Chapter Text
He wishes the pain was profound, a sensation higher than life, a feeling that was worth him chasing it. Instead it is mundane - so fucking painful.
Red Hood lays in the pool of his own blood and thinks that in books they make it somehow higher. His own situation could have poetry in it - here he is, under the skies, Gotham smoke cleared enough for him to see some stars. But fucking ouch. He doesn't even have the words to explain the pain otherwise. Mercifully, already he was feeling himself losing his conscience.
From the corner of his eye, he sees a black shadow move quickly, separating itself from the rest of the darkness. Typical, he thinks, hoping he is hallucinating, but knowing he isn't.
When he awakens in the cave, he expects it, can feel the familiar damp air around him before he opens his eyes. It is pretty hard for him to open his eyes. He fights against it.
"Where?-" he tries to move his lips. Christ, but Bruce didn't spare his painkillers - Jason can barely feel his face.
"Home, lay still."
Jason is fairly sure that it is his heart speeding up a notch that lets him fight off the morphine, but it'd be embarrassing to admit it. Strange how he can anticipate Bruce and yet still be affected by him.
With a hardship he pries his eyes open and rises slightly on his elbows.
"Where is the tracker?" He can't quite focus his eyes, and Bruce's voice in the cave does have a tendency of echoing and so seems to go from all direction at once, so he can't tell which dark shape is the Bat.
"Jason." It sounds disappointed, as his name tends to do on Bruce's lips. He seems to understand Jason's plight to locate him because he steps closer into the light.
He can see the tension in Bruce's mouth line, jaw held tight, but the mask hides the rest. How does he look at him? Disappointed? Sad? Frustrated?
Probably all at once, as he tends to, these days.
Jason takes a stock of his body on the med table, his costume is left intact, only his arm is connected to the drip, plus his chest is open and his ribs are bandaged, the wounds closed, he can also feel a steel support at his neck - he did get a whiplash during the fight. His head is bandaged also - the main source of all that blood in which he laid, he guesses. He separates a knife from his thigh pocket.
"Fuck you. Is it in my legs?" He readies the knife right over the meat of his thigh. Bruce inhales. Jason guesses they both know how this would go, they both know that he really would.
"I expect it is in your small intestine by this point," he gives up.
Jason thinks on the past couple of days.
"Oh no, not Dickie..." he remembers them getting a take-out a couple of days back. "Shit, Bruce, it's basically a tradition by this point, we do this weekly, I'll never forgive you for robbing me of this."
Already he's forbidden Alfred from visiting him, because this one time he's found that the man has planted some tracking devices in his apartment. And it was so damn hard to find them all, Alfred's Bondian past showing itself. In the end he just bought a minor device off the black market which killed all the tech in the vicinity, rendering his whole apartment building dysfunctional, but at least this way he was sure. He did consider moving out, but the economy being what it was, he wasn't sure he could secure another lease and scourge enough money for the security deposit.
"No, not Dick. That food truck you favor."
"Not the Just taste & Lick!" And he did eat there yesterday, shit, as he did every few days or so. Ah, that evil, devious Margie, the owner of the thing, Jason knows she has a daughter in school and probably plenty of financial cares, but still. "B, that's almost worse - their Wonder Wurger has this golden sauce, I've got no idea what it is, tastes vaguely Grecian, really divine... And like it is a combo if you get a Cy-boba-tea, you know the pearls painted to look like cyborg's eyes, you get the Flash Fries for free. Maybe you should've gotten Dick on the job, you know. He's just my brother."
"I tried to recruit him. He told me that it would probably piss you off, and also that the decision didn't sound like a healthy coping mechanism."
"Ah, good ol' Dickie... It is a nice thought that somewhere in the world there are some mentally healthy people, isn't it?"
Bruce smiles, and takes off his mask. Jason's heart does a somersault into his throat.
"It is a nice thought," he agrees, eyes kind on Jason.
Jason suspects that he is going to boil, but he is also helpless, it never stops feeling like a win when he manages to make Bruce smile, and so he smiles, helpless, back.
Bruce tentatively steps closer, his fingers touching the bedding. Jason watches the fingers like they are tiny bombs that can go off any moment. He tries to scoot away from them.
"It does sound good, that food truck place," Bruce tries.
Christ. Jason wishes he was slightly less transparent about it all, and also at least few notches less pathetic, it all makes everything so hard.
"C'mon, B," he tries to save at least some of the dignity of Batman.
Bruce shrugs, apparently not above using this horrible awkwardness against him. "I heard they've had the Bat Nuggets?"
"Yeah, it's regular chicken nuggets except cut into bat forms, artificially colored black," Jason rolls his eyes.
Bruce's eyes don't leave his face, but Jason refuses to meet them. He could probably make a run, even with his injuries, even high on morphine, Jason thinks.
"Please, Jay," at last Bruce breaks.
"Fuck off," the words come out desperate, like Bruce he isn't above begging to get what he needs.
Bruce pauses, but it seems like nothing's enough to deter him. He probably sees that Jason is in no condition to make a swift run for it. And he isn't, shit. When Jason rips off the drip, he feels light-headed and has to fight it for a moment.
"I thought you told me you weren't mad anymore," Bruce pleads.
Jason's latest surrender, and a fairly good reason for him to avoid Bruce like a plague - whenever he sees the man so desperate and so defeated, so broken and hurt by Jason, he feels this need to somehow try to make Bruce feel better, which results in all types of confessions. And, really, after all those years, Jason isn't. Well, some days he still was... But that's not the main reason he tries to avoid his adopted father.
"You know why, I've explained it - if I start with him, I'm afraid I will lose whatever control over myself I have," apparently Bruce isn't yet out of his mind bored by this conversation they've had a million times over the years.
"Yes, God, I know, stop crowding me!" he knows that he sounds hysterical, but Batman steps back.
Bruce exhales, sounding punched in. Jason hopes desperately that this is the end.
"You could've died, Jay. Today, on that roof, you could've died, do you realize that?" No, of course, it is not the end. It will never be, the only way Bruce ever lets go of him is if Jason makes a run for it. Jason lowers his legs, and wonders if Bruce got him such a killer dose for a reason apart from his desire to shield him from pain. Everything is swimming.
He thinks it is a mercy that he doesn't speak out, doesn't answer Bruce. Yes, of course, I know that. Why do you think I was there?
"If I didn't put a tracker in you, what do you think would've happened?"
"Nothing that didn't happen before."
Alluding to his death is always an interesting route to take - sometimes it shuts Bruce right up, Jason can just about feel the self-loathing which consumes the man. Sometimes, it makes B really really angry.
"You are my ward, do you realize that?" Jason doesn't mention that he is of age because Bruce sounds completely enraged. "You are my responsibility. I want you to know that I could force you to take my help. We could play a war, how about it? I want you to know that I am capable of doing that. I respect your autonomy, but the patience is wearing thin. You're clearly a danger to yourself. This is the last warning - I need you to move in to Manor, and we can come to a compromise about the rules of your living here. Should you desire it, you will never see me. And if it is about some desire of yours to punish me, I'm sure we can find some ways, but it will happen under this roof. Fail to do that and I will make you my main project, I will observe your every step and every move, I will use all the cards available to me, no matter how illegal or wrong, no matter how humiliating to you, but I will install a complete observation of you, and I will make sure that you do not come to any harm. Is that clear?"
Jason swallows. "You can try, old man." But that's all he has - bluff. Bruce has never threatened to go with his whole arsenal against him. Maybe he could go neck to neck with Batman for his own independence, but that is if the scales were in balance, as it is though Jason works on a much much smaller budget than the Wayne heir.
Bruce tries one last time, "Please, Jay... I will do anything you ask. Anything."
When Jason dashes right past Bruce, the man lets him go without trying to catch him.
But his last word latches into Jason's skull and rattles inside. Anything. Anything.
What a joke.
He knew everything when he was thirteen. He knew the world, he knew the people in it. He knew how to score, could spot the easy marks, not that there were many of these in Gotham. He didn't mind that, the world was a war-ground but mostly he was winning. He learned a long time ago to accept the things exactly as they were.
Not many would've robbed Batman, but that was the trick - Jason understood immediately that Batman relied too much upon his reputation and didn't over-protect himself the way the weaker marks would've done. So it was easy to get the tires off the Batmobile, and then, even when Batman tried to catch him, it was easy to leave him in the dust, clutching his middle after meeting the tire iron.
And, sure, Batman found him easily enough, but what was he going to do? Put Jason into the system? Really scary, and also Jason could run away from any house he wished.
But then when the man found him, he didn't admonish him, or throw him into some new house he needed to escape. No, he told Jason that he would adopt him.
In his new life, this life after death, Jason's memories of his first life come hazy, strange, viewed through the green of Lazarus prism. At times he feels as though he is dreaming his memories, creating them in his imagination, and wonders how many of them are fantasies and wonders if any of them are real. His past became a thing that he could unroll, view multiple, kaleidoscopic - this is how it happened, but then can place a stop to the motion pictures and view that same scene but filmed by a different director, unrolling a different script. His past became a thing twisted by his hindsight, his young, soon coming death, and this new life beyond it. He can't recreate his past from his memories and be precise about it.
But this he knows, this fact consoles him - when he first saw Batman, he saw the man as nothing more but an escape off the streets. He took one look at this man dressed as a bat, and knew him for an easy mark.
So imagine this - you're trying to hide from Batman, what do you do?
Jason shoots a quick text to Artemis and Roy, "Gotta drop low. Don't look." He doesn't go back to his apartment to get any of his things even though he is pretty sure Bruce would've given him a headstart for this much. Still, the man is not all that well in the head, and it does seem as though Jason has managed to get on his last nerves so he doesn't want to take any unnecessary risks.
He goes to Talia. Flies to UAE, from there picks up her trail, finds her and the League somewhere in Quarac and asks asylum, which Talia happily provides. It is temporary, Jason knows, but he needs at least a bit of a time to prepare for this whole war against Batman, time to find him the people willing to trade him what he needs, write a few lines of code that would shield his web presence, etc. Jason trusts and Talia assures him that this much League of Assassins can give him.
It is strange entering Quarac again. His mind is poisoned with literature and he thinks he sees a motif in his life, a pattern. Here he goes again, looking for his mother, and who is Talia but not the mother of his second life?
But like all people who love to read he knows that life is nothing like literature.
Meanwhile he watches the world news religiously, hoping for some kind of opening that perhaps JL is splitting, some of the super supes are picking up a bone against Batman, and maybe overall a greater thing would distract Bruce, or at least give Jason a chance.
It is not even a week since he settles inside the palace hidden in sands when, during the pleasant dinner he has with Talia in which they discuss his physical training classes he picks up while he's here, that Damian slides into the Great Hall.
"Mother," he greets Talia, walking awful confident, like it is his palace. And Jason guesses it kind of is.
"Son."
He sits at the table with them, and tells the guards to hurry with his food.
"Brother," he greets Jason.
"Damian," Jason nods.
It's been what? Five days hidden at Talia's, about thirty-six hours that he's spent trying to locate her? A week. It took him one fucking week.
He pushes the plate away from him, appetite lost. Meanwhile Damian taps the glass, impatient. The waiter appears and places his Kabsa dish before him. Damian dives right into it.
"Mmm... Nothing like mother's cooking."
"You know Damian that I've never once in my life cooked."
He and Talia both look at this what? twelve-year old who probably enjoys it, though not that Jason thinks Damian Wayne is actually capable of feeling any human emotions.
He and Talia both have too much dignity already stripped to show Damian any of the impatience they feel so they wait until Damian finishes his meal. And then watch impassively as he gulps the Moroccan tea to cleanse the palate. After that Damian, and by this point Jason is damn sure that the little gremlin enjoys this assignment he got from Bruce, wipes his mouth with the cloth and then folds it accurately in front of him.
"Oh, do fuck off, Damian," he did promise to Dick not to curse in front of the gnome, but this kid is obviously playing with them and stringing them along, and that seems like a worse thing to do and more than deserving a little foul language.
Damian glares at him, then folds his hands and gets to it. "Father has asked me to relay to you, Todd, that as of now you have subjected the whole business of the Assassin's League to round the clock surveillance. Do not worry, mother, he doesn't wish to disrupt any of the activities, and he doesn't, at least not yet, intend to go with his data to any of the legislative bodies, including that of the Justice League. Though regarding this new scheme, details of which I don't know, father has refused to elaborate to me, some new business deal with a certain dealer, I see that you know what I'm talking about, well, considering that you were most likely to ask Todd to help you secure it, father has asked me to warn you that should Todd be involved in such a dangerous scheme, he will have to step up, so bear that in mind. And, Todd, father told me that he has given you a grace period, a week in which he did not trace your internet output, but from that point on, he will put trackers on that, so take care only to visit the websites you'd feel comfortable knowing father would see them."
They sit in silence for a moment.
Jason has a hunch that Bruce sent the gremlin because he knew damn well that Jason would feel his hands itching to simply get his guns out and solve the most immediate problem of having to see the bearer of such a humiliation.
"Well. It's been a pleasure," Damian concludes, raising. "You wouldn't mind me using the prayer room for Maghrib?" - "Of course not, son."
They watch him leave on his tiny stick legs with all the dignity of someone about four feet tall. Before the door he is stopped by Talia: "How are you, Damian?"
Jason watches the involuntary flex of Damian's fingers on the door knob and softens a little. Apparently the kid has something of a human inside him.
"I'm good, mother."
Another fact that Jason knows is that if he felt dismissive of Bruce upon their first meeting, one year later it was definitely not so.
He remembers that they were driving somewhere... in Europe? Spain, perhaps. Convertible top and the breeze was pushing their hair back, on one side of the road the sea sparkled. The road was curvy, they were rising up, where were they going? Someplace good, Jason is sure, they weren't there for Batman business, but to relax, have a vacation. The memory is not full, only a flash of it, yet so saturated with colors, with depth and spatial awareness that Jason knows he didn't imagine it. He knows he is fourteen.
"You can call me Father, Jay," Bruce said, casual, eyes not leaving the road, one hand on the wheel.
Even from the time separating him from that boy, time and death, Jason still feels the pain same as he did right there.
And he looked at Bruce's profile, saw how relaxed the man was, how beautiful the moment was and caught it forever, preserving it in the amber of his pain to the place beyond death.
"I get that you're mad that I've tried to assassinate you, but really, Drake? Is that brotherly at all?"
Tim turns on the light and Jason sees how he rolls his eyes, barely deigning to look at him. Tim moves across his room in the Young Justice headquarters towards the closet and strips to change.
Jason does fall back leagues behind Bruce in plenty of spheres - he is less of a detective, lags behind scientific education which here and there comes handy. Jason can even admit that even though Bruce's age should play in his, Jason's favor, it is kind of not so, so physically too, Bruce is more of a tank, Jason can admit that he is weaker than the Bat. But what he isn't is he isn't worse than Bruce at the whole internet gimmick, here his age gives him the greatest privilege, like all kids his age he gets the internet, he's been raised with it, he understands it on this instinctive level. And yet, somehow, what he hasn't been able to do, is he hasn't been able to throw off any of the internet trackers. And, sure, Jason isn't an internet genius, but he knows enough to recognize the footprint, or the lack of it, he knows precisely the only person who is simply that good.
"See all of this? Can you guess how much energy the headquarters like that cost monthly? We have, and I kid you not, a time-warp portal downstairs. Also Amethyst needs her crystals vibrating at a pretty stable frequency in order to do her mojo, and, I mean, all other metas have their own specific needs. Not too many regular humans in here. Nothing personal, Todd."
"Like hell it isn't. I thought you used the trust fund Bruce set you up with, can't you use that?"
"Still Bruce's money."
"Okay, don't play cheeky with me," he whips out the gun.
Tim sighs out and turns to look at him, exasperated. They never did form some brotherly bond between them. Probably Jason's fault, for trying to kill Tim and all that. Dick told him that Tim would forgive him if he apologized. Well, Jason never felt like doing that, and he didn't feel sorry, too. He reasoned that if he was successful, that meant that Tim really wasn't that suited to be Batman's sidekick. He wasn't successful, that was all.
"I know that you're under Batman's surveillance right now. So we can have a fight if you want, and I must remind you - in the headquarters of my team, so count your chances, but I can promise you that Batman will be here before you'd have a chance of firing your shots. And is that what you want? From what I've understood you're trying to place the distance from him. So far, while you're not giving him reasons to do it, he respects your wish, but you know, I'm sure he would love to explain to you why he decided to recruit me."
"So, really, you're just doing all this for the money? That's the explanation you're sticking with?"
Drake smiles. "Oh no. I delight in making your life as miserable as I can. Assassination attempt, I kind of get, but you never even apologized, asshole."
He is fifteen jumping from the roofs in a way that isn't safe. Was he chasing something that soon will catch him? Did his young death surround him?
Bruce is frustrated, tired, mad with him. "Do you have a death wish, Robin?!" is something that Jason frequently has to listen to. Jason can feel that at fifteen he was close to losing his mind because his memories are scrambled even more, his mind was coming close to splitting, his fate so close to his death. He remembers the fascination with the heights, and he knows that when Bruce asks him - did Garzonas really fall down himself, and Jason knows that he doesn't trust him, Jason also doesn't know the real answer. What was this? Was he mad even then at Bruce's moronic rule that no one should be killed? Or was death coming so close to him, was Jason getting familiar with the death, death staking claim of him. Or did he choose this death? Running headlong towards the danger, what was he running away from?
It is a truth universally known that if you are a Gothamite with a problem, it can't be the only one.
Right when Jason escapes the Young Justice headquarters, after knocking Tim out, and jogs through the back alleys, some goons attack him, and before he knows it, he is thrown into the van, a bag on his head, and feels himself lose his conscience.
He only has a time to think that it is surely ironic - either way one of his problems would be cancelled by another - either Batman would find him, or, at least, he would find a way to escape his constant surveillance. He kind of hopes that whoever stole him is good enough to evade Batman for some time. Jason is embarrassed to admit that he barely gave Bruce a run for his money.
He wakes up to the green light and wonders if it is Lazarus Pit again.
He cranks his eyes open, and through the bars of his tiny grey cell, he sees Aurora Borealis.
Jason takes care of the knots on his hands and his feet, gets off the gag from his mouth, all while not taking his eyes off the vision before him, unable to. He hops towards the window, ignoring his numb limbs coming awake with pain, and watches, fascinated.
There is something about the green, Jason guesses.
It is a vision like his death.
The green of it is the same one that brought him back into his life.
He realizes that he is close to tears, can feel his throat closing, choking, hunched, in pain, but doesn't understand why, just for a moment. Then Aurora Borealis explodes, the green of it pulls him right in, and he takes a trip into his death and beyond.
Jason doesn't know which of his memories are his fantasies, which of them are his dreams, which he created, he can't trust himself.
Remembering his life before Lazarus is painful, and he is sure that he creates a dream story, sees everything through his own prism, adjusts everything when nothing could've been clear or linear, and that imagination is torturous because he knows what he wants, and that's something he can't have.
Bruce comes up to him while he is sitting hunched with his math homework, frustrated, close to throwing a fit, and places his hand on Jason's neck. Jason sees it as though from a distance, not inside his body, and he knows even though he sees himself freeze uncomfortably, it is because such affection is unfamiliar to him, and he doesn't understand what it is or how to react to it, afraid to do something wrong, even though he can feel the gutting pleasure of this easy move. Bruce ruffles his hair, and takes a seat next to him, "Let me help," unaware this is the first kind touch of Jason's life.
The first time Bruce hugged him, which was right after his first stint as a Robin, a terrible thrill and danger, and then, while his blood was still pumping, he felt it - being crushed into the Bat-suit, but this time he didn't freeze, he breathed in deep and tentatively put his arms around Bruce back, and Bruce hugged him even tighter and it was bliss, this time Jason knew what it was. "Are you hurt, are you alright?" Bruce moves away just to take a look at him, pushes the hair away from Jason's face, tints his head into the light, and Jason allows him. "I'm alright." - "I was worried," but before he can bristle that he's had everything under control, Bruce smiles brilliantly and says, "You were... Amazing!" And Jason thinks that never in his life did he want to make another person proud but he knows that he will chase this high forever.
And he doesn't know what is going on, but he knows that Bruce holds so much power over him, that he is so dependent on Bruce, and he hates this in himself, can't stand how his mood depends on Bruce and his opinion of him, especially when Bruce disappears, and he has some other people, not Jason, some models to woo, and Catwoman to flirt with, and sometimes he even leaves for the whole night and it isn't the missions, Jason knows because then he would've joined. And he feels and feels so much, and he knows that something is wrong, something is wrong with him, he shouldn't feel like that. But he can't not. He is jealous of everyone. He hates Dick, and has to restrain himself constantly in order not to ask Bruce - who was the better Robin? meaning of course, which of us you love more? meaning of course, I think I might die if you don't love me enough. And long before he can understand why he feels like that, because he shies from understanding, holds so tight upon the normality like he knows what it might be, he already knows that he can't ever let Bruce suspect what he feels, what is going on in his head. But he thinks that Bruce is so good that surely he can see through Jason, can comb through his confused feelings and know exactly what they are, because Bruce is a detective and it sometimes seems like Bruce knows everything in the world, and he can read the minds of others, and Jason, before he understands what is going on inside him, decides that he will hide it all from Bruce, learning shame before understanding for what it is.
The more he needs Bruce, the more he punishes Bruce, fights against his orders, tests his patience, runs away, gets into trouble. He feels this need to make Bruce proud and so he jumps headlong into disappointing him, and when he feels the shame from seeing Bruce tense, frustrated, angry and finally sad with him, it feels less scary, though equally painful. This is what I am, at times he wishes to tell Bruce, a street rat, and you should regret taking me under your wing, trying to control the inevitable.
Because the more he fights with Bruce, the more distance he tries to put between them, the closer he gets to understanding, until it crowds all around him, waiting for him to take the final leap, waiting to take him down and under.
Bruce is showering after a mission and Jason sneaks a glance. His legs are like columns, he thinks, afraid to rise his gaze higher. He knows this hunger for seeing Bruce's skin, knows that the amazement of Bruce's form, his muscles is not envy.
How did he end up sleeping some night next to Bruce? He was too old even at his youngest to be afraid of the dark but nonetheless, sometimes they slept together, in Bruce's huge bed. Jason liked to wake up before his warden and get a good look at his adopted father's face. The knowledge crowded near, but Jason suppressed it, knowing that he would never have his innocence back again, once he acknowledged it, and so he traced, with his eyes, Bruce's features, finding them beautiful, memorizing them, already aware that soon enough he would never have it again. Only in these moments he allowed Bruce to hug him and his arm was a heavy weight on his middle, pushing him down, and it was then that he knew that he bristled whenever Bruce tried to close the distance between them, with the age letting the man touch him less and less because he wanted it too much.
He saw Bruce with different beautiful women and felt torture.
There was no release from it - he was in pain when Bruce smiled at him, pleased with him, and when Jason did manage to secure some safe distance between them.
The height of skyscrapers was dizzying clarifying moment of stillness when he was falling from them, and so was the escalation of the danger when they had to face the criminals, the pain never felt like a pleasure but it never had to, it only needed to be mind-numbing. At thirteen, Jason pegged Bruce for an easy mark. At fourteen he was in pain when Bruce attempted to be his father. At fifteen he was running hard away from the knowledge that in true he knew. When he was fifteen he was chasing anything that could stop his mind, turn it away from the realization, and Jason thinks that surely he knew that there was a way of stopping him from understanding, of freezing his mind permanently. When he was sixteen he found a way to do that. All he had to do was to die.
And so he managed to be a good son to Bruce. And he managed to be remembered by him with love, sadness, as someone good. Someone normal. He managed to go into his grave with his secret.
Forgive me, Father, for clawing my way out of death. Forgive me, Father, for wanting to live.
Forgive me, Father, for loving you.
It is a fun exercise - to narrow down who might have him. He establishes early that he is in Alaska, and wonders if maybe Luthor got a place close to Superman's Ice Fortress. Lex is a good option. They feed him about once, sometimes twice a day. If he counts correctly, he is kept in the cell for ten days. Whoever has him, manages to evade Batman for ten days. Ten whole days while Batman is actively searching for him. And, sure you might think - it must be a genius to evade Batman. But it is not. It is either someone so close to Batman that they're feeding him wrong information, someone privy to Bruce's deepest secrets, someone who can sneak in and out of the Batcave, in short, someone in the Batfamily, or it is the only person who somehow always manages to go neck to neck with the Bat. There is literally no one in the Batfamily except for him who would do something as twisted as that. That leaves one option. Only one person is mad enough to be beyond Bruce's understanding.
Jason hates himself for being afraid at being captured by Joker.
He is wearing a crown, sitting on the pile of junk in the depth of a throne room somewhere deep in the sewage system. In his hand he is holding a crowbar. A wave of fear, revulsion, pain and panic passes through Red Hood. It is the twelfth day since Jason's capture. He knows that they are in Gotham, though he was knocked out for the whole journey back home.
"Well, come on, kiss your father," Joker motions. Jason hears a hysterical laugh and understands that it comes from him. The goons standing behind Jason push him forward and he stumbles and almost falls.
"Fuck you mean?" he is almost proud that he manages to sound cocky, angry. Not the sixteen year old, realizing that he is about to die, beaten with crowbar.
"Don't you know?" Joker laughs. Jason's heart skips a beat. Oh, fuck, please, just not that. One time, when he was feeling particularly sorry for himself, he almost confessed to Dick, but he didn't. He never talked about it, he never breathed a word of it to anyone in the whole world. Don't let the first person to see through that be him.
"I made you. Created you. Honor thy Father and kiss my brow. I made you and I can unmake you, though we've been through the unmaking, haven't we, my dearest son?"
Jason feels a wave of revulsion while Joker dances and plays all around him. And he feels relief - no, not that, not yet, at least. Who is he? Who is that madman? What does he know, and how? How does he manage to escape Bruce again and again, and how does he manage to strike always so precisely and exact?
Joker farts for like... twenty full seconds, and Jason thinks - ew, and also - is he evading recognition, but mostly - fuck, what a fucking situation and shit, and I want to be anywhere but near that fucking freak. And he thinks - I wish I was protected in Manor, I wish I was near Bruce, I wish above all else to go home. And meanwhile he hears the gunshots and thinks, Just in time. The goons that he has managed to buy off also start taking care of all those he hasn't bought off, and Joker laughs.
Jason sees the yellow teeth before him and feels his stinky breath, "You naughty naughty boy. Come with me, and we will do so many fun things to our Bat friend. Come to me, Jason, if ever you wish to punish him good. Or... if ever you wish to punish good fun with the Bat."
Jason's heart is running staccato, his hands tangle up and he can't free himself in time, and he knows that it is because he is getting a full-blown panic attack, and he doesn't quite remember his age, and thinks he is sixteen about to die. And Joker raises the crowbar - imagination, memory or a real thing?
The first thing he does is he makes a mess searching through Batman's collection. The toxin is already affecting his nerves and he can't stop giggling uncontrollably from time to time, as his muscles are freezing in the sped-up time. Does he have enough time? He wasted so much of it crawling through the sewerage. He finds the anti-toxin to the Joker's gas and injects himself, fingers numb, using the wall to help him aim the needle at his heart - there is no time for the cure to travel from any other point. And then he is paralyzed and drops, cluttering right into the glass cabinet, all those other meds and injections splashing around him.
He observes his breath, but he can feel how his heart remains pumping and thinks that he did it in time. In a few minutes he is sure of that, even his breath starts normalizing. He wonders where Bruce is. But he will be here soon enough, Jason knows, alerted of the intrusion to the Batcave. Jason narrows his eyes at the camera nearby and, with the effort, waves - letting Bruce know it is only him. And also checking that he is, indeed, regaining the motor functions. Another few breaths and he puts himself into the sitting position, muscles straining against the poison. He takes the needle, re-stocks the anti-toxin and injects each of his limbs - that should speed up the recovery.
When Bruce comes into the Batcave, Jason could've escaped, he's had enough time for it.
He hides in the dark and observes Bruce as he looks all around, frantic, for him. He sees it when Bruce understands that he's escaped, and slumps defeated on the chair, takes the mask off, and plays the video roll of Jason dusting himself off after the injections have worked.
When he drops from his high ground and Bruce flinches, Jason releases the fit of giggles that still shake through him - oh, he didn't realize that Batman actually didn't know that he was still here, he thought it was one hell of a trap.
"Jason," is the only thing that he says, like it is punched out of him.
Jason holds his injuries tight, and when Bruce rises from his chair to come up to him, he whips his gun out and says, "Easy. Sit down."
Bruce listens to him. Jason sees how Bruce methodically takes stock of his injuries, quite possibly able in his strange twisted mind to relay the blow-to-blow fight which has happened. Jason comes closer, his gun still pointing, when he gets close enough, he pushes the head of the gun against Bruce's head, and sees that Batman isn't afraid. He doesn't think I'd do it, Jason muses. Even in his current state, he still trusts him, even though it must be apparent to Bruce, as it is crystal-clear to Jason that he is in one hell of a state. If he knew... Jason thinks, he would rather I killed him. I would rather I was only angry and raging, and only wanted to kill him. He lowers his gun slowly down Bruce's face, hoping Bruce would be anything but accepting of his actions. Bruce just holds himself so open for him. When he gets to Bruce's mouth, Jason opens his mouth slightly, instructing Bruce what to do, and Bruce opens up and accepts the steel. Jason sways on his feet, eyes all on Bruce's face, lost, his mind swimming high, he is about to lose it, and not just because of all the blood that he's lost and which still drips down and down and pulls under Jason's feet. Bruce's mouth is stretched and rounded with the barrel of the gun.
Jason gracelessly lowers to his knees into the blood, all while not releasing the gun in Bruce's mouth, and finds himself a place between the columns of Bruce's legs, and lowers his head down on the thigh, pretending he is only gaining a moment because of his injuries but actually using the chance to inhale the breath between Bruce's legs. One hand holding the gun, he lets his hand release the multiple wounds he was holding around his midsection and knows that the countdown to him losing conscience is turning into the minutes. One hand he splays right between Bruce's legs, hungry, desperate, aware that even before he would lose conscience, he will be pushed away, and the question is how much he will be able to do before Bruce understands what it is he intends to do. Immediately after getting a feel with his hand of Bruce's dick, he puts his head right into there, and hears Bruce's shocked intake of the breath. Bruce's shock might get him some time, Jason thinks, nuzzles into the organ, with his hand hurrying and freeing Bruce's dick out, and then, for one blissful moment he almost tastes the skin, but already Bruce's hand is tightening in his hair, tugging him away. His eyes are saucers, mouth stretched by the gun, and Jason thinks - shit, don't let me waste my time explaining, just let me die here, let me have a taste and die right between your legs, sucking your dick, please. Let me die with the taste of you. Of course, he can't have anything the way that he wants it, not even his death, and his rage, which really never leaves even in his death, boils him and he spits out, "You said - Anything. Well, that's my condition."
And he sees Bruce's eyes, but already his vision is swimming and he surely imagines something like surrender in them, and surely when he feels Bruce's hand directing him down and into the warm black, that's only because he is dying, and it is his death that gets him the feeling of a warm velvet of his tongue, the salty taste of which he dreamed since he was thirteen.