The voices were indistinct, impossible to decipher even as they grew nearer, louder, bolder, even as they grew nearer they were no clearer. Jason couldn't open his eyes, or if he could, they weren't working anymore; there wasn't a part of him that was. He was stuck, frozen, and now they were right on top of him.

Hands pressed against Jason's body, just the barest whispers of touch on very edges of his consciousness, they moved on to pushing and tugging at him when he couldn't react. He knew they were there, could feel them, even if only lightly, wanted to push them away, but it was already taking everything he hand to keep his tenuous hold on the warmth of the sunshine in his arms.

Then even that was taken from him, the fleeting warmth of her weight lifted and ripped away. Jason tried desperately to hold onto her, but in the end, it didn't make any difference at all, there was nothing he could do.

The voices grew more insistent. His eyelids were pried apart and a light shone through them that did little to push aside the swath of blackness that covered everything. Fingers dipped lower, ripping cloth then the smell of blood, sharp and metallic. He felt himself dropped when he hadn't even noticed the lifting. Through eyes still opened just the slit that was wide as they could, he caught just a flash of gold moving away from him.

'Stephanie!' Numb fingers tried to claw at the cape he knew he could reach. Within a second that spanned hours, he watched as she was carried off, powerless to so much as call out to her. Pathetic.

Screaming. Soft pressure on both his cheeks. A pleading tone and a face hanging over him. Blots of darkness grew and reclaimed his sight before he could make out a word.

His fingers had managed to get a grip on something, something rough and softer than what had been under his before. There was movement all around him, hurried, clipped speech. Jason opened his eyes and the next thing he knew was a light, bright at first and near as blinding as the darkness that had taken him before it.

When he could see, it was dark silhouettes that surrounded him boxed him in, the shapes of their surgical wear cutting through the unnatural numbness weighing him down. Beeping. '…here to continue out chat…' The memory of a harsh, hoarse voice assaulted him. A flash of what was undoubtedly a needle glinting right where a searing pain had flared up at his abdomen.

Oh god please no, not again. The beeping sped up, and it seemed to Jason that it had increased in volume too. He tried to push himself up, to get out because he needed to get out, he was no way he was going through this bullshit again. Got his arms under him, but they wouldn't bare his weight, wouldn't lift him an inch. The silhouettes, already in a flurry of movement became erratic.

Arkham was dead, he hadn't found Jason again, hadn't found Stephanie...

Stephanie. No, no, no, no, she couldn't be, they couldn't have her too. He tried harder to get up, to focus, but he couldn't find her, he couldn't get up and then him arms were knocked down and his back his the sticky, squishy surface of the hospital bed again.

"Jason." The voice had been calling out to him for a while, but Jason was only now able to hear it.

His eyes instinctively turned up, panicking even more now, because he hadn't let them know that, he hadn't told them that they shouldn't have known. And it was Bruce's face hovering over him grim and worn. He felt a spark of hope sputter hesitantly to life in his chest. Sputter and die when he connected the face above him to the hand pushing down on his chest, forcing something over his mouth that filled his mouth and lungs with something chemically sharp. No, he wouldn't have…

"Bruce…" Jason reached up for this arm, locked eyes with him, pleading. "Don't."

"You need to stop fighting it." Bruce replied, and the slight, tacked on remorse Jason could hear in his tone only made it worse. Made it clear more than anything that he wasn't here to help.

Jason's hand tightened around Bruce's wrist, the EKG screamed. Bruce pushed down, forced Jason further down.

"Please." Jason begged, salty liquid running down his face.

There was nothing from Bruce. The chemicals did their work and Jason's sight blurred out, the sounds and smells and feel of the place slipped away from him. Again, Jason knew nothing.

ooo

Even in one of the most expensive restaurants in Gotham, surrounded by what many in this portion of Bruce's world would consider the elite, Talia stood out. She wasn't dressed up, if anything in her sleek black dress pants and flowing button down shirt, she was dressed down. Her jewelry too, expensive as it was, was modest. She wasn't looking to impress him, and that told Bruce rather a lot more about this meeting that he would have learned in all the researching and stewing he could have done in the days since she'd called to arrange it.

Bruce steeled himself, gave himself the few seconds he could by straightening his tie. He smiled at an approaching waiter and made his way over to Talia's table, stepping down the apprehension he wished not to be there at all.

At his approach, Talia looked up from the tablet she'd been tapping on, something like surprise, as if she were still capable of such things, on her face.

"You didn't think I was coming?" Bruce accepted the menu he was offered and ordered a glass of wine without looking at it. He didn't have the stomach for food now, not even to keep up the pretense that this was a friendly breakfast.

"Not at all, I merely assumed you'd be late, some sort of power play I'd imagine." Her eyes went back to the tablet she made no move to hide from his view. It was all written in some code Bruce hadn't seen before, hadn't had the chance to decipher

"I might have assumed the same." Bruce nodded and folded his arms on the tabletop.

The look Talia directed at him over her work reminded him a little too much of one a parent might send at their child. He wondered for a moment where she could have practiced a look like that. According to Damian, she hadn't been an active enough presence most of his life for it to have been with him. Then Bruce remembered the pretence for this breakfast and abruptly derailed that train of thought. There would be no power plays from Talia here; she had no need for them.

Bruce steeled himself for the conversation ahead before he said. "You know I have things to see to at home, so if you could tell me what you've brought me here for."

Talia nodded lightly and set her tablet aside. For the first time since he'd arrived she really looked at him, her eyes greener than when they'd been younger, took in everything about him he hadn't had the time to try and cover up first. Bruce knew what he looked like, his skin ashen, eyes ringed by circles darker than they'd been in years, and if Alfred was to be believed, his cheeks hollowed by too many missed meals. Self care had been buried so far beneath his other priorities over the past few months it hadn't even made the list, and makeup could only do so much.

"And no double meanings or riddles, please, I don't have time for them."

She hummed, almost smiled at him, the corners of her lips just lifting before she seemed to steel herself too and straightened her back even more, her posture now mimicking Bruce's own. "I thought I'd save us both some trouble in the coming months by asking directly that you hand the boy over to me. "

"What?" Bruce asked, not because he hadn't heard her, or because he'd heard wrong, but because he hoped she'd said anything other than what she had. The knot in his stomach tightened.

"Come now, Detective," she used the title mockingly now, as her father never had. "You've asked for me to be direct, I'd appreciate the same courtesy." Her eyes moved past Bruce and he turned to see the waiter approaching with wine Bruce had ordered along with a pot of tea and accompanying glass and teacup.

They waited for the waiter to finish both pouring the wine and filling the cup with a fragrant liquid that almost at once had Bruce feeling more alert. He entertained the drinking down his glass only lightly after that; he'd need to be alert here.

Talia blew over the surface of her cup, sending steam along with the strong, spicy scent still closer to Bruce. It was familiar, itching at his brain, but before he could place it, she prodded. "I'd be willing to allow you the time for consideration, but I'm sure you're aware my time is as valuable as yours."

"No." Bruce said simply, firmly. "I won't be needing time to consider," he bit out the word, "anything, it's out of the question."

No surprise from Talia, just as well as Bruce hadn't expected there to be. It was a request that, were it not for its serious nature, would have bordered on ridiculous. There should have been no way she could have so much as entertained the idea that he would give in to it. Instead, she breathed out a sigh, like Bruce was being difficult, but she was resigned to it. She sipped her tea.

"You realize my asking this of you is but a courtesy. There are few places you might put him that he couldn't escape from, and should it come to that, my people will find him and bring him to me regardless." She said it with the same certainty if not the urgency she'd used that night she'd warned him about leaving the boy in Arkham all those months ago. The catastrophe that had followed when he'd refused was the only reason Bruce hadn't gotten up and left the restaurant already. "I will not allow for a repeat of this last year's foolishness."

"That won't happen again, ever." Bruce knew he sounded defensive despite his attempt at muting his tone.

Talia sipped on her tea, she shook her head, again lightly, as if not only did she not believe he was being truthful, she believed he was being stupid as well. "I know, because I refuse to allow it." She set the cup down with a soft chink. "You've exhausted your chances Bruce, and proven yourself consistently incapable. If you cared about that boy as much as you seem to believe, you would look beyond you pride and hand him over to me."

"This isn't about my pride, Talia." 'The only person he has is Damian's crazy mother and you can bet she'd not encouraging him to become a fucking pacifist!' Bruce didn't know how much Stephanie knew about Jason's life after his resurrection, or even how much of what she knew was accurate, but it was still more than he knew, more than he was likely to ever get the chance to know. "I'm not handing my son over to be inducted into you new cult."

"So, he's your son now?" The way she said it, along with the upturn on her lips, the lilt of her head, it might have been a joke. Then Bruce looked to her eyes and he saw something else, a spark of green at the rings that seemed to almost glow apart from the rest. It was familiar, but he couldn't, no for some reason his mind refused to place it. "I seem you remember your saying something quite to the contrary when last we spoke of him." Her tone stayed even, as thought they were talking about the flowers decorating the table, the green in her eyes didn't dim.

Bruce remembered too, and he remembered the weight, or rather the lack of such when he'd gone to see Jason shortly after Talia's visit, the sound he'd made when his head had cracked against the wall, his mocking grin faded with a sigh that had made him seem both much older and much younger than he had since…

"That was a mistake." Bruce said, the only thing he could say as he lifted his wine glass and drank down more than he should have, even considering the low proof of the drink.

"It was," Talia agreed with him readily, "and as I've said already, it will not be repeated."

"No, it won't." Bruce set his glass down, pushed it away from him. "If there's nothing else, I have other places to be." Bruce slipped his phone from his pocket, as he stood, no updates, not that he'd thought there would be.

"They're only biscuits, give them to him." She pulled a parcel, wrapped in red and around the size of a lunch box from her purse and slid it across the table. "Without any tampering," She warned, her gaze cold and steely, "or he's likely to reject it, as much as he will whatever yours try to feed him when he wakes."

After that, she picked up her tablet and went back to whatever it was she'd been working on before he'd arrived, as if he were already gone. As much as he might have wanted to dispose of it and any risks it posed, he took the box with, he had enough equipment that he could to a reasonable degree asses any danger it might have posed without tampering.

As much as he might have wanted to believe it contained something dangerous enough to dispose of, he knew even as he ran it through each and every one of those scans, that it wouldn't be necessary.