Chapter Text
The thing that people always forgot, well, didn’t so much forget as misunderstand, was exactly how much coming back to life and being dumped in the lazarus pit had affected him, fucked with his head, his body and his hormones in ways that he was still figuring out for himself.
So, somehow, he shouldn’t have been surprised when he, half-way across the country, found himself getting sick for absolutely no reason that he could figure out, which was fucking scary.
What was scarier was the results of the tests he ran, particularly because they listed him as pregnant.
Which wasn’t possible.
It absolutely, one-hundred percent was not possible, he hadn’t had any sort of sex that could get him pregnant in… years.
Hell, he’d been so careful after he came back because of the ‘little’ incident that came a short while before his death… He had to stop and think about it.
He hadn’t shared a heat with anyone (save Talia after he’d come back, but she was careful and female alphas couldn’t impregnate male omegas unless they damn well intended to) since before his death.
It wasn’t like he could have anyone so much as knowing the Red Hood’s designation, much less so intimately.
He didn’t need sex that much anyway, he wasn’t obligated to sleep with anyone, no matter how attractive he found them and suppressants existed for a reason, so his heats weren’t really a problem.
Hell, the only reason why it had happened before was because the robin costume didn’t do shit against Ivy’s weird ass sex pollens and it had thrown him into a nasty heat even after he’d gotten the antidote and being trapped with golden, perfect Alpha Dick Grayson hadn’t particularly helped in that matter.
He was fairly certain that the other had repressed the memory in a little box labeled ‘things that I’m going to pretend didn’t happen with the people I claim to feel platonic/brotherly love towards’, which, well; that sort of thing had been happening long before Jason came into the picture, and he had no doubt that they had continued to happen since.
They all did what needed to be done, and then forgot about it. Usually.
It wasn't like he ever thought about the bastard, romantically, or anything. Ever.
He could be forgiven for checking out that ass, because everyone did that, but he didn't ever think about sharing a real heat with him. Nope.
~
The retests, and the retests of the retests all told him the same thing; either his testing equipment was faulty, which was his preferred answer, or he was actually pregnant.
So he ignored it, working through the case that had brought him out to the city of whatever and planting himself very firmly in denial.
If he maybe stopped drinking and cut back on coffee, then there was no one around to know.
And if not knowing drove him to distraction until he finally walked into a local clinic with a fake ID, then he surely couldn’t be blamed for that.
Anyone would want to double check, just to make sure.
Even though it really couldn’t be a true possibility.
~
It turned out to be a good thing that he had gone, because his medical equipment wasn’t as faulty as he’d been hoping for.
He did have a kid, and it was further along than he’d suspected (although not as old as it would be if it actually came from any occasion of sexual intercourse on his part) and suddenly he wasn’t quite sure what was real anymore.
He couldn’t be pregnant, it simply wasn’t possible.
Hell, he’d half convinced himself that he was infertile, whether naturally or from something that he’d come in contact with over the years, maybe even from the pit even though that wasn’t logical.
He didn’t know jack-shit about pregnancy or childbirth, much less what the hell he was going to do about it, looking at the doctor with a stare that he refused to admit was wide-eyed, biting his tongue to keep back the curses in his mouth and wondering what the hell he was going to do with a baby.
Because he wasn’t going to give it up, he couldn’t. It just, it wouldn’t feel right.
~
He let himself be convinced to stay in town for a while, just until he regained his equilibrium.
Just until he knew what he was going to do.
Partially because it was a doctor that had put up with him snapping and refusing to cooperate without quitting, and partially because it made it less likely that anyone he knew would track him down and find out.
He wasn’t even sure how he was going to handle it, he didn’t have the energy to try and figure out how anyone else would react to his sudden maternal status.
Then again, he could feel the disappointed bat-gaze already.
From what he understood, the pregnancy had gone into a sort of freeze mode after the child had been conceived (too much lazarus, too much rage and unhealthy actions for a growing fetus to survive) and waited until his… something stabilized enough for him to sustain the pregnancy to full term.
Which. It was the sort of crazy ass thing that would end up happening to him, so he didn’t even know why he was surprised anymore.
But, the more he learned about what was going on with his body, about how much it all would entail, the more he started (panicking) worrying.
There was literally no way for him to have a natural birth, his body wasn’t capable of doing that, so a C-section was going to be his best bet.
Which was. Why. How had male omegas even existed before modern medicine? There was no fucking logical explanation for why nature had decided to create them.
Jesus christ, at least some people had the proper reproductive biology to produce and carry a child to term, but a lot of male omegas had the sort of body that simply couldn’t do that.
He wound up renting an apartment, just for a little while, once the week long trip starting looking like it was going to last a couple of months.
Because he couldn’t bring himself to think about going home, not yet.
And no one managed to track him down either (or they just didn’t bother to try and follow him, which was more likely) and he had absolutely no doubts that his turf would have gone absolutely to hell by the time he got back.
But then, a few months later, after endless appointments and weird ass health-care routines that just didn’t make any sense to him and his silent freak-outs when the baby moved inside of him; eventually he gave up on pretending that he wasn’t carrying on full conversations with the bump, mostly joking but… He didn’t always believe that they were completely one-sided either.
It all lead up to him waking up in a shitty hospital cot, on more pain medication than he took when he got shot and with a squalling child being placed into his arms, held up by hands that were far more accustomed to holding weapons than to holding children and he’d never admit it, but something inside of him ached at the thought that the child was already cursed; damned to have the him as a parent, the infamous Red Hood, a murderer, the undead former robin.
Hell knew how much of the things he’d done had affected the kid (how much fear gas had mixed in with Gotham’s drinking water over the years? Did the Lazarus ever really leave your system? Had he taken a blow to the gut before he’d known he was pregnant that might have hurt it?)
What kind of legacy could he leave to a child other than the weight of the destruction that he’d wreaked?
That was a depressing thought.
When he thought about it like that, he hated that she was going to grow up in a world where people like him were necessary, but it wasn’t like he could do much about that.
So, ultimately, his question was; what the hell was he going to do with a kid?