Chapter Text
We need not to be let alone. We really need to be bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?
Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451
When Jason and the Kid’s phones rang, Jason knew something was up. Their team was essentially handing off all outside cases to the other teams while half of their team was missing in some way or another.
Trainee was gone in the wind, the Old Man wasn’t answering the Kid’s calls, and Grumpy was suspended. Leaving just over half of their team actually there. Without being able to do anything, Jason felt like he was just wearing a hole in his mind with worry and anxiety so he had to get away for a bit.
Returning to Gotham, returning to his home was just the thing he needed. Seeing the Alley rats still thinking up little cons they could run on those gullible enough and helping Death court Lady Gotham with the Thorny Rose lifted his spirits like nothing else. Although, he was… concerned… with the new vocal development. With the way that Todd Luck ran, he wouldn’t be surprised if his voice returning came with a huge-ass caveat that he wouldn’t know about until it reared its ugly head.
So, he was resolutely ignoring it.
”Yeah?” he said into the phone once he picked up the call. Jason wasn’t sure how he felt about his voice. It sounded almost exactly as it does in Death and Dream’s realms, just with the extra gravel of using vocal chords that were just barely holding together and overlaid with the mechanical tone of the electrolarynx. He wasn’t sure that if he took the device away his voice would be loud enough on its own.
Given his incredible luck that is only rivaled by Constantine’s own, Jason would have to keep the electrolarynx on just to be heard, despite his voice apparently coming back. Or, more likely, it was a temporary gift from whichever cosmic being felt like thanking him for the Thornys.
”We’ve got a case in Milwaukee. Our team was called in specifically,” the voice of Newbie greeted him. He could tell, even over the phone, that she wasn’t super thrilled about having to take the case without their full roster. Hell, he wasn’t either. But, apparently, needs must.
”Meeting at the office or the plane?” he asked. Giving the Kid the rest of the tour of Gotham did help Jason at least get somewhat used to the fuckery that was his voice at the moment but he wasn’t going to push his luck with his- rather fragile- mental state when it came to things like that so he purposefully kept his sentences short for the moment.
”The plane. We were just going to do a brief overview of the case here,” obviously the office, though Jason didn’t really know who all ‘we’ were as it was well past the usual time when everyone went home for the day, “but we can do it just as well on the ride there,” she finished.
”Right. See ya then,” he said then hung up. The Kid was still on the phone, listening to the other end with great attention. A moment later, his own call ended and they silently got ready to leave. There wasn’t much to do as their go-bags were in Quantico and Jason hadn’t really done much here other than make some food which he’d have to freeze now. That took up all of two minutes, then they were disappearing from one apartment and reappearing in another.
They grabbed their go-bags- Jason was somewhat surprised that Gotham hadn’t just put their bags in his apartment in the Alley but he didn’t blame her, she’d just gotten a courting gift earlier that day- and were off to the airport, where the plane was waiting for them, engines already fired up and ready to go.
The last person he was expecting to see on the plane- sitting like she owned the damn thing- was Strauss. She was reading over the case details in one of the far seats, everyone else- Newbie and Angry- seated on the opposite side of the plane. Strauss glanced up from the file when Jason and the Kid entered and gave them a cursory, “Agent Peterson, Doctor Reid,” before looking back at the file, no more attention paid to anyone else on the plane.
He could already tell this was going to be about as fun as getting hit with a crowbar. He sighed- the action making a slight noise without the metallic distortion of the electrolarynx- and sat in the spot he tended to take, the one near to the door and cockpit. There was a file ready for Jason on his seat which he took and started reading through.
When they’d been in the air for a while, Newbie quietly said, “You know, from this angle, she almost looks human.”
That, of course, brought attention to their lacking members, which the Kid quickly pointed out with a question of if anyone had talked to Trainee. The only answer was that the woman was gone before Newbie had even arrived.
Barely a few seconds later, Strauss stood and joined them at their side of the plane. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe it’s protocol to brief everyone before we arrive at the crime scene.” She lifted her tone slightly at the end, like she was asking a question, but it was obvious that she wasn’t. The woman was unnecessarily reminding them of the protocols put into place, like they weren’t trying to get their bearings with half of their team gone and the fucking director breathing down their necks.
Newbie, ever the diplomat, said, “Yes, ma’am,” with a slightly strained smile. ”This unsub is abducting women from very public places, with no witnesses. He holds them 48 hours, with no sexual assault, and then he dumps their bodies with their hearts carved out of their chests,” she said, getting right down to business. She had a slight tonal change when she pointed out the lack of rape, indicating it as important.
Once Newbie was finished speaking, Angry plopped the photos on the table separating him and Newbie from Strauss. There was obvious attitude in the way he did it, something that Jason could respect.
”There’s an obvious dichotomy in the skill the unsub exhibits in abducting these women and the fact that he cuts their hearts out so crudely,” the Kid pointed out. Strauss, in the meantime, had taken a couple of the photos and was looking a bit pale at the horrors captured within. She’d obviously never been in the field.
”We’re probably looking at someone in a psychotic break. Could be a butcher. Might be a hunter. Somebody who’s very comfortable being around blood, but as you can see, he obviously doesn’t have the skills of a surgeon,” Angry said.
”So do we have a working theory?” Strauss asked, unfamiliar with the team’s thought process. Just because they had some thoughts laid out and a few of the puzzle pieces, doesn’t necessarily they really have anything to go off of.
”Sure. Misogynist,” Jason piped up, his tone just this side of being disrespectful. There was certainly a shitton of sass, and he didn’t particularly care to keep it to himself. It wasn’t like not being a part of the team stopped him from acting like it before, it certainly wouldn’t now. Now with the team being just about as Gotham-claimed as he himself was.
The plane fell into uncomfortable silence after that, Strauss not knowing how to respond to that, the other two surprised at hearing his actual voice along with the mechanical one they’d grown to know.
Due to something- Jason was going to bet Gotham had a heavy hand- instead of arriving in Milwaukee late enough at night that it was morning, they arrived instead when the sun was fully up, giving the team time to rest. The plane’s gas mileage didn’t suffer from the extended time and Ivy would be happy that the extended flight also didn’t affect the environment due to Gotham being Gotham.
Unfortunately, there was another body waiting for them by the time they landed. So, they headed straight to the newest crime scene.
The local police met them at the scene, Angry introducing everyone with just their names, giving a slight pause before introducing Strauss with her title. The Kid, after hearing the officer’s name, apparently recognized it as being one of the names of those who worked on the Dahmer case.
The guy- Vic Wolynski- confirmed with a simple, “Sixteen years ago,” to which the Kid stated that he studied it. Because of course he had. “And you remember my name?” The surprise and skepticism was easy to hear in the man’s voice.
”He remembers everything,” Newbie said, quickly followed by Angry saying, “It’s what he does.”
Then, Strauss got down to business. Honestly, Jason was surprised that she let the little interaction last for as long as it did. “What can you tell us?”
”Uh, local merchant noticed her a few hours ago. Uh, but considering he didn’t see her when he first came to work, uh, we figure she was dumped there between 7:50 and 8:05,” the man said. Gotham really worked time strangely. “Same window as the others.”
”All the bodies were found in this area, right?” Angry asked. The Kid and Newbie exchanged a glance when Vic specified the time- a fifteen minute window for disposal of each woman.
”Uh, Wauwatosa is an upper-middle-class suburb approximately fifteen minutes from here. All the women were abducted from there in the afternoon and turned up here in the morning two days later.” The timing was lining up in just the right way to be highly suspicious.
Newbie looked at the surrounding area, people milling about and drawn by the presence of police. “All this foot traffic, and no one saw anything,” she said. Vic- what an unfortunate name for a cop, considering- pointed out how the bodies were wrapped- loosely to obfuscate the human-shape with the wrapping coming open eventually, revealing the woman within. The man made his own guess as to potential vehicle and how the ‘unsub’- as they are apparently called- was able to stay undetected by the foot traffic.
There were no prints on the wrapping, just the common paint and wood stain that anyone could buy.
Strauss, while Angry and Jason got up close to the body, stayed at a safe distance as though if she were to come nearer, the death would jump from the body to her. That was a funny thought.
”He’s trying to demean them, putting them out like trash,” the Kid said, trailing off slightly at the end, looking at the body and the scene with an analytical eye, taking in every detail he could. Angry pointed out that the guy they were after likely worked or lived nearby. Jason had to agree. While it wasn’t impossible to be able to dispose of a body within a fifteen minute window in an area you weren’t familiar with, it was certainly easier to do so with the familiarity of an area you knew intimately: how people acted, schedules, and certain downtimes in foot traffic or when people would be too preoccupied with something more personally important to them to notice suspicious behavior.
”What can you tell us about the victim?” Newbie asked, her voice kind and sympathetic.
”She was taken from a supermarket. Her husband says that most days she would have been picking up her son at school. But he was spending the afternoon at a friend’s,” the man said. The timing and the mention of school was starting to line up in a way that Jason did not like. Someone was using the distraction of when school starts- likely when it ends as well- as their hunting and disposing time.
”This is your fifth victim, right?” Strauss asked. She obviously had thoughts about the number of women killed. To be fair, Jason did as well. Vic confirmed and Strauss, being the person she is, said, “You should have called us sooner,” with a decent amount of chastisement in her voice. The man thought they could handle this on their own, which given he’d apparently worked on catching Dahmer, was fair enough. “Apparently not,” the woman shot back.
She got quickly pulled to the side by Newbie, who politely excused herself and Strauss. When they were a bit further away, Jason heard Newbie saying that the team- which included the director at the moment- needed to work with the police and that criticizing them and how they run things doesn’t do the team any favors. Strauss, of course, had a smartass remark about how it would have been better to have been contacted sooner. When Newbie agreed that sooner is always better, Strauss was confident in her victory and when she said, “Don’t question me again,” Jason just knew that the woman had already made up her mind that their team needed to be fully disbanded.
She sounded like she was about one word away from firing everyone, starting with Newbie at the moment.
It definitely didn’t help that Vic was very obviously offended by Strauss’ words and attitude. Strauss, in her infinite wisdom and limitless field experience, just made it more difficult to get any information from the police and getting them to actually listen to what the team has to say.
Pretty soon, they finished looking at the scene and put their stuff in the hotel that they likely would only use the once. They gathered their knowledge from both the previous victims as well as the new one. The site itself didn’t offer much in the way of anything identifying, just the things they already said: local to the area and likely with a decent sized vehicle to block pedestrian eyes from catching him in the act.
It didn’t come as much of a surprise when later that afternoon, they were called to the police station, where they found out that another woman had been taken from a department store.
Panóptica, the wonderful technological goddess she is, found the footage of the missing woman in the department store’s footage and sent it over to the laptop on Vic’s desk. The woman- Claire Thompson- went about her business, looking for children’s clothes. No one around her was acting suspicious, no one stood out as keeping a special eye on her. A kid- male, probably about 7 or so- came up to her, looking lost.
Claire followed the kid down a hallway with no camera, and that was the last that she was seen.
”Ah, damn,” Angry said, his voice saddened with realization. When asked what the matter was, he said, “Something Hotch said. All the abductions and disposals have been timed around school. We thought the unsub might work in the system. What if this guy’s actually using his own son to lure his victims?”
Jason growled a bit at that- actually making a sound, the electrolarynx not interfering with the noise- and he knew that his eyes were glowing as he could see the reflection off the screen. Those that use their kids like that, they were some of the worst of humanity. Jason should fucking know.
”Jay?” the Kid asked, his tone somewhere around worried but not committing fully to the emotion.
”Agent Peterson, get a hold of yourself,” Strauss demanded. Jason was about ready to bite the woman. First, she fucks with the police’s willingness to cooperate, and now she was going to, what? Fucking demand that he throws away his emotions just to appear professional? He had fucking fangs now, and he was always willing to bite.
”Jay,” the Kid said again, this time less like he was asking out of concern and more like he was trying to drag Jason’s thoughts away from biting the woman who already thought quite lowly of the team. Jason looked to the Kid and marginably calmed down. At the very least, he wasn’t growling anymore and the longer he didn’t hear or see Strauss, the less he wanted to bite her. Not that she didn’t deserve it.
Jason huffed, a bit like an annoyed wolf, and said, “Profile on the dad?” to get the attention off of himself and back onto the case. No one was fooled by the distraction but they did seem to take it as meaning that he was relatively fine now. At least, he wasn’t going to bite Strauss and cause a bigger problem for the team.
”We should give a general profile to the police, now that we’ve got one,” Angry said, taking up the leader role with both Grumpy and the Old Man gone.
Newbie asked Vic to gather all his officers and the team waited for everyone who was going to arrive to do so before they gave the profile.
Once everyone was gathered and ready to take notes, Angry started. “Detective Wolynski told us you’re trying to single out trucks and vans. That’s smart. The unsub is dumping his victims in the business district, so I’d agree with you- he’s probably not driving something that would stand out. He may even have some type of company logo on the side of his vehicle as well.”
The Kid was the next to speak. “We know that he abducts the women in Wauwatosa and dumps their bodies somewhere in the third ward,” as he spoke, he gestured to the areas on the map hanging behind him. “Most unsubs keep their area of control- where they kill their victims- triangulated between the two points.”
Angry picked it up again, the profile flipping between the two of them for the moment. “Which means that the unsub probably lives in Wauwatosa or the third ward. Somewhere in that area.”
“People who live there know the guy,” Jason put in. The odd sound of his voice started most of the officers to various degrees from outright startlement and stares to just a little jerk that was mostly hidden before they focused on either their notes or the Kid and Angry.
”There’s no sexual component to these crimes, which means it’s more about the unsub making a point. He’s cutting their hearts out,” the Kid said, elevating the second sentence so it was obvious that the point was cutting out the women’s hearts.
”It might just be that this is the sickest way the unsub knows to disfigure the women and… throw them out like trash. We can’t really know,” Angry said, his voice somber throughout the entire profile so far but more so as he said that.
The officers were all looking at them with somber and serious expressions. It wasn’t pleasant to know that there was a killer in your hometown, killing right under your nose. They were taking notes, paying close attention to the profile the team was laying out. The Kid continued, “The two most important questions to ask ourselves are: what is this guy doing with these women for 48 hours? And why is he willing to use his own son to abduct them?”
”And if he is truly using his own son, then it’s likely that he has what we call borderline personality disorder,” Angry said, “Now, borderlines- they think that all relationships revolve entirely around them. Where they set their mind to something, absolute- there is no gray area.”
”Others will be able to see it: intense depression and anger, drinking problems, highly sensitive to rejection,” Jason said. That was sounding rather familiar.
While he didn’t drink so much, it was only really because alcohol didn’t affect him unless it was severely tampered with and he had a shit ton. And alcohol didn’t have the best flavor when you couldn’t get drunk off of it, so he tended to only really occasionally drink or use it for cooking. Hell, even the Gotham-grade alcohol- the shit that could get past the Gothamite resistance to natural poisons of any sort- barely worked on him unless he had about half a bar’s worth.
Intense anger and depression: check. Problems drinking: marked out only because of the extreme difficulty to actually get drunk. Sensitive to rejection: check. He’d been tossed aside and rejected so many times that he just came to expect it from anyone and everyone he got to know. And no matter how many times it happens, the rejection always stings like it was the first time all over again.
”And one last thing. It is not easy to crack clean through breastbone. You’re dealing with a guy who works with his hands and he’s used to hard labor. At the very least, he’s not afraid to get dirty,” Angry said, cutting into Jason’s thoughts.
No one raised their hands for clarification on anything they’ve said, no one had any additional thoughts so they all dismissed to go about their jobs, keeping the new information in mind. Everyone but Vic and the team left. Angry stepped out for a moment- Jason heard him talking to Grumpy, practically begging the man to come help them.
Vic- to his immense credit- didn’t take Strauss’ criticism as the tone of how the rest of the team would be interacting with him- likely helped along by Angry and the Kid both speaking to the man while Newbie was speaking to Strauss, just generally apologizing for the woman and treating him like a person. “I have triple patrol in the area and I’ve got every available unit recanvassing,” Vic told them while looking at a map on the wall- a different one than the Kid was gesturing to a few minutes ago.
”It’s tough knowing they’re out there and we’re still a step behind,” Angry said, sympathising with the situation.
Jason was standing off to the side, keeping the whole room and the door in his sightlines. So he saw with perfect clarity when Strauss looked up at Angry for a second before writing something down in the little notepad she had on her.
”You know, it used to be a running joke that if you told people you were from Milwaukee, all they wanted to talk about was Happy Days reruns. And then Dahmer happens and they ask you about it as if it’s the same thing. As if it’s entertainment,” Vic said as he sat down at the conference table. “But I was in that apartment.” The man obviously had a story to tell.
”Gideon, one of our bosses, says that there are things that attach to you that… you can never wash off,” the Kid said. And, damn if it wasn’t true. Jason had so many things that wouldn’t wash off, no matter how hard he tried. So, at some point, he just stopped trying. He just let himself drown in the blood on his hands, the unwelcome warmth, the near-constant rejection. He stopped trying to fight against the ever-rising ocean of darkness that he came across, just… stopped.
Newbie voiced a thought that had apparently been building for a while. “All right, it- is it possible we’re looking at this the wrong way?”
Strauss, looking up from her notebook and folding up her reading glasses, asked, “What do you mean?”
”Well, we’re trying to zero in on the unsub. Now, you guys tell me, but… if he really is using his son, wouldn’t the trauma manifest more clearly on the boy?” Now that was a thought. Everyone seated- literally everyone but Jason- leaned forward in their seats.
After a moment, Strauss asked, “Can your analyst get a list of all the children in the area that we’re targeting?” Angry, having complete faith in the abilities of Panóptica, said that she could get whatever Strauss wanted.
Hearing that, Strauss punched in the number to Panóptica’s office, only to be taken aback when the tech goddess answered with her standard flirting: “Talk dirty to me,” in her usual playfully flirty tone. Given part of the audience consisted of Strauss, Angry and Newbie both stammered and Jason tried not to laugh. He didn’t hold back the snort of amusement, though, didn’t even try.
Although, he did feel bad for Panóptica when Strauss said, “This is section chief Erin Strauss,” disappointment thick in her voice and body language.
He could hear the hard backpeddling Panóptica did on the other end of the phone and that was before she even said anything. “Ma’am, I think it goes without saying that I was expecting it to be someone else.”
Strauss, gracefully- and purposefully- ignoring Panóptica’s apology, demanded, “I need a list of every grade school in the third ward and Wauwatosa.” And, with a professional affirmative, Panóptica got right to it.
Jason could hear the clicking of keys on the other end as Panóptica found what Strauss asked for. “The third ward has one public grade school, but there appears to be 4 private schools that draw from that area.” A moment where she was looking for the other district- Strauss cutting in with a reminder- and she said, “That would be nine, ma’am.”
3,200 students total.
”Can you also get me a list of every guidance counselor that deals directly with the student body in that area?” Strauss asked and hung up the phone after Panóptica confirmed and started to apologize again. Now addressing the people in the same room as her, Strauss said, “You need to present these counselors with a profile of a troubled kid,” before she stood up and left the room.
The team then left to go do just that, speaking to each of the counselors and giving them a general profile of the kid: single-parent home, sullen and withdrawn, steals things from female teachers, clingy to maternal figures and made fun of because of it. In return, they got a rather large stack of files of kids matching the general profile.
They brought the files back to the station and started going through them, youngest to oldest. The clock of how long they had until the woman was dumped was down to a little over 12 hours.
Jason, keeping the door and the station beyond in his sightline, was the first to notice when Grumpy and Trainee walked in. As soon as they walked in, the Kid pointed out their presence with a friendly, “Look who’s here!” Grumpy and Trainee immediately got down to business, helping them sort through the files. And then, of course, Strauss walked in, bringing the lightened mood down with her presence. The woman was a dark cloud on their little bright spot of light.
She was obviously not pleased with the sudden appearance of both Grumpy and Trainee, which Trainee tried to appease with a, “We’re only here to help,” which got the woman to simply state that it would be dealt with later.
Eleven hours.
Eleven hours passed and they hadn’t even gotten through all the files. It was starting to look hopeless. Jason was feeling every hour that they weren’t able to find the killer, every hour that he was failing yet another person.
The last hour passed like molasses yet they were still no closer to finding the right kid, no closer to saving Claire.
They got a call that another body had been found. It was Claire.
Strauss was the first to approach the body. She stepped wrong and tripped into the chainlink fence before gasping as she stepped back. Grumpy, ever the chivalrous knight, steadied her and asked if she was alright.
”I st- I stepped on her hair,” Strauss said, obviously a bit in shock. And, the most human that she’d been the whole time that Jason had known the woman. She was on the verge of crying and just breaking down right then and there but they couldn’t have the public seeing that- as there was always a crowd of curious people near crime scenes.
“If you need a second, take a second. This is what it is. Just don’t let the public see you break down,” Grumpy said, his voice outwardly the stone wall but Jason could hear the compassion in his voice. He then lended the woman his hand to help her back up the stairs that she’d just tripped partially down.
”This is a different area from the other dump sites, isn’t it?” Trainee asked.
”He’s getting smart. He knows where all of our manpower will be so he’s changing locations,” the Kid said, leaning down a bit to get a closer look at the body. Angry then brought up the point of how long before the guy changes the abduction time and place.
”If he does that, we’re back at zero,” Trainee replied. Before anyone could say anything more, a man- presumably Claire’s husband as he shouted her name- started approaching the police tape at a decent clip, obviously worried. They couldn’t let the man cross the line, it would probably be a pretty good idea to keep him well away from the scene as well, just to mitigate any risk.
Angry, Trainee, and Newbie went to deal with the husband, leaving Jason, Grumpy, and the Kid with the body. Jason was probably too familiar with brutally murdered bodies for someone of his age, as he was perfectly comfortable being up close and personal with the corpse.
While Jason was seeing if there was anything differentiating this one from the five before, Grumpy and the Kid had a little chat. “Morgan says you’re worried about Gideon,” Grumpy said. Jason pretended he wasn’t listening in on their conversation.
”I keep on calling him, he doesn’t call back,” the Kid said, obviously worried.
”He’s probably at his cabin. That’s where he goes when he… needs to get away,” Grumpy said. Then, “Reid, I need your head in this. You too, Jay.”
”I know,” the Kid said. Jason just looked up from Claire’s body to look Grumpy in the eyes and nodded, determination to catch this guy in his own eyes. After the husband was taken care of, there wasn’t a whole lot more they could do at the actual site, so they headed back to the station.
“So what’s around the dump site?” Grumpy asked once everyone and Vic were once again in the conference room. The body was dumped in the Wauwatosa area this time rather than the third ward, marking it as different than the others for that reason alone. There was an old printing press, a paving yard, and the concrete factory the body was found near, none of which were visible from the highway.
”You don’t end up there by accident,” Trainee said. She was sitting atop the conference table while Grumpy, Jason, and Vic were standing, Newbie and Strauss were leaning against a little side table next to a window, the Kid was sitting in one of the chairs nearest the map that they were once again looking at, and Angry was leaning against the conference table. A rather casual atmosphere, despite circumstances.
”So we go back to the schools, we eliminate the third ward, and we target problem kids whose fathers have held blue-collar jobs over the last 10 years,” Grumpy said.
Jason didn’t think that their profile for the kid was quite right. “What if he’s not a problem kid? What if he’s a straight A’s, extra credit, teacher’s pet type?” Jason asked. He could see a bit of pleasant surprise in Grumpy’s body language at hearing his actual voice but the man made no other indication of it.
”Why do you ask?” he asked instead of anything about Jason’s voice.
Jason debated with himself how much he wanted to reveal about himself, his past. Since it would help the case, he didn’t debate with himself for too long before saying, “I tried to be perfect to try to keep my family together: perfect grades, extra credit. I thought that if I just tried hard enough, was perfect enough, then I could keep my broken little family together. It didn’t work, but I think the same might be true for this kid. He’s always perfectly on time, even with the abductions and disposals. The guy wouldn’t care, but the kid definitely would. He would ask teachers for extra credit work, be well ahead of the rest of his peers, and try to be the perfect son. No matter the cost.”
Jason couldn’t even tell if he was still talking about the kid or himself anymore.
The amount of times that he did whatever asked of him by his mamá, the amount of times that he stood in between her and Willis’ fists. The amount of times that he just threw himself into being the perfect son for his mamá, the perfect student for his teachers, the perfect Wayne heir…
He was startled slightly by Grumpy’s hand on his shoulder, lost in his own thoughts and memories of ‘childhood’. Honestly, the only time he actually had a childhood, he was probably about 6 years old, early 8 at the oldest.
Grumpy’s hand on his shoulder was a silent ask if Jason was ok. Which… he wasn’t. But he was together enough now that he’d been broken out of his thoughts to be able to continue with the case. “I’m fine,” he quietly said. Everyone could likely tell that it was a lie but close enough to the truth.
Grumpy squeezed his shoulder slightly before letting go. He then silently left the room and called up Panóptica. After a slight pause- longer than the cheerful woman’s typical greeting- he said, “Garcia, I need a list of parents in the Wauwatosa school district, eliminate any two-parent households or any fathers holding white-collar jobs that aren’t labor management… And one more thing- the glitches in the transfers and resignations stop now… And, Garcia… Thank you.”
Jason tilted his head at the mention of ‘transfers and resignations’, curiosity piqued. Who was trying to leave the team? And why now? Were they being forced to or was it a voluntary thing? At any rate, thank god for Panóptica’s technological wizardry for putting them on hold until they could at least talk about it.
After he hung up the phone, Grumpy came back in and slipped right back into the leader role, getting the team to split up to talk to the school counselors once again, this time with a new profile, one that felt more right. Jason, having never been released from the ‘follow the leader’ from after he came back from his grounding from the case in Golcoma, stuck by Grumpy. He wasn’t too happy about it but there were worse people to have to stick with.
About an hour or so later, the Kid and Newbie came away from talking with one of the counselors with a name: David Smith. The kid’s father had an inoperable tumor and the mother left them. A strange sort of twisting on Jason’s own sordid past. Apparently, the kid wasn’t feeling great so the nurse drove him home, meaning the clock was likely ticking. So, they got the address and the team headed that way.
David was alone in the living room, watching cartoons, no sign of anyone else being in the house. While Grumpy looked through the window, Jason cast his awareness out to the rest of the house, sensing and listening for any other presences.
The cartoons were blaring against his ears. The kid didn’t sound like he had trouble breathing. A steady and persistent drip drip drip of a faucet turned mostly off. The gurgle of pipes. The sound of the Kid and Newbie creeping around the other side of the house to get a better angle.
Grumpy went to tell the others what he saw. Jason heard the conversation with perfect clarity, but he blocked it out as it was muffling the already hard-to-hear sounds of something in the basement. Jason blocked out everything but that faint sound, honing in on it with his full focus.
”No! Aah!” Female. Obviously terrified. The rattle of something metal and a male voice.
Sounds like the kid isn’t alone.
Jason reappeared next to Grumpy in the little circle of agents and Vic. They were all talking, Trainee apparently planning on knocking on the door to see if she could find anything as ‘probable cause for entry’ for the rest of the team. He cut off the discussion with, “Kid isn’t alone. I heard screams and somethin’ metal in the basement. The woman sounded terrified and I also heard a male voice, though I couldn’t make out the words.”
Strauss looked at him with something that Jason would probably call suspicion and said, “How could you have heard anything?” It didn’t sound like she was playing her usual role of hating the team and everything to do with them, more curiosity and suspicion of how he could have heard anything- she was likely thinking that he’d broken in or something.
”Magic fuckery,” he deadpanned. He wasn’t about to tell the contemptuous woman too much about himself, only what she already knew. And his little swim in the Pit wasn’t exactly in his ‘application’, as much as he had one anyway. Maybe a little file of a few things the team had learned about him before he tagged along with them and became an unofficial-official member.
Strauss was not impressed with his explanation but he didn’t particularly care. He instead glanced at Grumpy, whose opinion was the only one that Jason really cared about right now he always cared about parental figures’s options. The older man was considering what to do with the information.
The director still tried to say that, “We still don’t know for certain,” and, “That doesn’t count as probable cause,” which frankly was just a cop-out at this point and everyone knew it. So, everyone unanimously decided to ignore her.
”Suit up and we’ll enter on my mark,” Grumpy said, decided in the actions they would take. How lucky for them that they had brought bulletproof vests along. Jason suited up, the actions feeling both familiar and foreign, his armor was close enough in design that he had the ease of familiarity when putting the vest on, though the thing was heavier than he was used to- the Bats had some fantastic armour designs that he yoinked, including armour that was thinner and lighter while still being being better than anything on the military market.
They quickly suited up- Strauss and Vic remaining where they were- and headed to the various entry points of the house. While Trainee was technically not a part of the FBI, Grumpy gave her the go-ahead to act as the concerned civilian to get a visual on the situation.
A few minutes later, she gave a signal on the walkie she was given- she was also given Angry’s ankle gun as protection and Jason felt a little tendril of Gotham follow after her as well, hiding in her shadow- and they burst in to the house. Jason appeared in the basement, gun immediately finding the father and instincts clocking the gun in the kid’s hands.
He hurriedly put his own gun away and instead focused on the kid. “Hey, kid,” he said, his voice still the jarring mix of human and electronic. It got the kid’s attention, he stopped pointing the gun- very amaturely- at Trainee. “Can you give me the gun?” He wasn’t worried so much about Trainee, she could handle herself, especially with Gotham tangling around the father to distract him. He wasn’t worried about himself either. He was, however, worried about the kid in front of him.
It appeared that this was the first time he’d held a gun- thank fuck- but there was still the knowledge that it could harm others in the kid’s eyes. Jason held out his hand for the gun, “Can you give me that?” he asked gently. The others had burst in just a second or two before, startling the kid with the loudness of the door bursting open. The others helped Trainee and detained the father.
The kid gave Jason the gun, which he quickly made sure had the safety on before putting in one of his various Gotham-pockets. He scooped the kid into his arms and carried him away from having to watch his dad get arrested.
It wasn’t fun to watch your father get arrested.
While the father was being brought out by Vic- the man came in just after Jason left with the kid in his arms- Jason distracted the kid with some of the little things he keeps in his pockets for the Alley rats. Just little knick-nacks but they served their purpose well enough.
”Is my dad going to jail?” the kid asked when the sirens whooped and the kid’s father was being put in the backseat. The kid was still playing with the little toys Jason had given him.
Jason looked to where the car had disappeared, glanced at Trainee in the back of an ambulance getting her head wound treated, and sighed as he looked back at the kid. “Yeah,” he said. He didn’t bother sugarcoating it, the kid was intelligent, he knew the truth. “He’s probably going away for a long time.”
The kid ended up going with CPS. He was going to go to a good home, Jason was going to make sure of it. He trusted the team to be able to find someone trustworthy to take the kid in and help him deal with what his father put him through. But he was still going to personally make sure of it.
The people from CPS came and took the kid away, comforting him and making sure that the kid was ok- well, as ok as he can be with his father going to jail for the murder of six women.
Jason watched as the car drove away, the kid looking out the window at the cop car with his father in the back until he was out of sight. The kid would be alright eventually. Jason was sure of it. He just had to make sure that the kid got placed with a good family, one that would be good for him.
Gotham curled around him, her form the shadowy cats she sometimes chose when not around native Gothamites. When she wasn’t the cats, she usually chose a little flock of Robins or a colony of bats- though, he noticed she doesn’t do the bats very often around him- rather than her ‘actual’ form. Far as Jason could tell, it was a bit harder for Gotham to manifest her humanoid form while away from the city itself.
He absentmindedly pet one of the shadow-cats that perched on his shoulder. There was another curling around and between his legs, one- a smaller one no bigger than a kitten- making biscuits in his hair, and another attaching itself to his pants, climbing him like a tree.
”Agent Peterson, what are you doing?” Strauss asked, incredulous.
”Nothing,” he answered back, staring at the woman dead on while still petting one of the manifestations of Gotham. There was something satisfying in the action. And, somehow, Gotham’s presence- or at least something physically there to remind him of her presence- helped to calm his tumultuous mind, calm some of the insecurities he had about his voice.
”Where did those cats even come from? Shouldn’t you know better than to pet random animals you find?” she asked.
”They aren’t random,” he said, a look of ‘are you stupid?’ on his face as the cats slithered into tendrils again. To say that Strauss looked mildly disturbed would be an understatement that Jason would laugh at.