[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/D4t61tc.png[/img][/center]
[INDENT][INDENT][sub][hr][/sub][COLOR=#CD5C5C][indent][sub][B]Location:[/B] [COLOR=#BFD7D7][I]Near Rockerfeller Plaza, New York City, New York [/I][/COLOR][/sub][/indent][/color][sub][hr][/sub]
[/indent][/indent]

Jason's banishment was wearing heavy on the young man. He knew he had done wrong, let his emotions get the best of him and gone against what Batman truly stood for. He was beating himself up about it, worse than Bruce ever could, and perhaps that was why he had sent his young protegé away. So that he could stew in his misery. He was laying on the bed in the hotel, staring up into the ceiling. He knew full well that this wasn't where he belonged. This wasn't a life that was truly his. He couldn't have deserved this, any of it, frankly. He was a fuck-up. A street-urchin. A bastard orphan and a thug. He had no right to walk next to the brightest among them.

He lifted his head and glanced at the suit, and his feelings of being an imposter grew even greater. It was a new suit, sure, but it carried the baggage of the one who had walked this path before him. Someone who had done it better than him. Richard Grayson wasn't a criminal - life had just kicked him down and Bruce helped a kid in a way that nobody had helped him. Richard had excelled at this kind of stuff, he was calm and collected, charming but able to put the mission before his emotions.

Jason wasn't like that. Not really. He was brash and abrasive. He spoke his mind, always. And he wasn't great at keeping his cool - as had been evident in the last encounter that had landed him here in exile from Gotham. 

[i]"If you ever leave, it's your choice, not mine, Jason."[/i] 

Bruce had promised him before sending the boy into the car to take him to New York. The words felt hollow at the time, but now, two weeks later, Jason started to believe them. Maybe this was just Bruce's way of getting through to him. Maybe he would be welcomed back home with open arms when the time was right. But he didn't know how long his punishment would be.

[COLOR=#CD5C5C]"It's about time to go and try to make the old bat proud. Here's hoping I don't die."[/COLOR]

The suit stared at him and he sat up in bed. And the pit in his stomach grew. He stood up, tearing his T-shirt off him, tossing it into the laundry basket, opening the glass-door into the wardrobe, revealing the suit. The black high-quality cotton in the white shirt, the jacket, and the matching pants. Even one of those fancy black sashes Bruce insisted on wearing to these events. A bow-tie. Custom-tailored to Jason's measurements, as well as a small tube of hair gel and a comb in the pocket.

The suit was a perfect fit, Jason had styled his hair and despite being one and a half heads shorter than Bruce, the 16-year old certainly looked like Bruce's mini-me today. [i]He hated it.[/i]

He was going to attend a fundraiser at the Rockerfeller Plaza for the Martha Wayne Foundation, the same foundation that had gotten Jason off the street and into Bruce's care after Batman beat the snot out of him, and in the past years, Jason had become the poster boy for the At-Risk Youth program. The fundraiser today was for a new Youth Center in New York, expanding the program out of Gotham, and Jason would be there to take questions from people asking about the program.

He sure was glad Bruce had taught him how to fool a polygraph, but he feared that the press was worse than any means of torture.