Welcome! So, another chapter for this. XD Nothing specific to note or warn this time around; enjoy!
Jason is heavy.
I mean, I knew that, of course I knew that, but I hadn't really grasped the core concept until now. Not until I was faced with carrying him out of the bathroom as complete dead weight, with not even a little bit of help. He's not as heavy as Bruce is, but he's solid muscle all the way through and that does not equal out to any kind of lightness. He's also irritatingly tall, and thick, and I am not the right kind of build to be carrying him around.
I get him back to the bed, but it's not easy. So I spend about fifteen seconds debating getting him to Dr. Thompkin's clinic before I grab my phone and call Alfred. There is no way in hell that I'm getting Jason halfway across town, while he's unconscious, with only my own strength and a grapnel. That's just not going to happen. I could probably do it if I had to, but that is a whole lot of effort and a lot of exhaustion that I can just bypass without even trying.
Alfred answers, and without so much as a hello asks, "Master Richard, is your 'friend' alright?"
Trust Alfred to know exactly why I'm calling. "No," I answer, scrubbing my still bare hand over my eyes. "Alfred, I need the car, please. I don't have any other way to get him across town, and I'm taking him to Dr. Thompkin's clinic."
"No offense intended, master Richard, but are you sure that's a wise idea? I doubt he'll appreciate it, and whatever anonymity you are trying to protect, that will destroy it."
"I really don't care if he likes it or not," I snap. "Alfred, he passed out on me, his temperature's through the roof, and he was barely even focusing when I tried to get him to talk to me. He can curse me out if he wants to, and I will tie him down if I have to, but I'm taking him to that damn clinic."
"Language," Alfred clicks, disapprovingly. "Very well, I'll bring the car to you. I will be accompanying you, Master Richard. Can you get him downstairs by yourself?"
I take a look at Jason, collapsed on the bed, and then grit my teeth and answer, "Yeah. I can do that. See you downstairs, Alfred." I let him hang up first, and then tuck my phone away. Oh yeah, this is gonna be fun.
I tug my other glove on first — I left it off when I got dressed back up in the Nightwing suit so I could still feel how hot Jason's skin was — and pull out a change of clothes from his dresser. The loosest ones I can find; I doubt anything tight-fitting will be comfortable for him right now. In fact, I'm really sure that anything tight-fitting will be absolute hell; I've been through my fair share of sickness, the flu included. At least a couple times, anyway. I pull the clothes over to him, and get to work.
It is very difficult to dress an unconscious person. Especially when that unconscious person is solid muscle and weighs enough to match it. I manage it, but half of that is practice, and the other half is sheer stubbornness. I also smack my face into his elbow once, and it hurts, but I'm fairly sure it's not going to bruise. It's not like there's any real force behind the smack, and I've taken worse without bruising. It still hurts though.
I leave all of Jason's gear behind, since I've got him dressed in civilian clothes, and pretty haphazardly lace his boots onto his feet. Sick or not, Gotham's streets — especially where we're going — is no place to be barefoot. They can come back off when we reach the clinic, but until then I'm keeping them firmly on his feet. Streets aren't kind to bare feet, and I've seen enough bits of shattered glass around Dr. Thompkin's clinic to know that even though it's a sanctuary, it still plays by the same rules as every other building in Crime Alley. Mainly, that the neighborhood is bad and should be approached with caution.
Actually picking him up is kind of a questionable thing. Yeah, Jason is pretty definitely heavy, and I might be at the stronger end of the scale but Jason is, conversely, also at the heavier end, and bigger than I'm used to carrying. He's pretty much like Bruce, minus about a hundred times the wounded pride and the surly attitude from needing help at all. Then again, Jason is unconscious, and that definitely doesn't exactly lead to being able to be pissed at the person carrying you. If he was awake, I'm sure it would be a different story.
I gather him up into my arms, one arm around his shoulders and the other under his knees, and slowly head for the door. Which is another problem. Somehow, I manage to prop his shoulders against the wall next to the door and then get it open far enough to hook it with my foot, but I nearly drop him a couple of times.
How the hell can I carry someone over one shoulder, across rooftops, with no problem, but I can barely get out the door with him securely in both arms? What kind of sense does this make, honestly? I'm really better than this, I swear.
I'm not alone when I head down the corridor and to the elevator — there is no way in hell I'm braving the stairs with neither of my arms available to catch me if he jolts awake, I misjudge a step, or someone objects to me carrying Jason out of here as Nightwing — and I manage to check the call button with his foot as I try to ignore the pairs of eyes I can see peeking around the corners of the walls. Including the eyes of the two little girls from earlier. They know that Jason was sick, I told them. It's not like he's bruising anywhere — at least the shirt covers his side, or I'd probably be answering some questions about the clearly broken rib — or obviously bloody, so they shouldn't be staring at me like I knocked him out and picked him up to carry him to a cell.
I'm not that bad, am I? I mean, I am a hero. Jason might save some people, sometimes, but he's not a hero. Not even a little bit. I won't let him use that word, and I won't let anyone else use it either.
He was a hero, as Robin, but whatever he's come back as is not the same. He's a killer, a murderer, and what he's doing is wrong. Even if the way he explained it… Well, it doesn't matter if it made sense, it's still wrong. I don't have to stop and think about it to know that killing people, and taking over a crime organization, is bad. It doesn't matter how much of what he said made sense. I shouldn't even be considering it. Just because I couldn't find the words to tell him he was wrong doesn't mean he was right. I refuse to believe that.
It's kind of a relief to slip inside the elevator when it gets there, and use Jason's foot — again — to hit the 'close doors' button, and then the one for the ground floor. I just really hope that there's no one down there. This could be awkward to explain, especially if the little girls spread the story about Jason. Especially if the people here actually like Jason. I really don't want to have to fight a bunch of civilians trying to protect my murderer of a brother, and it might be a serious blow to my reputation if I just run away from them. I will, if it comes down to that, but I don't want to.
So, of course, that's exactly what I face when the doors open at the bottom. There are four middle-aged men — and one very angry looking woman — standing very deliberately between me and the front door, and they might not be the most fit bunch, but I can tell at least two have some kind of strength. They do look a little out of breath, like they just booked it down the stairs to be here before me, and at least none of them are carrying anything that looks like a weapon.
I step out of the elevator, pausing, and glance to the sides. There are a few more faces at the bottom of the stairwell, but none look eager to get in my way.
"I'd really like to not do this," I point out, with a small, friendly smile.
"Great," the woman — five-foot-seven, on the thinner end, long blonde hair in a ponytail, narrowed green eyes — says, menace in every inch of her body language. "Then take Jay back upstairs this instant."
How the hell did Jason get a whole building loyal to him? Not just superficially loyal, but actually willing to defend him when he's not there to tell them to? He's unnerving, he's ruthless, he's a murderer. That doesn't translate out to loyalty in my book. Saving the girls can't have been enough, even though it would have gotten him some major points. What else did he do here?
"All I'm trying to do is help him," I explain, wishing I had my hands free so I could showcase that I don't mean any of them any harm. "He's sick, I'm taking him to get treated."
One of the men — six feet or so, hints of muscle, blue eyes, brown hair — scowls and takes half a step forward. "Jay doesn't like hospitals. You need to leave, Nightwing, we'll make sure he's alright."
"Not a hospital, the clinic down in Crime Alley. Totally free, no documentation needed." I shift, angling Jason's head — resting against my shoulder — towards them. "Look, his temperature's through the roof, and he was barely focusing when I tried to talk to him. I swear, all I'm doing is making sure he's alright." I turn a little more obviously, and tilt my head down towards his. "Feel for yourself if you want."
After a few shared glances, by apparent group consensus, the woman stalks towards me. I resist the urge to back off; angry mothers are about the scariest thing in the world and she looks very unhappy with me. She probably can't hurt me that badly, but it's kind of an ingrained reaction, and I really don't want to have to dodge anything she might throw at me. Fists included.
Her hand touches Jason's forehead — he doesn't even twitch, which reinforces to me that this unconsciousness is bad — firmly sliding to cup her palm over it. She glances up at me, mouth settling into a tight line that looks more worried than anything. I shift his weight in my arms, and glance past all of them to confirm that there's a car waiting out at the curb. One of the much more subtle ones that we keep for times like this.
"He passed out on me," I stress, quietly. "If you know who he is you know that means this is serious. I have to take him somewhere."
Her hand pulls away, and she looks up at me and demands, louder than my voice, "And are you going to bring him back once he's seen to, or take him to a cell?" Her tone definitely implies that if I answer anything but exactly what she wants, there's going to be trouble. Unfortunately, her eyes are also narrowed and studying me for any kind of deception. I'm sure I could lie well enough to fool her, but I really just want to get past the group of them and to the car.
"I don't know yet," I answer honestly. "It depends what kind of answers he has for my questions, and I can't ask those until he's conscious again." I know he's killed, I know he's done enough to deserve a cell, but can I put him there?
If this really is Jason, and he really has done all of these terrible things entirely of his own free will, then he deserves to be imprisoned. But the real questions are: is there actually enough evidence to keep him in one, can I stomach doing that to him, and if Bruce and I unmask him, will he turn his information on us? Jason could do a lot of damage to us, including announcing the whole family's identities and watching Gotham's villains hunt us down. I can't say for sure that he was bluffing, and that makes it a very dangerous thing to consider doing.
The woman stares at me for a long few moments, hands at her sides but clenched into loose fists, and then finally nods. "I expect to see him back here, Nightwing. Jay is a good kid, he's done a lot to help around here."
I resist stopping to ask what Jason's done, why they're willing to protect him, why she so firmly believes that he's good even knowing who he is. "Understood," I say instead, also resisting the urge to point out that Jason is at least…
Eighteen. Jesus, Jason is barely eighteen. He is just a kid. The muscle, the slight shadow of stubble across his jaw, and whatever it is about his eyes makes him look older, and he's got skills and strategy way beyond eighteen. I saw him as Red Hood first; I completely forgot that he was that young.
God, how could I ever put him in a cell?
The woman steps aside, and it's obviously reluctant but the men do as well, clearing the way to the door. I head for it without hesitation — partly because I'm concerned that if I don't, they'll change their minds — and turn to press the door open with my shoulder, carefully maneuvering Jason through it without hitting anything of his on the frame or the glass itself. Alfred doesn't get out of the car, which is a good thing considering how unfriendly this whole building is, and that leaves me to stride over to the back passenger-side door and cautiously balance Jason's weight so I can open it. This one is easier than the apartment door, but leaning inside to get Jason laid across the back seat — he's way too long for it — is a serious hassle.
"Everything alright, Master Richard?" Alfred asks, as I struggle to get Jason bent far enough inside that I can close the door, without unbalancing him so he'll fall off at the first stop.
"He's heavy, too tall, and the whole apartment building is treating me like I'm the criminal for taking him to get treated," I complain, finally giving up on any kind of real balance. I climb inside the back with him, hauling Jason up to something like sitting so I can click a seatbelt down over his chest. I shut the door behind me, and resign myself to spending the entire trip with my arm across Jason to hold him up and stop him from strangling himself against the seatbelt with his own weight.
Alfred pulls away from the curb, and I take in a deep breath as I scrub my free hand over my face. The other one I carefully press across his chest, with enough pressure to hold him up but not enough to impede his ability to breathe. Tempting as that might be right now, after facing off with Jason's neighbours and having to struggle with how irritatingly heavy he is as dead weight. I only kind of want to hurt him.
"Alfred, how does someone like him make friends willing to face down a vigilante, when they know who he is?"
Alfred's gaze briefly meets mine in the rear view mirror, mouth a displeased line — not at me, thank god — and then he gives a sigh just loud enough for me to hear. "Sometimes, Master Richard, it's not what we know people have done, but what they've done for us."
Which I totally understand — if people judged me by some of the things I've done when I nearly lost control… — but for a murderer? For a ruthless crime lord that just took over a good chunk of crime in Gotham? What trumps those kinds of acts?
"But he's Red Hood." Alfred's gaze flicks back to me. "He's a killer, and a crime lord, and just this morning he murdered Black Mask."
Alfred's mouth tilts in the tiniest smile, one eyebrow arching. "Have you put him in a cell yet?" I sputter a little bit, sitting back underneath the verbal equivalent of a disarming. "Criminal or not, Jason is your brother. To them, criminal or not, he's something else entirely. I doubt you know the whole story, Master Richard, and if you were truly convinced that Jason was as bad as the image you've built up of Red Hood, we wouldn't be here."
I look over at Jason, flexing my fingers in his shirt and feeling the unnatural heat of his skin through the fabric. Alfred's right, of course. By all rights I should have taken Jason in to Bruce the second I found him, but he's Jason. I remember what he used to be like, and I remember what he was like as a kid; how bright and determined, even underneath his eternal temper. I don't want this change to be real; I want there to be some excuse for what he's done and why he's like this.
"Alright, I get it."
I can feel the car turn, and tighten my grip for a second so Jason doesn't slide to the side.
"You are not the only one who prays that something is influencing him," Alfred says softly, "but you must be prepared, in case Red Hood really is what has become of Jason."
My jaw clenches down before I can stop the reaction, and then I shake my head. "I can try, Alfred. More than that…" What will I even do? If Jason really has become a murderer of his own free will, the only option is to imprison him. If he's not bluffing, that means it has to be privately, and hidden somewhere that he doesn't have anyone to tell our secrets to. "I don't know."
I rake my free hand up through my hair, leaning back against the seat and tilting my head back. Jason's heartbeat is strong and steady underneath my touch, and I can feel the rise and fall of his chest in equally steady inhalations, so at least that's something. At least he's not obviously dying, not yet and not even if I can see the sweat along his neck and dampening his hair. He could still be just fine, and then I really will have to face the idea of putting my younger brother in jail, or Arkham. Right next to the Joker; God.
"Did you remember how young he is?" I ask Alfred, and I can see his mouth tighten again.
"Yes," is all he offers, and he keeps his eyes trained forward at the road.
"I didn't." I close my eyes, raising my chin so even if I open them again all I'll have to see is the ceiling. I tighten my grip on my own hair and shake my head. "Eighteen; jesus. He doesn't look it, right? I'm not just totally blind?"
Alfred is silent for a long few moments, through another turn of the car, and then says, "He does look young, but not that young. He appears more around your age, Master Richard, somewhere in his young twenties. The difference from how we remember him is drastic; not immediately recalling his age is no failing of yours."
I open my eyes, and turn my head to study Jason. I can feel the corded muscle underneath my arm, and see it through the curve of his neck and his mostly bare arm. I can see the edges of a scar or two where they just barely peek past the edge of the normal t-shirt, but none of them are the ones I remember. I don't exactly remember every mark that was carved into Jason's skin when I knew him — I didn't see him shirtless enough for that — but I remember some of them. Not a single one that I remember is still on his skin, and all the others are new. They look almost exclusively like knife wounds.
What happened?
Jason was dead. I touched his corpse, I saw his container broken nearly in half — my hand drops from my hair down to my right thigh and the shape of my own container through the barrier of my suit, automatically — and I helped Bruce get him home. I watched while they buried his coffin. What brought him back? How did none of us notice? How recently, what method, what miracle?
Why didn't he come home?
Jason has a level of combat skill miles above what I remember, and he's picked up new skills somewhere too. Marksmanship, the training to fight with a knife — seamlessly integrated into his hand-to-hand — and a tolerance for pain that's higher than mine by a pretty large margin, and that's just what got showcased in the fight I had with him. Plus everything he must know to think he can run a criminal organization as large as Black Mask's, and the kind of strategy it would have taken to put this entire thing into play. You don't just magically know things like that; skills take time to learn.
So if he's been alive long enough to learn all of this, then why didn't he come home? Why has he set himself up as our enemy? It doesn't make sense with what I remember of Jason's convictions, and he was always very vocal about them. Even what he said to me, just hours ago, was missing anything personal. He never brought up why he's doing any of this, just said it had to be done.
Is he angry with Bruce and me? Did he decide he doesn't want to be associated with us? Is this our fault? Or was he not able to come back? Was he kept captive somewhere, turned against us and then trained to have the skill to be able to beat us at our own game? Is he a clone with implanted memories, or was it magic that brought him back? Science?
There's so much about this that doesn't make any sense, and I can't get any answers until he's conscious again. Ideally, conscious and actually aware, though him being hazy might make it easier to get straight answers out of him.
"Alfred," I start, keeping my voice pitched low and my gaze on Jason, "is there any other option but locking him away? Anything?"
"I can't answer that, Master Richard. We don't know what happened to Jason while he was," dead, "away from us. There may be other possibilities, but without knowing why he's become what he has, and if it was his choice, it's impossible to say. Wait until we have answers, no matter what they are."
I nod, even though I've got no idea if he's looking at me. "Yeah, I was afraid you were going to say that."
Being still isn't in my blood. I'm not like Tim, who can curl up in a corner of a couch with a book, files, or his laptop and spend long enough there that I start to question if he ever actually moves; or Bruce, who can spend hours sitting in front of his computer with no movement but the shift of his mouse to click on files or photos. I have to be able to move, to fight, to run, to do something. I can stay still for a little while, or if I'm really motivated, but most of the time it's way more trouble than it's worth.
Waiting, being stuck sitting around for something completely beyond my control, is just about the worst thing that can happen. I despise having to just sit still with nothing to occupy my time. Normally I fix that by going out on patrols, or running exercise routines, or something along those lines, but I can't do that in this case. I can't leave Jason alone in the clinic. Partly for his safety, sure, but also partly for Dr. Thompkins' safety. I don't think Jason would hurt her, but if he tries to leave and she gets in his way he might do it no matter what he thinks of her or wouldn't normally do. I can't take that chance.
I have to stay with Jason, and I have to make sure that no one else gets hurt because of him, or by his hand. I have to make sure that nothing else gets added onto the tally of sins I'm already going to have to judge him for.
"Do you think I'm doing the right thing?" I ask Alfred, turning my head forward to meet his eyes in the rear view mirror. "Hiding this from Bruce?"
His fingers tap against the wheel, and then he carefully says, "I understand why you've chosen to wait before informing him, but that does not mean I approve. Master Bruce deserves to know, and I think you're aware of that. Jason is as much his son as he is your brother, Master Richard, and he will be furious with you for keeping this a secret. You know that too."
Trust Alfred to tell it like it is, and of course he's right. I shouldn't be keeping this from Bruce; secrets might run in the family but this is a big one that shouldn't be kept. Maybe Tim shouldn't know yet, or Barbara, but at the least Bruce should know who the Red Hood is. I can talk him down from a cell, I can make sure that Bruce at least gives us the chance to figure out if Jason is actually doing this of his own free will. Together, as family, we can decide exactly what to do with him.
"You're right." Alfred makes a noise that roughly translates out to, 'of course I am,' and arches an eyebrow. "As soon as he's with Dr. Thompkins, I'll call Bruce and tell him. He deserves that, you're right."
Alfred gives a very small nod of approval, and then returns his attention completely to the road. I take a glance out past him, squinting to see past the tinted windows and try to recognize where we are. In the Crime Alley neighborhood is the answer, and maybe two or three minutes from the clinic. I stifle a grimace at the thought of having to carry Jason out of the car and in there, hopefully without anyone actually seeing us.
I don't think Jason would be foolish enough to show his identity — obviously his apartment building knows, at least some of them, but that might have been unavoidable — and obviously none of the family knew who he was, so it shouldn't be a problem if I'm seen carrying him. But, if it is, if by some random chance one of the people passing by knows his face, and spreads the word that the Red Hood is down and in the custody of the Bats, things could get bloody really fast. Jason just took over for Black Mask this morning, things haven't had time to settle yet and if I arrest him now, or someone thinks I'm arresting him, that entire organization could turn on itself. A lot of people will get hurt.
It might be different if Jason had already taken control over everything, and had a solid grip on it. Then, a few days or weeks in a prison probably wouldn't do much — and I have to think, if Jason is this skilled at so many other things, a jail break wouldn't be much of a problem for him — and they would continue with business while they waited for him to get out. But things are already shaky, and if he gets imprisoned the same day as Black Mask is killed? One of the others — Penguin is my first thought — might try for a grab of power, or another gang might see if they can take over while Red Hood is gone, and there will be an instant power struggle.
Jason has to have someone running the organization in his place. At least superficially. Otherwise he would never have taken the chance of killing Black Mask when he couldn't immediately take his place. Can that person hold onto the power if Red Hood's arrest is public?
And that loops me back around to the question of if I can actually arrest Jason without him turning the information he knows on us. Damn it.
Alfred pulls to a stop, and I glance outside to make sure we're in the right place before moving to unbuckle the seat belt holding Jason in. "Thanks, Alfred. I'll call Bruce as soon as she's seen Jason, promise."
He doesn't answer me, which is probably for the best since I'm kind of preoccupied with pushing the door on my side open and hauling Jason across the seats. I carefully get him into my arms, lift him out of the car with a little bit of a struggle — he's a little big to get out of a car door without his help — and then check the door closed with my hip. Alfred waits a moment, long enough for me to turn around and start for the clinic's door, before pulling away. Luckily no one's on the street, but I angle Jason's head into my chest anyway, just in case.
Bless whoever invented push bars on doors, seriously, because I don't know if I could have handled getting Jason through the clinic doors without smacking his legs into something, or nearly dropping him again. The clinic is also empty, though there are a few wrappers of something on the ground, beneath one of the waiting chairs, that makes me think it hasn't been empty that long. Dr. Thompkins keeps her clinic in good condition, always. She cleans her actual tools first, and the rooms where she does her examinations or surgery, but after that she always comes out here and cleans up the waiting area too.
When you have so many people bleed on it, it's probably a good habit to get into.
I don't call out, but I make sure that my footsteps are audible as I walk further into the small room. Sure enough, since she's got near supernatural senses about people coming into her kingdom, she appears through a door to the left of the desk set up at the end of the waiting room. She looks tired, but her eyes widen a bit at the sight of me and, I'd guess, the man in my arms. Her long black hair is pinned back into a messy ponytail/bun hybrid, her glasses are a little crooked, and there's a bit of dried blood spotted along her left sleeve, but she manages to still look pretty well put together.
"Nightwing!" She moves towards me, quickly, and I meet her as far forward as I can. "There's no one else here," she tells me, gaze fixed down at Jason, flicking along him in a clearly studying way before rising to his face. "What happened? Who—" she cuts off with her hand halfway to his forehead as I roll my shoulder to move his head so she can see it. The sharp flash of surprise, and then realization, in her eyes is fast, and then she looks up at me. "Is this Jason?"
Of course Dr. Thompkins knows who we are, even if she'll pretend to any and everyone that it isn't true. She's known Bruce for years, he funds this clinic, and she's seen all of us bloody and broken enough times that even without that advantage, she'd know. I didn't expect her to pick him out quite so fast, but I should have known better. Jason grew up in this neighborhood, she knew him long before he ever become Robin. Of course she'd recognize him, even with the few extra years.
"Yeah," I confirm. "I don't know how yet, but he's sick. I think just the flu, but his temperature's pretty high and he passed out, I didn't want to risk anything." Her eyes are worried, and she beckons me towards the door as she reverses direction. I don't follow her just yet; there's one other thing she needs to know before she commits to helping him. "Dr. Thompkins." She stops, turns, and I bite back a wince. "He's also the Red Hood."
I can see her stiffen a moment, shock and something like disbelief in her eyes, before a mask of steely professionalism slides over her expression. "I don't discriminate and you know that, young man. Bring him in, now."
This time I follow her — she holds the door open for me — and without guidance I move down the corridor to the first door on the left, the examination room. I've been here enough to know the floor plan. The door's partially open, and I nudge it the rest of the way with one foot before angling myself the right direction to slip inside. She's at my back, I can hear her, as I carefully lay Jason down on the cushioned table. He's almost too tall, but I manage to make it work. Barely.
She moves around me, and as soon as I have him set down I step back and up against the wall to be out of her way. Jason's still breathing steadily at least, but he's also very still apart from that, and that worries me. Jason never had the same abhorrence of being still as I do, but he was never very good at it. He was always a light sleeper, and a fidgety one. I'd find him, some mornings, curled completely beneath the blankets. Unless he was utterly exhausted, he always shifted and twitched in his sleep.
I watch her take his temperature, watch her jaw clench for just a moment as she reads the number. "It was one-hundred and three when I took it earlier today," I tell her, "but that was before at least seven hours of sleep, and he was just starting to show symptoms as far as I'm aware." She starts moving again, and partially for something to do I lean my head back against the wall and try to remember exactly what Jason's been like since I found him.
"He threw up, just once. He's been sweating, shaking, had trouble standing on his own or moving. Muscle weakness, I'd guess. He said his skull was trying to split apart, but for a while he was just fine talking to me. At least it seemed like it." I shove out a breath and raise my hands to scrub over my face. "I don't know if that's because it wasn't serious or just because he could take the pain. I don't know where he picked this up, or when he started actually feeling symptoms. When I got him up, maybe an hour ago, he was alright until I got him into the bathroom. I left him alone for a minute, just to grab some medicine, and when I came back he collapsed on me, wasn't responding to my questions. Figured bringing him in was safest."
"Good call," she answers absently. "His temperature's dangerously high, but at least he's still responding to stimuli. I can get him through the worst of it." She glances around, over at me, and then rakes her gaze down him once before asking, "Where's his container?"
"I—" I pause, trying to remember seeing Jason touch anything like it was important, or treat anything with special care… No, nothing. He watched me pretty closely when I moved mine from my suit to the pocket of the borrowed jeans, but I don't remember seeing him treat anything like it was more than a tool. "I don't know. I didn't see him interact with anything that was obvious."
She nods, and then sharply starts to gather a few things. "Help me get him into one of the rooms further back, just in case." I obey her non-specific instruction, moving forward to shift my arms back underneath Jason and lift him. I grit my teeth for a second at the weight, which seems like more every time I lift him, but follow her outside when she heads that direction.
She leads the way to a room nearly all the way at the back of the building — I know, from a time or two, that it's an actual room and not just the examination one — and opens the door, stepping inside and holding it to the side. She tilts her head at the bed in the center of the room, and I move to set him on top of the sheets. I don't hear the door close, but she does come around to the opposite side of the bed and set her armful of supplies down on the waist-high bedside cabinet.
"Go back to wherever you found him," she orders, with a no-arguing glance that I swear she learned from Alfred. "If you can find his container, having it nearby is important, especially with you vigilante types. Who knows when the last time was that he interacted with it?"
That's a good point. It won't be the cause of the sickness, but if Jason hasn't touched whatever contains his soul in a while, and we keep him here to get well, he could start to suffer from the distance. Most importantly, it could slow down his recovery time. It won't make him worse, unless he goes without contact with it for too long, but if deterioration starts it could slow down his body's immune system with the stress. I've never seen deterioration paired with an actual illness before, but I try really hard to never be around people who've lost their souls. The insanity that takes them as they waste away is… it's horrifying.
"Alright, I will." I shift forward, reaching for the zipties tucked away inside one of the pouches of my suit. Dr. Thompkins looks at me with a bit of reproach. "He shot B," I point out — she seems to somehow always know when we've been stitched up, so she should know that — "twice. I don't know how dangerous he is, or if he'll hurt you if you're in his way. Do you need his shirt off?" She shakes her head, still giving me a look that tells me exactly what she thinks of me restraining Jason, and I duck my gaze away from it. I carefully secure Jason's wrists to the plastic frame of the bed, one to each side, and pull them tight enough to keep his hands in — no matter what he might dislocate — without actually digging them into his skin. Delicate balance.
"I assume you have something to scan for his container?" she asks, and she sounds snippy too. Oh lovely. I'm going to get one hell of a lecture later, I'm sure. Especially if Jason somehow charms her like he did his neighbours.
"Yeah, got it. Alright, I'll be back as soon as I have it. Do you need anything else while I'm gone?" Jason's apartment isn't that far from here, and I can get through the window no problem. Searching everything might be a bit harder, but I'll manage it. I should be back before the hour is through, and hopefully he won't wake up between now and then. I want to be here when he comes back to consciousness, just in case.
"He'll probably appreciate a change of clothes."
Right, yeah. What he's wearing is going to be soaked through with sweat, and sick or not it's always nice to be in clean clothes. "I'll bring some. I shouldn't be long; if he wakes up just… be careful."
Dr. Thompkins arches an eyebrow at me as I look at her, waiting for some kind of sign that she's actually going to follow my advice. "I have been dealing with criminals and vigilantes longer than you've been wearing tights, Nightwing," she says instead, "and I remember when you thought that a v-neck and a stand-up collar was the height of fashion." I flush just a little at the reminder — and I really thought I was fashionable, that's the painful part — and she tilts her head and flicks one hand towards the door. "I will be just fine. Go."
I surrender, backing towards the door and slipping out. Alright, I have to think about the list of things that are good about leaving Jason alone with Dr. Thompkins. One, he'll be taken care of since no matter who her patient is, Dr. Thompkins always helps them. Two, it will give me the chance to call Bruce, and see if I can find any evidence or hints of what happened in his safe house. I haven't got much else I can think of right now — and if he wakes up, if he hurts her… — but it will have to do. I don't have much other choice, and I really do need to find Jason's container. To help him, of course, but knowing what it is, is also a tactical advantage.
It's not a pleasant thought, in fact it's one that nearly hurts to think about, but if I get desperate enough, and he's dangerous enough… I can use his soul to control him, if there's no other option. No other option. It's awful, and underhanded, and it makes me a little sick just to think about — I know how protective Jason was about his container, from growing up in Gotham's slums — but if I don't have any other choice, and I have to control him…
I'd hate it, and maybe I couldn't do it for more than a few seconds without the guilt getting to me, but in that kind of a situation a few seconds would probably make all the difference. If I had to, I would.
I just hope I don't.
