"I'm gonna kill him." Steph growled under her breath, barely feeling the tiny needle of rain that stabbed into her face.
'Calm down Batgirl.' There was less of the stern authority in Bab's tone than usual, her attempt at being soothing without coddling on the job. 'We don't know yet that he did anything wrong.'
"I know he did." She'd been questioning evasive Arkham staff all night and she wasn't in the mood for false platitudes,
Jason had always been a little more open with her in days after his therapy sessions. It had been easy to believe the shrinks were actually helping him.
After reading through that file through, Steph could see how he would have wanted a distraction on those days. Harder to explain away how off he'd been the last few days before he'd gone missing, and no Bab's, Steph was sure Jason was as big and scary as they said, but no way had he gotten up and walked off all those drugs.
Narcoleptics and benzodiazepines and that whole spectrum of junk she couldn't even pronounce in her mind. Tim didn't have to tell her it could have killed Jason, she was sure the stuff had damn near killed her and she was ten times as healthy as a guy who'd been starving himself to avoid those effects.
Steph had to reel in her line mid swing to keep from dropping to the busy streets below. Her knees hit the rails at the edge of a rooftop hard enough to leave a nasty bruise, but she barely felt it, pulling herself up to sit on the thin metal bar.
Babs said they had to wait for Bruce to get back, because only he would know if anything criminal had happened. The paranoid bastard had locked away any real information under his personal clearance level, and wouldn't let any of them access it.
They had no way of knowing Arkham had done anything criminal regarding Jason without checking to see if the drugs had been signed off on by a legal proxy.
Jason had come back to life after all, who knew what kind of resistances he had to normal medications? The drugs could have been necessary.
Steph called bullshit. 'For Jason's privacy.' A squeaking mockery of their voices repeated in her head.
Tim said it could have killed Jason…
Something inside Steph shriveled up at the thought.
Jason dead wasn't something she wanted to think about at all, Arkham staging his breakout to hide the body.
The others were already coming up with plans for when (if) they found him, dead or alive, and none of them were pretty.
She was sitting on a rooftop, and Jason could be laying at the bottom of the ocean, and for some reason, the only thing she could think of was that she'd never get a chance to pay him back for cheating at that stupid card game where he'd cleaned out all her skittles.
Actually, some skittles sounded good, not like she had anything else planned. She grappled in the direction of the nearest convenience store.
Lost in thought, she barely noticed when something pricked the back of her neck, a few seconds later she was free falling from a hundred floors up, and she didn't notice anything at all.
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Contrary to the spin put on them by the media, truth serums didn't actually make people tell the truth. Most of them just loosened lips in the same way as alcohol did, by removing inhibitions and making you a lot chattier than you would normally be.
All the questioner could do was hope one of the things you said was the answer to a previously asked question.
When he'd been wheeled to the dank… wherever the hell he was, he'd felt crushing disappointment before anything else. Then he'd noticed the man hovering over him, and rage had surged to the forefront of his mind.
Having his weak limbs – muscle relaxants Jason guessed – strapped down had ruled out any attempts at decking the freak though, and Jason deeply regretted the disorientation he hadn't been able to shake off when he'd first woken up.
He'd been injected with something else and left alone while every physical sensation save the throbbing bruise at his temple had faded away. His adrenaline had fueled his rage for hours after that, through a number of doses he was too out of it to count, and damnit if that needle didn't leave him feeling slimy for more reasons than one.
Now his barely clothed body was bloody where he'd fought against the restraints and his adrenaline had gone the way of the dinosaurs.
He was cold and shaky and even in the presence of that freak Jason's rage had abandoned him, leaving him to rely on his second line of defense…
"You're insecure, I get it with a face like that I would be too,but could you take off your creepy ass mask when you talk to me?" … being a little shit.
"Look at you." A hand raked through Jason's hair, "I wonder what thought process leads you to these…" the hand got caught in the bloodied strands and tugged harshly enough that without the restraints Jason would have been pulled from the table, "… terrible decisions."
"Same one that led to you thinking this was a good idea." Jason ignored the fresh blood trailing down his head, dripping into his eye. "Extreme lack of self preservation instincts."
To his mild surprise the Doctor chuckled and patted the side of Jason's cheek a little harder than he could have. Jason's growl of irritation went unnoticed while the man moved out of Jason's line of sight to. Yeah, that guy was number one on Jason's if he ever got out of there.
And the constant prickling at his fingertips reminded Jason that it really was a huge case of 'if'.
The needle appeared and Jason instinctively pulled against the strap holding his head in place as it drew nearer.
"Don't be so dramatic, you know this is no one's fault but your own."
"Mhmmhm." Jason shrugged as much as the bindings would let him while a piece of wood was forced into his mouth. At the very least, he wouldn't be biting his tongue off so, silver lining right?
The needle plunged into his neck and Jason focused on the wood splintering between his teeth while every nerve ending erupted into fire and things that couldn't have been there danced before his eyes.
God he hoped the deranged fuck wouldn't start with the Joker crap again. A chuckle and a crowbar later, Jason resolved to never hope for anything again, ever.
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Steph felt a lot better than she's thought she would. The way her relationship with the Gotham underworld had been going she would have thought they'd want to make sure she never woke up at all.
Then again, it was also entirely possible someone thought she'd make a good hostage and was just waiting for her to wake up before they did whatever it was they were planning on doing with her.
"I knew the sedative wore off before you did." The rich female voice was accompanied by the sound off sloshing liquid and a strong spicy smell.
Of course it would be Talia. Steph was equal parts awed and put upon by the woman she saw when she opened her eyes.
"Did you take him?"She kind of wished her costume didn't cover quite so much skin, so she could feel the glossy silk sheets she'd been laid on, they just looked so soft. A lot softer than the beat down Talia would give her if the woman admitted having something to do with Jason's disappearance, because Steph had a feeling the daughter if Ras al Ghul wouldn't take attempted strangulation well.
"You're so sure this is about that child?" Talia waved her hand in a way that somehow conveyed her order for Steph to sit up without saying anything, weirdly enough it was eloquent enough that Steph felt compelled to obey.
"No one attacks me without it being about him anymore." Steph accepted the offered cup and saucer, but wasn't in any hurry to drink it, even when Talia took a dainty sip from her own cup. "And all of this did kind of start right around the time you showed up."
"Which coincides with your own visits, does it not?" The look the woman sent her was one of extreme disinterest.
"Yeah, but I know I didn't have anything to do with him being force fed things with longer names than some of the books I've read."
"I have no intention of fighting you, child, but you would do well to look into the many others in your circle who would be much more disposed to such a line of action against than I." Talia blew gently over the top of her tea, or maybe it was a sigh, with 'Damian's' mother, who knew?
"No one in 'my circle' would do something like that." Steph wasn't even going to open herself up to the 'idea' of the people she worked with being capable of something like that.
"Believe as you wish, I have no time to prattle with one of his soldiers, I come with an invitation, one someone of your status would be foolish to refuse."
That wasn't ominous at all. Steph fought against the desire to roll her eyes lest Talia decided to have them plucked from her head.
"I kind of have to be looking for the guy you say you didn't kidnap." Steph eyed the lamp next to her bed, it looked like it was made with real gold, who the hell wasted 'gold' on a lamp? "So can you make it snappy?" Oh, Steph was gonna need teeth made of gold if she ever got home.
Talia chuckled, setting Steph even more on edge. "I'll offer you one call, during which you may request anything of me, and in return you will owe me and mine the same."
Steph wasn't crazy enough to put herself into debt with the league of shadows or whatever organization Talia was running them , but she also wasn't crazy enough to laugh in the woman's face, so instead she filled her mouth with the cooling tea in her hands.
Wow, it was spicy, like Alfred's ginger-cinnamon cookies times ten with a hint of something else Steph had never tasted before. She didn't exactly like it, but she wasn't going to spit it out either.
"Is this the tea you brought Jason?" She asked, taking another, smaller sip.
"This inferior blend?" Talia raised an eyebrow, that same look Alfred gave when someone had just said something too ridiculous for words.
'Fine, give me the inferior tea, not like I care.'
"I don't need your help with anything right now, so can we maybe take a rain check?"
"Even if they are not involved, what do you believe will happen when they find him?"
"They'll help him." Steph didn't hesitate before replying. Helping people was what they did, whether it was a bystander or a criminal, even a supervillian. They wouldn't let anyone suffer like Jason had, no matter how much they hated him.
"Then throw him right back for the situation to repeat itself." Talia set her empty cup down without so much as a clink. "In the name of 'helping' him. Slitting his throat would be kinder." Her expression shifted, so fast Steph could have imagined it, Talia actually looked angry. "In his current state he would never survive the kind of prison that could hold him."
"Well, what would 'you' do with him?"Steph's hands were clenched tightly enough that her knuckles ached.
"Had he proven a danger I have many suitable locations, but he has made his opinions on my interference known and the agreed upon time has not come." Here she smiled a little predatory smile. "I did not agree to turn down work regarding him before then."
Steph could practically feel her brain melting out of her ears, and she didn't even want to know what was going on between Jason and Talia. She had enough headaches trying to pick through the overcomplicated relationships she had to deal with on a regular basis.
Figured Talia had to come up with some convoluted plot to get involved instead of just moving in to help.
"Fine, I'll consider hiring you to find Jason." She accepted the card Talia gave her and was promptly escorted – blindfolded – from the premises before she could sully the shiny sheets again with her inferior butt.
One of the longest sighs she'd ever sighed left her throat and she was starting to feel a little petty regarding the lack of people skills that had Talia approaching her instead of the rest of Gotham's heroes.
Steph didn't 'want' to owe Talia al Ghul a favor, and she also didn't trust the woman, not when there was a core of trained detectives on the case already.
Still, she stored the card safely in her utility belt, but just because having her own personal line to a member of the league of shadows was a prerequisite of being one of the Bats, and it made her feel a little more like one of them.
She promised herself she'd never, ever use it.
Hours later, she was on a rooftop blinking at the midday sun with a mouthful of skittles that tasted like chewy ash, when the comm she'd deactivated buzzed in her ear.
"Let me guess, I shouldn't be out in broad daylight where the world can look upon my batty awesomeness?"
'No, well yes, but no.' Tim sounded about as tired as she felt, so he'd probably gotten a few hours of sleep very recently. 'B is back and he wanted to debrief all of us.'
"So what? I have to report to the cave?"
'There's been a complication.' Steph could almost feel her lungs cave in when he took a deep breath. Nervous Tim was knew-Steph-wouldn't-like-what-he-said-next Tim. 'Nightwing went to question Arkham and he flew the coop, we have no idea where he went.'
Steph didn't say she was gonna kill him, because Tim would be more literal minded about it than Barbara, but she was gonna do something really bad if she found out Arkham had as much to do with it as the file suggested.
Innocent people didn't often run from the bats, not unless they had something to hide.