Summary

Jason has a nightmare.

Chapter Ten

It doesn’t feel like waking up. He can’t move.

Everything is blurry and hazy except the lights. Shining straight into his eyes. He tries to blink. Everything is slow and foggy. He tries to wiggle his toes.

Someone speaks. A high clear voice like a bell. He can’t make out the words. He doesn’t understand.

A high clear voice. He doesn’t know where it comes from. He can’t see anyone. He can’t see anything, except the lights. He doesn’t know where he is. 

Weight settles next to him. It pulls him down against the mattress. Into softness and warmth. His heart beats faster. 

No. This is wrong. He said no. 

This isn’t supposed to happen. Danny said it would never happen again—

No. That’s wrong too. Danny is the one who sold him out. 

The weight gets heavier. The voice breathes in his ear. A hand touches his side. 

Jason knows what happens next. 

He’s not really awake. And maybe none of it is real. And he’s not supposed to know, but he does. He knows the hand will trace over his side, and across his hip, and down his thigh…

He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to. He said no. 

The voice crawls in his ear. It fills his head and spills down his spine burning hot like the hand between his legs. He needs to wake up, he needs to wake up right now, but he can’t move—

The hands are everywhere. Burning his skin. Oh that’s good the voice says aren’t you just the sweetest thing—

Jason pulls away from it and screams.

The lights go out. Jason flails against the weight on top of him. He kicks and claws and screams. He can’t see, but he can move. He beats against the weight until he finds the end of it—the edge—until it’s gone, and nothing is holding him down, and he can breathe again. 

Cold fingers wrap around his arm. 

Jason shrieks. His shoulder knocks against the wall and he scrabbles to put his back against it, to kick out at the person grabbing him, something—

Golden eyes stare at him. 

Talon. 

It’s Talon.

Jason’s chest heaves. His breath scrapes hard against his windpipe. It’s just Talon. He remembers—the apartment, the bedroom, the window seat and the view. He remembers where he is. He has his arms wrapped around his knees, his back to the wall. He’s still on the bed. This is what you get for trying to use the bed. He should have known better. But he didn’t want to cuddle up with Talon again, in case Talon wet the bed, and he thought it would be weird if he made Talon use the folding cot while Jason was still sleeping under the bed, and the floor wasn’t that comfortable anyway. He thought he could do it. He thought it would be okay. 

Talon makes a soft inquisitive noise. He reaches out. 

Jason flinches against the wall. No, don’t touch me! He tries to say it, but the words get tangled up into raw noise. 

Talon stops. He puts his hand down, but he stays where he is. Kneeling next to the bed, staring at Jason. 

Jason’s breath rattles in his throat. It was just a dream. I’m okay. I’m fine. He opens his mouth. All that comes out is an awful gasping sob. 

He covers his face. The next sob is quieter, but Jason feels it all the way down to his gut. He claps his hands over his mouth and curls down so his forehead touches his knees, and he heaves with the force of his tears. 

He shouldn’t be crying. It was just a dream. He’s not there anymore. It wasn’t real.

But it was real. He just can’t remember all of it. He knows they touched him. He thinks they touched him a lot. He can’t remember how many there were or what they did but he knows they drugged him to keep him calm and he knows the drugs made it feel like it would keep happening forever—

Something pokes his leg. 

Jason shrieks and presses back against the wall and cries. He can’t stop crying. He can’t stop the sobs wrenching through his body no matter how he tries to breathe. He’s not there anymore. It’s over. It’s over. He shouldn’t still be crying. It’s not fair. 

When he looks up, Talon is gone. 

Jason takes a shuddering breath. He rubs his face. He sobs. He didn’t mean to scare Talon away. He didn’t want to. But he knows Talon likes to touch him, and usually Jason doesn’t mind because Talon is good but if he does it now—if anyone tries to touch him now—Jason will scream. 

He takes another shaky breath. It echoes. He hears another person breathing. Another person, in the room with him, breathing. 

Jason’s breath hitches. Talon, he tries to say, but his mouth still won’t work. He ducks back behind his knees. The breathing goes on, slow and deep. 

Talon?

Jason takes a deep breath. He holds it as long as he can. It whistles out fast, but he feels a little better. He tries again. He sniffles, and tears keep running down his face, but he keeps trying. 

It was like this. After… everything. When he started to wake up, in the closet, huddled in the dark trying not to vomit. He didn’t know where he was or what was going to happen, but he had a blanket wrapped around him, and a solid wall holding him up, and someone was breathing. 

The monster. He thought Talon was a monster then. He didn’t care. Glowing eyes, bloody hands, but the thing with glowing eyes and cold bloody hands grabbed Jason off the bed and hid him in the closet and didn’t touch him. The monster saved him.

Talon doesn’t need to breathe. Jason knows that now. Talon only breathes when he wants to, and he only makes noise when he wants someone to hear him. Talon is breathing now, loud and steady and slow, because he wants Jason to hear him. He wants Jason to know where he is, or—maybe he wants Jason to breathe normally, and he’s trying to show how. Maybe he’s trying to help.

Someone knocks at the door. “Jason?”

Jason’s breath catches in his throat. Bruce. 

Talon pops up next to the bed. It would be funny if Jason weren’t so scared. What does Bruce want? It’s the middle of the night. Why is Bruce at their door in the middle of the night?

“Jason?” Bruce knocks again. “Are you okay? I heard screaming.” 

Jason presses a hand over his mouth. His breath rasps in and out of his throat, through his fingers, but it’s better than screaming—than crying—but he thought it was okay. Bruce said that. Those are not rules here. You may make as much noise as you want. Bruce said that, and like an idiot, Jason believed him.

“I won’t come in if you don’t want me to,” Bruce says through the door, “but I need to know you’re okay.” 

No. Don’t come in. Sorry I didn’t mean to I won’t do it again please. Jason opens his mouth to answer, but the words tangle up in his throat and all he gets is a pathetic whining noise. 

Bruce knocks again. Jason sobs. Talon hops onto his feet and goes to the door. The bottom drops out of Jason’s stomach. 

“N—n—”

Talon doesn’t hear him. Or doesn’t care. He unlocks the door, opens it, and puts his hand out against the doorframe. 

Bruce Wayne stands outside. He steps back when he sees Talon. Good, Jason thinks. Talon is half the size of Bruce, short and slender where Bruce is tall and broad-shouldered, but they all know the same thing: Talon could still kill him. 

Bruce looks past Talon. At Jason, huddled on the bed. “Jason,” he says. 

Jason hides his face in his knees. He doesn’t want to look at Bruce. He doesn’t want Bruce to look at him, either, but he can’t say that. 

“I won’t come in,” Bruce says. “I just… I have to make sure you’re safe. Are you alright?” 

Jason nods. 

“Was that you screaming?”

Jason nods. This isn’t so bad. Questions he can answer without talking, and Bruce doesn’t sound angry. And if he does get angry, Talon is there. Talon will stop him. 

“What happened?” 

Oh. For that, Jason has to talk. He presses his forehead to his knees and closes his eyes and tries to block out everything else, the light and the sounds and the soft fabric of his pajamas and the nauseous fear churning his gut, so he can find the words, so he can answer. Come on. Come on. They’re in his head somewhere. He knows. He’s good at talking, usually, when he’s not upset, but he can’t focus and he can’t think about anything except bright lights and burning hands and what if Bruce gets mad—

“No.” 

Jason flinches. Then he recognizes the voice and lifts his head in shock. He sees Talon, silhouetted by the light from the hallway. He looks tiny, in front of Bruce, but he stands his ground, holding his arm across the doorway to block the way. To protect Jason. 

Bruce frowns. Jason’s heart beats fast. 

Talon saved him. Talon hasn’t let anything happen to him. But Talon kneeled to Bruce, too, and called him Master, and Jason realizes suddenly that he doesn’t actually know which one of them Talon would choose in a fight. 

“What?” Bruce says. Now he sounds angry. 

“No,” Talon says. His voice is hoarse, raspy, like he smokes too much. He doesn’t sound scared. He doesn’t sound like anything. “N-not… talking. He.”

“Oh,” Bruce says. He looks at Jason. And then, like magic, he doesn’t sound angry anymore. “Jason, lad, is that true? You’re… not talking?” 

Jason looks at Bruce—in his direction, anyway—and nods. He keeps watching, but Bruce’s face doesn’t move, and he doesn’t hit Talon, so Jason can’t tell if he’s still mad. Sometimes Jason can figure out when people are angry, but he gets it wrong a lot. And Bruce is… weird.

“Okay,” Bruce says. His voice is quiet. “That’s fine. You don’t have to talk. Just—three more questions. Just nod or shake your head. Are you hurt?”

Jason shakes his head. 

“Do you want to stay with Talon?”

Jason nods. 

“Did you have a bad dream?”

Jason stares for a second. The words sound like Bruce is making fun of him, but his voice didn’t change. His face doesn’t either. He just stands there, on the other side of the doorway, looking in. He asked a question, and if he doesn’t get an answer he probably will get mad, so Jason nods.

“Okay,” Bruce says. “You’re not in trouble. Neither of you are. I just wanted to check on you. If you need anything—you can ask me. Always. I’m just down the hall.” 

He steps back. He stands in the hall a second longer. Then he walks away.

Jason takes a deep breath. Talon steps back from the doorway, closes the door, and locks it. Jason sees his eyes move in the dark, back to the side of the bed. He looks at Jason for another second and then ducks out of sight. 

Jason breathes out. He’s not crying anymore. He feels… better. He’s not going back to sleep anytime soon, but he can uncurl a little, and grab a pillow to sit against, and… he can relax. He still doesn’t know what Bruce’s deal is, but it worked out okay this time. It’s nice not getting screamed at or smacked around. 

Talon pops up next to the bed. Jason startles. Talon climbs onto the bed—slowly—too far away to touch. He’s holding something. 

The stuffed elephant. 

Jason stares at it. The stuffed elephant he took from the clinic, because he saw Talon looking at it. The one he tried to give to Talon, later. He wasn’t sure if Talon really understood that it was for him. Talon took the elephant, but he wouldn’t cuddle with it, he just hid it under the bed frame and left it there. 

Now Talon holds it out. He reaches forward, very slowly, and pokes the elephant into Jason’s knee. 

Jason doesn’t move. Talon stares at him. He pushes the elephant against Jason’s leg. 

Jason puts his hand out. He touches the elephant. Talon pushes it into his hand. Jason grips it, and then the elephant is in his hand, and Talon draws back without touching him at all. 

Jason pulls the elephant close to his chest. It’s soft and squishy. It has black eyes embroidered on and stiff ears that flop a little as Jason squeezes it. 

It helps. 

“Thanks,” he whispers. 

Talon doesn’t say anything. He sits back on the bed, a safe distance away. He crosses his legs in front of him. He rests his hands on his knees. 

“You—” Jason chokes a little on the word. He has to stop and take a few deep breaths, but the words are coming back. He can untangle them now, if he tries. “You’d kill him, right? Bruce. If he turned out to be bad?”

It comes out a little shaky, but clear. Talon’s eyes lock onto Jason’s face. Jason looks away. He squeezes the elephant between his hands. 

Talon doesn’t say anything. 

Nauseous weight settles in Jason’s stomach. He curls up again. He clutches the plush elephant close to his chest. 

“You can talk,” he whispers. As if that will work. As if Talon will say Oh right, I forgot, and tell Jason everything he wants to hear. 

He doesn’t. He says nothing. 

You killed them. All of them. Jason thinks of bloody hands and screams down the hall. He didn’t understand while it was happening. He was too out of it, just coming down off the drugs. When they left the closet, though—with Bruce—and he saw the bodies, he knew. 

Why? 

Talon saved him. Talon killed everyone who touched him. And everyone who didn’t. He protected Jason after that, but after they left the closet… no one else has tried to touch Jason, or do anything worse. Does Talon know the difference? Does he know what he rescued Jason from?

Would he do it again, if Bruce or Alfred came into their room one night and—

Jason takes a shaky breath. Bruce said something about that too. No one will exploit you for sex. Or anything else. He said it would never happen again. He promised. 

People break promises all the time. You can’t believe what they say, even if you know them well, even if they told the truth before. Jason knows that. 

But Talon never promised anything. Talon doesn’t talk. He acts. Maybe someone else could make him talk about it, make him explain himself, but Jason can’t. All he can do is wait and see what happens next. 

So he’ll wait. He’ll wait and see if Bruce is lying, if Bruce breaks his promises like everyone else. He’ll play along with the food, the bedroom, the library, all the nice things Alfred says. He’ll wait for one of them to take a swing at him. The next time someone comes after him, and running doesn’t work, and fighting doesn’t work, and he needs help—the next time someone tries to hurt him, then Jason will find out if Talon is really on his side.

As if that isn’t the most terrifying plan Jason ever thought of. He doesn’t have a choice.

⁂