Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"It's like you don't even notice the sinks are a foot too low."

Jokester jumped, banging his wrist on the faucet; the running water had drowned out Harvey's footsteps up the echoing hallway outside, so the voice from the bathroom door had taken him by surprise. He stuck his tongue out at his lawyer friend and grabbed the hand towel Ed had laid out, rather than burn electricity on running the air dryers. "Hey, you! Welcome home. Maybe I'm reliving my childhood."

Harvey rolled his eyes, and didn't point out that J hadn't had a childhood, or contest being welcomed home, even though, officially, he didn't live with them anymore. Such a nice guy, heh. "They wouldn't have been too short when you were a kid. That's the point."

J shrugged. "Maybe I'm reliving a previous life where I was really, really tall." Harvey once again cast his eyes up to heaven. He was probably the foremost expert on the ceilings of everywhere they'd lived. "Come on," J said. "We have a bit over ten minutes 'til dinner, and Harley was wanting your opinion on some setup stuff for the new clinic. She left it all in seventh-grade English."

Stepping aside to let the Jokester out of the bathroom, Harvey made a small exasperated noise, which J considered a sign he was in fine form. So far he'd managed to get half his friends to give up on making him stop referring to all the rooms in the abandoned middle school by their previous functions, and he was bucking for all by the end of the week. There was a possibility Pam would vine him to the ceiling before then if he didn't stop, of course, but those were the risks you took in show business.

The building had been a good find. As the school budget shrank, the districts crammed the same number of kids into less and less space to save on operating costs, which of course increased the drop-out rate, meaning the smaller space came closer to being adequate—J figured this worked out for somebody. It sure wasn't the kids.

Right now, it was him and his friends; they'd needed a new main base after busting Jason out of the Owl's screwy torture chamber, and this was far enough away from all his previous digs that it should take a while to track them down. And there was so much space. It was like living in a castle. A minimally furnished castle with big windows and polyvinyl-chloride flooring, admittedly, but squatters can't be choosers.

They were very comfortable squatters, too, because their resident electro-mechanical engineer had gotten the water hooked back up, and installed a bigger version of his old solar generator on the roof. It was going to be chilly once the seasons changed, since the school's heating system had been expensively inefficient in the first place and there was no way they could keep the furnace topped up all winter, but there was time to prepare for that.

J figured if they were still here by then, they'd slap up extra insulation on a few rooms, especially over the windows, get a couple of space heaters in there, and huddle. It would still be more spacious than year before last. Depending on who was around by that point, possibly more so than last year, too. Pam was being seriously wooed by the League of Shadows again; he swore Ra's was going to try sending chocolates any day now. (Not cut flowers, though. He knew better.)

He glanced sidelong at Harvey, who'd finally requalified for the state bar and was now practicing law out of a storefront in Crime Alley, with a little apartment up above just for him. It was good he was getting his feet under him again, probably, even if the contrast between this and the life he'd ground his way through law school to achieve probably stung sometimes worse than not practicing at all.

But J didn't like the feeling of having one of his best friends out of his reach, and so visible. He had his name on a sign.

He kept waiting for the Owl to strike. Maybe he wasn't sure Harvey was Janus? He wore a mask for a reason, but still. It wasn't exactly a subtle pseudonym. Maybe he thought that if he started making moves like that, they'd find a way to blow up his mansion in Bristol. Not a bad idea, but an ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure, as Harley always said when she got her hands on vaccines.

"Clients treating you okay?"

Harvey looked sour. "Clients are skinflint. And while I understand why, it doesn't mean I'm going to let them harangue me for hours and then walk away without paying for my time."

"No, it's fair," said J. "Know what you're worth."

A too-rare smile split both of Harvey's faces, and he fell into step with J up the echoing hall. "Where's Jon?"

"Hehe, lab. I'm not sure he's left since he got his stuff set up."

The lab had once been a science classroom, of course, but with everything the chemist had hauled in to equip it, it was make-no-bones-about-it a bona-fide-lab, and much more suited to the purpose than any of his last three. The computers and most of the books had been cleared out of the school library when the place was closed down, of course, but they'd left the tables with the rolling keyboard trays, so Ed had set up a hacker cave of his own in there. They'd been using this base for almost over two months now, and it was nice seeing everybody settled into their own spaces in a shared building. They couldn't always manage that.

Harvey shook his head at Jon's lab-burrowing. "It's good he loves his work, I suppose."

They turned the last corner before the one that would bring the stairwell into view, and J raised an eyebrow at his friend. "You s'pose?"

"Cooking up experimental drugs in an abandoned building is a little…"

"He doesn't just make drugs."

"I'm just saying there are good reasons that sort of thing is regulated."

"The pharmaceutical lobby, mostly," Jokester muttered, slouching.

"It's hard to mock conspiracy theorists when we're up to our necks in Owls, I admit, but J. In all seriousness. There are things that need regulation."

"Hah, and there's the lawyer talking."

"I am a lawyer."

He was a lawyer. But he was also the raging anarchist who they both still sometimes worried would lose track of himself in the moment, and wake up slick with blood. J didn't bring that part up. "Well, with your two-housed-ness an' all…"

The Bicameral Man flung up a hand in halfhearted frustration. "Look, I picked something shorter so it's easier to shout in a crisis—"

"Only so I'd stop calling you Bikey," J interjected.

Harvey ignored him. "So can't you let it rest? 'Janus the Bicameral Man' is a compromise."

"It sounds even worse than the original," J groused.

"You've been ragging on the name since I picked it," Harvey stated, which was accurate. Eight years, it had been. "I'm starting to feel harassed."

"Don't feel harassed. Just pay attention."

"Oh yes, I forgot perpetual annoyance is your favored method of getting your way."

J laughed. "Don't see how you managed that. It's a whole lifestyle."

Harvey looked even sourer than before, all lemon-sucking, and J hunched his shoulders, snorted, and after a few seconds went into a forward roll that kicked up into a handstand, and pointedly walked the rest of the way to the stairs upside down. Harvey didn't react even to sigh at him. He didn't even roll his eyes.

"J," he did say, when they got to the stairs and J paused to decide whether going up them on his hands was worth the effort, "I actually am aware you only sulk like this when you know you're wrong. It's my name. I should get to pick it."

J sighed, and let himself fall onto his feet, where he slouched against the abnormally low bannister for a second, and then started on the stairs, glancing under his elbow at his taller friend as he went. "Okay, yeah, it's your choice. Just…the Bicameral Man, Harv? Really?"

There was a logic there. A layered, twisty logic, which he guessed you should expect considering it was Harvey. Bicameral literally was 'two houses' but metaphorically 'two-headed,' which probably only worked because you almost never heard the word used for anything except legislatures, which brought in law. And for bonus points Asimov's Bicentennial Man had been a robot trying to become human, which J assumed was an intentional reference though he wasn't sure what it was supposed to mean.

The whole thing put him out of sorts.

Harvey looked sulky. "I thought you'd like it," he said, as he climbed. Like maybe he'd thought up the pun, years ago now, just for Jokester.

J got the joke. He really did. He got the message, even, a couple layers deep, about who Harvey was and what he wanted to be and what his scars meant to him. It was a good name, except that it was stupid. Most people wouldn't understand it. It could alienate people from him, in the slums, worse than any of his Harvard-trained attitudes and mannerisms, almost as bad as his past as the DA, because a joke people didn't understand was automatically a joke at their expense, and—seriously, Dent—most people don't know any Latin.

If J's memory weren't so good, if Ted the graduate student hadn't taken the time to explain the nested layers of the US governments to him years ago in the kind of sparkling, disorderly detail only the truly obsessed ever produced, he might very well not have gotten the joke himself.

"It makes you sound like a sideshow attraction," he said out loud, finally, as they reached the next landing.

The unmarred half of Harvey's face bent into an unhappy smile. "Well, they do call our little club the Circus. Guess every circus needs its freaks."

Bitterness was never good. J bit his lip. "Harv—" he began, as he pulled open the third-floor door. It opened on a cluster of guys in SWAT gear, bulky black, almost as startled as him. One lowered his assault rifle at Jokester's face.

"Nope!" J slammed the door closed again, and knelt to throw the weird bolts that went down into the floor. They wouldn't last long. This was a school, not a fortress. "Up!" he called at Harvey, for the SWAT guys' benefit, gesturing the opposite with his hands. As one, they flew back down to the second floor as quietly as they could, as the metal door shook behind them with the weight of SWAT heels.

When they reached the first cross-corridor, J shoved Harvey to the right while veering into the left-hand turn-off himself.

"Split up. Get everyone out. I'll draw them off!"

"But you—argh!" Harvey's knuckles were almost as white as Jokester's, and if he could have spared the time he would clearly have put it through the nearest wall and not felt the pain until later. But there was no time, and he turned and ran.

No sooner had he vanished when another batch of SWAT cops burst through the door at the end of Jokester's chosen hallway, bristling with military-grade weapons.

"Whoop!" No going that way. But he couldn't run after Harvey either…he ducked into the hall he'd just left, to at least stop presenting a target for the next few seconds.

"This is a raid!"

"I got that, thanks!"

Maybe he could double back and go up another level?

But back the way he came, the first unit had spilled into the stairs, filling the entryway with guns and shields and big black boots. That left one direction.

J rolled across the mouth of the corridor he'd meant to run down, popped up, and charged straight ahead.

He flung himself flat and rolled some more as bullets tore into the plaster. Only one gun's worth; the rest were holding their fire. Did they want him alive? He scampered onward, then dropped again, hands over his ears, as a combination of flash-bangs and what seemed to be actual concussion grenades ricocheted after him. In a hallway, guys? Seriously? Jackknifed up at the next corner, pulled a fire alarm, and booked it as the lights and klaxons started. They wanted to play the shock and awe game? He could play that. He was pretty sure he was a higher-rated smoke and mirrors technician than anybody in the police department.

Unfortunately, he was also outnumbered, and he only just ducked around the shelter of the next corner in time, as a flashbang rolled along the good, solid PVC-formica flooring. Then he held still with his back against the wall for a second, as it went off in the police's way, mentally enumerating his resources.

At least he knew the floorplan better, though SWAT was usually professional enough, even in Gotham, that they'd probably had a look at the blueprints before bursting in.

They hadn't been ready for the rolling chair full of cleaning supplies that they met caroming toward them as they rounded the next corner after that, and which they reflexively shot to death. J heard them slipping and sliding on the puddling soap as he fled on. Too bad he hadn't had time to cook up anything more violently reactive.

But there were still pounding boots—drat their professionalism anyway, some of them must have hung back—and he stretched his stride as he made for the end of the hall—and dropped, automatically, at the singing buzz of bullets and, almost simultaneous, the crack of guns.

What'd I do? he demanded poutishly of the universe. Everybody official always trying to kill him. And then the Arkham goons asked why he had problems with authority.

Eighth grade biology, finally! There was a fire escape out the window here; they'd made a point of it, what with Jon's record for lab accidents that went boom.

J dived right, slammed the door behind him, rolled upright surrounded by gleaming glass beakers and alembics and humming higher-tech gear he couldn't name.

Lab, yes. Jon, no. Either he'd actually gone to dinner, early even, or he'd heard the alarm and gotten out already. Or they'd caught him, but there was no sign of a fight. The escape window was open, but it was a warm day, so that might not mean anything.

Another concussion grenade sailed through the missing pane on the door. Not good! J dived for cover behind the nearest workbench. And then—

—all the world was bang and the shattering of glass. And now a sharp smell, sticking in his lungs, and he needed to get up and keep moving, but his limbs were oddly heavy…and…prickling…

.

…

....

!

Chapter Text

The spotlight came down hot enough to burn. He stood in the smell of sawdust and straw, sweat and melting greasepaint, and somewhere a whiff of large animals, surrounded by banks of shadow that rustled with the breath and murmuring of a mighty crowd. The invisible, most important part of the show. His audience.

He grinned, wide as his wide wide mouth would go, and flung his arms open so the tails of his green-and-golden coat lashed. The wordless human voices fell, expectant, waiting for him to speak.

"Welcome one, welcome all! Welcome to the greatest show on earth! I know they all say that, but none can compare with Gotham for the bizarre and astounding! We will move you to laughter and tears, and I promise…" His grin widened impossibly. "We will make you scream."

They were counting on it. Someone whooped.

"I bring before you for your pleasure, ladies and gentlemen, the most lurid and dramatic acts to be found in every foul or fair corner of our great city! Freaks and geeks and monsters galore, and acts of derring-do that would shrivel the liver of the boldest among you! As the Lord of Misrule, I bring you…the Circus!"

Drumroll please. Somewhere outside the ring, a drummer complied.

"Our first stupefying attraction: The Human Crocodile!"

A second spotlight flicked on, the first act standing to one edge of the ring, his back to the narrow curtained corridor for entrances and exits where there was no audience seating. Footlights glinted off scales, off the tip of a lashing tail, off long yellow teeth and golden eyes as Waylon flaunted his every irregularity for the crowd, naked to the waist. There were cries of awe and fear and disgust and admiration.

"He's part of the freak show and our strong man!" Jokester caroled, as the reptile-man flexed his muscles demonstratively.

He was posed before a display of vegetation, thick with ferns and vines, that seemed intended to invoke the Jurassic era, as though he was not a crocodile at all, but a Tyrannosaur. (He looked, honestly, more like a tyrannosaur, though his mighty arms were unlike either creature, or any known thing with scales.)

Waylon kicked off his show with two 500-pound barbells, pumping them up and down with slow deliberation, and then raising them, one in each hand, until his arms lay parallel to the ground at their fullest extension, five hundred pounds on the hinge of each shoulder; such a simple pose that required such incredible power.

The audience began to murmur and then to whoop, as the strongman's biceps began to shake slightly under the strain and yet he held position. His feet were firmly planted in the middle of the ring, but then behind the Jurassic scenery there came the sound of a gunning engine, and a moment later a tiny blonde woman in a spangled body stocking rode a Harley-Davidson motorcycle out into the ring.

This was in itself apparently occasion for cheering, and she did a lap to wave to the audience, jumping up twice to kneel upon the handlebars as she rode and wave with both hands and blow kisses. Then she pulled around to face the Human Crocodile, still holding his thousand pounds of weight with trembling arms. Gunned the engine meaningfully with her hands tight on the brakes.

Charged , as if in some sort of deranged game of crocodile/motorcycle chicken, and still Waylon held his position.

Until the final second, when he let both weights drop, to hit the ground with force that sawdust could not absorb, that shivered through the ground and up into the stands, for any doubters that had thought the bars misleadingly labeled. He dropped them, but instead of dodging he crouched between them, presenting his shoulders to the oncoming motorbike—

And then she pulled a trick, or he did, or they both did, and the motorcycle had ridden up onto his back and stopped there.

Slowly, the strongman straightened, the blonde waving happily to accept the crowd's accolades. Then he hooked both hands under the body of the bike and lifted it, machine and rider.

At the same time the woman braced her hands on the seat and lifted herself, with equal slow precision, into a handstand.

Both of them simultaneously let go with one hand, and then the Human Crocodile turned slowly to let every section of the audience see Harlequin's upside-down grin.

She flipped around to riding position again as he set her on her wheels, and then was off, on another lap, and from behind the set came galloping a small herd of tiny ponies done up in circus barding, a collection of dogs including a toy poodle that kept rising up on its hind legs and running along like that for several step and a St. Bernard that had a calico cat perched on its broad back; two hyenas in top hats, and an oddly smug-looking zebra.

The animals poured after Harlequin in a gleeful muddle, and by the time they began their second circuit the strongman had set up a series of low hurdles. Harlequin took them on her bike and many of the animals poured after her—the hyenas, the zebra, several of the ponies, the golden retrievers, the Dalmatian; the St Bernard almost lost its cat, and the toy poodle sensibly, and to the crowd's amusement, went under the obstacle. It didn't even need to duck.

Two of the ponies balked, and as the rest of the cavalcade swept onward remained sulkily grouped by the first hurdle. Harlequin took the next jump standing up, and the strongman stood over the laggardly ponies and frowned, then theatrically shook his head. The bay stamped; the piebald blew.

Waylon picked up a pony under each arm and hopped over the barrier.

To hoots and cries from the audience, he neatly set down the ponies, which had been trained to act recalcitrant but not surprised by the Crocodile's intervention and had taken the whole thing very calmly, then gave them each a light slap across the haunches that was their signal to gallop, leaping hurdles with effortless grace until they caught up with their fellows, at which point the whole crew followed Harlequin out of the ring, hyenas and all.

This left Waylon alone in the footlights, back where he had started, and finally, the Human Crocodile reached behind him to lift the set.

The plants were real, rooted in a huge, deep pot that normally could not have been taken on and off stage without special machinery. The two smallish but full-grown trees, apple and ash, swayed as Waylon swung the tub across his shoulders and slowly, inexorably straightened up as he had under the motorcycle, Atlas lifting a small world. As he reached his full height, a flower bud formed between the trunks, huge and red, and as he raised the mighty burden above his head with both straining arms, it swelled and grew until it burst, and the petals unfurled to reveal the curled form of a woman, just barely clothed in leaves.

The ringleader spread his hands and got back in on the action with a bellow. "And now we bring you the stupendous, the salacious…Climbing Ivy!"

Ivy unfolded, posing for the crowd in each direction, provocative and unflappable. They roared, and then she flung her head back and spread her arms, and two bolts of silken fabric, jungle-green, descended from the catwalks to meet her hands, and she swung herself up, in a looping, circling motion that looked effortless, though it couldn't have been.

Below, the strongman carried away his weights and weighty set-piece, clearing the ring, but the lights and the attention of the crowd had both left him, and moved up to the silk-dancer.

She cocooned herself in the silks, twisted, spun, green twining into vines and catching the air to fan out like great shining leaves, or wings. She posed like she was flying, she dropped like she was falling, but always, the silk caught her, wrapped her, safe and soft. She twirled, once, on and on, toes toward the hidden sky until even the audience was dizzy, and then brought herself gracefully to a halt, and danced on.

Usually, at the end of a silk-dancer's act, she descended, but Ivy climbed, up and up, her hands spread and empty as her legs coiled her upward, until she reached the second-highest platform on the tent's mighty central pole, gave a little swing, seized hold…and left her silks behind. They billowed absently, catching emerald light.

Pam took a bow, to thunderous applause, and then vanished through the rigging while one spotlight held fast on her earlier position, and the other dropped to the loudest clown.

"And now, ladies and gentlemen, we bring to you. Without a partner, without a net, the death-defying feats of the latest-and-greatest…Red Hood!"

The spot flicked those last fifteen feet up, to the crown of the Big Top. The invisible trumpeters gave a fanfare.

Jason looked very small on a wooden platform so very high, without his leather or his helmet. Much younger than fifteen. He was wearing Talon's tunic again (though at least in his own deep red, shades darker than the blood-bright cape), and nothing else. He brushed his hands against one another, then wrapped them around the bar of the trapeze, snapped the thin cotton cord that had held it within reach, and fell like a stone on a string.

He spun himself around the bar as it swooped—butt, elbows, knees, for a frozen moment ankles only, and then he finished his spin to head over heels, and came up to standing as the trapeze finished its long forward sweep, and began to fall back again. Jason fell back, too, in an arc that took him down from the bar until only his hands were high enough to grasp it—they did, and he swung forward once more, extending the pendulum with the length of his body for a little extra momentum, a little extra distance.

Cast himself into thin air, just long enough to spin up, up and close his fingers around another, higher trapeze bar. Another thin cord snapped under his weight, and on new steel cables the boy fell-swung-flew faster than before.

And at the highest point of that arc, let go. The audience shrieked as he somersaulted up, and somewhere behind his grin Jokester shouted No! because there was no other trapeze there to grab and no net…but…

Almost before his upward momentum ran out, just as his flight became a fall, the acrobat alighted on a nearly-invisible cable strung tight between the Big Top's central poles, light as a soap bubble. Bird on a wire.

It was not enough to walk the line. He walked it backward, placing every certainty in what he could not see. He toppled into a roll. He threw a cartwheel, and then was at the end of the tightrope, beside the roof support. He raised a foot as if to step off into the wooden platform where the cable was anchored, and was halted by a chorus of boos.

"Not done yet, sonny!" the ringleader heard himself shriek.

Jason's shoulders slumped for a second, and then he flipped backward, his palms pressed into the cable, spun, and then flipped again onto his feet, facing the length of the high wire again.

Jokester reached into his bag of tricks and drew out the bright, clean arc of a broad, curved sword—not a fine weapon, not elegant; gaudy with glass jewels and false gilt as befit its place here in the ring, but sharp. Dangerous enough.

"Here!"

End over end the scimitar spun up, until it smacked hilt-first into the young Hood's palm, and he whipped it in a complicated figure of eternity.

Slowly at first, he moved. It was almost a fight with an invisible opponent. It was almost an acrobatic routine. It was a sword-dance, all alone on the high wire.

Almost, the enemy took shape. Breath withheld, the audience could almost see the blows the Red Hood ducked with a deceptively easy somersault, the blade against which his caught, could almost have sworn one sword struck another in a burst of sparks. So real, the enemy that wasn't there, that he dodged too forcefully in a single second, and had to lurch back, the pattern broken, the illusion of his enemy shattered as his neck remained where the invisible sword should have been, and was not severed.

And now, as if the perfection of his rhythm had been all that was holding him in place, he began to falter. A step in the dance was missed in favor of something less elegant, but better balanced. He wobbled. He seemed to recover, spun through the next steps of the dance with only the faintest waver, and—leapt—landed—rolled—whirled— fell.

Truly, this time, and the promised screams rose again from the crowd, and this time there was no new trapeze, no hidden wire, no harness. He hit the sawdust at breakneck speed in a crack of bone and the sick, wet sound of his own sword coming out his back.

Schleck.

The boy lay in a crumpled heap of black and red, scarlet-smeared steel standing proudly above him, as the music trailed away. Screaming began again, and a new, more horrified susurration as all but the most bloodthirsty spectators recoiled. When it began to seem like someone might break for the exit, the ringleader stepped forward, into the margin of the patient spotlight that had followed their falling star all the way down.

"Ladies! Gentlemen! Please, remain in your seats! The show's not nearly done yet!"

Somebody booed. Jokester pointed a long white finger at that section of the stands and looked disapproving. "Now, is that any way to behave?" He looked down and prodded his acrobat with a toe. "Come on, stop being lazy."

"Booo!" came that thin voice from somewhere high in the stands, and then it gained companions, scattered, but rising in volume.

"Hear that?" the ringleader expostulated. "You're makin' me look bad!" He tapped a foot. "Gimme that back," he demanded, and turned the boy over with his foot to gain access to the sword hilt. A handkerchief appeared in his hand to gingerly wipe at the worst trickles of gore, and then he seized the spangled grip and tugged.

Red Hood's blue-green eyes flew open with a harsh, wet gasp, and then he lay there, panting, shocked, as the clown in chief shook his blood off the blade. "You got it dirty," he scolded. Slid the gaudy thing back into its sheath with a theatrical metallic ringing, which came from scraping the blade against the bright tin ring around the top.

Offered Jason a hand up.

The wirewalker's palm slapped into his, and the ringleader hauled him up. Slapped him bracingly on one shoulder once he was standing again. "Here, put this away for me," he ordered, giving the sheathed sword back, and grinned once again at the crowd.

"You saw it here, folks! Can't nothing keep this boyo down. Unfortunately Red needs to go change into a clean costume, but don't be discouraged! We have our next act all ready to fly, as a moth to a flame..!"

Those trumpets again, and the spotlight left him.

The new aerialists were Garfield and Cameron, on the trapeze, and they too flew without a net, even though there was no sign of their wings.

"Thaaat's right, folks! And if they fall they will not get up again! Place your bets now!"

They spun and twisted until Firefly all covered in red and gold sequins flipped high enough to brush his fingers against the canvas roof, tucked his limbs against his chest and spun head over heels as he fell again—once, twice, thrice…he was nothing but a blur of flame-color and glinting gold, must be clocking forty mph rotational velocity, enough to knock a man out all on its own, even without hitting anything, such as the ground, and there was no net —

Velvet gloves closed around his glittering hands, and with his knees locked fast around the trapeze to support them both, Garfield's partner swung him smoothly out of the spin, bleeding off his huge collected energy in a long, perfect arc, and then let go. Firefly sailed across the ring, spinning, tangled himself in Pam's still-dangling silks, and descended in an orderly twirl.

"Awwwww," said Jokester's big glad mouth, as the older flier vanished again into the shadowed depths of the tent roof. "No blood this time, sorry folks. Putchyer hands together for how good a catcher the Mothman is! Maybe some other day we'll see if his boy can catch him so good."

Silk and velvet rolled and winged away, Firefly took the ring alone. He snapped his fingers, and a tiny flame burst into being. Jokester tossed him a long kerosene torch—the young man caught it, lit it from his sequined fingertips, and smoothly caught the next, and then the one after that.

After that he began to keep them in the air, as the ringmaster threw torch after torch, until two spinning wheels of flame spread like wings across the ring, and then the fire-juggler began to count down again, catching his pieces one by one, dousing their fires in his mouth to the particularly vocal delight of some children in the audience, blowing out each time a plume of flame, and throwing the flameless torches back to the clown in the coat of tails, who made them vanish up his sleeves.

Then, as the number of whilrling fires in the air shrunk to five, the fire-eater began to run.

Around the ring, over the hurdles left by the animal act, and then through a hoop, which he set on fire with one of the flaming pins as he passed the first time. When the number of torches in the air dropped to three, they began to arc so high that he had time to pull a handspring while they were all in the air.

To dive through the flaming hoop, and land ready to catch the burning things and repeat their staggered pattern again, still moving. Then at last he caught the last spinning pin, and snuffed its flame between his lips, and bowed, and straightened in the showering applause—

—and lifted his head and breathed a stream of flame that licked up into the swings and wires and seemed just for a moment like it was going to shed light even on the shrouded audience. And then it was gone, but Firefly caught the fading sparks between his fingers and spun them into a ball of fire between his hands that spun and spun and grew and grew until—

—it burst in a cloud of menacing smoke, which thinned to reveal that the glittering fire-eater had disappeared, and instead a tall, twiggy form loomed in the middle of the ring, all flaring cloak and flashing lights and shadow. The violins of the invisible orchestra hummed low beneath the thundering applause.

"The Alchemist of Fear!" the ringmaster announced in a sepulchral hush when the clapping had begun to fade, and then fell back and let terror take the Big Top. Smoke and mirrors and the flap of leathery wings, the hiss of kissing blades, and the certainty that something was watching each and every one of you…

All the screaming anyone could ask.

The thing of sticks and straw that stood at the center of the nightmare called up horror upon nameless horror, things that writhed and things that watched and things that once you looked away you could not say what they had been, only that they shouldn't, and finally a suit of armor, red and gold, and you knew that if it lifted up its visor there would be nothing but a staring skull and…

wrenching…

cold…

After that they needed something light, so the Master of Revelry called for his fools, and here they came. Jason again, guts safely back inside, in a red football helmet four times the size of his head, and Garfield, dressed now as a comic fireman, and Pam in a ridiculous candy-apple-colored wig, and Edna hitting everything with her handbag and being very threatening with knitting needles, and Roman Sionis in a black half-mask doing a very grouchy Pierrot, and what appeared to be the one and only long-dead Joseph Grimaldi himself, though after a minute Jokester realized it was only Basil in disguise, and great fun was had by all getting him to admit it.

Another juggler, Ozzie Cobblepot in oversized spats, Leslie doing a sleight-of-hand act where she sawed people in half and sewed them back together.

Now Harlequin was back, as though she had never left, and she performed a spectacular contortionist's routine, eeling her way through spaces too narrow even for someone her size, bending back until her body arced into a perfect circle, rolling heels over head like a human wheel, and then wrapping limb over limb until it seemed the knot was too complex to ever untie. Then she untangled herself, bounced upright, and tugged at the ringleader's hair, laughing. Cartwheeled away. He chased.

She was always just outside his reach, and as the crowd fell about laughing stuck out her foot and sent him into a spectacular pratfall. He flung a handful of sawdust at her, and she stuck her tongue out at him, and pulled a giant hammer from seemingly nowhere, and now it was his turn to run.

And from there, without anything so stable as an introduction, they had slid before he knew it into a Punch and Judy show, flinging in one another's faces brutal violence and casual hate and easy lies, and the certainty that they would never ever be able to escape one another, and come to think on it, he had never really liked Mr. Punch.

"Who's a clever fellow, then?!" he screeched, and broke a bottle over Harlequin's head. The crowd roared.

Harlequin kicked him in the stomach.

There was more to the show before Punch and Judy could be done; a rollicking chase up the rigging and down again, a dancing skeleton, a complicated business with a string of sausages that had Waylon guest-starring as the traditional crocodile; but before long they had come round to the start. There he was, swinging the swaddled bundle that was the Baby against the great wooden pillar holding up the roof, and the swaddling was loosening until a small plump hand reached out and pushed the folds aside, and as Jokester drew the bundle back again familiar greeny-blue eyes blinked out, bewildered.

"Daddy?" said Ella, and then struck against the mighty central tent-pole and burst, like a firework, into a cloud of light and smoke and confetti.

Glitter settled over everything in the center ring, gold as bright as day. The crowd found their voices again and howled—appalled, amused, approving. Coins pattered out of the dark. Good show.

"That's the way to do it!" he declared, all delight, and saw, through the dancing glitter and sawdust, the figure of Harlequin rising up, with Judy's club in hand to punish him, but he just didn't have time for that. Something colder than the slapstick in his hand.

Bang! she dropped.

They laughed. So did he.

"What's this, my friends?" he called out, brushing glitter off his coat and making the handgun vanish up his sleeve with the motion. "How irregular! My family seems to have exploded!" Laughter. "We'll need someone sharp to get to the bottom of this one, and since two heads are better than one, please welcome…The Bicameral Man!"

Lights came up on a raised platform in the next ring, and the figure there turned, with slow deliberation, so that the audience on every side could see both faces, each at the end of its own neck. Both familiar, both strange.

"There's no point being concerned," opined the head on the left; beautiful, cold. "The woman is dead, that's plain enough. If a wrong of any consequence has been done, it will be taken before a court, and the law will see justice done—stop laughing!" it snapped at the crowd, composure lost, for they had seen at once that a freak of nature talking natural justice was a fine, crude irony.

"Of course they're laughing!" burst out the head on the right.

Its eyes flashed almost-real fire, and its skin was nothing but twisting scars. "Justice, law—what are they worth? Can you eat them? The law's a sham. All you can do is go out and enact justice with your own hands." The crowd was laughing at this, too, but the burned face didn't protest; it bared its teeth, challenging them all. "Mock me all you like!" he shouted. "It won't change what I know!"

"You know nothing!" retorted the angel face. "There is a right way to do things!"

"Freak!" shouted someone hidden in the shadows of the risers, outside the lighted ring. It seemed like a voice he should know. He couldn't place it.

The Bicameral Man had forgotten their audience entirely.

"You let your procedures and right way get in the way of actually doing anything that's right!" said the scarred half.

"Just because the system is imperfect is no reason to abandon it. If people fall through the cracks, well, either they should have taken more care not to fall, or someone should try to patch the cracks."

"Victim-blaming bastard!" ugly head snarled. "Keeping people from falling is the whole point! It's too flawed to patch. Burn it. Burn it all!"

The crowd rolled in the aisles.

"You're scum," said the left face.

"You're the reason no one trusts your precious law."

"You're a criminal. And you know what you deserve."

From somewhere in the shadow-shrouded depths of the canopy, a single rope dropped, with a noose at the end.

"Yes," admitted the burned and twisted head, clenching its matching right hand. "I know."

The left hand rose, lifted, and settled the loop of rope over the head on the right, whose scars twisted in a bitter smirk. "A fine hempen collar you've found me," Harvey said.

"A fine necktie you've earned," retorted Harvey, and his finely-cut lips tightened as a ripple of nervous laughter rippled through the crowd. They weren't laughing at his repetition, though. They were laughing because, behind him, a second patient rope had fallen out of the dark. Dramatic irony is a fine thing, when you're outside of it.

"Mm. But there's something you forgot," said the monstrous head, slipknot swinging against its left cheekbone.

Handsome long-lashed eyes narrowed. "What?"

"Where I go, so do you." Fast as thought, the burn-scarred hand lashed out, looped the other noose around the other neck.

He stepped off the stage.

It took skill enough to hang the usual one-necked sort of man properly, efficiently, with minimal strangulation and suffering, but the knots were true and the measure of rope must have been perfect, and two sharp cracks rang out as two spines broke. Two boots kicked for seconds only, and were still.

The unseen presence in the lofts hoisted Harvey out of sight to deafening cheers.

"Hangman's done," Jokester said to the crowd, when the noise had begun to die. "Constable too, and I am the Clown. Anyone sending me a Devil?"

Everyone laughed again, and then the Big Top fell silent as though a cleaver had bitten into sound, and the ringmaster knew he should not have made that reckless invitation. The story was allowed to end without the devil. He should have let it.

He turned.

On Harvey's abandoned platform fell a single narrow, weak beam, and just out of its circle of light lurked a presence, black and brooding.

A smile touched the ringleader's red red mouth, and his voice when he spoke was as soft as it ever had been, since the footlights had first been lit. "So you came."

"Always," said the darkness.

(Hello, darkness, my old friend…)

He narrowed his eyes. "Come out where I can see you. It's only fair."

"'Fair,'" replied the thing in shadow, as though the word were goods of dubious provenance, offered in barter.

"Well, it's only just, then. They're the same thing, most of the time."

"You think so?" The inky blackness that hung all around stirred, and then obligingly invaded the spotlight below the hanged-man's noose, and now it had an outline, at least. It was where the light was not. Towering blackness, smooth with threat, crowned with two sharp horns.

Ah, the ringleader thought. Yes.

Of course.

He wasn't sure how long he stood, in his spotlight at the end of all things, as the audience's whispers faded, watching the Devil loom, but sooner or later he found his face bending into a frown. As much as it could.

Something was…something was wrong. Everything was wrong.

He stepped into the dark outside his spotlight, and now the audience—fallen silent, as if they were all holding their breaths—couldn't see him, but he could feel the weight of the Devil's regard all the more heavily. "This is wrong," he whispered, and felt stronger for it. Stronger, but less ready to laugh, and that—that had never really happened before.

Had it?

Another step, and he stumbled over something in his path. Something heavy, and soft, that rolled a little with a sound like thff, and then the smell of blood hit and suddenly he could see the thing that had tripped him. Jason, lying in the sawdust again, broken and bloody as though from another, worse fall, and this time flesh and bone wasn't flowing back together. He wasn't healing. He lay cold.

Jokester staggered back, to the sound of the gallows creaking somewhere above as Harvey swung gently, and his eyes landed on the central tent pole and there was Ed, impaled spread-eagled with a dozen spikes and his hat slipped down over his eyes but it didn't matter, because J still knew they were gone—gouged out, pecked by ravens, didn't matter, gone. And there was Waylon's empty skin, lying piled and hollow like someone's exotic trophy, and that withered pale rocking thing, was that was Pam would become if she was denied the sunlight long enough? And lying somewhere in the dark was…was….

Just before his knees hit the ground, he caught himself, swaying. Took a breath of air that no longer smelled of popcorn or sawdust or paint, only death; set his teeth, and mounted the steps to the gallows. Stared into the small patch of nearly-white that hung in the middle of the devil-dark. Everyone was gone. The night had taken them. (My fault) whispered his heart in darkness, and he could have torn it out with his own hands if he had been sure it was true.

"This is a nightmare," he said firmly. Saying it like he knew it was so could help him learn to believe.

"Foolish clown," replied the pillar of night. "You know already." He reached out with one great cold hand, claws pricking against Jokester's jawline as the Devil held his head in place. Judge's thin lips curled scornfully.

" You've always been the nightmare. "

And now the darkness was rearing up, on every side. It had swallowed his audience, it had swallowed the ring, it had swallowed the gory column that held up the world and the spotlight he'd left behind him and everyone he'd left in it, and now it folded in, around the two of them, alone.

"Are you afraid?" the voice was asking. "You pathetic little weasel, you sad little jokester. Are you afraid yet?"

No, he shouted, soundlessly, backing it with a wild cackle but now, for the first time, it was a lie, and he tasted that night in the chemical plant, iron and acid. (He would always fall. The night would always win. There was no bright madness that burned too hot to be snuffed out, not even the most wildly flickering star.)

And it didn't matter if he was scared, he knew how to keep living through that, through anything, Arkham had taught him about surviving fear, and holding on then had led to the best thing ever, so now he had to hold on for all the people who counted on him.

Except no, he remembered, and his hold on the wrinkling night faltered. Because no one was counting on him, because he'd used them all up and thrown them away, lost them by feeding them to the dark for the sake of an audience who thought it was all such a laugh, because—

"Daddy?" he remembered. And. Red and gold. Red and gold and black.

Red. And black.

And.

.

…

....

?

Chapter Text

"Are you scared?" someone was asking, and he instinctively bared his teeth in his nastiest grin, but no, come to think of it, that wasn't a gloating voice after all.

It was kind of…stunned. And worried. J drew a breath that shuddered into his chest. He didn't like being scared. He did not like being scared. But what was even worse? Was scaring people. People who hadn't done anything wrong.

"Not really," he lied. It wasn't his best effort in the arena of lying. He was actually a pretty good liar. Given time to mentally rehearse, at least. But. Well. He didn't have that much practice pretending not to be scared. He was much better at faking scared-ness. His voice as he told this lie did a shaking thing that he had been aware voices did but it sounded really strange from him and this really wasn't working. He was flat on his back with his heart going like a marathon and, and hyperventilating. Because. Because something bad that he didn't know what and he was not going to whimper. Not.

The worst part was he was completely sure something bad had already happened, and was probably going to go on happening, and it was his fault, and he didn't know what he could do about it but he could at least not whimper.

"M'okay," he tried, with a lot less shaking. If he could just get his breath normal. He could fake it. He couldn't remember what he was so scared of but the worried person probably needed help. He could help. He was supposed to make people smile. Any second now he'd get up, and make sure they didn't have anything to worry about.

Something—someone—moved sharply in the undefined space outside his eyelids, and he flinched back against the—pillow?—eyes flying open in the now-desperate need to see his doom coming at him, but all he got was a blurred silhouette looming before the blinding spears of light slammed into his corneas with such agony that they were closed again and buried in the crook of his elbow before J was personally consulted on the matter.

Not good. Notgoodnotgood, and then there was a hand closing on his shoulder and no.

He wrenched free, scrambled back over the pillow until his back hit a wall, which was sub-optimal in terms of the way a little voice in his head started screaming about being cornered and blind but at least he hadn't fallen off anything and now he had something at his back. It was cool and solid and non-threatening.

Only after the maneuver was complete did it occur to him that grabbing-person was, logically, probably worried-person, and therefore possibly not out to get him. Was that panicking? He wasn't exactly renowned for thinking things through but having his ability to think at all just leave like that…great, now he was scared of being scared. This was just hilarious. (Actually it wasn't nearly as funny as it should be, which was like half the problem.)

Water running for a few seconds, in another room. Voices. He couldn't make out any words. That worried note was in one of them, but no one sounded scared.

"Panic is bad," he said. His voice didn't shake but it was very small, like he'd spent a long time crying. He didn't remember crying.

"A little not good." Cautious agreement was…pretty non-threatening. Not as good as his nice cool wall, but something. "Uh, you okay?"

It was such a stupid question J just huddled there against his wall, shaking slightly, for several rib-battering heartbeats before letting out a thin, hysterical titter. "Okay?" he repeated. "Okay?"

"Alright, sorry, dumb question," said the voice. Which was Ed's, he realized suddenly, with a sharp release of tension.

"Ed," he said. Eddie was okay. Trustworthy. And he'd barely been there at the circus at all—

Every muscle in his body seized up.

The circus.

He was going to throw up.

Nope. Nothing in his stomach.

"Hey, J, buddy, there's a bucket right here, it's fine." Hand on his back, drawing hesitant circles and turning him toward the bucket, but J shook his head and pulled away, getting his back safely against the wall again. Gagging over with; no mess. He must not've eaten recently. He might not ever eat again.

For a moment he flashed to how hunger strikes were dealt with in Arkham, but he wasn't there, no matter how much it felt like it, because Eddie was here. But—he remembered—

Cautiously, he bent his elbow enough to partly expose his left eye, and squinted. Someone had turned down the lights, but they still hurt. Ed was turned away from him, fussing with the bucket. J swallowed. His throat was very dry. "Look at me," he demanded.

Instant compliance. Worried, button-bright eyes fixed on the tiny sliver of his. J sank back against the wall in relief. No staring pits. No gore. He let his burning left eye slide shut and buried his face in his own elbow again. "You're alive."

"Yeah, I—we got out fine, J. The ones that were after you got smaller doses, and we knocked the rest out long enough to grab you and grab the most important stuff. Basil's down breaking the rest out of impound with some of the guys."

J fixed on the part of that he understood. "Basil's back?"

"Yeah, he turned up while we were all freaking out about your coma." There was a note of accusation in the last word, a sort of do you understand how much you worried us? It was comforting in its familiarity.

"Gotta get him t'stay this time," J asserted blurrily.

"He thinks we just want him for his powers."

"Don't forget his scint'lating acting abilities."

"Heh. Those too." Ed's chuckle was halfhearted, and he followed it with a sigh. "I'm going to go get you some water, okay? And I'll tell everyone you're awake. And okay. More or less."

"Wait!" J sat up straighter, giving up the pressure of the wall in his urgency at being left alone. "What happened?"

"Oh. Oh, hell, J, I'm sorry."

"What?"

"Ssh, nothing that bad, just listen. You remember our base in the old middle school? We got hit by SWAT. Got a bullshit tip about drug dealers holing up there."

"Yeah?" That sounded familiar. "They…had grenades?"

"Uh-huh. They blew up Jon's lab with you in it."

J rolled his shoulders a little. "I got blown up?"

This didn't feel like that, exactly—his skin felt a little too tight, sort of like it had when he was healing from the acid, and there were definite bruises and a lot of small, stinging-sharp new cuts that had to be from all that shattered glass he suddenly remembered hearing, but none of the all-over ache that usually came with the sharp press of an explosion knocking a few hundred pounds of air into you all at once. And no burns.

"No, ugh, sorry, you know me, I am the worst at communicating, why did you wake up on my shift. You did not get blown up," Ed clarified, over the sound of an opening door.

"Though not for lack of trying by certain idiots." The new voice almost made J open his eyes again, but he decided to save that up. He knew the voice; it was Harvey. If another Harvey started talking too, then…he wasn't sure what. But he couldn't get the image of Harvey as a two-headed sideshow attraction out of his head and wasn't about to look yet, just in case. He kept expecting to hear a creaking rope. "They think they're after meth cookers, see a chem lab, and don't think 'gosh, this room might blow up if things get smashed and set on fire.'"

"But Strawman was not cooking meth, and therefore all they did was release three different powerful psychoactive substances into the air," Enigma concluded. "So basically, what happened is you got hit with Jon's very-scary stuff, mixed with a few of his other things. Which is why the screaming and the panicking, if you were wondering whether you'd gone crazier."

The fear gas. Yeah. Jon liked to use that when he went out alone, especially. The Owl controlled his guys with fear; all you had to do to get most of them to break and run was be scarier. Jon was really, really good at being scary without hurting anyone, but even he wouldn't be able to scare off hardened criminals without the gas. Wafting a weaker dose over a group they were all going up against was a handy way to undermine morale, too, since he'd come up with antidotes to protect them.

One problem. "Doesn't work on me," Jokester mumbled.

It never had. Made him a tad bit jumpy, like way too much caffeine at once, and made anything at all funny shoot up to absotively-posilutely-gosh-darn-hilarious, but it'd never made him scared.

"You've never been given a lethal dose before," said Harvey practically. "Not to mention the soporific putting you under while you processed it. You should be fine, if you give it some time."

J swallowed, and nodded, and grappled with the immediate outrageous fear that he would never stop feeling afraid. If that did happen, he would learn to cope. Jon did it. It was a thing people could do. He could be brave. He could.

"Mister J?" said a voice like pale honey, and suddenly there was nothing in his head but the cold kick of the gun in his hand, the high, ringing laughter, those bluish-greenish eyes blinking in bewildered innocence.

Why would he do that. Why?

"—hey, hey, you big dumb eggplant, I'm here, come on, it's okay, you're okay."

It was Harley, her sweet voice and her careful little hands, trying to get him to uncurl out of the ball of misery he'd become, but he knew it couldn't be.

"Whatever you're thinking, honeybunches, it's not true."

"Unless you're thinking you married somebody who calls you names like 'honeybunches,' in which case I'm afraid it's completely real," said Ed. Which threw off J's crying jag a little, because he was pretty sure Ed had been real, but…hang on, wait… "Hey, he was getting hysterical about random things earlier," Ed defended himself. "He is drugged to his purely-proverbial gills. It could be anything."

"I do not believe for one second that you honestly think he's curled up weeping over my cutesy nicknames," Harley said, and by this point J had raised his head and opened his eyes. Harley still had one hand on his shoulder where she was kneeling next to him, but she was twisted around the better to hiss at Ed.

"Q," he said. It came out breathy but mostly calm, and he had all her attention right away. His hand was on her wrist, and she was so real. "You're okay." He swallowed. "Where's El?"

"She's okay too, J," his wife assured him, other hand coming up to run through his hair. "She's just downstairs."

Hearing it wasn't enough. "Can she come up?"

Doctor Q bit her lip. "Can you promise not to start crying again? She's already scared enough."

"I'm okay," he promised, and he was, because Harley was real, and sweet as she was she wouldn't be acting like this if he'd hurt Ella. "I just need to see her."

Harley contemplated him narrowly for a few seconds before giving a sharp nod. Harvey, hovering near the end of the bed where a door hung half-open, promptly dispatched himself to the fetching, and came back less than a minute later, followed by Waylon with their little girl perched in the crook of one arm.

Her face lit up, and she took a flying leap from Croc's arms onto the mattress, and half-bounced, half-scampered up to her parents. "You're okay, Daddy?" she asked, and without waiting for his answer reached out to trace one of the tear-tracks on his cheek.

Swallowing, J beamed. "I'm already starting to be swell, Princess Sugarplum," he promised.

Ella considered this, accepted it, nodded. "Good," she declared, and flopped down against his side, tugging impatiently on her mother's arm. Harley let herself be tugged, and Ella gave a contented little sigh as they leaned together, shoulders touching, and she could snuggle into the warm triangle between.

"Looks like we can clear out then," said Ed, though he was actually walking away from the door—oh, he'd left a book on the bedside table. Must have been reading while he took his turn waiting on J to wake up.

"Hey," J asked, as Harley's head sank onto his shoulder and he let his cheek lie against her hair, "what's a surefire way to get into the circus?"

Ed gave a little huff, sharing a speaking look across the mattress at Harvey, who was placing a glass of water carefully on the less-rickety table on that side. "Buy a ticket, J; you asked me that one already."

Heh.

The bed was a queen, and tucked together in the middle around Ella they seemed to have simply oodles of space. Jokester and Harlequin shared a look, and matching wicked grins, and then simultaneously turned and grabbed.

"No, no no no no," Eddie insisted, but in a longsuffering way that was accompanied by zero serious attempts to shake off Harley's grip, and was clearly just to keep up appearances. Once she'd successfully tugged him down, though, he kicked off his shoes, swung his feet up, and made himself comfortable. Obviously he had nothing better to do.

Harvey didn't say anything, and put up even less of a fight, but sank down onto the other edge of the bed with a sort of resignation. J kept hold of his shirt as a precaution as he snuggled back into place and fixed Waylon, just inside the door and out of reach, with an expectant look.

"I'm not gonna participate in breaking your bed," Waylon growled, folding his mighty arms. Since he'd weighed near about four hundred pounds at last count, he might have a good point. He generally had a pretty good sense of what furniture could and could not handle him.

"Air hug!" Ella announced, flinging her arms wide and bopping J in the nose. Best punch to the nose ever.

Waylon cracked a smile, the kind that showed teeth, and gave a less exuberant but wholehearted return version of the gesture. Their little girl had the whole team wrapped around her adorable little fingers, didn't she just. Awwwww. "I'll go tell the rest of your devoted fanbase that you're fine," Waylon dismissed himself, entirely amused.

"Tell Pam too!" J called after him, which netted him four laughs, including the one from Ella who probably didn't quite get the joke.

Harvey had once again been silent, which was not to be borne, and J made a revenge attack in the form of a tickle. Harvey was down to his shirtsleeves, which left him vulnerable, since he wasn't ticklish on the stomach or under the chin or anywhere that didn't come in pairs. Their resident lawyer doubled up, hooting and burbling with a total loss of dignity, but merely slapping J's hands away instead of counterattacking or trying to pin him down, which might be one of the perks of a sickbed, but also maybe not.

Harvey finally escaped by sliding off the side of the bed onto the floor, and J pulled away from his best girls enough to lean after him. "You had better not be thinking like it's your fault I got hurt," he whispered.

Harvey looked away, which was a ridiculously blatant tell. Clearly he wasn't even trying; Harvey was a great liar when he tried. Lawyer. "I let you handle them alone."

"Which was my idea, and which I was doing just fine, until I let myself get cornered in the drug lab by guys I knew were throwing concussion grenades at me. That's on me, and SWAT. It's not even on Jon, let alone you." He held out his hand, and waited. Some gestures, you could force people to accept, especially people who had trouble believing in offers of affection. But others, you really really couldn't.

Harvey sighed a little, and looked up, and smiled. "You'll have to tell him that," he said, and took J's hand.

"I will," J agreed, hauling his buddy back into the snuggle pile, his side plastered once again along Harley's. Jon was a ridiculous person to hug, all bones and uncertainty, but if he came up here he was getting press-ganged too, and if not J would catch him later. Ella sunk her weight into him pointedly, as if to direct her dad-pillow to stop squirming. Awwww.

He glanced left to Harley, who now had Ed slumped against her with his head on her shoulder and looking halfway to asleep, and found she was looking toward the door again.

He followed the look, and there was Jason hovering in the doorway, not hiding well at all how worried he was and how he'd needed to see with his own peepers that J was awake and alive and no crazier than usual. (It was adorable, and really funny in a way that was only a little heartbreaking, how bad Jason was at hiding his feelings any way but going full-on Talon. Go big or go home, that was their Jaybird.) J grinned. It was mutual, because there the kid was, not smashed up or broken at all, let alone cold and still.

"Hey, sonny boy," he said. "Come get yer cuddle on, huh?"

"Oh god no," Jason groaned, shaking his head at them. "I think you've got this covered."

"Plenty of space left," J argued, indicating with his feet, and then looked plaintive and ailing until Jason grumbled deep in his throat and dropped down to sit in the neighborhood of his left leg. There was in fact plenty of space, what with him and Harley in a half-sit against the wall, and J had to reach a little to press his bare foot up against Jason's knee.

"Oh, not just in the bed, you're gonna play human octopus," Jason complained, but then he flopped over sideways so J's calf lay straight along his back, so it must be okay. "Don't do that, you asshole," he muttered. "Everyone was worried sick. Again."

J smiled. The shivery feeling down inside was still there, but it was starting to fade, and in the meantime he had warm, alive, safe family all around him. He wished he could fit everybody he cared about into one room. "Sorry," he said quietly. Harley's hand uncurled from Ella to give his leg an affectionate squeeze, and he felt his smile finally coming back for real.

If his nightmare meant anything, it was that somewhere down deep he was afraid…not just of his people getting hurt, not just of watching them suffer, but that they'd get damaged and it would be his fault. He'd never wanted to be a leader, didn't like the idea of bossing people around or being responsible for what they did, but as Edna had said the very first time he complained, if he wanted to not be ringleader he was doing a very bad job at working to get what he wanted.

He'd talked Ed and Harvey into this; Harley had pretty much followed him into it; Waylon wouldn't have been putting himself in Owlman's way if he hadn't fallen in with J, and part of him shared Harley's concern that by keeping Jason with them instead of finding him a safe family a long way away to relearn normal with they were just taking advantage. And the danger Ella was in, as their daughter….

But except for Ella, they'd all made their own choices. It was unfair to them to hold himself responsible, and…whatever happened, he knew he wouldn't ever stand there and laugh at their tears. Talk about ridiculous fears.

You've always been the nightmare, whispered the voice that was not exactly Owlman's, and he shivered a little, and held his family tight.