Chapter Text
It’s always a warehouse.
Doesn’t matter if you’re in Magdala Valley, Ethiopia or the ass end of Kansas, there’s always a fucking warehouse.
Jason has started to find it almost reassuring.
An immutable fact of the universe.
Grass is green.
The sky is blue.
There’s always a fucking warehouse.
It’s an average sized place, as these things go. The kind of cheap, middle-of-nowhere storage option megacorporations across the country set up - a suspiciously unremarkable cinder block and corrugated steel rectangle, surrounded by the otherwise-barren fields of Augusta.
This one specifically is owned by FairFax, a subsidiary of Lexcorp, and officially off-the-grid - registered as defunct with the state and cut off the main power supply.
Yet, here it is, fully lit up like Christmas morning.
Jason sighs, checks his weapons, and hops the fence.
He isn’t even supposed to be in Kansas.
Chasing down leads on the mysterious gang consortium going by The Underlife led him to Texas, where he took a sudden deviation through bumfuck nowhere, and now here he is in a podunk town just outside Wichita.
They’re not even his leads, technically speaking. Jason is here to close Harper’s cases and the asshole doesn’t even have the courtesy to be staking out these creepy corporate hellscapes with him.
That’s not fair. Jason knows it’s not.
Roy left this case in his entirely capable hands to go to exclusive superhero rehab for a damn good reason, and Jason has nothing but respect for Roy looking his demons in the eye and giving them the finger.
It’s just that when he agreed to take this on four months ago, it was as a temporary holdover - Jason working the case for a few weeks while Roy got his head back on straight, and then they’d get the team back together like old times.
Neither of them were expecting Cheshire to turn up at Sanctuary, hand Roy a goddamn toddler, and take him out of the game on a much more permanent basis.
And Roy is a good guy and a fucking great dad, and Jason is happy for him. Really, he is.
But fuck if Jason doesn’t miss knowing the resourceful bastard’s got his back when he finds himself in situations like this.
Scaling the back wall is easy enough on his own, though, as is jimmying the window open. Gotham has Jason trained to instinctively spot high entry points, and this far in the sticks nobody thinks to guard them.
(Jason isn’t thinking about Gotham. He’s not. Fuck Gotham, fuck Bru–)
Considering what Jason knows about Lex Luthor and his dealings, it’s not exactly a shock to find the allegedly abandoned warehouse is actually full of both shipping crates and people. It is maybe a little unusual that they’re wearing garish orange, full-length robes.
Jason suppresses a sigh.
Always with the freakshows in the warehouses, he fucking swears.
At least they're not clowns. Or worse, mimes.
From his vantage point on the elevated catwalk, Jason counts twelve industrial freight containers. They're stacked two high, spanning the length of the building. Only one seems to be open, on the far end and opposite side of the floor - right out of Jason’s line of sight.
Typical.
He crouches low and creeps along the walkway, keeping his footfalls light.
Getting a count on bodies is harder. They’re all dressed in the same bright orange and milling around in close proximity. At least twenty, twenty-five on the main floor alone.
They don’t seem to have any weapons, which doesn’t track with the Underlife MO - they tend to go over- armed, not under- armed. A few of the weirdos are holding something, but Jason can’t get a good look at what. Not metal, but too short and thin to be effective blunt force weapons.
Jason reaches the corner of the walkway and peers around the support pillar. Two men are looking down at the others - one is maybe mid- to late-sixties, the second no more than half of that at the very most.
Neither of them are built like hired mercenaries. The younger of the two is tall and skinny in a distinctly adolescent kind of way, the older has a pronounced paunch on him.
The kid is wearing an honest to god pointy wizard hat.
Definitely not the droids Jason is looking for. Fuck.
Well. He’s here now, and these numbers alone suggest some sort of organized operation. Might as well find out what these bozos are up to and, hey, maybe he'll get lucky and it will turn out to be connected to the Underlife after all. Somehow.
Yeah, right. Jason's never been lucky a day in his life.
Wizard Hat says something to the other guy. Jason can’t make out the words from his position, but Wizard Hat is gesticulating wildly, angrily. He storms away, leaving the older man standing there looking annoyed.
The guy shakes his head, clearly frustrated, and takes a moment to lean against the safety bar and breathe deep.
Jason strikes.
He edges up behind the guy and gets him in a chokehold. The man manages a small groan before he passes out, but Jason eases him to the grated walkway and moves on before anyone can investigate.
These guys sure don’t come across like your everyday type of thieves… but, contrary to certain Bat-eared beliefs, Jason doesn’t actually meet every problem with a loaded gun. He needs more information on this operation, needs a better idea of what he's dealing with.
A quick scout to see what’s in the box and he’ll bail. Regroup and decide on a plan of action.
Jason drops down to the main floor, ducking behind a crate for cover and unlatching the holsters on his guns.
Just in case.
He eases forward, but before he can get a read on the situation a familiar instinct prickles up the back of his neck. He dips down and left, barely dodging a blast of something right over his shoulder.
Not bullets. Some sort of energy blast. One that hits hard, if the slam of impact against the cinder block wall is any indication.
Jason spins, fires a couple of low, haphazard shots back mostly blind, dives behind one of the metal storage containers, and hopes that’s enough to hold off whatever those orange beams are.
Okay, maybe he underestimated the threat level here.
God, Jason really misses having backup.
Someone shouts from above - directing, probably, fuck - and Jason keeps moving. He darts between the crates, making good use of all those blind spots to take easy shots at any flashes of orange light he sees.
He isn’t shooting to kill. He still doesn’t know what the fuck is going on, and the possibility exists that these idiots are being coerced. Which means there is a chance that they’re not irredeemable scumbags.
Unfortunately for Jason, they’re firing at him much more recklessly.
Jason risks a peek around the edge of a container door, and is rewarded with the smell of singed hair when an energy blast just misses his ear.
Fuck, sometimes he misses the full helmet.
Not that it did him much good the last time he wore it.
(He is not thinking about Gotham, he is not thinking about Bruce.)
Sliding a fresh clip into his pistol, Jason dives out of cover and shoots the two closest guys in the kneecaps before he tucks and rolls against the next storage container.
It’s not enough.
If his counting is anywhere in the right ballpark, that leaves at least seventeen more fucking wizards or whatever on the main floor, and whoever is hollering down from the walkway.
The metal crate clunks as several more energy blasts make contact, but Jason is getting their reload timing down. The second there’s a lull in fire Jason dives again.
Two more out of play, and he doesn’t spare a second to see if they stay down before he’s tackling the next person.
Jason leaps up as soon as he’s sure they’re unconscious, twists and shoots the last place he saw a flash of tangerine… but it’s a second too late.
Orange light fills his vision. His gun is knocked flying from his grip, his fingers going numb from whatever kind of energy that hit him, and then there’s the blunt press of something against his windpipe, and six more assholes in cosplay leveling their staves at him from only a few feet away.
Dammit.
A couple of minions grab his arms from behind. Two more shuffle tentatively forward to strip his remaining weapons away - his spare pistol, his katana, his trusty boot-knives.
“Should, uh. Should we take his mask, too?” one of them stammers.
She’s young. Frightened, and Jason doesn’t get the impression it’s of him.
He doesn’t hear a verbal reply, but someone out of his line of sight must signal an affirmative. The minion hesitantly unhooks the straps on the left of his face, then lets gravity do the job before she scurries back into line with the others.
Up close, Jason can see that the outfits are even worse than he thought. The robes have flared sleeves and wide belts, like every bad Merlin costume on Halloween.
Wizard Hat - whom Jason is going to assume is the ringleader here, call it a hunch - finally joins them on the ground floor. He makes a show of circling around Jason twice before stopping in front of him, well out of grabbing range, and squinting up at his face.
“Who are you supposed to be?”
And, okay, Jason’s face doesn’t mean much to anybody anywhere, but come on. He might have changed the suit up a little, but he figured the actual literal red hood was still pretty much a giveaway, even outside of Gotham.
“Question is,” Jason musters up his best shit-eating grin, making it extra sharp around the edges, “who the hell are you supposed to be? Gandalf the Garish?”
Without warning, his head is slammed sideways. His cheek smarts where one of these goons has smacked him from behind with their fancy stick. He can’t tell which one, because they all flinch back in weird synchronization.
“Careful, careful!” Wizard Hat squeaks. And jesus, Jason had clocked him as young, but the kid sounds like he’s barely pubescent, what the fuck. “The rods are delicate!”
Jason doesn’t even try to repress his snort of laughter.
“Shut up, plebeian!” Wizard Hat shrieks at Jason. “My rod contains more power than you can comprehend!”
“Sure, kid, never heard that one before,” Jason says, and shoots a pointed look down. “And I’m sure you’re not compensating for anything at all.”
The kid goes blotchy and red all across his pale face.
“I’ll show you!”
A couple of his minions look embarrassed for him, which raises even more questions about why the fuck they’re working for this guy in the first place.
Questions Jason maybe won’t get to answer, because he finds himself staring down at the crystal end of the kid's staff as it starts flickering orange sparks like a fucking blow torch.
Shit.
Jason has just enough time to wonder what Bruce will think when he learns that Jason has died in a shitty warehouse for a second time before the world flares bright and hot and then everything rushes from orange to black.
A different warehouse.
A different time.
The damp chill of early-morning middle-America replaced by the desiccating heat of dry desert air burning in his lungs.
Or maybe the pain is from his broken ribs.
Blood bubbles in his mouth. Jason chokes on it, iron taste on his tongue, throat too torn apart to swallow. It dribbles in thick globules down his chin, sticky-hot against his cold, numb skin.
Every inch of his body is agony. Every stolen breath jangles painfully in the mangled cage of his crushed chest.
This…
This isn’t right.
His nose is broken, face swollen so badly his eyes won't open. He’s trapped in pain and darkness and fear.
When he tries to shift - tries to ease the pressure in his chest - the broken bones in his arms, hips, back grind together. Raw and awful and familiar.
The hurt is sharp and deep and damn near impossible to think through.
But this isn’t right.
Jason is alone.
He shouldn’t–
There were people, both then and now, there were…
Laughter ringing in his ears, and the smell of smoke layered over blood and dirt and fear.
People he desperately wished weren’t there.
And…
And not the one person Jason desperately wished was.
His lips crack when he tries to speak. His tongue is thick and uncooperative. Jason stumbles uselessly over the single syllable, even though he knows nobody's coming, knows there's no hope–
“Bruce.”
When Jason regains consciousness, his first thought is, not dead yet.
Which is, admittedly, a pretty low bar, but in Jason’s experience it’s a solid place to start. Especially with the memory of fire and pain lingering in the back of his mind, death nipping at his heels and Bruce’s name on his lips.
For all the good it ever does him.
Nope, there is no way he’s following that particular train of thought.
Jason forces himself to push past the shadow of memory and focus on the present.
Keeping his eyes closed and his breathing even, he takes stock of his body. There’s a familiar post-fight ache in his muscles, but all his limbs respond when he microflexes.
Good so far.
His holsters are still in place, the cool alloy of his mask pressing uncomfortably into his neck where it’s still half unfastened.
He doesn’t appear to be bound, either, and that’s always a win.
Jason works through the splintering headache thrumming up the back of his skull - not from a crowbar - to crack his eyes open, and finds an ordinary ceiling above him instead of the obnoxiously luxurious silk lining of a coffin lid.
It’s the same ceiling as before he passed out - cheap corrugated steel new enough to still shine vaguely in the electric lighting.
Right, a warehouse.
Not that warehouse.
The skylight reveals the clear, cool night sky of Bumfuck Nowhere, stars still visible against the deep inky blue, so he probably hasn’t lost much time either.
More worrying is that Jason can’t see anybody else - no clown, no Sheila, no Batman - and there’s no chatter to be heard or any sense of movement around him.
Fuck subtle. Jason gets an elbow under himself and shoves up enough to see, and–
Sabrina the Teenage Wizard is out cold on the concrete floor in front of him.
Huh.
Guess the dumbass backfired his own shot. Blast. Spell. Whatever.
The kid looks even younger now he’s unconscious, his face slack and mouth gaping slightly. He still has pimples clustered across his chin and forehead, the barest hint of thin, fluffy, blond facial hair on his jaw.
Looking beyond the Baby of Oz, the seven guys that had been holding Jason at, uh, “rod”-point are also laid out like dominoes, still in their neat little line. Combined with their… interesting costume choice, it almost looks like some kind of high-class art installation.
Welp. Jason’s done being part of the exhibit.
He forces himself to his feet, shakes his stiff limbs out. Digs a couple painkillers out of one of his pouches for the headache and swallows them dry, then surveys the warehouse.
Two more people lay prone behind him, a third a few feet away. They all seem to be breathing. Jason snaps their mug shots to run through the system later, zip-ties them up and leaves them where they are.
These small-fries aren’t his immediate problem - the weapons are. Whatever the “rods” are, they’re dangerous. Jason can’t leave them here, especially with tentative links to Lexcorp.
None of the containers on the main floor have taken concussive damage. Interesting. The energy blasts were leaving dents in the metal just fine before, but the explosion - implosion? - only seems to have affected people.
Well. People and the conduit itself - the Wizard Boy’s “rod” is scattered across the concrete in smoking chunks of twisted metal and plastic. The wooden veneer is charred completely black in some places, and sparkling a faint orange in others.
The few other - fuck it - wands visible between bodies look about the same.
Jason breathes steadily through the smell of burning and makes sure his gloves are intact before carefully bagging some of the larger pieces. The mechanics aren’t exactly a surprise considering the power these things were giving off, but he can’t make heads or tails of ‘em here.
The open container, now that he can finally see inside, is stacked with circuit boards. They look unremarkable to Jason, the kind of circuitry you’d find in any store-bought appliance. But then why go to all this trouble for them?
He snaps a few more pictures of the shipping manifest, collects his weapons, and then heads back up to the raised platform along the right wall.
On the plus side, nobody tries to stop him. On the down side, he doesn’t find any more bodies.
Which means he’s at least a dozen or so short. Fuck.
Figures a bunch of guys willing to follow around a kid barely out of high school would also be the type of guys to get the hell out of Dodge as soon as things go sideways.
Now Jason is gonna have to track them down.
Great.
“He really called it his rod? Like, out loud? In front of people?”
Jason double checks the locks on the door of his motel room, rolling his eyes hard enough that he’s pretty sure Roy can hear it four states away, open phone line or not.
“Yup,” Jason says, popping the p, all casual disinterest he knows full well Roy will bluster straight through. “Right on your level - middle school jokes.”
It's a habit more than a necessity at this point in their friendship, but the ritual is calming all the same. Jason likes to remind himself that he can’t scare Roy off by being an asshole.
“And you said it exploded when he pointed it at you?”
Roy doesnt even try to hide the childish glee in his voice at his own terrible innuendo.
God, Jason misses him.
“Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up, Harper.”
Jason might gripe, but he’s glad to hear a friendly voice after memories of pain and fire and loneliness.
(Memories that skirt a little too close to the sucking, empty feeling of loss on that Gotham rooftop that he's not thinking about - more explosions and destruction and pain, and… and Batman, too late to save the people that mattered, too focused on the wrong thing at the wrong time.)
It loosens something tight in Jason's shoulders, talking to Roy. Eases something instinctive just knowing that someone out there still has his back no matter what, even with Artemis and Bizarro gone.
Jason drops onto the flimsy seat at the flimsier table and boots up his tablet.
“When you’re done busting a gut, you think you can take a look at the photos I'm sending you?”
“‘Course I can,” Roy says, just like Jason knew he would. “But I can’t promise all that much without getting my hands on one—”
“What, don’t tell me the ankle biter is killing your rod handling game already.”
“Fuck you too, Jaybird.”
Roy’s laugh rumbles down the line as Jason finishes up the encryption and sends the pictures over their secure network.
Jason grins despite himself. “You know I’m not that kind of girl.”
Something rustles over the line, the shifting of pages and pages of haphazardly piled half-drawn schematics, if Jason knows anything at all about how Roy lives. “Uh huh, you’re a real classy broad.”
“Damn right I am. Speaking of classy ladies, how is Lian?”
“Amazing,” Roy gushes immediately, with audible pride. It's easy to picture the grin on his face. “Exhausting, but God, Jay, she’s so clever. It’s hard to be mad at a kid for evading nap time when she scaled her room’s safety gate to do it, y’know?”
Jason doesn’t know at all - he has zero frame of reference for childhood milestones - but there’s a level of delight in Roy’s voice that hasn’t been there in a while, and Jason is glad to hear it again even if it does put an effective end to their partnership.
Speaking of…
“Listen. I’m gonna follow this up. I know we’ve been—”
“Hey,” Roy cuts him off. “It’s cool, man. The Underlife have proven they ain’t going nowhere. If this is pinging your radar, go for it.”
“It is.” Jason scrubs a hand over his aching eyes. “I don’t know why yet, but it is.”
“I trust your instincts, Jaybird.”
That’s a nice sentiment, but Jason isn’t sure he can say the same. His instincts tend to lean into pushing things too far, pushing until something inevitably blows up in his face.
Literally.
Jason ignores the imaginary taste of char on his tongue, instead focusing on the rapid click-clack of Roy’s typing over the line.
“I’m in,” Roy jokes when he connects to their secure system. He pauses for Jason’s indulgent snort, then hums. “Oh, this is a real frankenbeast of a design. It’s all stitched together from the ground up. Very you.”
“Har har.” Jason grabs the baggie full of broken circuits from his pocket, turns it over in his hands. He wouldn’t exactly call it salvageable , but… “You think it’d be worth resuscitating one of these babies?”
“Depends. D’you have one that’s fixable?”
“That might be overstating it. I’ve got a lump of charcoal and half a circuit board.”
“Don’t suppose there’s a whole one somewhere over there in an evidence lock up?”
“Not likely. They all imploded. Some sort of feedback loop or something.”
“Of course they did.” Roy hums again. “Something this small shouldn’t really have components capable of that kind of feedback loop, though, unless…”
Roy trails off into semi-coherent mumbling. Jason lets him work through whatever it is he’s working through without interruption.
Balancing the phone between his ear and shoulder, Jason shuffles over to the bed.
His body aches in that used-and-abused way, the way that’s usually a vaguely pleasant buzz post-fight. But with the dream - the memory - still clinging to him, the pain leaves him feeling drained mentally as much as physically.
Like he could sleep, and be happy with never waking up again.
He sinks into the lumpy mattress, and it feels like the best thing in the world.
Jason has the fleeting thought that he should probably shower first - he’s gross with sweat and gunpowder and whatever accumulated grime was on that warehouse floor. But Roy’s familiar rambling in his ear is soothing, and this might be the last time he has an actual bed for a while once he starts hunting down those runaway wizards.
“Jay?”
“Mm?”
“You good? Kinda drifted there, buddy.”
“I’m good. Just tired.”
Roy clicks his tongue like he isn't sure he should believe it, but he follows up with , “Alright, get your beauty sleep then. I’ll send you whatever I find for your little witch hunt before morning.”
Jason snorts. “At least this time I’ll be on the other side of one.”
“Jason,” Roy says - not a nickname in sight and all humor dropped from his tone.
It’s his “wanna talk about it?” voice that he's picked up from therapy.
“I’m good, Roy, I promise. Just tired.”
“Yeah, okay.” Roy sighs, long and world weary - team leader and older brother and exhausted parent all rolled into one sound. “I just wish I could be out there, watching your back.”
“No you don’t,” Jason says, making sure his tone says, I know, I appreciate it. “Go hug your daughter for me, man.”
“I will. Take care of yourself, Jaybird.”
“You know me,” Jason mumbles, eyes already half-closed. “I always do.”
Jason dreams of Magdala Valley.
The desert sand is a bright, blinding orange in the glaring sun, the hope in his chest a tiny seedling refusing to shrivel in the heat.
His mother grins around a laugh, and says, “I’m so happy you found me.”
The warehouse is stuffy and dry. The air rattling through his punctured lungs burns hotter with every gasping breath.
His mother frowns around a cigarette, and says, “Do I have to stay for this?”
Jason’s body hums with the thrill of fighting side by side with Batman again.
Bruce says, “I’m glad you’re here,” and for a fleeting moment it almost sounds like he means, ‘I’m glad you’re alive’.
Jason’s heart aches with a hurt far deeper than muscle and bone.
Bruce shouts, “Help me figure out how to bring my son back!” It echoes in the stillness of the air, ‘You’re not my son, you were never my son.’
Emotional hurt twists into physical, split lips and bloody knuckles more welcome than shattered hope and useless longing.
Flash fire burning melts into cool open air, the warehouse crumbling to dust, and Jason is both reduced to ashes in the wreckage and watching untouched from the outside.
A hand, strong and solid on his shoulder. A squeeze, firm and comforting.
Jason refuses to look, because he knows who it is.
“I’m sorry,” Bruce’s mouth says.
His voice still echoes around them, straight from Jason’s memories, ‘I thought bringing you here would jog your memory.’
“Fuck your apologies,” Jason snaps.
His own words ring out from the past, ‘My life’s been tainted by you!’
“Yes,” Bruce’s mouth says, so quiet a confession that Jason barely hears it even with how close he’s standing.
Jason keeps his eyes firmly on the ruin of the building he died in.
A monument, a tomb. For a kid who never came back.
‘Family also needs to earn each other’s trust,’ Jason’s voice calls from above, an echo, a remnant, a goddamned joke.
‘Comes a time when having to keep earning someone’s trust stops,’ Bruce’s voice returns, a mockery of a mockery. ‘And you hope the people you put your faith in will always be there when you need them, will always have your back no matter what.’
Bruce’s hand flexes, tightens.
“You broke my trust,” he says.
“Like you ever fucking trusted me in the first place,” Jason spits, and wakes with bitterness still caught in his throat.