Chapter Text
Dick Grayson’s little brother had been reported missing one week ago, to the date. Shotgun in hand, the seventeen-year-old’d gone off into the woods near the Wayne estate, alone, to investigate some “strange sounds”. The following morning, the only thing that the search party could find were the torn scraps from the kid’s favorite coat, stained with blood.
Dick had blamed it on a pack of coyotes.
The two’s adoptive father, on a bear.
Their butler, on a hog.
No matter what animal got to him, though, both of them knew, truthfully, that the kid hadn't survived the bitter bayou night.
So, there was no possible way that the man standing at the manor’s doorstep, in the dead of night, drenched from rain, was Jason Todd.
“May I come in?”
The man surely looked like Jason, just… more sick-looking. Pale. Emaciated. Haggardly- Looked like he hadn’t gotten a good night’s rest in his life, from the bruises around his eyes.
He didn’t talk like him, though. Didn’t act like him, neither.
Jason wasn’t the type to ask for anything. An ass of a kid, really, but most were. He never felt the need to put on a polite mask, not in front of his family. And he’d certainly never ask to be let in.
“Please, Dick. It’s cold out here.”
In his mind, Dick knew that it was too good to be true, that there’d always been tales about the supernatural: fairies, skinwalkers, demons, that sort of thing. Beasts that would spell the doom of any poor soul lost enough to fall for one of their traps.
In his heart, though, Dick didn’t care, so long as his brother was alive, in some form or another.
“Yeah,” he managed, lowering his head as he held the door wider. “Yeah, man. Come on in.”
—
Alfred would make the three of them supper that night, which Jason, even though Dick could hear his stomach growling from across the table, refused to eat.
Maybe it was a low appetite- maybe he was still in shock from whatever happened in the woods.
But, even when he’d gotten a bed-ridding case of the Russian flu a few years back, Jason Todd would never refuse Alfred's homemade chili. Now, he seemed disgusted by it, unable to even take a bite from his spoon.
“Jason,” Bruce began. “Eat something. Please.”
Dick could see the kid’s eyes divert, guilt biting on his jaw. “Can’t,” he whispered, plainly.
“Can’t? What do you mean, can’t?” Bruce pressed, his tone harsh with concern. “It’s your favorite, Jason, just try-”
Jason scooted the bowl away from himself, and folded his arms. “Guess I’m just not hungry, Dad.”
Dad.
Jason had never called Bruce Dad.
From the look on Bruce’s face, the title was anything but comforting.
“What the hell happened to you?” Bruce demanded, his voice hushed in genuine worry.
Jason would’ve quipped back some snarky retort in a second, endlessly stubborn to his core. But he, with Jason’s face and voice, only stood from his chair, slowly, not in the dramatic fashion that Dick’s little brother was known for.
“Can’t you just be glad that I’m back? For one second, just pretend, alright?” Not angry. Not bitter. A plea, more than anything. A silence, and a swallow, then, with his eyes to the floor, “May I be excused, please?”
This time, Jason didn’t wait for permission, especially from ‘Dad’, with his furrowed brow and calculating regard. With a look to his eldest, Dick got up to follow his brother out of the dining room.
–
When Jason didn’t answer to the raps on his bedroom door, Dick found the lock unhitched, uncharacteristically. Inside, he found Jason, tired as he seemed, sat upright on his bed, drinking weeks-old bedside water as if it were the last liquid on the planet.
Just when Dick was worried he might startle him, the man’s eyes flicked over to the doorway, catching the sconcelight in such a way that the light seemed to completely become his eye, much like a deer’s. “You… er, thirsty, I guess?” Dick tried to wit, though Jason seemed none the wiser. “Don’t have much choice else, do I?”
Vagueity was never something that Jason was fond of.
“Ok…” Dick mumbled, taking a place on the bed’s edge, just next to his brother, who didn’t even bother trying to shove him out of his ‘personal space’. “You know you can tell me anything, right, Jay? I’m here if you need anything. No judgement.”
After he set an empty glass back on the lamp table, Jason looked anywhere but the person talking to him. “I’m just hungry. Haven’t eaten in a while. That’s all.”
Dick narrowed his eyes. Jason was always a bad liar- at least that much hadn’t changed. “If you need me to hide a body, I can-”
“I’m starving, Dick. Feels like my stomach’s eating itself.” Jason’s voice had a sharpened edge to it, be it from frustration, pain, or something else entirely.
“Then why didn’t you eat, if you’re so hungry?” Dick was trying his best not to get irritated like Bruce. He wanted to help his brother, really stranger as he may seem, but he couldn’t do that if the kid refused to help himself.
“I already told you, I can’t. I’ve tried. I promise, I’ve tried, but… Christ, it’s like trying to eat bleach-flavored horse shit.”
It wasn’t uncommon for some sicknesses to wipe out a victim’s appetite, if not change their palette completely. Dick wanted to believe that was the cause of… this. “Ok, bitter medicine,” he proposed. “You have to eat food, man. Horse shit’s better than dying a slow, agonizing death.”
When Jason looked at him, at last, Dick was halfway expecting his brother to antagonize him for such an obvious answer. But, the poor kid seemed worn-through, and couldn’t even muster the strength to sneer. “It’d just come right back up. Body just rejects any sort of food, even if I manage to swallow it. Water’s the only thing I can keep down.”
He’d gone a week like this?
Jesus Christ.
“That… doesn’t sound fun,” Dick noted, helpful as always. “We can…uh… go into town, tomorrow. Find a doctor. Get medicine. I’m sure this isn’t-”
“I don’t need somebody to tell me what I already know, Dick. I know that I have to eat. I can’t think of hardly anything but how damn hungry I am.”
“I’m sure he can prescribe something.”
“Which, I won’t be able to keep down.”
“Then, I’ll go to the library. Find books on illnesses, and find the remedy to this one.”
“I don’t think this is a regular illness.”
Dick rested his hand on his brother’s, in what was supposed to be a reassuring gesture, but he found only dead-cold flesh. Not like a typical ‘chilly hands’ situation- more like, a ‘post mortem’ situation, like there hadn’t been bloodflow in quite sometime.
Dick gently put a thumb against his brother’s inner wrist, and found no pulse. He wanted to think that maybe, just maybe, it was only faint. Starvation probably weakened it. A living person had to have a pulse, right?
“You seem agitated, Dick?”
Dick could hear his heart beat a little bit faster, sure, but he should’ve been able to hide that panic a bit better than this. Jason certainly wouldn’t be the one to catch on, even if he hadn’t.
“Just worried, that’s all.” He could feel his brother’s pressing gaze as he tried, in vain, to look for really any sign of circulation at all. Not in his hands, not in his arm, maybe, though…
Jason caught him just before he pressed two fingers against his neck, his grip around Dick’s wrist much stronger than it should’ve been. “What’s wrong?” Jason asked, like he wasn’t the one on the verge of the grave.
Dick wasn’t going to lie to his brother. Not about this. “You don’t have a pulse,” he blunted. Dick could read the expression on Jason’s face- something that he’d never had to worry about, before.
But, Jason did loosen his hold, Dick’s hand slipping free. “Don’t I?” he asked, as if he well knew the answer. “No,” Dick said. “You don’t. If you do, I could probably feel it around your throat, but…”
“That area’s really sore right now. Snake bite.”
“A snake bite, on your neck?”
“One swung down from the trees. You can see for yourself, if you don’t believe me.”
Jason adjusted himself, so that the gas lamp’s light hit just to the side of his neck, right at the spot that Dick had learned to check for signs of life. There, pierced through his little brother’s skin were two, small, equally spaced, perfectly round puncture wounds.
Dick was no hunter, but he was pretty sure that snake bites didn’t look like that.