Work Text:
When Jason’s eyes crack open, he can still smell the city.
He always does, of course. The stench of Gotham permeates everything, but now, it’s strong. It’s the kind of strong that Jason expects when he’s racing through the streets or flinging himself across rooftops, when he’s ducking punches and sending limp bodies to the concrete. He smells blood and smoke and fear and his body tenses on instinct, his muscles locking in preparation for war.
But there’s no fight, not here, not now. Jason’s in a bed that isn’t his own, wearing a gown that definitely isn’t his own, staring at white walls and a window overlooking the Gotham skyline. He’s hooked to a myriad of machines that beep and chirp melodically. A heart monitor indicates his rising pulse as he takes stock of the situation, of himself.
And then the pain hits.
Jason’s eyes water immediately, as though it’s all fresh again. The sharp pinpoints across his back and down his right leg are bullet wounds, no doubt about that. He flexes the toes on his left foot, and he has to bite down on his lower lip to suppress a scream; something down there is broken. It’s a struggle to breathe with ribs that are bruised or shattered. He aches everywhere, a dull, throbbing discomfort that feels like he was tossed off a building.
He might as well have been, if he remembers correctly. It all comes to him in pieces. He remembers the chaos in the streets, a burning warehouse, people running for their lives. He can still hear the screaming ringing in his ears. The Bats hadn't been there, of course; they were busy, Jason assumes, dealing with “the bigger picture”, whatever it may be. Jason had been there by himself, and he'd done a damn good job of it, too, until he'd gone and gotten himself shot. And when Bane himself had shown up, Jason couldn't have done much on a bad leg and a fucked up back.
Rage bubbles in Jason's gut, familiar and comfortable, but it makes the ache worsen. His head pounds; he's definitely concussed.
The moon looks bright in the distance, casting light over the city. Long shadows fall into Jason's room. Every cell in his body burns. The pain makes it difficult to focus on anything else. He's still out of energy, and his eyes begin to drift shut. Jason makes no urge to fight it.
A young woman slips into the room and puts something into the IV bag hooked to Jason's arm. The world falls away, and Jason feels like he's floating.
// // //
It's daytime when he wakes again, or so he assumes. The sky outside is gray with clouds and rain, and the city looks pallid beneath it. The gentle sound of rain against the window almost makes Jason forget about the machines around him, but not quite.
He's pumped full of drugs, which explains the feeling of weightlessness and the lack of debilitating agony, so Jason considers it a positive. His body is slightly more responsive to his commands — he successfully curls his fingers toward his palms, and as far as he's concerned, that's enough of a victory for the moment.
His room is an endless cycle of doctors and nurses with names and faces he doesn't bother committing to memory. They wear the same expression of detached kindness, with smiles that barely meet their eyes. They fiddle with the machines and ask him questions that he answers with boredom dripping from his voice.
They don't ask him much about who he is; he finds that pretty odd for a man who's supposed to be dead.
The time in between the visits are quiet, aside from the television on the wall. Try as he might, Jason can't detach himself from Gotham, even in a state like this. The reports play monotonously; it's the usual gang wars and petty street crime, interspersed with a few notable villain attacks that, apparently, have already been dealt with.
Fucking Bats.
He doesn't hate them, even though he wishes he could say otherwise. The uneasy truce between them has developed, at some point, into something less familiar. Jason had gradually found himself at more and more birthday parties and dinners, to the point that Alfred had taken the liberty of keeping a bedroom ready for him, as though he'd ever want to stay there.
He's used it once. Maybe twice. A third, if you count passing out on New Year’s Eve.
They're not here now, and they weren't there when Jason had nearly died a second time. They're never around when he needs them. He knows that won't change.
The news segues into talking about a new Batman stuffed toy, and Jason turns the television off.
// // //
Jason’s drifting back from sleep and listening to the rain when there's a knock at the door. He makes a noise of affirmation, and the door swings inward. There's no flash of a white coat or the scribbling of a pen on a clipboard. Impeccably-polished black shoes click against the floor, and Jason turns his head just in time to catch the eyes of Timothy Drake-Wayne.
He sucks in a breath through his teeth, and by the looks of it, Tim is somehow just as surprised to see him. Tim blinks owlishly, still dressed in a suit that probably cost more than all of Jason's hero equipment put together. He isn't wearing a tie, and his collar is undone; Jason realizes he must have just gotten off work.
“...hey,” Tim begins, awkward in every way. Jason snorts. Tim slips inside, and the door closes with the dull click of a heavy latch. “Bruce told me you were here.”
Jason raises his eyebrows. “How did Bruce know?”
Tim shoots him a look. “He's Bruce. He knows a lot about everything. Doesn't make it any less creepy sometimes, but it is what it is.” There's a pause. “Are you okay?”
“I'm awesome,” Jason replies, in a time that confirms how entirely not awesome he is. “Fucked up just about every part of my body, if you can't tell my looking at me. Surprised my fuckin’ dick isn't broken, too. The doctors say it'll be a while until I'm walking again, if I ever do.”
Tim rolls his eyes. “How many times have doctors told us shit like that?”
“Touché,” Jason snorts.
They settle into a quiet that feels uneasy in a way that Jason can't quite explain. Tim looks tense, rocking on his feet, and Jason can't help but notice the way that Tim is almost scanning him with his eyes. Tim's always had a way of making Jason feel like he's being viewed through an X-ray machine; Tim's gaze is piercing, and Jason finds himself shifting in discomfort.
“I wanted to thank you,” Tim begins, breaking the silence with a sentence Jason had never expected to hear from him. “For what you did. Helping all those people, even if it got you hurt.”
“Oh, stop,” Jason insists, cutting Tim off before he can continue. “Don’t come in here acting like Bruce, thanking me and shit. I’ll jump out of that window, I swear to God. I did it because it was the right thing to do, not because I wanted you bats to jerk me off over it.”
Tim rolls his eyes and crosses the room, facing the window with his back to Jason. The hazy light outlines Tim’s body in grey. “Jason, nobody in their right mind would think that you did this — or literally anything, ever — for my approval. For our approval. But you deserve praise for doing good. A lot of people got to go home that night because of you.”
“And I wasn’t one of them,” Jason says, though he fails to conjure as much nastiness into his tone as he’d like. “Who the fuck knows how long I’m gonna be stuck here?”
Tim pauses again, looking over his shoulder with an odd half-smile. “At least you have an excuse not to come to dinner at the manor for a while, right?”
Jason can’t help but laugh at that, even if it makes his injured ribs ache like a motherfucker.
// // //
It takes a couple of days for the first bits of Jason's mobility to return. He's still nowhere near walking under his own power, but he can wiggle his toes a little more, and he can grasp the TV remote without wanting to die. The doctors say it's promising progress, but Jason isn't used to being helpless. He's meant to be tearing through Gotham and striking fear into the hearts of criminals, not cooped up like a caged bird.
The physical pain becomes little more than annoyance, but the boredom and restlessness are infinitely worse.
There's only so much television he can watch, only so many cases he can go over in his head. He can catch glimpses of things through his window if he's attentive enough; when Mr. Freeze turns a quarter of downtown Gotham into a winter wonderland, Jason can see the ice twisting around the buildings in the distance. If he looks carefully enough, he swears he can see the Bats springing into action.
He wishes he could be out there. He plans the battles in his head, and his arms twitch with the muscle memory of reloading his pistols. He mulls over the best one liner for the situation — “You're going back on ice, asshole” is what he settles on — and mutters it under his breath until the inflection is right.
He's going fucking insane, and he knows it.
Jason wants to help, which is an incredible realization for someone with a reputation for selfishness. He'll never admit it, but he hates the thoughts of the Bats out there without backup.
The television murmurs along with some fluff piece about Superman. Superman would clean up an iced-over part of the city in minutes. Superman could probably have all of the goddamn criminal lunatics in Gotham rounded up and in Arkham before dawn. Superman probably wouldn't have let Jason get folded in half like a lawn chair.
But Superman isn't here, and Jason doesn't live in a world of “what if”s. He kills the television and squirms until he can find a position of relative comfort in his hospital bed, and he watches the ice twinkle in the distance.
// // //
Jason struggles to dial the numbers on his phone, but he manages.
He waves a hand to a helpful nurse and holds the phone to his ear, nibbling on his lip the way he used to do when he was little. He's surprised he hasn't bitten a hole through it. Each ring makes him grow more restless, clenching the phone tighter, and he flinches when a bored voice meets him from the other end of the line. “You've reached Wayne Enterprises, this is Timothy Drake-Wayne speaking. If you require an appointment, I can forward you to my secretary.”
“I'll die a second death before I ever file an appointment to see you,” Jason replies, making a noise of disgust.
“Yet you're calling me on my cell when you know I'm at work,” Tim replies breezily. “What do you want, Jason?”
“I'm just surprised you picked up,” Jason says. He's stalling. They both know it. “What, running a billion-dollar company doesn't keep you busy enough, Timmy?”
“You managed to find the thirty minutes of my day where I'm not in a meeting of some kind. And don't call me that,” Tim asserts. “But that's not the point here. I'm pretty sure you've literally never called me unless it was an emergency, so what do you want, Jason?”
Jason falls silent until Tim prompts him with another use of his name. “I'm bored,” he says lamely.
Tim snorts. “So? Am I your babysitter? It's not my job to entertain you.”
“No,” Jason says, speaking slowly and carefully. “But I figured I could just…see what you were up to. That's all. No ulterior motive, not trying to piss you off, just…yeah.”
There's another pause before he hears Tim sigh. Jason hears the pleasant beep of a second phone. “Margaret, I need you to reshuffle my schedule a bit.”
Fifteen minutes later, Tim strolls through the door in his full work ensemble once again. There are a few bruises on his face that Jason doesn't ask about. Tim sits in a hard plastic chair near Jason's bed, and for an hour, they talk about nothing important.
It's the best Jason's felt in days.
// // //
By the end of the second week, Jason can move a bit better. The doctors all but beg him to remain in bed as often as possible, but Jason insists on reclaiming as much of his mobility as he can; he's already losing his fucking mind being trapped in the hospital.
He's offered crutches, which he takes reluctantly. In the time between his meals and when he falls into restless sleep, Jason hobbles and hops around his room and down the hallway, back and forth, with grim determination etched on his face.
Jason is restless, but he does his best to remain collected. He's kind to his nurses — he has a few favorites — and he's polite to the other patients that he sees.
But he refuses to accept help.
He won't let them give him painkillers anymore; they make his head feel foggy, and they bring back bad memories. He ignores the ache in his bones as best he can, and he never complains, nor does he seek comfort in anyone around him. Jason bears it all by himself, because anything else would be unacceptable.
He wanders in and out of sleep so often that it’s hard to tell when things are real. Jason opens his eyes and grimaces at the dryness of his mouth and at the morning sunlight pouring through the window — sunshine is a shocking rarity in Gotham — and as he blinks away the bleariness, his gaze sharpens on a slim figure seated nearby.
Jason immediately moves to sit up, which proves to be a horrendous mistake. His body seizes with soreness and pain, and he grits his teeth so hard that he’s surprised not to hear his jaw pop. He groans shakily and falls slowly back against the pillows. “What…the fuck.”
Tim gives that shitty little smile of his, shrugging his shoulders. “I didn’t want to wake you up just to tell you that I was here.” As Jason’s eyes adjust to the light, more of Tim comes into focus. He's wearing a plain, simple sweater and jeans; it looks strange on someone who wears a new suit every day. “The nurses tell me you've been quite difficult when it comes to taking your medicine.”
Jason's face twists into a scowl. “And why is that any of your business?”
Tim's smile grows wider by about a millimeter, and rage erupts in Jason's belly. “Well,” Tim says slowly, cautiously, eyeing Jason. “Technically, as far as the hospital knows, I'm responsible for you.”
Jason's eye twitches. It's a good thing for both of them that he doesn't have a weapon nearby.
Tim laughs, a light little sound that's infuriating nonetheless. “Dr. Thompkins would have patched you up herself, but you were already here before any of us knew anything had happened to you. And since you're legally dead, we had to come up with something pretty quickly, and…well…as far as the hospital is aware, you're my ward.”
Jason stares at him in silence for a moment. “I have never wanted to kill anyone as badly as I want to kill you right now.”
Tim offers a nonchalant shrug. “The alternative was letting every newspaper and television station in the city run a story about a dead kid showing up in the hospital, alive. Oracle handled all the fake paperwork. I just signed on a few dotted lines. They've called me a few times about your progress, you know. You're healing really quickly.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Jason sighs. It's true; his body feels way better already, and as far as he's concerned, that means he's close to getting the fuck out of the hospital. He finds his anger draining quickly. “...thanks for handling all of that shit, I guess. I didn't ask you to do that, but still.”
Tim smiles and stands, moving to Jason's bedside. “Don't mention it,” he murmurs, gingerly patting Jason's arm. “No, seriously. Don't mention it. You're gonna get us found out.”
Jason can't help but snort.
He casts his eyes toward the window. Gotham looks strange, bathed in morning sunlight. It's almost easy to forget that the whole place is a hellhole. “So now what? How long am I gonna be stuck here?”
“That's the other thing,” Tim muses, and Jason looks back at him. “I talked to the doctors, and they think it would be alright to have you moved out of the hospital, as long as you're in an environment where you can receive the proper care.”
Jason's eyes narrow. “Tim, no. Absolutely the fuck not. I would rather be shot again.”
Tim puts up his hands. “You have a choice, Jay. It's the hospital, or…”
“Or the fucking Manor,” Jason finishes, groaning. “I wish I'd died. Again. You're really going to give me this choice? Seriously? It's sit here and rot, or have Dick hover over me like a goddamn mother hen for fuck knows how long.”
“It wouldn't be all bad,” Tim muses, raising his sharp eyebrows. Amusement dances in his eyes, as though he's privy to something Jason isn't — which, in all likelihood, he is. “After all, wouldn't you rather have Alfred’s cooking than hospital food?”
It's the ultimate ace up Tim’s sleeve, and Jason resigns himself to defeat.
They leave the hospital before noon. Jason supports himself with crutches, and they listen to Tim’s terrible music all the way home.
// // //
Bruce doesn't say anything when Jason enters the manor, begrudgingly helped along by Tim. His eyes say plenty; Jason has known the old man for long enough to recognize his emotional constipation. They share a moment of silent staring before Bruce nods his head, lips drawn into a thin frown. Jason lets out a breath he doesn't remember holding.
Dick is so distraught that he should be nominated for an Oscar. Damian pretends he doesn't care, but he does.
Alfred is there to fluff Jason's pillows and bring him three square meals a day, plus tea time.
Jason still aches, but it's an ache that he's used to. He's damaged, but the pieces are still together. And every time one of the Bats — no, one of his family members — smiles at him, he feels a little more whole.
It's still sunny in Gotham, and for once, Jason feels like he's home.