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It was raining in Gotham. Not that the rain was anything new; in this city, the dark sky was as familiar as the back of your own hand. No, what was new, (new to Jason, but very familiar to Gotham’s war-torn streets) was the blood streaming down the road and into a storm gutter in thin rivulets, a whirlpool forming a gaping black mouth before being swallowed into a drain. Jason stared at it, like it would swallow him too, into a darkness that would suffocate his shrieking brain, leech all the thoughts right out of his head and into the quiet of the night before. The leather of his coat was stiff with water, damp seeping through the seams, beneath his skin and into his bones. Shivers wracked his body, and he was cold, he was so cold, he’d never been this cold in his life–
Yep, this is it. The day he quit running around in tights to fight a problem that was the moral equivalent of pushing a rock up a hill for eternity, all to try and piece together a city that was rotting from the core outwards and eating its would-be saviours alive. Man, he hated fighting Freeze.
Jason pressed his hands up to his mouth, the startling warmth of his breath burning red-hot against the broken skin of his knuckles. It had just started to rain, and Gotham really picked her moments, huh. He was so cold, colder than he’d felt for a long time, definitely not since B had scooped him off the streets with strong arms and a strangely alluring car.
The earpiece crackled to life in his ear, nearly sending him off the edge of the building he was crouched on.
“Hey Jay, still alive?”
He sunk a little further into his jacket. “And kicking, baby bird.” Just wishing he wasn’t.
“Hey, that’s great! We have a call on–” Tim’s voice was loud and grating, rattling around his aching head, and he really did not want to spend another minute in the Gotham winter.
He sighed. “Give me a sec, just warming up.”
“Mr Freeze hot on your trail?” There was a slight crackle over the line, Tim laughing at him from across the city.
“Very funny.” He said, trying to force as much malice into his voice as he could muster.
“Ye-ouch, frosty audience today.” The line hummed as Tim busied himself on the other side, fingers skittering across keys. "A break-in on seventy-seventh, think you can handle that one, Jack Frost?"
Jason groaned. “God save me.” He said, and pushed himself off the ledge.
“Don’t let the frostbite catch you on the way out!” Tim chirped in his ear, and the connection sizzled out before Jason could even think of a witty reply.
Little shit.
But when he stumbled into the cave, hours later, teeth clashing together like cymbals and wet from head to toe, the ergonomic chair Tim had bullied Bruce into getting (spewing lines about growing boys and maturing bone structures) there was a steaming mug of hot chocolate on a side table, with a note that said, ‘even saved you some hot water’.
Rain sluiced over his head, dripping down his nose, splashing into the red hands he’d been staring at for God knows how long, someone come get him, anyone, Tim–
A biting wind was cutting into his skull, forming a pressure around his ears and eyes that he couldn’t rub away. He pressed his hands to his eyes anyway, until the rainwater was replaced with tears.
Tears were swimming in Tim’s eyes, bright blue rimmed with red that just made them seem larger, brighter, more unshaking in their attempts to keep it in. The Cave was quiet, only the soft brushing of Jason’s antiseptic pad against the grazes that were littering Tim’s knees.
“How does this somehow hurt more than breaking a bone?” Tim muttered. If Jason weren’t so clued in to the small sounds he made when he was trying to hide his pain, he may have missed it. But there was a tiny hitch to his breath on every exhale, and it was pretty hard to miss the dam building up in his lower lashes.
“Because normally when you break a bone, kid, we hook you up with the good stuff.” Jason muttered, fingers swiping lightly at a particularly stubborn piece of gravel clinging to the open gash. Above him on the bed, Tim sucked a breath in between his teeth. “This time, you’ve just got to be real brave.”
Tim scowled. “I’m always brave.”
“You sure are.” Jason balled up the old wipe. “But you have made a real mess of yourself, kid. I swear I was never this reckless.”
“Nah.” Came an amused voice, echoing behind him. “I’m pretty sure I remember a certain someone coming into my room one morning, scratches everywhere; and I’m talking legs, arms, face; I had this whole speech ready to go about the dangers of patrolling on your own, only for this idiot to say he crashed his bike.”
“Couldn’t be me.” Jason muttered, ready to tackle a patch of probably hazardous Gotham gunk in Tim’s leg. “I hate biking.”
“I wonder why.” Dick said dryly.
Tim’s next exhale sounded more like a laugh than a pained gasp, so Jason was claiming it for the win it was. Dick–he’ll save that for another day.
Jason sat back, wiping his hands on a fresh towel. “Well kid, looks like we won’t have to amputate.” He said. Tim glared, arms folded, although the tight line of his shoulders was slowly releasing.
“You're a bonafide comedian, Jay."
There was a heavy weight on his shoulder. He didn’t look up.
“Jay”, Dick’s voice was shot through with pain and heavy with despair. “We should go.” Water and blood swirled in eddies around his boots. The buzz was back, digging into his ears. Rain was still dripping from the end of his nose, rain and tears. It was endless.
“Jay, please, we need you to–” Dick choked, voice cracking over the words.
“Okay.” Jason said, and gently placed his fingers on top of the hand on his shoulder. “Okay.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Jay.” Tim said, voice as soft as powdered snow.
The body was small, too light to be the cause of the weight dragging his heart down, anchoring him in place. Such little things have too much energy to be contained in such a small body, Jason would know, he’d sat Tim too many times to not bear witness to the kind of frantic excitement only a kid could muster, and oh–god–this child was barely older than Tim, probably not, the streets had a way of aging someone that he knows all too well–
Thin fingers threaded their way between his own.“Jay, I need you to help me move her.”
–And, okay. He could do that. They’d fall apart, together, back at the Cave, like they always would with the hardest cases.
There was a body, under that sheet, in the middle of the Cave. The shroud was so white it was burning his eyes, and Jason had to look away. He was half-expecting it to rise off the slab along with the body, reanimated by the harsh clinical lights that were so out of place it was almost fantastical in the dim cave, as was the body of a boy who was supposed to be beside him, eyes critical as they leapt from clue to clue, brain deducing and making connections faster than the rest of them could ever try and keep up–
A figure was standing in the corner, just outside of the glow the unnatural sheet was casting. The black-hole effect the Batman usually had wasn’t working right, why could Jason still see the scene unfolding in front of him, could he take it away, could Bruce suck it up and hide him from the pain like he was twelve again?
“Red Hood. Report.”
But it wasn’t Bruce here, tonight, after all.
Undercutting the yells, the screams that were echoing around the street, and the ghost of a gunshot that would follow him to the grave, was a buzz that was steadily growing louder. “Hood–are you–Oh my God–”
A body was curled in the gutter, robin-red.