"When my time comes
Forget the wrong that I've done
Help me leave behind some
Reasons to be missed
And don't resent me
And when you're feeling empty
Keep me in your memory
Leave out all the rest"

-Linkin Park, "Leave Out All the Rest"


TWO WEEKS LATER

It's not the same every time, waking up from a nightmare. Sometimes, it's a scream. Other times like tonight, I woke with a wet and aching face, gasping as if I just couldn't get enough air. I lay there for a second, balling handfuls of my pillow into fists and gritting my teeth as my body protested at how long I rotted in that abandoned wing.

My bones told me just how lucky I was to get out of there, to be alive. It'd be great if I believed it. But if I did that, I'd have to believe that the only pieces of me - and they were pieces - that had been broken were just bones and skin.

I stared at my callused hands as I lost it into my pillow, more gasps and grunts and hisses between my teeth. I felt like someone was reaping me hollow, like back then. I shut my eyes tight, tears of shame squeezing onto the already wet fabric that was cold against the brand on my cheek. I crumpled, clenching my hands hard until it hurt. Everything hurt. C'mon, Jason. You knew pain, and this wasn't the real deal.

Real pain came from somewhere you thought was safe at first. Somewhere you trusted. And it clung to you like a disease or a parasite. I've found that hate and anger work just the same way. Pain and hate and anger.

I sat up, pushing my palms into my eyes to stop the crying. My feet touch the floor, and as my hands came down, I saw the moonlight from the cracked window on my toes. I wiped my inky hair off my sweaty forehead, and groggily gazed through the empty section in the glass. My vision was blurry, but I could see the 'W' of Wayne Tower. I had to look away, the nightmare images loud and immovable in my mind. Most people forgot their nightmares within the first thirty seconds. For my kind of terror, it takes me thirty minutes. One image my mind latched into, and submerged me in the memory like dunking someone's head underwater without warning.

"Miss me, sport?" I heard the tapping noise behind me as he clicked the whip around his feet. My barbed-wire ruined arms were chained to either side to the ceiling, and my boots were just barely touching the ground.

"I thought I'd stop by, it is Christmas after all!" He said, giving a laugh before the first lash cut open the skin on my shoulder blade and I belted a shout that razed my throat dry. "I was just watching 'A Christmas Carol', great stuff. I personally love Tiny Tim. Good kid, sorry luck. You remind me of him, you know that…?"

He uttered another sickening laugh and whipped me again, the flesh on my shoulder splitting and I grunted through my teeth. Every breath made me wish I couldn't breathe, or didn't need to. But I begged for death with each pant, and each heartbeat tolled sadly like church bells in my ears. Another lash on my lower back that my spine arched as the shout left my chest. My arms spread wide...That made me think of the choir. I used to sit outside the window while they sang on Sundays, and I let out a low whine. I was thinking that I'd never hear their Christmas songs again.

"Oh, if only someone could help the poor, crippled... unfortunate boy?"

The panic constricted my chest like a vice. I got up from my bed and stumbled into the small bathroom, bending over to splash icy water in my face. I glared into the mirror and as if by torturous magnetism, locked onto the 'J'. I forced myself to look at my face, shining stains beneath my eyes. My crooked nose, my chin, my ear, and finally, my blue eyes.

"It's okay," I whispered, leaning over a bit. "It's fine. You're real, you're here. It's okay. You're okay. This," I pressed a hand to my chest, coughed miserably. "This is real. You're awake."

It didn't work, my lungs were still heaving to get all the air it could. I heard his laughing, ringing in my ears. I slammed my fist onto the sink, roaring over the laughter, "He's dead, dammit!"

Christ. The look on everyone's faces if they saw the Arkham Knight bawling in his bathroom...over a nightmare.

I probably shouldn't lie to myself. It's more than that. There's also that fact that I've done horrible things to the people I care about, and was heartless enough to do horrible things to people I've never met. The crooks I'll never apologize for, but…

"My anger never got people hurt."

I had a converter in my chest that specialized in turning grief into rage. It did the job just fine, but I knew that it was just prolonging this cycle, not ending it. I'd be good for a couple of days, or three days or however long it is between nightmares and the brief minutes each day of bathing. I needed a better system. I needed to be better.

I met the Jason in the mirror's eye. "You can fix this. You can do it."

I reached up to open the medicine cabinet behind the mirror. There were mostly wound - dressing supplies, but there were three orange medicine bottles. One was full of the sleeping pills Tim left for me, I hadn't taken a single one. One was about half-full of top-of-the-line painkillers. I only took them when the pain kept me from doing my job. I screwed the cap off and downed a pill dry. Next to the bottles was a scooper, and I snatched that.

I turned to my bathtub and threw on the hot water, holding my hand in the stream. Once it got hot enough, I plugged the bottom of the tub and sat on the edge, breathing through my nose to hopefully slow my lungs. It didn't take long for it to get full, and when it did, I moved to the bucket to the side of it, prying the top off. The strong scent of peppermint flooded my senses, and I breathed in deeply as I scooped out a heaping amount of bath salts with shaking hands. They settled, and I swished them around before peeling the sweat-drenched white tank from my chest, the lounge pants that were ripped in places.

I stepped in, my toes mingling with the salt and then I lowered myself into the water gradually, hissing in through my teeth at the temperature. Just right. The hot water tingled on my bare skin, but on the scars, which covered most of my body, the tingling soothed. I leaned against the side of the tub, hung my arms over the edge and let my head tilt back. I sighed in relief, and allowed myself to relax...something I'd forgotten how to do. My eyes slipped closed, and I fell headfirst into another memory that had floated to the surface, drowning.

All was dark, and I knew exactly where I was. And when. I was almost sixteen and in a medically induced coma. You know. Same old, same old. I joke now, but then, I was truly scared. My cape had softened the landing, saving me and the toddler I'd dove out of the window after. I remembered my shoulder nailing the ground hard, and next I knew, I couldn't open my eyes. But I could hear everything. A beeping noise I immediately trusted to be my heartbeat. The doctor barking orders to good nurses, telling someone that whether or not I made it was up to me. If I fought hard enough, I would live.

A door slowly creaked closed behind the doctor, but not seconds later, a sliding noise came to my left. My arms were heavy, like my eyelids. I was lead.

"Robin." Bruce sounded angry. "That was reckless…" He sighed. "And brave. The boy will live because of what you did today."

Leave it to him to scold me and praise me, in the same sentence, in a hospital bed.

"I rushed you here myself. Everything was arranged."

Meaning he brought me here as Bruce Wayne taking his ward to the hospital after some kind of accident. No worry about someone bringing Robin to the hospital and finding out that it's Jason, connecting the dots, you get the idea.

The awkward silence stretched out. These were common and you learned to expect them when you work with Batman. I didn't hear him cross the room but when I heard the chair squeak open, I knew he'd be here a while.

"I brought you something," He sounded oddly sentimental, one of the few times he's ever been like this. And he used his Bruce voice, the lighter one. "I came across this passage in The Great Gatsby."

I heard pages rustling, and my throat felt dry.

Batman will bring your attacker to justice and break his kneecaps. But Bruce Wayne will stay up with you through the night and read you Gatsby.

There was a faint smile in his voice, "And it reminded me of you…" His reading voice was smooth, and I never tired of hearing it. "He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced–or seemed to face–the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor."

I'd wanted to cry then, and was grateful that I couldn't help but just listen to the old man. "It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey."

He went on and read me another couple of chapters before he left when morning came. Later, I'd tracked down his copy of the book and found where he'd stopped reading. I placed it on his desk, maybe as a bashful thanks. Maybe as an offer to pick it back up when one of us got hurt next.

"Believed in you as you'd like to believe in yourself," I repeated, my eyes opening again and exhaling a reflective sigh. "Nice thought…"

The bath salts was doing its job. My muscles relaxed, and my breathing was slower now and more even. Turning off the faucet, I sunk further down into the tub, until I was fully submerged. Water muffled my hearing and blurred my vision, and I watched each tiny bubble leave the tip of my crooked nose and climb to the top of the surface. Towards the light from the scrappy fixture in the ceiling. I saw my legs draped over the back end of the bath, because I was too tall to all fit in it.

I wasn't drowning. I could lean up and out of the water when I wanted...and there was a relief to that. I could submerge myself in what terrified me most and be there long enough until I needed air. Just be there a moment, smell the roses…

I straightened, water falling from my face and I broke the surface again. I slicked my hair with a hand and unplugged the tub, stepping out. I left the bathroom with a towel wrapped around my waist, and headed for a pair of shorts, then for my gym.

Time to train...so much for a night off.


Dangling from a rope attached to a wooden beam with my feet eight feet off the ground, with one arm, I felt strong. Legs crossed at the ankles, free arm behind my back, and the arm being worked had the rope coiled around it. I exhaled pulling up, inhaled coming down. Little trick: exhale with exertion. 'E' with 'e'.

I had a radio on the windowsill blaring Van Halen. My neighbors probably hate me right about now. It was six in the morning. Yes, I'm that guy, and I'm a little sorry, but not sorry enough to stop. Crime doesn't sleep. Neither do I.

Inhale, ease down. Exhale, flex and level my chin with my knuckles. Repeat.

To maintain a deep focus was never difficult for me, even after a nightmare. But for some reason, tonight my mind raced like it wasn't gonna reach tomorrow. I felt the nerves, coiling under my rib cage, then jolting skyward along my spine, shooting down around my arms and finally, settling in my hands. I let go of the rope, my bare feet smacking the floor and I crouched in recoil. I strode to radio, flicking it off and grabbing my water bottle, taking a drink. With a sigh, I poured a tiny splash into my palm before swiping the cold liquid over the back of my neck. The chill slithered between my shoulder blades, and I had to make myself ignore how it meandered with the scars.

I thought about what the old man must be doing. Was he licking new wounds from crusading abroad? I looked down at the calluses in my hands. Was he training like I was? Or was he waiting for the right time? Did he even have plans to come back?

I understood him. Bruce knew that Gotham wasn't an island, and that sooner or later, the mission would come to an end. I clenched my fist without thinking.

The mission isn't done. It never will be. Crime doesn't sleep. It isn't considerate. It doesn't stop to think about taking your parents, your brothers and sisters. It doesn't care if you're just some kid from the Narrows who'd been dealt a bad hand. It doesn't matter if you've worked hard for yourself, you'll still be extorted by some weasel. This is Gotham.

I mean, Christ, Bruce. With a crazy game this big, you can't just bow out gracefully when you don't wanna play anymore. What happened to Barb should've taught you that. What happened to me should've taught you that.

I glanced at Wayne Tower through my window. I'd never say this out loud, old man...but before you left...I should've said something. Instead of painting the floor at Panessa.

I used to think that I was never a son to you. That you thought of me as just another Robin. Just a Dick Grayson knockoff. An assistant. A scapegoat.

But...I uttered another rough sigh. I should've said something to you.

I shook my head, clearing all the sappy gunk out of my mind and picking up the jump rope. I did some rope drills boxers use, whistling the Van Halen song that'd been on the radio from where it left off.

And that's when my phone beeped in my pocket. I ignored it the first time, but when it called again I stopped mid-drill and fished it out. I wiped the screen on my shorts before answering.

"What, Dick?"

"You'll never believe this."

I raised an eyebrow. "The Knights lost to Metropolis?"

"Actually yes, but that's not the point," Dick panted; he was running, "There's a Falcone warehouse on 30th and King that have a troop of boy scouts hostage. Gordon received an anonymous tip that Calendar Man will be coming through there in an hour. Thing is, they've barricaded themselves. Nobody can get in…We need something big to get in there, get the kids out and then bust Day."

A dark smile curled my lips, and I started walking to the engine bay, "What's the warehouse used for?"

"On record, it says clothing but word on the street is that they also use it to circulate drugs."

I went down the stairs two at a time, and eyed my girl on my way to a weapons cache I repurposed into a toolbox, "Get in there, get the kids and wait for me. Get them in the safest place in there and then let me know."

"Way ahead of you," There was a smile in his voice, "Are you doing what I think you're doing?"

I only answered him with a laugh, and ended the call. I found what I needed, and shook the spray can, the metal knocking in it stirring up the paint. I patted her treads and said smoothly, "I'm thinkin' you've been cooped up too long, baby."

I climbed the ladder to the roof of the tank, finding the Arkham insignia on the side. "Let's go out tonight, what do you say?"

I grinned, my finger over the sprayer.

"Make sure you wear the red one."


A/N: Plot twist, everyone. This fanfiction is secretly a romance between Jason and his tank. Spread the word.