It was supposed to be just another patrol. Granted, a patrol ending with her holding a traumatized child wasn't that out of the ordinary, but the circumstances surrounding that particular case were a little off.

She'd followed a scream into a darkened underground parking lot and found a scene that was disturbing even for the parts of Gotham she regularly patrolled.

A child had run from the only square of light in the place, crashing into Steph in his haste to escape the howling laughter coming from within. With the child in her arms, she couldn't get her night vision goggles on, so she had to fight with only the glint of the blade to guide her.

She'd handled herself pretty well until more and more attackers had shown up, all of the screaming and howling, the sounds echoing around the enclosed space and disorienting her. On her own she could have dealt with them all, no problem, but the child had a death grip on her cape and it was all she could do to keep them both alive until Dick and Damian had shown up.

For a few minutes, she was too grateful for the reprieve to care that she'd needed the help. But once the gang was put down and the light shed on the scene the scene – via Barbara reactivating the power grid – she felt a feeling she tried not to think about creeping up on her again.

She'd almost been shooed away from the crime scene when Dick poked his head into the room, but she'd refused and regretted it as soon as she got a look.

Trying to coax the child into the ambulance minutes later she shuddered at the memory. The only way she could calm herself enough to get her head back into the game was by reminding herself that none of the corpses had been children.

That was still only long enough to make sure the child got to the hospital. Children or not, those had all been people, likely with others who cared about them. Her eyes drifted over to where Damian was curled up atop a fire escape while Dick spoke to some police officers. Dick hadn't let Damian into that room, and she found herself extremely grateful.

For all his boasting, he was still a child, and a sight like that would have undoubtedly scarred him.

Unfortunately, an upsetting patrol wasn't enough in Bruce's eyes for her to go home early.

In retrospect she should have known they'd go overboard when her little side project was upgraded to full on bat-mission status. She'd made her objections, but almost all of them had been shot down. She drew the line at wearing a wire, even when Tim said that Jason probably though she was wearing one all along. If Bruce wanted to listen in on her visits, he'd have to plant his own bugs because she was very attached to her life thank you very much.

"You literal ass." She sighed when she caught sight of the book in Jason's hands.

"You're up late." The look he shot her was unimpressed and he directed it back at the pages quickly enough.

"Yeah well, I had a bad night." She dragged her stool to her corner, not bothering with her homework. "And technically I'm early."

"You find it too stressful; you shouldn't be running around in tights every night." He turned a page.

"Go back to being quiet." She studied the bowl of unappetizing gruel on his desk. "And give me back my book, I have a report due in five days and I haven't finished reading it yet."

"Too damn bad, finder's keepers, Goldilocks." He underlined a sentence and wrote something in the margin before tucking his pencil back behind his ear.

"Asshole. I'm gonna eat your porridge if you don't hand it over."

"Go ahead, I dare ya." His pencil scratched against the page again. "I don't eat that crap anyway."

"Can't be that bad." She lifted the bowl and scooped up a spoonful of its lukewarm contents. He looked at her without turning his head, a challenging glint in his eyes. She put the spoon in her mouth and her gag reflex kicked in almost immediately and she hurried to spit the travesty against food into Jason's little basin.

Mocking laughter filled the cell as Jason threw an arm over his eyes. Stephanie's ears burned even as she rinsed her mouth out with water that tasted vaguely of broccoli "Oh my god what do they put in that?" She dropped the bowl back on the desk and started rinsing her mouth out again. "It's like chalk and…" she gagged, "…licorice. Why didn't you eat the stuff I brought you instead? I think I'm gonna be sick."

"I can't believe you fucking did that, do you even know what they put in there?" He huffed and stuck her book back under his pillow.

"Do I want to?" Stephanie tried to decide if ridding herself of the lingering taste of the porridge was worth another mouthful of the funny tasting water.

His eyebrows drew together and his mouth opened, but he didn't speak for a few moments, until his face went to it's default – I don't know why I haven't killed you yet – expression.

"Yeah, you're definitely not cut out for the vigilante lifestyle." He rolled his eyes and tucked his hands behind his head.

"Argh." She groaned, scrubbing a hand over the lower part of her face. "Can't you be nice just this once."

"Sorry to tell you, but not strangling you is as nice as I get." His eyes narrowed and his mouth curled into a smirk that sent a shiver down her spine.

"You know what, Big Bad Mister Hood; I'm too tired to deal with you tonight." She threw up her hands. "I'm going home."

"Victory." He said, no emotion in his voice while he drew a line on the wall. His eyes flickered to the bowl on his desk. "You might wanna take a day or two off after that."

"Yeah, yeah, I'll be back and all that you asshole, and you'd better be done with that book when I am."

Stephanie woke up the next day with one of the worst headaches she'd ever had in her life. Her alarms clocks buzzing might as well have been a screeching siren for her frayed nerves. Even the textures of her blanket and hair scratching against her set her on edge.

She ripped the clock from the wall, smashing it to the ground, and immediately regretted it when the clattering of broken pieces had her convinced for a second that there was something waiting to drag her down the hall. The thought startled her, and she shook her head, blaming the string of horror movies she'd marathoned the last time she'd been laid up.

'I'm okay.' She inched her legs slowly over the edge of her bed, immensely grateful for her soft, fluffy shag carpeting. Gripping the fibers between her toes, she took a series of deep breaths that only made her stomach even queasier.

Stepping off her carpet and onto the tiles in her bathroom was like having her feet stabbed by little shards of ice, the pain lacing up her legs all the way to her thighs. She dropped, her knees hitting the ground in front of her bathroom like a sledgehammer. Somehow she got her body angled to the toilet bowl and emptied the meager contents of her stomach into the bowl. Even that felt worse than it should have, like she'd swallowed fire and brimstone.

Tears blurred her vision and she pulled herself into her shower, trying her best to ignore the jagged edges of the uneven tiles she reached up to turn the faucet on and collapsed against the wall. The water rained down on her like hailstones for a while, but forced herself to endure until she was almost used to it.

When the water was freezing enough that she could blame her shaking in the cold she pulled herself sopping wet out of the shower and to her room. Her baggy sleepwear clung uncomfortably to her skin while flopping frustratingly at the same time.

She made a mental checklist of her symptoms, worried for a while that she'd picked up something from that room, but it only took her a few minutes to rule that out.

"Jason." She grumbled, injecting as much animosity as she could into that word in the vain hope that he'd sense her displeasure all the way in Arkham. The asshole was probably laughing his head off while she lay counting the pieces of her broken alarm clock.

Jason wasn't laughing, no matter how funny that clown tough she was. In fact, he was seriously considering doing something that would make his new plans almost impossible to pull off.

"Aw come on, Hoodie." Quinn cooed, trying to wrap her arms around him from behind.

"Get the hell away from me." He growled, disentangling her arm from him and shoving her away from him.

"Hey!" She hopped up, a rage filled frown in her face that disappeared within seconds, replaced with a smile almost as creepy as the Joker's. "You're a bad boy aren't ya?" She skipped forwards again. "Bet it was your Daddy that taught ya to mouth off like that, huh?"

Jason turned to his back was to the wall, preventing her or any of the freaks watching from sneaking up behind him. "Sure." He tried to look bored, maybe a little irritated at her incessant invasion of his personal space.

It had been a while since he'd had to interact with the psychos, and he wasn't anymore prepared for it than he'd been the last few times.

"Don't worry, we can fix it." She reached out, her expression almost tender but for the glint of madness in her eyes. Jason grabbed her wrist before it she could touch him and she giggled despite his tight grip. "Me an my Mister Jay'll knock those bad manners right out of you when he gets back. Can't have our baby bein' such a brat, no siree."

Nausea swirled in his stomach, for a moment making him wish the Joker was never caught and brought back to Arkham again. That he almost preferred that thing on the streets made took it one step further and he had bile rising up his throat. The shock had him releasing Quinn's wrist and almost breaking his composure.

"Your baby?" He scoffed. "I'd tell you to get your head checked, but considering where we are, it's kind of late for that."

"Hmm." She hummed, rubbing her wrist and looking at him with a disconcerting twinkle in her eyes. "Yeah, we'll take real good care a' ya. After all the trouble you went through to get out attention with Mister Jay's old outfit and all. We're actually kind of hurt that you only came to say hi once. Be seeing ya, Baby." She gave a flighty wave and skipped back to join Isely at the tiny pot plant in a corner.

Jason stood in place, keeping up his glare until the other inmates got the hint that the show was over and dispersed. The his hands balled into fists at his sides so tightly that his nails broke through the skin of his palms.

"Fucking hell." He whispered under his breath, forcing back the panic that had begun creeping up on him. Maybe Talia had a point about him needing to leave sooner rather than later.

"You seem, stressed today." The shrink said, tapping the edge of her table with her pen. "Do you want to tell me about it?"

"Sister had a bad day." He mumbled offhandedly, his eyes still fixed on the clock.

"Oh." Her professional frown lifted a little, drawing his attention to the wrinkles above her eyes. "You've never spoken about those visits before."

Jason's tongue roamed over the cuts in his mouth, he didn't really remember biting his gums. "Nothing to say." He watched her face shift again.

"I'm sure there is something to say, she must have plenty of exiting things to tell you." Her pen pressed against her notebook, poised to dredge up some meaning from his reaction.

"She's Batgirl." He shrugged, trying to shift into the mindset he'd had the last time he'd convinced her he was sane. "Can't tell you much."

"Hm, that must worry you a lot, your little sister having such a dangerous hobby." The pen's scratching almost drowned out the clock.

"She can take care of herself."

The shrink kept talking with minimal input from him, but Jason paid just enough attention to get the gist of it. For the first time in months, she wasn't talking about new treatments, or tossing around psychiatric jargon that she thought he couldn't understand just for the hell of it.

She was talking about Blondie. It was enough to raise a few flags for Jason, but the only thing he really cared about was that she wasn't talking about him and didn't expect him to answer.

For the remainder of his session he listened carefully to the comings and goings of the guards that walked by the door, casting glances at the clock to mark the times. To his mild surprise they were very similar to the patterns he'd memorized months ago.

If he had to go by guesswork, he'd have said not many of the other security measures had been changed either. As much as he liked people to think it was, going by guesswork wasn't really his style. To piece something together he needed to weigh what he knew against info that was more precise.

As he was led out of the office, he watched the halls he passed though his long bangs, making sure his memory hadn't been overly scrambled by his long stay.

More precise info. He held the thought while he scribbled down an abstract of the asylums layout on the back of his calendar.

Maybe having the bat-backing wasn't so bad after all. Steph didn't even have to be sneaky about getting a copy of Jason's schedule, all she'd had to do was ask, really, that was it. And she could show up whenever she wanted without having to put up with the overly long check through.

For the first time in weeks she'd brought something edible along with her and a new plan. Even of she had to stay up freakishly late to make it work.

She arrived around the same time as she had her last visit, just in time to get to Jason's porridge before he did.

"Before you ask, yes I'm still really mad that you didn't tell me what was in this stuff." She looked him over, but his eyes were fixed on her book.

"Sensory overload sucks huh?" He brought the tip of his stolen pencil to his lips.

"Yeah it sucks, I still had to go on patrol that night, because everyone thought I was just freaked out by the case." That had been annoying. Especially because she couldn't tell them what was really wrong without telling them that she'd been dumb enough willingly put Arkham food in her mouth. "But I guess you're right about not expecting you to be nice."

She lifted the bowl from the desk, and this drew his attention from the book. The look on his face was almost incredulous, but he didn't do anything to stop her.

"No, I'm not eating it again." She tossed the contents of the bowl down the drain and rinsed it out. "And since you don't eat it anyway, no one'll yell at me for throwing away your medicine. Now close your eyes or look away or something."

He did, shifting his attention back to the book, her book.

She stomped down her frustration again and pulled a pack of cereal out of her bag, along with a flask of milk. The refilled bowl was set back on his desk in the exact same position as she'd found it.

"There, now you can pretend the lunch ladies forgot to put that gross stuff in it." She said, gesturing proudly to her work while trying to stifle a yawn.

Jason's snort sounded suspiciously close to a laugh, and his lips curled up for a second before he turned a blank stare in her.

"I poisoned you, and you're still doing this?" He asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Yeah, we've already established that you're an asshole, but you're an asshole with my book, and I need it back for school remember, so I'm hoping I can make you a little less of an asshole."

He looked her in the eye while he wrote something else in the book.

"I brought this along too." She got out another book, this one some French title that Alfred said the second Robin had liked. She tossed the book in the air and caught it with a smirk. "So let's negotiate, huh?"

Jason looked at her for a second, then his eyes roamed over to the bowl, and the book before stopping at her again.

"You have any more problems with Scholz?" He asked, shutting the book, but keeping a firm hold on it with one hand.

Steph was taken aback by the question, Jason never asked her questions and she was immediately suspicious. "Did you do something to him?" Her eyes narrowed and flickered around the room, half-expecting to see a body part stashed somewhere.

"No. God Blondie, now who's being fucking morbid?" He looked genuinely offended, and cracked the book open with a frown, angrily going back to writing.

She still felt the need to check that the creep was still kicking, but Bruce would tell her if Jason had killed someone recently, right? That was if Bruce even knew. Wasn't he supposed to know everything? That just brought her back to the question of him telling her. He wouldn't want to scare her off going to Arkham though, would he? Her train of thought ran in circles for a few minutes while Jason kept reading on reading like she wasn't struggling with a question that was, unanswerable without leaving.

"I haven't come during his shifts since last time." She said eventually, flipping the pages of the book she was holding. "You wanna trade books."

"You aren't scared of getting my creepy serial killer germs all over your hands?" He almost spat the words out, a sharp contrast to the calm on his face.

She refrained from pointing out how if he hadn't become a serial killer he wouldn't have the creepy serial killer germs to begin with, but she wasn't going to shut away her suspicions until she knew that Schools was alive.

"So you don't want…" She read over the title of the book and decided not to chance reading it aloud. "This thing?" She held it over him.

He lifted an arm, and she was pretty sure he was going to hit the book out of her hand, but he slowed down right before the strike would have connected and plucked the book out of her hands, holding out 'Oliver Twist' in its place.

She gingerly accepted the book, and tucked it into her bag while he started reading the French one in silence.

"So, I was uh, bodyguarding this kid tonight." She pulled the chair to her corner, more for something to do than that she really wanted to sit. "It's, we found him the other night. Well I found him, and he's scared of the others, so I'm watching him after hours. He's the only witness we have, but he's too scared to talk, Red Robin says he'd selectively mute, cause of the shock, you know?"

"You allowed to talk about your casework?" Jason asked, a confrontational edge to his voice.

"They don't tell me what to talk about." She pulled up a spark of the anger she'd felt earlier and tried to glare at him. She gave that up when her response didn't get anymore that a scoff from him. With a sigh she checked the time. Still early enough that she could get a few hours of sleep before her first class if she made left right then.

"And if they did tell me what to talk about, I'd just say the exact opposite anyway, 'cause that's kinda my M.O"

"Just get the fuck to bed before you pass out in my cell." He said. "I don't want them banging down my door for drugging you."

"Okay, fine, I'm going, but not because you told me to." She yawned before jumping to her feet. Why did it have to be his breakfast that was drugged? Any other meal and her plan would have been so much easier to pull off.

"Sure." He drew a line on the wall besides the one he'd made on her last visit.

"That'd better not be a tally." She said in lieu of a goodbye.

The next day she got up two hours before her classes started so she could make some headway in reading 'Oliver Twist'. She was surprised when she found there wasn't a page that didn't have some notation in its margins.

There were notes on the commentary that Jason must have found interesting and all the old timey words were underlined, with a neat line leading to the definition along with a bunch on synonyms.

By the time she went to class, she hadn't gotten very far with the actual reading assignment, her attention too drawn to the little notes Jason had left behind.