It was a peaceful, lovely night in Jump City. No barking dogs could be heard, the few motorists on the roads behaved themselves, and if any megalomaniac was plotting, he was doing it quietly. The cities resident team of superheroes were sleeping peacefully in their beds.
It was the perfect opportunity for a certain someone to retrieve a certain item from the confines of the Titans Tower safe. Just so we're clear, that certain someone was me, Red X. I'd tell you not to forget that, but seriously who could forget me? Most people would probably say I was stealing, wouldn't they? Well that's there problem, I honestly couldn't care less. It was mine, sure I hadn't built it, but that didn't make it any less mine.
See, I make it my job to search out flaws in the security systems of certain high priced goods and give incentive for improvement. Not that they have much left to secure once I'm done though. Well, the Jump City museum was in desperate need of my services.
That item I had to get back from the Titan's? I'd been using it on a job just a little while ago when they'd showed up. I'd just gotten to my job site where I'd accidentally – maybe not so accidentally – tripped a little alarm. In retrospect, I shouldn't have done that, but the Titans had been off world for the past two weeks and I was itching for a fight. They were easy enough to manage most nights.
That night, however was a bit of an exception. Okay a lot of an exception, turns out I wasn't the only one looking to let off a little steam.
My hand had just closed around the fist-sized gem of a gem when a flying kick sent me crashing into the glass case of the exhibits. The beautiful marvel of nature was knocked out of my grasp and the rest of the little superheroes dropped in through the skylight. Someone had been taking pointers on making their entrances more dynamic.
"Oh, you're back." I said, but to my surprise, I got no witty comeback. Sure Beastboy said something at the time, but that kid's just annoying so I didn't care.
Mister Doom and Gloom was being even more Doomy and Gloomy than usual. Whatever they'd been doing on their trip, it had paid off. I'm not saying that I didn't put up a good fight, but well, they just put up a better one. Somehow, they managed to get my belt, and I had to hightail it out of there.
As much as I like playing around with those kids, I'm not risking them seeing who's under the mask. I'll save that for when I actually want one of them broken.
And that, brings us to my not so daring assault on the Titan's tower. You see, losing my belt isn't really that big of a deal, not when you know every password the boy wonder could potentially come up with. They were almost always codes I would have used myself. It was easy enough to deactivate their security systems and sneak in.
Seriously, when I stole, ahem, took the suit the first time I hadn't needed the thing, so how could they think taking the belt would make me any less dangerous? The Halls were all dark, Titans asleep cozy in their beds while I calmly entered the code and stepped into the safe.
I'd just clipped the belt around my waist when I heard it, the near silent whirring of a mechanical door opening. I flicked the invisibility switch before I could blink. Peeking around the corner I wanted to slap myself, of course the boy wonder would still be awake, obsessive little detective that he was. To my surprise he didn't check on the safe, instead making a beeline for the kitchen.
I listened carefully for a minute, just to make sure he wasn't going to rush me. All I heard was the fridge opening and the clinking of some cereal dropping into a bowl. Just when I was about to teleport my butt out of there I heard glass shattering.
My curiosity got the better of me and I went to check it out. There was the boy wonder all dressed up in his pj's and missing the mask, kneeling in a puddle of milk and cereal, picking up the pieces of a ceramic bowl. Midnight snack gone awry, I'd been expecting something a little more interesting, and cursed my curiosity when I got it.
His hands were shaking, making him drop most of the sharp pieces he lifted from the ground and leaving red splotches on the white ceramic. His cheeks were wet, drops of salty water dripping off his pointed chin. He lifted a hand to wipe the wetness away and mixed it with the blood on his finger tips. My first thought was that he must have really loved that bowl.
Eventually he got all the pieces into the wastebasket and cleaned the food of the floor. He sat at the kitchen table, in the dark, and buried his face in his hands. I told myself that I'd seen enough and that it was about time I should leave, but I lingered just a moment too long.
I heard the tears, muffled by his hands, but heartbroken all the same. Maybe he had a girlfriend somewhere who'd broken up with him, that was a feeling I remembered well, I would have laughed at the display of what I'd thought was failed puppy love. The I heard one word, a name I hadn't heard spoken in forever.
"Jason." He whispered and I was instantly rooted to the spot. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."
I remembered that feeling too, but I didn't remember being in space at the time. There were a lot of things I wished I didn't remember, but that name wasn't one of them. 'Leave.' I told myself. I didn't need the sleepless nights this would give me and I already had plenty of those. He had friends who would comfort him, ease away the pain.
Another sob echoed through the empty kitchen. They wouldn't understand though, would they? They'd never felt that kind of guilt, of heartache that could drive a person to destroy themselves. I did something I knew I'd regret later and clicked off my invisibility before slipping into the chair next to him.
"Hey kid." I said, the suits voice modulator masking most of the emotion in my voice. He tensed up, ready to attack, but I held up my hands and continued. "You just find out?"
He sunk back, all of the fight going out of him. I wanted to laugh, call him weak, but I couldn't do that, not there not with that.
"I already know, so you can tell me about it." I patted his head awkwardly. When had I gotten so bad at showing normal human sympathy? "I know how it feels."
For some reason he sensed I was being genuine in my attempt to comfort him, turns out he is better that me at something, huh?"
"He was so young." He sobbed, burying his face in his folded arms. "He was so tiny and he wanted…" He sniffled. "…just wanted me show him the quadruple somersault, but I never did." His voice was shaking as hard as his shoulders.
I rubbed his back in a way I barely remembered as he spoke, waiting quietly while he cried himself out enough to talk again. This wasn't a way he'd want his teammates to see him, or anyone really.
"Now he's dead." He said softly. "Oh god." His voice got louder, so loud I had to help muffle it by pressing his face into my torso. "My little brother is dead!" I held him tightly while he screamed silently into my suit, he cried harder, as though saying it aloud had made the words all the more real, he couldn't pretend anymore that they weren't. "He's dead and all I can do is cry about it. I was never there, he was all alone because I was never there!"
It's human nature to comfort a grieving person by denying those kinds of words. You hug them and you say things like, 'I wasn't your fault,' or, 'There was nothing you could have done,' 'You did your best.' 'They know you loved them.'
I didn't say any of those things. Instead I said the things someone should have said to me so long ago. Things that, maybe if I'd heard I wouldn't have turned out so bad.
"You are weak." I said, and held him tighter when he tensed up. "But it's a good kind of weakness, because it's proof that you cared. Everyone else will be strong, there will be no proof anyone cried for him. He deserves to have someone being weak for him. Deserves to have someone crying until they can't breathe."
He'd gone quiet while I'd spoken, I had to pause, get my own composure under control so I wouldn't give anything away. I told myself it didn't affect me, it wasn't the same boy buried in the cold ground, I had nothing to do with any of it. I let go of him and scooted away.
"He also deserves for there to be someone, just one person who doesn't enshrine an idea of him to brood over. Someone to smile when they remember him, for who he was, and to really be happy that they knew him." I rambled on, forgetting somewhere along the way who I was talking to. "No one else will be weak enough to do that for him, so you have to. Cry because he died, but smile because he lived."
I was mildly surprised that he'd listened for so long, I sat next to him in silence for a while and thought over what I had just said. A light clicked on in the hall and I stood. With one last look at the boy I teleported to the small ski boat I'd left docked at the base of the tower.
I did know what Robin was going through because I had had it worse. Like everyone else I'd been strong, hardened myself until I couldn't feel the pain anymore. The thing with that his, the harder something is, the less flexible it becomes, and the less flexible something is, the more likely it is to break. The pieces will be sharper, and they'll cut deeper.
Like Robin, I'd had my own Jason once. Only I hadn't been living in some far away city when I'd lost the little brat who'd been part of everyday of my life. When the pieces are part of everything, everything cuts, everything hurts.
Like Robin, I'll never have my little brother back. I teleported away, leaving the boat to drift in the choppy waters of the bay.