Adoption Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be -- Chapter Two
This is chapter two to ‘that one fic idea I had’! I really enjoyed writing this one. It’s my first time writing a fic, and I’m having a lot of fun. This chapter is from Jazz’s POV. This is mostly just set up, the next chapter should be when the plot actually gets going.
Words: 1,085
Ao3 Link
First -- Next -- Masterpost
TW: blood, vivisection, neglectful/abusive parents
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Jasmine Fenton was panicking. She was definitely, surely, without a doubt panicking. Her breathing was quickened, she was close to crying, her hands were shaking, and her baby brother was bleeding out in the back seat of her scrappy old car. Danny, her sweet, kind, dead baby brother was bleeding Christmas colors in the back seat of her car. Yeah, she was panicking.
“It’s okay, you’re gonna be okay, I’ll protect you, I won’t let anyone hurt you again, okay, you’ll be safe - safe - okay?” She was only vaguely aware of whispering this, over and over again, throwing as many reassurances as she could at Danny, whose eyes were squeezed shut and whose breath was coming out ragged and hitched.
She needed to think. What was she going to do now? She needed a plan. Yes. A plan, that’s what she needed. Baby steps. She’s got this. Okay, first, where to go? What city has enough ectoplasm to both sustain Danny and hide his signature? In what city will no one notice, or care, if two teenagers show up and start living on their own? Gotham, of course. Dark, gloomy, and hidden. She could protect her brother there. Accelerating, she made several questionable driving choices and steeled herself for the long ride to Gotham that would surely be filled with worry and regret.
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Jazz heaved a deep sigh as Gotham’s signature skyline came into view. Grand gothic architecture with solemn gargoyles and sweeping rooftops. It was as beautiful as she was pretty sure it was cursed. Danny’s breathing in the backseat was slow and shallow. It was much slower than a normal human’s but fairly regular for Danny. His brow was furrowed in his sleep, a perpetual grimace of pain evident on his face. Jazz quickly turned her eyes back to the plastic-littered road, both to avoid crashing in the worsening traffic and to avoid the swell of emotion that rose looking at her baby brother. Her baby brother, whom she had sworn to protect, and whom she had failed so miserably. She shook her head, trying to dispel those thoughts before they overtook her. She failed at this too, the images of Danny sprawled out on a clinical metal table, his chest dominated by a gaping incision and the rest of his skin mottled with bruises, swam in front of her eyes like persistent flies. The way his blood reflected the fluorescent green light from those buzzing (so, so much buzzing. Everything seemed to buzz) light bulbs in the basement. She never wants to look at that shade of green again.
It’s too neon, she thinks, too bright, too green, too much of it in her brother’s blood that was not inside his body, where it really should be.
She’s in shock, she thinks. Yes, she’s in shock. She remembers the psychology books she’s read describing trauma response. She’s in shock. She has all the symptoms. This is bad, though. If she’s in shock then she can’t think straight and if she can’t think straight then she can't protect Danny! She needs to protect Danny. She needs to. Jazz swears, she won’t let anything bad happen to her brother ever again. Never, ever, ever, ever. He’ll be safe, she’ll make sure of it, she’ll protect him, she’ll do better, she’ll be everything he needs, and she will damn well rain destruction on anyone who tries to hurt her sweet, precious Danny who’s already been so broken by the world. She’ll do anything.
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Jazz pulls up to a hotel with a flickering neon sign (not neon, anything but neon, she can’t handle neon) and a door that squeals in protest when asked, even politely, to open. The clerk, a tired and raggedy looking young man, doesn’t question Jazz’s request for their most out of the way (and cheapest) room. Doesn’t question Jazz’s poor attempts to hide Danny and the alarming amount of blood he’s covered in. Doesn’t even question finding Jazz in the employee break room, holding their only first aid kit behind her back with a desperate look on her face. Simply raises an eyebrow and turns back around. Jazz is grateful.
Back in their foul-smelling room about half an hour later, Jazz ties off the bandages now cocooning Danny’s chest and finally allows herself to breathe a sigh of relief. It’s okay, they’re safe, Danny will be okay, she will be okay. She can figure this out. They can stay in this hotel for a couple of days, maybe a week, before she can find some cheap apartment to stay in. She can get a job. She… won’t be able to go to college. Get her degree in psychology, like she always dreamed. She can’t. She’ll need the money she saved up just to survive, to take care of Danny, and anyway, enrolling in university would let the Fentons know exactly where they were.
Only nineteen and your dreams are already in the toilet. Her thoughts continue to scream at her, and she smiles bitterly, but it’s really more of a grimace that makes her tired eyes seem even more hollow.
She shouldn’t be thinking like that. Danny’s hurt, Danny’s more important. She’ll figure it out. She’ll change her name. Talk it over with Danny first, see what he likes, but they’ll change their name. She certainly doesn’t want to be a Fenton anymore, and she doubts Danny does either. She can take online classes. Eventually. Yeah, she can do this. Running a hand through her carrot-orange hair, she sighs for what must have been the thousandth time that day.
It is only when she feels her tears dripping off her chin that she realizes she is crying. They start as silent tears dribbling down her face, and then morph into hiccups and little hitches in her breath and the tears begin to fall more steadily, and before she knows it she is doubled over heaving big, gut-wrenching sobs. She cries, for herself, for her broken dreams, for her broken life. She cries for Danny and how small he looks, curled up on a dirty, bare mattress. She cries for the bandages around his chest and for the pain they’ve both known. And she cries for a very long time. Eventually, the tears stop and her cheeks dry, and she is left sitting in the corner of a shitty hotel room, hair askew and head in her hands, deafened by the silence and quieted by the rasping breaths she and her brother draw.
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I would appreciate constructive criticism, thank you for reading!
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