As much as I fought against him not to, Dick forced me to lean on him most of the walk back to Titans Tower. I insisted I didn't need his help because I hated how weak it made me seem, but truthfully it felt nice not to have to hold myself up alone. The electricity had done more damage to my stability than I liked to admit and having Dick's arm around my waist was a comfort stemming back the exhaustion threatening to take over.

On the elevator ride up, I felt the idea of the safety of the building relax my muscles until I was leaning more heavily on Dick, head in the crook of his neck. His grip tightened on me reassuringly and for the moment I could almost forget anything but us existed in the world. I breathed in his familiar scent, curled my fingers into the soft fabric of his sweater and let myself drift away on that idea.

Then the elevator doors opened and reality came slamming back down on me, filling me with a renewed sense of energy as I separated from Dick and forged forward into the hall. "Jason!" I yelled at a pitch high enough to make the glass in the open room shake. I cleared my throat and tried again, making sure to use my normal yelling voice. "Jason, where the fuck did you go?"

"Jason's not here," Gar said from the kitchen, shoveling a spoonful of cereal into his mouth. I was struck by how young he looked for a second. Like he should just be home gaming every night, grudgingly going to school in the day rather than morphing into an animal to fight crime at night.

"What do you mean, he's not here?" Dick said calmly from behind me. He placed his hand on my lower back and I stuttered a breath as I tried to match his energy.

Gar shrugged, looking as though he got caught stealing a cookie. "He's not. I thought he was still with you guys."

"There was an incident, we got separated," Dick replied, turning to me as he added, "I'm sure wherever he is, he's fine."

"What kind of incident?" Gar asked eagerly.

"One that won't leave me the hell alone," I sighed, earning a confused look from him.

"Don't worry about it, it's taken care of for now," Dick told him before changing the subject. "How was the mission with Conner? Any problems?"

"Nope. I didn't even have to change or anything. The guys were so surprised by the dog with laser eyes that their attention was elsewhere. Took 'em out with barely a fight."

"That's good," Dick responded. I assessed the look on his face, noting the distraction in it. He wasn't as sure as he wanted us to be about Jason being okay. "Don't get too comfortable though. Bad guys talk; a novelty dog won't keep them distracted for much more."

"Got it," Gar nodded. He glanced at the open laptop on the counter before him as it beeped and looked back up at us. "Um, Dick, there's a file that Batman just sent over. A CADMUS file."

I moved forward to open the file myself, but Dick used his longer legs to get ahead of me. "Thanks, Gar. I'll take a look at it in the comms room." He closed and snatched up the laptop before I could reach it and I let out a small growl in my throat.

"Grayson—"

"We're looking at this together, Madds. You won't talk me out of it." With that he turned his back and headed down the hall, leaving me a little dumbstruck where I was. Gar watched me in silence for a few seconds until it got awkward and then he mumbled something about needing to call a friend before disappearing in the opposite direction.

Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to follow after Dick and the possible answers I'd been searching years for.

When I got to the comms room, Dick stood hunched over the keyboard, body tense like he was ready for a fight. It threw me off for a minute seeing that reaction. If the file was what we thought it was, it seemed more like what I should be feeling than what he should be. It suddenly made me nervous and want to turn around and run to my room, even if to put it off for just a little while longer. But I couldn't do that; not when I was so close to finding out the truth.

That didn't mean I couldn't postpone it another couple of minutes, though. "Do you really think Jason is okay?" I asked, stalling.

Dick only turned his head slightly to look at me over his shoulder as he nodded. "He's erratic and impulsive but he's also well trained and resourceful. If he was in trouble, he would've found a way to tell us back at the club."

"So, what, you think he just abandoned us back there? That doesn't really sound like something he would do."

Dick sighed, his shoulders slumping more. "It doesn't, but... Jason went through some things recently that he needed time to himself to work through. Maybe he did all he could back there in getting those people out and thought we could handle the rest on our own."

"You don't really believe that," I scoffed, coming to a stop beside him. He gave me a small, tired smile.

"No, but I need to tell myself something while I wait for this trace to find him." He gestured to the monitor to his left that read 'JASON TODD TRACKER', a little dot bouncing across the digital map quickly. "I didn't say anything before because I didn't want Gar to worry. He has enough to deal with."

"You know, I think you might actually be doing this adoptive vigilante family thing better than Bruce ever did," I said with a small smile of my own. Dick only chuckled once, shaking his head.

Standing straight, he turned to me with his eyes framed by the curl of his hair and spoke softly. "A lot happened tonight that I think we should talk about—"

"I don't."

"Madds—"

"Don't, Dick, just don't," I interrupted again. "I don't want to talk about anything right now. There are two things that I really need right now. One, is to know whatever is in that file that Bruce sent, no matter what it says and whether its about me or not. And two, for you to understand and respect that."

His jaw tightened with the urge to protest but he nodded once. "Fine. For now," he answered and I sighed in relief. I could always find a way later to avoid the conversation, whatever it may be. "Are you ready for this?" He gestured to the file transfer waiting to be opened on the computer screen and I dropped in the chair beside him with a huff.

"Honestly? I don't think I ever will be. But... having you here with me helps."

Dick stepped closer, taking my hand in his with no protest on my part this time. He gave it a silent squeeze before turning back to the monitors and clicking on the file.

My breath caught in my throat as I stared at the download bar on the screen, the words 'PROJECT DAHLIA' flashing above it. Once the download completed, documents opened up all over the screen, my eyes not knowing where to focus first.

There were audio files, video thumbnails, full reports on what seemed like multiple projects at once. So much came up at once that I found myself hoping that somehow it wasn't anything connected to me. Maybe it was just something that Bruce thought Dick should know about and keep his team on alert for; a new enemy that CADMUS created in the wake of their last failure.

"Madalyn...look," Dick said, pointing to an image in the far right monitor. I dragged my eyes up to where he pointed, forcing the air out of my lungs at the photo.

It was me, lying still and naked on the bank of Gotham river the night I remembered being my first. Only it looked different than how I remembered. I wasn't covered in dirt like I was when I woke up, but there was blood smeared in multiple places across my pale moonlit skin. It wasn't just a photo of when I thought my life started; it was a photo of when they thought it had been my end.

"'Termination and expulsion of PROJECT DAHLIA in Gotham city,'" Dick read stiffly from the caption just below the photo. "'Access video upload file PDT2 for completion of drop.'"

"Where is it?" I demanded, eyes scanning everything else on the screens. "Where's the video?"

"Madds..."

"No, Grayson, I want to see it," I insisted, pulling my hand free from his and trying to fight for control of the mouse. Dick moved it out of reach and I made an angry sound in my voice as I glared at him. "I want to see it! Is this system voice command capable like Bruce's? It is, isn't? Access video files for PROJECT DAHLIA."

"Madalyn, Bruce took your voice recognition out of the system years ago."

"Then you fucking say it, Dick. Because I want to know what they did to me. Hurricane said they thought I was dead and I want to know why." I stared him down fiercely, his dark eyes just as intense as he stared back at me. I could see him struggling internally on what he should do and my breathing grew rapid as my mind went to its dark place again.

Dick may have been vaccinated against my pheromones, but that didn't mean I couldn't easily take him out in other ways.

I don't know if he realized the same thing or if his deep rooted need to help me won out over himself. "Access all PDT video files," he said dejectedly.

Wordlessly, I brought my eyes back to the middle monitor before us, now centered on two video files. The thumbnail of one was the same image as the photo we'd seen while the other was a clean laboratory setting. Without waiting for me to snap on him again, Dick pressed play on the first video.

The video started with several people in lab coats walking across the screen before a single female who looked in about her forties with pale golden hair pulled back from her face stopped center to face the camera. She held a clipboard in her hand that looked thick with paperwork as she began to speak. "Today we will begin the final stages of injection with the subject. Her hormone levels are high, which we believe will lead to an interesting outcome if reactive correctly. Thus far in the experiment she has not shown any negative symptoms or hints of rejection to the concoctions. Behavioral differences, however, have been noted as more easily susceptible to bouts of anger and violence, a change in understanding of morals and a stronger presentation of floral manipulation. Expectations following this final injection are unspecific but to say that the subject should be exhibiting strength far beyond that of those whose DNA has been forged with her own."

The camera adjusted after her words, sliding its frame to the right to reveal a younger me strapped to a vertically standing gurney. I wore plain white scrubs but for the dark and blocky letters reading CADMUS LABS on my pant leg and something dark across the space of my mouth. I looked tired and tense, but in no way fought back against whatever was about to happen to me; something that seemed drastically out of character to me.

A few feet away, several others in lab coats stood by computer monitors and taking notes while the woman who had just spoken made her way to a tray beside me. The camera zoomed in closer as she nodded to one of her colleagues and lifted a large syringe full of a slightly yellow tinted liquid.

Present day me felt my heart slamming into my chest at the image, whether from a repressed memory of what was about to happen or not, I couldn't say. Instead, I could only ball my hands into tight fists as I wondered why the past me just laid there and waited.

The woman didn't even look at my face as she cleaned a spot on my arm and put the needle through the skin. I swore I felt a phantom pinch as I watched her plunge the concoction into my body without so much as a warning and then put the empty needle back down on the tray beside me.

Within seconds, my younger self started convulsing and thrashing against the restraints holding me down to the flimsy bed. Despite the obvious pain I must've been feeling and going through, and the tense bend of my neck, I didn't seem to make a sound in reaction. There were at least eight people in that room, watching me suffer through their little experiment, and none of them did anything to try and calm or comfort me. It was as though I was just an expendable lab rat that they could replace should it all go wrong.

I watched as the convulsions started to slow but the tension in my body coiled harder against the restraints. The camera zoomed in on the space from my chest and above, and I saw the familiar rise of my shoulders just seconds before the powerful scream exploded from me. The gag they'd placed was blown free from my mouth as the sound escaped and we only heard it for a few seconds until its soundwaves crashed across the room, knocking everyone backwards, including the camera man.

The camera was thrown across the tiled floor, all sound now muted, but kept a partial view of where I was restrained; though not for much longer. At first, there was nothing to see but off kilter feet running toward me, and then foliage slid on screen after them, coiling at their like snakes on prey. The room began to fill with it, lifting the camera off the floor and angling it to center once more on me as they tore the restraints from my body. Finally, free but clearly angry, my younger self brought her eyes to the camera before smiling wickedly. The scientist who had injected me was being held by vines beside me, her arms and legs spread out around her as she tried to pull away.

With a silent snap of my fingers, the foliage tugged and tore her into pieces, her blood splattering everywhere including one side of me. Seemingly satisfied with myself, the past me gestured in different directions, thorned vines lashing out and impaling others in the room. I winced as I watched, internally hearing the screams that the footage had fallen deaf to.

Something off screen caught my younger self's attention, hand raised in an attack order. Some of the foliage reacted, though it was short lived. What seemed like invisible attacks hit me, throwing off my balance so that I fell against the abandoned gurney. Red blots began to form on the scrubs and then the camera crashed down among the rubble, catching feet running on screen, paired with what was clearly tactical gear.

It was as I watched a booted foot kick the camera that I realized what had happened; they'd shot and presumably killed me.

The video footage cut out after that but I couldn't bring myself to look away from the dark screen. With every blink I saw the outline of that final image on my eyelids and my emotions started building in me. Anger. Disgust. Betrayal.

Unsatisfied.

Concerned with my silence, I felt Dick take a step towards me, one hand hovering at my lower back. I expected him to say something kind to comfort me; instead, he said the exact thing that was in my mind. "I will kill every single one of them for what they did. I will burn the place to the ground if I have to."

Momentarily surprised, I finally turned my face to meet his eyes. His features were twisted somewhere between murderous and pained, hitting me like a stab through my chest that managed to plunge just enough to cause damage but not instantly kill me. This. This was the look I'd seen on his face the night he went off on his own to kill Tony Zucco.

This was the look that had taken everything away from me.

This chapter was supposed to end on a slightly different note than this but I got lost in the moment 😂 Bright side, it gives me a perfect segue into a very important (to me anyway) flashback.

THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR NEARLY 24K READS AND 1K VOTES! 😭
This fic has been so much fun to write and honestly I wish Black Dahlia was an actual DC character so NightDahlia would be cannon.

Anyways, what did you guys think of the chapter? How do you think it's going to affect the story going forward? And where do you think is Jason?

Hope to have another chapter soon! Once I get the flashback done, the story will be back on track with revealing more on Project Dahlia. This was just a teaser for what's to come 😉