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By the time Hood shows up, Tim already knows he’s in trouble.
There weren’t supposed to be this many people at the drop point. They definitely weren’t supposed to have access to the kind of weaponry they’ve got.
He’s also pretty sure no one bothered to train these morons, which is probably why he’s still alive, and also why he’s hyper-aware that this has a high chance of ending really, really badly for everyone in the building.
And then the Red Hood crashes in through a window.
He only catches a glimpse of the scarlet helmet before he has to jerk his head back behind the crate he’s crouched against to avoid getting hit by a panicked spray of bullets. Once again, he tries the comms, even though he’s pretty sure the electric pulse gun they caught him with earlier knocked it out entirely.
“N, Hood’s here,” he hisses. “Would be really nice to get some backup.”
As expected, nothing but static answers him.
Behind him, the violence has rapidly escalated. He flinches at the sound of gunshots, and a henchman topples past him, blood spilling from a shot to the neck. Jason isn’t holding back.
He draws a couple birdarangs from his belt, ignoring the way his heart is in his throat. The first one hits its mark, taking out the gun stand of the man up on the catwalk and sending the altered machine gun tumbling down to crack against the concrete.
“Hey Hood!” he calls, praying the gunman will take the opportunity to get the hell out of here before Jason catches him. “You know I appreciate the assist, but I’ve really got this under control!”
“Replacement,” he growls, flat and mechanical. “Pretty sure we talked about you wearing those colors. Forget already?”
Without even looking, he fires upwards through the grate of the catwalk floor, and the man above tumbles off the edge with an abruptly-silenced scream. Tim’s stomach feels like it plummets right along with him.
“Hood, we really don’t need to do this tonight,” he says, trying to keep the slight waver in his voice under control. “Can’t we reschedule for next week?”
If he keeps low, he thinks he can make it to the dark space behind the forklift while staying out of sight.
More gunshots. Bootsteps come closer across the concrete, and he bolts.
He makes it, crouching down and scanning the warehouse from his new vantage point. There’s a man, not far away against the warehouse wall, groaning as he applies pressure to the gushing wound in his leg.
None of the goons are paying him any attention anymore, completely focused on Jason as he darts around the crates, the white eyes of his helmet narrowing as his gaze whips up, searching for his missing prey. From his position, he can’t see the goon standing up on the other side of the warehouse, the same EMP gun that hit Tim earlier clutched in his shaky hands.
But Tim can.
“Hood, look out!” he blurts out.
Too late.
The pulse knocks him off his feet even from across the warehouse. He’s clambering back up within seconds, his distorted snarl sounding…more muted than it should.
No time to dwell on it. As soon as he’s sure Jason is still alive and more-or-less well, he takes the advantage to dart out towards the man bleeding out feet away from him, hoping Jason is distracted enough to spare him from getting a bullet in the back.
The would-be arms trader is nearly unconscious, eyes fluttering sluggishly as Tim yanks pressure bandages out of his belt.
Behind him, Jason’s muffled cursing suddenly gets much louder.
He glances back over his shoulder to see he’s ripped the helmet off, face covered only by a domino and teeth bared. The helmet’s eyes are dark, and he realizes the pulse must have knocked out the electronics in his helmet.
The idiots on the other side of the warehouse haven’t taken the opportunity to get the hell away from here. Another pop pop pop of gunfire rattles out every few seconds.
Jason has no choice but to fire back. Tim forces his attention back to the man in front of him, even as his skin wants to crawl off his body at having to turn his back to the predator behind him.
“You’re going to be okay, try and stay awake for me, alright?” he says steadily, fastening the bandage in place as quickly as he can.
The man groans, weakly raising his head.
It explodes in a burst of red and bits of skull.
Tim blinks. He can feel the wetness splattered across his face. Behind him, boots stomp closer, but he’s too frozen to even look.
There’s the sound of a gun cocking, and he knows that this time, it’s pointed at him.
“Replacement,” Jason says coldly. There’s no distortion, nothing between Tim and the bitter hatred in that voice, the same hatred that’s haunted him since the tower.
He swallows thickly. “You didn’t need to kill him,” he says, proud of the way his voice only shakes a little.
“Maybe I wanted to anyway. You know who these fuckers have been testing their weapons on? Cause it sure ain’t volunteers, even if you seem to want to apply.” The gun prods the back of his head. “Get the fuck up.”
He stands, slowly, hands open and shaking. He knows already that there’s no point fighting back, has had that lesson beaten into him with every broken bone Jason left him with last time.
He swallows again, and the line of scar tissue around his throat feels tight as a garrote.
“Turn around and face me.”
Jason’s lips curve up cruelly as he obeys. The gun is leveled at Tim’s collarbone now, perfectly placed to rip through the base of his throat and leave him to die choking on his own blood. He cocks his head. “Man, and here I thought maybe slitting your throat would finally get Daddy Bats to stop leaving his canaries alone in warehouses. Guess I was too much of an optimist.”
“If you’re going to kill me, stop monologuing and do it.” Tim has no idea where the words come from, but he’s pretty sure it’s not courage. He’s so far past courage, he thinks maybe he’s fried the part of his brain capable of terror and gone straight to exhausted resignation.
He wonders if this will hurt more than the knife, or if the shock will kill him before the pain has time to set in.
The domino keeps Tim from seeing the unnatural green that he knows is flaring hot and furious in his eyes, but he sees the lenses narrow consideringly. His finger twitches on the trigger.
He also sees the movement as the man slinking through the shadows towards them rises to his feet, something glinting in his hand.
Jason does too. The gun swings around towards its new target, but not fast enough. The object in the goon’s hand arches through the air towards them as the gun goes off, and the man hits the ground at the same time as the silver canister bounces off the concrete a few feet away from them.
It bounces once, twice. Tim has time to think of kicking it away from them.
The canister explodes.
White gas tinged sickly yellow rushes out in a cloud, gushing into the air like a water balloon crushed in someone’s hand. Tim slams his eyes shut on instinct, fumbling for his rebreather, but he can feel it irritating his skin already.
Jason swears viciously, voice muffled as through pressed against an elbow.
It’s not until Tim is frantically shoving the rebreather over his mouth that he realizes: Jason doesn’t have a rebreather.
He had a helmet, a helmet that’s now broken and tossed aside.
This is your chance, a voice in the back of his head whispers. You can run for it, leave Jason here to either die again or find his own way out.
Jason would do it to him in a heartbeat.
And Bruce would never, ever forgive him.
“Hood!” he cries, muffled through the rebreather. He opens his eyes again, trusting his domino to protect them from the burning prickle against the rest of his face. He lunges forward, grabbing Jason’s arm.
He’s shaken off instantly. “Get the fuck away from me!” Jason barks, the skin on his face beginning to turn red where it’s been exposed to the gas.
At that moment, the door to the warehouse crashes inwards.
Shouts come through the hazy air, too many of them. Backup, and not their backup.
Time to think fast.
They won’t make it out through the front, not if they have to fight their way out.
Jason staggers, and drops to one knee.
Improv time.
He grabs Jason again, digging his fingers into the leather of his jacket and dragging. It’s much easier this time, the older boy spitting half-formed curses like a furious cat, but stumbling after him as Tim hauls him towards the forklift and forces him into the seat. He climbs half over him, praying that someone was stupid enough to leave the keys in the vehicle.
His prayers are answered, and he grabs the keyring from where it’s been tucked next to the doorframe, shoving the key in the ignition. His foot barely reaches the pedal from where he’s almost on top of Jason, but it does reach, and he throws it in reverse and slams down as hard as he can.
Tires screech, the engine roars, and they hit the wall of the warehouse hard enough to almost jar him out of the vehicle. Jason is knocked to the side, only Tim’s stubborn grip on his jacket keeping him from tipping out.
Metal screeches deafeningly, and then they’re bursting free, into the cold Gotham air.
He’s not sure if he actually manages to put the brakes on before he’s hitting the ground and rolling. All he knows is that Hood is right there, right behind him, and he needs to get away.
He staggers to his feet, coughing around the rebreather as he draws his grappling hook. It takes him too many tries to get his fingers around it, too long to try and aim it at the next building over, the jolt as it hopefully hits its target feeling strange and muted through his arms.
The haziness isn’t going away. In fact, he’s pretty sure it’s getting worse, no matter how much he tries to blink it away.
A much larger body crashes into him right as he launches off, a hoarse snarl in his ear as they both go sailing, the angle thrown completely off.
They hit the roof hard.
By the time Tim stops rolling, one leg is dangling off the edge of the roof, and he scrambles backwards, heart pounding in his throat. He picks himself up, swaying on his feet.
Jason crashes into him again.
They hit the ground, the wind knocked out of Tim’s lungs and the rebreather out of his mouth. The gray edge of the roof and the black sky beyond are blurring together, a strange, swirling mess that makes him nauseous as it spins around him.
“Get away from me!” Jason shouts.
“I’d love to,” Tim wheezes, fingernails bending back as he tries to claw his way out from under him. He kicks backwards, and hears a thud as it connects.
He only barely feels the impact in his leg.
It does the trick. Jason is knocked off of him, and he’s able to flip himself over onto his back as he skitters wildly backwards, almost putting a hand over the edge for the second time.
Jason is a blur of red and brown, domino mask a smear of white no matter how hard Tim squints. But he’s not moving towards him, not attacking.
He’s hunched over, folded in on himself and trembling.
“Jason?” Tim says shakily.
His head snaps towards him, and he lunges clumsily. Tim rolls to the side, and Jason crashes down on his knees right where he had just been, making no attempt to follow him.
His face is up but not angled towards him, and this close, Tim can hear how rapid his breathing is. Realization dawns on him.
Whatever they got hit with, it’s affecting Tim’s vision, and Jason got a larger dose than he did.
He can’t see.
Swallowing heavily, Tim slowly starts to shift himself backwards, careful not to scrape the gravel that digs into his hands and risk making a noise. He gets weak legs under himself, and pushes himself cautiously to his feet.
Oh, he thinks, as his numb knees fold and send him crashing back down, it’s a nerve toxin.
This time, the sudden sound doesn’t trigger an attack. It sends Jason flinching backwards, one arm collapsing under him as he uses the other to push himself away.
For a heart-stopping moment, Tim sees him going straight over the edge, splattering in a blurry red smear on the ground below.
“Jason, wait!” He cries harshly, almost a shriek, and then, when that fails, “Robin, stop!”
Jason freezes, inches away from the edge, still shaking and unbalanced.
Tim swallows heavily. “You’re right next to the edge,” he says slowly. “Your left hand is about two inches away. You need to move towards me.”
Jason bares his teeth. His expression, what he can see of it, is wild. “Don’t come fucking near me,” he spits. “Don’t fucking touch me.”
“I’m not!” he replies hastily. “I’m not - I’m not touching you, I’m not coming near you. Here, I’m - I’m moving away.” He clambers backwards, this time not trying to hide the noise of the gravel, stopping only when he’s about ten feet away.
He’d be happier if it was the other side of the city.
“See?” he says thickly, and then cringes at the poor choice of words. “I’m all the way over here,” he continues anyway.
All he can see of Jason now is a hunched-up blob. “I’m - I can’t see,” he chokes out, and there’s none of the viciousness that was there moments earlier. “I can’t - it’s too dark, I don’t, - please let me out.”
His voice cracks.
“You are out,” Tim says, trying to make his tone soothing even as his heart clenches at the sheer fear in the older boy’s voice. “I - I don’t know what you’re seeing, but you’re outside, you’re on a roof, we’re not far from the docks. We got hit with something, do you remember that?”
The blob twitches. It might be a nod.
“Okay good,” he says, letting out a breath. “It’s, um. I don’t know what it was, but I think it’s affecting our nervous systems. I can’t - I don’t know about you, but I can’t move super well? And I think it’s messing with our ocular nerves. Your - your eyes are fine.”
He hopes he’s right about that. He can feel that the edges of his mask are loose where the gas has eaten away at the adhesive, hopes it didn’t get into either of their masks. Based on the now-thankfully-numb burns he knows are on his skin, he knows direct contact with their eyes could be very, very bad.
He’s not sure he would even know, not with how dull his skin feels.
He can’t think about that right now. There’s no way to flush out their eyes on this rooftop anyway.
Taking another deep breath, he forces himself to push his palms down, using the distant pressure of the sharp rocks to ground himself.
He needs to get off this rooftop.
He’s pretty sure he can get down more or less safely.
He’s also entirely sure that he cannot leave Jason here alone, blind, helpless, and trapped in whatever flashback this seems to be triggering for him.
“Okay,” he mumbles to himself. “Okay.”
He shuffles a little closer, close enough to see the way Jason has wrapped his arms around his knees. “Jason?” He tries quietly.
“Leave me alone,” he spits, voice cracking.
“We can’t stay here,” Tim says.
“Then fucking jump.”
Okay. New tactic. “If you stay up here, eventually B is going to come find you.”
Jason’s head jerks up, shoulders twitching strangely. “Then maybe I should just throw you off,” he hisses lowly. “Let him come find out what happens to little birds when they’re pushed out of the nest.”
Tim is almost grateful for his faded vision. He doesn’t know if he could handle the sight of the hate on his face right now, not with the familiar tone echoing in his ears.
Not the tower. He’s not in the tower.
He breathes through the instinctive panic, until he can think again.
Because when he’s able to think, to really take in what’s in front of him, he’s able to recognize that Jason isn’t really angry.
He’s scared.
“Where’s your closest safehouse?” he asks, voice quiet and level.
“The fuck - you think I’m going to tell you that?”
His restraint breaks. “Jason, I know you can’t see anything, because I can barely see anything, and you were exposed longer than I was,” he hisses. “I’m not leaving you here on this roof, because I have hobbies other than vengeance. So either we can sit here, exposed, and wait for B or Nightwing to come find us, or you can tell me where your safehouse is and I can get us there to wait for this to wear off. Stop the asshole routine and pick.”
Tim’s throat closes up as soon as the last word is out. Even knowing he can’t see, he swears Jason is thinking so hard about murder that it’s physically burning his skin.
Or maybe that’s just the lingering toxin.
“Two blocks from here,” Jason says, in the same tone that one might use to say I’m going to rip your windpipe out with my bare hands. “Want me to draw you a fucking map?”
“Two blocks,” he mutters to himself. Okay. Two blocks. That’s nothing. That’s totally handleable.
He can totally handle getting a panicking, murderous ex-vigilante who hates him specifically two blocks while blind and pumped full of nerve toxin.
It’ll be a cakewalk.
He swallows thickly. “I’m gonna come closer, okay? Don’t - don’t freak out.”
It’s an exercise in concentration, convincing his tingling legs to hold him up, but necessary if they’re going to make it to the safehouse without crawling the whole way. His balance is all off, and he totters over like he’s trying to walk on one of those trick moving funhouse floors, before crashing down to his knees again, just out of reach of Jason, who jerks back.
“Do you think you can stand up?” he asks him, shoving down the way his body rebels at willingly coming closer.
He recognizes Jason’s breathing pattern as one of the meditative ones Bruce taught them. “Not on my own,” he says finally through gritted teeth.
Tim swallows. “Okay,” he says, dread pooling in his stomach. “Okay. I’m - I’m gonna help you up, okay?”
Cautiously, he shuffles closer. Part of him expects this to be some sort of trick, that Jason will grab him as soon as he’s close enough, sneering at him for being stupid enough to fall for his act.
But no violent hands come. Jason stays still, breathing heavily, as Tim slowly approaches.
“I’m going to touch your arm,” he warns, and when Jason shows no sign of either consent or denial, he takes hold of his forearm.
Muscles tighten under his hand like he wants nothing more than to fling him off, but he doesn’t. His other hand comes up, fumbling before grabbing onto Tim’s arm in turn, fingers digging in bruisingly.
“You okay?” he can’t help but ask against his better judgment, trying not to wince at the way his bones grind together at the grip.
Jason takes a shaky breath, and then another one. “Just…keep telling me what’s happening,” he finally grits out. His grip doesn’t loosen, but Tim gets the sense its more to try and ground himself than it is to hurt Tim.
“Okay,” he agrees, and doesn’t try to shake him off, no matter how badly he wants to. “Standing up now, hold on,” he says, and begins to try to leverage them both to their feet.
Jason nearly comes down on top of him.
“The fuck, replacement?” he snarls, as Tim staggers and tries desperately to keep them both upright.
“It’s not my fault you weigh as much as a batmobile,” Tim snaps right back. “You’re not exactly helping here.”
“I will throw us both off this roof,” he hisses in his ear as Tim finally finds a stable stance that doesn’t make his knees feel like they’re about to buckle under their combined weight.
Tim barely manages to bite back another retort, only because there’s a tight, panicked undercurrent to Jason’s words, no matter how vicious he tries to sound.
Unfortunately, he’s got a new problem, which is that being thrown off the roof is kind of the only plan for getting down to the ground that he’s got so far. There’s no way they can both grapple down safely like this, not without turning themselves into pancakes.
He tries to concentrate on his memory of the roof when he was doing surveillance. He never used this position to watch from, but he must have seen it, the information must be stored somewhere in his brain. He squeezes his eyes shut, blocking out the vague landscape around him in favor of concentrating.
Jason shifts next to him, like he’s trying to support himself on his own weak legs. Based on the way he sags heavily against Tim instead of pulling away, it doesn’t go well. “What are you doing,” he grunts, sounding more like a demand than a question.
“Thinking,” Tim mutters. His eyes pop open again, and he squints at the far side of the roof to their right. Is there a…yes. “Do you think you can climb down a fire escape?”
“Are you shitting me right now?” Jason fires back.
Tim waits, so patiently.
He lets out a hissed breath. “Yeah, maybe,” he mutters. “But if I fall off I’m taking you with me.”
“Yes, I know, you want me dead, it’s come up,” Tim mutters, and earns himself a scoff that could almost be a snort. “Okay, c’mon, one foot in front of the other.”
Jason’s not holding much of his own weight up, but he does seem to be able to awkwardly move his feet, enough to shuffle along in a more or less forward direction. Tim has to concentrate hard to avoid tripping or unbalancing, but luckily Jason isn’t exactly in a position to rush him.
He fumbles for the smudged railing of the fire escape. Jason’s grip on him tightens, and Tim glances at him. The finer details of his face are unclear, but he can still make out the fear he’s failing to cover up beneath his scowl.
It hits him then, that Jason’s life really does rest in his hands at this moment.
He’s not sure how he wants to feel about that.
“Just… hold on, move slow, and don’t make any major movements unless I tell you,” he tells him, trying to keep the thin sheen of anxiety out of his own voice as he tries to look down.
The fire escape doesn’t turn into a platform until about a story down. The first section off the roof is just a ladder.
Tim really hopes it’s not so rusted it’s out of code, because he can not see well enough to identify any weak points right now, and if it breaks they’re screwed.
“There’s a ladder,” he says aloud, remembering that his companion can’t see what’s going on.
“Can we jump down?” Jason asks, eyes flicking blindly.
Tim considers it. They probably could under normal circumstances, assuming it’s not too rusted out, but with the partial numbness still seeping into his muscles, he doesn’t think he’d have enough control over their landing to keep them from going over the edge. “No,” he finally decides. “We’re going to have to try and climb.”
“Good fucking luck with that,” Jason mutters.
Tim chooses to ignore him in favor of pulling out his grapple.
“I’m going to try and lower us down, okay? So I’m going to - I’m going to tie you to me so I can use my hands without dropping you.”
Bruce taught him how to use rope to carry someone hands-free, but that method would require him to tie Jason to his back, and frankly he thinks if he has to have Jason against his back so close to his throat, he’s going to give in to the panic attack that’s already low-key waiting to pounce.
He improvises a new style of harness.
“This is digging into my fucking armpits,” Jason grumbles, tugging clumsily as he tests the thin cable of the grappling line.
“It’s only like fifteen feet,” Tim says, hoping Jason reads it as reassuring and not condescending. “I’ll climb fast,” he adds.
And he does his best to be true to his word, the line digging painfully into his hands even through his gloves as he uses the rungs of the ladder to keep them both from being dragged down by Jason’s weight where he’s bound limply like an oversized baby to Tim’s front.
He’s almost grateful for the numbness to his hands, knowing he’s going to have black lines of bruises running along his palms by tomorrow.
It takes him too long to realize that his feet are on the platform, the numbness keeping him from feeling the pressure against his soles until he’s able to make out the sense of his own weight resting on his hips.
He has a sinking feeling it’s getting worse, slowly but surely.
“Aaand we’re on the platform! One story down, two to go!” he chirps for Jason’s benefit.
“Yayyy,” he responds flatly. Based on the faint pressure Tim can feel against his arm, he’s digging his fingernails in like a cat dangled above a bathtub.
He pushes them faster on the way down to the next platform, less cautious now that there are actual steps instead of just a ladder and increasingly eager to get to the ground before the toxin eating through his veins hits its peak. Jason is only getting clumsier, barely helping at all where he’s still tied to Tim, which is probably for the best at this stage.
By the third platform, he’s leaning heavily on the railing just to keep them both upright. “Almost done,” he mutters, as much for his own sake as Jason’s. “We’re on the last platform, ground’s right there. Pretty much.” He squints at it, trying to see if there’s anything dangerous beneath them in the vague, pavement-colored expanse.
Jason manages to shift his chin where his head has flopped against Tim’s shoulder. “Another ladder?” he slurs out, sounding like he’s struggling to get his tongue to cooperate.
Tim feels along the railing, searching for… there it is, the ladder, currently pulled up off the ground. He rattles at it, trying to push it down, and his heart sinks.
It’s rusted in place. Nothing he couldn’t break if he was at full strength, but right now his arm starts to shake as soon as he applies the slightest bit of pressure.
He lets out a slow breath, resting his forehead against the railing and stubbornly ignoring the flakes of rust that fall against his cheeks.
“Well?” Jason manages to demand impatiently.
“Nope,” he responds dully. “No ladder.”
Jason’s fingers spasm against Tim’s arm. “Great,” he forces out.
“Okay,” Tim breathes. “Okay. Moving while we still can. Let’s do this.”
“‘We,’” Jason mutters sarcastically, head lolling to the side as Tim pulls out his grappling line again.
It’s much harder this time to get a stable line set, absolutely terrifying to swing their legs over the railing, clinging to the grappling line as tightly as he can and still not sure if it will be enough. It’s somewhat of a mercy that the ground is a blur beneath them, because it makes it harder to guess at exactly how much it’s going to hurt if they fall.
The older boy squirms, and Tim bites back a frightened sound as he almost unbalances off the edge of the platform. “Don’t do that,” he snaps, breathing harshly.
Jason goes still again, except for the rapid rise and fall of his chest.
Tim is too focused on beating back the panic that’s threatening to paralyze him as effectively as any toxin to feel bad. “Almost down,” he manages to scrape out, and tentatively eases them off the edge.
His grip holds, the grappling line creaking beneath their combined weight and his numbing knuckles popping under the stress. Jason remains still and limp as the corpse he’s theoretically supposed to be, and he’s not sure how much of it is the toxin and how much is just him kindly trying not to get them both broken necks.
Still, they don’t have much time before he’s going to slip.
One hand over the other. Don’t look down. Don’t think too hard about how discomforting it is to climb without being able to feel how hard his hands are gripping. Quickly now, get them as close to the ground as soon as he can.
In his defense, the grappling line gives before his hands do.
The rusted metal of the fire escape lets out a short, ripping shriek as the poorly fastened hook snaps free, and Tim echoes the sharp cry as they’re suddenly weightless. He can’t hear if Jason cries out too before the wind is rushing past his ears.
The weightlessness doesn’t last nearly long enough before coming to an abrupt and painful end.
Tim blinks. The blurry expanse of pavement has been replaced by a blurry expanse of sky.
He’s not fucking numb enough for this.
A breath in. It rushes back out of him with a strangled whimper, crushed by the throbbing band of agony that’s wrapped around his ribs.
Something shifts on top of him with a muted groan, and the pain flares so bright and hot he’s suffocating in it. Then, suddenly, the pressure on top of him disappears, and he can almost breathe again.
The pressure groans again, from beside him this time, which is a much more convenient place for the pressure to be. Tim tips his head to the side, squinting at Jason’s sprawled form. He’s rolled off onto his back, staring blankly up at the sky next to Tim.
He nudges him with his foot. “Are you dead again?” he wheezes.
Jason’s chest rises and falls. He blinks slowly, eyes focused on nothing. “I wish I crushed you,” he mutters.
Tim can’t help it. He lets out a short rasp of a laugh, lifting one heavy arm up to rest on his sore chest.
The other boy moves first, dragging a hand under himself and trying to push himself up. He doesn’t quite get his palm flat, index and middle finger pinned under his hand.
“You’re going to break your fingers,” Tim comments absently. He can’t tell if he can really feel the cold bumpiness of the asphalt pressed against his cheek, or if his brain’s just filling in what it knows should be there.
His head feels full of cotton.
Jason grunts, shaky arm giving out before he can do any actual damage or make any actual progress. He tries again immediately. “Don’ care,” he mumbles. “‘S’not safe.”
Tim refrains from sighing only because he knows it will hurt.
Some logical part of his brain pings that Jason is right, that they’re only a building away from a warehouse of pissed off arms dealers, and if anyone finds them in their current state they’re massively screwed. A much larger part of his brain protests that the ground is comfy.
But Robin is going to hurt himself if he keeps trying to get up without help.
He rolls himself onto his hands and knees, his uniform scuffing against the pavement, and then has to pause, nausea churning in his stomach as the impressionist painting that is his world swirls.
It takes him a moment to realize Jason has gone still too.
His hands are still bent awkwardly, breath coming in short, rapid pants as his eyes search the space near Tim blindly. “Replacement?” he whispers. “Tim?”
Tim squeezes his own eyes shut, a spike of dizziness making him almost tip over, and Jason’s voice sounds panicked when he cries, “Tim, wait!”
“I’m right here!” he rasps as soon as he knows his stomach won’t leave with the words. “I’m right here, I didn’t leave.” He half-crawls his way over to the blurry form of the older boy, prying his contorted hands up and taking their weight with his own. “‘S okay. Stop that. You’re going to hurt yourself, it’s okay, I’m right here,” he mumbles.
Jason lets out a slow, shuddery breath, tipping into him with a relieved ease that he doesn’t think is entirely the toxin. He seems too uncoordinated to take his arm, this time, so Tim does it for him, leveraging them both up to unsteady feet. “What direction?” he says breathlessly, the band of pressure wrapping itself around his badly-bruised ribs again as they sway.
“Northwest,” he slurs into his shoulder. “Empty building. Corner of Stone and 27th.”
“Stone and 27th,” Tim repeats, already dragging them forward one faltering step at a time. “Two blocks.”
It’s the worst two blocks of his entire life.
It’s made worse by the fact that he’s uncomfortably aware the entire way that it could at any moment get much worse. He can’t even tell if there’s anyone else on the street with them, let alone fight against anyone who decides a half-dead looking Robin and Red Hood are an appealing target. He’s seriously wondering at this point, every step that his legs don’t give out letting him know that his remaining steps are limited, if they should have stayed on the roof, if trying to make it to safety is going to be what kills them both.
Their only blessing is that the toxin seems to have reached its peak. His limbs aren’t getting any more under control, his vision no less blurry, but at least they’re not getting any worse.
He reaches the building mostly by memory, unable to read the street signs to confirm that they’re at the right intersection. Jason is sheer dead weight at his side, and Tim is only still moving through sheer will.
“Back door by the dumpster,” Jason mumbles into his shoulder when he jabs him with an elbow to confirm they’re in the right place. “If there’s no keypad you fucked up.”
There is a keypad. It takes him nine tries to punch in the passcode Jason gives him, trying to count the right number of buttons with dull fingers, but finally the door clicks open, and they stagger through.
“Is your apartment on the ground floor?”
“Third.”
“Do you hate yourself?”
Jason snorts. “My mental health is a whole can of…. birds. Bugs. Whatever.”
And of course there’s no elevator.
The stairs are slightly better than the walk through the streets, in that he’s not constantly afraid of attack (or at least less afraid, now that they’re indoors), but it’s also the closest he’s felt so far to collapse. By now, he feels like he’s walking on cracking ice, sure that every next step will be the one that breaks.
By the time they actually reach Jason’s door, he’s given up on even keeping his eyes open. It’s not like he’s discerning anything useful from the blurry colors around him anyway. His head lolls to the side, Jason’s hair brushing against his cheek as he fumbles through disarming the series of traps on the door, Jason’s short, exhausted directions little help.
Finally, they spill inside, and he cracks a heavy eyelid open. He makes out a vague green blob in what’s probably a living room. Perfect. He beelines over to it with the grace of a bumblebee dowsed in syrup, letting Jason slide off him and onto the moss-green blot of a couch with a grunt.
He stays upright just long enough to make sure Jason’s face is turned away from the couch. As soon as he’s pretty sure the other boy isn’t going to suffocate, his legs decide he really doesn’t need them any more for now.
At least the carpet is comfier than the concrete.
***
He wakes to the blessed smell of coffee and the absolute worst headache he’s ever had the misfortune of experiencing. He groans, turning his face to press it harder against the rug beneath it, as though he can squish the pressure throbbing inside his skull into submission.
“Wakey wakey, up and at ‘em! C’mon, you’re hogging my floor.”
He turns his head back to squint-glare at the source of the too-loud and too-chipper voice. “‘You’re too awake,” he mumbles. “How are you this awake.”
Jason is standing above him, clear as anything ever looks when Tim has just woken up, and some bit of anxiety Tim wasn’t conscious enough to know he still had unravels. He raises an eyebrow. “Lazarus pit privileges,” he chirps. “Get murdered by a clown and you can have them too.”
Tim squints harder at him. Though his voice is bright and loud, there are dark circles under his eyes, and his skin is still a vaguely sick color where it’s not splotched with mild pink chemical burns. Satisfied, Tim smushes his face back against the rug. “You’re full of shit,” he mumbles confidently. “You still feel awful too.”
Jason huffs irritably, and kicks him in the shin, lightly enough not to bruise.
Tim revels in the fact that he can clearly feel the pain at all.
“And here I was going to be nice and give you coffee before kicking you back to your cave.”
Tim’s eyes snap open, and he lifts his head fully to stare hopefully at the mug Jason’s got clasped in his hands, headache almost forgotten.
Jason huffs again, this time more amused than irritable. “Sit up, I’m not giving it to you where you’re going to spill it on my carpet.”
Tim obediently pushes himself up so he’s leaning against the front of the couch, his ribs and bruised hands protesting dully, and Jason passes him the mug. He almost moans at the warm delight of the ceramic cradled between his palms, the heat soothing the stiffness in his fingers, and he takes a deep gulp, not caring when it burns his tongue.
Jason flops back on the couch, massaging his own temples as he does.
Tim eyes him carefully. No signs of nerve damage that he can make out, no shaking hands or lack of symmetry in his facial muscles. The burns, which Tim can feel echoed on his own skin, are irritated but not severe.
More importantly, no anger in the lines of his body, no sign that this is a build up to him torturing Tim once he’s awake enough to really feel it.
Jason spots him looking, hand dropping from his head, and Tim is momentarily frozen under his inscrutable gaze.
Then he heaves a sigh, and the spell is broken.
“Guess I owe you a thanks. For, you know, not leaving me behind,” he mutters.
“Yeah, well.” Tim swirls the coffee gently in his mug. “I like to imagine you’d have done the same.”
To imagine, not really believe. Would have done, once, before Ethiopia.
Jason doesn’t call him out, doesn’t comment on the scattered ways the statement can actually be true.
“And…thanks,” he continues, tugging at a strand of white hair, almost nervously. “For not calling the bats. I don’t know why you didn’t, but I appreciate it.”
Tim doesn’t say it’s because he felt safe without them, because they both know that would be a lie. He chews on his lip, wondering how honest he should be.
“I know you’re still mad at Bruce,” he finally says quietly. “And I don’t get it, not really, but… you seemed freaked out enough without needing him around as well.”
He takes another sip of coffee to avoid having to see Jason’s reaction, and they’re both silent for a minute.
It’s…tense, but not as awkward as it probably should have been.
Finally, with a groan as his joints pop, Jason gets up. “Go take a shower before you head out,” he orders. “I don’t have a decontamination shower, but who knows what shit you’ve still got stuck to you.”
And without another glance, he heads off towards the kitchen, leaving Tim alone.
If he wanted, now would be the time to plant a bug or two, to hit his beacon and summon Bruce and Dick, to get up and go see if he could find any weapons or a uniform he could sneak a tracker onto.
Instead, he folds his legs under him, and resolves himself to savoring the rest of his coffee before he goes to shower.
If this is what some measure of trust between them looks like, he certainly won’t be the first to break it.