Title: The Ghost of Me.

Fandom: DCU- Batman.

Rating: PG-13/soft R.

Genre: Supernatural. Angst. Romance.

Wordcount: 5500+.

Characters/Pairings: Jason/Tim main. Hinted/platonic Talia/Jason. Cameos by Alfred Pennyworth and Dick Grayson. Brief mention of Babs.

Warnings: Self-beated. Mentions of: character death, violence, consensual sexual activities between two teenager boys. Purposefully written with a jerky, dipping-into-madness pace and style. It might be confusing to read, and I apologize for that. D:

Summary: Jason the Friendly Ghost takes a dip into madness dip into the Lazarus Pit.

Notes: NON-AU in the sense that the timings and happenings all concur with pre-reboot canon.

The darkness ebbs around him. It cools his burning skin. It licks at his face, wet and soft, reminding him of a kitten's tongue. He opens his eyes, swallows a mouthful of this darkness. It is not air, and it is not water.

It just is.

His mind flashes back to the crowbar, then darts away quickly, like a scared birdie. He turns his face away, eyes scrunched against the memory. Pain has never bothered him too much. But this not not just pain. It's more. Heartburn coils like a spring under his ribcage. He's been.

Killed.

By a madman.

By a crowbar.

By an explosion.

By his own mother's betrayal.

He's.

Dead.

He's flowing. Suspended. In a sea of nothing, darkness that embraces him sweetly, enveloping him in its cool, gentle hands.

Let go, Jason, the darkness whispers within his mind. Let it all go.

The words are like a spell. They press against something aching and tender inside him, and memories come welling up in shards and droplets, they bubble and overflow, chinking quietly like water from a spring.

It all comes to him, all at once, and oh-so sweet.

The taste of Alfred's scones; Batman's cape wrapped tight around him, its leathery texture, cool under his fingertips. The scent of Dick's cologne, the sound of his laughter as they hug, fiercely, balanced precariously on the roof of the world. Bruce's hands in his hair, Babs' rouge-red lips, stretched in a lazy smile, her yellow boot flashing over a rooftop's edge, matted red hair, her black cape sleek with rain.

They spread inside him, these memories. Filling him up. Fragments and flashes; sounds that blossom into colours. Images as sharp and clear as polaroid pictures, snapshots of a life gone too quickly. It's a flood.

Jason would like to say he has no choice but to let go, sink in. But he does. He can turn his back on this flood of memories. Hide his face deeper into the darkness. Gasp it in in mouthfuls, and just be gone.

He chooses not to.

Death sighs. Shakes her head at him. But when he tugs, she lets him go. Like a bird from its nest, he takes flight.

Bruce, he thinks. Or perhaps he thinks home. Or perhaps, they're one in the same. Especially here, in this darkness.

Jason looks for it – looks for him. He looks and looks and looks until he aches. He looks, restless and desperate and hopeful and stubborn. He looks. But. He doesn't, he cannot find Bruce.

He catches a glimpse of Batman in the desert, body and cape cocooned tightly around Robin's tiny, battered body; then another flash comes to him, of Bruce arranging their return home, Bruce with his eyes dry and his jaw locked as he talks, talks to the police, talks to the people at the embassy, he talks and talks, his voice a cracking a monotone: "My son. There was a terrorist attack. A bomb. They took my son from me. My son. My son."

There's a third and last glimpse that Jason gets: a splitting flash, the roaring of thunder, cutting the sky in two on the dreary, rainy day of his own funeral.

And then Bruce vanishes.

Gone.

Whenever Jason tries looking for him, he can't find that warm sparkle, the steady and comforting pulse of red that he has long come to associate with Bruce. All he can see is a gaping, swirling back vortex of nothingness

Fear is unbecoming of a Robin, but that void frightens him like fuck, so Jason shies away from it; he leaps back like a burned animal at the mere sight of it, and glowers distrustfully at it from a safe corner.

Oddly enough, he can't seem to reach Dick, either.

Jason isn't quite sure whether his older brother would want anything to do with him now (if he ever did), but Jason tries reaching out for him too, every now and then.

He peers into the hazy distance, his little domino scrunched between his eyebrows. What he glimpses is comforting and familiar and soft, like Christmas cheer and bedtime stories and delighted laughter, but it's also distant. It's almost as if Nightwing was gone playing hide and seek in outer space, getting lost among the glimmering of stars. No matter how much Jason stretches, his fingers just won't reach that far. His gloved hands stretch and stretch and stretch, they tremble and curl, clenching around fog and air and a whole lot of fucking nothing.

He is puzzled; frustrated maybe (he always had a temper. Even in life) but he's not much worried. His brother is a big boy. No one in his right mind would ever mess with him (just you try, you fuckers. Dickiebird's gonna kick your butt).

So he settles back. Carefully skirts away from the vortex, turns a deaf hear to the siren call from whatever is "beyond the light", and goes to Alfred.

Oh, Alfred.

If Bruce is a flaming red blaze and Dick a cheerful blue star, Alfred is like a candle's flame: pale silver, streaked with warm yellow like honey, unwavering and soft. His light drapes itself around Jason's shivering little soul like an old blanket, rough to the touch, but warm and cosy. Its familiar touch warms Jason as though he still had a body to speak of. It clings to him, but the snug-fit never stifles Jason, only makes him feel wanted and safe.

At exactly five o'clock every afternoon, Alfred makes tea and cookies for two. He lays out the table in that little corner Jason used to go hiding, whenever he was either pissed at Bruce or overwhelmed with fright (though the latter was never admitted out loud).

Jason appreciates the effort, and tries hard to show it.

It will be a long time coming, but one day, he'll lift his teacup and make a toast with the old Englishman. He's. Well. He's not quite sure one is supposed to have toasts with tea (or the finest bone-china set), but Alfred never complains.

So every evening, five o'clock sharp, finds Alfred serving tea and Jason perched opposite him, kicking his legs back and forth under the table, and looking longingly at the cookies arranged so artfully in front of him and that he can't taste, dammit. Alfred says his name, quietly, as a way of greeting, and then takes his first sip of tea, his kind pale eyes riveted inside, where the memory of that precious child still remains, bright and lively. Usually, Jason uses the following silence to murmur things, so many things. Things that Alfred never hears, but that he sure would've loved to, back in the days.

One day, something happens.

Something explodes.

Blue and cheerful and warm.

Nightwing (Dick! Dickiebird! Big brother!) is back on Earth.

And Jason is drawn... no, Jason friggin' well rushes to him. Because in the pulsing blue radiance of Dick's soul, he can see Bruce's red spark mirrored and magnified and oh! There you are, Bruce. So that scary black hole thingh really was you all along, mh? To think. When did you become so cold, Bruce? So hard? So empty?

Jason hovers close as his two mentors fight. He flinches, hoots and cheers as they trade blows, both verbal and non. He doesn't try to come between them, or rather: his endeavours ceases right after he's accidentally sent hurtling right through Bruce – right through that chilly, pitch-black hollowness. He emerges gasping, shaking, seizing; reaching up as though he'd been drowning.

It might be silly, because he's already dead, but he doesn't fancy dying again, so he just huddles in a corner and watches, eyes huge and seemingly lit from within behind the little black domino bask.

It's not like he can do anything else, no matter how inviting it sounds to crack some sense into their skulls. So he huddles and waits for the so-called adults to wise up.

They don't, but he sure as hell picks up a couple new moves from the fight.

Later on, when his eyes fall on the Case, he feels thrilled. Freaked out, sure, but thrilled, because really, Bruce never told him "I love you" so clearly as with that Case. Jesus, Bruce's never going to forget him, is he? That's. So. Fucking. Thrilling.

It takes Jason twelve tries before he can actually rest his hand on the glass of his memorial, rather than have it slip through. And it's only after a few minutes of staring that the bad taste creeps into his mouth, and Jesus, Bruce's never going to forget him, is he? He's going to be Bruce and wallow in guilt and do something really, really stupid. Stupid like forget himself. Stupid like never forgive himself. Something that will push him even farther away from Jason. The light inside him is snuffing out already, sputtering like a dying candle. And he cannot feel Jason the way that Alfred does or the way that Dick is learning to feel him, when he's all but drowning in regret and Jason has to go and haul the idiot up from whatever funk.

What will happen, once the light is all gone? Who else will Bruce lose? Himself? Alfred? Gotham? Dick?

Cursing isn't as much fun when the world is pretty much deaf to your voice, but Jason curses anyway. He curses and climbs the walls (the latter more literally that he'd have thought possible) and wonders just who he'll have to tip for a ciggie, because he needs one like something fierce. It's driving him mad, being so helpless. He's seriously considering to go poltergeist on the Cave, so that someone may friggin' notice him and go stopping Bruce from self-destructing... and he's already practicing that sort of mumbo-jumbo in his head, when he suddenly feels it.

"It", whatever it might be, feels a lot like Bruce used to: a steady flame, of a reddish colour that has everything to do with sun and fire and intense and nothing with blood. So Jason takes flight, like the little birdie ghost that he is, and tracks this new light down.

This flame is smaller than Bruce's, a whole lot less intense, and more pale. Jason is half-tempted to be meanfunnymean and blurt out "Dude, you're pink!" to whoever this person is, but their soul is actually not pink, just pale red, really, like some rare flower or distant star. Besides, they're kneeling before Jason's tomb and gripping the dirt and sobbing, and that gives Jason pause, because no one has ever sobbed on his tomb, before. Alfred has his Englishman composure to hold on, and Dick has is rage, so neither one has gone and sobbed on his grave, shoulder-racking, painful-sounding sobs that rock you right down to the core.

Little Red Flame is just that: little, and wearing a red blazer. Jason would like to go and run a hand through the kid's hair, soothe him a bit, let him know that yeah, I can hear you, whoever you are. He starts only slightly when the kid calms down enough to hiccup out his name (it's Timothy Jackson Drake) and something half-coherent about being sorry (uh, thanks?), about Jason not deserving his fate (damn straight I didn't!) and how Batman was crumbling without him (Give the boy a prize. Have been saying that for months myself, Timster).

When Tim gets to the part about Batman needing help, Jason is so friggin' grateful he is ready to plant a big wet one on the kid's lips (which he'll do, later on when Tim seems to need it most, though Jason won't ever admit the hows and whys of that first kiss, even to himself).

But then Tim says something about going to get Dick, and Jason doesn't know whether to kick him or what, (kid, don't you think he would've already done something if he could?) so he does the only reasonable thing.

He follows.

The outcome is predictable. It angers him, to see Dick treat little Timmy so harshly, but it's not like Jason had expected anything else.

When he has to choose between trying to sock his brother for being a jerk, and sticking with the stranger who sobbed on his tomb, it's not even a choice. Jason does the latter, curses ectoplasm hands to all kinds of Hell, then remembers that, HELLO! He can touch the teacup so it stands to reason he can touch Tim, too.

So he does.

The kid doesn't freak doesn't start doesn't jump. He just lean into Jason; kind of, since the kid doesn't realize what's happening, and Jason's not really there and real enough to lean upon. But the kid feels comfortable, in both the sense he's comfortable with Jason touching him, and that he is, as odd as it sounds, comfortable for Jason to touch. And Jay will have you know he was never a biggie on the touchy-feely stuff as a whole.

They just bask into mutual comfort for a while, then Jason has to kick the kid into action and into his own outfit, because, to quote someone wiser than him, "Batman needs a Robin".

That day, a tradition begins.

An odd tradition, but what isn't odd, in the clan of the Bat and Birds?

And the tradition is: when Tim is in need of a confidence-boost, Jason will play hallucination for him.

If Jason has to be honest, it's a fine and dandy game. It feels all sorts of cool to rear up from a cloud of smoke, wrap himself dramatically in his cape and talk with his voice pitched at a Batman-low whisper.

Surprisingly, Tim is never spooked by Jason's Prep Talks from Beyond. If anything, he seems to look forward to them, and always takes them at heart. Even so, Jason kinda expects Tim to outgrow them, you know? To outgrow Jason. To find his way in life and stop visiting Jason's grave and Case. Being promoted to the Robin position full-time can do that, to a guy. Make him full of confidence and magic like that. Make him an adult. Or at least, make him feel like one.

However, no matter how confident, or taller (which isn't all that much) he becomes, Tim never tires of Jason. Never stops thinking about him, never stops seeking the Case with his eyes, trailing his fingers across the cold glass.

That's another milestone in Jason's non-life.

Literally the first friggin' time he's glad to be proved wrong about something.

Tim... he likes Tim.

Kid's like a balm on them all – Dick and Bruce and Alfred and Jason – and Jason can only hope they're a balm for him too, though he's got the feeling that a clan of Bat-people and one Friendly Ghost From Beyond are not quite what a boy Tim's age requires to grow up healthy and sane.

Well.

Jason supposes that Alfred will make sure about the healthy part, but it's actually the sane thing that's got him worried.

Tim's a lonely, little freaky child that uses words bigger than him and looks at you with eyes that are too old and jaded, but he's an okay little guy. He looks up to Jason, looks forward to the hallucinations of him he gets every once in a while, and talks to him in soft whispers at the oddest moments, sometimes when he's huddled under the covers, or when he's pressing himself flush against the Case after a particularly horrifying patrol, or when he's crouched over a rooftop and remembering the days when Jay flew, and he followed from down below, taking pictures.

It's odd, but within a few months Tim is doing with Jason all that stuff friends get to do together. Stuff Jason never got to do when he was a living child, and stuff he supposes Tim should do with children who are alive. But he's too much of an egoist to let go, or too stubborn, or just too lonely, so best-buddies stuff they do, and will do for years on end.

They chatter and encourage each other and run away together and sail across the night in their long capes and he listens when Tim is weak and shaky and ashamed of his insecurities and Tim totally feels it when Jason guides his punches where they'll really hurt the crooks, and they laugh and touch and kiss under the moon and swear undying love as they have sex and all that.

To be honest, it will take them more than one year to reach the kissing stage – kisses dropped on Tim's cheek as he nods off in front of his PC, kisses pressed to the cold glass of the Case; kisses on the lips shared as they dream, kisses rained down on the tip of their fingers and then nestled, like a secret, in the warm hollow of Tim's neck, or against the faded photography of Jason that Tim keeps hidden in the bottom drawer.

The kissing stage is where they'll be stuck for what feels like forever. Then puberty will finally strike, hard and fast. And Tim's dreams, which are filled with nothing but JasonJasonJason already, will bloom into good. Dreams so loud, a siren's call, that will lure Jason in, suck him right inside Tim's mind, where all is bright and dark at the same time; and hard and soft are not just two sides of the same coin but are one in the same. They will kiss, like they always do. And they will whisper and kiss again, kisses that are like promises, deep and sweet. And then they will renew those kisses and those promises as they'll touch, skin on fabric at first, and then skin on skin, skin on sweat, the heat building, their cries mingling, pleasure and pain, softness and hardness, light and darkness, becoming one, at the rhythm of their beating hearts.

And if there's one thing Jason will regrets about all this, it is one, and one alone: it is beautiful and hot and nice, and perhaps even meant to be. But it's only in their heads, because he's dead. And dreams – who really remembers dreams when they are awake?

He's been dead for six months, when one day out of the blue Jason feels this thing like a punch in the gut. A Superman punch in the gut, it hurts so bad.

He gasps, and he screams, and he feels all he felt when he was dying, all of it, all over again. For a second he thinks he's in his coffin, buried alive; and then he is, so he does the only sensible thing and calls for help, calls for Bruce, as he claws his way out, out and up, into the rain.

His body feels gangly and all wrong and not like it's made of flash and blood but rather of pain and ache and hurt and fire, and then there's a bright light, a car honking, painpainpain, and Jason has this sickening feeling of being split. He's hurtled back across the air, back into the Manor and to the Cave. He lays gasping unneeded air, while his body is hit-and-run-over and rushed to an hospital and hooked to tubes and fuck but he can feel all of it even from a distance. All of it.

He can feel the testing and prodding, a year's worth of it. He can feel the needles, the tubes, the hooks, the surgeon blade cutting around the top of his skull, the pressure purged from his damaged brain, the stitches, and later on, after the endless series of surgeries: the mightily embarrassing things like the catheter, chafing and inflaming his crotch; the bedpan; the gloved hands pumping his muscles to keep them from atrophying; and below all that, the nightmares and the buzzing of drugs and the echo of constant, constant pain, ebbing and flowing, seemingly without end.

The phantom pain that Jason feels echoing from his comatose body becomes a constant companion, familiar and inconsequential. It lingers around him for one long year, and then things take a sudden, drastic turn.

Alfred still brings him tea and cookies, but only on weekends. But at least Jason is privy to a cake on both his birthday and his deathday.

For his part, Dick still angsts like a pro, and Jason still has to roll-up his sleeves and bitch-slap his brother out of a funk or a nightmare or the occasional mind-controlling drug every now and then. But Jason likes to think they've come to an understanding, if only because Dick doesn't need Jason to go tuck him in at night as much as he used to.

Bruce has centred himself.

Somewhat.

He is still Dark and Broody, but he is way less Crazy nowadays. Jason will never stop tucking him in at the wee hours on the night, when Bruce comes back from patrol with more bruises than he can count.

But Bruce has re-learned that old trick of smiling and actually meaning it. And it's like a weight lifting off Jason's shoulders.

Things are going well. They're going perfectly well, which, of course, means that the other shoe has to drop, and boy, how it drops. What a bang! What a crash! What a – no. No, there's no sound. Just a fluttering of lashes, a deeper breath, and then his body is awake, slipping out of the bed, the room, the corridor; slipping out of the hospital and into the cold Gotham night.

Jason tries to go back inside his body, tries to shut it off when that fails; he tries to tell someone, anyone, that he's up and alive, or rather, his body is up and breathing and why won't anyone fuckin' listen? That thing is me and it's out there and it's hurting, and not just that: it thinks it's smart enough to live on its own, can you imagine that? A brainless kid living on his own on the streets of Gotham, living off rats and rainwater and stolen bread and street brawls, of all things.

Street.

Brawls.

Good grief.

But Tim won't hear him when he tries to beg for help; Bruce won't see him wave frantically in front of the Case. Alfred will serve him decaf tea and then water and then empty cups, and forChristssake Dick, snap out of that funk, because I need you, big brother, so much. So much. And you never ever needed me, did you?

So Jason is alone, and his body is alone, when people, Arab people wearing familiar garbs and insignia slip out of the foetid shadows of a misty alley and steal it, him, whatever, away.

He's alone.

The creepy beautiful lady who takes Jason's body under her wing is creepy and beautiful and has this shroud suffocating her colours, so Jason can't really tell if she's nice and hurt and lashing out, or cunning and wicked and just so sad. She sort of clings to him, not with tea and cookies the way Alfred had, but with a fierce, fierce determination, a blazing hope that borders on love, and all that mushy stuff Jason thought was only for books.

She likes him. She likes him, and then one day Jason realizes that he likes her – not the mindless body in her care, but the real he, the soul. He likes her, and he has no way to show it, other than let that mindless body of his be loyal to her, defend her and follow her around like a duckie with its momma. He likes her. Lots.

For one year, she's his constant companion, her one supporter. He is her pet project, perhaps, her confident, her mindless, loyal bodyguard, her blue-eyed, pale-skinned mastiff. He can't talk to her, but she talks to him. Not much, not for long. She talks in whispers, her words measured and tone sombre, eyes smoky and bottomless like the darkness between stars. She never says too much, but neither too little. Always just the right amount of words, with the right inflection to them, to tame him when he's wild, soothe him when he's hurt, lull him to quietness when he rages.

Mostly, she talks about Bruce. Because he loves Bruce, and he misses Bruce, and because she does too; love and miss him. But as far as Bruce is concerned, the two of them are as good as dead, and it's sad, and it's unfair, so one day Jason's body crumples. Talia is whispering clipped words into the wind, razor-blade sharp and diamond-cold, and Jason's body's eyes burn, burn and waver until tears are clinging to the eyelashes like dew on the grass.

As the teardrop teeters and falls, rolling down the scarred curve of a cheek, a world away Jason's soul is lying spooned around Bruce on the bed, face pressed in the warm dip of Bruce's throat, mouthing words that will never be heard, and crying, both soul and body. Crying.

This is what his non-life has turned into. A endless, non-sequitur strip of pain upon pain upon pain, because he's split in two, dead and not. Two long, endless years since his body woke up and the pain began, mounting, like the tide.

Two years.

And then Tim loses the ability to see him, and can hear him only in dreams he will not remember.

Two years. Three since the punch, the car-crash, the coma.

And Bruce has locked Jason so deep inside his heart - deep where he hopes the memory will stop hurting - that he doesn't need Jason's spirit hovering around him to function anymore.

Three years and six months since Ethiopia.

The bomb.

The crowbar.

And Alfred starts forgetting to serve cookies with the tea, and then forgets the tea altogether, while Dick sometimes laughs out loud and his brain is empty of every notion of ever having had a deceased younger brother, and full of thoughts of an alive younger brother instead, and it should gladden Jason that they're moving on, but it does not, because he's split in two, and it fucking hurts, and no one can hear him when he cries out in pain and no one even cares, except for Talia, who's taking his body by the hand now, kissing his forehead like a mother like a sister like a lover, and hiding him under folds and folds of cloth and leading the way down a dark and twisty corridor, all sharp bends and low ceiling like something out of a nightmare, leading him towards a place of glowing light, a place where Jason really doesn't want to go but really wants to, and he's powerless to stop this, to stop her, so he huddles in the darkest corner of Tim's room, hugging his knees and rocking back and forth, back and forth, hiding and scared and fucking angry, because anger seems such a better way to deal with helplessness than tears that no one will hear or see or dry or even care about; so he huddles and hides, watching and waiting, Talia behind him, Tim in front of him, she in the shadows, he in the light, standing in front of the mirror, wearing his Robin costume, Jason's own, and touching the reflection like a child like a brother like a lover, and saying softly, "I was so angry at you Jay, when you became Robin. You'd gone and replaced Dick, and I wanted him back..." and Jason digs his nails in his palms, bites his lip hard, tastes coffin-ash and mud and betrayal and then blood, because his body is gnawing on its lip too; it is tightening its hands like vices, and the pain in his palms is another sort of balm altogether, it's a poison, and it burns, burns like the tears in his eyes, and he rages, because betrayal has killed him once already, and he won't let it happen again, he won't be abandoned. He won't let Dick have Tim, won'twon'twon't, because taking Robin from Dick wasn't Jason's damn fault, and it can't have hurt Dick as much as it'd hurt Jason if Dick took Tim from him, it'd fucking kill him, the loss, except that he's half dead already, and then Jason hears Tim say: "but," he says it brokenly, like a confession, like a secret, like a prayer, like a fucking crowbar smashing his fucking windpipe, and Tim is stretching against the mirror as though he could push his way onto the other side like in a children's book, and Jason aches to hear more, because there's hope in that "but", there's salvation, there's some emotion he's too scared to name because he thought he wasn't supposed to ever feel it, if not for Bruce, maybe, perhaps, one day, if he hadn't died, and so he holds onto this emotion and leaps to his feet and stretches towards Tim, reaches out, jumps, but it's only Talia pushing his body, and it falls, falls like Lucifer fell from the Heavens, falls into the Pit and drowns in it, and Jason is wrenched away from Tim and back inside his own flesh, emerges gasping from the luminescent liquid, moaning a name that's not the same he moaned when he emerged from the coffin, and then there's Talia, Talia, Talia, her face, her eyes, here hands, her mouth, warm and welcoming, her tongue invading his mouth, sweet and sour, and then even her, even her – oh my God, is there any justice in this world, some sense, any at all? – she is pushing him away, and Jason falls and falls and falls, over a cliff and into rapid waters, chilled like death, and his memories of his time as a Ghost fall with him, they scatter and drown and flee as he comes alive, perhaps for the last time, gasping out of the water and clawing his way onto the sand, and

.

.

.

when he wakes, he has no idea who Tim is, but he thinks he likes the name. He likes it but also hates it, because it tastes like shy kisses and betrayal against his tongue, and burns a hole in his chest the way Bruce's name is supposed to, but doesn't anymore.

~*~おわり~*~