Chapter Text
Bruce did not want to be at this gala.
Not that he ever really wanted to be at a gala.
For all that Brucie Wayne was known to be a party animal, Bruce himself was not interested on any evening, let alone on the anniversary of his son’s death.
But Gotham high society didn’t know that.
Gotham high society thought that Jason had died in a Joker attack in Gotham weeks after he had already died.
So Bruce didn’t have an excuse, be it mourning or his own fundraising gala to attend.
Which meant that he was at the gala, trying his best to smother all of the rage and sorrow, and not in truth succeeding if the glances he was getting from some of those who knew him slightly better were anything to go by.
Still, he wined and dined with the rest of them, his mind constantly whirling back to Jason. To the bright future that had been in front of him. To the emptiness in the Manor and at Bruce’s side that no one could completely fill.
To the weight of Jason’s body in his arms.
He was talking to a television reporter from Metropolis about the Jason Todd Foundation when he smelt it. Joker gas.
Bruce whipped around, trying to find the source of it as a green fog began to swirl through the room. The journalist began to cough, and Bruce glanced back at them just as the cameraman gave her his gas mask, and if there had been any doubt, Bruce definitely knew they weren’t from Gotham now.
He felt in his own pockets and only came up with one gas mask himself. Cursing internally at his own foolishness, he passed it over to the cameraman.
He, at least, had some experience with this kind of thing.
Bruce held on to his rage as he began to scan the room again. If he could use the emotion he was already feeling to hold back the gas a little longer, he would.
Then he noticed something strange was happening.
Even as the fog grew denser, there was very little laughter. Instead, the screams grew thicker in the air as the Joker’s own laughter began to ring out.
Bruce’s rage spiked, and before he could even really think about what he was doing, he threw himself across the room and tackled the Joker, heedless of the gunmen around him.
“You killed my son!” Bruce snarled as the Joker hit the floor, “you killed my son and you have seen no justice for it!”
The Joker squirmed out from under Bruce and they both scrambled to their feet, Bruce swinging wildly, the terrible uncontrolled anger of his youth revisited upon him.
He forced the Joker backwards, tears streaming down his face and blurring his vision.
“You killed my son!” He shouted, half a sob, his rational mind taking a backseat, eaten away by the chemical influence of the Joker gas.
“What’re you going to do about it Brucie?” The Joker taunted, even as Bruce hit him and hit him and hit him, the rage pushing away all awareness of anything or anyone around him. “Is little Brucie Wayne going to do what the Batman never could?”
“I am not the Batman.” Bruce snarled. He backed the Joker against the edge of the balcony he had entered from. “And you do not deserve to live when Jason is dead.”
For all that Bruce had been unable to express it before, he felt it was true. Batman didn’t kill, couldn’t kill, was an upholder of the system of justice that swam, corrupt though it was, in Gotham’s veins. Bruce Wayne has trained with the League of Shadows, had killed some bad people in his anger and youth, and now Bruce Wayne was more angry than he had ever been in his life.
“Did your son deserve to live?” The Joker cackled and Bruce hit him again, his head snapping back and his laughter becoming even more breathless. “Did Jason Todd, the little street rat, the little thieving bastard, really deserve to live?”
“You keep his name out of your fucking mouth!” Bruce slammed the Joker against the railing of the balcony and he howled.
Bruce howled with him, a wordless sound of grief and rage as he threw his son’s murderer down into the unforgiving streets below.