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Separating was a necessity. Not constantly, never for long, but often enough.
Roy had known it would be from the very beginning of their trip—two men and a baby, always together, always seen in the same types of stores and paying cash for every transaction, on a clear route across the country? Yeah. Not good. It would create a pattern, and if Gotham’s vigilantes were known for anything, it was recognizing a pattern.
Despite the ninja’s apparent… unconcern with Batman and his horde of once-Robins, Roy was wary (understandably, he felt) of barging into the Bat’s territory with nary a heads up. He got along with Dick, yeah, but it was one thing to toe at the city limit while Dick talked Batman down from arresting him; it was quite another to bring a full-fledged assassin and his stolen ward into Gotham proper, leaving a trail of dead Shadows in their wake.
So, yeah. Against Roy’s better judgment, they separated, the ninja (Jason, Roy reminded himself, amused as always by the ordinary name—the ninja assassin had asked to be called Jason) with the baby hidden in a sling around his chest and Roy shoving a trucker cap on over his hair. They’d switch up who did what, alternating which of them dealt with food and fuel and diapers and all the other millions of things that needed to be sorted on a haphazard roadtrip from Star to Gotham. Then, once they were finished, they’d meet again, and they’d keep going, together, working their way through the mountains in pursuit of safety.
It’s worked so far. Batman hasn’t sent Orphan with a cease and desist order, and they’ve kept just ahead of the Shadows, skating on the knife’s edge of here and then gone. And it’s worked, it has…
…until now.
Roy chews the inside of his cheek, absently working at a sore spot that he’s worn there. He paces a few feet along the walk in front of the convenience store, pauses, paces back. The screen of the burner phone in his hand stays dark, the ringer silent.
No messages. No calls. Nothing.
Jason was supposed to be back from changing the baby three minutes ago. He’s not.
If it were any other roadtrip, or any other baby for that matter, Roy would have waved off three minutes. He’s no stranger to wrangling a hangry, squirming toddler who just wants to put the sidewalk bug directly in their mouth, Daddy’s plans be damned.
Damian, little prince of the al Ghuls, on the other hand? If Roy didn’t know better, he’d think the baby kept a planner, he’s so precise with his schedule. He starts fussing if Jason is so much as a minute late with the first spoonful of baby food. He doesn’t tolerate a diaper change taking more than six minutes. He’s straight up bitten Roy for daring to try and put him down for a nap when he wasn’t sleepy yet, for crying out loud.
Which means that something is wrong.
Oh, god… something is wrong.
Sucking in a breath, Roy shoves the burner phone into his pocket. He’s moving fast, working on instinct, as he grabs for the compound bow stashed in the bag slung over his shoulder. He’s already wearing gear under his t-shirt and jeans—all that’s left is to press a domino into place, the familiar weight of the mask settling on his nose as he takes off around the building toward the separate structure housing the bathrooms.
There’s no one there. The key is in the doorknob, a used diaper in the trash—Roy spins in a circle, sharp eyes scouring the empty space between the convenience store and the post office beside it. There are no footprints, but of course there wouldn’t be—Jason is so light on his feet that sometimes Roy thinks he floats rather than walks.
Okay. Okay. So there’s no physical way to track Jason—fine. Roy will have to figure this out another way.
Wracking his brains, Roy turns again, tracing the shapes of the scatter of sparse buildings and all the gaps between them. Power lines, rolling hills, leaning trees… where would Jason go? If something happened, where would his instincts take him? The town is small. It’s hardly even a town, really—just a collection of tractor stores, government buildings, and gas stations, all clustered together in the middle of a good three dozen miles of farmland. The post office is the biggest building around, and even that is only two stories and a parking lot boasting three whole mail trucks.
Roy turns the other way, his heart pumping adrenaline through his body. Where would a ninja assassin running from a threat go? Where would he have the high ground? Where—?
Wait. High ground. Roy whips his head back toward the post office, frowning up at it. It’s no Gotham skyscraper, that’s for damn sure, but it would be defensible. Easy to secure, good sight lines. And even if Jason isn’t there, it might give Roy a hint as to where he actually is.
With a direction to go, Roy doesn’t hesitate. One step, two, and he’s hit a full sprint, vigilance cranked high as it’ll go as he switches to a grapple arrow with a flick of his wrist. He draws the arrow back and lets it fly in one smooth motion, watching it catch on the edge of the roof. A moment later, he’s lifted off his feet, letting his momentum carry him.
Roy is no ninja, but he’s no slouch, either, if he does say so himself. He hits the roof in a roll, softening his landing—by the time he comes to a halt he already has both bow and arrow up, ready for anything that might be waiting for him.
He needn’t have worried. There’s no one there—no one still alive, anyway.
Breathing carefully, Roy walks slowly down the length of the roof, arrow trained at each body in turn. There are no signs of life, not in any of them. Just the crumpled forms of a dozen of the League’s Shadows, each lying in a deep wash of crimson blood, slowly oozing across the gravel. A battlefield turned graveyard, lives snuffed hard and fast by the flash of a blade.
There are so many. Body after body after body—and Roy waits for it to catch up to him, for the weight of what he’s done to settle on his shoulders. He agreed to this, after all—agreed that Jason deserved to live, that Damian deserved to be free, and thus condemned the Shadows that came after them to quick, if grizzly, deaths. In protecting two lives he’s allowed so many others to slip from his grasp.
He waits. And waits. Waits for the futility of it to rise in him, for his conscience to make his stomach turn. He waits to hear Ollie’s voice in his head, that sarcastic beat of, “Some hero you are.” But as he keeps going, stepping over broken arms and throats slit wide… as he finds Shadow after Shadow after Shadow but no sign of Jason… all he can feel is relief.
Five minutes. That was all it took. Five minutes, and the Shadows caught up. Roy was screwing around, sorting through candy bars for five minutes, and he could have lost… god, he’s barely known Jason for a few days, but it feels like he would have lost something that was simply too important to lose.
If Jason made it out with the baby, that is. If Jason and Damian are safe.
Boots sticking in the blood, Roy comes up to the air conditioning unit on the far side of the roof, the lone hiding spot for friend or foe. Keeping his breath even, as silent as he can, he rounds the corner of the clunky box arrow-first, and…
Jason is sprawled out on his side, his back to Roy, head in the shadow of the air conditioning unit. His legs are in a tangle, like he was tripped up and went down hard. One of his arms lies, limp, on the gravel—the other is hidden by the bulk of his torso, tucked up near his chest.
Roy takes it all in, his eyes skittering from Jason to the edge of the roof and back, looking for any sign of more Shadows, before it sinks in.
Jason isn’t moving. Not his hands, not his legs, not his chest. He isn’t moving—oh, god, he isn’t moving. And Damian is nowhere to be seen, and there’s blood pooling under Jason’s head, and it might be blood from the Shadows or it might be his own but there’s no way to tell until Roy can get a good look at him and—
It’s about here that Roy’s body finally jerks into motion. With a curse, he stashes his bow at his back and drops to his knees, frantic hands reaching for Jason’s neck. He finds blood—thick, tacky blood, the scent fresh and sharp as a blade—but no wound. Not there, anyway. The skin of Jason’s throat is unbroken, even as Roy frantically searches for an artery, a pulse, a sign of life to indicate that this wasn’t all for nothing.
“Come on, Jason,” Roy mutters, leaning further over the prone figure. As if in response, Jason stirs, the arm curled to his chest moving.
Roy is about to collapse from the relief that Jason is alive when he realizes, no… that’s not Jason. Rather, it’s the bundle of blankets clutched to his chest—a bundle now struggling in earnest to free itself from Jason’s limp grip.
Swallowing hard, Roy leans in, easing Jason’s arm up and away. He hardly dares to believe it, but—there it is. There he is. Clutched to Jason’s chest, with Jason’s form curled around him like the ninja gave up his life to protect him, lies baby Damian, his tiny face pinched up with irritation as he bats away the folds of the blanket.
Roy helps, pulling the hem down past Damian’s little chin. As if on autopilot, he leans over Jason’s shoulder and cradles the baby’s head, cushioning it from the sharp gravel beneath them. He needs to check and see if Damian is injured—Jason will never forgive him if he doesn’t. Hell, he’s not sure if he’d forgive himself. The baby comes first—that was the foundation of their alliance, the first thing they agreed on and the whole basis on which their relationship so far has been built.
Dead or alive; unconscious, incapacitated, or unharmed; the baby comes first.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, too far to make any kind of impact, Roy can tell that he’s shaking. His hands are unsteady, struggling to get a good grip on Damian as the baby wiggles. Damian always seems like he’s simply putting up with the indignity of being held by Roy—an amusing little detail on any normal day.
Today, as Roy’s trembling fingers leave bloody streaks on soft brown skin… Jason’s unmoving body lying between them, the baby’s caretaker either dead or out so cold as to appear dead… Roy laughs, a sharp gasp of a sound. God, today it feels like Damian was only right to disdain. Roy has never, not in all his life, felt as inadequate as he does right now.
He can’t think about that. He needs to narrow his focus—needs to finish extricating the baby from Jason’s slack grip, to hold himself together long enough to determine if Damian has been hurt. He makes himself breathe—in and out, in and out—and keeps going.
It takes but a few seconds more, an eternity spent with Jason’s still face at the corner of his eye. Damian squirms when Roy finally lifts him free, making a sharp, unhappy noise. Not pained, as far as Roy can tell—just unhappy. Still, Roy is careful as he cradles the baby, unwrapping him the rest of the way and feeling gently down each little limb in turn.
By the time he’s done, Damian is giving him his best impression of a miniature imperial glare. If Roy didn’t know better, he’d call it accusatory—like Damian is telling him off for wasting time when he could be tending to Jason. Relieved that Damian, at least, is unharmed, Roy strokes a knuckle down the baby’s chubby cheek. “It’s okay, bud. It’s alright,” he whispers, before he spreads the blanket on the ground in the shadow at the base of the air conditioning unit and sets Damian down on his back on top of it.
Then, and only then, when Damian is as shielded as possible should any more Shadows show up, does he turn his attention to Jason.
…Or tries to. He would have, anyway, if the moment he reached for Jason’s pulse once more Damian hadn’t started fussing.
Roy glances over, concerned, to find Damian’s pudgy hands grabbing at the air between him and his caretaker. He’s making what sound like small, pre-tantrum growls—Roy curses and just barely gets a hand on the baby’s chest before he rolls over onto the gravel, intent on crawling to Jason.
The hand does not help. In fact, the moment Roy touches the baby, Damian lets out a true cry, his little feet kicking at Roy’s arm.
“Come on, kid, work with me,” Roy says, keeping the baby pinned with one hand while the other feels for Jason’s pulse.
The kid does not work with him. Determined to reach Jason, Damian only squirms harder, cries growing in volume.
Roy grits his teeth, bowing his head over Jason. He feels torn, stretched thin—like he’s a very rickety bridge hanging over a canyon, one stiff breeze away from snapping and falling into the depths. It figures that the little prince is throwing a fit now of all goddamn times, but good grief is it not helping.
Focus, he thinks to himself. It’s a monumental task to force his brain to come up with a solution, but he manages, his entire body strung tighter than his bowstring. He just hopes that swaddling Damian will give him enough time to check on Jason, to figure out if he’s… if he’s still even breathing.
Feeling like an overtaxed robot, Roy moves away from Jason for the second time, turning his attention back to the baby. Damian puts up a fight, but Roy is relentless, using his superior strength and size to his advantage. A few twists and folds of the blanket later and he has Damian swaddled, his little arms trapped against his chest.
“Stay,” Roy says, hoping against hope that the baby will listen and understand. Wasting no time, he turns back to Jason—it’s quick work to check his neck and spine for injuries, stabilize his head, and roll him onto his back. Damian huffs and cries, his little face turning red in Roy’s peripheral vision, but Roy ignores him for now, leaning down to put his ear to Jason’s lips. He closes his eyes, listening intently for any sign that air is getting in or out.
He… thinks there might be something. Just a sigh, lighter than the breeze ruffling his long hair, but… Jason might be breathing.
Might.
Fuck. Fuck. Fucking fuck. Roy frowns, pressing his hand to Jason’s throat in search of a pulse. It’s only getting harder to tell as Damian graduates to legitimate wails, cries echoing across the death-filled expanse of the rooftop until Roy feels like they’re ringing through his head.
If Jason has a pulse, if he’s breathing, if none of the blood beneath him is his own, Roy doesn’t know. He can’t tell, can’t puzzle the facts together. With every wail his composure unravels just a little bit more, each one a stark reminder that they’re nowhere safe, the three of them left out in the open with dead Shadows all around, and he can’t keep Damian here, not with the threat of more League members so close, but he can’t move Jason yet, unsure if he’s stable enough to be moved, and he probably can’t carry both the baby and a full grown man at the same time anyway, and he can’t leave Jason behind but he’s not even sure he’s alive, and he’s supposed to be watching Damian, supposed to be taking him somewhere that the League won’t find him, but he doesn’t know where that is without Jason, doesn’t know how to do this, doesn’t know how to get through this, doesn’t know, doesn’t know, doesn’t know—
—until, in the middle of Roy’s spiral into panic, Damian manages to escape his blanket. Roy watches—one hand clutching at his chest, fingers digging into his shirt, helpless—as the baby rolls onto his front and starts to crawl, still wailing. His pudgy little hands reach for Jason, forever searching, determined and furious and afraid, only this time… this time Jason reaches back.
It’s just a twitch of his fingers at first. A flex at his thumb, a flutter of his eyelashes. Then, as Roy watches, his arm starts to shift, elbow bending. His hand drags through the blood and dust and gravel—slow at first, sluggish, but alive. Alive and absolutely refusing to stop. He moves, reaching until his shaking, outstretched fingers brush the baby’s chubby little cheek.
An instant of contact, a single reassurance of life, and Damian’s wails quiet, dissolving into little hiccups. His tiny fingers wrap around Jason’s thumb, clinging. He’s still crawling, his little legs propelling him with even more determination than before—so much so that he evades Roy’s hands when Roy finally shakes himself into action and tries to pick him up off the dirty gravel.
It makes no difference. Damian doesn’t stop, doesn’t slow, until he reaches Jason’s shoulder. Once there, he curls his little body into the nook between Jason’s arm and his neck, setting his head down on Jason’s collar bone.
He’s tiny. Just a baby, too little to feed himself or speak his mind or run from danger—but that doesn’t seem to matter. When he clings to Jason’s bloody shirt, he does so with all the might of a tiny vice, holding on with such ferocious intensity that Roy knows he won’t be pried away. His tiny baby hands are so sure it’s as if he’s choosing to bind Jason to the land of the living with the strength of his little fingers alone, the laws of life and death be damned.
And no wonder. Jason has given Damian his single-minded devotion, his trust and love and care, for every moment of every day for as long as Roy has known them and more. If Damian wants so desperately to cling to Jason, it’s only because Jason has held him and fed him and carried him for as long as the baby’s memory stretches. It was Jason’s reverence, his dedication, that stole Damian away from the League, from the Demon’s Head and every single Shadow who fell in place behind him. It was Jason who ran—ran so that the darkness would not swallow the little prince whole like it did every al Ghul who came before him.
Jason has protected Damian without thought, without hesitation. He’s given nearly everything he has short of his life. And if there had been no other way, Jason would have given that, too, for the child curled up at his neck. Roy knows it’s true—knows that this could have ended with yet another body in yet another pool of drying blood, with a sacrifice paid in pounds of flesh and bone. Jason’s pale face, pinched with pain and his brow notched with deep furrows, is proof of that.
And yet, Jason is nothing but gentle as he curls his arm around the baby in turn, his large hand pressed soothingly to Damian’s back.
He’s breathing in short, shallow gasps, exertion and relief both evident in his eyes as he meets Roy’s gaze. They need to triage him. Need to splint any broken bones, bandage any open wounds. Need to find a way to get him off this stupid roof and to a safehouse where they can regroup. But as Jason dips his chin in a small nod of thanks… Roy knows it can wait.
Swallowing down the lump in his throat, Roy nods back. Then, with a deliberate breath in… and out… he turns his face away from the man and child on the roof before him. A quick flick of his hand and his bow finds its place at his front, arrow nocked and ready to fire, pointing outward toward any threat that dares encroach on this moment.
He’ll protect them. Baby and caretaker both. Just for a moment, a few seconds hewn from their frantic race across the country. Just so that Jason and Damian can have this space, no matter how small, no matter how painful, to reassure each other that they’re both still here.
The moment will end soon. When it does, Roy will force Jason to his feet in search of somewhere safe to lick his wounds. They’ll figure out what to do next, where to go, how to keep going—
—and then they will. One day and then the next and then the next. They will do this, they will do whatever it takes, to find freedom.
Roy may not know what the end of this journey will look like, but by god will he see it through.