one of us, but i'm not going to tell you who (it's me), just watched the 2010 "under the red hood" for the first time.
and barring the amount of time i spent, jaw agape at the screen at the angst unfolding in front of me, the thing that's fucking with me is that. he was just a kid.
and when he comes back, lazarus-touched—ra's even describes him as "damaged"—he's still just a kid.
and i imagine that "damaged" is somewhat of a surface-level description to the way that the pit actually feels. i imagine it's a hunger, the kind that claws at your insides, that eats away at your chest until you feel hollow and brittle, and when—not if, when—you break, the pieces will be jagged and razor-sharp.
and it's really gut-wrenching because like. bruce was the person that he thought, hoped—i imagine pre-bruce jason might have even prayed to a god that didn't care enough to reside in crime alley that someone like bruce might find him one day—would do anything for him. and instead, it's a child being shown in real time that the one person he thought loved him unconditionally did, in fact, have conditions. bruce's condition was that he wouldn't break his own code for jason—when for jason, there was nothing that could have stood in the way of unconditional protection, even after death.
it's why he can forgive bruce for not saving him, but letting the joker live means that bruce doesn't fully love him, not the way jason loves bruce.
it's a boy who, in his last moments, wished for his father. it's a boy-now-man who is starving for the warmth he once had, who wants to look his dad in the eyes and see that they still share some part of themselves. (sure, they've always had a marginal resemblance physically, but jason looked to bruce and wished that maybe, maybe he wasn't so alone in his jagged bones and simmering skin.)
it's a child for whom love now bears conditions, who now carries deep in his chest that he isn't worth it.
