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He should've known it was gonna be a bad night. Right from the fucking get go.
There was an Arkham breakout. Not a big one, but Scarecrow and Harley managed to escape. Quinn was harmless, already on her way to see Pamela, wherever she was holed up. But Crane has been off the radar for hours now, most probably planning an attack, and the more time they lost looking, the more shit he'd manage to cook up. And it wasn't looking good.
He was waiting for further directions from Oracle with B and Dick when it hit. A smoke bomb was thrown right in between them and went off before it even hit the ground, red gas spreading everywhere instantly.
Jason had his helmet on. His helmet with air filters. Batman and Nightwing didn't have time to even reach for their rebreathers, falling to their knees while inhaling the unknown gas.
"B and N are compromised. No idea what's going on yet." He said to the open line, waiting for confirmation from Oracle. "Anybody copy?"
Silence. He was alone, his signal probably blocked, with two drugged up vigilantes.
The smoke cleared, just enough for him to see Nightwing's silhouette. He was still on his knees, his head bowed.
"Nightwing, can you hear me?" He edged closer, approaching him like a wild animal "Nightwing?"
He barely managed to reach out his hand before Dick's shot out and grabbed his wrist, painfully tight. He didn't look up as Jason cussed and struggled to free himself, his head still hung low.
"O, I could really use some help about now."
Then, everything happened at once.
Dick reached for his escrima stick and whacked it at Jason's head. He only barely managed to dodge it and stumbled back just to walk into the ledge of the rooftop, about to fall when a strong hand grabbed him by the throat.
Bruce had him by the throat over a five storey fall.
"Oracle, they're trying to kill me." he wheezed out, praying the comms managed to let anything through. Bruce's hand tightened around his windpipe and he tried praying his fingers open, desperately clawing at the leather gloves, but he didn't budge. Next thing he knew, he was thrown back on the rooftop, hitting the rough surface shoulder first. He scrambled up immediately, gasping at the pain spreading from his arm, hand immediately going for his gun, when Dick lunged at him. He managed to dodge the first hit, and then the kick, but his shoulder was slowing him down and panic was starting to settle in, because this was his brother trying to hurt him. And he wasn't holding back. Whatever that gas was, it was making them try their best to kill him.
He was already barely scraping by before Bruce joined the fight. And he wouldn't have beaten him on a good day, one on one.
Bruce delivered a series of blows, of which Jason narrowly escaped two and took the full force of the rest, wheezing as his body armor did little to stop the pounds of sheer mass and brute force. Dick attacked with his escrimas, Jason barely avoiding electrocution.
Then Bruce grabbed his wrist and twisted it in one smooth motion. He could hear the crack, seconds before his own scream.
Dick chose that moment to swing the escrima towards his helmet. It absorbed the electric shock, but not the impact. As Dick hit again and again, it began to give and crack away. Bruce moved on his throat again, and Jason reached for his gun, fully fledged panic making his movements erratic. He only managed to take it out of the holster before Batman's hand shot out and he lost the chance to shoot.
He was going to aim at their legs. Of course he was. That was his father, his brother. But Bruce didn't have the same objections as he pointed the gun at his head.
"B, please." He tried, his voice raspy and desperate. He clutched his broken hand to his chest. "It's me, it's Jason, don't do this. Please-"
His helmet was broken. The voice modulators were off, the crack revealed his face. Bruce could kill him. He could shoot him in the face.
The shot rang and he fell to the ground, crawling away with his hand on the gap between the parts of his armour in his side. Bruce shot him. His dad shot him and he was coming closer, the gun still in his hand, mouth set in a thin line.
Dick lunged first. Landed on him, pinning him to the ground, and punched. Jason felt the material give away, bit by bit, until it crumbled around him and Dick's fist met his cheek. Then his nose, then cheek again, his temple, his jaw. His ears were ringing and he couldn't see straight, only a flurry of black and blue hitting him as his head bounced off the ground.
And then he just stopped. He stopped, breathing heavily, and stood up. The pain in Jason's side was a pulsing, throbbing mass of heat, and he fought to stay awake, not even able to lift his hands.
There was a shadow over him. Batman. Jason swallowed around the blood in his mouth, trying to focus on the figure, his vision doubling
"Dad…?"
There was a moment of silence, and then, a weight on his chest. A boot.
It was Batman's boot.
The weight got heavier and heavier, pressure increasing as Jason tried to lift his shaking hands to get it off, trying to breathe, to just make this end. He cried out when something cracked and dull throbbing turned into hot white agony, and Bruce wasn't stopping, his dad wasn't stopping.
His dad was killing him. Again.
He thought he begged, as he lost consciousness. He thought he begged for his dad, but it all may as well have been another twisted dream.
—
It was Stephanie who shot the tranquilizer darts at Dick and Bruce. Nightwing immediately stopped, chest heaving as he looked down at Jason's bloodied face. He got up, panic slowly setting in, before making three steps backwards and falling unconscious.
Bruce didn't even budge. Stephanie took another shot, hit the kevlar plates and ignored Tim's panicked shouts before shooting again. And again, for good measure.
By the time Bruce went down like a brick, Jason was barely breathing, laying in a pool of his own blood.
"Black Bat, Spoiler, help me take him to the Batmobile." Tim leaped on the rooftop, immediately crouching next to Jason and pressing down on the gunshot wound, hard. "Robin, stay with them. We'll come back once Hood's in Leslie's hands, keep the darts at the ready. Don't hold back. Run if necessary."
Cassandra dropped on the rooftop, barely having gotten on the scene, and immediately gently checked Jason's head for any wounds, besides the bloody mess that was his face. Stephanie looked between them and the alley, trying to figure out how they were supposed to get him down, when Oracle's voice rang out in her ear.
"Stephanie, breathe. You did great, he's going to be alright." She nodded, holding up a hand to her chest as a familiar click notified her of Babs changing the channel to open comms "I already sent the mini jet, it's gonna be okay. Leslie's on her way to the cave."
Tim nodded, his hands soaked in blood.
It felt like forever. Between the jet landing, trying to get Jason inside with minimal damage, the ride to the cave and then back for B and Dick, who were both unconscious, Steph was ready to be done with the night. And they still had no news of Jason while he was in surgery with Leslie and Alfred.
Her, Cass, Tim and Damian were anxiously waiting in different corners of the cave, still half dressed up. Tim was hovering over the door, going back and forth with his thinking face on, while Cass was sitting in the corner like a statue, expressionless. Damian looked angry, which was code for fear, Alfred the cat trying to get into his lap every three minutes. And Steph was so out of her depth it was crippling.
Dick and Bruce woke up in their respective cells after two hours. Tim did their bloodwork and didn't speak to them before double checking that the results were completely clean. They didn't speak either. Something about their vacant, traumatized stares told Stephanie they knew what happened.
Steph was the first to see Jason when he woke up, intubated and high on morphine. She listed the injuries in a small voice, while Tim looked over the medical sheet Leslie left in the room.
A gunshot wound, two broken ribs, four cracked ones, a concussion, a hairline fracture on his skull, a broken hand. He flatlined twice.
She didn't know when she grabbed his hand, but she nearly cried when he squeezed back, listening intently.
Tim still didn't say a word. Just called for Damian and sat down next to Jason, still hovering.
Damian stubbornly climbed on the bed and held him, murmuring softly in arabic.
Cass and Babs walked in last. Stephanie gently held Cassandra's hand and led her to Jason, while Babs wheeled up to where Tim vacated his spot. Jason couldn't speak, not with the tube in his airways, but he signed weakly to Cass, using his one healthy arm.
Tim and Stephanie were the ones who dragged Bruce and Dick to Jason’s cot. Leslie had come back the night after and got the tube out, pronounced him recovering. He only had a strong concussion and broken bones to worry about, but hopefully there would be no permanent consequences.
At first, they both refused to come. Dick had been clearly crying, hands still shaking by his sides. He kept glancing at them like he was expecting to see blood even though Alfred made them shower and change when Jason was stable.
Bruce was unreadable. His mouth was a straight line, face expressionless, and Stephanie shuddered as the blank look made her queasy. She knew Bruce was impeccable at hiding emotions, being a cold statue. But this time, it just felt like he was scared.
She always imagined her first time yelling at Batman would’ve been more fun.
Screaming at him to “move his fucking ass and go talk to his own son” because he was “hiding like a coward” wasn’t at all how she imagined it. But it worked. Bruce took a shaky breath and nodded, following Dick to the medbay.
Stephanie stayed back as they entered the room. She kept an eye on Jason, noticing the second where he was scared, terrified of his dad and brother, before his face crumbled and he held out his healthy hand towards Bruce.
Even though his back was facing her, Stephanie was sure Bruce must have been crying. His shoulders didn’t shake as he gently held his son, not like Dick’s, who put his hand on Jason’s ankle and kept looking him over, making sure he was alive and breathing.
She left them alone and silently slipped into Cassandra’s room minutes later to get her well deserved hug.