ain't no crying in the club

'til you see the sunrise

tw - nongraphic descriptions of self harm and depression (i think), i got carried away, sorry. No beta. 

~×~

{Inspired by the interactive movie, Death in the Family}

"Little did Dick know that the child in his arms would be the living reminder of a broken angel that fell from grace to the claws of insanity and the message of merciless judgement from hell.

Little did the man know he was harbouring the devil of Gotham, the Grim Reaper himself."

~×~

"You think that you'll die without him."

   Jason slammed his hands on the cool surface of the table that housed the Batcomputer, which steadily ran multiple programs like various local news channels, the Oracle facial recognition software and a police line synchronized with vigilante comms. Nightwing had just intercepted Harley Quinn, who managed to catch him off-guard by bringing Poison Ivy into the fight. Batgirl had arrived just in time to deliver the antidote to the poisoned pollen Ivy had puffed into his face, but too late to intercept Quinzel and Isley before they made their retreat.

"Dammit," he growled, knuckles white against the edge of the metal table, which bit into his palms like the sharp bade of a katana.

His palms were still wrapped from the last time he gripped the edge a little too hard.

"Master Jason," Alfred called out from where he was prepping a blood test for Nightwing, "I believe that goes to the jar."

Jason heavily exhaled through his gritted teeth. "Sorry," he forced out, committing the task to his memory and filing it for later. "It's just...god, we were so close."

Alfred had come to his side, a gloved hand gently resting on his shoulder as if he were made of fractured glass. The younger boy had removed his glasses to block out the rising anger from looking at the screens, which was basically removing his vision, so he tensed at the abrupt human contact. "My boy," the British butler softly said, "Master Bruce wouldn't want you to-"

"Bruce is dead," growled Jason as the sparking agitation and shrugged the hand off, "You don't know what he wants."

"I raised him, if there were anything I would know it would be what he thinks."

"You weren't there when he died," he snarled, twisting in the wheelchair he was confined in to face Alfred, who was a black and white blur against the expanse of darkness and light. "You weren't there when he died in my arms! Mine!"

He could see the flinch in the butler at the echoes of his words and felt some sick pleasure in knowing he won the battle. With a content huff at the sound of an engine cutting off whatever Alfred was going to say, he turned to pick his glasses up. "Help Nightwing," was his only words, "I'll look for Quinn."

Jason sat alone once again, coldness trailing their fingers against his skin as the heat the old man had been radiating disappeared. Shadows curled on the edge of his vision, contrasting against the flickering red of the coiled rage of his undying thirst for revenge that guided him every day past Ethiopia. Slipping the black-framed glasses on his nose, determination festered within him.

He could find the Joker and kill him, feel the blood smeared against his hands as he would slowly kill the maniac, but it was too easy. He would be the clown's living hell; he would haunt the psychopath's nightmares like how Bruce haunted his. He would ruin everything that deranged clown had. The freak would always look over his shoulder, every shadow would be a remembrance of the deaths he inflicted, of the pain. He wouldn't kill the Joker, no.