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This isn’t going to end well.
Jason has been around long enough to know. He’s seen the way these sorts of things panned out countless times, and after a while the outcomes started to get pretty unoriginal.
One of these days, one of them is going to make a mistake.
It might be tomorrow or in a month or in five years from now, but it’s going to happen. Someone is either going to get shot by a raider, or bitten by an Infected, or end up with a festering wound that only gets noticed far too late to be helped. One of these days, one of them is going to die, and somebody is going to be alone again.
It’s a grim thought for a night like this.
Up on the 45th floor of an abandoned financial tower, Jason and Damian have made a peaceful little home for themselves. They’ve salvaged food, electrical generators, blankets and ammo, and right now that’s more than anyone can hope for.
Jason sits on the lookout, perched on the huge bay window. He stares out below at a Gotham City that is finally at peace. Plants and grasses have warped and cracked the concrete, overtaking everything with lush greenery. The balmy summer air rustles through trees that have grown huge without the inhibitions of man to choke them.
Jason turns to look at Damian, the little brother he’s never had, who sleeps curled up in a nest of blankets like all is well in the world. A gun lies but a few feet away from him. The ten year old is small and painfully thin and as Jason takes in the sight of him, he feels a knot in his chest that he hasn’t felt once in his entire life.
Jason is mourning something he hasn’t even lost yet.
He knows he is an idiot for getting attached. There aren’t a whole lot of options for anyone living in a zombie apocalypse, so Jason has to accept that it’s stupid to think that this is going to turn out okay. There was, and will always be a time limit on this.
He just hopes he’s taught the kid enough. He worries about Damian being on his own, and he also hopes that Damian will have the strength to one day move on if it ever comes to that. Because Jason knows that he wouldn’t be able to do the same if Damian died first.
Jason knows that if he loses him, he’s finished. He isn’t going to have it in him to keep going.
So Jason sits there and mentally repeats the mantra that all good things are fleeting and he never seemed to have them for very long anyway. He plays out every horrible scenario a hundred times until he’s tired of it, numb to it, and tries to tell himself that he isn’t going to be surprised when the worst finally, inevitably happens.
But until that day comes, maybe sitting up here on this balmy summer night with his little brother is the best thing that he could hope for. Maybe for now it’s enough.