Chapter Text
Dick didn't understand the words the old Quraci woman in the nurse's scrubs was asking him in a calm, even tone. He couldn't tell if it was because he'd never learned whatever language she was speaking or if it was the ringing in his ears as he stared at Jason's battered, bloody form on the hospital gurney in the operating room.
Bruce was dead.
He was standing here in a hospital in the Middle East, in his Nightwing suit, covered in dust and Jason's blood, alone. Frozen. He didn't know what to do.
Yes you do, Dick. Bruce's voice echoed in his head. What's the biggest problem here?
The biggest problem was Jason. He could get medical attention here — this was a good facility, Dick knew from Bruce's files. But he was wearing the Robin uniform. Utterly unmistakable. If the hospital started asking questions, put two and two together…
"You need to know about the boy?" he asked the woman in Arabic.
"Yes."
Half the truth is better than a full lie, Bruce's words echoed in his head. "He's the son of an American billionaire. He was kidnapped by the Joker and brought here as a ransom. I was sent to rescue him if the Joker refused to free him. His name is Jason Wayne."
The nurse nodded. "We'll take care of him until his father gets here."
It took every ounce of Dick's training to maintain his calm, steady expression. "He should arrive later today."
And then — even though it was the absolute last thing he wanted to do — he slung himself out the open window he'd used to enter and dropped down to the streets of the city below.
An hour or two, and then he could return to the hospital as himself. He lingered in the area for a while, then headed to the jet for his street clothes and the papers he needed.
When he came back to the hospital, he was prepared enough to let a controlled amount of frantic worry show through as he approached the front desk. "My son. Where is he?"
"I need to see proof of identity, sir," the nervous receptionist said in Arabic. She was younger than Dick, with a brilliant yellow hijab wrapped loosely around her head.
"I don't speak whatever you're speaking," he said in irritation, over the swell of guilt at snapping at her. "I want to see my son."
The girl picked up a corded phone and said something into it faster than Dick could catch, and a minute later, a young man in a suit and doctor's coat joined them. "Hello. I am Ramin," he said in accented English. "How may I help you?"
"My name is Bruce Wayne," Dick gritted out, "and I am here to see my son."
"Mister Wayne," Ramin said. "Yasman will need to see your identification."
Dick pulled two passports out of his jacket pocket and smacked them down on the counter. "Mine and Jason's."
He waited, making sure to be visibly impatient, while Yasman looked over the altered passports and ensured they were in order. They would be — Barbara was good and Bruce's resources were impressive.
Yasman looked up and nodded to Ramin. "These are sufficient."
Ramin turned back to Dick. "If you would follow me, Mr. Wayne, I will take you to see your son."
"Good." Dick followed him to an elevator, down a hall, and into a hospital room — where he stopped short in the doorway.
Jason was laid out on the hospital bed. His eyes were closed, his cheeks bruised between the bandages on his face. At some point the tatters of his Robin uniform had been replaced by a clean hospital gown, and Dick could see bandages poking out from under his collar. There was a pulse oximeter on one of his fingers and an IV line tucked in between more bandages wrapped around his forearm. Most of his form was hidden by the bedcovers; he looked small, and it made Dick's heart twist.
"One of your American heroes brought him in about three hours ago," Ramin explained. "A young man in a black and blue suit. He was kidnapped by one of your American villains—"
"Nightwing filled me in," Dick interrupted tersely. "How is he?"
"He will live, Mr. Wayne. We have him sedated so that he will not impede his healing, and he is on much pain medicine. I can get a doctor if you would like to speak with him."
"That's alright." Dick forced himself to step through the doorway into the hospital room, then another step, then another, until he could sit down in the chair next to Jason's bed. He carefully slipped his hand under Jason's bandaged one, looking for the pulse in his wrist — he could hear the steady beeping of the heart rate monitor, but feeling it under his fingers eased some of the tightness in his chest. His brother was alive.
"Hey, buddy," he managed. God, he was tired, but he couldn't drop the act, couldn't stop pretending to be Bruce, the father to the boy on the bed who should never have been in Qurac in the first place. "It's me. I'm here. You're gonna be okay, Jay."
"Is there anything else you need, Mr. Wayne?" Ramin asked.
"I'm alright, thank you," Dick said.
Ramin nodded solemnly and left, and Dick took several deep breaths to calm himself before he dove back in to the laundry list of problems that confronted him. Jason was being treated, and as soon as he was stable, Dick could have him moved to Gotham and eventually back to the Manor. Alfred would need to know how long they'd be in Qurac, and Dick would have to take a few more vacation days from his police detective job in Bludhaven, so he'd need to call them, too — and he should call Barbara, so he started to dial her, just to let her know that he and Jason were safe and that Gotham would be without Batman for a little while longer and—
And Bruce was dead, dead dead, shredded-burned-scraps-in-the-debris-of-an-explosion dead. Nothing-left-to-bury dead. And Dick was the only one who knew it.
Once, on his first week out as Nightwing in Bludhaven, Dick had been shot in the side. It had been a clean shot, straight through, and Zatanna had healed him up good as new, but he remembered the pain of it, the sharp, stabbing heat of the wound that spread up his chest and across his stomach with every tiny movement. He'd been scared he'd lose range of motion; he'd been terrified it would never stop hurting. It was nothing like being grazed, being cut or stabbed. Even breathing sent pain shooting up his torso. This? It felt like that. It felt like blood seeping into his uniform, stinging isopropyl at the edges of the wound, every little shift tearing at the fragile tissue. It felt like being shot in the side, except this time it wasn't clean straight through. This time the bullet had lodged between his ribs, pressing against his heart.
Barbara picked up. "Dick?"
"Hey," Dick managed, choking down a relieved sob at the sound of her voice.
"Dick, what's wrong?" she asked. "Did you find Jason? Is he—"
"He's alive," Dick said. "He'll be okay. Barbara… B is… he's…"
She waited quietly on the other end, waited until Dick found enough voice to finish. "He's dead."
The silence that followed was a solid thing, broken only by the steady beep of Jason's heart rate monitor.
"What do you need?" she finally asked, her voice taking on that measured quality it did when she was no longer Barbara Gordon but Oracle. He forced himself to breathe, bullet be damned.
"A cover story," he said. "For him and Jay both. A plane crash on his way back from visiting his son after his kidnapping. The boy was taken to a Quraqi hospital. Bruce flew down today to visit him. He'll fly back when Jay's stable enough to be transferred to Gotham. His private jet will go down somewhere over the Atlantic. Falsified flight logs, records of takeoff and landing… you know the drill."
"Understood." She hesitated briefly before adding, "Be safe, Dick."
"I will," he promised, and the dull click of her hanging up sounded in his ear, leaving him there in the hospital room with Jason's heartbeat against his fingertips reminding him that he couldn't fall apart, not now. He needed to stay composed until he could get Jason back to Gotham.
The hospital chair was uncomfortable, but somehow he must have fallen asleep in it, because the next thing he knew there were footsteps in the hallway.
"Ah. Mister Wayne?" the doctor asked.
Jason's fingers had curled around Dick's hand in his sleep. Dick wasn't moving for anything.
"Yes," he said. "I trust I'm not in your way?"
"No, no." The doctor shook his head as if to emphasize that Dick was, in fact, not in his way. "I must check a few things." He busied himself with the machines on the other side of the bed.
Dick nodded, going back to watching Jason, though he kept track of the doctor out of the corner of his eye.
"He will be waking soon," the doctor informed Dick, inspecting the IV line. "In an hour or two."
"That's great," Dick said. It was not. Jason was the one person here in Qurac who could blow Dick's precarious cover as Bruce. "Was he conscious when he arrived?"
"He was not."
Dick let a little huff of air out, forced himself not to draw his shoulders up at the memory of Jason going completely limp in his arms, the panic that had poured through his veins as he desperately checked for breathing, a pulse, anything at all.
"He'll need space when he wakes up," he told the doctor.
"Mister Wayne, I am not sure that would be the wisest course of action."
"The last thing he remembers before losing consciousness is whatever happened that left him like this," Dick said tersely. "I'll stay with him, but if he comes to in a room full of strangers, I imagine he might set back his own recovery."
The doctor tilted his head, considering. "You'll use the call button if there is an emergency."
"Of course."
He nodded. "A nurse will page me when your son is awake, but I will give you time to settle him."
"That's all I ask," Dick said. "Thank you."
The doctor finished his work and left, and Dick sat back in his chair and waited.
He felt Jason's fingers twitch under his hand first. Then the slightest increase in the frequency of the beeps. Then a careful hitch in Jason's breathing, a tightening in his body, and Dick knew he was awake and listening, trying to figure out what had happened, where he was.
"Hey, Jay," he said softly, glancing briefly at the door. "It's just me. You can hear me?"
"Mmmh," Jason said in agreement, and the small, pained noise broke Dick's heart — god, how was he going to tell his brother that Bruce was dead?
One thing at a time, Dick, his inner Bruce reminded him.
"Don't talk yet, just listen," he continued. "You're in a hospital in Qurac. I got you out of that bunker, you're safe. But while we're here, I'm Bruce."
"Why?"
"What happened to not talking?" Dick shook his head. "They wouldn't let me in otherwise."
Jason fixed Dick with that stubborn expression. "Where's Bruce?"
"I can't tell you now," Dick said. Not while he had to be Bruce to everyone in this hospital.
Jason tightened his grip on Dick's hand. "What happened to Bruce?"
"Jason—"
"I'm not playing along until you tell me, Dick." Jason was awake now, eyes sharp through the pain and the last remnants of whatever they'd used to sedate him. "What. Happened. To. Bruce."
Dick heard, rather than felt, his own breath catch as he started to line up another deflection — because he couldn't lie, not about this — and all of a sudden Jason had gone watery in his vision, and fuck, he had to get himself under control here —
And then understanding flicked across Jason's face, and Dick remembered that Bruce had trained Jason in detective work just like he'd trained Dick, and that his little brother was as perceptive as they come.
The understanding was followed by grief, sharp and painful, and then, just as quickly… nothing. The same blank, slightly disoriented expression he'd had when he'd first woken up. "'S that the doctor, Dad?" he mumbled.
Dick forced himself to breathe normally and looked up at the door — sure enough, the doctor was paused in the doorway, observing them both like he was trying to determine if it was okay for him to come in. "Yeah, it is," he said, squeezing Jason's hand gently in silent acknowledgement. "You ready for him?"
Jason nodded, and Dick waved him in.
"How is the pain?" the doctor asked.
"Bad," Jason admitted. "Better than it was."
"That means the medicine is working," the doctor told him with a smile. He probably meant it to be reassuring, but Jason's hand tightened around Dick's.
"I'm on pain medications?
The doctor nodded.
"Opioids?" Jason pressed
"Yes. Is that an issue?"
The question was directed at Dick, and for a brief, stupid second he couldn't figure out why.
Right. He was Jason's father. "Can you put him on the lowest possible dose?"
"He will be in more pain," the doctor explained patiently.
"I'll deal with it," Jason said. "Please."
The doctor looked at Dick again. Dick nodded.
"I'll adjust the dosage," the doctor promised.
"Thank you," Dick said.
The doctor adjusted a few more things. "He'll need rest. I'm adding another sedative to help him sleep. It'll last another eight hours and we'll evaluate from that point."
Dick nodded, and the doctor left.
"He's dead, then," Jason whispered as soon as the footsteps had faded down the hallway.
Dick swallowed hard and nodded.
"You're sure?"
"I saw it."
Jason fixed Dick with his big blue eyes. "Are you okay?"
Dick almost laughed. "Buddy, you're the one in the hospital bed."
He could see the sedatives starting to take effect, could hear it in Jason's voice as he said, "That's a weak deflection."
"You don't need to worry about me, Jay."
Jason shook his head and mumbled something Dick didn't catch. Then he was quiet for a while, long enough that Dick thought he'd fallen asleep, until he felt Jason's fingers tap against his hand.
"Thank you."
And then he was asleep, and Dick rested his forehead against the edge of the bed and cried.