Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Talia stalks down the filthy alley, fuming. Her father has called her home, and she doesn’t dare to upset him, not when he can reach Damian faster than she can. She’d wanted to tell Bruce about Damian on this trip.

She’d wanted to tell him a year ago, but then Jason had died, and it would have been in incredibly poor taste to offer up her baby as some sort of replacement son. So she’d given Bruce his time to mourn. And she’d come back to find that he’d gotten his own replacement son, and also that he was in an angry, distrustful mood, and wanted to hear nothing she had to say.

Tim Drake seems like a decent boy, and she is optimistic that he’ll make a good brother to their son.

Talia nearly trips over a leg, which turns out to belong to a child bearing a striking resemblance to the late Jason Todd. Far too striking to be a mere coincidence.

“Jason?” she asks gently, crouching on the ground in front of him. She’ll have to burn these pants when she gets home.

The boy doesn’t respond.

“My name is Talia,” she continues. “I’m a friend of Bruce.”

“Bruce?” he repeats. She doubts he heard anything else she said—up close he has the sick, distant look of someone whose mind and body aren’t in sync.

“Bruce,” she confirms softly. The boy is clearly ill, and while she’s almost certain that he is, impossibly, Jason Todd, almost is not good enough. She can’t drop heartbreak on her beloved’s doorstep, and she can’t run the necessary tests when Damian is vulnerable to her father’s wrath. There’s no way around it. He’ll have to come home with her.

“Come along, Jason. I’ll take you to Bruce.”

And she will. As soon as she’s confirmed his identity, healed his mind, and discovered how he can possibly be alive.

-

Talia takes advantage of the long layover in London to drop off Jason and her luggage in the flat. She’ll be back, with Damian, in three days. Apparently, this is the home of the world’s best speech therapist. Her father is concerned about Damian’s speech delay.

He’s only eighteen months, and multilingual children always take longer to speak. She’s explained this to her father multiple times. And it certainly wasn’t her idea to teach him English, French, Mandarin, and Arabic from birth, with Urdu, Russian, Spanish, and German added at his second birthday. It wasn’t her idea to start him with piano lessons and fencing at eighteen months, either. It will be nice to have a full six months in London with her son and without her father, but how on earth is a toddler going to learn to fence?

Being the heir to the Demon’s Head is seeming like a worse idea every day.

It’s a risk, leaving Jason alone in this state, but not as big a risk as bringing him into her father’s reach. Talia makes him take a shower, gives a cursory examination of his physical state, makes sure the kitchen is stocked with plenty of water and ready-made food, and turns off all the utilities to prevent any accidents. She brushes Jason’s too long hair from his eyes, kisses him on the forehead, and sets up all her security systems before rushing to catch her flight.

Her time in the air is spent working through what she’s seen of Jason. The autopsy scar rules out any chance he was never actually dead. An uncountable number of other scars rules out the possibility of a Lazarus Pit, as does his mental state. The condition of his hands and forearms—well. It’s entirely possible the boy broke out of his own coffin and dug through the six feet of dirt separating it from the surface.

Talia adds oxygen deprivation to head trauma and psychological trauma on her list of reasons for his current condition. Then she puts all thoughts of Jason aside to focus on the fact that she’s about to see her baby for the first time in three weeks.

Damian runs to her on his clumsy toddler legs as soon as she reaches home, and she holds him stiffly, conscious of her father’s eyes at her back. Two more hours and they’ll be in the air again, and she’ll be free to give him all the affection a child deserves. Two hours. In the meantime, she needs to convince her father that she’s seen the error of her ways, and will not try to tell Bruce the truth again until the time is right. Not until Damian is grown and trained and deadly, and will break her beloved’s heart and his family in a thousand different ways.

Since becoming a mother, Talia has become an excellent liar as well.

-

Jason is thankfully still alive and relatively well when Talia gets back to the flat.

“Damian, sweetheart,” she says, in a tone of voice her father will never hear, “do you want to meet your big brother?”

Damian nods; he’s a quiet, serious child, and every time she looks at him she is surprised again that such a wonderful thing can possibly be hers.

“Damian, this is Jay, all right? Jason, this is my son Damian. Bruce’s son. Your brother.”

Jason doesn’t react much to this information, but she wasn’t really expecting him to. He certainly won’t hurt Damian, whatever else about him may be a mystery; she sets him on the ground at Jason’s feet and begins setting up the apartment. She’s been ordering things all week, and now there are beds and playpens and tables to set up. Jason is a strong kid, and it would be nice to have his help, but she isn’t going to use him as a pack mule while she’s still figuring out how he even exists.

The lab supplies were harder to order without her father’s notice, and it will be a few more days before they arrive. For now she just has to keep him alive.

When she’s finished arranging the flat and returns to the boys, Jason is on the floor playing quietly with Damian. Damian is chattering enthusiastically in his confusing jumble of English, French, and Arabic, and she smiles fondly at them both. This is good. Puzzling, but definitely good. Damian will have a chance to bond with his brother before being introduced to Bruce, and she’ll be able to present him with two sons the next time they meet.

Dinner is a tricky business for both of them, but they go to bed easily enough, and Talia spends her evening reading any article about Bruce she can find that mentions Jason. He might be here a while; she needs to know as much as she can to reach out to him. So far he’s only really responded to Bruce’s name.

In the morning Damian is supposed to see the piano teacher, then the speech pathologist. Fencing, at least, can wait until Thursday. Talia’s done her research, though none of the decision making fell to her. The fencing instructor belongs to Ra’s. The other two are merely the best in their fields, and she doesn’t need to keep secrets from them.

Well, no secrets beyond the usual.

She takes Jason with her to Damian’s piano lesson, uncomfortable with the idea of leaving him alone again so soon. Her father has spies everywhere, but Talia has her own spies, too, and she knows that London is hers. Everyone but the fencing instructor has been bought or bribed or, in a few unfortunate cases, killed—she hates to do it, but privacy for her son to have a childhood is something worth fighting for.

“This must be Damian,” says the piano teacher when they arrive, looking expectantly at Jason. She’s a large, cheerful woman in bright colors, and Talia is surprised to find she likes her immediately.

“Me,” Damian says, and the woman crouches down.

“You’re Damian?”

He nods solemnly, and she holds out her hand, which he shakes.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Damian. And who have you brought with you today?”

“Mama and Jay.”

“And you’re here to learn the piano?”

Damian nods again, and the woman looks back up at Talia when she tells him, “Honey, I don’t think your fingers are long enough.”

Talia shrugs helplessly. “His grandfather insisted.”

After some dithering about, she unearths a miniature keyboard suitable for a toddler to play, and lets Damian hammer happily away at it, making the most distressing sounds.

“Lessons can wait until next week, don’t you think?”

Talia doesn’t mind at all; she’s overjoyed that this new freedom from her father will allow Damian to make as many obnoxious sounds as he pleases, like a child should.

Jason sits down at the real piano bench, tapping randomly at keys in a much more pleasant pattern than Damian’s.

“Does he play?”

“I don’t know,” Talia says. “His father—this is only a temporary situation. We’ve had less than a week.”

“Well, we can always include him in the lessons, if you’d like. Your father is certainly paying enough for two.”

“I’ll think about it.”

With the speech pathologist, Talia has to explain, again, her father’s insistence; there’s nothing wrong with Damian’s speech development and she knows it, but one does not say no to Ra’s al Ghul.

The doctor lets Damian play with various toys throughout the office, babbling quietly to himself, while she talks to Talia about the languages he’s learning.

“And Jason? Does he speak?”

“Only once since he’s been with me. I’m not sure how much he—there was an accident.”

“Would you like me to look with a scope? See if there’s any damage to the vocal cords?”

Talia is fairly sure there’s not, but it certainly can’t hurt to have a more comprehensive view of the situation. Jason, unfortunately, does not tolerate having a tube stuck down his nose, and she hurries out of the office five minutes later with two deeply unhappy children. She’ll have to come back next week, even though there’s nothing to be done here; her father will check that she’s keeping his appointments.

-

Some sort of stimulation, she thinks as she makes dinner. The flat is full of toys for Damian. What does Jason need to keep him occupied? What do fifteen year old boys do? She hadn’t expected to deal with that question for over a decade.

Books. Music. Games. Should he have a phone? A computer? When Talia was fifteen she mostly played with knives and the assassins at the other ends of them—that’s not the life she wants for any child in her care.

Her supplies will be here in two days, and she can do blood work. But what good is that, really? Jason almost certainly needs scans of some sort. She knows he’s had an autopsy; are all of his insides still where they belong? Are there skull fractures, or is any brain damage from the oxygen deprivation? Talia isn’t sure she dares take Jason to the doctors he might need, even if London is mostly hers.

For now the boys are playing together. Damian sits in Jason’s lap and rambles, handing him a never ending stream of toys, and Jason listens, taking the toys then handing them back. It’s good enough for now.

She’ll have to leave him alone when she takes Damian to fencing, but he’ll be fine. She’s more worried about the blows she’ll have to watch her baby take in silence.

She never understood, until Damian was born, why Bruce disliked her father so much.

-

They fall into a pattern with surprising ease. Every week they spend an hour with Amy, Damian picking out simple tunes on his mini keyboard, Jason sometimes picking out the same tunes on the grand piano, unprompted, if he’s in the mood. After the lesson, Talia takes Amy and the boys to lunch.

Twice each week Talia and Susan talk and have tea while Damian plays with a variety of toys intended to help with speech development, usually dragging Jason along behind him. Jason is a patient kid, perfectly willing to crouch on the ground and accept anything given to him, perfectly willing to be tugged across the room for some new game, largely unconcerned as Damian lapses into Mandarin, then Arabic, then nonsense.

Talia isn’t how much of what she sees is Jason and how much is the accident; she never paid much attention to Bruce’s children before one of them was hers.

Susan has connections in the medical field, and understands about overbearing (and, Talia suspects, abusive) fathers. She helps arrange appointments quietly, so Talia can see all the things that were done to Jason. She looks at CT scans and MRIs and x-rays, and marvels at his survival. Or resurrection, rather.

It’s beyond impossible.

She lets the lab technician show her each of the fracture lines in Jason’s skull, and she hugs Jason and cries and asks, “How are you alive, baby? How are you alive?” even though she knows he won’t answer.

That night they have ice cream for dinner, and she calls the fencing instructor to tell him Damian has a high fever and won’t be in the next day.

Once each week Talia leaves Jason at home and stands on the sidelines, expressionless, as Damian learns from Mr. Robertson. Mostly he learns to spend hours taking hits from the flat of a blade, falling down and scrambling up again, waving a too-large sword in vain. He learns not to cry, and Talia burns with hatred for her father. It takes everything in her not to kill Robertson where he stands, but if she does her father will send a few dozen ninja to escort her home. Damian will be sent far away to complete his training without a mother holding him back, and she has no idea what will become of Jason.

She counts each blow her baby takes; someday she’ll hurt her father just as badly.

Their flat is messy and lived in, full of toys and games and photographs. She takes pictures of the boys together. She finds and prints off a picture of Batman and Robin, a picture of Bruce and Jason, pictures of Bruce and Dick and Tim. She hangs up the only photo she has of Bruce and herself, folded and faded, over a decade old. She wants Damian to know his family when he meets them.

When their six months in London are nearly up, Talia asks Amy to watch the boys for a few days. She tells Robertson, again, that Damian is ill; he’s a vile man who doesn’t care about hurting sick children, but has a convenient hatred of germs. With her sons safe for the next week, Talia flies to Gotham.

It’s a mess. It always is, between her and Bruce.

“Tim’s parents are dead,” he says as soon as he sees her. “I don’t have time to deal with you right now.”

He slams the door in her face.

Talia goes to the room she’s rented, discretely, under a false name. She’d assumed Tim’s parents were dead long ago; she’s sorry to hear he’s just been orphaned, but she doesn’t have time, either. Her father will be calling her home soon, and she cannot bring Jason into his reach.

She considers contacting Richard Grayson; the boy’s never liked her, but he’s not living with his father, and should therefore be far enough removed from this new tragedy that she can get his attention. Then she learns he’s moved to Bludhaven, of all the idiotic places, and when she goes out to call a taxi, she sees a Gotham Gazette with the Joker on the front page.

It’s dated for yesterday. That psychopathic clown is still alive.

Of course Bruce hasn’t handled it. Him and his stupid morals. She’s not bringing her boys to a city with the Joker still in it.

That night Talia breaks into Arkham and shoots the Joker in the head. She catches the next flight back to London, still too furious with Bruce to consider interacting with any of his stupid little birds.

The next day she calls her father to tell him that, while Damian’s speech is developing nicely, she wants to be sure that he’ll stay on track when they add four new languages for his second birthday. May I please keep him in London for another six months? I’m sure he’ll benefit from more time with Mr. Robertson, as well.

Ra’s agrees.

They celebrate Damian’s second birthday with cake and ice cream and a terrible beating from Mr. Robertson. Talia quietly vows to kill the man before she leaves London permanently.

She tapes newspaper clippings of Batman and Robin to the walls. She takes Jason to physical therapy for the few wounds that still haven’t fully healed. She joins a book club with Susan and meets Amy’s husband. She considers a Lazarus Pit for all of five minutes, remembers how insane her father is, and tapes another newspaper article about his time as Robin to Jason’s wall.

Three months later Talia goes to Gotham again. The city is in chaos. She can’t even find Bruce; a girl named Barbara Gordon tells her about the earthquakes, tells her to get out while she can. Talia looks around the ruins of the city, tries to imagine having a toddler here, and thanks Barbara politely.

On her way out of town she runs into a girl about Jason’s age. It takes a moment to recognize her as the project that ran away from David Cain nearly a decade ago. It takes another moment to remember the latest news from the spies that watch her father.

“Cassandra,” she says, “David Cain will arrive in Gotham within the week. Come with me; I can take you somewhere safe.”

Talia buys a second plane ticket. Susan is delighted with the challenge Cassandra poses on the speech therapy front. Amy has a third piano student. Damian drags Jason and Cassandra both around the flat, babbling in Russian and English and Urdu about dogs; dogs are his new favorite thing, and she is running out of places to store his toys.

Cassandra takes to sign language much more quickly than anything verbal. She helps bandage Damian’s injuries from his lessons with Mr. Robertson. She sits quietly with Jason. Talia takes dozens of pictures and hangs them on the walls, turns her home into a living scrapbook.

They have traditions and schedules and routines, and it’s almost the family she’s always wanted. (Only Bruce, only Bruce could possibly make this better.)

-

Talia sits at one end of the couch, reading for book club. Jason sits at the other, with some video playing on the tablet she bought him. Damian is in the other room, shrieking with laughter, shouting, “Cassie! Cassie, no!”

Her response is too soft to make out.

“That’s a pony,” Damian says, and then there’s a silence that means they’ve switched to sign language.

By the time Talia is ready to start lunch, Damian, worn out, is sitting sleepily in Jason’s lap; Cassandra helps her in the kitchen.

Amy and her husband are coming over after dinner. She’ll have to send the kids outside to play this afternoon while she cleans up. Jason knows better than to walk into the street or go anywhere with strangers, and Cassandra will keep an eye on Damian.

She’s not worried about Amy seeing anything Batman related—everything she’s hung up is clearly taken from newspapers, and she’s told people Jason is a fan. She’s not, in fact, worried about anything but Damian’s next meeting with Mr. Robertson. It’s amazing to think that most people can live their whole lives this free.

Talia calls her father; she tells him that while Damian’s speech is coming along well enough, he’s struggling with keeping track of so many alphabets. She’s found some excellent tutors locally; may they have another six months in London?

Fine, Ra’s says, but bring Damian home for a week; I have a job for you. And don’t ask for any more time.

Talia leaves Jason and Cassandra with Amy. She spends the whole flight home coaching Damian on what not to say. They’re a full year out from the strict discipline of the Demon’s Head, and she can only hope he’ll obey.

She leaves Damian with her father while she carries out her work, adding each day apart from all three of her children to her list of blows to deliver back to him.

Damian is clingy and distressed when she returns, covered in the odd scrapes and bruises that she used to be able to pretend didn’t bother her. She stays impassive, because her father is watching, and refuses to carry him, making him jog on little legs to match her pace. He doesn’t cry, because Mr. Robertson taught him not to.

Talia goes to Susan’s house to rant for a few hours, in vague terms, about her father before she collects the older children. It helps.

-

Jason turns seventeen. Talia tells Mr. Robertson Damian has the stomach flu, and they spend a week in the Lake District. Cassandra begins to meet children her age in the building, often dragging Jason along. A woman in book club has a daughter Damian’s age, and Talia schedules a playdate.

And then she goes to the grocery store with all three of her children and runs right into Mr. Robertson.

She considers her options. The first and most appealing is to slit his throat here in the dairy aisle with the knife braided into her hair. But there would be questions, and besides, she’s trying to avoid exposing the children to too much violence. It would be hypocritical to kill a man in the grocery store after that movie she didn’t let Jason and Cassandra watch last night.

She could ask him not to tell her father—that would never work. She could run, use the fake IDs she’s been collecting this year and settle down somewhere her father would never think to look. But there isn’t time. She could call Bruce for help, but she isn’t sure he’d come. Not for her.

Could she convince him that she doesn’t know these kids, that they just happen to be standing near her?

Probably not. Damian is holding Cassandra’s hand.

Her best bet is to lure him away, leave the children here, and kill him in private. There will still be questions, especially from her father, but it will buy them time, maybe even enough to disappear.

Talia looks at his smug smile and makes a choice. People have been underestimating her since she was a little girl. It’s easy enough to ask, with a voice that just barely wavers, if they can speak in private. Easy enough to lead him into the family restroom, kill him quickly, wash her hands, re-braid her hair, and collect the children.

They don’t finish shopping—someone is going to find the body soon.

She has to get the kids to Bruce. That’s the safest; her father will chase her, and probably Damian, but Cass and Jay will be fine if she can get them to Gotham. And if she gives Damian to Bruce, she has to believe he’ll do anything to protect him, a hidden son who is not yet three.

They can’t go directly to Gotham. Too obvious. But it turns out they can’t go anywhere; a dozen ninja are waiting at the baggage claim in LA.

-

Jason dies burning. He comes back drowning.

Chapter Text

Jason dies burning. He comes back drowning.

-

“You’ll stay here,” Ra’s says, “until I’m certain you can be trusted.”

“I understand,” Talia says stiffly.

“Damian will be training in Russia for the next two years. If you are very good, you may be allowed to rejoin him in Japan when he turns five.”

Two years without her baby. And that’s if she’s lucky. Will he even remember her?

“And the others?” she dares to ask.

“The girl will be returned to her father. The boy is already on his way to the Lazarus Pit; he’s useless to me as he is.”

“I see. May I at least say goodbye to my son?”

Ra’s agrees. Talia meets her people in the hallway, her few loyal spies, and together they take out first her escort, then the six men with Damian. He cries, and she struggles to wipe the spattered blood from his cheeks. She hands him, still crying, to one of her women.

“Give him to the girl. Lead them to our south exit, and then prepare a plane for me. We’ll go east. I’ll meet you there in an hour.”

She collects a gun on her way across the base—it’s not her favorite weapon, but it’s fast. She gets to the Lazarus Pit alone, and shoots the six men surrounding Jason in the heads.

“What’s going on?” he demands immediately, and her heart sinks, because she wasn’t in time to spare him the Pit.

“Jason,” she says, “do you know who I am?”

“Talia.”

“Good.” She sits down beside him; she can’t spare the few minutes it will take to make sure he’s all right, but she has to. “You’re confused and afraid. You’re angry and you don’t know why.”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve been in the Lazarus Pit, Jason. I know it’s hard, but I need you to hold yourself together and deal with this. What’s the last thing you remember?”

If she’s lost the last year and a half with him over this…

“I was in the warehouse. Burning. Then I was trapped in a box. Then I was with you?”

“Good job, Jason.”

“And I have a little brother?”

“And a sister.”

“And a sister,” he says. “I want my dad, Talia.”

“I know. I’m going to get you to him. You and Damian and Cassandra, all right? But it’s not going to be easy. There’s a truck waiting. You have to drive into India, and catch a flight from there. People will be looking for you.”

“You’re not coming?”

“I have to keep my father busy so you’ll be safe. We have to talk fast—they’ll be here soon.”

She tells him about Tim Drake, so he won’t be taken by surprise when he gets home. She tells him about the woman who’ll meet them in India to hand over the fake IDs. She reminds him that he’ll have to do the talking for Cassandra, and makes him promise to take good care of Damian. She tells him she loves him.

“Are you sure you can’t come with us?”

“It’s not safe. You have to go now, Jason. The others will be waiting with the truck.”

He hugs her before running away; she waits until he’s out of sight to go in the other direction.

She’s lost all three of her children in a single day. She’ll likely never see them again, and while he seems stable, she can’t be really sure Jason is sane enough not to get them into trouble. The Pit ruins people—Talia’s spent her whole life seeing how.

Chapter Text

Jason lets himself into the manor quietly. It’s Tuesday afternoon; Alfred will be out. He left the other two at a warehouse in the city. Bruce thinks he’s dead—it seems better to break things to him one at a time.

He’s still confused. His recent memories are all happy but hazy, his last clear memories are horrifying, and he constantly feels like he’s on the edge of something really bad. The Lazarus Pit, he assumes. Considering how absolutely psycho Ra’s al Ghul is, Jason thinks he’s doing pretty well.

He follows voices to Bruce’s office—B and some kid, probably Tim, are arguing quietly. Nothing too serious.

“Hey! You picking on my little brother?”

Tim stops halfway through a word, and they both turn around to stare at him. The silence seems to drag on forever; Jason doesn’t know what to say.

“Jay?” Bruce asks finally, voice choked.

“Hi, Dad.”

And then Bruce is hugging him, and everything is okay.

“I’ve been with Talia,” he says when Bruce lets go.

“The Lazarus Pit?”

“She tried to stop it. It’s not what brought me back, anyway. We don’t know what brought me back. The Pit just straightened out my head a little.”

“How long have you been back?”

Jason shakes his head. He missed Bruce, a lot, but he doesn’t think he can handle an interrogation right now. “Later. There’s—Talia has a son. You have a son. He’s waiting for us downtown.”

“You’re sure he’s—”

“Positive.”

“How old?”

“Almost three. His name is Damian.”

“You left a toddler alone in the city?” Tim asks.

“Nah, Cass is with him. You’ll like Cass, Bruce. She’s kind of my sister.”

“Exactly how many children am I acquiring today?” Bruce asks.

“Just the three of us. Timmy, you’re on the motorcycle with me. Bruce, you can follow us in the car.”

Bruce frowns. “I’m not sure that’s—”

“I have a spare helmet.”

“I want to go with Jason.”

“Then it’s settled,” Jason says.

He’s not totally sure how he feels about the kid that Bruce made Robin while he was dead, but he wants things to go well, and anyway, Bruce is probably going to need a few minutes alone to process. He’s got to be in shock—he hasn’t even tried to do a blood test or checked his fingerprints yet.

-

Cassandra digs around in the bag for something to keep Damian occupied. Most of his toys were left behind when they tried to run away, and Talia’s friend who picked up supplies and IDs and met them in India didn’t know his favorites to bring.

“Want Jay,” he says. This is significantly better than wanting Talia, at least. She hands him a stuffed bear instead.

Things have gotten very strange over the last week. She doesn’t like it. First they left all their friends behind without a word. Then they got taken back to Ra’s al Ghul and split up. She didn’t even get to say goodbye to Talia, and the woman who brought Damian to her didn’t think they’d ever see Talia again—Cassandra could see it all over her.

Then Jason came back different. He’s scared and confused and dangerous, and he’s not as comfortable with her and Damian as he was. He’s loud and always on edge. Cassandra knows he’s been in the Lazarus Pit, and it scares her. People who’ve been in the Pit are dangerous and unpredictable. They’re much harder to read.

And now they’re back in Gotham, which is at least slightly safer than the last time she was here, and Damian is homesick and confused, and Jason left.

He said he’d be back soon, with his dad and maybe his brother, but she doesn’t know him anymore, and she isn’t sure about anything.

-

Bruce is pretty sure he’s going into shock.

Jason.

Jason, or someone who looks exactly like Jason probably would now if he hadn’t died years ago.

Either Bruce’s son is impossibly, miraculously alive, or he just sent his other son out alone with a potentially dangerous imposter. He steps on the gas. The motorcycle is still in sight.

And another son, a son with Talia.

Probably he’s hallucinating. Probably he’s had a psychotic break, and Alfred will come home from the grocery store and take him straight to Arkham.

He parks beside Jay’s bike; the boys are already inside.

Jason is inside.

As soon as Bruce steps through the door, a child is deposited in his arms.

“Hello,” he says.

“You’re my daddy. I have pictures.” The boy thrusts a teddy bear into his face, then taps his arm. “Down, please.”

Bruce puts him back on the ground, bemused. He looks exactly like his mother.

“Are you Damian?” Bruce asks.

He nods.

“It’s nice to meet you. I’m Bruce.”

“You’re Daddy,” Damian corrects him. He points at Tim. “Where is the other one?”

“He means Dickie,” Jason calls across the room. “We have pictures all over the apartment.”

“He ran away with his girlfriend,” Tim says.

“He’s taking a sabbatical,” Bruce says.

“Yeah, with his girlfriend.”

“We’ll talk about it later, Jay. Damian, Dick isn’t in town right now. Have you met your brother Tim?”

Bruce gives the teddy bear back, and Damian immediately grabs his hand, discarding the bear on the ground. “Show me Tim’thy,” he says.

Bruce leads him obediently across the room, and Tim turns away from the girl standing beside Jason, crouching down to put himself at eye level with the boy.

“Hi,” he says. “My name is Tim.”

“I know.” He pulls a rubber duck out of his pocket and hands it to Tim.

“He likes animals,” Jay says. “If he gives you one it means he likes you. B, this is Cass. Cassandra, this is Bruce. He’s our dad.”

The girl smiles at him, but doesn’t say anything. She’s a few inches shorter than Jason, probably about the same age as him. And apparently Jason has decided, sometime in the last few years, that Bruce is going to be her dad.

“You know British Sign Language, right, B? Cass can listen but she doesn’t talk great.”

“I know British Sign Language,” Bruce confirms.

In response, Cassandra launches immediately into conversation, not bothering with any pleasantries. “He was in the Pit six days ago. Very different now. We need to help—” She pauses, frowning. “Mom. We need to help Mom. Big trouble. She protects us.”

“Talia?” Bruce checks. Cassandra nods. “We’ll talk about it when we get home.”

-

They go back to the Manor, Tim with Jason on the motorcycle again.

(This is so. Cool. Jason is alive. Jason is alive, and he called Tim his brother, and Tim is riding on his motorcycle. So cool.)

He’d be suspicious, normally, but Bruce isn’t, and that kid clearly belongs to him, and this is Jason. Real, live Jason.

Tim wonders if he’ll want Robin back. That’s okay, though. If he does, Tim can be someone else. He’ll still be Robin’s brother.

Bruce took the others in his car; Tim and Jason beat them back to the manor, getting there just as Alfred is going through the front door with a bag of groceries.

“Hello, Master Timothy. Who’s your frien—Jason?”

Alfred drops the groceries. Jason drops his helmet.

“Alfie. You didn’t really think I’d let an explosion slow me down, did you?”

Then Alfred and Jason are hugging, and they’re both crying a little, which is weird and makes Tim feel like an intruder. He goes to finish unloading the groceries.

-

Bruce looks around the room at his family. Damian has fallen asleep in his lap, and Jason is listing into his side. Cassandra has her feet tucked under Jason’s legs, and Tim is sitting in an armchair a few feet away, sipping blearily at the coffee Alfred’s just brought him.

It’s been a long night. They left patrol to Batgirl and Spoiler. (Batgirl—he’ll have to tell Barbara about Jason soon, before she finds out for herself and gets mad at him.) They’ve had several hours now of storytelling, Jason doing his best to piece together his somewhat fragmented memories, Cassandra taking over from the point when she joined the family. Bruce translates out loud; Tim’s only learned American Sign Language so far, and Jason doesn’t seem to understand BSL either, though who knows what he’s picked up since his completely unexplainable resurrection.

Every single time he’s brushed off Talia in the last three years—Bruce could have had Jason back years ago, before he went through the Lazarus Pit. He could have had Damian when he was still a baby, before he began to become his own small person.

He could have spared him the “training” ordered by Ra’s.

Bruce looks over at Tim again. Too far away, he decides. Cassandra is closer to him than Tim right now, and she’s a stranger.

“Tim, come sit by me.” He shifts slightly, disturbing Jason and Cassandra, to make room. Tim slides into the small space between Bruce and the arm of the couch.

“We need to call Dick,” he says.

“Yeah,” Jason says, sitting up a little. “I want my brother.” He glances at Tim and Damian. “Um. My big brother.”

Bruce hesitates. He knows Dick will want to know Jason’s back—of course he will. But, well. Tim can joke about Dick running away with his girlfriend, but Bruce, Dick, and Alfred had agreed not to tell him what really happened, with Blockbuster and Catalina Flores. Dick needs the time away with Kori. Badly. He seems to be doing better, from what few reports Bruce gets (more of them from Kori than from Dick), but if he isn’t feeling well enough to text Bruce and Tim regularly, he certainly shouldn’t be running back to Gotham yet. Which he will definitely do when he hears about Jason.

“I don’t know, Jay,” he says. Cassandra looks sharply up at him.

“Dick’s been sick lately. I don’t want to upset him.”

“You think I’m upsetting?” Jason asks. He sounds like he’s trying to make a joke about it, but not quite succeeding, and Bruce finds himself caving instantly. Dick deserves to know.

Kori answers when he calls. “Mr. Wayne? Is everything all right? It’s very late.”

“Everything is fine, Kori. I need to talk to Dick.”

“He’s sleeping.”

“He’ll want to be woken for this.”

“B?” Dick asks groggily, a moment later.

“Hi, Dick. I have a surprise for you. Don’t freak out, okay? I already did the bloodwork.”

“Bruce? What are you—”

He hands the phone to Jason.

-

Dick is dreaming. A really weird dream that just happens to be less terrible than any of the other dreams he’s had over the last four months.

Because there’s no way he actually just heard “Hey, Dickie,” in his dead baby brother’s voice.

“Bruce?”

“He gave the phone to me, Dick. It’s Jason.”

“Jaybird?”

“Yeah. Hey.”

“You’re dead.”

“That’s what they tell me.”

Dick looks over at Kori, who nods. The phone’s on speaker—she’s hearing this too. Not a dream.

“Um, Jay? Can I talk to Bruce again?”

“Sure, I guess.”

“It’s really him,” Bruce says as soon as he’s back on the line. Dick hears some shuffling around, like maybe he’s leaving the room so Jason can’t eavesdrop. “I ran all the tests. He showed up at the manor this morning. Says he’s been alive for over two years, but Ra’s dumped him in a Lazarus Pit a week ago. He’s holding up really well, from what I’ve seen so far.”

“He’s been with the League? All this time?”

“With Talia, actually. And there’s more.”

-

As soon as he gets off the phone with Dick, Bruce announces that it’s bedtime.

“Really, B?”

“Your brother is catching the next flight home, Jay, and I want you awake and ready to see him in the morning.”

Tim goes upstairs, waving absently at the rest of them as he walks away. Bruce puts Cassandra in a guest room, and Damian gets shy, for the first time ever as far as Jason knows, and insists on staying with her.

Jason follows Bruce down the hall to his own room, glad to finally have a few minutes alone with his dad.

“I missed you,” he says. “I remember missing you.”

“I missed you too, Jay.”

“We’ll get Talia back, right?”

“Of course.”

“Good. I—” Jason stops abruptly in his doorway. His room looks exactly like when he left. Exactly, right down to the muddy shoes he kicked off under the desk, and the open textbook from his chemistry class.

“Bruce?”

He looks away. “We didn’t—it hurt too much to change things, after you—after.”

Jason surveys the room, skeptical. “Did it hurt too much to change the sheets?”

Bruce laughs. “Alfred did that while we were eating dinner.”

“Good.”

Bruce hovers, awkward, as Jason opens his new toothbrush and rifles through his dresser drawers, curious if any of his pajamas will still fit. He hasn’t grown nearly as much as he hoped he would have by now.

“Will you stay with me?” he asks. “Just until I fall asleep?”

Bruce nods, looking relieved.

-

The first thing Dick sees when he walks in the kitchen door is a little boy sitting on the counter, eating a cookie.

“Richard!” he says with his mouth full. “You’re late.”

“Sorry, um…Damian?” He meets Alfred’s eyes over the kid’s head; Alfred nods.

“Damian,” the kid repeats. “Cookie?”

He picks up another from the plate on the counter beside him, holding it out to Dick.

“Um, not right now. Do you know where Jason is?”

He’s asking Alfred, really, but the kid nods solemnly, pointing in the general direction of pretty much the entire house.

“You wanna show me?”

He nods again, and Dick picks him up off the counter. “Okay. Which way are we going?”

Damian directs Dick to the library, where Jason is sprawled on the floor with a book. He’s wearing Dick’s jeans and a ratty sweatshirt Bruce wanted him to throw out years ago, and he’s here, alive.

“Holy shit,” Dick says quietly, because talking on the phone and actually seeing his dead brother are two totally different things.

“Shit,” Damian agrees solemnly.

Dick looks down, horrified, at the toddler in his arms. Jason sits up and spins around, looking scandalized. A girl Dick’s never seen before comes around the corner, takes Damian from him, and walks away. Damian waves.

“I can’t believe,” Jason says, “that after all those lectures from Bruce about language, you’re the one cussing at a baby.”

“Jay,” Dick says, then stops, frozen by too many things to say.

“Are you going to hug me, or what?”

Dick does. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

“Yeah, it’s been a weird week.” He shrugs. “Are you okay? Bruce said you were sick.”

“I’m fine,” Dick lies easily. “I want to hear about you.”

Jason shifts away from him, eyes fixed on the ground. “I woke up in my coffin.”

“Jay…”

“I don’t remember much after that. Not until I was with Talia, and even then there’s a lot of gaps, and what I do have feels like a dream.”

“Tell me anyway. I know you haven’t talked to Bruce yet.” He risks wrapping an arm around his brother’s shoulders; Jason allows it.

“It was really nice. I remember missing you guys, but not much—there were pictures of you, of all of us, on all the walls. She was—I went to Ethiopia for a mom, you know? And I guess I found one.”

“Talia?”

“She took real good care of me, Dick. Of all of us.”

“Why didn’t she bring you home?”

He shrugs. “As soon as she came for me after the Pit she sent us home. I don’t know about before. You can ask after we rescue her.”

“Rescue her from what?”

“Didn’t Bruce tell you anything last night? She’s running from her dad, trying to keep him distracted and away from us. He won’t come after me and Cass, probably, but he’ll chase Damian down if she doesn’t keep him busy. How come you didn’t bring Kori home?”

Dick lets him change the subject; he’ll get more information out of Bruce later. “She went to meet up with the other Titans. We didn’t want to overwhelm you.”

Jason shifts a little, and Dick lifts his arm, lets him scoot away.

“Bruce isn’t gonna let me help rescue her, is he?”

“You are out of practice, Jay.”

“So are you—Tim says you and Kori have been gone six months. If I can’t go, you can’t go. You think Bruce and Tim can handle Ra’s al Ghul on their own?”

“They’ll probably take Barbara. And she has a new friend helping. Goes by Spoiler. Between the four of them—”

“I want to help.”

“Would Talia want you there?”

There is a short pause. “No,” he admits, sullen.

Dick ruffles his hair before standing up. “I’m gonna go find Bruce, okay? See you later, Jaybird.”

-

“May I hold him?”

Cassandra looks up at Bruce. Damian missed his naptime today, and now he’s falling asleep on her shoulder. She hands him over reluctantly; if he was awake enough he’d probably want to go to his dad.
She hates this. There’s nothing bad about Bruce, and he’s not exactly new to her—home is full of stories and photos, but she thinks if he was as great as Talia says, they would have been with him all along, instead of hanging newspaper clippings on their walls. She misses her family. Bruce is Jay and Damian’s dad, and Talia loves him, but he isn't her family. She wants her family back. She wants her home back.

Cass and Jason are never going to be those weird Asian twins that don’t talk again. They’re never going to tell people that she and Jay are Talia’s half siblings because she’s too young and too dark to be their mom, they’re never going to play the piano with Amy or clean the house before book club or walk down the street to their favorite park or try to teach sign language to the kids across the hall. Their neighbor is never going to make Cass’ favorite cookies when she has a bad day. She and Jason are never going to hide under the blanket waiting for Talia and Damian to come home from fencing, not talking because they don’t need to, because they understand each other. Because now they don’t. They’re never going home, and Jason is a stranger and Talia is gone.

And even if they get her back like Bruce says they will, it will never be the same. She doesn’t know these people and she doesn’t like these people and she doesn’t belong here.

“Cassandra?”

She looks up. Bruce is attempting, awkwardly, to sign around the child in his arms. She thinks he’s asking if she’s all right.

“Yes,” she says, out loud, because if Jason is talking she’d better learn how, too. She walks away looking for—something. She doesn’t know what.

-

Talia stabs a man, pushing his body aside to board the plane. She looks around at her people as they take off—two of them are missing. Likely dead, on the ground below.

This is a good thing, she tells herself firmly. If her father is putting this much effort into chasing her down, he can’t possibly have the same sort of force following her children.

-

Tim wanders aimlessly around the manor. Dick is finally home, and Jason is alive, but they’re both in their rooms. Bruce is with his new son. He can’t even find Alfred.

He finds the girl Jason brought—Cassandra—standing in the foyer, looking lost.

“Hey,” he says, then doesn’t know what to say next. She turns around to look at him, silent. “Um, you understand, right? You just don’t talk?”

She nods.

“Good. I-I just started learning sign language, but it’s the wrong sign language. So I’ll work on that. We should—you’re staying, right?”

She doesn’t answer.

“You should. Jason wants you to. And Damian.” He’s barely spoken to either of them, but he feels pretty confident in this assessment of their feelings. Jason had introduced Cassandra as his sister.

“Okay,” she says. “Staying.”

“Cool. Everyone is busy, but I thought maybe, if you wanted—um, I could help you set up your room like you want? Bruce doesn’t mind if I use his credit card for stuff like that.”

-

Jason finds Tim and Cass together in the room Bruce set her up in last night, a couple doors down from his. He’s trying really, really hard to be cool about Tim.

He died. Bruce got a new Robin. Bruce got a new son. One who looks like him, like he could actually be his son biologically. (Tim looks more like Bruce than Damian does.) One who was born a rich kid, who knows how this shit works. Not a circus freak or a street kid. Not some weird-ass Asian kid whose first language was Spanish because he spent so much time being babysat by the prostitute across the hall while his mom was high. Rich white boy, exactly the kind of kid Bruce Wayne should have.

And Cass is his sister. His. He remembers her—not a lot, but he does. Everyone in the building thought they were twins.

He doesn’t even know how old she is. He isn't quite sure how old he is—he has no idea how long he was alive before Talia found him.

And none of that is Tim’s fault, and he can’t afford to start getting mad about anything, because Pit Madness is a thing, and it’s not a thing he wants.

“Jay!” Cass says, loud and happy, when she sees him in the doorway, and suddenly it’s easy to stop being angry.

“Tim shows me—shows me—” She gestures toward the laptop Tim’s using—it looks like they’re shopping online for decorations. “I want—like at home? Our room.”

Jason sits down at the edge of the bed. It takes him a minute to pull up the memories, with that hazy, dream-like quality they all have. “We shared a bedroom. Bunk beds. You were on top.”

Cass nods, but it’s clear that’s not what she’s looking for.

“Uh. We had a lot of pictures? On the wall? Us, and Batman and Robin. Newspaper clippings. Bruce, Dickie, Tim. One of Kate?”

“Yes,” Cass says. “Yes, that.”

“You want pictures of Bruce on your wall?” Tim asks, sounding skeptical.

She shakes her head. “Family.”

“Okay,” Tim says. “Um, we’ll have to take some new pictures, probably. Once Talia gets here? But I can order some picture frames.”

Cass shakes her head. “Now.” Jason doesn’t know exactly what she means, and it doesn’t look like Tim does either. Sighing, she picks up Tim’s phone, sitting on the bed, and holds it up like a camera, mimes clicking the shutter.

“Oh. You wanna take pictures now?” Jason asks.

She nods. “You. Family.”

Jason is glad he’s not the only one feeling a little possessive about their sibling relationship.

“Hang on,” Tim says. “I’ve got a much better camera in my room.”

-

Dick finds his brothers (both of them, alive and at home) in a guest room with the girl Bruce says is now his sister. They’re crowded around Tim’s laptop, watching sign language videos on Youtube.

“Timmy!” he says, because he hasn’t actually seen Tim since getting home this morning. “I missed you.”

Tim extracts himself from the group, coming over so Dick can hug him.

Dick’s had a great time with Kori these last few months, getting away from everything, but it’s really nice to see his brother.

Both his brothers, he remembers. Jason is alive. Dick goes to hug him again, then introduces himself to the girl.

“This is Cass,” Jason says. “She’s my sister.”

Not our sister, Dick notes, and it’s a horrible reminder that Jason has been alive, living his life, without them for well over a year.

He’d yelled about Talia for a while, earlier, but Bruce was doing that thing where he blamed himself for everything—he said he’s been constantly brushing her off for the last couple years. But Talia could have tried harder. They should have had Jason back as soon as he came back to life. Jason is theirs.

-

Damian wakes up about half an hour after Cassandra leaves, and immediately asks for his mother. He is not pleased when Bruce fails to deliver him to her.

Bruce has very little experience with children under ten, and has no idea what to do with a toddler having a tantrum. He tries to hand him off to Alfred and go find his older children, but Alfred insists that they should be left to themselves—new and regained siblings need time to get to know each other. Alfred also refuses to take Damian from him—if he’s going to be parenting a toddler he can’t walk away anytime he cries.

Damian is eventually soothed by stories of his mother, although it takes nearly every story Bruce has. They really need to get Talia back. Quickly.

Chapter Text

Tim is allowed to come rescue Talia. Barely. Jason and Damian have to stay home with Alfred, and Dick has to promise to stay on the plane. Tim assumed he was still being Nightwing while he was off with Starfire, but apparently not. Bruce says he’s way out of practice. Tim gets to come because Bruce isn't sure Batman, Batwoman, and Batgirl will be enough, and Cass refused to be left behind, but they don’t really know anything about her skillset.

But Tim bets Cass is going to be really awesome, and he’s going to get stuck in the plane with Dick. That’s not too bad—he missed Dick, and they haven’t had any time alone since he got back. But he understands why Jason was so mad about being left behind. Talia’s not even Tim’s sort-of mom, and he wants to be in on the action too.

It’s kind of a bust, though. Tim only gets to hit one evil ninja, which is less evil ninjas than he gets to hit some nights in Gotham. Then they have Talia al Ghul and six ninjas crammed into the Batplane, and Talia is being all stiff and aloof, not like Cass and Jason described her at all. Tim helps Dick and Babs create convincing fake IDs for the ninjas while Bruce flies the plane in circles. Babs has to help a lot on the first one he does, but he gets the second all by himself.

-

Bruce drops off Talia’s six—friends? Servants? Coworkers?—in various discrete locations throughout Asia, under new names that Ra’s won’t think to search for. It’s not until the last one steps off the plane that she goes to hug Cassandra, and then the two of them are talking in a flurry of sign language much too quickly for Bruce to follow. Talia hasn’t said a single word to him since he helped her fight off nearly twenty of her father’s men in southern India this morning. It’s nearly midnight now. Bruce is trying not to be annoyed.

When they’re done talking, Cassandra goes back to her seat and falls asleep immediately. They left Gotham about forty hours ago, and she’s been awake the entire time.

Finally, finally, Talia comes to the front of the plane to talk to him.

“My boys are safe?” she asks.

“They’re at home with Alfred. What the hell, Talia.”

It is at this point in the conversation that Kate quietly exits the co-pilot’s seat.

“I didn’t want to tell you about Damian right after Jason died. It seemed…tasteless. And then I found Jason wandering around Gotham catatonic, and there just wasn’t time. I had to get back to Damian before Father got angry. After that—you’ve been terrible, Bruce. A woman can only travel halfway across the world to have the door slammed in her face so many times.”

“I’m sorry,” Bruce says, because it’s horrifying to think that if he’d been nicer to his ex he could have had his son—his sons—months ago. “You’re the one who killed the Joker. Aren’t you?”

“Someone had to do it,” she says, and Bruce can’t quite bring himself to disagree.

“Father will keep coming after me,” she says quietly, a few minutes later.

“He can keep trying. He won’t win. The kids would—the kids need you.” He’s not quite sure where he stands with Talia, right now, but he knows where the kids stand, and that’s what really matters. Three children in his household need their mom.

-

Talia says goodbye, retreating into formality to protect her emotions, to each of her people as they exit the plane with their new identities. It won’t be safe for them to meet again, now that they’ve openly betrayed the Demon’s Head.

At least she’s able to say goodbye—there was no time for that in London. Her friends there will be safe, as long as she doesn’t return. Father is not vindictive enough to kill random civilians that she’s no longer even in contact with.

Bruce thinks that everything will be fine now, that her father’s respect for him will protect them as long as they stay in Gotham. He hasn’t said so, but he doesn’t need to; she can still read him well enough, even after all this time. Talia doesn’t think her father’s respect for Bruce is stronger than his anger at her, his plans for Damian and Cassandra, his fascination with the inexplicably living Jason. She thinks this is the sort of fight that only ends with one of them dead. And she doesn’t intend for it to be her. But Gotham will buy them time, at least. Time to prepare, to plan, to look for other solutions. They have time.

She looks around the plane. Bruce’s cousin, a woman she knows only by reputation, is piloting now, with Dick Grayson in the copilot seat. Bruce is asleep, one arm wrapped around Tim Drake’s shoulders—the boy is asleep too, as is the young woman beside him. Talia is fairly certain she’s the same young woman she met on the trip to Gotham that gave her Cassandra. Batgirl, then, most likely. Cassandra is asleep as well, leaning into Talia.

It’s so good to have her daughter back. And Damian, waiting for her in Gotham. Talia doesn’t know quite how she feels about Bruce—thinks she still loves him, knows she’s angry, has no idea where things will go. But she’ll have her children back. They’ll share their son, like they should have from the beginning.

Jason, though. She’s not sure how much he even remembers her, how much like the boy she knows he’ll be, after the Pit.

“Talia.”

She wakes up to a man looming over her, and panics for a moment before recognizing him as Bruce—this has been a long, stressful week.

“We’re here,” he says.

Talia steps slowly out of the plane, into Bruce’s cave. Jason is there, holding a sleeping Damian; he hands him to Alfred and rushes over, smiling. “Talia! You’re home.”

“Yes,” she says softly, hugging her son. “I suppose I am.”