#[ p: royh ]

[gothamcitylazarus]

coming apart ;

It was strange, being in this body, having all this knowledge without knowing how, having a body that made him feel like he was a young man again. He had not been young in a long time, despite how his appearance may deceive people. Besides, his body had long since been betraying him while his mind was still sharp, and he couldn’t do that anymore. That was why he decided to reunite the pieces of himself that had been split apart. 

And, oh, it felt good. 

He had missed the feeling of being young, of having this sort of power in his stance and in his gait that made him feel like he was invincible. With his mental acumen and now the body of a much younger man who had been in a Lazarus Pit not once but twice, he knew that there was nothing anyone could do to stop him. He had a team of assassins—which had ended up being pretty much all of them—follow him here. He was ready to burn this eyesore to the ground. 

It helped that the body he now inhabited belonged to one of the detective’s little proteges. The detective had always been his greatest foe, the only one who was capable of stopping him, but this gave him the edge he needed. How would the detective be able to beat his son? He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. While he wore this face, the demon was untouchable. 

The detective had many weaknesses, and this was one of them. The child was one of them. The detective held people too close to his heart, he relied too much on that unreliable thing beating in his chest than on the intelligence the demon knew him to possess. What a waste of talent—what an excellent addition he would have made to the League of Assassins. Of course, half the reason the demon had admired him was because of his rigidity—and that same stubbornness almost brought the League down.

Before he went after the detective, he knew that he was going to have to prepare. The first thing he did was go to the child’s apartment. It was too easy to get into that building with the face he was wearing, it was too easy to find the key hidden in the molding and walk in with a duffel bag over his shoulder like this had been his home for years. 

He hardly noticed the sound of Jason, still screaming, in the back of his mind. The child was of no importance to him now.

[ @arsxnalroy ]

[connorxhawke]

blood on your hands ;

 Connor was always good with directions. He remembered the way past Roy’s apartment, after he had walked Roy there after their talk—though he just made it seem like Roy’s place was on his way home, he had really wanted to make sure the man got home safe, especially with the ginger way he had been carrying himself. And this had turned out to be handier than Connor had thought it would be—he didn’t expect to find himself in a situation like this, but for all his meditation and all his breathing techniques, Connor couldn’t manage to get himself to calm down.

He had moved in with a random roommate he found from craigslist, and he certainly couldn’t go home like this, covered in blood in his green arrow suit. When he went to Roy’s place, however, he couldn’t find it in himself to actually go up and knock on the door, and so instead, he just crouched in the partial shadow of the small alleyway between Roy’s building and the next one, feeling the blood drying and growing sticky on his face and on the front of his suit. He hugged his knees tightly to his chest. Keep breathing, Connor. Keep breathing. 

Usually, the sound of Master Jansen’s voice in his ear would remind him of everything he needed to remember, but it wasn’t working that night. He shook his head to himself, ducking his head and pressing his forehead against his knees, taking deep breaths and trying to keep the smell of iron out of his nose.

@arsxnalroy

[gothamcitylazarus]

i wish we had more time ;

“Shit. Shit!” Jason’s voice carried through the apartment as he flipped through the surveillance footage from the cameras he had set up around his and Roy’s apartment. He was almost inclined to throw his laptop across the room as he flipped through the live feeds, and he shook his head, his voice growing into a yell. “Damn it!” He slammed the computer shut and pressed a hand over his face, pausing for a moment just to take a breath. 

There were four men, heavily armed, currently descending upon their apartment, two of them coming down from the roof and two of them coming through the hallway. This was it. Jason didn’t want this now, this couldn’t happen, now, he didn’t have enough time here. That was what it all came down to—time. He wanted more time before he had to go. He wanted more time to figure everything out, rather than feeling like he was leaving everything half-finished. 

Of course, things could turn out fine and Jason could come home and this would be the end of his involvement with the Mossad, but if it was that easy, they would have sent one of their own guys. There was something fishy about all of this, that much was for sure, and he had been trying to dig more into it, but he didn’t have the time to do it. He didn’t have the time to make amends. He didn’t have the time to say goodbye. 

He strode into the bedroom with a purpose, rifling through his desk. “Roy! Roy, where’s the tracker I gave you?” he asked, tossing papers aside, uncharacteristically messy as he searched for the tiny black device, finally finding it and palming it easily. He picked up his duffel bag containing all of his Red Hood gear, finding the hidden pocket inside and carefully dropping the tracker into it before closing it up again so that it was practically undetectable. 

“They’re almost here,” he said, looking up at Roy for just a second as he walked in before looking back down at the bag, making sure he had everything he needed. Jason ran a hand over his hair, feeling his lips tugging down into a frown that he passed off by pressing his lips together. He wasn’t going to show how scared he was when they got here. He wasn’t going to show anyone. Jason kept staring down at the bag. “I’m leaving tonight.”

[ @arsxnalroy ]

[gothamcitylazarus]

i’ll take care of you ;

When he went to pick up Roy from physical therapy, it was clear to see that that day’s session had been a lot tougher than most of the ones that Roy went through, and Jason hated seeing Roy in pain like that. He knew that the PT would help in the long run, but it wasn’t easy for either of them—it wasn’t easy for Roy to go through it, and it wasn’t easy for Jason to know the right thing to do to help him with it. 

Having been through physical therapy before, he knew that a big part of it had to be the frustration at being unable to do the things that he used to do. Jason had been dreading going to physical therapy because of that—he was almost inclined to keep his exoskeleton on forever, just never take it off and never deal with the weakness in his muscles and the inflexibility in his joints, instead just rely on that machinery forever.

Jason knew that he had to go, however, it was just a matter of time until he did, and he wasn’t sure when he’d do it, he just knew that he would. For now, however, he couldn’t. Instead, he had to remain whole and strong to help Roy get through this before he thought about himself. That was how Jason always was—he was always putting those he cared about before himself, especially when that allowed him to avoid his own problems.

Even thought he knew he didn’t have to, he still helped Roy into bed that night, making sure that everything was adjusted the right way and he wouldn’t be uncomfortable before carefully crawling into bed next to him. The dog walked in circles and circles on the edge of the bed to get comfortable before he finally settled down, too, curled into a tight ball while Jason curled into Roy’s side, his head resting on Roy’s shoulder. 

“How was it today?” he asked, shifting his shoulders slightly and hearing the exoskeleton on his back whirr and adjust with him. Jason’s hand came up to gently trace down the side of Roy’s face before his index finger and his thumb caught Roy’s chin, turning his head to face Jason so Jason could lean forward and press a quick kiss to his lips.

@arsxnalroy

[gothamcitylazarus]

all of me is all for you —

Jason let his fingers gently card through Roy’s hair as he sat there on the couch with Roy, a book in one hand and Roy’s head in his lap. Jason had been there 24/7 since they had come home from the hospital, unable to do anything but think about Roy—think about everything that had happened, think about everything that he had to investigate still, and, most importantly, think about how close he had been to losing Roy. 

He couldn’t stand the thought—that they had only been a hair’s breadth away from being cut in half, that Jason would lose Roy before he could even have him. Jason was pretty hard-hearted when it came down to things—loss was not something he was unaccustomed to, but losing Roy would break him. He knew that about himself. He knew that he and Roy were intricately intertwined, and if all those threads just snapped—Jason would be lost. No doubt about it.

Of course, they should have been talking about it—the whole married thing. He knew that. They were legally married and Jason had been wearing a wedding band every time he walked into the hospital to prove to the hospital staff that they were married as a cover story, though it turned out to be the most truthful cover story he had created yet. And here they were, coming up on three years of being legally married, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to bring it up. 

A deep sigh left his chest as he put his book down, resting it on the arm of the sofa as he looked down at Roy. “How are you feeling?” he asked, noticing that Roy was waking up again—bringing Roy home just a little bit too early meant that he was still pretty badly injured, so Jason had been watching him like a hawk—the last thing he wanted was to screw this up. This was literally life and death—both his and Roy’s. 

Leaning down, he pressed a kiss to Roy’s forehead. “You’ve been out for a few hours,” he elaborated, looking down at his watch and then back at Roy. “It’s been almost 5 hours. Are you hungry?” He wanted to keep Roy occupied—keep his mind off the wedding band that Jason had been wearing, keep his mind off the fact that only a few days ago, they found out that they were actually, legally married. He just wanted to keep going as normal.

Things had changed, however, this meant change, and Jason knew that—he just didn’t want to deal with that change. Jason was the definition of growing pains—he never did well with change, no matter how hard he tried. It just wasn’t something that he handled well—his life had been so unsteady that he clung to the static moments, and watching them slip through his fingers actually hurt him. He didn’t like the feeling of being on shaky ground.

Still, if there was anyone he would be on shaky ground with, it might as well be Roy. Jason felt solid around him. He felt like everything that bottled up in him, everything that hurt him and made him feel weak, it was all normal with Roy. It didn’t make Jason any less of a person. It didn’t make him damaged or ruined. When he was with Roy, he felt like all those broken pieces were just a part of him—it didn’t matter if they were broken or not. 

And that was a feeling that was hard to come by, to say the least, and so Jason clung to it and Roy. Whatever Roy wanted to do about—all of this, Jason would go along with. He just wanted to keep everything good between them, however that happened. He wasn’t going to allow his own insecurities and self-doubt force them apart. If that meant that he was Jason Harper-Todd now, well—would that be so bad?”

@arsxnalroy

[gothamcitylazarus]

sea of love ;

Jason pulled himself onto the balcony, falling onto the concrete with a heavy thud, panting heavily as he felt every part of his body ache. It had been a rough night, to say the least, and he was too tired to get himself to move off the ground, just raising a hand to his ribs and feeling them expand uncomfortably. There was blood and mud caked on his skin and in his hair, impossible to tell what blood was his and what wasn’t, and he had bruising all over his torso and on his face. 

His lip was split, and as he ran his tongue over his dry mouth, he tasted copper behind his lips and winced. Exhaustion weighed down his bones, and he felt somewhat sick, panting as he tried to keep the nausea from over-taking him, his eyes sliding shut. He let out a soft groan, feeling his shoulders and chest heave with the effort. Jason thought about getting up, about pulling off the body armor that covered him, but he just undid one of the straps before he stopped, his muscles burning.

It had been a shitshow, to say the least. Jason should have been in and out, but he didn’t expect his mark to have friends—and big ones, at that. They might not have been as skilled as Jason, but they could pick him up with one hand and slam him against the wall if need be. He couldn’t help but feel like a ragdoll as they threw him around, and Jason barely managed to finish the job and get out. 

Every part of him hurt. Every single inch of his body hurt and was exhausted and he just wanted to drag himself to bed, but he couldn’t even bring himself to do that, instead just lying on the balcony, splayed out exactly how he fell onto the concrete, blood dripping slowly from various scrapes and cuts on his body—none of them insanely serious, but he certainly was going to be leaving a stain on their balcony before the night was over.

He didn’t know where Roy was, and he couldn’t bring his mind to recall where Roy was at that moment, his eyes closed as he tried to slow his breathing down, tried to get himself to calm down and pull himself to his feet, but he just couldn’t. He was empty, his body feeling like it was sinking through the floor, his chest just void of all emotion. Jason couldn’t do anything but lay there, eyes shut, tasting iron in his mouth.

@arsxnalroy

[gothamcitylazarus]

a light on a hill ;

Jason didn’t realize when they had ended up like this, but he actually didn’t mind the feeling of Roy’s arm around him. 

Usually, Jason was pretty averse to cuddling. The physical contact, the intense proximity of it always came along with too many emotional repercussions that he didn’t want to deal with. There was something about it that was suffocating—the sense that he wouldn’t be able to escape this grip, the feeling that he was trapped. Moreover, though he wasn’t quite aware of this, it usually brought back memories that his mind had been working hard to suppress. The connection made his stomach twist.

However, both of them were clothed, just lying in bed, just enjoying each others’ presence and holding each other tight. Roy’s arm was wrapped around Jason, and Jason had his fingers intertwined with that hand, holding both of their hands to his chest. Their legs were tangled together, and Jason absentmindedly ran his toes over the shape of Roy’s foot, actually enjoying the way that Roy just seemed to engulf him. Jason hadn’t known this about himself. He loved it. 

He nestled in closer to Roy, pulling Roy’s hand tighter around him, wanting more of that closeness, that security, that feeling of safety that he had been lacking for so long. He closed his eyes. He could get used to this. 

“I had a fucking awful day,” he mumbled, not really thinking about it as music played softly from the speaker in the corner of the room. Jason was grateful for the constant humming of sound—it made him feel less anxious. It made it easier to allow himself to be close to Roy. “You took forever to get home.”

@arsxnalroy 

[gothamcitylazarus]

use somebody ;

Jason was going to tell Roy about the baby, but he decided not to after talking on the phone with him. He wasn’t ready to tell Roy about it, and he was sure that Roy wasn’t ready to hear about it. Besides, he had only told Bruce, and he had no plans to tell anyone else—it wasn’t a reality he was quite ready to face yet, and he didn’t want to make Roy face it with him when they were already on shaky ground.

It was stupid of Jason to have run away the way that he did. It was cowardly, and it was what Jason always did—he was always running away and he was always pushing his problems outside, and now, it was coming to bite him in the ass. He knew that it was only going to get messier from here, with things with Meg and a baby and having to deal with his own issues before the baby got here so he could at least try to not fuck the kid up—

It was a lot to think about.

He already knew that he was going to be going back to therapy, but the rest of it, he wasn’t so sure about. Jason had quit taking the meds that had managed to keep him level before everything with the Joker happened, and since then, he had been on a roller coaster—he hadn’t been able to even think straight for longer than a few days before the mood swings came back, before the depression hit, before the numbness washed over his body. He didn’t know how to explain that to Roy.

That was why he was writing it all down, so, worse comes to worse, he’d just read off the paper in his hands, and that would be that. He had a bottle of wine next to him, half drunk—he had wasted no time in getting some alcohol in his system after hearing the sound of Roy’s voice—and on his lap, sitting on top of a book of photography that Jason had been thumbing through earlier, was two or three pages of handwritten notes that he was scribbling out and making adjustments to so that he could say wha the wanted to say without it coming out a jumbled mess.

Still, Jason wasn’t ready when the door opened, and sitting on the floor behind the couch, he considered bolting again. He didn’t think he was ready for this. He didn’t think he ever would be. He took another swig straight from the bottle next to him. 

“I’m back here, Roy.”

@arsxnalroy

[gothamcitylazarus]

i’ll be the courage you lack ;

At least when he was asleep, he wasn’t shaking. That was what Jay told himself, sprawled out on the couch with Roy sprawled out—next to him? On top of him? They were a tangle of limbs he didn’t quite understand and didn’t quite care to understand. His fingers traced absent shapes on Roy’s upper arm, his thick-framed glasses perched on his nose as he flipped lazily through The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins, 

Still, his mind wasn’t focused on the words on the page. Rather, his gaze kept getting draw to Roy, just to make sure he was still breathing, that he was still doing okay. He found himself staring at Roy more than a few times, blinking slowly before he realized what he was doing and went back to the book. In an hour, he couldn’t have read more than ten pages of this book—which really, wasn’t all that difficult to read, anyway. He bit down on his lower lip, his eyes flicking to Roy again.

Feeling a surge of paranoia in his chest, something inexplicably tightening, he just shifted his hand to wrap around Roy’s upper arm, squeezing lightly. “Roy? Roy, you still alive?”

@arsxnalroy

[gothamcitylazarus]

broken wings ;

Jason threw his phone at the wall, and he heard it shatter with a satisfying sound of broken glass. It was only one of his numbers, and he had all the contacts from it memorized, anyway, so it just didn’t matter to him, not anymore. He just wanted to feel better, and he wanted to take out his frustration and his anger and wanted to feel something get destroyed at his fingertips, and he felt better for a second before he felt monumentally worse. 

He pressed his hands against his face for a moment, feeling a sob shake in his chest, but he forced it down, shaking his head to himself and forcing his body up off the couch. Walking over to where the phone was lying on the ground, he felt his hands clench into fists, unable to stop the tremors that shook all over his body. He pressed his lips into a tight line, shaking his head before bringing up his foot and letting it stomp down hard on his phone—one, two, three. He looked at it again. He stomped once more. The glass shattered again under his foot as the phone literally broke in two.

And for another brief moment, he felt better. Then he just started feeling worse again. A lot worse. He didn’t know what to do with himself, with his hands, curling them into fists so tight that he felt nails digging into his palms, but he didn’t care, looking around and trying to find something to do with himself that would make him feel better, but there was nothing to do but just ride out the panic that had risen in his chest. 

The first thing Jason did was walk into Roy’s room and root through his laundry hamper—overflowing, as usual, though Jason tried not to focus on that—and dug out one of Roy’s sweatshirts, pulling it over his head. It fit a little awkwardly, stretched out in the shoulders—years of archery would build up your shoulders, he supposed—where Jason was narrower, his torso a little longer so the sweatshirt was a little short, but he didn’t care about that. He cared about the smell, about wrapping himself up in the smell of Roy, wrapping his arms around himself as he went to his own bedroom, sitting down on the edge at first, on top of the covers, before easing himself down, curling up into a ball. 

It was quiet—too quiet—but he was too tired to turn on music or do something else to calm himself down as he curled up even tighter, lying on top of the blankets, clenching his fists so tightly that his nails dug into his skin hard enough to make his palms start to bleed. 

Barb managed to come over for a little while, and during that time, he felt a little better, a little distracted while they just watched a movie—which move, he didn’t remember, but it distracted him while it was on, so he didn’t complain. After a while, however, she had to leave again, and he was left alone in the apartment, shards of the shattered phone scattered across the floor in the living room. Left to his thoughts, Jason started to panic again—and a call from Patty certainly didn’t help matters—and he kept replaying Dick’s words in his head. He was a murderer. Nothing more, nothing less. He was a murderer, and he was doomed to be a shitty father because of his own shitty parents, and he didn’t think he could do this. The panic only got worse the more he thought about it. 

Usually, having music on in the background helped. It didn’t help, not really, not this time. He was still clenching his fists so hard that blood started to collect in his palms.

@arsxnalroy

[gothamcitylazarus]

wastelands ;

Jason didn’t know what to expect as he finally managed to get the comm signal strong enough in his helmet to find out from where Roy had been transmitting. By the time he had triangulated it, he had already been in far too many fights. The crack in his helmet had proved to be its downfall, as it had split open, half of it having broken where it had originally been covering his face. 

(That was after a Dominator had thrown him against a wall, which, admittedly, had been his fault for not thinking straight, but that was neither here nor there. Jason didn’t want to think about it.)

He wondered if he would see Bruce’s body. Maybe Selina’s, next to him, as they always seemed to be. Maybe he’d even see Tim, curled up with an “R” splashed across his chest, bloody, broken, just like Jason had been. It almost made him not want to go there, almost made him want to just run, pretend that he had never even been here in the first place.

It wouldn’t be the first time Jason ran. As Red Hood, he could find thousands of places to hide out, take on a different identity, pretend to be someone he wasn’t, pretend to be anyone but Jason Todd. The thought was one that he had considered more than once, something that he had wanted for a long time, if he was going to be honest, but he couldn’t escape that. There was no cure for being born.

(Well, there was. He’d considered it. Never came close.)

Running across rooftops had become difficult in his injured state, so he just didn’t do it, instead walking as well as he could, which was really a limp when it came down to things. Still, he kept going as best he could, using his grapple gun and feeling the strain on his shoulders, the weight in his spine. He should have known it would turn out this way. 

When he saw them from afar, seeing Batman in his cowl, standing upright, Tim with that stupid staff, he started to berate himself for believing that they were dead. The weight in his chest only got heavier, however. Where was Roy?

Swinging through so that he could land near them, rolling through the landing like Bruce had taught him all those years ago, he ended up on his knees, unable to stand for a moment. When he did stand, however, and he saw Roy, he pushed everyone aside, kneeling next to the archer. 

“Roy?” Jason put his hand in Roy’s. “Tap once for yes, twice for no. Do you understand?”

@arsxnalroy

[gothamcitylazarus]

heartbeat

Jason had tried moving. That had been a mistake. Every inch of his body felt like it was on fire, the pain shooting through his leg and through his torso especially with his broken back and the broken ribs. Now shifted over to the side of the bed, he was still denying painkillers, despite what the nurses had been encouraging him to do—and he had convinced them that he was fine, that he could be on his own. 

But he was tired, and he was in pain and he was sick of being in this hospital and he was sick of constantly thinking about what the Joker had done to him. Jason had been alone more often lately, and he couldn’t blame the people who were around him for that—they needed to continue on with their lives. Jason couldn’t ask them to be here at all hours, at every second just waiting and watching. He would have liked it. He didn’t have it in him to ask.

He had been shifted to the side of the bed just to avoid moving him anymore that he had already moved, leaving an empty column of white next to him as he leaned against the frame of the bed. Jason had told himself that it was fine, that he just had to breathe through it, that he would be okay in a moment and that the pain would pass, but it was becoming harder and harder to do that.

Whenever the pain came back, he thought about what put him here. He thought about how his entire life was nothing. How he meant nothing. He thought about leaving the hospital. He thought about leaving Star City. He though about pulling the leads from his chest and the tubes from his arms and hobbling over to the window as best he could and just lean back until he fell out. 

He’d probably just come back, anyway.

A hand raised to his good eye as he felt his cheek get wet with tears, and before he knew it, he was crying to himself. He didn’t even notice as the door opened, a hand over his face as he tried to get his breathing under control.

@arsxnalroy