Author's Note: Thank you so much for all your kind words on the first part. We finally see Damian in this one. Again, comic book character ages are kind of fluid so just go with it. I'm trying to keep our boy in-character but still soften him up a bit because he's younger and has had less of Talia's influence (I remember he once said he didn't actually meet her until later in life). So enjoy and please review!

Jason ventured downstairs a little later in the day because curiosity was still one of the emotions he hadn't quite rid himself of. The house was quiet as he looked from room to room on the ground floor. Somewhere in the distance he could hear voices and steps, but it didn't seem anything out of the ordinary or urgent.

The sound of a single pair of light footsteps coming to an abrupt stop behind him caught his attention. Jason spun and actually had to look down to see who it was. What he saw was a boy who couldn't have been more than seven or eight, the tips of his slightly spiked black hair not even reaching Jason at chest level.

He stared at the boy, and the boy stared back. Then he said something in Arabic, and Jason blinked. The confused look on his face must have been telling because the boy paused as if assessing, then in nearly perfect English, asked:

"Who're you?" His tone that was an equal measure of curiosity and demand.

Jason was too startled by the sight of a child in a place like this to reply with anything other than the same question. "Who're you?"

"Tt, don't you know?"

Jason frowned. "Why would I?"

He didn't think he liked this boy and his attitude one bit. Thankfully the entitled expression on his face changed, the frown switching from annoyance to mild confusion. The child cocked his head to the side slightly.

"Aren't you one of my new tutors?"

"I have no idea who you even are, kid!"

"Oh... I'm Damian," he said as if it was supposed to explain everything.

"Aha." That told Jason absolutely nothing. "What are you doing here, Damian?"

"I don't know. My mother asked me to be brought here. I assumed there was another tutor I had to meet."

Jason blinked. "Tutor? How old are you, kid?"

"Eight. How old are you?"

"I'm..." He had to think about that, add the years and months since his death. "Nineteen."

"You don't look that old."

Jason actually laughed, the sound now nearly foreign to him. This boy with the attitude the size of a small country was really just a little kid after all. He remembered being at an age when anyone more than a year older than himself was so old. Still, Jason couldn't shaking off the horrible sensation that he was missing something. Something about this kid... how old did he say he was? Eight? Jason's frown deepened.

"Damian," he said in the mildest tone he could manage. "Who's your mom?"

"Mother, duh."

"No, I mean what's her name?" He didn't really have to ask. He could easily guess, but Jason wanted to hear it said aloud by someone other than himself. The boy frowned again.

"She's Talia al Ghul. How can you be here and not know that? Who are you?"

Jason opened his mouth to answer or ask about the second half of the boy's parentage, he didn't really know. Really looking at him now, doing the math, he had no more need to ask the second question than he had the first. But this was so much worse, because if what he was almost a hundred percent sure about was true, there would be hell to pay. He just needed some kind of confirmation which came from the woman herself.

Talia stepped in behind Damian, who turned to look at his mother.

"His name is Jason." She said. "He's your brother."

For the first time since his resurrection, Jason truly saw red.

He wanted to scream at her, to shake her, or do something potentially even more violent. His hands kept clenching and unclenching at his sides, and for the first time since his attempted escape, the fire in his gut was back, the flame brighter than ever. But with a child – Bruce's son, for God's sake! - standing not two feet from them, he could do nothing but glare daggers at Talia.

Damian, clearly far from oblivious to the tension, looked between them. "Really?"

"Yes." Talia assured him. "Now, go to your studies. You and I will talk later."

She ushered him out of the foyer, and Jason watched until the boy disappeared down the hall. He wanted to be sure he was out of ear shot. Only after hearing two consecutive door closures did he turn on Talia.

"What the fuck!" He demanded.

She scowled slightly. "I do not respond to this vulgar language, Jason."

"How do you do this to Bruce! To me! To the kid! Does Bruce even know about him?"

"He does not," she replied calmly. "Nor will he until a time of my choosing."

"A time of your choosing!" Jason roared. "Like when you finally decide you have some use for me? Would it be around the same time we're talking about? You're keeping us from our father, do you get that! What the fuck gives you the right!"

"I am Damian's mother."

"But you sure as hell ain't mine!" He accused. "Though I don't know what's worse: this or the one that got me killed in the first place. I hated you before, when it was just me, but now..."

"You may hate me," Talia agreed. "It's well within your right, but I ask you to refrain from lashing out at Damian. He is innocent."

A different kind of anger flared in him. "You think I would do that to a kid?"

"No, I do not. Forgive a mother her over-protectiveness."

Jason didn't believe a word of it, but he simply scowled. "What do you want from me, Talia? Why did you bring him here now? Somehow I doubt it has anything to do with a new tutor."

"In a way it does. I want you to teach him. Nothing specific," she assured him seeing the dubious look on his face. "He wants to know of the outside world and of his father. I want you to talk to him about... anything you like."

"And if I tell him the truth?" Jason challenged. "That his mother is a cold-hearted bitch who kept him from his dad his whole life?"

"He knows I've kept him away," she replied calmly. "He isn't happy about it, but he's also accepted it's for the best. You may say what you will about me but remember one thing: how willing were you to believe the worst of your mother?"

She left him standing in the foyer in thought. It was odd, but after only a few minutes, Jason could feel the fog of indifference fade. He didn't want it to, didn't want to return to the pain, but something inside him demanded he live again. The first thing necessary for life was will. The second was sustenance, and Jason suddenly found himself hungry. Having no desire to eat with her, he made his way to the kitchen and raided the large breadbasket for something akin to a danish. It wasn't much but it would do for now.

He didn't see Damian or Talia for the rest of the day, but the following evening when he returned to his room, he was somewhat surprised to find the boy there, curiously touching the jacket that hung on one of the chairs. Jason had never asked how clothes that fit nearly perfectly got to his room, but over the last six months he'd acquired a few pairs of pants, spare shirts, and a jacket that he he'd worn for a while during the cooler months but hadn't touched recently.

Damian looked up at him when he entered, apparently unabashed that he was discovered in a room and touching things not his own. It was a good of a time as any, Jason thought, to lay out the ground rules for this little tutorship. He hadn't even decided if he was going to do anything Talia had asked, but it didn't hurt to let the kid know what was what.

"That's mine," he said sternly.

"I didn't do anything," Damian's frown was a mixture of confusion and defensiveness.

"You came into my room and touched my stuff," Jason told him. "That's rude. I don't care if you're the little prince around here. You don't do that to my things, got it? Want to see something, then you ask for it."

The boy neither argued nor gave any indication that he understood, but he did step away from the chair and half-bounced half-sat down on the bed. Jason didn't like that much either, but he let it slide, groaning inwardly. What the hell was he supposed to be doing with this kid?

"Is my mother your mother?" Damian asked suddenly.

"What?" Jason's eyes bulged. "Of course not!"

"Oh." The boy frowned. "Then why did she say you were my brother?"

Oh, God, was he really supposed to explain the bizarreness that was the Wayne – or in the kid's case, Wayne and al Ghul – family dynamic? Jason made a face and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Because I am." He insisted. "We have the same dad, different moms. I'm your half-brother if you really want to be picky about it."

He didn't want to go into the fact that he wasn't actually Bruce Wayne's biological son. Talia was unlikely to bring it up since she'd been the first to use the word 'brother', and if he were honest with himself, Jason had to admit that it was kind of nice to think of Bruce as his father without qualifiers.

Damian seemed to accept that however because he didn't argue the point further. Jason looked around the room and sighed. Now what?

"Look, kid, I don't really know what we're supposed to do here. Your mom just asked if I'd hang out with you for a bit. Do you want to... umm... go get a snack? What do you usually do?"

"Read," Damian replied. "Study things."

"Like..." What did eight-year-olds learn? "Fractions?"

"Trigonometry," the boy corrected, and Jason was glad for the table behind him because he reached for it. "It helps a lot in engineering."

"You like to tinker with stuff?" For his own sanity he had to say it in terms that might apply for a normal child, even though Jason was quickly realizing that Damian was anything but. His new brother nodded. "Well, I don't have anything for you to play with, but when we get back to Gotham, I'll tell Dad to put you to work on our cars. Those things have hubcap issues."

Damian just stared at him, and Jason winced. "And I'm trying to be funny again. Nevermind. What do you like to read?"

"I just finished The Art of War," came the excited reply. Jason couldn't help but role his eyes.

"And here I thought I was cool when I read the Hardy Boys," he quipped.

Damian gave him a quizzical looks. "Who are they?"

"The Hardy boys? They're brothers and a team of detectives," like Batman and Robin, "like our dad. 'Course, our dad's way cooler."

"Naturally," Damian agreed, never having met Bruce but certain anyone who was his father must be great.

Jason smiled and held out a hand to him. "I'm starving. How about you and me go get some dinner, and I'll tell you everything you want to know about the Hardy Boys?"

"And Father?" Damian asked.

"Yup, him too," Jason promised.

It continued like that for the next week. Damian still had his regular studies, but in the late afternoons and evenings, he would come to Jason and the two of them would talk or read or play. The young man was not at all surprised to learn that the boy's favorite game was chess. Since Shoots & Ladders were a little out of his mental age range, he decided to introduce him to Risk and Monopoly, though he had some trouble convincing Damian that they were, in fact, just games.

The boy was fluent in Arabic, English, and Jason suspected a few other languages. He could read the thickest books in the mansion's library, but Jason was somewhat amused to learn that like normal children, he liked to be read to as well. At one point, when they were going through a mythology book, he actually left his own chair and went over to sit on the arm of the large one Jason was occupying.

"These so-called-gods have more family issues than us," Jason smirked before continuing.

He still avoided Talia, his anger having turned to a sort of ice cold fury. However, no matter how angry he was, the fact remained that he would not outright scream at her while Damian was in the same house. He didn't care about her, but the boy had strangely grown on him. The only time they'd exchanged words was once in the hallway when their paths happened to cross. To his surprise, it was Talia who lowered her gaze for a moment.

"Damian has told me of all your playtimes." She was smiling slightly. "Thank you, Jason. For everything you're doing for him. Everything you will do."

"He's a good kid," Jason nodded. "He doesn't deserve this."

"I know." She said before moving on, and he couldn't quite tell what part she was replying to.

Throughout his imprisonment Jason had developed a habit of going to sleep fairly early for two reasons. The first was that he still instinctively woke nearly before the dawn but with no patrol to go on and no Crime Alley thugs to watch out for, he could finally afford to at least try to get a full night's sleep. But that rarely came easy for the second reason; nightmarish images that haunted him almost every time he closed his eyes. That night, just as he'd all but fallen asleep, Jason thought he heard light footsteps in his room. When he shot up, eyes wide open, heart pounding, there was no one there.

The second time he was awakened in the night, it must have been close to dawn but not so close that Jason briefly wondered what it was that had woken him. He sat up, looking around. No immediate danger, but then what was it? A faint glow from under the door caught his attention, and he experimentally sniffed the air.

Smoke!

He was dressed within a second, swung open the door, and stepped into an inferno.