Work Text:
Being Robin is about family. That was certainly true. And for his family, at least--maybe for all families, come to think of it--that meant putting up with the worst of the worst.
And the worst of the worst on Bruce Wayne was damn scary. Dick could remember countless times his mentor/adoptive father had done awful things, to him or to others; things that made him want to scream, strike Bruce until he got his head on straight, or just curl into a ball and wish all of it would just go away and somehow he could be waking up in the baggage car on the way to another show.
Yet somehow, he's never been as furious at Bruce as he is right now.
He barely pays attention to where he's going, what's going on around him, and part of him is screaming that he needs to get his head in the game because this is dangerous and practically begging for someone to attack him. The other part is wishing that someone would, that he could lash into a criminal and not hold back, that something, anything would distract him from what's happened. He barely recognizes that he winds up at the zeta tubes, leaves the bike behind without bothering to secure it or turn it off, and the lights in the portal flicker behind his closed eyelids. The announcement of his designation over the intercom sounds like ringing in his ears, as do the startled shouts of his name as he stalks through the main room, feet pounding as he's suddenly running flat out to escape, to hide from the truth.
He skids to a stop and drops to his knees in the hologram room. The sight of his best friend's face in the red and yellow cowl just adds to the pain that's threatening to crush him. Turning his head and seeing the small boy, in his old uniform, gazing straight ahead, proud and tough and kind and alive hurts worse, and he almost wants to tear the damn thing down, break the projector and smash it into the wall and erase everything he'd done wrong with the baby brother he'd loved.
Loves.
Because Jason is alive and Bruce has abandoned him.
He would hate Bruce more if he weren't too busy hating himself.
***
"Batman! The smoke bombs won't work long, we need to evacuate, now!" Dick shouts as he snatches his usb cord out of the computer on the desk in front of him. He kicks the door to the office shut behind him as he runs.
"Copy. Bring the Batmobile around, rendezvous out front. I'll bring the evidence," Batman's low voice says in his ear, and Dick nods even as he throws open the roof access door, firing the grapple and swinging down around the building towards where the Batmobile is hidden in a nearby alley. He tries to tamp down the eagerness he's feeling; he loves when Bru--Batman lets him drive. He disengages the grapple and hits the ground running, rounding a corner to start the car. Then he stops dead in his tracks.
"Uh, boss, you're not going to believe this, but..."
"We don't have time for this, Robin," Bruce says tightly, panting. "Just bring the car..."
"I can't!" Dick exclaims. "The tires are gone!"
"What," Bruce sounds completely deadpan, which Dick knows is his version of surprise. He would laugh if they weren't in such a rush. "I'm serious, the tires are gone, and..." He stops when he hears a scuffling sound a few feet away. Training kicks in, and his hands go towards his batarangs even as he creeps closer to the car, leaning down to look beneath it.
A long, thin, solid piece of metal comes swinging out at his face, and he leaps backwards with a very manly yelp.
"Robin, what's happening?" Bruce's voice sounds strained in the earpiece, and Dick can hear grunts and screams and punching in the background.
"Somebody just swung a--hey!" he ducks under another swing, "--tire iron at my head. Our thief's got guts. Gimme a sec," and he flings a batarang in the general direction of the arm holding the tire iron. The rest of the thief's body is cloaked in shadow. His jaw nearly drops when the tire iron comes up and swats the batarang back in his direction. He dodges absentmindedly. Wow. This dude's good. Or lucky.
However, they've made the mistake of leaving the safety of the ground beneath the car, and now they're trying to run out of the alley. Dick leaps onto the trunk of the batmobile, running up the roof before springing from the hood. He lands on the thief, tackling them to the ground and sending the tire iron clattering onto the pavement. Dick springs back onto his feet easily, ready for retaliation. Which is why he nearly falls over when he sees that the thief is a stupidly tiny boy, with greasy black hair and the biggest hazel eyes he's ever seen. The kid is curled on his side on the pavement, clutching a bloodied nose, and Dick is suddenly worried he'd hurt the kid when he jumped on him.
He barely gets the chance to squeak out an "I--" before Batman is landing in the alley, and the kid growls like a scrappy dog, grabs the tire iron and swings it hard towards Dick's abdomen. Dick leaps backwards, and Bruce is next to the kid instantly, grabbing him and trying to restrain him. "Stop, calm down," Batman orders, and Dick chokes back an incredulous laugh. The voice that terrifies the criminal underworld of Gotham isn't likely to be very reassuring. Not that the kid cares. He's scrabbling and clawing and kicking and flailing and generally looking kind of hilarious and pathetic at the same time. "Lemme go, I didn't do nothing, let me go," he snaps, and Dick is laughing interiorly even more now. "So you did do something, did you?" he snarks. "Also, sure, that's incredibly obvious by the way you were hiding under the car with a tire iron in your hand."
"Robin," Batman says sternly, but Dick just smirks. The kid hisses at him, like a friggin' cat, and elbows Batman in the stomach. "Leggo of me, ya big boob!"
Dick can't help it. He bursts out cackling, even as Bruce releases the kid--sort of. The shrimp tries to run off, but stops rather abruptly, as Bruce is holding his collar and not letting go. "What are you doing," Batman asks, not quite harshly.
"None of your damn business," the kid snarls.
"Language," Dick says, and the kid looks at him incredulously. "Nerd," the boy snarks, tone implying that the word is worse than the oath he'd just said.
"We don't have time for this," Batman says. "Where are your parents?"
"Why should I know," the kid growls, crossing his arms, and Dick blinks. This suddenly isn't as funny as it had been. Batman sighs. "Robin, the zeta tubes are a block away. Go. I'll be right behind you."
"But what about..."
"Just go," Batman says, in a tone that allows no argument. Dick turns and sprints for the zeta, anxiety churning in him. Bruce is great--most of the time--but sometimes he gets a little too overzealous with those who break the law in his beloved city. He hopes he'll go easy on the kid.
He skids into the zeta tube. "The Batcave," he says, and prepares for the familiar weightless feeling as the tube takes him home.
He wanders out of the tube and into the Cave. Alfred is waiting, as usual. "Good evening, Master Dick. Unharmed, I take it?"
"I'm fine, Alfie," he says distractedly.
"And where is Master Bruce, then?"
"Should be here any--" the tube cuts him off. Batman steps out of the portal--and the little street urchin is in clasped firmly against his chest, looking both very perturbed and a little frightened.
There's silence in the Cave for a moment. Then Alfred says, "I believe we will be needing hot chocolate before the night is through," and turns to head upstairs. The kid perks up the slightest bit at the mention of chocolate, but squelches his reaction quickly. Dick stifles a chuckle, but watches Bruce intently. The man glances down at the child sternly. "Are you going to run away or attack anyone if I set you down?"
The boy huffs, folding his skinny arms across his chest. "Where would I go? I don't know how to get outta this place without springing traps or some shit." Dick notices that he doesn't address the attacking bit, but Bruce sighs and sets him down anyway. The boy barely changes position except to adjust his feet and fold in on himself tighter.
"You stole the tires off the batmobile."
"So? You gonna kill me, now?"
"Batman doesn't kill," Dick pipes up.
"Lock me up, then. Good luck."
"Where are your parents?" Bruce asks, and the kid glares at the wall. "You sure are big on parents, arncha?" Batman doesn't look amused and the boy sighs. "My mom's dead, alright? Don't ask how it happened or tell me you're sorry, she just is. Dad's probably doing time. Again. So if you're thinking about taking me to social services, you might as well just throw me out now. I've busted out three times and I'll do it again."
Dick is appalled. Bruce doesn't betray what he's thinking with his tone. "Why did you bust out?"
"The foster home wasn't bad to start out with, but then the other kids were bigger than me and they started messing with the foster mother. I told 'em to stop and they wouldn't listen so I beat 'em up. Then I got put into juvie. And I'd rather you kill me than send me back there."
Dick pales. He himself had spent a small amount of time in juvenile detention before Bruce adopted him. It had both traumatized him and made him even more determined to keep people from ending up in there.
"I'm not going to kill you," Bruce says tiredly.
"Oh really," the kid says. "I'm pretty sure I know where your secret hideout is, now, and I've seen you up-close-and-personal. And your snazzy space tech or whatever the hell that is. So how're you gonna deal with some punk kid knowing that information?" The kid looks up his nose at Bruce, as if daring him to answer.
Bruce doesn't blink. "First things first. What's your name?"
The boy snorts. "Why should I tell you?"
Bruce's mouth hardens, and Dick worries that he's going to start scaring the kid. He's blown away when Bruce tugs the cowl from his face. "I'm Bruce Wayne, and that's my son, Richard Grayson. What's your name?"
Dick watches the kid intently. He's so focused that it takes him a minute to realize what Bruce had called him. Warmth seeps up in his chest, and somehow the kid's huff looks far more adorable than it had a moment before. "Jason. Jason Todd," he mumbles, shuffling his feet.
Bruce smiles, not a huge, fake one, but a sincere, if tired one. "It's nice to meet you, Jason."
***
He isn't sure how he winds up back in Gotham--his ability to strategize and plan are gone, and he's just walking endlessly, as if he's being pursued and can't shake it no matter how hard he tries. He doesn't go back to the Cave, can't stand the thought of seeing Bruce. He feels bad for poor Timmy, who never asked for any of this. He hopes the boy's okay. He knows he'll feel guilty for this later, but right now he's too pre-occupied with his other brother.
Besides, he's used to guilt. These past few years, it's become his way of life.
He's grateful that it's raining. It's the awful rain, too; the one where it doesn't really pour down and cleanse the city of its grime, instead it just hangs in the air, dampening and suffocating the world even more, dragging all the oil and dirt to the surface and letting it stay there. It's the perfect backdrop to the pain of his raging emotions. And it lines up nicely as he drops into an alley behind the figure wearing the red hood. The Joker's past, his origin story, reclaimed by one of his victims. If it were anything but this, Dick would be proud.
The vigilante freezes when Dick touches down, shoulders tensing, and Dick knows that he knows that sound and that gait, has heard it so many times when they were sparring or battling criminals or roughhousing at home. He waits, gazing at the figure. Twenty feet away. Twenty feet away from the baby brother he's missed so much. And he's numb, now.
The hood turns just slightly towards him, and Dick realizes with a shock how tall he is now, thinking back to when he was smaller even than Dick's thirteen-year-old self--which was saying something.
He's...he's almost as tall as Bruce.
He opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. He wants to scream, wants to say his brother's name, wants to cross the short distance and hug him and never let go and beg for forgiveness for failing him and for dragging him into this life and for everything that he'd ever said that was less than kind. Because he never really meant it and he knew that was no excuse because you shouldn't ever hurt the ones you love if you can help it. But nothing comes out and for a moment he thinks he can see the sadness hanging about the Red Hood, the same sorrow that he's feeling.
Then he turns and walks away without a word, and Dick realizes he's been reaching his hand out, the word "Jason" resting like a prayer on his lips. An unanswered one.
***
Jason lives with them for a year, training for ten months, and already he shows significant promise. It starts out as a mix of self-defense training and a hobby; after all, as a ward of Bruce Wayne's, it never hurts to be prepared. His style isn't as flexible or refined as Dick's, but he can hold his own and take down opponents three times his size. He fights with far more energy and enthusiasm than Dick ever had. He hates being stuck at home with Alfred, waiting up for the others to come back and hoping they're alright. Which is why, when Dick approaches Bruce one day and explains his plan, Bruce at first denies it but finally, after weeks of nagging, gives in. Dick's birthday is coming up soon--it's his sixteenth--and given select witnesses, Bruce might even admit he's proud of the boy's decision.
Jason is confused when Dick gives him a present on his own birthday, but doesn't argue as his older brother urges him to open it. When he sees the red and yellow kevlar resting in the box, his jaw drops and his head snaps up towards Dick, eyes wide.
"I decided it's time for a change. Alfie's helped me make a new get-up," Dick grins. "It's all yours, baby brother. That is, if you want it..."
He's cut off by 110 pounds of pre-teen slamming into him, skinny arms wrapping in a tight grip around his waist. "Thank you thank you thank you," Jason rambles, and Dick hugs him back, smirking at the smile on Bruce's face. Jason pulls back and looks up at him earnestly. "I'll make you proud. I promise."
"You won't have to do anything special to do that, Jase," he says, tousling the boy's black curls.
The team is a bit startled by the change, but once Nightwing explains the whole thing to them, they quickly welcome the boy into the fold. He gets along best with Aquagirl, who dotes on him often, Artemis, who is all for more non-superpowered individuals on the team, Captain Marvel, who's been hanging around as his alter-ego more since the whole dimension-splitting incident, and Garfield Logan, who's both tiny and just as new to the whole thing as Jason is. Dick finally feels ready to take up a leadership position. Kaldur happily lets him take over. Barbara joins the bats and the team, and for a while, life goes on without any hiccups.
Which is why Dick is both broken and grimly unsurprised when things start going downhill.
They lose Tula on a mission. It hadn't seemed like anything that was going to be too important when they started out, and now they're trudging back to Mount Justice, down one member. She's the first of them to have died, really died, and they're all in shock. Kaldur draws in on himself and away from the team. He doesn't go back to Atlantis, but doesn't stay at Mount Justice, either, and Dick can see that it's worrying the League. It worries him, too, but he knows how hard it is to deal when you lose someone you love like that. Kaldur'll come around eventually.
He hopes.
Jason's reaction is the opposite. He's angry, constantly beats up on himself and the others for not being able to do anything, and takes his anger out on criminals in a way that startles Dick. Bruce isn't the best at dealing with this, especially since he and Jason are so similar in this way. Except Jason wears his heart on his sleeve, and Bruce's is hidden carefully away.
Dick doesn't bench Robin. He knows exactly how well that'd go over. But he is careful, and watches Jason closely. Tula's death has shaken them all up, and he's going to do his damndest to make sure they don't lose anyone else.
***
Dick is almost disappointed when nothing happens. After such a bombshell has been dropped, part of him wishes the world would come crashing down around them. But it doesn't. Tim recovers fairly quickly, but Bruce becomes incredibly protective of him. Tim isn't allowed out in the field unless he stays within ten feet of Batman or Nightwing. Normally Dick would disagree, but he knows the fear that's gripping Bruce all too well. Tim's all either of them have left.
Then Damian shows up. The kid is an excessive pain to start out with, Tim and Dick agree. But little by little, Dick learns to see past his exterior and sees a kid who's desperate to fix what he's done and to find people who'll really love him. And, well. He's always been a sucker for little kids looking for families.
Damian reminds him of Bruce, a lot, but sometimes he reminds him so much of Jason that it hurts. Even if he knows Jason's alive now. He worries about where he is, what he's doing, if he's safe.
He's fairly certain it's pointless to hope that he's happy.
It hits him, sometimes, just how screwed up this whole situation is. Jason's not even eighteen yet, and yet he's running the streets and keeping the drug trade down. More than Batman had, at least in recent years. It's all so confusing and hurts just to think about, so he tries to forget it, leave it alone.
He's never been very good at that, either.
He starts following Jason around after a few hours of patrolling. He limits it to once or twice a week--he has no doubt that Bruce is keeping track of Jason's whereabouts, but he never speaks of the boy or intervenes except to call the police. Dick doesn't try to speak to him, or fight with him, just watches him. Drinks in the sight of him, alive and walking, more accurately. He only intervenes a few times in gang clashes, throwing smoke grenades or batarangs at some faceless thug Jason misses. He's sure Jason knows about it--the boy's had the same training, after all--but he never acknowledges Dick's presence. It both saddens him and relieves him. Maybe Jason hates him, too--he wouldn't blame him in the slightest--or maybe, he's willing to accept this little bit of help Dick gives him. A guy can hope.
***
Dick starts running the instant the light of the zeta tube fades, barreling through the cave before skidding to a stop behind Bruce. The older man is sitting, back turned to Dick, apparently completely focused on the computer. The tension in his shoulders says otherwise, though.
"Where is he!?" Dick gasps.
"Upstairs." Bruce's voice is emotionless, and he still doesn't turn to look at Dick. The boy decides that Bruce's bullshit can wait, and runs for the stairs to the manor, tearing his mask off as he goes. The door to Jason's room is unsurprisingly locked, and a tray of food, doubtless from Alfred, sits outside on a table. Dick knocks on the door. "Jay? It's me."
There's a muffled crash, and he can hear the nasally "go away," fairly well. "Jay, I'm not mad at you, please let me in. Jason, please."
Silence. Then there's scuffling, a click, and the door opens a crack.
Encouraged, Dick pushes his way in, and blinks at how dark it is in the room. The curtains are drawn, the lights are off. He can't see Jason anywhere, but if he squints he can just make out a lump under a bunch of blankets. He cautiously steps closer and sits down on the bed. The lump tenses, but doesn't otherwise react. Dick sighs. "What happened?"
A weak scoff. "Didn't Batman tell you?" Jason spits the name out like it's poison. Dick flinches. "No, as a matter of fact. Besides, I want to hear it from you."
After a moment, the blankets peel back and Jason sits up a bit. Dick swallows hard at the sight of him--his eyes are red, hair messy and sticking up, and he looks awfully pale. But aside from all that, he looks utterly defeated, and that's worse. He really wants to pull the younger boy into his arms and hug him for a good long while--he looks like he needs it--but they have to get this out of the way, first. "What happened?" he prompts gently.
Jason curls up with his knees under his chin. "Bruce was just gonna let him get away. Just because he'd already destroyed all the evidence and everyone was too scared to speak against him, and I couldn't let that happen. So I...I took him to the rooftop. I was trying to get him to confess to it, I just wanted him to confess I swear..."
The boy's shaking, and Dick's glad he already knew the details of this case his father and brother have been working on. He doesn't think Jason could take the total retelling.
"I...he wasn't giving up and I was so angry, I couldn't think, and..."
"Did you kill him?" Dick asks, and though his voice is steady, he's terrified of the answer.
Jason pales even further, if that's possible. "I didn't! I swear I didn't mean for him to die, but it was windy, and he was backing away and he slipped or something, I dunno, and I saw he was going to fall, and I-I could've caught him, if I'd tried. But I didn't. I just let him fall." Dick doesn't restrain himself, grabs Jason and pulls him in, presses his head to his chest and holds him tight as his brother cries silently. Jason's hands fist in his shirt, trembling and cold. "I've never seen him so mad before. Never. Not even at the Joker or Two-Face."
Dick's heart hurts. "Jason,"
"He's going to throw me out." Jason sobs. "Throw me out or lock me up and I don't wanna leave..."
"No, he won't. I promise he won't do that, Jason. I wouldn't let him, and he wouldn't do that, anyway. He loves you. You have to know that."
"Not more than he loves Gotham. Or his rules," Jason chokes with a mix of hatred and brokenness, and Dick feels a flare of rage at Bruce rising in his chest. He will definitely be having a long talk with his mentor as soon as he can. For now, though, he sits back against the headboard and lets Jason cry himself out, stroking through his sweat-stiff hair the whole while.
***
The breath leaves Dick's lungs all at once as he's slammed against a brick wall, his escrima sticks clattering to the street. Black Mask leers at him with his unnatural visage. "You seem to take an interest in the Red Hood. Well, I do, too. You talk, you live. Maybe."
Dick spits blood in Black Mask's face. The crook doesn't react except to ram him against the wall a few more times, releasing a string of curses so vile that Dick almost blushes. His head takes the full force of one of the hits, and he sees stars. Pain throbs agonizingly in his skull, and he can almost imagine the bruise that's probably forming on his skull, his skin too tight. He hits the pavement suddenly, feels a boot slam into his ribs. There are voices, gruff and crude and sadistically pleased everywhere, and he flinches as his arm is wrenched. He should be doing something, but he can't for the life of him think what. There's laughter and snarling all around him, and he wonders if this is how Jason felt, alone with the Joker.
Suddenly, there's gunfire in rapid succession, and the laughter cuts off, turning to screams and feet pounding and returning fire. He drags himself up off the road and crawls back towards his discarded escrima sticks, trying to get out of the line of fire. He makes it halfway before he's seized by the scruff of his neck and rammed back into the ground. A gun barrel is pressed against the back of his skull, and he freezes.
"Can't kill him, pretty boy, but I can sure as hell kill you!" Mask roars. Dick closes his eyes. He's too tired to fight.
He has been for years now.
A knee slams into his side, and he goes flying. He rolls, only his years of training preventing him from breaking something. He pushes himself up on his elbow to see Red Hood--Jason--laying into Black Mask with a ferocity he hasn't seen in years. Mask looks shocked. He's desperately calling for back-up, and Dick can hear cars rumbling in this direction. This is bad. He forces himself back to his feet, runs for his sticks and begins fending off the arriving minions. All the while, Jason doesn't let up on Mask.
The numbers of henchmen are steadily growing, and Dick resigns himself to trying to hold them back from the fight going on behind him. The henchmen start firing from the roof onto the skirmish going on in the alleyway. Dick barely has time to duck behind cover, and he has no idea where Jason is now. He tries to check, but a bullet embeds itself less than five inches from his head, and he ducks back down.
Then he hears a familiar sound--an explosive projectile that's part of Robin's arsenal. He looks up, and sees Tim leaping off the roof, bo staff in hand. He's both immensely relieved and scared to see the younger boy here. He leaps back into the fray himself, back to back with Tim, and accepts the handful of explosives his younger brother hands him.
"Boy, am I glad to see you," he says, and Tim grins. Then they begin ripping into the crowd of men, taking them down together.
***
"You're headed to Ethiopia. A rural town has been reporting odd occurrences consistent with what we've seen from the likes of Klarion. Find out what he's up to."
Dick glances around as his mentor gives the pre-mission briefing. Jason's finally back on the team. He's been benched for two months, but now Batman has finally decided to let him back out in the field. Jason seems to be over the incident with the rapist, and he's definitely happy to be back. The rest of the team seems okay; well, he thinks. M'Gann and Conner seem to have had a spat of some sort, because while the both of them were normally were fairly clingy, they're at opposite sides of the room with several people between them. Conner's eyes are a bit red, which is odd for him. Artemis and Wally, meanwhile, are holding hands, and Dick suppresses a smirk. Jason's clearly noticed it, too, because he rolls his eyes. "You guys are like a fu--dging sitcom," he trails off when Batman glares at him, immediately looking away. Batman sighs. "As always, extreme caution. You're dismissed." The team heads off for the bio-ship. Since Dick was at the back of the group, he sees Bruce drop a hand onto Jason's shoulder as he passes. Jason immediately glares up at his mentor. "I can handle myself."
Rather than reproaching him, Batman nods. "I know you can," he says. Jason is dumbfounded, and Bruce pats his shoulder. "Just be careful. Alright?"
"Yeah, sure..." Jason mumbles distractedly as he keeps going. Dick shoots a grin at Bruce as he goes to load up into the bio-ship himself.
Everything goes to hell rapidly upon their arrival. It's an ambush, that much is clear, when a laser knocks the bio-ship from the sky, breaking one of Kid Flash's legs and dislocating Batgirl's shoulder. They all evacuate and find a veritable army of mercenaries, hired by Queen Bee by the looks of them, along with Klarion, Psimon, and Deathstroke. They have their hands full, and Dick gives orders for the others to hold the mercs back while he goes for Deathstroke. It takes him a good twenty minutes of dueling before he can pin the man for a moment. "What's the game-plan, Deathstroke?" he demands, twisting the man's wrist where he has it pinned against the assassin's back.
Deathstroke laughs. "This? We're just here on behalf of a mutual friend. I believe you've met the Demon's Head?"
Ra's is behind this? "Why?" Dick asks. Suddenly he hears Psimon's voice in his head. "Ra's wants your mentor. So he sent us to gather incentive. You have a lovely little family, especially that brother of yours. It would be a shame if something happened to him."
Dick's blood runs cold. He ignores Deathstroke, neck snapping to the side as he searches the brawl below.
Robin is nowhere to be seen.
Where is he?! he screams over the mental link, his panic slamming into the others like a battering ram. Artemis and Kid Flash immediately take off, Barbara right behind them. Wally's voice comes back over the mental link. "He's gone. There was a helicopter here earlier, but it's been gone at least twenty minutes."
Dick yanks Deathstroke up by the neck and slams him into a wall before the others can stop him. "Where is he?" he snarls, and Deathstroke laughs. "Better call daddy. Ra's hired the clown." he smirks.
Dick yanks the man down and breaks his collarbone almost effortlessly, dumping the unconscious body on the floor. He flicks the communicator on. "Bruce."
"What?" The man sounds suddenly alert, and Dick barely restrains himself from screaming at him.
"He's gone. They took him, Joker has him."
Before he's even finished the sentence, he hears wind rushing in the comm, and can see Batman in his mind's eye, running full-out. "Abandon the mission. Your priority is finding him. I'm on my way." The comm disconnects. At any other time, Dick would have marveled at that sentence, but now he just turns to the team, who are watching him with a mix of horror and anticipation. "Back to the bio-ship. Finding him is our priority."
No one argues, and they're back in the ship and flying as fast as they can further into the country. The location was mysteriously provided to both Dick and Bruce from an unknown number. A warehouse just outside a small town in a valley.
Dick nearly goes insane on the flight, watching the clock on his wrist computer the entire time. Two hours. Anything can happen in two hours. He refuses to allow himself to think of what might be happening to Jason this very moment, yet he can't stop imagining awful scenarios.
He shakes his head. Jason will be fine, and this time Dick will bench him if it means he's alright.
"Nightwing," someone breathes, and he looks up. M'Gann is staring straight ahead, her face pale. "What?" he asks. M'Gann opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. It's Conner's voice that says "look," softer than Dick's ever heard it. He glances up and stares.
There's a mushroom cloud on the horizon, fire shooting up into the black sky.
His mind shuts off.
The bio-ship slows over the wreckage, and Dick jumps out, hearing the roar of a jet that signifies Batman's arrival. The ground is smoldering, and the soles of his boots are melting as he leaps over the wreckage, sifting through it. He can hear Batman, Conner, and Batgirl doing likewise. No one makes a sound as they dig.
Dick scrambles past Batman and begins tossing rebar aside. He uncovers a small, bloody hand, and stops dead. He can't tear his eyes away from the arm--weeping red burns running down it, knuckles broken and bleeding, limp and pale and too still. Someone slams into him, and he staggers backwards, falling on the ground and raising a cloud of ash as Batman throws the remainder of the rubble off. Part of Dick wants to hope, but when he sees Bruce's shoulders slump, hears his breath hitch, he knows. He'd known when he saw the hand.
Bruce pulls Jason into his lap, pressing his cheek against his dark hair, and Dick can hear the others coming out of the bio-ship. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Barbara drop to the ground, Artemis with silent tears running down her cheeks, Wally doubled over and dry heaving next to her, and M'Gann weeping. He's suddenly both incredibly relieved and doubly crushed that Gar and Captain Marvel aren't here.
He crawls forward slowly, passing Bruce and facing him. His mentor--his father raises his head, and he's crying. Sobbing. He can't meet Dick's gaze for more than a second, closing his eyes tightly as his shoulders hunch, head dropping down. He doesn't stop Dick, doesn't even seem to be paying attention as Dick reaches out, oh so slowly pulls the cape back.
Jason's face is bruised and slack and empty. His left eye is swollen, his cheekbone is broken, there's bloody foam trickling from his mouth and smeared on his face. His eyes are half-open and glazed over.
Meeting the blank gaze is what does it. He drops the cape as if he's been burned, scrambling backwards on all-fours before he's on his feet and running out of the warehouse. He hears shouts of his name, his real name, and then there are solid arms wrapped around him. He screams wordlessly and pulls, trying to get away. The arms yank him back, turning him around. Conner and Wally stare at him, tear tracks running down their faces. They don't say anything. The fight goes out of Dick all at once, and he slumps. Bruce, the damn batman is crying, and he just.can't.cry.
He never got to say goodbye. Or comfort him at all, hold him and tell him he loved him. He wonders if Jason doubted them, assumed they weren't coming, or if he waited and hoped. He isn't sure which would be worse.
He wonders if Jason was scared. That's when he starts crying.
***
Between them, he and Tim drive the majority of the crooks away. Jason appears at some point, and the three of them tag-team until the last of the men are running or crawling away, the ground littered with unconscious thugs waiting for the police. Dick looks Tim up and down. The boy looks unharmed except for a few minor cuts. Tim looks past him and pales slightly, and Dick whips his head around.
Jason is fifty feet away, standing unsteadily, an almost dazed air about him. He glances down sluggishly, and Dick realizes that his hand is pressed tightly against his stomach and blood is running out between his fingers. He raises his head and looks at the other two Robins, and begins to collapse.
Dick is already running, sliding the last few feet and catching Jason with his body. Jason's head falls onto his shoulder, lolling slightly. He runs shaking hands across Jason's back, searching for an exit wound. He finds one. Blood is gushing out of Jason with each of his heartbeats, dribbling through Dick's fingers, warm and slippery. This isn't happening. This can't be happening. Not again.
Tim is probing the entrance wound. "I don't think it's as bad as it looks. It's definitely gotten a vein, but no organs so far as I can tell." He raises his head at the sound of distant sirens. "We need to get him out of here."
"N't the cave," Jason rasps, and Dick starts.
It's the first time he's heard his voice in three years.
He yanks the helmet off, and Jason's head lolls back. He's wearing a domino mask beneath it, but his face is the same, if a little older and scattered with stubble. Tim meets Dick's gaze. Where else are we supposed to take him?
Dick wracks his brain for somewhere to go. The cave is too far, anyway. Then he remembers a place and he looks at Tim. "I know somewhere. Come on."
The two of them get to their feet slowly, supporting a half-conscious Jason between them. They limp out of the alley and around a corner just as the police pull up to the war-zone behind them.