Young Writers Society

Megara's silence was enough.

"I miss him," James said. He wasn't sure if he was talking about Charlie or Jason at this point, and wasn't sure why he was telling this to a girl who was mostly a stranger. But Jason knew her and trusted her, and that had to mean something.

His mind focused. It was Jason that he missed the most right now. He always missed Charlie, but Charlie's pain was becoming easier to deal with over time. "I'm not supposed to know that he's alive," James quietly said. "He doesn't know that I know he's alive. But..."

"But you still know. You still miss him." It had to hurt more that way. She imagined that Rory was alive somewhere, within reach but choosing to stay away. She swallowed the lump that formed in her throat. No. No. Megara couldn't handle pain like that. It was a wonder James could.

Or maybe he couldn't. She looked up at him, not realizing she'd been crying until she had to blink the moisture from her eyes. Everything about him looked like a cracking facade. A broken mask with naught but pain beneath it.

James managed a nod.

"I thought the worst pain was knowing I'd never see someone again," he said. His mind flickered back to thoughts of Charlie - of all of the moments they shared together, and of their last. Of Charlie rushing to help him, even as they both knew it was too late-

"This is even worse," he whispered. "He's so-so close, but he'll never be my Jason..."

"He'll return," she said. It was a shot in the dark. She didn't know him well enough to know that for sure, but from the way he spoke to her when he was in her home, it seemed like he missed these people. Like he wanted to go back to them. "You'll get to know him all over again." It sounded like a promise. She couldn't decide if it was.

James shook his head.

"He never will," he said, with a certainty that Dick Grayson wasn't supposed to have. It wasn't a desperate denial - it was a confident counter. He knew Jason's story. They had lost Jason Todd the moment that he had died. The Jason that had taken his place had been twisted by anger and being revived in the Lazarus Pit.

"Yes," she countered, her voice hardened with certainty, "he will. He'll be different, but so will you. When he died he came back, that doesn't happen in my world. And I can promise you he isn't some twisted version, either. If he was, Eddie never would have led him back to...our home." She hoped she was convincing. She didn't care about much this way, but what little shi did wasn't allowed to go wrong. Not while she was capable of changing that.

He shook his head with more emphasis.

"Jason is good with kids," he quietly said. "He always has and always will be. I'm not surprised that Eddie trusted him. But I...I know how his life is supposed to go. Jason is never going to return to my family."

Jason was never going to return to him.

He was just going to hate him for being just as indecisive as Bruce was when it came to killing the Joker.

"He wants to," she knew she wasn't lying. She could hear it in the way Jason had spoken, see it in his body language. He wanted to return more than anything. "I don't know if there's anything he wants more."

"You don't understand," James said. He looked over at Megara, his expression suddenly emotionless - though, if anyone knew him well, they would know that an emotionless expression from James was a sign that he was feeling very emotional beneath the surface.

"I know how Jason's life will go," he said. "It's not meant to make you pity me. Jason Todd is never meant to live in this manor again - our father and him are never going to have the same relationship, and Jason is never going to like Tim. At some point, he'll even try killing him."

She got a hard look, "How the hell can you know that? In case you haven't noticed, you have free will. He has free will. I don't give a damn if you went to some oracle who told you whatever possible-future BS they felt like spouting at the time, you acting like there's only one possible outcome for everything is only going to make things worse. Take it from someone who would know." And she was thinking about Rory again, damn her.

She shoved those thoughts from her mind, into the past where they belonged, and focused on now. Her frustration, namely. With James and his certainty that Jason was this other person, nothing like the boy she'd housed and almost killed, who cooked for her and Eddie and who she'd pushed away. Who she had resolved never to see again.

....oh.

James took a deep breath.

He knew he wasn't supposed to be sharing this. It was their greatest secret; Tim and him had promised never to stray too far from canon. But Megara and Eddie just being in Gotham was a major error in the continuity, and he was starting to realize that telling the truth wasn't going to make things any worse than they already are.

"I know this is going to sound absurd," he softly said, "but I know what is going to happen because we're in the middle of a story. Tim and I are like you. We're not supposed to be here, but we are. The only difference is that we've become two of the characters - Tim Drake and Dick Grayson."

She blinked.

"You're...I didn't expect that." She tried to wrap her head around it. There were pieces missing, details she knew she didn't know, but she didn't try to figure them out. She wasn't sure she wanted to.

"It's difficult to comprehend it if you aren't living it," James admitted. He hadn't ever truly understood fanfiction that depicted something like this until his own life ended prematurely. Becoming Dick Grayson was both a shock and an experience; he wasn't sure he could imagine his life going any other way at this point.

"Yeah..." she shook her head, a thought forming, "Are you sure that Jason isn't like you?" she asked suddenly. It wasn't unlikely, and it fit with some of the things he'd told her, not to mention Jame's claims. What he was describing didn't sound like the Jason she'd met in the slightest. She wasn't even sure if Jason was capable of killing anyone.

James faltered.

"I am," he quietly said. "I...I want to think that he is. I tried to see if he was like me, but he never once acted differently than he should have. Jason could never be like me."