prodigaljaybird | (no subject)

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batpocalypse

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It's strange to be outside again after so long spent indoors; first the endless dark of Rapture, and then the shuttered quiet of his own bedroom. He's seen the sunlight in bits and snatches, trickles through the slatted walls of the hut and shining through the door, but no more than that.

It feels good. Warm on his face when Jason tips it skyward, comforting. It feels good to know that in spite of the whole world ending, the sun and sky, the trees, the island is still here.

And going on as normal, if the sounds that greet Jason as he shuffles down the boardwalk are any indication. That feels good, too, and Jason feels better for every step he takes. In many ways, he feels like he's been ill, like it was a fever that's kept him indoors and not his own insurmountable dread. He feels raw and worn out, too hollow, but under the sun again...Bucky was right. He feels better.

He has no aim for where he's walking. There are faces he wants to see, but even now, he's afraid to seek them out. What will they say to him, what have they heard, or worse, what if they didn't care to notice he was gone?

The familiar hurt turns in Jason's stomach, and he takes the path not to the Compound, but down to Robin's Gym. Outside of class, the place is like a graveyard, but the wooden structures are familiar and sunlit. As ever when he's here alone, Jason thinks of Tim, and he smiles a little. "Way to miss the fireworks, little brother."

[ooc: wide open to familiar faces~ find him at Robin's Gym or on the way there]

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Jason's dad. Zuko doesn't really know much about the guy, but he does know about having a...strained relationship with your father. For just a moment, he allows himself to think about the possibility, what would happen if Ozai came to the island. He knows it wouldn't be pretty.

"Captain Barnes said you were still around," he says. "I figured you needed some time, for some reason. That seems like a good one."

"I did," Billy answers, knowing he's luckier than most, even among the Young Avengers alone. So many lost parents, no wonder they'd all been driven to a different sort of life. "I have the best parents. But I kinda also have a second set of parents, if you believe in the whole...magic and reincarnated souls thing. So my birth dad's a robot."

Edited 2011-11-26 23:35 (UTC)

Lux nods, and slides her fingers into Jason's hair with a sigh. It all seems so final and she hates that, despite what Jason has told her. More than anything she wishes that there was some way for him to have something even close to what she'd ended up having with Baze, but in no way is Jason's life that simple.

"I don't think there's anything else you can do," she concedes, and kisses his dark hair. "If anybody's going to try to work things out, it needs to be him. He's the dad, here. It's not your fault he's a supremely shitty one."

Jason shakes his head, moving forward on the path now that she's caught up. Stupid as it is, he feels better for not staying in any one place too long. "We don't get along," he says, then, wetting his lips, adds, "He's Batman."

Jason huffs out a breath, too tired for anything as exhausting as bitterness. "He won't," he says, simply. "His real kid's here." Were he anyone else, he might pity Bruce for the handful of trouble he's just inherited. "Damian's not exactly a kid who shares."

"Yeah," Jason exhales, caught up for a moment in the honest wonder in her face. He's spent so long resenting the man, he'd forgotten what it's like to be where she is, where he used to be, lost to hero worship. The goddamn Batman.

"The real thing. We used to know each other."

"Yeah," says Jason. He's silent for a while after, quietly startling when he realizes his fingers are curled over the faded, pink line along his throat. "We fought at home. He's...he gave me this," he says, pulling his hand away. "Kind of like yours did."

"You knew him? I knew it, I knew you were Robin. You are, aren't you?" Coraline asked more in awe of him than Batman. Coraline was fan of Robin not Batman. "You're Robin, Jason, you're Robin. I might forgive you for leaving... might. So cool."

Jason barks out a startled laugh. "What the hell does that mean?" He gets the second set, he's been through a couple sets of his own, after all, but a robot?

Tortured to death. It's not the point she's making, but he can't help but think about it. A person can't die slowly and in pain without remembering, without a small part of themselves being trapped in that moment forever. She's showing him hers, and in a strange, sad way, Jason feels kinship there.

"Tell him," he says, "he'll listen to you. They both will." Batgirl, who can do what he can't, who can make the same furious point without burning a city down to do it. "Protect Damian." Whatever else the kid might be, he's the child of two people Jason loves in helpless, equal measure.

You're never out.

That's the first thing that Katniss thinks, and to her it's almost irrevocable proof that she will probably always be this way. Mistrustful. Paranoid. Violent. She's also a terrible liar, because the truth always shines through regardless, but telling Jason what she really thinks seems cruel.

Then again, lying would make her feel like one of those terrible syncophantic people that tried to tell her that she was safe, that everything would be okay. All lies, and very prominent ones as well, and Katniss could only remember hating them for it.

So, what to say?

"I'm glad," Katniss exhales, and then she looks down. "Jason, your hair--" cautiously, incredibly cautiously, she reaches out and touches the now-white strand. "...It's not important."

"What do you mean 'he's Batman'?" Grace asks, not following. Does he like to dress at Baman? Maybe Jason's father actually thinks he is Batman. She can't really imagine what it'd be like to have a father who's gone mad, but she can only imagine that id' be awful.

"I mean he's the Batman, Grace," says Jason. There are people on the island who react like they've heard of him, even when they're not from Jason's world, like somehow, Batman's legacy is so big it reaches other universes, in myth if not in reality. He'd thought she'd be one of them, but maybe not.

"We're from Gotham. He adopted me when I was eleven."

Jason looks down at her, mouth hanging stupidly open, and thinks to himself with a mental shake not to underestimate Coraline again. "I was," he says, "I was Robin, but I haven't been for a long time. Me and Batman don't get along anymore."

"What?" Jason asks, watching her eyes widen and narrow in turn, and thinks it must be something stupid, a leaf in his hair. He's not seen a mirror in days, hasn't bothered with shaving or combing his hair, content to stand beneath the water in the shower and nothing more.

"I haven't brushed it," he says, suddenly wondering if he should have, but it seemed so unimportant. He smiles a little. "Does it look dumb?"

Jason got an extra tight hug for that, her eyes mostly dry now that she was in awe of Jason. Pulling away Coraline looked up at Jason brightly, making a face at him.

"You don't stop being Robin. I mean, you can but you can't not really. You'll always be Robin, which is a good thing because Robin is the coolest thing ever. Much cooler than Batman." Coraline said honestly. "Does Batman get on with anyone though?"

She's never seen anything like it, white hair in a perfectly healthy young person. It looks like a ridiculous fashion choice spawned in the Capitol, where people have hair and skin and eyes of every color of the rainbow, all artifically made. Jason's not like that, though, which is exactly why the reasons behind this make her nervous.

"It's...white," Katniss mumbles, taking a strand and tugging it down to show him. "Not all of it. Just a little bit."

What the hell happened to him?

"I've tried. I'm trying." For a moment, it breaks and all that exhaustion comes out. How hard it is to be the voice of reason and put aside all her past shit to deal with Bruce on a daily basis. Weathering Damian's crisis. She is being worn down to her peppy, optimistic bones, and it's only been a few days.

It only lasts for a moment though, and then she's offering Jason a humorless smile. "You vastly overestimate how much either of them will listen to anyone, especially me." Her expression sobers. "I won't let what happened to us happen to Damian. And I'm not doing it his way, I'll do it our way, which involves way less bullshit."

Now, she looks at him and smiles slightly, and this manages to have a bit of good cheer. A comfortable sense of conspiracy. Children never get along so well unless united by common cause. "So if you see him in danger of being attacked by plush clowns again, I rely on you to step in and save him. Keep up our respective ends."

"Right?" Master Pandemonium had told them the story, and as much as Billy believes it, he still has trouble with some aspects of it. "My mom was a much more powerful witch than I am, and she was in love with another Avenger called the Vision, who was a robot. She really wanted kids, but since they obviously couldn't have any, she kinda...created me and my twin brother."

Out of shards of a demon's soul, but Billy isn't really keen on admitting that part.

Aware of how ridiculous he sounds, Billy holds up a hand, three fingers in the air. "Scout's honor, that's the truth. At least, that's the story I was told, and I believe it."

Eyes rolled so high they're practically crossed, Jason still can't see it, but he trusts her. White, his hair's gone white. No wonder Bucky knocked him the hell out to drag him topside.

"That's a new one," he murmurs, touching what he can't see. "Do you remember the day we met? When I got here, and you sewed me up?" Releasing the scar on his head, Jason reaches for the one at his throat instead. "The person who gave me this showed up in Rapture. That's why I was hiding. I didn't know what to do." Jason swallows. "I still don't."

She remembers. It's not something that Katniss will easily forget, all of that blood slick underneath her fingers. Shaky stitches that she was sure wouldn't hold. The flash of needle and thread. Her hands had been shaking. All these little details form in her mind as the calloused pad of her thumb brushes against his scar. They've both got them in spades.

And suddenly, a sick sort of anger dawns on her. A rage that used to be familiar but was something she thought had faded in time. The person who had inflicted that cut on Jason had made it deep. Probably deep enough to kill. Her expression darkens, brows pulling together in order to try and retain some semblance of normalcy in her face.

"Who? Who is it?"

She killed four children once upon a time, because she loved her sister. And as much as she hates herself for it, Katniss knows she'd do more. Loyalties are not easily made, but when they are she never lets them become tarnished.

It's one of the only things Katniss can stand about herself, actually.

Jason bursts out laughing. "Point," he says when he has his breath, wrung out from it but pleasantly so this time. Bucky was right, it's good for him to be out and among people again. "He doesn't, really." Just Alfred. "My name at home was the Red Hood. Call me that if you want, I don't think he'd be too thrilled with you calling me Robin."

"Katniss." Jason lifts his hand, fingers wrapping in a loose circle around her wrist. He wonders if she even knows she's made a fist. "You can't touch him. I planned and trained and prepared for a year, and I couldn't beat him. I think he..."

Bucky'd told Bruce to stay away, but how long would that hold? Jason doesn't know, and he can't wonder anymore, not without going as mad as they all say he is. "I don't think he wants to hurt me now. And even if you could hurt him..." Jason drops his gaze. "He's my dad."

You can't touch him.

How familiar. Where has she heard that before? It's been branded into all of their minds: don't fight, don't make any noise or think about anything that the Capitol doesn't approve of because there's nothing you can do about it. And for the first 16 years of her life, she was okay with accepting that fact.

It's only when the people around her were being threatened that Katniss had acted. She doesn't have any huge ideals or moral notions, couldn't care about the world at large - she just had this urge to protect the few that she holds to her chest.

So when he tells her that it's his father that rage translates into shaking, because her father might be dead but he'd never laid a hand on her. Because Peeta's mother used to hit him all the time, he used to show up with bruises on his cheeks and half-hearted excuses about how he ran into doors. Because adults always, always managed to hurt children and she's sick of it.

"I hate him," she hisses, trying to calm herself down. "He hurt you. I hate him."

"Wow," Grace replies, and while she's certain that it's rude of her to frown as she is at his confession, the expression comes to her face without her meaning it to. Of course she's heard of Batman, even if she isn't a reader of comic books at all. It'd be impossible to not hear of him.

But in truth, despite Jason's obvious displeasure with this most recent turn of events, Grace can't help but think that there's an element of it that's not altogether awful. At least, from an outside perspective.

"Would you hate me if I say that's actually kind of cool?" she adds, with a tentative smile.

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