the poem ends soft as it began

Jason Todd is no stranger to hiding places.

Once, he was stuck on the ground—sliding under dumpsters, crawling under porches, climbing through broken windows. Once, he was small, and his best bet was to hide himself in places no one else could fit. He was never the fastest runner or the strongest fighter, but if he could curl up out of sight, someplace no one could reach him, he could escape to live one more day. Once, that was all he needed.

Now, those things are no longer true.

He isn’t stuck on the ground anymore. Now, Jason can fly. Now he vaults across rooftops and railings without ever touching the ground. Now, he’s big and strong—six-foot-two in steel-toed boots, armed and armored, ready to fight anyone in the city and win.

But bigger guns draw bigger threats. Now, instead of dodging cameras and cops, Jason dodges bullets.

There are a lot of bullets in Gotham City, and a lot of people willing to use them. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out.

Jason lands on the roof with a groan. The impact jars all the way up his torso, into the back of his neck, into his teeth. The helmet muffles his voice, mostly. There’s no one around to hear anyway. He staggers a few steps further, making to leap the next gap, but the pain rolling through his ribs stops him. It’s getting worse. The adrenaline of the fight is wearing off, and Jason does not want to be in midair when the full extent of his injuries hits.

At least he managed to blow the warehouse, before they started shooting.

He stumbles to a stop next to the building’s aircon unit. He leans against the largest box, breathing fast and heavy with the growing pain. His breath stutters through the helmet’s modulator, sharp and mangled.

When he runs a hand over his armor, he finds it dented but unbroken. The armor did its job; the armor saved him from taking several bullets to the chest. What it couldn’t stop was the impact of multiple projectiles at 820 miles per hour. If he took the armor off—which he won’t, not in the open, he’s not that stupid—he would find his entire ribcage mottled red and blue. He's seen it enough times to know.

Heavy bruising. Multiple broken blood vessels. Possible internal bleeding. Trouble breathing means broken ribs.

His mental assessment sounds suspiciously like Bruce.

It hurts. Fuck, it hurts. Jason doesn’t realize he’s sliding down until he’s on the ground—the rooftop, rather—slumped against the aircon unit. Once he’s there, standing up feels impossible.

His leg is bleeding.

Oh, this is bad. This is not good.

His breathing, if anything, is only getting louder. Jason tries to get it under control, with what limited lung capacity he has, with his ribs trying to murder him. He pulls his legs up close to his body for a better look.

The wound on his thigh is shallow—and nowhere near his femoral artery, thank God. He probes it with one gloved hand. He finds twin holes in the thick fabric of his pants, and a bloody furrow in the skin underneath. It’s a graze. That would explain why it took so long for him to notice.

Okay. Okay. He can handle this. He can get through it. He can get himself out of this, he just—he just has to think.

He focuses on his breathing for a minute. Just breathe in and out.

It hurts. He winces, at the pain, at the ragged noise that crawls out of his throat. He keeps breathing. If he can breathe, he can move. If he can move, he can bandage his leg—he still carries bandages, not a lot, but he has them—and if he can bandage his leg, he can get out of the open.

He just has to breathe.

Tourniquets are easy. Bruce—Batman made him practice them, over and over, for hours, until Jason could tie one blindfolded and hanging upside down. He used to dream about tourniquets. He gets a strap off of his belt and cinches it around his leg. He doesn’t bother trying to cut away his pants leg—there’s no fabric in the wound, so that’s a problem for future Jason. He just tears back the cloth until the wound is exposed. Then he grabs the bandages and starts wrapping, before he has the chance to run out of energy.

He knows, if he stops now, he won’t get back up again.

Something passes overhead.

Jason jerks his head up. He just catches a flash of movement, and then it’s gone. He stares at the dark, clouded sky.

What was that?

The thing is, he knows what it was. Jason is not an idiot. He’s been doing this long enough to know a cape when he sees one.

He’s in trouble.

Fuck. Fuck. Shit.

He grabs for the aircon box, to pull himself up, and barely stifles a yelp. No, that won’t work, not with one leg bleeding and his ribs a mess of ballistic impacts. He might have hairline fractures; he doesn’t know, but the possibility makes moving incredibly risky.

Jason would take that risk—gladly, to stay ahead of the Bats—but his body doesn’t feel the same way. The pain makes it hard to even breathe. He ends up slumped back against the box, in the same spot, his chest heaving with each breath.

You’re fucked.

He holds himself still. He scans the neighboring buildings for any sign of movement. It wasn’t Batman that passed over him. He doesn’t think it was Batman. If it was Robin—or one of the others—it’s possible that they didn’t see him. If he just keeps still, and stays quiet, maybe they’ll pass him by, and he can crawl back to his safehouse in a couple hours—

Something moves.

Jason doesn’t see it. He feels it. The hairs on his neck stand up, his scalp clenches, and he pulls a gun before he even knows what he’s aiming at.

Batman stares down at him.

Neither of them move. Jason hardly breathes—half from pain, half from the force of his heart slamming in his chest. Batman is a shadow, the barest outline of a shape, and a pair of blank white eyes.

He doesn’t look human.

“Are you going to shoot me?”

He could. Jason could pull the trigger right now and empty a clip into Batman’s chest. It wouldn’t kill him. It would hurt, for damn sure, but they both know that Jason’s .44 isn’t enough to pierce the batsuit’s reinforced armor. It might slow him down, but it wouldn’t stop him.

Jason lowers his gun.

He’d like to pull the trigger. He’d like to empty the clip, watch Batman stagger in pain, and hear the latest Robin shriek with anger and badly disguised fear. But he doesn’t have the firepower to follow through. Follow that course of action one step further, and Jason can picture the results:

Robin swinging down on him with a sword. Batgirl putting a batarang through both his hands. Red Robin breaking his ribcage open like a piñata.

Six months ago, he wouldn’t have cared. He would have taken the shot, taken the beating, and spit his own blood back in Batman’s face.

Six months ago.

It feels like years.

Jason doesn’t have that spite festering in him anymore. He doesn’t have that anger. Right now, he just feels tired. His ribs hurt. His leg is still bleeding.

He doesn’t want to fight.

Batman steps toward him. Jason watches. It doesn’t look like Batman is about to attack. Robin is nowhere to be seen.

“You’re hurt,” Batman says. His voice is flat, emotionless.

“Yeah,” Jason snaps. “No shit.” World’s greatest detective, my ass.

Batman turns his head. When he speaks, Jason strains to hear him. “Robin, rendezvous at the Batmobile. Twenty minutes. Batman out.”

Jason’s mind races, through the gathering fog of pain. No Robin. Whatever Batman plans to do to him, he’s going to do it alone. He doesn’t want Robin to see.

That doesn’t bode well.

Jason’s teeth clench. He knows how hard Batman hits, and he’d rather not bite off his tongue. The angle’s bad, though, so it’s not a surprise when Batman reaches down toward him.

This is going to hurt.

Batman doesn’t kill, and he probably won’t want a detour to Leslie’s or the Cave; he’ll want to throw Jason in a cell as soon as possible. So it probably won’t be too bad. He’ll rough Jason up a little—and it’ll be hell on his bruised ribs, won’t that be fun—and then he’ll cart him off to Arkham and they can both get on with their lives. Jason survived Arkham once. Assuming he gets through the night without a rib in his lungs, he can do it again.

Batman takes him by the shoulders, avoiding the taser built into his chestplate. Smart. He levers Jason up, off of the ground. Jason hisses at the fresh stabbing sensation in his ribs.

Batman stills.

“Your ribs,” he says. His voice seems to be losing its edge, fading from Batman to Bruce. Jason doesn’t like that. It’s a level of vulnerability he doesn’t get anymore.

“What about ’em?”

“You’re hurt,” Batman says.

“Yeah,” Jason says again. “I got shot.” Batman still has him by the shoulders, crouching awkwardly to hold him up. His body wants to bolt. His lungs want to breathe fast and heavy, but he can’t, and the pain of trying only makes it harder to think. “Sorry it didn’t take.”

It’s far from his best jab. Batman flinches anyway. Jason feels the motion, and he flinches, anticipating the first hit. It never comes.

Batman just looks at him.

Somehow that’s worse. Those blank, inhuman lenses staring at him, peeling back every layer, grinding him down to nothing.

“What the fuck do you care?” He’s yelling. In the back of his brain, Jason thinks that he probably should not be yelling. He doesn’t have the energy, he doesn’t have the breath, and Batman is about to break his arms. But that part of his brain isn’t in control. Hasn’t been in control for a long time. “You think you’re gonna break me? You?” He laughs. It sounds completely fucking insane. “You couldn’t kill me if you tried. Do it. Hit me. You gonna let a couple broken ribs stop you, you fucking coward—”

Batman grabs him. One arm goes around his back, one around his knees, and Batman lifts him off of the ground.

Jason’s voice cuts out.

They’re moving. Batman swoops to the edge of the building, and sudden fear grips Jason. He’s going to drop you. He’s going to throw you off the roof! He clutches frantically at the armor, at the spot where the cape attaches.

Batman grunts. “Stop,” he says. Automatically Jason stops. Then he remembers that he doesn’t owe Batman anything, and fuck him, it looked like he was going to throw Jason off the roof.

He wasn’t. At the edge of the roof, Batman makes a short drop, and lands on the top level of a fire escape. It clatters loudly. Jason winces.

“Easy,” Batman murmurs. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

It sounds so much like the way he talks to children that it riles Jason up all over again, but this time the anger is mixed with confusion. Batman is walking now—walking down the fire escape, with Jason nestled in his arms.

What the fuck?

Batman is taking him somewhere. That much is clear. Jason just can’t see why. If Batman wanted to beat him up, he already had the perfect out-of-the-way place to do it. And if he wanted to move Jason, for whatever reason, why not just throw him over his shoulder?

Why carry him like he’s someone worth protecting?

“What the fuck?” Saying it out loud probably won’t get him any answers, but it does make Jason feel better.

“117th street,” Batman says. His voice is quiet. “You have a safehouse there. 117th and Mayberry.”

Jason freezes, because yes, he does have a safehouse there. One he thought the Bats didn’t know about. How—when— If one safehouse is compromised, he has to assume all of them are. How long has he been watching me?

“Is that correct?” Batman says.

“Yeah,” Jason says. “Yeah.” He pushes the rest of the implications off for another day. He’ll have to burn this safehouse, and seriously reassess the others, but that’s a problem for future Jason. His leg is still bleeding, and his ribs are shot to hell, and Batman—

It sounds like Batman is giving him a ride home.

Nothing comes for free.

Jason grits his teeth. If this is real, it’s one hell of a favor. Whatever Batman wants in return isn’t going to be pleasant.

They’re only a few blocks from his safehouse—a studio apartment on the fifth floor of a building where the owner takes payments in cash and doesn’t care about noise. As Batman slips in through the window, Jason hears the dull pulse of his next door neighbor’s music. Batman’s mouth twists in displeasure as he takes in the cramped space—the kitchen corner piled with surplus first-aid supplies, the couch made up as a bed, the bare floor covered in dust.

Jason clenches his teeth. He knows what Bruce is thinking, the rich asshole.

“You gonna put me down, or?”

Batman jerks forward, and moves to set him down on the couch. He moves slowly, so he doesn’t jar Jason’s ribs, and for the first time it occurs to Jason that Batman is carrying him. Jason is six-foot-two, well over two hundred pounds of muscle, and Batman picked him up like it was nothing.

Like he’s still a scrawny teenager in a traffic-light costume.

Jason stares up at the Bat. They’re back where they started. He’s on his back, in too much pain to move, and Batman is looming over him.

“What is this?” he says. “What, I owe you now, just ’cause you walked me home?”

“No,” Batman says.

Jason waits for him to elaborate. He just stands there. Muffled bass thumps through the walls.

“Look, whatever you want,” and those words still leave an acrid taste in Jason’s mouth, “just tell me and—and I’ll get on it when my ribs aren’t fuckin’ falling apart, alright? That work for you?”

“I don’t…” Batman tilts his head. “I don’t want anything.”

Jason snorts. “Sure. That’s why you picked me up and carried me home and dropped me on the couch? Out of the goodness of your fuckin’ heart?”

There is a lot of goodness in Batman’s heart. He would, in fact, do all of those things for any one of his allies, for any civilian who needed it. But not the crime boss who tried to take over his city one corpse at a time. Not the deranged rogue who tried to murder his children.

Not Jason.

“You were hurt,” Batman says. “I…” He looks around the apartment again. Then back to Jason. “I just… wanted you… safe.”

Jason blinks, and Batman moves. He slips out the window like a wraith, more agile than anything that size should ever be. Then he’s gone.

Jason sits there for a while, staring into the dark, waiting for something to emerge from the shadows. There’s no way it was that easy. No way Batman found him injured and incapacitated and then just… carried him home.

Only it seems like that’s exactly what happened.

Jason hits the release for his helmet and drops it next to the couch. He eases back against the cushions. A half-empty bottle of vicodin sits on the floor; Jason grabs it and shakes out one pill. There’s no water within reach, so he swallows it dry. Then he lays his head back and stares at the ceiling.

So what?

So Batman didn’t hurt him. So Batman saw him bruised and bleeding on a rooftop and decided not to make it worse. Maybe he got cold feet. Maybe he felt bad about it, like the bleeding heart he is. Jason doesn’t know. All he knows is he got lucky, he got really, really lucky, and now he’s sitting on his couch instead of in a cell.

And he’s going to have to burn this safehouse.

Fuck.

Jason closes his eyes. He lays his head back. He doesn’t think about how Batman picked him up and carried him like the kid in the traffic-light costume. He doesn’t think about how, just for a minute, he felt like that kid again.

⁂