🎂☆ Jason Todd Birthday Week ☆ Day 6 (Aug 14th): Resurrection / Didn’t Die AU
Death was not what he’d thought it to be.
There was no bright light to give him solace.
Thanatos did not offer him a hand and a promise as he whisked his soul away.
Anubis did not glare down at him and call him weak.
He made an attempt to recall Shakespeare’s 18th sonnet as he lay on his side, pain fading rapidly. He was aware of his blood loss, his erratic heartbeat, the broken ribs that had surely punctured his lungs and the vast amount of brain trauma he’d been left with.
And the words were there.
Something about eternal lines. Lost possessions. Eternal summers.
He’d kill for an eternal summer. Winter months were too cold to be on the streets. Too many kids died in dank ditches, choking on their own snot. Bruce would never let him be that cold again. Bruce would make him go outside and drink in the rays. He longed for a good kiss of sunshine, enough to drag the freckles back onto his skin and chase away the cold that had his body wracking with shivers.
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade.
The words danced around his head, circling his brain with the elegance of a troupe of Kirov ballerinas. Graceful vowels curled in Bruce’s soft tenor. He thought of early mornings. Cold rooftops and leaning on gargoyles as the city came to.
Kafka had described death as a confrontation. He did not feel confronted. He felt regret. And shame. And a swallowing helping of anger, because he’d lived through so much, fought so hard all his life and he’d let himself throw it all away.
It is our task to obscure or quite obliterate the picture by our deeds while we are still in this world.
He hoped that being Robin would cancel out the things he had done in the name of survival. He hoped that this loss of consciousness, this end to all meaning would be swift and comforting.
But he could still hear the tick, tick, ticking of the timer attached to the bomb. His own ragged breaths were wet with blood that pooled in his mouth, dripped down his chin and his throat. The longer he struggled toward alertness, the harder it became to get there. He was losing himself, falling behind in this battle. There was no room for him to argue, to wiggle his way out on sheer luck and spite and grit. He was dying.
Was there peace after death?
Was there anything more waiting for him?
Where was his dad? He was going to miss him.
Death must be so beautiful.
What else did Slyvia Plath say?
To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.
He was ready to accept his fate. To forget. He was ready for the cold to end. It was just there, inches away from his fingers to reach out and grab. Like so many things in his life, he had to take before he was given. Forgiveness and permission and all that.
He rolled flat onto his back, blinked up twice at the ceiling— the bright red 00:05 of the timer stained the backs of his eyelids. He pretended it was the glare of summer. He pretended to have brown earth and soft grass. To have won the battle against this unstoppable force. To have bested death even as nothingness consumed him.
It was dark. It stayed dark for so long that he forgot what light looked like. There was no sunshine in death. There was nothing. He was nothing.
The cold lingered. It was heavy and suffocating. His body was sore. Every chink in his spine was being prodded by some uncomfortable spike that didn’t budge. His toes and fingers were frigid and frozen but his brain was on fire. All he could see was red. Blood, explosions, the dooming descent of a timer. Smoke stung his eyes. Ash made his throat thick. He burning up and falling apart into shards of ice.
Coming back to life was full of violence. He was crawling, spitting, begging and crying for air. For light. For his father.
Death left him confused. Life screwed him up.
He realized in his panic—with his fingers bleeding and brain screaming for oxygen— he was digging himself out of his own grave. It was a sloppy job. His body was not his. He was in pain, he couldn’t control his movements. He had a heartbeat but it was much too fast for him to retain any semblance of being alive. This was worse than death.
There was something wrong with him. Not just his body. Not just his brain.
The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls.
Poe said that. He could remember. He could remember dying.
Something was wrong with his soul.
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