Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Magic doesn’t come to Gotham.

Which is simplifying it. Because, well, magic isn’t allowed in Gotham, first off. But also, it really doesn’t want to come to Gotham. Of all the things the Bat tries to keep out, magic is the easiest because magic wants to stay as far away from the city as possible. Zatanna called it a “cesspit of untamed ambient magic,” which was being nice even with calling it a cesspit. The last time some asked Constantine about Gotham he just laughed, lit his cigarette, and walked away.

Jason doesn’t blame them. He’s not even magic-magic and sometimes he can’t stand being in Gotham – and this has nothing to do with his slowly mending relationship with the Bats (his family) that occasionally makes his skin crawl despite how much he aches for it.

The magic here is thick and cloying and acidic all at once. It sits in the back of your throat and slowly suffocates you. It worms into your head and makes you thinks, makes you wonder, forces you to comprehend the incomprehensible then takes it away from you. It leads you down a dark, wandering path and doesn’t shine a light unless you beg.

It’s not always that bad, despite what others think, but when it’s bad – it’s pretty fucking bad.

Like right now.

In an abandoned warehouse, Jason doesn’t shout or kick the already overturned chair. Instead, he swears quietly under his breath and very carefully breathes through cold fury.

In front of him is a mess of chalk and already tacky blood. The kid he’d been looking for doesn’t even resemble a human being anymore – a gruesome painting of blood and gore bursting outward like the kid had imploded. It doesn’t smell. A combination of time – it’s only been a day; rot hasn’t set in yet – and magic sucking any and all scents away. There’s not even a hint of fish and chemicals wafting from the harbor literally right outside. He’d only walked half a step into the building and the smells had abruptly been cut off.

He crouches down near the only part of the arcane circle not covered in blood. The lines of chalk are still intact, but barely. Only one of the sigils is clear and visible, but it’s still a piece of the puzzle. The stupid bullshit puzzle that’s murdering kids and costing him sleep. And when he does get to sleep, he’s plagued by nightmares tinged green and orange and dripping with blood.

Jason takes several pictures of it and sends them to storage.

This setup is like the other three setups he’s found so far – who knows how many are actually out there. The scent-eating magic lasts weeks and, for all he knows, whoever did this is already booked it out of Gotham with a day’s head start – a medium-ish arcane circle easily nine-by nine, a chair and table cleared of debris, and a dead kid in the middle.

The amount of splatter and gore has been different every time, but they all have the same things in common: an exposed ribcage cracked wide open, a missing heart, and, for two of them who had their faces left intact, an expression filled with fear.

Jason climbs to the second level and takes two more pictures from a few different angles. He hesitates over them for just a second before he sends those to storage as well without ever pressing the button that would deliver them to Oracle.

She would help in a heartbeat, he knows this. He’s not exactly sure what’s keeping him from asking. Their relationship now is miles better than it was before. Jason wants to blame the ‘keep magic out of Gotham’ policy, knows that once it’s revealed magic is involved then the Bats are going to converge, and it will become a huge, annoying-as-fuck deal.

But something – something about this screams wrong. There’s more to this that he’s not seeing. A creeping danger that makes his skin crawl the moment he thinks about bringing someone else in. He doesn’t want them to get caught up in it. He trusts them – he thinks – but magic is different from aliens and metahumans and science, it’s more chaotic, unstable, unpredictable. He doesn’t –

He sighs gustily and hops over the railing back to ground level. The plastic on his boots slide on the smooth concrete, the convenience store plastic bags crinkling in the silence. It’s too damn quiet in here, makes his hackles rise and his paranoia kick up a few notches. The other three scenes were exactly like this too. Devoid of ambient sounds and signs of wildlife that should’ve moved in not that long after activity died down and the bodies went stale.

It’s unsettling.

He slides the plastic off his boots when he reaches the entrance and makes sure to scuff his boot-marks as he walks away. The smell of chemicals and fish is like a smack in the face, and he gags. After being…deprived of it for so long, it’s nearly overwhelming.

His anonymous tip to the GCPD is nasally as he avoids breathing through his nose.

—

Holed up in his apartment not even an hour later, he sits cross-legged on the floor against the couch. His coffee table is shoved over, overflowing with books and scrap paper, and his coffee has long gone cold. None of the arcane books in his collection have anything on the sigils he’s had to literally piece together and now he’s debating whether he should start digging around his contacts before he tries the meager shops in the city.

Jason rubs his burning eyes and slumps, tilting his head back to stare at the ceiling. He’s exhausted, running on fumes, but every time he closes his eyes, he just sees those kids’ faces. One of them is an unknown only because he couldn’t see their face – too damaged by whatever was done – two he knows personally, and the fourth he knows because he’d been asked to look for her by her mother.

He’d been looking for Marietta and Khalid – street kids he knew – when Kyerra Adame’s mom had approached him about her missing child. She’s been missing for weeks and the GCPD had made her disappearance such a low priority that the woman came all the way from Coventry to ask for Red Hood’s help, banking on his protectiveness of children extending beyond Crime Alley and East End.

She was right.

He found Kyerra three nights ago – identifiable only by her hair color and the bracelet on what was left of her arm. Tonight, he’d found Marietta. Sweet, adorable Mariette who carried a My Little Pony plush that was so ratty you couldn’t tell by the color which one it was. When she’d discovered he couldn’t tell the difference based on even the cutie mark, she spent an hour teaching him and practically quizzed him on it until he could recite them forward and backwards.

His eyes sting. He’ll have to continue his welfare checks tomorrow and visit Kyerra’s mom, but right now he presses his fingers to his eye sockets until he sees sparks. Sparks turn into explosions which turn into fuzzy images of those kids burnt into the back of his eyelids. He bends, back curling and shoulders hunching, until his elbows are on his knees and his face is buried in his hands.

Jason doesn’t look when the alarm on the fire escape beeps and there’s a noise at his window – the smallest, slightest noise that’s familiar enough he doesn’t tense. His alarm beeps again in deactivation and the window opens softly. A leg appears first, unconcerned with being stealthy, then a cape slides through, dark and shimmering. Jason peeks out from his hands then rolls his eyes when Stephanie finally climbs all the way through, looking unperturbed that she’s sneaking into his goddamn apartment.

She’s not looking at him when she pulls back her hood and hooks her mask around her neck. Her forehead is streaked grey from soot, her hair matted and sweaty. Jason sits up fully and there’s a delay when she jumps a foot in the air, whirling around, hand over her heart.

“Don’t scare me like that!” she exclaims in the most unconvincing tone ever.

Jason scowls. “Don’t fucking break into my apartment!”

“I thought you weren’t home,” she argues and ignores his “That doesn’t make it better!” as she starts stripping off her suit. “I was just gonna use your shower. The lights were off, I thought you were still outta town with the Outlaws.”

He gestures at his definitely lit lamp and his definitely on laptop. Steph shrugs, the corner of her lip twitching. “That’s a flimsy excuse and you know it. What happened to leavin’ my apartment to me and respectin’ that boundary?”

Her flippant, “You haven’t been seen in a while,” makes him growl and she huffs out a laugh. “No seriously. You were the closest one and you gave me a key. I don’t see what the big deal is.”

Jason stays quiet as he gathers his notes and stacks his books. She doesn’t move from her spot halfway to the bathroom, dressed down in her under armor and her suit bundled to her chest. There’s a fresh burn on her wrist where her glove and sleeve usually meet. Typically, her sleeves are kept in place by thumb holes, so evidence of a rougher patrol than normal. He vaguely remembers hearing about an apartment fire. There were no calls for back-up so must’ve not been that bad. Besides, it was all the way across the city, he would’ve never made it in time even if he was called so this weird flicker of guilt he’s feeling can stop, please.

“There’s a difference between breaking in and using a key,” he says without turning all the way. She shuffles in place. He tucks his laptop between the cushion and armrest then picks up his mug, hiding a grimace as his ribs protest the movement. When he does turn and finally look at her, she’s chewing on her bottom lip and watching him carefully. “What,” he says flatly, annoyed.

“We haven’t seen you in a while,” she repeats, clutching her suit closer.

He sighs. “I’ve been busy, is that so hard to believe?”

“Normally you tell us when you’re coming and going,” Steph says in return. “And any big cases you take are obvious.” He grins fondly, his big cases are usually wonderfully explosive. “Are you sick? Tim said you weren’t sick, but me and Duke don’t believe him.”

“Duke and I,” he corrects absently, brows furrowing. “Why would Tim know if I were sick or not if you haven’t, quote-unquote, ‘seen me in a while?’” Her eyes widen comically large, exaggerated, and completely faked. She needs to work on that if she’s gonna try that trick on family. He ignores it. “I swear to god, if he’s stalking me again, I’m going to drop kick him off a building and laugh.”

“He’s not,” she offers weakly. Tim must’ve done something real fucking bad recently if she’s just throwing him under the bus like that.

“Yeah, no. Pass on my threat and leave me alone. This is a shitty way to check up on me.” She opens her mouth, and he jabs a finger in her direction. Her teeth click close. “Don’t even. I know for a fact there’s a bolthole closer to where the fire was than here. I have a phone, you know.”

“Would you’ve answer it? You’ve been avoiding the Manor,” she argues. “Which means you’re avoiding Dick. Do you know how annoying he gets when you avoid him? It’s unbearable.”

Jason dumps his mug in the sink, checks his fridge for food. He’s not going to let Steph stay, but he’s hungry. For once. Maybe he can actually stomach it this time. “I’m not avoiding anything or anyone. I’ve been busy.”

“Busy doing what?”

He slams the fridge close – the dramatics of it completely ruined by the seal – and whirls on her. “Can you not?” he grinds out. “Damn it, Steph. Sometimes I’m busy. Sometimes I don’t feel like talking to anyone in the family. Okay? Not everything I do needs the Bat Seal of Approval. Just leave me alone.”

“I’m sorry,” she mutters – and she’s not sincere, not really. He’s seen that face before. She’s sorry for some of it, but not sorry for breaking into his apartment with the excuse to check in on him. She’s merely conceding. For now.

Jason leans against the fridge and takes it as is. “Whatever. Go take your shower. Leave after, okay? I really don’t want to deal with anyone right now. Even people I like.”

She perks up. “You like me?”

“Fuck off.”

She also takes that as is. She takes the distraction, well, deflection, as offered and dumps her suit on the floor right then and there before prancing off to his bathroom, already singing a K-pop song just loud enough to be annoying, but not loud enough to be irritating. Jason sighs and digs out clothes that are vaguely her size from the container of shit his various siblings have ‘accidentally’ left behind. Yeah, sure.

The shower turns on and her singing doesn’t stop. He shoots Tim a message basically reading Stop stalking me or I’m stealing all your good coffee and doesn’t bother reading the response.

—

Steph doesn’t fight him kicking her out. She leaves with a threat to sic the group chat on him if he goes more than a day without checking in and Jason only promises so she’ll actually leave him alone.

With food forgotten – because he checked his fridge again and he couldn’t even look at it without bile rising in his throat, without the taste of blood coating his tongue. He shut his eyes and willed it all away and that just made it worse – With food forgotten, he sits on his couch and pulls out his laptop, biting the inside of his cheek as he navigates his contacts. He really doesn’t have much of a choice. Arcane and occult shops are practically non-existent in Gotham. The libraries boo-hiss if their occult section grows beyond two shelves.

Constantine is off the grid, again. Zatanna is just plain off world. He doesn’t trust either of them to not tell Wonder Woman or Batman anyway, so moot point

Essence might be willing to lend him some text. Or she might outright ignore him. And it’s up in the air if she’s actually ignoring him or just not on this plane altogether. Anna is an option; her knowledge outweighs her practical skill. Though he’s not sure where the JSA is right now, if she’s still with them. Molly stopped having a phone years ago, something-something about her status as the Protector of Summerland making it pointless, he knows she keeps a laptop with her Tim though.

Sighing, he emails all three of them anyway. They’re the best options he has even if it does take them forever to get back to him.

—

Kyerra Adame’s mom is informed of her daughter’s death by the GCPD four days after an anonymous tip – classic Gotham City Police incompetence. Red Hood visits not even an hour later to find the woman sitting at her kitchen table, face buried in her arms, shoulders shaking with the force of her cries. Jason swallows thickly and stays at the entryway, unsure.

After a couple minutes, Lydia Adame sits up. Her face is blotchy, her eyes swollen. He prepares himself for rage, for hate, for blame, but instead she looks at him with the same big brown eyes her daughter has in all those pictures he saw of her and all there is, is pure, unadulterated grief.

“Real magic?” she croaks out. Jason had told her, days and days ago, his suspicions, but he couldn’t outright confirm them then. He nods silently, doesn’t try to speak around the lump in his throat. She should blame him. He wasn’t fast enough. He wasn’t smart enough. Kyerra was killed a mere two days after he picked up her case.

If he’d been better, he would’ve found Kyerra alive. He would’ve found Mariette alive.

“Were there others?” He nods again. She inhales sharply, mouth pressed into a thin, trembling line like she’s trying not to scream. “You’ll find them? Make them pay for what they did to my little girl – for taking her from me?”

Jason cracks, right down the middle. “Of course,” he says hoarsely, and tries not to think, think – (“Just him. And doing it, because…because he took me away from you.”)

It was never going to be anything else – even before Kyerra. When it was Khalid and Mariette. When it was him looking for two kids he tried his best to watch out for. When he found that unknown child that will never have someone properly mourn over them because he doesn’t know who they are.

This failure – four failures that he knows of, because, because he thinks and then he knows, these four aren’t the only ones. Kids go missing in East End all the time and he knows better than to pretend they’re being adopted by kind-hearted billionaires.

These failures are going to haunt him for a long, long time.

—

His phone vibrates. He stares blankly at the caller ID – Duke – until it rings out. Duke doesn’t call again. Instead, a new message notification pops up. Jason swipes it away without reading it, lets the number on the icon increase by one – then two when Duke sends another – and join the rest of the unread messages he’s been getting recently.

If it was important, there’s other ways to contact him that aren’t his personal phone.

Stephanie’s visit to his apartment a few days ago apparently opened the flood gates. No one else has tried to come by thankfully, but he keeps getting a smattering of direct messages here and there that, when he reads them, he doesn’t know how to respond. So, he’s just been…not reading them. He doesn’t even read the group chat, just sends a different emoji every day at random times to get them off his back and calls it good.

The comm unit in his ear clicks once, twice, then, “Hood.”

Jason pauses because – that’s Barbara, not Oracle. She isn’t modulating her voice, the crisp tones when she’s working are nowhere to be heard. He doesn’t know why, but either way –

“Oracle.”

She sighs and it crackles. He’s got an old unit. One he snatched up the last time he’d been in the cave when Bruce was off-world and the cave had been empty. The system registered him, his codes had been updated, he was under no illusions that no one knew he was there.

“Just checking in,” she says, a little sharper, a little more like Oracle instead of Babs and something loosens in his shoulders. “You’ve got everyone worried.”

He rolls his eyes. “So, I’ve been told. I’m working a case, that’s it.”

“Need any help?”

“No,” he snaps. There’s a ringing silence. He bites the inside of his cheek and tastes blood. “I have it handled. I don’t need anyone’s help.”

She’s quiet for a long time before she lets out a heavy breath, not quite a sigh. “Okay,” she says simply. By virtue of being Babs, he doesn’t bristle at the easy tone. If it’d been anyone else, it would’ve come off condescending, he’s sure. “Can I get your help on something?”

Jason blinks in shock. “Uh, yeah, O. Always.”

She hums this indecipherable little hum and relays her request over the line.

—

He finds a fifth body. The circle is smaller, six-by-six, and with that, there’s not a single fucking sigil intact.

Still no smell, but this time the state of the body is enough to tell him that whoever it is has been in the city for a while. Months, in fact. There’s barely any flesh left on the bones; any scent of decay would be long gone even without the smell-eating magic. A sewer entrance is one block away, one he knows Waylon uses on his bad days because it reeks and keeps people out.

Jason should be able to smell it from here.

He doesn’t.

The guy is using a spell to keep the bodies from being discovered through smell alone on top of being near putrid locations. Jason is grudgingly impressed and hates himself a little bit for it. It’s effective. Terribly, terribly effective.

Theodore Bennett. Twelve. He’s been missing for two months now. Jason only found out yesterday. This is the oldest body he’s found, and he still has no idea what’s going on. Essence, Molly, and Anna haven’t responded at all. His internet search has predictably turned up blank.

Jason scrubs his face roughly and kicks the door with his steel-toed boot. The magic in here is heavy even after all this time. He can taste it on the back of his tongue – coppery with blood, muddy with grave dirt, the sickly taste of decaying flowers; there’s the taste of petrichor, of heavy clouds, of rusted iron. It’s settled, seeped into the cracks into the ground, has made a home in Gotham’s foundation.

He pauses on that thought.

Huh.

—

Fuck. He fumbles with the doorknob, unable to get a proper grip with the blood stuck to his palm. He falls against it, cheek to cheap wood, breaths puffing out. Jason squeezes his eyes shut so tightly static bursts under his lids.

Finally – Finally. The door opens and he staggers in and, and drops to the ground as his vision whites out.

He comes back staring at the ceiling. There’s footsteps at the stairs and he hurriedly toes the door closed before a neighbor can walk past and see him bleeding out. He presses an open palm to his side, swearing loudly as blood squelches between his fingers. He’s fully aware he needs a gear upgrade, okay? Fully fucking aware. Between Gotham and the Outlaws, his gear is reaching a breaking point and tonight some goon got a lucky shot between two panels of armor.

It wasn’t because of his exhaustion. The exhaustion that’s reaching new levels of shitty. He totally saw the guy coming up behind him, totally anticipated and reacted at the proper speed any good vigilante would react at. He’s not losing his touch.

Jason thunks his head back once, twice, one more time a little harder until there’s a dull ache blooming. He needs to get up. Needs to get out of his gear and stitch up the stab wound but – gods. He’s so goddamn tired. A pathetic whine breaks between his gritted teeth, one he doesn’t bother trying to muffle. If someone hears him and knocks on his door, he’ll just play dead.

Yeah, play dead.

His phone vibrates between him and the floor. Jason lets it ring out then – his phone buzzes once. Jason hisses between his teeth as he shifts to dig it out. He squints at the screen, thumbing away blood and just smearing it worse. Dick, it says. He left a voicemail.

Click. “Hey, Jay. Haven’t heard from you in a while. Babs said you were working on a big case. Be careful, alright? I mean – ”

Palm pressed to his open wound; he closes his eyes to the sound of his big brother’s voice in his ear.

—

He dreams –

 – he dreams of screaming and crying, young voices wailing out for a hero, and he knows, he knows  it’s not him. It can’t ever be him. He tries so hard, but he doesn’t know if he can ever be a hero again. A hero like he used to be – a hero with the wings of a bird and a chirp that made people laugh and smile and praise him – but he still tries.

The waters rise up and over his head, weights drag him downdowndown. The sun flashes on the surface before it fades and he’s gonegonegone into the deep, dark abyss. He doesn’t struggle because he knows – and the voices are getting louder and louder, rising up to meet him, clawing at his skin, asking him why, why, why – why did he fail, why did he leave them, why them, why them, why them – I want my mom, I want my dad, my sister, my brother, my life back – pleasepleaseplease.

And he lets them – lets them cling to him even though it drags him deeper, lets them crawl up him, use him as a launch point – he watches them go, watches them reach for the sunlight – and a shadow passes overhead and they scream, they scream so, so loud. He raises his hands to catch them, but they float away out of reach, their fingers brushing fleetingly.

He cries out for them, his own scream caught in his throat, and he gets dragged deeper and deeper and deeper, wails echoing all around him, wrapping around his throat and squeezing until he’s gasping, and he can’t breathe –

– he can’t fucking breathe –

and eyes in the dark, watching him accusingly –

teeth glinting in a smile –

and he hears you’re a monster, you’re an abomination, why are you even alive

– and blood bubbles from his mouth and he’s dying as his bones crack and shatter – and it’s – what hurts more, A or B –

Green blossoms and blooms and burns – forehand or backhand – and his hands come up to ward off the next hit, fingers digging into his arms as a shrapnel tears through him and, and –

Jason howls –

 – and he’s sitting up, drenched in sweat. He rolls out of bed, hitting the ground hard and gasping at the pain but relishing in it when it dulls quickly enough to remind him this is real. Jason presses his sweaty forehead against his floorboard and tries to catch his breath, his dream echoing in his mind on loop. He sobs sharply then shoves himself up, grimacing at the way his shirt sticks to him.

His arms sting and he glances down, frowning at the oozing blood starting to drip off his wrists. Red is shoved under his nails, caked in his cuticles. He leaves smeared palm prints as he leverages up to his feet. Warmth slides down his side and he presses a hand to his reopened stab wound, swearing violently.

There’s ants under his skin. He feels jittery and wrung out all at once. Jason cleans himself up in the bathroom, refusing to look at himself in the mirror.

—

Jason steps away from Yi Tian’s Chinese restaurant with a frown and a heavy heart and a tiny bit confused. Essentially a dead end – like what most of his intel gathering forays have been like. He would list the names of kids he knows are missing and get blank looks in return. It takes effort, real fucking effort, to get whoever he’s talking to, to recall anything that has to do with some of the kids, even if that person saw the kid themselves every single fucking day for three years.

Something about this is all kinds of wrong.

He pinches the bridge of his nose, willing the niggling headache to go away. He secures his bag of take out – Yi Tian refuses to let him leave from under her roof in either of his identities without some sort of food. It took Jason a pathetically long time to learn she doesn’t know who Red Hood is under the helmet. Apparently, according to her, he does enough as Jason Todd to earn the privilege of free food – which is embarrassing. He doesn’t need free food, he doesn’t need thanks or whatever, okay? But she refuses to take his politest no thanks as an answer, and it’s come to the point where he’s just plain rude for refusing. His mom did not raise a rude boy.

At least she…more-or-less ignores the forty he regularly slips into her tip jar, even if she does glare at him sometimes and, less often, he finds the crumpled bills shoved back into his pocket when he least expects it.

As for intel – Kelsie had been someone else who got free food whenever she stopped by. She came by once a week to pick up leftovers to deliver to the various homeless scattered around the area, Jason and Red Hood played pack mule for her often. A little older than the other kids he found – fourteen to the twelve that was Theo – she was more of a latchkey kid than homeless. Every week she would come by, like clockwork on Fridays for the leftovers, and a smattering of random days throughout the rest of the week for regular meals for her and her mom.

Yet, Yi Tian can’t tell him when she saw her last. And that was after twenty minutes of trying to remind her who Kelsie even was.

The headache doesn’t go away.

Kelsie’s just one of many. That’s not including anyone who isn’t on the streets who could’ve been taken. Kyerra wasn’t homeless. She wasn’t a latchkey. She wasn’t a runaway. Kyerra went to Brentwood and thrived there, she was in the debate club and played soccer. She doesn’t match the profile of any other kid that has been or might’ve been taken.

Really, she’s exactly the type of kid that, once she was reported missing, her face should’ve been plastered all over the news and the cops should’ve been out in full force looking for the adorable high-class, rich, white girl. The rest of the children, the homeless ones, the black and brown kids who get the short end of the stick, the poor who pickpocket to make it through the day, the street rats, and vermin, the GCPD don’t care about them even with a missing person’s report.

But Kyerra would’ve been the straw that broke the camel’s back, the one case that got the rest of them solved.

The Gotham City Police are corrupt. Everyone knows this. Still, it’s out of character for them to drop the ball on such a high-profile case.

And since Jason is having such a hard time on his end gathering intel, he’s starting to think this isn’t a classic case of police corruption. Because, well, it would make, make sense.

Magic is in involved after all.

Jason stops in his tracks. Magic is involved. Gods, he’s such a fucking idiot. That explains so much. This guy is doing everything in their power not to get caught – from taking a majority of his victims from Crime Alley to the scent-eating spell to the locations of the bodies. Of course, he would use a tracking nullification spell. Or, or, a notice-me-not spell? Whatever it is.

And, and Jason’s not magic-magic, but he’s a little bit magic if what Ducra said is true. The wielder of the All-Blades, Heir to the All-Caste (ugh). He might not be able to do all that mumbo-jumbo shit like Zatanna and Constantine, but he’s not completely useless.

He's not magic-magic, but he might be magic enough that some of this guy’s stuff just doesn’t work on him properly. It worked (works?) on him too well, though, or else he would’ve caught on to everything a lot sooner.

—

Cold metal touches the exposed knob of his wrist. Jason flinches, snatching his hand back, turning to stare at Tim who watches impassively back. Red Robin wiggles the canned coffee between them, eyebrow raised. He sighs and takes it, cracking it open and pressing it to his cheek instead of drinking it. His skin feels overheated despite the cool October air. Thankfully Tim doesn’t say anything, just settles next to him with his legs kicking childishly over the edge of the roof.

They sit there in silence, the only sounds are ambient city noises and the rest of Bats tossing quips back and forth during what is, apparently, a slow night. Tim sips his own canned coffee, humming a K-pop song under his breath. Oh no, Steph’s infected him too.

Jason takes a drink then wrinkles his nose. “This is disgusting.” Tim shrugs. “Seriously? Are your taste buds that shot?”

Tim cracks a smile. “Maybe.”

He rolls his eyes. “What do you want?”

Tim sits back, bracing himself with one arm, face tilted towards the sky. The lights reflecting off the clouds make them green and Jason’s trying very hard not to look up. “We’ve been worried – .”

“I swear to God if you say, ‘we’ve been worried about you,’ I’m going to drop kick you off this building like I promised,” Jason snarls. He takes an angry drink and, yep, didn’t get better in the last thirty seconds.

“That was weeks ago,” Tim protests. “You really need a new threat.”

“This one’s fun. For me.”

Tim has the audacity to actually laugh at him. Jason bares his teeth and gets a stuck-out tongue in response. Then he sobers, smile falling. “I’ve been doing some poking around,” he admits. “Kyerra Adame.”

Jason doesn’t stiffen, doesn’t flinch. He should get a prize for his composure. “Who?”

“Don’t play stupid.”

Jason sneers but relents. “What about her?”

“How’d you find her? Why’d you drop the tip anonymously?” Tim asks in a rush, like he’s been waiting weeks to ask Jason. He leans in closer and Jason leans away, goes back to pressing the can to his cheek even though it’s not as cold anymore. His ribs creak, his side screams at him. “How did you know she was missing?”

Jason breathes in deep, and everything reeks of death. “Tim,” he croaks out. Tim jumps like he’d been slapped, his chin tilting as he looks down to realize how far he’s leaning and how Jason’s very carefully holding himself away from the younger boy.

Tim overexaggerates his pulling away. “Sorry,” he says quietly. His hands reach up and hover in the space between them. “Are you – are you okay?”

“How’d you know it was me?” Jason asks instead.

Tim’s frown deepens. “Why was it you and not Red Hood?”

Jason closes his eyes as he lets his head fall back. “I didn’t wanna call attention to myself,” he tells the clouds. “It’s called investigating. Miss. Adame reported her daughter missing, but the cops did nothing about it. She knew that Red Hood protected the kids of Crime Alley and asked me for help.”

“A woman from Coventry, asked you for help?”

He scowls at the brat. “Yes,” he stresses. “She did.”

“Why?”

Jason shoves a hand through his hair, lets it linger on the back of his neck. “I don’t know why, Red. I really fucking don’t. My reputation proceeds me, I guess? Doesn’t matter, I was too late anyway. The kid was killed two days after I picked up the case.” He pauses, his throat closing up, his eyes burning. He ducks his head, tucking his chin to his collar bone. His domino hides the shine of his eyes, but he doesn’t need Tim to see the wobble in his chin. “Too fucking late. Are you here to, to lecture me or something? You’re four years too young and two feet too short to lecture me.”

Tim is silent for a long moment then, “I’m not even a foot shorter than Batman.”

“He doesn’t get to lecture me either. None of you do. That’s the point. What the fuck do you want, Red?”

Tim takes a deep breath and Jason hates him a little for how normal it seems – he doesn’t smell death or decay on the wind, doesn’t taste acid on the back of his tongue. “Are you okay?” he asks again, voice impossibly soft. And, and Jason shouldn’t be getting that voice. Not from Tim of all people. After all the shit – . He can’t really be – .

“Don’t ask me that,” Jason whispers around the lump in his throat.

Because he’s not okay. He’s not sleeping. He’s not eating. Someone is snatching up kids and murdering them for some sick magic ritual that might actually be working and he’s running out of time to get it from exploding in their faces.

He should ask for help.

He doesn’t.

Why doesn’t he ask for help?

“Jason – .”

Jason brushes the attempt aside with a rough gesture. “Why are you asking about Kyerra? How’d you know about my tip?”

Tim’s head cocks to the side like a puppy, and Jason’s abruptly aware of the lack of chatter over the comm. The only sounds are Oracle’s soft clacking. Great. “A complaint was filed by her mother about the GCPD’s conduct,” he says, any concern or softness towards Jason has been muted and he’s so very much grateful for it. “She mentioned Red Hood. I back tracked and found all of your tips. I cross-referenced them and you did them all without your modulator.”

“Okay, and? What does that have to do with any of you? I’ve told you guys a dozen times –  I don’t want your fucking help.”

Tim makes a frustrated sound. “But why?” he asks. “Stop being stubborn. You found, what, four dead kids?”

“Five?”

“What?”

“I found five dead kids. Found another two weeks ago.”

He gestures. “Exactly! Let some of us help, please. You’re running yourself ragged – you look awful and that’s coming from me.”

Jason sets the canned coffee down, hand curling into a fist. “Maybe I don’t want your help.”

Tim groans. “Well, maybe you need our help.”

Rage scorches through his body so fast he feels lightheaded. He climbs to his feet with a predatory grace that has Tim freezing before he’s standing as well. Jason gets into his space, looming over him like he used to once upon a time. To his credit, Tim doesn’t back away, he meets Jason head on, staring at him with his chin jutting out in defiance, head tilted back to accommodate Jason’s height.

“Fuck you, Red Robin,” he snarls. “I don’t need jack shit, least of all from you. You poking your nose in my shit is not helping. I have it under control, so fuck off.”

Tim gives him a condescending once over. “Do you?” he asks challengingly.

Jason’s hands are shaking as he shoves past Tim, shoulder checking him hard enough he stumbles, and jumps down to the fire escape with a loud clang. It creaks under his weight, but he nimbly throws himself across the alley, grabbing onto the adjacent escape with a strong grip. He climbs his way to the opposite roof. He doesn’t have his grapple and that’s fine. He needs to run off this excess energy before he does something drastic and free running back home will do just that.

He ignores Tim calling his name.

“Way to go, Red,” Oracle mutters under her breath for just the three of them before his comm unit clicks and Jason’s alone.

—

The door to Zoi’s occult shop dings as he leaves. His canvas bag, which she insisted on, isn’t heavy or bulging and he stares at it despairingly. He’d expected this to be a dead end and is resigned and disappointed that he was right. Gotham practically chases out the arcane whenever they try to set up shop. Zoi’s the longest lasting shop of exactly two months. Soon she’ll either move out of the city or start stocking predominantly non-occult items.

For a messed-up city like Gotham, it really is weird that the whole magic thing extends beyond Batman.

Jason’s flipping through one of the books, bottom lip pulled between his teeth when he nearly crashes into a very familiar person. Duke smiles sunnily at him and Jason squints.

“Thought you were all mad at me,” he mumbles as he side-steps him and continues on his way. Duke falls in step with him, hands in his hoodie pocket, stride relaxed and casual. “What do you want?”

“Food, mostly,” Duke answers. His smile widens when Jason snorts. “You wanna head to that diner near Eden Park?”

“The one with the curly fries?”

“Yep. B’s paying.”

Jason laughs outright this time. “Yeah, sure, why not.”                  

They don’t talk in the blocks it takes to get to Moe’s Diner. Neither of them head for the rooftops or through the alleys. Duke seems content to walk in silence, their arms brushing occasionally. Every now and then he’ll snag Jason’s elbow and direct him out of a collision course with a person or a trashcan. But they don’t say anything, don’t really acknowledge each other. It’s nice after the conversation and subsequent blow up he had with Tim the other day.

Duke’s great. Jason loves Duke. He’s smart, he’s witty, his self-preservation is miles ahead of anyone else’s. They have shared life stories from growing up in East End. There’s no baggage attached to hanging out with him, or Stephanie, because they both came after. Stephanie is tricky since she dated Tim and all. But Duke? Duke is amazing. There have been days here and there, slow as molasses days, where they’ll meet up for coffee and Jason will read and Duke will either write or fill a puzzle book at a scary pace. He’s contentment when everyone else is chaos – most of the time. Other times he’s just as much of a menace as the rest of their siblings.

There are no “normal ones” in this family.

He waits until they slide into a booth and order before he’s resting his elbows on the tabletop, mouth pressed to his threaded fingers. “Soooo,” Duke drags out. “You look like crap.”

Jason rolls his eyes. “Thanks. I feel the love.”

Duke shakes his head. “No seriously. You look like a raccoon.” Jason frowns, pressing his finger pads to the thin skin under his eyes. He knew he was pale and wane, but really? That bad? “How can I help?”

Immediately, he bristles. “I don’t need your help.”

“You don’t, but I’m offering it anyway.”

Jason looks at him carefully. The same anger he felt at Tim’s offer doesn’t appear – and the guilt rises up. He’s gotten texts from Tim – and from Steph and Babs – but he hasn’t looked at them, just like he hasn’t looked at any of the messages from his family. He still sends his emojis, but he can’t help but wonder how welcome they actually are.

He should apologize to Tim; he was only trying to help. Jason drags a hand over his face – then flinches when Duke reaches over a snags his wrist.

“What the hell, man?” Duke says as he shoves Jason’s sleeve up to expose his forearm.

Jason snatches his arm back, rolling his sleeve back down to cover the nail marks dug into his skin. They’re slightly inflamed, irritated not infected, and he doesn’t have enough bandages to cover them. He scowls, hiding both arms under the tabletop.

“Privacy much?” Jason snaps.

Duke stares at him wide-eyed. “Did you do that to yourself?” he asks, voice pitched higher than usual.

He flushes, looks away. “Didn’t do it on purpose,” he mutters. “Had a nightmare.”

“A nightmare so bad you hurt yourself?” Duke raises an eyebrow, disbelief in his expression. That’s fine, Duke can believe whatever he wants to believe. “Dude. I know you’re getting tired of hearing it, but we’re really worried about you.”

Jason scrunches down in his seat, crosses his arms. “Yeah, I know.”

Duke sighs out like he’s bracing himself, hands splayed palm down on the table. “Jay, it’s been two months,” he says seriously. “You’ve gotten thinner, we barely see you on patrol. You’re ignoring every call and text we send you. Can’t you accept that we care about you and are worried? Roy called Dick last night, said you haven’t spoken to any of the Outlaws since you got back. Please,” he begs. “Please. I don’t, I don’t need you to come back to the manor or the cave or anything, I just need you to let me help you. Please.”

He shouldn’t – he really, really shouldn’t. The idea of letting Duke help makes him sick to his stomach. The idea of letting any of them help makes him want to scream and run away as fast as possible and, and – that’s not normal. He squeezes his eyes shut. Shit. That’s not normal.

That’s not –

Jason swallows thickly then slides his bag over with shaking hands. Semi-reluctantly, he texts Duke the sketches he pieced together from his photos. Most of his intel is hard copy in his apartment, but the sigils he keeps in his pocket.

A look of triumph appears on Duke’s face when he checks his phone. Jason smothers his own smile and pulls out the books, setting one in front of Duke and tapping the cover.

“See if you can find those sigils in this. I’m trying to figure out exactly what they mean.”

His smile flickers and he looks confused. “Why not ask O to do a database search? I’m sure she’d find something instantly.”

Jason shakes his head. “The arcane is hard to document with technology. Most of what’s on the internet is fake because that’s the only way to get it on the internet in the first place. She won’t find anything.”

Duke hums in acknowledgement, already flipping to the first page, eyes skimming over the words not just glancing at the diagrams. Jason does the same. He recognizes some of the concepts in here from his own training. Which, what a fucking relief, it means the books are legitimate. He would’ve doubled checked that in Zoi’s shop, but the woman had been so enthusiastic about having a customer she wouldn’t stop talking and shoving items in his arms, he desperately wanted to get away and didn’t even look.

Their food comes and Jason picks at his, stomach still churning, his teeth watering. Duke swings his book around a couple times, pointing at a few different things that caught his attention but ultimately has nothing to do with their search. Jason tries to answer the best he can without losing his own momentum and he can tell he’s surprising Duke with his arcane knowledge. They all know a little bit about magic, you can’t get away with being a vigilante or a hero without knowing something, but it seems Jason knows more than even Bruce, if Duke’s raised eyebrow means anything.

Jason hadn’t totally meant to keep his time with the All-Caste a secret, it just happened. The rest of his magic training after that, though. Absolutely.

He reaches the end of his book first and snaps it shut with a grunt. “Nothing,” he seethes quietly. “Big fat load of fucking nothing. Useless.”

“Why are you so interested anyway?” Duke asks absently. He doesn’t see Jason stiffen. He just munches on a fry and turns the page with non-greasy fingers.

Jason drums his fingertips on the tabletop, looks out the window to the busy street. Duke’s watching him now, lips pursed, his gaze heavy. He opens his mouth to say something and closes it instead before sliding the book over one more time.

“Look familiar?”

He lurches, yanking the book closer and practically shoving his nose against the pages as he reads. Fuck. Fuck. Jason had known, sorta, what the sigils were for – he just didn’t want to believe it. He’d known, deep down, what the taste and smell of this magic that’s been haunting him truly meant – coppery with blood, muddy with grave dirt, the sickly taste of decaying flowers; there’s the taste of petrichor, of heavy clouds, of rusted iron. They’re something he knows so well, so intimately.

It's Gotham. Magic or no, that’s what Gotham is.

Jason didn’t want to believe it. He didn’t. Because this – this is beyond him. Beyond Gotham. This is – fuck.

He doesn’t take the book as he stands, he doesn’t need it. He absently sets some bills on the table, mind racing. Duke’s saying something, but he can’t hear him over the weird roaring in his ears. It sounds like he’s underwater. He feels like he’s underwater, drifting, coming out of alignment with his body.

Jason doesn’t look at Duke as he leaves the diner like the hounds of hell are dogging his heels.

—

It seeps into his head – he knows it’s there; he knows it’s not him with these thoughts, these feelings – but it crawls under his skin, clogs his veins. He scratches at it – scratches and scratches and scratches – barely healed scabs burst open, he leaves fingerprints along his own skin, red against brown, stark and shining in the city lights. He wonders if anyone’s nearby, if anyone’s going to find him like this and look at him in disgust – he’s pushing them away, shoving, forcing them away from him and he doesn’t want to – he wants his family, his brothers, his sisters – he misses them so, so much, and yet – yet ants under his skin.

He needs help. Not just with the case, but his tongue is swollen and there’s fire down his throat.

His phone rings, for once not on vibrate because there’s books open on his kitchen table, a highlighter that rolled to the ground, and he needs to be searching for a way to track this so he didn’t think, but his head is stuffed full of cotton, and he can’t – but he needs to. Jason’s eyes sting as he drops his head, staring at his phone screen as Dick – because of course it’s Dick – as Dick tries to call him. He reaches out and hangs up before it can ring out.

It dings with a voice mail and Jason wonders when that became their thing. Him not answering and Dick leaving a voice mail. He wonders how much longer he has before his brother comes down from Blüdhaven, demanding answers he doesn’t know he can give. Steph had been right all those weeks ago. He hadn’t been avoiding the manor specifically, but he was avoiding Dick. Dick who’d been down for family time and Jason had avoided that, had known even then, subconsciously, that if anyone’s going to force the truth outta him, it was going to be his big brother.

Jason presses the phone to his ear, closing his eyes and resting his temple on the freezing cold metal of the fire escape. What he expects is Dick with another awkward message asking him to take care of himself and to be careful.

What he gets is this:

“’It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies – .’”  

He snorts when he hears the first sentence, wonders what Dick thought trying to cram as much of Fahrenheit 451 into a voicemail as possible would accomplish. Not gonna lie, it does soothe something inside him – more than his last voicemail. He slumps further against the fire escape, ignoring the drying blood on his arms.

The ants are gone. He needs to find a way to track the ritual circles. He needs to find this guy. But he knows that he’s already run ragged, he’s so close to collapsing altogether. Just this moment – he’ll take this moment.

Then back to work.

—

He declines Steph’s call, then Cass’s in quick succession. They message him not even a second later and he ignores that too. He’s glad Dick hasn’t tried calling him again. He thinks he might actually answer this time and he doesn’t know if that’s a good thing. Jason doesn’t know if anyone’s come by his apartment since he left Duke behind at Moe’s because he’s been not-avoiding them by using a safehouse over in Gotham Heights – far enough out of his usual territory that no one should think to look for him there.

Jason tucks his phone back in his pocket. He squares his shoulders, takes a deep breath to steel himself. Fish and chemicals – another harbor warehouse, abandoned from the last recession and not picked up by Wayne Enterprises yet – and it’s by that smell alone that makes him pretty sure he has the right place.

He opens the bay door slightly and squeezes under. Yep, definitely the right place. His eyes sting. Damn it. He’s too late again.

Kelsie – her hair done up in two pig-tails with the brightly colored scrunchies he used to tease her about until she’d hit him in the stomach with a laugh and no force – is in the middle of a arcane circle, her chest burst outward, her face twisted in fear. There’s clean lines through the blood on her cheeks, eyes wide and unseeing towards the ceiling. Jason closes his eyes briefly, a lump lodging in his throat, a pressure building in his chest. A tear trickles down his cheek before he sniffs and wipes it away. Fuck.

There’s clearer sigils on this, but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t need them anymore. He can’t bring himself to take pictures. Not…not right now.

Jason finds a clear spot and just – sits down, legs pulled to his chest, eyes pressed to his knees. Fuckity-fuck-fuck. His breaths shudder out of him, his shoulders quiver. He lets the pressure go and just cries into the rough denim of his jeans. But –

But only for a moment. He lets himself cry, humidity building up, his hair clinging to his skin, for just this singular moment, before he takes a deep breath and holds it, until he shoves it all down and out of the way.

When he lifts his head, he feels wrung out and achy and he knows he didn’t give himself long enough – but he also knows that he doesn’t have time. He doesn’t uncurl from his spot, he just takes a steadying breath – and then another, forcing himself to calm down completely. He takes what he learned from Bruce, from Talia, from the All-Caste, and he centers himself to the here and now, his emotions smoothing out and folding up minuscule until they’re the calm, mirrored surface of a pond, undisturbed, hiding any turmoil he might be feeling.

The moment his heartbeat slows and his blood stops roaring in his ears, he stands on too-steady legs, and moves closer to the chalk circle.

Magic swirls around it like a fog, barely visible and probably invisible to anyone else. It’s green, not quite the tint of the Lazarus Pit, not quite the color of fear toxin, but softer, paler, something wholly different altogether. He steps closer and the glow grows brighter until it casts shadows. Kelsie’s expression disappears in the darkness, and he forces himself to look away.

Instead, he looks over and beyond, into the deep, deep shadows off to the side. And with his new vision, he Sees.

He bares his teeth into a snarl and reaches into his soul for the All-Blades. They answer him as readily as they should with evil in his presence, glowing a dull copper. He twirls one blade with a flourish and points it at the shadows.

“Show yourself,” he demands, voice hoarse.

There’s a chuckle like sounds like nails on a chalkboard. “Heir to the All-Caste,” a voice says. “I wonder how Essence felt about that.”

“She hates it,” Jason says – Essence despises it, but neither of them got to choose. “Get the fuck out of my city.”

“Oh, but it’s so nice here. And I’m afraid I’m not quite finished yet.”

From the shadows steps out a hulking beast with pale green eyes and lines of power threaded like veins. Jason knows instantly that what he sees isn’t the true perpetrator, but a simulacrum – a representation of him. A barrier between the retribution Jason wants to rain down on this sick fuck and the sick fuck in question. It stretches in the dim light of the circle and his Blades, growing taller, its back curving, claws elongating.

“You are alone,” it says, stilted in a way that makes Jason think of a bad ventriloquist. Like the guy doesn’t quite know how this spell works. “I thought so.”

Jason sneers. “I don’t need help.” Then falters.

“No,” it says, amused. “You do not.”

He shakes his head, and his vision bounces around, wavering. “Turn it off,” he demands, almost pleads but he’s ignoring the hitch in his voice. Another nails-on-a-chalkboard chuckle. “Whatever it is. Turn it off.”

“Why would I do that? It’s such a lovely spell. I can keep going with my plans and not worry about some busybody interfering – and look, the only busybody to see through the spell is suffering at the same time. It truly is a masterpiece.”

“I will find you,” he warns. “And I will stop you.”

The simulacrum ambles towards him, knuckles dragging along the ground. “How many more innocent children will I kill before you do that, hm?” It laughs again at Jason’s flinch. “I’m almost done and you’re no closer to finding my final circle. Who’s the real winner here?”

Jason lets out a scream of rage and frustration, lunging across the circle in a careful, graceful dance that has him sidestepping Kelsie. The simulacrum doesn’t dodge – doesn’t seem capable of dodging, really – as Jason shoves the All-Blades up into its chest.

It howls silently, maw snapping towards his face. Teeth scrape his cheek, his throat, along his hairline before he ducks under and shoves harder. The blades, usually so warm, freeze in his hands, ice crawling up his wrists to his elbows to encase his chest. He grits his teeth and shoves even harder. It reaches out with a massive claw-tipped hand – and Jason’s too frozen, literally, to do anything but let it come closer.

The hand wraps around the entirety of his head, nails digging into the back of his skull. He screams against its palm, frost crawling along his spine. Blood streams down his back and it should burn, it should feel like a blazing inferno but all he feels is cold, cold, freezing, choking cold. His breath catches, sparks burst along his vision – Jason shouts before he yanks down and out, partially bisecting the shadow monster.

It dissipates slowly into little wisps, flailing in death throws. Claws catch his chest, throwing him back and he doesn’t even try to catch himself as he falls to the ground mere inches from disturbing the arcane circle. He chokes on the scream that tears out of his throat, curling in on himself as waves of agony crest and crash. Blood pools under his head. He can’t stop shivering. He blinks and the world darkens around the corners.

On the winds there is a chuckle. Let’s have a race, a voice whispers – only half familiar – good luck.

With shaking hands, he paws out his phone. He can barely see the screen; it takes him several tries to type out his code. There’s blood still crusted between the phone and its case from the last time he was in this position. Bile climbs up his throat, his stomach churns, as he navigates his contacts. He hesitates over a name, thumb hovering. Jason swears he can hear the puddle under his head grow bigger with each passing second.

Fuck. He presses down and the line starts ringing. It takes him too long to think about hitting the speaker button. As soon as he does, the phone is clattering from his grip, his arm growing too heavy to keep up, his fingers going numb.

“Jason?” Tim’s voice is crackling and faint. Jason frowns. “Jason – what’s wrong?”

“Tim,” he croaks out. “I need – I need help.” He sobs around the word then gags, choking. He turns his face to the ground, pressing his cheek against cooling blood. Copper taste of blood, of grave mud, of funeral flowers. “Please. Tim. I can’t…” and the words slur, mush, blur together. Jason closes his eyes, unable to keep them open any longer. “Please,” he whispers. “P-please. I'm sorry. I'm...”

Then he knows nothing.

Chapter Text

Batman said no magic in Gotham.

Gotham said okay, and everything wasn’t peaceful or kind, but that’s not the reason why.

Batman says again no magic in Gotham.

Then Gotham says I can’t anymore.

And that’s also not the reason why nothing is peaceful or kind, but it is the reason dead boys come back to life, why there’s a clue within easy reach, why death is just a tiny bit harder to come by, why, why, why –

It’s the little things, really, in life and death and magic.

—

They know, without a doubt, that something’s wrong – how could they not? It’s obvious. So painfully obvious. But there’s a fine line of knowing and knowing. The moment Duke told them “he let me help.” The moment he told them about the marks on his arms. There was a collective we don’t know anything. They noticed something wrong, but then they didn’t do anything beyond asking, letting Jason brush them off even though…even though –

(It’s magic and they don’t know this. It’s not their fault. It’s not any of their faults.)

But now it’s led to this – Jason refusing their calls, ghosting their messages. They go to his apartment and find it empty, so they spread out like the detectives they are.

Tim’s attention is caught immediately by the map of Gotham on Jason’s wall. He sees faded spots behind it, the posters and pictures Jason had put up years ago only recently taken down, probably specifically for this map. He frowns when he traces the outline of something small enough to be a polaroid. And Tim remembers staring at this particular photo after Jason stopped kicking them out of his apartment – which came after he stopped automatically burning his safe houses when they were found. It was of Dick and Jason back when Jason was Robin, but they were in civilian clothes, smiling over sundaes at a shop that closed down not long after Jason’s death. Bruce’s finger blurred up in the corner did nothing to hide how bright their smiles were.

How bright of a smile Jason used to have.

For him to take that down…

Tim steps back, takes in the map more thoroughly. There’s not much on it, just a handful of red-tipped pins – five, to be exact – with sticky notes curling from them. He peeks at one and sees Kyerra Adame written on it in Jason’s precise writing. The kind of handwriting he puts out when he cares about what he’s writing. There’s a scattering of blue-tipped ones with nothing on them. And a tangled ball of string sitting on the shelf, like he’d unwound it in a hurry and didn’t bother throwing it away.

“I don’t think he’s been here,” Steph says, stepping out of the kitchen. “His fridge is empty.”

“Clothes are gone,” Cass adds.

Duke rehangs an empty bag on a hook. “Definitely took his tech with him.”

Planned, but enacted in a hurry. Tim would bet that Jason dipped as soon as he left Duke in that diner. Probably originally planned on leaving not long after that point anyway – but why?

That really is the driving question. Simple, elegant, compact – why?

And Tim doesn’t have time to think more on it because then his phone rings –

He doesn’t ignore a phone call. So, he answers it without looking, frowning at the map that feels like it should mean something important as he puts it to his ear.

All he hears is raspy, pained breathing with just a hint of panic and resignation (and sometimes Tim hates that he can pick that all out from a simple breath.) Tim checks the caller ID, and his stomach drops out, opens up in a void-maw to fill with cold panic instead.

“Jason?” he says sharply – and that catches everyone’s attention. Steph, Duke, Cass, all three of them cluster around him with wide eyes and uneasy expressions. Steph fumbles for her phone and shows him the screen that Barbara is already on the line. He puts his phone on speaker. “Jason – what’s wrong?”

A pained gasp, if it can even be called that with how awful it sounds, and Jason croaks out, “Tim,” then with an electronic crackle of interference he says, “I need – I need help. Please.” Cass’s expression goes stony. Duke’s eyes get even wider.  “Tim. I can’t…Please. P-Please. I’m sorry. I’m…”

Then all there is, is a crushing silence only broken by raspy breathing.

“Babs,” Steph says sharply.

“Working on it.”

—

“The strongest his signal ever was, was just outside of Tricorner,” Barbara tells them as they zip through the streets – rooftops are a no go, the distance is too great for them to traverse on foot. Frustration is audible in her voice. It never really wasn’t. “It blips in and out at varying strengths throughout the Yard. At most I can give you a place to start, but that’s it.”

The same interference that made Jason’s call crackly and distant. The same interference that has been plaguing Gotham for a couple months now – all blamed on unusual weather and the attempted alien invasion the Justice League chased off not even a week before the comms started acting weird.

Now, Tim’s beginning to think they were completely off the mark.

The plan is sound – until it isn’t. Until they actually make it to Tricorner Yards, and Barbara’s voice fades out completely before it comes back in, every other word gone, every other word after that broken. She swears in between the awful static that buzzes as she tries to give them locations to start with. It takes twice as long as normal as she repeats herself so the whole thing gets through.

They pass around flares – colored flares because they’re Bats and that’s how it works – before Tim swings his leg back over his motorcycle and splits left at the intersection of warehouses. Steph’s voice dips in and out as she mutters under her breath. Cass is quiet – and not quiet in the normal sense, but an intense quiet that she gets when she’s worried or angry or both. And then Duke makes a comment only now and then when he catches what Steph is saying. Tim keeps one ear open on them, his focus mainly on his own route.

Each warehouse he checks is suffocatingly empty. Yeah, sure, there’s pallets and products – and, memorably, one warehouse full of smuggled guns. He marks that one for investigation – but there’s no Jason. Every time he closes a door to nothing, his heart rises further and further until it lodges in his throat in worry and unease and dread.

This is Jason. Okay? Jason Todd shouldn’t sound like that. He shouldn’t look worn and broken down like he has been. He shouldn’t be, be lashing out either. Jason has, surprisingly enough to some people, a mild temper – a low, shimmering temper that doesn’t show itself nearly as often as people think. Tim knows his temper, knows how calculating Jason can be when it comes to vengeance and justice.

He gets vindictive when he’s pissed, runs the long game of revenge and payback.

Not the explosive fire that Tim had been graced with a few days ago.

What he saw was fueled by paranoia and exhaustion and something…something else that has Tim anxious.

It drives him up the wall not knowing. He used to think he was the Bat expert. He knew everything about them – their names, their timelines, he knew of Robin’s death before anyone else in Gotham finally admitted to themselves that it could be possible.

Even as they added more people – Steph, he knew Steph before she became Robin and before she became Batgirl and all the little gritty things in between; Damian isn’t as hard to read as the kid would like to think; Duke is practically an open book; Cass is harder but also easier because she wants people to know what she’s thinking most of the time; Barbara is an enigma and he loves her for that, but they’ve made a game out of it and Tim wouldn’t have it any other way; Bruce is harder when he’s Bruce, and easier when he’s Batman and Tim hates it just a little bit.

Dick and Jason though.

Dick he thought he knew, but then Tim became Robin and Dick became his brother and…he knows less of Nightwing than he did Robin, he knows more about his brother Dick than he did about Richard Grayson and Tim doesn’t know where the line is anymore because Dick is Dick – the one with the bright smiles and the warm hugs and experience that surpasses most senior heroes, and the kindness that know no bounds, but he’s the one with the anger and the rage, the shouting matches he used to have with Bruce even though they lessened when Tim started staying around them more. He remembers catching the tail end of them when he first became Robin. Six months of mourning and grief doesn’t smother the burning hot anger inside, it just stokes it higher, especially when your father figure and mentor is uncommunicative and uncooperative in his own grief and anger. Dick got better, calmer, found different outlets for the anger, but Tim will always remember those first few months.

Jason, he thinks he knows better now. There was Jason Todd who was Robin and then Jason Todd who was Red Hood – and now Jason who is Red Hood. It’s different from the Red Hood who came to Gotham seeking vengeance and affirmation. Different from the Red Hood who once drop kicked him off a building without a grapple. It’s different from the Red Hood who used him, once, as bait to escape a situation. Who didn’t care about Tim in any capacity other than the kid who stole Robin from him. This Jason, his brother, his friend, is a Jason who shoves extra food in his hands and sends him case notes with notes in the margins and doodles on corners. This Jason Tim understands a little better about replacements and that living nightmare of Robin being ripped from your hands and given to, taken and claimed by someone else.

This is a Jason that…he’s pretty sure would break the family if they lost him again. He doesn’t think Bruce would survive a second death. Neither would Dick or Alfred. Tim doesn’t want to think how he would react. Or Steph or Cass or Damian. He’s not the glue that holds the family together – that’s Dick, hands down – but he’s something important and this –

“Tim,” Barbara says sharply over the line. Tim screeches to a stop, engine idling hot in the frozen air. He puffs out a breath, watches it come out like smoke before it dissipates and he wonders, faintly, wait, when did it get so cold? “I’ve got him. You’re closest.”

A blip appears on his visor. Two warehouses down. It doesn’t waver, doesn’t fade. It’s a strong, steady blip that goes along with Barbara’s strong, steady voice that doesn’t crackle with interference anymore.

“Roger,” Tim says as he revs the engine and makes quick work of the distance.

“The others are on their way.”

Crystal clear. Unbelievably clear. Her words are clearer than they should be. Even Oracle has limits when it comes to technology and she’s done the best she can with their comms, but there’s always something.

And that something isn’t there anymore.

—

Tim enters that warehouse on alert, bō at home in his hands even without the uniform. He wrinkles his nose at the heavy scent of blood that permeates the air and mixes with the already overwhelming scent of the docks. It’s been a while since he’s smelled blood this strongly – not just blood, honestly, but decomposition as well. The buildup of chemicals and bacteria, the body relaxing after death.

His eyes skitter across the mostly empty warehouse, looking for immediate threats, as he creeps closer to the circle of blood and chalk in the middle. A body – small enough to be a child – almost unrecognizable as human – is in the middle and Tim closes his eyes for a moment, heart breaking. Another life lost. He steps around it, following the fresher blood outside of the arcane circle.

There’s a mess of it right next to the circle and – and Jason’s phone is glistening right there, fingerprints smeared over the screen that’s already idle-dark. Streaks of blood extend from the mess and Tim follows it up until the shadows, his breathing quiet and steady, steps confident as he goes slow and sure. He sees no footprints, only the dragged motions of handprints and odd patches of more solid puddles of blood like…like Jason’s dragged himself. Tim swallows thickly.

“Jason?” he whispers.

Silence. Smothering, choking silence answers him. Tim steps further into the shadows.

“Jason,” he tries again, and it feels like he’s trying to talk around a noose.

Right there. A noise. The slightest, quietest whimper that he could barely believe came from Jason. Tim whirls towards it and drops to his knees next to the other man, bō snicking closed so he can shove it into his pocket.  

Jason is half curled into a ball. One arm pulled in close to his chest, legs tucked up. His face is ducked into the safety of his arm, the only thing visible is the pale, blood-streaked skin of his forehead. His other hand is stretched out, resting on the edge of a symbol Tim doesn’t recognize. It’s painted in red, wet and shiny in its freshness. Jason’s hand is bloody, but his fingers are drenched in it – it doesn’t take a detective to figure out he drew it in his own blood.

Tim doesn’t have time to figure out what it’s for, so he ignores it for now. Jason’s the priority. Instead, he shoves his hands under him and rolls him onto his back, hissing between his teeth when he flops like a ragdoll and – and Tim thinks ragdoll physics, the awful boneless animations that video game characters do when they die. Tim coughs out the ball of emotion threatening to overwhelm him and sucks an angry breath between his teeth. No. Don’t think like that.

Jason’s head rolls, face falling to the side. Blood pools anew under his head, slow and sluggish, but still too much. He’s already lost too much. Tim presses his thumb to Jason’s cheek, feeling the muscle twitch under his touch. His lashes flutter, his lips move soundlessly at first then break around a whine.

He puts a finger to his comm. “Found him,” he whispers – something, there’s something in the air that he doesn’t want to break, shatter. “Right where you said. He’s hurt and my kit isn’t going to be enough.”

There’s a pause and he fears the worst – that the clarity from before was one off. The comms are down again, and Tim is left alone with an injured Jason that he isn’t sure he can help, but then – “Steph took a detour to borrow a car. They’ll be there soon. Stabilize him.”

Tim focuses on that – on patching what he can. Jason’s brief fling with possible consciousness has faded. He has shallow wounds on his face and across his chest. Claw marks. Tim stares at the ones on his face. He can put gauze pads and wrap the ones on his chest, but these ones?

The biggest concern is whatever’s going on with his head. He gently lifts it and sighs when he finds holes in his scalp. Head wounds are the worst. Who knows how long he’s been laying out here bleeding before he called. Tim pulls out some gauze and presses it to the wounds. There’s only three of them, large and not as deep as he originally thought. Whatever got him dug in then scraped, dragging bloody marks across the back of his head. He hopes Jason won’t need stitches – a futile hope, he knows. So, he hopes Jason won’t mind his future haircut.

His next concern is how Jason won’t stop shivering. His lips and the tips of his fingers are tinged a pale grey. A violent shudder goes through him every now and then, making his teeth clack together. Tim feels for a pulse and it’s fast, but not overly out of the norm. He takes out a shock blanket one handed, the loud crinkle makes him wince, and does his best to tuck it around him while keeping pressure on his head wounds.

When he sits back, he nearly jumps out of his skin when he realizes Jason’s awake and watching him from between his lashes and, and –

His eyes aren’t blue.

They aren’t green either.

“Jason?” His eyelashes flutter, his brows furrow. He blinks at him and the brilliant copper of his eyes – sparkling, molten brass and bronze and gold and vintage whiskey and sunlight through iced tea and the orange-brown of fall – shimmer in the low light. “Can you hear me?”

He blinks again, slowly, and languidly, and the colors shift wildly. Copper swirls into pale green, dappling like the sun through leaves – pale green. Not fear green, not Pit green, but something deeper despite the tone, darker despite the shade, more of something. Livelier is the only word he can think of right now. Old. Ancient. Unfathomable.

The world falls still, silent, breath held like it’s waiting for the rubber band of reality to snap.

But then Jason frowns and he blinks long and sluggish and dazed and when he opens his eyes again, a sweep of dark lashes, his eyes are teal-blue once more, unfocused and wavering – until they drift and land on Tim hovering in front of him. Then they zero in like a predator, but Tim’s not afraid.

Tim hasn’t been prey in a long while.

“Timbit,” he mumbles, lips barely moving. He blinks again in that slow way, like he’s trying to test Tim’s permanence in front of him. He lifts a hand, catches sight of it, then frowns as it hovers there midair, shaking. “No Cave,” he says.

Tim sighs and rolls his eyes because of course. “Gotta go to the Cave, Jay. It’s the only place with the equipment.”

Jason’s head lolls in his grip and blood squelches – Tim swallows around a gag and reminds himself that head wounds bleed a lot. He’s been trying to ignore the gross warmth pooling in his hand this whole time and he would really like Jason to stay still so it’ll stop drawing his attention please.

“N-Nest,” Jason says quietly, his gaze going distant over Tim’s shoulder. “No…help…”

Tim stays silent, watching Jason mumble to himself. Technically, he’s right. One of Tim’s more stocked safehouses – which at this point are more than just safehouses – has more than enough to help Jason and Steph and Cass’s hands are the steadiest after Alfred’s. They don’t have to go to the Cave where Damian and Bruce are.

Should they – should they bring Jason to the Cave anyway, expose his injuries and his struggles like that to Bruce of all people? Their relationship is miles better than it has been, but it’s a careful balancing act. They’ve already been keeping quiet for weeks now about their concerns. Even if Damian looks more and more suspicious every day. Bruce probably would’ve caught on sooner if it weren’t for some big case going on with the Justice League that he pretends isn’t happening since, you know, they just got done with an attempted alien invasion.

He sighs, rests his elbows on his knees as his arms start to complain about holding Jason’s head. Then gets stuck on that second thing – No help. But they are helping. Jason asked for help. From Duke. From Tim.

Asked for help with seemingly no inciting factors after refusing, for weeks, to the point of, of self-harm. Duke told them about his arms.

“We’re going to help you,” Tim tells him softly. Jason frowns, eyes flickering back and forth under his lids. “Wish you’d asked sooner, though.” He shakes his head minutely and Tim presses his lips together at the squish of gauze and blood.

—

It takes three of them to get Jason into the car even with Duke’s augmented strength. Steph grimaces at the blood, mutters something about stealing the car instead of borrowing and thank god Bruce is rich – Tim doesn’t tell her that he’ll pay for it instead because he’s decided he doesn’t want Bruce to know anything unless Jason okays it. Jason groans in the back seat, eyelashes fluttering, hand coming up to press against the patched claw marks on his chest. Cass climbs in and tucks her legs under his head so she can take a turn on stemming the blood – why won’t it stop bleeding? Surely the Lazarus perks should’ve kicked in by now?

Tim finds some old wet wipes from the glove compartment and does his best to clean himself up. All their clothes are ruined to the point it’s pretty much useless to try and salvage them. He tosses the dirty wipes to the footwell and hops into the driver’s seat. Duke silently calls shotgun by just taking the passenger seat and Steph puts on a show of pouting as she clambers into the back with Cass and Jason.

“Do we call someone?” Duke asks quietly. He stares straight out the windshield as Tim puts the car in drive and they slowly make their way out of the Yard.

Steph snorts. She’s in the footwell of the backseat, arm thrown over Jason’s legs to keep him from sliding as Tim takes a turn too sharply. “With Jason’s blood all over the crime scene? We can’t. We’ll have to figure something else out. No one else found the other bodies without help. I think that one will keep.”

Tim chews on the inside of his cheek as he maneuvers through late evening Gotham traffic. He peeks back through the rear view mirror and Jason’s still shivering like he’s been left in the snow, but once they got in the car and made it a block from the warehouse Tim found him in, the sudden cold in the air had faded into an autumn chill that didn’t smoke their breaths.

“Priority is patching Jason up,” Tim says, grip tight on the steering wheel. “Then we figure out what he’s been dealing with.”

“Steph sent me a picture of that map you found,” Barbara’s voice comes in with – it’s not as clear anymore, but instead of the awful interference from the Yard it just sounds like it has been these last couple months. “I recreated it and sent it to your files, Tim.”

Tim sighs. “Thanks, Babs.”

Duke cracks his neck, fingers drumming on the windowsill. “I got a picture of that symbol Jason drew too. I only looked through one of the books he had so it doesn’t look familiar.”

“Clarity,” Cass finally says, her words careful and deliberate. Tim meets her eyes through the mirror. “It broke through the interference, gave us the clarity to see and hear what we needed.”

“Magic?” Steph asks like she still can’t believe it and Tim gets it. They’ve faced wizards and magicians and metas and aliens, they’ve met Zatanna and Constantine and Doctor Fate, but those have never been in Gotham. In Gotham it’s always been magical artifacts they’ve been able to deal with like normal and, even then, that was rare. So rare, that Tim can’t remember the last time they dealt with one.

For Jason to draw out a clearly magical symbol – because there’s no way to deny that – means that Jason knows magic and he…what, didn’t tell any of them?

…did he have to tell them? Did they really need to know about Jason’s apparently extensive magical knowledge?

“Wait,” Steph says after a beat then directs at Cass: “You know magic?”

She shakes her head. “No. Not enough.” Her mouth twists as she thinks. “I know some things, little things, but I cannot use it.”

“Common symbols,” Duke offers. “Simple spells.” Cass nods. “The book Jason had me look through was mostly runes and symbols, but none of them were for stuff like clarity or, or anything like that. It seemed more complicated.”

“Like what?” Tim asks. He pulls in the parking garage and the dim orange glow blankets inside the car. It makes everything quieter, muffled.

“A lot of it had to do with life and death,” Duke says slowly as he tries to remember. “Uh, not like hardcore life and death, but…I don’t know. I was just looking at symbols, not what they meant. There was something about transference of power and trapping elements. A couple pages on healing. It’s all a little fuzzy.”

“More magic,” Cass says.

Duke shrugs. “Maybe. I remember one symbol he had me look up. It was under the chapter ‘genius loci.’”

Tim pulls into a parking spot just as he finishes that sentence. He parks, pauses, then drops his forehead to the steering wheel and thumps it a few times, eyes squeezed shut. “Genius loci as in…?”

“…Yeah,” Duke says sheepishly.

He groans and thunks his head again.

Steph clears her throat. “Yeah, anyone wanna translate for people who don’t speak Latin?”

“Spirit of a place,” Cass tells her. She’s cradling Jason’s face with one hand, thumbing over his cheek. “A protective or guardian spirit of a location.”

“Sooo…Gotham is alive?”

“I think we’d know by now if Gotham was alive,” Tim says – hopes.

—

It’s only by luck that they manage to get Jason into the safehouse and on the single gurney Tim has before he starts regaining consciousness. Again.

Steph keeps her hand braced on his chest, careful around the claw marks, as he starts to move sluggishly, groaning under his breath as he aggravates his wounds. She leans over him, hair falling over like a curtain, and makes sure she’s in his sightline when his eyes finally open. They stare upward for a moment, unfocused and drifting, but only for a moment. He snaps his attention to her frighteningly quick – if it weren’t for the whole vigilante thing, she’d wonder how he could come to awareness so fast in the state he’s in.

His brows furrow. “East End,” he mumbles.

She grins. “Alley.” She pats his chest. “We’ll get you patched up in no time.”

His gaze flickers behind her where Duke and Tim are huddled around one of the Nest’s big screens, then to Cass next to Steph, before coming back to her. He looks confused for a second before he grins sharply – and that’s not even, like a random adjective. His smile exposes the weird sharpness of his canines that no one’s been able to get an answer about. It’s nice to see, only because it’s purely a Jason smile and not whatever wane thing he’s been wearing lately.

Then – he makes a noise in the back of his throat. A strangled sort of thing. Steph raises an eyebrow and then the other one joins it when Jason starts to giggle. Like, honest to god, giggle. Cass’s eyes go wide as Jason falls helplessly into laughter, curling up on his side, gasping wetly, clutching his stomach at the same time he presses a hand to his throat where the injury splits open and starts to bleed again.

“Uh, Jason,” Steph tries, holding him the best she can to keep him from straight up rolling off the gurney. His laughter and the embarrassingly high-pitched tone worry made her voice draws Tim and Duke over. “Jay. What – ?”

“Cobwebs,” Jason wheezes, sounding almost giddy. He coughs and blood speckles his lips. Duke makes a sound of alarm and lurches, but Jason continues with, “Bastard is a goddamn moron,” before his laughter takes the turn of hysterical and his next breath is a shuddering sob.

“Jason…”

He curls into a shaking, miserable ball, scrunching himself smaller than a man his size should have any right to be. Caught between laughter and crying, he presses his face into his arms and falls apart – and the rest of them are struck useless, helpless. Steph chews on her lip, hand still resting on his bicep, but at a loss.

It’s Cass who shoves her way into his curled ball, letting him latch onto her arm in a death grip. It’s Tim who ducks his head near Jason’s, whispering something she can’t hear, but it’s enough to make him suck in a shaky breath and hold it before letting it out slowly – then he repeats; careful, deliberate breaths that are soft and shuddering, more like sobs than anything else, but slowly gaining some semblance of control.

They wait patiently for him to pull himself together. And, honestly, he barely manages.

There’s tears on his cheeks when he finally squints up at them and says, with a tinge of disbelief –

“You actually came.”

Steph snorts. “You asked for help. Of course we did.” She urges him to uncurl more and Duke plops one of the heavy-duty kits on the table next to them. “We haven’t been worrying about you for weeks just to leave you in the dust at the first sign of you actually reaching out.” Jason slowly blinks at her.

“Hold still, little brother.” Cass shoos Tim and Duke back to the monitor where Babs is watching them quietly in worry. Good call, Jason doesn’t need them all to be hovering. It’s bad enough all five of them were watching his break down. Jason groans and shoots her a half-hearted glare. She smiles winningly and gently pats his unmarred cheek. “Little brother.”

“Bigger than you,” Jason mutters, but the age-old argument that’s turned more into banter seems to do the trick because he relaxes even more, the tense line of his shoulders releasing. He lets out a gusty sigh and tilts his head back, closing his eyes.

Everything goes quiet – the soft murmurs from across the room, the rip of supply packages being opened, the pained hitches from Jason as Cass and Steph tag team patching him up.

There’s the claw marks on his chest. Those will scar no matter how fast Jason heals, they’re just a bit too deep, too ragged. The shallow wound on his throat – any deeper and Jason wouldn’t be talking, any deeper and he wouldn’t be alive – matches the one on his cheek and forehead. Those are the easiest. They need stitches for the worst parts, but then the rest can make do with butterfly bandages and a careful application of gauge and wraps.

It’s the ones on his head that are the problem – Jason balks when Cass comes up with hair clippers. Eyes wide, a shaking hand goes to the blood-matted curls on the back of his head. He hisses when he just barely brushes the wounds. His shoulders droop in resignation.

“Don’t worry,” Steph assures. “I think you’ll look pretty good with an undercut. It’ll help with that whole bad boy vibe you keep failing to pull off.”

A beat. “Failing?”

Tim laughs outright.

Jason scowls, flipping him off without looking. “I’m sitting here, injured, and I’m being bullied. Unbelievable.”

Despite his words and apprehension, he obligingly tilts his head to give Cass room to work – seemingly okay with it now that he knows they’re not going to shave him bald – and winces as she maneuvers around the wounds even though she’s trying so hard to be gentle. He clasps his hand together, knuckles turning white, lips pressed into a thin line.

Steph smooths a bandage over his shoulder then pries his hands apart to start dragging a damp towel over them, cleaning up the streaks of long-dried blood. Jason stares down as she works, blinking back tears she’s pretending not to see. The joking and teasing has done its job and the tension in the air has mostly disappeared, but now that’s leaving room for the adrenaline crash. She crowds Jason on the gurney as he starts to sway. His forehead drops to her shoulder as he breathes out a heavy sigh.

“You good?” she whispers. He nods and doesn’t move.

They’ve done this more than enough times – after battle patch up, post-mission huddles – to know how Jason’s going to function for the rest of the night. He’s not as cuddly or touchy as Dick, but he’s still going to find an excuse to throw an arm over someone’s shoulder or lean into them in some capacity. She’s a little surprised how soon it’s happening, but, well, the man must be completely wrung out after whatever the hell’s been going on.

Speaking of…

“Sooo, we gonna get answers, Alley?” Jason grunts. “Ah, yes. Super detailed. How did we never figure that one out.” He jabs his knuckles into her side, and she laughs.

“Jason,” Babs says patiently. He reluctantly lifts his head a bit. Steph steps to the side so he can see the screen properly. “What’s going on?”

He doesn’t answer for a long time, a muscle in his cheek jumping and betraying how hard he’s clenching his jaw.

Cass carefully wipes up stray hairs and gets to bandaging the injuries now exposed. She actually put effort into the haircut – of course this is Cass. She doesn’t ever not put one-hundred percent into whatever she’s doing – and Steph takes back any ridiculous notion she had about the possibility of an undercut not working for him because, damn okay. With the curly hair and the white streak and the jagged scar that goes from the corner of his mouth to above his ear, and the scarred notch in his brow –

Steph was totally lying about the bad boy vibe failing before. Now that’s completely unfair. One person should not be able to jump between nerd chic and bad boy as well as Jason can.

Tim suddenly smirks, arms crossed. “You look a lot like Kon right now.”

“Motherfu – .”

“Jason,” Babs interjects before Jason can really get going.

He sighs heavily again, closing his eyes briefly before he heaves himself off the gurney. He staggers when he’s up on his own two feet but gains his bearings before anyone can offer support. Duke steps to the side as Jason comes up to the screen, eyes narrowed as he takes in the map that now has his red and blue pins made digital and placed precisely where he’d placed them. There’s new ones now. Spoiler purple because it’s Steph’s turn to have her color borrowed for Babs’s various projects.

Tim shoves a small bottle of orange juice into Jason’s hand – and he breaks the seal and starts drinking without taking his off the map. Duke snaps his fingers, expression lighting up like something’s dawned, and he grabs a stylus. Silently, he starts to connect the dots, head tilted to the side like he does when he’s looking at a particularly challenging puzzle. Steph has yet to see something actually stump him for long and based on the sharp inhale Jason just did, this specific puzzle has also fallen under the mightiness that is Duke Thomas.

Steph has riddles. Duke has puzzles. Together, they’re unstoppable and the bane of family game night even in a room full of detectives.

This is why they’re not allowed to team up for shit like that.

The picture ends up being a large circle with various connecting lines that looks…that looks a lot like the arcane circle they found next to Jason not even a couple hours ago. Except bigger.

Way, way bigger.

“First question,” Tim says when Duke puts down the stylus. His expression is hard, but it doesn’t do anything to hide his worry. “Why didn’t you ask for help sooner?”

Jason drags his hands over his face. They’re still shaking – hell, he’s still shivering. Cass hands him a Wonder Woman hoodie he must’ve left behind at some point because it’s definitely his. It’s got thumb holes. That, like, instantly marks it as Jason’s even if he likes to pretend otherwise and if you pretend that the Wonder Woman logo didn’t already make it his. It covers the old bandages on his arms – it’s hard to tell if the blood on those is fresh or not, but no one seems to want to bring it up.

He pulls it on and slowly smooths out the already smooth front, looking reluctant and pained.

“Ask an easier one,” Jason says – not an outright plead, but disturbingly close to one.

Cass asks, “Why did we not notice sooner?”

That’s a good point. Tim found Adame’s case through the filter he and Babs have on police reports for Bat mentions and audio matching, but there should’ve been more than that. Missing persons. Rumors. Things they would’ve heard about on the streets, that their own surveillance and skills should’ve caught because they’re Bats, and this is…months’ worth of missing and dead children. They should’ve noticed.

But they didn’t.

And Jason did.

Jason groans. “Okay, fine. First question it is.” He sighs, tapping the now empty bottle against his temple. “There’s a spell. Think of it as a, a cloaking spell. You can’t see what’s behind the curtain, but if you manage to get a little peek then it…redirects your attention.” He braces both hands on the desk, head hanging, shoulders curling towards his ears. “You might’ve noticed the kids gone, but the second you think too much about it, it just…fades away.”

Okay…What?”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Steph says, frowning. “Even if we excuse whatever’s going on with you. Didn’t Kyerra Adame’s mom ask you for help? She noticed. She talked to the cops. And then she asked you. That doesn’t sound like redirection to me.”

“Cobweb,” Jason says again with a sorta solid finality like they’re supposed to know what that means. “It went from a curtain to a cobweb. I guess. Stupid way to explain it but – the guy fucked up. He grabbed a kid who was on a completely different level of attention compared to the others. A few threads pulled loose, made a hole that couldn’t be patched up. Victoria made it wider by talking to me.”

“Was she magic?” Tim asks.

He shrugs. “Maybe. Probably. That might’ve been what kept the hole open long enough to get me involved. And then…well – .” I’m magic, he doesn’t say out loud. Not yet. But they hear it anyway. “She suffered the whole time for it. From the moment she noticed her daughter missing until I finally delivered the news, she suffered for seeing through the curtain. The spell. It – It makes you not notice, but when you do notice it – I…It – .”

“Your arms,” Duke says softly.

Jason grimaces, curls in more on himself. Tim pushes him into the desk chair, and he doesn’t fight it, collapsing like he doesn’t have the energy anymore to stay on his feet. He rests his elbows on his knees, buries his face in his hands. Tim leans back on the desk, ankles hooked over each other, arms crossed, shifting just enough that his legs brush Jason’s and stay there touching. Jason sighs and shoves his fingers into his curls, leaving them there with his palms against his forehead.

“It didn’t want me to ask for help,” he mutters to the ground. Then, like it pains him to say, “It hurt worse when I wanted to. I don’t think it was on purpose, yanno? The guy isn’t a novice, but he’s not an expert. He used a bunch of different things that, combined, had some nasty side effects. He’s been using scent blocking runes in his circles to keep the bodies hidden and the cloaking spell to keep people from questioning the missing kids. Along with grabbing them off the street. No one misses street kids,” he adds bitterly under his breath.

Steph exchanges a grimace with Duke. The Narrows and general East End area are a completely different ballgame compared to Crime Alley. But being vigilantes – and a latchkey kid in Steph’s case and Duke’s time as a slightly different type of Robin – they’re both fully aware of the awful situation for people on the streets.

But Jason knows it better.

He breathes out slowly, deliberately. “I wanted help,” he says plaintively. “I asked for help from, from magic people I know. But gettin’ in contact with them is always up in the air and maybe – fuck – maybe the magic knew that. Some sorta stupid universal probability letting me ask, knowing  it would do jack-fucking-shit.” He tugs harshly on his curls. “It’s what you found me doin’, Steph. When you broke into my apartment.”

She can see the deflection for what it is, but before Steph can open her mouth to take the bait, to set up the banter, Cass rests her hands over his, squeezing gently to get his grip to loosen.

“Did they respond?”

A sharp bark of laughter, just as bitter as some of his words. “No.”

She drapes herself gingerly over his back, half on the seat and half on him. He practically goes boneless under her weight – and makes Steph feel like she should be looking for a weighted blanket or something. She’s sure Tim has one around here somewhere. They’re all familiar with the weird, detached, out-of-body experience rampant emotions and adrenaline crashes can bring – and Jason doesn’t even get the luxury of having this as a post-mission thing. The mission is still very much ongoing.

Jason sighs. “Second question?”

Tim hands him another orange juice. Jason rolls his eyes as he takes it just like the other one. Cass adjusts herself so he can drink it without choking, but, ultimately, doesn’t do anything other than arrange it so she looks like a lounging cat pressed between the chair and Jason’s back.

“What’s going on?” Duke asks. “Why is he doing this? How long has he been here? What the heck happened to you?”

Jason smirks. “That’s more than a second question.”

“Is Gotham alive?” Steph cuts in, both apprehensive and eager for the answer.

Jason hesitates.

He fucking hesitates. “No?”

“…Why do you sound unsure?”

“Why did you hesitate, you asshole?”

Chapter Text

Okay. So. Listen. Gotham isn’t alive per se.

…Gotham also isn’t not alive.

(It’s complicated.)

But in a world like this one – with super men and magicians and cosmic entities and reality warpers – when you have as much ambient magic that Gotham does – festering, pooling, overwhelming. Nowhere to go. No one to use it.

Well.

It languishes, seeps into the foundation, seeks physical objects to siphon a single droplet from a deep, abyssal ocean, burrows into the bones and nerves and beating hearts of those (un)fortunate to catch its attention –

When you have as much ambient magic that Gotham does –

The line between alive and not alive gets a little more than blurred.

—

Tim lets them laugh, let’s Steph boundless capacity for banter ease some of the tension. He glances over at Cass and sees in her expression that she’s noticed it too – for all that Jason smiles and snarks back, his hands are shaking, he grimaces in pain with every move. He keeps blinking away tears they pretend they don’t see.

Injuries aside, there’s something more to this. Tim knows. Jason just told them. And it’s stupid to think that in the last hour or so, he’d get any better. It’s in the way he folds his arms tight across his chest, putting pressure on the claw marks there. the line of pain pinched around his eyes. Jason digging his nails into his sleeves, the sweatshirt being the only barrier that keeps him from drawing blood.

 – and he thinks of the bandages around his arms and the blood shoved under his nails.

He’d hoped that telling them would put a stop to it, but what does he know about magic except for his own wishful thinking? He closes his eyes, suddenly exhausted, and cuts in with, “The cloaking spell thing, it’s still hurting you.”

Not a question. A statement of fact. A confirmation.

And Jason doesn’t look at him – and admission all in itself – his nails burrowing, teeth flashing to bite his lip. His fangs – because that’s what they are no matter how often Bruce calls them elongated canines; he just doesn’t want to admit Jason has fangs. Some things are just too weird even for Batman – reopen the split in his lip, blood beading up until it oozes down his chin.

“No,” he outright lies.

Steph frowns. “Jason…”

He sneers back, something gleaming beyond the tears he refuses to let fall – and Tim thinks of sunlight through sweet tea and vintage whiskey.

“It’s fine,” he snaps – and it falls flat, sounding exhausted. They’re collectively slammed with the question of how much sleep has Jason been getting? Not enough, obviously. “We don’t have time to worry about it.”

“There’s always time,” Duke says. Jason bares his teeth at him, nose scrunching, but doesn’t get up, and Duke levels him with an unimpressed glare. “If you wanna be stubborn about it then fine. But this isn’t over.” And there’s a glow in his eyes to match Jason’s – golden where Jason’s is copper. The back of Tim’s neck prickles as he remembers – he never really forgot – that Duke’s meta-abilities are unusual and more than what they seem. “Do you have a plan?”

Jason slumps like his strings have been cut. Cass swings her arms over his shoulders, slouching in a way that’s uncharacteristic of her but makes Jason automatically, and almost absently, reach up and hold onto her to keep her from slipping to the ground.

And subsequently makes him stop pressing on his injuries. The tension around his eyes stays, though, the self-inflicted pain is only a drop in the bucket. Cass catches Tim’s attention and shakes her head slightly, fingers fluttering just outside of Jason’s sight.

S-t-i-l-l c-o-l-d. F-r-e-e-z-i-n-g, she finger spells to avoid giving it away. Still cold. Freezing. Tim frowns, slides a hand over the panel that controls the thermostat. The heater ticks up a notch and wafts hot air over them. Steph glances up briefly and doesn’t say anything.

“The plan is to figure out where his final circle is going to be and stop him,” Jason says slowly. He presses his lips together. Tim hands him a napkin he takes without looking, wiping his chin. His eyes flicker across the map, following Duke’s lines from point a to b, all the way to m – thirteen points. Twelve like a clock, literally, then one in the middle. “That’s smack dab in the middle of the reservoir.”

“The labyrinth,” Tim says. Jason nods. “Great. Just what we needed.”

“I’m sorry, the what?” Duke asks, brows furrowed. The gold in his eyes has faded even if Jason still shimmers copper. “We have a labyrinth?”

“We don’t,” Steph says, and she looks absolutely disgusted by the direction this is going. “The Court of Owls, on the other hand, did. Do we really have to?”

Duke pinches the bridge of his nose. “The Court of Owls? They’re real? No, of course they’re freaking real. Why wouldn’t they be!” Everyone stares at him. “Hey, don’t look at me like that. Some of us are new to this whole vigilante business. I’m still in Jason’s era of casefiles!”

Jason groans and mutters, “Fantastic.”

Tim gives him a sympathetic look that’s ignored. He’d studied – practically memorized, really – the reports from Jason’s time and they’re not pretty. It’s a lot of cases dealing with organized crime and the emergence of some of the darker Rogues.

“I can send you files about them to your tablet. Later,” Babs says before fixing Jason with a stern yet concerned look. “We need to focus. Jason, why is he doing this.”

Jason drags a fingertip over the desk surface, nail scratching out a pattern. His lips part like he’s about to speak, but then they close again. Tim watches the motion. It’s not random. Most definitely a specific pattern that he traces over and over again, something lost and unfocused in his gaze. Steph ducks down, that frown still there, and waves a hand in front of Jason’s face – he flinches, hand going flat in a little smack!

“Magic,” Jason says.

“We’ve established that,” Tim replies.

He shakes his head, drags a hand down his face, winces when he pulls at the marks on his face. “No. That’s why he’s doing this. He wants Gotham’s magic. For his own.” He lifts his head, eyes dead serious. “That’s a lot of fucking magic.”

“How much?” Babs asks.

“Enough to cause problems even for the Sorcerer Supreme.”

Steph makes a face. “And that’s?”

“Currently it’s Zatanna Zatara,” Jason says with a smirk. Steph immediately brightens. “Yeah, thought you might like that. She’s been Sorcerer Supreme for about…five years now? After Kent stopped being Doctor Fate, Khalid picked up the mantle. I know magic isn’t really our wheelhouse for the actual scope of this to mean anything, but there’s a reason the title is Sorcerer Supreme. Gotham has enough magic in it that, when used by the right person – or wrong, really – it could probably cause someone to rise beyond Sorcerer Supreme.”

Duke quirks an eyebrow. “But how? No one here uses magic. We don’t have magic.”

Jason snaps his fingers and points at him. “Correct and also really, very, horribly wrong. Magic is everywhere. There’s, like, maybe two places on this planet where magic is null and lemme tell you, Gotham is not fucking null. So, incorrect. We have magic.

“And here’s the correct bit: no one uses it. Magic has to be used. It’s gotta flow. Doesn’t have to be a person or person adjacent – that cursed shit we’ve dealt with over the years? That’s Gotham’s magic trying to find an outlet. That’s the only reason we’re not suffering from some weird magical plague bullshit.”

Weird magical plague, Cass mouths to herself then makes a face. Considering the other weird plagues they’ve had to deal with, Tim can’t help but agree. Vehemently.

Jason’s looking pale, swallowing thickly. Tim hands him another orange juice and he takes it even as he rolls his eyes, pressing it to his cheek.

He gestures aimlessly. “Even before B’s stupid declaration, people didn’t use magic. It’s spent so long festering growing – feeding on lives and deaths and grief and exhaustion and exhilaration and joy, just everything and anything – it’s grown and grown. The amount of unused magic in Gotham is unprecedented and it’s made itself a target. Just no one’s been stupid enough to come into Bat territory to try.”

“Why don’t you use it?” Steph asks. Jason stares at her, looking…confused. “What? Is one person not enough to keep up with it?”

“I can’t use magic,” Jason says slowly. “Not like that.”

Duke cocks his head. “Uh, yeah you can.”

“Not like that,” Jason repeats firmly. “The itty-bitty, teeny-tiny amount of magic I can do is nothing compared to what needs to be done.” He presses the juice bottle to his neck with a sigh. They exchange looks over his head but don’t say anything. Tim adjusts his weight, putting more of it onto Jason. “I can do runes, sure, yeah, okay. I can…I can do some other stuff – but I can’t cast magic like Zatanna or Constantine. I can’t make arcane circles work. My clarity rune? That took massive amounts of concentration, for one thing. The other is that it only worked for you guys. You were close by and already looking for me and you’re my family. Anyone else and I would’ve been shit outta luck.

“We’re your family,” Steph coos.

Jason shoves a finger in her face. “Do not, East.” She just grins, waggling her eyebrows, so he palms her face and shoves her away with a barely concealed smile. She laughs and rolls with it. “Either way. I ain’t got no magic that’s gonna help us.”

“But you can stop his circle,” Duke says.

“Yeah, of course. That’s easy. Just gotta tweak the right spot that doesn’t blow us up. Easy as cake.”

Tim huffs. “You say that like making cake is easy.”

“Maybe not for you,” Cass says. Tim gasps, mock offended, hand over his heart, but he grins when Jason barks out a startled laugh. “Like bricks.”

“How soon?” Babs asks, cutting through the laughter. She grimaces, looking regretful – but it’s a question that has to be asked. “Do we have time?”

Jason glances at her on the second screen then goes back to staring at the screen. He picks up the stylus idly. Babs already marked the names of the kids Jason found where he found them, but he adds one more. The sixth one from tonight. Kelsie Bapple.

“Probably,” Jason murmurs. “This ritual. The circles, the deaths – the kids. It’s all charging up one big circle for him to absorb it all. If it doesn’t…burn him up from the inside out first…” He stares at the map, brows furrowed in deep thought. Tim waits for him to add more, but he doesn’t, trailing off.

“How likely?” Cass asks, chin hooked on her arm.

“…Pretty likely. I think. Just not as likely as…” He sighs, tapping the stylus. “He doesn’t have to wait until the full moon, but it’ll definitely help him control it if he can get close enough.”

“That’s two weeks away,” Steph says, eyes wide. “How close does he need to be?”

Jason shakes his head. “It won’t matter if these have been used.” He circles the remaining six locations – bypassing the one in the middle. “We don’t know how many kids he’s killed already. Some of the ones I found were weeks old. He’s been here for a long while, takin’ all the time in the world. Fucking smug bastard. He knew we were never gonna catch him in time. It’s only happenstance that I got dragged into this at all.”

Cass tightens her arms around his shoulders, and he squeezes the hand he has on her wrist.

“If there’s bodies here then we only have a day or two at most. If there aren’t then – we’d have to do a stake out or something because then he’s trackable.”

Tim nods slowly. Easy enough. “If we pull Dick in from – .”

“No,” Jason snaps out. Everyone freezes. Jason stares at Tim, wide-eyed and pale. “No. Don’t call Dick.”

He frowns. “He’s just as worried about you as we are. He’d want to…help.”

(And Tim’s ribs pulls tight around his lungs, for one brief moment he can’t breathe. Cass feels a noose around her neck, unforgiving and unrelenting until it’s not –

Pain sparks behind Steph’s eyes, knife sharp. Duke feels it thunder down his spine. Babs’s fingers spasm on her keyboard –)

Jason shudders, stylus dropping as he curls his other hand over Cass’s forearm – taking obvious steps to not hurt himself. “No,” he says quietly, and it comes off as a plea. “Just – you guys are enough. Please don’t – .”

Tim drops his arms in shock, lurching a little, when the first tear falls. Is this the spell? Is the idea of another person coming in, of asking them for help, making the spell hit harder? Causing this, causing this sudden step back? Cass’s hand makes it to Jason’s hair, detangling his curls, and she whispers something in his ear that makes him shake his head and take in a stuttering, wet breath.

“Okay, okay,” Steph says quietly. “We’re enough. One person stays here with you, the other three can check the locations. It shouldn’t take long.”

His brows furrow. “What – no. I’m coming with.”

“Jason…”

“I’m fine.”

Duke moves just before Jason jumps to his feet, already catching him even before his knees give out. Cass slips out from the chair as Duke helps control Jason’s fall into it. Jason’s eyes are squeezed shut as he breathes through his nose, fast and harsh but trying for slow and steady and failing, his face is two shades paler and sweat breaking out on his forehead. Duke waves his hand in the air before he pushes Jason forward, head between his knees, back trembling as he struggles to even out his breathing.

“You can’t even stand, dude,” Duke says, then scrambles to grab the trash can, shoving it over in time for Jason to retch into it. Nothing comes up but bile and orange juice – which has to burn – and he gags, making a pained whining sound they all pretend they don’t hear. “No offense, but you’re no help to anyone if you can’t stand.”

Jason snarls, defensive at how vulnerable he is, and it cuts off halfway for him to retch again. Tim sighs and drops a hand on the back of his neck, feels how Jason shivers at the touch. He’s burning hot, a disturbing counterpoint to how cold he probably is.

“When was the last time you slept? Ate?” Tim asks.

There’s a pause for Jason to retch and choke on it, heaving loudly in the silence. Nothing comes up still, which answers Tim’s question. Steph hands over a bottle of water and Tim holds onto it for now, waiting for Jason to catch his breath.

“Just for a couple hours,” Tim says when Jason sits up and blinks slowly at them. His eyes are rimmed red, eyelashes clumped together with unshed tears wanting so badly to fall. For a while he’d been looking better, animated as they talked, but now he looks death-warmed over, hand shaking so hard when he takes the water bottle from Tim, he spills some of it onto the collar of his hoodie. “Duke will stay behind, keep an eye on you. We’ll take a look at the locations.”

Duke meets his eyes and sighs, nodding in agreement. He’s the only one who will see Jason take a turn for the worse – or try to do something stupid – before it actually happens.

“Don’t need a babysitter,” Jason mumbles.

Tim grimaces. “It’s for us, not you,” he half-lies.

Jason squints at him in suspicion. Tim meets him head on, not even blinking.

Then, finally, Jason sighs. “You,” he says. “Not Duke. Sorry, man.” Duke shrugs, not even bothering to hide his grin.

That’s…interesting. But not surprising. Tim nods. “Okay. Yeah, I’ll stay.”

—

Jason sinks into the too comfortable bed Tim has stashed upstairs. The room is barren, it barely looks like the guy spends time up here. The only ways to tell he bothers at all are the bookbag at the foot of the bed, wires and hardware spilling out, and the pile of clothes on the closet floor. There’s a little camera in the corner, pointed at an angle to catch the door and the single window. The light isn’t blinking but that doesn’t mean anything when it comes to Tim.

Everything hurts.

It hurts in a way Jason can’t even describe. It’s like – the crowbar and the smoke filling his lungs and the crush of building and the suffocating darkness of his own coffin and the burn of the Lazarus Pit as he came screaming out of it. Always screaming. Everything all at once. He squeezes his eyes shut, covers his face with his hands and – he presses down on the injuries there, feels them spark and sizzle on his nerves. He gasps out sharply, but clarity comes.

And fades just as quickly.

Jason drops his hands, head hanging. It feels weird, this help he’s getting. There aren’t any ants under his skin. Instead, he feels numb. Like there’s an inch of space between him and the world and growing bigger every second. The hurt is deep inside him, a hollow feeling that the pain is trying to fill, but it’s bottomless, taking Jason with it. Empty inside and out.

Where before he tried to claw the ants from under his skin, tried to choke back the feeling of pain and hurt when it came to thinking about asking for help. Now he folds his arms, hands curled around his forearms, and tightens his grip, trying to bring reality back to some semblance of normal.

And just like before, it works until it doesn’t. He gives it up as a bad job and flops back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Tim’s Nest is pretty decent real estate. No water stains, no cracks. The floorboards don’t creak and are warm because of all the tech downstairs. Funny he spends his nights on a cot down there instead of on this too fucking squishy bed. Like sinking into a marshmallow. Untethering him even more until he feels like – until he feels like there’s nothing and he’s nothing and he can’t –

Jason sighs and sits back up, abs cramping, the world spinning. The shadows twist and curl in the corners, reaching out for his feet as he gathers up pillows and bedding before heading to the attached bath. No tub, but the shower takes up the whole wall. Works out better in the end. The last time he tried to shove himself into the bathtub he’d been five-four and fifty pounds lighter. Doesn’t want to think about how cramped it’d be now.

It hurts to curl up, but he does anyway, tucked up in that shower. It’s quieter here. Colder, but whatever. He shivers, closes his eyes. Sees dead kids plastered on the back of his lids. Opens them again even though they burn, his breaths getting shuddery.

All those dead kids. All his fault because he was too fucking slow. And he’s, what, trying to sleep while the rest of them are actually doing the work? Making headway that he was too stupid to make himself? Jason swears he would’ve caught the giant arcane circle encompassing the city if he just had time – but hasn’t he had time? Hasn’t he been working on this for weeks now and never fucking noticed?

Jason curls up tighter – feels every one of his injuries – and thinks too much about it. What he could’ve done differently. (Nothing.) What he could’ve done better. (Nothing.) What he could’ve done sooner. (Again, nothing.)

“Jason?”

He doesn’t answer. Hears footsteps when normally he shouldn’t. A shadow appears in the light, and he buries his face in the comforter that smells like dust and faintly of detergent. Tim sits on the floor next to him, the soft thump as he sets down something. There’s no smell, thankfully, his stomach churning, but he can feel the warmth from here. Jason peeks out to see a container of plain rice and a fork. He wrinkles his nose, glances up at Tim. Really, a fork?

Tim shrugs. “Figured it’d be easier.”

Jason pulls the comforter over his head, feeling childish but needing the extra darkness. Tim doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t leave. He can’t decide if he likes that or not – if it makes him feel better or worse.

“Did you call Dick?” he asks, voice muffled.

“You said not to.”

He did, didn’t he? Jason just didn’t expect them to actually follow his wishes. Then again. They brought him to the Nest instead of the Cave.

Jason tries to relax. His stomach is too tight to eat. He shivers again and grunts, bringing his knees up until he can wrap his arms around them, head ducked under the comforter until only some of his hair peeks out. Tim sighs and leaves – Jason makes a little noise in the back of his throat, pretends it’s quiet enough – but he comes back quickly.

Weight drapes over Jason. He lets out a soft sound, going the type of boneless that happens after a long day on your feet and you finally get to lay down. Tim huffs in amusement then, blissfully, another weighted blanket appears. Normally Jason hates too much weight on him. Makes him feel trapped. But this? This, right now, is fucking perfect.

If he were a cat, he would purr.

Jason falls asleep like that to the sounds of Tim typing on his tablet and whispering into his comm, and his legs thrown over Jason’s, a weighty reminder that he’s not alone.

—

mouth opened grotesquely in a silent scream. hands clawing, tearing, scrabbling for a grip. Whispers your fault it’s all your fault you killed us you were supposed to protect us how could you how could you HOW COULD YOU. choking, crying, blood in his mouth, heart beating out of his chest, bones cracking, shattering, water, blood dripping through his fingers. his fault it’s all his fault how could he how fucking could he. I’m sorry he sobs. it’s not enough. hands around his ankles, dragging down. hands around his wrists, pulling him up. tearing him apart. mouth opened grotesquely in a silent scream, ripping, tearing, ripping apart at the seams.

—

He wakes up screaming. Or close to screaming. It’s a terrible rasping thing that gives out halfway through. There’s hands around his wrists, pullingpullingpulling and he yanks back so hard his head cracks against the wall. The hands are gone, and he brings his own to his chest, curling in on himself, gasping horribly, tears on his cheeks.

“Jason,” a voice whispers, soft and, and – Jason freezes. “Jason.”

Cass is there when he looks up, her eyes wide and round, expression open. Her expression is always open. She likes to make herself as easy to read as she finds everyone else. Her hands are up, hovering like she wants to touch him again. He slumps over and she catches him easily. His eyes burn hot as he presses his face into the crook of her elbow.

“You’re okay,” she says.

A hand in his hair, detangling his curls, careful around the wounds. He shudders and she stops for a moment to climb into the small space with him, curling around him like a cat. It’s warmer in the bathroom than it was before, one of the weighted blankets is missing. Jason needs to ask what they found, how much longer they have, but Cass starts humming a song under her breath and he’s so tired.

“Sleep, little brother,” she murmurs.

He shakes his head.

“One more hour,” she says in compromise and, okay, yeah, he can do that.

He can do that.

—

This time there’s no nightmares. He wakes up and nothing hurts – much. Same old, same old, but nothing new. And that’s such a relief he almost starts crying from that alone before he clocks who’s in the bathroom with him. Duke gives him a grimacing smile, shadows under his eyes, lines crinkled around them. Jason groans, sitting up, pressing the heel of his palms to his own eyes until he sees stars.

“It’s been more than an hour,” he mutters. Glances up in time to see Duke’s grimace tighten in guilt. “Whatever. Did you find anything?”

“I’m under strict orders not to say anything until you eat something,” Duke tells him. He stands and helps Jason up. His knees wobble but hold. His mouth tastes like something died in it. His skin feels stiff.

And there are no ants under his skin still. There’s not – He squeezes Dukes arm and watches the kid – because he is a kid. A Gothamite through and through but a kid, nonetheless. He watches the kid hunch, shuddering like Jason had stabbed him instead of lightly pressing his finger pads between his tendons.

Hm.

Everyone’s gathered in the little kitchenette so that’s where they go. Jason hobbles like an old man into the offered seat – the most supported, cushioned seat – and tries not to groan too loudly when he sits. He pillows his head with his arms, hands flat on the countertop. No one says anything. There’s no extra noises except breathing and someone popping something in the microwave.

He hears it – soft and erratic. The slight hitch. The careful way Tim moves – because that’s Tim, he knows Tim, Tim doesn’t move that way. The way Cass actually makes sound where she’s perched on the counter. The way Duke can’t control his reactions the way the rest of them have lived and breathed for far too long.

Then someone sits next to him, a warm line at his side. “How ya feelin’, Alley?”

He cracks open an eye to see Steph watching him, head cocked to the side like an owl, hair falling in a curtain, face pale, pain around the pinch of her eyes. “Like shit,” he croaks out. “Will probably feel worse when you tell me what you found.”

The emotion that flickers in her eyes makes him close his, his chest tightening. She looks like he felt in the beginning. So does Duke. He bets if he looked at Tim and Cass, he would see the same.

In the time it takes for the microwave to ding – and for Tim to swear when he doesn’t catch it before it does – Jason nearly falls asleep again. Tim nudges his hand with the warm container. The rice Jason hadn’t touched earlier.

He sighs and sits up, finds Duke on his other side, tapping the countertop. The light reflections blink in time with it and Jason can’t help but watch, catching Hot Cross Buns on repeat before he moves to a nonsense rhythm. Jason gets halfway through the container, chewing slowly, before his stomach cramps and he takes a deep breath.

Honestly, he doesn’t have to ask. Just one look at them – and them not looking at him – and he knows the answer. The goddamn answer. He sighs, checks the time, and just – thinks, fork getting heavier in his hand as his thoughts whirl around at a nauseating pace. Right now, he has choices. And he doesn’t like any of them.

But –

The timeline just moved up.

Jason makes a decision.

His vision speckles black on the edges as he stands, taking care to steady himself with hands braced on the countertop, head hanging. Too much – it’s too much effort to lift it. There’s an ache down his spine, wrapped around his ankles and wrists, weighing heavy in his heart.

Tim can’t move right. Cass can’t move right. Duke. Steph. Babs.

People – kids – have died. People have lost their loved ones, their friends, their family, and they don’t even know. Jason was too slow. Now his family –

He can’t let this go on. He can’t let this continue down the path they want.

“I need some time. A – another nap,” he murmurs, and never mind he literally just woke up from a ten hour long one already. It wasn’t enough. Plagued by pain and nightmares. He doesn’t have to pretend to feel exhausted. It drips from his words, too reminiscent of blood. It weighs his shoulders. Buckles his knees. Everything’s heavy. “I – We have time.”

Cass almost sees right through him. Almost. So close. “Do we?” She hops off the counter and – and no one sees it except Jason because he’s looking for it. Her landing hitches. Cassandra Wayne’s landing fucking hitches. Just a tiny bit. “Jason, do we?”

He meets her eyes, his own half-lidded and fathomless. There’s nothing there but pain and resignation. “No,” he croaks out. “But we have to pretend there is. I can’t – I can’t go like this. You can’t go without me.” Steph makes a noise of protest, and he covers her hand with his own, wrapping around her fingers and squeezing gently. “You can’t go without me. This is, is magic beyond anything we’ve handled – I need – .”

“Yeah,” Tim says quietly, strained and wavering. Despite how well he covers it, Jason’s listening. “Okay. We’ll prep some gear.”

Jason presses his lips together, takes stock of how he feels, and comes up with, “Two hours.” Duke raises an eyebrow. “Just, gimmie two more hours. I’ll be ready then.”

—

An hour later, Duke checks in and finds – glittering, smoky gold remnants of Jason standing at the foot of the bed, arms crossed, head hanging. He sees the motions of his breathing. Sees him shake his head. Watches the light-smoke move to the window, disabling the alarm before climbing out.

Tim’s system should’ve caught it.

He goes over and finds a post-it stuck to the windowsill. A rune scratched out in pen. It smells like smoke and ink. When he picks it up, the lines of the rune fall away in a flutter of ashy paper, leaving a cut out of it, ragged against the clean edges of the post-it itself.

I can do runes, sure, yeah, okay – and he made it sound like a massive effort. Like the clarity rune was a one-off. And maybe it was. To reach through the interference and catch the attention of not only natural senses but technological ones? While injured? While not knowing how far they were? That type of massive feat was probably a one-off.  

Duke closes his eyes and breathes out slowly – and even that hurts. Asshole, he thinks. The post-it crinkles in his grip. He should’ve trusted his gut and came up earlier. Jason is a Bat and Bats are self-sacrificing idiots – (and Duke pretends he’s above it, but we all know that’s not true.)

Should’ve come up earlier – and in any other universe, maybe he would’ve. Maybe Cass would have been the one to creep up here after seeing through Jason’s lies. But all they saw the exhaustion and pain first. They all felt their own, weighing them down, tripping them up, beyond anything they’ve dealt with in a long, long while.

(And to think, this is pain spread out over seven people – because Lydia Adame counts, she knows, and the cobweb is still up, only frayed a little, she’s still stuck to it like a writhing fly just like the rest of them, helpless to the burn. If this is spread over seven people, imagine it contained to one, to two, for months.)

He stalks out of the room and into the main floor of the Nest, tossing the post-it note onto the desk. It flutters, weightless, before Steph snatches it just before it touches down. She sighs when she sees it, already dressed as Batgirl. Cass pulls on her last glove and takes the post-it from her, frowning.

“Disregard,” she says. “Overlook. Miss.”

She rips it in two and Tim’s alert system pings, letting them know the alarm has been disabled and the window opened. An hour ago.

“He knows more magic than he told us,” Barbara says slowly, consideringly.

Cass shrugs. “So he said, yes. He also said runes.” She gestures. “That is a rune.”

Tim shoves a chair against the desk. It bounces off, tips over to clatter to the ground. “Idiot,” he seethes, hands fisted at his sides. “He won’t survive,” he tells them like they don’t already know, like it’s not already a certainty. Like they don’t know Jason took one look at them, saw the way they shared the burden of knowing that translated into pain, and decided no more.

“Then let’s go get him,” Steph says.

—

The center of the labyrinth is more cistern-like than it should be – a holdover from when it was an actual cistern and there wasn’t an entire reservoir of water above head. Rows of columns, archways made beautiful (and creepy) by old carvings of owl faces and stories of Old Gotham. The proper Old Gotham, as some of the Court might say. The middle is a circular platform raised two feet from the rest of the floor underneath it is a deep pool of water tinged disturbingly green. Luckily, it’s not glowing. But it is rippling as water is redirected from the surface to the sub-cistern beneath.

His footsteps are silent as he creeps through the shadows. The only light source is above the platform in the middle, illuminating the circle already there. It makes the darkness deeper and sharper. It welcomes Jason wholeheartedly and he’s never been happier to not be afraid of the dark as he lets it take him. Cass is like pure shadow, but right now Jason is shadows, feeling a coolness on his skin like silk. He follows the darkness to the very edge, lingering – and then he steps into the light to inspect the arcane circle.

It's complicated. Incredibly so. If it weren’t for the circumstances, he’d be impressed. It’s not just a larger version of the ones used across the city. No. It’s more.

He crouches down to touch a cluster of runes, thinking carefully. His clothes slide painfully on his already aggravated wounds. He’s not wearing his armor. But the comm in his ear beeps once, clicking on. It’s not like anything they say will change his mind. It’s not like they don’t already know where he’s going, where he is.

“Jason, you idiot,” Babs voice comes through, thick and heavy. He closes his eyes. “What was the point of asking for help if you were just going to ditch us the second we offered it? We knew the risks – .”

“You didn’t,” he cuts in. Stony silence responds back. He sighs. “I knew the risks and I shouldn’t of put you guys through that. Coming here now, compromised like that, is just gonna get them killed. I should’ve known better.”

Babs makes a frustrated noise. “You – You’re such a Bat,” she snaps.

“Takes one to know one.”

“Unbelievable. You can’t take it back. Sit tight, they’re on their way.”

There is a sound – footsteps coming from the opposite direction. The easier path while Jason had taken something slightly more complicated to make it a surprise.

Jason pulls his hand back, slips it into his pocket, and steps into the shadows, lets them take him, and he sighs again, heavier and contrite, regretful and pained. All he’d been thinking about was how alone he was, how much he missed his family, when he called Tim, when he told them everything. And that loneliness, that pain, that isolation, blinded him to the stupidity that was bringing them into the fold.

And that – it’d been an oversight to forget, in the moment, of how unequipped they are for true magic. They’re baseline human, they don’t have a team with an alien or an extra dimensional sorceress or a magic resistant superhuman. This isn’t a Titans team up or the Justice League, or anything useful.

And he’s not so far gone he can’t admit that…he’s in over his head as well.

But he’s not going to take anyone down with him – except for this bastard. He hopes they can forgive him for bringing them into this mess, for causing them so much pain.

“No can do,” he says – then, over the swears erupting over the line, he takes the comm out completely, crunching it under his heel.

(If he survives this – and that’s a big if – Babs is gonna kill him for that.)

—

“I’m going to kill him.”

Barbara rages almost uncharacteristically over the comm line as they race their way through Gotham for the second time in twenty-four hours. This is when she normally mutes herself, gets her rage out in private before she comes back calm and professional.

Not this time.

There’s an underlying fear in her voice that none of them comment on – they don’t need to. It’s there for them as well, but they can’t ignore that it’s more for her.

This is Barbara. This is Jason.

And this is the situation: a moment of desperation, a promise to stay put a demand to stay put and wait for backup, and then going off on his own anyway.

She hadn’t been there in Ethiopia. Dick hadn’t been there. None of them had been there except Jason and Bruce and – they don’t know what happened. Jason won’t talk about it. Bruce won’t talk about it. Any security footage was corrupted or deleted or nonexistent altogether.

So, to Barbara, this is too similar. Too painfully similar. And in that scenario – Jason died.

And in this one…he’s likely to die again if they’re not fast enough.

(In that one and this one – a moment of desperation, a promise to stay put a demand to stay put and wait for back up, and then going off on his own anyway because he wanted to protect, to save his family – and maybe this time he’ll succeed.

And maybe, this time, he’ll still die for it.)

—

The footsteps get louder. Out of the mouth of the tunnel, comes a rather…ordinary looking man. He’s just as greasy as Jason expected. Rat-faced, but surprisingly sturdy, shoulders back, spine straight, a guy who isn’t scared to walk with his head up and his chin jutted out. He’s not powerful yet, and it seems the yet is keeping him going, giving him that false sort of confidence that can get you far.

Jason breathes out, keeps his eyes on him, takes long, loping quiet strides in the shadows until he’s following along on the edge of darkness. He doesn’t blink. Barely breathes. He reaches into his soul and the All-Blades are there, screaming for retribution for the mess this guy left them in last time – he can feel the cold still, deep in the marrow of his bones, but the Blades burn gloriously hot as they settle into his palms.

The guy doesn’t even get the chance to gasp before Jason plunges both blades into his back, shoving the guy onto his toes. Jason leans in and laughs in his ear before pulling back viciously. The Blades scream and claw at the cage that is his control, demanding more – and he tells them no as the guy stumbles forward, blood waterfalling down his back, as he turns towards Jason, a spark of pale green flaring in the guy’s eyes before –

“Did you really think it was going to be that easy?” he mocks with the same reverberations of a simulacrum.

Jason shrugs, twirling one blade nonchalantly. “Nope,” he says, popping the ‘p’ obnoxiously. “But it was really fucking satisfying.”

The simulacrum laughs loudly –

Then collapses into a heap of green and black. Jason steps back as it undulates grotesquely – organically – and then. A claw appears, nails scoring the stonework, exposing the soft white underneath the years of grim since the Court was defeated. Another. And – the simulacrum from last night pulls itself out, looming and big, and –

It’s still laughing.

“You lost once,” it says – he says, the magician. It moves fluidly as it steps closer, knuckles dragging across the ground. It moves nothing like it did before in that warehouse. Jason raises his blades, chin raised definitely. There’s an itch across his senses, but he doesn’t look. “And now you’re back. Not even half a day later. You want to lose that again that badly? Do you want me to crush your head in my palm this time – splatter your brain across the ground for your dear friends to find?”

It swipes out – fast and snake-like. Jason curves around the claws, heart in his throat but they – nick him anyway, catching fabric and tearing through his hoodie, hooking on the gauze on his side, the tip of the nail sliding, ripping, tearing – he chokes on a scream, yanks his right blade up, carving through the wrist in front of him – it –

Comes off in a splatter of pale green. It speckles his face and burns, eats away through his hoodie. Jason stumbles back, already panting, hands trembling around the blades, feeling the flames flicker and rage and yearn –

The hand drops to the ground. Disappears in a puff of smoke and then – the empty wrist of the simulacrum grows a new hand, claws and all.

Fuck – Jason didn’t think this was going to be easy but….fuck. Twelve hours. Twelve hours was enough time for this bastard to – to –

“I was going to use another child,” it says casually. Jason lunges – it smacks him out of the air. All the oxygen leaves his lungs in one fell swoop as he goes skittering across the floor. It shakes its frog-like head, makes a tsk’ing sound. “Now this is just pathetic. Jason Todd, Heir to the All-Caste. The big, bad Red Hood. The Dark Prince of Gotham.”

That one catches his attention. Jason lifts his head, wheezing, vision blurring, climbs laboriously to his feet. “How did – ?”

“You think I didn’t research you?” it asks. The itch across his senses gets more insistent. Look. Look. He doesn’t look. “You think I didn’t look into the only other true magician in this city?” It wraps a large hand around his left blade and yanks. Jason lets it go before his shoulder goes with it. It throws the copper blade into the shadows, but it disappears in a flash of fire before it hits the ground – Jason feels it settle back in his soul and he holds it there. “Not very powerful. Not even close to powerful. But – the most powerful magic user in Gotham right now. After me, of course. And ripe for the taking.”

Jason bares his teeth in the mockery of a smile. “Oh yeah?” There’s sweat sliding down his spine. He’s running out of time. “Not much you can do, hiding behind your little puppet, is there?”

A beat of trembling silence then –

“I will use you!” it roars – the whole cistern shakes with the force of it, dust raining from the ceiling. “I will bleed you dry and crack your ribs open and your beating heart with grant me the power I deserve!”

He spits out a glob of saliva and blood, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “You’re pathetic,” he sneers. “Hiding behind spells and children. You are nothing. And you’ll continue to be nothing. That magic is going to consume you inside-out and there won’t be a thing you can do about it. And I’m going to enjoy watching you burn, you pathetic bastard.”

When the attack comes – it doesn’t come from the rage-trembling simulacrum in front of him. The itch burns. It screams at him. Look. Look. And Jason whirls around with a stagger, deflecting a fireball aim right for the back of his head. It splatters into globs of burning liquid, scattering at his feet.

From the shadows comes the rat-bastard, eyes blazing, veins burnings dark as magic surges through him. Jason smirks, his teeth stained red, his own eyes bright and wild.

“You’re so easy to taunt,” Jason says.

“Shut up.” Another fireball – bigger, but no less easy to deflect. “Shut up. Shut up! Shut. Up! You don’t know what you’re messing with!”

Jason takes a careful step backwards and lets the bastard advance on him. “You got that turned around. You look at Gotham and all you see is power – but that’s not – .” He ducks a crackling ball of lightning, feels it reach for him, hot fire snapping across the back of his neck before it explodes harmlessly on the other side of the cistern.

“What, were you about to tell me about all the beautiful and meaningful people who live in this city,” the rat-bastard mocks. “And how, after living their entire lives with all this ambient magic, if I take it all at once, I might doom them to a slow and painful death? Are you going to appeal to my good side, Todd?”

He sucks in a broken breath. “We both know you don’t have one. There’d be no point.”

Rat-bastard sneers. “Then do you want to know why?”

“Not really.” Jason grins, and it’s all savage mockery. “I know why. You know why. Ain’t gonna waste my breath with it.”

His heel makes ripples in the little pool under the center platform, his calf knocking the edge of the platform itself. He glances down then back, a tiny flicker of his eyes. Rat-bastard smiles wide, wider than natural, teeth counting back further than they should.

“You fool,” the rat-bastard says, soft and whispery, floating like smoke from a house on fire.

He lurches, shoves burning hands against Jason’s chest and – Jason falls, a scream between his teeth, hoodie smoldering. His back hits the ground with a sharp noise, his vision going black for a blink, then flickering back like a bad connection. Rat-bastard straddles his chest, hovering over him, burninghotcoldburning hands wrapped around Jason’s wrists. The man is still smiling, eyes glittering and oh-so-wrong, unnatural depths, pupils too big and growing wider, pale green kisses the edges like a stellar corona, feathering out until it’s blinding.

“Fool,” he says again. Jason turns his head as saliva drips like drool from a wolf’s jowls and lands on his cheek, his nose wrinkling in response. “You could have had back up. You could’ve won. But your arrogance has led to your downfall.” His grip tightens and Jason fights back instinctively – trying to wrench his wrists from his hands, gritting his teeth, forcing his screams down and trapped in the wild beating of his heart as his skin sizzles and burns and rots on the edges. “You walked right into my circle.”

Jason goes limp. Defeated. Resigned. A little voice in his head saying you could’ve put up a better fight, and it almost sounds like Bruce – like those times when he was Robin and he was worried about trying too hard, was worried that showing what he could do would basically equal showing off and – everyone’s attention had already been on him. For the wrong reasons. For the right reasons. For all the reasons he didn’t want because he just wanted to be.

Be home. Be Jason. Be Bruce Wayne’s son. Eventually – Be Robin.

You could’ve put up a better fight, Bruce used to say. Could’ve gotten a better grade, Jaylad. You’re smart. Could’ve handled that better, Robin. You could’ve put up a better fight, you have the skills, the strength, the know-how.

And he never told Bruce this before but –

Sometimes it’s worth being underestimated.

Jason grins. Eyes still closed, he whispers, “Did I?”

“What?”

The back of his hands are pressed along the inner circle. His heels tap between it and the outer one. Fresh blood trickles from his front to pool on the ground, tracing the lines of paint.

His smile widens and he opens his eyes, chin jutted out stubbornly as he stares up at the rat-bastard. “I said…Did. I? Did I walk right into your circle?”

“…What?”

Jason leverages his leg – knee going in and up, catching the rat-bastard right between the legs. He gasps sharply, his grip already loosening. Jason moves quickly, yanking his arms around and wrapping them around the guy’s neck, flipping them around until their positions are reversed – Jason’s considerable weight making him wheeze around the sudden pressure on his chest. The bastard’s hands scrabble at Jason’s arms, nails scoring his skin, ripping through bandages. The spell he hand on his hands stutters for half a second before it burns back up, welts and burns following every attempt to dislodge Jason.

Attempt. It doesn’t work.

Jason slams his hand around the bastard’s throat and his next wheeze is soundless, his hands still, wrapped around Jason’s forearms. His eyes wide and rolling wildly, lips pulled back in a snarl.

“The problem is,” Jason breathes out. “You look at Gotham and all you see is power. And you think it’s so easy to take.” He applies a bit more pressure, relishing in the almost-scared choke. There’s too much anger in his expression, too much hunger for it to really be satisfying. Jason leans in close. “And then you fuck up. You gather all of Gotham’s magic – which, you added to, by the way, with your little attention redirection spell and your senses spell. You let them linger, let them mix with the ambient magic, let them grow with it. Then you kept it from naturally influencing objects to bleed off the pressure. You gathered all of that into twelve little spots.

“Spots too small for all that magic. You made a fucking powder keg out of my goddamn city! And you think ONE conduit is going to be ENOUGH?”

And then he grins – bright and unnerving, all sharp teeth and glittering eyes. Rat-bastard gulps audibly. Jason’s nails dig into the side of his neck to draw blood, enough that it drips down into a puddle, mixing with Jason’s onto the circle underneath them.

“Good thing we have two then,” Jason whispers.

The circle begins to glow.

—

There is a…buzzing in her bones. Cassandra frowns, drags her tongue across her front teeth – her whole mouth tastes…metallic. Like a battery.

Like a storm.

The hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Stephanie trips over nothing. Tim visibly recoils. Duke shudders, knees wobbling.

“What is he doing?” Steph hisses. She uses Tim to steady herself then keeps stalking forward through the tunnel, heavy and low like a predator, Tim getting dragged along as he takes a moment to tap at his gauntlet for the map they’re following. “He’s supposed to be the super serious long-con strategic one! What the fuck is – ?”

“Less talking and more running,” Duke interrupts – he is running, something frantic in his pace. Steph’s teeth click and she’s back to running too, following Tim’s muttered directions of left, left, right, left towards Jason’s last known location. The screen fizzles and the tracker is no longer sending a signal, but there’s only so many places to be when you say middle of the reservoir.

“We will make it,” Cass says firmly – low enough it almost seems like it’s only for herself, but Tim glances back at her, elbow still caught in Steph’s grip, and his eyes are narrowed, unsure and terrified but trying so hard to hold onto hope, to disbelieve his own words (he wont survive).

We have to make it, she thinks just in time for pale green lightning to crack! above them, bouncing off the walls of the small tunnel, thunder booming so loud there’s various shouts of pain as they have to cover their ears. Cass ducks down, hands pressed tightly to her ears, her bones vibrating so hard she swears they’re the reason she’s shaking.

When she opens her eyes, everything is illuminated green. The lightning hovers, frozen mid-air, crackling ominously, in the dark as if it’s…waiting.

Waiting so patiently.

“Hurry,” Barbara whispers.

They don’t need to be told twice. Didn’t even need to be told once, to be honest.

It bounces in the air. Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.

And a faint –

 you’re too late.

—

The rat-bastard throws his head back in his scream – eyes and mouth and veins glowing and smoldering that pale green. Gotham green. The green of the streetlights when they illuminate the clouds hanging over the city. Jason’s own blood feels like it’s boiling. He can taste it in the back of his throat, can feel the heaviness of it on his lips as it steadily leaks from his nose.

He doesn’t let up. He’s burning from the inside out. Magic lashes out in the air, claws its way from underground and surges up like waves. – and he’s the poor lifeboat caught up in it.

Better him than – than –

“Jason!”

Fuck.

His head snaps up.

And through the haze of wild magic only he and rat-bastard and maybe Cass can see, he spots his goddamn family spilling into the cistern. Jason grits his teeth, cheek caught been his molars, blood pooling on his tongue until he opens his mouth, and it spills over his lips.

“Get the fuck away!” he shouts – and his voice collapses in on itself halfway through. He blinks away frustrated tears as they just step closer, clustered together like they’re walking through a storm. Even if they can’t see the magic, they can feel it, ducked down like there’s wind, arms up like they’re ready for debris to come crashing through. “Please,” he breathes out, horrified. “Get outta here.”

And they don’t hear him. They’re too early. He was supposed to have more time.

Jason had a plan! A shitty one! But a plan! And then there were just too many risks. Too many variables. Their pain. Their inexperience. The timetable of everything. So, he threw it out and built up a new one. One that only risked him. One that would –

They’re not supposed to be here.

He glances down at rat-bastard, feels the give of the tendons in one hand and the way his neck sinks inward under his grip of the other – and swallows thickly. Seconds. He has mere seconds. The rat-bastard is more magic than not right now, and Jason is next in line.

Hand in his pocket, withdrawing the thick chalk he’d stashed there. It’s stained with his blood. Broken in half. But he reaches over and puts it to the circle anyway and – Green flares so brightly it hurts. Jason can’t close his eyes, blinking away sunspots as he once again, for the second time tonight, adds to the runes.

Always have a plan for any foreseeable contingencies.

There’d been a chance. A slight one. But a chance, he would’ve lived through his second plan. This third one though – he can’t.  He can’t watch them die. He knows –

He knows they’ll survive him. It’s awful to say but…they’ve had practice. He’s not Dick or Tim or Damian or Cass, were their loss would mean devastation. He’s not Steph or Duke in that he’s needed for Gotham. Not – Not anymore. Jason doesn’t want to die, but also –

“Jason!” Tim shouts. “Stop!”

He laughs bitterly. Too fucking late and also, no fucking way. If he stops now, then everything goes up in smoke. Him. Them. Gotham. There’s only one way to see this through now. All other options disappeared once they entered the picture and he put chalk to the ground.

Jason finishes the last rune – two extra lines on an already existing one. He throws the chalk away and it lands in the water with a little plop sound that’s lost among everything else. They’re close enough he can see the color of their eyes, masks off, barely dressed in their suits. Capes are missing, joint protection missing. Just the bare basics and Tim’s gauntlet – which is a bare basic at this point.

He can see their eyes – wide and terrified. Mouths moving. His name. Stop. His name again, just over and over, getting louder and louder even though he can’t hear them. Can’t hear anything over the sound of his own heart, over the whine of magic growing in intensity. Jason looks away first.

No one can have this magic. It’s Gotham’s.

No one else has to die for this.

Except one more.

I’m sorry – he thinks and can’t bear to say it out loud. Sorry for dragging them into this. Sorry for not being able to figure it out on his own. Sorry they have to witness this. It’s not going to be pretty.

He gives them one last rueful smile.

And then his whole world goes white.

—

Jason screams – and it crackles into a whining keen that makes the hair on the back of their necks stand on end.

Tim lurches for his brother just as Jason’s back arches with the force of his pain, limbs contorting as his veins smolder and burn – pale green. Once he could say it was a soft color. A softer green than the Pit. Gentler than fear toxin. The same pale green he said dappled like leaves, the green he saw in Jason’s eyes when he found him in that warehouse.

There’s nothing soft about it anymore. Nothing gentle. Jason’s hands come up in claws, nails pressing into his own face, dragging downdowndown as lightning, as magic surges through him. Like a tornado, getting faster and faster, pulling the lightning branches from the ceiling like a sponge soaking up water and all Jason can do –

All he can do is fall. Collapsing sideways, seizing as a current moves through him.

“Jason!” Steph shouts, throwing herself forward – and she hits an invisible wall. It ripples out, her impact echoing in that same stupid, shitty green. “Jason!”

Duke hovers, fists clenched at his sides. Cass stares wide-eyed, never blinking. Tim presses his palms on the barrier, and he has to close his eyes, he can’t watch – then. Now. All he hears is Jason. All he smells is ozone. It’s heavy in the air, the taste of, of petrichor, of heavy clouds, of rusted iron – and then salt on his lips.

He’s crying.

Cracks appear under their feet. Popping like bones. Water and dust trickle from the ceiling as the whole room groans and shifts under the pressure emanating from Jason, from the magic consuming, devouring –

destroying him.

Then it all

Stops.

Tim falls forward, the barrier disappearing. He catches himself in time, but Steph actually hits the ground on her knees. They stay like that, frozen in shock, for a long moment before Cass snaps out of it first, dashing towards the platform where Jason lays unmoving.

He scrambles to his feet. Tripping his way as he follows, all of his grace and skill leaving him in one fell swoop as no repeats in sickening circles in his head. No. No. Nonono. No. This – Jason can’t – Bruce would never forgive – Dick would never forgive – It hurts to breathe, his ribs tightening around his lungs like a steel trap. His eyes burn.

Cass scrambles up the platform, kneels next to Jason, her fingers pressed to his neck. Her eyes are closed, brows furrowed in concentration. Tim sucks in a breath and holds it, heart in his throat. Then her hand moves to Jason’s forehead, thumbing across his brows, shoulders slumping, hair falling in front of her face as she bows her head – and shakes it.

“No,” Steph whispers, hands over her mouth. “No. You’re – You’ve gotta be kidding. He can’t – .”

Duke drops next to Cass, legs pulled to his chest, face buried in his knees. There’s a soft sound. Not quite a sob, but close. Cass wraps her arm around him, leaning most of her weight onto him.

Tim doesn’t climb up after Steph. He stares blankly at Jason’s lax face. His veins still glow faintly green. and growing fainter. His arm is splayed out over the edge of the platform, hand drooping mid-air, fingers curled loosely only the unconscious can pull off.

The unconscious – and the dead.

He reaches out slowly, his own hand trembling, and wraps his fingers around Jason’s wrist. There is no heartbeat under his fingers. No rush of blood. No twitch of muscles and tendons. Just – the grotesque warmth of magic that is so different than a living body Tim wants to vomit.

His other hand comes up, wraps around Jason’s limp fingers. And he just – holds on. Shoulders shaking. Cheeks wet with tears. His chest jerking with every sob that he doesn’t bother trying to hold back. His knees wobble but he doesn’t let himself fall. If he falls, he won’t be able to keep holding onto Jason.

How is he supposed to tell everyone? How is – Jason did this. To save them. Compromised, he’d called them. Because they’d shoved themselves onto his case. A case he was perfectly capable of solving himself and was well on his way to doing so. Shoved themselves onto his case and got caught up in the web of pain that smothered their reflexes and their senses and their minds. Compromised.

But then – what if it still ended up like this? Jason solving the case, the bad guy dead, Gotham saved, and –

And Jason is still dead. He disappears down here in the labyrinth and not a single soul knows about it, and he dies for it. In every option. Down every path.

“This is the exact opposite of letting us help you,” Tim whispers wetly. He tugs on Jason’s hand and his body ragdolls at the force. Shit. “Fuck. Jason. You – .” He presses his forehead to his knuckles, Jason’s growing cold fingers brushing his cheeks. “I hate you so much right now.”

—

Pale green fireflies flicker under Jason’s skin.

Like little, tiny heartbeats.

The heartbeats of a city full of millions.

And they only get brighter. Stronger.

—

O h !

H e l l o

a g a i n .

Third time’s the charm, my dear. I owe you a fourth if you ever you need it.

—

It’s like a bad dream. All fuzzy around the edges, his chest constricting, a weird acidic feeling building in the back of his throat. His mouth tastes like blood. His muscles twitch and spasm. His limbs don’t want to listen to him.

Jason cracks his eyes open, and, between his eyelashes, he sees – the top of Tim’s head. He’s bowed over Jason’s hand, fingers tight around his wrist. His blood is slow to move. His lungs are sluggish to expand. He doesn’t shift when he looks over, seeing Cass and Steph out of the corner of his eye. A little further he meets Duke’s startled gaze, eyes wide and shimmering gold.

He smiles at the kid. Duke smiles tentatively back, obviously struggling to connect what he’s seeing to the echoes flickering around him, past and present and future colliding in dizzying explosions.

Jason feels magic spark under his skin – so much different than ants. He feels storm clouds billowing in his chest, escaping with every slow, imperceptible exhale. Petrichor in the grit of his eyes and under his nails. Rusted iron in his joints, creaking with every –

His fingers twitch, in Tim’s grasp. Tim doesn’t react at first. Jason frowns and moves his fingers a little more noticeably. That’s enough to exhaust him, but he forces his eyes to stay open to watch Tim jerk like he’s been electrocuted, head snapping up, first to Cass and Steph, then meeting Jason’s eyes dead on.

“…Jason?” Tim breathes.

“What the fuck!” Stephanie shouts. Jason grunts when she throws herself at him, her hands patting his cheeks before she grabs his face, turning it every which way. He makes a pained sound, and she lets go immediately, looking contrite. “What the hell, Jason?” she whispers, a thin veneer of calm.

His smile is a grimacing thing. Hyperaware of Tim still staring at him. “Sorry,” he whispers back, but while her whispering was emotional, he literally can’t talk louder than a breath. “I just wanted – I didn’t want – you guys – to get hurt.” He twitches, the closest thing to jumping, when Duke’s forehead meets his knee and he just…leaves it there, hands a death grip on Jason’s pants, shoulders trembling. Cass snakes a hand under Steph’s arm and presses her thumb to the pulse point on his wrist. “I’m – sorry,” he says again, heartfelt.

Tim yanks on his hand and he groans at the motion. His body reluctantly goes with it, but he instinctively pulls back even if it’s weak.

“Why?” Jason asks him despairingly.

Fresh tears spill down Tim’s cheeks. “I’m telling Dick,” Tim rasps out. “And Bruce.” Jason groans again, this time a beleaguered sibling rather than in pain. His grip tightens around Jason’s wrist. “Stop – Stop fucking dying.”

Jason twists his hand until he’s holding onto Tim instead of the other way around. “I didn’t mean to,” Jason mutters. But he squeezes the shaking hand in his hold – weakly but getting stronger every second. “I’m not interested in a repeat. Promise.”

“You are in so much trouble,” Cass says solemnly. “Little brother.”

He smiles hard enough it hurts. But the good kind of hurt. "Yeah, saw that comin'." Then yelps when Tim yanks him again, this time using his arm as leverage to pull himself close enough to throw his arm over Jason's chest, face pressed against his bloody hoodie, and he just – tries not to cry. Jason sighs and brings his arm up to wrap around Tim. "I just wanted to protect you," he says quietly. "It wouldn't of been fair if you guys got hurt or, or killed because of me."

"Technically, it would've been because of the bad guy," Duke says thickly. He looks up and he's no longer crying, his eyes a little puffy and rimmed pink. "You don't get to decide that for us," he informs Jason. "That's something Batman would do."

Jason recoils, nose wrinkling. "Ugh."

Steph does the most disgusting snort giggle at his expression – and it goes again. And again. Until she's laughing semi-hysterically. Jason grins and huffs out his own laugh. 

Yeah. They're gonna be okay.