Change of Plans

Chapter 7

When he was younger, Jason would hide under the table, pressing his face into his small palms, trying to block out his mother's and father's screaming. Their fights were at a daily basis, but they terrified Jason every time. As much as he wished for his father to go, he wanted him to stay, to fix everything again.
But he knew he wouldn't and that realisation hurt.

When the police told them, Willis Todd was in jail, Jason hurt some more, because from there on, he had to look after his mother, had to bring food and money for her addiction home.
When she died, Jason hurt the most.
Hadn't he been enough for her to stay?

And then, at the age of fifteen, Bruce had taken him in.
And Jason had been the happiest person alive. But it became obvious that he wasn't made for the life of the rich pretty fast. He felt like a stranger on Galas, like he didn't belong to all the graceful and fine people.
He had lived on the streets for too long.
He was too rough around the edges, too habituated to the hard life.
And that realisation hurt again.

And being Robin had taken some of the mental pain away, given him something to believe in, to fight for.
But being Robin had hurt, too, just on a different level.
He got punched, kicked and stabbed, but Jason always got back up. The physical pain he could deal with.

He never thought about why he was Robin, didn't want to think about it, because if he questioned Dick Grayson's motives for leaving, thought about that he was just a replacemt, a placeholder, there would be new layers of pain.
So he ignored that and focused on the things that would heal, the bruises, the stab wounds and split lips.

With that in mind, Jason couldn't say he was a stranger to pain, but having chunks of flesh cut out of his leg was still no fun.

He still couldn't see or hear anything and his hands and feet were still bound to that God forsaken chair, though that really wasn't necessary.
His wound was burning so bad, he felt as if he might puke and the flashes of pain that shot up and down his leg would make an escape by walking impossible. He'd collapse the second he applied pressure on his leg.

Jason was startled out of his thoughts as the thing covering his ears was ripped off.
He waited for the blindfold to be taken off, too, but to his disappointment, his vision stayed dark.
Maybe his captors had become bored and needed to whine about their hard lives (though that was more Dr. Light's thing) or just wanted to annoy him with the cliché villain talk.
Please not.

"Where's Jason?" He heard... Dick say?
How...? But his voice sounded far away and distorted, like...
...Through a phone, he realised, cocking his head to hear better.
Had Deathsroke and Doctor Light called the Titans? How did they even get their number?

"Oh, you mean your little sidekick?"
That was defenitifly Deathstroke's voice.
Jason felt the well-known anger rise again. Maybe it was his ego, or maybe he was just fed up with the situation and his leg was still killing him, but the anger got the better of him. "Who the fuck you calling a sidekick, asshole?!" He yelled, jerking in his bonds.

"Attaboy," was the growled response and then there was a metallic glove against the soft skin of his cheek and Jason's head jerked to the side.
He wasn't sure if he gasped or groaned, but the sound he made was defenitifly pained.
Would people stop hitting him in the face already?

The next two punches came rapidly after one another, the first meeting its mark on his chest, the second in his stomach.
Jason felt bile rise in the back of his throat as pain flared through his torso, feeling as if he was squashed, lungs constricting, but he swallowed it back down.
He was not going to throw up in front of his enemy.
He thought he heard someone yelling through the phone, but it was as if his body had blocked his senses and was only focusing on sucking in short puffs of oxygen.