Original Author's Note

content warning: probably more medical inaccuracies!

when I started this project I really did not expect to be writing this much on-screen medical treatment. some more guest stars in this chapter, which I did plan for. and this is another long one.

Prompts

going into shock | fetal position | prisoner trade

Chapter 20: it's been a long day

Dick doesn’t wake up. 

Jason gets him out. He sticks around just long enough to see the Justice League burst forth from Firestorm, to see the atomic matrix glow for a single second; then he grabs Dick and runs. Everything else—the Crime Syndicate, the battle, the sun—it’s the Justice League’s problem now. Jason came here to rescue Dick. That’s what he’s going to do. 

He finds Kory and Roy outside, in sudden, brilliant sunshine. It was night when they breached the Watchtower. It’s been night for the past sixteen days. For some reason Jason thought it would still be night when they finished here. 

“Where’s Luthor?” Jason says. He passes Dick off to Kory. She lifts him and holds him with ease. 

“Inside. He went looking for Batman.” 

“Batman can handle him,” Roy says. He shifts from one foot to the other. He’s scratched up, bruised, but he doesn’t look hurt. He looks nervous. “We should go. Cold and Manta and the others already split.” 

“My thoughts exactly,” Jason says. “Rendezvous in Gotham. I got a hideout there.” 

“We have much to tell you,” Kory says. She tilts her head at Roy. Then she takes off in a burst of orange light. 

⁂

Dick doesn’t wake up. 

He lies limp in Koriand’r’s arms. She holds him under his back, under his knees, and it reminds her of nothing so much as their time with the Titans, when she picked him up and carried him into battle so he could keep up with the others. She loved carrying him then. She loved being close to him, feeling his skin on hers, feeling his life and warmth and love. She loved him then. 

Now he is cold to the touch. He looks paler than he ever did before. He is naked. Kory has never understood humans’ visceral aversion to nakedness, but she knows that Dick is more fervent about it than most. He hates to be naked. He hates to let others see him so openly. 

He would hate to have her carry him now. 

His heart beats fast. His blood pulses under his skin, but even that feels colder than it should be. Kory flies faster. She shoots across the bright sky in the direction of Gotham—now a distant shape on the horizon—and she hopes that Jason and Roy are moving fast, too. She will need their help when she lands in Gotham. She has some idea where Jason’s hideout is, but it is his, and she will be a stranger there. If more of Batman’s family is there, she will be a stranger to them, too. And she will need their help to care for Dick. 

Dick cares deeply. She has always known this. He cares for his family, his friends, and the people he meets in his travels, even if he only meets them once. Now he needs someone to care for him. 

Koriand’r is glad that it might be her. 

⁂

Dick doesn’t wake up. 

When Kory lands in Gotham, when Jason and Roy roar in on a stolen motorcycle, he doesn’t wake up. When they take him down into the sewers, he doesn’t wake up. When they lay him down on a cot in a surprisingly clean and organized cave, he doesn’t even twitch. 

Roy would find it funny, if he wasn’t so damn worried. 

“Heart rate’s elevated,” Jason says. He has his helmet off, finally, so Roy can see how worried he is. He stands over the cot in the cave’s little infirmary—again, surprisingly tidy—with one hand on Dick’s neck, taking his pulse. Kory hovers behind him. “I think he’s going into shock.” 

Roy moves to the foot of the bed and lifts Dick’s feet. He grabs a blanket and folds it over and over to prop underneath. Then he shakes another blanket—a thick blue fleece—over Dick’s body. 

“We should clean him,” Kory says softly. 

“We gotta get him awake first,” Jason says. “He—” Then he doesn’t say anything. He stares at Dick’s face, arms crossed over his chest, shoulders hunched. He looks small. Scared. 

Roy can relate. 

“If he’s going into shock,” Roy says, “he needs blood or oxygen.”

“Of course he does, Luthor fucking suffocated him, and—” Jason stops again. He has a raw look in his eyes—something in his head that he doesn’t want to say out loud. Maybe something he can’t say out loud. They all have those. Jason likes to pretend he doesn’t, but Roy knows. 

“So oxygen,” he says, patient, even though Dick is stretched out on the bed between them and he might be dying. “You got a supply down here?”

Jason jerks into motion. “Yeah. Yeah.” 

He goes to a closet and drags out a tank of compressed air and starts setting it up. “And blood,” he says over his shoulder, “he’s—he needs it. There’s some in the fridge.” 

“This is how you store your blood?” Kory says, peering into the refrigerator. 

“Get the bag marked O-negative,” Jason says. 

“But blood is warm,” Kory says. She takes the blood bag out, as directed.

“Jay,” Roy says. “Is this fresh?” 

Jason looks up. 

“Yeah,” he says. He glances around the infirmary. The rest of the cave. The haunted look is back in his eyes. “Someone else was here. Is here—I think.” 

“Bats?” Roy says. 

Jason nods. 

“Lucky for us,” Kory says. 

“Lucky for him,” Jason says. His voice is bitter. He fits an oxygen mask over Dick’s face. “We gotta set up an IV.”

So they do. Roy sets the bag up on a stand. Jason ties a tourniquet, finds the vein, and wipes the skin down with water and rubbing alcohol. Kory’s hands are the steadiest, so she injects the needle and places the catheter tube. Roy runs the line to the bag.

At some point, a couple of Bats slip into the infirmary. Robin steps inside the privacy curtain and lingers there, scowling behind a domino mask. He’s on crutches, with a baggy sweatshirt and sweatpants pulled awkwardly over a cast. After him comes Batgirl, the blonde one, still in costume and smelling like the city. 

Jason glares at each of them in turn, but he doesn’t leave Dick’s side. 

At some point, Batgirl slips out again. Roy finds some chairs and drags them to the bedside. Jason sits. Kory sits. When Roy points at the third chair, Robin shakes his head. Roy lets him be. The kid is old enough to know what he wants; Roy isn’t going to argue with him.

It feels wrong to argue, with Dick lying still and silent in front of them. 

Batgirl comes back with instant noodles. She hands a bowl to Robin. She edges around the bed, cautious but confident, and offers a bowl to Jason. He takes it. 

She gives Roy and Kory bowls, too, which is nice of her. 

At some point, Roy puts his head down on Kory’s shoulder. Her skin is warm. She’s still sweaty from the battle earlier, a little bit sticky, but she doesn’t smell bad. 

At some point, Batman steps into the infirmary. 

He lingers next to the curtain, like Robin did. He stares down at Dick. He still has his cowl, but most of the rest of his costume is gone. He’s been here a while, Roy thinks.

Jason glares at him, darker and angrier than he did with Robin or Batgirl. He reaches under the blanket and takes Dick’s hand, lacing their fingers together. Batman grimaces, but he stays quiet, and the truce holds. 

At some point, Batman moves close enough to check Dick’s blood pressure and blood-oxygen levels. He stays on the other side of the bed from Jason. He takes the reading and then—slowly, gently—tugs the oxygen mask away from Dick’s face. He leaves the IV. 

And there they sit. Jason clutches Dick’s hand, bending his head as if in prayer. Roy and Kory sit next to him, dozing on each other’s shoulders. Bruce looms at the head of the bed. He stares at Dick through unblinking lenses. Robin and Batgirl linger on the edges of the room, too agitated to sit, too nervous to walk away. 

They sit there for a long time.

⁂