Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Marvel Studios, Disney, Warner Bros. Entertainment, and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: Welcome back! I got out the other stuff that I wanted to do before this chapter a lot faster than I thought I would, so here you go.

I've kept on vacillating on this chapter's title. But I decided to go back to the song that I originally intended for it, Governator by Green Day. Think it just fits better with this chapter and the overall fic + 'verse playlist that I have. And the punk rock is just so Jason!

Anyways, as always, I hope you enjoy. Until the next chapter,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~the black and gold 'verse~

~break the rules~

~chapter 2: governator~

The dream wasn't any different from the typical one.

He was back in the base in Siberia, staring into the corner of the training room. "Пять...четыре...три..." he counted off. "Два...один! Ready or not, here I come!"

With a grin, he turned around.

Perhaps this seemed strange, that HYDRA would allow him and Cass to play something as simple as hide-and-seek. They were supposed to be their best assets, once they got old enough, spies, and assassins. Not even the Red Room, or so Jason and Cass had heard when the leader of it had come to inspect them and compare them to his own "daughters," allowed his "girls" to play any games. It was always training, always learning, always surviving for them, and never a moment otherwise.

But Haywood had told him, "They're more...compliant when they have the occasional moment of entertainment." Her blue eyes had looked at Jason and Cass intently, as if she'd been telling them to say otherwise.

They hadn't. Just the threat of her taking away their moments of fun had been enough for him to keep his mouth shut.

And Cass, of course, couldn't speak.

He started to walk around the training room, beginning his search. There weren't really too many places for his sister to hide. The real challenge of this kind of game was seeing how well they could hide themselves, depending on who was playing which role, if they could prevent any inch of their skin from being seen, if they could remain perfectly silent and still.

Because in the real world, if they were to fail at one of those goals, then there would be no second chances. They would be killed, and that would be the end of them.

"...Cass?" he said as he inspected one of the possible hiding places, his green eyes looking into it. He reached out with a hand, but it met empty air. She wasn't there.

He went over to one of the other hiding places. She wasn't there, either. Nor was she in the next two hiding places that he looked at.

Jason frowned. Something about this wasn't...right. Like, not in the sense that she wasn't here, he knew that she had to be here in the training room somewhere. But more like...he felt like he should've found her by now. Like this wasn't a reality that he was actually experiencing here in the moment, but a memory.

"Cass?" he whispered.

Suddenly, just as soon as he had spoken, there was a familiar beat echoing from down the hall. It didn't belong. He knew that it didn't.

His head snapping up, he stared over at the door to the training room, locked as always when he and Cass were in here until it was time for them to go back to their room, from where the music – the song was coming from.

"But every time it rains, you're here in my head. Like the sun coming out..."

Just like that, everything came back to him.

Cass really wasn't here.

She was gone.

She had been for years.

He had been, too.

Still, he shook his head, tears pooling in his eyes. "No, no, no!" he shouted as he pivoted on his foot once more. He ran around the training room as if his life depended on it. "Cass? Cass, where are you? Cass!"

He refused to believe that he would leave her behind. It was something that he would refuse to do. Even when they were thousands and thousands of miles apart, or however much the distance was, he would never forget her. He would neveract like she didn't exist.

She was his sister! Like him, she was the daughter of –

"Но ты сделал."

The words weren't actually said. Naturally, they weren't. They were signed, and somehow he could see the signs in his mind's eye. Like they were being signed in front of him.

He blinked.

When he opened his eyes, there Cass was. She was standing in front of him, her dark brown eyes bright as the tears fell down her cheeks. She was older now, looking the same age as him, fifteen, instead of the six years old she had been when they'd gotten separated, looking like the alpha he'd thought he would've been until he'd presented.

Her black hair was cut into a bob, and she was wearing an all-black suit that didn't actually look all too different from Selina's suit, or the suits that the Black Widows of the Red Room had once worn. The main difference was that over the lower half of her face was a black fabric mask, as if whoever had designed it had wanted to make it loud and clear that her vocal cords couldn't and would never work.

Her hands moved."Ты забыл меня," she signed.

"No!" Jason cried. "I didn't, I swear! I've never forgotten you!"

"Тогда почему ты не искал меня?"

"Because – because – " Jason scrambled for words. He couldn't come up with an answer besides one that he would refuse to admit, even in his darkest dreams.

The music got louder, so loud it was practically deafening. "And every time it rains, you're here in my head. Like the sun coming out..."

"Ты забыл меня," Cass repeated. "С чего ты взял, что я тебя не забыл?"

And now she was the one to turn around, she was the one to walk away.

"Cass, wait, no!" Jason exclaimed. He tried to run after her, but strangely, it was like his feet were glued to the floor. He couldn't move them. "Don't leave me!

"Cass!"

Jason woke up with a slight jolt, his eyes flying open as he lifted his head.

Not even more than two seconds later, his alarm began to go off: beep, beep, beep, beep!

With a groan, he reached out his arm and turned off the alarm. Then he let his face fall back on his pillow, acutely aware of how the few tears that he hadn't been able to stop himself from shedding were soaked up by the fabric of his pillowcase. It seemed like a metaphor for something.

For what exactly, he didn't know.

He allowed himself a few minutes to simply remain in bed, mulling over his dream. As he'd said, it wasn't an atypical one. In fact, it was one that he had fairly often, at least a couple of times per month – albeit that particular piece of information hadn't been found out until his first heat by anyone else, because he hadn't had enough control of his body during the brain fog to keep it hidden.

Dick hadn't told anyone else the truth about his sister since then, though. That had to count for something.

Once those few minutes were up, sighing lightly, he got out of bed and started getting ready for the day.

Downstairs, a lot of his siblings were already in the kitchen for breakfast. Dick was among them, spooning baby food into Mari's mouth and making faces at her to encourage her eating. Despite this, because of his position at the table, he was the first one to notice Jason walking into the room. "'Morning, Jason," he said.

"'Morning, Dickie," Jason responded. He sat down next to Lili, who grinned at him. "'Morning, Lili." He said his greetings to Harley, Peter, and Bea, too, as well as Bruce, Alfred (who was making breakfast), and Bucky. Tony and Taryn weren't anywhere in sight, but he assumed that was because Tony was bottle-feeding Kamala and Taryn was taking care of the twins.

He went about helping himself to the spread on the table as he received all of the greetings back: pancakes, beef bacon, hash browns, coffee, and orange juice.

"So," Bruce said afterwards, folding the newspaper he'd been looking at. "Are you all looking forward to going back to school?"

"Yes!" was the general response. How weird it would probably seem to an outside observer, that every single kid in their family was looking forward to going back to school after spring break.

They were an odd bunch, that was for sure.

"I think Jason's looking forward to it the most," Dick singsonged, a shit-eating grin on his face.

"Dick!" Jason hissed.

Bruce looked at him amusedly. "And why is that?"

(Like he probably didn't already know himself, despite how he and Tony hadn't given Jason "the talk" yet. They were both geniuses and highly observant.)

Jason cut off a piece of pancake with his fork. "I'm just...excited to be resuming my classes." He nodded to himself. Yeah, that sounded reasonable. "We're actually covering some interesting stuff in my English and History classes right now."

"And to think, you didn't want to go to school when you first came into the family," Tony said breezily as he entered the room, baby Kamala tucked in the crook of his left arm as he held her bottle to her mouth with his right hand.

The reference, combined with his dream earlier, almost made the smile slip off of Jason's face.

Almost.

As always, he was able to stop that from happening. "Well, things change," he hummed instead.

His adoptive omither grinned. "That they do."

During the drive to St. Philomena's, courtesy of Happy, Jason felt his morning melancholy begin to fade away. It was replaced by butterflies in his stomach as he thought about Barbara.

...And Batgirl. It was strange.

No, more than strange. He'd only met Batgirl last night, dammit, and he'd never had a crush on anybody besides Barbara before. It wasn't like any of the other kids at St . Philomena's were particularly appealing people to have crushes on:

There were those who liked to use slurs against male omegas and/or had taken to viewing him more as an object than a person since he'd presented, and then there were those who didn't want anything to do with him at all because of his reputation and/or who his parents were. For the alphas and male betas, it just so happened that most of them fell into the latter category of that first sentence, but a fair few of them and everybody else had even before this past March and his first heat.

But fuck, it was like over the course of only one night, Batgirl had ingrained herself into his brain. Not only that, but as he thought about her, he could feel that twinge thing happen again. Grimacing, he shifted uncomfortably.

He didn't understand what about her was causing his body to like it was aroused when it wasn't, and he didn't care.

Firmly, Jason shoved the thoughts of Batgirl and, unfortunately, Barbara by extension into one of the corners of his mind for the remainder of the drive. It wasn't that hard for him to do; he'd been repressing things for a good percentage of his life, even when he knew it wasn't a good thing for him to be doing.

(Even when the memories that he was repressing were of Cass.)

When they got to St. Philomena's, he was the one to hop out of the car first, Barbara and the nervous excitement he was feeling over her bleeding back into his brain. "I'll see you guys after school!" he told his siblings, barely waiting to hear a reply back from them.

Then he set off in search of his best (and only, outside of his family) friend.

It didn't take too long for him to find her. She was standing underneath the tree just outside the high school entrance to the building, the same tree that they always stood under because nobody else really bothered them there.

His heart fluttered at the sight of her: she was wearing her shoulder-length hair down, parted at the side because that was where the part to her hair naturally was, with a flannel jacket over a green shirt and dark jeans. It seemed like she had taken to plaid in the past two weeks – something a lot of alphas strangely did shortly after they'd presented.

Jason grinned. He was totally going to tease her for that.

"Barbara!" he shouted as he ran towards her.

The now female alpha startled, before she looked over at him. The beam that spread across her face was so bright, it would've blotted out the sun – had it not been yet another cloudy, threatening rainy day in Gotham.

He noticed as he got closer that it looked like she was wearing makeup. There was something...off about her left eye and cheek, like she'd gotten a bruise or even a black eye somehow.

But while he noted this with concern, it was not the immediate matter on his mind. It could've easily been a result of her rut, after all. She would not have been the first person to sustain an injury during a mating cycle.

It was only when he got within six feet of her that his reaction changed. "Hey, Barbara, how was your – ?" he started to say, only to stop short as he inhaled through his nose.

Because Barbara smelled like an alpha now, as she was supposed to, since she had presented and gone into her first rut over break.

But along with that scent was the scent of honeysuckle and fresh linen that Batgirl had been wearing last night, the scent that had bothered him so much, the scent that had even made him produce slick if he was really willing to be honest with himself.

And that could only mean one thing.

Well, actually, it could've meant several, if he wasn't the kind of person that he was. If HYDRA hadn't trained him to observant on top of so many more things from the get-go.

(Let's just say that the only reason why Natasha hadn't been found out from the start of when she'd come to be the "summer nanny" for his family in Malibu, either by him or Bucky, was because she was really, really good at what she did as a turned Black Widow, maybe even the best out of all of the Black Widows. But he'd still known that she was a delta.

Why, you might ask, had he kept that a secret when he knew his family wouldn't have cared about her true designation in the slightest? Even though he'd been fourteen at the time and scent-blockers were still a relatively new concept to society, he'd known that it would've been rude to reveal her status without her permission. Deltas faced so much discrimination, if she'd felt like she'd had to hide her designation to prevent that, he hadn't been able to blame her.

He just hadn't realized how much she'd been hiding on top of that.)

It wasn't merely the bruise that she was covering up with makeup in the same location where the male alpha had hit Batgirl – had hit her – last night, he wanted to be clear. It was also her body posture, which he'd recognized as familiar last night but hadn't known where to place. It was her red hair, and how it was the same length and shade.

It was anything and everything that he could notice, which was a lot, all at once.

Barbara was the Batgirl.

Now, Jason could have done several things in light of this realization. He could have done many, many things.

The thing that felt the most suitable, however, was for him to grab her by the arm and pull her along. "Hey, are you – Jason, what are you doing?" she spluttered, her concern at how he'd abruptly cut off giving way into confusion.

"You're coming with me," he snapped at her. He was too angry, too shocked, too...tense to do anything else.

...Yeah, that was a good way of putting it.

Jason didn't really know where they were going to do...whatever it was that was about to happen. On the one hand, there was that one restroom for omegas, beta and unpresented girls, and thetas on the second floor that was hardly ever used because it was in desperate need of some remodeling.

On the other hand, on the off-chance that somebody decided to use the restroom...Barbara was an alpha now. She wasn't supposed to be using that restroom anymore.

Quickly, he decided to hell with it. What mattered first and foremost was confronting her about being the fucking Batgirl. Everything else could come second.

He didn't answer any of Barbara's questions about what he was doing or where he was taking her, not until they were in the handicapped stall of the aforementioned restroom and the door to the stall was locked behind them.

Glaring at her with what felt like murderous fury (and he had killed people before, even though it'd been a long time ago), he demanded, "What the hell were you doing last night?"

Barbara's eyes widened. Clearly, she hadn't been expecting for him to figure out her stupid ass plan so soon. "Jay, I don't know what – "

"Don't bullshit me!" he hissed back. "You know what you were doing. You're Batgirl!"

The female alpha's expression blanched even further. This was followed by a cross somewhere between disbelief and resignation coming upon her face. "How did you even figure it out already?" she retorted, crossing her arms. "I thought I would have a few weeks until you figured it out, not until the very next day!"

"You know where I was raised before Bruce and Tony adopted me! How did you think that I wasn't going to figure it out?" Jason exclaimed. "Also, if you're that concerned about keeping your identity a secret or whatever – which you should be if you're trying to be a vigilante – not that you should be a vigilante – then why are you wearing such a recognizable perfume?"

"Me?" She gaped at him. "You're one to talk! Can you even smell yourself right now?"

"What?" Jason blinked. He tried to parse what she was saying. He could feel himself producing slick again, but he didn't think she was referencing that. It would be unlike her. "But I'm not wearing any perfume!"

"Well, then that makes two of us, because I'm not, either!"

Jason stared at her for several long, hard seconds. He wracked his brain trying to come up with a solution, any solution at all to why they would be smelling so good to one another when neither of them were wearing perfume or anything else similar.

His instincts were what gave him the answer. When one possibility occurred to him, a possibility that he would've otherwise discarded almost immediately, they whispered in agreement, Mate.

. . .

. . .

Oh.

Oh, shit.

Perhaps he should explain himself a bit, in case you don't already know what was going on. In case it had never been explained to you before in depth by any of the others. It probably hadn't.

Anyways.

There was a rare phenomenon in their world – not as rare as, say, the mutation that had caused Barbara to be an alpha, but still rare, like one-in-a-hundred-million rare, or some number like that – of something called scent matches.

Some people called them "soulmates." Many children in the Western world, even, were more familiar with that term rather than the proper one.

Naturally, that made a lot of people's concepts of scent-matches be of the fantastical nature: they would think that scent matches were something which only belonged in fairytales and fantasy books and nothing more, up until a scent-match was recorded with the government. Then there would be some fanfare about how they actually existed, then the collective memory would forget that they were real again unless, like, a really famous person was part of a scent match or something.

Rinse. Wash. Repeat.

Jason had always known better than the collective memory, though. He'd never met a person who had a scent match before, but he knew that they were real. HYDRA had gone over them when they were giving him and Cass their human anatomy lessons. A scent-match was not a "soulmate," but it was theorized by the Nazi-descended organization that they were one's most genetically compatible match. The one that they would produce the best and healthiest children with.

...Or, rather, depending on who you were in the dynamic, one of the ones.

That was the thing about scent-matches: they were almost never monogamous. Almost always, there was a person who had multiple scent matches, however many there were, but their scent matches didn't have any others. This person was called a "primis," because they were at the center of their group, their...pack.

Most of the time, the person who was the primis in a pack was an alpha, with all of their scent matches being omegas, betas, or sometimes even thetas. Rarer than that, there would be an omega primis: in this case, he didn't think there had been more than one or two documented cases of them having a theta scent match before, and the others were all alphas, never betas. Even rarer was the theta primis, which he thought had also been documented only once or twice before.

There was no such thing as a beta primis. Nobody really knew why, as far as he could tell.

And the reason why he had just explained all of this was because, well...

If his instincts were to be believed, Barbara was his scent match.

It was a ridiculous conclusion to come to, even though it was the most logical one. What were the odds that you would meet your scent match, much less that scent match being your best friend and an alpha when she technically shouldn't have been one in the first place but was because of something much rarer. What were the odds that you and your scent match would both only be fifteen years old when you discovered that you were scent matches?

Answer: they were astronomically high, so high that he knew that he was far likelier to die in a myriad of ways than for this to happen.

Hell, he was probably likelier to win the lottery than this.

If he wasn't underage and the son of two billionaires, perhaps he would've even considered buying some tickets.

As it was, Jason's instincts weren't happy with him as he thought about how unlikely all of this was.

Mate, they insisted, which caused him to gasp as a cramp suddenly ripped through him, urging on more slick.

"Jason!" Barbara gasped. For multiple reasons, though the fact that they were scent matches was not one of them. She didn't even have a clue about that yet; he'd have to explain it to her himself.

He gritted his teeth as the five-minute bell rang. He was going to have to make a decision about what to do next, and fast.

Again.

"Can you get me a napkin from the dispenser?" he asked. Considering that this restroom wasn't used as much as the other ones, he hoped that the janitors kept it stocked. Otherwise, he didn't know what he was going to do. "'Think 'm gonna need it."

Barbara continued to gape at him like a fish, before she shook herself into action. Unlocking the stall, she went over to the dispenser. He heard her put a quarter into it and get out a napkin. She came back and handed it to him. "...Here," she said.

"Thanks," he said.

She wasn't done yet. "Jason, why are you – ?"

"Give me a minute," he told her.

He proceeded to close the stall door in her face. A part of him felt bad about that.

Oh, well.

Jason had never had to use a pad before when he wasn't in heat or pre-heat. He'd never had to wear one at school, either. It was more than just a bit of a mortifying and humiliating experience, putting one on here in the stall. The thought of what the rest of their classmates would think when he left the restroom was more so by many magnitudes.

...Not that he and Barbara would be around them for long today once they left the restroom.

No, he thought determinedly. They couldn't talk about either of their big topics – don't worry, he hadn't forgotten about her being Batgirl with the revelation that they were scent matches – in public, or at least not in school.

It did occur to him that he could call Tony or Bruce and tell them that he needed to come home and Barbara needed to come with him.

But, no, they couldn't do that, either. If they went back to his house, then his parents were going to have questions, and they were questions that he wasn't willing to answer yet. Not if there was a chance, no matter how small, that they would lead to him –

("Ты забыл меня.")

That decided it, then. He and Barbara were going to have to skip school today, even though they were already here.

But that didn't answer his question about where they would go.

The omega was still thinking about it after the pad was put on and he exited the stall. He went over to wash his hands.

"Jason?" Barbara asked again.

"We need to talk about this, but we can't do it here," he said without looking at her. "We're going to have to leave school."

"What?"

"Just trust me?" Jason questioned as he turned around, his sea glass eyes meeting her leafy ones. Both green, just vastly different shades. "Please?"

He watched as a light flush dusted her cheeks.

It comforted him more than it perhaps should've, that he wasn't the only one experiencing...biological malfunctions from this entire thing, although she hadn't figured out the reason for it yet like he had.

"Okay, Omega," she said. The redness of her cheeks worsened, becoming almost the same shade as her hair. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry! I don't know why I just said – !"

"Save it," Jason grumbled, grabbing her by the hand once more. "Just...don't do that again."

His instincts were not happy with him saying this. But she's your mate! She's your – !

Shut up! he screamed back.

"It's better if we leave now, before the final bell rings," he informed her as he led her over to the restroom door. "So many students are walking about, they won't notice us."

She nodded silently in agreement, still looking horrified at what she had said.

Jason didn't try to comfort her. There was no time.

Getting out of the school was easy enough. True to his word, nobody noticed them walking the exact opposite way that they should've been walking – at least, none of the teachers did.

They did earn a few weird looks from their classmates as they walked down the halls, and then down the exterior steps of the school, and then away from the school.

He knew, however, that could've been because of one other glaring reason: that he was producing slick. It wasn't exactly an inconspicuous thing to do when you were a male omega.

Great. He hoped that he wasn't going to pay for it later.

He and Barbara walked all the way to a park about for or so blocks away from St. Philomena's. It was early, and they were in Gotham, even though St. Philomena's was in the Elizabeth borough, so nobody was really there. Just some runners and an old man with his dog.

Jason led Barbara over to a giant pine tree, the branches of which weren't too terrible to get under. They would offer them some privacy, similar to the tree at St. Philomena's yet to an even greater effect:

It would be hard to see them as an outside observer, and if they spoke quietly enough, it was likely that nobody passing by would even notice them.

The ground was damp. Wincing, he took out the spare jacket that he always kept in his backpack and put it on top of the mixture of dirt and pine needles. It could only fit him, bu that was okay. Barbara, as it turned out, had her own spare jacket and she used it for the same purpose.

She tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear as she looked at him. "O – Jason," she corrected herself, her blush returning. "I don't understand. Why are we skipping school? It's not just about me being Batgirl."

"No," he agreed. "It's not."

His mind was still spinning from the two revelations of this morning: first Barbara being Batgirl, now them being scent matches.

It didn't feel real.

Just like how the day that Bruce had rescued him and Bucky hadn't felt real, either.

(Jason was startled awake by several...peculiar sounds.

He sat up immediately, his head turning to look at the door to his and – to his room. At first, because of how tired he was – he'd had a particularly hard day of training yesterday – he didn't recognize what was going on.

But then, he heard the pop pop pop!

The sound of a gun – no, multiple guns – going off.

Accompanying it were cries and shouts in Russian, the screams of the guards.

A shiver went down his spine, sending the hairs on the back of his neck on end. Besides the aftermath of that New Year's when Haywood had cleaned house, so to speak, killing almost every single one of the guards, and the two times that the Солдат had broken free of her programming while Jason had been here – "my name is Rebecca Permelia Barnes!" – he'd never heard these sounds in this context before.

Something was wrong.

Something was very, very wrong.

Were they...was the base being attacked?

The sounds were getting closer to his room. He could tell, as they prickled at his ears.

Jason hopped off his bed and got into a defensive position. There was no guarantee that whoever was causing the sounds was coming for him.

If so, though, he wanted to be ready. HYDRA had taught him how to fight; it was the most important thing they had taught him besides how awful they were through taking his sister away.

He wondered briefly, only for a second or two, if the person or people who were causing the gunshots were coming to rescue him –

But, no,

He'd learned a long time ago that nobody still living in this world, besides maybe Cass, had ever given a damn about him. He was to be a future asset of HYDRA's, and his only worth to them was how well he could be at that. Any resistance would only cause him to be tortured like the Солдат or taken away like Cass, if not killed outright.

The sounds of the fighting reached the outside of his room. He heard the guns going off, the noise so close that it felt like it was going to shatter his eardrums, and the shouting. He also felt the bodies that were thrown against the walls.

Then, in the course of only twenty or so seconds, albeit those seconds might as well have been an eternity, there was silence.

A very unearthly silence.

The door to his room was unlocked, then opened.

Jason braced himself even further for the fight, only to stop in his tracks.

There, on the other side of the door, was a man, a six-foot-four alpha who was basically built like a fridge.

The weird thing about him, however, wasn't that.

It was the costume that he was wearing. Some sort of all-black suit with a cape and two pointy things on either side of his head that looked like ears...bat ears?

What the hell?

The man didn't seem to be very threatening, either. It was obvious from his posture that he had the potential to be. Yet right now his posture was relaxed as much as it could be, like he had known to expect a kid on the other side of the door. Like he had known that Jason was here.

"Кто – Кто ты?" Jason breathed, his own stance relaxing against his skill. He didn't really know why.

He would find out. Later.

"My name is Bruce Wayne, or the Batman," the alpha said as he took off the cowl which was obscuring the upper half of his face. It revealed his brown hair and dark eyes. Probably also brown. "And I'm here to rescue you, Jason.")

Jason decided to rip off the truth like a bandaid. There was really nothing else for it.

After wetting his lips, he said, "I think...I think we're scent matches, Barbara."

Mate, his instincts agreed.

Word Count: 5,470

Next Chapter Title: hard to explain