Short Story Saturday (Part Two of the Jason Lives AU)
Happy Birthday to Jason Todd! This is a longggg part two so I hope you all enjoy! Thanks so much to everyone for the comments asking for more! There is definitely even more to tell in this story, so keep an eye out!
Length: About 5k
Jason won’t remember this part later.
Smoke, heat, the weight of someone’s arm draped across his back. Not his–not Sheila–she got away before they did. He pries his eyes open.
They’re outside. There’s fire and smoke behind them, but they’re not in it, not buried in the rubble. Jason’s lying on his stomach, and he can feel every bone in his body.
It hurts to turn his head–it hurts so badly, but he does it so he can see Dick.
Dick’s turned away from Jason. He isn’t moving, his hair dark with blood.
It hurts to speak, but he does it.
“N…” he chokes on his own breath, chest tight with panic and broken bones. He tries to draw his arm up from his side to rouse Dick, but abandons the idea because all of him is basically fucking useless.
“Night…Nightwing.” His voice is hoarse. No response from Dick. Jason feels cold.
“Co…come on…you…Dick, hey…” Jason tries again to drag his arm up to touch, and he does, but not without a pathetic animal sound of pain as his shoulder spasms.
He tries not to think of the damage. He grips Dick’s shoulder, sand sticking to the blood sticking to his glove.
“Nightwing…geddup…” Jason can’t quite catch his breath. He can’t quite rouse Dick either. But Dick is breathing. At least he’s breathing.
Jason knows he should get up, but the world is spinning, blurring fire and sand and blue and black and red.
They’re gonna die here, he thinks. Dick came to save him, and they’re gonna die here anyways.
“Sor...sorry, Dick.” Jason’s eyes sting. He doesn’t try not to cry, even though it hurts every inch of him, “...Sorry, Dick…”
Sorry Bruce. Sorry Dick. Sorry Alfred. Sorry Mom.
Jason’s eyes fall on the blood around his brother’s head. The red in the sand. He won’t remember this later.
“Robin. Robin, stay with me.”
Dick taps the side of his face, there’s so much blood he doesn’t even know where to start. Jason doesn’t stir, and he’s breathing but it’s even more ragged and wheezy than it was before the explosion. His lung may have collapsed. Dick doesn’t have his belt–he doesn’t have anything on him.
Stay calm. Think. Assess your situation, comes Bruce’s growl somewhere in his mind..
His head wound is making it hard to think. Blood seeps from his forehead into his left eye.
He tries to contact Bruce again. Static. Someone’s blocking the signal.
Or Batman is trying to maintain radio silence.
“Nightwing to Batman, Robin is down, I repeat: Robin is down–we need help.”
Jason makes a choked sound right as Dick feels eyes on him.
As much as Dick wanted to see Jason’s eyes…he realizes quickly that unconsciousness was a blessing.
Jason’s face contorts, panic clear in his eyes as he tries to move–to speak. Dick takes his hand, hesitant to hurt him more,
“Don’t move.”
Jason tries to say something again, but blood dribbles from the corner of his mouth. He coughs hard,
“Shit-” Dick moves quickly, and as gently as he can while Jason’s pained noises cut a hole right through him. He pulls him into his lap, propping him up just enough to clear his airway,
“Easy, Robin. Breathe.”
Jason’s head lolls against Dick’s shoulder–like a little kid
(He is a little kid. Where the fuck is Bruce?)
“Robin, hey, look at me.”
Jason’s eyes snap up, wild with fear and pain. His mask is gone, Dick realizes. They must have taken it. (He saves his anger for later. He needs to be here.)
His forehead is streaked with blood and sweat and dust and sand, but his eyes are bright, and as blue as the acid sky. He’s still alive.
Dick tries to look reassuring, forcing a smile he knows doesn’t conceal his fear,
“Hey Robin, there you are. Just breathe for me alright?”
Jason’s struggling to do it, but damn it if he isn’t trying–fighting. His fingers find Dick’s and he squeezes. His gaze flicks to the sky–to the acid brilliant desert blue as he fights.
“Night…”
“I’m right here, Jay” His eyes slide over again. Dick holds him as gently and as tightly as he can.
“..Dick…” Jason’s face crumples, his voice nothing more than a wheeze, “...Hurts…”
“I know, Robin I know…I….”
Dick checks his comm. Deadly silent. He looks at the sky. Deadly still.
“I’m going to get us out of here…” He looks around. A truck, a few hundred yards away stands abandoned. It’s at least fifty miles to the nearest major city–let alone the nearest hospital, “...I’m gonna get you out of here.”
Bruce, where are you?
Tears cut lines down the grime on Jason’s face. Dick’s world starts to spin, he knows they’re both on borrowed time. Even if Bruce got here right now. Even if Bruce got here thirty minutes ago.
Dick squeezes Jason’s hand, muttering encouragement as his brother struggles to breathe. Scrambling for something to do. They could get to the truck, they could make it to the hospital–
Jason goes quiet. His grip on Dick’s hand—vice-like seconds ago–weakens, slackens, releases.
“Robin?” Jason doesn’t stir, eyes distant and unfocused. Dick pulls him closer, glued to the barely-there rise and fall of his chest,
“Robin…Jason…are you with me?”
Dick’s heart drops into his stomach. He carefully wipes blood away from Jason’s mouth with his thumb, then settles his hand on his cheek,
“...Come on….look at me, Jason…” Dick’s throat closes, “...Look at me, Jason…I’m right here.” he traces his finger under Jason’s good eye, “Look at me.”
Jason, impossibly, heroically, finds Dick, locking eyes with him:
I’m here. I’m here. It hurts. But I’m here.
“I’ve got you.” Dick says, smiling with what little ease can muster, “I’ve got you.”
Dick thinks Jason smiles back. Or he tries to, the corner of his mouth twitching. But his eyes drift away again, and his chest goes suddenly and horribly still.
Before Dick can think, he’s screaming at the sky for Superman.
It's desperation, really and truly.
Dick jostles his brother in his arms but it does nothing to rouse him, squeezing hands, brushing his face, smoothing his hair, tapping his cheek.
“Superman! Clark! Help!”
He hears the boom before he finishes the sentence. He doesn’t look up, though.
“Jason!” Dick’s voice breaks, “Jason!”
“Nightwing!”
Clark. Calm, blue eyes, cape and all. He hovers over the sand, looking as out of place as an angel in hell, set against this backdrop of fire and blood.
God, some distant part of his mind thinks, we look a mess. We’re so fucking breakable.
“Take him–take him Clark!”
Before he can think he’s thrusting Jason into Clark's arms, feeling sick at how limp he is and how small he looks compared to Superman,
“Robin–” Clark looks horrified, holding onto Jason so gently, “Nightwing–are you hurt?”
“Just go!” His eyes sting, he can’t catch his breath, “I’m fine just take him, just go!”
Clark does. Dick blinks and Jason and Superman are a speck in the acid blue sky.
Here, with Jason in the arms of Superman, Dick allows himself to panic. He rocks forward, fists driven into the sand, thinking of nothing but Jason being so horribly, horribly still.
His head throbs. His heart pounds. Every blink brings the image of Jason's bloodied face, or his parent’s vacant eyes. They all blur together, all dressed in green and yellow and red.
So much red.
The hospital really is the worst part of it.
Jason doesn’t know where he is when he wakes up. Blinding lights, too many noises, tubes in his nose and throat and wires everywhere. It’s fucking terrifying. Someone says his name, he doesn’t understand anything else. At least not for a while.
The nurses are nice–well, the ones that aren’t strictly business anyways. And Dick is there. The first time Jason sees him is about the second or third time he wakes up–maybe the first really meaningful time. He tries to pull his tracheal tube out, but Dick stops him with a hand on his wrist. Just the sight of him–albeit with bandages and stitches on his forehead–is enough to make Jason burst into tears in sheer relief.
After that, Dick is almost always there. Jason’s glad he has a hand to squeeze when the breathing tube comes out. And once it’s decided Jason’s ready for some answers.
Dick tells him it’s been weeks. (He doesn’t say how bad Jason’s really hurt. The adults don’t think he’s ready to know, Jason can tell. Jason isn’t ready to ask either.) He tells Jason that the Joker is dead. (The name immediately brings memory. Jason flinches, but he still listens. He’s not ready to sleep tonight.) That Clark came to get Jason after the building went up in smoke. He asks Jason what he remembers, but things are…tangled.
Broken bones and blood, Dick, the Joker, smoke, Superman, Batman—it gives him a headache. Words are hard, hard to focus on and hard to get out. Trying to remember everything jumbles up his thoughts and his words. All of the sudden it’s like his mouth doesn’t know how to speak English. It scares him.
Jason knows he had surgery–more than one. He knows more are scheduled.
Dick himself spent the first week and a half after Ethiopia nursing his own nasty head wound. Jason tries to not let his gaze flick to the neat line of stitches down Dick’s forehead when they talk. It makes him feel sick. Dick holds his hand when the feeding tube comes out. Jason can’t even find it within himself to be embarrassed.
He doesn’t see Bruce. Dick assures him that he comes around, but Jason’s usually asleep. The first time Jason really sees Bruce is the first time he’s allowed to hear about his own injuries. Dick isn’t there. Bruce says he got a migraine, and had to stay home. (The head wound, Jason assumes. It still hurts something in his stomach.)
Bruce holds his hand when he gets the news. When he learns just how long it will be before he can even walk again. Bruce wraps Jason in his arms as he starts shaking. (Bruce heard this already, Dick heard this already. He gets why they didn’t tell him.)
The words traumatic Brain Injury loop around in his head until he’s dizzy.
“It’s alright, son.”
Jason can’t breathe.
What did you do to yourself this time, Jason?
He can’t breathe.
The nightmares had to start sometime. And try as he might, Jason can’t really hide them. They aren’t like the ones he had as a kid, where he’d wake up quiet and frozen in terror. He used to wander down the halls, to the study, to the sitting room, and if he couldn’t calm down, to Bruce’s room.
Now it’s always screaming, always. And then Bruce or Dick or both come flying in and he’s shaking and crying and he can’t even tell them to go away if he wants them to. He can’t go to the bathroom and splash water on his face. He’s not selfish enough to ask Dick to push him down the halls in his wheelchair at three in the morning. He’s not selfless enough to be alone, either.
Dick winds up staying a lot. Bruce, on the rare occasion he’s not patrolling, goes back to bed. Jason doesn’t blame him. (Honestly, he doesn’t get why Dick puts up with it.)
On a particularly bad week, Dick sets up a mattress on Jason’s floor. And Jason pretends not to notice how he sits up four or five times a night to check if Jason is breathing. Or when he jerks awake, and sits up taking careful breaths for minutes on end.
Jason fucks up everyone he touches.
Bruce says wants Jason to talk to someone. Not him, though. He isn’t around enough beyond doctors visits and talking him back into the present after he wakes up screaming bloody murder.
Dick moves back to Bludhaven at the beginning of June. Jason tries homeschool, to catch up from the school he missed. It makes him wonder about his classmates–do they know where he went? Do they know what happened?
He does okay in his classes. When he thinks clearly enough to concentrate. Dick still visits, looks over his schoolwork, gives Jason the odd case file to chew on. He’s grateful for it, especially in between surgeries. It makes him feel like he’s doing something.
Bruce is still awkward around him. Alfred is Alfred. Stoic and steady as always as he hands off Jason’s meds with his breakfast. He’s grateful for it. For normalcy. For their quiet drives to physical therapy and their quiet drives back.
(And if he wishes Bruce were at the appointments with him, He swallows the feeling.)
It’s been nine months. Almost ten. Dick turns twenty one. Jason turns sixteen. He’s on crutches now; pins in his right leg, seizure medication in his wallet.
He goes to Bludhaven often, almost as often as he can. (Jason’s still in homeschool. He tried–back in August–to go back, but it was too much. Loud noises and questions. Alfred picked him up in the middle of the first day.) And it feels like an escape. Dick doesn’t treat him like glass. Dick lets him be angry.
It feels like that’s all he is, now. Angry. He doesn’t know at what, or who, but it needs to go somewhere. They drive around, Dick lets him rant about anything and everything. Bruce, his classes, his physical therapist, his doctors. Jason knows Bruce doesn’t like it, but Dick keeps giving him cases. A couple times he takes Jason to Titan’s Tower.
The Titans are great. Jason gives his input on cases, he complains about Bruce. He sees why Dick loves them so damn much.
It’s Donna, actually, who gives him the idea for school.
“Then move out”
Jason balks, blinking at Donna as they sit on the couch at Dick’s apartment.
Dick himself is passed out in his room (long night, longer story.). Donna and Jason just happened to be “double–booked.”
“I’m sorry–” he gestures to his crutches leaned against the wall, “Move out? Bruce would lock me in the basement before he let me get an apartment.”
“Then go to college.”
Jason scoffs, crossing his arms and leaning his head back on the couch cushions.
“I mean it, Jason. Graduate early. You’re plenty smart enough.”
She looks genuine. Jason at least is good at knowing when he’s being made fun of. And Donna isn’t the type. He decides to entertain the hypothetical,
“Okay, so I graduate early,” he holds up a finger, counting off the unlikely scenarios, “Get into…Gotham U? And then Bruce makes me commute, because there’s no way in hell he’s letting me live alone.”
“The dorms–”
“Or with a roommate he hasn’t put through a lie–detector test and a blood panel.”
Donna considers him, chewing on the inside of her cheek. After a second, she’s biting back a grin.
“What?”
She shrugs,
“You could go to Princeton.”
Jason picks his head up just to give her a look,
“...Princeton?”
“Like I said, Jason, you’re plenty smart–”
“Still no way I’m gonna–”
“--You could go to Princeton, and live with Dick.”
That catches him off guard. And for a second, Jason feels like an idiot for not thinking of it. Donna’s satisfied,
“Bludhaven is only twenty minutes away—and you’re plenty close to Gotham, so Bruce can shove it.”
Jason goes quiet, weighing the idea seriously for the first time.
He could live with Dick. The idea excites him, if he’s being honest. He imagines his new life, new city, independence…and then what?
“I…I don’t even know what I’d major in, Donna–and I can’t just ask Dick to–.”
“You’ve got time to try things out, kid.” She takes her mug off the coffee table, drawing a long sip,
“You’ve got a trust fund at your disposal, and you know Dick would do anything for you.”
Heat spreads across Jason’s face,
“I don’t know about–”
“He would.” She says, “We all would, Jason. You’re family.”
That shuts him up. A lump sticks in his throat, Donna sets her cup down and squeezes his shoulder,
“You have a life outside of Robin, Jason. Live it.”
Live it.
That’s what he tries to do.
It isn’t easy. Not by any means. Not the school, not the planning not trying to plan how to ask Dick if he can come live with him
He doesn’t ask him. Not for months. He just chews on the idea, afraid that any direct action to make it happen will push it out of his reach forever.
But Dick is still around, helping him with PT, helping him with homework, helping him get everything in order for early graduation under Bruce’s radar.
Jason is…cautiously optimistic. By the end of March he’s on track, his doctors say everything looks good, he’s doing good. Seizure free, speech therapy, no more crutches. He even talks to Bruce’s friend, Dinah a couple of times. He doesn’t know if it does much good, but it makes Bruce feel better. He’s on his final surgery, at the start of April, and Jason is more than ready to be done with surgery. He feels hopeful.
It’s fitting, then, that everything falls apart so completely.
The surgery has complications. The serious kind. The kind that keeps him under for sixteen hours.. The kind puts him weeks behind in school. The kind that puts him back in the wheelchair for the time being.
He was angry before. Angry, and desperate to do something, ready to fight, ready to put his life back together.
This time…he just cries. Cries until he’s numb, until he can’t talk anymore.
His stutter worsens. He stops talking.
Bruce lets him pull out of school again. Jason goes to physical therapy and comes home. April marches on. He reads his books. He thinks about Princeton, about Bludhaven.
He was stupid to fucking believe in it.
He knows Bruce is worried. He knows Dick is worried. The Titans leave messages. Jason stays in his room. His nightmares come back. No one comes running. Dick’s case files collect dust on his nightstand.
April 27th.
He stares at the calendar, hating every inch of it. He stews, he stews far too long. Long enough that when Dick knocks on his door, Jason knows he doesn’t have any words for him. He doesn’t even have a smile. Dick does though, holding up a bungee cord and a gym mat.
“You wanna do PT?”
Jason shrugs.
They’re on the floor of his room, Dick’s giving him pointers on his most recent batch of approved stretches and exercises. He’s got his right leg–the one that had pins–stretched out in front of him. He’s trying to touch his toes with the resistance band.
It. Fucking. Hurts. Dick encourages him, pushes him just a little farther. But he can’t do it. He can’t fucking do it.
“Jay? You wanna try something el–”
“No!” Jason rips the stupid resistance band off of his foot and throws it, “I can—I can’t fuck—can’t fucking do it!”
He’s sobbing before he can think about stopping himself, everything spilling out of him in stuttered pathetic cries. He can’t look at Dick, he can’t make himself look at Dick and the forehead scar that makes Jason’s gut twist every time he sees it. He buries his head in his hands,
“It’s—I’ts all—my own fucking–” he gasps, heart pounding, “My own fault. And I’m never gonna–fuck—I’m never gonna get out of here. It’s my own fucking fault, my fucking–”
Dick’s arms wrap around him. Jason wants to push away, wants to explain to Dick that he doesn’t deserve his kindness, that he ruins everything and everyone he touches, but all he can do is cry.
Dick holds the back of his head, slotting Jason’s head in under his chin. Jason clutches at Dick’s shirt as he’s racked with sobs, loud and ugly. Jason doesn’t cry like this. He doesn’t think he’s ever cried like this.
“It’s not your fault, Jason.”
Jason shakes his head, and Dick pulls Jason away by the shoulders.
“Look at me.” Jason drags his eyes up, Dick stares right into him, “It’s not your fault.”
Jason can’t help but look at Dick’s forehead scar. Dick’s expression breaks, he pulls Jason back into his chest,
“I would do it again, Jay. I would do it a hundred times, do you hear me?”
Jason’s going boneless, exhausted from sobs like a little kid. He sniffs.
“Do you hear me?”
Jason nods against Dick’s shoulder. Dick holds him together.
The next day, Dick asks Jason to come live with him.
As soon as Jason’s on crutches again, he and Dick are moving into a new apartment. (He wasn’t a part of Dick and Bruce’s talk. But Bruce is different after. He lets Jason go, but something between them is not the same. Maybe they need the space.)
Princeton is still far away, but he works towards it, does summer school, does everything he can.
Dick gives him case files, and this time Jason has the added context of Bludhaven. Dick’s made him swear up and down not to follow anything in person, and he keeps his word. They find an easy rhythm (when Jason isn’t coming for Dick’s ankles with his crutches.). Jason does school. He finds a job at a little bookstore. He makes friends. He goes out. He applies to Princeton. He gets off of his crutches a week before his birthday. His friends at the bookstore congratulate him, he and Dick start walking around downtown on the regular.
Dick turns twenty-two. Jason turns seventeen.
It’s a small affair, at Titans Tower. An oversized cupcake with a huge candle. Someone hugs his neck, he gets passed a few envelopes. Donna nudges him in the elbow and demands to know about the cute girl Dick says he’s working with. Dick messes with his hair. He’s allowed a couple of beers–with the promise that Bruce will know nothing.
His acceptance letter comes in the spring. He starts his classes in the fall. Nightwing flies–Bludhaven is as much of a handful as ever. Jason chews on casefiles. He’s right more often than he isn’t. He talks with Dinah. He makes more friends—hell, he goes on a couple dates. They don’t go anywhere, but Dick enjoys teasing him. He majors in humanities. He’s the best in his class.
Jason finds a life outside of Robin. He lives it.
