Chapter Text
She shouldn't have ever set foot in Gotham again, but the kid had been so insistent, so convincing, that she thought she'd actually be able to do some good and help Bruce, but all it's done is bite her in the ass.
Like she'll ever do him a favor again.
Silently, she curses Tim for his persistence and for wearing her down. She had her own problems, her own city to take care of, and now she's here in Gotham, running her old patrol routes while Tim's off in Timbuktu preparing to take on the mantle of Robin or whatever. God only knows what'll happen to him when he gets back.
She shakes her head. She shouldn't be so pessimistic. It's just her emotions getting in the way again.
On nights like these, when the air is crisp, the weather mild, and moonlight breaks through the overcast sky, she misses simpler times. Back when she and Bruce were both figuring the whole vigilante thing out. Back when they relied on each other for more than just field support. And when they both had a more positive outlook on their war on crime.
Before Jason.
She fumbles, rolling a landing instead of sticking, and snaps back to her surroundings. Patrol. Right.
She checks the time and decides to loop back to Crime Alley. No doubt he's already passed through twice tonight, so it's not necessary, but it'll be a way to feel like she's actually accomplished something tonight instead of just running around with her head in the clouds.
Besides, it's on her way back to the cave.
The road is still. Not quiet – a dangerous term to use – but as though the city were holding her breath in anticipation of something big. It's ominous, foreboding, and not a good sign. And yet, a small victory tonight is an easy one.
She takes the opportunity to visit the Wayne Memorial. A bouquet of flowers, fresh, lies beneath the plaque. It's a beautiful arrangement with white roses, purple statice, and red gladiolus. All tied together by a black ribbon and set gently on the ground. Bruce had definitely been here. Only he'd leave such an expensive arrangement in such a place. And yet there's something odd about it. He doesn't leave flowers at this time of year. Usually, he leaves them in the spring.
Unless they weren't meant for them.
She crouches down, inspecting the arrangement with a keener eye. Flowers were never her specialty, but she knows there's meaning in them. She counts a dozen roses – expected for a memorial – but also seven red gladiolus and fourteen statice. Definitely not for his parents.
Seven and fourteen.
It comes to her: seventeen years, fourteen months.
She checks the date. Sure enough, it's half past two on August 16th.
They're for Jason.
There's no card, no other identifier or clue as to why they'd been left, and her knowledge of the "flower language" is too poor to discern more from the bouquet itself. All she knows is that Bruce has more of a heart than she'd thought.
She stands back from the memorial and scans the alley for any activity. Nothing. So she gives it a detailed pass from the ground. She rarely sees it from this angle, always taking the higher perch, but it brings back memories of all the times things had gone wrong here. There's the dumpster she'd hid in after her first exposure to Scarecrow's fear toxin, the storm drain where she'd lost the keys to the Batmobile, and the fire escape where she'd gotten herself tangled in the line of a prototype grappling gun.
This is also where she'd taken Jason the night she'd snuck him out of the manor for patrol to spite Bruce.
A weight tugs at her heart. She fires her grapnel and heads back to the cave.
"You're late." He doesn't look up from the computer.
"Can't a girl just enjoy a night out on the town?"
No answer. She sighs, defeated. She patters over to the display and begins to shed her gear. Sparing a glance, she looks over at the case next to hers. The customized belt and harder armor plates had been his idea and preference, but she recognizes the dynamic stitching, the accents of yellow, and the "R" that she'd designed. He'd been working on the design the last time they spoke. He'd finished it, but never got to wear it.
If she'd known that was the last time she'd seen him, she would have stayed like he'd asked.
She turns away.
"Any updates on the Joker's goons? I didn't see anything tonight."
A grunt. She glances over her shoulder and sees him running a sample. She might as well not be there.
After downloading the rest of her equipment, she heads up to the manor without another word to Bruce. The fewer words between them, the better. At least it preserves this awkward truce between them that they've sustained for the past few months. It'd be a bad time for both of them if something were to send them back into one of their sustained spats.
She's already sacrificed much of her work in Bludhaven to be here for him. She doesn't need it to be in vain.
The eerie silence of the city makes it hard for her to sleep. The few hours she manages to get are wrought with afterimages of the battles she's lost, and she's far from rested when she gives up her attempt to sleep some time after sunrise.
Alfred is waiting in the kitchen with coffee and an omelet, the smell stirring her appetite.
"Thanks, Al," she says, sliding onto the stool. "B not up yet?"
"Master Bruce departed at first light," Alfred replies.
She arches her brow. "Oh?"
"There's been a development at Wayne Industries requiring his immediate attention."
"Anything else I should know?"
"Not unless you've acquired a sudden appetite for boardrooms," he says, topping off her mug. "Strictly business, I'm afraid."
She huffs a laugh. "I'll pass. I'm not exactly cut out for that life."
"Cream and one sugar," he murmurs, adding both. "You'll have to show some interest sooner or later. You are, after all, the family's heiress."
"I failed my first semester of business school."
Alfred sets the spoon aside with a soft clink. "And yet I suspect the blame lies with matters outside the syllabus. Relative to the workload of your nightly...extracurriculars, I'm quite certain you could manage."
She stabs a piece of omelet, thoughtful. "We'll see."
"Indeed, we shall, Miss Rachelle," Alfred says, a corner of his mouth tilting. "Preferably before the board does."
She dreads the possibility of the company falling onto her shoulders, but she knows that she should be prepared in case it ever does. Now, more than ever. In the wake of Jason's death, Bruce doesn't seem quite as untouchable as he has in the past. And if something were to happen, it'd be up to her to keep the public from getting their hands on private affairs within the company.
Alfred collects her plate as she nurses her second cup of coffee. She sips as she checks the news. Much as last night, the city is silent, with boring, mundane affairs making headlines. A little bit of breathing room on a day that deserved it.
So the first thing on her agenda for the day is going to be flowers.
Poet's Corner is a small corner shop florist that the Waynes used for most regular affairs. A smaller business with unique expertise and talent with all things flowers, it's one of the businesses that Bruce finds any excuse to patronize and help pour his wealth into the local economy. She's only been once before, two winters ago, when she'd visited Barbara in the hospital.
Yet another topic she and Bruce don't talk about.
Amarilis Lee, the owner, is a salt and pepper-haired woman with warm brown eyes, crowned with crows' feet and smile lines. She's the type of woman to dress in colorful fabrics, long skirts, and out-of-time statement pieces. She's eclectic, and it runs over into her store, which, while only a few blocks away from Crime Alley, holds the quaint charm of a cottage in the forest. A bustling oasis of green in the dark and grimy Gotham.
The bells jingle when she enters, and almost immediately, she's greeted with a warm, dramatic flair.
"Rachelle, darling, so good to see you," she says, setting a plant down on the counter and waltzing over in her direction. "It's been a while. Your father was here just the other day, but he didn't mention you were back in town."
"It's just for a little while."
"Ah, for the anniversary." She reaches for the closest display. "You'll need white roses, of course, 8 should do—" she begins gathering said flowers, selecting and inspecting each before adding them to the bunch. "He was a creative child, no?"
Rachelle nods, "More of an enjoyer of the arts than a creator."
"But he was a fan of the classics?"
"If you mean like Shakespeare or Jane Austen, then yeah," she says, "He had a thing for symbolism and deeper meanings."
"Then that's what we'll give him." She hums and walks behind the counter, returning a few moments later with a small bunch of deep blue pansies. "Pansies for thoughts, and rosemary for remembrance — from my Ophelia bouquet and fitting for a boy of good taste. With the roses, I call it Ophelia's Song."
She ties off the bouquet with a simple black ribbon and hands it over with gentle hands. Rachelle takes the flowers with care and examines them.
"They're beautiful."
"Of course they are, Dear." She flashes Rachelle a smile. "I only make perfection."
She pays, and Amarilis throws in a gardenia for free, handing it to Rachelle with a twinkle in her eye. She looks over the white blossom, expecting something to stand out about it, but it's just an ordinary flower.
She's speaking an entirely different language.
She waves goodbye and heads back to the manor, making the trek out to Jason's grave.
Bruce had forgone the tradition of burying him near the family cemetery to give Jason the best view of the property. On a small hill, under a tree, overlooking a sea of trees with mountains on the horizon, Jason's gravesite is not only fitting of the novels he reads, but it has a perfect view of every sunset. She thinks a view of the sunrise would be less depressing, but Jason had preferred sunsets, and it suits a life cut tragically short.
She's beaten Bruce to the grave. Dusting off the headstone, she lays the flowers down and wipes a tear from her eye.
"I'm sorry I didn't come around more," she says, her voice barely above a whisper. "You wouldn't understand, Bruce and I thought it was for the best that I kept my distance, but if I'd only known— I wouldn't have left when you asked me not to."
A breeze rustles the leaves of the tree above, which is her only answer. She twirls the gardenia in between her thumb and index finger, watching the petals twirl.
What did gardenia's mean? There's a message there that she just can't read. She looks at Jason's name, inscribed in the stone. He'd know. He knew so much. There was so much life, knowledge, and experience in that boy. It still doesn't seem possible that he could be dead.
Not the boy who'd followed her like a lovesick puppy the first night she'd taken him on patrol, whose grit and spite fueled him beyond reasonable limits, and whose background and literary prowess gave him knowledge that alluded even her and Bruce's combined expertise. She'd sparred with him, fought alongside him, and refused to believe it's anything other than the world's greatest injustice that he'd been taken from the world.
And his killer walks free.
The sun peaks from behind a cloud and another breeze whiffs the scent of the gardenia to her, sparking a distant, but distinct memory of Jason explaining the proper flowers to give a woman.
Gardenias convey secret love.
She laughs, setting the flower down next to the bouquet. "You can have this one too," she says to Jason. "Though your secret was pretty open."
She sits in the sun for a few more minutes, soaking in the quiet morning. It's a beautiful day, a rarity for Gotham, and there's no horrific crime or crisis stopping her from enjoying it. The tragedy in it is that it's Jason's birthday and he's not there to enjoy it. He doesn't get to enjoy it.
Seventeen. He would have been seventeen today. She would have found a way to surprise him, take him out of the manor and find a way to break as many of Bruce's rules as possible, justifying them by him "only being seventeen once."
He didn't even make it to sixteen.
Hot tears well in her eyes.
"I'll find him," she vows. "I'll find the Joker and make him pay for what he did to you. Bruce'll just want to lock him up like usual, but I—I'll make sure he gets what he deserves. You're not just another casualty — not to me."
Her phone buzzes; Alfred calling to check up on her. She tells him that she's alright, she's just finishing up, and ends the call. Standing to her feet, she pockets her phone and looks down at Jason's headstone once more.
Don't say goodbye. Goodbyes are forever.
"I'll come by again soon." She cringes at those words — the last ones she'd said to him when he was alive. "I promise this time. And I'll bring you more flowers, and maybe a book. And when I find him and bring him to justice, I'll bring you proof, I swear it."
And she means every word.