Chapter Text
Jason died for the fifth time in a fire. He'd run into the burning building, into flames the cried and walls that mourned. Fire's were odd in that way. For all of their violence and ferocity, the stench of death carried grief not anger. It was the taste of acceptance rather than vengeance. For fire's like this one had no cause other than bad timing.
One can't truly blame a fire like this, can't get revenge on it, in the same way one can't truly blame an earthquake or hurricane. To truly blame would be to think it, the fire or earthquake or hurricane, had a choice in the death that it caused.
No. One can blame the person who started the fire, blame the companies that build faulty alarms, blame the lack of funding for the fire fighters. But one can't truly blame the fire itself.
That's why the flames don't reek of regret, don't sircreet tar of guilt, don't burn cold with apathy. For the fire is not at fault.
Jason got all four people and their cat out of the house before he went back for their dog. The heat didn't bother him, his body forever frozen by death. His mask filtered out the smoke, so he wasn't concerned on that front. He found the animal whimpering in a corner, trapped by a burning fallen beem.
Jason jumped over without hesitation, sweeping the dog into caring arms. He ran back out, keeping as far from the fire as possible. Just as outside was in view a crack sounded above him. He dived forwards, letting the dog jump from his grasp and run safely to its waiting owners.
The beem caught his back, trapping him in a collapsing prison of flames. Tar pooled beneath him and the claws scraped at him with vigour. His mind fell silent.
—
The fire was dying by the time he awoke, he pulled himself from beneath the now crumbled beem and retreated out the back of what was once a house.
Things felt different, again.
He could feel the claws against his skin. Hear screams before they cut off. Smell dusk air and taste last breaths. He could see hands reaching for those about to pass, blood-shot eyes opening in tar filled voids to stare down those in their final moments.
Things seemed… hesitant around him. Scared almost. Clawed abominations scurried back to the hell which they came from, tar receded back into the ground, burning glaring eyes closed when he met their gaze.
—
Jason knew death. He could hear it, see it, feel it. It was as much a part of him as he was of it. He never figured out exactly why or how he became like this, but it didn't really matter in his opinion.
The longer he stayed the way he was, the more he learnt about what he felt, the better prepared he was to respond when he heard death calling for someone. Jason couldn't stop every death, even if he could, he wouldn't. Sometimes it was just… the right time.
When someone was slipping away they changed. When the time was right they smelt like lilies, roses, chrysanthemums. The air around them felt like dusk, and the hands around them became gentle. They sounded like goodbyes, the end of a book, they sounded like rest.
This time. This was not one of those times.
When someone was dragged to death's door it was different. They smelt like terror, adrenaline, pain. The air around them felt as oppressive as the water beneath a frozen lake. The hands pulled, they grabbed and sunk their claws in, they became vicious, feral in their attacks. They sounded like anger and broken glass, a book burnt before ever finished, they sounded like anguish.
The world told him all of it. Through the water and wind, the ground and his dreams, death would always find him. But it wasn't death he felt now. No. It was dying.
He hadn't even meant to go near the Replacement, but it couldn't be avoided forever. It was only one time, the Replacement didn't even see him. But Jason, he saw the Replacement. Saw him and the chuncks of flesh being ripped from his body by claws. Heard him and the screams and yells and hands banging against doors.
The wind carried the scent of rot, of decomposition and decay. The air tasted of disease and infection, puss and plague. The wind carried the boy's freezing temperature and oppressive pressure. Jason watched as his Replacement flew away with hands clawing at him with such fever that his body was barely visible.
—
Jason knew that he used to want the Replacement gone. If he got rid of the Replacement, he could go back home. But ‘home’ wasn't looking all that appealing right now. And revenge wasn't as tempting as it used to be, his vision didn't become a haze of green at the idea anymore.
He had a new goal. He needed to get the Replacement away from Batman. After all, Red Hood helps kids and the Replacement was a kid. A kid who was currently being slowly killed. This led to his current situation.
Jason hadn't been to Bristol since he came back, and maybe that was a good thing. The towering manors were drenched in dripping black guilt, coating the occupants. Their cash and cards were barely visible behind the distorted hands of suffering.
The black seeped from every ostentatious waste of money, from luxury cars that never got used, to draws filled with watches that individual cost could feed a family for months. The Drake Manor was just as bad.
Foreign treasures and artifacts lined the walls, dripping with the loss of having something sacred ripped away, never to be seen again. Their rugs and clothes smelt of the death in the factories they were made in. The bins echoed the quiet horror of empty stomachs never getting full, of skeletons visible through skin, of the hunger that eats at its own body.
Waste. The building reeked of the deaths of people the Drakes never knew, that they'd never even care to think of. The house was cold in a way that even Crime Alley wasn't.
Crime Alley's cold came from lives cut short by circumstance, ordinary people pushed to the end of their rope. Of desperation and despair. It was cold with the understanding that that's how things were, not because the people killing and stealing and running drugs wanted to, but that they had little choice.
Bristol was cold in its apathy and willful in its ignorance. Cold that came from useless excess, of death caused by greed. Cold in the way that came from recognising that you're the problem, that the most dangerous and deadly crimes were committed from mansions in rooms costing more than the lives they were selling, and then deciding that you simply didn't care.
The cold came from the option to help being acknowledged and then shoved aside for greed. Because in Bristol, it wasn't getting money to survive, no. It was getting money to add to a never ending hoard of gold and trinkets. A hoard that would never be spent, would never pay a wage or feed a family, it would just sit. Forever.
It was the cold that came from stealing from those with nothing, and not feeling an ounce of regret.
The Drake Manor was empty of life, because at that point could the only occupant even be called alive? The boy laid face down on his floor, the tar beneath him trying to claim his body, dozens of eyes watching on with their unblinking stares. It was close, too, the air was becoming quieter. The screams being cut off, the yells now only echos. But, an echo was still something.
Without letting himself thing about it, Jason ran to the boy's side. Replacement Tim was still breathing, his heart still beating. Jason reached out, yanking away a clawed hand that was reaching for the boy's heart. The hands shrivelled under his presence, the tar seeped back into the floor boards, the eyes closed.
Not wanting to risk death claiming the boy, Jason carried him to the kid's bathroom. Tim groaned at the movement, good. Noise meant he's still alive. Jason laid the boy on the ground, mindful of his injuries. He couldn’t tell at first glance what had happened to Tim, but being in such close proximity to the boy made it easy.
He grabbed the first aid kit from under the sink, thankful for the boy putting things in sensible places. Jason cut through his Tim's Robin suit, peeling the fabric away from wounds that smelt of grief.
The worst of the wounds were easy to find. The long jagged gash that cut across the kid's thigh, likely from the edge of a metal structure like a fence given the rough edges. It was pulled further apart by prying claws, and filled with the sound of rats and rot.
Tar poured from a bullet wound in the kid's shoulder. The smell of gunpowder and the sound of explosions meant the bullet was still in there, likely stuck in Tim's trapezius, thankfully it didn't seem to have hit anything else.
The echoing cracks and sickening crunches that came from the boy's upper arm let Jason know the bone was broken. It smelt of metal and tasted of jeering taunts.
Bad? Yes. Fixable? Also yes.