Chapter Text
The first knocks sounded like drum beats, or heartbeats, or chants, in the echoes of Jason’s dreams before he surfaced enough to be considered awake.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Ha’rasz. Ha’rasz. Ha’rasz.
Like blood flow. Like the river roaring into the sea. Like the crash on waves against rocks.
“Peter?” The name disoriented him for a moment. ‘that’s not who I am’ "Are you there?" Now, Jason registered the reedy, strained voice of his elderly neighbor, Matilda, calling from outside his front door.
Is it Thursday? Groping for the black reflection in his bed sheets, he flicked on his mobile and groaned silently as he realized he must have stood her up. “Iik–” His throat ached when he tried to speak, but he cleared it. “Attie, uh, just a second!”
“Alright, Peter.” Through the door his ‘name’ sounded even more like Peder than it usually did.
Dropping the phone, Jason shoved himself up by his arms and rolled off the bed with a stiffness that came from staying too long in one position. He stood for a heartbeat, swaying slightly as his brain struggled to wake up and his dreams clung to him. They’d been strange today, hadn’t they? Not nightmares, no, but enough to make him feel uneasy… Yet a warmth surrounded him, too, and a nearly foreign feeling that everything would be alright.
Then, weight registered. It wasn’t heavy (not like it had been?), but, as someone who drilled in observing even minute differences and who lived that training out nightly, it might as well have been a thousand pounds. The difference blared like an alarm.
“Uh, Attie.” He switched to Russian, knowing the woman would parse it better than Peter’s Crime Alley accented English. ‘//I am going to slip some money under the door. For a delivery fee and to get one of the kids to help you order everything. I think I’m coming down with something,//’ he lied, padding over to collect his wallet and the forty dollars. Even as she declined it, he slid the money to her.
When she was gone, the tip-tap of her cane fading from the too thin carpet in their apartments’ hallway, he walked calmly to the bathroom and shut himself inside.
He could feel the weight more clearly now, in multiple places throughout his body – ears, lip, nipples, navel, – and the small heat that radiated from each piece of gravity, a little bit of self-contained warmth as if there were more happening below the piercing’s surface. He could feel other, more unsettling changes, now that he began, almost subconsciously, to take inventory of his body. He ached a little. In his throat, yes, but also between his legs and behind his abdominal wall.
Jason turned to the closed door with its full length mirror, so useful with hard to check injuries. Releasing a held breath carefully, he allowed his eyes to lay on his reflected form. The weight matched new inky black metallic adornments that shined like oil slicks where they pierced through his pinker than usual skin. Two studs in each ear with some flashing metal hanging between them, a stud in his cheek that looked like a shiny birthmark or mole, a ring with a dangling gem hanging from his septum (he would not be branded), and a barbell in the center of his bottom lip that matched the metal he felt when he flicked out his tongue. It registered as warm against his flesh, even when compared to the inside of his mouth.
In the silence between his last breath and his next he very carefully did not scream. But he allowed himself to strip his shirt off next, wildly, ripping it away. His boxer-briefs he kicked off before turning back to the mirror, his chest rising with heavy pants from this non-exertion, from the stress of checking. He must know even if part of him wanted to hide away like a puppy. Fuck. It blared in his head, a singular, all-encompassing thought as he stared at his naked body. Matching oil slick metal protruded as rings from his hard nipples, framed by large areolas, but the biggest change stood alone, below. Adorned in pink but unswollen flesh was the cock he expected to see. Below it, instead of the slight bulge from his unpresented secondary gender – the one he had his entire life – he found an open slit of shiny, slightly slick flesh parted in waiting.
I presented.
For a long moment, Jason felt a whiteness of the mind fill him, barring all thoughts, stopping all reaction. Then –
When he finished having a panic attack and caught his breath, his mind returned to his ‘dream’. He only remembered flashes of it now: hands holding him safe, protecting him from harm; warmth filling his body, overwhelming in its size and shape, too large for his mind to fully comprehend; that smell of brine and the sound of flowing water. The foreign feeling of being safe. When he strained he could just barely remember a child, which was not a child but a trap. A perfect trap if intentionally set for him.
Yet, it hadn’t been sprung in costume. Did the not-child-creature somehow know his full identity? He needed to find out.
For now, he began with the basics. Pulling on clean underwear and a pair of sweatpants, trying not to grimace at how both cupped his groin differently now, he climbed up on the bed and settled into Lotus pose. When his mind eventually cleared enough for focus, he found his tether to the Acres of All and slipped into the plane of not-space.
The Acres’ stark beauty, similar to the most remote of Himalayan refuges, caught in his chest the way it always did. An aching fondness and homesickness for a place he’d consciously chosen not to make his home pressed at him. He put it, and his grieving ache, aside to push his sense of being outward.
Disconnecting his mind from his body, he viewed himself from a distance. It helped his calm to control his, technically unnecessary, breathing. This second examination of his body gave him more information than the first had, though he wasn’t sure how to interpret all of it, though he knew something had swamped him with its power. In the Acres, he could see the typical glow of the All-Blades, nestled safely in his chest and surrounded by their usual protective shielding. A hitch in his chest released to see they hadn’t been tampered with. He couldn’t say as much for the rest of his body. At each point where he knew a piercing was in the physical world, he could see a spot of power, black as night but somehow, also, glowing in the same way the All-Blades did when manifesting.
That the piercings might be the manifestation of some person’s soul made no sense; no one could burn their soul so consistently and survive, human or otherwise, and he could see these points of power wove within him now. He was puzzling over that, not yet ready to move on to his other discovery, when he heard a chuckle.
“Ah, still walking into trouble, hmm, puppy?” The cracking voice of the old woman sounded amused and when he looked up he found the glowing form of Ducra staring up at him. She floated a few inches off the floor, as if she’d forgotten she used to walk, but he still had to look a long way down.
The sight of her brought tears to his eyes and nausea rising up his throat, his feelings as thick and fresh as the day he found and was forced to strike down her decaying body. “I’m sorry.”
“Eh. What for? Do you think you are so powerful that alone you could have changed the treachery? Eh, eh, powerful little puppy that you are, you could not have done that.” She snorted and cracked open a pomegranate – a glowing one – with her hands. “You did what I asked of you always. More than I can say for half my students.” He blinked and she cackled. “Boy, you went after the Devourer of Young Souls and vanquished it, as we asked. Yes?” She waited for him, so he nodded obediently. He had done that; someone needed to. “You completed the second task, too, despite my concerns about that one. I knew before I agreed to train you that you would return to Gotham and your unfinished business.” Waving her hand to dismiss the subject, she lowered her ghostly eyes to stare straight over at him – at his abdomen given her tiny form – and both scraggly white brows raised, lifting her wrinkled face into a smile. “Gotham, Cursed City though it is, needs you. I taught you a third skill, did I not?”
His chest panged as he remembered their many, many lessons over the fire. She had spent most of his year in the Chamber of All with him as her only student and taught him far more than three things. “More than that.”
“On the level of the All-Blades, boy. Don’t lose focus with your sentimental yipping.”
A chill went down his spine and, strangely, the jewelry in him sought to replace that warmth and more – like it wanted to reassure Jason. She had taught him a third major magic or, rather, a whole set of magics that went together. He’d never had reason to use them, though. The All-Blades handled the Untitled and the Five Fingered Punch handled Ra’s al Ghul. “The cleansing.”
“Why you insist on acting slower than you are, boy child…” Her tongue clucked. “It drives Talia crazy, too, you know.” Ducra snorted again and shook her head. “Bah. You’ll need to use your brain for this one.”
He opened his mouth –
And abruptly found himself back on his bed, in his primary apartment, Ducra’s voice call of ‘Congratulations’ echoing in his ear. Another attempt to enter the Acres failed and he cursed, falling back on his bed. “What the hell was that about, old woman?”
—
“And you woke up this way?” Leslie Thompkins asked, frowning at the fuzzy grey image of the ultrasound machine.
“Yup,” he said, feigning an unbothered affect. If he let on how much this was freaking him out, Doc Thompkins might do something well-meaning like call Bruce. No breaking down on the doc’s time. Do not accidentally summon Batman. “So, what’s the verdict?”
For another minute she moved the sterile wand over his belly. Then, she frowned. “To get a proper image I need to do an insertion, Jason.” His shoulders, pressed back against the uncomfortable examination bed, locked up; below the medical wand, between his mostly closed thighs, his new anatomy attempted to do the same.
“How important is it?”
Her wrinkled face settled into its neutral, professional mask, to his relief. Too much sympathy and Jason knew he would bolt right now. “As your medical doctor, I recommend getting the scan done now. There is no other way to confirm that everything is in working order. Given the abruptness–”
Throwing an arm over his face, he muttered, “Fuck!” into his own skin. When he went to growl, an instinctive noise of frustration done daily by people across the world, his usual tenor rumble came out baritone. It startled him to silence, for a moment, before he whined. “The kids are gonna be even more scared of that.” With his size and deep voice, Jason already struggled to convince the new street kids he was safe as it was. “Fuck,” he muttered again. “Do it.”
The doc patted his arm, but then got down to business.
An awkward, goopy five minutes later, she pronounced, “Everything looks as I’d expect from a routine presentation. We’re still waiting on a number of the blood test results, but what I have right now confirms that you presented successfully. Your hormones have begun leveling off by this point, which is a good sign.”
Sure. Except for the overnight presentation triggered by abduction from what might have been mole people, everything’s great!
“I’m not concerned about any immediate complications, though there is the fact that you haven’t gone into a presentation heat...” She frowned. “We’ll need to keep an eye on it. You’ll also need to schedule a pap smear. Given the abnormal presentation, sooner would be better. I can refer you to a colleague of your preference for that.”
“Ugh. Omega, I guess? Or female beta.” He didn’t much want someone who had no experience with the body part poking around his.
He was dressing while she washed her hands – neither of them concerned with modesty given how often she’d given him emergency medical care – when she cleared her throat. “Last night I had multiple inquiries from your Pack.” He could hear the capitalization in her tone, though he wasn’t certain they qualified. “I told them I hadn’t seen you, but I imagine that they would appreciate personal reassurances.”
Inquiries. Jason stilled with a shirt tucked over his head, fists bunched in the soft cotton fibers. “Who all…?” If he could have pack support without being expected to cede all control to Bruce, he wouldn’t feel so conflicted about calling them Pack.
“Batman, Red Robin. Robin… lurked, but refused to come in; he didn’t appear injured.” She shook her head. “I also received a call from Alfred.”
Jason fought a frown off his face, opening his hands as he nodded. “I’ll take care of it.”
“I expect you back for another scan a month from now, if you haven’t settled on a new doctor.” The doc looked over at him for a moment before asking, “I can write you a prescription for birth control.”
A shock went down his skin as he stilled. “No, thanks. Not relevant.” The closest thing he had to a regular thing was his friendly arrangement with a friend, but none of that involved anything that could get him pregnant anyway. “Thanks. I’m good to go?”
A few minutes later he was on the street, cursing when he noticed that his phone was dark. It’d probably been dead, or turned off, all ‘morning’ (vigilantes kept odd hours). As soon as he turned it on it exploded in sound and vibration, drawing a growl out of him. He made it about ten yards before it rang. He glanced at the screen, saw the unique ID he associated with comms, and sighed as he answered it. It might be Alfred, after all.
—
“I’m fine. Stop that.” Jason snarled, flashing his teeth at Big Bird.
Ever since Blüdhaven burned, forcing Dick to move back to Gotham, the two of them kept circling each other without ever fully reconnecting. The old wound of his early rejection never healed. Dick regretted his part in it, but he also seemingly lost details over the years about how thorough his rejection of his pack’s new pup had been. To him, he apologized and the apology wasn’t rejected; this meant they were Pack now. He never seemed to notice that Jason still held him -- all of them -- at a distance, too busy with other worries to pay the black sheep too much mind unless Jason drew attention to himself. He hated the way Dick treated any situation like they needed to move on to more pressing matters. Read: Jason's lethality and his unrepentant attitude -- as if he were the problem, when they all contributed to the tension between them. When it wasn’t that, Big Bird hovered. Monitoring him. Acting like Jay couldn’t take care of himself, Dick would keep prodding and prodding. Like now.
“You didn’t arrive to check in with Alfred as agreed upon,” Bruce said, keeping his scent tight to his body and his voice carefully neutral.
All that did was obscure his current emotions, if he was having any. His spicy black coffee and boxwood marking scent lingered everywhere in the Cave after years haunting its recesses. Jason's brain latched onto the scent markers like a drowning man, attempting to read some sort of current emotional signals. The long-unnecessary evolutionary tool drove Jason on and even the soapy brine of the Cave’s water systems couldn’t overcome the way Bruce’s very presence had sunk into this place, claiming it. It put Jason on edge on good days. Today he felt suffocated between Bruce’s scent and Dick’s chalk and poppy.
Even as ‘only’ the Second in their Pack, Dick’s scent also marked everywhere in the Cave and, for some reason, it came across much, much stronger than usual today, more distinctly Alpha than usual. Jason wished he could casually flick on the rebreather in his mask without them noticing. He’d foregone the whole helmet because it would have seemed strange not to remove it, whereas he often kept the mask on in the cave. Adjusting it still wouldn’t be subtle enough in front of these two.
“And now you’re fidgeting,” Bruce continued pointedly.
Fuck you, too, B.
“Forget the fidgeting. His scent changed!” Dick said forcefully, whipping his head around to glare at Bruce before settling back on Jason. “And what’s with the jewelry Little Wing?”
Well. Fuck. With a groan, Jason conceded he wasn’t getting out of the Cave with only a (completely unnecessary) check of his (mysteriously healed) bullet wound. “Fine. Fine. Get the others you want for a debriefing here. I’m only gonna talk about this once.”
Despite their multiple, annoying attempts to pry more information out of him, Jason kept mum. Even siccing Alfred on him, a low blow, made no progress.
Jason went to wait in the Manor’s Library, which was gratifyingly short on anyone’s scent except a trace of Duke’s sunshine-on-asphalt half-puppy scent. The beta was still in the process of presenting at 17 and his scent hadn’t fully matured yet. Scenting it made Jason realize what Dick had meant about his own. As one of the very small percentage of adults who had never gone through the second stage of puberty, Jason’s scent never matured. It must have now, that he presented, but sniffing his own arm only confused his brain a little. Something stingy, but more robust than cinnamon? It was usually easier to identify other people’s scents than your own.
He resolved to ask someone later what they scented and settled down with a book to take his mind off things.
When Damian arrived home from school to find out Jason would soon be the subject of a– Family(?), Pack(?) – of a Bat meeting, the pup made his way to the library. Pretending he’d intended to do his homework in the library all along, despite much preferring the privacy (and security) of his own room, he searched Jason out. They greeted each other quietly, with a wariness that would be considered respectful in the League and that the rest of the pack routinely critiqued here. Sometimes it felt like he was the only one who accepted Damian once had another life instead of appearing, fully formed, at 10 years old on Bruce’s doorstep.
Now Dames scrunched up his nose as he approached the armchair Jason planted himself in. “I see that Richard was accurate in describing that your scent has, once again, been altered.”
“Yeah?” The first change had been the consequence of dying, or the Pit, or some combination, blending his original pup scent with a new one. He had died drowning in stinging nettles as his emotions rose and woken up in a Pit of green with a bunch of fuzzy memories and aspen battling stinging nettles on his skin. The doctors thought it might be his presentation scent. Given how pre-presentation scents were usually more personal and unlikely to be plants, having two plant scents would have made sense. Soon after it became clear that his presentation had been arrested by the trauma of being murdered, his scent blended. lacking the fullness of an adult scent. “What’s it like?”
Damian’s eyebrows furrowed, a complex mix of confusion and longing rising from his skin. “Aspen, without nettles, and Mother’s chai.”
A pang of longing hit Jason and he fought to suppress his scent by burying the emotion further down. He sniffed his arm for the fifth time since he entered the library and, yes, he could see that now. Definitely more robust than cinnamon.
“I should make up a batch of it this weekend,” he offered casually. If it sounded pitying at all Damian would shut him down, no matter how nice a visit sounded. His little brother never quite grew comfortable with Jason’s instinct to treat him like a child.
Even the first time Talia had Packed In Jason, when he was little more than a mobile coma patient, he’d shown a particular interest in protecting the kids around her. Damian started resentful of sharing his mother’s limited time, at first, but the day Jason attacked a would-be assassin on instinct he won a tiny bit of the pup’s trust. Not even the Lazarus pit could steal that from them, though Damian took time to adjust to having a verbal (and not always present) big brother. Getting to have visits with the pup was a big part of the reason why Jason eventually reconciled with Bruce, though he didn’t think the great detective knew that.
“If I acquire Pennyworth’s approval. It has been made clear to me that I am not to leave the Manor at the weekend without it.” Adorable. Dames puffed up like an affronted cat, his scent souring at the indignity of having a guardian.
“Hey, at least someone cares, so you won’t get kidnapped without anyone noticing.” Jason winced as soon as he said it. Kidnappings were a sore spot on both their sides, between his death and Damian’s training exercises.
The pup glared. “Mother cares.”
Relieved he could diffuse this, he nodded back seriously. “She argued with your grandfather more than once about the exercises. She worried you wouldn’t know if you were kidnapped for real, a risk for you as the child of important people.”
It diffused the hurt enough that the pup dropped his school bag on the table closest to his chair and sat down. They spent a little while spending silent time together before Alfred entered, a tea tray in his hands. “The others will gather here for dinner, Master Jason. Are you certain you do not wish to discuss this in a more private group first?”
Read: my stubborn kid can’t stand not knowing your secret.
“Thanks for the tea, Alfred. I’m sure.”
—
Jason spent the half-hour before the dinner bell hiding in ‘his’ room in the Manor. During the Cataclysm, the massive earthquake broke through the family wing of Wayne Manor, among others. For the rebuilding his belongings had been salvaged, if they could be, and boxed up, but never placed back in his rebuilt room. He’d recovered the books and put them back in the new, empty room he claimed further down in the wing, but aside from those and a handful of non-gun weapons hung decoratively on the walls (for cover, but also to annoy Bruce who felt that was still too blatant) he kept very little here. A few changes of clothing. A to-go bag for emergencies.
I don’t even have a Scent-Bake here, he thought as he entered a scent-neutral room. The others all kept at least one, but usually two: one in the bedroom, one in the Pack den. This never bothered me before…
Shaking off the weird feeling, he’d settled in to meditate. He knew that he’d need all the calm he could gather before Pack dinner.
“I don’t fault you for approaching an unknown child, Jason,” Bruce started, sounding like he definitely faulted it, “but when you grew uneasy why didn’t you withdraw and call for back-up?”
With his scent suppressed, still, Jason could only go off his tone and his tone sucked. “I blacked out, like I told you. It was some sort of magic, like I told you.”
Barbara, her beta-scent flaring in curiosity (and doubt), asked, “How do you know that? Couldn’t it have been a powder or a contact liquid? You know the improvements Crane has made on rapid-penetration chemicals since you’ve been gone.”
He resisted the urge to pinch his nose while considering her question. He either could lie, by saying she had a point here, or admit how he knew. Both options had drawbacks.
Yet. If these people are his Pack, capital P, his family of choice, then he should be able to trust them, right? Right now, instead, he moved cautiously, then felt guilty for doing so. And then he felt angry about feeling guilty given it was they (Dick) who had mostly ignored him since he came back, it was them (Bruce) who treated him like… Fuck.
Okay, the memory’s fuzzy, but I’m pretty sure I thought they would come for me last night. They tried, checking in the safehouses they knew, talking to Leslie, patrolling along my usual routes. They’d still been looking when I turned on my phone. That’s how a Pack would act, right?
Taking a slow breath, careful to keep his scent to himself, he said, “Leslie mentioned you checked in with her last night…”
“You went to Leslie.” To his surprise, Bruce’s scent blew out relief, his shielding failing. Controlling your scent was half managing your biophysical response and half a subconscious magic humans were born with. His loss of control left Jason shifting minutely, but he answered the question.
“I presented late. Yeah. I had a doctor check that out, B.” He blew out an annoyed breath. He could take care of himself.
“Did Doctor Thompkins assess your injury as well, Master Jason? Is it healing well?” Alfie was sitting in on dinner at Jason’s insistence, as much part of the Pack as he was. More, really.
“It’s healed, actually.” With a small sigh, Jason straightened up. “I know it was magic because I felt it take effect in two parts: a fascination-class spell I recognize and a straight-forward numbing spell that paralyzes. It horrifies you so that you freeze and the second part can take effect. I managed to break away partially, but I was too caught to bring up any active defenses.”
Bruce, at the head of the table, turned his full attention to Jason’s seat straight across from him. In the formal dining room, rather than the kitchen table, Alfred insisted on formal seating, which meant eldest Omega sat across from Pack Head (always an alpha or a beta). Ugh. Now B stared across eight feet with an intensity that made it feel like eight inches. “Are you saying that you know formal magic, Jason?”
“As part of my year-plus tour of the world, learning skills, before coming home to Gotham to be a vigilante. You learned a little magic then, too.” Jason preferred to keep it at that, but he knew he would be accused of lying – or, at least intentionally hiding things – if or when they found out later. “I learned… more than a little magic. Place I lived in was in a different time-space. I went in, studied a year, popped back out after two weeks.”
Dick frowned, his chalk cloying up with hurt. “Why haven’t you mentioned this before?”
“B doesn’t like magic? It hasn’t been relevant? I was sworn to secrecy about the sect, so the only other thing I can tell you is they were warrior monks with a specific goal and that I chose not to be inducted.” Damian’s eyes widened briefly before he schooled his face back under control. Thankfully everyone was too busy staring directly at Jason to notice. He shrugged. “As none of you have any basis for understanding, debriefing on this skill set is pointless and it usually isn’t… applicable to the problems you’ve run into since we started working together again. Gotham doesn’t exactly have a lot of magical problems to begin with.” Only one big one. Maybe. I really need someone with more experience to check it.
“What sort of ‘magical problems’ would it be applicable to.” Bruce ‘asked’, slipping down towards his Batman growl.
Lowering his chin to make it clear Jason would not be conceding anything to that tone, Pack head or not, he dropped his own voice to the new low octave and vibrated his throat to growl back, “No interrogation or I’m gone.” The table went still. Immediately, all at once, to his confusion. When Damian whined, of all things, Jason froze, too. His chest clenched at the distressed sound and he went to rumble, or the mimicry he’d learned from betas in the last few years, only to make an entirely unexpected sound. “Did I just chuff?”
“You used your Voice, too,” Babs said, shaking it off first. “That was strange.”
Dick shook himself, hunching a moment before he straightened and frowned. “That wasn’t Omega Voice, Babs. I’ve heard it, back when I was a beat cop. You’d see it sometimes during domestic disturbances.”
Jason scowled. Omega Voice was used pretty much exclusively in-pack. Fine. I guess these assholes are my Pack.
The conversation dragged on far past dinner time and none of them left completely happy. When Jason wouldn’t back down, refusing to be interrogated, Bruce switched to a less confrontational request for a report. When Bruce pushed about his health, Jason conceded to allowing Alfred to examine him, privately, so long as the results were never written down (the nosy shits that made his younger siblings would read a report). The whole thing went like that, a strange battle of wills between him and Bruce.
That, itself, happened pretty regularly. What was strange was that Jason won about half their arguments, with Bruce backing down.
Ultimately, aside from agreeing to the exam, Jason agreed to calling Zatanna, too. He’d already been planning on that, hoping that she could answer a few questions. Surprisingly, as soon as he described the not-child-creature she said she’d be there in person in a few minutes by zeta.
That was how he found himself standing there awkwardly, ‘his’ Alpha and Pack second lurking far too close behind him, waiting for Bruce’s ex to arrive. Right before Jason snapped at them to step back, the zeta activated. He turned back.
“Ms. Zatara,” Alfred greeted, a domino plastered to his face like she didn’t know exactly who B was.
“Agent A.” She managed a charming smile for Alfie, before she turned to look up at Jason. “Tell me, is this who you saw?” She thrust a phone at him, the screen already on.
He growled as he saw the pale thing mimicking a child. “That’s it.”
“He. He goes by Witch-Boy, but he is no longer a child. His ancestry and shapeshifting allows him to look any age he pleases and this amuses Klarion, as a Lord of Chaos.” I got taken down by a Lord of Chaos. Holy shit. With a sigh, she murmured ‘erots’ and put the phone away in a pocket dimension. “He cares for only power. While not beyond siphoning off the life and power of a single magic-user like you, obviously you’re still alive. Most likely, he used you to bargain. What happened after he spelled you?”
Regretting agreeing to this already, Jason led the way back to a small work table and took a seat. Alfred offered drinks and they began.
He described being completely numbed, unable to move, low-responsiveness to touch, while he was laid out on an altar. He quickly went over being pierced, how they seemed to minimize his suffering (in its dream-like state it felt safe, not like suffering, but he knew what he would have felt at the time). The way he ached, the presentation that this ‘Witch-Boy’ or they kick started, and finally the summoning itself.
“I remember being weirdly emotional. Upset in a way I would usually shunt to the side to deal with afterward.” Scowling, he added, “The dream aspect is pushing an intense feeling of safety onto the experience.”
“As if the people or entity behind this would prefer you come away unharmed and without distress?”
“Yeah.” That fit it exactly. Polite kidnappers? “And I can swear that the… jewelry tried to reassure me earlier. I also can’t remove it.”
“Would you like me to try?” She took his head when he nodded, touching one of the piercings in his left ear. “’evomer’” For a beat nothing happened. Another sent a pulse of heat through the earring, but before he could warn her a sudden, bright sensation surged into reality, throwing Zatanna back like she’d been hit with a shockwave.
“Zee. What. Happened,” Bruce snapped.
She groaned as Dick went to help her. “Well, I believe the entity went on the defense. That is most likely what the jewelry is for. I’m sorry, I don’t believe I was told your hero name…”
She looked right at him and he lowered his chin, even knowing it would look defensive instead of challenging. With his strange day, it was all he could manage not to vibrate out of his own skin. “I’m the Red Hood.”
“Oh.” Her mouth twitched, glancing at Bruce, back to him, and Bruce again. “Your lost little robin.”
He growled the same unsettling Omega Voice as before, despite the fact she wasn’t Pack. “I wasn’t lost.”
“No. He was.” Zatanna took Dick’s hand and he lifted her to a stand. As she approached Jason she brushed off dust and cocked her head. “The last time I saw you, you were about ye high.” She put a hand out a little above his waist, which checked out. “I did a magical diagnostic back then, if you remember. I would appreciate it if you would allow me to run that and perhaps a few more tests depending on what I find, Red Hood.”
“That’s what you’re here for. Let’s get it over with.” Alfred shot a hard look his way. “Ugh. We, I, appreciate your help, Ms. Zatara. I’m on edge and it’s making me snarly.”
She gave a small laugh. “You were scowling the last time I saw you, too.”
The sudden reminder of the weird goo a wannabe rogue had thrown all over him made him snort, scrunching up his nose. “That goop was disgusting.”
“It smelled awful, too.”
Ice successfully broken, she lured him into a lotus pose on the Cave floor and began the first of what turned out to be many, many spells.
By the time she finished examining him backwards (ha!), forwards, and what felt like sideways twice, Jason knew he reached his last nerve about an hour earlier. Luckily, she ignored his snappishness and got on with it rather than drawing attention to his bad mood. He still tried to keep his attitude under control so as to not stress out Alfie.
Most of the last half-hour the entire Cave had been silent aside from muttered spells. It wasn’t until she looked up from yet another result and zeroed in on Bruce that she even spoke to her ex for the first time.
What she said, “You, your second, and any active listening equipment need to leave. Or, I can zeta with Red Hood to a location I control to ensure our privacy,” drew a growl from Bruce and she threw an unimpressed look right back.
“He’s my son. And one of my Pack’s omegas.”
With one eyebrow raised, Zatanna broadcast her determination in her scent as she snapped back, “He’s an adult and it’s been about 60 years since omegas were considered wards of their alphas. Even if it hadn’t, his status as a Prime Omega would have put him on an equal heading as you and you know it.”
“What? I’m – Oh. That – Should have guessed that with my size. Of course I am.”
Primals were rare enough that he knew only one in person and even that had artificial cause. Still, they had all been taught about Primals; how humanity first evolved with primal forms before slowly losing that over the millennia until as few as one Primal per 30 million people remained. ‘Lost evolutionary adaption’ had been the precise term used, though not everyone thought more Primals would be a good thing for modern society. Not when they were faster, stronger, and better at hunting than others, according to what he learned in freshman Biology. This was especially true for Primal omegas, as they also had better scent control and supposedly better reading of body language.
Once, not that long ago, when most of humanity lived in closely knitted Packs, multi-Pack Clans, or the larger Tribes, many of which were nomadic, Primal Omegas were the ones sent out to negotiate between peoples. Tribes trusted them to not only care about the well-being of their Pack, but the well-being of the larger world, too.
And I’m a Primal Omega.
“Oh! I’m sorry! You didn’t know. This is why I want your father gone. Bruce, he deserves to be given his answers in privacy.”
Jason snorted. “He doesn’t know what privacy is.” With a resigned sigh, he went on, “If you don’t tell him, he’ll only hound me for it until I submit and tell him what he wants to know. What I want doesn’t factor into it.”
The sharp, aching scent of hurt punched the air and he snapped his head up, towards where it came from Bruce. Suddenly, the frustration, anger, and fear of the last day rose up in Jason and he bared his new long fangs, surprised when a further sheath snapped down from his gums. My shredding fangs, all the better to rip your throat out. Pouring furiousness all over the cave -- at Bruce, at Dick, even at how Alfie never stopped B from crossing lines even if he scolded him for doing so -- Jason stood and clenched his fists.
“Is that really how you feel, Jason?” Bruce stared hard. “That I force you, that I don’t care about your feelings?"
“That’s what I know,” he snarled back. Jason hated it. “‘No’ is a complete sentence. It means ‘no’. But it’s never, ever good enough for you. If I don’t have a reason you think is good enough, you keep pushing until I give in and let you have what you want or you get it another way. Why do you think I never told you I can do any magic! I knew you would interrogate me, even though you don’t have the background to understand half of what I know. Now, because you don’t understand it, you won’t trust it. That means you won’t trust me because I AM THE MAGIC!” He roared, a wordless cry of frustration that jarred his own bones and left Dick shaken a few feet behind B.
Bruce’s expression withdrew in stages, a blink of shock before he began closing down: shutting his mouth, straightening his brow, letting his lids and lips go lax, until only the unfeeling, utter dick of Batman stood there. Despite the fact he had been much more expressive that night, something about it reminded Jason of the night he killed the Joker. Distress crawled up his spine and he crossed his arms over his chest defensively. As much as their relationship had improved since the day that they stood over Joker's dead body while Bruce shouted at Jason for daring to kill in front of him, the furious scent between them threw him back to that night as he shivered, suddenly cold.
Zatanna stepped in front of him, facing him, her back to Batman. Quietly, she offered, “I have a few places we can go. Would you rather go to my home or a League safehouse?”
Always grab a line if you’re drowning. “Your place. He’ll have access to any Justice League camera.” Her bright green eyes narrowed and, for a moment, despite the much paler skin, she reminded him of Talia. He relaxed. I want my mom. Fuck. I’m not a child. She’s not exac– I need to get over this shit.
“Very well. Do you mind if I rift – teleport – you?”
“Jaso–” He shook his head, pushing acceptance into his body language. The world dissolved into pretty sparkles with Batman growling, “Zee,” in the background.