"Jason?" she asks, her soft voice turning to a cold vapour in the air between them. "Are you crying?"
The boy shakes his head no, his hair flopping against his face with each jerking motion. The boy sniffs miserably, scrubbing at his eyes with the rough and dirty end of his sleeve.
"N-no" the boy croaks, his high voice revealing the treacherous tears beginning to pour down his thin cheeks.
Catherine tuts affectionately. She opens her arms invitingly and Jason leaps at the chance to bury his face against her chest, wrapping his arms around her bony torso. Catherine returns the hug, gently petting his overgrown, unclean curls.
"Now son, why are you crying?" She wonders, using her spindly shaking fingers to tilt her son's head up to look imploringly into his watery blue eyes. Jason sniffs and blinks a few times before he tries to reply.
"I-I couldn't get any money. I'm sorry Momma! I tried! Really, I did! But nobody was buyin' tonight an' now you…" Catherine shushes the boy with a gentle hiss and a kiss to his sweaty forehead.
"It's okay, baby. S'not your fault. We can go without for a night, no sweat." She whispers, leaning her face against his head and speaking into his hair.
"But what a-about your medicine, momma?" Catherine winces at the question, her eyes drifting to meet the glaringly obvious needle marks marring the skin above and around her elbow. She quickly glances away to focus on the room around them.
The apartment was completely barren besides the two barely breathing bodies embracing on the floor and the disgusting discarded mattress Jason had stolen from the neighbour's skip. The floorboards were bare and rotten, stained with various bodily fluids that they had not had the equipment to properly remove. One stain in particular drew her attention – a large, deformed circle of blood where her son had once lay, beaten and broken and unable to stand.
Her dealer, Paul he said his name was, had burst into the room, a bruise swelling on his cheekbone. He said it was collection day, and Catherine had nothing to give him. Already furious from a previous fight with another client, Paul was a short fuse on a large bomb. 6ft 2" and built like a bulldozer, the man had towered over the waifish woman, and growled. "If you don't give me what I want, I'm gonna need to take something from you. Understand?" Half-high at the time, Catherine took half a second too long to nod in affirmation.
"Now, you're lucky, Cathy. I make it my business not to touch women. I got sisters, y'know? Gotta have principles in a fucked up city like this." He toldher, rolling up the sleeves of his bloody white shirt and cracking his knuckles.
"The kid though? I ain't got no problem tanning his hide a bit. That oughtta get it through to even your mixed-up clusterfuck of a junkie brain, Right Cathy?"
Jason raised his head from his library book he had been pretending to read to look up at the man he knew was talking about him.
When Catherine doesn't say anything, too scared to know the right answer, Paul pushes past her towards the boy, whom he grabs by the collar of his T-shirt.
"Up, pipsqueak." He barked, yanking the boy to his feet roughly. Jason, then not even seven yet, looks the man dead in the eyes, fear pricking at his own until it sprang forth tears.
Paul had thrown the boy like a rag doll at the wall, and Jason had screamed. Catherine couldn't keep up with the speed of the man's blows, couldn't register the screams and cries for help for the only person in the world she was sure loved her. All Catherine could do was stand paralysed, like her feet had been nailed to the floor and her whole body followed suit.
That stain was a reminder not to let that happen again.
"Momma?" Jason's voice derailed her train of thought, snapping her back like elastic into the real world.
Realising she hadn't answered his question, Catherine caught Jason's eyes again. "I'll just have to find another way to pay for it, sweetheart."
Jason was shivering in her arms, or maybe her arms were just shaking. At this point in time, both were entirely feasible. With the cold of the empty decaying squat they had settled in and the need for her fix rising with each passing minute, Catherine wasn't sure for how much longer she would be coherent enough to hold her little boy at all.
"What kind of thing could you do to pay them, momma? You're not talking about having S.E.X with them, are you? It's not worth it. And what about Dad?"
"No!" Catherine protested. Truth is, it'd only probably cost a blow job or two, but she was hardly going to explain what that is to her nine year old son. She may not be the best mother on the entire planet – but even she isn't that hopeless. "And never mind your dad! Ain't none of his business what I get up to. Hasn't been since he fucked off and left us."
Jason sighed, pressing his face into her chest again. "He ain't comin' back, is he?" the boy whined, like it pained him.
"No, son. Probably not."
Jason pulls back from the embrace to look at her miserably. "So, what are you gonna do?"
Catherine pursed her lips, thinking for a moment. Then it hit her like the lamp Willis once threw at her for telling him how to raise 'his son'.
"Jason? Remember how I told you I used to be the singer in a band?"
Jason nods. "Yeah, and you said you had to break up because the drummer died and you didn't have enough money to keep it going. Why?"
"Well, I could always start singing again."
Jason looks at her sceptically. "I don't think you'd be able to come up with songs to play or get somewhere to play them on time, mom."
Catherine rolls her eyes. "I could busk anywhere I wanted. I know enough songs to get by."
Jason laughed at her. "There ain't no money in that! All ya get is some stingy bastard's spare change. Not to mention, without the guitar, you can't play the back track."
Catherine gently pokes her son in the ribs. "Why, what happened to the guitar?" All of the laughter drains from Jason's face suddenly, and he looks quite pale when he answers: "You sold it down in the pawn shop last month, mom."
Catherine doesn't remember that, but it doesn't seem unlikely either, so she shrugs in acceptance. "Yeah, well, that's not the point. I could borrow somebody else's guitar or buy it back."
Jason snorts. "Doubt it."
A smile creeps onto Catherine's thin face, her yellowed teeth on full display. A rare occurrence, these days. "Oh yeah, smart guy? How come?"
That cocky little smirk Jason used to have when he'd come home with the best test result in his class appeared on the boy's face. It was an expression sorely missed, since Jason had dropped out of school. His confidence had dropped with it, as Jason had struggled to find any particular talents of his own outside those in academia.
"Well, you can't buy it back from the pawn guys, since we don't have any money, which is why we need it in the first place, in case you forgot."
Catherine ruffles her son's hair roughly, making him squirm. "Uh huh, okay. Good point. But why couldn't I borrow it from a friend, eh?"
"Easy." Jason claims arrogantly. "You don't have any friends."
Catherine shakes her head in disagreement, stringy hair slapping across her face, smile in place still. "Nuh uh."
"Yeh huh!"
She continues to shake her head. "I got you, don't I?"
Jason takes a moment to digest her counter, looking thoughtfully up at the dampness-ridden ceiling.
"Well, yeah. But I don't count."
"And why's that, hun?"
"Because I'm your son, duh!" the boy interjects. "Besides, I don't got no guitar anyway."
"Good point." She agrees.
Catherine takes that moment as the perfect time to strike, wrapping her arms around her son's torso and flopping onto her back, dragging Jason with her, leaving him to lay on-top of her with his back pressed to her chest.
"You are too smart for your own good, you know that?" she tells him proudly, gently pressing on the end of his nose with her finger and making a "boop" noise as she does.
She can't see his face, but Catherine can tell he's blushing.
They giggle together for a while, gently wrestling and tickling each other into submission, but they soon quiet down and lay side by side on the floor, with Jason's head resting against her shoulder.
They lay in silence for several minutes, the only sound being that of their shallow breathing. It's Catherine that finally breaks it.
"Don't worry son. We'll think of something and it'll all be alright."
Jason sighs beside her, taking his mother's shaking hand into his own sweaty calloused palm. "I hope you're right." He whispers. "I really do."
AN: So I noticed there was an obscene lack of fics about Jason's childhood featuring Catherine, and decided to remedy that. This was originally going to be a one-shot, but I have had a request to continue, so if anyone else want's that, hit me up in a review or PM.
Please review. It feeds my starving ego.
and thanks for reading!