Young Writers Society

"Jason," she repeated. He was supposed to be dead because he was dead. He had the scars to prove it. Then he was resurrected, somehow. Cute.

She sighed, "We can deal with this in the morning. Eddie may come in here in the middle of the night. Nightmares."

He nodded.

Then he finally laid down on the bed, eyes lingering towards where he was sure Eddie would come in. He didn't have a problem with the thought. It hadn't happened too often, but sometimes Damian had nightmares, too. Damian didn't really ask, or even try to wake him up. He'd just find Damian snuggling up against him when he woke up in the morning, the remnants of tearful dreams on his cheeks.

He rolled over on his side so he wasn't facing her.

He started to close his eyes, but hesitated and opened them again a second later.

"Night, Megara," he quietly said.

He closed his eyes again and quickly fell asleep.

Megara didn't sleep.

It wasn't the pain that kept her awake. She'd slept perfectly well after her increasingly severe punishments back when she'd lived in the manor. If anything, the pain might have helped her sleep better at this point. A comforting reminder of how things used to be.

That thought made her want to laugh, or cry, or scream. It made her want to react.

No, it wasn't the pain. She was calculating.

She'd never kidnapped anyone before, but Finn did have a family. They were already being threatened, a redundancy to keep Finn under control, but perhaps if they were in more immediate danger...

She squeezed her eyes shut.

Many hours later, she was still thinking through the problem. How was she supposed to put together a summoning circle? She couldn't do it by herself, and it wasn't like there was anyone left on this world who would help the Count's rouge assassin with the plethora of death penalties on her head.

She was broken from her thoughts by the shifting of the shadows in the room. She looked at the door.

Eddie had silent tears running down his cheeks as he shuffled over to Meg's side of the bed and climbed up without a word.

She wrapped her arms around him as he climbed into her lap and hummed a quite lullaby as he sobbed into her shoulder.

Jason couldn't stay asleep for long.

Usually, he was a heavy sleeper. But his wound was making it hard to focus on falling back asleep after he woke up from his unsurprising nightmare, and hearing Eddie enter the room was the last straw; he knew he wouldn't be getting any more sleep that night. He turned over onto his other side - wincing when he accidentally put pressure on his injury - and settled for sitting up instead a second later.

He looked over at Eddie, heart melting when he saw him sobbing into Megara's shoulder.

Without really thinking of it, his hands went for his wrists. He rubbed them as his gaze turned to his lap, trying to ignore the old memories flickering through his head. Trying to ignore the old dreams, too, ones that stubbornly followed him over from his first life into his second and third.

Megara glanced over at Jason when he moved, worry that she hadn't the mind to hide furrowing her brow. She knew that look. Her eyes dropped unconsciously to his wrists, searching for scars that matched hers.

He was remembering something painful. The kind of thing you're supposed to break down and sob about, but the only ones who ever seem to cry are the ones who weren't there, who didn't experience it.

Sympathy filled her eyes. She could hate herself over it later.

Then Eddie spoke, his works broken up between sobs and gasps for breath, "She-she's gonna...she's gonna come for me!"

"No," Megara said soothingly, turning her full attention back to him, "No, she won't. I won't let her."

Eddie cried harder, "But...but you won't...you won't kill her! You do it to all the other...the other bad...bad guys!"

Megara couldn't respond.

He let go of his wrists.

His old life - his first one, not his time as Robin!Jason Todd - drifted off into the confines of his memory, forgotten so he could focus on what he had just heard Eddie say. His problems weren't Eddie's problems. It was selfish to draw a comparison, and selfish to do anything other than worry about why someone so little would be so afraid of something. Why he would be so afraid of someone.

"I won't let anyone hurt you, either," he said, scooting a little closer to both Megara and Eddie.

Eddie sniffled, "Meggie won't kill Cook," he said, putting the weight of the world into his words.

"I can't," she said gently, "Cook isn't-"

"SHE IS THE BAD GUY!" Eddie screamed, pushing Megara away but only managing to push himself off of her lap into Jason, "And you won't make her stop!" he broke down again, inconsolable as he curled up into a ball and shook with the sobs that wracked his body so hard he looked like he might break.

Megara looked pleadingly at Jason. She didn't know why, it just felt like he could know what to do. He would know better than her for sure.

She didn't know how to explain to Eddie what murder was, why death wasn't a good thing, why she wasn't the good guy either.

Her gut twisted as, not for the first time, she wondered why she allowed herself to keep Eddie in her care. Why she didn't drop him off with someone who knew what the hell they were doing.

Jason was only just beginning to learn about kids.

He had taken some parenting books out of the library when he had first taken Damian in, and had even looked a little into childhood development. He was nowhere near an expert on kids, but all he needed was a little common sense to put it together. Megara was good at fighting. She also had poison on hand with her, and had shot him with a poisoned arrow. He had guessed it was because she wanted to protect Eddie from him, but he was beginning to realize it wasn't just someone acting desperately.

Megara was as used to things meant to kill as he was used to things meant to fight. He didn't question why. He didn't want to. But Eddie had to know that she did it, or else he wouldn't be so insistent on "Cook" needing to die. It was a terrifying thing to hear from someone so little.

But it was a familiar thing too.

It was something the real, canon Jason Todd had always insisted. It was why he became Red Hood, and why he was so upset with Bruce for never killing Joker. Bruce wasn't a killer like Megara was, but he could have been one. And just like Bruce stopped himself from murder so he didn't go in too deep, Megara couldn't kill "Cook" because both she and Eddie would go spiraling into something they couldn't get out of.

Even if Cook had done something to hurt Eddie.

He scooted over a little so Eddie had more room to lay down in between him and Megara, and straightened the little boy out with a gentle touch of scarred hands.

"Death is tricky," he said, keeping his words simple and his tone soft. He grabbed onto Eddie's little hand - noticing it was even smaller than Damian's was - and gently guided it towards the autopsy scars on his chest. "I have a little secret. A very, very bad man killed me, and a magical pool brought me back to life. I got these scars from when everyone thought I was dead forever."

He looked down into Eddie's eyes.

"Dying is really scary," he said. "Even if you know you'll be alright after it, it still hurts. It hurts after you come back, too."

He let go of Eddie's hand, clenching his chest with his now free hand.

"It's not just pain like when you stub your toe," he said. "It's pain like when you lose your favorite toy. Sometimes it still hurts me, even though I've been alive again for awhile."

He put his hand down.

"...My dad saw me die," he said. "And my dad was really, really sad afterwards. I knew he was sad, too, but I thought he wasn't sad enough. I thought he was supposed to be more sad, and more angry too. I wanted him to kill the bad man as much as the bad man had wanted to kill me, and he never did."

He laid back down on the bed, ignoring the pain as he put pressure on his injury.

"He did put the bad man away," he said. "He made sure he put him in the best prison he could find, and made sure the bad man could never hurt anyone else. And I didn't really understand why my dad didn't want to kill him until my dad told me that he wanted to, too, but stopped himself because he knew that he would lose everything that made things good."

He reached a hand out and pressed his palm against Eddie's chest.

"I know it must hurt in there," he whispered. "But neither of us can ever make the people we care about lose what makes them the good guys, because then we'd be killing them, too."

Eddie heaved a breath and cried some more.

Megara gave Jason a grateful look before reaching out to Eddie, holding out her arms for him to crawl back into.

A beat later, he did. "You have to kill cook," he muttered. Then his eyes closed, ever gradually, and he drifted off to sleep.

Megara drew him in close.

After a little while, it was clear Eddie was fast asleep.

Megara looked at Jason, "You can go back to sleep, you know," she said quietly.

Jason gave a small smile.

"I wish you saying it would make me able to," he said. He pointed at his stitches, turning a little so he wasn't directing all of the pressure onto his injury. "This woke me up, and I don't think it's going to let me go back to sleep now."

He knew the first part was a lie, and something told him that she probably knew that, too, but he wasn't used to talking about what was bugging him. His time at the Wayne Manor had been the only time where he really had any sort of support, and that felt like an eternity ago.

She looked at the stitches. He had been sleeping on his opposite shoulder. If he'd fallen asleep with it, then it was unlikely it had actually woken him up.

She shifted to tuck Eddie in between them. Usually, she would carry him back to his bed, but tonight she had a slight issue with her ability to walk.

"Do you want to go back to your world?" she asked suddenly, still keeping her voice down. It had dawned on her that maybe he didn't want to go back at all. Anyone with scars like those and that look in their eyes deserved a choice, at least.

The question made him falter.

He already knew the answer. There was only one possible one - he had too much responsibility in his world to suddenly leave. But, just for a second, he let himself imagine what it would be like if he never went back.

Then he thought of Damian, and that was the end of that of thought.

"I do," he confirmed. He looked down at Eddie. "I have my own Eddie I need to take care of. He's away for a few days right now, but I need to be home when he gets there."

The little sliver of hope burned out of her eyes.

She thought she was done with the violent crimes and the coercion. She was stupid to think so.

"I understand," she murmured, "I can help." It was a lie for now. She'd fix that soon, though. As soon as she could devise a plan and regain the capability to execute it.

Noticing the shift in her eyes and in her voice, he realized that she might have been hoping the answer was no - despite what she said, he was sure hopping between worlds and realities was just as difficult in this world as it was back on his second Earth.

"Thanks," he softly said. "I'm sure we'll figure out something - people like me are known to do the impossible. If I could survive dying, I can definitely get through this."

She frowned at him, shook her head slightly, and lay all the way back down. He didn't get it. He wouldn't get it until she explained, and she wasn't going to explain.

She turned so her back was to him and closed her eyes, "Goodnight, Jason," she said.