#brucejason

He knows that now.

Something in him says revenge isn’t worth his time, but he has to see Bruce’s face. He has to know.

His mother hadn’t loved him. Why should he have expected more from Bruce?

So he returns to Gotham, wondering all the while if someone who never loved him will even care.

~

They aren’t together.

They will never be together, despite what has happened between them.

Jason knows it and Bruce has said it at every available occasion, and yet it still comes as a shock when Bruce announces his engagement to the family.

“This is a con, right?” Jason asks, sounding slightly more desperate than he had hoped. He tries to recover, to explain to himself if no one else. “You need an in and she was the quickest route to some scumbag you’ve been tracking. Right?”

Everyone stays eerily silent and Jason hears his own voice ringing through his ears.

“Jason,” Bruce starts gently. “It’s time for me to settle down. We’ve been seeing each other for quite some time.”

“But–” And Jason stops. This can’t be real. He’s stuck in some nightmare. He’s hallucinating.

Bruce would never.

Bruce would…

“This is real?” His gaze bores into Bruce, who stays silent, and his eyes flicker from one face to another to find that he is the only one shocked. The only one who didn’t know.

“Yeah,” Tim says, and his tone is two parts sympathetic and one part patronizing, as if all this was obvious.

Jason forces himself to nod, to feign understanding of anything that is happening, anything that is still being said, but nothing processes.

Eventually, everyone else seems to file out and it is just them: Jason and Bruce.

“I thought you loved me,” Jason says quietly, like the little kid he never was, never had the chance to be.

Bruce doesn’t reply and Jason picks his helmet up.

He stares into it for a moment. He sees a reflection of pain and ugliness and jealousy and tosses it to the floor.

So he leaves Gotham, wondering all the while if someone who never loved him will even care