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Tear Jerker / The Changeling Sequence

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The Changeling

  • Jason crossing the Despair Event Horizon when he realizes Talia isn't going to let him go back to Bruce, slipping back into the Empty Shell he was when he crawled out of his grave.
  • Right after fleeing the burning manor with Damian, Jason briefly thinks they're going to be okay... then Damian starts screaming for his mother.
    • Damian pushes his distress down until the next night. There, he sobs into his pillow, and Jason finds himself unable to go and comfort him so he just pretends he can't hear this.
    • The worse is, Talia is alive. But she let her eight-year-old son believe she's dead because she's utterly convinced he would be safer this way.
  • Everytime Bruce thinks of Jason. His Batman side tries to diminish the pain by insisting Jason was a soldier, only for the Bruce side to protest the teen was his son.
  • Tim's attempt to tell Dick Jason is alive. Poor kid only wanted to cheer up his sibling, but he just managed to depress him further.
  • After enduring too much of a shock, Jason's mind breaks and he flees into Gotham's streets with Dick's gun, a small part of him crying for Bruce all the while.
  • When Damian is finally introduced to his father, Bruce's knee-jerk instinct is to reject him, blatantly comparing him to a "cuckoo", something who doesn't belong. He has to remind himself that Damian didn't got to pick his parents, didn't ask to lose his mom, and doesn't deserve his dad hating him.
    • After learning Damian was brought to him because of what happened to Talia, Bruce wonders if everyone he loves is doomed to be miserable by way of people dying on them all the time.
  • A startled Jason almost shooting Batman. In Crime Alley. OUCH.
    • Right after identifying Bruce, his words? "You let him live." OUCH.
    • More happy variety of tears, Bruce finally appeases Jason with three words: "I love you".

The Guardian

  • This is the background of Identity Crisis. Oh Tim...
    • Dick and Jason being helpless to do anything more than watching over him while he's laying despondent on his bed.
    • Alfred tries to assure Bruce he's not at fault, just like he wasn't at fault every time his loved ones suffered a tragedy. Bruce merely answers that it just keeps happening.
    • Damian immediately realizes something's wrong with Tim and intuits Mr Drake's demise wasn't natural or an accident. When Bruce tries to cheer him up with the news that Dick and Jason will come home sooner, the kid lights up... right before asking if he's allowed to feel happy since Tim is so miserable.
    • Batman revealing the culprit and their motivation: Jean Loring was only a human woman who wanted her ex-husband to notice her again. The boys are incredulous and disgusted.
  • On the road to visit the Teen Titans, Jason carelessly asks after Donna Troy, whom he crushed on when he still was Robin. Dick has to break out the news that Donna was killed some time ago.
  • Immediately after the case's resolution, Connor Hawke appears to announce to Dick another criminal saw it as his opportunity to rampage and managed to badly harm Roy Harper while killing Roy's six-year-old daughter. Even Jason - who hated Roy at first sight - feels awful for the archer.
  • Jason's complicated relationship with Talia, mainly because of how her "death" impacted Damian.

The Progenitor

  • The Queen family isn't the main focus of the story, but they're still messed up from what happened to them in the previous installment.
    • Roy fell back with the bad crowd and started using again, while Oliver is imprisoned for avenging his granddaughter's murder, Mia shut down and starts to neglect her health, and poor Conner is stuck trying to pick up the pieces.
    • Linked to this is Dick's absence from the story, since he went to support Roy. Jason firmly disapproves his decision, especially since it came right after Tim being orphaned.
  • After seeing many photos of Damian as a baby and a toddler, Bruce asks Talia why she has no pictures of Jason. She answers he didn't like this after being cured and before... Bruce really doesn't want to know how he was before.
  • Talia's mixed feelings over her father's potential imminent demise. He may be a criminal megalomaniac, but it won't change the fact he's her father.

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