How easily he could end this fight. Jason’s hand tightens around your windpipe, a steady pressure that never loosens. He could finish this—end you. Sever the last tie to a past that only drags him down. Erase his final weakness.

It would hurt Bruce. That’s the point, isn’t it? To hurt everyone who left him, who let him rot in the shadows of his own making. The people who claimed they loved him, only to abandon him when it mattered most. Had you even searched for him? Had you wept for him like he needed you to? Do you still mourn the boy he once was? His every thought twists with the desire to rip the answers from you until your words crumble into nothingness.

“Not even going to struggle?” Jason hisses, his voice distorted by the helmet, warped into something cold, almost unrecognizable. You haven’t realized who he is yet. It’s almost laughable. “You’re pathetic.”

He expected more from you—someone Bruce personally trained. But maybe you were always weak, hiding behind the facade of strength he once saw in you. A naive fool, he was, blinded by a crush that never really died. He followed you like a shadow, his every thought consumed by your presence, while you barely noticed. It was easier then, when he was just Robin. Simpler. He wonders, bitterly, if you ever think of him at all anymore. Do you remember the boy who kissed you under the mistletoe one Christmas? The boy who would fight beside you, protect you? The boy who thought—no, believed—he was loved? He was a fool, thinking it was love. A fool, and now it’s too late to change anything.

"Say something," Jason growls, the desperation in his voice unmistakable, even though he fights to keep it buried. "Beg for my forgiveness."

But that boy is gone now. Jason’s no longer that wide-eyed kid who believed in heroes. Maybe he never was.