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Jason woke up screaming.
It bounced off the glass tanks all around him, reflecting back at him over and over, until it was all he could hear, screaming in a cavernous room.
Jason clamped a hand over his mouth finally, taking in deep, sobbing breaths, and slowly realized that that shouldn't be possible. He shouldn't have been able to scream like that; last he knew, he'd been spitting blood in the Joker's face because he couldn't form the words through the stabbing pain in his chest. Last he knew, he couldn't have moved his hand like that, because they were twisted behind his back in handcuffs.
Last he knew, Batman hadn't come for him in time and a bomb had gone off in his face.
Jason sat up carefully.
"Bruce," he called out quietly. "Bruce?"
He wasn't in a hospital. He was on a concrete floor, his back to one of the endless rows of glass tanks he could see around him, and he wasn't in any pain.
He should be dead—
Jason turned.
Roy Harper's body floated in front of him, in the tank he'd had his back to. His eyes were closed like he was sleeping, but Jason knew it couldn't be anything so peaceful as that. For one thing, ominous glass tanks were no one's friend. But more than that, the missing arm and years on this Roy Harper's face said that this wasn't the man that Jason knew as Red Arrow.
This was the original Roy Harper.
And Jason really was dead.
Exciting as it was to find his soulmate – and holy hell, Jason really was kinda excited about it, especially because wow, he had not seen that coming – Jason was more stuck on the fact that he was dead.
He was dead.
He died.
The Joker killed him.
Jason rested his head on his knees, curling into himself and the side of Roy's tank.
He was dead.
And the only person that could possibly help him, the only person that would be able to see and hear him, was floating unconscious in some creepy vat somewhere who knew where and Jason couldn't even do anything to help him.
That was the worst part of it. Jason was fine ignoring everything that had happened to bring him here; he didn't want to think about it. But now that he was here, there was nothing he could do, and that was infuriating.
Let him be dead, fine. Let him find Speedy, the original Speedy –
– and not be able to do jackshit to help him. That was the part he couldn’t deal with. He couldn't even tell anyone where Roy was, and Red Arrow had been tearing up the world trying to find his original for years now.
Jason frowned.
Could Red Arrow see him? What was the protocol with clones? Was it like twins, or did whatever metaphysical plane soulmates registered on count them as the same person? Would he be able to leave here and find the other Roy Harper and tell him where to find this Roy?
Jason stood, brushing non-existent dirt off his cape, and habitually reached up to make sure that his mask was in place.
"I'm going to get you some help," he told the Harper behind glass.
Easier said than done, as it turned out.
Jason could wander around through whatever facility this was, but as soon as he headed toward any doors to the outside world, he was stopped cold. Some barrier kept him from leaving this place. Jason wasn't sure if that was a general guideline for this whole – ghostly soulmate business, or if it was because of some kind of general "fuck you" from the universe at large, or, what was probably the most likely, something that the Light and whoever was holding Speedy had set up. He doubted it was something set up specifically against ghosts, but he wouldn't discount it as something against certain members of the Justice League that was affecting him too.
Whatever it was, he was not happy about it.
He didn't stop looking for a way out, though. He poked through every nook and cranny of the facility, he tried every single bolthole, he tried phasing through outside walls the way he had figured out he could go through floors, he tried darting through in the shadow of someone that was leaving (nervous as that made him to do)—
None of it worked.
"I'm going to find you a way out of here," Jason swore.
Even if he couldn't get out, he could still look at everything that was going on in the facility. Exploring while trying to find ways out meant that he ran across a lot of things that the Light would most likely want to be kept secret. Jason had no doubt that what he found here was only a minuscule amount of the shit that the Light was up to at any given time, but every little bit helped.
Once he got Roy out of here, he could tell him all about it.
(If he got Roy out.)
(Stop that, dammit.)
It wasn't like Jason could actually physically effect anything. He couldn't rifle through papers, he couldn't get into the computers, hacking through file after file like Dick could. He sometimes couldn't even understand what was being said, when the members of the facility talked to each other in languages he didn't know.
But he could read whatever papers were on top. He could stand behind people when they were using the computers, seeing what files and information they pulled up. He could commit everything he did understand to memory, ready to repeat to any listening ear.
If he could just get Roy out.
Jason didn't work on finding a way out all the time. At night, he always curled up next to Roy's container, talking to him like he imagined that Roy could hear him, that Roy could ever respond.
Jason talked to him about Batman and Nightwing, about Bruce and Dick, about the Team and his friends and his mom and everything about himself. Everything that Roy had missed while he was stuck here in the Light's captivity.
He asked questions, told stories, tried to pretend that he wasn't stuck here in this lonely place, a fifteen year old dead kid in the company of an unconscious, kidnapped sidekick.
Sometimes he screamed. Sometimes, he threw wavering, transparent batarangs through containers and practiced his forms like he was attacking someone he hated, bounced around the labs like he could destroy all of it if he just pressed hard enough and angrily enough against any of the glass.
Jason wanted to overturn tables, to throw batarangs for real, to be able to take off his gloves and press his palms against the controls of Roy's container and set him free.
He couldn't.
It was a day like any of the others, stretching out endlessly the way the rest of eternity looked like it was going to be for him. Jason didn't follow anyone around; he was too tired, and it wasn't like there was any point. Maybe in a day or two, he would work up the energy to start looking again, always desperate to find something that he had somehow missed, but today he was exhausted.
"Funny how tiring death is," Jason muttered into his knees.
He was too tired to even be angry, now.
Jason pulled his cape further around himself. He leaned into the glass. It looked like it was cold, but Jason couldn't feel it. He could barely feel his uniform, sometimes. Or maybe the uniform was the only thing that he could feel. Everything else was insubstantial, like it would break apart if he put too much weight into it.
Or maybe he would.
If Roy were awake, it might be different. As it was, he was pretty sure that he was starting to lose it.
"I miss Bruce," Jason whispered into his knees, trying to hide the tears that no one else could see. "I miss my family."
A shuddering movement went through the world.
Jason stood in alarm, pressing a hand against Roy's container. Had that been a bomb? An earthquake? Was someone finally coming to save them?
Another shake, harder than the first, hard enough that Jason felt it rumbling through his bones and tearing at him like a living thing, but nothing else moved. Nothing in this room, nothing in the whole of the facility.
Only Jason.
"Roy," Jason said. "Roy! Roy, are you waking up?"
Nothing, as Roy Harper keep sleeping peacefully, and everything around Jason was shaking harder and harder. The world was ending.
"Roy!" Jason screamed, reaching out to the container, and his arms connected with a thump against something above him, obscured by the total darkness surrounding him.
"Roy!" Jason screamed through the choking pain, and oh god, it was so real, the most real he had felt in what had to be months, and he was dying from it, he was sure, it was so much pain, he didn't know where he was, he didn't know where Roy was, what had happened –
He wasn't in his uniform, he didn't have any weapons, he reached for anything –
He didn't know what was happening, the pain was whiting out everything at the edges –
what's happening to me what's going on it hurts so much it hurts it hurts Bruce Roy where are you someone HELP ME
– his breath was coming in short, panting gasps; he couldn't get enough of it, it hurt too much and there wasn't enough of it anyway because he was –
(where was he where was Bruce where was Roy where)
(what was going on)
– tearing through the lining of –
no, no, it can't be
it could be, you were dead
– the coffin, nails breaking and tearing and he was crying, sobbing when he hit dirt and he barely had the presence of mind to pull his jacket awkwardly over his mouth to keep from suffocating and then he was digging until he breached through the mud into a raining cemetery and –
I need to find Roy!
– bright lights –
I need –!
Talia threw him into the Pit and over a cliff, to bring him fully back and save him from her father.
Jason knew where she had been holding him.
No matter what she might have wanted, whatever plans she had going on, Jason wasn't going along with them. The place she had been trying to help him recover, before she gave up and realized the Pit was her only option for him –
That was where the Light was keeping Roy.
Epilogue
Dick stumbled through the zeta, the last of the team to make it back to the Cave. He was limping on a twisted ankle and exhausted, but everyone had made it safely back with the mission completed on time.
“Good job,” Dick said, looking out on the faces still standing in a ragged circle around the middle of the briefing area. “We—”
And that was as far as he got, the zeta tube powering up again behind him. Dick half-turned, listening for the codenames being called, because he hadn’t thought any of the League were going to be coming here tonight—
“B-06: Red Arrow,” the computer stated, and Dick frowned a little. Roy hadn’t been seen in a while, much less come by the Cave – “B-13: Robin.”
Dick spun to face the zeta fully, a strangled noise the only thing that managed to get out. He heard similar sounds of alarm from the rest of the team even as the figures in the tube were clearing up.
Both of them were too short to be Red Arrow, but that was definitely Roy Harper. A too-young Roy Harper, whose jacket sleeve was awkwardly pinned where his right arm should have been and a hard look etched on his face. And standing next to him, a little older and thinner and with a streak of white in his hair…
“Jason?”
Dick took a staggering step forward, unsure what he was going to do, but before he could make up his mind, Jason was already running toward him, grabbing at him in a fierce hug the way that Jay had never really been a fan of before. Even so, Dick hugged him back just as fiercely.
“I’m home,” Jason said, the awful catch in his voice and the quiet words muffled by Dick’s Nightwing uniform.
Jason was alive. In that shining moment, Dick didn’t care about specifics. He didn’t care if this was a trap or if there was a cost accompanying this or anything. Somehow, his little brother was alive again.
“Welcome back,” Dick said, ducking his head on top of Jason’s and trying desperately not to cry. “Welcome home, Jay.”