Day Fifteen: delirium| fever dreams | bees

[Jason Todd & the Ethiopian b.s (you know which one)]

-!!!-

 It couldn't be real.

Jason thickly swallowed as he gazed at the barrel of the glinting gun, his skin tingling at the proximity to silver. Bruce had trained his body to tolerate a certain amount of the substance, refusing to go through with the full agenda as it was unbelievably painful, and they didn't want to test the limits of his land-dwelling capabilities.

Sometimes it was frustrating, being one of the few mermaids that didn't need a charm to walk on land and breath air.

Thanks, Sheila, her human genes were totally appreciated.

Jason's attention was snapped to reality as the temperature in the room dropped and every hair on the masked boy's neck raised, goosebumps trailing his arms as the short sleeves of the Robin costume offered no heat. Ethereal laughter filled the warehouse as the dust grew agitated, fluttering around from god-knows-where and swirling like little tornadoes. The place grew darker even as the door opened, the laughter growing louder and more erratic and crazed.

There was no mistaking that luminous green hair that glowed exactly the way Nightwing's finger stripes glowed with otherworldly sprite magic.

But there were no gentle and cautious touches when the crowbar came down with acid sparks, burning his skin wherever it hit. Even the desert wind had trickled to a stop, and not even Jason could find it in himself to do anything but hold back whimpers and tears.

Dick had promised Jason that he would show the boy how his powers worked, especially the so-called life-strings that arched out of the acrobat's back on call, acting with lives of their own to charge at goons as slice thin cuts into skin, radiating the electric blue of Grayson's soul like an obnoxious glowstick.

He was told that the life-strings were unique to a person by an indefinite number of ways. Most Sprites were experimented on, each subspecies having their own type of life-strings. Dick was a Willow-of-the-Wisp, rare species as it is. The only reason he wasn't taken for illegal experimentation was the fact he was tauntingly half Vampire, which would provide inconclusive results.

The Joker was – laughably – a nymph, who was long detached from his lake when the 'Red Hood' had fallen into a vat of acid, burning and tarnishing his connection to nature and, in addition, his life-strings.

So, instead of allowing the life-strings to illuminate himself, the Joker wore bright and dazzling colours like purple and orange.

It couldn't be real.

The crowbar broke the soft, human skin Jason was forced to endure on land. When he was a mermaid, before the traffickers got to him and before he escaped to the streets, his naturally hard skin would pulsate in the heavy pressures of the deep. With scales as tough as steel and fins of cartilage, his body could have taken a hefty bashing.

But humans worked differently. They were much more fragile.

So fragile, that when the teeth of a crowbar sink its teeth into Jason's warm flesh, crimson oozed out, bones broke and muscle tore.

He felt so weak, and just wanted it all to end.

It couldn't be real, Jason begged, it's just a dream.

Fever dream, more like it, nightmare.

The fact that a rag had been stuffed into his mouth to prevent from alluring and mind-duping them into releasing him was hard. The lack of water made it hard for Jason to even half-shift, to push scales out and long claws to untie himself. Even shark-like teeth to gnaw through the cloth and get the upper hand, but he could do nothing.

He always hated being human. Maybe this was a sign of the universe saying that Bruce should just turn him already, because a Vampire Siren sounded amazing.

When Jason tried to focus on the sound of rhythmic ticking, deciding that when he woke up, he should really ask Bruce to do it, partly because of the dream and partly because Jason would be with him forever and they could be the dynamic duo till the end of time.

He would be able to swim around in the Wayne's obnoxiously large pool, laughing as the tingling sparks that would ricochet through the liquid when Dick excitedly sparks, the Big Bad Bat of Gotham looking like a ghost from where he would be slathered in sunblock, a pair of shades precariously hanging off the edge of his nose as he tried to figure out the little umbrellas in cocktails all while Alfred fondly smiled at the domestic scene.

It will all be okay because this was all just a dream. He'll open his eyes, and it will be alright.

But it wasn't, for the next time he had opened it, it was six months later and six feet underground, the burns of Ethiopia still tingling on his broken skin.

-???-

Do I know if I like this? No I do not. Did I know how to end it? To be true, I hadn't the faintest idea. Was it a bad idea to go on a writing spree after my literature class, where we read and watched Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird with the southern accents of the actors bouncing in your head?

Hellscape, lemme tell you. Hellscape.