Young Writers Society

His gut twisted and churned.

She already had an injured leg.

She already had an injured leg, and he had just taken away her good one.

His lips drew into a thin, tight line as his skin paled and green - now glowing - eyes widened. Jason didn't think a lot about the origin of his alter ego. He didn't like to draw the connection between Red Hood and Joker, especially when everyone else was so keen on doing it. But Red Hood had been the Joker's previous act, before Jason redid it and made it his own, and it was hard not to draw the connections between what he had done and what the Joker had done to Barbara Gordon.

He didn't really know her that well, but he knew the story line. Everyone did. The Killing Joke was infamous for crippling Barbara as a plot device, and she was only able to reinvent herself as the Oracle when a different set of writers took over.

No. Joker had hurt her to antagonize. This had been to protect himself, and to protect Eddie. He didn't know that she was Meggie. Neither her or Eddie gave any clue that they knew each other in that way, and he had been justified in shooting her after she shot him first.

...But that didn't make him feel any better.

"I understand," he managed to croak out. His eyes were welling up with tears. He tried to stop himself from crying by furiously blinking them away, but the tears stubbornly remained. Why was he crying over this? There were so many other reasons to cry in his life, but this was the breaking point? Comparing himself to Joker, even when he knew that they were really nothing alike?

He was crying. He was crying.

That fact only made her angrier.

She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting off her own tears. She refused to be weak here, now. In front of him.

With a frustrated sigh, she distracted her mind with logistics. He had to stay here. His injury would need attending to in the morning and she had to make sure the poison didn't have any lingering effects. She had never had a reason to use the cure before, so whether or not it worked at all had yet to be seen.

He couldn't sleep in Eddie's room. There was no space for them to share the single, small bed and sleeping on the floor wouldn't be good for his arm.

"You'll have to sleep in here," she decided, unhappily, "I've never used the cure before, so if you start to react I need to be nearby." She pulled herself fully onto the bed, wincing in pain as she moved her wounded leg.

"And for the love of the gods stop apologizing," she added, "You're only making me wish I hadn't said anything about the poison."

He nodded.

An apology died on his lips as he looked around the room. He doubted she had any spare clothes that would fit him, so he would just have to sleep in what he was wearing. But the room was already warm, and he doubted he'd be able to fall asleep wearing the heavy duty clothes he included as part of his Red Hood outfit. The pants would have to stay, but maybe it wouldn't be too bad taking off his shirt? His autopsy scars would be as plain as could be, but she hadn't commented on the shrapnel ones - she hopefully didn't know anything about autopsies.

"Thanks," he said. He looked over at her for a quick second. "It's a little hot in here, so I'm going to take off my shirt - I just wanted to give you warning before I did."

Careful not to irritate his wound, he removed his shirt and laid it down beside his jacket and helmet. More shrapnel scars littered his torso, chest and back, but the most prominent of the scars were the autopsy scars on the front of his body.

Megara didn't notice at first, simply nodded when he said he was going to take his shirt off and focused on getting herself under the covers without tearing up from the pain.

When she did turn toward him, she froze. Those were...She shook her head. They couldn't be. He was alive, after all. They had scarred up properly and everything.

She blinked. She was tired, her eyes could be playing tricks on her. She had never known herself to hallucinate before, but that bomb she'd diffused before could have been one of Briar's. Gods knew what that girl could have coated it in. Even with gloves, there was never a guarantee Megara hadn't picked up something toxic.

No, it wasn't one of Briar's. It had been too easy to diffuse to be hers.

Megara blinked again.

No, they were there, and he was alive.

"Those are autopsy scars," she said tactlessly. It was unclear, even to her, if she was even fully aware she said it aloud.

He froze.

She knew what autopsy scars looked like.

Shit.

"They're not autopsy scars," he quickly said. "They're-"

He faltered.

How could he possibly come up with another explanation? They were definitely autopsy scars, and there was no other explanation for why they would be shaped in that pattern.

He let out a sigh.

"...They're autopsy scars," he reluctantly admitted.

She stared.

"You're alive," she said tactlessly, unsure which of them was the dumb one she was simplifying for.

"...I know," he said. He wasn't really sure what else he was supposed to say. He could explain everything with the Lazarus Pit, but that would involve explaining who he was - and, if Megara knew anything about what went on in Gotham, it would probably result in him revealing both his and Bruce's secret identities.

She just stared for a beat. Two beats.

She let out a frustrated sigh and ran her fingers through her curls, or tried to. They were unbrushed and messy, meaning her fingers couldn't comb through them. She picked out a knot with her hands, a momentary distraction as she mulled his words over.

She eventually gave up and dropped her head back against her the headboard, one hand falling down to the edge of the bed, awfully close to where one of her knives was tucked into a hidden pocket in the mattress.

She looked him over, "Explain the scars."

He faltered.

Why couldn't something like this have been in the comics? Then he could have an idea of what he was supposed to say, or how Jason would have actually handled a situation like this.

He stared at her with a hopeless expression in his worried, now glowing green eyes.

...He was going to have to tell the truth, wasn't he?

"I died," he said, "and was brought back to life."

"...uh-hu...."

She was staring, not at the scars anymore, but at his eyes. They were glowing.

There are two ways to apply this fact, the voice in her head was her father's, ever teaching. Either this is proof in his favor, or you are being fooled.

He would instruct her to assume she was being fooled. To use her words and her tact to corner him into telling her the truth.

She sighed.

Suddenly, she was pinning him down with a knife at his throat. Her leg was screaming in pain, but she blocked it out for now.

"Where are you from?" she asked calmly, "What's your home called?"

The glow in his eyes faded ever so slightly.

He was scared. Of course he would be - he had a knife up against his neck. But Jason also had come to realize that the thought of Eddie seemed to influence all of Megara's decisions involving him, and he knew that she wouldn't want to risk worrying Eddie. She was just trying to intimidate him. And, as someone who had lived with Bruce for several years, and had been a diehard fan of Jason Todd before he died and became him, he knew a thing or two about how intimidation worked.

"I'm from Gotham," he said, looking her right in the eye.

Gotham. She'd never heard of it. The word could be from one of the eastern languages, the suffix 'tham' meant 'safe' in three of those languages. It could easily be the name of a place. But he wasn't eastern by any means, not in appearance, not in accent, not in language.

She cursed. "You're not from this world, are you?"

She didn't remove the knife, though it was pretty clear it wasn't the least bit effective. Though she should probably expect someone with so many scars to know how to resist intimidation.

He looked around the room, and then back at her - her question having confirmed what he was already beginning to suspect.

"I don't think I am," he admitted.

She cursed again and rolled off of him.

"Let me guess, you don't know how you got here?" she said, flopping back on the bed and staring at the ceiling. It was Skull all over again. The difference here was, she didn't have any favors left. If she showed up at the university, Finn would turn her over to her father. Then they were all dead. He'd probably have Eddie killed, too, just to teach her a lesson.

She closed her eyes, trying to piece together how she could get him back where he belonged.

He sat back up and looked over at her.

"I don't," he confirmed - he wished he could say more than that, but he honestly had no idea what he was supposed to do now. He thought for a moment, shifted his weight and finally decided that Peter wasn't really a name he needed to use here if no one would recognize his actual name. "...If this isn't my world, I can tell you my real name. It's Jason. Jason Todd. Peter's just an alias I've been using, since I'm technically supposed to be dead right now."