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The firefight isn't going so well. Jason’s pinned down at the back of a warehouse with what seems like an endless stream of goons sending a barrage of bullets at the broken-down machinery he's using for cover. Every goon he manages to pick off seems to come right back, and he's quickly running low on ammo.
At this point, the best option is to run. Jason’s got no qualms about making an escape. He would literally rather live to die another day than risk actually dying again, even if he has to crawl on hands and knees behind a stack of crates to scurry out the back door.
He makes a break for it as soon as there's an opening, sprinting through a small clearing before heading into the nearby treeline. A hundred yards in, the gunfire breaks out again and Jason hits the ground. Bullets ping over his head, splintering apart trees and sending chips of wood through the air. He has to find better cover before the goons catch up and riddle him full of holes. There's some kind of barn up ahead. It's the only thing within a reasonable distance so Jason makes a run for it.
He dashes through the doors and then slams them shut. It only has a rudimentary latch, but he finds a plank of wood that he slides across the door to bar it shut. The sounds outside have gone quiet. That's never a good sign, but there's nothing to do at the moment but wait.
The barn seems much smaller from the inside. It's more like a tiny shed really. He's not sure why he called it a barn in the first place. It's cold inside too. Really cold. Almost freezing. Jason clutches his jacket close around himself. He starts to shiver.
A small sound suddenly catches Jason’s ear. He whirls around, guns raised, only to spy a small figure huddled under what looks to be a burlap sack. It's a child. A boy by the looks of it, his pale hair peaking out from the shadows.
"Hey," Jason gentles his voice. "You can come out. I won't hurt you."
The boy crawls out from beneath the refuse. He's only wearing a scraggly sweater and jeans. His face is smudged with dirt and there's something strangely familiar about his pale, blue eyes.
Jason holsters his guns and crouches down. "You okay?"
The boy squints at him and furrows his brows.
Memory comes crashing. The shape of his face is obviously much younger. The hair a little blonder. But that face. Jason knows that face. And those eyes... they're more than familiar. He knows those eyes. Or rather eye. "Slade?"
Then other things start to register. The way the gunfire from the warehouse goons have completely disappeared. The way the barn has shrunk down to a shed so small that Jason can touch both sides if he extends his arms out. The fact that the temperature has suddenly plummeted so much that Jason can see the steam of his breath gust through the vents in his mask.
Moonlight streams in through the gaps in the slats of the shed. The air is heavy and thick. When Jason moves it feels like his body has to wade through something viscous to catch up. It feels surreal.
It feels like a dream… because it is.
Lucid dreaming isn’t something that Jason’s perfected, but he's had some practice at it from his training in the All-Caste—enough that he can occasionally recognize and maintain awareness until he wakes up. Occasionally. Because most of the time he just falls into the clutches of his memories, and he is at the mercy of his own mind until some deep, subconscious part of himself has had enough.
This feels different though. He can't quite explain why, but it probably has to do with the kid standing in front of him.
“Slade,” Jason keeps his voice neutral, “do you know who I am?”
The boy eyes him tentatively. He looks like he's about to shake his head, but then recognition flashes through his eyes. “Jason?”
It's strange hearing his name come out of the boy's mouth. It's the same inflection that Slade always uses, but the boy is so young. It's hard to fathom that Slade was so small and vulnerable once upon a time.
Jason lifts a hand, his instinct to place it on Slade’s shoulder, when he's suddenly interrupted by a loud banging on the shed door.
“You still in there, boy?” A man shouts. “How'd you lock yourself in there? Open the goddamn door right now!”
The boy—Slade—immediately tenses. He clenches his teeth as he balls his fists and takes a step back. It's not fear that flashes across his face, but anger. Hatred.
Jason stands and turns, drawing his guns from his holsters. His skin prickles. His hackles go up. He can't explain it but the imminent sense of danger has just gone up to eleven. He doesn't know who's on the other side of that ramshackle door, but he's damn well sure it's nobody good.
“Is he going to hurt you?” he glances back at Slade. He can almost feel the haze of fury emanating off the boy, but before the kid can answer, the man outside the shed kicks open the door and rushes in.
Maybe it's because this is all a dream. Maybe its because its not just Slade’s anger that Jason’s feeling, but his own too. The thought that someone had once hurt this younger version of Slade makes him livid. Jason doesn't think. He just reacts. He shoots.
Bam!
The man falls backward into the snow. His face is blown off. All that's left is the bloody crater left by taking a hollow point through the skull.
Shit. Jason whirls around. His hands are trembling as he holsters his guns and asks the kid, “You okay? Who was that?”
The kid grimaces and Jason starts to reconcile the image he has of Slade in his mind with this boy. Jason reaches out again, this time his hand fully lands on the boy's shoulder, and suddenly in a blink, Slade isn't a kid anymore. He's an adult, back in the body with which Jason is intimately familiar. He's wearing the same ragged outfit, just bigger.
The grimace on Slade’s face turns into a sneer. “That was my father,” Slade says.
“Oh.” Jason swallows. Was the fact that Jason just shot Slade’s father in the face a good thing or a bad thing? It's hard to gauge Slade’s reaction, but this is a dream. Maybe it's some theme and variation on a memory. A bad memory. The air is sour with the smell of blood. The dream feels tainted with bitterness, but not regret. Jason isn't sure what that means. He's not even sure if this is the real Slade or if this is some fabrication of his own mind.
“Is that really you?” Jason asks.
It's a stupid question. There’s no way to prove one possibility or the other until he wakes up, but Slade answers, “It's me.”
Jason is inclined to believe him. This memory or variant thereof isn't his. It's not a stretch that he would dream up some fucked up childhood trauma about Slade, but something about this just feels too foreign. It doesn't belong to him. This isn't Jason’s dream.
“Any idea what's going on?” Jason carefully steps over the body and ventures a look outside. It's all woods and snow. There's no sign of the warehouse from earlier. Jason must have left his dream behind when he entered Slade’s.
“Not sure, but this isn't what happened. Not exactly, so this is some kind of nightmare or hallucination.” Slade takes a long look at his father's body. There's something withering in his expression, but when he looks up at Jason it's gone. “It feels like there's something I should be remembering, but I can't latch onto it for some reason. It's like someone's blocking very specific memories.”
“Something about your latest job?” Jason suggests.
Slade nods. “Probably, but the details of the contract keep coming up blank.”
“You left yesterday for Shenzhen, if that helps,” Jason adds. Slade had left early. He remembers rolling into the warm spot that Slade left in their bed. He remembers feeling cold later when the veritable furnace that is Slade’s body heat finally dissipated.
Slade shakes his head. “Even if I do remember, we probably shouldn't discuss it here. Whoever's doing this might be watching.”
“Right.” If someone's gone through the trouble of tampering with their dreams, even somehow linking their minds together, then they're a formidable force to contend with. But to what end? To get intel? Or take them out somehow through their dreams? Either way, they're in danger, and the sooner they figure out what's going on the better.
“What about you?” Slade interrupts Jason's train of thought. “What's the last thing you remember?”
The last thing Jason remembers is sliding into an empty bed after a long night of patrol, and then feeling stupid for missing Slade after only one day. He doesn't tell Slade that. Instead, he says, “As far as I know I'm still asleep in Gotham. I have some cases in the works, but nothing coming to a head yet. ”
“Doesn't mean someone's not still gunning for you,” Slade points out. “This could be about you too.”
“It could,” Jason admits. “So now what?”
“So now we're stuck in a dream and we have to figure out how to wake up.”
“In nightmares, people usually wake up when they die.” It's what happens every time Jason dreams of the Joker. Every time there's a ticking countdown of a clock. He wakes up before he feels the heat of the explosion.
Slade regards him with a frown. “What are you suggesting?”
“At least one of us needs to wake up, so… maybe one of us could try and die.” Jason pulls a gun from his holster, then flips it in his fingers so that he's holding the muzzle and offering Slade the grip. “You could shoot me?”
Slade takes the gun, but he immediately says, “No. This isn’t a regular dream. We don't know the full situation and if anything that happens here could transfer to our physical bodies. I won't take that risk with you.”
Even if it's all a dream, Jason’s stomach flutters at Slade’s words. He doesn't want to take that risk with Slade either… which is why he offered himself. He's more relieved than he thought he would be to not be staring down the barrel of a gun with Slade holding the trigger. It isn't all that far-fetched that the level of mind manipulation could produce a psychosomatic effect. Jason’s seen enough over the years that it's entirely possible.
“Okay. So no shooting each other.” Jason considers another option. “What about falling? Or at least the feeling of falling?”
“You watch too many movies,” Slade grumbles.
“But it could work right?”
“Or it could kill us if we don't wake up before we hit the ground.”
Slade isn't wrong if the psychosomatic hypothesis is true. But a fall doesn't have to mean death. They both regularly jump off buildings, after all. Jason says as much, adding, “It might be a better option than trying to shoot each other to death.”
Jason watches as Slade tilts his head in thought. Slade is entertaining the idea as he surveys the woods around them. There's nothing but thickets of trees as far as the eye can see.
"We have to find some high ground," Slade finally says.
They set off toward the first upward slope they can find, but the woods are dense and the snow deep and exhausting. It's getting colder and colder too. Jason’s leather jacket isn't doing much to keep him warm. Slade, on the other hand, doesn't seem to notice. He plows through the drifts of snow like it's nothing but foam. Jason trails in his wake, suddenly noticing that at some point Slade's gone from wearing a threadbare sweatshirt to his Deathstroke gear. Jason didn't even notice when his clothes had changed, but he supposes dreams can do that—blend the disparate into a seamless, shifting reality.
At last, they reach the top of a slope where it opens up into a small outcropping. Slade points down at something in the valley below. “There,” he says.
“What?” Jason catches up to look, but Slade suddenly goes over the ledge and starts sliding down the rocky face below.
“Wait! Slade!” Jason scrambles to follow but he isn’t as fast or as durable. He narrowly avoids braining himself on a boulder as Slade practically plummets into the valley below.
“This isn't what I meant when I suggested falling!” Jason calls after him.
Slade keeps running. The drifts of snow turn into sludge, then mud, then a thick layer of green undergrowth. They've somehow plunged from the freezing winter into the warm and muggy understory of a jungle.
“Slade!” Jason calls again, nearly out of breath, but to no avail. It's as if Slade doesn't even know he exists. With the way the landscape has been changing, the way Slade himself has been changing, and the fact that everything in this world is coming from Slade’s mind and memories, it's becoming clear that he's lost his awareness once more to the dream.
Up ahead a round building with a strange honeycomb-patterned dome comes into view. Jason's never seen it in person, but he's read Batman's files. It's one of the former headquarters of H.I.V.E.
Slade heads straight for it.
“Slade! Stop!” Jason sprints as fast as he can but he keeps losing ground. Slade draws his weapons and crashes through the doors of the building before disappearing inside. Jason pushes through the burn as he sprints the final few yards to follow. Inside, amidst the piles of smoke and rubble, he finds Slade holding the shriveled husk of a body.
“No!” Slade holds the body close. “No, you stupid kid," his voice full of a pain Jason’s never heard before. "I told you not to do it!”
Jason instantly recognizes who the body belongs to—its the original Ravager—Slade's son, Grant. Jason's known about what happened to Slade’s eldest for a while, but admittedly he's never really thought about it much beyond it being a page in Slade’s case file. Slade doesn't talk about him and Jason hasn't asked. Jason's never seen him display any palpable grief. Not like he does now.
Grant's body begins to crumble. The wind blows, and the ashes dissipate through Slade’s fingers.
Jason stays silent. There’s nothing he can say to make this better. He can't say that this isn't real because it happened. He can't say that it's only a dream. He doesn't know if Slade would even hear him. At the same time, they can't linger here forever. They still have to find a way to wake up.
“We have to go,” Jason says, voice quiet.
Slade blinks at Jason. There's recognition again when he says, “I'm gonna kill whoever's doing this.” He gets to his feet and dusts the last of Grant's ashes from his hands. The look on his face is murderous.
“We have to get to high ground,” Jason reminds him.
Slade nods. “Stay close,” he says and grabs Jason’s bicep to tug him in. It's not quite an embrace, but it's intimate. “I don't know if I'm going to lose myself in this godforsaken nightmare again,” Slade adds. “This might help me stay anchored.”
“Okay.” Jason leans into Slade’s grip. The fingers clutching him are firm but not painful. He'd be lying if he said he doesn't find it reassuring.
They make their way through the compound, heading upwards any route they can, but as they follow a winding staircase on the perimeter of the dome the landscape starts changing again. The hexagonal honeycombs of the H.I.V.E. compound start to square off into bricks. The floors turn into a rain-slick pavement. Soft sodium lights illuminate the streets as the roof fades into a twilight sky.
Jason doesn't recognize the skyline and there's nothing about the location that presents any apparent significance. Slade on the other hand is getting tense. His grip on Jason’s arm tightens as the pull of memory engulfs the dream.
“What's going on?” Jason probes. He wants to be ready for the next nightmare that gets thrown at them.
Slade doesn't answer. He just takes a sudden turn at a corner, then again and again. He shakes his head. “It doesn't matter which way I go," Slade grinds through clenched teeth. "It's going to take me back to the same place.”
They stop in front of a door. It sits slightly ajar. Beyond the sliver of the open frame awaits an ominous darkness.
Beside him, Jason can practically feel the dread radiating from Slade. They turn to the left, then to the right. They look behind them. It's the same door anywhere they look.
“I guess we're going in,” Slade says. The line of his shoulders is taut like a bow. His grip on Jason’s arm tightens.
Jason follows as Slade crosses the threshold. They make it down a short hall and then into a ransacked room where a young boy lays in a pool of blood on the floor.
“Joey!” Slade lets go of Jason’s arm and dives forward. He puts pressure on the gaping wound in the boy's throat. He tries to start CPR. “Help me stop the bleeding,” Slade barks.
Jason kneels beside him. He doesn't know Joey much at all, but the sight of alarmingly pale skin, the blood, and the frightened eyes has him instinctively reacting. He puts his hands on Joey's throat to staunch the bleeding. He can hear blood rushing to his ears as adrenaline floods his veins.
“This is a dream,” he says it as much to remind himself as Slade, to try and convince them both that there isn't a dying boy lying here before them. “Slade, this already happened. I was never here. Joey's alive. He made it through this. This isn't really your son!”
Slade draws back and stares at the blood on his hands. There's a wide terror Jason’s never seen in Slade before as he looks up to meet Jason’s eyes. “Jason?”
Jason nods as everything around them shifts again. The room fades to gray. It's replaced by more concrete and a familiar skyline filled with gothic towers and contemporary skyscrapers. They're in Gotham, standing on some kind of industrial roof. The hum of the nearby HVAC assembly drones on into the night.
Slade curses. He balls his fists. “Not Gotham. This damn city will eat us alive.”
He reaches out to grab Jasos's shoulders, except suddenly there's a sharp zinging sound as something suddenly hits Jason in the neck. He falls backward. Excruciating pain explodes from his throat as blood fills his mouth. He spits but more and more blood keeps coming. It bubbles in his mouth as he tries to take in air but he chokes. He can’t breathe!
“Jason!” Slade is above him, hands flying to dislodge whatever it was that hit him. Jason thrashes on the ground, fumbling around Slade’s hands because whatever hit him in the neck is still there. He can't get it out. He can't get it out!
The agony in Jason’s throat extends through his shoulder as Slade finally jerks something free. It's a batarang.
Shadows grow darker and darker around him. A looming form made of pure black hovers above. White slanted eyes, sinister and cruel. Pointed ears….
Bam! Slade fires off a shot. Bam! Bam! He fires off one after another until the bat-shaped shadow fractures into thousands of tiny bats. They whoosh down in a thick, screeching mass to envelop Jason. It feels like they're clawing into his skin and suffocating him!
“Jason! Hold still!” Slade is there again, trying to put pressure on the wound in his throat as he swats at the flurry of bats. Blood beads on Slade’s skin from the tiny bat claws and teeth. Jason chokes on blood. He's starting to feel cold. The batarang must have nicked his carotid.
He'll die if he can't stop the bleeding…, but this isn't a memory. Jason’s had his throat cut, but this is not how it happened.
Memory rises up from the depths of Jason’s mind. There's no cacophonous laughter this time. There was no maelstrom of bats when it happened either. There was just one devastating choice made by a man he had once thought his father. And most of all, there was no Slade there trying to protect him from Batman's betrayal.
This is a dream….
Jason repeats those words in his head—this is a dream this is a dream thisisadream thisisadreamthisisadream—until he can piece together the facets of awareness, mentally stitching together the gouged carotid in his neck to scream aloud, “This is a dream!”
He regains control of his flailing hands and holds Slade’s palms to his chest. He spits blood and exclaims, “Slade, this isn't real!”
Slade freezes for several seconds. His single blue eye is focused on Jason with a wild ferocity, but it gradually widens in awareness.
“Thank fuck,” Slade hisses a gust of tense breath as he crushes Jason to his chest. “I thought I was going to lose you.”
Jason lets Slade hold him for a moment. He presses his face into Slade’s embrace. He can still taste blood in his mouth. He can still feel his heart trying to hammer itself out of his chest, but… he knows the pain and the panic are only the vestiges of deeply embedded memory. The fear remains, however. It's a twisted knot of guilt and helplessness. Jason is more than familiar with the feeling, but once again it feels foreign. This fear is not his.
“Slade,” Jason reluctantly pushes away, “listen. This is going to keep happening. Whoever is doing this is going to keep fucking with us by digging up our worst nightmares. There's going to come a point where neither of us will be able to keep our awareness. We have to figure this out before it's too late. Do you remember anything about your contract?”
“So you think this is about me?” Slade hasn't let go of him. He cups Jason’s face with his hands and narrows his lone eye.
Jason let's Slade touch him. He covers Slade’s hand with his own. “This nightmare is yours. What happened with Grant and Joey. Even this,” Jason pulls down his collar to expose his gore-covered neck, “something like this happened to me, but not like this. This fear is yours. This nightmare is yours. It's your childhood, your sons, and what you're afraid of for me…. Whoever's doing this is digging up things that can hurt you. Maybe it's Rose next. I don't know for sure, but someone is coming after you, and they probably want to use me as a distraction.”
Slade stands up, pulling the both of them to their feet. From the outside Slade is collected and controlled, but Jason knows that when Slade gets cold it means he's downright furious. “I'm gonna rip his fucking throat out,” he growls. “He's gonna regret this.”
Jason doesn't disagree. He'd be surprised if there was a body left to ID afterward. “So you know who's doing this?”
Slade pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes as if in deep thought. When he opens them, he says, “The Dream Killer. My contract. That's him. Some kind of meta who uses his powers to keep people unconscious while he tracks them down and kills them.”
“Maybe he doesn't know your physical location. That's why he brought me in." Jason feels like kicking himself as he realizes his mistake. “Shit, this is my fault. I mentioned you left for Shenzhen earlier. He's probably on his way now while he's been threading memories together until he found a way to get to you.”
“Not your fault,” Slade says. “You couldn't have known. I never told you the details of the contract.”
His words aren't very reassuring, because the landscape changes again as he says them. It's a different city this time with what seems like an endless expanse of skyscrapers.
Jason recognizes the tallest tower. “Is this Shenzhen?”
Slade nods.
A feeling of foreboding fills Jason when he asks, “What building are we standing on?”
“It's my hotel.”
That was the expected answer, but it still feels like a punch in the gut. “That's it then. He found you. You have to wake up before he kills you.”
Slade turns to face him. He's holding Jason's shoulder again. “Not me. We have to wake up. We don't know for sure that he hasn't infiltrated Gotham too.”
“Okay then.” Jason looks at the ledge of the building. It's at least fifty stories tall. If they're wrong and they don't wake up, the impact might transfer to their physical bodies. Slade might make it, but Jason would die. He looks back at Slade and takes his hand. “We fall together?”
Slade places his free hand around the back of Jason’s head. He pulls Jason close to touch their foreheads together, then kisses him.
“We fall together.” Slade's palm lingers on Jason’s cheek before he pulls away.
They step up to the ledge, fingers laced together tight, and jump.
...
Jason wakes with a gasp. It feels like the wind has been knocked right out of his lungs. Pain flares through his chest. He tries to breathe but he can't, and for a moment he thinks he's back in the dream with a batarang stuck in his throat. Except when he brings his hands up to tear it out, he finds there are fingers wrapped around his neck.
Someone is strangling him.
He viciously kicks his knee up, dislodging his attacker. It's dark and all Jason can see is a mass of black moving through the shadows. Whatever it is, it's fast and strong. Jason grabs one of the knives tucked into the bedframe and aims for the ribs, but as soon as the blade connects the thing dissipates into thin air.
The black mass regroups and charges, slamming Jason against the wall. He drops the knife. Something inside him cracks with the impact and Jason flails. He kicks and punches but he can't get a good hit in. The dark entity leans in hard, crushing Jason's chest until he can't expand his lungs.
Jason fumbles for anything he can reach. His hand brushes against the nightstand. It's close enough that he can tip it over with his foot, and there—he catches the handgun tucked into the drawer. He jams it up under the thing’s head and fires.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
The black mass suddenly pulls back and drops him. There's a horrific screeching sound and Jason can’t tell if it's the entity or himself that's screaming. The sound echoes in his ears. He feels like he's drowning. Every breath feels like he's gargling shards of glass. It's hard to get enough air until eventually, the world goes dark.
...
The second time Jason wakes up it's to a dull throb that aches across his entire torso. When he tries to sit up, a gentle but firm hand presses against his sternum.
“Don't get up.” The command is short and clipped.
Jason opens his eyes and immediately relaxes. Slade’s bedside manner leaves something to be desired, but Jason finds it comforting. He lets himself sink into the bed as Slade’s warm hand slides over Jason's. Slade would never make such a gesture unless they were safe. It gives Jason the peace of mind to take in his surroundings. He's in what looks like a hospital room. The lights are dim and the air tinged with antiseptic. Slade is sitting in a plastic chair pushed up alongside the bed.
Strange memories gradually come into focus.
Jason looks at Slade. “What happened to the Dream Killer?” It's half garbled as Jason tries to rasp through the oxygen mask covering his face.
“I killed him, but not before he got to you,” Slade explains. “He had the ability to send an astral projection form along with invading dreams. He sent a sort of physical astral body after you while he attacked me on the other side of the globe.”
“Oh.” It makes a sort of sense, Jason thinks. It explains why it was so hard to physically damage the dark entity. And yet the thing had no problem nearly crushing him to death. “How bad did he get me?"
It must have been bad enough to warrant a trip to the hospital. The furrow of Slade’s brow is severe. He hasn't taken his eye off Jason since he woke up. It's almost as if he's afraid that if he blinks Jason will disappear.
“He managed to crack three of your ribs and puncture a lung,” Slade's deep voice is a rumble that penetrates Jason to the core. “I was too far away, so I sent Billy to find you when you wouldn't answer. He had you med-evaced here. It was a close call.”
That's Slade’s way of saying that Jason almost died. If they hadn't both woken up, one or even both of them would have been killed.
As if following his thoughts, Slade adds, “You kept me anchored in that dream. You helped me gain awareness more than once. If it weren't for you I'd have been trapped in those nightmares and the Dream Killer would've easily picked me off in my sleep.”
Slade's fingers curl into Jason's. It's probably just in his head, but it almost feels like the heat from Slade's hand is traveling all the way up Jason's arm and into his heart.
Jason squeezes Slade’s hand. “I'm glad we took the fall together.”
Slade squeezes back, “me too.”