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[prodigaljaybird]

Jason's tired.

It's been a while since he saw a cape on his tail, but that doesn't mean they're not there. It just means they're getting better, which is so much worse, and if he thinks about it any harder he might actually explode.

"Fucking...birds," he says, drained enough that even that takes an effort. He's secured the perimeter around Lux's treehouse, but who knows how long that will hold. Steph is probably still out there somewhere, and Damian definitely is. He's probably scowling at them from a safe distance even now, biding his time, waiting for Jason's guard to drop before winging closer, and Jason can't - he can't take much more of this.

"Are you sure?" he asks, sprawled on the bed and twisting his head towards Lux. "It'd only be a few explosives. I could rig this place and only the people we don't want creeping in would know about it."

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[prodigaljaybird]

"He doesn't have any right to watch you," huffs Jason, lying back again with an explosive sigh. "Not me, either, I haven't done anything here, and they won't listen. And now she's in all my fucking classes, and trying to pal around with Bucky, and it's bullshit."

"They don't get to act like this here." I haven't earned it, I'm not crazy. "It's not how things are anymore."

[illuxinated]

When it clicks, Lux is a little annoyed with herself for not having clued in earlier. Kids like the two of them, they don't get much that's genuinely theirs, and when someone wants to share those things or somehow dimish them, it hurts more than just about anything, regardless of intent. It's terrifying in a way that calls your self-worth into question, that makes you wonder if maybe you really are just something to cast aside.

Last Christmas, she'd literally run crying from Baze's hut because he'd invited Kate and Sam over that morning. Stephanie's getting along with Bucky now. Lux gets it.

"Listen," she quietly says, and pushes herself up so that she can swing a leg across Jason's hips and move to straddle him. She wants him looking at her now, not caught up in his head. "It sucks, and it isn't fair. They don't know you like I know you, or like Grace or Bucky or anyone else here knows you. So let 'em watch. If they think they're going to find something bad here, they're wrong." She reaches to brush the hair from his brow. "And you have me. No matter what."

[prodigaljaybird]

They'd been hard, those first few weeks here. Given everything else he'd had to adjust to, what'd he lost, living without his mask shouldn't have been the hardest, but it was, and even so, Jason never feels so naked without it as when he's looking at Lux, his every thought, feeling, emotion plain on his face. He reaches, covering her hand with his own.

He can't lose her. He can't lose any of it, not his friends, his life here, not Bucky, but Lux...if he loses her, he really will go crazy. "I shot him," he blurts, shuddering under a sudden wave of terror. The moments when he wonders if he doesn't deserve their hatred come too frequently, and he's not even sure that this terror is his own, if it doesn't belong to Damian, trying to stand down Jason and his gun. "They both said so, in my future, when I was...I don't know what I was. Gone. Too far gone. But I wouldn't." His fingers tighten just enough to hold on, and Jason swallows down a wave of bile, tries to remember that it must be better coming from him than Damian. "I don't want to do that, I don't ever want to do that. You believe me, right? That's the me you know."

[illuxinated]

"Yeah, yes," Lux hastily replies, startled by Jason's sudden exclamation. She falters, mouth working as her mind hurries to pin it all in place, but the shocked expression on her face is tempered by concern.

"That wasn't you," she finally insists, and pulls Jason's hand up so that she can brush a kiss to the back of his knuckles. "I know you wouldn't do that here, Jason. You're not that person. They just need some time to see it."

[prodigaljaybird]

"I don't care if they see it," Jason murmurs. He doesn't mean it, not really, but for the moment he just wants some peace, longs for the refuge Lux has just freely offered him.

He sits up, pressing his face to the crook of her throat. "Thank you. I know it's all so - " He gives a wearied sigh. "Fucked up. And they just keep coming." Pulling back, he smooths the pale hair from her face. "Why is it never Tim?"

[illuxinated]

"I don't know, babe," Lux replies, and echoes Jason's sigh as she rests a hand against the back of his neck. "You're going to be okay, though. You've been through so much worse and come out the other side. We'll figure it out together, right?" As far as Lux can tell, that's the only viable option other than becoming angry and embittered all the time.

[prodigaljaybird]

"Yeah," Jason exhales, trying to relax through the itch of something, unease, irritation, fear, running through of him. "Lux," he says, pulling back, "I've been making a place. A little cave deep in Rapture. I think it's...smart. Just in case."

Jason's face is grim when he looks up at her. "If Batman comes. Just in case."

[illuxinated]

Jason's so incredibly earnest, but for a moment all Lux can do is stare back at him, expression slack. "You what?"

As a rule, she really tries to be sympathetic to the way Jason thinks and the reasons he does all of the strange things he does. But she genuinely cannot fathom why he would ever think living down in Rapture would be the better alternative to seeing Bruce. It scares her a little that this isn't just a notion, but something already done.

[prodigaljaybird]

"Not forever," says Jason, misreading her distress. "Just until he - " Jason waves his hand. "Figures it out. That this place isn't Gotham, and he can't do whatever the fuck he wants, not to me or anybody else he thinks shoots children."

Falling silent with a stuttered breath, Jason rubs his fingers over the scar on his throat, a year healed and still red. "The last time I saw him, I got this. I asked him to kill the Joker, and he cut me instead. He hates me, Lux. The Joker's filled fucking graveyards full of people he cares about, and he'd rather put me down."

[illuxinated]

She'd wondered, of course, about the pale line of scar tissue across his throat. They had a pact, though, unspoken but no less crucial for it; they didn't ask about the past, not without an invitation. Lux has secrets of her own, things she hopes Jason never learns, and she respects his need for secrecy in turn. But this she couldn't have fathomed.

"I don't—" she begins, the words pinched off as her face crumples a bit; distressed, angry and fiercely implacable. Hearing things from Jason's side all this time, she'd never liked Bruce, but now she hates him.

"Will you tell me, at least?" she quietly asks, and brushes away a tear before it can fall. If he's suddenly gone, how is she supposed to know the reason?

[prodigaljaybird]

"Of course I will," Jason murmurs through a throat gone tight. Watching a girl like Lux cry only leaves a guy two options - rage against whatever's made her unhappy, or cry, too, and he squeezes his eyes closed, pressing a gentle kiss along her collarbone.

"I'll figure it out. No matter what, Bucky won't let anything happen to anybody, okay? If you're scared, you go to him."