Young Writers Society

There was no hesitation in his answer.

He had another world, once, but that world was no longer his own - and he was glad for that. He was a Gotham resident now, proud despite all of its corruption, villainy and everything else that someone might hate a city for.

"It's a little wild," he admitted. "And dark, too. But I've seen so many that I can never really describe. We have cities and towns, like your world probably has. But every major city usually has its own hero and set of villains. And the powers that they have - it's incredible. One set of heroes can fly. Some can do things with their minds. I've heard of people with water powers, clones, and people who can run faster than ever should be possible."

"So you're all magicians?" she asked.

It was a concept. Heroes and villains, black and white, good and bad. The language she'd been taught her whole life not to believe in. She didn't think about that any further. That wasn't likely what he meant by it.

It was interesting that not one of the systems of law enforcement could deal with the 'villains' effectively. Or maybe the 'heroes' were affiliated with the governments? She shook her head. She was going to give herself a headache.

The only reason she needed to know about Jason's world was to understand him, specifically. There was no need to go overthinking the whole ordeal.

He rubbed the back of his neck, eyes glowing in what almost seemed like embarrassment - not that Jason knew. "I'm not a magician," he admitted, "and they don't technically go by that. I think there's a few that are actual magicians, but most of them call themselves superheroes."

His hand returned to his side.

"I'm just a vigilante," he admitted. "I had nothing to do with coming back to life; that was thanks to this weird artifact Damian's family has."

Megara's hair was bothering her. The loose curls were seemingly intent on getting in the way every time she tried to take a bite of her food. She huffed in annoyance, listening as Jason finished his explanation, and pulled a length of black ribbon - cut off the mask she'd been wearing when she was Ivy - from her pocket with which to bind her hair once she finished twisting it into a braid.

As she bound the end of the braid with the ribbon, she responded, "Your world must be awfully chaotic with resurrection as an option. I would be screwed if we had such a thing here." She finished tying the ribbon into a small bow and went back to eating. Eddie would probably be upset that they started without her, but he'd calm down as soon as he was presented with food.

He nodded in agreement.

"People rarely stay permanently dead," he agreed, "and it's never in the way you would think it would be. It's one big, jumbled mess of rules. I don't like to think about it too much - it hurts my head."

He moved one of the plates over next to Megara, preparing to go get Eddie from where he had run off to. "I am grateful for it, though. I'd rather be alive than dead, and I'm grateful that my family will never stay dead for long."

"Sounds exhausting," she said, letting her head thump against the wall behind her, "Go ahead and get Eddie, he'll throw less of a fit if we haven't finished eating before you go to get him."

She tried to imagine what it would be like if people could come back to life. If her family could come back to life. She shivered. She was sure her birth family was wonderfully mundane. Nobody-nothing's with peaceful little lives doing peaceful little things with no idea what that daughter they had so long ago was up to and how much blood was on her hands. It was her real family, the one that took her in, that gave her such a reaction.

She planned to have her father dead through some ceremonious means. Some dramatic end to his understated cunning that tormented so many. If he could come back, everything she did would be in vain.

Back to square one.

It was then that she decided that Jason's world was a horrible place.

He nodded.

Leaving Megara with the eggs, he headed in the direction that Eddie had gone. He didn't know what Eddie was up to right now, but he hoped he had calmed down since he had gone storming out of the kitchen.

"Hey, Eddie," he said, "breakfast is ready!"

Eddie was near the entrance sitting in the rubble with a set of smoothed pebbles arranged before him for some kind of game.

He looked up when Jason called and grinned, apparently having forgotten the events of the morning, "Break-fast, break-fast!" he chanted and dashed past Jason back into the kitchen.

Jason grinned, following Eddie back into the kitchen. Though Eddie had started before he did, it was easy to catch up with him - he did have the added advantage of having longer legs. By the time that Eddie finally reached where the food was, Jason was already there with Eddie's plate all set in his hand.

He just hoped Eddie would like it.

"Here you go," he said, holding the plate out to him.

Eddie took the plate and dug in with his hands, grinning between messy bites of egg and seemingly too engrossed in his meal to comprehend the world around him. One would think he hadn't eaten in weeks.

Megara opened her mouth to remind him to use utensils, then decided to just let it go. He would ignore her anyway.

She gave Jason a look like, can you believe this kid?

Jason returned the look with an expression that bordered on amusement and agreement - he wasn't entirely surprised, but Damian had better manners that Eddie did. Maybe it was just the age difference?

"Do you like it?" he asked. "The recipe isn't the one I was originally going to use, but I had to improvise."

"Mhm," Eddie mumbled around a bite, then shoved another fistful of eggs in his mouth.

Megara shook her head, "You're a very good cook," she told Jason, "Thank you."

He was. Such a fact was brought starkly into the light by the fact that Megara was not a good cook. She could make simple things like bread and whatnot, but anything more complicated or that involved seasoning and she was screwed. She was always adding too little here, too much there, unbalancing the whole ordeal and probably burning something in the process. It was nice to be able to eat something that wasn't ruined in some way or another.

A blush spread across his cheeks.

"Thanks," he said, taking a bite of his eggs - he hadn't touched them at all when talking with Megara earlier, and had been so focused on hearing their opinions that he hadn't eaten after bringing Eddie back into the kitchen. "It's not as good as Alfred's would have been, but he's better at cooking than I'll ever be..."

"Alfred?" she asked. It was a very foreign name. She'd place it somewhere among the less sociable groups of freshwater mer if had been a name she'd heard at court.

Eddie paused in his eating, stared into space, then resumed. Megara assumed he'd just had a thought that he decided required his attention, or he'd decided to tune into their conversation.

He paused for a moment.

"He was my family's butler," he said. Jason rubbed the back of his neck. He knew how surprising that must have been - he had never really adjusted to being in a rich family, and it still made him feel a little uncomfortable when he thought about the life he had lived for those three long years. "I think he's more like what a grandfather would be like, though - he always was happy to show me how to do new things, and he always kept an eye on how I was feeling."

He looked down at his plate.

"...I miss him," he admitted.