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Damian was dead.
Damian was dead and he wasn’t coming back.
Damian was dead and Jason couldn’t bring him back.
Damian was dead and it was all Jason’s fault.
The young boy had died two months prior and yet, Jason still answered each phone call with a feverish anticipation, eyes tracking the glowing screen for Damian’s painfully familiar scowl. Whenever he found the strength to make his way to the Batcave, he would take two steps and automatically perk up, listening out for the grumbled “Todd” that would betray his brother’s thickly concealed anxiety that the elder had flanked on his promise; naturally, he wouldn’t hear a thing besides Tim’s sleep-deprived mumbling and he never managed to stay for long after that.
Occasionally, he would wake up in a panic and scramble to his feet, heart pumping at the realisation that he hadn’t called Damian that week like he had promised and if he broke a promise, his brother would never forgive him. He would make it all the way to the kitchen, sweaty paws clamped onto his phone like a drowning saviour sticking himself to a lifeboat before the memory would sink in and the electronic would fall to the floor like an anchor sinking silently into the sea.
Most days, he couldn’t fathom thinking, instead resigning himself to carrying out more patrols and pouring more of himself into his work, just to think less about the boy that he had considered his best friend.
Everytime that he bled, he felt the need to take care of it dissolve bit by bit, until one day, he simply lay down on his hole-ridden, squeaky bed with a heavy sigh, uncaring of the pool of blood that soaked through the mattress like dark red ink trying to push its way through water. The wound was, naturally, inflicted by Poison Ivy’s thorns that had wrapped themselves around his right leg and dug their sharp, little teeth into it without abandon; now, hours later, he turned onto his back to tilt his head down and analyse it, fingers twitching with the need to slip into the thin slit and pull on the blood-stained skin around it until he could see bone and the bed looked a trench after war.
He got as far as digging the nails into his skin before an image swelled to the front of his mind like a volcano bubbling and Jason pulled in a harsh breath at the sudden memory of Damian’s eager face looking up at him, lips twitching with the need to beam up at his older brother. Eyes shining, he had tugged on Jason’s shirt and insisted that he hurried up, because otherwise they would miss the leopard feeding , while Jason laughed and reassured him that they had plenty of time and they could always come back another day .
Funnily enough, that was the last time they went to the zoo.
A dry, animalistic sound pulled Jason out of his mind, and his eyes shot open as his muscles automatically tensed in preparation to deal with whoever had broken in; it took him a few seconds to realise that the broken sound had come out of him. The realisation only made another sound come out of him, except this time it sounded more like a mourning dog that had just lost its puppy.
For a moment, he bristled at the comparison and nearly found the strength to pull himself out of bed to nurse his wound; it quickly deflated like a popped balloon when he remembered how much blood Damian’s body had been drenched in. In a way, it was a kind of divine punishment from above because no matter what they said, he should have been there .
He should have been with Damian when he had looked up for the last time, he should have been with Damian when his heartbeat had spiked for one tantalising fraction of a second, he should have been with Damian to tell him that it was going to be okay, even if it wasn’t because nothing was okay and everything seemed wrong because Damian wasn’t there, because DamianwouldneverbreatheagainanditwasallJason’sfaultandand-
…
Jason missed him.
He missed walking into the Manor to see Damian holding Titus’s paw, he missed hearing the small voice on the phone command him to bring him “proper” food even as it wavered with excitement and he missed being able to touch the other, to ruffle his hair or to feel those delicate hands cling onto him, like he meant something to the younger.
It hurt like having your stomach pulled out by a crowbar and he hated it.
By now, Jason was full on crying, raw sobs getting torn out of his throat as the mattress beneath him slowly dampened; he had no strength to wipe them or even pretend to - not that there was anyone to see him and even if there was, he highly doubted that they would care.
Sniffling pathetically in a vain attempt to breathe amongst the snot and tears he had accumulated, Jason rolled back over, onto his stomach, to force himself to sit up on his knees and lean his head on the wall beside him as he panted like a drowned dog that barely survived getting pulled out of the river. His right hand jumped to sit on the wound, subconsciously pushing down on it in order to stop the blood flow and possibly allow the vigilante to get up and bandage it.
A sudden spike of pain caused him to flinch almost violently and his hand jolted up like it had been stabbed on a porcupine’s spikes. It only really occurred to him when his legs crumpled beneath him and he landed back on his side with a small, uncharacteristic yelp, breathing heavy even though he had barely moved in the last few hours.
Clearly, the pain was a punishment from whoever the hell was sat up there, covered in his brother’s blood with his small intestines dangling off of their corrupt, filthy hands.
Mumbling under his breath, Jason shuddered as his crying finally began to slow down and his lungs screamed victoriously as they finally found themselves able to function properly. Muscles aching, he sniffled one last time before forcing himself to sit up at the edge of the bed, legs dangling off the edge like he used to do when he was a child.
Breathing in deeply once, Jason sniffed almost grumpily before finally pushing himself off and standing slumped over on his feet, swaying slightly; his vision blurred and the man stumbled to the right, hands blindly reaching out for a nonexistent wall.
He almost considered going back to his breakdown - alas, his sudden, impulsive need for pancakes was too strong. Besides, with the amount of blood on his hands, it wouldn’t be a problem to find jam.
Trudging silently to his kitchen, Jason ignored the metallic scent of the viscous blood steadily flooding the apartment with an undying determination, eyebrows furrowed and fangs itching with the sudden need to bite; the urges had been getting stronger with each passing day, to the point that Jason sometimes wanted to put his own arm into his mouth and just rip at it, to maul it until it was nothing but a shredded mess of blood and bones.
Sighing heavily, the man sluggishly pulled open his ingredient cupboard to sit the necessary ingredients on his marble kitchen counters and simply stare at them for a minute, hands clinging onto the counter in an effort to hold his weary body up. As soon as he found the strength to, Jason began the slow, unbearably long process of creating the batter, body working on autopilot as he threw every ingredient in without measuring any ounce of it.
Damian would have shoved him aside and measured each thing with assassin-like precision, narrowed eyes barely peeking over the counter.
Without warning, Jason’s hand spasmed violently and milk spurted over the walls in a blood-stain-like manner, thin droplets slowly trailing down it like a pack hunting dogs chasing their prey. Eyes wide, he stared at it open-mouthed before gulping heavily and sniffling once, heart already starting to speed up.
Closing his eyes, Jason focused on slowing his heartbeat back down and within seconds, he was back to mixing the batter with his previous speed, the only difference being his now clenched jaw. He managed to continue for a few minutes before the doorbell rang shrilly and he just managed to tighten his grip on the bowl to keep it in his arms.
Green eyes narrowing, Jason analysed the flimsy wooden door to his right, hips swaying either from his exhaustion or the assassin-instinct to check every hole and crevice for who the hell needed him.
The exhaustion won out and he pulled the door open slowly, back curling over as he prepared himself to deal with Dick’s kicked-puppy pout or Tim’s worried and yet suspicious, crossed-arms stance; there was no way that Bruce had even thought of him, let alone come all the way out here to lecture him on this or that.
When he finally got the door to swing open and saw who was glaring up at him, all that he could do was freeze up like an ice statue, mouth open and eyes shining in a long extinguished light. His hands tightened on the doorframe and his heart skipped a beat as his eyes tracked up and down the increasingly irritated boy who stood expectantly before him. The reason for his irritation quickly became clear as the boy tutted and made a movement to tell Jason to move aside and let him in; the vigilante did so, but kept silent even as the boy moved to stand beside the kitchen counter and glare down at the slightly-disgusting-smelling batter.
“This is disgusting, Todd.” Damian hissed, sharper fangs bared like a disgusted cat.
The aforementioned vigilante didn’t answer even with the oh so familiar quip perched on the tip of his tongue, feet firmly rooted to the ground as if mud was dragging them down. His mouth had flopped open at one point and it took all of his strength to force his eyes to look up and down his younger brother’s relaxed body as the boy poured the forgotten batter onto a pan with his usual precision.
While mostly unchanged, scars stood out on the boy’s form and green-tinged skin made a tinge of uneasy rack Jason’s body, finally snapping him out of his shock-induced daze; at least enough for him to slam the front door closed and move closer to his dead brother. With every step that he took, the unease within him grew as his heavily trained eyes slowly picked up more and more unnatural aspects on the body before him.
One step showed him that his brother’s left leg was slightly crooked as if his bones had been put together wrong.
One more step showed him that the other’s skin was taut and empty of fat, like a piece of fabric that had been pulled too far and was on the brink of snapping.
Two more strides and he could see that Damian’s pre-existing fangs had sharpened and grassy green eyes had become a vibrant, murderous emerald that promised years of the most abysmal torture you could go through with just one simple, uninterested glance in your direction.
Now stood directly behind Damian, Jason stared at his gloved hands expertly flipping pancakes, eyes completely focused on the one drop of blood that trailed down the younger’s arm and landed on his current pancake silently like a drop of water falling into an endless ocean of red.
The unease in his stomach ballooned into a weight that threatened to pull him down and drown him like he deserved to and hold him down even as he thrashed and begged for a saviour. But what really, really gave the unease power was the knowledge that he had known .
He had known that it was likely that Damian would be thrown into that cursed pit and rise like Jason had done all those years ago, he had known that the boy’s mother couldn’t simply let her finest soldier die and yet, he hadn’t thought to go down there or hide the body or do absolutely anything to stop it; in a way, he had wanted it to happen.
Jason had wanted Damian to get dragged through hell because of his own selfish desire to be with his brother.
There was something incredibly wrong with him; after all, there had to be because no good person would want that. No good person would even consider the concept and yet here he was, begging for Damian to go through horrendous amounts of pain and be permanently rewritten, just to what? Hug him? What kind of an older brother was he?
Older brothers are meant to protect their little brothers, they’re meant to absorb their pain, they’re meant to treat their kid brother with respect and dignity and they’re meant to accept their deaths , not be the cause for literal hell being unleashed on them. Jason wasn’t worthy of calling Damian his brother and he certainly wasn’t worthy of being the first to see him; the radio silence from the other Bats assured him that Damian had come to him first.
Why he would want to go to the person that had caused him pain and turned him into this was inconceivable to Jason.
He couldn’t even begin to imagine how much hatred was burning the other’s bones and yet, he kept preparing Jason food like it was nothing, like he wasn’t the cause for this, like he should be allowed to even eat.
At one point during his breakdown, Jason had sunk to his knees, completely oblivious to how a fresh volume of blood gushed out from his leg wound from the odd movements and how his nails dug into his upper arms almost frantically, ripping at the well-used muscles.
All that the man knew was that his brother was back and yet he wasn’t because the Pit tore people apart; he knew that for years, if not decades, his little brother would be suffering from all of the shit that comes with that and Jason could have stopped it.
Damian would find that out soon enough and then he would refuse to be near Jason; in a way, that was worse than having death rip them apart. At least when he was dead, Jason could pretend like Damian had loved him.
A raw sob tore its way out of the vigilante’s throat and within seconds, the man was sobbing once more, body shaking almost painfully with the strain.
And on the countertop, a bowl of pancake batter judgingly watched him as he collapsed alone with only the cold to comfort him.