A/N: This is a crosspost from AO3, where I post under the same name. This is part 3 of my now-complete Whumptober 2021 series.
Long time no chapter, but it hasn't yet been a full year so I'm still technically on top of things! Enjoy xx
Jason ignored Superman and forced his way upwards.
The basement they'd been trapped in was levelled to an incline, concrete and rebar flattened and melted with streaks of cracked vinyl and flecks of paper dust, and the tiny gap in the collapsed room was no more, widened into an opening onto the street.
Jason could hear Superman urging him to stay still, but the sound of sirens and chaos of loud voices was slowly penetrating the buzz in his ears, a trickle becoming a storm.
He stumbled up the crumbled remains of the building. His bones sizzled with the movement, like the marrow had been replaced with a clammy panic as he emerged onto the crowded street.
He could hear Superman telling him that Tim was in an ambulance, Kon was keeping him from bleeding out until the medics could stabilise him, but for as loud and clear Superman was making his voice, it was effectual as screaming into a white water river.
He forged his way through the milling crowd, a tiny part of his brain spotting the dusty figure of the store attendant being fussed over.
He'd stumbled through another crop of hi-vis blocking his way when a red and blue silhouette flickered before his eyes and an arm slammed into his chest.
"Son," Superman said firmly, "Tim is in good hands. He's as safe as he can be in this situation, but a potential distraction to those helping him could change that."
Jason let out a hiss, anger bubbling up through the cracks in the fog like frothing magma.
"You," he forced out through gritted teeth, "are not keeping me from seeing Tim. Where is he."
Superman's concerned expression hardened, though his eyes pinched with sympathy. He nodded towards a makeshift barricade of GCPD officers surrounding a flashing ambulance.
"He's over there, but Jason—"
He kept moving, and this time Superman didn't stop him.
The crowd was mostly emergency crews, keeping away onlookers and still working to clear the rubble of the collapsed building. Jason was panting as he stumbled his way through, the adrenaline peeling back and leaving him hollowed-out, the throbbing in his leg harder and harder to ignore.
He was barely ten yards from the ambulance when another person stepped into his way.
"Sir, I'm sorry, but you can't come here," they said, waving him back with raised hands.
Jason shrugged them off, barely noticing the annoyance. The medics were moving before the ambulance, a thicket of bodies hunching over a gurney.
The mass parted enough for Jason to get a glimpse of a dusty red arm before the gap closed once more, and a sudden fear bubbling up within Jason forced his legs forward without needing to think.
"Sir," the voice urged again, firmly holding him back.
"He's my brother," Jason roared, pushing towards the shock of black hair barely visible behind the swarming medics, smothered by an oxygen mask and dripping with cables and wires, buried beneath dark red-soaked gauze.
He was so close, he was almost there, he was—
"Jason," said Dick, and he stopped in his tracks.
The sight of Dick's ghost-pale face prevented Jason from forcing his way forward once more.
"Dick," he croaked, and swallowed around a sudden lump in his throat. "Dick, the building— the kid—"
The booming crack of the foundations echoed back through Jason's ears, the thick film of concrete dust still coating his airways making it hard to breathe.
A cool hand on his shoulder jolted Jason back to the present, and he managed to refocus his eyes on Dick.
"We don't know what happened just yet," he said, voice forcibly calm. "The GCPD is looking into it. We're lucky Superman and Superboy were nearby when it happened, and the building's been cleared. It was only you and Tim in the basement level beside the store owner."
At the mention of Tim's name, Jason swung his eyes back to the ambulance.
The gurney was being rolled into the ambulance, Superboy still hovering nearby, and something in Jason snapped.
Any thoughts of staying still vanished, the pain in his leg dropped to nothing more than a dull roar; all Jason's functioning thoughts were dedicated to getting to that ambulance.
He noted the suit-clad figure of Bruce in the peripherals of his vision through the adrenaline-fuelled haze, the scratch of Dick's shirt against the scraped-bare skin of his chest trying to hold him back, but they were irrelevant in the need to just get closer.
The doors pulled shut, but he was still moving forwards.
"Jason," Dick pleaded, and Jason turned back to shake him off and follow the ambulance speeding off down the road, but the fear in his eyes halted something within Jason's furiously working mind.
Dick had grown even more pale, his eyes flickering between Jason's face and the ground.
Jason looked down, and instead of the slightly-banged up leg of his jeans he expected to see, he saw a weeping bloody mess of torn skin and cracked yellow-white bone.
"Oh," said Jason faintly, and blacked out when the pain hit him all at once.
Jason woke up in the hospital. He felt exhausted and bleary eyed, with a dry-ass throat. It took a moment to remember exactly why he was in the hospital, but when he did it was only a hand holding him down at the chest stopping him from launching up and off the bed.
"He's okay, Jason," said Bruce, and his voice sounded destroyed.
He didn't look much better. His face was weary, exhaustion etched into the permanent lines of his skin, and the grey at his brows looked more prominent than ever. His turtleneck was creased, pilling visible on the fine cashmere.
He didn't look like he'd slept a wink.
After a moments pause, "Dick's with Tim, otherwise I'd be there myself."
Jason finally let himself settle back down into the bed.
"…How is he?" he asked, his voice almost as gravelled as Bruce's.
Bruce wordlessly handed over a glass on the bedside table, speaking as Jason tried not to drown himself with how quickly he guzzled the water. "It's not good. He was in surgery for a number of hours, and he was only just brought out of the ICU."
Jason's heart skipped several beats. "ICU? How long—"
"We don't know when he'll wake up, but he's stable."
Jason forcibly relaxed his grip when it unconsciously tightened on the glass. "So we just have to wait."
"Yes."
Jason threw his head back into the crunchy hospital pillow with a harsh sigh. "How long have I been here?"
Bruce settled into the chair at his bedside. "Your own surgery didn't take long. Once they brought you out, you slept for almost sixteen hours. It's nearly been two days."
Jason hummed, and flicked back the sheets to look at his right leg, now clad in a plaster cast. He gently moved it back and forth, cataloguing the deep burn of pain.
"You were lucky it wasn't worse."
"Well, yanking a trapped leg out from under concrete will do that to you," said Jason quietly. Bruce grunted in response.
They sat in silence for a long moment, Jason still tired enough from the whole experience that Bruce's continued presence wasn't even making him twitchy.
"…I wanted to thank you," said Bruce, just as Jason started to think he might nod off again.
Jason jolted, and turned his head to stare. "What?"
"For Tim. You kept him alive. If you weren't there, he might not have come out. So thank you."
Jason stared at Bruce for a long moment. "…It was nothing," he muttered eventually.
Bruce nodded, and said quietly, "I'm glad you're both alive."
Jason huffed. "Yeah," he said. Me too.
Twenty minutes passed in silence, neither Bruce nor Jason saying a word.
Eventually, Bruce dug his phone out of the pocket and glanced at the screen. "I should check on the others. Will you be alright if I leave for a bit? Damian's with Alfred down in the family waiting room."
And likely going stir-crazy with worry, thought Jason.
"I'll be fine, you clingy old man. Don't rush, go change into something that doesn't look like you've been wearing it for a week."
A tiny smile ticked up Bruce's lips, and he gave Jason's arm a firm shake where it was resting on the covers. He stood with a grace that belied the clear exhaustion weighing down his shoulders, and gently closed the door of the private room behind him.
Jason watched him leave, and gave it a full ten minutes before he hauled himself up from the bed. Someone—most likely Alfred—must have brought a bag of his things, because a duffel was resting on an end table next to a pair of crutches.
Jason gingerly changed out of the hospital robe into the spare set of clothes, thankful he hadn't been attached to an IV drip when he woke. He had to cuff the loose tracksuit pants above the cast, but being back in his own clothes outweighed any discomfort from the weight of the plaster.
He adjusted the crutches to the correct height, and with a glance outside the room to confirm no one he recognised was around, Jason took himself down the hall.
He had to wander for a bit before he found the right corridor, but eventually he stumbled upon the recovery rooms down from ICU.
Spotting Dick leaving one of the rooms with a phone clutched in his hand expedited the process significantly.
Jason waited until Dick was out of sight before manoeuvring himself into the room, latching the door closed behind him.
He took a moment before he turned, bracing himself for the worst.
Tim looked lifeless laid out on the bed, surrounded by beeping machines and trailing wires. Jason forced down the swoop of fear in his gut, watching the rhythmic wave of the heart monitor until his own pulse settled. They were both here, no longer trapped in that basement, and Tim's heart was beating.
They were alive.
Jason watched Tim for a long moment, then levered himself into the chair and settled in to wait.
He must have dozed off, because the next thing Jason was aware of was blinking himself awake to a small sound coming from the bed.
He glanced across to Tim, and saw his eyes had opened a crack, the heart monitor picking up speed.
"Hey," said Jason quietly, "you look like shit."
Tim's head fell to the side, and he blinked long and slow at Jason across from him.
Jason shuffled the chair closer, keeping his voice low. "Dick just left to answer the phone, and Bruce is checking on everyone else. It's been two days, and you're in Gotham General. Kon got you out. You're alive."
Tim's head moved in a semblance of a nod, and his eyes fell shut, as though even that movement was too much.
Jason slid his hand beneath Tim's where it rested on the bedsheet, feeling the twitch of small fingers against his palm. "You know the drill, press once for yes and two for no. You got it?"
Yes.
"Are you in pain?"
A pause. No.
"Need a drink?"
No.
"Want me to get Bruce? Or Dick?"
No.
"Want me to stay?"
Yes.
"'Kay. I'll be here until you want me to leave."
No.
Jason let out a huff, unable to contain a smile. "Alright. You won't be getting rid of me any time soon, then."
Tim gave his hand another squeeze, and Jason returned it with a gentle squeeze of his own. Something in his heart wrenched loose at the sight of Tim's eyelids drooping shut, the barely-a-conversation enough to exhaust him.
The wave of relief settled deep into Jason's bones, and he couldn't help giving Tim's hand another squeeze.
"I'm glad you're okay, kid," he said, and let himself slip back to sleep, Tim's hand still clutched in his own.
A/N:
I read so many surgical articles on impalement for this and disregarded most of them.
Also, it's so nice writing on a new laptop where right clicking to bring up spell check actually works on Notion! I switched from Word/Dropbox back in 2020 to have all my fics in one database and I didn't realise how annoying it was for my writing flow to try and correct spelling errors when I had to click in one random place that didn't work half the time, lol.
Thanks for reading, and for everyone's comments that gave me the inspiration to finally finish this! You can find me on my social media linked in my profile.