Chapter Text
“This,” Jason says solemnly, a lit cigarette dangling between two forefingers, “Is some grade A bullshit.”
It’s late evening, around 9 PM, but still early by Damian’s internal clock. Jason won’t be out on patrol for at least another hour, which is why he’s perched on Jason’s fire escape, talking to the other vigilante through his bedroom window. Jason’s still fully inside, due to the gentle snowfall that’s leaving gray-white snowflakes drifting on Damian’s cape. Somehow, probably due to Gotham’s persistent pollution problem, the snow seems dirty even before it hits the filthy streets.
“I’m just letting you know,” he says, irritably brushing some snow off his shoulder and then frowning at the wet smear it leaves on his glove. “Now we’re even.”
Jason scoffs, the sound accompanied by a gust of cigarette smoke.
“Look, kid, dropping by and being like, ‘You’re about to be guilted into an awkward Christmas dinner’ is not the same as me hauling your unconscious ass out of the river.”
Damian’s frown deepens.
“I’ll keep that in mind next time I consider doing you a favor, Todd.”
Jason takes a long pull from the cigarette instead of answering, and Damian shifts a little bit, the fire escape creaking under his weight. It’s below freezing outside, and even his best fur lined boots aren’t doing much to keep out the chill. It doesn’t seem to bother Jason, though, who’s standing in front of the open window in a lightweight Henley and a pair of sweatpants.
“Did Alf mention how many other people he’s planning on dragging into this shitshow,” he asks finally.
Damian shrugs.
“Everyone, I suspect.”
Jason nods absently, starring at a point just to the left of Damian’s head as he thinks. To distract himself from his cramping legs, Damian examines Jason’s bedroom. It’s very clean, certainly cleaner than Drake’s apartment, or Brown’s. There’s a pile of books on the nightstand, mostly heavy looking hardcovers, and the desk off to the side is covered with weapons and body armor. And, of course, lying on top of the bedspread is a german shepard with its big black and brown head pillowed on its paws as it watches Jason with soft, dark eyes. Almost as if in response to Damian’s attention, it lets out a low huff of a bark and jumps down with a clack of claws, walking towards the window with its tail whipping back and forth. Jason starts slightly, and looks down and then immediately back up at Damian.
“Anyway, come inside. You’re letting the snow in.”
Instead, Damian stands and shakes the snow off his hood.
“No, I’m supposed to be sweeping downtown.”
Jason, caught in the middle of leaning down to ruffle his dog’s ears, looks back up at Damian with a frown. Then he shrugs, fumbles in his pocket for a moment, and then pulls out his pack of cigarettes and offers an unlit one to him.
“It’s cold out there,” he says by way of explanation.
Damian takes the cigarette wordlessly, but offers Jason a faint nod before he pulls his grappling gun off his belt and launches himself off the fire escape.
He runs into Cassandra within fifteen minutes of leaving crime alley, although perhaps “run into” isn’t quite the right phrase. He’d been swinging between buildings on Wells Street when he’d suddenly had a shadow, lithe and quiet, and when he’d landed, Cassandra had landed beside him with barely a crunch of ice to betray her presence. She hooks a clawed finger into the dark balaclava she’s wearing and pulls it down so that he can see the bottom of her face and the small smile she’s wearing.
“Merry Christmas,” she says.
“Not yet. It’s not even ten.”
“Christmas eve, then.”
He grunts in reply, and then they’re both interrupted by Oracle’s voice in their ears, directing them to a liquor store robbery. Batgirl joins them on the way, and between the three of them it’s a quick fight.
“Who robs a liquor store on Christmas Eve,” Brown grumbles when they’re done.
It’s muffled slightly since the bottom of her face is still covered, and she’s chaffing at her arms as they settle themselves on the edge of a roof across the street to keep an eye on things until the police show up.
“Thieves,” Cassandra says.
Brown rolls her eyes. “Thanks, Cassie.”
It’s an inane thing to talk about, and Damian is about to point this out when Cassandra speaks again instead.
“Are you coming?” She asks, looking over at Brown. “Tomorrow?”
Now Brown isn’t meeting her eyes, her wrist computer apparently having suddenly become completely enthralling.
“I dunno, Cassie.”
“You should,” Cassandra says, nodding slowly. “It is not good to be alone on Christmas.”
“I’d just be alone for the evening,” she says quickly. “Mom and I are having a big Christmas lunch before she has to go in for the night shift.”
“Still.”
There’s silence for a moment, broken only by the squeal of a distant siren and the sound of Brown fiddling with her gauntlet nervously.
“It’d be weird,” she says, finally. “Right, Dami? It’d be weird.”
“No weirder than Todd being there.”
Now he has both of the girls’ eyes on him.
“Jason’s coming?” Brown asks, faintly incredulously. “He actually said yes?”
Damian shrugs.
“He will.”
Cassandra lets out a quiet huff of laughter, and then says, “Alfred.”
Brown laughs too.
“That makes sense. I guess the old man is tired of fooling around. It’s hard to say no when he’s standing right in front of you, looking all… British. And disappointed.”
“Exactly,” Cassandra says. “So you should come.”
A groan.
“Cassie.”
The argument having now circled back to where it began, Damian turns his attention back to the street. The two trussed up thieves are still lying on the sidewalk outside the store, and he can see the store owner through the window. He’s pacing, jittery, with a phone pressed up to his ear, and he’s continually glancing out at the men on the sidewalk. It isn’t much of a way for the man to be spending Christmas Eve, Damian thinks dispassionately. Not to mention it’s cold, cold enough that he wishes the GCPD would hurry up so that they could start moving again. Instead, he pulls Jason’s gift cigarette out of a pouch on his belt and lights it. The smoke is warm in his chest, but he only gets to take a single drag before Cassandra plucks it out of his hand. He half expects her to stub it out, but instead she takes a drag herself.
“Bad for you,” she says with a faint smile. “Should not get in the habit.”
He doesn’t dignify that with a response, instead taking the cigarette back from her.
“You’re both disgusting,” Brown says. “And the smoke smells awful. It’s bad enough that Jason’s, like, entire existence smells like it without the two of you smelling like it too.”
Cassandra shrugs and, when Damian offers it to her, takes another drag.
“It is cold,” she finally says.
“You’re ridiculous,” Brown says, and is then cut off from any further criticism by the appearance of a GCPD squad car down below. “Ok, now let’s get out of here. I’m freezing.”
Cassandra and Brown had split off from him after the liquor store to sweep the north side of the city, leaving the waterfront to him. It’s even colder down by the water than it is in the rest of the city, and it leaves Damian chafing absentmindedly at his arms as he looks out across the water. The river is reflecting the city lights in a rippling mosaic of white and pale yellow, and, for once, the docks are completely silent. He’d checked all the usual hotspots, the shipping containers where the Black Mask’s gang usually stores their shipments and the Gotham Port Authority building that’s been burned down so many times by rival gangs that it’s one of Gotham’s few municipal buildings that looks almost new, but apparently Gotham’s more professional criminal element has decided to take the night off. Then, there are steps on the roof behind him, and he stiffens until he recognizes them, only to start slightly when Richard slings an arm around his shoulders.
“Hey, lil’ D,” he says, as usual ignoring the irritated sound Damian makes at the arm and the nickname. “All clear here?”
“Yes,” he says shortly. “Which is something you could’ve asked over the comms.”
“I was in the neighborhood.”
It’s a lie, but a cheerful one, and Damian is sure that if he looked over, Richard would be smiling. But he doesn’t, and Richard pulls Damian closer to his side, chafing at his arm.
“Anyway,” Richard continues. “I was hoping you could run an errand for me.”
Richard is very warm and, like Jason, seems unbothered by the cold. If it weren’t for Brown, he’d think that he’s the only person in the whole damn city who’s affected by the temperature.
“What kind of errand.”
Richard reaches into a pouch on his belt and holds out a flash drive.
“I need to head back to Blüdhaven for a few hours, but I found some useful intel for Batwoman on a pair of gun smugglers she’s been looking into. Could you run this over to her tonight?”
Damian crosses his arms across his chest.
“Why isn’t Oracle doing this?”
There’s a slight tightening in Richard’s jaw, which is all Damian needs to see in order to know that they’ve had a fight, but it’s gone as soon as it appears, and he smiles easily.
“Are you saying you won’t run an errand for your favorite brother?”
Damian doesn’t grace that with an answer, just swipes the flash drive out of Richard’s hand and puts it into one of his own belt pouches.
“Thanks, Damian.”
Richard’s voice is full of genuine warmth, and he rubs Damian’s arm once more before he removes his arm from around Damian’s shoulders and fires a jump line to take him back down to the street. Damian watches him go, refusing to shiver.
It’s laid out in tableau before him. Batwoman—well, like this, she’s Kate, his aunt or at least something close to it—standing by her kitchen table with wig and cowl discarded on the couch behind her. It’s dark in the apartment, but she’s lit with the pale golden flame of a single lit candle, held gently between thumb and forefinger, and she’s looking down at the menorah with its unlit candle in front of her. She cuts a strange figure, standing there in uniform with a sweat spiked crew cut and her heavy black cape sweeping the floor about her feet. She’d taken off her gloves but not her gauntlets, and she’s reciting in Hebrew.
“Barukh atah…”
She doesn’t look up until she’s finished, carefully lighting the other candle before placing the first one in the middle holder. It’s hard to tell in the half light, but Damian thinks she looks uncomfortable. It doesn’t show in her voice.
“Did you need something,” she asks, flatly, as she gently lifts the menorah off the table and sets it on the sill of the window over her kitchen sink.
“Um,” Damian says.
She turns back to him, lifts an eyebrow.
“I thought you were supposed to light those at sunset,” he says, train of thought completely derailed.
As soon as the words leave his mouth, he winces. It hardly seems the thing to say, correcting her on rituals he’s never performed himself. To his surprise, though, the corner of her mouth twitches.
“At sunset, I was up in the rafters of a warehouse down by the wharfs waiting for some weapons smugglers to show up. I’m sure he understands.” A faint ironic tilt of her head upwards.
“You’re an atheist,” Damian says, leaving the windowsill where he’d been perched in favor of walking around the table to get a better look at the menorah. There isn’t one in the manor.
Kate shrugs.
“It’s complicated.”
He glances over at her. She has her arms crossed across her chest, and her face is, as usual, inscrutable. So he’s surprised when she continues.
“My mother always used to make sure that we’d celebrate the first night together. Used to make latkes and everything.”
He nods, turns back towards the candles. It’s answer enough, even though he doesn’t really have a frame of reference for it himself. They stand there in silence for a little while, watching the candles burn, until Damian finally shakes himself a little and pulls the flash drive out of the pouch on his belt.
“Intel,” he says, holding it out to her. “From Richard, on your gun smugglers.”
She takes it, and then salutes him slightly with it.
“Thank you.”
He nods and has already turned back to the living room window he had entered through when she speaks again.
“Chag Sameach, Damian.”
He pauses, and then turns back.
“Chag Sameach, Kate.”
The words feel strange on his tongue, but his aunt smiles at him, a soft smile that, for once, reaches her eyes.
He takes his time on the way back, and when he finally enters the cave, everyone has already showered and staggered their way upstairs to their warm beds. Even Alfred and his father are gone, and the only person visible is Duke, sitting in the chair in front of the computer. He minimizes what he was looking at when he hears the dull roar of Damian’s cycle, but not before he catches a glimpse of the picture. Two adults, a woman with dark skin and long box braids and a man who is much taller than her, standing next to a child. The woman has her arms wrapped around him, and the man has a hand resting on his head, and the child is clearly Duke. Damian doesn’t mention it.
“Your Dad’s upstairs in the study,” Duke says, spinning the chair around to face Damian as he comes up the stairs from the vehicle garage. “Mr. Pennyworth forced him up ‘cause he thinks he’s coming down with a cold.”
“Unlikely,” Damian says.
“What, does The Batman not get colds?”
That actually hadn’t been what Damian had meant at all, but he doesn’t much want to point out that Alfred had purposefully given Duke his space, so instead he summons up an inner voice that sounds suspiciously like Jason in his head.
“He is the night.”
Duke laughs, a startled sound.
“Man, it really must be Christmas if you’re making jokes. A regular Christmas miracle.”
Damian rolls his eyes and stalks off towards the showers, Duke still laughing behind him. He’s careful not to let the other boy see his smile.