Death Has No Right To You (arkham knight!jason todd x reader)
Summary: You're severely injured, but he's not letting you go. Even if you're not his to lose anymore.
(a/n: angstcomfort? not even death can try to drag you away from him. tw: mentions of blood/near death)
Jason has not felt such fear since his time in the warehouse, where the very thought of metal scraping concrete conjures phantom stings in his scars, and a gutting-drop in his heart. After him- after everything he's been through, he was close to believing nothing could ever be worse than the past he buried deep down, which he stifled with hatred-filled revenge.
Shaking fingers cradling your limp head, he can't believe he was ever foolish enough to think life had enough of him to let its dreaded claws loose. He had thought he was done with attachment to his past, to his mantle, to Bruce, to you.
"Please, don't take her away from me." He pleads to no one, because no one ever listens to him when he begs. Not when he was caged in that warehouse, not when he pleaded to be found, not when he pleaded to die.
He knows the scent of death like the back of his hand, coated on his hands when he kills, coated in the haunted look that stares back at him in the mirror. You- you're covered in the scent of it.
You're barely holding on, your grip on his neck falling looser only for him to snap at you to wake up whenever your eyelids shut, forcing you out of your stupor. Stay, stay, stay- his voice commands you.
When he reaches the base, he's barking orders and there's a flurry of movement as his militia move aside for him, all eyes on the limp body in his arms. "Get a fucking doctor- or I will make sure everyone in this room pays." His modulator renders his tone cold, but he can hear his desperation echoed back to him. Thankfully, no one notices and someone finally listens and makes a move.
He places you down on a flat surface, heart dropping when he can finally see how much blood you've lost under the fluorescent light. He grips your hand that reaches out for comfort. "You're going to make it." He mutters to himself, because he simply refuses anything other than your survival. "Because you're not someone who gives up. You're a fighter, you can fight this. I won't let you go under, you understand?"
You wince and heave with every breath, but there's confusion etched into your expression when you listen to his words. You try to find familiarity through his altered voice, something of memory to his armour, but you find none.
"Was I someone- were you someone to me?" You finally dared to ask.
There is no sound from his modulator, no flicker in those illuminating eyes, but somehow, you can sense the tension in his shoulders, the way his breath stops at your question.
"No." He answers. Not anymore.
The silence stretches, and footsteps are nearing.
"Then." You struggle through your next words, vision blurred till he leans in. "If I don't make it," You notice his fingers tighten around yours. "Will you bury me near Jason Todd's grave?"
The Arkham Knight is a powerful figure, with connections and a motive no one understands. Yet, if he was willing to put all this effort to save you, maybe he would listen to your final request.
"I promised him." Tears filled your eyes. "I'd always be by his side. I failed to before- Promise me, that you'll let me."
Jason stares at you, and he fights back the urge to scream. Don't you know, that by finding your Jason, you'll be leaving him? He had thought that whoever he became the day he escaped Joker's grasp couldn't possibly be something you could love, so he had left you alone. Or at least, he had convinced himself that it was the right decision. Now, even on your deathbed, your last words are of him, for him. Wrongs after wrongs after wrongs, it seems to be all he's capable of. But not this time.
He's not letting you go.
"I promise."
When you wake, you feel a strong hand covering yours. Your head pounds, and you try to recall what happened. A gunfight, a crossfire, a stranger, a promise-
The Arkham Knight. He saved you, didn't he?
You turn your head to see who was sitting beside the bed, expecting a robotic suit and glowing eyes, only to meet pale blue. Your heart recognises the colour before your mind does, seizing uncontrollably as if possessed.
"Am I dead?" You ask, laughing humourlessly. "Is that why you're here, Jay?"
He gives you a sad smile. Your Jason smiles at you. It's solemn and heartbreakingly haunting, unlike anything you've dreamt of since his death.
His hand moves to rest over your pulse, which beats over his calloused thumb. Life. Then, you're.. alive? You notice then, how he's not really the Jason you remember. There's a deep scar engraved into the skin tissue of his cheek, a crookedness to his nose from a punch gone wrong, and how his eyes hold secrets you can't uncover.
He's not your Jason, but he still looks at you the same way.
"I told you I'd keep my promise." He finally answers. "And now it's your turn to keep yours."
oh simon and your visible and invisible scars. x reader with a bad ending.
Gaz meditates, but you wouldn’t be able to tell with how quiet his breath comes out. Johnny, unironically, counts sheep- a trick his brother taught him for stormier nights. Price doesn’t sleep.
Simon, though, counts scars.
In his head, like he often is, before bed. Reserved for when the heater is too loud or the cement is too cold. When his sparse apartment feels empty, and the bed isn’t nearly uncomfortable enough to convince him he’s earned the right to rest.
Snaggle teeth on the back of his calf, a lightning bolt down his arm, tree grain over his chest. Each a distant reminder of a folly, a man, a death. He never touches them, afraid the tissue will catch on the end of his finger and spread to whatever he touches next. Midas, if gold was pain.
When he met you, he had fifty seven.
You adopted his habit, once you began burrowing yourself into his itchy covers. Sat in his lap, running your fingers over the puckered skin. He’s surprised that when they dance from arm to shoulder, the scars don’t follow. Then again, your hands are nothing like his, are they? Soft. Clean. Warm.
“You miscounted.”
“What?” His broken nose scrunches.
“You said fifty seven. But here,” your hand comes to hold the back of his neck, just before blonde meets winter pale, “You have one more.”
You pull away to kiss his forehead. “It's beautiful. They all are.”
That memory finds him bitter now. Almost a decade old, before the marriage, the son, the divorce. The weekend visitation, for the weekends he’s home. Before his son grew behind his back. Before you started looking at someone else the way he had once looked at you.
Before the empty bed got too cold, too loud, too uncomfortable for his back and his head.
Just before it all, you asked him if he’s collecting scars. He said he’d stop at one hundred. You called him a liar. Said he’d never stop. And you’re right. That's why you left.
Today, he is fifty eight years old. He sleeps alone.
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