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It was unusual for Jason to go off grid for days, weeks, fuck sometimes even months, so he wasn’t really surprised no one had noticed that he was missing yet. Not that he thought any one of the Bats would care all that much. Sure, he supposed, there would be an adjustment period and some initial sadness. But at the end of the day they weren’t even close to being family anymore, it would be like when your coworker from another department passes. Close enough to notice an absence but not really enough to feel it. He knew, logically, no one was going to come for him for a while, all his friends were dead or in space and the only people he’d ever called family couldn’t answer a single question about who Jason even was anymore.
He hadn’t meant to get himself caught, he was incredibly skilled but when 20 people are shooting at you even the best fighter would lose. Waking up tied to a chair was certainly not normal for him but it wasn’t his first time either. It was his first time being caught for this long though. The men who caught him were so convinced that Batman would come for him, but as time wore on and their frustration grew so did their violence. What had started as a few punches had grown until he was sure they were just going down a list of different torture methods. As they went on he grew more concerned, there was no time for him to heal, cuts never closed and began to fester, and the water in his lungs from the waterboarding had almost certainly turned into pneumonia. The sound of footsteps roused him from a fitful sleep, never getting anywhere close to actual rest.
“Where are they,” the man who seemed to be in charge demanded. He had asked everyday for a while now, Jason lost count of the days long ago.
“Not coming.”
“They better.” Jason heard the implied “or else” in that sentence and knew he would likely be finding out what that “or else” meant. The strength to try to imagine what new torture method they would come up with today eluded him, he was aware enough to feel everything but his mind was so foggy he couldn’t think much. Even if he had been aware enough to think about it he wouldn't have had to think terribly long about it as several men wheeled in a cart. Lifting his head up to try to see what was on it felt like a monumental task, every atom of his being pleading for him just to give up. So he did.
He didn’t bother to look up when the cart stopped next to him, nor when the men started shuffling items around on it, no longer caring what happened to him. He’d been here too long to. Jason still wasn’t sure what they even wanted from him, sure they were trying to lure the Bats in, but why he didn’t know. There had been no evil monologue from any of them, no “if the bats don’t do x then we’ll do y to you”, just days of endless pain. The fact that some of his injuries were infected was obvious, Jason felt hot all over and the skin around a particularly deep cut on his midsection felt tight, not that the men seemed to care at all. In fact they seemed dead set on making it worse.
The shuffling around him stopped, a rough hand grabbed his jaw and yanked his head up. With his vision still blurry and his ears ringing something was placed around his throat. Had he been more cognizant he would have realized it was a rope. Normally Jason would have immediately recognized the texture and known what was next, but he was too out of it too, not that he would have cared at this point anyway. Head heavy, he was jostled around and moved to stand up. His feet failing to stay steady on the ground beneath him, he was half dragged away from the chair that had been his home for a while.
An outsider looking in would have seen a man, once strong and unshakable, now nearly a corpse, being dragged to the gallows. If they bothered to look closer they could see old scars and new wounds that refused to heal. Burns wrapping around the same throat that now housed the noose. Cuts and gunshot wounds left for infection to take, not deep enough to bleed out anytime soon, but oozing and hot to the touch. A mouth filled with gashes and tiny pieces of glass no one had bothered to remove. Worst of all, if you listened closely, you would hear the breathy rattle of a man whose lungs were soon to stop working, either from the noose or from their own infection.
In and out of consciousness, Jason barely felt anything as he was brought up to the gallows. They were really a mimic of the real thing, pieced together from pipes long ago ripped from the plumbing due to rust. Whether on purpose or not it had been built to provide a slow, painful death, with just enough room under it that Jason’s feet wouldn’t touch the ground but not enough room for gravity to do its job and snap his neck.
As far gone as he may have been, adrenaline was a hell of a drug. Midway through the rope being tied up Jason snapped to attention, twisting and trying to fight his way out of it. Unfortunately his body, weakened by starvation and infection, couldn’t muster up the strength to break free. His reward for his struggle was removing another layer of burned skin from his neck, exposing the nerves to both the air and the rope. It didn’t seem that his brief struggle had even slowed them down as they quickly finished tying it up and stepped backwards, with the release of a trigger he felt his body drop.
Every inch of his body was on fire, every nerve white hot. He tried to open his mouth to gasp for air but his body wouldn’t respond to him, instead he was blindly thrashing around, tearing more and more of the burnt skin from his throat. Despite his efforts and panic his mind grew cloudy again, this time from asphyxia and not the infection. It did nothing to calm his panic, unable to breathe in or out his nervous system lit up, trying, despite all odds being against it, to prevent or at least delay death. It was no use however, his eyes became heavy. He knew that if he closed them he wouldn’t open them again but he had no choice in the matter, finally surrendering, his body went still. Not yet dead but not alive enough to matter.
The men, it seemed, figured their job was done, the Bats never came, their grand plan didn’t work out, and they really didn’t want to dispose of the body. Not like anyone would find it here anyway. And they were right, there Jason’s body hung until the pipes gave out and sent him tumbling to the floor. Weeks were spent like that, an unclaimed corpse slowly starting to decay face first on the floor of some warehouse that even its owner had forgotten about. Until a voice echoed off the empty walls, coated in grief and cracking despite everything.
“LittleWing? Please, god, no, not again.”