Archive of Our Own ^beta

Nightmares always cause Jason to wake up cold. Even when the terrors are of a preternatural heat and there is sweat running like tears down his face, he is so very cold. It’s how he’s taken to measuring his nightmares; an invisible doctor asking, ‘on a scale of one to ‘this-phantom-frost-is-so-bad-I-can’t-even-think’, how cold are you right now?’ Right now, gasping for air, Jason would distantly answer that he’s at a solid ‘if-this-were-real-he-just-may-have-hypo’. It’s not real though, none of it, and Jason desperately tries to get his body to realize that as his scrambled-egg brain flips wildly between pulling his sweat soaked shirt off or wrapping it closer as his teeth chatter.

Everyone assumes he dreams of his death. When Roy is the one dragging him to consciousness his continual promises are, ‘you’re alive, he’s not here’. He does not ask why Jason shivers while he sweats, maybe just writes it off as part of the trauma, and Jason is never in the right state of mind during those episodes to tell Roy that he’s not being comforting. The fact that Jason is alive is exactly the issue.

That’s not to say Jason doesn’t dream about that warehouse, of course he does. The shield Jason claimed as his own, his own flesh meant to heal and protect, was cracked. It was reduced and wrecked and there’s no pretty way to restate the fact that Jason was tortured, and then blown up. That does terrible things to one’s shield, no matter how tough skinned you are, and yes, he still feels the heat.

When Jason was younger, he would marvel at the scratches and bruises that bloomed and faded on him, like he had his own protective layer and even as Robin, as each scar came with a story to regale to Alfred, there was a world of wonders in each challenge to the skin.

There is no wonder found in the autopsy scars marring his chest, nor in the white lines littering his sides where rib broke free, nor in the ugly jigsaw mess of twisted flesh around his kneecap from when it shattered and he tried to stand anyways. He feels sorry for his flesh. It shielded him and look at how he repaid it.

Jason clenches his jaw to stop the chattering, still debating on what to do. No, it is not his death that wraps him in this cold shroud; it is his rebirth.

Tim thinks the Lazarus Pit is hot. It’s logical, with how the steam rises off the surface, and yes, the top bit is warm to the touch, like a pool warmed by the sun. Past that, however… Jason had taken ice baths before, of course. Dick had promised him the first time was always the worst, and that had to be true for the Pit as well, seeing how Ra’s never has an issue. Jason swears it wasn’t the healing capabilities of the pool that brought him back, but the pure, full body shock at the frigid temperature that snapped his soul back into place. 

Jason knows cold well. The streets in the winter were cold. Bruce’s ice baths were cold. Mr. Freeze’s guns were cold. There are no words to describe the temperature of the Pit. It’s full body frostbite, before the frostbite feels warm. It’s how mountain climbers die, and abandoned Lanterns in space. It’s being disgustingly aware of every piece of skin you possess as it freezes inch by inche. It is every nightmare younger Jason had about death added up and then multiplied by at least six.

Roy is wrong, it is not his death that causes him to scream and beg in his sleep, his death does not cause him to vomit on the worst nights and simply sit on his bed staring at nothing as he chatters and loses feeling in his hands and feet on the better nights. Everyone thinks dying is the most painful thing that can happen. Jason knows that really, the most painful thing is the coming back.

He has to change the bed, Jason finally tells himself. He’s still shivering in a pool of sweat, and there’s an ugly stain on the sheets all around him. He hucks his shirt while it’s still in his mind, using it to wipe himself down as much as possible before pulling on the sweater that’s haphazardly hanging off his footboard. It’s not his, he realizes in a short moment of clarity, after it’s already on. It’s a little tighter than he likes his sweaters, meaning it’s either Roy’s, or was someone else’s that Dick stole and then left here. It doesn’t matter, really, the smell of it isn’t anything like the sharp, chemical, vomit inducing smell of the Pit and that’s enough for Jason.

Jason has no awareness of getting out of bed, only one minute he’s huddled in the middle of his bed, the next he’s swaying unwittingly halfway to the door. Distantly, he realizes the next step to his plan is to literally take another step forward but he cannot. Instead, his arms have closed in on him, hugging his body to himself, as he would a child when Gotham fights back, as if he can protect himself from the terror being inflicted on him. As if hands were enough to hold an avalanche off. The issue, of course, is that the avalanche is internal and already years old and has already done so much damage to the people he cares about, and to himself, the one person he thought for sure he could take care of. Nonetheless, he thinks, groping at the doorknob with his shaking and sweat-slick hand, he must try to keep the avalanche at bay. If not for Bruce or his brothers, if not for his mother or his friends, then for the dead little boy that found wonder in the metamorphosis of harmless bruises.