Jason Todd

It's been nearly a week, and all Jason can say for the passage of time is that his hand isn't quite as swollen anymore.

It's still swollen enough, though, to prevent him doing just about everything he enjoys. He can't grapple gun his way through the trees, can't do most of what they practice in gymnastics (though he will, by god, and sooner than anyone thinks he should), he can't swim in Bucky's class, can't...enjoy the attentions of his girlfriend with quite the same enthusiasm. At least he can drive his fucking go-kart now that his knee's no longer the size of a bowling ball.

His life, while much improved from the endless minutes he'd spent underground, kind of sucks, a pale comparison to what he wants it to be, and when he reaches for the Compound door for the billionth time with the wrong hand, he very nearly breaks the other one punching it. With a huff, Jason settles down on the bottom step, face set in grim determination not to show how much that punch had fucking hurt.

Sometimes, Jason thinks he feels too much.

He doesn't notice it often, but sometimes, he'll feel eyes on him. Gazes lingering too long after an outburst, mouths hanging open when it's Jason who's done the shouting. He feels too much, and he can't help it. Not even when he's asleep.

Nightmares are old hat. He had them before Bruce, before the desert and the Joker and his crowbar. He had them before he was propelled into a Soviet bunker to be stabbed to death by his best friend, and before he ever went back to Gotham and saw his memorial case. He's had them for so long that to sleep a night through is the exception, so Jason doesn't know why they're getting to him so much of late, why they're getting worse.

He's done so much in his life that others want him to apologize for, things that Jason knows in his bones were necessary and right. He's stubbornly fought every accusation of wrongdoing ever made to him, and so, it's with surprise that he finally comes to recognize the weight pressing down on him, interrupting his dreams, is guilt.

Jason wakes up in the dead of night. The hut is silent but for the breeze pressing in against it, and Jason is just as silent as he sits up, puts his bare feet to the floor and stands. He doesn't pull on more than a shirt to go with the shorts he'd gone to bed in, and when Jason slips out the door, he's foregone shoes, too.

It's a few miles to Lux's treehouse, but Jason walks.

It's not until he finally reaches it that he curses not bringing a gauntlet, but with or without his tools, Jason's still a skilled gymnast. He makes it through her window with ease, quietly calling almost instantly, "Lux?"

Jason doesn't remember the first six months following his resurrection. He has pieces, fragments with edges too smooth to catch onto, snatches of cold and endless hunger, before everything tipped into warmth. He remembers Talia in brief, kind touches, fingers on his shoulders, his cheek. Knows that he fought a little, when the al Ghul's first took him in, but knows they never actually hurt him.

Not until the Lazarus Pit.

They'd washed him in fire and water, sent his consciousness screaming back whole and raging and thrust him into the night, naked as a jaybird and twice as terrified.

He hadn't been angry. He still isn't, not at them, hadn't remembered to be angry until he read the paper and discovered just what Talia meant when she told him, You remain unavenged. Clear as newsprint, black and white, the Joker alive and unpunished, and Bruce...Bruce abandoning Jason to his fate. Unavenged, unloved, unwanted.

He'd killed two people before he came back to himself that night.

He doesn't feel like killing anyone now. It's different, somehow, Bucky riding away from him and Bruce turning his back. It hurts the same, but it doesn't make him angry.

He's a messy crier, always has been, wet and loud and shaking all over, and Jason's chest aches with the force of it, but by the time he realizes the truth, by the time he realizes Bucky's not coming back, he's already exhausted, tears cutting jagged lines down red cheeks, spilling over a jaw he can't seem to steel no matter how he tries.

Jason makes it to Tim's porch in relative silence, not even breathing when he sits down. There are a couple places he could've gone. To Lux. To Katniss. To Boyd, even, but he doesn't want them to see him cry.

Tim's already seen the worst of him, and Jason rests his head against the porch support, pushes a tired hand over his eyes and doesn't open them.

The sobs, when they return, are quiet.