Work Text:
“Hood is down!” There’s a second of hesitation from the goon that shot at Red Hood, shocked that they managed to actually down a bat. “Repeat! Hood is down!”
Tim flips over and smashes his staff against the temple of the man that shot Hood and spins around to sweep the legs out of the woman behind him, letting her head smack against the ground before knocking her out too.
“Robin! Report!” Nightwing’s frantic voice is overlaid by Batman and almost drowns out the footsteps of the two people trying their best to sneak up behind Tim. Ignoring the comms for now he takes out the last stragglers quickly, no quips or fancy flips, and runs over to Hood with his staff out.
It's been a while since Hood made a tentative truce with the family but Tim would be lying if he said he was comfortable with the older boy. That doesn’t mean he’s going to let him bleed out, not when they’re supposed to be working together. He’s supposed to be better than that.
So if his hands would stop shaking as he tries to pat Hood down the best he can that would be great.
The one bullet wound on his leg looks bad but Hood was flagging the entire fight. It's the only reason he got hit.
Tim applies pressure as he runs a hand down the neck around the helmet and taps his hand down the spine to make sure there aren’t any wounds there that’ll prevent him from shifting Hood around.
“One GSW to the right upper leg.”
When everything comes out okay, as okay as he can find it around the helmet and armor, he takes out a few pressure bandages and shifts Hood around to get them around his thigh to put pressure on the bullet wound.
After he’s done that he does another quick pat down.
He finds a few cuts from a knife and wraps some gauze around those to stop the bleeding.
“No exit wound. A few lacerations, nothing else.”
Most worrying though was that Hood wasn’t saying anything during this whole thing.
“Hood? Hood?” Tim reaches out to tap on the wrist of Red Hood with a bloody shaking hand, the other one hovering over his staff. No reaction. “Hood? Are you awake?” Tim runs his knuckles down Hood’s sternum and sees no reaction at all and adds more bandages to the gunshot wound.
“What’s the ETA on the medevac? Hood is unresponsive.”
“Batmobile is three minutes out.” Oracle’s steady voice comes in his ear and Tim reaches out again to rub down Hood’s sternum. He almost feels bad about being relieved for the lack of reaction for even that split of a second.
Glancing at the bandages that are soaking through already Tim adds some of the last ones in his belt and keeps pressure with his hands. Does another pat down because Red Hood really shouldn't have gone down like this.
And that's when he finds the lump of bandages on the chest.
“I need that evac quicker than that, O. I've found previous wounds. I can't tell how bad they are.” The comms seem like it’s only quiet because the memories of years of grief are choking back the screams.
“I can’t — that’s the quickest,” Oracle cuts herself off with a choke and the comms beep as she silences herself.
Jason might have come back to their lives bloody, painfully, and traumatically, but no one wanted to lose him. No one could lose him. They were just getting back to some form of middle ground with him.
Tim forces his hands steady and adds more bandages, applies more pressure, and tries calling out and rubbing his knuckles down the sternum again.
He has to bite back a scream when Hood’s hand twitches.
“Hood?” Tim rubs his sternum again and gets another twitch. Seeing as he’s waking up Tim moves both hands back to putting pressure on the wound and sticks to calling out, “Hood?”
Tim strains his ears to hear past his own pounding heartbeat and fights to keep his eyes on Hood rather than making sure his staff is still by him. It’s the only reason he can hear the groan and see the twitch in the hand that turns into a flail aimed at his hands. Tim catches the hand by the wrist and puts it back on the ground before quickly going back to putting pressure and getting what sounded like a growl out of the teenager under him.
“Hood, you’ve been shot and passed out for approximately four and a half minutes now. Stay down. We’ve got medevac coming.”
“One and a half minutes out, Robin.”
“One and a half minutes until medevac, Hood,” Tim repeats, just in case Hood’s comms were knocked out. There’s a grunt that sounds like it could be an answer and another small flail of a hand and scrabbling of feet as Hood reaches for the wound. Tim grabs Hood’s wrist again and puts his hand on the ground once more, heart racing.
Blood is starting to well up through the bandages and between Tim’s fingers and Tim reaches for his last bandage to add to the pile, pressing as hard as he can and ignoring the strangled groan that brings out. Ignoring the hands digging into concrete and feet bracing against the ground.
“Hood, stay awake.” Sure he's awake right now but it’s hard to tell just how awake he is with the helmet on.
There’s a cough and a groan from Hood and what sounds like a strangled curse so Tim translates that in his head into, ‘Of course Tim, whatever you say.’
Finally, the roar of the batmobile sweeps down the road and idles outside and there’s the whine of a grapple outside the window.
“Robin! Hood!” Batman swings in through the window and disengages so roughly that he staggers and has to do an extra roll and still stands up not nearly in line with where he probably wanted to end up. He sprints the short distance to Tim and Hood and collapses onto his knees by their side.
“Batman, we need to get him to the cave. Now.” Batman holds out a collapsable gurney and they position it under Hood. They strap him down and Tim folds his staff up to carry Hood over to the window. Batman leans out to hook up their grapple lines and tie up connectors to the gurney itself.
Batman goes down first and then Tim pushes the gurney down after him, the whole thing sliding down between the two lines and stopping by itself at the bottom with Batman spotting it. As soon as Batman unhooks the line from the gurney, Tim slides down, kicks off the building to flip off and land far away from Hood and Batman — nice and clear of the pair.
He jogs back over and helps lift Hood over to the Batmobile and hooks him into the backseat so that he doesn’t jostle before climbing into the back for the ride to keep an eye on him. Batman slides into the driver's seat and slams the gas as soon as the door closes.
Tim tries to go back to putting pressure with shaking hands before rerouting to grabbing the heavy duty trauma shears. He cuts through the seams of the body armor and the undershirt to expose the lump of bandages that he peels back. The two-inch gash has popped stitches and is red, inflamed — and when Tim rips his glove off to tap around the area — warm to the touch.
“Tell me the doctor is already at the cave.”
“She’s on the way. Nightwing is bringing her and should reach there just a bit before us.”
Nightwing cuts in with a, “Doctor already retrieved, cave in sight.” Nightwing must have really pushed the limits even with a civilian passenger.
"Hood has a laceration on the lower right chest area. Approximately two inches long. Stitches are in but some are ripped. It's red and inflamed, warm to the touch."
Suddenly Hood is coughing and Tim isn't a hundred percent sure he's imagining the bloody splatter inside of the helmet.
“We need to get this helmet off of him.” Reaching up to take off the thing with one hand he doesn’t expect any resistance, which is why he flinches so badly when one of Hood’s hands finds the strength to come up and grab him. Tim tries to pry him off but Jason just scrabbles back on. “Hood, I need to take off your helmet, let go.”
Tim’s hands are shaking and his heartbeat is thunder in his ears so he misses it the first time. He almost misses it the second time, not that he understands it. Doesn’t want to really.
“What? What did you just say?” Tim freezes with one hand in Hood’s grasp and the other back to applying pressure. Batman is oblivious in the driver’s seat, the roar of the engine having drowned out the small voice — even with the voice distorter.
“B–bomb.” Bomb? Where? Back there? They left people knocked out back there. In here? In the batmobile? “Helmet.”
Bomb… in his helmet?
“Red Hood. Is there a bomb in your helmet.” It’s not really phrased as a question and Hood must hear that because he lets go of Tim and lets his hand flop down. Batman must hear it because the car swerves almost dangerously and Tim has to clutch at the door of the car, releasing pressure on the wound for a second and leaving a bloody handprint, to keep his balance.
“Robin, what did you just say?” Batman growls back at him.
“There is apparently a bomb in Hood’s helmet preventing me from taking it off.” His voice is flat. The silence in the car and over the comms is lengthy. It’s only broken by a wet laugh from Hood himself.
“How do you take this fucking thing off Hood?” Tim is on his last dregs of sanity, being in an enclosed space like this with Hood is not helping him, and now he has a bomb.
“I ‘ave to.” There’s a wet quality to his voice that Tim doesn’t like, “Anyone ‘lse do it ‘nd — and boom. Do it wrong and boom.”
“Hood,” Batman growls back, “get that off.”
Tim brings his hand that was still floating uselessly back down to put pressure.
“Nah. S’ok.” And suddenly that thundering heartbeat is skipping a beat.
“Hood… Hood, take off the helmet.” Nightwing’s voice is ringing in Tim’s ear with how loud he was screaming over the comms.
“No, Di–dickwing.” Hood coughs again and it sounds too weak to be good.
The batmobile screeches into the cave and Tim and Bruce, who already flung his cowl away on his way to the backdoors, drag the gurney out and into the medical bay. Dr. Thompkins is already waiting for them by Dick and Alfred. Barbara watches everything from the batcomputer. It was pure luck she worked from the cave tonight.
Barbara and Dick are screaming at Jason, Bruce is begging, Alfred is helping Dr. Thompkins and Tim has blood on his shaking hands while he stands on the side trying to think.
Alfred and Dr. Thompkins finally wheel Jason over to the surgery area and start taking the rest of his armor and clothes off, cutting off the parts that are too close to the wound itself, and Alfred is trying to get Jason to get the helmet off too. Jason doesn’t seem to be listening. Tim needs to think but there’s blood on his hands and a wounded Jason in front of him and —
“We need to go into surgery now.” Dr. Thompkin’s voice cuts through everyone neatly and everyone’s eyes shoot straight to the sight of Jason in a hospital gown with the helmet firmly on.
They don’t know if he has a concussion, they haven’t been able to check, but he needs surgery anyway.
Dr. Thompkins slides an IV in.
Tim stands there with shaking hands, wet with quickly drying blood, staring at a helmet that still haunts his nightmares and thinks about what it must mean to put a bomb around your own head. Thinks about an empty grave. Glances over to the Robin uniform that his hero died in that Bruce leaves up in an altar of his own grief and wonders what it must look like from the other side. The other side of a second life.
A bomb in his helmet he refuses to take off.
An empty grave that was broken out of.
Tim watches as Dr. Thompkins and Alfred attach monitors, hang a blood bag, and puts Jason under carefully — keeping a close eye on his vitals.
Tim thinks of years of grief and years of pain. He thinks of a bomb in a helmet that Jason refuses to take off and thinks of a bloody, traumatic, painful return.
Thinks of all his nightmares and every single time he jumped at shadows as he watches Alfred and Dr. Thompkins finish prepping. Thinks of all those weeks and weeks of healing and physical therapy as he watches Barbara and Dick clutch at each other. Thinks of dead heroes and lonely altars as he sees Bruce stare at a bloody Batmobile.
A bomb in his helmet.
Tim rips his mask off and runs to the sink to scrub down. He watches the water run red, then pink, then clear. Runs to change into clean clothes and scrubs himself again before snapping gloves on and grabbing one of the sterile holo computers meant for the surgery room.
“Barbara, scrub down and come in. We’re getting that helmet off.” Bombs are tech and that helmet is all tech.
If there’s anything Barbara and Tim are good at, it’s tech.
Tim marches his way towards the surgery room, catching a glimpse of Barbara throwing herself out of Dick’s arms and wheeling towards the closet with the sterile clothes and where there is a spare electric wheelchair for her — so she doesn’t have to touch the wheels on that one.
Tim goes past one double door and picks up a phone outside the second set of doors.
As soon as Alfred picks up on the other side Tim speaks up, he’ll get his lecture on manners another day, “Alfred, warn Dr. Thompkins that I’m coming in, please, and Barbara will be coming in soon as well. We’re going to work on that helmet to try and get it off.”
Silence for two seconds before there’s a curt, “Very well, come in in a minute Master Tim.”
Tim waits exactly a minute before going past the double doors and skirting around the room to stand by Jason’s helmeted head. Tim does a cursory scan which doesn’t give him much due to the shielding on the thing. He gets the basic shape and that’s about it really.
He risks running his finger around the bottom and doesn’t feel anything except for some catches that he does his best to stay far away from.
Barbara wheels in and Tim can see that she’s holding her own holo computer and some other things. When she stops by his side she holds up her own computer for her own scan and frowns when she gets nothing like he did.
Tim sends over a note asking her what she brought so that he doesn’t have to bother Dr. Thompkins by talking the entire time.
‘B: Just brought some extra equipment, thought we might need some.’
Tim nearly sighs with relief and only just bites it back. She holds up one of the scanners they use on the Batmobile which has shielding that regular scans can’t get through. It sends something to both their computers and now Tim can see some form of wiring which is a start. There are too many black and gray areas that could be the bomb itself though.
For one moment he contemplates the idea that Jason lied about the bomb before putting that aside. From what he's seen of this Jason, he would not lie about something like this. And for how jaded and angry this Jason is, he seems to have kept the characteristic that he does not lie often. Besides which, Tim imagines if he had to die a brutal death, only to come back to life by crawling out of his grave, and be put in a Lazarus Pit he would probably at least contemplate something as insane as a bomb in a helmet too.
For a few minutes, Tim and Barbara trade notes back and forth through their screens on where they think it’s best to cut into the helmet to try and get into the wiring itself. They eventually agree on a few wires they want to connect to and the best area to cut into to minimize the cutting. Tim looks up and raises his hand, feeling like he’s in school. Only if he gets this wrong something explodes and someone dies rather than him failing.
Alfred looks up and signals to Dr. Thompkins that Tim needs their attention.
“What is it?” Dr. Thompkins's tone is short and impatient and Tim can’t blame her one bit.
“We need to cut into the helmet to get to the wires in order to attempt to get it off. I want to set up a barrier to separate what’s happening on this end from what’s going on on your end.” It won’t be the most sterile but it’ll help. Dr. Thompkins nods and steps back from Jason so Tim rushes around to quickly set up a barrier at the shoulders. Dr. Thompkins steps back in to work and Tim steps around the room grabbing some equipment.
Coming back to Barbara and Jason’s head with a tray full of sterilizing equipment, Tim sets about wiping down and sterilizing every inch of the helmet he can reach.
Grabbing a marker he signals Barbara to show him where he has to cut and double checks before marking it off. Grateful that his hands stopped shaking. The square at the side of the helmet seems so innocent but if they messed this up it could ruin everything.
Tim grabs his holo computer again and flips out a section at the end. A gadget that looks like a laser pointer pops out and Tim slides it out. Turning the laser setting on low he aims it at the helmet and carefully starts to cut through.
He goes slow and stops frequently to keep from heating the metal up too much. Once it gets to a point where he thinks the section is loose enough he reaches for his holo computer again and pops out a suction cup to help hold onto the cut square. Finally done cutting through the helmet he holds the section in place for a few seconds to see if he triggered any security measures before slowly easing the section off.
He hands it to Barbara who lays it gently on the tray.
Up in front, he can catch a glimpse of Alfred hanging another bag of something.
Barbara hands him some wire strippers and holds up the screen which is marked off with which wires they want. Tim reaches in, double-checks the first wire before stripping it, and waits for another moment before connecting their own wire that’ll link it to their holos. He does this a couple more times and by the time he’s done his hands are clammy and his breath is shaky with how nervous he is.
They got through the first few hurdles though.
They should be able to see the software now. They should be able to tell the helmet to open.
Barbara scrunches her face and Tim wants to groan. That’s not good.
A note flashes on his holo.
‘B: This is going to take a while.’
The note is overlaid on code that is far more complex than Tim would like right at this moment. No one told him Jason was this good with code. Although maybe they should have realized with the helmet and the working alone thing. No backup means having to know a bit of everything.
Of course, being a Bat means a bit is relative.
Tim types out a very heartfelt, 'Fuck.'
Barbara hangs her head and breathes for a bit while Tim does his best to go through his own breathing exercises. The sight of the red helmet behind his eyes is reminding him too much of his nightmares. Eventually, she looks back up, determined, and starts scrolling carefully through the lines of code.
It helps that they know what they're looking to do and what they don’t really care about.
They skip past the lines of code talking about messages, comms, motorcycle GPS, and even a few stray lines about playlists.
They focus on the lines of codes on authorization, coded protections, failsafes, and failsafes, and failsafes, before finally finding the helmet open/close command.
They linger on the voice commands, the helmet's sightline, anything and everything that uses eyes and voice because they can't be sure if Jason synced it to himself. They decide to put a pin on them and move on.
When they finally have a giant bookmark of areas where it's all some form of security measure it still feels like too much. Anyone who is a bat or even bat-adjacent naturally lives and dies by the belief that there is never too much security — but this is truly a lot for a single helmet. Tim can already feel himself craving an energy drink, a rubber duck, and a chair. But Jason is still in surgery so Tim gets exactly none of those.
Instead, Tim has Barbara that he gets to pass notes with and the headache of an adrenaline crash.
They go straight for the open/close helmet catch release command and just look at it for a while. Tim highlights a few lines he thinks might lead back to another security measure and Barbara highlights a few others.
Eventually, they both have a good chunk and decide to follow their own trails. Tim traces his lines of code to the visor screen, to the message codes, to something he thinks might be a battery, and back to the catches. This line is looking less like a bomb and more like a taser so he marks it off and moves on.
Barbara marks one next to her own highlighted line as, 'taser.'
There's something to be said about not only putting a bomb but a taser around your head too.
Eventually, Tim follows two more chunks of code into more tasers and one that surprisingly sends an SOS signal somewhere Tim can't be bothered to track. Barbara linked up one other code to a taser, one to an SOS message, and one to an automatic comm link with Oracle.
They still haven't found the bomb.
Tim is halfway done following another line of code that seems like it’s about to lead to the voice distorter when suddenly a note pops in the corner of his screen.
'B: Bomb trigger found.'
Tim's fingers spasm and he has to jerk them away from the screen to keep from pressing something he doesn't mean to. Fuck. He was operating on the belief it was there but still — fuck.
'T: Okay, I'm gonna finish this code.'
'B: Gotcha.' Barbara attaches another note letting Tim know which lines of code are the bomb and goes back to the absolute insanity that is the bomb. Tim, meanwhile, finishes his trail into the voice distorter and sees it's not much more than a harmless prank at most. Letting out a loud scream-like sound.
The lines Barbara highlighted make a complicated way through the visor, the battery, back to the visor, into the voice distorter where it's set to let out a warble of noise, and then finally a set of code that's meant to count down.
A timer.
At the end of which is a code that Tim has never seen before. Unfortunately, or fortunately, he's seen codes close enough to this format to confidently say this is a bomb trigger mechanism.
Tim and Barbara trace the code back and figure out what not to do to trigger this specific code and make a note of it. It seems to be a specific pattern to the catches as far as Tim can tell, although there is one part of the code throwing him off.
Barbara highlights the area throwing him off and highlights it again in other lines. A pattern. Consistently showing up in every line of code where it triggers anything that isn't the release code.
Barbara leaves this line of code to Tim while she goes searching for more bomb triggers. It's easier now that they know what they look like for the most part and Barbara finds three more by the time Tim figures it all out.
'T: Fingerprint. You need his fingerprint to open this.'
As soon as he sends the message he bends over as much as possible and eyes the bottom of the helmet. He can't see the bottom of the catches properly from this angle and stands back up.
A glance at the computer shows a frustrated keysmash from Barbara.
His sentiments exactly.
It's around this time that Alfred and Dr. Thompkins both step away from Jason.
"We're done. Let's move him." Barbara stays close by with the computer attached to the helmet while Tim helps wheel Jason to one of the beds in the cave. Dr. Thompkins sets up an IV drip with stuff Tim can't be bothered to pay attention to when he has a better angle on the helmet. Bent nearly on top of Jason, Tim finally has a glimpse of the catches themselves and he sees the way they shine differently.
The helmet itself is matte, can't risk giving away your position with a glare of color you don't want. While the catches are still semi-matte you can never truly hide the shine of glass needed for fingerprinting.
Tim snaps up, stares at a waiting Barbara, and takes a deep breath.
"I see the fingerprint scanners." It's the first words either of them has said since they cut open the helmet. It should feel like progress but it doesn't.
Dr. Thompkins is sitting in the corner of the room, waiting for them to get the helmet off to finish her complete assessment. The family is undoubtedly waiting somewhere outside this room.
Barbara is looking back at the code and highlighting stuff but Tim looks over at Jason.
Swathed in bandages, straight out of surgery, and in a hospital gown he seems smaller. Even with the helmet.
"Tim." He doesn't know how he feels about this Jason, it's complicated. Full of fear and nightmares and pain and maybe a smidgen of understanding coated in self-loathing. "Tim!"
Tim blinks and looks over at Barbara, breaking his stare off with an unconscious boy.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm focused." Tim brings up his computer only to have Barbara snatch his arm.
"I found the release code."
Tim stares at Barbara and looks at his computer at the lines of code she noted in glaring neon green.
Dr. Thompkins shifts in her corner and there's murmuring outside the door.
The code is complex. It takes a while, far too long, but in the end the two of them unravel it enough to find that the helmet needs the fingerprints and the catches released in a pattern.
This is a problem because when Tim reaches with shaking hands to guide Jason's hands up to his helmet they flop with the weight of unconsciousness. When Tim tries to line the fingers up they threaten to slip out of his hands and he has to put Jason's hands back down. He's not risking anything by having Jason's hands slip. Not when they're this close.
"You hold that hand?"
"We need to make sure to get the timing on this pattern right, Tim. I'm not blowing him up because we couldn't get it right this once in our lives." And fuck, she's right.
Tim's hands are shaking.
"It… it needs a fingerprint and a pattern. If — what if we just add in a fingerprint?" Barbara is looking intently at the code and scrolling through it.
That sounds like it could work. They gotta check the failsafes to make sure adding something like that won't trigger anything.
"Okay. I'll check the security, you build the code."
He trusts her more with that. Right now Tim doesn't trust himself to miss something in building something as important as that, not on a time crunch.
Barbara finishes cobbling together the code before Tim finishes scouring all the failsafes and authorization codes. They switch so Barbara finishes looking through the codes and Tim checks her work.
Tim makes notes of adjustments they can make and after spending a while going back and forth the code is done. They piece it in with the existing one and hold their breaths as the helmet runs the new version.
They let it out as one when they get a screen asking to register a new fingerprint. Tim scans his prints on the screen and waits for the code to run through and integrate and puts his computer down.
Gently walking back to the bed he looks over at Barbara.
She looks down, "Left back and right back. Click twice, pause, then release."
Okay. Okay, he can do this.
He reaches over, hears Dr. Thompkins stand, places his fingers over the catches, and opens and lifts the helmet quickly.
As soon he clears the bed Dr. Thompkins is moving in and checking Jason over again. Tim ignores everyone, disconnecting the computer from the helmet and sprinting straight for the explosives hall.
He throws open the door, runs in, tosses the helmet into the testing field, runs back out, and slams the door shut behind him. With the danger finally out of his way, and another helmeted nightmare added to his repertoire, his knees give out and he slides down the door.
The air seems thin and Tim knows he needs to breathe but there is a door between him and a bomb in the shape of his nightmares behind him. He can still feel his hand slick with the blood of his hero turned enemy turned part-time ally. The lines of code are flashing behind his eyes and he’s recognizing just how many of them triggered the bomb.
Four.
Four that they found.
Four out of the thirteen lines of code in the release mechanism they followed to security measures ended up as bombs. That’s 30.76% of the security measures being a bomb. Over a quarter.
Tim takes a deep breath, and another, and another, and looks at his clean and clammy hands.
30.76%
He stands up and heads to the cave proper, hearing the voices of the family down the hall near Jason’s room.
“Tim.” There’s a hand on his shoulder and he has to stop himself from ripping it off and breaking a finger or two. Bruce always walks too quietly unless he focuses on making noise. “Thank you.”
This should be a momentous occasion. Bruce thanking someone. Verbalizing his emotions.
Tim should be happy. Tim should be over the moon.
But all Tim can think about is a bomb in a helmet that Jason was refusing to take off and a grave that was clawed out of. The only thing he’s thinking of is a bloody, painful, traumatic return on all sides.
He’s not forgiving Jason. This isn’t forgiveness — this isn’t even really understanding because Tim hasn’t had a single conversation with Jason outside of the mask. However, Tim thinks this is something close to edging towards that middle ground where he would be willing to listen.
Then in the corner of his eye he sees that damn Robin suit in the fucking case and what comes out of his mouth is, “You need to get rid of that goddamn case, Bruce.”
Bruce frowns down at Tim, taking his hand off of his shoulder, and doesn’t even reprimand him for his language. “Which case? The Montiago case? I’ve told you, Tim, th–”
“Not the — damn it, Bruce, not the Montiago case. The fucking case!” Tim swings his arms up and around to point straight at the Robin suit and Bruce stiffens. No one really acknowledges it. No one talks about it. Especially not after Jason came back.
“Tim.”
“No, Bruce. Get rid of it or I will.” And Tim knows he’s crossing a line. He’s not even a part of this family. He’s an interloper, but the only thing running through his head right now is empty graves, bombs in helmets, and 30.76%. He’s resisting the urge to run to the sink to scrub down his hands to make sure the water isn’t running red again.
“Tim.”
“Bruce.” Bruce reaches out for Tim and Tim surges back and away and walks back down the hallway, he doesn’t really know why. Only that he needs to get away from Bruce and he can’t stand the fucking Robin altar right now.
“Tim, stop.” He can hear Bruce coming after him but Tim doesn’t care and keeps stomping forward. “Tim Drake, stop.” Tim twitches but continues.
“Robin, stop.” The edges of the Batman growl bring Tim’s feet to a pause and he hates himself just a bit for it. He can see the open door of Jason’s room a couple of doors away. He didn’t even realize he was coming this way.
“Get rid of the case, Bruce.” Tim whirls around. If Bruce wants to talk about this then they’ll talk about it. Bruce is going to get a shocking reminder of just how stubborn Tim could be.
Bruce just stares Tim down and doesn’t say anything and Tim has to bunch his hands into fists and press them into his sides to keep himself from punching Bruce for a reaction.
“Get rid of the case, Bruce!” His voice is rising but he only gives it half a thought because the air still seems a bit thin and Bruce is still made of stone and his hands still have the phantom feeling of slickness, “Get rid of the fucking case before I do it for you.”
“Why?” Tim is already breathing hard despite having not said much and Bruce is squinting down at him like a puzzle.
“Because he’s alive!” The hallway is quiet except for Tim’s rough breathing and the shuffling of Dick in the doorway of Jason’s room. Clearly debating whether he should intervene. Tim doesn’t give him the chance. “He’s alive and you’re leaving your altar up when you should be done grieving. I get it, B. Some people think you left it up as some sick reminder of a kid you lost or whatever, but I get it.”
Bruce flinches just the faintest bit. Not in any way any normal person would see, but in the way he stiffens and narrows his eyes.
“You left it up as some altar of your guilt and some sick reminder to yourself to do better.” Bruce takes a physical step back but Tim isn’t done. “But you have a second chance! He’s back! Take it down!”
“It’s not —”
“How can he ever think he’s allowed to come home when you still have the altar up of the boy he used to be? When it looks like you’re still grieving the kid that died instead of the one that came back?” This isn’t forgiveness, this isn’t understanding, and this isn’t Tim allowing Jason into Tim’s life.
But when Tim glances to the side and sees a groggy Jason who is miraculously awake and in a wheelchair with greengreengreen eyes staring? He can’t help but think of a kid soaring through the skies with a laugh as bright as the sun.
Dead heroes with empty graves and a bomb on their heads they refuse to take off.
This isn’t forgiveness or understanding but this is a small bit of mercy for what might remain of Tim’s hero in his nightmare. Looking back at Bruce gives him nothing. No clue as to what Bruce might be thinking.
They stare at each other for a few seconds before Bruce grunts and turns to walks off with a passing glance at Jason. When he disappears around the corner Tim collapses against the wall and presses the heels of his hands against his eyes, bright sparks dancing behind his eyelids.
“Tim? Tim! Jason, stay in the chair. Stay in the— Tim?” Dick’s voice comes from startlingly close in front of him and Tim jerks back with his hands still over his eyes. He hears shuffling and when Dick speaks up again it’s from further away. “Tim, are you okay? Breathe with me. In for four, hold, out for seven. There you go.”
After a few rounds of breathing exercises, Tim feels well enough to bring his hands down and sees Dick crouched in front of him at the other side of the wall. Jason is still by the door, a frown on his face and hands by the wheels as if he wants to come closer. Tim can’t help but be glad he stayed where he was though.
“I’m fine. I’m fine. Sorry about that.” Dick frowns for a bit before smiling softly although Jason just seems to frown harder, his hands actually coming down on the wheels.
“It’s okay, Tim. Nothing to be sorry for. Happens to all of us.” Dick’s hand twitches and he looks like he contemplates reaching out before thinking better of it and Tim isn’t sure whether he appreciates that or not. He’s not sure if he wants a hug or not. He's never sure if he does. “What was that about? Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” They probably all heard anyway. “Where’s Barbara?”
“She had to go. Her dad.”
Right. Her dad was going to try and get home early today. Looks like he actually managed to clock out.
“What’s Hood doing up? He shouldn’t even be awake right now.”
“Anesthesia don’t really work right on me anymore.” Tim can’t quite suppress the jump at hearing Jason’s voice. It’s weird to be talking about something other than missions during a mission.
“What?”
“You heard me. The pit — it doesn’t work right anymore.” Jason wheels back into the room a bit more before taking his hands off the wheels and putting them onto his lap. Leaning back in his chair he leaves himself open to attack and Tim feels safer and hates that Jason probably meant for that to happen. Jason is pale and sweating, the hospital gown sticking to him where there aren’t bandages, and he looks a general mess. Tim can’t help but still feel afraid.
“The morphine should at least be knocking you on your ass.”
“Doesn’t work right either.”
He doesn’t know what to say to that. Anesthesia is one thing but pain meds are another. They work in a line of duty where half the time they are awake they are injured or on their way to becoming injured. Tim can’t imagine not having pain meds work correctly. And what does that even mean anyway? Does that mean they just have to adjust the dosage or does it just not work at all?
He seems to be okay for the most part sitting in that chair out of surgery. So Tim assumes the medicine is doing something but did the Pit affect other things too that lets Jason just ignore the pain now?
“Stop thinking twerp, I can see all the smoke coming out your ears.”
“Better than the rust falling out of yours.” Tim quips back on autopilot before freezing. Dick bites back a smile and Jason just raises an eyebrow.
“I see you’re not debating the ‘twerp’, glad to see you know you’re the size of a gnat. Missed your growth spurt did you?”
“Excuse me. I didn’t get a cheat code to growth via a quick dip in the forbidden Mountain Dew swimming pool.”
Dick can’t hold back a laugh at that one and even Jason’s lip twitches.
“I wouldn’t say it was Mountain Dew. It was more of a Baja Blast.”
“Baja Blast is Mountain Dew.”
“Baja Blast is not just Mountain Dew, it’s a category of Mountain Dew and has a different color. Anyway, it’s the superior Mountain Dew”
“It’s close enough in color. Anyway, Mountain Dew sucks.”
“It’s the principle of the th— what do you mean Mountain Dew sucks? Dick, do you hear this? Shut the fuck up and do something about this!” Jason flings a hand out towards Dick but Dick is too busy laughing and it’s at that point that Tim realizes he’s been bantering with Jason Todd, the Red Hood. He freezes again.
Jason eyes him from the corner of his eyes before slowly putting his hand back down on his lap.
“Anyway… where’s my helmet?” Dick stops laughing.
“In the explosives hall.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s a bomb.” Tim has to bite his tongue in order to refrain from saying the idiot at the end.
“It’s a helmet.”
“Little Wing, it’s a helmet with a bomb that you put on your head.”
“Yeah, my head. Not your head or anyone else’s head. My own head. Give it back. I’m getting out of here.”
“Were those tasers?”
“What tasers?” Dick asks the same moment Jason’s eyes flare a brighter green and asks, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Everyone freezes at the growl in Jason’s voice and Tim has to breathe deeply to stop his hands from shaking. When he calmed himself down he realizes his breathing synced up with Jason’s who was also doing some breathing exercises. The same ones Bruce taught Tim as part of his Robin training.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Jason asks again, calmer.
“The tasers. I found the code that looked like it tased you if you opened your helmet wrong.” Jason just stares at him with hands twitching towards the wheels and Tim shifts to the balls of his feet.
“The fuck were you doing in my code?”
“Barbara and I had to get your helmet off somehow. How did you think it came off?” Jason stares blankly at him and blinks for a while.
“I thought — never mind. Give me my helmet back. I’m leaving.”
Tim opens his mouth to respond but gets cut off by Dick, “No.”
“Give it back, Dickface.”
“No, Little Wing. You’re not getting it back.”
“It’s my fucking helmet. Give it back!” Jason should really lie back down, he was looking rather pale and sweating a lot more. Tim looked around for any sign of Dr. Thompkins.
“No, I’m not letting you blow yourself up.”
“Too late for that I guess.” A full body flinch from Dick and Tim couldn’t hide the way he sucked in a breath through his teeth if he tried. “Give it back.”
“No, Jason. Stop asking.”
Jason grabs his wheels and comes out into the hallway where Tim struggles not to step away. Out here where there’s more light, however, Tim can see that Jason isn’t looking very good at all and kind of looking glassy-eyed. He glances around for Dr. Thompkins again.
“Give. It back. Dick.”
“No.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Because TIm is right! Because you’re alive now! Because you’re here and I’m not willing to lose that to some fucking bomb in your helmet that we can’t take off when you’re hurt. To some bomb that might go off when you’re hit wrong!” Dick explodes out and up as he rises to his feet yelling.
Jason watches all this with a stoic face and hands twitching on his wheels like he wants to run but knows he won’t be fast enough either way. When Dick is done screaming Jason waits another two seconds before calmly sitting back in his chair. Tim can see a spot of red on his gown at his leg and glances around for the doctor again.
“I don’t want to die, Dick.”
Tim can’t help but look at Jason at that because his head was still running through empty graves and bombs in helmets that Hood refused to take off and lonely altars.
“What?” Tim and Dick echo.
“I said, I don’t want to die.”
“You put a bomb and a taser in your helmet. Forgive me for not believing you, Jay.” Dick sounds tense.
“That’s fine. But it’s true, I don’t want to die.” And here Jason shifts like he’s finally uncomfortable. “I just don’t want to come back to life.”
Empty graves that were crawled out of.
“It’s not fun, coming back to life. It’s even worse being dunked in a Pit to be made whole again because you weren't brought back fixed.” Jason fidgets and twitches one of his hands as if to grasp his side but Dick is busy staring at his face and Tim is too transfixed. “Crawling out of your own grave isn’t… it isn’t easy. It was raining so it was muddy. I wasn’t in my suit so all I had was a belt to help me. I wasn’t healed so I was hurting.”
Tim wants to throw up and Dick looks green too.
“Coming out of the Pit is just as hard. The pain of everything wrong with you getting fixed in one instance isn’t fun. The anger isn’t great. I’m still not sure I have all my memories.” Jason looks very uncomfortable and not just from the pain.
“Jason…” Dick reaches out a hand and Jason lets it land on his knee for a second before brushing it off.
“I’m not telling you this to get you to pity me or justify anything, Dick. I did what I did because I thought it was the right thing to do at the time, Pit or not.” And that feels like a kick in the teeth all over again. “I’m telling you this because you somehow got it in your head that I want to die. I don’t. There’s too much shit for me to do to die.”
It’s not really a, I want to live, but a, I have to live. But there's nothing to really be said about that because Tim doesn’t know anyone in this business with a healthy grasp on their mental health anyway.
“But you came back to us… why — you came back, why wouldn’t you want to — why would you risk never—”
“I didn’t come back to you, Dick.” Jason wheels himself around, the red spot on his leg growing bigger with his movements. “You’re still waiting for that kid that got buried. I crawled out instead.”
Dick moves to follow Jason into the room but Tim stops him. There’s only so much they could afford to push and pull before the fragile connections they built got severed. “Later Dick. Later. Let him rest.”
Dick looks around him with wounded eyes but takes the advice and steps back. They can hear Jason moving around in the room and Dr. Thompkins finally walks down the hall with a cup of coffee in hand.
“Dr. Thompkins, Jason’s going to need you. It looked like he bled through his bandages.” Tim whispers to her as he pushes Dick away. The doctor stares before rushing in and closing the door behind her.
When Tim finally manages to get in bed as the sun is rising, he thinks about empty graves again. Of bombs in helmets and lines of code and one stray failsafe that sent a connection straight to Oracle. Of SOS messages to a location Tim hadn’t bothered to check.
He thinks of hands on laps and slow movements in the corner of his eyes that felt the opposite of threatening.
The next morning when he goes down to the explosives hall and sees no helmet he can say he's shocked but not surprised. Though he is surprised to see the empty space where the Robin case used to be.
But when, six months later, Red Hood takes a nasty wound to his arm and a big hit to his head and they need to take his helmet off? When they’re all fluttering around the cave next to a heavily slurring Hood trying to simultaneously convince him and figure out how to get the helmet off.
When Tim is calling for Barbara to get her ass to the cave so they can hack his helmet again. When Hood reaches over with his good arm to grab Tim and drag him closer to growl out a slurred, “Just fucking open it, idiot.”
Tim can’t quite hide his shock as he lifts the helmet with ease.
It doesn’t feel like an apology. It doesn’t feel like understanding.
But it feels more like they’re both standing firmer on that middle ground where they can talk about it.
And if Tim can laugh a bit at the rest of the family when they pout and scowl and whine at the way they still aren’t allowed to touch the helmet? He’s going to consider that part of the healing process.