(Untitled)

[prodigaljaybird]

He wonders if it’s meant to be a kindness that his little brother would disappear on the same day the Little Sisters start dying. The ache of one blow balanced by another, the pain of each so separate and complete that Jason can choose between one moment and the next which will hurt him - it seems exactly the kind of fucked up stunt the island

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[fireinthe_hole]

Sometimes Boyd feels like a pot left to boil a little too long. Like all the water has already gone and all that's left is the scorched and blackened bottom. He's tried, he's really tried to heed the advice of people like Miss Anne who preach patience but he knows what abandonment feels like. He knows God has turned His back on the lot of them.

And watching whatever the hell is going on right now is only confirmation of where they are.

"What has happened?" he asks, voice tight and low.

[prodigaljaybird]

"Rapture," answers Jason, though he doesn't want to. He doesn't want to do anything, can't settle on anything that doesn't make him want to set something on fire and maybe climb right into the flames with it. His task here is complete but for carving names into the wooden crosses he's already made, and then he'll have nothing left. Nothing, apparently, besides being a dick to Boyd.

"Did you miss the whole fucked up city under our feet?"

[fireinthe_hole]

Rapture. It's an ironic name for it, considering where they've all ended up.

"I have seen the effects, but I have not seen dead children until now," Boyd seethes, hands clenched into tight fists. "Every time I think this place cannot be worse I am proven wrong. When I'll stop putting limits on hell I do not know. I suppose we'll be expected to sweep this all under the rug and go on praising this place."

[prodigaljaybird]

"I won't." Looking down again, he uses his own knife to carve the name Caroline across the flat of a handmade cross. "This place is cruel. It's even worse than home because it pretends to be different." The knife cuts too deep. "Gives us things that make us happy, then takes them away again."

[burnwithus]

Dead little girls with tattered dresses and bloodstained skin. The stuff of nightmares, at least to Katniss, who has dreams of them often enough. Rue, Prim. The girl in the Capitol with the yellow coat. Children in front of President Snow's manor. It always had to be them, didn't it? Never the adults. Never the ones who started the fight in the first place

[prodigaljaybird]

Jason turns to look at her, but doesn't otherwise address her for a long moment, his gaze dropping back to the makeshift marker in his hands. He doesn't want to deal with her, with anything really, and he wonders if the way he feels now is the way others feel about him all the time. That he's a timebomb waiting to go off, a tangled mess of wires just waiting for the wrong one to get cut.

He feels numb in a way he never does, pushed past the point of caring, and he can't - he can't figure out how to spell 'Noelle.' She's the girl in the third grave to the right, she'd told him so with her last breath right after she called him an angel. Swearing softly, Jason settles for 'Noel' like Christmas, finally looking up at Katniss again. "Why are you in the graveyard?"

[burnwithus]

The way Jason feels is more or less the way Katniss views herself. Deadly, not to be trusted. Not sure what exactly she's capable of doing but knowing that there's little she isn't. Either way, she is wary of the tension in him and yet is possibly a good person to approach him because she has stopped caring very much about what happens to her.

Besides, there's a tenuous trust she has with this boy that won't be thrown away so easily, so Katniss merely shrugs and turns her head to the lone flower she had dropped back there. "Just thinking."

[onlyapassenger]

"Who are you trying to convince

[prodigaljaybird]

It should be ridiculous, Bucky appearing from the trees, but after years of capes popping out from every Gotham alley, rooftop and gargoyle, Jason doesn't even blink.

"Hey," he returns, eyes passing to the hand on his shoulder like he can't figure out why it's there. It's rare that anyone touches him but Lux, rarer still that it'd be Bucky, and after a moment Jason shrugs. He hasn't done anything yet, and that might be because nothing can make this better or because Jason's not yet been stretched to snapping, but either way it feels like he owes Bucky an explanation. "Tim's gone."

[onlyapassenger]

Bucky sucks in a breath, letting it out slowly; he doesn't ask for clarification. Gone has a very specific set of connotations when it comes to life on Tabula Rasa, and Jason's overall demeanor serves only to confirm what's obvious. Nodding after a moment, Bucky lets his hand fall back down to his side. He wants to offer an apology, but he doesn't think Jason will take to it all that well, and so he remains silent a beat longer, trying to come up with an alternative.

"You wanna get out of here?"

[prodigaljaybird]

He doesn't. He doesn't seem to want anything at all, actually. Now that the worst of the labor is over, Jason's limbs feel dull and heavy, the ache that should be there as muted as his sluggish thoughts.

"There's nowhere to go," he says, relishing the tiny stab of pain that cuts through the fog in his head. No matter where he goes, what he does, how happy he tries to act, Tim's still gone. What's the point in relocating?

[slowspeedster]

"Need a hand?" Bart asked, as he hesitates at the edge of the graveyard. One of the worst parts of being a hero was that they usually only got together when someone died. It was just the way it ended up.

Maybe the ring had put death on his mind a little more than normal, but he found himself checking the graves for signs of disturbance, or sitting at the feet of Kon's statue. Tim knew about the rings, and he'd danced around it with Jessica, but having one here.

"I'd volunteer as someone to punch, but I'm not so fast here."

[prodigaljaybird]

Everyone always thinks he wants to hit them.

He doesn't. He will, but capes don't seem to care that there's a distinction. He hurts bad men, so he must hurt the good ones, too, must enjoy inflicting pain, right?

Jason's hands tighten around the cross in his hands, but it doesn't break. It's for Adele, second grave from the left.

"I'm almost done. Why are you in the graveyard?"

[slowspeedster]

The tension in Jason's hands told him he'd once again said something the other teen didn't like. The thing was, he didn't know him well enough to be pushing buttons on purpose. He never knew what to say around him. Once again his eyes are drawn to the angel with Jason's name on it.

"I found something from home a few weeks back. Makes keeping tabs on the graves that are supposed to be occupied something worth knowing. At least until I figure out how to destroy the damn thing."

[prodigaljaybird]

The admission cuts through the fog in Jason's head neat as butter, that easy mention of graves all that's needed to set his nerves alight and singing in shock. He can't help but take any talk of graves personally, any hint of resurrection putting him right on the defensive, even if he's not sure why Bart would bring it up.

"Why?" he says, standing. He can see Bart looking at his tombstone and he wants to jerk his head away, but he doesn't. "What did you find?"

[arrownomore]

Cissie wasn't sure why she had come to the cemetery, exactly, but with all the craziness that had been going on lately, it was the one place where she could go and try to think things through without distractions.

This didn't seem to be a good time though, she thought as she took in Jason and the woman she had seen around but didn't quite know and their shovels. Maybe it was something to do with that city, maybe not but she couldn't just stand there and not offer help.

"Hey. Is there anything I can do to help or something?"

[prodigaljaybird]

"I'm almost done," he says, falling quiet around a spasm of his throat. It's raw, he must have spent a solid half hour screaming, and Jason can't remember a single thing he said.

"You could get flowers," he continues, adding in a dull voice after, "Tim's gone."

[arrownomore]

For a moment, Cissie thought she had misheard Jason. Misheard him or misunderstood because there was no way that Tim could be gone. The look on his face quickly convinced her of the unthinkable - they all were still here but Tim was not.

She rubbed her hands against her eyes, trying to keep it together in front of Jason. "When - when did he - do you know?"

[prodigaljaybird]

"I saw him yesterday," says Jason, watching her because there's nowhere less painful to look. "And today he's gone. You can look if you want, but." You know, Eden had told him. You just know. "It feels like he's gone."