Chapter Text
Jason eases his knee down into the mud, feeling the waters of the marsh seep into his britches. He shifts his weight slowly, carefully, waiting as the sludge shifts beneath him and solidifies into an unearthed tree root. The moonlight splits off the glistening silver tip of his crossbow bolt for the barest second as he hoists it, and Jason pauses, awaiting a reaction that doesn’t come. Then he steadily nocks the stirrup into a gnarled twist of age-old root and layers his shoulder against the stock.
He waits. He can wait for as long as it takes. Can wait until the clouds shift and split and bare the lake before him like a pearl beneath that gaping moon. He’s waited years for this moment, and Jason can afford to wait however many more it takes for him to get his justice.
The creature slides across the ink of the lake with barely a ripple, intangible in the clouded moonlight. Jason holds his breath and eases forward to get a better glimpse. It traces a route parallel to the shore near where he waits, only the faint trickle of water off its back the indicator of its position. He can make out the shadow of a long and slender neck, arched high over the mottled lake, as if it’s surveying its domain. There’s a streak of blood-red down its mouth, and Jason’s lip curls back, the fury in his gut stoked at the sight of the beast.
His hand shakes on the crossbow for a brief moment, before he inhales deep through his nose and focuses to a razor point. Lets his gaze skim the ruffle of wings over its back, coiled and waiting. It’s formidable in size, elegant in its lethality, but Jason knows better than any man the sort of wretched havoc that creature can cause in flight. Knows deep in his gut, wrapped like a noose around his chest that tugs tighter with every agitated sweep that savage makes over the water. Then it raises its head, a single crimson eye flashing in the stagnant light.
For a moment, Jason’s fifteen again, gripped with paralysing fear. He can feel the splinters in his palms, feel the ruptured carriage shifting beneath the claw and beat of an enormous winged beast. His breath is hard and flat in his lungs - not enough, too fast - and Jason can’t swallow past his pertification.
There’s bellows around him, a cacophony of sound that’s swallowed entirely by the creak of the abused vessel that’s shattering, slowly and surely, around him. And those wingbeats thrum in his skull like a winter’s storm rips across barren fields, pervasive and malicious in their intensity.
He can’t think, can’t move, and Bruce’s hand is white around his bicep, his gravelly bark ricocheting in Jason’s stunned ears. He can’t make out the words, can barely hear them over the great black beast’s unwavering assault as the carriage jolts and tips and threatens to crack open, bare them to this skyward demon.
There’s a frantic glean to Bruce’s eyes, but he’s moving so slow, like the sands of time are running through treacle. The other prince, Jason’s betrothed, is tucked into Bruce’s side. His bright blue eyes are drowned in tears, his cheeks cleaved by their tracks as he shakes and sobs and screams, terrified beneath Bruce’s protective curl.
“Jason,” Bruce is insisting, his tone hard and raw. Jason thinks maybe he’s scared. He’s never heard Bruce scared before.
The carriage shifts, wood splitting beneath the rending of the creature’s talons, and Jason staggers back into the bench seat, fumbling for balance when the floor bucks. Bruce’s hand is bruising around his arm, and Jason numbly tries to focus on his words.
“Take Timothy,” he instructs, and Jason’s gaze flickers down to the boy at his feet, forehead buried in his knees as he shakes and mewls. He looks hysterical, and so very young, and the thought lodges hard and obtuse in Jason’s chest. “Jason, take Tim and get out of here. Take him to his parents. Save yoursel-”
Then the roof is rising, warping and cracking and splintering. Jason glances up as those talons descend, sharp and curved and wickedly lethal as those wings beat and reform the sky above them. Jason can feel the force of the wind pinning him against the seat as Bruce tries to shield him, and he can’t breathe.
Tim’s scream rises to a shrill alarm as Bruce is ripped backwards and upwards, the carriage and the clearing suddenly bare around them as Jason’s hands curl around the timber. He tries to rise, reaching blankly for Tim. He takes his arm in much the same way Bruce had taken his, tugging him up against the younger boy’s protest. But Jason’s older, and stronger, and Tim is his responsibility now.
That creature is circling again, Jason can hear it, and Jason clamps down on the realisation that it’s talons are empty, bare of Bruce- then he’s scrambling up, Tim in tow, and launching himself from the wreckage of the carriage.
He shifts against the root, drilling his knee into the solidity of it, the certainty, to draw him out of the memory. Jason clenches his palms around the crossbow, and for the barest second, he can feel the soft give of a younger boy’s arm as it’s wrenched from him, and Jason opens his eyes.
He layers himself against the foregrip, retribution coiling like the roots around him, firm and unwavering. Jason stares across the bank of the lake at the creature, the monster that killed his father - murdered Bruce and murdered young Timothy Drake before Jason even had a chance to properly meet his betrothed, threw both their kingdoms into disarray that Jason’s spent six long years rectifying, robbed of a guiding hand - and feels his resolve fortify.
The clouds shift, the moon yawns wide, and the entire surface is illuminated in shreds of rippling silver. Jason can make out its form now, can discern the long arch of neck and the individual spines of the ebony feathers that paint its sides. As Jason watches, it settles its weight into the shimmering pool of the lake, arching upwards as it bares wings. It stretches up and out, as if it can embrace the moon, and the sheer size of it is enough to throw Jason’s tiny puddle of marsh into shadowed darkness.
Jason grits his teeth, lets the trembling vengeance fill him, and adjusts his finger on the trigger. Lines up the sights of that perfectly lethal bolt with the scruff of feathers between the creature’s shoulders. Imagines what it will look like when the swan collapses into water, sinks like a stone back to the hell it clawed its way out of.
Then Jason realises he doesn’t have to imagine, he can just take it, and his finger curls.
There’s a flash of liquid, silver light, so blinding that it fills the entire clearing, scouring the trees and stone white. Jason wrenches his head below the tangle of roots to shield it, heart leaping to his throat. When he peeks above, a frown etched into his brow, his heart sinks back to his stomach and lodges there.
The swan curls, arching its throat back as if in horrid pain, a voiceless scream tearing through its lips. Its wings beat once, stretching out until the very tips of its remiges are trembling from the tension, and then it jolts violently, like a strike of lightning has coursed through it. That light expands, the white burning into Jason’s shielded retinas, and when he next blinks, there’s a man standing in the lake.
Jason stares, jaw slack and crossbow lulling in his grip.
The man folds forward onto his knees in the shallows and wails.
The sound of it startles Jason, and he jerks back from his crouch, finger slipping. The bolt releases, flying wide and burying itself a few yards shy of the man as Jason slips in the mud. He catches himself with a curse, twisting his ankle in the exposed roots, and glances back up to find the man has spun to face him.
There’s tear tracks on his cheeks, though he’s not crying now, and those huge, startled blue eyes are fixed on him. Jason would know that blue anywhere. That’s a blue he could fall into, deeper and more turbulent than the lake behind the shivering man.
The name rises to Jason’s lips as he straightens, the man’s gaze following him up. “Tim?”
His expression freezes, suspended in disbelief for the barest second, and then it folds into sharp relief. He staggers towards Jason as he flings himself over the log, water cascading around him as he throws himself into Jason’s chest.
The wind goes out of him, and Jason only manages to keep his footing because he braces at the last second. That head of ink-black hair buries itself against Jason’s collarbone, and then there are hands on his shoulder blades, on his spine, pressing, clinging to him.
Jason’s hands are numb and trembling when he brings them up to cup the back of the man’s neck, half-certain he’ll disintegrate into a fog as soon as he touches him. But that pale skin is hot and flushed beneath his palm, and the instant he realises it’s Tim, it’s actually Tim, Jason’s fingers burrow into his hair and drag him impossibly closer.
Tim makes a choked, bitten-off sob against him, and Jason feels his shoulders heave with it, though the sound never reaches him. Tim’s shaking like a leaf, soaked through and trembling, and Jason folds them both down to the shore because he’s not sure he can stay standing much longer himself.
“You’re alive,” Jason whispers, voice raw and stunned, and Tim whines like he hasn’t heard another person’s voice in years. Jason has the sudden, horrifying thought that perhaps he hasn’t. So he tightens his grip around Tim’s shoulders and repeats with fortitude this time, “You’re alive, Tim.”