Chapter Text
She groaned as she struggled to open her heavy eyes.
Tile, chilled floors, that’s what’s supposed to be under her.
She felt around with her hand, eyebrows furrowing at the swollen feel of it.
Soft material, something that didn’t match the texture of her usual blankets.
It was the same texture as her Superman cape blanket, if less worn in.
She didn’t even fall asleep with a blanket this time, though.
She swipes at it with her thumb, the satin being pushed around under the digit.
The smell of damp soil hit her nose.
Goshi snapped open her eyes, a yelp leaving her lips as she came face to face with a family moment that wasn’t hers.
The polaroid had dried tears on it, as if someone had cried onto it and then didn’t wipe away the tears.
A kid.
Just a kid, maybe 16 at the oldest.
The rising sun shone around his head like a saint’s halo in religious iconography. His eyes were scrunched shut in a beaming grin, his nose pinched at the flour smudged onto it. His hands were kneading dough, small scars peaking up from behind the dough’s sticky layer on his hands. An old man in an out-of-place suit stood beside him, a small smile on his face as he held a recipe book in his hands with a page in the middle of being turned.
She squinted at the description in the low light.
‘Jaylad’s First Baking Lesson.’
She held a hand to her heart, feeling a heart’s beat that wasn’t her own.
Memories that weren’t there as well, though those may rise up in time.
Jason Todd? From DC?
She had to hold back a laugh, a pang of something hitting her that she had to push aside.
She was always called the Jason Todd of the BatPham server.
She just didn’t realize how true it would turn.
‘Who would ever think of this exact situation?’ She thought hysterically, studying her new hands more closely and turning them this way and that.
Her hands were usually longer and with a few scars, mostly on her thumbs, whereas Jason’s are thin and have quite a few more scars, with more odd calluses than she was used to.
She slipped the photo out of the clear pocket and into Jason’s own, internally grateful for the burial suit having pockets. She paused when her hand swiped against the belt.
Didn’t he dig out of the grave the first time with this thing?
She unbuckled the belt and wedged the metal against where the lid met the bottom, meeting the latch pin.
Goshi groaned at the resistance, wiggling the buckle until the sound of metal scraping metal reached her ears.
There, she just needed out and up to street level now.
She maneuvered Jason’s legs to be able to place the feet against the cap panel, kicking at it.
Nothing.
She kicked again, hearing the foam of the cap panel snap.
She glared at the lid, it now in disrepair and herself not any closer to relatively fresh air.
A noise of frustration rose up in Goshi-Jason’s throat, manifesting itself in her kicking the lid harder. Her foot got impeded by the rolls, to her immense displeasure.
She broke.
Each kick and struggle to get out was punctuated by a yell.
She reveled in the fact that she could scream if she wanted to, her vocal chords not stopping her anymore.
The lid gave way to chunks of dirt, causing her to tie the suit jacket around the face in order to not choke on dirt and have this body die again.
This kid , she swears, will be the first death of her .
Goshi made her way up to the surface, narrowly avoiding being suffocated by mass amounts of dirt. She took off the suit jacket from the face, breathing in Gotham air. She tied the jacket around her waist from where she was crouched down.
She got used to Jason’s body, loudly cracking the body’s neck. She stood up and scowled at the grave she had to desecrate.
Why did the casket have to be a quality casket?
She patted the lid absentmindedly, honoring the dead boy who did not get the chance that she had been shoved into.
He might have been a teen, but his childhood ended long ago.
She sighed and started walking.
There had to be a location she recognized somewhere .