ephemeraltea prompted: if Jason had survived and the events immediately following.

Tea, this holds the record of the longest amount of time it has taken me to fill a prompt. I am SOOOO sorry. It has been over a year now since you gave this to me. You were on your previous account! That's how terrible of a friend I am. You all should throw me under the bus in shame.

But in case you don't want to do that, I'll fill out this prompt now! Just for you! And anyone else who feels the need to have angst via Jason Todd feels. Which, c'mon. That's everyone.

Batman and related properties © DC Comics
story © RenaRoo

Debris

"Robin, respond!"

The motor was roaring, the dry wind of the desert whipping at his exposed face. The motorbike he stole wasn't nearly quick enough. He reached up enough to roughly smack the side of his cowl, clearing the fuzz from the radio receiver only briefly.

"Robin! Respond to me!"

Growling, he tightened his grip on the handlebars, eyes narrowing even behind the cowl's protective lenses. His teeth ground the sand flying into his face. He refused to believe the words of the Joker's henchmen. He refused to remember the anger and warnings and hatred in Barbara's voice.

"ROBIN! RESPOND!"

The explosion was blinding, even yards away. The debris flew, the bike flying out from his grip, spinning out before colliding with a metal door. Batman sat up - Bruce looked into the destroyed compound.

"No."

The moments after the explosion were a hot, furious blur. Sweat was trailing down his ashened face as Batman tore over the debris and rubble. Hot cinders were still falling from the collapsing framework but he simply didn't care.

All he need was Jason.

His heart was an angry, throbbing pain in his chest, full of concern and full of knowing what no doubt awaited him within this collapsed structure.

Flipping a block of crumbling drywall, Bruce saw a hand and he nearly lost his footing. Then he lunged.

"Jason!" he cried out, tearing through the plaster and wood, uncovering more of the battered body of-

A blonde woman, face and body bloody but still breathing, still burning. Sheila Haywood.

Quickly, Batman unlatched and removed his cape in a swift movement. The fire retardant fabric easily wrapped around the woman's broken frame. She would need a lot of work from doctors after this, probably having hit the wall at a monstrous force when the building exploded.

"Hnn."

She's conscious? he wondered before gripping the woman as gently as his frantic mind would allow. "Shiela! Doctor Haywood!" he called. "Where is Robin? Where is Jason? Did he get out?"

She coughed, closing her eyes before gasping. "He... good boy," she slurred in a painful gap between pants. "There. There. He's hurt."

Bruce couldn't manage to express that he had assumed as much - had hoped for so much different - but he gently laid her over a fallen door and began to search the nearby rubble. From the sounds of it, Jason wouldn't have been far.

Sure enough, it did not take long before Batman was faced with a familiar, but now tattered, bright yellow fabric.

"ROBIN."

He brushed brick and cinder aside, digging ruthlessly to match the heightened rhythm in his own chest. There was a sound of sirens, of shouting from the nearby village that Bruce Wayne and Jason Todd had just visited.

"Jason, oh god, Jason," he whispered as he finally reached the boys broken and bleeding body. Gently, gently he turned over his son, watched carefully as he tried to judge the boy's breathing.

"You're alive, Jason," he whispered, cradling the body closer, his son almost unrecognizable, his costume in tatters. "You're alive. You're fighting. You have to keep fighting."

He doubted his murmurs fell on his son's ears, or that Jason was in any condition whatsoever to hear them, but he kept them up, waiting desperately for the first responders to hurry.

Everything happened quickly from that point. The pause as Batman disappeared to "get" Bruce Wayne, and Bruce Wayne's haggard appearance in the E.R. would have caused heads to turn more abruptly on the other side of the world, but there all attention was on the two patients rushed into surgery.

The supplies were low in this area. They had to race was to stabilize Jason and the woman he had been reunited with just hours before transitioning them to a larger hospital in the nearest port city.

If they could make it that long.

"The hospital could use funds, Mister Wayne. We are struggling so much already," the head doctor says behind Bruce. There's not even a wall dividing the waiting area and the two surgery teams on the floor. "We will do our best for your son. And we are in debt to Doctor Haywood. But will my children pay for these supplies in their lives?"

"You will be better in the near future than you have ever been before," Bruce assured the man, turning to look him in the eyes, shuddering. "Please. One father to another. Save my son. Save his mother."

The man nodded, dark eyes full of understanding. "It is my duty, Mister Wayne."

Calling out orders to the surgery teams, the doctor began his work, starting with Jason. Bruce's heart ached, but he watched all the same.

"You can make it, Jason," he whispered. "You can-" his eyes drifted to the woman as well, a second set of surgeons began working on her as well. Bruce spared some hope for Jason's birth mother as well.

Sheila's surgery lasted only half as long as Jason's, but Bruce could hardly make it to her bedside. He stayed by Jason.

Physically.

The Batman was a cruel taskmaster, and his mind not easily settled on only one objective. No matter how fiercely Bruce wished to be there for his son, to concentrate on his son's wellness, the need to go after the monster that did this to them was almost overwhelming.

He left only twice, the guilt of a well kicked dog returning him to the hospital OR each time.

He was sick with himself, sick with this anger and with this guilt. Why Jason why not him. Why Jason.

Each time he left was not in vain, however. He returned, laptop in hand. His investigation began - he had to know what the Joker had been doing, what he was doing now, what he was planning on doing next.

By the time the ambulances arrived to begin the transfer to the nearest city, Bruce closed his laptop, the bat computer's systems already erasing any traces of his searches. And of his his access to the Red Cross' funds.

He leered at the second ambulance.

"Do you want anyone to travel with Doctor Haywood?" the local doctor asked as Bruce boarded with Jason.

"No," Bruce returned darkly. "No, I don't."

He hadn't left Jason's side for a week straight. Alfred was on a flight over, having nothing of Bruce's excuses for why he should stay and prepare the Manor after so long. He'd arrive in a few hours, then, within that same hour, they would be all be on a Wayne jet back to Gotham.

Bruce wouldn't have left Jason's side until they arrived in America safely but for the nurse telling him, as directed, when Doctor Haywood was conscious.

She was. He went.

It was the room beside Jason's, but Bruce hadn't so much as glanced in its direction in the week they had spent there since the transfer. He had demanded separate rooms even when the new hospital staff tried to reunite the mother and son.

"That's not his mother," he had been quick to assure them.

Because he was right. She wasn't.

Even wrapped in bandages across her face and body, tied to a IV dip and several monitors, Sheila Haywood's form was able to elicit such undeterred rage from Bruce as he stared at her from across the room.

Her eyes were milked over from medication and pain, she didn't notice him at first, but then she finally seemed to look in his direction. And he could tell by her reaction she wasn't seeing billionaire Bruce Wayne in the door.

She was seeing a nightmare. The Batman.

"Don't feel any need to try to talk," Bruce said darkly. "I doubt you have the strength if you wanted to, but I want to make it perfectly clear: I don't want to hear your excuses."

He neared her bed, door closing with a click behind him. "I know what you think you know, and quite frankly I could care less what plans you might have for that information. It's one of the least of my concerns," he continued, eyes narrowed on her face. "Doctor Haywood, in my research between waiting by my son's side during surgery, by my son's bed as he fought for breaths on the transition between hospitals, by my son's room as he nearly lost that fight time and time again... I learned more about you than I could have ever wanted to know."

He stopped, dangerously close to her, hands behind his back. She seemed horrified. Good.

"You were a Gothamite once," he reminded her. "You left because of some heat, not just because of your schooling. You left because you owed people. People you worked for. People who found you again." His nostrils flared. "You may have moved locations, but you are still one of the Joker's through and through. I thought, briefly, that you may have changed over a new leaf and the Joker's appearance where you were working with the Red Cross was a matter of incidence... but even casual glances would notice that those same money siphoning tactics you used while he was here were happening with branches of the Red Cross under your direction long before your old friend caught up with you."

His fists clenched. "Just let me know," he said between gritted teeth, "Did you tell the Joker about my son before he was attacked? Or was it all you." His eyes narrowed. "And be sure to remember... I already know more than you could have wished for me to. And I don't care for liars."

Sheila stared at him before closing her eyes. A small nod.

Bruce stared at her, tried to feel something in addition to the new information, but found his limbs inexplicably numb. He was no more or less angry than he had been since the moment he knew Jason was in trouble.

Frustrated, exhausted, angry, Bruce turned quickly on his heels and roared as he kicked the unused visitor chair. It clanged heavily against the opposing wall. Sheila's entire body flinched, her heart monitor blaring.

Standing straight, the Batman did his best to force down a heavy breath. He couldn't bare to look at this supposed mother a moment longer.

"You will never darken Jason's doorstep again," he said shakily. "You will never endanger his life again. You will never even know about us again. Or this will not be the closest shave in your miserable life, do you understand?"

He didn't look to see her affirmation, he merely walked to the door, ignoring as the doctors and nurses rushed the room, confused and concerned for the woman they all thought was a hero.

Bruce returned to the adjacent room, melting into the seat beside the only hero in the building.

There was a United Nations assembly in New York scheduled for that afternoon. The Joker, with diplomatic immunity awarded through mysterious and shady means, arrived promptly. But to his misfortune, so did the Amazonian Ambassador and Princess, the Atlantean King, and the watchful eye of the United States' personal escort, of the Kryptonian variety.

His apprehension after a botched attempt at mass murder, was swift and fearsome.

But in Gotham, Jason opened his eyes for the first time in three weeks, and Bruce was there.

He was ready to make sure he was always there for Jason from that point on.