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It was cold. The kind of cold that sank into your bones, froze your fingers to the grapple and dragged at your every footstep.
Red Hood pressed the button to retract his grapple before clipping it to his belt. It took him three tries, and by the time he managed it, the prospect of risking death by roof-hopping instead of pulling the life-saving wire out one more time sounded glorious.
Red Robin glanced at him from the shadows he was crouched in, the barest tilt of his head. Red Hood couldn’t see his eyes behind the white lenses, but he knew when he was being looked at. Years dodging shady bastards on the streets would do that to you.
Red Robin didn’t say anything. (What was there to say?) He just raised his binoculars once more, turning a dial on the side.
Hood crouched next to him, a futile attempt to look inconspicuous. He felt big and clumsy and wrong. His usual gig, unfortunately, was drawing attention. (Hood was better at putting on a show than Nightwing was, now, and he clung that accomplishment with both hands and his teeth.) Tonight, though, Hood just wanted to fade into the background.
“Why aren’t you using your mask?” he growled instead.
Red Robin’s weight shifted, but he didn’t turn around. A supremely foolish move, really, trusting Hood with his back. (It had been four years. Four years since the bloody showdown at Titans’ Tower. He didn’t do that anymore.)
“This cowl isn’t outfitted with infrared,” the kid answered. His voice was very level. Hood couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
A moment of blank silence. Hood dug his gloved (frozen) fingers into the sleeves of his jacket, suppressing a shiver. “Why the hell not? Aren’t you Sir Paranoid Second Only To Batman?”
Red Robin really did glance up, then, but only to peer at the building across the street. “Are you grumpy cause it’s me?”
What? “You… being… an idiot?”
“Me on patrol.” Red finally glanced back, giving Hood a once-over that was probably a little too understanding for comfort. (Hood couldn’t see his eyes. He just knew.) “Nightwing an’ Robin are tied up in Blud, but they’ll be back as soon as possible. B is helping Superman with that big prison transfer. Spoiler is sick, and Orphan is still---”
“I know,” Hood snapped at him, surprising himself with the sudden volume. He lowered his voice back to a mechanized growl. “I know where they are. I’m not grumpy. You’re fine.”
Red Robin turned back towards the bank. Because that’s what they were doing. Searching for Mr. Freeze. “It’s a sucky assignment for Christmas Eve, but… there’s no one else. I’d let you know if I didn’t need backup.”
Hood felt a twinge of disbelief followed quickly by guilt. This wasn’t an assignment for either of them. It was Robin’s. Unfortunately, circumstances had handed Red Hood the job instead. “Credit where credit is due, baby bird. I needed you.”
The corner of Red’s stoic mouth turned up a fraction of an inch, which wasn’t enough, really, but it reminded Hood that he was not in the habit of throwing his allies off of roofs.
Anymore.
“I’ve got movement.” Red Hood suddenly surged to his feet, shooting his line. “Southeast corner. I’ve got the roof?”
Hood braced himself, heaved his frozen block of a body to its feet, and forced himself to raise his grapple.
This was gonna be a really shitty night.
************
Red Robin took about ten minutes shoving Hood through the window of his safehouse. One, because the opening was a few inches too small for Hood’s broad shoulders. Two, Hood wasn’t entirely… conscious.
Not for lack of trying.
With one last mighty shove, Red managed to push Hood through the window without breaking anything. He was thanked with a miserable groan.
Red had enough humanity to wince as he climbed through the window, shut it behind him, and flipped the security back on. “Sorry.”
Hood rolled onto his side, panting. (Honestly, it was good he was breathing at all. Red’s heart had nearly stopped when he’d been shoved out of the way of Freeze’s gun, knocked over a moment later by a block of frozen Hood, unmoving, unspeaking---
Their suits’ lifesaving heaters had worked. They had worked. Hood was fine.)
A round of body-shaking coughs interrupted Red’s spiraling, and he dropped to his knees at Hood’s side, fumbling with the edges of his helmet. There was a latch or something, he’d studied this---
Hood’s fingers raised, trembling, to move Red’s hand further up the helmet. The younger man’s fingers caught on the latch… perfect… and he carefully eased the helmet off.
Jason’s face looked… awful.
“You might have frostbite,” Red told him, keeping his voice low. He fumbled with Hood’s gloves, which were frozen stiff, but at least movable.
Jason released a huff of pain, squeezing his eyes shut. There was snow clinging to his eyelashes, and his face was pale. His lips were blue.
He looked dead.
Red pulled his cowl down, swallowing. He’ll be fine. He’s still breathing; he’s alive, Tim; calm down. “I’m sorry. I know it hurts. I’ve… I’ve gotta put you in a lukewarm bath.”
Jason tried to pry his eyes open. The expression of pure hatred wasn’t easy to pull off with almost-frozen muscles, but the emotion was implied.
Tim shook his head, concentrating on the very uncomfortably vulnerable task of removing Red Hood’s armor. He tried to ignore the hisses of pain, the spasms of the older man’s muscles. He even tried to ignore the flashes of fear that crossed Jason’s numb face when Red started stripping him of his under-armor.
Reassurance would come later. Hospitals were a last resort, especially for someone with glowing green poison in his eyes and a penchant for popping arms out of sockets, so this had to be done. “Can you lift your arms?”
Jason closed his eyes, and something in his jaw popped. He slowly raised his arms above his head, flopping them on the floor above his head. Tim made quick work of wriggling the armored turtleneck off, and then it was just Jason in his long underwear and socks, shivering violently on the floor of the dark safehouse in the middle of Crime Alley.
Tim clenched his hands until they stopped trembling. Then he pushed onto his knees, sliding his hands under Jason’s torso. “C’mon… Try to stand. This’ll be a hell of a lot harder if I have to drag you.”
Jason’s middle fingers twitched, which Tim probably only saw because he was looking for it. Still, the man could move, at least. His abs still worked. He sat up, slung an arm over Tim’s shoulder, and attempted to get to his feet.
It wasn’t too bad, honestly. Only took five minutes to stumble from the living-room to the tiny bathroom beyond.
Tim cursed at himself. He hadn’t filled the tub first. It took an extra minute to sit Jason on the lid of the toilet, then another three to get a few inches of lukewarm water. Jason was shivering hard enough for his teeth to chatter by that point, which was… technically good. (Tim still felt guilty.)
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, helping Jason to sit on the edge of the bathtub, then ever so carefully lowering him in.
Jason jerked back up, a tortured whine escaping his throat. “C… cold… fuck…”
“I’m sorry,” Tim whispered again, forcing his hands to stay steady as he forced Jason’s shoulders back down.
“Stop,” Jason begged him, his hands scrabbling at the sides of the tub. “P-p-please.”
Tim ceased breathing for a moment. Jason was begging. Begging.
This was not how tonight was supposed to go.
************
It took an hour. Fifty-eight agonizing minutes of keeping Jason in the bath, helping him out, drying his shivering body from head to toe, and leaving him to his own devices (for no more than two minutes) to get some dry clothes on. Tim made sure to leave the warmest socks he could find. After that came the slow process of moving the man to the couch, where he slouched with a pained grunt, allowing Tim to further bandage whatever open wounds were left over from patrol. (Not that he had much choice in the matter, really. His limbs weren’t working all that great.)
Tim kinda felt… pretty bad. He wasn’t trying to hurt Jason, to make him feel powerless. Heck, he should be enjoying it. He’d never really gotten revenge. (He’d never wanted any.) His left leg still ached when it rained. (He didn’t care.)
Being this vulnerable was making Jason’s eyes glow green, though. Or maybe it was just Tim’s face doing that. It was a pretty awkwardly miserable situation all around.
“Do you want an anesthetic?” Tim chanced softly when Jason hissed for the fifth time in as many minutes.
Jason glared at him. His eyes weren’t as menacing as they should have been, seeing as they were staring about three inches to Tim’s right instead of at Tim’s face. “When’re you d-done?”
Tim glanced down at the bandage he was wrapping. “Four… three minutes? And I’ve gotta soak your fingers an’ toes again. Just… to be sure.” He gently touched Jason’s hand. Jason’s fingers twitched in annoyance, which was good, but they were also pretty red. “An anesthetic would… help. You’d even fall asleep, I’ll bet. It’s safe to do that now.”
Jason rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, and then he just… stayed that way, with his head tipped to the sky.
Tim almost poked him before he heard a choked “Do it.”
“Are… Are you sure?” Tim carefully reached into his belt, taking out the smallest dose he had. “It might---”
“Do it,” Jason snarled at the ceiling, and Tim’s hands spasmed.
“Okay,” Tim breathed out, prepping the needle below Jason’s eyesight before finding a vein. “No need to be an asshole about it.”
The poor insult was well-timed. Jason’s sped-up breathing evened out again before the needle had left his skin.
Tim watched him for a moment before finishing up the bandages. That hadn’t been so bad, all things considered, but---
“Tim,” the older man choked, and it sounded scared.
Tim pulled the sleeve of Jason’s hoodie down, tugged a tattered blanket off the back of the couch and wrapped it tightly around Jason’s shoulders. Then he clasped numb trembling fingers in his own, clearing his throat. “It’s okay. It’s… heavy, I know. It’s not addictive; you’ll be okay. You’ll just pass… pass out for a bit. You’ll wake up grumpy as ever.”
“I can’t,” Jason whispered hoarsely, and he jerked, but the anesthetic had taken too much effect by now, and he wasn’t able to move.
Tim squeezed Jason’s hand in his, swallowing. “It’s okay, I swear it. I’m here.” Like that’s any consolation, dumbass; you’re the one that did this to him. “I’m here.”
Jason’s head rolled back, and a second later, his body went limp.
“Well,” Tim said to the silence. He checked Jason’s heart-rate--- elevated, but not dangerously so--- and went to the kitchen to get a bowl of warm water.
It wasn’t that Jason didn’t deserve what was happening to him, and he didn’t--- It was that he hadn’t deserved almost any crappy thing up to this point, Tim thought, carefully soaking calloused fingers in the bowl of water. Because Jason didn’t really talk about himself, about his past, excepting the scathing callbacks he liked to throw at the rest of the family like darts to a dartboard, always landing precise emotional hits but never ever considering the fact that the others still rolled with the punches---
Jason didn’t talk about himself, but it was obvious. It was obvious that he’d spent time out on the streets when he was a kid, when he had no one else. It was obvious that he hated the cold. It was obvious that he hoarded food, that he spent so much time cooking and baking and carefully preparing meals for everyone else, for the people in his immediate community, for a wayward Robin or two, and yet almost never seemed to eat anything himself. It was obvious that he’d lost weight. It was obvious that the stove hadn’t been used in a few days. It was obvious that he hadn’t slept--- the bags under his eyes rivaled Tim’s from the Dark Ages of Bringing Bruce Back. (And wasn’t that its own can of worms, because sure, Jason had been gone, then, but Tim had always found a warm meal at his door when he’d come home, and he knew the difference between Alfred’s cooking and anyone else’s.)
Jason didn’t hate him anymore. Tim wasn’t sure what they were, exactly, but they weren’t enemies, and the stalemate in-between wasn’t too bad thus far. Except for the fact that Jason didn’t deserve this, and it made Tim wanna cry.
You’re my hero, he didn’t say. Please get better, he didn’t say. He knew what it was like to not eat, to not sleep. He knew what it was like to be unable to rest.
He hated it. He hated it so much.
Tim tipped his head back towards the ceiling as he soaked Jason’s left foot, trying to breathe around his thick throat. This would probably be easier if he were an emotional wall, the same dissociated Red Robin that had taken down the Court of Spiders. Except Tim Drake had been having a rough time, too, lately. Christmases had never been a time for celebration, really, not outside of his few years as Robin. Christmases had just been lonely and empty and cold.
This one kind of still was, truth be told. But Jason was having a harder time than Tim was, and Tim wished from the bottom of his heart that---
A soft sound broke him from his thoughts. A tinkling noise, like the chiming of tiny bells.
“Hello, Timothy,” a deep voice greeted.
Tim blinked a few times. And then a few times more. Run, his brain told him, and fight, but he couldn’t. There was absolutely nothing that alarmed him about the tall, heavy-set, red-clad man suddenly standing in the middle of the room. Nothing at all.
Who are you? Tim almost asked, but what came out instead was--- “Santa?”
The giant of a man placed his hands on his hips, causing his long coat to sway near his booted feet. He wasn’t wearing glasses like the jolly displays suggested in the downtown malls, so his blue-eyed gaze pierced right through Tim’s soul, and Tim still didn’t want to run. “Oh, come now--- It’s been a few years, I’ll admit, but I know you haven’t forgotten.”
Tim blinked a few more times. He didn’t have the mental bandwidth for this, probably. It was real, but--- “You’re Santa.”
“In the flesh,” the man agreed, a smile lifting his thick white beard. “You may have never seen me, Timothy, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t there.”
Tim took a deep shuddering breath as dots connected in his brain that should not have been there in the first place. “The… The decorating of the house. I always… I never… It happened in one night.”
“Every year,” Santa agreed proudly, clapping his gloved hands together. “And that skateboard you got when you were nine, do you remember that? Not to mention that good breakfast I left on your eleventh; I’d never seen a house so empty of---”
“That was you,” Tim gasped out. He was still so calm… Something in the atmosphere was pressing down on his emotions, making him unbearably sleepy. (Safe.) “You decorated the house. You left those gifts.”
“I know you’d hoped it was your parents,” Santa observed solemnly, tipping his head modestly to one side. “I didn’t correct you, of course. Best to leave the innocent delusions of children untouched.”
Tim shook his head. This was undeniably the third weirdest thing to ever happen to him, but--- “Why are you here? Don’t… Don’t you visit Darkseid every year? To give him… coal?”
Santa’s blue eyes flashed, and he drew himself up, sniffing importantly. “That I do, and he deserves it.”
“Right.”
“I was in the area, Timothy. I can spare a few minutes. You’ve been a good lad this year, and you called, so? Here I am.”
Tim couldn’t help a frown. “But I… I haven’t been good.”
“Don’t give me that bull. Rescuing your father from the clutches of time? Taking on eleven responsibilities that weren’t your own? Preventing murder by self-control? Taking down at least three evil organizations?” Santa tapped the side of his nose, winking. “That’s a lot of good for only one year, Timothy. You’re near the top of my Nice list, I’ll have you know.”
Tim’s throat thickened. “I don’t feel like I’ve been good.”
“Ah, well, that’s how good deeds often are.” The huge man smiled again, and his gaze seemed to soften. “You’re a good boy, Timothy; a good man. You wished for help tonight, and you were heard. Now tell me. What is your Christmas wish?”
Tim looked down at Jason’s foot, removing it from the bowl of water. Then he looked at Jason. (Why was his vision blurry? Stupid.) “Jason’s… not on the Nice list. Is he?”
Santa approached Tim from behind, getting close enough that Tim could feel the soft sigh. “Men like Jason Wayne are a special breed, my son. Too good to be wicked, too many lives taken to be kind. An unfortunate but much-needed category of people in a world like this one.”
“But if he was on a list,” Tim pressed quietly, and he didn’t know why this was so important to him, this, of all things, but his throat burned with the effort of trying not to cry. “Would he be…?”
“He is not on a list,” Santa confirmed quietly. “But his heart, Tim, is forged of the stuff hope is made of. I know you know about hope… The human version, the highest ideal that you can wrap your smart brain around. Glorious stuff that pierces through the worst of fear, births new stars.” A heavy hand rested on Tim’s shoulder, and a wave of safety washed over the room. “That, my boy, is what composes your brother’s heart. Jason is a good man. Always has been. Always will be.”
Tim rested his head on his brother’s knee--- He was still sitting on the floor, and his legs were cold. Quietly, his chest squeezing with so much emotion that he could barely breathe, he whispered, “He didn’t deserve it, Santa. Any of it. I don’t know what to do.”
“Have courage,” the deep voice commanded, and the gloved hand stroked down Tim’s back, smoothing away the aching feeling in his chest as easily as cobwebs in an old forgotten tunnel. “You’ve done all you possibly can. You’ve been good.”
Tim hiccuped softly. He couldn’t speak, but the supernatural being kneeling by his side didn’t rush, didn’t leave. He stayed and stoked Tim’s back and waited.
Tim finally raised his eyes, blinking through the thick curtain of tears. Jason was awake, now, for all that counted as such. He was sitting at a rather awkward angle, blinking blearily at the two of them in an expression of indecision. To believe, or to go back to sleep? (He was still tired, still in pain. Tim could see it, watched it swirling deep in his glowing green eyes.)
“I don’t have a wish, Santa,” he finally murmured, watching Jason watch Santa like if he glared hard enough, the being would just disappear. “There’s nothing you could give me that I don’t already have. I don’t know how far your magic goes, what… what you can do. I just… want Jason to rest. Give him rest. Please.”
Santa stared at Tim for a concerning amount of time. Finally, he smiled again, and it melted the rest of Tim’s defenses, cracking apart the emotionless wall around his heart so that his many ignored wounds could bleed.
Tim gasped softly, sitting back on his heels. He watched through steadily-flowing tears as Santa tugged off his glove, reached, and placed his palm over Jason’s forehead, large fingers tangling gently in damp hair.
“Have peace,” Santa commanded softly, and his voice echoed, filling up the corners of the room.
Jason’s eyes rolled back, and he slumped. Tim jumped up to catch him in the nick of time. The first thing he noticed were the golden sparkles floating lazily around Jason’s still body. The second thing he noticed was that Jason was warm.
Tim’s hands shook as he sat on the couch, carefully lying Jason down. He pillowed the older boy’s head in his lap, unable to look away. Jason’s cuts were gone, his bruises--- His face was clear of all tiredness, his sleeping expression the most relaxed Tim had ever seen.
He looked young.
Tim cradled Jason’s head in both arms, looking up with wide-eyed wonder. “How did you---”
A heavy hand landed on Tim’s forehead. “Fear not.”
Tim’s vision slunk away, and his body dropped under a heaviness so pleasant, he wondered why he’d ever wanted to be awake.
The last thing he registered was being carried in the strongest arms he’d ever felt.
Then the comforting darkness pulled him under.