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Chapter 1
Chapter Text
He had planned the details of this operation for two weeks straight, with great care and no little caution for his normal standards, and up until half an hour ago he was actually pretty damn pleased with himself for the results of his hard work. That's why, if someone asked him right now how could he screw it all up so badly, Jason honestly wouldn't know what to say to them (apart from fuck off, that is).
So, he's trapped in a corner, he's bleeding and he's angry, and he's so ready to kill anything that even looks at him the wrong way, let alone shoot at him like the thugs in front of him have been trying to do for the last half an hour, and of course - of course - that's the moment when things get even worse.
He doesn't see Darian. He doesn't hear her either. Shit, he wouldn't even know it's Darian - what with the kid not wearing her Robin costume but just normal baggy teenager clothes - if not for the fact that there aren't so many kids around Gotham who would willingly jump in the middle of fights they so obviously have no business to do with. (There are a few others besides Darian, yes, but they're all taller than this girl is) (and on top of that, Darian is kind of, you know, Jason's sister).
So he's trapped in a corner, he's bleeding and he's angry, and he also gets to watch a fucking kid - his fucking kid sister - jumping in the middle of his fight with no weapons, no kevlar protection and probably - because he knows her well enough at this point - not even the hint of a plan on her mind.
His adrenaline levels rise, instinct kicks in, and Jason gets back on his feet without even thinking about it. He starts shooting bullets, curses and swears indiscriminately at everything that moves - and let's be honest, that should've been the preferred course of action all along, screw the planning thing, it never works anyway.
He's going to kill Darian. Save her short ass first and then beat it black and blue. Tie her to her bed and let her watch while he burns everything the brat owns, clothes, knives, videogames, art supplies and carefully hidden toys (because Dick had spilled the bean about those, yeah). Take her pets away from him and give them to the local zoo.
His mind only stops rambling when he notices one of the snipers he was trying to distract turning his attention and his rifle away from him and towards Darian, and a thought - no, not even a thought, but an unavoidable certainty - freezes him to the bones.
Darian is going to die. Again.
And since Jason wasn't there the first time, now he gets a front row ticket to the show. The best tickets you could get, ladies and gentleman!, a voice inside of his head starts screaming, a voice that sounds sickeningly similar to the Joker's. And if you're very very lucky, you'll be even getting some of the blood on your faces! That's how close you get to be! Isn't this what family is for? Ah ah ah.
Jason's panicking. He knows that. But knowing isn't helping, and the split of time he was given to actually do something about it is already running out.
Meanwhile Darian delivers a mid-air kick to one of the thug's face, jumping closer to the sniper's position and stepping even more clearly in his line of fire. Jason's out of batarangs and the angle would be wrong anyway. Same goes for shooting first, no way he's gonna hit the guy and that would probably just prompt him to shoot right back at Darian. So Jason does the only thing he can think of and dives for his sister, but he doesn't have enough momentum, and the bullet goes off while he's still too far away to shield the kid.
Jason's heart skips a beat. Darian merely flips on her side and rolls on the ground. The bullet doesn't even brush him. She probably saw the sniper too, Jason realizes while he shifts on his feet to charge at the shooter without losing a beat. He's going to kill him anyway. The thug first, Darian later.
He avoids two bullets fired at him in quick succession, then lands a good round of punches on the guy's face. He'll probably survive, but he's gonna need a lot of reconstructive surgery to look as a human being again. Behind him Darian keeps drawing shouts and cries of pain, so Jason knows she's doing okay. Still, his pulse doesn't slow down. He can still taste the aftertaste of the fear in the back of his throat. He's not gonna sleep well tonight. Or tomorrow. Or any night soon, probably.
Yes, Darian's most definitely dead. Again.
Even with the newfound energy and Darian's help, it takes them almost an hour to clear the docks, tie up everyone who's still moving and retrieve the crates of weapons that were Red Hood's primary purpose for this escapade.
Once everything's done and the police's sirens are on their way, Darian turns towards him with a smirk. It's the first time that night Jason gets a good look at her face and he notices that she's wearing the Robin domino mask. She's unscathed, not even a scratch or a rim of sweat on her forehead. She actually looks quite content, and ready to start all over again.
"Well, that was easy. Is this how you usually spend your weekends, Hood? Being a living target practice for half-witted goons?" she taunts.
Jason barely register he's even speaking. He loads the last crate on his van and secures it with a lock, then gets up on his feet and takes off his helmet in one swift movement. When he finally turns to look at his sister, quickly and without even the hint of a warning, he grabs her by her wrist, pulling her toward himself. He peels the domino mask from her face and throws it away before Darian has even the time to understand what's happening to her.
"What the fuck were you thinking?" he growls in her face, all the adrenaline of the night still pumping his blood, loading his voice with a low key promise of violence and pain, and Darian's so startled by his reaction she actually tries to take a step back, eyes widening in alarm. "What the fuck are you even doing here without your costume? Are you fucking suicidal?"
"Release me!" Darian shouts back once the surprise fades away. She struggles uselessly against him, and for some reason that only serves to fuel Jason's fury. He catches the flailing fist the kid's trying to hit him with and uses his grip on her to shake her like she's nothing more than a ragdoll until he actually hears the rattling of her teeth.
"I said. What the fuck. Were you thinking." he asks again, voice like a thunder, fear and anger numbing him to everything else.
"I saved your sorry ass, you simple-minded ruffian!" Darian screams.
"You almost got yourself killed again, you fucking minikin!" Jason screams back.
Darian does her best interpretation of a feral growl and tries to headbutt him in the stomach. Jason shifts just in time and his hipbone promises him revenge in the form of a big, fat bruise. Jason can almost feel it blooming on his skin already. He loses his balance for the split of a second and Darian, relentless as ever, takes the opportunity to bite his hand too. Jason snarls, blocks a direct kick to his knee, and having finally had enough, he straightens up in his full height.
And Darian may be a high skilled assassin baby with the equivalent of twenty years or more of hard training on her little shoulders, but she's also a tiny eleven years old child, and Jason is the size of a mountain compared to her. So when he grabs her by the collar of her shirt and lifts her up in the air to slam him against the nearest wall, Damian can't do anything else but yelping in pain and looking completely stunned for a moment, just like any other regular kid would.
Then again, this is Darian, so the moment passes and she quickly resumes her fight by jerking into his grip and digging all of her ten nails into the skin of Jason's wrist, while also loading a kick that will do no favor to his ribs - that if Darian actually gets to land it, of course. But he doesn't.
He doesn't because, again, Darian may be angry, but Jason is angrier. Furious. And for a white hot moment he wants nothing more than to stop defending himself and actually hit the brat back. He wants to beat her until she's crying and fucking apologizing for this entire mess. Which… would be unfair, considering that most of this mess is definitely Jason's fault.
He closes his eyes. Breathes. Counts to five. Opens his eyes again.
"Darian", he calls, more calmly.
Darian keeps squirming, still trying to kick him. Jason counts to five again.
"Darian, that was a show of monumental stupidity and you are smart enough to know it." half a praise, half an insult. That was Dick's advice on how to deal with the child (except Dick may have said scolding instead of insult. But whatever).
Anyway, it works - of course it does - and the girl actually looks up at him. Jason doesn't let go of her shirt but shifts his grip so that he's not leaning all his weight on the kid's chest anymore and Darian can take a deep breath too. They look at each other for a long, uncomfortable minute, then Darian finally caves in.
"You needed the help", she reproaches Jason, who's not hypocrite enough to deny it.
"I could've used Robin's help, maybe, not Darian Wayne's."
"Tt. I had my mask on, there's no way any of them could identify-"
"Not the goddamn point, brat."
Darian pouts and looks down at her feet dangling well above the ground. She looks… deflated. Like she's actually offended at Jason for getting angry at her.
"Put me down," she orders, kicking him lightly in the stomach.
Jason eyes him for a moment before complying. Darian straightens up and adjusts her clothes with as much dignity as she can muster - which is still a lot, all things considered. Jason gives her some space while she recovers the green domino mask and pockets it.
"Now, do you want to tell me what the hell are you doing around Gotham in your civvies? And no smartass answers, you stepped on the limit of my patience two years ago."
Darian doesn't look at him. She's still pouting and the tip of one of her sneakers is aggressively pounding the ground, and if Jason didn't know any better, he would say that the kid's fidgeting.
"I was taking a walk," comes the grudgingly answer.
Jason's mouth twitches and he has to remind himself that swatting kids is a bad thing to do, even when you are the Red Hood and the kid is Darian.
"...You were taking a walk. In the middle of the night. On Gotham's docks."
Darian scowls at him.
"It's not like I can go home", she sputters, and oh. Oh.
Jason runs a hand over his face. He never thought about that. Fuck Bruce. Fuck Dick, too.
"Please tell me you haven't been roaming around Gotham's streets since that shit with Bruce went down."
Darian looks at him like he's a crazy person.
"Of course not, 'Hood. Do I look like a street rat to you?"
Jason wisely decides not to answer that.
"Okay, look, if you need a place to stay-" he's not sure about what he's going to say next because his plan for the night didn't include adopting homeless little sisters. Then again, there were obviously a lot of things that his initial plan for the night didn't included at all.
"I have a place to stay," Darian interrupts him. "It doesn't matter. He's going to send me back anyway."
Jason blinks, taken aback by that.
"Who's going to send you where?"
"Timothy."
"What?"
"He's going to send me back to Grandfather. He's my legal guardian now, so it is in his power to do so, since Father can't stop him."
Jason blinks at him again, but Darian's only reaction is to cross her arms over her chest and sheepishly look at her shoes, like she's embarrassed to have confided that much to Jason. Which means that she actually believes in what she just said.
"Tell me you are kidding," Jason pleads, but he already knows Darian's not kidding at all. It's all in her posture, in the way she's angrily chewing her bottom lip and avoiding Jason's eyes. And suddenly Jason has a sneaky suspicion that Darian decided to seek him out on purpose tonight, and that helping him deal with a bunch of thugs was his… Darian-esque way to ask Jason to help him back with this crazy deportation theory thing with Tim.
"Oh for the love of-" he sighs, kneeling in front of the girl. "Okay tator-tot, just tell me the story from the beginning, yeah?"
It's 3.00 AM, Tim Drake is wearing the top half of his best suit over his pajama's trousers and he's not even ashamed of it. He doesn't mind having a conference in the middle of the night to accommodate a client calling from the other side of the world, and he's not hypocritical enough to mourn the loss of sleep that he wouldn't be having anyway, but it's been a long, long week, and he's tired. So tired that he barely reacts when his front door opens with a bang and Jason Todd bursts into his living room, tugging along with him a reluctant Darian Wayne by the hand.
"As for the results of the second semester-" Tim's mumbling, and then he glances up from his laptop to stare at the two figures standing in the doorframe. Jason's in his costume, Darian is not, but they both look tired and ruffled, like after a patrol gone wrong. He looks at Jason's face, then at Darian's, then at the way Jason's tightly holding Darian's hand. He closes the ledger in front of him and smiles politely at the computer's screen.
"-They are not ready yet, but I'll inform you as soon as the numbers come in. Thank you", he finishes, closing the laptop. Bit rude, but as previously stated, Tim's tired. He looks back at his brothers, who – quite surprisingly, to be honest – have yet to spoke a single word.
"So... what happened?", he asks, bracing himself for the answer. He doesn't know what else could happen, what with Dick gone and the whole Bruce's amnesia affair and the demon brat now living with him, but he learnt long ago to not underestimate the amount of shit his life can manage to throw at him at the same moment. Besides, this is Jason and Darian holding hands. That's an alarm bell of its own.
Jason gives him a hard stare. He's standing tall and angry, and looks like he wants to punch someone (probably Tim). Which is not his worst mood, because at least he doesn't look like he wants to kill someone (again, probably Tim). Maybe the situation's not so bad. Maybe.
"Kiddo here crashed my operation", Jason starts slowly, shaking Darian by the hand.
"I did not-" Darian tries to interject, but Jason doesn't pay her any attention.
"Almost got both of us killed."
Darian looks up at him angrily and Tim knows that the grip on her little hand must be bone-crushing by now, even if Jason looks totally unbothered by it.
"Your incompetency at doing your job is not my problem, Todd. Besides, it was you who-"
Again, Jason completely ignores him.
"I was going to give her a piece of my mind about that, but turns out this entire mess is actually your fault," he concludes, still looking at Tim.
Darian doesn't add anything to that. Which is surprising, and honestly worrying.
Tim just sighs, fingers rubbing his temples. He looks again back and forth between his two siblings and for a moment he finds himself at loss of words.
"How- how it is my fault?"
Jason raises an eyebrow, and Darian suddenly finds a very interesting spot on the floor to stare at.
"Apparently you told her you were going to send her back."
Tim tilts his head to the side.
"I told him…" He slowly repeats. "What? Back where?"
"To Ra's," Jason quietly growls. And if looks could kill, Tim would be dying in a very horrible way. But it's Jason the attempting eye-murderer. Darian's still busy studying the pattern of his floor tiles.
Tim doesn't understand. Sure, he and Damian had an argument today, one that ended with the littlest Wayne stomping out of his apartment in a cloud of holy rage, but that was hardly news to anyone. And yes, there were insults and threats thrown back and forth between the two of them, but again, no news there - if anything their squabbles were getting kind of repetitive and boring. So no, he doesn't understand. Not right away.
"I never told her-", he starts, then something clicks and he pauses, sighs again, and barely refrains himself from banging his head into the desk. "Oh my god- it was a joke. I told her that if he didn't behave I would send him back to where he came from- and I didn't mean Ra's. I actually meant, you know, Hell. But it was a joke! Like, telling your siblings that they've been found in a trash-can and adopted out of pity joke? Or that you'll sell them to the circus joke?"
That's enough to spark Darian's anger. Tim tones out his snarky remarks at being the only blood son because he's heard them quite enough, thank you very much. But for all the insults and angry shouts, there's still something off about Darian. Something that says she's defensive, and insecure and… scared. The idea that Darian - Jesus, Darian - could be scared of him is… Tim doesn't have a word for it. It's just not something that makes sense.
He looks up at Jason again, almost gaping.
"It was a joke, Jason", he repeats weakly.
"Good thing that you remembered that the kid here has a good sense of humor then," Jason retorts. And well, he's not wrong.
Tim looks back at Darian's turbulent face. He wants to remind the kid that when she needed a place to stay he had took her in without batting an eye and despite their conflicting relationship, but he doesn't know how to say it without making it sound like Darian owns him for that, which is not the point Tim wants to make.
"I fought Ra's when he tried to take your body", he reminds her then, because it's the only thing he can came up with at the moment.
"Father made you do it", the squirt promptly snarls back.
"No, he-", Tim started, then bit his lips. "No, I would've done it anyway."
Darian doesn't answer, but she has a look of disbelief plastered all over her face, and Tim instantly knows that there's no convincing the girl. And maybe he's right anyway, because back then Tim had been in a very dark place and yeah, Darian was not exactly on the list of his good actions. But that was then, and this is now, and things have changed. They may not be friends yet, but he can't think of Darian as anything else but his younger sister (and an annoyance, of course, but that kind of goes with the word).
Yet it's pretty clear that with Bruce and Dick gone, Darian thinks she doesn't have a family anymore. And well, it's not like he doesn't have his own right reasons to think so. But…
"This is so stupid." Tim mutters, closing his eyes and hiding his face behind his hands. He wants a coffee. He wants to sleep. He wants to never tell a joke again in his life.
When he reopens his eyes Jason and Darian are still standing in front of him, looking as much tired and angry as he feels. Tim sucks in a breath, realizing that he's going to have to apologize, and even if he kind of see the point of it, he still doesn't like it.
Jason's not going to help him either, that's pretty much clear. Even if he's not butting in, he's still standing beside Darian, and he has still not let go of the little girl, even if the back of his hand is a battlefield of scratches and- yes, those are definitely bite marks. Jason knows how to make statements without a single word being spoken, and in any other situations Tim would probably laugh at the ridiculousness of all of this.
He stands up and walks around the desk to kneel in front of Damian, close enough to touch her but also leaving enough room between the two of them to shield himself from an eventual attack. Caution is one of the first things you learn when you're around Darian Wayne.
"Look, I know things are complicated right now. And I know that complicated is the understatement of the century," he quickly adds when both Darian and Jason click their tongues at him - and oh my god, is that a family thing now? "But they had been complicated before, and honestly, I don't think they're ever going to be not complicated, because we are who we are and all of that, but. But you've been around enough to know how this works now. We take the hit, we regroup and we go on. And we always, always, protect our own."
Or at least what's left of them, he adds mentally. And it's not the best speech of his relatively brief and not really brilliant older brother's career, but Darian's sullen face lightens a bit, and the girl doesn't look so angry and hurt anymore.
"No one will send you anywhere, Darian. I'm sorry if I said something that made you think so, it wasn't in my intentions." Tim adds anyway, just to be crystal clear about the entire affair, since Darian's not one for subtleties. "And if Ra's ever tries to take you back, we'll kick his ass again, Bruce or not Bruce. Okay?"
Darian just clicks his tongue again.
"Tt. Like I would require your assistance", she retorts. Then she seems to realize that holding her older brother's hand while saying so kind of ruins the aesthetic of it, so she gives Jason an annoyed tug, and this time her brother allows him to free her hand. He doesn't spare her a teasing smile and a quick hair ruffle, though.
"Well, you have it anyway, tator tot," he adds, butting into their discussion for the first time. "Besides, Timbo wasn't talking about just the two of us, you know?"
"Yeah," Tim cuts in. "Steph and Cass would love to take a swing at Ra's, and Barbara always had some sort of personal grudge against him. Oh, and Alfred will probably put on the cape and the cowl himself- and let me tell you, he's going to be ten times more terrifying than Bruce or Dick ever were."
Jason laughs, loud and clear. Darian scrunches up her nose in that funny way he does when she's trying not to smile.
"Alfred would make a worthy protector and a mighty opponent", she concedes, and now it's Tim's turn to hide a smile.
"Glad we can agree on something."
"Tt."
Jason yawns and stretches his back, producing an annoying sound of crackling bones first and then a wince.
"Alright twerps. Now that the crisis has been resolved, and before I ground your ass and kick yours", he says, pointing at Darian and then at Tim respectively. "I need food, alcohol, disinfectant and a forceps. In this exact order. I forgot I was bleeding out and after all this sweet talking about family and whatnot I think I'd definitely feel guilty if I died again."