jason is still warm but his—the blood is so tacky. Without his gauntlets on, Bruce can maneuver so much easier, can scoop and fill so much faster, more delicately. He's never careful enough with Jason, who has always been so delicate. His sensitive boy.
One of Bruce's hands wraps around Jason, presses tight to the side of his head. His other hand, a little frantic, tries to pile the wet and small sharp pieces, tries to shovel those piles up, tries to fill Jason back in.
"That's--that's okay, sweetheart. Dad's right here."