(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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[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."