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August 18, 1996 - April 27, 2011
The 15 year measure of a life that had turned out to be worth nothing at all.
Jason snorts a little at that, at the thoughts running through his head. First anniversary of his death that he was actually around in Gotham for, and he was drunk. Alcohol tends to make him maudlin, not angry. Not like Willis had been, with his broken beer bottles and doubled leather belt. He's not really drunk, more loose-limbed, sprawled in front of a grave he knows like the specs of his Beretta. A grave he had to be drunk to even consider coming near, and once he was, he couldn’t go back with seeing it at least once. A grave that, for the life (see what he did there?) of him, he can only remember in the flashes of panicterrorBruce that are his earliest memory, before the Pit.
There's no need to go down that route though, not unless he wants to wake up scratching at silk and padding and wood that is not there, so Jason takes another swig from his bottle. Studies the generic words cut into the flawless and white marble instead.
Here lies Jason Todd. Jason laughs to himself, but it’s still so bitter. Not anymore. There’s no epitaph, of course. That was saved for the Cave, the case with its final, condemning words: A Good Soldier.
Like he had ever wanted to be a soldier. A partner, yes. A sidekick, if you were going to get technical about it. A hero? Jason scoffs, but Robin was so much more than a hero. So much more than one more soldier, fallen in the line of duty.
The worst part is, he can't even get mad about it. He feels drained of it, the alcohol diluting whatever it is that keeps Jason mad, leaving him—
Sad, mostly. Grieving, a little. He feels the sudden urge to pour one out for Robin, that pathetic, loving kid, who'd died for his faith and his trust, like if he were to dig up the dirt—not frozen but still cold, in Gotham's April—he'd find that broken, battered thing still dead, under all of it.
Jason shakes his head slightly. He's not wrong, really. Just being an overly dramatic shit, as per usual. But Robin is dead. The Red Hood is what's left.
There's the sound of someone shifting, somewhere to his left, and Jason raises his head to look up at the cold and unsmiling face of Bruce Wayne.
Fucking alcohol.
Jason's stomach turns violently. It's his fault for letting himself get so wasted. So drunk that he hadn't even noticed Bruce approaching. Dulled senses are a bitch.
No need to let Bruce see his sudden inner turmoil, though, so Jason just raises the bottle of—whatever it is he'd bought, toasting Bruce with a merriment he does not feel.
"It's a lovely night," he says cheerfully. The sun is still setting in the west, turning Gotham gold for just a little, until the night arrives and its bats show up as well. "What are you doing all the way out here?"
Bruce clenches his jaw in that way, the one that says I-have-no-patience-and-yet-you-try-me, but he doesn't answer the question. "Jason," he says instead, so neutrally it's more of an acknowledgement that he's here than anything else.
It pisses Jason off, but punching Bruce right now would only lead to him falling on his ass, and he's too tired to be angry, really.
Not too tired to be malicious, of course. To make Bruce hurt.
"You ever wonder how I got out of here?" Jason says with a lightness he does not feel. Takes another swig from his unknown alcohol beverage. He chances a look at Bruce through his eyelashes. The expression on his face is his detectiving one. Detectiving isn't even a real word, Jason thinks inanely, then is caught off guard when Bruce actually answers. He'd expected him to take it as another of Jason's useless, crazy questions, to be ignored in ffavor of meaningless pleas for him to come home.
"I assumed Ra's had one of his operatives exhume your corpse." The tone of his voice is carefully neutral, but Jason can hear the question in it. The 'I'm waiting for you to either confirm or deny my theory, but I would never stoop so low as to ask' in it.
Snobby motherfucker. Jason tilts his head to the side, feeling the cold spring breeze wash over his face. Lets his eyes wander over Bruce's stern face, the black three piece suit he's wearing, the daisies and sunflowers he no doubt imported clenched in his hand. Everything required to mourn someone who isn't even dead. (And yet, he is. Ain't that the kicker? Isn't it the joke?)
He smirks a little. “Nope,” he drawls, stretching out the O, popping the P. “Not. Even. Close.”
Jason shuts his mouth after that, looking around the graveyard that had been his final resting place. Trees placed tasteful distances from the graves, flowers—and was that incense he could smell on the wind?—unfurling petals, and the rows and rows of black-grey-white headstones that marked where a life ended, as if that was the most important part.
He feels Bruce shift where he’s still standing. Annoyed, probably. Jason’s theory is confirmed when Bruce asks, “How, then?” in between gritted teeth.
Jason widens the smirk now, plastering his most irritating grin on his face. He shrugs expansively. “Fucked if I know. Woke up one day in there,” he tilts his head towards the cold marble, “and I was alive again. I mean, still pretty fucked up, but. Alive.”
He glances at Bruce to see how he’s taking the news. The expression on his face is—weird. Not one Jason’s seen before, so he’s not quite sure how to interpret it. He raises his eyebrows. Smiles, tapping his tongue against his teeth. “What’s it feel like? Being wrong, I mean.”
Bruce doesn’t answer that question either. “How did you get out?”
The question hits Jason like a train to the face. He wants to laugh. Or vomit. His stomach and his head are not in agreement, at any rate. “What, you never dug up the old grave? Never wanted to check and see if I was really me, or just some feral, crazy thing with the same name?” Said as blithely as possible, like he doesn’t care, because he doesn’t. He doesn’t.
Bruce narrows his eyes at Jason. “I was reasonably certain you were who you said you were. There was no reason to exhume the coffin.” He pauses, just for a second, crushing the stems of the flowers in his fist. His knuckles go white. “And by then your plan was already in motion.”
I couldn’t be bothered to even check, are the unspoken words, of course. Jason stands up, swaying, leaving the bottle on the ground, miraculously untipped. He stands toe-to-toe with Bruce, the smirk still on his face. The blank expression still on Bruce’s. Jason realizes, with the vague and murky uncertainty of the drunk, that this is the first time Jason’s seen Bruce maskless since he died.
“I broke myself out, of course. I was always afraid of getting buried alive, you know. Being trapped under everything, with no chance of anyone hearing you. No chance of getting out. So when I woke up in that coffin,” Jason points at the gravesite, but Bruce’s eyes are still resolutely on his face, vivid and intense points of ice blue, “I took off my belt and started scratching.” That cold smile he’d perfected training with Egon and Bruce closes his eyes so slowly. So slowly, like he’s in pain.
He omits the part where he’d screamed for Bruce. Cried for Bruce, even. He doesn’t deserve to know that. The devastation writ across his face right now is enough for Jason, spreads across his soul like a balm. Bruce is hurt, and that’s exactly how it should be. He deserves nothing less. Jason had carried that burden around for 3 years. Let Bruce chew on it for a bit.
He rolls his shoulders idly. “But, y’know, it’s whatever. Who cares anymore, really.”
Bruce’s eyes open again, fixing on his own (too-green) ones. “Jason,” he says, and there’s pain in his voice too, but who fucking cares, “I care—”
Jason waves a hand in front of Bruce’s face, cutting him off sharp. “I don’t really, though, Bruce,” he says. His words are maybe a little slurred. “It’s over. Done with. You can leave your fucking flowers and go.”
Flowers for a dead boy. The one Bruce had claimed to love, then abandoned, like it wouldn’t break him as badly as the Joker had. It had only ever been a lie for a kid too gullible for his own good.
Fucker, Jason thinks darkly, then startles as Bruce moves past him, holding the flowers so carefully they might as well be eggs or thin glass. He stops in front of the grace, places his hand on the enormous Episcopalian cross that is his headstone. Bows his head. He cares about the dead one so fucking much and—
How can Jason be jealous of himself?
Bruce turns suddenly, somehow looming in front of Jason, even though they're almost the same height nowadays. He presses the flowers into Jason’s hands, the dandelions already falling apart, the sunflowers too long, the daisies crushed. His favorite flowers, if only because they were bright and beautiful and dandelions were technically weeds but Jason had never really cared.
“....I miss you,” Bruce says softly, placing a hand on his shoulder. “I miss you, Jason.” Soft, sincere words, punctuated by the gentle pressure on Jason’s shoulder.
Jason shrugs off Bruce’s arm as fast as he can, then steps back as coordinated as he can, which is not very. He bares his teeth in a smile that hurts. Liar. Liar. The rage that overtakes him feels like it's hot enough to burn the intoxication right out of him.
“If you miss me so much, why are you here? I’m alive, Bruce! Still here, still kicking, despite it all. That—fucking—case is still up in the Cave, isn’t it?” A single look at Bruce’s face tells Jason he’s spot-on. “And you’re here to mourn someone who isn’t even dead, so tell me, Bruce, who do you miss? Because it certainly isn’t me.”
His head is swimming, and he’s so angry, even with the alcohol running through his veins. Jason’s blood is boiling like acid, like Lazarus, and it’s times like this when he wants to cut himself open just to make sure he still bleeds red.
He fights back the urge to claw into his wrists. Picks up his bottle of alcohol and hurls it into the ground at his feet, where there was only an empty wooden box and what was left of Jason’s fingernails, probably. And still the ghost of Robin hovers there, yellow (sunflowers) and red (blood) and green (Lazarus) and above all else, dead. Murdered.
“You can keep the flowers. And Robin too. You can keep him too." The naïve little bird who'd hoped so intensely and trusted so easily and been let down so hard.
"Jason, listen to me—"
Jason punches Bruce, a sloppy, telegraphed excuse for a right hook, but one that Bruce makes no attempt to dodge. He just takes it, rolling with the punch expertly. It's going to swell and bruise, Jason can tell.
"Fuck you," he spits. "Fuck you." And then, like he has no control over his mouth whatsoever, "I wish I could stop caring about you completely."
The words slip out of him by accident, but the look on Bruce's face is so hopeful, so—
Jason turns and stalks away, letting the drink go to his head, letting the anger warm him until he feels real again.
“Jason,” Bruce calls again, despair and hope mingled, intertwined in his voice, but—
Hope is a thing with feathers. He’s the Red Hood.