Chapter Text
Maybe inviting a brother you’d never met to share a body with you wasn’t the best idea in the world. Rose Wilson was beginning to think so, anyway.
For one thing, he was always watching, always awake. Kinda made some things awkward. Like trying to patch things up with a certain ex-boyfriend. Jericho was a cool guy, and she was glad to know him outside of Slade’s lies, but he was still essentially a stranger. And he liked to talk. A lot.
Rose had never been much of a talker. Not when she lived with her mother, and certainly not when she’d lived with Slade. Most people weren’t worth talking to. The Titans were… a notable exception. They’d forgiven her even after all she’d done. To them. For her father. They were closer family than she’d ever had. Literally, in Jericho’s case.
But he was still starting to get on her nerves.
“So, dad let you in on his secret life?”
Rose scoffed, leaning over the desk she’d had moved into her room in Titans Tower. It had been a week since Donna’s funeral, but it seemed longer. They’d fought crime since then...both of them, which was weird beyond words. The whole time, he’d been pestering with questions about herself and her relationship with her father. Their father, she corrected herself. They were questions she didn’t feel like answering. Not so soon after what she’d done. Jericho seemed to understand, even if that didn’t stop the endless wave of questions he sent her way.
“Yeah, he let me in on his ‘secret life’. He wanted to make me into a weapon. A dagger he could thrust right into the heart of the Titans. Came real close, too. Hey, wait a second, why are you asking me about what Slade was doing? Weren’t you inside his head?”
Jericho did a mental shake of his head. Man that was weird. Rose wondered if she’d ever get used to this. Or if she even wanted to get used to it.
“He didn’t exactly let me see much. Only when he was tired or hurt or...he was feeling generous.”
So dad kept secrets from him, too. Maybe they had even more in common than Rose thought.
“I’m sorry. He hurt me too. Told me it was for you. To honor your memory. I thought he was joking at first, but...he never jokes. Joked, I mean.”
A sharp intake of breath from Jericho, and then:
“Hard to believe he’s really dead.”
She knew he was, though. She’d driven the blade into his chest herself. There hadn’t been time to double check, but his death had been all over the news in the days since the fight. People were celebrating. And why wouldn’t they? It was a good thing, right?
“We’re shaking,” Jericho pointed out.
Rose realized he was right. She hadn’t trembled like this in a long time. Not since her first training sessions with Slade. He’d been a brutal taskmaster, merciless in his demands and his execution. It had been way too much for her, all at once. She shut down, body trembling uncontrollably. Slade hadn’t taken too kindly to her weakness. She spent most of the next month in bed, recovering.
He’d always known how to hurt her.
Her hand brushed against her eyepatch. She wasn’t sure if the movement belonged to her or to Jericho.
“Can you...can you read my thoughts?”
It wasn’t such a ridiculous question, was it? She could get flashes of his mind, occasionally. Warm memories of his time with the original Titans, the taste of his favorite cheesecake, the love of his mother…. Funny. She hadn’t talked to her own mother in months, and she hadn’t missed her at all. But Jericho had missed his every single day he’d been within Slade. She’d known he was alive, but it just wasn’t the same as being there. Being present.
“Some of them. Sometimes,” came the quiet reply to her question.
“Huh.”
She sat down on her bed, trying not to think about how scary that was. Someone having access to your mind, to your most private thoughts...well, they were all private, weren’t they?
“Do you think we’ll be like this forever?”
Jericho frowned.
“Only if you want us to be. I wouldn’t force you to...carry me around like some sort of parasite. And I’d never take control without your permission.”
It sounded nice, but…
“What if I don’t want it? You leave my body and just...die? You take over someone else, some stranger?”
Jericho didn’t have an answer to that.
“No, I can’t let that happen. I won’t. You’re family.”
“You don’t even really know me, Rose.”
“I know enough.”
There was silence in Rose’s bedroom for a long while. She realized how crazy the last few minutes might appear to a complete outsider. Talking to herself like she was two different people. Maybe she was crazy. It didn’t matter.
“We really need to work out a schedule for this thing. Swapping back and forth like this is a hassle. I think it’s probably pretty confusing for everyone else, too.” It came out a little more bluntly than she was expecting it to, but that was Rose in a nutshell. Bluntness personified.
Jericho, on the other hand, was all earnestness and warmth. Really, you couldn’t choose two more different people to share a body. But neither of them had really chosen. That didn’t make it bad. Just...difficult.
“I agree,” Jericho replied quickly, much to her surprise.
“Maybe...we could do alternating days? One day you, one day me? I don’t really have any other ideas.”
“Isn’t a whole day a lot? I don’t want to intrude…”
Rose chuckled.
“You can’t intrude any more than you are right now. Besides, this is your life, too. For now. Until we can come up with something better.”
I don’t want to be like Slade, the unspoken truth whispered behind her words.
“Okay. Thank you,” Jericho spoke and signed, the way he did whenever he was excited. She wondered if her last thought was one of the ones he picked up on. She found herself surprisingly okay with the idea.
“So, is tomorrow you or me?” he asked.
Rose smiled.
“You, definitely. It’s mostly been me this past couple of weeks. Fair’s fair, you know?”
Jericho nodded eagerly, his excitement bleeding over into her mind.
“So…”
“So?”
“Can I call my mom? She’s probably driving herself crazy over dad’s death. She probably thinks I went with him. I should let her know I’m okay. And that I have a sister.”
Rose pulled out her cellphone. She tried not to focus too much on the background picture. Happier times. Back when Jason still trusted her.
“Knock yourself out. Not literally, though. I mean...just don’t go into my texts, okay?”
The last thing she needed was her brother seeing all of her pathetic attempts to reconnect with a boy who’d all but disappeared since he’d left her.
“Got it,” Jericho chirped. “Let me know when you’re ready.”
She wasn’t sure if she’d ever really be ready to give up control of her body. It was always a scary prospect, no matter how much she trusted Jericho. But she summoned up the courage and nodded.
“Ready.”