Chapter Text
"Red Robin," Oracle's voice said over the comms. "Are you heading for that chili dog stand on your way home?"
Tim adjusted his next swing to let him land in a crouch on the ledge of the Salesforce Tower, scanning the area for evidence of chili dogs. "I could be. Why?"
"I took Hood off the schedule for tonight," Oracle replied. "His tracker hasn't moved from his apartment in two days and he sent me that meme of a screaming goat a few minutes before patrol started. He left me on read after that, so I figured he was calling in sick. But I think someone should go check on him."
"...I mean yeah, I guess that checks out," Tim sighed. "Sure, I can bring him the healing power of chili dogs, why not. How many do you prescribe for Screaming Goat Memes?"
"Six?"
"Only six? What if the goat's there with him? What if he was trying to tell you he's being held hostage by a goat? Did you even check for local goat break-outs, O?"
"It was definitely a standard-issue meme, Tim. But bring him more if you want to. And don't forget your mask."
Tim aimed, shot, swung. "On it. Do you think B would notice if I used his card to buy the whole stand? Nothing says 'get well soon' like your own chili dog cart."
"No plotting theft over comms," Batman said sternly.
"B. This is the most secure line in the city," Tim argued.
"The country," Oracle objected. "Hopefully the world."
"Yeah, the world! Where else are you gonna plot theft? Are you actually suggesting we scheme insecurely?" Tim gasped. "What kind of mentor--"
He could hear Batman pinching the bridge of his nose through the cowl. It made a very distinctive, smooth, subtle tap. Almost the opposite of noise. It was Tim's favorite un-noise. "Please," his ill-advising mentor continued, "Let me know when you've put eyes on Red Hood. It's not like him not to show up."
"It's extremely like him not to show up," Oracle and Tim chorused.
"It's not like him not to show up for no apparent reason," Batman corrected himself.
"True," Tim said, a little ruefully. "Usually, we all know what you did to piss him off."
"Hey," Batman said. Oracle, overlapping with him, added: "Sometimes it's Dick."
"You two owe me a chili dog for every name over comms tonight," Batman's deep voice growled seriously. "That's three so far." He paused. "And it's usually Dick."
Oracle laughed. "Maybe you really should just bring the cart home."
Tim failed, three times, to correctly enter the unnecessarily-secure 20-digit code to disengage Jason's front door security bar and brace locks.
He didn't feel like trying to get in the window while carrying five steaming sacks of chili dogs. But maybe it would have been less of a hassle.
He let his forehead bang lightly into the foot of steel that Jason called "the minimum reasonable amount of security, Tim, what the fuck, how can you even live behind WOOD," while he breathed deeply -- yes, through his KN94 mask, Babs -- and tried to muster the willingness to do it again. The foot-thick steel effectively muffled any sound inside.
But the shitty apartment walls around it didn't. Tim could hear deep, dry coughing from within.
He moved over a little and put his ear directly against the wall for a moment. Then he abruptly straightened up and pounded the 20 digits in with lightning speed, shoving the door open so hard it bashed into the opposite wall. Hopefully Jason owned the building, or at least wasn't planning on getting his cleaning deposit back.
Tim didn't even hear it hit the wall, or the bags of chili dogs hitting the floor. All of his attention was on his brother's intense, unceasing coughs.
He could hear Jason's wheezing gasps between each bout. It didn't sound like he was getting a single clear breath.
Tim desperately wanted to find an inhaler, but Jason didn't have asthma. The Pit would have fixed it if he had, right? Maybe he'd been hit with some toxic dust or - a building had collapsed on him, and he hadn't mentioned it, again, or -
Jason was half-leaning against the bathtub, half-sprawled across the bathroom floor, his back to Tim. He was pressing his inner elbow against his mouth to block his coughs. He held his other hand up in the air, struggling to catch his breath long enough to say something.
Tim waited, nearly vibrating.
Jason took a slow, raspy breath. A short, tight cough. Another slow, raspy breath.
"'M. Fine." His outstretched arm fell heavily back down over the side of the tub.
Tim took a slow, deep breath of his own. Then another. Slower. Slow, calming breaths, Tim. Good. Nice and calm, now.
"ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!"
Jason startled, jerking slightly where he lay. "N--" He took a longer, wheezing breath. "No?"
Tim waited.
"It's just. A cough." Jason took a deep, slow breath of his own to demonstrate. It sounded like the air was scraping along rough corduroy the whole way.
"Oh, okay," Tim said. He took a step back. "So, you're just resting in here."
"Ye." Jason leaned his face against the cool bathtub again. "'M comf' here."
"So, you just have a cough, and you're just resting comfortably on the bathroom floor, like a normal person," Tim summed up.
"Y' g't it," Jason mumbled.
"Great. So you feel fine."
"Mmhm."
Tim's verbal trap swung shut. "And you can get up and close the front door real quick while I find a plate for these chili dogs."
There was a pause.
Tim wouldn't even characterize it as an uncomfortable pause. He was perfectly comfortable waiting for Jason's reply. And he wasn't totally sure Jason was conscious enough to feel uncomfortable right now. In fact, he was preparing for the possibility that he'd have to give his brother a little shove to wake him up and ask again. He might be safer shoving the guy's legs with his foot than going in for the shoulder. On the other hand (foot), Jason's reflexes were probably total shit right now. He was probably safe to lean in and shake Jason as much as he wanted.
"...T'rd," Jason offered.
"You're. Just tired," Tim said flatly.
"Mmph."
"Okay. You are full of shit, and I'm going to close the door myself. And then I'm telling Babs what's up." Tim exited the room, ignoring Jason's wordless, protesting whine. He slammed the door shut and re-armed it with one hand, slapping his comm with the other. "Hey, so, Jason is on the floor of the bathroom and he says he's fine. He says he's just tired and has a cough. Like a normal person."
"Like a normal person," Barbara echoed. "You mean like Bruce?"
"That's two more chili dogs," Bruce reminded them.
"And if you were on the bathroom floor coughing and wheezing uncontrollably," Tim said with annoyance, "you would...."
"Be fine, yes," his venerable mentor agreed.
"And fine would mean that you should be in the medbay getting your lungs x-rayed, correct?" Tim responded, moving all the bags of chili dogs to the coffee table.
"Uh, in all likelihood, yes, that is correct. What's his temperature like?"
Tim groaned. "I haven't even gotten that far yet. But he looked like shit, if that's any help."
Twin sighs echoed down the comm lines. Barbara asked, "Ambulance shit, or...?"
Tim began to pace rapidly back and forth across the stained beige living room carpet. Five steps, pivot; five steps, pivot. "What exactly is on our triage shit list? Ambulance shit? Leslie shit? Med bay shit? Is there a shit flow chart I should be following here?"
"We can take better care of him in the med bay than the hospital can," Bruce said. "But only if we can get him here."
"Are you saying we need a bat-bulance?" Tim said, suppressing a half-hysterical half-giggle. "Look, I think I need to at least take his vitals. I'm getting off comms for a sec." He silenced the comm over their protests, took it out of his ear, and dropped it next to the chili dogs for good measure.
He returned to the open bathroom door, leaning casually against it in the manner of a casual younger brother just hanging out with his absolutely and totally fine older brother. In the bathroom. As you do.
It wasn't a very big bathroom. But he still shouldn't be able to hear the deep rattle in his very healthy older brother's lungs from the doorway.
Straining to get a deeper breath, Jason emphatically said, "'M fine!" And began coughing again.
Tim was preparing a snarky response when he realized that the deep, ragged breaths between coughs were sobs. He dropped to his knees next to his brother and carefully placed a hand on Jason's back. "Are you fine?" he asked gently.
"N- no," Jason closed his eyes, gripping the edge of the tub harder. "Shit."
"You feel like shit?"
"'M shit," Jason said argumentatively. He managed a clearer breath. Creasing his brow in concentration, he rasped out, "C'n't - even - breathe - right," and shuddered, rubbing his face against his sleeve.
Tim clenched his fists, then forced himself to release them, and turned so he was sitting alongside Jason. "Skill issue," he agreed.
Jason let out an incredulous bark of a laugh. Encouraged, Tim added, "Can't even control your unconscious bodily functions. Couldn't be me. I trained under the master of bronchial tube control in Hanoi. I've named each alveolus, and I make sure to fill them with air in alphabetical order." He saw Jason's shoulders shake, and hoped it was with laughter. He put a hopefully comforting hand on Jason's upper back.
Not laughter, then, or not only laughter. Jason's white undershirt was unpleasantly hot and damp with sweat.
Obeying a deep, confusing instinct, Tim laid his face against Jason's back, wrapping one arm around his waist in a half-hug.
It was a wildly uncomfortable position. But like this, he could hear the near-silent sobs Jason was suppressing, and the nasty scrape of each shallow breath. He could feel Jason hold his breath for a moment, stilling, as if suddenly catching sight of a wild creature. And he could feel the minute fevered tremors continuing across Jason's body, like waves in the stillness.
Tim tightened his hug, just a tiny bit.
Jason heaved out a surprisingly deep sigh, and shivered harder. He wiped his face with the back of one shaking hand.
Tim sat up slowly, sliding his arm up so it was lying across his brother's back. "Any chance I could see how bad you fucked up controlling your own body temp?"
Jason responded with a sort of half-laugh, half-sob, and (like a true theater kid) cheated his face outward, eyes closed, sliding his forehead against the edge of the tub as he turned so that his profile was visible. The effort made new beads of sweat break out among the old ones. He wrapped his arms around his torso, cramming his hands into his armpits, in a mute and ineffectual effort to contain the chills.
Tim's free hand came to rest briefly against his cheek, then disappeared. Cool, dry terrycloth appeared in its place, blotting at hours of sweat. The surprisingly cool back of Tim's hand returned, lingering for a moment against his cheek, his forehead, and -- more blotting -- then the back of his neck.
"Pretty fucking bad, bro," Tim informed him. His voice dopplered away to be joined by the sound of small wooden drawers being briskly swept open and closed, one after another. "And do you even have a fucking thermometer in here? Sorry. Sorry. I meant that as a funny funny joke, but it sounded mean. I'll find something. I don't need one probably. I get it. You have--" He ran out of breath and paused. "A pretty high fever, I think."
"Second... down, right," Jason managed to say over Tim's barely-controlled freakout. The back of a drawer slammed into its stops. Tim's knees hit the floor beside him. A red light swept across his eyelids: beep, beep, beep, then a warning staccato, beep-eep-eep-eep-eep-eep. The drawer slammed shut again.
He heard Tim breathe in, breathe out, breathe in again. "One oh four point five," his brother informed him tightly.
"Yeah."
"Did you already know that?!"
"No." Jason felt like he was floating somewhere very warm. He could feel the scratchiness inside his lungs if he paid attention, but he was going to make sure not to pay any more attention. It seemed like Tim deserved a better answer than that. It was probably still answering time. He could do it. "Felt bad, though. Hot," he offered. That was almost a speech! That was so good. So much better than when he couldn't even do breathing right. Surely Tim would see how much better he was doing. And leave him alone? Jason wasn't sure that was what he wanted anymore. "Feel... bad," he added.
His body suddenly buckled into another coughing spasm, hauling him back down into the shocking cold of the bathroom, and slamming his head against the tub. He tried to untangle his arms from his torso, and managed to free just one hand, gripping the bathtub with all his strength to prevent himself from bucking into it again while he coughed. His eyes watered from coughing. "I... maybe... hospital," he managed to say in between coughs.
His eyes must be open again now, because he saw Tim's eyes widen before his brother turned and fled the room. Oh well; Jason was probably going to cough himself to death now anyway. He slid down to the bath mat, coughing and shaking too hard to complete another thought.
In one fluid gesture, Tim slammed the comm in while activating it. "He wants to go to the hospital," he blurted urgently.
He was met by silence.
"Are you guys even still there?! BATMAN. REPORT," Tim yelled.
"He's there. We're here. We were just - thrown," Oracle said. "What's going on?"
"He has a fever of 104.5, his lungs sound like garbage, I think we're going to see them soon because he sounds like he's coughing at least one of them up right now, um, oh, and he said he felt bad and that maybe he should go to the hospital?!" Tim ended on what may have been a shriek.
Batman intervened. "He's going to be fine. He's going to be fine. We should probably have him checked for sepsis."
"SEPSIS?!" Oracle and Tim both shrieked.
"It sounds like pneumonia. It's just good practice to check for sepsis. He's at very low risk," Bruce protested.
Tim face-palmed. "I thought the reason you weren't a doctor was because you dropped out to become Batman, not because your bedside manner got you fired from medical school!"
"You cannot be fired from medical school," Bruce said. "It's - I mean, you could probably be fired from your rotation-"
Barbara cut them both off. "How are we getting Jason checked for sepsis and treated for probable pneumonia? You have thirty seconds. Go."
"The obvious solution is an ambulance to the hospital," Tim said.
"The obvious solution is the med bay," Bruce argued.
"The ambulance won't take him to your med bay. I don't care how rich you are," Tim said.
"I could come pick him up," Bruce said.
"It's already morning rush hour and you don't have sirens," Barbara said. "No - B. Do not. I don't care what you're thinking. The amount of attention you'd get for racing the Batmobile across Gotham and back just after dawn is not worth it."
"The obvious solution is Superman," Bruce grumbled.
"The obvious solution is Kon," Tim retorted.
"The obvious solution is Superman, who's big enough to carry Jason Todd without difficulty," Bruce said.
"Kon can carry Jason! He's just as strong as Superman now!"
"But he's smaller. Jason is a lot to maneuver."
"You guys," Barbara said. Something pounded on the front door so loudly that the walls shook and the door began to buckle. "You'll have them both there in a second if you keep saying their names like that."
Notes:
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Chapter 2: chapter fuckin two
Summary:
I am a genius and my chapter title is perfect 😈
Sicktember prompts: 19. stomach ache 28. ghostly pale 😈
Whumptember prompts: 16. are you sure you don't need my help; outstretched arm
Whumptober 2025: 29. fainting
Daisy's Whumptober 2025: 21. passing out 31. post-victory collapse
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Tim ran to open the door before it was damaged beyond repair.
Kon froze, one fist raised, clearly only now processing that even Jason's door couldn't survive Super-knocking.
"Gentle hands! Gentle hands!" Tim grabbed him by the collar and dragged him in, with Clark close behind.
"We heard our names? Like, a lot?" Kon said in weak self-defense. "Is Jason okay? Are you?"
Tim considered ripping his mask off for just a minute to make out with his boyfriend. Probably it would be totally safe to go do it in the hallway. Clark could handle everything. They really didn't need two supes.
Clark was turning in place, quickly scanning the apartment. "Whoa," he blurted out, spotting the hot splotch through the bathroom wall. He made it there in a blur of speed, carefully checking Jason over for injuries.
"I'm fine," Tim remembered to tell Kon.
"You're so fine," Kon informed him, gazing into his eyes intensely.
"You're not going to be fine for much longer if you don't tell us what's going on right now," Babs growled in his ear.
"Hi, O! We--"
"Heard your names, like, a lot. I'm aware," she said dryly. "Hood is not okay. Is Supes with Hood."
"Supes is with Hood," Tim replied without breaking Kon's gaze.
Both boys could hear her teeth grind over the comm. Abruptly, she switched into a syrupy tone. "I am so sorry, Superboy, but our colleague and loved one Red Hood seems to be running just a bit of a temperature, and he did mention that he was considering going to the hospital, so I'm sure you can understand our concern."
Kon blanched and made sure to speak directly into Tim's comm. "Of course. I am so sorry, Ms. Oracle. I'll go check on him right away." He sped after Superman.
Tim said, "Oracle!"
"Get your head in the game," she advised him. "And never underestimate the power of Martha Kent's training."
"Hn," Batman agreed sagely.
Lying on the bathmat, Jason tolerated Superman's examination for a full thirty seconds. Mainly because he had stopped coughing long enough to recede into a fevered doze.
He woke up, or at least faded into a more alert state, to find himself sitting upright, leaned forward against Clark's chest. "H'mum'ph?" he said.
Clark lowered the back of Jason's shirt, satisfied that there were no new injuries there. He carefully scooted backward, shifting to hold Jason up by the shoulders. "How're you feeling?"
Jason squinted at him. "Uncle Clark? Wh?" His throat was painfully raw and rough. His eyes drifted shut as he took a shallow, raspy breath. He opened them and squinted at Clark again. Then his face relaxed. "Tim!" he said hoarsely. "Y'look like... Clark." He leaned forward, resting his forehead heavily on Clark's shoulder.
Kon appeared in a blur of motion. "Oracle says Jason has a fever high enough that he wanted to go to the hospital. Not a normal person: Jason. Oh shit, he really does. Oh wow. That guy's glowing."
"Nuh-uh," Jason said into Clark's shirt. "Nnh...." He wheezed heavily and held his breath, trying not to start coughing again.
After a few moments, he slowly let it out, shivering. "Nnh glowin'. N'rmal."
"Infrared," Kon said flatly. "You're glowing in infrared. How long have you been this sick?"
Jason shook his head slowly. "Only now? I tol'... Barbie. Goat."
"He did," Tim agreed, coming in beside Kon. "He sent a screaming goat meme. She gets him." He could hear Bruce's nearly-silent but thoroughly-exasperated exhalation in his ear.
Jason carefully raised his head, staring at them. "Tim Two?"
"That's barely even an attempt at a weird nickname. He's doing worse than I thought."
"No. Two Tims." Jason weakly moved one hand to point. "This one..." He stopped to catch his breath. "Looks Clarky. You... Timmy."
Tim stared at him. Looked at Kon. Looked at Clark. Then stepped forward, picked up the thermometer, and swept it across Jason's forehead again. Beep-eep-eep-eep-eep-eep. "Yeah, that checks out. One oh four point nine now."
"So, medbay?" Oracle and Batman chorused.
Tim knelt down to meet Jason's eyes directly. "Hey. Timmy Tim here. This? Clarky Tim? He looks like Clark because he is Clark. Clark came so we can get you help faster."
Jason slowly turned his head and gazed into Clark's eyes. "Yeah. 'Kay," he said after a long moment.
Clark was an experienced reporter. He had interviewed a very wide range of people, who had an even wider range of comprehension of the topic under discussion. He had zero confidence that Jason was processing any of this.
Aiming his voice at Tim's comm, he said, "It looks like pneumonia to me. I'm not a doctor, but his lungs look terrible, patchy all over. I didn't see any signs of injuries. His fever's gone up, I take it." He turned to Jason. "Jase, I know your dad wanted you to come to the medbay. Is it okay if I bring you to the medbay? We'd have to fly there, and I don't know how that feels with a fever this high. We could bundle you up pretty good first, though."
Jason stared into the middle distance, appearing to do mental calculus. "'M fine," he eventually rasped.
"You've got to be kidding me," Oracle said in Tim's ear.
Clark mustered all of his parenting and investigative reporting skills, many of which were identical. Like patience. So much patience. "You're feeling better? You don't need any medical care?"
Jason nodded seriously. It was easy to do; his head felt light and buzzy and loose.
Clark carefully let go of him and stood up. "I'm so happy to hear that." He reached out a hand to help Jason up.
Jason shook his head. Show, don't tell! He would show them how much he didn't need a hospital! He braced one hand on the closed toilet. His legs felt like they were filled with sand, incredibly heavy and constantly shifting. He managed to lift one of them and place his foot flat on the ground. He had to stop there and lean against the toilet for a minute. That brief effort had made layers of fresh sweat break out all over his skin. They cooled quickly, leaving him shivering with cold and exertion. He bowed his head, breath scraping through his lungs, and slowly shifted all his weight onto that leg. Carefully, slowly, he raised the other weighty sandbag and placed its foot on the ground too. He stayed crouched against the toilet for a minute, teeth rattling in his skull. The room felt fizzy around him. Taking in a very careful, slow, raucous breath, he placed one hand on the bathroom counter, moved the other one next to it, pushed his legs straight, and stood. Raising one hand above his head, then the other, he clasped them and shook them in a victory celebration.
Tim began a slow, sarcastic clap.
"No, no. Golf clap," Kon said. They proudly golf clapped.
Jason leaned against the bathroom cabinet. "See?" he wheezed, then bent over the sink in a harsh coughing fit.
Clark winced. Kon and Tim continued to golf clap.
They stopped when Jason started vomiting watery bile.
He dry-heaved a few times, then just stayed there, head down, leaning most of his weight against the counter.
"Jase," Clark said gently, "your whole body's shaking. I don't care where we go, but you need to go someplace where they can check you out and help you get better."
Jason shivered violently and nodded. Very quietly, he croaked, "Please."
"Do you want to go to the medbay or the hospital?"
"You've already X-rayed him and checked him out," Tim pointed out. "If he goes to a hospital it's going to slow everything down."
Clark half-turned toward him. "Please tell me we do not have to have a talk about the importance of consent, Tim."
Jason laughed sharply. It caught in his chest, starting a new coughing fit.
Tim gave Kon a horrified look.
Kon whispered, "It was worse than you're imagining."
Tim reached out and squeezed his hand. "'No, sir," he told Clark.
"Medbay," Jason managed to cough out as he finally caught his breath.
Tim couldn't help himself. "Did you just cough the word medbay?"
Jason tried to glare at him. "Said wh' I said." He wrapped his arms around himself, jamming his hands under his armpits again, and groaned quietly. The sand in his legs shifted, loosened, and began flowing away.
"He looks so cold but he's glowing so hot," Kon complained. "How do you guys live like this?"
Behind him, Jason's legs buckled as he lost consciousness, head flopping disastrously toward the counter for a split second before Clark hauled him backward and scooped him up. "Find a blanket or something we can wrap him up in, quick, so we can go," he said grimly. "Because they don't always live, like this."
Notes:
(chapter now edited slightly bc why did I think tim could chew on his thumb, he's wearing a mask)
At first, I was putting in all kinds of notes that would let me explain why they weren't bothering with masks when Jason was probably contagious. Then it was like... there wasn't a tag for Tim Drake Has a Spleen. There wasn't a tag for Pre-COVID. There wasn't a Pre-Pandemic tag.
And then it hit me just how little effort anybody ever puts into things like... Tim being spleenless in a world where COVID still exists. Or protecting Alfred from it. Or just living by the science and trying not to get COVID repeatedly themselves.
And I thought: instead of putting this effort into explaining why it doesn't affect their everyday lives in all the ways it affects mine, why am I not just showing the reality of that? Seems like that's needed a lot more.
In this chapter, it really is just one mention of wearing a mask and one mention of Tim putting on a mask. Because that's all it fucking takes.
(I was going to have him be like, "I'm still wearing my suit! i'll just use the built-in rebreather!" And then I googled it and realized his suit doesn't have anything covering his mouth and nose, and an actual rebreather is a gnarly piece of equipment that is totally overkill here. It's bacteria or possibly viruses, not fear toxin.)
In fact, all of that is how I got into the Batman fandom in the first place. I did watch the 1966 reruns growing up, and then the 1990s cartoon, and sometimes read the Robin comics, and I saw a couple of the movies. But I didn't join the fandom until the day, several years ago now, when I decided to see how people were incorporating COVID into their fics. And I discovered they mostly weren't. Except for one extreme outlier: QUARANTINE: Red Robin's TikTok Account.
Two Discord servers and a fuckton of fics later, I have finally ended up at the "post a new work" page.
I always think, "I should go back and find the Doctor Who fanfics I wrote in the 90s, and post them on AO3." I probably will at some point. I'll probably a lot of things.
But this. This is what turns out to be my fucking gateway drug.
Batwhump.
Chapter 3: this is chapter three!
Summary:
Sicktember prompts: 17. infection
Whumptember prompts: 3/4: hospital, car ride to the hospital (ok fine, it's a superflight to the not-spital) 21. fever
Whumptober: 1. please don't cry (bruce to himself lmao) 7. tell me that you're okay, and i'm fine (bruce, mentally, to jason at all times.by which i mean he's hypervigilant about jason and totally unaware that he's hypervigilant)
Daisy's Whumptober 2025: 29. hypoxia
Notes:
i'm cracking myself up with "a superflight to the not-spital" lmao
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Almost as soon as Superman flew off with a still-unconscious Jason burrito wrapped in a bedspread tortilla, Batman was back in Tim's ear.
"Red Robin. Do not leave yet."
"I wasn't going to?" Tim arched an eyebrow at Kon, who licked his lips and looked him over from head to toe. "I - what do you need me to do?"
"Give me Hood's symptoms."
"Seriously, the bedside manner needs work." Tim stretched backwards as far as he could, trying to think. "Fever of 104.5 when I got here, went up to 104.9 before they left. He seemed pretty delirious, but I don't think he was hallucinating or anything? Shivering, sweating, uh, coughing a lot. Really dry cough, not like he was choking or coughing anything up." Tim grimaced apologetically, upside-down, at Kon. "Really long coughing fits. Right before they left, he coughed so hard he threw up a few times, and then he passed out."
"He vomited? Did he complain of any gastrointestinal distress?"
"Did he what. No, he just threw up."
"Did he mention a stomachache or any, ah, digestive problems prior to that?"
Tim massaged his forehead. "I honestly can't imagine a conversation where Red Hood would ever tell me about his digestive problems."
"How long had he been feeling ill?" Bruce persisted.
"He said just today."
"That's very sudden onset. Are you sure he was lucid?"
"I'm never sure Hood is lucid," Tim said. He heard what he gauged as a Level 9 sigh, just below the Losing Patience Threshold. "I mean, he mentioned the goat meme, B. It seemed like he was having a hard time talking, but he was making sense."
"What do you mean by 'having a hard time talking'?"
"I mean...." Tim gazed into Kon's eyes, as if they might give him either a simple explanation, or, at least, the willingness to keep trying to explain simple statements to Doctor Batman. "He was really hoarse from coughing, but that wasn't it. It was hard for him to articulate, I guess? Like he was too tired to say words clearly, or say much?"
"Was he slurring his words?" Doctor Batman said urgently.
"I guess? Yeah, you mean like when someone's really drunk? I guess if it weren't so obvious he was really sick, he would sound really wasted, sure."
The line went silent.
Tim raised one eyebrow at Kon. Then both eyebrows. Then he muted his line and said aloud, "Oh my god, B, just hang up so I can slam my boyfriend against Jason's walls already."
Kon smiled wickedly. "Not if I slam you into the couch first."
"Yours is better," Tim agreed.
Batman came back. "Do not leave," he repeated. "Superman just arrived. I'm going to need you to take water samples from his apartment building. Maybe from anywhere else we can find that he's been this week. I'll check what the protocol is and get back to you in a bit. Keep your comm in."
"Roger that," Tim said jauntily.
"Red Robin," Batman said. "Do you copy?"
"Yeah, I copy," Tim repeated.
"Red Robin, report!"
"...Oh fuck," Tim groaned, unmuting his line. "Sorry, B, I was muted. Roger copy yes got it, I will do the thing."
"You'll stay on the line. Until you hear back from me."
"Yes. That. I will stay on comms until you tell me what to do next. Sorry."
"Batman out."
Tim heard the rustle of the comm being removed and turned off. "Batman ouuut," he repeated in a high-pitched voice.
"For god's sake mute yourself until he gets back," Oracle advised.
Tim twitched violently. "Forgot you were there."
"Yeah, you do a better Batman impression when you know there's an audience," she agreed. "I'm muting you myself, actually. I'll let you know if there's any news with Red Hood."
"Thanks, O," Tim groaned.
"And maybe consider just taking a nap while you're there. It's almost dawn and it's been a rough night." She muted him and herself.
"That was a nicer way than usual for her to tell you 'you're being an idiot,'" Kon observed.
"Yeah, I guess she's not totally wrong," Tim sighed, hopping over the back of the couch onto the cushions. "That was pretty rough. Let's pre-game with some medicinal chili dogs."
It took Superman a full five minutes to get Jason to the Batcave. He couldn't stop thinking about how fragile his human nephew was, and how scary it would be for him to wake up doing Mach 1 through the atmosphere. It made him want to squeeze Jason tightly to his chest. He had to bob carefully along just above the clouds, reminding himself that hugging humans as tightly as he wanted was always going to damage them.
At least once he was in the tunnels leading to the Batcave, he could focus on keeping his speed just slow enough to make it safely through all the curves.
Batman was pacing around his desk, fingers on the comm in his right ear. "Shit. Fuck! Fuck, shit, fuck, fuck, fuck," he swore fervently before tapping to unmute himself. "Do not leave. Superman just arrived." He waved Clark toward the medbay, holding up one finger to indicate he'd join them there.
Clark gently laid Jason down on the widest hospital bed. Keeping one hand (gently, lightly) on the boy's chest, he looked around for more blankets. If he wasn't mistaken, Jason's temperature had gone back down a little. But a single blanket, even burrito-style, didn't seem like enough to sweat out pneumonia.
He began going through the wall of cabinets. Bandages. Gauze. Masks. More bandages. Antiseptic wipes. Entire rolls of cut-to-fit bandages. Those stretchy bandages for sprains. Maybe humans should be leaving this work to the metas. Portable lights. Empty sharps containers. Blood test kits. An array of gleaming metal instruments worthy of a Saw movie.
They should definitely be leaving this work to the metas.
Maybe they actually were metas. With super-stubbornness instead of strength.
Finally, a cabinet with sterilized bedding. Including plushies.
He set a stack of minky and weighted blankets, and two plushies, at Jason's side. Batman appeared in a whirl of activity: clipping a pulse oximeter to Jason's finger, drawing two vials of blood, popping each one into a different machine, taking his blood pressure, and then hesitating slightly before sweeping a thermometer across his head. He gave Clark an awkward grimace. "I don't know why, but somehow the temperature always seems like the most significant part. Maybe it's a parent thing."
Clark nodded sympathetically as his friend silenced the thermometer. "I've probably checked Jon's temperature a hundred times to see if he's sick, but I've never waited on his blood pressure."
Bruce sighed. "Blood pressure and temp are high, heart rate is low, but his oxygen's only 91."
Clark joked, "Dammit, Bruce, I'm a meta, not a doctor!"
He was rewarded with a slight crinkle around Bruce's eyes. "His temperature is high, but we knew that already. His blood pressure is high, but it's not dangerous and it's not surprising. His heart rate should be high, with a fever, and especially with such low blood oxygen. But if it's low, that helps narrow down a diagnosis. His oxygen is too low, but again, it's not surprising - and it could be so much worse."
"That's good," Clark said hesitantly.
"I think so," Bruce agreed. "How does his breathing sound to you?" He pulled a stethoscope from the cabinets, and sat down to listen for himself.
"Shallow. Too fast - sometimes much too fast. Sort of... crackly? It almost sounds like it's hitting a wall before it gets all the way into his lungs, if that makes any sense. Almost like it's squeaking and wheezing through the cracks to get that far."
Bruce kicked away from the bed, rolling over to a desk and rapidly typing into, Clark supposed, a Bat-laptop. A Bat-top.
Clark drew a chair over to the bed for himself and sat, using his sleeve to blot the sweat from Jason's forehead. He froze. "Is this bad, what I'm doing? Could I be contaminating him or something?"
Bruce looked up sharply, then relaxed. "You'd be better off using one of those blankets, but no. Your only risk is getting your suit soaked."
"Can we... does he need more blankets?"
"Hang on," Bruce murmured, scribbling at length on a clipboard.
"You don't have an app for that?"
"I - No. I don't have an app for the physical process of writing on a physical clipboard." He stabbed a particularly savage punctuation mark onto the paper. "Clark, please shut up, I'm trying to think."
"Must be hard," Clark muttered, wiping more sweat off Jason's forehead. His color didn't look right. Was this what people meant by waxy? Did he look jaundiced? Was this what people meant by jaundiced? Wasn't that a liver problem?
What if Jason had been hit by some new toxin that was shutting all his organs down, and they were only paying attention to his lungs? Why wasn't there some other organ you could look at with X-ray vision? He could see Jason's liver, stomach, and spleen all right, but all he could tell was that they looked okay. What if they were twice their normal size, and he had no idea because he'd never bothered to look at his own nephew's organs before? Maybe he should start looking at everyone's organs regularly.
He eyeballed Bruce's torso suspiciously. Oh, Lord, that was a mess. That was - that was too much information. Those were the lumpiest bones he'd ever seen. Were there any bones in there that hadn't been broken and healed over? There were cracks, there were bones fused together, there were some kind of metal pins in there.... Maybe he could get a meeting of the Justice League together without Batman, to talk about how they could shield him from injuries. The man was a billionaire; shouldn't he be able to build some kind of mech suit?
Jason's bones were better, but that didn't fool Clark. Jason hadn't been at it so long. And his armor was a lot better. Maybe when Jason felt better, he could help with the mech suit.
At least Bruce's organs looked okay from here.
One of the blood machines chimed. Bruce was instantly on the laptop.
His shoulders sagged as he slowly exhaled and leaned his forehead against the desk.
Clark stayed perfectly still, suspended in that fearful, peaceful moment between uncertainty and knowledge.
Bruce sat up and turned to him. "Thank God. Low sodium, high lactate, high CRP -- it's legionella."
Clark drew a deep breath. "Dang it all to heck, Bruce Thomas Wayne, what is legionella?" Also, your bones look like crap, you absolute jackass, he did not say.
"It's a rare kind of pneumonia-"
"Do you mean Legionnaires' disease? That kills people, Bruce!"
"It does. It does," Bruce said placatingly. "But usually only if it's not treated soon enough. Or they have other risk factors. Chronic cardiopulmonary diseases, immune problems, alcoholism.... It's - it's going to be okay, Clark. It's not a new city-wide toxin that's going to kill thousands before we can find an antidote. It's not a rare fungal infection we can't even identify, much less treat. It's not a mystery disease that's about to become a terrible pandemic. It's something I know how to treat." His hands tightened on the edge of the desk. He turned back around and picked up the clipboard.
Clark was pretty sure Bruce was crying.
He thought about humans for a minute more. Humans who were bats outside, and shaky skeletons inside, and could say a million times more about medical tests than about themselves or their sons.
He rolled up and put a hand on Bruce's shoulder.
As Bruce turned toward him, Clark pulled him into a hug.
Bruce tolerated it tensely for a moment, then abruptly relaxed against his friend's shoulder. He wrapped his arms around Superman, hanging on like the alternative was falling to his death.
"It's okay," Clark said quietly. "He has - he has a really big team behind him, this time. So do you."
Bruce made an agonized sound into Clark's chest.
Clark slowly stroked one hand up and down his back. Bruce choked out a sob, then pulled back, turning away to put on a dry mask. "We have to get him on oxygen. With his healing factor, he should recover quickly once he's on antibiotics."
Nobody having emotions here. Everyone has work to do. Clark played along. "Why did he get so sick in the first place, though? Doesn't he have accelerated healing now? Why isn't it kicking in?"
"I don't know," Bruce admitted. "He could have gotten hit with an unusually large amount of legionella bacteria somehow. But for someone his age, no risk factors, no complicating conditions... I just don't know. We need to find out where it came from."
He returned to Jason's side, rolled an IV stand and a heart rate monitor to the bed, and tapped his comm back on. "Red Robin, are you still on-site?"
Tim broke away from Kon's lips. "Ssh! He's back!" He unmuted the comm. "Still here. How - what's up?"
Bruce checked Jason's temperature again. Still high. "Hood is stable. I'm administering oxygen and fluids, and I'm going to start antibiotics shortly. I need you to collect at least 250 mL of water separately, labeled, from every source in the apartment. Oracle, are you still on the line?"
"Still here. What are we calling stable?"
"Nothing has changed since Superman got him here. He's still unconscious, low O2 levels, temperature over 40 C--"
"Batman."
"He's-" Bruce cleared his throat. "He's sleeping. Which is good. It's Legionnaires' disease, which as you probably know is a type of bacterial pneumonia. He's very sick, but he's going to be okay. We need to find out where he got it, to prevent any more cases. Do either of you know anywhere else he's been over the last ten days?"
"The last ten days," Tim echoed incredulously.
"The incubation period ranges from two to ten days," Batman said.
Kon went into the kitchen and held two steak knives up next to his head like cowl ears. "I'm Batman. I have researched human conversation extensively. Our current interaction is very stable."
"I'll see what I can find," Oracle said. "I have tracker data I can pull up, but I don't know exact details about where he went and what he did at each location."
"You have tracker data for Red Hood?" Tim raised his eyebrows at Kon. "What did you do, hit him with a dart and tag his ear?"
"Don't be ridiculous, he would notice that. Cass gave him a Kuromi keychain and told him she's 'a rebel with a criminal streak who likes romance novels.' He carries it everywhere now. I think he knows she put a tracker in it. But it's Cass."
"So he doesn't care, and is maybe a little bit afraid of her too," Tim agreed.
"In a respectful, healthy, self-care kind of way. Yes."
"Okay," Bruce cut in. "Get the tracker data to Red Robin as soon as you can, and he can get started on the apartment's water sources in the meantime."
"Please, O, thank you, O, I know it's so late that we've looped around to early and I really appreciate you staying up even longer, O," Barbara added.
"...Yes. All of that."
"You're welcome. And thank you, Superman, for your help."
"And Kon!" Tim added.
"Yes, thank you Kon. Is he still there?"
"Yeah?"
Oracle raised her voice. "Conner Kent, if I hear of you distracting Tim before he's done collecting all the water samples and getting them to Bruce, so help me I will tell Martha!"
Kon blanched again, and carefully returned the steak knives to their magnetic holder.
Notes:
and by "let's pre-game with some chili dogs" i mean that first they're gonna put hot dogs in their mouths and then they're gonna put uh
Also: Bruce fully should have just started him on fluids and oxygen before getting on his little laptop. I realized that afterward. And then I realized: that's why he's not a real doctor! (or really, it's *because* he's not a real doctor)
If, like me, you keep wondering where Alfred is: it's the middle of the night, Bruce is letting him sleep. Will Alfred appreciate that? Probably not, but *someone* got all caught up in cosplaying Dr. House.
This is not even slightly what I thought I was writing and posting for this chapter and it feels weird. but dem's da berries!
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Chapter 4: fourth chapter. four is my favorite number! give it up for chapter number four!!
Summary:
honestly, I could probably name these chapters. working title for this one: Holy Shit, I Just Watched Jason's Death Scene From Under The Red Hood, And His Eyes Are So Beautiful?!
Sicktember 2025: 20. fever nightmares
Whumptember 2025: 26. "I didn't think I'd get out of there alive" / successful escape
Whumptober 2025: 26. creative restraints 9. flashbacks
Daisy's Whumptober 2025: 4. PTSD 27. near-death experience
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Bruce carefully positioned an oxygen mask over Jason's nose and mouth. "Masks for masks," he joked weakly.
Clark looked at him in pure confusion.
"It's just something the kids started saying because we use the medbay so much."
Clark's gaze did not waver.
"This - this is an oxygen mask? And we're-" Bruce stopped. "Do they not call you masks in New York? Is this just a Gotham thing? Because-" Oh no. "Because most of you don't wear masks. It's just Oliver. The other human."
"And Barry," Clark offered.
"He's not even wearing a separate mask. It's part of his suit. The man designed himself a hoodie."
"How have I never noticed that before?" Clark lightly brushed a hair away from Jason's hot, sweaty forehead. "I wonder if he ever gets confused with the Red Hood."
"How have I never noticed that nobody else calls us masks?" Bruce countered.
"You never leave Gotham."
"Untrue. I have been to outer space on multiple occasions."
"My mistake. I forgot that this was intergalactic slang."
The corners of Bruce's mouth quirked up. "It is." He looked at the clock. "Alfred will be up soon. You probably need to get back to your family and go to work."
"Not the worst idea," Clark agreed. "Call me if you need anything. I'll stop by on my way home, see how everyone's doing." He was careful not to phrase it as an offer Bruce could politely dismiss. He meant it as a certainty.
"Kal... thank you." Bruce looked down and added, "For everything."
Well, there was only one possible response to that.
Clark pulled him into an even bigger hug.
After he took off, Bruce rubbed the back of his neck, staring at the computer screen. He would need to look up the right antibiotic and dosage. Maybe find a meta-analysis comparing the research on every treatment protocol for legionella pneumonia. He should review how soon to expect Jason's blood oxygenation levels to improve. And the different factors affecting his prognosis.
And, probably, let Alfred know why the Manor was so empty.
And Damien. Let Damien know what was happening. Let everyone know what was happening. See if any of them knew where Jason might have been at risk of exposure. Make sure none of the rest of them had gotten sick. Run more blood tests to make sure Jason hadn't been exposed to any new concoctions that might have made this worse.
And start Jason's treatment.
That should probably be near the top of the list. Except first he had to research....
Bruce had pulled out his phone and begun shooting off texts when he heard a muffled noise behind him.
He whirled around and saw Jason, still blanket-bound, twisting frantically on the bed.
Bruce leapt to free him from the oxygen mask. The blanket was harder; it had clearly been intended to stay secure at Super-speeds. The poor guy was thoroughly swaddled, had rolled face-down as soon as the oxygen mask was gone, and was now thrashing like a landed salmon.
Jason was, at most, barely semi-conscious, wheezing shallowly, and now operating at an alarming 105.1 degrees.
But adrenaline had always been his best fuel. Bruce managed to pin his shoulders down, and searched for an edge of the blanket to untuck. Jason immediately used this as leverage, successfully kicking his feet up and over his own head. His feet slammed into Bruce's head and shoulders, knocking Bruce to the floor behind the bed and hurling himself halfway off.
Bruce, dazed, pulled the giant burrito down to safety. He peeked around the edge of the bed to confirm that it was just Jason who had bashed into him, and not Killer Croc on the loose in the Batcaves.
Jason flopped and jerked a few more times, then lay still, panting creakily. He was muttering something. His eyelids twitched back and forth, from closed to half-open.
Bruce put an arm around Jason's chest, pulling him closer and feeling around the top of the blanket for some way to untangle it. "It's all right," he said quietly. "It's all right. You're safe. Just hold still."
"No. Nom... nomma gehn," Jason mumbled plaintively.
"Not your what?" Bruce found an edge, and tugged at it, hoping to pull a corner loose.
"Nomma gehn. Can'." His eyelids were fluttering wildly now, his eyes flicking back and forth behind them. "Cannagehn. No...." He shuddered. "Can'doit."
"Neither can I," Bruce told him frankly. "I don't know what they did to this blanket, but it seems to have fused into a single layer. Do you think they can fuse blankets with super-strength?"
Jason shuddered. "Nooooo... no - no-" He began jerking violently. "No. No. No. Can'. Die. Again. No. No-"
"Oh, Jason," Bruce murmured.
He stood, keeping a hand on Jason's shoulder in an effort to steady him. Crouched down and maneuvered his other arm under Jason's legs. Then stood slowly up, cradling his shivering, struggling son. "It's all right. I have you. I'm not-" He choked, and took a slow breath. "I will not let you die again. You're not dying. I promise. I have you now. You're safe."
He sat Jason down on the edge of the bed and turned, keeping him upright with one hand while flailing at a nearby drawer. "I thiiink - yes. Bandage scissors. Don't worry, they have a round tip. We're going to get you free, safe and sound. Don't worry. Just hold as still as you can." The slow stream of chatter seemed to be helping. Or maybe Jason was just worn out enough to slip deeper into unconsciouness. "This is going to take a while. Sorry about your duvet. I'll get you a new one. I'll get you as many as you want. You can always use more bedding, right? Especially for occasions just like this. Anyway, Clark got you a whole pile of blankets. We can just switch them right in, just... as soon... as I get this off. Look, there's your arm! That's really going to help." He found there was enough flexibility in the blankets now to move them around into a better position for cutting, and began slicing down the bottom half. "I had to pulse ox your ear before. I don't want to do that again. I think you could pull it off, though. As a style choice."
The last of the blanket burrito finally came apart. Bruce looked up triumphantly, right into Jason's open eyes.
Notes:
Well, here's an absolutely unhinged bit of trivia I just found when googling how long it takes to get back to normal blood oxygen levels:
Your blood oxygen levels drop for about eight hours when you smoke?!
My roommate smokes. She goes outside every few hours to smoke. She must never be at her normal blood oxygen level!
When she had COVID, she was so much worse than the rest of us. She literally hallucinated that there were rats scratching underneath her floor and told me she was so glad that they couldn't come up through the tiles. She didn't remember this at all later - not even a few minutes later when she was literally outside smoking lmao. During which time I was under the porch she was smoking on, trying to see whether rats had gnawed their way into the crawl space. (You will be shocked to know that they had not! Because they didn't exist.)
No fucking wonder her blood oxygen level was so low. Her fever was so high, too.
It wasn't "go to the ER low," but like, she was a fuckin mess. Fortunately, we got her daughter to pick up Paxlovid for her, and she got a lot better after that.
Never fuckin again, fingers crossed. We all still mask everywhere. (That time, we got it because my ex, who also masks everywhere, somehow thought it was safe to go out to eat twice in one weekend. During peak COVID case rates for the area. Idk, y'all.)
Oh wait, that's not even the biggest thing I just learned! I also read that "A pulse oximeter may give a falsely high reading because carbon monoxide in the blood can be misinterpreted as oxygen, leading to an inaccurate result." I'M SORRY WHAT.
HOW THE FUCK did this not become common knowledge during COVID, by which I mean "during the small part of the pandemic when we all actually talked openly about COVID and learned about it from the media?"
I shudder to think how low my roommate's blood oxygen level really was. she survived it with only, I guess, mild cognitive effects. she looks a lot older -- before, she seemed ageless, and now i can see her aging from year to year. but mostly, she says she can tell that she's not as smart as she was. she has more trouble reasoning things out, and remembering things, for example.
she seems fine, especially compared to e.g. my ex who already had chronic illnesses and now has pretty severe long COVID. but that's a pretty big curve.
omg. "In smokers, pulse oximetry resulted in an overestimation of arterial oxygen saturation by +0.7%," but it was not too bad in the 90s (like, 90-100 on a pulse ox) - and REAL bad once you got below 85.
wait wait wait no this is a real trip:
"The clinical implications of these data are that there is no observable association between current smoking status and measurement error that is directly attributable to smoking tobacco. However, as a consequence of having more advanced lung disease, smokers have lower oxygen saturation levels which itself results in more measurement error of oxygen saturation from pulse oximetry for this category of patients."
It's NOT the smoke. Contrary to what i LITERALLY JUST SAW, which said the "after 8 hours your oxygen saturation levels go back to normal" thing. It's not that too much carbon monoxide got into your bloodstream instead of air or something.
It's that smoking fucks up your lungs. And fucking up your lungs means you get less oxygen.
this makes so much sense, and is also so disturbing.
so is this last bit: "The prevalence of smoking for UK emergency respiratory admissions is 30%, and hence this indirect effect will impact on large numbers of patients as even a small overestimate in oxygen saturation readings may delay timely initiation of treatment in a large number of patients."
I guess it's a UK study. But like. Almost a third of people who get admitted to the ER for respiratory problems, in the UK, are smokers.
Again, makes sense and is also YIKESY.
And therefore, a lot of those people are not getting treatment fast enough, or not getting appropriate treatment, because they look like they have more oxygen in their blood than they do.
ok one more tiny fun fact: looks like the non-medical sources generally say, "after 8 hours the CO2 leaves your blood and your blood oxygen is normal!" and the actual healthcare sources say things like, "after 8-12 hours the CO2 levels in your blood start to decrease and more oxygen can get in your blood!" (but they phrase it better)
Too bad Bruce doesn't know that. But that's ok, Jason would NEVER smoke :)))))))
Chapter 5: five alive
Summary:
LET IT BE KNOWN: The BatBat plushies featured in this chapter were ALL Master_Torch_Master's excellent idea.
Sicktember 2025: 8. aches and pains 20. fever nightmares 24. "I feel like I'm dying"
Whumptember 2025: 2. bloodied clothes
Whumptober 2025: 19. on patrol
Daisy's Whumptober 2025: alternate prompt: seizures
Just discovered Hurtcember 2025! Day 5: Anxiety. And Day 6: Starving.
Notes:
Fun fact: You know how, when someone's using another language, you can either translate what they're saying into English ("Hey! I saw you yesterday!"), or transliterate it by just writing out the words? ("¡Hola! ¡Te vi ayer!") And if they're using a language with a different alphabet, you can transliterate it into our alphabet ("Hai! Raiti otech etmol!") or transcribe it in the original alphabet? ("היי! ראיתי אותך אתמול!")
Well, in American Sign Language, I guess you'd transcribe it by showing or describing the signs. Most people in fics just translate it. But you can transliterate it too. And the way you do that is by writing the names of the signs used in all caps. Like this: "HEY! YESTERDAY I-SEE-YOU!"
You can see that the grammar is different than in English. Just like it would be if you translated the Spanish word for word: "Hi! You I saw yesterday!"
If we translated both languages exactly the same way, it would be "You I-saw yesterday," because "vi" means "I saw." We don't, but that's just because different communities developed the way they translate these languages, separately, at different times.
We could. It would maybe be more useful.
All of which is to say that I decided to transliterate the ASL people use in my fics. Occasionally I'll probably also describe or translate it.
I love ASL, like, a LOT. Maybe it's an autistic thing, or a linguistics nerd thing, or both. It feels more natural to me than spoken languages, and I think the grammar is so cool. Plus, you can learn a lot about how it works by reading the transliteration. Or at least I do.
So, when you see people sign things in all caps, just remember that they're not screaming incoherently in English :) They're saying things in a rich and beautiful language that most of them (like me) aren't 100% fluent in!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
They looked at each other silently for a moment. Jason painfully swallowed and rasped out, "I'm... wearing that... to... th' next... gala... ol' man." He began rubbing his arms. "Shit... thank y..." His voice faded out entirely.
Bruce hastily helped him to lie back as he tried to eke out another sound, and began holding up each of the blankets from Clark's stack for Jason's approval before layering them on him.
Jason finally signed, "ALL FINE," gesturing to the whole stack.
Bruce made a strangely choked sound. "Where did Clark find these?" He was holding a gleaming, soft, black bat with a Batsymbol on its chest. "We have... plushies?"
He handed Jason the bat, and opened the blanket cabinet. The shelves labeled "Sterilized Blankets" were slightly fuller than they had been, because two of the shelves were now labeled "Sterilized BatPlushies."
Bruce shook his head. "Who did this? How long have we had these?"
Jason shrugged, patting his face with the soft, cool bat wings.
Bruce was examining the other plushie that had been behind Clark's stack. It was a soft baseball bat, filled with weighted beads. It, too, featured the Batsymbol on one side. The other side sported a pair of doofy bat wings.
"It's a BatBat," Bruce said despairingly. "They're both BatBats." He handed the second one to Jason.
Jason draped the weighted BatBat across himself with some satisfaction, and closed his eyes. They immediately jolted back open as an icy shiver stabbed through him from head to toes.
"Febrile seizures," Bruce said, as if that explained anything.
Jason raised his hands to exclaim, "I'm having seizures?" Hesitated. Lowered them. And shot Bruce a dirty look, because he didn't know how to sign "seizures." The chills faded, leaving his head wringing with sweat. Dizzily ringing with heat.
"Your brain is telling your body it's cold to make you shiver, so your body temperature can go up faster to fight the infection." Bruce removed the pulse oximeter, and gently attached a different sensor to Jason's ear. Jason was beginning to regret having ears. "But this says your temperature is... still just over a hundred and five degrees."
Jason wasn't listening, couldn't process any of that, and didn't care. Instead, he tapped a V to the back of his fist and hesitantly brought it toward himself. "YOU-SAVE-ME?"
"I think your healing factor will kick in once we get you on antibiotics and intravenous steroids-" his father replied.
"NO. NO," Jason corrected him. His fingers felt stiff and tired, but it was easier than speaking. Painfully, slowly, trying to ignore the letters, he fingerspelled, "J-O-K-E-R. YOU-SAVE-ME? RECENT." He held Bruce's gaze.
"I..." Bruce glanced away and raised his own hands. "THINK," he agreed. "I TRIED. YOU BURN-UP - FEVER, BLANKET, SWADDLED, STUCK, COULDN'T MOVE." He hesitated, raising his eyes back to Jason's face. "YOU SAID, 'CAN'T DIE AGAIN.'"
Jason swallowed. He remembered the nightmare vividly. It felt more real than abruptly being in an unfamiliar bed, his head ringing and fuzzy, his breaths ghosting shallowly in and out as long as he didn't think about them. (Or inhale too quickly. Or laugh. Or roll snake eyes on some distant cosmic dice.)
Feeling immobilized and trapped felt normal, compared to this. The burning walls of the warehouse felt normal. As though he had never left.
"Jaylad, no. Stay with me." Bruce's icy hand on Jason's forehead awoke him before he realized his eyes had slid shut.
"Fuc'n cold," Jason croaked, twisting away from the awful sensation to cough into his elbow. "Ow-" He coughed again, his breath coming in high-pitched scraping wheezes. He looked to his dad in alarm.
Bruce pressed a button on the bedframe, slowly raising the head of the bed, and reached for the oxygen mask. "You're not getting enough oxygen, either. This will get oxygen into you faster, to prevent oxygen starvation. But if it -- if you don't like how it feels, we can do the cannula instead."
Jason coughed harshly a few more times and shook his head, reaching for the mask.
There was blood on his arm and sleeve. Pulling the mask straps over his head, he looked at Bruce again, eyes wide.
Bruce sat down gingerly by his legs. "That's normal for legionella pneumonia, I'm afraid. At least for people without accelerated healing. Tim is getting water samples from your place, but can you think of anywhere else you've been this week?"
Jason stared into the middle distance, trying to think. The floor felt like it was undulating. Was that normal? No. It felt like a floor. It looked like it was undulating. It was making him dizzy. He should stop looking at the floor.
He turned back to Bruce and signed, "FLOOR. UNDULATE." He pointed at the floor accusingly and added, "DIZZY."
Bruce's lips compressed. Solemnly, he replied, "SORRY. BAD FLOOR." Turning to the floor, he added, "BAD!"
He turned back to Jason. "HELPS?"
Jason held out a flat hand and rocked it. "SO-SO." He added, a little accusingly, "O HAS TRACKING-ME!"
"I know. I know. And she can give Tim the data. But if you took a shower anywhere else, or went to a hot tub, or... anywhere with water? Anywhere that water is aerosolized?"
Jason really wanted to mockingly finger-spell that back at him. Who asks a delirious semi-zombie whether they've been around aerosolized water?
Wait. "SAME-AS SPRAY? HOSE?"
"I suppose so?"
"ONE-GUY...." Jason tried to think of how to sign this. "BACKPACK. FOR P-E-S-T-C-I-I-I-D-E? SPICY HOSED-DOWN ME."
"Did you have your helmet?"
"BROKE," Jason signed sadly. "TWO-WEEKS-AGO. BUSY. FIX NOT-YET."
"Do you remember what day that was?"
Thinking about the smell of the pepper spray was making Jason want to hurl. "STOMACH-HURTS," he signed. "HEAD-HURTS. BODY-HURTS. CHEST-HURTS. THROAT-HURTS. HEAD-HURTS."
Bruce reached out, offering a grounding hand. Jason took it, and tried a slow, deep breath.
It didn't kill him. Maybe he even felt a tiny bit better. He tried another slow breath, and let go to sign, "TODAY WHAT?"
Bruce glanced at the clock. "It's Saturday morning now. Almost 6:30."
"MAYBE..." Jason tilted his head. "YESTERDAY, SICK. THURSDAY, SO-SO. WEDNESDAY, SO-SO. TUESDAY, MASS-MURDER, MONDAY, SUNDAY, SATURDAY, MASS-MURDER... LAST FRIDAY."
"I know for a fact you were with Roy on Sunday, not committing mass murder."
"ROY: MASS-MURDER. TWO-OF-US. BOTH," Jason insisted.
"Duly noted. Is there any chance you wrote a report about Friday's encounter?"
"NO."
"I supposed not," Bruce sighed.
Jason relented. "TEXTED." He felt for his phone, and realized that it was still at home. "ROY: YOU-ASK-HIM."
Bruce squeezed his shoulder. "Thank you. If we can find the source, we might be able to save others from getting this." He stood. "An IV will help with some of that pain. I'm sure you're incredibly dehydrated. I'd like to add hydrocortisone to the IV. It's, uh, it is a steroid, technically, but it's dramatically decreased mortality in severe Legionnaire's cases, and it's not addictive."
"WONDERFUL, YOU PUT-ON BIG BOY P-A-N-T-I-E-S, USED WORDS. GOOD JOB," Jason smirked. "YES, OK, H-Y-D-R-L-C-T-S-J FINGERSPELLING."
"The oxygen must be helping," his father said dryly. He clipped the pulse oximeter to Jason's finger and began setting up the IV. "Would you like painkillers in the IV as well? I know you usually avoid those."
"WANT KEEP CLEAR-MIND," Jason agreed. "JK JK, MIND CONFUSED DIZZY TRASH. YOU-GIVE-ME DRUGS PLEASE."
Bruce anxiously checked the vitals monitor. Everything looked just as bad as before. Good, he told himself. That meant Jason was stable. That was a kind of stable, right?
Maybe he should get a second opinion.
But first, he should start the hydrocortisone.
"The antibiotics will be easier on your body if you take them orally," he told Jason. "Do you feel up to that?"
Jason was staring up at the ceiling. "SURE," he signed without looking away. "IF THROW-UP, CHANGE."
Bruce hesitated. "Are you sure?"
Jason turned to him - cheeks burning, puffing out shallow wheezing breaths, eyes feverishly alight - and slowly whispered, "I feel like I'm dying."
Bruce could smell burnt almonds and sulfur. He quelled the urge to pick Jason up and run.
They looked at each other while he counted ten of his own breaths. He reminded himself: it was a miracle that Jason was alive. It was a miracle that Jason was here, trusting him. It was a miracle that he was able to diagnose Jason quickly. It was a miracle that he had a medical bay with the equipment to treat pneumonia.
Jason waited patiently. He could burn, and burn, and never die. He was doing it right now. He could feel the walls burning down around him, even though he knew he was safe. He was a phoenix. He could take comfort in the warmth.
He was also maybe a tiny bit delirious.
But it didn't matter.
It didn't matter how high the flames climbed, because his dad was already here.
Bruce took his hands and said, "All right. I'll be right back with the pills. Do you want some water to take them with?"
Jason imagined ice-cold water running down inside of him, and shivered.
"No," Bruce agreed. "Maybe tea? I'm sure that would help your throat. I'll check in with Alfred and be back in a few minutes."
Jason gripped his hands harder, trying to stifle the small, fearful sound that wanted to come out of his mouth. He saw a spark of worry and compassion kindle in Bruce's eyes, before a third voice made them both jump.
"I'm afraid it is far too late for that, Master Bruce."
Notes:
The fact that "JK, JK" is actually a legitimate sign in ASL is fucking sending me.
There is no way "SPICY HOSED-DOWN ME" is correct. Jason is just falling apart at this point. Stop interrogating the patient, Bruce.
Likewise, devolving into fingerspelling a keysmash, and then just signing "FINGERSPELLING" in lieu of continuing, is... definitely something I would do, but not something I would recommend doing. I do not have the experience to know whether that would make sense to a native ASL speaker, but I'm super-curious.
The sign YOU-SAVE-ME has incredibly beautiful grammar.
In ASL, if you're doing something to someone, the verb moves from you to them. For example, if I'm offering to bring you something, I'll sign BRING? and move it from me to you.
YOU=SAVE-ME is a V-shape, which makes me think both of SAVE and of a person's upheld arms. You tap it against your other fist, which makes me think of the HELP sign (but without the upraised thumb) or of a massive boulder being moved, or of a huge sphere of metaphorical help being brought. The whole thing moves toward Jason's chest here, like a visual of Bruce coming to rescue him.
There's just something so much more visceral and vulnerable about it than the English words -- which Jason could never have said to Bruce anyway, even if he weren't sick.
I have the mental image of that Mean Girls gif here, except with "OMG Karen, you can't ask someone if they just saved you!"
If all of this is piquing your interest in ASL, you might like queerasl.com. They have lots of online classes at sliding-scale rates. Anyone who's queer/trans/intersex OR AN ALLY is welcome!!
(And if you're the kind of person who internally debate whether you should go because maybe you're not a good enough ally, are you really even an ally - or maybe you're not ___ enough, do you really even count -- YES, YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH. YES, YOU ARE ENOUGH. YES, YOU COUNT!)
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Chapter 6: chapter six: pick up sticks
Summary:
Shorter than I meant it to be, because I liked ending it on a peaceful note. Bruce is upstairs getting absolutely reamed by Leslie, and then he's going to get dragged by his own children... next time!
Notes:
Whumptember 2025 prompt: 30. warm drink
Sicktember 2025: 21. tea
Whumptober 2025: 30. Confrontation
Daisy's Whumptober 2025: 22. Exhaustion
Hurtcember 2025: alternate prompt "I can fix it": bruce, to himself, as he tries to get alfred to forgive him
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Alfred swept in with a tea tray and the authority of a king.
He set the tray down with a clatter that could be measured on the Richter scale, and bent over Jason with his back to Bruce. "My dear, dear boy. How are you feeling?"
Jason thought about it.
No thoughts came out.
Jason shook his head a little.
Still no thoughts coming out of there.
He met Alfred's eyes, slowly raised one hand, and gave a weak thumbs-down.
Alfred tutted.
"I, uh...." Bruce cleared his throat. "Did you see my text?"
"Did I see your text?" Alfred's eyebrows arched like offended cats. "Master Bruce. I most definitely did see your text. As I recall, it consisted of a single sentence fragment, was sent at approximately 6 a.m., and was not followed by any sort of response to my ensuing questions."
Jason sat up a little higher and managed to take a deep breath of oxygen.
Alfred dropped him a tiny wink.
Jason didn't think this was healing his body, but it was absolutely watering all his crops.
Bruce was frowning at his phone. "I thought - oh."
"Yes, perhaps you could read me your text again? I seem to have forgotten much of its contents." Alfred gently stroked Jason's hair. "It is so terribly difficult to absorb so much detailed information at once, at my advanced age. Even when it concerns a loved one."
Bruce cleared his throat again, shifting his weight. "I thought - I meant to say more." Without turning around, Alfred gestured for him to continue. "I texted you, 'In medbay'."
"Ah, yes, that was it! 'In medbay'." Alfred shook his head. "It's no wonder I couldn't recall all of that. Certainly the words themselves seem simple enough. But the subtext! The world of people and actions at which it hints! The questions it raises, and the questions raised by the raising of those questions!"
Jason mentally upgraded his condition from "might already be dead again; unsure" to "could probably handle a cup of tea."
Alfred poured two cups."Now, Master Jason, do tell me, what treatment have you received?"
Jason helpfully gestured at the oxygen mask.
"Yes, and I do see that your oxygen levels have reached... goodness me, 93% already, how time does fly. But have you received no other medication?"
Jason looked sorrowful and shook his head.
"Do you have no diagnosis?"
Bruce took a step forward. "I'm certain it's bacterial pneumonia. I was about to come talk to you and bring him something to take antibiotics with."
Alfred finally deigned to address him directly. "And just what, may I ask, prevented you from doing so earlier?"
"I - oh, God, I still need to look up the right one. I was - I couldn't leave him alone here." Bruce's eyes were wide and earnest.
Alfred was unaffected. "I believe Master Kent brought him here, did he not? Surely that, or indeed the duration of his travel time here, would have been an ideal moment in which to alert me to what was occurring."
Bruce said meekly, "I didn't want to wake you. It was the middle of the night. I thought you'd be up soon enough anyway."
"Master Bruce. Honestly, which is it? That you did not want to wake me? Or that you expected I was about to wake myself?"
Bruce looked down at his shoes.
Jason looked at the tea tray to see if Alfred happened to have brought any popcorn.
Alfred doubled down. "Did it not occur to you that not only were there others who cared for the lad, but that you could provide better care for him if you had help?"
"Sorry, Alfred," Bruce rumbled. "I'm - I'm sorry. I panicked and I wasn't thinking clearly."
"Perhaps you should be apologizing to Master Jason," Alfred sniffed.
"I'm sorry, Jason," Bruce said.
Jason mock-gasped, started coughing again, and let out a hoarse, frustrated scream in between coughs.
"All right," Alfred said briskly, sitting on the edge of the bed and slowly rubbing Jason's back. "I believe you will find the nebulizers in cabinet ten. Perhaps you might bring us one, and then call Doctor Leslie to confirm your diagnosis and get a prescription."
When Jason's coughing fit finally abated, he rested his head in his hands and tried to think.
He could lie back down. But he would probably need to sit up again when the nebulizer was ready. And he wasn't sure he had the strength to lie down and sit back up.
Really, he wasn't sure he had the strength to lie back down in the first place. He would have to use his back and chest and shoulder muscles to control his movement in a direction he couldn't even see.
He could maybe just fall backwards, in a pinch. It couldn't be that far; the bed was still inclined.
His arms were beginning to shake just from holding up his head.
Unless it was another febrile seizure. Bruce. You absolute fucking nerd.
He did realize that he was planning this out like a heist.
Maybe he wouldn't have to sit up to use the nebulizer. They must be made for people to use in bed. Obviously. Silly Jason.
He realized he had slumped forward quite a bit while thinking this over. Better for his arms. Worse for breathing. Although it was kind of a wash since he was already breathing so shallowly. But definitely worse for getting back home to the pillows.
What if he just went to sleep right here, though.
Okay. It was a plan.
Alfred turned around with the prepared nebulizer in hand, and found that Jason had passed out in an uncomfortable-looking forward bend. "Oh, dear dear dear dear," he muttered to himself as he lifted the boy back against the pillows and checked his vital signs. "All right, no harm done. Now, oxygen to the nebulizer, off with the oxygen mask...."
He lifted Jason's head to fasten the nebulizer mask. Jason, exhausted far beyond his limits, barely even twitched. Alfred sat next to him, sipping tea and waiting for the nebulizer to finish.
"There, my dear boy," he quietly told Jason's sleeping body, fastening the oxygen mask back on. "That should help a great deal. When your father returns, I shall tell him to put the antibiotics in your IV after all, so you can rest."
Notes:
Jason could not, in fact, handle a cup of tea.
Alfred is nobody's fool. He got the entire story from Babs, Tim, and Clark before he went down there.
Chapter 7: enter dr. dev
Summary:
dr. kiran "dev" devabhaktuni is the creation of bowditch, formerly audreycritter, who - with infinite grace and kindness - has not only shared him with the world in a bajillion fics, but also lets other people write stuff with him.
Notes:
Hurtcember 2025 prompt: Death.
Whumptober 2025: 12. withholding medical treatment, 23. ICU
Daisy's Whumptober 2025: 1. Unconsciousness
Whumptember 2025: 19. “I really wanted this to work”
Sicktember 2025: Alternate prompt 5, "I love you"
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Bruce deeply regretted having pissed Alfred off this much. Because if he hadn't left Alfred out of the loop for a good hour, Alfred would probably have called Leslie.
"Why would you take him straight home in that condition?"
"I d--"
"Confusion. Vomiting. High-grade fever. Still rising. Probable dehydration. Difficulty breathing. Loss of consciousness. Severe bronchospasms. You don't know how long this was happening before you found him. You don't know why his healing factor isn't helping." Leslie stopped to take a breath. "He should be in a hospital."
"I didn't," Bruce stressed. "Superman offered him a choice of whether to go FROM home to the hospital, or to the medical bay here in the Batcave."
"You could have called him an ambulance."
"Not to the Batcave!"
"Mm. Maybe not," she agreed. "But you could have brought him upstairs. I'll give you the pneumonia diagnosis, but what makes you so sure that it's Legionnaires' specifically?"
"He has five of the items on the six-item predictive score.'
"Which ones?" she challenged him.
Bruce poked a punching bag with one finger to see how far it would move. Not very far. But not too bad. "Uh. High-grade fever with relative brachycardia. Low sodium, high lactate, high CRP... and a dry cough. With what Superman described as 'patchy-looking' lungs."
"Lungs, plural?" Leslie said sharply.
"Yes. Double pneumonia."
"Jesus. The poor kid. No wonder he went down so hard." Bruce could hear her typing up notes. "No thrombocytopenia? What's his platelet count?"
He pushed a punching bag counter-clockwise, watching it spin on its chain. "I... don't recall the number, but it was slightly below the threshold."
"Mm-hm. And how did you know the six-item prediction score?"
Bruce cleared his throat. "I googled it."
"...You googled it."
"I had a hunch."
Leslie shook her head. Fucking World's Greatest Detective and his hunches. "Okay. You have a high number on an imperfect scoring system. Now how are you going to confirm your diagnosis?"
"I have a multiplex PCR platform that should be able to identify it from a blood culture, but it'll take another half-hour at least." The punching bag slowed, wobbled, then began to rotate the other way.
"Another half-hour at least, he says!" She sighed. "Okay. I was wrong. He shouldn't be in the hospital." She paused for emphasis. "He should be in the ICU."
"Leslie," Bruce said weakly, dropping to his knees on the exercise mats.
"He should," she repeated firmly. "You can wait until you have PCR results, to make intake faster. But he should."
"He isn't septic," Bruce argued. "He doesn't need mechanical ventilation."
"How fast is his breathing, Bruce."
"It went over 30 breaths a minute when he was having a nightmare," he admitted. "It's 20 now."
"Difficulty breathing. Rapid breathing. Confusion. Severe low blood pressure. Low oxygen. Multilobar pneumonia. ICU."
"I don't want to move him."
"I understand. But hospitals do it all the time."
"He...." Bruce swallowed, trying to think of the reasoning for ICU admission. "He needs to be in the ICU because they can keep his vital signs monitored constantly? And give him immediate support if anything changes?"
"And what if he needs to be put on a ventilator, Bruce? You can't do that for him. Even if you were a doctor, you shouldn't be your own child's doctor. It's one thing to bandage them up, but this is a huge violation of medical ethics. Especially with Jason, for God's sake. You can't be unbiased with a kid who's already died once!"
"I... you're right. Of course you're right. I just hate to...." Not be able to monitor everything personally. Not to have total control. "Put him through all of that." His mind raced.
"I know. I know. He clearly feels safer in the medbay, and being transferred while this sick would be stressful on anyone. But I don't see an alternative. We don't have the room, or the resources, at the clinic."
"And we have the resources and space, but not the staff." Bruce paused. "I could call Dr. Dev."
He could practically hear Leslie's raised eyebrow. "You want to call that man and ask him to end his vacation to be your sole trained medical staff instead of the entire ICU? Be my guest." She tapped a pen on the desk, thinking. "Bruce. Okay. Here's the deal. I will leave you alone about taking him to the Batcave and not calling me immediately. I will sign off on the levoflaxin while he's there, but not the steroids; they're contraindicated with legionella because of GI bleeding. You can nebulize sterile saline or albuterol to help him breathe, but no steroids. And I'll write up a diagnosis and treatment notes for the hospital. You can call Dr. Dev if you want. Check all the local ER wait times, too. I will come by on my lunch break to see how he's doing and hear what your decision is. And you will buy my clinic two of each of all your fancy machines."
"Done."
"And all the hospitals. Two for each department. I'll take a quick tour of all your equipment after I do the exam, too, so I can make you a shopping list."
"Anything for you, Leslie."
"And don't you forget it," she grumbled.
![[the first of two screenshots of Bruce's texts to his Family Group Chat]](https://images.squidge.org/images/2025/12/20/this-is-bruce.png)
Alfred's phone rang. He checked Jason's vitals again, then got up and moved to an area where he could still keep an eye on them but avoid waking Jason. "Hullo, Dev," he said with a mixture of relief and concern. "How are things?"
"Right as rain, Alfie old chum. But I hear your lot can't say the same."
"I'm afraid not," Alfred sighed. "Do I take it that Master Bruce has apprised you of young Master Jason's condition?"
"You do. You bloody well do," Dev said briskly. "Not to put too fine a point on it, but I gather that Leslie's told Wayne to send Jason to hospital. And the silly fool sodding wants to call me in instead."
"Oh, dear."
"Oh dear indeed. I also gather you're with Jason right now. Can you give me his vitals?"
Alfred glanced at his watch. "He's been receiving oxygen through a mask for, oh, an hour perhaps, and I do see that his blood oxygen levels have improved. They've gone from 91% right up to 96%. I did administer a nebulizer of albuterol, which seems to have helped. He's been sleeping peacefully for over half an hour, with his breath and heart rate within normal ranges. His fever has gone down a little, but is still quite high; currently just a touch over 40 degrees."
"Bloody hell! Wouldn't like to be him," Dev said. "All right. Really, at most, he's on the line for ICU admission right now. A busy hospital would be just as likely to administer antibiotics, check on him regularly, and call it a bloody day. I take Leslie's point, and I might just have a word with Clark later about letting very ill people make life-threatening decisions for themselves - not that the bloody rest of them would have done any better. But I think I'll tell Bruce yes."
"Are you quite sure, Kiran? I have every confidence in your judgment, of course. But I fear Master Bruce may be treating you as a bit of a deus ex machina."
Dev snorted. "You absolute bloody drama geek, Alfie. As if I could just say, 'Ship him off to hospital, I'll visit when I get back.' Rest assured, I'll let them lower me from the heavens on a crane any day, if it's for Zombie Boy and a spot of your tea."
"So you'll do it?" The note of hope in Bruce's voice really shouldn't tug at his sodding heartstrings like that. He was only doing this, he reminded himself, because he had ironclad faith in his ability to be rational about medical decisions even with this ridiculous found family of his.
"Accept no-doubt-massive and as-yet-undiscussed amounts of money to cut my vacation short and rush to Jason's bedside, like someone in one of those Regency novels he loves so much? Yes, I'll bloody do it; you know I'll bloody well do it, or you wouldn't have called."
"I don't ever want to assume, Dev," Bruce said quietly.
"Yes, fine, I love you lot too. Am I going to look up commercial flights, or are you picking me up in luxury in the Batplane? I am not flying Superman Air. It's bloody terrifying, and there are never any in-flight snacks."
Notes:
Bruce, holding up a five-page internal corporate memo like he's in that one Pokemon meme: "Is this how you text your kids?"
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Master_Torch_Master on Chapter 1 Mon 25 Aug 2025 03:31AM UTC
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Last Edited Sun 30 Nov 2025 09:40PM UTC
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