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Jason Todd is dead and, in all the ways that matter, so are you. Some might say he's more alive than you are, a mirage of a boy haunting the corners of your vision like a dream half-covered by fog.
You're a ghost of yourself, or perhaps that's not the right word, because a ghost is a spirit left behind, and it seems to you like your spirit is what's gone, taken along with Jason's to a next life, its shell left behind, pleading to be buried by his side.
You see him everywhere. Have been, for years. Ghost might not be the right word for that either. You hope it isn't—you don't like to think that Jason's soul is stuck here with you. The therapist you went to for exactly a month and a half following his death told you you were hallucinating him, gave you medication to stop you from seeing him. It worked, so you stopped taking it.
Seeing Jason—blurred at the edges though he may be—is a comfort, his steady presence bringing you a measure of peace in the dreary days that have made up your life in Gotham since he's been gone. It's reassuring too, that you can see him just as he was, that you're not losing your memory of him as the books you've read on grief suggested you would.
And so you live on, holding onto the thought that Jason would have wanted you to. You know Jason wouldn't have wanted you to wallow in grief, to sit silently by his grave every Sunday, to spend most of your nights wandering around Gotham, haunting the places you used to hang around together. But you're already staying alive for him, and you can only do so much. Wherever he is—Heaven, you plead as you pray for the first time, not unlike a non-believer watching as their death draws near—he'll just have to accept the compromise.
Lately though... things have been weird. Weirder than usual. There's someone—or something—watching you. It's not one of the Bats, they've long stopped trying to reach you, finally worn down by your steadfast stonewalling, yet still gracefully ignoring your weekly trespassing onto the Wayne's graveyard. It could be one of Gotham's never-ending gallery of rogues, but you are not the kind of person a villain stalks—everything special about you is buried six feet under the ground you still weep over.
You're out at night again. Stupid, of course, stupid and reckless and daring in the worst of ways. A girl alone in the Gotham night is a bat-signal for the creeps and the thugs. Jason would have your hide if he knew, but Jason's not here and what's the worst that could happen? You die? All the living parts of you already have.
You stare at the darkness. The darkness stares back, not in the usual Gotham way that makes each alley its own fearful being, but in a way that lets you know danger lies near. Somehow, amazingly, you don't feel threatened.
You're nearly home, anyway, the roof of your building a siren song you never ignore. You climb the stairs slowly, a bottle in hand. You sit on the edge of the roof, legs dangling over the city. The shouting that fills the nights in Crime Alley, the sirens that wail in the distance but never quite come near enough to help, are a dreadful yet comforting backdrop to your reminiscing.
You drink. You wait. You know if you sit here long enough, eventually Jason will show.
It doesn't take long before there's movement in the corner of your eye. You look, expecting to see the boy you've lost. Instead, you find a man, tall, broad-shouldered, draped in red and black. A domino mask covers his eyes, but there's no world in which you wouldn't recognise the half of your soul that has been missing.
Jason. Not as you remember him, but perhaps as he would've been now had he been allowed to live.
"Huh," you say, looking him up and down, eyes slightly unfocused as you turn back to your view of a city perpetually covered by fog. "That's a new one."
You hear a questioning noise behind you, a hesitant call of your name. You take another sip before turning to face him again.
"Well, usually you look like you did before you– before the last time I saw you. Not–" You look him up and down. "Not all grown up like this."
"Usually?" Jason asks, and that's familiar, the way the word tilts up slightly at the end, giving an almost insecure quality to the question.
You only hum, taking another sip before turning back to the night. You feel off-kilter tonight, and even the silence that falls between you doesn't seem quite right.
"Do you... see me a lot?" Jason asks, and you frown, sending a confused look his way.
"You're being weird today. Why are you being weird today?" You ask, an edge of suspicion growing into your voice.
You don't like change, not when most changes in your life have ended up ruining it. Jason's presence, unreal though it might be, is a stable, steady thing, a snapshot of the boy you knew, of the love that was ripped away from you. This new Jason unsettles you; he's all hard edges, the blur that typically surrounds him gone along with his youthful features, replaced by a deep voice and hardened expression, although his eyes are soft as he gazes at you. At least that hasn't changed.
"Today?" Jason asks and you sigh, getting up from your perch at the edge of the roof, stumbling a little as you bend down to pick up the half-drunk bottle and take another swig.
You wave your hand around vaguely, vodka sloshing around in the bottle, "Hallucination you is usually a lot more coherent than this, you know? And smaller. I don't know why my brain cooked this one up today but it feels kind of cruel to show me what you could've looked like if you hadn't died."
"Hallucination me?" He asks, and you huff, looking away from him.
"Maybe I should've stuck with the meds," you mutter, knowing you would never have done so, never run the risk of not seeing him again.
Jason frowns, brows furrowing in the same endearing way they always have.
"Baby, it's me. Jason. I'm... you're not hallucinating," he says softly.
You laugh, sharp and unamused. His frown deepens, and he takes a step towards you, reaching out as if to touch you. You flinch, stumbling back. You're not ready for an attempt at a touch that will go right through your skin, another reminder that you will never feel his hand on yours again.
You're closer to the edge than you thought, and the movement has your foot slipping over it. You feel yourself starting to fall, and for a moment there's something eerily close to relief blooming in your chest, your mind welcoming the eternal oblivion that is sure to come if you fall from a building this high. You hear a shout of your name, and the next moment a hand clamps down on your wrist, pulling you back up.
You look down at your arm, then up at the wide scared eyes searching yours. Jason he– Jason just grabbed you. Hallucinations don't grab you. Not like this.
"Jay...?"
Your voice is small, hesitant, terrified. It can't be him, it can't. He's dead. Dead dead dead.
"It's me, baby, it's me. I promise. I'll explain everything to you later, but for now just... just step away from the ledge please."
You follow numbly as he pulls you to the middle of the roof. All the inescapable noise of the Gotham nights fades away.
"Jay..." you say again, a tear slipping down your cheek.
"I'm here. I'm here," he says, a promise and an apology in one.
He leans down to kiss you and it doesn't feel like fireworks, because fireworks are loud and jarring, and kissing Jason for the first time in years could only ever feel like a wave of relief washing over your body, through the very core of your being, leaving you pliant in the arms of a man you thought long gone.
"Jay..." you sigh against his mouth, a nearly silent sound, just a whisper of a word.
He holds you tight, and between his insistent lips on yours and the force with which he squeezes your body to his you can barely breathe. When your time comes, you hope this—cradled in his arms, warm and safe amidst the chaos of a city that awakens when the sun sets—is how you go, but now is not your time, not when your Jason is impossibly, miraculously, back. You pull away, just the slightest bit, and it's not the hardest thing you've ever done only because every Sunday since you lost the part of your soul that gave you life you've left sharp-edged pieces of your heart behind in the dirt, over a coffin that might never have contained the body of the boy you lost, the body that you now hang onto tight enough to bruise as you pant into his mouth.
You are suddenly reminded of Jason's funeral, memories of screaming matches with Bruce flashing through your brain, your desperate insistence for an open-casket funeral or at least for the chance to see your Jason one last time, tangible evidence of his passing to silence the voice in your head that refused to believe it.
Nausea swirls in your stomach when you realise there never was a body, that Bruce's insistence in not allowing you to see him was because there was nothing to see. That Bruce kept this from you because he knew you would never let it go if you knew he had not found a body, that you would keep looking until it killed you too. Bile burns at your throat when you realise you would've been right, when you realise that Jason was out there, alone, abandoned by those who were only ever meant to protect him, to love him. You choke it down with a sob, dropping your head against Jason's chest, the pain of your forehead colliding with the armoured uniform hugging his chest barely registering in the back of your mind.
"I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, Jason, I'm so sorry."
The words are interspersed with sobs, but Jason understands them in the same way he's understood every piece of you from the moment you met.
He pulls your head away from his chest, his thumb coming up to swipe the tears on your cheeks away.
"It's not your fault. None of this is your fault, baby. I missed you so much."
You say something that could be 'I missed you too' but comes out so garbled even you can't be sure. He hugs you tighter, mumbling apologies into your hair. You shake your head. He's got nothing to apologise for, nothing at all. You're the one who should be pleading for his mercy, begging him to forgive you for letting Bruce convince you that he was gone.
"Let's go home, angel," Jason says after what could've been a minute or a year, voice thick with unshed tears.
You slide your hand into his hair, pull him down to brush your lips against him once more. You're already home.