Jason couldn’t breathe.
He was dying. His hands were scrabbling at his throat, clawing deep into flesh and drawing blood. He was choking, dying, and he couldn’t breathe.
A fire was blazing in front of him. A whole apartment block, up in flames, and Jason knew there was someone on the top floor, choking too.
Someone was dying. Someone was choking on the thick air and the smog and Jason was sitting there, just letting it happen.
Stop.
In one, two, three, and out, one, two, three.
His hands left his throat and he pushed himself up, back onto his feet, and stumbled towards the fire.
His heart was beating a thousand beats per second, his pupils were dilated and his whole body was wracked with shivers as he forced one foot in front of the other. Shaking hands pulled up his hood, pulled on gloves, popped the collar of his jacket up, and did up the zip.
His nerves were on fire, and he couldn’t breathe.
But someone was dying, and then he was jogging, and then running, and then sprinting up the stairs, and his lungs felt like they were collapsing inwards and his mind was roaring and completely silent.
One floor, two floors, five and then the seventh floor.
Jason fought off a coughing fit and forced his trembling voice into a shout. “Hello? Anyone here?”
A terrified scream rang out, and then: “I’m in the bathroom! You have to help me!”
Stuttering, stumbling, shivering and shaking. He ran through the flames as fire licked his clothes and the smoke-filled his chest with gray, gray ash. Boots dragging on the floor, eyes snapped open, unblinking, and a hand that he vaguely registered as moving forward and slamming open the bathroom door.
Stumbling, heavy feet running towards loud sobs. Quivering arms wrapped around a shaking body. A window, already smashed open, the near-silent zip of the grappling hook, a sudden, weightless heavy fear smashing onto Jason’s shoulders and a hard crash to the floor.
Jason lay, gasping, curled up around the figure, crying and crying. They scrambled out of his arms and into the relieved embrace of their family, and Jason remained curled up in a fetal position, heavy with sobs.
Dully, he could hear the sounds of a thankful family, but the fear was washing over him and would carry on drowning him until he could breathe again.
When Jason woke up in the middle of the night and screamed out of a nightmare, he was paralyzed with fear. And then the fear would raise his adrenaline, and then the terror would crash into him again. He was trapped in a continuous cycle until he blindly grabbed his pills, beta-blockers, and forcibly stopped his adrenaline. If they weren’t on hand, he’d spend an hour desperately trying to breathe, until he dissolved into angry tears and his day was ruined.
It had been three years and eight months since that night, and three years and eight months since he’d seen Bruce, and yet the reminder of him clung to Jason still.
He was forever crippled by his own body.
He was not living. He was barely getting by.
Three years and eight months ago, Jason fled. He got onto the first plane and landed in Oregon, and he’d been living there since.
He got a job as a builder, because dead men don’t have degrees, and he worked Monday through Saturday unless someone was willing to pay more for him to come in on Sunday.
The men there liked him. He was a strong, capable young man in his mid-twenties, a good sport when you knew what buttons not to push, bound by honor and willing to beat the ass of any disrespecting idiot.
It was clear to them that he’d been through something. Every inch of his skin was marred with scars and burnt and rough. His hair was cropped short, military style, with odd white roots that made an appearance every few weeks. And when he would suddenly fumble for a white plastic container every time something fell and crashed, or someone misdirected the machinery and things went flying, they would never say anything. He respected their boundaries, and he respected theirs.
Jason knew they were curious, but he didn’t say anything. He smiled and joked, went out for drinks, and laughed uproariously when he’d only order OJ or water from the bartender. “I like to have my wits about me all the time, and besides, who’s gonna make sure one of you doesn’t get hit by a car on the way home?”
“You’re just a lightweight, Peter,” they taunted.
Peter Johnson. To everyone else, he was a nice, fun, capable guy.
Jason looked in the mirror and saw a shadow, waiting for death.
In the weeks following that night, more than fear, more than terror, Jason felt fury.
He trashed his apartment. He beat up criminals and kept beating them until they didn’t get back up. He’d broken every cup in his apartment, every plate and all the mirrors. The bedframe was splintered in two, the walls were covered in bullet holes and the smooth stone of the bathroom was cracked.
Fury raged in his veins, and then the blood rushed to his head and he dropped everything and sunk to the floor.
An endless pattern of anger, hoping it would override the fear, but it never did, and Jason was trapped.
One month, two months, and the anger gave way to calculated wrath. He contacted every specialist he knew, even the ones he loathed, but they’d come, hum and haa at his head, shake their own, and leave. Some were working on the Bat’s orders. Others were simply confused.
Six months of searching produced nothing, and he sank into acceptance.
This was it. This was all he ever was going to be.
When people were in danger, he’d drug himself full of pills and run towards the screams. And then he’d take too many hits, because the drowsiness would hit, and then the pill would stop working because his enhanced body always burned through drugs way too quickly. And if he was lucky, the person would have been saved, and he would’ve gotten away with no lasting injuries.
Too bad Jason had truly sh*t luck.
One year after that night, Jason had been idly flipping through the tv channels, balancing the Count of Monte Cristo on one knee and a cup of Earl Gray tea on the other, when he heard gentle tapping at his window. His heart rate spiked, and his hands flailed and then started to seize up. Trembling fingers snatched up a pill and he swallowed it dry. Heavy breathing, muscles tense, and eyes as large as saucers. Twenty seconds later, his heart slowed back down and he slumped back into his chair. And then his knee was burning, and hot liquid was dripping down his legs because in his panic, he’d knocked over his tea. Great.
Jason hauled himself out of his chair, grabbed a tea towel and started dabbing at his pants as he hobbled over to the window. He took a steadying breath and swung it open.
“I will shoot you,” he warned, despite being completely unarmed.
A purple figure clambered through the window frame and tumbled to the floor. “Hey Jason,” Steph groaned.
“Get out,” he said, anger nipping at his words. No, anger was bad. He shoved it out of the way.
Steph pushed herself up onto her feet and raised her hands disarmingly. “Hey, I’ve got nothing on me.”
Jason’s knuckles were white. “Good for you. Get out.”
“Jason, wait.”
“No, blondie, you don’t get to make me wait. Now get the hell out of my apartment before I chuck you out the window.”
She took a step back and lowered her arms. “I wanted to see how you are.”
“I am fine,” he gritted out, and balled his fists into his pockets, because tension was starting to rise through his body. “I’m alive. Leave.”
“Look, Bruce-”
“Get out!”
Something snapped in Jason, and then terror flooded his ears and froze his heart. He crumpled to the floor and dug the heel of his hands into his ears. Steph ran towards him and crouched. “Jason!”
“My pills,” he croaked. Gasp. “Table.”
A second later, a single white tablet was dropped into his now open hand. He shoved it roughly into his mouth and swallowed.
Breathe.
You’re not dying. You’re alive.
Breathe.
After what felt like an eternity, he opened his eyes. Steph’s worried gaze met his. “Jason,” she said mournfully.
“Get out.”
“I’ll make him pay. I promise.” And she stepped out of the window and into the night.
Jason’s legs gave out and he crumpled to the floor. A single tear slipped down his cheeks.
Bruce was coming. As soon as someone in the family found him, Bruce would come. Just thinking about that outcome made him panic, so he quit his job, waved goodbye to the men he was starting to become friends with, and flew out of the country.
He landed in Mexico City, left the Benito Juarez airport and started backpacking across the country. He spoke to the locals, who took one look into his empty gaze and welcomed him warmly into their homes. Jason let his native tongue guide him through the city, and he soaked up a place that was so foreign and yet felt so much like home.
When people had a problem, the locals always approached Jason. “Ese Jason, él solucionará cualquier problema que tengas.”
He hopped from household to household, helping anyone who needed it, free of charge, in exchange for a place to sleep and one solid meal a day.
Mama Elena, the grandma of some kid who’d nearly got himself kidnapped, would not hear of him leaving her home after her grandson came home tearfully explaining what had happened, Jason in tow. She sized him up with sharp, calculating eyes, and then forced him to eat with the family, and cleaned up the attic for him.
But, nothing in Jason’s life stayed good, and the changing winds brought whispers of the Bat, so he picked up his backpack, kissed Mama Elena’s cheek, and caught a plane to Venezuela, with his funds running dangerously low and his access to beta blockers becoming more and more shaky with every added mile south.
Caracas, Venezuela was a dangerous place. He nearly got mugged at Maiquetia Airport, and there seemed to be traffickers and gangs eyeing his every move. He laid low and traveled to the more rural areas, staying with the Canache’s, a farming family who appreciated another hand in the fields. The patriarch, an old man of almost eighty, crippled and weary, gripped Jason’s hand so tightly when he promised to help them in the first half of the harvest season and said something Jason was likely to never forget.
“Que Dios recompense el infierno por el que habéis pasado y os salve de aquello de lo que huís.”
May God reward you for the hell you have gone through and may He save you from what you are fleeing from.
But there’s no rest for the wicked, and with the gale in March came the whispers again, and left Jason in Paraguay, having hitchhiked across the north of the continent with the last few dollars he had.
His last tub of beta blockers ran out two days ago. His legs were exhausted. He’d lost about thirty pounds, he was dehydrated and sapped of energy. Fear loomed on the horizon like a promise. It was only a matter of time.
Jason counted the number of drops of water that fell from the ceiling of the shack he was in, to keep him centered. His eyes drifted close.
In his dreams, a large, black figure was standing across an enormous field. It kept walking towards him at the same pace, but every time Jason sped up to run from it, he’d turn around and see he hadn’t gotten any further. The figure kept getting closer and closer, and white lenses became sharper and sharper with the closing distance until he was a few feet away, and then:
Jason lurched up from the rough floor and sobbed. He screwed his eyes shut.
A few moments, and his heart rate fell. He opened his eyes again, and they fell on a black figure in the corner of the shack.
A hallucination. Just his luck.
It moved, silent despite its weight. It opened its mouth and
“Jason.”
That voice. Gravelly, ragged. Present, real. Again. “Jason.”
Jason’s mouth moved silently. Blood rushed to his head and pounded against his ears. A sharp, high sound pierced through the air as the figure kept speaking, but Jason couldn’t hear him. The sound shot through his head and sank into his bones as his heart kept pounding and blood kept rushing, pumping around his body too much, too fast.
His lungs kept expanding but his chest was so tight and
Jason couldn’t breathe.
He was dying and his hands were scrabbling at his throat. Bloodshot eyes watched the figure’s eyes narrow, and the man approached, hands outstretched. No no no no no no no-
Don’t -
And his heart was racing and then it wasn’t anymore and the figure’s mouth kept moving and rugged hands were on him and his heart had stopped and his mind went blank and he couldn’t f*cking breathe-
“Jason!”
And it all went black.
