ella

You don’t realize that he’s wearing it. Not until he’s half-carried in by the good-natured diligence of his brothers from the conclusion of a long-winded patrol. It’s their chatter that allows you to realize that something is amiss.

Rather than the interspersing of conversation in lilting ambience—there’s something taut, panicked in the way that their voices crescendo into audible range.

Worry is nestled deeply into the formidability of tones trying to keep calm as they echo off the cave walls—to the point that you’re already drawn to standing, clearing a space on the medical table.

After all, there’s only one reason why they would devote such nervous pitch: and that’s because someone is injured. But worst of all is when you see their long-loping shadows drawn in by tether of their approaching bodies, and you let your heart sink.

He’s still conscious. The fracture crack of his mask, splintered away by some unknown force, has revealed the vulnerability of a green eye that stares back out at you.

After all, when either of you returns from the depths of patrol, you are both the only thing that is of necessity to look for. But he’s carried in the confident strides of Tim and Dick, who trundle him limping to the distance you’re already working swiftly to cross.

“What happened?” You ask, trying to keep the anxiety from consuming you inside-out, searching for purpose that you can direct task into. Dick is the first to hum out an easy, glib reply—after all, cuts and scrapes and broken bones are part of the family business.

“Nothing too serious. Just a few bumps in the road with some bank robbers,” Dick returns casually—it’s a group effort to bring Jason over to the sterility of the table, given the size of him. But the four of you manage.

“Took a shot he didn’t have to.” Tim pipes up in follow-up addendum.

“Didn’t want anyone else to have to take it,” Is all that Jason grunts out, “Part of the business.”

An affirmation of Dick’s point, something genially inserted into conversation. But for someone like you who’s only recently graduated into it, rather than have a lifetime curated to the devotion of it, it's different. There’s still something that twines in consumptive fear in the pit of your stomach.

But you keep a brave face as you finally sink your fingers into physical purchase on Jason, reassure yourself of the warmth that guarantees that life still flows through him. That he isn’t separated from you yet, by the yearning push of his body into the flat of your palm that seeks him out.

"Well, now you’re gonna have to lay down here,” You return, working to keep him level as you heft one muscular leg over the edge.

You can tell from the way his leg pulls rigid it pains him to do it, but he’ll never breathe an ounce of discomfort to any of you. The next one barely even registers a shallow, hitched breath.

“That’s your business for the next half hour, Mr. Todd,” You inform him pertly as you work to roll up the hem of his shirt, to better assess the damage done.

“Sure we shouldn’t give you two a room?” Dick asks with a teasing, plying slant. Obviously, this means that this is something Jason can walk away from. But it does nothing to help the gradual fraying of your nerves as you send him a withering look.

“Sure you won’t be on the table next?” Tim shoots back gruffly. A muffled noise of someone getting elbowed catches audial current back to you.

But you ignore it. All you care about is shucking Jason out of his shirt, which is easy enough given the way you know the meter of his body as well as your own.

This gives you access to the coagulated blood that already spools from a shallow wound above his ribs. Your eyes instinctively tighten at the sight but you’ve steeled your nerves to manage it.

Your hands are already migrating the distance of the table to search out the antiseptic, the bandages to return him back to convalescence.

But that’s when you catch it: a glint of metal where it shouldn’t be. A sliver of silver that gleams in semicircle around the curve of his neck, thin links that stoop low into the dip of his collarbones in anchor by a pendant.

And it’s such a distinctive aberration; such an unknown factor that you can’t help but draw pause over the damage done. You can’t even stay the glide of your hand as you work to give it further inspection.

It’s simplicity: elegance in means, subtle but well-wrought and well-made. And only one thing is etched into the glossy, metallic surface. An initial.

“Is this my—”—You ask, as you realize the significance of his dog tag. A requiem of someone in parting that he takes in hallowed preservation to the battlefield. A physical oath of fealty to return to your side in whatever condition he can manage.

“You okay with it?” Jason’s gruff voice summons the drag of your eyes back to those green that search for your approval. Your consent that he has commemorated you in those darkest moments.

You already know the answer. But you don’t provide any response, save to set it gently back into the groove of his body he has carved out for you. All you do, to the silence of your audience and the bemused furrow of his brow, is to roll up your sleeve.

“Just as long as you’re okay with this.” You return, and display a set of initials that sit in emblazoned ink over the pulse of your wrist—a lifesblood connection to yours.

Jason reads the initials but does not seem to comprehend, his gaze flitting over his initials that are now documented in the minutiae of his skin.

When he finally does, there’s something vulnerable in the cant of his eyes that you only see in your most quiet of moments, in the shared embrace of each other.

“Yeah,” Your man, bleeding and broken, but yours as ever proclaims, “I do.”

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