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"Jaybird."
He felt someone poke his shoulder. A groan escaped his lips, and he turned in the bed, refusing to even open his eyes. The bed dipped next to him as though someone had just sat down. A few seconds later, another weight made the bed dip again on the other side.
"Jason." The second voice was different, possessing a higher pitch than the first.
"Go away," his voice was hoarse from a night of disuse.
"It's time to wake up, bud." The first voice, clearly Roy, spoke up again.
Jason hummed a bit. "I don't think so."
"It's almost noon." Roy commented.
And I had a long ass patrol last night.
Instead of this, all that came out of his mouth was a drawn out groan. Through his closed eyelids, he could see the light pouring into the room, but that didn't encourage him to get up. His patrol had been insane the night before. A new bill had been passed that launched many people in Crime Alley into poverty. They had started resorting to crime to make ends meet, and the amount of children he saw living on the streets was on the rise. That combined with the spike in suicides made Jason's job absolutely hectic. Did the other bats do anything to help him? Absolutely not. They hadn't been on good terms for a long time, really since Bruce had last beaten him senseless, and Jason was a-okay with that. If Bruce thought it was okay to hit on him until he was near death but not do the same to the Joker, he didn't want to be anywhere near the asshole.
Suddenly, he felt someone yank his blanket off of him, and it was only then that he wrenched his eyes open. Above him, Roy was gripping the blue blanket tightly in his hands, his eyes sparkling with mirth and a shit eating grin stretching across his face. Kori was on the other side of the bed, her arms crossed in front of her, but she too looked equally amused.
"What do you want?" He grumbled, throwing his hand up to shield his eyes from the light.
"To embrace the day!" Kori ripped open the curtains even further.
The light burned his eyes, and he instinctively buried his face into his pillow. He would much rather stay right where he was for the rest of the week. Jason still barely understood why Bruce was acting the way he had been recently. He had broken the man's precious rules, but seriously? He didn't even beat the Joker or anyone else of that caliber like he had Jason. Even though it had been almost a year ago, just thinking about it made him very, very...depressed, and all the shit going down on his home turf was certainly making matters worse. No matter what he did, it wasn't enough to fix anything. Luckily, Roy and Kori seemed to notice quickly.
"Jaybird, you can't stay here all day." Roy sighed.
Watch me.
He heard the archer move, and the bed dipped beside him again. Jason felt hands on him soon after, pushing him away from his pillow. He threw his hand out, shoving the other man away from him abruptly. Almost instantly, he heard a dull thud on the ground, and he allowed himself to snort.
"Come on, buddy." Roy said as he stood back up and started tugging on Jason's arm. "We have plans for today."
"What plans?"
It was Kori who answered first. "We're going to go help out at a soup kitchen down in Crime Alley. They have almost no volunteers nowadays."
He lifted his head up, his eyes meeting hers. It felt like he had spent his entire life looking for a way to help those in his section of Gotham, but it was never enough. There would always be people whom he couldn't save. Knowing that hurt, but Jason had grown used to a lot of different types of pain, including that. Slowly, he sat up, looking at Kori the entire time.
"The one that-"
"Yes, that one." She nodded her head, knowing exactly what he was talking about.
It was the soup kitchen that he used to frequent in his childhood. His parents had taken him there all the time, and after they had gone, it had been the only one that he could consistently remember the location of. His mother had always said that the other ones were too shady anyway. In all honesty, he had been surprised to hear that it was still open when he returned to Gotham. It wasn't like they got a lot of finding over there, and most volunteers and Samaritans avoided Crime Alley like the plague.
Wordlessly, he got up and tugged a loose fitted t shirt over his head. Roy popped up again, grinning like a mad man, and thrust his jacket at Jason. It had been a while since they had done something together out of costume. Lately, his daily schedule had consisted of only two items: patrolling his section of Gotham and passing out in his bed, and he had repeated that every single day. It made life particularly monotonous. His energy has been at all time lows, and the simplest task seemed to sap all of it out of him.
"Let's go, buddy." He felt Roy fling his arm around his shoulders.
During the car ride there, he remained restless. His leg bounced incessantly, and his hand would occasionally stray to the gun that was strapped to his belt. Even though he was out of costume, he wasn't stupid enough to go into Crime Alley unarmed. Besides, a soup kitchen full of a vulnerable population seemed like it would be an easy target for a more sadistic villain. To the best of his knowledge, the worst of the worsts were all still locked up in Arkham, but he could never be too careful. Situations could turn sour in the blink of an eye.
The trip was thankfully a short one. Jason had never been a fan of tight spaces, not since he had been brought back from the dead, and sometimes, long car rides made his hair stand on end and send shivers up and down his spine. He nearly jumped out of the vehicle as soon as Roy had it in park.
"Thanks so much for coming," the woman who ran the soup kitchen met them at the door. "We barely get any help around here these days."
It was the same woman who was in charge all those years ago when Jason used to practically live off of this place. Her name was Sister Jean, and she was also a nun at the old church down the street. Over the years, the lines around her eyes, which used to be caused by many, many smiles, had become filled with stress as her situation worsened. The people she fed never saw that though; her eyes always sparkled as she greeted everyone. It was safe for him to say that she was one of the nicest ladies he had ever met.
"Here are your name tags," she passed a few stickers and markers out. "I'll be ready for everyone in about thirty minutes, all right?"
"Yes, Sister." Jason replied, scrawling his name onto the sticker.
There were already a few people lingering nearby, waiting for Sister Jean to open up, and Jason couldn't help but see himself a little in them. There were several underweight children whose height had clearly been stunted, and one of the few parents around them had track marks running up and down both of his arms. There was another lady who was wrapped tightly in an old wool jacket, and she appeared to be talking to herself. She very well might could be, but over the years, Jason had encountered many people who would speak to things that weren't actually there. Most of the others looked like average joes that you wouldn't think twice about if you saw them walking down the street. Economic and financial problems still drove them to Sister Jean's door.
He turned away from them, wiping a wooden picnic table off with a wet towel. There wasn't much for him to do just yet, but Sister Jean had promised to be ready in a few minutes. In the past, soup kitchens would serve simply soup and bread. More modern version sometimes had casseroles and pasta dishes. Sister Jean often focused on how much nutrition she can put into a dish in an affordable way. After all, this would be the only meal some of these people would get that day. She would use inexpensive meats like chicken, pork shoulder, or ox tail and pair them with foods like brown rice, russet potatoes, carrots, and onions.
"Jason, c'mere!" He heard Sister Jean calling him.
Jason walked in, striding past his partners. Roy was stacking paper cups next to the large pot of coffee, and Kori was stirring the soup with a ladle. It was...relaxing, knowing that they were helping people without having to put themselves in constant danger. He loved the adrenaline and loved avenging and protecting his people, but this was a different pace. It was invigorating, rejuvenating. This wasn't a feeling he felt very often.
It was painful, seeing others in a position that he was once in, but it also brought back memories of the times that his parents had brought him here. This time, he was there with his two partners. He may not have the Todds or the bats anymore, yet he didn't feel completely alone. He hadn't been able to stop his parents from passing, and he hadn't tried to fight Bruce off when the assault began. The fact that he decided to beat him was on Bruce and Bruce alone. It went against many of his rules, but that hadn't stopped him. If he had fought back, that might have just enraged him further. That wasn't the sort of company he wanted to have around.
Kori and Roy, though, they were amazing. He hadn't been a very attentive partner as of late, just patrolling and sleeping in turns. Just existing, really. Jason hadn't allowed himself to feel anything positive for a long time. He had been drowning.
He plastered a gentle smile on his face as he passed a bowl of soup to the child before him. Like many of the children there, he was far too thin and maybe a bit shorter than he should be. The kid grinned back up at him, showing off the two gaps where he had lost his baby teeth. Jason wasn't sure where this boy's parents were, and he started wondering if he even had parents. The kid's clothing looked old and worn. There were holes in his jeans and frayed ends on his jacket sleeves. There was dirt under his fingernails and bruises on his face, which was one of the only areas of his skin visible.
This kid probably didn't have a home to go back to, and Jason could do jack shit about it. He couldn't change the laws. He couldn't force parents to be decent, but he could make sure that this boy got some food to eat while he was here.
It was times like these when he would compare his life at Wayne Manor to his life on the streets. At first, he had felt special. He had been the street rat that Bruce Wayne adopted, and he had been introduced to the manor, galas, and other rich people crap. Now, it made him feel queasy thinking about it. Bruce had picked up one kid and ignored the rest. There had been many others just like Jason that could have been picked instead, and it wasn't fair that they got left out in the cold while he got to go home with Batman.
He slipped the boy in front of him an extra piece of bread with a wink. Sister Jean used to do that with him and some of the other orphans a lot. The boy looked at him with wide eyes, staring as though he expected Jason to take it away from him in some cruel practical joke, but he eventually snatched it from his hands and shoved it in his jacket pocket. The kid's head dipped a bit in thanks. He darted away from Jason with his prize almost immediately. Part of him wanted to abscond with the kid to where it was warm and safe where he could get decent clothes and food all the time, but he knew that he couldn't. While he wasn't sure who his parents were, that didn't mean that the kid didn't have parents who would come looking for him.
"How you doing?" He asked as an older woman stepped up next.
"Just fine, dearie." Her breath came out as a wheeze. "A bit chilly, but just fine."
He accepted the answer, knowing that he wasn't going to get the truth out of her. Jason himself often found it hard to tell the truth, and he finally had a home and a family to go back to. He would always wonder what could have been if his parents hadn't died or if he hadn't died, but there was nothing he could do to change the circumstances he was given.
The Outlaws were there now. They were the present, and they were the past. There was no use in brooding over things that once were instead of spending time with things that are.
Jason hummed a bit as they drove home that night. "I love you guys." He commented absentmindedly, barely even thinking about the words that were coming out of his mouth.
There was a moment of silence, and then, Kori spoke. "I love you too, Jay."
Her eyes remained on the road as she was in the driver's seat, but Jason could see a softness in them through the rearview mirror. Thinking back on what he had said, it hit him like a ton of bricks. He had never said anything like that to them before, not to anyone in a very, very long time. Jason used to pretend that he didn't love anything. He had thought that he was stronger that way, but perhaps that wasn't the case.
He felt Roy lean forward from his seat in the back of the car, and the archer's arms enveloped him from behind. "Me too, Jaybird."
And with that, he relaxed.