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The family isn’t… they won’t be pleased with her. Because – because, there’s static in her head and she shouldn’t have – she should have known. If she called one of them now, Thomas or Dick or Barbara, it would be a weakness. And maybe they’d help her or maybe they’d decide this should be a learning experience – either way, it wouldn’t be pleasant. A distress call would pretty much guarantee one of them synthesizing the compound in her bloodstream and subjecting her to it again, until she either developed a resistance or figured out some way to work past it.
They’ll know anyway. She can’t hide what happened forever. But she can’t think about that right now, just – can’t think.
The Hood wouldn’t use this as a weapon against her. He might – it might have consequences down the line but right now she can’t reason that far into the future. He won’t hurt her now, and that’s enough. She digs out the secure line he left her, just in case.
Time… passes. She’s not sure how much. Enough. There’s a hand on her shoulder, and she lashes out.
Jason swears and pins her down. “It’s me! Christ, it’s me, Tim.” She goes limp, and he hauls her semi-upright and checks her pupils. “Fuck, what are you on?”
“Don’t know,” she grits out. Isley is nothing if not creative, with a vicious edge.
He pulls the sleeve of the Talon suit up, maybe looking for an injection site, and swears again. “The fuck did you do to your arm?”
She hadn’t even felt it, but it’s practically dripping with blood from gashes that are just about the right size for the claws on the end of the Talon gloves. “I don’t remember.”
“Okay. Okay, Christ, I got a safe house, we’ll go there and bandage that up,” he says – maybe more to himself than to her. Jason hoists her in the air, and she’s… dizzy, she doesn’t – she loses track.
Her throat hurts. There’s pressure on her wrists – they’re tied down, and her experimental tug on them tells her that the restraints are sturdy. She takes a deep breath to get ready, because she knows how to get out of them but it’s going to hurt.
“Shit, no.” In what feels like the space of just one heartbeat to the next, Jason is on her, holding her down. “You’re okay, Babybird. You’re just detoxing. I had to strap you down to keep you from hurting yourself or ripping the IV out. You’re safe.”
She’s not. Not ever, really, but she untenses slightly, willing to accept that she’s not in danger for the moment. “What,” she croaks out.
“Try to give your voice a rest, okay? You’ve been doing a lot of screaming lately,” he says, in a weird, flat tone.
“How long has it been?” she asks anyway.
“I don’t know.” He eases the pressure off her by increments, like he’s still worried she might try to escape. “About – a day, maybe?”
The words kick her awake like a shot of adrenaline to the heart. If she’s been missing for over 24 hours, then the Owls know. Someone’s going to be looking for her.
“Trackers don’t work in here,” Jason says, like he was listening to her thoughts, or, or maybe she’s just vocalizing without realizing. “Signal’s blocked; didn’t even have to remove them. Though you did a pretty good job of ripping the one in your arm out by yourself.”
“I have to go.”
“No. You don’t.” He grabs her face and forces her to look at him. “No one knows where you are right now, Tim. I can keep the trackers scrambled long enough to surgically remove them. You don’t have to go back to them.”
She doesn’t bother to dignify that with an answer, just stares at him steadily until he throws his arms up in frustration.
“Why?! What the fuck do you get out of them?”
She purses her lips. He wouldn’t understand, even if she could explain. “I appreciate you coming to get me, but this,” and she nods briefly towards the room, “doesn’t change anything.”
His hands curl into fists, and for a second, she half-expects him to punch her. “Fine,” he says instead. “What-the-fuck-ever. You want to spend your time following their orders and getting half-killed for even the tiniest fuck-up, be my guest. I’m done.”
He’s not, and they both know it. If she called for help again, he’d come running. She knows because he’s Jason, and because even though he’s pissed, he still takes the time to undo one of the wrist-restraints before leaving the safe house so she doesn’t hurt herself escaping them. And in return, she waits an extra ten minutes beyond the time it should take him to clear the area before she starts heading back to the Roost.