Work Text:
When I Remembered Someone’s Kid is Dead
Jason wakes up gasping for air, sticky wet hair plastered to the side of his face. Blood dribbles from his nose down into his mouth and he gags on it, rolling onto his side blindly in the pitch dark. The past twenty-four hours are fuzzy, just beyond his reach. He thinks he remembers going somewhere with Bruce, maybe... There was a fundraiser, wasn't there?
No, wait.
He’d run away to find his mom.
It feels like he's in bed, maybe, but it's not his. His hands aren't tied and neither are his feet, but when he tries to push up he hits something soft but unyielding overhead.
"Bruce?"
No one answers, not even his own echoes. The soft padded fabric muffles his voice and the sounds outside of the small room equally. He tries to explore with his hands but his fingers feel broken and unset.
Most of him feels broken actually.
For a brief moment he’s terrified that Bruce has given up on him and turned him in to Arkham. Maybe he’s been given his own padded room next to the criminals. When Bruce came for him in Ethiopia, he’d thought Bruce believed him after all. Maybe it had been a ploy to get Jason locked up to pay for a murder he didn’t commit in a death he didn’t regret.
But no.
He’s in a suit and tie not a straight jacket.
He rolls back into his back, ignoring the screams of every muscle and bone as he does so, to reach above himself. There’s a pillow beneath his head and dead flowers around him.
Jason’s pretty sure he died.
He remembers the flames that caused the pus filled blisters. He remembers metal screaming against powdered limbs and ribs. He remembers the flick of ash on skin and shielding a larger body beneath him.
He swallows hard so he doesn’t remember anymore.
Gathering his draining strength, Jason kicks against the lid and is gratified by the give beneath his dress shoes. He can hear the grind of bone against bone and actually, he’s pretty sure that his skin isn’t doing great at holding it inside.
Biting back a scream, he can’t afford to waste the oxygen he has left, he claws at the fabric above him. Precious seconds pass as he tears it into strips and winds it around the worst of his breaks. It’s not as good as splint, or god forbid a cast, but the reinforcement can’t hurt either.
Fresh blood blooms from his shredded fingertips and split nails but it’s alright. Panic and moderate dissociation make it so he can’t feel anything in his fingers or toes. At least he’s hoping that’s what it is.
Nerve damage would suck.
He laughs at his own black humor as he kicks. Breathing is coming harder from the effort and exhaustion and he’s burning through oxygen he just knows it. Turns out death isn’t as restful as the propaganda promises. He feels like he’s on his third all-nighter in a row.
One, two, five, ten kicks and he finally feels the wood give beneath his feet in a shower of splinters and wet dirt. A slimy worm landing on his cheek is all the warning he has before he’s gasping in his last breath and clawing up through the dirt like a man drowning.
His fingers catch hold of grass and between that and the leverage of his shattered legs beneath him, Jason finally breaches with all the gasping elegance of a dying walrus.
For a moment he just lets himself swallow huge lungfuls but relief doesn’t last long. He’s created a sinkhole that sludge, bugs, and rainwater collapses into. The idea of dying a second time from a collapsed lung halfway out of his grave gives him the last push he needs to crawl most of the way out.
The sharp snap of his ankle caught in the wedge of wood pulls him to an abrupt stop. Between the wood, his exhaustion, and the weight of everything filling the coffin he’s unable to tug free. He tries to dig through the mud but for every clump of mud he digs out, three more tumble in to replace it and he quickly gives up.
Tears and rain and snot smear across his face when he tries to wipe his nose against his stiff suit jacket. He doesn’t realize he’s sobbing until he tastes the salt of it.
It fucking sucks that he’s gonna die a second time, trapped by his ankle in his grave.
Curling up beneath his headstone, he decides he’s earned a rest. Hopefully he won’t wake up this time.
He doesn’t let himself think about Bruce finding him this time too. He doesn’t let himself think about Bruce visiting his grave at all. At least he can be pretty sure that Bruce is the one who buried him. He can see the graves of the murdered Waynes next to him. Next door neighbors one might even say.
He tips his head so he can watch the stars. He didn’t get to see them last time and he’s kind of glad he gets another chance. Tracing the constellations he knows is enough to reassure him that he’s in Gotham and that he hasn’t been dead long.
He’s not really sure when his eyes fall shut but he knows they must have at some point because he’s brought screaming back to life the next morning coated in dew drops. Specifically he’s woken by Bruce’s screams.
Staring up at his father, high off his ass on every natural pain killer his body can produce, Jason forces himself to smile. It brings his attention the the fact that some of his teeth are missing, but their loss is far from his most pressing concern.
Bruce is upset and that’s not alright. It’s Jason’s job to cheer him up so he forces a laugh to drown out Bruce’s screams and says,
“I didn’t know you could do that.”