Jason was different the next time Stephanie visited, but not in any way she could have put in words had anyone asked her to describe it. He was just… off.

When she walked in he didn't even look at her. Now she wouldn't have found that at all weird during her earlier visits. Jason acted like she wasn't there plenty of times.

'Jason acted' like she wasn't there, but there really wasn't any more of a question as to how closely he watched her as there was whether she was there at all. Taking your eyes off a potential threat was a big no-no, and the first lesson Batman pounded into them was that everyone was a potential threat.

She didn't know how she knew, but it was like Jason didn't notice her presence at all until she was within striking range. Maybe it was because he didn't even have a book in his hands or his face tucked under his pillow to distract from the fact that he was focusing on something far away from the little cell that was almost his whole world.

"Happy almost solved the case day." She proclaimed, cheerfully setting down the icing covered monstrosity she'd slaved for three hours under the watchful eye of her mother.

All the attention awarded her creation was a dismissive glance before is dimmed teal eyes refocused on the wall. Okay, the small cake looked like something out of a low budget horror movie, but that was exactly why she'd been expecting mockery of some sort at the very least.

"I hope you're not this moody on 'Actually solved the case day'."An unused batarang made as good a cake knife as anything, and she set about dividing the cake into ten even slices.

"Leave me alone." He didn't acknowledge the paper plate she slid towards him at all.

Unless he was sleeping or pretending to sleep – Steph couldn't tell the difference and doubted it mattered with a former street rat – Jason at least looked at everything she tried getting close to him, another of those potential threat things. In their line of work it could have been a bomb for all he knew.

"It's just cake." Steph pulled out her stool a little more cautiously that she had her last few visits, weary of breaking him from whatever trance he was in. Just looking at him was enough to tell he wouldn't be playing any games with her that early morning.

While she sat in silence, the chutes and ladders board stayed in her bag and she scooped up a mouthful of the cake, ugly green icing and all with one of the rainbow colored plastic sporks she almost hadn't gotten in.

"I was gonna use a box mix, but then it wouldn't be a celebration cake, it would've been a… box cake I guess. So I got a recipe online, comments said it'd turn out good, but you know." She waved her spork around while she chewed. "It's not bad though, try a bite."

With a short shake of his head and a long suffering sigh – freaking drama queen – Jason lifted his plastic spork and took exactly one bite of his cake before pushing it away, his face turning a little green as soon as he swallowed.

"Fuck." He pressed one hand over his mouth, looking at her like she was the devil incarnate. "Happy?"

"It's not that bad!" Steph accused, taking another bite to prove her point. "Couldn't you just this once not be so mean?"

Jason groaned and scrubbed a hand over his face, drawing attention to the increased prominence of the bags under his eyes. "It's not the taste." He admitted in that 'pulling teeth' tone again. "Fucking Arkham's monitoring my food intake." He dropped the plate on his desk with a barely disguised – but hey, he tried to disguise it – scowl on his face.

It was kinda funny, until Steph realized what it meant that he 'had' to eat that stuff now. Her cheeks went a little red when she remembered the time she'd been stupid enough to try some of that stuff and she still remember the almost crippling sensory overload she'd experienced after that one bite. She hadn't wanted to eat anything that whole day.

"But breakfast's only in two hours?" She set her empty plate beside his full one.

"Been eight hours since dinner." Jason nestled himself into the corner his bed was pressed up against, grumbling a little to himself before his eyes went vacant again.

"Is it even legal for them to drug everything you eat?" She lowered her voice to just above a whisper. If his reaction to that stuff was anything like hers had been, he'd have a killer headache right then, but something to take his mind off it was better than silence.

He rolled his eyes and went back to staring at nothing, tucking his knees against his chest and folding his arms on top of them to pillow his head. "What do you think?"

Of course it was legal, she leaned a bit into her own corner. She was sitting in an asylum for the criminally insane, Jason was criminally insane and wouldn't take the drugs any other way. It was just the kind of thing that happened in those kinds of places to people who were as uncooperative as him.

"You're not reading today?" She said in that same soft tone, like there was some big secret she didn't want anyone else to hear. "Did you fill up the pages with your cute little notes already?"

"It sucks you're not up to the cake, cause it's awesome, and I put a lot of work into it, not the actual missing and stuff, but my mom. She was all 'Why are you baking a cake so late at night Ste… Batgirl,' then I told her I wanted it fresh because warm cake is best, so she said 'I'm sorry, why do you need a 'fresh' cake so late at night?' so I said it was a school thing, but I'm two hours early tonight cause I could tell she didn't believe, so I high tailed my cute ass outta there, so…"

"Sentence structure Blondie." Jason groaned, slumping over so he was laying on his side. "If you're not going to stop bothering me at least do it right."

"I you keep interrupting my stories, I'm not telling you anymore." Her last few words were punctuated by the wagging of her index finger, a move she saw often from disappointed professors.

"Heaven forbid." He uncurled a bit and shifted his head to his pillow with a sigh.

"You're such an asshole." She said, her chest lightening a little now that he was acting a little more like himself. Only a little though, because she knew even then that Jason was one hell of an actor, even if she didn't know yet just how good.

.

.

.

The light still blinked out of time, and Jason hated it more and more with each passing hour. A night ago it had occurred to him that the blinks might be some kind of coded message, but even then he didn't find any meaning in the erratic pattern.

Picking at the crescent scabs in his palms, he kept his eyes on that light. Such a simple thing, yet it infuriated him. He wanted the cell lights to come on, wash out the blinking even a little while at the same time he dreaded it.

Blink, pause, blink, blink, blink, pause, blink, pause, pause…

It kept on, and even though he couldn't bring himself to lay down, he pressed his pillow into his face hard enough to suffocate him.

He was light headed by the time she stepped into his cell, and not entirely sure how aware he was. It didn't matter too much though, by the time she skipped – fucking skipped, her had to blink a few times to make sure his suffocation attempt hadn't given him brain damage – over to his stool, he was as aware as ever.

"You'll never guess what you're lead turned up!" She excitedly punched at an invisible target in the air, a huge grin on her face.

"No." That case again, just looking at her was like some sadistic fuck had opened the curtains on a bright afternoon after he'd spent the night concussed. It left him with a migraine out of the seventh hell and steadily building nausea. He pressed his face back into his pillow to block out the imaginary light and maybe get a few more minutes of not-sleep.

"Don't be an ass." She set something down in the desk and started unscrewing the cap. "Come on, I made it myself…"

"So reassuring," he peeked up from his pillow to watch her reaction.

"…because the store didn't stock what I wanted." The second half of her statement was much less cheery that the first had been. She held a steaming cut to him while pinching the bridge of her nose with her other hand. "It's ginger and chamomile and peppermint and a bunch of spices that'll help you feel better. I mixed it all, so I know it doesn't have any weird chemicals or whatever."

Jason eyed the cup skeptically, he'd almost thrown up the last thing she'd gotten him to eat, and he wasn't keen on trying something else that rich, even without the risk of some kind of poisoning. When he didn't take the cup from her, she set next to the thermos on his desk and drew her stool to her corner.

The smell wafted up to him, and thankfully didn't make him any more nauseous, but he was too tired to either pick it up, or push it further away from him, so he just left it where it was. He guards would take it away when he was taken to the common room just like they did almost all the things Blondie left in his cell.

Now they were assholes, would probably be Jeremiahs flunkies the next time too.

…

Actually some tea wasn't that bad of an idea. If for no reason other than the water in the taps was worse than anything Blondie could cook up.

She was talking again while he lifted the cup, careful not to spill any over the side.

"… a nurse, so she knows these kinda things, but now she thinks I have pregnant friend who craves cake at ungodly hours and she said I'm lucky I'm not a guy, but…" Her face scrunched up like an old leaf and she drew her hands up to cover it. "…Oh I just got what she meant by that." She let out a high-pitched keening sound.

The genuine emotion, and not the kind that came from having an embarrassing parent, drew Jason's attention from the tendrils of steam curling out of the pungent scented liquid in his hands. A question was on the tip of his tongue, but he washed it down with a sip of the tea, finding he'd rather not know.

"I wanted to put some honey in it, but…" She trialed off and pulled out her schoolbooks. "So we got the analyses back on the drugs we lifted from Billyboy's hovel, wanna know what we found?"

"An opiate-venom compound." He swirled the tea around his cup just so he could move his hands.

"An opiate-venom compound." She tilted her head from side-to-side while she spoke in a guttural voice, he really hoped that wasn't supposed to be an impression of him – he didn't do that thing with his head. "I thought you don't know anything about the scene out there."

"I can guess." Jason read through some of the notes he'd made in the page borders. "I wouldn't have told ya 'bout him if I didn't have an idea what he was up to."

"Did you guess he had ninjas?" She asked, her eyes narrowing ever so slightly.

"Yes." He lied, he'd had no idea Billy would have hired bodyguards, but there was no reason she had to know that. How would such a low ranking looser even get the money for something like that? Unless they'd been fakes or, he'd have guessed a street gang that just called themselves ninja's, but she'd described them in detail when she'd told him about the meeting…

Only she'd described the using very generic terms, and there were many groups who could fit her 'ninja' mold, even if they had nothing beyond face-coverings in common with Japanese assassins.

"Now Batman is off tracking Bane down, big Batman, not Nightwing, so I can get away with sneaking homemade tea into Arkham, fun times they are a here." She chuckled and started on her homework.

"He trusts Dickwing to watch his city?" Jason asked, calmly taking a sip of his tea while inside he could feel his heart rate speeding up.

"Yeah, well he did it before, and Big B's not really gone yet, just too wrapped up in front of that computer to notice anything." She shrugged, the pursing of her lips somewhere between a pout and a smile.

Another time he might have found that amusing, but right then all the only part of that situation he could care about was that Bruce was looking for Bane, and that when he found out where the man was he'd leave Gotham to find him.

Bane wasn't an idiot, for his boasting he was no Bruce Wayne, but definitely not an idiot. The guy knew how to keep himself hidden when he needed to be, and if he was involving himself in the Gotham drug trade he would definitely be sliding towards that school of thought.

Thing was, no matter how well bane hid himself, he knew he was at the 'League of Shadow's' beck and call, just like anyone who'd ever worked for Ras, and he had to be careful not to hide himself from them too, or there would be consequences. Jason himself had a few scars that could attest to that, and he'd never even been on old Dustballs al Ghul's payroll.

"I'm surprised they're chasing it." Jason finished the tea off, it was cold but he barely noticed, there were more important things on his mind than the chemical cocktail in his bloodstream. "Ida though they'd toss any info from me out on its ass."

"We've gotten leads from worse places." She was looking around the cell again, like there was actually something interesting about the bare cell. "Man I'm not looking forward to checking out tonight, those guards are even more hardass about their 'procedures,'" A deaf man would have heard those airquotes, "than usual. A visitor stole a bunch of their phones or something, and when I told em I didn't deal with things like that, and they're all pissed with me. Not Scholz though," she grinned, "he's still too scared to so much as look at me, now if there was just some way you could work your magic on this guy in my chem class…"

.

.

.

Batman, the real one, not Dick, had been the only snare in his plan, requiring the extra fortnight's worth of work for Jason to come up with plan he was reasonably sure would work. Without Bruce, he had all he needed to bust out, and now thanks to the stupidity of a scumbag who'd barely been on his radar before, he might have gotten what he needed to take Batman out of the equation entirely.

He was almost so wrapped up in his thoughts that he didn't notice the turn Dumbasses number one and two led him down when they came to collect him for his session with Jeremiah.

Silent as the grave was a funny expression, and in Jason's case was extremely inaccurate… blood… wood… dirt… screaming for… Jason stomped on those thoughts like they were a glass and he a Jewish groom.

Damned drugs messing with his head again.

Anyway, he would never in his life use that expression unless he was sure it would get a response out of certain people who he wasn't likely to see very soon, if ever. Thing was, the halls they walked though were gravely quiet. It wasn't funny but almost prompted a chuckle from Jason anyway, yeah he was definitely setting something on fire when he left.

Fuck, he forced a smile off his face. Two days on that crap and he was already losing his ability to keep his train of thought on track for more than two minutes. That it'd only been three hours since he'd last eaten wasn't helping matters at all.

There halls were empty, no guards, no shambling patients, it was so quiet that the echoing of his footsteps almost had Jason feeling sacrilegious.

Eerie, but not the reason he had dread pooling in his gut with every step. Going on the layout he'd memorized what felt forever ago, the list of places they were leading him to were places that everything he'd done since Bruce had denied him a transfer had been to keep him out of.

Surgery, said a sign decorated with a blood red cross. In a room labeled Recovery, he caught a glance at rows of empty beds.

Past all the doors he went, not once breaking his confident stride. A scare tactic, the front of his mind reasoned, Jeremiah just wanted to show his threats should be taken seriously. It took a few minutes of even breaths, and staring down that door as they approached to convince the back of his mind of the same thing.

The door opened and he was treated to the sight if Doctor Jeremiah Arkham in a fucking lab coat, syringe in hand. Jason chose irritation over the myriad emotions raging through his blood.

"I've been cooperating." Jason said, clenching his fists at his side and refusing to take so much as a step forward. "I've done…"

"To feed the delusion that you have any sort of control over this situation." Jeremiah said evenly. "You have to understand the only way you can gain any real control is to let us do our jobs and help you."

Yeah, fuck no. Jason didn't take a step back, didn't so much as flinch when Arkham approached with the needle, but he squared his shoulders to show that he was more than prepared to fight if that thing got anywhere near him. 'Try it, I dare you.' His posture practically screamed when he locked eyes with the doctor.

"This," Jeremiah waved his arm at defiant patient in front of him, "is exactly why you need this," he held up the needle. "If you keep resisting I'm not above sedating you."

"Go to hell." Jason struck, knocking the syringe out of the Doctors hand before anyone else even noticed him move, it flew across the room and shattered against the wall, little pieces dropping to the floor along with the liquid, making a sound akin to tiny chiming bells.

Jeremiah seethed, his face reddening, but all he did was nod and Dumbass number two's hold on Jason shifted, arms moving to put the boy in a viselike grip. Number one went to get a breathing mask off a nearby shelf and tried to press it against Jason's face.

Too weak from those drugs to properly defend himself, Jason was reduced to ducking his head away from the device.

"You Asshole!" Jason bucked in Two's hold, forcing down any feeling but rage. "You do keep trying this and I swear you'll regret it." His eyes searched for the camera he knew had to be there, but he couldn't find it. Not a hint of the blinking red dot anywhere in the room. It had to be behind One's grotesque head. "There were already drugs in the food, you said if I ate it…"

"I said nothing of the sort, I diagnosed you and this is the cure."

Number two got the mask over Jason's face and he boy held his breath while Arkham approached with a fresh needle. With a surge of strength born of a sudden spike of adrenaline, Jason broke out of Number one's hold by drooping to the ground and skidding away.

"You have no right Arkham." Jason said, his breath hitching on the last word.

"On the…"

"Shut the hell up!" Jason stood, resisting the urge to lean against the wall and the little bits of glass in his left arm – when the hell had that happened? – he wasn't letting the old man interrupt him again. "In cases where he patient is incapable of deciding for themselves, all new treatment plans need the approval of a legal proxy." Jason's breathing was still shallow, but evening out with every second, his growing anxiety being forced back. "You don't have the right."

Arkham stared Jason down, his face flickering through an interesting variety of emotions before finally settling on cold fury.

"Well played, boy." He set the syringe on a metal table with a loud 'chink'. "Return the patient to his room while I contact the necessary authorities."

Jason, his heart still beating heavily in his chest let the men lead him back to his cell. As soon as the door shut behind him and he was alone as he ever got he tumbled onto the bed. There was no way he was dying of an overdose in kennel of freaks.

Ten hours later Batgirl showed up all smiles and pointless stories, another thermos of tea in hand.

Jason told her where to find Bane.