Synopsis: When you first meet Jason Todd, the foliage has barely begun its preparation to hibernate. Between then and the barricades of snow, you begin to imagine a future among the colors of every season together. Too bad the flowers are in full bloom when you leave him. Jason Todd English major au, reader is a Psychology major
Word Count: 8,034
Trigger Warning: emotional abuse, child neglect, minor character death, trauma, survivor’s guilt, depression, anxiety, grief, mourning, talks of death, severe angst, reader does not have a good relationship with their parents, arguing, swearing, inaccurate descriptions of therapy, self-blame, depictions of a car accident, suicidal ideation, talks of suicide, financial abuse, mentions of self-harm
A/N: I am not a licensed therapist
MDNI: Minor's do not interact
Series Masterlist Full Masterlist
Then
Snow and ice crunched angrily under your boots as you creeped through the shoveled paths. Every few steps, you’d glance hesitantly over your shoulder. Each time, you met the same sight.
No one followed.
No one watched.
They weren’t here.
They didn’t know you were here.
Steeling yourself, you carefully knelt in front of the smooth placard that’s place in the world had so drastically changed-and yet, had it? Yours had always been this, had it not-the direction of your life.
The wet snow bled into your clothes immediately, a sharp, biting cold against your knees and legs.
Shivering, you extended an arm and slowly brushed the flakes off the gravestone.
“Hi,” you whispered. The word rattled about in your mouth, scraping against the rawness of using your voice for the first time all day. You cleared your throat with a quick cough, never taking your eyes off the carved name centered in your vision.
“I’m sorry I haven’t visited since before school started. Turns out you were right: senior year is nightmare-level busy.” Your throat closed in on itself, and you blinked rapidly to dispel the crest of tears threatening to turn to ice against your cheeks.
“Mom and dad…” you inhaled sharply. “Well, not much has changed there.” You laughed, the sound humorlessly fracturing against the silent world around you.
After, you bathed in the silence, everything you could voice fighting against itself within you.
“I got my acceptance letters,” you finally said, voice cracking. “Plural, if you can believe it.” The sound that followed was somehow both a laugh and a sob, yet neither description felt accurate as it pierced your own ears. You lifted a hand to muffle it, shaking your head as the tears fell and froze against your skin and neckline in the December air.
“I’m sorry.” you leaned forward as this sentiment tore out of you. “I’m so, so sorry.” Your forehead brushed the space between the gravestone and the snow-filled ground surrounding it. “I’m sorry.”
Your elder sister, buried six feet below you, frozen forever at the age of twenty-two, didn’t answer.
Now
Within moments of returning after your last final of the semester, your roommate shoves you back out the door and announces that the two of you are going to a party.
You manage three indignant yelps of protest before you’ve left the building, but your roommate ignores them in favor of frog marching you across the knee-deep snow painting Gotham U’s landscape an innocent, stark white.
They lead you to a house on a corner right off campus grounds. The thunder of a bass pulses through the layers of snow and ice underfoot, reverberating through your eardrums as the two of you weave up the path.
Your roommate knocks some pattern you barely hear against the door, and it swings open. The woman who opened it appraises the both of you with a sly eye before winking and gesturing for you to enter.
You wrap your arms around yourself as you timidly follow your roommate through the pack of dancers, the athletes shouting over a game of what you think is beer pong, and one student wearing what you’re pretty sure is the actual, official school mascot costume.
Where or how they got it, you can only guess. Why they have it, you don’t want to think about.
As the two of you reach the entry to the kitchen, your roommate squeals and rushes to envelop one of the only two people in the room in a hug.
The other person watches with distinct indifference, swirling whatever liquid they’ve chosen around in a red solo cup for a brief moment before slinking off toward one of the other rooms.
Your roommate pulls back and ushers you forward. You give a weak wave, and the girl you vaguely recognize as one of your roommate’s friends grins back.
“Oh, you must be Y/N,” she says. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
Your roommate playfully shoves her shoulder, shakes their head, and laughs. Turning to you, their expression falls sheepish. “Nothing bad, I swear.”
Throat dry, thoughts running rampant in your mind, the only thing you can think to reply with is: “Cool.”
Your roommate and their friend share a look, something unspoken passing between them with the ease you’ve only shared with one person.
As soon as that thought enters, you push it away and focus your attention on the array of bottles and cans littering the kitchen counters. “What exactly am I doing here?”
Your roommate clears their throat. “Nothing you don’t want to or are uncomfortable with, if that’s what you’re worried about. But finals are over and I thought we could all use a bit of fun.”
“You could’ve suggested I watch a movie or read a book or something. What about this,” you gesture vaguely to the entire atmosphere caging you in, “seemed like something I’d enjoy?”
Your roommate shifts on their feet, and they turn their eyes to the wall to avoid your stare. “Well…” they drawl.
You say their name in as much of an accusatory tone as you can manage.
They clasp their hands together the way one would to pray, their eyes widening dramatically. “I know you don’t want to talk about whatever argument you and Jason Todd had, but I really think you should talk it out with him. You haven’t been yourself since Thanksgiving.”
You scowl, hot indignation flaring in your chest. “Thanks for your input, but that’s not your decision to make.”
Your roommate lifts their hands up in surrender. “I know,” they say softly. “But come on. You’ve been miserable. If you don’t want to talk to him, then I really won’t make you. But you said yourself you thought the two of you were good friends. Surely whatever argument you had wasn’t bad enough to erase that?”
Treacherously, your brain decides it’s the perfect moment to recall Thanksgiving, and the walk you and Jason had taken around Wayne Manor’s gardens, and the way he’d looked at you after telling you-
You clear your throat, turn your head away, and bite the inside of your cheek.
They weren’t entirely wrong, you reason. You had thought yourself close enough to Jason Todd to call him your best friend, and he you his.
But…could that friendship truly be salvaged after Thanksgiving? After what followed?
Yes, you’d run away without saying anything.
But he didn’t contact you after.
He let you run.
In the deepest depths of your mind, you can’t help but focus on that. On wondering if, in your silence and absence, he’d decided that if you didn’t say yes then your friendship no longer had meaning and had decided it-you-were no longer worth the effort.
You’d mentioned that to your therapist only once, and quickly decided to never voice it again after she spent rest of the session berating you (more-so your brain and parents, you think,) for it in the way you’ve found only a therapist can berate someone.
Your roommate sighs, and their friend smiles a small, sad smile in your direction.
“If it’s any consolation,” she murmurs, “he’s miserable too.”
Something in your face must show, then. You’re too focused on the memories and uprising thoughts to fully notice, whether it’s a furrow of your brow or a downturn of your lips you’re unsure.
But both your roommate and their friend give you such sympathetic looks, you flinch.
“Erica shared a general class with him,” your roommate’s friend says by way of explanation.
You blink, the lack of context for that statement just enough to pull you from the currents of your mind. “Who’s Erica?”
“My lab partner. Or, well, former lab partner. From bio.”
Your roommate rolls their eyes. “Because there’s only one Erica in all of Gotham.”
Their friend hums thoughtfully. “You know, we never actually shared last names. I wonder if I could find it on the class list? If it’s even up anymore, that is.”
You blink again, slowly, a pressure you’ve come to identify as dread pooling over your shoulders and in your stomach.
Your roommate eyes you from the corner of their eye, thins their lips, and gently lays a hand on their friend’s shoulder. “I don’t think that’s important right now,” they say softly.
“No,” you agree. “It’s not. What is, is the audacity the two of you have to assume you can just ambush me like that here of all places!” you shake your head.
Your roommate sighs, the start of an apology cresting into the air.
You push past them before it finalizes, blindly retracing your way back to the front door.
The music around you swells.
A group of dancers spin and shuffle away from their spots, and someone’s found a strobe light to turn on and it’s arcing a path along the wall.
You blink once. Your eyes find the space the dancers have left, drawn to the shape left in their absence.
And you freeze.
People push around you.
Someone bumps into your shoulder and you think they say sorry but the muffled word enters one ear and doesn’t quite reach your brain because across the room, Jason Todd is leaning against the wall with his arms crossed looking like he’d rather be anywhere but here.
Your throat runs dry, and you swallow in a meager attempt to force it back to how it normally feels.
Behind you, your roommate softly announces their presence and then leans their head against your shoulder, jostling you as they make a quick gesture in Jason’s direction. “See,” they mutter. “It’s kind of pathetic, to be honest. Apparently, he almost flunked one of his major requirements because he couldn’t focus. Or so rumor says.”
“Rumors aren’t fact.” Your reply is automatic.
Your roommate scoffs but says nothing.
The two of you stay like that for a few beats before their friend is calling them for something. Your roommate gives your shoulder a quick squeeze. You force a toothless smile to your face and assure them you’ll be okay.
They stare a moment longer before slowly nodding and leaving you to your own devices.
When you glance back at the wall, you start.
Jason’s eyes pierce into you from across the room.
You scratch at your wrist and hurry for the door.
You make it half a block before he’s calling your name.
You increase your stride.
He shouts louder.
You whirl, your shoes slipping on a patch of ice that has you sliding a few centimeters back before you regain your footing.
When you focus on him, Jason’s arms are out as if to steady you, his eyes wide and mouth parted.
You glare.
He visibly swallows, and a muscle ticks in his jaw.
He stares at you, and you stare at him.
Neither of you say anything for a few minutes.
Your fingernails dig into the palms of your hands as you bite your tongue to avoid speaking first.
Finally, he clears his throat. “It, uh, it’s been a while.” He visibly winces as soon as the sentence is finished.
You harden your glare. “No shit.” The words come out sharp, harsher than you’d meant and yet somehow not harsh enough.
Jason reels back as if you’ve slapped him, shock overwriting his features for the briefest of moments before something you’ve never seen on his face before, something you can only assume is anger, takes over. “Why are you angry at me? You ran.”
“You said you love me!” the words tear out of your throat in a scream, bile burning the back of your throat and your fingernails pressing even deeper into your palms. Your knees and shoulders lock, and you curl your lip in your best imitation of a snarl.
The lines in Jason’s face deepen, his eyes narrowing in some mix of frustration and confusion. “I wasn’t trying to pressure you into saying it back or anything.” The words come out gruff, but he doesn’t match your volume. If anything, his voice grows quieter, more thoughtful, softer in its tone as he gently lifts his hand in what would typically be a calming manner.
A noise not unlike a growl carves its way forth. You’re in no mood to be calmed by anyone, much less the man responsible for your ire.
“You don’t love me.”
That proves more useful than your initial tactic.
Jason’s expression turns icy, sharpening deeper into that expression he’s never used around you before this moment, this night. His voice is low when he next speaks, but it’s still not the lowness you’re used to.
It’s not the gruff, pissed lowness of your father’s voice.
It resembles the low pitch of words that have been chosen carefully and required to be heard with complete seriousness.
It sounds like how you remember Bruce Wayne sounding.
“You don’t get to mitigate my feelings.” Jason visibly swallows and moves one step, one small step, closer to you.
You scramble back, eyes widening.
“You don’t have to feel the same way, clearly you don’t, and I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable.” Jason exhales, the breath fogging in the frigid air, curling in the space between you like a broken line attempting to reconnect with itself. “But you don’t get to tell me I’m not feeling what I am.”
Your chest tightens, your throat constricting itself as Jason takes another hesitant step toward you. You shake your head but find your feet won’t cooperate with what you know you need to do.
Jason stops just an arms-length away from you. His hands twitch as if wanting to reach for you, but he holds still, eyes cataloguing your face.
You poke the inside of your cheek with your tongue, blink back tears, and force your eyes over his shoulder. “You don’t know me.” These words aren’t as strong as your previous ones. They’re broken, cutting into what he refuses to see.
“Best friends, right?” his lips quirk in the tiniest of grins as he shrugs.
You study him for exactly three breaths.
Then he twitches again. This time, he doesn’t stop himself as he reaches for you.
You step back. “You shouldn’t love me.”
He stills completely.
You keep scuttling back, still facing him, God why are you still facing him?
He says your name. It bounces in the air like a broken plea.
You swallow the bile pulsing in your throat, blink against the tears, and force yourself away. Over your shoulder, you simply say: “If you really knew me, you wouldn’t.”
Then
When you first woke, the five minutes of bleariness allowed you to forget. In those five minutes, still half-asleep, the reality of your world and the day did not exist. The silent house sprouted before you as a rare blessing.
But reality is reality, and it is inescapable.
After, when you remembered, the silence of the house loomed as an omen of death.
And it was death that loomed.
Your parents sequestered themselves away for the day, nothing but a note to inform you of their plans.
You dressed in your mourning black, the same outfit you’d donned almost a year prior.
They didn’t visit her with you-they never did.
You went anyway, a bundle of fake flowers twisting in your grip.
The graveyard remained empty of other visitors in the mid-December day, threat of blizzard enough to keep all sane away.
You gently caressed the snow on dirt off the gravestone before resting the fake flowers against it. You tearily greeted your sister by name, sniffling and wiping at your nose in the absence of her replying with yours.
“I uh…” a waterfall of despair clawed your throat, stuffing the words back into your chest and replacing them with muddled sobs. You snapped your mouth shut, shoulders shaking, in an attempt to curb the display.
After a few minutes, in which you remained unsure if your composure was truly stable or just stable enough for the lack of a physical, human audience around you, you cleared your throat and tried again.
“I don’t really know what to say,” you admitted. “I miss you. And…”
The sheer force of the desire to break flowed through you again. You shoved your hand into the ground next to the gravestone, leaning over it.
“Why did you have to go?”
The words tore through you, and a mix of tears and spit followed down your face as your sister’s name obscured itself behind the wall of tears covering your eyes.
“Why…” the question cut itself with a whimper. You shut your eyes, then opened them when your eyelids betrayed you with a picture of your sister’s sympathetic frown, the details of her face lost to you.
“Why…”
As always, she did not respond.
You stayed there until your limbs grew too cold and stiff and numb, and your mind buzzed with the fogginess of dehydration.
Then, and only then, you lifted yourself up, dusted her bed one last time, and made your way back to the silent house.
Now
Your therapist screams when she sees you.
Vaguely, you recognize that as something to be expected, given you do not have an appointment and, you will admit, you do look like you got in a fight with both a raccoon and a pigeon.
Your therapist blinks in rapid succession, hand over her heart, lips parted as she takes you in. “What are you doing here?”
You stiffly stretch your limbs from where you’ve kept them the last several hours as you sat in one of the many creaky chairs scattered about the waiting room.
The receptionist merely clears their throat, says a quiet “excuse me”, and cuts between the two of you to leave the office.
“You said to come in if there was an emergency,” you say by way of explanation.
Your therapist presses her lips together, and she slowly moves to drop the keys she’s been holding back in her purse. “So, I did,” she muses. “I just didn’t expect you to have so many emergencies over winter break. What happened today?”
You shrug. “Same as yesterday. With my roommate gone, I have the dorm to myself.”
“No plans with other friends? I know it’s not the most ideal city to do so, but you could try playing tourist by yourself during the day just to get off campus.” Your therapist gently sits on one of the chairs across from you still close enough to converse. She leans back, crossing one leg over the other, and waits for your answer.
You lean forward, your elbows on your knees and your fingers intertwined to hold your chin up. “Playing tourist requires more money than my budget allows, and I would need friends still in Gotham to have plans.”
“To clarify, what I’m hearing is you still haven’t reached out to your friend Jason.”
You stiffen, eyes dropping to the pristine floor under you. “He doesn’t want to hear from me.”
“He’s told you this?”
Your nose itches, but your hands feel too stiff to unlock from where you’ve positioned them. You straighten in your seat, clear your throat, and shrug.
“Ah.” Your therapist doesn’t tsk, but the nod and look in her eye is enough for your shoulders to raise the way they’ve always done when you cower. She blinks, and the look is gone, and she gives you a small, sheepish smile, quietly apologizing.
“Why would he want to, after what I said? If he did, he would’ve reached out,” you mutter, picking at your fingernails.
Your therapist hums, tilting her head. “Maybe he’s giving you time and space to reach out, because he doesn’t think you want him to?”
Your nose scrunches, but you say nothing to that.
Your therapist lets you sit with it for a minute before speaking again. “You did say the other day you wanted to reach out, try to salvage the friendship, didn’t you?”
“Even so, he doesn’t want friendship,” you argue.
“Did he tell you that? That if you rejected him, he’d no longer be your friend?”
You shift uncomfortably, roll your ankles, stretch your neck. “He shouldn’t want to. Bad things happen to people who care about me.”
Your therapist inhales deeply and settles further into her chair. “Well, that sounds like the crux of the problem. Be honest: is loneliness truly the reason you’ve come here today? Or is it because of what today signifies?”
Your airway closes, your nostrils flare, and the burning urge to cry gathers in your face. “Do we have to?” you whisper.
“You brought it up,” your therapist replies gently.
You exhale shakily. “Two years-” the words catch in your throat. You cough, swallow, take a deep breath. “Today marks two years since my sister died.”
“I’m so sorry you’ve had to go through that. Losing someone you love is never easy.”
You blink, run a hand over your face. Your fingers pull away wet, and you sniff. “My parents…well, we’ve talked about how they reacted.” You sniff again, laugh dryly. “The thing is…they were right to blame me. It was my fault.”
Your therapist’s shoulders droop. Her mouth downturns, and you sense the refusal even as she says nothing, waiting for you to finish.
“It was my fault,” you repeat. “If it wasn’t for me, she wouldn’t have gotten in that car. She wouldn’t have-she wouldn’t have died. I’m the reason she’s gone.”
“Did you cut her break lines? Tamper with the car? Pour water on the road and will it turn to ice?”
You shake your head, a garbled no escaping your lips.
Your therapist presses her lips together, slowly nodding. “You didn’t cause the accident.”
“But I’m the reason she was driving!”
“Did you…hold a gun to her head and force her into the car? Did you threaten her in any way?”
You shake your head again.
“She made a choice.”
When you shake your head once more, your therapist says your name. It cracks through the room, both stern and broken, and you blink through the tears to focus on her.
“Your sister loved you,” your therapist tells you. It is solemn, a promise, something you know and have mourned and regretted ever since it led to her demise.
“Your sister loved you,” she repeats, “and she chose to answer your call and help you because of that. What happened is not your fault.”
Everything in you shakes, and the world distorts around you. “It is,” you insist. “She wouldn’t have died if she didn’t love me.”
Your therapist observes you without responding for a moment. “Why?” she asks. “Why is that the only possibility? Others have cared for you. Have they died because of it?”
You shudder. “That’s not the same.” The words leave you with a rasp, weak and shoved out by a force that’s been built over the years of your childhood. “Friends don’t love me as my sister does-did.” You swallow.
“And your parents…” your therapist starts.
“Never loved me,” you say firmly. “My sister’s the only one who’s ever loved me, told me she loved me, and she’s dead.”
Your therapist taps her knee idly. “So, the two must be connected? Someone says they love you, and they die? Based on one instance?”
You look up at the ceiling, still blinking hard. “I’d rather not test the theory.”
It says something, you note in the recesses of your mind, that your therapist doesn’t huff at that. Usually, she laughs when you joke.
The next thing she says is your name. Only, she doesn’t say it like she did before. This time, it is laced with nothing but seriousness, some edge of her tone ringing a bell in your mind so forcefully you can do nothing but immediately look to her.
She’s staring, unblinking, as if assessing your condition for the very first time. “Have you felt like you don’t want to exist, recently?”
Your breaths still. You swallow. “Not since last year,” you answer honestly. “I haven’t tried to kill myself, I swear.”
“Have you wanted to?”
“Not since last year,” you insist, firmer. “That’s not what this is…it’s just…”
She waits.
You swallow again. “He said he loved me.”
“Why did that bother you?”
“You know why.”
“No, I don’t. You haven’t said why it bothers you. Only that you’re afraid of people loving you because the last time someone did, they died. Is that why? Or is it something else?”
An ache swells in your head, your stomach, and your throat all at once. “I don’t see how that’s-”
Your therapist sighs, and you cut yourself off.
She apologizes, and then says your name a third time. Gentler than the last, but just as grounding. “There is no understanding this, no tools to learn to cope, until you are ready to talk about it. I can only help you if you want me to, and let me.”
You scratch at your elbow, avoid her eyes. When you answer, your voice is no more than a whisper, a rasp of what it should be. The words leave you stilted, hesitant. Your heart races against your chest in defiance, and you brace yourself for some cosmic intervention to strike you for admitting it.
“I think I love him too.”
Then
Your parents vanished over Christmas break. You’d stopped asking their holiday destinations after Thanksgiving. They didn’t offer one.
No one called. Your parents’ siblings had stopped reaching out over the summer, as if your parents’ inability to desire a fun family activity due to your sister’s death was too stressful for them.
None of their friends had ever attempted to reach you outside of the funeral.
Your friends had already drifted. The ones attending the same colleges made plans for sharing a room and exploring together.
The ones traveling further pulled away of their own accord, busy planning integration into the unknown alone.
You floated, adrift, mindless, unsure.
The acceptance letter from Gotham University sat hidden in the back of your photography folder, the only folder of assignments you had your parents did not care to review.
The acceptance letters from the other colleges adorned your desk, placed carefully as if under review. They were artificial, really.
Your parents had already decided the moment the letter arrived. Their alma mater, the school that would have been your sister’s too had she not…
Despite their order, you had yet to formalize your acceptance of their acceptance. Every time you went to click the right buttons and sign the right forms, some rope you could not see tugged your hand back.
You prided yourself on not believing in ghosts, but truly, you were starting to believe your sister was reaching from beyond the grave to chide you for giving up your dreams.
Not that you thought she actually was, of course.
Why would she chide you still, knowing you were responsible…
Were she a ghost, you thought, she should be cackling maniacally at your misfortune.
On December 25, your parents off who knew where for who knew how long, you opened your computer again, determined to finalize your fate.
You hadn’t slept well in the weeks since the anniversary of your sister’s death, the testing and applications and acceptances and rotary of emotions filtering through the house pushing you in every direction.
Thus, you typed on autopilot, selected things based on words you half-saw, and trusted your gut.
When you blinked, horror filled you.
The screen blasting excitement over your acceptance of their acceptance was not the screen for your parents’ alma mater.
The website glowed.
And you could not unsend your acceptance of Gotham U’s acceptance.
Shit.
Now
Despite media’s interpretation of therapy, you and your therapist did not solve your issues when you ambushed her at the end of the day.
Naturally, you’d talked until you were no longer on the brink of…well, breaking.
And then your therapist had sent you on your way with a phone number to a line available 24/7/365 for someone to talk to outside her availability.
You woke at the crack of dawn on December 23, and, taking your conversation to heart, decided to do something about it.
Now, you find yourself regretting your lack of an actual plan outside of ‘fix it’.
Unfortunately, the door opens before you can run far enough away to hide.
Alfred greets you with the familiarity you do not think you deserve, a warm smile, and slight bow.
You stiffly incline your head in response.
Alfred ushers you inside, and motions for your jacket. You hesitantly shrug it off and hand it to him, and he shakes it out before hanging it in the entrance closet.
You hadn’t noticed that, last time you were here.
“I’m sorry for just dropping by,” you start.
“Nonsense,” Alfred replies. “Master Bruce assured Master Jason you were welcome here anytime. Did he not tell you?”
The words spread to the seams of your essence that had cracked the moment you’d thought your friendship with Jason over. “It must have slipped his mind.”
Alfred hums, his eyes crinkling with something akin to wonder. “Master Jason didn’t mention any plans of yours today. Are you surprising him?”
You swallow in an attempt to make the words exit your mouth easier. In the end, they still cram together. “I’m sorry, I didn’t tell him I was coming. Is he here? The front desk of his building said he wasn’t staying in the dorms over break.”
He bids you follow him and leads you down several halls before depositing you in a grand library all without answering your question.
“Master Jason is currently occupied with a personal matter,” Alfred says, guiding you to a plush chair in front of a fake hearth. “I’ll send him in right away once he’s available. It shan’t be too long, I think. In the meantime, I’ll make some tea and scones and you can peruse the library.”
He waits until you’re sitting, tentative and stiff as it is, on the chair, fingers grasping the edges of the throw next to you, before slowly leaving.
The library doors shut with a click behind him.
Hesitantly, you shift your eyes from bookcase to bookcase. From your perch, you can’t tell what genre of books surrounds you. Despite Alfred’s permission to look and read, you feel no desire to move from where he’d left you.
Instead, you find yourself silently keeping track of the time in your head. Alfred returns minutes later.
Did he keep a pot of water ready to boil all day long, you wonder.
He sets a tray with a tea cup, small kettle, and a few scones on it on the small end table next to the couch. “Master Jason will be in in just a few minutes,” he informs you.
Then he leaves you on your own again.
The tea and scones plead up to you from their position, and, mouth watering at the thought of Alfred’s cooking, you gently dig into the snack he’s provided.
Doing so, you forget to count the time.
In fact, you become so absorbed in the tea-or perhaps he’s always been that quiet, he has teased you in the past for walking louder than those born in Gotham, has he not-you do not hear the library doors.
Jason enters a wraith, unnoticed to you until too late.
When he gently sits on the edge of the couch next to you, you startle, nearly dropping the tea cup into your lap.
His hand is there, steadying it. He’s careful not to touch your hand with his as he does so.
Shakily, you return the cup to the tray next to you before turning to face him.
For the first time since he introduced himself, since he sat at the desk next to yours in a class he was not meant to attend, you cannot read Jason Todd’s face.
He’s staring at you, and while the gentleness in his eyes is oh so familiar, you can’t tell what he’s thinking or feeling behind the mask he’s painted on.
You exhale.
Jason blinks, but says nothing.
You wet your lips, clear your throat, and scratch your wrist. “I’m sorry for just showing up,” you finally say.
A muscle in Jason’s jaw ticks. “That’s what you’re sorry for?” his voice is scratchy as he says it.
You wince. “Well, yes, but not just that.”
His gesture for you to continue is the only movement he makes.
“I’m sorry,” you begin slowly, “that I told you you didn’t know your own feelings, and that what you said you were feeling wasn’t what you were actually feeling.”
Jason sighs. “I really didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
“It, uh, it wasn’t you entirely.” You sniff.
Jason’s brow furrows. “What does that mean?”
You swallow, scratch the back of your neck, then your arm, then the back of your wrist. Your eyes move to the fake fireplace, to the rug you hadn’t noticed on the floor, to the specific details of the throw you’ve abandoned picking at.
Weeks ago, you imagine Jason would’ve said your name. He would’ve prompted you in that gentle manner, sincere in a way that let you answer if you wanted to and let you keep quiet if you wanted to.
Today, he says nothing. He just waits you out.
That causes the bubble of nausea to grow worse. You clear your throat, scuff your foot against the rug, hope Alfred won’t be too upset at you for doing so, and then meet Jason’s eyes.
“There are two things I want to say before I explain.”
He gives a singular, deep nod.
You inhale sharply. “One, I know I hurt you by running away but you not reaching out after hurt me. Two, I think I love you too.”
Jason stills so completely you lean ever-so-slightly toward him in the hopes of learning whether or not he’s still breathing.
A moment later, he blinks, visibly swallows, and pinches his nose. “I feel like you’re about to say something that contradicts that.”
Gently, you reach out and reset your hand next to his. Your pinky extends to touch his. He jolts before carefully moving his hand to intertwine with yours.
“I just want you to know all the facts so you can make an informed decision,” you say as steadily as you can, which really isn’t steady at all.
Jason squeezes your hand.
You take a deep breath. “Two years ago, there was…an incident. I needed a ride home, so I called my sister. There was an accident. She didn’t survive.”
Neither you or Jason say anything for a few minutes. You watch Jason’s face as he processes this, the way his eyes dart back and forth on some whiteboard you can’t see, the way his lips twitch into a frown and his brow furrows.
“What does that have to do with your or my feelings?” he finally asks. It’s not unkind, just genuinely curious.
“According to my therapist, nothing. But, uh…” your grip on his hand tightens as you use your other to swipe away the mutinous tears pricking the corners of your eyes. “My sister is sort of the only other person who’s every told me they love me, and um…I’m really scared that if you keep saying it, you’re going to die too.”
“How…why…” Jason sighs, squeezing his eyes shut. “I’m not trying to invalidate your thought process, but I don’t really understand it.”
“I can tell you more,” you offer. “But you really won’t want to continue our friendship after.”
Jason gives you a look so similar to the deadpan your therapist has taken to employ, you automatically apologize.
“Please don’t make my decisions for me,” he says. “I’d never make yours for you.”
That alone gives you pause.
“Okay,” you finally agree.
The Before
It started with the fact that your birth had not been planned.
Your parents planned everything in their lives.
Your elder sister learned that the moment she grew enough to learn anything. She had been planned for. Her life, her schooling, her greatness, had been planned for.
You had arrived with a half-baked plan after learning of your existence.
The nursery was remnants of your sister’s nursery. Your learning was remnants of her learning.
Your parents devoted their time and energy into perfecting their plan for her life.
They didn’t give you one of your own until the idea came: replicate hers and you would be a duplicate.
A spare.
An afterthought.
They lavished her with tutors and praise, and you got the scraps they tossed your way.
Despite this, your sister did everything in her limited power to show you how to create dreams of your own.
You’d asked her, once, when you were five and she ten, if she had no dreams of her own.
She had smiled and you did not know then how to notice the contrast of her smile with the dimness in her eyes, but oh she had smiled. “Your dreams are my dreams,” she had said. It held all the solemnity of a sworn promise a ten-year-old could make.
You did not understand, then, all that she was subjected to that you were not.
The expectations that came with the praise.
The gripping silence when she did not perform as they believed she should have.
Your parents never told either of you they loved you.
They praised your accomplishments-hers, more than yours, for she was their pride and you were the extra.
They complained-your failures, their jobs, finances, things no child should have to worry about.
Your sister rectified that.
When you sprained an ankle, she held you and whispered comforts against your hairline.
When you failed a test you had spent days studying for, she told you how proud of your determination she was.
There were no requirements for her to tell you she loved you. She’d say it at the most random of times, on the most random of days.
When you got sick at school and the nurse called your parents, you wished she would call your sister instead.
Your parents would take you home, sneer, and pester you: were you sure you couldn’t last the rest of the day? You’d miss so much coursework.
When your sister turned sixteen, she got her license. Your parents bought her a car for passing her exam. To help her get to and from work and internships and activities. To help her build her college application and resume.
Your mother complained when you told her she or your father was required to sit in the car with you until you got your license and to bring you to take your exam.
Needless to say, you did not get a car when you turned sixteen.
Despite all of this, your life had routine with your sister in it. You knew what to expect. You knew she would always smile and wrap you in a hug if you needed it.
Your parents could throw you into the storm, but she would always be the lighthouse to guide you back from the crashing sea.
Until that December.
You hadn’t been thinking. That’s what you came back to in the months that followed.
Your sister, twenty-two, despite still having one semester of college left, had already secured a job at a company your parents approved of.
They’d celebrated it.
She’d had no true joy or despair upon giving the news. It simply was what would be.
The week prior to learning this, you’d been nominated for an award at school. Your parents had scoffed, and told you that was to be expected.
Your school friends had been the ones to suggest it. You’d agreed, stupidly, because you hadn’t been thinking.
You’d told your parents it was an extra shift. They didn’t care enough to know whether you were lying.
The night started fine, but then your friends ran into other friends, friends you didn’t know. There were too many people, and you couldn’t breathe.
At some point, between one breath and another, you lost sight of your friends.
You called your sister.
“Hello?” she’d asked. You’d not been able to respond. Her voice changed, then, to that unique mix of panic and authority she’d only ever used when the two of you were alone. “Where are you? Are you safe?”
And you-
You’d sobbed.
Your sister, ever the genius, calmed you enough to get your location. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” she assured you.
She forbade you from hanging up, not that you had the mind to even had you wanted to.
With her voice in your ear, you’d started for outside. You ran into one friend on your way, who took one look at your panicked state and decided to wait with you.
Your sister arrived in ten minutes.
She rushed out of the car, gently led you to it, and she and your friend guided you in.
Vaguely, later, you would remember hearing her ask your friend if they needed a ride as if you were underwater.
Your friend declined.
Your sister didn’t ask any questions as she started the drive home.
Halfway there, you apologized.
“What’re you apologizing for?” she snorted.
“You were probably busy, and I ruined your night. I could’ve found my own way home. Better yet, I shouldn’t have gone.”
Your sister scoffed. “You didn’t ruin my night. You could never ruin my night.”
You hadn’t believed her.
It was then, you think, or was it a moment later? Everything distorted out of place, after the fact.
“Hey,” her voice carried that sternness in it. “You are my sibling. I love you. I will always be here when you need me, okay?”
One hand off the wheel to rub your shoulder.
You’d remember, later, meeting her eyes.
She’d taken her eyes off the road to assure you, hadn’t she?
Did she?
Why?
The car shrieked, swerving.
Black ice, they’d say.
What did it matter, when you’re the only one who made it home.
Now
Suspicion flutters through your veins at the sight of Jason Todd entering the classroom. It’s late January, the first day of the new semester, and you know for a fact that you and Jason share, once again, absolutely no classes on account of having compared schedules with him several times over winter break.
He catches sight of your narrowed gaze and grins, dropping into the empty seat next to you.
“What’re you doing here?” you murmur.
He leans toward you, extending a pencil with all the grace of someone raised in an elite rich circle. Or, so you assume. You certainly weren’t raised in such a manner.
“You left this at my dorm last night,” he whispers. “Thought you might need it.”
You raise an eyebrow. “Do you really believe I only own one pencil and pen?”
Jason shrugs. “Most of assignments are online. Besides, sue me, I wanted to see you this morning before lectures steal you away for the whole day.” He glances around the room. Satisfied no one is paying either of you any attention, he darts forth to press a quick kiss to your cheek. “I love you.” The words ghost against your skin, prickling it.
You shove at his shoulder as playfully as you can manage while snatching the pencil from his grasp. “I love you, too,” you grit out. “Now please leave before the professor thinks you’re actually in this class.”
Jason laughs but does as you’ve asked.
You watch him leave. When he’s gone, you twirl the pencil in your grasp.
Really, you’d think an English major would be able to come up with a better excuse.
It’s not even your pencil, after all.
Not that you’re not happy to see him, of course.
It had been a rough few weeks, since you’d told Jason everything.
He’d sat with it in silence before repeating what your therapist had said: that it wasn’t your fault.
You’re still trying to find it in yourself to believe the two of them when they tell you that, but your therapist assures you that you are making progress.
Jason and you had spent the first week of talking again working on restoring your friendship. After, you both agreed that, while terrified, you did want to explore the romantic feelings you both had.
The moments of complete terror are fewer now then they were, so you’re proud of yourself for that.
Your roommate had cackled when you finally admitted what the argument you and Jason had was about, and everything that followed.
For now, you’re happy enough to take it one day at a time.
Then
It happened in the middle of January. The bleak greys and storms of winter had pressed in from all sides of the sky, and snow-crested hills developed where no hills stood.
You hadn’t anticipated it, at least not like this.
Maybe that was the error; for really, you had grown too lax. You should’ve anticipated it. A year earlier, you would’ve. Hell, a month earlier, you would’ve.
But you’d grown disillusioned, the sentences and plans hidden secretly in the emails of your phone and the admission you hadn’t meant to make but couldn’t regret fostering the growth of new dreams in your mind.
You returned from school in as good a mood as you’d been able to muster since the accident that tore your life in two.
Your parents were both home, waiting in the kitchen for you.
That alone should’ve been signal enough.
Instead, you had merely furrowed your brow, greeted them, and moved for your room.
Your father calling your name stopped you.
“Yes?” you’d asked, unknowing.
He and your mother exchanged a glance.
A pit formed in your stomach at that.
“Can you explain why there’re several emails from Gotham University about your enrollment in their psychology program?” your mother asked, a layer of thick sweetness coating the words.
You shuffled on your feet. “Um.”
“That’s not the university I thought we’d agreed on,” your father said. “Nor the program. Psychology? Really? You do know you need a Ph.D. to do anything with that, don’t you?”
Your mother sighed. “And it’s in Gotham, of all places. I bet they charge students extra, as hazard insurance or something. What with all the dressed-up lunatics running around.”
“I want to go there,” you found yourself interrupting them.
They both turned, blinking, astonished.
“What?” your father asked. You knew he only asked it to give you a chance to retract your statement.
You swallowed. “I want to go there,” you repeated, more firmly. “I want to study psychology.”
Your parents stared at you in silence for a moment and then burst out laughing.
You shrunk back.
“Well, I’m certainly not going to pay for that. All that schooling. You’ll have to take out loans and then you’ll still not make hardly anything for years and years.” Your father tsked, shaking his head.
Your mother shrugged helplessly. “We won’t stop you if you want to waste your life, sweetie. It’s your life. But you will have to take responsibility for your decisions.”
Mentally, you tallied your current wages and the expected costs you’d encountered while planning for the next fall. “I already enrolled,” you muttered.
“Should’ve thought of that sooner, then,” your father chided.
They broke off into their own discussion after that, a silent dismissal.
Mindlessly, you found yourself in your room.
You thought of the dreams you’d lost, the dreams you’d gained, and wondered what your sister would think.
What she’d tell you to do.
Only-she’d never told you to do anything, not really.
She’d supported you, made suggestions.
But she’d only ever provided information, not orders.
Before you fully realized what you were doing, you’d found your razor and hovered it above the skin of your thigh.
Maybe, maybe if you dug deep enough, you’d find her again.
Maybe, maybe you’d be okay, if only you weren’t here but wherever she was.
The razor slowly touched your skin.
You gasped, jerked your arm back, and chucked it as far away as you could.
Synopsis: When you first meet Jason Todd, the foliage has barely begun its preparation to hibernate. Between then and the barricades of snow, you begin to imagine a future among the colors of every season together. Too bad the flowers are in full bloom when you leave him. Jason Todd English major au, reader is a Psychology major
Word Count: 8,034
Trigger Warning: emotional abuse, child neglect, minor character death, trauma, survivor’s guilt, depression, anxiety, grief, mourning, talks of death, severe angst, reader does not have a good relationship with their parents, arguing, swearing, inaccurate descriptions of therapy, self-blame, depictions of a car accident, suicidal ideation, talks of suicide, financial abuse, mentions of self-harm
A/N: I am not a licensed therapist
MDNI: Minor's do not interact
Series Masterlist Full Masterlist
Then
Snow and ice crunched angrily under your boots as you creeped through the shoveled paths. Every few steps, you’d glance hesitantly over your shoulder. Each time, you met the same sight.
No one followed.
No one watched.
They weren’t here.
They didn’t know you were here.
Steeling yourself, you carefully knelt in front of the smooth placard that’s place in the world had so drastically changed-and yet, had it? Yours had always been this, had it not-the direction of your life.
The wet snow bled into your clothes immediately, a sharp, biting cold against your knees and legs.
Shivering, you extended an arm and slowly brushed the flakes off the gravestone.
“Hi,” you whispered. The word rattled about in your mouth, scraping against the rawness of using your voice for the first time all day. You cleared your throat with a quick cough, never taking your eyes off the carved name centered in your vision.
“I’m sorry I haven’t visited since before school started. Turns out you were right: senior year is nightmare-level busy.” Your throat closed in on itself, and you blinked rapidly to dispel the crest of tears threatening to turn to ice against your cheeks.
“Mom and dad…” you inhaled sharply. “Well, not much has changed there.” You laughed, the sound humorlessly fracturing against the silent world around you.
After, you bathed in the silence, everything you could voice fighting against itself within you.
“I got my acceptance letters,” you finally said, voice cracking. “Plural, if you can believe it.” The sound that followed was somehow both a laugh and a sob, yet neither description felt accurate as it pierced your own ears. You lifted a hand to muffle it, shaking your head as the tears fell and froze against your skin and neckline in the December air.
“I’m sorry.” you leaned forward as this sentiment tore out of you. “I’m so, so sorry.” Your forehead brushed the space between the gravestone and the snow-filled ground surrounding it. “I’m sorry.”
Your elder sister, buried six feet below you, frozen forever at the age of twenty-two, didn’t answer.
Now
Within moments of returning after your last final of the semester, your roommate shoves you back out the door and announces that the two of you are going to a party.
You manage three indignant yelps of protest before you’ve left the building, but your roommate ignores them in favor of frog marching you across the knee-deep snow painting Gotham U’s landscape an innocent, stark white.
They lead you to a house on a corner right off campus grounds. The thunder of a bass pulses through the layers of snow and ice underfoot, reverberating through your eardrums as the two of you weave up the path.
Your roommate knocks some pattern you barely hear against the door, and it swings open. The woman who opened it appraises the both of you with a sly eye before winking and gesturing for you to enter.
You wrap your arms around yourself as you timidly follow your roommate through the pack of dancers, the athletes shouting over a game of what you think is beer pong, and one student wearing what you’re pretty sure is the actual, official school mascot costume.
Where or how they got it, you can only guess. Why they have it, you don’t want to think about.
As the two of you reach the entry to the kitchen, your roommate squeals and rushes to envelop one of the only two people in the room in a hug.
The other person watches with distinct indifference, swirling whatever liquid they’ve chosen around in a red solo cup for a brief moment before slinking off toward one of the other rooms.
Your roommate pulls back and ushers you forward. You give a weak wave, and the girl you vaguely recognize as one of your roommate’s friends grins back.
“Oh, you must be Y/N,” she says. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
Your roommate playfully shoves her shoulder, shakes their head, and laughs. Turning to you, their expression falls sheepish. “Nothing bad, I swear.”
Throat dry, thoughts running rampant in your mind, the only thing you can think to reply with is: “Cool.”
Your roommate and their friend share a look, something unspoken passing between them with the ease you’ve only shared with one person.
As soon as that thought enters, you push it away and focus your attention on the array of bottles and cans littering the kitchen counters. “What exactly am I doing here?”
Your roommate clears their throat. “Nothing you don’t want to or are uncomfortable with, if that’s what you’re worried about. But finals are over and I thought we could all use a bit of fun.”
“You could’ve suggested I watch a movie or read a book or something. What about this,” you gesture vaguely to the entire atmosphere caging you in, “seemed like something I’d enjoy?”
Your roommate shifts on their feet, and they turn their eyes to the wall to avoid your stare. “Well…” they drawl.
You say their name in as much of an accusatory tone as you can manage.
They clasp their hands together the way one would to pray, their eyes widening dramatically. “I know you don’t want to talk about whatever argument you and Jason Todd had, but I really think you should talk it out with him. You haven’t been yourself since Thanksgiving.”
You scowl, hot indignation flaring in your chest. “Thanks for your input, but that’s not your decision to make.”
Your roommate lifts their hands up in surrender. “I know,” they say softly. “But come on. You’ve been miserable. If you don’t want to talk to him, then I really won’t make you. But you said yourself you thought the two of you were good friends. Surely whatever argument you had wasn’t bad enough to erase that?”
Treacherously, your brain decides it’s the perfect moment to recall Thanksgiving, and the walk you and Jason had taken around Wayne Manor’s gardens, and the way he’d looked at you after telling you-
You clear your throat, turn your head away, and bite the inside of your cheek.
They weren’t entirely wrong, you reason. You had thought yourself close enough to Jason Todd to call him your best friend, and he you his.
But…could that friendship truly be salvaged after Thanksgiving? After what followed?
Yes, you’d run away without saying anything.
But he didn’t contact you after.
He let you run.
In the deepest depths of your mind, you can’t help but focus on that. On wondering if, in your silence and absence, he’d decided that if you didn’t say yes then your friendship no longer had meaning and had decided it-you-were no longer worth the effort.
You’d mentioned that to your therapist only once, and quickly decided to never voice it again after she spent rest of the session berating you (more-so your brain and parents, you think,) for it in the way you’ve found only a therapist can berate someone.
Your roommate sighs, and their friend smiles a small, sad smile in your direction.
“If it’s any consolation,” she murmurs, “he’s miserable too.”
Something in your face must show, then. You’re too focused on the memories and uprising thoughts to fully notice, whether it’s a furrow of your brow or a downturn of your lips you’re unsure.
But both your roommate and their friend give you such sympathetic looks, you flinch.
“Erica shared a general class with him,” your roommate’s friend says by way of explanation.
You blink, the lack of context for that statement just enough to pull you from the currents of your mind. “Who’s Erica?”
“My lab partner. Or, well, former lab partner. From bio.”
Your roommate rolls their eyes. “Because there’s only one Erica in all of Gotham.”
Their friend hums thoughtfully. “You know, we never actually shared last names. I wonder if I could find it on the class list? If it’s even up anymore, that is.”
You blink again, slowly, a pressure you’ve come to identify as dread pooling over your shoulders and in your stomach.
Your roommate eyes you from the corner of their eye, thins their lips, and gently lays a hand on their friend’s shoulder. “I don’t think that’s important right now,” they say softly.
“No,” you agree. “It’s not. What is, is the audacity the two of you have to assume you can just ambush me like that here of all places!” you shake your head.
Your roommate sighs, the start of an apology cresting into the air.
You push past them before it finalizes, blindly retracing your way back to the front door.
The music around you swells.
A group of dancers spin and shuffle away from their spots, and someone’s found a strobe light to turn on and it’s arcing a path along the wall.
You blink once. Your eyes find the space the dancers have left, drawn to the shape left in their absence.
And you freeze.
People push around you.
Someone bumps into your shoulder and you think they say sorry but the muffled word enters one ear and doesn’t quite reach your brain because across the room, Jason Todd is leaning against the wall with his arms crossed looking like he’d rather be anywhere but here.
Your throat runs dry, and you swallow in a meager attempt to force it back to how it normally feels.
Behind you, your roommate softly announces their presence and then leans their head against your shoulder, jostling you as they make a quick gesture in Jason’s direction. “See,” they mutter. “It’s kind of pathetic, to be honest. Apparently, he almost flunked one of his major requirements because he couldn’t focus. Or so rumor says.”
“Rumors aren’t fact.” Your reply is automatic.
Your roommate scoffs but says nothing.
The two of you stay like that for a few beats before their friend is calling them for something. Your roommate gives your shoulder a quick squeeze. You force a toothless smile to your face and assure them you’ll be okay.
They stare a moment longer before slowly nodding and leaving you to your own devices.
When you glance back at the wall, you start.
Jason’s eyes pierce into you from across the room.
You scratch at your wrist and hurry for the door.
You make it half a block before he’s calling your name.
You increase your stride.
He shouts louder.
You whirl, your shoes slipping on a patch of ice that has you sliding a few centimeters back before you regain your footing.
When you focus on him, Jason’s arms are out as if to steady you, his eyes wide and mouth parted.
You glare.
He visibly swallows, and a muscle ticks in his jaw.
He stares at you, and you stare at him.
Neither of you say anything for a few minutes.
Your fingernails dig into the palms of your hands as you bite your tongue to avoid speaking first.
Finally, he clears his throat. “It, uh, it’s been a while.” He visibly winces as soon as the sentence is finished.
You harden your glare. “No shit.” The words come out sharp, harsher than you’d meant and yet somehow not harsh enough.
Jason reels back as if you’ve slapped him, shock overwriting his features for the briefest of moments before something you’ve never seen on his face before, something you can only assume is anger, takes over. “Why are you angry at me? You ran.”
“You said you love me!” the words tear out of your throat in a scream, bile burning the back of your throat and your fingernails pressing even deeper into your palms. Your knees and shoulders lock, and you curl your lip in your best imitation of a snarl.
The lines in Jason’s face deepen, his eyes narrowing in some mix of frustration and confusion. “I wasn’t trying to pressure you into saying it back or anything.” The words come out gruff, but he doesn’t match your volume. If anything, his voice grows quieter, more thoughtful, softer in its tone as he gently lifts his hand in what would typically be a calming manner.
A noise not unlike a growl carves its way forth. You’re in no mood to be calmed by anyone, much less the man responsible for your ire.
“You don’t love me.”
That proves more useful than your initial tactic.
Jason’s expression turns icy, sharpening deeper into that expression he’s never used around you before this moment, this night. His voice is low when he next speaks, but it’s still not the lowness you’re used to.
It’s not the gruff, pissed lowness of your father’s voice.
It resembles the low pitch of words that have been chosen carefully and required to be heard with complete seriousness.
It sounds like how you remember Bruce Wayne sounding.
“You don’t get to mitigate my feelings.” Jason visibly swallows and moves one step, one small step, closer to you.
You scramble back, eyes widening.
“You don’t have to feel the same way, clearly you don’t, and I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable.” Jason exhales, the breath fogging in the frigid air, curling in the space between you like a broken line attempting to reconnect with itself. “But you don’t get to tell me I’m not feeling what I am.”
Your chest tightens, your throat constricting itself as Jason takes another hesitant step toward you. You shake your head but find your feet won’t cooperate with what you know you need to do.
Jason stops just an arms-length away from you. His hands twitch as if wanting to reach for you, but he holds still, eyes cataloguing your face.
You poke the inside of your cheek with your tongue, blink back tears, and force your eyes over his shoulder. “You don’t know me.” These words aren’t as strong as your previous ones. They’re broken, cutting into what he refuses to see.
“Best friends, right?” his lips quirk in the tiniest of grins as he shrugs.
You study him for exactly three breaths.
Then he twitches again. This time, he doesn’t stop himself as he reaches for you.
You step back. “You shouldn’t love me.”
He stills completely.
You keep scuttling back, still facing him, God why are you still facing him?
He says your name. It bounces in the air like a broken plea.
You swallow the bile pulsing in your throat, blink against the tears, and force yourself away. Over your shoulder, you simply say: “If you really knew me, you wouldn’t.”
Then
When you first woke, the five minutes of bleariness allowed you to forget. In those five minutes, still half-asleep, the reality of your world and the day did not exist. The silent house sprouted before you as a rare blessing.
But reality is reality, and it is inescapable.
After, when you remembered, the silence of the house loomed as an omen of death.
And it was death that loomed.
Your parents sequestered themselves away for the day, nothing but a note to inform you of their plans.
You dressed in your mourning black, the same outfit you’d donned almost a year prior.
They didn’t visit her with you-they never did.
You went anyway, a bundle of fake flowers twisting in your grip.
The graveyard remained empty of other visitors in the mid-December day, threat of blizzard enough to keep all sane away.
You gently caressed the snow on dirt off the gravestone before resting the fake flowers against it. You tearily greeted your sister by name, sniffling and wiping at your nose in the absence of her replying with yours.
“I uh…” a waterfall of despair clawed your throat, stuffing the words back into your chest and replacing them with muddled sobs. You snapped your mouth shut, shoulders shaking, in an attempt to curb the display.
After a few minutes, in which you remained unsure if your composure was truly stable or just stable enough for the lack of a physical, human audience around you, you cleared your throat and tried again.
“I don’t really know what to say,” you admitted. “I miss you. And…”
The sheer force of the desire to break flowed through you again. You shoved your hand into the ground next to the gravestone, leaning over it.
“Why did you have to go?”
The words tore through you, and a mix of tears and spit followed down your face as your sister’s name obscured itself behind the wall of tears covering your eyes.
“Why…” the question cut itself with a whimper. You shut your eyes, then opened them when your eyelids betrayed you with a picture of your sister’s sympathetic frown, the details of her face lost to you.
“Why…”
As always, she did not respond.
You stayed there until your limbs grew too cold and stiff and numb, and your mind buzzed with the fogginess of dehydration.
Then, and only then, you lifted yourself up, dusted her bed one last time, and made your way back to the silent house.
Now
Your therapist screams when she sees you.
Vaguely, you recognize that as something to be expected, given you do not have an appointment and, you will admit, you do look like you got in a fight with both a raccoon and a pigeon.
Your therapist blinks in rapid succession, hand over her heart, lips parted as she takes you in. “What are you doing here?”
You stiffly stretch your limbs from where you’ve kept them the last several hours as you sat in one of the many creaky chairs scattered about the waiting room.
The receptionist merely clears their throat, says a quiet “excuse me”, and cuts between the two of you to leave the office.
“You said to come in if there was an emergency,” you say by way of explanation.
Your therapist presses her lips together, and she slowly moves to drop the keys she’s been holding back in her purse. “So, I did,” she muses. “I just didn’t expect you to have so many emergencies over winter break. What happened today?”
You shrug. “Same as yesterday. With my roommate gone, I have the dorm to myself.”
“No plans with other friends? I know it’s not the most ideal city to do so, but you could try playing tourist by yourself during the day just to get off campus.” Your therapist gently sits on one of the chairs across from you still close enough to converse. She leans back, crossing one leg over the other, and waits for your answer.
You lean forward, your elbows on your knees and your fingers intertwined to hold your chin up. “Playing tourist requires more money than my budget allows, and I would need friends still in Gotham to have plans.”
“To clarify, what I’m hearing is you still haven’t reached out to your friend Jason.”
You stiffen, eyes dropping to the pristine floor under you. “He doesn’t want to hear from me.”
“He’s told you this?”
Your nose itches, but your hands feel too stiff to unlock from where you’ve positioned them. You straighten in your seat, clear your throat, and shrug.
“Ah.” Your therapist doesn’t tsk, but the nod and look in her eye is enough for your shoulders to raise the way they’ve always done when you cower. She blinks, and the look is gone, and she gives you a small, sheepish smile, quietly apologizing.
“Why would he want to, after what I said? If he did, he would’ve reached out,” you mutter, picking at your fingernails.
Your therapist hums, tilting her head. “Maybe he’s giving you time and space to reach out, because he doesn’t think you want him to?”
Your nose scrunches, but you say nothing to that.
Your therapist lets you sit with it for a minute before speaking again. “You did say the other day you wanted to reach out, try to salvage the friendship, didn’t you?”
“Even so, he doesn’t want friendship,” you argue.
“Did he tell you that? That if you rejected him, he’d no longer be your friend?”
You shift uncomfortably, roll your ankles, stretch your neck. “He shouldn’t want to. Bad things happen to people who care about me.”
Your therapist inhales deeply and settles further into her chair. “Well, that sounds like the crux of the problem. Be honest: is loneliness truly the reason you’ve come here today? Or is it because of what today signifies?”
Your airway closes, your nostrils flare, and the burning urge to cry gathers in your face. “Do we have to?” you whisper.
“You brought it up,” your therapist replies gently.
You exhale shakily. “Two years-” the words catch in your throat. You cough, swallow, take a deep breath. “Today marks two years since my sister died.”
“I’m so sorry you’ve had to go through that. Losing someone you love is never easy.”
You blink, run a hand over your face. Your fingers pull away wet, and you sniff. “My parents…well, we’ve talked about how they reacted.” You sniff again, laugh dryly. “The thing is…they were right to blame me. It was my fault.”
Your therapist’s shoulders droop. Her mouth downturns, and you sense the refusal even as she says nothing, waiting for you to finish.
“It was my fault,” you repeat. “If it wasn’t for me, she wouldn’t have gotten in that car. She wouldn’t have-she wouldn’t have died. I’m the reason she’s gone.”
“Did you cut her break lines? Tamper with the car? Pour water on the road and will it turn to ice?”
You shake your head, a garbled no escaping your lips.
Your therapist presses her lips together, slowly nodding. “You didn’t cause the accident.”
“But I’m the reason she was driving!”
“Did you…hold a gun to her head and force her into the car? Did you threaten her in any way?”
You shake your head again.
“She made a choice.”
When you shake your head once more, your therapist says your name. It cracks through the room, both stern and broken, and you blink through the tears to focus on her.
“Your sister loved you,” your therapist tells you. It is solemn, a promise, something you know and have mourned and regretted ever since it led to her demise.
“Your sister loved you,” she repeats, “and she chose to answer your call and help you because of that. What happened is not your fault.”
Everything in you shakes, and the world distorts around you. “It is,” you insist. “She wouldn’t have died if she didn’t love me.”
Your therapist observes you without responding for a moment. “Why?” she asks. “Why is that the only possibility? Others have cared for you. Have they died because of it?”
You shudder. “That’s not the same.” The words leave you with a rasp, weak and shoved out by a force that’s been built over the years of your childhood. “Friends don’t love me as my sister does-did.” You swallow.
“And your parents…” your therapist starts.
“Never loved me,” you say firmly. “My sister’s the only one who’s ever loved me, told me she loved me, and she’s dead.”
Your therapist taps her knee idly. “So, the two must be connected? Someone says they love you, and they die? Based on one instance?”
You look up at the ceiling, still blinking hard. “I’d rather not test the theory.”
It says something, you note in the recesses of your mind, that your therapist doesn’t huff at that. Usually, she laughs when you joke.
The next thing she says is your name. Only, she doesn’t say it like she did before. This time, it is laced with nothing but seriousness, some edge of her tone ringing a bell in your mind so forcefully you can do nothing but immediately look to her.
She’s staring, unblinking, as if assessing your condition for the very first time. “Have you felt like you don’t want to exist, recently?”
Your breaths still. You swallow. “Not since last year,” you answer honestly. “I haven’t tried to kill myself, I swear.”
“Have you wanted to?”
“Not since last year,” you insist, firmer. “That’s not what this is…it’s just…”
She waits.
You swallow again. “He said he loved me.”
“Why did that bother you?”
“You know why.”
“No, I don’t. You haven’t said why it bothers you. Only that you’re afraid of people loving you because the last time someone did, they died. Is that why? Or is it something else?”
An ache swells in your head, your stomach, and your throat all at once. “I don’t see how that’s-”
Your therapist sighs, and you cut yourself off.
She apologizes, and then says your name a third time. Gentler than the last, but just as grounding. “There is no understanding this, no tools to learn to cope, until you are ready to talk about it. I can only help you if you want me to, and let me.”
You scratch at your elbow, avoid her eyes. When you answer, your voice is no more than a whisper, a rasp of what it should be. The words leave you stilted, hesitant. Your heart races against your chest in defiance, and you brace yourself for some cosmic intervention to strike you for admitting it.
“I think I love him too.”
Then
Your parents vanished over Christmas break. You’d stopped asking their holiday destinations after Thanksgiving. They didn’t offer one.
No one called. Your parents’ siblings had stopped reaching out over the summer, as if your parents’ inability to desire a fun family activity due to your sister’s death was too stressful for them.
None of their friends had ever attempted to reach you outside of the funeral.
Your friends had already drifted. The ones attending the same colleges made plans for sharing a room and exploring together.
The ones traveling further pulled away of their own accord, busy planning integration into the unknown alone.
You floated, adrift, mindless, unsure.
The acceptance letter from Gotham University sat hidden in the back of your photography folder, the only folder of assignments you had your parents did not care to review.
The acceptance letters from the other colleges adorned your desk, placed carefully as if under review. They were artificial, really.
Your parents had already decided the moment the letter arrived. Their alma mater, the school that would have been your sister’s too had she not…
Despite their order, you had yet to formalize your acceptance of their acceptance. Every time you went to click the right buttons and sign the right forms, some rope you could not see tugged your hand back.
You prided yourself on not believing in ghosts, but truly, you were starting to believe your sister was reaching from beyond the grave to chide you for giving up your dreams.
Not that you thought she actually was, of course.
Why would she chide you still, knowing you were responsible…
Were she a ghost, you thought, she should be cackling maniacally at your misfortune.
On December 25, your parents off who knew where for who knew how long, you opened your computer again, determined to finalize your fate.
You hadn’t slept well in the weeks since the anniversary of your sister’s death, the testing and applications and acceptances and rotary of emotions filtering through the house pushing you in every direction.
Thus, you typed on autopilot, selected things based on words you half-saw, and trusted your gut.
When you blinked, horror filled you.
The screen blasting excitement over your acceptance of their acceptance was not the screen for your parents’ alma mater.
The website glowed.
And you could not unsend your acceptance of Gotham U’s acceptance.
Shit.
Now
Despite media’s interpretation of therapy, you and your therapist did not solve your issues when you ambushed her at the end of the day.
Naturally, you’d talked until you were no longer on the brink of…well, breaking.
And then your therapist had sent you on your way with a phone number to a line available 24/7/365 for someone to talk to outside her availability.
You woke at the crack of dawn on December 23, and, taking your conversation to heart, decided to do something about it.
Now, you find yourself regretting your lack of an actual plan outside of ‘fix it’.
Unfortunately, the door opens before you can run far enough away to hide.
Alfred greets you with the familiarity you do not think you deserve, a warm smile, and slight bow.
You stiffly incline your head in response.
Alfred ushers you inside, and motions for your jacket. You hesitantly shrug it off and hand it to him, and he shakes it out before hanging it in the entrance closet.
You hadn’t noticed that, last time you were here.
“I’m sorry for just dropping by,” you start.
“Nonsense,” Alfred replies. “Master Bruce assured Master Jason you were welcome here anytime. Did he not tell you?”
The words spread to the seams of your essence that had cracked the moment you’d thought your friendship with Jason over. “It must have slipped his mind.”
Alfred hums, his eyes crinkling with something akin to wonder. “Master Jason didn’t mention any plans of yours today. Are you surprising him?”
You swallow in an attempt to make the words exit your mouth easier. In the end, they still cram together. “I’m sorry, I didn’t tell him I was coming. Is he here? The front desk of his building said he wasn’t staying in the dorms over break.”
He bids you follow him and leads you down several halls before depositing you in a grand library all without answering your question.
“Master Jason is currently occupied with a personal matter,” Alfred says, guiding you to a plush chair in front of a fake hearth. “I’ll send him in right away once he’s available. It shan’t be too long, I think. In the meantime, I’ll make some tea and scones and you can peruse the library.”
He waits until you’re sitting, tentative and stiff as it is, on the chair, fingers grasping the edges of the throw next to you, before slowly leaving.
The library doors shut with a click behind him.
Hesitantly, you shift your eyes from bookcase to bookcase. From your perch, you can’t tell what genre of books surrounds you. Despite Alfred’s permission to look and read, you feel no desire to move from where he’d left you.
Instead, you find yourself silently keeping track of the time in your head. Alfred returns minutes later.
Did he keep a pot of water ready to boil all day long, you wonder.
He sets a tray with a tea cup, small kettle, and a few scones on it on the small end table next to the couch. “Master Jason will be in in just a few minutes,” he informs you.
Then he leaves you on your own again.
The tea and scones plead up to you from their position, and, mouth watering at the thought of Alfred’s cooking, you gently dig into the snack he’s provided.
Doing so, you forget to count the time.
In fact, you become so absorbed in the tea-or perhaps he’s always been that quiet, he has teased you in the past for walking louder than those born in Gotham, has he not-you do not hear the library doors.
Jason enters a wraith, unnoticed to you until too late.
When he gently sits on the edge of the couch next to you, you startle, nearly dropping the tea cup into your lap.
His hand is there, steadying it. He’s careful not to touch your hand with his as he does so.
Shakily, you return the cup to the tray next to you before turning to face him.
For the first time since he introduced himself, since he sat at the desk next to yours in a class he was not meant to attend, you cannot read Jason Todd’s face.
He’s staring at you, and while the gentleness in his eyes is oh so familiar, you can’t tell what he’s thinking or feeling behind the mask he’s painted on.
You exhale.
Jason blinks, but says nothing.
You wet your lips, clear your throat, and scratch your wrist. “I’m sorry for just showing up,” you finally say.
A muscle in Jason’s jaw ticks. “That’s what you’re sorry for?” his voice is scratchy as he says it.
You wince. “Well, yes, but not just that.”
His gesture for you to continue is the only movement he makes.
“I’m sorry,” you begin slowly, “that I told you you didn’t know your own feelings, and that what you said you were feeling wasn’t what you were actually feeling.”
Jason sighs. “I really didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
“It, uh, it wasn’t you entirely.” You sniff.
Jason’s brow furrows. “What does that mean?”
You swallow, scratch the back of your neck, then your arm, then the back of your wrist. Your eyes move to the fake fireplace, to the rug you hadn’t noticed on the floor, to the specific details of the throw you’ve abandoned picking at.
Weeks ago, you imagine Jason would’ve said your name. He would’ve prompted you in that gentle manner, sincere in a way that let you answer if you wanted to and let you keep quiet if you wanted to.
Today, he says nothing. He just waits you out.
That causes the bubble of nausea to grow worse. You clear your throat, scuff your foot against the rug, hope Alfred won’t be too upset at you for doing so, and then meet Jason’s eyes.
“There are two things I want to say before I explain.”
He gives a singular, deep nod.
You inhale sharply. “One, I know I hurt you by running away but you not reaching out after hurt me. Two, I think I love you too.”
Jason stills so completely you lean ever-so-slightly toward him in the hopes of learning whether or not he’s still breathing.
A moment later, he blinks, visibly swallows, and pinches his nose. “I feel like you’re about to say something that contradicts that.”
Gently, you reach out and reset your hand next to his. Your pinky extends to touch his. He jolts before carefully moving his hand to intertwine with yours.
“I just want you to know all the facts so you can make an informed decision,” you say as steadily as you can, which really isn’t steady at all.
Jason squeezes your hand.
You take a deep breath. “Two years ago, there was…an incident. I needed a ride home, so I called my sister. There was an accident. She didn’t survive.”
Neither you or Jason say anything for a few minutes. You watch Jason’s face as he processes this, the way his eyes dart back and forth on some whiteboard you can’t see, the way his lips twitch into a frown and his brow furrows.
“What does that have to do with your or my feelings?” he finally asks. It’s not unkind, just genuinely curious.
“According to my therapist, nothing. But, uh…” your grip on his hand tightens as you use your other to swipe away the mutinous tears pricking the corners of your eyes. “My sister is sort of the only other person who’s every told me they love me, and um…I’m really scared that if you keep saying it, you’re going to die too.”
“How…why…” Jason sighs, squeezing his eyes shut. “I’m not trying to invalidate your thought process, but I don’t really understand it.”
“I can tell you more,” you offer. “But you really won’t want to continue our friendship after.”
Jason gives you a look so similar to the deadpan your therapist has taken to employ, you automatically apologize.
“Please don’t make my decisions for me,” he says. “I’d never make yours for you.”
That alone gives you pause.
“Okay,” you finally agree.
The Before
It started with the fact that your birth had not been planned.
Your parents planned everything in their lives.
Your elder sister learned that the moment she grew enough to learn anything. She had been planned for. Her life, her schooling, her greatness, had been planned for.
You had arrived with a half-baked plan after learning of your existence.
The nursery was remnants of your sister’s nursery. Your learning was remnants of her learning.
Your parents devoted their time and energy into perfecting their plan for her life.
They didn’t give you one of your own until the idea came: replicate hers and you would be a duplicate.
A spare.
An afterthought.
They lavished her with tutors and praise, and you got the scraps they tossed your way.
Despite this, your sister did everything in her limited power to show you how to create dreams of your own.
You’d asked her, once, when you were five and she ten, if she had no dreams of her own.
She had smiled and you did not know then how to notice the contrast of her smile with the dimness in her eyes, but oh she had smiled. “Your dreams are my dreams,” she had said. It held all the solemnity of a sworn promise a ten-year-old could make.
You did not understand, then, all that she was subjected to that you were not.
The expectations that came with the praise.
The gripping silence when she did not perform as they believed she should have.
Your parents never told either of you they loved you.
They praised your accomplishments-hers, more than yours, for she was their pride and you were the extra.
They complained-your failures, their jobs, finances, things no child should have to worry about.
Your sister rectified that.
When you sprained an ankle, she held you and whispered comforts against your hairline.
When you failed a test you had spent days studying for, she told you how proud of your determination she was.
There were no requirements for her to tell you she loved you. She’d say it at the most random of times, on the most random of days.
When you got sick at school and the nurse called your parents, you wished she would call your sister instead.
Your parents would take you home, sneer, and pester you: were you sure you couldn’t last the rest of the day? You’d miss so much coursework.
When your sister turned sixteen, she got her license. Your parents bought her a car for passing her exam. To help her get to and from work and internships and activities. To help her build her college application and resume.
Your mother complained when you told her she or your father was required to sit in the car with you until you got your license and to bring you to take your exam.
Needless to say, you did not get a car when you turned sixteen.
Despite all of this, your life had routine with your sister in it. You knew what to expect. You knew she would always smile and wrap you in a hug if you needed it.
Your parents could throw you into the storm, but she would always be the lighthouse to guide you back from the crashing sea.
Until that December.
You hadn’t been thinking. That’s what you came back to in the months that followed.
Your sister, twenty-two, despite still having one semester of college left, had already secured a job at a company your parents approved of.
They’d celebrated it.
She’d had no true joy or despair upon giving the news. It simply was what would be.
The week prior to learning this, you’d been nominated for an award at school. Your parents had scoffed, and told you that was to be expected.
Your school friends had been the ones to suggest it. You’d agreed, stupidly, because you hadn’t been thinking.
You’d told your parents it was an extra shift. They didn’t care enough to know whether you were lying.
The night started fine, but then your friends ran into other friends, friends you didn’t know. There were too many people, and you couldn’t breathe.
At some point, between one breath and another, you lost sight of your friends.
You called your sister.
“Hello?” she’d asked. You’d not been able to respond. Her voice changed, then, to that unique mix of panic and authority she’d only ever used when the two of you were alone. “Where are you? Are you safe?”
And you-
You’d sobbed.
Your sister, ever the genius, calmed you enough to get your location. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” she assured you.
She forbade you from hanging up, not that you had the mind to even had you wanted to.
With her voice in your ear, you’d started for outside. You ran into one friend on your way, who took one look at your panicked state and decided to wait with you.
Your sister arrived in ten minutes.
She rushed out of the car, gently led you to it, and she and your friend guided you in.
Vaguely, later, you would remember hearing her ask your friend if they needed a ride as if you were underwater.
Your friend declined.
Your sister didn’t ask any questions as she started the drive home.
Halfway there, you apologized.
“What’re you apologizing for?” she snorted.
“You were probably busy, and I ruined your night. I could’ve found my own way home. Better yet, I shouldn’t have gone.”
Your sister scoffed. “You didn’t ruin my night. You could never ruin my night.”
You hadn’t believed her.
It was then, you think, or was it a moment later? Everything distorted out of place, after the fact.
“Hey,” her voice carried that sternness in it. “You are my sibling. I love you. I will always be here when you need me, okay?”
One hand off the wheel to rub your shoulder.
You’d remember, later, meeting her eyes.
She’d taken her eyes off the road to assure you, hadn’t she?
Did she?
Why?
The car shrieked, swerving.
Black ice, they’d say.
What did it matter, when you’re the only one who made it home.
Now
Suspicion flutters through your veins at the sight of Jason Todd entering the classroom. It’s late January, the first day of the new semester, and you know for a fact that you and Jason share, once again, absolutely no classes on account of having compared schedules with him several times over winter break.
He catches sight of your narrowed gaze and grins, dropping into the empty seat next to you.
“What’re you doing here?” you murmur.
He leans toward you, extending a pencil with all the grace of someone raised in an elite rich circle. Or, so you assume. You certainly weren’t raised in such a manner.
“You left this at my dorm last night,” he whispers. “Thought you might need it.”
You raise an eyebrow. “Do you really believe I only own one pencil and pen?”
Jason shrugs. “Most of assignments are online. Besides, sue me, I wanted to see you this morning before lectures steal you away for the whole day.” He glances around the room. Satisfied no one is paying either of you any attention, he darts forth to press a quick kiss to your cheek. “I love you.” The words ghost against your skin, prickling it.
You shove at his shoulder as playfully as you can manage while snatching the pencil from his grasp. “I love you, too,” you grit out. “Now please leave before the professor thinks you’re actually in this class.”
Jason laughs but does as you’ve asked.
You watch him leave. When he’s gone, you twirl the pencil in your grasp.
Really, you’d think an English major would be able to come up with a better excuse.
It’s not even your pencil, after all.
Not that you’re not happy to see him, of course.
It had been a rough few weeks, since you’d told Jason everything.
He’d sat with it in silence before repeating what your therapist had said: that it wasn’t your fault.
You’re still trying to find it in yourself to believe the two of them when they tell you that, but your therapist assures you that you are making progress.
Jason and you had spent the first week of talking again working on restoring your friendship. After, you both agreed that, while terrified, you did want to explore the romantic feelings you both had.
The moments of complete terror are fewer now then they were, so you’re proud of yourself for that.
Your roommate had cackled when you finally admitted what the argument you and Jason had was about, and everything that followed.
For now, you’re happy enough to take it one day at a time.
Then
It happened in the middle of January. The bleak greys and storms of winter had pressed in from all sides of the sky, and snow-crested hills developed where no hills stood.
You hadn’t anticipated it, at least not like this.
Maybe that was the error; for really, you had grown too lax. You should’ve anticipated it. A year earlier, you would’ve. Hell, a month earlier, you would’ve.
But you’d grown disillusioned, the sentences and plans hidden secretly in the emails of your phone and the admission you hadn’t meant to make but couldn’t regret fostering the growth of new dreams in your mind.
You returned from school in as good a mood as you’d been able to muster since the accident that tore your life in two.
Your parents were both home, waiting in the kitchen for you.
That alone should’ve been signal enough.
Instead, you had merely furrowed your brow, greeted them, and moved for your room.
Your father calling your name stopped you.
“Yes?” you’d asked, unknowing.
He and your mother exchanged a glance.
A pit formed in your stomach at that.
“Can you explain why there’re several emails from Gotham University about your enrollment in their psychology program?” your mother asked, a layer of thick sweetness coating the words.
You shuffled on your feet. “Um.”
“That’s not the university I thought we’d agreed on,” your father said. “Nor the program. Psychology? Really? You do know you need a Ph.D. to do anything with that, don’t you?”
Your mother sighed. “And it’s in Gotham, of all places. I bet they charge students extra, as hazard insurance or something. What with all the dressed-up lunatics running around.”
“I want to go there,” you found yourself interrupting them.
They both turned, blinking, astonished.
“What?” your father asked. You knew he only asked it to give you a chance to retract your statement.
You swallowed. “I want to go there,” you repeated, more firmly. “I want to study psychology.”
Your parents stared at you in silence for a moment and then burst out laughing.
You shrunk back.
“Well, I’m certainly not going to pay for that. All that schooling. You’ll have to take out loans and then you’ll still not make hardly anything for years and years.” Your father tsked, shaking his head.
Your mother shrugged helplessly. “We won’t stop you if you want to waste your life, sweetie. It’s your life. But you will have to take responsibility for your decisions.”
Mentally, you tallied your current wages and the expected costs you’d encountered while planning for the next fall. “I already enrolled,” you muttered.
“Should’ve thought of that sooner, then,” your father chided.
They broke off into their own discussion after that, a silent dismissal.
Mindlessly, you found yourself in your room.
You thought of the dreams you’d lost, the dreams you’d gained, and wondered what your sister would think.
What she’d tell you to do.
Only-she’d never told you to do anything, not really.
She’d supported you, made suggestions.
But she’d only ever provided information, not orders.
Before you fully realized what you were doing, you’d found your razor and hovered it above the skin of your thigh.
Maybe, maybe if you dug deep enough, you’d find her again.
Maybe, maybe you’d be okay, if only you weren’t here but wherever she was.
The razor slowly touched your skin.
You gasped, jerked your arm back, and chucked it as far away as you could.
Synopsis: When you first meet Jason Todd, the foliage has barely begun its preparation to hibernate. Between then and the barricades of snow, you begin to imagine a future among the colors of every season together. Too bad the flowers are in full bloom when you leave him. Jason Todd English major au, reader is a Psychology major
Word Count: 7,589
Trigger Warning: emotional abuse, child neglect, minor character death, trauma, survivor’s guilt, depression, anxiety, grief, mourning, talks of death, severe angst, reader does not have a good relationship with their parents, arguing, swearing, mentions of Jonothan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”
MDNI: Minor's do not interact
Series Masterlist Full Masterlist
Now
The crisp morning air circulates around you like a barrier against the tendrils of memories haunting your dreams. It grazes the back of your neck, and the fluttering press of moving air is all you need to ground yourself in the reality of now, away from the then you’ve traveled across the country to escape.
You let the breeze coat the back of your throat with a deep inhale, holding it longer than you know you should before releasing it back into the world around you.
The sidewalk in front of you narrows into a point across your vision, the building it leads to swaying in your mind even as it stands strong as a fortress against the Gotham atmosphere.
A few students mill around the entrance, some on computers and others talking amongst themselves. Fewer still are on the sidewalk itself, or the sidewalks branching off from the one you’ve stilled on, darting across the paths centering the quad of Gotham U.
When you scuttle your feet, the straps of your backpack shift with you and the weight of your future presses against your spine with a reminder of what you’ve lost for this.
One moment more, you decide. Then, swallowing the dryness building in your throat, you start for the building.
You’re almost relieved the ability to recognize the silliness of your hesitation tickles the back of your mind as you make your way inside. Almost. The lingering presence of unwelcome thoughts and glances from everyone you pass solidifies the hesitation as the correct choice.
As if you’d woken this morning and deliberately made it.
Sweat gathers along your fingertips, and it takes you three tries to correctly swipe your phone open to check the room number. It hasn’t changed since you looked this morning. You quickly repeat the number to yourself anyway, blindly stuff your phone back in your pocket, and shuffle down the hallway toward the stairs.
Your shoulders grow taught the closer you get to the room. When you enter, no one looks. You stiffen further for a breath even so before carefully mapping your way to the third desk back in the row closest to the door. The professor briefly glances up from where they’re shuffling a pile of papers, smiles, and then returns to their task.
None of the handful of students lazing about glance at you, much less say hello. You quietly pull out your notebook and a pen.
You’re debating how you should title the first page of notes for this class, if the name of the class itself is sufficient or if you should wait for the professor to name the first topic of lecture, when someone rather rudely drops into the desk next to you.
You blink, swiveling to look at every other open space in the room. The person next to you, dark hair curling over his forehead, grins easily, eyes sparkling.
“This’ll be an exciting class, huh?” he asks.
You look at the desk behind you. Empty. The desk in front of you. Also empty.
You frown. “Have we met?” though it is a question, you do not truly ask it as the literal one it is. Not when you know the answer. Not when distance and time has moved you from all the familiar into the unfamiliar and prep work for today has left you with little socialization outside of the necessary.
The man makes a sound low in his throat, half-chortle, half-indignant cough, you think. “Not that I’m aware of?” When you say nothing to this, he nods slowly, dramatically, poking his cheek with his tongue. “Okay,” he drawls. “Not in the mood for friends?”
You can do little but blink slowly, in the manner a cat does. Though, your blink has nothing to do with affection and everything to do with the unanticipated interaction you’ve found yourself an unwilling participant of.
“Is friendship a requirement for passing this class?” mentally, you scold yourself. There’s no reason to further whatever this is.
The man shrugs. “Guess not, but I imagine it would make the discussions easier.”
Your frown deepens. “The factual discussions based on research?”
The man’s face contorts in a confused manner, his nose scrunching and eyebrows pulling in what you assume is thought. Slowly, he extends a hand. You stare at it but don’t move to shake it. He holds it up for another minute before slowly dropping it back down. “I’m Jason,” he says slowly.
“Okay?”
His head tilts, his eyes darting across your figure.
You raise an eyebrow, glance at the professor, then the clock, and then return your attention to the notebook in front of you. Class will start soon, and you need to title your notes before it does. You lower your pen to the page, tap it once, and start scribbling a headline. You can always rewrite or retype the notes into a more organized fashion later.
“You know,” the man, Jason, starts.
You sigh, your grip on the pen tightening.
The professor, bless them, chooses that moment to clear their throat and start the lecture. Jason shuts his mouth immediately. The rest of the class quiets, and the professor gives the room a small smile.
“Welcome to Social Psych 101. To start, we’re going to do an introductory exercise. If you’d all find the person closest to you, exchange names, majors, and something interesting about yourself? We’ll do five minutes, and then present to the class.” The professor waves their hands in a ‘get to it’ motion and turns back to their desk.
You grit your teeth, shut your eyes for a deep sigh, and turn to formalize your introduction to Jason.
His grin wavers, and he scratches the back of his neck sheepishly. “So,” he says, “I’m Jason Todd, I’m an English major, and I just realized this is not British Literature 1. Nice to meet you?”
Silently, you curse.
Then
It wasn’t so much that you chose psychology. Rather, psychology chose you.
The application blinked on the screen in front of you, the page threatening to die with the darkness of a screen that had been abandoned for too long.
You stared unblinking at the dropdown of choices available. The mouse cursor hovered over Computer Science, the decision that had been made for you years ago available to be solidified into truth with a single click.
Your fingers trembled slightly. One click, and your future was determined. One click, and your future was no longer the dreams you’d had but the plans they’d made.
Hesitantly, slowly, you inched the bar down. The list of majors blurred as tears gathered in your eyes. The screen shone too bright in the dark room around you, the blanket pulled taught around your shoulders offering too little comfort for the herculean task before you.
Too much, too much, too much. How were you meant to do this? How were you meant to simply click and let the path you’d once danced to fade into oblivion for the hopes of another?
You blinked, and the cursor had stopped. It traced the option under it, Psychology, and for no reason other than the infuriating desire to rebel one last time before becoming the puppet you’d been born to be, you clicked it.
Your chest tightened, your throat closing even more. The air you breathed thickened into paste. Your hands shook as you filled the rest of the application out, typing and deleting and typing and deleting. One application, you told yourself.
It was a singular application to a university you’d never be accepted into anyhow. What did it matter if you applied for the Psychology program at Gotham University? It wasn’t like you’d actually end up there.
And you had enough saved up. They’d never see the bill for the application fee; they’d never know. It didn’t matter.
You glanced at the door, cracked open, always cracked open, never fully shut. The hall beyond remained empty, silent.
Before you could talk yourself out of it, you clicked one last button. The screen swirled for one second, two. And, then, the application had been submitted.
A sob tore through you, and you clamped a hand over your mouth before it could fully release. You rocked back and forth, carefully exiting the website, deleting it from your history.
Only when the laptop was off and out of reach, and still the hall empty and silent, did you wipe your face, take several deep breaths, and start to relax.
Beyond the confines of your room, the hall stood sentinel. Silent, empty.
Even had you wanted to, there was no one to tell of what you’d just done.
Now
The laminated orange leaf practically shines against the cardstock you’d traced random designs into. You lean the handmade bookmark back and forth, examining the way the light hits it from every angle.
You’d found the leaf your third day of class, and though surprised to find such a thing so early in the season you’d kept it all the same.
You found purpose for it only days later when you’d stumbled into fellow Gotham U student Jason Todd who, no longer sitting in classes he was not paying for, had promptly dropped an anthology on the grass, cursed, and spent the next five minutes rambling about his actual professors while trying to find his page again.
At the end of the interaction, he’d somehow reaffirmed his goal of becoming your friend and decided that though you were in different majors and shared a total sum of zero classes together the two of you would make the perfect study partners.
In the weeks following the interaction, you’ve found yourself silently agreeing with his conclusion.
You’re still staring at the bookmark when the chair next to you is pulled back from the table. You don’t even glance at him as Jason groans, plopping next to you. He, thankfully, pulls out his homework without a word.
After a few minutes of him working next to you and you still analyzing the bookmark, you glance at him from the corner of your eye. He’s dutifully filling out a page of what you assume are annotations based on the open book in his lap.
You inhale sharply before nudging his leg with yours.
Other than the pause of his scribbles, he gives no indication he’s noticed your maneuver. You grumble under your breath before shoving your foot into his leg harder.
His lips twitch, and he clears his throat as quietly as he can, an effect you know is due to what happened the last time he laughed in the campus library. “Yes?” he whispers.
With a quick prayer to the universe, you throw the bookmark at his face. He snatches it before it hits him without even turning his head. You huff.
Jason’s hands are surprisingly gentle as he turns the bookmark over, humming quietly and inspecting its details with more thought and time than you think its warranted. “For me?” he asks.
“Don’t read into it too much,” you reply immediately. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
Jason visibly bites back a grin. “Oh, I wouldn’t dare to presume otherwise.”
“Good.”
With careful reverence, he traces the outline of the leaf and slowly, oh-so-gently, sets it in the book he’s reading. The cover closes in the same manner, and then Jason’s turning in the seat to face you and you’re turning to stare at the bookcase along the wall across the room with the determination of a cat stalking a laser pointer.
“You made me a gift.” His voice is soft. Each word is enunciated and clear, but none of it enters the space between you as anything other than the warmth of gratitude.
You scratch your hand along your cheek, and then your elbow, and then the back of your neck. Your foot taps a random pattern into the carpet and Jason’s gaze burns into the side of your face every second you still refuse to acknowledge the moment.
The clock in the library ticks as it always does. Tick, tick, tick. The murmur of group projects doesn’t rise any further than what it already is, and the librarians are too busy either reshelving or whatever else it is they’re busy with to save you from Jason’s patience.
“It’s just a bookmark,” you finally hiss.
The smile that spreads across Jason’s face at that is so unlike any of the smiles you’ve grown used to seeing on his face, you instinctually shrink in on yourself and focus on the edge of the table while picking at your nails.
Jason stills in your periphery. You risk a secondary glance at his face, and something you can’t name flashes across his face in a brief furrow of his brow. You blink, and his smile is the same. It doesn’t dim as he slowly tilts his head to meet your eyes.
“Thank you.” The phrase is simple, his tone level.
Your nose twitches, but nothing your ears pick up signify anything but sincerity. So, you risk a small grin. His own widens.
You give a half-shrug before tapping your laptop and gesturing to his open notebook and assigned reading. “Don’t get the wrong idea. The less you’re mumbling about trying to find your page again, the easier time I’ll have getting my own work done.”
The words sound wrong to your own ears: half-jumbled, half-coated in something that pricks your marrow the way embarrassment does.
But Jason doesn’t laugh. His smile still doesn’t change shape, and his eyes don’t narrow or light with anything other than how he’s always looking at you. “We’re friends now,” he croons. “You made me a gift; you can’t deny it.”
You groan but don’t fight when he slowly, carefully, wraps an arm around your shoulder and pulls you into a stiff hug. He doesn’t argue when your arms remain locked in place against the table, and he releases you within seconds to turn back to his work.
You sniff, pull up your assignment, and stare at the words on the screen without reading.
The two of you last thirty minutes before Jason’s humming catches the attention of a librarian and the two of you are politely asked to either book a room or study elsewhere on campus. Longer than last time, you note.
Then
The discussion started as it always did: over a dinner in which not a word had been spoken prior. The scrape of forks and knives remained the background tune of every mealtime, bar the singular, routine discussion.
It started, as it always started, as became routine, with your mother reaching for the empty chair next to her.
Her hand lifted.
Your every nerve froze.
Your father’s cutlery slowly dropped onto his plate.
And your mother’s hand touched, as it had touched for so many months, nothing but air.
Her head moved next. It would’ve been better, you thought, if it was a quick snap. If she turned in surprise that air met her hand, if she gasped.
Instead, her chin slowly tucked into her shoulder as her eyes swept the empty place next to her, her fingers curling sharply into her palm.
“Oh,” she said flatly.
That, too, remained routine.
Your father said your mother’s name: gentle, calm, a whistle back to the meal at hand.
Your mother tsked. “For a moment, I had forgotten.” The words came curt, her gaze scathing as it cut from the empty space to you.
You lowered your hands into your lap, your fingers winding around one another. One ankle curled over the other, your shoulders hunched slightly.
Your mother sighed the disappointed sigh she always sighed. “I had almost forgotten,” she repeated morosely, “that it is you that still lives and not…well.”
You bit the inside of your cheek, kept your eyes on your plate.
“God willing there will be something to be proud of soon enough,” your father filled in. “You have sent in your applications, correct? All the places we’ve talked about?”
Talked about. Mentally, you scoffed.
Visibly, you gave a singular, deep nod.
Your father hummed. Not a pleasant hum, not even a thoughtful hum. No, ‘twas the hum of a man who could not fathom his inquiry could be met with anything other than what he’d suggested and had been told exactly what he’d wanted to hear.
A single laugh tore through the air immediately after, the sound not unsimilar to a wicked stepmother’s from a children’s movie. Not routine. She never laughed, not now.
Your head lifted before you realized you were looking.
Your mother’s lip curled into what reminded you of a dog’s snarl. “And another, too, so I’ve heard.”
The automatic action of breathing eluded you. Your heart stopped and then started racing faster than it’d ever beat before. Your lip trembled, and your eyes grew dry and wet all at the same time with the sudden inability to blink.
Your father stiffened. “Is that so?” his voice grew low.
“My friend Patricia from the ladies’ crochet club, you remember her, her husband worked at that one church for a few years, well she has a friend who does business over at that one diner off East Elm?”
Every thought escaped you except one: shit. Shit, shit, shit. How had you forgotten?
If that was the information your mother knew, it was bad. Not as bad as if she knew about the Gotham University application, you knew, but almost.
It hadn’t even been your idea, really. One of your school friends had suggested it during English. An application to the Computer Science associates program at the local community college would save you money: you’d get two years under your belt for less of the cost before transferring to finish the full four-year degree.
You’d been hesitant, and your classmate had all but kidnapped you and made you fill it out under their hawkish gaze at the diner.
The diner your mother’s friend’s friend apparently saw you at.
“I was just appeasing a classmate,” you blurted.
Your parents both turned to blink at you. Your mother pursed her lips. Your father shifted to rest his elbow on the table and his chin in his hand.
You swallowed, suddenly aware of the fact that you’d just spoken. You hadn’t meant to do that, not really.
Even if it was the truth.
Your mother readjusted in her seat, her back straightening further, her tin tilting ever so slightly as if to let her peer down at you from her almighty throne. A muscle in your father’s jaw visibly ticked and his nostrils flared as he assessed you.
“I don’t remember asking you your version of events just now.” The sentence crawled out like a reprimand and you flinched.
“I thought you’d learned that no college professor will let you speak out of turn.” Your father rolled his eyes, turned his focus to your mother, and waved his hand. “You shouldn’t do things just because a classmate says to. Would you jump off a cliff if they told you to?”
“With all your advanced courses I thought you’d be smarter than that,” your mother agreed.
They continued back and forth, trading remarks over your silence until the food called to them again. You pushed the remains of your portion around on the plate, but didn’t scoop another bite.
When they finally dismissed you, you retreated to your room with the promise that you wouldn’t accept the community college’s offer of attendance should it be offered and that you would apply to no more universities without their express approval.
Now
The moment September made way for October, your roommate took it upon themself to plaster the walls of your dorm with Halloween décor.
Initially, you had questioned the need.
But between coursework, your job at the campus coffee shop, and your job at the closest off campus diner, you didn’t truly have the time, effort, or desire to argue.
Thus, two days before Halloween finds you staring at a mosaic of neon fake webbing, ornamental jack-o-lanterns, a tiny mouse skeleton riding a broomstick for some reason, and a mechanical raven with soulless red eyes.
“It’s going to come alive and peck our flesh off,” you deadpan.
Your roommate snorts. “It runs on remote batteries.”
“That doesn’t negate my previous statement.”
“There are no batteries in it.”
“There aren’t any batteries in the stuffed animals that always turn into killers in the worst horror movies.”
Your roommate groans, a deep guttural sound, flops back on their bed, and dramatically shoves one arm over their eyes.
A pang rings through your chest, and you scuff your foot against the ground as you eye the ruby-eyed raven once more. “It can stay,” you mutter. “It does fit the theme.”
This, you decide, is technically true on account of you’re not sure what the theme is outside of every Halloween and Halloween-adjacent decoration your roommate could find.
Your roommate springs up. “If you really aren’t comfortable with it,” they begin.
You shake your head, quickly holding your hands out to assure them it’s fine. Once they’ve settled back once more, you glance at the time on your phone, smile apologetically, and stuff yourself into a light jacket before hauling your backpack up and leaving the room.
An arch of oranges, reds, and yellows spirals overhead as you make the familiar trek to the campus library. The trees themselves dance with the autumn breeze, and you find yourself watching the swirl of leaves as several flitter from their branches to a tune none but them hear.
The tingle the thought of sleeping in the same room as the mechanical raven had given you dissipates by the time you slink inside the comfort only rows of books and enforced quiet provides.
Jason is already seated at the table the two of you have all but claimed over the semester, notebook open, anthology cracked.
He’s staring, unblinking, at the pages open in front of him when you creep up on him.
Your hands rise, fingers arching like pincers above his shoulder blades. As you start to lower them, ready to attack, he sighs.
“Your footsteps still give you away,” he tells you.
You pout, abandoning your plan immediately. “How do you always know?”
Jason glares at you from the corner of his eye as you plop into the seat next to him. “You still walk louder than most who grew up in Gotham,” is all he says before returning his focus to his work.
You cross your arms, leaning over to read the title of whatever his current assigned reading is. Your head brushes his shoulder as you shift in front of him to block his view. He lightly shoves you back into your seat, laughing, and pulls the anthology up, turning so you no longer have access to the book.
“Do your own work,” he chides.
You grumble, dutifully pulling your laptop out as you do. “But reading Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” is so much easier than writing a paper on prosocial and antisocial behaviors.”
“Tough luck.” Jason points an accusatory finger at your computer screen. “It’s due tonight, isn’t it?”
You scowl at the reminder and aggressively pull the document up.
When you next glance away from your assignment, Jason has turned his attention from schoolwork to staring at you. You blink, frowning at the lack of notebook and anthology on the table in front of him.
He shrugs when you point it out. “I finished half an hour ago,” he says.
“And you couldn’t have started another assignment?”
He grimaces. “I’m supposed to have a family dinner tonight,” he says carefully, slowly. “I didn’t want to lose track of time.”
Ah. “You don’t talk about your family much,” you note. In truth, you could probably count on one hand how many times Jason’s mentioned “the family”.
When you’d shyly brought it up to your roommate, curious if it was something you were close enough to you could bring up to him, your roommate, shocked at your lack of apparently common Gotham-lore, had detailed everything they knew of Jason’s upbringing as the adopted son of Gotham Billionaire Bruce Wayne.
You hadn’t believed them until Jason hesitantly confirmed it a week later after noticing your pathetic attempts to google it.
“Well.” You click your tongue absentmindedly. “If you need to escape, just text me and I’ll call with a fake emergency. Surely, they can’t fault you if my roommate and I need your help with a murderous mechanical raven.”
Jason’s face scrunches in confusion. “A murderous mechanical raven?”
“My roommate’s idea, don’t ask. Halloween is apparently sacred. Which reminds me, actually. What are you doing Halloween? I think we’re hosting a séance for some reason.”
Something akin to horrified disgust crosses his face. “No. Definitely not. No.”
“If your dorm’s available we could do a movie night instead?”
Jason hesitates, helplessly lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug. “I’m busy Halloween,” is all he offers, the words an apologetic jumble tumbling forth somehow with both the speed of a crashing airplane and the crawl of a snail’s pace.
A cloud of disappointment envelops you, but you force a smile to your face anyway. “No problem. I’m sure the séance won’t be too bad. Might even be entertaining to watch, who knows.”
Jason opens his mouth, no doubt another apology on the tip of his tongue. You wave him off, hurriedly grasping for another topic to talk of instead.
He lets the conversation flow elsewhere, and neither of you return to Halloween again.
Then
For your last Halloween as a high school student, your class organized a lock-in. You had debated the pros and cons of going, of asking to go, and decided it wasn’t worth it.
You stood by that decision. Up until the week before, when you returned home with the results of your last calculus test in shaking hand.
Your parents took one look at the 89.
“What happened?” they asked. “I’m sure you’ll do much better next time.” They tsked. “Didn’t you study for it?”
Despite their insistence, you didn’t eat that night.
The next morning, you’d informed them of the lock-in. You banked on the fact that teachers would be there, and extra study sessions would be allotted for students who wanted or needed help with homework and preferred that over one of the planned activities.
And so, Halloween night you grabbed your backpack and joined your classmates and teachers at school.
Several of your friends attempted throughout the night to pull you into one of the planned activities: one room had been set up like a maze, another an escape room, a third was filled with board games.
You declined every time, rotating through homework assignments and study guides under the supervision of a handful of other students and the study hall supervisor.
When gaggles of students passed in the hall, dressed in costumes and imitating animals, you ached. Not to join them, but at the sounds and sights that would never fill your life within your childhood home again.
The following morning, neither of your parents asked if you’d had fun, only if you’d gained help with the material you were struggling with.
You’d nodded, and that had been that.
Now
By mid-November, you had learned three important things about living in Gotham.
One, despite the rest of the country’s opinions on billionaires and rich celebrities, Gothamites are, inexplicably, protective of Bruce Wayne and his children. The everyday person still gossips, of course, and Jason isn’t followed around like some deity by any means, but if an outsider criticizes the Waynes, the outsider is criticized in turn. The result: Bruce Wayne is Gotham’s to love and hate, and only Gotham’s.
Secondly, despite the horror stories of what could happen in the city at night, the area around the Gotham U campus is surprisingly safe. According to a rumor your roommate uncovered, Harley Quinn and Batman have teamed up to make the campus a safe zone and none of the other criminals-regular or costumed-dare cross them.
Third, and arguably most important, no one really cares about your history unless it poses a danger to them. Such, you’ve taken to telling no one other than your therapist and roommate any of it.
Perhaps that’s why Jason raises an eyebrow and shifts uncomfortably when you decline your mother’s call for the fifth time in a row.
The two of you had left the confines of the library, where frazzled group projects had been unleashed, in search of sustenance and found yourselves at a quiet family-owned restaurant a few blocks off-campus.
You’d been having a pleasant, normal conversation when your phone rang the first time. You’d hesitated only a second before declining the call. Naturally, your mother didn’t like that.
A sound escaped your throat; some mix between a groan and a hiss. To Jason, you specified “sorry”.
He attempted a smile of reassurance. It did not reassure you.
You declined the next incoming call, and the next, and the next, and the next, and dear God how many times could one woman call you in the span of a single minute?
Jason clears his throat, his hands lifting and dropping the menu in front of him randomly as he glances around the small restaurant. “You can take that if you need to,” he says. “I don’t mind.”
“She just wants to complain that I’m not coming home for Thanksgiving,” you tell him. It’s technically the truth, or as truthful as you’ve found it can be without making your audience uncomfortable.
You’d texted your parents three days ago to inform them you’d not be returning to your childhood home for Thanksgiving. Your father had asked about your plans for winter break, and then spring break, and then informed you that if you did not come home for the first Thanksgiving they were hosting in two years you could stay gone for all he cared.
Your mother had taken a slightly different approach. She’d emphasized that the family and friends who’d been invited would miss you and wonder where you are if not at home. When you’d stood your ground, she questioned if you’d started dating someone and how you could not tell her such a thing demanded to be introduced.
That, of course, led to you assuring her that you were still single and yes, of course mother, when I date someone, I’ll tell you.
…
Thinking back on it, you know your therapist would berate you for so easily promising her that.
Nevertheless, since your adamant refusal to return (ever, by your father’s law), your mother has taken to calling you as often as she can to demand you see reason and change your mind.
It is far easier to decline her calls than attempt to reason with her.
It would be even easier, you know, to block her number. But every time your finger hovers over the button to do so, you waver. She is your mother, after all.
“Too much homework?” Jason asks, the words tentative and soft despite the probing of a question no other Gothamite would ask.
You blink at him. “Always,” is your solemn reply. Jason simply nods. You sigh, shake your head. “Yes and no.” you say it before you’ve fully committed to saying it, before the thoughts of his response to your explanation can paralyze you into never saying it.
Jason doesn’t utter a single sound. He doesn’t even move drastically. He just carefully, gently, lowers the menu and folds his hand on the table between you.
You swallow the dryness in your throat and avoid his eyes. “It’s not a money thing, either. Not really. It’s just…” you shrug, scratch your nose. “I don’t want to be there. If I go back, I’m not sure I’ll have it in me to come back.”
The words settle into the space between you, and for the next few minutes the white noise of a restaurant is the only sound you hear.
Then, Jason leans back, and the seat groans under his weight. Your eyes dart to him, and he’s crossing his arms, nodding, and looking out the window instead of at you. “I get that,” he says finally. He doesn’t expand further, and neither do you.
Even still, when you reach for your menu, your arms feel lighter than they have in days.
“Anyone else know?” Jason waits to ask until you’ve ordered, the menus no longer a buffer you can use.
You pick at your nails. He doesn’t ask again. When your food arrives and the waiter leaves, you sigh. “I see a therapist.”
He considers. “Do you like them?”
“Somewhat.”
“That’s better than not at all.” He picks up his glass, sets it down without taking a sip. He inhales sharply, and reaches across the table to still your hands. Bashfully, you meet his eyes. “Thank you for telling me that,” he says.
“It’s not all of it,” you protest.
His nose scrunches. “If you want to tell me all of it, I’ll listen,” he promises.
You nod, throat tight. It’s another minute before you tell him you’d do the same. His head cocks to the side, eyebrow raised. You shrug. “You haven’t really told me about your family either. If you want to, I’ll listen. If not, that’s fine.”
He smiles, and you smile back.
“But,” you raise a finger, “don’t go getting a big head or anything just because you’re my best friend.”
His smile grows, a dazzling spectacle truer than the smiles he gave when you first met. “You’re my best friend, too.” He reaches for his glass again before once again pausing, lowering it without taking a sip. “If…if you want someplace to go for Thanksgiving instead of the campus cafeteria,” he starts slowly, “I’m allowed to bring a guest to the manor.”
You bite the inside of your cheek and shift the food on your plate around for a moment, debating what your therapist would say. Gathering yourself, you take a deep breath and square your shoulders. “Do you want me there or are you inviting me out of pity?”
The look Jason gives you is answer enough, and you smile meekly, squeaking a quiet apology. “I just said you’re my best friend.” He shakes his head. “Of course, I want you there if you want to come.”
He kicks your foot under the table. You kick his back. He laughs, and then you laugh, and that’s that.
Then
Your parents rented a cabin for Thanksgiving. To get away from all the noise, they said. A whole week of vacation, how relaxing.
They didn’t tell you if you were invited to any of your extended family’s houses for the holiday. You didn’t ask.
They left the Monday before the holiday. You spent the time not in school ravaging through the fridge for meal ideas. You hadn’t saved for a full week’s worth of groceries; you hadn’t anticipated needing to.
Thanksgiving itself passed without notice to you. You woke, you did the chores you could, you ate what you knew they wouldn’t miss, and you studied ahead.
Black Friday replicated the day prior.
And, then, Saturday tossed you through a window.
The mail came early. That should have been the first sign, really. The mail never came early, especially on a Saturday.
Most of it was expected. Normal mail delivered to your parents. One envelope was too large. Addressed to you.
You could do nothing but stare at it for a solid ten minutes. Your teachers and advisor had joked that half the time students received word from colleges they knew before they even opened the letter if they had been accepted or not. If accepted, there would be an entire packet of information. If rejected, a simple letter.
Your hands shook, and you carefully traced your name on the envelope before tearing it open.
Several sheets of things fell out, and you fell after them. Your knees landed hard on the kitchen floor, your hands scrabbling for a hold on something as the words pierced your eyes.
…Gotham University…pleased to accept you…Psychology…
Your breaths turned ragged.
They weren’t supposed to accept you.
It had been one last act of rebellion.
A joke.
You hurried to gather everything, nodding to yourself.
You’d tear it all up. Shred it.
Throw it away, and then throw the garbage bag away.
They’d still never know.
They’d never have to know.
They could never know.
Something dripped off your chin.
Another drop.
A third.
Only then did you realize your cheeks were coated with tears and sobs had been built and unleashed through your lips.
You curled in on yourself.
The dream of a dream shuttered under your eyelids.
You clutched the papers tighter.
A dream.
It shattered.
Now
You stumble after Jason as he leads you toward the entrance of Wayne Manor. You clutched the fruit platter your roommate and you had scoured the nearby stores for tighter the closer you got to the door.
“You really didn’t have to bring anything,” Jason says for the tenth time.
“It’s rude to show up empty handed,” you argue.
He makes a face, like he’s debating the truth of that statement in general to the truth of it in this situation.
The door opens before either of you can say anything more on the matter.
The man who peers down at you is fitted in a suit, his grey hair styled serenely.
Jason’s shoulders drop in relief and he smiles. “Alfred.”
“Master Jason,” Alfred replies warmly. He steps aside, ushering the two of you in. “Do you not have a warmer jacket?” he tsks.
Jason groans but doesn’t argue as Alfred shoos the two of you further inside and rambles on about a cup of tea he’ll have ready shortly. Then, Alfred is pulling the fruit platter from your arms, marveling at it, and telling you he’ll set it up with the rest of dinner. You don’t have time to respond before he’s gone.
You follow Jason down the hall, emerging in a large space you don’t know the name of. At first glance, you think living room. What with the giant television and luxurious-looking couch and the several chairs perched about the room. But then you see the elegant table off to the side, more akin to the type found in a dining room and you’re blinking too hard and two people you don’t know are standing up from where they’ve been conversing and Jason is tensing and it no longer matters what type of room this is.
The eldest man in the room appraises Jason with a look that sends a shiver down your spine, all too familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. “Jason,” he says. It’s low, but not the lowness of your father’s voice, not the timber of a growl. Just a pitch.
“Bruce.” Jason reaches behind him. Pulls you forward until you’ve stumbled next to him. “This is my friend.” He says your name, and it’s the softest word to come out of his mouth since the two of you have entered this room.
You give a quick wave.
Bruce Wayne, Gotham Billionaire, Gotham’s sweetheart, turns his scrutinizing gaze that doesn’t feel at all like the scrutinization you’re used to but is scrutinization all the same onto you.
“Jason’s talked about you,” you say to be nice. It isn’t the full truth, but it’s not a lie either. Jason has mentioned his family, in that offhand way. He’s even brought them up by name since you agreed to attend Thanksgiving dinner with him.
According to him, it’s so you know what you’re walking into.
You won’t tell him nothing he’s said could have prepared you for this.
Bruce Wayne dips his chin in a single, deep nod, but his eyes don’t leave you. Without thought, your fingers move to pick at your fingernails.
Jason reaches over, sliding his fingers between yours and giving your hand a squeeze before you can commit to the act.
You glance at him, eyes wide.
He’s not looking at you. His eyes are trained on his adoptive father.
When you look back at Bruce Wayne, his attention is back on Jason. His face has softened, you think.
The man next to him, who looks only a few years older than you, grins and waves, bouncing forward. “Hi!” you tilt your head, picturing a dog’s tail wagging with excitement behind him. “I’m Dick Grayson, Jay’s older brother. It’s lovely to meet you.”
He reaches a hand forward for you to shake. You extend your own arm, yelping when Jason pulls your entire body back, out of Dick’s reach, using your clasped hands.
Bruce Wayne sighs a tired sigh. Dick only grins wider, sharper, something sparking in his eyes as he raises his hands and backs away, laughing easily.
You clear your throat, unsure if you should say something or wait for someone else to speak first.
Thankfully, Alfred arrives. He sets a tray with several tea cups and a pot of tea down on a coffee table you hadn’t realized was a coffee table, says dinner will be ready shortly, and excuses himself back out of the room.
Bruce Wayne uses that time to sit, pour a cup of tea, and motion for Dick, Jason, and you to join him.
Jason, still pulling you along with him, sits tersely on the couch. Bruce hands him a cup of tea. Jason doesn’t take it. Bruce holds it out for a moment longer before, once more, sighing and gently setting it in front of your friend.
You smile, carefully accepting the cup he extends your way next with the single hand you have available. Jason’s grip on your other hand tightens, but he says nothing as you take a small sip of tea.
Dick bounces in his seat, his head swiveling from Jason to you to Jason and back to you. You frown over the rim of your cup, but it’s Jason who snaps.
“What?”
“You actually brought your friend.” To your ears, Dick sounds like someone who’s seeing the Northern Lights for the first time.
“I said I was.”
“You did.”
Jason scowls.
Bruce Wayne clears his throat before their banter can escalate into an actual argument. “Jason mentioned you’re majoring in psychology. How did you choose it, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Oh.” You set the cup down in front of you. All three men give you a moment to compose your thoughts. In the end, you shrug. “I guess I’ve just…always been interested in understanding why people act the way they act.”
“Gotham U’s program is prestigious,” Bruce Wayne replies. “And they have wonderful assistance with finding internships should you need it.”
You fidget. Jason shifts next to you, and Bruce Wayne cuts himself off.
The silence only lasts a moment this time.
“How exactly did you and Jason meet?” Dick inquires. “He never did say.”
You glance at Jason. His eyes are shut, his jaw clenched. You squeeze his hand. “If he didn’t say then he didn’t say for a reason.” The words leave with an undertone of confidence you do not feel as you say them. Jason squeezes your hand back nonetheless.
Thanksgiving dinner commences as such. Bruce Wayne and Dick prompt the conversation with questions, mostly aimed at you. You answer as best and willing as you’re able. Jason steps in every now and then.
Two times, it’s Alfred who informs Bruce Wayne that the question he has asked is too personal for the first time you meet one’s child’s friend. Bruce Wayne looks especially bashful after that.
After, Dick offers to help Alfred clean up and Bruce Wayne disappears into another room of the manor with the quiet excuse of needing to finish something for work.
You follow Jason through a door and meander the Manor’s gardens for a while.
It’s there, amid the dying roses and greying stems that seem especially bleak under the lightness of the upcoming frost, that Jason thanks you.
It’s so quiet you almost don’t hear it.
“I should be thanking you,” is all you can think of to say. “I’d have nowhere else to go if you hadn’t offered to let me come with.”
Jason’s nose twitches. “So, it’s pity that made you agree to come?” he asks.
You shake your head. “You’re my friend, Jason. Why would I pity you?”
He opens his mouth, and then closes it without saying anything. He watches you and you watch him, and around you, the lightest sprinkle of snow begins to dust the air.
“What?” you finally ask.
One of Jason’s arms jerks like he started some movement he realized he didn’t intend to start. “You’re my best friend,” he says slowly.
You frown. “As we’ve established. And?”
“I think I’m in love with you.”
Everything stops.
There’s a faint buzz in your ears.
You can no longer feel your heart, or your legs, or your arms.
You no longer feel your breath, or see it in the air in front of you.
In front of you, just out of reach, where he’d been standing, Jason’s figure blurs in your eyes and then reappears clearly.
He’s watching you with that careful gaze of his. Gently, oh so gently. Sincerely.
Synopsis: When you first meet Jason Todd, the foliage has barely begun its preparation to hibernate. Between then and the barricades of snow, you begin to imagine a future among the colors of every season together. Too bad the flowers are in full bloom when you leave him. Jason Todd English major au, reader is a Psychology major
Word Count: 7,589
Trigger Warning: emotional abuse, child neglect, minor character death, trauma, survivor’s guilt, depression, anxiety, grief, mourning, talks of death, severe angst, reader does not have a good relationship with their parents, arguing, swearing, mentions of Jonothan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”
MDNI: Minor's do not interact
Series Masterlist Full Masterlist
Now
The crisp morning air circulates around you like a barrier against the tendrils of memories haunting your dreams. It grazes the back of your neck, and the fluttering press of moving air is all you need to ground yourself in the reality of now, away from the then you’ve traveled across the country to escape.
You let the breeze coat the back of your throat with a deep inhale, holding it longer than you know you should before releasing it back into the world around you.
The sidewalk in front of you narrows into a point across your vision, the building it leads to swaying in your mind even as it stands strong as a fortress against the Gotham atmosphere.
A few students mill around the entrance, some on computers and others talking amongst themselves. Fewer still are on the sidewalk itself, or the sidewalks branching off from the one you’ve stilled on, darting across the paths centering the quad of Gotham U.
When you scuttle your feet, the straps of your backpack shift with you and the weight of your future presses against your spine with a reminder of what you’ve lost for this.
One moment more, you decide. Then, swallowing the dryness building in your throat, you start for the building.
You’re almost relieved the ability to recognize the silliness of your hesitation tickles the back of your mind as you make your way inside. Almost. The lingering presence of unwelcome thoughts and glances from everyone you pass solidifies the hesitation as the correct choice.
As if you’d woken this morning and deliberately made it.
Sweat gathers along your fingertips, and it takes you three tries to correctly swipe your phone open to check the room number. It hasn’t changed since you looked this morning. You quickly repeat the number to yourself anyway, blindly stuff your phone back in your pocket, and shuffle down the hallway toward the stairs.
Your shoulders grow taught the closer you get to the room. When you enter, no one looks. You stiffen further for a breath even so before carefully mapping your way to the third desk back in the row closest to the door. The professor briefly glances up from where they’re shuffling a pile of papers, smiles, and then returns to their task.
None of the handful of students lazing about glance at you, much less say hello. You quietly pull out your notebook and a pen.
You’re debating how you should title the first page of notes for this class, if the name of the class itself is sufficient or if you should wait for the professor to name the first topic of lecture, when someone rather rudely drops into the desk next to you.
You blink, swiveling to look at every other open space in the room. The person next to you, dark hair curling over his forehead, grins easily, eyes sparkling.
“This’ll be an exciting class, huh?” he asks.
You look at the desk behind you. Empty. The desk in front of you. Also empty.
You frown. “Have we met?” though it is a question, you do not truly ask it as the literal one it is. Not when you know the answer. Not when distance and time has moved you from all the familiar into the unfamiliar and prep work for today has left you with little socialization outside of the necessary.
The man makes a sound low in his throat, half-chortle, half-indignant cough, you think. “Not that I’m aware of?” When you say nothing to this, he nods slowly, dramatically, poking his cheek with his tongue. “Okay,” he drawls. “Not in the mood for friends?”
You can do little but blink slowly, in the manner a cat does. Though, your blink has nothing to do with affection and everything to do with the unanticipated interaction you’ve found yourself an unwilling participant of.
“Is friendship a requirement for passing this class?” mentally, you scold yourself. There’s no reason to further whatever this is.
The man shrugs. “Guess not, but I imagine it would make the discussions easier.”
Your frown deepens. “The factual discussions based on research?”
The man’s face contorts in a confused manner, his nose scrunching and eyebrows pulling in what you assume is thought. Slowly, he extends a hand. You stare at it but don’t move to shake it. He holds it up for another minute before slowly dropping it back down. “I’m Jason,” he says slowly.
“Okay?”
His head tilts, his eyes darting across your figure.
You raise an eyebrow, glance at the professor, then the clock, and then return your attention to the notebook in front of you. Class will start soon, and you need to title your notes before it does. You lower your pen to the page, tap it once, and start scribbling a headline. You can always rewrite or retype the notes into a more organized fashion later.
“You know,” the man, Jason, starts.
You sigh, your grip on the pen tightening.
The professor, bless them, chooses that moment to clear their throat and start the lecture. Jason shuts his mouth immediately. The rest of the class quiets, and the professor gives the room a small smile.
“Welcome to Social Psych 101. To start, we’re going to do an introductory exercise. If you’d all find the person closest to you, exchange names, majors, and something interesting about yourself? We’ll do five minutes, and then present to the class.” The professor waves their hands in a ‘get to it’ motion and turns back to their desk.
You grit your teeth, shut your eyes for a deep sigh, and turn to formalize your introduction to Jason.
His grin wavers, and he scratches the back of his neck sheepishly. “So,” he says, “I’m Jason Todd, I’m an English major, and I just realized this is not British Literature 1. Nice to meet you?”
Silently, you curse.
Then
It wasn’t so much that you chose psychology. Rather, psychology chose you.
The application blinked on the screen in front of you, the page threatening to die with the darkness of a screen that had been abandoned for too long.
You stared unblinking at the dropdown of choices available. The mouse cursor hovered over Computer Science, the decision that had been made for you years ago available to be solidified into truth with a single click.
Your fingers trembled slightly. One click, and your future was determined. One click, and your future was no longer the dreams you’d had but the plans they’d made.
Hesitantly, slowly, you inched the bar down. The list of majors blurred as tears gathered in your eyes. The screen shone too bright in the dark room around you, the blanket pulled taught around your shoulders offering too little comfort for the herculean task before you.
Too much, too much, too much. How were you meant to do this? How were you meant to simply click and let the path you’d once danced to fade into oblivion for the hopes of another?
You blinked, and the cursor had stopped. It traced the option under it, Psychology, and for no reason other than the infuriating desire to rebel one last time before becoming the puppet you’d been born to be, you clicked it.
Your chest tightened, your throat closing even more. The air you breathed thickened into paste. Your hands shook as you filled the rest of the application out, typing and deleting and typing and deleting. One application, you told yourself.
It was a singular application to a university you’d never be accepted into anyhow. What did it matter if you applied for the Psychology program at Gotham University? It wasn’t like you’d actually end up there.
And you had enough saved up. They’d never see the bill for the application fee; they’d never know. It didn’t matter.
You glanced at the door, cracked open, always cracked open, never fully shut. The hall beyond remained empty, silent.
Before you could talk yourself out of it, you clicked one last button. The screen swirled for one second, two. And, then, the application had been submitted.
A sob tore through you, and you clamped a hand over your mouth before it could fully release. You rocked back and forth, carefully exiting the website, deleting it from your history.
Only when the laptop was off and out of reach, and still the hall empty and silent, did you wipe your face, take several deep breaths, and start to relax.
Beyond the confines of your room, the hall stood sentinel. Silent, empty.
Even had you wanted to, there was no one to tell of what you’d just done.
Now
The laminated orange leaf practically shines against the cardstock you’d traced random designs into. You lean the handmade bookmark back and forth, examining the way the light hits it from every angle.
You’d found the leaf your third day of class, and though surprised to find such a thing so early in the season you’d kept it all the same.
You found purpose for it only days later when you’d stumbled into fellow Gotham U student Jason Todd who, no longer sitting in classes he was not paying for, had promptly dropped an anthology on the grass, cursed, and spent the next five minutes rambling about his actual professors while trying to find his page again.
At the end of the interaction, he’d somehow reaffirmed his goal of becoming your friend and decided that though you were in different majors and shared a total sum of zero classes together the two of you would make the perfect study partners.
In the weeks following the interaction, you’ve found yourself silently agreeing with his conclusion.
You’re still staring at the bookmark when the chair next to you is pulled back from the table. You don’t even glance at him as Jason groans, plopping next to you. He, thankfully, pulls out his homework without a word.
After a few minutes of him working next to you and you still analyzing the bookmark, you glance at him from the corner of your eye. He’s dutifully filling out a page of what you assume are annotations based on the open book in his lap.
You inhale sharply before nudging his leg with yours.
Other than the pause of his scribbles, he gives no indication he’s noticed your maneuver. You grumble under your breath before shoving your foot into his leg harder.
His lips twitch, and he clears his throat as quietly as he can, an effect you know is due to what happened the last time he laughed in the campus library. “Yes?” he whispers.
With a quick prayer to the universe, you throw the bookmark at his face. He snatches it before it hits him without even turning his head. You huff.
Jason’s hands are surprisingly gentle as he turns the bookmark over, humming quietly and inspecting its details with more thought and time than you think its warranted. “For me?” he asks.
“Don’t read into it too much,” you reply immediately. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
Jason visibly bites back a grin. “Oh, I wouldn’t dare to presume otherwise.”
“Good.”
With careful reverence, he traces the outline of the leaf and slowly, oh-so-gently, sets it in the book he’s reading. The cover closes in the same manner, and then Jason’s turning in the seat to face you and you’re turning to stare at the bookcase along the wall across the room with the determination of a cat stalking a laser pointer.
“You made me a gift.” His voice is soft. Each word is enunciated and clear, but none of it enters the space between you as anything other than the warmth of gratitude.
You scratch your hand along your cheek, and then your elbow, and then the back of your neck. Your foot taps a random pattern into the carpet and Jason’s gaze burns into the side of your face every second you still refuse to acknowledge the moment.
The clock in the library ticks as it always does. Tick, tick, tick. The murmur of group projects doesn’t rise any further than what it already is, and the librarians are too busy either reshelving or whatever else it is they’re busy with to save you from Jason’s patience.
“It’s just a bookmark,” you finally hiss.
The smile that spreads across Jason’s face at that is so unlike any of the smiles you’ve grown used to seeing on his face, you instinctually shrink in on yourself and focus on the edge of the table while picking at your nails.
Jason stills in your periphery. You risk a secondary glance at his face, and something you can’t name flashes across his face in a brief furrow of his brow. You blink, and his smile is the same. It doesn’t dim as he slowly tilts his head to meet your eyes.
“Thank you.” The phrase is simple, his tone level.
Your nose twitches, but nothing your ears pick up signify anything but sincerity. So, you risk a small grin. His own widens.
You give a half-shrug before tapping your laptop and gesturing to his open notebook and assigned reading. “Don’t get the wrong idea. The less you’re mumbling about trying to find your page again, the easier time I’ll have getting my own work done.”
The words sound wrong to your own ears: half-jumbled, half-coated in something that pricks your marrow the way embarrassment does.
But Jason doesn’t laugh. His smile still doesn’t change shape, and his eyes don’t narrow or light with anything other than how he’s always looking at you. “We’re friends now,” he croons. “You made me a gift; you can’t deny it.”
You groan but don’t fight when he slowly, carefully, wraps an arm around your shoulder and pulls you into a stiff hug. He doesn’t argue when your arms remain locked in place against the table, and he releases you within seconds to turn back to his work.
You sniff, pull up your assignment, and stare at the words on the screen without reading.
The two of you last thirty minutes before Jason’s humming catches the attention of a librarian and the two of you are politely asked to either book a room or study elsewhere on campus. Longer than last time, you note.
Then
The discussion started as it always did: over a dinner in which not a word had been spoken prior. The scrape of forks and knives remained the background tune of every mealtime, bar the singular, routine discussion.
It started, as it always started, as became routine, with your mother reaching for the empty chair next to her.
Her hand lifted.
Your every nerve froze.
Your father’s cutlery slowly dropped onto his plate.
And your mother’s hand touched, as it had touched for so many months, nothing but air.
Her head moved next. It would’ve been better, you thought, if it was a quick snap. If she turned in surprise that air met her hand, if she gasped.
Instead, her chin slowly tucked into her shoulder as her eyes swept the empty place next to her, her fingers curling sharply into her palm.
“Oh,” she said flatly.
That, too, remained routine.
Your father said your mother’s name: gentle, calm, a whistle back to the meal at hand.
Your mother tsked. “For a moment, I had forgotten.” The words came curt, her gaze scathing as it cut from the empty space to you.
You lowered your hands into your lap, your fingers winding around one another. One ankle curled over the other, your shoulders hunched slightly.
Your mother sighed the disappointed sigh she always sighed. “I had almost forgotten,” she repeated morosely, “that it is you that still lives and not…well.”
You bit the inside of your cheek, kept your eyes on your plate.
“God willing there will be something to be proud of soon enough,” your father filled in. “You have sent in your applications, correct? All the places we’ve talked about?”
Talked about. Mentally, you scoffed.
Visibly, you gave a singular, deep nod.
Your father hummed. Not a pleasant hum, not even a thoughtful hum. No, ‘twas the hum of a man who could not fathom his inquiry could be met with anything other than what he’d suggested and had been told exactly what he’d wanted to hear.
A single laugh tore through the air immediately after, the sound not unsimilar to a wicked stepmother’s from a children’s movie. Not routine. She never laughed, not now.
Your head lifted before you realized you were looking.
Your mother’s lip curled into what reminded you of a dog’s snarl. “And another, too, so I’ve heard.”
The automatic action of breathing eluded you. Your heart stopped and then started racing faster than it’d ever beat before. Your lip trembled, and your eyes grew dry and wet all at the same time with the sudden inability to blink.
Your father stiffened. “Is that so?” his voice grew low.
“My friend Patricia from the ladies’ crochet club, you remember her, her husband worked at that one church for a few years, well she has a friend who does business over at that one diner off East Elm?”
Every thought escaped you except one: shit. Shit, shit, shit. How had you forgotten?
If that was the information your mother knew, it was bad. Not as bad as if she knew about the Gotham University application, you knew, but almost.
It hadn’t even been your idea, really. One of your school friends had suggested it during English. An application to the Computer Science associates program at the local community college would save you money: you’d get two years under your belt for less of the cost before transferring to finish the full four-year degree.
You’d been hesitant, and your classmate had all but kidnapped you and made you fill it out under their hawkish gaze at the diner.
The diner your mother’s friend’s friend apparently saw you at.
“I was just appeasing a classmate,” you blurted.
Your parents both turned to blink at you. Your mother pursed her lips. Your father shifted to rest his elbow on the table and his chin in his hand.
You swallowed, suddenly aware of the fact that you’d just spoken. You hadn’t meant to do that, not really.
Even if it was the truth.
Your mother readjusted in her seat, her back straightening further, her tin tilting ever so slightly as if to let her peer down at you from her almighty throne. A muscle in your father’s jaw visibly ticked and his nostrils flared as he assessed you.
“I don’t remember asking you your version of events just now.” The sentence crawled out like a reprimand and you flinched.
“I thought you’d learned that no college professor will let you speak out of turn.” Your father rolled his eyes, turned his focus to your mother, and waved his hand. “You shouldn’t do things just because a classmate says to. Would you jump off a cliff if they told you to?”
“With all your advanced courses I thought you’d be smarter than that,” your mother agreed.
They continued back and forth, trading remarks over your silence until the food called to them again. You pushed the remains of your portion around on the plate, but didn’t scoop another bite.
When they finally dismissed you, you retreated to your room with the promise that you wouldn’t accept the community college’s offer of attendance should it be offered and that you would apply to no more universities without their express approval.
Now
The moment September made way for October, your roommate took it upon themself to plaster the walls of your dorm with Halloween décor.
Initially, you had questioned the need.
But between coursework, your job at the campus coffee shop, and your job at the closest off campus diner, you didn’t truly have the time, effort, or desire to argue.
Thus, two days before Halloween finds you staring at a mosaic of neon fake webbing, ornamental jack-o-lanterns, a tiny mouse skeleton riding a broomstick for some reason, and a mechanical raven with soulless red eyes.
“It’s going to come alive and peck our flesh off,” you deadpan.
Your roommate snorts. “It runs on remote batteries.”
“That doesn’t negate my previous statement.”
“There are no batteries in it.”
“There aren’t any batteries in the stuffed animals that always turn into killers in the worst horror movies.”
Your roommate groans, a deep guttural sound, flops back on their bed, and dramatically shoves one arm over their eyes.
A pang rings through your chest, and you scuff your foot against the ground as you eye the ruby-eyed raven once more. “It can stay,” you mutter. “It does fit the theme.”
This, you decide, is technically true on account of you’re not sure what the theme is outside of every Halloween and Halloween-adjacent decoration your roommate could find.
Your roommate springs up. “If you really aren’t comfortable with it,” they begin.
You shake your head, quickly holding your hands out to assure them it’s fine. Once they’ve settled back once more, you glance at the time on your phone, smile apologetically, and stuff yourself into a light jacket before hauling your backpack up and leaving the room.
An arch of oranges, reds, and yellows spirals overhead as you make the familiar trek to the campus library. The trees themselves dance with the autumn breeze, and you find yourself watching the swirl of leaves as several flitter from their branches to a tune none but them hear.
The tingle the thought of sleeping in the same room as the mechanical raven had given you dissipates by the time you slink inside the comfort only rows of books and enforced quiet provides.
Jason is already seated at the table the two of you have all but claimed over the semester, notebook open, anthology cracked.
He’s staring, unblinking, at the pages open in front of him when you creep up on him.
Your hands rise, fingers arching like pincers above his shoulder blades. As you start to lower them, ready to attack, he sighs.
“Your footsteps still give you away,” he tells you.
You pout, abandoning your plan immediately. “How do you always know?”
Jason glares at you from the corner of his eye as you plop into the seat next to him. “You still walk louder than most who grew up in Gotham,” is all he says before returning his focus to his work.
You cross your arms, leaning over to read the title of whatever his current assigned reading is. Your head brushes his shoulder as you shift in front of him to block his view. He lightly shoves you back into your seat, laughing, and pulls the anthology up, turning so you no longer have access to the book.
“Do your own work,” he chides.
You grumble, dutifully pulling your laptop out as you do. “But reading Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” is so much easier than writing a paper on prosocial and antisocial behaviors.”
“Tough luck.” Jason points an accusatory finger at your computer screen. “It’s due tonight, isn’t it?”
You scowl at the reminder and aggressively pull the document up.
When you next glance away from your assignment, Jason has turned his attention from schoolwork to staring at you. You blink, frowning at the lack of notebook and anthology on the table in front of him.
He shrugs when you point it out. “I finished half an hour ago,” he says.
“And you couldn’t have started another assignment?”
He grimaces. “I’m supposed to have a family dinner tonight,” he says carefully, slowly. “I didn’t want to lose track of time.”
Ah. “You don’t talk about your family much,” you note. In truth, you could probably count on one hand how many times Jason’s mentioned “the family”.
When you’d shyly brought it up to your roommate, curious if it was something you were close enough to you could bring up to him, your roommate, shocked at your lack of apparently common Gotham-lore, had detailed everything they knew of Jason’s upbringing as the adopted son of Gotham Billionaire Bruce Wayne.
You hadn’t believed them until Jason hesitantly confirmed it a week later after noticing your pathetic attempts to google it.
“Well.” You click your tongue absentmindedly. “If you need to escape, just text me and I’ll call with a fake emergency. Surely, they can’t fault you if my roommate and I need your help with a murderous mechanical raven.”
Jason’s face scrunches in confusion. “A murderous mechanical raven?”
“My roommate’s idea, don’t ask. Halloween is apparently sacred. Which reminds me, actually. What are you doing Halloween? I think we’re hosting a séance for some reason.”
Something akin to horrified disgust crosses his face. “No. Definitely not. No.”
“If your dorm’s available we could do a movie night instead?”
Jason hesitates, helplessly lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug. “I’m busy Halloween,” is all he offers, the words an apologetic jumble tumbling forth somehow with both the speed of a crashing airplane and the crawl of a snail’s pace.
A cloud of disappointment envelops you, but you force a smile to your face anyway. “No problem. I’m sure the séance won’t be too bad. Might even be entertaining to watch, who knows.”
Jason opens his mouth, no doubt another apology on the tip of his tongue. You wave him off, hurriedly grasping for another topic to talk of instead.
He lets the conversation flow elsewhere, and neither of you return to Halloween again.
Then
For your last Halloween as a high school student, your class organized a lock-in. You had debated the pros and cons of going, of asking to go, and decided it wasn’t worth it.
You stood by that decision. Up until the week before, when you returned home with the results of your last calculus test in shaking hand.
Your parents took one look at the 89.
“What happened?” they asked. “I’m sure you’ll do much better next time.” They tsked. “Didn’t you study for it?”
Despite their insistence, you didn’t eat that night.
The next morning, you’d informed them of the lock-in. You banked on the fact that teachers would be there, and extra study sessions would be allotted for students who wanted or needed help with homework and preferred that over one of the planned activities.
And so, Halloween night you grabbed your backpack and joined your classmates and teachers at school.
Several of your friends attempted throughout the night to pull you into one of the planned activities: one room had been set up like a maze, another an escape room, a third was filled with board games.
You declined every time, rotating through homework assignments and study guides under the supervision of a handful of other students and the study hall supervisor.
When gaggles of students passed in the hall, dressed in costumes and imitating animals, you ached. Not to join them, but at the sounds and sights that would never fill your life within your childhood home again.
The following morning, neither of your parents asked if you’d had fun, only if you’d gained help with the material you were struggling with.
You’d nodded, and that had been that.
Now
By mid-November, you had learned three important things about living in Gotham.
One, despite the rest of the country’s opinions on billionaires and rich celebrities, Gothamites are, inexplicably, protective of Bruce Wayne and his children. The everyday person still gossips, of course, and Jason isn’t followed around like some deity by any means, but if an outsider criticizes the Waynes, the outsider is criticized in turn. The result: Bruce Wayne is Gotham’s to love and hate, and only Gotham’s.
Secondly, despite the horror stories of what could happen in the city at night, the area around the Gotham U campus is surprisingly safe. According to a rumor your roommate uncovered, Harley Quinn and Batman have teamed up to make the campus a safe zone and none of the other criminals-regular or costumed-dare cross them.
Third, and arguably most important, no one really cares about your history unless it poses a danger to them. Such, you’ve taken to telling no one other than your therapist and roommate any of it.
Perhaps that’s why Jason raises an eyebrow and shifts uncomfortably when you decline your mother’s call for the fifth time in a row.
The two of you had left the confines of the library, where frazzled group projects had been unleashed, in search of sustenance and found yourselves at a quiet family-owned restaurant a few blocks off-campus.
You’d been having a pleasant, normal conversation when your phone rang the first time. You’d hesitated only a second before declining the call. Naturally, your mother didn’t like that.
A sound escaped your throat; some mix between a groan and a hiss. To Jason, you specified “sorry”.
He attempted a smile of reassurance. It did not reassure you.
You declined the next incoming call, and the next, and the next, and the next, and dear God how many times could one woman call you in the span of a single minute?
Jason clears his throat, his hands lifting and dropping the menu in front of him randomly as he glances around the small restaurant. “You can take that if you need to,” he says. “I don’t mind.”
“She just wants to complain that I’m not coming home for Thanksgiving,” you tell him. It’s technically the truth, or as truthful as you’ve found it can be without making your audience uncomfortable.
You’d texted your parents three days ago to inform them you’d not be returning to your childhood home for Thanksgiving. Your father had asked about your plans for winter break, and then spring break, and then informed you that if you did not come home for the first Thanksgiving they were hosting in two years you could stay gone for all he cared.
Your mother had taken a slightly different approach. She’d emphasized that the family and friends who’d been invited would miss you and wonder where you are if not at home. When you’d stood your ground, she questioned if you’d started dating someone and how you could not tell her such a thing demanded to be introduced.
That, of course, led to you assuring her that you were still single and yes, of course mother, when I date someone, I’ll tell you.
…
Thinking back on it, you know your therapist would berate you for so easily promising her that.
Nevertheless, since your adamant refusal to return (ever, by your father’s law), your mother has taken to calling you as often as she can to demand you see reason and change your mind.
It is far easier to decline her calls than attempt to reason with her.
It would be even easier, you know, to block her number. But every time your finger hovers over the button to do so, you waver. She is your mother, after all.
“Too much homework?” Jason asks, the words tentative and soft despite the probing of a question no other Gothamite would ask.
You blink at him. “Always,” is your solemn reply. Jason simply nods. You sigh, shake your head. “Yes and no.” you say it before you’ve fully committed to saying it, before the thoughts of his response to your explanation can paralyze you into never saying it.
Jason doesn’t utter a single sound. He doesn’t even move drastically. He just carefully, gently, lowers the menu and folds his hand on the table between you.
You swallow the dryness in your throat and avoid his eyes. “It’s not a money thing, either. Not really. It’s just…” you shrug, scratch your nose. “I don’t want to be there. If I go back, I’m not sure I’ll have it in me to come back.”
The words settle into the space between you, and for the next few minutes the white noise of a restaurant is the only sound you hear.
Then, Jason leans back, and the seat groans under his weight. Your eyes dart to him, and he’s crossing his arms, nodding, and looking out the window instead of at you. “I get that,” he says finally. He doesn’t expand further, and neither do you.
Even still, when you reach for your menu, your arms feel lighter than they have in days.
“Anyone else know?” Jason waits to ask until you’ve ordered, the menus no longer a buffer you can use.
You pick at your nails. He doesn’t ask again. When your food arrives and the waiter leaves, you sigh. “I see a therapist.”
He considers. “Do you like them?”
“Somewhat.”
“That’s better than not at all.” He picks up his glass, sets it down without taking a sip. He inhales sharply, and reaches across the table to still your hands. Bashfully, you meet his eyes. “Thank you for telling me that,” he says.
“It’s not all of it,” you protest.
His nose scrunches. “If you want to tell me all of it, I’ll listen,” he promises.
You nod, throat tight. It’s another minute before you tell him you’d do the same. His head cocks to the side, eyebrow raised. You shrug. “You haven’t really told me about your family either. If you want to, I’ll listen. If not, that’s fine.”
He smiles, and you smile back.
“But,” you raise a finger, “don’t go getting a big head or anything just because you’re my best friend.”
His smile grows, a dazzling spectacle truer than the smiles he gave when you first met. “You’re my best friend, too.” He reaches for his glass again before once again pausing, lowering it without taking a sip. “If…if you want someplace to go for Thanksgiving instead of the campus cafeteria,” he starts slowly, “I’m allowed to bring a guest to the manor.”
You bite the inside of your cheek and shift the food on your plate around for a moment, debating what your therapist would say. Gathering yourself, you take a deep breath and square your shoulders. “Do you want me there or are you inviting me out of pity?”
The look Jason gives you is answer enough, and you smile meekly, squeaking a quiet apology. “I just said you’re my best friend.” He shakes his head. “Of course, I want you there if you want to come.”
He kicks your foot under the table. You kick his back. He laughs, and then you laugh, and that’s that.
Then
Your parents rented a cabin for Thanksgiving. To get away from all the noise, they said. A whole week of vacation, how relaxing.
They didn’t tell you if you were invited to any of your extended family’s houses for the holiday. You didn’t ask.
They left the Monday before the holiday. You spent the time not in school ravaging through the fridge for meal ideas. You hadn’t saved for a full week’s worth of groceries; you hadn’t anticipated needing to.
Thanksgiving itself passed without notice to you. You woke, you did the chores you could, you ate what you knew they wouldn’t miss, and you studied ahead.
Black Friday replicated the day prior.
And, then, Saturday tossed you through a window.
The mail came early. That should have been the first sign, really. The mail never came early, especially on a Saturday.
Most of it was expected. Normal mail delivered to your parents. One envelope was too large. Addressed to you.
You could do nothing but stare at it for a solid ten minutes. Your teachers and advisor had joked that half the time students received word from colleges they knew before they even opened the letter if they had been accepted or not. If accepted, there would be an entire packet of information. If rejected, a simple letter.
Your hands shook, and you carefully traced your name on the envelope before tearing it open.
Several sheets of things fell out, and you fell after them. Your knees landed hard on the kitchen floor, your hands scrabbling for a hold on something as the words pierced your eyes.
…Gotham University…pleased to accept you…Psychology…
Your breaths turned ragged.
They weren’t supposed to accept you.
It had been one last act of rebellion.
A joke.
You hurried to gather everything, nodding to yourself.
You’d tear it all up. Shred it.
Throw it away, and then throw the garbage bag away.
They’d still never know.
They’d never have to know.
They could never know.
Something dripped off your chin.
Another drop.
A third.
Only then did you realize your cheeks were coated with tears and sobs had been built and unleashed through your lips.
You curled in on yourself.
The dream of a dream shuttered under your eyelids.
You clutched the papers tighter.
A dream.
It shattered.
Now
You stumble after Jason as he leads you toward the entrance of Wayne Manor. You clutched the fruit platter your roommate and you had scoured the nearby stores for tighter the closer you got to the door.
“You really didn’t have to bring anything,” Jason says for the tenth time.
“It’s rude to show up empty handed,” you argue.
He makes a face, like he’s debating the truth of that statement in general to the truth of it in this situation.
The door opens before either of you can say anything more on the matter.
The man who peers down at you is fitted in a suit, his grey hair styled serenely.
Jason’s shoulders drop in relief and he smiles. “Alfred.”
“Master Jason,” Alfred replies warmly. He steps aside, ushering the two of you in. “Do you not have a warmer jacket?” he tsks.
Jason groans but doesn’t argue as Alfred shoos the two of you further inside and rambles on about a cup of tea he’ll have ready shortly. Then, Alfred is pulling the fruit platter from your arms, marveling at it, and telling you he’ll set it up with the rest of dinner. You don’t have time to respond before he’s gone.
You follow Jason down the hall, emerging in a large space you don’t know the name of. At first glance, you think living room. What with the giant television and luxurious-looking couch and the several chairs perched about the room. But then you see the elegant table off to the side, more akin to the type found in a dining room and you’re blinking too hard and two people you don’t know are standing up from where they’ve been conversing and Jason is tensing and it no longer matters what type of room this is.
The eldest man in the room appraises Jason with a look that sends a shiver down your spine, all too familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. “Jason,” he says. It’s low, but not the lowness of your father’s voice, not the timber of a growl. Just a pitch.
“Bruce.” Jason reaches behind him. Pulls you forward until you’ve stumbled next to him. “This is my friend.” He says your name, and it’s the softest word to come out of his mouth since the two of you have entered this room.
You give a quick wave.
Bruce Wayne, Gotham Billionaire, Gotham’s sweetheart, turns his scrutinizing gaze that doesn’t feel at all like the scrutinization you’re used to but is scrutinization all the same onto you.
“Jason’s talked about you,” you say to be nice. It isn’t the full truth, but it’s not a lie either. Jason has mentioned his family, in that offhand way. He’s even brought them up by name since you agreed to attend Thanksgiving dinner with him.
According to him, it’s so you know what you’re walking into.
You won’t tell him nothing he’s said could have prepared you for this.
Bruce Wayne dips his chin in a single, deep nod, but his eyes don’t leave you. Without thought, your fingers move to pick at your fingernails.
Jason reaches over, sliding his fingers between yours and giving your hand a squeeze before you can commit to the act.
You glance at him, eyes wide.
He’s not looking at you. His eyes are trained on his adoptive father.
When you look back at Bruce Wayne, his attention is back on Jason. His face has softened, you think.
The man next to him, who looks only a few years older than you, grins and waves, bouncing forward. “Hi!” you tilt your head, picturing a dog’s tail wagging with excitement behind him. “I’m Dick Grayson, Jay’s older brother. It’s lovely to meet you.”
He reaches a hand forward for you to shake. You extend your own arm, yelping when Jason pulls your entire body back, out of Dick’s reach, using your clasped hands.
Bruce Wayne sighs a tired sigh. Dick only grins wider, sharper, something sparking in his eyes as he raises his hands and backs away, laughing easily.
You clear your throat, unsure if you should say something or wait for someone else to speak first.
Thankfully, Alfred arrives. He sets a tray with several tea cups and a pot of tea down on a coffee table you hadn’t realized was a coffee table, says dinner will be ready shortly, and excuses himself back out of the room.
Bruce Wayne uses that time to sit, pour a cup of tea, and motion for Dick, Jason, and you to join him.
Jason, still pulling you along with him, sits tersely on the couch. Bruce hands him a cup of tea. Jason doesn’t take it. Bruce holds it out for a moment longer before, once more, sighing and gently setting it in front of your friend.
You smile, carefully accepting the cup he extends your way next with the single hand you have available. Jason’s grip on your other hand tightens, but he says nothing as you take a small sip of tea.
Dick bounces in his seat, his head swiveling from Jason to you to Jason and back to you. You frown over the rim of your cup, but it’s Jason who snaps.
“What?”
“You actually brought your friend.” To your ears, Dick sounds like someone who’s seeing the Northern Lights for the first time.
“I said I was.”
“You did.”
Jason scowls.
Bruce Wayne clears his throat before their banter can escalate into an actual argument. “Jason mentioned you’re majoring in psychology. How did you choose it, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Oh.” You set the cup down in front of you. All three men give you a moment to compose your thoughts. In the end, you shrug. “I guess I’ve just…always been interested in understanding why people act the way they act.”
“Gotham U’s program is prestigious,” Bruce Wayne replies. “And they have wonderful assistance with finding internships should you need it.”
You fidget. Jason shifts next to you, and Bruce Wayne cuts himself off.
The silence only lasts a moment this time.
“How exactly did you and Jason meet?” Dick inquires. “He never did say.”
You glance at Jason. His eyes are shut, his jaw clenched. You squeeze his hand. “If he didn’t say then he didn’t say for a reason.” The words leave with an undertone of confidence you do not feel as you say them. Jason squeezes your hand back nonetheless.
Thanksgiving dinner commences as such. Bruce Wayne and Dick prompt the conversation with questions, mostly aimed at you. You answer as best and willing as you’re able. Jason steps in every now and then.
Two times, it’s Alfred who informs Bruce Wayne that the question he has asked is too personal for the first time you meet one’s child’s friend. Bruce Wayne looks especially bashful after that.
After, Dick offers to help Alfred clean up and Bruce Wayne disappears into another room of the manor with the quiet excuse of needing to finish something for work.
You follow Jason through a door and meander the Manor’s gardens for a while.
It’s there, amid the dying roses and greying stems that seem especially bleak under the lightness of the upcoming frost, that Jason thanks you.
It’s so quiet you almost don’t hear it.
“I should be thanking you,” is all you can think of to say. “I’d have nowhere else to go if you hadn’t offered to let me come with.”
Jason’s nose twitches. “So, it’s pity that made you agree to come?” he asks.
You shake your head. “You’re my friend, Jason. Why would I pity you?”
He opens his mouth, and then closes it without saying anything. He watches you and you watch him, and around you, the lightest sprinkle of snow begins to dust the air.
“What?” you finally ask.
One of Jason’s arms jerks like he started some movement he realized he didn’t intend to start. “You’re my best friend,” he says slowly.
You frown. “As we’ve established. And?”
“I think I’m in love with you.”
Everything stops.
There’s a faint buzz in your ears.
You can no longer feel your heart, or your legs, or your arms.
You no longer feel your breath, or see it in the air in front of you.
In front of you, just out of reach, where he’d been standing, Jason’s figure blurs in your eyes and then reappears clearly.
He’s watching you with that careful gaze of his. Gently, oh so gently. Sincerely.
Summary: Arthur told you to leave for your own safety. You listened. He didn't think about what would come after that. Sequel to "Cages or Wings (which do you prefer)" found on my old blog @/teaand-dreams
TW: kidnapping, Arthur is a hostage, angst, yearning
Word Count: 2885
Cages Masterlist
Author's Note: Hello, I have returned after about four years of silence. Is anyone still active? This is not proofread, no betas, the idea came from an ask I answered about four hours ago.
I do not use AI when I write, I do not consent to my work being uploaded/shared to/with AI in any capacity.
Despite the easy grins, the laughter, the playful banter every knight endures because of his blood, and the way his father nods assuredly every time he puts his relaxed, happy façade on for a banquet, Arthur Pendragon has regrets.
Merlin listens to him, offers advice, and rarely pushes. And yet, in the years they’ve known one another, Arthur has never inquired about any of Merlin’s problems. Nor has his manservant willingly verbalized them.
Lancelot was good. He was honorable as a knight should have been. And Arthur had done nothing but wished him well when the King sent the would-be knight away for not having been born to nobles.
He could have been nicer to the entirety of Camelot’s servants, to be sure.
And the blacksmiths. And merchants. And everyone, really, he really hasn’t been the nicest. Especially before Merlin came along. And even more-so since…well.
Rather selfishly, Arthur thinks it would be nice to know more about Merlin and Gaius’ work. The ability to understand their hushed conversations would have made him a better Prince.
And, chiefly,
Apparently, he’d been so convincing in his orders, you had heeded them and disappeared from Camelot in face, name, and rumor. Neither Gaius or Gwen has heard from or of you since he’d sought your escape from death. And Morgana was so furious she refused to even entertain his inquiries.
Morgana, Arthur reckons, had the right idea, if this is where his inquiries would see him.
In the months since you scattered like ash in the wind, Arthur has done his best to maintain his dignity and leave you and whatever’s remained of his feelings for you hidden away in the past, buried in the deepest depths of his marrow.
His father’s outrage and pillage of the realm in search of you had only convinced him doing so was in both his and your best interest.
And yet…
He grunts, snapping his bound arms forward, testing the strength of the rope cutting into his skin. Too tight.
The motion carries him forward, and the visage of the cave’s floor as the ceiling is enough for his eyes to roll and acid to burn the back of his throat.
If only they hadn’t hung him upside down and left him alone with his thoughts. Much better to be a captive when you’re not dangling from the ceiling.
“Oi.” One of the bandits snaps from where the pair have built a small camp just out of reach. “Stop that.”
Arthur bares his teeth. “Or you’ll kill me?”
The bandit lunges for his sword. The other intercepts, murmurs something too quiet for Arthur to catch, and they both settle back on the ground, sneering at him as they do so.
Arthur fights the urge to cluck his tongue. They’d knocked him out to tie him up, and without a clear view of the sun’s position he can only guess how long it’ll be before someone notices he’s gone. And then finds him.
Not that he’d left an abundance of clues. He’d rather thought he’d have been back in his chambers by now. Or, at least, by morning. Whenever that is. Will be? Was? He briefly considers asking if either of the bandits knows the time, but dismisses the idea as quickly as it arrives.
They’d have no reason to tell him. And every reason to assume he’d use the information to escape somehow. As if simply knowing the time would undo the knots keeping him bound.
“My father won’t let you keep whatever ransom you think you can get,” he tries. “Even if you make the exchange, Camelot’s knights will follow you and you won’t survive the week.”
It’s the second bandit that barks at him to shut his mouth this time. Arthur snorts, but acquiesces. He’s nothing more to freely give them anyway. Not until they give something in return.
Surprisingly, they return to their hushed conversation. In the boredom of not being interrogated, Arthur pulls the threads of what led him here to the forefront of his mind.
Firstly, in the absence of all information regarding you Arthur had attempted to throw his father off your invisible trail by bribing people to falsify rumors.
He couldn’t do it himself, obviously. Merlin had been willing to help, but he and Gwen had both been adamant that rumors could not just sprout up in the middle of Camelot. They had to originate elsewhere and circulate back to the castle.
That had been the first obstacle they faced.
In less than a day, you, Arthur’s fiancé, exposed yourself as someone who used magic, and then magically vanished from a prison cell Uther had condemned you to. Thus, Uther’s paranoia spiraled like a forest fire.
He questioned everyone in Arthur’s life. He started overseeing Arthur’s patrol routes and hunting grounds. For the first week, Arthur could not leave the castle without ten knights surrounding him.
Even Merlin and Gaius found themselves unable to leave without an escort for the first month. They’d known you as well, after all. It was for their safety, the King said. What if you tried to intervene while they gathered the herbs they required?
And Gwen could go nowhere without Morgana, and Morgana was under as severe lock and key as Arthur.
Their savior came in Sir Leon. Sir Leon, who had decided that while Uther’s stance on magic was law, and as a knight he served the crown and law, Arthur was not under a spell and if Arthur wanted to help you then Leon would help too.
Unlike every other person Arthur considered a friend within Camelot, Leon was not under Uther’s surveillance. He took ideas Gwen, Merlin, and Arthur compiled, and spread seedlings around various outer villages.
Soon thereafter, rumors ripened of your whereabouts. Every time a courtier voiced one, every time a servant whispered one, Arthur’s heart soared in hopes of knowing where you were and fell at thoughts of Uther finding you and finishing what he’d started.
And then the facts came back to him, and he realized he knew every rumor because he and Gwen and Merlin and Leon had started them.
None of the rumors or fabricated sightings ever led to you because none of them actually started with you. They started with a desperate plan carved by a man who could not stop loving you even when you betrayed him and hid part of yourself from him.
Even when you obeyed him and left him.
A shuttered breath tears through Arthur’s throat, and he blinks back tears. For the first time since waking this way, he’s grateful the bandits aren’t right in front of him. His father would never forgive him if he found out Arthur shed tears while kidnapped.
Even if the tears weren’t related to being kidnapped.
Right. Arthur clears his throat. So, the starting point. You vanished. He created his own network of people he trusts to (hopefully) aid you. Because he would aid you with every choice in every breath, whether or not you wanted it.
You had needed it, when he’d led you out of the dungeon after all. You’d not fought, not sought an explanation, merely succumbed to allow your execution. Either that, or you’d had some plan Arthur still hadn’t dug up.
And months passed. Your presence lingered like an old wound. Never fully gone. Pressure at times. Routine to avoid certain thoughts and movements and think and act otherwise to account for it.
The lack of you disrupted everything, though. Council meetings where he’d come up with how to retell a joke to make you laugh before remembering. No more dinners he’d accidentally forget, too caught up in paperwork or disputes or his father’s tirades.
The lack of conversations about anything wedding-related was most obvious. Everyone avoided words like wedding or nuptials or spouse as if Arthur would strike them. Or Uther would.
The wound lingered. The ache you left pressed through him some nights until he could scarcely breathe. He shoved every garment dyed your favorite color he owned to the back of his wardrobe.
Merlin never pressured him into answers he wasn’t sure he could give. Gwen and Morgana never chided. Uther made offhand comments to be careful who he gave his affections to and left it at that.
And Arthur grew to know and recognize the space you left behind as well as he’d known the space you occupied.
See, the problem is Arthur loves you. Even still, even now, even here. Even when, months ago, you ruined his dreams of the future by revealing your magic in front of not just him, but Merlin and Gaius and Gwen and Morgana and hundreds of nobles and, worst of all, his father.
Two days ago (or yesterday? Really, he can’t be certain of the timing of events without knowing the current time), you ruined the tentative peace he’d convinced himself he’d built in your absence.
Two days ago (or whenever, does it really matter anymore?), Leon brought a rumor none of them had started. The first and only rumor since you’d left that held the possibility of truth within it.
And Arthur, like an idiot, had waited. With all the other rumors that had crept up and led nowhere, he was foolishly certain Uther would think nothing of this one.
And then, yesterday (was it yesterday? Hours ago?) Uther learned of the rumor from his most loyal lapdog of a knight during a meeting Arthur was not privy to.
Leon told him as soon as the meeting was over. Arthur retired early, barricaded his chamber, and climbed out the window like a lovesick fool.
Worse, he hadn’t even told Leon he was going to. Or Merlin. Or anyone.
Not even a couple hours into his journey, and the bandits knocked him out.
He’s angrier, Arthur concludes, at the fact that they knocked him out today of all days than that they knocked him out at all. Really, if they’ve been planning a kidnapping, they couldn’t have planned it for a day that better suited him?
Well, why not ask them that. Arthur nods to himself, and focuses back on the bandits’ campsite. Only, when he does the bandits are on the ground and Lancelot is walking toward him.
“You hit stronger than I realized,” Arthur mutters. That’s unfortunate. Without Merlin, it will be rather difficult to heal the head wound and continue on and get back to his chambers before his father realizes his intent to keep you hidden.
Lancelot’s face does something weird, and metal scrapes a scabbard, and then Arthur blinks and he’s on the ground and his head is woozy and Lancelot is pulling the rope away from his wrists and saying something.
“What?” Arthur manages.
Lancelot pinches his nose and takes a full breath to look at Arthur in what Arthur imagines a disappointed father who even disappointed is kind to you in a way Uther could never manage looks at their son.
Then Lancelot is hauling him to his feet and a dreadful, heavy wave forces its way into Arthur’s chest.
“What are you doing so close to Camelot?” he hisses. “My father will kill you if he finds you here.”
Lancelot grins, and it’s nothing like the wide, joyous grin he wore when they first met that Arthur spends the next minute convinced this isn’t Lancelot, but Lancelot’s grumpier twin brother.
His rescuer doesn’t say anything until they’re out of the cave. When the forest surrounds them again, and Arthur the familiar route back to Camelot pieces itself together in front of Arthur, he turns, and Lancelot is looking at him, waiting.
“What are you doing here? How did you know where I was?” Even to his own ears, Arthur can’t fully decide if he sounds more desperate or more commanding.
Lancelot tilts his head to each side, humming. “I don’t think I can answer that entirely, I’m afraid.”
This time, Arthur knows before the words are formed that they will be coated in outrage.
They haven’t formed on his tongue when Lancelot holds out a hand, something clutched in it for Arthur to take, and continues speaking.
“The answers to your question aren’t all mine to share,” he says. “But I am allowed to share this.”
Arthur brings the object up to study, and-oh. Oh. His hand shakes but his grip doesn’t loosen as he stares at the ring he commissioned for you. He’d hidden it in the saddlebag of the horse he’d gifted you upon your escape. If you couldn’t wear it as his spouse, he’d had it made for you. It was yours, and he’d wanted you to do with it as you would.
Even if he knew you’d probably sell it for the coin it would give you in a time you had little else to sell.
He knows it’s the same ring. The design, the shape. Carved by his mind, forged because of the desire he holds for a future you have now denied him, and now, returned to him through a vessel he cannot comprehend.
Nausea boils in his stomach. “Why do you have this?” he asks lowly.
Lancelot slowly raises his hands, placating. “Words are spoken freely and difficult to trust. I am merely safeguarding it for now as I act as a messenger. Fear not, it will return to its rightful owner henceforth.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
Lancelot’s eyes flick meaningfully, or is Arthur imagining it because he is desperate for meaning in this where he knows none, to the trees and horizon beyond in which Camelot draws breath.
“There are many rumors,” Lancelot says. Arthur closes his fist around the ring, his eyes stinging, and glares at the person in front of him he once thought he could call friend. “You are your father’s heir,” he continues. “You will one day be King of Camelot.”
Refusal rises as it always does in the back of Arthur’s throat. His father is King. His father will be King for years to come.
He doesn’t voice it.
Lancelot smiles grimly. “The laws are what they are,” he reminds him gently. “By your father’s hand. You have helped. You are trying to help. That is known. Do not make yourself a target over this.”
“My father has heard a rumor from his most trusted, most loyal knight,” Arthur manages. He’s almost proud of the way his voice barely shakes.
Lancelot chuckles. “Do you really believe rumor and fact are the same, Your Highness?”
Arthur wants to question it. Everything bleeds together, a storm of want and desire and longing and hurt and anger and Lancelot is in front of him with answers Arthur doesn’t understand how he knows and you’re not here but you could’ve been and Lancelot is talking, even if in riddles.
He sniffs, brings his fist up to his nose as if the ring could possibly have carried your scent all the way here from wherever it is you are, and considers what is in front of him.
Lancelot is honorable.
Lancelot would have been a good knight.
Lancelot is not a knight because he was not born to nobles.
Arthur lowers his hand, unfurls his fingers, traces the ring with his thumb once, and gently hands it back to Lancelot.
“Thank you for the message,” he whispers. “And for seeing that this is returned safely to its home.”
Lancelot pauses where he’s tucking the ring safely into a pocket. “That’s the thing, isn’t it?” he muses. “Home is what you make of it. Some of us find it in a place, others the people around us, and some of us…we can never go back to it, can we?”
He bids Arthur a silent farewell, and is gone by the time Arthur regains the ability to know that in this light, he should be on his way back to Camelot.
The return journey lacks bandits and kidnappings.
It lacks the certainty of your safety he’d envisioned upon his departure. It lacks the certainty of answers he’d imagined and has only the pieces of what he’s been given.
Uther confines him to his rooms for two days, sends a group of knights out to hunt every bandit they can find, and disappears into his paranoia once more.
Merlin frets but doesn’t push for answers. Gaius just pats him on the shoulder when he delivers the medicine Uther requested Arthur take.
Morgana visits once. She says nothing. Arthur considers telling her she was right, but knows those words are false to him.
Morgana smiles to herself, tells him not to run off on his own again. He has friends and confidantes, and sees herself out.
Arthur is still pondering that when Leon sneaks his way in.
“The rumor,” Leon tells him, “was just a rumor. I still don’t know who started it or why, but there are several testimonies that prove it false. The bird remains free.”
Arthur’s shoulders drop, a breath escaping him. He presses a hand to his chest, nods, and thanks the knight. When Leon leaves him to his thoughts, he turns to the window, and stares out.
Camelot surrounds him. In the distance, on the horizon, the sun slowly departs and you remain, hidden, elusive, safe.
Synopsis: When you first meet Jason Todd, the foliage has barely begun its preparation to hibernate. Between then and the barricades of snow, you begin to imagine a future among the colors of every season together. Too bad the flowers are in full bloom when you leave him. Jason Todd English major au, reader is a Psychology major
Word Count: 7,589
Trigger Warning: emotional abuse, child neglect, minor character death, trauma, survivor’s guilt, depression, anxiety, grief, mourning, talks of death, severe angst, reader does not have a good relationship with their parents, arguing, swearing, mentions of Jonothan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”
MDNI: Minor's do not interact
Series Masterlist Full Masterlist
Now
The crisp morning air circulates around you like a barrier against the tendrils of memories haunting your dreams. It grazes the back of your neck, and the fluttering press of moving air is all you need to ground yourself in the reality of now, away from the then you’ve traveled across the country to escape.
You let the breeze coat the back of your throat with a deep inhale, holding it longer than you know you should before releasing it back into the world around you.
The sidewalk in front of you narrows into a point across your vision, the building it leads to swaying in your mind even as it stands strong as a fortress against the Gotham atmosphere.
A few students mill around the entrance, some on computers and others talking amongst themselves. Fewer still are on the sidewalk itself, or the sidewalks branching off from the one you’ve stilled on, darting across the paths centering the quad of Gotham U.
When you scuttle your feet, the straps of your backpack shift with you and the weight of your future presses against your spine with a reminder of what you’ve lost for this.
One moment more, you decide. Then, swallowing the dryness building in your throat, you start for the building.
You’re almost relieved the ability to recognize the silliness of your hesitation tickles the back of your mind as you make your way inside. Almost. The lingering presence of unwelcome thoughts and glances from everyone you pass solidifies the hesitation as the correct choice.
As if you’d woken this morning and deliberately made it.
Sweat gathers along your fingertips, and it takes you three tries to correctly swipe your phone open to check the room number. It hasn’t changed since you looked this morning. You quickly repeat the number to yourself anyway, blindly stuff your phone back in your pocket, and shuffle down the hallway toward the stairs.
Your shoulders grow taught the closer you get to the room. When you enter, no one looks. You stiffen further for a breath even so before carefully mapping your way to the third desk back in the row closest to the door. The professor briefly glances up from where they’re shuffling a pile of papers, smiles, and then returns to their task.
None of the handful of students lazing about glance at you, much less say hello. You quietly pull out your notebook and a pen.
You’re debating how you should title the first page of notes for this class, if the name of the class itself is sufficient or if you should wait for the professor to name the first topic of lecture, when someone rather rudely drops into the desk next to you.
You blink, swiveling to look at every other open space in the room. The person next to you, dark hair curling over his forehead, grins easily, eyes sparkling.
“This’ll be an exciting class, huh?” he asks.
You look at the desk behind you. Empty. The desk in front of you. Also empty.
You frown. “Have we met?” though it is a question, you do not truly ask it as the literal one it is. Not when you know the answer. Not when distance and time has moved you from all the familiar into the unfamiliar and prep work for today has left you with little socialization outside of the necessary.
The man makes a sound low in his throat, half-chortle, half-indignant cough, you think. “Not that I’m aware of?” When you say nothing to this, he nods slowly, dramatically, poking his cheek with his tongue. “Okay,” he drawls. “Not in the mood for friends?”
You can do little but blink slowly, in the manner a cat does. Though, your blink has nothing to do with affection and everything to do with the unanticipated interaction you’ve found yourself an unwilling participant of.
“Is friendship a requirement for passing this class?” mentally, you scold yourself. There’s no reason to further whatever this is.
The man shrugs. “Guess not, but I imagine it would make the discussions easier.”
Your frown deepens. “The factual discussions based on research?”
The man’s face contorts in a confused manner, his nose scrunching and eyebrows pulling in what you assume is thought. Slowly, he extends a hand. You stare at it but don’t move to shake it. He holds it up for another minute before slowly dropping it back down. “I’m Jason,” he says slowly.
“Okay?”
His head tilts, his eyes darting across your figure.
You raise an eyebrow, glance at the professor, then the clock, and then return your attention to the notebook in front of you. Class will start soon, and you need to title your notes before it does. You lower your pen to the page, tap it once, and start scribbling a headline. You can always rewrite or retype the notes into a more organized fashion later.
“You know,” the man, Jason, starts.
You sigh, your grip on the pen tightening.
The professor, bless them, chooses that moment to clear their throat and start the lecture. Jason shuts his mouth immediately. The rest of the class quiets, and the professor gives the room a small smile.
“Welcome to Social Psych 101. To start, we’re going to do an introductory exercise. If you’d all find the person closest to you, exchange names, majors, and something interesting about yourself? We’ll do five minutes, and then present to the class.” The professor waves their hands in a ‘get to it’ motion and turns back to their desk.
You grit your teeth, shut your eyes for a deep sigh, and turn to formalize your introduction to Jason.
His grin wavers, and he scratches the back of his neck sheepishly. “So,” he says, “I’m Jason Todd, I’m an English major, and I just realized this is not British Literature 1. Nice to meet you?”
Silently, you curse.
Then
It wasn’t so much that you chose psychology. Rather, psychology chose you.
The application blinked on the screen in front of you, the page threatening to die with the darkness of a screen that had been abandoned for too long.
You stared unblinking at the dropdown of choices available. The mouse cursor hovered over Computer Science, the decision that had been made for you years ago available to be solidified into truth with a single click.
Your fingers trembled slightly. One click, and your future was determined. One click, and your future was no longer the dreams you’d had but the plans they’d made.
Hesitantly, slowly, you inched the bar down. The list of majors blurred as tears gathered in your eyes. The screen shone too bright in the dark room around you, the blanket pulled taught around your shoulders offering too little comfort for the herculean task before you.
Too much, too much, too much. How were you meant to do this? How were you meant to simply click and let the path you’d once danced to fade into oblivion for the hopes of another?
You blinked, and the cursor had stopped. It traced the option under it, Psychology, and for no reason other than the infuriating desire to rebel one last time before becoming the puppet you’d been born to be, you clicked it.
Your chest tightened, your throat closing even more. The air you breathed thickened into paste. Your hands shook as you filled the rest of the application out, typing and deleting and typing and deleting. One application, you told yourself.
It was a singular application to a university you’d never be accepted into anyhow. What did it matter if you applied for the Psychology program at Gotham University? It wasn’t like you’d actually end up there.
And you had enough saved up. They’d never see the bill for the application fee; they’d never know. It didn’t matter.
You glanced at the door, cracked open, always cracked open, never fully shut. The hall beyond remained empty, silent.
Before you could talk yourself out of it, you clicked one last button. The screen swirled for one second, two. And, then, the application had been submitted.
A sob tore through you, and you clamped a hand over your mouth before it could fully release. You rocked back and forth, carefully exiting the website, deleting it from your history.
Only when the laptop was off and out of reach, and still the hall empty and silent, did you wipe your face, take several deep breaths, and start to relax.
Beyond the confines of your room, the hall stood sentinel. Silent, empty.
Even had you wanted to, there was no one to tell of what you’d just done.
Now
The laminated orange leaf practically shines against the cardstock you’d traced random designs into. You lean the handmade bookmark back and forth, examining the way the light hits it from every angle.
You’d found the leaf your third day of class, and though surprised to find such a thing so early in the season you’d kept it all the same.
You found purpose for it only days later when you’d stumbled into fellow Gotham U student Jason Todd who, no longer sitting in classes he was not paying for, had promptly dropped an anthology on the grass, cursed, and spent the next five minutes rambling about his actual professors while trying to find his page again.
At the end of the interaction, he’d somehow reaffirmed his goal of becoming your friend and decided that though you were in different majors and shared a total sum of zero classes together the two of you would make the perfect study partners.
In the weeks following the interaction, you’ve found yourself silently agreeing with his conclusion.
You’re still staring at the bookmark when the chair next to you is pulled back from the table. You don’t even glance at him as Jason groans, plopping next to you. He, thankfully, pulls out his homework without a word.
After a few minutes of him working next to you and you still analyzing the bookmark, you glance at him from the corner of your eye. He’s dutifully filling out a page of what you assume are annotations based on the open book in his lap.
You inhale sharply before nudging his leg with yours.
Other than the pause of his scribbles, he gives no indication he’s noticed your maneuver. You grumble under your breath before shoving your foot into his leg harder.
His lips twitch, and he clears his throat as quietly as he can, an effect you know is due to what happened the last time he laughed in the campus library. “Yes?” he whispers.
With a quick prayer to the universe, you throw the bookmark at his face. He snatches it before it hits him without even turning his head. You huff.
Jason’s hands are surprisingly gentle as he turns the bookmark over, humming quietly and inspecting its details with more thought and time than you think its warranted. “For me?” he asks.
“Don’t read into it too much,” you reply immediately. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
Jason visibly bites back a grin. “Oh, I wouldn’t dare to presume otherwise.”
“Good.”
With careful reverence, he traces the outline of the leaf and slowly, oh-so-gently, sets it in the book he’s reading. The cover closes in the same manner, and then Jason’s turning in the seat to face you and you’re turning to stare at the bookcase along the wall across the room with the determination of a cat stalking a laser pointer.
“You made me a gift.” His voice is soft. Each word is enunciated and clear, but none of it enters the space between you as anything other than the warmth of gratitude.
You scratch your hand along your cheek, and then your elbow, and then the back of your neck. Your foot taps a random pattern into the carpet and Jason’s gaze burns into the side of your face every second you still refuse to acknowledge the moment.
The clock in the library ticks as it always does. Tick, tick, tick. The murmur of group projects doesn’t rise any further than what it already is, and the librarians are too busy either reshelving or whatever else it is they’re busy with to save you from Jason’s patience.
“It’s just a bookmark,” you finally hiss.
The smile that spreads across Jason’s face at that is so unlike any of the smiles you’ve grown used to seeing on his face, you instinctually shrink in on yourself and focus on the edge of the table while picking at your nails.
Jason stills in your periphery. You risk a secondary glance at his face, and something you can’t name flashes across his face in a brief furrow of his brow. You blink, and his smile is the same. It doesn’t dim as he slowly tilts his head to meet your eyes.
“Thank you.” The phrase is simple, his tone level.
Your nose twitches, but nothing your ears pick up signify anything but sincerity. So, you risk a small grin. His own widens.
You give a half-shrug before tapping your laptop and gesturing to his open notebook and assigned reading. “Don’t get the wrong idea. The less you’re mumbling about trying to find your page again, the easier time I’ll have getting my own work done.”
The words sound wrong to your own ears: half-jumbled, half-coated in something that pricks your marrow the way embarrassment does.
But Jason doesn’t laugh. His smile still doesn’t change shape, and his eyes don’t narrow or light with anything other than how he’s always looking at you. “We’re friends now,” he croons. “You made me a gift; you can’t deny it.”
You groan but don’t fight when he slowly, carefully, wraps an arm around your shoulder and pulls you into a stiff hug. He doesn’t argue when your arms remain locked in place against the table, and he releases you within seconds to turn back to his work.
You sniff, pull up your assignment, and stare at the words on the screen without reading.
The two of you last thirty minutes before Jason’s humming catches the attention of a librarian and the two of you are politely asked to either book a room or study elsewhere on campus. Longer than last time, you note.
Then
The discussion started as it always did: over a dinner in which not a word had been spoken prior. The scrape of forks and knives remained the background tune of every mealtime, bar the singular, routine discussion.
It started, as it always started, as became routine, with your mother reaching for the empty chair next to her.
Her hand lifted.
Your every nerve froze.
Your father’s cutlery slowly dropped onto his plate.
And your mother’s hand touched, as it had touched for so many months, nothing but air.
Her head moved next. It would’ve been better, you thought, if it was a quick snap. If she turned in surprise that air met her hand, if she gasped.
Instead, her chin slowly tucked into her shoulder as her eyes swept the empty place next to her, her fingers curling sharply into her palm.
“Oh,” she said flatly.
That, too, remained routine.
Your father said your mother’s name: gentle, calm, a whistle back to the meal at hand.
Your mother tsked. “For a moment, I had forgotten.” The words came curt, her gaze scathing as it cut from the empty space to you.
You lowered your hands into your lap, your fingers winding around one another. One ankle curled over the other, your shoulders hunched slightly.
Your mother sighed the disappointed sigh she always sighed. “I had almost forgotten,” she repeated morosely, “that it is you that still lives and not…well.”
You bit the inside of your cheek, kept your eyes on your plate.
“God willing there will be something to be proud of soon enough,” your father filled in. “You have sent in your applications, correct? All the places we’ve talked about?”
Talked about. Mentally, you scoffed.
Visibly, you gave a singular, deep nod.
Your father hummed. Not a pleasant hum, not even a thoughtful hum. No, ‘twas the hum of a man who could not fathom his inquiry could be met with anything other than what he’d suggested and had been told exactly what he’d wanted to hear.
A single laugh tore through the air immediately after, the sound not unsimilar to a wicked stepmother’s from a children’s movie. Not routine. She never laughed, not now.
Your head lifted before you realized you were looking.
Your mother’s lip curled into what reminded you of a dog’s snarl. “And another, too, so I’ve heard.”
The automatic action of breathing eluded you. Your heart stopped and then started racing faster than it’d ever beat before. Your lip trembled, and your eyes grew dry and wet all at the same time with the sudden inability to blink.
Your father stiffened. “Is that so?” his voice grew low.
“My friend Patricia from the ladies’ crochet club, you remember her, her husband worked at that one church for a few years, well she has a friend who does business over at that one diner off East Elm?”
Every thought escaped you except one: shit. Shit, shit, shit. How had you forgotten?
If that was the information your mother knew, it was bad. Not as bad as if she knew about the Gotham University application, you knew, but almost.
It hadn’t even been your idea, really. One of your school friends had suggested it during English. An application to the Computer Science associates program at the local community college would save you money: you’d get two years under your belt for less of the cost before transferring to finish the full four-year degree.
You’d been hesitant, and your classmate had all but kidnapped you and made you fill it out under their hawkish gaze at the diner.
The diner your mother’s friend’s friend apparently saw you at.
“I was just appeasing a classmate,” you blurted.
Your parents both turned to blink at you. Your mother pursed her lips. Your father shifted to rest his elbow on the table and his chin in his hand.
You swallowed, suddenly aware of the fact that you’d just spoken. You hadn’t meant to do that, not really.
Even if it was the truth.
Your mother readjusted in her seat, her back straightening further, her tin tilting ever so slightly as if to let her peer down at you from her almighty throne. A muscle in your father’s jaw visibly ticked and his nostrils flared as he assessed you.
“I don’t remember asking you your version of events just now.” The sentence crawled out like a reprimand and you flinched.
“I thought you’d learned that no college professor will let you speak out of turn.” Your father rolled his eyes, turned his focus to your mother, and waved his hand. “You shouldn’t do things just because a classmate says to. Would you jump off a cliff if they told you to?”
“With all your advanced courses I thought you’d be smarter than that,” your mother agreed.
They continued back and forth, trading remarks over your silence until the food called to them again. You pushed the remains of your portion around on the plate, but didn’t scoop another bite.
When they finally dismissed you, you retreated to your room with the promise that you wouldn’t accept the community college’s offer of attendance should it be offered and that you would apply to no more universities without their express approval.
Now
The moment September made way for October, your roommate took it upon themself to plaster the walls of your dorm with Halloween décor.
Initially, you had questioned the need.
But between coursework, your job at the campus coffee shop, and your job at the closest off campus diner, you didn’t truly have the time, effort, or desire to argue.
Thus, two days before Halloween finds you staring at a mosaic of neon fake webbing, ornamental jack-o-lanterns, a tiny mouse skeleton riding a broomstick for some reason, and a mechanical raven with soulless red eyes.
“It’s going to come alive and peck our flesh off,” you deadpan.
Your roommate snorts. “It runs on remote batteries.”
“That doesn’t negate my previous statement.”
“There are no batteries in it.”
“There aren’t any batteries in the stuffed animals that always turn into killers in the worst horror movies.”
Your roommate groans, a deep guttural sound, flops back on their bed, and dramatically shoves one arm over their eyes.
A pang rings through your chest, and you scuff your foot against the ground as you eye the ruby-eyed raven once more. “It can stay,” you mutter. “It does fit the theme.”
This, you decide, is technically true on account of you’re not sure what the theme is outside of every Halloween and Halloween-adjacent decoration your roommate could find.
Your roommate springs up. “If you really aren’t comfortable with it,” they begin.
You shake your head, quickly holding your hands out to assure them it’s fine. Once they’ve settled back once more, you glance at the time on your phone, smile apologetically, and stuff yourself into a light jacket before hauling your backpack up and leaving the room.
An arch of oranges, reds, and yellows spirals overhead as you make the familiar trek to the campus library. The trees themselves dance with the autumn breeze, and you find yourself watching the swirl of leaves as several flitter from their branches to a tune none but them hear.
The tingle the thought of sleeping in the same room as the mechanical raven had given you dissipates by the time you slink inside the comfort only rows of books and enforced quiet provides.
Jason is already seated at the table the two of you have all but claimed over the semester, notebook open, anthology cracked.
He’s staring, unblinking, at the pages open in front of him when you creep up on him.
Your hands rise, fingers arching like pincers above his shoulder blades. As you start to lower them, ready to attack, he sighs.
“Your footsteps still give you away,” he tells you.
You pout, abandoning your plan immediately. “How do you always know?”
Jason glares at you from the corner of his eye as you plop into the seat next to him. “You still walk louder than most who grew up in Gotham,” is all he says before returning his focus to his work.
You cross your arms, leaning over to read the title of whatever his current assigned reading is. Your head brushes his shoulder as you shift in front of him to block his view. He lightly shoves you back into your seat, laughing, and pulls the anthology up, turning so you no longer have access to the book.
“Do your own work,” he chides.
You grumble, dutifully pulling your laptop out as you do. “But reading Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” is so much easier than writing a paper on prosocial and antisocial behaviors.”
“Tough luck.” Jason points an accusatory finger at your computer screen. “It’s due tonight, isn’t it?”
You scowl at the reminder and aggressively pull the document up.
When you next glance away from your assignment, Jason has turned his attention from schoolwork to staring at you. You blink, frowning at the lack of notebook and anthology on the table in front of him.
He shrugs when you point it out. “I finished half an hour ago,” he says.
“And you couldn’t have started another assignment?”
He grimaces. “I’m supposed to have a family dinner tonight,” he says carefully, slowly. “I didn’t want to lose track of time.”
Ah. “You don’t talk about your family much,” you note. In truth, you could probably count on one hand how many times Jason’s mentioned “the family”.
When you’d shyly brought it up to your roommate, curious if it was something you were close enough to you could bring up to him, your roommate, shocked at your lack of apparently common Gotham-lore, had detailed everything they knew of Jason’s upbringing as the adopted son of Gotham Billionaire Bruce Wayne.
You hadn’t believed them until Jason hesitantly confirmed it a week later after noticing your pathetic attempts to google it.
“Well.” You click your tongue absentmindedly. “If you need to escape, just text me and I’ll call with a fake emergency. Surely, they can’t fault you if my roommate and I need your help with a murderous mechanical raven.”
Jason’s face scrunches in confusion. “A murderous mechanical raven?”
“My roommate’s idea, don’t ask. Halloween is apparently sacred. Which reminds me, actually. What are you doing Halloween? I think we’re hosting a séance for some reason.”
Something akin to horrified disgust crosses his face. “No. Definitely not. No.”
“If your dorm’s available we could do a movie night instead?”
Jason hesitates, helplessly lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug. “I’m busy Halloween,” is all he offers, the words an apologetic jumble tumbling forth somehow with both the speed of a crashing airplane and the crawl of a snail’s pace.
A cloud of disappointment envelops you, but you force a smile to your face anyway. “No problem. I’m sure the séance won’t be too bad. Might even be entertaining to watch, who knows.”
Jason opens his mouth, no doubt another apology on the tip of his tongue. You wave him off, hurriedly grasping for another topic to talk of instead.
He lets the conversation flow elsewhere, and neither of you return to Halloween again.
Then
For your last Halloween as a high school student, your class organized a lock-in. You had debated the pros and cons of going, of asking to go, and decided it wasn’t worth it.
You stood by that decision. Up until the week before, when you returned home with the results of your last calculus test in shaking hand.
Your parents took one look at the 89.
“What happened?” they asked. “I’m sure you’ll do much better next time.” They tsked. “Didn’t you study for it?”
Despite their insistence, you didn’t eat that night.
The next morning, you’d informed them of the lock-in. You banked on the fact that teachers would be there, and extra study sessions would be allotted for students who wanted or needed help with homework and preferred that over one of the planned activities.
And so, Halloween night you grabbed your backpack and joined your classmates and teachers at school.
Several of your friends attempted throughout the night to pull you into one of the planned activities: one room had been set up like a maze, another an escape room, a third was filled with board games.
You declined every time, rotating through homework assignments and study guides under the supervision of a handful of other students and the study hall supervisor.
When gaggles of students passed in the hall, dressed in costumes and imitating animals, you ached. Not to join them, but at the sounds and sights that would never fill your life within your childhood home again.
The following morning, neither of your parents asked if you’d had fun, only if you’d gained help with the material you were struggling with.
You’d nodded, and that had been that.
Now
By mid-November, you had learned three important things about living in Gotham.
One, despite the rest of the country’s opinions on billionaires and rich celebrities, Gothamites are, inexplicably, protective of Bruce Wayne and his children. The everyday person still gossips, of course, and Jason isn’t followed around like some deity by any means, but if an outsider criticizes the Waynes, the outsider is criticized in turn. The result: Bruce Wayne is Gotham’s to love and hate, and only Gotham’s.
Secondly, despite the horror stories of what could happen in the city at night, the area around the Gotham U campus is surprisingly safe. According to a rumor your roommate uncovered, Harley Quinn and Batman have teamed up to make the campus a safe zone and none of the other criminals-regular or costumed-dare cross them.
Third, and arguably most important, no one really cares about your history unless it poses a danger to them. Such, you’ve taken to telling no one other than your therapist and roommate any of it.
Perhaps that’s why Jason raises an eyebrow and shifts uncomfortably when you decline your mother’s call for the fifth time in a row.
The two of you had left the confines of the library, where frazzled group projects had been unleashed, in search of sustenance and found yourselves at a quiet family-owned restaurant a few blocks off-campus.
You’d been having a pleasant, normal conversation when your phone rang the first time. You’d hesitated only a second before declining the call. Naturally, your mother didn’t like that.
A sound escaped your throat; some mix between a groan and a hiss. To Jason, you specified “sorry”.
He attempted a smile of reassurance. It did not reassure you.
You declined the next incoming call, and the next, and the next, and the next, and dear God how many times could one woman call you in the span of a single minute?
Jason clears his throat, his hands lifting and dropping the menu in front of him randomly as he glances around the small restaurant. “You can take that if you need to,” he says. “I don’t mind.”
“She just wants to complain that I’m not coming home for Thanksgiving,” you tell him. It’s technically the truth, or as truthful as you’ve found it can be without making your audience uncomfortable.
You’d texted your parents three days ago to inform them you’d not be returning to your childhood home for Thanksgiving. Your father had asked about your plans for winter break, and then spring break, and then informed you that if you did not come home for the first Thanksgiving they were hosting in two years you could stay gone for all he cared.
Your mother had taken a slightly different approach. She’d emphasized that the family and friends who’d been invited would miss you and wonder where you are if not at home. When you’d stood your ground, she questioned if you’d started dating someone and how you could not tell her such a thing demanded to be introduced.
That, of course, led to you assuring her that you were still single and yes, of course mother, when I date someone, I’ll tell you.
…
Thinking back on it, you know your therapist would berate you for so easily promising her that.
Nevertheless, since your adamant refusal to return (ever, by your father’s law), your mother has taken to calling you as often as she can to demand you see reason and change your mind.
It is far easier to decline her calls than attempt to reason with her.
It would be even easier, you know, to block her number. But every time your finger hovers over the button to do so, you waver. She is your mother, after all.
“Too much homework?” Jason asks, the words tentative and soft despite the probing of a question no other Gothamite would ask.
You blink at him. “Always,” is your solemn reply. Jason simply nods. You sigh, shake your head. “Yes and no.” you say it before you’ve fully committed to saying it, before the thoughts of his response to your explanation can paralyze you into never saying it.
Jason doesn’t utter a single sound. He doesn’t even move drastically. He just carefully, gently, lowers the menu and folds his hand on the table between you.
You swallow the dryness in your throat and avoid his eyes. “It’s not a money thing, either. Not really. It’s just…” you shrug, scratch your nose. “I don’t want to be there. If I go back, I’m not sure I’ll have it in me to come back.”
The words settle into the space between you, and for the next few minutes the white noise of a restaurant is the only sound you hear.
Then, Jason leans back, and the seat groans under his weight. Your eyes dart to him, and he’s crossing his arms, nodding, and looking out the window instead of at you. “I get that,” he says finally. He doesn’t expand further, and neither do you.
Even still, when you reach for your menu, your arms feel lighter than they have in days.
“Anyone else know?” Jason waits to ask until you’ve ordered, the menus no longer a buffer you can use.
You pick at your nails. He doesn’t ask again. When your food arrives and the waiter leaves, you sigh. “I see a therapist.”
He considers. “Do you like them?”
“Somewhat.”
“That’s better than not at all.” He picks up his glass, sets it down without taking a sip. He inhales sharply, and reaches across the table to still your hands. Bashfully, you meet his eyes. “Thank you for telling me that,” he says.
“It’s not all of it,” you protest.
His nose scrunches. “If you want to tell me all of it, I’ll listen,” he promises.
You nod, throat tight. It’s another minute before you tell him you’d do the same. His head cocks to the side, eyebrow raised. You shrug. “You haven’t really told me about your family either. If you want to, I’ll listen. If not, that’s fine.”
He smiles, and you smile back.
“But,” you raise a finger, “don’t go getting a big head or anything just because you’re my best friend.”
His smile grows, a dazzling spectacle truer than the smiles he gave when you first met. “You’re my best friend, too.” He reaches for his glass again before once again pausing, lowering it without taking a sip. “If…if you want someplace to go for Thanksgiving instead of the campus cafeteria,” he starts slowly, “I’m allowed to bring a guest to the manor.”
You bite the inside of your cheek and shift the food on your plate around for a moment, debating what your therapist would say. Gathering yourself, you take a deep breath and square your shoulders. “Do you want me there or are you inviting me out of pity?”
The look Jason gives you is answer enough, and you smile meekly, squeaking a quiet apology. “I just said you’re my best friend.” He shakes his head. “Of course, I want you there if you want to come.”
He kicks your foot under the table. You kick his back. He laughs, and then you laugh, and that’s that.
Then
Your parents rented a cabin for Thanksgiving. To get away from all the noise, they said. A whole week of vacation, how relaxing.
They didn’t tell you if you were invited to any of your extended family’s houses for the holiday. You didn’t ask.
They left the Monday before the holiday. You spent the time not in school ravaging through the fridge for meal ideas. You hadn’t saved for a full week’s worth of groceries; you hadn’t anticipated needing to.
Thanksgiving itself passed without notice to you. You woke, you did the chores you could, you ate what you knew they wouldn’t miss, and you studied ahead.
Black Friday replicated the day prior.
And, then, Saturday tossed you through a window.
The mail came early. That should have been the first sign, really. The mail never came early, especially on a Saturday.
Most of it was expected. Normal mail delivered to your parents. One envelope was too large. Addressed to you.
You could do nothing but stare at it for a solid ten minutes. Your teachers and advisor had joked that half the time students received word from colleges they knew before they even opened the letter if they had been accepted or not. If accepted, there would be an entire packet of information. If rejected, a simple letter.
Your hands shook, and you carefully traced your name on the envelope before tearing it open.
Several sheets of things fell out, and you fell after them. Your knees landed hard on the kitchen floor, your hands scrabbling for a hold on something as the words pierced your eyes.
…Gotham University…pleased to accept you…Psychology…
Your breaths turned ragged.
They weren’t supposed to accept you.
It had been one last act of rebellion.
A joke.
You hurried to gather everything, nodding to yourself.
You’d tear it all up. Shred it.
Throw it away, and then throw the garbage bag away.
They’d still never know.
They’d never have to know.
They could never know.
Something dripped off your chin.
Another drop.
A third.
Only then did you realize your cheeks were coated with tears and sobs had been built and unleashed through your lips.
You curled in on yourself.
The dream of a dream shuttered under your eyelids.
You clutched the papers tighter.
A dream.
It shattered.
Now
You stumble after Jason as he leads you toward the entrance of Wayne Manor. You clutched the fruit platter your roommate and you had scoured the nearby stores for tighter the closer you got to the door.
“You really didn’t have to bring anything,” Jason says for the tenth time.
“It’s rude to show up empty handed,” you argue.
He makes a face, like he’s debating the truth of that statement in general to the truth of it in this situation.
The door opens before either of you can say anything more on the matter.
The man who peers down at you is fitted in a suit, his grey hair styled serenely.
Jason’s shoulders drop in relief and he smiles. “Alfred.”
“Master Jason,” Alfred replies warmly. He steps aside, ushering the two of you in. “Do you not have a warmer jacket?” he tsks.
Jason groans but doesn’t argue as Alfred shoos the two of you further inside and rambles on about a cup of tea he’ll have ready shortly. Then, Alfred is pulling the fruit platter from your arms, marveling at it, and telling you he’ll set it up with the rest of dinner. You don’t have time to respond before he’s gone.
You follow Jason down the hall, emerging in a large space you don’t know the name of. At first glance, you think living room. What with the giant television and luxurious-looking couch and the several chairs perched about the room. But then you see the elegant table off to the side, more akin to the type found in a dining room and you’re blinking too hard and two people you don’t know are standing up from where they’ve been conversing and Jason is tensing and it no longer matters what type of room this is.
The eldest man in the room appraises Jason with a look that sends a shiver down your spine, all too familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. “Jason,” he says. It’s low, but not the lowness of your father’s voice, not the timber of a growl. Just a pitch.
“Bruce.” Jason reaches behind him. Pulls you forward until you’ve stumbled next to him. “This is my friend.” He says your name, and it’s the softest word to come out of his mouth since the two of you have entered this room.
You give a quick wave.
Bruce Wayne, Gotham Billionaire, Gotham’s sweetheart, turns his scrutinizing gaze that doesn’t feel at all like the scrutinization you’re used to but is scrutinization all the same onto you.
“Jason’s talked about you,” you say to be nice. It isn’t the full truth, but it’s not a lie either. Jason has mentioned his family, in that offhand way. He’s even brought them up by name since you agreed to attend Thanksgiving dinner with him.
According to him, it’s so you know what you’re walking into.
You won’t tell him nothing he’s said could have prepared you for this.
Bruce Wayne dips his chin in a single, deep nod, but his eyes don’t leave you. Without thought, your fingers move to pick at your fingernails.
Jason reaches over, sliding his fingers between yours and giving your hand a squeeze before you can commit to the act.
You glance at him, eyes wide.
He’s not looking at you. His eyes are trained on his adoptive father.
When you look back at Bruce Wayne, his attention is back on Jason. His face has softened, you think.
The man next to him, who looks only a few years older than you, grins and waves, bouncing forward. “Hi!” you tilt your head, picturing a dog’s tail wagging with excitement behind him. “I’m Dick Grayson, Jay’s older brother. It’s lovely to meet you.”
He reaches a hand forward for you to shake. You extend your own arm, yelping when Jason pulls your entire body back, out of Dick’s reach, using your clasped hands.
Bruce Wayne sighs a tired sigh. Dick only grins wider, sharper, something sparking in his eyes as he raises his hands and backs away, laughing easily.
You clear your throat, unsure if you should say something or wait for someone else to speak first.
Thankfully, Alfred arrives. He sets a tray with several tea cups and a pot of tea down on a coffee table you hadn’t realized was a coffee table, says dinner will be ready shortly, and excuses himself back out of the room.
Bruce Wayne uses that time to sit, pour a cup of tea, and motion for Dick, Jason, and you to join him.
Jason, still pulling you along with him, sits tersely on the couch. Bruce hands him a cup of tea. Jason doesn’t take it. Bruce holds it out for a moment longer before, once more, sighing and gently setting it in front of your friend.
You smile, carefully accepting the cup he extends your way next with the single hand you have available. Jason’s grip on your other hand tightens, but he says nothing as you take a small sip of tea.
Dick bounces in his seat, his head swiveling from Jason to you to Jason and back to you. You frown over the rim of your cup, but it’s Jason who snaps.
“What?”
“You actually brought your friend.” To your ears, Dick sounds like someone who’s seeing the Northern Lights for the first time.
“I said I was.”
“You did.”
Jason scowls.
Bruce Wayne clears his throat before their banter can escalate into an actual argument. “Jason mentioned you’re majoring in psychology. How did you choose it, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Oh.” You set the cup down in front of you. All three men give you a moment to compose your thoughts. In the end, you shrug. “I guess I’ve just…always been interested in understanding why people act the way they act.”
“Gotham U’s program is prestigious,” Bruce Wayne replies. “And they have wonderful assistance with finding internships should you need it.”
You fidget. Jason shifts next to you, and Bruce Wayne cuts himself off.
The silence only lasts a moment this time.
“How exactly did you and Jason meet?” Dick inquires. “He never did say.”
You glance at Jason. His eyes are shut, his jaw clenched. You squeeze his hand. “If he didn’t say then he didn’t say for a reason.” The words leave with an undertone of confidence you do not feel as you say them. Jason squeezes your hand back nonetheless.
Thanksgiving dinner commences as such. Bruce Wayne and Dick prompt the conversation with questions, mostly aimed at you. You answer as best and willing as you’re able. Jason steps in every now and then.
Two times, it’s Alfred who informs Bruce Wayne that the question he has asked is too personal for the first time you meet one’s child’s friend. Bruce Wayne looks especially bashful after that.
After, Dick offers to help Alfred clean up and Bruce Wayne disappears into another room of the manor with the quiet excuse of needing to finish something for work.
You follow Jason through a door and meander the Manor’s gardens for a while.
It’s there, amid the dying roses and greying stems that seem especially bleak under the lightness of the upcoming frost, that Jason thanks you.
It’s so quiet you almost don’t hear it.
“I should be thanking you,” is all you can think of to say. “I’d have nowhere else to go if you hadn’t offered to let me come with.”
Jason’s nose twitches. “So, it’s pity that made you agree to come?” he asks.
You shake your head. “You’re my friend, Jason. Why would I pity you?”
He opens his mouth, and then closes it without saying anything. He watches you and you watch him, and around you, the lightest sprinkle of snow begins to dust the air.
“What?” you finally ask.
One of Jason’s arms jerks like he started some movement he realized he didn’t intend to start. “You’re my best friend,” he says slowly.
You frown. “As we’ve established. And?”
“I think I’m in love with you.”
Everything stops.
There’s a faint buzz in your ears.
You can no longer feel your heart, or your legs, or your arms.
You no longer feel your breath, or see it in the air in front of you.
In front of you, just out of reach, where he’d been standing, Jason’s figure blurs in your eyes and then reappears clearly.
He’s watching you with that careful gaze of his. Gently, oh so gently. Sincerely.
Synopsis: When you first meet Jason Todd, the foliage has barely begun its preparation to hibernate. Between then and the barricades of snow, you begin to imagine a future among the colors of every season together. Too bad the flowers are in full bloom when you leave him. Jason Todd English major au, reader is a Psychology major
Total Series WC: TBD
Trigger Warning: emotional abuse, child neglect, minor character death, trauma, survivor’s guilt, depression, anxiety, grief, mourning, talks of death, severe angst, reader does not have a good relationship with their parents, arguing, swearing
Some of the parts will have additional trigger warnings, please review them carefully before reading
A few years ago while trying to find ways to commit suicide as painlessly as possible, I came across a PDF of Dr. Paul Quinnett's The Forever Decision. Thinking it might go into actual methods of suicide (I read an article once that actually did that and was trying to find it again) I started to read it, and I think I only got about two pages in before I was crying too much to actually see the words.
I downloaded the PDF to my hard drive and I open it again whenever I'm feeling too suicidal to do much else, but not enough to start booking a ride to the hospital. And every time without fail I only go up to a few pages before backing off and choosing to live another day just because suicide suddenly seems even more unbearable than whatever the hell upset me in the first place.
All the book really does is [I'm pulling a summary from GoodReads here as, again, I've read no more than 5 pages] "discusses the social aspects of suicide, the right to die, anger, loneliness, depression, stress, hopelessness, drug and alcohol abuse, the consequences of a suicide attempt, and how to get help."
But it also starts with the author kindly asking the reader to complete the book before going through with anything, and for some reason I'm compelled to really just try to read it all before finalizing everything. Despite not yet completing it (hopefully never will) I think I can safely say it's saved my life at least a few times now.
It's intentionally legal to copy and redistribute this book to keep it as accessible as possible, and it's very easy to find, but here's a link for it anyways.
jujutsu kaisen ... kusakabe atsuya x reader
~1.5k words
warnings: gojo being annoying? lore accurate gojo?
summary: Life — the kind that was sketched into margins of weekends-off-missions, the empty squares on calendars where time warped and, affection-worn at the edges, never quite existed in permanence — always involved you, and inevitably, Kusakabe found, a familiar quiet.
⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆
olive notes: *taps mic* is this thing on?
surprising absolutely no one, kusakabe is one of my silly little dudes who i think deserves a quiet moment or two in between the chaos.
⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆
On the rare occasion that Kusakabe indulged in sports betting and, more often than not, won, he never cashed out in yen but on bullet train tickets from Tokyo to Kyoto.
Each time, his booking confirmation was sent with an unseen but certainly felt scowl, the dry punctuation of Utahime’s message inspiring a series of obnoxious pinging from Gojo, teasing that would inevitably set the woman off and disrupt the entire group chat for the rest of the day. With practiced speed, Kusakabe would save the information and set the chat to the silence of Do Not Disturb, certain that someone would tell him when the worst of the verbal eviscerations were over and it was safe enough to return.
(Nanami would be that someone, most likely. His role in the group chat was never to indulge Utahime’s gambling habit, like the rest of them, but one ubiquitous despite, a stoic and watchful eye — something the rest of them would always tongue-in-cheek poke and prod at, a half-baked and ultimately grateful tease.)
After that, it would be a deep stretch of his stiffened neck until his phone was vibrating again: messages from Yaga — one, always a bid for Kusakabe to share some of his edge (Yaga was on the betting end of most of Utahime’s worst impulses, and by virtue of a revolving door of winning and losing, was always trying to tempt luck); the other, a vow that he’d do what he could to preserve some semblance of peace for the weekend trip. Some weeks were more unlucky than others, with Kusakabe catching the final train back to Tokyo on the same day he left, but mostly his luck would keep. At least for a day or two.
Just enough time for him to board a busy-enough evening train, sacrifice the last of his lollipops to a child with water-dark moons for eyes, and finish the book he’d started months ago as the windows played watercolor impressions of forward motion. Just enough time for him to lethargically shuffle up a comical number of stairs, jiggle a key into a lock, and be with you.
“Waitin’ for me?”
And just like you were every time Utahime made a short-sighted bet on her favorite baseball team, there you’d be: legs folded at all odd angles on a seat at the kitchen table, a poor man’s attempt at smothering a smile, and at least three projects placed before you, all patiently waiting their turn for your divinely particular attention. Strategies for a new method of teaching cursed energy reinforcement to the students at Kyoto Jujutsu High. A letter you were writing to family abroad. The same book Kusakabe had just managed to turn the final page of, already annotated and dog eared many times over, always ten steps ahead of him and meticulously designed.
“Waiting for this.” And you’d tug the bags of take-out from his hands, fingertips kissing, while your familiar pride stoked a feeling in him ever-deep. Kusakabe would shrug off his peacoat and ease out of the responsibilities he’d shouldered before entering your place, and meet you at the freshly organized table that still, at the end of the day, needed to be lacquered (you and Kusakabe would take turns all weekend scolding the other for forgetting a place-mat or coaster — you'd get around to buying the supplies to seal it's admittedly impressive condition... some day).
Quiet music, perhaps jazz, would filter through the orange-tinted room as you’d fill each other in on the life you’d spent apart since you last sat just like this. Missions you’d led and the hijinks that had ensued. Lessons he’d taught that were more flammable than anticipated. Appeals you’d made that were granted after short deliberation (your doggedness gave Gakuganji little and less to push back on and much for Kusakabe to respect). The latest tricks managed by Gojo. The latest airball you were humbled by in the miss. It all slowly arranged itself before the both of you, all side-dishes to pick at and tease and eventually pack up and stow away with the other thousand nuances you’d share between the both of you. Always half-fatigued and good naturedly sighed at — chronicles of too-dry novels meant for only the two of you: similar-souled enough to hold the soft mundanity of the other.
Life — the kind that was sketched into margins of weekends-off-missions, the empty squares on calendars where time warped and, affection-worn at the edges, never quite existed in permanence — always involved you, and inevitably, Kusakabe found, a familiar quiet.
An alarm at 6:00 a.m. that never roused him fully, silenced before making it ten seconds in; late afternoon sun that kiss his eyelids like a previous night's memory, too gentle, it's essence a softer aspect of sweet; a pot of coffee half empty, the rest a reserve for him, a fact murmured, just barely heard over the faint rustling of pages and the steady breathing of his still-tired form. You wouldn't speak above that blanket-thick hum until after you'd finished your meditative miscellaneous tasks in earnest, but you'd look at him whenever he existed in your view, and he’d hold whatever was coldest to his touch, warming it like the pale-worn sun and earth-rich coffee had thawed him.
By afternoon, you’d be circling the room languidly like pleasant little whirlpools and eddies — plants that needed watering, thoughts that would only come to you when fathomed in a round, gentle tip-toeing that had once made Kusakabe wonder slowly and dreadingly if all of this comfortability was just a kindness: some olive branch extended by someone resolved to their best behavior — a concession on your part, mindful, possibly, of his more effort-efficient and energy-conscious temperament. He had long grown used to the run around complaints typical of friends and coworkers, family and romantic partners: he was boring. Life on his terms was cautious to a point of drab.
You wouldn't be the first to slowly edge your way into "bringing excitement into his life," or gear up to more hectic and fervent schedules, and while you had never given him any indication that you preferred such business, most people operated at a baseline decidedly elevated from Kusakabe's leisurely own. It was a fact of life. One he thought you were perhaps just more tentative of introducing.
But the quaint weekends never stopped. The stolen breaths between work and the clandestine moments amidst action turned months into a year and the quiet was all that met him after train rides that brought one of you to the idle sanctuary of the other. Your pacing was just your breathing, his suspicions were just overthinking, and every slow day — each moment with you uneventful and barely measured — was just another way of eroding and filing them down.
Afternoon breakfasts were always the work of his, and Kusakabe hoped softly that the warm-toned comfortability was a feeling shared between the both of you as he eased the bowl into your hands with a comment too-early to be considered wry.
It never took long for Kusakabe to value over all else his time spent ignoring the stove-top clock and just existing, predictably, alongside you. There would always be the disbelieving sputtering of people like Gojo, who couldn’t fathom a fate worse than what the both of you treasured beyond naming, but he’d done his time analyzing your quietly occupied demeanor. He’d searched for any indication of listlessness or annoyance, or perhaps worst of all, defeat, and he’d never managed to find it.
Not during predictable walks to the grocery and the same tayaki from the familiarly manned stall; not when he settled on the cushioned tatami to sharpen his katana like a ritual, always the same time, clockwork made law; not when he joined you, side-by-side, to flip mindlessly through documentaries or daytime viewing, or just to request you read your latest collection of philosophy essays aloud, the sound of your voice low and thoughtful, lulling him into a sort of hypnosis where all he could consciously focus on was the careful shapes your mouth made, but later, when you mentioned Nishitani, he'd be able to indulge you in your ramblings with echoes of what he'd committed to memory and could still recall.
It was just the way you both connected, your mutual contentment in routine habit. Most of the time, you’d do it better than him. Just... exist. Slowly, carefully, softly: like this bubble inside your home, this comfort with him beside you, is all you could ever want for, and later — as you’d bid him goodbye at the station for his other-way bullet train — he’d leave with the lingering touch of your fingertips, and the words you’d spoken in the intimacy of your final moments of proximity, asking and hoping for more.
A few years ago while trying to find ways to commit suicide as painlessly as possible, I came across a PDF of Dr. Paul Quinnett's The Forever Decision. Thinking it might go into actual methods of suicide (I read an article once that actually did that and was trying to find it again) I started to read it, and I think I only got about two pages in before I was crying too much to actually see the words.
I downloaded the PDF to my hard drive and I open it again whenever I'm feeling too suicidal to do much else, but not enough to start booking a ride to the hospital. And every time without fail I only go up to a few pages before backing off and choosing to live another day just because suicide suddenly seems even more unbearable than whatever the hell upset me in the first place.
All the book really does is [I'm pulling a summary from GoodReads here as, again, I've read no more than 5 pages] "discusses the social aspects of suicide, the right to die, anger, loneliness, depression, stress, hopelessness, drug and alcohol abuse, the consequences of a suicide attempt, and how to get help."
But it also starts with the author kindly asking the reader to complete the book before going through with anything, and for some reason I'm compelled to really just try to read it all before finalizing everything. Despite not yet completing it (hopefully never will) I think I can safely say it's saved my life at least a few times now.
It's intentionally legal to copy and redistribute this book to keep it as accessible as possible, and it's very easy to find, but here's a link for it anyways.
vaporwave
germansingergirl
ellievsbear
romaincrisis
2087
amandla
