Chapter Text
Rain hammered Gotham hard enough to turn the streets reflective.
Neon bled across flooded asphalt in streaks of electric red and sickly blue. Somewhere downtown, sirens screamed through the storm like wounded animals.
And Jason Todd was having a truly horrific night.
Again.
The warehouse job had gone sideways twenty minutes in. Black Mask’s men had apparently decided assault rifles were a substitute for personality, and Jason had spent the last hour getting shot at by idiots with enough ammunition to start a small war.
His shoulder ached.
Something warm kept sliding down his ribs beneath the armor.
His helmet comm spat static into his ear every few seconds.
Worst of all, Gotham felt wrong.
Not dangerous wrong. Gotham was always dangerous.
Empty wrong.
Jason slowed at a red light he absolutely intended to ignore.
Rain hissed against his helmet.
The city behind him flickered in the mirrors.
Not visually.
Wrongly.
Like the skyline had become a badly remembered dream of itself.
Buildings stretched strangely.
Streetlights blurred too long.
For one awful second Wayne Tower looked impossibly distant.
Jason’s grip tightened on the handlebars.
“…yeah, no.”
The bike roared forward.
Thunder cracked overhead.
Then the rain stopped.
Not gradually.
One second Gotham drowned beneath a storm.
The next there was silence so complete it made his ears ring.
Jason’s motorcycle rolled onto dry pavement.
His headlights swept across an empty black road stretching endlessly into darkness.
No skyline.
No buildings.
No Gotham.
The engine sputtered violently beneath him.
Died.
Jason coasted another few feet before the motorcycle finally stopped.
Silence swallowed everything whole.
No thunder.
No traffic.
No wind.
Just the soft metallic ticking of cooling engine parts.
Jason climbed off the bike slowly.
Every instinct he had screamed at him to leave immediately.
Unfortunately there was nowhere to leave to.
Behind him, the road vanished into darkness so thick it barely looked real.
Ahead, neon flickered softly through the black.
OPEN ALL NIGHT.
One of the letters buzzed weakly. The O blinked in and out like a dying heartbeat.
Beneath it sat a diner glowing gold against the void.
Warm windows.
Fogged glass.
Chrome edges catching soft light.
It looked less like a building and more like someone had stolen a tiny piece of another universe and dropped it beside the road by mistake.
Jason immediately distrusted it.
Which felt reasonable.
His hand hovered near the knife beneath his jacket as he approached.
The air smelled strange.
Rain.
Coffee.
Ozone.
Something old hiding underneath it all.
The windows glowed warmly from inside.
Figures moved beyond the fogged glass.
A laugh drifted faintly through the door before vanishing again.
Jason stopped near the entrance.
A sign hung crookedly in the window.
NO FIGHTING INSIDE
NO GAMBLING WITH REALITY
NO APOCALYPSES BEFORE 11 AM
PAY WHEN YOU REMEMBER TO
IF YOU LEAVE, LEAVE QUIETLY
IF YOU STAY, DON’T ASK WHY
WE ARE NOT A PORTAL (THIS IS DEBATABLE)
Jason stared at it.
“…the hell kind of place is this?”
The neon sign crackled overhead.
Somewhere far beyond the diner, something enormous groaned through the darkness.
Jason’s hand tightened around the knife instantly.
Silence followed.
Then the diner door creaked open by itself.
Warmth spilled out into the cold black road.
Coffee.
Sugar.
Old vinyl.
Butter hitting a hot grill.
Against every survival instinct he possessed, Jason stepped inside.
A bell chimed softly overhead.
Heat wrapped around him immediately.
Not just physical warmth.
Something heavier.
Like stepping into a place untouched by the rest of reality.
The diner looked almost painfully ordinary.
Checkered floors.
Red booths.
Chrome stools lining the counter.
Low music humming from a jukebox near the back.
But every detail felt slightly off if he looked too long.
The shadows stretched wrong.
The lights buzzed too softly.
The windows reflected stars instead of the inside of the room for half a second before correcting themselves.
And the customers…
Jason stopped just inside the doorway.
A teenager wearing Greek style armor slept face-first in a stack of pancakes (that were blue? For some reason?) at a booth, one hand dangling toward the floor.
A white-haired teenager with green-tipped hair scribbled equations across napkins fast enough to nearly tear through the paper. Empty coffee cups surrounded him like battlefield casualties.
At another booth, a girl around Jason’s age sat reading three different books at once while stirring tea without touching the spoon.
Nobody looked surprised to see him.
Nobody reacted at all.
Like armed strangers wandering in from impossible roads happened every night.
Jason’s instincts sharpened immediately.
Meta-humans?
Magic users?
Cult?
Worse, probably.
Then a menu slid across the counter in front of him.
“You’re dripping on my floor.”
Jason looked up.
The waiter/ress (Jason couldn't decide) stood behind the counter holding a coffee pot.
Simple black uniform.
Sleeves rolled neatly to the elbows.
Silver nametag scratched at the corners from years of wear.
Messy handwriting on the nametag that read AVERY.
They looked completely normal.
Which immediately made Jason trust them the least.
Most civilians reacted to him with:
fear,
panic,
or regrettable attempts at lying.
Avery just looked tired.
Not exhausted exactly.
Older than tired.
Like they’d been working a double shift since the invention of the moon.
“You gonna stand there dramatically all night,” Avery asked, “or are you planning to order something?”
Jason narrowed his eyes.
“Where am I?”
Avery grabbed a mug from beneath the counter.
“Inside.”
“That’s hilarious.”
“Thanks.”
Coffee poured into the mug in a dark stream.
The smell alone nearly killed him.
Jason realized abruptly he hadn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon.
That felt annoyingly human of him.
“How did I get here?” he asked carefully.
“You drove.”
“You know what I mean.”
Avery slid the mug toward the empty stool beside him.
Jason eyed it suspiciously.
“Poison?”
“Only on weekends.”
A snort escaped from somewhere deeper in the diner.
The white-haired guy didn’t even look up from the equations.
“First-timer?”
“Shut up,” Jason replied automatically.
“Rude,” the guy muttered.
Avery refilled one of his empty cups before he could ask.
“You’ve had twelve coffees.”
“I’m thinking.”
“You’re vibrating.”
“Science requires sacrifice.”
Jason stared between them.
“…what.”
The guy finally glanced up.
Sharp eyes.
Wild grin.
Coffee-induced insanity radiating off him like heat waves.
Instead of answering, he pointed the pen at Jason.
“Interesting armor construction.”
Jason blinked.
“…excuse me?”
“Reinforced plating under the leather, modified weapon holsters, military-grade boots, but your helmet tech seems weirdly low-end compared to the bike.”
Jason slowly looked at Avery.
“Help me.”
“He does this,” Avery said.
“I can hear you.”
“I’m counting on it.”
The girl with the floating spoon finally glanced up from her books.
Her eyes flicked over Jason analytically.
“You’re injured.”
Jason instinctively straightened.
“You can tell that from over there?”
“You’re bleeding through your jacket.”
Right.
That.
He’d forgotten about the gunshot crease along his ribs.
Again.
Avery tossed a towel at him without warning.
“Bathroom’s down the hall. Don’t die in there.”
Jason caught the towel automatically.
“…you say that often?”
“You’d be surprised.”
The guy sleeping in the pancakes laughed suddenly without lifting his head.
Actually laughed.
Like he’d heard the conversation through sleep somehow.
Jason stared.
“…is he okay?”
“Debatable,” Avery answered.
“Rude,” mumbled Pancake Guy into the syrup.
Jason looked around again slowly.
The diner felt layered.
That was the only word for it.
Reality sat thinner here.
The jukebox music sounded distant and underwater at the same time.
The windows showed darkness now instead of rain.
Not night.
Something bigger than night.
Stars flickered beneath the black occasionally like something was moving under the road outside.
Jason’s fingers twitched toward the knife again.
Immediately, every light in the diner flickered once.
Not violently.
A warning.
The room went still.
Silverware rattled softly.
Coffee rippled in mugs.
Even the sleeping guy lifted his head slightly.
Avery didn’t move.
Didn’t raise their voice.
But something in the diner itself seemed to lean closer around them.
“No fighting in the diner.”
Jason froze.
The words settled heavily into the room.
Not a threat.
A rule.
A real one.
Then the lights steadied again.
Conversation resumed.
The sleeping guy immediately collapsed back into the pancakes.
The girl returned to her books.
The scientist-looking teenager kept scribbling equations like reality itself hadn’t just threatened Jason personally.
Jason stared carefully at Avery.
“…what are you?”
Avery wiped down the counter with slow practiced movements.
“A waitress.”
That answer somehow felt more dangerous than if they’d said demon.
Jason finally sat because his legs were starting to feel suspiciously like concrete.
Not because he trusted this place.
Absolutely not.
Because exhaustion crashed into him the second he stopped moving.
Avery set a plate down in front of him.
Burger.
Fries.
Pickles.
Steam curled upward warmly.
Jason blinked.
“I didn’t order this.”
“You looked hungry.”
“That’s profiling.”
“That’s customer service.”
Jason hesitated before stealing one fry.
Crisp.
Perfectly salted.
Possibly blessed by minor gods.
He immediately took three more.
The scientist guy grinned without looking up from the napkins.
“Yeah, that’s usually how it starts.”
Jason frowned around the fries.
“How WHAT starts?”
Nobody answered immediately.
Outside the windows, something vast shifted beneath the stars.
The diner creaked softly around them.
Warm light glowed against chrome and old tile.
The girl turned another page in one of her books without touching it.
Pancake Guy snored directly into syrup.
The scientist kept muttering equations under his breath.
And Avery quietly refilled Jason’s coffee before it had even reached halfway empty.
Jason should leave.
Every instinct he had screamed that this place was impossible.
Wrong.
Dangerous in ways he didn’t have names for yet.
But for the first time in weeks nobody expected anything from him.
No missions.
No masks.
No pretending he wasn’t angry enough to crack apart at the seams.
Just warm lights.
Rainless darkness outside the windows.
Coffee.
And fries good enough to briefly restore his faith in humanity.
Jason exhaled slowly.
“…Fine,” he muttered.
Avery leaned lightly against the counter.
“Fine what?”
“I’ll stay for one meal.”
For the first time since he walked in, Avery smiled fully.
Small.
Tired.
Real enough to change the whole room around it.
“Yeah,” they said quietly.
“They all say that.”