Chapter Text
"Here Lies Jason Todd '' said the grave. Dick was sure that the last time he was there it said "Rest in Peace '', an urban mystery, people would make creepypasta stories if Dick even imagined saying anything about it in the tabloids.
Jason would have found it funny, he could almost see him snorting as his laughter began to quickly take over his body. It would have been beautiful, Jason's laugh tended to be beautiful. Annoying, shrill and like the very sweet little shit that he was. His smiles were from ear to ear. That boy had been able to make Batman laugh.
In comparison, Dick had a gremlin grin which matched the anger that accompanied him most of the time.
Robin was always responsible for making Batman smile, but only Jason had made him laugh. Dick may have started a beacon of hope, but Jason turned Robin into a legend.
"Who cares about Batman." How harsh and petty words, but it was the biggest amount of emotions he allowed himself to feel at the moment. Anger, tiredness, aggression, loneliness,... Dick still felt many things, after all he was always good at being upset and better at cover it.
The reality was that Robin started because he didn't know how to deal with his grief.
Grief was different for everyone, Alfred would say. It could last up to two years, said the studies. Dick hadn't felt much different since the day he found out Jason died. Through the newspaper, if he felt bitter enough to press on that wound. Cold and distant parting as Jason was beneath the earth because Bruce hadn't called him to the funeral.
Idiot alpha, stupid, arrogant, pompous, frustrating, shitty father, useless mentor-
Batman.
Fucking Batman.
His hands fell on the tombstone, it was clean and well cared for as on his first visit. There were always fresh flowers, Dick always tried to bring some sunflowers with him, it was something that the little Omega liked. Flowers of all types and colors, Jason was adept at the language of flowers and Bruce had always been reluctant with any other type of gift that Dick tried to offer him.
Dick could now leave all kinds of gifts, all the funny and all the pretty ones that he end up buying and never delivering. He could leave them there and let them be stolen, after all wasn't like Jason-
… They kept with the flowers, so Dick kept giving flowers. Luckily Jason never seemed disappointed in them like any other kind of 15 year old boy. He was sweet like that.
His Alpha yelped like a kicked puppy. 15 years old, Jason was only 15 years old. Another year and he would enter his debutante season and no matter how much Omega complained about the old-fashioned habits of high society, Alfred confided in him that Jason's favorite works were by the writer Jane Austen. More specifically, Pride and Prejudice.
Dick read the book.
They had a heated conversation about the book, which led to a big argument, a huge one. If he was being honest, he didn't even remember what they argued about. But they couldn't stop, they pushed, pushed and pushed as if there was no end to it.
Pulling his hair, Dick laughed tastelessly. "But that was us, wasn't it? Always tiptoeing around each other."
It was always like this, varying between shouting and playing, between helping and pushing, between protecting and biting. Dick's Alpha had never been more frustrated than when he was with Jason. Always with Jason and only Jason. Disarming, so complicated, made Bruce's hair start to turn gray, but Dick never managed to fully understand who Jason Todd was.
But he knew he would have been a wonderful Omega and worthy of the Wayne name.
"He at least could have placed Wayne with the son he actually adopted." He grunted between his teeth, kicking the grave next to Jason's without resentment.
Sheila Haywood, Bruce could have turned a blind eye to the woman's past for whatever her last words had been, but Dick didn’t. He searched, dug up and found all that woman's dung. It was nothing that Jason would approve of, it was nothing that Jason would fight for, nothing that would justify not burying his son with his parents, with the new name he adopted or at least burying him next to his adoptive mother who loved him. Fuck, if Bruce wanted Sheila and Jason to be together so much he could have done it at the mansion.
But no, of course not, Dick was starting to understand what Bruce thought of their pack bonds.
After all, he made that damn memorial.
Like a war uniform in a museum, worn and torn from the soldier who perished in it, but it was Jason they were talking about. Jason who loved Gotham, Jason who tried with the Titans (and tried so hard, giving people him who cared about him in a way he doubted Jason himself knew, but that was Jason, obtuse and blind to everything involved him), Jason who said Robin gave him magic-
Jason who loved school, Jason, who never finished school-
Jason who was his legacy.
Oh, fuck- He was only 15 years old.
15 years.
Giving two shaky pats on the stone, Dick bent down to the height of the grave, staring at the name. His fingers ran along the incised innards of the name in the tombstone and feeled the roughness, the curves and countercurves but also the firmness of the letters, like Jason who planted his feet and wouldn't bow for anything, as if he could feel Jason himself. "You were more than a good soldier, Jason."
A lot more.
So much so that Dick didn't know what to do with himself.
There were days, between hallucinations and his friends dying, that Dick believed he lived for vigilantism- Hypocrite, he was a Hypocrite - He doesn't want to be like Batman. He can’t.
He kissed his fingers and touched the grave before leaving, knowing that he'll be back sooner than he should.