That's the short version of the story, yeah." Jason confirmed the angel's supposition with all the passion of a man reading off his grocery list. His eyes locked with the angel's, unflinching. Somehow, the other man's clearly inhuman nature was making this easier. There was an element of wordsmithing whenever Jason wove this tale, an escape into his gift for language, though his vocabulary was always rougher than what he'd set down on a page. "The long version is he dragged it out. Joker likes to mess with people's heads. He's as insane as they come, and he wants everyone else to be, too. So he chats with you when he's playing with you like that. Strikes up a regular conversation. We had a nice one-sided discussion about all my failures as Robin, Bruce's failures as Batman--especially about how he wasn't going to save my ass--and which technique hurt more. Fun times. And he went far enough that I'd at least need the ICU. Then he stopped. Said see you later, locked me and Shiela in the warehouse. I thought maybe Bruce would make it until I saw the countdown for the bomb."
Jason still saw that clock in his sleep. Red numbers glowed against a black background on a rectangular face and counted down first minutes, than seconds. "He gave us enough time to think about it. I kept telling myself I'd screwed up, but Bruce would make it like he always had before. Even managed to get my hands in front of me and drag myself to the door, get it open so we could get the fuck out. Sheila never said a damn thing about being sorry, just begged me to save her, and I tried. Soon as I knew that door wasn't opening, that Bruce would be too late, I hauled my sorry ads back over to her to try to give her some cover." He'd been coughing up blood, basically drowning in it. The pain had gotten so bad he couldn't remember what it was like to have a single part of him not hurt.
"Don't know how long it took after the bomb went off. I was kind of in and out. Coroner's report says I died of asphyxiation from smoke inhalation, which sounds about right. Sheila died, too. Then there's this stretch of nothing, like I didn't exist, until I woke up in my coffin." That nothingness scared Jason more than he liked to admit. Where had he been while dead? Anywhere? Nowhere? Had he existed at all?