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“There’s no windows and the door we came through locked behind us. It's sealed shut,” Tim said, his chest panting as he twisted to look up. His eyes were flicking through the room, desperately trying to find an escape.
They had been thrown in through the ceiling and seemed to be trapped in some kind of pit. The door had slid shut behind him and Jason had heard the click of a lock.
“These are air vents,” Steph said, as she felt a small fist-sized hole. Her tongue stuck out as she tried to poke around inside it. “But I don’t think even Red Robin can squeeze his flat ass into this.”
Tim shot her a look. “That pipe is barely bigger than your hand, of course, I couldn’t fit into it.”
Steph snickered. “I don’t know. It’s easy to be mistaken with those little chicken feet of yours. Did you skip leg day again?”
“My— Steph! I did not skip leg day! You know that I’m just naturally thinner than Jason and Dick and I can’t do anything about—”
“Guys, come on,” Jason sighed, cutting Tim off before him and Steph could really start bickering. Those two could get into it and they wouldn’t be out of it for hours. “Let’s figure a way out of here and go. This place gives me the creeps.”
“Fine,” muttered Tim, stomping away from Steph. He grumbled to himself and arms crossed over his chest in a way that was so distinctly sixteen that Jason almost laughed. It could practically hear the Panic! playing in Tim’s mind.
Tim tilted his head, looking up at the roof. “Maybe we could—”
Steph squawked and the boys whipped around towards her. Water was gushing out of the “airvent” she had been looking at and was shaking water from her hair. All around them the holes in the wall poured a steady stream of water onto the floor.
It only took a couple of seconds before there was a half inch of water soaking through Jason’s boots.
“Steph!” Jason barked. “What the fuck!”
“I didn’t do anything!” she said, trying to put her hands over the pipe, but water was leaking through her fingers.
“Did you press some kind of button?” Tim asked, pulling up his cape, so it wasn’t getting soaked.
“I didn’t push anything! It just started happening!”
“Just started...” Jason’s voice trailed, off as the lights overhead of them flickered and shut off.
Suddenly the room was plunged into complete darkness.
And water was lapping at his thighs.
Water.
It was soaking through his pants, going up, up, up, filling…
His lungs. His breath. Everything washed into green.
There were voices. Young. One of them was shouting at him.
Water had gotten to his chest now.
Wake up, Revenant.
“JASON! Snap out of it!” Steph’s voice was right in front of him, shaking him by his leather jacket.
“You can’t have a panic attack now. You just can’t.”
He… he…
He shook his head and water dripping down from his hair, plastered to his skin. It took him longer than it should to realise that the water was beginning to force him up, becoming taller than what he could stand in.
Steph was already swimming, half clung on to him, half kicking her legs in the darkness.
“Please Jason, you have to stay with us.”
“Yeah,” he gasped, putting an arm around her and shoving her closer. He firmly held her up, desperate to make sure both of their heads stayed above water. “I’m here. I’m good.”
His eyes fought against the darkness and blearily he made out another shape. It was Tim, cracking glowsticks and spreading them out to float next to them. His face was sallow and the radioactive glow of the light and Jason tried not to let the whisper of the pit think about it.
They needed to get out of here. They needed to figure it out. But as Jason looked up into the yawn of the dark, he couldn’t see an exit.
“What do we do Jay?” Steph asked, her fingers tight in his armor.
He didn’t know. He should know but he didn’t know.
Dick would probably know. Dick probably would have had them out of here a couple minutes after they had been locked in here, before the water had even started flowing. But Dick wasn’t here which meant Jason was the big brother now.
“We get out.”
“But how?” Tim’s voice whispered.
“We gotta think and put our heads together.”
So they tried to think and as they did the water kept rising.
And eventually, they reached the top.
The water must have slowed at some point because even though it took them only a couple of minutes to be swimming, it took over an hour before they began to see the roof.
A roof that could kill them if they didn’t manage to find some way to get out. Their air pocket was getting thinner, their oxygen slowly being depleted.
Tim was paddling, his legs kicking as he gasped at the small pocket of air. Exhaustion was taking a toll on him and his movements were becoming less smooth. He was still scraping madly at the wall, trying desperately to find some hidden way out.
Steph’s fingers clutched into Jason’s shoulder, and they trembled with the rest of her.
“Jason,” she whispered into his neck, “I’m scared.”
His heart cracked in half and he tried to push against the ceiling opening again.
He slammed his fist against it, praying for anyone to please open the door.
But the darkness and the water kept rising to swallow them whole.
“It’s okay, Blondie,” he fought to keep his voice level as the water crept up.
It was as black as ink in the darkness, but when he closed his eyes, it flashed Lazarus Pit green on the back of his lids.
His heart was already beating rabbit-fast against his ribs, but it hitched at the thought of the Pit.
The bubbling acid of those waters. Sliding down his throat. Stealing his air. Taking something inside him and twisting it until—
No. Now’s not the time for trauma.
Not when he had two terrified kids, looking to him to be their last hope.
“I’ll get you out of here.”
She didn’t answer, but Jason felt the shudder of her sobs on his chest. Her panicked heartbeat matched his own.
“I’ll get you out of here,” he repeated, “I promise.”
Tim’s wet gasps punctuated the tiny sliver to air they had left. His struggles were becoming slower, more labored. He coughed. His scratching became faint until… they stopped.
And Jason’s heart stopped with it.
“Tim!” Jason shouted, diving towards the place where he had last heard Tim’s splashing. The arm not holding Stephanie frantically beat at the water.
Please.
Please.
His hand found Tim’s wet mop of hair and he dragged the boy to them.
The water was to their chests. He couldn’t go up any higher. The roof was beginning to scrape the top of his head.
“Don’t give up on me now, baby bird,” Jason begged, trying to keep everyone’s heads above water. But Steph and Tim were deadweight on body and the Pit licked at the back of his mind.
“I’m sorry,” Tim whimpered, his voice broken by pants. Jason was too soaked to feel the tears that he knew were there. “I can’t find a way out. I’m supposed to be the one to find a way out.”
“It’s alright,” Jason assured him, even though it wasn’t. The water was about to swallow them whole. “It’s okay. Rest your big brain. I can figure it out.”
“But Jason—”
“No but’s. I got you. I got both of you.”
Neither of his siblings spoke, but Jason could still feel both of them curled into him. Their heads were on his collarbone. Their hearts beat against his ribcage. Their trust was placed into his fucked-up hands even though they all knew he couldn’t do this.
He couldn’t save them this time.
“Jay?” Steph whispered up to him. He felt the press of her wet hair tickle under his chin. “I just wanted to say you were a pretty kickass older brother.”
No. No, no, no.
They were not doing the final words. Jason hadn't gotten final words the first time he died and he was definitely not letting his little sister get any. There would be no dying. Not on his watch.
“No, I’m going to get us—”
“I know we had our differences,” Tim’s tiny, scratchy voice was on his other side and Jason could imagine those stupidly, huge blue eyes looking up at him. The same eyes that had trusted him almost instantly and seared into his would when he had said you're my Robin. “But I’m really glad that I got to know you and that we’re family.”
No.
Tears stung at the corners of Jason’s eyes and they fell to mix with the black water that was creeping up his neck.
He couldn’t do anything to stop it. He couldn’t do anything to save them.
“I’m sorry… I—”
I was too weak.
I didn’t figure it out.
I couldn’t save either of you.
“I love you,” he said, because he needed them to know. He had never said it before, but they had to know.
Stephanie’s heartbreaking, almost-silent crying was in one ear and Tim’s frantic, uneven breaths were in the other.
He hugged both of them impossibly closer and tried to think of them in any other place as the water rose and stole the last of their air.
Jason woke up.
Because the water always resurrects Jason as much as it kills him.
The world swirled. Darkness was at the corner of his eyes. A heavy weight pressed down on his ribs and kept him from taking a full breath.
Panic rose up against his throat as dark water came up to steal his air and ki—
“Woah, Little Wing, it’s okay.”
A blurred tan-ish shape bounced into his vision. Gentle hands held his head as he blinked to clear the fuzziness from his eyes.
Dick’s form sharpened into focus and his brother’s sad, soft smile came into view.
“Dick?” he croaked and his throat ached with the effort of making the simple sound.
Dick’s smile quirked, and one of the hands slid through Jason’s hair. “Yeah, Jaybird, I’m right here.”
“We… I…”
Thoughts were still fuzzy and slow in his mind.
“I—”
Dark water. Darker than the pit.
Taking their air. Taking their lives.
Steph. Tim. Their last breaths on his neck.
I promised he would…
“Dick, Steph and Tim, they are—”
“They are right here, Jason,” Dick’s eyes flicked down and Jason’s gaze followed down to the weight on his chest. Two weights actually. Two sleeping siblings. Curled up. Dry. And...
Alive.
“They woke up before you,” Dick explained gently as his hand went down to brush some blonde hair out to Steph’s face. “They were as worried about you as you were about them.”
His older brother’s eyes flickered back up and there was a haunted, desperate look in them. “We weren’t sure you were going to make it.”
Jason picked over Dick’s posture. That terrified glint in his eyes. The tenseness bound up in his shoulders. The way his hands wouldn’t leave Jason’s alive, breathing body.
There was panic in him. Jason couldn't see the worst of it, but the echoes of it were still singing behind his eyes.
“Come here,” Jason said, shifting over and tugging Tim with him. The kid woke up slightly, scrunched his nose, and grumpily let Jason pull him fully onto his chest. He was out again before he really understood what was happening, leaving a sliver of bed for Dick.
“I don’t think these beds support four people.” But Dick was already trying to climb in.
“Small Steph and Tiny Tim are more like half a person each,” Jason said while gently petting a hand through Tim’s hair. “I’m sure the beds can hold three.”
Dick settled beside him and smiled. It didn’t reach all the way up to his eyes, but it was enough for now.
“I can’t argue with that logic.”
Jason turned his head and leaned it down to bump against the top of Steph’s golden hair.
No one said anything else until the younger children woke up and began crying all over again.