What if Jason came back from the dead later, like Damian is already Robin now, and Jay comes back and is still pissed but while he's stalking the family for dirt on how best to pull off an UTRH, he finds out the kids basically beat him to it.
They constantly appear to make Bruce absolutely fucking miserable. Some of the shit they say, while pushing Bruce away? Or come crawling back? Horrendous. Now, the kid from the LoA, Jason could understand some of the demeanour, but not all. But Dick? Jason wonders if Dick was always like that. He doesn't remember it being this bad before.
What the hell had happened here?
He sticks around and keeps at his spying, and also learns about the convoluted reasons why Tim and Damian ended up Robin--basically against Bruce's wishes which made some of the anger deep inside Jay fizzle out--and that there's a girl who was Robin for a small period of time who maybe died? (he keeps hearing that Leslie faked this girl's death but told Bruce she killed her on purpose, and he pales at that knowledge. Granny Lee did that???)
Day after day of seeing and hearing all of this, Jason starts to wonder why he's plotting some revenge scheme. There's so much less fuel for this hellfire brimming inside of him, especially watching all this unfold through secret cameras and audio recorders and his disguises when stalking them outside the Cave or Manor grounds. It almost doesn't compare to his original plans.
But he also can't tear his eyes away from this, learning all that's happened since he's been gone. He overhears Dick mention to Damian that Clark, Uncle Clark, stopped Bruce from killing the Joker. He was so close, too...Then he hears what happened after. Right after Jason died. Practically trying to get himself killed, that's all Bruce was doing for weeks.
Jason doesn't see Bruce often in his snooping, only glimpses, and Bruce is a decade older now but....Jason almost doesn't recognize him anymore.
He looks so viscerally exhausted, his eyes no longer shine. Shoulders barely hanging on to their steely form. Days pass and he looks like he's thinning out, dark circles underneath those icy eyes. Not eating for a second day in a row because as soon as Bruce walked into the dining room, the chatter died and a pindrop would set off an explosion of vitriol from these people.
More than once Jason watches as Bruce deflates after whatever argument this time has died down and the kids leave. He's a hollow of himself. Barely keeping together.
And Alfred? Alfred isn't even trying. Maybe he never was. Some of the things that man says to Bruce, they make it sound as if everything is Bruce's fault. It's his stubbornness and temperment and emotions or lack thereof that are always the problem. Never the kids. Never Alfred.
...Was he like this before, too? Had Jason just not seen it? He hears the disregard in Alfred's words, words that say something nobody sane should ever tell their practically adopted child, and Jason's blood burns. What the fuck?
Jason watches as Bruce tries again and again to go out of his way for them, providing ample room and berth for these people. Giving them such patience and leeway. Taking a scalpel to his own flesh, all for them, all the time.
But they still just snap back at him like a bow string let loose to recoil violently. Nothing is ever enough.
After that, the goal changes to getting Bruce the hell out of there, because if Jason doesn't, that 'family' will be the death of Bruce.
