Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I punch; my knuckles having gone past the point of feeling to just a sense of motion now. I rip through the air, my muscles strained and trembling. Things are under my fists, cracking, breaking and now I am into it I don’t know how to stop. It had started off with a scream, like I was finally letting out something that had been simmering inside and it was escaping out through my throat, down my arms and exploding from my fists.

Release.

It kept coming and coming until my face was wet and my arms coiled so tight and my throat raw. It’s still coming and the hard things beneath me are all soft and gooey now. I hear a noise behind me, it means danger, attack, I’m not your son, so I turn and this time it comes out of my legs and shatters ribs underneath my foot.

I’m on the danger in a moment, jaw shutting so hard that I feel the reflexive pierce of pain as teeth cut into flesh. I can’t really see anything except that they’re wearing black and holding a knife - no guns because we don’t use guns so I’ll use my hands instead.

My hands shake, or maybe I’m shaking and I can only just see a bit, but I’m shaking with it, with whatever is still spewing out of my mouth in a wave of scalding fire. It pours from me, my hands go tense and flex and then I clamp them tight around the dangers face (face?) and push my thumbs in. They go, go in deep, down to the insides of the hole but there’s nothing inside. Nothing left but the gunk and useless stuff and it’s nothing like what I’ve got inside, the hole that’s hidden behind my eyes. But I can see it. I know it’s there...

Full of dirt and wood and mother I’ll save you and pain and rage because –

“I won’t be your punching bag again!”

I slam the man’s head down against the cement, thumbs still in sockets, again and again and again until the next bad man comes and tries to hurt me but I won’t let bad man hurt me because I can protect myself.

There’s no one here to save me. No one is coming.

No one. No one. No one came.

It’s leaving now, the hole has been burnt at the edges and now all the ash is just falling back inside, the landscape a snowy black.

 The cement is cold on my knees but it’s nothing compared to a thousand splinters making their home in your skin (the finest mahogany is no different from others when it’s daggers of wood in your hands.)

I slump, my nose is blocked, I can’t breathe through it, I have to open my mouth with my tongue all fat and heavy and producing too much saliva. My heart throbs so fast I feel like it’s not there at all, a useless wet lump that’s just there to block the air in my lungs and the logic in my mind.

Pit-pat, pit-pat.

Tap, tap, tap.

Steps. Steps – getting heavier.

Steps running towards me.

“Ja-n . . . Jas---”

You can’t treat me like this. I gave everything for you and now I’m just back in the same place, a gutter rat lying on the street surrounded by scum.

“Jason.”

Danger. I roll, away from the grasping person, throw a kick out even though it’s like my leg is filled with lead. Lead and wood and pain. Everything tastes like ash and the world is gray. Danger rolls me onto my back, pulls me up into their lap and I see black ringed eyes.

Bats.

I taste it on my tongue again but it’s all burnt out, only ash is left. I’m worth more, I was worth more; I thought I was worth more.

I guess I wasn’t.

“Jason, Jason, listen to me. Focus. Look at me.”

Why no stern tone of ‘Robin’, demanding that I say what wrong thing I’d done now? Why no, ‘go back home’? (Home, isn’t home a two room apartment with messy dishes, a bookcase by two warm green chairs and the light laughter of someone? Wasn’t home a mansion and a plate of warm cookies? Wasn’t it a threadbare blanket, a warm arm and the tv showing re-runs?)

“Jason, Jay, Jay-bird, Little Wing, come back to me, listen. I’m here. You’re not alone.”

My mouth moves and dan- No. Him, he, home, jolts, shards of wood surrounded in fire, something deep in me aches.

His blue eyes water, encased in black and I just want to see his face and he leans over, presses his mouth to my hair and says “you aren’t worthless. You aren’t just a plaything. You aren’t a punching bag. You’re just you. You’re my Jason, my Jay-bird, my Little Wing and you need to come on home.”

Ah, I remember: that taste, that smell. All of ash and burnt anger but I can’t quite remember what I was angry over.

Dick is here, he’s holding me. My limbs aren’t working again, oh, it’s been quite a few months since it’s been this bad, at least of what I can remember. I know I don’t quite remember all of it.

I blink, look around but Dick covers my eyes, turns me back to face him and smiles that smile that seems familiar, like I’ve been seeing it a lot lately. I don’t like it. It feels new somehow. Smiling is what he does, so why is this so different?

I lift up my hand, see the tattered bits of my skinned knuckles and the blood but don’t really feel it and pat Dick’s face.

It’s okay, I try to say, don’t cry.

Maybe he understands, maybe I do get the words out.

He doesn’t cry. But I still wonder why my face is so wet. He helps me up, and presses a finger to his ear, calling someone, a bird that makes me remember flying and soaring through a dark windy world. The person on the end answers and they sound neutral and I taste more ash on my tongue. It falls down the back of my throat, into the gaping hole that spread out inside of me.

A little stockpile of ash and just underneath it, the tiniest ember.

“You’ve been a bad boy.’

“This’ll hurt you a lot more than me.”

The person on the other side of the radio says something and Dick replies, "Thanks Robin, Nightwing out.”

Robin.

The ember catches fire.