( lord, not a word of banter. maybe it is serious.
so up he gets an' off he goes. he brings his musette bag just in case, slung over one shoulder. he's adapted to modern clothin' such that he ain't really distinguishable from other folks in new amsterdam, but the thriftshop bag with a handstitched red cross does on occasion cause him to stand out some.
anyhow, he gets to the apartment at a good clip, an' knocks on the door. )
( serious to jason? yes. he opens the door, still in the boxers and a loose tee he slept in the night before. his hair's a bit of a mess, obviously unbrushed to the point the curls he usually keeps tamed are causing the longer bit of his hair to frizz.
there's no sass, just. jason pressing his lips together and throwing a duffel bag towards gene. )
There's something on my bed that definitely doesn't belong. You mind moving it?
( yes, that's the emergency:
a heavily blood-stained crowbar jason woke up with, rolled out of bed away from, and didn't know how to deal with in his half asleep stupor. )
( he joined up for the 82nd in '42. spent near a year trainin' an' the like before they all shipped out for husky over gela. he was better-prepared than most'a the boys, on account'a seein' the dead an' all. he knew it was comin'. had the voices of a thousand veterans from a dozen wars chimin' a chorus in his ears all the while. reggie made it easy, always standin' beside him, pointin' out ambushes an' the like. he was also good at spottin' out the men what needed a break from the front, those sufferin' the fractures of combat stress. gene watched as many folk as he could, but lord knows they got so run down in numbers it just weren't possible to check in on every man, every day. after september of '44 it was just him and ginny that'd been trained with the original company, the rest were replacements even more hastily trained than they'd been, whose sole instructions often seemed to consist of 'bundle a man up and send him to an aid station'. an' havin' reggie helped. while gene caught precious few hours of sleep tucked down in a foxhole somewhere, or sittin' up against the wheelwell of a jeep, or stretched out on the battered pew of a blown-out church reg' would make the rounds an' come back, an' give him a list of names, all men that needed back from the front.
but the thing is, he's still good at it. recognizin' when a fella's tryin' real hard to be calm an' casual about something but ain't all right or there. so rather than joke, gene just gives him a solemn nod an' claps him once on the shoulder before he heads on into the room.
he doesn't know what he's expecting. jason wouldn't call him over a spider or a dead rat or nothin' like that. what he finds is... a crowbar? he studies it a moment like a fella might a dud grenade an' then he picks it up as gingerly as possible. seems like there's a bit of hair on one end of it, plastered there by the coagulated blood.
he knows jay's a violent man. well-used to it, by the scars he saw the once. but as brutal as he imagines him to be, he also doesn't think that the man would beat someone to death with a crowbar. it's a medic's instinct that tells him plain that the blood, the damage, whoever this thing was used on is either dead or perilously close to bein' so. is it a warnin'? somethin' put there by somebody else (an' who the hell could sneak up on a fella as paranoid as he is?) or maybe it implies some harm's come to someone he knows?
he wraps it up in the duffel bag without another thought, an' then comes back outta the room. )
Jason. ( his voice has got that soft, groundin' tone to it he uses with wounded men an' horses. ) I'm gonna go take care'a this somewhere else, but before I go I gotta ask — is somebody hurt somewhere's I need to attend to?
( gene disappears into the room and he--lets out the breath he had been holding since he woke up, chest glowing bright blue and a nice gift left behind. it wasn't his first gift, so the glow wasn't extremely surprising but what he found on the other end of it. . threw him off. jason doesn't let himself sleep deeply that often. especially not when he's home by himself--but he needed it. unfortunately, the rest was ruined by immediately switching into flight mode the moment his body realized there was nothing to fight and instead just.
old memories out to bite him in the ass. his head's a mess, a rush of jumbled old memories he's trying his damned best not to think about. his laugh, his words, jason's belief he'd be okay only to have to accept at the last moment that it was over, no one was coming to save him. it's the same goddamn shit that replays every time he gets stuck in a bad headspace. the same crap he still hasn't figured out how to get over yet even though he feels like he should have.
gene's voice sounds and jason snaps back to attention, winces while he raises a hand up to shove fingers through his hair. )
No. You can leave it, too. I just--couldn't deal with it. ( a breath in. steadying. ) It's mine. The blood and crap--just old.
( no one else to chase down. )
Sometimes this place likes to give us gifts from home.
( despite it all, the war an' the camps and the millions dead an' all the ghosts he spoke with on all the awful things, he never did become inured against it all. there's that familiar old, sick twist in the pit'a his stomach that makes his hand curl tighter into the straps of the duffel bag. jason's near as bein' one'a his own as anyone here. sorrow crests hard over the tangle of his emotions, though it don't hardly stop him from wantin' to pitch the whole damn bag into the sun none, neither.
he gives it a little drop/toss, mostly aimin' to get it nearer the door, an' then he gives jason a sort of sideways look. )
You gonna take a swing at me if'n I give you a hug?
( eugene hicks: could not fight his way out of a literal paper bag, but by christ can he take a punch. )
( jason isn't a soldier--not the same kind gene is. but he knows he gets it. maybe that's why when he woke up in the middle of the day to everyone else being gone(work, flame throwers, who knows what else) he dialed up gene. he hasn't lost his shit over it yet, but god knows that jason's probably close to it. he's on edge; shoulders tight, a little more cagey than normal.
and gene asks him if he wants a goddamn hug. jason snorts, pulls a grin onto his face that doesn't reach his eyes. )
My comfort'd sooner involve a damn pack of Chesterfields, but I'll take a beer.
( he's mostly passed the cravings now, but lordy when they hit they hit like a truck. he's taken to chewin' gum much'a the time. but he nods, an' lets jay be. he leaves his own musette bag by the door too, takes his boots off. they're about as close to combat boots as he could find in the modern world, polished to a mirror-sheen. soldierin' never really leaves the soul, don't it?
from there, he makes his way to the livin' room an' takes up a chair. leanin' forward, fingers laced, elbows on his knees. his mind is an awful torrent'a all the things jason ain't sayin' but what he can plain infer, an' this feels a little like tryin' to navigate the mindfield of al's moods after one'a his night terrors. except, he's known al his whole life an' he can manage him. jason has more mystery to him an' there's no guarantee gene can offer him anythin' more than a steady presence an' an easy calm.
whenever jay brings out the beer he accepts it with a nod of thanks, an' then waits for him to come back out in some better manner'a dress. )
( it's too damn bad there aren't any cigarettes in this shitty future. vapes, sure. but jason doesn't have any and as funny as it'd be to watch gene go at it, he's not offering to get one delivered. so he lifts his shoulders in an idle shrug, moves into the kitchen to grab a beer out of the fridge and offers it over before he disappears behind a corner.
not without taking one more look at the bag, though.
and once he's gone? uses the few moments of peace to take a few deep breaths. recenter himself. grabs onto the first pair of jeans he finds and throws them over what he was already wearing and shoves his belt on after. cinches it tight. grabs onto the knife he keeps under his pillow and clips it onto the back of his jeans. grabs onto a second one from the top drawer of his dresser too, just in case.
shoves that one into his front pocket. a lot more obvious. but once he's got an actual jacket on, the back one won't be.
not that he's shoving on his jacket now. jason shoves his feet into his own boots, doesn't bother lacing them up yet. then heads on out, sitting down in the chair opposite of gene to watch him closely. )
(so. jay's waitin' for him to ask. but the thing is, there ain't a one of them that has much autonomy here. always somethin', ain't it? if it ain't dreams, it's possession, it's the fact that they can't go home of their own volition an' have to hope that it's what happens when folks vanish from this place.
bein' here stripped him of somethin' that was so inherent to his identity that he feels half a man, but at least it ain't never given him anythin' yet out of cruelty. jason called him, he supposes, on account'a there bein' some level of trust between them an' gene ain't about to call in the chips an' ask for an explanation where none is due. bein' curious won't kill him, an' it don't need validation.
he rubs at his jaw thoughtfully, blunt nails scraping through the stubble he ain't bothered fussin' over in a day or two. )
My brother Albert, the next one younger'n'me. ( the one he's compared jason to more than once, which he likely remembers just as well. maybe what he says next will explain why — ) Got his arm blown off in the Pacific. Spent a year after in a POW camp run by the Japs. He ain't never said a word about it, an' I ain't ever asked. Few months ago — back-home months, I mean, must be comin' up on eight or nine now if'n we're talkin' ones I've lived since — he an' I were a few states up doin' some business an' we ran into a spot'a trouble with the locals at a Navy waterin' hole. One fella asked him if he lost his arm in a tractor accident. Funny 'cause we're southron sorts, huh? Hoo boy. ( al'd always been the one in the family who could whup anyone's ass he so chose. gene'd never known him to lose a fight, leastwise not anywhere in conecuh or at least three countries in any given direction. ) You ever wanna see an Alabama boy missin' his dominant hand kick the ass'a three Navy boys without spillin' his beer you can share the memory sometime.
( doubtless it seems a ramble. but he punctuates it with a faint shrug. )
Point bein', I ain't gonna ask. You got your life an' all its stories an' I ain't entitled to a one'a them no matter how many times you call me up for a favor. I care about you, an' that's that. It ain't a transaction.
( see: if gene had asked, jason would have shut down. he would have laughed the subject off, said it doesn't fucking matter anyway. moved on to something else, ignoring the elephant (crowbar) in the room and pretend he never called him here for anything to begin with. gene gives him the perfect opportunity to change the subject too, to talk about albert and his one-armed ass-kicking. about the stupid assholes that targeted them. he doesn't push, doesn't get angry over it, doesn't ask questions he doesn't need the answers to.
doesn't get angry with jason, except for when jason is really asking for it and even then? backed down when he realized what jason was doing. it--reminds him a bit of markus. pisses him off too, because people who have a tendency to take care of others are always the first people try and take advantage of. but eugene--has a bit of a backbone to compensate, he's witnessed it firsthand.
which is why jason trusts him. hasn't known him long, sure. but gene is soft in places and harder in others, can read a room better than most. has offered jason comfort without expecting anything in return. brings him pies and deals with his asshole friends. deals with jason being a total asshole, too.
it's why he can't bring himself to be that bad, with gene. jason gets prickly when angry, gets loud. his words full of venom, spat out whenever he gets upset enough to start throwing down. finds what stings and digs into it until his opponent gets so pissed they beat him into the floor or tells him to fuck off and never turns back around again. both of those are wins, far as he's concerned. and maybe he hasn't tried pushing that far with gene, yet. but instinct screams that it'd be fucking pointless anyway, so. )
I was fifteen.
( it's a story he's screamed in anger. admitted to in whispers, thrown out bits and pieces and used them as ammo. but it's murmured this time, soft. )
I fucked up. Walked into a situation I shouldn't have, and I didn't come back out of it for a long time.
( no details. no using the gory bits here. this isn't a tantrum meant to guilt trip anyone, just an explanation. )
Hell, sometimes I'm sure I'm still in it. Even after everything else. Sometimes because of it. And then shit like this comes up and it throws me all off again.
( with a hand raising, fingers shoving through his hair. yanks on the strands closest to his face; not enough to pull them out, but enough to feel the pressure of it. )
'm fine. Just wasn't a great way to start my day. ( in the middle of the afternoon. look, everyone has a different 'morning'. anyway-- )
People'll get pretentious over the stupidest of shit.
( experiences tie into one another. bleed together like the colors of a sunset. some things are hard to imagine if you ain't seen 'em, ain't lived 'em.
now gene, he's got a hard time with stories. no head for things like those superhero rags some fellas read or those penny novels robbie devours about fantastic things in far-off places, flash gordon an' all that. he's too grounded in reality to have much imagination in that way.
but you ask him to picture a fifteen year old gettin' beat an' he don't have to imagine it. he's seen it. boys that age or younger still, maybe they were maqui or dutch resistance or whatever else, wherever else. he remembers rollin' through a dozen different cities an' seein' it as many times over an' as many times again. the ss liked to make examples. an' boys on that cusp of manhood, too young to be taken up as soldiers but old enough to feel they ought to be, boys robbie's age. jason's. gettin' into situations they shouldn't've been an' not comin' back out again. sometimes strung up in the streets, bodies ripe with rot, whatever family they've got left forbidden from buryin' 'em because it was about sendin' a message. beaten, tortured, killed. for sport as much as anything.
survivin' don't make him lucky. there are some things it's kinder not to walk away from.
(reggie spent two weeks in a cellar in champagne. he ain't never spoke on it, but aveline told gene once he wouldn't've recognized the body.)
so gene thumbs idly at the label on his bottle, drinks it slow with a steady hand and hears jason saying i fucked up like bein' fifteen an' dumb somehow means he deserves what it lead to. beatin's somebody with a crowbar ain't somethin' what has a point but pain. an' beatin' someone's hard work — leaves a man breathless by the end of it. doin' it hard enough to put dents in solid steel? that's fuckin' insanity.
he's seen every possible reaction to trauma humans are even capable of an' then some. some folks get hard. some get all the more determined to be kind. jason's an odd mix of the two, maybe the rarest sort. because here he is, tellin' gene somethin' he would've been well within his right not to, takin' ownership for this awful thing, sayin' i'm fine because he knows gene's prone to worryin' about things of that sort. it's enough to break his goddamn heart.
he sucks a mouthful of beer through his teeth, swallows it down against the rise of bile. he wants to ask if the fella what did it is dead, but. that'd be more for him than jason, an' if he ain't — well, that'd be its own wound, wouldn't it? instead, soft: )
Reckon not.
( bein' a good start to the day, he means. easy to touch on. the rest is. harder. in some ways, he's a product of his time an' his time ain't one where the acknowledgement of trauma is somethin' he's got a script for. he fumbles his blind way along empathy, tryin' to suss out the right words. jason ain't the sort to want pity, nor the bitter, claustrophobic sorrow that grips him. the only thing he can offer is understandin'. a faint clear of his throat, an' then he continues: )
You know, the hardest thing about comin' back from the War was goin' home? You leave all the fellas who'd been in it with you, seen the same awful things, you leave 'em back at the train station or the docks an' you go home to folks who're expectin' you to be the same man you were when you left 'em an' when you reach for that fella... Lord, it's a hard thing to find him sometimes, buried beneath the shit you've survived.
( he ain't ever told anyone he feels that way. different. changed. like all his atoms got scattered an' put back together wrong. there's an indelible stain to his soul. an' it ain't just reg, an' it ain't just wöbbelin, it's those fuckin' donkeys in tunisia they threw outta planes that were brayin' in terror until angel walked up an' put a bullet between their eyes so they didn't have to thrash about in the ruin of their splintered legs. it's all the boys he saw drown at gela, it's every woman with war in her eyes an' every blown out home an' the millions starved at stalingrad an' it's this neverendin' fuckin'... thing that lives in him. )
But we live in the things we've seen. What we've done. ( his fingers flex. ) An' it's okay to have bad days, you know? You ain't under an obligation to hold it together for no one. You heal however works for you an' fuck the rest.
( jason's never had something to go back to, is the thing. he never went out to war. he never strapped a gun to his back and fought his way through it. but that's just it, isn't it? bruce has been stuck in his own goddamn internal war his whole life. he's brought kids into it, and while jason knows that he would've been worse off without bruce, that he would have been dead in an alley or become one of the assholes he works so hard to keep off the streets--he was still a damn kid.
he loves bruce, still. would throw himself in front of a bullet for him and the rest of his family despite how shit he's been treated recently. loves them so much his heart aches from it. hell, when he thought tim died? he was so upset he couldn't bring himself to go to his goddamn funeral. couldn't stare at the gravestone, and he's tried to kill that kid more than once. it's complicated, but it's the family he knows and loves. who are all stuck fighting off the scum who bring everyone else down, who don't know how to get back out of it.
they've gone out to battles, sure. against darkseid, against joker and his gang of nice pals. but he's damn sure bruce has never figured out how to step out of it--and neither has jason. being here?
it's fucking with his whole method of coping with the world around him. there's no door out. there's no way for him to burn everything around him down and start over, like he has back home. there's no escape route, no fake IDs, no desolate islands he can spend months and months on with barely any contact from the outside world. no obvious enemy, anymore. nothing to focus on fighting down before moving on to the next big baddie.
so. he gets it. in the sense that he's never had to come home. in the sense he doesn't know who he is buried under both his own internal battles and all the shit jason likes to get himself into. he doesn't know who he is without the red hood, without the guns and knives and bodies and anger he's still working on dealing with every damned day. without harley quinn being obnoxious and pressing up against him. without damian getting his goddamn arm cut off and all the grief he's been swallowing down since. and it's really not an aspect he wants to battle through.
because jason hasn't been jason todd since he was fifteen. since that last little bit of hope died down inside him and he watched as his world went up in flames. he's been trying to find it again, find what it meant to be himself. but it's damned hard. )
Yeah. ( he has to bite back the tears, for a moment. scrunches up his face instead. it's okay to have bad days is becoming something he hears more and more of but it still--catches him off guard every time because--it wasn't. it wasn't okay to have a bad day before. to lose himself a little bit and come out of it with blood on his hands. this isn't one of those days. or it won't be now, at least. violence is always his go-to, but gene had to come in and be all soft about it and now he doesn't have the fight left in him. funny how that works. ) No one comes back from near anything the same they were before, y'know.
( gene knows. he's sure. but jason stands himself up anyway and moves over to--ruffle his hair. )
People who expect you to walk into a warzone and come out the same you were before are shit. That's not how any of this works. You're the accumulation of your life experiences--discounting some and trying to pretend that shit never happened isn't good for anyone.
( and it feels like garbage to try and pretend otherwise. )
( an' then, jason troubles himself to try an' comfort gene. who ain't all that in need of it, an' ain't never been. it's such a testament to the strength of his character that ain't even all that surprisin' at this point of knowin' him. jason ruffles his hair an' gene just smiles some, ducks his head in a mock-avoidance of the gesture. )
I came here to look after you, brother, you don't get to turn that around on me. That's cheater talk.
( it ain't a clear you're welcome. that'd imply that it was somethin' for which gratitude was warranted an' he don't feel it is. this is just what you ought to do for your friends. )
( also taking the focus off of himself is a shitton better than leaving it on him. jason doesn't like--being the center of attention. doesn't like his own issues on blast. gene extended out a hand and offered his own, which--definitely felt a lot more safe than handling himself.
( gene reaches out an' thumps him one — not hard, on the shoulder. or, well, maybe more the elbow seein' as how he's still sittin' down to jason's standin' upright. )
An' for what it's worth, you'd be the first one I'd holler at to fish me outta a like upset just the same.
( he won't mention how it's his fault his own damn brother lost an arm. how it's his fault his team got sucked into a black hole. how he fucked up so bad he got disowned for a --what, third time? how when his own older brother got here, all he could do was look at jason with contempt despite how hard he tried to prove he wasn't batshit crazy anymore.
how he'd left his best friend who then showed up here, expecting shit to be the same as it was before. how he fucked up in the sim, over and over again.
I stayed Catholic in a foxhole, Jason, where we were usin' the frozen bodies of dead men to keep mortars off our heads.
( ain't a thing he's proud of, but at the end of the day, the dead were past carin' what their bodies were in use for. most of 'em, anyway. an' he'd know.
truth is, a frozen body absorbs impact better than any number of treebranches you could cover your dugout with. little known facts of the battle of the bulge. )
My faith is boundless.
( but he tosses off the rest'a that beer an' stands, claps a hand to jay's shoulder. his fingers flex. ain't quite a stand-in for a hug, but it's a close thing. )
You've earned that from me. Ain't no changin' it now.
now that's a terrifying thing to hear. not the bodies, not gene's own faith but the faith he's giving jason. there's absolutely nothing more scary than hearing someone believes in him, thinks they will eternally. because that's just it:
jason todd is a fuck up. he makes friends, he does good by then, and then he fucks everything up and destroys it. gets people killed, tortured. his expression goes--tight for a moment, worried, before it relaxes into something a little less obvious. )
( but he doesn't push. there's an equilibrium to be had, an' jason's already had a day. he doesn't exactly need an escort back, but he lets jason fall into step beside him anyhow. silence settles in the cracks, but it ain't the sort born out of discomfort or shame — it's just easy an' calm, leastwise for him to bear.
Roy's alright. Most the time. Sometimes he's an annoying asshole.
( he doesn't follow gene all the way. just far enough. enough to know that no one's going to jump out at it him in alleys for being at jason's place, enough to know he'll (most likely) be alright. and then he's turning around on his heels, raising a hand in a slight wave. )
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Date: 2020-07-23 01:08 am (UTC)so up he gets an' off he goes. he brings his musette bag just in case, slung over one shoulder. he's adapted to modern clothin' such that he ain't really distinguishable from other folks in new amsterdam, but the thriftshop bag with a handstitched red cross does on occasion cause him to stand out some.
anyhow, he gets to the apartment at a good clip, an' knocks on the door. )
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Date: 2020-07-23 01:15 am (UTC)there's no sass, just. jason pressing his lips together and throwing a duffel bag towards gene. )
There's something on my bed that definitely doesn't belong. You mind moving it?
( yes, that's the emergency:
a heavily blood-stained crowbar jason woke up with, rolled out of bed away from, and didn't know how to deal with in his half asleep stupor. )
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Date: 2020-07-23 01:31 am (UTC)but the thing is, he's still good at it. recognizin' when a fella's tryin' real hard to be calm an' casual about something but ain't all right or there. so rather than joke, gene just gives him a solemn nod an' claps him once on the shoulder before he heads on into the room.
he doesn't know what he's expecting. jason wouldn't call him over a spider or a dead rat or nothin' like that. what he finds is... a crowbar? he studies it a moment like a fella might a dud grenade an' then he picks it up as gingerly as possible. seems like there's a bit of hair on one end of it, plastered there by the coagulated blood.
he knows jay's a violent man. well-used to it, by the scars he saw the once. but as brutal as he imagines him to be, he also doesn't think that the man would beat someone to death with a crowbar. it's a medic's instinct that tells him plain that the blood, the damage, whoever this thing was used on is either dead or perilously close to bein' so. is it a warnin'? somethin' put there by somebody else (an' who the hell could sneak up on a fella as paranoid as he is?) or maybe it implies some harm's come to someone he knows?
he wraps it up in the duffel bag without another thought, an' then comes back outta the room. )
Jason. ( his voice has got that soft, groundin' tone to it he uses with wounded men an' horses. ) I'm gonna go take care'a this somewhere else, but before I go I gotta ask — is somebody hurt somewhere's I need to attend to?
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Date: 2020-07-23 02:18 am (UTC)old memories out to bite him in the ass. his head's a mess, a rush of jumbled old memories he's trying his damned best not to think about. his laugh, his words, jason's belief he'd be okay only to have to accept at the last moment that it was over, no one was coming to save him. it's the same goddamn shit that replays every time he gets stuck in a bad headspace. the same crap he still hasn't figured out how to get over yet even though he feels like he should have.
gene's voice sounds and jason snaps back to attention, winces while he raises a hand up to shove fingers through his hair. )
No. You can leave it, too. I just--couldn't deal with it. ( a breath in. steadying. ) It's mine. The blood and crap--just old.
( no one else to chase down. )
Sometimes this place likes to give us gifts from home.
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Date: 2020-07-23 03:03 am (UTC)he gives it a little drop/toss, mostly aimin' to get it nearer the door, an' then he gives jason a sort of sideways look. )
You gonna take a swing at me if'n I give you a hug?
( eugene hicks: could not fight his way out of a literal paper bag, but by christ can he take a punch. )
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Date: 2020-07-23 03:31 am (UTC)and gene asks him if he wants a goddamn hug. jason snorts, pulls a grin onto his face that doesn't reach his eyes. )
You still gonna go for it if I say yes?
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Date: 2020-07-23 03:40 am (UTC)Not if you're really opposed. But I will say, my primary objection to gettin' punched is purely principal.
( sometimes autonomy is more important. )
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Date: 2020-07-23 07:52 pm (UTC)Not really in a hugging mood, honestly.
( but he raises a hand, points behind him with a thumb. )
But feel free to make yourself comfortable, I'll grab you a drink then go find my pants.
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Date: 2020-07-23 11:53 pm (UTC)( he's mostly passed the cravings now, but lordy when they hit they hit like a truck. he's taken to chewin' gum much'a the time. but he nods, an' lets jay be. he leaves his own musette bag by the door too, takes his boots off. they're about as close to combat boots as he could find in the modern world, polished to a mirror-sheen. soldierin' never really leaves the soul, don't it?
from there, he makes his way to the livin' room an' takes up a chair. leanin' forward, fingers laced, elbows on his knees. his mind is an awful torrent'a all the things jason ain't sayin' but what he can plain infer, an' this feels a little like tryin' to navigate the mindfield of al's moods after one'a his night terrors. except, he's known al his whole life an' he can manage him. jason has more mystery to him an' there's no guarantee gene can offer him anythin' more than a steady presence an' an easy calm.
whenever jay brings out the beer he accepts it with a nod of thanks, an' then waits for him to come back out in some better manner'a dress. )
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Date: 2020-07-24 09:56 pm (UTC)not without taking one more look at the bag, though.
and once he's gone? uses the few moments of peace to take a few deep breaths. recenter himself. grabs onto the first pair of jeans he finds and throws them over what he was already wearing and shoves his belt on after. cinches it tight. grabs onto the knife he keeps under his pillow and clips it onto the back of his jeans. grabs onto a second one from the top drawer of his dresser too, just in case.
shoves that one into his front pocket. a lot more obvious. but once he's got an actual jacket on, the back one won't be.
not that he's shoving on his jacket now. jason shoves his feet into his own boots, doesn't bother lacing them up yet. then heads on out, sitting down in the chair opposite of gene to watch him closely. )
So.
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Date: 2020-07-24 10:31 pm (UTC)bein' here stripped him of somethin' that was so inherent to his identity that he feels half a man, but at least it ain't never given him anythin' yet out of cruelty. jason called him, he supposes, on account'a there bein' some level of trust between them an' gene ain't about to call in the chips an' ask for an explanation where none is due. bein' curious won't kill him, an' it don't need validation.
he rubs at his jaw thoughtfully, blunt nails scraping through the stubble he ain't bothered fussin' over in a day or two. )
My brother Albert, the next one younger'n'me. ( the one he's compared jason to more than once, which he likely remembers just as well. maybe what he says next will explain why — ) Got his arm blown off in the Pacific. Spent a year after in a POW camp run by the Japs. He ain't never said a word about it, an' I ain't ever asked. Few months ago — back-home months, I mean, must be comin' up on eight or nine now if'n we're talkin' ones I've lived since — he an' I were a few states up doin' some business an' we ran into a spot'a trouble with the locals at a Navy waterin' hole. One fella asked him if he lost his arm in a tractor accident. Funny 'cause we're southron sorts, huh? Hoo boy. ( al'd always been the one in the family who could whup anyone's ass he so chose. gene'd never known him to lose a fight, leastwise not anywhere in conecuh or at least three countries in any given direction. ) You ever wanna see an Alabama boy missin' his dominant hand kick the ass'a three Navy boys without spillin' his beer you can share the memory sometime.
( doubtless it seems a ramble. but he punctuates it with a faint shrug. )
Point bein', I ain't gonna ask. You got your life an' all its stories an' I ain't entitled to a one'a them no matter how many times you call me up for a favor. I care about you, an' that's that. It ain't a transaction.
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Date: 2020-07-25 05:42 am (UTC)doesn't get angry with jason, except for when jason is really asking for it and even then? backed down when he realized what jason was doing. it--reminds him a bit of markus. pisses him off too, because people who have a tendency to take care of others are always the first people try and take advantage of. but eugene--has a bit of a backbone to compensate, he's witnessed it firsthand.
which is why jason trusts him. hasn't known him long, sure. but gene is soft in places and harder in others, can read a room better than most. has offered jason comfort without expecting anything in return. brings him pies and deals with his asshole friends. deals with jason being a total asshole, too.
it's why he can't bring himself to be that bad, with gene. jason gets prickly when angry, gets loud. his words full of venom, spat out whenever he gets upset enough to start throwing down. finds what stings and digs into it until his opponent gets so pissed they beat him into the floor or tells him to fuck off and never turns back around again. both of those are wins, far as he's concerned. and maybe he hasn't tried pushing that far with gene, yet. but instinct screams that it'd be fucking pointless anyway, so. )
I was fifteen.
( it's a story he's screamed in anger. admitted to in whispers, thrown out bits and pieces and used them as ammo. but it's murmured this time, soft. )
I fucked up. Walked into a situation I shouldn't have, and I didn't come back out of it for a long time.
( no details. no using the gory bits here. this isn't a tantrum meant to guilt trip anyone, just an explanation. )
Hell, sometimes I'm sure I'm still in it. Even after everything else. Sometimes because of it. And then shit like this comes up and it throws me all off again.
( with a hand raising, fingers shoving through his hair. yanks on the strands closest to his face; not enough to pull them out, but enough to feel the pressure of it. )
'm fine. Just wasn't a great way to start my day. ( in the middle of the afternoon. look, everyone has a different 'morning'. anyway-- )
People'll get pretentious over the stupidest of shit.
cw war horrors/mentions of torture, animal cruelty, etc
Date: 2020-07-25 10:10 am (UTC)now gene, he's got a hard time with stories. no head for things like those superhero rags some fellas read or those penny novels robbie devours about fantastic things in far-off places, flash gordon an' all that. he's too grounded in reality to have much imagination in that way.
but you ask him to picture a fifteen year old gettin' beat an' he don't have to imagine it. he's seen it. boys that age or younger still, maybe they were maqui or dutch resistance or whatever else, wherever else. he remembers rollin' through a dozen different cities an' seein' it as many times over an' as many times again. the ss liked to make examples. an' boys on that cusp of manhood, too young to be taken up as soldiers but old enough to feel they ought to be, boys robbie's age. jason's. gettin' into situations they shouldn't've been an' not comin' back out again. sometimes strung up in the streets, bodies ripe with rot, whatever family they've got left forbidden from buryin' 'em because it was about sendin' a message. beaten, tortured, killed. for sport as much as anything.
survivin' don't make him lucky. there are some things it's kinder not to walk away from.
(reggie spent two weeks in a cellar in champagne. he ain't never spoke on it, but aveline told gene once he wouldn't've recognized the body.)
so gene thumbs idly at the label on his bottle, drinks it slow with a steady hand and hears jason saying i fucked up like bein' fifteen an' dumb somehow means he deserves what it lead to. beatin's somebody with a crowbar ain't somethin' what has a point but pain. an' beatin' someone's hard work — leaves a man breathless by the end of it. doin' it hard enough to put dents in solid steel? that's fuckin' insanity.
he's seen every possible reaction to trauma humans are even capable of an' then some. some folks get hard. some get all the more determined to be kind. jason's an odd mix of the two, maybe the rarest sort. because here he is, tellin' gene somethin' he would've been well within his right not to, takin' ownership for this awful thing, sayin' i'm fine because he knows gene's prone to worryin' about things of that sort. it's enough to break his goddamn heart.
he sucks a mouthful of beer through his teeth, swallows it down against the rise of bile. he wants to ask if the fella what did it is dead, but. that'd be more for him than jason, an' if he ain't — well, that'd be its own wound, wouldn't it? instead, soft: )
Reckon not.
( bein' a good start to the day, he means. easy to touch on. the rest is. harder. in some ways, he's a product of his time an' his time ain't one where the acknowledgement of trauma is somethin' he's got a script for. he fumbles his blind way along empathy, tryin' to suss out the right words. jason ain't the sort to want pity, nor the bitter, claustrophobic sorrow that grips him. the only thing he can offer is understandin'. a faint clear of his throat, an' then he continues: )
You know, the hardest thing about comin' back from the War was goin' home? You leave all the fellas who'd been in it with you, seen the same awful things, you leave 'em back at the train station or the docks an' you go home to folks who're expectin' you to be the same man you were when you left 'em an' when you reach for that fella... Lord, it's a hard thing to find him sometimes, buried beneath the shit you've survived.
( he ain't ever told anyone he feels that way. different. changed. like all his atoms got scattered an' put back together wrong. there's an indelible stain to his soul. an' it ain't just reg, an' it ain't just wöbbelin, it's those fuckin' donkeys in tunisia they threw outta planes that were brayin' in terror until angel walked up an' put a bullet between their eyes so they didn't have to thrash about in the ruin of their splintered legs. it's all the boys he saw drown at gela, it's every woman with war in her eyes an' every blown out home an' the millions starved at stalingrad an' it's this neverendin' fuckin'... thing that lives in him. )
But we live in the things we've seen. What we've done. ( his fingers flex. ) An' it's okay to have bad days, you know? You ain't under an obligation to hold it together for no one. You heal however works for you an' fuck the rest.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-25 06:48 pm (UTC)he loves bruce, still. would throw himself in front of a bullet for him and the rest of his family despite how shit he's been treated recently. loves them so much his heart aches from it. hell, when he thought tim died? he was so upset he couldn't bring himself to go to his goddamn funeral. couldn't stare at the gravestone, and he's tried to kill that kid more than once. it's complicated, but it's the family he knows and loves. who are all stuck fighting off the scum who bring everyone else down, who don't know how to get back out of it.
they've gone out to battles, sure. against darkseid, against joker and his gang of nice pals. but he's damn sure bruce has never figured out how to step out of it--and neither has jason. being here?
it's fucking with his whole method of coping with the world around him. there's no door out. there's no way for him to burn everything around him down and start over, like he has back home. there's no escape route, no fake IDs, no desolate islands he can spend months and months on with barely any contact from the outside world. no obvious enemy, anymore. nothing to focus on fighting down before moving on to the next big baddie.
so. he gets it. in the sense that he's never had to come home. in the sense he doesn't know who he is buried under both his own internal battles and all the shit jason likes to get himself into. he doesn't know who he is without the red hood, without the guns and knives and bodies and anger he's still working on dealing with every damned day. without harley quinn being obnoxious and pressing up against him. without damian getting his goddamn arm cut off and all the grief he's been swallowing down since. and it's really not an aspect he wants to battle through.
because jason hasn't been jason todd since he was fifteen. since that last little bit of hope died down inside him and he watched as his world went up in flames. he's been trying to find it again, find what it meant to be himself. but it's damned hard. )
Yeah. ( he has to bite back the tears, for a moment. scrunches up his face instead. it's okay to have bad days is becoming something he hears more and more of but it still--catches him off guard every time because--it wasn't. it wasn't okay to have a bad day before. to lose himself a little bit and come out of it with blood on his hands. this isn't one of those days. or it won't be now, at least. violence is always his go-to, but gene had to come in and be all soft about it and now he doesn't have the fight left in him. funny how that works. ) No one comes back from near anything the same they were before, y'know.
( gene knows. he's sure. but jason stands himself up anyway and moves over to--ruffle his hair. )
People who expect you to walk into a warzone and come out the same you were before are shit. That's not how any of this works. You're the accumulation of your life experiences--discounting some and trying to pretend that shit never happened isn't good for anyone.
( and it feels like garbage to try and pretend otherwise. )
Thanks for the pep talk.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-25 07:27 pm (UTC)I came here to look after you, brother, you don't get to turn that around on me. That's cheater talk.
( it ain't a clear you're welcome. that'd imply that it was somethin' for which gratitude was warranted an' he don't feel it is. this is just what you ought to do for your friends. )
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Date: 2020-07-26 03:24 am (UTC)( also taking the focus off of himself is a shitton better than leaving it on him. jason doesn't like--being the center of attention. doesn't like his own issues on blast. gene extended out a hand and offered his own, which--definitely felt a lot more safe than handling himself.
so it's only fair. )
You're alright.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-26 06:24 am (UTC)An' for what it's worth, you'd be the first one I'd holler at to fish me outta a like upset just the same.
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Date: 2020-07-26 05:57 pm (UTC)( an easy dig at himself but--whatever, he's fine. feels better already, at least. )
Finish your drink, then I'll take you back home.
( it'll get him out of the room for a bit too. )
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Date: 2020-07-26 06:02 pm (UTC)( he knows self-deprecation when he hears it, an' don't think for a minute he's gonna let you wallow in it, jay. )
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Date: 2020-07-26 08:05 pm (UTC)( he won't mention how it's his fault his own damn brother lost an arm. how it's his fault his team got sucked into a black hole. how he fucked up so bad he got disowned for a --what, third time? how when his own older brother got here, all he could do was look at jason with contempt despite how hard he tried to prove he wasn't batshit crazy anymore.
how he'd left his best friend who then showed up here, expecting shit to be the same as it was before. how he fucked up in the sim, over and over again.
but jason knows. that's all that's important. )
You haven't given me the opportunity.
cw for desecration of the dead
Date: 2020-07-26 08:11 pm (UTC)( ain't a thing he's proud of, but at the end of the day, the dead were past carin' what their bodies were in use for. most of 'em, anyway. an' he'd know.
truth is, a frozen body absorbs impact better than any number of treebranches you could cover your dugout with. little known facts of the battle of the bulge. )
My faith is boundless.
( but he tosses off the rest'a that beer an' stands, claps a hand to jay's shoulder. his fingers flex. ain't quite a stand-in for a hug, but it's a close thing. )
You've earned that from me. Ain't no changin' it now.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-26 08:24 pm (UTC)now that's a terrifying thing to hear. not the bodies, not gene's own faith but the faith he's giving jason. there's absolutely nothing more scary than hearing someone believes in him, thinks they will eternally. because that's just it:
jason todd is a fuck up. he makes friends, he does good by then, and then he fucks everything up and destroys it. gets people killed, tortured. his expression goes--tight for a moment, worried, before it relaxes into something a little less obvious. )
Let's get you back home, yeah?
( so he can never talk to gene again. )
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Date: 2020-07-26 10:56 pm (UTC)( but he doesn't push. there's an equilibrium to be had, an' jason's already had a day. he doesn't exactly need an escort back, but he lets jason fall into step beside him anyhow. silence settles in the cracks, but it ain't the sort born out of discomfort or shame — it's just easy an' calm, leastwise for him to bear.
though, after a spell of it — )
I like him, you know. Your pal Roy.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-27 04:07 am (UTC)( he doesn't follow gene all the way. just far enough. enough to know that no one's going to jump out at it him in alleys for being at jason's place, enough to know he'll (most likely) be alright. and then he's turning around on his heels, raising a hand in a slight wave. )
'til next time, Genie.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-27 09:28 pm (UTC)Yeah. Take care, Jay.