After she'd taken him to the town, Jason ceases roaming the house, doesn't check on the security measures he's installed, having become wither satisfied with them, settled on them as the height of his capabilities, or he's decided he has no use for them.
He still prepares meals he never partakes of, and then returns to his room where she hears nothing from him for the remainder of the day. When Talia looks in on him, all she finds is a still lump vaguely outlined by the many blankets piled on his bed. The lack of the ungodly racket he'd made before leave the premises feeling too still, as though a corpse again accompanied her in her sister's morgue.
The turn she's been expecting not long ago doesn't come, Jason has stagnated, in his progress; grown content to sleep his days away both his days and nights. Talia is a patient woman, and under different circumstances, she might have given him more time, left him to find his own purpose as he had before.
Now, however her time is short, she fears she will not be available much longer to watch over him personally, and never has she had an agent who could keep up with him when he wished to disappear, something that before had been an annoyance could prove fatal without some great improvement in his condition. Were he to regain some small will to keep himself living, or she could find someone up to the task, Jason had still responded best to her, even when mindless and seemingly incapable of caring who's company he was in. Handing him off to another would stall his progress perhaps halt it all together.
She did not return him to the world to have him remain a lifeless husk for the rest of his days, never tapping into his potential.
For two days, she leaves him to wallow, a reward for the comparative lack of blatant self-destruction he's exhibited. The bruising heals fast, aided by the short time that has elapsed since his most recent submersion in the pit. By the third day, it may as well have never been there at all, yet he still hasn't shown any initiative to do anything but loaf around. Talia's given him all the time she can spare for this, so she takes the matter into her own hands.
"Jason." She pulls the cord to draw the heavy drapes, flooding the room with the snow-brightened sunlight and allowing her to see the mess he's made of it in more detail. Her nose wrinkles at the nest of clothing scattered about, the many glasses of stale water balanced precariously on and around his nightstand.
There's a malcontented grumble from beneath the mound of blankets, but nothing else.
"The time for wallowing in bed has passed, this behavior is unacceptable." She comes to stand besides the bed, stepping around the clutter on the ground, her heels clicking loudly enough for him to track her progress.
"So?" The blankets shift and one of his feet emerge for a moment from the covers; he shivers and draws it back in, then goes still. "Bringing me back was unacceptable, 'n you didn't give a fuck. Got what you wanted, now I wanna sleep."
"I don't recall implying at any point that your 'wants' factored in to what is expected of you." If he'd been eating, she expects she'd be finding food squirreled about as well. One of the first things she hopes comes back is his general appreciation of cleanliness. "Find yourself a task or one will be relegated to you."
"Oooh." He mocks in a high-pitched voice. "Or what, you'll lock me away in the middle of nowhere like a fairytale gremlin?" He snorts.
Talia's face is fixed into the blank state she'd rarely been given occasion to use, but is now quickly becoming her default expression as she grabs hold of the many layers of blankets and rips them out of his loose hold. The glasses on the nightstand are topples over and the blankets fly to the other end of the room where they temporarily darken the place again before fluttering down to the cluttered ground before he's had the chance to so much utter his protests.
"Oh my gosh, what the…" Jason curls into a tight ball against his headboard almost instantly beginning to shiver in his boxers and undershirt. "Did you really just…"
"A stack of fire wood has just been delivered to our doorstep; the logs are too large to fit into the main fireplace. Make yourself useful." She toes aside a discarded sock, displeasure plain on her face. "If you haven't begun within the hour I will return with a jug of iced water. Do not test me on this Jason."
As she leaves, she hears him shuffling to retrieve his blankets, and then returning to the bed. When she returns, Jason has already gone back to sleep. The iced water has the added benefit of soothing a great part of the irritation that causes. He hasn't been that loud outside of his tantrums since before the pit.
O
O
O
"Crazy, evil, contrary…" Jason mutters under his breath as he raises the axe high above his still damp head and brings it down hard on another log. He turns to glare at the window of her office, because she couldn't have been more obvious about his little activity being set right where she could keep watch over him. Be a real shame if he ends up axe murdering himself, a real fucking shame.
He props another log on the stand and puts all his not as considerable weight into the down swing that splits it in half with a too loud crack. Woods are so quiet he'd bet they could heat him all the way in the town. Stupid fucking town, with the stupid fucking people that thought they knew bull.
And Talia, pulling that on him, since where the fuck? Between teachers there were periods where he'd spend days doing crap all, and no one did crap all about it. Talia never did crap all about it. 'The time for wallowing in bed has passed' in-fucking-deed. He shivered even under his thickly layered clothes and snagged another log.
Because not even Talia can be a damn constant, has to go and pull a one-eighty on him, like she thinks she's… He slams the wood on the stand and plants himself in front of it, breathing out a crystallized puff of air that takes a while to dissipate in the still air. If she'd been like this before, he'd never have started his training, wouldn't have gotten her to find him half those teachers.
The axe gets stuck in this log and Jason angrily raises both above his head again to slam them onto the stand with all the force he can muster. The impact makes a resounding thump and sends shock of pain running all up his arms and to his shoulders, leaving his hands feeling tingly. It only gets the axe wedged further in. He plants his foot on the wood and squares his shoulders as he grips the handle of the axe.
Without those teachers, he'd still be that pathetic little… Something flows out of his shoulders as Jason huffs in a breath, his eyes drifting over to the split logs piled carelessly around him, then over at the house, feels the damp in his hair and the fire that burns behind his eyes whenever he so much as thinks about Batman.
That pathetic little brat had had more of an idea of his perceived place in the world than this one.
Jason sighs, watches the cloud of steam this time as it drifts slowly away from him, then trails his eyes back down to the axe that's and the lump of wood it's stuck in. Squinting, he bends over to get a better look. There's something leaking out around the blade, something thick and dark. Jason rears back, the scores across the wooden neck of the training dummy superimposing themselves over the log, blood dripping down a lighter wooden chest that turns grey and broad and covered with a bat symbol.
His hands fly to his own neck; almost squeeze to stop the flow up blood again, but the collar of his jacket brushes against his fingers in place of slicked skin. He curls his hands into fists, in front of him, dig the nails of both into the left one instead of his throat until it bleeds, but the feeling of wrongness doesn't bleed out with it.
Burning eyes fix on the wood again, the sticky dark liquid leaking out; he runs his finger along it and brings it up to inspect, to make sure he's not going crazy again. It comes back sticky with tree sap. Jason swallows, tastes no iron running down his throat, sucks in a breath, and grips the axe again, this time with just his right hand.
He wiggles and tugs, until with one of his sudden jerks, he falls back, the axe coming with him and the wood skittering across the snow in the other direction. His eyes are still burning, and he goes to retrieve the wood, sets it aright and draws back the axe.
It takes three swings to split the wood, and Jason ripping it apart with his hand and foot to relinquish the sap's attempts at keeping the halves together anyway. Then he brings the axe down on the pieces again, and again, breaking the wood into quarters, then eighths, then smaller and smaller.
While it lasts, he feels some satisfaction at the syrupy strings of sap that cling to the axe every time he pulls it away from his target. Tiny little strands like wires trying vainly to bind the pieces together, but he's splintered the pieces too many times, flung too many slivers of wood away for them to put it back the way it was, no matter how sticky the sap is. His arms and his lungs are soon burning too with the exertion, but he keeps chopping, keeps breaking up the wood more and more until the chunks are so small the axe won't get them any smaller.
Jason keeps swinging anyway. Growing ever more frustrated at the little pieces that move aside rather than be broken further, his swings become harder and more violent, sweat trickling down his neck and turning icy as the wind picks up. His frustration builds until one of his downswings is powerful enough to send the axe head breaking apart from its wooden handle. The metal glints as it spins and flies away from Jason, catching just the bits of sunlight that past the clouds that he hasn't noticed gathering overhead.
His lips curl downwards at the broken handle, before Jason tosses it away from him, lets it join the many other broken pieces of wood scattered about as he heads back inside, his heavy footfalls making the prints forming in his wake much deeper than the ones that had marked his walk towards the stacks of wood earlier.
O
O
O
"Broke your axe." Jason mutters in her direction when he stomps back inside and petulantly shucks off his jacket. Talia arches and eyebrow at him when he makes as though to drop it in the entryway and he elects to fold it over his hands instead.
"It would be best to keep that on." Talia sips on her coffee and keeps typing up of her final replies. "We'll be returning to the town in under an hour."
"We?" Jason holds the jacket to his chest, and Talia will admit he looks a mess, his shoulders and arms shaking with exhaustion as he breathes in long, deep breaths, too long hair, dampened by sweat curling on his brow even when he brushes his elbow across his brow to clear the droplets away.
"Enough time for you to change your clothing and have breakfast." She can't leave him behind, and can't leave people without instruction another day. The more he leaves the house now the better.
"I don't want breakfast." Jason says, he moved to leave but Talia's frown stills him.
"If not now, you will have to eat when we reach the town and I cannot guarantee the food will be at the temperature you prefer." She keeps working as though she hasn't noticed the way his body tenses up, the widened eyes he pins on her, searching for the threat, debating whether or not to oppose her this time.
"Don't wanna go back there." The loosening of his posture is too artificial to reassure her. "I can eat something here later."
"Leaving you here on your own would be irresponsible of me after your last outburst."
"Yeah, what I want doesn't factor in anymore, right?" The green of his eyes flickers for a moment to something brighter, more poisonous as he spits the words out.
"Throwing another tantrum will only prove my point." She brushes her worry aside and saves the file, opening up another to continue her work. Jason doesn't linger, he's gone before she looks up again.
O
O
O
"Our operatives have thus far been incapable of obtaining a viable sample for testing Lady Talia." The operative on screen reports. "We've been unable to gain clear visual confirmation of their location, but according to an informant the targets are headed for Japan, we have personnel ready to intercept. They seem to have caught wind of our pursuit and are guarding the boy extremely closely."
"I see," Talia turns away from the article on another monitor 'BRUCIE WAYNE DOES IT AGAIN' plastered over most of the page. It goes on to compare the characteristics of the Bruce and the newest he'sbrought into his home. With a disgusted scoff, she swipes the page away. "And news of Shiva?"
"Still unaccounted for, but it's unlikely she's been convinced to further along an agenda of the Usurper. She's recently tripled the bounty on the head of the 'One who is all' and last sighting of Lady Shiva suggest she was furious, but such claims are of course…"
"Unconfirmed." Talia finishes, and fights to keep the irritation from showing on her face. Skilled as they are, none of her operatives have the skills to do what she requires of them, not without her coming out of the shadows to back them up front. "Assign more personnel to David Cain's surveillance and that tower of children, the Terminator may come out of concealment to engage his daughter."
She waves her hand dismissively and he bids her farewell before disconnecting from the server.
Talia waits a second, deliberating before bringing up the feed from the room where Jason had been left.
He's typing away furiously on the laptop she's given him, trying to break through the limitations set on it. It hasn't taken him long to realize the programming blocked out any site or search entry regarding either Gotham, Bruce Wayne, or any of his brood. Though not inept by any means, Talia's been guaranteed that his hacking abilities won't be enough to work around the system, not without setting of fail-safes that will render the thing useless.
It wouldn't be the first time he does something she's been told he's incapable off, so she keeps a close eye on his progress anyway. Watching him work towards 'some' goal, no matter how pointless, or perhaps 'because' it's pointless and he knows it, is a welcome sight. It's much more the sort of behavior she's learned to expect from him before.
Then he lets out an enraged shout snaps the monitor of the laptop from the keyboard and throws halves against a wall with enough force of shatter them, glass and the keys of the device launching from the point of impact in to scatter along the ground. This unfortunately is not unexpected.
Talia's rising from her seat before she's given the move thought, and has to restrain herself from going to him as he continues to take his frustration of on the already destroyed device. She mustn't coddle him, Talia thinks, as she returns to her seat, at best, it will make him too reliant on her, and that's not what she brought him back for either. As much as she tells herself this, it's still near painful to leave him there, screaming himself hoarse throughout his tantrum while the most she can do is watch to make sure she's available to stop him should he attempt to do serious harm to himself.
She rests her head against her hand and shakes her head, as she pinches the bridge of her nose until the shouts die down.
Jason pulls away from the mess he's made, something like fear shining briefly in his eyes while he presses a fist to his teeth. An arm shoots out to catch him against the wall before can topple over, then abruptly pushes away and stomps into the hallway.
Talia quickly shuts down the feed and brings up another of Luthor's proposals just as Jason plants himself in front of her desk. She schools her face carefully to disinterest, and doesn't let her gaze linger too long on the blood dripping from the teeth marks on his left fist too long before he slides it into his pocket.
"The laptops broken, I need another one." He says, not meeting her eyes.
"What happened to the one I gave you?" Talia scrolls through lists of contact information she'd memorized hours ago.
"It was 'broken'." He clenches his fist when he emphasizes the word, knuckles popping under the strain.
"I'm afraid it was all I could spare, I have access to very little funds while we are in hiding, you should know that." She reaches for the cooling mug of tea at her elbow.
Jason scoffs, makes an aborted motion to roll his eyes. "Then what the fuck am I supposed to do here?"
"Find a repairman, surely there's one in this town who can repair whatever damage was done to your laptop since I last used it." She sips on her drink as he flinches, his narrowed eyes drifting guiltily to the hallway.
"Can't I just go home?" The question in half a sigh, his posture slumping wearily to the side.
Talia's hands still over the keyboard. "Home?" She looks at him straight on for the first time since she walked into her work place. He blinks back at her confusion slowly creeping its way onto his features. Talia clears her throat and shakes the odd feeling off. "I have three hours of work to complete here. You can find some way of entertaining yourself for at least that long I'm sure."
"With 'what'?" He demands, throwing up his right hand and glaring at her, his shoulders squared, all traces of his weariness gone in an instant.
"Whatever you'd like Jason, you're not a child in need of toys to occupy your attention, just refrain from drawing undue attention for now."
"You're…" he growls low in his throat and takes a quick step back from her, a hands reaching up to his head, but stopping before it gets there. "The fuck I gotta be here for then!?" His heavy, stomping footfalls are pounding down the hall without him waiting for any reply, carrying his rage with his like virtual storm.
Talia sighs, and brings up the building surveillance again, even as she types in the codes to contact another of her agents. There are only eleven days left.
O
O
O
Jason considers picking a fight with someone at first, he doesn't care who, just wants to feel his fist crashing into something that's not wood or bring, to hear something crack and feel blood that isn't 'his' coating his hand. The hazy, green tinted flashes rip through his mind, and he's reminded that whatever he'd done the last time he'd looked for a fight, he'd gone too far, even without knowing what had happened he knew that.
So he crashes his fist into the grungy walls outside, hard enough to tear open the cuts that are already there and leave a red smear along the weatherworn exterior. He keeps at it until the shaking stops and his fist is broken, the pain having long passed to some point at the very back of his mind pushed everything else with it.
He could almost forget why he'd been so angry to begin with. That he's so screwed up 'Talia' thinks he needs babysitting. Needs kiddy locks on everything he touches like he's a five-year-old then have her turning around and berating him for being childish. He hates it, hates it almost as much as the green in his eyes and hot, itchy, 'wrong' feeling in his left hand. For a while, he almost considers doing something that get everyone's eyes on them just because she wouldn't like it, to set off a bomb in the middle of the town, or paint the mayor purple and hang him over some bridge while singing guns 'n roses at the top of his lungs. Then he catches himself and realizes how fucking stupid doing something like that would be how 'childish', and he slumps down to sit in the snow.
He grabs tow hands full of the slushy, half melted stuff and presses it to his face, breathing in the cold as it drip from his heated fingers. It's not worth it, being alive like this, 'he's' not worth it. Whatever Talia thinks she's going to gain out of bringing him back, whatever she thinks he can do, he can't and he knows it, she 'has' to know it too. Then why is he still here?
O
O
O
Night falls and Jason still hasn't had any great epiphany as to Talia's odd behavior.
The house is so quiet, he can hear the clacking of her computer keys from the kitchen where he's slicing up vegetable to toss in the curry he's making. Then again, that might be more a sign of her frustration than the actual noise level of the house, because there's also a branch bashing annoyingly against the walls in the wind. There's going to be another blizzard soon, Jason wonders how anyone lives in a town with such crappy weather. Gotham was just rain and visitors couldn't wait to get out.
Talia gave him tea almost as soon as they got back from the town, it was darker, with a very different color from what she usually gave him, but it still tasted like peppermint and Jason's head is clearer than it's been in days. Clear enough for him to worry about what she's putting in it. Nothing that will kill him, unfortunately that much is kind of obvious, but he doesn't like to think he's letting her drug him, doesn't want to wind up living with an addiction to some weird league drug, that'll give the bats a laugh he's sure, or maybe it's just something they'll expect from the crime alley kid.
Then again, what he 'wants' doesn't matter anymore.
Maybe Batman finding him won't be so bad. Dying was quick last time; it'll be quick this time too, won't it? And he's sure Batman will find some way of making sure Jason can't be brought back again. But Talia… His knife slips and makes a deep slice through the wooden cutting board as well as the carrot he's in the middle of slicing. He said he loved her at one point right, he wouldn't hurt her.
'He said he loved you too…'
Jason tastes blood on his tongue, imagines the same on her, seeping into the floorboards, the plush carpet in front of the fireplace and he can't breathe, a high-pitched keening sound being all that makes its way past his throat. She can't beat the Batman alone; she doesn't have any bodyguards to slow him down for her. She doesn't have any bodyguards because she has to hide from her sister, because of Jason…
The lights flicker and something shifts in the sudden darkness, before Jason can blink, the kitchen knife is flying from his fingers at the shape. There's a grunt and he slips into a fighting stance adrenaline thrumming in his veins.
"You're aims degraded." Talia's frowning at the knife, sunk into the wooden doorway barely an inch from her head.
"Oh my fuck." Jason backs against the counter, she blinks and see's her with the knife slicing through her neck, blood splattering all along the kitchen floor. It's not real, he knows it's not, but somewhere, some part of his mind knows it could have been. There are footsteps nearing him and Jason doesn't want to open his eyes and see that for himself.
"You're burning those onions Jason." He hears the knife clatter against the granite countertop.
What he wants doesn't matter...
He forces his eyes open, turns his back from where he can hear her sitting at the kitchen table. He moves the onions in the pan and turns down the heat, then tosses in a few more spices. Outside, the snow has started falling again, so he tosses in a few more to ward off the cold, wishes that there was a way to have the iced things he eats to the same.
What the fuck is he going to do? How can he do anything when he's too scared to eat his own fucking cooking?
O
O
O
Jason stands in front of his bathroom mirror, a razor in his shaking hand; he wipes the steam that's condensed on the glass. When the blade touches his neck, he flinches, back, almost cuts himself like he had the last time, the last time when he'd ended up a sobbing mess on the floor.
He growls, fist clenching, tight enough to hurt, to crack the tough plastic razor. Jason switches it to his left hand instead, the one that's wrong, then he brings the razor up again, his whole body freezes. Everything but his left hand and Jason doesn't know how he knew it would be different anymore than he knows 'why' but it works so he stops thinking about it. It takes long, too long, longer than it had even the very first time he'd done this, when he'd walked away from the mirror feeling way too proud of himself for a kid with a bloody face.
Then it's done, Jason almost throws the blade away from him, so eager he is to get rid of it, but he makes himself set it calmly, shakily on the basin instead.
It takes more force of will than he likes to make himself look at the result in the mirror afterwards. His eyes are greener than they ever were before, not a trace of blue, a sliver having become golden at the center. Hair's the same though, so he doesn't look any more like an old man at least if you discount the dark bags under his eyes and how much leaner his face had gotten.
Jason turns away with a sigh. It's not him, it doesn't feel like him, the him he was before but at least that's something he feels he has some experience with, something he's used to. The light stays on, casting it's light over his bedroom when he slides open the door.
Despite his misgivings, he drinks the iced tea at his bedside before he crawls under the covers. He can hear Talia still busy at work somewhere in the house, for the first time ever he wonders what it is that she'd doing. All he knows is that some of it is for Luthor and anything that prick wants can't be good for anyone, and he doesn't understand for a while why she's doing it at all. Then he's reminded again that she's working with very little right now, and Luthor, despite being penniless not long ago, - go Talia - now has very much.
Jason tucks his head under his pillow his knuckles clenched between his teeth until the tea does it's work and he's dragged down into sleep.
O
O
O
He comes awake with a start at the sudden chilled breeze against his legs, spends a seconds searching for a threat in the now brightly lit room before he realizes the source of the light is his window, his 'open' window.
"The drive way's been snowed in." Talia's standing at his bedside, a shovel in one hand and a jug of iced water in the other, unfazed by the glare Jason gives her through his too long bangs. His blankets are on the ground again.
Grumbling through the long list of Arabic curses he knows, Jason, grabs the shovel. Talia leaves the room with much more grace than his march to his closet for a dozen layers of fucking clothes.
Before he returns from shoveling the snow, frozen to his bones, he buries the damned shovel in the woods. There are easier ways of getting clearing a driveway, and he's not 'doing' that again.
Predictably, she has the fucking resources for another one.
