Chapter Text
When Jeremiah opens his eyes, his vision is blurry.
He blinks at the ceiling – too white, too luminous, nothing like the dark grey stone he's used to wake up to – before turning to reach for his glasses.
At least, that's what he tries to do. He feels his arms being held back and when he looks down, he sees that he is restrained.
He tries not to panic.
He panics.
He feels dread rising from within his chest as his mind begins racing with disaster scenarios – familiar ones, ones that have plagued him for years. Jerome having found his way to him, Jerome capturing him, Jerome getting his revenge on him, Jerome, always Jerome. Him and his dangerous, lethal games.
He's dead.
Is he?
He hears the sound of a curtain being drawn back. Two women stand a few feet from his bed, dressed as nurses. A hospital then. Although, who knows. This could easily be a ruse. They watch him from afar with wary expressions, not stepping closer. After a moment one of them whispers something to the other, who nods, before they both leave without saying a word to him.
He can't shake off the feeling that something has gone terribly, horribly wrong.
He doesn’t know how long he lies there, his breathing shallow and fast. He wishes he could move and sit up. There is a weight pressing on his chest, getting heavier and heavier, and nothing for him to do but worry. The last time his mind had been spinning out of control like this, Ecco had found him sitting on the floor, his back against- no, the last time his mind had spun out of control--
He closes his eyes.
His fears are manifesting into irrational thoughts, that’s all.
It feels like hours have passed when he hears movement, low voices coming from behind the curtain. When he hears footsteps coming closer, his eyes snap open.
Bruce is standing there, the curtain pushed just enough for him to look inside.
“Bruce,” he sighs in relief, because he’s the first familiar face he’s seen since he woke up, and if he’s there, surely the situation is not that bad.
Bruce doesn’t say anything, simply looks at him with an unreadable expression. Someone else pushes past him into the room. And, well.
If this is a hospital, and someone has called Captain Gordon as soon as Jeremiah woke up, it isn’t reassuring.
The thoughts that keep flashing in his mind are getting harder to dismiss.
A dark alley. A gun. The inescapable urge to leave his mark and pull the trigger on two people who are not who they should be. And at the center of it all, Bruce.
Jeremiah feels like he’s choking on air. He can’t tear his gaze away from Bruce, feeling more horrified with each passing second.
What has he done?
---
Bruce should be used to seeing a new personality of Jeremiah’s by now.
It’s strange, him being awake at all, after months of only seeing him unconscious. Jim doesn’t know Bruce had been visiting him. He doesn’t need to know. He probably wouldn’t understand, just like he didn’t understand why he would willingly spend time with him back when the only menacing aspect about him was his last name.
And as to why he had started coming here, Bruce doesn't have any answers to offer. The first time had been to make sure. He didn’t have an excuse after that.
But Jeremiah is awake, and Jim is asking him questions, and Jeremiah is answering them.
When they first arrived, he hadn’t said a word.
Jim had asked the nurses to move the patients that shared this room to other quarters. A simple precaution, seemingly pointless as Jeremiah was strapped to his bed. They did adjust his restraints to allow him to sit up while they were talking with him, but he had been completely pliant during the process.
Bruce is sitting opposite him, a few feet from the bed. He had planned to simply sit there and indicate Jim when he was straying too far from the truth, but Jeremiah is acting strangely.
His bizarre accent is gone, for starters.
His recounting of the events is honest but broken in pieces, pausing either to look for words, or to remember what happened, or something else entirely. Does he think himself so powerless that he has to resort to compliance? It’s not an attitude they’ve ever known from him.
Above everything, what Bruce notices is that Jeremiah is avoiding looking at him. At most, he gets a quick glance when Jim asks something that relates to him.
This is far from the Jeremiah he had come to know. The Jeremiah who would look at him like he was the only thing in the room.
It’s disconcerting.
His tone is devoid of his usual arrogance, and Bruce can’t help but think that he sounds like he used to when-
Focus. This is still the Jeremiah who shot Selina, destroyed Gotham, killed God knows how many people.
Bruce’s gaze drops to his hands, catching the slight tremor in them as he reaches the part where he had Tetch hypnotize Jim and Lee. Attempted to kill them, for the only reason that it would allow him to insert himself in Bruce’s life. To create a connection between them. Bonded by hatred.
“I’m sorry.”
His eyes snap back to his face. He can’t tell if this is addressed to him, Jim, or the both of them. He can’t see Jim’s face from where he’s sitting, but for a moment he’s just staying still, his fist clenching slightly. Before Bruce can react, he has crossed the distance that separated him from Jeremiah, his fingers closing on the collar of his hospital shirt.
“What do you mean you’re sorry, you sick s-”
“Jim,” Bruce says, standing up, because he looks moments away from throwing punches, and Bruce is tired of that.
Jeremiah’s gaze shifts between Jim and Bruce. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen him act this uneasy, and it’s a long way from the confidence he used to display.
“When I…” He pauses, starts again. “I think, the gas-”, but Jim releases him, letting his back hit the metallic headboard with a thump, and makes for the exit.
Bruce doesn’t move. He’s still looking at Jeremiah. He hates it, he doesn’t want to take the bait if this is another one of his games, but this has caught his attention. Jeremiah always denied Jerome’s gas had changed anything in him. Acknowledging any sort of impact Jerome had had on Gotham or on his own life seemed insufferable to him.
“Bruce,” Jeremiah calls quietly, and he sounds hesitant, like he’s expecting him to storm out like Jim.
Jim lets out a sigh and turns to look at Bruce, who just nods.
“I’ll be outside if you need me.”
He’s clearly reluctant at leaving them alone together, but frustration radiates off him. This isn’t what any of them had expected. It’s not who they expected. He crosses the empty room, past the empty beds.
The door closes. They stay silent for a moment.
“Have they drugged you?” he finally asks.
“What?” Jeremiah breathes out, and Bruce swears he sees a flash of... something, in his eyes. Fear, maybe, for a moment. “No, I don’t think so.”
Bruce takes a step towards the bed.
“What’s all this, then? What are you saying, you don’t feel the effects of the insanity gas anymore?”
It’s something he didn’t want to let himself consider, when he was looking at Jeremiah’s unconscious form, wondering what would happen when he’d wake up. It still crossed his mind, more than once, but he was quick to bury that thought before it started building into something resembling hope.
Because if he started thinking about the Jeremiah he first met, before everything, before the gas, he would start thinking about how he doesn’t put any blame on him. He only hates the person he turned into. The person Jerome made him. And then comes his own guilt, for making Jeremiah face his fears and not protecting him from the repercussions. He can’t think about that when he’s facing Jeremiah. He can’t let it slip that he cared, still cares, about the person he was underneath.
But it’s hard to ignore that thought now, with the meek way Jeremiah is conducting himself. His hair has grown, too, red roots reappearing under the greenish black. The reminder is almost painful.
“I don’t know,” he admits. “How can I be sure? All I know is- what I did… Bruce, I would never-”
Jeremiah stops abruptly, looking away, and Bruce knows he would once have felt the urge to sit by his side and reassure him, tell him that everything was going to be alright. (If he feels it now, well, he suppresses it.) He remembers being at the bunker after Jeremiah had confessed about the gas, watching him pace in panic at the idea of Jerome still being alive. Back then, Bruce had thought he could still save him. That they could overcome this together. Even at the cemetery, his arm locked around Jeremiah’s neck to keep him from attacking him, he believed it wasn’t too late, that whatever damage had occurred could be undone. And he feels the hint of something similar now, that maybe, if he is telling the truth, all he needs is someone to believe him to help him go back to who he was. To make things right.
But.
He had already been fooled once.
It had all been a trick, then. The gas had had a hold on him for much longer than Bruce could have predicted. The worry, the distress, the paranoia, it had only been an act. A trap that Bruce walked right into. And before that, the days they’ve spent working together on those generators, growing closer and becoming friends… The companionable silence at first, and when Jeremiah had started opening up, the joyous laughter he could get out of him, he wants to think some of it was real. That the effects of the gas had been gradual, that it had not all been a lie, but he cannot know that. When had Jeremiah realized that making the generators overload would turn them into bombs? When had he decided to use them as such? When had the brilliant, shy inventor he knew slipped completely out of reach?
He has never stopped feeling guilty for not seeing the signs earlier. Alfred is always quick to tell him that he couldn’t have seen this coming, but a part of him knows this could all have been avoided.
And now, well. Bruce can’t say he hadn’t wished for the insanity gas’ influence to weaken over time, for the Jeremiah he knew to resurface, but every time he had seen him he had seemed more and more out of reach. Madness had engulfed him, and he was simply too far gone.
Maybe his coma or the chemicals he fell into had broken that spell. It’s possible.
He shouldn’t get his hopes up, he knows better than that. Jeremiah might just be trying to get him to let his guard down. But if he’s telling the truth, it feels like a chance to make it right for failing him. Part of him doesn’t want to dismiss that possibility. Not when it puts him in a position where he could repair things. Another is begging him not to make the same mistake.
It’s a fine line to tread.
“I don’t expect you to believe me,” Jeremiah says after a while. He seems unsure if he should speak at all. “I want to tell you how sorry I am, for everything. But I know it will not change what hap- what I did. And I can’t make it right.”
“You can try.”
Bruce hadn’t planned to say that, but the words still hung in the air between them. It feels appropriate, though. A half-open door.
Jeremiah finally looks at him, and after a beat, nods faintly.
---
The next time Jeremiah wakes up, there’s a pair of glasses on his nightstand.
He reaches for them (the handcuffs allow more movement that his initial restraints had, something he’s very grateful for) and as he suspected, it’s his old ones, the ones he discarded at the cemetery. Bruce must have gotten them for him, because - who else? He has made himself an enemy of everyone in this town. He supposes it’s a good thing he’s still locked in this hospital, as it’s probably the safest place for him right now. He’s not sure he cares.
Looking at the glasses in his hands, all he feels is the wrongness of wearing them now. It feels like proclaiming that he’s expecting life to go on like nothing happened. But the person he was back then is now miles away, separated by an ocean of destruction, and he can’t pretend he wasn’t the one to pull the trigger. He can’t act like he didn’t destroy lives in his pursuit of rebuilding Gotham, as well as his pathetic chase for--
He resists the impulse to squeeze until the lenses shatter, until the glass digs in his palms.
He thinks of Bruce going to the trouble of getting them for him. After everything, it’s more than he deserves.
If this is a test, he doesn’t know what answer is the right one. He’s not sure he wants to pass it, anyway. Does he want to gain Bruce’s trust? Does he deserve it?
Bruce would be better off forgetting about him. He should probably tell him to stay away.
He slips the glasses on.