The flickering light above him is almost the final insult of this entire night, Jason thinks as he stares into this grotty, dirty bathroom mirror.
Everything had gone too quickly from barely manageable to a fucking shitshow and then some. Bullets had flown and blood had flowed. And here he was: wounded, angry and breathing in a shit stained bathroom.
That night he’d jacked the tyres of the batmobile he’d honestly thought that maybe, just maybe he’d stumbled onto something wonderful and his life had taken a turn for the better. A lowly, underfed and forgettable streetkid…taken in by the Bat himself and offered a warm bed, warmer food and the warmest embrace that hinted at home. A dream he’d had for longer than his mom had been cold in the ground.
He should have known better…happy endings don’t happen to street rats like him. Good things don’t happen to the afterthought that was Jason Peter Todd. He was the second choice, the settlement, the consolation prize, the better luck next time. He didn’t live in a fairy tale.
The nightmares of deranged laughing, the ever present twinge in his ribs, legs and everywhere during a thunderstorm, and the large Y shaped scar on his chest hammered home every single time he looked in a mirror that Jason didn’t live in a fairy tale. Jason lived in a horror.
Tonight had been a horror. Kids trafficked and beaten, abused and used in ways that kids never should be. Kids like him who’d been made to grow up far too quick than they would ever be able to heal from. And through all the horror they’d already endured to then see their so called rescuer, drenched in blood and with eyes filled with rage… who could blame them for curling away in the fear that they’d just swapped one devil for another?
Jason punched the mirror and didn’t flinch at the sharp, stinging pain. Pain was an old friend, almost a second narrator to his story. Familiar like a father’s voice reading a nighttime story. But Jason’s nighttime stories were never comforting, rather a constant litany of failures, fears and regrets imeccably delivered in Bruce’s measured, assured, cold and accusing diction. A broken child who thought he’d transcended his genre and into a happy ending, rather than turning merely turning the page into a new chapter of ever expanding horror, fear and torture.
A child that had hoped for a warm bed, safety and love…only to be met with a crowbar, a casket and rejection when he’d wanted an ending he thought he deserved.
Crying into the sink, Jason furiously scrubbed away tears. He didn’t deserve them, hadn’t earned them. He was a monster after all, a broken little doll brought back against his own will and forced to continue his own sad narrative of pain and rejection.
Staring into the mirror, in flickering light and surrounded by shit-stained toilets, Jason couldn’t help but wonder: how could a cracked mirror show such a spitting image?