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When Jason’s fingers broke through the surface of the earth wrenching himself from the dirt, the first thing he did was pray.
He made a church in the space between his coffin and the surface. He made himself both priest and congregant. He led the prayer and begged for mercy. If God could hear him may he put enough air in his lungs and strength in his arms to make it to the surface. And God heard him. He pushed himself through soil till air poured into his lungs and his fingers bled from digging, but he was breathing. He was alive.
When he first came back he used to just walk till he found himself at the church, sitting in the pews some nights, on the worst ones he’d sleep there, curled against the cold and hard wood. No one ever kicked him out or asked questions, they just let him come, let him be a part of the flock on late nights since Sunday morning mass didn’t suit him.
Jason does not remember heaven, but he does remember dying.
He’s not sure what to make of that. The priest on the other side of the confession booth isn’t so sure either. Jason thinks the preacher must find him half crazy, but he never stops listening and for that small fact Jason finds himself grateful.
It’s often now, even years after his return, that he finds himself outside of the church at night. Grand spires and stained glass windows staring down at him as night washes over his shoulders, beckoning him inside.
On his worst nights he’ll stumble in, still bloody and bruised from patrol and sink to his knees, letting them dig harshly into the red carpet running down the aisle, hands clasped together in an achingly tight grip.
“Please, Jesus, help me,” he’ll repeat over and over into the empty church, wondering silently in the back of his mind if God answers to souls that have already been reaped.
It’s a snowy night in late winter when the priest sinks down next to him. It startles Jason, sends him flying up from his kneeling position.
“Father, I—”
But, the priest’s face is warm, drawn into a kind smile, “do you want me to pray for you?”
Jason bites back embarrassment and bile in his throat, staring at the man, waiting for his face to contort from kindness to some sickening sort of pity, to look at him as if he is the patron saint of misery. But the priest lets him stare, and his face never changes. It is the small kind of mercy Jason thinks he has been praying for each night.
“Yes,” he finally breathes out, “please.”
“And what should I pray for?”
Jason swallows and looks back up at the altar, then to the stained glass surrounding him. What does he want? What does he wish for? Why does he come here each night?
His eyes fall on Mother Mary and for a moment it feels like her eyes fall on him. What had he wanted? His mother? That had gotten him killed hadn’t it? Did he ever really want her, or just someone to make sense of him? To understand him? To keep him?
“I want,” he hasn’t drawn his eyes away from the stained glass, his voice trailing off into a quiet lull. “I want someone to stay.”
Red, hot embarrassment creeps up his neck onto his cheeks and the tips of his ears, his face contorts like he hadn’t meant to say that out loud. The priest, however, pays no mind to any of that and just nods. He doesn’t preach to him about how the only one he really needs to keep him is God, he just nods for the broken man in front of him. The broken man who already has God’s love, but needs a human’s.
Jason leaves the church quickly after that, like he can outrun the shame pooling in his stomach if he leaves fast enough. He looks back though, just once as he pushes the door open, there in the first pew sits the priest, head knelt and hands clasped, praying for him.
When Jason meets you for the first time he swears you’re an angel.
He’d been stumbling down an alley, Red Hood mask stripped off, breathing heavy and ragged when you found him. You’d slipped your arm under his, led him to your place and stopped him from bleeding out on your shitty, second hand futon. All of that for a stranger. All of that for him.
When he woke the next morning you looked so relieved, rambling on about how you were so glad he was okay and not dead. But, he wasn’t paying attention to any of that, he was just looking at you and how the sunlight pouring in from the window behind you framed your head like a halo.
It’d been months since that snowy night with the priest, almost long enough to push it into the recesses of his mind as a distant memory. But as he looked at you and the golden light framing you and knew instantly that you were the answer to whatever prayer had been said on his behalf.
And he was right, because you stayed with him. Even when things got hard. Even when he came home battered and bleeding. Even when he came home angry and broken over things you couldn’t understand and he couldn’t begin to verbalize. At his worst, there you were. And day by day as he becomes a better man for you, because of you, there you are. For all the pain in his life, all the suffering, he was gifted you. A partner with the patience of a saint when it came to him, who loved him so unconditionally and truly that Jason wondered how it could ever be possible that God might love him more.
There are nights tangled in bed with you that he treats your body like a temple. He kisses down every inch over your skin, lips warm and languid, muttering against you. His hands cascade down you, but never once do they stop holding you, caressing you with a sort of reverence. His rough hands are unfathomably gentle with you. It almost startles him how akin to worship it is when he kneels between your thighs.
With a lazy, lovesick grin he’ll look up at you, moonlight forming that halo around your head all over again as your chest rises and falls rapidly, a flustered warmth to your cheeks.
“Quit looking at me like that, you look at me like I’m—"
He’ll always cut you off with a soft kiss to your inner thigh, “an angel.”
He does not remember heaven, but he swears it’s alright because God sent a little piece of it down for him in the form of you.