_ Chapter 7 _
It took a while to get Jason to calm down. Bruce was at his wits end, especially when Jason made an escape.
He couldn't be here. He'd lived this day, or he thought he had, and it was driving him mad to do so again. He wanted to be safe, somewhere that wasn't the manor. He wanted to go somewhere where people didn't know his name, where, if he freaked out on them, they wouldn't give him a second glance. He could slip away back into the shadows and not held captive under scrutiny.
But Bruce didn't let him go. He hauled Jason around the waist, the two of them grappling until Bruce managed to pin Jason on the mats. He could see the other three behind Bruce, all of them looking at him with that same mix of pity and disgust they had in his dream.
"Let me go," Jason begged. "Please Bruce."
Bruce tightened his hold, "You know I can't Jay."
He was brought up to the manor, Tim too when he wiped the sick off his self. Alfred had Jason put in a bath, wrapped up tight and negotiating medicine as soon as he was put in the mans care. He wasn't leaving. He wasn't leaving until he was better, and after the week he had he didn't think that was any time soon.
Tim was sullen the whole time he was with Jason. Probably because the wide berth he wanted to keep with Jason wasn't allowed. He had to sit near, and in whoevers' sights since it wasn't just the one of them any more. Tim wasn't even allowed up to his room to fetch his charger or laptop since Jason was comatose for the time being. Needless to say, Tim wasn't happy, and Jason was probably not going to win brother of the year in his eyes. But, at least Tim wasn't giving him that look. That jealous sneer he wore almost constantly in Jason's dream.
Dick ended up taking pity on Tim around nine, just before he went out for patrol. He came in, full Nightwing gear, and handed Tim a comm and tablet that was hooked up to the batcomputer. Bruce wasn't too pleased, but since he had been off active duty for almost a week now, he was just as eager as Tim to crowd around the tablet and give orders.
It lifted Tim's spirits anyway, and kept Bruce from looming, so Jason couldn't complain.
He'd spent most of the day, when he wasn't recovering or in the midst of a panic attack, trying not to fall asleep. It was bad enough slipping up and not knowing, voluntarily falling asleep was worse. He would be giving over, and Jason didn't, couldn't, go through another attack today.
He tried everything to keep himself up, even begged Bruce to let him help Alfred before the tablet was brought up and Jason was trapped in the library again. He struggled to find something to do in here while the other two were busy. Reading was off the cards. He loved reading, hell, when he was a kid he felt like Belle in Beauty and the Beast when he saw the Wayne library for the first time. But when he read, he was treading a fine line between reality and his imagination, something so easy to slip further into if he lost concentration for even a moment.
He ended up hopping the chairs, hoping he could annoy Bruce into letting him leave. Bruce didn't, but the action itself was enough to keep Jason wired. He made it more difficult by skimming the top, adding flips and handstands until something caught his eye.
It was a book. One on the top shelves, the ones Bruce reserved for Bat research, not for general readership. It was old, the spine cracked and scratched, a horror to Jason's eyes really since he always kept his own collection clean and crack free. However, it wasn't the shoddiness of the book that held his attention, rather, the small symbol, barely noticeable on the dark spine.
He faintly recognised it.
Bruce didn't shout him down when he grabbed the ladder. He did keep a sharp eye, but he let Jason up to the top shelf.
The book closer up was tiny, especially compared to the tomes towering next to it. Jason took it out, the symbol on both the front as well as the side. He looked around, feeling like he was doing something wrong even if Bruce wasn't shouting him down as he opened it. The ink was faded, the inside covered in detailed illustrations and calligraphic letters. It was a lore book, similar to the ones Bruce had Jason read when he'd been Robin and there was a magician in town.
It wasn't anything fancy, the information inside was mostly useless too, Bruce having bought it, when he asked, because it was a bargaining chip they eventually didn't need. But still, there was something about it, about that symbol cropping up again and again.
He found the meaning of it, some kind of summoning circle which, again Bruce said was a bunch of nonesense when Jason asked.
"What's it summon?" Jason asked anyway.
Bruce pried his eyes from the tablet to flip the book to the right page. He didn't show that much care to it, something which righted itself immediately as Bruce caught Jason's pointed look. "It's meant to summon a demon. An incubus actually. Zatanna says that people would often try and sic them on lovers that had betrayed them as some kind of revenge. However, the symbol's a bunch of crap. Zatanna says there's no magic behind it. She thinks it might have been an attempt of a witch or sorcerer to make some money in the fourteenth century. A phony symbol for phony sorcerers."
Jason listened to it, but something inside of him didn't think Bruce was right when he said it was phony.
He studied the symbol for a while longer. Hours really when he looked at the clock. He looked at it until he eyes hurt and still he couldn't remember where he'd seen it before.
He yawned, the sixth one in ten minutes, and more than enough to catch Bruce's attention. "You okay Jay?"
He rubbed his eyes, nodding as a gust of wind perked him back up. He blinked, sure he was seeing things before rolling his eyes and turning back to his book.
"Okay, so I think I have something but I don't know if it's connected to your problem or not. Just thought you ought to know really," Wally rambled.
"What?" Bruce demanded.
Wally should have known better by now if he wanted Bruce to be civil to him. One, don't do it over the phone since phones could be hacked. Two, do not come into the Bats turf without permission, even if Wally had been around the manor longer than Jason himself. Three, do not come into Bruce's home, in costume, without warning. Each and every one of these things had Wally on Bruce's bad side before he even opened his mouth. Really, by now the speedster should know better.
Wally seemed to sense he'd done something wrong as he slowed down, stopped pacing and said, "I think Barry's still alive."
The room went still. Jason had heard the story just like everyone in the superhero community had. Barry had disappeared. He'd been fighting, or running or something, the story changing depending who you asked. But the result was the same, Barry had ran, he'd ran and not came back. Wally and Bart had looked for months for Barry. They'd travelled the world, the prisons, even had Superman look for him but Barry was gone. Presumed dead until now.
"Where?"
Wally wrung his hands, "I don't know. It was last night, just for a moment. I was running, going out for corn dogs, and then, it was like the world around me just left and I was in Keystone but it wasn't Keystone at the same time. And there Barry was, running next to me. He was slow, so slow, like he'd lost his speed, and he was shouting at me, trying to tell me something but as soon as I slowed down I lost him." He started pacing again. "I think it was him. I know it was him Bruce, and I know this is a bad time but I think we need to help him."
"Did you consider everything?" Did he consider Wally was hallucinating from longing and hunger Bruce meant.
Wally didn't take the insinuation that hard. Jason guessed he'd toughened up since joining the big league. "Yes. I did. But then I remembered the alert, and Bart. Remember, I told you on monitor duty how he thought he'd seen a different Metropolis when the alert came through. Maybe it was the same thing. I mean, maybe Barry had tried to contact us then and did so again last night."
Bruce looked like he was considering it as he nabbed the tablet off Tim, tapping on it a few times before his brow furrowed. "There was another anomaly last night. What time did you say you saw Barry?"
"Eleven. Surprised you didn't notice it until now," Wally noted.
"I was busy."
Busy snuggling with Damian Jason wisely kept to himself. It wasn't the time. Especially because he could see Tim shooting him warning looks, like he knew Jason wanted to snark the place up. He stuck his tongue out at the kid, tuning back into the situation at hand.
This must have been what had pinged their phones on game night, Jason realised. The thing no one had told him about, that he'd been excluded from.
"It matches up," Bruce said.
Wally was vibrating from excitement, his whole image a headache to look at. "So you think it's Barry? He's trying to contact us?"
"I think so. From where however, needs to be considered."
"The multiverse," Tim supplied.
"Most likely," Bruce agreed.
"I don't know," Jason argued. He wished he hadn't when he was put under scrutiny. Even sharing his opinion wasn't welcome apparently, but he carried on, knowing somehow the multiverse wasn't quite right. "I mean, we've had multiverse encounters before. Through all of them there was some kind of device or machine that took us from one world to another. This seems like it's bleeding."
"Doesn't mean it's not the multiverse," Tim argued, "We don't know everything that's out there, for all we know this could just be a new way."
"We'll look into both," Bruce said before a scrap could break out. "We'll find out what's going on," Bruce promised.
Wally hung around for a while, changing out of his suit at Bruce's insistence before the two of them started on theories and investigative work. Tim and Jason were told to sit and behave, even more so when Tim tried to join in the work.
"You're on bed rest," Bruce insisted.
"I'm injured not brain dead," Tim whined.
Tim ended up next to Jason anyway, glowering at anything and everything after he'd warned Jason not to puke on him again. Jason turned back to his book, not even trying to argue with Bruce at this point.
The symbol still nagged at him. Enough, that after another hour of trying to remember, he turned to Tim for help. "You recognise this?"
Tim huffed, "Of course, I was the one who had to find it online."
"No, I mean, do you have any idea where I might have seen it?" If Tim had been the one to get it Jason hadn't seen it in his Robin days. Maybe afterwards, when the pit still held a strong haze over his mind.
"No." Tim took the book from him, turning it over in his hands, the same look Bruce had on his face now passing over and over as Tim tried to remember something important. A few minutes passed before the book was back in Jason's lap. "No idea. Why?"
"Just feel like I've seen it before."
Regardless of his ill feelings towards Jason, Tim wasn't one to deny help if he could. He wasn't petty like Jason could be. "Maybe you saw it when you came in here. Short term de ja vu is actually more common than long term."
"I guess." It just didn't feel right.
Everyone was still awake when Dick, Cass and Damian came in from patrol. Damian and Dick were banged up, Dick more so than Damian, no doubt due to damage control. The fatigue left Dick however, as he spotted Wally.
Squealing, flappy hands and a lot of bodily contact for two self proclaimed heterosexual men later, Dick was just as excited as Wally about the idea Barry was still alive. Jason knew Dick had always liked him. Oliver had always left Dick and Roy to it when sleepovers happened, but Barry, being the 'cool uncle' and living in less than luxurious accommodations meant he was just as much Dick's uncle as he was Wally's.
Damian would have hung around too had Cass not dragged him out and to bed.
Dick, for all his want to help, only managed half an hour before he was drooling in Wally's lap. Jason was tempted to follow, he found himself falling on Tim twice p, each time the kid punching him back awake. Jason didn't blame him, not after the week they'd had.
He was falling asleep a third time, teetering close to Tim's knee this time, when a flash of memory hit him full on. His dream. That was where he'd seen the symbol. Bruce had Damian draw it under the bed, Bruce doing the rest on the ceiling and bathroom.
He reared up, Tim scuttling away as Jason grabbed the book. Demon summoning. Demon summoning! Last night dream Dick had been warning him, telling him to keep his mouth shut. But maybe, the thing had given away more than he thought he had.
The thing, whatever, whoever, could move through walls, it could invade his dreams, his waking world. Jason hopped up, racing up the ladder to grab as many books as he could.
Oh it had been smart, making him lethargic, taking Dick's form. It had Jason thinking he had lost his mind. Sure, this might not be right, but Jason's gut told him he was on the right path.
The demon lore Bruce had was quite extensive. Considering all the occult and magical happenings he'd fought over the years Bruce would be stupid not to have a big collection. What was truth and what wasn't was hard to decipher however.
If Jason was right, and this was a demon, God he hoped it wasn't but still, then it wasn't operating under the same rules as it should. That symbol, Bruce had said it was useless, yet the thing had put it in Jason's dream. A joke maybe? A test to see if he had figured it out? Or was it an actual symbol, an actual summoning. Who was to say that Jason had only been dreaming until that symbol had appeared. Until Damian and Bruce had finished drawing it and things had went downhill.
He tried to remember if it had popped up anywhere else. If it was in his apartment, his room, his bathroom. Yet, it hadn't been. What was so different between this time and the others?
"Let me see your chest," Jason said.
Tim, as if Jason were the bad guy here, clutched his chest like a maiden, a look that could only be described as scandalous on his face. "No."
"Please?" And sure Jason could have maybe asked it without the growl, but he was desperate right now.
Tim scrambled away, getting to his knees before Jason flattened himself on top. Tim tried, as he usually did, to get away. He put up a real fight too. But Jason was bigger, more experienced, and even ill stronger than Tim so he had the kid on his back, his wrists pinned and the bandages riding up with his shirt.
"Jay," Bruce warned, finally glancing over from his work. "Let him go."
He did, he'd seen what he wanted.
Tim's chest wasn't in a circle. Or, it wasn't just in a circle like Jason had originally thought. The words were carefully chosen, the vowels and consonants placed so it resembled the symbol on the book.
Interesting.
Jason checked himself, getting the kid to snap a picture of his back, well, forcing him to, and checking his thighs as well. They were just lines, nothing special. Not like Tim's. So why Tim and not Jason? Why only in Jason's mind?
Tim retreated next to Bruce, the kid curling up on top of Dick so Jason couldn't grab him again. He didn't care, he had books to check.
Demons were malevolent creatures. They only wanted to cause destruction. An incubus was considered a lesser demon, the lore not having much on them since they were termed mischievous rather than dangerous.
Jason wanted to get whoever had wrote that line, show them the crap he'd been through and demand they tell him again that this thing wasn't dangerous.
An incubus was a creature devoted to sexual acts. It fed from the energy sex created, and when it latched onto a human it wouldn't leave until their purpose was achieved.
Well, considering Jason had been, he was pretty sure, feeding this thing from the get go, he couldn't think of a reason why it was still hanging around.
Most often an incubus was summoned, like Bruce and Zatanna said, and set upon someone to exact revenge. They always left the victim alive, but drained, and usually with a sense of violation that would stay with them for the rest of their life.
Well, Jason felt drained, and he could definitely think of a few people who would want revenge on him. But revenge with magic, he couldn't think of anyone that fit that M.O.
An incubus, was of the same kind as a succubus, only male. There were a lot of ugly drawings of them, Jason remembering that night he could have sworn Dick had wings. They didn't often find need to take human shape, yet the one he'd met had been pretty set on Dick's form. Maybe it had known of Jason's want for Dick.
Maybe.
He was more convinced now than ever that he was dealing with a demon. A demon with a fixation on him. He breathed deeply, controlled, he had to think this through. He had to prepare because this thing had made it clear it wasn't content with a one time deal. It had messed with him, mocked him, killed Damian's damn dog. This thing wasn't going to leave without a fight, and for once, Jason didn't have a clue how to defend himself.
First thing was first, he needed to find out what it wanted. Really wanted. Before, when he'd asked, he'd been begging on some level for understanding on what this thing was more than what it wanted. He'd went into the negotiations blind. Well, not any more. He knew what it was now, he hoped, and he was going to get answers, real answers, even if it killed him.
Again.
