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Bruce is too late to save Jason.
So he carries the boy out and he screams and he cries.
He makes the decision not to pull Nightwing from his mission and so he attends the funeral feeling alone, like he has no family left.
Alfred is there, of course, one hand on his shoulder and a judgemental pull to his grieving face. He wanted to tell Dick.
Dick is furious. He yells and yells at Bruce, tears streaming down his face.
Bruce screams right back, his own grief crack and crackling into anger until they’re both only made of hurtful words and tempers and then Dick storms out and doesn’t come back and doesn’t come back and doesn’t…
And then there is Tim and Bruce starts to live again.
Slowly.
Very slowly.
He makes up with Dick, a tentative truce that lasts right until the Redhood is in town and it’s Jason, it's Jason, his Jason.
But…
But…
Jason comes back wrong.
It’s not that he looks stitched together, scars stretching over his face and mapping the story of his death.
It’s not even the green that shines from his eyes, not necessarily.
All of it together though…Jason is unhappy and he is volatile and violent and he’s unhappy.
Jason is unhappy.
So desperately unhappy.
Bruce wants to fix it, wants to fix him, even if Jason is not something to be fixed. His son is not something to be fixed, he isn’t, he isn’t, but he’s unhappy.
He jumps at little things and he doesn’t sleep properly and he hurtles from panic attack into anger outbursts and he’s unhappy.
Bruce meets a magic user at a mission and the magic user offers him something.
A do-over.
Go back in time and stop Jason’s death and Bruce, Bruce takes it because Jason came back but he’s so unhappy and Bruce might lose him again soon if Red Hood keeps being reckless.
So he takes it.
And he goes back.
~•~
Bruce is on time to save Jason.
He carries his boy’s broken body from the warehouse and then it explodes.
Nick of time.
And Jason takes a while to heal, takes a while to mend his bones and his flesh wounds and his mind, especially his mind, but he gets there.
Dick comes back from his mission and he motherhens and Bruce never ever tells anyone that Jason died in Ethiopia the first time around.
They’re on a mission, an Arkham breakout and Jason fights against Killer Croc and the villain gets his teeth around the boy’s neck and it snaps and Jason is dead again, dead, dead, dead.
Bruce is devastated.
He doesn’t talk to anyone, not for weeks, not when Jason was alive, alive and unhappy but alive, and now he’s dead, again, and it’s Bruce’s fault.
It’s his fault and he doesn’t eat and sleep and he tears down the villains.
And there is Tim and Bruce tries and tries not to let his mental state depend on a child, but something in him heals and soothes and he gets better.
He gets better and then Jason is back.
He comes back wrong again.
He comes back with a neck so covered in scars that he looks as if he is wearing a scarf, but it isn’t that.
It isn’t the green either or the temper.
No, it’s how unhappy he is. Jason cries in Bruce’s arms and Alfred’s arms and Dick’s arms and the next second he has a knife to Tim’s throat.
He wakes the house screaming and he starts sleepwalking and then one day he asks Bruce if he would miss him if he stayed dead and it scares Bruce enough that when he meets a magic user, a different magic user, and they offer him a do-over, he takes it.
He takes it.
And he goes back.
~•~
He doesn’t let Jason go to Ethiopia this time.
He catches him before he does and he and Jason talk. They talk about trust and violence and Robin.
Bruce doesn’t let Jason go off by himself again, but he explains his concerns well enough that he gets through to the boy and instead of feeling stifled, Jason feels protected.
And it works, it works.
Bruce starts inviting Tim over and their neighbour boy, starved of touch and affection and attention, he comes over willingly, gleefully and Jason and him get along like a house on fire.
“Black hair and blue eyes, huh,” Dick comments and Bruce smiles weakly because there is nothing he can say to defend himself.
He doesn’t see any other big changes in the timeline either, so when Alfred comments on his chipper mood, he smiles and says that he is happy. How can he not be, with his boys, his family?
Jason and Dick go on a mission together and Nighwing comes back alone, sobbing and begging and near incoherent. And a moment later, Bruce is throwing up and Jason is dead again, dead, dead, dead and they discover his body later from where he was violently tortured to death by some goons, by Bane.
And Bruce cries himself to sleep every night, but his sons are there every morning and they carry him through it and it takes several months, but eventually some of Bruce’s guilt and shame eases.
Jason comes back.
He comes back all wrong, with scars zig-zagging up his arms and a glass eye and a half-tilted smile, but it’s not that, it’s the way he freezes up and zones out and doesn’t come back for hours and hours.
It’s the drawings Bruce finds, disturbing imagery and the way he confesses that they haunt his nightmares.
He comes back all wrong, a patched together puzzle of trauma, but Bruce swears he’s done, he’s done. He will just have to help Jason in this timeline.
But Jason is not okay and so when Bruce finds him, bloodied and lifeless, and he meets a magic user and he is offered a do-over…he takes it.
He takes it, because it’s his fault that Jason is dead and Bruce is a coward and he can’t live without his sons and so he takes it and he goes back.
He goes back.
~•~
He is too late to save Jason from Ivy’s pollen and they’re not usually lethal, but this one is and so Robin dies.
He does and Gotham mourns and so does Bruce, but he is used to living without Jason now, so Tim becomes his new Robin.
Except, except Jason comes back and Bruce expects it even if he knows he shouldn’t have.
Some time, his luck would run out.
Jason comes back wrong and he kills Tim and when Bruce is offered a do-over, he takes it and he goes back.
~•~
Jason drowns and when he comes back, he can’t really leave his room and he is so desperately, desperately unhappy.
He takes his life again and Bruce thinks those are the worst timelines and there is only so many times a man can watch his son die.
He is tired.
He is tired and he is drained and he isn’t sure he can save Jason, not really, but he has to try.
So he takes it.
And he goes back.
~•~
Jason falls off a roof during parkour.
He comes back all wrong and Bruce takes it and he goes back.
Jason gets killed by the Joker again and Bruce takes it and he goes back.
Jason gets killed in an explosion that levels half of Gotham and it takes Dick too and Tim and Bruce takes the do-over and he goes back.
~•~
“Sir?”
Bruce looks up at Alfred. “Mmh?”
“Are you sleeping alright?”
Bruce isn’t, because Jason is fifteen and he’s alive and he’s about to sneak off to Ethiopia and die and Bruce is going to let him because at least Red Hood kept the man alive and maybe his original timeline was the one for a reason.
And maybe, maybe Jason will be unhappy, but unhappiness can be fixed and slit wrists can’t.
So Bruce is going to let him die and he is not okay and he is not sleeping and whenever he closes his eyes, he sees his broken boy, his broken boys and they’re dead, dead, dead.
“Yeah,” he lies. “Yeah.”
So Bruce is too late to save Jason.
He carries the boy out and he screams and he cries despite himself.
He makes the decision not to pull Nightwing from his mission and so he attends the funeral feeling alone, like he has no family left.
Alfred is there, of course, one hand on his shoulder and a judgemental pull to his grieving face. He wanted to tell Dick.
Dick is furious. He yells and yells at Bruce, tears streaming down his face.
And Bruce doesn’t yell back.
He apologises and he hugs his oldest son tight and Dick clings and clings to him.
And then Bruce goes and he kills the Joker.
It’s something he can’t take back, but he thinks that’s fine because a lifetime ago, several months and months and years and years ago, over ten years ago for Bruce even if no time passed for anyone else, Jason told Bruce that he is asking for Joker’s death.
And Bruce has seen what the Joker has done.
He doesn’t regret it and he knows that Alfred and Dick agree.
Tim though, Tim shows up like clockwork and Bruce sighs and smiles and aches and makes him Robin.
Jason comes back.
He still comes back spitting mad, but this time Bruce listens and Jason listens.
Jason comes back wrong. He’s unhappy, but he’s not alone and he’s safe and loved and maybe that’s okay.
And Bruce is tired, he’s so tired and he dreams of his sons dead and he holds them tight and never wants to let them go.
Jason’s eyes burn and burn and burn all green and he is too violent and too volatile, but they are making it work.
He doesn’t run into the night.
He doesn’t drag a knife over his brother’s throat.
He goes to therapy.
Bruce goes to therapy too and he never talks about altering the timelines, but he does talk about the nightmares and by the time a little boy named Damian shows up at their doorstep, they have eased.
It isn’t perfect.
Jason is still unhappy, but not as desperately anymore and they’re all safe and loved and tired.
Bruce learns the shape of this version of his son. He learns the tells before the panic attacks. Learns how to sit through silence. Learns when to push and when to stay back.
Things get quieter.
Not better, not necessarily, but they’re joined by Cass and then Duke and things are falling into place.
Jason is still unhappy.
Not all the time.
Not all the same either, but it’s there, in the edges of his smiles and the way he curls away sometimes and the way he lashes out a bit too quickly still.
The unhappiness lingers, but it’s something woven into him, something inevitable. Bruce knows that now.
There is nothing that can be done about it.
No version where Jason is untouched, where he is whole.
But he’s alive. He’s alive and he’s healing and he is getting better and he is working so, so hard and Bruce sees that now.
His boy isn’t something to be fixed and neither is his mind.
Jason is alive and he is not always unhappy anymore and that…
Bruce lets it be enough.
So when he meets a magic-user and he’s offered a do-over, he doesn’t take it.
And Bruce doesn’t go back.