#please note this is NOT for the hinamizawa time loop au that i wrote

[citadelofswords]

apex worsties my beloved y'all may remember marn's hinamizawa fic. a couple of months ago i had the realization hey. jason's in the baseball car and both of his close friends were just brutally murdered. wonder how he's gonna feel about that. and now i'm getting a bunch of minific out of my docs and out of my dms with marn and riley so congrats! y'all get this one first.

The baseball game is on hold, since there aren't enough passengers to make a full game. Mob sits on the bench in the dugout and almost immediately falls sideways— Audrey lurches forward, but when she puts two fingers under his chin his heart is still rabbiting. 

"I think he's just asleep," Trish says quietly. Audrey folds to her knees and exhales, feeling the stress and terror bleed out of her. "I don't blame him," Trish adds. "I don't think any of us got that much sleep, not after—,"

"Don't say it," Audrey grits out. But when she cranes her neck to look behind her, Trish looks as devastated as Audrey feels. 

"I didn't want to," Trish says. "He was my friend. But you're also my friends. And I didn't know what else to do." 

Her hands are shaking. Audrey grabs one of them before she can second guess herself. "I'm sorry," she says. "Thank you. But I'm sorry." 

Trish swipes her free hand under her eyes. "I want to know what happened," she says. "He wasn't like that when we met. That was wrong." 

Audrey opens her mouth to respond, but then hears from behind her, "You used to have more guys running with you than this." 

Trish looks up first. When she doesn't move, Audrey controls her breathing and turns around to look at Jason Todd, still in his stupid mask but with a baseball jersey on and a bat slung over one shoulder. 

"I'm not complaining," Jason says. "I mean, I am; we can't leave the car until one team or another wins, and we can't play without full teams. But—," He stops, and looks between the two of them, then to Mob, and back to Trish. "Who died?" 

Audrey flinches. Trish says, "Do you want the list?" 

Jason's eyes go wide, and he sets down his baseball bat. "I was joking," he says. "What the fuck happened since the last time I saw you?" 

"Ran into the Apex," Trish says, ticking it off on her fingers. "Something happened to Al. Not sure what. Shadow got off the train. Al killed two people. I killed him. Now we're here." 

"Al did?" Jason thinks. "Huh. I didn't expect that. Maybe you or the hedgehog, but not him."

"Thanks," Trish says flatly. 

"So who'd he kill?" Jason looks between the three of them again. "You picked up more strays in the meantime, I'm assuming, unless he killed denizens." 

"They were passengers," Audrey says, thinking of Roxas. "They had long numbers."

"Former Apex, both of them. Audrey adopted Roxas at the same time that Shadow left and then Shoka followed us— hey, what?" 

Jason has gone bloodless. "Roxas," he says. "And Shoka? He—," He swallows; Audrey can hear it, and winces. 

"You knew them," she guesses. Jason nods, jerky. "I'm sorry." 

For a moment, looking up at Jason's face, twisted with grief and rage, she's afraid she's about to see even more blood. If the way Trish shifts closer to her, legs bumping up against her back, she's not the only one. 

But Jason just pulls his mask off and swipes the back of his hand over his eyes. "Shit," he says. Looking at him, Audrey realizes he's not that much older than either of them— sixteen, maybe seventeen. "You killed him already, you said?" 

"Yes," Trish says. "Sorry if you wanted to kill him yourself, but he would have killed us." 

Jason sighs. "Yeah, okay." He glances out to the field, and then puts his mask back on. "This just happened, I assume?" 

"In the last car, yeah." Audrey blinks at him. "What are you— where are you going?"

"Gonna go figure out what happened. Who did that to him. And then I'm gonna kill them." Jason's face twists like he's grinning, and Audrey shivers seeing it. "Can you do me a favor though? There was a girl I met a couple cars back. Cute, blonde— she got caught in a pod and dragged to the caboose, but she stopped it from catching me and I kind of owe her. Can you go break her out?" 

Audrey opens her mouth to agree, but Trish cuts her off before she can. "No," she says. "I mean, maybe later. Definitely later. But I'm going with you first."

She and Jason both turn to look down at Audrey, who swallows. Thinks about Al sitting next to her in the casino, and covered in blood in the Korean BBQ car, and the blood currently staining her hands. 

"Yeah," she says, finally. "If you don't mind. I want to be there too. And we can't leave Mob without us." 

"Fine." Jason sits down; he doesn't look happy, but there's a note of understanding in his eyes, warring with the grief that's still there. "So while we wait for him to wake up, tell me everything you know. Let's figure this the fuck out."