upon brushing with death

It's raining again. Just like that night. I can hear it come down around me, joining earth and sky, and feel it cool against lips that dare not speak. There are some memories that are filed away in an instant, a photograph whose colors fade and change with age. Others are etched between the lines, a cautionary tale left in the leaves of a book, a lesson learned at the end of the day, when worries are meant to be released in favor of sleep. The rain is... none of these things. Not the familiarity of night, nor the safety of a streetlight at the corner of an intersection as it draws the path of least resistance. The rain is none of these things, promising no more than to blur a memory and narrow it down to sense alone. I recall fear. I remember hatred.

I feel grief.

—

"Sir, if I may. While I don't mean to speak for Master Jason—"

"So don't."

"—I cannot help but feel that you are taking this a bit far, Master Bruce."

"A crime doesn't end at death, Alfred."

"That was not what I—"

"The very moment we bury him, the moment anyone learns that Robin lies six feet below where we stand, do you know what they'll do to him, Alfred?"

"..."

"Can you even conceive of what their twisted minds are capable of?"

"Master Bruce—"

"We're moving him."

"Master Bruce, I have loved that boy every bit as much as you have. I have clothed him, I have fed him, I have driven him to school, watched his successes, comforted him in his failures, and though I may never have been scaling the buildings while bearing cape and cowl, I have also lost a boy of my own."

"..."

"And if I, for all the warnings I have given over the years, cannot find it in myself to blame you for what has happened, I am sure that Master Jason would not either."

—

There are those who claim, upon brushing with death, to have witnessed wings unfolding. I am no God-fearing man. Nor am I a man of faith. But I have also seen the brush of wings in the corner of an eye, black cutting across my gaze, a light that flickers like a dying flame. In these, I now see only madness. Hear only the voice of a childhood friend, revealed to be nothing more than a lie. Shadows skirt across my vision as I walk through the rain, and even from a distance, I know that they are familiar. I know that I have seen them before. I step across earth not made sacred not by the hand of God, but instead by the legacy left there, of loved ones gone but not forgotten.

Here lies Jason Todd.

Lied, once.

And though I know he walks this island, still, I drop to my knees. They can try to absolve me all they like. They can offer a path to forgiveness or a chance at redemption.

It doesn't change a thing.