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Jason POV
The thing Jason had learned about Tim and Damian was that they never actually stopped.
Jason had figured that out in the first year after Damian showed up and Tim got shuffled out of Robin like a hand of cards nobody wanted anymore. Every patrol Jason ran near Gotham, every time he ended up in the cave because Bruce had something worth trading, every family dinner Alfred guilt-tripped him into showing up to. Always some background noise from those two.
Tim and Damian, at each other's throats about something. Mission parameters. Patrol routes. Who left the batarangs in the wrong case. Who used the last of the good medical tape without replacing it. Who breathed too loud. Who existed too loudly.
It was constant.
It was exhausting to even be adjacent to. As such, Jason had developed a very specific coping mechanism for it, which was to locate the part of his brain responsible for registering their voices and just turn it off. In one ear and out the other.
Like flipping a breaker.
Gone.
White noise.
The cave could be burning down around him and if it was Tim and Damian doing the burning he would not hear it.
Bruce had never shut it down, which Jason found genuinely baffling.
Bruce, who ran worst-case-scenario simulations at three in the morning for fun. Bruce, who had contingency plans for his contingency plans. Bruce, who had once written a forty-page document on the potential threat vectors of the Justice League, which Jason had found by accident and read cover to cover because it was the most entertaining thing he'd ever seen in his life.
That Bruce had looked at two of his kids actively trying to draw blood with their words every single time they were in the same room and thought. Yeah, that's fine, they’re just young, nothing will go wrong there.
Jason had opinions about that but nobody asked for them, and he wasn't in the habit of volunteering.
Not like his opinion mattered, that’s why he made it background noise that Jason had gotten used to ignoring over the past year.
The cave was warmer than his safehouse and he had a USB drive full of information about the Bertinelli smuggling operation that Bruce had been asking about for a month. Jason had waited the extra week purely out of spite, because he could, and because watching Bruce's jaw do that specific tight thing when Jason finally showed up was the closest thing to entertainment available on a Thursday night.
He plugged the USB in. Started sorting files. Behind him, somewhere in the direction of the training mats, Tim and Damian were at it again.
Brain off.
Jason organized three weeks of surveillance data into the correct folders. Found a sub-folder Bruce had mislabeled and fixed it without saying anything, because Bruce would never know and that was fine. Checked his own encrypted partition to make sure nothing had been touched. It hadn't. Good.
Behind him was noise.
He was about twenty minutes into cross-referencing shipping manifests when something in the noise changed register. Jason's brain flagged it without him asking it to, the way it flagged sounds on a rooftop or footsteps in a stairwell. Not a conscious decision. Just his brain knocking on his skull from the inside, and playing on his nerves like a violin. Hello? This thing on? Pay attention!
He didn't turn around. He turned the listening part of his brain back on.
"...doesn't matter how long you've worn it. Duration is not legitimacy. You were given Robin because there was no one else appropriate at the time, and the moment someone appropriate came along, it was corrected."
Tim's voice, flat and controlled,"Right. Because you're so appropriate."
"I am the blood-son." Damian said it like it was a theorem. Like it was self-evident. "I am the biological heir to both legacies. Batman and the League of Shadows. Everything you have was given to you on loan. Everything I have is mine by right."
Jason's hands had stopped moving on the keyboard.
"Even Richard understood this," Damian continued, and Jason could hear him warming to the subject now, that particular tone Damian got when he thought he was winning. "He gave Robin to me. Even he could see that you didn’t deserve it. He recognized what was owed to the actual heir."
Silence from Tim.
Jason turned his head a fraction, not enough to be obvious. He caught Tim's profile in his peripheral vision. Just for a second. Just long enough to see Tim's expression do something complicated and quiet, something that lasted maybe a microsecond before Tim's face locked back into the controlled blankness he wore like a second cowl.
Something about it sat wrong in Jason's chest.
Tim was still talking. Still holding his ground, voice steady, giving back everything Damian threw at him. Good. Tim could fight. Tim had always been able to fight, which was the most annoying thing about him, back when Jason had still been at the stage of finding him annoying.
But there was a difference between fighting because you were okay and fighting because you'd decided that being okay was the story you were going to tell.
Jason was good at spotting that difference. He'd told a similar story for years.
His feet were moving before he made a decision about it.
He threw his arm around Tim's shoulders, rough and easy, like this was something they did. "C’mon stop already. You know the demon’s right, baby bird."
Tim went rigid. "Jason. What are you—"
"I was just finishing a point," Damian said, voice sharpening at the interruption.
"Yeah, yeah, blood-son, very important." Jason waved his free hand. "Huge deal. Massive. Here's the thing though, little demon, and I'm doing you a favor here, so pay attention." He leaned forward, conspiratorial. "You don't actually get to invoke blood-son's privilege until you start addressing Bruce correctly."
Damian's eyes narrowed. "What?"
"It's a thing we’ve been keeping from you." Jason glanced at Tim. "Right?"
Tim stared at him. Tim's expression said, very clearly: I have no idea what you are doing.
"Sure," Tim said, which was the correct answer and the reason Jason had grabbed him specifically.
"Why have you been keeping this information from me?" Damian said.
"Because it's not really something people bring up unless it becomes relevant." Jason shrugged. "It's like, an American tradition thing. Cultural. You weren't raised here so there's no reason you'd know. But, like Bruce’s family was super into the old-established shit like that."
Damian's jaw tightened.
The thing about Damian was that he hated being at an information disadvantage. He'd trained to fight since he could walk. He knew twelve languages. He was working his way through Bruce's entire physical library, which was considerable. Being told there was something he didn't know, something everyone else already knew, hit him in a very specific place.
"If this is manipulation," Damian said.
"I'm wounded," Jason said, hand to his chest. "Tim, am I manipulating him?"
Tim's voice was very carefully neutral. "I genuinely cannot tell what you're doing."
"Stop acting, Timmy. I know you just don’t want me to tell him." Jason looked back at Damian. "Here's the deal. You want to make your point once and for all? You want Bruce to look at you and go, yeah, that's my heir, that's my blood-son, he knows what's what? There's a thing you have to do. Even Dick knows about it, and he kept it from you." He paused. "Tim, didn't Dick tell you to keep it secret?"
"I," Tim said. "...Yes."
Damian looked between Jason and Tim, curiosity and suspicion. He still wasn’t convinced yet.
"See. So here's the thing." Jason dropped his voice. Damian was leaning in, almost imperceptibly. "If you want Bruce to acknowledge your rights, your rights as blood-son above Tim or me or even Dick, you have to call him by his real title, the title only the blood-son has the privilege of using. Easy as that.”
Jason dangled the carrot. The exclusive use of a title that he knew Damian would covet.
Damian narrowed his eyes, “What title?”
Gotcha now, brat!
Jason controlled his facial expression, he shared a knowing look with Tim, who looked totally confused and was not keeping up.
“On second thought. I— I don’t know, kid. Maybe you’re not ready for this yet. I mean Dick wanted to keep it from you for a reason... Bruce will really start treating you like an heir. You’re kinda young to be thrown into it so soon.”
Jason laid it on thick. If this was going to work, Damian had to want it.
“Stop this nonsense Todd, I demand you relinquish the title at once!”
Jason just stared at Damian. Like he was pondering. Like he was measuring Damian to see if he was up to the knowledge he was about to bestow. Jason took a deep breath, like he was bracing himself for something huge.
“You have to walk up to him right now and call him motherfucker."
The silence was extraordinary.
Tim made a sound like he'd inhaled a batarang.
Damian mouthed the word motherfucker like he was given a secret password.
Jason patted Tim firmly on the back. "He deserves to know, Tim. I can't keep it from him. Even Dick— Only the blood-son can call his father by this title."
Which was basically true. Call Jason a bastard, just don’t call him a liar.
Tim couldn’t manage to say anything, eyes watering, seeing what Jason was after.
"See, Damian? Tim's emotional about it, he knows he could never call Bruce by that title." Jason looked at Damian with the most sincere expression he'd assembled in years. "Go. Right now. While you still have momentum. Walk up there, look Bruce in the eye, and address him correctly. That's it. That's all it takes."
Damian looked at him for a long moment. Then he looked at Tim, who was staring at the middle distance with the face of a man watching a disaster unfold at sixty miles per hour. Then Damian looked back at Jason.
"...You are absolutely certain," Damian said.
"Hand to heart," Jason said.
Damian straightened. Squared his shoulders. Walked with complete dignity toward the stairs.
Jason watched him go. He waited until the footsteps faded, then turned and walked in the other direction toward his bike.
"Jason." Tim's voice came after him, a little strangled. "Jason, we can't just—"
"Yeah, we gotta split." Jason pulled a spare helmet from the storage shelf and tossed it over his shoulder without looking.
A pause. Then the sound of Tim catching it.
Good reflexes. Always had good reflexes, Tim.
Jason took his time with the bike. He wasn't rushing. He listened to the cave. Heard nothing yet from upstairs. Tim appeared beside him, helmet already on, visibly vibrating with anxiety and the effort of not telling Jason what to do.
"He's going to figure it out as soon as—"
"Shh," Jason said.
"Jason—"
"Wait for it."
From somewhere above them, through the solid stone and the cave ceiling and the manor floor and however many layers of old Wayne family architecture between them and Bruce's current location.
"JASON!"
Jason smiled. Just a little. He pulled on his own helmet and turned the engine over.
In his peripheral vision he caught the doorway at the top of the stairs.
Bruce.
Jaw doing the tight thing. Behind him, Damian, wearing an expression that Jason had never seen on him before and would probably never see again, the expression of someone who had just realized, in real time, in front of their father, that they had been had.
Jason raised his right hand. Extended the middle finger. Let the engine take them out into the night.
Worth it. Absolutely worth it. That's going on the highlight reel.
They ended up in Blüdhaven, which was nobody's plan. Jason had just driven, and the city had materialized around them the way it usually did when Jason wasn't paying attention and he was pissed at Bruce.
He found a smoothie place open late, which in Blüdhaven meant it had maybe three health code violations instead of eight, and he bought two of them because Tim had followed him all the way out of Gotham on the back of a motorcycle without complaining once, which was worth at least a smoothie. Possibly a medal. Jason didn't have a medal.
They sat on the roof of the building across the street. Tim drank his smoothie. Jason drank his. The city made its noises.
Jason did not ask what was wrong. He knew what was wrong. He'd seen it on Tim's face in that microsecond, the way something old and settled had moved when Damian said Dick's name. Jason knew a lot about old settled things and what it felt like when someone poked them.
He didn't want to get into it. Not with the replacement who was having trouble with his replacement in the city where Dick moved to before he was replaced.
He hadn't planned on getting into it.
He'd intervened because his feet had moved and he was constitutionally incapable of watching someone get hit in that particular spot and doing nothing about it, but that was the limit of his involvement. He had driven Tim to Blüdhaven. He had procured a smoothie. He had fulfilled his obligations as a human being. He was done.
Tim, apparently, had not gotten the memo.
"You didn't have to do that," Tim said, to the skyline.
"Yep." Jason agreed.
"I was handling it."
"Sure."
Tim turned his head. "Then why—"
"Don't ask me that," Jason said.
Jason was starting to wish he didn’t involve himself.
Stupid brain telling him to start listening to the argument. If only he’d ignored it. Ahh the sweet bliss of ignorance.
Tim looked at him for a moment. Then he looked back at the skyline.
"It doesn't bother me," he said. "The Robin thing. That was years ago. I'm Red Robin. It's fine."
"Okay," Jason said.
"It is."
"I said okay."
Jason was not disagreeing. He was just sitting here. He was just a man on a roof drinking a smoothie, watching Tim Drake try to convince the both of them of something Tim had probably been saying in front of the mirror too many times. Not Jason's business. Not getting involved. Already involved too much, actually. The smoothie had been a mistake, it implied a level of commitment to this evening that Jason had not intended to communicate.
Tim was quiet for a beat. "Dick was in a hard position. Bruce was— There were a lot of moving parts. It made sense at the time."
"Uh-huh,"
Maybe if Jason stopped talking then Tim would too?
"I'm not—" Tim exhaled. "I don't hold it against him."
Well… now he had to say something so that Tim wouldn’t believe that bullshit.
"You can hold it against him," Jason said. "Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. You can understand why something happened and still have it sitting somewhere bad."
Silence.
"Yeah," Tim said, after a moment. Just that.
Jason finished his smoothie. Crushed the cup. Looked out at the city, which was lit up yellow and orange and the particular grey-blue that Blüdhaven got when the clouds were low.
He did not want to do what he was about to do.
"Stay here," he said.
Tim turned. "What? Why? Where are you going?"
"Stay here."
Jason dropped into the alley and pulled his bike into the road.
"Jason." Tim's voice had gone sharp. "Whatever you're thinking, don't. It doesn't matter anymore, it's—"
Jason got on the bike.
"It literally doesn't matter!" Tim hissed after him. "Don't do anything! I'm serious, Jason, if you—"
“I’ll be back.”
Jason drove.
He found Nightwing on a rooftop four blocks east, which was almost offensively easy.
Dick was on patrol, which meant he was moving, which meant Jason had maybe a 30-second window between spotting him and Dick spotting him back and doing whatever Dick did when he saw Jason, which was usually something warm and enthusiastic that made Jason want to leave immediately.
He landed on the rooftop two seconds before Dick turned around.
"Little wing!" Dick's whole face did the thing.
Jason steeled himself to resolve this quickly. He approached Dick, not saying anything.
Dick’s smile was beaming, delighted, genuinely happy. Like Jason was the whole reason behind that smile and Jason had never once in his life figured out how to be immune to, which he resented profoundly. "What are you doing in this part of town? Here to see your—"
Jason socked him in the jaw.
Dick fell off balance, sprawled onto the ground.
And then Jason turned and walked back toward the roof access door before Dick had could recover.
"The HELL, Jason?" Dick called after him.
Jason didn't answer.
That's for Tim, Dickhead. You're welcome. Consider it a public service.
He drove back to Tim's location. Tim was exactly where he'd left him, standing on the rooftop with the look of a man who had spent the last eight minutes catastrophizing in real time and had covered significant ground.
"What did you do," Tim said, the moment Jason pulled up.
"Nothing."
"Jason."
"Got on the bike. Drove around. Came back." Jason held out the spare helmet. "Come on. I'll drop you at the nest."
Tim stared at him. Then, slowly, took the helmet. He didn't say anything else until Jason stopped in front of the building in Gotham. Tim climbed off and handed the helmet back, and stood there for a second doing something complicated with his face.
"So, uh…" Tim started. The gears in his brain turning.
"Don't."
"I'm just going to—"
"I don't want to hear it. I punched an idiot who deserved it. I do that for free. It has nothing to do with you." Jason looked straight ahead. "Go to bed, Tim."
A pause.
"Okay," Tim said. "Goodnight, Jason."
Jason waved him off and drove away without looking back.
Don't think about it. Don't think about any of it. You did a normal thing, you are a normal person, you're going home to your normal safehouse that nobody knows about, and tomorrow you're going to wake up and none of this is going to feel like anything.
The smoothie was good though.
Dick POV
Dick had been hit by a lot of people.
He'd been hit by professionals. Villains with themed gimmicks and names to match. Random armed criminals with nothing but desperation and bad decisions. He'd been hit by Bruce, during training, with the particular controlled precision that meant you leave yourself open on the left side and you need to know that. He'd been hit by Kory, during sparring, and Kory hit like a small star deciding to introduce itself to your face. He'd been hit by Roy, once, during an argument that had gotten out of hand, and they'd both pretended it hadn't happened and never spoken of it again.
He'd been hit by Jason before, too.
That was the thing. Jason hitting Dick wasn't unprecedented. But there was usually more to it. More buildup, more intention, more of a whole scenario surrounding the hit that made it legible. Jason might want to make a point. Jason might be testing something. Jason might be running some specific play that Dick couldn't read yet but that would eventually resolve into something Dick could understand.
This had been none of those things.
This had been Jason showing up on a rooftop, saying approximately nothing, and punching Dick in the jaw with no further context, and then leaving.
“Nothing personal” was never that. Every time someone said that phrase, the immediate action followed was always personal. But now Dick found the perfect example of how that phrase could be applied.
Dick had stood on that rooftop for a full minute just replaying it.
Little wing! What are you doing in this part of town? Here to see your—
And then a fist. Then footsteps walking away.
He'd called Alfred on the way to the manor, because Alfred was the person Dick called when things happened that he didn't have a framework for.
Alfred had listened to the whole story and then said, very calmly, "Perhaps, Master Dick, it would be productive to hear what has occurred on this end of things as well."
Dick didn’t know if he agreed that. He didn’t want Bruce making this into a whole thing… which he did on more than one occasion when it came to Jason’s erratic behaviors.
He pushed through the front doors of the manor at 2 in the morning with his jaw still sore and his brain running circles, and said, to whoever was in earshot, "Anyone know what pissed Jason off?"
He had expected it to be empty. Or close to empty. People should be on patrol. Late night, mid-week, the kind of night where the cave had a skeleton crew and Bruce was probably already tired and ready for this particular Thursday to be over.
Instead, Bruce was in the main sitting room, still in civvies, rubbing at his eyes with two fingers in the way he did when something had given him a headache. Alfred was standing nearby with the specific posture of a man who was present at something and was exercising great personal restraint. And Damian was in the armchair by the fireplace, spine very straight, jaw very tight, wearing an expression that could best be described as I am furious and I am humiliated and I am not going to confirm that I am either of those things.
Nobody had suited up. On a Thursday night.
Something blew up, Dick thought. Something blew up and Jason was involved and now nobody can go on patrol and Damian looks like he's been personally insulted by the concept of existing.
Damian was sitting rigidly upright in the armchair closest to the fire, which he always claimed by default and which nobody fought him for because Damian in an armchair had the energy of a judge about to hand down a sentence. He wasn't looking at the door. He was looking at the fire. Pointedly.
"I shall be the one to kill him," he announced, the moment he registered Dick. He still didn't look away from the fire. "For this embarrassment. Whatever sentencing one might expect for the crime, I accept it in advance."
"Nobody's killing anybody," Bruce said, on reflex. He had his elbows on his knees and both hands pressed over his face, which was the posture of a man who had been sitting in that exact position for a while.
Dick blinked at the bloodlust before he asked, "What happened?"
"Master Richard," Alfred said, "perhaps you would like to sit down."
That was not a good sign. Alfred only offered seating as a preamble to information that required structural support.
Dick sat.
"Todd," Damian began, with the carefully controlled fury of someone filing a formal complaint, "exploited my unfamiliarity with certain American cultural customs—"
"He told Damian," Bruce said, in the flat voice of a man who had already processed his feelings about this and arrived somewhere past them, "that calling me an obscenity to my face was a required tradition for blood-son recognition."
Dick opened his mouth.
He closed it.
"And Damian...did that," Dick said.
"I was deceived," Damian said, at elevated volume.
"Damian walked up to me," Bruce continued, "while I was in the study, looked me in the eye, and said—"
"We do not need to repeat it," Alfred said.
"I was deceived," Damian said again.
Dick put his hand over his mouth. He needed his hand over his mouth. He needed it there immediately and with some force.
"Timothy Drake was present for the deception," Damian said, pivoting with purpose. "He participated. He was complicit. I want Todd banned from the manor and I want Drake's access to the cave reviewed—"
"We're not banning anyone," Bruce said.
Dick stifled a laugh.
"This is serious, Richard!." Damian eyed him.
"I am listening very seriously to everything you're saying." Dick cleared his throat hard. He looked at Bruce, who had the expression of a man who had been awake for too long watching a situation that was not improving. "Where's Tim now?"
"He left with Jason," Bruce said. "On his motorcycle. Before I could— Before I could say anything to Jason."
"Tim just got on Jason's motorcycle?"
"Willingly," Bruce said, which implied he found this almost as concerning as everything else.
"And then Jason…" Dick glanced at Alfred.
"Expressed himself," Alfred said, neutrally, "via hand gesture, as he departed."
Dick looked at the ceiling for a moment. He was reviewing the points.
Okay. So. Jason showed up to the cave, convinced Damian that calling Bruce an obscenity was a cultural tradition, sent him upstairs, grabbed Tim, gave Bruce the finger, and left. And then later found Dick specifically on patrol in Blüdhaven and punched him. And left again.
As worrying as being punched for no reason was, it wasn’t exactly out of the norm for Jason, but that first part was wrong.
Jason didn't grab Tim. Jason barely tolerated Tim. Jason went out of his way to maintain a carefully calibrated distance from most of them most of the time, and he especially did not pick up younger siblings and drive them across a bridge on his motorcycle for no reason.
Dick rubbed his jaw and Alfred spoke up, "And after that, Master Dick? You have some information to share with the rest?"
"Well… Jason found me on patrol and just punched me. So I thought something had set him off."
Bruce considered Dick, his eyes moving over the already-bruising jaw. Bruce's hands rubbed over his face again. Dick could almost see the steam from the gears turning, the new contingencies forming for Jason. Reminding Dick of why he didn’t want to come to the manor and make this a whole thing.
"Ok, before anything else — do we know what started this?" Dick asked, breaking Bruce from his trance.
Damian's jaw tightened. "The situation with Todd—"
"Before that. What started the whole thing." He looked at Damian carefully. "What were you and Tim doing?"
"That is not relevant to—"
"Damian."
"We were having a disagreement on the east sector patrol routes," Damian said, looking at the fireplace.
Nobody in the room believed that.
Dick looked at Bruce. Bruce looked at Dick with the exhausted expression of a man who had already attempted to extract the real answer once and been stonewalled.
Alfred made a quiet sound. "Master Damian, we have spoken before about the nature of your disagreements with Master Timothy. About what is productive and what is not."
Damian's chin went up. "I am aware of what we have discussed."
"I wonder sometimes," Alfred said, gently, "if awareness and acting accordingly are quite the same thing."
Damian said nothing. His jaw was very tight.
Dick turned it over. Patrol routes. Sure. He'd believe patrol routes. He'd also believe that the argument had started about patrol routes the same way a fire started from a single match, which was technically true and also not really the point.
"This happened in the cave, yes? The cave has cameras, let's just replay the footage." Dick said.
Damian's head snapped toward him.
Damian stared at him. His expression shifted through several things quickly, and what settled was not anger. It was something more complicated. Almost like bracing.
"Fine," Damian said. His voice had gone quieter. "Fine. Look."
It was a strange thing, watching yourself on a monitor.
The cave was cold and quiet and the monitors cast their usual blue-white light over everything. Dick pulled up the archived footage while Bruce stood with his arms crossed a few feet back and Alfred stood at the edge of the light and Damian stood the furthest away, like he was keeping the option of distance available.
The timestamp was from earlier that evening. Dick found the right point and let it run.
The main feed put Jason at the center, at the terminal, back to the camera. He was working. In the background, soft in the focus, Tim and Damian on the training mats. Even on the recording, Dick could see the line of Jason's shoulders, the deliberate stillness of someone who had decided to be elsewhere in his head.
Tim and Damian had clearly already been at it for a while by this point. Their voices were clipped and too-careful, the register they both got when they'd already taken the argument through its opening moves and arrived at the part where every word was a chosen weapon.
"The east quadrant sweep takes eleven minutes your way," Tim was saying. "Twelve if you stop at the secondary junction, which you always do because you like the vantage. Eleven minutes leaves a four-minute gap on the south end. My route closes that gap."
"Your route," Damian said, "requires a longer crossing at the Tricorner bridge, which is exposed. You're prioritizing efficiency over tactical position."
"I'm prioritizing coverage. Coverage is the point of a sweep."
"Coverage is meaningless if you're exposed during the crossing. It is a fundamental—"
"I've been doing this longer than you've been in Gotham," Tim said. "So maybe—"
"Duration is not expertise," Damian said, and something in his voice shifted, sharpened. "You consistently confuse the two."
Dick watched Jason at the terminal. Still working. Hadn't moved.
He had tuned it out completely. Tim and Damian are background static at this point. Which is honestly impressive and also a little bleak.
"Right," Tim said. "I consistently confuse a lot of things, according to you."
"I have said what I observe."
"You observe what you want to observe."
"I observe what is there." Damian's voice had gone cooler now. Calmer, which was worse. "You were adequate for what was required at the time. You are still adequate. But adequate is not the same as the right person for the position, and it never was."
On the recording, Tim went very still.
"The right person for the position," Tim said, slowly.
"Yes."
"And that's you."
"It was always going to be me." Damian said it without heat. Like a statement of geological fact. "I am the blood-son. That is not a preference or an opinion. It is what it is. You wore Robin because someone had to and you were available and willing, and that's not nothing, Drake, but it doesn't matter how long you've worn it. Duration is not legitimacy. You were given Robin because there was no one else appropriate at the time, and the moment someone appropriate came along, it was corrected."
Bruce made a quiet sound behind Dick. Not a word. Just the sound of someone absorbing something.
"Right. Because you're so appropriate." Tim replied flatly.
"I am the blood-son." Damian said
Dick shot a glare towards Damian, who had enough shame to look guilty. They had talked about this. Dick thought they came to an understanding. What was the point of those conversations if Damian went straight on ignoring them… at least when he wasn’t watching.
"...I am the biological heir to both legacies. Batman and the League of Shadows. Everything you have was given to you on loan. Everything I have is mine by right.”
The Damian in the recording stood tall and proud, while the Damian that Bruce and Dick looked at seemed to want to curl up as small as he could.
"Even Richard understood this. He gave Robin to me. Even he could see that you didn’t deserve it. He recognized what was owed to the actual heir."
The recording was silent.
Dick felt the first small pull of something uncomfortable somewhere behind his sternum.
"I'm not framing anything."
"—but because he recognized what was owed. He gave Robin to me because he knew that I was the right one to carry it. Blood calls to blood. That is not sentiment, it is lineage, and lineage—"
"Lineage," Tim said, and his voice had gone very flat. "Great. Okay. Lineage."
Dick watched Tim's face on the recording.
He watched it do the thing.
It was less than a second. A fraction of a second, really, and then it was locked back behind Tim's careful nothing-face, and Tim was already talking again, voice steady, body language controlled, every inch of him arranged to say that didn't land, nothing lands, I'm fine.
Dick knew that arrangement. He'd seen it before and filed it away somewhere and told himself Tim was fine because Tim was always functional and functional and fine were not the same thing and Dick had somehow kept forgetting that.
He looked at the recording of Jason at the terminal.
Come on, he thought, without meaning to. Come on, Jay, you're right there.
On the recording, Jason turned.
Dick let out a breath he hadn't noticed he was holding.
He watched Jason cross the cave floor in a few easy strides and drop his arm around Tim's shoulders like it was a thing he did. Tim went rigid. Damian's eyes tracked the movement, thrown off mid-sentence.
On the recording: "C'mon, stop already. You know the demon's right, baby bird."
Dick cursed at Jason in his head. That was not what he was supposed to say in this situation. Why did Jason love to create chaos?
"Jason." Tim's voice on the playback had gone very careful. "What are you—"
"I was just finishing a point," Damian said, voice sharpening.
"Yeah, yeah." On the recording, Jason waved his free hand, easy and unbothered. "Blood-son, very important. Huge deal. Massive."
He leaned in slightly, and Dick could see the shift happen, the way Jason's whole posture changed when he was running something. Shoulders dropping. Voice warming. "Here's the thing though, little demon. And I'm doing you a favor here, so pay attention. You don't actually get to invoke blood-son's privilege until you start addressing Bruce correctly."
A beat of silence on the recording.
And Jason's bullshitting went full throttle. He just decided to do this. On the spot. With zero preparation. For fun.
"What?" Damian said.
"It's a thing we've been keeping from you." Jason glanced at Tim. "Right?"
Tim stared at him. The stare lasted almost two full seconds, which on Tim was a lifetime of rapid calculation.
"Sure."
Dick made a sound, Tim just went with it? If… they actually started to work together, who knows what they’d be capable of?
On the recording, Damian's eyes had narrowed. "Why have you been keeping this information from me?"
"Because it doesn't really come up unless it's relevant. It's an American tradition thing. Cultural." A casual shrug from Jason. "You weren't raised here, so there's no reason you'd know. But, like Bruce’s family was super into the old-established shit like that."
Bruce, beside Dick, made a short exhale through his nose. Not a laugh. The sound of a man who could see exactly what was happening and was choosing to reserve judgment until he understood the full scope of it.
"If this is a manipulation," Damian said, on the recording.
"I'm wounded." Jason's hand went to his chest. "Tim. Am I manipulating him?"
On the playback, Tim responded to Jason honestly. "I genuinely cannot tell what you're doing,"
Undeterred by Tim’s lack of playing as his accomplice, Jason went on full speed ahead.
"Stop acting, Timmy. I know you just don’t want me to tell him," Jason looked back at Damian, "Here's the deal. You want to make your point once and for all? You want Bruce to look at you and go, yeah, that's my heir, that's my blood-son, he knows what's what? There's a thing you have to do. Even Dick knows about it, and he kept it from you… Tim, didn't Dick tell you to keep it secret?"
The pause on the recording was not long. But it was the specific quality of pause that happened when someone was deciding, very quickly, whether they were complicit or a bystander, and concluding that the window for bystander had already closed.
"I...Yes."
Dick felt the specific sensation of his own name being deployed as supporting evidence in a con he was not present for.
He looked at Alfred.
Alfred was watching the screen with his hands folded behind his back and his expression perfectly composed, which was the expression Alfred wore when he was watching something unfold that he had opinions about and had elected to keep to himself for the moment.
On the recording, Jason looked back at Damian with an expression of careful, reluctant honesty.
"See. So here's the thing. If you want Bruce to acknowledge your rights, your rights as blood-son above Tim or me or even Dick, you have to call him by his real title, the title only the blood-son has the privilege of using. Easy as that.."
"What title?"
And there it was. Dick watched Jason's face on the recording do the thing where it went very still for just a second, like a man reconsidering, like a man with a conscience wrestling with what he was about to do. Which looked like Jason would keep withholding the secret from Damian. Which, knowing Damian, would piss him off.
This was a masterclass act.
"On second thought." Jason exhaled. "I don't know, kid. Maybe you’re not ready for this yet. I mean Dick wanted to keep it from you for a reason... Bruce will really start treating you like an heir. You’re kinda young to be thrown into it so soon."
"Stop this nonsense, Todd." Damian's voice had gone rigid. "I demand you relinquish the title at once."
Dick looked at Bruce.
Bruce had both fingers pressed against his eyes now, the heels of his hands against his cheekbones. His jaw was doing the specific thing it did when he was expending significant energy on not reacting to something — the thing Dick privately called the I have raised these children and I have no one to blame but myself expression.
On the recording, Jason took a slow breath. Like a man steeling himself. Like a man about to say something that cost him.
"You have to walk up to him right now, and call him motherfucker."
The silence on the recording was enormous.
Dick had been following the whole con with a kind of helpless admiration, the way you watched someone do a magic trick you'd already half-figured out but couldn't stop enjoying anyway. The setup, the fake hesitation, the exclusive title, the “maybe you're not ready”— all of it was genuinely good work.
Dick had run ops. Dick knew how to sell a story. And he was standing here watching Jason Todd, on a Thursday night, with no preparation and no ulterior motive except the one he would never admit to, absolutely cook a 13-year-old with the most committed straight face Dick had ever seen in his life.
And then he said motherfucker and Dick's brain just. Stopped.
That's it, Dick thought, faintly. That's the title. That was the point of the whole thing. That was it.
Then the sound of Tim choking on nothing in the recording, followed by Jason patting his back twice, consoling, like Tim was overwhelmed by the weight of this sacred moment.
Dick shook his head. Jason was so dramatic.
"He deserves to know, Tim. I can't keep it from him. Even Dick— Only the blood-son can call his father by this title."
"See, Damian? Tim's emotional about it, he knows he could never call Bruce by that title. Go. Right now. While you still have momentum. Walk up there, look Bruce in the eye, and address him correctly. That's it. That's all it takes."
The cave on the recording went very quiet.
Damian looked at Jason for a long moment. Then he looked at Tim, who had arranged his face into something neutral in the way that a person standing next to a lit fuse arranged their face into something neutral. Then Damian looked back at Jason.
"You are absolutely certain," Damian said.
"Hand to heart," Jason said.
Dick looked at Bruce.
Bruce had both fingers pressed against his eyes again.
"Was that all it took?" Dick asked, “Did he actually…”
"Enough," Bruce said.
"No way. He's actually going to—"
"I know," Bruce said.
On the recording, Damian squared his shoulders. He smoothed the front of his shirt. He turned and walked toward the stairs with the complete unhurried dignity of someone fulfilling a correct and important obligation, and he disappeared from frame.
The cave on the recording went quiet again. Just Jason and Tim, and Jason already moving toward the bike, measured and easy, like he'd simply finished a task and was moving on to the next one.
"Jason. Jason, we can't just—"
"Yeah, we gotta split." Jason pulled a spare helmet from the rack without breaking stride and tossed it over his shoulder.
Then Tim appeared beside him, helmet on, posture radiating a very specific frequency of anxious compliance.
"He's going to figure it out the second he—"
"Shh."
"Jason—"
"Wait for it."
Dick was gripping the edge of the console with both hands. Beside him, Bruce had gone very still. Alfred, behind them both, had not moved at all.
The recording waited.
From somewhere off the feed, muffled through stone and floors and the considerable architecture of the manor:
"JASON."
Dick laughed, he couldn’t help himself. The timing, the reaction it was all so perfect.
On the recording, Jason smiled. Small and slow and deeply satisfied, the smile of a man who had placed a very precise bet on a very specific outcome and was watching it pay out exactly on schedule. Jason pulled his helmet on and started the engine. He looked towards the entrance.
Dick only wished he could see that footage. Of Bruce coming down and what his face looked like.
Jason's hand came up. The middle finger, easy and deliberate. The grin didn't waver.
Then they were gone.
The recording ran on empty cave for a few seconds before Dick reached over and stopped it.
He stood there.
Dick pressed both fists against his mouth. His eyes were watering. He was thirty years old, he was a senior member of the Justice League, he had saved the world on multiple occasions, and this couldn’t break him—
"It's not funny," Bruce said.
Dick’s determination broke and he fully laughed again.
"It is somewhat humorous," Alfred said, which was the most Alfred had ever conceded in Dick's memory, and it did not help.
"Alfred," Bruce said.
"I am simply being accurate, sir."
Dick turned away from both of them and looked at the wall for a moment and got himself under control. When he turned back, Bruce's expression had shifted from the long-suffering face to something quieter. He was looking at the frozen screen, at the empty cave, at the place where Jason and Tim had been.
Dick looked at Damian.
Damian was watching the screen. His jaw was a hard line. His eyes were still and very dark. He looked like he'd aged about three years in the last four minutes, which was the specific look of someone sitting with the humiliation of having been convinced of something, having acted on it with total sincerity, and now watching themselves do it from the outside.
Something tightened a little in Dick's chest. He tried not to let it show, because Damian would hate it.
"Damian," Bruce said.
"Yes, Father?" Damian said, tightly.
"We're going to talk about this."
"I know." He paused. "I was aware, after, that I had been deceived." He stopped again. "I was aware too late after I had already said it."
Dick looked away from Damian's face, because it was either that or let Damian see something on Dick's face that Damian wasn't going to want to see from him.
"Not about that. I don't care about that anymore," Bruce said, quieter. "Just because some of you boys were adopted doesn't make you any less mine. I want this to stop. Tim is your brother. Go to bed, we’ll discuss this in the morning."
Damian nodded. Once, short, and then he left, footsteps fading toward the stairs, and the cave settled back into its normal quiet.
Dick stood in front of the monitors for a moment. He rewound the footage a few seconds and let it play again, just the part where Tim's face changed. Just that second. Less than a second.
"I thought he was okay with it," Dick said. Not to Bruce specifically. Just to the room.
Bruce said nothing.
"The Robin thing. I thought— I thought we'd moved past it. I thought he'd moved past it."
"He has moved through it," Alfred said, from behind him. Dick turned. Alfred was watching him with the particular patience of a man who had been watching Waynes fail at understanding each other for decades and had made his peace with the long game. "That is not the same as it ceasing to exist."
Dick looked at him.
"Master Timothy is very good," Alfred continued, "at presenting the version of himself that the situation requires. He has been good at that since he was very young. It doesn't always mean what it appears to mean."
Dick turned back to the screen. It was paused now on Jason's face, mid-turn, somewhere between the terminal and Tim. The expression on it was very specific: not heroic, not calculated, not performing anything. Just a man who had seen something and was already moving.
"Did you apologize to him?" Bruce said. "After the Robin thing. Properly?"
Dick opened his mouth. Closed it. "I... yes. I think so."
Bruce looked at him.
"I said something," Dick said. "He acknowledged it."
Bruce kept looking at him.
"Okay," Dick said. "Maybe not properly. Haaaaa, it probably wasn't."
"That," Alfred said, very gently, "is a Wayne family tradition that perhaps need not be continued."
Bruce made a sound that was almost a laugh. Almost.
Dick looked at the frozen image of Jason on the screen. He touched his jaw, where it was still a little sore.
"I deserved that," he said.
Neither Bruce nor Alfred disagreed with him.
Jason POV
The knock came at nine in the morning, which was a violation of the natural order on multiple levels.
Jason had a specific rule about the safehouse, which was that nobody knew where the safehouse was. This was a non-negotiable condition of the safehouse's existence. He'd done three sweeps when he'd set it up, checked for any surveillance he might have missed, varied his approach routes for the first six months. The safehouse was private. The safehouse was his.
He looked through the peephole.
Dick was standing in the hallway in his civvies, looking like he'd driven straight from Blüdhaven without sleeping.
Jason stood very still on his side of the door.
The thing about not being seen was that you could pretend you weren't there. He hadn't turned on any lights. The building's corridor camera had been on a loop since Jason moved in, which was standard procedure. From outside, there was nothing to indicate anyone was home.
"Jason," Dick said, to the door. "I know you're in there."
Jason closed his eyes briefly.
"The building super told me someone had been messing with the corridor camera on this floor," Dick continued. "Also your bike is parked two blocks away under a tarp but it's your bike."
Fuck you too, Dick?
Why was everyone in this family so bad with their stalking habits?
Jason weighed his options. He could keep not answering. Dick would keep talking. Jason would stand here for however long Dick decided to talk, which based on historical evidence could be a very long time, and he would slowly lose his mind, and the conversation would happen eventually anyway because Dick was the most stubborn person in a family of profoundly stubborn people.
Or he could open the door, get it over with, and go back to sleep.
“Come on, little wing. Talk to me, I want to make sure everything’s goo—”
He opened the door. Grabbed Dick's jacket. Dragged him inside.
"I'm not apologizing," Jason said, before Dick could get started. "Get that out of your head right now. You deserved it."
"I know," Dick said.
Jason paused. He had expected more resistance than that. "You what?"
"I deserved it," Dick said, simply. He was looking around the safehouse with the unhurried attention he gave to any new space, clocking exits and layouts and probably noting what Jason had changed since he'd last been somewhere like this. "This is nice. You repainted."
"You've never been here."
"You repainted from whatever it was before, I can tell." Dick turned and found the nearest flat surface to lean against, which was the kitchen counter, arms crossed loosely, and looked at Jason. "I already apologized to Tim..."
“Oh yeah?”
“Before I drove here. I called him."
Jason raised an eyebrow.
"A real apology," Dick said. He exhaled. "He said it was okay."
"Was he lying?"
Dick was quiet for a moment. "A little. But less than before." He met Jason's eyes. "He also said you dropped him off at his place without letting him say thank you."
"He mentioned that, huh."
"He did." Dick looked at him steadily. "Do you want me to thank you on his behalf?"
"I want you to not make this weird."
"Okay." Dick uncrossed his arms. Reached over and picked up one of Jason's spare mugs without asking, which was rude and also extremely predictable. Poured himself coffee. "For what it's worth, I thought what you did to Damian was hilarious."
"I know you would."
"I mean genuinely hilarious. I was watching the footage and—" Dick made a sound that was clearly a suppressed laugh.
Was Jason’s typical asshole behavior so unbelievable they had to rewatch the security footage? Damn, Jason had to up his game to not be questioned like that again.
"I aim to please," Jason said very flatly.
"It was the correct call." Dick drank his coffee. "He'll be insufferable for a week, but it was the correct call."
"Yeah, well." Jason leaned against the counter on his side of the kitchen. "Someone's got to take him down a notch. He can't go around doing the blood-son thing and expecting it to land."
Dick went quiet again. A different quiet this time.
"I’ve tried to stop it. So many times," Dick said, finally. "The blood-son stuff. I thought we had got so far… I think you messing with him will actually make all of this nonsense stop."
Jason looked at his coffee.
"Bruce doesn’t hold it against you either, he’s looking into real ways to resolve this. Damian still feels like he has to prove himself that he’s worthy in a family where blood doesn’t mean anything, and Tim… Tim will let himself be walked over if it's what’s good for the family." Dick said. “None of those are very healthy mindsets to have when we need to trust each other.”
"Tough shit, maybe one of them should die and come back a sociopath and commit various crimes so when they do eventually play nice it puts all the bad blood behind them?" Jason said.
"Shut up, asshole." Dick turned the mug in his hands.
Jason took that as a win.
“Just sayin’ worked wonders for our relationship.”
"Oh yeah, now that we’re talking about strained relationships. You were big-brothering Tim."
Dick looked at him sideways.
"Absolutely not," Jason said, with full sincerity.
"Come on, Jay. Tell your big brother. When did you feel so protective of Tim? Hmmmm? And a smoothie run? You remember when I used to do those for you?"
“Shut up, I didn’t even do that for Tim. I did that because Damian is a brat sometimes and needs to be knocked down a peg.”
"Oh yes, knock down the 13-year-old who’s experiencing puberty for the first time. You what, 22 now?"
"Remind me the age difference between you and Tim?"
"Ouch, okay fine. I deserve that."
Jason finished his coffee. Set the mug down. "Bruce just needs to spend more one-on-one time with Damian, y’know? All of us got that when we were Robin, Damian knows that. The kid's just jealous he never got to experience that with his old man."
"That's actually, that sounds like a solid plan," Dick admitted.
"I know. I have those sometimes."
Jason had a lot of opinions he didn’t offer up, but this was just him thinking aloud.
“Then what about Tim?”
“He needs a rebellious phase. Give him some booze and get him high. He’ll figure it out.”
Dick just laughed at that.
They stood in the kitchen and drank coffee, and the morning did its thing outside the window, light coming in grey and quiet over the Gotham skyline.
"You could've just called," Jason said.
"You would have ignored it."
"...Yeah," Jason allowed.
"This way you had to deal with me in person. Also." He reached over and tapped Jason's shoulder once, brief and deliberate. Not the full Dick Grayson Production of a physical greeting, no hug incoming, no sustained warmth. Just a touch, solid and direct. "You're a good brother. I wanted to say it to your face."
Jason looked at the window and tried to stifle the feelings of warmth in his chest.
Eww, feelings.
“Get out of my apartment now," Jason said.
Dick just laughed.
"I’m serious."
Dick smiled. It was a small one, the kind he didn't perform. "Yeah, okay."
Jason went and found something that could be called breakfast with a loose enough definition and Dick sat on his counter and they argued about something low-stakes for the rest of the day, and Jason let himself have it, and didn't think too hard about why.
It was fine. It was nothing. He was just a man who noticed things sometimes and occasionally acted on them and it didn't mean anything.