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

Damian’s voice as he had said, “We were the best.”

He tries to convince himself that Damian didn’t do it for him. That Damian’s last words weren’t “Don’t touch him.”

But he thinks of Absence. He thinks of Deathstroke. He thinks of– of Heretic.

He thinks of all the times Damian had fought against everything–everything–to save him.

“Why–” he starts, when he works up the courage one night. He hesitates. “Why did you trust me?”

The silence yawns and stretches into something akin to a question, asks for elaboration.

Dick kneels in the dirt. He feels like he should be doing something more poetic, more pristine. His hand should be resting on the gravestone and he should be speaking like there’s peace–like he believes Damian is at peace.

It wouldn’t feel right. Here, in the dirt, he’s closer. He can speak in low tones and believe that Damian will still hear him. As if Damian can hear anything now.

“You trusted me and I just watched you die.” He swallows. “Why? Why trust me of all people? I mean, Bruce, sure, and– and Alfred? Of course. But me? I probably told you to. Something like, ‘We need to trust each other.’” Dick laughs. “I can hear myself telling you that. But when did you ever listen to anyone?”

The night contemplates.

“Why me?”

The wind blows. Crickets chirp. Somewhere far away, a siren starts screeching.

The silence is gone and any reply that might’ve come is lost.