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“How many times do I have to ask for you guys not to ambush me right out of work?” Jason asked, wearily, tossing his keys on the counter, before he slid the bolt home on the door.
In front of him, Damian Wayne nee al Ghul sat on his kitchen table, clutching the edge under his eager hands, and swinging his legs. Jason fixed him with a hard stare. “This is the third time this month. Do I need to mail you all a page from Merriam-Webster’s with the word ‘boundaries’ highlighted with a bright pink fluorescent marker?”
“We’ve found him,” Damian said, feverishly.
“We’ve found who?”
“We’ve found him.”
“You’ve found who?” Jason repeated, already tired of this. It wasn’t that he disliked spending time with Damian—usually—but it had been a very long shift, and all he wanted right now was to flop down on the couch with a book of poetry and that leftover lamb stew he knew was tucked away somewhere in the freezer. Damian’s visits over the last year had tended to be intense, and Jason wasn’t up for it just now. That was one of the reasons for “no showing up unannounced after work” had turned into a rule in the first place.
That, and Dick and Cass repeatedly raiding the fridge. The lamb stew, lovingly made with herbs grown on the balcony, was labeled “chicken bones”.
“Aaron! The boy who changed your life, Jason! We’ve found him.”
It took a few seconds for the name to register with Jason, and when it did, it sent an unpleasant frisson through him.
He didn’t remember the kid that way. Not as a name. He barely remembered the sight of his upturned face, as they’d trudged through the mud, into destiny.
There was a fleeting feeling, in his mind—the sense memory of the way his right arm had jerked back with the recoil. Once or twice. Three times? Four? And then the way his left had moved out, in that disciplined gesture that was almost pure reflex; the barely perceptible drag on the blade as it slid through skin, opening arteries. Bright red pop-up fountains that existed for barely a minute, before the source was exhausted, and the local landscape was gross and polluted with the sticky residue of death. He’d carried the stain of it for miles, until the snow melted it away, leaving only memory.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Jason said, mainly by way of stalling.
“I know it’s him,” Damian said, stubbornly. “I can’t go into it—Father forbade me—but we’ve found him.”
Stop saying that, Jason wanted to say. He ran his hand over his face. “Is ‘we’ actually ‘me’?”
Damian huffed.
“If we’re talking about the same person—I’m really not interested, Damian.”
“Why wouldn’t you be?” Damian said, sounding slightly hurt.
“I keep telling you this, okay? It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to him,” Damian said, lowly. “It matters to him that you saved him.”
“It matters that he didn’t get left in it, yeah,” Jason said, sharply. “But doesn’t matter who stopped it, only that it stopped. So leave it alone.”
“Don’t you want to know what happened to him?”
“No,” Jason said, lying.
“He’s enrolled in a nursing program, you know,” Damian said, and when Jason looked out of the corner of his eye, he could see the little smirk on Damian’s face. “I thought you might appreciate that.”
“That’s none of my business,” Jason said, firmly. “Go away, or I’ll call Bruce and tell him to tighten your leash.”
Damian’s face darkened. “I was trying to do you a favor,” he said, through gritted teeth.
“Thank you. But you’re not. Now go away.”
“Tt,” Damian said, and he sounded truly offended, before he slipped out of the kitchen, and back to hell.
Jason briefly fantasized about boarding up the windows.
***
“I told him not to,” Steph said. “I told him that you would say no.”
“Yeah, well, he never listens, does he,” Jason grumbled. He felt uncomfortable, even a little guilty about having all but kicked the kid out, earlier. Damian had been coming to him, lately. Jason knew why that was, and he had been trying to be available. But the space, the distance he’d built for himself—he still needed it.
“He’s...eager,” she said. “He thinks he can fix everything, if he tries hard enough.”
“And to think, he’s only pre-med.”
“Oh,” Steph chuckled. “Didn’t anyone tell you? He told Bruce that he was planning to go for his DVM after he graduates. Bye-bye med school.”
Jason took a moment to process. “Veterinary school?” he said, gleefully.
“Tim said Bruce took it well.”
“What did Cass say?”
“She also said he took it well.”
“And you?” Jason said, curious.
“I personally think it’s a great career choice for Damian.”
Jason snorted.
“Fine,” Steph said. “I asked Bruce how he felt about having two kids who did medical stuff but weren’t doctors like his dad. He started crying. I asked him if he was disappointed in you and Damian, and then he threw me out of the house.”
Jason made a strangled noise.
“Relax,” Steph said, breezily. “I asked him if he was really going to treat a woman in my condition that way, and he came out and we had a good talk and he cried again. And guess who has a fancy birthing suite at GH all paid for in advance, now?”
“We were going to tell him together,” Jason said, exasperated. Typical Bruce; it was way, way too soon to plan that way. “How...was he?”
“Surprised. Thrilled. Expect hugs.”
Actually, if anything, Jason was expecting a surprise visit to follow Damian’s. The real question was who’d get to the apartment first, Bruce, or Steph.
“Maybe take the long way home?” he said, thoughtfully.
“I was pretty sure you’d say that,” Steph said. “I was thinking about camping out at Cass’s tonight, unless you’d rather I was there for this one.”
“I don’t think so,” Jason said. “Not for this. Love you.”
“Love you too, babe,” Steph said. “Bye.”
***
“Congratulations,” Batman said, looming in the living room window that Jason had left unlocked, just to save time. There was always the possibility that someone else would take advantage of that, but they were twenty stories up, and that narrowed the field of possible intruders to people Jason felt he could still comfortably handle, people for whom a locked window was in no way an impediment in the first place, and family members, who fell across a range of the first two options.
Jason blinked out of his doze and lifted his head off the couch arm. “Thanks. Wanna come in?”
“Were you planning on telling anyone?” Bruce asked, as he gathered his cape and stepped fully into the room.
“Not for another month at least,” Jason said, honestly. “It’s early days, and neither of us needs the pressure.” He sat up fully, setting aside the book of sonnets that had been lying on his chest. “You want some tea? Coffee makes her sick right now, even the smell, so that’s out.”
Bruce stood over him, backlit mostly by moonlight—not much lamplight, this far up—ominous and imposing. “Do you have Morrocon Mint?” he asked, hopefully.
“Sure,” Jason said, like he didn’t stock it just for these visits, and went into the kitchen to heat the water, taking his empty plate with him.
Bruce followed him, pushing the cowl back. Jason’s nose wrinkled at the pungent smell. Steph always changed and showered upstairs, so it was easy to forget the stench of all that sweat and spandex and body armor. Funny. He could remember it well enough, but it was so much more off-putting, here in the now. At least Damian had worn street clothes. Even if he had picked the lock.
“Damian,” Bruce said, as if it was an opening, and then said nothing else.
“I heard,” Jason said, blandly. “I guess you’re two for two, huh?”
“For god’s sake, Jason,” Bruce said irritably. “I am not ashamed of you for choosing a career in nursing. I couldn’t possibly be prouder of you than I am.”
“It doesn’t sting at all, though?” Jason couldn’t help but ask. “He was pre-med. Tell me that didn’t get your hopes up.”
“My hopes for Damian are exactly the same as they were before,” Bruce said, rolling his eyes. He slurped his tea.
“He was here earlier, you know.” Jason said.
“I know,” Bruce said. “I suspected, anyway.”
“Did you know…?”
“That he found the boy?” Bruce said. “Yes.”
“And were you planning on telling me?”
“I don’t think so,” Bruce said, holding his tea cup over his mouth.
Good, Jason thought. If there was one thing he could count on, it was Bruce respecting this choice. There were a million reasons why Bruce did it, and not all of them were about protecting Jason, but enough of them were, and Jason felt secure in that.
“I just…” Jason said, turning the rounded teacup in his hand, letting his eye play out over the blue flowers and golden vines and red gates so delicately glazed on the white porcelain. (The set had been a gift from Talia. Probably. It had arrived the day he graduated, with a card blank except for the letter T, in a hand he knew. Jason and Talia hadn’t been in contact for years before that, and never since, but he nevertheless felt that they understood each other.)
“I just don’t see who it would help,” he finally said. “I don’t need it. And I can’t imagine why the kid would ever want to see me again.”
“Mm,” Bruce said, sagely, taking another sip of tea.
“If he remembers me at all...it would be ugly,” Jason said, bleakly. “I think I’d just be another piece of nightmare fuel.” It had been a bad night, he felt. He thought. It was a long time ago, and the memory was blurry. But there had been a lot of blood. He didn’t regret rescuing the boy, but he thought he very much regretted how he’d gone about doing it.
“Maybe,” Bruce said. He shifted, minutely, and Jason suddenly had an inkling.
“You knew,” he said, and put down his teacup, more roughly than he meant to. “You already knew. Before Damian did.”
Bruce was still holding his own cup of tea over his mouth, steam rising from it and obscuring his eyes. And he wasn’t denying it.
“How long,” Jason asked, blankly. “How long have you been—”
“As soon as I knew who to look for, Jay,” Bruce said. “I’ve been keeping an eye on him for years.”
“Of course you have,” Jason muttered. How perfectly like Bruce, to always be keeping more secrets than you thought he was. He wanted to ask; he didn’t want to know. Everything he’d told Damian was true, but this was Bruce, and couldn’t he trust Bruce enough to ask did I save that kid? Did I make everything worse?
He couldn’t ask Damian, because Damian wouldn’t even be able to know what Jason needed or didn’t need to hear. Damian was still crawling his way out from under his own pile of corpses; Damian needed to be kept away from this, always.
Jason clenched his eyes shut, and tried to think about the feel of Stephanie’s fingers, curled around his palm, holding his hand so tightly. Walk away, walk away. He tried not to think about the past that Damian’s visit had stirred up in his mind, the blood-soaked history of regret. He needed to think about now, about last week, when Steph went to cut some rosemary for the stew he was making, and she’d shrieked in delight at him because the plant had finally sprouted a little purple flower. He needed to think about the way she’d leaned into him outside the theater two days ago, when he kissed her because she’d made a killer pun about the Oresteia (”What did Cassandra say when she foresaw the massacre of Agamemnon?” “Probably ‘fuck you, Apollo.’” “‘Oh, the Eumenides!’” Aeschylus wasn’t even her jam; she’d just come along to spend time with him.)
He needed to think about how Steph had passed her boards but that they hadn’t talked about money yet, or about whether to ask Bruce for help, and God, that was going to be an argument, a big one, maybe a whole bunch of arguments, because Jason knew Steph was going to refuse to ask. He knew that the pregnancy conversation Steph had just relayed had been an accidental slip on her part, an unconscious deflection from the thought of dealing with the far more emotionally loaded undertaking of an accomplishment that all Thomas Wayne’s descendants—biological and adopted—had ultimately rejected.
Jason still wasn’t sure whether Steph was more afraid that Bruce wouldn’t be proud of med school because it wouldn’t count in his father’s eyes if it was Stephanie, or because it would count.
It was hard not to think I could get him to agree to pay tuition in two fucking seconds right now and you wouldn’t even need to talk to him about it, babe. It wouldn’t be hard, it wouldn’t hurt.
Not for Jason, anyway, not anymore.
Jason breathed in steam from the tea, breathed out some of the storm of his mind, and kept the secret.
“You wouldn’t...be talking about this at all if it was bad,” Jason finally said, when he felt more settled in his thoughts. “You’d hide it from me. You’d want to protect me from it.” And about this, this, Jason wouldn’t object. If you lose a leg, you need a cane; if you lose a tooth, you need a crown. Or more. It was the mercy of this take on his life, that Jason could let his family help him, now. He wished Steph would let them. He wished Bruce and Stephanie could find that level of trust and comfort between them the way that Jason had, with his father. But there was still a fraught awareness there of a history of mutual failure that lay beneath every serious conversation, even the happy ones.
No wonder Bruce had cried. Jason knew Steph had cried, too. He’d seen the way they fought.
Bruce idly drummed his fingers on the table. “It’s not bad,” he said, looking past Jason, as if their cupboards were so fascinating to the eye.
“You did tell Damian not to” drag me “bring me into it, though, right?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Bruce set down his teacup, and exhaled. “What Damian found was drawn from therapy notes.”
“Jesus Christ, Bruce!” Jason exploded. “That’s fucking private!”
“I know,” Bruce said, steadily. “That’s one of the reasons I had no intention of bringing this to your attention. Damian discovering those was a complete accident. And I knew you wouldn’t approve.”
“Fuck,” Jason hissed. He dropped his teacup, which landed with a scary sounding bounce, and rubbed his hands over his scalp. Damn right I wouldn’t; therapy had been too important to him. He’d always told himself that Bruce had respected his privacy and not gone digging through his own records, but he wasn’t at all sure Bruce would extent that courtesy to other people. His face felt hot, and it was all he could to not to jerk himself away from the table. Damian found it by accident but I bet you didn’t, did you—
He felt a warm hand on on his arm, and he managed to bring his face away from his hands long enough to look up at Bruce, who was standing beside him now, one hand on Jason’s shoulder. “It’s not bad,” Bruce was saying, and Jason knew he’d been saying it over and over again for awhile. Bruce’s face had that look on it, the one it always had when Jason did something that frightened Bruce, when he tried to mask his anxiety to give Jason a steady presence. Sometimes it even worked. “He said...that you’d saved his life. He was asked what he would say to you, if he ever met you, and he said ‘I would say thank you. Thank you for saving me.’”
You’re only telling me this because you’re terrified for me, Jason thought. It might even be true, about the kid being grateful, but Bruce had still only told him that because Jason was scaring the shit out of him right now. Bruce was always scared for him. Even after all this time, after all the work, all the bridge-building, all the therapy, Bruce was scared for him.
He always would be. They’d never really be over that part, and that made Jason feel sick.
Time to go home.
“I don’t think about him,” Jason managed, and he pulled damp fingers away from his face. “I don’t wonder. I don’t think that I have a right to.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Bruce said, softly. “But I won’t push this. Not now.”
Not yet. Well, maybe one of them would just up and die, before yet rolled around. Was it good or bad, Jason wondered, that he hoped Bruce went out first?
Bruce was reaching back for the cowl. “You can tell Stephanie I’ll pay for medical school.”
“Sure,” Jason said, slightly shocked, just a little bit sour and at the same time cynically thinking well, I guess we won’t need to fall back on the pregnancy when she announces her leave of absence from punching. “That’s cute, like you can just say that and you don’t have to have the eight million super fucking weighty conversations with her about it what that means. Whatever.”
“You’re welcome,” Bruce said, having correctly interpreted the remark. Then he jumped out the window.
Jason snorted.
I never am gonna board up that window.