InsaneJournal

Who: Jason, Damian, and the Bat
What: Jailbreak.
Where: Blackgate.
When: Let's say now-ish.
Warnings/Rating: Some violence.

Damian was trying so hard to hold onto that toxin high. It kept him from fighting back against the Bane goons, kept the physical and emotional trauma that Kara put him through at bay and it even made him not even care that much he was in Blackgate. Even if he wasn’t high, Blackgate didn’t pose that much of a threat. Most of the prisoners were innocent people or white collar criminals who managed to shake money around to keep themselves from being caught. No one was stupid enough to mess with the angry, brooding teenager who just wanted to be left alone to sleep. Most of the time he forced Jim away from the door (who was getting tired of the new and exciting ways Damian managed to hurt himself), but today his mind was starting to clear and his...member was feeling better.

With the toxin gone, it caused a fevered paranoia that reminded him of a flower his mother made him eat once to improve his training. If he could fight when he felt weak and scared, he could fight any time. For all the misery his mother put him through, at least he could thank her for little gifts of experience like that. Sitting up on his bunk bed inside of the cramped, dank cell he rubbed his face and sighed. “How many days have we been here?” He asked like a little kid wondering how late into the night it was. One of the former rich men in a cell nearby murmured something Damian couldn’t make out and the little bird decided that how long he was in here didn’t matter. It was all about how he was going to get out.

He jumped off the bunk bed and looked around before pressing his face against the bars, trying to remember which one of his brothers was dragged into prison with him. Grayson didn’t make it back to the mansion, did he? Or was he there the whole time? Damian sighed, hitting his forehead against the door a couple times before turning around to see Jason sleeping on the bottom bunk. “Hey, idiot.” Damian said, poking at Jason’s arm before shaking him a little. “Wake up.”

Jason was dead asleep, that much was true. The toxin had already been wearing off by the time Jack had escaped from his minders at the apartment. When Jason came back through he had been just getting ready to try to really get his shit together and maybe do something to help the people trapped in Gotham when Bane’s men arrived. He wasn't sure what exactly he would have done, still sort of delirious, the toxin waning but not enough that making plans was an easy thing. He would have tried something. Probably gotten himself killed, too. It was enough to almost be grateful that he'd been knocked over the head and dragged to Blackgate.

There had been no defending himself, really. Jason hadn't been in any state to get in a fight, running on no sleep at all and kicked up into a high stage of post-toxin paranoia. He'd managed to down one henchman, and after that it had been a slaughterfest with him in the middle. He would have bruises for weeks, if they ever made it out of this place.

One thing could be said for Jason, however, and that was that old habits died hard. Being poked awake made him bolt upright and turn toward Damian with all readiness to grab him by the neck and plant him into the wall if he needed to. When he saw who it was he deflated. Where the fuck was he again? Right. Blackgate. "Don't fucking do that," Jason groaned, sliding his legs off the bunk, resting his eyes carefully against the base of his palms. "Jesus. Something going on?"

Damian was both nonplussed and unimpressed by Jason’s alarmed, murderous response. His heavy brow, dead-behind-the-eyes gaze and thin, tight lips made the little bird look like he was in his final form of grumpy. Like he went on a spiritual journey through the mountains of Tibet to learn the secret to being the grumpiest eighteen year old on the planet. “No, dumbass.” Damian snapped, crossing his arms and leaning on the wall behind him. “We have to get the hell out of here. Did you grab anything on your way out of the mansion or are you just as useless as I remember?”

He turned and pressed against the bars again, reaching a hand through to see what kind of lock the cell used. “I need a hairpin.” Damian said with finality. “Or maybe you could fake a stroke and get a guard over here.”

Jason was not awake enough to deal with Damian sassing the hell out of him. "No I didn't grab anything on my way out of the fucking manor," he said, lifting his head to glare daggers at Damian's back. Give him a tin cup and he'd complete the prison picture, pressed against the bars like that. "I was still pretty high." And he'd been unconscious before they even dragged him out. "I don't really carry around bobby pins like you do, sunshine, but I had a lockpick. It was gone when I woke up here, they must have taken it off me when they threw us through the metal detectors." He looked up at one of the guards on patrol around the prison floor. "And maybe you could screech like a spaz. That'd get their attention."

It was, perhaps, fortunate that neither of them had the opportunity to attempt loud noises and false illnesses in order to lure a guard to their cell. Blackgate’s overpopulation worked in his favor, but it was the disproportion between prisoners and guards which gave the Bat his true advantage. He moved faster than news spread between guards, which meant that he was already inside the prison by the time they detected a security breach, and he was a good two steps ahead as they struggled to keep up. The Bat didn’t go so far as to blow open a wall and barrell through obstacles like some sort of unstoppable machine, but he wasn’t as subtle as he could have been. When all was said and done and the dust cleared, he wanted it to be known who’d broken into Blackgate. He couldn’t set them all free, not yet, but this was a fair start and he would never let either of his sons rot behind bars when he had the means and opportunity to get them out.

Too late, the walkie-talkies lit up with static and warnings. Something dark and heavy dropped from above, and then it was chaos, shouting and gunshots and metal, overlapped by the sound of fists meeting flesh and bodies hitting the ground. It was over in no more than a minute, and the keys he’d collected jangled as he moved. The comm in his ear buzzed, guidance only he could hear, but from this point on he was confident enough to not need assistance. There was relief in his gaze, just for a moment, as he approached the cell, but then it was gone, and the Bat was all business once again.

“We don’t have much time,” he told them, sliding the correct ring of keys off his belt. “How do the two of you feel?” The toxin had seemed, for the most part, to have worn off, but he had two doses of the antidote as a precaution.

Jason could hardly believe what he was seeing when a bat shape appeared in front of him. For a moment he wondered if it was the toxin still wreaking havok on his system, but, no, he stared and the shape remained.

He felt something then that he hadn't felt in a long, long time - a surge of relief at the sight of Bruce, and warmth. He stood, a little unsteady, and tried to cover for the unexpected reaction with movement. He was tired and still drugged out - that had to be it. "Exhausted," he said, honestly. "And a little dodgy, but I can make it." If they caught them halfway out, he sure as hell wasn't going down without a fight. He still had a roided out psycho with a mask to deal with.

“Pissed off.” Damian said, rattling the bars again impatiently, looking up to Batman only briefly enough to give a small sign of gratitude. He expected someone to come save them because no one left the family locked up or in trouble, but he thought Grayson would have come. The fact that it was Bruce meant something and he was comfortable enough showing that small piece of gratitude that only a fellow Wayne would pick up on.

Once the doors were open he slipped through and looked back to make sure Jason was coming along. “Can we beat up some idiots on the way out?” Damian asked, knowing it would be hard to get out of there without knocking some heads together, but he was willing to take the long way if it meant more criminals to take his aggression out on.

With both of them relatively level-headed and free of the toxin, this would be much easier. The Bat still wondered how it had gotten this far, toxin or no toxin, but there was no use dwelling on a past he could not change. Now, they had to move forward. He had to get Damian and Jason out of here, get them somewhere safe, and then concentrate on Bane and his partner. When they fell, their hold on the city would fall with them, and Gotham would be free.

The key turned with a quiet click, and he stepped back as the door opened, continually scanning his surroundings for any approaching guards. As much as he might have wanted to open every door in the block, he didn’t have the time, and he wouldn’t be responsible for innocent people being gunned down in a botched escape attempt. Once they were both out of the cell, he let the door swung shut and lock itself behind them. They still had a few minutes, give or take, before the guards caught up, and he regarded Damian with a flicker of what might have been amusement, or might have simply been a trick of the poor prison lighting, when he made his request. “They’ll make it easy for us. They should know enough to stay out of our way, but they won’t. Just don’t waste too much time,” he warned. He had both an entrance and an exit route, not wanting to reuse the same path, and with that he turned, expecting them both to follow. Getting out of Blackgate didn’t concern him; even exhausted and dodgy, they were more than a match for the guards here.

To say it was an unexpected turn to be broken out of Blackgate by Bruce, rather than put there by him, was a major understatement. Jason slipped out after Damian and stuck close to the Bat, eyes on the mostly wide-eyed and terrified white collar types who'd been locked up with random assortments of other rich as sins and the scum of the earth.

Jason wasn't worried about getting out either. He'd recover from the toxin soon enough, and being off his game didn't change the fact that he was pissed as hell about everything he'd missed in his cloud of not giving a shit. So many dead already, and the city under Bane's martial law. That he had heard the news, seen some of it happen, and not cared even a little was unnerving in a way he wouldn't have wanted to admit to out loud. The one guard that ducked unexpectedly out of a dim hallway became the subject of his ire - a sharp jab to the neck got him down quietly, and a solid kick put him out for the count. Bane needed to hire faster men.

Damian edged out of the cell before it was even open all the way and trotted after Bruce. His focus started to sharpen and the second two other guards tried to stop their exit, Damian knew he was turning back into his regular, kick ass self. One of the guards yelled stop, which earned a smirk from Damian as he clenched his fists and slid one of his legs forward in a perfectly tuned fighting stance. He looked the guards dead in the eyes and gave a simple,

“Nope.”

And, before either of them knew what was happening, one guard’s gun was smashed into the other guard’s face before both of them were shoved against a nearby cell door. The bounce of their skulls against the iron bars made him feel better. Refreshed. He turned to see another set of guards appeared at the far end of the hallway and saw the wreckage Todd and Damian did without much of a thought, they backtracked a little to call for more goons. “That’s fine. Cowards are no fun to beat up anyway!” Damian called after them and then sprinted forward before he could fall behind.

The Bat might have glanced back once or twice, more out of a perpetual state of concern for those close to him than any doubt he had in either boy, but what he saw satisfied him, and he continued forward. Those who were foolish to attempt to stop them were dealt with, and while he spared their lives, he wasn’t very generous otherwise. His blows fell hard and heavy, ensuring that while the guards’ interference slowed him down, they didn’t stop him. He had no patience for unnecessarily drawn-out fights. With the remainder of the guards pursuing them falling back to wait for reinforcements, the Bat saw their chance. They were slow, these guards, and while he might have relished lingering in order to beat every last one into submission, his main priority was getting Jason and Damian out, and somewhere safe.

He turned a corner, nearly colliding with a lone guard who appeared to be attempting to get away, but Bruce barely even blinked. One, a knee to the man’s abdomen, two, his head connecting with the wall, and then he was down. “Almost there. The door won’t be guarded,” he said over his shoulder, stepping over the unconscious guard. Once they were outside, they could easily be long gone before the guards did a sweep of the grounds.

Damian trailed closely after his father, practically right in his shadow. It didn’t surprise him that guards were starting to fan away from them and though part of him wished they were stupid enough to put up a fight, he was mostly eager to simply get out as fast as possible. Once they reached the main door, Damian rushed forward as if he were just going to take off into Gotham, but he stopped and turned back to look at Batman. “I’m coming with you.” He said decisively. An echo of what he should have said when his father went after Ra’s. So much of what mattered before Bludhaven seemed less important now that the city needed him and the family was together.

The Bat paused and regarded his son for a long, long moment. His instinct was to say no, to protect Damian as he sought to protect the others, but he realized that this was their fight too, as much as it was his. They’d all returned, after all. Even after going their own ways and needing space, they’d come back, and if it hadn’t been for the toxin, maybe they could have managed to band together and stop Bane before things escalated this far. His only response to Damian’s assertion was a nod, because that was easier than finding the right words, and then he turned and shoulders through the main door, out of the prison and into Gotham itself.