When Jason is nine years old he sleeps with the lights on.
He sleeps with the light on and the blanket over his head every night. His mother, when she's not strung out on drugs tucks him in and promises that they will move to a better apartment one day. He stopped believing her when he turned four. He can hear the rats moving around in the kitchen so he hunkers in the blanket and puts his hands over his ears.
He can still hear them. He waits for the sun to come up and spread its warmth and light. Jason dreams about a house where he can go to sleep without the lights on and feel safe. He wakes up and it's still the same old ratty apartment he's lived in for the last few months. He gets up and goes to school. He loves school it's mostly clean and he gets a hot lunch. Pickpocketing is easier when you don't look so hungry. He stays out as late as he can and gets two mostly empty wallets before he forces himself to go back home.
He doesn't like calling it home. Home is supposed to be good not filled with bugs and overgrown rats. Dirty needles in the trash and weird old men his mom brings home that gives him the creeps. He dreams of a real home.
When Jason is twelve years old he sleeps with the light on.
Wayne manor is bigger than the house he used to picture. In his head, he would work hard and get a good job and buy a house on the outskirts of Gotham. It would have a yard and it would be a brick house with a tin roof. He and his mom would live there and be happy. Instead, he lives in a forty room manor that smells of vanilla, leather, books, and lemon-scented cleaner. Wayne manor doesn't have bugs or rats. It's the first place he's ever lived at that is clean all the time. Juvie was its own brand of dirty.
It's clean and Jason hasn't once gone without food. Alfred let him store a stash or non-perishables in his room and for the first time in his life he knows what it feels like to not be hungry. Bruce is a good dad. Alfred is an awesome grandfather. Jason loves living with them. He has all the books he could ever read. Bruce enrolled him in a great school, he's learning so much. He still sleeps in his bed (It's a lot better than just a mattress on the floor) with a light on. He keeps the bathroom light on and the door wide open. The covers pulled over his head and he knows light is covering him. He sleeps the best he ever has in his life living in the manor. He loves the feeling of safety he has. He's Robin he has the best life ever!
When Jason is sixteen years old he sleeps with the lights on.
Talia hates it. She's cut the power to his room and Jason gets keeps his Zippo lit. Smoking comes in handy like that; he has at least two spare cigarette liters on hand. She tries to beat it out of him and he doesn't budge. The bunker is underground and he's seen rats and roaches down there. Jason has enough to eat, but living with Talia is like a convoluted second childhood with dingy living conditions. It has angry people who beat him. He finishes training with bruises that heal faster than when he was an underweight kid on the wrong side of the tracks.
It doesn't hurt that he took a dip in the Lazarus Pit. He's angrier and less hopeful than when he was a child. Being brutally murdered will change you like that. He learns things that Bruce never would have allowed. He decides that's no one is every going to hurt him again.
When Jason is seventeen years old he sleeps with the lights on.
He has become what Talia wanted, Bruce's worst nightmare come back to life. He terrorizes Gotham and becomes a crime lord. He beats the boy that replaced him within an inch of his life. Jason lives in old run-down apartments that no one would think to look for him. He sleeps with the light on and it's for the same reason he did as a child. He is not happy. He is not safe. He is not home. He hasn't had a home since he died.
He watches his own back and almost kills the Joker for Bruce (his dad) to stop him. Jason isn't going to stop trying.
When Jason is twenty years old he sleeps with the lights on.
He's not the little boy he was that was full of himself enough to steal the tires of the Batmobile. He's not the man that cut off heads and carried them in a duffel bag either. It's taken years but he's calmed down some from the madness that enveloped his every thought. The only one from the family that talks to him regularly is the kid he twice tried to kill. He thinks Tim isn't talking regularly with anyone at the Manor either.
He confirms that thought when Tim calls him needing stitches he can't do himself. Jason finds him limping outside his door.
"What would you have done if I wasn't here?" Jason asked as he ushered him in his safe house.
"Gone to Leslie. It's just a gash on my lower back. I'm not going to bleed out," Tim huffed.
Jason got the suture kit and walked back to the kitchen where Tim was topless and leaning over the kitchen countertop. Jason noticed the gash was deep. He got to work cleaning it out Tim didn't say much besides the occasional grunt and wince. When Jason was done cleaning and stitching him up Tim went to put his uniform back on.
Jason shook his head, "You're staying here tonight."
"Fine. I'm too tired to leave anyway," Tim said as he dropped the top part of his uniform in a grocery bag Jason handed him. Once Tim was in some of Jason's old clothes and was drinking the bottle of water Jason forced on him. Jason had the spare bedroom ready it was right beside Jason's room and a bathroom.
"Here is an extra blanket if you get cold. I'm in the other room if you need me, the bathroom is on the left. I keep the light on in the bathroom don't turn it off," Jason said as he showed Tim around.
"Ok, thanks, Jason. I owe you one," Tim replied as he was already getting under the blankets. Burrowing like a kitten in the blankets wearing the too big clothes that made him seem sad and five years younger.
The next morning Tim was still sleeping while Jason made breakfast. When Tim did get up he asked the question no one else dared too, "Why do you sleep with the lights on?"
"I lived in a lot of crappy places," Jason explained, "the earliest one I can remember had roaches. Big ones everywhere. It got to the point Mom would open a cupboard and they would fall out. At night we would have some light on us all the time or they would crawl all over us. Roaches hate light so we could still hear them scurrying over the floor, but they couldn't get on us. It's stupid, that happened when I was a kid and I still can't sleep without making sure I won't get roaches on me."
Tim didn't give him a look of pity, but one of understanding. "I used to keep the lights on in Mom and Dad's room and pretend they were home. I like the idea of it keeping roaches away better."
Jason poured him a cup of coffee and passed to him, "The apartments after just kept getting worse so I liked having the light on if one of Mom's boyfriends came in I could see it was them and not her. It got so I couldn't sleep without it. Talia couldn't even break me from it."
Tim smirked at that, "I'm sure she loved that."
"She got so mad, but eventually just gave up. No one ever asked why though. Bruce gave me an ocean night light plugin, but didn't say anything," Jason said before he took a sip of his own coffee.
"That sounds like him," Tim replied, "enough to let you know he knew, but he didn't want to talk about it ever."
"Yeah, I didn't want him to know. You know next time you need stitches just give me a call. I'll come and get you."
"It's more dramatic if I show up on your doorstep, but thanks, Jason. I mean it," Tim said as he took a bite off the pancakes Jason made for him. "I'm here if you ever need the favor returned I have a spare bedroom and I don't mind the lights being left on."
Notes:Stay safe out there!
Wear a mask like a vigilante