Whumptober Day Eight: pneumothorax | exotic illness | "definitely just a cold"
{Watched Titans recently, so there is just a bit of 'Jason' profanity that has peeked out through this sea of angst which I just wanted to be crackish for once with Tamaranean Chicken Pox...
Then it truly hit me. I am an angst/whump writer and this whole thing is so toxic to me I don't know whether to laugh or sob.}
[Jason Todd & Batfamily Members]
-!!!-
Jason Todd was officially a chicken.
He had been suffering under the effects of Tamaranean chicken pox for a few hours until the feathers started appearing, covering his arms and neck, a few even sprouting from his temples and cheeks. There were bumps under his skin – signs of feathers that were going to break free. It was hell not to relieve the itch that crawled all over his body, to break the blisters that drove him to near insanity.
"It's just chicken pox," Kori had told him after they came back from space, "It's nothing big. Expect it to go after a few days."
If Jason couldn't survive the first hours, how was he going to survive days?
Rubbing his gloved nails over red skin, he gritted his teeth together and turned in his cocoon of sheets, wondering if sleep would drag him down. The echoes of silence were bouncing in his head, the cool draft of the opened windows giving him gooseflesh. His mind was free to roam, longing for stimuli.
Back when Jason was sick and Robin, Bruce used to swaddle him in blankets and switch on the television as background noise as he murmured the tales of Jane Austen and Ronald Dahl, his features twisting as he switched tones and pitches for the dialogues.
Dick never had the opportunity to witness Jason so vulnerable, but on one occasion they had stumbled upon each other in a warehouse, each taking turns to patch up the other's injuries before silently leaving, the flickering flames of the Red Hood/Joker/Batman showdown still burning on cooling embers. Nightwing had not said a word to his brother, but the caring and hopeful and questioning hands said enough.
Tim, on the other hand, caught Jason at a bad place and a bad time. The older had been reeling from a face full of fear gas, jumping at every little noise and abrupt movement. His blatant ignorance towards the Bats made it almost impossible for him to receive an antidote, so his main option had been to ride it out in a random safehouse.
It was Tim who found him tucked between the gap of an air conditioning duct and a small rooftop access, shivering like a leaf in a tornado and silently crying.
It had taken the junior detective little to no time to administer the antidote and drag his ex-torturer's butt back to a known safehouse of his, polite enough to even leave extra vials in case he needed them in the future. Jason was too out of it to remember what happened, but he remembered the flash of fear that was drowned in worry and concern and anxiety that laced the third Robin's muscles when he caught a flash of glinting red.
Cass obviously hated Jason because of his whole murdering-is-the-best-medicine mindset he had bouncing around and his history with brutally beating down his family members – it was a thing of the past and can she not remember that she too had gone toe-to-toe with her own parents? – along with his overall personality, but she did give him a scathing look when he allowed a punch to connect with his gut, the edges of brass knuckles digging into the thick armor and bruising. He had only allowed it because it was a way to grab his wrist and pop the guy's shoulder out of place, but Cass seemed to be disappointed. "Sorry," he grinned from under the hood, wincing as his intestines groaned, "But it worked, right? Why are you so upset?"
He had ignored the lingering feeling of eyes watching him that night, or the thin outline of a Bat that flashed in the dark. Cass may have hated him, but an asset was an asset, and what good was it if he was out of commission?
Like hell he was going to let the newbies see him weak – Damian would never let it go. Jason doubted that Steph or Duke or Harper – Harper Row, not Roy, never Roy, because... because Roy was dead, just like everyone who loved Jason – had ever seen him bleeding out on a ratty couch, or with an irritated nose, or with painful whimpers, or gasping for breath and dumping outdated frozen peas onto his gut. Instead, they had seen him snap, raging with fire as he beat a trafficking ring till they couldn't feel their faces. He had bloodied his knuckles and crimson splattered his clothes, green fuzzing in and out of his vison. The children had been starved and abused, just like those in Russia, when Jason was-
It was Steph who pulled him out with a snarl of "stand down!" and bright blue eyes, just like Catherine. Through the fuzz, he had taken it the wrong way and shut down, his knees buckling like a leaf in stormy winds and his breathing quickening. In a few seconds of paralytic shock, his walls had toppled and Jason Todd was exposed world and to the shocked looks of his 'teammates.'
That night he had tightened the screws of his walls and resisted the urge to punch Dick after the man was sent to check up on him.
But the image of shock-scared-confused faces were engraved on the back of his eyelids, vivid and clear and aching and painful.
Letting out an agitated sigh, he curled into himself and glared the feathers poking out of his sweatshirt like the fluff of pillows. White contrasted against red, an eyesore that stuck out like a thumb compared to the muted colours of the night. It reminded Jason of Batman and Robin: a light to a darkness, hope in despair and salvation to the demons.
A sickness.
The little tin toy soldiers all lined up waiting for a stray wind to knock them over, spilled blood and cracked bones. A damning title, a damning symbol, a damning and unforgiving sin. A twisted pleasure, a dark mind, to feel delight when blood stains your teeth, when people are nothing but meat bags that can fall under your fist, that fear of the shadows where the devils crawl out, split knuckles like euphoria, copper tanging on grinning lips. Bending muscles and splintering bones with a spray of crimson and the silver of cuffs and the thanks of grateful civilians. Tiny tin soldiers, all expendable.
It was a special, rare sickness, just like chicken pox. The thrill, the pleasure, the power and craving the masks give you. The god-like saviour complex you can afford to have, the way everything sings when you bring someone down.
A sickness where the cure is death.
But not even death can get rid of it. The Mission drags you down as much as it pushes you up. Kills you until there is nothing left. The Lazarus Pit was just like it; cruel and unforgiving, but the epicenter of one's trust. It's the reason they wake up in the morning, the reason they eat, the reason they breath, the reason they live.
It was a fucking joke.
But Jason wasn't laughing.
"I hate you," he told the feathers, "I really, really, really hate you."
It replied by irritating the man, taunting him with the fact that he couldn't relieve the itch.
Jason wondered whether it was a physical itch, or the itch for family.
He would never know. Just like the Pit, just like the Mission, just like that stray wind, Jason was a sickness, spreading and corrupting and falling apart at the seams. It grew, aching and cold and plainly wrong. Fractured, broken and lost.
The joke himself.
"Shut up," he whined to his head, "Just shut up."
Everything stayed quiet as he heavily sighed and tugged his pillow to his chest. Kori would be receiving a well worded lecture about what exactly chicken pox was, because sprouting feathers and having obviously delirious thoughts was not the real deal. Tomorrow he'd call her.
Today he will dream of a warm hearth and warmer smiles and not the sick within him.
YOU ARE READING
A Chicken With Chicken Pox
Fanfiction'There were bumps under his skin - signs of feathers that were going to break free. It was hell not to relieve the itch that crawled all over his body, to break the blisters that drove him to near insanity. "It's just chicken pox," Kori had told him...
