Jason

Jason plopped down onto the grimey ground. He was tired and needed to rest. The eleven year old didn't give a flying fuck what Terry wanted to do. He was tired and wanted answers. And if it meant to sit down in a dank alleyway, then so fucking be it.

He closed one eye, rested his head on his hand, and kept Terry in his sight with his other eye.

Terry, or so he claims to be his name, leaned up against the wall next to him, not caring if any God awful substances latch on his clearly genuine leather jacket. He was short, but so was Jason, but damn it he doesn't believe Terry when he says he's seventeen. Jason met with Terry's twin, Rob, and there is no way that guy acts like a seventeen year old. Although not everyone matures at the same rate and not everyone actually ages at this he same rate either. So Jason logically knows that there could be a possibility that the twins actually were in their later teens. But a larger part of him calls bullshit.

It might mainly be because he never sees the twins together.

But there was no way that they were the same person. They acted too different from one another. And having Terry continue his fake ass accent sort of helps keep the two separated. But they couldn't be like Two Face, if the twins aren't actually twins, since Jason's pretty sure Two Face is a special case.

(Jason is a smart boy. He likes to read as much as possible. Learning about the human psyche with library books is something that he could do at this point in his life. He just wish he could actually buy the books. Jason is like a sponge and he wants to absorb as much knowledge as possible. And Terry and Rob know this.)

So Terry just leaning against the building, as nonchalant as possible, acting as if everything was fine.

Jason got the feeling that if this were a movie, and if Terry was even the smoking type, Terry would hold a cigarette loose in between his pointer finger and middle finger. Occasionally he would take a drag of it, and then slowly let it loose, letting the smoke twirl in the air around him, obscuring him. Making him seem less real.

But life wasn't a movie, and Terry wouldn't even touch a cigarette. And yet…

And yet it almost felt like there was some smoke obscuring his view of the teen.

(There was always something about Terry that seemed off. Like he wasn't actually real.)

"There's this girl," Terry started, snatching Jason from his thoughts, "and the more I think about it, the more I realize that I haven't been the greatest boyfriend to her."

Wait he's talking to him about relationship problems? Terry what the fuck.

"And I've come to the conclusion that… I want to do better. I want to be better. For her. Because I think… I think maybe I want to spend the rest of my life with her. But to do that I need to actually be there for her and not just let her be there for me."

It was almost as if the duo were in a bubble. Outside of it, Jason knew that cars were zooming around, people were walking at various paces, voices were chattering not unlike birds singing away. Yet in the small alleyway that they found themselves in, it all was distant. (It was as if they were in their own little world.)

"Have you talked to her?" Jason asked, as that's the only thing he could think of to say. (It's almost what everyone says in the books. It feels like it was something he should say too.)

"She doesn't know I'm here."

The young boy choked on his spit. "What did you do?! Run away?!"

Terry tilted his head just so, that Jason could see a lone, cold blue eye. A frigid breeze chilled him to the bone. But it might've just been the look he was given from his pseudo older brother for the first time. (No one would catch Jason calling Terry his big brother aloud let alone calling Rob that. It was rather embarrassing but damn it, it felt good to be looked after for a change.)

"No. I told you before, me coming here? An accident." Terry tilted his head back.

(Jason hates Terry and Rob's sunglasses. He can never tell if they're looking at him or not. And right now he can't tell if Terry was looking above at the sky or was still staring him down. Jason hates it and wishes that they could trust him enough to let him see their whole face.)

He licked his chapped lips. He knows it would make it worse. He doesn't have any chapstick. (Terry or Rob would buy him some if they notice it. They seem to notice everything.)

He gathered his courage and said, "why are you telling me this?"

Jason watched as Terry inhaled, and exhaled. He could almost see the imaginary smoke from the nonexistent cigarette be expelled from the teens lungs. (A more childish part of him wonders if that's what a dragon in the body of a human would look like.)

"Because you asked me if I had a home. Isn't home where the heart is? And she, she holds my heart. Or at least a part of it."

Shifting, Jason moved his legs around, feeling like he needed something to do. "Then who else holds your heart?" He asked.

"My family." It was short, it was sweet.

It made sense.

(A cynical part of him, the one that grew in the streets of Crime Alley, tells him that he isn't part of that family.)

"So I suppose that means that I have two homes." Terry continued.

Jason blinked. What. What did Terry mean by that?

Almost as if reading his mind, Terry went on to say, "see, my girlfriend and a good majority of my family is back where I came from. But here? There's a missing member here and if I find him, then I'm partly home. But even then right now, as we speak, I'm home too."

Jason… blinked owlishly at the teen. What did he mean by that?

Deep chuckles struck through him, and a new, older, teen smiled down on him. His blue eyes were much more pale than the ones he got a glimpse of before. No, these were the color of ice of glaciers, but they weren't frozen. No, they were so warm and full of love that Jason couldn't breath. This teen hairstyle and choice of clothing was so familiar and yet the material that the clothes were made out of looked nothing like anything Jason had seen before. The facial structure of this new person was ringing bells, but nothing came to mind.

Jason knows this person. Jason has seen someone like him before.

"Silly Jason," this new teen spoke, his voice never heard before except for around corners and hidden away in the dark of night, "you hold a piece of my heart too. You're part of my family, and Rob agrees with me when I say, you're our little brother."

And just like that, the teen was gone. There was only Terry and Jason. Jason and Terry. No one else. Nothing else, except for the alleyway of Gotham. (It was almost as if he was never there in the first place.)

And just like that, Jason had to remember to breathe again.