24/7 procrastinator

Something is wrong.

Jason feels it like a pressure change—subtle, almost polite—but it crawls under his helmet and settles behind his eyes. It hasn’t clicked, not cleanly. Not yet. He hasn’t asked. Hasn’t said a word through the harbor sweep, through the cold iron stink of saltwater and oil and Christmas rot. A small job. The kind that should feel easy. The kind that still manages to choke the air out of his lungs anyway.

Everyone’s moving like the night might shatter if they stop.

Tim keeps choosing his words too carefully, syllables slowed and smoothed like he’s sanding down sharp edges. Dick’s doing that thing where he smiles first and speaks second—but the timing’s off, the warmth a fraction too late, like a recording lagging behind the video. Damian watches Jason more than the perimeter, eyes sharp, calculating, guarded. Stephanie hasn’t joked once. Not even a cheap jab to him, not even under her breath. That alone feels wrong enough to tilt the world sideways.

Bruce didn’t come.

That absence is loud. A hollow where a presence should be, echoing through comms and instinct alike. The Cave, he’d said. As if that explained anything. As if Bruce ever sits things out without a reason that claws.

Cassandra says nothing—but she’s closer. Close enough that Jason can feel her awareness like static along his spine. When the group splits, she falls into step beside him without discussion, without a glance. Just there. Solid. Protective in a way that feels less like trust and more like vigilance. As if she’s guarding him.

That’s when unease really sinks its teeth in.

Bruce didn’t need all of them.

Didn’t need six sets of boots scraping concrete, six heartbeats crowding the same dark. Dick alone could’ve dismantled this whole thing with half the effort. Hell, Jason himself could’ve wrapped it up fast and bloody and been home already. Instead, they’re stacked together, overlapping, slowing each other down like they’re afraid to let him out of their sight.

He agreed because no one argued about his presence. Because no one questioned whether he was needed. Because the silence around that decision felt intentional.

That should’ve been his first real warning.

Between two groups of thugs, he had ducked behind a row of shipping containers, Gotham’s lights bleeding gold across the black water. He had pulled out his phone and called you, already rehearsing the apology in his head. Late for presents. Again. You’d tease him, pretend to scold, maybe force him to wrap some gifts for your co-workers. 

You didn't answer.

Probably a bath, he told himself. You’d mentioned one. Candles. The fancy bath salts you bought. Something soft to push the cold out of your bones. The thought settles him, briefly. He sends a text instead—short, careful. An apology. An I love you so much that he doesn’t overthink, because with you, he never has to.

You always know what he means.

The phone stays quiet in his pocket.

No buzz. No vibration brushing against his thigh like it usually does, grounding him, tethering him back to something warm and real. He told himself it’s nothing. That you’re relaxed, distracted, asleep. That the night is just heavy, that Gotham is doing what Gotham always does—making ghosts out of shadows and dread out of coincidence.

Still.

When he looks back at the others, he notices the way Dick avoids his eyes now. The way Tim’s gaze flicks to Jason’s pocket and away again. The way Damian’s jaw tightens when Jason shifts his weight, like he’s bracing for impact. Cassandra meets his eyes once—just once—and there’s something there that twists low and sharp in his chest. Not fear. Not exactly.

Knowing. Jason doesn’t ask. He doesn’t press.

But the harbor feels too quiet, the night stretched thin and listening, and for the first time since he sent that text, a cold, irrational thought curls in his gut—

That whatever is wrong didn’t start here.

And that somewhere far from the water, far from the mission, something precious has already slipped out of reach.

“That was the last of them,” Jason says, voice rough through the helmet, as Tim finishes cinching zip-ties around the final goon and anchors him to a rust-flaked shipping container. The plastic bites down with a sharp click that echoes too loudly across the concrete. The man mumbled insanities through spit.

The harbor exhales around them—cold wind off the water, carrying brine and diesel and something rotten that’s been sitting too long. Sodium lights flicker overhead, casting everything in jaundiced gold and long, distorted shadows that stretch and tangle at their feet. The concrete is damp beneath Jason’s boots, slick with mist and old oil, the kind of surface that never really dries no matter how many ‘sunny’ days Gotham pretends to have.

“We should do another check around the harbor,” Dick says.

He’s already kneeling, already breaking the man's phone in half with practiced efficiency, grinding it into the concrete with his heel until the screen spider webs and dies. He doesn’t look up when he says it. Doesn’t grin. Doesn’t even sound casual about it.

Jason lifts an eyebrow, slow, deliberate. His gaze slides to Damian automatically—because Damian is usually the first to shoot an idea like that down, sharp and impatient and blunt as a blade.

Instead, Damian just mutters, “Tim could be wrong.”

Mumbles it. Like he’s afraid the words might carry.

That alone sends a small, unpleasant chill up Jason’s spine.

Tim doesn’t argue. Doesn’t bristle. He straightens from the goon and dusts his gloves together, eyes flicking—not to Jason—but to Stephanie. The movement is quick, practiced, like muscle memory.

“Do you want to take the gates with me?” Tim says, too smooth. Too rehearsed. “Jason and Dick could go along the—”

“What?” Jason cuts in before he can finish, blinking once. “You two were perched on the gates the entire op. What’re you talking about?”

The wind gusts harder, rattling loose chains and setting a tarp snapping somewhere down the dock. Water slaps against concrete pylons in a slow, hollow rhythm. 

Jason suddenly feels like the sound is counting something down.

“It wouldn’t hurt to double-check,” Tim says, rising to his feet.

He still won’t meet Jason’s eyes.

Jason’s jaw tightens. He shifts his weight, the concrete cold and unforgiving through the thinning soles of his boots, and for a split second his mind drifts—unbidden—to you. To the warmth of your kitchen lights. To the way you’d probably be halfway through setting out plates by now, humming something low and off-key, waiting for him in that way that makes him want to claw his soul out and hand it over to you. 

The thought lands soft, intimate, grounding—and then slips through his fingers when he remembers his phone, silent and heavy in his pocket.

“…You guys don’t need me for that,” Jason says, firmer now. There’s an edge to it, something protective and stubborn. He already has plans. A timeline. A promise he intends to keep. “Seriously. If you want to sweep again, even one person could—”

Dick finally looks up.

It’s just a glance, quick and loaded, the kind Jason’s learned to read over a lifetime of almosts and unsaids. Cassandra shifts closer at the same moment, her shoulder nearly brushing his, her presence steady and deliberate. Jason doesn't think she's ever willingly touched him in his life. Stephanie opens her mouth like she’s about to say something—anything—then closes it again.

The harbor feels tighter suddenly. Smaller. Like the stacks of containers have leaned in, hemming them closer, their corrugated sides looming like silent witnesses. The wind cuts sharper off the water, needling through the seams of Jason’s jacket, and somewhere deep in his chest, that pressure builds again.

Jason turns fully to Damian.

“Kid, I swear to God, tell me what—”

Damian snaps at the exact same moment Cassandra moves. Her hand closes around Jason’s shoulder, firm and sudden, fingers digging in through armor like she’s trying to anchor him to the concrete before he does something irreversible. The contact is intimate in a way that feels wrong, alarmed.

“How the hell should I know? They didn't tell me—” Damian bites back, voice sharp, flaring too fast, too hot.

“Damian!” Dick hisses, the sound cutting through the night like a blade dragged too quickly from its sheath. He’s already moving, stepping between them without quite committing to either side, hands up in a placating gesture that lands closer to panic than calm. He turns to Jason almost immediately, words tumbling over each other. “Come on, dude, let’s just go check the security towers and—”

“That’s going to take another hour,” Jason cuts in.

The words come out flat, but there’s steel underneath. He shrugs Cassandra’s hand off—not rough, but final—and reaches into his pocket. The harbor lights blur for a second as his fingers close around his phone, the familiar shape of something that connects him to you grounding him. It’s 10:20. He knows that without looking but checks anyway. He’s been counting the minutes since the mission dragged past its supposed end.

“I had plans,” he says, quieter now, but more dangerous for it. “Let me at least—”

The batarang whistles through the air.

Jason barely has time to register the movement—Damian’s arm snapping forward, wrist precise, expression tight and furious—before metal slams into his hand. The impact jars up his arm, sharp and biting, and the phone slips free, spinning once before it hits the concrete.

Crack.

The screen fractures instantly, a spiderweb of dead glass blooming beneath the sodium lights before the device skids to a stop near Jason’s boot. The harbor seems to hold its breath. Even the wind falters, the water’s slap against the pylons momentarily muted, as if the night itself is listening.

Jason stares down at it.

At the dark screen. On the way his reflection breaks apart in the shattered glass.

Jason’s gaze lifts slowly from the ruin at his feet.

It settles on Dick.

“Call Bruce.”

The words aren’t loud. They don’t need to be. They cut anyway—clean, controlled, edged with something that’s starting to slip. Dick falters under it, hand coming up to rub at the back of his neck, eyes flicking anywhere but Jason’s face. The harbor lights stutter overhead, one of them buzzing like it’s about to give out, bathing Dick in a sickly gold that makes him look younger. 

Guilty.

“What, you gonna tattle?” Dick says, trying for levity and missing it by miles. His laugh lands wrong, brittle against the cold. “C’mon, Damian's just in a mood. I was going to surprise you with burgers but I thought the kid would spill. I’ll buy you a new phone, okay? Just—”

“Call Bruce,” Jason repeats.

This time it’s a hiss, dragged out through clenched teeth, something feral and fraying around the edges. The wind picks up again, slicing between the containers, rattling loose metal and carrying the sharp tang of rain that never quite falls in Gotham. Jason turns his head, slow and deliberate, until his eyes find Cassandra.

She hasn’t moved. She’s watching him like she’s afraid he might break.

“…He’s busy,” Cass says.

Her voice is barely there. Smaller than usual. Soft enough that Tim, standing a good ten feet away, doesn’t hear it at all. The words dissolve into the night almost as soon as they leave her mouth, swallowed by wind and water and distance—but Jason hears them. Every syllable.

Busy.

Something inside him tightens, winding down to a thin, dangerous thread.

His hand comes up to his comm without conscious thought. He adjusts it once, fingers steady despite the way his pulse thuds too hard, too fast. The harbor seems to lean in again—the stacked containers looming like watchful giants, the river below churning black and endless. 

Gotham breathes around him, damp and unforgiving.

“B,” Jason says.

Sharp. Precise. A single syllable fired into the dark like a flare.

Static answers him. Wind whistling through steel corridors. The distant cry of something alive and miserable echoing off the water. No voice. No correction. No irritation crackling back through the line.

Just silence. It stretches. Pulls thin. Grows teeth.

Jason exhales through his nose, a humorless breath that fogs faintly in the cold air. He thinks of you again—too vividly now. The way your voice softens when you say his name. The way you always pick up, even when he thinks you shouldn’t. The way silence has never belonged between the two of you.

His jaw locks. Fuck this shit, I should be at home with her.

Jason moves before anyone can stop him—before anyone even realizes he’s decided something.

He’s across the concrete in three long strides, boots splashing through shallow puddles that mirror Gotham’s jaundiced lights in broken pieces. Damian doesn’t flinch when Jason grabs his comm. Doesn’t pull back. Doesn’t protest. That, more than anything, makes Jason’s teeth grind.

He clicks the emergency signal to the Batcomputer—once, twice, a break, two clicks hard enough that it hurts his thumb—then rips the comm free. His helmet follows, clattering against the concrete with a hollow, echoing crack that ricochets between the shipping containers. The sound feels too loud, too exposed. Jason presses the comm to his bare ear, cold metal biting into skin.

No one stops him.

Not Dick. Not Tim. Not Stephanie. Cassandra watches with that same quiet intensity, hands flexing like she’s bracing for impact. They stand there and let it happen, like this is how it was always meant to go—like they’ve already accepted that Jason finding out is inevitable, but telling him would be worse. Like this is some twisted test, or penance, or family tradition he never agreed to.

The harbor hums low and restless. Wind slides through steel corridors, rattling chains, carrying the stink of oil and brine and rain-soaked concrete. Gotham feels awake in that way it only does when something bad is already in motion.

“Robin?” Bruce’s voice cuts through the static, sharp and immediate. Too immediate. There’s an edge to it Jason hasn’t heard in years—tight, almost nervous, parental. “Robin, what’s wrong?”

Jason almost laughs.

Instead, his mouth twists.

“I’m going home, old man,” he hisses, already turning away from Damian. “What was this? Ya trying to tire me out, or did you get mind-controlled again? ‘Cause everyone here apparently likes you enough to not tell me the truth.”

“Jason—”

“Red Hood,” Jason snaps, the correction coming fast and mean. He bends, scoops his helmet up by the chin guard, and starts walking toward the exit between the containers where the harbor opens up to the road. “What happened to keeping hero names on comms? Or are you the only one allowed to break rules tonight?”

“Red Hood, just give me—”

“It’s a lousy gang!” Jason shouts, voice tearing loose now, bouncing off steel and concrete and dark water. “They don’t even crack the top twenty. Damian could’ve done this shit by himself.”

He doesn’t look back, but he knows they’re following him. He can feel it—the weight of their footsteps, the way they trail just close enough to intervene if he breaks. Later, it’ll hit him why Tim made sure every single goon was double zip-tied, wrists biting white beneath plastic. Insurance. 

Tim knew Jason would find out. 

Knew none of them would be coming back to clean this up.

“Red Hood—”

“Merry Christmas, B,” Jason cuts in, bitter and sharp as broken glass. “Please don’t call.”

“JASON—”

Bruce’s voice snaps through the comm like a gunshot, dragging Jason straight back into another life, another night, another version of himself that answered to that tone. “She’s in danger. And if you want any chance of seeing her again, get to the Batcave—”

The line goes dead.

Not static. Not interference.

Bruce cut it himself.

Jason stops, because there's only one person he could be talking about to send all five of them with him.

The harbor seems to lurch, the world tilting just enough to make his balance feel theoretical. The wind howls between the containers, louder now, like Gotham exhaling something foul and satisfied. Water slaps hard against concrete pylons below, relentless, counting seconds Jason no longer owns.

Slowly—too slowly—he turns.

He looks at them. At Dick’s pale face. At Tim’s clenched jaw. At Damian’s rigid stillness. At Stephanie, eyes bright with unshed panic. At Cassandra, whose gaze is already on him, steady and mournful, like she’s watching something crack.

They look at him like he’s glass.

Like he’s a bomb they’re waiting to defuse—or clean up after.

Jason doesn’t give them the chance.

“Fuck all of you,” he spits, the words coming out broken and small despite his best efforts.

Then he runs.

Out of the harbor. Out of the sodium lights and rust and the weight of too many eyes. Jason runs like Gotham itself is on his heels, boots striking concrete in a brutal rhythm that drowns out thought—or tries to. The city stretches around him in jagged silhouettes and wet stone, skyscrapers looming like blackened ribs against a low, churning sky. Clouds hang heavy and swollen, bruised purple and gray, threatening rain they never quite release. Gotham loves the anticipation of pain more than the act itself.

His blood is loud in his ears. Too loud. Every heartbeat punches through his ribs, frantic and unforgiving, as if his body already knows something his mind refuses to accept.

Toward the manor. Toward answers.

Toward the awful, creeping certainty settling into his bones that whatever Gotham has taken this time, it didn’t take lightly—and it didn’t take something he can afford to replace.

He takes the shorter way.

Fire escapes. Rooftops slick with mist. Narrow alleys that smell like old rain and older sins. He vaults gaps without slowing, coat snapping behind him like a torn banner, the city blurring into streaks of shadow and light. This route cuts close to your place. Too close. He doesn’t consciously choose it; his body does, muscle memory dragging him along a path his heart has memorized better than any map.

And then—

Mid-leap, suspended between one rooftop and the next, he sees it.

Your building sits quiet against the skyline, dark in a way it never is. Your lights are off. All of them. The windows—your windows—are shattered, glass glittering weakly under the city’s glow like fallen stars. The balcony rail is smeared with something darker than shadow.

Blood.

The word doesn’t form. Not fully. His brain skids around it, refuses to give it weight. At most, he tells himself, you’re hurt. Something small. A cut. A scrape. A stupid accident that looks worse than it is. You’ll laugh it off when he gets there, scold him for worrying, tell him he’s being dramatic again.

Because you’re untouchable.

That’s the rule his mind has always clung to. Gotham can drown him in filth and violence and rot, but you—you—are clean. Untarnished. Something soft the city hasn’t learned how to bruise yet. You exist outside its reach, outside its hunger. Gotham takes things like Jason. It breaks people like him. It doesn’t get to put its hands on you.

It can’t have you.

Because if you’re hurt—if you’re really hurt—then everything Jason has built inside himself caves in at once. Every fragile structure, every careful compromise, every promise he’s made to stay standing for you. There’s no version of the world where you’re broken and he survives it intact.

He lands hard, barely absorbing the impact before he’s running again, lungs burning, throat raw. The manor rises ahead of him through the trees like a dark monument, windows glowing warm and oblivious against the night. Too slow. The gates are too slow. The doors are too slow.

Jason doesn’t bother.

He barrels straight for a ground-floor window and drives his elbow through it without hesitation. Glass explodes inward, sharp and screaming, biting into skin. He doesn’t feel it—not really—until he’s inside, boots skidding onto the polished floor, breath tearing out of him in harsh, uneven pulls.

Blood runs freely down his forearm, drips onto the pale carpet in dark, blooming stains.

It looks wrong there. Violent. Out of place, just like the blood on your balcony.

Jason stares at it for half a second too long, chest heaving, and something in him splinters quietly—because now he knows. The city has already touched you and it has never, not once, let go without breaking something in return.

Jason doesn’t slow down in the Cave.

The platform is still lowering when he’s already moving, boots striking metal too hard, too fast, the sound ricocheting off stone and steel. The Batcave yawns around them—vast and echoing, all cold water and colder rock, computer screens throwing pale blue light across jagged walls. The waterfall roars like it’s trying to drown the night itself, a constant, punishing noise that usually steadies him.

Tonight it only sharpens the edges.

Bruce turns at the last possible second. His eyes flick first to Jason’s face, then to the blood smeared down his arm, dripping steadily onto the pristine metal floor. Bruce’s mouth tightens. Not in anger. In calculation. In fear he refuses to name.

Jason shoves him.

Hard.

Bruce’s back slams into the Batcomputer console, screens rattling, data stuttering for half a heartbeat. A lesser man would’ve been airborne. Bruce Wayne could have thrown Jason across the Cave without effort—could have ended this in a clean, controlled second.

He doesn’t.

Jason knows he won’t.

“Where is she,” Jason spits, the words tearing out of him raw and shaking. His hands fist in Bruce’s cape, knuckles white, trembling despite the strength coiled beneath them. The fabric bunches beneath his grip like it might rip if he pulls any harder. “Where is she?”

Bruce lifts his hands slowly, carefully—not in surrender, but in containment. Like approaching a live wire. His voice, when he speaks, is measured to the point of pain.

“…Jason.”

The name alone is an attempt. An anchor. Bruce is already running scenarios, already gauging angles and exits and how much damage Jason could do if this slips another inch. He knows Jason’s tells. Knows the way his breathing has gone uneven, the way his eyes are too bright, too fixed. Knows this isn’t rage yet.

This is terror.

“Don’t,” Bruce says quietly. Not commanding. Pleading, buried deep beneath control. “Just—listen to me.”

Jason laughs once, short and broken, the sound scraping his throat raw. “No. You don’t get to slow this down. You don’t get to prepare me.”

Bruce swallows. “…Joker—” he begins.

And the world fractures.

The word lands heavy and obscene between them, fouling the air of the cave like poison gas. Joker. The name crawls under Jason’s armor, past muscle and bone, straight into the place where you live inside him.

Suddenly, you’re not untouchable.

You’re not the one clean thing Gotham never got its hands on. Not the soft place Jason runs to when the city claws at him too hard. Not the warmth in his bed, the light in his kitchen, the voice that says his name like it belongs to something human.

You’re not safe.

You’re not distant.

You’re not protected by the simple, impossible belief that the worst things in the world know better than to touch you.

You’re real.

You’re fragile.

You’re reachable.

Jason’s grip tightens without him meaning to, breath hitching violently in his chest. His mind fills with images he refuses to finish forming—broken glass, blood on pale surfaces, your windows shattered open to the night the same way his chest feels split open now. He thinks of your hands. Your laugh. The way you look at him like he’s something worth keeping.

And now—

Now you’re the blood he’s already wearing.

The blood he’s going to feel soaking into his gloves tonight.

Bruce sees it happen. Sees the moment Jason slips past anger and into something far more dangerous. His own heart lurches, sharp and traitorous. This—this is what he’s been afraid of since the second he knew Joker was involved. Not Jason lashing out blindly.

Jason focused.

Emotional.

Unanchored.

“Jason,” Bruce says again, softer now, steady as bedrock despite the fear tightening his chest. “I need you to stay with me. I need you here. Because if you go out there like this—”

Jason’s eyes snap back to him, glassy and feral and devastatingly alive.

“If I don’t go,” Jason says hoarsely, “she dies.”

“If you go,” Bruce says, low and sharp, the words cutting through the roar of the Cave, “you die—and you could lose her at the same time.”

The Batcave hums around them, fluorescent light washing the rock walls in cold blue, computer screens flickering with restless data. The waterfall crashes endlessly behind Bruce, mist clinging to the air, dampening everything it touches. It feels like the Cave is breathing—slow, heavy, watchful.

Bruce moves closer and grips Jason’s jacket with both hands, fingers clutching the leather like it’s the last solid thing in the world. He holds on the way a man holds a ledge he’s already slipping from, hoping friction alone might be enough to keep someone from falling.

It isn’t.

“Where is she,” Jason says.

His voice is flat. Too controlled. His eyes have already left Bruce, already slid to the Batcomputer, to the glowing map littered with red and yellow pings like open wounds across Gotham’s body. Each marker pulses faintly, alive and accusing.

He doesn’t notice his siblings closing in—Dick’s careful steps, Tim’s rigid stillness, Damian hovering sharp and coiled like a drawn blade.

“She’s alive,” Bruce says quickly, desperately. “She wasn’t the only one—at least four other children and three women—”

Jason turns his head.

The look he gives Bruce is devastating in its emptiness. Eyes glassed over, jaw set too tight, brows drawn together like the world has narrowed to a single, unbearable point.

“Do you honestly think I give a damn about them right now?”

The words aren’t shouted. They don’t need to be. They land heavy, obscene in their honesty, and Bruce’s grip tightens reflexively, knuckles whitening against Jason’s jacket.

“I know you don’t,” Bruce snaps back, frustration bleeding through control. “Which is why I didn’t tell you she was taken. Because we need a plan that keeps everyone who was captured safe—”

“At the risk she dies in the process?” Jason cuts in.

Then—he stills.

Something shifts. His hands loosen, falling away from Bruce’s cape as if the fabric has suddenly burned him. His gaze slides, sharp and intentional, and locks onto Tim.

“How long,” Jason says.

The question is steady. Solid. Frighteningly calm.

Tim swallows and flicks a glance at Bruce—a silent check, a plea, a habit Jason has seen a thousand times. Jason shoves Bruce’s hand aside and crosses the distance in two strides, grabbing Tim by the shoulders, fingers digging in through armor.

“Don’t,” Jason hisses, thumbs pressing hard, grounding, painful. “Don’t look at him.”

The words aren’t just for Tim. They’re for Jason too.

He vaguely registers Dick saying his name, Stephanie’s voice tight with panic somewhere behind him, but it all dissolves into a dull ringing as he stares down at Tim. Tim doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t pull away. He meets Jason’s gaze head-on.

“How long,” Jason repeats. “Where.”

Tim exhales, slow and controlled, the way he does when delivering bad news. “Two hours,” he says quietly. “Warehouse two blocks from Crime Alley. Behind that busted playground.”

Crime Alley.

The name echoes through the Cave like a curse, sinking into Jason’s chest and blooming outward, cold and malignant. Of course it’s there. Of course Joker chose that place—layers of history piled atop rot, a shrine built from other people’s pain.

Jason releases Tim slowly, hands trembling now, control finally beginning to crack.

Two hours.

Two hours of you alone with the man who taught Gotham how to laugh while it kills.

The Batcomputer hums on, indifferent. Gotham’s skyline glows faintly on the monitors—jagged towers under a bruised sky, rain finally starting to smear the camera feeds, streaking the city in gray. Somewhere out there, windows are broken. Somewhere out there, that cashmere scarf he wrapped and placed under your tree stays un-wrapped.

Jason understands then—with a clarity so sharp it almost feels merciful—that plans are a luxury meant for people who still believe time is something they own.

Time has never belonged to him.

Because you—you—aren’t alone. You’re trapped with seven other people. Four of them children, Bruce had said, like that word didn’t rearrange Jason’s insides completely. His mind does something traitorous then, something he hates himself for even acknowledging: it calculates. It knows how these things go. It knows Joker’s sense of theater, his appetite for cruelty, his fondness for leaving one survivor behind as punctuation.

And the last one standing is never the strongest.

It’s the smallest. 

You would be dying before those kids.

Jason’s breath stutters, just once.

“Jason,” Bruce says from the Batcomputer, voice tight, forced into calm the way it always is when he’s terrified. The blue glow paints him hollow, all sharp angles and restraint. “Don’t make me stop you. The cops are on their way. Joker just wants cash.”

For the first time since the harbor, the noise in Jason’s head goes quiet.

Not peaceful—focused.

Everything narrows down to Bruce. To the way his shoulders are squared like a barricade. To the way his hands hover, uncertain, like he’s trying to decide whether to reach out or brace for impact. Jason’s heart hammers so hard it hurts, louder than the waterfall, louder than any threat Batman could ever make.

“If you even try, Bruce,” Jason says.

He doesn’t look at him when he says it. He can’t. The name comes out wrong in his mouth—too raw, too intimate, scraped down to bone. Instead, he keeps his eyes on Tim, standing rigid in front of him, small in a way Jason suddenly can’t stop seeing. He hopes—distantly, uselessly—that he isn’t glaring at his little brother. Hopes Tim understands this isn’t anger.

Just pure desperation. His last attempt, his last shot.

“Ill fucking shoot myself. I’ll make sure you know it’s your fault,” Jason continues, voice low and shaking despite his effort to keep it steady. “I’ll use my gun. And if you tie me up today, I’ll wait until next week. If you lock me down for a week, I’ll wait a month. I’ll do it.”

He swallows.

Because that’s the only thing that’s ever worked. The only language Bruce Wayne never ignores.

Dick moves fast—too fast—grabbing Jason’s arm where it’s still braced near Tim, fingers digging in hard. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he shouts, panic cracking straight through his anger.

Jason turns on him then, eyes blazing, voice breaking loose at last.

“Would you be this still?” Jason yells back. “If that was me with Joker again? If it was me instead of her—would you have left me there for the police to find? Again?”

The word hangs between them, heavy and damning.

Again.

Jason knows Dick well enough to see it land. To watch his brother’s grip falter, fingers loosening like they’ve forgotten what they were holding onto in the first place. Dick’s face goes pale, mouth parting uselessly, and Jason twists the knife—not because he wants to hurt him, but because he needs them to understand.

“This,” Jason snaps. “This is why none of you fucking knew about her.”

He looks at all of them now—really looks. At Bruce, frozen behind the console like a man staring down a live bomb. At Dick, wrecked with guilt.

“If you can’t even see me beyond a mistake you made,” Jason says, voice hoarse, “there was no way you wouldn’t have seen her as that too. And I love her too much for that.”

The words leave him hollowed out.

Then he’s gone.

The Cave swallows the echo of his footsteps, leaving only the roar of the waterfall and the hum of machines that suddenly feel pointless. No one moves to stop him. No one even tries.

It takes Tim a full minute to cross the platform and reach the Batcomputer, fingers hovering uselessly over keys he knows by heart.

It takes Cassandra four times as long to find a part of Bruce that still moves—some small, human place in his arm or shoulder that isn’t locked rigid like a man bracing for an explosion he knows is already ticking down.

Dick follows Jason’s trail almost immediately. And Damian follows Dick.

You don’t remember the last five hours.

They’re gone—hollowed out—like someone reached into your head and scooped the time away with a careless hand. The last thing you have is small and warm and ordinary: the coffee table between the couch and the window, set for two. Plates aligned just so. The new glasses you bought with Jason on that stupidly perfect thrift-store date, thin and elegant and impractical. You’d laughed about them, about how easy they’d be to break. Jason had pretended to scold you, fingers warm around yours as he tugged you toward the bookshelves, already stacking paperbacks in his arms like treasure.

You’d bought homeware. A vintage mirror with a gold edge, slightly warped, the kind that makes everything look softer than it is.

Jason always said you needed better locks. You realize it numbly.

He always said it gently, like a suggestion instead of a warning. Like he was talking about replacing a lightbulb or buying better coffee. You brushed him off every time, smiling, pressing a kiss into his shoulder, telling him Gotham wasn’t that bad. That you were fine. That you were safe.

And you were right. You always are.

Because an extra lock wouldn’t have stopped the man with the red smile.

It wouldn’t have stopped hands tangling in your hair, fingers tight and merciless as he dragged you across your rug, skin burning where it scraped against the fibers. It wouldn’t have stopped the way your mirror shattered when he slammed you against it, glass singing as it broke, your own reflection splintering into a hundred terrified pieces that stared back at you with wide, unbelieving eyes.

It wouldn’t have stopped the way he looked at you.

He crouched in front of you like this was intimate. Like this was a secret. His smile stretched too far, paint cracked and smeared, eyes bright with something wrong and delighted and ancient. 

Joker tilted his head, studying you the way a child studies an insect pinned to cork.

“Here’s the other lovebird,” he murmured, voice lilting, almost fond. “Ohhh… how cute you are.”

You remember thinking—absurdly, desperately—that Jason would hate that word. That he’d bristle at it, roll his eyes, pull you closer just to prove a point. You remember the ache of missing him hitting harder than the pain at first, your mind reaching for him the way it always does when the world goes wrong.

Jason would know what to do.

Jason would make this stop.

The thought is a comfort even now, curled tight in your chest, fragile but stubborn. You cling to it as the man stands, as one of the shadows behind him passes up an old, rusted crowbar. The metal is pitted and dark, flaking with age and something older still. It smells like iron and damp and rot.

It doesn’t take a lock to stop that.

It doesn’t take a security system to stop the sound your bones make when he brings it down.

The pain comes in blinding flashes—white-hot, nauseating, wrong. Your legs scream before you do, nerves lighting up in protest, your body trying to fold in on itself, trying to protect something already broken. You taste blood, copper and thick, your teeth chattering even as your throat burns raw from crying out.

Through it all, you think of Jason.

Of his hands—gentle despite their strength. Of the way he says your name like it’s something precious, something he’s afraid to drop. You think of his laugh, low and surprised, the way he softens when it’s just the two of you and Gotham can’t see him. You think of the books still stacked on the table, waiting to be read, of the glasses that shattered just like the mirror did.

Of how he warned you.

Of how he would be here already if he knew.

The room feels wrong—tilted, smeared with shadow, the air thick and sour. Blood pools where it shouldn’t, dark against your floor, soaking into the rug you picked out together. The city hums outside your broken windows, indifferent and vast, neon bleeding into the night like nothing is wrong at all.

You breathe when you can. You hold onto Jason’s name like a prayer you’re afraid to say out loud.

Because if he comes—when he comes—you need to believe there will still be something left of you for him to find.

Your consciousness returns in fragments, drifting in and out the same way you remember nights with him. Not clean breaks. Not mercy. Just gaps.

A void of sleep.

Jason easing your window open like the city might hear him, hands raised in mock surrender, voice low and careful. I didn’t mean to wake you… shh… go back to bed. The mattress dips, familiar weight settling beside you, warmth bleeding into your back.

A void of sleep.

Jason in your bathroom, the light too bright, the mirror fogged. Gotham’s blood and grime rinsed down the drain while he rubs his hair dry with one of your soft, ridiculous pink towels. He smiles at you through the doorway, sheepish and fond, promises he’ll be there in a second. He always is.

A void of sleep.

Jason shifting beside you, breath warm against the delicate skin beneath your ear. His arm tightens in his sleep, possessive without knowing it, like even unconscious he’s afraid the world might take you if he lets go. He murmurs your name—broken, reverent.

A void of sleep.

White hands. Cracked paint. Fingers threading through your hair, slick and tangled with blood. The touch is intimate in the worst way, scalp burning as he hums—no, sings—a childish tune about robins, voice lilting and wrong, laughter bubbling beneath it like rot under sugar.

A void of sleep.

Concrete tearing at your skin as you’re dragged, knees bouncing, spine jolting with every crack in the ground. A van door yawns open, metal teeth waiting. A child sobs near your ear, small and hiccuping. A woman screams at the child to shut up—panic sharp and desperate—until a gunshot rings out like punctuation. The woman goes silent. The child doesn’t. The word mommy repeats, thin and broken, drilling into your skull.

A void of sleep.

You wake choking on pain.

Your body is bound to a chair, wrists cinched tight, ankles screaming. Barbed wire coils around you like something alive, biting deep with every involuntary twitch. The metal is rusted, flaking, cruel—tearing skin open in ragged kisses that burn and throb and never quite stop bleeding. Your legs are numb in places, screaming in others. You can feel blood soaking into fabric, sticky and cooling as it trails downward.

He’s in front of you.

Smiling.

Head cocked, eyes bright with interest, like you’re a puzzle he’s just started enjoying. He steps closer, crouches until he’s eye-level with you, hands clasped together as if in prayer.

“You do love your sleep, don’t you?” he says, voice almost gentle.

Your vision swims. The room smells like iron and oil and damp concrete. Somewhere nearby, something drips steadily—water, or blood, or both. The walls feel too close, the shadows stretching and curling like they’re listening.

“The other birdy,” he continues, grinning wider, “wouldn’t even sleep if I cracked his skull. Such a shame.” He sighs theatrically, tapping the barbed wire with one gloved finger, delighted by the way you flinch. “I suppose I’ll have to find a way to keep you awake.”

Through the haze, through the pain, one thought stays stubbornly intact.

Jason is coming.

And you cling to that like a lifeline, even as the horror closes in, even as the night tries to peel you apart—because if you let go of that belief, if you let the void take everything—There will be nothing left for him to save.

You can’t see farther than four feet in front of you.

Anything beyond that dissolves into smears of color and motion, the edges of the room bleeding into one another. When you try to focus, your vision tilts violently, the world pitching sideways as warm blood slips down from your temple, sticky and insistent. It drips into your eye, blurring everything further, each blink making it worse. The ceiling swims. The walls breathe.

He notices.

Of course he does.

He steps into what little clarity you have left, face snapping into focus like a nightmare finally deciding to be seen. His hand comes up fast, fingers prying your jaw open with impatient familiarity. Something chalky presses against your tongue.

You gag immediately.

Your throat spasms around his fingers, saliva thick and useless as panic claws up your chest. Your head jerks instinctively, barbed wire biting deeper in protest, fresh pain flaring white-hot along your wrists and ankles. He doesn’t pull away. He shoves the pill back, past your tongue, past your resistance, until your body betrays you and swallows.

You choke.

Tears spill from your eyes, hot and humiliating, streaking through the grime on your cheeks. Your lungs burn as you suck in air in sharp, broken pulls.

Jason, you think, distantly, desperately. The name is a reflex now. A prayer you don’t dare say out loud.

His hand withdraws at last.

Then—

Smack.

Your head snaps to the side, vision exploding into sparks. Before you can react—

Smack.

The second strike lands harder, ringing through your skull, teeth clacking together as pain blooms anew. The world steadies just enough to be cruel about it.

“That’ll keep you awake, birdy,” he croons, pleased.

Your heart slams against your ribs, frantic and trapped. Already you can feel it—the way the haze pulls back just a little too much, the way your thoughts sharpen against your will. Your eyelids burn, heavy but refusing to close, nerves screaming as the drug seeps in and denies you even the mercy of darkness.

“Now.”

He leans back into his own chair like this is a rehearsal, like he’s bored of waiting for his cue. The legs scrape loudly against the concrete, the sound sharp enough to hurt. He reaches forward and adjusts the camera in front of you with careful precision. A small red light blinks every few seconds—steady, patient. Watching.

“We’re going to make a deal, okay?”

You don’t answer.

Your eyes refuse to cooperate, swimming uselessly as you blink through blood and tears. Every attempt to focus sends a wave of nausea through you, the room tilting, your pulse roaring in your ears louder than his voice. Your jaw trembles. Your tongue feels thick, wrong in your mouth.

“Okay?”

Nothing comes out.

The barbed wire strung cruelly across your throat digs in deeper with every breath you take, a quiet reminder that sound would cost you skin. Air hisses past your teeth in shallow pulls. You can feel your heartbeat there, fluttering and frantic against metal.

His smile thins.

He stands.

The rusty crowbar tightens in his grip as he rises from a stupid, bright orange folding chair—out of place, obscene against the filth of the warehouse. He steps into frame, then closer, until the camera, until you, are all that exist. He hooks two fingers under your chin and lifts your face, forcing your eyes up.

“Answer.”

You try.

Your mouth opens. Nothing happens.

All you can see is him—cracked white makeup creasing around his eyes, green hair greasy and limp, age showing in the lines around his mouth where smiles have lived too long. He smells like oil and metal and something sour beneath it all. The warehouse stinks of rust, damp concrete, old fuel. It crawls into your lungs.

And then—

You hear it.

A sound that doesn’t belong to him.

Crying.

Your head turns slowly, painfully, vertebrae protesting as the wire shifts against your throat. The movement costs you another sharp breath. Your vision blurs again—but this time, shapes resolve.

A cluster of bodies huddled together against a dented equipment container. Two teenage girls with their knees pulled tight to their chests, faces streaked with dirt and tears. Four little boys wedged between them, shaking, hands bound too tight, mouths open in silent sobs like they’ve already learned screaming doesn’t help.

Something in your chest caves in.

You don’t even see the crowbar move.

The impact comes out of nowhere—white-hot, brutal. The hooked end of the bar slams into your shoulder with a wet, tearing sound, metal biting deep as it pierces flesh. Pain detonates through you, ripping the air from your lungs. He yells as he does it, manic and delighted, like the violence startled even him.

Your body jerks against the restraints.

Barbed wire bites deeper. Blood spills warm and fast down your arm, soaking into your sleeve, dripping to the floor in thick, uneven drops. Your vision fractures, stars bursting behind your eyes.

You clamp your teeth down hard on your lip to keep from screaming.

You taste iron immediately—sharp and overwhelming—as skin breaks beneath your bite. Tears spill freely now, blurring everything, mixing with the blood already clinging to your lashes. It burns. It hurts. Your whole body shakes with the effort of staying quiet.

Behind you, the crying gets worse—fractured, panicked.

“Okay,” you choke out.

The word scrapes your throat raw on the way out, barely more than a breath. It tastes like blood and rust and surrender.

Immediately, the pressure is gone.

The crowbar pulls free with a wet sound that makes your vision white out, pain screaming down your arm as the hooked metal tears away from muscle and skin. You shudder hard, a broken gasp ripping out of you despite your best effort to swallow it down.

He steps back like a magician deciding on the next trick.

Then he leans in again—careful, deliberate—and pats at the wound where the bar pierced you. Not gentle. Never gentle. His palm presses just enough to make you flinch, fingers smearing warm blood across your torn clothes.

“See?” he says brightly, turning slightly so the camera gets a better angle. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Your breath comes shallow and fast, chest stuttering against the wire. Every inhale sends a fresh bloom of pain through your shoulder, the edges of it pulsing in time with your heart.

His hands come up next.

Dry. Cracked. Too warm.

He grabs your face, fingers digging into your cheeks, thumbs pressing at your jaw as he tilts your head from side to side. The movement drags the skin of your neck against the barbed wire, a searing, intimate pain that makes your eyes flood instantly.

“What a dumb dumb birdy you are,” he croons, affectionate in the way predators are. “It’s okay. Joker can teach you.”

Your body trembles uncontrollably now. Your fingers spasm uselessly against the wooden arms of the chair, nails scraping shallow grooves into the surface. You can feel blood slicking your palm and you don't even want to think about how you got hurt there too.

He releases your face.

Pats your head once.

The gesture is almost worse than the violence.

“Now,” he says softly, pleasantly, “say thank you.”

Your vision swims. The room feels too loud, too close. Somewhere behind you, one of the children sobs so hard it turns into hiccupping gasps. You swallow around the wire, throat burning.

You look up at him with shaking eyes, lashes heavy with tears and blood. Your mouth opens. Your lips quiver.

“Thank—” Your voice breaks completely. You force it back together, dragging the word out of yourself like it’s being pulled through glass. “Thank you.”

His smile spreads slow and satisfied, stretching the cracks in his makeup wider.

“Good birdy,” he coos, pleased. “So much more compliant than your love bird already!”

“Now—” Joker announces, voice lifting into a theatrical lilt, like he’s stepped beneath a spotlight instead of flickering warehouse fluorescents. He turns toward the camera, gives it a jaunty little nod, then looks back at you, grin splitting wider. “I was gonna let you go for some cash. Thought your little boy bird might get scared shitless—just a fun little bonus, really—buttt—”

He drifts away from you, footsteps light, almost playful. You can’t turn your head far enough to see what he’s doing. The wire bites when you try. Your vision pulses, dark at the edges.

Then—

A scream.

Sharp. High. A girl’s voice.

It cuts off halfway through, collapsing into a thin, broken cry that echoes far too long in the hollow space of the warehouse.

Something in you fractures.

Joker reappears at your side, breath brushing your ear, laughter bubbling out of him like it’s a private joke the two of you share. “Got lucky with a rich bitch on the road,” he cackles, delighted. “Gotham really does keep on givin’.”

Your stomach twists violently. You taste bile. The crying behind you swells again, panicked and animal, and you can feel your own body trying to fold in on itself despite the restraints, like if you curl inward hard enough you might disappear. 

His hands slide to your throat and at the same time your eyes land onto his hands. Diamond earrings.

He ripped her earrings out of her ears. 

Before you can flinch at the sight of pieces of skin in his open hand, he yanks.

The chain snaps free with a sharp tug, metal biting into your skin as the necklace tears away. You gasp, the wire at your neck punishing you for it, and the sudden cold where the chain used to rest feels obscene—too exposed. You feel lucky that you took off your earrings when you were doing your hair.

He dangles it in front of the camera, letting it glint under the harsh light, gemstones smeared faintly red from your blood. “This could go for a couple hundred too!” he sings. “Ohhh, how delightful!”

He leans closer, eyes alight, savoring every tremor that runs through you. “At least one of the birdies knows how to decorate their nest. Found a few rings at your place as well.”

Joker pockets the necklace with a satisfied hum.

“Well, now that I don’t need the money,” he croons, voice lilting, playful, like he’s deciding which joke to tell next, “what should I do with you?”

His fingers drag along your cheek again, slower this time, the pad of his thumb pressing just hard enough to bruise. His touch leaves heat behind, a crawling sensation that makes your stomach revolt. You feel contaminated where he’s touched you, like your skin is remembering something it shouldn’t.

“…I’ll give you more,” you whisper. Your voice fractures around the word, splintering into something pitiful and thin. “However much you want—just—”

“Oh, I don’t need money.”

The change is instant. His tone drops, sharp and venomous, and when he leans in his eyes are blown wide and empty, pupils swallowing the green like oil slicks. A hawk spotting movement. A blade finding flesh.

“I was looking for some fun, love bird,” he hisses. “You can’t give me that?”

You whimper around the grip on your jaw as his fingers tighten, nails biting into your skin. The wire at your throat digs deeper when you gasp, its teeth kissing something vital. Pain blooms hot and bright, stars bursting behind your eyes.

“Jason— Jason will—”

He doesn’t even flinch at the name.

Maybe that’s mercy.

His fingers move higher, rough and invasive, smearing through the makeup you’d put on hours ago with careful hands. The eyeshadow burns as it’s ground into your skin, sweat and blood turning it into a dark, ugly paste. His thumb drags through the faint blush on your cheeks, erasing it like it was a mistake.

“How pretty you are,” he murmurs, almost tender. “I do makeup on myself too, you know.”

Then his hands leave you entirely.

He grabs his own face, fingers digging into the cracked greasepaint, stretching the red grin wider, tearing at the corners until the white creases and flakes. For a second you think you see real skin underneath—white, lined, angry. Horrid.

“Do you like mine?” he asks brightly. “Do you think I’m pretty?”

Your mind blanks.

Your eyes flick helplessly to the camera instead—the blinking red light pulsing steadily, patiently. Recording. Waiting. You try to speak, to say yes or no or anything that might stop what’s coming, but your throat locks around the wire and all that comes out is a wet, useless sound.

Then—

“Very pretty!”

The voice is behind you.

Too young.

A teenage girl, no older than seventeen. Her voice trembles, thin and frantic, the words tumbling over each other. “So—so pretty—”

You feel something inside you tear open.

She’s trying to survive. You can feel that hope radiate off of her. The hope of throwing words into the dark and praying it lands somewhere safe.

Joker’s head snaps toward her.

His eyes narrow, sharp and wrong, smile freezing into something predatory. “You think so?”

There’s a frantic nod you can hear more than see—the quick intake of breath, the shuddering little sob that follows.

Joker bends down.

The crowbar scrapes loudly as he lifts it, metal screaming against concrete. You catch a glimpse of it as he moves past you—rusted, pitted, darkened in places where it’s already been used tonight.

Then he’s gone from your line of sight.

The scream that follows is immediate and unbearable.

It’s not just pain—it’s shock, terror, the sound of someone realizing too late that they were wrong. The metal wall amplifies it, throws it back at itself until it feels like the warehouse is screaming with her.

There’s a wet, sickening crack.

A sound like meat hitting concrete.

“Why don’t we match?” Joker coos from behind you, voice light and delighted. “I did one side, now the other!”

The crowbar hits again.

You hear bone give this time—feel it in your teeth, in your chest. Her scream fractures into something animal, then into choking sobs, then into a raw, bubbling sound that makes bile rush up your throat.

Your own crying breaks free, ugly and uncontrollable. Your body jerks against the restraints, fingers cramping, nails tearing uselessly into the wood of the chair. Hot tears spill down your face, mixing with blood, dripping off your chin in thick, dark drops.

The camera’s red light blinks again.

Once.

Twice.

It taunts you by matching every sound that breaks out of you.

Every gasped sob, every wet, hitching breath. The camera’s red light blinks in time with your chest, like it’s learned your rhythm, like it’s decided to breathe with you instead of for you.

And then the Joker comes back.

You smell him before you see him—iron-thick blood, old rust, sweat gone sour. His hands are slick, red to the wrist, fingers shining under the warehouse lights. The crowbar hangs loose in his grip, darker now, clotted, strands of hair caught cruelly in its curve.

He crouches in front of you, bringing himself eye-level, like he’s talking to a child.

“Well,” he hums thoughtfully. “I can’t give you her look, can I?”

Your vision swims. You can’t stop shaking. Tears slide down your face in hot, unstoppable streams, carving clean paths through blood and grime. Your mouth opens, but nothing coherent comes out—just a broken, animal sound that folds back in on itself.

His smile twitches.

“What should I do with you?” he asks softly. “Hm?”

You don’t answer. You can’t. You just cry harder, chest stuttering against the wire, throat raw and burning.

That seems to irritate him.

He clicks his tongue, disappointed, and lifts the crowbar. The cold metal taps against your cheek once—tap—just enough to make you flinch violently. He pauses, head tilting.

“Oh—”

His eyes light up.

“Oh yes, that’s wonderful! Oh—” He erupts into laughter, sudden and explosive, clutching his stomach as if the joke is too much to bear. Spit flies from his mouth, warm and disgusting as it lands in your hair, streaking through blood-matted strands. “Oh, isn’t my brain just splendid?”

He straightens, still laughing, wiping his eyes like he’s genuinely amused. “You bats are all poetry, I say—pure poetry!”

Then he turns.

Walks away.

His footsteps fade, echoing hollowly through the warehouse, until there’s only the hum of the lights, the distant crying behind you—and the camera.

You’re alone.

One last sob claws its way out of your throat, wet and choking. Blood follows it, dribbling down your chin, splashing darkly against your chest. You force your eyes open, drag them upward, lock them onto the camera.

You don’t know who’s watching. You don’t know if anyone is.

Your voice comes out steadier than it has any right to be.

“How—”

“Shut up!” someone whisper-yells behind you, frantic and terrified. “There’s other men!”

Your mouth snaps shut.

And the red light keeps blinking.

The metal door slams open with a shriek of abused hinges, the impact shuddering through the warehouse floor and straight up your spine. Dust rains down from the rafters in a thin, dirty veil, catching in your hair and sticking to the blood already drying there.

He’s laughing before you even see him.

Not distant laughter—close. Moving. Each step accompanied by a wet, dragging sound, like something heavy being pulled across concrete. His cackle ricochets off the shipping containers, off the steel beams, off the low ceiling that traps the sound and forces it back into your skull.

A little boy cries out behind you as Joker passes him. A sharp, panicked sound that fractures into a sob and then cuts off abruptly, like someone clamped a hand over his mouth.

The air grows hotter.

Through the warped reflection in the camera lens, you see it clearly now: a long metal bar burning red-hot, so bright it hurts to look at directly. Heat ripples distort the image around it, the glow painting the walls in feverish streaks of crimson. The smell hits you next—burning iron, scorched metal, something faintly organic beneath it that makes bile crawl up your throat.

Joker taps the brand against the concrete behind you.

It doesn’t clang.

It hisses.

The sound is sharp and alive, like meat on a skillet. Tiny sparks spit outward where it kisses the floor, leaving blackened scars in the cement. The red glow doesn’t dull. Doesn’t cool. It stays furious and bright, as if fed by something endless.

Whatever fragile hope you were clutching evaporates in that moment, leaving you hollowed out, lungs burning as you exhale something that feels like your last prayer.

He’s behind you in the next second.

Joker’s hand comes out of nowhere, clamping over your mouth, palm slick and hot. The copper taste floods you as his fingers press into your cheeks, nails digging in just enough to hurt—just enough to remind you that restraint is a choice he’s making. Your head is forced back, neck screaming as the wire saws deeper, the barbs biting into tender skin.

“Would you like to match your birdy?” he murmurs.

His voice is serene. Gentle. Almost affectionate.

He angles the brand around the arm of the chair so you can see it clearly. The letter is unmistakable now, its edges glowing white-hot, heat radiating off it in suffocating waves.

A ‘𝙹’.

Your body reacts before your mind can—your stomach convulses, gagging against his hand, breath stuttering uselessly through your nose. Your skin feels too tight, like it’s already shrinking away from what’s coming.

“We’re going to make the deal now,” he coos.

In the camera’s reflection, you can see his eye—wide, bright, utterly focused on the blinking red dot. Performing. Enjoying the audience if there even is one.

“You either get a matching look…” The brand drifts closer, close enough that the heat kisses your cheek, nerves screaming in anticipation, sweat instantly breaking out along your spine. “…or you tell me who you hate.”

His hand peels away from your mouth.

Air rushes in too fast. You choke on it, coughing hard enough that the wire grinds into your throat, pain blooming hot and blinding. Your voice comes out shredded. “Who… who I hate?”

“Who put you here?” he hums thoughtfully, as if the answer delights him. “It wasn’t me.”

The brand pauses, hovering inches from your skin. You can feel the heat burrowing inward, like it’s already memorizing you.

“Why do you think I found you?” he continues lightly. “Do you know how sloppy he is?”

Silence stretches, thick and oppressive.

You stare at the glowing red letter, your mind drifting somewhere distant and numb to survive. Absurdly, irrationally, you think of Jason’s helmet—the same violent red, the same defiant color. You wonder if he’s thinking of you right now. If he can feel this, somehow.

“Tell me who you hate.”

The words don’t just reach you—they enter you, heavy and cold, sinking past bone and settling somewhere deep and irreversible. They press the air flat, make the warehouse feel smaller, closer, like the walls are leaning in to listen.

He stands before you in all his wrongness, and up close there is nothing theatrical left. The Joker’s makeup has melted into something corpse-like, white cracked and flaking into the grooves of his face as though his skin is trying to shed it. The red smile is no longer a grin so much as a wound, smeared unevenly, darker where blood has mixed in, the corners dragged downward by age and use. His hair hangs limp, green dulled to the color of mold, clinging to his scalp in greasy strands. His eyes are too bright—glass-bright, feverish—never still, never soft, reflecting the warehouse lights like knives.

The space around you hums with misery. The concrete beneath your feet is slick with blood and oil, cold seeping up through the chair and into your bones. Shipping containers loom like coffins, their metal sides scarred and rusted, shadows pooled so thick between them it feels like something could step out at any moment. The air reeks—burnt iron, old sweat, copper, rot—and every breath feels like inhaling something alive and hostile.

You look at the camera.

That red eye blinks steadily, rhythmically, a heart that isn’t yours. It sees the way your chest shudders, the way your fingers twitch uselessly against the bindings, the way your body is already bracing for pain it knows is coming. Your thoughts drift, slow and exhausted, slipping through your hands like water you can’t quite hold.

You think of Jason.

Not the helmet. Not the blood. But his hands—warm, callused, careful when they touch you. The way he looks at you like the world might soften if you stay. The way he says your name like it’s something solid.

You could say his name now.

You could offer it up like a sacrifice and pray that this monster believes in deals, that you might walk out of here broken but breathing. You could lie and hope he lets you go.

Or you could say Jason’s name and watch Joker’s smile vanish as he switches off the camera and kills you quietly, preserving this horror to show your sweet boy later.

Or you could stay silent and take the brand—feel your skin burn, your body marked, watch the ecstasy bloom in Joker’s eyes as he claims you like an object he’s improved.

None of them feel survivable.

Something inside you twists—not courage, not bravery, but love sharpened into something desperate and ugly and defiant. You gather what spit you can in your blood-wet mouth and turn your head as far as the wire allows.

You spit in his face.

It lands wet and unmistakable, dragging a slow line through the cracked white paint, cutting through the red smile like an insult carved in flesh.

For a heartbeat, everything freezes.

The Joker goes utterly still, his expression emptying out in a way that is far more frightening than his laughter. Then his eyes widen, pupils dilating, fury flaring bright and feral—pleased.

You lean forward, neck screaming as the wire bites deeper, and you whisper because your voice will not survive being louder.

“You know,” you murmur, breath shaking despite everything you do to steady it, “he’s never mentioned you before.”

His breath stutters.

“You must not have left quite an impression.”

It’s a lie. A reckless, transparent lie.

You have lived in Gotham long enough to know exactly what he is—his name written in blood across the city’s history—but lies can still cut, and you see it land. You see the way his smile stretches wider, hungry and thrilled.

You’ve given him a reason.

A reason to prove himself.

A reason to keep you alive.

A reason to make you hurt longer.

His hand tangles in your hair and yanks your head back violently. Your neck slams into the barbed wire, spikes tearing in with a wet, intimate sound that makes you sob despite yourself. Warm blood spills down your throat, choking you, slicking your chest.

Then the brand descends.

The heat is indescribable—ancient, total, a pain so vast it consumes thought itself. Your flesh screams as it burns, the smell of seared skin rising thick and sweet, smoke curling upward as the letter is carved into you slowly, deliberately. Your body arches uselessly against the restraints, every nerve on fire, and the sound that leaves you is not a scream so much as something torn out of your soul.

You hate that he hears it. And when that drug denies you the void of sleep you so desperately need, you allow yourself to think numbly as the man pulls it away that at least Jason can't dwindle his appearance anymore.

Your tears stripe down your cheeks, burning as they touch your skin.

We match. You think numbly, Atleast we match.

He strokes over the brand with more delicacy than he has ever had in this whole nightmare, mumbling, “This is going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me.”

When you wake again, it’s to the weight of tears landing on your face—warm, uneven drops that pull you out of the dark in slow, reluctant pieces. For a moment you don’t know where you are. The world rocks gently, like it can’t decide whether to keep moving or stop altogether. There’s the low hum of an engine beneath you, vibration traveling through bone and bruised muscle, and the smell of old leather surrounds you—worn, familiar, grounding in a way that makes your chest ache.

Leather is good.

Leather is not acid.

Leather does not burn your lungs on the way in.

“Hurts,” you mumble, the word barely surviving the journey out of your throat. You offer it up like an apology, like a peace offering, half-expecting pain to answer you back.

Instead, the crying breaks harder.

It comes undone above you, raw and ugly, and through the haze you realize you aren’t lying flat on concrete, waiting for the Joker to press a cinder block to your stomach. Your body is stretched across someone, your legs draped over another set of knees, your weight distributed carefully, reverently, like something fragile that might shatter if shifted wrong. 

An arm is braced beneath your neck, steady and strong, keeping your head from lolling, and your cheek presses into a leather jacket that smells unmistakably like gun oil, sweat, rain—

Jason.

The knowledge hits softer than it should, cushioned by exhaustion and shock, and when your eyes finally manage to open, everything swims. Light smears at the edges, colors bleeding into one another, but his face is there anyway, hovering close, carved with terror and relief and something so naked it almost scares you more than the warehouse did.

“Am I in heaven?” you mumble.

He lets out a sound that isn’t quite a sob and isn’t quite a laugh, choking on it as his chin trembles. “You don’t even believe in heaven.”

“Well,” you murmur, trying—and failing—to pull your mouth into something that resembles a smile, “what else could you be?”

Your jaw burns when you speak. Everything burns. It feels like your body has been filled with broken glass and lit from the inside, and you’re dimly aware of warm liquid slipping from your mouth, darkening the leather beneath your cheek every time you breathe wrong. You hate that you’re staining him. You hate that you can’t stop.

“I’ll kill him,” Jason whispers, like a prayer he’s been holding onto with both hands. His fingers shake as they brush your hair back, careful to avoid places he knows are hurt. “I’ll kill him. I promise.”

“Can I have hot chocolate first?” you mumble. The words feel distant, like they belong to someone else. “I bought that expensive kind… from Finland. Asshole knocked it all over my carpet…”

Jason’s breath fractures completely at that. He nods too hard, tears spilling freely now, dropping onto your cheeks, your neck, your collarbone. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll buy you hot chocolate. I’ll buy you all of it.”

Somewhere near your feet, another voice cuts in, low and strained with concern. “Hey, Jay—breathe—”

Jason doesn’t hear them. Or maybe he does and simply can’t afford to listen. His chest is rising too fast beneath you, breaths sawing in and out like he’s drowning on dry land, his eyes glassy and unfocused, the green in them shifting with every frantic blink.

Or maybe that’s just your vision still failing you. That would make sense. The powder. The smoke. The way light hurts now.

“Stop crying,” you murmur weakly. “I can’t die with you looking like that.”

That breaks him.

His face crumples completely, grief spilling over into something fierce and desperate as he bends closer, forehead almost touching yours. “Good,” he chokes. “Fuck you. I’ll cry even more, so–so stay with me, yeah?”

“No,” you whisper, your voice scraping raw against your throat. “Wanna sleep.”

“You slept an awful lot,” he snaps, but there’s no anger in it—only terror wearing sharp edges, only love clawing its way out however it can.

“Well,” you murmur, your voice thin but soft, like you’re afraid of startling him, “You show up in my dreams an awful lot.”

That does it.

Whatever fragile control Jason had left fractures clean through. He folds over you instinctively, shoulders caving as he tries—fails—to hide the sound of it. His breath comes apart against your hair, his forehead dipping close to your temple like if he presses himself near enough, he can keep you here by force alone. You feel the tremor of him through your whole body, every hitch of his chest echoing in your ribs.

You smell blood on him then. Copper and iron, sharp beneath the leather and sweat and rain. For a distant, numb second you think it’s yours again—until the scent is too heavy, too layered.

Oh.

Was this—

“Did I interrupt family bonding?” you whisper.

Your lips barely move. The words slip out half-asleep, half-dreaming, and they earn you a startled huff from somewhere behind you. Jason doesn’t answer. He can’t. His arms tighten instead, one hand splayed carefully at your back like he’s afraid even breathing too hard might hurt you more.

A voice comes from the seat behind, dry and unimpressed, because Jason is currently incapable of speech and whoever has your legs resting in their lap is rubbing slow, grounding circles into his back.

“If this is what you think family bonding is, you’ll fit right in.”

“Damian, be quiet,” another voice snaps.

“She’s the one shamelessly flirting with him in front of all of us, Tim” Damian continues anyway, undeterred. “And Father isn’t even saying anything, so—”

“Well she’s the one dying!” Tim blurts, voice cracking sharp with fear.

Jason chokes on the words that come from Tim’s mouth, breath stuttering hard, and a deeper voice cuts in from the front seat—controlled, measured, holding itself together by sheer will.

“She’s not going to die, Tim.”

“I want hoya bellas on my grave,” you interrupt softly.

Jason lets out a broken sound that might have been a laugh in another universe. He shakes his head over you, forehead brushing your hair, and through your blurry vision you think you catch a gloved hand popping up behind him in a solemn thumbs-up.

“Got it.”

Another voice joins in from the front, exasperated and strained. “Cassandra, she’s not being serious.”

“I’m sorry,” Jason whispers, over and over, like a mantra, like something he’s trying to carve into reality. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” His thumb strokes your hair away from your forehead again, impossibly gentle, avoiding the places he knows hurt, the places he doesn’t want to know at all.

“I’m gonna sleep now,” you murmur. It takes effort to shape the words. The dark is getting heavier again, tugging at you, warm and deep. “Can one of you give Jason water?”

“Hey—” Jason breathes, panic flaring sharp as his voice cracks. “Hey, no—no, no, no, stay with me, come on—”

But you’re already slipping.

Your eyes flutter closed despite him, despite the warmth of his arms, despite the way his heart is racing beneath your ear like it’s trying to outrun fate itself. His glove comes off hurriedly and you feel his bare fingers press to your pulse, grounding himself in the steady beat there, in the fact that it’s still happening.

After a few minutes, Dick leans forward and taps Jason’s shoulder gently, offering a water bottle. His uniform is torn and scorched like the rest of them, a thin cut bright against his cheek, but his voice is soft when he speaks.

“Drink.”

Jason doesn’t look up. He doesn’t let go. He just nods once, tight and shaky, eyes fixed on you like if he looks away for even a second, the world might take you again.

He forces himself to take a full gulp of water, the plastic bottle crinkling loudly in the too-quiet car, his throat working like it has to remember how swallowing goes. His hands are still shaking when he passes it off to Tim.

“Hey, I don’t need any—”

Jason looks at him.

Not sharp. Not angry. Just steady in a way that leaves no room for argument, the kind of look that says do this or I will fall apart next.

Tim takes a long swig immediately. Somewhere in the background, Damian lets out a low, satisfied cackle.

The digital clock on the Batmobile reads 4:00 a.m.

The numbers glow cold blue against the dark interior, reflected faintly in the windshield like a second set of eyes staring back at them. Gotham outside is hollow and half-dead at this hour—streetlights flickering, rain-slick asphalt stretching endlessly, buildings slumped together like they’re exhausted too.

Bruce’s voice is calm as he calls Alfred, clipped and precise, already listing supplies like this is something he can control if he names enough of it out loud.

Jason doesn’t listen.

He keeps his focus on you.

On the shallow rise and fall of your chest. The warmth is still clinging stubbornly to your skin. On the way your weight settles into him like it belongs there, like it always has. One hand stays firm at your neck, holding you upright because you need it—because you need him steady, and that knowledge anchors him harder than anything Bruce could ever say.

You need him here. You need him present. You need him not to break.

He knows that, because once—once—that was all he ever wanted too.

And that’s the cruel part of it.

Because the weight of you in his arms has only ever meant safety. Home. Sleep curling warm and heavy in his bones. His body doesn’t know the difference between holding you safe and finally being allowed to rest.

Jason Todd passes out with his forehead dipping gently toward yours, his grip loosening only by a fraction, like even unconscious he’s afraid to let you go.

The last thing he hears before everything goes dark is Tim’s voice, sharp with panic and disbelief.

“Dude—what the fuck—”

“Hold his head up—don’t let him fall on her!” Bruce barks from the front, voice cracking sharp through the Batmobile like a snapped cable.

All at once, everyone moves.

Damian fists the back of Jason’s T‑shirt, knuckles white as he yanks him upright with a strength born of panic he’d never admit to. Dick stretches impossibly from the passenger seat, arm braced awkwardly as he cups the back of Jason’s head, careful, reverent, like he’s afraid one wrong angle will shatter him. Tim presses a steadying hand to Jason’s chest, feeling the uneven rise and fall beneath his palm, grounding him the way he’s learned to do with bombs and brothers alike.

Jason is dead weight. Heavy. Still clinging to you even in unconsciousness, his arm slack but stubborn around your shoulders, like muscle memory alone refuses to let you go.

The Batmobile hums on, tires slicing through wet streets, Gotham blurring past in streaks of sodium light and rain-slick concrete. The city feels distant now, muffled, like it’s holding its breath with them.

“…Did someone check if the Joker was—uh—breathing?” Stephanie asks from the back, her voice small in a way it rarely ever is.

She hadn’t stayed for the end. Her job had been triage—getting the kids out, shouting orders, dragging civilians through blood and broken glass while the rest of them stayed behind in the warehouse with the laughter and the screaming. She’d smelled the aftermath on them when they regrouped. She didn’t need details then but...

Bruce doesn’t look back. His hands tighten on the wheel.

“Jason didn’t hit any vital points,” he says quietly, like he’s reciting a report he’s already memorized. “Just… ah—”

“Carved his face like a jack‑o’‑lantern,” Damian supplies, entirely too calm. “Heated up a crowbar to do it too. Very effective.”

There’s a beat of silence.

The city lights flash over Bruce’s face—old stone and deep eyes that are hollowed by relief he doesn’t let himself feel yet.

“…Yeah,” Bruce exhales, short and rough. “That.”

The Batmobile keeps moving.

Jason breathes.

You breathe.

And for now, that’s enough to keep the night from swallowing them whole.

You wake up in bed.

Not the thin, borrowed kind your body has learned to tolerate at your apartment, but something deep and indulgent—clean sheets tucked tight, the mattress yielding just enough to cradle you instead of swallowing you whole. The pillow beneath your cheek feels stupidly expensive, cool and smooth, smelling faintly of detergent and something old and comforting, like cedar and money and quiet hallways that echo.

For a moment, you think you’re dreaming again.

Then you feel him.

Jason is asleep beside you, solid and unmistakable. You don’t need to move—you can’t really anyways—to know it’s him. The arm wrapped around your waist is heavy with familiar strength, protective even in unconsciousness. His hair brushes against your arm every time he breathes, soft, tickling your skin in a way that makes your chest ache.

He’s breathing.

That fact alone nearly undoes you.

God. You really need to raise your standards, you think hazily. You’re reduced to this—listening to him breathe, feeling the slow rise and fall of his chest, and already you want to curl into him and coo like nothing in the world has ever gone wrong.

Then you see Bruce.

He’s standing near the bed, still as a statue, watching you with the careful intensity of someone afraid to spook a wild animal. It takes effort to focus on his face, your vision dragging itself into clarity inch by inch.

When you try to lift your head—manners resurfacing before sense—your body protests sharply.

Bruce moves instantly.

“Hey, hey—no,” he murmurs, hands gentle but firm as he presses you back into the mattress. “Relax. It’s okay. You’re safe.”

Your head sinks back into the pillow, and the moment stretches. You swallow thickly before managing a small, hoarse sound of politeness.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Wayne. Jason—”

“Hasn’t told you much about me,” Bruce finishes for you, a faint, tired chuckle slipping out. “That’s alright. I just need you to sleep right now.”

You glance downward as best you can, feeling something sharp dig into your side.

“…I can’t sleep if your son’s elbow is in my ribs.”

Bruce blinks.

Actually blinks—surprised enough that it breaks through the carefully assembled calm. “Ah—” he starts, then reaches for Jason, trying to rearrange him with the same precision he uses on everything else.

It doesn’t work.

Jason huffs in his sleep, a low, irritated sound, and somehow manages to make it worse—his arm tightening, his leg hooking over yours possessively, like you’re something he’s afraid the world might steal back if he lets go.

Bruce freezes.

You mumble, exhausted but soft, “It’s alright. I’m sure he hasn’t slept… I’ve gotten quite a lot, so…”

Bruce looks like he wants to argue. His jaw tightens, then loosens, the fight draining out of him. He exhales and sits back in the chair by the bed, elbows on his knees, hands clasped tightly together.

“It’s the 26th,” he says quietly.

Oh.

You missed Christmas.

What a shame.

After a moment, Bruce speaks again, and his voice is heavier now—careful, deliberate, like every word costs him something.

“I… want to apologize to you.” His fingers interlace, knuckles whitening. “I knew you’d been taken. And I didn’t tell him. Possibly… he could have been there sooner. But I needed to make sure the others would be saved as well.”

“Well,” you murmur, the word barely more than breath, “I don’t exactly blame you for that.”

It isn’t forgiveness exactly—nothing so grand—but it’s honest, and it lands heavier than anger ever could.

Bruce doesn’t relax. If anything, his shoulders pull tighter, like he’s bracing for a blow that never quite comes. He’s spent his whole life learning how to de‑escalate men with guns, gods with vendettas, cities with teeth—but you unsettle him in a quieter, more dangerous way. You’re calm. You’re lucid. You’re something Jason had threatened to shoot himself for.

He clears his throat, trying to give you something solid, something measurable. Facts are safer.

“Jason… got him,” Bruce says carefully. “Badly. I think—” He hesitates, eyes flicking once toward Jason like he’s checking for movement. “I think the Joker may be blind now. Or at least permanently impaired.”

“You let him?” you ask.

Still no accusation. Just a soft, stunned curiosity, as if you’re piecing together a story you were never meant to survive.

Bruce nods. Once. The motion costs him. “I did,” he admits. “But I—”

“Then that’s enough,” you whisper, interrupting him gently, like you’re afraid the words themselves might hurt. “Jason will realize that too.” Your lashes flutter; exhaustion tugs at you like a tide. “I mean… he probably won’t. He’ll still try to kill him.” A faint, crooked exhale. “But you did everything you could yesterday.”

Your gaze drifts—not to Bruce, but to Jason. To the way his arm is still locked around you, even in sleep. To the stubborn set of his jaw, the crease between his brows that never fully smooths out anymore.

“Thank you,” you add quietly. “For finding me.”

That’s when Bruce goes still.

Not rigid. Not defensive.

Still.

Because he’s been looking at you, yes—but now you realize he hasn't been looking you in the eye while he speaks. His eyes have been caught in one place, drawn there again and again like a bruise you can’t help but press.

Your cheek.

The skin there is angry beneath the bandage’s edge—raw, faintly swollen, discolored in a way he winced at while he bandaged it. Bruce didn't let anyone else tend to it, not even Alfred. 

Because this was a wound he inflicted, one that he needed to tend to.

“It’s still fresh,” he says, softer now, stripped of the Bat and the rules and the fear. Just a man speaking carefully around something fragile. “I’ll get you better medicine. The pigment should fade.” A pause. His voice lowers. “I can’t promise about the texture.”

You don’t look away. You don’t flinch.

“That’s okay,” you say.

And Bruce doesn’t know if you mean the scar, or the pain, or the fact that you’ll carry this forever—but Jason shifts in his sleep then, brow tightening, arm drawing you closer like he sensed the weight of the moment and refused to let it settle on you alone.

Bruce watches that. Watches how Jason anchors himself to you without waking, how his breathing steadies when yours does, how it pauses even in sleep when yours hitches.

“He loves you a lot.” Bruce mumbles.

“...And you too Mr.Wayne.”

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