Innocence
There was a jolt against his shoulder and his heart leapt into his throat and his reflexes were suddenly in overdrive. His attention snapped to the threat and he barely registered that it was just a teenage girl he'd bumped into in his distraction. She was stooped down, scrambling to gather up the cans that had rolled out of her shopping bag.
"I'm so sorry!" Bruce had made him learn several languages, French included, but his practical use was lacking. He understood the girl’s apology, though. It managed to penetrate the green haze that had suddenly fallen over everything.
"No, uh…ma—uh…mon erreur," he responded. My mistake.
She flashed a shy smile at him as he bent and helped her gather up the cans. "We are both clumsy," she responded in kind.
Her smile did something to the green fog, made it a little easier to think through it. He smiled back weakly. Or tried to. "Oui."
"Thank you for the help." Then with a little wave she was gone.
He tried to remember if anyone else had smiled at him since he'd died.
Xxxx
Jason had only ever been outside of Gotham a few times in his life, and a lot of those memories were fragmented or foggy now. He couldn't help but gawk at all of the new sights now, on his travels.
"What the hell is that?" he asked when something landed on the end of his mounted sniper rifle.
"It is a stick bug,” his teacher answered in English. “You've never seen one?"
He gave a half shrug and a shake of his head. "No."
Ludovic scooped the bug onto his finger and gently deposited it on Jason's head, chuckling when Jason twitched.
"My mémère called them aiguilles du di dable." Devil's needles. "She did not like them eating the leaves of her cherry trees, but they do not eat enough to do true harm. They are good at camouflage. You could learn from them."
Ludovic killed indiscriminately for money, but Jason would always remember how he laughed at Jason’s sputtering when the bug tumbled off of Jason's bangs and landed on his nose. He'd plucked it off of and deposited it safely onto the bark of a big oak tree and it blended in with the wood, disappearing like magic.
Jason had nightmares about Ludovico's mémère for weeks after he killed him.