Chapter Text
(hurry) – and hands grasp his face, nails pulling at his
skin, mouth opened in a scream, but he can’t tell who’s screaming, is it just
one scream, are they both screaming, he screams he thinks, gripping her
wrists, and they’re bone under his hands, and she’s ash in his lungs, (please)
and his tears taste like blood and his skin feels like fire, there’s jaybug
on the wind but that’s wrong, it’s all wrong, that’s not her, (she’s not supposed to be here! no!)
that’s not soft, crooned Spanish lullabies, that’s not fingers through his hair
and kisses on his cheeks, but she’s there,
she’s screaming,
she’s ash and fire and blood and blame and, and
Jason is sobbing, trying to hold on to her
(please) but she slips through his shattered ribcage
reachesreachesreaches for his heart and –
(hurry up please – )
– This is how it starts:
April is the cruelest month, Jason thinks – miserable and resigned, all because of the nightmares dogging his heels since the calendar flipped. The Pennsylvania landscape is grey and sad, rain pouring down and bending trees under its onslaught. It mists his face, nice and cool, but when thunder booms and crashes and rattles the windows he almost flinches, tasting grave dirt on his tongue, feeling the grit between his teeth. Jason flexes his fingers, phantom pains of splinters and torn nails making them ache deeper than bone.
– so! let’s try and clear this up, okay pumpkin? what hurts – fuck – he’d died to fire and came back to rain, and it gets mixed up sometimes, in his head. He curls his hands around the porch railing, slivers of wood digging into his palm and, shit, that’s really not helping at all. It usually doesn’t bother him, his death. It’s probably (definitely) one of the most traumatic things that ever happened to him, but he’s, yanno, eight years past his grave and all that. Sometimes you just have to move on damnit.
April has never bothered him before. And yet –
There’s a worm on the sidewalk in front of him.
He shudders, closing his eyes against the sensation of them crawling up his spine, wiggling out from his rotting skin clothes when, no, his clothes are clean and whole and relatively new. No worms here.
Maybe he should take another shower.
“Anything?”
A body next to him, fire-orange hair brushing his arm, shoulder against shoulder as Artemis leans on the railing next to him. Jason drops his head. Not startled, he’d heard Artemis’s steps on the creaking floor – maybe he should leave a note and tell whoever owns this place they need to call someone about that. He sucks in a slow breath, pretends he doesn’t taste his own death through it – blood and screams and a mangled batman, batman, please. Ugh, stop.
“No,” he forces himself to say evenly like he’s not slowly breaking down. (This is fine. He’s fine.) “The rain’s an issue.” It muffles his senses, makes a blanket of Nothing tinged with Other, and he can’t See anything.
He watches her from the corner of his eye – the way locks of hair escape her ponytail and cling to her cheek, the way her eyes are greengreengreen against the backdrop of grey. There’s a dab of blood on her bottom lip from where she’s been picking at it during their down time.
“When is the rain ever not an issue,” she grouses. Her fingers are carving half-moons into her skin, knuckles bleaching pale. Jason gets it. He really does. It’s been ten days of investigation and chasing, nothing to hit, nothing to fight. He feels the itch under his own skin too. She presses their shoulders together even harder, leaning most of her weight on him as she puts a finger to her ear. “Biz, you got anything?”
“Everything,” Bizarro responds in the perfect recreation of Jason’s chirpy sarcastic tone. Jason snorts. “Me found absolutely nothing. We don’t get to go home now.”
Jason laughs outright, misses the way Artemis smirks triumphantly.
“Yeah, yeah, big guy. Drop down in the backyard. Might as well eat while we wait for the sun to come out.”
“Under and in.” – and that makes them both laugh, you can practically feel the smugness radiating off Biz from over the line.
They’re not here for fun.
If they were going to pick a place for fun, they wouldn’t be in Lancaster, Pennsylvania of all places. Maybe a beach somewhere. Or a nice, scenic mountainside with skiing. Jason sighs and it comes out more like a groan, presses the heel of his palms to his eyes until he sees stars burst under the lids. It does absolutely nothing for his persistent headache – all the way from his neck down to his shoulders. Just there. Always there.
Artemis and Biz argue behind him. He’d tuned them out too long ago to know exactly what they’re arguing about, but neither of them seem to mind his lack of participation. It’s soothing to hear the buzz of them going back and forth about something meaningless, lessens the frantic energy thrumming under their skin at sitting and doing nothing.
They stop when Jason sets bowls of homemade olla gitana in front of them and takes his own seat at the sturdy oak table. It’s hand crafted and well made – he absently wonders if whoever made it is local and still alive. Biz digs in with gusto, bread in one hand, shoveling food with the other. He always appreciates Jason’s cooking with a level of enthusiasm that makes Jason feel both incredibly smug and slightly embarrassed.
Artemis is watching him from under her lashes and he pretends otherwise, pushes his food around before he sighs and drops his spoon. His stomach has been…not great since last week and that’s fucking shitty because he made olla gitana specifically because it was warm and comforting and filling, and relatively easy to make (for him) to lull himself with the soothing rhythm of making food.
And now… His gums water and he pushes the bowl away to take out their cheap map instead. Spreads it on the table as far from Bizarro’s spot as possible. There’s already grease marks on it from when he delved into a bag a chips during his turn with the map.
(hurry) – Jason rubs his ear on his shoulder, splays his hands on the map, and tries not to grimace as his head throbs. The lack of not doing anything is making him antsy. The tension building among the three of them is going to burst sooner or later and it’s going to end in either tears or blood. He hates both options.
“We’ll figure it out,” Artemis says around a mouthful, watching his finger trace their journey from New Brunswick all the way to Pennsylvania. The food muffles, ever so slightly, the doubt in her tone.
Jason pulls out a pen. “Will we?” he asks, lips curled in almost a sneer. There’s a peek of fang. Artemis has always loved that little hint of sharp teeth. It makes him look like a panther – all dark and dangerous, a lithe predator that blends too well with the shadows. It makes him seem less cookie-cutter than the rest of his family. The bags under his eyes and gauntness of his face makes her like it less. “When? When we find a fifteenth kid dead and empty? Seems like we’re pretty much fucking failing, Arty. So, really, will we?”
The pen tip presses down hard against the thin paper, ink bleeding, the rune he’d been doodling in the margins carving into the wood underneath. Artemis glares back and snatches the pen away before it breaks under his pale-knuckled grip.
“Don’t be an asshole,” Artemis says. Suddenly she’s not as hungry despite the unfairly delicious food. She waits until his hands flex and his shoulders slump before she offers the pen back. He takes it slowly. “Did your spell figure anything else out?”
Jason thunks his face against the table. A little too hard. Ow. The map sticks to his forehead and he turns so his cheek is mushed and he’s looking at Biz, has to pull his neck awkwardly to see Artemis.
“Yeah,” he says. “Sorta.” He draws a lopsided star slightly north of Lancaster. She squints to read it. Lititz. “Spell says north, and this is the only place that matches the profile of other sites. I just,” he buries his face in his arms, missing the look Artemis and Biz exchange. “The spell stops there. It doesn’t narrow it down. There’s enough countryside that we could be lookin’ for weeks for where these bastards are hanging out and by then they could be in Florida.”
It’s been ten days since they’ve picked up this case. Ten days of hopping towns from Seeley Cover, New Brunswick all the way to this little (not little) city, following the trail of a magical cult gone magical-but-also-murder cult (the aforementioned bastards). By the time they’d even learned about this case – less of a contract and more of a coast spanning plea of help please, somebody, anybody, help us – it’d been six months cold and fourteen bodies deep.
And Jason, out of all of them, has been drowning himself in the burden of figuring this out. Artemis knows magic. She’s an Amazon of Bana-Mighdall. Of course she knows magic. But not like Jason does. Her specialty is magical objects, and they have a limited supply of those.
They’ve already tried them.
But Jason? He knows spells and runes and arcane circles. He doesn’t use them often, doesn’t tell them why, but Artemis has seen the shit he can pull off and the fact that he can’t do another feat like that is…is –
It’s got to be killing him.
Jason’s a Bat. Investigation is their thing. Jason is of the All-Caste. Magic is their thing. This is both. And they’ve been constantly two steps forward, three steps back.
He closes his eyes, brows furrowing, pen absently sketching out a rune on the west coast. Artemis cocks her head to look at it, squinting. It’s not any of the runes Jason has been using since they started, but there’s similarities to the rune that got them this far. His hand drifts over easterly and the ink glitters unnervingly in the light. Jason opens his eyes and Bizarro nudges Artemis. They both grin, edging on a smirk, when they see the faint glimmer of copper among the green and blue of his usual heterochromia.
“Biz,” Jason says roughly, like coming out of a dream. “Do you still have that compass you picked up in Maine?”
“No, of course not,” Biz says, disappearing in a blur of grey and red and displaced air. Artemis slaps a hand on the edge of the map before it flies away.
Jason takes the offered compass, flipping it over and over in his hands, biting his lip as he visibly thinks. “I might make this useless,” he warns.
Biz shrugs. “Not worth it. Me don’t trust you.”
The corners of Jason’s eyes crinkle when he smiles. It makes him look unburdened and his age instead of world weary.
He takes out a permanent marker, wrinkles his nose – etching it would make it more accurate – and draws on the back of the compass, pulling the lines up over the rim and partially onto the plastic face. It doesn’t take long. The rune is in perfect view in his mind’s eye and all he has to do is add a dash of power and keep the lines clean and he’s good.
Not even a second after capping the marker, the black lines glow purple and then sink into the cheap metal. The rain interferes just a little bit, compass needle spinning wildly, so fast Biz is worried it’s going to snap right off, before it comes to a sudden stop, pointing just slightly northwest.
Jason taps the compass on the table, grinning. “Now we’re cookin’.”
Biz packs up his scattered assortment of knickknacks as Jason double checks his ammunition and weapons. Artemis doesn’t look up from polishing her already polished sword when she murmurs, “If nothing’s there, we might need to consider asking for help.”
Jason taps a clip into the magazine, sighing. “Was wonderin’ how long that was gonna take. Hate to say it, but you’re probably right.”
“I usually am.” There’s the tiniest smirk before it fades. “Your dad going to be okay with that?”
“He’s not my dad,” Jason bites out, something hot blooming in his sternum.
Bruce stopped being anywhere close to dad when he chose that goddamn clown over his own son, okay? He might’ve forgiven the new Robin – with the much-needed context and all that. He’s not happy about it. Will never stop feeling hurt and bitter. But Tim’s…pretty okay for being from Bristol, he admits very, very reluctantly.
Sure, yeah, he may have dropped-kicked the dude off a roof one too many times – he only broke something once! – and using him as bait for a case, well, there was definitely a better plan. Not as funny, mind you. But better. Tim dished it back just as good even if he was less physical about it.
So, yeah, that one broken bone, a smattering of incidents where blood was drawn more often than not, a handful of teeth clenched teamwork for a hopeful Nightwing, and –
They’ve been getting along better than ever in the last year or so. They’ve successfully worked and solved multiple cases that involved more oh shit, we’re gonna die moments than is healthy and they didn’t hate each other by the end of them. Hell, Jason invited him to his apartment for dinner once and next thing he knew he had a cluster of Bats and Birds showing up at all hours. Dick stills wants to pretend he’s playing mediator whenever they’re all hanging out, but Jason sees right through the act.
A mediator isn’t needed. Tim has a goddamn video of Jason wiping out on a skateboard he’s holding specifically for blackmail. (It’s harder than it looks, okay?) He ain’t doing shit, ‘kay?
So, yeah, he’s chummy with Red Robin, mostly forgave the whole Robin thing, got forgiven in return, yadda-yadda. A whole bunch of character growth and interpersonal relationship mending that Batman had nothing to go with, fucking useless.
He’ll never forgive everything else. He can’t. That would mean – That would mean…
“If he’s not, he can fuck off. This is our mission.”
Bruce can scold him all he wants about whatever he wants. They’ve used all their available resources and branched out even further. Both Artemis and him delved into their contacts – hell, he’d messaged Molly not even an hour into realizing how magical this cult was leaning, but she was in Summerland and her Tim didn’t know enough to give him an answer. It’s fine. He figured it out on his own. But this means that no one can deny they asked for help. They just didn’t get it.
Artemis prods his steel-toe with the flat part of her sword, getting him to look at her. She sets her chin into a stubborn jut, green eyes glittering on the attractive side of smug and arrogance. “We got this.”
Jason meets her energy, canines glinting, his own green and blue eyes swirling copper. He loads his other gun with a sharp snap, all fluid, lethal grace. “Hell yeah we do.”
(hurry up – )
The compass leads them through Lititz – Biz looks longingly at the park off Main Street where they hold their festivals. It matches two of the previous ritual sites, what with the meandering river and the large ponds it feeds into. It’s just the teeniest too busy to pull off. Biz just wants to feed the ducks, and makes a sad noise when Jason leads them past it. Artemis pats his arm and promises him they’ll swing back around when they’re done.
Jason takes them out of the town proper and into Amish country, where the fields are endless, the cows are abundant, and the abandoned farms are remote. So fucking remote.
“I hate this,” Artemis groans. She already has her sword out, knuckles bleeding white as she holds it in an uneasy grip.
Jason twists his mouth, eyeing the dilapidated barn. The rain had let up a little the closer they got, a misting drizzle that’s barely noticeable from under the shelter of trees. Everything should be dark and quiet now, hedging this close to midnight. And, for the most part, it looks dark and quiet.
But he can see Beyond the cloaking spells as easily as breathing. There’s flashes of lights and the sound of laughter and a heat haze of magic drifting off the roof.
And whispers.
Whispers so quiet Jason strains to hear them.
But he definitely hears them.
Ghost-soft on the wind – (heap of broken images where the sun beats and the dead trees give no shelter the cricket no relief) – and he thinks Ethiopia and then fuck, that sounds familiar. Like a book he’s read before. But he can’t…he can’t think. The familiarity is drowned out, smothered ruthlessly by the incessant, overpowering sense of wrongness in those whispers. He wants to gag, drop to his knees, and puke up the oil-slick tar sliding down his throat as the whispers nudge and ghost across his mind. They’re darkness. They’re…They’re mutilations of sense that burrow into his skin and hook on his nerves and pull him apart at the seams.
Agony hits him so fiercely, so suddenly, he staggers. Biz is there, catching him easily, a concerned frown on his face. He shakes his head, shrugs off the clone’s hand, and straightens up, stomach cramping as he does. He wraps an arm around himself in a mockery of a hug, pressing nails into his skin to keep himself grounded under the onslaught that’s choking him. What was that? he thinks desperately as the whispers quiet but never go away, scrapes his tongue against this teeth to get rid of the cloying taste of decaying flowers and the sharp taste of ozone and the gritty texture of grave dirt that’s invaded his mouth.
Artemis’ hand hovers then drops. Are you okay? lingers between them like it has for the past week and a half. And he’s glad it’s unspoken because he doesn’t want to admit that he’s not. Not yet.
“We stealth it,” he says before the whispers actually make him vomit. Biz pouts and Jason is quick to assure him, “Just to start. Once we locate the kid, you get them out. Arty, you and me are gonna wreck their shit real good. Put as many of them down as we can and figure out what…what they’re doing with the rest of the kids.”
Artemis scoffs. “Who died and made you boss? No, shit, wait – .”
“Me.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
They exchange wild grins, nerves bubbling with adrenaline. Bizarro covers his mouth to muffle a laugh – has to turn around to cover his whole face, shoulders shaking, when Jason and Artemis give him twin mock-offended glares.
Jason shakes out his hands. “Your sword should be more than enough to cut through anything magical they try to throw at us.”
She swings her sword for emphasis, and it catches the scant light of the half-hidden moon. “Your guns going to be enough?” she asks, eyebrow raised.
He unholsters his trusty (and rather pricey, but so worth it) Alien – the Laugo Arms Alien – so she can see the bottom of the magazine where he’d etched a rune once he realized what they were dealing with. The stopping power of a plain ol’ bullet and the breaking power of a magic infused plain ol’ bullet. It won’t take down anything too big magic-wise, but if anyone tries to set up a barrier, he’s got it taken care of.
“Be quiet. Be quick. If we lose them here, who knows how long it’ll take to catch back up.”
Bizzaro nods firmly, saluting. Artemis huffs, but she tilts her chin in agreement – both her and Jason knowing he’s going to get so much shit for this later. But if she didn’t want him to make the plans, she could always take over. His plans work ninety-seven percent of the time anyway. He did the math once.
He’s a planner.
He plans.
(I WILL SHOW) – (I will show you) – (hurry up please – )
Jason shakes his head to dislodge the whispers (the whispers he knows are coming from that damn barn, knows it like he knows how a crowbar feels against his bones, knows it like he knows what Bruce’s…what Bruce’s hugs used to feel like) – Artemis elbows him gently, the touch not lingering, settling something in him, and quirks a questioning eyebrow at him. Unspoken again. Are you okay? He makes a face, brushing it off like he has been.
Whatever it is, it’ll stop once they fix this. He also knows that.
The cloaking spell drops silently and unobtrusively when they step over it. Jason scuffs his shoe across the line sparking across his vision. Artemis shudders, makes a little groan like she’s popped a locked-up joint, and glares at him for not warning her. He shrugs, sticks out his tongue – pulls it back in when she lunges as if she’s gonna grab it. Bizarro pats the top of Jason’s head like he’s some sort of pet then flies up out of sight.
Jason and Artemis circle the building until they find a rickety ladder leading up to what can only be a hayloft. It’s dark and still piled high with hay. The smell of rotting wood and straw is pungent and almost overwhelming. Jason eyes them warily – once Damian got his stupid cow, Bruce decided to revitalize the stable on the Wayne property and they all got a crash course in general upkeep. Whether they wanted to or not. The kid broke into his safehouse to deliver Jason’s very own lesson, as if Jason was spending even a second anywhere but the Cave and would need to know this oh-so-important information.
The key part, the relevant part, is that hale bales, well, they like to “spontaneously” combust. Just because they look dry doesn’t mean they are dry. The wet, molding straw inside the bales generates heat that eventually catches the whole thing on fire – the spontaneous part, no one ever sees it coming. It leads to a lot of stable fires and generally why hay is kept in a separate building.
He touches one of them – not even sure what he’s looking for – and doesn’t feel anything, but he makes note just in case. They could serve as a distraction with the right amount of encouragement, something he hush-whispers to Artemis.
Jason peeks over the line of bales bordering the loft’s edge, Artemis’s shoulder brushing his as they take a look at the gathering of people. The whole thing is set up like a barnyard dance mixed with a gala – temporary lacquered flooring, lantern lights, tables dotted here and there too tall for anyone to actually sit at. Music plays from somewhere. There’s murmuring clusters of people huddled around the tables, the occasional flash of light like someone’s doing a fancy magic trick. There’s about forty of them in total, packed up tight like sardines, dressed in finery that’s better suited for Gotham’s Elite than a magical cult in a barn.
In all honesty, they just give off rural Court of Owl vibes. They’re all wearing masks in all colors of the rainbow – none of them particularly bird themed, some of them dominos, some of them full faced, no underlying pattern other than color – with champagne flutes in hand.
It looks like a normal masquerade gala.
If it weren’t for the center of the barn.
Normally, that’s where the dancing would happen. Instead, there’s a tiered raised platform with a table in the middle. A girl is tied down to it, coarse rope around her arms, elbow to wrists, around her legs, knee to ankle, around her middle, around her throat. There’s dried tear tracks on her cheeks, blood staining her mouth, bruises already blossoming under the ropes like she’d been struggling for her life. She can’t be more than thirteen-years-old, and Jason can clock the moment Artemis spots her – body stiffening, breath catching, rage radiating off her.
At the head of the table is a pedestal with a black bowl, glittering in the light. He sees the runes painstakingly carved then painted on the rim, but the distance and angle makes it hard to decipher them.
He nudges Artemis and they duck back behind the bales, faces close as he whispers out an addendum to the plan. Close quarters means Artemis’s swords are gonna do better work than him, she can make it hard for them to get off any magic attacks they have in their arsenal. He can provide cover fire until there’s an opening and get to the girl then deal with that bowl – he has a feeling he knows exactly what’s in it based on the fact that his attention keeps wanting to slide off of it.
Jason pops back up, and surveys the people below. They treat the girl in the middle like some sort of inanimate display until they don’t, when they clamber up, swaying like they’re tipsy, and run glowing fingers across her skin, watching her twitch involuntarily.
He grits his teeth, hand tightening around his gun. Holds back, because there’s one specific person he needs to take out first. Eyes darting from person to person, analyzing, taking their clothes, their masks, their body language apart bit by bit until – ah ha…
“Get ready,” he whispers as he lifts a little from his crouched position, elbows on the bale in front of him, hands steady as he takes aim with his Alien. Both of them miss the way shadows curl around him, deepening even though the light sources haven’t changed. Both of them miss the way the rune on his magazine picks up a shine to match the copper in his eyes.
His fingers curl over the trigger, pausing thoughtfully as his aim follows a man dressed in a glittering black suit, his mask gold with dramatically long, black feathers that can only be standing with the help of magic or really good material. The man smiles like Lex Luthor, like Simon Stagg, like Maxwell Lord. His hands wander. His presence commands adoration. People lean into him when he approaches, their attention lingers as he leaves. Like well trained dogs begging for low-grade steak.
The man’s mask has designs carved and painted on it – beautiful in its intricacy alone, gorgeous in its skill. Barriers. Reflections. Glamours. A little dab of hypnosis. Maybe against his followers or anyone else, it would be enough to protect him.
With Jason around, it’s nowhere close to enough.
Jason’s lips curve into a smirk. Gotcha. His breathing slows, his heart steadies. It’s not a sniper rifle in his hands, but he doesn’t need the range anyway.
He adjusts his aim. Puts pressure on the trigger.
The man goes down in a burst of red and gold. Blood spraying. Magic bursting like flint sparks. His face is nothing but gore. The ceramic mask shatters into a hundred little pieces. Immediately there’s screaming – shocked into frightened into rage. People go for weapons, for their spells. Already out for vengeance before something red puffs out from the shards of broken mask and disperses in the air.
An unneeded failsafe. Jason huffs. Something to kick his followers up into a frenzy just in case. They’re all following this dude willingly already, the hypnosis on the guy’s mask completely countered by the runes on everyone else’s. They don’t need that extra push. Guess the dipshit didn’t trust his followers in the slightest.
Jason ducks behind his trusty hay bale just as a beam of magic lights up the loft. Artemis deflects another and leaps over and down, cutting through barriers and beams alike, taking out those who seem to be more combat oriented. Well, as combat oriented you can get as a magic cult all dressed up in nice clothes. Jason is suddenly very, very thankful they don’t have a magical equivalent to a Talon.
He’s slightly less thankful when he glances backward on a whim and sees a small pink flame flickering on a pile of loose hay, dangerously close to a hay bale. Nope. Nope! He swears and snuffs it out quickly, the magic he wove into the seams of his gloves protecting him from the worst of it, but the leather burns and melts anyway. He swears again, viciously, and strips them off.
“Bizarro!” Jason barks as he vaults over the bales, landing on a cultist who’d been forming some sort of armor around herself. He takes two more shots and the one setting up a barrier bubble around the girl go down in a spray of blood.
They don’t get back up.
He shoots at the barrier just as Bizarro comes through the weak roof. The half-formed bubble disintegrates before Jason makes it to the top tier of the platform. The clone starts gently tearing the ropes off her while Jason takes pop shots at anyone trying to sneak up on Artemis or those who are taking aim for them up here – up here with no cover, he doesn’t have time to set up a barrier, open wide for easy shots. Ugh.
Not many people can get the jump on Artemis with or without his help. She’s dancing around them, ducking and spinning, sword flashing in the multicolored lights. She’s grinning. Laughing when someone puts up a good enough fight but ultimately, no one can match up.
Jason waits a beat, making sure everything’s more or less clear, before he’s pressing fingers to the girl’s pulse point. Her chest has been moving this whole time, lips parted as she breathes, but that means nothing in the grand scheme of things. An empty body is an unconscious body until it finally catches on that there’s nothing left to live for anymore. He’s gotta make sure that – yes. There it is, her pulse, slow and steady. Maybe a little too slow. He traces a symbol over her pulse, and it flickers gold.
Oh, thank fuck.
The back of his neck prickles and he ducks the streak of electricity. It thzzpts! past Bizarro, scorching the side of his face. The clone growls in annoyance, blinking rapidly. Jason whirls around and only has a split second to find his target – their hands glowing blue, the taste of ozone building – and he takes the shot without hesitation. He hears a wail of anger, but he ignores it for now to help Biz finish freeing the girl, paying special attention to the rope around her throat.
“Make sure someone takes her,” he tells Biz quietly. Bizarro’s expression is firm and solemn as he nods, eyes surveying the destruction behind Jason as he hefts the girl gently into his arms. His face tightens at the number of dead bodies, but it smooths out. “Be careful.”
“Never am,” Biz says, winking.
And then he’s gone, shooting up into the storm that’s building back up.
Jason watches for a second before he has to duck another attack. This time from someone trying to get up close and personal, having slipped through the outskirts to avoid Artemis and his attention. A construct of hard light wraps around their arm like a shield. Like a – like a Ring construct. He narrows his eyes even as he dodges a blow to the face. He knows there is some vague overlap when it comes to magic and hard light constructs, which he’s…pretty sure is what the Lanterns make. It’s just a little off-putting to see it right in front of him.
Jason dodges again and twists into their guard in a move most people think a guy his size can’t pull off. He scoffs internally. Fucking magic users. Half of them don’t know how to fight for real then get in over their heads when stuck with someone like him. They’re always training for ranged fights and then fumble when it gets close and personal.
Just. Like. This.
He smirks in the woman’s face – and she’s glaring something fierce, snarling – hooks an arm over hers, and yanks up, popping her elbow in the wrong direction. She howls like a wildcat, tries to reel back from him, but she’s trapped as he continues to hold onto her, following her steps like a waltz as she backs up until they get the edge of the platform. He pauses, then wraps his leg around hers, tripping her up.
She falls into him then, hand curled into a claw, fingertips blue, going for his throat – Jason leans back, swings around to swipe at his arm, she falls into him further –
And stiffens. She gurgles in the back of her throat. Her eyes go wide. The blue on her nails falters. There’s a flicker of rage covered quickly by cold calculation that’s just a second too late. Jason knees her off of him and she falls, his All-Blade making an awful squelching noise as it pulls out of her chest. Her good arm gestures in an arch, the blue darkening to almost black, even as she free falls, even as the red stain on her dress grows bigger and bigger.
Jason sighs. Just stop, he thinks. And she doesn’t. He shoots her before she can get the spell off. She hits the ground in a silent heap.
He takes a moment, breathing slowly. Jason doesn’t have the same qualms about killing like Batman does, but that doesn’t mean he likes it. It's just another one of those things to take on himself so others don't –
Sometimes he just needs to…to recenter himself. These bastards have murdered fourteen people – kids – for their own use. They most likely tortured them first, based on the way they were treating the girl, and he knows. Knows without a doubt that those kids’ deaths did not happen peacefully or quietly or quickly. It was agonizing and endless.
These people were despicable. Evil. The fact that the All-Blades answered his call without a single protest can attest to that.
He has no regrets killing them. He knows neither does Artemis. And Bizarro, well, him being able to fly isn’t the only reason his part of the plan involved him not being here when the bulk of the fighting happened. Biz knows they’re bad people, but none of them could stomach if Bizarro started killing.
Jason closes his eyes briefly before opening them, refocusing on the matter at hand. Most of the cultists are dead or gone, fleeing when they realized that not even the boost their dead leader gave them would be enough to pit them against the Outlaws. Artemis is dancing. A whirlwind of deadly power. It’s only the grace of the remaining cultists’ magic that keeps it an actual challenge, but even that has dwindled to the point where Artemis’s expression is more bored than anything else.
He checks the shadows for anyone lying in wait, either to ambush or powering up something big, slides his All-Blade back under his skin where it condenses settles like a decades old tattoo on his upper arm, before he turns to the actual problem. The second reason this whole thing has been a breakneck race to catch up as soon as possible. Though, he’ll admit he’s the only one who knows about its importance.
The bowl at the head of the table.
It’s made of obsidian because of course it is. That’s, like, the second most pretentious material to use after moonstone. It’s filled with an indescribable liquid. Not water. Not anything natural. It’s both clear and dark at the same time, wisps of silver smoke drifting lazily from the surface. Fourteen glowing rocks sit at the bottom, shimmering with various colors that may or may not exist. Like the night sky, he thinks absently, as the stones flicker as if lit with fire from the inside.
He doesn’t know the liquid. He doesn’t fully grasp the mechanics of this whole ritual, but he gets the gist of it.
Break the connection. That’s all he has to do. Easy enough, right? Just tip the bowl over. The rocks won’t be in contact with the liquid, and then the liquid won’t be touching the obsidian. It’s not his first rodeo with physical magic. It just happens to be one of the more annoying rodeos he’s ever had the (dis)pleasure of being in.
All he has to do is break the connection.
But suddenly, he can’t move.
His fingers twitch at his side. His gun feels distant. Both feather light and heavy as stone. He tilts his head as whispers waft up from the bowl – (the roots that clutch what branches grow out of this stony rubbish son of man you cannot say or guess) – as they murmur in his ears, loud as sirens, muffled like he’s underwater – (dry stone no sound of water on there is shadow under this red rock come in under the shadow of this red rock and I will show you something) – he shudders as he can practically taste the compulsion on the back of his tongue. Like rancid wine and soured milk. A don’t look, don’t touch, don’t look, don’t touch. It oozes into his skin, glues his muscles in place, makes his vision waver.
Jason grinds his teeth together, jaw aching, tries to move his fucking feet.
And he can’t. He can’t.
Shivery laughter. Wailing whispers – (different from either your shadow at morning striding behind you or your shadow at evening rising to meet you) –
Bile climbs up the back of his throat. What is wrong with him?
(hurry up, please – )
Artemis sees him freeze, sees the curl of his gloveless hands, the way his cheek ticks. She shoves off a cultist, shouting his name. The sharp bark of “Jason!” nearly knocks him flat – and does actually knock the haze that’d been falling over his mind, overcomes the whispers until they’re soft, barely audible murmurs. He lurches and catches himself on the bowl, hands wrapping around the edge as the runes flare bright and his nerves start screaming at him like he’s on fire, like he’s stuck his hands in acid, like they’re being shattered and destroyed and ruined by a crowbar.
(And they still hurt, sometimes. The Pit didn’t heal everything. There was probably too much to heal. It was probably too old. He never got a clear answer from Talia. His hands. His chest. His jaw – once shattered and so broken he couldn’t croak out Dad when Bruce found him. It occasionally locks up even now, keeps him from talking, keeps him from eating. Which, you know, isn’t a great thing for a guy who has as many food issues as he does. Chronic food insecurity will do that to a person.)
Blood bursts between his teeth as he desperately traps the howl whirling up inside him.
“It’s got – ,” his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth and it takes effort to free it. “It’s got a compulsion on it,” he shouts.
“Then get rid of it!”
Jason breathes out harshly through his nose, scowling. “I’m fucking working on it!”
“Work faster!”
“I’d like to see you break through a multi-level compulsion spell without blowing us all up with some, some fucking mind control backlash!” Jason wiggles the bowl. The liquid doesn’t slosh. “Do you know how fucking annoying those are?”
“No!”
“Really fucking annoying,” he mutters to himself and blocks out the sound of fighting. “Seriously. Fucking seriously?”
He traces the runes on the edge of the bowl with his eyes, trying to pinpoint the tangle of compulsion wrapped around it – skips over three interlocking runes. It takes effort to focus on them, and that’s how he knows he found them.
Jason’s so focused on not fucking up he almost misses what happens next.
Almost.
Bizarro crashes through the ceiling – all that rage he kept tamped down in order to focus on the kid is now at the forefront, he practically shakes with it – He crashes through the ceiling and Artemis throws the cultist she’s been having fun with directly at him. Bizarro clotheslines them midair, and the body goes flying – and careening –
Straight towards the bowl. He has half a second to decide –
– he puts himself between the bowl and the cultist.
Jason grunts. Twists his body to throw himself and the cultist to the side. But it’s not fast enough. The cultist’s flailing foot clips the bowl and it falls in slow motion off the pedestal. Jason watches in abject horror as the barrier keeping the liquid flat breaks and it arches out, the stones glitter in the light. He and the cultist fall too, weightless for the meager seconds it takes for them to hit the ground.
The bowl – it shatters. Sounding like a hundred little wails in a cave –(I WILL SHOW YOU) – and the stones clink against the lacquered flooring.
Jason’s head hits the corner of something, his vision sparking, going black, coming back in pieces to the cultist dead next to him. Blood pools from the sword wound across their chest.
He stares, blinking rapidly, at the meandering river of red slowly inching its way towards the pool of clear but dark liquid. The stones scattered, still, across the puddle. The night sky in watercolor.
That’s bad, he thinks sluggishly. Why is that bad? His thoughts scatter away in the wind. He struggles to his hands and knees, blood oozing down his temple. He stares at the night sky and the river of red. Stares. Stares.
Then – the blood touches the liquid.
Immediately, it begins smoking and hissing. Jason blinks dry eyes, reaches again for the answer to why is that bad. He’s still reaching when the stone closest to the blood. A brilliant orange of groves and summer drinks and happy laughter.
That stone. Goes grey with this awful sputtering sound. Like a child trying to scream around water in their lungs.
Jason lunges, scrambling towards the scattered stones and the puddle and the rapidly growing tendrils of blood – reaching, curling, grasping at the stones like spindly fingers, like it’s realized what power is right in front of it. It doesn’t matter that the body is dead. This is the blood. And those are the souls. It wants them now that it’s tasted them. It wants and it won’t stop.
Jason leaves the summer orange stone for last. It’s gone. It’s too late. He grabs a brilliant red one. Then the deep night indigo. An ocean blue. A burning violet. A cat’s eye gold. This one and that one. Gritting his teeth, trapping a scream threatening to burst, biting his tongue until he tastes blood as the liquid – dark and clear and hungry – surges up to meet him.
It eats through his skin like acid – the power has been claimed and not by him, how dare he – Jason, Jason forces himself to continue. It burns his fingers, sears his palms, blackens his hands. Stone after stone. They’re warm in his hands like a heartbeat. Their internal flame flickering wildly in fear. He wipes them clean on his pants – and then his shirt when that gets too dirty – before setting them far, far away.
Then repeats over and over even as tears spring up unwanted and start to trickle down his cheeks. Even as blood wells up from under his nails and along the lines of his palms like he’s being torn apart bit by bit –
He doesn’t stop.
He has to save them.
– (I WILL SHOW YOU FEAR) –
It doesn’t matter – and he doesn’t notice – that his veins are turning black. That it’s crawling up his arms under his skin. It doesn’t matter because of that orange stone. Summer fruit and happy days. Orange – and now not orange. Grey. Grey. The smoke of a snuffed candle. Grey like closing your eyes for, for the last time.
That’s a soul. That was a soul. A person. Gone. Forever. These others, if he can save them, he can take them to Fate or Zatanna or Constantine or, or fucking somebody and they can. They won’t come back. They’re dead and gone, but they won’t be trapped anymore. They won’t be stuck being used as someone’s magic battery. He can still save them in some way. He has to.
His movements are frantic. Panicked, but detached in a way his thoughts are moving too fast for him to begin to keep up with. Tangling together until one bleeds into the next of hurry, faster, fuck, save them, you have to save them. His heart beating a tattoo against his ribcage, and he’s breathless from it. Panting harshly, barely audibly above the roaring in his ears.
He feels all that and yet – yet he can’t quite grasp reality. Like his own soul is detaching from his body. Hovering. Fragmented. A tattered, fragile thing. He’s not aware of the last cultist falling – (I WILL SHOW YOU FEAR IN A HANDFUL). He’s not aware of Artemis and Biz calling his name. He’s not aware of the blooming crimson and the midnight black staining his hands and – he just sees colors smeared across his vision from the tears and the whispers in his ears growing in intensity, the clatter of stones going from the ground to his hand to the ground again – safe,
safe.
They’re safe.
They can go home.
They won’t know darkness or
pain or
loneliness.
He won’t let that happen.
(please – please – )
“Jason,” someone says. So far away. Is that his name? He picks up a dawn-like pink stone and cleans it on the hem of his shirt. The liquid burns through the fabric. His hands are shaking. His breaths are shuddery and uneven. “Jason, can’t you hear me?”
Twelve. Two more – no, one more. The first one is dead-dead-dead. He was too late.
“Jason.”
Pressure on his shoulder. A hand. His fingers are stained with that goddamn cursed liquid. He holds the last stone – electric green, sour green – and feels a little lost. He hasn’t felt, felt like this in a long time. Long, long – time. Why is he feeling like this.
A different hand, a slight grey tint to it, appears in front of him. He watches blankly as Bizarro carefully takes the stone from him, motions gentle and soft, and cleans it off like it’s something fragile and precious. It gets placed in a stacked pile with the others. A pile Jason hadn’t been making – it’s arranged by color in that distinctive, precise way Biz does.
Artemis kneels in front of him. Jason opens his mouth to warn her, but it doesn’t matter because she’s already neatly side stepping the puddle. Her pretty green eyes are wide with worry and shock, lips moving like she’s saying something. His ears feel like they’re filled with cotton. He’s surprised he heard his name earlier.
He meets her eyes briefly before his gaze drifts over her shoulder back to that pile, then – it grows worryingly distant. She unbuckles the back of his half-mask, drops it unceremoniously to the side, and takes his slack hands in hers, tries to wipe them clean before she squeezes his wrists just hard enough to briefly drag him back –
He – He doesn’t want to go back.
But he – he needs to go back. Something’s wrong. Where is he going?
– (I WILL SHOW YOU FEAR) – (IN A HANDFUL OF DUST) –
Artemis says something again. Only one word. Clearly enunciated – oh. That’s his name again. He frowns. His fingers hurt. His hands hurt. Jason tilts his head questioningly and curls them.
They burn.
He makes a guttural sound that pitches into a whine, back bending until he’s practically folded in half. Tears start back up – he hadn’t realized he’d stopped crying in the first place – and he sobs into his blood covered, black stained hands. He’s vaguely aware of Artemis dropping his hands into her lap, of pressure and darkness encompassing his head. She hugs him, carding her fingers through his hair, not saying anything but his name – he can feel the vibrations of it through her chest – she just stays close, lets him press into her.
Jason fights to bring himself back into the present. They can’t sit here forever. He needs to get the stones, the souls to someone who’s actually useful. He needs to see…to see if someone can do something about the one he was too late to save even though he knows, knows it’s pointless. He needs to – He needs to get a fucking hold of himself.
Slowly. Agonizingly slow. One step forward, two steps back. He catches his breath. He thinks. Forces himself to steady it. He doesn’t bother curling his fingers again, pain won’t help him. It’ll just chase him back. And instead focuses on the smell of magic in the air – ozone and petrichor – and the fruity scent of Artemis’s shampoo. Wait – he cracks his eyes open, frowning.
That’s his shampoo.
She stole his goddamn shampoo .
Again, again, it’s sharp, but ultimately brief, his awareness. Jason tries to say something – a joke, something snarky, something to break this mood, to break him free – but the words don’t come, only these awful rasping sounds like he’s been screaming.
…Had he been screaming? He could’ve been.
“Jace?” Artemis pulls away and he makes a sound of protest – doesn’t have the energy or awareness to be embarrassed about it. She’s cupping his face, thumbs on his cheeks, pinkies under his jaw. Her hands are warm. He’s never seen her look so concerned, so scared before – face pale, eyes shining. Bizarro hovers, literally, behind her, and it looks like he’s been crying. Shit – he hates making Biz cry. “Jason, can you hear me?”
He blinks languidly at her, not quite focusing. She glances down at his arms and sees the spider webbing black veins stop just before they disappear under his sleeves. His fingers look like he’s dipped them in smoke and broken glass – a sooty black that starts void-dark on the tips and fades into a pastel purple then into skin-brown when it reaches his knuckles. Blood drips steadily from the lines of his fingers and palms, the skin torn open in jagged marks.
“Jason, c’mon. Talk to me.”
His mouth works open, close, open – he breathes out, “S-something’s w-wrong.” Blinks slowly, and it takes a long time for him to open his eyes again. There’s a hollow feeling in his chest, growing steadily, the edges gnawing at him like hungry rats. He realizes, after a moment, he hadn’t said that in English. Tries again with a wavering, “Some – thing’s – wrong.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Artemis snaps, tightening her grip on Jason’s face, nails pricking his skin hard enough to leave marks but not draw blood. He doesn’t even twitch. He doesn’t scowl. Doesn’t slap her hand away like he normally would. “What is it?”
Jason meets her eyes fully for the first time, pupils blown wide, a ring of copper around them that transitions into a mottled mess. Like one of those hot spring pools at Yellowstone, only reversed. His hands are shaking as he lifts them and wraps them around her wrists. She grimaces at the wet feeling of blood.
“Wrong,” is all he can get out and he chokes on it, shuddering.
She swears loudly in frustration and anger and worry – just a whole mix of different feelings that she shoves to the side to try and focus properly on the actual problem instead of her emotions. “Biz, take him back to the house. I think this place is making it worse.”
“No, I’ll go fast – slow – yes, fast.” He can’t decide if he wants to go slow for injuries or fast to get Jason away quickly.
Bizarro kneels next to Artemis. She lets go of Jason’s face and his chin drops, neck bowing so fast she scrambles to catch him before he topples over altogether.
Jason flinches when Bizarro hooks an arm under his knees and wraps the other around his shoulders – it’s not the usual way he carries either of his friends. The best way to carry Jason, in Bizarro’s humble opinion, is to either grab him by the collar like a misbehaving kitten or around the middle like a toddler because he absolutely does not like it and lets out the most creative, entertaining swears either of them have ever heard.
Now is not the time. And Jason’s not in the right mindset.
Bizarro is extra cautious when he stands, Jason’s head rolling on his shoulder. Jason freezes, eyes widening, and then he’s struggling weakly against Biz’s hold. The clone keeps his grip gentle, but tight, unmoving as Jason strains.
“Stones,” Jason murmurs. Artemis glances back at the pile still on the ground. “Stones. Have ta – have ta – save – can’t – please.” He’s panting, something in his expression has her stomach rolling. Biz steps back and Jason keens loudly, still fighting him. “No. Nonono – can’t – .”
Artemis walks up and cradles his face again. It gets the desired, predicted effect. He stills at her touch, breaths hitching. His eyes are bright with tears, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. She thumbs over his cheekbones, smoothing away the faint indents her nails made earlier.
“I got them,” she tells him. On a whim, she adds, “You saved them, Jace. They’re okay.” And she doesn’t know if that’s true, but something collapses in his expression and Jason sags into her hands.
She sets him back against Biz. Pulls away as she takes off her half-cloak to turn it into a make-shift sling bag and starts gathering the stones under Jason’s watchful gaze. She hesitates over the grey one, but then remembers how frantic Jason had been when it lost its color, how he clawed his way through each one so single-mindedly. She picks it up and sets it with the others.
Artemis straightens, closing her eyes briefly, takes a deep breath. “Biz, get him out of there.”
Then she’s alone except for the scattered bodies and the taste of magic.
(hurry up, please – )
( —IT’S TIME)