Author's Note: Only a couple more chapters of this left!Thanks to WolfTail Run (I'm glad I actually have time to write again!) and soccernin19 (Talia and Damian were the hardest parts of the last chapter to write so I'm glad you enjoyed it!) for reviewing the last chapter! I own nothing.
Jason knew he still wasn't completely comfortable with the cape the hinder his every move and that he would be a liability. Therefore his job in this fight would be to keep Wilson from breaking free of the battle to go after Damian. For the moment it seemed that the mercenary was content with trying to beat Dick down but Jason knew it wouldn't last. The man was only in Gotham for one purpose, to take Damian back as his apprentice like he had so long ago. Neither one was going to allow that to happen. "You're going to fail," Deathstroke hissed, tossing Nightwing away from him as if the acrobat weighed nothing. "Fail to rescue your clone, fail to rescue your father. It's a wonder you can even get up and face the morning." Jason snarled at the insult to his brother, hands clenching into fists within the heavy gauntlets, but Dick let out a rough laugh as he stood.
"You don't get it, do you Wilson? This isn't about me. It never has been and it never will be. This is about protecting other people no matter the cost. My family understands that, even if you don't." Dick launched himself at the mercenary again, never one to give up easily, and this time Jason joined him. Forget restraint, they were going to take Wilson down even if Jason got tripped up by the stupid cape or thrown off a building. The last thing Damian needed was to be forced into a partnership with a man as cruel and manipulative as Slade Wilson.
Deathstroke may have been able to anticipate a lot of Nightwing's movements but Jason was a wildcard thrown in. His fist crashed hard into the mercenary's masked face. Dick took advantage of the man's slightly stumble to attempt to sweep his feet out from under him. Of course it wasn't that simple but Wilson had faltered. They could bring him down. Jason's smile was too sharp to be anything but predatory and Dick smiled back, wide and wild. They converged on the mercenary, working together as two parts of a whole, two cogs in a machine. Their time working together as Nightwing and Red Hood in Bludhaven helped, allowing them to anticipate each other's punches and kicks. Wilson could anticipate and dodge many of their hits but they landed blows.
They twisted across the rooftop in a kind of deadly dance, Wilson landing blows on both of them. Jason knew he would have bruises when this was over with but he didn't care. Wilson had insulted and injured his family. He wasn't going to be allowed free to haunt his baby brother's every waking moment. "He has my healing factor, did you know?" Wilson inquired, ducking underneath the one escrima that Dick had managed to hang on to. "When they cloned him they spliced my genetic code in with Grayson's. He belongs to me down to the DNA."
"He doesn't belong to anyone," Jason snarled and Dick bared his teeth, landing a particularly vicious blow across the mercenary's shoulders.
"He's a person, not a thing," Nightwing growled, sounding more like Bruce than Jason had ever heard him.
"And he's entitled to the same choices as the rest of us," Jason finished, landing a blow on the man's head. Deathstroke wavered and Nightwing was on him in an instant, unleashing a flurry of blows with moves that Jason hadn't seen since the Court of Owls had lifted their heads from the shadows not long after Jason had revealed that he was alive. The mercenary went down under the onslaught and Jason knocked him out with a swift kick to the head. The pair stood over the fallen body, gasping for breath.
"Well," Dick said, voice lightening considerably. "That was fun, don't you think?"
"Thrilling," Jason agreed dryly. "Now what do we do with him?"
"Call the others back," was the easy reply. "We're all going up to the Watchtower."
"You really want to take Steph after how ticked off she was earlier?"
"We did promise her revenge," Dick reminded the new Batman, a merciless look in his eyes.
"Yeah," Jason agreed, lifting a hand to his ear. "We did."
A shadow landed whisper soft next to a figure dressed in purple and black. Stephanie Brown almost threw the figure off the roof as a reflex before the green and yellow registered fully in her mind. As it was, she still had her hand wrapped tightly around Damian's wrist as her pulse thundered in her ears. The men below, low level thugs waiting for a delivery, didn't notice the altercation above. They were just stupid like that. "Give someone a little warning before you do that," Steph hissed at him and he smirked at her.
"Nightwing and Batman are dealing with Wilson," he told her and she pretended not to notice how his shoulders tensed up when he referenced Deathstroke.
"You're not helping them beat the crap out of him?" Steph asked curiously. She had thought that Damian was the sort who would want to personally beat his demons down, like Jason had with the Joker. She had never pictured him walking away.
"I'm not," the boy said but when he turned to look at her, the blonde could see uncertainty written all over his face. "Should I be?"
"Nah," she replied with an easy smile, releasing the boy's wrist and slinging an arm around his shoulders instead as the men below them were joined by the delivery men. "Want to knock some heads?"
"Naturally," Damian replied with a sniff at her phrasing. Together Batgirl and Robin launched themselves off the ledge towards their unsuspecting victims. What followed where a flurry of blows that left Steph's blood singing and her heart racing. It was during these times that she felt fully alive and, judging by the small but fierce grin on Damian's face, the boy felt the same. They dropped their last unconscious quarries and grinned at each before Damian remembered himself and forced the smile down. Steph didn't care. This was the most time she had spent with the boy without him snarling at her or looking as if he were contemplating her demise. It was fun.
"Time to head back our direction kids," Jason announced over their comms.
"Aww," Steph whined playfully. "You're ruining all our fun here."
"You mean you don't want to yell at senior members of the Justice League?" Jason shot back.
"All right, all right," Steph replied, snatching Damian's hand and tugging him along. "We're on our way."
Clark Kent startled guiltily when when the computerized voice announced the arrival of Nightwing, Red Hood, Batgirl, and a guest. He had known he would have to face Bruce's children eventually but he had hoped it would be after the man had returned and smoothed everything out. Now it looked as if he would have to lie to the children's faces about what was going on and try to comfort them. Diana would go along with it but both J'onn and Hal had given him disapproving looks. They were avoiding him and Clark wasn't sure he blamed them. It had been a horrible decision to make but Bruce had advised subtlety and this was the best way to keep Batman's undercover mission a secret. He stood and made his way towards the central control room where the Batkids would be.
Waiting for him were Dick, Jason, Stephanie, and a small boy the Kryptonian guessed was Damian, Bruce and Talia's son. The boy was dressed in a modified Robin uniform and Tim was nowhere to be seen, both worrisome factors. "Is everything all right?" he asked, taking a step forward and reaching out as if to pull them close so he could check them over.
"I don't know," Stephanie said, placing her hands on her hips and giving him an icy glare. "Is it?" Clark hesitated, worry curling in his stomach. "Did you know Bruce is alive?" the blonde continued.
"And that he's been sending us messages that someone in the Justice League has been blocking," Dick added, sounding truly ticked off. Diana came to join them, J'onn, Hal, and Shayera following behind her.
"We knew," Hal said. "Some of us didn't approve of lying to you but we knew he was alive."
"We believed it was necessary to keep Bruce safe," Shayera said. "One slip of the tongue or misstep could get him killed."
"And you believed Father would raise children foolish enough to make a mistake?" Damian inquired, voice cold.
"You know what?" Jason snarled. "That's beside the point. All of you know what someone's death does to this family. How could you just stand by and let us fall apart at the seams?" Dick lifted a hand to Jason's shoulder, trying to calm him some.
"What we're trying to say is that we don't appreciate being lied to, especially about this." Dick's voice was ice as he surveyed the founding members of the Justice League. "We don't appreciate it when B lies to us and we don't appreciate it when you all do it. You're going to have to do a lot of work to regain our trust." Then he nudged the unconscious figure on the floor with his foot. "Take care of this for us." That said, he pulled his siblings back towards the zeta tubes.
"Do you want any help?" J'onn questioned, gesturing toward himself and Hal. Dick studied them both and then nodded once. The six of them vanished in a flash, leaving Shayera, Clark, and Diana with the slowly rousing form of Deathstroke the Terminator.