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“Did anyone else just see that?” Dick asks, his blinking locator pausing on the roof of a building according to Tim's virtual map on the screen in front of him.
“Yeah, looks like there was an explosion in Hood's territory,” Steph replies. Her tracker changes trajectories towards Crime Alley. “Do we have any communications with him right now?”
“I'll patch myself in.” Oracle's line clicks off, everyone waiting quietly for her return.
“I mean, his tracker says he's moving, so he's probably fine,” Tim supplies.
“I heard an engine in the background, but no response from him. He probably took his helmet off, so he couldn't hear me,” Oracle reports as she returns.
“I'm gonna take a look, just in case. My route is quiet tonight anyways,” Steph mentions quickly before anyone can say anything else.
Tim sighs, leaning back in the chair in front of the bat computer. Or the Batputer, as Dick lovingly named it.
“Status?” Batman's growl comes through for his hourly status check in minutes later.
“Vibin’,” Steph answers breezily.
“Fine as usual, B!” Dick, or rather Nightwing, chirps.
“Patrol has been quiet, Father,” Damian responds flatly.
“Bored,” Tim chimes in, twirling a pen between his fingers idly.
“Nothing new showing up on the cameras, but I've made some progress on your latest case,” Oracle cuts in. Batman hums.
“Robin, go ahead and head home. Nightwing, Spoiler, Hood, and I can cover the rest of patrol,” Batman orders gruffly. There's a tut of disapproval, then a moment of silence, before Damian responds.
“I see no point in this foolish decision, as I am more than capable of covering the rest of Red Robin's route.”
“You have school tomorrow.”
“I do not see how that information is relevant, Father.”
Muffled laughter comes through over the comms, matching Tim's own from where he has his hand over his mouth.
“Cave, Robin.”
A sigh, then a clipped, “Yes, Father.”
“I bet he's just like you when you were growing up, B!” Tim supplies helpfully. The following silence is a deafening acquiescence.
“...Oracle, what have you found out?” Batman finally says.
“Ten out of ten segway there, Bats,” Steph cuts in with a laugh. Oracle cuts her off before another argument can ensue, rattling off the details of what she was working on.
Tim, on the other hand, isn't paying attention, because he's adjusting his earpiece to be a bit quieter when he hears a motorcycle roaring into the cave. Glancing at the code input to open the entrance up and the placement of trackers, it's Jason's code.
That's weird, he usually patrols for another couple hours…
“Oh, hey Hood. What are you doing here so early? Usually you're patrolling for another couple hours at least,” Tim calls back over his shoulder as the bike's engine dies, but doesn't tear his eyes away from the screen where he's working on his own case to pass the time.
“Hood is there?”
“Already?”
“Tell little wing I say hi!”
The silence should've been telling, but he doesn't turn around until Jason's helmet slams into the screen in front of him, making him jump and spill coffee everywhere.
“What the–”
He spins around to yell at Jason, but the words die in his throat when he sees his older brother's partially hunched over, shirtless, blood-soaked frame. He hasn't even walked that far and Tim can see small pools of blood along with bloody footprints following him from the bike that very clearly isn't his and his eyes are glowing in the patch of shadow he's walking through and blood is practically streaming from Jason's mouth and face and oh my god there's so much blood–
“Oh my god Jay what the fuck happened to you??” Tim nearly screeches, knocking over his mug of coffee in his haste to stand up. A chorus of suddenly concerned voices come through the comms but the sounds don't register as actual words in his ears when Jason pauses at the doorway to the medbay and levels him with an unimpressed glare because then he's disappearing into the medbay with a vague come here gesture like his entire upper half isn't dripping blood all over the god damn cave floor.
“O take over comms I have to go bye–!”
Tim grabs his crutch and nearly trips over himself while hurriedly making his way over to Jason, huffing in annoyance halfway through and just letting it clatter to the ground so he can limp over quicker.
Rounding the corner, he sees Jason sitting criss-cross on a bed he dragged over to a mirror, his domino mask and a glass beaker beside him. He’s leaning towards the mirror with a pair of tweezers in hand (what the fuck happened to his hands), using them to pick little pieces of something out of his face and depositing them with a little clink in a beaker sitting next to him.
Getting closer, Tim can see that it’s most definitely broken glass that’s fucking everywhere at this point– on the bed around him, in his hair, lodged into his face, his back, his shoulders–
Tim blinks at the dislocated shoulder that Jason is ignoring.
“Okay. Um. I’m gonna– I’m gonna reset your shoulder. Yeah. We can deal with the rest of this–” Tim gestures to his face, to which he glares at Tim again for in the reflection of the mirror, “–after. And I expect a thorough fucking explanation for why the hell you look like this.”
Jason rolls his eyes, but shifts so Tim can get easier access to his shoulder. He grips the metal bar on the side of the bed for stability, or maybe as a sort of stress ball. Seeing as this is Jason, it’s probably the latter.
“Ready?”
Jason nods.
“Three, two–”
He pops the shoulder back into the socket smoothly, Jason’s grip turning white-knuckled as he lets out a choked whine, squeezing his eyes shut. Tim squints at the blood dripping steadily from his lips, and then the wetly wheezing breaths that follow.
“Jay, what the fuck happened?” Tim finally asks, sitting down on the edge of the bed and gently turning his older brother's head up so he can actually see his face. He’s sweating, blood-soaked curls sticking to his forehead. Jason’s eyes crack open when Tim pushes his hair out of his face, slowly letting go of his grip on the now-indented metal bar he was holding.
He glances away, leaning over the edge of the bed to a bucket Tim didn’t see on the floor before. He opens his mouth and a fucking cascade of blood falls out of his mouth with barely any effort on Jason’s part.
Then he turns back to Tim, shoves the tweezers into his hands, and opens his mouth.
If he thought Jason’s hands, back, or face were bad, it was nothing compared to this.
Tim gapes at the absolute wreck that Jason's mouth is. Blood is already starting to pool again, but he can make out the jagged shapes of bloodstained broken glass scattered throughout his mouth, in his tongue, and something tells him that with the amount of blood he’s been losing, Tim will be finding glass all the way down his throat too.
“What the fuck…” Tim breathes, taking a moment to just process what he’s looking at before getting to work.
“Red Robin, report!” Batman snaps in his ear.
Oh yeah, he never muted, did he?
“I think Jason gargled broken glass,” Tim finally answers oh-so-helpfully. There’s a stunned, or maybe confused silence over the comms. Jason raises an eyebrow, the corner of his lips twitching up in some approximation to a smile or laugh.
“Timmy what the fuck does that mean.” Dick’s voice had grown harder, more serious, but there was an undercurrent of brotherly worry in his tone.
“Well, if Jay didn’t have glass lodged all the way down his throat, I’d ask him,” Tim snaps, trying to focus on the task at hand. In response, Jason tears his jaw out of Tim’s grasp to drain his mouth of blood again.
“What is Todd’s status?” Damian cuts in before Dick can try to argue back in his worry.
“He’s pale, sweating, bleeding from fucking everywhere–” Tim stops as Jason taps his chest. “I think there’s glass in his lungs. He’s having trouble breathing.”
Jason nods before going still for Tim again. Tim huffs out a sigh, depositing more bloody glass into the beaker.
“ETA ten minutes. If he’s laying down, sit him up, it will make it easier for him to breathe. Remove as much of the glass as possible from his mouth first–”
“What the fuck do you think I’m doing demon spawn–”
“–and I can remove the rest of it later. Keep him from passing out, Drake.”
“Stop bossing me around, demon spawn,” Tim mutters, glaring at Jason when he lets out the closest approximation to a laugh he can right now. “Jay I swear to fuck I will make you do this yourself.”
Jason raises his hands in surrender, then settles again.
“Also, who decided Robin got to boss Red Robin around like that?” Steph asks, sounding more curious than anything.
“He’s a trained surgeon, from his time with the League,” Dick responds.
“That’s wild, imagine being a trained surgeon at like ten years old.”
“I am eleven, Br– Spoiler.”
“Yeah, yeah, short stack. Anyways, I’m at the building that blew up. Lotta glass here, guess that makes sense–”
“Nightwing, what are you doing?” Oracle’s voice cuts off Spoiler.
“I’m going back to the Cave.”
“You can’t help him right now, he’ll still be there when you finish patrol,” she reasons.
“Yeah, he’s not going anywhere, trust me. He came here of his own volition, he doesn’t get to leave until he can at least talk again.”
Jason fixes Tim with a challenging glare at that. Tim just matches it. Jason breaks it to spit out more blood into the bucket.
“I don’t care, I need to be there.”
“Nightwing, you will only be in the way. Red Robin’s hovering will be quite enough,” Damian interjects. “Seven minutes.”
“I’ve almost got it all out of his mouth, but there’s still a lot in his throat and his breaths are getting more rapid,” Tim mutters, mostly to himself. Glancing up at Jason’s eyes, they’ve turned from teal into a full acidic green of the Lazarus Pit and are glowing softly, but he still seems pretty calm. Jason glances at the mirror behind them when Tim pauses, then leans back.
‘Means the Pit is trying to heal me,’ Jason signs, taking the quick break to relieve the blood build up.
“Jason said the Pit is trying to heal him, so at least there’s that,” Tim reports. He grabs a penlight from a drawer in the side table once Jason turns back to him, shining it into his mouth. Examining closer, he can see the cuts have stopped bleeding quite so much. They're still trickling sluggishly, but at least it's less of a constant stream.
“Do not attempt to remove anything past what you can easily see. You will simply make Todd's condition worse.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dami…”
“I am simply trying to ensure that the biggest imbecile of this group doesn't manage to drown on land,” Damian responds flatly. Tim rolls his eyes, taking a moment to get the rest of the glass out of Jason's lips and right around his mouth.
Of course, this is when Jason's eyes drift closed and he starts swaying enough that Tim has to hold his shoulders and jaw to keep his head up.
“Hey, hey, Jay, you gotta stay with me–” Tim mutters frantically, gently slapping his cheek despite the way the glass there slices into his fingers.
“What's happening–?”
“I'm coming back.”
“Drake, ETA two minutes.”
“Didn't you just say seven not that long ago??”
Jason makes a gurgling sound as he slowly, painfully forces his eyes open. He blinks quickly, furrowing his brow.
‘Breathing is… hard,’ Jason slowly signs. Tim nods, offering a stressed smile. ‘Dizzy.’
“Yeah, blood loss and glass in your lungs will do that to ya, Jaybird,” Tim chuckles. “Hold on.”
He makes sure Jason is at least somewhat stable before pushing the bed back against the wall from where he had moved it before. He then helps Jason shift backwards so he can lean back against it, grabbing the bucket filled with a frankly concerning amount of blood to take with them.
Jason coughs, hacking up chunks of glass and blood in the fit that leaves Tim's hands fluttering with uncharacteristic indecision.
“Oh, little wing…”
“That doesn't… sound very good.”
Damian doesn't respond, but Tim hears a bike engine roaring into the cave signifying his arrival.
Jason finally stops coughing and leans back against the wall with a stuttered groan, cracking his eyes open when Damian walks in.
“What inane act of stupidity led you to achieve this outcome, Todd?” Damian snaps upon entering, tossing his gloves off to the side while he works on getting his domino off. Jason just holds up a middle finger. “Drake, get him hooked up for vitals. I will prepare anesthetic and painkillers.”
A sputtering growl catches both their attention, but neither stops what they're doing. Tim works on cleaning the blood off Jason's chest enough to stick on the electrodes.
“Todd, I will not have you dying again just because of your aversion to needles and painkillers.” Damian climbs onto the edge of the bed so he can get a better look at the damage, holding Jason's jaw open. “This will be a delicate operation that requires you to be still, which requires you to be asleep.”
If Jason's glare could kill they'd be dead several times over, but he doesn't have the means to act on it right now so Tim decides not to worry about it.
Once the vitals monitors are set up and oxygen is ready to go after Damian is done with his procedure, Tim gathers everything else the child points him towards while the baby bat prepares all his tools.
When Damian comes towards Jason with a needle, his gaze snaps to it and he grabs the youngest's wrist in a bruising grip before he can inject it.
“Todd, you do not have the time to argue about this. Let me go.”
“No,” Jason manages to growl. The singular word is raspy and wet and frankly sounds like hell on Jason's throat but he doesn't relent until Damian tuts disapprovingly.
“Fine,” Damian acquiesces, setting the needle aside in favor of hanging a blood bag, ready to transfuse if needed. He hands Tim a suction tool and levels him with a piercing glare as he comes around the other side. “Drake, keep his airway clear and stay out of my way.” Then turns down to Jason. “Todd, if I decide you can't handle this, I will be putting you under.”
Jason just offers a simple, yet shaky thumbs up from where he lays and lets his eyes slip shut. He probably doesn't want to actually watch his two little brothers sticking shit down his throat.
Damian starts by gently threading the camera down Jason's throat, using the special forceps he grabbed at some point to pick out the pieces closest to his mouth. Tim makes sure the suction is off to the side, keeping it out of Damian's way while also trying to make sure Jason can at least somewhat breath.
Beyond the tight fists in bundles of the sheets on the cot he's laying on and the occasional eyebrow twitch, Jason doesn't show any sort of reaction so far.
The camera on the bronchoscope shows a picture that isn't quite as bad as how Jason's mouth looked when Tim first got started, but it's still pretty bad. Damian is able to maneuver his forceps to get the glass out piece by piece, but it's slow. Slower than Tim would like, which just makes it worse when he knows Damian is going as fast as he can.
Then there's another engine echoing loudly as it screeches into the cave. Neither Tim nor Damian look up, laser focused on the task at hand, but that doesn't stop Dick from practically barreling into the room.
“How is he?” Dick pants, walking much more carefully around to Tim's side. Jason cracks open a glowing green eye before closing it again.
“He's fine,” Tim mutters, shooting Dick a glare before briefly gesturing at the vitals monitor beside them. Dick breathes out a sigh of relief, wringing his hands together as he watches.
“Is there anything I can do?”
“If you can manage not to disturb us, you may remove the glass from his hands and bandage them,” Damian replies, not quite a command but not an offering either. Maybe more of an appeasement?
Dick nods to himself, pulling up a chair and his own tweezers and bandages so he can get started. He keeps his words to himself so as to not distract Damian, but his worry is practically palpable in the air.
Tim thinks Jason can feel it too, seeing him give Dick's hand a gentle squeeze before letting him continue to work.
The minutes pass by agonizingly slowly, with only the quick, but steady beeping of the heart rate monitor to keep the four boys company. At some point Tim notices Jason get more tense, his brow furrowing and eyes squeezing shut, but he just chalks that up to him being uncomfortable during the procedure.
Damian did tell him he should've taken the anesthetic.
But eventually, the child surgeon nods to himself before announcing:
“I've located and removed all the glass from Todd's throat. I was able to place stents in the bronchi and after thoroughly examining his lungs, I have located some of the glass within them. However, his lungs are much smaller than they should be, and I fear pneumothorax will become an issue when I pull the glass out,” Damian reports, looking to his brothers. “The suction needed to drain the pleural cavity of its pooled blood and prevent his lungs from collapsing could potentially cause the glass to be ripped through more and make Todd's state worse.”
Tim blinks, a solid few seconds passing before he realizes Damian is looking to them for their opinions.
“Just make the choice you think is best, Dami. We can deal with whatever comes up,” Dick reassures him with a warm smile, laying a comforting hand on his shoulder now that he isn't actively pulling glass from their brother's throat.
“Yeah, we've dealt with a collapsed lung or two before, just do your best with whatchya got,” Tim chimes in.
Damian nods, seemingly to himself, before coming to a decision.
“Grayson, acquire a scalpel and chest tubes for me. If a lung collapses, you will help me place the tube to drain the cavity. Drake, you will be prepared to remove my tools from the lung if this happens.”
Both brothers nod before Damian turns back to Jason, who's heart rate and breathing did speed up in the time of their conversation. Damian only glances at it.
Threading the camera into the first lung, Tim can see the glittering of both Jason's blood and the glass stuck in the walls of the organ. Damian carefully, gently, delicately pulls the shards out and deposits them into the beaker, which is getting concerningly full. Tim keeps Jason's throat and mouth as clear as he can of blood, which thankfully does seem to be slowing, at least marginally.
It takes a while, but eventually, Damian deems the first lung clear and there's no collapse. He has Tim hold the various tools while he situates the chest tube, only a drawn out (at least as much as he can with the amount of breath he has) exhale being the only sign Jason was even aware it was happening.
Then, it's onto the second one.
The same process is used: Damian does a careful, thorough search for glass, picks the shards out one by one, and repeats. Except…
“There is a shard larger than the others that has completely punctured through the wall,” Damian mutters under his breath, making Tim and Dick look up in surprise. He tries to simply work it out the way it came, but it won't budge. Not without ripping into him even more. “That one will need to come out last.”
He checks over the rest of the organ’s ever-shrinking walls, collects what glass shards he missed previously, double checks, then returns to the one that's stuck.
“This will most likely cause the lung to collapse. Grayson, hold these, but do not move them.” He hands the tools off to Dick, who takes them gingerly. Damian guides the forceps to secure the glass, then leaves Dick there to insert the chest tube on Jason's other side.
It goes in without a hitch, and then Damian is back in control of the forceps. He uses them to ease the glass out of the organ wall, steady and careful despite, or more accurately because of the delicate situation.
Never one to let his nerves get to him, even as a child.
Then again, none of them are. You can't be, in this line of work.
“Turn it on,” Damian commands as he lifts the sparkling shard. Dick switches it on right as Jason's eyes fly open and he tries to gasp for breath that isn't there. Tim uses his free hand to hold Jason's shoulder, Dick coming around to hold his head straight seeing as Damian is still finishing removing the forceps with the glass in tow.
“It's alright, we've got you, little wing. Just give it a second, you'll be able to breathe in no time,” Dick murmurs, brushing a hand through his sweaty fringe, gently working out the knots and picking out glass that had been tangled or stuck in it. Jason closes his eyes with a barely perceptible nod the only thing keeping the brothers from worrying too much.
Damian removes the stents and the rest of the tools, taking a breath after it's all removed and Jason's breathing returns to its previous labored-and-concerningly-quick-but-still-surviveable pattern. His heart rate slows a bit as well and he opens his eyes, exhaustion showing in them.
“Get some sleep, little wing.” Dick smiles as he fastens the oxygen mask around his head. “We'll get the rest of this all cleaned up.”
It's only moments later that his heart rate and breathing slow, his body goes lax, and his face smooths out into something more peaceful.
There's a few moments of near-silence, only broken by the heart rate monitor, before Tim finally speaks up.
“Okay, what the fuck.”
Dick sighs, running a gloved hand through his hair. “I don't know, but we should get the rest of this glass out before the Pit tries to kick in too much.”
“I concur with Grayson. Almost all the glass should be accessible, apart from his upper back.”
“We can just sit him up a little when we need to,” Tim sighs, before getting to work on Jason's shoulders and arms. Damian works on what was still in his face and neck, and Dick gets to work on his feet, which he was very clearly walking on the broken glass with.
He doubts Jason's going to be walking for the next couple days.
Because of the near silence, it's easy to hear when Damian's breath stutters and he pauses what he's doing, hands hovering near Jason's neck with a washcloth in one hand.
“What's up, babybat?” Dick asks, turning his gaze up from where he was wrapping bandages around Jason's right foot.
“Did… when did this happen?” Damian asks, voice quieter than usual and a concerning waver to it. Tim follows his gaze to Jason's neck and–
Oh.
Oh.
Someone slit Jason's neck.
Tim blinks, rubbing his eyes before looking again and– yep, the scar is still there. It's old, too, had to have been years since it happened but still–
“I– I don't know. Maybe it happened in the League?” Dick replies, but it's weak, his gaze trained on the slightly-raised tissue. The scar is wide and looks deep.
This should have killed him.
“No. I would have known had this happened in the League. It would not still be here if it happened before he was revitalized which means–”
“It had to have happened when he came back,” Tim finishes quietly.
The room is silent, slow beeping filling the space.
“...Another day,” Dick decides. “We'll ask, but not until he's healed and can actually tell us.”
They nod in agreement.
Crunching steps make all three of them tense and turn to the entrance of the medbay to see a hulking shadow standing there stiffly. Bruce pulls the cowl off, gazing at Jason with a mixture of worry and anger, though Tim doubts the latter is at anyone except whoever caused this.
Then he turns to the three of them.
“Go change, and shower. I will take care of the rest of this,” he murmurs, stepping further in to allow his children to pass. They look between each other, then Jason, before silently filing out.
Leaving just a worried father to tend to his injured, sleeping son.
When Jason begins to drift into consciousness, the first thing he realizes is that he isn't choking on his own blood.
The second thing he realizes is that he doesn't feel like a thousand little knives are trying to make him their personal pincushion.
All in all, he's only seeing upsides.
That is, until he tries to open his mouth and suddenly there's that fucking copper tang of blood filling his mouth again and he just want to breathe damn it–
“Hey, Jaylad, you're okay, just roll over a little bit for me, there you go…”
Someone rubs soothing circles on his back, helping him cough up the little bit of blood in his mouth. When he's done the hand shifts to card his hair out of his face, pressing a gentle kiss to his hairline. He finds himself leaning into it, though he would forever deny that.
“Don't try to talk, just drink some water, it'll help,” Bruce's voice, his mind now recognizes, continues. Jason latches onto the straw pushed into his mouth, sucking down the cool liquid gratefully despite how the act of swallowing is hell on his throat.
He cracks his eyes open to see Bruce smiling– holy shit he's actually smiling– down at Jason.
“So, gargling glass, huh? Not my favorite hobby of the ones you've taken up,” Bruce hums lightheartedly, though his smile does little to hide the concern in his eyes.
Jason's lips quirk up before he signs ‘Sounded like a good idea at the time.’
It would be helpful to mention that Jason can convey sarcasm in any language, including sign and body.
This has been confirmed by Cass.
“Oh good, you're up!” Bruce's response is cut off when Dick claps his hands together as he walks in, two little birds trailing behind him. Tim is using his crutch this time.
“So, want to explain what the fuck last night was about?” Tim asks accusingly, but more out of concern than actual anger. He thinks. Jason has gotten at least marginally better at deciphering between the two in the past few years.
In response, he just shrugs and signs ‘Was chasing a lead, got got, and then had to get out.’
“I do not believe it is outlandish to say that your particular condition when you returned was… peculiar,” Damian tries.
“What Dami is trying to say is that we need a better explanation than that,” Dick cheerfully continues, his smile warm but his posture overall looking like he was ready to commit a murder.
Jason sighs, rubbing his eyes. ‘I've been chasing a serial killer for the past two-ish weeks, found another body last night–’
“Oh, you mean the one with the inside-out head in the alley you got kidnapped from?” Tim interjects innocently, tilting his head. Jason deadpans.
‘Yes. Now keep your mouth shut or you don't get to hear the rest of the story,’ he snaps. Tim raises his hands in surrender, so Jason continues. ‘She took me to a building on the north side of my territory, took my shit, chained me to the ground, left a bomb with a timer for thirty minutes– not that I knew that at the time– and made me dig through a basin of broken glass with my mouth to find the key to my cuffs and get out,’ Jason finishes casually. All three of them stare at him in vaguely growing amounts of horror while he goes through the story– well, Damian and Dick just progressively look more murderous, Tim looks curious, and Bruce looks like he's about to burst a blood vessel.
“So… you're chasing Jigsaw,” Tim finally says. Jason raises an eyebrow, to which Tim sighs. “You know, the Saw movies? Guy kidnaps people who don't appreciate the value of life, sticks them in a life or death situation where they have to do something terrible to get out and supposedly that gets rid of their depression or whatever,” he explains. “Had some real weird ways of killing people with his traps, too. One of which was a reverse bear trap that basically would turn your head inside out.”
‘Makes sense.’ Jason shrugs again. ‘But this woman mentioned something about going after people who aren't supposed to be alive and testing them to see if they deserved the second chance.’
“Tt. Clearly this woman is foolish and should reevaluate her values,” Damian mutters, crossing his arms close to his chest and looking away. Jason ruffles his hair with a grin, to which he responds by slapping his hand away half-heartedly.
Huh. Maybe the little demon brat really was worried about him.
“We'll track down whoever did this,” Bruce decides.
‘Uh, no. This is my case and I'll be the one to put a bullet in the bitch who put my jacket on the floor,’ Jason retorts, glaring at Bruce.
“You aren't going anywhere for a bit, little wing,” Dick cuts in. Jason raises an eyebrow, challenging them to stop him.
“You can't speak and can't walk until your injuries heal. We also need to keep an eye on your lungs, make sure there are no complications,” Tim chimes in with a grin. Jason hits his head on the pillow under him.
“Aww, don't worry, Jay! You love our company!”
Maybe death by a thousand papercuts was preferable to this.