Chapter Text
Jason Todd is a particular boy that Talia can not figure out.
He’s quiet—catatonic, actually.
He doesn’t speak. He just follows her around when she lets him.
He’s quiet and new and exhilarating. He doesn’t fight anyone until they have hit him first. Except for when she (or Damian) touches him. When they touch him, he settles, pliant and calm. He is a unique boy, she thinks, watching as he follows Damian daily, holding up the young boy’s katana with practiced ease.
But it’s not just his quiet acceptance that makes her curious. It’s not even the fact that he is Bruce’s boy—or the fact that he somehow pulled himself out of his grave, braindead and all.
No. It’s the….It’s the miracles that he produces.
Funnily enough, it hadn’t happened in front of her, but instead her son.
Damian had been seven at the time, growing further into his training then ever before. She hadn’t been at the compound at the time, too busy on a mission that required her help. But Jason had.
She had placed him in as Damian’s guard. Jason didn’t attack when provoked, and brain dead or not, he was someone not to be messed with. So it made sense that he would be given to her son as a protector.
But the miracle doesn’t happen until after training. Damian had been tasked to kill his first animal—a small bird. Damian hadn’t said it—but Talia knows her boy. He had refused and refused until he had drawn his sword and stabbed the bird.
That’s the story her father tells her after all—pride that he was able to crack the soft shell of her only son.
Damian; however, told a different story.
Damian had stabbed the bird, and had been left alone to watch as it took its final breath. But Jason had stepped forward, face blank, before the bird had regained its color, alive once more.
She hadn’t believed him—scared that he had been put through too much shock and had started to hallucinate.
No. She hadn’t believed him. Not at first. Not until she had seen it first-hand herself.
Even now—it was hard to believe.
“Damian,” she hums, watching her youngest son huff from where he’s sitting beside Jason.
“Yes, Mother?” Damian asks, glancing at her through dark eyelashes. He pokes at the vine that curls around his palms, steady and sweet.
She glances at Jason out of the corner of her eyes. He’s quiet, face serene. His teal eyes watch the rising sunset, flowers humming from where they sit around him.
“I told you not to come here.” She says after a long moment of silence. Damian flinches, lips pulling down into a frown. “The more people that know about this place, the more danger Jason is in.”
Damian’s fist clench, the vine trapped in his still chubby fingers. A normal vine would have snapped by now, but Jason just hums, glancing down at her boy as carnations bloom from the vine. Damian looks up at him, green eyes bright in apology.
“Sorry,” he murmurs to Jason, before doing the same for her. “Sorry, Mother. It’s just….It’s calm over here.”
Talia inclines her head, letting her fingers run through Damian’s hair. She hesitates, before doing the same to Jason. Jason hums, leaning into the touch. Hydrangeas grow from the ground, curling into her body as they weave around her. She doesn’t gasp—not like the first time it happened, but she still feels like her breath has been stolen.
“I know, Damian.” She whispers, letting her fingers rub at the petals that surround her. “But my Father will not be happy if he knows about this secret with Jason—That he can bring back the dead.”
Damian huffs, plucking the pink Carnation from his vine before placing it in Jason’s hair. “He can’t bring back the dead, Mother. I told you that already.”
Talia hums. “No human can grow flowers and revive dead birds, Damian.”
“He can only bring them back if they’re dying, Mother. Or else he would’ve been able to bring back those assassins from last week.”
Talia scrunches her nose in a manner that she only does in front of these two boys, shaking her head. “Maybe he didn’t want to bring back the miscreants that were trying to kill you. He’s soft for you, My Prince.”
Damian pouts, but Talia can see the smile that threatens to overtake his face at the prospect that Jason cares enough to kill for him. Her son liked Jason, even if he wouldn’t admit it.
“Whatever,” Damian murmurs, back to playing with the vine that wiggles in between his fingers.
Yes. Damian loved Jason. It was clear to see, especially to Talia. Only Jason is allowed to follow Damian on all his missions, only Jason is allowed to give him flowers, only Jason is allowed to ruffle his hair, and only Jason is allowed to watch over him sleep.
Everyone else, other than her of course, were met with anger and disdain.
“Damian.” Talia scolds from her spot, watching as her son freezes from where he was digging up flowers from the ground, dirt caked in between small fingernails. “What are you doing?”
Jason glances at her through his hair—tousled from the wind. He taps his fingers against the soil, and she watches in fascination as the dirt falls from her boy’s hands, settling back into the ground around them. All that’s left is the vine that Damian has twisted to hold a few of the Carnations and weeds that Jason has sprouted from the ground. Damian glances at her, wary for a moment, before he continues to weave the flowers.
She blinks. Normally Damian would have apologized by now. In fact, Damian would have never even picked flowers, knowing that he would have looked childish and not fit for the throne.
She glances at Jason, who just huffs, running his fingers through the flower field around them. The flowers flutter in the breeze, leaning towards Damian, who picks them carefully.
“You did this.” She accuses, but it’s not as hard-edged as she had hoped. Jason just smiles in his I don’t understand what you’re saying, but I’m right anyway, look, patting her knee.
She sighs after a long moment. Jason leans towards her, pulling her hands off of the ground. She lets his trembling fingers open her hands towards the sky, watching with rapt attention as vines pull from the ground and curl into her waiting palms. Flowers sprout from the vines, twisting together to create a sort of crown, albeit sloppy and messy. His fingers stop the vine from spreading, watching as it drops back into the earth, leaving her with a wreath of flowers.
Warm fingers bend her knuckles in, until she grasps at the wreath with a soft grip, looking up at him. Jason—the boy who grew more and more spectacular as the year went on, just smiles, patting her hands.
Damian leans over Jason to look at his work, using the teen’s thighs to keep himself upright.
“Hey. I was making her one.” Damian mutters, fingers pinching Jason’s thigh in an effort to prove his annoyance physically. “Stop showing off, Jason.”
Talia lets her fingers curl around the wreath Jason has so effortlessly made her, feeling her heart fill with an emotion that is normally only reserved for Damian and her father. Damian must tell by the look on her face, because her young boy only tsks, pulling away to continue with his wreath.
“Fine. I guess she can have two.” Damian sniffs, but he relaxes into Jason’s side when Jason leans on him, placing his chin in between unruly black strands. She can’t find herself angry at the action, not when Damian just settles into the junction between Jason’s stomach and chest, quiet and content. In fact, she can even feel the feeling of fondness bubbling up in her chest at the sight.
It causes her to sigh, watching as the rest of the sun disappears as it fades into the horizon.
She contemplates her boys and their relationship for the rest of the evening, before they are swept back into the compound, ready for bed.
And as she stares at Damian’s form—asleep on silk sheets and perfumed pillows, she wonders when Jason had wiggled his way into her heart.
She glances at the boy who perches at Damian’s window, playing with the cactus that sits atop Damian’s bedside table. The cactus blooms a flower to catch Jason’s fleeting attention, but Jason has turned to look at her.
He doesn’t speak—hasn’t, since the moment she had picked him off of Gotham’s streets.
But she finds she wants him to. It doesn’t even have to be about his so-called miracles, even. She wanted to pick apart the boy that had somehow gotten her prickly son to open up to.
She wanted to pick apart the boy that her Beloved loved so dearly—enough so that he had almost killed the Joker himself.
Yes. Jason Todd was a particular boy indeed.
“Mistress Talia.” One of her Father’s personal guards slinks in from the shadows, head down in respect. “Master Ra’s has asked for you.”
“Lead the way.”
Yes. Jason Todd was a particular boy—one that she didn’t want to let go of.
“Talia. Tell me more about that young rat that you’ve been hiding under Damian. Tell me—Will the Detective be sad if I kill him?”
Yes. Jason Todd was particular—but he was hers.
She would even go against her Father for him, to make sure that her Beloved and Damian do not cry at his second death.
She ignores the whispers that say she is doing this for her.