Chapter Text
Jason laid in the rubble and felt nothing.
His hand pressed to his throat, his palm enough of a seal that air could still somehow rasp through his trachea, but blood trickled into his lungs, making them burn. The pain was distant, though – everything was distant. The injuries, the snarling rage, the emotional devastation, it was all happening far, far away from him.
He was almost glad. Relieved. He had been through his before, knew how it went, and he had been so, so tired.
He wasn’t sure anymore that he had even wanted to do all this. He just wasn’t sure how to stop.
It should hurt. His body. Bruce choosing Joker. But it didn’t. Even the fire scorching his back felt warm, like those softest days in Nanda Parbat when he could actually coax the Prince to smile, just a little, just the two of them, alone and relatively safe.
“Oh, child,” she said, soft, kind, sad, her fingers brushing over his forehead and making him flutter open eyelids he hadn’t realized he’d closed. “You don’t belong here, do you?”
Every breath rasped wetly in his throat, ugly and loud, combining with the crackling of the fire and shifting of the debris. He couldn’t focus on her face, but she looked kind. She sounded like she loved him. He didn’t think anyone had ever spoken to him with so much love. Not even his Mama.
He reached towards her hair, blurry as it was, with his grotesque, broken arm. Wanting to stroke the soft white streak above her brow. Matching his. But his arm trembled, dropped hard on his stomach, making breath wheeze out of him and a dull spike of pain shoot through his side. He didn’t have the strength.
She looked sad. So sad. Not scared of him, not waiting for him to fail. She looked like she loved him, too.
This was a nice dying dream. Not scared. Not in pain. Just a stranger who loved him stroking his hair.
It was better than the last time.
“Sweet child, what has been done to you?”
A contented sigh escaped him, fuzzy with blood loss and lack of oxygen. He didn’t answer, just nuzzled into her hand with the slightest movement. He had the warm, comforting surety of a child who knew their Mama would take care of things, would fix things. Would allow him to let it all go.
“Love, why are you here?”
Her voice remained soft, full of a steady kindness, but he fluttered his eyes open again, glancing around blearily. It didn’t sound like she was talking to him. He was her sweet child, after all.
It was another woman. Hardened. A warrior. Knelt at Jason’s other side. There was still a softness about her. A grief, maybe.
“It is my duty, love,” she replied, voice rough like she was used to screaming.
“For him?” The confusion was gentle. Undisturbing. Her hand in Jason’s greasy hair remained soft. He savored it, drinking in another leaky breath.
“Hm. Yes. But this seems incorrect.”
“The Universe does not make mistakes, love,” she said, doubtful, like someone who was realizing something had gone horribly wrong. A frisson of unease curled across the back of Jason’s neck, soothed as her fingers stroked gently over his brow and down his nose again, making his sore, tired eyes shut.
“Oh, dear one, what has been done to you?” the warrior asked, her voice soft like the shushing of water over stone. Love. She also loved him. Remarkably.
What had he done to deserve their love?
“You are you, sweet child,” the motherly one replied, sad. Her hand was so gentle.
“We must call him.” Another frisson of fear. He had heard Batman moving about the rubble, putting out fires, boot scraping over stone – but he had retreated, dragging a body behind him. Joker. Now they wanted to call him back? Let him finish the job?
No. Please no. It was so peaceful here. Jason just wanted peace.
“Yes,” the motherly one agreed, and Jason could’ve wept. Her thumb, tracing the bridge of his nose, reassured him. They were not calling Batman. “The child does not deserve this.”
But the universe worked on rules. He didn’t want her to break them for him. He just wanted to bask in this a moment longer.
“Someone has already broken the rules, dear one.”
“You have suffered for it, sweet child.”
“We will fix it, young moment.”
His voice was deep, grounded and endless, like a mountain. He seemed so tall as he leaned over Jason’s head, features too blurry to parse as he pried his eyes back open.
“He does not belong here,” the motherly woman said, voice warbling.
“He is not properly tethered,” the warrior added.
“He has been touched by powerful hands,” the man mused, a frown on his voice.
Oh, Jason had disappointed them. Another sigh escaped him, air rushing surreally past his blood-slicked palm. It was only a matter of time.
“No, sweet child, you are perfect.” Her voice was fervent, honest. He leaned into her hand, the barest movement, and let his eyes flicker shut.
“I cannot remove the influences,” the man said, voice soothing. “That is not how time works for him. But I can tether him somewhere stable.”
“Somewhere he can be loved?” the motherly woman asked.
“Somewhere he can belong?” the warrior demanded.
“There is no reason to do this if not with kindness,” he reassured them. “The rules have already been broken. There are other solutions. But I have so little opportunity to be kind.”
Murmurs of agreement. Sad. Grieving. Jason understood. He had never been allowed to be as kind as he wanted, except as Robin.
The thought made his chest ache. Or maybe it was the rebar through his side, starting to hurt again.
“You have been hurt, sweet child,” Mama whispered in his ear, sweet and despairing, her hand still gentle, achingly gentle. When was the last time someone was this gentle with him? “We cannot fix the pain. We cannot remove the influences of those who have come before us, those tarnished touches. But we will do our best to fix this much, at least. You must promise me, sweet child, to accept my boon. Let yourself be loved, and I will meet you when it is your time. You must tell me all about the love you found.” She pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead.
It felt warm. Snuggly. Like someone laying a blanket over him and turning off the television, letting him sleep.
And then the world swirled. Unnatural. Incorrect.
His palm slipped against his sweat- and blood-slicked neck, gagging desperately for air, as the pain rushed back in. Her fingertips lingered on his temple. He couldn’t force his eyes open. He opened his mouth, screamed.
No sound came out.
The peace shattered, pain surging through him, worse even than the first time he had died, worse than the Pit, worse than anything he thought anyone had ever experienced, and he welcomed the darkness.
“I’m sorry!” Thomas said as he slammed through the locker room doors, which didn’t bode well for what was about to come next.
“No, Dad, please,” Bruce couldn’t help but whine, feeling all of thirteen years old again for a single moment as his father grimaced at him. “I was just about to change!”
“I said I’m sorry, Brucie! Please, I need your help. We need more hands and Warren isn’t getting in for another hour.”
“What about the residents? C’mon, Dad, I have to get home.”
“They’re scrubbing in too, but this is too advanced for Maria and Tyrone. Chum, this kid needs your help.” Thomas looked at him with wide, distressed, pleading eyes, and Bruce took a second to take in the blood smeared over his scrubs – not much, most caught by the disposable robe and gloves used as PPE in the trauma rooms, but there was enough that some had crept past the protective barriers and stained the hem of his father’s shirt.
Fuck.
Bruce knew Thomas wouldn’t have been asking if he didn’t really need help with the case; but he was also exhausted, stressed, and had just finished his own shift and was really looking forward to going home and cuddling his son for just a little bit while everyone was out of the house, those forty-five minutes between when Bruce got home and when Martha did where he got the baby all to himself somehow feeling vital to his existence these days. How could Bruce say that was more important than whoever was dying, though, the only reason his father would ask him to scrub in like this? Especially when Thomas had said the person was a kid?
He shut his locker with a silent sigh. Thomas was already bolting back out of the room, and Bruce scrambled to follow his dad, almost running through the hallways to OR 3. Shit, it really was an emergency if Thomas was running like that. He felt bad for even the thirty seconds he had delayed arguing. He knew how much those thirty seconds could change things.
Scrubbing in and gowning up was a blur as his father laid out the damage they would be faced with – severed throat with a compromised trachea, barely missing the major arteries; compound arm break; rebar through the right kidney; crushed leg and hip; full and partial thickness burns; hemopneumothorax; and various other minor injuries, including trauma to other internal organs. Just from the descriptions, Bruce was shocked the patient ever made it to Gotham General, much less that the ED had stabilized them well enough to make it to the table.
When he actually got eyes on the patient, it was even worse than described. The surgical nurses, well used to all kinds of trauma surgeries, were hesitating in placing the sterile drapings, unsure where they would be starting. The gaping slash in the boy’s neck was too clean and precise to be anything but intentional, the airway the paramedics or ED had managed to secure shining slickly with blood as an artificial trachea through the wound in the actual flesh. Bruce had never seen someone survive something like that, and doubted Thomas had either; but they were obligated to try at least. This kid had fought like hell to make it to the hospital, so they would fight like hell to save him in return.
Bruce took up the secondary surgeon position to his father’s primary after they checked the chest tube the ED had placed to treat the hemopneumothorax. They immediately began work on the slash in the boy’s neck first, Thomas directing the residents, Maria and Tyrone, to evaluate the piece of rebar still stuck in the boy’s side and through his kidney for removal. The boy’s fast-beating heart monitor and the steady breaths of the respirator were a soothing background to their frantic efforts, reassuring the longer they stayed stable as Bruce helped sew the different layers of flesh back together, hiding the airway tubing behind muscle and skin where it should be.
“This kid is lucky,” Maria muttered from where she and Tyrone were finally able to control the bleeding from the removed rebar, glancing at the slashed throat before they moved to detach the mangled kidney that had been shredded by the metal.
“I heard they only lost him once in the ambo,” Tyrone answered. “I can’t believe he hasn’t coded yet.”
“Let’s not tempt fate,” Thomas cautioned, glancing over with a flick of his eyes to observe their work.
“I can’t believe the scars he has,” Jessica, Thomas’s frequent surgical nurse, whispered, something like horror in her voice, barely audible above the sound of suction. “It looks like someone vivisected him – just cracked him open collarbone to hips.”
Bruce traced the line of the slash in the boy’s throat with one bloody, gloved finger after the last stitch was snipped. “This was purposeful. Clean.”
“Missed the carotid and jugular,” Thomas agreed, taking a second to sigh and stretch. “A slow, painful death of suffocation.”
“Who would do that to him?” Maria demanded, hot with anger. She had always felt for their patients; sometimes Bruce worried she felt for them too much, to make it in a field like theirs.
“More like what did he do to deserve it,” Tyrone snorted, his callous nature always grating on Maria.
“He’s a child, and your patient,” Bruce cut him off shortly as he and Thomas repositioned. “Is ortho coming for his arm and leg?”
“The leg will be another surgery. Mason is on the way for the arm, ETA 15 minutes,” Bronson, another nurse, reported calmly. It had already been an hour or more in this surgery. Bruce sighed.
The longer this patient was stable on the table, the less likely he would be to code, and the longer the surgery could be. “Can someone call Alfred and let him know Dr. Tom and I will likely be home extremely late?”
“On it, Doc,” someone parrotted diligently, and Bruce stretched out his neck for a moment before moving to dive back in with his father.
“Clear the field,” Maria suddenly snapped, yanking her hands back from inside the kid’s abdomen.
“What?” Tyrone questioned as Bruce and Thomas automatically lifted their hands.
“Clear the field!” she barked again, and he pulled his hands back, staring at her like she was crazy. She studied the patient for a moment before declaring, “This guy is moving,” turning an accusatory eye to where Dr. Jefferies was managing the anesthesia. Jefferies’s eyes were wide, movements a flurry as he checked medications and weight calculations.
“I’ve been trying, I can’t keep this guy under!” he cried, stress evident in his voice. “The paralytic should still work even if he’s conscious, I’ve never had this happen before. There’s only so much I can give him!”
Sure enough, the patient’s hips were shifting, his eyes flickering under taped-down eyelids. “Christ almighty,” Thomas cursed, panic flooding the room.
“Fuck, can he feel us in there?” Tyrone asked as they rushed to pin the patient down to keep him from injuring himself further.
“Unlikely,” Bruce answered, voice clipped, as Dr. Mason entered the OR to be gowned. “Heartrate and BP are steady, no indications of pain.”
“What’s going on here?” Dr. Mason asked, gloves snapping around his wrists.
“Awake patient,” Thomas grunted. The movements didn’t seem to be targeted yet, just restless shifting, but if the kid started struggling in earnest with his abdomen wide open things would get messy fast.
“I’ve already loaded him up to the damn gills, more could kill him.” Dr. Jefferies had regained his composure, pressing the patient’s shoulders down to the table as he watched the monitors.
“He must be a meta. No one else could survive these injuries and burn through meds like that.” Maria’s deduction had merit, and they had no time for the DNA analysis to confirm.
“Assume he’s a meta,” Bruce declared, Thomas nodding in agreement. “We need to use meta protocols – advanced metabolism and healing.”
“If he’s not, I could kill him,” Jefferies said wearily, even as he moved to prepare more medication.
“We’ll never be able to treat him like this. It could also be exponentially increasing resistance to the meds. We need to fix the leg and hip now, page more ortho help,” Thomas ordered, Dr. Mason voicing his agreement as he began to examine the mess of the kid’s arm.
“Someone put this poor kid through the meat grinder,” Mason muttered, peeling back the gauze hiding the open fracture.
“Blown up building, actually,” Tyrone corrected unhelpfully, sighing in relief as the shifting faded with the new medication load.
“Fuck,” Mason said, with feeling. “Someone really wanted this poor schmuck dead.”
“Well, let’s not give them what they want,” Thomas replied coldly, directing everyone back into action.
Bruce sunk into the action and reaction of surgery, until all that was left was ortho finishing setting the bones and closure. Ortho was moving slowly, carefully – external fixation was typical for these types of breaks, but with the meta abilities displayed, they weren’t sure they’d be able to get the poor kid back under to remove anything external. Internal fixation wasn’t as effective, but it would have to do in this case, leading to a tedious piecing together of bone with tiny screws and plates. Bruce took a breath as he watched, and his dad leaned over to nudge their shoulders together.
“Head home, chum,” Thomas said softly, eyes just as tired as Bruce felt behind his PPE. “I’ll stay here to help close and get him settled, Warren is handling ED cases, and Buchanan is on call. You’ll still make it to dinner and be able to get Damian to bed if you leave now.”
“Are you sure, Dad?” he asked tiredly, more to be a good son and coworker than anything else. He desperately wanted to go home. Damian was a very good infant, but he was still a baby that woke up multiple times a night most of the time, and although his dad, mom, and Alfred were being very kind and taking turns with him, he was still exhausted by the end of the day even without a several hour emergency surgery.
“I got it, chum. Go ahead and scrub out.”
“Thanks, Dad. Let me know how he does. Poor kid.”
“Yeah. I hope he pulls through this,” Thomas sighed, nudging Bruce again with his shoulder. “Go on. Give Dami a kiss from his Poppi for me.”
Scrubbing out, changing, and driving home was a blur that Bruce barely remembered. It wasn’t until Martha placed Damian in his arms that the burden which haunted him after cases like these lifted slightly, stilling the circling thoughts of who and how and why and whether the patient would pull through. Damian yawned grumpily at him, little brows furrowed and little eyes muzzy, and Bruce felt himself melt.
He had never anticipated being a father like this. Sure, he had helped raise Dick since his adoption – had been fully prepared at the time to raise Dick himself if his parents hadn’t agreed to help before he learned his young age would keep him from adopting Dick in the first place – and he had wanted children in a vague way, cooed over others’ babies and envisioned his own children in a distant manner one did when they weren’t sure of the future, but he had never expected an infant to practically land on his doorstep right at the beginning of his long-term surgical career. It was hard, now, to imagine his life and plans without the precious, grumpy baby he came home to every day, even if Damian had somewhat upended all their lives.
He nuzzled against Damian’s fuzzy head, who grunted unhappily into his ear. “He’s been grumpy without his dad,” Martha said fondly, if not a little tiredly. That was Damian – he wasn’t fussy, but perpetually grumpy. Bruce had worked himself into a panic attack when he realized Damian never smiled socially, worrying about missed development milestones, until the little bugger full out grinned at Alfred for handing him a plush kitten.
“Did you miss me, chum?” Bruce murmured, bouncing Damian gently and getting an unhappy squeal in response. Dami waved his chubby arms in the air, fist nearly clocking Bruce in the nose as he chuckled. “Sorry, sweetheart. Daddy had to stay at work with Poppi to help someone.”
“I’m sure the young master shall forgive you over dinner,” Alfred said as he entered the sitting room. “Come along then, young sirs, Miss Martha. Master Bruce, you have arrived at the perfect time.”
Normally over dinner he and Martha would share their days and plans. Today his mother seemed to sense he was still processing and filled the dining room with the W.E. gossip and what the tabloids were talking about now, letting him soak in the serotonin that came with feeding his baby boy.
Privately, Bruce worried that he never spent enough time with Damian. That being passed between family members so often during the day was going to give him an attachment disorder. That the routine they’d settled into, which was easy if a bit tiring, was unsustainable long-term.
They had discussed hiring a live-in nanny, but Bruce had balked at the number of times Dick or Bruce himself had been kidnapped or extorted as children by people ostensibly working for the Waynes. Daycare had similar problems, alongside the high risks for a baby so young. He had considered quitting his job – they didn’t need the money, after all – but Martha and Thomas knew how passionate he was and had discouraged him from quitting.
Secretly, Bruce wondered if his parents had been empty nesting a bit with Dick now away in college and Bruce moving to a different hall in the manor for his own space. They had been, and still were, enthusiastic in helping with Damian. Bruce appreciated it, but he also wanted his parents to enjoy their time as they aged; he always worried he was getting in the way, or taking advantage.
He tried to breathe those thoughts away as he repositioned Damian to burp him, accepting the cloth Alfred passed him gratefully. “So, what held up you and Dad?” Martha finally ventured, and Bruce felt himself grimace. “Oh, that bad, huh?”
“Brutal,” Bruce confirmed, rubbing Damian’s back, feeling him breathe against his chest. “I don’t know how the poor kid made it to the table, much less through surgery, but somehow he made it. We think he’s got metagenes, the anesthesia wasn’t working effectively.”
“So it was a kid?” Martha asked, concern leaking into her voice.
“We guessed so.” Damian squirmed, kicking little legs against Bruce’s stomach until he adjusted his hold. “He looked to be in his mid- to late-teens, athletic, probably doing football or wrestling. Someone dropped a building on the poor lad.”
“My God,” Alfred exclaimed, while Martha gasped.
“The building explosion near Park Row? The news said the building was empty! We’ve already engaged the relief teams.”
“I guess so,” Bruce said, stomach twisting inexplicably. “I’m not surprised the news didn’t say anything, police probably already instituted an information gag. Someone tried to kill the kid. I don’t think any of us were under the impression this was the first time they tried either, not with the scars he has.”
“That poor child,” Alfred muttered, Martha’s eyes gleaming.
“Have they found a guardian? Do they need assistance with the medical bills?”
“I don’t know, Mom,” Bruce answered tiredly, and Martha softened. “Dad let me go before surgery was done so I could come get Damian settled.”
“Of course, sweetheart, I’m sorry. I know you’re tired. I’ll talk to your father and look into it.”
“You go settle the young master, Master Bruce. We shall clean up here,” Alfred ordered, and Bruce knew better than to disobey him. Besides, maybe he could grab a little extra sleep – Damian was almost sleeping through the night, but not consistently. He could use any extra he could get.
Jason floated in a space between consciousness and void, his body a distant pulsing of agony, senses muted to near-nothing. The world around him felt strange, a disconnect that had nothing to do with the distance between his mind and body, the muffled nature of the noises around him, or the blurry fog that filtered through his parted eyelids. He felt a part and apart of the world; knew there was something strange here, but couldn’t identify what. Mama’s words (not his mama, but still Mama, somehow) echoed through his mind: Let yourself be loved... You must tell me all about the love you found.
Something pulsed inside him, anxiously pacing, wanting him to snap and snarl and protect himself; but he was so tired, all his effort poured into slitting his eyes back open after blinking, barely tracking the fuzzy, shadowed shapes that moved around him. He thought one of the shapes looked a lot like Bruce, but that was ridiculous because Bruce had left him and he had died in that rubble. (He had died in that rubble. What was going on?) He thought the shapes were speaking to him, but the voices were muffled to the point of unintelligibility, a background droning like the adults in the Peanuts. He thought the shapes were touching him, but his skin felt like it was floating three inches above everything else, the nerves barely transmitting the sensation of air or fabric brushing against the surface from so far away.
The only thing that felt true were the hands he could still feel poking around in his stomach, ignoring the way he shifted his hips and flexed his fingers, poking and prodding the most intimate parts of him to package in canopic jars for presentation to Judgement. This had happened to him before, he knew, and he had felt those phantom hands snatching at his stomach before. These were no less real or fake than the hands he had already felt, but for some reason, he thought this might have happened again, being split and rendered wide in a manner unnatural to the living body.
His eyes found purchase on the back wall, the droning mutters quieting as he laboriously dragged his hand up to his abdomen, tracing over the flesh there, underneath fabric. The flesh was jagged with scars and dressings – nothing concerning – but whole despite that, fully surrounding his precious insides. He dragged his fingers up and down, from his sternum to his pelvis and back again – slow, slow, his arm did not want to move faster and the effort was so exhausting he wanted to close his eyes and sleep – savoring the curiously muted sensation of fabric catching against his calloused fingers and broken nails.
The droning murmurs climbed in volume, shapes waving in front of him, lights flickering, touches firmer, but he could only stare at the wall where his eyes had caught and appreciate the confounding sensations of his own flesh against his own flesh on the outside, and the grasping hands clutching at the inside.
His eyes slipped closed, exhaustion dragging him under; he had a feeling that despite that, he wouldn’t be able to sleep.