(no subject)

[prodigaljaybird]

Jason hasn't slept a night through since he was fourteen years old. It's nothing new, half his nightmares so familiar they happen almost by rote, though there's a few that still manage to terrify. He goes to bed in tired expectation, feels his body sleep and his brain light up. The fighter in him smiles and welcomes the chance to meet each falling crowbar with something better than child-sized fists, meet them with guns and blades and bombs, and in his dream Jason doesn't start screaming until the shadows grow long and bat-shaped.

He falls asleep in silence.

Jason wakes to his own gasping breaths in bed and the earth shifting beneath him.

"What the f - " he starts, but the world only shakes harder, something in the movement focused, personal. It's shaking his bed harder than anything, and Jason reaches out against the attack, seizes the gauntlet beneath his pillow and wishes it was a gun.

"You'll fucking wish - " he bellows, but as soon as the words leave him he feels himself forced violently back, propelled from his sheets and right into the air. His heart races - his bed's so close to the wall, he's gonna hit and there's no time to twist, nothing to grab, nothing to stop him and it's too fucking late to -

Jason's body flies through the bamboo with a mighty crack and is caught by the ground, coming to rest a dozen yards away with great rivets of earth in his wake.

There's a million things he should be doing. Lying there stunned feels like the best start.

[ooc: open to all in game, posted privately for preplay~ Jason just blew out the side of his hut, still in the boxers and tank top he went to bed in. His power is the sonic scream.]

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[backward]

Somewhere in the distance, Effy Stonem listens, eyes wide and unseeing. The world isn't often a safe place, but this place has been, a patch of forest by Jason's hut, where the wind blows through reeds with a soft kiss and nightfall drapes everyone with its heavy blanket. Today, it all threatens to fall apart, the earth moving beneath her feet, the grass hissing in angry whispers, and it's only the resolve of a girl who can't lose anything more that helps her tear through the shadows just in time to watch Jason fly through the sky with a yell that seems to resonate right through her chest, leaving her unable to breathe. Or maybe it's the sight of him on the ground, maybe it's the impact, maybe, a million maybes and none of them can even start to describe the sights and sounds that immediately pass through her memory.

(Tony. Tony.)

She screams, and the world seems to light on fire, bright around her eyes as she runs— only for a second, and then everything's bathed in the faint light of a rising sun once more— dodging cracks in the earth before she skids to a stop by his side, kneeling. No words, for how hard it still is to catch her breath at all, just a hand on his shoulder, willing him to look her way.

[prodigaljaybird]

There are hands on him, and Jason moves before his eyes will open, cursing the sluggishness that came with the shock of impact. His fingers close around a wrist too slight to feel dangerous - Lux, he thinks, always her, always first - and blinks into the sun haloing a dark head of hair.

"Effy," he exhales, struggling up to scan the area. "Get - " Fuck, where are they? Is his attacker invisible? Who the fuck can even do that here? His back aches, shoulders scraped raw and aching but forgotten when the ground seems to quiver beneath his feet. "Get behind me."

[backward]

He's awake. He breathes, and the sound of it is wet, far from smooth in the way that Effy's always known Jason to be, every last action of his taken with the kind of purpose that Effy's never known. It's different, to act for a cause, or to act for its own sake, but maybe Effy can feel a flicker of the desire to when her hand closes more tightly around his shoulder, her head shaking, hair falling out of place. "No," she protests, afraid suddenly. Being behind someone is no different than being left, abandoned— at least, such has always been true in Effy's life. She can't.

It can't happen again.

"No," she insists, eyes grazing over the red of his shoulder and quickly staring, fearfully, over her shoulder. She'd rather stay. "No, Jason, you're hurt."

[prodigaljaybird]

"It's nothing," he says and laughs, his nerves scraped too raw to hold it in, the hilarity that anything could hurt him after all he's been through. So someone shoved him down, so fucking what? It won't happen again.

"Coward," he barks, moving until she's behind him no matter what she says. She won't be the first stubborn girl beneath his wing. "C'mon," he says, and his face lights up with fury and triumph when the ground beneath him again begins to shake. "Come on!" He aims his shout at the shifting dirt and doesn't yelp when he flies straight up this time, teeth clenched tight and eyes narrowed until the force desists, letting him fall back to the earth. More in control this time, Jason rolls.

[backward]

It's instinct that has Effy grabbing at the dirt, the tiniest of voices in her chest bursting into the air with a shriek that still dies in her throat as her fingers dig into the earth. Something catches hold, and she's anchored, watching helplessly as Jason flies into the sky— away, she believes that he could fly away if he wanted, and it stupidly catches around her heart like a vice, seems to stop it right in her chest. Tightly shutting her eyes, Effy curls into the ground, shaking her head, willing the world to stop turning underneath her feet. She can't keep up. Her arms feel heavy, leaden.

Dizzy and light-headed, she chances a glance down at her hands, where they curve protectively around her knees, only to find that they've turned to stone.

"Oh," she breathes. "It's a dream."

[prodigaljaybird]

Letting the momentum carry him back to his feet, Jason runs, zigzagging just in case, but already his thoughts suggest he needn't bother. A force powerful enough to punch him right off the ground should leave a mark, bruises, even broken ribs, yet all the pain he feels is in his back and shoulders.

It only happens when he shouts...

"Effy," he says, his focus bent on speaking softly, and drops to his knees at her side. Her hands are gray, stone. He reaches for one, finding it unyielding. "It's me," he whispers, it's him throwing his own body around each time he's frightened, and now she's protecting herself in the most instinctive way possible. "Can you control it?"

[backward]

He's returned. Again. It's as much of a curse as it is a blessing, Effy's gaze quickly glancing over him for signs of injuries, for any sign of the darkness that comes right after a light is extinguished— the kind that she saw in Tony those years ago, eyes waking up dull, scared, and confused. It doesn't come, fortunately. Even if this is a dream, Effy doesn't think that she'd be able to handle it well, seeing Jason like that. She's hardly able to forget with Tony, most days. Blankly, she stares down at her hands, at the gray that creeps up her skin, cold.

"What do you mean," she breathes, brows pinching together, "what do you mean, control it? It's a dream. It's not real. This whole island... we can't stay here. Because it's not how things are supposed to be."

[prodigaljaybird]

"Place doesn't care how things are supposed to be," Jason replies, "just what it wants us to do. Effy, focus." He waits for her to meet his eyes. "I think it's me, it's my voice, it's pushing me."

His fingers slide around her wrist. "This is you. You're stone, you're protecting yourself. Can you make it stop?"

[backward]

Air shudders through her lungs and her shoulders hunch, still feeling a thrum of energy in the air. Is it him? Effy thinks that it'd make sense for all of that to him, her eyes darting to where the earth has practically opened up under their feet. Such power, commanding, the only surprise being that she's not sure if Jason has so much control over it after all. If he did, he wouldn't hurt himself. It laces her blue eyes with concern, clouded as she stares back at him, lips parting for too long without words, the back of her throat growing parched.

Legs still free, however fragile, Effy does her best to find her balance and stand on her feet. "You could do anything," the realization slips from her tongue, a spark of admiration in her eye. "I..."

Glancing down at her arms, they itch, crackling down the side along the sand of the stone, until blood rushes through again, warm and alive. "Do you think I could try?" she asks, quiet, raising her hand for both of them to see, same as it was before. "To be powerful."

[prodigaljaybird]

Jason grins at her, shudders through his next breath and feels the potential of what he could do rolling through his veins. "You're already powerful," he says, twisting his head away to bark a scream at the closest patch of earth just to watch it erupt.

"People listen to you, that doesn't happen to everybody. Be careful, Effy." It's a rare sentiment from Jason, but he's never been this strong before, not even after he brought Crime Alley to its filthy knees. "We could break anything we wanted to today."

[backward]

"You're wonderful."

The words don't carry enough weight to cover the entirety of what Effy wants to say, but it's better this way. Light, quick, everything about Jason boils down to this, beautiful in its simplicity. Her eyes slide to a close as she feels the scream passing through her, lingering in her chest with all the weight of a promise. That anything which might hurt them, anything that even dares try, will only end up tumbling down in the end, dust between their fingers, ashes at their feet. She smiles, and it isn't the distant smile of a girl overwhelmed any longer, but instead a girl who dares leap forward.

Her hand grazes against his arm (he's not hers, he's his very own), coaxing. "Where do we start?" she asks, even as flames begin to lick at her shoulders, her eyes darting to the side and watching as they reach towards the sky.

[prodigaljaybird]

Jason watches the fire creep over her skin like it belongs there, skims his fingers through it just to feel the heat, and smiles. "I'd've given anything for this back home," he murmurs, for a moment consumed with wild possibilities from long ago. Bruce would have listened to him then, harder, sooner, even if Jason found a way to get his attention in the end.

"I think," he says, exhaling against the earth to start a tremor. "I think you start with your wall."

[backward]

Watching his fingers brush through the flames, Effy's smile widens, almost proud. She twirls when the ground quakes underneath their feet with a light laugh under her breath, the type that used to be so normal for her. It's freeing. Intoxicating to be around him like this, happy, in a way that she knows he wasn't while with her in the cave; she doesn't remember too much of that time anymore, but she remembers the soft gaze of a man concerned. Now, it's all reckless abandon.

"We're not going home," she reminds him, and the flame falters for half a second. "Not anytime soon. Couldn't bear it if you left, not now." Gaze skimming against the ground, she stares in the direction of the caves, fear trickling against her chest.

"Isn't that cheating death, Jason? Burning it down."