prodigaljaybird | (no subject)

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bucky

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Jason's lungs feel like they're trying to turn inside out.

He takes a rattling breath through his teeth, gives up and curls his lip, lets the air blossom full and sweet in his lungs. It serves to stay the faint buzzing between his ears, but he's still dizzy, frustration and rage and a hurt he's too keyed up to realize is childish warring in his head and heart.

Fucking Batgirl. Fucking Robin. It's bad enough that Tim is gone and they're on the island instead, creeping in his periphery far more often than his temper can endure, and now she's in his class? Both of them, with Bucky? Jason could have pulled the parallel bars down with his bare hands this morning. He settled for oneupping her in every exercise he could, and in cardio, running harder, faster, better, pushing himself to the point of exhaustion and then harder still.

He can't tell if she's impressed or not. He doesn't care, and it doesn't mean a damn thing that he keeps looking at her, that he can't hold any expression on his face that isn't a sneer or snarl. She can't touch him in class, not in combat or in quality, and if she thinks she can come in just to spy on him, to see if he's 'doing anything she has to stop,' she's fucking wrong.

Fury renewed, Jason unfurls his hands and takes a step over the sand, eyes on Steph where she's detached from the rest of the dispersing students.

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There's absolutely nothing gentle about the way Bucky reaches for Jason's shoulder, intent on stopping the kid in his tracks before he gets any closer to the girl. Though Bucky takes care to give everyone in the class equal attention, today marked a fairly drastic exception, his focus split between the new girl and Jason all morning, even if Jason's stolen all of it, now, his objective reading more than clear in his body language.

"You. Me. Now."

Jason's not afraid of dying again. It's not bravado, it's just the truth, and maybe he courts death with his actions at times, but he doesn't want it. Even at his wildest, there's a small, quiet part of him still concerned with self-preservation, and it ought to be sounding off now, given the look on Bucky's face. It should, but it isn't.

"Why?" Jason barks. "I did good in class." He fucking did, he was perfect, better than, even. Better than Batgirl, that's for damn sure.

Bucky smiles, but there's no mistaking it for friendly. It's the type of grin he uses in fights, the challenge reading clear across his features, the spark of anger lingering behind his eyes. His patience has already been tested for the day, and the kid's playing jump rope with his one last nerve; they've never come to blows, never in earnest, never when Bucky's been in his right mind, but with the attitude pouring off Jason by the bucketful, all bets are off. Because at the end of the day, Bucky's not Steve Rogers.

"You really wanna play games with me, kid?" he asks, just loud enough for Jason to hear and no one else, getting right into his space. "Or do you just think I have moron stamped across my forehead?"

Jason's not insane, he can read the look on Bucky's face plain as anything, but he's spent a day acting like he was Superman, and against all reason, he's not done. "No," he growls back, "what are you even talking about?"

Bucky might be in his face, but Jason's world has narrowed into two distinct points, and the new little brother and sister are hard to see past. They're the ones who are dicking everything up, not Jason. "Why are you in my face?"

"The girl," Bucky explains, the only allowance he'll make, and without tearing his gaze from Jason's, he jerks his chin in Stephanie's general direction. "Talk."

"You mean Batgirl?" Jason retorts, switching tack with dizzying speed. He doesn't know why Bucky let her in this class, his class. He could believe that Bucky didn't know who she was, but Bucky knows everything, and that hurts, too. And maybe this is a keep your enemies closer thing, but what if it isn't? What if everyone wants to breathe down his neck, Bucky included? He's rapidly approaching the last damn thing Jason has left.

"Why'd you let her in? She's weeks too late. She - sucks."

She was a bit rough around the edges, Bucky'll admit to that, but this isn't the ITF, so that's acceptable; the only people he doesn't make a habit of accepting are the kids who physically can't handle it, and this Stephanie Brown doesn't qualify for the automatic reject pile. Her performance was perfectly acceptable.

"No, see, this isn't how this works," Bucky replies with the ghost of a laugh, shaking his head, once. "I don't have to explain myself. I'm in charge! This is my show to run. You, on the other hand..." Another smile. "Tell me what the hell your problem is before I decide to get creative."

"She's one of his," Jason snarls, suddenly, idiotically reckless with it. His fingers finds the scar at his throat and press down hard, but if they're meant to stay the flow bleeding out of him, they do a piss poor job.

"Said I had to prove myself to her, and it's bullshit. They're so fucking stupid, clinging to him like - like he knows anything. Like he's somebody to follow." There's a moment when Jason realizes he doesn't know what he's mad about anymore, but he recalls one thing. "I'm not wrong!"

He needs more context to piece it together; a lot of Jason's world is still a mystery to him, the major players mostly unknown save for the few names that've cropped up more than once. The smile fades, slightly, from Bucky's face, as he watches Jason fall apart in front of him.

"Batman," he surmises, not a question, but close enough.

In a fucked up, stupid way that Jason resents to the very depths of his teenaged soul, it hurts to hear, but his nod is short and sharp. "Batman," he says, but he's..."Bruce. He's just a guy. They act like he's a god, but he's just a man." He's been more than that to Jason, but that's not the point. The myth doesn't excuse all the desperate, human things Bruce has done, and if anyone thinks otherwise then they're buying in way too hard.

"He's the one who's wrong. Not me."

Bucky sighs, hands falling to his hips. His mind's racing trying to keep up with the torrent of information coming at him, trying to piece it together in ways that make sense, but the kid's talking a mile a minute about things that might as well be in code for how cryptic he's being.

"Wrong about what, Jason?"

"About me." It's strange, how he wants to set fire to everything he looks at in one moment, how completely he wants to disappear in the next. "I'm not the fuck up. She thinks I'm crazy."

What's worse is that he might be, that this Jason, the one on the island right here, right now, might be someone else at home. A guy who'd hurt children. He shudders. "I think," he says, swallowing, "that's what he tells them. That I was just a bad seed." He'd tried so fucking hard, and somehow, this scar on his throat is the sum total of what he deserved.

He's a good kid. Misguided, at times, and in definite need of looking after, but when it all boils down, he's a good kid who's been thrown into a tangled mess of a world without adequate means of getting himself out. For all that Bucky sees a lot of himself in Jason, however, in this, he's at a loss, because at the end of the day, Steve had always been there for him, both as his brother and his defense against the rest of the world, Bucky himself included.

Jason didn't have that.

"Then you're right," says Bucky, eyes flicking back upwards. "He was wrong."

Jason stares at him until he can't, until the sweat drips down and stings his eyes. He rubs it away before it can be replaced by a deeper ache, his gaze off Bucky and towards Stephanie where she lingers at the edge of the gathering.

"They're watching me. Her and the little one, the new Robin. I don't know what they expect to happen." And Jason honestly doesn't. There's no crime to fight here, no Joker or Two Face or Riddler, no Batman. There's nothing to rail against but the remnants of home the island keeps sending him, and sometimes Jason doesn't even want to do that. He just wants to move along. It's all he knows how to do.

"You to prove them right," Bucky says simply, following Jason's eye line, and frowning. For all that the days here tend to bleed into each other, it's remarkable how quickly some things can change.

"You want my advice?"

I don't need to prove anything to them, Jason thinks fiercely. He still cares about his family, still belongs to it no matter what they say, but when it comes to their moral high ground they can all go fuck themselves.

Still, he wants to know what Bucky thinks, oftentimes more than Bucky would clearly prefer. That's not going to change. "Yes."

"Don't."

If they're expecting Jason to go off the deep end, it stands to reason, then, that the best thing Jason could do is to keep on the straight and narrow. To continue living his life the way he has for months. Eventually, his two new stalkers will find themselves bored. Or, ideally, experiencing a change of heart.

Jason swallows and looks away, waits out the sudden urge to throw a punch, maybe not at Bucky, but at something. The muted crunch of bone is grounding, the same way every bomb Jason ever wired was grounding, and he hasn't pursued either in a while. Is that what they mean? Is every dark impulse that consumes him going to be a failure in their eyes? In Bucky's?

"Do you think I'm gonna do something?"

He doesn't answer right away. Deception comes easily to Bucky, even when everyone knows he's lying, but he wants to give the kid a straight answer, and not just the one that'll make him feel better for a few seconds.

Finally, he says, "Not if you don't have cause."

Jason exhales a breath so stale he must've been holding it this whole time, his expression tight when he looks back at Bucky, though not in a bad way. It's such a relief to hear it's either cry or jump on him, but as Bucky's not really one for hugging, Jason settles for a light shove to his shoulder. "Thanks," he says. Bucky might be the only one who believes in him, but that's enough.

Bucky arches an eyebrow.

"You do fall off the deep end, though, those kids aren't the ones you'll have to worry about," he replies, and though there's a slight wryness to his tone, there's truth to what he's saying. Jason's more or less been his responsibility since the kid fell from the sky a year ago, for better or for worse. "Just so we're clear."

Jason should probably be more unnerved by that, but with Bucky he's learned to take it as a matter of course. "Better you than any of them," he says, watching Stephanie at last begin to drift away.

"Only one that really fucks me up is him, anyway," he admits in a quieter voice. "And the Joker. But you said you'd kill him." Jason looks at him, harder than he means to, the conversation taking a turn he'd not meant to steer it, but now that he's here he can't stop. "Do you still mean that?"

He's worn a lot of hats over the years, but even when he was a soldier, he was the one they sent in to do the real dirty work. Neutralizing threats before they have a chance to act used to be his job, and though the circumstances of the island are different, though they are not in the middle of a war zone, though the shield sitting in his room would have him take a less lethal stance, the Joker wouldn't walk on these shores for long.

Bucky holds Jason's gaze. "I do."

Jason's a child of his world, the thoughts that should frighten him a comfort, the promises that should be sinister reassuring instead. He grins and shakes the last of his ire from his shoulders.

"Then it'll be okay. I'll leave'em alone, long as they leave me alone."

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