Chapter Text
The fourth lesson goes like this: you were a sheep, once, and now you are a wolf. You are alone and starving and the snow is turning your feet blue but you are numb to it for you do not feel. Why would you, when you have no place in this world, and your body is merely a tool. It does not belong to you. It never was yours to begin with.
Since your birth, Ma nourished your frail bird-bones, now Ma asks for something in return: your loyalty, your obedience, your compliance.
Your life.
And who are you to deny her?
Jason wakes and can’t help but smile. Oh, this reminds him of the old days. Tied to a chair, the sound of laughter, the feeling of his blood running down his skin. Nothing outwardly hurts, just a few abrasions and the slight pounding in his head. Not broken, then. Not even really bruised. Jason is slightly annoyed, actually, he was expecting more. Ignoring the injuries on the outside, he focuses in. His mental clock, and the fact he can’t see any true sunlight when he peaks his eyes open, indicates he’s only been unconscious for a few hours.
Just enough time for Batman to be out and about.
Oh, joy.
Jason knows he can fake being unconscious. Could probably spend the time waiting until the guys who grabbed him grow bored and try to forcibly wake him. After all, he was trained to be able to gather intelligence, to sit and wait, for hours, days at a time. Be patient. Be nothing until needed. A skill Jason learnt the hard way considering he’s never really been a patient man.
And currently, he’s bored.
Lifting his head, he surveys the area he’s being kept in. Only one other person is here - Joker, if the purple suit is an indicator - and they’re in a warehouse. Very classic. Creaking catwalk and low hanging bulb of light. By his feet, surrounding him in a circle is a plethora of different weaponry. Some seem new. Others are clearly old and used, rusted with flaked blood stuck to the metal and wood.
Real inventive. Jason wonders what school of torture Joker learnt at.
He wonders how close it’ll reach to the Room’s imagination.
Vaguely remembers the freezing concrete of the cells, sapping the little warmth from his bones. The gnawing of hunger, the rawness of his throat from thirst. Broken foot. Burns lining his arms. No fingernails left attached. Skin peeling at his ankle. The loud ringing of an alarm every time he nearly dozed off.
Distant screams of his fellow recruits--
Jason swallows, blinks back to the present, and watches the clown guy dance around a bit with a crowbar, muttering to himself. Jason has been around his fair share of insane people, and even more torturers who are actually quite sane. He wonders what issues the guy has and rolls his eyes. Time to find out.
“Yo!” He shouts and Joker snaps his head around, looking like he’s giving himself whiplash, and grins molar-wide at him. Glasgow smiles really are fascinating.
“Little bird!” Joker coos, skipping towards him. “You’re awake! You scared me, ya see, I thought he knocked your brains out!”
“Wouldn’t want that, would we?” Jason replies, evenly, and Joker giggles, bringing the crowbar up to rest on his cheek, pulling his eye down.
“You’re funny, Robin,” Joker breathes, leaning in close.
Jason doesn’t flinch. He keeps his eyes locked with those dilated pupils, keeps his breathing even. Torture, after all, is all about what the mind can handle. The body will break quicker. Will always crumble first. Pain is something that really cannot be taught. But it can be ignored. Can be used. Can be useful in some cases.
The body will suffer but the mind—
The mind must remain unbreakable.
Just like marble.
“Thanks, Jay,” Jason whispers back, softly, letting his own bloody smile spill across his face. Equal parts eager and weak.
Something akin to confusion filters through the man’s eyes and he visibly pauses. Tilts his head. Lifts the crowbar and taps Jason’s cheek with it. He doesn’t even blink. In fact, the cold metal against his skin feels quite pleasant.
“You’re different, Robin,” Joker murmurs. Frowns. Eyes narrowing.
“You did kill me, remember?” Jason replies, pouting at him, and Joker’s frown tightens.
“Do you?” He shifts back. Stares at him. Takes the crowbar and taps his own cheek. “You’re not my Jason.”
Jason frowns back at him. Bats his eyelashes. He’s already got the handcuffs off his hands and the ropes are easy enough. Might as well play with the guy before he stages his escape. He’s not feeling bored anymore. Instead, his blood has started to thrum, his body preparing for a fight that he knows he’s going to enjoy.
First interesting thing that’s happened in a while.
“I could be,” he says, all glib and sly.
Joker shifts his weight between his heels, like he’s about to bounce up and down. “Who are you?” He prods him with the crowbar again. Not even that hard, just cold pressure. “Not a Scarecrow hallucination.” He tilts his head, prods himself, much harder. “Nope! Not back in Arkham! Clone? Are you a clone?”
Jason shakes his head. “Not a clone, man. Are you a clone?”
Joker stares at his polished shoes, looking suddenly unsure. “Am I?”
God, Jason loves these people. They’re fucking insane. It’s fascinating. Makes him want to completely split off from Batman and investigate the whole criminal world, see what he can find. He bets it would be fun. Maybe he can join an organisation, or run one if he truly feels bored.
Another presence hits his peripherals. Silent. Still. He tilts his head, focuses on that instead of Joker and—
Huh. He didn’t think he’d show up. He wonders how he should play this, if he should lean into the pretend Jason or not. Wonders what the reaction will be and that thought has his lips twitching.
“Got a question for you,” Jason says, because he really has nothing to lose and really wants to see that reaction. “Is Gotham always fucking like this for you guys?”
Offhandedly Joker nods, scratches his nose with the crowbar, still staring at his shoes. “Pretty much, yeah.”
“Fuck,” Jason breathes, leans back in his seat. Picks at the knot on the rope. Tugs. “Sounds fun.”
“It is—” Joker looks back at him, frown deepening. And after a careful scan of his face, his frown lightens. He grins. “No matter that you’re not my Robin! Still love killing a birdie!”
Jason sighs. “Ah, man. You sure? We could talk something out. I’m bored; you’re bored: I’m thinking a partnership—”
“Nuh-uh, Robin. Maybe if you were mine…”
He starts humming a tune under his breath and then raises the crowbar. Jason waits to see and nope: the presence doesn’t twitch.
Jason sighs, then moves.
He tackles the man - scrawny, lean, practically malnourished - and snatches the crowbar from his hands. Weighs it carefully in his hands, testing its strength. He straddles the man, pressing the bar against his throat.
“Listen,” he breathes, pressing down. Not enough to hurt but enough to cause issues. “Another question for you: how’d you kill him?”
Joker blinks at him, clearly surprised. “Huh?”
“You heard me. How’d you kill him, your birdie?”
“I—”
“Oh wait,” Jason murmurs, leaning down until their faces are close he can practically smell the fear. “I don’t care.”
Rising from his straddle, he takes the crowbar, and smashes it over Joker’s face. One mean swing, blood splashing and pooling. He pauses, still no movement from above and so he gives in to the Wolf. He hits and hits and hits. Blood spraying everywhere.
He doesn’t stop until he can see bone and brain matter.
Then he drops the crowbar and stands up straight, wiping the blood from his face. He hopes the clown doesn’t have diseased blood but then again, he can heal from pretty much anything. He hasn’t been sick in years.
Something quietens in his mind.
Jason looks up at the catwalk. “You gonna come down?” He asks and then—
A shadow moves out from the darkness and Damian drops down. He’s in what must be his superhero uniform. He doesn’t look at the bloodied corpse or the crowbar. His focus is entirely on Jason. Single-minded. Worried. Cautious. Prey recognising predator.
“Did you really work in the Pentagon?” Damian asks, quietly, taking him off guard. Of all the questions, and the all the answers he wants to know. Then again, Damian has always been smart, with a mind working ten steps ahead. He knows that Jason is lying, especially after his display with Joker, he just doesn’t know how far the lie goes.
Jason looks at the boy, who was once his Handler, and in this life, once his little brother, and answers honestly, “Yes.”
“Was that your actual job?” He asks a better question. Jason smiles. Good. He’s still got Talia’s smarts in there somewhere.
“No,” he says, honestly.
Damian watches him for a moment. “You do not wish to stay here.”
No question but Jason still shakes his head. No, he really doesn’t. He wants to go back to Cass, to where everything makes sense. Even if his world is a lot darker than this one, at least it’s his.
“Father doesn’t care about your past,” Damian says, turning his head, not meeting Jason’s gaze, even as his body is poised for an attack. “If you were planning on staying.”
“Tim and you don’t want me there,” he says, slowly, trying to grasp the angle. “And you’ve seen me… and now you’re offering to, what? Keep me? Like a stray?”
Damian’s lips twitch. “Like a stray, yes.”
Jason blinks. Thrown. “What? Why?”
Damian sighs, as if he’s asking a stupid question. How familiar, this routine. “Because,” he says, harshly, “Father likesyou. You make him happy.”
Ah. Human sentiment.
Sometimes he forgets this child is not his Handler. Not the cold and calculated King of an army of shadows. A man that has killed simply to prove he can, to intimidate and posture. A man that refused to befriend people, or even show emotion, because he was raised to never show any weakness.
For his dad’s happiness, Damian is willing to put up with him.
“Tim onboard, too?” Jason asks, intrigued, wondering how far this goes.
Damian huffs. “He will be. If you can convince Father to step down without killing himself, he will be indebted you.”
Not his Handler, but still Damian al Ghul, offering a deal in order to further his own plot. Even if that means his pain. So long as his dad is happy. It’s oddly intriguing to witness this.
“Sounds nice,” he agrees, “but I’m— Being cooped up in that Manor is not good for someone like me.” Damian raises his eyebrows and Jason continues with a smile, “I get bored. I’m sure you understand.”
Damian twitches at that. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Jason scoffs. “I’m not judging, kid,” he says, hands up in mock-surrender. “If anyone in that family of yours is going to understand, it’ll be me.”
Damian’s white lens narrow. He shifts, as if preparing to fight or flee, then firmly plants his feet. Good. A true al Ghul, not running from anything. Standing his ground or willing to die to do it.
“I am not… whatever you are.” He settles on. Jason nods, easy. Calm.
“You’re not,” he agrees. “But you were raised like I was. That shit? Sticks. And as someone who looks a lot older than they are: it sticks for a long, long time.”
Damian watches him but something has changed.
Jason wonders if Damian is hearing what most people hear in their head when he approaches: threat, threat, threat; danger, danger, danger; run, run, run.
Back when he was a recruit, nothing more than a bone-thin child, there was a test. His class was released into the surrounding woods and told to make it to the barbed wire fence. A thirty-second headstart as the older recruits hunted them. Foxes and hounds. Deer and wolves.
And while they ran, through thick snow, and dark skies, one trainer would sing, “Run, rabbit, run, rabbit, run, run, run.”
Anyone caught disappeared for the day.
When they returned, they weren’t the same. Jason learnt something very important during that test: do not, ever, be a rabbit. Always be a hunter. Always be a predator. Always be a wolf. Always fight and claw and bite and kill. Never give an inch. After all, there we in a world of kill or be killed, and Jason refused to die.
He can see the sudden realisation in Damian’s eyes. He believed Jason a problem, yes, an adversary. He did not see him as a true threat, a true danger. Not until now, when the mask is fully down.
There’s no point being a big fish in the pond, when you can be the shark.
“Who trained you?” Damian asks, voice stilted. Wary.
“No one that exists here,” Jason replies, easily enough, because while he’s sure there are familiar faces, they aren’t his Handlers, his trainers. Reminding himself that the boy before him isn’t that either, is harder than he imagined. “You and the others are safe from others like me.”
Damian eyes him up. No fear, because he is an al Ghul and things like fear are beneath him. Fear is predictable. Fear makes people reckless, makes them hesitate, retreat, choose survival over victory. Damian has been trained better than that. He is assessing him.
“What you said about us,” he settles on, “how truthful was it?”
“You would’ve known if I was lying,” Jason replies and something seems to click in Damian’s head at that statement.
He shifts his stance, straightens, more Prince than vigilante. “Who was I to you?”
Jason meets his gaze evenly. Finds he can’t resist an order from him, even if this is but a boy compared to the King he knew. “Lots of things,” Jason says. When Damian’s fingers flex in annoyance, he adds with a smile, “Damian al Ghul was my Handler. Talia needed someone to ensure her coup wasn’t for nothing.”
Damian swallows, white lens widening. “Handler,” he murmurs and his stance once again changes: he relaxes. Not completely. Not when much is unknown, but enough. Enough for a tell Jason has been pointing out for decades in his Damian.
This boy has realised just exactly what that means.
Because brothers is one thing. Love and blood are a strong form of loyalty.
But Handler? That’s ownership. That’s employing someone competent and saying: live for me, kill for me, die for me. It’s knowing that tool, that weapon, would do that for you and more. A person can betray you, can break you, can lie and cheat and steal, but a weapon? That’s either reliable or not worth the time.
Talia gave her son up, her very heart, the child she was executing her father for, to Jason. Showed a vulnerability most al Ghul’s hiss at. But she knew exactly what she was doing. A bodyguard has thoughts and feelings and opinions. A Spider, a Wolf, simply does their job. All they know is the mission.
Death before failure.
This Damian might not know the full truth, but he knows exactly what lengths his mother would go for his safety.
This Damian knows, given other Damian’s history, Jason is probably the safest person he could be around.
Jason lets him think over what he wants to do while he looks over at Joker’s body. The warehouse smells like rust and gasoline and opened flesh and Jason merely sighs. Jabs Joker in the side with the crowbar. No twitch but still.
“Think he’ll stay down?” he asks.
Damian doesn’t even look. “No.”
Jason hums. Makes sense really; Gotham is insane. “Yeah.”
Jason leans down, wipes his hands on Joker’s jacket, uses it to wipe the crowbar, before stepping over the corpse. Damian’s eyes track the movement automatically.
A snake watching a spider. Predator watching predator. Wondering if they will become a threat or not.
Jason wonders if Damian even realises he does it.
Probably not.
“If you’re not staying, you should leave before Batman arrives,” Damian says.
Jason snorts. “You’re not going to try and defend me?”
Damian raises his eyebrows and yeah, fair. That fight would not be pretty, not for either of them. Especially because Jason would have to break out of five different insurance policies of mental conditioning to harm the boy before him. And then would have to mentally scar him as he kills his dad in front of him.
“You eliminated the Joke,” Damian comments. “You get a pass.”
Jason barks out a laugh. “Wow. Talia’s kid, through and through.”
The corner of Damian’s mouth twitches. For a second, just a second, Jason sees the child underneath. Then it’s gone as quickly as it arrived. Buried. Locked away from prying eyes. A familiar tactic. One Jason used years ago and taught his Damian.
“Come,” Damian says, already turning away.
Jason raises an eyebrow. “What?”
“The Batmobile is approximately four minutes away.”
“You’re timing your father?”
“Obviously.”
Jason laughs again at Damian’s mildly offended look. A familiar kid but brighter, with less strain around his eyes, less anger in his shoulders. The Damian standing in front of him has something the other never possessed. He had a childhood, filled with insane vigilantes and a family with so many issues it was a wonder they were still functioning. But he had them. He had a safety net.
The Room had taught Jason that attachment was a weakness.
The al Ghuls had taught Damian that loyalty was strength.
Same lesson in a different language with a different outcome.
They head toward a broken side entrance. Jason keeps pace beside him. Not behind him, like the Spider he is, but beside.
“So… You wanna tell Bats what happened?”
Damian’s expression becomes completely blank. “Father will be upset.”
“Understatement of the century. He’ll lose his mind.”
Damian sighs. The sound is long-suffering and deeply familiar. Jason smiles at it before a twinge in his peripherals. He shifts, tilting his head, looking up at the top of the other warehouses.
“Ah,” he murmurs. “Judgement day is here.”
Damian blinks at him but taking in the way Jason has frozen, he follows suit, hand reaching for his sword. Jason is proud of the boy he is, even if he misses the man he would’ve become. If he ever gets out of here, he wonders if Cass would let him spend a few years back in the al Ghul compound.
Jason clocks it the second Batman stops trying to be stealthy. Damian follows his gaze and swallows. Jason grins. For the first time since arriving in this universe, Jason almost looks forward to seeing him.
This is going to be fun.
Most people, when meeting them as they are, assume it’s Cass’s job to temper Jason. He’s always been the Wolf: all teeth and claws and viciousness. Blood and guts and gore that he’s never shied away from. She’s seen as the ballerina, the one that gentles him, the one that leashes him. Soft and sweet and cute.
Many don’t realise their bond works both ways.
See, Jason may be the more emotional one, but that is both his weakness and strength. Cass had those trained out of her and was paired with Jason too late for that to be fixed. She gets the job done. No matter the cost.
“P-Please!” Cass blinks at the man before them as her blade cuts into the throat she has in her grip. Jason may be a Wolf but she’s Spider through and through. She will kill without a care in the world.
“Tell me where it is,” she says, calmly, coldly. “Or I slit his throat.”
“This is bold, even for you,” Artem mutters, eyes narrowed. “Usually, it’s the dog barking at me with you holding his leash.”
Cass smiles, something ugly, something vicious, something demanding blood. “Did you know, it was him that wants to keep you alive? He tells me you’re useful. Are you, Artem? Are you useful?”
The man stares at her.
She stares back.
The both know what she’s capable of, the bloodshed she can create. The fourteen men surrounded her are but child’s play. She has killed more for less.
“You would do this, burn yourself like this, for a mutt like him?”
Cass remembers the Room in startlingly brightness. Each memory is vivid and pulsing with energy. The elegant staircases, the tightness of the bun at the back of her skull, the gun in her too-tiny hands, the scent of metal, of blood, on the floor.
She remembers refusing orders to kill after the initial ceremony. Remembers enduring the beatings and the side-eyes and the starvation. Remembers grinning through bloodied lips as she freed another traitor instead of killing them.
Her father was the only reason she wasn’t taken out to the courtyard and allowed to be target practice. Each punishment, she would laugh at him, because death to her was kinder than working for them, and doing their bidding.
And then Jason.
Every wolf has a widow, after all.
Cass ignored him, for the most part. He would take the kills and she would find ways to escape. Jason would let her, enduring his own form of punishment when she was inevitably dragged back.
Loyal, to a fault.
She doesn’t know what he saw in her that made him keep trying, that kept him trying to protect her. But years past, and they grew up together, and suddenly they were one of the strongest pairs in the Room. Bonded through blood, sweat and tears. When they were called in, the mission never failed.
And then leadership changed.
And Cass was dragged to the courtyard, after spending time with the Doctor, having her brain picked and her body played with. She had accepted her death. Knew since she started her crusade to never kill, that soon she would be expendable, too much trouble to keep. So, she accepted her fate. Strolled to the gallows with a bloody smile.
Until she saw Jason strung up beside her. Bloodied. Beaten. Clearly tortured. Unconscious.
“What a waste,” the guard escorting her had murmured. “Didn’t even break for a traitor. Such talent.”
Cass doesn’t really recall what happened next.
She remembers the sight of the children with their rifles. Remembers the way her knuckles cracked and blood sprayed across her. Remembers screaming her throat hoarse. Remembers the fire spreading across the buildings, the smoke darkening the sky. Remembers Jason’s shoulder as he carried her away.
The Red Death, they called her. Called them. Because Cass refused to leave his side after that and he’s always been too loyal.
“Yes,” she says, as calm as her namesake, as deadly and as vicious as they made her to be. She would do more than this for Jason. And yet he asks nothing of her. Even now, she doesn’t doubt he’s out there, accepting his own fate, trying to find his own way out.
Not because he doesn’t trust her, but because he only trusts himself based on his worth, and like this, he will be thinking himself undeserving.
Artem swallows, nods. “Then I can be useful.”
Cass grins. It widens when he winces. “Good.”