Concealed

Rejection (reprise)

In the end, death was silent.

Jason closed his eyes, leaned back his head, and then he was gone.

There was no light at the end of the tunnel and no savior anointing him from his sins. Instead, a final black stretched around him, cradling him in the cusp of its hand as if he were neither living nor dead, but in-between. Like god had created a nest for his lost soul. 

Jason shut his eyes for the second time and took a nap.

A gulp.

A gurgle. 

When he opened them again, paradise had been ripped away.

Acid and chlorine sizzled into his decomposing eyesockets. He swam, he swam, he swam to the surface. It receded two feet every foot he gained.

He didn't breathe because he wasn't sure he could yet.

He gasped.

He choked.

He awakened. The sheets were drenched. 

No matter what he did, he always came back to the sea of green.

-

Chapter Four

Robin had a hole in his heart.

It was a recent hole, one that had maybe spawned when he was on a ferris wheel ride or stranded on a hostile alien planet.

Some days it consumed his entire body. Other days he felt like there was nothing there at all. 

The hole moved around. It could take the form of a pit in his stomach. An ache in his head. A lump in his throat. It wasn't fatal. No congealing blood oozed out of its cylinder, no teammates were needed to seal his skin with stitches. 

It was still the most painful thing he'd ever experienced. 

When Robin slipped back into the material world his cranium and eyelids throbbed with pain. His surroundings blurred in and out of sharpness like he was wearing the special red and blue-tinted glasses for a 3D movie. 

But the hole was the first thing he felt.

"Yo, Ro-ob! Come in, Rob!" 

Robin rubbed away the branches of crimson tentacles creeping up his cornea. The sun felt like lemon juice squeezing into his eye.

"I'm here."

Robin stretched out his tangle of limbs. A moist squelch rapped against his rear. Garbage. He had spent the night dozing on a pillow of doused, soggy garbage. Lively Spanish music and the sweet-talk of hagglers bartering their goods confirmed he was nowhere near the hideout's trash. In fact, the opposite. The lopsided sign over the array of food carts said it all: WEST QUARTER'S FINEST FARMERS MARKET.

Real classy of Jason to dump me god-knows-where so I'm surrounded with the smelliest fruit in Jump.

"Where have you been, dude? We were so worried about you!" Beastboy flashed a hairy eyeball at the camera. 

Well, it could be worse.

He had blessings to count. He wasn't locked up in a warehouse. He wasn't stripped of his phone or his weapons. He wasn't chained, tied, or drugged.

He wasn't dead.

Jason had left him unscathed for a reason. He was a canary in the mine, a test of which boy Starfire would place her faith in. Then what? If she dismissed his concerns and he was left as a snitch waiting to happen...