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He hits his breaking point midweek, midmonth, midyear. There is nothing unusual or different about the way Bruce reacts at the sight of him, or the way his so-called siblings audibly sneer at the sound of his voice.
There is only a message, the same message that has been sitting unread in his inbox for three months. Only, this time, he reads it.
He packs.
He unpacks.
He hammers his helmet into the wall with his bare hands until it shatters, screams until his throat is scraped raw, kicks his ratty old couch until it crumples. He cuts his fingertips slicing the trackers and comms out of his uniforms and burns his palm on the matches he uses to set fire to his bookcase and all the pieces of his heart it holds, and he slams the door so hard behind him that the fucking frame cracks.
After the rage and the pain just comes more pain, of course, tinged with grief and bitter acceptance for added spice. He weeps most of the way to the airport and all the way overseas, and holes up in a shitty motel room for three days when he lands to guzzle water and electrolytes and eat every shitty fast-food craving that comes to him. He doesn’t even turn on the television; he sits there with his own thoughts and little else to occupy himself.
It’s a necessary torture. Jason is adept at playing into every poor thought or opinion his family has ever had of him, but that does not make their assumptions correct, and Jason has never made a decision this critical without taking the time to dissect his own psyche first.
“I don’t want to be immortal.” Is what he leads with, ten hours later. S’aru does not look surprised to find him crawling into the Fields of All through the window to S’aru’s private chambers – which technically don’t exist, some bullshit magic math, pocket dimension plus pocket dimension equals negative dimensions unless you tell creation itself to fuck off stylishly enough.
“I cannot promise you your mortality. Nor can I promise you immortality either.”
“But you have a guess.”
“Rebirth, I would think.” S’aru murmurs, and Jason makes an effort to avoid his gaze, because S’aru is pinning him, dissecting him, mentally. The telepath can’t exactly help it, he’s poorly socialized and all, but Jason doesn’t like to acknowledge it when he can avoid it.
Instead, Jason stares at the scroll shelf S’aru has spent millennia so painstakingly cultivating, and sighs.
“I suppose there has to be some sort of downside to joining a cult.”
“To leading a cult.” S’aru corrects, and his voice is softer than Jason has ever heard it before.
X
Jason had never, ever been intended to take over after Ducra.
Essence had been her heir; Jason had been a foot soldier. General at best. Experiment at worst.
The All-Caste’s greatest weakness had been its stagnancy; it did not obtain new recruits through any means beyond birth. Jason had not been the first mortal whose aura had been compatible with the All-Caste’s teachings Ducra had encountered; he had just been in the right place, at the right time, because S’aru had managed to cajole Ducra into testing the initiation on a mortal – now, while their numbers were still strong, before they would have to risk everything trying with no way to mitigate the consequences.
Ducra had trained him personally, but it was S’aru that had been his true teacher during his time with the All-Caste. Jason didn’t have the magical aptitude to take over after S’aru, or even be an assistant – but he’d pleased the cantankerous immortal by learning the material and history of the All-Caste anyway. Gotten on his good side by being willing to sacrifice for the cause, by comprehending exactly what it was he was swearing to before he did so. S’aru hadn’t expected that of a mortal. Ducra hadn’t either; but Ducra hadn’t really had expectations of him until well after he’d cemented his place amongst the rest of the All-Caste.
And then they’d all died.
And then Essence had left.
There’s a cold kind of certainty that comes with staring down at S’aru’s smooth hands laid over the Blood Blades themselves; a hollow ache that swells in his throat so intensely he half fears his flesh will tear apart.
Jason can’t touch them. Hasn’t been able to since he first took up the All-Blades. But he wants to, if only for the grieving of the swords buried in his own soul, to see their kin and other half rent so wholly from their wielder.
In retrospect; it should have been the first sign, vengeance choosing Essence and justice choosing Jason. Or maybe the second; he’d seen the tension between Essence and Ducra first-hand, the way she’d frozen and flinched every time Ducra had brought up her future as leader.
“I feel like it’s my fault.” He says softly.
“If you think you failed her – what do you think I did?” S’aru’s voice cuts deep, for all that the immortal is trying to be gentle. It isn’t comforting.
“We were always mean to fail. That it took this long was a miracle.” S’aru continues, a harder edge to his tone now, and Jason sighs.
“We didn’t fail.” He says. And that is, unequivocally, true.
The Untitled had finally forsaken the world of Jason’s birth for easier prey, glut on its success in culling its foes and seething at its failure to eradicate them entirely. It and the All-Caste have been playing this same game of chase for eons; the All-Caste didn’t always win, the Untitled didn’t always lose, and eventually one moved on and the other followed.
Jason has no head for the theoretical, academic foundation of why and how; he’d never expected to still be alive when it came time to leave, never even considered willingly going himself, but –
He has a duty. He knew what he was doing when he swore his oaths and took up the All-Blades, chose them right back, and he has nothing left to him beyond this. He failed Gotham; he will not fail the All-Caste.
“We didn’t win either.” S’aru answers.
And that, too, is unequivocally true.