Young Writers Society

Megara gave Eddie's hand a comforting squeeze, hoping he would recognize it as confirmation. They had to get home. Even if Eddie was right and home really was more dangerous than here, they couldn't stay. She didn't know the first thing about this place, she wouldn't be able to navigate it well enough to keep them both alive and Eddie cared for.

Eddie stuttered out something through tears, though it was hard to tell what he was crying about, or even what he said, as he was switching languages sometimes between syllables.

"You mentioned technology?" Megara said to the boys.

They nodded.

"One of us should check the cave," Tim suggested. "Should I do it or should you-"

He was interrupted by a buzzing in his pocket. Frowning, he pulled down and checked who had just sent him a text. The frown immediately disappeared when he realized it wasn't anything horrible.

"...Do you need anything?" Tim asked, looking over at Dick. "Alfred's running errands, and wants to check before he heads home."

Dick shook his head. "I already went shopping this week, and I can get any tools I need from the cave."

Tim texted back a reply.

He gave Megara and Eddie an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry about that," he apologized. "Alfred is the butler here. It would have been rude for me not to answer him."

He glanced over at Dick. "...I can go check the cave, if you want to stay with them and show them around."

Dick nodded.

Tim was gone before anyone could say anything else.

Alphred, she recognized the name, but she couldn't quite place it.

She thought about that as they walked around, eventually coming to the back of the house where a small collection of gravestones stood resolute, cold and etched with the names of the remembered dead.

A few moments after they stepped into the yard, Eddie suddenly became distressed and ran to one of the graves, tearing out of Megara's grip and going to read the headstone.

"JAY-JAY!" he cried, looking back at Megara with tears in his eyes to point at the name on the stone, "Jay-Jay..." then he broke down in sobs.

Megara walked up to him, painting a puzzled look on her face as she read the name. This must be Jason's grave, meaning...So that's where she'd heard that name before.

He froze.

Eddie was crying about Jason's grave. If he was crying about his grave, they must have met somewhere along the line. But Jason had never mentioned someone named Eddie, and he had told the Wayne household everything.

He had told James everything.

"How do you know who that is?" he asked, voice quiet as he glanced between Megara and Eddie. The question was more directed at the former than the latter; she must have known him, too, given the expression on her face.

She glanced at him, considering lying for a second before dismissing the thought. What was the point?

"Long story," she said as she knelt beside Eddie and wrapped her arms around him, "It's alright," she murmured to him, ignoring their host, "It's alright." She wondered if this was really his grave, the one he got before he came back or if he died again in the time between him leaving her world and now.

"I have time-" James started to say, but faltered when he saw how distraught Eddie was. His gaze lingered on Jason's grave. No one was supposed to know that he was alive besides the ones who had brought him back, but...

"It's alright," James reassured Eddie, crouching down before Megara and him. "Jason came back. He just has a grave because everyone...everyone is supposed to think he's dead..."

Eddie didn't calm down. He didn't seem to hear as he clung to Megara and sobbed.

So this was his old grave. She switched to his native tongue, hoping the familiarity would help calm him, "He's not dead," she said soothingly, the smooth syllables and almost musical sounds helping in that endeavor, "This is from before we met him. He is alive. You saw him alive."

Eddie hiccuped and looked up at her, "Jay-Jay...isn't dead?"

She matched his language, "No, he's not dead."

He sniffed and blinked, processing slowly.

He struggled to understand what Eddie was saying, but he did understand what Megara said - it just took a little bit of thought before he could process it. He looked from Eddie to Megara. They had seen Jason alive. It must have been recently; Jason hadn't been alive for that long.

"How is J-" He faltered. He knew exactly how Jason was. He wasn't nearly as invested in his story as he should have been, but he knew what Jason was supposed to be like after he died. He wasn't like the Jason he had seen grow up anymore. He was different. And even though he had always known that was what was going to happen, he couldn't help but miss the boy he grown so used to watching over.

Megara looked up at him. It wasn't hard to tell what he was going to say.

"Jason was alright the last time I saw him," she said simply.

"Jay-Jay makes good food," Eddie added. Megara gave a small smile and nodded in confirmation. Neither of them had had anything nearly as well made since, which was Megara's fault. She couldn't cook, and she could never find the time to steal something decent from one of the local shops.

He let out a breath he didn't realize he had been holding.

"Thank you," he quietly.

He wasn't sure which one of them he was thanking - or even if he was thanking them at all. There was just something relieving about knowing that Jason was doing alright. He couldn't tell if the simple answer was because Jason's version of alright was different than most people's now, or because of some other reason, but he was still okay.

He looked over at the grave.

"...Jason's my little brother," he said. "The one who died."

"He's an idiot," she said bluntly, laughter in her voice, "He tried to hide that he'd been dead before. Didn't think I'd recognize autopsy scars when I saw them." It really was a halfway reasonable assumption if context were removed. She was just some random girl taking care of a little boy, why would she know what it looked like after someone was cut open and stitched back together? But they had just gotten done with a little fight in which she had ended up revealing she knew at least something about weaponry and poison, those put together should have had him being more cautious.

But no, he was apparently many kinds of bad at thinking things through. So, autopsy scars.

James gave a small smile.

"That sounds like him," he said. It was something he could imagine resurrected Jason doing, but, even more so, it was something pre-resurrection Jason would have done. His Jason. James didn't even realize tears had formed in his eyes until they started sliding down his cheeks. It wasn't anywhere close to sobbing, but they were still there.

The edges of Megara's lips angled downward slightly. Eddie was okay now, fiddling around and muttering happily as though nothing had happened as he acted out a game with his hands on the ground before him.

So she got up and went to James. She didn't know what kind of comfort he needed, but she didn't give herself time to debate. She just wrapped her arms around him and hoped she wasn't stepping over any boundaries.

He stiffened when he felt her embrace.

For a moment, he felt like he was a kid again. His mind flickered back to standing outside of the grave he had made for his goldfish - Jason was far more important than a pet could ever be, but Percy had been his everything back then. Charlie had been there, too, and Charlie had done exactly what Megara was doing now.

Just a hug.

A tear fell onto the top of her head.

She tightened her embrace when he didn't pull away. She'd never done this before, not for anyone but Eddie. She'd never done it for anything important. When Eddie got upset, she knew what to say, how to assure him that everything was alright because she knew that everything was. She'd dealt with Eddie's problems, she'd run away from the closest thing she'd ever had to James'.

She'd only had one person she'd cared about die. She'd only ever run away from her grief.

The difference was, Rory wasn't coming back. Jason already had.

She didn't know how to relate to James. She didn't know how to tell him how it was going to turn out. So she hugged him.