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The thing about the Walls of Constantinople, the thing that made them so impossible to breach, was the cracks. Oh, the walls were certainly strong before, but once the cracks began to show, that was when they came into their own. The people filled the gaps with bonded remnants and refuse, gravel and brick and anything they could get their hands on all wrapped in lime. The cracks filled with mortar were more flexible than the rock. They absorbed what the unyielding base could not. They bent, where previously, the rock would have broken; they held where previously the walls would have crumbled. The cracks made the Walls of Constantinople the last great structure of Antiquity, so great that they survived the Ancient World, the Crusades, the Middle Ages. Humans had to invent gunpowder and the Modern Era before walls a thousand years old could even be breached, and even then they went on standing.
Jason liked to think about the Walls of Constantinople, walls from a bygone century that protected the people of their city through generations of change, walls made stronger and better by the times they’d been broken. When he looked at his autopsy scars, Jason reminded himself of King Philip, who famously used a tombstone to repair a crack in one of the earliest walls.
His death made him stronger. Losing his life, losing Bruce, losing everything that came with it, left a gap that needed to be filled, and the League came in with his tombstone and training like mortar. They patched the hole in his heart, and now Jason bent but he would not break. And every time he fell he would come back stronger.
Standing atop the vestiges of the abandoned building he’d clawed his way out from under, blood pouring down his neck from the blow his own father dealt, Jason saw nothing more than a hole to patch, a weakness that caused a crack he needed to repair, and he was standing on the ruins he would use to fill it.
The memory of his father choosing the Joker, the memory of his father trying to kill him for having the audacity to ask for justice, the memory of his father pulling his murderer free and not him; he would use those slights to fill the wound. He would train more, plan more, to make the mortar to patch it over, and he would come back better.
Constantinople fell when the walls were breached, when those at the top were too complacent about the looming threats outside their door, when those at the top didn’t take the necessary measures to protect their city. Jason was the wall. He would stand strong. He would not let Gotham fall.
“So take me back to Constantinople,” Jason quietly began to sing the words to the song as he carefully made his way down the ruins of the fallen building.
Eyes up, always alert, Jason could just make out a dark figure as it appeared atop a nearby court building, cape rippling in the breeze.
“No you can’t go back to Constantinople-”
Every injury left debris, just more material to use.
Mortar and wreckage that could stand a thousand years. Jason reminded himself. He would come back stronger.
“Been a long time gone, Constantinople…”