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Jim hated it when Batman went places without backup.
Batman hated having backup.
They compromised by Batman telling Jim what he was going to do as he did it and usually finishing the job before Jim arrived, but today Jim had walked through rolling purple clouds of fear toxin into a prison riot. In the first hallway they found no signs of life, only a corpse, his mouth open in an eternal scream with raised purple blotches on his tongue. He had also clawed his own eyes out. Jim kept going; he didn't have a particularly good feeling about this Arkham riot.
In the antechamber outside the infirmary there was a fight, and in true fashion, that was where Jim found him. A hulking man was holding someone down on a shiny silver exam table while a smaller man crouched over the obscured figure. The cape dangling onto the floor in a waterfall of shadows was a clear indication that whatever the two men were doing on that table, they were doing it to Batman.
Jim hadn't even broken stride when he shot the man standing by Batman's head, holding him down. The man howled a guttural sound as he registered the pain from being shot in the shoulder, nearly 10 seconds after it happened. The big man running from the room distracted the smaller man who had been crouched on Batman's abdomen, causing him to sit up and turn. That was when Gordon spotted the blood.
The man lunged at Jim with a screech, brandishing a bloodied butter knife. The shot almost distracted him–one of the backup officers had saved him, from the knife and from himself. Jim couldn't trust that he'd be shooting to protect himself and not shooting to avenge whatever it was they had done to the Bat.
He had to lead the squad to the area, and they merged with Montoya's team there. He was grateful that he didn't have to explain to Montoya why he was heading back. She knew Batman had been entering first, and he clearly wasn't with Jim.
When he got back to the infirmary, Batman was gone. Uncharacteristically, there was a dribbling path of blood from the table into one of the two exam rooms. Exam Room One was where Jim found Batman shoved into a corner.
He didn't turn on the overhead light, instead turning the wheeled light nearby to face the Bat and flicking it on like a tiny spotlight. Batman was wrapped protectively in the massive cape, shivering as though cold. The blood trail that led to him was solid, not droplets. Neither boded well.
"Batman, I need you to move your cape," Jim said, tenderly taking a handful of the black fabric. He was surprised to find not only that Batman let him move the cape himself, but that it wasn't fabric, not entirely. The outside was leather, which Jim had smelled on him before, he just hadn't realized it was the cape. As the heavy garment moved, the lining came into view, and Jim had never seen silk so black, it practically ate the light coming from the lamp.
Batman grunted but he stayed completely, uncharacteristically still, and it didn't take long to uncover the wound. The connection that attached the cape to the chest armor had been crushed, so when it slid off the ruined connections, Jim saw where the ruined armor had been used as a point of ingress. What he had seen was the inmate sawing Batman's shoulder open through a tear in the suit. The wound was jagged and long, but he couldn't seem to make out how deep it was.
Batman's breathing was off, and Jim needed to get his heart rate. He grabbed for the neck of the cowl, the opening that led below his jaw and shoved two fingers in to find a pulse. "Batman, you told me this thing is modular, take this shoulder off while I check your--"
"Can you fucking just--" Batman grabbed Jim's wrist with his good hand, the grip tight but not crushing. "Wait, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm, just–wait," he begged, his breath even more ragged than before.
Jim, for his part, waited. The hand restraining his wrist was still uncomfortably firm, but he had his other hand on the pulse point hidden under the cowl, and while he waited, he counted.
"I'm having a lot of visual hallucinations," Batman began again, releasing his grip on Jim's wrist as though he just realized he had grabbed him. "I think this will go easier if I close my eyes, and you narrate what you're going to do."
"Visual hallucinations are usually primary, didn't you have your rebreather on when you got hit with the gas?" Jim had assumed it was secondary contamination with how low Batman's pulse was. His breathing was ragged, but he didn't seem to be at risk of cardiac arrest.
The sound Batman made might have been a laugh in a bleaker world. "I did not." He opened his mouth and showed Jim his tongue: solidly, deeply purple.
"How the hell are you still functioning?" Jim wondered aloud. The man in the hall who had clawed out his eyes had only had a few spots of purple on his tongue.
"Poorly. Please focus, Gordon." The words were tight, and they reminded Jim of the way that Gotham born scientists spoke, a veneer of nonregional diction plastered over top of the normal Gotham patter.
"So you're going to close your eyes, and you just want me to talk to you about what's happening," Jim double checked.
"I'm not having auditory hallucinations, and I can't trust what I see," Batman replied curtly. The implication was entirely too wide for Jim to poke at it, so he decided not to pay attention to any unspoken words, instead getting to work.
"I'm going to take my hand out of the cowl. Since you're drugged, this would be easier if I could look at your eyes before we start." Jim wanted to make sure he didn't have a head wound from being thrown around, the probable blow that crushed his shoulder armor could easily have given him a concussion. "I know it's a big--"
"You've seen my eyes before, this cowl design is barely two years old," Batman interrupted him.
Jim knew he was right, could still mentally see the younger Bat with his grease paint and his sharp blue eyes. While Jim pulled his flashlight off his belt, Batman reached up to the cowl and after a little pulling, a little twisting, and a decisive click, removed the eye lenses. They glowed softly, and Jim felt triumphant at being correct that he had a display in them. Bullock owed him $20.
"Okay, I'm gonna shine a bright light in your eyes when you open them, then you can close them again," Jim explained. He startled a little when Batman reached up with his good hand, holding Jim's bicep to anchor himself.
"Okay," Batman growled.
He opened his eyes in the faint light and immediately almost snapped them shut again, but he kept them open, focused on something in the room behind Jim that was moving. He fought the urge to look over his shoulder, instead shining the light to see if Batman's pupils would react. The reaction was equal on both sides and Jim sighed in relief as Batman closed his eyes again and let his head fall back against the wall. Jim finally couldn't take it and looked behind him, the empty room and closed door seeming somehow more sinister than before.
"Batman, I need your help removing the left shoulder of your suit, can you strip that part off?" Jim didn't like the look of the injury on his shoulder, and he wanted to get a better look, rinse it out at least.
"I can remove the armor there, the suit is mostly one piece." Batman reached up to the bat on his chest and, after some maneuvering, got the armor there to split, revealing an overlapping piece from the shoulder that moved under the chest guard.
Jim was going to commend him on the smart design, but as he talked Batman through his cutting the undersuit sleeve to get to his shoulder, an old white scar along the line of the armor was revealed, a clear indicator of why the suit was made with overlapping scales. It hadn't been preemptive.
When he reached the actual shoulder though, he froze. Nearly the entire deltoid was covered in a slick burn scar, the edges too clean for fire.
"It was acid," Batman gritted out. "Please keep talking."
"Yeah, sorry." Jim hadn't even realized he'd been touching, but he removed his fingertips from the scar. "I'm gonna get up and find a saline wash and some towels for your cut, it might need stitches."
"I hope you're a good seamstress," Batman huffed.
"I didn't realize you know how to joke." Jim found what he was looking for quickly in the well organized clinic. "I'm sitting back down now."
After talking him through every step of washing and prepping the area, he got down to the actual stitches. It was a nasty cut but mostly straight, and about four inches long. Jim was familiar with the act of giving stitches, but he was a bit out of practice, and he struggled temporarily with the grippy little scissor clamps. He figured if he was more in practice, he might remember what they were called.
"There's not much to narrate here. What do you do in your free time?" Gordon asked when he found a bit of a rhythm. He was going to have to work quickly–the asylum would be cleared soon, and Batman would need to clear out with it.
"Mostly I find myself listening to police commissioners talk about sewing my shoulder up through their rebreathers," Batman deadpanned. "Sometimes I play polo."
"Is that the one with horses?" Jim hummed back, only mostly paying attention to the sass.
"Honestly, I have no idea." Batman grimaced. "What do you do in your copious free time, Gordon?"
"Between my sewing up vigilantes groups, bonsai trees," Jim sassed back, since they were being ridiculous.
"They're gorgeous." Batman sounded a little far away.
"I'm almost done stitching this up, you doing okay in there?" Jim asked.
"I have been told that joking while I'm dying is my worst quality," Batman explained, not even flinching as Jim started dressing his stitched-up shoulder.
"You're not dying. You're hurt, and you're drugged, but if you think you're dying on my watch, you're also insane."
"Maybe I belong here, then." Batman let his head fall to the side, opening his neck and shoulder up more to Jim.
"You're not dying," Jim repeated. Batman didn't reply. If his breathing had changed, Jim might have suspected he'd passed out, but he was still taking short, jagged breaths. It wasn't until Jim was throwing out the evidence in the sharps container that Batman spoke again.
"I'm cold, but I don't think it's hypovolemic shock. I think it's the toxin," he sighed, all ghost of the bat growl gone.
Jim checked his watch. He needed to move Batman–he couldn't ride this out here, but his car was running with the heater on.
"I've got to move you," Jim sighed, pulling on Batman's forearms. The vigilante stood and wobbled, but didn't fall. Jim hooked an arm around his ribs and led him to the door. "The blood had mostly slowed down when I found you. There's a good puddle out here, but I've seen you lose more." Jim disliked that knowledge as soon as he'd said it out loud. It was true, but he didn't like how much of this man's blood he'd seen outside of him. "It's funny, I've seen quarts and quarts of your blood and never your face."
"Do you want to see my face?" Batman asked, breathing heavily as they walked to the exit.
Jim almost tripped. Batman's tone was unreadable–definitely not angry, maybe... "They were right–joking while you're dying is a very terrible quality to have.”
“"You know me, Al–”Batman choked out a little laugh, though he could have easily explained it away as a cough. “Just a joke a minute."
"Hey, I need you to focus okay?" Jim warned, "You start getting blurry, I'm gonna have to take you to a hospital."
"That would be suicide." Batman was leaning more heavily on Jim now, and he really hadn't noticed before how massive the man was. Jim didn't think he could carry him if he fell. "And you know it."
His breathing was less even and more ragged. They really should stop–he needed an ambulance and not the warm back seat of a Crown Vic.
They passed the corpse in the hall, and the officer who was taking down the details turned slowly to be facing away from them, another miracle in a list of many. All Jim needed was one vigilante-hater to get in his way.
Hell, a lifetime ago it would have been him.
A glance at Batman's face revealed he had his lenses back on. Jim hadn't noticed it, but he was unsurprised. Sweat and condensation was pooling in the clear mask of the rebreather Jim was wearing, but he didn't dare remove it in the building, with Batman covered in the gas. He had been hit with fear toxin once, and it had been more than enough.
"My car is this way." Jim pointed, but Batman stopped him.
"I have a ride, apparently." He gestured to the Rolls Royce with heavily tinted windows sitting nearby, back door open to the cold.
"Does it have a driver?" Jim had seen more than one of Batman's cars self-drive, and he hated it.
"Not big for meet and greets but yes, there's a driver. I'll see you soon for the rundown, okay?" Batman seemed to gain strength looking at the vehicle and stood on his own, shambling to the car and damn near falling into it. The door closed automatically behind him, and Jim hated himself for squinting at the driver window, hated that he didn't just trust Batman.
As the car pulled away the front left window opened and a driving-gloved hand waved to him, a much smaller hand than the gauntlet.
"Jim, you've got a little bit of... all the blood on you," Montoya said, interrupting him as he stared after the car with no license plates. "You wanna go pull that guy over for no plates?"
"Nah." Jim ripped off his rebreather and poured it out. "I want a drink. We cleared?"
"It's all cleanup now. The guards are back in place, and the junior officers are doing the grunt work," Montoya agreed.
"All right. I'm buying, just pick the place," he sighed, pulling off the bloody overcoat and throwing it into the backseat of his warm, running car.