Chapter Text
At first came the constant whirring that Dick just couldn’t seem to tune out. Then came the migraine that hit him like a truck.
The ground was hard, cold. Upon peeling his eyes open, Dick didn’t recognize the place. The room around him was metal, industrial and just as unwelcoming as the cold floor. He wasn’t sure if whatever knocked him out finally cooked his brain, but he couldn’t seem to read the lettering that appeared on the wall in front of him.
A groan from behind startled him. Jason. Splayed out on the floor in a similar fashion to how he found himself. Half dressed in vigilante regalia, half in his base layer, everything looking worse for wear. The body armour that was still hanging on looked pretty useless at this point. Wait, why was Jason here?
He didn't remember going on a mission with the Red Hood.
He didn’t remember how he got knocked out either.
He didn’t remember how he got here, or what this place even was.
“Jason,” he hissed whilst getting up and immediately regretted it. He felt like one massive bruise— and telling by the ache in his chest, he’d definitely cracked some ribs. He inhaled sharply. Tried again. “Jason. Robin .”
The name jarred Jason to attention, sending him scrambling to his feet. It took him a split second to get his bearings, which left him gripping an injured shoulder, looking only more confused. He sent a wary glance over to Dick. “What… What’s going on?”
“I uh, I don’t know. Do you remember how we got here?”
Jason frowned. “Where is here ?”
“No clue. I don’t remember anything since… I had patrol with Spoiler. And then I went home.”
He nodded. “I was doing research for a case back at the safehouse. I don’t know, I must have fallen asleep…” He looked up at Dick. “Unless Nightwing started growing that sorry excuse for a beard intentionally, I’d say your last memory is a bit stale.”
Dick’s hand flew to his face. Jason may have been right about one thing. “It can’t have been too long. It’s just a bit of stubble.”
Jason rolled his eyes. “At least we know it hasn’t been twenty years.” He looked around, taking in the strange writing on the wall, the car-sized metal crates lining the walls and the large bay doors behind him. The whirring sound continued in the silence, air hissing from some vent above them. Jason wrinkled his nose suddenly. “It smells like burnt steak.”
Past the metallic taste on his tongue, Dick didn’t think he could really smell anything. Beyond the crates, he saw another doorway. He nodded towards it. “I’m going to see if that’s open.”
“And if you get shot at the moment that door opens?” Jason unscrewed a metal rod from the side of the closest crate, detaching the side of the crate in the process. He set it on the floor and brandished the rod. “Now we can both get shot at.”
“Wonderful.”
The two approached the door. Dick gave a quick glance to Jason. He nodded. Dick extended a hand towards the door and–
It simply slid open.
There was nobody waiting for them on the other side. Nothing. Nothing except a large window–
Jason groaned. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
A large window that opened up into empty, yawning space littered with the far off glimmer of stars and planets. The blackness was expansive, consuming, hypnotizing.
If this was space and they were on some sort of spacecraft, there must have been a kind of artificial gravity anchoring Dick’s feet to the floor. All the same, he felt as though he were floating away, from the ground, from himself in a way that was uncontrollable. Dick was used to being away from the ground, in fact he often enjoyed it. But with the cosmos staring back at him, reducing him to the size of an ant, he was free falling with a snapped rope above him and no safe landing below.
He turned away from the window abruptly, squeezing his eyes shut. As if blocking out the sight would erase it, plant him safely back on Earth. He breathed, the motion making his ribs twinge.
Distantly, he registered Jason’s cursing from beside him, quiet, as though he didn’t quite believe it himself. The cursing grew louder. “Dick!” he said finally. “Get over here!”
Jason stood at the end of the corridor leading to yet another closed off doorway. The floor leading up to it was streaked with a pooling, black liquid that seemed to drag itself into the doorway. Jason hefted the rod in one hand, the other on the door. “Ready?”
It was the smell that hit him first. Stale, decay, rot. Strong enough to be noticed even past the metallic air.
There were bodies. Three of them, lying limp on the floor, none human but humanoid enough. Grey skinned, eyes jet black and staring. More black liquid pooled around them and Dick hated how the detective in him knew they’d been shot. Hated how he knew it must have been with slugs rather than some sort of laser weapon– there had been no cauterization near the wounds. The room– the cockpit of the ship still had lights blinking and screens functioning, still operating beyond the death of its pilots.
He turned to Jason. And hated how he noticed the black blood, old and dried on Jason’s clothes. His fingers twitched by his side as he studied them.
“We have to move them,” Jason finally said quietly.
“Where? If there’s an airlock, we don’t know how to operate it. We could end up killing ourselves in the process.”
“The cargo containers. If we empty one of them enough. Then we can send them off once we figure out the airlock.”
Dick absolutely hated the idea. “Okay. You’ll have to help me carry them.”
If there was anything to be gained, the cargo container Dick and Jason had pried open had within it a supply of rations and extra clothes. These were quickly moved outside of the container. It wasn’t much— it seemed as if a significant portion of the supplies had been destroyed, with the walls singed and burned remains of supplies littering the ground. But it was something. It gave them time .
The clothes were of a starched linen, as best Dick could guess, dyed in rich jewel tones and cut into simple working clothes. It seemed very out of place to wear while being stranded in space but they weren’t stiff with sweat. Jason stubbornly held onto his usual cargos, opting only to switch out his tattered body armour for a fresh shirt. Dick was eager to free himself wholly of the sad remains of his Nightwing regalia.
The extra clothing was ripped into bandages with which Dick wrapped his ribs as best he could. Off in the corner, Jason seemed to be tending to his own injuries, presumably his shoulder. Dick would have helped, but the man had instantly gotten cagey about the subject and Dick decided it best to back off.
Carrying dead weight was more labourious than he remembered. He and Jason made three trips, from cockpit to cargo container, carrying each body together. It was a slow process with their injuries but they muscled through it with an appropriate amount of breaks. Spare linens went to create shrouds— something that felt respectful, if unnecessary. If he heard Jason muttering a prayer for the deceased, he didn’t mention it.
As they moved back to the cockpit, a part of him wondered if Jason’s prayer was exclusive to the dead.
Jason stood by the control panel, brows furrowed as he tried to make sense of it. He scanned over the various blinking buttons, hesitating to push them. Most resulted in a flash of red across the panel’s screen, which left Dick to believe that some security lock had been put in place. However, the map of the ship’s route was still accessible, the screen charting the route of the spacecraft.
“Do you know what solar system we’re in?” Dick asked as he studied the flight course.
“Not ours,” Jason replied, not looking away from his work. Despite any push of buttons, the ship’s autopilot yielded no control. “We seem to be headed towards a planet though. Very distinctly not Earth-bound, though.”
Planet bound could be good. Assuming it was a hospitable place.
Jason leaned closer to the screen, frowning. “Dick, I don’t think this planet has a surface. It’s a gas planet.”
Scratch that.
Dick’s mouth flattened into a line. “Is it possible we’d just get pulled into orbit?”
“I don’t think so. It says the destination is on the planet. Except there's nowhere to land.” Jason turned to look at him. “We’d implode inside the ship.”
Okay. So they needed to change course. That had been the plan anyway. But whether to turn back to where they came from or head to Earth…
But where had they come from? How had they gotten onto the ship? Had it been hijacked? Had they had a hand in helping the pilots, or had they helped in their deaths? Or had they just been caught in the crossfire?
The grainy map on the screen simply showed what must have been an abbreviated code for the planet of origin. “Does this make any sense to you?”
Jason looked over. “Nothing makes much sense. Yet.” He rubbed his bad shoulder, wincing. “Either way, it doesn’t matter what that means. We just need to get this thing turned Earth-bound as soon as possible. To Gotham.”
“Wait,” Dick said, drawing himself up. “What about what we might’ve been doing, how we even got here?”
Dick understood as well as anyone the pull Gotham had. That whispering in the back of your mind that never quieted until you returned, no matter how far or how long you wandered. However much you hated it, Gotham always called you back.
But there was that thought. Something left unfinished that led Dick to resist the urge to return. He needed to see it through, or else go insane.
Jason crossed his arms. “Not my problem.”
“What if it was important? What if we were helping people?”
“We just woke up on a ship, in the middle of nowhere, with a bunch of dead people ,” Jason scowled. “I don’t know if we were helping people.”
“That doesn’t negate my point. We could have been.”
“Your point contains a lot of what-ifs. We know there are people back in Gotham, back on Earth that do need our help. Are you going to turn your back on them for a what-if ?”
Dick scoffed. “Is there nothing about this you find strange? That neither of us remembers anything? We have none of our tools or supplies. We were put here.”He narrowed his eyes. “We have a duty to investigate.”
“I think we have a duty to not freaking die in space!” He sighed. “Look, we just need to get back to Earth. After that, we can figure this whole thing out, bring in the JLA if you want.”
The words sounded empty to Dick’s ears. Placating. Jason was terrified and trying not to show it. Dick wasn’t one to deny the same trepidation that coiled itself in his own stomach or else call himself a hypocrite but at least he wasn’t running away.
Dick squared his jaw. “Have some conviction.”
“What?”
“You heard me.” He stared Jason down, daring him to look away first. Jason was always going on about creed–let him have it then.“All those oaths sworn to be a protector. Are they dissolved now? Or do they only apply to people you actually like? To people who are convenient –”
“ Shut it , Goldie,” Jason grit out. “I swear to God.”
“You swear… what? Because it seems you’re not going to do anything. Maybe throw a fit and call it a day?”
Jason moved. Close enough for Dick to see the crooked scar that disappeared into his hairline. Close enough to clearly notice the bulk that Jason had put on in his years away. “You think you can save the whole universe because you’re special . You don’t get to do that. We don’t have time for that. Stop being delusional, you’re never going to get anything done.” He sneered. “Call me a coward, but I get results.”
Dick shoved Jason away from him. He hit the wall with a thud. “I don’t need you on autopilot the moment things get rough. You can piece it together– something’s going on and we need to get to the bottom of it.”
“Oh, I need ?” Jason’s eyes widened and he barked a laugh. “Don’t think you’re in charge here.”
“If you were in charge,” Dick said, “I think you’d crack .” He huffed. “Look at you.”
“Me?” Jason inspected Dick for a moment before pulling away from the wall. “Well, curiosity did kill the cat.” He strode off, holding his bad shoulder.
“Jason. Stop being an ass and listen to me. We’re not going to–”
Jason flipped him off. And the doorway hissed shut.
Dick made no move to follow him.
The bunk creaked as Jason rolled over once more in his scratchy sleeping bag. His shoulder throbbed in a way that was worrying, especially when they had no medical supplies. He cradled it, hoping the alleviation of weight would help. It didn’t.
Instead, he found his bandages becoming saturated once more with blood. He bit back a groan.
When he first awoke, he knew immediately that the injury was bad. But it wasn’t until he and Dick dressed their wounds did Jason come across torn, angry flesh hidden underneath the remaining sticky fabric of his suit. He’d cleaned it quietly, hiding the worst of the injury from Dick as not to worry him further. Jason didn’t know if he could stand Dick’s worrying with nobody to punch but Dick himself.
Jason was fine. Was going to be fine. He just needed to get back to Earth.
But as the seconds rolled by into minutes, into hours, the throbbing didn’t fade. Sleep remained elusive and Jason instead found himself huddled in a stolen sleeping bag atop a metal bunk, pretending as hard as he could that he was indeed resting.
He had no idea what approximation of time had passed by the time the door creaked open. Dick barrelled through, seemingly unaware or uncaring of Jason’s attempt at sleep. “Jason! You’ve gotta see this.”
Jason made no sign to show that he was awake.
”The cargo hold has some sort of computer that I managed to access. Broke past the passwords, you're welcome . I got ahold of the ship’s log and the security footage. Well, whatever wasn’t corrupted.” He paused, and Jason could picture him frowning. “Which seemed to be most of it, but maybe we can figure out who put us here and why.”
Another distraction. And Dick had to get himself enraptured by it. Jason had a feeling that he’d be doing most of the legwork of figuring out most of the ship's controls. At least Dick might stay out of his way.
Jason did not move.
With no input, Dick eventually sighed, climbing up to the bunk above Jason. “It’s a step, you know. To prove this isn’t just a what-if.” Dick muttered to himself. He found sleep much more quickly than Jason did, leaving Jason to lie in the dark, listening to the cycling air through the ship’s vents and the soft snores above him.
He lay like that as long as he could bear before shuffling back to the cargo bay to change the bandages on his shoulder. More ripped linens and water, neither sufficient to appropriately dress the gaping tear. The small voice in the back of his head threw out ideas of what might happen if Jason didn’t find any medical supplies soon– infection, sepsis.
Jason shook his head. He was fine. He just needed to figure this out.
Linens and water weren’t enough to stave off infection. Not with a tear like this, messy and gaping. Like someone had shot a grappling hook into his shoulder. He swallowed. It could very well kill him.
He breathed, trying to steady his hands. In. Hold. Out. Hold.
Jason didn’t want to die again.
In. Hold. Out. Hold.
Not on this tin can, dwarfed by an enormity of nothingness. Not when the walls could so easily crumple inwards around him, suffocating– air sucked out of his lungs into the vacuum of space. Frozen, boiling at the same time.
In. Hold. Out. Hold.
Focus. He needed to focus.
In. Hold. Out. Hold.
He tightened the linens as much as he could, the pressure making him gasp. He shut his eyes.
In. Hold. Out. Hold.
Dick had pulled some kind of barbed arrow out of his shoulder. How did he know that? How had he remembered that?
In. Hold. Out. Hold.
It took him a minute to blink away the white spots in his vision. The memory– it seemed right. Seemed real. Jason could still smell the smoke on Dick’s gloves, pressing over his mouth as he drew the arrowhead out. Could still feel the heat–
–It meant Jason didn’t have very much time. He needed to get to work.
It wasn’t that Jason hated the flashing lights of the cockpit. Various buttons, screens, switches– sure, it wasn’t exactly like any Earthly ship but this wasn’t Jason’s first time with alien tech. It was taunting him, familiar yet just out of reach. The only thing stopping him from pounding his fists into the buttons was a thinning thread of self restraint and the building heat behind his eyes.
Based on his meddling from yesterday, Jason had found out two very important things. One: the ship’s autopilot was still working and actively taking them towards a death trap. Two: any access to change the ship's destination required an override code. If Jason could redirect the autopilot to Earth, they could be okay.
That is, if he also redirected Dick’s insane obsession at the same time.
The thing was, the pilots who may have had such codes weren’t likely to volunteer any information from their mausoleum. Jason grit his teeth in frustration. The jumble of symbols only served to make his vision swim. He blinked hard, trying to will the symbols into submission. In some hapless fashion, he smashed random symbols into the computer. It flashed red in error.
He tried again.
Red.
Jason sighed, resting his forehead against the cool metal in front of him. It was a good distraction from the heat .
He let his eyes slide shut.
There had to be some other way of accessing the codes. What was that thing Dick had been yapping about earlier? The ship log. It could have feeds of information being input into the ship computer.
Without the sheer excitement, Jason didn’t think he could have peeled himself off of the panel. He wiped the bleariness from his eyes as he made his way to the cargo bay. Sure enough, he found Dick’s pet project. The computer popped out from the wall near the door, screen still glowing. True to his word, Dick had already gotten into the security files. All Jason had to do was scroll.
The feed showed a picture of each room, allowing Jason to scroll between rooms to follow the footage. He selected the earliest available footage and pressed play.
Just as Jason thought his retinas might be permanently stamped with footage of the aliens simply sitting or walking from room to room, he found something. He may not have had a photographic memory like Babs, but he could definitely copy the keystrokes from the footage.
He watched the loop several times to memorize it and hurried back over to the cockpit to input the code–
Green .
Jason stood for a second, dumbfounded. This might actually work. They could get out of this. All Jason had to do now was set the new destination.
Out of curiosity, Jason found himself returning to the cargo bay. What other answers did the security log hold?
As he scrolled to more recent footage, more and more of it seemed to be corrupted. However, one intact file caught his eye– Nightwing was in the frame. Stomach turning, he played the footage.
The inside of the ship was dark. Jason flipped through the feeds, trying to find some sign of motion. The lights in the cockpit blinked. Three bodies were slumped around the room just as he and Dick had found them. Jason sucked in a breath. Okay.
Suddenly– motion in the cargo bay. Jason flipped to the feed just in time to see a heavily armoured figure stride in and inspect the ship. Once satisfied, he left only to return with a prisoner. Nightwing. The figure dumped him unceremoniously on the ground. Jason’s own unconscious form soon followed suit.
He then took to the cockpit to input a destination only to step out of the ship and seal the bay doors once more.
God.
A bitter taste filled Jason’s mouth. Dick had been right. They had been put here to die. Which likely meant they had been meddling in some extra-terrestrial mob’s affairs. Crime families never really did change, did they? You were either sentenced to swim with the fishes or starve to death among the stars. Or suffocate. Whichever came first.
Dick wouldn’t leave this alone, would he? Now that Jason had figured out the autopilot, he’d likely turn the craft right back to where it came from. Just when Jason was a hair away from getting them home.
But. He had been on a mission. With Nightwing, of all people. Who would be on a mission with Nightwing and would not be involved in the most infuriatingly sincere plot to help someone?
Jason shook his head. They needed more intel, needed to regather their knowledge lost from their induced amnesia. Jason needed supplies to treat his freaking shoulder. He was willing to bet Dick wasn’t peachy either.
He glanced back at the computer. But Dick wouldn’t listen to reason.
This – this was a distraction.
Jason stood, ignoring how the sudden movement made his head spin. The metal bar he’d pried from the crate yesterday lay in the corner, unassuming. Jason hefted the weight in his hands– and hurled it towards the computer.
Clunk .
It was a sluggish attempt, but still Jason was rewarded with a satisfying dent in the computer’s side. Jason bared his teeth, ignoring the fire in his shoulder, and threw himself at the machine again.
Clunk .
Clunk . The screen went fuzzy, then black.
Clunk .
Clunk . Until what once was the computer was a mangled mess of parts barely even salvageable for scraps.
Chest heaving, Jason let the bar drop to the floor. No more distractions.
Listless feet carried him back to the control panel. He collapsed into the pilot’s chair, awkwardly heavy in the artificial gravity. He felt like a zombie, barely coherent as he keyed Earth into the autopilot. The computer flashed green in confirmation.
Now all Dick had to do was not mess this up.