Buyde-Your-Time

Sonic the Hedgehog + Ex-Aid Burgerwin AU crossover jumpscare

MANIFEST

In Fire and ice there's a moment where Fireheart tells Silverstream that she should break up with Graystripe because it's against the code.

Jason in the morning dropping his brothers off to school: I made Lunch you better fucking eat it

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ jason in a floral apron making cookies?? Bruce just thinks he’s hallucinating for the first week because that cannot be his murder son

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he doesn’t even tell anyone he’s back. He just snuck in and took up residence in the kitchen at 1am, making pancakes until the morning

Talia has like infinite money and a crap ton of influence, so she can absolutely get Jason the best tutors and can easily get him into the most prestigious schools if Jason wanted to (she doesn't need to do that though because Jason's just smart enough to get into them on his own)

The major he chooses? Med.

Why? Because Bruce dropped out of med school.

Jason practically flies through all the secondary education that he needs to catch up on and is already en route to earning his bachelor's AND his master's.

And it'd be so incredibly funny if the way Bruce and Jason reunite in this AU was purely by coincidence.

Bruce (as Brucie Wayne) offers to show up as a guest lecturer at Hudson University (the school Dick attended but dropped out of so double points for Jason), maybe to talk about future career paths and job positions at WE idk

So as Bruce is just wandering around the campus, he randomly bumps into a student and immediately puts on the Brucie act and is all "Oh my, I'm SO sorry, I'm just a klutz haha" only to stop dead silent when he makes eye contact with a very alive, very grown Jason Todd, who also stops dead in his tracks, mouth agape, staring at Bruce like the world's about to end

And before Bruce can get his thoughts straight, Jason just bolts out of there like his life depends on it, and Bruce is just in shambles for the rest of the day.

It doesn't help that the person giving Bruce the tour is all like "Oh yeah, that's Jason, he's one of the heads on our student council haha, anyways, this way, Mr. Wayne." and Bruce is just stood there bluescreening.

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Alternatively, it'd be kinda funny if this all happened AFTER the events of UTRH where after the final encounter with Bruce and Joker and the whole explosion, Jason's just like "yk what, maybe I'm just gonna turn over a new leaf and pursue a higher education"

Shepard pupper in training

I'm making Jason a cat dad... sorry not sorry

And as general rule, Bruce doesn't raise his voice when he's close to kids. Especially his kids, and especially kids that are traumatized, that are still raw from leaving a particularly difficult situation. He took this from Batman, from the very first year, and carried the habit to his sons

But after Jason dies? They're both drowning in blind grief

So when they fight, and they do fight, viciously, Tim is the one that is there to see it. He's the one the see all the ugly bits, the imperfections behind the mask– not only that, I don't think Jason as a kid ever saw his father cry. Bruce knew neither of his sons should ever carry his emotional baggage.

But Tim? Oh, Bruce's grief is a weight that presses upon his chest until he chokes, and the manor is so haunted by Jason's absence, emerged in such deafening silence, that Tim inevitably heard Bruce cry more than once. Until his own chest became so tight he needed to go and comfort Bruce too. This or he was going to go insane. He needed to fix it all, somehow

While Dick and Jason got to make play and silly tricks while in patrol, Tim, Cass, Steph and Damian got a Batman extremely paranoid with protocols, rules and safety measurements. Dealing with Gotham is a serious commitment and is not to be joked about.

So there's that. I'm not saying either Dick or Jason got a perfect version of Bruce. And I'm not saying that, in either case, Bruce is/was a bad father. On the contrary, Batman must always be a good father because of what he represent– what he is as a character

But, yes, being raised by Bruce pre and post Jason's death is a completely different experience