Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Warner Bros. Entertainment, DC Comics, and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: Eeeeek, sorry it took so long to get this posted! I had a lot of writer's block with this one for some reason. 'Think part of it was trying to do too many things at once, so there might end up being another story between this one and the shadow of my shadow. Idk, we'll see.

Story title comes from the song Never Make Me Cry by Fleetwood Mac. It's a Christine McVie song for a change, not Stevie Nicks! Not sure who would think of that as notable, but eh, I just wanted to point it out. :)

Anyways, as always, I hope y'all enjoy,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~the storms 'verse~

~never make me cry~

The first several days after his return to the manor with Damian were tense and awkward, there was no other way to slice it.

Jason had been expecting this. To emulate Boromir from The Fellowship of the Ring movie, one did not simply come back to their family after having been killed, resurrected, and used as a human broodmare for the child of themself, their adoptive father, and their adoptive father's stalker and expect everything to immediately become alright. It was a huge adjustment to deal with.

In fact, he was even surprised that Bruce, Dick, and Alfred had taken it as well as they seemingly had. Yes, there was the hole in the wall from Bruce's fist, because it was obvious that he had been the one to make it. But Bruce had also held Damian multiple times since Jason had allowed him to at breakfast the morning after he'd come home, and he'd changed his diapers a few times, too. The alpha's face became soft whenever he was even around his younger son, though the haunted look in his eyes made it clear that he hadn't forgotten the circumstances that had brought Damian into being. But that was better than him and Dick charging off after Talia and Ra's.

Because although Jason loved his adoptive father and brother very much, they wouldn't have a single clue about what they were getting themselves into if they did that. Ra's and Talia had hidden a lot about the way they actually did things from Bruce.

(Hell, with him knowing to a greater extent about the way that they actually did things, Jason still almost couldn't believe he'd escaped with Damian as well as he had. A part of him was still waiting for the other shoe to drop, because it couldn't have been that freaking easy. Not without a cost.

But, he wasn't going to mention that train of thought to anybody except for himself.)

But just because Bruce, Dick, and Alfred had taken everything better than he'd been expecting, there was still a marked difference in how they were treating him than Before – with a capital "B," because much like BC and AD/BCE and CE, there was a Before Death and After Death in his mind.

Before Death, in those months leaning up to Ethiopia, he wouldn't deny that he had been a pain in Bruce's ass. He'd been reckless against the criminals they'd gone after, and had talked back when Bruce had tried to get him to stop and see the error of his ways. He still remembered that fight over the circumstances of Felipe Garzonasa's death, and how hurt he had been that Bruce hadn't fully believed him when he'd said he hadn't killed that man.

Because he hadn't killed him. He really fucking hadn't.

That didn't mean that Bruce had loved him any less in those months leading up to his death, but the fact remained that they hadn't been getting along. Now, however, in the After...it was obvious that the alpha was walking eggshells around him. Dick and Alfred, too. They didn't want to make him upset. The Joker wasn't brought up again, seemingly a conversation left behind to the night that he had come back. None of them asked questions about what the past two years had been like for Jason, even though he knew that they wanted to. Thus, every time the subject was brought up, it was by him. They all respected his need for space, and yet when he was in the same room as them, their eyes were constantly on him, like they were afraid that he was going to vanish into thin air.

And maybe, maybe he should've been more appreciative of this, because it was the proof he'd wanted for the past two years of how much they really loved him. But it was just mostly –

Well, mostly it was making him fucking pissed.

Jason hadn't come back to Gotham just to be treated like a paper doll, or a figurine made of glass. He was an omega now sure, but that didn't mean he was liable to break. He'd been through hell and back the past two years, and he'd clawed his way out of it just fine, without any help from his family. And he'd been Robin before, fighting and hunting down criminals right alongside the Batman. He wasn't a weak damsel in distress, waiting to be saved. He didn't need anybody to save him, actually. He'd saved himself.

(What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? That had to mean if you got killed and then were brought back from the dead, you were even stronger than that.)

As had been the case in Iran and on the run, Damian was his reason for bearing it out. Never for a second had he blamed his son for the crimes of his themither. Even when he'd been in the womb, Jason had loved him with the deepest depths of his heart. There had often been times when he'd looked out the window of his room in the castle in Iran, his hands clutching his growing belly as he'd whispered, "Omi's going to get you out of here...I'm not going to let Talia and Ra's fuck you up, I promise...I just need to find a way..."

Giving birth to his son had easily been the best moment of his entire life. It had never been on his bingo card to become an omither at the age of seventeen when he'd thought about what it would be like to be an omega Before, but he didn't regret it one bit, even with how it had happened. Escaping with Damian pretty much immediately afterwards was now second, and being taken in by Bruce that night he'd stolen the tires off of the Batmobile had become the third...

He spent a lot of time in his room with Damian, since the nursery was only starting to be constructed. Nobody bothered them here. When Damian was sleeping, he spent the majority of that time on his phone (how much he had missed the simple pleasures in life like scrolling on a phone...), trying to catch up on everything that he'd missed. When his baby was awake, however, he spent every second that he could feeding him, cleaning him, playing with him, and giving him the encouragement that he needed while he tried to roll over onto his tummy.

That wasn't to say they spent all of the time in his room, because Jason refused to deprive Damian of his father when he was the only other decent parent that he had. And also, it was nice to hang out with Dick, even if he was overbearing now.

But again, his family was being tense and awkward without being aware of it, and it was – stressful. Frustrating. Infuriating. Making him want to pull his hair out on occasion.

It did help that Barbara came over to visit once. It hurt his heart like it always did at first to see her – seriously, the Joker paralyzing her should have been enough, why hadn't Bruce put him down like the animal that he was after he'd also killed his son? – but unlike the others, there was no awkwardness in their reunion.

"Jason, oh, I'm so happy you're alive!" were the first words that she breathed when she saw him.

He met her halfway across the great hall, pulling her into a hug. "What, did you think you were gonna get rid of me that easily?" he snarked under his breath.

With how Bruce, Alfred, and Dick were acting around him, he hadn't made that joke with them. But Babs only laughed. "Good to see the bastards didn't grind you down," she remarked, knowing he would get the reference. When he pulled away from her, she smiled at Damian – because omither and son were still used to them being stuck together like this practically all the time – and reached out a finger to him. "And this is Damian, huh?"

"Yep," he confirmed with a nod.

The two of them retreated to one of the sitting rooms in the manor, only disturbed by Alfred coming in with a tray of tea. He let Babs hold Damian, because yeah, his instincts were going haywire around Dick and even Alfred, hence his reluctance to let either of them hold his son (and they were going haywire around Bruce too, hence why he'd called him "Alpha" the night he'd come home and a few more times since then).

But, Babs was a beta woman. It was different with her.

She held Damian like a pro, not needing Jason's expertise or anything. "He looks so much like you...and Bruce," she mused out loud. Then, after a pause, "He, Dick, and Alfred haven't been handling this the greatest, have they?"

He laughed. "No." He was glad that he could admit to this with her. If he said it to his family's faces, he knew they most likely would ask him how they could fix their behavior or make him feel better, and in the process would thus completelymiss the point he would be trying to make in the first place. "I mean, they're trying, but – "

"They don't know how to treat you because they don't know how to deal with their own feelings in all of this, so they're acting like you're more fragile than you really are," she finished for him. She smirked. "Believe me, I get it. They'll get better eventually."

"How eventually is 'eventually?'" he muttered.

To this, she only laughed.

But even with her advice and the solace of her and Damian, he needed this tension and awkwardness in the manor to pass. It was making him angry, but there were a lot more reasons for why he was angry than just the overall mood. And if things didn't change sometime soon, he knew he was going to be like a cauldron boiling over, or a storm that had been brewing for so long it was ready to pour down a shit ton of rain:

The results were going to be explosive, and he felt bad for anyone who got in his way or were even near him when it finally happened.

Just over two weeks after he'd come back home, Jason woke up a couple minutes after midnight drenched in a cold sweat. He'd had the Nightmare™ again, the one that was a combination of his darkest moments over the past couple of years: the Joker beating him over and over again with a crowbar, seeing the timer in the warehouse and realizing that Bruce was going to be too late, gasping as he came out of the Lazarus Pit without having any idea of who or where he was before the slick began to drip down his legs alongside the green liquid, and the look in Talia's eyes as she held that device in her hands and told him the complete fucking lie of how it "wouldn't hurt."

(Seriously, he would've been fine with the pain, he'd already been beaten with that aforementioned crowbar, so why had she lied to him outside of just wanting to cause him more misery?)

Damian was still in the crib Bruce and Dick had put together for him. Jason's breasts were already starting to feel tender again from the replenishing milk, but his son usually preferred to be fed closer to two o'clock nowadays for his night feeding and he didn't feel like waking him. He didn't feel like staying in a sitting or half-laying down position for the next twenty to forty-five minutes at all – he wanted to move, move, move.

So, that he did. Getting out of bed, he took off his shirt to slip on his maternity bra and put on another shirt. Then, turning on the baby monitors and stuffing one of them in his flannel pants' pocket and putting the other on the nightstand right next to Damian's crib, he left his bedroom, shutting the door behind him. He meandered down the hallways, not sure of where he wanted to go – or so he thought. It was only when he came upon the doors to the gym that he realized that was where he had wanted to go all along.

He walked into the gym. It was dark, save for the moment when lightning flashed in the windows and lit up the room and the rain-stained glass. He'd forgotten how much he'd missed the rain in Gotham while he'd been held captive by the al Ghuls and then gone on the run. He was used to the rain lulling him to sleep, reassuring him that he was in a familiar place and that everything was going to be alright.

He turned on the lights to the gym, watching them flicker briefly. He looked at the various pieces of exercise equipment, not sure of which one he wanted to use. The treadmill wasn't appealing; Lord knew how he'd done enough running in the past four months. The bicycle and 3-in-1 machines wouldn't do for similar reasons. The weights and bench simply didn't call to him.

Finally, he decided to settle on the good old-fashioned punching bag. He wrapped up his hands, although he didn't put on gloves simply because he didn't feel like it. Maybe not the best of ideas, but he'd been through worse than bloodied and broken knuckles.

The first hit felt good; it felt good to be getting the anger he'd been feeling all this time out. The second hit was even better than that. And the third hit and the ones that came after it soothed him down to his very soul – he pictured the Joker, Talia, and Ra's in his mind's eyes, and imagined what it would be like if their faces were the punching bag instead. He imagined what it would be like to kill them.

(When it came to his son's themither, that was possibly the best thing that Jason could ever do for Damian. After all, if she was dead, she couldn't sink her claws into him and mold him into that perfect assassin that Jason had sworn he wouldn't let him become as long as there was still life in his breast.

Even so, wasn't it awful that he wanted to kill one of his child's other parents? He knew that it was.)

He didn't know how long he spent punching the bag. Probably around thirty to forty-five minutes, maybe an hour, but definitely not an hour and a half to two hours because Damian would've been crying by then.

Anyways, as he hit the bag for the umpteenth time, he was abruptly made aware of the fact that he was no longer alone.

He stopped what he was doing, panting. "Bruce," he said. "How was patrol?"

"Patrol was fine," Bruce commented. It made Jason's eye twitch. Such a noncommittal answer. "I wasn't expecting to find you awake."

Jason shrugged. "Well, you know how it is. I needed to let off some steam."

He turned around so he could look at the alpha with his own two eyes. That haunted look was in the man's brown eyes again. "Did it help?"

Another shrug. "A little."

Actually, it had helped a lot. But he wasn't willing to admit to the truth, because he had a feeling that if he did, Bruce would then not-so-subtly suggest that he go back to bed.

Of course, it should've occurred to him that his adoptive father would do that anyways. "It is late," Bruce spoke, his eyes flitting about the room. "I know that doesn't mean much to you, but – "

That irritation Jason had been trying to punch out of his system came back at full force. "I was out later than this all the time with you. You know that, right?" he huffed, stepping away from the punching bag. He rubbed at his knuckles; they were bloodied from his lack of wearing gloves, but it wasn't anything too bad. Nothing that wouldn't heal.

"I know. I just – " Bruce sighed. "I'm sorry. Please, go back to what you were doing." He gestured with his right hand to the punching bag. "I just wanted to check up on you."

He's trying.

Let it never be said that he wasn't trying, even though he was failing miserably.

"No." Jason winced as he started to take off the wrapping on his knuckles. Maybe he'd done himself in better than he'd realized. "I think I fucked up my knuckles enough for one night."

Bruce started to walk over. "Let me see."

I can take care of myself, Jason thought, his anger only rising more, almost like bile in his throat. I don't need you catering to my every whim. "It's okay, Al – Bruce," he said out loud. Dammit, he'd almost slipped again. He needed to get better with that. "I've got it."

The alpha – the alpha, not his alpha – stopped, his eyebrows crinkling together. "Are you sure?"

He fought to keep his voice level so that he wouldn't snap. "I'm sure."

Bruce looked like he was feeling helpless. It wasn't exactly a good look on him. "Alright, then," he said. He turned around, moving to exit the gym. "I'll be upstairs if you need me."

"Need." There was that word.

The only thing that he needed was a sense of normalcy.

He didn't move until he was sure that Bruce was no longer in the hallway that led to the gym, his body as stiff and frozen as a statue. Then, going over to the corner of the gym that had some benches as well as first aid kits, he grabbed one of the kits and took it with him into one of the bathrooms connected to the gym. He turned on the water from the sink to a nice temperature, and watched his blood intermix with the water as it went down the drain. He didn't immediately do anything after that, just watched the threads of red dye the clear water pink.

Tears burned in his eyes as he did, for more reasons than just staring for too long without blinking. But blink he did, blinking the excess water surrounding his eyeballs away as he gave a small shudder, then to work on drying and then applying disinfectant and dressing to his wounds. Just as soon as he was finished, the baby monitor in his flannel pants activated with Damian's cries. Putting the first aid kit back where it belonged in his quest to leave the gym, he went back upstairs, a tired smile on his face as he entered the room and went over to his son's crib.

"It's okay," he soothed Damian, taking off his shirt and maternity bra for the extra skin-on-skin contact before picking up the baby and taking him over to the armchair in the room. It was the one where Jason had spent a lot of his time curled up and reading books Before, what felt like a lifetime ago. He rolled his nipple up against Damian's lips, and in no time at all he was latched on and nursing. "It's okay, Dami. Omi's here..."

A week later, when Jason came downstairs with Damian and walked into the kitchen (they were still eating there in the mornings at what he had been told was the breakfast table, though they ate in the informal dining room for lunch and dinner. He had a feeling that before he had come back, the family had been eating their meals more in the kitchen than the informal dining room, and it made him feel squeamish that the routine had developed and they had now changed said routine for him, though that was neither here nor there), he saw Dick sitting at the breakfast table, sporting a black eye and a pack of ice shoved awkwardly into his mouth towards the back. It looked like he'd gotten another tooth knocked out.

Jason internally winced in sympathy. It wasn't like the tooth wouldn't grow back – when humans had been infected with the virus that had given them their designations/secondary genders seventy-thousand years ago, they'd also been given the ability to regrow teeth, though only if periodontal disease wasn't involved. But the whole process too a couple of years, involved a high-calcium diet, and was rather uncomfortable.

He knew the latter part from experience, since the Joker had knocked out over fourth of his teeth with the crowbar before he'd killed him. Talia had given him some sort of serum the League had developed to make his teeth grow back and come in faster, over the course of six months, before she'd impregnated him with Damian. She'd said something about how he needed to be "in perfect health" in order to make sure his son came out okay.

With the process having been sped up like that, it had hurt a lot more than it was supposed to.

Like a bitch, to be precise.

"What happened to you?" Jason asked as he sat down in one of the chairs, although he knew that Dick wouldn't be able to respond to him easily. He also noticed the one absence in the room. "And where's Bruce?"

"Master Wayne had a meeting at Wayne Enterprises to attend," Alfred informed him as Jason helped himself to the spread of food on the table. The beta man glanced at Dick, as if trying to decipher whether or not the alpha was going to answer Jason's question himself. When Dick gave no inclination to speaking, Alfred explained for him, "As for Master Grayson, he had a fight with the Orca last night. She knocked out two of his back teeth."

"'Ey'll grow ba'," Dick muttered around the ice bag, though he winced as he did.

Jason rolled his eyes. "I know that, Dickie. But, uh..." His eyebrows furrowed. "Who's the Orca?" That wasn't a name he had heard before. She must'v been a villain that had appeared on the scene while he'd been...gone.

"Dr. Grace Balin," Alfred told him. "She's a scientist who experimented on herself after she was left paralyzed by an accident. We're not exactly certain of how, but she turned herself into a hybrid creature that resembles an orca whale."

Jason snickered, to which Dick glared at him. "Sorry, sorry," he apologized, even though he wasn't that "sorry" at all. "Just...her last name is Balin? Like baleen? That's some coincidence."

"'Augh it u'," Dick replied, before wincing again.

Damian let out a loud shriek, cutting off that particular conversation. Jason glanced down at him, smiling as he saw his baby reaching out towards his filled plate with meaty fists that were opening and closing. "What, have you decided that you want to try solid foods now?"

Alfred's expression became tinted with worry. "Are you sure that's a good idea?" he asked as Jason went about smushing an extra large piece of scrambled egg with his fork, breaking it down into much smaller pieces that would be more manageable for Damian to try and eat. Or, as he figured was more likely to be the case, taste and then spit out. "He's not...too young?"

Jason tensed. Logically, he knew that Alfred's worry came from a good place, but –

– The beta man swiftly seemed to realize his mistake, his visage becoming abashed. "My apologies, Master Todd," he said.

If there was one thing that you never, never did without serious cause or reason, it was question an omega's parenting abilities of their newborn/infant child. Their maternal instincts were more pronounced at this age than any other. Jason kind of hated how he wasn't an exception to that rule, but at the same time, he was thankful for it. In many ways, it had made taking care of Damian easier while they'd been on the run, thousands and thousands of years of evolution since the initial outbreak of the virus guiding him in what to do.

He inhaled and exhaled loudly through his nose. "It's fine," he said, even with how a not-so-small part of him wanted to insist that it wasn't. "I know four months is a little early, but he's closer to five now anyways. And if he's interested, I don't see a reason in not trying to get him to start. He's not going to be able to stay on the boob forever."

Dick made a spluttering noise, coughing as he yanked the ice pack out of his mouth, an excess of saliva trailing down his chin from his mouth along with it. Jason, now accustomed to dealing with saliva all the time, merely rolled his eyes again as he held up a pinch of scrambled eggs to Damian's lips. "You wanna try this, Dami?" he asked softly.

Damian let him place the scrambled eggs in his mouth. He didn't really know how to chew yet, so he more or less just moved it around in his mouth, making a face as he did that made his omither chuckle and Dick smile. Jason went back to eating his own breakfast of oatmeal and eggs, since he understandably probably wouldn't be able to handle eating foods that required more work right now. The baby seemed to like the eggs enough to swallow at least some of them, however as Jason had expected the rest fell out of his mouth through a trail of drool.

Jason grabbed a napkin from the table and wiped off Damian's mouth. "Let's not pick up any bad habits from Dick, Dami," he teased.

"Hey!"

He was able to get most of the way through his meal before Damian made another face. This time, it was accompanied by a...vibration that told Jason what the cause was. Sighing, he pushed his chair away from the table.

This was what he had appreciated about coming back and letting his adoptive father take on some of the parental duties for their child, and he still did. He didn't have to scarf down his food after feeding Damian the first thing in the morning to make sure that he got enough food down in time to change his diaper. Yes, he supposed that he could just wait to eat until after he'd changed Damian's diaper or force himself to go back to eating once he did (cleaning up literal shit did not do good things for one's appetite, as he'd learned), but breastfeeding also required a lot of calories. Now, that wasn't so much of a problem, since he had easy and ready access to food once again. But back while he'd been on the run...

Well, let's just say some habits aren't easy to brea, most of all after only three weeks.

"Master Todd," Alfred said, eyeing him with concern. "Are you finished eating?"

Jason sighed again. "Yeah, I've gotta change his diaper."

Alfred did not offer to change Damian's diaper for him. There were just some things that even a beta or an alpha like Bruce and Dick knew not to do most of all when it came to the boundaries of an omega and their newborn/infant. Granted, he had made that other comment, and Jason could tell that he did want to offer up his help in this regard as well. He was holding himself back from doing it, but it was obvious.

Just like the beta man's comment, it made him uncomfortable. Not angry, but it did set him on edge.

Alfred's lips pursed. "If you would like, I can keep another plate warm for you in the – "

"No, it's fine. I'm never hungry after a diaper change," Jason said. He barely looked over his shoulder as he did, making a hasty retreat for the open doorway that led into the kitchen. Then, because if there was one thing that Bruce and Alfred had made sure to instill in him during the three years he'd livered here in the manor Before, as short as they were in retrospect, he added, "But thanks, anyways."

He was gone before Alfred could even formulate a reply.

A month later, Damian was down for his second nap of the day, and Jason was sitting in his favorite armchair in the library, the old and worn copy of Pride and Prejudice in his lap and the baby monitor on the end table next to him. Besides Alfred, and he didn't know where he was exactly, they were the only two ones in the house: Bruce was back at Wayne Enterprises for his business affairs, and Dick had an apartment in the city. It was somewhere close to Gotham University, where he was now in his junior year of his forensic science degree. He'd taken a gap year after high school, partially because he'd had his own bone to pick with Bruce at the time. Jason's return had seemed to start to smooth things over there.

(For now.)

Jason remembered fondly, with a twitch of his lips and everything, back when Bruce had first brought him to the manor, he'd hardly been able to believe that all of this existed just to service one family. True, it wasn't as big as the Gotham Public Library, where his adoptive mother for all intents and purposes, had taken him to whenever she hadn't been working or getting high, before she had died from her drug overdose. But it was nevertheless expansive, and filled with older books than what the Gotham Public Library usually offered on its shelves, including many books that had only been printed for a few runs, meaning that their copies in the Wayne Manor were likely some of the only ones left in the entire world.

The al Ghuls had an even more extensive collection than the Wayne Manor library and the Gotham Public Library, carefully built and refined by Ra's over the several centuries that he had lived. Their library contained even more priceless artifacts than the Wayne family's. When Ra's and Talia had learned of his love for books, they had used their library as a bribery for his compliance. He'd never actually been allowed to set foot in the thing himself, he'd hardly been allowed outside of his room at all, but it had frequently happened that he would wake up and find a book on his nightstand. It was usually one in English, but they'd also given him ones in Arabic and Persian as they'd forced him to learn them and become more fluent in them.

As you can see, their attempts at buying his compliance hadn't worked, and not just because of how he'd been planning his escape.

For all of the rare books that the al Ghuls had that the Wayne Manor library didn't, Jason would always prefer the latter. He would always prefer the books that had substance to them, and weren't just boring works on political theory or books that he couldn't properly appreciate because of how far removed from their culture he was. Yes, he did enjoy those kinds of books too, he was thoroughly a book nerd, but they had become too overbearing when they were all that you were able to read. Give him a Jane Austen novel any day over days and days of those – case in point.

He would always prefer the coziness of the Wayne Manor library, too. He had his favorite armchair in it, and there was nothing better than placing the armchair in front of the fireplace, or right next to the window while it was raining with one of his favorite books in his lap. The room he'd stayed in Iran would just never compare. He would always prefer the crackling of the fire in the fireplace, the pitter-patter of rain over the sound of the desert wind.

(And he would always prefer his own family over the one that the al Ghuls had thought they could make with his son, because he had seen the writing on the wall that – )

His musings as he was reading (he'd always been good at multi-tasking) were interrupted by footsteps pinpricking at his ears as they came down the hall. Jason knew even before he looked up as the library doors opened who they belonged to, and that they didn't belong to Alfred.

No, they belonged to his older (and only, he'd told Dick that he could think of Damian as a younger brother if it made things easier for him, but to hell if he was going to think about his own son that way himself, urgh) brother.

"Oh, you're here," Dick said. He looked more tired than usual; there were dark circles underneath his eyes. "Good."

Jason had a feeling that, whatever Dick apparently wanted him for, it was going to take longer than a few minutes. He grabbed his favorite bookmark from where it was on the end table right next to the baby monitor and put it into his spot, closing the book. Then he put the book on the end table. "Why?" he asked.

Rather than looking at him as he spoke, Dick's eyes flitted about the room. "It's nice to see you here again. It's just like the old times."

There was something about how he said "old times." Something that set Jason on edge.

(Yes, they could reminiscence about the "old times" all they wanted to, recalling how Dick, in his own words, hadn't been "the best of brothers," regardless of how he was trying to change that now with all the time he'd been spending at the Manor since Jason had come back with Damian. They could talk about how those "old times" should have been, even though Dick had gotten better back then, too.

But they didn't have a time machine. They couldn't go back to the past and change it. Moreover, even with how horrible the past two years had been, Jason wouldn't want to do that if it meant giving up Damian. His son was the light of his life, an absolute perfection.)

"I guess so," Jason said. He wished that he hadn't put the book on the end table. If he hadn't, if he had kept it in his lap, he could be rapping his fingertips against its surface right now. Let out some of the nervous energy that was quickly filling him.

Dick noticed this. "Sorry," he apologized. He ran a hand through his hair – a nervous habit of his own. He grabbed the armchair that was closest to where Jason's currently was and turned it around. He sat down. "I want to talk with you."

"I kind of guessed as much," Jason remarked blandly.

Dick stiffened at that, which was...weird. It wasn't a usual reaction for him.

Jason decided to take a little bit of pity on him. "What do you want to talk about?"

Dick opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"I know you went through a lot over the past two years," he started to say. He wasn't able to say anything more.

Because Jason –

Something inside Jason broke. He knew that it wasn't fair, that he was about to not be fair. It wasn't like Dick deserved this.

But here it was, the moment he'd said had been coming. This was the boiling over point for the cauldron. When the cloud had gathered up so much mass, it had no other choice but to pour down the rain.

He'd been dealing with Bruce, with Alfred, with Dick all being weird all this time, ever since he'd come back to Gotham. If this had been Before, Dick would've just gotten straight to the point with whatever he was trying to say. But no, as a continuation of the weird behavior, he had to beat around the bush, offering Jason a platitude about how rough things had been for him, like he didn't already know that himself, like he hadn't suffered through the past two years on his own.

Like he was fragile, as Barbara had said.

Jason's eyes narrowed. "What would you know about it?"

Dick stilled, the abrupt change in his tone taking him aback. "Well, I, uh, I don't know everything that you went through," he said staggeringly. "But – "

Jason stopped him right there. "No, you don't," he spat. He got to his feet. His hands clenched into fists. "You know, you, Bruce, and Alfred actually might've known more about it than you do now, if any of you had ever decided to ask in the past almost two months about what the past two years were like for me, but none of you ever actually have! I've always had to be the one to bring it up!"

Dick's eyes were wide. His expression was pained. "Jay," the alpha said. "I – I know that, but – "

The omega scoffed. "If you know that, then why have you never said anything? Why have you never changed your behavior?" he demanded. "You all – you all've been treating me like I'm made of glass, but I'm not!" He waved his hands for emphasis. "I've been – I've been through hell and back! I was murdered! Do you know what it actually feels like to die? And I don't just mean you're technically dead for a few minutes, but to actually experience brain death?"

Dick shook his head. "Jason – "

"Do you know what it's like to come back from that? To present just as soon as you're alive again when you know that you shouldn't be? To be confined to a single room for two years, unable to leave it? To be tortured all for the sake of making you the perfect breeding stock, to have something that's supposed to be yours forcibly removed from your body just for it to be changed and shoved back into you by a device meant to replicate an alpha penis? For that thing to grow into a baby, who you love, but you know the second that they're born, their bitch of a themither is going to take them from you and you're never going to see them again as she makes them into the perfect human weapon? To know that if you even try to stop that and fail, they're just going to kill you all over again?

"Or what about, when you actually manage to somehow succeed in stopping that, despite all the odds, when you come back home, the home you wanted to come back to ever since you got kidnapped by the man who murdered you, your instincts are all haywire? That they make you want to call your father your Alpha because even though he's your father, because he's one of the other parents of your child they also want you to view him as your mate? That your instincts also make you not trust your brother and honorary grandfather as much as you want to, your trauma aside, and you know it's irrational but you can't stop it anyways? Do you know anything about what that's like? Do you?"

His chest was heaving by the end of his impromptu rant.

And Dick was just sitting there, his visage as pale as a ghost's.

"What's going on here?"

Jason's head snapped towards the open doorway of the library. His face wasn't faring much better than Dick's as he felt the blood recede, turning his skin to the color of bone.

Bruce was standing there. Although his voice was deceptively calm, it was clear that he had heard everything that Jason had said. He looked like, as soon as he thought he reasonably could, he was going to be sick.

Jason hadn't wanted to admit to just how badly he wanted to call him "Alpha," and what that actually meant, while he was around.

He'd never wanted to admit to it at all.

All of the sudden, he did feel fragile. He felt small and weak, and so completely the docile and meek omega Ra's and Talia had wanted him to be.

He didn't bother trying to respond to Bruce. There was some sort of response that he could've come up with, he was sure, but the anger had well and been thoroughly drained out of him and replaced with something else, an even uglier emotion:

Shame.

So he did the first thing that came to his mind instead:

He ran.

Jason walked over to one of the other doors to the library, since of course in a manor as old as this one, there were multiple exits/entrances to every room. "Jason," Bruce called out to him.

Jason ignored him.

"Jason!"

He threw open the door, walked through it, and shut it behind him.

There were several places that he could've been cut off at, several places that Dick and Bruce could've cornered him and tried to continue the conversation he'd just run from like a complete and utter coward.

But, they didn't. And Alfred didn't randomly appear and try to stop him, either.

Thus, he was able to rush back to his room, where Damian was still napping, and then shut and lock the door behind him.

His back made a thud as he leaned against the closed door.

Jason felt the tears run down his cheeks as he quietly sobbed. He'd always been a quiet crier. Whereas Catherine had been a neglectful parent due to her drug addictions, but still kind and warm when she'd been able to muster it, his sperm donor, Willis Todd, had been a downright malicious "parent" – if you could even call him that. He'd demanded that the apartment be free of things that he didn't like when he'd come home from work, whether it be at his day job or his night job under the Penguin. It just so happened that his son's "whinging," which usually meant his talking in general but especially included his crying, was one of those things.

Yeah, Jason hadn't been sad the day that they'd been told he'd died in prison, even though it had made Catherine's addiction that much more worse.

At least being a quiet crier was now coming in handy. He didn't want to wake up Damian too soon from his nap, wanted to have some time to grieve at what he'd done.

Hadn't he said before he just wanted a sense of normalcy again? He'd pretty much just ruined all of his chances of that.

He slid down to the floor, still with his back pressed up against the door, and brought his legs to his chest and rested his arms on top of his knees and his head on top of his arms as he cried. He didn't know how much time passed with him in that position: he heard footsteps approaching his bedroom door, which made him tense.

They paused, and then they retreated, leaving him relatively alone.

Eventually, Damian did end up waking from his nap. Jason could tell by the quiet gurgles he began to make. Sniffling, the omither wiped the tears from his cheeks messily with his right hand, before he stood up and went over to the crib. "Hi, baby," he cooed, picking up his son. "Did you have a nice nap?"

Damian looked up at him with an expression that could only be described as confusion, like he didn't understand why his omither was so upset.

Jason sniffled again. "It's alright, I'm fine," he said. "Don't worry about it."

He went through the motions of taking care of his son that he always did, the well-rehearsed routine. They were only interrupted twice. The first time was at six o'clock, and it was by Bruce knocking at his still-locked door. "Jason?" he asked. "It's time for dinner."

Jason acted like he hadn't heard him. It wasn't hard for him to do: for once he had the TV in his room turned on, since he'd hardly ever used it Before, and he hadn't gotten out of the habit since then. It was playing the 1995 movie Sense and Sensibility. Not on purpose per se, as it was playing from one of the cable channels. He'd just stumbled upon it and naturally decided to watch it, because it was the adaptation of yet another of Jane Austen's novels and how could he not want to watch it?

But Bruce wasn't as ignorant as he wanted to be. "Jason?" he called again. Damian, who was laying on the play mat that could be placed on the bed – and rest assured, it was as far away from the edge as possible – looked up at his omither again curiously. He probably didn't know why Jason wasn't interested in him getting to spend time with his father again right now.

He was fairly certain that he heard Bruce let out a sigh. "I'll tell Alfred to put your plate in the fridge," he said before walking away, just like he had earlier.

The second time was by Alfred, about an hour or so later. "Master Todd, I've put a plate of tonight's dinner for you in the refrigerator," he said. "It's shepherd's pie. It'll be there when you're read for it."

Jason didn't go downstairs to get that plate until much later in the night, after Damian had already been put down for the night and he was sure that Bruce and Dick had gone out as Batman and Nightwing. There was no one around as he took the plate out of the fridge, heated it up, and ate its contents at the breakfast table in silence. Nor were they afterwards, when he cleaned up his dishes, took a pint of Ben and Jerry's out of the freezer and ate it in its entirety, and washed his spoon, too.

He didn't really get any sleep that night. He spent almost the entire time staring up at the ceiling in the dark, his left arm tucked against his head even after it fell asleep on him. He was awake when Damian woke up for his night feeding. He was awake when the sun slowly began to rise from the horizon, as its rays began to trickle into the room. And he was awake when Damian woke up once more, expecting his morning feeding.

And he was awake when there was a knock at his door for the third time since he'd locked himself and Damian in his room last night. Except this time, he wasn't really in the mood for it. He was busy trying to nurse Damian, but it didn't take too much hassle to throw on one of the nursing blankets that Bruce had gotten him in record timing. He stood up, adjusting Damian as necessary, and went over to his door and threw it open as best as he could given his circumstances. "What?" he borderline growled.

It was Dick on the other side, which made him feel a little bad. Dick didn't deserve to be on the other side of his wrath yet again. His older brother's eyes darted down to the nursing blanket, causing him to flush. He looked back up. "Breakfast is just about ready," he said.

Jason stared at him. "Okay?"

"Alfred was wondering if you'll be coming downstairs or not," Dick clarified. "If he should be putting your plate in the fridge again."

Jason felt a touch guilty. He didn't feel too guilty, as mostly he was filled with a sense of dread. He knew that, if he went downstairs, even if the conversation that he didn't want to have wasn't discussed over breakfast, it would inevitably end up happening almost directly after.

But, he did feel a little guilt. He just wanted to be clear on that.

"I'll be coming downstairs," he said. There was no use in fighting the inevitable, he figured. He couldn't run away from this conversation forever. He adjusted his hold on Damian once more. "Just, uh – let me finish this first."

The relief that shone on Dick's face was so strong, it probably could've lit the world several times over if given the chance. "Sure thing," he answered. "I'll, um, leave you to it."

He started to walk away.

The guilt from last night churned in Jason's gut. "Oh, and Dick?" he said, briefly closing his eyes so he wouldn't have to immediately look at the reaction on his brother's face.

"Yeah?"

When Jason opened his eyes, he noticed how Dick didn't seem...anxious. Curious, but not anxious.

Not like he was expecting his brother to blow up on him again.

"I'm...sorry about yesterday afternoon," Jason apologized. "I shouldn't have unloaded all of that on you."

To his surprise, Dick gave him a smile, one that fully reached his eyes. "Don't worry about it," he replied. "I understand."

Jason's surprise was only furthered when he went downstairs. As he walked down the hallway that led to the kitchen, he saw that one of the doors to the informal dining room was propped open. He could hear voices coming from inside the room.

Bruce and Dick were sitting in the room, and the highchair they'd recently gotten for Damian – like his wanting to start solids early, he'd kind of let them know that he was ready to sit in the highchair a bit early too – was at the table as well, between where Bruce was sitting and an empty seat. Both his adoptive father and older brother looked up at the sound of his arrival.

"Jason," Bruce said. "Good morning."

Jason raised an eyebrow. "We're eating in here today?"

"If you don't mind."

"No. Not at all."

If anything, it made him feel relieved. It was his first sense of normalcy from Before in a long while.

Jason put Damian in the highchair before sitting down himself. Damian let out a loud shriek of excitement, making grabby motions towards his father. Bruce chuckled and went to ruffle his hair. "Good morning to you too, Damian."

Damian let out another shriek.

Jason helped himself to the food. In spite of his expectations, the breakfast was actually fairly...pleasant. Dick regaled them with a few stories from the Gotham University campus, as he was wont to do. They talked a little bit about what had happened during the night before on patrol for him and Bruce, but not in a way where Jason felt locked out of the discussion. They took the time to explain things to him as necessary.

About three-quarters of the way through the meal, Jason got that feeling that could only be described as an "omega mother's/omither's intuition." He glanced at Damian, his nose crinkling. "Do you need to have your diaper changed?"

Damian giggled, yet his expression said it all.

Bruce instantly rose from his seat. "I'll handle it." He eyed his youngest son speculatively. While he wasn't too much of a mess, since most of his meal had come from breastfeeding, he did have some scrambled eggs and baby food puree in his hair. "On second thought, I'll give you a bath, too."

He scooped up Damian in his arms. "Thank you!" Jason told him, for multiple reasons.

The bath was going to take time, which meant more time between now and the inevitable.

Bruce nodded. "Of course."

But the inevitable could only be prevented for so long, hence why it was called as such. After Jason and Dick were finished with their breakfast, they retreated to the family room as Alfred began to clean up their meal. Dick sprawled out on one of the couches, immediately going for the remote to the TV to turn it on, and Jason chose one of the other two couches as his own. Dick chose to turn on CNN for the news. Predictably, it was much of the same old, same old, but Jason didn't mind this. It helped ease his nerves, just a little.

...Even as his hands became slicker and slicker with sweat, necessitating him to wipe his hands off on his pajama pants.

Alfred was the first to come into the room, his washing up of the dishes done. He sat down in the armchair that he usually preferred.

Bruce arrived about twenty minutes later. Damian wasn't with him, but the baby monitor in his right hand explained why. He gave it to Jason, explaining, "I put him down for his morning nap."

Jason nodded, taking the baby monitor from him. He circled his thumb over the plastic.

Damian being down for his nap gave them plenty of time to have this conversation.

Bruce sat down in one of the other armchairs. Dick sat up and muted the TV, but he didn't turn it off entirely.

"So," Bruce began, "about what happened yesterday."

Jason couldn't look at any of them. His eyes remained focused on the baby monitor. "I'm sorry," he spoke. "I – I already apologized to Dick, but I'm gonna say it again. I'm sorry. I didn't – I didn't mean for you to – "

"You didn't mean for me to hear that?"

He didn't have to specify what part of his entire rant was "that."

Slowly, Jason nodded again.

There was silence. Jason's face felt like it was on fire the longer the silence dragged on.

Then, a single-word question:

"Why?"

Jason's head snapped up. "What do you mean, 'why?'" he demanded. He wiped his thumb under each of his eyes. Damn fucking hormones. "That's not – why would I ever want to admit to that?"

"So we could help you, little wing," Dick interjected, frowning.

The omega snorted. "You mean like you guys have been 'helping' me already?"

They all looked like they wanted to say something to that, however they held themselves back. "What do you mean?" Bruce asked for clarification.

"I just – " Jason floundered for words. This was the exact situation that he had been wanting to avoid, as he'd thought about it during his talk with Babs. Like the inevitableness of this conversation, though, he supposed there was no point in trying to avoid it any longer. "All I've wanted since I came back was for things to be normal again. I'm not – I'm not saying that I want everything to be the same as it was before, because that's impossible, but – "

"'But,' what?" Bruce encouraged when he stopped.

He crossed his arms. "I just don't want you guys treating me like I'm going to fall apart at a moment's notice when I'm not."

"That hasn't been our intent, Master Todd," Alfred attempted to protest. "We've just wanted to give you some more time to adjust."

Jason wasn't impressed. "Do you really mean 'me,' or do you mean 'all of you?'"

More silence.

Then, contrary to his expectations, Dick pointed a finger gun at him. "Jay has a point," he said. "He's had plenty of time to wrap his head around all of this. We haven't, and we've been acting like he hasn't, either. But that's not fair."

Jason felt a little bit of warmth rise up in his chest. He hadn't –

He hadn't expected even that to happen so easily.

Bruce leaned forwards in his seat, resting his chin against his fist and his elbow on his leg. "We haven't asked you all too much about what you've been through," he noted. "I won't lie to you, that's because we've been trying to understand fully the big picture, but we've relied on you to offer up the smaller details yourself. I take it this has been frustrating for you."

He said it like a question, even though it wasn't.

Still, Jason responded to him like it actually was. "What do you think?"

Bruce did the same. "I think," he spoke, "that you would have been more willing to speak to your problems if we had been more willing to listen and help you deal with them."

Jason's eyes flitted downwards. "I've been able to deal with that problem just fine on my own. 'Sides, it'll get better once I stop breastfeeding."

He was afraid that Bruce was going to press that particular issue further. Actually, he probably should, but Jason didn't want it to be pressed. He'd really rather just die all over again than be forced to explain how just because his instincts wanted him to view Bruce as a mate did not mean that he...urgh, he could barely even think it...had romantic feelings for him. No. Just no. It was a purely familial context, though it was still messing with his head.

That wasn't what happened, however. Undoubtedly, there would come a day when that conversation would happen too, but it wasn't today.

"You already apologized to us, so I think it's about time that we apologized to you," Bruce said. "I'm sorry that we've made you feel this way, and that you've felt like you couldn't comment on how we've needed to change our behavior."

"I'm sorry, too, little wing," Dick piped up.

"And I'm sorry as well," Alfred said, even going as far as to bow his head slightly. "I've never meant to upset you, Master Todd."

"I know," Jason said. He cleared his throat afterwards, as his emotions were becoming a bit too much.

"Dick is right, it hasn't been fair of us to put our feelings on you," Bruce continued. "You're not going to fall apart at a moment's notice. You're strong. You were Robin before, and you were resilient, even when I doubted you. Yes, I'm referring to the death of Felipe Garzonasa," he confirmed at Jason's wild look, "I did further research into that night after you died, and I confirmed that you couldn't have pushed him. I'm sorry that I didn't believe you when you told me the truth.

"And you've been strong since then, in more ways than we have allowed you to let us know. I'm not going to deny that. What I am going to say is that I want things to get better than that. Which I think, if Dick and Alfred will agree with me," here, he glanced at his older adoptive son and his surrogate father, to which he saw Dick nodding emphatically before he even finished his sentence, "means that we all need to figure out together a better course than the one we've been going on. You do need to speak up when you're uncomfortable, Jason, but we shouldn't be allowing it to get to this point again ourselves, either. I don't want us to end up like we were before."

Jason could hardly believe it. This wasn't anything like he'd thought this inevitable conversation would go anymore. His eyebrows almost metaphorically shot up towards the ceiling. "Are you being serious?"

Bruce tilted his head slightly. "Do I sound like I'm joking?"

"No!" the omega rushed to say. "No, I just – "

This part of their conversation in particular didn't seem to be real. He'd thought that he would have to be the one to tell them how they needed to fix their behavior, not that it was something they all needed "to figure out together." Maybe...

...Maybe he'd been giving his family too little credit. He'd thought that he'd been the only one to have been through hell and back over the past two years, but obviously that hadn't been the case. He'd died, and they hadn't known that he had been brought to life. They'd mourned him. They'd grieved for him. And that mourning and grief had obviously changed all of them, but especially Bruce. Jason didn't remember him being as self-reflective and understanding back then as he was now.

And his adoptive father had a point, too: Jason could have been more willing to speak up for himself than he had been in the times he'd noted and more. He wasn't entirely not at fault here. Just because he'd felt uncomfortable in doing so, it didn't mean that he should've not done it entirely. Part of life was being uncomfortable, most of all when it was necessary.

The omega closed his eyes. The warmth in his chest was spreading, just like the warmth from a mug of coffee or hot chocolate did on a cold winter's day after you drank it. "Thank you," he breathed.

This was why he'd escaped from Talia and Ra's and come back to Gotham, besides not wanting Damian to suffer the fate that they'd intended for him.

This was his family, and he couldn't put into words like he could the other things about how much he had missed them, wanted them, craved them while he'd been gone.

"Don't thank us yet, little wing," Dick said cheerfully. "First we need to come up with a plan to get better, and then we actually need to follow through with – hey!"

As he'd spoken the second sentence, Jason had grabbed one of the pillows on his couch and thrown it at him, aiming for his head. Dick caught it easily, albeit he looked liable to chuck it back.

"Boys," Bruce reprimanded them.

Alfred, meanwhile, chortled. "It would indeed be nice to see some things like that again," he said.

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