Fic: Through Fire | DCU | Jason/Tim | R | 1/1
Title: Through Fire
Fandom: DCU
Pairing: Jason/Tim
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,953
Prompt: For dcu_freeforall: Bullet or Knife Wounds/Lacerations
Summary: Jay doesn’t expect to walk into a trap when he goes after the bastards that hurt his boy.
Disclaimer: DC and WB own everything, the schmucks.
Author's Notes: Final official part of the Through Crimson & Fire 'Verse; Follows The Long Road. \o/ Warnings for lots and lots of Jay-whump. There might be more later, but nothing concrete is planned right now. Thanks to those of you that stuck with me for this one! *bows*
Through Fire
In retrospect, getting into the building was easy. A quick bullet through each of the guards watching the entrance-much to the chagrin of the rest of the team-and Dick’s quick work on the alarm on the door, and it was just a jog down a few hallways to get to the central hub. But none of them anticipated the fucking army guarding the inner laboratory and production facilities.
Ducking another swing of the plasma blade-just a gun with a retractable blade that pulses with burning plasma-that they all seem to be carrying, the weapons that screwed over his Baby Bird, Jay swings his arm back up and fires off two shots into his attacker’s neck. Dumb fucks never think about protecting that.
The goon falls over, his throat gushing blood-serves the fucker right, Jay thinks-and Jason kicks him out of the way before launching himself up from his crouch at another thug, striking his weapon arm with a well-placed elbow. The weapon hits the floor as Jay squeezes off another shot to take down the stunned guard, and almost as an after-thought, Jay grabs up the gun, tucking the thing that looks like an oddly-shaped pistol into the back of his pants. Maybe they can analyze it after, he hopes.
But there isn’t any time for contemplation, as another group of guards swarm him, their weapons blazing with unearthly green fire. Jay barely manages to duck the swing of one of them, its blade crackling and hissing with angry flame hot enough to sear the top of his head. The stench of burning hair fills his nostrils, and-fuck, that’s burning flesh! Lifting a hand to his ear, he realizes that the very tip of his ear has been singed, burned, and when his fingers come away sticky, he knows he’s fucked if he doesn’t get the fuck out of the circle of goons that has him suddenly trapped.
Raising his gun, Jay starts firing, just as the agony of the burning blades starts in on him and the sound of screams fills his ears.
~*~*~
Coming up from the darkness, all Jay knows is pain. His legs, his back, his left arm. Everything is ablaze, from his scalp to his feet, as if he’d been burned at the stake. All he can see behind his eyelids is green fire, sparking and screaming. He doesn’t know where he is, or what-
“Jason?”
The voice is barely a whisper, hoarse, grieving, and Jay manages to open his eyes just a crack, the sudden onslaught of brilliant white light entirely too much to handle after so much darkness. “Wh-what happened?” he croaks, his own voice graveled from disuse. “Where am I?”
Tim-his Baby Bird, God, his boy-moves into view, and Jay realizes he’s standing over him, and Jay is lying prone in a … a bed.
“You’re on the Watchtower,” Tim says, still whispering, nearly toneless. “Got torn up pretty bad, but Dick and Steph were able to get you up here quick when they realized you were down. The mission just … didn’t go as planned. They were waiting for you.”
Jay sees the weariness in Tim’s eyes then, the streaked stains running down his cheeks from endless tears, and the bottom of his stomach drops out. “Ambushed,” he breathes, trying to take it easy on his own throat. “Dick and Steph?”
“They’re okay,” Tim nods. “There were over fifty men waiting, each armed with a plasma blade. And … and the lab, the factory, they were empty. Cleared out before you got there.”
Squeezing his eyes shut, Jay fights back a scream of frustration. So much work, so much intel, all for fucking nothing! And here he lies, torn to fucking shreds himself.
But he slowly gets control of himself, fights back the wave of pain and nausea that rises up with the tide of his anger, and blinks up at Tim. “How bad is it?” he asks quietly, not exactly wanting to know.
Tim sighs, glancing down over Jay’s broken body. “They … they took the tip of your left ear. Cut your left tricep, sliced through your left latissimus dorsi and … and through two vertebrae, T9 and T10, all in one stroke. Doctor Mid-Nite says you were lucky the slice wasn’t any deeper, or you’d never be able to walk again. As it is, he’s using a neural regenerator on your spine every four hours to make sure there’s no lasting damage. And-” he pauses for a long moment, hesitating and seeming to shake as he thinks about the rest, “-and they took a chunk out of your right hip and thigh. Sliced through your left calf, and took two toes off your left foot. It’s … it’s gonna take a long time to heal from all that. You’ll have to relearn how to walk, since your balance will be off.”
At that, all the fight drains out of Jay, his chest feeling suddenly hollow. All he’d wanted to do was exact some retribution for what was done to his Baby Bird, and look where it’s gotten him; as broken and fucked over as Tim was, wrapped up in bandages and probably strapped down to the bed. He’d have walked through fire for his boy-and did, as it turned out-but he didn’t think it’d end like this!
A wordless roar finds its way up from his belly as he realizes just what he’s done. All that work, just to wind up getting screwed over himself, and what Tim had to have gone through while Jay was out-
Fuck!!
His throat raw and his face aching, he grimaces, swallows hard, and catches Tim’s watery gaze. “I’m so fucking sorry, Baby Bird. I didn’t mean for this shit to happen. Just … just wanted to make it right, to fuck over the assholes that hurt you. Didn’t want you to have to go through what I went through when you were hurt.” The very thought of Tim having to sit vigil by his bedside for however long, crying and praying-because what the hell else is there to do when you’re fucking helpless?-and holding his hand, watching him sleep, Jay’s body bruised and broken and torn up and probably in agony, is enough to drag a sob from Jay. He can’t bear to think of it.
But Tim’s expression changes then, a tiny half-smile tugging at his lips. “Hey, hey, it’s okay. You weren’t hurt nearly as bad as I was, and I knew you were gonna be okay, all right? And it wasn’t all for nothing, by the way. You killed almost all of them,” he whispers, his voice seeming to harden, dark and still and quietly pleased. “Forty-three men, all dead, bullets through either their necks of their heads. You must’ve gotten one of the plasma blades away from them, too, because seven of them were missing at least a hand. One was even beheaded.”
At that, Jay sucks in a deep breath, relieved and shocked, the ache of grief washed away behind a tide of satisfaction and release. There was some retribution after all. “Good,” he croaks, letting his dark glee color his voice. “Just wish I could remember doing it.”
“You’ll probably remember some of it eventually,” Tim assures him. “Hopefully the good stuff. And!” he adds, an eyebrow lifting mischievously. “That’s not even the best part.”
“Oh?”
“Bruce hasn’t said a word. He’s been pretty much mute ever since the mission, like he’s been working the whole thing over in his head, and trying to decide what to do. I think he finally realized that you were right about this one. Or else, he’s just tired of fighting it, and letting people get away with hurting us on his watch.”
And that is even better news. Surprising as hell, and certainly welcome, even if makes Jay wonder just how fucked Bruce has to be by all this to finally just give it up and let things happen the way they need to. He’ll just have to talk to him later. “About damn time,” he says after a long moment.
Tim nods, then says, “Oh, and they tracked down the real laboratory, too. Bruce and Dick took it out last night. They, uh, were gonna try knockout gas on the guards, to avoid what happened to us, but no one realized the gas would ignite the plasma, and … ” Tim pauses, shrugging slightly, “the whole place went up in a green fireball. No survivors, no more plasma blades.”
Jay can’t help the grin that moves over his face, vindication filling him. “Yes,” he hisses. “Those fuckers.”
Another nod, and Tim smiles slowly. “Oracle and I managed to hack their system and copy everything over before the place went up, too. Can you believe they were gonna sell those things to the Quraqi Guard? But they’re done now. We’ve got the only remaining blade, and Bruce and Mister Terrific are taking it apart to figure out how they work, just in case there are any more out there that we don’t know about. It was … ironically … tucked in the back of your pants when Dick got you out of there.”
Heh, Jay knew that sucker would come in handy. But something’s bothering him at the back of his mind, something not quite adding up. He feels like he’s been in this bed a damn month, his injuries aching like they’ve been there forever. And for Bruce and Dick to have had time to track down the real production facility-
“Tim, how long was I out?” he asks quietly, and small knot of dread sitting in his gut.
Tim blinks, takes a slow breath, then says, “Almost two weeks. Every time you started to come up, you’d start fighting, reopened some of your wounds, so Doc Leslie decided to keep you sedated until the worst of your wounds were on their way to healing.”
“Shit,” Jay spits, lifting his right arm to run his fingers through his hair-fuck, he needs a shower, he realizes absently. Closing his eyes, he mentally catalogues the stiffness in his body, the still-searing pain where he was wounded. Jesus fuck, two weeks is a long damn time. And for him to have come up fighting. … “Shit, I’m sorry, Baby Bird,” he apologizes again. Didn’t want to freak you out.”
Shaking his head, Tim frowns. “I’m okay. Was just worried about you. Didn’t want you to re-injure yourself.”
Jay lets out a slow breath, blinking up at his Baby Bird. Of course the kid is lying-the tear tracks down his cheeks are proof enough-but there isn’t exactly anything he can do about it. “Pain killers?” he asks, his right hip and leg starting to throb and burn even worse.
Another head shake. “They decided against morphine. Didn’t want you to come up addicted. So you’ve been on Tylenol-3 and low doses of Dilaudid.”
Damn, no wonder he hurts so fucking much. But … but fuck it, he decides. He can take a little pain. Or a lot, whatever.
Schooling his expression, he catches Tim’s blue eyes with his own as he reaches up to cup his Baby Bird’s face. “Gonna be in a wheelchair for a while, ain’t I?” he asks.
A nod. “Yes. But not more than a month or so. You’ve-” Tim takes another slow breath, “-you’ve got about the same outlook as I do. I still need my last surgery, and you’ll need two, maybe. We’ve got a lot of hard work ahead.”
Jay nods back. “Okay. We’re good, then. We’ll retrain, you’ll get your voice back-” because the alternative is unthinkable, “-and those bastards are all done for. They couldn’t break us.”
Tim smiles that tiny, sort-of happy smile that Jay fucking adores, and leans down to place a quick kiss on Jay’s chapped lips. “They could never break us,” he agrees.
“Never.”
~*~*~*~
Fandom: DCU
Pairing: Jason/Tim
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,953
Prompt: For dcu_freeforall: Bullet or Knife Wounds/Lacerations
Summary: Jay doesn’t expect to walk into a trap when he goes after the bastards that hurt his boy.
Disclaimer: DC and WB own everything, the schmucks.
Author's Notes: Final official part of the Through Crimson & Fire 'Verse; Follows The Long Road. \o/ Warnings for lots and lots of Jay-whump. There might be more later, but nothing concrete is planned right now. Thanks to those of you that stuck with me for this one! *bows*
Through Fire
In retrospect, getting into the building was easy. A quick bullet through each of the guards watching the entrance-much to the chagrin of the rest of the team-and Dick’s quick work on the alarm on the door, and it was just a jog down a few hallways to get to the central hub. But none of them anticipated the fucking army guarding the inner laboratory and production facilities.
Ducking another swing of the plasma blade-just a gun with a retractable blade that pulses with burning plasma-that they all seem to be carrying, the weapons that screwed over his Baby Bird, Jay swings his arm back up and fires off two shots into his attacker’s neck. Dumb fucks never think about protecting that.
The goon falls over, his throat gushing blood-serves the fucker right, Jay thinks-and Jason kicks him out of the way before launching himself up from his crouch at another thug, striking his weapon arm with a well-placed elbow. The weapon hits the floor as Jay squeezes off another shot to take down the stunned guard, and almost as an after-thought, Jay grabs up the gun, tucking the thing that looks like an oddly-shaped pistol into the back of his pants. Maybe they can analyze it after, he hopes.
But there isn’t any time for contemplation, as another group of guards swarm him, their weapons blazing with unearthly green fire. Jay barely manages to duck the swing of one of them, its blade crackling and hissing with angry flame hot enough to sear the top of his head. The stench of burning hair fills his nostrils, and-fuck, that’s burning flesh! Lifting a hand to his ear, he realizes that the very tip of his ear has been singed, burned, and when his fingers come away sticky, he knows he’s fucked if he doesn’t get the fuck out of the circle of goons that has him suddenly trapped.
Raising his gun, Jay starts firing, just as the agony of the burning blades starts in on him and the sound of screams fills his ears.
~*~*~
Coming up from the darkness, all Jay knows is pain. His legs, his back, his left arm. Everything is ablaze, from his scalp to his feet, as if he’d been burned at the stake. All he can see behind his eyelids is green fire, sparking and screaming. He doesn’t know where he is, or what-
“Jason?”
The voice is barely a whisper, hoarse, grieving, and Jay manages to open his eyes just a crack, the sudden onslaught of brilliant white light entirely too much to handle after so much darkness. “Wh-what happened?” he croaks, his own voice graveled from disuse. “Where am I?”
Tim-his Baby Bird, God, his boy-moves into view, and Jay realizes he’s standing over him, and Jay is lying prone in a … a bed.
“You’re on the Watchtower,” Tim says, still whispering, nearly toneless. “Got torn up pretty bad, but Dick and Steph were able to get you up here quick when they realized you were down. The mission just … didn’t go as planned. They were waiting for you.”
Jay sees the weariness in Tim’s eyes then, the streaked stains running down his cheeks from endless tears, and the bottom of his stomach drops out. “Ambushed,” he breathes, trying to take it easy on his own throat. “Dick and Steph?”
“They’re okay,” Tim nods. “There were over fifty men waiting, each armed with a plasma blade. And … and the lab, the factory, they were empty. Cleared out before you got there.”
Squeezing his eyes shut, Jay fights back a scream of frustration. So much work, so much intel, all for fucking nothing! And here he lies, torn to fucking shreds himself.
But he slowly gets control of himself, fights back the wave of pain and nausea that rises up with the tide of his anger, and blinks up at Tim. “How bad is it?” he asks quietly, not exactly wanting to know.
Tim sighs, glancing down over Jay’s broken body. “They … they took the tip of your left ear. Cut your left tricep, sliced through your left latissimus dorsi and … and through two vertebrae, T9 and T10, all in one stroke. Doctor Mid-Nite says you were lucky the slice wasn’t any deeper, or you’d never be able to walk again. As it is, he’s using a neural regenerator on your spine every four hours to make sure there’s no lasting damage. And-” he pauses for a long moment, hesitating and seeming to shake as he thinks about the rest, “-and they took a chunk out of your right hip and thigh. Sliced through your left calf, and took two toes off your left foot. It’s … it’s gonna take a long time to heal from all that. You’ll have to relearn how to walk, since your balance will be off.”
At that, all the fight drains out of Jay, his chest feeling suddenly hollow. All he’d wanted to do was exact some retribution for what was done to his Baby Bird, and look where it’s gotten him; as broken and fucked over as Tim was, wrapped up in bandages and probably strapped down to the bed. He’d have walked through fire for his boy-and did, as it turned out-but he didn’t think it’d end like this!
A wordless roar finds its way up from his belly as he realizes just what he’s done. All that work, just to wind up getting screwed over himself, and what Tim had to have gone through while Jay was out-
Fuck!!
His throat raw and his face aching, he grimaces, swallows hard, and catches Tim’s watery gaze. “I’m so fucking sorry, Baby Bird. I didn’t mean for this shit to happen. Just … just wanted to make it right, to fuck over the assholes that hurt you. Didn’t want you to have to go through what I went through when you were hurt.” The very thought of Tim having to sit vigil by his bedside for however long, crying and praying-because what the hell else is there to do when you’re fucking helpless?-and holding his hand, watching him sleep, Jay’s body bruised and broken and torn up and probably in agony, is enough to drag a sob from Jay. He can’t bear to think of it.
But Tim’s expression changes then, a tiny half-smile tugging at his lips. “Hey, hey, it’s okay. You weren’t hurt nearly as bad as I was, and I knew you were gonna be okay, all right? And it wasn’t all for nothing, by the way. You killed almost all of them,” he whispers, his voice seeming to harden, dark and still and quietly pleased. “Forty-three men, all dead, bullets through either their necks of their heads. You must’ve gotten one of the plasma blades away from them, too, because seven of them were missing at least a hand. One was even beheaded.”
At that, Jay sucks in a deep breath, relieved and shocked, the ache of grief washed away behind a tide of satisfaction and release. There was some retribution after all. “Good,” he croaks, letting his dark glee color his voice. “Just wish I could remember doing it.”
“You’ll probably remember some of it eventually,” Tim assures him. “Hopefully the good stuff. And!” he adds, an eyebrow lifting mischievously. “That’s not even the best part.”
“Oh?”
“Bruce hasn’t said a word. He’s been pretty much mute ever since the mission, like he’s been working the whole thing over in his head, and trying to decide what to do. I think he finally realized that you were right about this one. Or else, he’s just tired of fighting it, and letting people get away with hurting us on his watch.”
And that is even better news. Surprising as hell, and certainly welcome, even if makes Jay wonder just how fucked Bruce has to be by all this to finally just give it up and let things happen the way they need to. He’ll just have to talk to him later. “About damn time,” he says after a long moment.
Tim nods, then says, “Oh, and they tracked down the real laboratory, too. Bruce and Dick took it out last night. They, uh, were gonna try knockout gas on the guards, to avoid what happened to us, but no one realized the gas would ignite the plasma, and … ” Tim pauses, shrugging slightly, “the whole place went up in a green fireball. No survivors, no more plasma blades.”
Jay can’t help the grin that moves over his face, vindication filling him. “Yes,” he hisses. “Those fuckers.”
Another nod, and Tim smiles slowly. “Oracle and I managed to hack their system and copy everything over before the place went up, too. Can you believe they were gonna sell those things to the Quraqi Guard? But they’re done now. We’ve got the only remaining blade, and Bruce and Mister Terrific are taking it apart to figure out how they work, just in case there are any more out there that we don’t know about. It was … ironically … tucked in the back of your pants when Dick got you out of there.”
Heh, Jay knew that sucker would come in handy. But something’s bothering him at the back of his mind, something not quite adding up. He feels like he’s been in this bed a damn month, his injuries aching like they’ve been there forever. And for Bruce and Dick to have had time to track down the real production facility-
“Tim, how long was I out?” he asks quietly, and small knot of dread sitting in his gut.
Tim blinks, takes a slow breath, then says, “Almost two weeks. Every time you started to come up, you’d start fighting, reopened some of your wounds, so Doc Leslie decided to keep you sedated until the worst of your wounds were on their way to healing.”
“Shit,” Jay spits, lifting his right arm to run his fingers through his hair-fuck, he needs a shower, he realizes absently. Closing his eyes, he mentally catalogues the stiffness in his body, the still-searing pain where he was wounded. Jesus fuck, two weeks is a long damn time. And for him to have come up fighting. … “Shit, I’m sorry, Baby Bird,” he apologizes again. Didn’t want to freak you out.”
Shaking his head, Tim frowns. “I’m okay. Was just worried about you. Didn’t want you to re-injure yourself.”
Jay lets out a slow breath, blinking up at his Baby Bird. Of course the kid is lying-the tear tracks down his cheeks are proof enough-but there isn’t exactly anything he can do about it. “Pain killers?” he asks, his right hip and leg starting to throb and burn even worse.
Another head shake. “They decided against morphine. Didn’t want you to come up addicted. So you’ve been on Tylenol-3 and low doses of Dilaudid.”
Damn, no wonder he hurts so fucking much. But … but fuck it, he decides. He can take a little pain. Or a lot, whatever.
Schooling his expression, he catches Tim’s blue eyes with his own as he reaches up to cup his Baby Bird’s face. “Gonna be in a wheelchair for a while, ain’t I?” he asks.
A nod. “Yes. But not more than a month or so. You’ve-” Tim takes another slow breath, “-you’ve got about the same outlook as I do. I still need my last surgery, and you’ll need two, maybe. We’ve got a lot of hard work ahead.”
Jay nods back. “Okay. We’re good, then. We’ll retrain, you’ll get your voice back-” because the alternative is unthinkable, “-and those bastards are all done for. They couldn’t break us.”
Tim smiles that tiny, sort-of happy smile that Jay fucking adores, and leans down to place a quick kiss on Jay’s chapped lips. “They could never break us,” he agrees.
“Never.”
~*~*~*~