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Jason makes Jon uneasy in a completely different way than his brother. Where Richard reminded him of a tiger, all lazy energy until it's ready to strike, Jason is… grim, perhaps, in a way that seems to permeate the air around him.
He claps Richard on the back though, as the oldest of the Wayne boys leaves the library, before Jason comes in and takes the seat Richard just vacated.
"So. How do we do this?" he asks, his voice heavy with the weight of something 'other'. "You ask me a bunch of questions, and I answer?"
"Ah… no. No, I…" Jonathan struggles for a moment. "I'll start the statement, and then you just… tell me whatever you want to tell me. Related to… all this," he adds, probably unnecessarily.
Jason lifts an eyebrow. "So… what, you want all the down and dirty details of how I died?"
"If that's what you want to tell me."
"And you're gonna store it on… that," Jason states, nodding towards the tape recorder. "Then… what? You just keep it in your 'archives' forever?"
"I… well, essentially… yes?"
Jason seems to consider that for a few minutes, before he shrugs. "Alright. Your show. Let's get it over with."
Jonathan leans forward, and clicks the tape recorder on. "Statement of Jason Todd-Wayne, concerning his becoming an Avatar. Twelve July, 2018. Statement begins."
"Where to start, huh?" Jason asks, stretching his legs out in front of him, before he leans back in the chair, in a pose similar to the one his brother had taken. "Guess I should give you at least a little background.
"I was born'n raised in Crime Alley. S'a five block shithole in East End, and if you think Gotham's unpleasant? Dial it up to ten, and you get an idea of what Crime Alley is. Folks down there consider it a good day if Scarecrow or Killer Croc don't go on a bloody rampage, and a dozen murders a week is considered slow.
"My parents were born there, raised there. My mom died there; my dad died later, in prison. Pretty sure that was B, but I don't ask, and he don't tell. Dad liked whiskey, mom liked smack, and neither of 'em really gave a shit about me, or what I was doin' any given day. Then dad went to jail, mom O.D.'ed, and I ended up on the streets.
"S'not a pleasant way to live, Archivist," Jason says, almost conversationally, although the look on his face -equal parts anger, shame, and hatred -belies his casualness. "Constantly hungry. Constantly running, sleeping with one eye open, and knowing that one wrong move, one missed detail, and that's it. You're done for.
"It's a constant pressure. A steady presence in the back of your head, something that maybe you can forget about for a couple of hours while you're scrambling to try'n find somethin' to eat, but once you're done? Once you're back in whatever little box you're crashing in for the moment? It's just… there. The constant knowing that you're one mistake away from death, one mistake away from it all crashing down around you.
"That's not even getting into the sheer amount of luck that goes into it. Picking the wrong pocket can get you killed faster than starving will. Take the wrong job, deliver the wrong package, or just… being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and somebody stronger than you is in a bad mood and wants to take it out on you.
"And you don't really think about it. It's not a conscious thought, right? 'Oh, I'm gonna die at any minute, better make my peace' or whatever. No, it's more like… it's just always there. Just there, sitting in the back of your mind, this… awareness. One wrong move. One mistake.
"That's where Dick and B found me; I was tryin' to steal the tires off Bruce's car. Hadn't eaten in a few days, and I figured… Lotta people would pay good money for tires from the Bat. If nothin' else, get me street cred, and enough to get me a meal or two, which was better'n anything else I had goin' for me. So I just… started taking his tires."
Jason chuckles a little, a quiet noise, almost more of a scoff than anything else. "For all B's fancy security system, guess it'd never occurred to him that somebody might try and steal his tires. I just went to it with my tire-iron, and after about fifteen minutes, I had three of 'em off, and hidden.
"But I was an idiot; I just didn't know when to quit. I went back for the fourth tire, and I literally walked right into 'em. In my defense, I was hungry, and tired; seemed like an on-goin' theme in my life up until that point, but…"
He shakes his head a bit. "Anyway. There I was, tire iron in hand, and I walked smack into freakin' Robin of all people. Dunno who was more surprised, him or me. And don't get me wrong, I knew that Batman and Robin were… something different. Gotham ain't like everywhere else; folks here might not know what's wrong with the city, but they know something isn't right. Robin beat up grown men, and walked away without a scratch; Batman walked into a group of fifty men with guns, and walked out again like it was nothing.
"But they didn't… look different. Not then, anyway; later, when I got to know them better, I understood why other people were so afraid of them, but right then? They looked… mostly normal. So when I walked into Robin, and fell over on my ass, I… I don't know. Again, I was… probably closer to starvin' than I like to admit, so I just… stared, I guess. And then Robin started laughing."
Jason smiles, and the simple gesture wipes years off of his face, the fondness evident. "It was just… It wasn't mean; it wasn't cruel. He was just… laughin'. And he looked at B, and said, 'oh yeah, definitely part of an evil scheme, Batman. Just look at all the evil oozing!'
"I managed to pull myself to my feet; it was harder than I'd admit, since I hadn't eaten anything in three or four days. But I forced myself to stand up as straight as I could, and stare 'em down. I don't… I was dizzy, and I thought… thought they were makin' fun of me. So when B reached a hand towards me… I smacked him as hard as I could with the tire iron, and I hauled ass the other direction.
"Now, I say I 'hauled ass', but honestly? A half-dead cat probably moved faster'n I did at that point. I was with it enough to know I couldn't go back to my squat, but that was about all the higher brain function I had goin' for me.
"Took 'em all of about three minutes to find and catch me. Then, I was pissed that I didn't last longer; later? After I came back? I realized that was the first sign that somethin' was different about me. 'Cause outrunning Batman and Robin for three minutes is somethin' that most normal people just can't do. Oh, sure, sometimes Dick might drag the chase out, if he's really playin' with 'em, but it's not 'cause he can't find 'em, you know?"
Jonathan manages to nod, as if the casual mention of Richard essentially playing with his food is just another part of daily life, shower, hunt, tea, and then off to bed. But Jason seems to take the nod as agreement, and continues on.
"So there I am, tryin' to drag myself up a ladder to the roof, and I can hear the Bat climbin' up behind me. But I'm thinkin', he's bigger, so he's slower, right? I can outrun him if I can just get to the top before he can grab me. Then, when I'm almost to the top… I don't know if I missed the rung because I was dizzy, or if it was 'cause I was hurrying so much, but I missed it either way. And I felt myself start to fall.
"And I knew a fall from that height? I'd splatter on the ground, and basically just… explode, right? And maybe that'd be better, after everything, than letting Batman and Robin catch me after stealin' their tires. But before I could really even make myself right with it, I jerked to a stop; felt my shoulder pull outta socket, and I heard the 'pop' sound it made. Couldn't even find the breath to scream, honestly.
"Which is about the time I passed out. So the rest of the story, I got from B, Dick, and Alfie later. Apparently, Dick was already on the roof, waiting for me. He saw me start to fall, and managed to grab my arm. And he heard the pop, knew he'd dislocated my shoulder, and he… kinda panicked. By the time B got up to the roof, Dick was holdin' on to me like a damn teddy bear, and insisting that Bruce 'fix' me.
"See, thing about Dick is… He's a predator, sure. We all are," Jason says with a shrug. "But… unless a tiger's really really hungry… how often you see it go after a baby pig? Nah, it'd rather go after Mama Piggy who wasn't paying attention to where Piglet ran off too.
"Now, my very shitty metaphor aside… We may not be entirely human anymore; won't deny that. But we're not monsters either. Dick's never Hunted anyone who didn't deserve it. Now, did they deserve the literal epitome of the Hunt chasing them through inescapable alleys?" He wavers his hand back and forth in a 'eh' motion. "We could debate that one. But he's never hunted a kid, never hurt a kid.
"Was my dislocated shoulder serious? No. But, something else you gotta realize about Dick is that he was the youngest out of all of us when he Changed. Spent the least time as an actual human. He can mimic social interactions better than any of us, because he's studied it so much longer, but gettin' hurt? Dick knocked a toddler over turning around too fast gettin' ice cream once. Kid didn't even cry, but she scraped her knee a bit, and I thought Dick might have freakin' kittens. Think he was more upset than the kid's mom was.
"So even though he'd literally just saved me from becoming a very small alley pancake, he was more focused on the fact that he'd clearly hurt me somehow, even if he couldn't quite understand the 'how' part."
Jason laughs, and there's more than a hint of bitterness too it. "You know, it's kinda funny. My whole damn life, humans never cared about me. Never cared what happened to me. My parents couldn't be bothered to give a damn if I wandered in with a broken skull; I had random people I asked for change kick me in the ribs. I had cops throw me into walls, just 'cause I was 'stinkin' up the place'.
"First person who ever gave a shit about me bein' hurt… was Dick. A guy who hasn't been human since he was eight years old, a guy who could put the actual movie Predator to shame. Don't get me wrong, Johnny, I'm not the type to push for the end of the world, but sometimes…" He gives Jon -who's still trying to decide whether or to be indignant about being called Johnny -a rueful smile. "Gotta wonder if humanity's really worth keepin' around, huh?"
Some of the edges seem to smooth out on Jason's face as he kicks his feet up onto the coffee table, dropping them onto the wooden surface with a thud and a grin, as if daring Jonathan to call him out on it. Which… If he'd actually set his feet on the tape-recorder, maybe. But as it stands, Jonathan will leave it alone.
"So anyway, there we are, and you know my biggest regret? That I was passed out and couldn't see B's face," Jason continues. "'Cause I mean… picture it, Johnny: a teenaged Avatar of the damned Hunt freaking out like a high school girl who just hit a puppy with her car, a half-starved, bruised up homeless kid passed out with a dislocated shoulder, and there he is dressed up like a giant bat, and a car with no tires. Dick's demanding he 'fix' me, and Bruce is probably thinkin' I'm dying or somethin' from the way Dick's carryin' on. Two fully realized Avatars, panicking over a homeless kid passing out after stealing their tires.
"Honestly? Couldn't tell you what B was thinkin', bringin' me back here. If he was panicking because Dick was panicking, if he didn't know where else to take me… I don't know. But Dick carried me back here, and uh… Yeah, they had to hike across Gotham on foot to do it," he adds with a grin. "Left the car out there until I woke up enough to tell 'em where the tires were.
"Anyways, make a long story that's relevant to nobody but us short… Bruce decided to keep me around. Officially adopted me, made me a member of the family and all that. Didn't take 'em long to tell me about the Fears and all that bullshit; was kinda hard to miss, you know? Like, clearly they weren't entirely human, I wasn't an idiot."
He looks thoughtful for a few seconds, before he says, "You know, I think… I think part of them expected me to be afraid of them. Not in like, the 'essence of primal Fear' way, but that I'd think they were monsters. That I'd be afraid of them, Dick and Bruce, not Batman and Robin.
"Maybe I should've been," he says, shrugging a bit. "But I wasn't. After watching Dick play nursemaid, running to get anything I wanted -and I'll admit, I took advantage of that like an asshole -it was kinda hard to see them as 'evil' or 'scary', you know? Then later, I was teachin' Dick how to act like a 'real boy', and by that point… He was just… Dick, you know?
"He moved to Bludhaven a few months after I got there; I don't think he wanted to actually leave, but he wanted to stretch his wings. Try and Hunt without Bruce there looking over his shoulder. Not that Dick wanted to break the rules or anything, but B can be…" Jason grimaces. "He can be a bit… overbearing, let's say. Dick wanted the chance to see who he could be without Bruce.
"And Bruce was teachin' me how to go out with him, even though we all knew I'd never be even a tenth as good as Dick at being Robin, but I think they thought I needed it to feel like part of the family. And they weren't wrong; it was nice feeling like I was helping, and not just some pet puppy they'd brought home and would get tired of once it started acting out, you know? So I started goin' out as Robin too, and… well, again, obviously I wasn't Dick.
"I don't… A lot of the memories from the week before the Joker took me are… fragmented. Hard to put in context. I know I'd had a fight with B; I'd been there about two years at that point, and I'd gotten… Them treating me like I was fragile was starting to wear on me, you know? I told him, I might not be unkillable, but I wasn't a doll either; I could stop a mugging without Bruce lookin' over my shoulder the whole time.
"But I can't tell you what it was exactly that we fought about, or what either of us said. I just… I got mad, told him I was goin' back home. And I took off. Started tryin' to make my way back home. I don't remember what route I took, or where the Joker grabbed me."
The smell of wet dirt fills the room. It's faint, to be sure, almost cloying, like walking outside after a rainstorm. But it's unmistakable.
"Thirteen hours. That's how long the Joker had me, according to Bruce," Jason says quietly. "I don't remember it. Not clearly, anyway. I remember being afraid. I remember being in pain. And I remember everything going dark, and fuzzy, and it not hurting anymore. That's it.
"Then, next thing I know… I'm waking up underground. In a wooden coffin, and it was… Dark. Most people don't understand what dark really is. Most people will never really experience it. Not fully. There's the stairs, or the light off the clock, the glow of a street lamp. Most people will never experience true, actual Dark.
"I wasn't really… I still had all the damage. All the broken bones and skull fractures. So even though I knew what had happened, I wasn't… I couldn't really process it. I know that doesn't make sense, but… We can't really 'die', Jon. So imagine having fourteen skull fractures, collapsed lungs, and a punctured heart, but not being able to die. And that's… That's when I started screaming, I think."
Jason twirls a finger around his temple, chuckling a bit, and Jon is fairly positive he hasn't heard anything sound so forced. "It was all pretty scrambled, up here. I remember hearing Dick's voice, even if I couldn't understand what he was saying. I… sort of remember being pulled out, or at least, the feeling of it anyway. I can sort of remember people touching me, although the pain from that is still pretty clear.
"It took three weeks for my body to slowly knit it back together. You know, in case you wanna include that in the medical portion of 'How To Be An Avatar 101'. It takes three weeks to heal from death by crowbar. And again, remembering the brain damage… it didn't really set in what was happening -or what had happened -until about two weeks in. When I realized I shouldn't be alive, much less healing and getting better.
"Dick never left my side, the whole time I was stuck in bed. He just kept saying he was sorry, that he'd never wanted this, but he wouldn't let me go either. I think… I think at first, he thought I was a Hunter; that because he'd called a Hunt on me, I'd belong to the Hunt. I mean, it was pretty obvious that I wasn't, but I was too tired and out of it to tell him that. It was Bruce who finally told us -'cause again, Dick wouldn't leave my room -that I belonged to the Buried now," Jason says with a shrug. "Don't know if that really… Everything was different. Like, I understood what he was saying, but it didn't really… connect. Not until I started getting up and moving around again.
"Dick was… bein' a mother hen. I was still taking it easy, because Bruce and Dick were both worried something would go wrong. Honestly, I think they just couldn't wrap their minds around me not being human anymore. But I'd decided I'd had enough of stayin' in the Manor, and I went for a walk outside, Dick following so close I was nearly tripping over him.
"And it was just… It was annoying before, right? Now it was just… I don't know if I was still messed up from what happened, if everything was just amplified, or if it was part of who I was now, but he kept tryin' to tell me I should go back and lay down. As if I hadn't literally just gotten out of bed to head outside fifteen minutes ago.
"So I… I started yelling. And Dick just… complete 180 from worried mother hen to calm, and cool, telling me I needed to calm down. And the switch was enough to grab my attention, 'cause like… Dick only gets like that when something's really wrong, you know? Otherwise he goes back and forth between over eager puppy and a cat playing with a mouse.
"And that's when I realized that the garden was… changing. It felt like I was still standing on solid ground, but it was… getting… soft. Not muddy, just… like soft. Two of the benches out there had started sinking into the ground, and the plants were starting to die. And that's when it actually set in that… That I'd changed. That I was like them now."
Jason looks contemplative, almost like any other normal college kid talking about his life. "You know, at first? I gotta say, I was… maybe not 'disappointed' but… I mean, hell, Bruce is the Dark. Dick is the perfect Avatar of the goddamn Hunt. It makes them perfect at what they do, at protecting the city, while feeding themselves in the process. What was I gonna do as the Avatar of the Buried? Get rid of their bodies? Usually wasn't much left of their bodies to begin with.
"I didn't realize until then how much I felt like an outsider. How much I wanted to be able to help. How much I wanted to do what they did every night. And then to finally have it, but not in a way that was useful? That was almost worse, to tell the truth. I got… I don't know if it was 'depressed', but it's probably close enough for your little 'archives', so we'll run with it. I was yellin' at everybody -even Alfred, and that's something you just don't do -and when I wasn't yellin', I was laying in bed, tryin' to figure out what I was gonna do.
"It was Bruce who finally figured it out. Or… well, he'd probably always known, but I think he didn't want to face that I really had changed. That I wasn't human anymore. But eventually, he told me… I was hungry. And I needed to feed."
The contemplative look disappears, replaced by a look Jon knows all too well: something deeper than hunger, something almost primal.
"They both took me out, my first night. Which was a good thing, because once I got out there? Once I was in the city? Honestly, if they hadn't been there, I probably would've attacked the first person I saw. I hadn't realized just how much I wanted it.
"That first time? B made it a point to tell me who I was after; what he'd done. And I listened, because of course I did, but I didn't really… I didn't care. It was like explaining to a starving man where his steak came from, where the cow had grown up, and all he wants to do… is eat.
"You know, up until that point? I'd been thinking about it like… How the hell am I gonna find claustraphobic people, people scared of being buried alive? How much overlap is there gonna be between acceptable targets, and people who are afraid of my Fear?
"That night… I learned something." Jason's voice hasn't changed, and yet, overlaid and interwoven throughout is something gutteral, something deep and dark. "It's not about finding people who are afraid of you. It's about finding people who deserve to die… and then making them afraid of you. And let me tell you, Jonny… I'm very… very good at that."
Jason smiles at him; it's completely different from his brother's, no threat of violence, just a promise of pain, as Jason's gaze nearly pins him to the couch, like a physical weight pushing down on him. Just for a few seconds, just enough to let the message settle in, before the weight disappears, and Jonathan can breathe again.
"Any other questions, Jonny?"
Jon shakes his head. "No. End of statement."