Chapter 3
AN Enjoy. :)
Jason Todd doesn't know to fight when he's sent to Juvie, because he's expecting, hoping, that his brother is on his way there as well.
He doesn't fight when after the first day, there's no sign of him.
He fights when after a week of searching, asking, bribing, and threatening, he realises that his brother really isn't there.
It's too late. The damage is done.
He asks anyone with authority that he can see about his brother, and he's laughed at. He's told that he's making things up, that he couldn't possibly have a brother, because he didn't even have a real name.
He never told them his last name, knowing from the laughs and ridicule he underwent everytime he asked about his family, that he wouldn't get anything for telling them his last name.
Three months passed while Jason fought and attempted to bribe himself information on his brother. Four months passed and he was desperate to see his other half, his family.
Five months passed and he was finally released due to overcrowding, overcrowding which had led to underfeeding, less supervision, more fights, and less blankets.
The first thing he did when his clothes were shoved into his hands and he was shoved out the door, was go to his apartment, he snuck in the window and tried to keep himself calm when he saw that nothing was left in the shithole.
He tried to keep himself calm when he went to his and Dean's bedroom to find only his clothes behind, and he couldn't stop the tears from falling from his eyes when he pulled his copy of their favorite picture of the two of them from the batbox, along with his leather bracelet and batarang, there is also about four hundred dollars in the box, which, instead of being halved, like Jason was expecting, is all there, meaning Dean left it all for him.
He tries to calm his breathing when he finds a messily scrawled note in Dean's handwriting in the bottom of the box, weighted down with the money.
"Jason. I don't know if you are going to find this. I told the lady where I was staying my last name, and two people came to get me. One of them is our dad. They want to take me home with them and they said they would help me find you. I've been everywhere we usually are and I asked all of our friends if they knew anything. I can't find you. I think I'm safe with the people that came to get me, but they want to take me to kansas, their names are John and Mary. if you get this, please come find me."
Jason reads the letter over and over, tears streaming down his face as he wonders how he's supposed to find his brother based off of two first names and a state.
A month later, John and Mary Winchester are sitting in bed together, Mary with a round belly, and Dean in his room down the hall from them.
"What if he was making it up?" Mary asks her husband, her hand resting on her stomach as she speaks.
"Why would he do that?" John asks, although he's beginning to think the same thing.
"Maybe he didn't want to leave Gotham. John, we haven't found any trace of this boy existing, Dean destroyed his room today because he freaked out that he didn't put our last names on the letter. I don't even know what he was talking about, but when he told me that we had to go to back to Gotham, and I told him no, he locked me out of his room and destroyed it. I think maybe we should take him to a therapist, I love him John, he is such a sweet boy, but when it comes to Jason? He gets so emotional. So angry. Sad. I just, I don't know if he made him up or if he's real, but he needs help." Mary tells her husband, looking over at him as she takes his hand in hers.
"I know. I can't… I can't tell if he's telling the truth, or if he just thinks he's telling the truth, he's always got that picture with him, but all that proves is he's got a friend. He's such a sweet kid, he helps you out around the house all day, and he never asks for anything, even though he doesn't have anything. He always asks me if he can help me work on the car, and he's quiet Mary, he's real quiet... I'll make a few calls tomorrow, see if I can get him some help." John says leaning over to kiss her before he turns their light out, the both of them rolling over to go to sleep.
Dean sits in his room, wiping stray tears from his eyes as he thinks about Jason, about how long it's been since they've seen each other, and then he stands up, and he puts his room back together. Piece by piece. He rights flipped over furniture, makes his bed, puts the toys that Mary bought him back in the toybox, his new clothes back in his closet.
He thinks back to when John brought him up for bed, when he looked around the room and told him he would help him clean it all up the next morning, he remembers the worried look on Mary's face when he finally opened his door, hours after he slammed it on her and locked it, taking his anger out on the room.
He remembers the concern on her face as she took his hand, bloody and bruised from where he slammed it against the wall, how she bandaged him up, kissed his hand, and told him that everything would be alright.
He draws the blankets over his shoulders as he feel something wash over him, something that feels a little bit like love.
It's then that he gets mad again, throwing his blankets off of his body and rolling them into a ball, trapping his arms inside of it so that he can't do any more damage to his room, then he buried his face in the comforter and screams.
He screams until his throat hurts and his lungs are fighting for air, and then he screams some more. He screams until Mary and John hear him and come rushing into his room, finding it tidy, and finding him folded against the blankets, his arms tangled and his face buried, and as Mary gently pulls him up by his shoulder, he stops screaming.
His throat hurts but he can't stop sobbing.
His eyes sting and his nose runs, but he can't stop the tears from coming.
His chest aches, but he can't help the small rush of emotion when Mary pulls him into her chest, John settling onto the bed next to him and rubbing his back, attempting to calm him down.
He doesn't want to love them. He wants his brother.
He can't explain why he was screaming when they ask.
He doesn't know how to tell them that he doesn't want to love them, because the only person that he's ever loved was Jason, he doesn't want to tell them that he feels guilty, because he knows that wherever Jason is, it isn't here, with their dad. With Mary, who is the nicest woman that Dean's ever met. He doesn't want to tell them that he misses his twin so much that it hurts, that all he wants to do, despite loving them, is run back to Gotham to look for him.
As he sits there, silently wishing for his brother back, his brother is standing in a Gotham alleyway, blood on his fists and in his mouth.
Jason glares at the boy he's fighting, the boy that's two years older than him and has obviously gotten more meals than Jason has.
He takes the elbow glancing off of his chin with a mirthless smirk, and then attacks twice as viciously. He's angry, because it's been six months since he's seen Dean, and he misses him. He's angry because with all of the street smarts that he's gathered over the years, with all of the hours spent in the library, he can't find him. He's angry because the one person that he cared about, more than anything else, more than anybody else, including himself, is gone. All he has left is a letter with not enough details, about three hundred dollars left, and his anger. He uses that anger to beat the boy until he's laying on the ground groaning, and then he takes the bet money from the other kids around the circle and he walks away. He puts the money, not much, into his bag along with the rest of his things, and he goes back to his mothers new apartment, with her new boyfriend. And he hates it.
AN Thoughts? Good? Bad? Meh? Lemme know what you think. :)