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Bruce was leaving his bedroom when he noticed it, a quick glance down the hall that showed all of his children's doors closed except one. He took a sharp breath.
Jason's room.
The only person who ever ventured in there was Alfred, dedicated to cleaning it as regularly as any of the others. He'd started the habit soon after learning of Jason's resurrection. Before that the room had remained closed up, a tomb for Jason's stolen life.
But Alfred was downstairs in the Cave.
Bruce approached the open door, briefly wondered if maybe it was Damian, digging into his older brother's past in that thorough and determined—and pigheaded—way that Bruce could probably blame on himself. Nurture if not nature.
When he reached the door and peered inside it wasn't his youngest he found but Jason himself, digging through the bookshelf that was near overflowing. The shelves were crammed with books; from old textbooks to the novels Jason preferred, with a few stacks of comics on the shelves near the bottom, gifted from Dick in an attempt to make up for the early tension between them.
He probably shouldn't have been surprised. Jason's improved relationship with his siblings saw him visiting the manor more often, his visits no longer so perfectly timed to ensure he and Bruce never crossed paths.
Bruce hovered in the doorway, uncertain, until Jason turned sharply and glared at him. Not in a good mood, then. He swallowed and stepped into the room, committing himself to a conversation that he could see going very badly. With Jason 'okay' was usually the best he could hope for.
"Don't worry," Jason said, waving the book he held clasped in his left hand. "I'll bring it back. I never finished this one, figured it was time."
"You don't have to bring it back," Bruce said, hesitant and awkward over the words. He could never tell what the right ones were, with Jason. Not anymore. It hurt, because it used to be so easy. "It's your book. This is your room."
Jason snorted, cast a disparaging look around the room. "This? This is isn't my room. It's a shrine dedicated to who I used to be. You know, the kid you still mourn."
"It wasn't—" Bruce cut himself off, swallowed and started again. "This is yours, Jason. We didn't feel we had the right to change it."
"But you didn't get rid of it," Jason replied. Bruce couldn't read anything off his expression. It was always unpleasant when his children shut themselves down like he did. He didn't want them to pick up his worst traits.
"I—no," Bruce said. He hadn't even been able to stand looking at the room, let alone approaching the idea of cleaning it out, of taking Jason's things and storing them away somewhere because they weren't needed anymore, because the boy was dead and buried and gone forever.
Not quite forever, as it turned out, but sometimes the distance felt about as long.
"You're back now," he said, careful because while Jason and his brothers were getting along better, he and his estranged son still had more bad days than good, and this was quite clearly a bad one. "You can do whatever you like with it now. You could clean it out and move some of your things in."
Jason's safe houses were transitory things. He didn't keep them long and that was probably why he didn't have much in the way of physical possessions. Most of what he did have invariably ended up either abandoned with the safe house, destroyed with the safe house, or dumped off with a sibling while Jason gallivanted around the world and made valiant attempts to give Bruce a heart attack.
He didn't like it. The manor was Jason's home; he should feel safe enough to leave his possessions here.
"I'm not changing a thing," Jason said. "I'm even bringing the book back when I'm done with it. This room is staying exactly the same. I don't visit long enough to need a room and I never will. Not while that thing is still down there."
The memorial case.
Bruce closed his eyes and took a steadying breath. "Jason. I know you don't like the case—"
"Don't like it?" Jason interjected. "Try 'hate', or maybe 'detest'. As long as that thing is around this room is staying exactly the same, because no one is going to be living in it, least of all me. Hell, at least this place actually represents me. Not like that fucking monument of guilt you've built down there, dedicated to someone who never existed. 'Good Soldier'? Are you kidding me? That's how you chose to remember me?"
There were things he should be saying, but he was utterly inadequate to the task. Jason was just too good with words, struck sharply to wound and stole his very breath, stole the words he wanted to say and rendered them useless.
"Why would I come back here when you're still busy mourning me? A version of me that you've built up in your head as something I wasn't, to serve as a warning to every kid who came after. 'Kids, don't be like Jason or you'll get yourself killed!'." Jason's voice had risen steadily through the tirade until he was nearly shouting. "And yet, at the same time you practically drown in the guilt of it all! Your greatest failure. Give me a fucking break. It was my mistake. I'm the one who died and now I'm back. Stop fucking mourning me."
"It wasn't—it wasn't your fault," Bruce said, fumbling the words out while there was a lapse as Jason caught his breath. "You were murdered. It was not your fault. It was the Joker's. And mine."
"Oh, this again." Jason rolled his eyes. "Newsflash, Bruce—not everything is about you."
"I'm your father," Bruce insisted, shaking his head. "You never should have been there in the first place. You never should have felt like you had to leave. I'm responsible because you were a child, my child. I failed and you were murdered."
Jason licked his lips, rocking back on his heels. "And yet i'm right here, but that doesn't stop you keeping that thing around and mourning the idea you have of me in your head—because I didn't come back the same and that means that kid is still dead." He waved a hand to encompass the room. "And because I'm not even sure you miss who I really was or just the idea you built up about the 'Good Soldier', this room will be around to remind you who that kid who died really was. Children aren't soldiers, Batman. If you were really my father, maybe you should have remembered me as your son instead."
"Jason—"
"I'm done." Jason moved past him, hurried footsteps carrying him to the door. "I was only here for the book, anyway."
Bruce stood in the room, listened as Jason's footsteps faded away down the hall, and tried not to think about Jason disappearing again. It hadn't been their worst fight—far from it—but Jason was good at leaving him reeling. He took a long look around the room, a pristine reflection of Jason at fifteen. His heart always ached in his chest whenever he dwelt on how Jason had changed from that boy.
Only recently had he begun to feel the same tight grip on his heart as he noticed all the ways that Jason was still the same.
Bruce swallowed, turning and leaving the room behind, throat tight with something he didn't want to put words to. The halls of the manor were quiet and dark as the evening grew late. The rest of the boys were likely already down in the Cave with Alfred, preparing for patrol. He hoped Jason had gone down to join them, but he doubted he had stayed.
Jason was an emotional hit and run.
Bruce made his way downstairs to the study and the entrance to the Cave, ready to set aside the emotional upheaval. He stopped short when his eyes caught on the figure leaning against the grandfather clock, blocking the way.
It was the second time he'd walked in on one of his sons in a place he did not expect them to be, and he wasn't any more prepared for this one. He had far more practice fighting with Dick over the years, but it did not make him any better at dealing with it. His eldest boys had wildfire tempers and while Jason struck precisely, Dick was a freight train.
"Are you going to yell at me, too?" He asked, steeling himself. He wasn't surprised Dick had been keeping tabs on Jason. He was protective, borderline overbearing towards all of his younger siblings. The few times that Bruce and Jason were present in the manor at the same time it was a good bet that Dick would be lurking somewhere, ready to intervene.
"If yelling was all you got from that, he should have punched you in the face," Dick said, arms crossed over his chest, deceptively relaxed. "It might have at least made him feel better."
"Has he left?"
"He's downstairs." Dick straightened up, but didn't move away from the clock. "Which is why I'm not yelling at you, actually. He's down there preparing for patrol with Damian and someone needs to supervise those two or otherwise Gotham will be burning by morning."
"You're not just up here to keep me away until they leave."
"No," Dick admitted. "It's just a happy side effect. Look, the last thing Jason probably wants is for me to get involved between you two, but reasoning with you is like arguing with a brick wall, except the wall actually has its shit together."
Bruce clenched his teeth together. "Do you have a point?"
He saw the spark of temper flare in Dick's eyes before it was smothered under his son's sometimes tenuous control. "I do, yes. I want you to think about one thing, Bruce. Why is your guilt more important than Jason's feelings?"
He opened his mouth, but Dick shook his head, cutting him off.
"I don't want an answer, Bruce. I just want you to think about it." Dick moved to open the entrance to the Cave. "Because from where I'm standing it looks like you can either have your guilt or your son. I really hope I don't need to point out which one you should be choosing, here." He glanced back. "Give me a few minutes to get them out, alright? Damian doesn't need to see a fight."
Bruce didn't reply, but he didn't follow Dick down immediately, all the same.
He waited on the threshold of the secret entrance until the faint sound of a rumbling engine signaled that the boys were preparing to leave.
By the time he descended the stairs to the Cave only Alfred remained, sorting through medical supplies while the computer was busy broadcasting the chatter of the boys over the comms. Jason's voice was conspicuous in its absence. Guilt clenched his heart in a vice. Jason had come so far, was joining their patrols more frequently, was even keeping to Batman's most important rule.
But more important than that, he was slowly coming back to them as Jason instead of Red Hood. He was talking with his brothers more often, spending time with Cass and Stephanie, and whiling away hours in the kitchen of the manor with Alfred while Bruce carefully avoided going anywhere near.
Was there anything worth jeopardizing that progress?
A gravestone in a cemetery, a memorial in the Cave, a bedroom in the manor. Jason had crawled out of the grave, saw the memorial case every time he worked with them as Red Hood, and his bedroom was a snapshot frozen in time of what he'd lost. What good did it do Jason to have reminders around every corner?
What good did it do Bruce, to have reminders when his real son was right there?
He had to pass the memorial case on the way to his suit. Bruce stopped in front of it, dropping his eyes to the plaque that Jason had so vehemently denounced.
It really hadn't been Robin he'd been mourning all these years.
"Alfred," Bruce said, letting his voice carry across the Cave. "I think it might be time to take this down."
There was a heavy thunk. He glanced up to see Alfred approaching, the box of medical supplies discarded on the ground.
"Better late than never, Master Bruce." That was definitely censure in his voice. "I shall take care of it right away."
He was the so-called World's Greatest Detective. He could take a hint.
Bruce reached out and pried the plaque away from the case.