Chapter Text
Later, Jason wouldn’t be able to put an exact pin in what he had been thinking. (Not completely true, but he would repeat that to himself enough to almost believe it.) He had, well, at first, he was just so tired. He was so tired that he could feel it in the muscles of his legs and back and lungs. He was tired in his blood and tired in his bones. He was the sort of tired that meant he couldn’t fall asleep. Normally, he would have gone downstairs and played a game of chess with Bruce, but Bruce was… Bruce was avoiding him. He couldn’t look him in the eye, and it was--
Jason was just tired, ok? He just wanted to sleep. Regular normal sleep. Seven or eight unintirrupted hours, even. So that was how he ended up with the pill bottle.
And then, well. He took one. And he was holding the bottle so tightly like he might snap the plastic with his grip. The image of Gloria Stanson swinging gently from the ceiling fan in her bedroom flooded his mind, her bloated purple face, the way her feet pointed at the ground, almost elegantly. And he thought he could hear the sounds of Bruce a level below in his study clicking away on the typewriter to fill out some “paperwork” for the Wayne Foundation. An excuse that Jason could see through because he knew Lucius Fox had taken over just about every element of Wayne Foundation running that Bruce had ever touched. Bruce just didn’t want to have dinner with him. Because he couldn’t look at him. In fact, the only time he seemed to look at Jason, actually look at him since Gloria Stanson died was when Jason was injured on patrol a week later. They were still ok as Batman and Robin. They were even ok as Jason and Bruce. He put on a good show, but he was holding back so. He was...He just didn’t look at him. Or he didn’t look at him the same.
And he was so tired.
And he just wanted it all to be quiet.
And then he looked at the full bottle of pills and realized it wasn’t full anymore, and there was an unpleasant pill-y aftertaste in the back of his throat. He stared at the bottle. And then he came to his senses, a rush of terror flooding him with adrenaline. He threw to bottle across the room like it was a combatant. It rattled as it fell, sending a million tiny pills all over the floor. Ping! Ping! Ping! But he—He didn’t know how many he’d taken. Too many. He’d taken too many, and Bruce was going to find him, and he wouldn’t be there to be found, not really, like his mom and Gloria and so many other people he was too late to help.
Too late.
He tried desperately to think of how many he’d taken, how much time had passed while his mind had been wandering, but he didn’t know. He didn’t know.
Bruce was going to find him dead, and he didn’t even leave a note. He didn’t even think it through. He always thought things through. He always left notes. He left notes when he was going to a concert. He left them when he missed Bruce before going to school. He couldn’t just leave and not leave a note behind. But he didn’t know what to put in it, and he was so scared. He didn’t want to die. Even if he sometimes – He didn’t. His heart thudded in his chest, and he couldn’t discern if it was his imagination that it was getting slower with every beat.
He flung the blanket back and bolted from his room and ran downstairs, bare feet thudding against carpet. He landed in front of Bruce’s study, and he tapped on the door, suddenly timid.
Bruce hummed from inside, so he opened the door, entered, and closed the door, all very slow and mechanical.
“Bruce?” Somehow, Jason’s voice wasn’t shaky; it was completely flat.
Bruce’s eyes flicked up and immediately back down. He was writing something on the typewriter, clack-clack-clack-sliiiiiide-clackclackclackclack, almost hypnotizing. “I’m in the middle of something right now. I’ll see you in the morning before you go to school.”
“It can’t wait.” The idea of actually telling Bruce what he’d done felt equally if not more terrifying and impossible than just going back upstairs and dying, but he was so scared, and he had to pony up and say something even if it felt like he was being eaten alive by shame and terror. “I think I need to go to the hospital.”
Bruce’s head snapped up, and he seemed to be running an X-Ray with his eyes even though he wasn’t Superman. But he wasn’t doing very well against those Superman allegations because he teleported from behind his desk to crouching in front of Jason in exactly zero seconds. And people said the Flash was the fastest man alive. “What? Where are you hurt?” He was feeling along Jason’s head and chest and arms even as he asked.
And Jason, he just couldn’t say it. He couldn’t say it. He started to cry.
“Jay, sweetheart, please, I need you to tell me where you’re hurt.” Bruce paused his gropings to cup Jason’s face with both hands and stare imploringly into his eyes.
But he couldn’t. He could fight people thrice his size. He could leap across buildings. He could disarm bombs. But the idea of telling Bruce that he’d—out loud, was too hard. It was physically impossible. He should have stayed in his room and gone away instead of needing to say it out loud. But he didn’t want to die, and Bruce was really smart, so he would figure it out, and he would never ever have to say it.
Bruce’s face went very tight when Jason only cried harder instead of answering. He resumed his search for answers in Jason’s body, and he sucked in a breath when he reached Jason’s hands, which were kinda numb actually. He looked down, and they were sort of blue at the tips. They were also sort of blurry. And then Bruce was saying something else, but he had teleported again, so he wasn’t in front of Jason when he looked up. He hadn’t gone very far though, just to Jason’s back. But Jason was so distracted by this spacetime bending skill that Bruce had apparently developed that he completely missed what the question was. And then Bruce was crouched in front of him again, warming his hand between his own.
“Jason,” Bruce said, and he was trying to keep his voice very calm. “We’re going to go down to the Cave, ok? I’ll get Alfred.”
Jason shook his head. He was still crying really hard, but he managed to choke out, “Ho-hospital,” in between hiccuping sobs.
“Ok,” Bruce said. “Ok. Car or…” He took a breath. “Batmobile?”
And Jason really wanted to say Batmobile because it was really fast, and he was really, really scared, but he was worried, if they went in the Batmobile, that Bruce wouldn’t be able to go in with him. And hospitals made him nervous. What was he thinking going to the hospital anyway? He should just go upstairs and go to sleep, and it would be fine. He wouldn’t have to worry about it. But--
“Jay?”
But Bruce looked really scared, and he didn’t want Bruce to be scared even if they were fighting, so he said, “Car.” And then the room started moving around.
Bruce caught him before he could pitch face first onto the floor, and he swung him up into his arms and started jogging towards the door leading out to where the cars were parked. One of them was a 1963 Falcon that he and Bruce were fixing together, but they hadn’t worked on it in a little while. He was thinking about whether he would be able to do some work on the engine when Bruce teleported both of them inside a car and onto a road.
“Whoa,” Jason mumbled. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
“Do what?” On any other person, that tone would have sounded perfectly placid, but, on Bruce, that was basically a shrill soprano.
“Teleportation. Y’r gonna have t’teach me.” Jason was buckled in with an over-the-shoulder belt, so it wasn’t one of the old cars. That was ok. He tucked his head against the belt, so it suspended like a tiny hammock for his head. He’d been having trouble sleeping for – well, for forever actually, but he was just about ready to drift off. Maybe he wouldn’t have any dreams.
“Jay!” Bruce’s voice. “Stay awake.”
“Hmm.”
A hand reached out and jostled him, and Jason opened his eyes to tiny slits to glare at whoever had done that. It was Bruce. That was rude of him. “Stay awake, lad. It’s not much further.”
The car was rumbling around him, and it reminded him that there was somewhere he had to go. He was really afraid of not going there, and that was enough for him to rally. “Think I need t’go t’the hospit’l,” he told Bruce.
“We’re on our way there now.”
Were they? That was fast. Fast turnaround, that Batman. “Mm’kay.”
“Why do you need to go to the hospital, Jay?”
Jason’s eyes drifted closed. He swung along on the little belt hammock.
“Stay awake, Jay! Why do you need to go to the hospital? Did someone dose you with something? Did you—Did you take something?”
“’Mm tired.”
A very soft sigh. “I know, baby. I know. But I need you to stay awake a little longer. We’re almost there.”
And Jason really wanted to stay awake for Bruce, and there was something making him nervous about falling asleep, but he was already falling.
Bruce’s increasingly panicked ministrations blurred together into the vague background as Jason finished falling away.