To tame a Demon (english)

Chapter 33: The many sides of the same

"Damn it Dick! Get your feathered ass off the ground already and stop pushing this depressive act! I didn't sacrifice all my stuff just so you could starve yourself to death now! Come...on...out...ALREADY!"

Roughly and with all his strength, the annoyed Outlaw tugged at the unyielding wings that held their wearer tightly locked beneath them.

Jason had given him everything the Manor's kitchen had to offer. From poultry to beef, from eggs to energy bars.

But this stubborn mourner spurned all the food that usually gave him so much pleasure. Damn! He wasn't even interested in tobacco. And Jason was getting pretty annoyed by this behavior!

So he pulled and pushed at him, aiming at least to finally get to see Dick for once. Which, of course, didn't work out.

"Jason, it's no use. He's easily a hundred times stronger than you. If he doesn't want to come out, your tugging around won't change that either."

Tim sat a few feet from the cage on a large metal box in which the many spare batarangs were stored for their use. Leaning next to him were his crutches and in front of him a hologram that, in addition to his analysis, showed Bruce's current location in a separate window.

Grumbling at the failure to finally get Dick to touch a crumb of food, Jason stepped out of the cage and dropped down beside the teenager, arms folded in annoyance as he continued to complain about their current problem:

"This depressive behavior of the turkey is really starting to get on my nerves! Now I've decided to move back into this damn house for him, and all we've accomplished are regressions. Just the fact that I get to see Bruce every day now makes me bile up to my neck. Speaking of which, is he still distracted?"

A quick glance at the screen followed before Tim just gestured in confirmation:

"Aside from the fact that he's finished his morning coffee by now, he still continues to sit by Damian's bedside. I assume that the fact that Damian has developed a fever is keeping him there. Even though it sound a little macabre, thanks to him we should be undisturbed for now."

Jason groaned in exasperation. It was predictable that the little one in his weakened condition would not be able to avoid a fever. Although they had always made sure that everything was neatly disinfected, germs could not be completely eliminated in the end. So far, however, his fever was not too bad. Hopefully it stayed that way.

"Any other ideas on how we can motivate Dick?"

Tim snapped Jason out of his thoughts again and the Outlaw pivoted in his musings. Without much further puzzling out the individual sparks of thought, he quickly answered unmotivated:

"We could light him on fire."

"What?!"

"Oh man that was just a joke. He wouldn't care anyway. He'd probably be more than happy about the warmth."

Tim let out a long sigh. Why did Jason, of all people, have to be the person with whom he somehow had to find solutions to their many problems? His specialty involved brute force rather than constructive and intelligent input into planning how to solve the problems. But they had to do something.

The teen brushed the strain off his face after that thought before drawing his own conclusions:

"We need to force Dick out of his state somehow. Maybe we can get his attention for something or provoke him with stimuli like smells. But since he won't even respond to tobacco, I'm not sure what we should use to accomplish that. Maybe ammonia? Sulfur? Whereby... "