Chapter Text
Some of Two-Face’s goons had caught him unawares and jumped him.
He had no money left for food and only a moth-eaten tarp he’d salvaged from a dumpster to keep him warm. He was going to freeze to death. It was only the beginning of fall, but Gotham’s predilection (he’d learned that word three days earlier—the librarian was a kindly old woman who let the kids in for free, and that had been in the book he’d been reading, so he’d looked it up because he thought it was ‘prediction’ but that didn’t make sense in context—he was going on a panic-tangent again, wasn’t he?) toward rain made for a much cooler season than could be wished for. At least his tarp kept him dry, if not very warm.
He was so tired. But food came first, and he couldn’t—he hated the street corners, and he hated the men who drove by and offered a ride with their giant hands and grabby fingers—
He gagged a little and forced himself not to think about what he’d done for the money he hadn’t even been able to use. He hated this, and he missed mom so much—but going back wasn’t an option with Willis still living there.
He curled up in the small corner in the back of the alleyway. He was tired and he was hungry and his stomach hurt so bad from where one of the goons had flung him into a pole of some sort—maybe a sign? It didn’t matter—the only thing that did matter was how much he was hurting after the scuffle, with no way to get relief.
He just…he wanted Mom back. More than anything. She hadn’t been the best, but things had been so much worse since she’d died.
He forced himself up and moving. If he was going to die miserable and cold and hungry, it wouldn’t be on a dumb street corner in the middle of Gotham’s worst area. He’d at least make it to his hideout first.
He struggled to walk—his stomach hurt so much he could barely breathe. He hoped that goon hadn’t broken anything—and that he’d die from infection from the massive chunk of skin Jason had torn from his hand with his teeth (Jason was a bit proud of that—even if it had ended with him the loser).
He heard an odd noise as he passed a particularly dark alley, and proceeded to ignore it. Everybody knew to ignore strange noises in the bowels of Crime Alley. Or—he tried, at least. Only it sounded like somebody was begging, and Jason thought the voice sounded familiar—
So he edged his way down the alley and hid behind a conveniently placed dumpster. The begging was clearer—and so was the snap of bones, the tear of muscle. Jason hated that he was familiar with those sounds. Gotham was such a hellhole. Back when he'd been at school, he'd heard other kids talking about their out of town friends, who didn't even have toxic gas drills. Imagine.
“The Court of Owls has sentenced you to death,” the person doing the beating said in a voice so dry it made Jason need a drink. It was weird. Normally killers in Gotham were more—enthusiastic about beating the shit out of people. This person just sounded exceedingly (beyond expectations, according to the dictionary from the library) bored.
Actually—The Court of Owls? Like that jumprope song Jason had learned back when he was actually able to go to school? Or the nursery rhyme Mom had chanted to him when he was having a hard time sleeping (Mom hadn’t been exactly in her right mind, and hadn’t considered that creepy rhyme would make him even less likely to sleep well)?
Why were adults so fucking weird? The Gotham villains were just a freak show that liked to murder people in their spare time.
The man who was currently getting the shit beat out of him began begging even more, pleading and gasping and sobbing and it sounded strangely familiar—wait.
Wait a fucking second!
Was it—? It was! That asshole from earlier who’d stolen Jason’s money! Jason had to stifle a laugh. Karma sure came back and bit the dude in the ass! (And the arm, and the leg, and the face, and…)
He risked a glance from behind the dumpster and grimaced. As awesome as it was that the world was actually being fair for once, Jason had never seen somebody that bloody still alive. Dude looked like he’d been mauled by a rabid bear. On steroids. That had just been told his bear girlfriend was cheating on him.
Jason couldn’t see the angel of justice from his angle, but that was just as well. Bad things happened to people who actually saw the villains’ faces, so Jason would be content with his pseudo-revenge of the dude who would steal money from poor kids who didn’t want to freeze to death getting fucked up.
It wouldn’t bring his cash back, but it warmed his heart, and that was all that mattered in the moment.
“Wh’r y’—?” The man gurgled through what looked like a broken jaw.
“The Court of Owls has sentenced you to death,” the angel of death repeated tonelessly. This time they added a, “…painfully,” to their spiel.
The dick who stole Jason’s money and broke his internal organs sobbed as the death angel stepped closer. Jason could only see its shadow from here, and it had long, vicious claws…what was up with the demons in Gotham lately, and could they please return to whichever Hell they came from?
Jason paused as he eyed the shadows. Well. Returning to Hell after the bastard who jumped him was turned into a mince pie would be great. The demons could stay until then.
The demon didn’t waste time—its claws slashed down, and the man let out a gurgle-scream before the alley was silent. Too silent.
Except for Jason’s heart, which had picked up its pace and was now trying to win the Olympics. He swallowed and tried to breathe quietly. Which was hard, because breathing became louder the more it became a less automatic process—it was scientific fact.
It was also scientific fact that Jason almost pissed himself as the demon’s shadow grew larger as it loomed closer.
Fuck.
It totally knew where he was.
And Jason had been total catnip to demons lately, and he really should have left earlier, and he was feeling dizzy—holy shit he wasn’t breathing why wasn’t he breathing he couldn’t breathe he couldn’t—
The shadow loomed over him, the angle changed. He swallowed deeply, heart jackrabbiting and breathing still evading him. He slowly looked up and—
There were eyes, staring at him upside down from where the creature dangled over him. Its eyes were spotlights, golden and bright and glowing and staring right at him.
He let out a noise (that he would deny was a squeak until the day he died) as it came closer and closer, face unnaturally white.
Jason trembled, and closed his eyes, and swayed a bit because he still wasn’t breathing—
“…Good?”
Jason didn’t recognize it at first, because he was trying to force his lungs to work—but after a moment he snapped his eyes open to stare at the very familiar white mask, breath coming so suddenly it felt like he’d been punched (or maybe that was just his injury acting up).
“You?” He demanded, voice coming out in a heavy rasp.
The demon that had saved him from the Bat and had now given him justice tilted its upside down head from a body that was—twisted in half and contorted to stay at the edge of the dumpster while looking Jason in the face, and if he’d had any doubts about its unnatural existence before, they’d be quenched now (he’d never had any doubts—it was a demon for sure).
“Good?” The creature trilled, voice still heavy with disuse and accent rippling like the rapids he’d seen when he went camping with his class a couple years before.
Jason stared for a long moment, and finally huffed an amused snort. “Yeah. I’m…good,” he winced as a sharp pain in his stomach gave lie to his words. The demon’s head tilted and it—
Jason couldn’t describe it. The demon leap-fell over the dumpster, rolling off and over somehow, twisting like a cat as it landed in a crouch, mask to nose with Jason. It lowered its head to where Jason’s arm was clamped across his stomach.
“I’m fine,” he hissed as it lightly—but firmly, holy shit it was skinny as fuck but stronger than a fucking bus—pulled his arm away with one hand and his shirt up with the other.
Jason had never been so humiliated in his life, and Willis Todd was his father.
The demon tutted as it ran its claws lightly over the purple and black bruise, and—oh, it looked worse than when Jason had checked it earlier, that didn’t look good. He blinked rapidly as the pain came back, made worse by actually seeing the bruise. He’d been doing just fine until then, thanks nightmare demon.
It hummed lightly as its claws skimmed over the bruising, and Jason blinked away tears. He didn’t cry when Willis broke his wrist, he damn well wasn’t going to cry over a bit of a bruise and the first person—demon—whatever to be kind to him since Mom had died. The demon tilted its head and leaned closer—
Between one blink and the next, Jason was being held princess-style and the demon was moving, but—
“Wait! He might still have my money!” Jason snapped as he whacked the demon’s shoulder—the only part of the demon he could reach from this angle, with his arms being held against his sides the way they were. Jason had his priorities, and the money was at the top of his list. Who cared if he was treated, because he’d only freeze to death afterward.
The demon tilted its head at him (what had that jumprope song been? Or the nursery rhyme? He thought it said something about birds in the court and then maybe he’d know his—the demon’s title) before whisking around.
Jason almost gagged as he saw the goon’s mutilated body. He deserved every second of pain, but Jason didn’t deserve to see that corpse. The demon leaned over—still holding Jason with one twiggy arm, what the actual fuck—and shuffled through the man’s pockets until he came up with a blood-soaked wallet. The demon shuffled through it, pulling out—bills, glorious green bills, it didn’t matter if they were Jason’s or not, they were now—and handing them to Jason even as it tossed the wallet back on the due.
Apparently demons with claws didn’t have to worry about fingerprints.
Although, now that Jason was looking closer, being held like he was—and not out of his fucking mind with terror, like that first day—the demon didn’t actually have claws. They were just…metal claw-glove things?
What a lame demon, that needed fake claws because it didn’t have its own. Jason wanted a refund. He paused and glanced at the cash in his hands, at the arm holding him surprisingly gently for an actual demon.
…Never mind. He’d keep this demon, thanks.