In any timeline wherein Tim meets The Squad, two things happened in that first meeting.

1. Riley scared the ever-loving crap out of him. Not through doing scary things necessarily, but by using Jason as a insta-ladder to reach a fire escape.
2. Antoine took a potshot at him.

None of them respect him. They won’t try to kill him, but none of them respect him.

Jason’s asleep. Admittedly, he’s asleep because Mark drugged him, but he’s asleep and that’s the important thing.

He’s aged forward again, which is great. Less great is where he’s aged to: sixteen (a painfully malnourished sixteen, good God–), with an oh-so-familiar brand on his cheek. The brand is, in Mark’s non-burn-expert opinion, a month old or so. It’s red and raw and brutal and hard to look at. The healed brand on a…mostly-adult…face is surprisingly easy enough to overlook, once you get over the shock. The new brand on a child? No.

He hadn’t been screaming. But he hadn’t been…he’d…you see this, sometimes, after major trauma. He’d been checked out, shaking and gasping through clenched teeth. So it had been for the best, in the end, to sedate him. Keep him from thrashing or freaking out or anything like that.

But it’s still rough. It’s still rough and Mark almost hopes the Bat shows up so he can see this, see what his bullshit caused. For the last goddamn time: child soldiers are not okay, not in any sort of war.

“So,” Frank says, quiet and deadly despite the hand moving gently through Jason’s hair, “how much farther do we have to go?”

What’s missing, he’s not asking. What else did that fucker do to him that hasn’t happened yet.

A lot. The bullet wound is the big one, the round, puckered scar on his chest. And a mangled thing under his ribs, one that looks like it got cut open again after it healed.

“Another few months, at least,” he says carefully. “Five or six, I think.”

“Hm.”

He’s grown a bit, but not enough for Mark’s liking. He guesses he’ll have the mental image of that small, pale, broken body being cradled in Trent’s arms for…for a good long while. At least they’re about halfway through, give or take.

He’ll be glad when this is over.

At least he knows who they are, and what’s going on. Mark is not cut out to handle the psychological fuckery this would have caused otherwise.

Goddamn Batman, he thinks. This is what fucking happens when you don’t keep your crusades to yourself.

My Soul’s Worn Thin

“How old were you?”

“What?”

“When you first killed someone.” Trent pops his neck. “How old were you.”

“Why.”

“Nosy.”

The car is silent, at first. But hell, they’re all in this crazy ride now whether they like it or not, and it’s not like anybody’s some sort of homicide-virgin. They wouldn’t be here if they were.

“Eighteen,” Antoine says at last. “Army. He came outta nowhere, I was quicker on the trigger.”

He doesn’t say the guy had been his age, or that he’d about puked all over his boots. It’s not the messiest kill he’s ever done, just…seconds, that’s all that had been between Z.Z. going, ‘fuck, I didn’t even see him–you okay?’ and him being the one staring into the void with three bullets in his chest.

Jimmy swallows, clearly a little uncomfortable, and mumbles, “Twenty-one. This. We were at a bar, this guy came up to us-turned out to be a guerrilla fighter-, shot the friend I was with. I got off a lucky shot before he could get to me. Friend lived that time, but. Didn’t see him coming.”

Antoine doesn’t correct that story. It’s true, it’s not that, but Jimmy’s leaving out that their attacker was another friend that turned traitor. It happens, but it can’t be easy to look a friend in the eyes and blow their head off.

“Nineteen,” Trent finally supplies. “Fucker turned on me, I just. Grabbed at him, you know, to not get shot, and, uh. Managed to twist his head backwards.” He shrugs. “Gun didn’t go off, so that worked out.”

Riley nods.

Him or me, he explains, hands just this side of hesitant. Gun jammed, but I had a knife, got it through his eye. Not bad for nineteen, huh?

“Twenty,” Frank says shortly. “I’d been out to fix a jeep, you know? We got ambushed, and this guy came up on me. His gun jammed, mine didn’t.” He laughs, a little. “I got the guts up after that to ask Daisy to marry me. Figured that had to be less scary than some guy trying to kill me.”

Mark shrugs.

“Thirty-three. I was trying to stabilize this guy who’d gotten his arm blown half off, and this guy just comes out of nowhere, screaming bloody murder. I got grazed, because I moved, but I got him in the stomach. He bled out while I was working on the guy I was there for.” He flicks a piece of lint off his pants. “That whole day was a mess.”

The car falls silent, barring the radio, and Antoine looks at the mountains in the distance. Nobody here, he guesses, ever had much of a shot at doing anything else. He certainly doesn’t feel like it. You get used to it-or that’s what you tell yourself-but it changes you, puts you on a different course.

“Sixteen,” the Knight says suddenly. Antoine doesn’t look over there, but. Mm. “Thought it was someone else, but he did try to kill me, so.” He shifts a bit. “Strangled him.”

Yeah. Nobody here ever had much of a chance, did they.

THE END