title: it's a struggle to be a good boy
series: things we carry
pairing: jason todd/dick grayson
rated: r (language and heavily implied abuse)
i.
Not too long ago, Jason thought the day he learned he could sense magic was the worst day of his life.
It had been the end of August when the sweltering heat of Gotham’s summer ended and life seemed almost bearable. The front door of the apartment slammed shut in the early evening, far too early for Willis Todd to come home, and the muttered curses filtering through the thin walls made it clear he wasn’t happy to be there. Everything about him seemed to be fraying from the unraveled ends of his jeans and shirts, to the grimy ends of his red hair. He was always a big, sweaty man, whose carved, handsome looks had faded over time leaving a hollow-eyed meanness behind.
Willis was a small player in the transportation business running packages for illegal trade between the western territories. The Italian families, the Irish Terror Squad, the Black Mask Demons, Willis had a small angle on all of them. It wasn’t respect and it wasn’t money that drove him. As far as Jason saw, Willis barely got any, but the other penny ante crooks knew his name, challenged him enough to get the blood pumping through his body and maybe that was enough for him.
Jason had been in the kitchen trying to skim the last of the peanut butter across two slices of bread when Willis walked inside. Jason shuffled to the end of the counter because keeping his back to his dad was a bad idea and watched all of Willis’ movements out the corner of wary eyes. Willis stood there, face hard with expectation, so, Jason made a small show of sweeping the crumbs into the sink.
“Should’ve known you’d be in hear eating up my food,” Willis finally grunted. “Did you make the run up to the White Garden?”
Jason just started meeting Willis’ contact in restaurant beside the White Garden, an aging curio shop owned by the Sing family. They bought and sold items of antiquity with minimum questions. A lot of trade moved through those doors, and Willis finally got his own cut to profit from, at least, that’s what he said.
That morning, Jason had taken the bus to west Gotham when the sun crossed the horizon and the towering glass and steel cast their long shadows to help Willis with his daily route. He’d known something was wrong the second his feet hit the street. The feeling of wrong pushed Jason to pass on to the next block without peering into the dusky windows. Jason had asked careful questions at a bodega at the other end of the street anticipating this conversation and found that the White Garden’s doors had been locked all morning and the eerie neon green sign was off, a something no one in the neighborhood could remember seeing.
“TwoFace. No one thought he’d be back on his feet so soon. Them masks are gonna have to move now.” Willis moved to cross his chest when he seemed to notice the small package in his hand. His skin paled. “Is that what this is?” He tossed a small tan package on the box and then Jason’s world exploded.
A sound ripped through the air, sudden and strong, growing louder and louder until all Jason could hear was the white-faced static of fear thumping louder than his own heart. It felt bad, real bad, like the nights he used to scuttle through the warehouse district looking for his mom and it seemed like there were unblinking eyes in every corner. He fell to the floor with a sharp cry, hands scrabbling at his ears, pressing his palms to his head to keep the sound out.
He’d been jerked up by the collar, Willis shaking him, mouth was moving angrily, but Jason couldn’t hear the words. Could barely catch his breath with the sound creeping through him. Jason couldn’t remember the last time he called Willis “dad” but he did that night, face wet with sweat and tears. There was a danger of showing any kind of weakness in the Todd household but he couldn’t stop it. Not this time. “I can’t,” he whispered, voice broken from holding back another raw scream. “Dad. I can’t.”
His hand bounced across Jason’s cheek leaving a loud ringing in his ear but it was better. Even the shock of pain was better than that sound wrapping around him. It was the first time Willis used his hands for mercy in a long time.
“You hear me now?” Willis asked, pulling his hand back again.
Jason nodded body slumping heavy from relief. The sound was gone.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, boy?”
“Don’t know,” said Jason. “That. Um. That package. It’s. It’s got something in it. I think. It made this sound.”
“Magic,” Willis spat, twisting his fingers in the fabric of Jason’s shirt, pulling the cloth tighter. “They said only users and magic folk would be able to feel that hex. You magic now?”
“No. No.” Jason forced his body to still to keep, his eyes focused on his dad’s electric eyes so similar to his own. He could read the thoughts there, knew exactly where Willis could start seeing him as a threat and Jason knew he wouldn’t survive that path. He swallowed, let a quaver into his voice. “I don’t know, Willis. You tell me.”
“Your mom always said she could see things in the air. Said it’s why she always took that shit. I never believed her.” Willis dropped his son to the ground. “Pretty like her. Fucking dreaming like her. Now you got magic like her. You spent so much time with her when you were a boy. Knew it was wrong, knew it would make you weak.”
Jason curled on his side. Willis usually had a couple bottles in him before he went on about his mother and it never ended well for either of them. Sad as it was, those were the only times Jason knew his father had been a better man once, or at least a man who hadn’t drowned in anger all the time. It never lasted long.
He felt Willis’ eyes roll over him, sharp and appraising.
“Maybe you’ll finally be useful to me.”
Training started soon after, at least that’s what Willis called Jason sitting at the dinner table from mid-morning to dark. Willis would drag an old duffle bag full of junk and set each item before him. Jason would concentrate on each items in game of trial and error that ended in Jason staving off pain in his head, all to see if he could sense magic.
“What about this one?” he would say, shoving a heavy mantel piece at his son, grunting when Jason would shake his head.
“This one?” A tray of tiny spoons, age disgracing the silver’s dull glow.
"I don’t know. Maybe,” he said after narrowing his eyes at the things.
“What did I tell you about that?” Willis slammed his head on the table. “Be careful, boy. You’re toeing the line of disrespect.”
Jason swallowed at the reminder of all the imaginary lines he’d crossed before. “I’ll try again.” He focused on it, really tried to bridge the distance between himself and the spoons because there was something, something he could almost hear. A tiny clink of glass. It’d be better if he could touch the items but Willis had grabbed his wrist and twisted the first time Jason waved his hand over a tiny book. Willis hadn’t thought his little “carnival flair” wasn’t necessary.
The delicate scrap rang in Jason’s ear again. He could almost see the spoon circling the bottom of a porcelain cup, pale lips pulled in a satisfied smile. And suddenly his mouth flooded with a bitter taste. “Yeah,” he choked. “Them spoons are magic.”
“Good.” Willis shifted them to the keep side of the table before pulling out another object to test. “Try this one.”
Jason learned rather quickly that his sideshow act went beyond the pain of hexes and curses. He could sometimes sense how much power something had, sometimes guess where they came from. He would know that carved black wood traveled from Cameroon, a striated green stone as big as his fist from La Jollet, a pair of rosary beads from a languishing grandmother from the old country, a fertility stick from the west maybe past the coast to the islands that Willis had immediately pocketed. There was always a film over the things that were probably magic, something he could sense, and the more he tried, the better he got at it.
The pantry-usually bare-had filled slowly with scrolls, books, old pocket watches and jewelry, anything Willis could palm, barter, or steal that might have a trace of magic. He’d sell them slowly to people Jason never wanted to meet. The only thing he cared about is how wrong it felt that he was happy that Willis had all fuller pockets. It didn’t make him less mean, but it allowed him to have the things he wanted; money, attention, women.
One night Willis had even come home warmed by alcohol and the young pair of tits plastered to his side. It was the first woman Jason had seen in the place in a long time.
“Me and my friend here need to do some communicating with the spirits.” Willis had leaned over and cuffed Jason lightly. It took him three times to pull out a fading wallet but he did and then slipped out two crisp bills. “Take this and get lost for an hour.” He ran his eyes over the girl’s round hips. “Maybe two.”
She giggled, gun popping between her teeth.
“Go get some food. He eats all my fucking food,” he complained with a grin.
“Oh baby,” she had said, wrapping her thin arms around his neck. “When we’re finished connecting on that next plain, you won’t be thinking about nothing like sandwiches.”
“Let me get my stick,” Willis whispered.
After a while, Jason started running more than just the west side loop for his dad. He shimmied up storm drains for Willis, stood watch while Willis let himself into the unlocked homes just outside the city on the hunt for magical junk to sell to the White Garden. He’d gotten use to the tinkle of broken glass and the heavy fear in his stomach when Willis started bringing him into other people’s homes expecting Jason to find something good. Willis’ hand had never felt as heavy as when they were clenched on Jason’s shoulder shoving him left to light like a human dosing stick looking for treasure.
But it wasn’t just the fact that Jason was hurting people that swirled guilt with the fear of getting caught. It was the way Willis, who had always been tight and cautious, started talking about bigger things. He’d be done with pawning those shitty trinkets soon. He’d be done with running packages from one side of town from the other. He would become a real player in the game, was gonna make a name for himself because he had an ace up his sleeve. Raised it from the dirt and it was finally, finally paying off. Willis would come home talking like that, like he was a big man, like he wanted the attention that came from being a name in Gotham city that was divided by man and demon across invisible lines. Like he wasn’t afraid of the names made before Jason was even born, the Sabatinos, the Rot Worshipers, the Commissioner, or even the Dark Knight.
Everyone knew that Dark Knight crusaded in Gotham’s twilight hours protecting the city from true evil. The Dark Knight was real. Plenty of people on the streets and the news confirmed his presence, but even the closet facts about Gotham’s demonic savior were rumors. Jason had thought of the Dark Knight as something like the GPD-nice in theory but never around when you needed him.
The feeling of liberation Willis must have felt never trickled down to Jason, but he hid it underneath a sly grin and carefree jaunt in his step that was all for show. He’d go in with this dad. He’d pick as many things as he could, never too much, as few powerful items he could spare, then crossed his arms and made himself stop flinching when Willis tucked him under one arm like a real pop should.
And then Willis said something to him that made everything change. “Come here, son,” he’d pulled Jason under his arm waving at a dark house before them. “This time I want you to go in there by yourself. Prove to me that you’re a ready to take on real challenges like a man.”
Jason had only nodded and slipped through the gate.
“Jason,” Willis hissed and Jason, a boy who went months without hearing his name not at school, and definitely not at home, turned back. “Be careful,” he urged, mouth twisted in what was probably a comforting smile.
And that’s when Jason realized he had still naive. Because his dad finding out he could do magic wasn’t the worst day of his life. He’d been thinking small, never knew that life could get worse than living in Crime Alley-a place so tangled with the underworld and the outerworld that even the richest companies couldn’t buy the votes to rezone and “revitalize” the place-in a twelve floor tenement without running water and a broken furnace, and a hot meal was a sometimes thing.
It got way worse.
It got Jason kneeling on plush carpet, a bag of magic coins rattling against his belly while blue lights swirled about him, pushing and tugging him away from the window. “No,” he’d shouted. “No, no. Let me go!” He had been panicked, stuck to the floor, shouts coming from the other side of the heavy wooden door, and Jason pushed with everything he had and went crashing into the wall. Free, he’d rolled through the window and ran faster than he ever had in his life, afraid that he’d be caught, afraid that someone would know, afraid that someone would tell Willis that he didn’t just sense magic.
Jason could do magic too.
ii.
Summoning wasn’t about drawing perfectly round circles or contracts. It was about organizing a plan, establishing an ordered pattern out of seemingly endless points, and executing through repetition of key ideas. Sure, there were gates and understanding spirit planes and mazes, but having a plan and executing it were the things that made sense to Jason. Summoning also took a steady hand, which Jason could only manage when he crammed his fingers at the bottom of the chalk and pressed hard.
Jason shook the cramping sensation from his right hand. “Mr. Nelson makes it look so easy,” he grumbles, stepping back to observe his work.
The dark wall of the practice lab was covered in white chalk. Heavy lined circles wound at the outer corners followed by half-moons that connected at the ends and formed diamonds. The next ring was a solid circle followed by a simple protective spell with a thin ring of what Jason called “fiddly-bits” that spiraled out. Jason drew the center of the circle from memory, a ring of triangles inside of hard lines and unknown words he’s never found again but the shape of them, the way they had closed in around his body and took his air, Jason would never forget. A yellow post-it note fluttered in the very center of that ring, the yellow paper smeared with his red thumb print. He checked again just to be sure all of the chalk connected and that there were no thin lines before tearing out a sheet from his notebook. All in all, it looked like a solid reproduction of what his new primer calls and intermediate gate. It wasn’t pretty or anything, but it would work. Probably.
Making spells was considered advanced, or at least, something students Jason’s actual age could do, but not Jason because he was being held back. He’d read one or two books at the manor (once Alfred cornered him in the library and passed out assigned readings) but he’d never really done them before. On the other hand everything suggested keeping a basic command or two is best because then the summons can understand them better and there’s less of a chance of them angry if they feel mislead. Jason’s spell was simply two lines.
He sat cross-legged in the middle of a protective circle drawn on the floor, a sheet of wide-ruled paper clutched in his hands. He smoothed the damp paper on trousers and read it again to make sure he knew the words and would not hesitate. When he was finally ready, Jason spoke in a calm, sure voice saying, “If you are friend, appear before me. If you mean to harm me, speak the truth. If you are a friend appear before me. If you mean to harm me, speak the truth.” He clapped once, the paper crackling between his palms, and the sound waved forward widening to ripple across the chalked wall or maybe it was his magical essence.
The thought made Jason focus more.
Breathing deeply, Jason began to draw that focus inward, up to the asphalt covered ground and the shimmering black in his mind. He landed in the center of the void quickly and could feel his body grin outside in mild triumph. He’s getting faster so that means he’s getting better.
Jason approaches the black expanse of the boundary again. This time he can see the faint lines of his protective circles swirling around it, shining like blue starlight in the near dark.
If you are a friend, appear before me. If you mean to harm me, speak the truth. Jason recites again then claps his hands. Nothing happens, which is weird. Everything he had read said that magic clusters at the boundary attracting like energies. Whatever he saw yesterday should still be out there waiting for him to coax it through the gate. Because if Jason could bring over a spirit animal or familiar-and it has to be some wolf thing with those sharp blue eyes-he’d be able to prove to Bruce that he doesn’t’ need the song and dance of the Academy to help him. He can do just fine on his own, and maybe a little more tutoring from Alfred.
Maybe he’s not being loud enough. Jason cups his hands to his mouth and calls out, hey, out there. Hey, blue-eyes! I came back to visit and you can’t say hello?
His voice ended at the boundary unwilling to echo back. Which is cool, he supposed. He sounded kind of lame there and Jason laughed a little at himself. He waited and waited but there was no sign of movement from his summoning circle or the void around him.
Heeding the various warnings for being careful Jason counted to ten, letting his consciousness sink slowly up into his body. The sensation reminded Jason of the times he swam to the bottom of the pool and sat there under the wavering blue until his arms floated out and his body lifted, slow and steady. It had always felt like flying and
Jason had imagined that he was in the thick folds of the sky where the atmosphere must bounce the body gently enough for flight, and then Jason would extend his legs back, his hips bunched up, back breaking to the surface, and he would tilt his head back slowly, the fizzing silence of the water breaking. He came back to the real world in much the same way except this time, Jason could hear the sound of a boy laughing right before he popped to the surface, laughing and calling, I found you.
Jason wrenched his eyes open. His throat hurts like someone had held his throat. His eyes traveled up the wall while he drew in another deep breath, and stopped when he got to the center.
The yellow paper posted in the center circle looked charred at the edges.
“Shit,” Jason hissed. Not only did it looked singed but a sooty trail surrounded it, a trail that spun its way out from the circle's center and through his carefully drawn patterns like pencil dust through a maze. Jason stood slowly and followed the trail with his eyes, and with his finger hovering in the air above him. Eventually, he found where the line’s beginning at the oriental line.
Maybe Tim was right. Maybe something was looking for him. Maybe something eager to claim what was Jason’s one and only possession on earth that was his alone; his life.
“Maybe I need to talk to Bruce about this,” he muttered, then began dusting the chalk from the wall.