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There is nothing better than morning darkness. That blissful time when the Gotham sky is dark, haunting in the early hours of the morning. As he crouches low on a towering rooftop the clouds doom the skyline in shades of grey, and to him, everything is perfect. His surroundings bleed solitude, and in its peace he allows himself to sit properly, leaning back on his hands while his legs dangle over the side.
Chaos has always chased him, stalking him his whole life, drawing turmoil, and rage, and pain, and all the other things he doesn’t want to feel, yet somehow always takes over him like some sort of curse. Whenever his emotions surfaced it was like they were bubbling, boiling and spitting and burning whoever it touched. He fucking hates it. He fucking hates how every emotion he feels is like a third degree burn. How it feels like any time anything goes wrong it just breaks him, over and over, no matter how stupid or unimportant the situation is. Everything always ends in an argument. No matter what. And he fucking hates that it feels like every time he makes even the slightest bit of progress, all it takes is one snide or condescending comment and he’s slipped all the way back to fucking square one.
He likes the grey. The smoggy twilight of the morning sky. It's his mirror, his reflection, it shows back to him all the ways his life feels like shitty grey clouds rolling lazily through the skyline, and unknowingly ruining everyones fucking day. It’s a shitty pathetic fallacy that seems to follow every moment of his shitty life. From life to death to fucking rebirth.
Sometimes, In the winter months, when it’s especially cold and all the daylight is sucked away sooner than anyone can even see it appear in the first place, he’ll see a star. Not for long, and certainly not very bright, but it will peek through, just slightly, behind a patch where the clouds are thinned. He always thinks it’s beautiful. But it never lasts. Nothing in his life ever does.
Case in point, the peace and solitude he was talking about. Out of the corner of his eyes there is a figure moving, acrobatically scaling the wall. It’s trying to be subtle, to no avail, and Jason mentally takes a really big fucking sigh. Dick Grayson, acrobatic extrordi-fucking-naire, has no subtle bone is his body. And as much fun it is trying to watch him climb in a way ‘as not to disturb’ the moment that’s definitely been ruined, Jason really does not want to talk to his brother right now.
He stills as Dick approaches, any sense of peace ungracefully destroyed, and he feels his shoulders tense. He shifts in discomfort, an unsettled feeling imbedding its way back into his bones. He takes a deep breath. His face contorts unnaturally, barely holding up a grimace of a smile before he twists his head to make eye contact with the man ‘sneaking’ towards him. Dick freezes. Great. It’s going to be one of those conversations.
He pulls off his mask reluctantly, secretly berating himself for not leaving the helmet on, and Dick approaches, all too smiling, all too condescending .
“Hey little wing, can I sit?”
Jason mentally cringes at the nickname. He’s being babied, treated like a petulant fucking toddler. The stupidity of it makes him almost want to scream. He takes another deep breath.
“Sure, whatever.” His answer is clipped, safe. Short responses yield better results when he’s not in a mood to argue.
Dick crouches, stretching, before flopping down next to him, leaning back casually on his palms.
Jason watches with uncertainty, waiting for him to say something, make his routine bleeding heart speech bullshit or whatever about how he should come home, and how Bruce really misses him. But there’s nothing. Dick sits in silence, staring out ahead of him towards the skyline. Jason shifts nervously. He watches his brother dangle his legs over the edge of the wall, swinging them idly. He’s sitting as if they’re just two normal brothers . Every internal safety measure Jason has is screaming at him, that he needs to get out get out get out , but something inside him is freezing him in place. Just as he thinks his head is going to implode from the deafening silence, his brother turns to face him.
“What’s wrong little wing?”
What? Something inside him breaks, shattering his attempt at calm, and anger floods him. What’s wrong? Nothing was wrong, everything was fine until he decided to stick his nose into his business like he even had the right . He was fine, he was calm, he was even some shred near fucking happy , until Dipshit had fucking shown up.
“I’m fine.” He gritted out. Anger bubbling and hissing inside of him. Keep it under control.
“Really? Cause I don't believe you.”
“I’m fucking-!” He brakes off, seething, every muscle in his face twitching beneath his skin, and he doesn’t even know why he’s so fucking angry.
“I’m fine, please.” The line comes out cold but in his head there is a desperate pleading for Dick to stop talking . For him to stop talking. Before he says something he really fucking regrets.
“Really convincing.” comes the snarky reply, and Jason is one second away from entire self-destruction that is going to take everyone sitting right next to him out in the blast too.
“Dick just- stop. Just stop.” He keeps his voice even, stilled, with just enough measured emotion in his voice that his brother needs to stop pushing this.
“Okay, okay, backing up. Got it.”
Jason breathes a half sigh of relief. The anger is unclouding in his vision, and he takes a deep breath. His shoulders untense slightly, and he’s back to regulated breathing. He turns his head towards the cityscape below. People pass by on the streets beneath the rooftop, oblivious completely to the people sitting above. It gives him a sense of calm, clarity. He’s so tired.
He’s always performing, always , for other people. Always acting his emotions in a way that’s deemed tolerable, acceptable to other people. His family, his friends, It was so much work. And half the time it didn’t even fucking works because he still ended up in fights, and in arguments, and it was always for fucking pointless reasons too. Everything in his life just feels eternally numb, lost, directionless. The only thing he feels is his emotions and he feels those too much, something that consistently has dire consequences. But without his emotions, he doesn’t even feel real, so what’s the fucking point? He’s so fucking self destructive, trying to prove his existence through scars, but none of it works. He feels like a ghost. But that’s what he is, a fucking ghost. He died at fifteen, he’s been re-animated against his own will, and half his life doesn’t even feel real to him anymore. He can’t keep up, he can’t keep going.
His silence shifts, moving from pleasant to anxious, and his stomach is buzzing. He turns to Dick, then back, shuffling nervously, before looking out towards Gotham. He takes a deep breath.
“I can’t keep doing this Dick.”
“Doing what?”
“ This , this whole thing.”
“I don’t get it.”
He takes a breath, exasperated. “Dick I’m not even supposed to be here, I died . I Died when I was fifteen and I wasn’t supposed to come back.”
“But you are here. You’re here Jason, alive.”
“But I'm not meant to be.” He can feel his frustration growing, forming in the pit of his stomach.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying maybe living isn’t the best option.”
“What’s the other option Jason?! Death? ”
“Maybe, yeah.” It is so fucking hard to stay calm right now, but his brain feels like it’s buzzing. He feels numbness creeping in.
“You can’t do that! You already died once! You can’t do that to me- you can't.. You can't do that to Bruce again.”
The air around them is growing colder. It’s getting late. He wishes he could’ve just kept his stupid mouth shut. The height of the roof they're on is starting to get to him. All this talk about death is messing with his head. He wants to turn around, he wants to go home, he wishes he could stop fucking talking.
“Death was peaceful, a bliss in comparison to this shithole.” Shut up. Shut up Jason.
“How can you say that?”
“I mean it.” Shut up. Shut UP.
“You mean it?”
“Yeah Dickwad, why the fuck would I say something I didn’t mean? I swear to god you’re so-”
He turns to face him, to berate him for his stupidity, and the anger is growing, but as his eyes lock onto his brother’s something shifts. He stares at him, but all he sees is pain, practically radiating. He watches as he sees Dick’s shoulders hunch over, and his mouth is frozen into something that makes him look like a fucking wounded animal. It’s painful.
“Dick…I didn’t-”
“Just shut up.”
Guilt washes over him. A cold tidal wave, building inside him, and he doesn’t know what to do. He shuffles along the roof edge, closer to his brother, until they sit hip to hip. He bumps against his shoulder, sorry . The man next to him stiffens.
“Don’t apologise for how you feel.”
Jason doesn’t know how to respond.
“I didn’t-” Dick breaks off, “I didn’t know you felt that way, I’m sorry for not realising sooner.”
“It’s…fine. I don’t really care if you realise. I can deal with it by myself.”
“You shouldn’t have to.”
“I always have.”
Dick wraps an arm round his shoulder, Jason stiffens.
“I am sorry, little wing.”
“I know.”
Jason leans into the hug. He sits a while, with his brother, staring out at the grey sky of the early morning darkness.