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Overprotective Part 5 (Dad!Jason)
I decided to make this part because I wanted to describe in more detail Jason’s feelings about becoming a father. This part was made specifically because I just felt like it. This part can be read as a stand-alone, but part one (on my masterlist) will offer more details on how Ruby came to be for those who haven’t read the full story. This part is more about Jason than Ruby, and its pretty short.
Throughout most of Jason’s life, he was uncertain of what the word ‘love’ truly meant, and what the connotations of it were. He was almost entirely sure that he had loved his mother, the way that a son does, but she had betrayed him in a way and got herself killed by her own volition. Whenever Willis would raise his voice at Jason when he was a child, and frighten him to the point of tears, never did Catherine hush her husband, or aid her child in any way. It was a onesided love that Jason had for his mother, and much to an aching feeling in his stomach, he eventually outgrew that love, and only had resent.
He had loved his father once, for a very brief time. He loved his father when Willis would pick up Jason’s small form off the couch where he had fallen asleep, and bring him to his bed, where he planted a kiss on his forehead and bid him only good dreams. He loved his father when he would come back home from work with Jason’s favorite snack, which were sour gummy worms at the time. He loved his father when Jason had a bad dream, filled with all too real horrors, and would crawl in bed beside his mother and father, buried in scratchy blankets and wrapped in his father's arms. But, of course, good things always come to an end in Jason’s life, and eventually, those good moments ceased to happen, and a small and vulnerable Jason was left with a cold space where his father once had been.
Jason loved Bruce. Loves. Much to his misfortune. Jason still loves the man that replaced his biological father and gave him the proper home and love that he didn’t think he deserved. Though, it’s on nights when Jason is alone, not inside Wayne Manor, while the others all eat dinner made by Alfred, that he wonders why did he have to love Bruce so much? There was always a bitter taste in his mouth when he thought of it, and that bitter taste almost always brought on a stinging in his eyes. So, Jason tried hard not to think of it too often.
Jason considers the love he has for Bruce, his mentor, and possibly a father, unfortunate because of the circumstances. Jason grew up reading, watching, and listening to stories about love, between any two people family or not, in which sacrifice is the ultimate showing of love. Sacrifice, in Jason’s personal dictionary, didn’t necessarily imply giving up one's life, it simply meant doing what needs to be done, no matter the consequence. Because you love that person. And no one had ever done that for Jason- not even Bruce, who was Jason’s father at the time of the young boy’s death. Jason could recall many times when he did sacrifice something for someone he loved, and yet, no one had ever returned the gesture. He tried not to let that bother him- it was a lot to ask of someone. Wasn’t it? Maybe he was simply suicidal and willing to die again so easily, or maybe it was that Jason didn’t know how to love something reasonably.
Jason came back from the dead with a twisted sense of what love truly was. And yet, despite the confusion, Jason loved freely. He loved his friends- Roy, Kori, Artemis, all of them. He loved them deeply and had promptly decided after befriending them, that he would, in fact, die for them. Drastic he knew, but he supposed that their lives were simply worth more than his. The world had already forgotten about him, people don’t need him, however, the world needs his friends- therefore he would sacrifice his life for theirs if he needed to. He would sacrifice anything for them. Of course, that same sentiment went to his family members as well, but that left a hard knot in his throat.
Conclusively, Jason had his own idea as to what love was, and in actuality, it was very different from what the real world definition was. But Jason simply shrugged that off. It was a reality fuck up that he was alive- no one could tell him how to love, not when he was given a chance at life again. If anything, dying and coming back gave him a more profound idea as to what love truly was.
For years, Jason had one type of love in his life- an unreturned favor, and one that decided if he lived or died, come the circumstance if it will. That was until the carrier ended up on the entrance to his hideout, and the girl he found out was his own flesh and blood, came into his life. As per Jason’s usual style, and his typical empathy for children, he came to love the child, his child, at a rapid speed. He loved her so fast, it made him dizzy, and on the third day of her living in his apartment, which was the third day of Jason being a father, he threw up. It was nerves, he assumed, but he also held a cool hand to the pulse on his neck and felt his heart rate so elevated he was surprised he didn’t pass out or have a heart attack. What twenty year old has a heart attack?
Soon the words, “Red Hood has a baby,” started playing over and over in his head, echoing in his ears rather obnoxiously. Red Hood had a baby, true, and he was determined to keep her a secret. To protect her, to keep her safe. He quickly decided that being a crimefighting vigilante would have to come to a slow, much to his teammate's annoyance, but mild understanding. Jason needed to stay home with her, and he wasn’t about to tell anyone about her in order to get a babysitter. It was absolutely, and rather unnecessarily overprotective. A babysitter wouldn’t do any harm to his baby, it was their job to protect children, and his family would be willing to watch her, he knew, but he didn’t care.
The nerves that had been so wound up when he first found her, had finally unwound, and Jason was left feeling nothing but a new kind of love. It was separate from what he felt from friends or even the rest of the family. It was a kind of love that he had never experienced and was determined to never let that love go. It was a feeling of being ready to do anything for that child, to die for her, but not wanting to die, because if he died, he wouldn’t be able to see her anymore. It was feeling the happiest he had ever been- even when Bruce took him in for the first time- when his daughter wrapped her small, chubby hand around one of Jason’s boney, and calloused fingers. It was how the babbling noises of nonsense that she made were the best thing Jason had ever heard. Everything that she did made Jason happy, even when she woke up crying loudly, or when she threw a fit because she had been angered by something. She was a true gem in his life, for that which she was named. Ruby.
And what stemmed from that love he had for her, was her love for him. Jason couldn’t recall a time when someone spoke the words, “I love you,” to him. Not from Catherine, or Willis, nor Bruce Wayne. He was always left unsure whether they truly loved him, or if they simply felt obligated to. Then, there was Ruby, who didn’t need to speak the words to let him know that she did truly love him. And that was in the way that she looked at him- like she needed him, and never wanted him to go away. How she smiled when he did, laughed when he did or cried when he did. But, Jason’s favorite thing, though it did make him feel quite guilty, was how she never wanted him to leave. If he made for the door and left her sitting in the arms of someone else, she would promptly begin to cry. Not loud, and ear piercing, but a small whimper until her father returned to hold her, and of course, Jason always went back to her. He would take her back from whoever, and hold her against his chest, whispering to her softly until she settled down. It was only when she was asleep that Jason could slip out. She loved him with all of her small heart, and never wanted him to leave, and Jason had never seen someone care about him that much.