Chapter 1
Jason was missing more memories than he had of his time at the League.
Even then, half the memories he did have were hazy and strange – more emotion than word, and more impression than picture.
A lot of the hazy memories were green or filled with taut silences followed by sharp blades. Others were long mornings and burning thighs and dirt under his feet from the morning katas. There were a lot of knives, but there were even more explosions. More mechanical slides and gun oil than could ever find their place in coherent narratives. His time in the League (and after) was bathed in it. Different kinds of guns – from the guns he held cradled in his left hand to ones that required both hands and a table.
Bangs, pops, pews, and other explosions punctuated most of his waking moments, and some of his sleeping, too.
The heft of a gun in his hand and the sense of knives against his skin. Pistols at the small of his back and thigh holsters. Duffel bags and ammo shipments and-
There was a lot about the League Jason had forgotten.
He did his best to forget the more questionable missions. The knives and guns and bombs he didn’t question. The missions with collateral damage the size of entire cities and good assassins left behind for minor injuries.
The unnecessary cruelty that had been his loyalty tests.
Torture, sometimes. Ugly deaths, more often. Missions that pushed the boundaries of what he was willing to do until they were so dull and flexible that he didn’t know if he had ever even had morals to begin with. Had he ever truly been a hero? Clearly that had been affectation.
So. Jason had a lot of things about the League he’d both forgotten and regretted.
Damian? Wasn’t either of those things. Couldn’t ever be either of those things.
Jason would argue, in fact, that Damian was the best thing to have ever come from either the League or from Bruce, let alone from both at the same time.
Somehow, the kid had grown up bright, clever, precocious, and with a remarkably lack of cruelty.
That wasn’t a good or an easy thing, not in the League, but Jason was proud of him anyway. It was a hard way to live, to have any kind of kindness left, but…
Jason and Talia had both indulged him.
Jason wasn’t stupid. He knew why there had been a soft, vulnerable body placed in his hands while his vision was still full of green fog and his hands still shook with Pit rage.
There was something to the age-old adage about the most dangerous thing being a man with nothing to lose. There was a lot of untruth to it, too, but- Jason had lost everything he cared about already. The Pit wiped away lingering fears, at least at the beginning, with overwhelming rage and homicidal tendencies.
So Talia entrusted him with her only son. Her son who had been born into a pit of vipers and wouldn’t live to adulthood if he wasn’t protected and protected well. Jason had a new job that only he could do, an outlet for his new Pit rage (anyone who looked at Damian askance), and a leash.
After all, Damian was only his on sufferance.
Jason might have gotten him up in the morning (lies, Damian got Jason up in the mornings) and dressed him before they went to eat in the dining hall together. Jason might have put a toddling Damian on his lap so they could both eat from the table and then made sure Damian’s hands were clean before lessons and they were both on time. Jason might have taken what punishments he could—acting out to distract from Damian’s mistakes – and broken the rules to sneak strays into the compound from his missions. He might even have soothed the tears from nightmares that hehimself had caused, from having to kill a few too many people in front of his little charge.
But Damian wasn’t his. Couldn’t ever be his.
In the end, they had been doing missions together, with Jason as backup.
Little Damian.
Jason knew it was beginning to go sideways.
Damian was—shutting down. Who could blame him, after the rabbit incident. Jason had been sent away for six months because of the fight he’d started about delaying that piece of Damian’s training. But no. Damian was too soft, and it didn’t befit an Al Ghul.
And that was the thing—Damian wasn’t his. It would be years before Dames had finished up his training enough to sneak off and meet up with the infamous Red Hood. It would be even longer before he was well enough trained to take his grandfather on, if that was ever something Damian decided he wanted to do.
Now, Jason could always offer to do Talia a mission as a ‘favor’. She would be the one doing him a favor, if she put Damian in the same mission, but-
It meant going deeper into the League and its intrigues, and the missions were directly proportional to the trouble either one of them was in. The last one had been rather memorable because Jason was rather certain they hadn’t both been intended to survive it.
They had, because Jason always had backup plans and because Damian trusted him way more than was at all healthy, but it had been way too close. Even despite their relative success, Jason had been down for two weeks with his injuries, and Damian had needed twenty-two stitches.
So. That was no longer an option.
When Jason called to check in with Talia, he occasionally was put on the phone with the kid. It depended entirely on the news (he had to have done exceedingly well), the time (Damian needed to be awake but not in lessons), and whether either Talia or Damian was on a mission (if either of them were, Jason was just out of luck). And of course, all of these phone calls were recorded, supervised, and stilted.
Jason wasn’t too proud to admit they were the highlight of his short second life. There wasn’t much he wouldn’t do to hear from the kid.
So it came as quite the surprise when, during his typical Friday night stakeout of Wayne Manor, two familiar people stepped out of a hired limo.
Jason greened out.
Jason came to and he was chilly. Not hypothermic, and he didn’t think he was too close to dangerous hypothermia, but he certainly wasn’t comfortable.
He was wearing his helmet, which was convenient. He’d only lost a little over two hours, which was an improvement. He’d have to tell Talia when he saw her, which –
Right. Talia. Damian. She-
Brought Damian to Bruce.
She knew that Bruce had killed him and she brought Damian right to him.
He.
Jason heard his molars creaking and went through the Pit exercises he’d been taught to at least relax his physical body. The one he’d been taught alongside Damian, who was right there. He was-
Fuck. Jason was in the Batcave.
Well, let it never be said that Jason made the best choices while under the influence.
At least he didn’t go after Damian and Talia right at the front door. That would have been…embarrassing. Especially when Talia killed him for his insolence. Or near-killed him, anyway. He didn’t know where his usefulness ranked in her little chess game these days.
Refocusing. He was in the Batcave, off to the side with the fewest cameras. Biding his time? Had his plan been to wait until Bruce left on patrol to see the kid? It wasn’t the worst plan he’d ever had, and it was certainly work-able.
If Bruce didn’t patrol, though, how was he going to get to Damian. Bruce was the world’s worst hover parent except when it counted and so it would be hard to get into the family wing and into Damian’s room without alerting him. The paranoid insomniac. How Bruce had managed his terrible sleep schedule this many years without keeling over dead was an absolute mystery.
Wait, fuck. The Replacement would be here, too. Or was- no. The Replacement was in Titan’s Tower being protected from the Big Bad Red Hood. That would at least make this simpler.
Was Talia gone now?
The temptation to check the Batcomputer and the security cameras was so strong that Jason punched a wall to rid himself of it. He had no reason to believe his passwords would still work, and besides, the cameras were unavoidable. That might cause complications, later. Patience. He could be fucking patient.
After another two hours of interminable waiting (thankfully, his HUD display allowed him to review reports from his goons and then text them his responses), Bruce came down into the Cave.
With.
Damian.
The Pit exercises were barely keeping him in one place and quiet, and so there was no way he was able to listen to what Bruce was saying.
But Damian, Damian had grown! He was taller, and gangly in the way kids got right after a growth spurt. He was thin, maybe because of the aforementioned growth spurt, but—
Jason choked down a whimper. That was his boy. His boy was right. There.
“Am I to help you with your work?” Damian was standing the way he always did when he was about to receive a beating from one of his instructors, and Jason couldn’t stand to watch this. He just-
He was breathing. Breathing so that Bruce didn’t know he was there. Damian could manage for a little while longer. Damian was also breathing. Damian was safe, Damian was safe, Damian was-
“No. I have a Robin. You are my son. You will be enrolled in school as soon as possible, and-“
Damian’s fists clenched. It was the worst of his tells, and they’d been trying to break him of it since he was a toddler. He was deeply hurt and offended and on the edge of tears. Despite everything, the kid was sensitive. “I will help.”
Jason huffed out a soundless laugh. Of course the kid was going to help. There was no stopping him from helping, not once he got his mind set on something. It was easiest just to find something you wanted him to help with.
Damian had been a Pit Handler by the time he was four, which was…not something Jason ever wanted to remember. Thankfully, the kid was out. No more Pit rages to handle.
“You will not.”
Fuck Bruce. Fuck Bruce and his-
Damian looked soul-crushed, at least to Jason. Bruce wasn’t bothering to look, he was already leading Damian to another part of the cave. The conversation had finished.
Jason took the chance and flashed his League laser at Damian’s feet.
They were used on missions, and it allowed them to catch each other’s attention with a quick, soundless, and small visual signal. Damian’s eyes flashed to the corner where Jason was hiding and something strange happened to his face. Poor kid. It had been a long day, and Jason didn’t blame him for being overly emotional and letting his mask crack a bit.
Damian followed Bruce on the rest of the tour without a single offered word.