CHAPTER SIX
"Hello?" Gia answers the phone, seeing Jason's name flash across her screen as she shuts the door of their apartment, Rambo barking and carrying on until he sees it's her.
"Hey," he replies, falling back on the bed in his hotel room, "I was about to go out but I wanted to call and check on you." He says.
"I'm good," she says to him, taking a deep breath.
"Are you sure?" He asks, raising his brows, and she rubs her lips together.
"Yeah, I'm sure." She replies calmly, patting Rambo on the head.
"Are you staying with your brother?" He asks next and she lets out a breath.
"I'm fine here, Jason." She assures him and he closes his eyes, sitting up and rubbing his forehead.
"Gia…"
"...I'm okay. I feel okay. I'm doing okay."
He can't bring himself to argue with her, despite knowing she's lying.
"Besides, you'll only be gone for two more days." She adds.
"Yeah, and I've been a total of fourteen hours and you're already stirring up trouble." He smiles to himself and she tenses up, her heart stopping momentarily.
"W-What?"
"Oh, c'mon, like Bruce wouldn't call me and tell me to get you in check after you basically told him to go fuck himself in front of his room of important assholes." He chuckles.
"Oh," she sighs with relief, taking a breath, "I didn't mean to be like that, I just got frustrated." She admits.
"He's not trying to be an ass, babe." Jason says cautiously.
"I know he's not."
They're quiet for a moment.
"I really miss you." He tells her, honestly, and she feels guilty.
"I really miss you, too." She replies. "Just be careful and you'll be back here before you know it."
"I'm always careful." He states. "It's you I'm worried about."
"I'm okay, Jason." Her voice shakes and he doesn't miss it.
"Are you crying?" He asks next, feeling bad for not being there.
"I've been like this all day off and on." She laughs it off. "Just me being a pussy."
"I'm really sorry, Gia." He says. "I can talk to Bruce about—"
"—No, it's okay." She promises. "I'm just moody, I guess."
"Get some rest, alright?"
"Yeah." She smiles softly, stepping to their room and taking her shoes off.
"I'll see you when I get home."
"I'll see you then." She replies.
"Goodnight, Gia. I love you."
"I love you, too, Jason."
Her words bring a little smile to his face, filling the little void not seeing her today has made.
They hang up, and she starts cursing herself as he puts his phone down on the bedside table and rakes his hands through his hair.
The next day, Bruce quickly steps down the hallway of Wayne Biotech, avoiding running into movers as they push crates on carts past him coming from the direction of the lab Gia worked out of.
He gets to the doorway, seeing Gia carefully placing a snake into one of the crates with tongs.
"What the hell are you doing?" He asks her, stepping into the lab and she looks up at him.
"Getting my snakes. They're transferring to Arkham Asylum." She explains.
"Arkham?" Bruce furrows his brows.
"I spoke to Jeremiah last night, he's carrying out my research." She adds.
"What?"
"I handed the rights of it over to him."
"There are no rights, it's public domain, Gia." He argues.
"According to the D.A., once it's gone through trial and error and is successful at curing cancer, these big companies will be dying to slap their name on one and start selling it, and will pay whatever price they can pay. In that case, it is patented if we file for it—and we're in the process of doing such—and he will be the one with the credit, and he will be the one getting money for it. Not me. Not Wayne Biotech. Not Wayne Chemicals. Him and his associates. I refuse to leave any loophole for you to find a way to make money off of it."
"Is that your final 'fuck you,' to me, or something?" Bruce asks her, rolling his jaw.
He's not mad she's handing it over to someone else, he's mad she thinks he cares about the money.
Not yet, she thinks to herself, pushing past him to leave with the last of her snakes.
"What the hell does a psychiatric ward doctor want with that, anyway? Does he even have access to the resources he needs?"
"I don't know the details." She lies.
"I'm sure you don't." He states, knowing she's up to something.
She doesn't answer, breathing out and pushing past him as the last snake is wheeled out.
13 YEARS AGO
Jason exhales as his feet touch the ledge of the hotel building, Gia shakily gripping to the concrete wall as best as she can.
"You're okay, Gia, you're doing good." He tells her, as he crouches down. "Alright, come on." he says gently and she tries to breathe as best as she can, giving him her hand. "Alright, hold on tight," he tells her and she nods as he holds tightly to her hand. "Okay, one, two, three," she carefully steps off the ledge as he grips her hand and uses her velocity to swing her to the next ledge down.
She takes a breath of relief when she feels the tips of her bare toes touch it as Jason crouches down so she can reach.
She discarded her heels when she realized she'd have to balance on the side of a building.
"Two down, fourteen to go." Jason comments lightly as he skillfully gets himself down to the same story Gia's on.
They've been hearing stray gunshots from inside every now and then...he's been hoping Bruce, Dick, and Barbara are being quick about it.
He lets her take a moment before saying, "we'll be down before you know it," urging her to grasp his hand again.
Neither of them have taken notice to the fact that the first thirteen floors are regular hotel rooms, and not suites, which is a cause for more windows lined up closer together.
Neither of them notice this until Gia's hanging from Jason's hand, her toes merely ghosting against the concrete ledge along the bottom of the window…
The window shatters, startling Gia and she gasps as she slips and lets go of Jason's hand, screaming for only a millisecond until she's caught.
Jason's heart sinks as he leans over.
The Joker whistles down at her, his bloodied hand holding tightly to Gia's as she hangs.
Jason sees something from the corner of his eye, sighing out when he sees Dick a few stories above them on the balcony railing with a grappling gun.
The Joker leans out of the window, only making Gia more nervous as her hand slowly starts to slip from the sticky bloodied palm of the clown.
PRESENT
Gia bites her teeth together when the stark white hand roughly grabs her's and shoves her sleeve up her forearm.
Needle, transfer tube, and blood collection vial on the table beside where she's sitting.
He feels around for a good vein, deciding she doesn't have any before trying the other arm.
Taking note that her arms are so frail he could probably snap one in half with his hands, he grins at the thought, sending an uneasy chill up her spine to her neck, making her wince.
He glances down at her feet, tucked safely into heels, eyes a vein on the top of her right foot.
Gia digs her nails into her palms when he tightly grabs her ankle and pulls it off of her foot.
She instinctively tries to pull her foot away, to no avail, his eyes slowly flickering to her as his jaw tightens as if saying, "I dare you to try to get away."
It doesn't take but a moment to realize he's going for the vein in her foot and she calms down for a moment before he's gently isolating the vein, his careful movements a stark contrast to him practically manhandling the way he shoves the needle into her skin, the abrupt pinch and sting making her take a sharp breath, her eyes squeezing closed as he audibly chuckles to himself, making her tempted to kick him in the face with her other foot, but she decides against it.
She glances up to the window in the lab where the guards are carefully watching the two of them.
"Something else about this…" She starts softly to him.
"Hmm," is all he says in response, watching her blood flow into the tube.
"...I'm not using test subjects for this." She tells him and he looks at her. "There's no test run. As soon as you get it how you believe it's how it should be, I'm administering it." She adds.
This gets him to look at her.
"Does Arkham know that?" He asks through his teeth, knowing they can hear them if they're not careful, and she shakes her head, just slightly.
This detail makes him even more happy to oblige.
13 YEARS AGO
"This is sad," the madman comments, curling his lip as he grabs his hand gun from his holster. "But fuck it."
"No!" Gia barks out, panicking, before Joker shoots as best as he can in the general direction Gia was hanging from.
He smiles when he hears a sharp punch of skin.
Jason looks down at the hole in his chest before looking at Dick one last time before he gets light headed and falls.
Once Joker sees the vigilante dive after him, he sarcastically puts his other hand above his eyes to curve the city lights around them so he can see the two men falling freely before he's pulling Gia up harshly, her disparaging shrieks music to his ears.
She gets cut up by the window that's been left in shambles as she's pulled into the room, Joker keeping a tight grip on her arm to keep her from straying.
He can feel her shaking, her dress torn from the ragged edges of glass she was pulled up against, a deep gash in her stomach that she's trying to keep her arm over to get some pressure on it.
She can't feel it due to adrenaline, but she knows she'll feel it in a matter of moments.
"Now, to put it lightly," Joker mumbles, grabbing James' phone from his pocket, scrolling until he gets to Renee Montoya.
"Joker, we're not playing games with you." Renee immediately cuts through the bullshit as she scrambles in front of the Plaza that's currently been declared a hostage situation, waving Gordon over when he looks at her from a few feet away, his heart picking up rapidly when he discovers who she's on the phone with.
"I think now would be a good time to ask me how high I want you to jump." Joker cuts back, his eyes flickering down to Gia.
"Why's that?" Montoya questions, dreading his answer.
"I can see why Gordon's been hiding baby sister away all this time. She's far too pretty for a place like Gotham—especially being the commissioner's sister, too enticing of a target to pass up." He sneers through bitter teeth, resisting the urge to choke her out right here, right now.
The color drains of Renee's face, and Gordon takes a breath, catching his temper before grabbing the phone from her.
"How high?" Gordon demands into the receiver.
The clown looks at Gia again, smiling at her, his hand—busted up from punching through the thick glass of the window—brushing against her cheek, making her skin crawl.
"Joker." Jim snaps after the line is silent for a moment.
Joker's paper-white thumb brushes over the 'end call' button, before he hangs up, not breaking eye contact with her, dropping the phone and giving it a heavy step under his shoe, causing it to break.
PRESENT
Gia feels her stomach turn as she watches her blood being examined in the multiple little tubes of samples her accomplice has taken, now holding them up to the light to see it better.
It's odd for him to see it so isolated.
He's only ever pictured it splattered about wherever he's left her to die and rot for her brother to find.
"Which one?" He asks flatly, still looking at his specimen, and she glances at the snakes in the corner, barely enough room for them to all fit in here, but Jeremiah made it work.
"The taipan, she's on the bottom." She replies.
"What's the point of having them all here if you're not gonna use them?" He asks next and she furrows her brows.
"Excuse me?"
"Just a thought."
"A reckless one." She doesn't hesitate to cut him down and he glares at her from the corner of his eye.
"I wasn't aware you were under the impression you were in kahoots with Mr. Caution." He mumbles.
"I wasn't aware you were under the impression that I actually want to die." She spits back.
"You're placing your trust in me. Let that speak for itself." He points out brutally.
Jason winces as he tries to doctor his own wound, half-assing stitches into his arm where he was caught up in a barbed wire fence in an attempt at breaking and entering...and possibly killing.
"Let's, like, not do that again." Roy harper comments as he gets out of the bathroom, covered in his own share of cuts.
"This is the second night in a row I've been here and we haven't gotten them." Jason grumbles out, raising his brows.
"I know, alright, but I swear tomorrow night, we've got it in the bag." Roy states.
"We better because I'm not staying here another night. We're finishing this tomorrow night and then I'm immediately getting back home."
"Dude, you used to love this stuff. You'd hang around for weeks and just tear shit up with me." Roy recalls the first few years after Jason's resurrection, and Jason exhales, finishing his stitches.
"I can't afford to stay here and tear shit up, Roy." He replies, honestly, trying not to worry about Gia anymore.
If she were in trouble, she'd let him know.
"Yeah, I picked up on that." He chuckles as Jason checks his phone to see if Gia texted him back.
She hasn't.
"I doubt she's gonna croak while you're gone." Roy adds and Jason stands up, getting his boots off, ignoring him.
"Yeah." Jason mumbles, going to the bathroom to shower next.
"She managed to stay alive while you were 'dead,' I think she'll be okay if you had to stay another night." He adds.
"Roy, I told you. Tomorrow. That's it. If we can't get your guy by then, then look for someone else for the job." Jason gruffly states, not leaving room for an argument.
Roy just breathes out and goes to the door.
"I'm calling it a night," He tells Jason. "See you tomorrow."
"Later." Jason replies, shutting the bathroom door and leaning against it, staring in the mirror at himself. "Fuck." He grumbles, eyeing the stitches.
He figures they'll be ready to take out by this time tomorrow night.
His phone dings on the bathroom counter and he picks it up to see a text.
Gia: We need to talk.
He furrows his brows, deciding to call her.