Shattered Glass

Jagged

Bruce, Alfred and Richard sat around Jason's bed as he continued to sleep restlessly. The doctors told them that once the adrenaline had worn off from his escape, he had passed out from the pain and stress from the beating. His ribs were broken, orbital fracture that had needed surgery and a shocking list of minor breaks and fractures. There were some minor burns from the fire, smoke inhalation and other bone damage from the beatings, but nothing that couldn't be fixed. Jason would live and be able to leave in a couple weeks and be back in school in a couple months.

Alfred offered to simply tutor the boy, school obviously wasn't going to work, and after what had happened they didn't want to risk the backlash from his peers. Jason was a tough kid but had a short fuse and they didn't want to pay off the school board if some kid got their hands caught in the paper shredder for saying the wrong thing. Kids were mean and they would use his kidnapping and beat down against him and Jason wasn't known for playing nice.

"He's smart," Bruce said, guilt dripping from his voice, "School would just bore him anyways, we never should have sent him to begin with."

"This isn't your fault," Richard whispered, looking at the young man laying in bed, sedated and resting well for the time being. Bruce had paid off the doctors to let them stay past visiting hours, Alfred had brought in coffee and cookies sometime ago but they were mostly untouched. Bruce was getting call after call after call until he had finally lost what little control he had left and threw his phone out the window. Richard turned his off after the calls started coming in on his end, everyone at the tower would be wondering what happened to their jobs, but Bruce had a kid to worry about and a lover to mourn. He didn't want to think of the hundreds of men and women who would be paid to work from home until everything was rebuilt. Lucian could look after it while Bruce was with his family, Jason needed him more than the board and his employees.

"We could have done something," Bruce hissed, distressed that he hadn't been there, that the one time he had needed to be somewhere he wasn't. 

"Done what? We were half way out of the city looking for Jason, we didn't have time to go back and suit up and the damn tower was burning when we got there, what could we have done?" Richard asked, "We were too late to help and Jason is here and Harish is dead, there was one casualty and..." Richards' voice broke as he thought about Jack, having seen him jump off the building like it was nothing.

"He chose to jump," Alfred said softly into the silence, "But he took that bastard with him."

The silence was heavy as each man fell into their own thoughts, trying to piece together fractions of what was left. Bruce slowly started to collapse onto Jason's bed, head resting deep into his arms as he fell slowly to sleep. Alfred watched as Richard curled in the chair, his body contorting in ways that only an acrobat could pull off. He found some of the spare blankets to cover the men, running his hand over Richard's young face and when he approached Bruce all he could do was rest his hands on his shoulders. Bruce had been many things, troubled and possibly unstable but the months he had spent with Jack he was almost okay. Batman vanished to make way for Joker and Richard took up his own mantle and took to the streets. Bruce was a broken child in the body of a man and Alfred spent years trying to revive and piece together jagged edges of a dismantled boy. He watched his son by name alone risk his life for decades and seeing him stay in and actually sleep was something he treasured and he felt guilty for it because he knew that Bruce was hurting deeper than before. Alfred just wanted the man he raised to be happy and it was painful to see the one thing that was bringing a bit of light into such a dark place drop hundreds of stories and crumble to nothing.

All Bruce had was anger, spite and vengeance wrapped up in a bat costume that barely kept him alive. Jack brought something out of him and Alfred hadn't seen in years, a spark and a warmth that Bruce lost years ago.