Damian crept across the rooftops in the worst of Gotham, dressed not as the bird he'd taken as his own mantle while here, but in his League gear. His father refused to admit that Damian was ready to patrol, Damian would prove otherwise.
If he was to do that though, he'd have to hunt by his father's rules. Namely, no killing. It seemed absurd to Damian, considering how many villains came back again and again. But for now, he'd abide.
So far he'd broken the bones of two muggers and a would-be rapist. He needed something more sizable if he was to achieve his goal, however.
He found what he needed in a brawl happening with the Red Hood at the center. Damian could pick off the goons attacking him and then take on the Hood, who plagued his father. It would do.
Damian leapt down from the roofs and silent as a ghost took out two of the shooters in the back, working his way around to the opposite side to take two more, someone finally shouting a warning that there was another player in the game. Damian dodged the desperate, grabbing hands of another goon, but the man managed to snatch his mask off, and Damian scowled, promptly rendering him unconscious. The damage was done though, his face on plain view.
Gotham was a cess pit. A melting pot of gentrification and poverty, spiced with madness and 'old school charm'. It was at best a powder keg primed for a fuse and at worst? At worst, it was already starting to devour itself, sickness leeching into it's very core.
The Bowery, the East End, the Narrows- whatever you wanted to call it, the northern most point of the northern most island was a beast of a different nature. To walk the Bowery after dark was to hand your suicide to someone else and ask them politely to at least make it quick. Even Bruce didn't patrol there, washing his hands on it's life hardened occupants as 'too far gone'. He used to go, every once in a while...but that had stopped. And it had stopped because no Bat or Bird was allowed to cross the boundary of Crime Alley without getting hit by the area's new protector.
Red Hood.
After his homecoming nearly a full year before and the new scar he wore on his throat to remind him of Bruce's betrayal every day, Jason had crawled away from the explosion and had disappeared. He healed. He spied. He learned. And, finally, he'd decided that Bruce and Tim could go fuck themselves and if they were going to leave the people of the Bowery vulnerable, then he'd step up. Because this desolate garbage pit had been his home. These people were his people. Not all of them were rotten to the core, but everyone who was rotten was forced here by Bats.
And he was fucking tired of it.
The night's activities had started off as a stake out, recon to sniff out what he could about a new gang that was trying to make boot prints on his turf. He'd started the evening off with the perfect vantage point of an old fire escape, well out of the way of sight lines and set up with a recording device that he could study later. He was all settled in for the night...until one of the men he was watching had started getting handsy with one of the boys who worked that stretch of street. Jason had bared his teeth, but he'd been trailing this group for weeks and if he jumped now, it would all be for nothing. The boy was fine, the thug was just giving him a hard time.
The boy yelped, the sharp keen of a pup in distress and Hood didn't even remember vaulting over the edge of the fire escape. He did remember putting the first, and only, round of the night between that man's eyes, though.
Getting company in the fight was a surprise. Getting competent company was even more of a surprise. Especially because the figure was too small to be wearing the colors that they were wearing. He knew most of the ninja who had infiltrated his city and none of them were deep enough in their covers to have children, let alone children old enough to be trained.
He grunted as a thug used his distraction to get in a good shot on his shoulder, his attention whipping back to the fight at hand. His company was wearing colors that he wanted nothing to do with anymore...but he wasn't outright enemies with most of them. He'd deal with them when everyone else was down.
At least, that was the idea. The last man went down under his sap gloves like a sack of bricks and Jason turned, body held defensively just in case...and then he was drawing and aiming, the helmet keeping his sudden loss of color from being obvious.
"You have exactly ten seconds to tell me who the fuck you are and why the fuck you're wearing the face of my son." His voice modulator covered the shake that he felt in his words, thankfully.
Damian was trained by the League of Assassins, and by his grandfather and mother, and previously by Jason himself. He was a machine in a fight, relentless and strategic and very, very difficult to shake.
But the question did it, and he froze, mind racing. The modulator kept him from knowing for sure - but who else would claim he was Damian's father? "Baba?" he said, small-voiced, before he could stop himself.
He rallied though, small shoulders squaring and mouth twisting into a scowl. "So this is where you ran to. Like a dog returning home to its masters." And Damian hadn't been enough to make him stay. "Either that or you're the imposter and I'll gladly gut you for the attempt."
It stole his breath and for the first time in his entire resurrected life, his gun wavered. It sounded so much like Damian. Like his little boy. The son he'd failed to protect, who'd been taken from him by...
The gun lowered, then was holstered, his movements easy despite how much his hands were starting to shake.
"Lift your chin up." If it was Damian, if it was really his little boy, there'd be a small scar just under his chin. A stumble when he'd been learning to walk, a scare that had resulted in three stitches that Jason had applied himself because he hadn't trusted anyone else with the small babe. He'd always tapped that spot later, in the training ring when Damian had tried to do something he hadn't done the ground work to learn, a gentle smile to go along with the reminder that one had to learn to walk before they ran.
An imposter--or a clone--wouldn't know to have such a scar, even if Talia....
Damian watched him warily, and circled when the Hood started to approach, keeping the same amount of distance between them, and Red Hood directly in front of him.
Damian rarely gave in to sentiment, he'd been raised to think of it as a weakness. Except by his baba, who would hug and cuddle him and encourage without hurting more than he had to. He'd been there when Damian fought crying over pain from his body or frustration with not being good enough for his mother.
Everything had changed when Jason abandoned him, leaving without a second thought for the son he'd left behind. (Not his real son, but Damian had never quite been able to shake the idea that Jason was his baba.
It hurt to think he was here.
"Take off your helmet," he retorted sharply, chin still firmly down. He didn't think why Jason might want to see it, he just automatically denied him.
It hurt to see Damian circle like that. Even if this boy was a clone or an imposter, it still felt like someone was tugging at his heart because his son should never act like that around him. Like he was dangerous, an enemy to be tracked. Not because he wasn't dangerous--he very much was and Damian had known that from a very early age, but because he wasn't dangerous to him.
Never to Damian.
It wouldn't be the first lie he'd caught her in.
If she'd told him that his son was dead....then, if this boy wasn't an imposter...what had she told him?
Splaying his fingers so that Damithe boy could see that he was unarmed, he reached up and back to carefully touch a sequence on the back of his helmet. It popped open on it's hidden hinge with a hiss as his filters detached and then he was pulling it off. Underneath, he was still wearing his red domino, his eyes a white glare of emotionless lenses, but a familiar fringe of white hair flopped over the top of that mask.
"Lift your chin. Please." This time, there was no voice modulator to disguise how shaky his voice was.
He wore a mask beneath a helmet. The double security even FELT like what his baba would do.
Damian shouldn't care. He SHOULDN'T. His baba left him alone with his mother and grandfather. He got all he wanted from the League and abandoned them, and Damian with them.
But a small, weak part of Damian still wanted to fling himself at his papa. Because even with the domino mask, he knew that fringe, the shape of his face.
Damian cursed himself for being so pathetically weak.
But he let Jason approach, wary as a half-feral cat, ready to bolt out of reach at any moment, and he tilted his chin just enough for the small scar to be seen, without exposing his throat. "The mask too," he said, swallowing.
It was there. Small, barely an imprint anymore, a corner of a piece of furniture that had stamped it's impact against the soft skin of a toddler. It would probably be completely gone in a few years, lost to time but not from memory.
Never from his memory.
She'd lied. She'd lied and he'd believed her. He'd let her shake him up and throw him at both her ex and the boy who'd infatuated her father and he hadn't thought twice about it. He'd almost killed...
His kneepads clunked hard against the ground as he fell down onto them, putting himself eye to eye with th-his son. His Damian. "S-she told me...she told you died. She told me that you were killed, were taken from me." His domino was designed to be worn all night in all weather, complete with sweat. It was glued very firmly into place, but Jason didn't pull the solvent from his jacket. He just reached up and peeled it away, leaving his skin an angry shade of red and speckled with little patches of residual adhesive.
He was also nine years old, however much he tried to overcome that fact.
It wasn't an assassin or a vigilante who lashed out at Jason when he hit his knees, it was an upset child, fighting back emotion. "You LEFT," Damian hissed. "You left me-us. You didn't CARE that I was still there without you. I'm not your anything," he said.
He was the son of the bat. His mother's son. Heir to the demon. He wasn't his baba's little prince, not anymore. He never really had been, since he could be left behind so easily.
He sneered. "Why would she do that? She has nothing to gain from you leaving."
He didn't move away from the hits. Didn't try to catch them. He brought his arms up to steady him, letting the hits break on his armor, feeling the strength in them even directed as they were by pain and anger instead of the calm control that Jason had tried to help Damian find. They hurt and not just because they'd leave bruises come morning, but he didn't try to stop them.
"I would never leave you, Damian! You are my world, my son, and my stars. I would die before I left you there, in that place without me. I..." He reached out, face open and so terrifyingly readable. "She lied to me, habibi. About so much. She used me.."
Used him to attack his father. To almost murder Tim. She'd sat and stroked his hair like Catherine used to do while he fed Damian, telling him all about the strong Alpha pup that Bruce had replaced him with. About how he was never mourned. How Joker was still alive.
She'd at least been truthful about that.
Anytime Jason had started to butt heads with her over Damian's training, she'd been quick to distract him from the pressure with another tidbit of how the world had gone on without him. He'd never bowed to her demands for his son, but he'd always be left off kilter and with a bitter taste in his mouth for weeks afterward.
He'd never bowed.
"Oh, what did they do to you, my sweet puppy? I'm so sorry..."
"You LEFT me," Damian said again, a crack to his voice that gave away he was fighting back tears, even if he'd never have admitted it.
He stopped hitting finally, glaring at Jason. "WHY? Why would she lie? It doesn't do any good. How do I know you're not lying to me now?" Damian asked, lip wobbling before he forced a scowl back across his face.
Damian didn't want to believe his mother would be so callous. He knew she could lie - she'd taught him how too, but Damian wasn't really good at it. Not like his mother. But he didn't see WHY.
Despite that, he wanted to believe Jason, even if it meant resenting his mother. Because Jason had been his baba, his solace. And he was here, in a strange city, trying to win his way into a place with the Bat and his brood. And everything he was, to them, seemed to be WRONG. Too violent, too young, too much a killer.
His baba was the only one Damian had been enough for, even if he didn't excel in training that day, or made a mistake. Everything else in his life had been conditional. But Jason just loved Damian.
Until he'd learned it was all a lie because Jason left him. And now here he was being told his world view was askew yet again. Damian didn't know how to adjust. He was angry and frustrated. But he also wanted to burrow into his baba and cling to him.
"You weren't THERE," Damian finally said, half whispered, face pale behind the tan of his skin and eyes huge and too-wet.
That crack in Damian's voice hurt more than any of the strikes before, not because it sounded like his son wanted to cry but because it was proof he wanted to. But he wasn't. Jason had never judged his pup for his emotions, he'd even encouraged them. Cited that emotions were integral for morality and morality was integral for a warrior. For a leader.
How could one lead a people if one couldn't feel for said people?
It was a fight that he and Talia had had often and one that Jason had done his best to keep Damian away from.
"Habibi...habibi, look at me." He reached out, gently touching his fingertips to the sides of Damian's head. He never held tight, never stopped the boy from jerking away if he wasn't ready, but if Damian let him he used to gentle touch to guide their foreheads together. Even if his son did pull away, it didn't stop him from trying. "Look at me, pup. I carried you. I birthed you. I fed you from my body, washed you with my tears, and kept you safe with my blood. Look at me.
Would I leave you? Is there any force on this world or any other that would make me willingly walk away from you, my little prince?"
Damian did pull back at first, but when Jason didn't give up, he let himself be drawn forward, small body pulled tight as a piano wire. But his forehead leaned into his baba's when it was done, and he drew a deep breath.
"But you were still gone," Damian said. "Everything was different when you were gone." He sniffled once, very quietly, gloved hand rubbing hard across his eyes. "I didn't think you would. I thought you'd come back for me, at first. But you didn't."
"Why would mother do this? I did everything she asked!"
He didn't have an answer and it was likely no one would - Talia wouldn't explain herself and her mind worked in ways that were impossible to predict.
"You really thought I was dead?" Damian finally asked softly.
It had taken the better part of two weeks to set up his territory to run by proxy. It was less time than Jason had been expecting, but still time spent away from his son. Yes, the boy had slipped away with every opportunity, but Bruce wasn't sloppy and as soon as the Bat had figured out that Damian was sneaking out, security had closed in. It meant that he'd only gotten to see his son twice in that last week, though they'd been able to communicate via the com that Jason had sent Damian back to the Manor with.
The conversation with Bruce had, as expected, turned into a fight. The man was stubborn and hardheaded and he hadn't at all wanted to believe that Jason was to Damian who he claimed to be, but in the end they'd come to tolerable terms. Jason would be allowed back into the Manor on a trial basis. The rules that came with it were harsh, but Jason had only bared his teeth and relented. He was confined to the Manor until Bruce decided otherwise and when Tim was in the Manor, he was to stay in his room. It rankled, but he agreed. He'd even handed over his weapons and his uniform to be locked away with only a sullen glare, and that more than anything else had shocked Bruce into being slightly more civil.
Alfred had been beside himself in that quiet, British beta way of his, and the old man's smile was almost as much of a balm as Damian's presence against his side. He'd agreed that Jason should have a new room, one without the memories of the one that was still untouched after all these years. He'd help Alfred go through it, eventually. When walking into it didn't threaten to break every bit of emotional control he'd fought so hard to relearn after the Pit.
He didn't own much, but still the process of moving in was slow. Bruce insisted on running each box through a battery of tests and a physical inspection before he'd let it into the Manor proper. Jason was pretty sure he was searching for explosives, which...was kind of fair, considering. But, finally, all of his boxes were up in the suite that had been set aside for him and all that was left was to organize.
Or flop over in the midst of the nesting supplies that he'd haphazardly piled onto the bed to be dealt with later, a groan muffled into a blanket. "Can I just? Sleep? For ten years?"
Damian started to get used to the idea that his bearer didn't leave him on purpose, he'd been tricked, and that Jason wasn't going anywhere. Dami hovered close to Jason whenever they were in the same room, and whatever nights he could creep away, he slept in his baba's nest still.
The fight to get Jason back in the house had Damian firmly on Jason's side, and when it was confirmed for him that the scar on Jason's chin came from Bruce, he'd instantly had a knife in his hand and was moving to give Bruce a matching one, when he was talked grudgingly down from it.
He still hissed at Bruce that he deserved one.
Finally though, the laborious process of moving Jason in to the manor with all of the required security hoops was done, and Damian crawled up onto the bed with Jason, curling up at his side. "You would be bored," he said. For sleeping for days on end, but he meant it for the conditions Jason was being forced to live by, too. Damian felt a little guilty making his papa obey that, but he wasn't ready to have him far away, either.
"He would be," a voice said from the doorway. Dick stood there, in civvies, watching the pair of them with wide eyes. "Jay? You're really back then. And Dami is-"
"He's my baby. My mother lied and told him I was dead," Damian said
Dick's smile widened. "Welcome back, Little Wing. As long as you're not gonna kill any of us anytime soon," Dick said, pleased to see Jason but a little wary of him still.
"I don't know. I slept for two years and when I woke up, I had a son. That doesn't seem that boring to me." He smirked, reaching out to snag Damian by the waist to haul him up into his arms. He had ever intention of using the boy as a pillow to try and coax another few minutes of rest from him...but the voice from the door made him tense.
He hadn't seen Dick since before his death. Not out of uniform, at least. It made the long dormant butterflies in his gut flutter, but it also made the little hairs at the nape of his neck stand on edge. It also made him nudge his pup a little behind him as he sat up, putting his bulk between his brother and his son.
Was Dick a threat to Damian? No, not even a little. But he was still more than a little mad and the only reason he didn't get up and close the door on the alpha was because Damian liked the acrobat. He didn't have to be happy about it, though.
"Relax, Dickface. I've been properly muzzled and declawed, so the world is safe once more."
"If you'd been yourself, would you still have wanted to have me?" Damian asked curiously.
"I'm betting you've still got some claws, Little Wing," Dick said. But he drifted in closer, looking between the two. Jason had wanted to kill half of them not long ago, and now he was cuddled up with Damian - who would almost never take that kind of affection from Dick.
Dick was glad they had each other again, but it was confusing as hell to see.
And he was a little shocked by how attractive Jason looked, bulk curled up with the little boy.
"Am I going to get those claws anyway if I try to hug?" Dick asked.
He tensed a little, torn between wanting to reassure his son but also not wanting to have such a personal conversation in front of Dick. Not because he thought Dick would be bothered by the conversation, but because Dick didn't deserve the knowledge. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
It wasn't just Bruce who hadn't killed the man who'd killed him.
In the end, he turned to lightly bump his jaw against Damian's shoulder, scenting him to reassure him. "I was 16, habibi. I don't know. But thinking questions like that don't accomplish anything because I did have you and I don't regret a moment of it." He paused, still doing his best to ignore the other man in the room for the moment. Then, slowly, he smirked and ruffled Damian's hair. "Well, no. I probably wouldn't have nursed you for so long, my little shark." He gave the boy another affectionate rub of his chin before he groaned and made himself sit up so he could properly face his brother.
"Not yet, Dick. Just...I'm still so fucking mad and some of that is the Pit but some of it is real. I need some time to untangle the lies I was told from what actually happened." He frowned, scrubbing at his face with his hands before running them through his hair. The white patch immediately flopped right back into his face and he huffed a breath up at them. "Time and space, okay? I'm not going anywhere." Both because he couldn't thanks to Bruce's rules, but also because he wasn't about to let Damian out of his nest for a good long while.
Damian's face turned red at mention of nursing, and he grumbled and sank down a little lower. It bothered him a little, how young baba had been. He knows it's not a good thing for someone so young to have to do. But Jason said he didn't regret it, and Damian wasn't sure what his life might have been, if he didn't have Jason there with him too. So he couldn't wish for anything different either.
His green eyes stayed on Dick though, curious about their dynamic, and plainly ready to intervene if his baba is mistreated.
"I can help you, if you want," Dick offered. Which was neither time no space, but Dick was a DO-ER. He was happiest in motions, solving problems, making sure the people around him were safe and happy. It was not the simplest of jobs with his family - nor one he always succeeded at either. Dick had his own anger to deal with.
He took a deep breath. "All right ... time and space. I'll try. But I mean Jay ... how ARE you? After all of that?" His attention turned Damian, who seemed more relaxed than he usually was. "And you, Dami? You okay."
"Of course. I'm with my baba," Damian said, earning another little tic from Dick as he said it.
Jason sighed softly, but he didn't call Dick out on his offer to help. Apparently, parenthood had cooled his temper a little bit, even with the effects of the Pit shredding most of the emotional control he had. The little flare of annoyance was there, sharply felt...but Damian's scent and close proximity helped to sooth it.
The question, however, was another matter entirely and Jason's jaw flexed as he felt that swell of anger creep up along his spine. He shifted, reaching out to ground himself with a hand on his son's back, but even then his eyes flashed a little when he flicked them over to Dick.
"After all of what, Dick? Being a surrogate? Raising my son? Training with the League? Cause if that is what you're asking about, then I'm fine. Peachy fucking keen. Cause that was a cakewalk after waking up in my own fucking coffin. Screaming for you and B until my air almost ran out. Being exploded also sucked, gotta say. Beaten to within an inch of my life isn't on my top ten 'would do again' list. Being sold out to the Joker by my mother wasn't fun. Which one are you asking about, Dickie? Cause, oh I could talk about them all if you want."
Damian watched from his space at Jason's side, worry flickering over his expression when Jason started to snarl at Dick.
"We had no way of knowing you'd crawled out of your coffin. If we'd have known - if I'd known, Little Wing, I would have been there. I know you don't believe that yet, but I hope like hell you do someday." Dick tried to keep his voice level. He didn't WANT to pick fights. He wanted to ... make some amends, somehow. "You had a harder run than anyone should have to, and I wasn't there for you even in the beginning of it, because I was too caught up in my own shit. But if you want to talk about any of that, I'll listen."
"He can talk about it with me," Damian said. Even if he knew Jason would probably try to soften it for him, at least a little. "You knew Red Hood was Jason Todd, didn't you and Father? Did you know he was my baba, and still keep it from me?"
Dick shook his head, expression going soft but a touch guilty. "Bruce knew about that, I didn't. I only found out about Jason being the Hood a few days ago." He and Bruce had Some Words about it.
Jason could feel his lip lifting a little with Dick's words and he made himself look away from the other man. Made himself stay quiet and focus on forcing that static buzzing of rage inside him back down to acceptable levels.
He didn't want to fight. He'd done that, he'd been there. Granted, it had been with Bruce and not Dick, but the result had been a Batarang to his throat and Bruce choosing the Joker over him. Why would the result be any different with Dick? Hell, Dick hadn't even liked him for most of the time that he'd worn the green booty shorts and pixie boots. So no, letting his anger get a hold on him was just going to get him kicked out of the Manor and out of Damian's life. Again.
While his son and his brother verbally sniped it out, Jason focused on his breathing. A League technique that he'd learned that first year after the Pit, when his emotional dysregulation was at it's worst. He'd kept the habit, a clear tell for Damian for when Jason's emotions were riding too high and he needed a break from whatever situation he was in.
Eventually, slowly, his muscles started to loosen and relax and when he opened his eyes again, he was able to look at Dick without wanting to just slam his door in the alpha's face.
"This is gunna take time, Dick. I'm...I don't know how much time, so don't ask. I just- this isn't something that is just going to go away overnight. I've missed you, but I'm still so fucking mad at you and I'm even more mad at B." His hand went to his throat, bare this time since he was in a t-shirt and not his uniform. "Right now, I'm here for my pup. Time and space, okay? And if I walk the fuck away or close the door or whatever...just leave me be for a bit. Okay? Those are my terms. Time, space, and respect."
Dick watched Jason, even as he spoke to Damian, watching the way he settled his expression as he breathed. Dick longed to hug him, to ask him a million questions about the League and Damian and HOW.
But Dick had grown up too, and he took a deep breath of his own. "I can give you time. I can try to answer anything you want to know, if it will help you. Just ... don't vanish on us, Jason. Please."
"He will not. He wasn't aware I was alive," Damian said. "He wouldn't leave me."
Dick blinked. "The League told you he was dead?" Dick asked, note of anger on Jason's behalf rumbling in his throat for a moment before he calmed himself down. "I'll listen to the rules you lay down give you the space you need. Just - I'm sorry I didn't know. That you were alive, that you were with the League, about Damian - all of it."
It sounded honest and for the first time, Jason remembered that Dick hadn't actually seen him since before his death. Talia had shown him pictures that proved that Dick hadn't been at his funeral, but he'd done his own research after his defeat at Bruce's hands. Dick had been offworld when he'd died, on a mission with the Titans.
Had Bruce even told him? The old man had an unhealthy relationship with secrets, after all. Jason wouldn't put it past him to not tell Dick so that the news of his death didn't throw off whatever mission Dick had been working on. It didn't stop him from being pissed that Dick hadn't done anything to Joker....
but also, Dick wasn't a killer. Not like he'd turned out to be.
The little grumble of anger pulled Jason out of his own thoughts, amusement clear even on the hard line of his lips. There was the Dick he'd known, all flash fury and instinctual impulses. Once upon a time that had triggered the biggest crush for the Alpha...but that was then and they'd grown. Right?
"He's a hardass who keeps his secrets to himself. You could have dug harder, don't think for a moment that you're completely off the hook, but I get it." He paused, glancing back at Damian for a moment before he huffed and made himself stand up. He was going to have to get used to everyone's scent in his space anyway, right? Might as well let it be Dick's first. "Now make yourself useful and grab a box. Just...for a little bit."
Dick had taken a long time to forgive Bruce for not calling him home for the funeral - and he still hadn't forgiven himself for not taking more time with Jason while he was alive. He'd been too caught up in his constant strife with Bruce, with the Titans, with dating drama - things that all seemed a lot less important than Jason in hindsight. His rage over that had contributed to his breaking point when he thought Joker had killed Tim, too, and Dick beat him to death. Bruce brought him back, and some days Dick still couldn't decide if it had been worth saving Joker to keep Dick from being a murderer. Most days, Dick still wished he was dead.
He didn't deny Bruce being a hardass. He WANTED to argue that he hadn't even known to LOOK, but Dick refrained. He wanted to keep their fragile peace and worm his way into Jason's good graces and presence as much as possible.
"Boxes I can do," Dick said instead with a bright smile, going to obediently fetch one.
Damian made a little huff at his cozy nest time being disturbed, but he stood up too, waiting for Jason's direction before moving to help too. Which was more than Damian tended to do for any other manual labor not related to training.
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Reunited
If he was to do that though, he'd have to hunt by his father's rules. Namely, no killing. It seemed absurd to Damian, considering how many villains came back again and again. But for now, he'd abide.
So far he'd broken the bones of two muggers and a would-be rapist. He needed something more sizable if he was to achieve his goal, however.
He found what he needed in a brawl happening with the Red Hood at the center. Damian could pick off the goons attacking him and then take on the Hood, who plagued his father. It would do.
Damian leapt down from the roofs and silent as a ghost took out two of the shooters in the back, working his way around to the opposite side to take two more, someone finally shouting a warning that there was another player in the game. Damian dodged the desperate, grabbing hands of another goon, but the man managed to snatch his mask off, and Damian scowled, promptly rendering him unconscious. The damage was done though, his face on plain view.
And it feels so good!
The Bowery, the East End, the Narrows- whatever you wanted to call it, the northern most point of the northern most island was a beast of a different nature. To walk the Bowery after dark was to hand your suicide to someone else and ask them politely to at least make it quick. Even Bruce didn't patrol there, washing his hands on it's life hardened occupants as 'too far gone'. He used to go, every once in a while...but that had stopped. And it had stopped because no Bat or Bird was allowed to cross the boundary of Crime Alley without getting hit by the area's new protector.
Red Hood.
After his homecoming nearly a full year before and the new scar he wore on his throat to remind him of Bruce's betrayal every day, Jason had crawled away from the explosion and had disappeared. He healed. He spied. He learned. And, finally, he'd decided that Bruce and Tim could go fuck themselves and if they were going to leave the people of the Bowery vulnerable, then he'd step up. Because this desolate garbage pit had been his home. These people were his people. Not all of them were rotten to the core, but everyone who was rotten was forced here by Bats.
And he was fucking tired of it.
The night's activities had started off as a stake out, recon to sniff out what he could about a new gang that was trying to make boot prints on his turf. He'd started the evening off with the perfect vantage point of an old fire escape, well out of the way of sight lines and set up with a recording device that he could study later. He was all settled in for the night...until one of the men he was watching had started getting handsy with one of the boys who worked that stretch of street. Jason had bared his teeth, but he'd been trailing this group for weeks and if he jumped now, it would all be for nothing. The boy was fine, the thug was just giving him a hard time.
The boy yelped, the sharp keen of a pup in distress and Hood didn't even remember vaulting over the edge of the fire escape. He did remember putting the first, and only, round of the night between that man's eyes, though.
Getting company in the fight was a surprise. Getting competent company was even more of a surprise. Especially because the figure was too small to be wearing the colors that they were wearing. He knew most of the ninja who had infiltrated his city and none of them were deep enough in their covers to have children, let alone children old enough to be trained.
He grunted as a thug used his distraction to get in a good shot on his shoulder, his attention whipping back to the fight at hand. His company was wearing colors that he wanted nothing to do with anymore...but he wasn't outright enemies with most of them. He'd deal with them when everyone else was down.
At least, that was the idea. The last man went down under his sap gloves like a sack of bricks and Jason turned, body held defensively just in case...and then he was drawing and aiming, the helmet keeping his sudden loss of color from being obvious.
"You have exactly ten seconds to tell me who the fuck you are and why the fuck you're wearing the face of my son." His voice modulator covered the shake that he felt in his words, thankfully.
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But the question did it, and he froze, mind racing. The modulator kept him from knowing for sure - but who else would claim he was Damian's father? "Baba?" he said, small-voiced, before he could stop himself.
He rallied though, small shoulders squaring and mouth twisting into a scowl. "So this is where you ran to. Like a dog returning home to its masters." And Damian hadn't been enough to make him stay. "Either that or you're the imposter and I'll gladly gut you for the attempt."
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It stole his breath and for the first time in his entire resurrected life, his gun wavered. It sounded so much like Damian. Like his little boy. The son he'd failed to protect, who'd been taken from him by...
The gun lowered, then was holstered, his movements easy despite how much his hands were starting to shake.
"Lift your chin up." If it was Damian, if it was really his little boy, there'd be a small scar just under his chin. A stumble when he'd been learning to walk, a scare that had resulted in three stitches that Jason had applied himself because he hadn't trusted anyone else with the small babe. He'd always tapped that spot later, in the training ring when Damian had tried to do something he hadn't done the ground work to learn, a gentle smile to go along with the reminder that one had to learn to walk before they ran.
An imposter--or a clone--wouldn't know to have such a scar, even if Talia....
It wouldn't be the first lie he'd caught her in.
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Damian rarely gave in to sentiment, he'd been raised to think of it as a weakness. Except by his baba, who would hug and cuddle him and encourage without hurting more than he had to. He'd been there when Damian fought crying over pain from his body or frustration with not being good enough for his mother.
Everything had changed when Jason abandoned him, leaving without a second thought for the son he'd left behind. (Not his real son, but Damian had never quite been able to shake the idea that Jason was his baba.
It hurt to think he was here.
"Take off your helmet," he retorted sharply, chin still firmly down. He didn't think why Jason might want to see it, he just automatically denied him.
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Never to Damian.
It wouldn't be the first lie he'd caught her in.
If she'd told him that his son was dead....then, if this boy wasn't an imposter...what had she told him?
Splaying his fingers so that
Damithe boy could see that he was unarmed, he reached up and back to carefully touch a sequence on the back of his helmet. It popped open on it's hidden hinge with a hiss as his filters detached and then he was pulling it off. Underneath, he was still wearing his red domino, his eyes a white glare of emotionless lenses, but a familiar fringe of white hair flopped over the top of that mask."Lift your chin. Please." This time, there was no voice modulator to disguise how shaky his voice was.
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Damian shouldn't care. He SHOULDN'T. His baba left him alone with his mother and grandfather. He got all he wanted from the League and abandoned them, and Damian with them.
But a small, weak part of Damian still wanted to fling himself at his papa. Because even with the domino mask, he knew that fringe, the shape of his face.
Damian cursed himself for being so pathetically weak.
But he let Jason approach, wary as a half-feral cat, ready to bolt out of reach at any moment, and he tilted his chin just enough for the small scar to be seen, without exposing his throat. "The mask too," he said, swallowing.
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Never from his memory.
She'd lied. She'd lied and he'd believed her. He'd let her shake him up and throw him at both her ex and the boy who'd infatuated her father and he hadn't thought twice about it. He'd almost killed...
His kneepads clunked hard against the ground as he fell down onto them, putting himself eye to eye with th-his son. His Damian. "S-she told me...she told you died. She told me that you were killed, were taken from me." His domino was designed to be worn all night in all weather, complete with sweat. It was glued very firmly into place, but Jason didn't pull the solvent from his jacket. He just reached up and peeled it away, leaving his skin an angry shade of red and speckled with little patches of residual adhesive.
"My little prince..."
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He was also nine years old, however much he tried to overcome that fact.
It wasn't an assassin or a vigilante who lashed out at Jason when he hit his knees, it was an upset child, fighting back emotion. "You LEFT," Damian hissed. "You left me-us. You didn't CARE that I was still there without you. I'm not your anything," he said.
He was the son of the bat. His mother's son. Heir to the demon. He wasn't his baba's little prince, not anymore. He never really had been, since he could be left behind so easily.
He sneered. "Why would she do that? She has nothing to gain from you leaving."
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"I would never leave you, Damian! You are my world, my son, and my stars. I would die before I left you there, in that place without me. I..." He reached out, face open and so terrifyingly readable. "She lied to me, habibi. About so much. She used me.."
Used him to attack his father. To almost murder Tim. She'd sat and stroked his hair like Catherine used to do while he fed Damian, telling him all about the strong Alpha pup that Bruce had replaced him with. About how he was never mourned. How Joker was still alive.
She'd at least been truthful about that.
Anytime Jason had started to butt heads with her over Damian's training, she'd been quick to distract him from the pressure with another tidbit of how the world had gone on without him. He'd never bowed to her demands for his son, but he'd always be left off kilter and with a bitter taste in his mouth for weeks afterward.
He'd never bowed.
"Oh, what did they do to you, my sweet puppy? I'm so sorry..."
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He stopped hitting finally, glaring at Jason. "WHY? Why would she lie? It doesn't do any good. How do I know you're not lying to me now?" Damian asked, lip wobbling before he forced a scowl back across his face.
Damian didn't want to believe his mother would be so callous. He knew she could lie - she'd taught him how too, but Damian wasn't really good at it. Not like his mother. But he didn't see WHY.
Despite that, he wanted to believe Jason, even if it meant resenting his mother. Because Jason had been his baba, his solace. And he was here, in a strange city, trying to win his way into a place with the Bat and his brood. And everything he was, to them, seemed to be WRONG. Too violent, too young, too much a killer.
His baba was the only one Damian had been enough for, even if he didn't excel in training that day, or made a mistake. Everything else in his life had been conditional. But Jason just loved Damian.
Until he'd learned it was all a lie because Jason left him. And now here he was being told his world view was askew yet again. Damian didn't know how to adjust. He was angry and frustrated. But he also wanted to burrow into his baba and cling to him.
"You weren't THERE," Damian finally said, half whispered, face pale behind the tan of his skin and eyes huge and too-wet.
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How could one lead a people if one couldn't feel for said people?
It was a fight that he and Talia had had often and one that Jason had done his best to keep Damian away from.
"Habibi...habibi, look at me." He reached out, gently touching his fingertips to the sides of Damian's head. He never held tight, never stopped the boy from jerking away if he wasn't ready, but if Damian let him he used to gentle touch to guide their foreheads together. Even if his son did pull away, it didn't stop him from trying. "Look at me, pup. I carried you. I birthed you. I fed you from my body, washed you with my tears, and kept you safe with my blood. Look at me.
Would I leave you? Is there any force on this world or any other that would make me willingly walk away from you, my little prince?"
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"But you were still gone," Damian said. "Everything was different when you were gone." He sniffled once, very quietly, gloved hand rubbing hard across his eyes. "I didn't think you would. I thought you'd come back for me, at first. But you didn't."
"Why would mother do this? I did everything she asked!"
He didn't have an answer and it was likely no one would - Talia wouldn't explain herself and her mind worked in ways that were impossible to predict.
"You really thought I was dead?" Damian finally asked softly.
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Moving Day
The conversation with Bruce had, as expected, turned into a fight. The man was stubborn and hardheaded and he hadn't at all wanted to believe that Jason was to Damian who he claimed to be, but in the end they'd come to tolerable terms. Jason would be allowed back into the Manor on a trial basis. The rules that came with it were harsh, but Jason had only bared his teeth and relented. He was confined to the Manor until Bruce decided otherwise and when Tim was in the Manor, he was to stay in his room. It rankled, but he agreed. He'd even handed over his weapons and his uniform to be locked away with only a sullen glare, and that more than anything else had shocked Bruce into being slightly more civil.
Alfred had been beside himself in that quiet, British beta way of his, and the old man's smile was almost as much of a balm as Damian's presence against his side. He'd agreed that Jason should have a new room, one without the memories of the one that was still untouched after all these years. He'd help Alfred go through it, eventually. When walking into it didn't threaten to break every bit of emotional control he'd fought so hard to relearn after the Pit.
He didn't own much, but still the process of moving in was slow. Bruce insisted on running each box through a battery of tests and a physical inspection before he'd let it into the Manor proper. Jason was pretty sure he was searching for explosives, which...was kind of fair, considering. But, finally, all of his boxes were up in the suite that had been set aside for him and all that was left was to organize.
Or flop over in the midst of the nesting supplies that he'd haphazardly piled onto the bed to be dealt with later, a groan muffled into a blanket. "Can I just? Sleep? For ten years?"
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The fight to get Jason back in the house had Damian firmly on Jason's side, and when it was confirmed for him that the scar on Jason's chin came from Bruce, he'd instantly had a knife in his hand and was moving to give Bruce a matching one, when he was talked grudgingly down from it.
He still hissed at Bruce that he deserved one.
Finally though, the laborious process of moving Jason in to the manor with all of the required security hoops was done, and Damian crawled up onto the bed with Jason, curling up at his side. "You would be bored," he said. For sleeping for days on end, but he meant it for the conditions Jason was being forced to live by, too. Damian felt a little guilty making his papa obey that, but he wasn't ready to have him far away, either.
"He would be," a voice said from the doorway. Dick stood there, in civvies, watching the pair of them with wide eyes. "Jay? You're really back then. And Dami is-"
"He's my baby. My mother lied and told him I was dead," Damian said
Dick's smile widened. "Welcome back, Little Wing. As long as you're not gonna kill any of us anytime soon," Dick said, pleased to see Jason but a little wary of him still.
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He hadn't seen Dick since before his death. Not out of uniform, at least. It made the long dormant butterflies in his gut flutter, but it also made the little hairs at the nape of his neck stand on edge. It also made him nudge his pup a little behind him as he sat up, putting his bulk between his brother and his son.
Was Dick a threat to Damian? No, not even a little. But he was still more than a little mad and the only reason he didn't get up and close the door on the alpha was because Damian liked the acrobat. He didn't have to be happy about it, though.
"Relax, Dickface. I've been properly muzzled and declawed, so the world is safe once more."
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"I'm betting you've still got some claws, Little Wing," Dick said. But he drifted in closer, looking between the two. Jason had wanted to kill half of them not long ago, and now he was cuddled up with Damian - who would almost never take that kind of affection from Dick.
Dick was glad they had each other again, but it was confusing as hell to see.
And he was a little shocked by how attractive Jason looked, bulk curled up with the little boy.
"Am I going to get those claws anyway if I try to hug?" Dick asked.
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It wasn't just Bruce who hadn't killed the man who'd killed him.
In the end, he turned to lightly bump his jaw against Damian's shoulder, scenting him to reassure him. "I was 16, habibi. I don't know. But thinking questions like that don't accomplish anything because I did have you and I don't regret a moment of it." He paused, still doing his best to ignore the other man in the room for the moment. Then, slowly, he smirked and ruffled Damian's hair. "Well, no. I probably wouldn't have nursed you for so long, my little shark." He gave the boy another affectionate rub of his chin before he groaned and made himself sit up so he could properly face his brother.
"Not yet, Dick. Just...I'm still so fucking mad and some of that is the Pit but some of it is real. I need some time to untangle the lies I was told from what actually happened." He frowned, scrubbing at his face with his hands before running them through his hair. The white patch immediately flopped right back into his face and he huffed a breath up at them. "Time and space, okay? I'm not going anywhere." Both because he couldn't thanks to Bruce's rules, but also because he wasn't about to let Damian out of his nest for a good long while.
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His green eyes stayed on Dick though, curious about their dynamic, and plainly ready to intervene if his baba is mistreated.
"I can help you, if you want," Dick offered. Which was neither time no space, but Dick was a DO-ER. He was happiest in motions, solving problems, making sure the people around him were safe and happy. It was not the simplest of jobs with his family - nor one he always succeeded at either. Dick had his own anger to deal with.
He took a deep breath. "All right ... time and space. I'll try. But I mean Jay ... how ARE you? After all of that?" His attention turned Damian, who seemed more relaxed than he usually was. "And you, Dami? You okay."
"Of course. I'm with my baba," Damian said, earning another little tic from Dick as he said it.
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The question, however, was another matter entirely and Jason's jaw flexed as he felt that swell of anger creep up along his spine. He shifted, reaching out to ground himself with a hand on his son's back, but even then his eyes flashed a little when he flicked them over to Dick.
"After all of what, Dick? Being a surrogate? Raising my son? Training with the League? Cause if that is what you're asking about, then I'm fine. Peachy fucking keen. Cause that was a cakewalk after waking up in my own fucking coffin. Screaming for you and B until my air almost ran out. Being exploded also sucked, gotta say. Beaten to within an inch of my life isn't on my top ten 'would do again' list. Being sold out to the Joker by my mother wasn't fun. Which one are you asking about, Dickie? Cause, oh I could talk about them all if you want."
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"We had no way of knowing you'd crawled out of your coffin. If we'd have known - if I'd known, Little Wing, I would have been there. I know you don't believe that yet, but I hope like hell you do someday." Dick tried to keep his voice level. He didn't WANT to pick fights. He wanted to ... make some amends, somehow. "You had a harder run than anyone should have to, and I wasn't there for you even in the beginning of it, because I was too caught up in my own shit. But if you want to talk about any of that, I'll listen."
"He can talk about it with me," Damian said. Even if he knew Jason would probably try to soften it for him, at least a little. "You knew Red Hood was Jason Todd, didn't you and Father? Did you know he was my baba, and still keep it from me?"
Dick shook his head, expression going soft but a touch guilty. "Bruce knew about that, I didn't. I only found out about Jason being the Hood a few days ago." He and Bruce had Some Words about it.
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He didn't want to fight. He'd done that, he'd been there. Granted, it had been with Bruce and not Dick, but the result had been a Batarang to his throat and Bruce choosing the Joker over him. Why would the result be any different with Dick? Hell, Dick hadn't even liked him for most of the time that he'd worn the green booty shorts and pixie boots. So no, letting his anger get a hold on him was just going to get him kicked out of the Manor and out of Damian's life. Again.
While his son and his brother verbally sniped it out, Jason focused on his breathing. A League technique that he'd learned that first year after the Pit, when his emotional dysregulation was at it's worst. He'd kept the habit, a clear tell for Damian for when Jason's emotions were riding too high and he needed a break from whatever situation he was in.
Eventually, slowly, his muscles started to loosen and relax and when he opened his eyes again, he was able to look at Dick without wanting to just slam his door in the alpha's face.
"This is gunna take time, Dick. I'm...I don't know how much time, so don't ask. I just- this isn't something that is just going to go away overnight. I've missed you, but I'm still so fucking mad at you and I'm even more mad at B." His hand went to his throat, bare this time since he was in a t-shirt and not his uniform. "Right now, I'm here for my pup. Time and space, okay? And if I walk the fuck away or close the door or whatever...just leave me be for a bit. Okay? Those are my terms. Time, space, and respect."
((So sorry, I thought I'd answered this!))
But Dick had grown up too, and he took a deep breath of his own. "I can give you time. I can try to answer anything you want to know, if it will help you. Just ... don't vanish on us, Jason. Please."
"He will not. He wasn't aware I was alive," Damian said. "He wouldn't leave me."
Dick blinked. "The League told you he was dead?" Dick asked, note of anger on Jason's behalf rumbling in his throat for a moment before he calmed himself down. "I'll listen to the rules you lay down give you the space you need. Just - I'm sorry I didn't know. That you were alive, that you were with the League, about Damian - all of it."
(No worries at all ^_^ I'll backtag forevers. XD)
It sounded honest and for the first time, Jason remembered that Dick hadn't actually seen him since before his death. Talia had shown him pictures that proved that Dick hadn't been at his funeral, but he'd done his own research after his defeat at Bruce's hands. Dick had been offworld when he'd died, on a mission with the Titans.
Had Bruce even told him? The old man had an unhealthy relationship with secrets, after all. Jason wouldn't put it past him to not tell Dick so that the news of his death didn't throw off whatever mission Dick had been working on. It didn't stop him from being pissed that Dick hadn't done anything to Joker....
but also, Dick wasn't a killer. Not like he'd turned out to be.
The little grumble of anger pulled Jason out of his own thoughts, amusement clear even on the hard line of his lips. There was the Dick he'd known, all flash fury and instinctual impulses. Once upon a time that had triggered the biggest crush for the Alpha...but that was then and they'd grown. Right?
"He's a hardass who keeps his secrets to himself. You could have dug harder, don't think for a moment that you're completely off the hook, but I get it." He paused, glancing back at Damian for a moment before he huffed and made himself stand up. He was going to have to get used to everyone's scent in his space anyway, right? Might as well let it be Dick's first. "Now make yourself useful and grab a box. Just...for a little bit."
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He didn't deny Bruce being a hardass. He WANTED to argue that he hadn't even known to LOOK, but Dick refrained. He wanted to keep their fragile peace and worm his way into Jason's good graces and presence as much as possible.
"Boxes I can do," Dick said instead with a bright smile, going to obediently fetch one.
Damian made a little huff at his cozy nest time being disturbed, but he stood up too, waiting for Jason's direction before moving to help too. Which was more than Damian tended to do for any other manual labor not related to training.
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