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Jason feels the tell-tale signs of a panic attack brewing inside of him, so he goes through the checklist of grounding techniques that his therapist taught him.
First, focus on breathing. Jason takes a deep breath in, holds it for a few seconds, and then slowly exhales.
Second, body scan. Jason closes his eyes and takes stock of all of his injuries. They are slight and insignificant, a cut there and bruise here, but nothing fatal. No concussion or cracked ribs.
Third, describe the environment he’s in. Jason reopens his eyes. It’s the middle of the night, prime crime fighting time, and he’s in a tiny, metal shack hidden in a scrapyard. It’s filled with nothing but a workbench near the corner and shelves and crates of old parts.
Jason tracked down his latest suspect here, a serial killer that kidnaps single Omega women and keeps them captive at an unknown location to torture them for months on end until they finally break. The bastard managed to stay under the radar for years by only targeting women who clearly lacked family and friends. But then he got sloppy, leaving evidence all over Gotham that led Jason straight to his hideout in the East End.
Jason had his perp, an old Beta man that retired from the GCPD a few years ago, cowering in the corner. With shaky hands, the Beta had a handgun pointed at Jason’s helmet-covered head which he found laughable at the time. The humor was instantly lost when the Beta turned the gun on himself, and, before Jason could stop him, pulled the trigger. Painting his blood and brain bits all over the aluminum wall, and leaving his pale corpse collapsed at Jason’s feet, the source of his impending panic attack.
In no way does Jason feel bad for the loss of life, in fact, it may have been the only good thing the Beta has ever done. But Jason can’t help but think about how the rest of the Wayne pack will interpret the crime scene. How Bruce will interpret it.
They would assume it was Jason that put the bullet in the criminal’s head. They would shake their head in disappointment, but not surprise, as Bruce throws him to rot in Arkham. What did they expect from a borderline feral Omega like Jason? Of course, he would break their one rule. Jason will be left packless once again.
Wait, is that crying?
Jason snaps back to reality at the realization that someone else is here and they need help. They need Red Hood, not an Omega in the middle of a freakout.
“Hello?” Jason asks. While the crying sounds weak it is close, but the shack is way too small to have any extra rooms unless it is underneath him.
Nobody responds, but the crying continues.
Jason follows the sound to the other side of the shack where there is a big crate filled with scraps and pushes it aside. The floor is so dark and dusty, it’s hard to make out the large square seam that indicates a secret door. In the middle is a smaller square seam that when Jason presses on a keypad pops up. While Jason may not be a tech genius like Barbara and Tim, he knows enough to break into something as simple as a digital lock. In little time, the door opens to reveal a set of concrete stairs leading down to pitch-dark blackness.
“Hello?” Jason asks again after he reaches the bottom. He pulls out a small yet powerful light from his harness.
The secret basement is more like a dungeon, with a torture rack in the center, chains on the wall, and the horrid stench of fear and human waste saturated in the stale air. One of the chains is connected to a collar locked around the throat of a woman curled up on a dirty mattress in the corner.
The woman is impossibly skinny, so skinny that the T-shirt she wears looks like it is swallowing her whole. Her skin may have once been a bright golden but now is dull, ashen, and littered with bruises, Jason suspects she has been held captive for quite some time based on some of those bruises. But she isn’t the source of the crying, instead, it’s what the woman is curled around. A baby swaddled in rags.
Jason reaches down and puts two fingers against the side of the woman’s bony neck. No pulse. Another dead body. Another failure.
Before Jason is swept up by another panic attack, the baby’s wails are rejuvenated, stronger and louder than before.
When Jason was a pup and his parents had to leave for work, he was sent to their downstairs neighbor’s apartment, Mrs. Brennan. All of the pups in the apartment building were sent to Mrs. Brennan at one point, her services were cheap but every dollar counted in Park Row so they only stayed until they were old enough to take care of themselves. Right before Jason aged out of her care, he would help her with the younger pups. Jason would feed them watered-down formula because they could only afford so much, change their dirty diapers, and rock them in his scrawny arms when they are upset.
But that was a literal lifetime ago, Jason is not that caring little pup anymore. He’s crueler, more violent, no longer suitable to be around children. Jason worries that he’ll accidentally crush the baby in his oversized hands rather than comfort them.
Gingerly, Jason reaches down for the howling baby, making sure to support their head and neck. They are so small and light there is no way they could be older than a few months old, or just severely malnourished. Now nestled in the crook of Jason’s arms, the crying settles down to whimpers. As soon as the baby looks up at Jason with watery, hazel eyes there is a sharp pang in Jason’s chest. And he instantly knows, from that point on, he can never let this baby go.
-
Jason, with his baby in his arms (a girl, he quickly discovers), settles into his nest that he recently built on his new mattress in his new apartment. His main safe house in the Bowery was no place for a pup, Jason needed an actual home with rooms and in a neighborhood that wasn’t constantly blaring police sirens and gunshots.
In the past couple of weeks, the baby pup has been with Jason, her honey-brown face had quickly filled out after Jason started lactating, a byproduct of his Omega claiming her as his own. Every time she feeds from him, Jason can only stare down at her in awe.
“Zora,” Jason decides then and there as he watches his pup drowsily suckle on his nipple. “Your name is Zora.”