My Enemy Was Bleeding Out, So I Locked Him In My Apartment

The chatter over the private comm line had been chaotic—reports of automatic gunfire near the docks, followed by an abrupt, unnerving silence. It was Red Hood’s territory, which meant it was a mess Tim usually made a point to avoid. But something in the report, a mention of Black Mask’s top lieutenants being on-site, had set his teeth on edge. It was too big, too public for a standard territorial dispute.

He found the warehouse half-shrouded in the thick Gotham mist rolling in off the water. The corrugated metal door was peppered with bullet holes, hanging askew from one hinge. Inside, the air was metallic and thick with the smell of gunpowder and blood. Bodies in cheap suits were strewn across the concrete floor, victims of a brutally efficient assault. Shell casings littered the ground like brass confetti.

And in the center of the carnage, slumped against a stack of shipping crates, was Jason.

His helmet was gone, discarded a few feet away, its crimson finish scuffed and cracked. Without it, he just looked like a man—a man who was bleeding out. His jacket was a ruin, soaked dark with blood that pooled beneath him, stark against the gray floor. Tim’s eyes, trained to assess and analyze, took in the damage with a sickening lurch in his stomach. At least three distinct gunshot wounds, two in the torso, one high on his shoulder. Too much blood. Far too much.

Every ounce of his training, every protocol Bruce had ever drilled into him, screamed one thing: call Alfred. Get him to the Cave. The med-bay there was second to none; they could handle this. He reached for his comm, his thumb hovering over the activation switch.

But he hesitated.

He pictured the scene: dragging Jason’s bleeding, half-dead body into the sterile quiet of the Batcave. Bruce’s face, a mask of grim disapproval. The inevitable questions. The interrogation that would follow as soon as Jason was conscious, which would undoubtedly devolve into a screaming match that would shake the stalactites. Bruce would see the problem. Alfred would see the patient. Tim, caught in the middle, would be the one who brought the explosion home.

A hospital was out of the question. Jason Todd was legally dead, and the Red Hood was Gotham’s Most Wanted.

That left one other option. A stupid, reckless, entirely illogical option. His own place. The safe house in the East End that no one, not even Bruce, knew about. It was his sanctuary, the one place on earth that was solely his. Bringing Jason there would be like inviting a lit stick of dynamite into his bedroom.

Jason let out a low, pained groan, his head lolling to the side. His face was pale, his breathing shallow and wet. He was dying. Right here.

The decision was made before he even consciously acknowledged it. Logic be damned. Protocol be damned.

Tim holstered his bo staff and moved, kneeling in the spreading pool of Jason’s blood. “Okay, Todd,” he muttered, more to himself than to the unconscious man. “Let’s go.”

Getting Jason’s arm over his shoulders was a dead-weight struggle. He was bigger than Tim, dense with muscle, and completely limp. Tim staggered under the load, his own armor digging into his skin. He gritted his teeth, legs straining as he hauled Jason toward the door, leaving a smeared, crimson trail behind them. The warmth of Jason’s blood soaked through the fabric of his own suit at the shoulder and hip, a visceral, unnerving heat against his skin. He maneuvered him into the passenger seat of his nondescript civilian car parked a block away, the recline groaning under the sudden weight. He didn’t bother with the seatbelt, instead pushing Jason’s torso against the seat as he slammed the door shut and ran to the driver’s side, peeling away into the Gotham night before the first GCPD siren began its distant wail.

The apartment was silent, sterile, and smelled faintly of antiseptic and old paper from the bookstore below. It was Tim’s sanctuary, and dragging Jason’s unconscious form through the door felt like a profound violation. He managed to get him onto the reinforced dining table he’d cleared in a hurry, the dark wood immediately smeared with blood.

Tim pulled on a pair of nitrile gloves, his movements economical and precise. He had to work fast. He took a pair of trauma shears from his medical kit and began cutting. The thick leather of Jason’s jacket parted with a tough, shearing sound. Next came the straps of the Kevlar vest, which he unbuckled and pulled away, the heavy plate clattering onto the floor. Finally, he cut through the black shirt underneath, the fabric already soaked and clinging to Jason’s skin.

Exposed, Jason’s torso was a canvas of violence. Old scars, silvery and white, crisscrossed his skin—souvenirs from a life of fighting, and dying. But it was the new wounds that held Tim’s focus: two dark, weeping holes in his abdomen, oozing blood, and another messy one near his left clavicle that had torn through the pectoral muscle.

Tim tried to maintain a clinical distance, to see only the damage that needed to be repaired. He was Red Robin. He was a medic. This was a problem to be solved. But it was impossible to ignore the man himself. His hands were on Jason’s bare chest, cleaning the entry wounds, feeling the steady, if weak, thump of his heart beneath his palm. He could feel the heat radiating from Jason’s skin, see the slight rise and fall of his ribs with each ragged breath.

He worked with intense concentration, disinfecting the area before carefully probing the wound in Jason’s side with a pair of forceps. The bullet was lodged against a rib. His fingers brushed against warm skin and the hard plane of Jason’s abdomen as he worked to get the right angle. This was Jason Todd. The specter that had haunted his first years as Robin. The man who saw him as nothing more than a replacement, a pale copy. And he was lying utterly helpless on Tim's table, his life entirely in Tim's hands.

The intimacy of it was deeply unsettling. He saw the faint lines of a prison tattoo on his bicep, nearly faded. He saw the way the dark hair on his chest tapered down over his stomach. These were details he had no right to know, details that made Jason feel less like a rogue variable and more like a person. A person whose blood was now drying under his fingernails.

After extracting the two bullets from his torso and a third from his shoulder, he began to stitch. Needle, pull, knot. A steady, repetitive rhythm. He closed the deep lacerations first, his stitches small and neat. His focus narrowed to the task, to the simple mechanics of mending torn flesh. When he was done, he gently cleaned the blood from Jason’s skin with a damp cloth, his touch lingering for a fraction of a second longer than necessary on the unmarred skin of his stomach before he pulled away, his own breath catching in his throat.

He had just finished taping the last bandage in place when Jason’s eyes flew open. There was no slow drift into consciousness. One moment he was still, the next he was moving, a raw, guttural sound tearing from his throat. He surged upward, ignoring the fresh stitches pulling at his skin, his eyes wild and unfocused.

"Who—" he started, but the word choked off into a gasp of agony. His body betrayed him instantly. The muscles in his abdomen seized, and he collapsed back onto the table with a heavy thud, his face contorting in a mask of pure pain. His right hand, driven by pure instinct, slapped against his hip, fingers scrabbling for the holster that wasn't there. The panic in his eyes sharpened into fury when he found only bare skin and the edge of a bandage.

"They're on the floor. With the rest of your gear," Tim said, his voice perfectly level. He hadn't moved from his spot a few feet away, watching Jason’s violent awakening with an unnerving lack of surprise. He held up his hands, palms open, a gesture meant to de-escalate that somehow felt condescending. "You're in my safe house. You were bleeding out in a warehouse near the docks. I brought you here."

Jason’s gaze snapped to him, the disorientation finally clearing, replaced by a dark, simmering hostility. He pushed himself up on his elbows, ignoring the fresh wave of pain that it cost him. His teeth were gritted. "My hero," he snarled, the words dripping with venom. "What's the catch, Replacement? You gonna turn me over to Bruce once I'm patched up enough to stand for a lecture?"

"No," Tim said, his expression unreadable. "The catch is you're stuck here until you can walk out under your own power. And while you're here, you'll follow my rules."

Jason let out a harsh, disbelieving laugh that turned into a cough, a fleck of blood appearing at the corner of his mouth. "Your rules?"

"My rules," Tim repeated, his tone leaving no room for argument. He took a step closer, his small frame seeming to take up all the air in the room. "Rule one: you don't touch my equipment. My computers, my comms, my gear—it's all off-limits. Rule two: you don't try to leave before I clear you. You'll bleed out in the alley, and that's a mess I don't want to clean up. And rule three," he paused, his eyes locking with Jason's, "you don't try to kill me in my sleep."

The silence that followed was heavy and sharp. Jason stared at him, his chest heaving with shallow, angry breaths. The sheer audacity of Tim Drake, of the kid who took his place, standing there and dictating terms to him while he was helpless and bleeding on a table, was so infuriating it almost eclipsed the pain. He wanted to lash out, to wipe that calm, analytical look right off Tim's face. But he couldn't move, and the gun he trusted more than anything was on the other side of the room. He was trapped.

"Fine," Jason finally bit out, the word tasting like ash. "But the minute I can stand, I'm gone."

"I'm counting on it," Tim replied, turning away to clean his medical instruments as if the conversation was already over.