"Mistress Anastasia, I insist you sleep now. Master Bruce and I will continue the search, I promise." Alfred tells me firmly on the fourth day after Jason was taken.
I haven't slept, I haven't rested. If I'm not at the computer researching, I'm out on the streets trying to find answers. I found a few of Joker's associates in hiding and managed to learn that the clown had something to do with the drugs we have been researching. I nearly killed the thug with torture to get the answer, but I didn't care. It was something to work with.
"No." I reply back with the same answer I've used each time when he asked me that. "We need to find him. I need to find him. I need him. My fault." I say robotically with desperation, whispering the last two words.
I don't hear any response, so I continue to research. Currently, I'm tracking the core components of the drug that Bruce managed to get and I'm analyzing the origins of it. Thank God that Jason loves chemistry and I listened as he always did his work with me so I'm proficient at it.
I'm mid-way through cross checking a component when I sense something behind me. I turn to look, but I turn too late. Bruce is there, holding a small syringe he just jabbed into my neck. "I'm sorry Ana, you need sleep." He says sorrowfully to me as everything starts to get fuzzy.
"You..." I weakly get out as I collapse to the ground, falling into his outstretched arms. "I need Jason..." I whisper out before losing consciousness.
I wake up in my bed a while later. I take a quick shower and change into clean clothes. I head back to the cave to get back to work, finding Bruce and Alfred already there. I don't say anything to them as I just get changed into my uniform and head out to the streets to search. I'm not really mad, I needed sleep, but I need Jason more.
I don't remember anything from the story on where Joker took Jason, but I know it's a warehouse. I have searched nearly every warehouse in Gotham. I'll wrap up the last of them today, then I'm moving to Metropolis next to meet with Clark. Dick is searching in Blüdhaven for him. Oliver is searching in Star City, just in case, but it's further away and less likely. Roy is currently in Junction City searching through his contacts.
No one has found anything.
Bruce and I spend the next two weeks in Europe after we searched all of Gotham and the surrounding cities, just the two of us while Alfred watches activity in Gotham at home. We're searching through the four cities we had narrowed down the drug distribution centers to. We searched as Batman and Shadow tirelessly through every pharmaceutical and drug center, and noticed there was a trend with the banks in each of the cities. They were getting robbed the same days drugs were shipped, and the habit seemed suspicious to Batman.
I tried not to get angry when Batman kept focusing on it, because maybe his detective brain was narrowing it down. Tried to, but by the third city, I snapped and attacked him for delaying us. Every minute we wasted was a minute that Jason was in the clutches of Joker. To Bruce's benefit, he stood there and took my hits as I lashed out on him. He let me hit him until I fell unconscious from exhaustion. He knew what I needed.
We finally got a solid lead on something after almost three weeks of Jason being gone. There was a component of Joker gas that was only sold in Sarajevo, which was the last possible European city on our list. The component just turned up on the listing of a pharmaceutical company that day. The name of the city again tickled something on the back of my brain, so I felt like maybe this was it.
We got in our rides and headed out at once to the address of the storage warehouse we found, and my fear was increasing. It all fit too perfectly, the memory of the name, a warehouse, us finally getting a lead. I sped ahead of Batman, feeling again the desperation as I approached the warehouse. Batman sped up to match me, not wanting me out of his sight at all. I think he also felt like we finally got the right place.
When we got close and could finally see the warehouse, it all clicked in my memory. The warehouse was on top of a small hill, it was like déjà vu when I saw it. This was it, this was from the story. My brother is inside that building.
I flew the bike up and jumped off it as it flew over the hill. I ran full speed to the door.
"Robin!" I scream out as I approached the door.
Before I could get to it though, the whole building exploded in my face.
Batman managed to grab me from behind and roll on top of me, protecting me from the blast as much as possible. I still felt the heat and the power of the explosion, parts of the building landing all around us as Batman pressed me further into the ground, guarding me.
"Oh god, no." I breath out as the explosion ends. "Jason."
I get up and run into the remains of the building, trying to find him. I search, and so does Batman. We are lifting and throwing debris around everywhere. My hands never stop moving until finally, I find him.
I scream out in terror and disbelief when I find his dead, broken, burned, destroyed body. He's still in his Robin uniform, blood splattered all over it, along with bright yellow words written across his torso.
'Ha Ha Ha
Joke's on you,
Batman'
"Jason." Batman breathes out in shock from behind me.
I shake my head in disbelief. "No. No this wasn't supposed to happen. I was supposed to stop this. This is all my fault. I'm so sorry Jason, I did this, I failed you." I shakily gasp out in between the sobs forming in my chest. I desperately kiss his bloody forehead, tears streaming down my face as I feel my world crumble around me. I feel like a hole has just been shot through my heart, through my very soul.
I scream out in pure agony as I clutch my brother's body tightly to me, all life from him gone. As I feel myself going numb, my scream dies out as I just clutch him to me while I rock him gently.
"Ana... this wasn't your fault." I vaguely hear Bruce say, but my mind has begun to check out. I'm locking myself up, numbing myself from the heartache because it's too much for me. I'm shutting down completely, unable to handle the reality anymore.
I release my twin only when I feel Bruce trying to take him from me. At first I don't let him go, clutching his charred and bleeding remains in a false hope that he might wake up again. After a few more gentle attempts, I release him. I know he'll be safe with Bruce, my brain registers that much at least in this moment. I can't hear what Bruce's saying to me though, his words are meaningless. I can't even get up from the ground. I've lost all my will, all my strength.
Bruce comes back for me and lifts me up off the ground, carrying me back to his car, my bike lays abandoned and destroyed in the rubble. His car only has two seats, but instead of sitting me by my brother's corpse, he just holds me tightly on his lap, never letting me go as I sob and shake brokenly into his shoulder. I'm only vaguely aware of him apologizing to me, blaming himself for what he did to us. I'm breaking, shattering from the inside, and coming completely apart into hysterics.
I'm not sure of the specifics on what happens next after that as the numbness fully kicks in. I know at some point I'm brought to a hotel room, or maybe a safe room, I'm not sure which, and Bruce changes me out of my uniform into civilian clothes. I'm unresponsive to anything going on though. I know Bruce gets us back home somehow, Jason already in a sealed casket. I think Bruce asked me questions, but I don't know what they were, so I didn't answer.
My one thing I loved, my one light in this dark world, is gone.
We have a funeral for Jason the day after we get back from finding him. Alfred helps me get changed into a black dress. Dick holds my hand tightly during the ceremony, though I'm not really aware of it. The sky is dark and stormy, and reflects how I feel as I stand in the rain at my brother's headstone. Bruce had him buried in a small, private cemetery not far away from the manor. I haven't slept yet since finding him, too afraid of the nightmares I know will come. Barbara, Roy and Oliver came as well, though I think they left shortly after Alfred finished delivering a short eulogy. He had looked at me to speak, but I couldn't. I was too numb still.
I stayed out in the rain long past when everyone else left, though not Dick. He stayed with me the whole time, he stayed while I wept at my brother's grave, he stayed until eventually I swayed on my feet and couldn't stand anymore. He caught me before I fell and carried me to my room.
"I can't sleep." I say to him, vaguely realizing I was being set in my bed. "I don't want to face the nightmares." I admit weakly in a whisper.
"We'll face them together." Dick says kindly to me, then he takes off his shoes and coat and gets in with me. I don't think about it much, and just curl up next to him, feeling the fresh batch of tears coming over me as he holds me tightly. I desperately cling the warmth he gives me, and finally give in to sleep at the soft touch of him stroking my hair.
For the next week or so, I drift around the manor in the same numb state. Dick had to go back to his city after a couple of days, but he's called every day since. I don't say much in reply to him, but he talks anyway, telling me about his day. I've taken to spending time in the library, since it was Jason's favorite part of the manor. I sit at Jason's headstone every day for hours. I also take to wandering around the house, letting my feet just guide me and keep me moving. I don't like to rest, the nightmares are awful and full of explosions and my brother's dead body screaming at me for failing him.
One night, my feet have me travel to the cave. Not for any interest or purpose of fighting crime, but just to be there in the darkness, isolated. I get there right as Bruce gets home from his patrol, and I lurk in the shadows and listen to him absently as I stare blankly at the bats on the ceiling.
"It was a set up." Bruce says to Alfred angrily. "Joker laid out his henchmen there as a trap in order to leave me this." When I hear Joker's name, my attention snaps to full focus and I move to a better vantage point, neither men realizing I'm there.
"Dear Batsy and your little shadow, I have a gift for you. Enjoy watching my playdate with your little bird." Alfred reads out a note as Bruce puts a thumb drive into the computer. Instantly, a video pops up, and I feel my breath catch as the it starts and it's the inside of the warehouse.
It's a long, lengthy, bloody video of all the time that Joker tormented and beat Jason. He used a crowbar and beat my brother for either minutes or hours at a time, and then took breaks to taunt him, or just to laugh at him.
That laugh, that grainy, psychotic laugh is ringing in my ears the longer I watch. Bruce is fast forwarding through parts, trying to find clues, but at each scene, it's just more of the clown beating my twin senselessly while Jason stares at him defiantly. I watch my brother put on a brave face through his pain as over and over he is beaten with that damned crowbar.
And that damn clown just laughed.
My heart breaks when at the last moment, when he thinks he might almost be freed, he sees the bomb and I had to watch his face fall in resignation, realizing that he won't be saved. He had kept the hope up that whole time that I would come for him, but I never did, and he died all alone. I hear my own voice calling out to him at the last second, and see him mouth my name in sadness, knowing I'm too late.
"Make sure Ana never sees this. Hide it and triple encrypt it." Bruce orders to Alfred, unable to look at the screen anymore.
I stay in my shadows, not feeling the need to come out. If I do, he'll just hide it harder. I can break through a triple encryption easily enough. I need to watch that full video. I need to watch every moment of torture Jason had to go through because I was too scared to tell him the truth. Because I didn't save him.
"Mistress Anastasia is barely responsive, Master Bruce. I'm worried for her. She needs you, sir." Alfred tries to suggest to him.
"No she doesn't. She doesn't need the reminder of the man who failed her and got her brother killed. She should hate me." Bruce says bitterly to the older man. "I need to find Joker, he needs to go back to the Asylum. It's not safe with him out there. That's the only way I can keep them safe, the only way to honor Jason. His killer can't be out there free."
No Bruce, he can't. Someone does need to honor Jason. Someone needs to right this wrong. That someone, will not be you though, Bruce.
And it won't be Shadow, either.
My mind is finally starting to wake up again, working again for the first time in weeks, clearing up now that it has something to focus on. As Bruce and Alfred go upstairs to bed, I go down to the computer. I hack through the encryptions and play the video again.
I spent the whole night watching it. I spend the whole next week watching it again and again until it's burned into my mind. I memorized every swing Joker took, every taunt he gave, every cut he carved into my brother's body.
"No, Mistress Anastasia..." I hear Alfred breath out behind me, finally catching me watching the video in the cave. I had lost track of time as I watched the clown slowly murder by twin again and again. "You weren't supposed to see this." I had been secretly watching it in private all week, only coming down here when they were asleep or gone, which has been often these days for Bruce.
"Too late." I reply back blandly, standing up to leave. I catch sight of the memorial display case they made for Jason's Robin costume, and I turn back to Alfred. "Put mine up there next to his."
"Are you no longer Shadow then?" He asks me quietly.
"No. I can't... I just can't, anymore. What's the point?" I ask him brokenly before walking away again.
"Very well, Mistress. Get some rest, please. I will be deleting this, I never want you to watch it again." Alfred says sadly to me, going to the computer and deleting the file.
It doesn't matter, it's burned into my memory at this point. The damage it done. My nightmares had already changed from explosions to the Clown's laugh. He haunts my nightmares, but those nightmares give me focus.
Those nightmares have given me a new purpose.