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𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐋𝐃 𝐎𝐍𝐋𝐘 𝐌𝐀𝐊𝐄𝐒 𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐒𝐄 𝐈𝐅 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐂𝐄 𝐈𝐓 𝐓𝐎

#CXPEDCRUSXDER: semi-selective, non mutual, literate, comic based Bruce Wayne/The Batman from DC COMICS. crossovers welcomed. multiship and multiverse. takes inspiration from comics, arkhamverse, DCAU and various media. beloved by Fox.

18+, minors and personals DO NOT INTERACT.

template credit @noahsresources

PINNED POST/INFORMATION

Jason never says how much things like this mean to him. Partially because that will reveal more about who he is than he wants Bruce to know. He knows that he's dead in some of his family's are they really a family anymore? eyes, or at least the Jason they loved is. For the past years, he'd been living as a ghost. Mostly left to his own devices as long as too many bodies didn't drop where the rest could see. And he'd gotten good about cleaning up behind himself. He hasn't taken off the helmet and it hides his smile when the other agrees, actually looks at him. It feels like that doesn't happen much, but he remembers the man isn't really seeing his face right now, scarred with a deep arc running from the corner of his lips, over his eye, towards his hairline-- looking a bit too much like a J. Of course the moment ends quickly. And the smile turns to a scowl beneath the guarding layer Jason wears as he looks back. "I'm starting to think your lead here is shit, B... If I focus much longer, I'm gonna start seein' shit."

@redhoodedtodd sent:

❛ working together again, it’s just like old times. ❜

𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐬

    🦇—-;; There is a nostalgic part of him that misses the days he no longer can have with Jason, that boy had died, and had been replaced with a man Bruce struggles to see eye to eye to on the best of days. Not for lack of trying, there is too much of a divide between them for that. That doesn't mean that Batman doesn't at least appreciate it when Red Hood is working by his side again. Bruce can't help the tender part of him that surfaces each time, having to remind himself that this will likely be short lived.

Still, the words out of Jason's mouth bring that nostalgic warmth a bit further forward. Bruce isn't quite able to catch the slight uptick of the corner of his mouth, though it's gone less than a second later before he huffs, shifting slightly before he looked at Jason properly. "It is." He agrees.

Quietly, to himself, he wonders if Jason misses those days as much as he does, but...he knows better than to ask. He is nothing, if not a sentimental old man at heart. He clears his throat and looks forward again, white lenses narrowing briefly. "We should focus." He says, gesturing to why they're here, working together in the first place.

It wasn't all Bruce's fault; Jason knew that. Of course he did. Bruce didn't make him break more laws than the Batman's morality allowed. He didn't make Jason stay away from the Wayne Manor, the one place that ever really felt like home to the man. No, that was Jason's doing. It was his choices, his own stubbornness, but something felt innately wrong about going home when things had soured so much between the Joker still breathing and the replacement child that was still allowed to fight after one soldier was already lost.

"Lemme guess, the sources were dragged up the side of a goddamn building crying for their moms," he snorted, knowing that Bruce-- despite his distaste for Jason's methods-- could be more than a little rough when he wanted information out of far more distasteful men.

A huff of breath and he glares back at the street, seeing the cars. "Not bored... restless," he grumbled out, slowly standing from the crouch. There was no grapple gun. Jason was well aware how far he could jump and land on his feet like some cursed to hell cat. Cursed didn't begin to cover it. "When do we move."

  🦇—-;; Bruce tone was a little lighter, despite shifting the focus back to the case, indicating he had at least been in something of a similar situation, leaning a bit on the large part of himself that missed the way things used to be. And sure, he'd like to go back to that, or whatever the new version of that was, like they were doing now, more often, stubbornness tended to get in the way of all that. That didn't mean Bruce didn't miss his son any less, his son working at his side. He'd tell Jason as much if he thought he could get away with it, but he'd been living with that strained bond since Jason had returned to Gotham. Maybe it's the part of him that still blames himself for what happened in Ethiopia. He hasn't breathed a word about that since he first found out the Red Hood's identity.

He shakes his head a little, "the source of this lead was reliable enough." He wouldn't have dragged Jason out this far without at least double-checking his sources. And sure a handful of mob enforcers weren't all that reliable on their own when being interrogated by the Bat, but they had all mentioned the same place. Bruce's hand flexes, clawed fingers moving to the side of the cowl briefly, adjusting the vision mode in the cowl manually.

As his hand lowered from the side of his face, his thumb found the scar on his own lip, faint as it was from how old it was, but it traced it regardless before he looked at his hand and then back out across the way, listening briefly. "We can move soon, if you're starting to get bored, Hood." Bruce's tone takes that slight sarcastic tone, gentle in the way he does with only family. Broken bond aside, Jason is, and always will be his son.

"There's a couple of cars that just pulled up with no plates." He says, looking at Jason again. "My lead isn't entirely rubbish." Bruce shrugged before bringing his hands up to crack his knuckles, then reached for the grapple gun on his belt.

All I did was give you direction. He almost has to laugh at that and amusement plays on his expression, those pale blues pinning Bruce in a narrow gaze that says he doesn't quite trust all that is said. "You gave me a lot more than direction, B."

Part of him wanted to say too much. Part of him wanted to tell the man he wished Robin and Batman didn't exist. But another part knows if Batman hadn't been on the streets, Jason himself... wouldn't have lasted. He would've tumbled through the East End to an obscure grave put together by the Gotham Memorial Morgue. A too young John Doe with no one to remember who the hell he was.

So how can he really be ungrateful... and can he really say it was all bad?

A huff of a laugh comes out and Jason turns the domino mask in his hand, casting his gaze out across the city from the high perch. "I know you are, in your own damn way..." Otherwise, Jason wouldn't be allowed to run free like he did. He understood there was something keeping him out of Blackgate or Arkham, and it sure as hell wasn't Grayson. "Still. Guess it's nice to hear it."

@redhoodedtodd sent:

you taught me how to protect myself.

PROMPTS FOR FEELING SAFE / EXPRESSING COMFORT

    🦇—-;; Of course, Bruce knows his boys are capable, he'd trained them, taught them the skills they needed to survive at the Bat's side and eventually flourish into their own people out of his shadow. Yet, he feels as if he'd failed Jason, though not through lack of teaching, but by simply not being there fast enough to protect him when he should have been. Jason's words do not soften that guilt any, no matter how much Bruce tells himself that it's true, and he knows how capable he is. But that one failure is going to be a mark on that until Bruce learns to let the guilt go.

Still, regardless of that, a smile, small as it is, curls the corners of his mouth. "Of course I did, but you had that potential within you the whole time, Jason. All I did was give it a direction." Perhaps it's wrong of him to downplay the significance of his choice to take Jason under his wing, to mentor him like he had with Dick. Even if sometimes Bruce wonders if it had been the right choice, it's not as if he'd change that.

"I...I am proud of what you are capable of." He might not like all of it, the things that went against everything he'd taught the boy, but at the same time, he was not angry about it. He finds it difficult to be angry about it. However, right now, he simply hopes his words were not crossing over any boundaries.