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There is an ant colony living in Jason’s apartment.
He noticed them for the first time several weeks ago. Too many weeks ago for it to be remotely acceptable that he's waited this long to do anything about it, and that he still hasn't tried. Only a crazy person would allow ants to fester and multiply in the place they eat, sleep, and spend most of their time existing. Except that Jason isn’t quite existing, not lately, so that’s a good enough excuse, isn’t it? He isn’t knowingly coexisting with ants. He’s just…there. And ants are also there. They are neighbors trapped in the same zoo.
He hasn’t decided what brought them in, if it was the weeks-old overflowing garbage can in the kitchen or the pile of dirty dishes on his nightstand that has twelve types of mold growing there and a sprinkling of crumbs on the carpet below that he hasn’t done a thing to clean up. The same mug of tea has sat on the kitchen counter for days. There are multiple somethings floating in the murky green water. He can’t recall the last time he washed a dish.
At face value, no one would walk into this apartment and assume it belonged to Jason Todd. Tim, sure. The kid becomes too engrossed in his work to remember to drink water most days, let alone wash dishes. If it weren’t for Alfred, Tim wouldn’t even change his clothes, Jason’s convinced. And Dick is the best at adulting out of all of them, but he’s also forgetful when it comes to maintaining a home. Like Tim, he’s too used to having a butler picking up after him, even after all these years. And don’t even get him started on Bruce.
But Jason? He might have grown up in the slums, but he’s the neatest of them all. One thing about living in poverty for most of your life is that the things you do have, you take care of them like your life depends on it. Every dish is hand-washed with the utmost care to make them last as long as possible. Food scraps are saved and repurposed for another meal later on. Sweeping and vacuuming twice a week, just out of habit because there’s nothing better for maintaining a healthy mind than a set routine and a clean home.
It’s when the unhealthy part of the mind overtakes the healthy part that things get cluttered and it all falls apart.
Jason watches an ant carry a crumb of granola across his pillow, and not for the first time, he thinks, This isn’t normal. No healthy person would let an insect crawl across their bed two inches from their nose and let it happen. This is gross. This is an invasion. Jason put so much time and energy into making this shabby Crime Alley apartment into a workable base of operations, and from there into a home. He’s got a goddamn fern growing on the shelf in the kitchen. It hasn’t had a drop of water in a long minute. Jason’s worried if he goes and checks that it will be dead, so he doesn’t check. He leaves it to rot right along with him.
The ant vanishes in a rumple in the unwashed bedsheets, then reappears along a fold farther down the mattress. Carrying that little crumb to share with its comrades, doing its part to serve the colony. They’ve been feasting on Jason’s depression-nest since this current episode began. He’s seen them retrieving bits of old food from the dishes in the sink. Found a handful floating in the dirty water, clearly having failed in their mission to scavenge what they could from the muck. It was their own faults for thinking they could swim, but Jason still feels guilty about his inadvertent role in their demise.
Guilty. The murderer feels guilty. Mister Eight-Heads-in-a-Duffle-Bag feels bad for causing the death of a few tiny, mindless ants who don't even have the cognitive ability to comprehend their own impending deaths. His mind is always a fucking trip when he’s like this.
Jason could kill this one now. If he had the energy to move, he could swipe his arm out and smack the ant right off the bed. Send it flying. He could smash it with the hilt of his gun. He could shoot it. Who would notice? It’s an ant in his home. There are so many ants in his home. He would be well within his rights to kill them all. He should.
If Jason had any sense at all, he would hop out of bed and go clean his apartment like the grown man he is. Take out the overflowing trash, wash the moldy dishes. Wash his filthy, disgusting clothes he’s slept in for five (six?) nights straight. When did he last shower? He usually showers after patrol, but it’s been a while since he last suited up. Gotham has been fine without him. There are others around to pick up his slack—others who don’t fall into a pit of despair with the regularity of an outlet mall’s seasonal sales.
He ordered a pest extermination kit online the other night when he couldn’t sleep. Real shocker there. He’d watched a conga line of ants march up the leg of his nightstand to slowly take apart the remains of a fast-food cheeseburger he couldn’t finish earlier in the day. He must have spent hours watching those stupid ants without interfering before he sighed and DoorDashed the kit and several bottles of bug spray using Bruce’s credit card information.
The package has sat on the welcome mat outside ever since it was delivered. He can’t even muster the strength to get up on his feet and walk across the tiny apartment to go retrieve it. Knowing his building and the characters who live here, it’s surely long gone by now, stolen by a hopeful someone expecting something fancy with moderate resale value. He hopes they’ll at least get some kind of use out of it so it won't go to waste.
If he set off a bug bomb in the apartment with the windows closed, how long would it take to kill him? Maybe he should give that a try next. Bruce or one of Jason’s siblings will break in eventually either to entreat his help or attempt to help him, only to find Jason dead in his bed surrounded by the corpses of one million ants who did nothing wrong. It’ll be hilarious. The ants’ queen will be last to succumb, sheltered away wherever the burrow is, wondering why all of her soldiers failed to come home. Because the very asshole who’s been keeping them fed all this time decided to turn on them in a murder-suicide KO.
Do ants even have a queen? Is it just a bee thing? Jason’s never done much research on the living habits of insects, but he does know a thing or two about serving a power higher than you and following their orders to the grave. Go out, find crumbs, bring them back for the good of the colony. Go out, fight crime, rinse and repeat for the good of the city. Try not to die in the process, but it’s okay if you do, because we’ll just replace you with the next gullible schmuck to fall in line. He’ll probably die too, they always do, but with luck, he’ll bring back a few more crumbs than you before he does.
It should be depressing, except that the next ant knows it will almost certainly die doing this. That’s what ants are for. They scurry around and collect food to bring back home. That’s their sole purpose. It doesn’t matter when they die, and they like it that way. They’re nothing more than cogs in the greater machine. They don’t have time to reflect on past mistakes or current circumstances. They don’t tumble into pits of depression every time they remember how meaningless their life is, and they definitely don’t imagine putting a bullet in their mouth when it dawns on them for the upteenth time that it’s most likely their continued existence only makes the world worse. Ants don’t have the brain capacity to consider if they served the colony better dead than alive.
Jason wakes up to the sound of a vacuum cleaner running.
He rolls over in his grimy bed, in his grimy clothes on his grimy body, his ear angled toward the bedroom door. He should be more alarmed by this, but he can’t name any vacuum-wielding supervillains off the top of his head, and even if one existed, they’d be doing him a favor by sucking him to death, or whatever it is Vacuum man would do.
Jesus, he needs to sleep. Days upon days in bed and he hasn’t rested once. He’s never been so tired.
“Jason?” The door creaks. “Son, are you awake?”
Jason hums noncommittally. His voice is hoarse, his mouth dry from going so long without speaking.
Bruce’s weight sinks onto the mattress beside him. Careful, Jason wants to warn him. Don’t let any of the dirt get on your fancy trousers. Don’t let my filth touch you. Despite the telepathic plea to keep his distance, Bruce’s hand finds Jason’s forehead under the curtain of greasy, unwashed hair. Feeling for a fever that isn’t there. Jason is sick, he’s always been sick, but not physically. You can’t even see it unless you know where to look—this room, this apartment, the bags under his eyes.
“We were worried,” Bruce says to his silent audience of a living corpse. And the ants, of course. “You haven’t answered anyone’s calls.” Of course not. Jason’s phone died shortly after he ordered the pest kit. There’s a charger plugged in somewhere behind the nightstand, but the wire fell and he hasn’t had the strength to lean over the edge of the bed and find it.
The vacuum cleaner cuts off outside the bedroom, then there’s the sound of a faucet being turned on. Dishes clinking. At Jason’s questioning stare, Bruce explains, “Alfred is taking care of it.”
Cleaning up Jason’s mess. Wasting his time picking up after a grown man who can’t muster the will to do the damn dishes. “Sorry,” Jason whispers. His eyes burn, but that could be from any number of things. He won’t cry over the mess he created and could have stopped at any time.
“No, shh, you don’t have to apologize.” Bruce rubs Jason’s shoulder as if to reassure him that it’s perfectly normal behavior for an adult to regularly become so depressed that every shred of dignity and self-respect goes out the window. Maybe it is common—even expected—behavior for Bruce and for every damaged child he’s spawned through nature or nurture, but they have to at least acknowledge to themselves that this isn’t normal. This isn’t right. “It isn’t that bad.”
It is. They both know it is. This isn’t even the first time Bruce had to discover Jason like this. It isn’t even the first time Alfred had to put Jason’s living space back in order after he let it fall into disarray. They’re all used to the cycle.
Bruce looks around the dimly lit room, still rubbing Jason’s shoulder. “It’s a pigsty in here. When was the last time you went outside?”
Jason laughs hollowly because he can’t remember. Then he closes his mouth because he also can’t remember the last time he brushed his teeth. “There’s ants,” he says. “I’m living with ants.”
“I can see that.” Bruce shakes one off his hand where it rested on the mattress. “Why don’t you come home, then? To the manor, I meant.” Home. “You can stay in your old room while we fumigate.”
“I’m gross,” Jason protests weakly. He feels like he just crawled out of the grave again, coated in dirt and swimming in worms.
Bruce shakes his head, dismissing the concern immediately. He’s always been good at turning the complicated simple. “So, you’ll take a shower. Or a bath, if you don’t feel like standing. There are clothes for you at home.” He waits a beat. “Jason, I would like it if you came home. Please.”
Jason watches an ant scale the nightstand, following the same trusted path they’ve all followed since the first scout struck gold on that crumpled cheeseburger wrapper. It roots around for a minute before it returns triumphantly to the edge of the table with a crumb on its back. Back to the colony, back to the queen.
“Okay,” Jason says.