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Jason wakes up at 3:14 a.m. again.
Always the same time. Always the same burning under his ribs. It’s not insomnia, not really—he’s slept through gunfire and worse—but this is different. This is something inside him that never lets him rest. Something that breathes when he doesn’t. Something that knows he’s weak when he’s sleeping, so it waits until he’s drifting just enough to start whispering.
Tonight, like every night, the voice in his chest starts slow.
He left you.
You begged and he didn’t listen.
You were nothing to him. You still are.
Jason rolls onto his side and drags in a breath through gritted teeth. The mattress underneath him is damp. Sweat again. He can’t remember the last time he woke up without a soaked pillow or clenched fists. He presses the heel of his palm against his sternum. It doesn’t help.
The thing in his chest—he’s never named it, never wanted to dignify it—isn’t pain exactly. It’s not even anger, though it mimics both well enough to fool anyone watching. It’s presence. It’s wrongness. It’s the sensation of being possessed by something that’s inside your skin, too close to cut out, too deep to dig out.
It slinks between his ribs like a serpent. It laughs when he’s quiet. And when he’s angry, it purrs.
The first time Jason noticed it was months after the Pit.
He’d clawed his way back from the dead, bones aching with rot and rage, memory fractured and stitched together wrong. But even then—even then—he’d known what thoughts were his.
Until one night, when he stood on a rooftop in Gotham with a gun in his hand and his name heavy on a wanted list, and the voice had said, perfectly calm:
Put it under his chin. Watch him cry.
And for a split second, he hadn’t known if that thought came from him or something else.
He didn’t pull the trigger. But he didn’t drop the gun, either.
Since then, it’s only grown stronger. Quieter, somehow, and more insidious. It doesn’t shout anymore. It whispers. It slips between his thoughts, repeating the same phrases in different voices.
You were born broken.
They replaced you the second you died.
He loves the one who came after more.
You should’ve stayed dead. That would’ve been cleaner.
Jason punches the wall of the apartment, not hard enough to break bones but hard enough to bruise. It’s an attempt to interrupt the spiral. Sometimes, pain buys him a few seconds of silence.
This time, the voice just hums. A pleased sound, like it wanted the pain. Like it fed off it.
He showers. The water is too hot, but it doesn't burn. The thing doesn’t flinch. Jason stares at the fogged-up mirror afterwards and doesn’t recognise the eyes looking back at him. Too sharp. Too tired. Not his.
He considers going out—rooftop patrol, chase a mugger, maybe pick a fight with someone dumb enough to swing first—but he knows what will happen. He’ll go too far. He always does when the voice is louder than usual.
He’ll snap a wrist instead of twisting it. Dislocate a shoulder and pretend it was necessary. He’ll pull the trigger before he has time to think. And then it’ll say:
Good boy.
And he’ll believe it.
He makes coffee instead. Doesn’t drink it. Just likes the smell. It reminds him of mornings in the Manor—Alfred’s French press, Tim up at some ungodly hour already typing, Dick in sweatpants dragging a comb through tangled hair, Bruce reviewing case files with that blank stare like he hadn’t slept.
Jason used to belong to that. For a brief, flickering second. He used to have a seat at that table.
The voice laughs at the memory.
You were always a guest. Never a son. Just a body they took in out of guilt.
He leans both palms on the counter and exhales slowly, trying to drown it out. Doesn’t work. Never does.
The only time he gets any kind of peace is when he’s unconscious or blacked out or—no. No, that’s not peace. That’s just absence. It’s not the same.
He goes out anyway. Gotham is wet with leftover stormwater, and everything smells like oil and rot. Jason zips up the Red Hood jacket and puts on the helmet.
When the HUD boots up, the voice quiets slightly. Not gone. Just…interested.
It likes when he’s hunting.
Later, much later, Jason will realise that this was the night before.
The night before Tim walks into a safehouse he’s commandeered, casually flipping through schematics and muttering something about shared intel, and the voice—the Hitcher—goes silent for the first time in years.
But for now, Jason doesn’t know that peace is coming.
He just knows that there’s something evil curled up under his ribs.
And it wants to be fed.
The safehouse is old. Brick and dust and too many locks. Jason likes it for that reason. It’s quiet, and the silence doesn’t echo. The Hitcher doesn’t like it here—it calls the air stale, the walls hungry.
That used to make Jason like it more.
But tonight, even with reinforced walls and blackout curtains, the voice is worse than usual. It’s slithering, cruel.
No one’s coming, you know. Not for you.
You’ll rot here like the other ones did.
Red Robin knows what you are. That’s why he avoids you.
Jason sits on the edge of the armchair, gloves still on, helmet discarded to the floor, fingers twitching around the grip of a pistol he hasn’t cleaned yet.
He doesn’t remember calling for backup.
But somehow, the door rattles.
Not a knock—a code. Three short, two long.
Jason doesn’t move.
The Hitcher purrs.
Kill whoever walks through. Let them see what you’ve become.
The door creaks open.
And Tim Drake steps inside.
He’s already talking, already in the middle of some thought as he enters,“—seriously, next time you steal a safehouse I’m using for intel drops, at least have the decency to leave a note—”
He trails off when he sees Jason.
Jason doesn’t speak.
Tim’s in civilian clothes, Gotham U hoodie over a Kevlar vest, damp hair curling at his temples. There’s a smear of ink on his wrist. He looks tired. But alive.
Real.
Jason’s chest seizes.
Not with pain. Not with rage.
With nothing.
The Hitcher goes silent.
Dead quiet.
At first, Jason thinks it’s a trick. Maybe he finally cracked. Maybe his brain just shut the demon off out of self-preservation. But he knows the difference.
The Hitcher is still there. He can feel it—coiled, like a snake beneath floorboards. Present.
But it’s not speaking.
Tim looks at him, head tilted slightly. “You okay?”
Jason doesn’t answer. He’s still trying to make sense of the pressure shift in his lungs. The absence of that constant, acidic voice scraping at his bones.
Tim steps closer, pulling out his tablet with one hand and gesturing toward a table with the other. “I’ve got new intel on the Iceberg ops. Thought I could run you through it. You’re already here and—frankly—tracking down Freeze’s second lieutenant is a bitch on my own.”
Jason blinks. Nods once.
Tim pauses. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
No. He’s not. He’s never been. But the room is quiet.
He shrugs. “Fine.”
They work in silence for a while. Jason barely hears the words. Tim talks about trafficking routes and false shipments, about rogue Penguin enforcers and underground contacts. Jason tracks the movement of Tim’s hands, the small twitch of his fingers when he pinches the screen, the way his eyebrows knot when a map doesn’t match intel.
The Hitcher doesn’t make a sound.
Even when Tim brushes past him to grab a file, even when he puts his mug on the armrest of Jason’s chair—nothing.
Not a hiss. Not a whisper. Not a breath.
Jason stares at the blue glow of the tablet and wonders if this is what peace feels like. It feels wrong. Like standing at the edge of a rooftop in perfect stillness and knowing you’ve forgotten how to fall.
Tim finally looks up. “You’ve been really quiet.”
Jason shrugs again. “Just…listening.”
Tim gives him a look that says you never just listen, but he lets it go. “Suit yourself.”
Jason watches him for another moment, then asks, carefully: “You always smell like that?”
Tim blinks. “Like what?”
Jason doesn’t know how to describe it. It’s not cologne. Not sweat. Not the metal-and-oil scent of the Batcave. It’s something clean. Something that makes his skin stop itching. Like—
He lies. “Like sleep deprivation and cold coffee.”
Tim snorts. “So, my natural musk.”
Jason doesn’t laugh, but he does look down. And he realises his hands aren’t clenched.
Later, after Tim leaves, the Hitcher roars.
It returns with the force of a flood, slamming back into him like it’s punishing him.
You let him in. You let him near.
You think you’re safe with him?
You’ll choke on his silence.
You don’t deserve the quiet.
Jason drops to the floor, back against the wall, teeth bared, eyes burning.
It’s louder than it’s ever been. As if it’s angry. As if it hates Tim.
Jason clenches his fists and breathes through it. He remembers the weight in his chest when Tim was near.
The lack of weight.
He doesn’t know what it means. Not yet.
But he knows this much:
He needs to see Tim again.
The Hitcher doesn’t like being ignored.
Jason learns this the hard way.
The more time he spends near Tim, the more brutal the backlash is when Tim leaves. The silence becomes a craving. An addiction. And the demon knows it.
Look at you, it hisses. Like a dog waiting at the door.
You only feel whole when he’s around. That should terrify you.
You’re rotting without me.
Jason stops sleeping. Not because he’s afraid of the voice—he’s long past fear—but because silence has become a luxury. One that doesn’t last long enough.
So he adjusts. He starts joining missions he wasn’t invited to. Shows up at safehouses he shouldn't know about. He doesn’t talk much, just looms in the corner, always within a six-foot radius of Tim.
Tim notices. Of course he does. The guy notices everything.
But he doesn’t say anything.
Not until the night Jason almost kills someone.
The mission is supposed to be easy.
Penguin’s guys are moving a weapons crate through the Narrows. Tim’s on recon, Jason’s backup. In and out, minimal engagement, no fireworks.
Except one of the thugs has a knife that reminds Jason of the one that killed him.
It’s not the same knife. It’s not even the same shape. But the Hitcher twists his memory until it is.
Jason hears the scream before he realises it’s coming from the man beneath him. His hand is around the guy’s throat. He’s punching—no, he’s slamming the man’s head into the pavement again and again, and his knuckles are wet, and the voice is singing.
Yes yes yes yes YES.
You remember what this feels like. Don’t stop now. Finish it.
You don’t need him. You only need ME.
Then, a hand on his wrist. Small. Steady.
“Jason,” Tim says, breathless. “That’s enough.”
The voice screeches.
Jason freezes.
The world pulls into focus: the blood, the whimpering man, the way Tim’s fingers wrap around his arm—not afraid, not trembling. Just there.
The Hitcher goes silent. Jason lets go.
The thug coughs and scrambles away. Jason doesn’t stop him. He just stares at the red dripping from his gloves and wonders how many punches ago he lost control.
Tim doesn’t move.
“Are you with me?” he asks, voice low.
Jason exhales once. “Yeah.”
“You weren’t.”
“I know.”
They don’t speak again until they're back at the safehouse. The air between them is thick. The Hitcher is quiet, but Jason can feel it coiled in his lungs, simmering. Waiting for a chance to strike again.
Tim tosses a medkit onto the counter and starts cleaning up without asking. His hands are practiced—efficient, quiet. He doesn’t speak until he’s almost finished wrapping Jason’s wrist.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“Do you want me to leave?”
Jason flinches.
He doesn’t. God, he can’t.
The Hitcher stirs.
Pathetic.
“No,” Jason says quietly. “Don’t.”
Tim studies him for a long moment. “Okay.”
He doesn’t push. Doesn’t dig. He just sits on the other end of the couch, knees pulled up, tablet in his lap, blue glow lighting up his face. Like it’s a normal night. Like Jason didn’t almost break someone’s skull on the pavement ten minutes ago.
Jason watches him like he’s afraid he’ll vanish.
Because he knows—he knows—the Hitcher will come back the second Tim’s gone.
And he can’t survive that kind of silence followed by that kind of noise again.
The next morning, Tim wakes up with Jason still in the same spot on the couch.
Unmoving. Awake. Breathing.
Tim frowns, then pads into the kitchen to make coffee. Jason hears the clink of the spoon against ceramic, the fridge opening, the water running. It’s the sound of normal.
The Hitcher doesn’t speak.
Jason almost cries.
Instead, he says, “You shut it up.”
Tim glances over. “Shut what up?”
Jason looks down at his hands, then back at Tim. His voice is flat. Honest. “There’s something inside me. I came back wrong.”
Tim doesn’t laugh.
He doesn’t say Jason, you’re being paranoid. He doesn’t say That’s Pit residue. Just trauma. Therapy will help. He doesn’t offer a sedative or a lie. He sets the coffee down and sits beside Jason again, this time closer.
“And it stops when I’m around?”
Jason nods once. “You’re the only thing that makes it shut up.”
Tim breathes in slowly, like he’s calibrating something, then says: “Then I’m not going anywhere.”
Jason’s throat burns.
The Hitcher is gone.
Not dead. Not exorcised. But gone.
For now.
Tim has always known how to chase threads. Digital ones, mostly. Data trails. Paper trails. Crime scenes and surveillance footage, fiscal records and heat maps. But this—this is different.
This time, the thread wraps around Jason’s soul.
And Tim refuses to let it unravel alone.
He starts by researching the Lazarus Pits. Again.
There’s not much left in the Wayne archives that he hasn’t seen before, but this time, he’s not looking for resurrection theory. He’s looking for residual occupancy. Haunting. Possession. Cases of transference—a second entity riding alongside the original soul.
The Pit doesn’t revive the dead, some records claim. It summons something that thinks you are still alive. Something that fills your body like a glove.
And sometimes, if your will is strong enough, you come back with it.
Tim scrolls through shaky translations of ancient texts recovered by Ra’s al Ghul. He finds references to “El-Bariḥ”—the Hitcher. The name stops his heart.
A spirit that binds itself to the broken. It whispers in the voice of fear and wears the skin of memory. It feeds on violence, rage, and self-loathing. It mimics thoughts to earn trust. It hates peace.
Tim feels sick.
Jason wasn’t imagining it.
Back at the safehouse, Jason doesn’t ask what Tim’s been researching.
But when Tim walks in, the shadows recede.
Jason doesn’t say anything. He just exhales like someone who's been underwater too long.
Tim says nothing either, just pulls out his notes and starts circling words on a printed copy.
After a long silence, Jason murmurs, “It hates you.”
Tim looks up. “What?”
“The thing. Inside me. It gets loud when you leave. Furious. Like...like it’s afraid of you.”
Tim blinks slowly, then shifts forward on the couch. “Maybe it should be.”
Jason gives a bitter laugh. “Why? Because you’ve got an encyclopedic knowledge of demon lore and a blessed batarang?”
“No,” Tim says. “Because I’m not going to let it win.”
Jason doesn’t argue.
Because if Tim believes him—really believes him—then Jason doesn’t have to carry it alone anymore.
And maybe that’s what the Hitcher hates most.
The first time they try to test it, Jason agrees reluctantly.
Tim draws a perimeter of Enochian sigils around the safehouse. Nothing fancy—just a protective circle, designed to amplify spiritual energy and create containment fields. Jason rolls his eyes, but he stands in the centre anyway.
“I feel ridiculous.”
“You look ridiculous,” Tim mutters, smudging chalk on the floor. “But humour me.”
He activates the symbols with a small charge of electricity. The lights flicker. Jason shivers.
Nothing happens.
Until Tim steps outside the circle.
Immediately, Jason jerks back like he’s been slapped. His hand clamps over his chest.
Weak, the Hitcher hisses. How do you breathe without someone holding you up?
Jason’s knees hit the ground.
Tim rushes forward, crossing the circle again—and the voice cuts off mid-sentence like it’s been gagged.
Jason gasps, fingers clawing at the floor, then looks up at Tim with something close to fear.
Tim kneels beside him. “I’m here. It’s gone.”
“No, it’s not,” Jason croaks. “It’s watching.”
They don’t sleep that night. Not really.
Jason dozes against the wall, and Tim watches over him. When Jason’s breathing evens out, Tim reads over his notes again and highlights three lines:
-
The Hitcher feeds on unspoken guilt.
-
It mimics the voice of the father.
-
It fears stillness. It fears intimacy.
Tim looks at Jason, curled tightly in the corner of the room like someone bracing for war in his sleep.
And he wonders—
If the voice sounds like Bruce.
And if Jason ever stood a chance.
In the morning, Tim sits beside him and says, “I know what it is.”
Jason doesn’t speak. Just waits.
Tim explains what he found. The name. The demon. The possession theory. The fact that the Hitcher needs Jason to believe it’s part of him.
“That’s how it survives,” Tim says. “It makes you think it’s you. That the worst parts of you are the only real ones.”
Jason stares at the floor. “Maybe they are.”
“No,” Tim says. “They’re not.”
Jason’s head turns sharply.
And Tim, voice steady, adds: “I’ve seen you hold back when you could’ve killed. I’ve seen you bring food to kids who never knew you were the one feeding them. You think I don’t notice, but I do. You think you’re only rage, but you’re not.”
The silence that follows is deafening.
Even the Hitcher doesn’t speak.
Jason blinks slowly. “Say that again.”
“What part?”
“All of it.”
Tim does. And for the first time in months, maybe years, Jason feels something swell in his chest that isn’t fury or guilt or hunger.
It’s hope.
Small. Shaky.
But loud enough to drown out the demon’s breath.
It doesn’t happen all at once.
There’s no holy light. No sacred chant. No circle of salt and blood that burns the Hitcher out of Jason’s body. No climactic battle where Jason wins because he punches harder.
No.
It happens because Jason chooses to believe Tim.
And the Hitcher can’t survive faith.
It begins on a rooftop.
Another mission. Another near disaster. They’re tracking a gang that deals in Pit runoff—illegal doses turned into inhalants, unstable and mutagenic. Jason’s already twitchy just being near it. He smells the rot before they even enter the warehouse.
“Stay close,” Tim says, low through the comms.
Jason nods. His pulse is steady.
Until the Hitcher starts screaming.
The Pit calls you home. You know this. Let go. Let go. Let GO.
Jason staggers, nearly drops his crowbar. Tim’s hand catches his wrist just in time.
He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t ask if Jason’s okay. Just grounds him.
Palm to wrist. Skin to skin.
The Hitcher’s voice stutters. Chokes.
Jason breathes through it.
Later, in the safehouse, Jason presses his fingers to his chest and says, softly, “I think it’s dying.”
Tim looks up from the monitor. “The Hitcher?”
Jason nods.
“I’ve been starving it.”
Tim crosses the room slowly, kneels in front of him, and cups Jason’s jaw. “You’ve been choosing you. That’s what’s killing it.”
Jason’s voice is rough. “It keeps telling me I’m nothing without it.”
Tim’s gaze doesn’t waver. “It’s scared.”
“Of what?”
Tim doesn’t hesitate. “Of you loving yourself more than it.”
Jason closes his eyes.
And he hears—really hears—the Hitcher scream.
This time, not in triumph. Not in fury.
But in terror.
They don’t call it an exorcism.
They don’t light candles or summon Zatanna or call Constantine.
They do it the way they’ve done everything else:
Quietly. Together.
Tim makes Jason talk. About the Pit. About the rage. About the things the Hitcher said to him in the dark. Every memory. Every lie.
And every time Jason repeats it, Tim counters it.
“Bruce replaced you.”
“No, he lost you. And it broke him.”
“You’re just a weapon.”
“You saved lives. You still do.”
“You’re not worthy of being loved.”
“I do love you.”
Jason freezes.
The Hitcher hisses.
Tim leans in, voice steady, eyes unwavering. “I love you. That’s real. That’s not a trick. And I’m staying.”
Jason laughs—but it breaks halfway into a sob.
The Hitcher screams.
And then—it doesn’t.
The silence after is strange.
Not peaceful. Not total.
Just…clean.
Jason sits on the floor, breathing hard, heart pounding. Tim’s arms are around him, his pulse steady where their skin touches.
Jason whispers, “I think it’s gone.”
Tim leans his forehead against Jason’s. “You fought it. You won.”
Jason pulls back just enough to ask, “What if it comes back?”
Tim shrugs slightly. “Then we starve it again.”
Jason lets out a shaky breath. “You’re not gonna walk away, are you?”
“Not unless you ask me to.”
Jason touches Tim’s face. “I won’t.”
“Good,” Tim whispers. “Because I love the silence too.”
Jason sleeps that night.
Really sleeps. No whispers. No heat behind his ribs. No burning voice telling him to destroy everything he touches.
Just Tim’s steady breathing beside him.
When he wakes, the sun is rising.
And the only thing in his chest is his own heart, beating—slow and quiet and his.