Work Text:
From the building opposite Jason's favorite safe house, Damian watched the scene below. His face twisted in annoyance, pulling at the glue holding his domino in place, but the feeling was nonetheless tempered by curiosity. Blood was slowly soaking into his gauntlet but he hadn't yet decided whether going inside or back to the Manor for medical treatment would be the lesser evil.
If Father found out he had been injured it would kick off an extensive investigation into why said gauntlets had not held up to the perfectly ordinary knife the mugger had been carrying. Which would put Robin out of commission for far too long. Not to mention the ridiculous way Father always reacted to his injuries: as if they were the end of the world and required a week of soul searching and yet another complete philosophical examination of the pros and cons of the family's vigilante calling.
Going home via Todd’s apartment had seemed to be by far the better option, but that had been without factoring in his relationship with Dick. Not that Damian had an issue with that relationship. He had simply been expecting Dick to be in Bludhaven, not on Jason's couch.
Todd would have patched him up with a few snide comments and zero fussing or soul searching. Grayson was a very different proposition and the unexpected obstacle to what had been a perfectly good plan was annoying.
On the other hand, it was rather fascinating to watch the two ex-Robins together. Dick seemed to be watching something on TV, judging by the flickering lights and the way he was gesturing. Jason was emphatically not watching the TV, his head was resting on one of Grayson’s thighs and his nose was firmly buried in a book, long legs dangling off the end of the couch.
The book was to be expected, Damian had found him sprawled in Nanda Parbat’s library, racing through the fortress’ english language books, more times than he cared to remember. But putting up with someone talking? With unnecessary background noise? That was unusual.
Todd had been so many things through the years Damian had known him. First, a catatonic teenager who'd drifted around Nanda Parbat like the zombie he liked to name himself. Then, a vessel for the Pit and its side effects, a journeyman training alongside Damian, an assassin aimed at Batman, a crime lord, a vigilante, a brother. And now a lover.
All those roles should not have fit into one person.
No one Damian had spent time with had been this multifaceted. Even Father and Mother, while very complex people, had one or two drives in their life that determined their actions. That intense focus was part of what made them forces to be reckoned with. Most powerful people were like that. But not Jason.
Todd's complexities had illuminated those within Grayson as well. When studying Mother's files on Nightwing, Damian would never have expected him to be able to maintain a relationship with a figure such as Red Hood. And yet here he was, carding his fingers through Todd's hair.
It had, perhaps, not been long enough to call the match successful but it seemed to be going remarkably well considering the pressures inherent in close relationships for the metas and masks. Better than any other relationship Damian had been in a position to observe.
Damian clearly remembered the day when his mother had brought Todd to Nanda Parbat. It had been less than a month after Damian's coming of age ceremony and he’d been glad of the distraction. His grandfather had originally planned Damian’s first kill for his tenth birthday, although he had frequently told Talia that Damian was old enough, and skilled enough, to face the trial earlier. Damian had been proud to hear him say it and confused as to why Talia had argued against it. But their disagreement had come to nothing in the end. Shortly after his eighth birthday, Damian had been kidnapped during a training exercise in the mountains. He’d been taken to a bustling city or town, he still wasn’t sure which. He’d listened to his captors whisper around him as they’d travelled and learned that they’d originally planned to ransom him. But several had grudges against the League and argued for his death, or at least torture.
When Talia and her team had found him his captors were dotted around the little house, cold and stiff, victims of the poison he’d added to the drinking water. He still had nightmares about the cat that had drunk from the unattended water glasses, its open, foggy eyes had stared right through him as Talia had led him from the room.
So his coming of age ceremony had been and gone before he was eight and a quarter, and he had become a part of the League by action as well as by blood. Ra’s had been pleased, if a little irritated that his specific plans for the event would never come to pass. Two weeks after, Talia had taken a trip to Gotham and returned with Todd.
Damian had been very curious, outsiders were a rarity, and that curiosity had only grown when she'd informed him that this was one of his own father's adoptive sons, formerly presumed dead. The interest had, of course, waned when Todd's catatonia had persisted for weeks and then months.
Then Todd had surprised him, Damian had been in the training salles practicing hand to hand against multiple opponents. The men assigned to train him that day were not fond of him and he had never looked forward to their slots on his training schedule, especially as a pair. But they were well aware of the penalties they would incur for damaging him more than was necessary. He hadn't been in any danger.
And yet, when, to his lasting shame, he had let a little of his discomfort creep into his voice, he'd found his trainers quickly unconscious at his feet and Todd swaying at his side.
The team who had been putting Todd through his paces on the other side of the salle followed him over warily. Mother might not have decided on a solution for Todd's catatonia but she wasn't about to let his body or skills waste away. It had been established early on that any aggression towards Todd would stimulate defensive reactions and it became a rotating duty to goad or encourage (depending on the temperament of the League member assigned the duty) him into sparring. But he'd never acted aggressively without provocation before.
One of the two men who'd been sparring with Jason headed for Damian, presumably to extract him from the volatile situation, and was quickly battered to the floor by Jason's fists and a perfectly executed spinning kick combination.
Heart pounding unpleasantly, Damian noted the way Todd had moved to keep his own body in between Damian and the perceived threat. One of the men on the ground had stirred and tried to rise, Todd’s head moved to track the movement like a cat with a bird it had yet to finish killing.
“Enough,” Damian said as calmly as he could manage to the injured trainers. “Stay down.”
It was his responsibility as an Al-Ghul to resolve the situation without any unnecessary loss of life, if that was possible. He moved slowly to Todd, heart beating harder than he would have liked. He took the older boy’s hand.
“Jason, come. We will go to the gardens.”
He’d recounted the incident to Mother that evening, long after an unresponsive Jason had been escorted from the gardens. She had listened attentively, eyes alight with interest as she combed out her hair. The scent of almonds always hung around her from the hair oil she used. Whenever some fancy Gotham party served marzipan Damian wanted to be back in Nanda Parbat so badly it hurt.
“It seems the training your father gave him runs deep,” she’d said. “Impressive. We shall have to separate your training sessions.”
It had been as she commanded, as it always was. But he’d never seen those trainers that had prompted Todd’s unnecessary defense again.
He didn't know to what extent the incident affected his Mothers decision to immerse Todd in the Lazarus Pit. But the next time his grandfather was absent Mother had seized the opportunity. Damian hadn't been present for that but he had seen the aftermath. He presumed that familiarizing him with the effects of the Pit had been part of his mother's plan. She rarely missed an opportunity to find multiple ways to benefit from any given situation, after all. The way Todd had torn apart restraints and guards alike had scared him more than it should have. He had been eight years old after all, plenty old enough to stand his ground, especially with his mother, the incomparable Talia al Ghul, at his side. When he’d gone to bed that night he’d seen poison green light behind his eyelids and the way that light had poured from Todd’s eyes and mouth as he screamed until he spat blood and destroyed anything or anyone within reach lingered in his dreams.
Mother had told him before that the Pit was no panacea. That, like all power, it was a double edged sword. Yes, it had done much for their family. But it was also the reason his mother did not always trust his grandfather’s ability to make the right decisions, why she avoided leaving Damian alone with Ra’s. And why she particularly did not trust him in the months or years after he emerged from the Pit.
Damian had been unsure whether her worries were really justified, excited by the idea of the magic in the Pit. Ra’s always said she treated him too much like a child and not enough like Ibn al Xu’ffasch. But seeing the effect of the Pit on Todd had been concerning and he’d resolved to watch and see what happened to him in the long term.
Progress in those first few days and weeks had been slow. The Pit had taken Todd from catatonic, far past sanity and into blind rage and infinite aggression. Mother had assigned rotating squads of fighters in full armor to wear him out to a point where he had bled off enough energy that he could be restrained without ripping his joints from their sockets. From there, the times when he was coherent enough to speak and listen slowly increased.
Damian had been present when Todd had first been told where he was and how he had come to be there. Then about the regenerative powers of the Lazarus Pit and the accompanying Pit Rage; the reason why he was still only intermittently in control of his body and mind.
Todd had laughed, raw and cracking, pulling instinctively at the padded restraints he was wearing. Damian was still unused to the sound of his heavily accented english, Jason had been a silent shadow in their halls for so long.
"Pit…rage? From…Ra's fountain of youth? I'm...a fucking rage…zombie?" He panted and gasped, the sounds grotesque from his torn throat. His eyes rolled back in his head and flared green. His head dropped down, chin to chest and for a few long seconds there was nothing but the rattle of his breathing, then he spoke again, tone turned menacing, then taunting. "Rage. Rage, against the dying of the light... Wise men at their end know dark is right."
Damian looked up at his mother.
"What does that mean?"
Talia was frowning thoughtfully.
"It's from a poem. About men’s reactions to the approach of death."
"With rage and raving," continued Todd in a more normal, if labored, voice. “Isn’t that right, Al Ghul?” He laughed again, raising his head, eyes glittering. "Seems it's how we react to returning to life as well."
Damian looked up at his mother again. She was still frowning.
"Mother?"
She just shook her head.
"I'll teach it to you sometime, little demon." Todd said, interrupting. His eyes had dimmed to nearly all blue as he calmed again. "Sometime when I'm…not…"
"Raving," Damian finished for him, a little wary and not happy with the disrespectful nickname.
Nevertheless, he didn’t need his mother’s reaction to tell him that there was more to this boy than met the eye, perhaps even more than she had expected. Perhaps his father had chosen his adoptive children well after all.
In the following months, as Jason continued to regain control, they’d started to train together when the Pit Rage was not too overwhelming.
Jason had grown swiftly in those days, adding inches to his height and packing on muscle as the Pit pushed him the rest of the way over the line from teenager to adult. It turned out he had still been absorbing information in his previous catatonic state. He never got lost in the warren of passages that made up the castle, and his understanding of Arabic was impressive, although Damian constantly had to correct his pronunciation as he tried to twist his tongue around the unfamiliar sounds.
He’d been full of rage and pain but not for Damian. For Damian he'd usually had a smirk and a joke. He'd tried to make him smile during tense moments and League ceremonies. It had been infantile but not wholly unappreciated.
After one intense training session where Jason had brought down the wrath of one of the most unpleasant trainers on himself with his smart mouth Damian had found him in the library reading a book of children’s tales in Arabic. Damian had sunk down on a cushion across from him and watched the black eye fade from green to yellow. In those days the effects of the Pit had still been strong enough for him to heal inhumanly fast.
“You’re staring, little morningstar,” Jason said, raising an eyebrow as his eyes flicked back and forth along the lines.
“Why do you insist on these ridiculous nicknames?”
Jason had looked up at him, his attention moving swiftly from the stories to Damian. He lowered the book.
“To test people, I suppose.”
“You suppose?”
“Yes, shivlet.” Damian glared at him, hoping it would convey his irritation at the nickname and the refusal to properly explain. Jason rolled his eyes. “I don’t examine everything I do under a fucking microscope.”
“That much is clear.” When he fought, the decisions Jason made on the fly were excellent but he often lacked a long term plan. Talia was trying to change that. “So it is a test?”
“Yeah,” Jason looked like he was considering his answer as he went along. “I like to see how people react. If they’ll lash out because of a dumb name then I know to stay out of range. After that I get to see how they react to different names. I can find out what makes them tick, what makes them lose their cool.”
“Lose their cool?” Damian asked.
“Yeah. It means to lose control: react emotionally, rather than logically.”
“You are identifying weaknesses.”
“Mhmmm. For example,” he grinned, “you don’t like me calling you Son of the Demon.”
Damian had hissed and then restrained himself with an effort. He was only proving Todd’s point.
“It is inaccurate,” He bit out. “I am the son of the Bat, or the grandson of the Demon.”
“True,” said Jason. “But that’s not everything. I think it’s more about wanting to make a name for yourself in your own right.”
Damian scowled at him. Todd shrugged.
“Nothing to glower about, gremlin. That’s something to be proud of, don’t you think? You don’t want to be respected because of who your family is but because you’ve earned that respect yourself.”
“That is…not incorrect,” said Damian, not wholly comfortable with the analysis. “And I will earn a name for myself.”
Jason smiled, white teeth on display and a lingering glitter of the Pit in his eyes.
“I have no doubt.”
Damian shot his grapple gun to the next roof and deliberately tripped Jason’s alarm as he landed. Testing Todd’s perimeter was not his mission today and there was no need to be rude. He ghosted down the fire escape and rapped on the window. Jason opened it a moment later.
“Gremlin. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Damian?" Dick said, putting his escrima down and walking over to hover slightly too close. "What are you doing here? Are you okay?"
Damian looked up at Jason, trying to convey silently that it was Jason’s fault that he was having to deal with this fussing. Jason grinned and shrugged.
"Don’t pretend you didn’t know he was here."
"Tt,” he shrugged the response off as unimportant. “I require your assistance. And your silence."
Jason disappeared into the other room, raising his voice a little as he went.
“How many bodies are we talking about?”
“What!?” Dick’s eyes had gone wide. Damian glared at him and tugged off his gauntlet, Dick descended immediately to examine the scratch. “Jeez, Dames, are you okay?”
Damian resisted the urge to back away, he didn't like being cornered. Dick might not have Jason's bulk but he was still all muscle and having him loom over Damian, big body in between him and any escape route was uncomfortable. Dick took his hand gently and Damian forced himself not to pull it back. His injured wrist looked miniscule and very breakable against Dick callused hands and impossibly thick wrists that had been built to support and flip 180lbs of muscle. He trusted his new family to a certain extent but his instincts still screamed at him to pay attention to the threat they represented.
“I am fine.” The arm was throbbing unpleasantly now that the tight gauntlet was off but the wound was purely superficial.
Jason returned holding a large medkit. He sat down at the small table and tapped the space in front of him. Damian hopped up, much more comfortable having the height advantage. Jason carefully finished laying out the supplies for small wound care and began cleaning away the blood from Damian’s arm with antiseptic wipes. Damian repressed a grimace as firm strokes removed any dirt from the wound. Just like Dick’s, Jason’s hands looked even more massive than usual and it was only the understanding born from hundreds of sparring sessions at Nanda Parbat that stopped him tensing up to see himself so vulnerable to a badly broken wrist on top of his current injury.
“And how will you be buying our silence?” asked Jason, before Grayson could find another way to fill the quiet.
“What do you want?” Damian said, shifting to brace a boot on Todd’s chair and focusing his mind on the bargain, not on the imminent needle.
“Hmm, not sure.” He sprayed a numbing agent over Damian’s wrist and before he could protest spoke again. “Dickie, you want anything from the mini-fiend?”
Dick looked between them, confused, but thankfully distracted from flapping inanely over Damian’s injury.
“Want anything? For…not telling B about an injury.”
“Yeah.”
“Why wouldn’t you tell...”
“No, no, Dickie,” Jason interrupted. “What do you want?”
“Alright…” Damian could see Grayson evaluating what promises he might be able to extract from Damian. He was going to ask for hugs, or for Damian to be polite to Drake. Damian could feel it coming. “I want you to draw me something.” Damian jerked in surprise and Jason flicked at him reprovingly and rearranged his grip on Damian’s arm. “For my flat,” Dick continued, “and visit me in Bludhaven to deliver it.”
Damian frowned at him, trying to work out why Grayson had chosen precisely that. But it would satisfy the man’s ongoing need for familial harmony for Damian to visit, perhaps that was enough. It could have been a lot worse.
“Your terms are acceptable.”
“And your stitches are done,” said Jason, slapping a dressing pad over the top a little more firmly than necessary. “Only two. They’re the fancy WayneTech ones so they’ll dissolve on their own.
Damian gave him a shallow bow and Jason nodded in return.
“You will find a way to address the weakness in your armor,” Jason said, a subtle thread of a threat in his voice.
“Naturally.”
Jason nodded and Damian dragged his gauntlet back on and turned to go.
“Wait!” Dick said, voice overly loud. “Dames, stay for a bit. I haven’t seen you in ages.”
Grayson looked at him, all pleading eyes and open body language.
It was something he never would have seen in Nanda Parbat. But here in Gotham, the Bats, particularly Dick, showed their emotional weaknesses to anyone who cared to look. But did that make them weak? Damian still wasn't sure. They were certainly some of the best, if not the deadliest fighters he’d ever seen.
“I’m not watching your show, Grayson.”
Dick smiled winningly.
“We have David Attenborough?”
So he stayed for an hour or so, curled up in the armchair, as Grayson aah and oohed at the screen and Jason went back to reading. He’d gone straight back to his previous position with his head in Dick’s lap while Grayson ran an unconscious hand through his hair, twisting his fingers through the white lock at the front over and over again. They seemed entirely unbothered about Damian seeing them like this. But perhaps that was what brought them together, they both wore their hearts on their sleeves, strong emotion rather than cold calculation driving them forward, only their methods diverging.
They seemed happy. Here, almost by themselves, the restless jitters were gone from Grayson’s manner and Todd’s eyes were half lidded as he read. Damian thought back to the younger slimmer version of Jason that he’d watched howl and shriek as blood ran from the skin under his restraints and the corners of his mouth.
When the episode finished and Grayson disappeared into the kitchen, Damian stood and climbed on the end of the couch holding out his hand for the book of poetry. Jason handed it over with a quizzical expression, drawing his legs up to give Dmian more space.
Damian flicked to the index and ran his finger down it, frowning at the small print.
“Was it worth it? The Pit?”
He heard a quiet intake of breath but didn’t look up.
“Why do you ask?”
There was a sliver of threat again, like the ratchet of a shotgun, as Jason decided whether or not the question was the opening volley of an attack.
“The Pit…it is a part of my birthright, my family’s legacy.”
Ra’s…
“So it is.” Jason’s tone had settled. He’d clearly decided Damian had a right to ask. “It’s not an easy question to answer, little morningstar.”
“When you spoke to Mother…the poem that you quoted… It says ‘old age should burn and rave at close of day.’”
“But I wasn’t old.” There was an awareness in Jason’s face and a slight emphasis on the I that said Jason knew Damian wasn’t only asking about him. “The Pit gave me my life back. For me, it was worth it. But if you asked members of the League I killed in the first waves of the Pit Rage. I bet they’d fucking disagree. It doesn’t just give life, Damian. Not even mostly life. And if you’re thinking about…”
Ra’s…
Damian shook his head. He wasn’t willing to go there yet. Not out loud.
“You’ve saved a lot of people since then.”
Did that justify the other lives taken?
“Killed more people too,” Jason said with a quick flash of teeth.
Damian waved a dismissive hand. Todd’s kills were always in the service of saving people.
“I saved a lot of people before the Pit as well. As Robin.” Jason paused for a second and then continued. “I never expected to live very long. Growing up the way I did, in the Alley, you see the people around you..there isn’t much of a life expectancy. Becoming Robin gave me a new life, a purpose, a way to rage against the fact that, in the Narrows, it felt like the light was always dying. I was failed by every single person who was supposed to save me. But I saved other people. And when I was dying, I hoped…” The specter of Batman hung briefly in the air but Jason didn’t fall down the rabbit hole the way he once would have. “But I wasn’t surprised to be checking out so soon…”
He trailed off and Damian looked up at him then back down, flicking through another few pages of the book.
Jason reached out and took it off him.
“He’s not in there; Dylan Thomas,” Jason said, voice back to normal. “But there’s another one you should read.”
He hunted through the pages and handed it back to Damian, tapping the correct poem. Damian looked down and read the title: God Abandons Anthony. His eyes ran over it and focused on a phrase:
‘Don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these,
As one long prepared and graced with courage…’
But Jason was talking again:
“Dying young was pretty much what I’d always expected. I just thought it’d be behind some Gotham dumpster not in fucking Ethiopia. A kid dying is always a tragedy, but I got to be everything I wanted before I bit the dust. So, if I’d been given a choice, would I have chosen to come back screaming my lungs up and up to my elbows in dead assassins? If someone hands me another chance on a silver platter I’m gonna take it but that doesn’t make it the fucking ethical choice. Like I said, it’s not a simple answer.”
Todd’s eyes flicked up to the door behind Damian and a flurry of emotions worked their way over his face. He looked back at Damian.
“Take the book, shivlet.” He flicked Damian’s knee. “And get going before B starts panicking. I can’t give you the answers you’re looking for. But you don’t have to decide your future tonight.”
Damian stood, bowed formally and disappeared out of the window.
When he was back on the opposite roof he looked back down to see Grayson with his arms wrapped tight around Todd’s waist from behind. Jason had his head back and eyes closed, hands holding Dick’s against him.