AN: Y'know, this arc was not intended, but the little fucker decided to spend ALL. DAMN. DAY belting out 'Cell Block Tango'.
Oh, did it bug you? It bugged me when YOU FUCKED WITH MY COFFEE, SADIST.
So this had to happen. As punishment.
Bite me.
Keep with the attitude and I'll have Croc bite you.
Look at me, quaking in fear. Anything but that. Please. Spare me.
Continuation of 'Plants' and co., but was written first. Sorry, hon, if you'd asked, you could've been warned that I do love to torture characters that come into my care.
McStaken-Stir fry. Vegetarian. Maybe vegetable soup. But no kale, kale's gross.
Mz. Melinda May (last name of Bates, but that throws everythin' off and she won't respond to it) knows what her stupid neighbor does at night. Bless his heart, he's trying, but really, that boy has the subtlety of a seagull snatching an ice cream cone.
Also, if he thought she wouldn't recognize his voice, mask or not, he's a damned idiot. She told him so, and it's telling that he didn't exactly deny it.
She raps on his door for the third time in as many minutes, ignoring the steadily growing feeling of concern. She doesn't see him every day, but it's been a week now and that's a little unusual.
When he doesn't answer, she hobbles back to her apartment and hunts up her knitting needles. She's been out of the business for years, but there was a time that she could have taught Catwoman a thing or three.
Ohh…these old knees don't much like gettin' down to lock-pickin' level, but too bad.
It takes a few minutes (too slow, damn old age!) to get the door open, but get it she does. It swings open with a creak (she suspects it's intentional, a heads-up of entry) and she pokes her head in.
"Jason?"
No answer. A little strange. Maybe he's out. Maybe he left. (Or got arrested. Or died in an alley.)
"You here, child?"
Still nothing, and she steps inside. The place is dim and stale, a little humid, like the shower's been running, but she doesn't hear water. She adjusts her grip on her knitting needles, prepared to aim for an eyeball if she has to, and shuts the door.
"Jason!" She throws a little steel into her voice. "You answer me right now!"
No answer. That's bad.
He's lying facedown on the bed, sheet and drugstore blanket bunched around his ribs. She flicks on the lamp, suddenly worried that she's let herself in to find him dead, and shoves him over. He's a dead weight, and warm-even factoring in her vampire hands. Doesn't respond, either, which is a little more worrying, but he's breathing.
"C'mon, darlin', open your eyes." She pats his cheek a few times. "Jason."
His only response is to shiver, arms curling protectively around his stomach. Hm.
"What'd you get yourself into this time?" she demands to know. When he doesn't answer (surprise, surprise) she pries his arms away.
The gash decorating his belly is angry red and ragged, and when she prods around it it's hot to the touch. She's expecting pus to come out of it, but nothing does. Really, apart from the redness, it doesn't look that bad. Not bad enough for him to be unresponsive like this.
She rustles up a washcloth (black, she's sure it's to hide the stains) and drenches it in warm water.
"Let's get you cleaned up."
He does react, at last, when she dabs at it with the washcloth-his eyes open halfway and he chokes out, "Hurts, please-"
"Shh, shh, darlin', I gotta get this cleaned up."
"No-"
"Yes." She reaches over and tousles his hair. "Just lie quiet, it'll be over in a minute."
"Too cold." he murmurs, eyes slipping shut. "S'too cold, please…stoppit…"
She draws the cloth back to go wring it out and spots…something. It's white, almost like bone, and for one awful minute she thinks he's gotten bone shard-his or someone else's-in there. But then the white thing moves.
She watches in horrified fascination as it wriggles up, squirming its way through blood and tissue. Maggot? Christ, no, surely not…no, there's no ribbing. It's too smooth, too thin, and when it catches the light she can see it's got a green sheen.
"Shit." she hisses, and it freezes. Jason tries to pull an arm back over his stomach and she grips his wrist. "Don't do that, honey, I'm gonna get you cleaned up."
It's a toss-up as to whether he hears her or simply can't struggle, but he stops moving. The thing in the cut stays where it is and it's an effort to take her eyes off it. It's comin' out, whatever the hell it is, whether it wants to or not.
"Just lie still." she says, trying not to scare him. "Just lie still, darlin', everything's gonna be fine now."
She finds tweezers in the first-aid kit and boils them anyway. Better safe than sorry.
"Okay, darlin', let's get this outta you."
His breathing's too forced for it to be anything but deliberate, but he's still motionless, eyes closed. Hopefully he won't remember any of this.
"Just hold still."
Grabbing the thing isn't hard-a quick strike down, like a bird-but the second the tweezers close on it, it starts squirming in earnest, its struggles making the tweezers move a little more than they ought to. It doesn't wanna come up and out, either.
"Please…"
"Shh."
The thing's hard and slick-though at this point it's just as likely to be slick with blood as anything else-and it's hard to keep her grip. It is comin', though, slowly but surely.
She finally works it out most of the way, but it just isn't…it's almost like it's stuck…
Got it!
It comes out, all right, and she nearly drops it. It's a…plant bulb, with bloody roots dangling from the end. It's not big, maybe half an inch long, but Jesus it was growing what on earth?
It's still twitching, but nowhere near as much as it was, and she drops it in an empty water bottle. Jason whimpers, once, and goes still.
She stares at the bulb for another few seconds before throwing the tweezers in the pot and turning the stove back on. Christ, this city…it was never like this before. Never.
Her throat works and her stomach clenches and she bends over the sink, gagging and spitting bile. Bullets she can do, but that…she'll never forget that, not 'til her dying day.
Once she gets herself under control and rinses her mouth out, she gets a clean washcloth and goes back to the bed. Jason hasn't moved again, and this time the washcloth doesn't rouse him.
The bulb is moving in the bottle, twitching like a worm, and she checks the lid more than once. The roots are makin' a scrit-scrit noise against the plastic that's up there with nails-on-chalkboard for Awful Noises. What the hell's she supposed to do with it? Throw it out? Send it to the government? (That's a joke, they don't touch anything from Gotham.)
She puts a band-aid on the cut-it's what she could find, and it really wasn't that deep-and draws the sheet back up to his shoulders.
"There we go."
He stays silent.
She makes herself comfortable on the sofa, where she can keep an eye on him. He stays out for the better part of the day, waking a few times to be sick into a bucket she found under the sink. Other than that, though, he's as still as the dead.
He stirs at last a little after moonrise. The bulb's finally quit twitchin' in the bottle and she's grateful-the scrit-scrit was unsettling.
"Wh-wha…?"
She drags her old bones off the sofa. How lucid he is is up for debate, but he's not throwing up or panicking.
"How you feelin', honey?"
He blinks a few times, face creased, and rasps, "M-Mz. May?"
"Hey there." She turns his bedside lamp on. "You awake this time?"
"Huh?"
"You gave me a fright."
"S-sorry…"
She pats his cheek.
"Don't do it again." Deeming him appropriately chastised for the moment, she straightens up. "Think you can keep some water down?"
He nods, a little hesitant, and mumbles, "I can get it…"
"You stay right where you are." That voice, she thinks, could stop the Batman himself. It works on Jason, anyhow-he doesn't move except to crack a knuckle. "You'll get arthritis if you do that."
He doesn't answer.
When she comes back, he's holding the water bottle with the bulb in it, its roots still tinged with blood and the rest of it covered with a green sheen.
"I fished that outta the gash in your belly." she informs him. "It's stopped movin', finally."
"Moving?"
"Mm." She gets her hand under his head. "Little sip."
"I can do it…"
"Don't you sass me."
He shuts up and takes a sip. She gives him a minute to make sure it goes down before letting him take another one.
"What'd you get into, boy?"
"S'complicated." He shivers and squirms under his sheet. "S-sorry for worrying you, I didn't…"
"What is this?" she demands, pointing at the water bottle. "I pulled that out, I got the right to know."
"S-s-seed." He swallows and she lets him have another sip of water. "Thought I got 'em all out."
"There were more?"
He nods weakly.
"Just two others, they didn't…do that."
Take root? Move? He needs to be more specific.
She'll let it slide for now, she decides-he looks awful and quite frankly, she's not sure he's all there.
"Go on back to sleep." she says gruffly. "It's been a day."
His only response is a tired sigh.
She returns to the couch, and when she peeks over later, he's curled up on his side, sheet wadded around his shoulders. She gets back up, straightens it out, and fishes the cheap throw out from behind him. There.
Once she's satisfied that he isn't going to wake up for a while, she leaves him a note saying that she's gone home, but will check in tomorrow.
The bulb moves again, weakly, when she props the note against a neighboring cup and on impulse she grabs the bottle and sets it on the kitchen counter. Just in case it…gets out.
The scrit-scrit follows her to the door.
THE END
