Like Breathing {pt. 1}
@nxghtwxng @rebellionred @xbonedaddy
This is part one of a really long drabble for nxghtwxng, and it’s probably going to get pretty graphic and triggering as it goes along. Please see the tags for trigger warnings if you decide to read it.
It's a funny thing, the way it feels to cut through flesh. The slow tug of a blade bites and tares slightly, parts the skin and meat with so little pressure. The feeling of it, of cutting into someone, it is unlike any other. It's almost as though you can feel it, the way each fiber of a person is spliced, unravelling them with each slit. The blood that wells up to meet you is to be treasured, rubies trickling alongside precious silver, spilling whispered, scarlet secrets. That drag of metal into a person is beautiful and sickening, intimate in a way similar to sex; looking into someone's eyes as they bleed, it bares your souls to one another, a brilliant transparency, an inescapable truthfulness. There are no lies, no shadows to hide in. There is a knife, there is flesh, and there is blood. So much blood.
It's easy, following orders. He's always been pretty good at it, when he wants to be, when it counts, be it with the gang he ran with as a teenager, the military, or SHIELD and Hydra later in his life. Saying yes and following the leader has always been easier in a way, but he was just damn good at it, and being good at something has always been important to Jack. He has always taken a sort of comfort from knowing that the awful things he does comes from someone else, pretending it isn't his fault, that he is less of a monster because these aren't his ideas. Of course, pretending doesn't make it true.
Back home, Dick is probably out on patrol, but Jack doesn't think of that. As he digs his knife in deep, his mind wanders to his boy; Dick laying out on the couch, laughing or smiling as they watch some television show together as a break from the news, his feet propped up beside him and head resting against Jack's shoulder, Jack’s own arm around the smaller man to keep him tucked there closely. Dick messing around in the kitchen, helping Jack with supper, or already having prepared it by the time he makes it back to their apartment. Dick, beneath him in bed, chest heaving and flushed as pink as his face while nimble fingers trail down the scar on Jack's jaw, tracing his throat and chest to grip at the chain that holds his tags, dragging him in for a searing kiss.
His knife hits bone, and Jack's attention returns to the present, here with this boy, the other boy, the one so similar and yet unlike Jack's own. Darkness where Dick is light, but alike, too alike for this to be easy to stomach. The thought that this could be Dick here, strapped into this chair, makes him feel a little sick, but Jack remains stoic as ever, a cool serenity over his face to show that, as always, he is calm and collected. This is not Dick. This is not Dick and will never be, Jack will make sure of that; he can't extend the same protection to this boy, even if he wants to. This young man, not even eighteen yet, who smirks and smiles and asks for more, more, is that all you've got? each time Jack presses in more deeply. That too is familiar, reminiscent not only of Dick but of Brock; Jack is impressed by this young man, this boy who deals more shit than anyone he's ever met, who laughed when Butcher couldn't crack him, even though he had left the kid bruised and bloodied.
Each previous attempt at gaining answers has been met with sarcasm and smart quips, but Jack can't exactly give in now. Brock, he knows, is watching on the other side of the wall, likely Pierce or others as well. Butch may escape punishment for losing to the boy, but Jack, Jack is less favored, known for his loyalties to Brock that didn't quite extend to Hydra as a whole, his feelings about Winter and his treatment, all of it. Jack, who has been dealt with in several instances before, cannot risk quitting, not on this. Not on Jason Todd, the not-so-dead boy with the secrets to immortality in his veins.
When first asked for his name, Jason responded with a remark about sex, which wasn't too surprising; Jack wasn't given much information on the boy, not really, but if he had a dollar for every time some guy responded to torture with a sex joke, he would have... a lot of dollars. It didn't faze him, Jack just continued on. It went that way for a while, back and forth, Jack asking questions about the boy, pretending he knew nothing on him or why he was here, and Jason responding with more and more snark. Ask his age [seventeen, Jack thought], Jason responded by asking how old he looked. Ask about his white-streaked hair [from his reanimation, according to Hydra's files], Jason offered to hook Jack up with his stylist. Jack was getting nowhere, but he didn't particularly mind; both seemed perfectly fine with the question and non-answer session they were having. Jack had tried offering an easy out, had told the kid there was no shame in spilling now after all he had already withstood from Hydra's Butcher, but the boy refused. Not only that, but Jason broke his own thumb and slipped his bindings.
An unfortunate turn of events for the both of them, Jack thinks-- this could have been avoided if the kid had just told him what they wanted to know. As soon as the boy stands from his chair, Jack slips his knife away and withdraws his gun; aiming easily, shoots Jason in the knee. As soon as he is on the ground, Jack walks over with a steady, clipped pace and raises his boot, stomping against the boy's pelvis as hard as he can, feeling something give below him. Good, he thinks. He stays silent as he grips that two-toned hair and hauls the boy up, throwing him back into the chair and cuffing him once more, noticing the grotesque swelling of his hand, satisfied that he won't get out again.
"Now. Where were we?" Jack asks, raising his brows some before pistol whipping Jason across the temple, making sure to daze him but nothing more. Can't have him losing consciousness. The young man is seated awkwardly, slumping to one side thanks to the broken pelvis, those green eyes staring up at Jack with an anger he hadn't had before. Jack doesn't mind, he's seen this look before, he's sure he will witness it again. Jason doesn't seem impressed or amused, spitting sharp words about Jack consulting his notes, something easily ignored by the older man.
Nothing about torture is pleasurable or fun for Jack. He doesn't like it and doesn't get off on it, not like so many of the others he works with do; it’s always been like drowning. Stomping this kid's pelvis, feeling that bone give beneath his boot with a dry crack that echoed throughout their little cell? Jack isn't going to get that out of his head for a while. Even so, he keeps his face blank and nonchalant, so very practiced in all of this that it comes easily, pretending he doesn't give a fuck about this kid, about hurting him, about anything.
"I think you were about to tell me your name, but that's okay. You don't have to tell me," Jack murmurs, smiling down at the boy easily. "How about you tell me more about why it takes so much to get you drunk, huh? You have a faster metabolism now, Jason?" he asks, using the kid's name for the first time, hinting that they know much more about this boy than to be expected. Such was the way with Hydra, though. Hydra was all seeing, all knowing. "Is that what happened to your hair, too?" he asks, using the muzzle of his gun to press on that broken pelvis, wanting answers and willing to hurt the kid if it means he can go the fuck home to his own boy.
Jason, for his part, just keeps that sharp, feral smirk in place, teeth tinted pink with blood from Butcher's time playing with him. More of those sarcastic remarks are drug from him: "I've always had a fast metabolism, that's one of the perks of being active," and "I told you I could hook you up with my stylist." It seems that Jason is quickly growing tired of this now that his hip has been busted though, since his next question is a thinly veiled demand for Jack to cut to the point of this, asking why he's wasting his time: "I don't understand, are you trying to elude to something or just being a pain in my ass?"
It's almost amusing, Jack doesn't mind. He could do this all day, as Cap says. "I'd say I'm more of a pain in your hip," Jack muses as he digs the muzzle of his gun into Jason's pelvis more deeply, pressing right on the break until he can feel one part moving beneath the pressure, the other side of the break rubbing lightly against his gun through the kid's flesh. He can hear the pain in the tightness of the boy's voice, knows it from the way Jason doesn't look so cocky anymore. His face is hard, eyes steeled and flinty as he all but snarls, feral, a trapped, wounded animal. Prey.
"I thought we decided to play nice, Mister Todd," Jack murmurs as he digs that gun into his broken bones, "But if you still don't want to do this the easy way, I can break something else," he offers. Without warning, Jack leans in just enough to punch Jason in the knee, right over the bullet hole already dampening his pants with blood. That knee will be out of commission for a while he is sure, might never be the same. Then again, whatever brought the kid back to life might be able to heal all of this up, Jack doesn't know. "All I know is what they told me, and that's a really weird little story. You were alive, then dead, and now here you are again. We just want to know how it happened, Jason," Jack says easily, tapping the boy's cheek with his palm, sharp little slaps to bruise darkened, bloodied skin.
"I think you decided that, I never really agreed now, did I?" Teeth gritting, Jason bites back a growled out sound of pain as that gun presses less tentatively and with more purpose against his hip. "Oh, it must be my birthday." Feeling that punch to the shot in his leg, Jason barely manages to restrain the huffed cry of pain. Fucker. "Why don't you ask your buddies up stairs, I'm sure they've got a number of ways of reviving people," he spits, sharply drawing away from the hand patting his cheek, "Or the fuckers that created your beloved Captain, but he isn't yours, is he? He's just a pawn, don't know the shit he's getting himself into, right?"
The kid really doesn't want to work with him, and Jack doesn't blame him. Hydra isn't exactly known for hospitality, and Jack isn't known for giving up, especially when the higher-ups are pressing him so hard. He's a smartass and, while Jack is impressed and kind of amused by him, he keeps that cold, easy look on his face as he continues digging that gun into the boy's shattered pelvis, humming some in answer as Jason speaks. Now that, that is interesting, but dangerous territory.
Leaning in, Jack fixes the kid with a sharp, intense gaze. "If I were you, I'd watch what I was saying. You're in pain and you're not thinking clearly. There are others listening to what's being said," he threatens in a low tone, but straightens again as soon as he's said it. "Now, let's talk about you," Jack murmurs, gazing down at the boy still trapped in the chair, as though he hadn't just offered him a piece of advice. "Jason Peter Todd. We know your birthday, the day you died. We know where you were buried, and we know, clearly, that you're not buried there anymore. What we don't know is how you came back to life after so much time passed. Who helped you, Jason? And how?" he asks, his face calm and easy once more.
"Oh I'm thinking plenty clear," Jason snarls in return; were he an animal, he most certainly would be rabid. Of course, that's what they had thought of him after he'd come out of the pit. A rabid, feral creature with no thought for why it acted, only that it could act and that it should. He almost envied that part of himself back before Talia had sunk her claws into him. Had tried to turn him against Bruce. Ah family matters.
With another small sneer, Jason just shakes his head. "Dunno what you're talking about. I'd hazard a guess that you've been reading too many books; goosebumps is good for young, developing minds. But you're a bit old, aren't you buddy? Shouldn't your comprehension level be higher 'n that?" Although he smirks, it's tight, controlled by that hot blossom of pain in his hip from where that gun has been rubbing ceaselessly. Fuck these assholes. They wouldn't get a lick of information out of him this way. He'd die first.
Jack stays there for a long moment even after Jason falls silent, watching him, eyes studying the boy and picking apart every piece of him. Eyes, the set of his mouth and shoulders, the muscles in his legs and chest, every tell or subtle clue to the boy, he seeks out before he nods once. "I think we're done for today," he allows, letting out a soft sigh. "You should have taken my offer," he tells the boy, withdrawing his gun only to bring the stock down sharply into that break, likely damaging the bones further. The boy won't be leaving tonight, but hopefully none of the men will come to toy with him once Jack retires for the evening, if his hip is busted up badly enough. He'll be sure to suggest isolation to Pierce, think up some bullshit reason to save the kid from the things some of the agents would like to do with a helpless pretty boy like him.
He isn't going to get anything more from Jason tonight. Let those breaks settle for a while, his body will be more tender tomorrow, the pain less easy to push down the longer he's left without food or water. "Sweet dreams, kid," Jack says to him, and though Jason is opening his mouth to say something more, Jack slips his gun into his left hand, decking Jason with his right just across the temple, knocking him unconscious with a well developed ease.
Finally, it's time to go home. He thinks of Dick as he turns from the mangled boy before him, those cuts he has made, the broken bones and bruises. He thinks of Dick and walks to the door, brushes past the guards and catches Brock’s gaze. He thinks of Dick as he nods to his friend, one single, sharp movement, relaxing when it’s returned; Brock knows, for all his pretending here, he knows. He will take care of this. He thinks of Dick as he walks away, leaving the boy and his cell behind him, Brock and Winter too. It’s time to go home.
Jack thinks of Dick, wipes bloodied hands on his pants, and it doesn’t feel like drowning; loving him has always been like breathing.
