Chapter Text
Welp. This felt familiar.
Lazarus green colored the edges of his vision, as his own red blood flowed rapidly down his chest. Jason sat slumped against the cement wall of an abandoned warehouse, his gloved hand weakly pressed against the wound in his neck, trying uselessly to slow the bleeding. He's dying, because he asked Batman to choose between killing the Joker and letting his son die again, and he chose wrong. But Batman was gone now, and he’d saved the life of Jason's first murderer instead, who had killed, tortured, and maimed thousands of people, terrorizing so many more.
Batman really wanted him dead, huh? So much for his number one rule, he had to break it just for Jason. But who knows? Maybe it doesn't count as murder if you're killing the undead, after all, they were no longer human.
Jason pries out the bloodied batarang that slit his throat, jabbed into the wall behind him. Undeniable proof that his dad that Batman would be the cause of his second death. As if clawing and scratching his way out his own grave the first time wasn't enough.
The thought made him chuckle. At least Bruce cared about his existence enough to go through the trouble of killing him. Not exactly what Jason was going for, but at least he had the balls to do it himself instead of leaving him to die by the Joker again. [Crowbar scraping against concrete, the flashing countdown of the bomb, the silence before the explosion.] Jason shivered, the memory of his first death taunting him even now.
Murder and revenge had filled every bit of his mind for so long now, the pit rage fueling his crusade against Batman and the Joker. The League of Assassins sinking him in the Lazarus Pit after Talia found him mindlessly roaming the streets of Gotham, still wearing the suit he was buried in. They honed his skill, training him in every kind of deadly art and centering the hysterical rage gifted by the pit on Batman.
It's funny the things you think of when you're dying, the constant boiling rage of the pit disappearing in his last moments. He wasn't dying angry, not like the first time, now he was just dying disappointed.
He wonders if Bruce ever truly loved him, or if it was all just a facade.
Soft hazed memories of flying through the air as Robin, learning Alfred’s secret recipes, and late nights reading Jane Austen in the manor’s library, stuffed to the brim with books no one's ever read. His fantasy-like escape from his mom’s addiction and death, the constant backstabbing that came from being poor in Crime Alley, and finally feeling free.
Were the best memories of his life just a poor kid's rose-colored glasses? Or a parent's betrayal? All he had wanted back then was to be safe, to belong, maybe even loved again like he was when his Ma was alive. For all her faults, his real Ma, Catherine, never made him doubt whether she loved him. Somehow Bruce was even worse than his father, he was just another child-beater Jason would've gladly put a bullet in.
But Jason was hardly a child anymore. Disregarding the fact that he’s only seventeen, and almost two of those years were spent catatonic or dead.
Crime Alley was the only thing he was sad to leave behind. He knew that without the Red Hood it would all go back to hell. All the improvements he’s made in in the alley: offing old gang leaders who sold tainted products, paying tutors and creating safe spaces where kids could learn and live, teaching self defense to working girls and anyone else who wanted to learn, starting supervised use locations and harm reduction for all drug users whether they wanted more or less. All but a quarter of the money his “organization” makes goes right back into the alley, the rest paying a living wage to his workers and supplying gear for his little one-man crusade. Hopefully the remnants of his gang (he refused to call them goons) would be able to salvage some of the progress they were able to make.
The kids of Crime Alley were everything he was as a kid, scrappy and cynical, refusing to go down without a fight. He saw his mom in every drug addict and working girl on the block. Jason tried desperately to give them what he never had. Pouring his unrighteous anger into his territory and defending it with his heart and soul. The only people who cared about Crime Alley were those at the very bottom of the food chain, with no power to escape, forced only to watch as this city ate them alive. The worst kind of evil constantly pounding them deeper into the cracked, infested pavement. Just like the Joker.
Every time he saw Batman or Nightwing or his replacement it shoveled hot coals on his already raging anger. He would rather be shot at this point, at least that wound could heal.
Choking on the blood now filling his lungs, his breath became painful and shallow, the beeping of the bomb Jason had placed for the Joker counting down to his imminent death. Somewhere in the back of his mind he realized that he was going into shock, not that it would matter for long.
Pinpricks tingled along his skin as his body grew numb from lack of blood flow. He didn't try to fight his way out of death again. He'd had his second chance, and was just so tired. Tired of his own bottomless anger, tired of never-ending pain, and tired of being hated. Maybe he wasn't supposed to be alive, certainly no one here wanted him to be. But he didn’t shed a tear, eyes falling closed as the timer ticked down.
[Tell the big man I said Hello]
A booming explosion… then silence.
~ despite all odds, two universes came to an agreement and an exchange was made. ~
He floated in complete nothingness, a void of true peace until the world painfully rushed back in.