Hello! Welcome back to this terrible, pain-filled story arc. So, first things first, this is another thing from the 100 Themes. Number 82, 'Can You Hear Me?' Also, fair warning, this is quite painful. Good luck!
Warnings for this chapter: implied/referenced torture, aftermath of torture, and reference to attempted suicide via picking a fight.
In the end, it's about two and a half hours before Jason starts to wake up, which is later than he expected but before the nurses thought it would be. It's not surprising; Jason, like all of them, tends to not stay down as long as he probably should. The fact Jason stayed down even this long worries him a bit.
Dick's standing at the window when the heart monitor picks up a bit, and immediately he turns to take a look. It's a little uneven, but it's different and that drives him over to carefully sit down at Jason's side in the foot or so of bed beside him. He watches Jason carefully, and that means that he sees the way his brother's forehead draws into a small frown, and the way his head tilts a bit.
"Jason?" he calls, quietly. "Can you hear me? You there, Little Wing?"
Jason stirs a bit more, drawing in a deeper breath, and he reaches forward and carefully pulls the oxygen mask down so it's resting beneath Jason's chin. The next breath comes out with a soft sound of pain, and then Jason's eyes very slowly drag open. They're hazy, dull, still partially lidded, and they take more than a couple seconds to actually rest on his face. Jason swallows, staring up at him with clearly uncomprehending eyes, before his mouth parts to actually speak.
"Bruce?" Jason whispers, voice hoarse and weak enough that it feels like it might just fade away again. And god, the disbelieving hope in that tone is like a kick to the chest. "What're you doin' in hell?" Jason asks, and that's a second kick right in the gut.
God, Jason thinks…
"You're alive," he whispers back, fighting the urge to reach out and stroke Jason's hair away from his face because he doesn't think he can do it without hurting his brother. "Jason, it's okay, you're alive. You're in Gotham General."
Jason's gaze slides across the room, and then looks back up at him. "No, I—" Jason draws in a little bit of a sharper breath, eyes widening a touch. "It was supposed to work. It was supposed to— Why?"
Did Jason try…? He tries not to react too much to that, and instead just asks, "Jason, can you tell me what happened in Arkham? Can you do that for me?"
Jason stares at him, and then breathes out, "Dick," like it's some huge revelation. Maybe to Jason, right now, it is. Then Jason gives a faint shudder. "No. No you can't—" Jason's head turns a bit, eyes squeezing shut. "You're not supposed to come back. Told you not to come back."
"Why not?" he asks gently.
Jason's not totally coherent, because if he can actually mistake Dick for Bruce then he has to be pretty out of it. If he can't get Jason to answer what he wants, maybe he can at least get Jason to answer something. He needs to know what happened in Arkham, why Jason wouldn't tell him, how bad it was, or just anything. If he can get just one small piece of the puzzle maybe he can figure out the rest of it on his own.
When Jason doesn't answer, he carefully presses, "Why don't you want Dick to come back?" With any luck, the third person will help Jason answer.
Another small shudder, and then a choked answer of, "Shame."
His heart clenches, but before he can try and reassure Jason that there can't possibly be a reason for any kind of shame, Jason's speaking again.
"Ashamed of me. Nothing— Nothing to save. Not worth it. Broken, ruined, digging under my skin with a dull blade and I can't—" Jason's heart rate picks up, eyes squeezing shut a little tighter as his voice rises. "Can't get them out. Can't— Can't stop them. Doesn't matter what I do, doesn't matter; they just take and take and take and there's nothing left! I— I—"
"Jason, hush," he orders, reaching up to carefully brush Jason's hair back. "Easy, Little Wing. I need you to calm down for me, okay? You're hurt pretty badly."
Jason shudders again, eyes opening. His mouth opens, closes, and then he gives a choked sounding little cry and tears slide down from the corners of his eyes. "Took my skin," Jason whispers, and his brother's tone has so much agony that his chest tightens up again on pure instinctive reaction. "They took my skin from me, Dick, and I can't— I can't fucking look at it anymore. I don't know how to—" A soft sob of sound, and Jason drops his gaze. "Please, just go. I can't— I'm not good enough; couldn't hold so I deserve it. Not worth saving, should have held—"
"Stop!" he demands, as his heart pounds in his ears and he just stares down at Jason. Who flinches, then almost immediately shivers and presses back into the bed like he's hoping he'll melt through it.
He squeezes his eyes shut behind the cowl, takes a deep breath in and pushes the horror in his chest down so he can deal with it later. He can't dwell on this right now. Jason's only going to be awake for so long and he needs answers, needs to know what happened and what his options are. The fact that Jason, probably someone who could rival Bruce in terms of pure stubbornness and willpower, has been reduced down to this is not a good sign. What did they do to him?
He takes a second breath, opens his eyes, and tries to ignore how Jason is very faintly trembling. "Jason, I need you to tell me what happened. Who hurt you?" Confusion, disbelief, and he realizes the mistake a moment later and corrects the question to keep things simple. "What was it that was supposed to work, Jason? What were you trying to do?"
Jason's inhalation is shallow, voice lowered back to a weak whisper as he says, "Make it all stop."
"How?" he presses, shoving the idea that Jason tried to get himself killed down with the rest of this messed up situation.
"Never left me with weapons," Jason murmurs, gaze lingering somewhere close to his shoulder. "Had to— Had to make him snap."
He practically already knows, but he still asks, "Who is 'him,' Jason?"
Sure enough, Jason swallows, shivers, and answers, "Joker," in a voice so quiet he can barely hear it.
He has to restrain the urge to clench his fists, has to viciously force the fury back down his throat to sit with everything else. He can't lose control right now. No matter how much he wants to, he can't storm Arkham and repay every inch of pain that Jason's suffered by seeing how much Joker can bleed before he dies. Killing isn't their way; it isn't right. Even ignoring that whole moral issue, Jason needs him right now. Being angry won't help, not when Jason's so clearly clinging on by just a few tiny threads. If he handles this badly, if he messes up, he could make things so much worse.
He carefully leans forward, brushing Jason's hair back behind one ear and very gently laying the other on a bruise-free section of Jason's nearer shoulder. "I'm just going to ask a couple more questions, okay? How are you feeling, Little Wing?"
Jason's gaze lingers on his arm instead of rising to meet his look. "Pain," is the first answer, coupled with a small grimace that probably only makes the bruises marring that face hurt worse. "Lots of pain. Hard to breathe. So… So tired."
"I'll let you get back to sleep in just a few minutes," he promises, stroking a soft thumb down the side of Jason's face and partially hoping his brother feels Bruce in the touch. God, what he would give to have Bruce handling all of this. To have Bruce here to help. "You've got some broken ribs, internal bleeding, and they haven't given you any painkillers for it because you had a lot of drugs in your system already. They don't want to risk any bad side effects."
"Deserve it," Jason murmurs, and he sucks in a startled little breath.
"No. Jason, god, no. You don't deserve any of this, Little Wing. No one does but especially not you." He feels the anger threaten his control, bites down on it and gives a small, shaking laugh at the effort. "God, if I could hug you without hurting you I would, Jason. Just… Just please, don't believe that any of this is your fault. You didn't deserve this."
Jason still won't meet his eyes. "Killed people," he whispers, "innocents. Hurt my family, hurt kids I— I didn't even know. Damian. Tim. I deserve to pay for that."
"Not like this," he stresses, wanting to make Jason look at him but not able to think of a way to do it that won't cause pain. Jason doesn't answer, doesn't even really react. "Jason, you know none of us ever wanted something like this. I— I'm so sorry. I should never have let any of this happen, I shouldn't have put you in Arkham, I shouldn't have… I just wanted to help."
"Deserved it," Jason repeats, and his words are slurring a bit, eyes drifting closed.
He carefully pulls his hand away from Jason's face, then makes sure the one on Jason's shoulder is over clear skin before he gently squeezes down on it. "Just get some rest, Little Wing. I'll be here till you fall asleep, I swear."
Jason's eyes flutter back open, and he breathes, "Dick?"
"Yeah?"
A swallow, a moment where Jason clearly tries to focus before giving up. "Just let me die," Jason says, and he can hear the plea in it.
"No," he snaps, instantly rejecting the idea. "Not ever, Jason. Don't even—"
"Don't make me go back," Jason interrupts, voice barely audible and his eyes begging. "Let me die instead. Please." His eyes slide shut again, as he breathes out another faint, "Please."
His throat feels clogged shut, and it's all he can do to stay quiet as Jason's breath evens out and the faint trembling eases. He manages to stay careful as he slips the oxygen mask back up over Jsaon's mouth and pulls away from his side, and then crosses to the other side of the room to stand by the window again. It takes a couple more deep breaths, but he manages to reopen the line to Barbara too, once he's sure that his voice will come through fairly normal.
"Oracle?" he asks quietly, turning so he can keep an eye on Jason and make sure that he's not waking back up at the sound.
"Yep, still here." Her voice is a welcome relief, and he almost speaks before she says, "Hold on a second, let me add Red in." That same distinctive beep, and then she's taking control again. "Red, I've got boy wonder on the line. You looking for status updates for everyone?"
"Yeah," he manages, leaning against the wall.
Well," Tim starts, "my news is that there's nothing. I've got a couple psychiatrist reports that basically say that Jason doesn't have any real mental illnesses they can pinpoint; one report for a week he spent in solitary, apparently for attacking a guard; the files from his transfer in, which have got some big holes; and the report for today's attack, which says they found him in his own cell and don't know what happened. This is way beyond negligence; we've got at least a handful of corrupt guards, some orderlies, and maybe a nurse or two if none of what we know of got into a report."
He scrubs his hand over his jaw in place of rubbing it over his eyes like he wants to. "Shit. What about you, Oracle?"
"I've got my systems scanning through all the security footage from Arkham for the months Jason was there, weeding out everything he's in. It's going to take a while to get all of it, but I've previewed a couple sections. Nothing all that bad yet, but in most of this he's moving like he's hurt. I don't think it's going to be long before I find something tangible. How about you, boy wonder? Is he awake?"
"He was. He's out again now, but I got him to answer a couple questions. It was Joker that attacked him, but…" He bites down on his tongue for a moment, has to take another second to keep his voice quiet. "He said they never left him with a weapon, so he provoked Joker into snapping so he would…" He can't quite make himself say the words, but judging by the heavy silence on the line they both understand anyway.
"Jesus," Tim finally murmurs. "Are you… Are you sure?"
"Yeah." He swallows, squeezes his eyes and jaw shut for a moment before he can continue. "He asked me to let him die, instead of sending him back to Arkham. I don't really know what they did to him in there but he's in really bad shape. He was talking about them 'taking his skin,' how he couldn't stand looking at it, and he seems totally convinced that he deserved everything they did to him. He's not… He barely feels like Jason anymore."
There's silence, and he takes in a deep breath, tilts his head back, and tries to control himself enough to speak.
"I need to get out of here," he manages. "Red, how long will it take you to get to Gotham?"
"Uhhh…" There's the metallic sound of what he'd guess is a laptop, and then a brief shuffling of paper. "Not long, if I get Kon to fly me over. You want someone there watching him?"
"In case he wakes back up," he confirms. "We need all the information we can get and he's the best source of it; I don't want to miss any opportunities to learn things from him. Would you—"
"I'll do it," Barbara says, with a note of steel to her voice that definitely means she's not going to be accepting any argument. "I can do my work just as well from there as here."
Still, he tries to say, "I'm not sure that's—"
"Dick," she snaps, and he stands to attention on pure automatic. "Jason's badly injured and I'm more than capable of handling him. Also, on a completely practical note you should have considered, neither of you is exactly the closest friend to him. He's probably not going to talk as easily to either of you as he might to me."
She makes a point he can't really argue, but he spends a couple moments trying to think of something to say anyway. Long enough for Tim to speak back up.
"I'll come back to Gotham anyway. This sounds like something we want all hands on deck for, and the Titans can handle things without me or give me a call if they really do need me for something. They'll understand. So, Oracle can take over for right now, and I'll get my loose ends tied up over here and then head over in the morning. Everyone agreed?"
"Agreed," Barbara immediately says.
He sighs, but gives in. "Agreed. I'll stick around till you get here, Oracle. See you in a few?"
"No need," she counters. "Go ahead and leave; I'll let you know when I get there."
Again, he can't really argue it. He grits his teeth, but closes his eyes after a moment. "Alright. Robin can finish patrol on his own, I'll head back to the Cave and get to work on the surveillance you've picked out so far, Oracle. You know the drill, guys; add in any updates to the file and we can get this figured out. Talk to you later."
He disconnects from the line, biting down on a heavy sigh. After a moment, he crosses over to the hospital bed and carefully resumes his seat on the edge of it. Jason's firmly out of it, as far as he can tell, but he reaches forward and traces his fingers over the swollen line of one cheekbone, as gently as he can manage.
"You're safe now," he promises in a whisper. "This is my fault, and I'm not going to let it happen again. I'll keep you safe, Little Wing." There's no response, but that's not surprising. He leans in, pressing a soft kiss to Jason's forehead. "I'm heading out, but Barbara will be here to sit with you as soon as she can. We're going to get all of this sorted out, I swear."
He draws back, gets to his feet, and then pauses to just look at Jason for a few moments. Just to cement all the bruises and the injuries in his head. This is his fault. Every broken bone, every bruise, every inch of pain Jason's suffered, is on his shoulders. He should have been there, or at least had the decency to listen when Jason tried to tell him things. No matter how veiled they were, he should have been able to understand. He should never have let any of this happen and the fact that he did…
He clenches his hands to fists, and whispers, "Get some sleep, Little Wing. We'll take care of you."
It's all he can manage before he leaves, slipping out the window and heading back for the Cave.
He hits the punching bag for long and hard enough that the chain holding it up breaks, and then finally feels like he's worked out enough of the anger and wild energy in his chest to sit still and do some real work.
He works through the blocks of security footage that have been flagged as having Jason in them, cutting it down to the parts that actually do and then adding notes explaining what's in them. He types 'Evidence of Injury' more times than he wants to even think about, and then adds little lists of what's visible.
Split lips, bruised knuckles, limps, or the times that Jason's favoring a side or an arm. It's more than enough to make it clear that Jason was either getting in frequent, off-camera fights, or that he was being abused in one way or another. The way the dates are spread out worries him, and he's especially worried by the fact that the injuries stop being visible after a while, at least for the most part. Instead it becomes clear in the way that Jason moves, the way he stands, the way he watches the people around him.
It's sickening to watch Jason draw in on himself as time passes in the security footage. To watch him go from anger, to pain, to wariness, and then snap back to a kind of desperate fury that has him baring teeth at everyone who gets within ten feet. It's even worse when he's clearly hazy, drugged on something or other and slow to react to anything around him. He stays in corners, stays facing the people around him and never lets them at his back. None of it seems to protect him at all.
But none of it's on camera. Not a single block Dick reviews has anyone actually doing anything to Jason, apart from a bit of manhandling by the guards and that doesn't explain the kind of injuries Jason's obviously dealing with.
Maybe it's possible that whoever is doing it to him is just that good at avoiding any kind of security, and making sure none of it gets caught on film, but that seems unlikely. This is Arkham; there's barely an inch of the place that doesn't have a camera pointed at it, and for good reason. Abuse like this doesn't happen often, but there are fights, and the people in this place are, as a rule, insane. Trying to hurt other people, or hurt themselves, is too big a risk not to keep pretty much the entire facility under careful surveillance. And then there's attempted escapes by the bigger names and, well…
There's no way that every bit of Jason's abuse has been off camera. That either means that this is false footage, or that someone with access to the video deleted any evidence. That should be easy enough to pinpoint, just by looking at the dates and scanning for missing sections of time, but he holds back. Better to finish up this part of the job first, then get Barbara involved and have them both scan through and see what's missing. That'll go faster.
As the videos go on Jason gets thinner, his hair gets longer, and it's hard to tell beneath the prison uniform but he probably loses muscle definition too. It's easy to see that he's exhausted and suffering, more and more the longer that he's stuck in Arkham. It's horrifying to watch.
It's a sharp jolt out of the sickened haze he's in when there's, suddenly, a voice from behind him.
"Is that Todd?" Damian snaps, and he nearly leaps out of his skin.
He ends up slamming his knee into the bottom of the console and almost falling out of the chair before he can gather himself enough to spin the chair around to face Damian. Damian, who is already in normal clothes with damp hair that says he's showered; arms crossed and eyes narrowed in a way that says he's definitely not impressed with Dick's complete lack of awareness.
He takes in a shallow breath, rubs his hand over his eyes, and confirms it. "Yeah, that's Jason. Damian, what have I told you about sneaking up on people?"
"I did not sneak," Damian argues. "I walked and you were so involved in your voyeurism you failed to notice."
"That's— That's not the right word."
Damian gives him a look like he entirely disagrees, but doesn't press the issue, which really means he's already lost. "So what is the problem? Has Todd escaped? Is that why you did not hover over me for the entirety of patrol as is usual?"
"No," he snaps, harsher than he means to and the way Damian's arms tighten and the ever-present scowl deepens means it's absolutely been taken personally. "No," he repeats, gentler. "Jason was attacked, he's in Gotham General. That's where I was; he's in bad shape and we needed to talk to him to see what had happened as soon as he woke up. Barbara's there now, and Tim's flying back here in the morning."
Damian's mouth curls in a faint sneer. "Why? Let Todd heal enough to survive and transfer him back. If he cannot handle one attack inside Arkham—"
"Damian, enough. It's more complicated than that." He glances back up at the screen, and belatedly remembers to actually pause the video. "It looks like Jason's been getting abused by someone in Arkham, or a lot of people, pretty much since he was imprisoned there. At the least we've got a few dirty employees, at most…"
Damian actually looks uncomfortable for a moment, weight shifting from one foot to the other. "Impossible. Todd would never allow himself to be harmed by those so inferior to his skill. He would kill anyone who attempted to harm him."
"It's not that simple, Damian," he tries to explain. "The power dynamics in a prison are very different than the streets, and there are a lot of things that come into play. Numbers, drugs, restraints, exhaustion, starvation or dehydration… That's not even getting into the politics of a place like that. Someone got away with hurting him, frequently. Either they weren't alone, he was at a big disadvantage, or he couldn't fight back for some reason. Or all of the above."
The silence, and the lingering hint of discomfort in Damian's expression, says everything he needs to know about their youngest Robin's feelings on the matter.
He offers what he hopes is a reassuring smile, and one that doesn't betray how bone-tired and freaked out he is, before turning the chair half back to the screens. "I've been combing through footage, but I haven't found anything that's actual proof yet. He's got injuries, obvious and hidden, but I can't find any of the actual encounters. I think someone deleted the sections that show it, but I won't know for sure till one of us starts up a scan to check for missing blocks of time. I was going to call Barbara and ask her to, as soon as I'm done looking through what we have."
Damian clicks his tongue. "Ridiculous. Let me fetch my laptop and I will start it."
The offer startles him, and he turns to look back at Damian. "You don't have to do that, Dami. You should go upstairs, get some sleep, or—"
"Cease your inane suggestions, Grayson," Damian says, with another sneer. "The sooner this is done the sooner Drake will leave my city, and the sooner I can stop thinking about Todd of all people. Go back to your footage, and I will start checking for missing time in the records."
He smiles, softer and more real this time. "Thank you, Damian."
"Not necessary," is the immediate refusal. "You could make this easier by finding me likely places to look for what is missing; such as where there is fresh injury but no explanation."
The suggestion is so stunningly simple that he has to blame the fact he didn't think of it on all the stress.
"Yeah, yeah I'll find you somewhere to start."