Work Text:
It doesn’t occur to Jason until Talia is long gone that he knows fuck-all about infants.
Excluding the fleeting period of time in which he was one, Jason’s experience with babies started and ended with Robin’s brief stints of babysitting toddlers whilst Bruce interrogated or examined the remains of their parents in the other room. All Jason really did was sit near enough to the kids so that he could make sure they didn’t crawl away or stick their pacifiers in an electrical outlet.
Baby Damian gurgles in Jason’s arms, his chubby hands reaching up for the scars burned into Jason’s face from the warehouse explosion. Mystified, Jason lets him. The charred half of Jason’s face usually sends kids crying and adults averting their eyes, but Damian does neither. He looks up at Jason trustingly, stupidly. Like he doesn’t know that he’s in the arms of a killer.
In a twisted way, it makes sense that Damian wouldn’t think twice about Jason’s wounds, baby brain aside. He grew up with the League of Assassins, however short his time there was. He’s used to maiming by now. Where other babies would stare curiously at the details that set one damaged person apart from the others, Damian only sees Jason. The man who is now sentenced to raise him.
“This is gonna be fine,” Jason says, mostly to himself. “No problem. It’s just...raising a kid. Easy peasy.” It sounded so much simpler when Talia said it.
Damian’s features are a perfect blend of his parents. He inherited Talia’s dark skin and high cheekbones, but the shape of his chin and eyebrows is all Bruce. His nose is more rounded than both his parents’, like a little button. The green eyes are naturally a gift from the Lazarus water sloshing around in the al Ghuls’ veins, but it’s nevertheless pleasing to think about how they are only a few shades darker than Jason’s own eyes. It won’t be difficult to pass themselves off as biological brothers if someone asks.
Yeah, Jason thinks as he tightens his hold more securely around Damian. This will be fine. If Dick can handle a little brother and not royally screw it up (much), then so can Jason. The only difference here is that Damian is a fresh, trusting baby, and not a street rat with a chip on his shoulder.
...And
that Dick didn’t have to be a parent to Jason as well as an older brother. Jason is going to have to do both, which can’t be
that
difficult, right? Just keep the kid alive until he’s old enough to do it himself. Eighteen years, maybe less. Jason managed to keep himself alive for years on the streets, and he took care of his mother before that. He’s got this.
First things first: get off the roof. He may not be a trained nanny, but Jason’s not about to risk his baby brother getting sick from the chilled air up here. Not when he’s only been in Jason’s care for ten minutes. Jason wraps his arms more securely around Damian, keeping him as warm as he can.
He regrets choosing Wayne Tower for his angst reverie. It’s a solid, Shakespearean choice on paper, but eighty flights of stairs is an easy obstacle to bypass when you’ve got a grappling hook and years of rooftop training on your side. He’d take the elevator, but the gun holsters, burn scars, and dark Robin tunic are hard to explain away
without
a newborn baby in his arms. Maybe-newborn.
“How old even are you?” Jason asks halfway down. Damian is small, but all babies are small. He’s old enough to reach for things and possibly grip them, it looks like, but is that a real marker of age? Are his smiles actual smiles or just gas? Isn’t smiling a checkpoint for babies two months or older, or is it three? “She could have at least told me your fucking
birthday.
I need
something
to work with.”
What about allergies? How is Jason supposed to know if the kid will die instantly from sucking on a strawberry? Does he have a middle name? Does he have a
last name?
Is he an al Ghul, a Wayne, or a Todd? What about preschool? Can he even be signed up for preschool without a social security number?
Damian chews on his hand, which clarifies nothing. Whatever. Jason will figure out the harder details later. Regardless of how old he is, babies need food as a universal rule. All Jason has at his apartment is a stack of six-packs and a freezer packed with bags of mixed veggies. He’ll have to stop by the store on the way home for baby supplies—at least enough to get them through the night. He hopes that Damian wasn’t breastfed, because there are only so many resources a sixteen-year-old boy can acquire, and he’s not about to be stumped by a picky baby.
Jason runs into his second problem of the night shortly after the first. He arrives at his motorcycle, parked innocently against the curb and flaunting its offensive lack of car seats or general safety. Damian eyes the machine with justifiable enthusiasm; Jason liked cars when he was a tyke, too.
“Sorry, pal,” he says, bypassing the motorcycle with great effort. It’ll be gone by morning, no doubt, picked up by some asshole with sticky fingers and an eye for high-quality machinery. Jason could haul it to a nearby alley and hide it until tomorrow, but it would be an impossible task to do one-handed, and he’s not about to put Damian down for some baby-snatcher to swipe.
He ends up borrowing some poor sod’s minivan, which is a good deed in disguise, really. Anyone who parks their kid-totingest vehicle in a neighborhood known for its skyrocketing crime rate is in desperate need of a reality upgrade. Jason will return the van tomorrow. If he remembers.
As he drives, Jason’s already unsteady confidence starts to crumble. He looks back every few minutes at the smiling baby in the rearview mirror, chewing on his foot in a stolen car seat, and wants to punch himself.
What the actual, literal
fuck
is he doing?
He is sixteen years old, for fuck’s sake. Most people his age are cramming for algebra tests and fumbling through braces-clogged makeouts, meanwhile Jason just signed up to play daddy for a kid that isn’t even his. If he didn’t know he was already under the League’s watchful eye now that he’s fostering their precious cargo, he’d contemplate dropping the kid off at the nearest center. But he could never do that. Jason knows all too well how cruel this city can be to an orphan. He might be a villain, but even
he
would never stoop that low.
That leaves Alfred then, Jason thinks as streetlamps flicker by. If he hadn’t burned every bridge he had, Jason could call Alf to help him out of this, or at least give him some advice. Jason should have paid more attention to Alfred’s stories about Bruce’s baby days. If he’s lucky, he can shoot Alfred an email with questions on hypothetical child-rearing and hope that Alfred’s developed dementia in the months Jason’s been gone and won’t question it.
He finds a Walmart that’s still open, thankfully. He wraps Damian in his jacket and strips to the first layer under his Robin tunic, leaving his guns stuffed under the front seat. He doesn’t look any less deranged with his mutilated body and grubby clothes, but it’ll have to do.
“I have no fucking clue what I’m doing here,” Jason mutters to his small companion. Damian is having the time of his life, tucked safely into Jason’s arm while Jason’s other hand pushes a shopping cart down the aisles. How is he supposed to know what size diapers to get, or what the difference is between powdered formula and liquid concentrate? They don’t teach this shit in Robin school.
He ends up getting one of everything, just to be safe. Good thing he had the sense to swipe some of Bruce’s credit cards before he ran away from home. Let the old bastard foot the bill for all this; it’s
his
son, anyway. There’s no harm in a little unintentionally donated child support.
“What do you think, Damian?” Jason says. He holds up two packages of bibs, one with farm animal designs and one with Disney princesses. Damian blows spit bubbles. “You’re right, we
should
get both. Good choice, squirt.” Jason tosses them both into the cart, along with all of the other bibs on the shelf. “Let the asshole pay for everything in the goddamn store.”
He bounces Damian gently as he continues down the aisle, tossing random baby supplies into the basket. “Can you say ‘asshole’? That’s a two-syllable word, right there. Very versatile word. It means fugly monkey-shit bastard.”
Damian’s hands slap at a sippy cup with cartoon monkeys printed on it.
“Yeah! Fugly monkey-shit bastard!” He high-fives Damian’s small hand with the tips of his fingers. “That’s what our dad is, Dami.” (He acknowledges that he probably shouldn’t be cursing around a baby, but who cares? If Talia didn’t want her son picking up foul language, she shouldn’t have dropped him off with Jason.)
He fills the cart up with everything he can think of that a baby could need, plus whatever else he finds that looks vaguely baby-related. He buys Damian three blankets, ten onesies, a dozen bottles, and as many toys as he can find. He also gets the kid a proper carrier, a high chair, and a baby sling, because fuck it. It’s always better to be too prepared than to not be prepared enough. First rule of bat-training.
The cashier gives Jason a curious once-over as he piles his mountain of purchases onto the conveyor belt. Wisely, she doesn’t ask why his face looks like fresh roadkill. She smiles at Damian instead, which makes him smile back, the little flirt. “Cute kid. Is he yours?”
Jason can only imagine what she’s thinking, looking at the two of them: a teenage boy who looks like he lost a fight with a flamethrower and an infant wrapped in a dirty jacket, playing with a stolen key fob.
“Baby brother,” Jason corrects her. He bats Damian’s hand away from a rack of candy bars.
“Babysitting?” she guesses.
“More like had him dumped into my lap for the foreseeable future.” Ordinarily, Jason wouldn’t humor her questions so as not to rouse suspicion, but this is Gotham. Abandoned children and struggling guardians are this city’s version of a nuclear family. “I wanted to be prepared.” He gestures to his items.
The cashier hums, but she doesn’t press for more. Smart girl. She finishes bagging his many, many items. When Jason swipes Bruce’s platinum card through the scanner, she asks, “Would you like to donate two dollars to the Jason Todd Children’s Foundation?”
Jason snorts. At her questioning look, he coughs. “Sure, why not.”
Monkey-shit bastard.
At home, Jason finally feels like he’s getting a handle on this fuckery. He manages to drag all of his new supplies up to the apartment and plops Damian in his high chair as soon as it’s assembled. He wobbles in place a little, so Jason props a stuffed animal on either side of the kid to keep him upright. When can babies sit up on their own? Six months? A year?
“Your mom really threw me into this headfirst, huh?” Jason tells Damian ruefully. “She couldn’t spare ten seconds to tell me any of the
important
shit. She could have at least stapled a pamphlet to your forehead.” He’ll have to find some baby books when he gets the chance—anything to help him track where this kid is at. He doubts he’ll find any information on when a baby is officially able to handle a gun, but he’ll hold off on the Batman-hating conditioning until Damian’s old enough to walk. Maybe longer.
He gets to work rummaging through his collection, saving the bigger stuff to be assembled later. Damian is bound to be hungry by now, so Jason takes out a random jar of baby food and hopes for the best. He has no clue what flavors babies typically prefer, but their taste buds can’t be that advanced, right? A creature that can’t even sit up straight shouldn’t be able to decipher between bananas and peas.
Jason unscrews the lid off the palm-sized jar, grabs a spoon from the drawer, and wraps Damian’s teeny fingers around it. “Bon appetite, little man. Try not to make a mess.”
Damian drops his spoon onto the tray. Jason puts it back in his hand. He drops it again. Jason sighs. “All right, so I guess we’re not there yet.” He takes the spoon back and scoops up some mushed peas himself. “Come on, pal. It’s food. Everyone likes food.”
He spoons a bit into Damian’s mouth, but Damian is clearly not getting the hint, because he is of no help at all. He lets the mush fall out of his mouth in a big glob, sliding down his chin and onto his brand new shirt.
“Damn it.” Jason bought like thirty bibs, but
god forbid
he remembers to put it on the kid
before
he eats. This one’s on Jason. He wipes some of the goo from Damian’s chin, which makes the boy gurgle and spit happily. “Is it the peas? Not a fan? I don’t blame you. Peas are fucking gross unless they’re Alfred’s. He makes ‘em with garlic and butter sauce—you’ll love it when you grow up, trust me.”
That is, if Damian ever
gets
that far. It’s unlikely. Jason took the reins on raising Damian to turn him against Bruce, and that plan isn’t changing anytime soon. This kid won’t be growing up anywhere near Wayne Manor if everything goes according to plan, though Jason finds himself almost saddened at that thought. Damian deserves to know his pseudo-grandfather, if only because there isn’t a person on the planet more deserving of Damian’s presence than Alfred Pennyworth. Maybe Jason can arrange a visit after things quiet down between Batman and Red Hood. Bruce never has to know.
Jason shakes his head at himself. Right. As if he could ever attempt such a thing. Jason knew the enormity of what he was doing when he ran away from Wayne Manor and never looked back. He can’t turn on Bruce and keep Alfred; it’s both or neither, and Jason made his decision. Now he has to live with it.
He banishes the thought from his mind and gets back to work. It takes another five tries of unsuccessfully spooning peas into Damian before Jason calls it quits. He and Damian are both covered in gunk, and so is the brand new highchair. Damian doesn’t seem to mind the messy state he’s in, banging his tiny hands on the tray and mashing his fingers in the mush.
“You,” Jason says accusingly, “are a very messy baby.” Damian giggles and grabs for Jason’s nose, smearing peas on him in the process. “Yes, you are. Fuckin’ lot of trouble. Don’t know why I volunteered to make you my problem.” And
no,
he most definitely does
not
say that in a baby voice. He’s the Red Hood. He slaughters criminals and stuffs their heads into duffel bags, thank you very much.
He picks Damian up and wipes his face and hands. “How about a bottle? ‘Cause it’s either that or starve at this point.”
Luckily, Damian seems content with the bottle Jason prepares for him. It takes an eternity for him to figure out the instructions on the back of the formula tin, and even longer for him to work on heating it in the microwave to a temperature he thinks is safe enough to give Damian. He must do something right, because it
works.
“There you go,” Jason murmurs as he feeds Damian the bottle. “That’s better, right?” Damian is warm where he’s tucked into the crook of Jason’s arm, one hand on the bottle and the other coming up to tug idly at his earlobe. He’s actually pretty cute like this, all cuddly and happy. Jason sways them from side to side, letting the kid drink his fill.
“Y’know, looking at you all happy like this, you’d never know you came from such a crappy place. You look like any other normal baby to me. Totally harmless.” Damian blinks sleepily at him. “You’re not a normal baby, though, and the good part about that is that it’s all your parents’ faults. That’s not on you. It’s not on either of us.”
Jason used to blame himself for his lot in life, but he’s grown up since then. He’s learned better. It’s his father’s fault for spawning him, his mother’s fault for dying on him, Bruce’s fault for picking him up and making a soldier out of him. Jason was just along for the ride. Had Jason not intervened, Damian would have suffered the same fate.
“I won’t be like them,” he assures Damian. “I’m gonna take care of you, teach you what’s right and wrong. We’re not going to be what they tried to turn us into.”
Damian seems perfectly fine with this plan. His fingers curl around Jason’s where he holds the bottle. Damian’s eyes inherited their color from his mother but their scrutiny from his father—a fact that is wholly apparent as he looks up at Jason, at his new guardian, at the only person he has in this godforsaken world. He can’t understand a word Jason is saying, but Jason likes to think that Damian agrees with him.
“We’re gonna be unstoppable, you and me. We’re gonna burn the world.”
Damian’s first step in burning the world turns out to be by annihilating Jason’s sleep schedule.
It takes a record-breaking ten minutes for Damian to move on from go-lucky baby to crying monster and hater of the world. He wails like he’s dying as Jason frantically tries to soothe him with whatever remedies he can think of.
“Come on, kid,” Jason pleads for the dozenth time. “I want to sleep.”
He’s tried everything he could think of to fix whatever soured Damian’s mood so terribly. He fumbles his way through a diaper change, and then a second diaper change when he realizes the diaper is backwards. He prepares another bottle, which Damian throws on the floor with undistilled rage. After hours of trial and error with rattles and stuffed animals, Jason resorts to holding Damian and rocking him, panickedly singing whatever stupid nursery rhymes he can remember.
Damian only hates that more. He pulls at Jason’s hair like it’s personally wronged him, shrieking at the top of his lungs.
“Fine, fine, so you’re not a fan of my singing. I don’t blame you.” He wracks his brain for something else, anything else. “How about a story, yeah? Kids like stories.”
Catherine used to read Jason all sorts of books when he was growing up, classics like Dickens and Austen, regardless of their target audience age. It was the best cure she knew of for sleepless nights, and turned out to be the only thing that gave Jason comfort after she died. Believe it or not, Jason was terrified of the dark until he was taught how to hide in it, how to see it as a security blanket rather than an unknown weapon to be used against him.
Jason’s favorite was Little Women. He never knew what it was really about until he was old enough to understand the basics of literature, but he liked the way the words sounded when his mother read them aloud to him. She’d always skip over the sad parts to spare him, and it wasn’t until Jason reread the book as a teenager that he realized there were sad parts. Everything is different when you’ve grown enough to see what’s changed.
“I’d read something to you, but all of my books are back in my room,” Jason says. He tries not to let the words hurt. They do anyway. He didn’t hesitate long enough to pack anything when he escaped the estate’s grounds. All of his possessions are back in his old bedroom collecting dust. Or maybe Bruce cleared the place out when he realized what his son had become. Maybe the remains of Jason’s beloved books lie disintegrated in the bottom of a fireplace somewhere. He shivers at the thought.
“How about I make up a story, huh?” He’s grasping at whatever he can think of at this point. Damian shrieks into Jason’s shirt, banging his tiny fists.
“Hey, hey,” Jason says, bouncing Damian gently. “Uh, once upon a time, there was a robin. Alright? He was really tiny and frail, ‘cause that’s how birds are when they’re small. They’re breakable. But it was okay, because he had his mama there to take care of him. She kept all the other pesky birds away from her robin the best she could.”
Damian doesn’t stop wailing, so Jason doesn’t stop either.
“But his mama would go away sometimes, you see. She’d disappear from the nest for hours at a time and the robin couldn’t find her. She’d always come back eventually, but you can only come back so many times before the bad stuff takes you away for good. The robin should have known better than to hope she could beat it, because one day, right on schedule, she went away like she always did, and this time she didn’t come back.”
The phantom sensations of cold bathroom tiles and colder skin freeze to Jason’s palms. He clutches Damian’s warm body closer and keeps going. “The robin did what he could after that, but babies aren’t supposed to be by themselves. They need someone there to keep ‘em from falling out of their nest. It didn’t take long for the robin to fall, and when he did, he lived on the ground for a really long time, all by himself.”
He peeks down at the significantly calmer baby in his arms. Damian’s whimpers have quieted. Tears still streak down bright red cheeks, but he’s got his head pressed against Jason’s chest, feeling the rumble of his voice. Jason runs a large hand down Damian’s back and continues the story.
“It was hard, living on the ground. And painful. And sometimes he wished the fall had killed him because the ground wasn’t as forgiving as the nest was. He learned that not every bird was as good as his mom was. Some birds are out to get you, and they don’t care that you’re small or that you’re too innocent to understand what it means when a bigger bird wants something from you. They take what they want and leave the scraps behind without stopping to think about who they’re ruining.”
His voice catches in his throat at that part. He clears it. “Anyway, things got better eventually. It doesn’t for everyone, but the robin was lucky. A bat saw him on the ground and carried him to his own nest, knowing that his new robin would be safe there. And he was. For a while there, the robin was happy. And after an even longer while, he stopped waiting for his happiness to be taken away.
“But guess what, kid.” Jason looks down at his baby brother, whose eyes have closed and whose breaths come in quiet puffs against Jason’s neck. “It did get taken away. It happened after he’d been convinced he was safe, that everything would stay okay forever. They lied to the robin, but he learned his lesson after that. It’s better on the ground because now there’s nowhere for him to fall.”
Let the bats fly high above it all, trying to save the world while stupidly believing it’s still capable of being saved. That’s fine by Jason. If the old man wants to get himself killed, let him. Hell, Jason might even do the old man in himself. He might kill the Joker first. Maybe both at once if the mood strikes him.
“You don’t have to worry, Damian.” Jason’s thumb strokes the wispy black hair on Damian’s head. “I’m not gonna let you fall. The world fucking sucks and there’s nothing we can do about that. But we’ve got each other now.” He nuzzles the top of Damian’s head with his chin, breathing in the scent of baby. “We’ll be just fine here on the ground.”