Chapter Text
It was raining. Again. Still. It felt like it had been raining for weeks.
Probably hadn't been weeks. Days, maybe. Time, even the distinction of days and nights, hadn't had much significance for Jason for a while now.
He hated the rain. He could practically taste it even now, the slick, heavy mud, the terrified confusion, the icy cold and the pain of his mangled hands as he dragged himself from that grave. At least from inside he couldn’t smell it. If he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend it was just the sound of a shower running, clean and warm.
Except.
Except now, thinking about that brought him back to the night he’d come back from Titans Tower. He still had no memory of how he’d gotten from there to here. Just standing over Robin, battered on the ground, and then… back at his apartment. He’d had blood on him, Robin’s blood, mostly, and he needed to get it off.
Out, damned spot.
The need was so urgent, the only coherent thought he had, he’d stepped into the shower fully clothed and stood under the hot spray until he couldn’t stand any longer. The next thing he remembered, he was sitting on the floor of the shower. The water had run icy cold and every bone in his body ached.
He’d dried off. Dragged himself to bed. Woke sometime later, still foggy and aching deep in his bones.
Since then, he’d just… drifted. He slept. He woke again. Sometimes with a slow surfacing to a waking world that felt more distant and unreal than anything in his mind. Sometimes a harsh jolt, the sound of snapping bone still echoing in his ears. Screams and cries of pain more dramatic than any sound the Replacement had actually let himself make at the time. Visions of turning to catch his reflection in a window or metal panel and seeing his own face painted into a perfect mirror of Joker’s.
Too many dreams.
He… didn’t know what else, what had happened to the days between. He kept losing long stretches of time, sometimes sleeping, sometimes just sitting there, staring into space.
He didn't know how long he'd been at the kitchen table now. He'd stumbled over there from the couch with some vague idea that it'd been a long time since he'd eaten and he should do something about that. He should be hungry, right? It'd been… a while. He couldn’t remember how long.
He was tired, unendingly tired, and he'd sat down to try to think, to remember what he could do with what he had on hand, but then he'd just…
None of it felt like it mattered.
The Pit had receded. For the first time since he’d been thrown into it, that burning green pulling at every thought and emotion hadn’t just eased to a low simmer, it was… not gone, not quite. He could still feel it, curling around the dark corners of his mind, but he could feel it as something separate from himself, a thing he could examine warily at arm’s length.
But it hadn’t exactly left his mind clear. That receding tide had dragged with it everything else that had given his life purpose and direction for the last… how long now? In its wake, there was nothing but a bleak jumble of broken thoughts and muddy emotions.
There was nothing left. No plans, no wants, no goals, just… black, aching void that seemed to be caving his chest in with every breath.
Replace—the kid was alive. Jason still had one quiet, unused backdoor into the Cave’s systems that Barbara hadn’t yet uncovered and blocked, and in a moment of near panic, he’d used it to check the medical files.
He was alive. He’d… probably recover. It wouldn’t be easy. Not physically, not…
Well. Jason knew there were some things you didn’t just get over. Things that haunted waking thoughts and stalked dreams in warped and terrifying variations, again and again. This could be one of those things. He didn’t know if it would be, for the—for Tim.
It had felt so right. A stroke of justice that would show them what they’d done to him, make them understand what it felt like, force them to remember him. He wouldn’t just be erased. He had been good, been everything Bruce wanted from him, and he’d still been tossed aside, forgotten, replaced with a nicer model without all those embarrassing rough edges. They wanted to dismiss him as nothing more than that? Well, he’d show them just how rough he could be.
Every step of planning and preparing and executing it had made perfect sense, and then… Then it hadn’t.
And now everything hurt, and he wanted… he just wanted it to stop. But it didn't stop, the hurting or the memories.
Memories of that night. Of what he'd done to a kid who was brave and talented and stubbornly doing his best, even when he was clearly outmatched.
Of… other things, things that had been lost in the hazy blur of his time with the League. Early days of training. The fragments of memory kept falling onto the flat, blank surface of his mind with a relentless drip, drip, drip.
Kill.
Kill.
Kill.
At first, it was less an order than simply stating what he was going to do the second he was released. It came to him now as flashes without context, more feeling than memory. The Pit was an inferno inside him, and the stretches of mostly-solitary confinement between those opportunities only made the explosion more violent when he was free. Anything and anyone nearby would suffer the consequences.
Animals, humans, monstrous creatures he only remembered as blurred impressions, with weapons or sent in unarmed. It was best if they fought back and gave him some resistance to throw himself against. There was another satisfaction in the predatory thrill of chasing them down if they tried to run, but a fight was better. The outcome was the same either way. Kill. Kill. Kill.
From blind destruction to rote obedience as the intensity of his own need for it began to fade. The first thing he remembered balking at in that transition wasn’t even a person. A kitten. Not hard to kill. It would have been effortless, over in an instant. Sometimes it was like that, too easy to be satisfying. They always gave him a better challenge after.
It was just… so small. And suddenly he couldn’t think why he should destroy this tiny thing that was no threat at all to him. He didn't want to. It could barely even get its little mouth around his finger as it tried, in a curious, experimental way, to gnaw on his hand.
He’d set it down and hadn’t made a move to catch it again. Just stood there and stared as it raced off and squeezed through a tiny gap in the surrounding barrier before disappearing out of sight.
Then he’d paid for it. They were angry, and even more confused than he was at the sudden departure from the steady progress he’d made. It wasn't his last moment of conscious rebellion, as the Pit abated enough to let him make decisions more complicated than those of a trapped animal reacting with frantic intensity to every new stimulus. But somehow, pointless as it had been, it felt like it meant something.
He'd thought what he felt was normal, the constant boil of anger, ready to spill over at the slightest provocation. It was normal now for him. He had reason for it. Through all the ups and downs since then, it'd never burned itself out.
Until that night, when it was snuffed out like a candle at the worst possible moment.
Well. Maybe not the worst possible.
He’d meant to kill Robin. That was the point. That was the plan. That was what he was supposed to do, making his point with a finality that had to be heard. Robin was no helpless kitten. He’d gotten his hits in, too, even if he’d barely felt them at the time. But Jason was bigger, stronger, more experienced, and he’d had him down, been ready to kill him, and—
He was so small. So small and still so stubborn.
“You’ve been cleaning up Gotham the easy way,” he’d told the Red Hood to his face.
“I am,” he’d declared, when Jason insisted that no one was good enough to uncover Batman’s secret identity if he hadn’t meant to be found out.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” he’d said. “Bruce wants you to come back. It’s all he’s wanted since the day he lost you. No one in that house could ever forget you. You’ve haunted every move I’ve made from the second I started training. If they could’ve traded me for you, they would’ve done it in a second.” And he’d kept on saying it was true, no matter how angry it made Jason, no matter how badly he hurt him for the lies.
They were all lies. They had to be. It was the only thing that made sense.
Except he’d really seemed to believe it, all of it.
And… Jason didn't hurt kids. That was—no matter what else he'd been willing to dirty his hands with, that was a line he didn't cross.
Except he had. The Replace—Tim was a kid, years younger than Jason had been when Joker beat him into the ground and blew him up for good measure. Just a kid.
And in that realization, something inside him cracked with a physical stab of pain that stole the air from his lungs as the anger drained away. All the pieces of his life slid out of place and nothing fit right anymore. Everything that had made sense just minutes before was… he couldn't make it work.
Before, the League had been there to step in, to force those pieces back into the picture they wanted from him again and again until it stuck. And that process had been about the closest thing to hell on earth that he could imagine, but in the end it had left him strong. Confident, certain of himself and his skills and his rightness, knowing how far he could push beyond what he thought were his limits.
He didn't want to go through any of that again. But sitting here, alone, with all the sharp edges of those shattered plans digging in under his skin, trying to figure it out on his own… he didn’t feel strong. He felt broken beyond repair, as if everything he thought he’d done to come back stronger had crumpled, brittle as cheap plastic in the end.
He was tired. He didn’t want to do it anymore. Any of it. No more thinking or planning or feeling. No more rain. Just quiet.
He’d slid forward at some point, until his head dropped forward to rest on his crossed arms on the table. It wasn’t comfortable. The edge of the table pressed against his ribs, digging in with every breath.
Maybe he’d fall asleep again anyway. Maybe he’d hurt even more when he woke up.
It didn’t matter.
A muffled squeak came from the direction of the window, nearly drowned out by the rain.
Jason’s eyes blinked open, focusing reluctantly.
The plaintive cry repeated. Familiar.
Jason rolled his head upright, chin still resting on his arm, and looked.
The cat was on the fire escape, front paws up on his windowsill as she peered inside. Watching him.
Great. An audience for his slow-motion breakdown.
“I don’t have any food for you,” he told her. “I don’t even have any food for me.”
And wow, he hadn’t talked in a while, had he. It felt like his throat had forgotten how to. Hadn’t said a word since… his confrontation with Robin. And that had been less talking than screaming.
The cat mewed again, unimpressed with his excuse.
It was his own fault, really. He’d fed her a few times before. Not often enough to become a habit for either of them. His routines were too irregular for that. This might be what he thought of as his “real” apartment, but that didn’t mean he was here significantly more often than any of his other safehouses. It was just the one he was particularly careful not to bring work back to, his ultimate untraceable, safe retreat.
He didn’t remember the thought process that had brought him here after the Tower. He wondered, now, if he’d been careful enough this time or if he was going to have to ditch this place, too.
It seemed like he should be… something, about that possibility. Worried. Sad. Annoyed. Angry.
Somehow, it didn’t seem to matter any more than anything else did right now.
The cat was still watching him. He should probably shoo her away. Even as little as he’d given her, she was already getting dependent on him. That was bad. You start counting on other people to be there when things are tough, and then when they decide they’re done it’s ten times harder figuring out how to do it all on your own again.
She couldn’t afford to be getting soft. Better not to rely on anyone. Especially him. He couldn’t even be counted on to take care of himself.
The cat meowed again, her saddest sound yet. It was enough to tip him into action.
Jason pushed himself to his feet and stepped over to slide the window up. The cat dropped her feet from the windowsill, nervously sidestepping a little at his approach, but she didn’t take off.
“Go away. Told you, I don’t have anything.”
The words sounded flat, not forceful enough even to his own ears. She craned her neck, tilting her head as she looked up at him. Then she jumped up and slipped neatly through the open space and into his apartment.
She’d… never tried to get inside before.
Jason just stood and stared at her blankly, unable to formulate a single idea of what to do about this.
She was pretty wet. The fire escape had been no protection from the rain at all. Didn’t she have anywhere better to wait out the weather?
Apparently not.
Well, he was not leaving the window open just because she’d decided to take a tour of his place. The rain was louder like this, and he could smell it now. A gust of wind made him shiver, standing there in just boxers and t-shirt.
(Had he changed clothes at all since the dry ones he’d put on when he got out of the shower that first night? He couldn’t remember.)
“You better not start yelling to get out again as soon as I close this.”
The cat blinked up at him. He blinked back at her.
He closed the window. She did not start crying to be let out again. She tucked herself under his kitchen table and settled down to begin grooming the water from her fur.
Jason stood and watched her.
She looked a lot like that kitten had, actually. Pale, sandy fur with slightly darker tabby markings, tiny white paws. Not exactly uncommon for a cat, but still. Maybe it was why he’d fed her before. Some tug of memory, even before it floated up into his conscious mind.
More likely, it was just an impulse born of older memories. He knew too well what it was like to be hungry. How hard it was when you woke up with no idea when or how you’d eat next.
The cat paused in her grooming and looked up at him expectantly.
“I really don’t have food for you this time.”
Still. He could go look. He hadn’t exactly been firing on all cylinders lately. Maybe he’d overlooked or forgotten something the last time he’d gone to find something easy to eat.
The cabinets produced no conveniently overlooked can of tuna tucked in a corner. The remaining shelf-stable supplies had run thin enough that he couldn't see a single combination that could be thrown together to make an edible dish. The cans of soup he kept stocked for days he was too sick or injured to manage anything else he’d used up in the first few days after the Tower, mostly eaten cold out of the can.
No frozen chicken tenders, either. Nothing at all in the freezer except for a handful of ice packs. As for the fridge… yeah, no point even trying to remember when he’d made that when it was visibly covered in mold. He tossed the leftovers in the trash, tupperware and all. Milk too, all that was left of it. The egg carton was a surprise. He had a vague memory of having… oh. Yeah, he had used them up. The carton held nothing but empty shells, but he’d apparently put it back in the fridge on autopilot anyway.
It was a wonder he hadn’t burned the whole place down around him at some point in the last… however long it’d been. The night he’d attacked Tim stood like a stark landmark in his mind, everything now divided into before and after. Before, a raging wildfire that he’d thought was the only thing keeping him warm. And now, the hollowed-out wreckage left in its wake.
What a pathetic life. Alfred would be ashamed of what he’d come to, after everything he’d gone to the trouble of teaching him. He was ashamed of him too, but not so much for the food situation. He probably would be, if he had the energy for it. Only so much self-loathing he could hold at any one time. Even in the worst times before he’d met Bruce, when he’d been on his own or when Catherine had been in such bad shape he might as well have been, he’d never just given up on even trying.
Now that he was actively thinking about food, he was… not quite hungry, but very much aware that he needed food and it had been too long since he’d had any. Moving around now, he was shaky and lightheaded enough to feel unsteady if he turned too quickly, the rest of his body chiming in with an urgency his stomach had given up on.
It was irritating. He wished it would stop.
And there was something that might make it stop, or at least give him enough of a reprieve to think. One solitary protein shake, tipped on its side and rolled to the back of the shelf.
He drank it leaning against the counter by the fridge, then dropped the bottle into the trash.
It wasn’t much better, but it helped. He should…
A half turn back toward the living area, and a sharp, urgent yowl sent him stumbling back, reversing course too late to keep his foot from landing on the cat’s paw.
She streaked across the room to take refuge under the couch. Jason followed for a few steps, unthinking, wanting to check on her, then jerked to a stop as the anxious face peering out at him retreated a little further into the shadows. He dropped to a crouch in a pointless attempt to look less threatening. He probably weighed as much as twenty of her, maybe more.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t—I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t know you were there.”
It was like a bucket of cold water had been thrown over him, leaving him sharply aware of the world around him, present in a way he hadn’t been in… weeks? The muffling fog of misery had been bad, but being dropped back into reality was somehow worse. Couldn’t pretend nothing he did could possibly affect anyone else now. Even from the self-imposed prison of his apartment, he managed to cause harm.
The cat had tucked herself into a wary huddle. He couldn’t tell if she was favoring a leg, whether he might have seriously hurt her.
She was so small, and now she was afraid. Because of him.
The snap of bone breaking. Robin was down, his leg no longer capable of supporting his weight. Jason’s hand wrapped easily around his throat. It would be so simple to snap his neck next, but he didn’t want it to be over that quickly. He wanted pain and blood and justice.
Tim hadn’t been afraid—or hadn’t seemed afraid, at least, even then.
Jason didn’t remember how it had ended, whether Tim had cried or begged or screamed before it was over. It was a blur, not green-smeared for once but a kind of gray haze, clouding everything until he found himself back in his own apartment.
No one hurt kids under Red Hood’s watch and got away with it. He didn’t want another kid to hurt the way he had if he could prevent it.
So why had it felt so right to turn around and recreate Joker’s starring role in another kid’s nightmares? A kid who’d recognized him with surprise but no guilty dread in the recognition of what he’d stolen.
He had told himself that even if Bruce was the one ultimately responsible for putting him in that danger, the kid had accepted the risks when he put on that suit. Robin should have ended with him, but it hadn’t. The two of them between them had seen to that, and they had to live with the consequences of what they signed up for.
(Had Jason signed up for what Joker did to him? Was that his own fault, too, for daring to think that a kid like him could make a difference? Bruce thought it was, he knew that.)
He’d been shaking then, as he looked down at Robin and tried to process what he’d done. He was shaking now.
It was so easy for him to apologize to a cat, but Tim—
Tim deserved so much better than he’d gotten. And Jason couldn’t undo what he’d done.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, and he didn’t know if he was saying it to the cat who couldn’t understand him or the boy who couldn’t hear it. “I'm—I'm going to get you something to eat, okay? Just… give me a minute to figure it out.”
She didn’t know the words, but food she might understand as a peace offering.
He couldn’t go out, not like this. He’d long since gone nose blind to his own smell, but Jason knew he had to reek at this point. A shower and a trip to a store was beyond his capacity right now. And… it was raining. He couldn’t. Not now. But he could have something delivered.
If he could find his phone. If it wasn’t completely dead. It probably was. He couldn’t remember when he’d last seen it.
One step at a time. First, just… look for it.
He didn’t have much furniture, much less clutter sitting around. It shouldn’t be hard to find. Except the way his brain had been lately, he could’ve put it down literally anywhere, up to and including the freezer.
No, not the freezer. He’d just looked there.
In the end, it turned out to be on his nightstand. It was even plugged in. He must’ve done that reflexively, after he’d finished making sure—
Tim’s medical records from the Cave were still open, staring back at him in stark accusation when he unlocked the phone. He almost swiped them away, as if he could dismiss the memories as easily. Instead, he refreshed the connection, pulling up the most recent data.
He was recovering well. No previously missed internal injuries. No slow brain bleed. No raging infection.
At least nothing was worse.
It occurred to Jason that he could use that connection to the Cave’s systems to check what progress Batman was making in hunting him down. See where he thought Jason might have gone to ground, which possibilities he’d already eliminated, how urgent the danger might be that he could burst through his window at any moment.
The more he poked around in their files, the more likely they were to pick up on the intrusion. Better not to use that access more than absolutely necessary.
He closed down the program and opened a delivery app instead.
Cat food. The good stuff, in cans. It was better for her than random scraps anyway. Cat litter and a box. She wasn’t going to be around long, but there was no saying when the rain would let up and he wasn’t going to throw her out in the middle of a downpour by force. Couldn’t have her peeing everywhere in the meantime.
Hopefully she’d actually use it. He didn’t know the first thing about training cats. Could you train cats? It seemed like the kind of situation where you just… gave them what you thought they needed and they’d let you know if you guessed wrong.
He wanted to call Selina. He hadn’t considered it once since coming back, but suddenly… She used to call him Kitten in a way that was never motherly but somehow made him feel cared for all the same. She laughed at his questions, but not in a mean way, and more often than not she’d answered them anyway.
Jason wondered if she called the Replacement Kitten now. The thought stung, but not nearly as much as knowing that Bruce called him—
No. Not thinking about that.
Thinking of Alfred before had made him want tea. He didn’t have any here. He could order some while he was at it. He almost did look to see what the store had available, but it felt… not wrong, exactly. Indulgent. Undeserved.
He did need food, though, and for the first time in a couple of weeks that need felt urgent and real, rather than dull and abstract. But when it came to determining what he needed, never mind wanted, his mind was a blank.
In the end, he pulled up his safehouse restocking checklist and just added all the food items on it to his order of cat supplies. Then, deciding neither his body nor his mind were in any shape to first wait for the delivery, then decide what to cook, then actually cook it… he made a second order from a nearby Chinese restaurant. He didn’t actually look at what he was getting, just reordered whatever it was he’d gotten last time.
It’d been a while since he’d eaten there, and only after completing the order did it occur to him that if his first solid food in a while was too spicy, there was a decent chance his stomach would reject it immediately after and he’d wind up worse off than before.
When he pulled up his confirmation email to check, it turned out he was getting beef lo mein and egg drop soup. Huh. Apparently, he’d been in a mood for mild comfort food last time.
Well, that worked. Either would rewarm fine for a few days if he found he couldn’t make it through much once he had it in front of him. He didn’t want to end up throwing away any more food.
He started to drop the phone back on the table. No, he’d need to hear it if there were any issues with the deliveries. He carried it with him back into the other room.
The cat was still under the couch, but she poked her nose out a little to watch his return.
It would’ve been nice to feel some vague sense of accomplishment in finishing a task. Instead, exhaustion was dragging at him again now that it was done.
Not yet. He couldn’t risk falling asleep until the deliveries arrived. Even sitting ran a greater risk of zoning out so hard he wouldn’t hear the deliveries’ arrival.
Water. He could put out some water for her. It wasn’t what she wanted right now, but she’d want it at some point.
Except. Every useful dish and utensil he owned were piled in the sink, crusted with dried food. He didn’t have a lot of extras, even here. It was just him and he washed up after himself as soon as he was done. He liked a clean place and wasn’t one for procrastination.
Usually.
He turned on the water and stared morosely at the pile while he waited for it to run hot. Disgusting. Pathetic. He couldn’t keep going like this, in a slow, indifferent slide toward… what? Starving to death in his own apartment?
He didn’t know what else to do. It was like his body had made some decision for him and his mind was too mired in its own refuse to have anything to say about it.
For now, he could at least wash the dishes.
It wasn’t a pleasant task, not with the degree of scrubbing and scraping required to make headway against the deposits of old food that’d turned into solid concrete. Still, looking at the results stacked neatly in the drying rack, there was a certain… not happiness. Not even satisfaction, quite. But an internal quiet that was different from the blank stretches that had been stealing so much of his time lately.
He took two of the smaller bowls, mostly used for ingredient prep, and filled one with water. He set it on the floor within sight of the couch but tucked safely out of the walkway. The second bowl waited on the counter nearby for the arrival of the food.
A sharp knock at the door gave him a heart-stopping jolt that left him scrambling for a weapon, only to realize he didn't have any. Nothing on him, in just boxers and t-shirt, nothing even within reach. He couldn't remember the last time he'd found himself without a weapon immediately available.
The hallway outside was still, no more knocking, no sounds of movement.
“It's probably your food,” he assured the cat, who'd once again retreated into the deeper shadows under the couch.
Still, he retrieved a gun from its hiding place under a side table on the way to the door, and paused to check the peephole before cracking it open. Fortunately for all concerned, the driver had followed his instructions for contactless delivery and was nowhere to be seen when he leaned out to drag the bags inside.
First things first. He opened one of the cans of cat food and deposited the bowl beside her water before shifting the other bags further away, into the kitchen area.
“It's for you. I'll just… stay over here for a while,” he told the cat. “Not gonna bother you.”
He was careful not to watch her, but very aware of the movement in his peripheral vision as she crept out from under the couch and then darted to the bowl. It didn't take long to settle his few groceries where they belonged.
There was a tense moment when the second knock came at the door, announcing the delivery of Jason's dinner. Her head came up, wary as she crouched lower over her food and turned to tuck herself closer to the wall, but she didn't run for cover as he gave her the widest berth he could on the way to the door.
He could sit on the couch to eat. Maybe even turn on the TV. It would help drown out the rain a little, and maybe even some of the staticky, insistent loop in his head. But no. He was going to eat, and he was going to do it at a table, and if that was the best effort he could make toward doing something right… it was, at least, something.
If he just ate straight from the containers rather than bothering with the newly cleaned dishes—well, that wasn't exactly falling back into failure. That’s what you did with takeout. It was normal.
Jason was so focused on not making the cat nervous by looking directly at her as he ate that the sudden tap against his thigh startled him into a flinch. The cat dropped her forepaws back to the ground, but didn't retreat. Seeing he didn't make any threatening moves, she stretched up again, one paw on his leg to steady herself as she stretched up on her back legs to sniff with interest in the direction of his dinner.
“Don't tell me you're still hungry.”
She looked up at him, eyes wide and hopeful.
And he knew that feeling, too. The ignoring hunger signals so long that when a rare opportunity came to really eat his fill it was just as difficult to listen to the signals telling him to stop. He'd suffered the consequences of stuffing himself more than once, shortly after Bruce took him in. And Bruce… Bruce had been so patient, finding ways to help him feel secure in the certainty that in that house there would always be food for him when he wanted it. That hunger didn't have to be a source of anxiety anymore.
And then the League had taught him entirely different lessons in refusing to let his body's weaknesses control him.
He squeezed his eyes shut, pushing away both sets of unwanted memories, before looking down at the cat again.
“I don't want you to make yourself sick,” he told her. “I promise, there'll be more later.”
Feeling more full than he should have been, given how much he usually ate, he closed the containers and stood to put the leftovers in the fridge. The cat darted away, this time to tuck herself under the coffee table.
It probably wasn’t just because of him that she was so jumpy.
It still felt like his fault.
Was the Replace—no. Those practiced resentments had worn such deep grooves into his mind now that his thoughts kept sliding into them, even when he tried to steer them away.
The kid. Tim. Was he afraid now, jumping at shadows? He’d seemed so undaunted as he fought back against Jason’s attack, but it was one thing to face a crisis with bravado and another to deal with the fallout afterward. Jason had had plenty of defiance to spare, too, when Joker—
He shut the refrigerator door with just slightly more force than necessary and headed for the couch.
No more thinking. Dreaming might not be much more restful, but at least it was a change.
He dragged the blanket off the back of the couch to cover himself haphazardly and stared up at the ceiling.
He didn’t so much hear the cat as vaguely sense movement, without the motivation to turn his head and look. If she found something she felt like pushing over, then let her. Wasn’t like he had a lot of precious breakables around. Wasn’t like he’d care right now if he did.
Little paws reached up, denting the cushion as she stood up to examine him. Then the cat hopped from the floor onto his chest, a graceful, deliberate movement. She was so light, her feet were so small, the delicate weight of her felt… strange. Almost frightening. Jason froze, even the rise and fall of his chest feeling like too much movement.
How had she even survived in Gotham this long on her own if she had this little basic caution? She had to know this was dangerous. He was dangerous. And she was tiny, with fragile, tiny little bones that he could break with a careless movement. He nearly had already, just by inattention. If he wanted to…
The visceral sound and feel of snapping bone under his hands was so real that for a second he thought he’d—but cats didn’t scream like that, that was the Replacement, that was—
He inhaled sharply. The paws on his chest shifted, rebalancing themselves, and Jason blinked away the afterimages to see a round little face peering down at him with wide green eyes. Almost as green as his own these days.
A fluttering panic gripped his chest and squeezed until suddenly he wasn’t panicking, he was angry. The dormant monster stirred, breathing out a slow stream of green smoke to stir those banked embers.
Push her off. Throw her across the room. Do it. She has to learn what it means to survive in Gotham. Teach her a lesson that will stick.
For a moment, it all made horrible, perfect sense. It was right. In Gotham, as in the League, only the strongest survived. If you didn’t fight to eliminate your own weak points, someone else might find them first. Weakness—trust—was stupid and dangerous.
And then, just like with that kitten in the arena, some deeper instinct stirred and pushed back against the tightening grip of the Pit.
No. No. He had to stop. He couldn’t do this anymore, couldn’t let his thoughts keep twisting around. It had to stop.
For the first time he could remember, instead of feeling right and justified and deserved, his own anger frightened him. Pushing back on it, remembering all the reasons he didn't want to do that, that this wasn't him, just seemed to make the Pit swell stronger with frustrated fury at the resistance. Everything flooded with green, with the need to release it before it tore him apart from the inside out, until he couldn’t even breathe with the effort to hold on to—
And then it collapsed again, slinking back to the recesses of his mind with sullen discontent. A wave of hot, shaking nausea rolled over him, but in its wake… his mind was quiet. It was his own again.
Something had changed. Before, the Pit had been an overwhelming force, too entangled with every thought to even question where its influence stopped and his own desires began. In the Tower, looking down at Robin, exactly as he'd envisioned it over and over, broken, helpless, at his nonexistent mercy… something in the Pit’s control had broken. The seemingly limitless stream of power and driving motivation short-circuited and gone between one breath and the next, leaving him as dazed as if he was the one who'd just taken a blow to the head.
He could see it for what it was now. And clearly, at least sometimes, he could say no.
Which meant that all the times he’d said yes before…
He couldn’t change that now. Couldn’t go back and untangle what he’d actually wanted in those moments and what he’d just never thought to question. Because it was so easy to give in to its promises of strength and certainty, when everything else hurt too much.
The wild racing of his heart was finally slowing. He opened his eyes to find the cat still on his chest, sitting now, ears twitching a little as she stared down at him with what looked almost like concern. Then she blinked slowly and looked away.
When she started to move, he thought she was going to jump down and find a better place to sit. Which was—good. Safest for both of them. Maybe she had better survival instincts than he’d thought.
There was no reason for that impending loss to stab into his chest and drag out an aching grief that bordered on despair.
Instead of jumping down, she turned around a couple of times, pawing at wrinkles in his shirt with a critical eye. Then she settled down to curl up in a little bundle right on his chest.
When she showed no sign of moving again, he reached up slowly, cautiously, to run one finger along the top of her head and down her back. She leaned her whole body into the touch without hesitation. When he tried it again, with his whole hand this time, she turned her head to rub a cheek against his palm in return. Again, and her eyes were squinted nearly shut as she began to purr.
He wanted to cry. Oh. He was crying, tears running down his face as he tried to suppress any sound or movement that might scare the cat. He was still exhausted, still half sick with a misery that seemed to have no possible escape, too late, all of it too late now. And yet somehow in that moment it was easier to breathe than it had been since that night at the Tower. Which made no sense, with the extra weight of a cat pressing down on him.
He didn't deserve it. She knew he could hurt her and she trusted him anyway. It made him wish he was actually a person worth trusting.
The sound of her purring didn't drown out the rain, but somehow it made it more bearable.
Maybe when he woke up again he'd kick himself into gear for a much overdue shower. Otherwise, he'd start to smell so disgusting even she didn't want to get close anymore. Didn’t cats have more sensitive noses than people did? How could she stand it?
Somehow, before his mind even finished forming the thought, consciousness began to dissolve gently into sleep. For the first time since he got back from the Tower, it was deep and dreamless.