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Jason tore through the Gotham night, twisting the throttle of his motorcycle until the engine roared in protest. Behind him, clinging tightly to his waist, was a wounded hero. Every few seconds, Jason would shift his weight, checking to ensure that the fragile, semi-conscious body hadn't slipped off into the asphalt below.
“Fucking Scarecrow,” Jason snarled under his breath, leaning hard into a sharp, dangerous turn.
“Left at the next intersection, Hood. It’s the fastest route to Gotham General. I’ve already cleared the traffic lights for you,” Barbara’s voice crackled through his earpiece, tight with a restraint that poorly masked her panic.
Oracle was on the line, anchoring them from the Clocktower. Her fingers danced across her keyboards like a woman possessed, charting the safest path through the bleeding city.
Normally his first instinct would've been the Cave, hand Dick off to Alfred and let the man they all see as a grandfather work his quiet miracles. But that luxury didn't exist anymore, and tonight there was no one else to call. Bruce was off-world, chasing some intergalactic mess with the League. Damian was with his mother in Nanda Parbat, probably taking advantage of Bruce’s absence to aggressively hunt down and cross names off his personal capture list, though thankfully, he had long since given up his lethal ways. Tim was in Metropolis, covering for Kon and the others while Luthor made his move. The girls were dark, Birds of Prey business, if Jason had to guess. Whatever they were doing, it wasn't picking up his calls.
That left just the two of them on the ground, and Barbara, tied to her monitors, doing everything she could from forty blocks away. Jason knew she'd have been at their side in a heartbeat if she could; it was her love for Dick, plain and unhidden, that kept her voice steady in his ear tonight.
He felt the old ache of Alfred's absence flare up again, sharp and sudden, and shoved it down. No time for that. Not tonight.
Jason skidded to a halt, killing the engine in a dark alley right behind the hospital. As the mechanical roar died down, the sickening sound of the young hero's agony filled the silence, low, ragged groans that made Jason's chest tighten.
“Hang in there, big bird. Don't you dare close your eyes,” Jason muttered, ripping off the crimson helmet that all of Gotham had learned to fear. He didn't care about the security cameras spinning overhead. If his face was caught on tape, so be it. He had been legally dead for seven years; nobody would ever connect a deceased fifteen-year-old Jason Todd to the hulking man he was today.
“Hood, report. What's his status?” Barbara’s voice cut through his thoughts, sharper now, the veneer of the stoic tactician slipping.
“He's fading, Oracle. Toxin's spreading. I'm going in civilian,” Jason replied clippedly as he shed his leather jacket and shoved his dual pistols into the motorcycle's side compartment. He pulled off his t-shirt and threw it back on inside out. The shirt was custom-made, entirely seamless on the inside, no tags… leaving no indication that it was reversed. It was a tactical trick designed for exactly this scenario; walking into a civilian hospital with a glaring red bat symbol stamped across your chest was a textbook way to ruin an undercover operation. “I'll call you if anything changes.” He ripped the earpiece out before she could argue, and tossed it into the compartment with the guns.
God bless Barbara, thanks to her, they had arrived at the hospital quickly, but to be honest, Jason was in no state to explain himself or report to multiple people at the same time.
With his quick disguise complete, Jason hoisted Nightwing onto his back. The older hero was losing blood fast, but what terrified Jason more was the sickening, vibrant green hue spreading across Dick's torso. Scarecrow's new toxin was slithering beneath the skin like a nest of vipers. This wasn't something a standard field dressing or a few stitches could fix. His brother needed a sterile room, a physician, and serious medical equipment Jason didn't carry on his belt.
He burst through the emergency room doors, his heavy combat boots echoing against the pristine linoleum.
“HELP! I need help, NOW!” Jason barked.
The ER staff froze. Seeing a massive, intimidating man carrying a blood-soaked, semi-conscious Nightwing, a hero whose childhood all of Gotham had watched unfold, sent a shockwave of panic through the room.
“Move! He needs a doctor!” Jason roared, snapping them out of their stupor.
Fortunately, their professionalism kicked in. Within seconds, a gurney was brought out, and Nightwing was transferred onto it. Jason sprinted alongside the medical team as they rushed Dick toward a trauma bay, one hand still fisted in the fabric near Dick's shoulder like he couldn't quite make himself let go.
“What happened to him?” the doctor asked, her voice tight but controlled.
“Scarecrow,” Jason explained breathlessly, his eyes locked on his brother. “He found a way to concentrate his fear toxin and inject it directly into the bloodstream.” With a swift movement, Jason peeled back the ruined abdominal section of Nightwing's two-piece suit.
The doctor's hands stilled for half a second. Dick’s skin had turned a morbid, toxic green, and you could actually see the poison pulsing through his veins, crawling upward. The sadistic villain had stabbed him first, using the blade as a delivery system for the concentrated venom.
“He’s lost a lot of blood, but you need to neutralize the toxin first. Wayne Enterprises supplied every hospital in the city with the standard panacea,” Jason urged. “I watched him take a dose right after the attack, but the formula is too concentrated. It only bought him enough time to get here.”
“Alright! I need Antitoxin S26 in Trauma Room 0078! Bring our entire inventory!” she shouted to the corridor. Two nurses broke into a sprint.
Once inside the room, the doctor pushed the spare bed aside to make room for the gurney. She immediately applied heavy, localized pressure to the path of the advancing green veins, trying to physically stall the spread. The agonizing pressure forced a raw, guttural scream from the young hero's lips.
“Hey, shh. Look at me, it's alright,” Jason said, stepping forward. He completely ignored medical protocol, grabbing Dick's trembling, gloved hand and squeezing it tight. “You’re going to be fine.”
But Dick looked anything but fine. A physical wound, no matter how deep, was just a regular Tuesday night for Nightwing. The real nightmare was the psychological warfare happening inside his mind. Under the influence of a hyper-concentrated fear toxin, only Dick knew what horrors he was seeing, what deeply buried traumas he was being forced to relive.
Suddenly, the hero who had looked near death seconds ago began to thrash violently, attacking the medical workers. Nightwing had never been an easy target, and with his perception of reality shattered, it was only natural that he viewed the hands trying to save him as enemies. But Dick would never forgive himself if he knew he actually hurt these unappreciated heroes. So, Jason had to stop him from doing actual damage.
Jason pulled the staff behind him, into protection. Then he pinned his brother’s arms. “None of it is real, Nightwing. None of it is real,” Jason asserted, his voice dropping into a firm, grounding register. “You're safe. It's over. I'm right here, brother.” Restraining him was easier than it was supposed to be. They didn’t have much time.
Jason kept his grip tight on the bloody arms. Dick was still convulsing in phantom agony, but he seemed to register the voice. A single tear slipped from beneath the edge of his domino mask, tracing a path down his sweat-sheened face. His muscles remained tense, but he stopped fighting the restraint.
The doors flew open as the nurses returned, hauling five heavy medical cases. The staff members who had taken a slight beating from Nightwing's erratic thrashing gladly stepped back to let them through.
Without wasting a single breath, the doctor popped open the first case, drew the first of 5 massive syringes, and plunged it directly into the young hero's abdomen.
The effect was instantaneous. The sickly green hue receded around the injection site, returning to pale flesh. But the victory was short-lived. The concentrated formula fought back, and within seconds, the green tendrils began to reclaim the skin.
“Dammit,” the doctor and Jason cursed in unison.
As she reached for a second dose, Jason intercepted the kit and snatched a syringe for himself. The nurses instinctively moved to block him.
“I don't have time for this,” Jason growled, brushing them aside with a single, unyielding shove. Working in perfect tandem with the doctor, they began administering the antitoxin simultaneously.
“It's fine, let him,” the doctor called out to the nurses, not looking up. “Apply pressure to the laceration and get me a sedative. Now!”
Nightwing’s thoroughly exhausted body offered no resistance to the sedative. Within moments, his breathing leveled out, and he drifted into a deep, chemical sleep.
It took fifteen grueling minutes and eighteen vials of antitoxin, but the toxic green stain was finally flushed from Nightwing’s system. To be absolutely certain, Jason and the doctor stood in tense silence for two full minutes, watching the wound. When no green veins returned, they both let out a long, ragged breath.
With the poison dealt with, the doctor efficiently cleaned and stitched the stab wound. The only lingering anxiety was the unknown; nobody had ever survived an influx of fear toxin this severe, and no one knew how Dick's body would handle the massive chemical cocktail of nearly twenty doses of antitoxin.
“So, which one are you?”
The sudden question caught Jason off guard, making him stiffen slightly. “Excuse me?”
“I meant, which mask do you wear?” the doctor clarified, looking at him intently.
Jason simply raised an eyebrow, letting out a soft, mocking scoff. He completely ignored the question, and she, wisely, chose not to press. In a cursed city like Gotham, it was common sense not to anger a heavily muscled vigilante who risked his life in the shadows every night.
But there was something else in the way she backed off, too, something steadier than fear. Jason caught it in the set of her shoulders as she glanced back toward the bed: quiet satisfaction, maybe even a little pride. Whatever this man in front of her was, the one lying in that bed was Nightwing. Gotham's golden boy. Saving him meant something, and the doctor knew it, knew that if they'd lost him tonight, it wouldn't have just been a name on a chart. The whole city would have felt it.
“I’ll be back in half an hour for routine checks,” the doctor said, scribbling notes onto a patient chart. She clicked the back of her pen a few times—click, click, click—lost in thought. She pointed the pen toward Jason. “I'm guessing you won't let me perform a pupillary response test on him?”
“The mask stays on,” Jason replied, his eyes never leaving his sleeping brother.
The lenses of Nightwing’s mask were completely opaque white, obscuring his blue eyes. So, they had to remove the mask to perform a pupil check.
Jason looked up at the doctor. “You can run the other vitals. I have enough medical training to check his pupils myself. If there's an issue, I'll let you know.”
It wasn't a lie. The Batfamily had always patched up their own wounds. Every child trained by Batman, every Robin, every Batgirl, was practically a certified trauma surgeon. Tonight, however, Jason had needed the sheer volume of a hospital's stock that even Leslie didn’t have, and extra pairs of hands.
“Fair enough,” the doctor conceded, looking Jason up and down, taking in his massive frame.
A rare, genuine smile tugged at the corner of Jason's mouth. It didn't quite fit him, or maybe it fit too well, and that was what unsettled people. Even out of the leather and the helmet, there was something in the set of his shoulders, the stillness of a man who knew exactly how much damage his hands could do, that made rooms go quiet when he walked into them. The doctor clearly felt it too, throwing her hands up with a nervous little laugh, gesturing between her own frame and Jason's.
“Not like I could force you anyway, right?”
Jason let the smile linger a second longer than he needed to. He knew what he looked like. What he was. The blood on his hands had never bothered him the way it breathed down Bruce's neck, never kept him up counting reasons not to cross a line their father drew in the sand. That was fine. That was the role he'd made peace with a long time ago.
The black sheep. The outcast. The one people crossed the street for.
Not like Dick. Dick was sunlight, warm, easy, the kind of hope this city didn't deserve but got anyway. Everyone loved Dick.
Including Jason.
“Thank you for your help, Doc.” Jason's voice came out quieter than he meant it to, stripped of its usual edge. He didn't want to be 'the one you should be scared of' tonight. “We really appreciate it.”
She blinked, caught off guard by the sudden gentleness from a man who'd looked ready to tear the room apart twenty minutes ago, then nodded and let herself out without another word.
Once the doctor cleared out, Jason pulled a chair closer to the gurney and grabbed his brother's hand again carefully, mindful of the IV line taped into the back of it.
Jason watched his older brother’s sleeping form for a few more minutes, observing the slow rise and fall of his chest and the slight twitches of his fingertips. He looked almost peaceful, right up until his brows furrowed slightly. He was either having a nightmare or was about to wake up.
“Wake up, big bird. Seriously, Scarecrow? You're letting a C-list rogue put you in a hospital bed?” Jason teased, his voice dropping into a familiar, sarcastic drawl. “Blüdhaven must be making you soft.” He kept his voice low, easy, like he wasn't holding his breath waiting for a response.
“Scarecrow... a C-list rogue?” a weak, raspy voice muttered back.
Jason's chest loosened all at once, relief hitting him harder than he expected. But he kept his cool, masking his emotion with a smirk as he looked at Dick. “Yeah, totally C-list. Please. Darkseid is an A-list threat. Deathstroke and Ra’s are B-list on a good day. Scarecrow is a fucking loser.”
Dick groaned, his fingers tracing the fresh bandages over his abdomen. He blinked against the harsh fluorescent lights, looking around the sterile room. “Where are we?”
“Gotham General,” Jason answered.
Dick’s hand immediately flew to his face, panicking.
“Relax, they didn't touch the mask,” Jason said, lightly patting his hand down.
“What about you?” Dick asked, his voice laced with sudden, sharp anxiety. “Jay, you're a wanted man. If the GCPD finds you here...”
“Don't sweat it,” Jason dismissed smoothly. “Nobody saw the Red Hood. I'm completely off the grid right now.” He gestured to his plain clothes. No helmet, no weapons visible, no iconic brown leather jacket, and most importantly, no massive red bat emblazoned on his chest.
Dick let out a long, relieved sigh. “Still... we need to move.” He shifted, attempting to sit up.
“We move when I say you're stable,” Jason countered firmly, placing a heavy hand on Dick’s shoulder to keep him down.
Jason pulled a small tactical flashlight from his cargo pants. He scanned the room to ensure there were no hidden cameras and double-checked that the window blinds were completely sealed. Approaching the bed, he carefully pried back the edge of Dick’s mask.
The older hero’s striking blue eyes were revealed, though they looked incredibly weary. The sclera, the whites of his eyes, were heavily bloodshot from the chemical strain. Jason forced himself to ignore the visual pang of worry. He shined the narrow beam into each eye, watching the pupils contract. They reacted perfectly. No neurological lag.
Dick pulled his mask back into place and sank back into the pillows.
Jason took his phone and texted Barbara: “He is fine” She must have been sick out of worry.
Moments later, the doctor returned as promised. When she saw Nightwing all awake, she actually dropped her clipboard onto the floor.
“The sedative we gave you was enough to put an elephant to sleep for twenty-four hours,” the doctor said, her eyes wide with utter bewilderment. “Not to mention you're operating on about half the blood volume you should have.”
Dick offered a weak but characteristically charming smile, inclining his head slightly. “I'm incredibly grateful to you for saving my life, Doc. And for respecting the mask.”
The doctor shook her head, trying to process the sheer absurdity of dealing with vigilantes. “Alright, miracle boy. We're setting up a three-unit blood transfusion. What's your blood type?”
Ten minutes later, Dick was sitting cross-legged on the hospital bed, wires and IV lines running out of his arm. As the dark red blood from the vacuum packs trickled into his veins, his hyperactive energy seemed to return almost instantly.
“...and then he goes,” Dick lowered his voice, doing a spot-on, gravelly impression of Batman, “'I don't work with teenagers.'” Dick laughed, recounting an old Young Justice memory. “So then Miss Martian shapeshifts into the exact double of my Robin days, and Batman just glares and grunts, 'Message received. Don't push it.'”
Both brothers burst into laughter. Mid-laugh, Dick suddenly winced, his hand flying to his side as the stitches pulled. Jason’s posture stiffened with instant worry, but Dick waved it off so quickly that the panic subsided.
They were a stubborn family. They had broken boundaries, stared down monsters and Gods, and saved the world more times than anyone could count. They had bled, died, and clawed their way back. This was just another scar to add to the collection.
Nightwing and Red Hood were resilient, unbreakable. And when the two of them stood together, the world didn't stand a chance.
On the small, wall-mounted TV in the corner of the room, a breaking news report flashed onto the screen. Scarecrow had been found by the GCPD, securely hogtied and left in a damp alleyway. Slapped across his chest were two very distinct spray-painted emblems: a Red Hood and a Nightwing crest.
The two brothers looked from the screen to each other, a synchronous smirk spreading across their faces as they bumped fists. Still, they both knew the clock was ticking. It wouldn't take the world's greatest detective to figure out that the hulking civilian sitting in Trauma Room 0078 was Gotham's most wanted outlaw.