Chapter Text
The Batcave's fluorescent lights blurred into streaks as Bruce carried Damian through the main floor toward the medical bay. Damian's head lolled against his father's shoulder, consciousness flickering like a dying bulb. He registered movement, voices, the echo of footsteps on stone, then nothing.
"Alfred," Bruce's voice cut through the cave's ambient hum.
"Already prepared, Master Bruce." Alfred's crisp British accent was steady as always, but there was an edge beneath it. Concern, carefully controlled.
Bruce laid Damian on the medical bed with practiced gentleness, the kind that came from too many years of carrying injured children out of the field. Damian's Robin uniform was already half-removed, revealing fever-flushed skin and the shallow rise and fall of labored breathing.
"Temperature is 104.3," Alfred reported, thermometer in hand. "Pulse is elevated. Blood pressure dropping. Master Damian, can you hear me?"
No response. Damian's eyes moved beneath closed lids, but he didn't wake.
"He pushed too hard," Bruce said quietly, stepping back to give Alfred room to work. "Three patrols in two days. Refused to sit out even when the fever started."
"Stubbornness appears to be a family trait." Alfred's hands moved with efficient precision, setting up IV lines and monitoring equipment. "Though in this case, it's nearly gotten him killed."
Bruce's jaw tightened, but he said nothing. They both knew whose stubbornness Damian had inherited.
The medical bay filled with the soft beeping of monitors as Alfred connected sensors to Damian's chest, clipped a pulse oximeter to his finger, and started an IV drip. Antibiotics, fluids, fever reducers, everything necessary to pull a child back from the edge of complete systemic collapse.
"He'll need constant monitoring for the next seventy-two hours," Alfred said, adjusting the IV flow rate. "And bed rest for at least a week after that."
Bruce looked at his youngest son, so small and vulnerable in the medical bed, and nodded. "I'll make the calls. We'll rotate shifts."
"See that you do, sir." Alfred's expression softened slightly. "He'll fight this, you know. The moment he wakes."
"I know."