Chapter Text
Tim focuses on trying to breathe through the agony shooting through his left arm, and looks at it logically.
It took him fifty eight minutes to get to his location from the surface due to the difficulty of the tunnel’s terrain, but he was moving relatively slowly in order to clear every offshoot of the cave system. Nightwing had still been the site of the first set of bombs, approximately thirty minutes behind him, last he’d checked. Tim had gone deeper underground to the site of the second bombs, the ones that would have collapsed half the city. He's successfully disarmed them.
The third bomb — the one they hadn’t known about — had gone off while he’d been on his way back up, and had brought down what seemed like half the tunnel system with it. The change in the tunnel layout would create delays in his team’s arrival to his location. Even if he’s being an optimist and nothing is entirely blocked off, he’s looking at at least an hour before help can get to him.
He’d woken up pinned flat on his back at an incline, his head about a foot higher than his feet. He estimates that he’d been unconscious for less than five minutes, and he’s been awake for another five trying to figure out a plan. But in that time, water has already started creeping up his calves, having soaked entirely into his boots. He does not have an hour left before the water reaches his face.
He might not even have another five minutes, if the rock that’s pinning his arm shifts any further and crushes his chest. It’s balanced precariously. His initial attempts to escape, to push it off of his arm enough to pull free, had only resulted in the weight settling further with a nauseating crunch of bone.
His arm is —
He doesn’t want to think about his arm. If he ignores the white-hot agony coming from it in sharp pulses that radiate up his shoulder, then nothing is wrong and he’s fine. It’s pinned, and that’s all he’ll allow himself to think about.
His arm is pinned, and the water is rising, and his arm—
“Robin checking in,” He says, forcing his voice flat, “Second bomb disabled but there were complications from the explosion of what seems to have been a third. I’m pinned. What’s the soonest ETA to my location?”
His comms buzz. The connection isn’t the most reliable, this deep underground, but it’s there. A little spotty, fading in and out at times. He’s not entirely alone.
“Hey Robin,” Nightwing chirps, “I’m escorting the hostages up to the surface. I’m at least an hour from being able to get to you. What complications?”
“Part of the tunnel collapsed from the third bomb,” Tim replies, his gaze drifting to the water lapping at his thighs. If the rubble from the collapse did block the tunnel entirely, Nightwing’s ‘hour’ could be much, much longer.
“Is anyone closer?” He asks quietly.
“Sorry, kiddo, I’m the only one still underground with you. B went back up to the surface to help deal with the sinkhole from the third bomb so he’s on the other line with Oracle,” Nightwing replies.
Tim lets out a shaky breath through his nose. That means he’s on his own down here for the time being. He can hear the blood flowing around where his arm is crushed between the two rocks, the sound of it steadily dripping into the water around him, and squeezes his eyes shut. He gives himself until the count of five, and then turns to look.
His arm is crushed under the large fallen rock next to him. There’s an open fracture just before the rock covers the limb, the wet shine of bone in the low light as it sticks out from the skin a nauseating sight, but it’s likely there’s significantly more damage to the arm under the rock from the amount of blood and the crack he'd felt earlier when it had shifted. Tim tries to move his fingers, just a little, and he – can’t tell if they respond. The muscles in his shoulder jump and twitch, shooting agony through his nerves, but he can’t tell if that goes any further than where it’s pinned. That’s… concerning. Severe damage is very likely.
He can’t risk attempting to tug his arm free again. Not with how much the entire structure had shifted the last time he’d tried. But the water is rising, and if he stays here waiting for rescue, he’s going to drown. He has to move.
Tim stares at his arm as the understanding of what he has to do slowly creeps up on him. His breath catches, hitches.
Oh god.
He turns away from his arm and closes his eyes again.
A field amputation done without the right tools, having lost an unknown quantity of blood already? His chances of surviving this… weren’t great. And that’s even if he could push through the mental barrier of cutting his own arm off, because no matter what, even if he succeeds, Robin will die.
“Can you get here as soon as possible?” Tim asks hoarsely.
“Robin, I’m on my way. What’s happening?” Dick asks, voice suddenly much sharper and more focused through the interference on the comm line. Tim doesn’t answer. Nightwing curses.
“What should I be expecting upon arrival?”
Tim thinks it would be cruel to tell Dick to expect to either find him dead or missing a limb. He stares at his arm for a long moment, and then starts to carefully unbuckle his belt, fingers fumbling and clumsy. He takes a deep breath and tries to focus. The strap of it should work well enough as a makeshift tourniquet, if he uses his collapsed bo staff to twist it tighter.
“Robin?” Nightwing prompts, sounding out of breath.
“Uhhh,” He replies, distracted, “Nothing good. Be prepared for… A lot of blood. Um,” He unzips his suit, working the wet material down his shoulder to just above his elbow, and then wraps the strap a few inches above the open fracture, “If you have – clotting powder. That would be great.”
Tim has antibacterial wipes in his belt. That would probably be smart to use first, right? Clean the site, clean his hands – hand – and the – the blade. Minimize the amount of bacteria he’s introducing into his bloodstream.
He pulls out a knife from his belt, lays it next to his shoulder, and goes back for the disinfectant wipes. He runs it over the knife, his hands, and then dabs it around the site of the fracture. It soaks up the blood and starts to just smear it around. He notes distantly that his hands are shaking.
He can’t really feel his arm anymore, but that’s – that’s a good thing, right? Since he’s about to cut it off?
“Robin!” Someone says sharply. “What’s going on? Answer me!”
“You– you said an hour, right?” Tim asks, voice shaky. “Because I’m about to do something I can’t exactly come back from if you make it here much sooner.”
“What the hell does that mean, Tim?!” Dick says, voice strained and uneasy. Tim can practically feel his brother’s nerves climb when he doesn’t respond, but he’s busy looking at the skin he’s about to cut into. “Timmy?”
“It’s stuck, so it’s gotta come off or else I’m going to drown in the next few minutes. It’s – it’s probably already damaged beyond repair from the cave-in, so it’s fine. It’s fine, right? I’ve got a tourniquet on it so hopefully I won’t bleed out before you get here,” Tim babbles.
Someone on the other end of the line sucks in a sharp breath.
“Tim…”
The water is at his hips now, and if he waits any longer he’ll risk it getting into the amputation site before he can crawl away. That’s a sure fire recipe for sepsis if Tim has ever heard one.
Tim presses the knife to his arm, approximately three inches below the tourniquet. He uses the site of the first break in his upper arm as a frame of reference for where he needs to be. He drags the knife across his skin, cutting deep through layers of tissue.
He knows he’s screaming by the time he starts to slice through the underlying muscle.
At some point in the process, his mind starts to detach from the agony of what he’s doing, trying to distance itself. He wants to sink into the fuzzy feeling, but – but if he does that, he risks passing out, and if he passes out now he’ll die. Instead, he follows Bruce’s breathing patterns through gritted teeth, tears pouring down his face and breath coming in desperate gasps between screams.
The bone already being broken is a godsend. He doesn’t know if he could have purposefully snapped it at this point, not with how much pain he's in, and not with the lack of leverage this position gives him. Instead, he cuts through the last of the flesh, and his arm is separated from his body. He gags, rolling to the side and vomiting into the water that’s risen around him. His entire body is shuddering so hard his teeth are chattering, and he squeezes his eyes shut, trying to focus on breathing through the foul taste in his mouth.
Right. The water. He can’t stay here, he has to move to higher ground. He looks at the mangled stump, what remains of his left arm, and suddenly that short distance to the ledge above seems much, much longer.
All he can hear is the ringing in his ears, the fuzzy connection of the comm getting worse in response to Nightwing getting deeper underground.
He forces himself to roll onto his side, and then bit by bit, he drags himself up onto his knees, and then uses his good arm – his only arm-- to push himself to his feet. Once he’s standing, he sways in place for a moment, and then takes a step forward. His feet feel heavy, squishing uncomfortably with the amount of water that’s pooled inside of them, his pants and back and torso dripping the water he’d been laying in. He staggers forward, fingers coming up to grip at what remains of his arm, shivering and moaning in agony. He makes it about fifteen feet up the incline before his body decides it's gone far enough. He stumbles, crashing down to his knees, and then tipping over onto his side.
Somewhere distantly, he can hear a frantic voice cut in and out, begging him to respond, but he’s too tired and cold. Shivers overtake him, so powerful that his damn eyes feel like they’re vibrating. He grits his teeth hard in an effort to keep them from chattering so much.
He did it. He cut his arm off, and he didn’t drown. He can feel his pulse throbbing through his shoulder, hot agonizing pain that he can hardly breathe through, the sense of wrongness--
Either Nightwing will make it in time to get him out, or he'll die here. There's nothing more he can do now but curl up on himself and shiver, staring at the dark water as it laps hungrily at the end of the severed arm, rising bit by bit until it’s completely consumed.
******
Jason had a lot of plans for his return to Gotham, but Robin splitting off from Batman and Nightwing to descend deeper into the tunnels under Gotham all alone was too good of an opportunity to pass up.
By the time Jason makes it down into the tunnels using his stolen comm to track Nightwing’s movements and slip past him in the dark while he’s occupied with the first bomb, Drake has made it deep underground.
Jason’s comm is an old model he snatched from a lesser-used safehouse. It's outdated by several years, but had worked well enough to keep him in the loop about the Bats' new patrol routes to avoid them in the city. But the deeper he goes, the worse the connection gets. He’ll catch a garbled word here and there, but it cuts out on him more than it transmits.
He’s closing in fast, but he doesn’t quite catch up to Drake before a bomb goes off.
Jason isn’t expecting it. He'd figured that Drake would have been good enough to have disarmed the bomb and been on his way back up already, had been preparing to meet the kid head on in the tunnel. Instead, a heavy rock falls and knocks into his shoulder, sending him sprawling to the ground. He shouldn’t be as dazed by the strike as he is – he’s wearing a damn helmet, after all – but his brain lags, stuck in a loop of a countdown, a bomb, a dead Robin.
The kid – the kid is probably dead, if the bomb that went off was the one he'd been working on, Jason thinks blankly as he stares at the collapsed tunnel around him. He’d narrowly missed being crushed by the sliding rock, himself. The entire back half of the tunnel is caved in behind him, and there’s only a narrow route forward.
The kid, only a couple years his junior, was blown up, buried under tons of rubble, a red and raw smear in the Robin suit. Batman and Nightwing will show up, too late as always, and find the body. Dig it out, dress it up in a nice little suit if there’s anything to salvage, a closed coffin if there’s too much damage.
The cave-in will be bringing the other Bats hot on Jason’s heels – on Drake’s heels – with no chance of slipping past them until they’re well and truly distracted. His best bet now is to press forward, hide out near Robin’s body, wait for them to clear a path, and then take the opportunity of their distress at the sight to slip past them and book it to the surface. It’s callous, but it’s the only way out of here without a fight.
Jason darts over the piles of rock, slips through the gap, and trudges forward.
Before long, he enters a cavern. One wall has caved in, large boulders sliding down into a deep pool of water. Jason scans the cavern, letting the infrared tech in his helmet do the heavy lifting in the pitch black, until his gaze drags along a dark smear leading from the water up towards his location, and eventually catches on a form on the ground in front of him.
Jesus.
Robin is curled up in a puddle of blood on the rough stone ground, limp and still. His suit is torn, his face scraped to hell, and his arm-- Jason takes a slow, deep breath, trying to settle the nausea that churns in his stomach at the sight.
He’d intended to come down here, ambush the kid, terrorize him a bit and then leave him for Nightwing to find. Break a few bones, maybe, to keep him off the street during the build up and subsequent showdown he was planning. But he never wanted to see another dead Robin.
He finds himself kneeling next to the body before he even realizes he’s moved forward, reaching out and touching the shoulder of the amputated arm and rolling the kid onto his back.
He gets a knife stabbed through the thinner material along his wrist for his trouble.
“Motherfuck–!” Jason hisses, yanking his hand back. There’s not enough power behind the strike for it to have caused severe damage, but the cut still stings, sharp and hot and dribbling blood down his fingers that pools in the tips of his gloves. The kid is a little less dead than Jason first thought, apparently. That presents an entirely new issue, because instead of a body, he’s now dealing with a grievously injured teenager with a missing goddamn arm.
“Don’t touch me, don’t touch me!” Robin begs, scrabbling desperately at the ground as he tries to drag himself away from Jason. He can’t see Robin’s eyes through the blank white of the domino’s lenses, but even through the infrared vision of his helmet, he can tell the kid is pale, shocky, and absolutely terrified. The tourniquet is holding well enough, heading off the worst of the bleeding, but if he starts thrashing around he risks dislodging it, or spiking his blood pressure enough to disrupt the delicate new clots that are trying to form.
“Robin,” He says, “I’ve gotta check that arm.”
Robin shakes his head furiously.
“No, no, please, it hurts, please don’t, please just leave me alone, I can’t do it, Nightwing please, help me," He sobs, curling around the space where the missing limb would be, tucking it close to his chest. His breathing is fast and shallow, like he might pass out.
Honestly, Jason thinks it would be easier if he did – his blood pressure spiking up sure wasn’t going to help with the blood loss, and the panic and pain would make him fight against manipulation of the limb while Jason takes a look.
Jason leans back into his crouch and sighs. He really wishes he had some sedatives on hand, but right now, his options are limited to what he has on him. The fastest way would probably be to do a quick blood choke, cut off the circulation to his brain for long enough to get him to pass out, but the kid would undoubtedly fight and injure himself further in the ten or so seconds it would take for unconsciousness to hit. Then he could get some gauze on the – the stump, and… then what? Wait here with Drake until Batman and Nightwing dug their way past the tunnel collapse, and hope the kid didn’t die in the meantime?
“Robin,” Jason tries again, “You need to calm down. Panicking is gonna make it worse. Hey. Hey. Listen to me, Tim. Focus on my voice.” The modulated, grating voice from the helmet. Fuck. No wonder this wasn’t working.
Jason reaches up and presses the button that releases the catch on his helmet, sliding it off. His sweaty hair flops along his forehead in limp curls. Tim stares at him for a long moment, and then the kid goes suddenly, horrifying limp, his entire body relaxing. Jason jolts forward, thinking for a second that the kid just up and died at the sight of his goddamn face, but Tim speaks before he can grab ahold of his body.
“Oh. Oh. Hi, Jason,” Tim says, voice breathy and soft. Relieved, almost. Jason freezes, hand still extended out in his reach towards Robin’s shoulder. “I didn’t expect to see you here…”
Tim is much, much calmer now. Scarily so. But for the moment it solves the problem, and Jason doesn’t want to say the wrong thing and ruin that, so he just ignores the fact that this kid recognized him immediately once the helmet was off. He reaches out, manipulating the amputated limb into his lap to look at it closer. Tim keeps talking, face turned towards Jason.
“I’m glad you’re here, though,” He says, “I… thought I was going to die alone,” Tim’s voice breaks, and he shudders with the strength of the sob he tries to choke back down. “I’m so sorry, Robin. I didn’t mean to leave them alone again. I tried, Jason I tried, please, you have to believe me.”
Jason tries very hard to tune out the words as he looks over the stump, because if he starts to focus on Tim’s rambling stream of consciousness, he’s going to lose his shit. The tourniquet did its job and reduced the bleeding significantly, but with how much the kid has already lost and no way to give him fluids or a blood transfusion until he gets evacuated, every ounce of the liquid is precious. He pulls out clean gauze rolls from a mini first aid kit stashed in one of the many pouches of his cargo pants.
He swings a leg over Tim’s chest and settles his weight to pin him in place, one knee leaning heavily on his good shoulder to make sure he’s not gonna get stabbed again, and then grips the stump firmly and presses the gauze against it, ignoring Tim’s pained scream. He layers it back and forth ten or so times, creating a thick padding of the material, and wraps up the arm neatly to hold it all in place. Then, he maintains the pressure on the wound.
“Robin, stop, please, stop! It hurts!” Tim shrieks, trying to yank his arm from Jason’s grip, hips arching up in an attempt to throw him off, but Jason has probably eighty pounds on the younger teen, and has no trouble keeping him in place. He grimaces.
“I know it hurts. I’m sorry, Tim,” He says quietly, “But we have to keep pressure on it.”
Tim’s struggles eventually weaken and then stop, hitched little sobs coming from him. Jason shifts off of him once he settles and sits next to him, leaning up against the wall. He tugs Tim over a little, settling him in between Jason’s legs with his back to Jason’s chest. Tim’s shivering, body chilled from the blood loss and the low ambient temperature in the cave and the shock, so Jason shrugs out of his armored leather jacket and drapes it over Robin from thighs to shoulders, grateful that the kid at least has pants on instead of the shorts that Dick and Jason wore. He tucks the jacket carefully around his body to help conserve heat, and eventually the kid cries himself into unconsciousness.
Jason’s chest aches. He shifts his hand, slipping it under the collar of the costume and leaving his fingers pressed against the kid's pulse to monitor. He sits there for a long, long time.
When he finally hears the sound of rubble shifting, he carefully slides Tim off of his lap, tucks the jacket back in around him, and slips away into the shadows of the rocks near the entrance of the cavern. He belatedly snags his helmet along the way and yanks it back on in a hurry.
“Oh god, Robin!” Nightwing cries out in to the dark, voice thick with horror, and Jason uses the distraction to make his escape. He really, really hopes they can get the kid out in time to keep him alive.