Chapter Text
The funny thing about safe houses is that they can be considered ‘safe’ for a variety of reasons. Some are safe because of their location. Warehouses tucked away in abandoned lots tend to run the most popular, and abandoned apartment buildings come second on that list. But, in Jason’s opinion the best safe houses are the ones kept in plain sight. Tiny apartments nestled between sections of the city. Right now he’s nabbed one right on the edge of Old-Gotham and Crime Alley. Safe enough to not get broken into on the regular, and just public enough to pass as being a normal guy with a normal life.
Also known as: A regular apartment. A neat two bedroom on the fifth floor of a run down number from hell. Jason spent nearly a month fixing every issue the place had. Leaks, weird holes in the wall, and he especially spent his time making sure every damn lock was changed.
And yet, despite having one bedroom as a dedicated armory, the place still came with the regular issues of living in an apartment. Namely, neighbors. His neighbors aren’t the worst. He coexists with criminal’s for god’s sake, so he can handle a party just fine.
But there’s a woman who moved in across the hall. Nice enough, although he wouldn’t truthfully know. Jason doesn’t make a habit of sticking in one place for very long. Sleep during the day, wake up by afternoon to get shit done, and prowl the streets at night. That’s his routine, and he planned on sticking to it.
Until she comes knocking on his door half past six. He turns off his tap and runs his wet hands through his hair. He was just about to get ready for patrol, and thankfully he was still in his civics. White t-shirt, and black joggers. As normal as he can get given his stature. He forces a bland if not pleasant look on his face when he opens the door,
“Hello?”
His neighbor steps back and whips her hair back out of her face. Exhaustion weighs heavily on her eyes. His eyes dart from her dark under eye circles to the red flush on her cheeks before she speaks.
“Hi. I am- so sorry to ask you this, but I know you live across the hall and I-I-”
Jason raises his brow, “What is it? Did a pipe burst?” it wouldn’t be the first time a neighbor somehow heard through the grapevine that he’s decent at home repairs. Wouldn’t be the first time he fixed a sink or a shower. In buildings like this one he tries to do what he can because he knows there’s no way in hell the landlord will do a damn thing.
“No, I,” she gestures to the name badge pinned to her scrubs. Krystal Parker, an E.R nurse at Gotham general. He looks back at her face and examines the panic hiding behind her tired eyes, “It’s my daughter. I got called in for a shift and I need a sitter. I-I’ll pay you. It’s just that my mom couldn’t come on such short notice and-”
“Sure.”
She pauses, “What?”
Jason blinks twice, and shrugs, “I don’t mind,” he pulls his keys off the hook by his front door and shuts his door behind him. He locks the deadbolt and turns back to face her, “I’ll do it.”
He gets it. She needs to work to support the kid but she can’t work if she has to watch the kid. He’s watched the struggle his entire childhood. So yeah. Watching a kid is easy beans compared to what his original plan for the evening is.
Krystal brightens and leads him inside of her apartment. The layout is identical to his but the main difference is that her’s is more of a home than his is meant to be. There’s children’s toys and books strewn about the floor. The t.v plays a childish tune at a low volume, and sitting on the couch is the child. A little girl. She’s probably less than eight years old at least. She blinks owlishly at him, and tilts her head towards her mother.
“Anika, this is..”
“Jason,” he supplies with a nod. Is it weird to be watching a stranger’s kid? If he called Bruce and asked the answer would be a definite That is a strange choice. But Bruce adopted a bunch of strange children so his opinion is shit.
“Jason,” Krystal walks over to press a sweet kiss against the side of Anika’s head. “He’ll be watching you tonight. Make sure to be on your best behavior, alright?”
Anika salutes her mother, and Krystal salutes back. The relief shows clearly on her shoulders that have finally gone slack. She pulls Jason into the kitchen by his wrist, and he tries very hard not to feel seven years old all over again. Mom’s just have a grip on them. A line of muscle between palm, thumbs, and fingers that can both cradle cheeks in gentle hands and clench painfully around thin wrists.
“There’s leftovers in the fridge, and she needs to be in bed by nine.”
“That’s it?” He thinks there might be more for a six year old to do. Kids have homework, right? Well, it is a friday night. Maybe she doesn’t. How much homework do first graders bring home?
Krystal nods and says, “I’ll be home around five. If anything happens my phone number is on the fridge. I seriously can’t thank you enough.”
“It’s fine,” he looks at the whiteboard on the fridge and taps her number into his phone. Jason saves her contact information and hovers over his contact for Bruce. He’ll have to call off properly. Or he’ll just call Barbara, that would be more convenient for everyone. “I hope you have a good shift.”
“On Friday night in Gotham?” She rolls her eyes and smiles, “I’ll need it. Thank you Jason, seriously. I’ll pay you back-”
“It’s fine, Krystal. Don’t worry about it.”
She frowns but looks at the clock on her microwave, retreating back towards the door. Jason follows her to lock it behind as she goes. He hopes she stays safe. Friday nights are another breed of awful in Gotham City. Currently being made worse by a new toxin haunting the streets. Jason has his money on Ivy being the one to propagate it, but someone out there is definitely making bank by selling it to other petty criminals.
He plucks his phone from his pocket and sends a quick message, Civilian Duty. Can’t patrol tonight.
Simple, quick, and for once, the truth. He watches Bruce’s three dots pop up only to be meant with a short, K.
Easy enough. Jason half expected to receive a phone call. He pockets his phone again and turns to the couch. Anika has her eyes trained on the television. He can’t recognize what’s playing on the screen. Something computer animated and flashy. The bad thing about waking up five years in the future was the lapse in pop-culture knowledge. He’s still pissed about missing the ending of Gravity Falls. Life isn’t fair sometimes.
“So, what are you watching?”
Anika shifts and looks at him. She blinks twice before returning her eyes to the television.
“Miraculous Ladybug.”
He looks at the screen and watches the red clad heroine toss her yo-yo into the air. Jason wishes saving the world could be as easy as it is in t.v shows. Call out a lucky charm and everything that’s gone wrong can be right all over again.
“Do you like it?”
“Not really,” her nose creases, “But it’s not the news or a documentary. Mom likes this more.”
“She doesn’t like you watching the news?”
“Have you seen the news, Mr. Jason?” her eyes roll dramatically along with her whole head. Jason flashes her a tight smile. He doesn’t have to watch the news to know what’s going on. Why is a six year old so fascinated by the news? That’s not his business to figure out. He leans back against the squashy couch and sighs.
“Yeah, and it’s nothing fun.”
“Mom says that it’s: ‘depressing and not good for kids.’”
“She has a point.”
Anika sticks her tongue out at him, and he sticks his back out at her. Her eyes widen before returning to the screen, “What do you think about the news?”
Jason sighs and knocks his head back against the couch. He shuts his eyes against the popcorn ceiling, “A lot of it is total trash, kid. Nothing of worth gets reported on unless it’s violent. It’s a fucking shame.”
“Oooh, you said a bad word.”
He looks at her with a shit eating grin. Anika covers her mouth to suppress her giggles but fails. She falls back against the couch in a fit of laughter, holding onto her ribs for support. She’s not a bad kid, honestly. He wonders why Krystal looked so apprehensive about the whole thing. Probably because he’s a stranger. He never wondered if his own mother was concerned about the men she used to leave him with while she attempted to make a living in the brief periods of time where she was sober.
He shuts the memory out before it can clutch him in it’s grasp and stands up, “Alright, are you hungry?”
“Yes.”
Anika’s head bobs up and down. Jason walks back into the little kitchen and cracks the fridge open. There’s not a lot there, but the leftovers are in tupperware containers with flower printed lids. Spaghetti by the looks of it. He tosses the smaller of the two containers into the microwave and looks over at the pile of dishes in the sink.
She takes a seat at the small dining table. Her legs swing back and forth before she speaks up,
“So what do you do, Mr. Jason? My moms a nurse and that’s super cool. But you’re buff so you must be cooler.”
Jason grunts and hunts down a bowl in the cabinets. He comes up with a plastic pink one and fills it with the spaghetti. Dry pasta noodles are less than a dollar at the local convenience store, and the sauce is slightly more expensive. He used to eat so much spaghetti. Jason imagines the prices are probably higher in recent years, but he wouldn’t really know.
“I’m a house cleaner,” he lies, “Not very interesting at all, kiddo.”
Anika frowns and takes her bowl from him. She twirls the noodles around and around while he busies himself with the dishes.
“Then why are you so muscley?”
“Someone has to lift heavy furniture,” he starts one side of the sink full of hot soapy water, and uses the other to rinse the dried food from the pots and pans. Behind him, Anika grunts.
“I guess that’s true. Do you clean places like my mommy’s?”
“Your place is way cleaner than the places I clean,” he soaks some of the dryer stuff in the hot water, and scrubs at it with a sponge. “Trust me.”
She giggles, “Do you clean crime scenes?”
He cracks a smile.
“No way!” She slaps her hands on the table, “I knew it!”
“You caught me,” he waves a clean dish around before setting it in the drying rack. He starts on the next bowl and burns through every last dish by the time Anika finishes her dinner. She gets up silently and pads down the hallway. He only figures out where she’s off to when he hears the shower running.
A good kid, really. It’s not even late yet. They spent an hour or so talking, eating, and washing dishes. Jason has no intention of sleeping. He cleans up the rest of the kitchen; Scrubbing the counters, the floor, and every available surface. It’s the least he can do, and he doesn’t exactly want to sit around doing nothing once Anika goes to bed. He should have brought a book with him.
But he didn’t. So, he regresses back into old habits. By the time Anika comes back from the shower he’s moved onto tidying up the living room. He pauses and picks up a few books,
“These yours?”
Her head bobs up and down. Wet hair clings to her face and she holds a hair tie out towards him. Jason sets the books down and sits down on the couch. Anika sits in front of him on folded knees. He hasn’t braided hair in a while. Maybe when he was still in Gotham Academy and he had a handful of girlfriends. They probably taught him. He ties off Anika’s braid neatly and checks his phone. It’s a quarter to nine, at least. He watches her run her fingers along the curves of her hair. There’s a neat little smile on her face that definitely doesn’t make him feel fond.
“Mister Jason?”
“Yeah kid?”
Anika reaches across the coffee table and plucks out one of her books.
“Can you read me a bedtime story?”
He takes the book and examines the title. A short anthology of fairy tales. He cracks open to the table of contents, and all the classics are there. Beauty and the Beast, Little Red Riding Hood, the Princess and the Frog, and Snow White.
“Sure, lead the way.’
She scrambles to her feet and runs down the hall. Jason follows after her and watches her get settled on her bed. Anika shoves a pile of stuffed animals against the wall and gets cozy under her covers, looking back at him with big eyes.
Having nowhere else to sit, he opts for the end of her little twin sized bed. The room isn’t much, but it’s there. A chest full of toys, a closet full of clothes, and a very fuzzy pink rug on the ground brings the entire thing together as a little girl’s room.
Krystal clearly prioritizes Anika, and that alone makes his shoulders sag with relief. Maybe he should stop expecting people to be terrible… nah. That thinking will get him killed. He opens the book up to its first page and clears his throat.
“Once upon a time…”
The babysitting becomes a part of his weekly schedule. It isn’t the worst thing to happen to him and he would rather watch a kid on a Friday night than what the alternative is. He also doesn’t like the idea of a total stranger watching his neighbor’s kid. He knows what strangers can do, and if he can stop one more person from getting hurt the way he was hurt? Yeah, that’s worth it to him.
But patrolling is still an issue. Barbara catches him up on what he’s missed, and they still haven’t tracked down their toxin dealer. Jason has half the mind to snoop out the warehouse he last caught the drug being sold in. There has to be something that will give him a clue. Anything helps.
That’s exactly how he ends up at the warehouse in mid-afternoon on a friday. He’s got a schedule to keep and he fully intends on getting in and out of the place as quickly as he can. Breaking in is a piece of cake. He slips in through a broken window and treads silently upon the dusty floors.
The machinery is still intact at least. Jason looks over it with a flashlight and pulls a sample swab out of its case. He runs it over the lip of the pump before returning it to a smaller plastic vessel. He’ll drop it off by the cave tomorrow, and maybe he’ll even wait around until the tests are done.
Probably not. He sighs through his nose and takes a few more samples. He takes up some of the glass on the ground, a nail covered in a weird purple residue, and the broken end of a scalpel. Despite the scalpel there isn’t an examination table in sight. There aren’t even chairs.
He doubts anything will pop up on what he’s collected but it’s worth a shot. If the toxin spreads further and they don’t have an antidote it’ll only be a matter of time before it reaches them. From what Barbara’s gathered, the toxin appears to be quite lethal. Jason runs through the list of symptoms in his head on his way out.
The toxin first manifests as a nosebleed before the rest of the symptoms begin to show. A nosebleed that has no signs of stopping. When that stops it’s only to give way to the other symptoms. Fever, chills, and eventually those will turn into seizures. Victims die in less than 72 hours depending on when they were exposed.
In other words, a whole lot of bad news for everyone in Gotham.
And very suddenly, bad news for him. He stands in front of his bathroom mirror at five p.m, head throbbing behind his eyes. Jason’s managed to wedge two tissues up his nose but the blood won’t stop pouring out. He imagines the bloody nile would not compare to the rush of blood dripping out of him.
His phone is on the edge of the porcelain sink. Jason’s run through nearly everyone on his contact list. It’s five p.m in Gotham. He knows he won’t get an answer.
The worst part is that he’s not panicking at all. Maybe it’s the toxin, or it’s just him. His heart feels like a moth’s wing in his chest, circling around and around. Thin layers of chitin beat against his ribs and flutter into his throat. He spits blood into the sink and doesn’t meet his reflection’s gaze.
No answer from Bruce, Dick, Tim, or Damian. Excellent. Do they know how easy it would be to use his body as an antidote source right now? All Bruce has to do is draw his blood and run a few tests and then boom. Problem solved! Make an airborne version of the antidote and pour it over the Gotham sky like ambrosia from fucking heaven.
He would give up, too. Jason can see himself laying on his bathroom floor, phone in hand. He’ll wait for someone to call him back and by the time he picks up he won’t have the strength to do more than rasp incoherently with fever. Hell, he’d be as close to a martyr as he can get.
But there’s a little girl across the hall that needs help with her math homework in an hour. Jason promised he would make her his mother's famous pierogi recipe. Anika wanted to help shape them. They’ve been talking about it for weeks.
He can’t just.. Die on her like that. Jason slams his finger over Bruce’s contact again, the dial tone ringing across tile walls makes his stomach turn violently. The empty receiving tone makes him feel even worse. Jason leans down on his elbows and takes a grounding breath in. If he could walk without his legs threatening to give out he would go into his armory and use his helmet. There’s no doubt that all the bats are on the comm line.
Maybe he’ll make it. He stands up to his full height again and holds onto the door frame. Walking is easy. He remembers his first steps after the lazarus pit. The first two were confusing, for his body hadn’t realized it was alive again but the second his nerve signals reached his brain he was running, biting, fighting, and screaming with all the rage a 15 year old reanimated corpse could manage.
These steps are not like that. They go down as easy as ever-clear shots at a college party. His knees buckle and his vision swims. Jason braces himself on his elbows, letting the cool wood floor hold his weight. The moth’s wings are worse and he remembers very suddenly what they mean.
He used to wonder what his mother felt like when she overdosed. Perhaps her seizures felt like his, like a moth trapped in the shell of a light fixture, doomed to turn in constant circles until it’s body finally gave out.
There’s a gentle hand on his shoulder, and a second tilting his chin up. His eyes open to a light being flashed into his irises. Jason blinks away from it, groans.
“Shit, Jason, sweetheart.”
Krystal? Krystal is kneeling next to him, muttering curses under her breath. There’s a tone in her voice that he’s only ever heard when she talks to or about Anika. A mother’s tone, a sweet melody with ferociousness nipping at the edges of her vowels. She wipes under his nose with a tissue. Worry is etched into her eyes. She squeezes his bicep,
“Sweetheart, can you hear me?”
Jason clears his throat and nods. Krystal sighs heavily and swipes her hands through her hair. He doesn’t like that look on her face. It’s not a look he deserves to be given. Her bitten lips, her tired yet sharp eyes darted to meet his. Her fingers press against his neck. She’s measuring his heart rate.
“You’re a good mom,” he mumbles, meeting her eyes that widen like saucer’s. Maybe he sounds like an idiot, a crazed man who had a seizure on the floor of a run down number between Crime-Alley and the Nouveau Riche Old Gotham. “If anyone says otherwise I’ll knock their fucking teeth in.”
Krystal laughs breathily and shakes her head, “Don’t give me grief now, christ- Jason, do I need to call someone. I can call-”
His phone rings shrilly in his hands. Jason turns his head and answers silently, drawing the device to his ear. He swallows down the building lump in his throat.
Bruce’s voice is clipped like gravel. Jason shuts his eyes and lets his head tilt towards the wall, as if that can hide him from Krystal.
“You called six times. What happened?”
He didn’t kill anyone at least. Bruce should be happy about that. The last time he bombed his phone it was because he accidentally sent a petty criminal off a building. Jason watched his body fall, and he hadn’t meant to kill him. He meant to do the right thing and he fucked it up all over again. Bruce didn’t talk to him for weeks. Jason wonders how many more times he’ll disappoint this man before he inevitably dies again.
Right, he’s kind of dying here. Jason clears his throat, “Hey uh..”
Krystal’s still watching. He shuts his eyes and sighs,
“Answer. Now.”
The moth’s wings are beating at his chest again. He can feel the muscles in his body tensing up. From the tips of his toes all the way up to his face. His jaw locks, and his heart flutters. Maybe his teeth will shatter in his mouth and he’ll choke on them as they find their way down his throat in shards.
In one swift motion his phone leaves his hands, and it’s in Krystal’s. Her lip curls into a nasty sort of snarl that only mother’s have. Bruce used to warn him when they went hiking. Never mess with a mother-animal, Jason. She’ll snap her own bones to protect her kids. Imagine what she’ll do to you. Jason always thought he was talking about bears, or foxes. Actual animals, not people. He used to watch documentaries. He’s seen a mother fox snap her leg between her jaw to escape a trap. Jason used to think he could break his bones if it meant survival. And he had. But then the warehouse exploded so really it meant nothing. Survival is such a bizarre thing.
Krystal’s hand finds his, and in his last moments of lucidity she squeezes his knuckles together with a fierceness he feels in his bones.
When Jason was little he used to get seizures real bad. The first few weeks at Wayne Manor had been hell for a lot of reasons. But having seizures didn’t exactly make things better. For the first three days he was fine as can be, happy, even. For the first time in his life he had his own room and enough books to feed his starving mind. His body was also starving. Severely malnourished from years of neglect, as the doctors put it after Jason had his first seizure.
One minute he was running down the central staircase, the next he was in Alfred’s arms and the old man looked like he’d seen the devil with his own two eyes. He swiped a handkerchief over Jason’s brows, muttered a short ‘Thank god’ and kissed the side of Jason’s head as if he was precious. Jason thought he fell on the stairs, so he said he fell on the stairs. Everything was fine until dinnertime.
The second seizure happened on the same day at the dinner table. Moths ran rampant in his chest and stomach. He remembered Bruce prying the fork out of his hand, laying him on the floor with a folded jacket beneath his head. When he woke up he was in the car, and he couldn’t remember it but apparently he had two more small ones.
All of that over actual nutrition shocking his god damn nervous system into overdrive. Worst part was, there wasn’t much that could be done for a while. Jason ate like he was starving because he was and sometimes that meant either eating until he threw up or eating until his brain freaked out enough to seize. Back then he didn’t think about the implications of a seizure. In his seven year old mind the only kinds of seizures that were deadly were caused by tar filled needles.
And they stopped. He never had another one after that first month in the manor. All of his scans came back fine, he was about as healthy and normal as a boy could be given the situation. Bruce stopped for ice cream on the way home, it was the best icecream of Jason’s entire life.
His head pounds ferociously behind his eyes. When he opens them the light is forgiving and dim. Jason relaxes and gathers his bearings slowly. He’s still in his safehouse, but in the living room. The couch is soft beneath him, but he notices his curtains shifting against the breeze. His eyes roll back briefly before he can focus them again.
There’s a shadow looming in the entryway to his kitchen. Jason groans,
“I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for an hour and now you just show up? Fuck…”
Bruce’s head snaps towards him, and his cowl casts great shadows across the room. Jason sits up and puts his head in his hand. He still smells blood on every inhale. Jason scratches his nose, glaring at the dried red flakes coming off his skin. Gross, fucking- gross.
Krystal’s gone. He looks at his front door and he wonders what Bruce will do if he gets up to check.
“Dick’s watching the girl,” Bruce clarifies, white lenses winking at him in a mock-blink, “What happened?”
He wants to tell him about the warehouse, about the evidence he clearly hasn’t had the time to test yet. The antidote is in there somewhere, but it’s also.. Shit, right. It’s in him, he’s a dying man all over again. Jason worries his teeth with his tongue. Breaking news to Bruce always sucks, and Jason happens to be the sole bearer nine times out of ten. It’s easier in a way, to be the standard of fucked-upness.
“Jason-”
The moth’s are at his chest again. His eyelids feel awful and heavy, and his heart might actually beat out of his chest. His tongue is limp in his mouth but he tries. Is this what the victims have been feeling? 72 fucking hours of this- and the only reprieve has been death. Liquid drips out of his nose, first in drops, and then in streaming rivulets.
Bruce is there in an instant. Jason blinks and he’s there. His head is tilted forward. Kevlar gauntlets cradle his cheeks. He feels seven years old and helpless all over again. His fingers wrap around Bruce’s and he wonders if he feels his squeeze in his bones before his vision goes dark.