Chapter Text
Bruce lifted one eyelid with monumental effort as thin fingers ghosted over his ribcage.
“What’s this one?” Jason asked, words muffled around the protein bar he’d just finished jamming into his mouth.
“That was from a particularly large thorn from one of Ivy’s man-eating plants,” Bruce said when he caught sight of the puckered scar under Jason’s finger.
The hit he’d taken during patrol was mild, relatively speaking. There wasn’t much blood. He’d not even needed stitches, just a few butterfly bandages and a painkiller for the swelling in his knee. That had been what put Jason on edge, though.
Bruce made a concerted effort not to take any medication when Jason was watching. Pills were usually more acceptable to him than needles, but not always. Both made Robin anxious, and the fact that these pills were strong enough to have a side effect of drowsiness meant Jason was probably going to be fairly clingy for the next several hours.
He had taken to a new game recently, of cataloging Bruce’s scars one by one, and digging out any story Bruce would supply. Tonight he had picked up the game again in a clear attempt to take the edge off his anxiety. Bruce played along to the best of his ability.
He always kept the retellings light, making himself out to be an unbeatable warrior, and playing up his and Dick’s heroics to get Jason giggling. At thirteen, he still had a childish sense of humor and particularly liked renditions that ended up with someone’s ‘ass getting handed to him,’ as Jason liked to say.
“Did it have teeth?” Jason asked, his finger petting up and down Bruce’s side until it made him suppress a shiver.
When Jason first started letting Bruce get close, Bruce had made the horrible mistake of tickling him once. Dick had loved it when he was a boy. It would curl around Bruce’s fingers and shriek with sparkling eyes and feet kicking and yell, “I’m not ticklish!” despite the ample evidence he gave his detective father that it was not fact.
Sometimes, when he was still small enough to fit, he would flop, face down, on Bruce’s knee, pull up his shirt, and plead, “Tickle me, B”. He delighted in the soft shudders that ran up his spine when Bruce would lightly drag one finger along the warm skin, sending a rash of goosebumps across the exposed flesh.
When Bruce had attempted the stunt with Jason, he had kicked him in the face, splitting his lip in the process, and hid under the bed for the rest of the night.
Bruce knew he wasn’t going to get a reason why, especially after the twelve-year-old came down for patrol, acting as if nothing had happened, even as he shied away from Bruce’s shadow. After he’d tucked Jason in bed that night and bent over the bat computer, he’d learned that tickling was a common tactic employed by abusers to groom their victims.
Tickling allowed predators to acclimate children to touch in sensitive places. It provided a guise under which to blur boundaries and remove the already weak authority behind words like ‘no’ and ‘stop’. Tickling straddled the boundaries between pleasure and pain, and exerted power and control over another person’s bodily reaction.
Like wrestling, or playfully lifting a child and spinning them around, or sharing a ‘secret’ like a sweet snack without a parent’s approval, it was a tactic that seemed innocuous from the outside but was sadistic when used as a weapon.
Bruce would never have wanted Jason to see how he had broken down crying after he had figured it all out. He made a promise to himself afterward that he was never going to tickle any child ever again. Not because of the issues with tickling itself, but just out of the principle itself. Or maybe because of the rolling nausea that had made a home in his stomach at the thought. It was promise he intended to keep, along with the promise to hunt down every username on the dark-web forum where perverted individuals had shared the ‘advice’ to use tickling as a safe way to groom a child right under the noses of even the most protective parents.
Bruce hated the fact that the memory was dragged up by Jason’s finger tracing between his ribs now.
Why must even the most innocent things hold dark memories for his son?
“Ivy’s plant didn’t have teeth,” Bruce said in answer to Jason’s teasing attempts to draw out a story. Bruce was tired. He was tired, and he was more than a little cranky. Jason wanted to keep him awake because of his own anxieties, so as much as Bruce wanted to curl into the sofa and snore, he wasn’t going to risk sabotaging what progress he’d made by snapping at him now.
“Was it a big pitcher plant?” Jason asked, rocking slightly on his knees.
“No, lad. It was sticky.”
“Like a sundew,” Jason supplied.
“A sundew with thorns,” Bruce agreed. “It had a thick sap that oozed out of it and covered its victim to slowly dissolve them.”
“That’s dumb,” Jason laughed. “Too much time to escape. Bet you were like Boba Fett in the… that thing that ate him.” They hadn’t watched the original Star Wars that long ago. Jason had been enchanted and had taken a special liking to Leia in particular, after she’d choked Jabba to death. Bruce had fast-forwarded through much of it, simply due to the fact that Jason would apply context to a barely dressed woman in chains that other children would never have thought of. But Jason had wanted to see the fight sequence.
“How do you know Boba Fett escaped?” Bruce asked.
Jason snorted. “No spiky sand anus is gonna kill someone like Boba Fett. Get outta here.” He sat back, pulling his hand away from the scar. “Just like no dumb old plant was going to slowly digest you alive. Ivy’s so dumb.”
“You think she should have planned something a bit quicker?” Bruce offered, trying to hide his smile at Jason's… colorful… descriptors.
“Well, yeah? She’s got all these plant powers, and she could invent an all-new man-eating plant, but what does she go with? A giant sundew. It doesn’t even SOUND threatening? Like cuddle pollen.”
“What kind of plant would you make if you were trying to fight Batman?” Bruce asked.
“I dunno. It’d have teeth, though.”
“Because teeth are more effective than thorns?” Bruce asked.
“Naw, they’re just cool.” Jason supplied. “Think about it, B. Whose scarier to fight? Ivy with her sticky plants? Bah, who cares? Kiteman? Don’t make me laugh. But Killer Croc? Now there’s a threat. He’s big and stupid, but he’s got all those teeth.”
“You have a valid point, son.”
“I mean, even Scarecrow isn’t anything without his fear toxin. All you need to beat him is a gas mask. That’s nothing.”
“Hmmmm. I don’t remember it being that easy last time we tangled with him.”
“He ain't got nothing on you, B.” Jason flushed a little and refocused on Bruce’s torso under the shirt he’d pulled up under Bruce’s chin. “Hey. I haven’t seen this one before. What’s that?” He poked at a thick knot of scar tissue at the base of Bruce’s arm, just visible at the edge of his armpit hair.
“Oh. That was from training with the League of Assassins.”
“League of Assassins,” Jason whispered. “Did they know just how awesome that name is when they picked it, or were they just being on the nose?”
“I feel like it may be a little of both,” Bruce said with a chuckle.
“But look. We match,” Jason said with an all too bright smile that said he didn’t understand just what he’d said. He twisted and pulled up his shirt, revealing a gnarled scar in nearly the same place.
Bruce took a deep breath.
He’d seen that one in one of the reports he’d taken from CPS records. In that case, it was most likely the result of an encounter with Jason’s biological father.
“We do match. Mine was from a sword. I didn’t quite turn fast enough. Good thing there’s nothing vital back there. Yours?”
Jason was twisting, lips pouting out as he attempted to see his own scar. “Beer bottle,” he said over his shoulder. Distracted. “I think mine’s bigger.”
“Hmmmmm. I think it is. Just a little bit, though.”
Jason pulled his shirt down, then turned and carefully did the same for Bruce, smoothing out a wrinkle over his chest with small, suddenly shaky hands. “Am I annoying you? You’re probably pretty tired, huh?”
“I am tired, but you are always more interesting than sleep,” Bruce said.
Jason sat back, not responding to the teasing, eyes fixed on the place under Bruce’s arm where the shirt covered his scar.
Bruce shifted and carefully patted his chest. “C’mere, Lad.”
Jason hesitated.
“You can hear my heartbeat if you lie up here. We’ll both get some rest, hmmm?”
Bruce wasn’t sure off the top of his head what weight the average thirteen-year-old boy should weigh, but he knew, from his experience with Dick at least, that Jason was still too small. His bones were growing stronger. His wiry muscles were deceptively small for the power they packed. He had grown to the point that the training was a benefit to his overall health rather than a dangerous risk to a body still fragile from starvation. But he still didn’t look much bigger than Dick had when Bruce first brought him home at eight years old.
He was far too light as he climbed onto Bruce’s chest, lying on his back with his curly hair tucked against Bruce’s chin. Bruce blew gently on the dark locks to clear them away from his nose, and Jason giggled.
“B?” Jason asked as Bruce settled both his palms on the boy’s too-small rib cage.
“Hmmmmm?”
“Do you think I should go visit Willis?”
Bruce’s breath hitched in his chest, and he had to fight himself to start it again as smoothly and as quickly as possible so he didn’t alarm the tiny boy.
Jason shifted, turned his ear into Bruce’s collar bone, and twisted the fingers of one hand through all of Bruce’s.
Bruce hated that Jason had to remember his biological father at all. He hated it even more so that it was things like scars left by broken bottles that brought the reminder up.
“Is he still in Blackgate?” Jason asked.
“Yes,” Bruce answered carefully.
Bruce had done his fair share of obsessive research when things started coming to light. Jason didn’t talk about it. He rarely shared more information than to indicate his distaste for alcohol or his insecurity around what Bruce assumed to be normal family dynamics. Bruce had done enough digging to come to the conclusion that Willis Todd did clearly love his son, but had no context for what love might look like in a safe environment. The patterns of poverty, abandonment, and abuse were easy to find in the Todd's history. Willis had been in and out of the system, much like his son. He had lost a brother in the midst of it. A boy of three who had 'fallen down the stairs' while the two of them were in separate homes. It was impossible to blame Willis for not understanding how to love his boy well when he'd likely not encountered much of it himself.
Bruce had once heard the Golden Rule rephrased, "Love your neighbor as yourself. But how can you love them if you don't know how to love yourself?" He suspected this was part of the struggle with Willis. Abused children often grew to either become abusers, or to become trapped in perpetual victimhood.
There were explanations for Willis's behavior, if Bruce allowed himself to look for them. He didn't want to see the man as a devil. He wasn't. At one point, he'd been a hurting little boy himself. There was a part of Bruce that wanted to cling to those excuses. For Jason's sake. He wanted to be able to hold Jason close and explain to him that his father did love him. That Jason was not condemned by his parentage. The other part of Bruce wanted to cut the man out of their future and pretend he had never existed.
In the end, it wasn't really his decision to make. Jason would have to come to his own understanding of who his father was, and who he was in relation to the man who had given him so many of his scars.
“Should I go see him?” Jason asked
Everything in Bruce screamed ‘no’, but he wouldn’t deny Jason his desire to see Willis, even if it was likely to hurt more in the end. “Do you want to?”
Jason’s shoulders lifted slightly. A barely perceptible shrug.
Bruce didn’t know how Willis might react to a visit. If he did bring Jason, should he allow the boy to go in alone? Would he be safer if Bruce went with him? Would Willis be reactive about losing custody? Did he even know?
“It’s your choice, Lad.”
“Maybe…” Jason's fingers were in constant motion, tugging and pulling at Bruce’s, his fingernails scraping against the calluses. “He might want to know I’m safe.”
“That’s a fair assessment.”
Too fair.
“Maybe,” Jason whispered.
“You aren’t sure?”
Jason shrugged again. There seemed to be more to the story, but Bruce didn’t want to push it. He didn’t want his son to retreat into himself again, or to have to think too long about anything that might trigger nightmares. If they hadn’t already wandered into that territory.
It was hard to tell if it was something Jason needed to do for himself or if it was something he felt guilt over. Jason had firmer boundaries than Dick ever had. If he didn’t want something, he was quick to say so. Even with his intense need to avoid displeasing them at all costs and the emphasis he placed on being the perfect kid, Jason still didn’t hesitate to make it clear when he was uncomfortable.
It could be that Jason just wasn’t sure himself.
“I think,” Jason started. “I think if it were you, you’d want to know. But you aren’t Willis. And I dunno… Do you think someone told him?”
Bruce wanted to press the little boy tighter to his chest, but resisted the urge. ‘Cuteness aggression,’ Dick called it once, after wrestling Jason to the floor and nuzzling his face into the younger boy like a cat.
Jason was not yet comfortable enough with Dick to allow for anything nearly that physical, and Dick had nearly earned a black eye for his trouble.
This was more, though.
Jason may not have a good example of what a father should be, but he had compared Bruce to Willis, and Willis had come out wanting. It would have brought up conflicting feelings if the same thing had happened with Dick, but Bruce had no problems showing Jason all the ways in which his father was deficient.
“Do you want to see him, or do you just want him to know?” Bruce asked carefully.
“I think… I think I just want him to know.”
“Would you like me to tell him?” Bruce asked.
Jason went still.
Bruce scrambled for any direction as to why his son might have been so thrown off by the suggestion. “I’m not saying that you shouldn’t go see him. You can, if you would like. And I’m happy to go with you, or wait while you go in alone. Whatever you want. But if you just want him to know, and you would prefer not to see him, I can go.” Bruce lifted his hand to trap Jason’s own, shaky one. “I can let you know how it goes, and you can decide if you’d like to visit after.”
“I don’t wanna,” Jason said quickly. He hesitated, his hand curling into a fist around a fold of Bruce’s shirt. “I mean… If you would tell him… I would… That would be good. Thank you.”
“But you don’t want to see him?”
“I need him to know…” Jason stuttered a lot when he was nervous. Unless his nerves turned into defensiveness and came out in yelling.
“Yes?” Bruce prompted, more from the need to hear his son take a breath than anything else.
“I need him to know that I’m safe, and that I want to stay here.”
“Jason, do you understand what it means that Willi lost his parental rights?” Bruce asked.
Curls tickled Bruce’s stubble as Jason shook his head.
“It means that in the eyes of the law, you aren’t Willis’s son anymore. You understand? And for a while, the government was like your parent, because it was their job to take care of you. To pay for you, and to make decisions like what schools you would go to, or medical decisions. Now, because I adopted you, I’m legally your parent.”
“So, Willis isn’t my Dad anymore?” Jason asked.
“That’s much more complicated to answer, Jason. One I think you need to answer for yourself. But this is just about who gets to make decisions for you until you are an adult. Because the court believes that Willis didn't make good decisions for you, they decided that he doesn’t get to make them anymore. Adoption says they trust me to make better decisions. Now, if Willis got out of jail, and he decided he wanted to take you away from me, that would be considered kidnapping.”
Jason lay very still, his breathing the only indicator of what he may be feeling. It would quicken one moment, and fade to almost nothing the next.
“He can’t take me away, then?” Jason said. “Even if he wants me.”
“He would have to convince the court that there is a good reason for him to have custody. Which…” Bruce quickly amended as Jason’s body tightened. “He would not be able to do. And even if he tried, you are old enough that the judge would let you tell them what you wanted to.”
“I could decide?”
“You could tell the judge what you wanted, and he would consider it in making his verdict,” Bruce explained. “Just like they asked you before they let me adopt you. It's not the only thing they would consider, but it is very important.”
Especially considering the files full of proof of Willis’s abuse… large despite Gotham’s gaping flaws when it came to child welfare, and the multiple arrests Willis already had for violent crimes. And if that wasn’t enough, Bruce was not at all unwilling to take advantage of the unfairness of Gotham’s courts to pay for a verdict. It may not be true justice, but if he had purchased Jason’s safety, he would do it.
"And Willis knows about that?"
Bruce took a deep breath. "I'm not sure what he knows or what he doesn't know. They would have told him that he lost custody of you, but he likely doesn't know what happened afterwards. He knows that he cannot take you without getting in trouble with the law. But he may not know where you are, or if you are safe."
“Will you still… Will you tell him?” Jason asked. "Not... not where I am, just... Just that I don't want to go with him if he gets out."
Bruce wished he could understand exactly what Jason's fear was. If he was worrying for Willis's sake, or if he was afraid for his own. Or perhaps it was some blend of them. Either way, he was asking Bruce to take care of him. He didn't ask for that often.
“Of course, Lad. I’ll request a visit. I’ll speak to him myself if I can, and if he will not allow it, I’ll send a lawyer to make sure he knows where he stands. You don’t have to worry, Jaylad.” He leaned in, his better judgment gone in a moment of affection and drug-induced exhaustion, and pressed a kiss into the hair. He smelled of baby shampoo. He may be a teenager, but Alfred seemed to have the same need to hold on to the lost childhood the way Bruce did, and always provided tear-free baby shampoo. “I’ll make sure he knows.”