Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jason, over the course of his two lives, had seen some weird things. Even if you were completely ignoring Gotham's general weirdness, like the serial killer woman with green hair and the overgrown furry with guns, he'd seen some weird things. 

He'd died. He'd woken up. He'd crawled out of the poorly-made coffin. He'd gotten a strange, unnatural little skunk stripe in his hair on the way out.

He didn't exactly want to compare himself to Jesus Christ, but he definitely did die, and, considering no one had come to steal his soul or something, he was pretty sure he had come back without outside tampering from a wizard or a cult or whatever. That had to mean something. 

He couldn't heal people with a touch, though, so he did his best to use his second chance in other ways. He held mass, ran several community centers (with help from Renee), and ladled out soup made from scratch every Friday (with help from some of the Alley kids). 

Maybe because of all of that, or maybe because of his innate inability to change the situation, he felt… almost detached, as he watched the news discuss the ongoing war. 

As Jason ladled soup into bowls behind the counter in the cafeteria, a news anchor on the little TV in the corner talked about the latest clash between the warrior women and the Atlantians, counting estimated casualties and speculating what each side would gain. Nobody knew quite what had set the two kingdoms off, but they'd decided to make it the whole world's problem. 

Unfortunately, not only did the whole world include billions upon billions of innocent lives, it also included Jason’s home. All the kids he looked out for, all of his friends… As a priest, he was supposed to be impartial, but he couldn't deny the relief that the war hadn't yet reached the east coast. Jason was only human (as far as he knew), and that fear hit close to home. 

“With each new battle between the two sides, many are left wondering if – or when – the conflict will come to a close. Civilians and soldiers alike are torn between the urge to stand their ground or flee for their lives, and with every video of battle that surfaces, it becomes clear how little a threat Earth’s human populace is to these two warring sides.” 

“Father, can you turn that off?” 

Jason looked up to see one of his regular volunteers, Duke, standing there with a tray of dirty bowls. His eyebags had grown since Jason had last seen him, and his hazel eyes were wide and anxious and caught on the TV. 

“Sorry,” Jason said, grabbing the remote. 

Duke grimaced and tore his gaze from the black screen, before starting to unload the bowls into the sink. “It’s just… more morbid'n I'd like, if I'm bein' honest.” 

Jason shook his head. “No need to apologize, Duke. I understand.” 

“Thanks,” Duke said, turning on the sink and rolling his sleeves up his dark forearms. 

Jason nodded, before furrowing his eyebrows and glancing around. “Isn't Stephanie usually the one who does the dishes?” 

Duke made a face. “She said she saw something outside and wanted t'check it out. I warned her against it, but…” He shrugged. “Once 'er mind is made up-” 

“There's no changing it,” Jason finished. Darn. “Do you think you can hold down the fort here for a minute while I go check on her?” 

Duke grabbed the sponge and nodded firmly. “Yeah. Go make sure she didn' get eaten or som'n.” 

Jason nodded back before pivoting on his heel and power-walking towards the door. 

Stephanie was one of the most stubborn people Jason had ever met, and he'd out-stubborned his own grave. Unfortunately, she was also very easy to lose track of once she decided to go somewhere, so if he wanted to catch her, he needed to hurry. 

Pushing past the double doors and then across the hallway, he opened the exit doors to find… Stephanie, unharmed, hands on her knees and squinting out into the pitch-black of this particular Gotham night.  

“Stephanie?” Jason asked. 

Stephanie didn't move, which was worrying. Jason was pretty sure she didn't know the definition of ‘sitting still,’ but she sat there, motionless in the dark, staring out into the nothing. 

Jason stepped forwards. “Stephanie-”

“Shh,” she interrupted. “Shush.” 

Confused, but knowing enough about this city to trust his gut, Jason closed his mouth and stood still. There was a beat of silence, then another, then-

A slight, near-silent shuffling noise echoed from the spot Stephanie had been staring at, and a slightly darker blob of shadow drifted forwards.

Jason stared. What?

Stephanie waved at the thing. “Hey, buddy.” She sounded like she was talking to a cat, or a scared child. 

Jason glanced at her incredulously. Again, what? 

“Stephanie, what-” 

“Shut up,” Stephanie hissed at him, and the shadow twitched, shuffled back, and if Jason didn't know better, he'd have said it seemed anxious. 

“No, come back,” Stephanie urged, and the maybe-a-person thing hesitated. 

Jason didn't trust this, especially considering Hell and demons were very, very real if that big yellow beast on TV with all the rhymes was to be believed. 

“It's okay,” Stephanie told it. “We aren't gonna hurt you.” 

Jason paused. Was the thing… scared? What had he missed? 

A car door slammed shut somewhere down the street, and the creature leapt backwards into the dark, quick as lightning and silent as if it was never there. 

Stephanie lurched forward and reached out at it, saying, “Wait-!” before deflating with a sigh. 

Jason raised an eyebrow at her as she turned around. “You wanna explain?” he asked. 

“I heard a weird noise,” Stephanie grumbled. “Sounded like a scared cat or a wounded bird or somethin’, but then I saw how big it was.” 

Jason turned his head from her gaze to look in the direction that the shadow had jumped, calculating the angle. Even if it had been proportionally as athletic as a human-sized cat should be, that jump wouldn't have been possible. 

“Thought it might be a person,” Stephanie continued. “I was talkin’ to it with yes or no taps on the ground, and it said it was hurt.” She glared. “An' then you came out an’ spooked it.” 

Stephanie was such a sweet kid. Jeez. 

“Wounded or not,” Jason told her, “it was strong. You okay?” 

She folded her arms at him. “'M fine.” 

Jason raised his hands in surrender. “Okay.” Then, he placed a hand on her shoulder. “Let's get you inside, and I'll leave a bowl and some gauze out for our mystery shadow, yeah?” 

Stephanie blinked at him. “You're... not mad?” 

“For what? You were tryin’a help, weren'cha?” 

“But… it might have been a monster or something.” 

“I was worried for your safety because I didn't know what that thing was, but clearly, it wasn't trying to hurt you. Besides, this city has worse monsters in human flesh than some of the unholy things fighting in the Resistance overseas,” he dismissed, nudging her towards the doors. 

“Well, yeah," she stammered, stepping inside, "but-” 

“That Joker woman, for example,” he interrupted leading her back towards the cafeteria. “Yo-Yo is out every other night slitting throats with her wires, but that bionic guy on the TV works for the government and a kid I know from the Coventry can change his face. The world's full of all kinds of beasts, but not every creature unlike us is a monster. You know this. Why did you expect me to be mad at you for trying to help someone?” 

Stephanie fiddled with her thumbs. “My dad… before he died, was…” 

“Horrible?” Jason finished for her. 

She snorted. “Yeah.” 

“Well,” Jason said flippantly, “I'm your Father, Stephanie, not your dad.” He grinned at her when she rolled her eyes. “Now get back to the kitchen and help Duke while I grab a serving for our newest stray cat.” 

“I'm still not callin’ you Father, Priest-man. And I keep tellin’ you t'call me Steph!” 

“Go.” 

Stephanie went, leaving Jason to shake his head with amusement. She was such a good kid. 

Admittedly, Stephanie was only a handful of years younger than he was, but he'd been on his own for longer, and he saw her and Duke almost like younger siblings. Now, though, he had someone new to keep an eye out for, and turned inside to grab some stew for who or whatever had ran away. 

Chapter Text

It became part of his routine. 

Every week, at the end of the night, Duke would head home like normal, while Jason and Stephanie would sit on the front steps of the soup kitchen with the first aid kit and an extra bowl of soup. They'd talk about things like the local crime, Stephanie’s homework, and even the war. They kept their voices low, their knives pocketed, and waited to see if the shadow would approach. 

It never did. 

Every time, they sat there, hoping their docility would lure out the thing in the dark, but they never heard anything outside of normal Gotham ambiance, and after a month of unsuccessful Friday stakeouts, Stephanie had started to sulk. 

Duke noticed. Two weeks into Stephanie's sullen silence, he finally caved to his own curiosity and asked what she and Jason kept whispering about and why Stephanie stopped walking to the bus stop with him. Neither of them knew how to explain it without sounding like they'd gone absolutely insane, so they invited him to stay late with them that night past closing time. 

“It's been a month and a half,” Stephanie complained. “What if it's gone for good?” 

Jason shook his head. “If it was communicating with you, I doubt it'd just leave.” He set down the night's bowl of soup on the sidewalk before joining Stephanie and Duke on the steps, and Duke eyed the bowl warily. 

“We makin’ offerings to the ghosts of the city?” he asked. 

“Maybe?” Steph replied. “Jury's still out.” 

“Oh, yeah, that ain't ominous or anythin’, not at all,” Duke said, making a face. 

Stephanie shrugged. “Welcome to Gotham.” 

Jason snorted, but seeing Duke's obvious wariness, decided to explain. “Stephanie heard something making wounded noises in the dark, and decided to investigate. Apparently, whatever it is is either unable or unwilling to speak, wounded, and unnaturally strong. We want to make sure it's okay, and she, specifically, wants to befriend it.” 

“How do you know it's not a person?” Duke asked, skepticism obvious. 

Jason chuckled awkwardly. “It ah… jumped away? Like… from the street here onto the roof over there,” he answered, pointing at the one-floor laundromat across the street. 

Duke turned to Stephanie. “Steph, you wanna befriend a nocturnal, human-sized frog?” 

Stephanie threw her hands up. “So what if I do? Maybe it's lonely!” 

“An’ maybe it's hungry!” 

“That's what the soup's for!” 

As funny as it was watching them rile each other up, Jason placed a hand on both of their shoulders before it could become a screaming match. They were trying to make their local shadow feel safe, after all. “Play nice, kids.” 

Both of them smacked him away in unison and glared. Despite their differing skin tones, hair, and overall color schemes, both expressions were so similar he couldn't hold back a grin. 

Steph huffed, folding her arms and glaring at her shoes. “I'm not waitin’ for it alone, Duke. His Holiness is here, we both know how to fight, an’ neither of us’s stupid.” 

Duke sighed. “I know, Steph, I just worry. I don' got a lotta people left.” 

Almost-apologies given, the two kids relaxed and an easy silence began to settle over them. 

It was immediately broken by a loud, metal-on-concrete scraping sound, and they all snapped to attention. Jason, for all his willingness to accept the strange, wasn't keen to let something happen to his pseudo-siblings, so he got to his feet and edged between them and the sidewalk and spread his arms a little to keep them back. 

“Hello?” he called into the dark. 

Another scraping noise, followed by a chitter that sounded like a cranky cat. 

Steph got to her feet too. “We aren't gonna hurt you,” she told the dark. “We have food. Do you want food?” 

Another strange animalistic noise echoed forth, like a boxcutter awkwardly sawing through cheap car leather. It almost sounded like a hiss. Great, the unnaturally strong shadow creature was hissing at them. 

“Kids,” Jason murmured, “if this goes south, I want'cha to sprint back inside and lock the doors.” 

Stephanie and Duke, two kids who had learned the rules of survival in a city like this, both nodded, and Jason stepped forwards. 

“We aren't gonna to hurt or poison you. You told Steph here that you were injured, and if you’ll let us, we'd like to help you.”

Silence. 

Jason stayed silent back. 

Then, from the darkness, a haggard, raspy voice that sounded like someone gargling gravel, “Wwwwuu-hnnn.” 

Jason blinked. It speaks! Kind of. 

“‘Wun,’” Steph whispered. “Like… it won a fight?” 

“What does that mean?” Jason asked the shadows. 

Again, the voice, and Jason winced at how painful it sounded for this thing to speak, “Wunn ssssta-yys. Res-t lh-eee-eave.” 

Duke cocked his head in Jason's periphery. “You… You want two of us t’go and only one to stay an’ talk with you?” 

Ah. That made more sense. Bless Duke and his gigantic brain.  

A clicking noise echoed through the quiet street, and Jason decided to take that as a yes. 

Duke put a hand on Stephanie's shoulder. “Before anyone goes, pause. Both’a you.” 

Jason relaxed his stance and turned a little to look at Duke. “What?” 

Steph snapped her fingers. “Right, I forgot you can see better than us. Whaddaya see?”

Duke squinted at the dark, hazel eyes a little more yellow than usual. Jason had forgotten too, that Duke was good at finding lost things and could handle power-outages like a champ. Good skill in a neighborhood where the electrical grid was spotty at best. 

“I can't see much besides it’s head ‘n hands,” Duke murmured. “Looks like it’s peeking out from the lip’a th’roof, sorta like a shy little kid hidin’ behind mom’s legs. Some sort'a tarp or blanket over its head. Human head, pale skin, black hair… Mostly normal, but…” 

“But?” Steph asked. 

“But it has eyes like an animal. Reflective. Also claws, I think.” 

Jason was not letting the kids go near an unknown creature with unnatural eyes and claws until he had verified for himself that it was safe to do so. “I'm staying. Go inside, both'a you. You can watch on the security cams.” 

Steph grumbled a token protest but followed Duke inside, who shut her down by hissing something about white people and horror movies. 

“Okay,” Jason said. “They're gone. You wanna come out?” 

A beat of hesitation, but then Jason heard slow, near-silent moving. He got the feeling this thing could be silent if it wanted to be, and was trying to put Jason at ease by making itself known. 

The effort was… slightly pointless when a creepy-crawly pitch-black hand (attached to an equally dark arm) made its way into the illumination of the streetlight, because that was straight out of a horror novel and Duke was right what if this was how he died for real- 

Jason pinched himself. He was a whoe adult. Focus. 

“Is that as far as you'll go? You avoidin’ the light?” he asked the owner of the creepiest hand he'd ever seen in his life. The creature-person-thing was crouched low, legs bent and hands on the ground like it was mimicking a gorilla. If gorillas were made of nightmares. 

A sharp index finger tapped once on the ground and made the same clicking noise as before that he'd taken to decide as a yes. Hadn't Stephanie said something along the lines of talking with yes and no taps? 

Hm. “One tap for yes, two for no?” 

Tap. 

“Okay,” Jason said, steeling himself. “So y’can understand me?” 

Tap. 

“Are you going to hurt me if I approach?” 

Immediately, a strange gargling noise, almost sounding offended. Tap tap.

Cool. Coolcoolcoolcool. Great. “I'm gonna grab the kit and then walk over to you. Is that okay?” 

Tap. 

Wonderful. 

Jason bent slightly to grab the first-aid kit as well as the bowl of now-cold stew, and paused. “Are you hungry?” 

The creepy hand scratched at the ground anxiously, but didn't answer. 

“...Are you scared I did somethin’ to the food?” 

…Tap. 

Oh. Well, that explained the caution. 

“Would you be willing to try it if I ate some of it first?” Jason asked. 

Once again, he was met with silence. Not a yes or a no. He'd try again later.  

“Alright. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm coming over to you now, okay? May I?” 

Tap. 

Jason edged his way forward, telegraphing his movements and keeping his posture as non-threatening as possible. He got all the way up to the flashlight-style line where the glow of the streetlight cut off and almost immediately became darkness, and then sat down about a foot away. He put the bowl of soup to the side by his knee and put the kit in front of himself, by his feet. 

This close, he could see a few more details, and… Jeez. There wasn't enough light for Jason to be able to make out much more than a silhouette, but what he could see left him with just as many questions as answers. 

The figure was male, as far as Jason could tell. It (he?) had a ratty cloak of fabric wrapped around it and pulled up over its (his?) head like a child hiding under a blanket, but even with that, Jason could tell that the stranger in the dark was slightly emaciated despite being corded with lean, wiry muscle. Yellow eyes did, in fact, reflect the light like a cat at night, but also had the slightest, barely noticeable golden glow of their own. The hand it (he?) had been tapping on the ground was slightly larger than a normal hand should be, and again, Jason was reminded vaguely of a monkey. He was probably a good climber. 

“Can y’show me where you're hurt?” Jason asked. 

The thing (guy?) slowly sat himself, and gingerly stretched his left leg out into the light. 

Shhhit. That- That was an open fracture. The lower leg was visibly snapped in two places, and in one spot there was a bone poking out, sickly pale skin still sticking to it. The wounds and several spots down the rest of the leg were covered in dried, black blood, and the tight black… leggings? were torn, stuck to his skin with the same stuff. 

Jason had seen weirder things, admittedly, but this was pretty up there. How the heck had this guy been running around with those sorts of jumps for a month and a half? “That looks… painful,” he managed. 

The silhouette made a shrug in the dark, and Jason frowned. He'd need to get better equipment, because just the first aid kit, and on his own, he wouldn't be able to fix this. 

“Can we go inside? I have better materials inside, and-” 

“N-ohh,” the stranger interrupted. “L-ighht hu-urtss.” 

Shoot. Explained the hiding from the street lights, though. 

“Kay,” Jason managed. “I can go inside an’ get some better stuff, if y’want.” 

The creature clicked at him disapprovingly. “Ohn-l-ee nee-ee-d spl-inn-tss.” 

Only need splints? So he probably some sort of healing ability, but considering that his leg might have been like this for over a month, it needed things to be set properly to work, which had to make the open fracture… all kinds of fun. Still, “You sure? I can help you put the bone back in, if y’like.” 

The hand in between the creature's two legs clicked unnervingly, scratching at the cement more than drumming idly, but eventually made two taps. 

Jason felt the anxiety of re-inserting in a bone dissipate, and the relief that flooded him was followed with a burst of shame. “You sure?” 

Tap. “C-aan do by ss-elf.”

Huh. “Okay. I have splints inside. Can I go get one?” 

Tap. 

"Alright," Jason said, before slowly getting to his feet. "I'll be back in a sec." 

Carefully not thinking about the inhuman strength of the wounded creature behind him, Jason turned his back and made his way inside.