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Jason watched his mom die. For months before she died, he watched her die. He knows what his mom’s body looked like after it was over. He wonders, sometimes, if that’s something he’s supposed to know. They all know, though. They all know what their moms look like dead. Jason, Bruce, Dick, Tim. Stephanie doesn’t, but she talks sometimes, about a mom so depressed she couldn’t bring herself to crawl out of bed, and Jason thinks she probably gets it, at least a little.
Damian doesn’t get it at all, but that’s fine. He’s not supposed to. He’s got his own stuff going on.
xxx
Something is wrong with Bruce’s knee. There’s always been something weird with that knee, sure, but it’s worse now. He winces every time he stands up; he’s starting to limp by the end of every night. He’s openly icing it, which is particularly damning, and he’s taking ibuprofen like it’s candy which is, again, damning, because usually he’d rather bleed out than admit he’s mortal.
“Of course something is wrong with his knee,” Tim says over breakfast when Jason finally voices his concerns. He has to speak around a mouthful of eggs, which is gross, but they’re all tired and starving. Tim pauses before he continues, swallowing and then throwing an extra piece of bacon onto Jason’s plate. “He’s been jumping off of buildings since he was 20. There’s no way he has any fucking cartilage left.”
Jason frowns. “There’s a surgery for that, right?”
Tim scoffs and stands to grab the coffee pot. He fills up Jason and his mugs, and then slumps into a seat and says: “yeah, and I’m sure he’s totally willing to do a surgery that will take him out of commission for months, and I’m sure there’s a surgery that’s so effective it’s totally fine with you, again, jumping off of buildings after you’re healed.”
Jason takes a bite of the bacon, looking off into the distance. “Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid,” he mutters, and Tim frowns.
“No. That’s not…Bruce is stupid. That’s what I’m trying to say. And honestly? We’ve all had more time to acclimate to that idea than you. Because…I don’t think it was this bad when you were kids. But it is now. So. Welcome to Bruce.”
Jason thinks about Bruce, making him stretch after every patrol as a kid. He thinks about Bruce monitoring his water intake and his sleep schedules. He thinks about Bruce, falling asleep in the middle of a Wayne Enterprises board meeting and getting lectured by Alfred afterwards while he kept dozing off in the car, causing Jason to giggle uncontrollably while Alfred monologued.
“Here,” Tim said, twisting his body to look through the doorway, where they can hear footsteps. “Watch this. DAMIAN!”
There’s a very long pause, and in that pause Tim butters a piece of toast and throws it on Jason’s plate, too. Jason can (begrudgingly) give Tim props for a few things. Subtlety is not one of them. Still, though. He eats the toast.
A very haggard Damian appears in the doorway, and Tim pushes out an extra seat with his chair. Damian eyes Jason a little warily, but still takes a seat. “What do you want?”
“Maybe we want to spend time with you. Ever considered that?” Damian doesn’t respond. Tim sighs. “Look. What’s Bruce’s fatal flaw?”
“He won’t use guns.”
Jason snorts.
“No. The other one.”
“Oh.” Damian huffs, thinking for a second, and says: “he’s going do this until he kills himself.”
“Yeah,” Tim says. “That one.” He looks at Jason, and there’s a heaviness to his eyes, even while his voice remains joking. “He knows his knee is blown, Jason. He’s just not planning on having an old age where it matters.”
xxx
There is a moment in Jason’s life where he realizes that he’s going to have two moms and he’s going to watch both of them die. Thankfully, this period is extremely short, under ten minutes total, and he’s having the shit beat out of him for most of it. But, yeah. There’s a moment in there where he knows what’s coming. He still tries, he really does. He tries to keep this one alive. Obviously, he fails.
xxx
“My mother is coming to Gotham,” Damian announces one day with the same inflection he’d announce the weather. They’re all in the Cave together, cleaning and sorting various equipments, and Jason freezes.
“Good,” Dick says with a nod, setting a grappling hook down with a little too much force. “I have some things to say to her.”
“NO,” Jason and Tim say in unison, and Bruce’s head snaps up. Damian tilts his head.
“Talia’s coming?” Stephanie repeats, and Bruce’s brow furrows.
“And you have things to say to her?” He asks, voice gruff, and Tim shakes his head fervently while Jason says:
“No he does NOT.”
“I think I do!” Dick says, and Tim half yells: “NO, Dick!”
Stephanie bounces her gaze between them and then turns to Bruce. “Jason and Damian said that Talia loved Jason like he was a gun.”
“Steph, what the FUCK?!” cries Tim, and Jason pinches the bridge of his nose. There’s a weird ringing noise in his ear.
“It was a more nuanced conversation than that,” he mumbles, feeling a little nauseous, and Damian says:
“No, it was not, but we agreed that my mother loves guns, so I do not understand Greyson’s reaction.”
“He’s lying,” Tim says, despondent, “he knows what he’s doing and he’s trying to manipulate us into not roping him in.”
Jason flexes his hand to see if he can still feel his fingertips. He finds that he can’t look away from Bruce’s face, even though he can’t stand to see it anymore. He needs to know. He needs to know what reaction he’ll have. He needs to see Bruce feel something, he needs to hear….what is it that he needs to hear. I love you, Bruce had said. I love you. You’re my son.
Bruce doesn’t say anything. Not for almost a minute. He works his jaw. He looks at the ceiling. He looks at the ground. He looks at Jason, briefly, and the look in his eyes is so raw and so much that they both look away from each other instantly. “Dick,” he says finally, “stay away from Talia.” A deep intake of breath. “Damian, we’ll discuss your mother’s visit later.” He grinds his teeth so hard Jason can hear it, and he finds his eyes on Bruce again. Bruce looks at him, just for a second, and that look is there again. “Jason…” they both look away. Jason flexes his hand. There’s no follow up. Bruce leaves the room.
Everyone is silent in his departure. Jason stares at the ground between his feet. He can FEEL all of their eyes on him. He swallows. “Thanks, everybody,” he says, and he hates how rough his voice sounds, and he wishes he could say why this, of all things, feels so fucking shameful. This is, by far, one of the least troubling loves that an adult figure in his life has ever felt towards him. But he didn’t…he didn’t want Bruce to know. He hadn’t even known it was a secret, but now, in its revelation, he recognizes it. He didn’t want Bruce to know. He swallows again. “Great. So…thanks. Thanks, Tim, for telling Dick. Thanks, Dick, for being so weird about it in front of Bruce. Thanks, Steph, for telling Bruce. Great. Great work, thanks everybody.” He pauses, replaying all of it over. “Damian, you… we’re good. You didn’t do anything. Everyone else, I…look, I’m going to go to my safe house until Talia’s gone. I don’t want anyone to visit me. I’m not kidnapped. You can freak out once I’ve been gone a week, but until then, I…leave me alone.” He looks at Tim, whose face is grave. “Tell Bruce.”
Tim nods, and Jason leaves. No one follows him.
xxx
Sometimes, when he’s a kid in the Manor, he can’t help but wonder about Dick’s parents. He can’t imagine…he can’t imagine watching someone he loved die like that. He can’t imagine having someone and then not having them with no warning in between. Of loving someone without knowing they were dying; of loving someone without the creeping dread of it all.
He wonders which is worse.
Sometimes, in the darker times, he wonders if that’s what’s wrong with him and what’s right with Dick. He knew his mom was dying and he sat with it for too long. He let that knowledge seep into every pore of his body; he felt it in the marrow of his bones long before it happened. Maybe that’s why life is so hard for him; maybe that’s why Dick is still so perfect. Maybe his mom, in her sickness, passed something onto him.
Maybe.
xxx
The safe house is quiet. It’s still. It’s safe, Jason thinks, before the sheer redundant stupidity of that thought makes him cringe.
He watches TV. He eats ramen. He goes out at night as Hood but stays away from Bat patrol. They stay away, and he’s grateful for it, even in his anger.
It’s always like this, is the thing. No matter how much better it is. It’s like there’s always this moment, this inevitable moment, where they can’t help themselves, and they have to…they all share fucking everything, is what it is. Whether it’s food or weapons or couches or video games or deep, shameful parts of Jason’s life that he’d rather no one know about. (Tim is currently in possession of one of the darkest secrets of Jason’s life and he hasn’t told ANYONE. Weirdly, that pisses off Jason, too, because how is he here in life, trusting TIM?). And he knows…how could he be mad at Stephanie? How the fuck is he supposed to find space to be MAD at her? But he wishes…He’d seen Bruce’s eyes. He knows Bruce doesn’t hate him, he knows…he just didn’t want to have to deal with this.
And he wishes Talia wasn’t in Gotham.
xxx
It happened to Bruce, too. That haunts Jason, once he starts to understand Bruce, once he starts to understand what Bruce lost. Bruce had to stand in an alley way and watch his parents die; Bruce had his parents’ blood on his hands. Bruce knows.
Jason wonders who Bruce is more like, if it’s him or Dick. Because on one hand, it was sudden, and he didn’t know at all. On the other hand, he had to stand there alone in that alley and wait. Maybe that’s what made Bruce the way he is. The waiting.
xxx
They stay away for exactly a week. He tries to make it obvious for them, during that week, that he’s alive—Red Hood stays extremely active and very visible, and he even Door Dashes on Dick’s card a couple of times to send the “I’m not being tortured signal.” He’s not…he doesn’t even know why he does it, to be honest. But he thinks about the look on Dick’s face when Jason woke up after being tortured and he thinks about Tim asking Dick “are you mad at me for losing Jason?” and he knows…he’s not trying to punish them.
At exactly one week, there’s a knock on his door. It’s a little too quiet for Stephanie, who he assumed they’d send, and a little too existent for Tim, who’s back on his entering through windows bullshit. Dick, then. He’s honestly surprised Dick made it this long. He opens the door, already bracing himself for the sad eyes.
It’s Damian.
He’s wearing a black hoodie with the hood up, half obscuring his eyeline, and sweatpants. He glares up at Jason. “Mother is gone,” he says. “May I come in?”
Jason stares at him for a second, before nodding. “Yeah. Yeah, okay,” he says, and he takes a step back so that Damian can brush past him, his hands digging into his hoodie pocket. Damian immediately slouches on the couch, eyes staring at a spot on the wall.
Jason has no idea what he’s supposed to do here. He thinks about being fourteen; he thinks about everything he knows about the League. He realizes that, like him, it would never occur to Damian to ask for food.
“Do you want something to eat?” He asks, looking around his kitchen. “Something to drink?”
“I have eaten today,” Damian responds grimly, and Jason nods.
“Yeah. That’s not what I asked.” He opens a cabinet. “I have ramen. And cereal. And…protein bars.”
Damian turns his head to blink at Jason over his shoulder. He turns back to his spot in the wall. “I will eat cereal,” he says, and Jason nods.
Okay, he thinks. He can do this. He can talk to Damian in a normal way.
He pours the cereal in two bowls and hands it to Damian, and Damian scowls. “This is mostly sugar,” he says, and Jason shrugs.
“Steph likes this kind.”
“You do so many things,” Damian says disdainfully, “because you think Stephanie will like it.”
Jason pushes down his immediate reaction, which is to snap back, and turns this idea over in his head. “Yeah,” he agrees finally. “I do.”
Damian squints at him, but he starts to eat the cereal, keeping his hood up. Jason chances a look at his phone, and then, without even fully considering the fact that he’s breaking his own silence, sends Dick a quick text: Damian’s here. In case you lost him.
The typing bubble pops up immediately from Dick’s side, and Jason puts the phone on do not disturb and slips it back into his pocket.
“So. Talia’s gone?”
“Please do not speak to me about my mother,” Damian snaps. Jason raises his eyebrows. “Everyone is so offended,” Damian continues, staring into his cereal bowl, “by however she treated you. She SAVED you. You’re alive, aren’t you? Why do we…why do we keep having to revisit her morality?”
Something inside of Jason bristles at the words she saved you, but. She did. And he thinks…he thinks about being fourteen. He thinks about having a mom. “Damian,” he says slowly, “I don’t hate her.”
“It doesn’t MATTER how you feel, apparently,” Damian continues, somehow managing to make eating cereal seem angry. “Because I…” he stops. “I don’t wish to discuss this any more,” he says after a pause. He finishes off his cereal, drinking the milk from the bowl. He actually looks fourteen, Jason realized with a start. He’s fourteen.
“Okay,” Jason says. “You wanna watch a movie?”
They watch Surf’s Up. It’s an unbelievably stupid movie, yeah, and Damian voices this opinion frequently throughout the first 30 minutes, but then he settles into it, burrowing further into the couch and into his hoodie as time goes on. It’s only when Jason starts hearing very soft snoring that he pulls his phone back out of his pocket and looks at the string of texts from Dick.
OH THANK GOD
dude is he ok
are you ok? if i can ask
visit with talia did NOT go well
let us know if you need backup
And then, after a thirty minute break:
im glad ur together
Something stirs in Jason’s chest, and he presses it as far down as he can. He sighs. He settles back into his chair, and, hearing another singular snore from Damian, closes his eyes. They can handle this when they wake up.
xxx
Talia saved him. He was nothing and then she made him. He would have died without her. She saved him. She saved him. She saved him.
She loved him and she took care of him and she saved him.
It took years for him to realize that she also pointed him at Gotham like a fucking missile.
xxx
Jason wakes up and Damian is staring at him. He’s such a little creep, this kid, but it’s so unabashed that it’s actually less annoying, somehow.
“That movie was ridiculous,” Damian spits out. “Those penguins should have been miserable in a tropical climate.”
“It’s a cartoon,” Jason mumbles, rubbing his face, and Damian glares at him.
“I’m not stupid,” he says, “and I’m not a child.” You’re fourteen, Jason holds back. “Why are you showing me children’s movies?”
Jason blinks at him. “For the record,” he says, “that movie has made both Dick and Steph laugh until they cried, okay? It wasn’t…it wasn’t pointed.” He sighs. “Next time we’ll watch Citizen Kane, yeah?”
He’s still glaring. “What the fuck is Citizen Kane.” Whenever Damian breaks his formal speech to sound like an actual teen it makes Jason have to hold back a laugh. “That sounds like a movie for old white men.”
Jason shrugs. “Yeah. Okay. Look, we can watch whatever the fuck YOU want next time, okay?”
Damian processed this and then relaxed, just a fraction. “Okay,” he acquiesces. “I want to watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre next time.”
“Okay,” Jason says. “Agreed.” They sit quietly for a moment, each sizing each other up, and Jason sighs. Goddammit, he has GOT to stop sighing. He’s too young for that shit. “Look, don’t answer if you don’t want to. But I feel like I have to ask. How was your mom?” Did she ask about me? He almost asks, but he realizes he doesn’t want to know the answer.
Damian frowns, staring at the black screen of the tv. “She is the same,” he says finally. “She is my mother. She…” he breaks off, working his jaw. God, he looks like Bruce. “They all hate her,” he says finally. “For what she did to you. For what…for what they say she did to me. And she…she is my mother.”
Jason used to not let Bruce talk about Catherine and Willis at all. He remembers that. That sinking feeling when he said something about them and he realized he’d just made them look bad in Bruce’s eyes; that nausea he’d get when he realized it was making it seem like they’d never cared for him. Bruce learned to talk about Jason’s childhood around them, avoiding any critiques of them directly because Jason couldn’t fucking stand it. He remembers.
“Sometimes,” Damian says slowly, still not looking at Jason, “I do not know what she wants from me. And I do not…I do not always like when she is here. Because I… I do not know how… but I do not hate her. I can’t. I…” he trails off, shoving his hands back in his hoodie pocket, chin jutting out.
Something awful, something gripping and heartbreaking and consuming washed over Jason, and he leans forward. “Damian,” he says seriously, waiting for him to meet his eyes, “my mother didn’t always feed me. And she was a drug addict. And she didn’t…she didn’t always protect me. And I would cut off my left leg right now and bleed out if it meant I could bring her back for three minutes. Do you understand that? I would…I loved her, Damian. I still do. I…no one wants you to watch your mother die, do you get that?” The feeling in his chest is threatening to crack him open. “We all know what that’s like. To have a dead parent. And you…no one wants that for you.”
Damian stares at him, emotion evident but completely indecipherable. He bits the inside of his cheek and then asks: “why do you not want my father to know how my mother felt about you?”
Jason breathes through his mouth and leans back in the chair. He thinks. “I’m embarrassed,” he finally admits. “Your mom, she saved me, and…she used me. And I thought…I thought I’d left that behind. The way that people could just…I wanted to be better than that. And I wasn’t. And it feels…when I was your age, the idea of Bruce loving me because I was a tool was…it was terrifying. And knowing that I let someone do it was…I’m fucking ashamed, man.”
Damian nods slowly, blinking a little too fast. “Sometimes I get confused,” he says quietly. “On when I am meant to be a weapon and when I am meant to be a son.”
“Yeah,” Jason whispers with an exhale. “Yeah.”
Damian nods again. “My mother should not have done that. You did not LET her do anything, she…she should not have turned you on Father like that.”
“Yeah,” Jason says. “Maybe not.” He taps his knee. “You should go home,” he says quietly. “Dick is worried about you.”
“Dick is worried about you, too,” Damian snaps, and Jason can’t help but smile.
“True,” he says. “So let’s go home together.”
xxx
Bruce is gone when they get back. He’s off somewhere fighting crime with his shit knee to process all of the complicated feelings he has about all of his children, apparently, but that just means that Jason is able to receive individualized and heartfelt apologies from Tim, Steph, and Dick with no oversight.
“My bad,” Tim says in passing in the hallway, while Stephanie plays him in Madden for three hours and then says: “that was on me, I’m sorry for spreading your shit. I was scared Dick was going to jump Talia, and also I wanted Bruce to be mad, too, but I was…I was prioritizing me having allies over you keeping your privacy, so. You know. Sorry.” And Jason says: “shut the fuck up” and everything is fine.
Dick is more complicated. He did NOT see Talia, apparently, so now he’s mad at Bruce AND worried about Damian AND sick to his stomach about upsetting Jason, so his apology takes about thirty minutes of pure stream of consciousness scattered with anecdotes about how much he loves hanging out with Jason and how he worries that Damian is too grown up and how actually, yeah, Bruce’s knee IS weird.
“I don’t understand why I’m so shit at, like, being a brother, and I wasn’t trying to blow up your spot with B, but I should have thought of that! I should have considered you first! And I’m so fucking sorry, the look on your face, I KNEW, and then the look on DAMIAN’S face, I’m so sorry man, I…and even now, like, is this a good apology? Or am I being too manipulative? I don’t KNOW, and I’m sorry, and-“
“DICK,” Jason snaps, “shut up. Shut up. Stop talking.” It works, thank God. “Look, I…I talked to Damian.”
“Yeah?” Dick asks, hope a little too evident on his face.
“Yeah,” Jason nods. “And…look, do you ever think about how he’s the only one that hasn’t lost a parent?”
Dick just stares.
“What if,” Jason continues, struggling to find the words to explain this part but trying anyways, “what if. What if he…what if he’s the fresh start. What if it’s not too late. What if…” he works his jaw. “What if we get to protect him?”
Dick keeps staring. “Okay,” he says slowly.
“What if we…if it’s not too late for him, Dick, then it means…” he trails off again, but Dick is nodding.
“Yeah,” Dick says. “Yeah. This time we get to do it right.”
“Yeah,” Jason says. “This time it’s not too late.”