Chapter Text
His baby brother could be such a fucking idiot sometimes.
Jason knew that. Half his friends at camp—both camps—knew that. For fuck's sake, practically everyone in that stuffy mansion in Brooklyn knew that. Despite his genius intellect, the hellspawn being an idiot wasn't new.
What was new in The Life Story of Damian Wayne: Jason's Sometimes-Idiot Baby Brother, was turning up at the Manor with a large gash on his right side, and promptly fainting from blood loss the moment Tim had laid eyes on him.
Jason guessed he should thank the fates it was Tim who had found the hellspawn in the foyer, and not, say, Bruce. Gods only knew how Bruce would react if he found his son bleeding while blue hieroglyphics floated in front of him.
"Obviously, he'd be all calm on the outside, but inside? Yeah, he's probably already planning to murder the sorcerer who cursed you." Jason ran his tongue over his teeth as he brushed the gremlin's hair away from his face with his free hand. "Only problem is, there's no sorcerer, and you ain't cursed, so who do you think he'd end up killing?"
No response, but it was expected. The brat had been out for about three hours now. Jason wasn't an Apollo kid, but he estimated it'd be a hell of a long time before Damian would be up again, considering he'd been treated the old-fashioned way.
Lips pressed into a thin line, Jason watched the steady rise, and fall of the hellspawn's chest for a few moments, then continued to brush back his hair. His mind kept flashing with all ways he could speed up the recovery, but they were too much of a liability to try. Ambrosia would burn Damian alive, Jason couldn't sneak him out due to the numerous security cameras thanks to Bruce's paranoid tendencies, and asking one of the healers from Brooklyn to portal straight to the hellspawn's room in the Wayne Manor was like a gods damned death sentence.
"You know something."
Jason stopped brushing back Damian's hair to shoot the Pretender an irritated look. He had, thank fucking gods, changed into a new shirt, fresh from the bloodstains the gremlin had slathered him with. "Yeah? Exactly what do I know, Pretender?"
Tim's eyes flashed. Some people would've taken it as a huge-ass warning sign to stop screwing around, but not Jason. He'd been to the Underworld and back, the Pretender didn't scare him for shit. "Don't play dumb with me. You know who attacked him."
"I have no clue what the fuck you're talkin' about," Jason lied, because really, the fuck was he supposed to do? Tell his vigilante-superhero-but-still-very-much-mortal-brother that yeah, the hellspawn just got half his side chomped off by a crocodile monster, and did you know he's actually a magician? Not the usual kind, Timbo, for the love of—keep up with the program. He's the kind of magician who was raised to kill gods.
Jason didn't need the gift of the prophecy to see how well it'd go over, not to mention all the questions Tim would ask like, "why didn't you tell us?" and "does Bruce even have a clue?" and other crap he didn't want to think about.
"We both know you know something, dear brother, so stop wasting my time, and just tell me what you know already."
Jason opened his mouth to shoot back a retort, but paused. It wasn't like Tim never called him 'dear brother' before, but the context was just way too... off. Frowning, he looked at the Pretender.
Really looked at him.
At his impatient expression, the steady set of his shoulders, the dagger in his hand that Jason somehow hadn't noticed until now, fuck—
He stood up, putting himself between the monster, and the hellspawn's bed. "What the fucking hell are you?"
The monster—demon? Empousai? A shapeshifter from another gods damned pantheon, as if three weren't enough?—smiled, the Pretender's face stretching along with it. The dagger wavered in his grasp, almost like it wasn't real, further confirming Jason's suspicions that no, the monster-demon-Empousai wasn't Tim. "I'll tell you if you hand over Damian Kane."
"Damian Wayne," Jason snapped, not taking his eyes off the demon. "And you just gave yourself away, dumbass."
Only demons had ever called the gremlin 'Kane', which made Jason's job easier if he hadn't been stupid enough to leave his case of Celestial bronze bullets at the Cave. The demon was still smiling creepily, but it also wasn't doing anything else, leaving Jason free to glance around nearby for something sharp to clobber it with.
A loud hiss made his gaze snapped back to it. The demon's glamour had melted away to reveal a long snout, sharp teeth, and blood-red eyes. Jason stared at it in—not disgust, per se, the Empousai he'd faced that one time in California still looked worse, but it was pretty damn close. "Anyone ever tell you that you look ugly as hell?"
The demon hissed again, forked tongue darting out.
Then it lunged.
Jason ducked, swearing when its claws grazed his jacket. The demon didn't crash into the gremlin's bed like he'd feared—yeah, thank the gods for that, at least—so he quickly straightened up, and tackled it to the floor without hesitation.
Distantly, he could hear Roy's voice berating him about going into a fight without a weapon like a fucking idiot ("I swear on my dad's name, Jay, if you die—"), but he pushed it away to focus on the demon who was currently trying to claw his eyes out.
"Will you fucking stop—" Jason grunted, barely avoiding having his head ripped off and the rest of his body sent to Elysium as the demon thrashed underneath him. Fuck, he hoped Alfred wouldn't barge in, because he had no idea if the Mist even applied to demons. Why the hell had he never asked Sadie about it again?
Before Jason could do something his cabin would be proud of like throttle the demon to death with his bare hands, it stilled. He held his breath, ignoring his instincts screaming at him to stab, kill, beat it up, anything.
Suddenly, right before his eyes, the demon disintegrated into a pile of gold dust.
Okay, what the everloving fuck.
Mind going into overdrive, he hauled himself to his feet. The gremlin was still fast asleep, as dead to the world (bad pun, but whatever) as some of the Hypnos kids during swordfighting practice; hell, maybe even deader to the world than that bastard Zeus after Hera had seduced him in the Trojan War like the cow she was. So, if it wasn't Damian who had killed the demon, then who did? And if it had managed to trick gods-know-who-else by wearing Tim's face—
Shit.
Jason dug into his pocket for the phone Roy lent him, which he'd got from the Valdez kid. According to Roy, Valdez had a batch of 'super special Daedalus-prototype anti-monster phone'—perfect for phone calls, Valdez had said. In the half a year since Jason got it, the phone had never failed him yet. Fingers shaking, he scrolled through his contacts, and couldn't help his relieved sigh when the call connected. "Pretender, where the hell are you?"
"Uh, in Smallville? Where else?" the Pretender responded, sounding like he was rolling his eyes. "Why? Damian finally driving you crazy?"
Smallville. Good. Jason nodded, barely remembering to answer Tim as he dragged himself back to his chair next to the hellspawn's bed. "Nah, just checking up on you. Say hi to your boyfriend for me, will you?"
Without waiting for the Pretender's response, Jason hung up, and dialed another number. "Hey, Princess. Any chance you could meet me at the Batburger near the docks? The di Angelo kid owes me a favor, he'll shadow-travel you if you ask nicely—"
"You know I'm always nice, hon."
Jason reached down to wipe the gold dust from his pants with his free hand. "Ask him nicely, for Zeus' sake, he's not your personal taxi service."
"When did you get all buddy-buddy with him?"
"He's friends with my brother," he explained impatiently, keeping the story short. When Drew didn't respond, probably because she was trying to work out how the hell the di Angelo kid became friends with Damian (Jason had no idea how it happened either, but he wasn't gonna ask), he added, "I'll see you in fifteen" and ended the call.
He stared at the gold dust scattered around the floor. Now, to clean up the gremlin's room without Alfred, Bruce, or anyone else, really, finding out and asking a bunch of questions...
When Jason got to the restaurant, Drew was already sitting at a table, sunglasses perched on top of her head like a pretty little tiara while she sipped at her drink, looking for all the world like she'd walked off the set of a fashion magazine. Or an influencer video. Aphrodite kids, seriously.
"Ain't the eyeliner a bit too much?" he asked, pulling up the chair from across her. She slid a plate of fries, and a cup of coffee towards him, which he accepted with a thankful nod.
"You can never have too much eyeliner, sweetie," Drew replied as she reached over to pat his arm, her pale pink nails gleaming in the warm light. "Now, be a good boy, and tell me everything that happened."
The words "Damian still hasn't woken up but I'll be damned if I let anyone else look over him" were coaxed out of his mouth before he realized what he was saying. Jason gritted his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut as it took all his self-control to stop himself from revealing the whole truth like a brainwashed idiot.
"You're getting better," he admitted gruffly, after the last of the charmspeak finally washed over him. "Anyway, yeah, the brat has been attacked by a crocodile, and I almost died via demon impersonating my younger brother, but it's fine."
Drew flicked a thoughtful look at him from over the rim of her drink. "You know who sent them?"
"I..." Jason swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. Sure, he had secrets long before he'd been revived by a stupid pit and some death magic, but if he really thought about it, his secrets weren't even half as bad as Damian's.
"—think you could betray me—"
"—haven't seen a half-blood in—"
"So?"
His grip tightened around the cup as he forced himself to push down the memories. Drew was still staring at him.
"Yeah," he croaked out. "I might have an idea."