elizabeth

And then take them away before Bruce has a chance to see them.

Just like for one reason or another the Batfam ends up having to go to the League and Damian is sent off by Talia to join his peers in morning katas while the elder family members meet in her office for something.

And of course all of the Batfam are little snoops so they walk around her office and look at the documents and few pictures she has. And then suddenly Tim notices something.

"I thought Damian had your eyes Talia?" Tim says staring down at a picture of a 3 or 4 year old Damian with muddy green eyes rather than the bright almost toxic ones the family is used to.

"No, not at all, I don't even remember what color my eyes originally were." Talia responds barely digging through some files that Bruce needs.

"What does that mean?" Dick asks harshly.

" You didn't truly think the Al Ghul eyes were truly the Al Ghul eyes did you?" Talia scoffs "They're Lazarus eyes, why do you think Jason's eyes match ours?"

"I. I didn't think of that, huh" Jason mumbles dragging his hands along the different books Talia keeps.

"So... So when did Damian die?"

That brought silence to the room.

Jason stopped walking, Dick stopped breathing, Tim was looking sadly at Talia, eye shifting to Bruce as he stared at a wall.

"About 3 months before his 5th birthday, it was before my Father and I started to actually train him. An assassin snuck in after infiltrating the guard for a few months. Apparently he wanted Damians death to be slow. He perforated a lung, I managed to get there and kill the bastard, but Damian couldn't be saved without the pit." Talia says robotically.

"I do miss his eyes though, such a soft green" she almost whispers.

Bruce walks over to Tim, lightly taking the photo.

His breath shuttered for a moment.

He stroked his fingers over the eyes that he will never see again, that were taken from him far to soon. Both times.

"Those are my mother's eyes." He says

"He had my mother's eyes."

He stares, unable to do anything but mourn what he didn't know he lost again.

"Do you have more pictures from before?"

"Of course beloved, I'll make you copies"

and no, not like “his eyes darkened with anger” or “they were a fresh spring color in the sunlight” no i mean his eyes actually change color.

When he was a baby, he was born with brown eyes, inherited from talia. they’re normal. unassuming. there’s not much hidden depth to them, people look at them and assume they’re a normal person’s eyes. ra’s was angry, predictably, because his grandson, the one whose body he was going to occupy, had eyes as dull as a common civilian. but talia stepped up and said “you fool. can you not see how this will help us all?” and it does. because people never expect damian to be as dangerous as he is. from birth to the end of his toddler years, people see an average child, which makes them all the more easier for him to slaughter.

then, damian was tossed in the lazarus pit. it was part of his training, mandated by ra’s. talia put him in there without a second argument, though gentler than she usually would be. the pain wracks his tiny body, and when he comes out, he feels dizzy and jumbled and angry. he doesn’t even what happened to his eyes until a couple days later. they’re a bright, acid green. like, danny phantom green. they radiate the unnatural. one look at those eyes and people instantly know something is not right with that child. it makes his ruthless grin even more terrifying. ra’s is pleased. talia tries to be pleased, and succeeds, somewhat. somewhere deep inside her, though, she’s terrified of her son, because while her viciousness as a child had stemmed from the constant training and need for approval from her father, damian seems to be this absolutely brutal on his own, because he liked it. she never did figure out his savageness stemmed from love for her.

when damian meets, then loses his father, his eyes are the same eerie bright green, though dulled, somewhat. bruce could never look him in the eyes. when dick becomes batman and makes damian his robin, he takes one look at damian’s eyes and declares that’s plain creepy. tim agrees. they’re straight up unsettling. at first, damian wears this as a badge of pride, showcasing how different he is from his siblings, how superior. over time, though, his eyes become just another thing separating him from them, another reminder of his heritage. dick still flinched ever time he looked damian in the eyes, and that cut damian deeper than he ever expected. over time, though, dick stopped flinching, and damian assumed he’d just grown used to it. it wasn’t until damian took a good look in the mirror that he realized his eyes had changed color. they no longer were the acid green pools of miniature lazarus pits, two seconds away from actually glowing. they had faded into a duller, almost brownish green. the same color as alfred’s tea leaves. and damian was happy, happy because now his eyes held a warmth to them, the same warmth that alfred left in everybody else. tim came back, with proof that bruce was alive, saw damian’s eyes, and sagged in relief. later that night, making sure damian couldn’t overhear, he went to dick and said “you did it. i don’t know how, but you broke his connection to the league.” and dick shook his head. “i didn’t break his connection to the league. i just made sure his connection to us was stronger.” (and if bruce now looked damian in the eyes while holding a conversation almost constantly, well, that was something damian would never admit to loving.)

and then came jon kent. damian knew from the moment he met him that jon kent was going to be somebody important. people called him stubborn? clearly they’d never met this one particular ten year old. on the outside, he seemed a picture perfect happy-go-lucky kid. damian wondered how nobody else saw the sheer determination behind his eyes, the blue being taken over by violet with rage. you would have to be a fool not to see the desire to prove himself, and how jon would do almost anything to accomplish that. and after kid amazo, after jon had cleared it with his parents after the move to go patrol with damian, they would sit on a roof and eat fast food during stakeouts and jon would talk about everything and nothing at all and damian could almost feel his eyes changing color.

but it didn’t happen until he was 22. there was a battle, a big one, and it had passed in a blur of days. of fighting and stitching up wounds and being constantly on edge. on the last day, damian had gotten hurt. there was a kryptonite spear. jon was busy helping another wounded hero off the ground. the answer was pretty simple. though, jon’s anguished scream when the blade lodged itself in damian’s torso hit a little harder than home. luckily that day the league was able to take out the bad guys for good, and jon stayed by damian’s side until it was certain he could pull through. and angry punch on the arm and a don’t ever do that to me again turned into a quiet i can’t see you get hurt like that turned into i couldn’t let you get hurt turned into damian ducking in and pressing his lips, once, softly and firmly against jon’s. afterwards, pulling back from jon, damian’s voice was unsteady, saying “this, jon, this is why i can’t let you get hurt.” jon stared at him for a minute, impassive (and boy did that scare damian because jon was rarely ever impassive) before saying “i get it. i understand. so i bet you can understand why i can’t let you get hurt” and dragged damain in for a kiss that was deep and passionate and sucked the soul right out of damian’s body. the next day, when damian was cleaning some of the cuts on his face, he spotted his eyes in the mirror. they had changed color again. from an earthy green-brown to a deep emerald. just like his second eye color, they were unnatural, unearthly. but these, these had hidden depths that damian loved. they were dark and mysterious and shone with hidden emotion. they danced the edge between mortal and not, between ordinary and captivating. and, if damian squinted at the mirror hard enough, he could see love woven through those emerald stones, as sure as the love in dick’s eyes, in jon’s.

Damian had been dunked in the Lazarus Pit as a newborn. Being a test tube baby that was born into an assassin cult, no one had thought to touch him after he was out of the contraption, and he'd died because of that oversight.

Talia learned from that particular mistake, but the event had its effects in Damian, who was (actually) a pretty tactile person now. As for who was Damian's favorite person to cuddle with? That would be his nanny, who was currently playing at being a crimelord in a cursed city, located a continent away from the League's current base of operations.

Being away from his nanny was slowly making Damian go insane.

GIMME ALL THE DAMI AND JASON CONTENT

And the thing is? Damian steadfastly refuses to be parted from Jason ever again and rejects physical contact from anybody else because Jason is the only one he trusts to be vulnerable around.

And Jason gets it, good GOD does he get it, but his ability to do crime lord stuff is getting significantly hampered by a tiny assassin child insisting on maintaining some kind of physical contact at almost all hours of the day and now that Damian has the added trauma of waking up to find Jason gone from Nanda Parbat he also insist of accompanying him on his patrols.

Lol Damian surprise hugging Jason during a Red Hood meeting? Like, all the goons are surprised and some are mocking, but then this brat threatens to get rid of their heads himself for that disrespect against Red Hood.

One takes him up on it. Needless to say, the goon doesn't survive the meeting.

So, now Red Hood has a baby demon on his payroll and everyone knows that if RH doesn't kill you, then his brat probably will. Especially if you interrupt his cuddle time.

Jason kinda gives up on the "subject the kid to a dufflebag of heads" because let's be honest, he would find that outrageously uncouth, but he will do it if you push him enough.

Jason would flip. his shit. Like, I think he accepted deep down that Damian is his kid (no matter how much of a pain in the ass he is). But he's also pretty sure that he's never even had sex before, so Batman trying to give him advice over how Damian is acting is deeply embarasssing. Especially considering that Jason KNOWS about how effective Bruce's parenting skills look like.

We all know they kinda suck.

Let's assume that Jason and Bruce had their typical tiff about Garzonas and this lead to Jason assuming that Bruce was going to fire him and kick him out of the manor after his accusation. They obviously said a lot of things they didn't mean, but this is also Jason's last clear memory about what interacting with Bruce was like. And now the guy has the balls to tell him about how to parent HIS kid?

So, Jason as Red Hood shoots that conversation down and goes fully hostile against the Batman. Their fight surprises Bruce, and this allows Jason to deal more hurt to him than he usually could do with a more prepared Batman.

Also, to add salt to the wound, Damian jumps into the fray: tries to stab Batman multiple times and at some point Robin pops up to do some damage control or at least deal with Red Hood's kid.

Jason steps in multiple times to make sure that the brat doesn't get hurt, but he's only partially successful.

TL;DR: The Bats still get their shit rocked and Jason ends up holding Damian back because he was about to reveal too much about him and Jason and they had sustained their own injuries.

Batman and Robin act more carefully around them after. Also, now they have a lead and Bruce calls Talia to ask for an explanation. Her answer? Yeah, their son (Red Hood) is very touchy about his kid (Damian); she's not surprised that he attacked them after trying to talk about being a better parent.

Bruce is stuck in "their kid" part and demands an explanation. Talia is super vague about it, but she confirms that it's "their kid" (as if Red Hood wasn't a mountain in the form of a man and the timelines didn't match) and she hangs up to avoid further conversation. She doesn't mention much about Damian, knowing that Jason wouldn't want her to talk about him (and Damian is completely uninterested in Bruce).

and that's what nightwing walks into when he visits gotham. he just enters the cave like "hello my primary parental unit and my littlest brother, how I have missed you"

and bruce would just grunt and stare at his screen playing a seven second clip of red hood taking down twelve guys looking to kill him (he's just that good, he only needs seven seconds) over and over and dick would be like "oh boy, it's Tuesday" bc let's face it, Bruce quickly reverts back to his grunting brick wall persona whenever things don't go his way

so Dick goes to his next best source of information: Timmy! who is currently a few feet away, munching on Alfred's cookies, watching Bruce brood.

"hey Timmy, what's new in Gotham? What's gotten the big guy all tense?"

Timy points at the screen. "see that guy? that's the red hood. He's a new crime lord."

Dick: "what about him?"

"well, it turns out he's B's secret lovechild with Talia al Ghul and was force grown in a test tube so he's an adult, and he has his own child, so B's a grandfather."

"he's what??"

then dick comes back to gotham after a long mission and cracks the case in like a day. maybe two

he'd be so disappointed in bruce. bruce is supposed to be a detective

Let's go with Jason crawled out of his grave but was brain damaged for a while. The dip in the Pit eventually fixed that.

But before he was fully mentally all there, Talia had him put with toddler-munchkin Damian to deal with his touch starvation. He was Damian's living teddy bear for a good while.

Still a tiny malnourished teen and healing from the physical damage, Jason wasn't a physical threat and was incapable of intent to harm in that state. He was safe to leave to cuddle with Damian for necessary human contact. No need to worry about a designated cuddler assassin turning traitor and trying to kill or steal away Damian.

The contact helped Jason too, at least a little bit. He was a little more present around Damian. He moved more without prompting, to sooth or help Damian with something simple.

But Ra's and Talia grew impatient with Jason's mental state not recovering to where he'd be useful with Bruce. (In their opinion anyway.) So Ra's had him dunked.

But either the Pit Rage or just the brain trauma damaged his memories a bit despite the brain restoration. So he is often fuzzy on the memories of the good times he had as Bruce's son.

His clearest memories of Bruce are the last weeks where they were arguing, and his PTSD death flashbacks where Batman failed him and didn't come to save him. He might not even be aware that Bruce got there just moments too late and dug him out of the rubble.

And Talia is the one filling in blanks for him. But she's always had a skewed view of Bruce's relationships with his kids. She views things through her own messed up window of being raised by Ra's in an assassin cult worshipping him. So what she tells him isn't accurate, whether or not she thinks it is.

The Pit fixed his malnutrition and he got a massive growth spurt. But he wasn't safe to be around Damian for a while either. They had to be sure he wouldn't lash out in a rage at the kid, and he needed to be retrained too, and get his anger and hurt aimed at Batman and Robin. And Damian was getting older, so they decided he needed less human contact anyway.

But when Damian's desperation for his nanny-teddybear got bad enough, and Jason was more in control of himself, they reintroduced them under watch. And Jason remembered him, more or less. It took a bit for Damian to recognize him because of the growth spurt and having his mind back.

Jason took to taking care of Damian more. Damian was thrilled to have his nanny-bear back, and able to communicate and do more with him. Ra's and Talia were able to use the attachment to control them both better. They believed Jason's long training trips away from Damian were serving to wean Damian off his need for physical contact.

And then Talia sent Jason away to Gotham.

I think it's not a case of Damian being uninterested in his Father. It's that he's upset and jealous about Jason leaving him behind to instead pay attention to his Father and the usurper Robin. Damian wants Jason's attention. But Damian also wants Batman's approval and attention just as he wants his Mother's attention and approval. He doesn't want Jason and his Father focusing on each other instead of him.

Time to be weird and scary with big bro!

Artemis II Mission Commander Reid Wiseman to the camera after being told his kids are in the viewing booth at Mission Control in Houston 😭

Perhaps one day I will get over the Mishapocalypse and move on.

Riddler: ...what's this?

Batman: *heavy sigh* I'm hiring you for a job

Riddler: I beg your finest pardon?

"…is your daughter’s new pet project bothering you, my lord? would you like me to dispatch of him swiftly? you are staring at him rather intently."

"actually… call ducra. see if she’ll give him those magic swords."

*jason in the distance, trips over his own feet and faceplants the stone steps*

"what."

"look even you have to admit that seeing what he’d do with them would be interesting. i’ve been in the desert for 600 fucking years oleg, i’m bored."

~

“so what’s new with jason?”

“…he seems to have finally taken to his new body, and is throwing himself into training.”

“…:/“

“…we also have word that he might be starting a coup against his poison tutor.”

“magnificent.”

~

“…my lord… if you don’t mind me asking… why are you crouching in front of those doors?”

“shhhhh, i left gotham newspapers on jason’s nightstand and i wanna see what he does when he realises the detective adopted another kid.”

*distant sobs of rage* *crashes and screams*

“ok now somebody go in there and tell him the joker’s still alive. i’ll wait out here where it’s safe.”