It was nearing the end of a fairly quiet patrol night. During the first cold snap of the winter, crime levels always dropped some; no one wanted to be out in the cold yet. Most of what he'd done that night was to check on the hidey-holes and alleys that the homeless population and street kids frequented, to make sure that they were prepared for the cold.
Red Hood was grateful that his access to Bat tech also meant access to insulated high-grade armor that prevented him from catching hypothermia while he was hopping between roofs, completely exposed to the biting wind.
The sounds of an altercation reached him, and Jason sighed and headed toward the noise. He'd hoped to get through patrol without breaking up any fights or stopping any muggings, something of a bet to himself, but trust Crime Alley to live up to its name, even on a night like this.
He stopped the mugging with little trouble, returned the victim's belongings, and prepared to leave when a nervous voice stopped him.
"Please, wait! Red Hood!"
The mugging victim hurried away, undoubtedly wanting to avoid being sucked into vigilante business as much as possible. Jason peered further into the alley and saw a lean figure in a hoodie unfold from between two dumpsters. He frowned, hidden behind his helmet, at the light dusting of snow on the figure's shoulders and hood. As the person approached, Jason saw that it was an older boy, a teenager. The hoodie and baggy jeans hid a lot of his figure, but there was a gauntness in the kid's cheeks and a hollowness in his eyes that Jason did not like. It spoke of illness or addiction. Jason was not sure which he'd prefer it to be.
He didn't look like a potential assailant, but looks could be deceiving.
The boy stopped well out of arm's reach. Something desperate and despairing flickered across his face as he eyed Jason.
"Did you need something?" Jason prompted when the kid failed to speak. "Are you prepared for the cold?" Jason had already run through his supply of gloves and scarves he'd had on hand for this patrol, but he still had some meal bars and cash.
The kid opened his mouth, closed it in obvious indecision, then finally said, "I have some information for you. And a warning."
Jason shifted to show he was listening intently. It was not often that anyone would come up to the Red Hood unprompted to share information. He didn't have the most approachable reputation, and spilling information could be a dangerous prospect to one's health, depending on who or what was being betrayed. He usually got his information from a network of informants, or from thugs he forced to squeal.
The kid wrapped his arms around himself. "It's… pretty weird. Probably not what you're expecting," he admitted, his gaze flicking to the ground.
Jason raised an eyebrow, intrigued. "Would you feel more comfortable in a more private setting?" he asked. "Won't take you far, just up to the roof." Maybe if the kid was more comfortable, he'd talk more easily. Jason didn't have all night.
Shame flickered across the kid's face, but he nodded and stepped closer. Wordlessly, Jason pulled out his grappling gun and held out an arm. The kid grimaced, but allowed himself to be tucked against Jason's side. Jason was not surprised that he could feel every one of the kid's ribs, even through the layers he was wearing.
This kid was absolutely getting the last of Jason's meal bars for the night. And Jason would definitely be keeping an eye out for him in the future. Kid was too unhealthy to be on the streets, but there was no telling what his situation was. Whatever drove him onto the streets in the first place might be worse than being on the streets. Jason would know, having been in such a situation before.
Jason reeled them both up to the roof with minimal fanfare. The boy stepped away as soon as Jason let him go.
The boy was visibly uncomfortable, so Jason prompted, "What's your name, kid?"
"Danny," the boy responded softly.
"Danny, then." Jason nodded. "Want to tell me what this is all about?"
Danny squirmed and said, "It's weird, and I'm not really sure where to begin…" He paused, then gripped the bottom of his hoodie. "I guess I'll start here."
He rolled up his hoodie and the shirt underneath, and Jason's breath caught in his throat. He was not expecting the Y-shaped incision spanning the width and breadth of Danny's chest and abdomen. Jason's hand unconsciously hovered over the red bat on his chest, over his own Y-shaped scar, left over from his autopsy when he'd died. The Lazarus Pit had strangely neglected to remove it, though it had erased all of Jason's other scars.
Danny's incision was fully stitched up. It was red and inflamed – not a good sign; probably infected – but not weeping, at least. From the outside, there was no telling how deep the incision went: if Danny had internal stitches or if the incision didn't go past muscle, or, in the worst case, if his organs were being held in his body only by his skin, with no telling what kind of mess the muscular, connective, and peritoneal tissues were in. Although the kid had done fine when Jason hauled him up onto the roof, which at least implied that there was no organ damage and incomplete, partially healed, or no damage that extended much deeper than the skin.
This was either a case of some moron performing a partial autopsy when the patient wasn't dead, in which case Jason would need to make sure that person lost their practitioner's license at the very least, or – more likely, Jason deemed with a sinking heart, simply because of the way Danny had approached him and had been treating the situation – someone was playing mad scientist, in which case Jason would strongly consider that someone losing their license to life.
Experimenting on kids definitely violated his "don't hurt kids, don't deal to kids, don't put kids on street corners, what's so fucking hard to understand about that" rule.
Danny put his clothes back down and shivered. Jason found his voice and asked, "Who did this to you, kid?"
"A government organization," Danny replied, visibly uncomfortable. It was definitely not the answer Jason was expecting.
"The government?" Jason repeated incredulously.
"Yeah, it's…" the kid slumped. "I'm legally not a sentient being in the United States, so if someone wants to experiment on me, or tear me apart, they have free reign to do whatever they want." He clutched the front of his hoodie over his Y-incision in a move reminiscent of Jason earlier.
"What the fuck?" Jason said blankly. "What the fuck?" Literal lab animals were treated with dignity and care thanks to the Animal Welfare Act. What the fuck was this?
"Yeah, um, it's codified in the Anti-Ecto Acts. In short terms, any being that is made of, produces, or consumes ectoplasm is to be considered non-sentient and dangerous, and is therefore to be contained and turned over to licensed entities for containment, experimentation, and disposal. And… I am," the kid finished simply.
"Let me look this up," Jason said, pulling up the wrist computer the Bats had so kindly "donated" to him during his last gadget raid of the Cave. "Not that I don't believe you," he hurriedly added when he saw Danny cringe back. "I just want to see exactly what I'm dealing with."
It didn't take much effort to pull up the Acts in all their glory on the computer. Jason's mouth curled into a silent snarl as he parsed the legalese. It took a lot of effort for him to get through the entirety of the document without breaking something. His vision shaded greener and greener with rage as the Pit churned, because this was such bullshit.
The Acts were passed recently, just in the past two years, slipped through as part of a much larger national defense act outlining strategies for dealing with national, international, alien, extradimensional, and superpowered threats.
They also laid the groundwork for massive sentient rights violations, as well as provisioned federal funds for a new federal agency to deal with these "ectoplasmic beings."
Jason didn't need to know exactly what ectoplasmic beings were to know that this law needed to go. Even if these ectoplasmic beings were hugely dangerous and actively malicious, as the Act painted them, that was no excuse to throw out the sweeping Metahuman Rights Act and the earlier Geneva Conventions. How the fuck did this get through in the first place?
Jason didn't have the power to change a federal law, but he sure as fuck knew people who did. With a quick run of his fingers, he sent information on the law to Oracle, along with a short message to get B and maybe the whole damn Justice League dismantling this law ASAP.
Any law that could justify whatever had been done to Danny, kid or not (and he might not be, if he wasn't baseline human, but he looked and acted so painfully young and uncertain that Jason didn't care), was wrong. Plain and simple.
Jason couldn't change the law, but he could wreck the people who did this to this kid. It was likely why the kid specifically sought him out, to stop the people who did this to him. Or possibly, Jason thought, his heart breaking a little, that the kid didn't trust heroes that were significantly more law-abiding, like the Bat, to not turn him in, in accordance with the Acts.
Though, if Danny had gone to Batman instead of Red Hood, Jason could absolutely see Bruce giving Danny "temporary" sanctuary that would end in adoption papers within the month. Assuming Danny didn't have family somewhere. Danny absolutely had the look of Bruce Wayne adoptee bait, with his black hair and blue eyes (which Jason only knew thanks to the advanced cameras in his helmet, because it was too dark to make out eye color otherwise) and general pathetic look.
Jason grimaced. He did not need to think about this random kid's suitability as a potential new sibling. "So, I assume you want my help taking these guys down, and keeping you safe in the meantime?" he asked, fighting to keep his voice level. He didn't want his inability to control the Pit to scare the kid off.
Danny looked startled, as if he hadn't expected Jason to come down so solidly on his side, and wasn't that just fucking sad? "Well, I mean," he stammered. "No, I just wanted to warn you about them. The GIW."
GIW, Jason thought, mentally filing away the acronym for later research. Even if Danny didn't ask him to, if they were the guys Danny was running from, Jason might just take them down anyway. "What about them are you warning me about? Are they taking random people or something? Get bored with the 'ectoplasmic entities' they think they're entitled to?"
"Oh, no," Danny squirmed. "For regular people, they're usually a nuisance at most, because they cause a lot of property damage and reckless endangerment—"
What the fuck, Jason thought. Reckless endangerment was way more than just a "nuisance" problem.
"—but I'm warning you specifically because they would target you. Because you're what they'd register as an ectoplasmic entity."
Jason squinted. "Come again?" He didn't fully understand what an ectoplasmic entity was; the Acts only defined them in terms of their connection to ectoplasm, which was neither defined nor explained in much detail, aside from it being highly modifiable and moldable, electrically conductive, having many potential forms, and usually not being bioactive.
"Well, you've got a lot of ectoplasm in your body. Way more than normal humans can have, which means it's bonded to your tissues."
"What?" Jason was definitely missing something here.
"Well, ectoplasm normally goes right through a human body and can't accumulate beyond infinitesimal amounts. It can't bond with living tissues unless there are some very rare circumstances involved."
"Why do you think I have this… ectoplasm stuff in my body?" Jason asked.
Danny wilted, hearing the skepticism thick in Jason's voice. "I can sense it. The GIW have tools that can sense it too; that's why I'm warning you."
Jason tensed. Whether or not he believed the kid about if he had "ectoplasm" in his body, there was no denying that his Y-incision was real, and that that Act was real. "Can they track you now?"
"Kinda," Danny shrugged. "Usually they can track me down pretty easily, but there's something about this city that interferes with their long-range sensors. So long as I'm in Gotham, they can't find me. But they know I'm in the city, so they're trying to find me the old-fashioned way. Which is why I'm warning you, because they're in the city right now. You're highly visible and a lot easier to find, compared to me. I mean, you run around each night in the same general area to fight crime. It's only a matter of time before they run into you and attack you." The kid paused, his expression falling. He looked miserable. "I'm so sorry. I led them to your city, and now you're in danger because of it."
Jason still didn't buy that he had this ectoplasm in his body, not without solid proof, because nothing strange had shown up in his recent blood tests, but the kid seemed convinced that he did. And even if these GIW thugs attacked him, Jason could more than handle himself.
Of greater concern, however, was the kid's safety. It was too cold for the kid to be out on the streets. But he couldn't go to a hospital or a shelter – he'd get picked up right away by the agency that was hunting him.
Jason could take him to Bruce and the other Bats for safekeeping, but Danny had come specifically to Jason to warn him about the GIW. Carelessly foisting the kid off on the others would definitely prickle at his pride.
What did he do with a kid that was on the run and looked like he could do with a good meal or five?
"So, kid. Thanks for the info. How do you feel about Batburger? It's on me."
It hit Jason, as he was coaxing Danny back to one of his safehouses for a warm and safe bed, that somewhere out in the multiverse, someone was laughing at him. Batburger and a warm, safe bed were what Bruce had used to lure a young tire thief home with him.
Jason would not turn into Bruce. He categorically refused. He would not adopt a stray kid off the street, despite how he was warming up to the kid abnormally fast. Besides, the kid looked like he was only a few years younger than Jason, only a few years away from hitting adulthood, and he probably had a family somewhere that he couldn't return to so long as the GIW were on his tail.
It was a bad sign that he already had to look for excuses not to keep the kid. But Jason couldn't help it. Some part of him just felt drawn to Danny. It didn't hurt that Danny held a passing resemblance to Jason when he had been on the streets.
But Danny had finally relented. He was currently fidgeting awkwardly near the entry of the safehouse while Jason bustled about, gathering blankets for the couch and putting away stray ammunition and gadgets.
Jason cast about for something to start a conversation and maybe break the uncomfortable tension. They hadn't talked about anything important while eating Batburger – Danny had been too busy stuffing his face.
"Do you need any help bathing?" Jason asked as he produced a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants that would probably fit Danny that Jason vaguely thought were Tim's. "That incision of yours needs to be kept dry."
Danny flinched as he accepted the clothes. "I can manage on my own," he replied.
Jason nodded. "Alright." He retrieved his well-stocked first aid kit and set it on the coffee table by his couch, then tended to the kettle he'd started heating the second he entered the safehouse. He retrieved his selection of teabags and chose one for himself. "Any tea in particular you prefer?"
"No, not really. I haven't had tea much."
Jason selected a healthy green tea for Danny. "Steep that for three minutes before drinking." He handed the warm mug to the kid, who cradled it close and inhaled the steam. Jason could empathize; there was nothing quite like a steaming beverage after being in the cold for a long time.
While Danny nursed his tea, Jason drew him a bath. He definitely didn't want the kid to take a shower with that massive incision.
It took some coaxing to get Danny in the bathtub once he'd finished his tea. Once the kid was in, Jason finally stripped himself of his own gear. Armor for cleaning, his guns and gadgets for cleaning and maintenance, checking for unnoticed wounds. The steady rituals of his post-patrol routine helped calm his nerves. The only difference was that he kept his domino mask on after changing into comfortable clothes. Having a near-stranger in his safehouse, even if it was a traumatized kid, was somewhat nerve-wracking. He wasn't exactly the best host.
Danny emerged from the bathroom looking much more relaxed. There was no telling when he'd last been able to clean himself. He was wearing the clothes Jason had found for him.
"I'll stick your clothes in the wash for you," Jason offered. No telling when Danny's clothes had last been washed, either.
"Thanks."
Jason started a load of laundry, combining the few clothes Danny produced from his backpack with some of his own. By the time he was done, Danny was half-curled on the couch, looking like he was dozing off.
Poor kid, Jason thought. Guess he really does feel safe with me. The thought gave him a warm feeling. Jason was loathe to disturb the kid, but he had to.
"Danny?"
Danny cracked his eyes open. "What?"
"One last thing before you can sleep. I want to check your incision and any other wounds you have, make sure they're healing properly." Jason rapped his knuckles on the first aid kit he'd gotten out earlier.
Danny immediately shot up, alert. He protectively clutched at his chest.
Jason held up a hand before Danny could say anything. "I know, I know. I doubt you would trust just anyone to get close to it. It was probably a huge leap of faith just showing it to me earlier, right?" When Danny hesitantly nodded, Jason gently continued, "I've been a vigilante for a long time, kid. Long enough to pick up a thing or two about taking care of wounds. If you don't want me to touch it, that's fine. I just want to see it and ask some questions about it. If anything needs to be done to it, I can direct you on how to do it yourself, unless you ask me to do it. Is that acceptable?"
Jason might not have been Robin for a long time, and Red Hood wasn't the most amiable of figures, but he still knew how to properly treat a victim.
"O-okay," Danny stammered. "The… one on my chest is the worst, but I had some others. They're mostly healed by now, though."
Jason hummed in acknowledgement as Danny took the shirt off. Seeing it in the light of the safehouse was even worse than seeing it in the poor lighting on the rooftop.
Jason clenched a fist. How could anyone do this to someone else on purpose? He gritted his teeth and told himself he could lose his temper once Danny was safely asleep and Jason could tear through the web looking for the GIW fuckers who'd done this.
Jason prodded Danny for details as he took in the incision and forcibly stopped himself from counting the number of stitches. The wound was inflamed, like it was infected. Danny wasn't sure if it was actual infection, or if it was a lingering allergic-like reaction to the tools that had been used, which had a corrosive effect on ectoplasm. The incision did penetrate all the way into the kid's chest cavity, but Danny was positive that much of the inner damage had already healed. Turned out the kid had something of a healing factor.
Danny wasn't nauseous or feverish, and the wound wasn't oozing, but Jason didn't want to take chances. He handed Danny a tube of antibiotic gel to smear along the incision, then dug out a bottle of prescription antibiotics.
"Twice a day, once in the morning and once at night. Take them all," Jason instructed. "You're not allergic to any antibiotics, are you?"
Danny shook his head. "Aren't you supposed to only get this stuff from a doctor?"
"Eh, so long as you know how to use them correctly, it's fine," Jason shrugged. Vigilantes didn't have the luxury of going to a doctor every time they got wounded. He dug out another bottle from the kit. "Might as well have you take an antihistamine too, if you think it could be an allergic reaction. Cover all the bases." Jason paused. "Do you know if the ectoplasm stuff that's in your body impacts how medication works for you?"
Honestly, Jason had to respect the doctors hired by the Justice League. They not only had to treat individuals from a number of different species, but occasionally had to figure out how to treat someone from a species they'd never encountered before at the drop of a hat.
Danny squirmed. "Well, I haven't had to take much medicine since… since ectoplasm became a part of my body. But some of them seem to work fine, while others don't work as well."
"Any of them make you sick?"
"None so far."
Eh. Good enough.
Jason helped Danny wrap his entire torso with bandages and in the process discovered an I incision on the inside of the kid's right wrist, spanning half the length of his forearm. This one was smaller and near fully healed, but Danny admitted that his control of the hand had been fucked up for a while. Jason privately thought that if it weren't for the kid's healing factor, he probably would have needed multiple reconstructive surgeries to get a fraction of control of his hand back, given the description of what had happened to his wrist.
He needed to think about something else fast, otherwise he was going to lose the battle with his anger and punch the table, hard enough to break either it or his fingers. Definitely not something he wanted to do in front of a traumatized kid.
"So," Jason began, casting about for something else to talk about other than the kid's injuries. He landed on a question he still had from earlier as he packed up the first aid kit. "You seem convinced I'm contaminated with this ectoplasm stuff since you can sense it. What is it, exactly? I haven't noticed anything weird about my body." At least, nothing weird that he couldn't account for. His resurrection and the Pit accounted for most of his weirdness, though over the course of being a vigilante and visiting other planets and associating with aliens, he definitely had been exposed to all kinds of bizarre things. Maybe even something that wouldn't show up on the regular checks he got at the Cave.
Danny blinked in surprise. "You don't know you have it? Strange. It's definitely a lot and it should be affecting you at that level. Can I check something?"
Jason nodded after a moment of deliberation. Danny leaned over and laid his hand on Jason's chest. Jason wasn't expecting anything to happen, but—
The Pit flared, agitated and angry.
Jason doubled over, clutching at his chest as acidic pain burned throughout his body. He couldn't see anything beyond the green taking over his vision.
Jason was surprised, when his vision cleared and his senses returned, to find that he was still inside his apartment. Hadn't even twitched an inch. There were no cooling bodies beneath his feet. No bloodstains. The kid was completely untouched.
"Yikes, that is worse than I thought," Danny said nonchalantly, as if he hadn't just triggered a blackout Pit episode worse than what Jason had had in years.
"What the fuck did you do?!" Jason screeched as he leapt out of his chair.
"I just stimulated your ectoplasm some," Danny replied.
"That's ectoplasm? What is your connection to the Lazarus Pits?!" Jason demanded, the green clouding his vision whispering that he should go for the gun he kept taped to the underside the coffee table. More fool him, for putting away his other weapons.
Danny held his hands up, naked fear flitting across his face. "I don't know what the Lazarus Pits are, but yeah, that's ectoplasm," he confirmed warily. "Yours is really polluted and technically not fully yours, but… yeah."
Jason grimaced. Well, that wasn't ominous or anything. He reminded himself that this was a kid that had been experimented on and needed help, not an enemy that needed exterminating.
"It… maybe you were aware of it?" Danny asked. Jason's reaction hadn't been subtle.
"Yeah. I know it by a different name, though," Jason admitted as he gingerly sat back down, forcing his breathing to be slow and calm. "I think we're going to need to compare notes some more." His head was clearing remarkably fast, for the aftermath of a Pit episode. Shooting his source of information – not to mention an abused kid who had been experimented on – was definitely not something he wanted to do.
"Settle in, kiddo," Jason suggested. He watched in amusement as Danny's nose crinkled at the nickname. "I got a lot of questions." It wouldn't hurt to keep the kid awake a little longer than planned, if it meant answers.
The Pit Madness was curable.
The Pit Madness was curable.
Oh, the information Danny had shared with him – and Danny did seem truly eager to share it with someone who was like him – was a lot more than just that, and Jason had definitely been paying close attention through all of it, but.
The Pit Madness. Was. Curable.
That was the most important part of this. The Pit was apparently heavily polluted ectoplasm. While it was integrated with his body, it wasn't properly integrated with his mind, and it had a very simple "will" of its own. Purifying the ectoplasm of both its impurities and the foreign "will" would, in all likelihood, solve all of Jason's problems.
Jason couldn't fucking wait to get the medical attention necessary to clean out the Pit. Danny couldn't administer it because he didn't know how, and even if he did, he was too injured to expend any significant amount of energy on anything other than healing himself. Danny did know people in a whole other dimension that would help if Danny asked them to, but getting both Danny and Jason to that other dimension required getting past the GIW, at the bare minimum.
Which led to the second most important part of this: everything about the GIW, aka the Ghost Investigation Ward, because Jason was definitely taking them down. He would have done it anyway, simply because of what they had done to Danny – he'd gone after other people and organizations for lesser offences to kids – but with their existential threat to Jason thanks to the Pit/ectoplasm in his body, andthem being in the way of Jason getting the Pit Madness cured, and their blatant sentient rights violations in general (even though they were technically lawful)…
Taking care of this kind of thing was exactly what the Outlaws were for.
Danny started drooping way before Jason was done asking questions, but Jason didn't want to push him. Poor kid was healing and hurting, and Jason had the most immediately important parts, anyway.
The details on an entire species living in another dimension that almost no one knew was real could wait. Jason had more important things to worry about.
It was only once Jason was sure that Danny was fast asleep that he grabbed his phone and called up Roy and Kori. "So," Jason said conversationally as they connected, "How would you like to help me blow up an organization that unethically experiments on sentient beings, including children?"
Kori, given her past as a child slave subjected to unethical experiments, unsurprisingly agreed immediately. Roy didn't have the same personal background, but he was always down to follow his teammates into blowing shit up, beating up assholes, and generally causing mayhem.
"I'll message you for a pickup when I'm ready. Should be within an hour," Jason promised as he ended the call.
Jason set the information gathering and hacking programs on his laptop to work while he quietly packed his go-bag full of equipment. The Outlaws' suborbital spaceship had more advanced tech for general information gathering and hacking than his laptop, but it didn't hurt to get a head start.
Jason couldn't just up and vanish to go blow up government facilities across the country, though, no matter how the Pit was egging him on. Not without making sure Danny would be protected and cared for in his absence.
He knew exactly who to call. This was the kind of situation where his pride could shove it.
"Dick," Jason greeted as soon as his older brother groggily picked up the phone. Oops; it was way past time that the other Bats would have gone to bed.
Oh well. Jason was not going to feel sorry about that.
"I need a favor from you and maybe the others," Jason steamrollered ahead.
"What'cha need, Little Wing?" Dick asked, yawning. "I gotchu."
No complaints about being woken up. Dick was the best.
"I need you guys to take care of a kid while I'm gone. Don't know how long, but I'm guessing no longer than a month. He needs protection from an agency that abused and experimented on him. He's here at my safehouse at—" Jason rattled off the address. "I'll leave pertinent details here for you. 'Kay thanks bye!"
"Wait, Jay—!"
Jason hung up before Dick could say no. Best way to shoehorn his brother into it. No way he'd be able to just ignore Jason's call with another person involved, especially since that person was a victim.
With that taken care of, Jason wrote out two separate notes for Danny and Dick. He felt badly for leaving Danny the way he was, but he didn't want to let this wait, especially with the Pit itching for violence beneath his skin. Then he picked up his go-bag, quietly left his apartment, and waited for Kori and Roy to pick him up in the Outlaws' spaceship.
They didn't actually leave Gotham, merely waiting around while cloaked in the ship, until they confirmed that Dick made it to Jason's safehouse. Jason refused to leave until he knew that Danny was protected by capable hands.
GIW security at their main facility was a strange blend of very lax and very tight. It depended which species you were, honestly. The GIW were heavily prepared for ghostly attacks, up to and including a full-scale invasion, but if you weren't a ghost? Getting into the facility was as simple as getting past a little security booth at the entrance to the parking lot with a fake ID that was stupidly easy to make. It was very strange, given the valuable equipment and materials and illegal experiments happening inside. Almost anyone could just waltz up and steal equipment, trade secrets, or proof of illegal activity. Or show up with a bunch of explosives to attach to the load-bearing walls of the facility.
It was almost painfully simple. Kori and Roy drove in first in a stolen vehicle and entered the building. Jason followed shortly after and acted as the distraction, because as soon as he crossed the property boundary, the GIW's ghost sensors would detect him and throw up all sorts of obnoxious alarms. Agents poured out of the facility to chase him, and Jason had the time of his life leading them on a merry goose chase while Kori went ham releasing all the GIW's ghost prisoners and Roy attached the explosives. Honestly, it was almost easy enough to pull off that they probably could have just stormed the facility, guns blazing, and achieved the same results. Kori barely faced any resistance, and she took great pleasure in melting the experimentation labs and freeing the haggard and abused prisoners, none of whom stuck around for long. Roy didn't face any resistance, no matter how blatantly he went about placing the explosives.
It would have been funny, if not for the condition the freed prisoners were in.
Watching the facility go up in flames was very satisfying, especially given that Kori and Roy felt no need to clear the building before blowing it up, given the meticulous documentation of sentient rights abuses they'd found.
That documentation would find its way to several major newspapers, members of Congress, and the Justice League. In the meantime, while the slower bureaucracy was working on dismantling the GIW as an organization so they couldn't just rebuild, the Outlaws were very happy to continue destroying all their side facilities and releasing any remaining prisoners.
Jason was gone from Gotham for less than a week. No one could argue that the Outlaws weren't efficient.
Jason returned to Gotham to find that the safehouse he'd left Danny in was a burnt husk. It looked like someone had triggered the explosives he'd wired into the place as a last-ditch protective measure.
Heart in his throat, Jason whipped out his phone and dialed Dick's number. "So help me god, Dickwing, if you don't pick up—"
The call connected. "Jason!" Dick greeted. "What—"
"Where's Danny?" Jason demanded, his grip tightening on his phone.
"He's safe, at the manor. Are you back in Gotham?"
"Yeah, and staring at the ruins of my former safehouse," Jason snarked as he shimmied down to street level. Thankfully, the shed housing his motorcycle seemed to be intact.
"The GIW tracked him down only a couple hours after you left and blew themselves up on your defensive measures. And, really, Little Wing? Was it really necessary to set up enough explosives to take down the entire apartment? There are other people living in that building, you know!"
"Be glad it was just the apartment and not the while building," Jason griped irritably. Not that he would ever set up something that could take out a whole building of innocent people just because he lived there, but he was mad and in the mood to annoy his older brother. He started looking over his motorcycle, just to make sure no one had left any "presents" for him, even though he hadn't received any security alerts from the vehicle.
"I think what you mean is, 'Thank you, Dick, my dearest older brother, for coming at the drop of a hat to protect a kid that has an entire government organization on his tail.' Excuse me, had, because you've been spending the week destroying said government organization," Dick replied sarcastically.
Satisfied that the motorcycle was safe to ride, Jason wasted no time in transferring the call to his helmet and gunning it to the Manor. "Thank you, dearest Dickhead, for doing your job," Jason warbled in his most insincere voice. "How'd you know what I was up to?"
"Oh, please, it wasn't hard at all to figure out. Your Outlaws are not subtle."
That was fair. "How's he doing?"
"Fine. Miffed that you ditched him without warning, though," Dick answered. "Should I take the motorcycle in the background as evidence that you'll be here soon?"
"Yeah," Jason replied, his grip tightening on the handles. It had been a shitty move to bail on Danny and stick him with someone unfamiliar, but Jason had been holding onto his sanity with his fingertips by the end of his conversation with the kid. The Pit had been baying for GIW blood. Jason just hoped the kid would still be willing to help him out with the Pit. Hopefully he would appreciate that Jason had taken down an entire organization, in large part just for him.
"I'll wait for you to get here, then," Dick said in a voice that Jason definitely didn't like. It was his smug 'I know something you don't' voice that usually precluded some sort of embarrassing revelation.
"Dick," Jason warned.
"Get here ASAP, 'kay thanks bye!" Jason growled at the dropped call, but really, he deserved that.
Dick handed him a newspaper the second Jason walked in the door. Jason had been out of the loop for the past week, too busy blowing up government buildings, and coming back to this—
"Are you fucking kidding me right now?" Jason spluttered as he stared at the headline.
"You asked us to look after him," Dick said innocently.
"This… isn't quite what I meant," Jason managed to reply.
NEW WAYNE ADOPTEE, the newspaper proclaimed.
Jason couldn't find his tongue, so Dick filled in the silence for him. "His parents and older sister were killed in the same incident where the GIW took Danny. Apparently, there was a lab in the basement of their home, and something big exploded in the midst of the raid on the house."
"Surely he has other family?" Jason asked, his throat tight. Collateral damage in lives wasn't something Jason would describe as mere a mere nuisance to bystanders. Unless the kid hadn't known his family was dead when he met Jason. Given that the kid had been locked in a lab as a guinea pig and then on the run, it was very possible.
"His only other family is an aunt who lives in a rural town, with the closest high school over an hour and a half away and with the next closest resident in age being thirty-six years old. Not an ideal environment for a kid who's fifteen," Dick reported dryly. "Besides, with the Anti-Ecto Acts still up, and looking to stay that way for a while because bureaucracy is slow, the safest place for him will be with a family that has the legal and physical resources to protect him."
"Son of a fucking bitch," Jason muttered. He was more concerned about Danny, but those laws applied to Jason, too.
"We'll protect you too, Little Wing," Dick said gently.
Jason ground his teeth. Of course Danny had talked about the Pit's – and therefore Jason's – connection to ectoplasm and those laws. "You all just wanted Danny for yourself," Jason accused, blatantly redirecting. Best defense was a good offence.
Dick shrugged, neither confirming nor denying. Jason was grateful he was letting discussion about Jason's new legal status slide; no way Bruce would be so lenient. "He's a good kid, once you get past the understandable skittishness. A total riot, actually. Though Damian is steaming mad about the sudden addition to the family and is blaming you for everything."
"Typical," Jason muttered as he skimmed the rest of the article. Blah blah blah, Wayne family drama, new adoptee, adoption pushed through very rapidly. Bruce definitely hadn't wanted to leave this kid in the lurch. He'd probably gotten attached at record speed, too, otherwise he would have found another solution that didn't involve adoption. He'd handled Cass's adoption with similar speed to grant her protection from her blood parents, so it wasn't like this was totally unprecedented.
A heavy weight landed on Jason's back without warning, and he nearly threw the person off in a move that would also break their arm when the Pit flared. Not as strongly as the first time Danny had poked it, but definitely enough for him to know who it was.
"Hasn't anyone ever told you that jumping on people without warning is a bad idea?" Jason halfheartedly snarled.
"Hasn't anyone ever told you that abandoning traumatized minors without warning is a bad idea?" Danny snarked back as his arms wound around Jason's shoulders in a hug that contradicted his tone. "Really, you couldn't warn a guy before running off for a week?"
"No," Jason grumbled. Something unwound in his chest with the confirmation that Danny was alright. More than alright, if he was ambushing people like this. He was undoubtedly recovering under Alfred's diligent care.
Danny's arms tightened. "Thank you for stopping them," he whispered.
Jason gripped Danny's arms and squeezed reassuringly. "You're welcome."
Some number of weeks later…
The swirling green light was intoxicating. Alluring. Nauseating. Jason had terrible memories revolving around that color, and yet…
"Ready to go?" Danny asked, holding a hand out to Jason. He looked eerie, backlit by the color that haunted Jason's nightmares.
Jason took his newest brother's hand, trying to convince himself that his hands were shaking from excitement, not fear. He had to step through this portal if he wanted to get rid of the Pit.
Danny squeezed his hand reassuringly. "C'mon, if you can face down dozens of guys who want to kill you and take down the GIW in a week, you can face down some doctors who just want to help you, right?" he teased gently.
Jason took a steadying breath. No time like the present. Danny stepped back through the portal, not releasing his grip on Jason. Jason squared his jaw and followed, allowing himself to be swallowed by the green.
Figured that, with the current (as of 7/10/2023) DDoS attack on AO3 servers, now is as good a time as any to port some fics over here.
Note: Please do not listen to Jason (aka me, who is writing him and who is definitely not a doctor) about taking antihistamines with a possible infection, without first talking to your doctor and weighing the risks and outcomes! Antihistamines can actually impair immune response to infection – they reduce the inflammation that comes from the release of histamines in the face of foreign particles, which include viruses and bacteria, not just allergens. Current papers indicate that this is only really a problem in people with severe infections and weaker immune systems.