Chapter Text
One of Jason’s New Year’s Resolutions was to be More Social, all caps. Because, see, the thing about being dead—and then suddenly not being dead, and then being kidnapped by a group of assassins—is that you miss out on a lot of meaningful and developmentally appropriate relationships. So whenever he got done with the plan, leaving the replacement choking on his own blood on the floor of Titan’s Tower, he got down to business writing the resolution down, on the back of a grease stained napkin: Be More Social, underlined three times, with a sardonic lilt to it.
Because Jason socializes with a lot of people.
Most of whom end up dead on the ground, bullets lodged somewhere that bullets should not be lodged. In a dingy warehouse, Jason stands before a semicircle of corpses, and congratulates himself on a successful completion of that particular goal.
They are—were Falcone men, and by the looks of their gear, not very important either. Cursing under his breath, Jason crouches next to the head of the biggest guy. Kinda lanky, balding a little, seems like the sort who’d stick his nose where it doesn’t belong.
Jason is so invested in rifling through the dead guy’s pockets, in fact, that he almost doesn’t notice her—the woman standing a little off-center of the corpse circle, her hands in her pockets, and a pensive look on her face. She’s also, coincidentally, dressed like she’s going to a funeral. Jason’s cursing starts up again in full force, because civilians were not part of the deal, and there’s no way this lady is anything but a civilian—Jason’s brain is already cataloguing—no weapons, ragged tank top, subdued demeanor, not a threat. Addict? Certainly looks spaced out enough for it. Something lurches in his stomach, wheedling for his attention, he pushes it away. It distracts from the rage.
(Though in all honesty, even if she was high off her ass, she should still look far more freaked out—considering Jason, his gun, and the aforementioned ring of dead bodies. As it stands, she looks mildly bummed out, like she just stepped in a puddle or something.) He feels, suddenly, as if he’s seen her before, though he can’t quite put his finger on it (as previously mentioned, he socializes. A lot.)
The woman shifts on the balls of her feet, continuing to stare into the middle distance. Jason grinds his teeth in frustration, part of him wanting desperately to ignore her and return to his looting—he needs to figure out what the hell the Falcone’s were doing on his turf—but he can feel her presence prickling awkwardly at the edges of his vision. He’s not sure what she’s on, and though he doesn’t doubt that he could take her in a fight, he’d prefer not to. The Pit finds no satisfaction in beating the shit out of random women on the street.
“Hey,” he snarls, the distorted growl coming out of his hood making the sound far more threatening than it would be. “Get the hell outta’ here, lady.”
The woman visibly snaps back into focus, her eyes seeming to suddenly clear as she takes a stuttering step back. And okay, yeah—now is when she should start looking afraid. But she doesn’t. She looks…really fucking confused. “I’m sorry…” she says, not looking sorry at all, “but are you talking to me? You can see me?”
“Jesus Christ,” Jason grumbles, finally deciding there’s nothing in the man’s pockets of value and moving onto the next body. “Yes, I can see you.” She’s quiet for a moment, brow furrowed, and Jason is becoming increasingly convinced that he should drop this lady off at the first shelter he sees.
“Huh,” she says, as Jason moves to Corpse Number Three. “Huh,” and when Jason grunts in response she continues, “nothin’ against you, it’s just, people don’t usually see me unless I want them to. You know?”
“Sure,” Jason says. Dead Guy Number Four. He doesn’t mention that she’s probably far from unnoticeable as possible, what with the ridiculous spiky hair and garish jewelry. Because that would be rude.
“Mhm…oh. Actually that makes sense,” she says, tapping her index finger to her chin. “Well, I guess that’s just the way the cookie crumbles.” Jason shoots her a glare look over his shoulder because, what, before he remembers that she can’t see his expression. He’s half tempted to take the helmet off, simply to express his disbelief further. He refrains. Fifth and final guy—dumb enough to keep personal identification on him, hell yeah. He turns back to the woman, but she’s not behind him anymore.
In fact—he does a quick sweep of the warehouse—she doesn’t appear to be anywhere. Jason spends about four seconds of his life debating if he should go looking for her, get her to rehab or something, before the Pit pulls at the edge of his consciousness, and he he decides he actually doesn’t care. He leaves the warehouse, whistling something tuneless and half-remembered.
It’s quite a bit before he sees her again—though this time he can remember from where. The warehouse. The Pit. The memories of early, rage-filled days that make him cringe with something like guilt.
He’s trying…trying to be better. At least that’s what Tim and Dick had argued to Bruce. That he’s got his priorities straight now. That he’s not gonna try and shank them in their sleep. (He appreciates their blind, stupid, unwavering faith. He’d rather die again before admitting that, but he does.) And the old man doesn’t buy it, of course he doesn’t. He doesn’t glare at Jason when he enters the room, so that’s a start.
The newfound fragile trust comes with a laundry list of stupid shit he has to do if he doesn’t want the bats descending upon him like crazy. No killing, of course. The biggest and most profoundly inane rule, but one he knows not to break. Keeping his comms on the same channel as the rest of the bats, in case of emergency. This one, he breaks often and openly. And then there’s responding to distress calls—usually the kid, usually with Nightwing’s help.
And therein lies another thing he’d never openly admit: he missed spending time with his brother. So much. So much so, that he almost feels something that’s too fearful to be excitement, but also not nearly the appropriate amount of dread.
“Hood,” Nightwing greets him warily when he arrives at the scene. The kid is standing behind him slightly, tensed, covered in soot, but fine. Jason’s wheeling around, trying to find the source of the distress call, which takes him about three seconds, as it’s hard to miss the large burning building they’re in front of.
“Why’d you call me?” Jason demands, since, as far as he can tell, they’re both fine. A little crispy, but fine.
“Civilians. We couldn’t get them all,” the kid pipes up, and that’s only when Jason notices the kid is adjusting his mask and holy fuck, he’s gonna walk back in there? Jason lunges forward, grabbing the kid’s shoulder and pushing him away—ignoring the twinge of guilt when Robin flinches.
“Absolutely not, Replacement,” he snaps.
“We don’t have time for this,” Nightwing interrupts. “Robin’s hurt. I need to get him home.” Jason scowls.
“And the old man?” Nightwing huffs something under his breath, as the kid pipes up.
“B is inj-” but he doesn’t get to finish his sentence, because Nightwing smacks a hand over his mouth.
“Busy,” he says firmly, and entirely unconvincingly. If Jason had to guess, Bruce is physically tied down with a broken neck or something—because nothing short of near death would stop him from hurling himself straight into the flames.
“Too busy to save a burning apartment full of innocents?” Jason taunts. Nightwing’s expression sours. “If B can’t even be bothered, I don’t see how that’s my problem.” He shrugs, feigning nonchalance and turns away, already calculating the fastest way into the building (the front door’s collapsed, he can swing in from the neighboring fire escape)—how many people he can carry, how fast he can be—when a hand claps on his shoulder. Jason startles, but doesn’t move, because the hand is gone almost immediately.
“Hood,” Nightwing says softly. Jason doesn’t turn around, because even with the domino mask on, Dick’s puppy dog eyes are brutal. “Little wing. Please.” Jason finally turns, and scowls, something small and fragile collapsing in his chest to see his brother believing all his blustering.
“Get kid out of here. You’re wasting time.” He doesn’t spare Dick a backwards glance as he clambers up the fire escape and makes his way into the apartment.
It’s one of the crummier ones, on the outskirts of the Narrows. The sort where the landlord can’t be bothered to keep things up to code—and if Jason had to guess, a faulty wiring started the blaze. Good news, the building is small, and it shouldn’t be hard to find the remaining survivors. Bad news, the building is small and the fire is spreading fast.
He doesn’t waste time cataloguing the rooms he busts into, doesn’t pay much attention to the people, only wether they have a pulse as he herds them out to the fire escape. Sometimes forcefully, as it turns out a crime lord approaching you in a burning building isn’t a terribly comforting sight. The smoke hangs heavy in the air, and Jason tries his best not to thing about how fucking small the space feels. Tries not to think about another, smaller space, that perished in a fire.
He pulls the last kid from the last room of the last floor, extricating the toddler from what looks like a pile of stuffed animals, barricaded in front of the door as if to stop the flames. Jason’s arms and lungs are burning as he hefts the kid on his shoulder and pushes his way out of the building.
He rips his helmet off immediately, gasping in the fresh air, as police and firefighters swarm the scene. He can hear radio static, something about fatalities. Great fucking job they did. Nightwing and Robin are long gone, and Jason bitterly crushes his disappointment. He sets the kid down by the ambulance, but the child is utterly unwilling to let go, chubby fingers clamped around his thumb like a vise. And he really needs to get out of here before the police look too closely at his outfit.
“Come on, now. Let him go,” says a soft voice somewhere behind him. Jason turns so fast he nearly gives himself whiplash.
“You,” he says, his eyes narrowing, because he recognizes the woman immediately from the warehouse. Mainly because she looks exactly the same—same hair, same shirt, same everything. As if she stepped straight from his memory onto the street in front of him. It’s…weird. It’s slightly unsettling. She beams.
“Me,” she agrees, and offers no further explanation.
“Sorry,” Jason grunts, still struggling to free his fingers, because he’s being hostile and cannot for the life of him come up with a reason why. “Can you help me here? Kid’s trying to take my finger off.”
“I think I’d better not,” the woman says, and she looks like she’s about to laugh, like they’re sharing some sort of inside joke. God, she’s so weird. But she looks noticeably more lucid now, and one of the paramedics even nods at her. ‘People don’t usually see me’ my ass, Jason thinks. And then his brain catches up to him. Possible addict. Apartment in the narrows. Fire. His mind, honed by years of trying to catch up to the world’s greatest detective, is piecing together the story, and he’s not liking what he sees.
“Uh, listen,” Jason says. “Do you…do you need help?” He’s become rather notorious in the Narrows and the surrounding areas for helping people down on their luck—and as much as he makes a show of hating the reputation…well, there’s a third thing he won’t admit then.
“Do I look like I need help?” She asks evenly. Jason levels a blank stare, but she’s not done—“how do I look to you?” And what a weird fucking question—like my mom, comes a thought immediately—a though that is not his own. Like my mom when it go really bad, and she couldn’t remember her name, and she was a hair away from death. Ashen, sunken like Him, like he was when he beat and I died. He winces against the memory, because she doesn’t, not really. She just looks like a girl…a woman.
Only now that he’s trying to pinpoint her age, it’s becoming difficult, her features fuzzing out when he focuses too hard—and Christ, he must be more sleep deprived than he thought.
“Like you need help,” he says finally, gruffly, when he trusts his voice enough to speak. She smiles then, faint and soft, but stays silent. “Look…” he continues. “There are…shelters, you know. Good ones.” She opens her mouth to respond before a paramedic bustles by, blessedly disentangling the child from his finger. Jason sighs in relief and turns his gaze back to the woman but—she’s gone.