Nothing made sense.
It was cold and hot all at the same time.
He couldn't stop moving, but something was holding his limbs down so tightly he couldn't breathe.
Tremor's ran through his body at least he thought they did, like someone had planted the cellphones of a thousand truant teenagers under his skin, and their parents just weren't having any of it.
Cellphones.
Under his…
Fuck, that wasn't funny at all. He had to get them out before he went into septic shock.
Only he couldn't move his fucking arms, they were strapped down, his legs too, he couldn't even move his head to chew them off because there was something pressed into his mouth and whenever he tried spitting it out a laughing face with a smile painted in blood pressed it back in.
He kept trying anyway because he had to get the bugs out from under his skin.
They were crawling around, just like they must have been when they'd, when…
Back in that box. Dark and damp and he was still shaking but he couldn't get out this time because his arms and legs were weight down and someone was laughing, laughing, laughing, laughing…
He curled his fingers, the only part of him that was doing what he told them, and found that his nails bit into his skin.
So he scratched open his palms, hoping something, anything would crawl out.
Hey if the worms could escape through his hands, then maybe he could too.
But for that the cuts would have to be bigger, bigger, bigger…
"Jason stop!"
Hospital room, it was a hospital room. Why was he in a hospital room when he was supposed to be underground?
His mind went under.
…
..
.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Bomb, camera.
EKG.
What the…
He fought back the vice grip of sleep.
"…had she not seen his eyes likewise turned to towards Mister Darcy, with an expression of half…"
He knew that… Why was he hearing it next to an EKG? He wanted to see who he was sharing a room with, but he couldn't open his eyes in time.
The story jumped ahead again.
"…highest opinion in the world of Elizabeth; though at first…"
Beep. Beep
It was quiet, there was no one there. Dark. He let sleep take him willingly that time.
"…bananas to go on broiler grill as soon as it heats." A pause. "I don't even know what a broiler grill is, but this is kinda making me hungry. Find…"
Blank. He caught onto the words before they faded away.
Gravity Rainbow. They were from Gravity Rainbow. He'd read it in, damn he couldn't remember.
"…to the bananas in the skillet and broiler." Why the fuck is Blondie reading Gravity Rainbow? "Hey Jason, have you ever tried to make a banana breakfast? Looks kinda…"
"No." Light burned his eyes and there were bandages covering skin that felt like he'd gottem dead things all over him and it stank, the smell of decay invading his nose, choking him and…
Vanilla…
He opened his eyes despite the light, but all he could see was the curtain of gold covering his face. Vanilla, Gold?
Not Gold, blonde.
She wasn't wearing the Batgirl suit, not…
.
.
.
Jason hadn't moved much since he'd tried to bite Doc Thompkins' fingers when she'd fed him that black stuff. He'd babble some nonsensical nonsense every few minutes, and his face would scrunch up pain every time she stuck him with another needle, but that was about it.
He'd been even more still over the past few hours, the only sign of his life, the slight rise and fall of his chest. It was just similar enough to the way he'd been the last few days before his disappearance to make her uneasy.
Leslie said it was good, it meant the nasty stuff Arkham had injected him was finally working out of his system.
Steph had taken that as meaning Jason would wake up soon and had brought a bunch of books so he wouldn't get bored enough to try and get out of bed when he did. That had been almost a full day ago, and he was as still as ever. It felt weird to talk to him when he was like that, so she'd been reading the books herself when she came to see how he was doing.
It brooked no further reaction that talking had, but she still asked him questions sometimes, thinking that maybe he would be like those internet guys that got all worked up when people didn't 'understand' the message. All he did was sleep through it, sans the twitchy thing his face did when the room was quiet.
Anyway, when Jason said, "No," she didn't get her hopes up that it was a conscious answer to her question and not whatever was lingering in his messed up subconscious. Then he'd frowned like he had when they'd played ghost and she leaped to her feet, watching him anxiously.
He muttered something she couldn't make out and his eyes slid open just a fraction before he shut them with a hiss, and arm flopping over to cover his face.
"Jason." She whispered so she wouldn't wake any of the other over night patients down the hall. She leaned close, her hair falling over her shoulders and pooling all around his neck.
"Blondie." He batted the strands away, but she barely noticed, leaning forward to wrap her arms around him as best she could without pulling out the I.V in a tight hug.
"You're okay." She whispered the same words she had when he'd been in the throes of drug induced hallucinations that had had him trying to flay the skin from his hands.
"S'focating." He struggled to bring up arms that were trapped under his blankets and she pulled away so fast she got whiplash.
"Sorry, are you…"
He sneezed and glared at her, but without the heat behind it that had made him scary before, it was almost like a pout. A pout from a very angry porcupine that was raring to launch it's spikes at her woth the barest provocation.
That thought gifted her with the metal image of Jason as a sonic-esque hedgehog scowling at a very confused Bruce.
She chuckled and dropped back into her chair, fixing her gaze on the real Jason only once the flush had faded from her cheeks.
He was looking around the room and trying to worm his way out from under the blankets, while the beeps from the heart monitor sped up erratically.
"Calm down!" She waved her hands in front of his face, before helping him free his arms from the brightly colored blanket she'd brought from home. "You're safe here. It's just Leslie's clinic, you remember Leslie, right?"
He clapped a hand over his mouth, a gesture she'd seen often enough on surveillance footage to never want to see it again.
"You're okay." She said again, calmly as softly as she could while still being heard. "You're not in Arkham, or wherever else you think you are. See, she very carefully lifted the fringe of the blanket hanging over the edge of the bed and brought it up high enough for him to see. "I got you a teletubby blanket, cause I figured you'd hate it and wake up sooner, they don't allow teletubby blankets in Arkham, because of that guy, I forget his name."
"Doodlebug?" Jason's voice hitched on the last syllable, but his hands weren't over his mouth anymore.
"Yeah, him." Steph edged around the bed to the sink that was on the other side and filled up a glass of water. "Do you need anything, cause I can get it for you, there's a store just across the street. Leslie say's you're not allowed solids yet, but I can sneak in some candy, or…" Damnit, she was usually better in those kinds of situations. She held the glass just within his reach, so he could take it or not.
He did, and finished it off almost in one gulp, holding onto the glass with a white knuckled grip. He breathed more easily with his hands away from his mouth, taking in deep shuddering lungfulls of air until it evened out.
"You want some more water?" Steph asked after he'd sunk back into his pillows, he wordlessly handed back the glass and she refilled it.
He took small sips of the water, watching something she couldn't see move slowly around the room.
"Are you seeing something?" Steph moved back to the other side of the bed and he flinched when she sat down again.
"No." He shook his head and threw an arm over his eyes, bringing the glass up to his lips with the other.
"Leslie says any hallucinations will go away in like, two days max, so if you do see anything weird you shouldn't be too freaked out by it, kay? Unless it's me, cause, I'm not weird, or freaky and I'll proly still be around in two days."
He scoffed and peeked at her over his arms. "What're you doin here Blondie?"
"I'm here to make sure you don't escape."
"Oh." He sighed pressing the arm more tightly against his eyes, his hold on the glass slackening until it nearly sloshes over. "Right."
"Not really!" She grabbed the glass and shifted aside the books on the bedside table to put it down. "I just, I. But I'd like if you didn't leave anyway. The others don't know you're here, and Leslie promised not to say anything. I told her you were my school friend, so if she asks you're an English major, but o don't think she believed me, but she promised not to tell, and you might have another seizure if you get…"
"Another seizure?" He dropped the arm entirely to gape at her unbelievingly.
"Yeeaah." She looked around for that hole that was supposed to be swallowing her up right about then, the one labeled, 'Leslie warned you.' "But it's okay, it wasn't serious she caught it before it could do any real damage, we. We're just a little scared you have one where there's no one around to help, huh?"
While she spoke his face grew progressively paler, when it turned an interesting shade of green she lunged for the stainless steel bowl at her feet, thrusting it in front of his as he threw up a clear sticky liquid that thankfully didn't slosh over its wide rim. When he was done, and she was sure he wasn't going to start up again she got him some more water and tucked him under the blankets again.
"How long until I go back?" He bit the words out.
"You're not." Steph set the glass back down with maybe a little more force than was necessary. "Not to Arkham anyway. Don't worry about it right now though. Just, try and relax so you can get better."
"He'll try and find me, he wants to know…"
Here Steph scoffed and settled back into her chair with a satisfied smirk. "Hard for him to try anything with four broken ribs, a cracked jaw and a concussion."
"How did 'you' find me then?"
"Oh I didn't tell you?" She crossed her legs and leaned back, her smirk widening. "That's why I'll be here for the next two days. I'm benched for putting Jerry in the ICU while you ran off into the night and not even paying attention which way you were going. I also busted up all the cameras, destroying vital evidence." She shrugged. "Whoops."
.
.
.
After the first day, the things he still had to remind himself weren't real stopped walking around the room, instead sticking to the corners where he could easily pretend to ignore them.
Whether it was intentional on their part or not, the room he was in halted almost all of his panic attacks before they even got started. Everything but the hideous blanket was colored in soft, clashing pasted colors, pink walls, yellow and blue tiles, nutritional posters plastered randomly over the vertical surfaces.
It looked like a child had decorated it, but the whole set up – especially that fucking blanket – was so different from anything in Arkham that even in the dark it was hard to mistake it for that hellhole.
Not that it was ever dark. The lights only went off when there was sunlight pouring in from a small window that looked to him like one of those huge things they fitted in palaces. It was when he watched that patch of sunshine move across the room as the day progressed he could believe he was out of Arkham for good.
"Then I told him I'm just not in the right headspace to start a new relationship right now, and he…" Blondie kept talking, her expressive voice not quite melding into the background along with the sounds of the city that made it through the walls, waving her hands and swishing hair almost the same color as the sunlight.
"I want spaghetti-ohs." He said abruptly to keep his mind from wandering further.
"You're not allowed solids yet." She pouted a little at having her story interrupted. "You'll just throw it up."
"So? I throw up everything I eat." He pushed his hair out of his face, he'd never really cared for cold tinned foods when there were other things available, but right then he really did want spaghetti-ohs. "I will literally sell you a fucking drug lord for a tin of spaghetti-ohs."
"Fine." She groaned and got up, "but if Leslie asks you got it by some secret league of shadows method."
The door clicked shut and just like that he was alone again. The patch of sunlight was stretched over the bed, making the colors on the blanket pop even more. He moved his hand to rest in the light and ignored the chuckling shadow in the corner.
The glint of deep red serum and a sharp, thin point. It took a step forward, grinning widely…
The door banged open.
"I had to buy a tin opener too, cause otherwise I'd have to ask Leslie for one and I couldn't do that when…" She followed his eyes to the corner and crumpled up a piece of paper from her pocket. "Go away." She demanded, the ball of paper flew at the specter then flew through the specter and bounced off the wall.
It didn't really change anything, but a reminder that the things weren't there was welcome anyway. He caught the tin and opener she tossed his way and studied both for any signs of tampering.
"There's this cute little diner on the corner of fourth and main." He said as he opened the tin. "Check the basement."
She typed the address on her cell phone and nodded sharply before dropping onto her chair and leaning forward, resting her head in her hands.
"So." She chirped. "How do those spaghetti-ohs taste?"
"Like heaven."