escritorzuela

“I bet you feel like an artist,” Siena laughed, showcasing the fall of her dress.

Genevieve did. Opera houses were not the clientele she tried to lure in, but the results were gorgeous to witness in motion.

“I get the impression all of you will ruin my good work tonight,” she gestured towards the crowd. Hardly the height of debauchery, but with a few more glasses inside, they might get there.

Siena sat down and laid hers on the table. “You love it when you and I get to ruin your good work,” she whispered, discreet, getting Genevieve to laugh.

“When’s the last time we went on a date?”

“What are you talking about,” Dinah huffed on the other side of the line. “You take me to the most interesting places.”

“Watching you crack skulls on a blurry camera hardly...”

Barbara heard the snap of a wrist and a muffled whine. She tapped a finger on one of her wheels.

“I thought that tropical fish smuggling ring was a nice touch,” Dinah said. Barbara scoffed, vigilant as Dinah rushed to the exit. “But I’ll take you on a lunch date tomorrow.”

“Deal,” Barbara chirped. Dinah got out without a hitch.

“Pick up lines only work when I’m drunk,” Elizabeth Saltzman slurred, several towns past tipsy, the night before her fatidic twenty-second birthday.

She showed little sign of change. Still irksome, loud, a little jaded.

Ablah hadn’t given her more than a handful of thoughts in years. She’d kept busy, and would only remember the girl who freed her and forgot her when prompted.

Noticing the upcoming date, the corners of her lips pointing upwards with mischief, she’d decided it was time to pay her another visit.

“But when I say I can make someone’s wish come true, I mean it.”

I thought there was time.

Those words get stuck inside Kisa’s throat during hazy dreams. Manola’s face isn’t fully visible in them —indirect sunlight hits at just the right angle to blind her; Kisa’s own shadow above her obscures it.

While Manola’s blood remains inside her —day after day, freely given—, Kisa tries on her face. It’s an illusion, a wasteful spell that won’t work on her, that doesn’t allow her to see Manola’s face reflected in the mirror like she yearns to. She puts it on in front of strangers and finds solace it means Manola can be seen.

"Clean it up. Get it— get it all out. All of it."

Master Bruce's voice was rough, throat scrapped raw by his screams. His face was carefully oriented away from Alfred, in order to avoid his scrutiny —as effectively hidden as if he wore the cowl.

As if Alfred could have borne to look at him.

Instead, he walked into Master Jason's room; his former room. He took its sorry state in, lamenting the mess that had been made of it. The young boy once in their care would've hated it. Jason liked things in his space to be… just so.

With a deep breath, Alfred followed his duty, as it was demanded of him. He lost track of time, completely absorbed by the task at hand as he was.

He started by cleaning up all that Master Bruce had destroyed, setting aside the paperback editions with half ripped off jackets from the sturdier hardcovers that had withstood the mistreatment. He finished taking down the shredded posters in the wall; all of music bands whose scandalous attire and dramatic vocals blurred together in Alfred's memories.

There had been a luminescent map of the night sky glued to the inside of the door; its top layer had been torn off, but Alfred had to fight the adhesive. Part of it would always remain stuck to the door. A piece of street art Jason had insisted on framing and hanging above his bed hadn't survived either, both frame and canvas broken in pieces. Neither had the music equipment once kept on the corner, its speakers laying broken on the floor, as if they'd been stomped on. The vinyls, kept within their compartment, would live to see another day.

He cleaned the adjacent bathroom, removing the broken glass shards from the floor, classifying the generic hygiene products Jason had contented himself with that were still standing. Next, Alfred returned to the bedroom to take down everything on the shelves, carefully picking up the few mementos that had been spared in the hurricane. The photographs of Catherine and Willis were a notable addition to that list, next to a small seashell from the only time the boy had visited the West Coast, sturdy enough to withstand the offensive. Other knickknacks the boy had proudly displayed, some presents bought by Alfred himself, weren't so fortunate.

The desktop computer was a lost cause.

He opened up the cupboards, filled mostly with schoolwork, and in doing so, he went against every promise once made to that boy. Some of them were already half opened, one even thrown aside to the other side of the room, wood nicked on its way.

He took off the bedding. He took care of the built-in closet next, carefully folding every piece of clothing, shirts with shirts, trousers with trousers, all extended over the the bed. He took notice of how, before leaving, Jason had taken the time to close each door properly, the way Alfred always had to chide him to.

He had left the large trunk beneath the window for last. Alfred knew of how private Jason had been with its contents, and he didn't have the heart to open it. Not at that moment.

Alfred returned with boxes and carried each one out, bit by bit. On his way, dismayed, he picked up broken picture frames that'd been thrown down from the walls and, following his instinct, did the same in Master Bruce's study, in his bedroom, with the grades slip stuck to the fridge in the kitchen. Every image, every small reminder of the boy, removed from the house.

His plan had been to take everything to the attic, but he found himself carrying everything, even the rubbish, into his own modest room.

It would be all the same to Master Bruce; if anything, he was less likely to wander into Alfred's quarters.

For weeks, most of it remained in the bedroom with him, silently greeting him every morning. Just as it all came in, some started getting out, due to sheer practicality. The rubbish went to the proper bins. Whatever couldn't be salvaged followed, such as the posters. Alfred repaired what he could, gluing small trinkets and rebinding the tattered books; he'd never been afraid of delicate handwork.

One morning, he opened the truck. Once, Alfred had the strong suspicion Master Jason used it to store non-perishables, but if that was true, Jason had, at some point, gotten over the habit. All it held within it were the winter bed sheets, a thick blanket, and a series of leather-bound notebooks.

In a fit of curiosity, Alfred opened one of them. R.O. asked me if I want to go on a ski trip with him, it read, in beautiful cursive, when his gaze fell upon the centre of a page. He closed the journal and his eyes with equal violence and put it back in its place.

The truck was the next thing to leave his chambers. Perhaps, one day, reading Jason's words would be curative for Master Bruce. At the moment, it was merely, extremely, unbearably painful.

Then, after he had to cancel another attendance on a gala on Master Bruce's behalf, Alfred caught himself eyeing some of the boxes. The ones storing clothes, and novels, and school materials, and hygiene products.

Alfred had gotten the nagging feeling that Jason held onto some distrust, some resentment, towards charity; nonetheless, the boy was in possession of the generosity of the have-nots. He'd lived by it, understanding the value of sharing and sharing alike, and suddenly having access to more of it was only a push to continue that trend. Alfred knew he'd outgrown batch after batch of clothing during his stay, and twice a year, he'd pick what no longer served him, and went with it to Doctor Thompkins.

Alfred wished he'd paid more attention to the process, because the idea of seeing the woman, the possibility of being on the receiving end of her I told you so, was nearly unbearable.

But once the thought had taken room in his head, once he'd told himself Master Jason would be the first person to want him to follow through, he knew he couldn't let something as pedestrian as cowardice hold him back. He took the boxes to the boot of his own car, far more discreet than anything else on offer, and drove into the city with determination and his trademark stiff upper lip ready to be used as a shield.

Leslie shamed him, but not as he'd predicted, trapped in a spiral of his worst, most ungenerous thoughts.

"Oh, Alfred," she said, and enveloped him in a tight, much needed hug.

Alfred hugged back, but he didn't cling as hard as he wanted to, didn't get as close, didn't melt into it the way his body demanded. He feared the inevitable collapse if he did, and so he cut it short all too soon.

She welcome him in, despite the manifest discourtesy. Once seated, she awaited, with uncharacteristic patience, until he gathered his thoughts.

"Did you know—" he started, surprising himself, for this was not what he intended to say, "did you know Master Jason was considering becoming a doctor?"

Alfred hadn't. Not until he found printed programs of what seemingly had to be every university within five hundred miles inside one of his folders.

"No, I didn't know," Leslie replied, a melancholic smile adorning her expression, a shine in her striking blue eyes. "A doctor, huh? Just like Thomas."

"He didn't know Thomas," Alfred dismissed. "He wanted to be a doctor like you."

Her face transformed, the smile twisting into a painful grimace. She turned her face away from him, hand covering her mouth, stopping herself from making a sound.

"And how is he?" she asked, once she recovered.

Alfred, in utter despair, finally voiced his biggest fear. "I'm afraid that, if he continues as he is, soon I'll… I'll have to bury him, too."

Leslie looked furious, righteous. It always gave her a fearsome, regal appearance. Alfred could guess at what must've been going in her mind, about Bruce and Alfred's careful omission of an invitation to the funeral; about the avoidance they'd regaled her with in the time after. She must have found out by the papers, instead of being informed personally, as a friend of the family should. And she must have thought about every time she warned them, every time she opposed Master Bruce's mission and, most importantly, the inclusion of any young boy in it.

Alfred had tried, too little too late, and it only made things worse. Should he have tried earlier? Much, much earlier, long before Master Jason arrived? Should he have not tried at all? Who was he, in the end, to insert his own desires in what either Master Bruce designed, or what Jason's heart longed for?

Alfred had known the boy was hurting, and he'd thought… maybe. Maybe this could be the way to stop it. But Master Jason was headstrong, courageous, and kindhearted; too much, in the end, for his own good.

"Why are you here, Alfred?"

Leslie's gentler demeanour returned with his explanation. She guided him in his task, from a library to a shelter. In his best American accent he gave an off-hand comment about his grandson outgrowing his boyhood clothes. He only wanted to avoid a stranger's officiousness disguised as sympathy, and he studiously avoided lingering upon the term used. A term neither he nor Jason had ever used for their relationship, when he was alive. A term that didn't fit a man who had never been a father, to begin with.

When the two of them were back next to Alfred's car, he hesitated for only a moment, before handing her a smaller package.

"I think he'd like for you to have this."

It was a small music box, a customized memento Alfred and Bruce had gotten the boy. It played a song from a ballet the four of them had seen together; at the end of the night, Jason had suddenly developed a stomachache, insisting that although Bruce had to accompany him home, Alfred and Leslie simply had to enjoy the dinner reservations, for they mustn't go to waste.

Alfred had repaired the box with his own hands.

Leslie herself became tongue-tied, after that. Not much later Alfred found himself unfit to spend another moment outside. Their goodbye, much wearier than their greeting, was brief.

But back in his room, Alfred finally knew the next step he'd take.

Dick drove to Wayne Manor late at night. He'd started the trip nervous, felt that turn into anger, and landed into numbness. He stopped once along the way just to puke his guts out.

When Alfred had called, Dick had tried everything to convince him to meet elsewhere, but the man had insisted, refusing to move an inch. As a compromise, they'd agreed to meet only while Bruce was out. Out, and breaking someone's teeth in, most likely.

Dick's unease had quieted his initial curiosity, but it came back tenfold when Alfred directed him to the servants' rooms. To his room.

It'd been years since Dick was there; Bruce and Dick had immediately understood each other, once easily working in the exact same wavelength, while Alfred came across as awkward and standoffish to him. But Dick was a steamroller, at heart, and he paved his way through Alfred's heart, and his space, through just a little boundary-pushing.

He'd also gotten to calling him "Master Alfred" back, uncomfortable with the unfamiliar treatment of "Master Richard" before knowing its meaning. And after all, Alfred, to him, was a bit like the Ringmaster of the house.

Dick got a bit choked up remembering how Jason had taken to imitate him, one time Dick had brought the old joke back in his presence.

In an ironic turn, things with Alfred were easy, comfortable, familiar; meanwhile, the state of things with Bruce was best left unsaid.

"I've been going through— that is, I thought—" It was strange, to see Alfred stumble like this. "I thought you might want… a keepsake. Something of Master Jason, to remember him by."

Dick's throat closed. Yes. Yes, he did want that.

For the first time, he took notice of the few boxes in the room. That's where it all went, he thought.

He went through all the boxes, nearly frantic. He reluctantly agreed, after Alfred's insistence, that he should take the vinyls, but they had taken him by surprise. Around Dick, Jason was often shy, starting withdrawn and needing to be coaxed out of his shell, at first. The heavy metal bands were a bit of a surprise; not so much a few more classical pieces, though the ones Dick was most familiar with were certainly on the earsplitting side.

He didn't know if he'd have the heart to play them. He could imagine it: he'd swap one of his or Kory's records for one of Jason's, and if they had people over, there would be bafflement, questions Dick didn't know if he had it in him to answer.

There was another scenario: Dick and Kory, alone in their apartment. Perhaps… perhaps it wouldn't be so difficult then.

As he looked through the boxes, his first impulse was to keep all the pictures, including the one of their ski trip, despite the exact copy he had at home. But there weren't that many, and maybe, one day, Bruce would get through the worst of his grief. And Dick knew he'd come through it wanting, needing, to look at Jason's face.

In the end, he took only a handful of them. He left behind the one from the trip. Following an impulse, he decided to keep with him the pictures Jason had saved from his own parents. He knew very little about them; it was a topic Jason never brought up with Dick. He was ashamed to say that they were little more than statistics to him —just as Jason had been turned into.

There were others that still remembered the Flying Graysons, but in the end, it was on Dick to keep their memory alive. Jason couldn't be that for his own lost parents, but maybe… maybe Dick could be that, for him, in this small, deficient way.

Alfred walked him out, polite as always.

"I know your last few visits went poorly," Alfred said. Dick repressed the childish impulse to raise his hand to his jaw; it was best for Alfred not to guess just how badly those visits went. 

Bruce had blamed him, for Jason's death. He'd blamed the precedent Dick had set, the way it'd inspired Jason's desire to become Robin. The weight of that accusation was to Dick's shoulders as the entire world had been to Atlas.

"But it won't be like this forever, my boy," Alfred continued. "Master Bruce needs you."

"I'm not his minder anymore, Alfred." And it would take something more than his platitudes to have Dick come crawling back.

Barbara looked through the car window, numb, indifferent.

Her father had all but jumped to the chance to drive her to Wayne Manor at Alfred's insistence that it was better for her to come and go through Jason's remaining, meager possessions, both men united in their wish to get Barbara out of the house.

At least Wayne Manor's isolation offered her a little dignity, when her father had to carry her out of the vehicle. Or up the stairs, because the old house, straight out of the set of Cluedo as it was, wasn't wheelchair-friendly. Alfred assured her he'd insist Master Bruce change that. Barbara bit her tongue; it would hardly be necessary. There would be little reason for her to come back here, and Bruce's diminished social circle of athletic superheroes would hardly start including cripples.

Her father said he'd wait in the hallway, offering her a little privacy with Alfred as she looked through the boxes. She felt the first flicker of emotion when she saw his last grades slip. Straight As, of course.

She would've liked to say part of the pride for that belonged to her, as his once tutor, but the truth was that Jason had been, by far, the most eager student she'd ever met. He was determined to catch up, to triumph; absolutely resolute to overcome his past.

"You can keep that," Alfred told her, as if reading her mind. "And I wanted you to look at this."

He showed her a desktop computer. The monitor was broken, as if dropped on the ground; its case was a disaster; her best guess was that it'd been kicked, repeatedly. It didn't paint a good picture.

"Maybe there's something you can do with this."

"Alfred, that's… I don't know if I can recover much from that."

"Don't worry about that, Miss Gordon," he said. "Jason only used it for schoolwork or games. Anything sensitive would've been…"

It would've been downstairs. And anything that didn't need the use of a computer would've been written by hand. Jason was hardly a Luddite —he took to any kind of knowledge like a fish to water, learning how to master it in record time, absorbing whatever he was taught like a sponge. Technology hadn't been an exception. But Barbara knew that he would've taken analog over digital every time. Analog was easier to take with you in a pinch. Analog didn't break down on you if they cut your lights.

And analog was prettier, in his eyes. Once he'd felt comfortable with her, he'd had his fun mocking her appreciation for tech chic aesthetics.

"I just hope you can make use of it, Miss Gordon."

Her father raised his eyebrows when he saw the large boxes she wanted him to carry. Even with Alfred's help, it took two trips.

Back home, she examined the pieces. It was true that there would probably be little data to salvage from the wreckage. But maybe, just maybe, Barbara thought, examining her own set-up, their stripped parts still had more to give.

Ever since he was invited to the batcave, Tim spent more time studying in a week that he'd done in all his years of school put together.

He was hardly a slacker, but there were few subjects that would ensnare his interest as thoroughly as the case files archived in Mr. Wayne's computer.

After a long talk, they'd both agreed that Tim should have access to certain files from Jason's missions. Not everything; not cases where only those in the known —Mr. Wayne, Mr. Pennyworth, Dick Grayson, Batgirl— participated, but cases where Jason might've worked more closely with law enforcement or, in a few counted occasions, with other heroes.

Many of those, the ones closest to Batman or Nightwing, knew the truth. Some others might hear rumors. But it was best to keep it as contained as possible, in order to protect their reputation, their safety. If Robin could be killed, all bets were off. No lines would be going too far, for certain villains.

At first, Mr Wayne had only given him access to his own files. Tim had made his case, on the advantages of reading about the missions as Jason thought of them, first. Mr Wayne had seen the value of it.

And so, Tim had spent the last few days reading Jason's reports. They were surprisingly meticulous, often self-critical. They were far more literary than Batman's; some of them were as engaging as reading a good book, as the former Robin unraveled the mystery at hand.

Especially as he took to the habit of reading Batman's reports first: Jason's Robin was in the habit of going on his own, making decisions on the fly that caught Batman by surprise. Those decisions baffled Tim, only starting to making a modicum of sense once he read Robin's explanation of events.

Jason took risks Tim didn't think he'd have in him. It'd paid off, for him. Until his luck ran out, and one of his off-the-wall plans failed him, as Tim had put together from things Mr Wayne, Mr Pennyworth and Dick had told him, for Jason's last mission wasn't one of the files he'd been given access to.

Tim would get lost in those reports, until he thought something like that. Reading them, one could almost forget for a moment that he was reading the words of a dead boy; a dead boy he'd never get to meet.

He would forget, until he looked at the case.

When Mr Wayne had given him access to the files, it was as if he'd finally come to terms with the inevitability of Tim's role. He'd talked to Mr Pennyworth, and the next day Tim had come, there it was. Solemn, sacred.

A good soldier, it called Robin. Honoring a boy who died for the cause, tragically, too soon.

When he finished the files, Tim felt he knew Jason a little bit better. Not everything, not nearly enough. Not as well as the other inhabitants of the house did. But enough to finally approach the case, to pay his respects to his predecessor.

Enough to give that boy his word: I'll take care of him, he promised. I'll be good. I won't fail them.

Looking up to the suit in the case, not daring to touch it, he promised he'd do Robin proud.

On Tuesday, at precisely 4:27 AM, Batman dies on Duke's watch.

They fall for an ambush. A high-caliber bullet impacts right in the only space left unprotected by Batman's armor. He dies with his jaw stuck on Robin's name.

But Robin, three feet away and a bullet in his torso, can’t bring him any comfort.

As Duke feels himself fade away, a voice, laced with disappointment, speaks from every direction at once:

"You'll do better next time."

Duke wakes up at 10:03, Monday morning. Ace sleeps comfortably at the end of his bed, occupying a good chunk of it while Duke curls up in a tight little ball.

Duke has lived on Gotham for fifteen years. He’s been Robin for over two.

He fears it wasn't just a nightmare.

They circumvent the ambush.

But they die at 5:15.

"You need to pay attention. See."

Bruce believes him. They bring in allies. Sometimes ones, sometimes others, even all hands on deck. Even from out of town –something Duke is usually the one person even more reticent to do than Bruce–; wizards, speedsters, whoever is available.

They're always removed from the chessboard. It always ends just the same.

"Whoever they are, I think they're testing you."

"Why? None of the villains I've pissed off could do something like this. None."

He's just Robin. This temporal shit is out of his goddamn league.

By the twenty-fourth Tuesday Duke's head hurts so bad, the eye-strain headache so intense, he wants nothing more than to claw his eyeballs out of their sockets.

"This is pitiful. You can't expect others to do your job for you."

"You could've been great."

"He's holding you back."

Duke has seen more people die during one Tuesday than he had in the rest of his short life put together.

He’s seen Bruce die in agonizing pain a total fifty-three times.

Each and every one of them, Bruce’s gaze searched for Duke, his first priority always to help him.

On the fifty-fourth Tuesday, Duke lies to Bruce. He goes alone.

His headache gets worse, until suddenly, he sees.

He sees forward. Every possible variable spread before him. If he does X, Y will happen. He sees each worst option, and each best outcome.

It's a beautiful tapestry.

"Can you see it now, my child?"

"I can," Duke replies through gritted teeth. "And I'm going to fucking end you."

Braiding each other’s hair was Duke and Elaine’s thing, a ritual he’d once feared he’d lose –a mother-daughter custom that might’ve felt out of place with a son. But Elaine took it in stride –as she always did in the face of change, ever since crossing the ocean, according to Dad.

Living on his own, Duke hadn’t kept the practice, shaving his head for convenience. Once his parents were found, once the medication abated the symptoms of Joker’s venom and they were cleared for visitation, Duke quickly found reason to regain his old dexterity.

The doctors had suggested reminding them of old routines, things that bring them comfort and keep them calm. Dr Thompkins came with him on the bus, every day that summer, from and back to her apartment. He read the entertainment and lifestyle section of the Gotham Gazette to his father, snickering with newfound amusement whenever Bruce Wayne featured in its pages. He almost thought Doug’s chuckles sounded natural, as long as he laughed with his son.

So he read gossip to his father, and he braided his mother’s hair. Day after day, as steady a presence in their new lives as they once were for him.

The clock marks the start of April 27^th, military time; Bruce enters the new day with the stench of alcohol firmly sunken on his breath.

The second anniversary, despite all the begging and pleading he was subjected to after his behavior on the first one, Bruce had decided to go out into the night. The result had been so disastrous, Bruce walking the line between dangerous to others and dangerous to himself and tilting swiftly into the worst direction of the two, that on the third year, he timed it perfectly to grant himself one night off. He’s already determined this is an indulgence he’ll only allow himself once.

Bruce thought he’d be itching to leave the house. Yet he sits on the stairs, bottle abandoned, and thinks of Dick, who’d come along to take Tim away –he pictures the two of them jumping from rooftop to rooftop, Tim in a Robin uniform, and his stomach twists; a phenomenon somehow unrelated to the toxic liquid he’s filled himself up with.

Maybe Tim will timidly ask Dick to tell him some nostalgic anecdote of times past; maybe, though unlikely, Dick will be the one to openly share it. Bruce wouldn’t know; this is not a topic he and Dick ever touch. Not since that first time.

Alfred is lost in the house, and Bruce won’t bother chasing after him. They each find the other’s presence unbearable, in this day. Instead, his legs move on their own, and they lead him to an empty room.

‘Empty’, as a term, comes short. Emptied strikes as far more accurate, because that’s exactly what Bruce ordered Alfred to do, come that first month of May: to empty out Jason’s room.

The furniture remains, each piece covered in white sheets buried in dust. Bruce removes the one over the bed with a violent yank, and lies his body upon it, looking straight up; like a corpse.

The time after his parents’ death is starkly vivid in Bruce’s memories. He had longed to return to Wayne Manor as soon as possible; there, every inch was wrapped in their presence. To this day, not a single room was devoid from at least one object that was cause for remembrance. Maybe Thomas’s old check book, which he’d been in the habit of using to write himself little notes when he didn’t want to forget a task; or Martha’s baseball card collection, shared with Bruce with the enthusiasm of a true fanatic. Bruce still found, still sought comfort in the echoes of their presence like a kid did on an old, soft, ratty blanket.

There wasn’t –couldn’t possibly be, not then and not years away– any comfort to be brought from Jason’s mementos, and thus Bruce had done away with them. He hadn’t been able to stomach the signs of his passage through Bruce’s life. The souvenirs from their cases were removed from the cave, and Jason’s own room had been emptied out.

All that remains is the old uniform, erected while a reluctant Bruce trained yet another child. A brutal reminder for both Tim and Bruce himself of the stakes. But that’s a monument to Robin; the only piece of Jason is encased in Bruce’s ribcage, sprouting –rebellious, accusing– whenever Bruce lowers his guard.

Abruptly, as if disconnected from his own body, Bruce realizes he’s now choking on drunken sobs. He bites them down, swallows them deep. He curls in on himself, arms in a protective loop over his knees, forcing open the eyelids he hadn’t noticed close.

Bruce remembers how, at first, Jason didn’t let him enter his room. He hadn’t let Alfred either, insisting on cleaning after himself –and all in all doing, if not a good job, a better one than any kid his age should’ve ever been expected to do. It took time to build trust, but by the end of things, Jason had no qualms about Bruce’s presence in his room, and Bruce would’ve been able to describe every corner of it to the minute details.

It's as if the image of that last time he walked in, the smell of fuel and charred skin still glued to his nostrils, remains engraved to his retinas. The built-in closet is in front of the bed, by the door; Jason never kicked the bad habit of not closing the doors properly, much to Alfred’s chagrin. The wall adjacent to it and the one perpendicular to the closet held various posters, mainly of whichever band Jason had most recently incorporated into his personality. The last one to go up was from Siouxie and the Banshees, and the very first Jason plastered against the ocher walls, now faded by neglect, was from Sisters of Mercy. He’d wanted Bruce to listen to those bands with him, and gently, playfully ribbed him for not getting it; asking “what would Bruce know”, when the only music he listened to were those recorded nature noises for meditation, surely.

Jason hadn’t been completely wrong. Bruce didn’t exactly keep up with the trendy bands of his favorite music genres; he has no idea of what poster Jason might’ve put up next.

On the door itself there had been a map of the night sky, each constellation identified by name emitting a soft glow in its stars. Bruce wonders if Jason would’ve ever tired of it, found it childish after a few more years on the house, when he’d once used to enjoy tracing the constellation patterns with his finger.

The one window in the room, looming large, was to Bruce’s right. Under it, pressed to the wardrobe’s wall, there had been a truck, now removed, that Bruce had never betrayed Jason’s trust by opening. On the other side of the window, beside the bed, Jason had requested they’d move a large music equipment in from one of the studios. It allowed tapes and CDs, and connected to the radio, but Jason only ever used it for the eclectic vinyl collection. One once shared by Thomas and Martha, the solace of their ghosts dripping into this room, too. Just like once the joy of meeting Jason, that daring boy he was, had soothed the ache of the anniversary of their loss.

On top of the bed there was a framed painting. It was one of the first things Jason had ever asked him to buy, and certainly the first one that wasn’t a necessity. Jason had stopped in his tracks during a walk with Bruce, and the two of them had taken a moment to watch it being made –a vivid picture of nocturnal wilderness, spray on canvas by a talented street artist. Instead of simply plastering it to the wall as he later did with his posters, Jason had insisted it needed a fancy frame, aged grey wood in strange harmony with the vibrant colors.

On Bruce left there once was a nightstand whose sole purpose seemed to have been serving as the resting place for whatever book Jason was devouring at any given time. Bruce only knew that Jason’s clothes all went to the closet, and that it was never quite full, for that’s not where Jason’s expensive tastes had gone.

Those were reserved, of course, for the bookshelves that stood past the bedside table. They were mounted on a writing desk that occupied the entire wall and part of another, and they were filled to the brim. If pressed, Bruce thinks he could’ve recited every copy, from a handful tattered books Jason brought with him on his arrival to the Manor, to the gold-leaf, leather-bound editions he had fallen head over hills for.

There had been an assortment of knickknacks amidst the bookshelves, a form of sui generis decoration of every useless thingamajig Jason had thought worth keeping. A small, customized music box that played a song from Prokofiev’s Cinderella, the first ballet he’d taken Jason to see. Clark’s autograph, proudly displayed in front of the non-fiction books. A seashell, from the first time Jason ever visited what he called “a real beach”, to Bruce’s utter confusion. A picture of Catherine that he’d later accompanied with a cut-off of Willis’s printed mugshot, trapping it on a corner of the frame.

A small board with the meaning of his name Alfred said he’d bought on a whim, at a flea market he liked to visit to get artisanal products. It’d said “healer”, and Bruce suddenly remembers how Jason had returned from an unauthorized mission with the Titans half-joking about wanting to be a doctor. Bruce had felt Thomas’s presence in his son’s room then, too.

Jason’s computer had sat at the corner of the table, and when he left, some of his class books had still been neatly piled up right next to the lamp at the end of it.

And on the nightstand… Bruce can’t remember, if Jason had left any half-read books on the nightstand.

He holds his head in his hands, fingertips pressing into his skull with a strength bordering on violence. Jason’s room had been a reflection of its dweller, filled to the brim with color and individuality, and Bruce thinks of how he’d wanted nothing more than to excise all of it from his life, to then reflect his own inner state. In at least a small part he succeeded, because he can’t remember if Jason left yet one more thing unfinished. Bruce feels the press of shame atop his lungs for it.

Alfred, nostalgic by nature, wouldn’t have thrown it out. He could put it all back, all of it; Bruce thoughts swirl with a tinge of desperation, imagining the posters and the painting and the books, all placed in perfect order to match. He could put it all back; all, except his boy.

There’s a violent ache in this pain, devoid of the hope of ever reaching a place where Bruce could look back on Jason’s unfairly short life, and on the even shorter –all the more unfair for it– amount of time he got to spend with him, with the tender nostalgia that sometimes visits loss. Would it have been better, to never meet Jason at all? To never feel this?

“I don’t know,” Bruce mutters, as if anyone could hear and judge his plea but himself. “I don’t know.”

In the dream Barbara is a string of ones and zeroes written in blinking neon green; she moves at light-year velocity through interwoven cables and hidden pathways, leaving behind infectious malware and taking instead her target’s most precious secrets –she snatches them like prey between her claws and disseminates them through the tips of her feathers to reach whoever can enact justice with them.

She awakens every morning; she exercises; she sits in front of her Orwellian set-up, the pale artificial light it emits bathing her skin.

The corner of her mouth curves upwards, imperceptibly so; Barbara –still– can fly.