c/p from a discord thread with the AMAZING @legaxies . Bruce talking to Catherine Todd about Jason. Oh my gosh the character development/exploration.
He paused and took a breath, tried to force himself to relax. To meet the fury with calm. He ran his hands over his face, cheeks ruddy and eyes red with unshed tears. He wiped them away quickly.
She was right. She was right about the whole thing. He had made mistakes with Dick, had sworn Robin was too dangerous to exist. And then this. He'd repeated his mistakes. She wasn't saying anything but the truth. A loud, angry, hurting truth, but the truth.
"No. You're right." He took another shaky breath, hands in his pockets. Funny how she could make him feel small. He hadn't felt that way since-- well, since the alleyway.
"I didn't get to grow up with my parents. I don't know what I'm doing. I-- I'm making mistakes. Most of them were benign. But now--" He wiped his thumb at his eyes and dropped it at his side. "He was hurting and angry and lost. And, and doing this helped me. I thought it helped him. It was helping him, danger aside."
He swallowed a knot. "I was shot when I was a child. I saw my parents die." Felt his mother's chest still as he tried to stem the flow of blood. Ignored his own wound to try and save her.
"I trained for, for years as a teenager. I was shot and stabbed and worse. I-- I guess I didn't realize the danger." He had a different baseline for what violence was. He'd gotten... desensitized to it. That didn't excuse what he'd done to Jason and Dick. But he honestly, earnestly, hadn't realized there was anything wrong with it.
This was just what happened to children, right?
No. No, it wasn't. He'd messed up. Messed up didn't even begin to cover his mistakes.
"Robin was a mistake. A terrible, terrible mistake. One I won't be repeating. I don't know how to apologize for, for all of this. But the Bat will go back to working on his own. I promise you that."