Jason scowled and clenched his teeth. He wasn't going back to the Manor. Bruce was stupid to ask.
And now Bruce was gone.
As Jason crossed the room for a T-shirt, it seemed larger and emptier than usual. Dark corners. He wanted to get out of there, quickly, before he heard the laughter again.
The bar was only a few blocks away. Maybe it was a bad idea, but he wasn't going to get a moment of sleep anyway.
He nearly lost his balance as he reached down for the gun Bruce had so arrogantly snatched from him. He reloaded it and shoved it into the back of his belt. The next time someone took it from him, he'd break their damn fingers.
He had his gun, what else did he need? Money. He shoved money into his pocket, shrugged on his leather jacket, pushed his feet into his boots, and left the drafty apartment.
He closed the door behind him quickly, and found himself leaning over with his hands on his knees. A concussion, a fever, some cuts and bruises, so what? He had his gun.
He locked the door with a vengeance. Maybe he should nail a bat to the door. Maybe that would get the message through Bruce's thick skull.
Why wouldn't Bruce and his stupid little gang of Batfreaks stay away from him? He knew what they thought of him. And he wanted to forget about it. He walked quickly towards the bar and felt the grit and crunch of broken glass and gravel under his uneven footsteps.
A cold breeze blew the Gotham stink across his face. It started to rain again, blurring all of the tall, ugly, graffiti-covered buildings into one dilapidated maze. Jason wove through it, passing a few people huddled in doorways, a few drunks, but no one he could punch. He grit his teeth.
The rain made his hair run into his face, and his eyes stung. He blinked rapidly and realized that the black dye was leaking out of the white chunks of his hair. He rubbed at his face, his fingers coming away streaked with black. He swore and sped up, knocking his shoulder into a telephone pole, and as he stumbled back, somebody caught his arm.
Jason tried to wrench his arm away but the attacker held firm. Jason raised his eyebrows. Normally thugs didn't mess with him. But now he wasn't wearing the Hood.
"Listen," a quiet voice commanded. "You're gonna go exactly what I say."
Jason turned slowly so as not to become dizzy, and faced his confronter. His victim.
His mouth spread into a wolfish grin. "Am I?"
The man who had grabbed him had wet blond hair raked down into a ponytail, and was only about Jason's size. He flicked open a switchblade, not a hint of fear in his face.
Jason realized that the man must have taken him for an easy target, just another drunk, with the way his concussion made him walk.
"Give me your money and anything valuable you got on you," the man said. Was the guy dumb enough to expect to win any fight he got into with that pathetic little switchblade? He obviously wasn't trained.
"Go to hell," Jason said, and he reached out, twisting the man's wrist so that the switchblade fell from his fingers and bounced away from his feet.
Bruce had taught him that, taught the move to him, and then used it on him, less than an hour ago. Jason's face contorted in anger at the memory and for a moment he was lost in thought.
Then he remembered he was in the middle of something. His vision, bleary as it was, focused on the man's face, and he frowned when he realized that there was still no trace of fear there. The man was smiling. Jason had a second to wonder what the hell was going on before a baseball bat swung out of nowhere, hitting him in the back of the neck.
Jason doubled forward, without time to be glad that the guy who had been waiting silently behind him had missed his head. The blond man tried to pin his arms at his sides, and as Jason broke free the man's fist connected with his side and a hot, blunt pain exploded across his waist. He cried out. The man must have picked up that stupid little switchblade.
He forced himself to straighten up against the pain as he fought off the onslaught of the men's fists. They didn't know he only had just enough money for a night of drinking on him anyway. All this for a few drinks. It was almost funny.
What wasn't funny was that Jason hadn't seen the man with the baseball bat coming. Stupid fever. And he hadn't even had the chance to get drunk. Frustration and anger fueled his blows and moments later he had the blond man unconscious on the wet pavement.
Jason stepped over him and looked at the other man, bigger, older, and dirtier, baseball bat still clenched in one meaty fist.
Jason stepped forward menacingly, trying not to shake, trying not to press his hand to the wound in his side.
The big man grinned, and then he nodded to someone behind Jason.
Jason's eyes widened as he whipped around, quickly enough that dizziness and a headache rolled over him. Where were these guys coming from?
The new man was smaller, covered in tattoos. Jason had no time to make more observations before the tattooed man and the big man flew at him, aiming punch after punch at his face. What the hell did they expect to get out of this? Why did they think he had money?
He realized that he was all defense, barely getting in a decent hit. His breath was getting quicker, shallower, and it took too much effort not to curl up around the throbbing stab wound.
The two of them managed to shove him against the telephone pole and one of them got in a punch right where the knife had hit him. For a moment he couldn't see anything. He coughed. Was that blood coming out of his mouth? He took another hit, and another, and another, and then he realized he was yelling, but so was someone else.
The big man with the bat had been dragged off him, and lied on the ground a few feet away.
Jason and the tattooed man were both still for a split second, their gazes starting with the unconscious body of the big thug and slowly travelling up to see who had knocked him out.
It was a homeless guy, looming over the big thug. Jason could see stringy red hair swinging from a baseball cap around a sharp, dirty face, gleaming with rain in the yellow streetlight. A sweatshirt ten sizes too big for him flapped in the rain.
"Who the hell are you?" The tattooed man looked back and forth between the newcomer and Jason, whose vision was starting to go black at the edges.
"You know, I'm glad you asked," the homeless man said. He stepped over the unconscious body and moved menacingly towards Jason and the tattooed man, who had turned his back on Jason to face this new man.
Jason's mouth twitched in the semblance of a smile as he reached one arm back behind his belt, his fingers closing around the cool handle of his gun.
"I'm your worst nightmare," the newcomer continued as he flew at the thug, getting in three punches in quick succession. He paused. "No, wait, that's cheesy, hold on-" A powerful kick sent the man flying back onto the cracked sidewalk, just feet away from Jason. "I'm... to hell with this, nobody cares, Roy, you idiot." One more punch and the thug was out.
But Jason didn't need the thug as a distraction anymore, because now he had out his gun. He raised it with shaking hands. It looked like there were two homeless guys in baseball caps, but it must just have been one. He moved the gun back and forth between them. Which one to shoot at first?
"You're right, Roy, nobody cares," he said, his words slurring together. "Now get the hell out of here." He shot at both of them in quick succession, one after the other, and then frowned as a hand swatted the gun out of his grip. He felt strangely adrift without it. He never missed. What the hell was going on? This stupid fever. Or concussion. Something. He needed his gun. It vaguely dawned on him that maybe he really was in trouble this time.
He tipped his head up and found himself staring up into a dirty, thin face.
"Not even a hint of gratitude? Not even a hint?" the man wailed, pressing a hand to his chest. The scent of dirt and alcohol came off him in waves.
Jason struggled to pull himself up the wall. "Like you beat them up just to help me," he scoffed sarcastically, attempting a laugh that devolved into a wet cough.
Roy walked towards him, steps oddly off kilter. Was he drunk? If he could fight like that when he was drunk, Jason wondered what he was like sober.
"No," Roy said. "I beat them up cause if I didn't have something to knock the lights out of I'd be drinking, and if I was drinking, Waylon would fricking kill me."
"Haven't you already been drinking?"
"What are you talking about? What the hell are you talking about?" Roy demanded, eyes going wide and confused.
"You drunk yourself so shitfaced you forgot?" Jason asked, just about to his feet now. If he could keep the man distracted for another minute he could stand up and get the hell away from-
"You shut the hell up!" A fist slammed into the side of Jason's head and a bright flash of light exploded behind his eyes. His body sprawled out next to the rest of them.