'The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.'- Arthur Golden
3. Debilitation
Jason was sitting on his grave.
The sky was blue, like an ocean in a child's picture book. The birds, whatever they were, were chirping pretty little songs across the scarce treetops. And the grass was as good as you could get in this portion of Gotham.
He saw all of this, but never felt it.
It was hard to feel anything but death here.
A spark of anger popped inside of him when he considered the cost of all of this. Surely there was something better to spend their money on, like starving children, or drugged mothers, or absent fathers. Why did anyone willingly pay for a funeral?
Was this all people wanted? To celebrate death?
A cold, intense feeling took over. He could imagine grief-stricken children, fathers, wives, dressed in black with umbrellas- because of course it had to rain- and maybe they were crying, maybe they had been reluctant to go, but if you could stand there patiently without clawing at the earth for your loved one; wasn't that what love was supposed to be like?
If Bruce, if he'd maybe opened the coffin earlier, then maybe things wouldn't have turned out like it had.
Had it rained, at Jason's funeral? Had he cried?
(He imagined Bruce, standing in a fancy suit, looking down at his dead 'son'. And the whole image was black and white and blurry, because Jason didn't have the heart to believe that Bruce even showed up.)
"I knew you'd be here," a voice said from behind him. "You're predictable."
Jason didn't turn around. He didn't have to, because of all the lands in Gotham, this one was his. It had his name on it. It had been his home.
This was his turf, and he wasn't playing on someone's else's terms.
"Right," he said sarcastically. "Don't think I didn't know your precious Grayson was going to send someone, Demon Brat."
He heard the distinct soft footsteps that were Damian's. They had a strangely pompous air to them, like a little princeling walking in golden shoes.
"You didn't show up yesterday. Grayson was looking for you," he accused.
Jason blew his hair out of his eyes. "Yeah, I know. I just didn't feel like showing up."
"It was your birthday."
A bitterness spread in Jason's chest. Dick had taken the liberty of knowing his address to send him a loud, annoying, personal invite.
He had to be invited to his own party. It was always like this.
"I have two anyway," he said scornfully. "You can celebrate during the next one."
"That isn't your real birthday," Damian argued.
Jason barked out a fake laugh. "I've been born twice. I deserve two birthdays."
Damian, seemingly ignoring all of Jason's subtle go-away hints, sat down next to him.
God, that kid was smaller than the Replacement. Was Bruce trying to get smaller children each time?
"Why?" Damian asked. "Why did you come here?"
Jason rolled his eyes. "Why do you think? This, this is what I'm celebrating. My death."
"It hurts you, being here. I can see it."
"Everywhere hurts me."
A tensing of Damian's shoulders was all Jason got in response. Not for the first time he marveled at how much Damian was like him, and how they were completely the opposite at the same time. He'd grown up killing, then changed by Batman's hand. And Jason... well, his was the reverse.
"You stood up Grayson," Damian said. "He'd worked hard for you."
"Well I never asked him to, alright? I didn't ask him to make me a party, to celebrate anything!"
"Does it make a difference whether you asked him to or not?" Damian said hotly. "He did it for you, and you should be there! Everyone was there!"
"Everyone?" Jason's voice turned cold.
Damian shuffled a bit closer. "Everyone who could make it," he receded. Then, after a pause, "why do you do that?"
"What?"
"You push him away. You push Father away, and yet you still ask for him. Why?"
"I don't-"
"Yes, you do."
Damian stared at him. The spark of anger inside him caught fire in his belly, like an all-consuming hate for everything. The only thing he could see was red and brown. The red of blood and the brown of a locked coffin, nailed in so that you couldn't even remember the sky.
"I deserve it, okay?! I deserve to toy with him like he did with me! I deserve to be everything he hated, I deserve to be the one that makes him cross the line!"
Damian shook his head furiously. "Is that why you want Father to kill the Joker? Just so you can be important?"
"I don't want him to kill the Joker anymore! I want him to kill me!"
Silence descended on the graveyard. Jason shook with anger, because he'd never opened up like that before, never said the real truth.
He'd wanted to see Bruce kill the Joker, sure, but he knew that just couldn't happen. Because Batman, as sick as it was, was doing this little deal with the devil. Keeping the devil alive just so his reputation could be intact.
He took the easy way out. The coward's way.
Jason could never do that. He didn't care what being a murderer made him, because he knew his place. He wasn't a hero. But he was doing the right thing.
Maybe Jason had always wanted the best for Bruce. Maybe that was why he tried so hard to get him to cross the line. If he really, truly was against Jason's code and character, then he'd kill him.
Permanently. With no second funeral.
But he never killed Jason, never fought him. And that didn't mean mercy- that meant indifference. Jason wasn't even as important as any other criminal in Gotham.
Sometimes Jason wished he'd just get stabbed in the chest already. But not being killed by Bruce's hand would accomplish nothing.
And he just wanted his death to mean something.
"You want him to kill you?" Damian asked incredulously. "That's your definition of caring?"
"I just want to matter, okay? I want to matter enough to him to make him cross his stupid line!"
"He can't!" Now Damian was shouting. "Don't you understand? He can't cross that line. It would destroy him."
Jason scowled. "Maybe that's what I want. Maybe I want him destroyed."
"No, you don't. You just want him to understand you."
Jason's throat clogged. If Bruce... if he understood Jason, then maybe he'd accept him. Maybe everything he'd done, all the blood, all the crimes, would be forgiven. And who knows? Maybe, one day, Bruce would realise Jason was right all along.
Maybe he'd be proud of him.
(No, Jason thought. If the Joker couldn't make him cross the line, then Jason sure as hell can't.)
"How would you know?" Jason said bitterly.
"You're not the only murderer here," Damian responded flatly. "You're not the only one who knows the freedom of taking a life. The freedom and the suffocation."
Jason swallowed hard. "Don't pretend to understand me," he said shakily. "You don't. You know how to give death, but you don't know how to get it. I've died, before. I deserve to spread death."
"So that's it? You're killing because you're selfish?"
"I don't owe this world a thing!"
"None of us do!" Damian took a breath. "All of us have been through tragedy, or war, or just the cruel life in general. And none of us owe anything to this world. But we don't have to! It isn't a game of who deserves it and who doesn't, it's a game of 'what would I do if I had the power to make things right'? You have the power. What do you do?!"
Jason closed his eyes. "I fight."
"Then fight. But do it the right way. There isn't any fight when your opponent is dead, Todd. Don't make me think your intellect is below Drake's."
There was a hollow laugh that spit out of his mouth. He did have the power to make the world a better place. But maybe- and this had just occurred to him, not a thought that plagued him forever- he was the one who'd taken the easy way out. That the struggle of saving a life was worth more than the struggle of taking one.
"This grave isn't yours anymore," Damian said quietly. "I could destroy it for you."
"No," Jason said. "This grave is still mine. It's the only thing I own."
"No, it's not. You have a life now. I think it's time you use it."
A warm feeling spread across Jason's chest. No fire this time, only a warm faint glow.
Like victory, only warmer.
"So... about this birthday party of mine," Jason inquired. "Dickiebird saved me some cake, didn't he?
"He saved you everything. He's still waiting for you."
Jason grinned, and he gave a real laugh this time. "Then let's not keep him waiting."
They stood up, the silence almost a mediator. He'd never realised before how much his brothers had actually done for him. Maybe it really didn't take a father to have a family after all.
"Wait," Jason called. He quickly went back to his grave, took out his gun, and shot his gravestone three or four times.
"...I thought we just discussed not being violent," Damian remarked.
Jason shook his head and smiled. For the first time since forever, he felt the weight of death fall off his shoulders.
"I was just making a statement."
"What statement?"
Jason blew his hair out of his face. "That Jason Todd isn't dead. He's alive, and he's going to his birthday party with his brother whether the world likes it or not."
Damian raised an eyebrow. "Todd, you're insane."
"I'm alive," Jason shot back.
He took one last look at the graveyard, and the smoking stone, where his name had stood for so many years. In the charred remains, the stone was now unreadable. In a few years time it would debilitate into nothing. No remains. He turned around to face the horizon.
"I'm alive."
Sorry for the long update time! I haven't got any time to write. Well, at least we got here! A little bit of a switch, as Damian's doing the comforting in this chapter. Thanks for the reviews and likes and follows!
