Chapter Text
He had planned the details of this operation for two weeks straight, with great care and no little caution for his normal standards, and up until half an hour ago he was actually pretty damn pleased with himself for the results of his hard work. That’s why, if someone asked him right now how could he screw it all up so badly, Jason honestly wouldn’t know what to say to them (apart from fuck off, that is).
So, he’s trapped in a corner, he’s bleeding and he’s angry, and he’s so ready to kill anything that even looks at him the wrong way, let alone shoot at him like the thugs in front of him have been trying to do for the last half an hour, and of course - of course - that’s the moment when things get even worse.
He doesn’t see Damian. He doesn’t hear him either. Shit, he wouldn’t even know it’s Damian - what with the kid not wearing his Robin costume but just normal baggy teenager clothes - if not for the fact that there aren’t so many kids around Gotham who would willingly jumps in the middle of fights they so obviously have no business to do with. (There are a few others besides Damian, yes, but they’re all taller than this kid is) (and on top of that, Damian is kind of, you know, Jason’s brother).
So he’s trapped in a corner, he’s bleeding and he’s angry, and he also gets to watch a fucking kid - his fucking kid brother - jumping in the middle of his fight with no weapons, no kevlar protection and probably - because he knows him well enough at this point - not even the hint of a plan on his mind.
His adrenaline levels rise, instinct kicks in, and Jason gets back on his feet without even thinking about it. He starts shooting bullets, curses and swears indiscriminately at everything that moves - and let’s be honest, that should’ve been the preferred course of action all along, screw the planning thing, it never works anyway.
He’s going to kill Damian. Save his short ass first and then beat it black and blue. Tie him to his bed and let him watch while he burns everything the brat owns, clothes, knives, videogames, art supplies and carefully hidden toys (because Dick had spilled the bean about those, yeah). Take his pets away from him and give them to the local zoo.
His mind only stops rambling when he notices one of the snipers he was trying to distract turning his attention and his rifle away from him and towards Damian, and a thought - no, not even a thought, but an unavoidable certainty - freezes him to the bones.
Damian is going to die. Again.
And since Jason wasn’t there the first time, now he gets a front row ticket to the show. The best tickets you could get, ladies and gentleman!, a voice inside of his head starts screaming, a voice that sounds sickeningly similar to the Joker’s. And if you’re very very lucky, you’ll be even getting some of the blood on your faces! That’s how close you get to be! Isn’t this what family is for? Ah ah ah.
Jason’s panicking. He knows that. But knowing isn’t helping, and the split of time he was given to actually do something about it is already running out.
Meanwhile Damian delivers a mid-air kick to one of the thug's face, jumping closer to the sniper’s position and stepping even more clearly in his line of fire. Jason’s out of batarangs and the angle would be wrong anyway. Same goes for shooting first, no way he’s gonna hit the guy and that would probably just prompt him to shoot right back at Damian. So Jason does the only thing he can think of and dives for his brother, but he doesn’t have enough momentum, and the bullet goes off while he’s still too far away to shield the kid.
Jason’s heart skip a beat. Damian merely flips on his side and rolls on the ground. The bullet doesn’t even brushes him. He probably saw the sniper too, Jason realizes while he shifts on his feet to charge at the shooter without losing a beat. He’s going to kill him anyway. The thug first, Damian later.
He avoids two bullets fired at him in quick succession, then lands a good round of punches on the guy’s face. He’ll probably survive, but he’s gonna need a lot of reconstructive surgery to look as a human being again. Behind him Damian keeps drawing shouts and cries of pain, so Jason knows he’s doing okay. Still, his pulse doesn’t slow down. He can still taste the aftertaste of the fear in the back of his throat. He’s not gonna sleep well tonight. Or tomorrow. Or any night soon, probably.
Yes, Damian’s most definitely dead. Again.
-
Even with the newfound energy and Damian’s help, it takes them almost an hour to clear the docks, tie up everyone who’s still moving and retrieve the crates of weapons that were Red Hood’s primary purpose for this escapade.
Once everything’s done and the police’s sirens are on their way, Damian turns towards him with a smirk. It’s the first time that night Jason gets a good look at his face and he notices that he’s wearing the Robin domino mask. He’s unscathed, not even a scratch or a rim of sweat on his forehead. He actually looks quite content, and ready to start all over again.
“Well, that was easy. Is this how you usually spend your weekends, Hood? Being a living target practice for half-witted goons?”, he taunts.
Jason barely register he’s even speaking. He loads the last crate on his van and secures it with a lock, then gets up on his feet and takes off his helmet in one swift movement. When he finally turns to look at his brother, quickly and without even the hint of a warning, he grabs him by his wrist, pulling him toward himself. He peels the domino mask from his face and throws it away before Damian has even the time to understand what’s happening to him.
“What the fuck were you thinking?”, he growls in his face, all the adrenaline of the night still pumping his blood, loading his voice with a low key promise of violence and pain, and Damian’s so startled by his reaction he actually tries to take a step back, eyes widening in alarm. “What the fuck are you even doing here without your costume? Are you fucking suicidal?”
“Release me!”, Damian shouts back once the surprise fades away. He struggles uselessly against him, and for some reason that only serves to fuel Jason’s fury. He catches the flailing fist the kid’s trying to hit him with and uses his grip on him to shake him like he’s nothing more than a ragdoll until he actually hears the rattling of his teeth.
“I said. What the fuck. Were you thinking”, he asks again, voice like a thunder, fear and anger numbing him to everything else.
“I saved your sorry ass, you simple-minded ruffian!”, Damian screams.
“You almost got yourself killed again, you fucking minikin!”, Jason screams back.
Damian does his best interpretation of a feral growl and tries to headbutt him in the stomach. Jason shifts just in time and his hipbone promises him revenge in the form of a big, fat bruise. Jason can almost feel it blooming on his skin already. He loses his balance for the split of a second and Damian, relentless as ever, takes the opportunity to bite his hand too. Jason snarls, blocks a direct kick to his knee, and having finally had enough, he straightens up in his full height.
And Damian may be a high skilled assassin baby with the equivalent of twenty years or more of hard training on his little shoulders, but he’s also a tiny eleven years old kid, and Jason is the size of a mountain compared to him. So when he grabs him by the collar of his shirt and lifts him up in the air to slam him against the nearest wall, Damian can’t do anything else but yelping in pain and looking completely stunned for a moment, just like any other regular kid would.
Then again, this is Damian, so the moment passes and he quickly resumes his fight by jerking into his grip and digging all of his ten nails into the skin of Jason’s wrist, while also loading a kick that will do no favor to his ribs - that if Damian actually gets to land it, of course. But he doesn’t.
He doesn’t because, again, Damian may be angry, but Jason is angrier. Furious. And for a white hot moment he wants nothing more than to stop defending himself and actually hit the kid back. He wants to beat him until he's crying and fucking apologizing for this entire mess. Which… would be unfair, considering that most of this mess is definitely Jason’s fault.
He closes his eyes. Breathes. Counts to five. Opens his eyes again.
“Damian”, he calls, more calmly.
Damian keeps squirming, still trying to kick him. Jason counts to five again.
“Damian, that was a show of monumental stupidity and you are smart enough to know it”, half a praise, half an insult. That was Dick’s advice on how to deal with the kid (except Dick may have said scolding instead of insult. But whatever).
Anyway, it works - of course it does - and the kid actually looks up at him. Jason doesn’t let go of his shirt but shifts his grip so that he’s not leaning all his weight on the kid’s chest anymore and Damian can take a deep breath too. They look at each other for a long, uncomfortable minute, then Damian finally caves in.
“You needed the help”, he reproaches Jason, who’s not hypocrite enough to deny it.
“I could’ve used Robin’s help, maybe, not Damian Wayne’s.”
“Tt. I had my mask on, there’s no way any of them could identify-”
“Not the goddamn point, kid.”
Damian pouts and looks down at his feet dangling well above the ground. He looks… deflated. Like he’s actually offended at Jason for getting angry at him.
“Put me down”, he orders, kicking him lightly in the stomach.
Jason eyes him for a moment before complying. Damian straightens up and adjusts his clothes with as much dignity as he can muster - which is still a lot, all things considered. Jason gives him some space while he recovers the green domino mask and pockets it.
“Now, do you want to tell me what the hell are you doing around Gotham in your civvies? And no smartass answers, you stepped on the limit of my patience two years ago.”
Damian doesn't look at him. He’s still pouting and the tip of one of his sneakers is aggressively pounding the ground, and if Jason didn’t know any better, he would say that the kid’s fidgeting.
“I was taking a walk”, comes the grudgingly answer.
Jason’s mouth twitches and he has to remind himself that swatting kids is a bad thing to do, even when you are the Red Hood and the kid is Damian.
“...you were taking a walk. In the middle of the night. On Gotham’s docks.”
Damian scowls at him.
“It’s not like I can go home”, he sputters, and oh. Oh.
Jason runs a hand over his face. He never thought about that. Fuck Bruce. Fuck Dick, too.
“Please tell me you haven’t been roaming around Gotham’s streets since that shit with Bruce went down.”
Damian looks at him like he’s a crazy person.
“Of course not, Todd. Do I look like a street rat to you?”
Jason wisely decides not to answer that.
“Okay, look, if you need a place to stay-”, he’s not sure about what he’s going to say next because his plan for the night didn’t include adopting homeless little brothers. Then again, there were obviously a lot of things that his initial plan for the night didn’t included at all.
“I have a place to stay”, Damian interrupts him. “It doesn’t matter. He's going to send me back anyway.”
Jason blinks, taken aback by that.
“Who's going to send you where?”
“Drake.”
“What?”
“He's going to send me back to Grandfather. He’s my legal guardian now, so it is in his power to do so, since Father can’t stop him.”
Jason blinks at him again, but Damian’s only reaction is crossing his arm over his chest and sheepishly look at his shoes, like he’s embarrassed to have confided that much to Jason. Which means that he actually believes in what he just said.
“Tell me you are kidding”, Jason pleads, but he already knows Damian’s not kidding at all. It’s all in his posture, in the way he’s angrily chewing his bottom lip and avoiding Jason’s eyes. And suddenly Jason has a sneaky suspicion that Damian had seek him out on purpose tonight, and that helping him deal with a bunch of thugs was his… Damian-esque way to ask Jason to help him back with this crazy deportation theory thing with Tim.
“Oh for the love of-”, he sighs, kneeling in front of the kid. “Okay smurf, just tell me the story from the beginning, yeah?”
-
It’s 3.00 AM, Tim Drake is wearing the top half of his best suit over his pajama's trousers and he's not even ashamed of it. He doesn't mind having a conference in the middle of the night to accommodate a client calling from the other side of the world, and he's not hypocritical enough to mourn the loss of sleep that he wouldn't be having anyway, but it's been a long, long week, and he's tired. So tired that he barely reacts when his front door opens with a bang and Jason Todd bursts into his living room, tugging along with him a reluctant Damian Wayne by his hand.
“As for the results of the second semester-”, Tim's saying, and then he glances up from his laptop to stare at the two figures standing in the doorframe. Jason’s in his costume, Damian is not, but they both look tired and ruffled, like after a patrol gone wrong. He looks at Jason's face, then at Damian's, then at the way Jason's holding Damian's hand. He closes the ledger in front of him and smiles politely at the computer's screen.
“-They are not ready yet, but I'll inform you as soon as the numbers come in. Thank you”, he finishes, closing the laptop. Bit rude, but as previously stated, Tim's tired. He looks back at his brothers, who – quite surprisingly, to be honest – have yet to spoke a single word.
“So... what happened?”, he asks, bracing himself for the answer. He doesn't know what else could happen, what with Dick gone and the whole Bruce's amnesia affair and the demon brat now living with him, but he learnt long ago to not underestimate the amount of shit his life can manage to throw at him at the same moment. Besides, this is Jason and Damian holding hands. That's an alarm bell of its own.
Jason gives him a hard stare. He’s standing tall and angry, and looks like he wants to punch someone (probably Tim). Which is not his worst mood, because at least he doesn’t look like he wants to kill someone (again, probably Tim). Maybe the situation’s not so bad. Maybe.
“Kiddo here crashed my operation”, Jason starts slowly, shaking Damian by his hand.
“I did not-”, Damian tries to interject, but Jason doesn’t pay him any attention.
“Almost got both of us killed.”
Damian looks up at him angrily and Tim knows that the grip of his little hand must be bone-crushing by now, even if Jason looks totally unbothered by it.
“Your incompetency at doing your job is not my problem, Todd. Beside it was you who-”
Again, Jason completely ignores him.
“I was going to give him a piece of my mind about that, but turns out this entire mess it's actually your fault”, he concludes, still looking at Tim.
Damian doesn't add anything to that. Which is surprising. And honestly worrying.
Tim just sighs, fingers rubbing his temples. He looks again back and forth between his two brothers and for a moment he finds himself at loss of words.
“How- how it is my fault?”
Jason raises an eyebrow, and Damian suddenly finds a very interesting spot on the floor to stare at.
“Apparently you told him you were going to send him back.”
Tim tilts his head to the side.
“I told him…”, he slowly repeats. “What? Back where?”
“To Ra's”, Jason quietly growls. And if looks could kill, right now Tim would be dying in a very horrible way. But it's Jason the attempting eye-murderer. Damian's still busy studying the pattern of his floor tiles.
Tim doesn't understand. Yes, he and Damian had an argument today, one that ended with the littlest Wayne stomping out of his apartment in a cloud of holy rage, but that was hardly news to anyone. And yes, there were insults and threats thrown back and forth between the two of them, but again, no news there - if anything their squabbles were getting kinda repetitive and boring. So no, he doesn’t understand. Not right away.
“I never told him-”, he starts, then something clicks and he pauses, sighs again, and barely refrains himself from banging his head into the desk. “Oh my god- it was a joke. I told him that if he didn't behave I would send him back to where he came from- and I didn’t mean Ra’s. I actually meant, you know, Hell. But it was a joke! Like, telling your siblings that they've been found in a trash-can and adopted out of pity joke? Or that you'll sell them to the circus joke?”
That's enough to spark Damian's anger. Tim tones out his snarky remarks at being the only blood son because he’s heard them quite enough, thank you very much. But for all the insults and angry shouts, there’s still something off about Damian. Something that says he’s defensive, and insecure and… scared. The idea that Damian - Jesus, Damian - could be scared of him is… Tim doesn’t have a word for it. It’s just not something that makes sense.
He looks up at Jason again, almost gaping.
“It was a joke, Jason”, he repeats weakly.
“Good thing that you remembered that the kid here has a good sense of humor then”, Jason retorts. And well, he’s not wrong.
Tim looks back at Damian’s scowling face. He wants to remind the brat that when he needed a place to stay he had took him in without batting an eye and despite their conflicting relationship, but he doesn’t know how to say it without making it sound like Damian owns him for that, which is not the point Tim wants to make.
“I fought Ra’s when he tried to take your body”, he reminds him then, because it’s the only thing he can came up with at the moment.
“Father made you do it”, the kid promptly snarls back.
“No, he-”, Tim starts, then bits his lips. “No, I would’ve done it anyway.”
Damian doesn’t answer, but he has this look of mighty disbelief plastered all over his face, and Tim instantly knows that there’s no convincing this kid. And maybe he’s right anyway, because back then Tim had been in a very dark place and yeah, Damian was not exactly on the list of his good actions. But that was then, and this is now, and things have changed. They may not be friends yet, but he can’t think of Damian as anything else but his younger brother (and an annoyance, of course, but that kind of goes with the word).
Yet it's pretty clear that with Bruce and Dick gone, Damian thinks he doesn't have a family anymore. And well, it's not like he doesn't have his own right reasons to think so. But.
“This is so stupid”, Tim mutters, closing his eyes and hiding his face behind his hands. He wants a coffee. He wants to sleep. He wants to never tell a joke again in his life.
When he reopens his eyes Jason and Damian are still standing in front of him, looking as much tired and angry as he feels. Tim sucks in a breath, realizing that he’s going to have to apologize, and even if he kind of see the point of it, he still doesn’t like it.
Jason's not going to help him either, that's pretty much clear. Even if he's not butting in, he's still standing beside Damian, and he has still not let go of the kid, even if the back of his hand is a battlefield of scratches and- yes, those are definitely bite marks. Jason knows how to make statements without a single word being spoken, and in any other situations Tim would probably laugh at the ridiculousness of all of this.
He stands up and walks around the desk to kneel in front of Damian, close enough to touch him but also leaving enough room between the two of them to shield himself from an eventual attack. Caution is one of the first things you learn when you’re around Damian Wayne.
“Look, I know things are complicated right now. And I know that complicated is the understatement of the century”, he quickly adds when both Damian and Jason click their tongues at him - and oh my god, is that a family thing now? “But they had been complicated before, and honestly, I don’t think they’re ever going to be not complicated, because we are who we are and all of that, but. But you’ve been around enough to know how this works now. We take the hit, we regroup and we go on. And we always, always, protect our own.”
Or at least what’s left of them, he adds mentally. And it’s not the best speech of his relatively brief and not really brilliant older brother’s career, but Damian’s frown lightens a bit, and the kid doesn’t look so angry and hurt anymore.
“No one will send you anywhere, Damian. I’m sorry if I said something that made you think so, it wasn’t in my intentions”, Tim adds anyway, just to be crystal clear about the entire affair, since Damian’s not one for subtleties. “And if Ra’s ever tries to take you back, we’ll kick his ass again, Bruce or not Bruce. Okay?”
Damian just clicks his tongue again.
“Tt. Like I would require your assistance”, he retorts. Then he seems to realize that holding his older brother’s hand while saying so kind of ruins the aesthetic of it, so he gives Jason an annoyed tug, and this time his brother allows him to free his hand. He doesn’t spare him a teasing smile and a quick hair ruffle, though.
“Well, you have it anyway, smurf”, he adds, butting into their discussion for the first time. “Besides, Timbo wasn’t talking about just the two of us, you know?”
“Yeah”, Tim cuts in. “Steph and Cass would love to take a swing at Ra’s, and Barbara always had some sort of personal grudge against him. Oh, and Alfred will probably put on the cape and the cowl himself- and let me tell you, he's going to be ten times more terrifying than Bruce or Dick ever were.”
Jason laughs, loud and clear. Damian scrunches up his nose in that funny way he does when he's trying not to smile.
“Pennyworth would make a worthy protector and a mighty opponent”, he concedes, and now it’s Tim’s turn to hide a smile.
“Glad we can agree on something.”
“Tt.”
Jason yawns and stretches his back, producing an annoying sound of crackling bones first and then a wince.
“Alright nerds. Now that the crisis has been resolved, and before I ground your ass and kick yours”, he says, pointing at Damian and then at Tim respectively. “I need food, alcohol, disinfectant and a forceps. In this exact order. I forgot I was bleeding out and after all this sweet talking about family and whatnot I think I’d definitely feel guilty if I died again.”