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i.
Jason wakes up to his bed smelling like must and old sweat and stale alcohol. Willis passed out here today, and Jason had been too tired to change the sheets before going to bed.
Across the hall, his mother sobs.
They’re soft and raw, with irregular hitches in between. Low mumbles, pleas, or incoherent words. Jason doesn’t know what she’s saying, but she’s crying. He lays on his back and stretches his limbs until he resembles a starfish, and looks at the dirty surface of the ceiling. His mother continues to stifle her misery into fisted palms. He rolls to his side and looks at the dying plant on his window. He’s tried his best with it, but it’s dying. Mama said it might be a miracle and live. Jason thinks there’s no such thing as magic or miracles in this world.
Jason is eight years old, his bed smells like his father and his plant is dying. His mother cries outside the hall, and Jason knows it’s all in his head.
She chokes. Jason flinches. He gets up, hesitant. Breathes through his mouth to refrain from gagging at the smell of the sheets. He feels his toes touch the cold surface of their floor, and stares at the door handle. He can hear her. She doesn’t try to hide it, when she cries.
He tiptoes out of his room and into the corridor. The wall paint is dried up and peeling off and there’s a dirty stain on the floor; probably due to one of Willis’ friends.
Jason wishes he could find something strong enough to get the stain off.
His mother is still sobbing; distant, as if she’s everything around him. She’s sobbing in the living room, she’s crying in her bed. She’s choking in the bathroom, she’s screaming on the balcony. She’s everywhere.
Jason shakes his head. He hits his forehead with his fist, hard enough to leave a dull ache. The cries continue to echo around him, beckoning him. His heart aches with worry. He finds himself standing in front of the door to his mother’s room. The choked cries get louder…
He knocks timidly.
Louder…
He pushes the door open.
The sobs are gone. Silence haunts him.
His mother lays asleep. Old night gown and a blanket lazily put over her legs. Some strands of hair fall onto her face. Jason walks forward until he hovers over her, observing her face for tear tracks. He finds none. It was all in his head.
She stirs, and Jason takes a cautious step back, unwilling to disturb her sleep. But she’s not a deep sleeper, and her eyes are open and radiant in an instant.
“Baby Jay,” she whispers. “What’s wrong?”
I love you, he thinks. Out loud, he says,
“I thought I heard you crying, mama.”
She smiles, and grief bleeds crimson on her face. She beckons the empty side of her bed. “Sleep with me tonight, Jason, darling.”
Jason tucks himself in. Tomorrow night, he will once again imagine the cries of his mother. Tomorrow night, he will once more tell her I love you in his head.
ii.
The ballroom twinkles and chuckles and shines. Polished shoes and silk robes, dangling gold earrings and silver cufflinks. The chandelier that glistens with a sort of fake brightness that is unsettling to look at. Amidst it all, Jason is the speck of dirt on a polished window.
Dick, at the centre of it all, is the light bulb, and surrounding him are the moths, greedy and unworthy. Small and insignificant. Jason watches like the ants on the ground, looking up at the bright ball of light. Wondering how close he can get before sizzling.
He sees the expression change before the action.
Dick’s PR trained smile, all white shining teeth and perfect skin, practically glowing. Dark pretty curls and twinkling blue eyes. A tie loosened just enough to give him a sense of playboyness but shirt neatly tucked in. His eyes dim for a second, his smile wavering, as if he can sense the hand that is reaching out to him. Crossing the line and not burning, closer until it touches something forbidden.
Jason is stalking forward before he can truly comprehend his actions. It’s his first gala, he is too short to be able to wade through the crowd as gracefully as Bruce does, and people are reaching out to start small talk with him. All the gossip around him; street child, mannerless, orphaned. Rumours about drug abuse and delinquency. Jason could care less what a woman who’s never slept in a back alley with rats and piss would think about his supposed politeness or position in society.
Dick entertains the creeps around him with practised patience and a tremor so subtle it is terrifying. How long? Jason thinks. How long has Dick allowed this—no. Jason should not think of it that way. How long has the elite of Gotham staked their claim on a body that is not theirs? Is it impossible to see something beautiful and not want to crush it?
Jason remembers being ten years old once and watching a rare purple flower blossom amidst the sewage in a drainage leak once. How it had bloomed in the dirt and the trash, how untarnished and pure it remained despite the rotten air and the pollution around it. How, as Jason watched it, a man had strolled past and crushed it with his foot as if it was nothing.
The man’s hand squeezes Dick’s waist, his tight fit waistcoat crumpling, skin digging on skin. Dick, to Jason’s horror, goes slack in his grip; a puppet with strings cut.
“Hey!” Jason snaps, “Dick, what are you still doing here? Alfred’s been looking all over for you!”
Dick giggles up at the man, strained and lost and caged. The man smiles down at him and it’s all sly eyes and vulgar glances, his smile showcasing teeth and lips that have thinned to nothing. His grip tightens like he has no plans of letting Dick go, and Dick winces. Jason, at that very moment, sees red.
“Let him go,” he states, stubborn and bullheaded in the way he gets when he feels powerless in the face of pain and all levels and aspects of it he’s seen and encountered. He’s a bird flying against a massive gale and all he has are little wings.
“But Richie is enjoying himself in my company, isn’t he?” the man drawls, and Jason represses his shudder. He’s faced worse monsters in darker places.
Dick huffs out a laugh, but takes the opening Jason offered, clutching onto it like a lifeline. “Ah, I better leave now, sir. Alfred is very dear to me, you see. I don’t wish to keep him waiting.”
“Oh I can imagine how dear to him you are, sweetheart.”
Dick pales at the insinuation, and Jason snaps. “Hands off, creep. We’re leaving.”
Jason bats at the hand and watches the grip release, and along with it, the tension that has been suffocating both Dick and Jason this whole time. The man’s expression hardens and his glare directs at Dick, who shudders. Something about their behaviour tells Jason that this man is one of the many creeps who must have harassed Dick since Dick has started attending these events.
It’s a little disorienting to think that no matter if it is a dark alley or an elegant dazzling gala, Jason will be surrounded by monsters. The same ones. He can recognize some of the faces here. The beady eyes and the sweat stained suits.
“I’m sorry,” Dick blurts out. “He’s just a little antsy. Hey Jay, let’s go meet Alfred.”
“Control that brat,” the man sneers. “Wayne should know the type of filth he gives charity too.”
It’s fascinating, the way the soft lines of Dick’s figure hardens into jagged stone. His eyes darkening until they swirl like midnight storms at sea. Jason can almost feel it; the rush, the pull. Drowning in the storm of Dick Grayson’s eyes.
“Watch your tone. Mr Wayne is a generous man but he doesn’t take kindly to people who badmouth his kid.”
He steers Jason away, agile and fast. Jason finds himself ten metres away and then out in the hallway, away from the man and the artificial lights in mere seconds. Badmouthing his kid is not fine, but molesting his elder ward is? It sits on the tip of Jason’s tongue, stuck.
Dick trembles next to him, and Jason watches them gradually get bigger until Dick is shivering. He places a tender palm on Dick’s elbow.
“It’s bullshit. All of this. You don’t have to—”
“It’s okay, little wing. Sorry you had to see that. He’s just…” Dick trails off, and then to Jason’s horror, his eyes brim with tears.
“Dickie…” Jason whispers, his heart suddenly racing. He cannot handle tears. Not from Dick.
“Sorry,” Dick repeats, his voice small. Strained. “Sorry.” He wipes his eyes. Plasters on a plastic smile that Jason loathes. “What does Alfred want?”
“He wants…” Jason trails off. A knowing look dawns on Dick’s face and then Jason watches a fond, tiny smile form. “Uh, he wants us in the library. He wants me to read a book to you.”
“Does he, now?”
“Yeah,” Jason grumbles, cheeks hot.
“What about you?”
“Huh?”
“What do you want? What do you feel?” Dick is smiling down at him, his eyes glistening with the residue of tears that have dried up. His posture has relaxed and he’s already walking towards the staircase that takes them to the library.
I love you, Jason thinks. Out loud, he says, “I want to read a book to you in the library.”
iii.
There is a warm glow in the library of Wayne manor that is magical to Jason. Magic, it seems, is real, and Jason is suddenly seeing it everywhere. There is magic in the blueberry pancakes Alfred makes that makes his stomach dance and his legs swim back and forth. There is magic in the library that makes every book look inviting, as if Jason is about to travel to another world, a pocket dimension. There is magic in the red, green and yellow he wears every night. He is magic.
Alfred is making an origami swan, and when Jason had first asked how he did it, he had looked down with a knowling glint in his eye.
“Magic, Master Jason.”
Today, Alfred has pink craft paper and he is cutting and folding it, neat, precise, orderly. He transforms paper into a swan and Jason memorises the steps. There is magic in Alfred’s fingertips that dwells in the waffles and the herbal tea he makes when Jason has stomach aches. There is magic in the paper swan that sits upright on the desk. There is magic in Jason. He wants to make something too.
He wants to make something for Bruce.
But what do you give a man who has everything and has given you everything?
Alfred is folding another swan. It’s smaller. It’s Jason.
“Alfie,” he says.
“Yes, Master Jason?”
“What do you give a man who has everything and has given you everything?”
“Well,” Alfred says, mulling the question over in his head. He plants a second small swan neatly next to the bigger one. Everything's better when it comes in pairs.
“Love,” Alfred says.
Jason nods to himself, serious. He spends the day exploring the magic in the Wayne Manor. He finds rooms that belonged to older Wayne men and women. He finds the room that once belonged to Dickie. Old high school timetables crumpled and discarded under the bed, with popcorn and chocolate wrappers. Some t-shirts and underwear forgotten in drawers collecting dust. Polaroids of Dick with other teenagers that he had left behind. A broken bracelet on the desk, next to a rough work notebook with doodles of birds and bats inside and a note in the front written with a sharpie — Dick Grayson, Grade Seven. The magic lingers here, in each of them.
Jason explores. He sees paintings of ladies with pearls on their necks and men with swords on their sides. Of children like Jason, from decades ago. Of Bruce. Of an eight year old Bruce’s smile made immortal with a few strokes of a brush. Between the arms of his mother and father, Bruce looks loved. Jason thinks of the magic, once more.
Jason finds himself in the attic. He finds himself standing in front of a box. It’s covered in a layer of dust, and he can recognize Alfred’s posh cursive.
Thomas Wayne - Accessories
Jason opens it. Inside, he finds silk covered boxes. There’s a silver comb, and golden cufflinks. Five rings, patterned. One of the rings had a W carved into the front. The box that catches Jason’s attention lies neatly to the right. He opens the box within a box, which he has found in this manor that is a living entity of nostalgia and grief and magic, and finds a broken watch.
It reminds Jason of pink craft paper, and he thinks of the love that dwells within the big swan and little swan upstairs on a mahogany desk.
Jason has a mechanic’s hands, and a magician’s heart. He has a poet’s soul.
He takes the watch upstairs with him, after closing the box and placing it back where he found it. He carefully hides it behind his back, because Bruce is usually back home around this time.
He skips up the stairs, and he feels a smile dangle from his lips, like a chain with a pendant he saw in a corner shop once. The Evening Star— Venus. He thinks he will get that for Dickie, one day.
He feels more than hears Bruce when he rounds the corner, and his sharp reflexes has him pocketing the watch with impressive stealth.
“Jason,” Bruce says, his voice warm. Jason smiles. “What are you up to?”
I love you, Jason thinks. Out loud, he says, “Fixing something broken for you.”
iv.
Jason watches his birth mother look away and smoke a cigarette as immeasurable pain laces through him like an electric current. Laughter echoes the warehouse like a broken, rotten record.
It’s not the first time a mother has looked away from him.
In the aftermath, as a bomb ticks in the silence that stretches between them for miles, Jason thinks, I love you.
Out loud, he says, “I’ll save you, mom.”
The magic dies.
—
When he comes back, he walks the Earth stumbling and in pain, delirious and confused.
When they ask him who he was, he whispers, “Bruce.”
They say things to him. He doesn’t understand them. There’s an ache in his body that will never go away. He’s an undead creature. There is something rotten inside of him. He can feel the way the world rejects him. Can feel the way nature shrivels away from him. He dug himself out of his own grave, and is living inside a corpse of a dead child.
He thinks of Bruce’s kind eyes and Dick’s pretty smile.
I love you, he thinks. Out loud, he says,
“Bruce. He’s my father.” He loses consciousness.
v.
The Flying Graysons poster on Dick’s bedroom wall is well taken care of. The seven year old Dick Grayson has a smile similar to one of a child in a painting Jason distantly remembers looking at and thinking of magic. His memory is a puzzle with missing pieces.
There’s a framed picture of a beaming thirteen year old Jason with a certificate for winning Best Creative Writing Essay on Dick’s desk. Jason remembers that day. His essay was titled The Origami Swan. It had been about Alfred.
Dick looks at him as if he’s seen a ghost. His skin pale, and his eyes misted. In the dim light of the Bludhavën apartment, Dick Grayson looks fragile. Jason sits in the rolling chair and tries not to look at the picture of him staring back at him, smiling and alive.
“So it was true,” Dick whispers. Voice cracking. “You’re alive.”
Jason doesn’t know if he is alive. He’s certainly not dead. He’s undead.
“Little Wing…” Dick chokes up, and the tip of his nose reddens and his eyes water. “Come closer, let me see you.”
Jason stands up. His face burns and he bites the inside of his cheek. Dick is shorter than him, slimmer. Time and death has robbed Jason of the joy of watching Dick grow into this beautiful man before him, with his wet eyes and pink lips, his trembling hands and firm muscles.
“Oh, so tall,” Dick lets out a wet chuckle, “How dare you get bigger than me.”
“I was always going to,” Jason tries to banter back. His voice comes out deep and bashful.
Dick gasps at his voice and smiles a wide, bright smile. It stretches his face and crinkles his eyes, letting the tears that formed to drip down his cheeks. Jason watches, transfixed. “You’re a miracle, Jason. You—you have no idea how much I lost… how much Bruce lost…”
A man who has everything, who gave me everything.
Dick surges forward, and Jason finds himself stumbling back as Dick buries his face into the juncture of his shoulder, feeling it dampen with tears as Dick clings to him like a lifeline. Dick, who Jason remembers, was always taken advantage of. Dick, who came to Jason’s middle school creative writing competition even though Bruce had made him cry the night before over a petty argument. Dick, who keeps a framed picture of him on his desk and leaves fresh flowers on his grave every month. Dick, who’s worryingly small in his arms.
“You came back to me,” Dick wails into his chest. “You did. Please, never leave again. Promise me.”
“I promise,” Jason finds himself making promises he’s unsure he’ll keep.
“I love you,” Dick sobs out. “I love you so much. Do you know? Do you feel it? My beautiful Little Wing.”
I love you, Jason thinks. Out loud, he says,
“You need to eat. Let me cook something for you.”
Fin.