Chapter Text
Over the past year since he revealed his identity and coincided resurrection, Jason’s standing with the Bats™ has progressed by leaps and bounds.
First and foremost, he stopped trying to kill Bruce and gave up on forcing the man to kill Joker - though he has not changed his own stance on that issue. They still disagree on the morality of killing, but the feverish intensity of his Pit-madness has significantly decreased since the horrifying Titan’s Tower incident.
Jason still gets nauseous thinking about what he did to that poor kid - a kid. His entire thing as Red Hood, crime lord of the Alley, is avenging and protecting kids, and yet…
On paper, the plan had been to break in and abduct the new Robin, to make a point to Bruce and force him to retire the mantle for good. But Tim hadn’t been willing to go quietly, and Jason… lost control.
Whenever he’d given in to the rage and madness before, it had always felt justified. He’d hear Talia’s voice in his head vindicating every bitter loss and fueling that ravenous hunger for vengeance. It had allowed him to shoot at rapists and former family members alike, as if each and every one of them equally deserved the pain that he was feeling tenfold.
When Tim’s mask and voice broke under his swing, all of that vindication shattered within him, too. That green-tinted high was suddenly replaced by weightless horror and the mortifying realization of what he had done.
Worst of all, he still felt so out of control of himself that he couldn’t even help the kid, or fix any of the damage he’d caused. Though, in all honesty, Tim hadn’t seemed too eager to get patched up by the crazy bastard who’d just beat the shit out of him, so perhaps it was for the best that Jason had just ran.
These days, he’s in the driver’s seat a lot more often than not. And when he isn’t, he takes care to stay the fuck away from the Bats - or anyone for that matter. This has gradually led to the aforementioned leaps and bounds.
He no longer shoots on site if any of them step onto his territory, and he’s even had a few civil conversations with almost all of them - including Tim. The kid is obviously still wary of him, and Jason doesn’t expect to ever be fully trusted or forgiven. He’s grateful for that, if he’s honest. It’s a win for the kid’s self-preservation instincts.
None of the Bats are exactly friendly with Jason, and he likes that just fine. One obnoxiously clingy Dick Grayson is more than enough to test his boundaries and tolerance on the daily, he does not need more headaches in his life.
He’s compromised enough to periodically let them know he’s still not dead, and finally acquiesced to Oracle’s insistence on adding him to the comm channel. When he occasionally joins them on missions, he has tentatively agreed to only shoot goons non-lethally.
He tries to ignore how significantly this practice has lessened his episodes with the Pit. He hasn’t killed anyone for a good while now, actually.
None of this makes him part of the family again, despite Dick’s insistence on calling them brothers and Bruce’s infuriating stubbornness in still referring to Jason as his son. He’s not one of them - that kid exploded in a warehouse, and no matter how they all beg for him, he’s never coming back.
The version of Jason that crawled out of that grave just can’t be compared to the kid they all miss. Especially since, according to them, that kid wouldn’t have had any problem with his family allowing his murderer to continue breathing.
But there is one person who knows only this version of Jason and still calls him ‘brother’ - the newest Robin. Talia’s son, the Prince of Demons, and sole heir of Ra’s Al Ghul. Damian, the child who Jason was charged with protecting through his training in the League of Assassins.
He doesn’t see much of the kid these days, mostly because he stays glued to Bruce’s side half the time and Jason makes a point of avoiding the old man. Talia technically released Jason of his duties when he went off for his revenge, but they both knew that training wouldn’t just disappear. And then she went and sent her son to Gotham right after, so who were they kidding. He could say a lot of things about Talia - most of them unpleasant - but if one thing was absolutely clear from his training, it was that she cared very much about keeping her son safe.
He spent several years with Damian in the League as the only one aside from his own mother that the kid could trust to not try and murder him, so it’s safe to say the two of them formed something of a bond. He was used to being referred to solely as ‘akhi’ by the little brat, so it caught him a little off-guard the first time they saw each other again without masks and Damian called him ‘Todd’.
It wasn’t too surprising, considering they weren’t alone in the Cave at the time, but Jason still had to adjust to the distance put between them. He knows that Damian still trusts him, that much can’t just be erased. But the little shit drew a line - he clearly doesn’t want the others to know how they’re associated. Honestly, he doesn’t think the kid told any of the others that they ever knew each other at all.
Jason’s not going to pretend that he’s hurt by this - that would be both majorly hypocritical and counterproductive for his carefully-maintained aloof and unbothered reputation. He is a little curious why the little ankle-biter has been so secretive about their shared history, but it’s easy enough to chalk it all up to embarrassment. Damian has always hated appearing weak in any capacity, so maybe he’s not too eager to admit that he ever needed a full-time bodyguard. Or maybe he doesn’t want to give Bruce any more potential reasons to disapprove of him.
Regardless, the brat has kept his distance and Jason is fine with that. He still keeps an eye out on patrol, and listens keenly to comms whenever Robin is tagging along for any non-routine mission.
Tonight was not one of those nights - or at least, it wasn’t supposed to be. Robin had been benched by the old man in the aftermath of their last patrol, so Jason had been looking forward to a few nights to himself where he could blow off some of the steam built up by the disaster that was that very patrol.
He should’ve known better, really. The little shit has Bruce’s genes, so of course he’s stubborn as nails, stupidly reckless and dangerously overconfident. (And Jason isn’t going to think about how that describes all of them, himself included. That’s the last thing he needs to consider right now, and besides the point.)
Because what’s the absolute dumbest thing a grounded Robin can do right after being banned from patrol for needlessly endangering himself? Sneak out alone to patrol the bowels of Crime Alley without tracker, comm, or panic button. The kid definitely wanted to prove himself, but the only thing he’s ended up proving is the old man’s exact point.
So that’s how Jason finds him. Whether by complete coincidence or some instinctual pull, his previously cathartic patrol led him to follow a string of rumours down into the lower levels of an empty parking garage. The sounds of a scuffle echoing through the open space had him tripling speed, but the faint, familiar grunt of pain unlocks a new level of adrenaline.
As soon as he lays eyes on the scene, Jason only has a single moment to take it in: Seventeen goons, most favouring legs or nursing wounds, but all still armed and poised with sinister hubris over a fallen form, which is bound and held roughly by two of them.
They’re laughing and jeering, one of them has a hand tightly gripping their captive’s hair to hold his head back, another is twisting his upper arm, and yet another is raising some sort of baton to strike. Their captive’s face is bloodied and bruised, lip split and one cheek swollen into the crease of his cracked domino, but he still snarls defiantly at his captors.
It’s Damian.
All at once, Jason finds himself completely swallowed by that roiling, green haze. The last thing he registers is the rapid blaring of gunshots, but they’re almost entirely drowned out by the screaming command to protect his little brother at any cost.
***
Damian Wayne is, as akhi would say, in deep fucking shit right now. He’s not too arrogant to admit that this patrol may have been a poor decision. Choosing to compromise his suit in order to avoid being traced definitely was tactically unwise on his part, and he can see that now.
None of this should be on his mind at the moment, as discussions of regrets and failures are best reserved for post-combat briefings rather than the heat of battle. However, the main issue that he is currently dealing with in that department is the rapidly waning belief that he will survive long enough for a briefing.
It is utterly humiliating that Damian allowed himself to be this compromised by such low-tier, opportunistic thugs, but unfortunately the direness of his present situation can no longer be denied. He was holding up perfectly fine against his adversaries despite the ambush, until the injury to his ankle had caused his footing to fail at perhaps the least opportune moment.
This was the very injury that he had sustained on the previous patrol - the same one that he had insisted to Father was trivial and not nearly consequential enough to warrant being benched. As if Damian needs anything more to be ashamed of…
That single fumble allowed the goons to gain the upper hand, landing a gunshot through his shoulder and slamming a baseball bat into the back of his skull in quick succession. The battle became a blur after that, the parking garage spinning too much in his vision for him to avoid the flurry of attacks that followed.
When the first pair of goons moved in to bind his arms, Damian’s adrenaline was pumping so high that he nearly slit their throats in a panic. Of course, his resulting hesitation was far from helpful in escaping from their grasp. Ergo, his current humiliation.
Now Damian is forced to kneel before their smug mockery as they beat on him. The pain is of secondary concern - these fools are clearly inexperienced with torture, and indulge in it with the same sloppy, over-eager opportunism which evidently led this entire ambush.
If they were in this for vengeance or actually had the intent to kill him, they easily could have finished him off by now. The fact that they bothered to bind his arms would indicate that they have other plans, but the fact that they continue to clumsily beat him without even bothering to relocate is a testament to how poorly planned out this was. They’re likely delusional enough to believe that they can use him for ransom, or as some sort of bargaining chip with either Batman or Hood. So they must not be locals. Traffickers from out of town, perhaps.
Obviously Damian has dealt with far worse for far longer by professionals of the art, but the problem with amateurs is that they don’t know how to keep their victims alive. His primary concern is the mortifying possibility that he may end up bleeding out at the hands of these pathetic, obnoxious idiots.
“Not so tough now, are ya, kid?” the brute with the baton jeers, flashing yellowed teeth as he cracks another rib.
The oaf on his left twists his grip into Damian’s hair, jerking his head back until his chin is jutting towards the concrete ceiling. It stings, but the majority of the pain is still coming from his head injury as it’s aggravated by every sudden motion.
He is disciplined enough to suppress the urge to vomit, but every second that he’s forced to stare at his captor’s doubling image is another that he’s increasingly tempted to spew his stomach’s contents directly onto his inept tormentor’s face. He snarls back instead, knowing that an aggravated retaliation in this situation could quite literally spell his death.
“I dunno, boss,” the cretin to his right snickers, twisting Damian’s arm as far as his feeble grip can manage. “Doesn’t look like the kid’s learned ‘is lesson yet!”
Suppressing an eye roll, he briefly considers playing scared in order to speed this segment along, but he just can’t bring himself to. These types get off on holding power over helpless victims and Damian refuses to feed into their fantasies.
Instead, he maintains a defiant snarl, never breaking his severely blurry, doubling eye-contact with the lead idiot as he raises the baton once more. For this reason, Damian has a front row seat to watch the man’s brains splatter out his temple.
Blood sprays over the lenses of his domino and obscures his already-compromised vision as relentless, deafening gunfire rings out through the vacant parking garage. The grip on his hair releases in the same instant that his arm is dropped, and Damian’s head snaps forward as a result. He feels the bodies fall beside him more than he hears them as the echoing shots continue to pound into his eardrums.
Ducking low, Damian wastes no time wriggling free from his bonds and wiping the blood from his mask with as much covert speed and efficiency that he can manage in his current state. The shots finally stall the split second before he looks up and an entirely new terror overtakes him.
Every single one of the seventeen bumbling goons now lay dead, scattered over the blood-soaked concrete with several fatal shots each. Discarding the still-smoking assault rifle and sprinting towards Damian in a frenzy is none other than Red Hood.
From the erratic body language and the lack of snarky remarks, there is no question that his brother is no longer in control of himself. Meaning that this brutal slaughter was a direct result of Damian foolishly allowing himself to be put in such peril - and on the Red Hood’s own turf, also.
It’s tougher to swallow down the vomit this time, and Damian takes care to steady his breathing as Hood scrambles to his side. Father is going to be furious. It hasn’t even been two months since Red Hood started adhering to the no killing rule, and now he’s violated it to an excessive and unjustifiable degree on Damian’s behalf.
“Akhi—” he chokes out, cursing under his breath as the frantic, zombie idiot reaches him and immediately starts feeling around for injuries.
“Stop it, I’m- Akhi!” he huffs, quickly resigning to his unhearing brother’s ministrations.
The helmet blocks his eyes, but Damian is certain that they’re glowing green as kryptonite. A constant stream of nonsensical muttering spills from the voice modulator as Hood scoops him into his arms, tucking him close to his chest.
Damian can’t stop staring at the mess surrounding them, so many bodies face-down in their own blood. A cold, crushing dread slowly builds in the pit of his stomach as he thinks of Father finding the scene. Worst of all, he won’t even understand that this wasn’t Jason’s fault.
“That… that wasn’t necessary, akhi…” he whispers, hand curling into a fist.
Shame and panic swirl around in his brain at dizzying speeds, leaving him frozen with the weightlessness. He has to do something - they have to fix this! But Hood only seems interested in taking Damian away from the incredibly incriminating crime scene.
“Wait, stop! Hood!” Damian manages to sputter, struggling fruitlessly in the larger man’s firm grip. “We need to- the bodies! We can’t allow them to be discovered!”
Hood pauses in his stride, and for a moment, Damian is actually hopeful that maybe some part of his message got through to his brother’s Pit-hazed mind. Then he realizes that the fool has drawn another weapon and is searching their surroundings for any further signs of a threat. He curses again.
“Akhi. Listen to me!” he tries, lifting one hand to forcefully turn his mask towards him. “We can’t just leave them like this! If Batman finds them—“
But midway through his sentence, Hood’s attention shifted back onto Damian’s bullet wound again and he shifts his grip to apply pressure before taking off for the exit. Damian groans, knowing that further attempts to communicate with his brother in this state will prove equally futile.
A million scenarios race through his head on the journey as he struggles to put together a plan. Hood holds him securely while winding through cluttered alleys at a break-neck pace, footsteps thundering with clear purpose. The nearest safehouse that Damian is aware of is approximately two blocks away from here, which gives him less than two minutes to consider his options.
With tensions so high between Father and Todd, he simply cannot allow this incident to be discovered. He considers explaining the situation and making it clear to Father that the responsibility for this mess lies solely on himself, but he has little faith in that method’s effectiveness. Father will be predisposed to blame Todd, and he will already be furious enough with Damian for sneaking out and doing such a foolish thing.
Even if Father does believe him, he is unlikely to trust either of them to handle the situation appropriately and would most likely try to prematurely separate them - which would result in even greater disaster.
No, he must find a way to handle this without Batman finding out. The simplest method would be to deal with the bodies himself, but that will be impossible until Hood snaps out of his haze. From prior experience, Damian estimates that his brother could remain compromised for up to forty-eight hours, so waiting it out is not an option.
He will unfortunately need back up, and the list of viable options in this scenario are extremely limited. Calling Richard is tempting, but the risk of him informing others out of worry is far too high to consider. Blackbat and Oracle could both be trusted not to compromise the immediate situation, but they would undoubtedly inform either Richard or Father once Hood regained his senses.
There is only one person that Damian can think of aside from Hood himself who may be both willing and able to cover up seventeen deaths without exposing them to the other Bats. The very same teen who still displays such obvious admiration for Hood even after he was beaten half to death by him.
It pains him to admit, but Damian might just have to call on Red Robin for help.
As if to signal the resignation of his mind, they reach the safehouse the exact moment that he reaches this conclusion. Luckily, the same muscle memory that seemingly guided his brother to his own safehouse also allows him to swiftly disable the traps - even while holding Damian in one arm and keeping pressure on his bullet wound. It would be impressive if the resulting cradle was not twice as undignified as the previous hold.
“I can hold it myself, akhi!” he snaps, but resists squirming too much to avoid delaying their entrance.
Unsurprisingly, Hood makes no acknowledgement aside from a grunt as he shoulders inside, rushing straight for the bathroom. Realizing that he is going to have to suffer hours of panicked medical care from his brother while the big oaf is essentially running on auto-pilot, Damian’s next plan of action focuses on getting hold of a communicator. Hood does not conveniently pass by any in his beeline to the bathroom, so he settles for the only one in arm’s reach.
“Akhi, take your helmet off,” he urges, prying feebly at the underside of the air-tight contraption in the hopes it will convey his message.
He is finally being set down on the cool tile, but only so that Hood can scramble for the med kit. When his brother turns back and kneels before him, Damian grabs the sides of the helmet with both hands, faking out like he means to remove it himself. He’s fairly certain that Hood’s helmets no longer contain C4, but he banks on the man’s Pit-fumed mind not retaining this information.
At last, his hopes are not misplaced. Hood responds immediately, yanking Damian’s hands away and swiftly inputting the required pattern to remove the helmet. The red domino remains underneath to shield the irradiated sheen that he knows is there, but the Pit’s influence is on full display regardless. White-streaked bangs are plastered to his forehead with dripping sweat, his lips are chewed bloody, and his whole face is twitching erratically. Damian can almost read his lips now as he drops the helmet and reaches forward, mumbling over his wounds in some bastard mutation of Arabic, Spanish and English.
“Hurt… not broken… still bleedin’… stitches…” is all he manages to catch, but it’s more than enough to get the gist.
Hood is peeling off Damian’s suit as quickly and carefully as he can manage, mostly focused on gaining access to the dribbling wound in his right shoulder. Luckily, the bullet did not get lodged inside, but that does require stitches for both the entrance and exit wounds.
Given the jerky motions and the intensity of his brother’s trembling, Damian elects to put his foot down on this one and snatches up the needle and thread himself. At least he can handle the front while staunching the blood against the wall, then by the time he’s finished with that, maybe Hood will have settled enough to assist with the back. But his brother’s hands follow the motion like moths to a flame, clearly not registering the message that he’s trying to convey.
“No, akhi. I will do it.”
There is no indication that his brother even heard his voice, let alone registered his words. With a huff of frustration, he holds the needle back further, but Hood just mumbles more and continues reaching.
How did they used to handle this? Words were never enough, it was more about tone and heart rate and body language. Mother was always better at calming Jason.
“Akhi!” Pushing back against the wall, Damian raises a foot and plants it firmly on his brother’s chest, halting him in place.
This was a terrible decision, as it aggravates basically all of his wounds at once, especially the cracked ribs that he had somehow forgotten about. Hood instantly recognizes this, but he must also process the hostility of the motion, because he abruptly shrinks in on himself as he gently grabs Damian’s raised leg with both hands. His brother appears starkly alike to a kicked puppy as he carefully lowers the leg back down, watching Damian closely for further signs of pain or aggression.
Sighing as deeply as his ribs will allow, Damian settles into the more comfortable position and centers himself. He needs to lean more familiar for this to work - tap into the League’s conditioning.
Attempting to replicate his mother’s soft, authoritative tone, Damian speaks in slow, carefully enunciated Arabic, “I need towels and water, please.”
The effect is immediate, though not quite in the way he expected. His brother flinches backward and straightens out where he’s kneeling, breaths heaving and hands twitching for a few hesitant moments. Damian wishes he could see his eyes behind the domino, but the lenses appear to be spasming with each twitch. Then, just as abruptly, Hood stands up from the floor and moves to the sink, robotically retrieving the towels and water as requested.
Blinking away the shock, Damian forces himself to take advantage of his brother’s distraction and grabs for the discarded helmet. Hood still watches over his shoulder as the sink runs, but makes no move to interfere as Damian fiddles with the device to activate its comm.
It takes more effort than he’d like to admit to figure out how to open Red Robin’s private channel, but he finally manages it just as Hood kneels back down to present the clean, soaked towels and large glass of water. As the line rings, Damian wedges one towel between his shoulder blade and the wall, and uses the other to clear his wound for stitching.
“Hood?” Drake’s voice finally crackles through the line, slightly muffled as Damian can’t exactly wear the helmet. “What’s going on?”
The sound echoing from his helmet draws Hood’s keen attention, but he only hovers closer, glancing quickly around the perimeter. Carefully lifting the needle and thread to his own shoulder, Damian grits his teeth to reply.
“Red Robin.”
Though the voice modulation is most likely still in effect through the comms, Drake seems to pick up on the pitch difference immediately.
“Who is this?” he demands, abruptly cold.
Rolling his eyes, Damian doesn’t bother suppressing an impatient sigh as he threads the needle through his skin. “This is Robin,” he bites out, wary of Hood’s instinctive twitch.
“Robin?” Drake replies after a pause, deeply incredulous. “What’s happening? Who’s dying? Wait, aren’t you benched?”
Huffing through his nose, Damian struggles to keep his voice level. “I require your discretion, Red. No one is… in danger any longer.”
He swats away Hood’s reaching hand as he fights to adjust his own grip on the needle. Drake scoffs humourlessly through the line.
“Yeah, that’s not ominous at all. What the hell’s going on? Why are you calling me through Hood’s comm?”
“As I said,” he grits, just barely suppressing a hiss as the twist of his body spikes agony through his ribs. “My situation requires a discreet manner of… assistance.”
Spitting the last word out is more painful than all of his wounds combined, but Damian pushes through the indignity not for his own sake, but his brother’s. Silence fills the line for a moment, and when Drake speaks again his voice is strangely intense.
“Robin, where are you right now?”
“I am with Hood, in a safehouse at the East end of the Bowery. There was an incident— Akhi, stop. No, I am stitching it!” he snaps, forcing his brother’s hands away from the needle again.
The oaf is whimpering like an anxious dog, likely reading all the growing signs of pain in Damian’s body language as he struggles to finish the stitch.
“Robin, I swear to god, if you’re injured and trying to avoid getting in trouble for sneaking out—” Drake is groaning through the line, and Damian is beginning to regret making this call in the first place.
Pausing in his dubious attempt to tie off the stitch and holding a palm out to keep his brother at bay, Damian barks out to both of them: “I’m fine!”
Obviously, neither are convinced. The crack in his voice was helpful to no one, so with a quick and dirty knot, he shifts around to allow his restless brother to access the exit wound. Hood scrambles forward and sets a fresh needle to work with shocking efficiency. His hands are less shaky than Damian’s, which isn’t a high standard at this point, but he will take his victories.
“It is no mere punishment that I am seeking your aid in avoiding, Red Robin,” he explains finally, spending most of his focus to remain unflinching. “I can handle Father’s reprimands with dignity.”
“Sure you can,” Drake snips immediately. “And how bad did you mess up that you’re asking me for help?”
Swallowing down a growl, Damian grips the helmet with enough force to crack it. It stings, worse than the needle and deeper than the bullet wound. Worst of all is what he has to admit. This had better be worth his effort…
“This incident was my fault entirely,” he forces out hoarsely, lifting his chin. “But Father would not see it that way. I cannot allow Hood to pay the price for my mistakes.”
Silence falls long enough for Hood to finish stitching the back, and Damian tenses. Just as he opens his mouth to explain more, the line crackles back to life.
“You- I— What exactly was this ‘incident’, Robin?” Drake suddenly sounds extremely nervous, which Damian can work with.
He certainly prefers nervous to incredulous or mocking. Hood is now trying to feel around at his other injuries, and Damian reluctantly lets him to spare his own focus on this far more urgent issue.
“Before I continue, could you guarantee that we are indeed alone?” he asks, his own nerves making an unpleasant appearance as he approaches the point of highest risk in this endeavour.
“…I mean, if O is listening in, I could neither detect nor stop her, so your best bet is to just ask,” Drake replies after a brief hesitation, switching to a strange combination of snark and insecurity. “Hey, Oracle? Are we alone right now?”
The line once again falls quiet, stretching out until Damian finally releases a long, resigned sigh.
“I suppose that will have to suffice…”
“Great!” Drake snips, clearly bubbling over with impatience. “Now what happened?”
Deep breaths. Knuckles whitened and face flushing, Damian tries to stay focused on who this is for.
“I… was ambushed,” his own words echo back full of shame, and he rushes through the rest of the explanation to bury it. “The parking garage just south of the docks, three levels down. Some opportunistic thugs, traffickers from out of town, presumably. I had no comm, but I should’ve been able to handle them. My… injury gave them an opening.”
He hears Drake inhale sharply, but shockingly receives no instant lecture about how utterly foolish and irresponsible his every decision had been. Taking full advantage of the lapse, he powers on.
“I was… at their mercy when Hood… arrived at the scene.”
Another sharp inhale, this time Drake does interrupt to tersely ask: “How many?”
Glancing down at Hood as the massive man slowly and gently wraps his swollen ankle, Damian hesitates a long moment before blowing out his own breath.
“Seventeen. All dead.”
“Jesus Christ—”
“It wasn’t his fault,” Damian asserts desperately, panic setting in deep now that he is forced to sensibly explain this unspoken, inexplicable pact between him and his brother. “I was in danger, he couldn’t control himself! He didn’t- he didn’t know what he was doing.”
“Are you safe around him like that?” Drake exclaims, and under different circumstances, the sudden terror in his voice would be endlessly amusing.
However, this is exactly what Damian had feared from Richard - an overprotective panic prompting irrational responses that only serve to drastically worsen the situation. It is also in this moment that Damian recalls precisely why Drake is so concerned for his safety around a Pit-influenced Red Hood.
It is likely unfathomable for him to imagine the man as anything close to harmless, especially within the throws of a green-tinted haze. Yet, Damian is currently witnessing his brother gingerly prodding at his ribs, lip jutting out into what can only be described as a pout at the bruising found there.
“Yes,” he replies firmly. “I am perfectly safe. This isn’t mere pit-madness, it’s… League conditioning. It would be harder for him to hurt me than it would be to shake off the madness entirely.”
A strangled noise comes through the line along with some shuffling. “What…? Because… you were both in the League?”
“No, because he’s m—” Damian stops short, nearly forgetting who he was talking to. “He was… my bodyguard,” he admits instead.
“Mother assigned him to protect me during the days of his reprogramming. He couldn’t possibly hurt me just as he couldn’t possibly help losing control the moment he saw I was in danger,” he explains, bringing them both back to the real issue at hand. “Therefore, the blood of those men is on my hands, not his own.”
More sputtering crackles through the line, and Damian feels his fraying patience finally snap.
“You- Wh- It’s not—“
“I have no time to argue this, Red Robin!” he cuts in, eyeing the ticking clock above the bathroom door.
It’s nearly three in the morning. Father will return from patrol within the next two hours and swiftly discover Damian’s disappearance. After that, there is no predicting how quickly he could stumble upon the mess they left behind. What if he arrives at this safehouse?
“With relations being so tenuous between Father and Hood, this is the absolute worst time for an incident like this,” he stresses, willing Drake to understand the gravity of the situation. “If we let Father discover the massacred bodies lying right next to Hood’s emptied gun, how do you expect that will play out?”
“Ah…” the teen hums eloquently through the slight static. “Not… well.”
“Precisely,” Damian retorts, allowing himself one breath of relief. “I can’t have A- Hood receiving blame for my failure, and I can’t risk Father making some foolish decision like attempting to separate us from each other for some misguided notion of ‘safety’. I would attempt to deal with the evidence myself, but Hood is not letting me out of his sight.”
He adds the last part sourly, giving his brother a wary glare as the oaf moves like he means to scoop Damian into his arms again.
“Okay… Okay, okay,” Drake eventually replies with a pinched-out sigh and a lot more shuffling. “Alright, we’re doing this. I’ll help you. But only ‘cause I can not deal with any more blow ups in the manor, things were just finally starting to calm down—”
It takes a few blinks to process what he’s hearing, and Damian still stares suspiciously at the helmet, waiting for the inferior Robin to take it back.
“Okay, but if we’re doing this, how clean are we going for?” Drake asks instead, throwing him through a whole new loop. “Like, do we want the whole crime erased, or should I just remove anything incriminating and pin it on someone else?”
Silence falls for a long moment as Damian considers these words. They distract him just enough for Hood to succeed in snatching him off the floor before whisking them away towards the bedroom.
Finally, he works open his mouth to respond: “…I highly doubt that you are capable of effectively erasing this crime.”
“No, not on my own, obviously,” Drake scoffs immediately.
Brushing over that apparently, he continues. “But okay, just a cover-up then. In that case, I can keep Batman from finding out what happened for now, but we will have to come clean eventually.”
Chewing at his lip, Damian huffs out an agreement. He’ll have to accept that for now. He can always renegotiate when the urgency has passed and he is able to deal with the matter himself.
In the meantime, Hood has settled them both on the bed with Damian sheltered snugly in his lap. The oaf finally seems somewhat content, though he keeps a pistol readied and his attention fixed on the closed bedroom door while his free hand idly pets Damian's hair.
Yes, this certainly confirms it. Grimacing at the thought, Damian glances nervously down at the helmet. If anyone tried to break in here, regardless of intention, the result would be disastrous.
“Okay, I’m about ten minutes out from the scene,” Drake pipes up again, wind heightening the static from the line. “But, for my conscience, you gotta give me your report.”
Narrowing his eyes, Damian hesitates. “I reported all relevant details of the incident.”
“That’s not what I meant,” the teen retorts, not missing a beat. “Give me your report.”
The stiffening of his posture causes Hood to flinch and curl around him protectively, but Damian ignores him in favour of snarling through the comm.
“I am f—”
“Don’t lie to me,” Drake barrels over him, snappish and firm. “If you were truly fine, none of this would’ve happened.”
The blunt truth of the statement is biting, and Damian’s teeth clack harshly from the force of his jaws slamming shut. A hot wave of broiling embarrassment sweeps over him as he struggles to steady himself for Hood’s sake.
“I am fine now,” he replies, low and sharp. “Hood has tended to my wounds.”
There’s a short pause, only wind and static stuttering through the line, before Drake huffs.
“Robin,” he emphasizes, all business and authoritative - replicating Batman just as Damian had attempted to replicate Mother. “Report.”
Eye twitching, shame and panic finally win out over stubborn pride, and the boy relents.
“Tt. Fine,” he scoffs, taking a deep breath before switching to the clinical tone of their training.
His wounds really are minor at this point - at least, to his own baseline. The deep breath brings them all to full display, however, so he easily rattles off the whole list.
“Gunshot wound through the left shoulder, stitches on entrance and exit wounds. Three rib fractures, lower right side. Bruised right lung. Swollen left ankle sprain, possible fracture. Moderate concussion, symptoms lessened since impact. Mild visual impairment, moderate nausea without vomiting, no noticeable…”
Trailing off, Damian feels the back of his head and winces at the tender lump forming there, at just the right position that it wasn’t pressing against his brother’s chest. He’ll need to address that, but for now he’ll finish his report.
“Moderate hematoma at point of impact, mild swelling around the left eye, upper jaw and nose, split lip, and moderate to severe bruising across both arms, legs and torso. Is that thorough enough for you?” he can’t help adding, bitterness battling with the heat in his cheeks.
“…You were shot.”
Damian blinks at the strange flatness in the other’s tone, especially while stating something so obvious and unremarkable.
“Yes,” he replies, suspicious. “A flesh wound, as I reported.”
An oddly shaky breath sputters through the line, faint enough that it could have been the wind. Silence stretches after, and Damian is unsure what to make of it. Instead, he turns his head towards his brother and tries to study his expression past the domino. It seems worth a try to test his cognitive functions at this point.
“Akhi,” he starts, immediately earning the other man’s full attention.
Not too different from before, but not a bad start, either. Perhaps with his wounds tended to, Hood will now have the capacity to focus on the meaning of his words.
“Are you able to acquire an ice pack?”
He tries English first, just to gauge a threshold of his brother’s awareness. He doesn’t expect his first attempt to work at all, but surprisingly, Hood cranes around to inspect the growing bump on Damian’s head before twitching spastically. He lets out a few grunts and muttering before seeming to tear himself away from the bed to sprint for the door.
Damian watches his brother crack the door open, gun in hand, briefly scan their surroundings, and then slip into the hall, clicking the door shut behind him. A mad scramble of motion echoes from the kitchen as Damian hums thoughtfully to himself. Perhaps akhi’s mind is more present than he presumed.
“And how is he?” Drake suddenly inquires, reminding Damian of the still-open line.
“Hood is unharmed,” he replies evenly, hoping that the comm hadn’t picked up his previous use of the endearment. “And is starting to recover elements of cognitive awareness, though I doubt he will fully ‘come back to himself’ for at least another twelve hours.”
On cue, Hood bursts back into the room, shutting the door behind himself and hurrying over to Damian with an armful of supplies. Dropping several assorted towels, three separate bottles of pain medication, two water bottles, a bag of frozen peas, and the requested ice pack onto the mattress, he crawls back onto the bed and curls around the boy once more.
Quickly grabbing the ice pack so that his brother won’t try it, Damian wraps it in a towel and presses it gingerly to the back of his skull. In the interim, Hood wraps the frozen peas and carefully rests them against the swollen ankle.
Studying the oversized caveman carefully, Damian hums again. If only he could remove the domino, then it might give him a clearer idea of what they’re working with. Still, this behaviour shows remarkable improvement for his brother’s cognition. Should his estimation for recovery be adjusted?
“Hood,” he prompts, craning his neck to meet his brother’s gaze through the white lenses. “Can you understand me?”
For a long, weighted moment, Hood only stares back at him owlishly, head slightly cocked. His sweat-soaked bangs flop awkwardly over the edges of the obstructing mask as he leans slightly closer, breaths deep but steady. It seems to take great effort to wrench his jaws open, lips still twitching and trembling as a constant.
Then finally, he slurs out a low and thickly accented: “...Habibi.”
All at once, Damian’s entire face flushes red-hot and he jerks away. Nevermind. He has greatly overestimated the degree of Hood’s present cognizance, because that name was the one that Mother used for Damian, and he hasn’t heard it from anyone’s mouth since he was six.
“What was that?” Drake immediately pipes up, because Damian hasn’t endured enough humiliation today, apparently. “Did Hood just speak? Is he waking up?”
“No, he is not,” he bites back, shoulders hiking to his ears and irritating the stitches. “Hood is very much still stuck deep within his subconscious. I can’t see his eyes, but they undoubtedly glow like the Pit and will most likely remain that way until late tomorrow.”
“...And what are you going to do about your obvious absence at the manor?”
The words fall over him with an unsettling frigidness, prickling beneath his skin. This is the inevitable problem, touching precisely on the urgency of their predicament. For all they know, Pennyworth could have already reported his disappearance to Father and their timeline could be rapidly ticking beyond control or recovery.
This could all be for nothing, and Father could end up shot through the mouth in a reckless attempt to ‘rescue’ Damian from his brother’s clutches.
“...Could you not simply tell him that I was with you?” he asks, swallowing dryly.
A sharp laugh rings through the comm. “Yeah, like he’d believe that for a second.”
The undeniable truth of the statement sinks in his gut and sets off a blaze of defensiveness all at once. “Tt. Well, is it more suspicious than telling him that I’m with Hood?”
“Honestly?” Drake replies with the harsh thump of a landing. “I’d buy you running off to Hood’s safehouse. You were upset at being benched, he won’t rat you out like I would, and as long as Batman doesn’t find this crime scene, he won’t dare encroach on Hood’s boundaries just to force you back into the manor. This might be your best cover story.”
Chewing at his lip, Damian mulls it over.
“I would not inform Father of my location in this scenario,” he states slowly. “So how will this provide a cover?”
“I can handle that part,” Drake answers easily, thumping against stone once more with a breathy sigh. “Right after I handle this part.”
Straightening up, Damian stares numbly at the helmet in his lap. “You’ve… arrived?”
Static whirrs loudly for a moment, flooding his gut with dread. What if the teen changes his mind once he lays eyes on the scene? What if he’s calling Batman right now? What if he’s been chatting with Oracle this entire time, and the whole armada of Bats are about to break into the safehouse and trigger a second, far more devastating slaughter?
Terror squeezes Damian’s chest, suffocating his lungs even as he draws a desperate breath. These thoughts are drastic and irrational - simple worst-case scenarios invading his mind in the aftershocks of adrenaline and the steadily rising tension - but they feel unbearably real in the moment. He almost voices these concerns aloud before Red Robin sighs again, a smothered weariness cutting through the hanging silence.
“...Just focus on Hood and yourself, okay? I’ll take care of this,” he asserts with a strange conviction. “You do owe me so many favours, though.”
Shaking off the unexpected and dangerously sentimental tone, Damian scoffs. “Tt. This is one favour.”
“Red Robin out,” Drake says in lieu of a retort, killing the line with a sharp click.
As soon as the static dies, Damian releases a heavy breath that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Drake will take care of it.
It’s downright shameful how much lighter he feels at the thought, but he cannot deny the waves of exhaustion continuously washing over him from all the stress of the past hour. Not to mention the intensifying concussion symptoms which are choosing this moment to make themselves known. His head feels like a jackhammer set to explode any second, and the nausea has returned with a violence.
So, with the promise that the matter is handled and out of his hands for now, he will allow himself at least a few blissful minutes to rest.