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The fight wasn’t going well from the start.
Jason’s knees hit the concrete hard, and he went down hard. A ragged gasp left him, and he blinked for a few moments, stunned. His heart thundered in his chest, blood roaring in his ears. Blinking, he glanced around. His head was slammed into the ground. A knee pressed into his back. Someone had his shoulder. One of the robots, he could feel the angular curl of its fingers and the press of metal digits into the muscle of his shoulder through his armor padding. The grip was too powerful, too robotic.
Across the roof, Dick was still battling the man who was controlling the robots. The pair of them traded blows, quick movements and hard strikes. Dick did a flip, and Jason laid there. Watching. For some reason, the man didn’t bother using his robot to take Jason out. From the look of it, he didn’t have any interest in Jason. Not right then, at least. Was he distracted?
Lying on the ground, Jason twitched. Slowly, he took another breath. Jerking, he tried to throw the robot off. It didn’t go anywhere. Damn. Okay, Jason. Go for an emergency beacon. You’re probably going to need it, he thought. He shifted. The robot’s fingers tightened around his arm, squeezing like a blood pressure cuff. His collarbone and shoulder creaked and groaned, the joint shifting in its place. Grimacing, Jason bit his lip.
There was blood on the inside of his hood. Thick, wet, dripping from his nose and from his lips.
This really was a suboptimal mission. Damien was probably roasting them back in the Cave, unless he and Tim were somehow still busy with their own mission. The pair had gotten into a fight, earlier—they were the only ones available for their job, though. So someone needed to monitor them, but it was a pretty simple recon mission involving some potential drug dealers. Duke was taking a nighttime quiz. Steph and Cass were trying to fix the broken Batmobile. Oracle was out with her dad, Bruce and Selina were on a date, the other vigilantes all had their own things to do.
This was meant to be an easy mission, too. This was meant to be nice and simple, and then they were all meant to go home and watch Moonlight Massacre III on the big TV in the theatre room and maybe Selina would show up and maybe Jason would be able to convince Alfred to let him make cookies with him. Even more important, this mission was also meant to be recon. Just something to check out the robots that had been spotted wandering around the area. Something something suspicious activity, something something weird robots, no new security orders—and definitely not security robot orders—according to Tim.
They weren’t meant to end up being in a fight, but they had both been startled by other robots and both been thrown in front of the man. Then, fighting., Immediate fighting, and Jason had been punched in the throat and the stomach several times. He was just not having a good time that night, apparently.
Even a small, flinching movement made the robot increase its grip on Jason’s shoulder.
Panting, he squeezed his eyes shut and triggered the emergency beacon.
The robot crunched his shoulder in its grip.
Pain shot across his arm. Grunting, Jason bit back a yell, pushed his face into the concrete to try and muffle the sound. In his peripheral, past the blurriness, he could see Dick glance over.
The robot master punched Dick in the face.
Going down, Dick grabbed at his face, for his nose. The robot master grabbed him, twisted an arm around his neck and held him close. “You might want to stop there. Take his neck.” Shifting atop Jason, the robot holding him curled metal fingers around his neck and then squeezed. Black spots danced in his vision. The pain increased. Several of his vertebrae popped, voicing their discontent with the situation. Yeah, well, Jason was doing pretty badly, too.
A ragged gasp left him. Dick struggled briefly, then stopped. “What’s with the robots? I don’t think that Joker or Scarecrow will be too happy about a new person moving into Gotham.” He forced out. The person holding him tightened his grip. Gasping himself, Dick clawed at the arm around his neck, shifted his weight back.
“I don’t care what they think. The robots will only respond to me. Telekinesis.” The dude said. Something crossed Dick’s face. Still in the grip of the robot, Jason gasped as it loosened its grip. “I don’t even need to speak to order them, I just need to think. I’m sure Joker and Scarecrow will find themselves…preoccupied before they can get to me.”
“Maybe.” Dick pressed back a bit more. They were by the edge of—
They’re by the edge of the building.
Jason stared at Dick and the baddie of the week, heart threatening to burst out of his chest. His dinner was already threatening to make a reappearance. Pain shot along his arm, up his neck and across his chest. He couldn’t even see Dick’s eyes—he knew he was staring at him, anyways.
“They will be.” Dick swallowed and huffed out a laugh. With narrowed eyes, the man demanded, “What’re you laughing about?” Instead of paying attention to him, Dick turned and looked right at Jason.
“See you later, sweetheart.”
Then, he threw his head back.
The man behind him stumbled and fell.
He didn’t let go of Dick.
The both of them plummeted out of Jason’s view.
No. Struggling, Jason cried out as the robot grabbed the top of his head and smashed him into the concrete. Everything went dark.
The next thing he knew, he woke to Bruce and Selina beside him. Bruce was holding someone, cape wrapped around them. As for Selina, she was settled beside Jason. Her fingers carded through his hair—
Wait.
His helmet.
Jolting, Jason glanced around. Pain shot through his shoulder. “Whoa, kid. You’re okay.” Selina gently pushed him back to the ground. He went willingly. His eyes searched the roof of the building.
“Dick. Where’s Dick?”
“He’s fine. He landed on top of the dude.” Selina explained, glancing over at Bruce. Heart shuddering in its place, Jason glanced at him as well.
He was holding Dick in his arms.
His brother was very much unconscious, head tilted into the crook of Bruce’s neck and shoulder. Blood matted the hair on the side of his head. The white lines of his domino mask were thin strips, he had red trailing from the corner of his mouth. Internal damage. “Why is he still here? Why aren’t you taking him to—”
There was a whirring over their heads, and Jason glanced up in time to see some sort of light. Oh. Swallowing, he glanced at Selina. She turned to Bruce, dipped her head once, and then did a quite possibly too-dramatic backflip out of the range of the beam.
I’m going back to sleep, Jason thought, dropping his head back against the concrete and closing his eyes.
+
When he woke up, it was to half of his siblings in the Watchtower’s medical bay.
Arms laid over his stomach, Jason tipped his head to the side and searched for Cass or Damien. Unusually, Damien was missing. Cass was not, however. She and Barbara were right next to one another, Cass typing away on her phone with the click of just-long-enough fingernails against the screen protector. Gotham knew she chucked the thing around enough that it was a miracle the phone hadn’t cracked.
“Cass?” He forced out, blinking languidly. Jolting, both Barbara and Cass straightened up to look at him. Taking a breath, he looked around the rest of the room, frowning, “Where’s—Tim? Damien?”
Cass and Barbara exchanged a glance.
“How’s Dick?” Cass’ mouth drew into a thin line. Looking at her, Jason frowned. “Cass. How’s Dick?”
Barbara answered, Cass looking at the floor with her hands clasped in front of her.
“He’s—okay. Just—” Sighing, Barbara glanced to the side. “Hurt. Bad. It’ll be a while before he can be back in the field. Think Scarecrow’s Fear Gas Car Crash kind of bad.”
“And…Tim? Damien? They’re with him, right?” He asked, slowly pushing himself up with one arm. The other was in a sling, he realized now. It wouldn’t move with him like the rest of his body would. Teeth gritting, Jason growled out, “Where are Tim and Damien?”
“Damien is in surgery.” Barbara answered, meeting his gaze. There was something torn in her face. Frowning, Jason glanced at Cass. His eyes went to the door, to the window outside and the blank hallway. Something was off, he should have known. The medical bay hallways were never empty, people were always coming and going and especially the staff when they weren’t doing a surgery.
“Tim?” Cass leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, and rested her chin on her palm. Even just that was answer enough. No. “What happened? Who got him?”
“He’s—alive, as far as we know. They got grabbed on their mission, Damien was dumped just outside of Gotham. Signs of a fight, some sort of struggle, then magic. From the look of it, Tim managed to get Damien away from them by throwing him down into a tunnel. He made it with a few injuries—better than being dead, though.” Barbara quickly explained. “But we—”
“We don’t know where Tim is.” Cass growled out. “And we don’t have any leads.”
Lying back down on the bed with a thump, Jason stared at the ceiling and closed his eyes.