Author's Note: Jason has a nightmare and something of a premonition. Does he go to Bruce? Hell, no, he just tries to do things on his own, as usual. Bruce comes along anyway. This is as fluffy a moment as there will ever be between these two. Enjoy.

Doomed

I'm falling in the dark. But I'm not falling slowly; I'm plummeting like a boulder shoved off the top of the Grand Canyon. I can't see anything or hear anything above the noise of my descent. And even as I seem to fall endlessly at a speed that should be impossible towards an uncertain climax, I know this is not the worst of it. There are far worse things awaiting me than a terrifying fall from dizzyingly high heights. I hit solid ground and am unhurt. I look up and find myself in Crime Alley. It's raining and everything is bathed in a weird, red glow. I stand up and look down at my feet. I'm twelve years old again, wearing sneakers way too big for me and worn out hammy-downs. When I look up again, I see them. My mom and dad are hanging from the walls, nailed against the brickwork in crucifix positions, a contorted look of horror and suffering etched into their dead faces. Someone has scrawled 'WHORE' in foot-high letters next to my mom's body. My dad has 'DEADBEAT' scribbled next to his. I can already see there is a space between their corpses just big enough to accommodate me. Someone's already taken the liberty of writing 'RENTBOY' on my behalf in the gap. All of this has been done with blood. Over the sound of rain, I hear the crackling of hungry flames. Then he steps from the shadows.

Even though the figure is clad in a cape and cowl, I know this creature is not Bruce; this is the devil. He regards me with blood-shot eyes and pulls his face into a ghastly grin eerily similar to The Joker. The devil gestures with a single finger to the space between my folks and nods in my direction. He wants me to go quietly and join them. It's now my turn to suffer. I understand immediately. I think I always did understand that it would all end this way. I knew somewhere inside that I would die young and I would meet my end alone. I am twelve years old and I am confronting Satan in Crime Alley. My fate is sealed. I shouldn't be afraid of death anymore. I should be able to accept this end without any kind of apprehension. I should just let him torture me until I am no more. But I clench my fists.

I'm terrified of death though, haunted by its ghost stalking my every night on patrol or in a tight spot. The rain stops pouring. I eye the devil with adrenaline racing through my body and my heart pounding like a jackhammer. The devil stops smiling. His hand comes down. He begins to growl. I'm too chicken to let him kill me, too petrified to accept my fate without one last dance.

I am no longer twelve; I am sixteen and I am dressed for combat. I am Robin and I have no death wish. I will fight for my survival until my last breath because the shadow in the valley of death hangs over my head and my very existence depends on winning this battle. If he wants me to die, he's going to have to kill me and I'm going to make him earn it. I look at my parents and find they are nothing but grey skeletons covered in rags. Their faces are still frozen in agony. I look back to the devil in the bat suit.

"You want me, Bruce?" I shout as the sound of crackling flames increases in the absence of the rain. There are no jokes anymore. I'm too freaking tight to make any kind of quip and he knows why. The devil takes a few steps forward and gestures to my parents again. Now they are howling, bloody messes, and misshapen monsters with human form. They wail and they thrash hopelessly against their nailed limbs, finding no give or escape waits for them to discover. I reach for a batarang as my heart climbs into my mouth. I still have enough voice left for one last act of defiance. "Come get me, you son of a bitch." I growl back as my fingers close around the batarang's outer edge. The devil charges forward with outstretched claws and a deafening banshee shriek that overwhelms even the flames. I hold my ground as my legs scream for me to run and my heart goes so fast it could explode out my chest any second. The devil is bearing down on me, but I still refuse to move. My parents continue to howl. I glare at them and yell for them to shut up. I turn back in time to strike the devil with my projectile and kick him in the nuts. He still wrestles me to the concrete and begins clawing at my costume, trying to tear it to shreds with me inside it. I thrash and manage to head-butt him in the face. This only seems to make him stronger and he continues to rip chunks of flesh from my body. I hit him again and again and each time he only attacks harder and with more brutality than before.

I have no energy left to fight with, but I continue anyway. I can't fight him off and I can't stop him. Somehow I knew that too. I knew I stood no chance of beating him, but I have to keep trying. What alternative is there?

"Beg me, Jason." The devil sneers leaning forward so our faces are almost touching, "Beg me to stop. Beg me not to kill you like your parents. I want to hear you plead and weep for me to stop." I want to beg. I really want to beg for him to spare me eternal suffering and all that crap. I want to, but I can't. I'm not allowed to do that. I did enough begging and pleading and weeping in dark motel rooms with faceless monsters to last a dozen lifetimes. So I glare up at him and bare my teeth.

"You fucking beg me to start. You fucking plead with me to give you anything but this." I spit in his face. His eyes begin to burn with an intensity and fire that can only come from hatred. He raises a claw-like hand above my head and I watch my life flash before my eyes as it comes down.

I wake up screaming but it passes quickly. My skin is clammy with a cold sweat as I throw off the covers and switch on the light. I'm in my bedroom. It's three-forty-seven in the morning. There are no flames, skeletons, monsters or otherwise in my room. I'm not about to die and I'm not covered in holes where devils have torn my flesh off. So why the hell can't I stop shaking? I splash my face with cold water, whip on my workout gear and head to the gym.

I find the punch bag immediately and just hit it for the next hour. I hit it as hard as I can and as fast as I can until the blows leave blood and skin instead of indentations. Even as my skinned knuckles sing in stinging pain, I continue to strike. My body is drenched in sweat and every muscle aches beyond anything recently experienced, but I can't stop. I still feel fragile inside, like I might actually break down. I can't let that happen. I have to beat the fear out of my system. Nothing else will work. Nothing else will heal like this. If my hands are going to shake, I want it to be from exhaustion, not fear. An hour comes and goes and suddenly it's almost five. I finally stop swinging and press my forehead against the bag. My body almost collapses in following my head, but I manage to steady my legs.

"Should I even ask?" I hear Bruce says from across the hall. I don't look over to him when responding.

"No. This is all just a bad dream, go to bed." My words come out in-between ragged and breathless pauses. I hear him advance towards me. "Stay away, Bruce. Just back the fuck away." He doesn't even hesitate in continuing forward. My eyes close as his footsteps grow louder until he has to be standing right next to me. I feel his hand settle on my shoulder. I shrug it off violently. He replaces it and squeezes. I don't have the energy to shrug it off again.

"Please talk to me." He says without attempting to turn me round. I ignore him. I don't want this conversation. I don't want this feeling. I want to be free of all of this shit. I bite down on my bottom lip; the tears are coming. I'm too fragile to speak without bawling. I need space to breathe. I'm being suffocated right now; he's too close to me right now. My hands really hurt now and my skin is getting cold. I feel pathetic. I need to get away from here. Maybe if I give him something to work on, he'll leave me to it.

"Had a nightmare. You were the devil and you were killing me." His hand doesn't move, even though I really think he should, following a statement like that. He squeezes my shoulder again.

"And you thought breaking your hands would help with that?" He's got jokes? That's really not fair at all. And his hand being on my shoulder isn't fair either. You can't play the man in the white hat when we all know your motif of choice is a black bat. I don't want to speak to him, but somehow I try to anyway.

"I needed…to do…something to make it stop…anything…I just…" I can't hold it together anymore. I tip over the edge and begin weeping like a girl. He turns me around and forces me to look him in the eye. He nods at me in understanding. Then he embraces me against his chest. I feel so ashamed of myself for crumbling right in front of him, even if it is what it is. He holds me in perfect silence for almost ten minutes until I calm down.

"And then he's bearing down on me and I want to run, but I can't move." I tell the big man as he bandages my hands after applying disinfectant. We're in the kitchen and I'm wearing Bruce's dressing gown to keep out the cold. "Then he asks me to beg him to stop. He just wants me to beg for my life. It was like I was just doomed from the start." Bruce looks mildly surprised for some reason.

"Doomed is something of a strong word to describe a nightmare, Jason."

"No, it fits, Bruce. Doomed really fits me." Bruce rests his hand on top of mine and squeezes it.

"You are NOT doomed, Jason; you're just tired and upset. Let's get you to bed and see how you feel after some sleep." I take my hand back. We'd all like to be able to sleep off our problems, Bruce, but, as you always demonstrate when I wake up, you're still here. I sneer.

"You really think I want to shut my eyes again after all that crap I just told you? Screw that idea!" I'm sounding pretty petulant at the moment, like a nine-year-old. Bruce isn't giving it up just yet though.

"You've had nightmares many times before now; what makes this one different to the others? Any other nightmare wouldn't even warrant a second thought from you usually."

"This seemed more like a premonition than a nightmare."

"You think I'm going to kill you?" If only things were so simple.

"No, more likely I'm gonna get killed because of you." Bruce clenches his jaw in response before shaking his head. Either he doesn't believe I'm right or he's ashamed of himself for making me come to that conclusion. He gives nothing away.

"I have nightmares too as you've probably guessed. Sometimes many of them also seem to be prophetic and forecast an early grave or the death of someone close to me. But these are not glimpses of our futures; they are just projections of our subconscious. They have no real basis in reality, no matter how close to the bone they appear. I would never let you die on my account, Jason. Regardless of how things go between us, I will always care about you too much to allow such a thing." He sounds horribly sincere in what he's saying. For once, I don't offer a comeback. He puts his hand on my shoulder. "A lot of the time, I forget you're just a kid. Sometimes I forget it was only four-and-a-half years ago that we first met; it feels like we've spent a dozen lifetimes together already. You've always been so hard on the outside, so tough on the inside that I dismiss the idea you can hurt at all anymore. It makes vulnerability in you seem impossible. I don't think I've ever seen you cry until earlier tonight."

"Don't make a big deal of it, okay?"

"I think I have to because it proves something very important about you. Despite acting to the contrary, Jason Todd still needs people. You still need people to care about you."

He's right on the money as much as I want to pretend otherwise. Normally I don't need people. Normally people don't need me either. So I go without anything or anyone and then nothing can hurt me. But my armour cracked and I let that kid I keep inside slip out. I needed Bruce tonight. When the big man held me like that, I felt safe. I haven't felt safe in a long time. Living on a knife edge every night of the week does that to you; every minute you spend in costume could be your last moment on Earth. It has a way of driving you into yourself, making you paranoid about letting anybody else get close to you. Bruce helped cultivate that little hang-up of mine but still, I forgot what real affection feels like even if he's responsible for helping my nightmares find an antagonist to torment me. "Are you ever just going to quit on me? Are you ever just going to throw in the towel and say 'enough is enough'? I drive you crazy."

"I'm not a high school science teacher, Jason; I like to think my capacity for patience and tolerance is somewhat above such a defeatist attitude, even with someone as stubborn as you to butt heads with. I won't lose you without fighting like a man possessed to keep what he considers most precious to his heart. You understand? Any demon that wants to take you away is going to have to take me too before I give you up." It sounds bad, but I don't think I ever heard my mom say anything like that, about keeping me safe at all costs. Even if she had, hell even if my old man had thrown his hat in the ring with a line like that, they'd have sounded as convincing as kindergarteners acting out the school nativity. Bruce is a totally different proposition.

He would LITERALLY fight off the demons to save me, like he has done countless times before. He can literally rescue me from any fate I can think of, no matter how dark and hopeless I make it seem. Because, despite the crap that comes out his mouth most nights, the man is physically and psychologically the most unflappable and perfectly crafted human being I have ever seen. Breaking him is close to impossible. And this is why I get angry with him; sometimes it seems like no matter what I do, I'll never be liked in his eyes, never be seen as Golden Boy's equal in or out of costume. Changing his mind is a lost cause before it starts. But, maybe I've got the totally wrong end of the stick on this one. I nod at him.

"Thanks. I think I'm going to go to bed now." I say standing up. Bruce nods in understanding.

"I see. Will I see you before midday?" I offer him a lopsided grin.

"Don't count on it." He smiles back before getting to his feet as well. His hand finds the back of my neck and rubs it briefly.

"You are always safe here, Jason. Alfred and I will always be here to help you, no matter what. Okay?"

"Okay. You want your robe back?"

"Wash it first." I roll my eyes, but can't help but continue to smile at his efforts.

"Funny guy."

"Someone has to be." He takes his hand back, "Goodnight Jason." I don't think I can express in words how thankful I am we had this conversation. I suck at speeches and it always shows in situations like these. So I do something else, something few other people in this world have experienced from Jason Todd and hope he understands the significance of such a gesture. I push up onto my tip-toes and kiss him once on the cheek. He doesn't even flinch.

"Night Bruce." And just like that, I leave him standing there knowing I care. Doomed? Fucking shut up, Jay-Jay; you're not doomed until you've finished your last breath.