'Feels like it happened a lifetime ago'

That wasn't a phrase Jason was prone to using. It was overused in general as far as he was concerned. If there was one thing he'd learned in the two lifetimes he'd lived, it was exactly how it felt to have something happen a literal lifetime ago.

Soldiers who came home from wars, blood soaking their hands, waking up screaming at night at things that weren't there anymore. Remembering a time when that hadn't happened, that was an example good use of the phrase. Some kid walking back to school after summer vacation was just being an overdramatic dumbass.

For Jason, it was easy, the before and afters separated by his death, he had a clear dividing line for what felt like it had happened a lifetime ago. Bragging to Bruce about his historical fashion research, walking through snow with the Titans in sadistically short shorts, trying to convince Bruce he had time for stage crew if not for the actual drama club – he needed to stop thinking about Bruce already. All those things, he had folded safely in his 'other lifetime' box. It was easier that way, the one useful thing he'd learned in Arkham, sitting in that cell day in and out, and he hadn't learned it from any shrink.

Arkham? The actual sitting in that cell, being a plaything in Jeremiah's basement, screaming himself raw. None of that happened in another lifetime. Jason just didn't think about it, pushed it aside and almost always found something else to consume his free brain cells.

That didn't mean that he'd forgotten it, just that he'd made sure to bury it deep as he could, almost as deep as the 'other life' box. And he'd been able to get by. Get out of dealing with it, what he'd done to himself in his stupidity and desperation to prove Bruce wrong.

Now though? Now Jason was scaling the fucking cliff outside of the place, reversing his old escape plan to get himself back inside the damned place. For the first time since he'd decided to do something for Stephanie, he wasn't sure he'd be able to do it. He had to not only get inside Arkham, but get down into 'that' basement, on his own, willingly. Not only that, but he was working on a time limit, one that could expire at any moment with absolutely 'no' warning and he had to have his head cool and under his complete control the whole way.

So far, that last part wasn't going so well.

Even saying the physical part of it was going 'well' was a bit of a stretch. His lungs ached, struggling to process air he was pulling in too hard and fast, the closer he got to his summit, the harder it got. The minor oxygen deprivation had already given him a major fucking headache and his limbs grew weaker all the time. It was more like scaling a mountain than one damned cliff.

His saving grace was, ironically, the part he'd dreaded most when plotting out his route; the powerful crashing of the waves below him. Heavy autumn winds stirred up water to smash against the rocks, dousing him with icy water. It forced him to focus. Where to put his foot? Where to grab on to? The rock was wet and slippery, his mind couldn't afford to stray from the path for long and it knew it.

Jason still cursed up his own personal storm whenever another wave attempted valiantly to drown him; it was a less destructive form of stress release.

The comm unit strapped to his arm beeped every so often, as if to remind him of its presence though he had absolutely no plans of using the thing. He didn't need the distraction of bats chattering in his ears while he was trying to focus. It was enough trouble reaching the top as it was. And by the time he did, he was fucking exhausted.

Jason pulled himself up the last few feet and rolled onto the narrow ledge. He laid there for a couple dozen seconds, looking up at Gotham's over cast sky while he tried to catch his breath, the key work being 'tried'. Lucky he hadn't eaten since breakfast that morning, he could taste bile in his mouth, so he clipped off his half mask anyway.

Concluding that waiting was 'not' going to make it in any way easier, Jason dragged himself up, resting his hands against the wall to help his keep his balance on the very narrow ledge. The wall of the asylum, if he looked up it would loom above him, so he didn't.

An equipment check proved that everything was in working order. The device he'd built to interfere with the cameras that morning worked a lot better than the one he'd made from stolen cellphones back in his cell, and he took a moment to wonder what had become of it before he moved on.

Cameras looping, no one could see him when he jumped up to grab the edge of the window he needed. He picked it and dragged himself within – where he had to pause to pull himself together again. Damnit if this kept up it would be the end of his life sentence by the time he made it to the freaking basement.

The comm beeped and Jason silenced it, he wasn't getting caught because someone who wasn't supposed to heard the thing, but when he tried to shove it in one of his pockets, it was met with resistance. The free hand he reached into his pocket with to investigate came back wrapped around a bag of skittles.

"Stephanie." Jason groaned under his breath. Turning it over in his hand, he saw the sticky note she'd stuck to the back, signed with a smiling Batgirl doodle. It brought a smile to his face, at least for a few seconds. He tore open the back and unclasped his mask to toss a few pieces of candy in his mouth. He still didn't like skittles.

Just focus on the individual steps and he'd get the job done.

In his original plan, getting himself to the laundry had been a priority, one that wasn't possible now due to the laundry being horrendously out of the way, he had to improvise. The first guard of appropriate size he came across – about four bigger than Jason's – got a tiny dart to his neck. Guy'd wake up with a headache and sore neck from the way Jason positioned him between stacks of cleaning supplies in a broom closet, but he'd be fine, probably. Jason waited in a surveillance blind spot for twenty seconds, pressed tightly against a wall, then he deactivated the interference device.

Movement in uniform was easier but not much faster. To avoid catching unwelcome attention, Jason had to work his way closer to his destination via a roundabout route that followed the patrol route of the guy whose clothes he was wearing. He affected a board expression throughout it, taking no note of anyone he passed, none they could see anyway. This was the office side of the building, no crazies around to make anyone feel nervous.

His heart rate sped up when he came to the medical wing; he hooked his thumbs in his pockets to control the shaking of his hands and pressed on. While paralyzed, he'd still been conscious enough during his 'kidnapping' – Jason scoffed at the word – to have a general idea, backed up by Dick's very, very extensive plans of the places secret passages (that guy needed to get a life, where had he found the 'time'?). The one he needed surprisingly wasn't in those plans; the one Arkham had had his taken through after he'd been brought out of the mirror room, but they made it easier to find.

The entrance to said mirror room had been replaced with a door, surprisingly, Jason had to resist peeking inside though he knew from Steph that whatever tapes there'd been of him had been destroyed. He maybe owed Talia a thanks for that one. Jason strode on past it and ducked down a looping service passage, then activated the interference device again.

When he got back to the appropriate hall, Jason slipped into the 'bare' office and shifted aside a pile of desks to reveal and access hatch place just a casual observer would assume it led to the storage floor below. His fingers dug into a panel on the wall adjacent the boarded window and ripped it away, revealing a single, simple lever that he pulled only as far as he'd seen Jeremiah do it. His breath stuttered when it opened and the musty smell assaulted his nose. He finished another couple skittles out of the bag in his pocket and moved on.

He'd slipped out of consciousness soon after that the first time and now, looking down into the narrow space, Jason wasn't sure 'how' Jeremiah had gotten him down there. As he descended the dark, sloping hallway, Jason lost the uniform, clipping the parts of his own gear he'd had to remove back into place. A guard would look more out of place down there than a mercenary. Jason listened carefully as he went, but for most of the way his own, nearly silent footsteps were all he heard, and that was only because he was listening for them. The three sealed doorways, melded almost seamlessly with the walls marked his progress

It was only once he was nearing a fourth that he started hearing movement, unless Arkham got a rat problem – Ratcatcher meant they usually death with those real quick – that was going to be a Jason problem.

He was supposed to wait near the room where he'd been held, ready to provide backup, that room was still ten minutes away. There wasn't time for him to wipe out any idiots who tossed themselves into his path beforehand. If he'd been solo, Jason might have ignored it, maybe set a charge if he was feeling paranoid. With someone else's life on the line however, Jason paused at the opening and pressed a listening device against it to get a better idea of what he'd been hearing. Breathing it sounded like, hushed demands for quiet, rustling around on the ground.

"Fuck." He whispered. While he hoped he was wrong, as much as he could ever hope for that, he was pretty sure he'd just found the missing 'hostages'. He swallowed, dryly and pushed the nearly dissolved candy around his mouth with his tongue. No one else knew they were there, he was backup, not rescue, they were the Bat's problem, all of them high ranking street dealers, the world wouldn't miss them, Bats wouldn't miss them if Jason kept his mouth shut. Stephanie…

Jason pressed his forehead against the wall. He'd check before he decided, there was still a chance he was wrong, maybe it was just timeout for misbehaving guards, or fucking hide-and-seek team building. It could be fine.

O

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O

The lack of instructions on how she was supposed to reach the meeting point was all the instruction Steph needed. Mister Fake Hood knew she'd been in there before, maybe even that she'd been the one to take Jason out, so at the very least there was no need for subtlety. Now she did it again, the same way she had before, and feeling very much the same as she had that night.

Tension and apprehension swirled in her gut. Unlike then, Steph wasn't alone, backup was less than a call away, backup she'd actually make use of this time, as soon as the other bats got the hostages out. Jason hadn't told anyone how he was planning on getting inside, and Steph didn't need to think too hard about the whys of him not wanting the bats to know what would have been his escape route. Hopefully there'd be no heart stopping speed-runs to Leslie's this time.

It wasn't fear that stilled her when she hopped out of the boat and looked down the dark entranceway. She could get her way out of just about anything he tried to do to her. Going off her encounter with the guy who fancied himself the Red Hoods replacement was proof enough of that. The last time she'd been there, when she'd seen the evidence of what had happened, what had been on the verge of happening since long before that, to Jason… Part of Steph was worried she'd have to see something like that again, that she'd go off on this Hood Guy the way she had Jeremiah.

Apparently it took her a little too long to stifle her indecision, cause a couple minutes later there were a trio of guys coming down the passage to invite her in.

"He's ready for you, come on." One said tilting his head inside. Steph couldn't see his face, couldn't see any of their faces past the thick balaclavas they had on, but she followed after them anyway, dragging her feet a little as she went, stalling.

The one who'd spoken headed up the front and the other too flanked her from behind. As if she would run, as if they could have stopped her if she'd decided to run. Their path took them through almost the same sticky halls as Steph had before, but unlike that time, she didn't let her cape cover her from it all despite the same prickly feeling jabbing her at every opportunity.

Why did so many criminals have to pick the absolute creepiest places they could get for these kinds of things, and the few who didn't were never the kind Steph went up against. Really, if super powered aliens weren't setting themselves on Metropolis every other week she might have considered moving there. It was doubtful Lex Luthor did his evil plotting in the creepy sub basement of an asylum.

Steph let her thoughts run; focusing on her surroundings just enough to memorize the little details of the route they were taking and the mannerisms of her escorts. It helped to know if they were going to pull a gun on her.

It was only once they were deeper that she started noticing little nozzles set along the walls, connected to thick black pipes. They hadn't been there before and Steph had a bad feeling they hadn't been set up in case of a fire. No outward sign that she was bothered showed on her body language, carefully squashed under plans for a temporary city change with Kara. Maybe Jay would like Metropolis; there were fewer dive bars, but still plenty good food, no Batman.

She'd ask him when this was over, if she could convince Tim to help her convince the others to leave him alone for just a couple… Okay, that train of thought did affect her body language, so Steph had to put a stop to it.

Light poured in, golden and bright from the next corner they'd turned, it came from 'there' the same room where she'd found him. Steph kind of hoped this new Asshole Hood was one of the asshats that had done it so she wouldn't feel bad when she beat him into the ground.

The room, cavern, whatever, was cleaner than it had been when she'd last seen it. Equipment that Jason's escape and her shortly following attack had scattered about was now set up neatly off to one side, along with a bed. The lighting was bright, like it would have been for a medical procedure. On the other side was a wall of monitors, and there he stood, Looser Hood before the feeds from the dozens of rooms making up his evil lair. One of those rooms containing at least fifty people tied and bleeding on the ground.

"You know what to do with her." His voice was even more distorted than it had been last time, something between a high, inhuman growl and a hiss with voice of legion thrown in for good measure. Yeah, he was definitely trying too hard.

Her escorts led her deeper into the cavern and she let her eyes rove around, now she got a better look at the place she could see that it really wasn't all that much cleaner than it had been before. There were still traces of blood on the floor, Jason's and the guards' he'd gone through to get out, Arkham's when Steph had come along.

The bed, Steph could feel blood rushing to her head when she looked closer at the bed. She'd thought it was rust covering the bars, what with the saltwater humidity in the air, but the patches of filthy reddish brown had pooled and dried on the off color plastic mattress too. From a certain angle, she could pick out the shape of a person in it, a shape she covered over with her own when the men tried to help her onto it and she brushed them off.

It was the same bed that had held Jason, hadn't even been cleaned. Disgust wormed its way into her chest; she swore she could feel his blood flaking off even under the thick fabric of her costume. For someone who claimed to be the Red Hood's 'legacy', dressed up like Jason and thought he knew what the fuck he was talking about, this guy was a real fucking piece of work. If not for those people, she might have strapped the piece of crap in it and dunked him in the ocean a few times.

He turned, slowly, his hands still clasped behind his back, and he must have read something of her expression, because his body language gave away something like amusement, almost pity that his face couldn't. "Don't." He pulled a little back box out from under his jacket and waved it at her. "You saw the installations." He nodded to the walls, where there were more of the nozzles. "Anything I don't like and everyone but me is dead. I have more triggers."

"Wouldn't dream of upsetting you." Yeah, because any dreams with this creep in it would have been nightmares. Steph kept her voice carefully neutral, because chipper was just way too out of her reach. Ripping her thoughts from the bed – not even hosed off, bastard – she looked at the monitors, the people. If she could just find a way to send a message through her comm without him noticing she wouldn't need any triggers. This whole thing would go only that much faster.

"I feel bad for you." He said, walking towards her, Steph kept most of her attention on the hostages. "Didn't think you'd come, that your family would sacrifice y, you for that." He pointed it the people. "They're disgusting, but your family gave him for them too so I shouldn't be surprised."

"No one sent me, it was me you asked for, any one of us woulda come." There was something weird with the monitors, but Steph couldn't quite place it. It was distracting enough that she barely felt the irritation at the implication that she was beholden to the other bats or something, that they would have had to force her to come and save those people. "Even Hood wouldn't have let you murder a bunch of innocent people to get at drug dealers."

Not a whole lie, Jason might have come but Steph didn't see him watching as the guys slowly wrapped the straps around his arms. Steph averted her gaze when the buckles snapped into place, her mouth going dry as Batman's sense of humor. It would be okay; she could cut through them with her gauntlets.

"Don't talk about him." Even through the modulation, he actually sounded pissed the fuck off, and again she found something about him was familiar. Something that wasn't just his attempt at imitating Jason. "This is YOUR fault, for what you did to him, he would have wiped that filth out." He jabbed his finger in the direction of the monitors without looking at them, stomping over to her. "Y, you don't get to lie about him too."

"If we'd known what that bastard was doing to him we woulda stopped it." Steph didn't have to put any effort into making her tone sincere, not with Jason's blood pressing against her cheek, in 'this' room, though she didn't think the Hoodster cared. Yeah, there was definitely something off with the recordings, unless that guy had really keeled over in the span three minutes and jumped right back up. "There's a reason Jeremiah wound up in hospital when we found him." And dead, the doctor had also wound up dead not long after that. Steph wondered if the Bats caught the guy who'd done that, she hadn't kept up with that part of the investigation.

"It's was never just Arkham!" The guy yelled right in her ear and Steph tilted her head only slightly to look at him, as if it hadn't startled her at all. "No I 'thought' about Arkham, I thought about it every day when I watched him, he, it had to be part of his plan, 'that's' why he never left, he was waiting and it was working wasn't it." He paced around as he talked, waving his arms about. That's why they sent 'you' to tip the staff off and spy on him. But he was too strong, wasn't he? That's why you had to get rid of him. How much of a threat could he have BEEN, after Arkhams experiments got him?"

"My guy, I dunno what to tell you." It was hard keeping her expression neutral after all that, was that something Jason had thought? He'd accused her of spying on him nearly every one of the visits where he'd actually spoken to her, could he have thought the others had handed him to Arkham too? Probably not once the Doctor started asking about the bats, but before that? Jason never hinted to her that he had, but that didn't mean…

No. Steph ripped that train of thought from its tracks and focused on the monitors again. Either Hoody was looping the footage on purpose, or someone else was there already, screwing with his security. And that someone had been there for at least three minutes already. In the latter case, all she had to do was play distraction, when all the hostages were gone, his little installations wouldn't count for anything. "You wanna make up a story then go ahead, but everyone and their uncle knows the bats tore this place apart looking for him we couldn't 'find' him in time, and if you were 'watching so closely' and you didn't help us then that's your fault too!"

Being in the hero game as long as she had, Steph wasn't unnerved by the strength of the glare she could feel through that helmet, all of his attention focused on her, but she affected the expression. Looking at both her and the monitors at the same time wasn't possible, Steph just had to hold that attention.

"Bats always know, but I thought you 'didn't', that you cared enough to stop it, but y, y, you're a fucking liar like the rest of them." He said. Before Steph could ask where the hell he was getting his information from, he turned back to the monitors swinging another trigger at them Steph tried to yank her way out of the straps, to get his attention away from them again. When she couldn't and he pressed down on a side button anyway she expected the gas, none came and the monitors changed. No more real time footage of the underground network, but instead the footage was of… her? "I 'know' you got him. WHAT did you d, do to him?!"

Steph's response to his accusation died on her tongue. She watched herself in fast-forward; slamming the access hatch open and storming past the cameras. It cut off before she got to this room, where she'd beat the ever loving crap out of Arkham, because she'd found and destroyed that footage, but how hadn't the bats found the rest of it? Steph hadn't been able to, hadn't even really thought to look in her rush to drag Jason to Leslie's.

"How did you get this?" Steph asked, turning her eyes on the Imposter Hood, standing tense at her side. She refused to watch herself after she'd gotten Jason, refused to watch him trying to move along with her, but she could remember it well enough that she didn't have to, remembered things the tapes didn't. The weight on him against her back, the trembling running through every inch of him, the stutters of breath against her ear that kept giving out.

Hood waved his arm and the other men practically ran out of the room. They were so fast, their boss barely had to pause before he reached up for his helmet, and clicked off the release, a little clumsily, as though he still wasn't entirely used to the action. He didn't wear a mask under it, only Jason was that extra, but she would have recognized him even if she had.

"Oh Jeff, I'm super disappointed in you." She breathed, her chest sinking a little at Baker's furious face. Figured Arkham couldn't have one moderately sane employee, could it?

O

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O

Jason found his way into the other side of the wall via an incredibly roundabout route that left him 'covered' in spiders. Screw some lucky idiot getting a shot in, he was dying from anaphylactic shot this time, he knew it.

Too many tight squeezes and sharp corners for him to bring much of his equipment along, so he'd had to strain his ears to hear whatever the hell was going on the whole way. Now he could see easily enough that it wasn't, unfortunately, a game of hide and seek. Not a very friendly one at least. It wasn't fine. It was a two story room full of people he hated and the one's guarding him were very well armed on walkways above his head.

Now this, this was exactly the kind of situation that would have merited the 'set a charge and move on' scene. He hadn't come to save these kinds of people, they were the kinds of people that needed saving from him. He hadn't really come to save any people but leaving these here would do just that. Jason pulled his goggles – another new pair – off his eyes so he could press the pads of his thumbs into them.

Saving them meant wasting time he'd need to get to Stephanie, but if she found out he'd left them… Even if she never found out, he would know and if this were one of the last things he did in connection with her before he left...

Holding back a groan, Jason moved his hands to pass through his hair – it needed a cut again – then lowered his goggles.

Up and to his left there was a click, and the barrel of a gun glinting down at him through the boards of the staircase he was crouched under. Jason fished some more skittles out of his pocket.

Fuck.