jason comes back to gotham as red hood and the batfam have no idea who he is or that he has anything to do with the league of assasins until during a wayne gala theres a hostage situation and before bruce or anyone can figure out a way to go suit up a crime lord appears and saves everybody only to have a publically friendly catch up session with.... damian wayne.
damian covers to the press afterwards that its because of red hoods 'i dont hurt kids' rule and that he'd met the guy a few times in crime alley before he was dumped on bruce's doorstep. gotham's citizens are slightly concerned but honestly? the scary stabby child that's been glaring at them from the corners of parties since he got here with absolutely no backstory or history in gotham turning out to have a past with crime alleys most infamous protector/crime boss? it's a little comforting.
it's less comforting to the bats.
damian, getting out the car after the gala: I don't know what hood was thinking, making me his public ally. he's lucky the simpletons of this city bought that, don't you agree father?
damian: *turns to see the rest of the family staring at him with hard eyes*
damian: ...what did i do?
everybody's less than pleased that damian withheld the info that red hood is trained and from the LOA, but damian simply maintains that they never asked. when further questioned about why his relationship with hood was so familial and about what his identity is... they get
damian: hood was perhaps my favourite tutor back home, the only one i didn't kill. he taught me many things, from how to poison somebody to famous quotes and sayings from classic literature.
bruce: what. is. his. name.
damian: you know what one of those sayings was? 'snitches get stitches'
dick: *slams his face into the wall*
tim: well you did want him to be more childlike.
they eventually have to move past it because damian won't budge, unfortunately jason is finding this whole scenario fucking hysterical because holy shit he'd thought about coming back and pissing off his family through their secret personas but he hadn't even considered the beauty of coming back and pissing them off through their public personas.
and from then on the entire batfamily has to deal with pretending to be nervous or wary every time the red hood comes and crashes their very real wayne public events. it's fucking incredible. jason can't believe that he was gonna try and beat the shit out of tim to freak out bruce when all he had to do was grab a glass of champagne, walk up to the dude, and ask politely how stocks at WE are doing. 'brucie wayne' has no fucking clue what to do, and jason just poured the champagne against his helmet and let it all fall to the ground and everybody's too scared to say anything.
nobody else bats an eye when red hood becomes an occasional presence at these fancy events, apart from the people who know for a fact they could be on his shitlist. mostly because this is gotham, but also because they know he's a crime lord so like... riches and business running wise he kinda fits the bill for these things anyway? and if the stoic kid of brucie wayne eases up around him then the whole 'i dont hurt kids' thing must ring true so it's not like he'll cause too much trouble. also the guards are too scared to tell him he's not allowed in, so there's that.
the bats hate everything about this. they don't even know what red hoods game is, they have no idea why they're being tortured and they're getting paranoid about it. damian's absolutely no help because he's just happy to 1. get to see his brother on a regular basis again, and 2. get to see his brother find a less self-destructive outlet for the pit rage he's watched jason struggle with for years.
it's also just really fun to watch tim accidentally fall asleep against a wall mid-gala, wake up to red hood's helmet 2 inches from his face, and then almost break his own hand trying to punch it because he forgot that he wasn't in-mask and had to hold back last second.
dick is mostly just indignant because every time red hood shows up and hangs around near damian, damian immediately becomes a picture perfect public persona, interacting with the elites of gotham with the same expertise of tim or bruce. he's so mad that a crime lord can wrangle HIS little brother in public but he can't, that he completely disregards the whole crime lord thing and starts bugging red hood both in and out of mask about how to be a better older brother to damian. at one point he corners red hood on a rooftop mid patrol.
nightwing: ok, seriously, when I asked damian not to be rude to the new investors he told a woman her coat looked like it would hold up in a fight against two-face, but when YOU ask he becomes a model citizen, what is UP with that?
red hood, being an asshole: *gasp* y-you're.... YOU'RE RICHARD GRAYSON?
nightwing: ....oh my god you didn't know?
red hood: no i fucking knew you're just an idiot. and damian listens to me because I'm the only tutor he could never kill and he knows i'll beat his ass with my magic swords.
red hood: and also im the only one at the league who played Just Dance with him so i get special privileges, like telling him what to do.
dick asks damian to play Just Dance with him that night and damian just looks at him all forlorn, like 'it wouldn't be the same without the exhilarating thrill of knowing if anybody catches us hood will be stabbed and thrown in the lazarus pit again as punishment for corrupting me... it was really an unfair punishment considering he replaced grandfather's bed with a plastic pool covered by a sheet once, and the only punishment he got for that was being banned from the family dinners for two weeks'
dick stares at him. damian just adds 'he used to sit outside the window like a dog. watching and occasionally yelling about the injustice. mother gave him a plate of roast potatoes through the window once. grandfather disapproved.'
nobody knows quite what to do about red hood becoming a gotham elite, but they are becoming more concerned about damian's family's dynamic every goddamn day.
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