Jason

Jason forced half a smirk to hide his grimace, starting for the stairs with purpose and adamantly refusing to waste any more time in this hell-hole than he had to. Not only did he have the pervasive sense that he should be safely scoffing at a television screen that of course he would die—and deserve it—if he went up the creepy staircase, but the hospital atmosphere was crackling against his temples. The echo of rushed rubber soles would never come; the witch's ladder around his wrist was nothing like the warm plastic of an admittance band; he couldn't smell anything under the rot, and his nose and throat didn't sting with disinfectant.

His steps felt too light, cautious, without the confidence he wanted to project. Too many half-formed memories passed behind his eyes, stuffing his head as he tried to push them away and latch on to fill them out. But there was no reason to remember that part of his life. He might as well have been as dead as the weeds back on the doorstep.

At least he felt sheltered in here from whatever had gotten his back up out there. He'd been a lot cockier when there were more exit points and hiding spots, but not knowing where that pervasive sense of malignity came from had him more disoriented than a shifty interior. He considered suggesting Nightwing stay back and hold the door, but that was probably excessive. He could already see the stairs' next exit two landings up, washed in a soft red.

Night vision was the one feature he doubled up on without his faceplate, his domino lenses suffusing the cramped space with a darker red sheen instead of the traditional green. If Roy hadn't suggested he customize that particular feature, he might be in danger of embarrassing himself here. There would never be a reason for anyone else to know, much less ask why, but Jason still had the practiced lie of decreased reflective shine ready to go just in case.

He rounded the outer edge of the stairs, leaving scant inches between his back and the handrail when he reached the landing, angling his shot up toward the tiny black window of the door above.

Nightwing was still at the bottom, both hands on his gun and wedging his foot against the door. Apparently, he didn't need to be asked. Red Hood had to remind himself that just because he looked like a baby bonobo holding a shotgun like that, Nightwing was highly capable in the field and a better tactician when working with a partner. Grudgingly, he felt a little better.

Dick waited for eye contact before letting it fall closed, then he pushed it open again to peek out. "Same hall. That's something, at least."

Jason had half a second to agree with Dick's annoying optimism before his shoulders slammed back into the concrete blocks. His skull followed with a crack.

His breath rushed out of him. Body armor dulled his impact with the wall, but spikes of cold shot through his chest as if he wore nothing at all, piercing, squirming through and around him.

He twisted trying to wrench away. His legs refused to follow through, sinking him lower against the wall until he was only propped up by the handrail bruising his tailbone. His spine went rigid, locking up while every muscle in his body started contracting and going slack again and again, the ache and heat fizzing under his skin.

The red in his vision faded. For a terrifying second, he thought he was blacking out, but the sight in his mask flickered back long enough to show the empty stairwell.

Empty except for the bursts of foul, rotten air hitting his lips and nose in heavy, haggard gasps. He couldn't pull in enough breath to make a sound. He managed to tilt his chin up and away, trying to clear his head, but dragging his arm up to shoot in any direction wasn't working.

The air in his lungs seared him from the inside. His sight flickered out again.

"Hood? Hood!" Nightwing's voice closed the distance but still felt further away. "Jason, hold on, breathe ." Jason's head lolled forward, all the movement within his control for a second, and tried to aim a 'do something' glare that direction, but only managed to gag as he saw the source of the writhing tendrils moving up to encircle his throat.

Eyeshine. A broad, flat, mottled face. Bile built up against the external pressure around his throat.

His vision flashed red. Stairwell.

Black. Fingers like centipede legs. A body wrapped in white.

Red. A warm hand cupped his cheek, guiding him firmly down toward a voice. Dick's, he remembered too slowly. Jason's skin prickled with goosebumps, the fuzziness in his brain was scraped away for just a fraction of a moment. He didn't think, he squeezed the trigger.

A flash. Black. Jason felt the extra weight leave his chest and gasped, clutching for the railing behind him to keep from sagging to the floor. It was shocking to feel his body responding normally, adrenalin making his thoughts disjointed. Vertigo swallowed him up in the absolute dark. He found his free hand ripping his domino away rather than digging around for his flashlight like he asked it to. Claustrophobia liked to hijack his body like that.

"Next time, shoot first!" His vocal cords scraped against one another and forced up a cough, but the sound came out without the roughness he expected from his abused windpipe. He brought out his pistol's light attachment and clicked it on without bothering to attach it.

"We can't just go around firing off at empty air!" Nightwing spoke with tight, urgent tones that he narrowly kept from rising in volume. "If we can't see, we're going to have to figure out a system for—"

"Shut up." Something in his tone shut Dick up instantly for once. He was standing close enough still that Jason could feel him freeze. "You didn't see that… that ?"

"No."

He visually raked through the rest of the stairwell, every angle he could see, forcing his breath back into rhythm and his brain out of fight-or-flight.

"Maybe it's only visible to whoever it's attacking." Nightwing suggested. "When it makes physical contact, which…?" He gestured to prompt a confirmation.

"Night vision. I saw it when my lenses crapped out." Jason said and kept glancing at corners he couldn't see while he aimed both his gun and the flashlight downward to slide the attachment onto the pic rail in a practiced motion. The dark was supposed to be on their side, dammit; he didn't like feeling how he imagined goons did when the Bat came down on them. Hunted.

"What exactly did you see?" Nightwing asked as he fiddled with the light on his weapon too.

Jason used that moment to check the back of his helmet for damage. The concrete gave him a hard rattle but didn't leave a mark. He cautiously ran a gloved hand over the raw skin around his neck, the smooth fabric soothing as his body reached the conclusion that it had suffered only minimal damage. The ache in his chest receded a little more with every breath, leaving him with only the adrenalin still coursing through him.

"Fucking hellspawn, obviously." He straightened and adjusted his grip on his pistol, relieved again by the extra weight of the iron, more pronounced still with the attachment added. "I'm going on record that I hate this and you."

The circle of light from Nightwing's weapon stilled momentarily before moving again as he did, taking a step back. "I'll take point this time. Forward or back to ground?"

"I'm fine." Jason moved to cut toward the next flight of stairs. He would be goddamn ready for the next one.

"We should switch off room by room."

He continued his tromping upward, not bothering to argue the point. Wasn't worth it when he was clearly in the wrong. Didn't matter. He still felt electrified and light-headed and it wasn't fading; he wasn't sure if that was a bad thing but part of him wanted to try to hold onto it. He lifted his chin and blew a breath quiet enough to escape Nightwing's notice.

Nightwing's voice was flat as he fell into following. "Do you still have your witch's ladder in place?"

Jason jerked his left arm out to the side hard enough to reveal his wrist at the end of the sleeve, the black threads still clinging where Zatanna had tied them. "Apparently they're good for jack shit." He brought the same hand to the door handle and threw it open without hesitation, ready to unload into anything unlucky enough to be on the other side.

His lips curled automatically at the tang of stagnant hard water seeping out of the room. He swept the beam over textured yellow tiles interlocked by blackened grout, stalls with rust-eaten doors lining the first several feet into the room, all beneath chipped and exposed water pipes that oozed an irregular drip somewhere further back.

Jason sucked on his tongue before shaking his head the tiniest bit. Nope. Veto. He was not walking past any mirrors, over any drains, and he sure as hell wasn't peeking under toilet stall doors for disembodied feet. That was not how this night was going to play out. Even high on the aftereffects of combat, he wasn't that stupid.

Nightwing hopped the last few steps and peered around him, bouncing his flashlight's beam from the ground to the far wall and back down, focusing on a lip on the floor at the threshold to retain an inch of something Jason hoped fervently was at least mostly water. The foggy liquid reflected some of his light to create an eerie phosphorescence.

He couldn't see an exit, but the back wall split into a row of sinks to one side and mottled and moldy partitions on the other, both stretching outside their line of sight.

"Looks like we're closer to hell than Gotham." Jason couldn't logically explain why he was whispering.

"What?"

"There shouldn't be this many stalls and definitely no locks." Based on the pictures he'd found, there shouldn't have been mirrors over the sinks either, but he planned to go right on ignoring those. He relaxed his lips from their sour twist and tested the viscosity of the tepid liquid on the tile floor before easing his way in.

"You did a lot of research into this place." A lilt tinged Dick's tone, asking a question without actually directing it at him. Jason hated it. How it glowed like unwelcome praise and disguised an obligation to answer, but his silence left too much room for inference. He had to scramble for a response that didn't involve telling Dick he should fucking know that shit too if he'd bothered to learn anything about Arkham before shutting people up there, but why should that matter to someone who never faced the possibility of a bunk next to Mr. Freeze or the goddamn Joker? "You never had to read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for school?"

Dick's soft snort sounded directly behind him before he moved to take the right hand row of stalls. "Jeez, maybe… I wasn't exactly concentrating on homework like you did, nerd."

Jason's head twitched a fraction of an inch back in shock as he stepped up to the next door, but the jab was thrown with such… fondness that he didn't feel the spike of anger he immediately expected. Instead, his chest tightened. He fell hard into a memory he'd thought he left buried in that casket, of Alfred tutoring him so he could test into the eighth grade when Bruce decreed he had to go back to school after he hadn't even picked up a book since before his stay in Crime Alley. The dry air of the manor's library, the butler's aged fingers running along a passage from Owl Creek Bridge, the first time anyone in his life had called him insightful. Not quick, not crafty, just… made him feel worth teaching.

Guess everyone made mistakes.

Jason elbowed the first stall door open sharply to reveal a streak-stained toilet. "Clear."

Nightwing echoed him. "Clear."

Which was stupid; they didn't need a call and response. Jason let himself get distracted and fallen into habit and Nightwing was just rolling with it and dammit, Jason hated him for that too. Hated that it felt easy, natural to work around each other. He didn't need to look over his shoulder to see if Nightwing vanished to pursue his own agenda like some others he'd worked with.

Dick just kept prattling on. "It was English lit you liked wasn't it? I remember Alfred bragging when you got called to the principal's office over a 'rather astute' argument with Mr…"

"Mattheson. Clear." Dick once warned him about that one. So Jason had gone in loaded for bear every period and ended up loving the subject by accident. "He hated you."

Why did he say that? Why did he remember that? Useless, sentimental bullshit. And now bleeding heart Dick Grayson was going to—

"Clear."

The tone was soft, but that was all he said. Jason tried to unknot the tightness creeping up his neck and shake off the remaining memories before opening the next door. He should say something, anything to cut through the weird, padded feeling between them and remind Nightwing of exactly why those things were better left in the past, where they couldn't be polluted by a homicidal drug lord—

A warm, solid hand fell on his shoulder with a gentle squeeze.

Jason threw it off, whirling around. " Fuck you."

Dick looked back from where he stood at his own stall, several feet out of arm's reach, his flashlight made a beeline for Jason's chest but stopped short of spiking through his retinas, then jerked to one side when Dick realized who he was pointing a loaded weapon at, lethal or not. "What?" He hissed.

"…Nothing. Nothing wrong. Yet." Jason shook his head. "Thought I heard something." It was a bad lie, his voice unsteady, off-balance, and worse, as he said it a low sound drifted over.

"What do you hear?"

"A… voice, maybe." Hell, he sounded like a nutcase. He sidestepped to look around the nearest corner, passing the last door without sparing it a glance and looking to the row of shower curtains. The ripples in the probably-not-water sounded off his every step but the jumbled mutterings didn't stop.

Dick paused and held his breath, then shook his head. "What's it saying?"

"What? Why?" Warning bells were ringing at even the thought of listening to anything the voice had to say. It was getting louder. Jason had to fight the urge to retreat several steps back. The exit was less than fifteen feet away past the sinks in the opposite direction, and he found himself suddenly agreeing with Dick's earlier assessment that they shouldn't try to fight every single thing in here, since they couldn't plot out a direction anyway.

Dick followed his lead, aiming lower than Jason himself, but continued "In case it's useful."

"Useful how ?"

"I don't know yet, but it might be something."

Because 'I don't want to' wasn't enough reason to drop the conversation, Jason began an approach. He felt uncoordinated, his emotions running ahead of the actual situation. He was prepared, he needed the adrenalin flooding his system right then to wane so he could focus. He held his breath a moment before shaking his head in the negative, catching nothing but gibberish, and biting the bullet to reach for the curtain.

The flashlight's halo illuminated his hand just enough for him to see that his senses were disagreeing on whether the thin fingers he felt closing around his were really there as the fabric waivered under his touch.

The murmurs paused before resuming, faster but no more distinct. The curtain's metal rings screeched as he ripped it aside, training his sight on the fiend within.

They were emanating from a figure with its back to him, fingers laced around the back of its neck, elbows touching, looking for all the world like just… a naked old man. Strands of white hair were slicked across his spotty scalp reflected in the yellow light, making his skin sallow and sickly. The man, the thing Jason reminded himself, didn't even seem to be aware of their presence, rocking gently forward and back, mewing to the showerhead.

Nightwing shifted in his periphery. Jason glanced at him, the way his weapon was at the ready to come open fire on a harmless old man.

He pursed his lips and made the call, shaking his head haltingly, pulling the curtain closed again. There was nothing they needed here. A memory, Zatanna said, something unresolved, not something he needed to break.

He didn't look Dick in the eye when he turned back toward him, fully intending to march out without even a bare-bones explanation.

The washed-out figure stood between them. Its back was still turned toward Jason, but its head tilted up with its fingers curled to dig its fingernails in short scratches, agitated words coming louder now. " —full of lies, " it said. Nightwing stood there, his eyebrows drawn up in concern but fixed over the man's shoulder, on Jason. A cudgel of dread struck below his ribs and he felt a surge of heat and fear and rage run through him. " You lie and they lie and we all lie in the ground ."

Nightwing slowly took one hand off his shotgun far enough to wag his finger in the sign for 'where?' Jason jerked his head to the left and moved to aim.

Dick's eyes never left Jason's as he moved where he was told. He was waiting for something, a signal maybe, Jason didn't know. But between one blink and the next the figure was hunched over Dick's shotgun barrel to scream into his impassive face, saliva flying from broken teeth. " You'll feel it! You'll feel it you'll feel it you'll feel it you'll—! "

Jason fired.

" —a coffin in your size! "

The screaming cut off. Echoes of the gunshot hung in the air then faded to wrap them in silence.

"Clear," Jason sighed finally. "For now."

"Clear enough then." Nightwing gave a hollow half-laugh and eased out of his low crouch. "Was it the same creature?"

Jason breathed so he wouldn't trip over his words. "No. That looked human. Seriously, you didn't see it? Hear it?"

Dick shook his head. "That's two."

"Thanks for the fucking math on—" Jason whipped his flashlight up into Dick's face, without thought, but with a bit of satisfaction as he flinched back from the sudden flare. "Hold up." Anger drained out of him as he caught a glint below Dick's right eye. Jason, suddenly finding himself much closer without realizing it, reached out to wipe it away before halting abruptly. "There's something on your cheek."

Dick cautiously rubbed both sides of his face with the back of his hand, looking down at it with a mix of confusion and trepidation before shifting his gaze back up. "Gone?"

"Gone." He turned away, toward the exit.

"Jay, I'm about to freak out. What was on my face?" Nightwing demanded, belying the statement with absolute composure.

"…Spit."

"It was close enough to spit on me?"

"Yeah, so I'm taking point for the rest of the goddamn night."

He strode further down the row of sinks, making it several steps before Nightwing caught him by the arm. " Jason ." That tone, that pleading bullshit that Dick always used when he thought he could get his way just by being Dick. Jason ripped his arm out of the hold and nearly swung it back to pistol-whip the Golden Boy before catching the outsized reaction. Still, Dick saw it and raised his hands, sliding seamlessly back into his Nightwing voice. "We need to regroup before we go any further. You said that one looked human, what about the one on the stairs?"

"That— Come on." Jason turned away again to collect his thoughts, continuing his push to the exit. He made the definitive call that he was following his instincts until he was back in the car, sensical or not. Don't listen to the patients, don't look in the mirrors, and don't hesitate to shoot no matter what it looks like. "The first one was… humanoid, and wearing, like, a coat. But its face and hands were all… this buggy, bulbous mess. That was just some guy."

"So a creature and a possible haunting. You think it's the differences in the charms Zatanna gave us? We could try—"

"I think Zatanna knew more than she told us." Jason snapped. He couldn't manage Dick right now. He could barely keep a nervous twitch out of his trigger finger. They both knew why it was him . And if Nightwing thought he could get Jason to broach the topic first, he was crazier than… than that time. That year, more, however much. The year of grave dirt and gravel, shadows and painhungercold when he could remember color bleeding back into the world only when he was fighting for his life and then slipping away again until he forgot to be scared of losing it–

"She wouldn't do that."

Jason whirled on him. "No? Be honest 'Wing, when she told you to bring backup, was it you that thought of the dead guy or her?" Nightwing opened his mouth, then closed it. Jason walked away, furious with his own big damn mouth. "Fucking thought so."

"Zatanna? Z, come in." Dick huffed behind him, taking his finger away from his ear. "Of course. Haunted house, no satellite or shortwave."

Something dark waved in the not-water near Jason's foot and he narrowly avoided the embarrassment of flinching at a fist-sized wad of ratted black hair rooted in a drain grate that marked the halfway point around the sinks. Halfway toward an open arch, but the way was blocked in by darkness that strangled his little beam of light before it could pierce any meaningful depth.

Jason was having serious second thoughts about waiting for the other man at this point. "We should keep moving before a clown slithers up the drain." He continued, louder.

He caught movement in the center mirror, slinking from crack to crack, a rolling ripple from the corner of his eye. "Out." He said. "Now."

Moving cautiously, way too fucking slowly, Nightwing eased toward him, his eyes searching for the threat but not asking. He didn't seem to taste the stench that quickly overpowered the stagnant water, a fetid miasma that reeked sharply of pus and gutters. Jason didn't want to acknowledge the thing in the mirror, didn't want Dick to acknowledge it. Instead, he reached out with his free hand and physically ended Dick's hesitation with a rough grab of his shoulder, yanking him around past himself so he didn't have to lose his periphery on the sludge-thing. When Dick went with it, he turned to the door himself and gave the man a stiff-armed shove. "Don't look back." Jason hissed urgently through tight teeth.

Dick obeyed, picking up the pace to a near-jog to splash across the threshold into the mystery room beyond, only taking enough care to be sure Jason was hot on his heels.

As soon as he was through, Nightwing jerked back and rubbed his face, blowing out a hard snort with a shiver. Jason barrelled in behind him and Dick grabbed for a door that didn't match the archway they'd seen from the other side but slammed just the same. Looking around for all the good it would do him, he ran his fingers through his bangs and gave a hacking cough.

Jason was instantly beside him, gripping his hunched shoulder, trying to look at his face without blinding him. "You okay?"

He searched the four corners of the room they'd come barreling into, sending his flashlight in a jumping pattern across the ceiling before lowering it to the furniture scattered about the room.

"Yeah. I just ran face-first into a mess of spiderwebs." Jason snatched his hand back when he realized he was thoughtlessly touching the man for the second time tonight, but it felt more substantial than Nightwing claiming to be fine, like the liars they all were on that front. The touch was grounding, brief as it was.

Trying to reorient, Jason searched the four corners of the room they'd come crashing into, sending his flashlight in a jumping pattern across the floor and ceiling before centering in on the furniture scattered about. Dick shook the liquid from his boots, apparently at ease with Jason's assessment of their safety, and leaned his shotgun against the wall. He bent down to wrap something green around the knob that Jason took a moment to realize was sage. Smart if it worked, pretty silly if it didn't. He prattled. "Gross, I could've had my mouth open."

"Great reason to keep it shut. And reason #23 to wear a helmet, right between concussions and the aesthetic." Jason's mouth was moving ahead of his brain again, but at least what came out this time didn't sound like he should be locked up in here. He let out a breath and forced himself to unclench a little. Then he realized. "Have you seen any spiders? Or cockroaches?" He asked. "Or rat shit."

Dick stood and recollected his shotgun, rubbing his arm in a nervous gesture. "I definitely felt one crawling around under the desk earlier."

"Felt."

Dick's mouth formed a thin line before he disengaged on the topic with 'nope' written in bold letters across his expression. When he moved, metal clicked on the tile floor with his first few steps before his weight shifted. The same sound the iron rivets in his own boots made. Great minds think alike, Jason thought with a sour edge.

He didn't follow Nightwing further into this room. All he wanted to see was a straight track to the next door.

A crib with bars that stood up almost to Jason's full height stood in the quickest path, short beds running along the wall under the barred windows, the glow from it scarcely reaching their ends. When he searched the opposite wall with his mounted light, it was bare aside from a small dresser and single stack of shelves with copies of thin, hardcover books decorated in faded pastels along the topmost ledge, far out of reach of the children trapped here.

Dick stooped to pick up a bundle of rough cloth at his feet and shook it out, into the shape of a tiny straightjacket. "They didn't use these on kids…"

"Of course they did."

"Assuming there's nothing in here yet and we have a minute to catch our breath…" There was just enough moonlight to see his wary expression in profile. "We need a plan to help me fire blind, and it would help if I could understand why."

Even knowing it was coming, Jason's stomach dropped. It's not like he had much to tell. Even less he wanted to.

Mission. Couldn't let civilians get swallowed up because he pussed out.

He moved to the opposite wall, away from Nightwing, restlessness winning over his reluctance to explore the sinister space. "I did play Charlie Charlie once as a kid."

"You played what?"

"Poor man's Ouija. You know, with the paper and pencils? You call up a demon named Charlie and try to make it spin to answer yes or no. Never worked, but maybe I'm overdue."

Dick hummed, a small glimpse of humor tugging at his lips. "My parents were superstitious." He sighed. "I guess we've seen weirder reasoning from interdimensional monsters."

Was the fucker really going to let him get away with that? Jason's heart pounded with a swelling hope, his throat thick with it. It felt like swallowing a baseball; maybe he was injured from being strangled before. He reached up to run his fingers over the bookshelf as though there might be something to investigate, desperate to keep his hands busy. Dick was too good with body language. All Jason could think about with him just looking like that was how very aware he was of his jacket collar on the back of his neck. "I don't remember anything." He blurted.

"What?"

"Coming back. Or before. I don't remember it. Most of it."

He didn't let Dick see him swallow down his sudden case of dry mouth, or the glacial pace he released the breath trapped in his lungs; he curled his hands into fists to cover up his attempt to banish the weird feeling of sweaty palms in his gloves, wishing he could let everything churning over in his head turn to anger again. Anger was safe.

Dick relaxed, sounding utterly at peace with the conversation Jason was sure would ruin him. "What do you remember?"