Matsu

*Damian and Jason, four hours into a stakeout*

Damian: Jay, hand me the mango pieces.

Jason: *plastic crinkling* ayyy, I’m Jason again!

Damian: *snorts*

Jason: what was with that, by the way? I just showed up in Gotham and found you referring to everyone like they’re your professor. Like, that’s not a ‘you’ thing, I don’t know why you started doing that.

*audible chewing noises*

Damian: do you want the genuine honest answer?

Jason: please god do tell

Damian: so- and you aren’t allowed to laugh. but when I first came to Gotham and I showed up at the manor, father obviously had to give me a tour of the place, right?

Jason: yeah.

Damian: and they wanted to do a DNA test to check that my mother wasn’t pulling a fast one by claiming my birthright, so the first place he showed me was the cave, which was also where Tim was.

Jason: *hums*

Damian: and you know that place- the first time you went to the cave, it was wild, right?

Jason: oh, like walking into the tardis for the first time. insane.

Damian: exactly. all high-tech and shit, and I’d just come from the desert compound I’d spent my entire life in- like, my first time going into the kitchen at the manor I saw Alfred loading the dishwasher and my first thought was ‘oh my god what the fuck kind of machine is that-‘

Jason: *abrupt cackle*

Damian: -so the fucking cave for the first time? as a little desert-boy ten year old? I was a little distracted,

Jason, chuckling slightly: ok, fair,

Damian: and so I’m zoned the fuck out, looking around this cave and not paying attention to anything father’s saying, and then I finally tune back in just to hear the words ‘-ackson drake’ while he like, tries to introduce me to Tim.

Jason: *slowly starts laughing again*

Damian, raising his voice to be heard over Jason’s increasing beats of laughter: -and so I’m fucking standing there, ten years old, no clue what this kid’s first name is, and everybody’s looking at me like I’m supposed to be the one fucking talking right now, and ALL I can think of is my mother, who before she shipped me off to Gotham completely alone kept fucking telling me ‘Damian you have to be strong and show that you deserve to be the Batman’s blood son. show no weakness and take the mantle you were born to have; show no fucking hesitance.’, so I’M panicking,

Jason, still cackling: *a clap* NO I DO- I DO REMEMBER, LIKE, BACK IN THE LEAGUE-, holy shit back in the league when your only coping mechanism for not knowing the fuck was going on around you, was literally just to pretend you knew what the fuck was going on around you and bullshit till you make it,

Damian: WELL IT WAS LIKE THE ONLY FUCKING THING MY MOTHER TAUGHT ME-

Jason, through tears: -that’s why I didn’t say shit when I came back to Gotham and found you fucking, doing all this blood son bullshit! You started calling me Todd and speaking in old english and I was just like ‘bless him he’s terrified, just leave him be’

Damian: *cackles* and I did- I did appreciate you going along with it, because back when this happened I panicked and just started calling Tim ‘Drake’ because I was too embarrassed to ask him for his first name, and then by the time I heard somebody else call him Tim in passing, everybody had just assumed this was a thing I did. and I was too socially awkward to clear it up and switch back, so I just had to stick to Drake.

Jason: *wheeze* a-and Grayson?

Damian: well at first I just went along with the surname thing out of awkwardness, but then I’d gone too deep and I had no way out- AND THEN- and then Batman fucking died-

Jason: *wheeze*

Damian: -and I went from being parented by the gymnastics version of the dark lord to being gentle-parented by fucking Nightwing-

Jason, choking: holy- holy shit-

Damian: do you know what it’s like to go from *gruff voice* ‘Damian we don’t fucking kill, give me the katana or I’ll put you in Arkham’ to *high pitched, sweet voice* ‘oh hey Dames, obviously I can’t stop you from killing but I really would appreciate it if we discussed all our options and came to a mature decision together on what’s best in this scenario-‘

Jason: *crying, silent wheezes*

Damian: so DURING all this I’m trying to subtly switch back to using peoples actual names, except it fucking backfired because people just assumed I was calling Richard Richard because we had that special parental mentor bond, and Tim had pissed off to- whatever he was doing in the desert for six months- getting a hysterectomy or whatever the fuck happened-

Jason, amused: hysterectomy- he lost a spleen, Dames

Damian: well whatever happened he wasn’t AROUND for me to shift to calling him Tim! and when father was back I’d made no progress and was back to square one, except this time I was stuck calling one brother Richard and the other Drake!

Jason, still laughing: and this is where I came in?

Damian: I felt BAD! I’d already taken Robin from the guy, I didn’t want him to feel like he was lesser of a brother to me than Richard. So I demoted you to Todd so he wouldn’t feel alone.

Jason: very thoughtful.

Jason: we should probably get you a therapist, dude. I think everybody forgets that when you showed up you were literally just a very confused immigrant child with no experience of normal social interaction apart from me at the league.

Damian: oh I was like, 60% into an anxiety attack consistently for the first two years I was in the city.

Jason: *snorts*

Damian: the first time I was left alone with Tim we were in the kitchen and he said ‘do you want wifi?’ and, y’no, coming from the league, barely any tech and the only normality was the concept of fighting to the death over everything, MY instinctual ten-year-old thought was ‘oh shit, wifi must be slang for brawl here, we’re about to fight’-

Jason: *laughter* you’re fucking kidding

Damian: -so I’m like, so be it, and I say ‘come on then’ and get ready to start punching, only for him to turn around and grab a piece of card stuck to the fridge and hold it out to me,

Jason: *cackles*

Damian: and he goes ‘here’s the password so you can connect, I’m assuming you have a phone or something’-which I fucking didn’t by the way, my mother gave me a shitty flip-phone to call her in emergencies but it didn’t use wifi-, and he’s holding it out to me and I had to like, subtly shift my posture out of the defensive position I’d been in-,

Jason, delirious from laughter: this is the fucking best. thing.

Damian: -and I take it from him, and he gives me this weird look like he has no idea how to communicate with me, and I was just like ‘shit I might have to kill this one, it’s the only way to get out of this interaction’.

Jason: *wheeze* if we go through the timeline, every murder attempt on Tim’s life has just been an occasion where you’ve felt socially awkward and didn’t see any other way out of conversation,

Damian: pretty much, yeah. I should have been on xanax for those first few years.

Jason: stories from your first years in Gotham are my favourite thing in the world.

*a few silent beats*

Tim: are you telling me I’ve been stuck as Drake for YEARS all because Damian’s fucking scared of social interaction?!

*crashing sound*

Jason: HOLY FUCK-

Picture this:

Bruce goes to the circus. A tragedy occurs. He starts walking back to his car with a freshly orphaned Dick Grayson clinging to his neck. He gets there only to find...

The tires are gone. All but one, which is in the process of being removed by a scrawny street kid named Jason Todd. The boy runs.

Bruce panics. He obviously can't let this poor, obviously homeless kid run off to get crimed in Crime Alley. Bruce does the only thing he can think of: he throws Dick like a pokeball. It works, sort of. Dick catches the kid, the kid catches a concussion.

Bruce panics harder.

He bundles the kids into the back of his car and hops in the drivers seat. "Hospital," he says to himself, "I can do this. I'm Batman."

"What?" Dick says.

"What?" Jason says.

"What?" Bruce says.

THUMP. They're interrupted by the sound of someone landing bodily on the roof.

Bruce stumbles out of the car to find Tim Drake doing the family guy death pose on top of his $400,000 Mercedes. Above them, a broken fire escape squeaks a threat of more violence. Bruce is distracted by it for only a second, but when he looks back down, Tim is already upright and setting off a camera in his face.

"Hi, Batman!" Tim grins. "I knew it was you."

Bruce blinks away the stars with a sigh and opens the back door again. Tim scrambles off the roof and wanders in.

Bruce now has three childr- wait when did that one get here? Cassandra Cain is wedged into the middle seat between Dick and Jason. She smiles at him sweetly.

"Who-" Bruce begins.

Someone wings a brick at them out of nowhere. Tim narrowly avoids further head trauma only because Bruce's dad reflexes activate in time to bat (ha!) it away. Bruce turns to see a little blonde girl sprinting off. He moves to catch her, but steps on Jason's discarded tire iron; it flips up and nails him in the balls. Stephanie Brown gets away.

Bruce realises, while he's writhing pitifully on the ground, that the car still has no tires.

He calls Alfred for help.

---

Four hours, a hospital visit, a whole lot of paperwork and one long phone call to CPS later, Bruce arrives home with four emergency foster kids in tow.

hey it's december so time to stare at my work and judge it, here's some stuff that i still like! not included are zine stuff that i'm holding on to for now

Tim: …? We did meet?

Jason, genuinely confused: what? No, no, I would have remembered meeting your scraggly ass-

Tim: First of all, you once told me you refused to remember rich people’s name because they ‘aren’t really people at that point’.

Jason: this is true.

Tim: secondly, we literally talked for like, an hour? Do you really not remember?

Jason, lowkey feeling a little bad now but refusing to admit it: Maybe you just weren’t memorable.

Tim: we talked about Frankenstein!

Jason: why were we- OH MY GOD THAT WAS YOU?!

Tim: yes! I thought it was a good conversation :(

Jason: YOU EXPLAINED HOW YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD DO EXACTLY WHAT VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN DID BUT BETTER.

Tim: YEAH CAUSE HE SHOULD HAVE USED ELECTRIC EELS INSTEAD OF WAITING FOR A STORM.

Jason: DUDE. I only kept talking to you because I deadass thought you were gonna be a future Rouge.

Tim: huh?!

Jason: dude, you even told me about how easy it is to steal bodies from hospitals in Gotham.

Tim: yeah that… I wasn’t always the best at keeping my cards close to my chest, so that’s on me.

Jason: the only reason I didn’t tell Bruce about you is because I was worried he’d try adopt you and I was worried about getting kicked out.

Tim: I appreciate it.

Jason: if I had he probs wouldn’t have made you Robin.

Tim: that’s… unnerving to think about.

Tim, fiddling with his sleeve: Do you… wanna hear about my new take on how to reanimate the dead to create a whole new person?

Jason, fully aware that Tim could one day be a bad guy and he would have more of a chance if he had Tim on his side: As a reanimated corps, I am more than happy to listen. Have you actually read the book yet though?

Tim: No- so, first thing your going to need is a alibi-

Tim: Alfred, this is Bernard. He's my roommate.