Archive of Our Own ^beta

Everything is tinged green when he wakes. Caught somewhere between night vision and the toxic tint of the Pit.

Jason blinks up at what he thinks is the ceiling. All there is, is darkness. But he’s lying on the ground – he digs his fingers down, nails scrapping painfully against concrete and, yep, that’s ground, that’s horizontal. He’s lying on the ground, which means what’s above him is the ceiling. The ceiling he can’t see. He frowns and smacks his lips, tasting something foul on the back of his tongue.

Nausea sinks its claws into him as he rolls over and clambers to his feet, swaying as the green tinged world spins around him. He groans and closes his eyes, breathing slowly through his nose to push down the rising bile. Huh, even the inside of his eyelids are tinged green.

He breathes and smells stale air, a faint whiff of the sickly-sweet scent of decaying flowers, the acidic sting of Gotham. Okay, that’s good. He’s still in Gotham. Jason can’t see walls, but he knows they’re there. His breathing echoes oddly, muffled and elongated. They bounce off the walls and come back to him, ringing in his ears. Jason covers them, presses his palms down tightly, just for a moment. Just. Just for a moment.

Jason tries to take a step forward and his knee buckles. He throws out a hand to catch himself and smacks it against a concrete wall way too fucking hard. His swears are explosive in the too small space. A hallways stretches in front and behind him, the walls on either side pressing in and in and in. He sucks in a sharp breath, his heart kicking up a notch.

No. No. Calm down. Calm the fuck down. This is fine. There is space, even if his brain wants to pretend there’s not. He can walk forward. He can walk backward. Stumbling, staggering steps, but it’s walking. He can walk.

Jason keeps a hand on the wall as he goes forward, using it as a crutch as much as he’s using it as a guide. He feels like he’s coming out of alignment with his body. His soul detaching and hovering just out of sync. He takes a step and doesn’t register it hitting the ground. He drags his hand along the wall and doesn’t react to the blood slowly beading up from shallow scrapes.

Crimson dribbles down his wrist and off his elbow, leaving a breadcrumb trail of redredred droplets. So red, so dark, that with the green light, they come out black.

Fog or smoke or, or something curls like ghosts, like will-o-wisps, glowing toxic green and lingering just out of reach. He steps through and they scatter, surging back just behind him like a vacuum follows in his wake.

Jason stops at a T intersection. Left or right. He lingers on the corner, reminding himself to breathe. Something skitters to the left, rat claws scrabbling at the ground, high pitched squeaking echoing, swelling. He shudders, swallows thickly, thinks about rats and scavenging and bodies left to decay and rot and alone, alone, alone, little rats nibbling on their fingers and toes. He hunches over, gagging, and fire blooms in his chest, crawling up to wrap around his throat. He clutches at it as his stomach turns and he gasps for air.

Sweat slicks down his face, drenches his shirt. A cold breeze blows from the right. So, the right he takes. One wavering step at a time.

—

Nightwing finds his helmet. Shiny and red and half its face shattered, pieces scattered around like drops of blood. He presses his lips together as he gingerly picks it up, cradling it carefully between his hands. He peers inside and there’s no visible blood. Something like relief makes him feel floaty. The shattered front isn’t great news, but the fact the rest of it is intact and there’s no blood is at least not-bad news.

A click over the comm as Batgirl joins the line. Nightwing sighs heavily. He presses his fingers to his ear even though he doesn’t need to. “Found his helmet,” he relays. “Over near Madame Tian’s.”

“…but that’s in Chinatown,” Tim says, the confused frown audible in his voice. “What was he doing all the way over there?”

“Who knows,” Oracle responds. Her voice modulator is on despite that they’re all family, but Dick knows she’s just using it to cover up her unease. “His tracker was still on, that’s how I was able to find it.”

There’s a sound, a little noise of triumph then Spoiler comes in with, “I found his jacket. Over in The Bowery in the alley of 5^th and Conroy.”

“That makes more sense. He said he had a case there.”

Dick tucks the helmet under his arm and grapples up to the roof where Robin scans the skyline as he waits. His lips are twisted in that little frown he gets when he’s worried and trying to seem like he doesn’t care. He hands over the helmet and Damian hesitates before he takes it. He wraps his arms around it, hugging it to his chest, and continues his slow scan, looking for anything suspicious.

“Found his kris,” Cass says. “Grand Avenue.”

Dick stares at the helmet in Damian’s arms. “Why scatter his stuff?”

“Come over to the Clocktower, N,” Oracle says before they can start speculating. “Something’s blocking me from the cowl footage. I’ll have to get a hardline in.”

—

Laughter. Bright, maniacal laughter.

Jason ducks his head and the blow of the crowbar never comes. He peers through his eyelashes, keeps his body curled in. Squinting through the green, the fog, the curling smoke, an indistinct figure dashes across the next T intersection. He lurches, words stuck in his throat, and nearly crashes to the ground as his knee buckles again. Jason sags against the wall, clutching at his leg.

It hurts, but it’s muted, trapped behind a veil of a hazy mind. He blinks and there’s blood soaking through his jeans, spilling over his hands, his ankle is twisted the wrongwrongwrong way. A scream catches between his teeth as his shoulder jerks and pops and he collapses to the ground, something in his chest giving way with a crack.

So, let’s try to clear this up, okay, pumpkin? and he moans around blood in his throat, flooding his lungs, dribbling over his chin.

Footsteps, quiet and unsure. The sound of a young Bat sneaking into unknown territory. Too small to be, to be – Jason tilts his head and Robin stares back at him.

“Is this what happens when I die?” he whispers, all soft and shivery in the way ghosts are.

Jason grins with bloody teeth. “Every time, kid,” he croaks out. (In his dreams.) Robin collapses down with a scream, broken and crackling. (In his nightmares.) His head snaps to the side, blood flying, his shoulder drops and pops, his chest caves in, his ankle turns the wrongwrongwrong way. “Every damn time.” (In those little moments he can never stop.)

Robin sobs around the blood in his throat, flooding his lungs, dribbling over his chin. Jason stands on shaky legs and walks away, leaving the little broken bird behind. His cries slow and then die off with a low moan that could be resignation, could be fear, could be everything and nothing all at once. Jason doesn’t remember.

He goes left this time, follows on the heels of a cape snapping in the shadows.

—

They cluster around Barbara’s monitor in various states of suited up.

Stephanie lingers on the edge of the group, Jason’s jacket in her hands. She frowns at the leather, scanning it up and down, checking seams and restitched seams, opening pockets, poking around the lining. She knows that his jacket is every part of his suit as much as his helmet is. For all that it seems like a normal leather jacket, it’s been reinforced up the wazoo, putting it on par with their capes and chest armor, but more like Nightwing’s suit to make it flexible enough.

There’s something wrong with this one. She can’t quite put her finger on it.

Dick leans his hip against Babs’s desk, arms crossed, red, irritated lines on his face from where he took off his domino without waiting for the solvent to soak all the way through. Damian is still fully suited up, sitting on the couch with his blunted katana resting across his lap. Tim leans over Babs’s shoulder, pointing at something on her screen that she’s navigating to. Cass watches Steph, brows furrowed and a frown on her lips.

“What is wrong?” she asks, coming closer.

Steph shakes the jacket. “I don’t know,” she admits. She hands the jacket over when asked, one of the sleeves sliding through her grip. “I feel like I’m missing something.”

Damian snorts, startling them both. “We are all missing something, Brown,” and he doesn’t sound sneering or arrogant. Steph suppresses the fond little smile that definitely would get her stabbed. There’s something tired and worried in his voice, echoing the rest of them. He’s not looking at them and is instead squinting between bodies at the monitor.

Cass taps her inner elbow, drawing her attention. Steph turns back to her and blinks at the jacket laid out in her arms. It still looks normal – and then, she sees it, framed by Cass’s fingers.

A little hole. The tiniest little hole ever. Easily missed, but in a jacket that’s so well cared for the restitched seams are almost indistinguishable from the original seams, it’s like a light in the darkness. Leave it to Cass to be the one who finds it, of course.

It goes all the way through. The lining is darker there. She pulls the sleeve inside out. Blood. Not a lot. But definitely blood. She rubs her thumb over it. Dried. Steph swallows and tries not to think about how thick the needle would’ve been to make it through reinforced leather.

—

Footsteps. Dancing on their toes. The bodies twirl around him, never blocking him from his forward shuffle. Their necks bent unnaturally, their wrists flop with every graceful rise of their arms. Their expression open and unseeing, the milky film of death in their eyes. Red and green and yellow. Black and blue. Purple. Yellow. Gold. Grey. Black. Black. Mouths slack. Throats slit, wide and gaping, a maw of darkness and void, bloodless. The flutter of a cape, the reveal of a punched-out hole in a chest; small in the back, blown wide through the front. A coward’s shot.

Jason looks away – and the next one is the same. There’s no direction he can look in that will show him something else. His family dances around him, dead and gone. And he did that. There’s blood on his hands, spilling hot over his wrists. His shoes squelch with each step, blood red footprints left in his wake. An arm brushes against his, cold, ice cold. Freezing like hell. Stealing his breath, wrapping around his lungs, and squeezing.

“You did this,” a voice says. Jason doesn’t look. Breaths brush along his ear, fingers crawl over his shoulders and settle around his throat. “You were always going to do this. A monster. A killer. An attack dog who couldn’t follow orders. They aren’t your family. We’re your victims.”

The ghost that is Dick – Dick dead. Dick with blood spilling over his lips, staining his teeth. Dick with blood coating his front. The ghost, he brushes his cheek against Jason’s, smearing cold blood on his skin.

Jason closes his eyes, his breaths shuddery and broken. “I’m sorry,” he chokes out.

“You always are,” Dick hums. “You always are, little wing. And yet that didn’t stop you. That will never stop you. You’ll do it again and again and again…” and the words repeat in his ear, soft and low, echoing in his head, echoing down the hallway.

“Please,” Jason begs – to who, to what – he turns the corner and Dick doesn’t follow. He can’t look back, he can’t look back and see – and he looks anyway, hoping, hoping –

Dick stares at him, engulfed by shadow. His face pale, his eyes wide and unseeing yet staring in his direction. His lips stretch and stretch, dark, black blood spilling over his smile. Tim appears, neck torn wide from side to side. Damian with his stomach a mess of blood and guts, hunched and trembling. Stephanie, the side of her face caved in. Cass, her neck twisted.

Bruce, his chest punched in one, two – five shots. Overkill. Jason swallows back bile and fails miserably. He drops to his knees, eyes squeezed shut as he vomits. Acidic and burning up his throat. He chokes on it, gags and coughs, hand braced on the wall in front of him to keep him from falling into the puddle.

Jason stays there, trembling, shivering as sweat cools on his skin.

—

The cowl footage is grainy and staticky, disorientated in places that causes the recording to fuzz out. Barbara tries to fix it, but time isn’t on their side – when is it ever really – so she holds her breath and hopes it gives them enough information.

Red Hood runs across rooftops, muttering to himself. Unimportant things – his plans for later, his grocery list, something about setting up a couple kids in a shelter, details about a case – but then the camera suddenly swings around and he’s dropping into an alleyway, a drawl to this words he only gets when he’s entertained. The men who’d been harassing a woman in that alley startle like rabbits and, yeah, she can see why he would be entertained by their reactions. From her left, Steph lets out a snort.

It seems like a normal take down. The men offer up laughable resistance and Jason doesn’t hold back when he beats them down. The woman stays curled against the dumpster, shaking and shivering, her face a mess of make up and tears. Her clothes are ripped, one sleeve hanging low on her arm, and she cowers when Jason approaches slowly. He stops, hands up in the air, his words soft and comforting.

The woman eyes him and something in her expression has Cass grabbing Barbara’s arm in a tight grip. She doesn’t look over at the current Batgirl, but Cass speaks anyway. A simple, single word.

“Lying,” she hisses.

And Babs can see it. Can see the fear slide into faux guilt then turn into ruthless satisfaction as the camera jerks, like Jason’s been hit from behind. The screen smears as he falls, as he twists around to face his attackers. He staggers, everything tilts to the side. He drops to his knees then to the ground.

There’s boots, scuffed, a common brand. Low, indistinct voices. Hands, flitting in front of the camera, wrapping around Jason’s helmet. The camera moves and turns, revealing Jason curled up on the ground, face slack in unconsciousness.

And then the camera is rushing up to meet the ground – over and over again, broken pieces flying everywhere, until the camera shorts out.

—

Jason limps, phantom pains clamping down on his knee like a bear trap, slowing him down no matter how hard he tries to move quickly. He wants to run. Run so fast his lungs burn and his vision blurs. He’s tired of turning corners and finding nightmares. Green swirls up around him, caressing his cheek, dragging along his jaw, and he gasps, sharp and terrified, as a shadow looms in front of him.

He recoils, hand flying up to protect his face, and the fist comes down, cracking his jaw. Jason drops against the wall. Batman is a mass of darkness and shadows; the only break are the two white spots of his eyes. He’s an eldritch horror, a swirling abomination that looms, that makes Jason hunch down into the tiniest ball he can muster with his bulk.

“B,” he rasps out. “Batman – please.”

I tried to teach you what I knew, but you were hopeless, whispers on the wind. Jason shakes his head and scrambles back to his feet. He breaks through the shadow, and it dissipates, letting him barge down the hallway and turn the corner.

The shadow of Batman is there. Taking up the space from wall to wall, stretching taller and taller. Why did I ever believe you could be anything more than a disgrace?

He goes through this one too and it’s cold and lonely, the taste of disappointment heavy on his tongue. There’s laughter – high and maniacal – and that rasping, nightmare of a voice rings out, What hurts more? A? Or B? Forehand? Or backhand?

I should never have recruited you – Batman says, growls in the next turn and Jason sobs. Please, he thinks, I just want this to be over. Make it stop. I thought you could be useful, maybe use you as cannon fodder.

Something rips through him, and he screams, thrown back into the wall. Shrapnel tears through his front, lodges in his ribcage, slices his suit and exposed skin mercilessly. He stays huddled against the wall, cradling his own broken chest in his arms. Wet, hot blood dribbles from his lips. His vision is a grotesque mix of green and red, red, red.

But you can’t even do that right.

There’s no Batman this time. No one is coming to save him. He heaves, shoulders quivering, breaths thick and sobbing.

You were the worst Robin, Bruce says, eyes too bright, disappointment rising up and over Jason’s head, drowning him so deep in the abyss, he doesn’t know how to swim back up. On your best day, you’re nothing more than a killer.

Now, you’re just nothing.

—

Damian finds – or doesn’t find – the key piece. He stares at Oracle’s monitor, mouth pulled down into a frown. We are all missing something, Brown, he had said. He takes Todd’s helmet from the table, turning it in his hands. Inside is empty, no blood, and he pretends he’s not relieved by it. He pokes the area where Todd’s ear would rest and feels nothing. Tries the other side. Nothing.

He has handled many of Todd’s helmets before. They all have. Damian knows there are different versions, different designs. Some have bombs. Some have more intricate locks. Some are sculpted differently.

Some have comms.

And some, like this one, don’t.

The tracker Oracle had pinpointed was a completely different part of the helmet. He tears through the padding and finds the blinking electronic. To be safe, he pulls apart the padding around the ears as well even though he knows this particular helmet is made for muffling gunshots, which means Todd generally uses an in-ear comm unit.

One he might still have.

The question that remains is: why hasn’t Oracle tracked that down yet?

Gordon stares at him. There are shadows under her eyes that weren’t there yesterday, a paleness to her face that makes her look sickly. Todd has been missing for twenty-two hours and no one has slept. He offers the helmet to her, and she takes it with trembling hands.

“I pay attention,” he says wearily.

She snorts and reaches out, hesitating. When he doesn’t pull away, she ruffles his hair in the same manner Richard does. Damian doesn’t lean into it, he swears, and he ignores the smile on Gordon’s lips.

The smile turns back into a thin line, steel enters her eyes. She sets the helmet to the side; her fingers move to her keyboard. Everyone else is on the streets, looking for more of Todd’s gear and for evidence of his location or attackers. It is just him and Gordon when she pulls up the tracking information and swears.

“Intermittent,” she murmurs, leaning in close. He nudges her chair tighter against the desk, so her spine isn’t curling as much, and she only hums out a thank out, so focused she is on the faint, slow blink of a tracker. “Underground? Hm.”

Damian watches her triangulate the blip with one hand, the other pressed to her chin. That hand reaches to her headset, something as unmovable as a mountain in her voice as she says, “Okay, team. I think I found him. Gonna need you in the Cauldron. We’re looking for something underground.”

—

Sometimes Jason wonders if he’s broken. As he sits there, panting and gasping, tears on his cheeks, blood dripping from his palms where his nails dig and tear, he feels like he shouldn’t wonder anymore. He is broken. Irrevocably broken. Before the Pit. Before the Joker. Jason was just born broken.

Footsteps. He closes his eyes and tries to breathe around the ragged jerks of his chest. The whoosh of a cape. The rough pull of Kevlar as the figure slides down the wall to settle next to him. He tilts his head back and can’t breathe and, for a moment, he’s okay with that – but then he lets his head fall to the side, knocking it against the head that barely comes to his shoulder.

“Is this what I become?” Robin asks. Jason doesn’t need clarification. “Maybe I was better off dead.”

Jason opens his eyes and stares off to the middle distance, eyes unfocused and shiny. A figure stands in the whirls of green – broad shoulders, stance wide. There’s no tremble to his hand as he raises his gun, points the muzzle to his own head. Jason flinches when the gunshot rings out, thundering loudly in the hallway.

He drops down to the side, crushing the kid under his weight, and Robin doesn’t make a sound, already fading in a smear of blood and tears and shrapnel, drowning in acid green, coming out as a different person with all his physical hurts mended, but still so, so broken.

He laughs into the concrete, tasting blood, scraping his face raw as he shakes his head.

“Yeah, maybe, kid,” he says. “Maybe I was.”

—

Tim sucks in a breath when he spots it. “Rebreathers,” he whispers. “This place is flooded with fear gas.”

He hears Nightwing swear uncharacteristically loud then the echoing movement as everyone straps on their masks. Green clouds part around his feet, drifting lazily with nowhere to go. It’s concentrated on the ground, dense and heavy, but it’s floating up near his head, disappearing towards the ceiling he can’t see in the darkness.

Already he’s running probabilities of this being an unknown strain and comes out with: unlikely. Crane has been in Arkham for months now and even though he likes to dabble with new strains all the time, most of what he leaves his lackeys is old school stuff. He also doubts this scheme is a Scarecrow one, but he doesn’t file that option away just yet.

There’s too much green in the air. He pulls out a penlight and clicks it on. The concrete walls are dark and grimy from years of neglect. He frowns, what’s the point of this place? It’s not the sewers. It’s not one of the tunnels to the Batcave. The walls are too smooth to be natural and are definitely concrete.

He touches a spot where the grime has been smeared away then flashes his light to the ground, looking for footprints and finding blood instead. The others had gone left at the T, splitting up even further. Tim goes right, follows the trail of staggering droplets further and further in.

Occasionally he’ll find bigger smears of blood on the wall, dried or congealed. His stomach sinks, his heart flutters in his ribcage. No one else reports finding evidence like this, so he presses his fingers to his ear.

“Go back and take a right at that intersection we found,” he says quietly. His voice still echoes, and it sends a shudder down his spine. “I’m finding blood this way.”

Twenty-two hours. Who knows how far Jason got in that time. Who knows how much fear gas he inhaled with his helmet gone and his gear scattered. He’s practically overdosed on it at this point if he really never made it out of these tunnels. Oh God. This is going to be bad, isn’t it?

It feels like he’s been walking for hours. His breathing too loud in the silence, his blood roaring in his ears. His eyes are slowly adjusting to the dark, to the way his light glints off the fear gas. He wonders if he’s ever going to find Jason at all and that’s – that’s when he hears it.

A sharp, startled gasp. It echoes back to him, bouncing off the walls. Tim hurries forward, doesn’t say anything over the comm, too worried that his voice is going to scare Jason off. The gasp turns into a sob that break out into big, heaving cries.

Jason doesn’t sound like that. Jason shouldn’t sound like that. Tim picks up the pace even more, zeroing in on the sound. Until – Until he finds a dark figure crumpled on the ground, hunched in on himself. Tim skids to a stop, his steps loud, but Jason doesn’t seem to notice him.

He’s on his hands and knees, fingers scrabbling at the ground and even from here he can see the flash of bright, fresh blood welling up from his nails, from the pad of his fingers. Jason shakes his head rapidly, panting with an open mouth as he scratches and scratches and scratches.

Tim’s on him before he even thinks about it, snatching up a wrist just as a fingernail tears off and blood drools down his fingers, over his palm, down his wrist to ooze over Tim’s hand. Jason chokes out something broken and incoherent and doesn’t fight him, teal eyes staring unseen over Tim’s shoulder. His pupils don’t constrict in the penlight, they stay dilated, the black of his pupil leaving only a ring of blue. He pulls the light away, shining off to the left.

“Jason,” Tim says, his voice muffled around the rebreather. “Hey, Jason. You’re okay now. I’ve got you.”

It’s useless. He didn’t actually expect it to work, but Jason’s always had a weird non-reaction to fear toxin, so there was this hope.

Tim grabs his spare rebreather and tries to put it over Jason’s face. He recoils violently, throwing himself against the wall with a sickening crack. He doesn’t react other than to cower, his free hand thrown over his head like he’s expecting a blow that will never come.

Will never come – and yet he flinches, ducking down as if he’s actually been struck. Tim falters, eyes widening behind his domino. He crouches until he’s level with Jason, swallows thickly. He doesn’t know what to do. There’s no point in giving him the antidote with him still breathing in fear gas, but he’s not sure how to get the rebreather on him without him turning violent. Tim might be strong, it comes with the territory, but he’s not strong enough to move an unwilling, high Jason Todd out of a maze of tunnels.

The sounds of the others is a relief. Tim’s shoulders relax and he lets himself actually hope. Jason’s too caught up in whatever he’s seeing, hallucinating, to realize there’s more people suddenly crowding the tunnel. There’s several reactions, but they mostly consist of shocked exclamations and Jason’s name.

Jason stays curled against the wall, shivering, oblivious to it all. His eyes start tracking something unseen, resignation flashing across his expression, a whine breaking from his throat. Whatever noise the rest of them were making suddenly falls silent, subdued.

Dick creeps forward, crouched like Tim is. Tim side-eyes him. Of them all, Dick is the one most likely able to carry Jason only because the height discrepancy isn’t as bad. God, he wishes Bruce was down planet side for this.

“I have an antidote,” Tim says out of the corner of his mouth. “Just gotta get him out of here or a rebreather.” He sees the twist of Dick’s mouth. “I don’t think he sees us.”

A rough noise punches out of Dick and he nods. “Okay,” he whispers. “Okay, okay,” he repeats to himself. “Cass, let me know if he’s gonna bolt, okay? Or anything else you think is important.” Black clad fingers push between them to tap on Dick’s shoulder in acknowledgment.

Dick rolls his shoulders then starts shuffling forward, a litany of soft, soothing words spilling from his lips. Jason doesn’t react at all – or, at least, doesn’t react to Dick. Whatever he’s seen has changed, shifting his expression from fear and his body from cowering, into that resigned look again. His shoulders droop like the weight of the world is being placed on them, his head hanging low. His breathing switches to these quiet, hitching things that sound so wrong.

He covers his face with his hands, smearing more blood along his forehead. Dick is practically on top of him, and he doesn’t move. Slowly, oh-so-slowly, Dick wraps his hands around his wrists and carefully tugs them way. Jason lets him, he drops his arms limply like all his will has left him. With exaggerated movements, Dick pulls his own spare rebreather out and carefully places it to Jason’s face. When he doesn’t flinch, he buckles the straps and tightens them.

Tim waits for Dick’s cue and then he’s moving in just as slow, antidote already in his hand. Jason lists to the side, arms coming up with hug his own chest, his breathing shallow and rapid. He seems too frightened to even move and Tim’s stomach churns at the animal-bright blue of his eyes, trapped in a corner with no way out. He presses the antidote into his bicep, doesn’t stop himself from the urge to thumb soothingly over the injection spot.

“Let’s get you outta here, little wing,” Dick whispers. “Sound good?” He doesn’t wait for the never coming answer. He slides his arms under Jason’s knee, the other around his back, and, with a grunt, he lifts him up in his arms. “Jeez,” he huffs, forced humor in his voice. “How does B do this? You’re, like, pure muscle, Jay.”

Jason, of course, doesn’t answer him. He blinks slowly and then his eyes slide shut; his body goes slack. Steph makes a noise in the back of her throat, lurching before she stops herself.

—

The others reluctantly drift away to their respective beds. Or, if you’re Dick, to the cot they dragged upstairs and set up in Jason’s room. Cassandra stays, though, claiming first shift.

She starts out on the chair, knees folded to her chest, eyes stuck on Jason’s face. Then, she ends up on the bed next to him, legs crossed, her knee pressed against his hip. His brows furrow, his mouth twists. Cass reads fear – no, more than fear. Terror. Anguish. Resignation. She reaches out but hesitates with her hand hovering over where his bandaged fingers tangle in the sheets.

The fear gas is out of his system, Tim had been right about it being an old strain. But the affects are going to linger for a little while longer. She watches his head turn, a tear trickles down his cheek. A nightmare. Her heart aches to comfort him in some way, but she’s not sure how. He wasn’t supposed to be on this level of consciousness yet, enough to have nightmares and to let out gasps of pain and fear. Cass hasn’t chosen this shift for that, but there was some level of comfort for herself that she might miss it and someone with more practice, someone Jason actually hung around with, would be on shift.

If he makes any more noise, Dick will be up in no time flat. Cassandra glances over at his sleeping form. He’d fallen asleep so quickly, exhausted – she can’t, she can’t wake him up. Not when she can do something.

Her hand falls gently on Jason’s, barely a flutter of touch, and he flinches. Cass goes to snatch her hand back, but then he’s twisting, tangling their fingers together despite his injuries. His grip is tight, almost painfully so. She doesn’t pull away.

Instead, she scoots up on the bed until she’s leveled with his chest. She’s seen Dick do this with Damian and Tim, and once with Jason during an awful situation with Ivy’s cuddle pollen. Cass isn’t shaking as she moves and rests her fingers on Jason’s forehead. His nose twitches, his brows furrow, but in a different way. Confused, like his mind can’t decipher the touch, or perhaps the intention.

She doesn’t give his mind time to think. Cass slides her fingers through his hair, scratching his scalp gently around the self-inflicted bruises, tugging on the ends as she swirls her fingers out, then she pets back through.

He leans into the touch even as he whimpers, more tears falling. She shushes him soothingly, presses a bit closer. Jason curls on his side, tucks his face against her thigh. He doesn’t reach for her. Instead, he folds his arms to his chest like he’s trying to keep himself together.

“You are okay, Jay,” she whispers. “I promise.”

Jason chokes a little, shuddering, but he’s calming slowly. She looks up and sees a glint of blue in the darkness, illuminated by the dim lamplight. Dick gives her a wane smile, exhaustion is still there, but so is concern and adoration. She blinks, startled at that second emotion. Adoration? For her? For Jason? The two of them together?

“You didn’t wake me,” Dick says quietly. He creaks up from the cot, standing with a grimace. “I fell asleep for maybe a minute.” He climbs onto the bed next to Jason and stretches out next to his brother, settling against the pillows and closing his eyes with a hum. “Lemme know when you need a break.”

Cass looks down at Jason’s face, his brows smoothed out, his mouth less unhappy. He’s no longer wound up tight and looks to be sleeping. She continues to brush through his hair. “I am alright,” she says. Jason snuffles quietly and moves in closer until he’s practically wrapped around her. She finds that she doesn’t mind. “Go to sleep, Dick.”

Jason doesn’t have another nightmare for the rest of the night.