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When people are stressed to their limits or thrust into life-or-death situations, the little details, the specifics of events can get jumbled and even forgotten entirely. Jason had seen it before in the victims he’d encountered, those he’d been too late to save from harm. Shivering bodies wrapped in foil blankets, hands clutching desperately at the edges, hopelessly seeking tendrils of the warmth that humanity’s depravity had snuffed out. Trauma-filled gazes, looking but not seeing, people struggling to recount to the police what had transpired. Jason had sometimes watched from the building tops, hidden in shadow, lingering partially from a sense of duty, but also due to morbid curiosity if he was being honest.
“He had blue eyes, I think,” a man had said in a wavering tone as he attempted to describe his attacker. “Or…or maybe brown?”
“Gray,” Jason had muttered softly under his breath.
“A-and he had a tattoo on his hand. A black rose.”
The tattoo had indeed been a rose, but on the man’s forearm.
Trauma sometimes had a way of messing with the mind, of blurring the details and sanding down the burrs of the harshest memories, perhaps to pave the way for healing to begin. He’d seen it countless times. How quickly they forget.
Jason hasn’t been so lucky.
He can recall the events of earlier that evening with clarity that would impress in any other circumstance. He can’t close his eyes without feeling like he’s in freefall, the memory of slipping from Dick’s grasp and plummeting toward sure death still as sharp in his mind as when he’d lived it scant hours before. A terror unlike anything he’d ever felt, surging from deep in his chest and stealing his breath, choking him, making it impossible to breathe. He remembers all too clearly the wind whipping past him, howling, shrieking in his ears, drowning out the sound of his own screams while he watched Dick’s anguished face becoming smaller and smaller as he fell.
He had briefly wondered if dying would hurt. If death would bring with it the peace that he hadn’t yet been able to find in his short life. And a tiny, vengeful part of him had hoped that Dick would blame himself, would carry with him the guilt of his death since he was so hell-bent on blaming himself for everything else. Since he couldn’t save him. Since he let him fall.
Jason lays in bed, watching the shadows cast on the wall by the moonlight, sleep eluding him as it had for nearly – he picks up his phone by his pillow and glances at the time, squinting against the bright glow of the screen – three hours now. Exhaustion had long since settled bone-deep within him, and he growls in frustration.
Jason stubbornly closes his eyes once more, willing himself to surrender to the pull of sleep. Almost immediately, he begins to feel like he’s falling yet again, overcome by a strange sense of vertigo, illogical as he knows he’s lying still. Eyes clenched, his breaths start to come quicker, quicker until he’s panting, gasping for air. Eyes shooting open, Jason leaps from his bed, unable to lie down any longer.
Sleep clearly isn’t in the cards tonight.
Resigned, Jason grabs some clothes from the floor, fishing a pair of sweatpants from beneath his bed and dragging them up his legs and carelessly yanking a hoodie over his head. Feeling a twinge, he briefly pauses to inspect a vaguely hand-shaped bruise that spans along the right side of his ribs and around to his chest. Hm. He hadn’t noticed it earlier. He thinks back to the fall, the moment when he had finally accepted the inevitable, and mere seconds later when he had suddenly and impossibly felt strong hands gripping him, arms closing around his chest and beneath his legs, cradling him and cushioning the impact of the crash landing on the car below. He gently trails his fingers over the bruise before pressing against it more deeply, sucking in a sharp breath through his teeth at the discomfort. Pain was familiar. Pain was an old friend, one who occasionally went away but always returned eventually, slotting back into place and picking up right where they had left off. To feel pain was to be alive, and Jason was glad for it - glad that he was still able to feel, to live, to breathe.
After the man - the boy, really - had saved Jason’s life, there had been no time to process his close call. The boy had been shot once, twice, right in front of Jason, his pain-filled gaze going distant and unfocused as he fell against the car and slid to the ground, laboring for air. The Titans had rushed him back to the tower and cleaned and bandaged his wounds. Remarkably, he seemed stable enough. Heartbeat steady, slightly pale but breathing well, yet still unconscious. They’d been unable to pierce his skin with a needle to administer any antibiotics or an IV, noting that despite his unconscious state, he already seemed to be healing relatively quickly. With no knowledge of who – or what – the boy was, they could only let him rest, monitor his vitals, and hope that he would recover.
Jason recalls the seconds before the gunshots had rung out, sharp cracks slicing through the still night air as effortlessly as they had pierced the boy’s skin, jolting him back as the bullets had slammed into his chest. He remembers the kid’s boyish smile, his joy and relief at having saved Jason, at being in the right place at the right time. Jason remembers smiling back, unlikely considering what he’d just been through, what he’d just survived, but he had felt inexplicably safe, soothed by the boy’s earnest demeanor. He had seemed so happy to help.
‘And look what it got him,’ thinks Jason bitterly.
He cracks open the door of his bedroom in Titans Tower, warily peering both ways down the hall. Seeing nobody, he exits his room, walking lightly on his feet so as not to make much noise, conscious of the late hour and the tower’s other inhabitants who were likely sleeping. Admittedly, the care he took to move silently was borne more of a desire to avoid the others than out of thoughtfulness. The only thing worse than being weak was people bearing witness.
Jason doesn’t know if it’s gratitude, curiosity, or something he can’t yet define that steers him toward the tower’s infirmary. He leans against the door frame and watches the steady rise and fall of the boy’s chest for a moment before venturing further into the room. The rhythmic beeps of the heart monitor disquiet Jason, momentarily reminding him of his own mortality. Swallowing, he pads lightly over to a chair in the corner of the room, lifting and carrying it closer to the side of the lone bed in the room. He sits, bringing his knees up to his chest, feet resting on the seat. Jason watches the boy’s pale face, features illuminated by the harsh, sterile lighting, furrowed brow glistening with the sheen of sweat. He looks sick.
Uncomfortable with the silence, broken only by the beep. beep. beep. of the EKG, Jason begins to talk.
“Hey, man,” he says quietly. “Thanks again for saving me. I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t shown up.”
He laughs humorlessly. “Well, I guess I do know. Not like I had any options. So yeah, thanks.”
Jason trails his gaze from the boy’s face, distantly noting that it was a nice face, down his neck and along his collarbones before finally resting on the two blood-spotted patches of gauze that covered the gunshot wounds on his torso. Leaning forward in his chair and bracing himself with a hand against the edge of the bed, Jason gently ghosts his fingers over the edges of the gauze, watching the motion of the boy’s chest as he breathes. Jason slowly lowers his hand to lie flat on the boy’s chest, taking care to avoid his injuries. He counts the breaths, feels the feverish warmth radiating from the skin beneath his palm. Unconsciously, Jason’s own breaths begin to slow, keeping time with the bed’s occupant, calming his heart that he hadn’t even realized was racing.
Suddenly restless, Jason leans away from the bed and stands, filling a bowl near the sink with cool water and retrieving a soft cloth from a cabinet against the wall. Returning to the bed, he dips the cloth into the water and wrings it of the excess water before folding it and placing it on the boy’s forehead. At the touch of the cloth, the boy’s brow relaxes and his lashes tremble slightly, eyes moving beneath his closed lids before falling still again.
Tensing, Jason waits to see if the boy will wake up. He doesn’t. Jason removes the cloth which had begun to warm and dips it back into the bowl, wringing it again before placing it back upon the boy’s brow.
“It’d be nice if you’d come back to the land of the living. What, you save one guy and think your work here is done?” Jason jokes lightly. “Plus, I’ve got questions, man. Like, a ton.”
Who was he? Where had he even come from? Dick had told him later that the guy had jumped, somehow covering multiple stories and seemingly floating in the air before catching Jason. He glances at the boy’s hand and recalls the bruise. He takes a deep, slow breath, savoring the twinge at his ribs and chest.
“I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised considering the people I’m surrounded by. You’re probably not the strangest, not by a long shot.”
Jason looks up, preparing to remove the cloth for a second time, but startles and freezes when he encounters the boy’s feverish, hazy eyes focused unsteadily on him, blinking closed before slowly re-opening with effort. Jason moves back a step from the bed, the boy’s head and eyes sluggishly tracking his motion. They watch each other for a long moment, neither of them moving.
“Hey,” says Jason, finally daring to speak.
The boy licks his lips but says nothing, still watching Jason. Jason feels his heart begin to race and the boy’s gaze flickers to his chest, almost as though he can hear the stuttering and stammering pace of Jason’s heartbeat. He wonders for a moment if it actually is audible, as loud as it seems from the pounding within his chest and the blood rushing in his ears, before dismissing the thought. The moment stretches as they continue to regard one another, brief yet also impossibly long, almost suspended in time. Then, the boy’s breath hitches slightly, eyes squinting and grimacing as though in pain.
And just like that, the moment’s broken. Jason takes a calming breath. “Here, this should help.”
Jason slowly reaches out a hand, clearly telegraphing his movements so as not to startle the boy. He removes the drying cloth from his forehead, dips it into the bowl, and gently places it back on his forehead for a third time. At the cool touch of the cloth, the boy’s eyes close in relief.
“You’re gonna be okay. I know it hurts, but that just means you’re still here. You’re gonna make it,” Jason says with a confidence that he doesn’t quite feel.
The boy weakly opens his eyes again, clear despite the exhaustion and pain evident in them. Almost immediately his eyes meet Jason’s, their gazes holding for a moment before a small, soft smile curves the edges of his lips, brief and fleeting. He then closes his eyes, breaths slowing, and exhales, the pained tension he’d held in his form bleeding away as he drifts back toward sleep.
‘Blue eyes,’ thinks Jason. Just like he’d remembered.
That glimpse of a smile was but a faint echo of the one Jason had seen hours earlier, but the effect is the same. The warmth and security he’d felt before begin to return in degrees. Moving his chair closer to the bed, Jason sits back down and considers the boy, noting that he seems to look a bit better than he had at the start of Jason’s visit. Wishful thinking, maybe.
Jason folds his arms near the edge of the bed and uses them to pillow his head. He angles himself so he can comfortably watch the boy breathe in his sleep, feeling himself gradually settle with every inhale and exhale. He risks closing his eyes, expecting the same terror he’d felt before to return. Instead, it’s quiet. Almost peaceful.
Eyes still closed, Jason slowly but deliberately moves a hand near the boy’s until he feels the heat radiating between them - not touching, just close. Behind his lids, Jason sees flashes of blue, a soft smile. He feels himself begin to doze and thinks briefly that he should probably go back to his room, but he can’t quite stomach the thought of leaving just yet.
“You’ll be okay,” whispers Jason, fighting through a small yawn. “I’ll be okay.”
And this time? He believes it.