Kings of the Air
Introduction
Jason Todd
I pierce the tip of my finger with the pin of the badge. No blood is drawn, it just hangs lamely from the thin loop of skin. I tear it out, but feel no pain, so I repeat the process, tearing harder. Again, nothing. I try again, piercing deeper and pulling harder. I manage to draw blood, but I still feel no pain, just frustration. I keep going, tearing and tearing. I remember, sadly, that it's my birthday. I try to push the thought away, but it keeps coming. I'm fourteen today. Vividly, as if waiting for my acknowledgement, memories of past birthdays come flooding back. I remember my dad looking down at me with that stupid proud grin on his face. My mom scooping me up in her arms and spinning me around the room. Suddenly birthdays turn to Christmases, as they tend to do, and I'm building snowmen. Ice skating. Drinking hot chocolate and watching shitty television programmes. Pierce. Tear. I draw blood. I feel nothing. I remember red and blue lights and wailing sirens. I remember your father being carted off. Being shot for fighting back too hard. My mother crying. Pierce. My mother lying on the bathroom floor in a puddle of blood and cocaine. Tear. I close my eyes and try to push out the memories. No blood. My hair falls over my face, wet with sweat. I push it to the side and the blood on my hands smears across my forehead. Absolutely nothing.
The light bulb flickers, and the TV only plays static and I can't figure out how to turn it off. My vision is white around the edges and all I can smell is cheap motel sheets and sex. He'll be long gone by now. He underpaid me, bastard. Normally, I would have chased him down, since he treated you like he did and then not paid in full, but I started remembering things and I didn't notice him leave. Everything feels like it's spinning and I can't feel any pain but I know that I should feel something. I know that losing my virginity and especially whoring myself out should mean something to me, should get some kind of reaction, make me feel something other than anger at the fact I can't feel anything about it. His face appears in my minds eye. I know him. Not personally, but I know who he is. His face is plastered across every billboard and magazine in Gotham City. His face is a lot more pleasant on those, you note, than when it's leering down at me, checking me up and down, asking my age and how much I cost. I didn't really want to do anything with him at all, but it's winter. Gotham's having it's coldest nights and the snow is up to my knees. Sleeping outside in a city like this is never safe, but to do it in this weather is a death wish. I needed shelter, and nobody in the Narrows is about to let a street rat into their homes. None of the Wayne Foundation boys' homes are on this side of the city, and by the time I'd've gotten to them I'd have frozen to death, and they have a habit, I heard, of alerting social services of your existence. Going to any of the boys' homes around the less attractive areas of the city is basically the same deal as prostitution. You just don't get paid and don't get to refuse. I was looking for some kind of hostel, and then he just approached me. Offered money. I was so desperate, I figured it couldn't be that bad.
It was that bad. It was awful. His body seemed to crush mine and I could barely breath and he wasn't gentle, didn't go slow. I've never hurt like that before. Then it started to hurt so bad that I just stopped feeling anything. I couldn't say if I've been sitting stabbing myself with the badge he left behind for seconds or minutes or hours. It sounds silly, thinking about it. My brain isn't working how it usually does, I keep getting flashes, like a mosaic of all the worst moments of my life. And I know it should all make me sad, or angry, or disgusted at myself. And it's not that I don't care, because I do. I just feel numb. So I stab the needle of the badge into my hand with all the strength I can gather up, but nothing happens. It should hurt like hell, but I don't even flinch. And I yank it out and throw it across the room and grab fistfuls of my hair and pull, but nothing. I scratch my arms, legs, torso, face, neck. Nothing. Defeated, I flop down on the bed and let out a strangled cry but I can't even produce tears. And the only thing keeping me alive is fear, because if I wasn't such a fucking coward I would have slit my damn wrists and taken a pill before it even got this far, before I had to kill off the last shard of innocence I had left. The room is spinning. I see my dad and mom screaming at each other. He hits her. I see red and blue lights. Tears. Blood and cocaine. The letter telling me that she's sorry, Jason, but she just can't cope. I remember the strange combination of rage, fear, and grief, but I don't feel it. I don't feel anything. I wonder if she can see me. If she's looking down at me bleeding and sweating and unwashed, watching me turn into such a wreck. I can see her in the back of my head, sneering at me, with the corpse-pale skin and deep black hair that I inherited, disgusted with me. I apologise even though she can't hear me, in hopes that maybe it'll make me feel better. It doesn't.
I remember what I've been told to do, when it gets bad like this. I go through the mantra of sorts, reminding myself who I am. My name is Jason Peter Todd. I'm 14 years old. My favourite band is Vampire Weekend and I might be able to sneak into their concert next month. I can afford to buy dinner tomorrow. This room has a bathroom, so I can shower. I think of the positives of the situation and eventually the memories stop coming so fast and so often. I calm myself down, and think about just now. I don't think about the fact that twenty minutes ago he was in this bed with me, half an hour ago he was putting me through so much pain that I wasn't prepared for, forty minutes ago that we arrived to a worried looking Receptionist who reached for the phone when we checked in. I don't register the fact that there are flashing blue and red lights illuminating the streets below or that in five minutes, the door will burst open, or that in ten minutes, I'll have to answer awkward questions that I don't want to answer, or that in a day I'll be in foster care because I gave up running away. I don't think about the past and I don't dare dream about the future. In that moment, I welcome the feeling of numbness. I take in my surroundings one last time, the flickering light bulb, the broken TV, the badge across the room who's golden letters twinkle at me. The badge that he left as a joke, to 'support his campaign' as he runs for District Attorney.
Vote Harvey Dent, they demand.
AN: I don't like authors notes, but I thought I'd update you all to let you know that I have began to rewrite Kings Of The Air as the story went off on a tangent and I really didn't like how it was turning out. I'm hoping you guys will enjoy this version a lot more than the first! I'm hoping Chapter One will be uploaded before the new year, but don't hold me to anything!