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Jay Garcia dreams of flying.
As far as dreams go, he supposes it’s a relatively standard theme. He’s sure that if he were to ask the people in his life if they’d ever dreamed of flying, most everyone could and would say yes.
But it isn’t really flying.
Jay doesn’t dream of feathered wings of some kind of magical levitation. He dreams of wind whipping through his hair and keeping him afloat. He dreams of falling and yet knowing he’ll never hit the ground, knowing he’ll rise above the surrounding skyline again and again and again.
Jay Garcia dreams of flying and wakes up wondering why he stopped.
—
Jay isn’t afraid of heights. He never has been, doesn’t even think he was during the Before. So when he jolts awake with a full body flinch in the middle of the night, he knows that it wasn’t from falling.
He takes a steadying breath and stares up at the ceiling, one hand lacing into Darcy’s fur where she’s curled up at his side. She’s always slept on the bed with him, but once the dreams started, Jay noticed he found her glued to his side more often than not. He’s not complaining. It helps, having her there as his brow furrows as he tries to piece together what exactly woke him up in the first place. But the memory of the dream is little more than a blur, and he knows he has no hope of remembering it tonight when he hasn’t managed to on any other.
Darcy curiously raises her head, nosing at Jay to make sure he’s alright. He chuckles once as he wanders back to the waking world and scratches her behind the ear to ease her worrying.
“All good, girl,” he murmurs with sleep rasping his throat. “Just a dream.”
Another slow breath soothes his nerves enough to pull himself out of bed. It’s still dark out, but a glance at the clock on the nightstand tells him it won’t be for much longer, so he lets himself fall into his usual patterns and heads for the backyard. If he’s lucky, Bingley or one of the other stray cats will pay him a visit.
He makes the usual stop by the kitchen for a bottle of juice, then snags a blanket from the couch to wrap up in outside, and settles himself into his favorite lounge chair to wait for the sunrise. Darcy follows at his heels the whole way, and together they sit in comfortable silence. It doesn’t take long for Jay to set aside the now-empty juice bottle and let himself close his eyes. And if he lets himself drift off in the calm, well, Darcy won’t tell.
—
“You’re going to turn into an orange.”
Jay snorts and takes another swig of orange juice from his glass. “That’s not how that works, dickhead.”
The familiar voice hums thoughtfully, and the teasing tone doesn’t leave his voice in spite of Jay’s blatant annoyance. “I don’t know, kid. You drink so much of the stuff that I bet if I hugged you too hard, it’d be like juicing an orange.”
“That’s disgusting,” he says, face twisting with displeasure at the mental image.
The man just laughs, and Jay flinches away from his hand as it comes down to ruffle his hair. He shoots him a glare and finishes the last of his juice in one gulp just to spite him.
—
For all his time living with Penny, Jay has come to find that some patterns and habits are purely his own. He tries not to think about some of them if he can help it. Looking too deeply at himself and his day to day mannerisms is a one way ticket to thinking about the Before, which is also something he promised himself he would try to avoid.
The problem is that it is unavoidable. The more time passes, the more things Jay notices - and the more things Penny notices, too, he’s sure, even though she is kind enough to keep quiet about them. Like the fact that, even after a night full of strange dreams and memories, and a haphazard pre-dawn nap in the backyard, he’s still the lightest sleeper she’s probably ever known.
The slide of the backdoor is enough to rouse him in an instant and his eyes are open before Darcy has even finished lifting her head up from her own paws.
Penelope smiles at him. He tries not to think about how sad it makes her look.
“Bad dreams again?” she asks.
He shrugs, but he still can’t meet her sympathetic gaze. “Guess so. I don’t really remember what it was about.”
It’s not a lie. There are the occasional dreams that he vividly remembers the following morning, but not many of them. Somehow, the ones he doesn’t remember are worse. Not that he can say why.
Penelope wanders over and sits beside him, teasingly scooching him over with her hip so there’s enough room. The motion makes him smile, like it always does, and he drops his head onto her shoulder.
“You wanna talk about it?” she asks next as she tilts her head on top of his.
He shrugs again at first, but eventually his thoughts fill the silence in spite of his better judgment. He chews his lip for a long while before responding.
“Do you ever think about what happened before you found me?”
He feels her stiffen but it doesn’t show in her voice. “Before I hit you with my car, you mean?” she jokes, though it feels forced.
“Yeah.” He laughs once under his breath. “Before you hit me with your car. I’ve been…”
Jay trails off with a sigh and Penelope wraps her arm a little tighter around him. “I know,” she murmurs quietly. “I wonder, too. Wherever you came from…”
She huffs once, so quietly that Jay is certain he wasn’t supposed to hear it, and then she speaks up a little more seriously.
“Jay, if you ever want to keep digging, if you want to try to find your family, we can. I have tools at my disposal now that I didn’t before, maybe this time I could get somewhere.”
His brow furrows as he corrects her. “I…I don’t care about all that. Penny, you are my family.”
“Your real family–”
He’s quick to cut her off. “You are.” There’s no room for argument, and he knows she knows it too based on the little smile on her face.
After a moment, she concedes. “Okay. If you’re sure.” She presses a kiss into his hair and then gets to her feet. “I have to get ready for work, Jay-Baby, but if you need a single thing while I’m gone, just call. You know I’ll always answer.”
He shoots her a look, something almost a pout but not quite. “I’ll be fine.”
“I know,” she answers with a soft smile, and then she’s gone, back into the house while Jay lets himself sink back into his chair.
Eventually, he’ll go inside again. Eventually, he’ll make breakfast. Then shower, get dressed. Maybe go for a walk with Darcy.
Eventually, he’ll stop thinking about the dreams, and go back to being just Jay Garcia.
Until then though, he lets himself gaze off at the sky and wonder what it would feel like to soar right through it.
—
“You have to be more careful, chum,” a man says, the features of his face just barely out of reach despite him being right there, mere inches away from Jay as he tapes a piece of gauze over his arm.
“I was careful!” Jay snaps defensively. “The thing just jammed a little, and it’s just a scrape, anyway!”
Even without seeing his face, Jay knows the man is stifling a smile. “I know. And I’m still allowed to worry. Even if it is just a scrape.”
Jay rolls his eyes, finding a smirk tugging at his lips despite his annoyance at the cop out of an answer. “You’re gonna give yourself wrinkles, old man, worrying like that.”
“Mm,” he hums in agreement. “And you’re going to break an elbow.” Jay pulls his arm away and the man chuckles, giving him space. He steps back, packing the bandages and everything else into the first aid kit. It’s big and well stocked. Jay wonders why they have such a professional looking kit, and then the thought is gone, and he’s standing in a big dining room instead of–
Instead of…
Where had he and the man even been before?
Somewhere dark. The air had been damp, but not in an uninviting way.
He shakes the thought away as the new room settles into view. A table, too big for how few people seem to be sitting down. Platters of food, too much for the number of place settings laid out. A ceiling so tall that he absently wonders how big of a Christmas tree must be needed to fill the space without it looking like a toy.
“Are you coming?”
He turns at the voice, so familiar and yet so different all at once. He’s sure he knows it, but it all feels like it’s slipping right through his fingers.
The dark hair is familiar, the way the waves frame his face ever so slightly, but like with the other man, the face itself is a blur. That doesn’t stop Jay from trying to make sense of it, but it’s like trying to smooth out a ripple on a puddle that’s disturbing the reflection. Useless, in the end.
“Yeah,” he answers anyway. “Don’t wanna keep Alfie waiting, right?”
The man grins, an expression so vibrant it shines through the muddled fog–
– and Jay wakes feeling like he’s surely seen it a million times before.
—
Jay closes the fridge with a sigh, already halfway through his post-breakfast clean up despite everything feeling slow and glazed over in a way he can’t quite describe.
It’s been days since he talked to Dick Grayson on the street, and each one has him feeling more and more untethered. He hates to think of himself as someone so easily influenced by a chance meeting, but there’s no denying that the whole interaction - even if only a few minutes brief - triggered something.
He can’t shake the strange memory of the men’s voices, how familiar they are and yet how distant they feel all at once.
He grabs the towel to dry the last of the dishes, doing his best to ignore the strange images that seem to overlay themselves across his reality. He dries a pan—
—his fingers tap across a keyboard as he looks up at the massive computer screen. He watches as new windows pop up, letting his eyes lazily scan over news articles and other bits and pieces of evidence.
It’s getting late. Behind him, the darkness feels heavy and echoes with the squeaks and chirps of distant creatures - creatures he knows but can’t quite place in the moment. The urge to turn away from the computer to watch them scatter themselves around the room is strong. At least it would be more entertaining than trying to find any viable clues in this mess.
He groans and drops his chin into his hand.
“You’re doing great, chum,” says the man he surely knows, even if the face he wears beside him is still too blurry to recognize. “Don’t give up now. What do you see?”
Jay chews his inner cheek, resisting another groan and instead tightening his shoulders as he digs for the right answer. “A lot of missing person reports…?”
“What else?” he urges with encouragement. “What about them?”
Jay frowns. “That…they’re all from the same part of town…?” His eyes dart to the other man as he nods but doesn’t say anything. “They’re all close to Crime Alley. And the Narrows.”
“Which tells you…?” The man trails off, clearly waiting for Jay to finish the thought.
“They’re…going after people that most folks won’t notice are missing.” Jay’s brow furrows in frustration. “Or, least people that the cops won’t pay no mind to, if there’s suddenly less of them.”
Even without being able to see his face properly, Jay can still see the way he smiles proudly at him. “Nice work, R—”
—and the metal clinks loudly as Jay puts it in the cabinet.
It’s wrong, somehow. Like an out of body experience every time he closes his eyes. He’s sure Darcy can tell something is off, too, considering the way she’s been glued to his hip like she’s afraid he’s going to collapse.
He’s not. He doesn’t think, anyway.
But the whole thing does have him lightheaded and distant, and a part of him wonders if he should have asked Penny to stay home today. Or worse, if he should have taken her up on her earlier offer. If they could find his family, the people from Before, then maybe he could have some sort of answer for what these visions are - because no matter what he thinks of them, he knows they’re more than dreams.
Dreams don’t happen when you’re wide awake.
Dreams don’t cause your knees to buckle halfway down the hall.
“Loosen up!”
Jay reaches up to rub his forehead with a wince, thinks about talking to Clue about all this or even one of his friends from school, but the fog has already settled before he can come to a decision. As he lets himself sink to the floor, absently feeling Darcy weaving under his arm to keep him upright, he only hopes he can pull himself back out before Penny comes home.
—
“I am loose!” Jay barks back as he stumbles across the rooftop. The grapple thing in his hand feels clunky, too wide for his thin fingers, and he clumsily clicks it back to his belt before he turns his attention to the man he’s with.
That ever-familiar grin stares back at him, though somehow more crooked and smug than before. He thinks it’s the mask that does it - the way it covers his eyes, his grin has to make up for the lack of expression.
“Not enough,” he teases, and gestures at Jay’s knees. There’s a flash of blue along his fingers, but it’s all so blurry, Jay can’t make out what exactly the color is from. “Lock your knees like that and you’re gonna pass out. And I don’t wanna explain why you passed out mid-grapple to B, he’d do that grunting thing where we all know he’s disappointed in us but won’t actually say it aloud because–”
“Because he wants us to figure it out for ourselves?” Jay asks, brow arching beneath a mask of his own.
“Yeah, that.” The grin widens. “Now come on, Little Wing! You’ve almost got this down. A few more swings, and then…”
He trails off almost suggestively, nothing but confidence in his tone, and Jay can feel it rubbing off on him.
“Alright already. Jeez.” He turns around before the man can see him smile, but Jay has a feeling he knows anyway.
Whatever.
He shakes out his limbs and hops on his toes a few times. “Loosen the knees, don’t lock up…” he murmurs to himself even as he feels the eyes on his back. “Ready, aim, fire–”
He takes a running start before leaping from the side of the building, arms open like the wings of a bird, and for a moment he lets himself drop as the urge to fly wins over his fear of falling. The wind whips around him, tossing his hair back from his face while his mask protects his eyes. The fabric of his outfit, his cape, billows behind him, not quite a parachute but heavy enough to make him feel weightless for that single split second before the dive takes over.
It’s invigorating, and it ends too soon when he pulls the grapple from his belt once again, too nervous to tempt fate by waiting any longer.
He repeats the mantra as he pulls the trigger - “Ready, aim, fire!” - and lets the motion pull him along just how he was taught.
The grapple releases and rewinds for a second swing, then a third.
It feels like flying.
He wishes he never had to land.
When he does - his feet steady and sturdy, his limbs loose but strong - he turns so fast that he almost misses his own reflection in the nearby window.
A flash of red and yellow and green, a uniform so familiar and yet so foreign that his mind nearly stutters to a stop before he instead finds himself beaming at the man from before, who’s landed a few feet behind him.
“Nice job.” He looks proud. Jay feels the same emotion swell in his own chest as the man ruffles his hair. “Think you’re ready to catch up to B, now? Sounds like he’s got a situation on 9th, we could probably lend a hand if you’re up for it.”
Jay feels his grin curl into something crooked and confident. “I’m always up for it. Are you?”
He laughs. “Don’t get too cocky. Who do you think you’re taking after here?”
Jay brushes him off, but the light air doesn’t fade between them even as they race off towards danger. It’s a familiar thing, the flow of the journey melting into the dance that is the fight. Between the three of them - or is it four, Jay wonders, when a flash of purple and yellow catches his eye for but a moment - the whole ordeal is handled within minutes.
He brushes his hands off on one another, beaming down at the sight of the red and blue lights below. When a hand lands on his head and ruffles his hair with pride, he turns his attention up towards the broad shouldered man and beams.
“Told ya, B. Nothin’ to worry about with me around.”
Something swells in his chest when the man answers back,
“Good work, Robin.”