The little bit of rain-slicked metal jumped from his hand and into a puddle.

Jason scowled and stooped to pick up the key from his doorstep, gloved fingers scraping the cement as he missed it several times. He squinted through the dark rain, forced himself to focus, and grabbed it. His hands slipped over the wet doorknob several times before he yanked the door open and tripped into his apartment.

He tugged off his helmet and peeled off the domino mask, dropping them onto the couch as he walked towards his room, one hand braced on the greyish wall of the hallway, because it was getting oddly difficult to balance.

It was just a fever. Bruce would never have let him out on the streets like this, but Jason wouldn't let a little fever stop him from cleaning up some of Gotham's scum. Damn whatever Bruce would think. Why couldn't Jason stop thinking about what Bruce would think?

It didn't matter. He was on his own now, independent of Batman's no-kill rule. It was Bruce's fault the criminals kept coming back. Jason needed to be out there as much as possible. He needed to stop them… stop them from hurting people. Too many people had been hurt.

Memories of the past hours flashed behind his eyes: Blood and tissue splattered onto a dirty brick wall behind a small, slumping body… and a man, cured up bloody on the ground, because Jason had been just a few seconds too late… and suddenly, a metal bar swinging at his own head, fast, and Jason got hit three times before he put the man down. It had been a crowbar.

He stepped into his room. The cold light from the window hurt his eyes. It was about 2 am since he was back early, but the streetlights and the light from the building across the street poured into his room and made the drops of rain on the window shine. He fumbled with the blinds until they closed, and dropped himself onto his bed.

His head felt heavy. He tugged off his jacket and his body armor and found proof that Bruce was right all over his skin. Bruises spotted and wrapped around his arms and his chest. As if he hadn't been at this for years. Apparently a little fever was enough to make all his training go to shit.

Didn't matter. He'd just sleep it off. He fell back onto his pillow and cringed at the creaking of his bed. It sounded louder than ever. His eyes drifted shut.

Soon a soft, rasping laughter drifted through the room, and Jason immediately twisted around, reaching fiercely for his gun, but nothing was there. He reached for the knife under his pillow, found nothing, and realized that he couldn't see. He tried to sit up but some invisible force pressed him down. The laughter floated louder, closer, and as the seconds ticked by, Jason swore he felt a breath on his face.

Someone shook him, hands gripping his shoulders like claws, and he found that he was able to jerk away.

He tumbled out of bed, gasping for air in the room that suddenly seemed hot and stuffy. The laughter had stopped. It wasn't real; he was alone.

He pushed himself back up onto his bed, trying to get his frantic breathing under control, to find the dark silhouette of a man sitting there at the end of it. With a strangled cry he sprang back off of the bed and stumbled backwards, reaching for the gun on his night-side table, a small relief flooding through him when his hands closed on the cool, heavy metal. This wasn't a dream, he wasn't helpless- he could raise the gun and shoot.

"Jason," the man said sharply. "Put down the damn gun."

The voice was as familiar as the laughter, or more. Jason's shoulders slumped in relief, because it wasn't him, it was just Bruce. And then he got a hold of himself.

"Bruce?" he yelled, still breathing too quickly as he straightened into an offensive stance. His knuckles were white around the gun. Laughter still echoed in the back of his mind and his hands shook erratically. "What the hell are you doing here? Get out!"

"Jason," Bruce said, more gently this time. Jason cringed at what sounded like pity in his voice. "Put down the gun."

Bruce had woken him up, probably heard him screaming. He bit his lip hard. Had he forgotten to lock the damn door? Had he been that out of it? He didn't lower the gun. He needed something in between himself and Bruce... he needed to be alone, to be safe, independent…

He lost focus as the laughter sounded again, as if it was in the same room as him, as if he was in the room. He didn't let go of the gun. His vision blurred but he could focus on the cold metal in his hands. The sound of laughter stopped abruptly as Bruce stood up, suddenly looming over him.

"I told you-" Jason panted as his mind cleared. "I told you to get the hell- agh!"

Bruce had moved smoothly and quickly and Jason found the gun twisted out of his grasp. He fought the urge to hold his sore wrist, glaring up at Bruce furiously.

"I never would have been able to pull that off so easily when you were Robin," Bruce said, disarming the gun and throwing it behind him, stepping closer to Jason. It clunked on the floor. "And now you're having nightmares. What's going on?"

"You know, I missed the part where that's any of your damned business," Jason spat. He hated the shake in his voice.

"And you went out on patrol like this?" Bruce continued, his disapproval clear. "I'm surprised I didn't find you unconscious in an alley somewhere. Or worse."

"What the hell do you think you're doing here, l-lecturing me like I'm your-" Jason swallowed hard. "Responsibility? I'm not. Not anymore. Not after- Just leave me the hell alone."

"You're my-" Bruce sounded startled, but he cut the sentence off before Jason could. He suddenly turned around and stepped away.

Jason panicked, expecting the laughter to start again any second.

"Wai-I mean, why- why the hell are you here?" he said quickly, before Bruce could vanish over the threshold.

"I came to talk."

To talk? Jason fastened his eyes onto Bruce's face, onto the cowl, but it was impossible to read his expression.

"I came to tell you that you need to come back to the Manor, and you're only proving me right." He gestured at Jason's bruises, visible in the dirty light that filtered through the weak blinds. "You're obviously not taking care of yourself, and if you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of Gotham."

Jason was silent. He remembered Alfred pestering Bruce with that exact saying time and again when Bruce came home from patrol, insisted that he was perfectly fine, and waved off Alfred's ministrations. But to hear the words from Bruce's mouth... maybe things were different now.

"Your old room is-"

"No." Jason clenched his eyes shut for half a second, aghast at himself for even considering the offer. "That's crazy. Why the hell would I put myself under your authority again? I-I'm doing fine. I'm making an actual permanent difference. I don't- I can't… look where trusting you got me last time."

Bruce's face contorted beneath the cowl. Jason glanced away, and when he looked back, Batman was gone.