Batman | Bat-Family Oneshots

Leaving a bad taste in the mouth

The Batcave was supposed to be a sanctuary of cold, clinical efficiency. A hidden sanctuary for Gotham's heroes. Tonight, however, it sounded like a slaughterhouse crossed with a wrestling ring.

"I am fine!" Jason roared, his voice echoing off the stalactites as he violently shoved Bruce back a step. "It's just a dull ache! I've had my collarbone shattered by Killer Croc and I didn't cry about it, so get that damn pair of pliers away from my face!"

"Jason Todd, you are twenty-four years old and acting like a toddler," Dick Grayson snapped, circling his younger brother with the agility of a circus acrobat, trying to cut off his escape route toward the elevator. "Open your mouth. Let us look at it."

"Not happening, Dickhead!" Jason bared his teeth-a terrible mistake, as the sudden movement triggered a vicious wave of throbbing pain that radiated straight up into his temple. He hissed, clutching his swollen jaw, his left eye watering. Despite his best efforts to hide it, the side of his face was rapidly swelling, his cheek turning a sickly green.

Bruce didn't yell. Bruce never yelled when Jason was like this-cornered, feral, and running on pure adrenaline and stubbornness. Instead, the Dark Knight simply advanced, his massive frame blocking the only exit that didn't lead straight into a wall of containment cells.

"Jason," Bruce said, his voice a low, unyielding rumble. "You have a raging abscess. The infection is tracking toward your jawbone. Left untreated, it will reach your bloodstream. We are not asking."

"Just you try and make me!" Jason snarled, dropping into a street-fighter's crouch, his fists clenched. "I'll break every bone in Dick's-"

"Master Jason."

The voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the cavernous room with the terrifying precision of a scalpel. Alfred Pennyworth descended the metal stairs from the upper level. He wasn't wearing his usual waistcoat; he had rolled up his sleeves, and in his leather-gloved hands, he held a stainless-steel tray holding a syringe, a surgical mirror, and a terrifyingly large pair of pliers.

Jason's bravado flickered, replaced by a deep-seated, entirely rational childhood terror. "Alf. Come on. You're the only sane one here. Tell them to back off."

"I am the only one who has reviewed your blood work, Master Jason," Alfred replied smoothly, stepping onto the damp concrete of the cave floor. "Your white blood cell count is through the roof. You are running a fever, your motor skills will soon begin to degrade, and quite frankly, you are currently polluting my pristine Cave with the wretched whining of a badger in a snare."

"I am not whining!"

"You are carrying on like a banshee," Alfred corrected mildly. "And it is entirely in your best interest that this tooth is removed immediately. Bruce. Richard. Subdue him."

Jason didn't wait. He lunged past Dick, throwing a punch that Bruce easily deflected, pivoting Jason's momentum and slamming him against the cold alloy chassis of the Batmobile.

"Get off me! Let me go!" Jason thrashed with the terrifying, unhinged strength of the Lazarus Pit still lingering in his veins. He hooked a heavy boot behind Dick's knee, sending the older acrobat sprawling, but Bruce caught Jason's wrists, pinning his arms behind his back with effortless, crushing leverage.

"Bruce, don't-dammit-" Jason kicked out, his legs flailing, kicking the air. "I'll-I'll-"

"Save your breath, little man," Dick panted, scrambling back to his feet and grabbing Jason's legs, stopping him from kicking. Together, him and Bruce hoisted the thrashing, cursing anti-hero off the ground and carried him bodily across the cavern.

"Damn you! All of you! I died in a warehouse, I can handle a damn cavity!" Jason bellowed, his muffled threats turning into genuine panic as they hauled him toward the obsidian-and-chrome monstrosity sitting in the medical sector: the restraint chair. Originally designed to secure rogue metahumans or heavily concussed vigilantes, the oversized chair bristled with reinforced leather straps, cuffs, and hydraulic locking mechanisms. "No! No! Not the chair! Anything but that!" Jason screamed, wriggling and thrashing as the duo moved closer.