Chapter Text
There’s sand in his mouth, gritty against his skin beneath the cowl. It whips against the lenses of his mask, kicked up by his speeding tyres. It extends endlessly around him. In front of him. Stretching between him and his son. Robin. Jason.
Batman tries to kick the batcycle up another notch, but already it’s straining at top speed, whining and shuddering between his thighs. It’s not fast enough. Not half as quick as the racing of his heart - the endless circle of his thoughts chasing each other around the static haze in his head. How long has it been? How long since Jason has been in his hands? The Joker’s?
Too long. The Joker is violent and unpredictable. He could have done anything to Jason. Hurt him. Killed him.
No.
Batman can’t let that happen. He won’t. He won’t be too late.
The desert disappears beneath him. In the distance, a small brown smudge winks into existence, getting rapidly larger. Batman’s heart clenches. That’s where the Joker has Robin. That’s where he’ll find his son.
Batman’s brain is strangely blank as he lets the batcycle slide out from underneath him. There are no real thoughts in his head, just panic and a single-minded determination. The air is hot and close against his skin. The desert crunches beneath his boots. Up ahead, a little metal door is all that separates him from his son.
Batman launches himself towards it and the door gives way like paper beneath his solid kick, not even locked. There’s a half-second where Batman adjusts to the sudden change in scene: a frozen moment in time where Batman’s eyes adapt to the sudden darkness, the concrete where there once was sand, the closeness of the walls. Then his gaze finds Jason and suddenly his son is the only thing in the world that he can see.
There’s blood. A lot of it. So much of it that for an awful, terrible, inconceivable moment, Bruce thinks Jason might be dead. It’s soaked into the concrete floor, leaking from his child’s split lip and the awful gash across his forehead, staining Jason’s shredded Robin costume.
Bruce’s stomach lurches up his throat and lodges there, thick and unwieldy. Something that might be a scream tries to follow it up, tries to force its way out of him, but there’s no room in his swollen throat for it.
Jason’s eyelids flutter and he’s not dead, not dead, and that should matter, that does matter. But the Joker is crouching over his son, one gloved hand tangled in Jason’s curls, the other clutching at his hip, staring up at Batman with what might be genuine shock. And Jason’s Robin uniform is torn and ruined and peeled away from him, peeled off in places. And Jason’s legs are bare and so is the curve of his hip and more and…
“Batsy!” The Joker gasps, rocking back on his heels. Batman can see the gape of his fly, the pale stretch of Jason’s flesh. There’s a buzzing in Bruce’s ears, so loud it almost drowns the Joker out. “Don’t you know it’s rude to arrive so early to a party? Now I know where boy blunder got his man-“
Batman’s fist cuts the words off, sends them skittering back down his throat with a brutal punch. The Joker falls back against the concrete with a strange strangled sound that might be a laugh and Batman follows him down. Delivers another sledgehammer punch that has the Joker gasping. It’s not enough. A blank red haze fills Bruce’s head. Not for what the Joker’s done.
“Ooh, B,” the Joker manages, breathless, “you know I like it rough.” Blood trickles out of the corner of his mouth when he smiles, yellow teeth stained red. “I don’t think your little birdy liked it quite as much, though.”
Batman roars. It feels as though all of the blood has drained out of his head. His skin prickles. His heart pounds in his throat, a sick, throbbing beat. What the Joker’s implying...what the Joker has done…
And Batman should go to Robin, should be checking on his son, because Robin is lying still and silent on the concrete behind him, covered in blood and bruises, broken and hurting. But Batman can’t get past the fact that the man who did that to him is in his hands. Is smiling up at him with blood stained teeth. Is reaching for the wrist of the arm holding him against the ground with the hand that touched his son.
Batman knocks the arm aside and shatters it in two deft movements. The Joker screams once, high and clear before the sound tapers into a breathless laugh.
“Did I hit a nerve Batsy? Did you want to be the one to pop his cherr- ugghhhh….” he cuts off with a moan as Batman breaks his other arm. Bile licks up Bruce’s throat. Thick and hot and burning.
“Is that - hah - ha, ha, ha - is that why you put him in that sinful little costu-“
Another brutal blow to Joker’s chest. Batman feels ribs give way beneath his knuckles. Sees blood bubble over the villain’s lips. The Joker sucks in a rattling breath, chest heaving beneath Batman’s hand. Batman uses that same hand to leverage himself to standing, feels the dip of the Joker’s chest, hears the ragged inhale. The Joker blinks up at him, his mouth moves, as if he’s going to speak again and Batman cuts him off with two quick blows - one to each leg. Bone crunches beneath the sole of his boot.
Somewhere behind them, someone makes a soft, frightened sound. The noise cuts through Bruce’s head like a knife, sharp and clear. It’s Robin. It’s Jason. He’s here and he’s hurt and he needs his father - needs Bruce.
Batman moves without thinking. Doesn’t need to think, just turns towards his son, the world spinning around him until his gaze finds Robin again. His kid is sprawled on the filthy concrete, his arms wrenched behind him, clasped together with cruel metal cuffs. His face is turned towards the door Batman had burst through, one cheek pressed into the ground, his domino mask torn and soaked with blood. There’s blood on his legs too, splashed across the bare skin. One of them is stretched out at an awful, unnatural angle, as if it’s been wrenched out of the hip socket.
Bruce chokes on a sudden surge of bile. Stumbles. Swallows convulsively against the acid in his throat. That’s his son. That’s his son.
When Batman steps closer, Robin flinches. It’s barely there, just a twitch of skin, but Batman sees it. It breaks his heart. Shatters it right in his chest. Batman isn’t sure if the kid can even move more than that one little twitch. He’s been beaten so badly, mangled almost beyond recognition.
Nothing could stop Batman from reaching Robin’s side then: not the Joker, not any of Batman’s extensive rogue gallery. An alternative version of himself could burst through from a parallel universe and tell him the world would be destroyed if he made it to Jason and Batman would fight tooth and nail to get there anyway.
He falls to his knees amongst the blood. Hesitates. He’s not sure if he can touch Robin - Jason - without causing him pain. He’s not sure if he should. Jason’s face is swollen, already streaked with dark, angry bruises. There are more bruises on the pale skin of his neck, black stripes that might be finger-marks, purple circles punched into his flesh that might be worse. Jason’s chest is moving jaggedly with his shallow, hitching breaths. If it weren’t for that, and the tremble of Jason’s dark lashes against his cheeks, he could be mistaken for dead.
No. He’s alive. He’s alive and Batman is going to keep him that way.
First, the cuffs. Harsh metal circled around his son’s thin wrists. When Batman reaches for them, he’s surprised to find his hands are trembling. He clenches his fingers into fists, has to close his eyes and take a deep breath and will that awful fear, that weakness, away.
Jason doesn’t flinch when Batman finally touches him. It’s not clear whether he’s actually conscious. One of his hands is a mangled, bloody mess, the fingers twisted and broken in a way that has Batman’s stomach clenching around nothing but acid. When Batman carefully unclasps the cuffs, the fragile skin underneath is rubbed raw, a wet mess of flesh. Batman ghosts his fingers across the wounds as gently as he can. Tries very hard not to imagine Jason struggling futile against his bonds and fails.
“Robin,” Batman murmurs, resting Jason’s arms carefully on the concrete beside him. He can’t stop himself from laying a hand against his son’s swollen cheek. It dwarfs Jason’s face. He’s so small, so young.
“Robin,” he tries again, clumsily petting through his son’s sweaty, blood-matted curls. God knows what’s hidden underneath that riotous mass of hair. Perhaps it’s better not to wake him. Still…
“Jason.”
Jason’s eyes flicker, that lovely, startling blue hazed with pain. For a moment he stares blankly, his face tight with fear.
“No,” he moans, so quietly that Batman, even so close, can barely hear him. “Please, please stop - I c’n’t -“
The words are slurred around a thick tongue. A sliver of crimson blood trickles over his chin. Bruce feels as though the world is collapsing in around him. No, not the world, the universe.
“It’s OK, chum. It’s OK, Jay-lad, I’m here. I’ve got you, sweetheart. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
Jason moans again. His eyes roll fearfully before they seem to finally focus on Batman, crouching over him.
“B?” He whispers and Bruce’s heart clenches so hard he tastes blood, copper on his tongue.
“Yeah, baby, yeah it’s me. I’m here.”
“Dad,” Jason sobs and Bruce didn’t know he could hurt any more but he does, he does. “Dad, ‘m sorry. ‘M so s’rry.”
“Don’t. Don’t be Jay-lad. It’s OK. I’m getting you out of here.”
He needs to. They need to get out of here, away from the Joker, away from the blood and the heavy stink of fear and sweat and - God - and sex.
Jason doesn’t reply. Carefully, Batman unclips his cape and lays it over his son. He tries not to look at the blood and bruises and...other fluids on the back of his child’s thighs. He fails. Has to squeeze his eyes shut and tighten his throat to keep from vomiting. He sees it still, branded across the backs of his lids. He’ll keep seeing it, he knows, until the day he fucking dies.
There’s a heady sense of relief as soon as the cape has obscured the worst of it, even though he knows it’s still there under the fabric.
Slowly, so slowly, so carefully, and yet somehow not carefully enough, Batman rolls his son onto his back. Jason gasps, choking on an awful noise of pain and Batman winces. Jason’s arms flop uselessly beside him. His head lolls loose on his neck. Batman cradles his skull in one hand, awfully aware of how small it is, how easily it fits into his palm.
Jason chokes again, the pale column of his throat working, blood pooling in his mouth. Batman tilts his head gently to the side to let a little trickle of crimson slide out. He has to shut his eyes again to avoid the bruises - the hickeys - on Jason’s little throat.
A hand slides against Batman’s uniform. “B?” Jason manages, a pained little rasp. “My - m-my mom - m’m…”
For the first time, Batman senses another presence in the room. It’s probably a shameful condemnation of his skills that he hadn’t seen Sheila before, but Bruce doesn’t care. She isn’t important - not to him, not when Jason is there and he needs him. But Jason had asked after her, and Batman can’t leave a person behind, even if they aren’t so innocent.
Batman leans carefully over his son, presses a trembling kiss to his blood-sticky forehead. “I’ve got her,” he whispers. “I’ve got her, son.”
They don’t have a lot of time. Jason needs a hospital and God knows what tricks the Joker might still have up his sleeve, but he has to free Sheila, Jason will never forgive him otherwise.
Batman spots Sheila the moment he moves his focus from Jason. She’s tied to one of the tall concrete poles that litter the warehouse, her arms wrenched behind her, a cloth forced between her teeth. Her face is red and puffy, streaked with tears, but there are no obvious injuries that Batman can see. It’s almost impossible to dredge up any sympathy for her. Not when he knows what she’s done. Not when she had sold her own son out for greed.
When Batman steps towards her, she flinches, as if she’s afraid that he might hurt her. For a moment, Batman considers it. It would be endlessly satisfying to feel her bones crunch beneath his fist.
He doesn’t. Instead he slides a batarang out and uses it to slice Sheila’s wrists free. She staggers. Stumbles. Reaches up to tear the gag free with a dry gasp. Batman doesn’t care. Already, he’s turning back to his son.
“I’m sorry,” Sheila gasps. Batman feels a hand scrabble at his shoulder. He shakes it free with a snarl. “I didn’t - I didn’t know he would...oh God…”
There’s the sound of retching, an awful wet gagging noise, the splatter of vomit against concrete. Bruce has to tighten his own throat at the sound.
He crouches by his son again. “She’s free,” he whispers, running fingers through Jason’s tangled hair. Jason only whimpers in response. “I’m going to get you out of here now, I’m going to pick you up.”
He doesn’t wait for a response to that. There’s never going to be a good one. There’s never going to be a way to do this without hurting him, and they’re running out of time. As carefully as he can, Batman gathers Jason into his arms. Jason whimpers, small and in pain and Bruce’s heart aches with every tiny sound, with every painful jostle that Batman can’t help.
“Is he...oh God, is he…”
Fingers dig into the meat of Batman’s arm. Sheila reaches for the boy in his arms and a growl that doesn’t even sound human rips it’s way out of his throat.
“Don’t touch him!” Batman roars and she flinches, shrinking away from him, white as a ghost in the dim light. Against his chest, Jason whines and Batman tucks his son’s face into his neck. It’s wet, whether with blood or tears, Batman can’t tell.
“Don’t…” he chokes. “Just get out of here.”
“Leaving already?” A laugh, shrill and sick. Jason flinches with his whole body and Batman’s arms tighten automatically. “But the party...isn’t over, Batsy. We - hah - we still have my final…my final surprise.”
He shouldn’t turn. He shouldn’t look. He should just get the hell out of here and leave the fucked up clown to whatever fate he has in store. But Batman can’t help himself. He has to know.
The Joker is still lying where Batman left him, limbs spread in a grotesque halo around him. He’s staring at the three of them with an awful intensity, but when he catches Batman’s white-lensed gaze his eyes flicker away. Batman can’t help but follow them to the ticking red numbers burning out of the gloom.
A bomb. The Joker’s set a fucking bomb.
“Get out,” he roars, already launching himself towards the door, holding Jason tight against his chest. Behind him, he can hear Sheila scrambling after him. Can hear her panting, terrified breaths. Then Batman is bursting out onto the sand, sprinting, not slowing, not bothering to look for where he’s going, just knowing he has to get away.
Another laugh follows them out. Batman almost doesn’t hear it over his own desperate breaths, the crunch of sand beneath two pairs of feet. Then…
⁂
There’s a ringing in Batman’s ears. A sharp pain throbbing in his head. It’s dark...or...no…Batman’s eyes are just closed. He blinks, feels the rasp of his eyelashes against the lenses of his cowl.
Above him is an endless sky, starting to dim as the sun sinks below the horizon. Where is he? The ground beneath him feels gritty, somehow soft yet firm at the same time. The air around him feels dry and too hot and…
Everything slams back into place at once. He’s in Ethiopia and he’s not alone: the Joker, Shelia, Robin - Jason, it’s Jason. He’s hurt. The Joker - the Joker hurt his son.
Batman pushes himself up so quickly that his head spins. Where’s Jason? Where is his son?
There’s a flash of red, the Robin costume, two bodies - two people - lying just a little way away from him. Batman scrambles upwards, forwards. Doesn’t make it off his knees. Slides to a stop at his son’s side. Jason is lying limp, limbs a strange tangle around him, the cape wrapped around his ankles. His face is slack and still.
Bruce’s heart thuds to a stop in his chest, an aching void behind his ribs. He rips his gauntlets from his hands and tosses them across the sand. Then he presses his trembling fingers to the skin beneath his son’s jaw.
There’s a pulse, slow and thready. Beside him, Sheila groans. Batman stares hard at Jason’s stomach. Turns his head and lays his ear against his son’s mouth, watching his chest.
He’s not breathing. Jason isn’t breathing.
Fuck. Fuck. The whole world drops out from underneath Bruce. For a second he can’t breathe either. Then -
“Superman!” Batman screams, unconsciously, instinctively, the sound tearing out of him like it’s coming from someone else. It rips his throat to shreds. He tastes copper in his mouth. “Superman! Clark, please! Help me!”
There’s no guarantee that Clark will hear him. Even less of a guarantee that he’ll come. There could be any number of emergencies: a villain that needs stopping, a natural disaster that needs evacuating, a cat stuck up a goddamn tree, perhaps. Jason could die here, out on the sand. Jason might -
There’s a sudden gust of wind, whirling sand up in its wake, turning the grains into tiny shards of shrapnel. Then a heavy thud and a strong, familiar voice.
“Batman?”
Batman almost melts in relief. He came. Superman is here and he can take care of this. He can save Jason.
Quick footsteps, then Superman is kneeling at Batman’s side, his face paler than Batman has ever seen it. “Oh Rao, what happened? Robin? Batman, what happened?”
Batman shakes his head. His desperation is lodged so firmly in his throat that it makes it difficult to get the words out. “He’s not breathing. Take him...take him please. He needs a hospital. He needs…”
Superman lifts Jason into his arms before Batman can finish his rambling plea. For a second, Batman’s cape clings to Jason, tangled around one leg, before sliding to the ground with a soft puff of sand. It leaves Jason horribly exposed, pale and vulnerable in the dimming light. Superman’s face twists with something that might be horror. Batman scrambles for the cape, wanting to tuck it back over his son, but Superman is already gone, disappearing into the distance in a streak of red and blue.
⁂
“What happened, Bruce?”
The voice is still familiar, although it’s softened into Clark Kent, losing the edge that Superman affects when he’s the man of steel. Bruce doesn’t look up from his hands, clenched between his thighs to stop them trembling. There’s a lump in his throat that feels as big as the world. When he tries to swallow around it, it hurts, jagged and heavy as a stone.
“He -“ Bruce has to swallow again, dryly. His throat clicks. He feels, rather than sees, Clark sit beside him. The warmth of his thigh presses against Bruce’s leg. “He found his mother - his birth mother - in Ethiopia. He was angry at me...for benching him…”
“I’m sure you had good reason to,” Clark says, softly, when Bruce pauses a little too long.
Bruce twitches one shoulder in dismissal. Has to clench his hands harder against the hot swell of self-hatred surging through his chest. If he hadn’t benched Robin, if he had trusted him, maybe this would never have happened.
“He ran away to find her. I was in Lebanon, after the Joker. We met up there. We went to Ethiopia together. I fucking - I fucking took him here.”
A hand drops onto Bruce’s shoulder, warm and reassuring. Bruce doesn’t have the energy to shrug it off.
“We found his mother - Sheila. She was working with an aid charity. Embezzling them out of money. Jason - he only wanted to get to know her, he just wanted - wanted to spend time with his mother.”
A shuddering breath.
“She sold him out. The Joker was blackmailing her, so she - she sold Jason out to him. Her own fucking son. By the time I found them, that freak had had him for over an hour. I don’t - God - I don’t even know what he did to him. Tortured him and -“
Bruce swallows again around the words. He doesn’t want to think about what that monster had done to his son. He doesn’t want to say the words.
“He was going to kill him.” And it hurts to say it. Hurts to admit how close Bruce had gotten to losing him. If he had been just a little bit later…
Not that Jason is safe now. It will be another few hours, most likely, before Bruce hears anything from the doctors. Jason had been in bad shape when Superman had brought him to the hospital. There’s no guarantee that he’ll survive.
The thought feels like a void in his head, as if it’s sucking away everything inside him, consuming him, turning the future into a sucking black hole. He feels so utterly out of control. Feels as though he’s been turned inside out and scraped raw and put back together by someone who didn’t have a clue what they were doing.
“And the Joker?” Clark asks, hesitantly. “What happened to him? Where is he?”
Bruce shrugs. “Dead.”
His voice sounds flat and awful even to his own ears. Bruce doesn’t care. He doesn’t care what Clark thinks of him.
“Dead?” Clark repeats. Then, dropping his voice to barely a whisper: “Bruce you didn’t - did you kill him?”
“I should have!” Bruce snaps, not bothering to keep his own voice low. He should have known that’s what Clark would care about. In another life, maybe that’s what Bruce would have cared about too, but not in this one. Not now. “I should have broken every bone in his fucking body.”
Another deep breath. Bruce can’t stop the shaking now, no matter how tightly he squeezes his hands together.
“No,” he continues, low and bitter, “the Joker’s own bomb got him. The one he would have killed Jason with.”
He can’t help looking at Clark then. There’s a strange expression on his friend’s face that Bruce can’t read.
“You don’t believe me? You can blame me if you want, Clark. I’m the one who made sure he couldn’t get out. I broke his arms and legs. Some ribs too. There’s no way he got out of that warehouse. And you can blame me for that if you want, Clark. I don’t care.”
Clark’s face twists. “Bruce…”
Bruce surges out of the chair before Clark can finish whatever he was about to say, start whatever lecture was on his tongue. There’s a wild, restless energy blazing in Bruce’s chest. He wants to hit something. Wants to destroy something.
“I don’t care, Clark!” He yells, too loud, too angry. Clark just sits there, still and silent in the face of his rage. “I don’t fucking care! He raped him.”
And the word breaks over a sob. That awful, hateful word, twisting like a knife in Bruce’s throat, dragging that awful ragged sob up after it. It hurts more than almost anything Bruce has had to endure just to think it, to think it and know that it applies to his son.
“He’s fifteen! He’s, God, he’s just a fucking kid and that sick son of a bitch…”
Another sob. Bruce presses a shaking hand over his eyes. He feels Clark stand. Feels a hand touch his arm, surprisingly light.
“Bruce -“
Bruce hits him. Puts all of his fear and anger and hatred into one brutal punch. Clark rolls with it, turning his head to absorb the impact, letting Bruce knock him aside. If he hadn’t, Bruce would have broken his hand.
“Bruce,” Clark says again, louder, firmer. “I don’t blame you, OK? I don’t. I’m not - I’m not saying that I’m happy about it. I’m not happy about anything that has happened here. But I don’t blame you. I understand.”
It helps, a little. But Bruce is too hurt and bitter to accept it.
“No you don’t,” he says, wet and ugly. “How could you possibly understand? He’s just a kid. He’s just a fucking kid.”
Clark doesn’t reply to that. Bruce isn’t sure if there’s anything to say.