"The devil in hell we're told was chained

a thousand years he there remained

He neither complain nor did he groan

but was determined to start a hell of his own"

Johnny Cash, "Mean as Hell"

My mother's killer's name is heroin, and I've seen him a lot since, but in different disguises. I couldn't stand, and I now had five bullets buried in my bones that will never come out. I've got so much lead in me that I could become something shot out of a gun. While Roy dealt with a Lian-related activity called a potty break, I made a move to the trunk that held my last resort.

I threw the sheets back, my shot hand ached in its bandages, and I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. I teetered as I stood, like a too-tall skyscraper in high wind. I gritted my teeth hard enough to make me dizzy with ache, and struggled with every step to walk. I bargained every gait, from the bed frame to the next place I could lean against, and got good at it. Diplomacy's a foil of war, and negotiations with my body to work with me was routine by now. Ever since the Asylum.

The stairs, contrary to what you might think, weren't that hard. I gripped the banister and let my feet down the stairs, leaning back to relieve some of the downward stress.

The engine bay was thick with sunlight peeping in from the door, the vent, but that wasn't my target. The dead ninja's rope was now tied around the survivor. He hung over, blood dripping from his chin and still unconscious. He wasn't my target either.

I did the combination on the lock with slippery fingers, and the lid on the trunk was heavier than last time, before the Wayne Foundation gala. The Arkham Knight helmet was wrapped in three layers of bubble wrap in the corner of the trunk so I wouldn't have to look at the cracks and think about how hard the old man punched sense into me.

The metal canister was cold to the touch, down here to freeze as October temperatures chilled the blood inside. I tore off the top, pulled out the syringes and rubber band for the tourniquet. One was empty. Five left. The Red Lantern bullets were in here too, the ones Tim promised me. Hate and healing in one compact space. I took a syringe, wrapped the rubber around my arm, and waited for a vein to pop out. Pinpointed needle scars compacted the other elbow, the thousands of times I needed blood or the clown wanted to try out a new narcotic on me.

I didn't care. I heard Roy calling my name upstairs, and I didn't care. I put the needle in, felt the warm prick and pressed the plunger until it was all the way down. I heard him coming down the steps, and I didn't care. My nerves and blood vessels lit on fire as the healing began, weeks of pain and irritation coming at me inside of a minute. I heard him stop halfway down the steps, call my name again, and I didn't answer. I gasped, my forehead against the front of the workbench I kept the trunk under. I pulled the syringe out, tore an antiseptic pad to wipe over it. I put everything away, with jittery, nervous hands and it took me four tries to get the lock back on the trunk just in time for Roy's heavy feet to smack the concrete floor of the engine bay.

"Jason?" His voice sounded urgent, and as I collapsed over onto the floor, shaking and sweating with the doctor drug in me. I flinched hard when he picked me up as best he could, shuffled an open lawn chair with his foot closer to drop me into it.

I tilted my head back, and one look at my eyes and he knew I'd taken something. He knew I was on something. My eyes were probably bloodshot. I felt his hands on the bullet wound on my thigh, and my skin almost closed on his finger. "Howdy."

"The hell did you take?" Roy took two handfuls of my shirt, shook me. "What'd you take? Why are your wounds closing? How are you doing it?"

"Magic," I cackled hoarsely, and swiped a rough hand down my face. I pushed myself out of the chair, my legs strong and my muscles vibrated with the aftershocks of the drug. When I started to pick at the bandages on my hand, Roy tried to swat my fingers away but I turned to miss him. "No, no, watch. Watch this."

Roy's cheeks pinched in that unsure, distrusting way as I unwrapped my hand. The bindings fell off, and I tossed them into a trash bin, flexed my hand. The bloody hole that had been there was gone, only a bullseye scar in the center of my palm. "See? All healed."

"But how?" And then he asked the question. "Is it safe?"

I'd tried not to think about the research done into the drug, the research Deathstroke gave me in a little packet before he sold me the small supply in the trunk. I didn't like to think about the price tag put on double-edged swords. Roy saw me hesitate and he stepped closer. I saw the anger behind the concern. "Jason, answer me. Is it safe? I'm going to call Barbara in three seconds if I don't get an answer."

"Alright, alright," I caved. Barbara had already asked the question, and I shrugged it off, saying I'd never use it because I doubted the situation would get dire. Two doses in, and here we were. If she heard that I'd taken it, and that two doses were missing from my supply, there'd only be one person she could point to. And that would be me.

I licked my dry lips, and drew in a deep breath. "Alright…The drug's supposed to heal you rapidly, but it hurts. One minute, you'll feel all of the pain that you'd feel if you let it heal naturally over weeks or months. You can't use it too often…because if your body develops an immunity to it, the potency falters. And…well. It's hell on your kidneys."

I remembered the swelling limbs, the nausea, the tightness in my chest, the tiredness after the gala - and trying to hide all of it from the most curious woman I'd ever met in my life.

"How many times have you used it?" He asked, quiet as anything. When I hesitated, his nose crinkled into a snarl. "How many times, Jason?"

"Y'know, Roy," I started, crossing my arms. "I'm a big boy. I can do my own laces and everything-"

Roy cut me off, tutting his tongue. "-That's not the friggin' point and you know that. You saved my life today, you saved my daughter's life today from that lowlife," He jerked a finger at the scumbag tied to the chair. "And not to get sappy right now, but you're the best thing that's come our way since Jade died, all things considered. We can have freedom because of you. Speaking for Lian and me, we don't want to lose our best chance. And if that means keeping you clean, then…" He trailed off, and I squinted at him.

"It isn't addictive, man," I bent forward, my knuckles getting hot. "You think it's just another drug to get high or doped up on? I've only taken this twice, if you're so desperate to know, and both times - then and now - it's so that we can get a job done. When that fuckface wakes up and we interrogate him, we're going to go back to Talia in his place and kill every person in pajamas in a three-mile radius. We're going to fix this."

"I don't want to rely on you if you're putting your life at risk," Roy shook his head, ginger hair bouncing. His eyes were insistent, unwavering. The look of a father. "What if it becomes a crutch? What if we fail tonight and barely scrape out- you gonna take it again? You think I'm gonna be able to look Lian in the eyes if I let you take it again? You're her uncle Jay now."

"Hey," I didn't think he'd try to guilt me with Lian, and I didn't like how thinking about her reacting to my death twisted my insides. "I didn't ask for that."

"I know that," Roy shoved his hands into his pockets, and looked down at the floor. "But that girl hasn't had anything solid for a long time. Anything that sticks, and I know it's gonna be harder later for her to commit to anything. It's how I was, being jerked between homes and then with Oliver, being jerked between cities instead of just…staying in one place. She needs stability, and so do I." He lifted his eyes to mine. "I can't do anything about this time, you've already taken it. And I won't order you around under your own roof. I'm asking here, dude. You take that shit again, need it or not, I'm going to tell your family. Because you've already become part of mine, and I care enough to keep you honest with yours."

I stared at him, eyes wide and mouth open to reply but with nothing to retaliate with. I had no ammo. I had nothing I could refute. As much as I wanted to fire back, I couldn't. He was right. I hadn't been honest with my family. I couldn't deny that. There were things they kept from me too. Something Barbara, Tim and Dick knew that I didn't, that they purposefully withheld. Things that I couldn't be told yet. Part of me knew that I only kept the drug from them because I ran on spite like I ran on gunpowder, coffee, guilt, and longing.

Rustling from the chair behind us broke our thoughts, and I was thankful for it. I had just been wanting to hit something. There's my opportunity, coming out of his gun-induced nap. He coughed blood as we walked to him, spat into his headwrap, which I tore away. He was young, couldn't be older than I was, and his eyes were slanted, sharp cheekbones. He regarded us with suspicion, but no fear. He held his chin high as he blinked.

"Do you know who we are?" Roy crouched in front of him, and smacked his cheek. The ninja didn't look awake enough for him.

"Like I give a damn," The ninja sneered in Mandarin, "You don't know what I'm saying. Stupid ingrates."

Roy glanced at me, lifted his eyebrows. I smirked, and took his place, standing with my arms crossed. I responded in rusty Mandarin I hadn't used in years. "That's Professor Ingrate to you."

I got a sick thrill out of watching his face pale. "Yeah, I speak Mandarin. Helps when you take a trip to China to train in the Himalayas."

"Talia al Ghul," Roy tied his hair back with a band he kept on his wrist. I knew why. "Where does she expect you tonight?"

"Up your mother's ass," The ninja said, his teeth blood-stained and he was missing a few.

Roy shrugged and stood. We shared a look. "Not that I know who my mom is, but…"

Another tooth flew between the ninja's lips as Roy nailed him in the mouth with a heavy fist. He barely had time to breathe when I said to Roy, "And not that I know who your mom is, dude, but…" I dug a heel into the floor and spun, my heel cracking off his nose. I knelt, and grabbed his jaw with a tight grip, making him look at me. "Locations, pal. Your chances of living, and our choices of ending your life, depend on location."

The ninja squirmed in the chair, fought his bindings - which for the special occasion, I used the red zipties. I let my eyes scan him, search for any part he was favoring. I squinted at his shoulders, an odd line pressed against his clothes. Roy tossed me a knife to slice the fabric and what do you know - a line of stitches where his deltoid met his bicep. Fresh. Couldn't have been there longer than a few days. No sign of distressed tissue that might indicate an injury. The guy shook his head, and started mumbling in Mandarin, too slurred to translate.

"Say, what would I find if I tear these open?" I tapped the tip of the knife at the line, slipped the end under the thread and gave a little tug to make him sweat. It beaded at his temples, slicked his clothes to him and the scum on him - the stench that seemed to come off every assassin that killed for something as trivial as money - stunk worse.

"What do you say, partner?" I asked the archer as I tore the sleeve down to get a better look at the stitches. "Wanna play Operation with him?"

Roy slouched on his hip. "Do you think his eyes would light up if we scraped the sides?"

"That's right over the funny bone," I cooed, and the edge of the blade, which I sharpened almost compulsively, sliced through the first two stitches. "What's in here, huh? What're you hiding under your skin? You hiding a monster, or are you simply that pathetic on the inside too?"

Behind his eyes, filled to the brim with tears, was defiance. He wouldn't give up Talia. I'll have to take the information by force. My patience ran out. I sliced through the rest of the stitches, and dug my fingers into the opening. Roy held him still, his arm around the guy's neck so he didn't bite me. I jammed my fingers deeper, and found a pill-sized piece of metal. I yanked it out none-too-gently, and as I studied it, I heard the light hum of the mechanism inside. I put it to my ear, and listened to it, the ninja retching with his pain.

"Tracker," I said, handing it to Roy. "Transmit it to Oracle. Red Robin is in Metropolis at the moment, and Nightwing will be home soon…As soon as we have coordinates, we're moving out."

Roy held the tracker in his fist, as if he couldn't bear to lose it. He eyed me, and the ninja whose arm was bleeding with renewed gusto onto my nice clean floor. "…Only two of us can go, you know. Only two assassins showed up here."

I moved to the workbench that my tools laid on, and ran my hands over the crowbar. "Which is why you're staying put with your daughter."

"Like hell am I going to sit here and-"

"-would you like to accompany Dick?" I didn't care about the codenames anymore. The guy wasn't going to last long to rat anybody out. "Or would you like to come with me and leave Dick with your daughter?"

Roy pressed his lips together, opened them like he was going to retort, and then closed again. He sighed, and pulled out the tie, shook out his hair before he combed a terse hand through it. "I hate this idea."

"No, you don't," I patted his shoulder, "You just hate being left out of the fun part. I can relate."

"Don't worry." I smiled, and grabbed the bonesaw instead of the crowbar. I started to walk towards the ninja, who thrashed harder than ever before. "I'll send pictures."

"Will you quit looking at me like that?" I muttered to Dick beside me, both of us swathed in League armor with headwraps to shroud our faces. "I washed them."

The parking garage made the back of my neck prickle with conditioned paranoia, too many dark corners and too little illumination, and Dick and I were standing high enough to feel the frigid autumn breeze through the fabrics.

"You hacked someone to death right where we were drinking the other night," Dick whispered, his hands clasped behind his back. He'd taken off the housing on his escrima sticks to fit inside the katana sheaths, but I knew it wasn't the fact that in a few minutes, we'll be face-to-face with Talia. It had to do with the plastique I was hiding in the baby carrier strapped to my chest.

"He tried to take Roy's daughter from him, and broke into my house, might I add." I glanced at him sideways, a hand on the carrier like I was supporting a baby's head. Lian was at the Clocktower with Roy, and they had Alfred and Barbara with them. I didn't want them at my place tonight, should we be found out. "What's your deal with him?"

He looked like he'd been waiting for me to ask. To get curious enough. "Remember when I said I hadn't seen him in years, since he was a Titan?"

I nodded, another gust of cool air brought up goosebumps on me.

"He told me that he was quitting before he told Oliver. He wanted my advice, on what to do when you want to leave your mentor and go your own way. Considering I'd set the precedent." That made sense. Dick would be the logical candidate. "I asked him what way he was planning to go if he quit, and he told me about his relationship with Cheshire, how she was pregnant. I…didn't react like a friend. I reacted like the leader of the Teen Titans, liaison to the Justice League."

I bit my lip beneath the headwrap. "What'd you do?"

"I told him that I couldn't be complicit to it, that if he went off with a supercriminal - father of her child or not - I had to treat him as a criminal as well," The sound of his sigh was tight, like his chest contracted on him. "I hated saying that to him. Just as I hated fighting with you when you came back." I still had the chips in my teeth from that night. "But what could I say? 'I'm going to lie to Dinah Lance when she asks me if I help you disappear'?"

"You made a tough decision," I shrugged. "Do you think he hates you for that?"

"For turning my back on him? I'd be surprised if he didn't." Dick and I both looked up as we heard the approaching noise of motors, saw headlights wind up the parking garage. He adjusted his headwrap, and straightened. "But still…this is the least I can do. Let me do the talking. My Arabic's better."

Three jet black SUVs rounded the bend, and came to meet us. Blacked-out windows, likely bulletproof glass, and the tires had to be the impenetrable Amertek D-80s Dick had on his motorcycle. Two of them pulled in front of us, and a third behind, formed a triangle with us at the center. We couldn't run without facing resistance. Maybe they already suspected me.

I kept both hands on the baby carrier, but a corner of the explosives jabbed into my ribs. The SUVs parked for a solid minute, like the people inside debated whether or not to get out. When doors opened and the ninjas went to the rear doors, the wind pulled my clothes tight against me. Two hooded figures stepped out of the car, one taller and one only half a head shorter, both in black robes but the shorter one had an Al Ghul stiff collar.

Hands gloved in black satin poked from the sleeves to lay the hood down, dark hair blowing with the breeze and regal shadowy eyes green as poison regarded us with scrutiny. Talia's collar kissed her cheek as she laced her fingers together in front of taller figure simply paced around us to join the pair of ninjas standing five feet behind us, but didn't take down his hood.

Talia spoke first in Arabic, asked if we had the child, but her eyes were on me, the baby carrier. She could see that we had the 'child'.

Dick curled his hand into a fist, pressed it against his heart and did a bow like every ninja in the League was programmed to. I did the same gesture around the 'baby'. Dick said something along the lines of 'by your wish'.

She asked next if the orders had been delivered to the archer, obviously meaning Roy. Dick affirmed again, his accent invisible. Talia hadn't looked at Dick once, her eyes were on me. I took one hand off the carrier, and stared back.

She pursed her lips, and asked if there was anything wrong with me. I responded in gruff Arabic that I was fine, made my voice hoarse to throw her off my identity. She'd heard me talk before.

All of these things I had expected. All of these things I had known beforehand. I knew that Dick would be nervous about this trip, I knew that he would feel obligated to come. I knew that if Talia did not recognize me by my stature or my voice, she would recognize me by my eyes. I knew that if the baby failed to serve as a decoy, I could tell Dick to run and hug Talia, explode the baby between us and end it all. I knew that if the baby failed to serve as a bomb, I could run with Dick and then throw it in the air to Talia, blow her head off with the gun at my ankle. I knew that if we both died here, Barbara, Alfred, Kori, Tim, and Roy would seek to avenge us. I knew that if it was just Dick that died here, I'd eradicate the world of the League of Assassins, and anyone who would seek to usurp control of it, exile myself away from Gotham forever until I accomplished that goal. I knew that if I died here, Dick would bring them to the old man's justice and I'd finally get the dirt nap I was denied for a year. Maybe she'd come to my funeral. Maybe the old man would too.

All of these things I had expected. All of these things I had known beforehand. All of these things were planned for, bought and paid for.

When the laughing started, a great blackboard eraser wiped my mind of these calculations and plans, and painted the entire thing red. My body constricted, my shoulders hunched to my ears, my hair stood on end, and I wanted to be violently sick. Every scar on my body lashed white-hot and seared into me just like when they were created, and I looked past Talia to see the tall hooded figure doubled over, convulsing with laughter. A lock of green hair fell past the hem of the hood. Dick didn't exist. The parking garage didn't exist, the explosives strapped to me didn't exist, Talia didn't exist, the wind didn't exist, my clothes didn't exist, but the uniform did. The uniform existed, the 'R' on my chest existed, I was a foot shorter, my ankle throbbed, and he was there with the branding iron. Oh God, there he was.

Oh God, there he was. Oh God. There he was. Oh God, there he was, oh God, there he was, OH GOD THERE HE IS. And just when the red fell from my mind, and weaved to the edges of my vision, I took control. I heard Arabic, the words rubbing together in my clean head and becoming nonsense.

"What's so funny?" It was Talia talking, her eyes back on him.

Talia advanced on me, my eyes wide, my body numb as I took off the bomb. And then one of Dick's hands came on my chest, pushed back, and everything rushed into me at once. With a feral sound that razed my throat, I lifted off the ground to crash my heels with Talia's torso in a drop-kick. She toppled backwards, eyes wide in surprise. Her hands disappeared, and Dick shoved me back, forced me to the opening between the SUVs. I fought him, tried to push past him as the laughing got louder, but he had his fingers in my clothes, he had his hand on the detonator for the bomb. My cheeks stung and my eyes were wet. I didn't realize I was screaming until I gasped the breath to say the words I'd handpicked for this moment.

"I'M COMING FOR YOU."

Someone put their hands on me, someone who wasn't Dick, and my eyes never left him as I dug my fingernails into the man's neck and ripped out the jugular vein. I reached down with slippery, bloody hands for my gun, and I aimed it at him. I targeted him, in every way I daydreamed since I was sixteen years old, but before I could, the parking garage was engulfed in flame and Dick tackled me over the concrete guard rail and emptiness swallowed us as we fell.

He held me tight and pulled out a grappler, but I still shot at the parking garage, aiming at his face my mind etched into the night sky until the magazine dried up.

I refused to let go of the gun until we landed.