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Jason rides in the ambulance with Tim.
He doesn’t think he’s allowed to, technically, since he isn’t family and both of them are minors, but he’s not about to take no for an answer. Luckily—or perhaps frighteningly—the paramedics are too busy to argue with him. They’re barking orders back and forth to each other, rattling off vitals, running IV and oxygen lines, applying cooling blankets. Tim’s temperature is over 105 degrees and his blood pressure is dangerously low. They’re worried about seizures.
They’re also worried about organ failure.
Jason doesn’t even realize that he’s been gripping Tim’s hand until one of the medics makes him let go of it so they can run a second line for fluids. The kid is so dehydrated, his veins so shriveled, that it takes them three tries to get the needle in. Jason thinks he might be sick.
Two days ago, he’d watched Lois Lane hand Tim a sealed bottle of water as his parents ushered him out of the gala, Jack shoving him along as Janet furiously scrubbed at her vomit-splattered gown with napkins. Ten minutes ago, he’d seen that very same water bottle sitting empty on Tim’s nightstand. Has he had anything to drink since then?
There’d been no evidence of any kind of caretaking going on in Tim’s bedroom. No empty dishes, no medicine bottles, no washrags or bowls of cool water to wipe down his brow. A single mug of tea sat untouched on the nightstand, cold and oversteeped, like Tim had been too weak to even lift himself up to drink it.
How could his parents just leave him like that? Thirty seconds in that kid’s bedroom and Jason could tell something was seriously wrong. One touch, and he could feel the heat pouring off of Tim’s skin in waves. Had they not even given him that much?
Jesus fucking Christ, even Willis Todd would have done more.
Jason wasn’t even supposed to be there. A few unanswered texts, a defiant streak, and a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach—that was all that had propelled him across the grounds and up through the window. He doesn’t know what he’d been expecting to find, but it certainly wasn’t this. It wasn’t a thirteen-year-old boy on his deathbed.
It wasn’t a fucking stab wound.
He has no clue where Tim would have gotten it from, but if Jack or Janet Drake have anything to do with it, the cops might as well just lock Jason up now. He’s going to have blood on his hands before the night is out; the only thing he hasn’t yet decided is whose.
The ambulance pulls up into the bay, and Tim is wheeled out and rushed inside, past doors labeled ‘NO ENTRY.’ One of the paramedics takes pity on Jason and guides him through the hospital to a deserted waiting room.
“Is there someone I can call for you?” she asks gently. Her face is kind, and for some reason it grates at him. “A parent? Guardian?”
Jason clenches his fists at his sides. “I don’t want to see him.” The words surprise even himself by their coldness, their detachedness. “It’s his fucking fault.”
“What is?” she asks.
“All of it.”
(It’s Jason’s fault too. It’s all of their faults, really. Everyone but Tim.)
She inhales deeply, and Jason thinks she's about to ask him to elaborate, but she doesn't. Instead, she just holds his gaze. “The police are going to ask you for a statement,” she says carefully. “It’ll be better if someone is here with you.”
Reluctantly, he gives her the Manor's phone number, and she gives him a stupid orange shock blanket in return.
That’s when Jason knows it’s bad.
Bruce is out on patrol when he gets the call.
Jason hadn’t wanted to come out with him tonight. He’d said he was too tired, but Bruce knew he’d still been upset from their talk that afternoon. Bruce hadn’t pushed it. It was probably for the best that Robin stayed off the streets that night, emotionally vulnerable as he was. It was better this way.
So when Alfred calls to inform him that Jason is sitting in a private waiting room just off of Gotham General’s intensive care wing and that their young neighbor’s “flu” is in fact something much more sinister, Bruce knows he’s fucked up.
Half an hour later, when he walks through the waiting room doors, his son confirms as much.
“You said!” Jason explodes on him. He’d been sitting hunched over with his shoulders slumped and head in his hands, but he leaps to his feet now, fists balled and eyes flashing with rage. “You said you were handling it!”
The words sting like wasps. “Jay, I–”
“You said he was fine!” Jason howls, shoving at his chest. Bruce stumbles backwards a few steps, which only seems to anger Jason more. “You said!”
“Jay–”
“You said!” Jason shoves him again, but this time Bruce is ready. He plants his feet and doesn’t move an inch as the full force of Robin slams into him. “You said! You said! You said!”
Jason is hitting him now. His fists slam against Bruce’s torso, one after another, tears streaming down his cheeks. He throws another punch. And another. Each one lands sloppier and sloppier until he’s just pounding the sides of his fists weakly against Bruce’s chest, choking out sobs.
Bruce doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t shift his weight. He doesn’t say a word. He just stands there, an immovable wall of a man, and lets his son cry.
“You said,” Jason chokes out, but as his cries grow more desperate, his assault grows weaker. “You said you’d take care of it. You said he’d be okay. You said…”
At some point, Jason’s fists uncurl and he clutches onto Bruce's shirt, his forehead, nose, and open mouth pressed to his father’s chest as sobs rack his body. Bruce, who hasn't intervened once till this moment, wraps his arms around Jason and just holds him.
He has no idea what to say, so he says nothing at all.
"They won’t let me see him," Jason whines miserably. His hand is fisted tight in Bruce's shirt, and at this confession he pulls his hand back weakly and pounds at his chest again, shirt still securely in hand. “They said – said only family. But he doesn’t – his parents – B, he doesn’t have–”
“I’ll take care of it,” Bruce says automatically, then winces at his own words when Jason scoffs out a bitter laugh.
“Jay, I–” he tries again, but Jason just shakes his head.
“Shut up. I don’t wanna hear it,” Jason tells him, though with less heat than Bruce might have expected from a boy who’d just spent the last several minutes using him as a punching bag. “Just bring him home, B.”
“I will,” Bruce promises, and he’s never meant anything more in his life. “I swear it, Jay.”
Jason huffs at him, but he doesn’t let go.
So neither does Bruce.
The hospital won’t release any information on the boy's condition.
On paper, Alfred supposes their decision is quite understandable. Timothy Drake is an unconscious minor in the ICU with an infected stab wound of unknown origins. His parents are currently unreachable and suspected to be out of the country. He is not family and has no blood or legal ties to any of the Waynes. Aside from a sparse string of emails over the past eight months between himself, Master Bruce, and the Drakes, and two rather unfortunate ER trips, there is no official record of the child’s parents placing him in their care.
This is why Alfred focuses his efforts on getting in touch with Majorie McIlvaine, the only other authorized emergency contact of the young Master Drake, according to Gotham Academy’s school records.
Alfred prides himself on being a man of discretion. He knows how to make his words count—to report on a situation giving only the most vital of details, not only to preserve the dignity of those involved, but also to arrive at the point of his inquiries in a timely manner.
Marjorie has no such qualms.
“...Oh that’s simply dreadful! Poor dear Timothy… yes of course, I’d be happy to help. Let me see, what country was it Janet said they’d be going to now? I wrote it down, I think…” There’s the shuffling of notepapers over the line. “They had that royal wedding recently. Well, not recently I suppose—had to be over a decade ago now, goodness me. Personally I thought the prince could have done better. They say she’s a second cousin, too. I know that’s supposed to be common amongst the royals, but you’d think by this day and age, one could find a better system to–”
“Pardon the interruption, Mrs. McIlvaine,” Alfred says with as much civility as he can muster, “but I’m afraid we are in a bit of a time crunch. Are you referring to the kingdom of Markovia by any chance?”
“Markovia! Yes of course,” she gushes. “I don’t know how I forgot that now after the absolute scandal that was their royal honeymoon. Why, I was just talking to Gladys the other day about it…”
It’s another forty minutes of painstaking conversational redirection before Alfred has managed to obtain the Drakes’ spotty travel itinerary. But obtain it he does, along with a faxed, handwritten-note from Mrs. Mac herself, attesting that the Waynes are close personal friends of the Drakes. It’s certainly not enough to get the boy released into their care, but it’s enough to make an appeal to social services once a case has been opened.
At this point, Alfred will take what he can get.
The sun is just starting to rise when he returns to the waiting room. Master Bruce is still there, sitting on the floor with Jason’s head in his lap. There's no one else around, though Alfred doesn't think it would make a difference either way. Bruce is lost in the sleeping teen. He looks worn out. They both do.
It says something that Bruce doesn't notice his presence, or doesn't acknowledge it, until he’s standing a mere meter away. Still, he doesn't look up. Rather, he sighs and drops his forehead to the top of Jason's for a moment.
"Alfred," he says, weakly. It stops there. Alfred waits, patient as ever for the man to speak. The words don't seem to come.
Before he can think better of it—after all, he's not exactly as spry as he once was—Alfred slowly lowers himself down to the floor, letting his arm brush against Bruce's. In a moment of fondness, he reaches over and brushes a hand over Jason's head.
"They always look younger in their sleep, don’t they?" Alfred keeps his voice soft, unwilling to break the air of weary tension that shrouds the area.
"He hit me," Bruce says simply. Alfred merely hums, neither encouraging nor discouraging the conversation. He's found over the years that in doing so he'll draw out of the man what under other circumstances may take days to relinquish. "And I deserved it."
Ah. There it is.
"Are these your feelings, or the feelings of a traumatized teenager lashing out?" he asks mildly.
"He’s not wrong.” Bruce’s eyes never leave his son’s rising and falling chest. “I should have done more.”
“Forgive me, my boy,” Alfred says carefully, “but what more, precisely, could you have done?”
“I could have checked on him sooner,” Bruce says solemnly. “Jason wanted to, but I told him Tim’s parents were home. That they knew he was ill and they’d be looking after him.”
“A reasonable assumption to make,” Alfred points out.
Bruce gives him a helpless look. “Was it, though?”
Alfred reaches over to rest a hand on the man's upper arm, squeezing gently. “It ought to have been,” he says, which of course means that it wasn’t at all.
They’re both silent for a long moment after that.
"Jason knew,” Bruce says finally. “If he’d listened to me, if he’d stayed home like I told him to and given Tim space, then…” He trails off, his words thick with emotion.
“Then it is a good thing you’ve raised a young man who knows when to defy an order,” Alfred says simply.
Bruce’s fingers ghost over his son’s hair as he huffs out a dry, humorless chuckle. “Pretty sure he came to me that way.”
“You give yourself too little credit, Master Bruce,” Alfred says, the smallest of smiles playing at the corner of his mouth. “I still recall the skittish young boy you took in off the streets nearly four years ago. He would not have had the gall.”
Bruce raises one eyebrow, looking skeptical. “Al. He hit me with a tire iron within ten seconds of meeting me.”
Alfred hums a bit. “Out of fear, yes,” he allows, “because he did not yet know what the consequences of invoking your wrath would be. He knows now, and it doesn’t stop him at all from doing what he thinks is right.” He pats a hand gently over Bruce’s shoulder, causing the man to wince slightly when he lands on what must be a blossoming bruise. “You ought to be proud.”
At that, Bruce brings his hands up to cover his face and breathes out another small, empty laugh. “This wasn’t in the parenting books.”
Leaning right into Bruce’s ear, Alfred murmurs, “Regrettably, neither was what to do when your young charge dons a bat costume and takes to the streets to beat criminals to a bloody pulp, yet I managed somehow, didn’t I?”
There’s a brief hint of a smirk on Bruce’s lips before his gaze flickers back to the ICU doors. He sobers again instantly. “I still failed him, Alfred. Failed both of them.”
“Put blame where blame is due, sir,” Alfred says firmly. “Master Tim’s parents have failed him. The boy you raised, meanwhile”—he nods down to Jason’s sleeping form—“is the reason that child is still alive. For now, let that be enough.”
Bruce sighs. Then, at Alfred’s slight nod of encouragement, he lets his head rest against the older man’s shoulder, and Alfred slides an arm around his back.
They might as well get comfortable. It’s going to be a very long day.