Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jason did not make a habit of sleeping at his operational headquarters, no matter where they were currently located.

That was only a little bit about separating business and personal matters. Everything and nothing was personal for him these days. He didn't have much of a life outside the mask, even now that he'd—let's call it deprioritized the whole revenge thing.

He and the Bats could work together civilly when their interests aligned (which was more often than he liked to think about these days). Didn't mean he was part of a team. He had his own operations they knew nothing about.

Case in point: the piece of action he’d taken care of tonight. Intercepting that particular weapons shipment was a good way to get some exercise for those of his men who were getting restless at too much mundane business and not enough big action—without getting the Bats on his case. They wouldn't want that kind of firepower loose in Gotham any more than he did. 

There had been a bit of grumbling among the men afterward. Not about the action itself—that had gone smoothly to plan—but about the buyer he'd arranged to offload the goods to. Several of his people had suggested local buyers who might offer a higher price, given the chance. Jason had pointed out that he wasn't going to risk handing over that kind of weaponry to potential competition, just to have it pointed right back at him next month. That had sparked questions as to why they didn't just keep the weapons to upgrade their own arsenal. Jason had told them that when they were running their own organizations they could decide how to balance long-term preparation against immediate cash flow, but until then he was calling the shots.

Not exactly proud of stooping to the crime lord equivalent of “because I'm the dad and I said so,” but it did effectively end the conversation. It also avoided getting any nearer to the truth that a major factor in the specific buyers he'd arranged was also the fact that he could live with that particular cause actually making use of them. No regrets on this one.  

Anyway, that was how he'd ended up in a warehouse’s dingy upstairs office, trying to snatch a few hours of sleep on a too-small, tattered couch. He was keeping a close personal eye on this one until it was settled and done with. 

His men thought that he'd missed the quiet murmurs, meant to be out of his earshot, that cooperating with the Bats was making him soft. Not just a good business decision to keep them off his back and use them to help eliminate more of his rivals with less trouble. He was risking becoming one of them, they thought. 

He'd have to find some opportunities to remind them in the near future that there was a reason Red Hood had the reputation he did. He'd earned it. Repeatedly.

Harder to reinforce it now, though, when no killing was more than just the baseline rule for joint Bat operations. The rest of Gotham hadn't quite gotten the memo on where exactly those new boundary lines lay yet for Hood, but he couldn’t quite fool himself anymore into thinking nothing had really changed. It wasn't that he wouldn't kill now. He just… weighed it differently. 

His sleep was shallow and restless enough that he heard the faint click of the lock being picked an instant before the door swung open. It wasn't the first time a background itch of paranoia saved his life. 

No pause to transition from sleep to action. He rolled to the ground to take cover behind the corner of the desk just as a spray of bullets tore through the back of the couch where he'd been sleeping. 

Good thing he still slept with a gun in his hand. In the brief quiet as the gunman paused to see if his initial attack had been effective, Jason popped his head up to snap off a couple of shots.

Dead center of his chest, right on target. They made him stagger back, but didn't drop him. Body armor. 

Jason's next shot caught him between the eyes. 

That put him down, safely outside the threshold of the door. There was shouting in the hallway, cries of anger and alarm as the man's co-conspirators realized that the first rush had failed and they'd lost the element of surprise.

Jason leaped back to the couch, shoving it across the room and into the door, slamming it shut and barricading the entrance in one move as it jammed the handle. 

It wouldn't hold long against the pounding from the other side of the door. 

Jason sent a couple more bullets through the wood to give them a moment’s pause and grabbed his helmet from where he'd left it on the desk when he went to lie down. He slipped over to the room's solitary window and pressed himself against the wall, careful not to silhouette himself against the glass as he peered down into the alleyway below.

As he'd thought, they had a couple of men posted down there, waiting to see if he came out. Two that he could spot, at least. There might be more out of his line of vision. No good as an exit. 

He stepped away from the window. Buckling his gun belt back on required two hands. The scant seconds he had to set the gun down on the desk beside him felt like ages. Difficult not to rush himself to the point of fumbling with adrenaline pounding the alarm of urgency for every instant he didn't have a weapon in his hand. 

The Pit that had lain quiet through all the action earlier in the night was prickling under his skin, waking with a snarl at the need to act now. He gripped the reins of that mental control more tightly, wrestling back into focus.

Second gun secured to his side, extra ammunition in easy reach on the belt. He could move.

The door was rattling on its hinges. He could hear the feet of the couch scrape as it shifted. 

There were only two visible exits to the room, door and window. Didn't mean there were only two possible ways out. 

He crossed to the far side of the office. The other side of that wall was a small storage room. The wall looked finished enough on the office side, but inside that storage space whoever had built the place hadn't bothered with insulation on those inner walls, much less finishing it out properly. All he had to do was get through the one layer of drywall and he could slide between the studs that made up that minimal framing.

He planted himself for a solid kick and broke through easily with the first blow. Two more and the hole was big enough to push his way through, tearing more of the material away with his hands to clear a bigger gap. The racket at the door was easily enough to cover the sound. 

He eased open the door to the storage room just a crack to get the lay of the land outside. There were more of them than he'd thought. They were still between him and the stairwell, but now he was the one with the element of surprise. 

He drew his other gun.

“Hood!” one of the men outside the office door shouted. “You can't hole up in there forever. Save us all some trouble. It's nothing personal, no reason to make it worse than it has to be.”

“I don't know.” The helmet’s modulator left his voice nothing but flat menace as he stepped into the hall. “I tend to take it pretty personally when people try to kill me.”

The men who'd been so eager to convince him to come out a moment ago spun toward him, their sense of strength in numbers wavering with surprise. Jason tipped his head a bit to one side, thoughtful, letting the helmet’s glowing gaze scan over them in a slow sweep. 

The first man who’d come through the door had been familiar, but a relative newcomer whose name Jason couldn’t immediately place. There were several much more familiar faces here. 

“I'm out,” he said. “You want to talk or you want to die?”

A moment of frozen hesitation. Then a gun cracked, like the starting signal at a race, and the scene exploded into motion. Jason barely noticed the flare of fire as the bullet skimmed his arm. The green that had hovered at the edges of his vision was burning too hotly to care.

So, dying it was. They’d see which of them finished with it first.

Close quarters was his only hope. They had more guns than he did and even the worst shots would get lucky before he could take them all out. Hand to hand, his odds were better.

Not good. Better.

He batted aside a gun and smashed the man’s nose in with the butt of his pistol.

The Lazarus green swirled and hissed, filling his veins with something wilder and stronger than any adrenaline.

Elbow to a man’s neck. Kick to a knee. Cracks of gunfire and screams of pain and fear and defiance that swelled in the confined space to a deafening pitch around him. 

A strike to his kidney from behind stole his breath. He barely blocked the next knife swipe toward his neck. Caught the wrist and snapped it. Staggered as a man leaped on his back. An arm wrapped around his throat and tightened. Someone had grabbed his arm, was trying to wrestle the gun from his grasp.

The Pit’s shriek rose to drown out even the ringing in his ears. Pain and desperation and fury. 

Jason would not die again tonight.

He stopped trying to smother it. The banked embers inside roared into green flame. 

The next thing he was truly aware of was the harsh sound of his own breathing, echoed by the pathetic whines of the man he held pinned against the wall, a bloody knife pressed against his neck. The rest of the hallway had gone still. Dead still. 

Everything in between was a smear of Lazarus green and blood red. 

His mind was reeling in the sudden stillness, like stumbling out of a tornado into the total silence of a bombproof building. 

“Please,” the man he held whimpered. “Please…” 

Jason yanked him forward and slammed him back against the wall again. The pleading cut off with a yelp. 

The hissing remnants in his mind urged him to do it, do it, make him quiet, finish it.

His rational mind, slow and bleary after the rush of fast, strong, unstoppable, remembered that this would be his only chance to ask questions. What did he need to know?

“Whose idea was this?” Even to his own ears, without the harsher filter of voice modulation, the snarling rasp of his voice was all but unrecognizable.   

“Big Tommy,” the man said. Gino. That was the name of the man in front of him. 

It took a moment of—not even disbelief, the words just held no rational meaning—as he processed that claim. Gino couldn’t see his expression, but there must have been some shift in his body language.

“It’s true!” The desperate insistence shot up an octave. “I swear, it’s true, he’s right over there, see?” 

Jason followed Gino’s frantic, darting glance. Yes. There on the floor, amid the tumble of bodies, he could see the blood-covered face well enough to recognize him. 

The physical reaction was too numb to be grief, to be anger, to be even indignant betrayal. Just a brief, wordless pang and then a lurching drop into dazed exhaustion. 

He had to finish this.

A faint tug at his peripheral awareness. He slammed his knife into Gino’s upper arm hilt-deep before his conscious mind finished catching up with the danger. Gino screamed and his fingers dropped away from the knife he’d been reaching for.    

Jason left his knife buried where it was and snatched Gino’s knife from its sheath, pressing it against his neck to pick up where the previous threat had left off. 

“You have two arms. For now. Want to try again with the other one and see how that goes for you?”

“No,” Gino whined, squirming at the pain but not daring to move enough to clutch at his injured arm. “Please—I won’t—no…”

“No?” Jason cocked his head a little to one side, and had to brace himself to keep his balance from tipping with it. He leaned in closer to cover the waver. “Then maybe you can do me a little favor and give me a reason to let you live.” 

“Anything. Whatever you say—anything.”

“Go tell your friends in the alley that I won’t be forgetting this. I’ll give them a head start. They’ll want to use it. If I ever see their faces again—or yours—I’m gonna start removing heads. Got it?”

“Yes.” He nodded frantically. “Got it. I’ll tell them. You won’t see me again. I’ll go.” 

Yeah, he didn’t doubt that now. Jason released his hold. Gino barely waited until Jason was far enough back that he wouldn’t impale himself on the knife Jason held before sliding away, clutching at his stabbed arm as he stumbled down the hall. 

Jason watched until he disappeared down the stairs before turning his attention to the hallway around him. If anyone else was still alive, there were no signs of it. No sounds, not the faintest stir of movement. 

He’d lost his guns at some point in the fight. Well. “Lost.” He had a snapshot among his fragmentary memories of throwing them at someone, one after another, but that could just be an educated guess. It was the kind of thing he did, when magazines clicked on empty and he had a split-second need for a projectile weapon.

They couldn’t have gone far. There wasn’t far to go in the cramped space. The question was just how much he’d have to look under to find them. 

The first one only took a few seconds of searching to find. The second turned up at last near Big Tommy’s feet. He bent to pick it up, stiff and slow as his body’s signals slowly started to leak through again, catching up on its injury assessments. His chest plate had definitely caught a few bullets. He'd be feeling that for a while. Not as long as he would’ve if he hadn't been wearing it. 

He looked down at where Big Tommy lay, then shifted closer, nudging the body with a foot until it rolled and he had a clearer view of the face. 

Yeah, definitely him, and he was definitely involved. Whether he was actually the ringleader, as Gino claimed… 

He probably hadn’t been lying. Not a chance Gino was the ringleader himself, and with his own neck on the line Jason didn’t think it was likely there was anyone he was more scared of than Hood in that moment. 

If there was some other player with that kind of clout involved who hadn’t been physically present tonight… Well, he’d keep his guard up either way.

He thought he’d had his guard up. Apparently not, because this…

It shouldn’t be surprising enough to hurt. 

Jason recognized all of them, every face he saw now, some better than others. But Big Tommy he’d had plans for. Not the most physically intimidating guy, but he was scrappy and smart, had a good logistical sense and a charismatic way with words. Jason had planned to talk to him tomorrow about a broader leadership position, start easing him into more of the roles Jason usually filled himself. 

It’d taken him a while to feel sure enough to move forward with the transition plan.

He couldn’t risk the power vacuum that would come from dismantling his own organization once it no longer served his purposes as it once had, but he was convinced he could shift it into something more self-sustaining as a source of information and a check on more egregious forms of crime. It just needed the right combination of leaders who could balance each other out and keep everything on the course he’d set, even when he wasn’t physically present as frequently. 

Big Tommy was a cornerstone of his confidence in that plan. 

Had been. Seemed Jason had misjudged the strength of his ambition and the lengths he was willing to go to satisfy it.

He was going to have to rethink… all of it. Who he could trust.

Not tonight, not now. His leg was burning with a throbbing intensity that was rapidly moving from distracting to all-consuming. The cause was immediately obvious when he shifted his focus to examine it: a deep gash, wrapping from the front of his thigh down and around the outer side of it. Someone had caught him good with a knife.

He was going to have to do something about that. Temporarily, for the moment. A better solution would have to wait until he was somewhere safe. 

Jason tore several long strips from his shirt, then slid down the wall to sit on a clear patch of floor and dug several gauze packs from a first aid pouch. He ripped them open and slapped them on top of the cut, then tied them more tightly in place with the strips of shirt. By the time he was through, the black of the shirt blended against his dark pants well enough to obscure blood and white gauze alike. He zipped up his jacket to hide the evidence of the torn shirt.

No visible weakness. At least in dim lighting, if no one looked too closely. He meant to make sure no one would. 

He breathed for a few seconds, mentally arranging the things that had to happen next and in what priority. It was harder than it should be, every part of him sluggish with exhaustion. He couldn’t stay here. Had to move. Now. The urgency of that thought just couldn’t quite communicate itself to the rest of his body. 

Yeah, he was gonna have to dig into the real emergency supplies, wasn't he. 

He pulled one of the small tubes from the depths of a little-used pocket and turned it to scrutinize the Cyrillic text on the side. Amid terse instructions and dire warnings were no mention of the stimulant's actual contents, of course. His small stash had been acquired from one of his Russian instructors and they were intended for the kind of situations where immediate survival took precedence over concerns like that. 

The crash after wouldn't do him any favors, especially on top of the letdown from a Pit episode, but he'd have some time until then. He'd need it if he wanted any chance at stopping this from spiraling into all-out chaos that stood a good chance of killing more than just him. He had to put in an appearance—no, not just an appearance, a demonstration—and he had to be on his feet and functional for it.

He jammed the end of the tube against his uninjured leg, the sting not even worth hissing at, then let his head drop back against the wall. It wouldn't take long. 

A slow tidal wave of shaky nausea rolled over him, and he breathed slowly through his nose, in and out. Clean, filtered air, no tang of cordite and blood and death. One hand hovered over his helmet's emergency release, in case it wasn’t enough. 

Gradually, the nausea drained away and receded to an ignorable distance. It was harder to control his breathing as it kicked up in time with his heart rate, the buzzy need to move, move, move pushing him back to his feet. It was hard now to differentiate the awareness of very real danger, that this might not be over yet, from the effects of the drug itself, kicking everything to high alert and sinking his awareness of the pain back into insignificance.  

Jason hated the stuff, and not just for the less-than-pleasant side effects. The (very) few times he’d been forced to resort to it, it’d felt too much like a metallic, artificial version of the Pit, sending his mind and body reeling into reactions he had to wrestle for control. Yet another thing vying to break down any semblance of restraint or strategy and leave him acting on nothing but desperate instinct. 

But tonight it would keep him alive long enough. He’d just have to make sure he stayed that way.   

“Sorry, Tommy,” he muttered. “Looks like you'll be helping me out with people management after all.”

He shifted into a crouch and hefted Big Tommy's body, slinging it into a fireman's carry. The weight drove a grunt from him as his body attempted to remind him that all the injuries that had been blaring with pain a moment ago hadn't ceased to exist, but the warning faded again to background noise as he caught his balance. 

He descended the first half-flight of stairs and exited the door there to step out onto the catwalk balcony overlooking the floor of the warehouse. The muffled thumping that he’d heard even through the closed door ratcheted into beat-driven music that echoed through the space as he stepped through the door. Someone’s phone was connected to a cobbled-together speaker system as it sat on one of the tables where a group of men lounged. Might explain why no one had come running at the gunfire. Then again, there might be other reasons for that, too.

Some of the men were sitting, some standing, some playing cards, smoking, drinking, laughing, chewing on slices of pizza. None of them actually expecting trouble, even if they were nominally the night shift designated to keep an eye out for it. The actual sentries at the doors would give them plenty of notice. 

Jason stopped in the middle of the catwalk overlook. He wasn't more than a single story off the ground, but none of them looked up to see him. People so rarely did. 

He shrugged the body off his shoulder and gave it a good shove over the railing. 

The crunching thud as it impacted concrete sent men stumbling back, tripping over chairs, drinks spilling as tables were jostled. The phone tipped off the edge of the table and yanked free of its cord as it cracked against the concrete, the pulsing music cutting out to a faint, tinny echo of its former enthusiasm. Shouts of fear and surprise died into confusion as they stared at the bloody body. 

Realization broke through the dazed stupor of shock and alcohol and eyes slowly drifted up to fix on Jason as he stood staring down at them.

“Anyone else think this outfit’s in need of new management?” One hand dropped to rest meaningfully on the gun at his side. “Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

No one spoke. Or moved. 

“No? Then you can find somewhere to get rid of that without drawing attention.” He indicated the body with a jerk of his head. “Sparky.”

The man in question, Burnes, aka Sparky, jerked to attention, wide-eyed and alarmed at being singled out of the crowd. 

“You're in charge of getting rid of the mess in front of my office. Take as many as you need, but I want it dealt with before morning. Understood?”

“Yes, boss.” 

Jason swept a look over the group with a slow, deliberate turn of his head. It was like acting for the stage, making a point in the helmet, especially at a distance. Subtler body language tended to get lost, so it took some projection. 

“I've got half a mind to clear the board and start over. Lucky for you, I've got better things to do tonight.” 

There was a general nervous, confused shuffling. They'd figure out what had happened soon enough. For now, uncertainty was good. 

Unlikely that the men at his office and in the alley had been the only ones to know about the planned attack. No way to determine just how guarded they’d been with their plans. Who else had known and looked the other way. Who might have joined in if the conspirators had trusted them enough to give them a chance to. 

Jason had always prided himself on his men's loyalty. The first ones might have come out of desperation and the lure of good pay, despite the risks of working for a relative newcomer who was busy kicking hornet's nests in the back yards of much more established players. They'd stayed because he took care of his own. They were wary of him, yes, but those who'd later turned to him for help in a desperate corner—bad debts to dangerous people, family members in trouble, landlords trying to force them out—had found him willing to do far more than extend a loan they'd pay for in blood later. He had a strict code of justice, but it didn't only cut in the direction of punishment. That meant something, to people used to being seen as little more than cannon fodder in Gotham’s endless power struggles.

Or he'd thought it did. Maybe the joke was on him after all. Maybe that, even more than the work with the Bats, had convinced them he was too soft to be worth respecting, much less fearing. 

It hadn't just been the power vacuum that'd concerned him, when he considered dismantling what he'd built here. He'd thought their loyalty deserved something in return. That he couldn't give them something that looked like a future, only to pull it away and leave them to crawl back to whatever lowlife would take them, just to feed themselves and their families. 

Maybe none of it really mattered. Maybe letting anyone get close enough to think they knew you was just handing them the knife they needed to stab you with.

“We’ll see if any of you seem worth keeping around when I get back,” Jason told them, low and growling. “Anyone who doesn't want to be here should take the chance to reconsider his long-term plans and get out before he loses his options altogether.”

A chorus of subdued yes bosses answered. Jason turned on his heel and headed back toward the stairs, leaving quiet murmurs of unease in his wake. 

He didn't stop until he got to the roof, though climbing the stairs was murder on his leg and halfway there he had to lean heavily against the wall for support before he could keep on dragging himself upward with the help of the railing. He didn't dare risk anything more for the pain, not when he still had to get himself to a safehouse. Not when he had to be alert enough to make certain he wasn't followed in the process. Grappling would be the best shot of shaking any would-be tails.

The little performance should be enough of a show of force to discourage any other attempts for the time being. Having seen him alive and well and on his feet, no one was likely to speculate that a temporary disappearance might mean he'd dragged himself off badly wounded, leaving a perfect opening to finish the job if someone could just track him down to his hiding spot. They were more likely to assume he was busy hunting down anyone else who might have been involved and teaching them a lesson no one who saw the aftermath was ever likely to forget.

Let them look over their shoulders and sweat a while, wondering what he might know and what he planned to do about it. At least he'd bought himself some breathing space. 

He had a feeling once the stimulant wore off he was going to need it.

Chapter Text

Jason didn’t so much land on the fire escape as collapse onto it. Bending his legs to absorb the sudden stop just dropped him straight to his knees on the hard grating. Only the brick wall he caught himself against stopped the rest of him from toppling forward to hit the grating next. He sagged against it, and his helmet dropped to rest on the window frame with a quiet thunk.

He hadn't dared pause for a breather, even once he'd gained enough distance that he wasn't concerned about being tailed, despite the growing pain of grappling, the abrupt, jerking starts and stops, the struggle to keep propelling his body forward to the next rooftop between swings. Had to keep that forward momentum or he wouldn't be starting again, like a car that had been running on empty for miles finally sputtering to a halt.

Now that he had stopped, that instinct was proven right. He couldn't seem to push himself back up again. Couldn't even peel himself away from the wall he was plastered against like his own blood had glued him there. 

That was fine. He could get the window open from where he was. 

Getting himself over the sill and into the apartment was a bigger challenge. The damaged muscles in his leg were seizing up with shrieking pain, and the more helpful effects of the stimulant were rapidly draining away, leaving him with shaking hands and a fast-fluttering heart that seemed to skip a beat every few breaths. 

He dropped to the floor inside and dragged the window shut behind him. 

Safe. Finally safe. Or as close as he could get to it, with all the unknowns still dogging his footsteps. Jason pulled off his helmet and dropped it to the floor beside him. The mask underneath followed, one less minor irritant in a sea of sensations pressing against his skin, drilling down to the bone with demands for attention or else. 

One more heave of effort to push himself back to his feet. Just a little further. Just—

When he woke, with one cheek pressed against the hard floor, he was shivering.

He hadn't blacked out long. He was fairly certain of that. If he had, he'd be feeling worse than he did now. Which was saying something. 

Jason blinked at the dusty stretch of moonlit floor in front of him and tried to wrench himself back into focus. He had to get to… no, the cabinet in the bathroom here was pathetically tiny. His box of first aid supplies wouldn't even fit in it. Kitchen cabinet. That's where he'd put it. The light was better there anyway. That's where he needed to go. 

He coughed a little on the dust that caught in his throat as he sucked in a breath. Groaned as his ribs seemed to creak and scrape like tree branches swaying in the wind. Probably a couple of breaks there. 

Every breath dragged painfully over his parched throat. He was so thirsty. Couldn't get anything to drink from here. Had to move for that, too. 

Not trying to get up again, though. 

Get his elbows under him first, then hands. Then, with a whine of pain, forcing his knees into place to lever his too-heavy body off the ground. His sliced leg felt like it was on fire, crackling and spitting out sparks at every moment. The makeshift dressing had long since soaked through, leaving the leg of his pants heavy and sticking with blood. 

His head was spinning, making the world around him slide and tip in nauseating swoops. It was easier if he just closed his eyes, once he got himself pointed in the right direction. 

Every drag of his injured leg as he forced it to keep moving jolted out a pathetic little cry of pain. He didn't waste energy on trying to choke it off. There was no one to care, as long as he kept quiet enough the neighbors couldn't hear. 

They probably wouldn't care much if they did. Not in this neighborhood. 

When his shoulder caught on the edge of the couch, he took it as a sign for a breather, letting his head hang as he leaned against it. Just a few seconds. Then a final push around the edge of the kitchen island and he could collapse with his back to the sink as he flipped open the cabinet beside him—good choice, putting it on a bottom shelf, almost like he'd foreseen just such an occasion—and drag the first aid box out onto the floor beside him. 

Sweat was dripping from his forehead, despite the shivery tremors still running through him. The heat was stoking the growing nausea and he had to stop and pull off his leather jacket now. 

One sleeve stuck strangely to his arm—oh, right, the bullet. It had just caught the flesh of his upper arm, and now that he was staring at it he knew that it hurt, too. Everything else was so much, filling his head with sparks and pops of electric pain in a chorus of pulses. It was hard to narrow any of it down to a location unless he really focused.

Focusing was hard to do, too.

His body armor was digging into his broken ribs, an edge pressing in sharply enough in this position to break through the cacophony into a sense of priority. He managed to finish wrestling his arms free of the stifling jacket and clawed at the armor clasps until that, too, fell loose and he was able to shove it to the side. 

The momentary relief of freedom and cooler air brushing against him sagged into realization that he still had a long way to go. 

It was the shaky letdown from the Pit, letdown from the stim he took, that was making his fingers clumsy and numb as they fumbled with the clasps on the box of medical supplies. Blood loss was… also a relevant factor, but he didn't want to think about how bad that part was, yet. 

He flipped the lid open and squinted at the jumble of materials inside. He couldn't see anything well enough to resolve them into some kind of action plan.

Better light in the kitchen only helped if they were turned on. The dim glow from the window did nothing over here. 

No time to bemoan it. Jason twisted to hook an arm up over the edge of the sink and with a sharp breath of preparation hauled himself up to reach for the switch. 

It wasn't far. Just on the other side of the sink, behind the rack of clean, dry dishes he'd left ready for fresh use last time he was here. Every muscle in his body was shrieking and his ribs felt like they were caving in, twisting like this, but he just had to—

The leg bracing him gave way and his ribs collided with the edge of the counter. 

He didn't hear the drying rack crash to the floor. Didn't even feel the jolt of impact himself as he dropped, too. It must have happened, but he wasn't there for it.

There were flashing white and black spots filling his field of vision. Tinny ringing whistling in his ears. Then a harsh, wheezing gasp, like a drowning victim sucking in a first choking breath after rescue. 

Unwillingly, he settled back into his miserable body and the world around him solidified back into hazy reality. 

He was sitting against the cabinets again, only because the corner of the refrigerator had arrested his shoulder in his slide toward full collapse. Silverware and shards of shattered glass were sprayed across the floor to his left. Most of the first aid supplies had been thrown from their box on his right, some of them kicked beyond reach. 

He still couldn't see a damn thing to assess his own injuries because he hadn't actually hit the damn light switch. 

That object, at least, he could identify as a gauze packet, close enough to reach. He ripped it open and pressed it against his leg, on top of the previous dressing. Pathetically inadequate, when all around it he could feel the cold damp of blood-soaked fabric against his skin. There was more gauze, bigger packets, pressure dressings somewhere, but the only one he could see was out of reach, unless he could just… 

Sharp pain lanced through his ribs. He settled back again, but it kept on pulsing with every breath, intense enough that he pressed a hand to his side, expecting fresh blood from impaled glass. He couldn't find any. But the black at the edges of his vision was deeper than any nighttime shadows and the clumsy numbness of his hands was turning into pricking pins and needles and everything hurt so much. 

He couldn't do this.

The thought sat like a lump of ice in his gut. It was years since he'd let himself think that. I can't. You will or you're dead, that was the rule. But… he couldn't.

Calling anyone could mean signing his own death warrant. Not calling anyone certainly would be. Couldn't go to the hospital. Couldn't call any of his people, even the ones he might have relied on in a pinch before. Couldn't even go begging to Leslie. He hadn't talked to her since he got back. Didn't have her number anymore. The clinic had moved from its old location.

He was cold again, the warmth of exertion deserting him. The shivery feeling from before was escalating into full-body trembling. He wanted his jacket back, but not enough to try to get it on again. Bile crawled up the back of his throat and he swallowed it back with a desperate, silent plea. Not now.

There was one other possibility.

The comm the Bats had given him was really just for coordination on the few joint ops he'd joined them for. He wore it sometimes on patrol, but kept it on standby so only emergency signals would come through. He'd responded a couple of times to urgent requests for backup. 

Jason had never tried calling them for anything that wasn't prearranged. Certainly not for something that was closer to a personal favor than a request for field support. He hadn't even been hurt on patrol. Backstabbed in the course of crime lord business. Hardly Batman approved. 

And he was even less an innocent victim right now than usual. He'd killed tonight. Not because they were evil enough to deserve it but just because they were trying to kill him first. People tried to kill Batman every night of the week and he didn't kill them back. No way he'd believe it was necessary.

Sharp, cramping pain in his leg tightened like a vice as the muscles spasmed around the injury, cresting again until his breathing tightened into shallow hisses between clenched teeth. By the time it began to ease again the room seemed to be spinning in slow rolls, even while he kept perfectly still. 

Batman had saved Joker's life before. More than once. He'd probably help, even if he knew. Even if he arrested Jason afterward. Even if it was the last straw. 

He dug in his pocket for the signal-blocking case with his free hand. They could track the comm when it was on, if they wanted to. He didn't like to take any chances when he wasn't fine with being found. 

Funny, when now he was just hoping they'd care enough to try. 

He stuck the device into his ear with blood-sticky fingers and clicked it on. Instantly, the line lit up with chatter, Dick and Tim mid-conversation, what seemed to be a debate over the relative risks and merits of various street food vendors based on deliciousness versus number of times someone they knew was rumored to have gotten food poisoning from that particular truck. 

Dick was weighing in heavily on the side of some risks being worth taking. What was the good of life if you weren't going to live it to the fullest? Tim reasonably pointed out that his fullest life tended to involve less time puking into gas station toilets and more time doing… literally anything else. (Fair. Though Jason did have to admit the tacos over on Fifth were really good. Maybe worth gambling a slow weekend on, once in a while.) 

At least if they were arguing about that, it probably meant they hadn't gotten any calls yet about an entire pile of bodies being found somewhere.

This was why he usually kept the line muted on patrols. Too distracting. It was a nice kind of distraction right now. Familiar and distantly foreign at the same time, like watching a TV show he'd liked as a kid and trying to remember if the more ridiculous parts had always been like that or if someone had gone and edited it since then. 

It felt less alone somehow, listening to them like this. He could almost be content just… 

No. He shook his head, forcing his eyes back open. His tongue felt like it was sticking to the roof of his mouth, and he had to peel it loose before he could manage to speak. It came out more like a croak than a word. Not loud enough to even interrupt the flow of conversation.

He cleared his throat, wincing, and dragged in a deeper breath to try again. 

“Quiet on comms.”

Batman's order cut off the chatter like a physical switch. They all recognized the tone, not irritated complaint but focused intensity. Jason froze with his own mouth halfway open. 

“Hood, I’m registering your line as active. Are you there?”

His heart lurched, anxiety surging along with another wave of breath-stealing pain. 

“Maybe he switched it on by accident?” Nightwing, quiet concern audible even in the attempt at explanation. 

Batman grunted, clearly dissatisfied.

“Need… help.” He'd wanted it to be a calm, professional request for assistance. The words were harder to get out than they should've been, and it had nothing to do with pride or even fear now. It felt like an iron band was very slowly tightening around his chest, each breath catching a little shallower and more painful than the last. 

“Hood.” Batman's voice sharpened with laser focus. “What's your situation?”

“Help.” A wheezing cough tickled at his throat and he choked out a faint whimper of pain in its wake. “Can't...”

And then he really couldn't. The overlapping voices in his ear stopped making sense as black slowly closed over his vision and the world narrowed down to the need for air that seemed to be in increasingly short supply. 

No strength left even to make his case. It was up to them now.

Chapter Text

The window to Jason's safehouse was cracked open about an inch. That was the first sign of something wrong that Tim noted. 

Maybe it should have been the smears of blood on the fire escape and windowsill, but it was dark enough that those only caught his eye after a second look. The window being unlocked and open, but not wide enough to be deliberately seeking the fresh air (Well—Gotham. “Fresh.”) was immediately off. Not the kind of careless oversight Jason was likely to make. 

Batman certainly saw it as well, but he didn't comment. Tim kept close beside him as he slid the window up and leaned inside. He paused halfway in, attention arrested by something Tim couldn't see, with his broad shoulders blocking the way. 

“Jason?” Bruce's voice was quiet but pitched to carry through the apartment. If there was any answering sound or movement, Tim couldn't hear it. 

Bruce gathered his cape over one arm to keep it from dragging and disturbing any evidence before stepping in through the window. Tim climbed in after him. 

A puddle of blood had pooled inside, just under the window, and Tim mirrored Bruce’s sidestep to avoid it. It was… probably not as much blood as it looked like. The Red Hood helmet was on the floor a few feet away, tipped on its side as if it had been carelessly discarded and then rolled away. 

More blood led away from the window, toward the kitchen. Drag marks on the floor. A slightly blurred handprint. Dark smears on the back of the couch at one corner. 

Then they stepped around the kitchen island and any effort to follow an evidence trail and decipher what had happened became irrelevant. 

Bruce dropped to a crouch beside Jason. 

“Tim. Lights.”

The order snapped him back into action. It wasn’t hard to find the switch. His boots crunched on broken glass as he stepped closer to flick them on, flooding the room with light. 

The situation looked much, much worse now. 

Smeared blood. Smashed dishes. First aid supplies scattered across the floor. There was an alarming blue tinge to Jason's lips against the ashy pallor of his face. As Tim knelt down opposite Bruce he wasn't sure if Jason was even still breathing. Then he saw his chest jerk and rise in a shallow gasp. When Bruce touched his face his eyes fluttered open, then shut again. 

A low, alarmed exclamation from near the window heralded Dick's arrival. Bruce's head barely twitched in his direction. 

“Get my kit from the car,” he called out. 

“Going,” Dick acknowledged, turning back through the window without a second's hesitation. 

Bruce was much further along in his assessment than Tim had gotten. 

“Work on stabilizing his leg,” he directed Tim. 

That seemed to be the source of most of the blood. If Bruce wasn't focused on that himself, there was something even more urgent going on. Presumably Jason's breathing, or whatever was causing the near lack thereof. 

Jason had clearly made an attempt to stem the bleeding from the leg injury himself. Or a couple of attempts. A makeshift dressing was tied around it, knocked slightly askew by subsequent movement. The wad of bloodied gauze in his limp hand was no longer pressing hard enough to do any kind of good.

Tim sliced away the bloody strips of T-shirt and tried to get a sense of the extent of the leg injury without disturbing the gauze too much. It looked nasty, bad enough to be an emergency all on its own, if the breathing situation didn’t present an even more urgent problem. He'd have liked to examine it more closely, but it wasn't worth disturbing any clots that had formed until they could get him somewhere better equipped to deal with it. He'd lost too much blood as it was. 

Tim brushed Jason's hand out of the way and shifted into a better position to put some real weight into a fresh dressing he laid down over the old one. The pressure yanked Jason back to awareness. His body jolted with a breathless cry and when Tim glanced up again his eyes were open, but glazed and unfocused. 

“Jason.” Bruce tapped his cheek, trying to capture his wavering attention. “I've got you. Look at me, son.” 

Jason moaned and made a weak attempt to pull his tattered shirt away from his body as his labored breathing caught in aborted wheezes, as if that might be the thing keeping him from pulling in enough air. 

“I know,” Bruce said. “We’ll fix it. Stay with me.” 

Bruce grabbed hold of the shirt collar and ripped it open, pushing it back out of the way. Not that it helped Jason's breathing any, but it gave him access to examine his chest, marking out the spot he needed with a hand. Developing bruises mottled Jason's chest, overlapping older, faded marks with fresh, blackening splotches. It was probably imagination, but Jason's breathing immediately sounded worse just looking at all that. The shadow of fear in his eyes didn't look like imagination. Jason's hand opened and closed helplessly, like he was trying to catch something that kept slipping through his grasp. 

Bruce turned to scan the scattered supplies on the floor, one hand still gripping Jason’s shoulder as if to keep him there by sheer force, hoping to find what he needed faster than Dick could return. It was a hopeless jumble, and Tim didn’t dare let up pressure on the leg to get up and help him search. 

Dick propelled himself through the window again and skidded across the apartment, dropping down beside them. He had the kit popped open almost before he hit the ground, shoving a pair of latex gloves toward Bruce, who had already set aside the batsuit’s bulkier—and dirtier—gloves. Bruce grabbed the stethoscope from the kit for a better listen to Jason's chest. 

“Tension pneumo?” Dick asked.

“Yes.”

He'd found the decompression needle kit almost before Bruce finished answering. There was a reason Bruce was so exacting about precisely how the medical supplies should be organized every time it was stocked. 

A hasty swab with alcohol and Bruce drove the needle into his chest. Tim flinched almost as hard as Jason did, but a second later air hissed through the catheter and Jason's chest rose a little more freely as he pulled in a coughing breath. 

The next inhale was deeper. Just how rigid Jason had been with the effort to breathe became obvious in stark contrast as he slumped into boneless relief, shivers wracking him in the wake of cooling sweat. 

Tim felt like he'd just pulled in his first real breath since setting foot in the apartment. He suspected Bruce and Dick felt the same, judging by the matched shaky exhales.

“How is the bleeding?” Bruce asked, turning slightly to look at where Tim was stationed. 

Tim shifted his grip on the dressing for a quick peek, then grabbed another layer of gauze to press over the first he'd added. “Slowing.”

Bruce nodded and turned back toward Jason. “Jay? What can you tell me about your leg? What happened?” 

Assessing Jason's mental state as much as gathering what information he could about mechanism of injury, Tim thought. 

Jason was struggling to pick up his drooping head and focus. Bruce cupped the side of his face with one hand and for a moment his eyes almost seemed to clear. 

“‘M sorry, B,” he rasped. “I… sorry.” 

“You don’t have to be sorry, Jason. Just stay with me. We’re going to—”

Jason’s breathing hitched in what sounded suspiciously close to a sob, and then his head started to loll again. 

Bruce caught him as he sagged forward. In other circumstances Tim would’ve called it a hug, the way he held him, but with Jason dead to the world it was practical necessity rather than an offer of comfort.

Not actually dead, though. They hadn’t been too late. 

Bruce propped him back against the cabinets again and his attention caught on a deep gouge on Jason's upper arm. Not dangerous in itself, but still sluggishly dripping blood he couldn't afford to lose. 

Dick handed him a pressure bandage from the kit and as Bruce began to wrap it shifted to crouch beside Tim, casting a more experienced eye over his efforts. 

“We need to get him to Leslie.” That was mostly to Bruce.

Bruce nodded, pulling his cape from around his shoulders to spread it on the floor, a barrier against stray shards of glass. 

“I've already let her know we’ll be needing her. Help me lay him down so we can get him ready to move.” 

Awareness returned first in tiny drops of physical sensation, then in a sudden rush. 

There was something plastic on his face. Tubing? Nasal cannula. Oxygen. Faint background noise suggested a medical environment of some kind. His whole body was radiating a diffuse hurt that signaled the effects of painkillers covering up something much worse. His arms—something held his wrists trapped. He couldn't move. His legs were tied down, too.

Jason's eyes flew open and he gasped a panicked breath as a machine nearby began beeping a quiet, insistent alarm. 

He was stuck. Restrained. Couldn't even try whether there was a way to get loose because the deeper breath as he tensed to pull against them had kicked the pain in his chest from dull and aching to a breath-stealing warning stab. He coughed, trying to get enough air for a better effort, but it just hurt worse. 

A hand settled on his forearm, gently squeezing. 

“Easy. Easy, Jay. Just be still. It'll ease up in a moment.”

Bruce. Bruce was…

Tension collapsed into limp resignation as memory filtered back. 

Of course he was here.

Bruce relaxed as he saw that Jason understood the situation enough to stop hurting himself in a futile attempt to change it. He pulled the chair he'd been sitting in a little closer, where Jason could see him more easily, before settling back into it. He was still wearing the cowl. Of course he was. This was still Batman business.

“The surgery went well,” he informed Jason. “Leslie said she would reassess whether you're strong enough to be moved once you were more awake. I'm hoping she'll give the go-ahead next time she checks in.”

That made sense. Couldn't leave him here unattended, but they had other things to do. No sense tying up one or more of them with shifts guarding him longer than necessary. 

“Blackgate or Arkham?” 

His voice was a weak croak, but he knew Bruce heard him. He couldn't read the silent stare he got in response. Surely, no matter how angry he was, Bruce wouldn't just make him wait in suspense out of spite. 

Unless he was worried Jason would try to make a break for it once he heard the answer, no matter what he did to himself in the process. Joke was on him if he thought Jason would just wait quietly with no answer at all.

“Which?” he demanded. “Where are they putting me?”

It was an effort, trying to bury any visible reaction under angry defiance, when sheer panic was clawing at his chest. Every signal his body was sending him said that it would be a while before he was anything close to capable of holding his own again physically. He couldn’t—Arkham would be bad no matter what, but if he went there like this… 

Bruce shook his head. “Neither, Jay. To the Cave.” 

For a moment, it made no sense at all. Like walking out to meet a firing squad and being handed a ticket to an amusement park instead. Then he remembered the holding cells. He honestly didn't know if the thought of Bruce as his jailer was better or worse than the first possibilities that had occurred to him. Maybe worse. He didn't know if he could survive Arkham long without losing his mind to the point he really did belong there. But facing Bruce directly every day, trapped and helpless with him the one controlling every detail of his imprisonment, deciding what Jason deserved and what he didn't, every moment of it a mark of his personal judgment, not the workings of an uncaring system…

“Setting up your own personal lockup for special cases now? Do I get to know the length of my sentence or is life just a given now that I've blown my chance?” His voice sounded stronger now. That was good. Better.

Bruce's frown deepened. “Why do you think I'm planning to lock you up?”

Was… did he really not know yet what had happened? Or was he just looking for a confession, some acknowledgement that Jason knew exactly why it was he was angry?

In answer, Jason yanked his arms again, looking pointedly down at the restraints holding his wrists in place with barely an inch of give, before raising his eyes to glare at Bruce again. They both knew it didn't make any difference that these were padded medical restraints rather than handcuffs. It was all the same in the end. 

(He did wonder, a little, if that decision had been at Leslie’s insistence, or if Bruce had decided on that gesture of mercy in concession to Jason's injuries himself. Maybe that didn't really matter either.) 

“Jason.” Bruce shook his head. “Those are just… you've been trying to throw yourself out of the bed every time you started to wake up. Last time you nearly pulled out the chest tube. We had to keep you from hurting yourself until you were aware enough to understand what was happening.” 

Jason stared at him, his face feeling like a frozen mask as he tried to slow his pounding heart. So… he didn't know? Even Batman wasn't omniscient. He might not have had a chance to find out yet. Jason didn't know how long it had been. There weren’t even any windows in this room—a necessary security measure to conceal the Bats’ presence here, but bad for any hope of orienting himself to time now that he was awake.  

“I can take them off if you’re done trying to get up,” Bruce offered. 

“I’m done.”

He wondered if Bruce could tell he was lying. Or at least… telling the truth on contingency. He needed to be able to try, if it came down to that. He didn’t just go down quietly without a fight, not ever. And he'd rather die fighting than—than—

Okay, maybe Bruce's personal lockup would be better than Arkham. He'd hate it, but he wouldn't have Joker as an immediate neighbor. 

Sitting there on the kitchen floor struggling to breathe, knowing it was a race between bleeding out and suffocating, he'd thought he could deal with whatever he had to if it meant survival. He didn't think that now. 

Whether he suspected the lie or not, Bruce took him at his word, moving to unbuckle the cuffs at his wrists before turning to do the same to the straps on his ankles. Tim had been curled up in a chair somewhere on the far end of the room. Jason only realized it as he stood now, slipping forward silently to help Bruce remove the ankle straps before dropping back into his chair. 

Would Bruce have left his back unguarded so easily, if he knew?

Probably. Jason's clothes were gone and he was in a hospital gown, which meant his weapons were all gone, too. Even if he'd had anything in reach, Bruce doubtless knew even better than Jason did just how little he was capable of right now. 

Jason flexed his wrists, curling and uncurling his fingers—more to reassure himself of his current freedom than from any need to restore circulation. The restraints had been secure, but no more snug than they had to be to do the job. 

The door opened and Nightwing stepped in, closing it again behind him. Dick's eyes turned toward the bed where Jason lay, even before acknowledging anyone else in the room. If he was surprised to see him no longer restrained, he didn't show it. He just studied him for a moment, a faint frown creasing his brow.

“Good to see you awake. We were worried for a while there.”

Jason grunted. Dick kept on looking at him, steady and serious. 

“Twelve of your own people?” 

Ah. So he'd been off investigating. Must've passed on what he learned already, given the complete lack of visible reaction from either Tim or Bruce. 

Jason turned his head, staring straight up at the ceiling again. “I wasn't counting.”

Not at the time, anyway. He had been afterward. Dick was off by a couple. 

“And you were alone?” Dick asked. 

“Yeah.” He felt strangely detached now. No point in obfuscation, really. He didn’t know exactly what Dick had learned, but it was clearly enough on the important points. “That was all me.” 

“Were there more, or did you kill all of them in the fight?” Bruce's tone was as calm as Dick's had been, no trace of what he was thinking in that flat inflection. 

“Not all. Most.”

“How likely are the others to try again?” Bruce pressed. 

Calculating the safest place to put him? There wasn't a prison around here that didn't have plenty of inmates with personal or professional grudges against Red Hood, regardless of any connections to tonight's little mutiny. Another mark in favor of a more personal imprisonment, probably. Not like anyone was likely to tempt the chaos that would come from putting him in gen pop in a place like Blackgate, even if he did get sent there instead of Arkham. 

His stomach squirmed with a little flutter of claustrophobic panic at the thought of being stuck in Blackgate solitary confinement indefinitely, only seeing the outside of a tiny cell for the briefest scheduled intervals—if he was on good behavior. If they didn’t decide even that was too much of a security risk.

On the other hand, he’d stand a better chance of escape in either Blackgate or Arkham than under Bruce’s watchful eye. 

He really had stuck himself with no good options, hadn’t he. Should’ve known it was inevitable, the hole he was digging for himself. If being Robin gave him magic, apparently Red Hood gave him nothing but bad luck and dead ends.

Not that the whole Robin thing had worked out so well, either. The end had been pretty dead there, too.   

Instead of working up an answer, Jason shrugged, a twitch of his shoulders that still made him wince at the ripple of pain that ran through the rest of his torso. His eyes were fixed on the ceiling. Waiting for the inevitable judgment. He couldn't quite muster the usual anger, or even preemptive annoyance. Maybe because this time even he agreed that the deaths were a pointless waste. 

They hadn't been targets, people he'd decided needed to die. Maybe they'd all deserved a final end with no second chances, maybe not, but there hadn't been room for anything but a chaotic scramble to save his own life against people he’d thought were… not friends, exactly. But something close to it. At least people he could work with. People he knew.

It could have been avoided. Should have been, if he was just paying enough attention to see it coming. He knew how desperate people could get in Gotham, with the right pressures at the wrong moment.

He'd thought he was doing better with his own people than that.

“Jay.” That was Dick again. “You won't be able to do anything about it yourself for a while now. I'm trying to fill in the gaps here. We need to know how likely it is more of them are actively hunting you down. If you're going to pretend you don't care for yourself, you could at least tell us what you know for Leslie’s sake so we know what precautions to take.” 

Okay. Yeah. That was a fair point, not wanting a civilian in the line of fire because of him. He should give them that much.

“I don't know how many more of them might want me dead right now. They caught me sleeping. Literally. Didn't see it coming. That safehouse is off anyone's radar, though, and I made sure I'd shaken any tails before I went there. Chances anyone was watching and followed us here are about as low as they get, unless you brought any tails along yourself.” 

“Good,” Bruce said. “Then we can focus our effort on investigating. The fact that you didn’t have forewarning will complicate things a little, but we can work with what we have. It would help if you give at least one of us an in with a cover persona. They’ll expect you to be cleaning house after that, so it won’t be surprising if you bring in some new hands.” 

“Focus—what?” Jason broke his staring contest with the ceiling to look at Bruce. 

He was remembering all over again why he hated heavy-duty pain medication like this. It made him feel so slow, shaping his thoughts into order. Not that he'd been that much better off mentally without it, dragging himself around, trying to stay alive.

“Given past experience, I’m assuming it will be difficult to keep you out of the line of fire once you’re back on your feet,” Bruce said. “So we have until then to unravel the situation and figure out how to eliminate any ongoing threat to your life.”

“We.” Jason huffed a breath of bitter amusement. 

“I’m not going to let you get yourself killed trying to handle this by yourself, Jason.” 

Jason shook his head. “My mess. You—” The effort of talking was catching up to him. He broke off with a cough, pressing an arm against his side as pain flared. 

Slowly, the mental shuffling of pieces started to take a shape that made sense. Oh. Of course. Bruce could see as clearly as Jason did the dangers of a sudden power vacuum, if Jason’s hold on his organization broke for good. Obviously, he would want to stabilize the situation before it could spill over into chaos that would impact Gotham at large. That would be easier with Jason’s cooperation than going in blind, but he’d do it either way. 

And… yes, Jason cared enough about the innocents who would be caught in the crossfire to set aside his pride for that, too. To give them what they needed to get things under control. This couldn’t wait for him to find a way to handle it personally. There was too much danger to others, and it would only grow the longer it had to fester. 

Bruce was still staring at him in silent judgment, waiting for him to finish coming to that conclusion for himself. To acknowledge how badly he’d screwed up, grabbing a dog as mean as Gotham by the ears and thinking he had what it took to wrestle it into submission on his own. 

But before he could finish arranging the words in his mind, Bruce spoke again. 

“You were barely breathing when we got there, Jay. If it had taken us even a few minutes longer…” His shoulders dropped slightly. He looked utterly drained, even with the mask hiding most of his expression. “I'm glad you called when you did. I wish you’d asked for help earlier.”

“Couldn't call anyone else. Didn't know who…” Jason sighed. “Big Tommy—Tom Layton. I think he was the ringleader on it.”

“You trusted him.”

“Yeah. He was… I thought I could.” Stupid mistake, and too late to fix it now. It'd cost both of them more than it should.

There was a pause, like they were waiting for him to say something more. Finally, Dick spoke.

“So you don't know how deep it goes yet,” he said. “At least some of your people seem pretty solid. Your guy—Sparky?—is doing a good job holding down the fort and keeping order, as far as I could tell.” 

Jason grunted. He hadn’t actually left Burnes in charge, per se, just assigned him a job because throwing a task out for “someone” in a group to get done usually just meant everyone standing around waiting for someone else to step up and take charge. But if seeing him as a leader was helping stabilize things for now—fine. No reason to try to clarify the misunderstanding.

“He wanted me to tell you that he’s making sure the sale goes through just like you said. I’m assuming that’s a good thing.”

Jason looked at him sharply. “You talked to him?” More to the point, he corrected, “He talked to you?”

“Wasn’t exactly planned on either of our parts. I ran into him on the roof of the warehouse. He’d followed the blood trail up there. Trying to figure out if it was yours, or if you’d just had that much on you from the fight or if someone hadn’t been as dead as he was supposed to be and followed you up. He seemed genuinely worried.” Dick was watching his reaction closely. Jason didn't know what he was seeing, considering he didn't know what he felt about it himself. “About you, I mean, not about what you were going to do to anyone.” 

“So you told him I’m injured?” So much for his efforts to keep the extent of the situation under wraps. 

“No. I told him we had your back and you wouldn’t be running into any traps out there on your own. Like I said, he was worried.” 

“And he just spilled his guts to a Bat, first chance he got.” Jason eyed him dubiously. “Just told you all our business because you asked nicely.” 

Dick’s mouth twisted, annoyed but also genuinely amused. “He didn’t give me anything he wasn’t convinced I already knew.” He tipped his head in a half-shrug. “I, ah, may have led him to believe I’d found out because you told me what happened yourself, instead of from my own investigations and Oracle’s review of external surveillance.” 

Huh. Jason had personally removed or disabled all the security cameras in the immediate vicinity of the warehouse shortly after moving his operations there. She must’ve snuck some more of her own back in without him noticing. Impressive. Annoying, but impressive. 

Or just another mark of how badly he’d failed to watch his own back.  

He tried to focus his mind on some kind of roadmap of what needed to happen now, who needed to know what. What he could actually do while literally or figuratively tied down like this. Somehow, his brain didn’t want to let go of the one thought it kept circling back to, like a dog with a bone. 

He turned his head a little, not quite looking directly at Bruce, but directing his words toward him. 

“When you take me back there—will you let me go outside sometimes?” 

Bruce looked… unhappy? Upset? Maybe wondering what kind of angle he was working. Jason forced his voice to hold steady and calm. Might as well get it out, while he was busy swallowing his pride today. A request, not begging. (It… might come to that later. He didn’t want it to.)

“Please. If I have to stay trapped underground for—”

“Of course.” Bruce was still frowning, but now he sounded more confused than anything. “We’ll get you settled upstairs as soon as we can. Someone can help you outside whenever you want, until you’re well enough to manage it on your own.”

Now Jason was the one who was confused, staring back at Bruce. 

“Jason.” Bruce shook his head. “I told you that I'm not going to lock you up. If you don't want to stay down in the Cave, I won't make you.”

He hadn't, actually. He'd… but he had a way of thinking that he'd communicated more than he really had, didn't he. Mentally replaying those exchanges, Jason could see now how that could have meant… 

“I killed them. I thought—you said—Before. You said you didn't want to, but you'd stop me if you had to.”

“If I had to,” Bruce agreed. “You couldn't keep going the way you were.”

Wasn't like Jason had just turned around and changed his MO because Bruce told him to. If anything, he'd just dug in harder for a while. But even he could admit, with the benefit of hindsight, with the Pit cooling into something less all-consuming, that his early plans had been… not stupid, but not what they could have been, either. Wild. Reckless. He hadn't cared much then if he lived, but dying again hadn't even felt possible. His ability to care if anyone else lived or died in the process was a little less shaky these days, too.

Things had changed. Most of it had been too gradual to pinpoint easily. 

“And you don't think you have to now?”

“Self-defense is still legal.” If it was anyone else, Jason would've said Bruce looked uncomfortable. “Regardless—I'm not actually a police officer. I don't carry the same professional responsibilities, whatever I choose to do of my own accord.”

Trust Bruce to say do I look like a cop in the most convoluted way possible. 

“No. Guess not.”

Bruce had always said that they had to hold themselves to a higher standard, not lower, if they hoped to do more than contribute to the collective level of violence in Gotham. 

“And you’re my son.” 

Jason’s breathing stuttered, a very different tightness in his chest from the one that had been choking the life out of him before—before they arrived. 

Tim shifted in his chair, drawing Jason’s attention. He'd been so quiet and still, observing everything, Jason had almost forgotten he was there. Now he was looking at Jason with a weird kind of intensity.

“You still have plenty of people on your side. Just because a few of them turned on you doesn’t mean everyone has,” Tim told him. 

“He's right,” Dick agreed. “And I meant what I said about having your back. That wasn’t just to convince your guy everything was being handled so he wouldn't try anything stupid.” 

Bruce pushed the cowl away from his face, letting it fall against his back. He looked tired. It seemed like there was a little more gray at his temples than Jason remembered being there the last time he'd seen him without it. Probably Jason's fault, though he didn't think he could claim all the credit. 

Then Bruce leaned forward, reaching toward Jason. 

In the first split-second of reflex, Jason wanted to flinch away from the touch or raise a hand to block it. He couldn't work up much more than a wince and a twitch of his fingers. If Bruce saw the aborted instinct, he didn’t show it. 

The hand came to rest in his hair, combing through it and brushing it away from his forehead. When the soothing movement stopped, he let it continue to rest there, warm and familiar, like a half-remembered dream.

“This is a dangerous life for anyone,” Bruce said. “And even I never tried to manage it on my own for long. I would’ve been dead a dozen times over in my first year as Batman, if Alfred hadn’t been there for me. Let us help you. Please.”

It was probably stupid to lean into the warmth of that comfort so obviously. No visible weakness. That was the rule. But he was so tired and it was just—it had been so long. And Bruce still wasn't pulling away.

“Yeah,” Jason rasped, pausing to swallow around the sudden lump in his throat. “Not gonna fight you on it.” 

And Bruce smiled—actually smiled, with his mouth and everything, even if his eyes were still weary—like he couldn’t possibly ask for any more than that. 

Eventually, there would have to be explanations. What he knew, what his plans had been, what alternatives were left now to take his organization in the direction it needed to go.

For now, this was enough.