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Looking at Jason now, there’s no denying it. Even in his best clothes, his hair styled to hide the choppy fringe he’d given himself out of anger when he and Bruce fought that one time, it’s still horrifyingly obvious. Jason is- was just a child.
It doesn’t matter how confident he’d grown to be. How he’d begun to shave just a couple of weeks ago, the proof of which sits against his skin still; tiny, barely noticeable unless you’re really looking, red scabs randomly distributed across his cheeks and jaw.
Dick knows that inside Jason’s mouth, sit his braces. Oh how he’d hated them. As much as Jason liked to insist he had an amazing pain tolerance, the braces tested that statement every time they were tightened. The last time had resulted in Dick running to the store before patrol, because Jason was starving but hadn’t been able to eat the dinner Alfred had made due to the sensitivity of his teeth. Dick had bought him every soft food he lay his eyes on. He’d hoped that it would become a tradition. Instead, it’s become a memory.
Worse than the shaving cuts is the acne. Despite Jason being dead for over a week now, they’re still littered across his otherwise smooth skin, obnoxious in their demand to be noticed. But Dick knows what they’re really saying -- what everything about Jason is saying:
No matter how many adult responsibilities he took on, he was still a child.
It doesn’t matter how hard Dick tried, he still failed him.