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The media annoys him.
To be fair, everything annoys him, but the media more than most. They're just so nosy, and they aren't even right half the time! They're always getting into people's business and then reporting on fake shit that never even happened. Where did integrity go?
Case in point - Damian Wayne. His youngest brother has been the talk of the town ever since he first appeared in the limelight. The moment Bruce made Damian's existence known Gotham went crazy. Jason couldn't go anywhere without them spewing weird and strange theories and asking him if they're true or not.
Is it true that Damian's mother was a random hookup?
No, shut up about that, they're all touchy about that.
Is it true that Damian, being a blood heir, will take over all the family businesses?
No, that's still Dick. Damian doesn't really want them at the moment, either.
Is it true that Bruce favors him?
What the fuck- no.
Is it true that Tim Drake and Damian don't get along because Damian now holds priority over Wayne properties?
Are y'all not listen, he already said-
Did you have anything to do with the latest attempted kidnapping of Damian Wayne?
Well, yes, but that's besides the point fuck you-
Is it true that the falling out between you and Bruce Wayne has widen because of Damian's-
And he's done here.
Annoying. Annoying annoying annoying.
It gets worse too.
The most annoying, most irritating, part of it all?
They don't give credit to where credit is due.
The media loves to prattle on about the little clone following Bruce Wayne around, about how much he acts like Bruce and how well he and Dick get along. They say he's just like them, says that both he and Dick are two sides of the same coin, that coin being Bruce. They say all this bullshit and it's not true because-
Because Damian isn't like Bruce or Dick.
He's like Jason. He's Jason through and through. He's Jason if Jason got dipped in the pit as a baby and grew up with swords permanently in hand.
And Jason's got a list to prove it.
It's fairly simple without the list too. Very obvious if anyone even bothers to look. There's only two people in their family that immediately go to violence when something goes to miss, and it's not hard to guess who.
Basically, Damian is a fucking feral little child goblin who will fucking fuck someone up the moment they get within a mile of someone he cares about with bad intentions. He's like a damn bloodhound when it comes to smelling shit coming their way- his head perks up and he looks in whatever direction the shit's coming from and then Jason finds a dead body that he conveniently hides for the kid because Damian knows Jason is the same and knows he'll keep a secret. Bruce and Dick like to think that his days of killing are mostly behind him (because he's smart enough not to kill in front of them and Jason hides the bodies) but Jason knows better. He's seen better.
For example.
Damian found him dealing with some washed up drug dealer, basically threatening him, because he wasn't a bad guy but he was dealing to kids and Jason wasn't having it. Problem was, the guy was getting mouthy and Damian appears in the middle of his rant.
"You let men yell at you, Hood." Damian slides into view, almost walking out of the shadows. The man pauses in his not sober (drugs, not his own) rant and glares at the kid.
"Isn't it past your bedtime, boy wonder?" The name is said as an insult. "What, Nightwing isn't around to babysit you now?"
Damian's eyes narrow, but he's calmed enough to not shoot people who have only annoyed him. "I hate having to be more mature than someone thirty years my senior."
The man spits near their shoes. "I hate you masks." He growls. "I'm just trying to live, trying to make enough money to get by, but you and the big boss just can't help but step on us!" His eyes are bloodshot, mouth frothing slightly. "You better hope I never meet Batman- the moment I see him-"
He doesn't get to finish the threat, because Jason's gun leaves it's hostler and a bullet carves it's way through the man's head. Damian scowls at the gun in his hand, almost like he's angry at how easy it was. With almost practiced ease he slides the gun back into Jason's hostler, like he never took it in the first place.
Feral. Child.
And that was for Bruce, who he actively went through hating and loving. When it came to his brothers, he was somehow even worse.
Which, honestly strange.
Here's why.
Dick makes sense. Of course it does, it's Dick. Literally any of them would kill to protect him, not counting Bruce or Dick himself. Tim and Jason, on the other hand, is weird because Damian acts like he despises the ground they walk on. Every time he's at odds with Bruce most likely he acts like he's at odds with them too.
Here's the difference.
When he gets genuinely angry with Bruce, he'll burn literally every single gift or present Bruce ever got him- from expensive things like gaming consoles to the little thoughtful things like a blanket made using the same materials they used at the League of Assassins (he fucking loved that blanket too, yet he still torched it after screaming his hatred). And yeah, some may say he's emotional and that's why, but he doesn't regret doing it, not to this day. It's a volatile father son relationship there.
On the other hand, Damian will curse the day he was born (and reborn) and yet he still will walk around with a little wolf plushy Jason got him a long time back when he thinks no one is watching. That thing cost ten dollars at most and yet it survived the burning of everything else in his room. That, and the lava lamp Tim hand made him when he found him staring at one in the mall once.
That's the difference. He gets mad at them, but he never actively hates them the way he does Bruce. Bruce makes it too easy, they've all hated him at one point or another. If Alfred wasn't there this family would've fallen apart long ago.
Another point. Besides the fact that the kid can smell danger directed at them and dispatch it before the danger even thinks about harming them (he must be a metahuman), there's more. He's not just proactive, he's vengeful too.
Exhibit B.
He and Dick got kidnapped, a long while back. Jason's 12, Dick's 15. They're at that stage when Jason thinks Dick hung the stars (he does not still think that, stop-) and Dick thinks Jason can do no wrong except every single second of the day and yet he still loves him for it. It had been a year since they had made up over the whole 'stealing Robin' thing and now Dick actually came back to Gotham every now and then, still in the throes of his own hating Bruce arc.
They both seem to forget (Dick because he's been away for so long and Jason because he's still not used to it) that they are the Wayne brothers, and that means something in Gotham.
They get kidnapped. Very publicly kidnapped. Dick can't do much as a civilian and Jason's barely even a good Robin yet, so it's very easy and Dick is very embarrassed and Jason tries very hard to stay calm at the camera shoved in his face as their kidnappers mock Bruce Wayne and demand ransom.
It's his first kidnapping out of suit. Very nerve-wracking. He cries a bit, which Dick is very nice about and helps hide it from camera.
So the problem here isn't the kidnapping itself. The problem is Bruce takes a long time to respond because he was currently (unknown to the kidnappers, of course) unconscious from a very harsh night of crime fighting. This led the kidnappers into getting angry, and that led to Dick's head getting stomped on the ground and Jason ugly crying from both that and his own little torture session.
All of which was recorded, which added to the feeling of humiliation and hopelessness. He was a mess after that, his first real batch of terribly vivid nightmares. He hasn't cried like that since and never cried like that before.
And give him a break, he was twelve.
Batman saved them, of course. They all went to jail, were still serving out their sentences, when the problem occured.
That problem being Damian figuring out the internet.
Damian, like all kids the moment they have a lick of power, turned into a dumbass and did the thing no one is ever supposed to do.
He looked himself up on the internet. And then he looked up his family.
And of course, him being him and his family being his family, he somehow managed to make his way into the darker part of the internet.
He found the video, there. The video of them getting their asses handed to them while the kidnappers waited for their random money. The dark web had of course saved the video, never took it down. It was absolutely being used for rotten stuff- not just people hating the Waynes but also fucked up people who just liked seeing children in pain. Damian found the video, watched it, and what happened happened.
A week or so later the prison holding all of the kidnappers had a series of mysterious killings, all in one night. Eleven people died, six of them being kidnappers (four being the ones who took them), two being rapists, and three being serial killers. Seven of those four people were just fodder, used to hide the trace of who might of done it for whatever reasons.
Bruce never found out who did it for one reason- Tim. Tim, who informed them what had happened, having found the history of what Damian found and saw. He took his time clearing the computer and the internet of that video, hid the fact that Damian even knew about it from Bruce. It became one of the many kept secrets from their father because they all had a soft spot for the gremlin that is their youngest brother.
Mind you, Jason was twelve when this happened- he died and came back to life in between that time and now. He's twenty now. He had put that behind him long ago.
Damian hadn't. He learned about them seven years later and held a grudge for something he didn't even know about at the time.
Damian gets his revenge, and he gets it like Jason does.
So besides the fact that he takes threats about as well as Jason does and gets revenge like he does, what else is there?
A lot.
They share the same brain cell when it comes to their overprotectiveness. Tim is the one who takes after Bruce when it comes to their version of it- they give out armor and gadgets and anything that can protect their love ones like Oprah gives out cars. Any threat against their family will have that threat waking up in a jail cell with the worse headache they've ever had.
The difference between them is the waking up part. See, Damian and Jason ensure that they don't.
(Dick's version of it is giving them a human as armor and that human is himself. Jason cannot deal with him-)
Exhibit C.
One of the many times Bruce was proclaimed dead, Nightwing and Red Robin ran the city, keeping it safe while training (taming-) Damian. Jason helped out as Red Hood when he could, but he mostly kept to Crime Alley, because mob bosses have busy lives and there was a really bad trafficking case he had to figure out at the time. Either way, it was mostly just Nightwing and Red Robin and Oracle helping when she could.
That's when a dumbass new villain decided to get on camera and vow to kill both Nightwing and Red Robin.
Note: you never see the veteran villains do that. Yeah, they'll threaten Batman and by association the Robins, but it's more the Wicked Witch's "and your little dog too!" kinda thing comparatively. They'd definitely kill the Robins if able, but they never vow to straight up murder them in broad daylight. They have more class than that. And common sense.
Because, you see, they learned better.
They learned better when Jason was fifteen, freshly out of the ground, and villains who started threatening the Robins (at that point just Dick and Tim) started being found dead in alleys with their head an entire street away. The more it happened, the more the villains started wising up.
(Joker did it once, because he's a fucking crazy psychopath. The only reason he's not dead is because Bruce really doesn't love him sometimes. That has to be the reason, because he obviously doesn't want him to have a sense of closure or peace or anything. Calm, Jason, breathe-)
And Damian, best little brother he is, of course took after the best.
So this new dumbass proclaimed on video that he would rid the city of the masks running around, the 'spawn of batman' as they were all called, Jason only partially excluded. The video was broadcasted on the main screen in the downtown area, and the crazy motherfucker of course went into detail about it. Talked about stringing out their intestines and making macaroni art with it -disgusting, sick in the head gah he needs to calm down- before crucifixing them to signal a new age without superheroes. Jason, tired and suffering from a bullet wound, didn't hear about it until later the next day.
The way he learned? There was another news broadcast about it, proclaiming him dead in an alley right underneath the main screen he had commandeered. They found him crucified against the brick wall, entrails out and wrapped around the knifes holding him to the wall.
Jason got jumped that night in his apartment by two angry brothers in civilian clothes obviously thinking he had done it, because it's something he would have absolutely done. They only believed that he didn't when they saw the bullet wound.
Damian was grounded for the foreseeable future, only lifting once Bruce came back from the dead because they again didn't want to snitch.
They spoil the devil child too much.
And there's more.
Usually it's three times the charm, but Damian's obvious affinity towards him keeps creating new pieces of evidence. So, he's overprotective, vengeful, and doesn't respond well to threats. Now let's talk about the multiple times he almost got himself killed trying to kill someone out of his league, something Jason has never tried before.
(Joker doesn't count, he would've killed him if Batman wasn't there.)
For Damian, there's not much that he can't handle, which means he doesn't understand backing down. It's a mix of the overprotectiveness and vengefulness, but Jason can name five villains off the top of his head that Damian went after craving revenge when he wasn't ready for it. And to prove he can - Joker, Bane, Deathstroke, Trigon, and his own grandfather when he insulted Dick once. Not because he has almost killed them all more than once, no, it's because he hurt Dick's feelings.
Let's not forget him going after literal Satan either, after he had been banished. He was willing to go to hell just to try and kill him, again.
This is why they don't tell Damian any of their backstories when it comes to the big villains, he will get himself fucking killed.
Feral little- Damian still walks around with that wolf plushy! He even named it Amira! He literally named his wolf plushy princess!
Damian is the most precious killing machine and Jason will protect him with his life.
The problem is, all of this stuff makes it obvious that Damian takes after Jason the most, but he can't just tell the media this. It's not fair though, he's thought of as the outcast middle child that Damian barely even knows when it's not! Damian does know him! They plot secret assassinations behind Bruce's back twice a week! Jason is not jealous, he's just upset!
What they got is quiet, unsaid. Damian doesn't mention it, and neither does he, but they both know it's there and appreciate it silently. They understand each other, and that's enough.
Except for when he's jealous.
So maybe, just maybe, he starts a little rumor of his own. Sends a little letter to someone from the Gotham Gazette.
The news headline the next day goes as follows.
'A Look into the Poster Family's Life! Closer than Expected?'
Smack dab in the middle of the article is a picture of Damian from a few months back, half asleep with his hair ruffled and clothes rumpled. He's walking to the kitchen for some water, unaware of someone taking a picture of him. He's holding a black wolf plushy in his hand, green eyes sparkling.
'Little Damian Wayne is already such a mature young man, but he still takes comfort from the cutest little things! Our inside source says that he sleeps with it almost every day, and that he even named the fluffy toy! And guess who gave him his favorite present? None other than Jason Todd, the supposed family recluse. Jason and Damian have never once been seen socializing, but maybe they're closer than once previously thought!'
And that, folks, is how you manipulate the media. He went from arranging a kidnapping on his little brother to being a 'supposed' family recluse, served with a large cup of doubt. Saving his reputation, there.
He sports a jaw bruise for the rest of the week. Completely worth it.
Oh. Oh wait.
He remembered something. The most damning piece of evidence there is.
He's a fucking tsundere.
(And maybe Jason is too if this is pointing out the similarities between them, FUCK-)
Exhibit D.
Damian had a love/hate relationship with being short. Hates being smaller, loved being able to fit into vents, the whole deal. Whatever, not important. Anyway, thing is here that Damian had a nightmare once, bad enough to really shake him, so he used his smallness to his advantage.
He fit into a vent.
They were somewhere, he doesn't remember where. Damian came to him for some reason, in the middle of the night. He doesn't know, he wasn't awake when it happened.
All he knows is he probably woke up a few minutes later, his body sensing a change in the room. There was a lump on his side when he became lucid, and opening his eyes found Damian curled up against him, fingers clutched onto Jason's shirt.
It's was the most adorable fucking thing he's ever seen, and he's known Dick and Tim since they were kids too. It's a fucking high bar and somehow Damian just leaped it. Whatever, nothing surprises him anymore.
Either way, he spent a few moments blinking down at the lump that was his little brother, wondering what kind of acid he ingested to have the most unrealistic trip he's ever experienced, before realizing it was all real and doing the only thing he could do.
He shrugged, and went back to sleep.
(After grabbing Amira, who had almost fallen off the bed, and tucking it back into Damian's arms.)
Damian woke up the next day and pretended that Jason was somehow the reason for him being in there, and Jason just smirked, thinking back on when he did the exact same thing with Dick and tried to blame Dick by saying he had given Jason a room with a terrible mattress, even though he had been staying in that room for weeks then and had never once complained.
Jason sees through this little shit. You can't fake the creator with his own creation. Jason is the master here, and Damian is only his novice apprentice. Whatever, all that matters is that people know who Damian really takes after.
It's Jason. Violent, volatile Jason.
And he's proud of it. Proud!
Very proud.
…
Extremely proud.
…
Very.
…
Proud.
…
…
…Fuck the media.