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Jason chokes himself awake, gagging and coughing up a familiar, radioactive green liquid onto Ra's' floor.
Oh, he thinks, forcing down a hysterical laugh. Oh. I died again.
His eyes focus just long enough to see Talia's unimpressed face. She pulls him up from the water, snapping her fingers for a towel and draping it over his hair to scrub it dry with a small frown and a furrow in her brows.
"Count yourself lucky I was the one to find you," she murmurs as she continues to dry him off. Jason doesn't respond. His body feels like his bones have all just gone on vacation, and the only thing that's keeping him up is sheer willpower. Talia cups his jaw in one hand, peering into his eyes. "You're exhausted, no? Sleep. We have much to discuss."
She links her arm through his, guiding him down long, winding hallways with pillars of ash wood reaching up to the dark ceiling above them. They end in a room, secluded from the rest and shut away behind a heavy, wooden door. It's lavish, is the thing.
(It’s familiar.)
The carpet is soft under his bare feet, the furniture is made of dark, ebony wood which is stained to be so dark it's almost like staring into the void. Even the bedding is luxurious— thick and warm, with silk sheets and pillows that probably wouldn't go flat no matter how much they were used. And, of course, everything is green and gold— the curtains, the blankets, the carpet.
Jason falls onto the bed, curling up on top of the duvet and shivering. He knows there are clothes in the dresser, ones better suited for the weather this high up in the mountains than the burial suit he's wearing now, but the disorientation is still making him dizzy.
(Why did she revive him again? She's supposed to hate him now. Ever since Damian's resurrection—)
Talia presses a kiss to his forehead and then leaves the room without another word. He can hear the lock click as soon as the door shuts, but he can't be assed to get up and try to break out right now.
When the dizziness recedes enough for him to stand, Jason stumbles into the adjoining room where he knows a bathroom is from his last stay to take a shower and wash the pit water off of himself.
There's nothing eye catching about his reflection at first glance. He doesn't think anything of it when he passes by— same dark hair and broad shoulders, same J scar carved into his cheek— but he can tell there's something wrong while he's in the shower and scrubbing his face. Jason's fingers start pressing against the bridge of his nose, searching for the break that never healed quite right and left his nose crooked a few years ago.
(A fight with Tim, actually. The two of them get along like a house on fire most days, but Jason is nothing if not a bastard. Tim rises to the bait, though— enough for Jason to think the kid secretly enjoys getting in fights with his sort-of-not-really older brother.)
(Tim has a good right hook.)
He trips over his own feet in the rush to check himself out in the mirror again. Like he thought, the crook in his nose is gone. He's missing other things, though, too— a tooth that chipped pretty bad during movie night with Dick, a few of the fainter scars on his chest, and—
Jason ruffles the hair by his left ear and then snaps his fingers. The sound is clear again in a way it hasn't been in years.
(That should have been his first clue. He lost a good portion of his hearing during that final confrontation with Bruce— between the gunshots, explosion, and the fact that his helmet was off, Jason had never been able to fully repair the damage done to his ears.)
(Everything is so loud now.)
Wide, green eyes stare back at him in the mirror. Him, but not. Still a hint of baby fat clinging to his face despite the muscle, eyes just a little too big. Jason doesn't think there are any pictures of him at this age, now. Sixteen? Seventeen? Something like that. Just a baby.
"Fuck," he whispers, jolting when the person in the mirror whispers with him. "Fuck."
His first priority is making an escape plan.
(Which is a blatant lie. His first priority is washing the conditioner from his hair before it dries and leaves his hair feeling crunchy and weird.)
(His second priority is taking a goddamn nap.)
Time travel is something the bats are all more than familiar with. Jason goes through the motions of changing into the pajamas he pulled from the dresser before his shower— long sleeves and pants that are thick and warm and soft against his skin.
Bruce and Tim were probably the leading experts on time travel bullshit. Tim especially, after—
(The gun clicks, empty, when Jason's finger squeezes around the trigger. Tim doesn't even flinch, eyes steely and shoulders squared. He would have made a good Robin to Jason's Batman. He would have been perfect, if he would just let go of Bruce long enough to see the other options right in front of him.)
Well.
When Talia drags him out of his room the next day, he goes without as much protest as he probably did the first time. He puts in just enough so he doesn't lash out when his trainers start treating him like some sort of violent dog, teeth bared and muzzle broken on the ground next to him. He accepts Talia's praise, though— she's soft with him, more than he remembers her being. Maybe it's because he's not as volatile this time. Or maybe his memories of waking up here the first time are foggy and not all there. Whatever the case, she runs her fingers through his hair and tells him what a good job he's doing when he breaks his trainer's bones.
"You are doing well," she tells him, sitting next to him on his bed. Her fingers tug on his chin until he's forced to look her in the eyes. "But I can make you even better. Stronger. Faster. You will go back to Gotham and be safe."
(There's something to all of it, though. She's soft, sure, but it's not quite right. A person, just a little to the left and tilted slightly on its axis. He doesn't realize what it is until she comes to his next training session with a toddler on her hip and a glare that's just a little more firm than usual.)
(Jason's hands shake as he snaps the next trainer's arm in half. He's never shied away from violence— even as Robin, he wasn't as afraid of getting his hands dirty as Bruce probably wanted him to be— but he had been working on slowing down for Damian's sake. To be a good example for his baby brother.)
"Who's this?" he asks, leaning in to poke Damian's forehead. Damian scowls at him and then makes angry babbling noises. Jason's lips twitch up in amusement.
Talia, if she were a normal person and not an Al Ghul, would probably have rolled her eyes at the interaction. She is, however, an Al Ghul, so she only gives him a reprimanding pat on the shoulder— just hard enough to remind him of his place without actually hurting him.
(You're here on my good will, her fingers say when they ghost over his neck and shoulder. Don't waste this.)
"My son," she says, turning on her heel and waving a hand for Jason to follow along. Damian stares over her shoulder at Jason, who happily follows along long enough to make silly faces at the toddler.
(The toddler who isn't his brother, but also is. The toddler who's Damian in every way that matters, but who isn't his brother. Who doesn't know all of the things his Damian knows about him— this Damian is too young to talk in complete sentences, let alone taunt Jason for reading 'women's literature' loud enough for Steph to overhear and kick his ass.)
He enacts his plan on a Wednesday afternoon.
The weather is unfairly cold still, and Jason can't wait to get his leather jacket back. It's all he can think about as he sneaks his way to priority two (four), Damian.
He's gained enough trust being seen with Talia that none of the League members question him too much when they see him wandering out and about. Jason gives them terse nods in greeting, keeping his face carefully blank, and then turning into the corridor that Damian's room is in as soon as he's sure nobody is looking.
"Shit," he murmurs when the doorknob only clicks at him without opening. "Fuck. Okay."
Jason crouches down, tugging a pin from his pocket for a makeshift pick, when the door swings open. His eyes trail up, up, up— Talia.
"Jason," she greets him, raising an unimpressed brow and turning back into the room. Damian is standing in the middle of the carpet, little knife in hand, and Talia corrects his grip when he gets too close to hurting himself. "You're not staying."
"No," he brushes off his jeans and follows her into the room, closing the door behind him. "He's not, either."
She crosses her arms over her chest, not looking away from Damian— using the knife, now, to stab at a little straw doll. "He is my son," she settles on, glancing at Jason out of the corner of her eye. Her hair leaves a curtain between them, falling over her shoulder in soft, dark waves. "You cannot—"
"You know what Ra's wants as well as I do."
Her mouth snaps shut, jaw tensing and untensing for just a moment. Jason watches her nails dig into her upper arms. "He's my son."
"Then let me keep him safe."
Talia sighs and lets her shoulders slump, turning to face Jason with a contemplative look. "You will protect him," she orders, cupping his jaw in one hand. "And you will bring him to his father." Her eyes shift to Damian again for a second before turning back to Jason. "I can help you escape the building. I can give you money. The rest is up to you."
(Is it always this easy? Jason spent so long refusing to ask for anything. Talia only asked Jason to protect her kid. He won't even need to risk having to fight his way out with her help.)
(Nothing is this easy.)
Jason has to sit in the room with Damian while she sets things up. He picks out a small bag for the kid, stuffing it full of clothes, and gives a second bag to Damian so he can feel like he's helping.
"Good job, brat," he pokes Damian's forehead again, snorting when the kid scowls at him again.
"No," Damian says. Jason grins wider.
(He's so little. Jason's never seen any of his siblings this young. Damian had been there when Jason was revived the first time, but Jason had been so angry that he hadn't ever seen the kid.)
(He's just a baby.)
Talia presses a card into his hand— pre-paid— and a good amount of cash. "You're smart," she tells him, pressing a kiss to his forehead and then leaning down to do the same for Damian. "Take care of each other. And call me."
She insists on being the one to carry Damian for the walk to the garage, holding the toddler close to her chest and running her fingers through his hair over and over again. Jason keeps expecting them to be stopped, still. Talia is only one woman— as badass as she is— and there's only so much she can do to keep them safe.
Nobody stops them, though. Nobody sees them. Jason doesn't know who to thank for that— God or just plain old luck. He settles for thanking Talia— but they make it to the garage unimpeded while Talia buckles Damian into the backseat.
"Where'd you get a car seat?"
Talia doesn't bother responding to that one, attention solely on Damian. She presses another kiss to his forehead. "My love," she murmurs in League dialect. Jason is only semi-fluent in it because of both Damian and Tim.
(If he has anything to say about it, Tim will never be fluent again.)
(But he will not take Damian's heritage away from him.)
"Mama," Damian wiggles in the seat, whining at the feeling of the buckles strapping him in and grabbing at her shirt.
"Goodbye, Damian," she pulls away, shutting the door even as he starts to cry. Jason can pick out the tense set of her jaw and the downward tilt of her mouth, but she keeps her face otherwise blank.
"I'll keep 'im safe," Jason reassures her, slinging the duffel bag she packed for him over his shoulder.
Talia manages to make him feel small despite the almost comedic height difference between them, pulling him back down to press another kiss to his forehead. It's more affectionate than he can ever remember her being.
(Is this time travel? Or an alternate universe? Or maybe Jason is finally loveable now that he's worked on himself.)
"You'll stay safe, too," she orders him, cradling his face in her hands. "There are passports in the bag for both of you. I expect you to check in when you reach the city. And again in every city after that. I cannot lose him, Jason. And I have no desire to lose you, either."
She walks off before he can respond, leaving him reeling for just a second before he's snapped out of it by another one of Damian's wails.
"God, this is a bad idea."
The engine starts up with a low rumble, and Jason takes a moment to dig through one of Damian's bags. He fumbles blindly for a moment before feeling something soft under his hands and handing it over to the screaming toddler.
It works, at least. Jason looks in the rearview mirror as he starts making his way down the mountain. Damian's face is still wet and a little red, but he seems thoroughly interested in the stuffed cow Jason tossed him.
"What's the cow say, Damian?"
Damian blinks up at him, wiggling the cow for a moment and frowning. "Woof!"
"Almost," Jason laughs. "You're real close, kid."
Forest and green grass slowly gives way to dirt and sparse trees as they make it into the foothills. The mountains loom over them, blocking out the horizon line and boxing them in, but Jason only feels free. He keeps his window rolled down, music on, and lets the wind blow over him with a wide grin.
(How long's it been since he went on a drive just for the hell of it? Even before whatever the hell this is, Jason's never been able to just… do something for fun.)
(Maybe he can talk the family into a road trip when he gets home.)
They pull into the Gilgit Airport a little before sunset. There's still no sign of them being tailed, and Jason sends a quiet thank you to Talia as he sets about ditching the car and unbuckling Damian.
"Oof," he groans, pulling the toddler onto his hip. "You stink, kid."
("How do you change a diaper?" he asks Talia in the airport bathroom, struggling with the wiggling, pissed off toddler in his arms. And no changing table, either. Goddamn men's room.)
(Talia laughs at him and hangs up.)
The flight from Gilgit to Islamabad is only about an hour, and Jason uses the time before they have to catch their next flight to let Damian pick out some snacks in one of the airport shops.
"You're old enough to eat shit, right?" he squints at the toddler who's munching happily on some dried fruit. Damian blinks wide, green eyes at him, and Jason shrugs. "Good enough for me."
He thinks about taking the one-stop flight, but a glance at Damian has him deciding against it. Jason's not even sure what he would do with a toddler during the hour-long layover, and it's late enough that the kid can probably just sleep through the whole flight from here to London.
Damian gets a window seat. Jason is stuck between the toddler on his left and a man on his right who's loud enough to wake the dead.
(And Jason would know.)
It's enough to make him regret the choice to take the direct flight. Damian spends most of the time screaming and crying— people are loud and waking him up, his ears hurt, he wants to get up and run around, he's hungry, he's thirsty, it's too dark— and Jason spends the entire time with a migraine bad enough he almost misses being half-deaf.
(He calls Talia again when they touch down in London and checks them into a hotel nearby. "How much NyQuil can I give him?")
("None," Talia sniffs. "You'll be fine.")
The only thing that stops him from passing out for a good two days straight is Damian waking him up throughout the night. Hungry again, thirsty, his diaper needs to be changed. Jason's never been more sure he never wants kids than he is right now.
(And then Damian smiles at him or babbles some incoherent question, and Jason melts. Kids are the best, he's just being dramatic.)
"You want the cow?" he asks when they stop by a Build-A-Bear— because Jason is going to be Damian's favorite brother this time, Dick can go to hell. Damian reaches for the longhorn plush— skin? Carcass? What the fuck do you even call these things?— with an excited little bark. "That's still the wrong sound, brat. Moo, can you say moo?"
Damian looks him right in the eyes and barks again. Jason only rolls his eyes and snatches up the longhorn with a sigh.
"Do you want it soft or firm?" the employee asks him.
"Soft."
(He feels like an idiot. Damian seems perfectly content, but Jason has a hard time with silences. He feels like he needs to fill them, say something to keep things from getting awkward.)
(He stays silent.)
"Okay," the employee grins at them now, holding out a box full of plush hearts for Damian. "I want you to pick just one, okay?"
Damian gives an annoyed little grumble at the limit, but he only takes one— a patterned one, even, with red and white checkered squares. When the employee puts the box back, she has him do all sorts of things and even ropes Jason into participating.
(He has to spin around and jump and sing a song for Damian, who giggles and claps his hands all the while. Jason tries not to feel completely humiliated by the whole thing.)
"Now," she tells Damian, voice serious. "I want you to give it a big kiss—" Damian does, pressing a loud, smacking kiss to the fabric. "Good job! I'll put it in your cow now, alright?"
Damian hands the heart over when she holds her hand out, watching with wide eyes as she stuffs it into the back of the toy and expertly sews it closed. She hands the cow back to Damian, who crushes it to his chest, and wishes them a good day before Jason can whisk Damian to the check-out counter and, hopefully, out of the store.
They stop for lunch after, too. Jason probably drinks an entire pot of coffee, and Damian ends up with syrup all over himself while trying to eat pancakes. Jason's only glad he remembered to keep the new plushie on this side of the table so it didn't end up covered in syrup, too.
"Almost done," he tells himself when he sees the nine-hour flight time at the airport terminal for a second time, turning his gaze down at Damian— currently chewing on the leg of his new toy. "You're lucky you're cute, brat, or I'd drop you out of the damn plane."
This one goes better, at least. They leave early enough in the morning that Damian isn't trying to sleep the whole flight but not so early the kid is feeling grouchy about being awake, and Jason's seat neighbor is perfectly quiet while she watches a movie on the in-flight TV— Twilight, it looks like. Jason's fingers twitch with the urge to put it on his own TV. Just for the hell of it.
They touch down in New York without much problem, and Jason snags a spot on a bus right before it leaves for Gotham.
(He should probably stop. He and Damian both need a real meal at this point, but— they're almost home. They're so close. Alfred will be at the manor. Bruce. Jason is sure they'll beg him to stay for dinner after they confirm he is who he says he is.)
The front door of Wayne Manor is made of huge, thick wood that makes Jason feel like a kid again. The sun's long set by now, and the overwhelming Gotham fog has already settled over Damian and himself.
This was a mistake.
It was a mistake, and they won't want him, and—
Damian is probably cold and hungry, though. He's just a baby. Jason clutches him closer to his chest, pressing his nose to the toddler's hair and mumbling a few curses under his breath. Damian squirms and whines, but he's not upset enough to break out into tears just yet.
"Here goes nothing," Jason sighs and raises his fist to knock. He has to force himself to grin when Bruce opens the door. “Hey, old man.”
“Jason–?”
“Been a while, huh?”
(If they both start crying when Bruce pulls him into the house, nobody has to know but the two of them.)
(And maybe Damian, who breaks the moment with a loud wail.)
"He's hungry," Jason explains, voice thick. "Um— can I—?"
"Always," Bruce breathes, cupping Jason's face in his hands. "We'll take care of it. Together."
"Together, then."
(And maybe everything is okay.)