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Jason hated the rain.
The downpour mixed with whatever pollution stained the streets of Gotham City, producing a foul petrichor that was the farthest thing from pleasant. This time around, it was accompanied by the roar of thunder shaking the very foundation of buildings, lightning illuminating the darkest shadows. Most were driven inside and those who chose to go out were quickly backpedaling on their decision.
Earlier news announced rain from hurricanes down south would arrive as a light precipitation, but the ache throughout Jason’s body told otherwise.
It began a day prior when the gray clouds were still rolling in over the city, not yet darkening. He had gone to the grocery store to fill his near empty refrigerator, finally gathering enough motivation to do so. He’d been looking through the produce section with his cart when his body betrayed him once again. His hands stiffened with a pain radiating to the tips of his fingers to just below his wrist. The little box of blueberries he’d been holding slipped, cracked open on impact, and spilled over the tile floor.
The moment was humiliating. The noise of the clattering plastic brought the attention of everyone around him. If not, it was a blueberry or three rolling by their feet. Jason attempted to pick them up, but found his fingers uncooperative and trembling. He was saved by an employee who assured him it was fine and pushed for Jason to go when they saw him struggling. He apologized and rushed to the cashier where he paid for everything he had in his cart despite not finishing his grocery shopping. And when he realized he needed to carry those two grocery bags back to his apartment, he almost abandoned them.
By the time he was home, he was exhausted. Dark spots threatened his vision at the edges. The constant ache in his bones, muscles, and joints he’d become accustomed to over the years flared up like he was being beaten with knives. He was left shaky with the tightening stiffness and burning tingles, sweat clinging between his skin and clothes. Inserting his key for his apartment ended up being multiple failed attempts before he succeeded, his fingers unable to properly curl around and grip the small bow of the key.
He let his groceries hit the floor at the door once he got inside, staggering to the couch and carefully sliding on no matter how much he just wanted to teeter over and collapse. He couldn’t imagine the hellfire his joints would erupt in if he did that. As he laid there, he welcomed the nausea stirring inside of him and groaned as his head also began to pound.
The pain only dulled by an inch when Jason moved again. He used his arms to sit up, legs still flaring. He glanced at the window and squinted at the clock on his oven. He lost a little over an hour and a half just laying there.
“Fuck,” he whispered out.
When his legs stopped feeling they were drenched in acid, Jason put back his groceries in their proper places. Each swivel of his neck or a slight bend of his back had him stopping to recalibrate his mind and senses to work around the pain. He eventually took an ibuprofen pill with two glasses of water to rehydrate himself. The water was cool going down his throat and gave him a moment of clarity.
Jason still went on patrol that night, albeit shorter than he originally planned. He checked over his operations to ensure everything was running smoothly, observed some of the small-time gangs he allowed for the moment for any suspicious movements, and made sure some street kids he’d been watching for a while were alright. It was all the energy he had in him for that night. He briefly saw the dark silhouettes of Red Robin and Batgirl soaring between rooftops over in Chinatown from afar. Even if he didn’t really converse with either of them on a daily basis and it was likely they wouldn’t approach him, he made sure he wasn’t seen and stayed away. He didn’t want to interact with anyone, patience running short by pain still obscuring his mind.
It was almost three in the morning when he crawled back to bed. He almost reached for the orange pill bottle in his drawer with his shaking fingers, but decided against it at the twist of his stomach. Head on his most comfortable pillow, Jason clocked out for the rest of the night.
The following morning, he regretted ever waking up.
Jason couldn’t move. Each nerve ending in his body was on fire. If he attempted to so much as twitch the slightest bit, it was like gasoline was poured and ignited. It concentrated mostly in his lower spine, down his legs to his toes, and his hands. The churning, dark swirl of emotions raged beside that physical pain, pressing against his skull with his building migraine.
Jason had walked out of worse situations. He’d been stabbed, shot at, electrocuted, multiple bone fractures, leaving him benched for a time. But he always wanted to return to the burden and freedom that was his life. Yet, this was what made him pause and reconsider everything.
Every time his body was consumed by such inconceivable pain, every future plan laid out in front of him, all carefully calculated and well-crafted, vanished. Only to be replaced by the thick cloud of darkness of no escape.
It scared Jason.
He couldn’t celebrate when he could move his body. There was still a bone-deep ache, penetrating between each muscle fiber, and it left him wondering how much more he could take it. If his entire life had to stop because the pain was too much, he wasn’t sure if he could continue.
The thought festered as he stood underneath the hot spray of his shower. His skin was turning red, but it was a momentary relief that allowed him to think for a second. He thought of all the weapons stored inside his apartment, thought of the hundreds of ways he knew how to kill with every one of them. He bitterly laughed.
In the end, he knew he wouldn’t be able to muster the energy to do anything with these thoughts when it was the only path he could see. It would be another humiliating episode with his nonfunctional fingers trying to find the dexterity and strength to pull a trigger or hold a blade. Just like the grocery store and the blueberries. Now, this time, it would be without all the eyes.
He wondered how long it would take for someone to notice his absence.
They—whoever they were, Jason didn’t who that consisted of anymore—would mourn for a few days and their lives would return to normal, just like it had the first time.
That train of thought wasn’t as comforting nor as distressing as he thought it should have been.
He managed to shuffle into the kitchen for breakfast when he finished his shower in his pajamas, the pain only slightly alleviated. Lunch, he corrected when he glanced at the time. He grabbed a prepackaged meal, an item increasingly becoming more common for the minimal amount of energy it took to throw it in the microwave. Besides, he still didn’t have much because of his failed grocery run and wasn’t going to go back anytime soon. He ate in the silence of his apartment, only interrupted by the faint buzzing in his ear.
Jason was lucky that the other issues that plagued his body weren’t also flaring up. Sometimes it did alongside the regular pain and it was bitch to deal with. The tinnitus, the clench in his chest, the sudden loss of air. It left him in a worse state, one of panic and dread, which only exacerbated the symptoms.
It all felt so painstaking familiar yet every time his mind tried to find the reason his body was fucked up physically, he hit a block that his body violently reacted to while his mind was confused and stunned.
The meal was put back in the refrigerator, half-eaten. His stomach could no longer handle it unless he wanted to throw up. He grabbed a blanket, turned on his TV, and sat on the couch. The news was already on and he briefly listened to a man drone on about the light rain Gotham was going to get by the evening and groaned, rubbing his face in frustration.
Jason hated the rain because it made most of his problems worse than they already were. And by how bad he already was, he knew there wasn’t going to be any light anything.
He eventually laid down and switched between channels. He landed one playing an older sitcom he’d never seen. It was one geared for young teenagers by the juvenile humor that was followed by the loud, identical laugh track after each piss poor attempt at a joke. He pretended that he didn’t chuckle at a few of them.
He left it in the background as he went to make dinner for himself once he could walk again. His stomach growled and it was probably best that he didn’t starve himself unless wanted things to make it worse all over again. He took another pain reliever and gathered his limited ingredients to make a broth. The constant movement of his hands soothed the tingling lingering in them.
As he waited and stirred the pot, he considered going out on patrol again for a moment. But as if in retaliation, the nerves down his spine and legs responded by becoming taunt and leaving him in a spinning daze. Nevertheless, he gritted his teeth and finished.
He sat down at his table with a bowl and took a couple of sips. The flavors were a little too dull for his liking, missing something of one thing and having too much of another, but he thought it was good enough. The bowl was half-way empty when the pain ventured back again like a creeping predator. Jason groaned in frustration, tired of the constant pain when he just wanted to enjoy the simple act of eating.
The soup started to feel like ash in his mouth. Nausea whirled in his gut, replacing whatever warm feeling he had. There was a pressure in his head from the building anger at how much his life crumpled during these times. The pain in his hands worsened, the spoon trembling in his grip.
Jason stood up, pushing back the chair so suddenly it fell backwards. He abandoned what was left in his bowl and grabbed his gear. His vision tunneled, ignoring the protests of his body as he slapped on every piece of heavy armor, and he didn’t know if it was the rage at his body for failing him time and time again or the determination to prove he could prevail despite that failure.
The rain and wind hit him like a brick wall when he stepped outside. Light rain my ass , he thought. Lightning cracked through the black sky, followed by the booming thunder. Even with his helmet, he could barely see anything. But he knew Gotham like the back of his hand and could traverse the city blind.
No amount of pain was going to stop him.
He jumped between rooftops and swung between buildings. He did his regular patrol stops, added a few more, surveyed all the areas regardless of his spotting vision. The weather was getting more violent with winds howling like a pack of dogs. Desperately, he needed to feel that exhilaration, that euphoria, just like when he was Robin.
Instead, his body was ridden by pain and he was exhausted.
He collapsed under a cover on a rooftop, rain still leaking through from the cracks above and the wind creeping into the tiniest gaps of his gear to penetrate his skin with a bone-chilling shiver. He dropped like a stone against the brick wall, every joint aching and throbbing.
Jason yanked his helmet off, almost forgoing turning off the explosion mechanism of the equipment in his haste, and threw it off aside as he heaved in air. His chest was tight, heart pounding and blood rushing in his ears, yearning for the precious oxygen his body needed. The ringing in his ears intensified and overpowered the sounds of the storm. He laid there, only being able to breathe in and out, as a heavy fatigue tainted his limbs. His vision faded out with the static in his mind and barbed wire tightened around his arms and legs, impending any movement with unimaginable and debilitating pain.
He couldn’t move, stuck like a bug on the wall. The idea that some despicable person could find him like this, do whatever they wanted, and he would be helpless to stop it sent him down another spiral of horrific dread. He watched ahead as the storm continued to rage like the anger that brought him out there and he regretted his stupid choice to ever leave his apartment.
The longer he laid there, the more the smell of his surroundings invaded his senses. It felt so terribly familiar. His head throbbed as images flashed across his mind of somewhere dark and small, oxygen being ripped away from him at each breath, his hands ballooning with sharp pain, claustrophobia gripping him like a vice. Was his mind creating new scenarios to torture him mentally too?
Jason continued to choke and wheeze, tears blurring his vision, unable to escape due to the domino mask on his face. He willed himself to stop, but he couldn’t as everything reached new levels of unbearable and overwhelmed him.
Lightning struck and thunder boomed as the storm continued, rushing through the city and taking Jason with it. He didn’t know how long it took when the storm finally quelled, but when it did, Jason felt drained and beaten, emotionally and physically rubbed raw like a skinned animal. He could move his body without the feeling of blades digging in and twisting over and over, his limbs tied down by boulders, and his heart ready to burst into flames.
He leaned against the wall as he stood. His legs shook underneath as if he were a newborn fawn. He gasped, fighting back the urge to vomit from how his head spun in all directions. Slowly, he limped out from under the small shelter he found, joints creaking and slipping under his weight.
The rain fell around him in a light drizzle, but he barely felt it hit his face. He only knew that he needed to get home. Yet, even in his detached state, the task felt so daunting. Jason knew Gotham, but he felt so lost and disorientated. The mist rising up from the ground, clouding the distance he could see, only made it more difficult to discern where he was.
Jason stared out over the edge of the rooftop. He tried to conjure a thought—a plan to get him out of here—but he came up blank. His mind was useless, disconnected from his body. Yet even now, when everything was so far away, the pain still lingered. Forever a constant in Jason Todd’s life.
Distantly, he thought about using his helmet and contacting someone. Anyone. For help. The feeling brought a new wave of nausea curling around that thought, everything in him dissuading him for doing so. Anxiety hammered him as he imagined their reactions about his condition. How their perspective on him could change and view him as pliable and weak.
He knew they saw him a bomb ready to go off at any time and if he came to them with his tail between his legs, they would seize on the chance to manipulate him under the guise of getting to know him and to inevitably change him, mold him to their rules and standards.
No, Jason was going to keep him to himself and manage on his own. Like he always had to.
Jason had been betrayed by every person he put his trust into. He wasn’t going to let it happen again, not when he felt the worst he’d ever felt. Not when his own body and mind were beginning to betray him too, like a vicious curse the universe threw on him. Like he was never supposed to exist. All the pain and tragedies he’d face throughout his life meant to erase him.
Jason just wanted to live.
Why wasn’t he allowed to?