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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Zuko's eyes narrow slightly at that, assessing the scar. It's a wound that could have easily been fatal, if not dealt with an expert hand. Ozai wasn't trying to kill Zuko when he gave him the scar on his face, he was simply teaching him a lesson - but Zuko doesn't doubt he would have, if he'd thought it was necessary. Like on the Day of Black Sun.

"Why?" he asks, a simple enough question, but it carries a whole lot of meaning behind it.

That may be true of Damian, but Lux doesn't want to believe it's wholly true of Bruce, that childish idea of Batman still lingering in the back of her mind even after all this time. She wants to think that, if someone just helped him see things more clearly, he could be better, do better by the people who really depend on him, not just anonymous citizens who will never even know who he is.

"I'm sorry," she quietly offers despite this, because regardless of how things shake out, it shouldn't be this hard. It should never be this hard to feel valued by the people who are supposed to love you unconditionally.

You can't stop, she's right, you can't stop. Jason loves Bruce as much as he hates him, hates him perhaps because he loves him. Sometimes, when he's steady enough just to let himself feel, he can't tell the difference between them, love and hate the same passion, the same inability to stop caring and let him go.

Jason hides his crumpling face behind his hands, takes a steadying breath, and looks up again. "You can't fix it," he affirms. "It is what it is." And no one can stop it. "Effy," he says, levering himself down again, "Do you know what a Batman is?"

"I'm sorry," Jason murmurs, sick with it, but his hands are steady when he cups her face, trying to still the way it trembles with anger. She hates so much already, and for reasons that could withstand no argument. He's given her another thing to hate, but standing here, Jason finds himself unwilling to go it alone.

"I hate him, too," he says, and doesn't add that it's just as true that he loves Bruce, a war he lives with every day. "It'll be okay."

Jason knows all too well how hard it is, bending that iron will once Bruce has set it, but for some reason, he thinks she can do it. Stephanie's not like him; faced with the same road home, Jason picked a winding one, and Batgirl will again have to do what Jason can't. He can't convince Bruce of anything, but he'll be there for the fallout.

"I'll help," he promises. "Just you, just Damian. Nobody else."

"Wow," exhales Jason, but he expresses no disbelief. It's a wild story, crazier than anything he's yet seen on the island, but it's familiar. Their homeworlds feel more similar than ever.

"So I'm a zombie, and you're a spell," he grins. "That's pretty cool."

"Because," says Jason, wetting his lips to stay what wants to follow. Because he loves his principles more than me, because killing the Joker is somehow more dangerous than letting him live, because he's an asshole.

"Because I wanted him to kill the man who beat me to death. Because the Joker's a murderer, and I'm the first he's killed or maimed, and I won't be the last. Because I put one gun in my dad's hands and the other in my own, and I said that if he didn't shoot the Joker, I would. I said it was the Joker or me."

She's even prettier when she smiles, but Jason finds he can't look for long. He shakes his head. "I won't hate you," he says, all his energy for hatred stored up for someone else, but neither will he agree.

"We wouldn't be superheroes without some kind of crazy back story, would we?" He'd always thought having some sort of tragic life made the decision to become a superhero easy, and the more he'd learned of the other Young Avengers and the more he learns of others, Billy believes it's true.

Why would anyone constantly expose themselves to mortal peril if they weren't messed up some way?

Hatred is a familiar feeling. Indeed, it's a feeling, which is already a marked difference from the apathetic numbness of earlier. Katniss remembers her time in District 13 vividly now. She remembers how her hatred for President Snow, her insistence that she be the one to put a bullet in his brain kept her going. Kept her alive, and while perhaps not strong, functional at the very least. Hatred had been the one thing she'd had while Peeta was in the Capitol and even now she looks back on it as one of the only things she's ever had.

If Katniss could pick only one emotion to describe herself with, it would be hate. Because there isn't much more that she sees. But his hands cup her face, and eventually the calming gesture works. The shaking stops, but the fire in her voice doesn't go away.

"What if he hurts you again? I'm not going to lose anyone else."

Essentially, what she's saying is, I'd kill him for you, if I had to.

Silently, she raises both hands to her ears, pointing her index fingers upward in the shape of the cowl, brow sharply arched. She doesn't spend much time watching films, but she'd run off that summer, run to Italy, tried to live like girls her age were meant to. Flirted, danced, went to the theater, watched the same movies as everyone else. The last shred of normalcy she'd known, really.

"Yeah." And no matter how ridiculous it sounds, there isn't a shred of her doubt when she asks her question in turn. "He's your father?"

Her gaze shifts to the side, fleeting, buried in thought. "He's kind of fucked, isn't he?" The ring of a shot. The sound of a bus hitting— the sound— hollow. Subconsciously, her shoulders raise as she wraps her arms around herself. How do you fix that? How do you erase it? She tries for a smile, all for him, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes, too resigned to travel far. "Real wanker."

As Jason speaks, Zuko's eyes narrow even more, until he's just flat-out scowling. He knows, without a doubt, how Ozai would act in that situation. To let that person live? It's unthinkable.

"What?" he all but growls, because it's all he can manage to get out at first. "This Joker guy beat you to death and your father let him live? That - that doesn't make any sense. And it really doesn't make any sense that he - why would he do that? If someone did that to me and I was around to do something about it, it wouldn't be a question of whether or not my father would kill the guy. He'd expect him to die. By my hand."

"He can be not thrilled with me. You're Robin too," Coraline said, making a face at the idea of calling Jason anything but Jason or Robin. Even Dick was always Robin to Coraline. Nightwing was a stupid name. "Is Red Hood a bird too? I'm going to call you Jason unless you're wearing a costume. Do you have a costume? Is it as cool as Robin's?"

"I don't think he will," says Jason again, and won't fault her if she doesn't believe it this time, either. The world he came from, the world she grew up in, they're different from this place, but they just keep bleeding in. Fear, uncertainty, rage, they don't leave a person as easily as walking through a door into a tropical island. She can't let go of her dread anymore they he can; Jason's just better at hiding it.

"He doesn't want me to kill bad people, but there aren't any here," he says, passing his fingers through her hair. "None to stop. He won't see me as a threat until there are."

"Everyone's fucked in Gotham," says Jason without a hint of mirth. "You're rotten as soon as you're born inside those walls. He just - our family just - we fight it harder than most." He touches the scar on his head. "Get more fucked up because of it."

He pulls his hand away with a frown. "He adopted me when I was eleven. He's not my blood, but he feels like it."

Jason listens solemnly, the part of him that's not as beaten down as the boy he'd been in that warehouse taking comfort in Zuko's ire, his disbelief. "My dad doesn't believe in killing. He believes in stopping evil people, but no more. Never killing." Jason looks away, his mouth set in a grim line. "No matter what, not even if the world is safer with them dead."

"Okay, good," Grace replies, and breathes a small sigh of relief. The horrible thing about it though, is that if her own father had been on the island and someone had called him cool, she's not sure that she would have had the same reaction as Jason's.

"Sorry, it's just that we don't exactly have a Batman where I come from."

She doesn't add on the fact that he's just a character from films and comic books; she's not sure if anyone's told him about all that, and she doesn't want to be the first if that's the case.

"Maybe it's about time someone took it down," Effy suggests underneath her breath. She'd never be the one to press the button and send it all exploding, careening, falling to pieces and through their fingers. Having ruined lives before, she can't imagine ever doing so again, never willfully tugging at heartstrings until people threaten to fall apart from it all. And if it's home to him, well, then Effy expects Jason to be capable of it even less than she. But sometimes a statement needs to be said, a truth needs to be heard, for however difficult it may be to finally part ways, it's the start of letting go.

Her hand reaches out for a moment, but doesn't come quite close enough to touch it. The scar. (It's worse than any of hers. So much.)

"He's your blood," she adds, under her breath. "When you bleed for someone... here," Effy motions over his chest, "then they become blood. More important than who you're born to."

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