I like DC characters; I just hate DC

From Flying Dragon and Dancing Phoenix, an AU in which Dragon’s Blood happens closer to UTH and Jason and Connor meet afterwards:

“So, Green Arrow, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Obviously not Oliver Queen.”

Connor turned, a little surprised. “You know him?”

“Know of him. Got that stupid little beard, used to have Harper running with him.”

“You know Roy?”

He shrugged. “We’ve met.” An evasion if he’d ever heard one, but Connor didn’t push. “Getting off topic, though.”

“I’m his son.”

“Really? Explains the blonde, I guess.”

“Why does everyone say that?”

The other man ignored the question. “So how’d you end up running around in his jammies?”

Connor shrugged. “It’s kind of a long story.”

“That code for ‘I don’t want to talk about it’?”

“Not really. It’s just… complicated.”

The other stared at him for a few moments, expression unreadable. “You took over after he died, didn’t you?”

Connor blinked in surprise, then nodded. “Yeah. Well, I was Green Arrow for a little bit before that. He gave it up for a little while, and I wanted to throw some people who were chasing us off the scent… then he went undercover in the Eden Corps, and things went bad and…” he trailed off momentarily, shrugging. The other man was watching intently, enough so to make anyone else uncomfortable. Connor just continued, “He came back a little while ago. He wanted to share the name.” The other man watched him for a few moments longer, clearly waiting for something further. Connor didn’t know what else to say. After a little longer, the brunette shifted and gave a small nod, barely noticeable.

The ensuing silence was awkward. Connor fidgeted with his bow. The brunette examined his knife, lost to the world. Eventually, Connor broke the silence, clearing his throat carefully. “You know, I never did give you my name.” He extended a hand to shake. “Connor Hawke.”

The other man looked at him for a few moments, then returned the gesture.

“Jason. Jason Todd.”

Oh, and as a bonus:

“What are you doing in my apartment?”

“Easiest way to find you. Not that finding you isn’t easy enough as is. You don’t cover your tracks well, you know that?”

“I’m not hiding from anyone.”

“Stupid of you. You’re the vigilante who fought Shiva to a standstill. You’ve got plenty of people with an interest in your head on a silver platter.”

“… has anyone ever told you that you’re kind of paranoid?”

“Yes, but they were all out to get me.”

From Zombie, a post-UTH AU in which Bruce does find Jason in the rubble at the end of UTH:

It begins with a groan, faint and nearly inaudible. Jason stirs slightly, his eyes darting to and fro beneath the closed lids. Slowly, Bruce sets aside the book he’d been reading, sitting up and folding his hands in his lap. He makes no noise, expression carefully blank as he watches the boy closely.

He waits.

Jason shifts, tosses, an arm twitching briefly towards his frame, pulling the cuff taut. Bruce leans in silently, regarding his face with cold intensity. Another shift, and Jason’s head falls to the side. Slowly, ice-blue eyes flicker open, and Jason’s gaze is unfocused as he stares uncomprehendingly at his wrist, tugging at the restraint as though unsure what it even is. Bruce doesn’t breathe as Jason turns to look at him, question in his expression. Bruce gives no answer, says nothing as he watches the memory slowly dawn in the boy’s eyes.

For as long as he lives, Bruce will never forget the look on Jason’s face as the recollection strikes him fully. There’s no anger in his eyes, no hatred or spite. Just shock and numb horror. Just pain, and betrayal.

“You-” his voice is weak, hoarse, full of agony and disbelief. “You-”

He breaks off, opening and closing his mouth without sound. Bruce can only watch as the boy turns to stare at the ceiling, breathing in short, ragged gasps. He can see tears beginning to form in his eyes, the fists opening and closing, muscles tensing against the restraints. “You-” The boy arches his head back, mouth opening in a soundless, shuddering scream.

There are many things that he can say at this moment. Endless questions to be answered. Infinite statements to be made. But as, sorrow in his eyes, he watches his son begin to break down, only two words escape his lips.

“I’m sorry.”

He knows it isn’t nearly enough.

The chair creaks faintly as he stands, slowly, silently. He says nothing more as he leaves.

The sobs have begun by the time he closes the door.

From Insomnia, an exploration of my interpretation of Jason’s mental issues that I’ve been working on for forever.

Warning for descriptions of an autopsy and general vaguely disturbing imagery.

He spends hours in front of the mirror sometimes, sleepless nights spent tracing over old scars, some unpleasant reminders and some just mysteries. The Pit had taken some and left others with no real rhyme or reason, and jumbled his memories enough that he isn’t even entirely sure which are missing.

There are two round, faded scars over his ribs, all that remains of six bullets to the chest during his early days as Robin. He had almost died- Leslie had saved his life. He was back out out on the streets before the next month had ended.

There is a long jagged line along his arm, a missed parry with a knife sometime after, not serious, but deep and lasting. There are scars on his fingers, half-moons under the nails and blotched white on the knuckles, carefully hidden with gloves. There are burns on his back, a small scar on his cheek from the shrapnel of a broken helmet, training injuries and fights gone wrong and Jason’s not even sure what for some of them, but they itch with memories the longer he stares, taunting and frustrating.

There’s a wide, ragged mar almost right over his heart, from where the crowbar had dug out flesh. The body armor had been good: it’d taken more blows than Jason could count to tear it. There’s a thin line on his neck where Bruce had etched his choice, and he does not allow his gaze to linger there.

He was autopsied. He’s seen the report, but never read it, never had the guts. He already knows how he died. Screaming, hurting and drowning in his own blood.

Every autopsy begins with an incision, standard, cookie-cutter. Y shape across the chest, shoulder to shoulder to sternum to hip, deep and precise. So methodical, so clinical, lay out the dead for the world to see. They pull back the skin, reveal the muscle and soft tissue before the ribcage before the organs before they move on to the head, skin sliced back and skull sawed to expose the brain, and afterwards they put everything back together and giftwrap it up all nice and tidy and so fucking neat, has to be to prepare for the funeral.

Jason drags a finger over his chest and wonders for a second if he can see the faintest trace of a scar, stretching its arms in a wide, forked blemish. He lets his eyes drop. He cannot stand his own reflection.

He is tired, and the Joker is alive.

He didn’t come back right. Jason knows that much- he’s not stupid, contrary to popular belief. The Lazarus Pit had been anything but a blessing, and things hadn’t exactly got better from there. That’s the thing about dying- it doesn’t matter if, by grace of God or the devil or chance or sheer fucking willpower, you’re dragged back to life, set breathing once more. You’ll never come back, not really. You’ll never be the same again. It seeps into everything you do, pries into thoughts and memories with cold fingers, intrudes into plans and meditation and sleep until you’re living with one foot in the past, one foot in the grave.

He lies awake tonight (most nights), and thinks he can feel the echo of death. He can hear the blood thrumming through his veins, staccato drumbeat driving into him (wrong wrong. wrong wrong), and his body seems like no more than a fragile shell, pieces glued back together haphazardly, waiting for something to strike just right and send the fragments scattering to the wind.

He’s not the only one who’d died. Superman, Green Arrow, Donna, Hal Jordan… They’d died. They’d come back. But they’re fine now. Not fucked up like he is, never were.

He’s the only one who came back wrong.

He’d hurt so many others. The Joker, he means. Civilians, thousands of them. Babs and her father. Is it like this for them? He can’t believe that Babs’s never had the chance to put the bastard 6 feet under. He knows Gordon has.

Is he the only one who needs him dead so badly?

Maybe he is. Maybe that’s why Bruce doesn’t understand.