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Chapter Text

Jason cursed as another wave of gas enveloped the room.  The people he’d been fighting were crazed and vicious and Jason had nearly been overwhelmed twice.  Goddamn rubber bullets.

He ducked a punch from someone who was glaring at him like he’d killed the guy’s mother.  Why was everyone so goddamn angry?  Typically the reaction to seeing the Red Hood was hate and fear, not all-out rage.

He didn’t know what kind of hopped up fear toxin this was, but it was becoming apparent that he maybe should’ve checked in with the Bats before crashing into the warehouse.  But whatever was in the air, it wasn’t getting through the filters in his helmet, and Jason finished up his fight before retreating deeper into the warehouse.

The latest Robin, Black Bat, and the old man were there, all of them working in tandem as they moved to take down their aggressive attackers.  The rest of the Bats had been called away to a growing fire on the other side of the city and Jason had wavered before deciding to lend a hand.

Jason hissed as someone’s punch connected, slamming into his ribs, and he twisted away from the follow-up strike, aiming his gun at the guy’s fingers.  This close, the rubber bullet smashed straight into his hand and fractured bone.

The guy didn’t stop and Jason had to nearly dive into another thug to get away from the follow-up kick.

There was definitely something wrong.  The man hadn’t even flinched.

Jason dearly wished he could get his hands around Crane’s neck, but for the moment he fired a grapple at the ceiling, getting out of the murderous mob before someone got in a lucky shot.  The thugs plowed into each other, their aggression clearly not differentiating between ally and enemy.

Even Batman was having difficulty taking players out of the fight and Jason was ready to call this whole thing a wash.  They’d have a better go of it if they cordoned off the area and made sure no one left.  Let a bunch of thugs pummel each other to pieces.

He was about to call it when—

They were slowing down now, sprints turning into stumbles, punches turning into clumsy slaps, and when they went down, they stayed down.  Soon all of the thugs were on the floor, some of them passing out where they stood.

Jason warily returned to the ground.

“They’re still alive,” Batman growled, checking the vitals of the man closest to him.  “They need a hospital.”

“And what if they wake up crazy again?” Jason muttered, stepping around the bodies.

“The hospital has restraints,” Batman answered, “We’ll take some samples to test out what this is.”

If this wasn’t some new variant of fear toxin, then that meant that there was someone else manufacturing drugs in Gotham and that was definitely a problem.

“You’re coming to the Cave,” Batman said shortly and Jason looked up in time to see the swish of the cape.

He gritted his teeth and bit back the ‘what, can’t scold me here?’ and stalked off towards his bike.  He didn’t want to go to the Cave, he didn’t want to hear another of the old man’s lectures, but he knew from experience that if he didn’t get it over with now, he’d be ambushed at his latest safehouse.

“Sure thing, boss,” Jason snapped, and revved his motorcycle loudly to drown out any response before heading for the Cave.

“—was reckless and dangerous, the agreement to using less-lethal weaponry was for you to be careful—”

Jason ignored Bruce and stared at the computer screen over Tim’s shoulders, deriving a small amount of enjoyment from the fact that the Replacement tensed every time Jason edged a step closer.  There were molecules spinning across the screen as the kid ran the analysis on the toxin, the canister left on the table.

“Doesn’t seem to be a fear toxin variant,” Tim mumbled, tapping away at the keys.

“Angry,” Cass concurred from her perch on top of the Batcomputer, “Not thinking.  Only anger.”

“What about targeting?”

“No, they attacked anyone who attacked them,” Jason said, effectively cutting off Bruce’s tirade.  “Didn’t differentiate between their own men and us.”

“Were you listening to a single thing I said?” Bruce growled.

Jason blinked up at him.  “Sorry, you were saying something?”  Steph muffled a chuckle from the other side of Tim.

Bruce gave him a dark look.  “I was saying that you showed a complete disregard for lives tonight, using your guns at close range—”

“Rubber bullets!”

“Which you know full well can be lethal,” Bruce said, crossing his arms.  He’d taken off the cowl, but not the rest of the suit, and it was an eerie dissonance.

Jason didn’t particularly care about Batman’s lectures.  He did not, however, want to be on the end of Bruce’s reprimands.

“I’m sorry, was I supposed to let them pummel me?”

“—ten, fifteen minutes maybe.  Then they fell,” Cass illustrated by jumping off the Batcomputer and into a controlled collapse.

“Adrenaline crash, perhaps?” Tim mused.

“You could’ve used alternative methods,” Bruce said, his jaw set in the same way it always was when they discussed Jason’s guns.

“There were no alternative methods!” Jason seethed.  Batman hadn’t been able to stop them either, he’d just kept up with the flow better.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have come.”

Jason flinched back.  Bruce’s gaze went hard and cold, his lips thinning out into a flat line.

“Oookay,” Dick leapt up onto the platform, an uneasy smile on his face, “I think that’s—”

“You’re right,” Jason said flatly, “I shouldn’t have come.”

“Jason—” Dick started and Jason raised his middle finger without turning.  Bunch of idiots that couldn’t even say thank you.

He slammed his helmet back on and headed for the garage and his bike, bodily checking Tim’s chair along the way and ignoring the Replacement’s squeak as the chair banged into the table.

Something clattered onto the floor and started hissing.

“Oh shit,” Tim said faintly, and all the conversation in the Cave stopped dead.

Jason spun back around—the canister, the one that some idiot had left too close to the edge of the table, had fallen off.  And opened.

Jason dove back for it and slammed the lid closed.

Tim was backing away from the chair, his face pale.  Cass and Damian had been the only two with their rebreathers close enough to slap on.  Dick wavered in place, his expression eerily blank.  Steph looked like she was holding her breath.

“Activate Cave lockdown,” Bruce said, and every exit in the room slammed shut.

Jason swore.  At least three of them were compromised, they needed to get into isolation so that they could monitor the symptoms and synthesize an antidote.

“Cass, Damian, we need to—” Jason broke off when he met Cass’s wild eyes.  She dropped her rebreather.  Damian let his fall as well.  They were both staring at him.

Jason edged back and froze at the heavy weight of a glare on his back.  Dick was blocking the stairs off the platform, his gaze hard.

Steph clawed her way up next to Tim, eyes narrowed and lips pursed.  Tim was staring at him like he’d like nothing more than to repay Jason for every wound he’d suffered at his hands.

Jason swallowed.  He was starting to get the feeling that he was on the wrong side of those locked doors.  If he made a break for the—

Batman dropped down next to the computer, his face twisted with something worse than hate.

Jason felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.  “Guys—” his voice cracked, “How about we talk this over?  You’re the ones always preaching about excessive violence, aren’t you?”

Nothing but six exceedingly unfriendly stares.

“Fuck.”

Jason had no illusions about his ability to hold up against the Bats.  One of them, two of them?  Perhaps, depending on which two.  Three, or four, on his home turf, with alleys and safehouses and weapons?  Sure, he’d give it a go.  Five, with careful planning and traps and contingencies?  Wouldn’t be the best plan, but wouldn’t be impossible.

All six?  Only if he was willing to kill.

His fingers spasmed on his gun.  Rubber fucking bullets.

Sedation—no, no idea how it would react with the toxins in their bloodstream, what Jason really needed was the time to sit down and synthesize an antidote.  The holding cells, maybe—he’d have to get them in one by one, which meant the others needed to be distracted, he’d have to get the Bats to fight each other—

First, he needed to get out of this circle.  He felt like a turkey before Thanksgiving.

He shifted towards Damian, drifting slow, and turning the twist straight into a lunge at the space between Steph and Tim.  They shifted into attack quickly, but Jason sidestepped Steph’s punch and let Tim’s blow glance off his side and they turned on each other the moment he leapt off the platform.

He caught the dark blur out of the corner of his eyes and braced for impact.

Damian slammed into him, though Jason managed to turn enough so that the kid scraped across his side rather than nailing him in the ribs.  He might as well start with the demon brat—Jason ducked under Damian’s attack and kicked him straight in the chest, sending the kid skidding to the back of the room.

To the cells.

Damian was good, Damian had League training, Damian was Robin—but the thing with all his training was that rage was a detriment.  He didn’t know how to use anger, and the artificial aggression made him sloppy.

Jason, on the other hand, had no problem grabbing the kid, ignoring the vicious elbow to his ribs—boy was he glad he wore armor—and throwing him bodily in the first cell before slamming the door shut.

Damian bared his teeth in a snarl and ran at the door, clawing and punching and screaming.

Unfortunately, Jason didn’t have the time to worry about the brat hurting himself.  The toxin had worn off the others in the warehouse after, what, fifteen minutes?  The demon brat could keep till then.

He could lock himself in a holding cell.  Bunker down until the toxin ran its course.  If it ran its course.

But—those thugs in the warehouse hadn’t gotten back up.  Jason was currently the only one sane enough to synthesize an antidote.  If he locked himself away and they never woke up, he’d be stuck inside the cell.

Jason remembered the distinct feel of scrabbling frantically at a locked door and felt his stomach twist.

“Fucking Bats,” Jason snarled, heading back to the sound of fighting.

His shoulders tensed despite his best efforts—he could feel the gaze stuttering on his back, but if the Black Bat came after him, he’d be lucky to get a warning.  He had to hope that someone else was distracting her.

Steph and Tim were facing off on the platform, while the sound of harsh blows echoed from deeper in the Cave.  Jason decided to tackle the easier problem first.

Neither Steph nor Tim could be hauled around like Damian, so Jason picked up a stray…rubber duck, what the hell, who had decided to give the thing a cowl and a cape?

Jason picked up the duck, resolving to ask a whole bunch of questions later, and threw it at the Replacement’s face.

It was kind of creepy, how quickly both their gazes snapped to him.

They stalked towards him, step in step, and it quickly accelerated from creepy into slightly terrifying, not that Jason was planning on mentioning that to anyone.

“You wanted a rematch that bad, Replacement, you could’ve just asked,” Jason said, ducking the bo staff and slamming his elbow into Steph’s stomach.  She stumbled back and Jason hissed as the bo staff caught his helmet.  It didn’t crack, but it was a near thing—the Replacement usually didn’t go straight for a headshot.

Jason stumbled back, drifting until he was reasonably certain that the door to the cell was behind him, and winced as he caught Steph’s kick.  Tim moved in, staff flashing, and he let them push him back, dodging punches and kicks and gritting his teeth through the ones that landed.

Another step back.  Another.  Blondie always fought with half an edge of rage, but Jason had no idea that the Replacement could be so vicious.

One step before the threshold, Jason dropped under Steph’s punch and lunged at Tim.  The bo staff caught him in the shoulder—a brief burst of pain—and Jason ignored it as he grabbed the younger boy’s shirt and twisted, using his momentum to fling him inside the cell.

Unfortunately, Steph sprang after Tim and Jason cursed, grabbing her by the hair—he had neither the time nor inclination to be gentle—and dragging her out before he slammed the door shut.

“Separate cells,” he growled—and let go of her hair with a snarl as she snapped her foot back, catching him in the definitely-sore, now-probably-cracked ribs. 

“Goddamn, how are you the more annoying Batgirl?” Jason hissed, stumbling back and flinching the moment the words left his mouth.  He really hoped Babs hadn’t heard that.

Steph leapt at him—Jason was glad he’d kept his helmet on, because she looked like she was ready and willing to claw his eyes out—and Jason dodged her punch, caught her arm, and slammed her against Tim’s cell door.

It didn’t slow her down in the slightest.

Definitely not just aggression.  Something was dampening all other signals from getting through—fear, pain, and whatever morals usually kept the Bats from ripping out his throat.

Steph might’ve fought like Crime Alley—quick and dirty—but Jason had the Alley in his bones and the League in his veins.  Quick and dirty and final.

He ducked the flurry of punches, caught a hand and used it to spin her, twisting the arm up into a hold.  She slammed her head back, and he let her, blinking in bemusement as her skull crashed against his helmet.

Blinding rage.  Apt.

Jason shoved her through the open door and slammed it shut before she could turn around.

“Three Bats down, three more—”

For a second, Jason didn’t understand what had happened.  The world had gone fractured—one part the familiar tinted visor-narrowed vision, the other vivid normalcy.

There was blood on his tongue and something stinging across his face.

The world spun around him and Jason snapped to reality when his head was a split second away from a collision with the wall.  He caught himself with a hand, spinning out with a punch—the world twisted, light shining through the cracks in his helmet—and following up with a kick as Dick smoothly ducked out of the way.

Jason couldn’t entirely suppress the shudder.

“Hated the helmet that much, Dickface?” Jason asked, spitting out glass.

Dick responded with a whirl of his escrima sticks.

Jason was pressed on the defensive, unable to attack, a headache growing as he tried to fight with jagged vision, plainly aware that his knives were not a match to Dick’s escrima sticks.

The sounds of fighting had all but disappeared and Jason was taking glances he couldn’t afford to check if Cass and Bruce were going to attack him too.  Dick seized on his distraction, one hand snapping up at Jason’s face, the other slamming a stick into his ribs.

This time, he felt something crack.

Jason bit down on the groan, his head ringing as glass tinkled to the floor.

He swiped with the knife, Dick ducked under his guard and slammed a stick into his side—electricity crackled and Jason was very glad that he was still wearing his leather jacket—knife clattering against an escrima stick, Dick was favoring his right leg but not quite unbalanced, punch to the face, kick snapping up to broken ribs—no, feinting—

Jason couldn’t suppress the scream as Dick’s kick slammed into his left calf and bone snapped.

Dick wouldn’t give him the time to recover.  Dick was rage and fury and nothing else and that meant that Jason couldn’t win a straight fight, not unless he committed to killing, but rage and fury and nothing else meant that Dick wasn’t thinking.

Wouldn’t even notice as he was led into a trap.  Jason took a hobbling step back into the cell as Dick shifted, observing and dismissing the edges of the door frame.

Dick lunged.  Jason dodged, strangled the scream as he used his bad leg to push himself out through the doorway, and slammed the door shut, nearly on Dick’s fingers.

His leg was on fire.  His head was still throbbing, his chest full of splinters, and Jason yanked the broken helmet off his head and brushed the glass off of his face.  Two more to go, and he still had to synthesize an antidote and—

Ice slid down his spine, the same cold dread that had raised the hairs on the neck of a twelve-year-old with a tire iron in his hands.

Jason turned.  Batman was ten steps away, watching him.

No Cass in sight.  Jason eased back, shifting towards the fifth cell, and Batman slid forward silently.

“Someone should tell Crane that there actually is a formula that works on you,” Jason murmured, limping back another step.

Batman followed.  There were only five steps between them now.  Without the cowl, Jason could see every line of rage on Bruce’s face— the narrowed, flinty eyes, the twisted snarl, the tense jaw.

Another wavering step and the lock pad for the fifth cell pressed against his back.  Jason carefully felt along it and activated the door.

When he drew his hand back in front, his fingers were closed around the hilt of a knife.

Bruce’s eyes flicked to the knife and Jason could see the disgust ripple across his face.  Jason almost wanted to laugh.  “Oh, you’re allowed to attack me, but god forbid I try to defend myself.”

Three steps.  Jason shifted until the open doorway was at his back.  “Come on, old man,” Jason said, tensing.

Batman was the only one who’d hesitated.  Was he trying to fight it?  Jason didn’t really know what he expected—it wouldn’t surprise him if Batman’s precious no-kill rule proved to be stronger than a chemical cocktail.

He finally shifted in reach of Jason’s knives, and Jason slashed out—he wasn’t expecting the hit to land, he just needed a dodge and an answering lunge, he needed the momentum to get Batman through the door because Jason’s maneuvering had been severely curtailed by the broken leg, thanks Dick, and he didn’t—

Batman caught Jason’s hand.  Caught and squeezed until something cracked, and didn’t stop compressing.

Jason instinctively tried to yank his hand back but there was an iron grip on his wrist and a hard arm coming down and—

Jason felt the cracks reverberate in his ears and watched with numb horror as his arm bent unnaturally.

The knife clattered to the floor.

Bruce’s face was suddenly in front of him, and Jason didn’t even have the time to raise his other arm before Bruce seized him by the collar and threw him back.  He landed hard inside the cell and automatically rolled to avoid the follow-up lunge.

He stumbled as he straightened to his feet, his broken leg shrieking and his broken arm limp and useless—Bruce was inside the cell and Jason needed to get out, had to—

Fists around his shoulder, slamming him into the wall and Jason couldn’t restrain the yelp as stars danced across his vision.

“Bruce—”

Another slam and Jason hissed, raising the second knife—Bruce blocked the strike and slammed his hand so hard against the wall that Jason could feel two fingers snap.

He kept his grip on the knife, though, and aimed at Bruce’s face—Bruce flinched, unlike the others, and Jason used the opportunity to tear himself out of his grasp and lunge at the door.

The door.  The door that was closed.

Jason tugged frantically at the handle but it didn’t budge.  It must’ve swung shut behind them.  Trapping him.

A hand closed around his throat and yanked him down—Jason took the impact on his hip and tried to roll but a heavy weight dropped down on him, pinning him in place.

Fingers closed around his throat.  Jason felt the first stirring of panic.

“B, stop—stop—”

The hands went from constricting to crushing.  Jason clawed and writhed and fought but the grip was unrelenting.

“Bruce—please—Bruce—Bruce—” He had to be in there somewhere, he had to, Batman didn’t kill, everyone knew that, Jason knew that, Jason had tested it extensively and Batman didn’t kill but Jason couldn’t breathe—

“Bruce, stop, please, Bruce—”

His chest was burning and blackness was crawling over his vision, turning everything fuzzy and dark and Bruce was on top of him, his lips curled into a snarl, glaring at Jason as his fingers squeezed tighter and tighter and tighter.

“Dad,” Jason sobbed, “Please.”

The darkness ebbed.  A breath, a full breath, and Jason was inhaling before he finished his exhale, he needed to breathe—

The fingers were back.  Crushing tight.

No, Jason thought dimly.  This was so much worse.  Kill me and be done with it.

“Stop,” Jason gasped, “Dad, stop—please—”

The fingers loosened enough for him to take a gulping breath before they constricted again and Jason didn’t know what he was babbling anymore, which sobbing pleas were in his head and which ones were out loud, and he could never take a full breath before the hands tightened again, alternating in a pattern that kept him on the edge of consciousness, and Jason just wanted it all to stop, please Dad, stop—

A harsh, sucking breath turned into another.  And another.  The weight pressing him down was limp, the fingers around his throat slack.

Another breath, and his vision cleared.  Another breath, and panic kickstarted back into gear—Jason writhed, scrambling to get Bruce off of him, ignoring the shrieking pain as broken bones were jostled.  He fought his way free and didn’t stop until his back was pressed against the wall, his chest heaving.

Bruce was out cold on the ground.  The door was still closed.

Jason curled up in the corner and tried to stop shaking.

“Jason?” came the sudden whisper and he flinched, jarring his ribs.  Cass hovered outside the cell door, her eyes trained on him.  She looked jittery and scared, but not angry.

Jason darted a quick glance at Bruce—still unconscious—and edged towards the door.  Cass unlocked it and he quickly slammed it shut behind him.

“You’re hurt,” she said quietly, her gaze flicking from the arm he held tightly to his ribs, to the leg he wasn’t putting any weight on, to the blood he hadn’t been able to entirely scrub off his face, to his neck.

Her expression twisted.  Jason didn’t need to know that it looked as bad as it felt.

“How are you feeling?” Jason rasped, scanning over her in turn.  She didn’t have any visible injuries, but her expression kept cycling through pain.

“Tired,” Cass said, and followed it up by shuddering.

Jason was saved from thinking of a response by the beeping coming from the Batcomputer.  Jason judged the distance from the cells to the platform and sighed.  “Help me there?” he asked, extending his uninjured arm.

Cass fit easily under his shoulder and Jason leaned his weight on her as he hobbled to the platform.  By the time he collapsed into the chair with a groan, his broken leg was throbbing and his ribs were registering a whole lot of displeasure.

The call was still ringing and Jason picked it up.  His voice sounded like he’d gargled gravel, he didn’t have to put any effort into modulating it.  “Batcave,” he answered.

“I’ve been trying to reach you for hours,” Gordon grumbled.

“There was a situation,” Jason said, “It’s under control now.”

There was a beat, in which Gordon probably decided and then discarded the idea of asking for an explanation.  “I was following up to see if you guys finished your analysis on the new toxin.”

“Not yet,” Jason responded, slowly tapping through Tim’s half-finished analysis with the fingers that weren’t broken.  “Have any info for us?”

“The suspects in the warehouse started waking up around twenty minutes ago,” Gordon said, “So far, no aggression.  Blood work’s come back clean.”

“Great,” Jason responded, “We’ll let you know once we have an update.”  He hung up before Gordon could ask for anything else.

“News?” Cass asked, shifting back and forth on the balls of her feet.

“Good, hopefully.”  Jason tried to get up, hissed sharply, and abandoned the task.  “Can you get a blood sample from everyone?”

Cass nodded and set off to the medbay.  Jason watched as she approached each cell door, unlocked it, stepped inside, stuck the needle inside a still-unconscious teammate, waited for the vial to fill up, and then exited the cell and closed the door.

He didn’t realize he’d been holding his breath until she closed the door to Bruce’s cell and he exhaled in a rush.

“Still asleep?” Jason asked as she gave him five vials and then drew her own.  Thankfully, Tim’s analysis apparatus had been moved to the platform.

“Will wake up soon,” she confirmed, leaning forward to hover over his shoulder as he fed the vials to the machine.  The results of the analysis popped up on the Batcomputer after a few minutes.

“Looks clean,” he said, clicking through each individual analysis and the comparisons to the previous blood work on file.  There were no strange traces or abnormal levels in anyone’s blood.

“Open doors?” Cass asked.

Jason swallowed.  The movement caught in his throat, stuck in the pressure that refused to abate even though the hands were gone.

Cass was watching him carefully.  “One at a time,” she decided.

“Sounds like a plan,” he said.  Cass hadn’t attacked him after she woke up, hadn’t seemed angry in the slightest, and the Commissioner said that the others had been the same, but—

“Dad, stop.  Dad.  Please.”

Jason kept his white-knuckled grip on the chair as Cass hovered near the doors.

Damian woke up first, uncurling from his slumped position near the doors and groaning softly as he straightened.  Jason could tell the exact moment he registered his surroundings because he snapped into sudden alertness even as he continued his slow stretch.

He finally turned to face the door.  “Cain,” his eyes narrowed.  Cass shot Jason a look, and he nodded.  She unlocked the door.

Damian eased out warily, his gaze flickering around the Cave.  They caught on Jason, and his frown deepened.

Jason had to remind himself that the demon brat’s default expression was irritation.

“Todd,” Damian said, his gaze moving to the other cells and their occupants.  “What’s going on?”  He started for the cell containing Dick, but Cass blocked his path.

Damian whirled back to Jason, his eyes glittering with anger—Jason tensed—but his expression slowly shifted from outrage to worry.  “What happened to you?” he snapped.

You.  Dick.  Batman.  My dear loving family.

“You guys got hit by the aggression toxin,” Jason said hoarsely, waving at the canister that was now safely tucked away in a corner.  “Fast-acting, but looks like it wore off in fifteen minutes.  Your blood work’s come back clean.”

Damian eyed him, then Cass, then the cells.  “The others?” he asked.

“Should be waking up soon.”  Cass looked like she hadn’t attacked anyone at all.  Damian had only managed to get in a few punches before he’d been locked into the cell.  It made sense that the ones who’d fought the longest would wake up last.

Jason turned back to the Batcomputer as Cass handled the rest of the Bats, unlocking doors as each of them woke up.  Tim and Steph had some nasty bruises, but nothing was broken.  Dick was complaining about sore ribs and a dislocated shoulder.  Jason tapped away, continuing Tim’s analysis and ignoring them even as the noise began to drift closer to the platform.

“Code 2-Alpha-4-Echo.  Deactivate lockdown,” Bruce said.  Jason went still as the Cave creaked back open.

He let the chair swivel around as the conversation died to the murmurs.  They were all staring at him again.

“Jason—” Bruce started, reaching forward, and Jason flinched back, accidently banging his broken arm against the chair and strangling the scream into a pained hiss.

Bruce froze.  The rest of the gang looked at him with wide eyes.

Jason was done here.  “Alright,” he said, ignoring the way everyone winced at the sound of his voice, “Blood work’s clean, the Bats are awake, I’ll leave you all to it.”

“Steph, call Leslie to come to the Cave,” Bruce said firmly.

“I’m not staying,” Jason said, narrowing his eyes.

“You can’t get on your motorcycle with your injuries,” Dick frowned.

“Watch me.”

Dick pursed his lips and crossed his arms.  “Fine,” he said, clipped, “I doubt you can even get out of that chair without help.”

Jason glared at him and braced his unbroken arm on the chair, easing his right leg forward as he slowly leaned forward and—

A streak of fire shot across his chest and Jason collapsed inelegantly back in the chair.

“That’s what I thought,” Dick said, smug.  Jason bared his teeth, his fingers twitching to give Dick a black eye to match the one he already had.

He didn’t want to stay in the Cave.  He didn’t want to keep tracking Bruce out of the corner of his eye, his muscles tense.

Steph finished the call to Leslie and drifted over to help Tim continue his analysis.  Damian hovered at the edge of the platform, his expression guarded.  Cass kept twitching, her arms wrapped around her.  Dick stared at Jason for a long moment, seemed to conclude that Jason wasn’t going anywhere, and went over to Tim.

Bruce was still standing in front of Jason.  Watching him.

“Say it,” Jason snarled.  His gaze darted up to Bruce’s blank face.  “Say it, old man, I know you’re dying to.”

“Say what?” Bruce had the audacity to ask.

“Your goddamn lecture,” Jason sneered, “You hadn’t even finished the last one.”  His throat was closing up.  “So say it, tell me all the ways that I fucked up again, that I let my anger get the best of me—” it was getting difficult to breathe again “—that I put everyone in danger, that I was reckless and—and irresponsible and—”

The air wasn’t coming in and words dissolved into desperate wheezes as Jason tried to breathe, tried to swallow, tried to push past the growing burn in his chest—

“Damian, get the oxygen mask,” someone ordered, the words faint and distant.  A second—a minute—an eternity later, hard plastic was pressed into his hand and guided to his face.

Jason wheezed for a few more breaths before he took one big enough to dissolve the black dots sputtering across his vision.

“Just say it,” Jason repeated, weary, “Get it out of your system.”  Bruce didn’t say anything.

“Alright, I’ll just run through the highlights then,” Jason slumped further in the chair.  “Your temper is out of control, blah, blah, you have to be more careful, yadda, yadda, stop endangering my family—”

“Jason,” Bruce cut him off, “You are a part of this family.”

Jason laughed.  Or tried to, the sound that came out of his mangled throat sounded more like a broken saw than a chuckle.  “I can’t believe you managed that with a straight face.”

“Jason—”

“No,” Jason snapped, “No.  I’m not a part of this family and you can’t just unilaterally—”

“Jason,” Bruce’s face was hard, “You are my son—”

“No, your son got blown up in a warehouse when you weren’t looking—”

“And I am your father—”

“You aren’t jack shit to me!” Jason snarled.  “You were a father to the kid that never stopped believing that Batman was going to save him, that died believing that Batman was coming.  I am not that kid!”

“Jason—”

“I’m not your son!”

The Batcave fell silent in the ringing echoes of the shout.  Bruce stared at him, his jaw tense.  “You called me dad,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

Jason went still.  That was a low blow.

“I would’ve called you fucking Santa Claus if it got your hands off my neck,” Jason hissed.  Bruce didn’t flinch, but something in his eyes splintered.

“I think we should table this discussion for now,” Dick said into the uneasy silence, “We’re all a little—”

“No,” Jason snapped, “You don’t understand.  You all refuse to understand.  Jason Todd died at the hands of a madman.  He’s dead.  You didn’t get your son back,” Jason narrowed his eyes at Bruce, “Stop pretending like you did.”

“Jason,” Dick started, but Bruce raised a hand to cut him off.

“Okay,” he said, and Jason blinked.

“Bruce, what—”

“Okay,” Bruce repeated, his eyes hard, “Jason Todd is dead.”  Jason hadn’t expected the words to hurt so much coming out of Bruce’s mouth.

“Bruce.”

“Then who are you?” Bruce asked, ignoring Dick’s sharp inhale.

Jason stared at him.  “What?” he rasped.

“If Jason Todd is dead, then who are you?”

“I—I don’t—”

“Who are you?  Why do you join in on our battles?  Why did you try to get us into holding cells instead of letting us tear each other apart?  Why don’t you just kill us all?  If you aren’t a part of this family, then why?”

Why?  The question echoed inside his head.  He—he wasn’t a part of their sickeningly perfect family, he wasn’t a bat—he wore the symbol only to spite them, he—he—

“Fuck you,” Jason said hoarsely, “Fuck you, Bruce.  You don’t get to ask that question.  You don’t—you—” Jason struggled to find the words to express the coiling, churning, vicious feeling in his chest, the words that could make Batman bleed the same way Jason was, the words that could tear Bruce open as easily as he laid Jason bare.

There was satisfaction in Bruce’s eyes as Jason spluttered, and he felt the tension and hurt and desperation shift to sudden, burning rage.

“It doesn’t matter who I am,” Jason hissed, lunging out of the chair, “It never mattered.”  The rage kept the pain at bay, dulled the shrieking klaxons as something in his chest shifted.  “No matter what you say, no matter what you do, your son is dead and you have to live with that.”  Darkness was flickering at the edge of his vision, the air was getting thin, someone was shouting his name, but Jason kept his gaze fixed on Bruce.

“Your son is dead,” Jason rasped, and watched something flicker behind Bruce’s eyes.  “Your son is dead, and you didn’t save me.”

The last thing he saw was Bruce’s expression twisting into heartbreak.

Chapter Text

“—Commissioner said—”

“—antidote’s not ready—”

“—out of time—”

“—can’t do this—”

“—lockdown—”

“—is Jason—”

“—Jason?  Jay?—”

“—still unconscious—”

“—don’t have time—”

“—holding cells—”

“—faith in him—”

“—don’t have a choice—”

“—B, come on—”

“Bruce!”

Laughter, high and shrill—

“You should’ve stayed gone,” Dick hissed as he snapped Jason’s arm—

Disappointment, failure, you are not who we want—

A fifteen-year-old wearing his face smiled with bloody lips—

“Jason Todd is dead.”  Seething, condemning, absolute—

Fingers around his neck, squeezing tighter and tighter and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, couldn’t ask Batman what he did wrong this time, couldn’t beg his father to stop—

Jason snapped his eyes open—dream, it was just a dream, it was just a dream.

He grabbed at the plastic biting into his face and brushed it off, wincing as the movement jarred something in his chest.  Two fingers were splinted, the other arm ached when he moved it, and he levered himself up onto his elbows to squint at the cast on his leg.

His throat felt like it had been used as a blender.  Jason tried not to think about it.

There was no one at his bedside.  Perfect.  He ignored the flashing memory-images of their furious expressions as he unhooked the IV line and pulled the oxygen mask off the rest of the way.

He had to leave before Bruce came back with his disappointed-in-you-and-all-your-life-choices expression and Dick burst forward with a guilt trip disguised as brotherly comfort and all the rest of them gave him a wide, tense berth like he’d stab them if they flinched wrong.

Jason eased off the bed, wincing as he attempted to straighten with probably-broken-definitely-cracked ribs, trying to stay balanced on one leg as he eyed the distance to the medbay doors—

There were crutches leaning against the bottom of the bed.

He was in spare clothes—sweatpants, a loose shirt, probably Bruce’s given that Jason didn’t leave his stuff at the Manor—his gear was gone, his boots were gone, but they left him crutches?

The last time Jason had been out of it enough to get treated at the Cave, they’d all but cuffed him to the bed, every possible mode of freedom guarded and out of reach.  And now he was waking up alone, with a mobility device in easy view?

Something felt…off.

Jason ignored the part of his mind that was grimly informing him that they wanted him gone and grabbed for the crutches.  He needed to get out of here before someone realized he was awake.

It was a bit difficult—one arm splinted, the other holding a crutch high to avoid injured ribs as he hobbled forward on one foot—but he managed to make it out into the Cave proper with no shrieking alarms.

It was still.  Quiet.  The chair on the platform had swiveled to face away from the Batcomputer, empty.

Too still.  Too quiet.

The Batcomputer beeped.

Jason edged around the platform—he was well aware that he couldn’t take his motorcycle, but neither did he want to be seen exiting from Wayne Manor.  The garage entrance would have to do, and he’d hail a cab when he got closer to Gotham proper.

The Batcomputer beeped again.

Jason stopped and tilted his head to look up at it.  The monitor had gone into sleep mode, and there were no clocks in the Cave to let him know if it was morning or night.  And yet the Cave was empty.

No.  Not empty.  It didn’t feel hollow, vacant, deserted.  It felt oppressive.

Jason didn’t have to be the World’s Greatest Detective to figure out that something was wrong.

The Batcomputer beeped again.

Jason bit down on his lip before changing trajectory to shuffle up onto the platform.  He’d like his gear back.  The Cave’s security cameras should tell him where they put his stuff.  It would only be a short delay.

Jason tapped at the Batcomputer, ready to pull up the security footage—a voice crackled the moment he touched the keyboard, the screen flickering to life with reports and chemical reactions and blood toxicology data.

“Jason,” Bruce’s voice said, and Jason couldn’t suppress the flinch.  “Gordon called.  The blood work failed to pick up on the dormant toxin.”

This was…a recording?  Why was Bruce leaving him a recording on the Batcomputer?  Jason cast an uneasy glance around the Cave.

“Twenty minutes ago, the people who were arrested at the warehouse suddenly became aggressive again.”

Something cold slithered down Jason’s spine.

“We didn’t have enough time to synthesize an antidote.”

Jason edged towards the Cave entrance.

“We’re in the holding cells.  All the data you need to create the antidote is on the computer.  The markers for the toxin have been isolated in the blood work.”

Jason blinked at the computer for a moment, nonplussed, before rage swelled up again.  An order.  Instructions left for a small child.  Like Bruce actually thought Jason was going to stay back and help them.

“Not my problem,” Jason hissed at the computer, before shuffling back to the door.  If they were all in holding cells, then they weren’t a threat to anybody else, and Jason was perfectly happy to go home and recuperate without worrying about checking over his shoulder for a bat-shaped shadow.

“Jason,” Bruce said, his voice lower, softer, and Jason didn’t even realize he’d stilled.  He waited, tense, as static hummed—what was it going to be this time—

“Bruce!” someone shrieked in the background of the recording, and it cut out in a flurry of movement.

Jason breathed in and out.  His chest burned with every inhale.  His throat ached with every exhale.

He needed to make sure they were in the cells.  He—he needed to be sure.  He wasn’t in any condition to take on even a single bat, and all of them were threats.

He hobbled over to the long line of holding cells and peered into each one, double-checking the doors.  Damian.  Tim.  Steph.  Cass.  Dick.  Bruce.

All out cold, curled up on the floor.  None of them masked.  A couple had bloody knuckles.  All the doors were firmly locked.

Jason pressed his left hand to Bruce’s cell door, the splints stark white against the glass, and stared.  Even in sleep, Bruce’s face was guarded, Batman lurking underneath the blankness like a shark in the depths.

“Now you know what it feels like,” Jason said quietly, “To be a rabid dog, to be so consumed by rage that you’re ready and willing to murder anyone in your path.”

To tear them to pieces with his own two hands, to watch blood splatter to the tune of screams, to destroy.

The anger was a part of him.  It had been a part of him long before he’d ever been thrown into a Lazarus Pit, and all he could ever do was learn how to manage it.  Fail, and try again.  Burn every bridge and rebuild from the ashes.

Jason pressed cold fingers to his neck and let out a low hiss as the bruising throbbed.

“Dad, please.”

“You don’t get to decide who I am,” Jason rasped, glaring.  Bruce was still and silent.  “You don’t—you don’t just get to decide that you’re my father.”

It still tugged at him, still burned and raged and seethed, poison slithering into the cracks that insecurities and tension had fractured days before he got on a plane to Ethiopia.  The Bats liked to pretend that the rage was all the Pit.  That fifteen-year-old Jason Peter Todd-Wayne had been the perfect son and Jason had come back wrong.

But that wasn’t how anger worked.

Reckless.  Irresponsible.  Impulsive.  A good soldier.  One of those had always been a lie, no matter what had been etched on a glass case that used to sit on the far wall of the Cave.

“And yet here I am,” Jason said quietly, “With your sanity dependent on my capacity to follow orders.”

It wasn’t trust.  It was a test.  It was always a test, and Jason knew that, because he always failed.

Team up with the Bats?  No, he wasn’t supposed to use excessive force.

Post-patrol debrief in the Cave?  Oops, he accidentally drugged them all.

An invitation to join the family?  He never stopped looking for the lie, pressing to see where the house of cards would topple, lashing out because it was always a trick and Jason was tired of hoping.

“I died in a warehouse, alone,” Jason said softly, “I woke up in my coffin, alone.  I was thrown into a Lazarus Pit miles from a friendly face.”  His fingers clenched into a fist, his voice dropped to a whisper.  “I needed you.  I cried for you.  And you weren’t there.”

And Jason was just—he was tired.  Of proving they didn’t care for him, over and over and over.  He didn’t know why he kept pushing them to show that he mattered when it was so obvious that he didn’t.  Why he kept setting up a question when he already knew the answer.

“But that’s the thing with rabid dogs.  You always make sure they’re on a leash.”

Enough freedom to ensure he didn’t rebel.  And the restrictions to guarantee he came to heel.

Bruce was silent and unmoving.

Jason sighed.  “Figures that I’ll only ever get the last word when you’re not conscious to hear it.”

He turned and made his way to the Batcomputer.

Oh, yes, all the data he needed to synthesize an antidote was on the Batcomputer.

It just wasn’t in a format that would make sense to any sane person.  Jason had taken nearly a half hour to figure out the organization system, because it had gone through a major overhaul since the last time he’d been using the Batcomputer regularly and at this point, he was ready to murder Tim all over again.

In addition, it wasn’t just a simple antidote he was creating, because half the Bats had preexisting complications in their blood work that needed to be kept in mind, and Tim had clearly not finishing unraveling the chemical makeup of the toxin, because a long stream of calculations ended abruptly halfway through and no other document that Jason could find had the rest of it.

Typing with only three working fingers was also not helping matters.

By the time the antidote simulations had been run and double-checked, Jason had a shrieking headache pulsing behind his left eye and the Cave had become even more stifling than it normally was.

Getting out of the chair took him five minutes, judicious use of the crutch, fierce swearing at whoever had decided that the chair needed to roll, and a minute-long break to lean against the table and remember how to breathe.  It was definitely getting more difficult, and a distant part of his mind pointed out that that was a bad sign.

He hobbled over to the synthesizer, the crutch feeling more and more like it was caving in his ribs, and leaned against the machine as it hummed through the process.  The vibrations felt nice, warm and soothing in a way that drew out the stabbing agony in his leg, the searing fire through his chest and throat, and the pulsing ache in his broken arm and fingers.

Jason should’ve really hunted down painkillers first.

But the antidotes were nearly done—he’d stick everybody with them and then leave and collapse into a bed at one of his safehouses and not interact with any of the Bats for at least a month.

Eyes narrowed.  Mouth twisted.  Fingers wrapping around his throat—

Jason took a ragged breath.  He wasn’t being choked.  He could breathe.  The Cave was pressing around him, tight and suffocating, but that was just in his head.  He needed to breathe.

The synthesizer chirped as it finished.

Jason retrieved the beaker, the antidote transparent with a viscosity a little higher than that of water, and grabbed six needles.  He checked body mass and the calculations he’d done to get the appropriate amount of antidote for everyone, and carefully filled each needle before marking who it was intended for.

Bag of needles in hand, he limped his way back to the holding cells.

Just needed to finish the job and get out of here.  That was it.  Make the antidote, deliver the antidote, and leave.  And think twice the next time he decided to drop in on a Bat operation.

Damian.  Jab the right number into the lockpad with sore fingers, stumble inside the room, awkwardly crouch with one working leg and a chest on fire, find the vein, press the plunger.

Check vitals.  Try to get back up without swearing.  Slump against the ground for four minutes before giving it another try.

Tim.  Rinse and repeat.  Stare dully at Steph through the glass door in the hopes that he’d spontaneously develop teleportation and he didn’t need to get off the floor.  Swear and struggle to his feet.

Steph.  His chest felt like it had been constricted by a vice.  He was breathing, he could hear it, it was loud and wheezing, but there wasn’t enough air in the room.  Every time he breathed out it felt like something snapped shut in his neck.

Cass.  He had to keep moving.  Had to—the fire was everywhere now, but he’d dug himself out of a grave with worse injuries than this and he had two antidotes left and—

Something shifted in his chest and Jason slid back down the wall with a pained hiss.  Cass was still unconscious, like the others.  He didn’t know when they’d wake up.  He didn’t know if the antidote worked.  He—

Two more antidotes.  Then it would no longer be his problem.

Jason shuffled to Dick’s cell.  Unlock door.  Kneel down—or crash down onto the one working knee because he could no longer control his descent.  Find the vein.  Dodge the punch—what the hell—

Dick was awake.  Awake, eyes open and narrowed, face twisting into a snarl, and Jason ignored the shrieking of his broken bones to tackle him and stab him with the needle.  Dick went limp near instantly.

Jason scrambled out and slammed the door shut behind him.

Was this what the toxin did?  Alternating cycles of sanity and rage?  Flip-flopping between consciousness and blind fury and exhaustion?

It was more sanity than the Pit had given him, anyway.

Jason cursed as he forced himself upright.  One more antidote.  One last cell.  He peered through the glass door—please be asleep, please be out, please—

A body slammed into the glass, and Jason yelped as he stumbled back.  He barely kept his balance as he stared into Bruce’s enraged snarl.  Eyes glittering with fury, mouth twisted, jaw rigid, hate oozing from every line of the tense face.

Jason backed up another step and tried not to shudder.  “Okay,” he said, “Guess we’re going to have to wait.”

None of the rest of the Bats were awake.  Jason clutched the remaining needle and turned away.  He didn’t want to look at that face.  At that expression.  He saw it enough in his imagination.

He could feel it itching between his shoulder blades, that razor sharp focus brought to bear on Gotham’s criminals.  On him.  He was a criminal, wasn’t he?  He couldn’t honestly expect any different.

“Fifteen minutes,” Jason said out loud.  That was how long it took the rage to burn itself out.  Fifteen minutes and he could give Bruce the antidote.

Fifteen minutes and he could leave.

Fifteen minutes.

His headache had moved past pounding and into the territory of brain-surgery-without-anesthesia.  The Cave was wavering in and out, but he managed to stay balanced on one aching leg so he disregarded the way it went a little fuzzy around the edges whenever he exhaled.

His ribs weren’t broken—some careful prodding had led to that conclusion—but they were definitely cracked and his chest felt like one big bruise.  Combined with the vice tightening around his throat and the oppressive feel of Batman’s glare, Jason was definitely not getting enough air.

His shoulder blades stopped itching.  Jason turned—Bruce had disappeared from the glass wall.

Had it been fifteen minutes?  Jason had no idea.  The rest of the Bats were still out for the count.  Jason edged closer to the door—and felt something inside him ease when he saw Bruce back on the ground.

He gripped the last needle in trembling fingers and carefully tapped out the code.  Bruce was unconscious.  It would be fine.  He just needed to find a vein.  He could leave after that.  Just needed to give him the antidote.  That was it.

Jason shuffled closer, his heartbeat thundering in his ears.  Something was squeezing around his lungs—Bruce was out cold, he couldn’t hurt him, he couldn’t—

Blue eyes snapped open.

Jason threw himself back before he even realized what he was doing, landing painfully on a bruised hip as he twisted to avoid his broken leg.  The door—he needed to close the door, he had to—

Bruce straightened and lunged at him before Jason could kick the door closed—had he been feigning unconsciousness?  Was the wait time between the toxin flare-ups decreasing?  Why hadn’t he checked—

Any hope of Bruce being back to his normal, controlling self died with his wordless snarl.

Idiot, some part of his mind screamed as Jason scrambled back, ignoring the sudden, sharp aches as his injures were jostled, will you never learn to look before leaping?

Jason did not need to be lectured about irresponsibility by his own goddamn mind, thanks, there were more than enough people willing to take up that role, and one of them was currently pinning him to the floor and—

Jason let out a strangled sob as fingers closed around his throat.

There was no time to find a vein, but Bruce had made the mistake of getting too close and Jason hadn’t let go of the needle—he aimed for the arm currently choking him out, dark spots beginning to swarm him—

Something caught his hand.  And slammed it down against the floor.  Jason gasped—he kept his fingers curled around the needle even though they were shrieking at him, even though his whole hand was beginning to throb, and he tried to twist away from the iron grip, he had to stick the needle, he couldn’t breathe, Bruce was seething—

His hand crashed against the floor, and everything went white.

Pain splintered out, fracturing as his fingers twitched—they were wet, something burned, something jagged pressed into his palm—

Jason jerked his head to see a twisted needle and a clear liquid dripping through broken fingers.

No.

Something gave way in his throat.  There was no air.  Fingers squeezed around bruises, his lungs were heaving, darkness was skittering across his vision.

Jason didn’t bother begging.  It hadn’t worked the last time.  It wouldn’t work now.  He closed his eyes—he didn’t want to see the rage on Bruce’s face.  He didn’t want to feel the sick curl of disappointment and regret and guilt and failure.

I’m sorry, he mouthed, no air left to squeeze past the choking grip around his throat.

Darkness fluttered.  Something slammed into his ribs, heavy and unyielding and Jason choked.  Fingers slipped off of his skin.

The darkness stayed its crawl.

Antidote.  The alarm of it blared in Jason’s head, to the same tune it always had—Batman down, Batman down, hurt, injured, Batman needs help, Robin go—and it helped dull the klaxons of broken bones and dry, choking gasps as he twisted out from under heavy deadweight.

Antidote.  Synthesizer.  Sixty steps to get there.

Jason didn’t know where his crutch was.  Was equally unsure of his chances of remaining upright.  Fire in his chest, fire with every breath, fire everywhere, but then why was he drowning?

The cast around his arm shrieked when he pulled himself forward, but he ignored it.  Broken fingers wailed as he clawed himself forward, but he ignored it.

Antidote.  Synthesizer.  Batman down.

Another couple of inches.  Another.  There was no air to breathe.  Something closed in his throat on every exhale, snapping shut as he wheezed.

Pain was nothing but a warning and Jason had gotten the memo.

Antidote.

Forward.  Always forward, even as the Cave wavered around him, tilting and tilting and tilting.  Like it was an earthquake.  Like it was underwater.  Round and round and round.  He felt dizzy.  He felt sick.

Antidote.  Synthesizer.  Just a little bit further.

This wasn’t a warehouse in Ethiopia, there was no clown lurking in the shadows, no crowbar, no whistling metal and snap of bone and dragging himself to a door that he knew was locked, desperate and panicked and—

No.  No, he was in the Cave.  He was fine.

Antidote.  Synthesizer.  Almost there.

The air grew stale and he could feel phantom dirt between his fingers, clawing at wood with torn fingernails and broken bones and swelling and throbbing and he needed to get out because he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t—

Synthesizer.  He’d made it.  Jason grabbed the edge of the table with broken fingers and levered upright on his one working limb—pain was just a message, he couldn’t fail, Batman needed help—and found the beaker.  The needle.  The dosage.

The distance back to the holding cells seemed twice as long.

Darkness swirling, surging, like waves on the beach, each time receding with a little more of his awareness.  Antidote.  He needed to get Batman the antidote.

For what?  He didn’t know.  Why?  He didn’t know.  What happened?  He didn’t know.

Batman—no, Bruce, no masks, there were in the Cave, Bruce was lying right outside the holding cells, still and unmoving, and there was a needle in his fingers, only they didn’t look much like fingers anymore, and the needle was in Bruce and the darkness was swirling and he didn’t know when he’d stopped breathing but there was no air and the ground was soft.

He needed to breathe.  He just couldn’t remember how.

The darkness slipped over him.

“Jason!  Jason!”

“—he isn’t breathing—”

“—no, Jaybird, please—”

“—can’t—his throat—help—”

“I’m so sorry, Jay-lad.”

“—The women who drove the carts usually spent their day on the Place de la Greve, beneath the platform of the guillotine, knitting and gossiping, whilst they watched the rows of tumbrils arriving with the victims the Reign of Terror claimed every day.—”

The voice was low and soft, the cadence dipped and rose with the story, the words teetering on the edge of comprehension.

“—“I made friends with Madame Guillotine’s lover,” she said with a coarse laugh, “he cut these off for me from the heads as they rolled down.  He has promised me some more to-morrow, but I don’t know if I shall be at my usual place.” —”

The storyteller did the voices too, seamlessly shifting from an old woman’s rasp to a sergeant’s commanding growl as Jason drifted.

The first thing he noticed was the crisp white ceiling.  Not the Cave.  Not his apartment.  He couldn’t smell the sharp tang of antiseptic that never left a hospital room.

“Little Wing?”  Dick’s head popped into view before Jason could properly work himself into a panic.

He relaxed automatically, and then tensed because he’d relaxed.  His subconscious was not allowed to make decisions on who he felt safe with.  Nope.  Jason didn’t trust Dick and his body was going to have to get with the program.

“You’re in the Manor,” Dick said softly.  Oh, great.  Like the Cave wasn’t bad enough already.  Jason had approximately negative infinity desire to play happy family with the Bats, and he attempted to sit up to facilitate a jailbreak.

Key word there being attempted.

Dick caught his shoulders a second before his chest screamed with displeasure and Jason let out a harsh exhale as he was lowered back onto the pillows.

“Four cracked ribs,” Dick said quietly, the corners of his eyes tightening, “Your left leg is broken.  Your right arm is broken in two places.  You have seven broken fingers and several metacarpal fractures across both hands.”  He paused, his gaze drifting down.  His face grew even more pained.  “And a partially collapsed trachea.”

Like Jason hadn’t figured out that last one already.  His throat felt like he’d been choked out by Killer Croc.

Or a particularly vindictive Batman.  Same difference.

At least some of his thought processes must’ve crossed his face, because Dick hunched over, his expression wavering, and Jason narrowed his eyes.  “Fuck off,” he tried to hiss.

He ended up coughing when he could only manage a harsh wheeze.

“Here,” Dick stuck a straw in his face and Jason took it with a narrow-eyed glare that hopefully communicated his extreme displeasure with the situation.

But Dick was still looking at him like he was going to vanish if he blinked.

Jason’s scowl deepened.  “What is it?” Jason tried, but ended up only with a hoarse, incomprehensible rasp.

Dick winced again.  “Dr. Thompkins said your throat would be sore for a couple of weeks.”  Jason had had sore throats before.  He’d never lost his voice.

Jason attempted to convey this to Dick, but all he could manage was a barely audible whisper of which Dick clearly only caught the profanity.

“I’m sorry,” Dick said, his face going pinched, “She recommended not trying to talk for a couple of days.”

Jason raised his hands and glared at the casts dwarfing both of them.  So sign language was out too.

“I’m sorry,” Dick repeated.

“Want to leave,” Jason managed to scrape out in a harsh whisper.  Trapped in the Manor and not able to communicate?  Absolutely not.  Jason was going back somewhere he felt safe, and it certainly wasn’t going to be around the six people that had just tried to kill him.

Dick’s expression stayed pained, but it shifted slightly to determined.  Jason narrowed his eyes.

“Jay,” Dick said softly, “You weren’t breathing.”

Oh, and whose fault was that?

“Just until you feel better, Jaybird,” Dick said, entreating, “Please.  So we know you’re safe.”

No, no, a hundred times no.  Jason gave a violent shake of his head—and nearly bit down on his tongue as the sudden movement flared the smoldering embers of a headache.

He couldn’t help the strangled whine at the sudden, stabbing pain—couldn’t help leaning into the fingers stroking through his hair as a quiet song drifted through the air in a language he didn’t understand but did recognize.

The lullaby signified home, safety, and warmth in a part of his brain he couldn’t consciously control and he let the lulling movement pull him back to sleep.

“—Chauvelin looked round once more, and there in the corner of a sofa, in the dark angle of the room, his mouth open, his eyes shut, the sweet sounds of peaceful slumbers proceeding from his nostrils, reclined the gorgeously-appareled, long-limbed husband of the cleverest woman in Europe.—” the storyteller continued, their voice rich and deep.

Dick was gone the next time he opened his eyes, and a different Bat perched on the chair beside his bed, watching him as he shifted to a more comfortable position.  Jason almost barked out a laugh—the temporarily mute and the selectively mute, what a fantastic combination.

Cass observed him for a long moment before easing forward.  She adjusted the cushion under the cast on his left leg, and then darted closer to pull him up so he was slightly reclined upright.

“Thanks,” Jason murmured, breathing through the brief jab of pain at the movement.

Cass smiled at him.  “Thank you, little brother,” she said, and made a jabbing motion to indicate a needle.

Jason sighed.  “My fault,” he forced out, “My mess.”  His responsibility to clean up.

Cass considered him for a moment before vehemently shaking her head.  Jason raised an eyebrow.

“Not your fault,” Cass frowned, and then made the hand motion she did whenever she couldn’t put her thoughts into words.  “It is—you—you helped.  You were hurt.”

That wasn’t the way everybody saw it.  Jason simply sighed again, too exhausted to try and argue, especially when he had to pick and choose every word he clawed out of his throat.

Cass looked at him again before nodding decisively, like his lack of response meant that she’d won the argument.  “Movie,” she said, grabbing the remote for the TV in the corner of the room and vaulting on top of the bed smoothly enough to not jostle any of his injuries.

Jason raised an eyebrow slowly.

Cass grinned at him, eyes glittering mischievously.  “Room for big sister?” she asked.

Jason rolled his eyes and slumped back against the pillows.  Cass slipped in next to him, and brought up some old cartoons—no words, just music and colorful characters.

“Not angry with you,” she said in a pause, just about when Jason started drifting off again.

He squinted at her, unsure of what she was talking about and quickly losing the capacity to care.

“Not angry with you,” she repeated, looking at him with a steady gaze.  It felt like a reassurance.

He slowly edged back into sleep with lilting music and a quiet humming.

He woke to giggling.  Laughter did not hold positive connotations in Gotham, and especially not for Jason, and the sound startled him all the way awake.

Something cold brushed on his toes and he instinctively curled them.

“Is he awake?  Jason, are you awake?”

Jason growled.

Something feathered down the sole of his unbroken leg and Jason kicked out automatically—prompting a bigger wave of giggles as the tickling broke off.

Jason cracked his eyes open and glared.

Steph and Cass grinned back at him from the foot of the bed.  Steph had a bottle of sparkly purple nail polish in her hands.

“You don’t mind, right?” Steph blinked wide eyes at him.

Everyone was taking advantage of his inability to speak.

Jason groaned and ignored them.  Nail polish was easier to remove than bloodstains, anyway.

They migrated from the foot of the bed after a couple of minutes and Steph hovered near him—out of reach, Jason noted, even if both his hands were broken in several places—studying him with a faint frown.

Jason raised his eyebrows with a glower, trying to communicate a terse what?  If he could speak, he’d tell her to take a picture, but he had to settle for the glower.

Steph’s expression smoothed and she held up a couple of bottles of nail polish that were—shocker—not purple.

“I can do your hands too,” she said tentatively, “If you’d like.”

Jason stared at her.  What part of this fucking situation made her feel like he wanted to have his nails painted?  He wanted to leave.  Wanted to go back to his safehouse, where people didn’t keep waking him up and humming lullabies and watching cartoons and ambushing him with nail polish and—

He’d given up on his hopes of a family in a warehouse in Ethiopia.  He had.  So why did it still hurt so much?

“Brother-sister bonding,” Cass chirped from next to Steph.  Jason closed his eyes.  He didn’t—he wasn’t—he—

“Red,” he rasped.

“What?”

He opened his eyes and glared, motioning to the darkest bottle of red in Steph’s hands.

Steph and Cass grinned.

“—Both these good folk were far too well drilled in the manners appertaining to innkeepers, to exhibit the slightest surprise at Lady Blakeney’s arrival, alone, at this extraordinary hour.  No doubt they thought all the more, but Marguerite was far too absorbed in the importance—the deadly earnestness—of her journey, to stop and ponder over trifles of that sort.—”

Low and soothing, on the edge of wakefulness, on the edge of sleep, drawing him from nightmares of bats and into memories he thought he’d long forgotten.

This time, he drifted back to wakefulness to the sound of a keyboard tapping.

He groaned, hissing as the rumble aggravated his sore throat, and blearily cracked his eyes open.  Still in the Manor.  Still tired, aching, and sore all over.  Still beset by annoying Bats.

Tim peered over the edge of his laptop.  Jason scowled at him—an automatic response—before freezing as something sharp slid into the Replacement’s eyes.

Jason swallowed with great difficulty and cast his gaze around the room, unwilling to believe that they’d been stupid enough to leave him alone with Tim.  No one else was in sight.

“Hello, Jason,” Tim smiled.  It was not a pleasant smile.

Jason glared.

“How are you doing?”

Jason glared harder.

“I’m so glad I managed to catch you,” Tim said, still grinning maniacally, “You see, I wanted to test out a new feature to add to our bikes.  You don’t mind me borrowing your motorcycle right?”

Jason bared his teeth in lieu of curling his hands into fists.

“What’s that?  No objections?”

You little shit, Jason mouthed, and Tim’s grin widened.

“Don’t worry,” Tim said brightly, “I’ll return it in one piece.  Possibly.”

Even with both hands in casts, Jason did a decent job of miming what exactly was going to befall Tim if he dared to return his motorcycle in anything less than pristine condition.

“Thanks, Jay!  You’re the best big brother.”

Jason’s glare faltered.  Tim’s grin dropped a few degrees in magnitude in response.

“Thanks,” Tim repeated, his face more solemn, “For the antidote.  For everything.”

Jason sighed and slumped back to stare at the ceiling.

“Still taking your motorcycle, though.”

“—He wore the magnificent coat and riding-suit which he had on when Marguerite last saw him at Richmond, so many hours ago.  As usual, his get-up was absolutely irreproachable, the fine Mechlin lace at his neck and wrists was immaculate in its gossamer daintiness, his hands looked slender and white, his fair hair was carefully brushed, and he carried his sunglasses with his uual, affected gesture.  In fact, at this moment, Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart., might have been on his way to a garden-party at the Prince of Wales’, instead of deliberately, cold-bloodedly running his head in a trap, set for him by his deadliest enemy.—”

He was twelve years old again—twelve, and stuck in bed with the flu, and unable to sleep without a comforting voice in his ear, soothing him, protecting him.

He should’ve expected this one after the betrayal of Tim’s appearance, but it was still slightly shocking to open his eyes and see the demon brat sitting on the chair next to his bed and reading a book.

Jason narrowed his eyes.  No visible weapons in sight, not that it meant much when it came to dealing with Damian.

The demon brat noticed he was awake, and met Jason’s scowl with one of his own.

“Grayson will be coming up shortly,” Damian informed him, and turned back to the book.  Jason could just barely make out the cover.

Damian turned a page and looked up again.  He frowned, before visibly straightening out his expression into something less annoyed.  “It has come to my attention that property may be temporarily lent to another based on verbal acquiescence,” he said.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.  What did the kid want?  His knives?

“May I borrow this book?”

Jason raised an eyebrow.  Damian waved the book in his hands.  Jason raised the other eyebrow, trying to communicate that he was not in charge of anything in the Manor.

“This book is yours, correct?”

Jason shook his head.  Why would he have brought any of his books to the Manor?

“It has your name on it.”

Jason stared at him blankly.  He didn’t put his name on any of his books, because the last thing he needed was his name plastered over stuff if his safehouses were ever compromised.

Damian glared at him and turned to the front page of the book.  “Property of Jason Peter Todd-Wayne,” he read out.

Jason hadn’t used that name since he crawled out of his grave.

Something in his expression—probably the death glare—clued the brat in, and he stilled.  “The book was on your table,” Damian said stiffly, like that meant anything.  “May I borrow it?”

“I didn’t leave it there,” Jason hissed hoarsely—let the brat go bother whoever had been reading it at his bedside—

Wait a minute.  Jason studied the book again.

“Reading out loud?” he rasped.

Damian blinked.  “You want me to read it out loud?” he asked, his eyebrows furrowing.

No, that was not what Jason was asking, he didn’t need an eleven-year-old to read him a bedtime story—

Damian started reading from the middle of the book, the words familiar and overlapping with the memory-tone of a deeper voice, and Jason closed his eyes and let the story wash over him

“—Wait!  Wait!  Wait!  How long?  The early morning hours sped on, and yet it was not dawn: the sea continued its incessant mournful murmur, the autumnal breeze sighed gently in the night: the lonely beach was silent, even as the grave.—

“—Suddenly from somewhere, not very far away, a cheerful, strong voice was heard signing “God save the King!” —”

A long pause—the pages of the book ruffled and it closed with a soft thud.  A chair squeaked.

“Don’t stop,” Jason forced out in a raspy murmur.

The movements stilled.  “Jason?”

He swallowed.  “Next chapter,” Jason whispered, staring up at the ceiling.

If this was a dream, he didn’t want it to end.  If it wasn’t a dream…he still didn’t want it to end.

The chair shifted and pages rustled again.

“Jason?”  There were phantom fingers drifting across his throat.  “Jay?”

He slowly turned his head.  Bruce was looking at him with an expression he couldn’t name.  It wasn’t anger.  Jason let out the breath he didn’t realize he was holding.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce said softly.

Jason stared at him, tired.

“I’m sorry for pushing,” Bruce said quietly, “I didn’t mean—I—I’m not trying to—” He let out a frustrated breath, and stilled.  He traced the book cover in his hands before looking up again.

“You are my son,” Bruce said—fierce, but tinged with sadness.  “No matter what happens.  Nothing will change the fact that you are my son.”

Points were going into the not-a-dream column.  Jason just wanted the story.

“But I understand if you don’t want me as a father,” Bruce said, his words barely above a whisper.  He wasn’t looking at Jason, his attention back on the book.  “I know that—that I wasn’t there when you wanted me, and that’s my fault.  My failure.”  He took a deep breath and met Jason’s gaze.  “But even if you don’t want me, you will always be a part of this family.”

There were a lot of responses swirling around Jason’s head.  Why now and fuck you, old man and are you sure about that and what took you so goddamn long and you nearly killed me and I want to scream at you so badly.

But Jason was exhausted and sore and his throat hurt and the thought of talking made him ill.  He didn’t have the energy to cover his feelings behind a veneer of disdain, and he was too raw for rage.

“Dad,” Jason whispered instead, and watched the word sink into Bruce like it was a bullet.  Jason nodded to the book in Bruce’s hands.

Bruce cracked a thin, fragile smile, and opened the book, picking up where he left off.

And Jason drifted back to sleep with his father’s voice curling around him.  Warm.  Safe.  Home.