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It’s the sixteenth of August.
“Batman to Nightwing.”
Bruce activates his gauntlet’s communicator and wills his hands not to shake.
They don’t.
A holographic image of his eldest pops up, the clear blue light the device emits jarring in the obscurity of the shadows cast by the Bat-signal.
“Nightwing to Batman.” Dick replies with forced cheer. Mock cheek. Trying to keep his mind off things, no doubt. It usually works well enough.
Not tonight. It’s the sixteenth of August, and he’s spent the past three days chasing Pamela Isley’s growing trail of violence. He’s prioritized. Lives over death. Rooftops over the cemetery. The mission over his son’s birthday. It’s the logical choice. The moral one, even. People were dying, Batman was needed to put a stop to hers and Crane’s rampage.
“Ivy’s been dealt with.” He announces, when the short moment of silence causes Dick’s expression to harden. “I managed to obtain a sample of the new strain.”
Without waiting for further acknowledgment, he sends the necessary information to the Batcomputer. They’ll know what to do, how to create an antidote. They’ll distribute it to the affected. The danger’s passed.
Dick looks down, presumably at the new intel that shows up on his screen, and lights up. A real smile, not the mocking parody he was sporting mere seconds ago. It causes blood to bubble up from his mouth. It stains his teeth, drips down his chin. His eyes are a jarring, unfocused, milky white.
His domino mask’s lenses, the logical side of Bruce’s brain argues. The boy had insisted on suiting up, despite his being confined to the Cave. He’s fine, only benched because of a twisted ankle. Not a caved-in skull, not a charred cheekbone. Not a broken collarbone, popping out of the skin, having given way to blunt force. That’s the fear gas’ influence, twisting his thoughts, turning Bruce’s own brain against him.
This time, it is.
Bruce closes his eyes. He needs to focus.
Fact: Bruce’s been fear-gassed during his fight with Scarecrow and Ivy.
Fact: The Batmobile isn’t very far from his position, a few blocks at the most.
Fact: Nightwing is injured.
His breathing picks up. Still, he chooses to ignore it. If he starts grappling back now, he can make it before the worst of the hallucinations sets in. There’s no need for Nightwing to get involved, no need to come get him, possibly aggravating his injury. Once he gets to the car, he can risk it. Activate autopilot, strap himself in, warn Alfred.
It’s forcing Dick’s hand in a way he won’t appreciate in the slightest.
Bruce cuts the transmission off when he obtains confirmation that they’re working on an antidote. Before Nightwing can ask, or remark upon, anything else.
Then, he’s moving.
----------
The telltale sounds of a fight draws him back out of his head, a mere two blocks from the Batmobile. A delighted laugh, the painful thump of flesh meeting flesh.
He’s in no state to continue patrol, not with how raw the memories are, how real they’re getting, but he can’t very well choose to ignore it either. Hallucination or not, he can’t take the risk without at least getting a clearer understanding of the situation.
Bruce still has himself under enough control to risk a short detour.
Tim would likely argue.
He lands at the scene to see a man round-kicking two other, way bigger men with a victorious cry. He laughs, and the laugh is just familiar enough to have Bruce freezing.
The man turns. He’s just a boy, really. Tall, muscular, but gangly and awkward the way still growing teenagers tend to be. He flinches back at the sight of Bruce, then settles in frown of distrust he’s been confronted to a thousand times before. Clenched teeth bared in a defensive sneer, a faint splatter of freckles. Blue eyes glaring daggers in his direction, daring him to try anything.
It switches to a look of pure wonder, and Bruce has to remind himself to breathe.
Seeing Jason tonight, he’d expected. A given. But him being grown, that’s- It’s new. Whether that’s due to the new strain, today’s date, or a vicious combination of the two, he’d have to determine back in the Cave.
He wants to slam his eyes shut, but only ends up drinking the sight in greedily. The world has whitened around the edges.
“B.” The voice is painfully familiar. Rougher, deeper, than it ever had the chance to get. No longer squeaking between highs and lows – fifteen, fifteen forever, fifteen for the rest of Bruce’s life – the voice of the adult he should have been. It shouldn’t sound so relieved. “B. Dad.”
Look, B. I know you said I was to stay in the car, and I wanted to, I did-
Arms cross. Eyes narrow. The right side of his face is red, puffy, already bruising. He’s the very picture of defiance, and Bruce just knows what’s coming next.
-But then, I heard the gunshots. Really helped me realize just how stupid of an idea that was. And, hey, look: I helped! You’re not pavement jelly. I’m fine, if a little more purple than I usually am-
“B.” The voice insists, angry, like Bruce isn’t doing enough, reacting quickly or efficiently enough for Jason’s tastes. It’s all wrong, Jason should be sassing him, should try to shut him down with a sassy, clever remark-
Bruce was wrong.
He can’t do this. He doesn’t have himself under control. Not in the slightest.
He reaches to take hold of the apparition. It feels real, so real, under his fingers, and Bruce doesn’t hear the whimper that escapes his mouth, drowned as it is by Jason’s sigh of relief.
----------
Bruce wakes to aching muscles and a tight throat.
Bruce wakes to Jason’s glaring absence and Dick sitting at his bedside, silent but scowling up a storm.
The hallucination isn’t there. Of course it isn’t.
He swings his legs over the edge of the cot, suppressing a grunt.
“I had it handled.”
Dick’s laugh is bitter, incredulous. Bruce concentrates on extracting the needle from his arm, letting the contents of the IV drip on the paper sheets. A small wad of cotton takes care of the blood that’s welling up from the puncture wound.
“Sure could have fooled me.”
“Dick.” He warns. He can’t. Not tonight.
“Bruce.” Dick bites back, on the verge of yelling already.
They stop, as the sound of rushed footsteps reach them. They’re a warning, a considerate one. An attempt not to startle him while he recovers from the fear gas, perhaps.
Then, Tim comes into view. He’s breathless – which is more than a little concerning, considering the amount of stamina required to survive as a vigilante – as well as beaming, almost outright grinning.
At first, his focus is almost entirely trained on Dick, but at the sight of Bruce, he skids to a stop, sliding the last meter of cold cave ground on his worn socks.
“Oh- You’re awake.”
He’s almost bouncing on the spot, looking younger than his actual age. That sort of lack of decorum is unusual for him, even more so since Damian’s arrival.
“What happened.”
He doesn’t miss the look his children share. Tim’s ecstatic but cautious, Dick’s starting to turn reluctantly hopeful.
“Nothing.” Tim rushes through the rest of his sentence. “Well, not nothing, but I really would be more comfortable talking to Dick about it first, and to you later. If-... you don’t mind?”
Bruce minds. Bruce could use some good news.
“What happened.” He repeats flatly.
His third s- the boy, he’s not Bruce’s he has to remind himself of that, slips past his guard with a quick hug. It’s a rarity, him initiating physical affection.
“Nope.” He chirps, not minding the way Bruce hugs back, not-so-subtly patting him down for injuries. Fear gas is difficult to deal with, even when it’s out of his system. Tim knows that. “Give me a few hours to be sure, then I swear I’ll tell you.” He steps back. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
He’d call it emotional manipulation in any other situation. From anyone else. But he doesn’t think he’s ever seen Tim so genuinely hopeful before, and he doesn’t have any ground to stand on. He backs off. A few hours is not an entirely unreasonable time-frame.
“This afternoon.”
Tim nods, a quick smile still managing to escape his poor mask of calm.
Bruce’s fingers itch with the need to do something, to search, to know.
“Sure. I can work with that. But you don’t get to be mad we didn’t tell you sooner.”
“Tim.” He warns.
“You don’t.” Dick counters, tone firm but having lost the most of the hard, angry, edge from before. “At least we’re telling you.”
Subtle.
---------
He doesn’t mean to spy. It’s more of a matter of needing a distraction, and a touch of bad timing.
“Dick, I think it’s really him.”
“Really whom?” Bruce asks as he pushes into the room.
But there’s a picture of Jason on the screen. A camera feed depicting his hallucination from the night before next to it.
It’s Tim slamming his laptop closed that all but confirms it.
.
His world shatters again.
Strange.
He’d have thought the fear gas to be out of his system by now.
---------
Finding Jason is easy, after that. He’s in all the places Bruce has been painstakingly avoiding for the last two years. The run-down apartment he used to share with Catherine Todd. His old hiding spots. Even his favorite gargoyle.
In front of the building Bruce’s office is in.
The Jason in the video, so much younger than the one from Tim’s camera feed, looks up the length of the skyscraper, as though rooted in place. After a few long minutes, he shakes himself out of his daze, and darts back in the crowd.
Bruce checks the timestamp. It’s no near-miss. He wasn’t planet-side on that particular week. He couldn’t have done anything, couldn’t have spotted him, found him, brought him back.
Just like last time, files go flying. Mugs shatter on the stone ground of the Cave. A screen ends up broken.
The Case stands, silent, judging.
----------
Just like last time, it’s Tim that finds him, takes a good look at him – at the utter mess he’s made of things – and ushers him back up to Dick and Alfred.
To Jason.