hello hello.

[shitglasses]

the FIRST LINE OF DIALOGUE meme

• generate some dialogue.
• stick it in your top level.
• respond to others.
• have fun! or don't. i'm not the boss.

Comments

[robintohood]

"I was thinking about mine and how different it could've been if just a few things changed," Jason replies in a matter-of-fact tone.

[telekinesis_kills]

That makes Danny wince. "I see."

Danny carries a lot of guilt for his part in what happened to Jason. (He was the last one that Jason spoke to, before leaving on that ill-fated search... Danny hadn't realized things were wrong, because Danny can't read a fucking emotional cue to save a life...)

Things could have gone really differently, if Jason'd had better friends at the time.

[OOC: I know it's different in different continuities, but in the comics we get Danny musing to himself, "I just spoke to the Toddster a week ago..." in the 'Teen Titans' issue where the death gets revealed. So, ow? I hate the writers?!]

[robintohood]

Jason sees that wince and waves his hand like his waving off Danny's guilt to reassure him.

"I never blamed you," he says. "There were other factors involved at the time."

((OOC: Yup! His friendship with Danny is part of my headcanon for this iteration of Jason. I'm forever salty the writers didn't really give Jason more friends besides Kid Devil and Danny, with the latter mentioned only after Jason's death. sigh))

[telekinesis_kills]

"Other factors?" Danny repeats. "I couldn't tell that you were upset when you called the Tower, because I'm defective. It is my fault. Bloomberg would have been able to tell, and we could have helped you."

[robintohood]

"Maybe but you're forgetting I've always been stubborn as hell too. Plus, I tried to call Dick separately, besides contacting the Tower," he replies calmly.

[telekinesis_kills]

"Eddie and I would have helped you. If you'd asked." Danny looks away, and says quietly, "We were supposed to be a team..."

[robintohood]

"I think none of us ever got the hang of being in a team like Dick and the others," Jason muses. "I know I didn't get that much experience."

[telekinesis_kills]

"We never had a chance."

Almost as sudden as the anger is there, it's gone again. Danny never blamed Jason for the way that things fell apart afterward. Jason doesn't deserve his anger. He just sighs, and shakes his head.

"I'm too messed up for any other life, Todd. I always have been." He takes a breath. "What would you do, if things had been different?"

[robintohood]

Jason pauses to think about how to word his answer. He meant it when he said he never blamed Danny for what happened. And given how bad things were getting between himself and Bruce, that part was perhaps inevitable.

"Finish school for one thing," he muses. "Not sure what I would've studied for college though. Maybe literature since I've always been a bookworm."

It's hard for Jason to imagine what else he could've been besides being a vigilante.

[telekinesis_kills]

Danny thinks about that idea, and smiles just a little bit. "You could be a museum curator, with a literature degree. If you focus on history, too."

[robintohood]

Jason makes a small smirk back. He appreciates Danny's suggestion, even if it's all just fantasizing.

"That wouldn't be so bad," he says. "I'd wanna be one of the more adventurous ones though and not just deal with rich stiffs all day."

[telekinesis_kills]

"You could go by Ace Todd." Danny grins. "Just so one of us in the know would get to say, 'we named the dog Ace'!"

Silly reference to an 80s movie? But of course!

[robintohood]

Jason barks out a laugh.

"Well, it'd be an upgrade from 'Toddster' at least," he then says. "Do I get a cool outfit and a whip too?"

[telekinesis_kills]

"I don't see why not. You'd be making college graduate money, and you could dress however you pleased." Danny shrugs. "When my parents took me around Europe as a little kid, I did silly stuff like wear a beret when we were in France."

He cups one hand over his mouth and leans in to say in an exaggerated 'stage whisper', "To tell you the truth, 'Toddster' was just keeping to the theme of nicknames I used to annoy Dick. I bet he'd still make faces if you busted out 'Wingster' one of these days."

Danny is thinking of annoyed faces, and it doesn't occur to him that -- given how everything played out -- a reminder of him might make Dick actually sad.

[robintohood]

"'Wingster' sounds like a bad name for a menu item at a chicken restaurant," Jason chuckles.

It's a light tease not meant to make fun of his friend but to lighten the mood. Bringing up the what-ifs of their lives was heavy and Jason knows it might not be a topic Danny's comfortable with.

"The Discowing suit is in storage somewhere too."

[telekinesis_kills]

"The Wingster -- sampler platter for all our tasty chicken wing flavors," Danny declares, in his best approximation of a commercial announcer's voice.

The mention of Dick's old Nightwing costume makes Danny snort. "Is it warded against escaping containment, too?"

[robintohood]

"Luckily, no," Jason replies, still grinning. "To this day he still thinks it was a perfectly good design."

Meanwhile, Jason's glad he moved on to a more practical outfit.

[telekinesis_kills]

"Are you going to go back to school someday?" Danny asks. "You could attend under a false name if you wanted to. You're smart, and unlike me you actually liked school."

[robintohood]

"Hmm..." Jason asks, furrowing his brow as he ponders. "Maybe. It'd be nice on just a personal level to know I finished school. But you know how our line of work is. Sometimes that just takes up our whole lives."

[telekinesis_kills]

"Yeah, there's this thing? Called work-life balance. And my therapist is pretty adamant about how important it is." Danny briefly sticks his tongue out at Jason.

"You should do it. God knows, you've given enough to the vigilante life, and for long enough. When you're old and creaky and can't do your ridiculous flips anymore, it'll be nice to have an education to fall back on, yeah?"

Danny is conveniently ignoring the probability that neither of them will make it long enough to be old. If it's all fantasizing, Jason, then keep pretending for a while.

[robintohood]

Jason's also well aware of that probability but still, it's nice to occasionally fantasize. Plus, it rare for him and Danny to have these kinds of conversations.

"I could always get robotic prosthetics if my real limbs ever give out," He jokes. "But I guess a more traditional backup plan wouldn't hurt. What about you? I feel like you would making a killing off of private security."

[telekinesis_kills]

"If I make it to retirement, I'm gonna go live up in the mountains in a tiny little town and do absolutely nothing." Danny grins. "I'll complete my transformation into a cryptid and just be the mysterious Old Man Chase who sometimes comes down from the forest to buy supplies from the general store."

[robintohood]

"And the local kids make crazy stories about you being an axe murderer," Jason smirks back. "Meanwhile, you secretly use your powers to make it look like your yard is haunted if any of them get close to your property."

[telekinesis_kills]

"Exactly!" Danny laughs. "There need to be more harmless dumb kid theories in the world anyway."

[robintohood]

"You should see all the Batman theories," Jason snorts. "He and the Robins get called all kinds of weird shit to explain why and how we work the way we do."