FIC: Forgiven [DCU; Jason Todd, Bruce Wayne]

[schizoauthoress]

Title: Forgiven
Author: D.L.SchizoAuthoress
Rating: R
Spoilers: Under the Hood AU
Warnings: alternate ending / major character death warning
Word Count: 156
Summary: ...where that batarang to the neck was as serious as it first appeared.
Note: originally posted to Tumblr

Forgiven

In his darker moments — and there are more now than there ever have been — Bruce wonders if Jason knew what he was doing… if he knew how utterly cruel it was to look at Bruce in those last moments and say what he said.

'It's nothing more than you deserve,' Bruce tells himself. 'You chose wrong, and you know it.'

He knew it from the moment that the batarang left his hand. But there is no erasing some choices, some actions.

It wasn’t the explosion that killed Jason this time. Though that — another bomb set off by the Joker — had helped seal Jason’s fate, made Bruce’s immediate remorse meaningless. In the end, it hadn’t mattered how he’d nearly torn his hands apart, digging through the rubble for his son.

It hadn’t mattered the first time, either.

Bruce wonders if Jason meant for that last “Forgive you…” to be the knife in his heart that it’s become.