Jason pulled your body from the pit, hefting you to the cool stone floors and watching your still chest heave and stutter with the breath that you had died with. He smoothed your wet hair out of your face, his own features screwed up to stop him from openly weeping over your body.

He rolled you into a recovery position, silently urging you to throw up, to get the green acid water out of your lungs, out of your stomach, to just come back to him.

To come back to your family.

Jason had died. He had been revived. He came back with a vengeance and a promise of yet another deathless death. He wouldn’t let that happen to you, he couldn’t.

No one had helped him out of the Lazarus Pit. No one had brushed his hair out of his face. No one had helped him throw up, helped him heave in gulps of stale air, helped him stand on legs that were not meant to work.

“Hey, kiddo.” He whispered, wincing at the sounds of your retching. “Hey, hey, it’s okay. ‘S just me, it’s Jason, kiddo, it’s okay.” He murmured, rubbing his hand up and down your back as he helped you sit up more properly.

When you looked up at him, your eyes were green.

Jason stopped, just… froze. The realization that this would never end was like having a gun aimed at his forehead, or maybe having one aimed at yours.

Jason hadn’t been able to stop the cycle of Robin. He’d accepted that. You’d become his own kind of Robin. You had hope- and you’d been killed. Because people wanted to squash that hope, that joy, that goodness. You hadn’t done anything wrong.

If Jason was just ‘a good soldier’, what would you be? What would the next Robin who died be?

Jason felt helpless as he tried to mop the pit water off your face with his sleeve. Everything in him was screaming to get it off, get it off you, and he could barely keep up with his own thoughts.

“It’s alright. You’re alright. I know it hurts, I know, it’ll stop burning in a few minutes.” He choked out, gathering you in his arms. “I’ve got you, it’s okay.”