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Drumbot Brian, it should be known, is not a good person. He’s better than most of the crew, of course. He has morals, of a sort. He is, for example, not uncharitable at times. This is why when he finds a poor lad whose mind had been taken from him – someone who had been touched by death and life and a twisted, shattered universe enough to prick at the prophetic threads of Brian’s mind – he does not leave him to his wanderings. No, Brian is not so uncharitable as to leave him there. He decides to help him.
The boy struggles when he is caught, naturally. But there is only so much acrobatic skill and martial arts can do against brass that reforms when scratched. He does not even manage to kill the Drumbot. It would not have mattered if he had.
It is for good ends that Brian severs the boy’s head from his body. They say that a head thinks for seven seconds after its severing. If that is true, the boy is terrified for all of them. He would scream if his head were connected to anything that could.
Killing the boy is such a small price to pay for his renewed life, is it not? Brian thinks so.
Drumbot Brian is not a good person. His help is not kind. It is kinder than some. It is less than others. It is a help that disregards means – cutting and slicing and bone saws and a ship of Theseus to rival his own brass body and mind – for the ends – the boy lives again, and his mind is intact.
His mind, though not his head. Nor his brain. No eyes nor nose nor mouth nor teeth survive the process. His brain, that thing that makes him himself, that thing so damaged from its own blood and, of course, the lack of oxygen, is remade in the finest of brass and copper filament. Gears and clockwork and gold lines against green boards. It is a master work.
Brian lacks the supplies and planning that Carmilla had in his building, but he makes do with what he has and what he finds. The new head is not the delicate simulacrum of humanity of his own design; it’s more … rudimentary. It will do. The boy will have an eternity to adjust.
Brian considers taking the boy with him to the Aurora. It would do him good, he thinks, but the Crew would be absolutely intolerable over a new member. Who knows if he can even sing? The boy will be fine where he is. The future is nipping at his heels. He’ll meet it. Brian cannot quite tell which of the many futures that hover around the boy will come to pass, but there is a world of possibility for this new Mechanism. He supposes they’ll meet again if they’re meant to.
He leaves the boy in the workshop, covered in a comfortable wool jacket with a red metal head on his shoulders and a flesh one mostly disassembled off to the side.
Distant stars await Brian, and he doesn’t keep them waiting. The boy will wake soon enough.
~~~
Jason wakes up, and his entire being feels wrong. There is something in his blood and in his bones and in his head. His head. What is wrong with his head? Why can’t he move? Where is he? Is he dead? Is it the coffin? He recalls a horrible slicing and the falling away of all he is. He recalls seeing his body fall. He wasn’t a spirit; he watched it with his own eyes. His head. What is wrong with his head?
The nerves of his neck and spine and body finally connect to his new head, and his body responds to his shrieking commands. He jerks, uncoordinated. He screams, and his voice is metallic. He reaches for his face and finds smooth metal instead. He screams, and it sounds metallic. He tries desperately to find the latches of a helmet, but he knows even then that there is nothing underneath. He screams, and it is not his voice. He claws at the metal, and the scratches he makes on his neck tell him that his face has no feeling. He screams, and he has no tongue. He screams, and no jaw opens. He screams, and there is nothing he can do.
As his metal brain comes online the rest of the way, his eyes light up white and see. The first thing they fall on is his own shattered face. His own eye looks back at him, milky and dead, caught in a final frightened stare. His skull isn’t caved it; it’s carved open with a surgeon’s precision. It’s grotesque. It’s horrific and somehow fascinating. So fascinating in fact that Jason reaches out for it.
This could be a nightmare, he thinks. It could be a nightmare. Or Hell.
He tries to reassure himself. It could be a hallucination. It could be Scarecrow. Please, god, let it be Scarecrow. Let this haunt his nightmares for years if it means it’s not real.
His hand brushes against the skin of his face. It’s cold. It’s so cold. It’s unforgiving and stiff. He flinches away from it.
He needs to focus. Trying to piece together what happened draws up a glinting metal face, his own falling body, a blur of an unknown span of time in which he only recalls snatches of emotion – move, run, fight, help, give, protect, run, fight – the coffin, his mother, the Joker. The further back he thinks, the clearer things are. That’s good. But he cannot reconcile what’s happened to him with the vague memory of a metal face. They must have done something to him. He must be drugged. That’s the only acceptable explanation.
Resolved that the visions and sensations he sees are not real even though they refuse to dissipate, Jason pulls himself together. He needs to get out. He needs to find Batman. In that order. He rises on unsteady legs. There is the feeling of dried blood on his neck and chest. He ignores it. It is probably another hallucination. He takes stock of the room. It looks like a cross between a mad scientist’s lab – goodness knows Jason’s seen enough of those – and a clockmaker’s shop. There are no obvious traps and at least two obvious exists. He’ll give the clockwork a wide berth in case it’s designed to react to his movements. Before he goes towards to the exit furthest from the clocks, he hesitates. The head isn’t his. It can’t be, but when he looks at it and sees his own face, and he can’t face – ha – leaving it behind. He finds a bag and stuffs it in.
None of the clockwork attacks him as he leaves.
Outside, it is dawn. Her rosy fingers paint the sky a bright, warm red. The old saying echoes in his head, red skies at morning, sailors take warning. He’s not a sailor. It matches the red skies that killed Nocturna. It’s not the same storm. Dawn means Batman’s just finished patrol, and Jason’s relieved to see the familiar skyline and know at least that he is still in Gotham.
He hopes Gotham’s not another hallucination.
He follows the familiar paths of the city. He wants to climb the buildings and fly from rooftop to rooftop, but he doesn’t have a grapple, and he doesn’t want to risk it when drugged. He walks instead. There’s a tunnel he can use to call the Batmobile nearby. It’s right where it should be. Before he goes in, it occurs to him that, if this is a simulation, he will be telling them how to find the Batmobile and the cave and Bruce. He hesitates, but the idea of staying away and hiding to lead the theoretical simulation masters astray… He needs help.
He goes into the tunnel, finds the keypad and recalls the Batmobile. It arrives quickly. Good, that means Bruce must be back home. God, Jason wants to go home. He was so mad and upset before he left. It feels distant. A million years passed in Ethiopia. And that feels distant too. All he wants in that moment is for Bruce to wrap him in a hug and ask a dozen questions that Jason won’t have answers to. And then they can figure out who drugged Jason and go after them. They can catch the Joker too. He recalls the blur of vague memory. Maybe he was drugged for longer than he knows. Maybe Bruce already caught Joker. Maybe the government got him. Or the Israelis or the Ethiopians.
The Batmobile rumbles around him on autopilot as his thoughts run. Its arrival at the cave is faster than he expects. Bruce is there, still in his costume from patrol. Bruce is waiting for him. Everything is ok. Bruce is here, and everything is going to be ok.
Jason stumbles in his haste to get out of the Batmobile towards Bruce. Bruce moved forward to meet him. There are hands on Jason’s shoulders, and he starts to lean in when he is suddenly shoved hard against the stone wall.
“Who are you?” Batman grinds out. His white eyes are narrowed in fury.
Jason tries to gape at him, but his jaw isn’t working.
Batman slams him into the wall harder this time. “Who are you? How did you get in here?”
“Bruce … It’s me. It’s Jason.” Jason ignores the way his voice sounds. It’s not real. Bruce must have been drugged too. Maybe it was widespread. Maybe it was targeted to Batman and Robin.
Bruce recoils, but he does not pull back. If anything his expression becomes furious. “How did you get in here?”
“I – The Batmobi—” Jason’s cut off as he slams into the wall hard enough that he feels something pop. “Bruce…” He gasps for breath, but his jaw still isn’t moving. It doesn’t move when he talks either. There is a humming like a vent in his chin. Not real. Feels real. Focus. “It’s me! Stop!” A fist strikes him in the stomach, and he doubles over.
“How do you know that name?”
“How do I – Bruce, it’s me. It’s Jason. You’re—” Between his reluctance to fight Bruce and his uncoordination since waking up, Jason is no match for Batman in that moment. At his best, he can beat him in a sparring once in a while. This isn’t his best. (Not yet.)
When Jason falls to the ground, the bag slung on his arms falls too. Jason’s been avoiding its eye, so he isn’t looking at it when it does. This provides him the vantage point to see the moment Bruce sees its contents. The eyes widening so much that the white lenses widen too. The horror in the lines of his mouth. The physical step back. The moment freezes.
Jason can picture it. The wrongness. The way he couldn’t leave it behind. He isn’t sure what it really is. If his own face is a hallucination, it must be something else. Is it someone else’s head? Something else entirely? He could have brought a bomb into the Batcave and not even known it. He forces himself to look again. It’s still him. A little more…disorganized than before it was rattled around in a bag. He screws his eyes shut. It doesn’t feel like he’s done so, but he ignores that. “I think I was drugged,” he whispers. “It looks like my face. It can’t – It’s not – I don’t sound right. Bruce, please…”
“You dug him up?” Bruce’s voice is a sawblade on chalkboard. He looms over Jason and presses a boot against his arm. It hurts.
“No, I – I woke up. I dug myself up, I think. I don’t—I don’t know what happened. I – Ah!” The pressure on his arm increases sharply.
“Don’t. Don’t you dare claim to be him. You – You took his body and – He deserved to rest.”
There was a lump in Jason’s throat, but it didn’t seem able to come out as actual tears. “I’m not dead!”
“You’re not Jason!”
“Test me.”
“What.”
“Test me. Anything. Try my DNA if you have to. I’m – I’m me, I promise. I swear. Ask me anything,” Jason pleads.
“Jason is dead.”
“I’m not!” He isn’t. He isn’t dead. His heart is pounding in his chest, and, if nothing else, that is real. He’s alive. He’s alive. He’s alive. He might be hallucinating, and Bruce might be hallucinating, but he is alive. He just needs to convince Bruce it’s true. He can do that. “Think about it, champ. I’m here. I had the codes to get in. My codes to get in. How would I get those? We change them weekly.”
Something twitches in Bruce’s face at that. Hopefully a good sign.
“I don’t know what’s going on exactly,” Jason speaks slowly and deliberately, fully turning on Robin-Mode. It helps keep him calm. It makes him feel more sure than he is. “I woke up in a lab or workshop; I think I was drugged. I’m – I’m seeing things that aren’t there. It might be fear toxin. It might have gotten you too.”
Bruce’s face hardens in the way it does when he’s thinking hard and hiding it. “None of that changes the fact,” he says, “that Jason is dead.”
Jason lets out a frustrated huff of air. It tickles his neck strangely. “Evidently not! I – I thought I was, but I’m here.” Like spinning a rolodex, the memories of red numbers and smoke and dirt flip through his head. He furrows his brow, but his face doesn’t move. “I thought I was dead. …My mom… Did she make it out?”
“…No.”
“Oh.” It hurts more than Jason can handle if he is going to be the one getting Batman’s head back on his shoulders. Bad choice of words. There was a blur of time where it didn’t matter, but now that his head is clear, the fact of this beautiful second (third? fourth?) chance at family being crushed is heavy and sharp. “I … tried to save her.” His voice doesn’t break, but it should.
Bruce is quiet for a long moment. He stops putting weight on Jason’s arm. Apropos of nothing, he says suddenly, “What was the name Jason went by before Robin?”
“What?” The question is so out of nowhere that it cuts through the swirls of grief cloying at Jason’s mind. It takes a second for him to catch up to what he’d offered before, to answer any question. “I didn’t have a name. I couldn’t think of one.”
“If you’re really Jason, who’s head is in the bag?”
“I don’t know. It was next to me when I woke up, and I couldn’t just leave it there. It looks like me.”
“Why did you quit being Robin?”
“Come on, you know I’d never quit. There’s too much work to do, and it’s too much dang fun to ever stop. Ya couldn’t stop me if you tried. It’s who I am.”
“Why don’t you take the helmet off and prove it?”
“Aside from the fact that you’re on my arm? I’m not wearing a helmet, Bruce.”
Bruce neither moves to release Jason’s arm nor try and remove his ‘helmet’. “Who’s president?”
“Checkin’ for identity, not a concussion, but Reagan.”
Despite the banality of the question, Bruce narrows in on it more than some of the others. “And today’s date?”
“I’m not sure. I was out for a while, and there’s – It’s blurry.”
“Fine, then the year?”
“’88 unless I was out way longer than I thought.” Jason is going for levity, but Bruce tenses slightly at his answer.
“Take off the helmet.”
“I told ya, I’m not wearing a helmet!”
“Mm.”
“Don’t ‘mm’ at me, Bruce! I’ve – I have had a long day. I just want to …”
“What do you want? You seem to have all the information you could want.”
Jason just wants to go to bed. Have dinner with Bruce and Alfred. Change into clothes he chooses instead of some unknown baddie. Have this day be over. “I want you to believe me.”
“Take off the helmet, and I will.”
“I’m not wearing a helmet.”
This time, Bruce does reach for Jason’s head. Jason can’t feel the contact. His face is numb. Number than numb. It doesn’t have any sensation at all. Bruce’s hands move in and out of Jason’s vision, exploring the nerve-less head. Jason lets him. Fighting him is the last thing he wants. If anyone can override drugging through sheer logic and evidence, it’s Bruce. He’ll figure out it’s Jason. He will.
There’s a sharp tug at Jason’s neck, and he yelps. Bruce’s hands freeze. “Geez, my head’s still attached, you know.”
There’s something in Bruce’s body language at the comment. Jason follows Bruce’s gaze to the open bag, and his own face, looking deader by the second, stares back at him. Unwittingly, Jason’s hands move towards his face. He’s not sure when Bruce released his arm. He feels smooth metal where his face should be. A helmet. Not a helmet. His eyes don’t leave the severed head. Oh. “You didn’t get exposed to fear toxin, did you?” he asks. His voice is quiet. He can’t look away from himself.
“No.”
“Did I?”
“You’re not wearing a helmet.”
“Then what is this?”
“I don’t know.”
Jason’s breaths are quick against his neck. Wrong. It feels wrong. He wants to cry, but he can’t. Why can’t he cry? “Bruce?”
“Yes?” Bruce’s voice is almost a whisper.
“Who’s president?”
“George H.W. Bush.”
“And what year is it?”
“1989.”
“Am I dead?”
“I don’t know.”
Jason can’t cry, but his body tries. He shakes violently, and he can’t stop. He can’t look away from his face in the bag, and he can’t move his hands from the metal where his face should be. He can’t stop shaking. He doesn’t understand what’s happening.
“Jay?” Bruce’s voice breaks where Jason’s can’t.
It’s enough to drag Jason’s eyes away from his face. Oh, Bruce took off the cowl. He’s looking at Jason with so much emotion flooding his features that it’s almost silly against the rest of the Batman outfit. Good luck striking fear into the hearts of criminals like that, Bruce.
A cautious hand finds Jason’s shoulder, a stark contrast to the sharp shoves from before, and then there are arms around him. He can’t look at the face in the bag because his eyes are being covered by Bruce’s shoulder. He can feel the satin of the cape against his hands but not against his face. He leans into the hug, and Bruce’s arms tighten in response. “What happened to me?”
“You died. You went in, and you never came out. You … gave your mother a few minutes of life. I was too late. I brought you both home.”
“Then, how--?”
Bruce traces a line on Jason’s back where he has an old scar hidden under his coat. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“We’ll find out.”
“We will.”
Bruce will need to test Jason’s DNA, and Jason’s head’s DNA, and ask a million more questions. Jason’s breaths come hard from the wrong place, and everything is wrong inside of him. But for one single second, he feels sure that they’ll figure it out. Maybe that can be enough. Even if it’s not, it is enough for that single second.