Chapter Text
The Third Time
Threads of agony sew themselves against Jason’s body. Chunks of his flesh are being torn away from his body, floating away. The exposed red blooms shouldn't be capable of inflicting this much pain. Numbness sitting just below the burning sensations. Enough to disconnect his mind from his body, but not enough to remove the pain.
Hot tears crawl down his reddened cheeks. The beads follow sticky trails. As they drop off his face, abandoning him, the beads light up blue.
Like a flock of birds, his tears float through the air. A white expanse surrounds the once-dead man. His missing chunks of flesh shimmer with teal light. Blue threads pinch together the open ends.
If Jason closes his eyes, he can hear Alfie’s reassurances, offering more anesthesia. More tears follow well-worn paths across his face, before being lifted away. If only his sorrow and agony could be removed as easily as the beads fly away.
Trying to move his legs, they find no traction. Running motions swirl nothing but air, refusing to catch on any surface, below him or otherwise.
Panic surges through him. More clarifying than the pain crawling against him, crawling across his body like a spider. Robin’s been in worse situations before. The last time he’d been immobilized, pain more familiar than food and Robin had ended in his death.
Focus. He’s better than before. He HAS to be. He just got back. Just started making fun of Dick again. He can do this, he can escape. Can make it back to Bruce Dick, Tim and Damian. His brothers.
His lungs expand, slowly, controlled. Release the air. In and out. In and out. He’s not there .
Pointing his toes, he still brushes against nothing. His arms feel like lead, stuck to his body. He’s tied with rope. Constrained. His mother’s off to the side, there’s blood sluggishly trickling his body. His throat’s raw from screaming
Swiveling his head from side to side, he catalogs what he can move. Hips down he can move freely, but elbows are stuck to his sides, unable to be bent. His forearms are stuck straight down and no matter how hard he tries, none of his fingers twitch. There’s nothing pressing down on his chest. Aside from his skin being sewn by a glowing blue thread and pounding with agony he is uninjured.
He’s floating. Unable to move.
Across from him, the murder of tears descends. Chunks of his flesh float in correlation to where they’d been taken. The tears fill in the missing pieces. Glowing into a blinding white, taking shape of Jason’s body.
The light fades. There’s a replacement directly across from him. Lacking the vicious scar webbing across the Red Hood’s neck. The white sprinkles of scars on trembling fingers. Missing the emerald green eyes that are shaking, unable to look away. Directly in front of Jason, is Jason.
He is perfect. Untainted by the Lazarus Pit or the man’s time as Red Hood. The replacement is free. They walk away, move further and further away from where Jay’s trapped.
A sharp whine comes from his throat. He’s being left alone . Again. He’s being faced with the possibility of being perfect, and being discarded. Replaced by something better. Something that is Jason but not stained by his pains.
With a trembling heart, he realizes that Tim isn’t … whatever is moving farther and farther away from him. Tim wasn’t an idealized version of him. Tim might have been a pretender but he wasn’t a replacement .
The trembling man feels eyes on his back. Observing. Watching his reactions. Documenting.
The sounds of keys on a keyboard furiously hit thunder around him. Drowning him. The sounds smash against his head. Threaten to deafen him.
There is no escape. No escape. No escape.