not deaths bitch | jason todd

[ xix ]

[ nineteen : kiss of life ]

THEY HAD GATHERED around his unconscious body, he'd been hooked up to some monitoring system and his wounds had been healed.

Although they loved him their trust in him was slim. The injured boy had been chained to the bed he was on, with chains that would be difficult for Superman to get out of.

His arms had been handcuffed to his sides, where Anastasia could still hold onto them.

Anastasia sat by his side, she would sit there as long as it took, all she wanted was to see him wake up.

Dick, Alfred and Bruce on the other hand stood back, not sure what was going to happen when Jason woke up.

"How did this happen?" Dick asked, arms crossed with a confused look on his face.

"It was the Pit." Tasi said blankly, "they brought him back to life."

She grabbed his hands as the others watched her. Dick nodded, looking down at his feet as his phone rang.

Awkwardly, sped away and picked it up. He came back with a disappointed look on his face.
"Tim needs me at the titans towers."

"It's alright, Dick you can go." Anastasia told his, she gave Bruce and Alfred the same look, "can I have a minute with him?"

Bruce nodded, "but if he wakes up call us back right away." Anastasia bobbed her head as they left the bat cave.

"Oh Jason," she sighed, pushing the hair that had plastered to his face to the side. She so desperately wanted him to wake up.

"I've missed you so much, I always thought it was my fault, I wasn't able to get you out of the warehouse. I tricked you, I told you I was Scarlet, but I'm not."

She stopped, almost like he was going to answer, dismiss her guilt infested worries.

"I moved to California too, just like we talked about, I told myself  I'd leave the life behind but here I am, getting tangled up with this again." She took a breath, "I came because Dick told me it was about you, that you were involved."

She then chuckled, "who would have though his silly trick would have turned out to be the truth."

The dim cave lighting made Jason's angelic face look pasty, like the life had drained from his body. "What happened to you, Jay?" She said softly, squeezing his hand tightly with both hands.

"Just, why can't you wake up?" Her breathing wasn't as steady as it had once been. Anastasia was frustrated.

"You've missed so much, I went back to school, I got a condo, everything was perfect, it was just missing one thing." She stared into where his beautiful blue eyes would have been.

She knew what the answer would be but she was too scared to admit it.

The constant beeping was making it difficult for her to come up with things to tell the boy, she moved her weight in a placed a hand on his chest, feeling his heart beat.

"I'm graduated veterinary school, I'm getting my undergraduate bachelors degree. I'm gonna be a vet, just like I said I would in Mr. Simons class, do you remember that?"

Again, she waited for him to laugh and respond but there wasn't anything.

Her eyes felt as if they were swelling up, she stayed quiet and just watched him.

She tried to stop the urge to kiss his exposed forehead but the feeling to fill the cliché void was too strong.

Anastasia presses her smooth lips onto his porcelain-like skin, hoping it would wake him up but like her old mother said, hope is for the weak.

What would happen when he did wake up? Her mind jumped to countless situations, Jason would be filled with rage as he once was as Red Hood or he'd be sent to Arkham Asylum like the mad man he was.

Would he remember her?

Would he be angry at her for double crossing him?

Would he take her back?

Terrified of the answer, Anastasia realized she needed to space herself from the boy. She lifted her body off the cot-like hospital bed and stared over the edge of the platform the bat cave had been built on.

She stroked her hair as she listened to the water dripping, bats scratching at the rocks and the machine reading Jason's pulse. They blend together into a polyphonic symphony.

Her heart then stopped, over the layers of sound she wasn't expected to hear anything new but when his voice cracked she knew he'd woken up.

"Scarlet?"