Sickness wasn’t anything new to Jason. Not that it’s a novel concept to many people—Jason’s just seen a lot of it, back in Crime Alley. Intimately familiar with the way disease sticks to someone’s skin, hollows their cheeks and permeates the air. Jason thinks of sickness and sees his mother’s sunken eyes and thinning hair, hears the way nighttime was broken by dozens of muted sniffles and stifled coughs.

He doesn’t have a thing about getting sick, but if he obsessed a bit over his health once Bruce picked him up as a brat, then that’s no one’s business but his own. Jason can’t help it, getting downed by the flu on the streets meant you weren’t able to protect and feed yourself. The selfless kid in him still quietly panics at the sight of anyone he cares about getting sick—then gets annoyed at worrying over a goddamn runny nose.

Jason’s a bit of a mother-hen about the health of his friends, to his dismay.

“You need to lay down,” Jason scolds through measured breaths. His kid was making pathetic sniffling sounds, eyes wet and hazy with what has to be a fever. Awkwardly patting an overheated arm, Jason ushers the other back to the couch. “I gotta patrol dude, you can’t wait up for me,” he tries to explain, feeling a little like a preschool teacher speaking to a child.

The change in season had brought a round of sniffles to the entire city, and with it, a spike in Jason’s anxiety. Now more than ever, he needs to out on the streets, keeping an eye on the folks down there. If only his puddle of a sidekick would cooperate.

“You’re going to be so goddamn embarrassed when you’re coherent again,” he mutters, poking his kid’s cheek and biting back a snort at the half-hearted swat it gets him. “I already gave you medicine, remember? Remember being force-fed Tylenol and Sambucol like an ornery dog?”

A part of him wants to give in. The same twitchy part of him that was always hoping his ghost of a mother would make it through his next food run.