Chapter Text
“Wake the hell up, Todd. You got a new roommate- and try not to make this one kill himself, yeah?”
The Arkham Knight had become, through some perverse twist of fate, rather comfortable as an inmate at Blackgate Penitentiary- and only partly from the luxuries afforded to him by the Penguin. He who had the Knight on his payroll, had used his newfound status as Mayor Oswald Falcone to ‘persuade’ the Warden to allow the Knight his rescue dog, under the pretense of Ace being a necessary service animal- which wasn’t actually a lie, surprisingly.
Oz had tried in vain to ‘fix’ the effects of the Lazarus pit on Jason Todd’s mind, but he’d only managed to heal the physical damage left by the Joker- if you could call months worth of facial reconstructive surgeries ‘healing’, though the Penguin would try to convince the Knight of that.
So too, was the Knight allowed a mask- if only to cover the lower half of his face, and solely with the purpose to administer his ‘unique’ medicines that kept his madness in check. That part wasn’t difficult to convince the Warden of- the last thing that he’d want was a mind-rotted super soldier biting at the bars of his cell. And the Knight, for what it was worth, had every desire to stay out of Arkham Asylum, and remain far, far away from Bruce Wayne’s suffocating grasp.
But, it seemed that all good things must come to an end- even when those ‘good things’ involved spending his best hours of the day fashioning equipment for the United States military.
He just hadn’t expected his peace to be interrupted by the shell of his former teammate.
“Todd, Wayne. Wayne, Todd. ‘Spose you two know each other, right? Through your old man, if I recall?” An officer introduced, a snide smirk on his face. Most of the Knight’s wing of the prison knew his dissonance from Jason Todd, but the majority of the guards couldn’t care less about that- only the name that the Mayor had let slip. Some assholes, like the brussel-faced one slamming the cell door behind the newest convict, had made a game of reminding the Knight about ‘his’ past.
Just before Officer Asshat made his escape, he turned heel, for just a moment. “Oh! And before I forget, you should know that this one hospitalized Kitrina Falcone- he might be more psycho than even you, Todd!”
Tim Drake.
One of two brothers that Jason Todd never got to meet.
The Red X, who’d gone behind the Knight’s back to kiss up to the Bat.
Some part of the Knight admired the kid for the balls it took to fly under his radar for so long, especially given how insistent Tim had once been about Jason Todd being alive. The other part of him couldn’t see that kid anywhere in the hollow thing gawking at him, his breathing as if he’d just run a marathon.
Tim’s eyelids dropped, his eyes unfocused and jittery, pupils blown to different sizes. He fiddled with his hands, his fingers shaking, his fingernails practically blue. He seemed unstable on his feet, swaying a bit, though a few of his muscles seemed to jolt at random intervals- cramps that the kid seemed not to notice. His teeth chattered, quietly, behind a mouth so pale, it was practically grey.
The Knight expected some form of one-liner to come out of the kid's mouth, maybe some witty remark on the Malinois below the cell’s sink. The Knight had experienced first hand that habit of Tim’s- both when he served alongside him as Red X, and when he’d had the misfortune of kidnapping the kid, years ago.
Tim, however, crumpled on top of the Knight’s bunk, the one that the Knight had been rudely awakened from, and began to sob violently into his pillow, creating a disgusting mess of snot and tears in mere moments.
Ace was stirred from his slumber, too, and went over to investigate his new friend, licking Tim’s hand in reassurance. He’s such a good dog. Geez.
The Knight bit his pride, for a moment, if only to get the kid to vacate his hold on the mattress. “Are you… good?”
One overly dramatic wail later, and the Knight immediately regretted asking. “I messed up, Jason,” Tim blurted, his voice muffled by the pillow and uncharacteristically broken. “I’m just a stupid traitor villain FREAK and everybody hates me…”
“You just now figured that out? Good for you.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck you!”
“Fuck you, man, I’m fucking dying over here!”
“I don’t fucking care, get off of my fucking bed.”
“It’s the government’s fucking bed, and I wouldn’t fucking be on it if you didn’t fucking make me become a fucking supervillain!”
“I didn’t to shit, you fucking pottymouth.”
“Everyone hates meeeee. Dad hates me, and Conner hates me, and Dick hates me, and Raven hates me, and Kara hates me, and Floyd and Slade probably hate me too, and-”
“Get the hell off my bunk, you piece of shit. I’m not playing therapist.”
Tim let out a groan that could only be described by all of his teenage angst pouring out at once, and flopped to the floor, where Ace promptly plopped down right beside him Tim’s glazed-over eyes regarded the dog minimally, before he wiped his nose, smearing snot all across his arm.
The Knight dared to approach him, staring down at a kid that really did look like he was at the end of his rope- physically, anyway. As far as the Knight knew, teenagers were the type to break down crying about once a week.
“Why the fuck are you even here? Officer Asshat said you hospitalized some chick? Felony battery shouldn’t land you in Blackgate.”
“Heh,” Tim chuckled, reaching out a hand to pet Ace. “You called him Officer Asshat, when his name’s Officer Ashley… ha! That’s funny.”
“Are you fucking drunk?”
That would help explain how someone as uptight as a Wayne could’ve been caught in a fight like that.
Tim almost immediately started crying again, in between hiccups of laughter. Definitely drunk. “She was a Falcone… I probably killed her. I killed a mother-fucking Falcone,” Tim sputtered out, an anxious smile creeping onto his face, like one of those chimpanzees right before they tried to kill you.
A Falcone- one of the Penguin’s legal family members. If Tim actually did hospitalize one of them, it made more sense why he’d be sent to Blackgate: as a punishment for harming one of the Mayor’s own, whether the Gotham public knew the why, or not.
Oz probably wanted the Arkham Knight to kill the kid, or something like that. Send a message. He really couldn’t care less- though he might have no choice, if he kept acting like… this.
Tim rolled over, until he was face-to-face with Ace, staring at the poor dog like he was some Holy Grail. “Jason…” Tim mumbled again, his manic gigglefest at last ceasing to another wave of utter turmoil. “What do you do when everything hurts?”
Vague as fuck.
“I have medication for that.”
“What about when your brain tells you to hurt people?”
“It doesn’t.”
“Oh. That sounds nice.”
Needless to say, The Arkham Knight was not looking forward to rooming with Dexter McFucking Morgan.