Dick waited in his corner, uncertainty pounding in his veins as unintelligible voices rose and fell outside. Jason had exited several minutes before without any explanation, ignoring his plea and leaving him all alone once more. The action had wounded him, but it worried him as well. If the other man had gone out the window, he would have been safe; going out the door led him straight into the guards' territory, though, and that was very, very dangerous.

The window... He turned his head and considered the curtained portal. Was it possible, he wondered, that Jason had chosen the door so that he could distract the guards? If so, this was his chance to escape. It would hurt, he knew – the light was slowly becoming less painful for him to confront, but from what little he'd seen there was a great deal of the stuff outside – but temporary agony was preferable to non-stop fear. He should go, should get out now while there was a chance that no one was watching...

Before he could do more than stand up, the door opened. Pressing back against the wall, he tensed. If Jason had been caught, would the guards have traced his incursion back to this cell? They could punish him so easily for not sounding the alarm on an interloper. Then again, shouldn't their camera crew have noticed that there was someone else in the room with him long before now? He shook his head fretfully. Nothing made any sense. Everything was changing too fast, contradicting itself, confusing him. An awful headache had started up behind his eyes, and was growing more overwhelming with each passing second. Reaching up with his good hand, he squeezed the bridge of his nose. Make it stop...

"Dick?"

He looked up to find that it was Jason, not the guards, who had come in. While he was glad to see him free and unhurt, he couldn't help but be curious about what his reappearance meant. Were they leaving together, perhaps? It was the only logical explanation he could come up with, but the other man didn't seem to be in any hurry. In fact, his entire mien had shifted since he'd gone marching out the door. The figure coming towards him no longer wore the attitude of a trespasser but rather that of a slightly unwilling house guest, compelled to stay but walking on eggshells all the while.

The new atmosphere tickled something deep inside of Dick, an old memory of how things had once been before the gods and the black-clad demon had made his life a living hell. He grasped after it, but it slipped through his fingers and vanished into the darkness clouding his mind. Frustrated, he let out a tiny moan.

"Dick?" Jason had stopped less than a foot away and was peering at him closely. "You okay?"

Questions flashed through his head. Where were the guards? What had Jason done with them? Where were they going now? Why was he going anywhere? What was so special about him that he deserved to be rescued? The last query in particular struck him. If Jason had been through the same things as he had – if he had dealt with the silence and the darkness and the torture, only to escape in the end – then why would he risk it all by returning to free another prisoner? "...Jason?" he ventured slowly.

"Yeah?"

"Why..." He blinked hard as he tried to feed words through the tangled wires of his brain, which seemed to be fighting his efforts. "Why did you come back?"

Jason stared at him for a long, speechless second. His eyes grew damp, and he finally tore them away just before they overflowed. "...I came back to save you," he whispered.

"But why? Why me?" There were others more deserving of relief than he was, surely.

"...Because you're my brother, Dick." Jason's voice trembled. "You're my brother, and...and I guess I finally figured out that that's never going to change. We'll always have certain things in common because of it, and this...this is just another one of those things. A bad thing, but...a shared thing. Okay?"

Shared things...brothers...the inexplicable familiarity that had teased him a moment earlier ghosted back into view, then vanished again the instant he focused on it. Nevertheless, he believed what had been said; Jason was his brother, and that was that. "...Jason?" he asked once more.

"Yeah, Dick?"

"How did you get your memories back?" If his were missing, then the other man's must have been too when he first escaped from his cell.

A sheen of ire washed over Jason's face. It fell away quickly, but it was enough to plunge Dick into desperation. "Please," he begged. "I can't reach them. They're right there, but I can't...they run away...please..."

"Okay! Okay. I...I think I know how to get them back for you. But we're not going to do the same thing that got me back my memories." Jason shuddered. "Just...no. I have a better way, okay? You have to trust me, though, Dick." Hands gripped his elbows insistently. "If you don't trust me, it won't work."

"I..." He hesitated. He had had perfect faith in the other man earlier, but things had changed since then. The guards hadn't come in despite the camera, which seemed impossible considering the round-the-clock watch they'd been mounting until not so long ago. Then there had been voices outside instead of the sounds of a scuffle. Now they stood talking as if they were in no danger instead of fleeing the prison like sane people would. It made no sense, something within him growled. Had Jason beaten everyone and just didn't think it was worth mentioning, or had he been working with his jailers all along?

Only the second answer fit the evidence, but it didn't satisfy the bubble of joy that rose in his stomach every time their gazes met. Thinking and feeling warred within his skull, each fighting for total dominance. He knew it was wrong, knew that there needed to be a balance of some sort, yet he was helpless to apply his knowledge. "I just want this to stop," he whined finally, pinching his nose so hard that his vision blurred. "Make it stop..."

"I'm trying, but you have to trust me first."

He couldn't stand the battle being fought behind his eyes any longer. It suddenly didn't matter if the other man was a double agent; if trusting him would lead to some sort of peace, he would shove his doubts aside and give in to whatever happened. Just so long as the pain went away and he managed to get a hold on that slippery memory...

"...Dick? Look at me. Look at me and tell me that you trust me."

It took every ounce of strength he had left, but he managed to raise his head and meet his brother's strangely needful stare. "I trust you, Jason," he breathed. "I trust you. Just please...make it stop?"

His knees gave out beneath him as the last syllable left his lips. Jason's grateful voice registered just before the feverish fog of war closed off the outside world completely. "No matter what happens, keep trusting me, okay? I need you to keep trusting me."

Of course I'll trust you, Jay, he thought as he faded away. ...After all, you're my brother...

Jason spotted Dick's swaying a full thirty seconds before he finally fell, and as such he was ready for the collapse when it happened. Catching him, he struggled to hold him upright. "I need you to keep trusting me," he murmured as he gripped him around the waist in a half-hug. Please, Dick. When you wake up – when you're yourself again – please, please still trust me. That's all I want out of this whole mess, I swear.

"What just happened?!" Bruce's frenzied call came from the direction of the door.

"Hold on," he sniped. "I'm a little busy." Heaving, he dragged his brother towards the bed. Heat was pouring off of his load, leaving Jason with no doubt as to what had caused him to pass out. "Jesus, you're heavier than I remembered," he cursed as sweat formed on the back of his neck.

J'onn spoke suddenly from beside him. "Let me help you." Another arm slipped into the mix, and the weight he was carrying instantly lightened. In a moment they had their patient stretched out on the mattress, but the Martian didn't look pleased. "His fever is higher than I realized from the hall," he grimaced.

"Bruce said he doesn't know why he has one. His injuries shouldn't have caused it so far as I can tell, so unless he's sick I've got no ideas, either."

"What just..." The billionaire trailed off as he stepped into the room and spotted the trio on the bed. "Why is he unconscious?!"

"He's overheated," J'onn explained. "I believe his fever may be a physical manifestation of his psychological distress."

That news seemed to calm Bruce slightly. "He always did used to run a temperature when he was overloaded as a child," he mused. His eyes crinkled with restrained pain. "It never made him faint, though."

"Hmm...we seem to have been returned to our previous hurdle. I can try and go in, but it really would have been better if I'd gotten his permission first. His passive state will help keep me from alarming him, but the risk is still higher than it might have been if he was properly prepared."

Jason glared as two sets of eyes riveted themselves to him. "I went as fast as I could, okay? He was already standing up and half freaking out when I came in. Then he started asking questions, and I couldn't just ignore them and hope he didn't mind." He stopped himself there, biting his tongue hard. As upset as it made him to have the blame for their predicament turned in his direction, arguing about it wasn't doing Dick any good. Determined to find a solution for this new turn in the trail, he thought hard. "...Right before he passed out he said he trusted me. If I tell him now that you're going to enter his mind and that he should trust you and let you do what you need to do, will that help?"

"...It may. The unconscious mind processes many things without us ever knowing about them. So long as the message gets through, my job will be easier."

"Okay. Good." Neither man moved. After a minute Jason crossed his arms expectantly. "Could I have some privacy, maybe?"

J'onn finally rose. "We'll be right outside when you're ready," he said. "...Bruce?"

The billionaire didn't look happy, but he gave a terse nod and followed the Martian out.

"...Okay," Jason muttered when he'd been left alone. Turning so that his back was facing the camera, he leaned forward and began to speak quietly. "Listen, Dick...I know we didn't get to talk about it before you went off into la-la land, but I'm not the only one you have to trust." He paused, hoping for some sort of a reaction to that news. Dick remained perfectly still save for the almost-too-rapid rise and fall of his chest, though, and Jason felt his shoulders slump. "Christ, can you even hear me right now?" He sighed. "Look...J'onn – you know J'onn, even if you don't remember right now – is going to go into your mind and look around. He might do some stuff, too. I don't know what or I'd tell you, but the point is that you have to let him do...well...whatever it is he tries to do."

He stopped. How would he feel, he contemplated, if he was passed out and someone he couldn't remember knowing started moving stuff around in his brain? "...I know it's going to be hard," he went on slowly. "I know you're going to want to fight, to push him out. But you just can't. If you do, you might never get your memories back. I'm...I'm not the one who can help you find them; J'onn is. You have to..." The next words tried to stick in his throat, but he forced them out. "...You have to trust J'onn as much as you trust me, okay? It's important. It's..." He gulped, feeling the precious pedestal on which he had briefly stood in his brother's mind cracking beneath the weight of his admonition. "...It's the only way, Dick. I can't fix you, so you have to trust J'onn to do it. If you can do that, then maybe..."

His mouth hung open for a moment as he struggled to give voice to his most secretly-held desire. It was only when he took up his brother's fingers and squeezed them that he found the strength to speak. "...Then maybe we can both stop being alone."

Author's Note: I know some of you had been hoping for more Dick and Jay fluff, so there you go. :D On Tuesday we'll have a little Bruce and Jason interaction, and we'll see whether J'onn makes things better or worse inside Dick's head. Happy reading!