( 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. )
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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. )
no subject
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.
no subject
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. )
no subject
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. )
no subject
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. )
no subject
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.