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Tim still remembered when he'd first found out about Natalie Wayne.
He'd been researching Bruce Wayne. Not yet fully convinced that he'd really unmasked the Bat.
Still unsure if the connections he had made were more than too vivid imagination fueled by a childhood spent mostly alone.
Natalie Wayne had- as far as Tim had known, been a person utterly unsuited to living in a city like Gotham. It really wasn't a surprise she had packed her bags and left as soon as she turned 18.
Seven years later she had her first and only child. With a man she had met hiking. Tim had trouble finding out more than that. This man’s digital footprint was nonexistent, which was virtually impossible. The only thing he had found was a picture of Natalie- pregnant, holding the hand of a man that looked a bit like Kurt Cobain.
If Kurt Cobain had been a fan of tacky fleece jackets and bright yellow hiking boots.
A few months later Natalie had had her son.
Magnus-
Tim had never met the boy. When he'd joined the family, the rift between Bruce and the Chases had already been too big to be repaired.
And then Bruce had vanished. And when Tim finally managed to find him, Natalie had been dead and Magnus missing.
Of course they hadn't known that. At least not right away.
To be honest Tim hadn't been in the right headspace to think about his new extended family at the time. He was busy enough with the part he already knew. Head still spinning from all that had happened. Still trying to come to terms with Dicks betrayal.
Tim didn’t know if he would ever fully forgive Dick for giving the Robin mantle to Damian without asking him first. Or the way nobody had believed him when he figured out, that Bruce might still be alive.
(It really hurt how nobody ever seemed to just take him by his word)
They were working on it of course. But there were some things that just left a mark, and for all the love he held for Dick, his brother still hadn’t regained his trust.
In a way Magnus’ death almost helped to bring them closer together.
If only that had happened sooner.
Tim didn't want to think about the fact that if they had started looking for Magnus sooner, he may have still been alive.
Next to him Cass reached out to grasp his hand. She squeezed it reassuringly. Thankful Tim squeezed back. Sometimes it was good to be reminded that for all the issues they had, he still had people he could trust to catch him if he fell.
It had been strange though, Magnus’ death…
Up front, the priest started his sermon.
…
Bruce looked at his children, holding hands and something in his chest clenched. The last funeral he had been to, had been Jasons and he barely remembered a second of that.
It was as if the universe was laughing at him, first Jason returned.
And wasn't that a wonder, Jason was back again.
Of course he was angry.
And jaded.
And he hated Bruce with a burning passion.
He had taken to the criminal underworld of Gotham like a fish to the water. Had dropped bodies left and right.
And heads at the door of the FBI.
His son had killed people.
But Bruce could live with that if it only meant that his son was not dead.
Batman couldn't though.
And as much as he hated it Bruce was and always would be Batman.
As much as Batman could never stop being Bruce.
How he wished that he could just forget about his morals for Jason.
For his son.
He couldn't.
And now he was standing at the open casket of yet another child.
Magnus didn't look like Bruce had remembered him. A five-year-old child playing tag with Bruce's six-year-old daughter.
Bright laughter.
Two children, hiding in his brother’s study as Randolph Natalie and Bruce once again failed to have one civil conversation and yelled at each other over a long cold thanksgiving dinner.
Dick's accusing glare as he ushered Jason out of the room.
Off to join his younger sister and cousin.
(A nine-year-old, holding his mother’s hand as Jasons body was lowered into the ground. Bruce too lost in his grief to even notice him.)
(A fourteen-year-old running out of his mother’s burning flat. Bruce lost in the timestream unable to do anything)
A sixteen-year-old. Dying an agonizing death. Molten debris embedded in his stomach.
Falling.
Down into the water.
Intestines burning.
Water in his lungs.
Alone.
It had taken hours to fish Magnus' body out of the river.
Somehow it had sunk all the way down to the bottom.
His nephew had died.
And Bruce hadn't been there.
He hadn't been there for Jason, and he hadn't been there for Magnus. -
He hadn't been there for Anna either, the traitorous voice at the back of his head said.
He hadn't been there for her and she had left.
She had left and he had feared the worst.
Because if Batman wasn't able to find her....
How big were the odds that she was still alive?
But then she returned.
And Bruce continued to fail her.
Again, and again.
There she sat.
Between Dick and Cass.
Fidgeting with a loose thread on her jacket.
Anna.
His daughter.
Much like Jason she had returned changed.
But unlike Jason Anna had stayed.
Bent out of shape.
As if she had been pushed into a mold not suited to her and had adapted, growing around it.
Determined to find her cousin.
When Randolph had told them that Magnus hadn't been living with him. That he had been missing- homeless- for the last two years. Bruce had been scared that Anna would jump and attack his brother.
She didn't. But her eyes had gained a dangerous glint as she started interrogating Randolph.
It hadn't mattered of course.
They still hadn't found Magnus in time.
It was as if the Jokers laughter echoed in Bruce's mind.
Why was he always late?
Yet another member of his family he did not save.
Sometimes Bruce wondered if he was cursed. If everybody he called family was doomed to die.
Not even Natalie, his baby sister, or her son had been safe.
Up front the casket was lifted and transferred onto a wooden cart.
Bruce had forced himself to go and look at his nephews corpse, he had looked so young and out of place
….
Cass was confused. Her sister. Anna- beth-
The syllables tasted strange.
Even in her mind.
Ever since her sister had come home some weeks ago, everything had been tilted sideways. Everything and everyone Cass knew, spoke, moved, and behaved a little different. Annabeth's return had disrupted the if not well-oiled then at least functioning machine that was her family ever so slightly.
Cass was happy to get to know her sister of course.
Still, it was confusing.
Everything about Annabeth was confusing.
There was the fact that Cass had to reconcile the stories she had been told of a little girl, scared in the dark with the woman that sat next to her.
Tense. Ready to bolt at any moment.
Annabeth was a fighter.
And Cass didn't know what to make of that.
There was also the fact that Annabeth didn't seem to be too sad about her cousin Magnus' death.
Which was strange. Because Annabeth had been the one to lead their search for him as soon as they found out he had gone missing.
Annabeth who had been devastated when the news of Magnus' death had hit the news.
She had tried to hide it of course.
But Cass saw.
She didn't understand though.
…..
Jason sat on the church's roof and listened to the music playing inside.
He had wanted to go in, he really did. But the thought of seeing Bruce, mourning at a funeral, was just too much.
The mere thought made his vision blur.
Or maybe that was because of the dead kid lying in a coffin in the church beneath him.
Jason wished he could blame Bruce.
Could go yell at the old man that he had managed to fail yet another kid.
That had he just killed the Joker-
No-
That wasn't right.
Jason really wished he could blame his-
He could blame Bruce.
But the horrible truth was that it was him who was to blame.
Had he just recognized the kid-
If he had looked harder after he'd found out.
Maybe the kid would still be alive.
Maybe he wouldn't sit here, on a church’s roof, waiting for yet another child to be lowered into the ground.
Below him the doors opened.
The casket was wheeled out on a cart.
Jason watched as the small procession made their way towards a freshly dug grave.
Careful not to look at Bruce, or his replacement.
As his gaze wandered over the small group Jason startled.
And almost fell off the roof.
Was that Anna?
The girl, who could have been his sister, if she hadn't run away when he'd just joined the family?
His memories of Anna were, like all memories of his family, a bit foggy and tinged green in places.
But there were some moments he could recall.
Of Anna coming into his room at night because Bruce and Dick were fighting downstairs and she'd had a bad dream about some spiders.
But now, it seemed like Anna had returned.
It made him think, that if she could come back, maybe-
No.
He couldn't.
The procession had reached the grave and Jason watched as the coffin was lowered into the ground.
He couldn't return.
Dying wasn't a thing one just came back from.
Jason might have dug himself out of his own grave, but there were parts of him, parts of the boy he used to be, that had never left the cold wet soil.
Parts of him that had died and not come back.
It was better that way.
There was a reason the dead were buried.
You couldn't hang on to them forever.
And funerals were really for the living.
What use had a dead body for a casket.
Still Jason couldn't help but hope that this was not the end. That he hadn't failed so irrevocably.
Even if it was egoistical.
Still it really was better that way.
It had to be-
There was no place in the world for people like Jason.