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Jason remembers the very first conversation he had with God.
It was the night his mother died, in that cold, damp bathroom that smelled of bleach. He’d been calling out for her all night, telling her to come down and have dinner before it got cold. After three minutes without a response, he’d creep up the stairs, open the bathroom door, and find Catherine lying there, slumped against the tiles with strands of greasy hair obscuring the gauntness of her face from him.
Jason thought she was asleep at first. Any kid would.
He’d approach the body, hold two fingers to her neck, and discover no pulse.
In that moment, overcome with grief and confusion, Jason would sit down next to her, put his hands together, gaze up at the ceiling and begin to speak.
He spoke about his father, who left him and his mother behind in prison. He spoke about the things he had to do, the petty crimes that he’d had to commit, all to take care of his family. A family that barely deserved to be called such, given the state of their household.
He spoke about wanting to be loved unconditionally.
Someday, he figured it’d come to him. Doesn’t have to be tomorrow, or next week, or even this year.
He just wants it to happen.
He knows it’ll happen.
***
His wishes came true the day Bruce Wayne adopted Jason into his family.
This was the fresh start Jason had wanted for himself. To be accepted and cared for by those around him, and to finally live a good, honest life.
…Well, maybe it wasn’t entirely honest, seeing as he trained for six months to become the next Robin.
But Jason didn’t care. He was happy—excited, even, to carry on the mantle as the one and only Robin, no matter what anyone said.
In the aftermath of his first night on patrol, Jason sat in his bed, covered in silk sheets and warm comforters.
He stared up at the canopy of his bed, a comforting cotton curtain in comparison to the cold, cracked plaster of the bathroom ceiling.
A smile found its way to his lips as he folded his hands together once more and talked to God.
He thanked Him for granting him this wondrous opportunity and for fulfilling his one desire in life. He promised he wouldn’t squander it, and that he'd do whatever it takes to become the best Robin he could be.
Besides, he'd have all the time in the world to become as great as Dick Grayson, right?
***
Jason would soon come to learn that time was, in fact, a limited resource that could run out at any second.
How was he supposed to know that things would turn out this way? His fears, his regrets, his worthlessness—it all came rushing back to him with every smack of that crowbar to his back, his face, his legs.
Pain. Burning, agonising pain. It was relentless and never-ending.
Make it stop. He wants it to stop. He NEEDS it to stop.
Why couldn't anybody come and save him?
He doesn't fully register when the hits cease, or when the clown finally exits the warehouse, leaving him and Sheila locked inside.
His first instinct is to save her, despite all that she's done to him. She was his mother, after all.
Jason tries to stand. His thighs ache, and his knees buckle under the weight and strain, but he gets up nonetheless, dragging himself against concrete to reach her.
He undoes the ropes that bind her, telling her to leave, to make a run for it. Does she thank him for helping her? Or does she leave him without a word? Jason can’t tell. It doesn’t matter, anyhow. Not when he’s this close to shutting his eyes from the world forever.
His vision swims, consciousness blurring in and out of him in waves. There’s ringing in his ears, but through it, he can still vaguely hear the beeping countdown of what seems to be a bomb.
With his breathing ragged and all the fight slowly seeping out of his body, Jason squints up at the ceiling of the warehouse and tries to focus on something to keep himself alive.
…That one thing happens to be God.
He grits his teeth. He can’t even find the energy to move his arms, let alone get in a comfortable enough position to pray.
The fear in his body quickly turns into rage. Why had God forsaken him like this? He wasn’t the most devout Christian, sure, and maybe he didn’t follow His teachings to the letter, but God loves all his children, doesn’t He? If such is true, then why does he still have to pay the price for something that wasn’t his fault?
They say life has its ups and downs, that things need to get worse before they get better. But what hope for recovery is there when he’s already lying on the floor, with no hope of survival?
Jason doesn’t hear Batman approach the warehouse.
He lets his eyes close, and when he opens them again, he hopes to be met with the twelve gates of heaven’s doorstep.
He hopes they shine as beautifully as he imagines they do.
***
When Jason does reopen his eyes, he is not met with warmth and sunlight as he expected.
He is instead met with pale, white cotton, surrounding him from wood.
The coffin is tight. Claustrophobic. It’s getting harder to breathe in there.
He doesn’t remember much of what he does in that coffin. All he remembers is banging on that cotton, screaming Batman’s name, and feeling the relentless need to get out.
He uses his belt to claw his way through. Dig his way out of that cursed grave.
He walks. Jason walks and walks for so long, with no discernible direction. But he’d like to think he was trying to make his way back to Wayne Manor. Back to home, where he belonged, with his father and his family comforting him at his side.
Except, just like his other father, Bruce had left him to fend for himself.
He passes out somewhere along his journey. And upon waking up again after what felt like another long, dreamless sleep, he could do nothing but stare up at those plaster ceilings that he had become so familiar with at this point.
Without knowing why, Jason decided to talk to God.
The oxygen mask around his mouth restricted his speaking, so he chose to monologue in his head. God was ever-present and always listening anyway, wasn’t he? Surely, He’d be able to hear Jason’s thoughts from high up above.
The first thing Jason winds up asking God about is very simple—why?
Why had he been brought back to life?
He didn’t want to return. He would’ve been happier dead. He would’ve preferred to stay dead, if it meant that he didn’t have to suffer anymore.
He made peace with his passing. Why, then, was he put back on this Earth?
Was it to continue being Robin? Or was it so that he could forge his own path?
Jason wasn’t wholly sure of the answer to that. But he knows that whatever he decides to do, it’ll be on his terms, only.
He’d learnt the hard way what’d happen if he put too much of his trust into people.
***
Jason doesn’t speak to God again much after that. Mostly because he’s too busy rebuilding his life. Training everyday to become better than Batman ever was.
He took on a new mantle for himself: Red Hood.
It wasn’t original to him, but he’d make it his. He’d make sure the people would know his name. Fear him, if they have to.
As time went on, Jason kept God close to his chest, even without directly starting conversations with him like he used to.
But then, one day…he meets Him.
God comes in the form of a Kryptonian man. A man in a deep blue suit, with silver armour and yellow wires wrapped around a lithe frame. A man with tousled blue-black hair, electric blue eyes, and a permanent smirk that can’t seem to be wiped off no matter what one would do to him.
God comes in the form of Superboy-Prime.
And Jason immediately hates Him.
God (or Prime, as he demanded to be called) was apparently the sole reason Jason rose out of that grave at all. Which would’ve been fine, if it was indeed God giving a soldier who had lost a battle a second chance to fight again.
But, the truth was, it was entirely an accident.
God, for whatever reason, had gotten angry at those surrounding Him. They had apparently failed to live up to His expectations, and in return for His help in fixing a problem they had encountered, they trapped Him in an eternal limbo, never to see or interact with anyone ever again.
So God, frustrated with His imprisonment, one day decided to break free from hell by punching His way out.
And one of those punches just so happened to right the wrongs of Jason’s demise, and revive him from the dead.
Jason, for the most part, felt confused and hurt by this revelation.
If this truly was God who stood before him at this moment, real and physical and not just a disembodied being of Jason’s imagination, why had He never come to save him from his misfortunes before? Why only show up now, after he’s spent his whole life rebuilding shit from the ground up on his own, when he desperately wanted His comfort all those years ago?
Jason never wanted to see God ever again after that. He didn’t need His help before, and he sure as hell didn’t need it now.
Yet after that first encounter, God continued to follow Jason wherever he went.
He never approached Jason directly, which was a good thing. He probably knew that Jason would beat Him senseless if He initiated contact again. But He was always just sort of…there, in the background. Watching over Jason, listening to him go about his day.
It was akin to how Jason thought of Him when he was younger—always present, always here, but never actually doing anything meaningful.
There was one key difference, however. This time, Jason could hear God’s side of the conversation, too.
He spoke of “writers” and “readers” and “plot holes” that didn’t quite make sense. He listened to Him complain about “the intricacies of slow burn romances”, like this was some trashy romantic comedy instead of Jason’s own real life.
But God’s ramblings led to a thought forming in Jason’s mind.
Superboy-Prime talked about subjects and scenarios that were beyond his comprehension. Coupled with his abilities that are more powerful than any other Kryptonian on the planet, it would make sense that He was God.
But these “writers” that He seemed to prattle on and on about appeared to be a greater being higher than even Him.
And if that’s the case…then Superboy-Prime never really was God all along, was he?
That’s what Jason set out to find.
Cornering Him was easy. Wherever Jason was, He was usually never far behind.
Pinning Him down, however—that was the hard part.
It took Jason a couple of tries, but he managed eventually to get Him up against a wall, a hand around His throat. Or maybe He was just feeling grateful enough to let Jason win, he didn’t know.
“No matter how far away you are from me, I can hear you yapping my ear off, y’know.” Jason said to Him. “You keep mentioning all these readers and writers, and I want you to tell me—”
Jason’s grip tightens around His throat, feeling the windpipe beneath his fingers tighten slightly.
“Who are they?”
Prime gasps, feigning dramatics…then smiles.
“They, dear Hood, are the Gods you have been seeking this whole time.”
***
Superboy-Prime is not God. Jason had to figure that out through trial and error.
Despite the sheer utter nonsense to his words and the eccentric traits of his personality, Prime is, at the end of the day, a pawn to a scheme far greater than his being, just as Jason once was. Misguided and manipulated for other’s personal gain, Prime really had only one goal throughout his entire life as a villain—to go home, and to be loved by his family again.
And what else was Jason to do, if not sympathise and give him the love that he deserved?
So, there they were, in Jason’s bed in his apartment, tangled in sheets not made of silk, but comfortable enough that it’d warm both of them up.
Prime has his head on Jason’s chest, ignoring scars and marred flesh to listen to the steady heartbeat underneath. Jason, in turn, has his fingers carding through Prime’s hair in a way that is meant to soothe the Kryptonian.
They are both broken men, seeking comfort in one another. Neither of them are the perfect example of a pristine, shiny, healthy romantic partner, but they understand each other’s struggles and needs, and that’s enough.
“This happiness isn’t gonna last forever.” Prime murmurs, breaking the shared silence. He buries his head in Jason’s chest, clawing at the skin as if he was the only tangible being left on the planet.
According to what Prime’s told him about his worldview, Jason might as well be that.
“I don’t want you to go. Please don’t leave. I can’t bear to be alone again.”
Jason opens his mouth to reassure him, but the words die down in his throat. Probably because, deep down in his heart, he’s thinking the exact same thing.
He resorts to wordlessly kissing the top of Prime’s head instead.
Nevertheless, Prime’s right, though. Joy like this is temporary. Neither of them know when it’ll get taken away.
But, for Prime’s sake…Jason hopes it lasts until the end of their borrowed time.