Chapter Text
Magic doesn’t come to Gotham.
Which is simplifying it. Because, well, magic isn’t allowed in Gotham, first off. But also, it really doesn’t want to come to Gotham. Of all the things the Bat tries to keep out, magic is the easiest because magic wants to stay as far away from the city as possible. Zatanna called it a “cesspit of untamed ambient magic,” which was being nice even with calling it a cesspit. The last time some asked Constantine about Gotham he just laughed, lit his cigarette, and walked away.
Jason doesn’t blame them. He’s not even magic-magic and sometimes he can’t stand being in Gotham – and this has nothing to do with his slowly mending relationship with the Bats (his family) that occasionally makes his skin crawl despite how much he aches for it.
The magic here is thick and cloying and acidic all at once. It sits in the back of your throat and slowly suffocates you. It worms into your head and makes you thinks, makes you wonder, forces you to comprehend the incomprehensible then takes it away from you. It leads you down a dark, wandering path and doesn’t shine a light unless you beg.
It’s not always that bad, despite what others think, but when it’s bad – it’s pretty fucking bad.
Like right now.
In an abandoned warehouse, Jason doesn’t shout or kick the already overturned chair. Instead, he swears quietly under his breath and very carefully breathes through cold fury.
In front of him is a mess of chalk and already tacky blood. The kid he’d been looking for doesn’t even resemble a human being anymore – a gruesome painting of blood and gore bursting outward like the kid had imploded. It doesn’t smell. A combination of time – it’s only been a day; rot hasn’t set in yet – and magic sucking any and all scents away. There’s not even a hint of fish and chemicals wafting from the harbor literally right outside. He’d only walked half a step into the building and the smells had abruptly been cut off.
He crouches down near the only part of the arcane circle not covered in blood. The lines of chalk are still intact, but barely. Only one of the sigils is clear and visible, but it’s still a piece of the puzzle. The stupid bullshit puzzle that’s murdering kids and costing him sleep. And when he does get to sleep, he’s plagued by nightmares tinged green and orange and dripping with blood.
Jason takes several pictures of it and sends them to storage.
This setup is like the other three setups he’s found so far – who knows how many are actually out there. The scent-eating magic lasts weeks and, for all he knows, whoever did this is already booked it out of Gotham with a day’s head start – a medium-ish arcane circle easily nine-by nine, a chair and table cleared of debris, and a dead kid in the middle.
The amount of splatter and gore has been different every time, but they all have the same things in common: an exposed ribcage cracked wide open, a missing heart, and, for two of them who had their faces left intact, an expression filled with fear.
Jason climbs to the second level and takes two more pictures from a few different angles. He hesitates over them for just a second before he sends those to storage as well without ever pressing the button that would deliver them to Oracle.
She would help in a heartbeat, he knows this. He’s not exactly sure what’s keeping him from asking. Their relationship now is miles better than it was before. Jason wants to blame the ‘keep magic out of Gotham’ policy, knows that once it’s revealed magic is involved then the Bats are going to converge, and it will become a huge, annoying-as-fuck deal.
But something – something about this screams wrong. There’s more to this that he’s not seeing. A creeping danger that makes his skin crawl the moment he thinks about bringing someone else in. He doesn’t want them to get caught up in it. He trusts them – he thinks – but magic is different from aliens and metahumans and science, it’s more chaotic, unstable, unpredictable. He doesn’t –
He sighs gustily and hops over the railing back to ground level. The plastic on his boots slide on the smooth concrete, the convenience store plastic bags crinkling in the silence. It’s too damn quiet in here, makes his hackles rise and his paranoia kick up a few notches. The other three scenes were exactly like this too. Devoid of ambient sounds and signs of wildlife that should’ve moved in not that long after activity died down and the bodies went stale.
It’s unsettling.
He slides the plastic off his boots when he reaches the entrance and makes sure to scuff his boot-marks as he walks away. The smell of chemicals and fish is like a smack in the face, and he gags. After being…deprived of it for so long, it’s nearly overwhelming.
His anonymous tip to the GCPD is nasally as he avoids breathing through his nose.
—
Holed up in his apartment not even an hour later, he sits cross-legged on the floor against the couch. His coffee table is shoved over, overflowing with books and scrap paper, and his coffee has long gone cold. None of the arcane books in his collection have anything on the sigils he’s had to literally piece together and now he’s debating whether he should start digging around his contacts before he tries the meager shops in the city.
Jason rubs his burning eyes and slumps, tilting his head back to stare at the ceiling. He’s exhausted, running on fumes, but every time he closes his eyes, he just sees those kids’ faces. One of them is an unknown only because he couldn’t see their face – too damaged by whatever was done – two he knows personally, and the fourth he knows because he’d been asked to look for her by her mother.
He’d been looking for Marietta and Khalid – street kids he knew – when Kyerra Adame’s mom had approached him about her missing child. She’s been missing for weeks and the GCPD had made her disappearance such a low priority that the woman came all the way from Coventry to ask for Red Hood’s help, banking on his protectiveness of children extending beyond Crime Alley and East End.
She was right.
He found Kyerra three nights ago – identifiable only by her hair color and the bracelet on what was left of her arm. Tonight, he’d found Marietta. Sweet, adorable Mariette who carried a My Little Pony plush that was so ratty you couldn’t tell by the color which one it was. When she’d discovered he couldn’t tell the difference based on even the cutie mark, she spent an hour teaching him and practically quizzed him on it until he could recite them forward and backwards.
His eyes sting. He’ll have to continue his welfare checks tomorrow and visit Kyerra’s mom, but right now he presses his fingers to his eye sockets until he sees sparks. Sparks turn into explosions which turn into fuzzy images of those kids burnt into the back of his eyelids. He bends, back curling and shoulders hunching, until his elbows are on his knees and his face is buried in his hands.
Jason doesn’t look when the alarm on the fire escape beeps and there’s a noise at his window – the smallest, slightest noise that’s familiar enough he doesn’t tense. His alarm beeps again in deactivation and the window opens softly. A leg appears first, unconcerned with being stealthy, then a cape slides through, dark and shimmering. Jason peeks out from his hands then rolls his eyes when Stephanie finally climbs all the way through, looking unperturbed that she’s sneaking into his goddamn apartment.
She’s not looking at him when she pulls back her hood and hooks her mask around her neck. Her forehead is streaked grey from soot, her hair matted and sweaty. Jason sits up fully and there’s a delay when she jumps a foot in the air, whirling around, hand over her heart.
“Don’t scare me like that!” she exclaims in the most unconvincing tone ever.
Jason scowls. “Don’t fucking break into my apartment!”
“I thought you weren’t home,” she argues and ignores his “That doesn’t make it better!” as she starts stripping off her suit. “I was just gonna use your shower. The lights were off, I thought you were still outta town with the Outlaws.”
He gestures at his definitely lit lamp and his definitely on laptop. Steph shrugs, the corner of her lip twitching. “That’s a flimsy excuse and you know it. What happened to leavin’ my apartment to me and respectin’ that boundary?”
Her flippant, “You haven’t been seen in a while,” makes him growl and she huffs out a laugh. “No seriously. You were the closest one and you gave me a key. I don’t see what the big deal is.”
Jason stays quiet as he gathers his notes and stacks his books. She doesn’t move from her spot halfway to the bathroom, dressed down in her under armor and her suit bundled to her chest. There’s a fresh burn on her wrist where her glove and sleeve usually meet. Typically, her sleeves are kept in place by thumb holes, so evidence of a rougher patrol than normal. He vaguely remembers hearing about an apartment fire. There were no calls for back-up so must’ve not been that bad. Besides, it was all the way across the city, he would’ve never made it in time even if he was called so this weird flicker of guilt he’s feeling can stop, please.
“There’s a difference between breaking in and using a key,” he says without turning all the way. She shuffles in place. He tucks his laptop between the cushion and armrest then picks up his mug, hiding a grimace as his ribs protest the movement. When he does turn and finally look at her, she’s chewing on her bottom lip and watching him carefully. “What,” he says flatly, annoyed.
“We haven’t seen you in a while,” she repeats, clutching her suit closer.
He sighs. “I’ve been busy, is that so hard to believe?”
“Normally you tell us when you’re coming and going,” Steph says in return. “And any big cases you take are obvious.” He grins fondly, his big cases are usually wonderfully explosive. “Are you sick? Tim said you weren’t sick, but me and Duke don’t believe him.”
“Duke and I,” he corrects absently, brows furrowing. “Why would Tim know if I were sick or not if you haven’t, quote-unquote, ‘seen me in a while?’” Her eyes widen comically large, exaggerated, and completely faked. She needs to work on that if she’s gonna try that trick on family. He ignores it. “I swear to god, if he’s stalking me again, I’m going to drop kick him off a building and laugh.”
“He’s not,” she offers weakly. Tim must’ve done something real fucking bad recently if she’s just throwing him under the bus like that.
“Yeah, no. Pass on my threat and leave me alone. This is a shitty way to check up on me.” She opens her mouth, and he jabs a finger in her direction. Her teeth click close. “Don’t even. I know for a fact there’s a bolthole closer to where the fire was than here. I have a phone, you know.”
“Would you’ve answer it? You’ve been avoiding the Manor,” she argues. “Which means you’re avoiding Dick. Do you know how annoying he gets when you avoid him? It’s unbearable.”
Jason dumps his mug in the sink, checks his fridge for food. He’s not going to let Steph stay, but he’s hungry. For once. Maybe he can actually stomach it this time. “I’m not avoiding anything or anyone. I’ve been busy.”
“Busy doing what?”
He slams the fridge close – the dramatics of it completely ruined by the seal – and whirls on her. “Can you not?” he grinds out. “Damn it, Steph. Sometimes I’m busy. Sometimes I don’t feel like talking to anyone in the family. Okay? Not everything I do needs the Bat Seal of Approval. Just leave me alone.”
“I’m sorry,” she mutters – and she’s not sincere, not really. He’s seen that face before. She’s sorry for some of it, but not sorry for breaking into his apartment with the excuse to check in on him. She’s merely conceding. For now.
Jason leans against the fridge and takes it as is. “Whatever. Go take your shower. Leave after, okay? I really don’t want to deal with anyone right now. Even people I like.”
She perks up. “You like me?”
“Fuck off.”
She also takes that as is. She takes the distraction, well, deflection, as offered and dumps her suit on the floor right then and there before prancing off to his bathroom, already singing a K-pop song just loud enough to be annoying, but not loud enough to be irritating. Jason sighs and digs out clothes that are vaguely her size from the container of shit his various siblings have ‘accidentally’ left behind. Yeah, sure.
The shower turns on and her singing doesn’t stop. He shoots Tim a message basically reading Stop stalking me or I’m stealing all your good coffee and doesn’t bother reading the response.
—
Steph doesn’t fight him kicking her out. She leaves with a threat to sic the group chat on him if he goes more than a day without checking in and Jason only promises so she’ll actually leave him alone.
With food forgotten – because he checked his fridge again and he couldn’t even look at it without bile rising in his throat, without the taste of blood coating his tongue. He shut his eyes and willed it all away and that just made it worse – With food forgotten, he sits on his couch and pulls out his laptop, biting the inside of his cheek as he navigates his contacts. He really doesn’t have much of a choice. Arcane and occult shops are practically non-existent in Gotham. The libraries boo-hiss if their occult section grows beyond two shelves.
Constantine is off the grid, again. Zatanna is just plain off world. He doesn’t trust either of them to not tell Wonder Woman or Batman anyway, so moot point
Essence might be willing to lend him some text. Or she might outright ignore him. And it’s up in the air if she’s actually ignoring him or just not on this plane altogether. Anna is an option; her knowledge outweighs her practical skill. Though he’s not sure where the JSA is right now, if she’s still with them. Molly stopped having a phone years ago, something-something about her status as the Protector of Summerland making it pointless, he knows she keeps a laptop with her Tim though.
Sighing, he emails all three of them anyway. They’re the best options he has even if it does take them forever to get back to him.
—
Kyerra Adame’s mom is informed of her daughter’s death by the GCPD four days after an anonymous tip – classic Gotham City Police incompetence. Red Hood visits not even an hour later to find the woman sitting at her kitchen table, face buried in her arms, shoulders shaking with the force of her cries. Jason swallows thickly and stays at the entryway, unsure.
After a couple minutes, Lydia Adame sits up. Her face is blotchy, her eyes swollen. He prepares himself for rage, for hate, for blame, but instead she looks at him with the same big brown eyes her daughter has in all those pictures he saw of her and all there is, is pure, unadulterated grief.
“Real magic?” she croaks out. Jason had told her, days and days ago, his suspicions, but he couldn’t outright confirm them then. He nods silently, doesn’t try to speak around the lump in his throat. She should blame him. He wasn’t fast enough. He wasn’t smart enough. Kyerra was killed a mere two days after he picked up her case.
If he’d been better, he would’ve found Kyerra alive. He would’ve found Mariette alive.
“Were there others?” He nods again. She inhales sharply, mouth pressed into a thin, trembling line like she’s trying not to scream. “You’ll find them? Make them pay for what they did to my little girl – for taking her from me?”
Jason cracks, right down the middle. “Of course,” he says hoarsely, and tries not to think, think – (“Just him. And doing it, because…because he took me away from you.”)
It was never going to be anything else – even before Kyerra. When it was Khalid and Mariette. When it was him looking for two kids he tried his best to watch out for. When he found that unknown child that will never have someone properly mourn over them because he doesn’t know who they are.
This failure – four failures that he knows of, because, because he thinks and then he knows, these four aren’t the only ones. Kids go missing in East End all the time and he knows better than to pretend they’re being adopted by kind-hearted billionaires.
These failures are going to haunt him for a long, long time.
—
His phone vibrates. He stares blankly at the caller ID – Duke – until it rings out. Duke doesn’t call again. Instead, a new message notification pops up. Jason swipes it away without reading it, lets the number on the icon increase by one – then two when Duke sends another – and join the rest of the unread messages he’s been getting recently.
If it was important, there’s other ways to contact him that aren’t his personal phone.
Stephanie’s visit to his apartment a few days ago apparently opened the flood gates. No one else has tried to come by thankfully, but he keeps getting a smattering of direct messages here and there that, when he reads them, he doesn’t know how to respond. So, he’s just been…not reading them. He doesn’t even read the group chat, just sends a different emoji every day at random times to get them off his back and calls it good.
The comm unit in his ear clicks once, twice, then, “Hood.”
Jason pauses because – that’s Barbara, not Oracle. She isn’t modulating her voice, the crisp tones when she’s working are nowhere to be heard. He doesn’t know why, but either way –
“Oracle.”
She sighs and it crackles. He’s got an old unit. One he snatched up the last time he’d been in the cave when Bruce was off-world and the cave had been empty. The system registered him, his codes had been updated, he was under no illusions that no one knew he was there.
“Just checking in,” she says, a little sharper, a little more like Oracle instead of Babs and something loosens in his shoulders. “You’ve got everyone worried.”
He rolls his eyes. “So, I’ve been told. I’m working a case, that’s it.”
“Need any help?”
“No,” he snaps. There’s a ringing silence. He bites the inside of his cheek and tastes blood. “I have it handled. I don’t need anyone’s help.”
She’s quiet for a long time before she lets out a heavy breath, not quite a sigh. “Okay,” she says simply. By virtue of being Babs, he doesn’t bristle at the easy tone. If it’d been anyone else, it would’ve come off condescending, he’s sure. “Can I get your help on something?”
Jason blinks in shock. “Uh, yeah, O. Always.”
She hums this indecipherable little hum and relays her request over the line.
—
He finds a fifth body. The circle is smaller, six-by-six, and with that, there’s not a single fucking sigil intact.
Still no smell, but this time the state of the body is enough to tell him that whoever it is has been in the city for a while. Months, in fact. There’s barely any flesh left on the bones; any scent of decay would be long gone even without the smell-eating magic. A sewer entrance is one block away, one he knows Waylon uses on his bad days because it reeks and keeps people out.
Jason should be able to smell it from here.
He doesn’t.
The guy is using a spell to keep the bodies from being discovered through smell alone on top of being near putrid locations. Jason is grudgingly impressed and hates himself a little bit for it. It’s effective. Terribly, terribly effective.
Theodore Bennett. Twelve. He’s been missing for two months now. Jason only found out yesterday. This is the oldest body he’s found, and he still has no idea what’s going on. Essence, Molly, and Anna haven’t responded at all. His internet search has predictably turned up blank.
Jason scrubs his face roughly and kicks the door with his steel-toed boot. The magic in here is heavy even after all this time. He can taste it on the back of his tongue – coppery with blood, muddy with grave dirt, the sickly taste of decaying flowers; there’s the taste of petrichor, of heavy clouds, of rusted iron. It’s settled, seeped into the cracks into the ground, has made a home in Gotham’s foundation.
He pauses on that thought.
Huh.
—
Fuck. He fumbles with the doorknob, unable to get a proper grip with the blood stuck to his palm. He falls against it, cheek to cheap wood, breaths puffing out. Jason squeezes his eyes shut so tightly static bursts under his lids.
Finally – Finally. The door opens and he staggers in and, and drops to the ground as his vision whites out.
He comes back staring at the ceiling. There’s footsteps at the stairs and he hurriedly toes the door closed before a neighbor can walk past and see him bleeding out. He presses an open palm to his side, swearing loudly as blood squelches between his fingers. He’s fully aware he needs a gear upgrade, okay? Fully fucking aware. Between Gotham and the Outlaws, his gear is reaching a breaking point and tonight some goon got a lucky shot between two panels of armor.
It wasn’t because of his exhaustion. The exhaustion that’s reaching new levels of shitty. He totally saw the guy coming up behind him, totally anticipated and reacted at the proper speed any good vigilante would react at. He’s not losing his touch.
Jason thunks his head back once, twice, one more time a little harder until there’s a dull ache blooming. He needs to get up. Needs to get out of his gear and stitch up the stab wound but – gods. He’s so goddamn tired. A pathetic whine breaks between his gritted teeth, one he doesn’t bother trying to muffle. If someone hears him and knocks on his door, he’ll just play dead.
Yeah, play dead.
His phone vibrates between him and the floor. Jason lets it ring out then – his phone buzzes once. Jason hisses between his teeth as he shifts to dig it out. He squints at the screen, thumbing away blood and just smearing it worse. Dick, it says. He left a voicemail.
Click. “Hey, Jay. Haven’t heard from you in a while. Babs said you were working on a big case. Be careful, alright? I mean – ”
Palm pressed to his open wound; he closes his eyes to the sound of his big brother’s voice in his ear.
—
He dreams –
– he dreams of screaming and crying, young voices wailing out for a hero, and he knows, he knows it’s not him. It can’t ever be him. He tries so hard, but he doesn’t know if he can ever be a hero again. A hero like he used to be – a hero with the wings of a bird and a chirp that made people laugh and smile and praise him – but he still tries.
The waters rise up and over his head, weights drag him downdowndown. The sun flashes on the surface before it fades and he’s gonegonegone into the deep, dark abyss. He doesn’t struggle because he knows – and the voices are getting louder and louder, rising up to meet him, clawing at his skin, asking him why, why, why – why did he fail, why did he leave them, why them, why them, why them – I want my mom, I want my dad, my sister, my brother, my life back – pleasepleaseplease.
And he lets them – lets them cling to him even though it drags him deeper, lets them crawl up him, use him as a launch point – he watches them go, watches them reach for the sunlight – and a shadow passes overhead and they scream, they scream so, so loud. He raises his hands to catch them, but they float away out of reach, their fingers brushing fleetingly.
He cries out for them, his own scream caught in his throat, and he gets dragged deeper and deeper and deeper, wails echoing all around him, wrapping around his throat and squeezing until he’s gasping, and he can’t breathe –
– he can’t fucking breathe –
and eyes in the dark, watching him accusingly –
teeth glinting in a smile –
and he hears you’re a monster, you’re an abomination, why are you even alive
– and blood bubbles from his mouth and he’s dying as his bones crack and shatter – and it’s – what hurts more, A or B –
Green blossoms and blooms and burns – forehand or backhand – and his hands come up to ward off the next hit, fingers digging into his arms as a shrapnel tears through him and, and –
Jason howls –
– and he’s sitting up, drenched in sweat. He rolls out of bed, hitting the ground hard and gasping at the pain but relishing in it when it dulls quickly enough to remind him this is real. Jason presses his sweaty forehead against his floorboard and tries to catch his breath, his dream echoing in his mind on loop. He sobs sharply then shoves himself up, grimacing at the way his shirt sticks to him.
His arms sting and he glances down, frowning at the oozing blood starting to drip off his wrists. Red is shoved under his nails, caked in his cuticles. He leaves smeared palm prints as he leverages up to his feet. Warmth slides down his side and he presses a hand to his reopened stab wound, swearing violently.
There’s ants under his skin. He feels jittery and wrung out all at once. Jason cleans himself up in the bathroom, refusing to look at himself in the mirror.
—
Jason steps away from Yi Tian’s Chinese restaurant with a frown and a heavy heart and a tiny bit confused. Essentially a dead end – like what most of his intel gathering forays have been like. He would list the names of kids he knows are missing and get blank looks in return. It takes effort, real fucking effort, to get whoever he’s talking to, to recall anything that has to do with some of the kids, even if that person saw the kid themselves every single fucking day for three years.
Something about this is all kinds of wrong.
He pinches the bridge of his nose, willing the niggling headache to go away. He secures his bag of take out – Yi Tian refuses to let him leave from under her roof in either of his identities without some sort of food. It took Jason a pathetically long time to learn she doesn’t know who Red Hood is under the helmet. Apparently, according to her, he does enough as Jason Todd to earn the privilege of free food – which is embarrassing. He doesn’t need free food, he doesn’t need thanks or whatever, okay? But she refuses to take his politest no thanks as an answer, and it’s come to the point where he’s just plain rude for refusing. His mom did not raise a rude boy.
At least she…more-or-less ignores the forty he regularly slips into her tip jar, even if she does glare at him sometimes and, less often, he finds the crumpled bills shoved back into his pocket when he least expects it.
As for intel – Kelsie had been someone else who got free food whenever she stopped by. She came by once a week to pick up leftovers to deliver to the various homeless scattered around the area, Jason and Red Hood played pack mule for her often. A little older than the other kids he found – fourteen to the twelve that was Theo – she was more of a latchkey kid than homeless. Every week she would come by, like clockwork on Fridays for the leftovers, and a smattering of random days throughout the rest of the week for regular meals for her and her mom.
Yet, Yi Tian can’t tell him when she saw her last. And that was after twenty minutes of trying to remind her who Kelsie even was.
The headache doesn’t go away.
Kelsie’s just one of many. That’s not including anyone who isn’t on the streets who could’ve been taken. Kyerra wasn’t homeless. She wasn’t a latchkey. She wasn’t a runaway. Kyerra went to Brentwood and thrived there, she was in the debate club and played soccer. She doesn’t match the profile of any other kid that has been or might’ve been taken.
Really, she’s exactly the type of kid that, once she was reported missing, her face should’ve been plastered all over the news and the cops should’ve been out in full force looking for the adorable high-class, rich, white girl. The rest of the children, the homeless ones, the black and brown kids who get the short end of the stick, the poor who pickpocket to make it through the day, the street rats, and vermin, the GCPD don’t care about them even with a missing person’s report.
But Kyerra would’ve been the straw that broke the camel’s back, the one case that got the rest of them solved.
The Gotham City Police are corrupt. Everyone knows this. Still, it’s out of character for them to drop the ball on such a high-profile case.
And since Jason is having such a hard time on his end gathering intel, he’s starting to think this isn’t a classic case of police corruption. Because, well, it would make, make sense.
Magic is in involved after all.
Jason stops in his tracks. Magic is involved. Gods, he’s such a fucking idiot. That explains so much. This guy is doing everything in their power not to get caught – from taking a majority of his victims from Crime Alley to the scent-eating spell to the locations of the bodies. Of course, he would use a tracking nullification spell. Or, or, a notice-me-not spell? Whatever it is.
And, and Jason’s not magic-magic, but he’s a little bit magic if what Ducra said is true. The wielder of the All-Blades, Heir to the All-Caste (ugh). He might not be able to do all that mumbo-jumbo shit like Zatanna and Constantine, but he’s not completely useless.
He's not magic-magic, but he might be magic enough that some of this guy’s stuff just doesn’t work on him properly. It worked (works?) on him too well, though, or else he would’ve caught on to everything a lot sooner.
—
Cold metal touches the exposed knob of his wrist. Jason flinches, snatching his hand back, turning to stare at Tim who watches impassively back. Red Robin wiggles the canned coffee between them, eyebrow raised. He sighs and takes it, cracking it open and pressing it to his cheek instead of drinking it. His skin feels overheated despite the cool October air. Thankfully Tim doesn’t say anything, just settles next to him with his legs kicking childishly over the edge of the roof.
They sit there in silence, the only sounds are ambient city noises and the rest of Bats tossing quips back and forth during what is, apparently, a slow night. Tim sips his own canned coffee, humming a K-pop song under his breath. Oh no, Steph’s infected him too.
Jason takes a drink then wrinkles his nose. “This is disgusting.” Tim shrugs. “Seriously? Are your taste buds that shot?”
Tim cracks a smile. “Maybe.”
He rolls his eyes. “What do you want?”
Tim sits back, bracing himself with one arm, face tilted towards the sky. The lights reflecting off the clouds make them green and Jason’s trying very hard not to look up. “We’ve been worried – .”
“I swear to God if you say, ‘we’ve been worried about you,’ I’m going to drop kick you off this building like I promised,” Jason snarls. He takes an angry drink and, yep, didn’t get better in the last thirty seconds.
“That was weeks ago,” Tim protests. “You really need a new threat.”
“This one’s fun. For me.”
Tim has the audacity to actually laugh at him. Jason bares his teeth and gets a stuck-out tongue in response. Then he sobers, smile falling. “I’ve been doing some poking around,” he admits. “Kyerra Adame.”
Jason doesn’t stiffen, doesn’t flinch. He should get a prize for his composure. “Who?”
“Don’t play stupid.”
Jason sneers but relents. “What about her?”
“How’d you find her? Why’d you drop the tip anonymously?” Tim asks in a rush, like he’s been waiting weeks to ask Jason. He leans in closer and Jason leans away, goes back to pressing the can to his cheek even though it’s not as cold anymore. His ribs creak, his side screams at him. “How did you know she was missing?”
Jason breathes in deep, and everything reeks of death. “Tim,” he croaks out. Tim jumps like he’d been slapped, his chin tilting as he looks down to realize how far he’s leaning and how Jason’s very carefully holding himself away from the younger boy.
Tim overexaggerates his pulling away. “Sorry,” he says quietly. His hands reach up and hover in the space between them. “Are you – are you okay?”
“How’d you know it was me?” Jason asks instead.
Tim’s frown deepens. “Why was it you and not Red Hood?”
Jason closes his eyes as he lets his head fall back. “I didn’t wanna call attention to myself,” he tells the clouds. “It’s called investigating. Miss. Adame reported her daughter missing, but the cops did nothing about it. She knew that Red Hood protected the kids of Crime Alley and asked me for help.”
“A woman from Coventry, asked you for help?”
He scowls at the brat. “Yes,” he stresses. “She did.”
“Why?”
Jason shoves a hand through his hair, lets it linger on the back of his neck. “I don’t know why, Red. I really fucking don’t. My reputation proceeds me, I guess? Doesn’t matter, I was too late anyway. The kid was killed two days after I picked up the case.” He pauses, his throat closing up, his eyes burning. He ducks his head, tucking his chin to his collar bone. His domino hides the shine of his eyes, but he doesn’t need Tim to see the wobble in his chin. “Too fucking late. Are you here to, to lecture me or something? You’re four years too young and two feet too short to lecture me.”
Tim is silent for a long moment then, “I’m not even a foot shorter than Batman.”
“He doesn’t get to lecture me either. None of you do. That’s the point. What the fuck do you want, Red?”
Tim takes a deep breath and Jason hates him a little for how normal it seems – he doesn’t smell death or decay on the wind, doesn’t taste acid on the back of his tongue. “Are you okay?” he asks again, voice impossibly soft. And, and Jason shouldn’t be getting that voice. Not from Tim of all people. After all the shit – . He can’t really be – .
“Don’t ask me that,” Jason whispers around the lump in his throat.
Because he’s not okay. He’s not sleeping. He’s not eating. Someone is snatching up kids and murdering them for some sick magic ritual that might actually be working and he’s running out of time to get it from exploding in their faces.
He should ask for help.
He doesn’t.
Why doesn’t he ask for help?
“Jason – .”
Jason brushes the attempt aside with a rough gesture. “Why are you asking about Kyerra? How’d you know about my tip?”
Tim’s head cocks to the side like a puppy, and Jason’s abruptly aware of the lack of chatter over the comm. The only sounds are Oracle’s soft clacking. Great. “A complaint was filed by her mother about the GCPD’s conduct,” he says, any concern or softness towards Jason has been muted and he’s so very much grateful for it. “She mentioned Red Hood. I back tracked and found all of your tips. I cross-referenced them and you did them all without your modulator.”
“Okay, and? What does that have to do with any of you? I’ve told you guys a dozen times – I don’t want your fucking help.”
Tim makes a frustrated sound. “But why?” he asks. “Stop being stubborn. You found, what, four dead kids?”
“Five?”
“What?”
“I found five dead kids. Found another two weeks ago.”
He gestures. “Exactly! Let some of us help, please. You’re running yourself ragged – you look awful and that’s coming from me.”
Jason sets the canned coffee down, hand curling into a fist. “Maybe I don’t want your help.”
Tim groans. “Well, maybe you need our help.”
Rage scorches through his body so fast he feels lightheaded. He climbs to his feet with a predatory grace that has Tim freezing before he’s standing as well. Jason gets into his space, looming over him like he used to once upon a time. To his credit, Tim doesn’t back away, he meets Jason head on, staring at him with his chin jutting out in defiance, head tilted back to accommodate Jason’s height.
“Fuck you, Red Robin,” he snarls. “I don’t need jack shit, least of all from you. You poking your nose in my shit is not helping. I have it under control, so fuck off.”
Tim gives him a condescending once over. “Do you?” he asks challengingly.
Jason’s hands are shaking as he shoves past Tim, shoulder checking him hard enough he stumbles, and jumps down to the fire escape with a loud clang. It creaks under his weight, but he nimbly throws himself across the alley, grabbing onto the adjacent escape with a strong grip. He climbs his way to the opposite roof. He doesn’t have his grapple and that’s fine. He needs to run off this excess energy before he does something drastic and free running back home will do just that.
He ignores Tim calling his name.
“Way to go, Red,” Oracle mutters under her breath for just the three of them before his comm unit clicks and Jason’s alone.
—
The door to Zoi’s occult shop dings as he leaves. His canvas bag, which she insisted on, isn’t heavy or bulging and he stares at it despairingly. He’d expected this to be a dead end and is resigned and disappointed that he was right. Gotham practically chases out the arcane whenever they try to set up shop. Zoi’s the longest lasting shop of exactly two months. Soon she’ll either move out of the city or start stocking predominantly non-occult items.
For a messed-up city like Gotham, it really is weird that the whole magic thing extends beyond Batman.
Jason’s flipping through one of the books, bottom lip pulled between his teeth when he nearly crashes into a very familiar person. Duke smiles sunnily at him and Jason squints.
“Thought you were all mad at me,” he mumbles as he side-steps him and continues on his way. Duke falls in step with him, hands in his hoodie pocket, stride relaxed and casual. “What do you want?”
“Food, mostly,” Duke answers. His smile widens when Jason snorts. “You wanna head to that diner near Eden Park?”
“The one with the curly fries?”
“Yep. B’s paying.”
Jason laughs outright this time. “Yeah, sure, why not.”
They don’t talk in the blocks it takes to get to Moe’s Diner. Neither of them head for the rooftops or through the alleys. Duke seems content to walk in silence, their arms brushing occasionally. Every now and then he’ll snag Jason’s elbow and direct him out of a collision course with a person or a trashcan. But they don’t say anything, don’t really acknowledge each other. It’s nice after the conversation and subsequent blow up he had with Tim the other day.
Duke’s great. Jason loves Duke. He’s smart, he’s witty, his self-preservation is miles ahead of anyone else’s. They have shared life stories from growing up in East End. There’s no baggage attached to hanging out with him, or Stephanie, because they both came after. Stephanie is tricky since she dated Tim and all. But Duke? Duke is amazing. There have been days here and there, slow as molasses days, where they’ll meet up for coffee and Jason will read and Duke will either write or fill a puzzle book at a scary pace. He’s contentment when everyone else is chaos – most of the time. Other times he’s just as much of a menace as the rest of their siblings.
There are no “normal ones” in this family.
He waits until they slide into a booth and order before he’s resting his elbows on the tabletop, mouth pressed to his threaded fingers. “Soooo,” Duke drags out. “You look like crap.”
Jason rolls his eyes. “Thanks. I feel the love.”
Duke shakes his head. “No seriously. You look like a raccoon.” Jason frowns, pressing his finger pads to the thin skin under his eyes. He knew he was pale and wane, but really? That bad? “How can I help?”
Immediately, he bristles. “I don’t need your help.”
“You don’t, but I’m offering it anyway.”
Jason looks at him carefully. The same anger he felt at Tim’s offer doesn’t appear – and the guilt rises up. He’s gotten texts from Tim – and from Steph and Babs – but he hasn’t looked at them, just like he hasn’t looked at any of the messages from his family. He still sends his emojis, but he can’t help but wonder how welcome they actually are.
He should apologize to Tim; he was only trying to help. Jason drags a hand over his face – then flinches when Duke reaches over a snags his wrist.
“What the hell, man?” Duke says as he shoves Jason’s sleeve up to expose his forearm.
Jason snatches his arm back, rolling his sleeve back down to cover the nail marks dug into his skin. They’re slightly inflamed, irritated not infected, and he doesn’t have enough bandages to cover them. He scowls, hiding both arms under the tabletop.
“Privacy much?” Jason snaps.
Duke stares at him wide-eyed. “Did you do that to yourself?” he asks, voice pitched higher than usual.
He flushes, looks away. “Didn’t do it on purpose,” he mutters. “Had a nightmare.”
“A nightmare so bad you hurt yourself?” Duke raises an eyebrow, disbelief in his expression. That’s fine, Duke can believe whatever he wants to believe. “Dude. I know you’re getting tired of hearing it, but we’re really worried about you.”
Jason scrunches down in his seat, crosses his arms. “Yeah, I know.”
Duke sighs out like he’s bracing himself, hands splayed palm down on the table. “Jay, it’s been two months,” he says seriously. “You’ve gotten thinner, we barely see you on patrol. You’re ignoring every call and text we send you. Can’t you accept that we care about you and are worried? Roy called Dick last night, said you haven’t spoken to any of the Outlaws since you got back. Please,” he begs. “Please. I don’t, I don’t need you to come back to the manor or the cave or anything, I just need you to let me help you. Please.”
He shouldn’t – he really, really shouldn’t. The idea of letting Duke help makes him sick to his stomach. The idea of letting any of them help makes him want to scream and run away as fast as possible and, and – that’s not normal. He squeezes his eyes shut. Shit. That’s not normal.
That’s not –
Jason swallows thickly then slides his bag over with shaking hands. Semi-reluctantly, he texts Duke the sketches he pieced together from his photos. Most of his intel is hard copy in his apartment, but the sigils he keeps in his pocket.
A look of triumph appears on Duke’s face when he checks his phone. Jason smothers his own smile and pulls out the books, setting one in front of Duke and tapping the cover.
“See if you can find those sigils in this. I’m trying to figure out exactly what they mean.”
His smile flickers and he looks confused. “Why not ask O to do a database search? I’m sure she’d find something instantly.”
Jason shakes his head. “The arcane is hard to document with technology. Most of what’s on the internet is fake because that’s the only way to get it on the internet in the first place. She won’t find anything.”
Duke hums in acknowledgement, already flipping to the first page, eyes skimming over the words not just glancing at the diagrams. Jason does the same. He recognizes some of the concepts in here from his own training. Which, what a fucking relief, it means the books are legitimate. He would’ve doubled checked that in Zoi’s shop, but the woman had been so enthusiastic about having a customer she wouldn’t stop talking and shoving items in his arms, he desperately wanted to get away and didn’t even look.
Their food comes and Jason picks at his, stomach still churning, his teeth watering. Duke swings his book around a couple times, pointing at a few different things that caught his attention but ultimately has nothing to do with their search. Jason tries to answer the best he can without losing his own momentum and he can tell he’s surprising Duke with his arcane knowledge. They all know a little bit about magic, you can’t get away with being a vigilante or a hero without knowing something, but it seems Jason knows more than even Bruce, if Duke’s raised eyebrow means anything.
Jason hadn’t totally meant to keep his time with the All-Caste a secret, it just happened. The rest of his magic training after that, though. Absolutely.
He reaches the end of his book first and snaps it shut with a grunt. “Nothing,” he seethes quietly. “Big fat load of fucking nothing. Useless.”
“Why are you so interested anyway?” Duke asks absently. He doesn’t see Jason stiffen. He just munches on a fry and turns the page with non-greasy fingers.
Jason drums his fingertips on the tabletop, looks out the window to the busy street. Duke’s watching him now, lips pursed, his gaze heavy. He opens his mouth to say something and closes it instead before sliding the book over one more time.
“Look familiar?”
He lurches, yanking the book closer and practically shoving his nose against the pages as he reads. Fuck. Fuck. Jason had known, sorta, what the sigils were for – he just didn’t want to believe it. He’d known, deep down, what the taste and smell of this magic that’s been haunting him truly meant – coppery with blood, muddy with grave dirt, the sickly taste of decaying flowers; there’s the taste of petrichor, of heavy clouds, of rusted iron. They’re something he knows so well, so intimately.
It's Gotham. Magic or no, that’s what Gotham is.
Jason didn’t want to believe it. He didn’t. Because this – this is beyond him. Beyond Gotham. This is – fuck.
He doesn’t take the book as he stands, he doesn’t need it. He absently sets some bills on the table, mind racing. Duke’s saying something, but he can’t hear him over the weird roaring in his ears. It sounds like he’s underwater. He feels like he’s underwater, drifting, coming out of alignment with his body.
Jason doesn’t look at Duke as he leaves the diner like the hounds of hell are dogging his heels.
—
It seeps into his head – he knows it’s there; he knows it’s not him with these thoughts, these feelings – but it crawls under his skin, clogs his veins. He scratches at it – scratches and scratches and scratches – barely healed scabs burst open, he leaves fingerprints along his own skin, red against brown, stark and shining in the city lights. He wonders if anyone’s nearby, if anyone’s going to find him like this and look at him in disgust – he’s pushing them away, shoving, forcing them away from him and he doesn’t want to – he wants his family, his brothers, his sisters – he misses them so, so much, and yet – yet ants under his skin.
He needs help. Not just with the case, but his tongue is swollen and there’s fire down his throat.
His phone rings, for once not on vibrate because there’s books open on his kitchen table, a highlighter that rolled to the ground, and he needs to be searching for a way to track this so he didn’t think, but his head is stuffed full of cotton, and he can’t – but he needs to. Jason’s eyes sting as he drops his head, staring at his phone screen as Dick – because of course it’s Dick – as Dick tries to call him. He reaches out and hangs up before it can ring out.
It dings with a voice mail and Jason wonders when that became their thing. Him not answering and Dick leaving a voice mail. He wonders how much longer he has before his brother comes down from Blüdhaven, demanding answers he doesn’t know he can give. Steph had been right all those weeks ago. He hadn’t been avoiding the manor specifically, but he was avoiding Dick. Dick who’d been down for family time and Jason had avoided that, had known even then, subconsciously, that if anyone’s going to force the truth outta him, it was going to be his big brother.
Jason presses the phone to his ear, closing his eyes and resting his temple on the freezing cold metal of the fire escape. What he expects is Dick with another awkward message asking him to take care of himself and to be careful.
What he gets is this:
“’It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies – .’”
He snorts when he hears the first sentence, wonders what Dick thought trying to cram as much of Fahrenheit 451 into a voicemail as possible would accomplish. Not gonna lie, it does soothe something inside him – more than his last voicemail. He slumps further against the fire escape, ignoring the drying blood on his arms.
The ants are gone. He needs to find a way to track the ritual circles. He needs to find this guy. But he knows that he’s already run ragged, he’s so close to collapsing altogether. Just this moment – he’ll take this moment.
Then back to work.
—
He declines Steph’s call, then Cass’s in quick succession. They message him not even a second later and he ignores that too. He’s glad Dick hasn’t tried calling him again. He thinks he might actually answer this time and he doesn’t know if that’s a good thing. Jason doesn’t know if anyone’s come by his apartment since he left Duke behind at Moe’s because he’s been not-avoiding them by using a safehouse over in Gotham Heights – far enough out of his usual territory that no one should think to look for him there.
Jason tucks his phone back in his pocket. He squares his shoulders, takes a deep breath to steel himself. Fish and chemicals – another harbor warehouse, abandoned from the last recession and not picked up by Wayne Enterprises yet – and it’s by that smell alone that makes him pretty sure he has the right place.
He opens the bay door slightly and squeezes under. Yep, definitely the right place. His eyes sting. Damn it. He’s too late again.
Kelsie – her hair done up in two pig-tails with the brightly colored scrunchies he used to tease her about until she’d hit him in the stomach with a laugh and no force – is in the middle of a arcane circle, her chest burst outward, her face twisted in fear. There’s clean lines through the blood on her cheeks, eyes wide and unseeing towards the ceiling. Jason closes his eyes briefly, a lump lodging in his throat, a pressure building in his chest. A tear trickles down his cheek before he sniffs and wipes it away. Fuck.
There’s clearer sigils on this, but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t need them anymore. He can’t bring himself to take pictures. Not…not right now.
Jason finds a clear spot and just – sits down, legs pulled to his chest, eyes pressed to his knees. Fuckity-fuck-fuck. His breaths shudder out of him, his shoulders quiver. He lets the pressure go and just cries into the rough denim of his jeans. But –
But only for a moment. He lets himself cry, humidity building up, his hair clinging to his skin, for just this singular moment, before he takes a deep breath and holds it, until he shoves it all down and out of the way.
When he lifts his head, he feels wrung out and achy and he knows he didn’t give himself long enough – but he also knows that he doesn’t have time. He doesn’t uncurl from his spot, he just takes a steadying breath – and then another, forcing himself to calm down completely. He takes what he learned from Bruce, from Talia, from the All-Caste, and he centers himself to the here and now, his emotions smoothing out and folding up minuscule until they’re the calm, mirrored surface of a pond, undisturbed, hiding any turmoil he might be feeling.
The moment his heartbeat slows and his blood stops roaring in his ears, he stands on too-steady legs, and moves closer to the chalk circle.
Magic swirls around it like a fog, barely visible and probably invisible to anyone else. It’s green, not quite the tint of the Lazarus Pit, not quite the color of fear toxin, but softer, paler, something wholly different altogether. He steps closer and the glow grows brighter until it casts shadows. Kelsie’s expression disappears in the darkness, and he forces himself to look away.
Instead, he looks over and beyond, into the deep, deep shadows off to the side. And with his new vision, he Sees.
He bares his teeth into a snarl and reaches into his soul for the All-Blades. They answer him as readily as they should with evil in his presence, glowing a dull copper. He twirls one blade with a flourish and points it at the shadows.
“Show yourself,” he demands, voice hoarse.
There’s a chuckle like sounds like nails on a chalkboard. “Heir to the All-Caste,” a voice says. “I wonder how Essence felt about that.”
“She hates it,” Jason says – Essence despises it, but neither of them got to choose. “Get the fuck out of my city.”
“Oh, but it’s so nice here. And I’m afraid I’m not quite finished yet.”
From the shadows steps out a hulking beast with pale green eyes and lines of power threaded like veins. Jason knows instantly that what he sees isn’t the true perpetrator, but a simulacrum – a representation of him. A barrier between the retribution Jason wants to rain down on this sick fuck and the sick fuck in question. It stretches in the dim light of the circle and his Blades, growing taller, its back curving, claws elongating.
“You are alone,” it says, stilted in a way that makes Jason think of a bad ventriloquist. Like the guy doesn’t quite know how this spell works. “I thought so.”
Jason sneers. “I don’t need help.” Then falters.
“No,” it says, amused. “You do not.”
He shakes his head, and his vision bounces around, wavering. “Turn it off,” he demands, almost pleads but he’s ignoring the hitch in his voice. Another nails-on-a-chalkboard chuckle. “Whatever it is. Turn it off.”
“Why would I do that? It’s such a lovely spell. I can keep going with my plans and not worry about some busybody interfering – and look, the only busybody to see through the spell is suffering at the same time. It truly is a masterpiece.”
“I will find you,” he warns. “And I will stop you.”
The simulacrum ambles towards him, knuckles dragging along the ground. “How many more innocent children will I kill before you do that, hm?” It laughs again at Jason’s flinch. “I’m almost done and you’re no closer to finding my final circle. Who’s the real winner here?”
Jason lets out a scream of rage and frustration, lunging across the circle in a careful, graceful dance that has him sidestepping Kelsie. The simulacrum doesn’t dodge – doesn’t seem capable of dodging, really – as Jason shoves the All-Blades up into its chest.
It howls silently, maw snapping towards his face. Teeth scrape his cheek, his throat, along his hairline before he ducks under and shoves harder. The blades, usually so warm, freeze in his hands, ice crawling up his wrists to his elbows to encase his chest. He grits his teeth and shoves even harder. It reaches out with a massive claw-tipped hand – and Jason’s too frozen, literally, to do anything but let it come closer.
The hand wraps around the entirety of his head, nails digging into the back of his skull. He screams against its palm, frost crawling along his spine. Blood streams down his back and it should burn, it should feel like a blazing inferno but all he feels is cold, cold, freezing, choking cold. His breath catches, sparks burst along his vision – Jason shouts before he yanks down and out, partially bisecting the shadow monster.
It dissipates slowly into little wisps, flailing in death throws. Claws catch his chest, throwing him back and he doesn’t even try to catch himself as he falls to the ground mere inches from disturbing the arcane circle. He chokes on the scream that tears out of his throat, curling in on himself as waves of agony crest and crash. Blood pools under his head. He can’t stop shivering. He blinks and the world darkens around the corners.
On the winds there is a chuckle. Let’s have a race, a voice whispers – only half familiar – good luck.
With shaking hands, he paws out his phone. He can barely see the screen; it takes him several tries to type out his code. There’s blood still crusted between the phone and its case from the last time he was in this position. Bile climbs up his throat, his stomach churns, as he navigates his contacts. He hesitates over a name, thumb hovering. Jason swears he can hear the puddle under his head grow bigger with each passing second.
Fuck. He presses down and the line starts ringing. It takes him too long to think about hitting the speaker button. As soon as he does, the phone is clattering from his grip, his arm growing too heavy to keep up, his fingers going numb.
“Jason?” Tim’s voice is crackling and faint. Jason frowns. “Jason – what’s wrong?”
“Tim,” he croaks out. “I need – I need help.” He sobs around the word then gags, choking. He turns his face to the ground, pressing his cheek against cooling blood. Copper taste of blood, of grave mud, of funeral flowers. “Please. Tim. I can’t…” and the words slur, mush, blur together. Jason closes his eyes, unable to keep them open any longer. “Please,” he whispers. “P-please. I'm sorry. I'm...”
Then he knows nothing.