Chapter Text
The pain is terrible, but hell, he knew it would be. With hip bones needing to slowly part to make better space, and muscles contracting harshly to push something way too big out… of course it would hurt like a bitch.
Fuck!
Still, his body is not, by a long shot, what is throbbing worst, it even helps to override the other, deeper ache, with something at least understandable.
Those memories he doesn't need at this moment.
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"I didn't do it! Will you at least listen to me?! For God's sake, Tim, I promised."
"...." Tim's silence hits worse than any vitriol he could have sprouted.
'Would you at least look at me?' he thinks.
But he never does.
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Jason clenches his teeth, pressing on despite how his arms tremble with the effort to keep his upper body mostly up, legs bend wide open and trembling ever harsher.
A drop of sweat slides down his temple and further down to his neck, adding another point of focus nicer than what is actually taking place between his thighs.
He's drenched, clammy, hair plastered to his forehead… a mixture of womb water and blood pooling under him, making the pile of furs he's laying on sticky.
Yet it's better than bare rock, so he doesn't complain.
What's starting to gnaw at his mind is the notion he's losing too much of both; blood, water womb... He can tell by the blandness settling over his overstressed muscles, the way his strength is bleeding out, and how his lips stick together, chapped in the first stages of dehydration.
To make it all the better, exhaustion is taking its toll after hours of labor.
But then again this is his very first birth, of course it wouldn't be a half an hour deal done before he has the time to work up a sweat.
Funny how just a year ago he wouldn't even consider getting pregnant. Now Jason refuses to even sketch in his mind the consequences if he cannot see this to the very end.
Losing the kid… bares his teeth savagely, violent over the threat to his cub. He will manage like he has managed so many other seemingly impossible deeds before.
"Hey," he presses softly a hand over his swollen taut stomach. "We are doing great, ok? Just a little bit more, shyshu (baby)." Breathes tiredly, and is reassured by the flutter he can feel inside.
Male omega hips were narrower than female ones, their womb settled further back, flush against the spinal cord, so giving birth was always kinda difficult. Let alone for a first timer whose hip bones had to stretch from scratch.
Usually this kind of dangerous birth for both the kid and the bearer would call for a hospital, or at least a doctor to make sure everything went well and intervene if necessary, but Jason just didn't have that luxury.
As if there will be something like a doctor down here.
It's already much that he has a soft pile of furs to lay on and a warm fire to keep the cold away.
It will have to be enough...It HAS to be.
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"Is there anything to be said?" Damian's verdant eyes look like poison. Jason's always found them beautiful. Then again, they have never before gazed at him like this…
Is that hate?
" I didn't." Tries again.
Definitely.
"You broke our oat" icy cold.
'But I didn't' he keeps thinking.
Jason doesn't know what tortures him worse; the fact they believe he would break his word to them, or the knowledge they mightn't have trusted him from the very start.
Love is such a bitch.
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He goes through another wave of agony (damn contractions!), shooting up from his lower abdomen like a spear to his already groggy brain, and Jason pushes with what strength he has left, clenching his teeth savagely in a growl. His arms tremble even harsher, weakened to the limit with the effort, and yet he doesn't fall back, flat on the pelts, because that's the moment a veritably huge arm comes to support him.
"Let me help, you're already exhausted" a rumbling voice echoes in the cavern prison.
Any other time Jason would have refused, but another contraction, faster coming than the last, has him cursing under a breath that's starting to get short, and he chooses to allow the touch if only this one time. Even if he really really shouldn't, because the contact with an alpha not his mate, at a time as vulnerable as this, makes the two raw bonds tied to his core flare up and clench like twin broken limbs.
They aren't, of course they aren't torn… it's precisely because they aren't that it hurts to the point of agony. Pain that has nothing to do with his current physical state chewing at his guts viciously, nearly pulling a whimper from his bloodless lips.
The connection is still holding up, strong despite the months gone by without meeting his mates, testimony of how deep they have engraved themselves into one another.
Deep enough to leave ever lasting scars.
It might have been better to have the invisible threads tying them together thin out and shrivel like too dry grass, crumble into dust never to be repaired, just so delivering without them would be easier. But even with the hatred, pain and rejection, EVEN after they let him be taken away, those still held.
(…so maybe…) He doesn't quite let himself think. A tiny speck of some barely alive ember of love still trying to hold onto hope.
Jason makes a sarcastic twist of lips at catching his mind sliding into such notions. He's but a pathetic case of stubborn fool, that even now, abandoned into one of the world's most inhumane prisons, he still half expects, somehow, to find those two crossing the threshold of damp rock. Coming for him, late, yes, but there nonetheless.
After all, Robin and Red Robin are just that kind of stupid hero that only ever seems to appear at the most critical moment.
Tim and Damian…
The names feel like burning coal on the tender meat of his traitorous heart.
He misses them, he misses them like a lost lung. Even breathing seems to hurt after so long deprived. Their bonds had still been new when the three got separated… didn't even have the time to settle properly. So of course they would ache and flare up the moment he so much as touches another alpha.
What a fucking mess.
For once Jason hadn't been the culprit. He promised there would be no more deaths when they choose to make their relationship stable. And he kept his word.
So no, he didn't kill the Joker, despite how he would like to clap on the back the one who did, if his actions hadn't pushed Jason into shouldering blame not his.
Tim and Damian must know it too (Will find the truth and come for him) tries to speak the uncalled for hope.
Hell, Tim is a fucking certified genius, and Damian the future head of the Shadow, if someone can clear what happened it's them.
"Here, drink some water. You're losing too much blood" an old ceramic bowl gets pressed softly against his lips, cold water brushing his chapped flesh.
The touch manages to extract Jason, somewhat, from the muddy ache of the bonds and the sluggish tendrils of the memories dragging his awareness down.
He's much too gone, starting to feel cold too.
That's not good.
Hood takes a few gulps out of forcing himself to swallow despite the nausea. "You don't have to do this Bane" he breathes out, tired. So very damn tired. It would be a shitty thing to do if he died on the other after everything they have gone through down here.
The hold around his shoulders tightens a bit, as if unwilling to even bear those words. "I want to."
Jason laughs a painful, cynical, thing.
How come the one who had broken Batman once already, shattered the bat clan for months, is now the only one at his side when he needs his pack the most?
Must be his chaotic luck, always taking away what he most loves, yet offering little scraps of help in exchange.
Wonders if he will lose this one friend too if he starts to care a little too much.
But it's a short lived thought, because he refuses to lose anything more. The anguish has to end somewhere.
"Okay, thanks then" breathes out a truer smile, not only because of the water, but it doesn't need to be said.
It's obvious who's the one keeping the hungry beasts away, now that Jason cannot protect himself.
Outside this one cave, from the long rock halls that follow, comes the small sounds of dozens of slithering feet, soft grunts, quiet words.. stalking around the smell of omega and blood, only stopped by Bane's terrible scent.
No one wants to confront the worst monster among them.
Another contraction arrives and it's worse than any other before. Makes him pant between clenched teeth, blood falling headier into an ungentle warm cascade of sticky crimson to paint his thighs.
His vision turns black for a moment, while a second enormous hand comes over his taut stomach, pressing softly, helping him, even if it feels like scorching molten glass.
"You're not pushing as hard you can" Bane says, feather light, as if not meant to be heard, and fuck, but he sounds worried.
"The hell I'm not!" Jason hisses back, so weak he can no longer keep himself from shaking like a leaf. His flesh so cold they might as well be in Gotham's winter, and not a cave whoever knew in which tropical country.
The scarred huge man lets out a quiet sigh, and speaks as if the Hood should already know what he's talking about.
"You still expect them to appear… but if you keep waiting for the ones who have left… you might lose the ones that are coming" looks significantly at his swollen abdomen.
Jason wants to laugh at those words, but it's something near a dry sob that which comes from his crooked lips. What the fuck? He thinks. What the actual fuck? Wants to deny the accusation, but finds himself unable to. Gaze gone again, for a moment, to the entrance covered in ragged curtains, willing something he's now fully grasping won't happen at all.
It feels like the countdown of a bomb, like the little red digits falling to zero, that were the last thing the second Robin saw.
So why does he keep expecting the heroes to make the day?
Maybe because their absence is a pain that doesn't abate.
Worse thing is, Bane is right, Jason can do better, he just doesn't want to break any of the promises made to them, because no matter what they thought he did, Jason didn't do it.
He didn't kill anyone, and didn't call for the pit fire burning in his veins.
He didn't.
And yet they still abandoned him.
A gentle new flutter inside, coming from their baby trying to be born despite everything, breaks the final chord of his pledge.
His cub is not worth them.
They broke their own oath first.
They left.
It hurts, it aches something agonic, to finally let them go. But the hatred he chooses to embrace mutes the pain.
Jason bares his teeth and grabs for the green rage fire hell of the pith, allows the madness to infuse new strength in his limbs, finally letting himself go.
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Later. Back to something like awareness, with a bloodied alpha cub crying on his weak arms, curled on ruined furs, while Bane keeps watch, he touches a tiny smooth cheek and calls.
"Daniel. I will call you Daniel."
'My little shyshu'
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