Work Text:
Green. Green.
The first thing they register is Green.
Green like the laughter—
Green like their mother’s pendant, swinging from her neck as she lifted their tiny hands in her own and spun them in circles in their living room. Green like the pendant as she did the clasps up behind her neck. Green like the pendant that raised and fell with laboured breaths from the curve of her clavicle.
The sofa was green. Maybe. There was green in the bathroom, too. A plant? No, wrong bathroom. That bathroom was cold and empty and cracked, leaking with the plick plick plick of the faucet that never turned off right.
White, stained with vomit, the sink basin that didn’t allow access to the pipes below, so they couldn’t fix it themselves. Bathtub. No plug. A showerhead above. Small hands swollen with childhood fat that splashed in the bubbling water, feet brushing against the small wad of fabric bunched up over the drain.
Rumbling pipes, groaning in protest as they resisted those living within their hollow cavities. Using them. Youthful fear striking at the loud noise.
Quiet, quiet, got to be quiet. Can’t let him hear you, no bleach left for the blood, no bandages left under the kitchen sink. Too many bruises and someone will ask and then they will take. Greedy greedy hands that snatch kids up and don’t let go–
Skin slapping skin, his dad. His dad hitting, chasing.
His dad is alcohol and violence and powder drugs. His dad is love and warmth and a wall to lean against. His dad is harsh truths and loneliness and hate. His dad is freedom and the comfort of night and hardworn but fierce loyalty. His dad is the unknown of the shadows, what thrives in the dark and is best outside of the light. His dad is the certainty of the moon, what thrives in the dark because it must.
His dad is fists and secrets and sights too old for such young eyes.
Wood. Plush walls that stretch up to a wood ceiling which should be further away. Why is the roof so close? Where is his dad? He opens his mouth and all that burns is a thick, bubbling sensation instead of the call for his father to swoop in and scoop him up into warm arms. Scrabbling at the wood he realises no one is coming and he needs to get out.
The cabinet door swings open. His father had locked him in there and gotten drunk, or was he drunk first? His mother is in the apartment. She got home and went straight to the needles, instead of checking on him. He knows that he can’t rely on anyone but himself, he already knew that, but in that moment he just wanted to know that his mother wanted to see him more than she wanted to see the needle stick out of her veins.
She’s lying on the couch, the couch that always smells of disinfectant, from shaking hands that try to clean her own wounds and later from smaller hands clumsy with inexperience. He drags himself over to the bathroom, turning on the tap and listening to the pipes—
The pipes again. Loud. Loud like the knock on the door. Loud like the ringing in his ears as the officer informed him of his father’s arrest. Like the thumping steps as they turned their meagre belongings upside down looking for more evidence. Like the thought in his head of thank god mom ran out last night, that she’s at work right now, that she isn’t here to fight these pigs with guns.
They leave and it is silent. Empty. Still. Absent of any other presence than his own like when he came home from school and found his mother with dried blood under her nose. When there was only one breath instead of two like there should have been.
His mother’s hair splayed out from her frozen head. Brown. Blond. Blond hair splattered with blood and the echo of a gunshot. His mother, who should love him, but does not. One loved the drugs more, the other loved herself. She got away with betraying him twice–
Laughter. Shaking hands that reach out and land on something hard. Smooth metal then twirled between his fingers with ease. He feels the weight shift between each finger, one end heavier than the other causing it to swing steeper during one half of the rotation. His lips curl back into a grin, stretching higher up his cheeks than he thinks it should, but it feels easy. Right. Sobs choke out beneath him, and he looks down.
Green. Green. Anger and pure hatred flood him, beginning in his heart and flowing down his limbs until it reaches a crescendo and he reaches his hand above his head and slams down, laughing. Again and again, he brings the crowbar down on the figure beneath him, covering the green in red and feeling the give of flesh soften away until he hits bone.
Pain explodes, and he cries out, he looks up and sees the grinning face above him through blurring vision, the figure swimming in and out of focus. The crowbar lifts again, and he waits for the next beating, like when he was with his father. He knows he should relax, move with the blow to soften the impact, that's something he already knew before his time flying above buildings and warm fireplaces. But there is nowhere to move, he cannot drag his battered body anywhere.
White face, clowns. No one likes clowns, they weren’t at the amusement park. His dad took him too after he witnessed his first death under his care. He’d never been to one, there’s only ever one nearby. Not like on TV, no clowns, not with the Laughter that haunts the halls of the asylum.
Warm laughter, his dad proud as he aces all the rigged games, as he has sticky cotton candy dissolving on his nose, as they watch the acrobats swing on ropes through the air.
Not as good as the blue and black. He didn’t trust him, didn’t like him. He was the standard, the idol he had to live up to in order to keep this fantasy that he’d clawed and tricked his way into. He didn’t belong in this glamorous life, and the reminder of that had black hair, blue eyes, and a grace like none he’d ever seen.
Cops weren’t to be trusted. He’d crossed paths with too many on the street. But trains, the chugging of the railway track and the gentle silence on phone calls when it was all too much to say and he had to try to untangle it all to begin.
A failing call. Voicemail. Desperation.
His brother sailing through the air, catching the wind. Flight achieved despite the lack of wings life had given him. He flew, too. Magic given Robin red and allowed to fly with the safety net of bat-black in his shadow.
Black gauntlets that would punch, but not him. For him. His dad fighting to protect him and the city under their care.
Blurring of city lights, buzzing of adrenaline, bluffing and joking as he confronts the monsters who lived in his life for years. Burning with the desire to work and protect and give hope like it had been given to him.
Burning of the fireplace, as aged hands guide him through the halls that loom with the taunting of how he doesn’t belong here. He has not seen Mr Wayne yet, but one look at him and even that airhead would know he is nothing but street-rat cunning stuffed into an underfed body. The man hands him a book, Pride and Prejudice, and asks if he has read it. With tears in his eyes, he tells him he has. The man is pleasantly surprised, genuinely interested in his thoughts.
Books over food, discussions lively and allowing him to take up space, to ramble and rant and continue on about whatever he is reading, despite listening for hours between helping to make food and eating it after. The head of the table is left empty, but he is okay with that. Better to limit contact.
Then there’s the crinkle of newspaper, and he learns that okay is nice, but it could be better.
His dad reaches out, and persists in doing so even with his guarded walls and stubborn will to not get attached to a temporary situation, a temporary safety and certainty.
Slamming door. Shouting. His dad shouts at his son, but the son shouts back. Torn between horror and intrigue, he listens and watches as the two argue. They shout and snap, but there are no fists thrown.
Until there is a gentle but firm hand steering him away, and he looks up to the wrinkled eyes with a petulant air.
During the storm out after, a crumpled piece of paper is shoved into his hands. Scrawled hurriedly across it is a number, and call me if you ever need me. Anytime, for anything. Even just an ear.
The beep of a dial tone, the knowledge that he can’t reach him as he wets his lips and opens his mouth to say something.
Just like when he was benched, told he couldn’t. He needed the right words but despite all the books he constantly buried himself in he couldn’t think of the ones that would earn him back the love. The trust that fell with the body of a man who jumped, who his dad thought he pushed.
Warm hands grip his shoulders, he looks up into blue eyes which then look behind him. He turns.
Protection turns to betrayal, two deaths signed and in his last moments he just wants his dad—
All that is left is the laughter stained at the edges with green. Pain explodes across him, rippling out as the explosion goes off, and he feels the crushing weight of the warehouse fall upon him.
A lone candle sputtering in the dark, trying to hold on, to give his dad enough time to catch-up, to undo all his stupid mistakes. The air becomes too thick to flow into his damaged trachea, and the last thing he hears is the groaning of metal.
Groaning metal like the rafters he slept in once, during a stormy night out on the streets. Fear rattling through his ribs that protrude from his skin from years of malnourishment, as he listens over the pounding of rain and his own panting. Stalked, by the partner of a man his father had killed. It had been the only kindness he could remember his father doing for him, that day he’d come home with a fresh shiner and his dad had taken one look and gone right out on the street.
The dead body had been revealed the next day. He’d turned to his father and realised he’d killed him because he’d laid a hand on his son. Didn’t dare voice this out loud.
In the rafters of the old warehouse, he’d cursed his father once more for his actions. For being so egotistical to let his backwards ownership of him leave his son even more enemies because of the blood he shares with the man. Used to the usual demands for payment, work, products his father had left unfulfilled, now he had to deal with the fallout of a man dead because of him and that man’s fucking ego—
No, his dad loved him. School drama shows where he’d look for his dad and find him in the front row, clapping the loudest. Nights spent reading in a steady rumble as he struggled to feel safe after a decade of never being so. Trust and love given so readily to him even when he couldn’t see it, couldn’t fathom it—
His dad loved him enough to kill for him. Kill the man that gave him a black eye. Who hurt him—
Laughing. Laughing. The green that hurt him, killed him, ripped him away from the safety he thought he could finally trust in. From his dad, his brother, his grandfather. His life. Burned to smoulders in the wreckage and his body left to go cold.
Cold in death. He should be dead. Instead he clawed out of the soil and… why is he still in the green? There is no laughter, he died, he should be free.
Gasping, he chokes on the bubbling, burning, boiling liquid that floods his lungs instead of air. Did he come back to life, just to die again? Please, let him die again. Let him rest. Let him not exist and not have to fight in a world that gave him nothing, where he had to scrabble his way into something, and lost it all again.
Hands grip him firmly, pulling him up and out and away and he doesn’t want to be here. Let him die—
Surfacing, he blinks up, green eyes glowing down at him. Sucking in air, he chokes, rolling over and coughing out onto the ground he’s leaned up against. Pulling in another cutting gasp of air, he looks back up to the owner of the eyes, and sees a woman kneeling with a stern expression.
Shaking and reeling, feeling his chest move with too large muscles and his too long legs weighed down with that green liquid, he hears the first words with aged ears.
“Jason. You remain unavenged.”