Broke Heart Blues, a batman fanfic

I started this on my smartphone during the convention, because I was so inspired I was bursting. It ran away with me as soon as I sat down to flesh out the initial notes. :S

I want to stress that I don't necessarily agree with anything Jason says in this. Okay, I don't agree at all. xD;;

Title: Broke Heart blues.

Fandom: DCU- Batman.

Rating: heavy R.

Genre: Romance, angst, family.

Wordcount: 3500-3600 circa.

Characters/Pairings: Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Conner Kent, Damian Wayne (though it's not like I ever mention any of these names *sweet smile*). Jason/Tim mainly. But to be fair, the emotional mess is more along the lines of: Dami crushes on Jay who loves Tim who would be better off with Kon. Or would he?

Warnings: Self-betaed. Stream-of-consciousness. Second Person POV. Language. Jason being very self-hating and mocking of everyone and angry. Mentions of blood, violence, and (very briefly) of sex. The plot takes root in the old DCU, but obviously goes AU to allow for my pairings and for the Batclan/Flock of Red-brested Birds to be reunited. :]

Summary: As you watch them together, something beneath your ribcage stops and breaks. He never laughs when He's with you.

It happens so suddenly, it hits you like a punch

(a crowbar)

to the stomach.

You know of their friendship; you've heard so much about it, it's become like the stuff of legends. Even in a crowd, even in a group, they make a team of their own, a team of two, like fucking Batman-and-Robin, but without the angst, the fixation, all the bad stuff.

It should be nice.

It really should.

But as you watch them together, something beneath your ribcage stops and breaks; it crushes your lungs like a punch, and a weight settles on the aching remains and makes it hard to breathe.

Their hands brush together. Their heads bent close and closer, mouth brushing an ear, trading secret for secret.

Then He moves back, head tilted back, cheeks dimpled, pale throat rippling with laughter.

He never laughs when He's with you.

He frowns. He mutters. He yells.

He pushes, He demands, He reminds you you're on trial, makes sure you don't waste the chance, don't whip out a gun, don't waste another life. He grits his teeth, clenches his fists, narrows his eyes. He distrusts and criticizes and is always damn right and shakes his head and watches your back and directs your missions and flushes angrily at your jokes and stitches your wounds and both shies away when you approach and meets you head-on when you argue, but He never laughs.

Not when He's with you.

Something like bile like grief rears up inside your throat. It chokes you.

They move closer once more – shoulders brushing together, hands fluttering and then meeting, a brief squeeze and then settling back on each other's shoulder, and they smile. They smile.

It hurts.

It damn fucking hurts.

And for the first time in your life you do something you would have never considered doing before.

You give up.

You run away.

Perhaps the rage the shame the anger at your own cowardice will one day obliterate the hurt the helplessness the jealousy the unworthiness that watching them together causes you.

One day.

Swapping working partners is easy.

You trade a Baby Bird for a Baby Demon, and no one questions your motives. They couldn't – not when you make it happen like it wasn't all your idea (your need) to begin with.

The Baby Demon is a silent companion, a vicious fighter, a mean judge, an unstoppable force of nature. He's a Wiseman in a child's body, a prodigy, and above all: an haughty little shit. He's mean and he's sardonic, and his snarky humour never fails to rip a laugh from your lips.

You spend more time tongue-lashing each other and ducking batarangs thrown from the shadows that you do punching criminals' teeth in; but you'd take a knife to the guts for the little shit (and you do that on the third week), and he'd pursue the one who dared hurt you with the dogged determination of an Hell-hound, he'd catch him and bring him to justice bloodied and broken (and he does).

You work well together. Of all the Bat's birds, you're probably the best suited to work in pair – the Demon, and the Baby Demon. Together, you're a force to be reckoned with. But you unleash the worst out of the kid, you're quick to realize. The Baby Demon simply cannot keep his assassin training in check when he works with you – your moves are too attuned, too similar, too perfect.

Like steps of a dance, each thing you do requires an answering move from him, which demands an even more complicated step from you, until the choreography is perfect and is bloody and is beautiful is deadly.

And you don't want that. Not for him, not for you.

You teach him, odd as it may sound.

You grab him by the scruff of his neck like a vicious kitty, shake some sense into him, some restraint, which would be laughable, coming from you – the Blood-Thirsty Demon, teaching about restraint? - but no one knows better than you how much focus, how much will and determination and rage it takes to keep it all in, the violence and the hunger and the thirst for something that's not quite vengeance and not quite justice, but that's beautifully painted in red, a red that can fall like a shroud before your eyes, blinding you to reason.

So you grab him by the scruff of his neck like a vicious kitty; you shake some sense into him, duck his flailing kicks and his sharp nails, and when he finally starts listening to you, things get better. They were good to start with. Now they get great.

You two start handcuffing more thugs than you send to the hospital. The Baby Demon's taunts loose most of their edge, and when you touch him, nine times out of ten it is only just to ruffle his hair or pat his shoulder (rather than to restrain him from a killing blow).

Soon enough, you don't have to worry about getting a knife between your shoulder-blades every time you turn your back on him; and now he lets himself fall asleep near you after patrol, knowing he can trust you not to toss him from the nearest drop available.

Sometimes, you think you spy a light in his eyes like the one he reserves for the Big Bird, the Big D, the Shiny Golden Boy of the flock.

It's perfection.

It's fucking perfection. And you even allow yourself a teeny winy bit of pride at your brotherly accomplishment. At least until you realize it's fucking not the same light, and you want to laugh want to cry want to stab at something (yourself) because the Baby Demon doesn't look at you like a brother like a mentor like a friend.

He watches you in the same way you watch the Baby Bird, and it's all such a fucking mess, isn't it?

You don't drop him (you're doing something good for him, and you ain't a quitter); but you go out of your way to be Brotherly and Uninteresting and Untouchable (and it surprises you how much you've got to sweat to appear unappealing to someone's eyes. Last time you checked, you were a failure and a monster and totally undeserving of notice from the human race as a whole. Your only redeeming feature are your handsome looks, and you know for a fact you're not the best looking of the clan by far. Not when the Golden Boy's got that smile that can move heaven and earth, and the Baby Bird those eyes that pierce you and can ignite a flame inside your chest. Not when Daddy-dearest's got those frowning lines like brush strokes from a painting around his generous mouth, and the Lady Bat those lethal hands that are minute and perfect as they wrap around yours. Babs' swan neck is warm and as pale as ivory, the hollow at the base fluttering like a drum when she laughs, and Blondielocks's luscious lips are always, always curled upwards in a smile that stops the heart. How can you compete with any of that?).

You don't drop your newest partner, but he's taken from you all the same.

You rage, you rant; he kicks and screams. But Daddy-Dearest shakes his solemn head and takes the Little One for himself. You won't work with Shiny Golden Big Brother D, and you can't work with the Baby Bird, not when you can't look at him and not remember how he looked throwing his head back and laughing freely in the night.

The only choice you're left with is to either fly solo, or scavenge a new partner outside of the flock of red-breasted birds.

Roy is too clingy; Kory is too beautiful; Eddie is too busy. Raven is too understanding; Scarlet is better off without you; the Titans are too perfect. And Donna is still off-limits, forever will be, to the likes of you. But flying solo is a shitty deal. You get wounded more often and catch less criminals.

You hate it.

So you take to hiding away in Babs' Tower whenever you need stitches, and endure her not-so-gentle teasing as you self-tend to your wounds. Before you know it, she's the one you answer to. The one to give you missions and tips, the one to mutter into your earpiece and make you laugh when the night's air has got a killing bite to it and you feel like your nose is about to freeze off your face.

You start working with her birds. Somewhat. Acting as escape diversion for her own Secret clan of Bats is more like it.

Once, you wake up to the Lady Bat watching you, her face one scant inch from your own. A couple of times you find yourself as a guinea-pig for Blondielocks' cooking experiments, but as nice and dandy as this all is, you miss home.

You miss Home.

You run into Shiny Golden Big Brother D every once in a while; you even help him with his jig in Blüdhaven when he needs a hand that doesn't mind getting dirty. You barely ever see the Big Bad Bat, but you do save the Baby Demon's butt from a ridiculous gang of Joker-boys, once. (You almost laugh out loud when you drop him back to Daddy's, and realize the "trap" you saved him from was all a ploy devised by the Butler to get you back to the Cave for a while.)

The Baby Bird, you avoid like the plague.

You've been avoiding him from before the Baby Demon was taken from you; from before you took the little shit under your own wing, even.

You've been giving the Baby Bird the cold treatment for months.

Which, of course, ensures that he comes looking for you, eyes blazing up a storm and mouth pulled taut into a frown. He looks angry and disappointed and hurt, and your mind automatically waxes up a string of poetic and Tolkien-like nonsense about light and dawn and grace and power when you watch the flush glowing across his cheeks, watch his eyes flash a deeper, electric shade of blue as he gestures wildly with his hands.

You watch him, and you can't help growing angry and disappointed and hurt yourself. You yell, he yells back. You throw a punch, he ducks. You flee, he follows.

You don't know how, or why, but you start working together once more.

Fighting, bickering, yelling. Hurting each other with words and actions, solving cases, yes, but never with a smile, never with a gentle touch or word exchanged between you.

There's only pain and rage and bitterness, festering inside wounds so deep they cannot be seen, spewing venom and toxic waste that are destroying you both from inside out.

The end of the world starts from there.

You're not quite sure how it starts – or how it ends.

The only thing you're aware of is the blood.

Baby Bird's blood, pooling under his shuddering body. The blood of his attackers, sticky and dark and spread all over your bruised knuckles.

You're bleeding from one million places yourself, and there's the tip of a hunting knife embedded in your left calf muscle. You're black and blue all over, but you.

Don't.

Fucking.

Care.

Baby Bird is down.

His head is in your lap, and you're wrapped around him, clinging to him, bloodied and screaming like a mindless animal, your throat raw and your eyes stinging as you cling and scream, cling and scream, so long and so high your throat might start bleeding at any moment, bleeding pain and rage and bitterness, bleeding all the words you've never told him, bleeding out the love and the hope and the damn fucking truth, that kernel of it you've kept hidden for so long, hidden not like the treasure it is, but hidden like a ignominy, hidden and left to rot for so long that it festered inside you and now it's pouring out on its own.

You hated him, at first.

You envied him, you tested him, and eventually, you grew to admire him. To care for him. As a fellow Bird. As a brother.

You began lust after him, after a fashion. And what an odd lust, it was. Because what you needed from him was never his body, naked and pliant in your bed, scarred legs flexing around your hips, urging you on. No. No. What you needed – what you will always need – is him sitting flush against you on a rooftop, the warmth of your bodies seeping together. You need to have his head tucked under your chin, his breath raising in silvery wraiths in the dark sky, mingling with your own. Have his hand dwarfed inside your own, his neck tilted, baring the scar that mirrors your own to your questing mouth; the scar you put there as a mark and a remained, and that has long since grown into something to atone for.

You love him.

You fucking love him, and you know you're not enough – never will be – you know he's in love with the Super-kid, and you – you're so fucking pathetic that you preferred to run rather than fight, run because there's nothing you can offer him, nothing but an ugly soul inside a scarred body, a heart which is a broken, second-hand toy at best, if not a rotting monstrosity.

You let him go, as not to hurt him.

Let him go, because you need him so much, so fucking much, you couldn't trust yourself not to do something stupid, something ugly and mean like challenge the Super-kid, or badmouth your Baby Bird, you dear one, your Tim – no, not your Tim. Never your Tim.

You tell him this. You scream this to the heavens, trying to keep him awake and aware, soiled hands pushing against his oozing wounds, eyes locked with his own, watching them flicker and dim, wide with wonder beyond the haze of pain.

You scream and push and rock him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. You kick and rage and bare bloodied teeth when they take him from you (take you from him), you howl and lash out, you claw and kick and issue a stream a gibberish in different languages (English for Bruce and Alfred, Arabic for Talia, Sanskrit for Ducra, all of the people who helped made you, all of them loved, all of them adults to your inner child).

Strong arms wrap around your shoulders

(Dick)

cold, little hands cup your face

(Damian)

as a mantle as dark as a shroud falls upon Tim,

(Bruce)

wraps around him, absorbing his blood, hiding his face, and he's taken away.

(Kon. Kon. Kon.)

You crumble like a broken puppet, like a statue of salt. Your brothers cling to you and you cling to them, as the redwhiteblue of the Police cars flashes all around you, filling the word with cold sterile light.

Your cheeks are covered with tears.

It's the only part of your body that feels even remotely warm.

Your hands don't feel clean.

You wash them and wash them and wash them, over and again. But as soon as you close your eyes, you can feel it, the blood. Tim's blood, gushing between your fingers; you can feel his flesh, yielding and tender under the pressure of your hands, gaping wounds oozing waves of sticky red liquid.

So you wash your hands once more. And then again. You're not sure the feeling will ever go away – but it's okay, because you cling to that phantom memory almost as strongly as you wish it gone. You don't want to forget how Tim's life felt like, trickling away through your useless fingers. You think that remembering it will prevent something that awful to ever happen again.

You hope it will.

But you can't take the chance. You won't.

Tim is alive.

Barely.

Tim is alive and on the (slow, painful) road to recovery, and you're leaving.

Damian tried stopping you (and Gods, you never want to see that kind of look in his face again. Those eyes. Those fucking eyes); Alfred tried stopping you. Dick didn't. He understood your reasoning, your reasons. So he patted your back and hugged you and wished you well. Bruce doesn't approve of your choice, but he didn't try to stop you either. He wants you to stay, but he knows how it feels to dip your hands in the warm blood of someone you love, so he won't order you not to go.

You're on top of the city's highest tower. Gotham is spread under and before you like a chest brimming with jewels (or a can of worms, you're never quite sure with her.) The smoke of your cigarette raises in wraith-like plumes in the chilly air. It veils the city and lends her a shine, blurs every core of light from streets and windows and turns it into a pulsing star.

You snort. Throw away the cancer stick and crush it under your boot. You smear the ashes left and right, then turn around.

And stop dead.

There's a rushing sound, something like a train like a bullet like an aeroplane hurtling towards you, and a patch of darkness amongst the starts that's not just a void but a figure drawing close at inhuman speed.

You take a step back. Try to. Think to.

But Kon is faster than thought, faster than light, and he drops gracefully before you not a second after you spotted him. In his arms, Tim looks thin and frail and entirely too pale. The rings under his eyes are black and ugly, so deep they look like they were painted on with ink or charcoal. His eyes are blue and angry like an electric storm, and he's shivering – partly from rage, partly from exhaustion, partly from the cold.

Kon (the motherfucker) deposits Tim on his feet as if he didn't look like death ran him over, and takes a step back (the motherfucker). When Tim sways, knees buckling, you have no choice but rush forward and catch him. Thin, talon-like fingers curl around your biceps, shaking with the strain. Tim sort-of fall into your chest, tucks his head under your chin, breathing harsh and fast against your neck.

Kon smiles. The motherfucker. He smiles. Arms crossed and expression smug like he fucking owns the world, and you'd like to punch the grin off his face but it a) wouldn't be worth the resulting broken fingers; and b)you're a little too busy making sure Tim doesn't pull any of his gazillion of stitches and bleeds to death for the second time in a matter of days.

You're so busy glaring at the motherfucker, you don't notice the arms enveloping you until you're trapped by shaking matchsticks, small fists curled tight in the fabric of your jacket.

When Tim's voice comes, it's surprisingly clear, steady like it shouldn't be, through faint with weariness. Two words. Two simple words: a thanks, and Kon's name, and the Super-kid brightens up like a fucking Christmas tree. He brings two fingers to his forehead for a mock-salute, and starts hovering in that silly ballerina pose all Supes are so damn fond of.

He says something along the lines of "Well, what are best friends for?" and blasts away into the night, streaking the sky like a wayward shooting star.

Best friends, you think, bitterly. Yeah, right.

And then you are not thinking anything at all anymore, because chapped, trembling lips are placed on the scar on the side of your neck

(He took me away from you.

This is it. This is the time you decide.

You want to stop me? You are going to have to kill me.

Shoot me.

Right in my face)

and Tim is mumbling something in a shaky voice, his breath raising in silvery wraiths in the dark sky, mingling with your own, and the first word he spells sounds distinctly like "idiot".

The warmth of your bodies is seeping together (and didn't you dream of something like this?). One of his hands lifts itself towards your face, and when it fails and falls and you catch it, your gloved hand is so big it literally dwarfs Tim's own.

And then it's lips again. Cold lips and teeth clicking together and faint shivers and it takes you a little while to catch up and kiss back, crushing Tim to you, cupping your hands around his waist, allowing him to climb up and flex his legs around your hips (and you definitely dreamed of this, though it involved a bed of roses rather than a soiled rooftop).

"It was you, you idiot," Tim tells you, between bites that are kisses and kisses that are laughter and laughter that are frowns and frowns that are made of deep lines you want to trace with your eyes and mouth and fingers, always and forever. "It was always you."

In the early morning of light, you are kneeling with Tim pressed against you, the warmth of your bodies mingling, your breath streaming between your joined mouths, his legs wrapped around you and your hands on each other's scar, healing and mending and reproaching and forgiving and kissing and kissing and kissing.

Overhead, a black bat flies west, feeling the light, and Gotham embraces it, envelops its dark shape in her shadowy arms.

Perhaps you will live happily ever after this once.

You can't wait to try this happiness thing out.

~ End