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Jason should be dead, and nobody can tell him why he’s not.
Bruce has called in experts, of course. The mages say there’s nothing to be done about his mark – Jason already knew that, though. He felt it, deep inside, when his connection to the Charter was corroded beyond repair, just as he felt every physical scar the Joker left on his body.
He doesn’t remember exactly what it felt like — the Charter – but he remembers enough to know that something isn’t right. He almost wishes he couldn’t. Better if it was gone completely. Cleaner. This is like deja vu, an unshakeable fog at the edges of his vision, pale wisps he can’t shake… there used to be an entire world at his fingers, bright and crisp and vivid, and he doesn’t even have the memories of its beauty; he just knows it was beautiful.
The mages say that he shouldn’t be alive. That what the Joker did to him shouldn’t be possible. They try to hide their expressions of disgust, but they never quite manage. Not that Jason blames them. He knows better than anyone that he’s an abomination.
He agrees with them: he shouldn’t be alive.
The normal doctors say that he’s malnourished, that he has a few bones that might never set right, that the worst of the scarring should fade with time… that he’s lucky, all things considered. Lucky to be alive. Lucky to be in one piece.
Jason’s not so sure about either. He doesn’t feel very lucky.
Sometimes he’s a hollow shell of a person, like he’s Dead in every way except physical — another rotting husk without a heart, but one who’s managed to hide the rot well enough to walk the world undetected. Other times he’s so full of anger his skin might split open.
He can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong with him.
The doctors say it’ll take time to feel like himself again. That it’s natural to feel this way after a “traumatic event.” But there’s nothing natural about what happened to him, or about the numb twisted feeling inside him. Everything is distant, muted… like the color went out of his world when he lost his connection to the Charter. Like it’s not just his forehead, his mark, that the Joker scarred beyond repair.
And he can’t figure out what it is, but –
“My dear boy,” says Alfred quietly, to Jason’s face. “These things take time.”
And Alfred would know, wouldn’t he? He’s been “alive” for hundreds of years, his body bound to the living magic of the Manor, woven into the stone itself. He’s not only a butler; he’s the living source of memories for the bloodline, and he – of all people – would know about things that take time.
But one night when Jason can’t sleep (he rarely seems to sleep these days) he tiptoes down to the kitchen, intending to get a glass of milk, and hears Bruce and Alfred talking in low voices as he approaches the door.
“I worry that he left a part of himself in that river,” Alfred says quietly.
Maybe. Maybe that’s the problem – maybe he left a piece of his soul behind.
Or maybe not, he thinks.
He brought something back, he realizes, with a sudden heavy certainty like a stone sinking in a pond. He brought something back with him.
“Just give it time, Jaylad,” Bruce says, and Jason tries to shake himself out of it, to dismiss the sudden knowledge that just settled into his bones. “Things will get better.”
But they don’t. They get worse.
He gets restless before long. He does love to read, but even he can’t stay in the library all the time. He feels like he should be doing something, he just doesn’t know what. And the Manor itself doesn’t fit right, like something that shrunk in the wash. Bruce keeps saying he has a home here forever, but it doesn’t feel like home anymore.
Not that he sees Bruce very often. Bruce spends most of his time, lately, with the Replacement – the new and improved Abhorsen-in-Waiting, although Jason wonders whether that’ll change now that Bruce has a blood relative. Maybe they’ll replace the Replacement. See how he likes it.
Damian has been sent away, though, to stay with Dick in Bludhaven until Bruce and Tim can figure out how to seal up the tunnels under Arkham, where the Joker had been working on some sort of rift, or gate, or –
They don’t know. That’s part of the problem. They’re both working from dawn to dusk lately. It’s just Jason and Alfred, and Jason can’t stand the way Alfred looks at him sometimes, with all that care and worry and love. He doesn’t know what to do with it anymore.
Tim and Bruce invite Jason to go with them one day. Not that he’d be much help with the magic, but – Bruce says it might be good for him to do something, instead of spending another day in the library. He might be right. Jason hasn’t been sleeping well; he keeps having strange, vivid dreams of a childhood that wasn’t his. Catching frogs. Playing hide-and-seek in a barn. There’s a blond brother with a bloody nose, and a father with his fist raised, and fight after fight where he’s staggering to his feet and putting himself between the two. He wakes up tangled in the sheets, thrashing around and lashing out at an invisible enemy.
So. Yes. Maybe a change of pace is what he needs. Maybe if he tires himself out physically, he’ll be able to sleep soundly.
He gets as far as the Cave before he stops, frozen, staring at the dark mouth of the tunnel. The darkness seems to shiver with anticipation.
“I can’t,” Jason says. “I can’t.”
He turns and runs.
Later, Bruce tells him gently, “It’s natural to have some apprehension about the tunnels. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
Jason’s temper, always quick to rise these days, just snaps.
“Quit treating me like I’m fragile!” he shouts. “I’m not scared!” He tries to shove Bruce away; he wants a fight, can barely see straight for how badly he wants to take a swing right now, but he knows it’s not a fight he would win. Instead he sucks in a deep breath and screams , wordless and raw . It boils up in his lungs, scalds his throat on its way out, blistering and burning.
It’s not the first time Jason has screamed at Bruce. Ever since he came back, seems like that’s all he does. All this rage has to go somewhere. All this black rotting poison in his chest, the infection down deep inside — it has to come out eventually, right?
But this scream is different. The moment he opens his mouth to let it blast into the world, he’s abruptly terrified that he’ll never be able to stop. That this scream is going to split him open. He screams until he tastes blood, until there’s no air left in his body, and then he just keeps screaming.
For a moment, the sound seems to shake the room around him, vibrating the foundations of the Manor itself, and then — everything goes black.
When he wakes up, Bruce and Alfred are hovering over him, pale and worried, and Jason can barely remember what he was so angry about.
“I just meant – nobody blames you for being afraid,” Bruce says carefully. “If I went through… everything you went through, I wouldn’t want to go underground either.”
Jason doesn’t know how to tell him that fear is not the problem.
The problem is that he does want to go underground . More than anything. He stood there, staring at the mouth of the tunnel, and his instinct was to run into the darkness and never stop running. It took every bit of willpower he possessed to hold himself back.
Something was calling him from the darkness. Calling him home, he thinks.
The next time his temper starts to fray, this time at Alfred’s fussing, he doesn’t scream. He runs. Not like Alfred can chase him, not once he makes it to the gates. He gets on his bike and pedals as fast as he can, rage howling in his head, chest heaving with every harsh panting breath. He doesn’t realize where he’s going. Doesn’t realize where he is. Doesn’t register much at all until he comes to, some time later, in the cemetery. Not his cemetery, the one where they buried his empty coffin — but he recognizes the place. It’s in Robbinsville, a small run-down church with a big, sprawling graveyard, one of the oldest in the city that the Quake didn’t destroy. He’s miles from the Manor, although that part doesn’t surprise him; the bike is spelled so that it eats up the distance faster than it should. (It used to greet him when he sat down, too, sending a little tingle of magic into his palms whenever he gripped the handlebars. Not anymore.)
He doesn’t remember how he got there, but there’s dirt under his broken fingernails and deep gouges in the dark, wet earth, as if he’s been trying to dig his way back down.
His anger is gone. Now he’s just terrified.
The headstone is too old to read the name, but he shivers when he brushes his trembling fingers over the faint grooves in a silent apology. He cleans the dirt from his hands as best he can, and he starts pedaling home.
That night, he dreams about a blond teenager tied to – an altar? A massive stone, somewhere underground, and – a raised knife.
“Take me instead!” he says, and the earth starts to shudder around him. Stones crack and the ground heaves, and that knife comes down, and Jason screams himself awake.
Jason starts to push himself to get back in shape. With Alfred’s careful attention to his nutrition (and magically enhanced meals) he starts to put on weight, starts to shoot up like a weed, like his body is making up for lost time after the years he spent malnourished. He starts training in the little home gym Bruce has over the garage, throwing himself at a punching bag until his entire body aches. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it doesn’t.
He starts biking more, too. Taking long rides. He keeps finding himself drawn to the same cemetery; if he doesn’t pay attention, if he lets his body move automatically, that’s where he ends up. It becomes an oddly peaceful place for him. It’s peaceful. There are worse places to spend the afternoon with a book.
Crime Alley is, in many ways, the same. Still dirty, dangerous, run-down. Still teeming with tenacious, spiteful life.
Jason’s not ready to walk through the world yet. Bruce made the announcement that his adopted son had been found alive and was recovering, which had caused a stir, but Bruce made it clear that he wouldn’t be answering any questions or giving any interviews. He also made it clear that anyone attempting to come onto the grounds of the Manor to sneak pictures would be subject to the (incredibly nasty) magical wards of the property, and digital cameras don’t tend to work in proximity to the Abhorsen’s Cave, anyway.
So he’s had some privacy, but he knows it wouldn’t last long if anyone spotted him in the city — and also, more importantly, he just doesn’t feel like being stared at for his scars and his mutilated Charter mark.
The easy solution is his bike helmet. It’s a full-face cover, more like a motorcycle helmet. Nobody gives him a second glance, but he gets to be out and about in the world again, reacquainting himself with the city.
He’s not stupid; he’s getting stronger, but he’s still armed every time he goes out. He loves Gotham, but he knows how the city is. He always has a knife on his thigh, a crowbar strapped to his back, and one of Bruce’s Charter-spelled paintball guns at his hip. Not lethal, of course, but at close range they pack one hell of a punch, and the paint leaves a magical trace that won’t wash off. Handy for helping out the GCPD.
Those things come in handy before long. It’s just past dusk, and he’s about to head home, when he hears a shout from an alley. He swerves abruptly and pauses at the mouth of it. There’s a man with a knife advancing on a pair of street kids not much younger than Jason.
All Jason’s rage finally has a target. His vision narrows, and his heart pounds, and he pulls the crowbar from the sheath strapped to his back.
The only problem is that he doesn’t want to stop once he starts – but he does, mostly for the sake of the two teenagers cowering nearby. He goes through the man’s pockets, once he’s unconscious, and gives the kids everything in his wallet before telling them to run. One of them pauses to spit on the guy before he goes. Jason doesn’t have zip ties (he makes a mental note to remedy that) but he calls the GCPD and tells them to hurry before he makes himself scarce.
That night, he sleeps without dreaming for the first time in weeks.
Next time he goes out, he’s more prepared. He brings zip ties and duct tape, but also, pre-packed zip-locks full of the sort of things he would’ve wanted, back in the day – first aid, food, a little cash, dry socks, toiletries. He finds a few street kids to toss them to.
And he finds more fights. God knows there are enough shitheads in the Alley who deserve a good fist to the face. Fights are never in short supply.
He knows it’s reckless and dangerous. He knows. But it feels so damn good he can’t find it in himself to care. Well – not good exactly. He doesn’t enjoy causing pain. It’s just a relief to have an outlet for all his fury.
He shouldn’t be so surprised, though, when he finds himself in over his head. When the guy he goes after turns out to have friends – backup – waiting on a fire escape.
Jason sees the knife, and he feels it in his thigh, and he thinks, That’s a lot of blood.
“Fuck you,” he snarls, lunging.
His vision grays at the edges, and he falls.
The pain fades quickly. So does everything else.
“Oh my god, it’s you,” says a soft voice, but Jason is already gone.
He’s in the river again. Death. It’s so familiar by now. There’s a serenity to it; he allows the current to start pushing him toward the Second Precinct.
Get up, someone says.
But he’s tired, and the current is strong, and –
Get up!
There’s a warm, rasping tongue licking his hand, teeth nipping at his sleeve to tug him gently backward.
You again, he thinks, and he’s so startled that he opens his eyes.
He’s on the dirty pavement of the alley, and there’s a dog licking his hand. He blinks.
“Hey, let’s get you cleaned up, huh?” says a warm, calm voice, and something about it is just so goddamn familiar, and so soothing that Jason wants to cry. The owner of the voice comes into view, crouching next to Jason to offer him a hand and a warm smile. He has a haystack of blond hair and a purple hoodie, and he’s maybe a couple years older than Jason.
Jason has the strangest sense that they’ve met before, but hell if he can figure out where or when. It’s just a tug in his gut, a sneaking suspicion rooted somewhere much deeper than his brain.
“What –” Jason starts. His head swims when he sits up. One of the men he was fighting is lying near him with an arrow through his throat; the others are nowhere to be found. Jason blinks. “What happened?”
“Yeah, we should probably get outta here before the police come sniffing around,” the blond says sheepishly.
“Who are you?” Jason asks.
“Clint,” he says, lifting a hand in a greeting. “And this is Lucky.”
Lucky cocks his head curiously at the sound of his name, and Jason smiles in spite of himself. Then he catches sight of the symbols on Lucky’s collar – like rainbows on oil, shifting and shimmering.
Jason would’ve been able to read them, before the Joker. Right now they’re meaningless.
A tracking spell, maybe? Like a magical microchip? But Clint himself doesn’t have a Charter mark, so… And it’s odd, but – for a moment it seems like Clint looks down at Lucky, and Lucky looks right back up at him, tongue lolling, meeting Clint’s gaze with his one good eye… like they’re having a conversation Jason can’t hear.
“Have we met?” Jason asks, slow and suspicious.
“We should get your leg sewn up,” Clint says, instead of answering.
Jason looks down. The wound in his thigh is shallower than he remembers. “How –”
“I can stitch it for you, if you want. I live right up there.” He points up at a neighboring building.
“I was dead,” he blurts out, panic curling up his spine. “I was dead, and the dog was –”
Lucky noses at Jason’s hand, giving his fingers a lick before tip-tapping back a few steps, and Jason shakes his head, memories going foggy again.
“C’mon, let’s get some fluids in you, too,” Clint says. “Is your head okay? Looked like you took a nasty fall.”
Jason staggers to his feet, with Clint’s help, and touches the side of the helmet bemusedly. He can feel a crack in the smooth material. Maybe he did hit his head. Maybe that’s why he keeps getting this dazed, dizzying sense that he knows these two.
Clint’s apartment is nice, considering that he barely seems old enough to be living on his own. He’s got it to himself, which is more than most Alley kids manage when they’re starting out. Doesn’t look all that junk-y, either. He has a few pieces of nice old-fashioned furniture, worn but solidly made, nothing you’d find for free on a curb.
There’s a bow and quiver resting next to a window, which Jason figures explains the arrow.
“You okay with me cutting those open?” Clint asks, gesturing at Jason’s jeans with the hand that’s not full of first aid supplies. “You can borrow sweatpants, if you want.”
“Sure,” Jason says numbly, and sits on the stool Clint directs him to. Lucky curls up on the couch and promptly falls asleep.
Jason really thought the cut would be worse. It’s barely a scratch. But the denim around the wound is soaked with blood, and with the location –
“I really thought it was worse than this,” Jason says. “I thought – I woulda sworn I was gonna bleed out.”
“Apparently not,” Clint says, with a crooked grin that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Guess you got lucky.”
The dog perks up one ear, nose twitching, and Jason smiles.
Once Clint is done stitching up the wound (with careful, tidy stitches that tell Jason he’s done this before) he offers to drive Jason home. And magic or not, Jason knows he shouldn’t be pedaling with stitches in his leg, so he accepts; Clint tosses his bike in the cab of his old diesel truck and gives Jason a ride back to the Manor.
“Next time,” Clint says slowly. “Next time you’re running around the city – let me know if you want backup, okay?” He writes his cell number down on the back of an old receipt, and Jason slips it in the pocket of the borrowed sweatpants with a smile.
Backup might be nice.
He gets his bike out of the trunk and wheels it slowly toward the garage doors, which open for him without any prompting. He turns to wave at Clint, who waves back before putting the truck in gear again and crunching his way over the gravel driveway.
Somehow, Jason manages to get up to his room and into his bed without running into Alfred. When Alfred knocks to let him know dinner is ready, Jason pretends he’s feeling overwhelmed, too anxious to leave his room, and only feels a little guilty when Alfred brings his dinner up on a tray instead.
It’s not until he’s falling asleep that Jason realizes he never told Clint where he lives… but he’s so exhausted that he’s forgotten about that revelation by the time he wakes up.
His leg heals faster than he expected, but it still takes several days, which means several days of being stuck at the Manor again. The rage begins to simmer under his skin again, and the dreams aren’t far behind.
Jason dreams about the barn. About broken bottles. About teaching the blond to take a hit.
“Get up!” he shouts. “Get up, goddammit, you don’t get to give up like that.”
And then a different scene. A new one. They’re older now, both of them, and – there’s a circus. A fight.
“Go on, then,” he screams. “Go! Don't come back!”
He wants to pull Clint back.
He wants to, but he doesn’t; it's for the best. Clint deserves better, so he just watches Clint walk away.
He wakes up gasping, pulse pounding in his ears, phantom pain in his knuckles, and starts moving before he’s fully conscious.
The full moon is high in the sky, and it’s clear for once. More than enough light to make his way. His leg isn’t completely healed, but it is scabbed over, knitting itself together, enough that he only feels a slight tug when he starts to pedal. His head spins. He doesn’t pay attention to where he’s going.
He’s not surprised when he finds himself at the Robbinsville cemetery – even less surprised when he finds Clint and Lucky there, waiting, sitting on the grass by the worn gravestone that’s been calling to Jason ever since he came back.
“What’s happening?” he asks as he approaches.
Clint’s got his arms wrapped around his knees and his mouth turned down in a frown. He gives Jason a slow, sad look, but doesn’t say anything.
“What’s happening to me?” Jason asks again, voice shaking. “Why am I having dreams about – about you?”
The dog cocks his head, looking at Jason through its one good eye, and for a moment Jason would swear he can see a galaxy in that one liquid pupil.
“Tell me!” he shouts, rage rising like acid in his throat. “Tell me what’s wrong with me! I don’t – there’s something wrong with me, and – I don’t understand what’s happening!” He’s trembling now, his entire body wound tight like a bowstring. “Why am I – what happened to me? Why am I so fucking angry all the time?”
“Kinda seems like you have a right to be angry,” Clint says pensively, staring up at the sky. Then he glances at Jason again, eyes flicking to Jason’s forehead, where his hair isn’t quite long enough to cover the mark, and then to the other scars, the one on his jaw, the one on his neck…
“Tell me,” Jason says, and instead of allowing himself to sob, to beg, he screams instead.
It’s going to split him open. He can’t stop.
The earth starts to tremble, and his vision starts to go gray, and then Clint’s in front of him – shaking him by the shoulders, shouting his name –
Jason stops.
The scream dies. The world goes still. Clint’s eyes are wet in the silvery moonlight, but Jason only catches a glimpse at the grief on his face before he’s hugging Jason, squeezing him, holding on for dear life.
"I'm sorry," Jason blurts out, without really understanding what he's apologizing for.
“It’s okay,” Clint is saying, when Jason’s head stops spinning long enough to hear the words. “It’s okay, I can explain, it’s gonna be okay.”
“What’s wrong with me?” Jason gasps again, and staggers away, wrenching himself from the embrace, and something catches his attention from the corner of his eye.
“Aw, shit,” Clint mutters.
There’s a crack in the earth. It goes right through one of the paths of the cemetery, splitting the grass, maybe a foot across at its widest part.
“I did that,” Jason says, and it’s barely audible with the way his throat feels raw and swollen. “Oh, fuck, I did that, didn’t I?”
The crack in the earth seems to slither at the edges with tendrils of roiling darkness.
“Whoa, hey,” Clint says, and Lucky nips at Jason’s sleeve, tugging him back a few unsteady steps.
Jason’s head spins. He didn’t realize he was so close to falling in.
“There’s something wrong with me,” he whispers. “Something inside me – I’m broken.”
“Sometimes things just break,” Clint says softly, sadly, and he crouches next to the fissure, brushing the grass at the edge. “Doesn’t mean you give up on ‘em.”
“I fucked it up, though,” Jason blurts out, taking an unsteady step back. “I should go, I – before I break something else.”
“Nothing’s too broken to be fixed,” Clint says. He sets his jaw stubbornly, staring down into the emptiness.
The earth shivers. Rolls. Shudders in a queasy way that makes Jason avert his eyes. And when it’s done, there’s no crack.
“How’d you do that?” Jason breathes.
Clint shrugs, with a tiny, unhappy smile. “Guess I always had a bad habit of not knowing when to give up on broken things.”
“The fuck does that mean?” Jason says, with a near-hysterical laugh that catches in his throat. “Jesus, this is – what’s happening to me? Am I cursed?”
“In a way.” Clint shrugs, settling back to sit on the moonlit grass again. “But only because she is.”
“She?”
“Gotham.”
“You’re crazy,” Jason says weakly. “That’s –”
“Gotham’s got a soft spot for fighters,” Clint says, soft and sad. “For people who… stand up for themselves.”
Jason closes his eyes, trying not to panic, and sits down on the spot. Lucky rests his chin on Jason’s leg, looking at him with that one bright eye.
“You have… part of her, now.” Clint makes a face, scrubbing at his eyes with scarred knuckles. “You aren’t the first. You won’t be the last.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means… she saw you fighting, and she helped. Gave you some of her strength. But that comes with some of her rage, as well. Sometimes that’s just what it takes to survive; you gotta get angry.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Jason insists.
“You should be dead,” Clint says, and his voice is gentle, but the words hit Jason in the gut.
“I know,” he breathes. “I know I should be.”
“A few times over, now,” Clint says. “But you can’t. Not anymore. Not by natural causes.”
Jason closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath.
A warm tongue brushes his knuckles. Lucky.
He gets a flash of foggy memory: stepping in front of Clint, taking a hit meant for him, the world exploding in a flash of pain, and then – nothing.
“My brother and I,” Clint starts. His voice breaks. He pauses, swallows, tries again. “When we were kids –”
Jason’s head spins with vague, formless memories. They’re just out of reach, somehow. Distant. They belong to someone else.
Lucky gets up, whining softly, and licks a tear from Jason’s cheek.
Memories whirl, individual wisps of smoke swirling into something more like a tornado. So many hits. So many times they should’ve stayed down, stopped fighting, given up. So many times it was the two of them against the world.
Until he left.
“Where is he now?” Jason blurts out. “Your brother.”
Clint glances from him, to the worn gravestone, and back again.
Jason realizes that he was right. Jason was right all along; he did bring something back with him. A piece of a human soul, all tangled up with Gotham’s magic, too intertwined to have one without the other.
“There was a god,” Clint says softly. “Who was torturing me because – because of the magic. Because I was connected to Gotham, and he could hurt Gotham through me.”
“Do you remember yet?” someone says, and it takes a moment for Jason to realize that it’s not Clint speaking – it’s Lucky.
He stares. Blinks.
“There’s only so much I can do,” says the voice that seems to echo in his head. “There’s only so much she can do.”
“Your brother sacrificed himself,” Jason realizes out loud. He closes his eyes and sees it again: the whirl of a green cloak, a menacing smile splitting a pale face, a knife glinting in long fingers. Pain. A cruel, high laugh.
Familiar.
He sacrificed himself to get Clint out, and then –
“The Quake,” Jason whispers. “That was him.”
“That was Gotham starting to lose hope,” Clint says. “Losing a piece of herself.”
“You won’t be able to rest until it’s done,” says that resonant voice, and once again, Jason sees a spiraling galaxy in the dog’s single eye. Sees it like the spokes of a spinning wheel, like a story told over and over again, a play performed every night – the actors change, but the characters don’t. “Until the curse is broken.”
Jason closes his eyes and sees darkness again. Sees the mouth of the tunnel.
Something is waiting for them, deep underground.
This time, though – this time neither of them will be alone.
They’ll go together, or not at all.