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Everyone has bad days. They come and they go. It gets better. It always gets better. But for Jason, his bad days are sometimes so rough and harsh, the world collapses from under him. He falls through the cracks into a black abyss, surrounded by every failure he's ever had. He falls and falls and falls until he finally hits the bottom and the wind is sucked from his lungs in a hard smack. Leaving him alone in the pitch black coldness. Today is one of those days.
He's just gotten back from patrol and he was quiet not to wake you. He walks steadily to the bathroom but his thoughts are circling the drain. Every step he takes is like twenty pounds added to his ankles and another thought joins the damned ride. Jason's chest grows heavy as he finally reaches the bathroom, quietly shutting the door behind him.
The worst nights of patrol involve kids and tonight did. It's always the most innocent of people that get to him. Most nights, he can handle it because it's part of the job. It's one of the reasons he puts the helmet on every night. But tonight is different. Tonight is different because it didn't have the hopeful ending it should have and it's not fucking fair.
Jason's hands grip the bathroom counter so hard he thinks he might shatter it in his palms. He almost hopes he does. He looks at himself in the mirror, his back slightly hunched over and he looks hollow. A discarded shell of who he should have been. And he can't stand it. His head spins while his eyes slam shut and his grip tightens harder against the cool stone.
His chest starts to heave as his breathing quickens. His chest grows heavy and he wants to start ripping out every single one of his organs in hopes it'll lift some of the weight. The heaviness is suffocating and if he didn't know any better, he'd think this would be his end.
But he knows better.
And this is the never-ending hell he's trapped in while the inability to save the kids tonight triggers memories to flood back like overflowing rivers in a flash flood.
There's the echo of metal on concrete seeping into his blood stream and that menacing laugh that never should be called a laugh beats against his eardrum. The feeling of the panic he felt that day wraps him in a cruel and painful hug as if to be living off of his inability to breathe properly. Images of the Joker and the look on his mom's face flash across his eyes and he can't take the heaviness of it all anymore.
The grief he suffers with is nearly paralyzing and it is agonizing. They say grief gets better but when is it that supposed to happen? Because it's been years and he can't breathe and he wants to rip his lungs out of his chest just to feel anything other than this. He was just a kid.
Jason was a just a kid.
Tears burn his eyes, one slipping by and sliding down his cheek and he grits his teeth so hard they nearly shatter under the pressure. All he wants is for it all to stop for even a second. He wants one damn second of relief.
