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“I’m going to murder you, Nightwing,” Jason growls, slamming his back into the floor with a crack as he scrambles with the beast trying desperately to claw at his helmet. The air slams out of him, and he gasps in a breath that stabs his chest in order to recover it.
“How is this my fault?!” Dick demands, followed by the crackle of electricity in his escrima sticks. “I didn’t know there were gonna be man-bats!”
Twisting, Jason flips the bat to be pressed against the ground, holding it down with one hand on its scrawny neck and reaching to his thigh holster with his other one. Flicking the buckle open, he spins it by the trigger, landing with it pointing squarely at the temple of the thing. With the cold press of metal, the bat screams, pure terror and it doubles its efforts in trying to squirm out of where Jason is straddling it.
A batarang sails through the air, knocking the gun askew, and Jason whips his gaze around to where Tim is bent over the wires of the device he’s hijacking, unrepentant. “They’re still people, Hood. Victims in all of this.”
Jason licks his lips behind his mask. Fuck. Reaching for the tranq gun he’d grabbed on a whim, he shoots a needle into the beast’s chest. The struggling peters out, and he springs away, needing some distance. Another bat takes a swing at him from the corpse it's feeding on, and he shoots that one as well.
Buzzing. He shouldn’t be out here, with the buzzing in his veins. He’d not even wanted to go out tonight, couldn’t trust himself to keep his temper on a leash and not hurt someone who didn’t need to be, but then his idiotic brother had almost gotten himself shot by sneaking into his apartment.
It’s days like today when the preternatural focus that the Lazarus gives him trips into paranoia, and days like today when he goes easy on the patrolling. His body feels wrong, and he is lacking the usual coordination he excels at. Fuck Two-Face, for getting his hands on the Man-Bat serum some-fucking-how and deciding to break out and use it tonight.
At least B is going after said murderer. Bruce never likes it when he’s helping out with hunting rogues, and with the lazarus twisting his body he can be sure that he’d spend the rest of his evening arguing with the man.
“Hood! A little help?” Dick asks, voice strained, and Jason turns to find his brother swarmed. Fuck. He needs to get some of this fucking buzz out of his head, or else he might as well be high during this. Flicking his wrist, he dislodges one of his daggers from his forearms, taking it to his wrist and severing his radial artery with practised ease.
Still hurts like a bitch, though, and he hisses at the pain as blood drips onto the floor below.
As the first drop splatters, it suddenly becomes so silent one could hear a pin drop. Instead, it’s just the collision of Jason’s blood on the floor. Plop. All at once, the beasts swivel their attention to him, and he gets approximately two seconds to think oh fuck before Tim exclaims, “I’ve got it!” and breaks the spell. All the beasts race forward, a pack of rabid wolves, and Jason turns tail to run.
Only to trip over his own feet and be sent tumbling to the floor. Fuck.
“Everyone cover your ears!” Tim shouts, and Jason braces himself for the wave of man-bats to be set upon him.
There’s a blast of a noise, barely registered as anything other than loud in his head, and then the screaming starts up. At least, he thinks it does. The gaping maws of the man-bats imply that they’re screaming, but his hearing has given out. What matters is that Jason is suddenly a lot lower on the beasts’ priority list, as they crumple into themselves and claw at their own ears.
Dick and Tim race over to him, pulling on his arms and urging him up. Stumbling, Jason follows, and he sees Dick hit a button on the wall that causes the building to be swathed in red light. Panting, he struggles to keep up with his brothers as they pull ahead.
Eventually, though, they make it to the exit of the building. Tim slams up against it, trying the handle but it doesn’t budge. In response, Dick wastes no time in taking an escrima stick to the window of the glass door, shattering one half easily. Shoving Jason ahead, they bolt out between the sharp edges of the glass, and roll to a stop outside on the pavement.
Shaking his head out, Jason tries to hone in on anything he can hear. There’s a crawling unease up his spine at the vulnerability. He can’t hear anything. Not footsteps, not his brothers’ chatter, not even his own breathing.
Fuck. He should be better by now. Why isn’t his hearing back yet? It isn’t like this is the first time he’s blown it out.
A hand lands on his shoulder, and he striked out only to cry in pain as his weak hand connects. Right, he severed an artery. Shouldn’t that be healing by now, too? The pressure of the hand disappears, and Jason looks up to see Dick crouched in front of him, holding out his palms. The man’s lips move, but his head is too muddled to try and lip read. His brother realises this, and slips into signing instead.
You okay? Hurt? Where? Dick signs rapidly. Jason nods, and tries to roll into a crouch to get up but is pushed back down by the vigilante. Hissing at the pain the contact makes, he recoils, and Dick signs a quick sorry. Then he demands Jason tell him where he’s hurt.
Rolling his eyes, Jason signs in quick succession, wrist. Deaf. Good. Dick nods, and takes his left wrist into his hands, turning it over.
Grip tightening sharply, Dick tugs his wrist forward despite Jason’s instinct to wrench it away. “Red!” He shouts, and Jason flinches at the noise. Tim hurries over, and they continue talking outside of his hearing range. At least Jason can hear some things. Watching, Jason realises they’re worried about his radial artery, and Tim begins packing the wound with resources from his belt.
“It’s fine!” Jason yells, and they both stop. “It’s not my blood!”
They stare at him, before sharing a glance and Tim returns to his work. Jason lets him, despite the pain it's sending up his arm, and focuses on Dick. Who is trying to disengage the lock on his helmet. “Stop!”
“We’re helping you!” Dick talks loudly, enunciating each syllable. “I need to check for head injuries!” Jason jerks his head forward, out of his brother’s grip, and tries to move his hands up to handle it himself. Tim doesn’t let go of his left wrist, though, and Jason swallows around the caged feeling that’s clawing at his chest. “Just stay still!” Dick shouts, his hands going either side of Jason’s neck to stabilise it. Great, they’re worried about head and spine injuries when there’s no fucking need to be.
“Listen to me!” Jason snaps, and both vigilantes pause. “If you open my mask, you’ll set off the explosives—”
“Explosives?!”
“—So let me do it!” He shouts over Dick’s interjection. Using their surprise to his advantage, he wrenches his wrist free and rolls to the side, ignoring the pain and straightening onto his feet. He draws in a lungful of air, trying to calm the roaring in his head of the Lazarus throwing a hissy-fit. Searing stretches across his chest, and he gives a strained noise as he grips the area.
Tim steps forward, but Jason puts out a palm. He struggles to regain his breath. Fuck, he’s injured a rib. No wonder shit is taking a while to sort itself out. He figures even on days when the Lazarus is far too active, it's struggling with the strain he can place on his body.
Pushing himself to stand straight, he knows he needs to make his hearing a higher priority in his body. So, he reaches to the back of the helmet and scans his fingerprint, unlocking the mechanism and pulling it off his head. Ignoring thow naked he feels, the whispering in his head that the domino isn’t enough, he flicks out his blade once more.
Then he stabs it straight into his ear.
Both Dick and Tim shout in alarm, rushing forward, and Jason hurries to stab his other ear before they take the blade off him. Shaking his head, Jason sways, and he realises he must have also hit his vestibular system as well.
Dick grabs him, wrapping his limbs around him and sending them crashing to the floor, and the swaying vertigo the action gives Jason makes him groan. He goes limp, trying to reorient himself, and by the time he achieves it Dick has put him in a restraining hold. Honestly, at this point it’s just fucking melodramatic.
Writhing in the hold only results in Dick tightening, and before long nausea sets in. Coupled with the pain of breathing, the pain the restrictive hold has on him, and the adrenaline crash, he decides he’s wasting his energy. Sighing, Jason slumps and rests his forehead on Dick’s chest. Fuck his life. He can’t even explain what he was doing until his hearing is properly back. For a brief moment, he wishes he’d updated the files on the batcomputer, because then they’d understand, but then he shoves that away with the reminder of B’s nosey ass.
He’s too weak at the moment to even do anything with the claustrophobic feeling crawling through his limbs. It’s only making the Lazarus pit more active in his thoughts, and he wants to get angry. Which he can’t, because that won’t go well for anyone, but god-fucking-damn it does he want to.
So he sits there, waiting for the two to figure out whatever the fuck they wanted to do, and counts each painful breath. Honestly, he should get a medal for his self-restraint.
When the shadow of Bruce falls over him, he quadruples this fucking sentament. Especially since they’re all talking too quietly for his shot hearing to pick up on it. Jason lies still, picturing all the ways he’d kill Two-Face for getting him in this fucking situation as a way to channel some of his anger, and a gauntleted hand rests on his hair.
Oh fuck no. He is not being some fucking pity-case. He knows what he’s doing for fucks sake, fuck them. Jason struggles, sinking further into his anger, and Dick wraps his arms further around Jason. Growling, Jason bucks, trying to get out, only for the hand that was in his hair to shift to the back of his head and press him down onto the concrete. Anger gives way to fury, and Jason feels the burn of the Lazarus surging through his body.
And then it ebbs away. Disappearing and leaving him breathing in Dick’s hold. His energy fucking evaporates, and his thoughts become muddled. He manages to grab onto the thought that he was fucking sedated, and growls into the ground, before Dick tugs him up into a sitting position.
Blood rushing to his head, he tries to glare at Bruce in front of him, but the man just reaches up and peels off his domino with care. As the black material moves away, it’s illuminated faintly by the glow of his eyes. Twitching his lips slowly into a snarl, he closes his eyes stubbornly because he is making none of this easy for these nutjobs. Dick moves his shoulder to support his head, and Bruce peels his eyes open anyway.
Relinquishing, Jason opens his eyes, and watches B’s mouth twitch into a frown. His lips move into a sentence, but the sludge in his head makes concentrating enough to make out the words difficult.
Then Bruce leans in, and the only protest Jason can offer is a vague tensing of his muscles. Gathering his limp limbs together, B lifts him off the ground, and walks over to the waiting batmobile. Dick hurries around, getting in on the other side and settling on the seats. He helps pull Jason inside, resting his head on his lap, and Jason spends far too much energy on pulling his eyebrows down into a scowl. Dick only smiles, and it makes it not as worth it as he’d hoped.
His legs are lifted, and Tim sits down under them. He leans over, and checks the bandage on his wrist. When did the kid complete it?
Unfortunately for everyone, there isn’t much Jason can do but wait. He closes his eyes, and returns to his ideas on how he is going to hit Two-Face where it hurts.
Eventually, Jason’s hearing increases, and he can hear the deep vibrations of the car, the report Tim is giving Bruce. He sighs in relief, and opens his eyes. Dick smiles down at him, and he makes a show of rolling his eyes. “Asshole,” Jason slurs, drawing out the ‘s’ with a tongue that feels too thick for his mouth.
“Hey, Jay,” Dick returns, still speaking in a strained way that shows that he’s raising his voice. “How are you feeling?”
“Like you drugg’d me,” Jason snaps, but his anger is lost in tone with the amount of concentration it takes to form a cohesive syllable. “Fuck you.”
Tim snorts, and Jason twitches his leg up to smack the phone out of his hands, grinning in petty satisfaction as the younger turns to glare at him. “Next time we’ll let you stab your brains out.”
“Tim!” Dick admonishes.
“Wasn’t— Wasn’ goin’ for my brains,” Jason sighs. Fuck this fucking sedative. His thoughts slip through his fingers, thick as molasses, and the frustration at his compromised thought processes rises. He manages to latch on to what he said before, and he mutters, “It’s not my blood.”
“We have no idea what that means, little wing,” Dick murmurs, and at least from this whole ordeal Jason got his fucking hearing back. Of course, that’s likely exhausted the damn Lazarus and he’ll probably need to stitch his artery up himself. “Just wait till we get back to the cave, okay?”
Oh hell the fuck no. He is not going to that stupid fucking cave. So help him god.
Jason shifts, squirms, and Dick grabs his side to steady him. “Jay, Jay, it’s okay!” Dick yelps, and another set of arms wraps around his legs. Fuck. Fuck. Why can his family not leave shit well enough alone?
He registers the prick of a needle, these fuckers sedated him again? As it works through his system, he slumps further into the seat, teetering on the precipice of consciousness. Summoning the last dregs of his energy, he manages to get out a final “Fuck you,” before he succomes to sleep.
The light is far too bright behind his eyelids, and Jason tries to move his hand to his eyes to cover it. Something tugs at it, though, not allowing it to get very far.
That grabs his attention. He opens his eyes and finds his wrist cuffed to a rail along the side of the bed. Jerking it, he tests its strength, trying to twist the chain to come undone. It’s reinforced, and he glances over to his other wrist. That one is bandaged, splinted, and immobilised. His upper forearm is cuffed instead. Fuck.
The door swings open, revealing Tim and Dick, both with messy sleep-tossed hair. “Jason!” Dick chirps, racing over. Jason curls his lip, scowling.
“You don’t get to give me shit after the stunt you pulled!” His brother sing-songs, and Jason doesn’t know what he did but it certainly wasn’t bad enough to warrant him being smothered to death.
“He does have two broken ribs, Dick, maybe lighten up on the pressure,” Tim says, and Jason breathes in relief as the man follows the suggestion. “Welcome back to the land of the living. You tried to leave it, again,” Tim adds to Jason, and the man grins at the joke. Dick makes a wounded noise, like he always does at these types of jokes, but doesn’t say anything this time.
“Rogue?” Jason guesses. Tim nods. “Fuck.” He thinks back, examining his recollection, and piecing it together into a wider picture that makes sense. “It was fucking man-bats?”
“Well, a lot of it was you,” Tim answers. Jason frowns. He didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, as far as he can tell. “You severed your artery, stabbed yourself in both ears, and aggravated still-healing cracked ribs. I can find no evidence of how you injured them in the first place, but it seems only a few months old.”
Oh. The Lazarus shit. Right. Dick turns to him, expectant, and Jason swallows as he looks away. He really would rather not air all that shit out. Please and thank you.
“Look, you’re not surprised to hear any of this, so we can rule out any mind-altering substances,” Tim begins. Jason resists the urge to curl his shoulders up to his ears. He is not some kid in trouble. “Do you want to tell us, or I can keep guessing.”
Resolutely, Jason keeps his mouth shut. After a few beats, Dick sighs, and leans over to be in his field of view. “We get that you don’t want to tell us, but it’s important. Unless you want to be sedated and brought into the cave every time something goes wrong,” Dick says. Fuck, he hates when his brothers are right.
Slumping his head back into the pillow, he turns his head back over to the two. “I don’t want B to know,” Jason admits. “Or anyone, really.” There’s a piece of him that is crawling in agony at mentioning even that.
Tim and Dick exchange a glance, before Tim leans closer. “There’s a policy Dick and I have. Anything that is important, that could compromise us, we have to at least tell each other and one other person.” Jason blinks. “You’re not the only one who doesn’t like everything being stored on the batcomputer,” Tim elaborates, shrugging. Tim, Jason expected this from. His own paranoia is likely only rivalled by his, but Dick?
“I respect my privacy. B hasn’t given me that until I took it when I left. I’m not giving it back to him that easily,” Dick explains at Jason’s curious look. “Like the ADHD medication I’m on. Tim and Wally know that, it’s not really anyone else’s business.”
“I’m not telling you anything,” Tim mutters. Dick elbows him, and the kid rolls his eyes. “Fine. I lost my spleen. Cass and Dick know.”
Jason chokes on his breath. “You what?”
“Ra’s keeps it in a jar,” Dick tacks on. Tim’s face goes red, and Jason guffaws past the pain it sends through his chest.
“It’s not like I asked him to do that,” Tim snaps, shoving at Dick’s shoulder. “Anyway, your turn. I hope it’s fucking embarrassing and then you’re a hypocrite,” Tim says to Jason, and he hesitates. The fear of compromising himself, on telling them a weakness makes the words solidify in his throat. But is that him, or the Lazarus? Dick scolds Tim for saying it like that, and the two devolve into an argument.
“It’s the Lazarus,” Jason mutters, cutting the two’s argument short. “It… It didn’t just bring me back to life. There were… other changes. Enhanced healing, mental processing, focus.” His skin is crawling, but he understands the tactical need for someone to know. It’s enough to allow him to choke out the words needed.
“How accelerated would you say your healing is?” Tim asks, and Dick shoots him a reprimanding glare. “What? It’s an important question!”
“How long ago would you say I broke my ribs?” Tim blinks at Jason’s question, before giving an estimate of three months. “Right, well I did it six weeks ago.”
“You recovered in half the time?” Dick demands, leaning closer to inspect Jason’s eyes.
“I thought the Lazarus just changed your eyes and made you more angry,” Tim adds, and Jason feels a stab of annoyance. This is part of the reason why he doesn’t want Bruce to know. He’s so desperate to make Jason into the little boy he lost, he’d want to believe that all of his ‘bad choices’ were the influence of the Pit. Sure, he doesn’t agree with some of the harsher actions he took when he first arrived in Gotham, but that does not change that he stands by their effect. He’d do them again if he had to, just with less unnecessary casualties. Jason’s anger, what he cares about and thinks and feels, that is all him. No matter how different that is from the kid who thought he was invincible because he had yet to know death. To truly inhale it into his lungs, and exhale his last breath of life.
“It makes me more focused. Obsessive. Heightens my emotions, because that triggers it to become more active,” Jason corrects. “It can’t heighten what isn’t already there. I stand by my philosophies, my choices, even if I don’t agree with how I carried them out.” There’s only one action he regrets in its entirety. “As far as I can tell, the Lazarus becomes more active when adrenaline is released into my system.”
Dick frowns. “That explains why you were so wound up last night.”
“Wound up?”
“Jason, you almost shot my head off when I entered your apartment. You were tense and snappish the whole night. You wore the old helmet. Which still had explosives in it. It was clear you weren’t alright,” Dick lists, pointing to a finger in turn. “So, last night the Lazarus was more active in your body. How do you combat it?”
They aren’t going to like his fucking answer. “Bloodletting.”
“Bloodletting!?” Dick yelps, grabbing Jason’s shoulder. “That is the stupidest fucking idea you have had in a long while. Only better than the fact that you wired explosives in your fucking head gear!” Deflating, he sighs, rubbing a hand on his face. “Okay, surely there’s a better way, right?”
“I need to give the Lazarus something to focus on, to heal. And get some of the buzz out of my system, with the fastest way to do that being bleeding.”
“It’s not my blood,” Tim says, and Jason tilts his head at him. “That’s what you said, when we saw you were bleeding from an artery. We thought you’d hit your head or something and were confused. You were draining the Lazarus.”
“Yeah… Yeah! And then you fucks overreacted!” Jason clicks his fingers, before pointing one accusingly at both of them. “I told you it was fine.”
Tim rolls his eyes, and snarks back, “We weren’t exactly rushing to follow the advice of someone who was clearly compromised. We thought you got dosed with something when you stabbed your ears! Why was that, anyway?”
“The sonar that you set off shot my hearing to all hell! It was going to make restoring it a higher priority. The Lazarus goes for the closest to fatal wound first.”
“Then why didn’t it heal the artery?!” Dick shouts, and Jason groans.
“Because I didn’t realise I’d reinjured my ribs. Threw off my calculations.” The two at his bedside exchange glances, and then break into keening laughter. “Yeah, yeah,” Jason grumbles.
“Oh my fucking god B has been practicing how to talk to you about self harm,” Tim gasps out between laughs, and Jason’s eyes widen.
“Fuck, no,” Jason swears. “Help, get me out of this thing.” He rattles the handcuffs as he says that, and the two simply laugh harder. “I’m not sitting through that fucking talk. Over my dead fucking body. Again.”
“You’re the one who wanted no one to know!” Dick sings. “Bruce will only show up and follow you on patrol if you don’t let him do his speech. He still thinks you’re at risk to yourself. You are on your own, Jay.”
“I’ll look into other ways to combat the Lazarus when it’s active,” Tim adds, wiping a tear from his eye. “See if we can find a better way. Are there any other effects that the Lazarus gives you?” He asks, hopeful, and Jason ignores the desire to shut this line of conversation down, instead choosing it to leverage it to his advantage.
“Let me out and I’ll tell you,” Jason lies.
“Hm, I’ll just figure it out myself. Now that I know what to look for. I always love a mystery,” Tim decides, curling his face into a sinister grin. Fuck. Fuck. He has to deal with B’s emotionally constipated ass and Tim’s nosey one?
“You’d better get some rest, Jason, you have some tough conversations ahead of you,” Dick says, voice dripping with faux concern. He ushers a snickering Tim out in front of him, and flicks off the lights before shutting the door behind him. Right before it clicks closed, he adds, “I’ll delete the footage of this conversation. It’ll stay between us three.”
Even with his heart warmed by the comment, Jason throws out a sharp, “Fuck you!” once the door shuts. The room is swathed in darkness, and Jason leans back into his pillows, staring up at the ceiling.
He awaits this
goddamn
conversation.