Hey Brother

Chapter Forty One

How many of you hate me right now? :)

Damian sat in the hospital waiting room with his family, his head in his hands. He was listening, vaguely, to what the doctor was telling Bruce and Selina, catching phrases every now and then.

"...make him comfortable..."

"...not much we can do..."

"...let you in to see him..."

Damian's head popped up at that and he was at his parents' side in an instant. "We can see him?"

Selina looked down at Damian with tears streaming down her face. "Oh, Damian, sweetie..."

Damian recognized the look of pity in Selina's eyes and shook his head. "No, no. He's not dying. He can't be. I won't allow it." He pushed his way past the doctors and down the hallway to Jason's room, bursting in to see the paralyzing sight of Jason hooked up to a dozen different machines, wires and tubes draped all over his body. He sat down next to his brother, taking his hand in his own. "Jay, pull through this. I mean, its only poison right? You've been exploded before, you can survive this!"

The rest of the family entered the room a moment later, standing back to let Damian have his moment with Jason. He let the tears fall down his cheeks as he squeezed Jason's hand. "Jason, please. I don't know what I would do without you. I need you more than you could ever know. Please, wake up and say sike. Say this was all some joke." Damian sighed, wiping at his eyes with his free hand. "Ra's is dead. We won. We took care of him. We're free. We can live our lives without fear now. Please, wake up, Jason. Please."

There was no response as Jason lay there in his medically induced coma, the only sounds in the room were Jason's life support machines as they worked endlessly to pump the toxin out of his body.

He was lucky, they said, he only got a drop of the poison in his system. Unfortunately, it is so potent that it started to shut his systems down right away. And without an antidote, all the hospital could do was make him comfortable until Bruce pulled the plug.

Damian let out a sob as he thought about his father telling the hospital that Jason was a lost cause, to end his life. He turned to Bruce with tear soaked eyes. "Father, please, don't let them kill my brother."

Bruce sighed, placing a hand on Damian's shoulder. "Damian, I'm not going to. I will keep Jason alive as long as I can."

Damian felt sick. His brother was dying and he couldn't do a thing to help him.

But he knew who could.

He turned to Barbara with determination in his eyes. "Barbara, get Ivy on the phone."

Barbara knew where Damian was headed with this. "She's already working on reverse engineering the chemical compound to make an antidote. She feels absolutely terrible about this."

"She was only doing what we asked her to do." Damian murmured.

Everyone fell silent once more as the beeping took over the room, nobody in the mood to talk. Stephanie turned the television on, wincing when it was news coverage of the gala. She quickly flipped through the channels until she got to a cheesy made-for-TV movie.

Damian hadn't realized how exhausted he was until he curled up on the chair next to Jason, resting his head on his brother's arm. He fell asleep moments later, his family standing around him.

"He's going to be so heart broken..." Cassandra muttered.

"These poor boys, they've been through so much." Selina sighed, looking down at Damian and Jason. "When will they catch a break?"

- - -

Jason was in the coma for a week before any thing happened, Damian never leaving his side, the rest of the family in much the same state as him.

The break happened with a phone call to Barbara. She answered right away. "Hey, Ivy. What's up?" She listened intently for a moment her face flashing through so many emotions it was hard to keep up. "Ivy, if you get caught, you could go to jail! No, its not only illegal if you get caught, its illegal all the time!"

Stephanie leaned over to Cassandra, poking her in the leg. "What do you think they are talking about?"

Cass shrugged. "Who knows? Girlfriend stuff, probably."

"Illegal girlfriend stuff?" Stephanie waggled her brow.

"Why does it matter?"

"I'm curious, sue me."

Barbara had moved the conversation to the hallway, leaving her family to sit in silence around the beeping machines of their dying brother and son, left to speculate on what Barbara was talking about.

Damian looked away from Jason when the door opened for Barbara, hope in his eyes. "Well, what did she say?"

Barbara sighed, sinking into the couch in the corner. "I don't want to get anyone's hopes up..."

"Well, then, don't. Just give us the facts."

Barbara nodded. "Okay. Ivy thinks she found the antidote." Everyone gasped and Barbara held up a hand to stop everyone's excitement. "But! It is either the antidote or it could make this a thousand times worse and actually kill Jason. So she needs to test it out first."

"How is she going to test it out? Nobody else we know of has been pricked by the poison."

"Unless...is Ivy planning some self sacrificial bullshit?"

"No! I would not allow that. In fact, I am not even agreeing with what she has in mind but Ivy already made her decision and there is no stopping her once she's made up her mind." Barbara sighed.

Everyone was quiet for a moment, trying to figure out what Ivy's plan was but coming up empty.

"We give up. What is Ivy going to do? How is she going to test this antidote before administrating it to Jason?"

Barbara gulped, looking out the window. "Well, she has some of the poison left over, right?"

"We assumed, yes."

"So all she needs is a test subject. And she believes she found one. A volunteer. "

"Who? Who would knowingly volunteer to possibly die for Jason outside of the people in this room?"

"You may or may not like this, Damian, but...its Roy."