A/N: So, this is an alternate ending to a story I wrote a little while ago (Cataclysm). Originally I just wrote this version for Black Friar, whom I've had the pleasure of getting to know recently, and who encouraged me to post this (Thank you!).

This came out of a prompt given to me on Tumblr. Someone asked for Dick to be the one Joker gets his hands on instead of Jason. (However, this is not a deathfic)

I hope you enjoy!

disclaimer: I own nothing.

warnings: Mentions of violence.

Zero Hour - [noun] moment of truth, crisis, turning point, appointed hour, etc.

Zero Hour

Dick is confused. Joker crouches next to him, hand patting – smacking – his cheek, commenting with a giggle at how blue his eyes are when he finally peels them open. It dawns on him that his mask is partially torn.

Separating from Bruce had been a bad idea. Joker had wanted it. Waited for it.

Dick stares dizzily up at a red smile and his thoughts are drowned out with incessant chuckling. He doesn't know how long he's been here, but he knows that Bruce normally doesn't take this long.

So Dick waits for him, and Joker does the same.

But he's getting impatient. Each strike comes with deadly intent. The curved neck of the crowbar gets him good in the ear once, making it ring like a siren until he is half-certain the hearing on that side is gone completely. Somewhere he loses a tooth and his lower lip is busted. Eventually his left eye is swollen shut. And the hits come harder and harder still; Joker is waiting for him to cry out. Wants him to sing.

He coughs wretchedly instead, spitting pink to the concrete. He wants to wipe at his mouth, but the zip ties bite his wrists and keep them trapped at his lower back. One arm might be broken, he thinks, but he can't be sure at this point.

"What's the matter, kiddo?" Joker observes playfully, hooking the teeth of the crowbar under Dick's chin to tip his head upwards. "You're normally a lot more chatty! Not a single pun out of you in the last hour!"

Dick doesn't speak. Words only fuel the Joker. That, and speaking hurts. Breathing hurts. His insides burn and something rattles wetly whenever he inhales. Alfred will have a field day when he gets home.

But by nature Dick is interactive, and while he can't find his voice, he forces his lips to upturn. It makes his face hurt, but he flashes his teeth at Joker briefly.

Joker tells him for the second time that night how he hates that alter-boy smile of his and thwacks him across the jaw. The sound is what makes him feel sick – that heavy squelch and thump as it connects, the wet spray of his blood peppering the ground a second later – and Dick moans miserably, testing his jaw.

His eyes fall onto the underbelly of his cape. Stark and bright and optimistically yellow, shielded under a black topside. Batman and Robin, he thinks. There is red on it now, his life splattered over the fabric like someone butchered a canary. Which isn't far off.

Joker is close again. Dick can smell him. Lithe fingers are winding into his hair and then they pull, causing him to wheeze. Dick wants to ask him to please, pretty please let him go so he can breathe easier, but Joker only directs his head further back.

"You're losing your touch, bird boy," he grins down on him, scary because he's always smiling. Like nothing disturbs him. Dick feels like nothing ever does. "And so is Bats. Where is he, I wonder?"

He hums softly, a mockery of concern in his tone, before he drops Dick's head to the ground. Dick doesn't expect it, though in retrospect perhaps he should have, and blinks away stars and bats when he connects. He mutters something, or maybe it's just another attempt to breathe, and Joker doesn't miss it.

"Take your breath away, don't I?" yellow teeth spread wide behind thin, chapped lips, and Dick can feel blood dribble over his own. He tries to remember Bruce's tricks. Batman's tricks. Mental devices to keep him sane. He dives into memories, but Joker hits him again, across his shoulder this time, and Dick stops thinking about elephants and popcorn fights and instead wonders if his skin has been torn off or if Joker really just has that good of a backswing.

"I'll give you this, Robbie-poo. You sure can take a hit," he commended, taking another swipe. To the collarbone. "You're so tiny! I can't believe you're still in one piece! Sort of." Another hit, across the face again. Dick almost passes out. He wishes he would. Joker hoots and tugs a handkerchief from his breast pocket, sliding it across the length of the weapon. In one stroke, it is sodden and heavy with his blood. Dick can smell it in the air like death. Joker brings his lips close to his good ear. "Tick tock, tick tock, sweetheart. Do you hear that? That's the sound of Batsy ruining our fun."

Hope flickers within him. Has Bruce already gotten here? He hadn't heard anything. But Joker stands up and tugs a coat over himself, looking disappointed. Dick realizes that Joker is leaving and Bruce is still not there. Confusion shrouds him once more.

"He's usually so punctual," the clown muses absently, then shrugs. "Oh if only he had been on time! Ah well. It's been a blast, boy blunder. I'd be lying if I said I won't miss you."

Dick flops onto his stomach in agony in order to watch Joker stroll towards the metal door. The clown turns back once, ever-present grin in place and a maddening laugh seeping through his teeth before he throws his head back in uncontained laughter as he leaves Dick completely alone, left to bleed out until Bruce bursts in, scrapes him off the floor like a gum wad and takes him home.

Dick can still hear the laughter from somewhere inside of himself as he struggles to loop his hands under his feet to bring them in front. He can't.

He presses his head to the ground and uses that as leverage. Every part of him screams but Dick wobbles onto his knees like a newborn calf. He soon realizes he won't be able to stand, so he allows himself to return to the ground. Gracelessly, he worms his way across the floor, trailing blood and groaning shamelessly now that no one can hear him.

The door feels miles away but he reaches it, using it to prop himself back to his knees, then to his feet, where he puts his back to his only exit in order to grope for the handle. Dick knows it's locked before he turns the knob, but it was still worth a shot. He slides to the floor and breathes and breathes and breathes, face pinching when his chest twinges sharply. Like someone's swinging a crowbar from the inside, trying to bust out.

He can relax now, he figures. Joker got bored and now he only has to wait.

Then he sees it. The counter ticking down the seconds he has left. Dick relaxes, surprised at how quickly he resigns and not at all surprised to find his thoughts falling in, on and all around Bruce. He worries about him. What it will do to him. What it will ultimately do to Gotham.

He thinks he hears the faintly growing buzz of a motor roaring in the distance. He doesn't know if he's imagining it or not, but Dick focuses on that sound like a lifeline. When the timer reaches the single digits, Dick forces himself to close his eyes and picture Bruce, picking out the tiny lines and details of his face that translate coldness into love, apathy into pride.

He hears the glass of the skylight shatter and doesn't know if it is the explosion or something else. For a split second he thinks he hears his name – Dick, not Robin – and it is loud and needy in a way that Bruce often exhibits not when he's in trouble or danger, but when Bruce needs Dick to acknowledge he is there. He is aware it could be wishful thinking during his final moments, but either way, he is engulfed in heat and then he knows nothing.

BONUS/BRUCE

Bruce knows that Dick is resilient, like a damn roach sometimes, but Bruce is also there when the explosion hits, eyes burning from the heat, and doesn't know if even someone like Dick can crawl out of the woodwork afterwards. The very thought is daunting and Bruce knows Dick would rebuke him for it, because Dick, in all his lovingness, doesn't have children, so Dick doesn't know. He won't understand. Not really.

He pushes those thoughts aside as he comes crashing down through the glass, ears picking up on the countdown, and it propels him to sprint towards the bloodied heap by the door. He leaps at him as the blast erupts, deafening him, throwing him, terrifying him.

They land in the snow, half-buried under rubble and the heat is still unbearable. Bruce's ears ring and he has to say Dick's name several times before he can hear it himself. Dick is heavy and limp, his face purple and engorged under the char. Blood devours him and his colors, even turning the red of his tunic into an angrier shade. Bruce cradles him like he's a babe, pulling him tightly to his chest as if he can transfer his strong and steady heartbeat to Dick's weakened one.

Past the blinding rage, Bruce is at the very least grateful that Dick is moaning softly and in pain, because being in pain is so much better than being dead. He runs then, determined to keep it that way.

BONUS/BARBARA

It is cold when she goes on patrol. Gotham is always chilly but Barbara feels that it is not the reason why. When Bruce lands silently behind her, she turns to him, following the line of his silhouette with her eyes. The tense shoulders, the pointed cowl, the rippling cape. He looks the same as he always does and yet, somehow, Barbara senses it.

"What's happened?" she ventures, voice already shaking because she can feel it. She can feel it so very, very deep in herself and she tries to tell her throat to unclench, for her eyes to remain dry because Bruce hasn't said anything, and yet it tells her everything. She touches Bruce's shoulder. Can feel the anguish through the thick material. Something has happened.

For a second she is angry that he is out on the rooftops when it is clear he should be somewhere else, but she simultaneously understands the drive and distraction. I'm sorry, she wants to say. She wants to but her mouth is too busy folding in on itself. Her chest has collapsed. She knows of only one person that does this to Bruce, and in her mind she pictures him in his trademark colors, small and active and younger than herself and she doesn't want to picture him any other way.

BONUS/ALFRED

The hot cocoa that he had so generously laced with sugar crashes to the cave floor, splintering the stone with glass. Bruce crawls out of the Batmobile with Dick in his arms, cowl pulled back, his face grim. The boy looks terribly heavy and motionless, and Alfred can see that Bruce is shaking. Bruce lays Dick over the medical table and rushes for supplies, listing off all the things they need to fix as he does so, and Alfred rolls up his sleeves.

Alfred always thinks about it for long hours on many days and never thinks of a way to deal if it ever comes down to losing one of his boys. The Englishman sees close calls like this often but he can never fully prepare for it, so he does everything he can to avoid the scenario completely. He wipes his brow and keeps working on the teenager as Bruce tenderly cards through Dick's blood-clotted hair. Alfred refrains from telling Bruce to give him some room because he wishes he could do the same thing right now and doesn't dare deprive the man of the contact.

"Master Bruce," he manages somehow. Self-given duty finds a way to guide him when he sees Bruce's face twist into grief. Bruce hardly moves other than that, but Alfred knows he's listening. "I can assure you that whatever you are thinking right now, Master Dick would disagree."

But it isn't until hours later, when Dick is breathing right again and bandages keep him from falling apart that Bruce rubs the creases from his face. Alfred allows himself to sink into the dark corners of the cave as Bruce sits next to the boy, waiting for him to open his eyes because Bruce needs to hear the words from Dick himself. This way he will know that Dick is broken but still in-tact, which ultimately, keeps Bruce in one piece.