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Jason Todd opens his eyes, pain tearing through his body in a way that tells him he's seriously injured, agony sparking along his nerves like lightning. He blinks once, twice, and then screams as if he's being flayed alive.
"Hood!" Robin and Red Robin yell in unison.
"What happened, Hood?" Nightwing demands, worry and anger in his voice.
"Red Hood, report!" Batman barks over the comms.
Jason's lungs have never felt heavier in recent memory. They sit in his chest like they're made of concrete. This can’t be real. It can’t. He can't— No. No. No!
"Not again," Jason sobs, something in his head fracturing, splintering into shards as he stares up at the lid of a coffin.
He's been buried alive.
"Hood, answer us!" Nightwing demands, voice buzzing in his ear. "What's the status of his trackers, Red?"
"I'm working on it. He changed the encryption again," Red Robin answers, voice tight.
Jason presses his hands against the lid of the coffin, nausea rising as he watches the satin lining wrinkle beneath his grip through wet eyes. The wood behind it is firm and solid. The coffin lid doesn't shift no matter how much desperate strength he puts into moving it, adrenaline burning through him.
“Let me out!” he screams so loudly he feels his throat burn. It doesn’t hurt quite as much as the batarang did, but it’s a very close second.
This can’t be happening. It can’t. He can’t— Jason can’t go through this again. This, even more than Joker and the crowbar, haunts him. He’s stuck in a coffin. He can’t move the lid. He’s— He’s—
"No. Not again," Jason sobs, the lights on his helmet the only thing keeping the darkness from swallowing him whole.
Batman's voice is tense when he orders, "Red Hood, repor—!"
"Dad! Get me out! I'm sorry, okay? I swear I'll stop killing people. B, don't make me crawl out of my grave a second time. Please!" Jason begs, shaking so hard his teeth chatter, slipping from denial to bargaining without stopping on anger.
There's a stunned silence on the comms before everyone starts yelling at once.
Jason can't focus on what they're saying, though.
His mouth tastes like mud and worms. He chokes on the remembered taste.
"Red—"
"I'm working as fast as I can," Red Robin bites out frostily, the tone that Jason knows he pulls out when he's well and truly pissed or when things spectacularly outside of his calculations have occurred.
Jason tilts his helmet the little amount he can and shakes bodily as the lights illuminate the coffin he's trapped inside. It's— He knows he needs to give them as much information as he can, that the smallest detail could lead them to him, but—
He's stuck in a coffin, presumably, six feet beneath the earth, buried alive, and—
His heart races faster and faster in his chest in a valiant attempt to detach itself from the veins and arteries and rip itself right through his autopsy scar, spilling itself into the coffin to flood the enclosed space with the scent of iron-rich blood.
Jason gasps for air. It’s— He can’t breathe. He can’t—
"Little Wing, breathe with me," Nightwing orders over the comms, voice soft but unyielding. "In two, three, four, hold. Out two, thr—"
Jason tries. He does. He swears he does. But he just can't—
"Not again. Not again. Not again," he sobs.
He scrabbles at the inside lid of the coffin, ripping the satin lining with the force of his grip. A voice, distant and almost smothered by terror, reminds Jason that he has knives, that he has equipment that he didn’t the last time he was in this situation, that he has a link directly to the Bats, that if he could just remember how, could force himself to think past the animal-like panic, he could activate his emergency beacon or trackers so that they could find him and—
"We'll get you out, Hood," Batman says, voice growly the way it gets when he's feeling an actual emotion. "We'll find you and get you out. I promise."
Jason knows that B is trying to reassure him, but all he can think of are the words that thoughtlessly spill from his lips and hurt his family, just like he's always doing, just like he's always done.
"You didn't last time."
The silence over the comms is so long and so intense that Jason starts to wonder if he imagined their voices, if his sanity cracked even further, if his comms are really broken and he just imagined the other Bats talking about finding him and hunting him down and saving him.
It ... it would make more sense than them actually caring enough to save him.
He murdered his way through Gotham, caused a bloodbath, forcibly put a gun in his dad's hand and tried to guilt him into committing homicide. He dressed in the Nightwing suit and killed people, something Dick Grayson has never done before. He beat Tim Drake almost to death in Titans Tower because he was pissed about getting replaced and turned his rage on the very last person in the scenario who deserved it; he can still hear Tim's screams of pain when he sleeps. He left Damian al Ghul Wayne with the League of Assassins, with Ra's and Talia al Ghul and—
"No one's coming," Jason says, tears leaking from the domino mask inside of his helmet as it feels like another warehouse collapses on his rib cage, depression eating its way through him.
Why would they? It's obvious, now, that their voices were all in his head. That he imagined it. Because not even a saint would be forgiving enough to—
Jason claws at the satin lining of the coffin lid. It's too similar, brings back too many horrid memories. The lack of air. The echo of his heart pounding so loudly in his ears that he couldn't hear himself over it. The bite of coffin-lid splinters digging beneath his nails. The terror so strong it could almost stop his pounding heart.
Anger, unlike anything he has felt since he finally conquered the side effects of the Lazarus Pit, flares through him like wildfire. Jason snarls wordlessly, a primal sound of rage. He pounds on the coffin lid until his hands ache, wants to scream until his vocal cords rip and his throat shreds and bleeds on the off-chance that someone real will hear and—
"Akhi," Robin snaps in League Dialect, his voice as sharp and as fierce as the wild animals he loves so dearly, "do not lose yourself in your mind. You are not allowed to leave me."
Even though he’s hallucinating the voice, must be, it can’t possibly be real, Jason says, "Habibi, you’re not real."
There’s a swift, indrawn breath.
“He thinks he’s hallucinating us,” Nightwing concludes, his voice a wealth of grief and pain that sinks its claws into Jason’s innards.
“Red Robin, status update?” Batman barks.
“Two minutes,” Red Robin snaps back with a frostbitten tone that conveys his quiet rage and self-disgust. He’s always held himself to impossibly high standards and flagellated himself whenever he seemingly falls short.
“Akhi, can you turn on your emergency beacon?” Robin inquires.
The rage tangles with the depression and flashbacks of when he first awoke in a coffin subsume him.
“It wouldn’t matter if I did,” Jason replies, tired and worn and wondering if it’s worth the effort of fighting. He’s stuck in a coffin with no idea of how he got here and— “Maybe I’ve fought enough. Maybe I should stop fighting,” he rasps.
“Don’t you dare!” Nightwing snarls, each word dripping with threat and grief. “Little Wing, don’t you dare leave me by choice.”
It’s not that Jason wants to die, because he doesn’t. He’s just tired. So, so tired. He’s been fighting to live as long as he’s been alive. Hell, even when he was dead, apparently, since he somehow came back to life. And if the universe or whatever hates him so much that its favorite hobby is attempting to erase him from existence, what chance does he have of winning in the end?
He wants— He just— Is it too much to ask for something good to happen in his life that doesn’t require his blood and sanity in exchange?
“Akhi?”
Jason wishes that they were real. He wishes that they actually cared, that their voices could truly sound like this because he was in danger. Jason wishes that he hadn’t burned every bridge between them with an ocean of accelerant, that he hadn’t done everything in his power to sever himself from their hearts and lives like a gangrenous limb, that he hadn’t—
“Here lies the mighty Red Hood, overpowered and buried alive by unknown assailants, pathetically hallucinating the voices of people who hate him, pretending like the sad, lonely boy he is, that someone can love a monster,” Jason rasps.
The silence that falls is painfully loud, confirming his—
"Superman, I need you in Gotham immediately!" Batman barks, his voice shaking and fragile in a way that Jason has never heard before.
Jason snorts wetly. “I’ve reached a new level of pathetic. B doesn’t let Metas—”
“Superman!” Batman roars as if he can force Superman’s presence by the strength of his indomitable will.
Jason squeezes his eyes shut and tries to measure his breathing. It doesn't work. He can feel it, hot and sticky against his face. But he doesn't have enough room to maneuver in the coffin to undo the security settings properly. If he tries to take it off, he'll set off the bomb and—
Well, that would be one solution to his current dilemma, wouldn’t it?
“Little Wing! Breathe with me—”
“Akhi, don’t give up—”
Jason fumbles for a knife strapped to his thigh—he’s never been good at acceptance—pulls it from the sheath, and cuts his way through the torn coffin lining. The blade thunks against the wood, gouging it in furrows. Woodchips rain down and bounce off his body armor. A particularly hard stab pierces the lid; dirt trickles through the hole when he pulls the knife back and Jason’s brain bluescreens.
All Jason can taste is blood and worms and mud.
“I’ve got his locat—”
“Jason!”
Jason jolts back to himself when large hands grab hold of him. It takes him several moments to realize that he’s cradled in Superman’s arms as they fly away from an unearthed grave that looks a hell of a lot deeper than six feet. If he had tried— If he hadn’t lost himself in the memories of the first time he was—
He wouldn’t have made it out. Not by himself. Not this time.
“Little Wing!”
“He’s moving. Superman must have him,” Red Robin declares, his footsteps loud enough to be heard over the comm. “Trajectory has him converging on Batman’s position.”
Wait. Wait.
Jason is in Superman’s arms. And … and B yelled for Superman. Which means … the Bats’ voices over the comms are real? The Bats were trying to find him this whole time? They … they actually care about him, still, after all of the horrific things that he’s done? B— B let a Meta in Gotham for him? Broke his own rule for Jason?
It’s— Jason wouldn’t believe it if he weren’t experiencing it himself in real-time.
His emotions are haywire. His mind is a flaming dumpster fire started by a Molotov cocktail, and everything Jason thought he understood about his relationships—complete lack thereof—with the other Bats freefell like the Replacement did after Ra’s threw him from that window.
Somehow, they don’t hate him. At least, not enough to want him permanently dead and out of Gotham, out of the way, out of their lives for real this time.
Superman deposits Jason into Batman’s waiting arms with a gentle, “He’s injured but alive. I’ll catch the perpetrators and then get out of Gotham, Batman. Take your boys home.”
He flies off without giving Batman a chance to object. Though, given how tightly B is squeezing Jason, it doesn’t seem like he’s in any hurry to do so. B shakes like a junkie aching for a fix. His grip is doing nothing to ease the pain in Jason’s ribs; whoever buried him alive sure didn’t treat him as fragile cargo while transporting him. It keeps his weight off his ankle—which he’s absolutely certain is shattered, though—so he’s not going to shove himself away just to collapse like a baby animal who hasn’t learned how to walk yet.
There’s spite and then there’s stupidity. Jason is best friends with both, but not even he’s masochistic enough to intentionally cause himself more pain when he’s so close to shattering that a Lazarus Pit would probably make things worse.
“You’re alive,” Batman says, a tremor of aching relief and grief coloring his tone.
Jason doesn’t know what to say to that. Doesn’t know how to react. Because they don’t talk about their feelings and—
Two pairs of feet thump onto the rooftop behind them.
“Little Wing!” Nightwing cries before latching onto Jason from behind, burying his face in Jason’s shoulder as he hugs both Jason and Batman.
“Hey, Big Bird,” Jason rasps.
A small hand grabs Jason’s hand, grasping with a grip strength that no normal kid possesses as if he never intends to let go. Robin’s voice is harsh and quavering when he snaps, “Never again change the encryption on your trackers without informing us, Akhi. That’s basic OpSec. If you do, I’ll kill you myself.”
“We don’t kill,” Batman admonishes, tightening his grip on Jason as his voice wavers.
“Tt.”
A grappling hook latches onto the roof behind Batman. Jason listens to it retract and watches Red Robin clamber onto the roof with a fluid grace he acquired at some point while Bruce was lost in time and believed dead. Whatever Timmy went through hardened him, made him a little more vicious, a little more the ends justify the means, a little more willing to walk with one foot in the darkness, instead of one in the light and one on the line.
Red Robin stalks over and unlatches Jason’s helmet with smooth, assured movements, even though Jason has only taken it off in his presence maybe—and Jason is being generous with the math here—a grand total of three times. Red Robin pulls it off and then grabs Jason by the chin, staring right at him so that their gazes would be locked if they weren’t wearing domino masks, and states with a wintry chill, “If you ever call yourself an unlovable monster again, I will burn your first edition of Pride and Prejudice. You are ours, Hood. You are family. And you don’t have our permission to die. Do you understand?”
Jason collapses into the support of the bodies and arms and hands that belong to his piecemeal family, who somehow love him, and rasps, “Got it.”