Chapter Text
“This is gonna hurt you a lot more than it does me.”
The first swing caught him by surprise. The next fifteen didn’t.
The crowbar slammed into his chest, cracking and bruising bone in its wake. Just listening to the sickening crunch of his bones shattering had him gagging up a meal he hadn’t ate.
Disobeying Batman’s orders was something Jason hadn’t thought twice about with the possibility of having a mom in his life on his mind. Now, torn apart on the floor of a warehouse in the middle of nowhere, betrayed by the one person he had been searching for, the one person left who would love him unconditionally, Robin be damned—
No.
It wasn’t going to end like this.
Jason shakily got on his hands and knees, every limb, muscle, and tissue in his body screaming in protest. Looking down, Jason felt like puking again once he noticed all the ropes tied around his body.
Taking them off was agony. He just about got himself out of them before he saw it.
A bomb, not twenty feet to his left. Ticking away. With less than ten minutes left on the clock.
He gazed towards his legs, and winced as his left one was bent in ways the human body shouldn’t be. Pain radiated all over him in waves. Why was this happening to him? Jason was so tired. He wanted to sleep. Maybe if he woke up, it would all be a dream. He could get Bruce to finish Legally Blonde with him, or finish up his English essay on Macbeth. He could maybe take a crack at asking Rena out again, or maybe even see if Lucas was up for one. He could live.
The bomb’s ticking snapped him out of his dazed state. 06:50.
Jason glanced down at his hands. Bruised and bloody. Crooked and almost beyond recognition.
Fine motor control wasn’t happening anytime soon. He was more than likely to speed up the process now, then stop it. There was no way he was walking away from this, either.
Tick, tick, tick.
Batman couldn’t save him. And Bruce wouldn’t come.
Jason shook his head hard enough to see stars. No. He’d gotten himself into this mess, so he had to get himself out of it.
He quickly assessed his own injuries with his one good eye, before glancing over at his mother, and her mostly uninjured form.
Jason blinked back the tears that came unbidden.
Tick, tick, tick.
…At the very least, they didn’t both need to die.
Jason crawled over to his mom, unable to hold back his pained noises. Ignoring her sounds of alarm, his injured fingers struggled to pull apart the ropes. He could do this. His chest heaved with every breath, one eye shut from how bruised it was, while the other cloudy with tears, but he’d manage. The rope soon loosened.
“I’ll save you… mom...”
She couldn’t die.
Tick, tick, tick.
Not again, please, not again.
She might’ve gotten him into this situation, but he couldn’t let her die. Her life hadn’t been the best, he’d gathered from the last few hours he’d been around her— he couldn’t let her die. She was still his mom.
He stood up against the wall, a gasp being dragged out of his chest.
It burned.
Jason let out another hiss as all the pain he had been attempting to block out reemerged twofold. He chanced a glance towards the bomb. 02:12. She didn’t have long— if she didn’t get going now, she’d be as screwed as Jason was. He couldn’t let that happen.
Tick, tick, tick.
He couldn’t let that happen.
“You’re free…please, mom…” he tried to push her frozen form towards the door. “Run…for…it,”
Before he could think, he was falling. Instead of the warehouse floor he’d become accustomed to, it was the arms of a mother he’d yet to get to truly know.
“Come on, let me help you.” She laid most of his weight on her, slowly but steadily moving them towards the door. Jason couldn’t help the whimpers that slipped through his lips as every step charged pain through him, from the tips of his toes to his stray hairs. He didn’t resist the urge to lean into her warmth.
Tick, tick, tick.
His mom softly shushed him, holding him gently as her hand rubbed his back. “We’re almost there, Jason. It’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna be okay.”
Even she didn’t seem to believe her own words.
Jason couldn’t stop the hope that bubbled through his chest at every inch closer they came towards the door. They could make it.
Tick, tick, tick.
They’d get out of the warehouse with their lives, and Batman would be there. He’d get them both to safety, and sure, he and Robin would have a talk. But then Bruce and Jason would have one, too. Then he’d get closer to his mom- in the way he and his other mother lost long before she’d died.
Jason should’ve known better than to hope.
“No!”
He sluggishly moved his head towards the abrupt noise, squinting his good eye in confusion.
“What’s wrong?”
“The door! It’s locked! The joker locked us in here!”
The next ten seconds were arguably the longest moments of Jason’s life.
The warmth was sucked out of the already cool room.
Tick, tick, tick.
Jason chanced a glance towards the bomb— 00:05.
He didn’t hesitate. Didn’t even think. Before he knew it, he was stumbling between the object of his fears and a mother he really wouldn’t get to know, not now. His arms went wide, wider than her eyes had.
He didn’t have time to think before his world was engulfed in pain and flames.
In his last moments, he might’ve said something. But with fire burning through his skin, smoke stuffing into his lungs, and tons of concrete crushing his bones into paste, there weren't many things that came to mind.
“..s…rry, ‘ruce.”
And then, nothing.
Jason woke up again with fear pulsing through every cell.
Pain rippled through his body. It was cold. So, so, cold. His bones felt like they were
melting—or reforming? His skin was rotten, and then it wasn’t. His organs weren’t there— and then they were. His heart beat harder than it ever had before. Every nerve cell was on fire.
A scream punched through his lips.
It was agony.
Taking a moment to let his head stop aching, Jason breathed.
Something was terribly, terribly wrong.
He cracked open his eyes and saw…nothing.
Pitch black darkness.
His eyes widened, and felt something in his chest squeeze.
No.
Jason threw his arms up— or, at least he tried to.
He only got half way there before his hands met something plush. His brain was going haywire, hands hastily scratching at the fabric. He could barely hear his harsh breaths over the rushing in his ears.
He banged on the ceiling, and it didn’t budge. Tears began to slip past his eyes without permission.
“Batman?! Batman, help!” He tried to rip open the ceiling with renewed vigor. “Bruce? Please…”
His calls weren’t answered.
He was trapped. Underground? Buried? God, please, no.
What the heck had happened? One second, he was being crushed to death by rubble with every bone and muscle smothered to pieces, and the next he was six feet under, in a fancy box, seemingly fully healed. Had the joker—?
Jason shook with a new wave of fear.
No. Relax. Don’t think about it now. He’d freak out once he wasn’t drawing closer to suffocation at every breath. He forcefully tried to slow his breathing. The tears persisted.
Escape. He needed to escape.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon—” He tried again at pushing the walls around him, scratching with vigor despite their refusal to give, “C’mon, c’mon, come—on!”
His finger nails broke, and so did his finger tips, and he let out a sob in dismay as the blood just made it even harder to break.
“Fuck!”
Jason hastily searched his body for anything useful. He was in a suit and tie— he hated the stuffy things. There was no way Bat-paranoia-man had left any gadgets in his casket for him, he’d never risk it.
His chest swelled with equal parts hope and relief as he got his hands on his belt buckle.
Ripping it apart, he used the sharp edges to cut through the cloth. It worked, sorta. Once again, relief flooded through his trembling being.
The cloth gave way to wood. Jason scratched, stabbed, bled his way through it, not stopping even as dirt began to spill in. Some of it got in his mouth.
He tried to keep his breaths level— there was limited air, and even less so after his mini panic attack slash mental breakdown.
Eventually, the hole got big enough, and Jason climbed his way through, cutting himself on every edge as he tirelessly broke through the dirt with his bloodied hands.
The further he went, the harder it was to move. Dirt was everywhere: his eyes, his mouth, his hair, his teeth. He felt as though some had even slipped through to his lungs. Time stretched on forever, and all Jason had for company was his beating heart. The further he went, the harder he got.
But the only way to go was up.
His hand broke through the earth. Then his arm. Then his torso.
And finally, finally, he was free.
He shakily sat against a stone slab, switching between coughing harshly and taking in painful, deep breaths.
Everything hurt. A shiver racked through his quickly rain-soaked body. Of course clawing out of your own coffin would leave someone in pain. Nothing in his life was ever that easy.
Jason looked down at his hands and cringed. They were damaged. Not as badly injured as— as back then, but still bloodied and broken, still shaking. The dirt that pressed against his cuts definitely didn’t help.
He took a moment to glance around.
“What the hell?”
He really had to have been buried alive, seeing as he was in a cemetery of all things. A familiar one, even. He could remember coming by the same day every year.
He felt chills crawl down his back. He didn’t bother turning around, already knowing which words would be carved on the stone behind him.
Bruce. Jason had to— Bruce.
Jason stumbled to his feet, determination winning over the pains that sunk deep into his bones. He put one leg in front of the other, speed steadily increasing. Soon enough, he was sprinting.
His chest ached with every breath he took, and his legs threatened to buckle under his weight. He had no idea why he no longer had the injuries he’d had before, but he wasn’t sure about anything right then and there.
Jason just knew he had to find Bruce.
He raced through the cemetery. His feet occasionally slipped and slid, but he just about managed to get to the entrance without face planting into the ground.
“Alright, Jason,” he mumbled to himself. The gateway towered over him by multiple feet. Screw his horrible genes for making him so short. “You can do this. You’re Robin. If you can jump from rooftop to rooftop, you can jump a stupid gate.”
Taking a deep breath, he ran for it.
Jason just barely made it, scraping his side with the metal as he flew over it. He didn’t bother to bite back a yelp as he skidded back onto and across the slippery pavement on the other side.
He placed a hand on his side. Red came back.
Jason jumped back up. There was no time to relax. He had no idea how long he’d been out, and wasn’t willing to waste a single moment trying to rationalise things over getting home. He’d deal with his injuries, and everything once he was safe and sound within the manor’s walls.
By the time he got into the mostly empty streets of Gotham, closer to the manor then he’d thought he could sprint, he’d been soaked for ages. The sun was nowhere to be seen, contrasting the slither he’d been able to see when he’d originally crawled out.
Gotham felt more familiar when it was dark out.
Jason rushed through the streets of Bristol like a man on a mission. This was it. He was getting back to the manor. He’d be safe. Safe from the Joker and his cruel, ridiculous plots. Safe from the miniature box he’d stuffed him in. Safe from the freezing, biting, cold of Gotham’s streets.
All thoughts running through his mind came to a halt as a car slammed into him.
“Holy shit!” The driver’s proclamation rang through his mind as his head slammed into the ground. Jason swore everything went black for a moment. He dazedly got back up, stumbling towards the building closest to him in order to stay up. His brain felt like mush. Every muscle in his body screamed in protest.
Not good.
“Hey—oh my god, kid! Fuck—are you okay?!” Jason didn’t bother replying, and swatted the man’s hands away as he swayed. He stumbled back onto the pavement. “What the hell— where are you going! You need a doctor! Your head is bleeding!”
Well, that would explain the sudden warmth, at least.
Jason shook the hands that tried to grab him off, almost wailing in anguish. “Stop! No! I need to—” he shuffled away, before rushing back on his path. “Bruce,”
The time after this seemed to blur together.
He was barely conscious, but his feet wouldn’t stop moving despite the agony searing through them.
Jason grit his teeth.
He didn’t know when the tears and sobbing had started, but he could taste the salt as it started mingling with the blood in his mouth.
Not yet.
He stalked through the unusually quiet night with as much speed as he could possibly with the injuries he’d sustained, shivering all the way.
Jason futilely wrapped his arms around himself.
It was and wasn’t long before the manor was in his sights.
Relief burst through his chest. He let his hands go limp from where he had them curled in his chest, and stumbled forwards towards the gate with a renewed vigor.
He’d made it. He’d actually made it back— he’d made it home—
Just as his hand pressed down on the buzzer, his leg gave up, and soon he was going down.
His face hit the dirt first.
He gasped, his vision spotting as he felt his body begin to shut down.
“No,” he gasped, hands futilely clutching the grass beneath him. “Wait, please,”
His protests were quiet and mumbled against the heavy rain.
Everything hurt, but— not nearly as bad as it did before. He could feel his limbs go numb. He didn’t even feel that cold anymore, either.
That wasn’t good.
Jason wasn’t sure why, though. He didn’t like the cold.
The grass felt soft beneath his hands and hurting head. Nature’s softest pillow.
…he could close his eyes, couldn’t he?
He felt his heavy eyelids shut.
Just for a minute?
…
“…Jus’ a sec.”