InsaneJournal

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By the time Damian made his way downstairs, the oven had been going for hours. He peered into the room expecting a mess or at very least controlled chaos and was slightly disappointed by the level of organization. (Not that Pennyworth would ever allow anything less.) Still, there were multiple dishes set out around the room. Some were cooked and cooling while others were in various stages of prep. Already there was an excessive amount of food, however, it seemed that Ramon had an excessive amount of friends.

Damian nodded to Jason, in brief acknowledgement, then made his way to the refrigerator. With cauliflower in hand, his next spot was the spice rack. It was a simple recipe: cauliflower, turmeric, cumin, salt, and a few other spices all mixed together and then oven roasted. Nearly impossible to botch so long as one paid attention to the the quantities and timing. He opened another cabinet then stopped.

"Did you use all the mixing bowls?"

Since day one, Wayne Manor had exercised a powerful effect on Jason. He’d been overwhelmed at his first sight of it as a child. His entire Crime Alley bedroom could have fit inside the en suite connected to the room Bruce had given him. Then there’d been the Batcave, and the excitement of coming home to a place where he was safe, and wanted, and actually had a chance to become something, someone, worthwhile. The house had started to lose that feeling in the months before Jason had died, as he fought more and more often with Bruce. After … Jason tried not to think too much about after, at least not the years before he’d come home.

Right now, Wayne Manor was exactly where he wanted to be. More specifically, he wanted access to Alfred’s frankly amazing kitchen. Jason loved that kitchen more than any room in the house except the library. His own kitchen was pretty good, but it wasn’t Alfred-level. Jason had curtailed his culinary ambitions just so he wouldn’t have to lower the quality of his food by prepping most of it at his place and warming it up later to make room for other cooks in the manor.

Jason nodded to Damian when the kid came down from upstairs, though he was too focused on his apple cider sweetbread to do much else at the moment. Only when Damian brought up the mixing bowls did Jason finally look up from where he was braiding the rolls of dough. “Try the cabinet up there, shortstack.” Jason nodded to show where he meant. He remembered what he and Damian had agreed to earlier in the week, but he figured he’d let the kid get settled in first.

It only took Damian a few more minutes to retrieve a mixing bowl, spatula, and baking sheet. The hunt for measuring cups and spoons took slightly more time. Apparently those were in higher demand. Finally, he grabbed a chopping knife, twirling it once, before setting it down with the rest of his items. He'd cleared out a space, staking a claim on the counter for the next hour or so.

Cooking wasn't something he did with any sort of regularity. When he was in residence, Pennyworth saw over the menu and when Damian was away from home, he managed to make do. Though he'd gotten more discerning after visiting countless restaurants who apparently believed that salads were the go to vegetarian meal. Even so, recipes were merely a series of instructions. It was hardly complicated. Technically, he didn't need to be in the kitchen for as long as he said. The oven would work perfectly fine whether he was in the room.

But Jason had offered to talk and spending time with him wasn't something Damian did with any regularity back home. They got together on occasion for group meals or the occasional visit but most of their time was spent on rooftops or out on the streets of Gotham and that was hardly an appropriate venue for such discussions. They didn't have the easy, casual relationship that he had with Dick or the contentious relationship he once had with Drake. They were both too preoccupied with their own affairs and teams. It was a rare opportunity that Damian had no reason to turn down. If nothing else, it'd be great insight.

Jason’s own version of Damian might have paid good money to be rid of him for a few weeks. Having been the only brother to have come back from the dead at the time, Jason had been insistent on sticking around after Damian's resurrection to make sure the kid came out of it better than he had. No one needed a rabid Demon Brat running around, and no one should have to go through what Jason had alone. Jason helped his own Damian through it by treating the kid … well, like a kid. Admittedly a highly trained, potentially deadly kid, but not even Ra’s and Talia had been able to completely ruin him.

For the first little while, Jason watched Damian get settled. He made no remark on the knife toss. Jason was all economy in the kitchen, no flourishes beyond what would get the job done, but he didn't hide that he knew his way around sharp objects better than most.

“So,” he said at last, wrist-deep in dough as he portioned it out for rolling, “where are we starting the incredible journey down memory lane?”

"That wholly depends on you," Damian replied. He paused a moment, smirked slightly then added, "Multitasking isn't a complicated skill." Depending on what he wanted to share, it'd take far more effort from Jason's part than Damian's. All he had to do was listen. Todd probably wouldn't even expect the murmurs of sympathy or acknowledgement most people were wont to do.

Damian moved to the sink to rinse the cauliflower then began cutting up the florets. Either he didn't see the value of mise en place or he just wasn't bothering with it. To him, cooking was far more functional than creative and measuring ingredients beforehand would only mean more dishes.

“Could do the Interview with a Vampire thing, but damn did that series have issues.” Was it even still around? Jason had no idea. Dying tended to put you off track in thousands of subtle and not-so-subtle ways. It did not, however, keep Jason off track of casually offering a middle-finger salute in response to Damian’s barb about multitasking.

“Okay. Let's level set. Which story did you get? Plucky street kid who hit the Bat with a tire iron, or something else? And for the record, my hair has never been Goddamn red. I don't know where that insanity came from.”

Despite his colorful language, Jason kept his eyes on his work, stretching and kneading his dough into proper shape for what he wanted to do with it.

Damian rolled his eyes at Todd's obscene gesture then his brow wrinkled slightly. Interview with a Vampire was one of the many pieces of media that he was unfamiliar with. He was passably familiar with the series that had ingrained themselves in pop culture or stood the test of time but there plenty of others that weren't anywhere near his radar. This series probably had minimal bearing on their conversation but he made a mental note to look it up all the same. People never seemed to realize just how many references they made.

"The version of events I'm familiar with is that you were attempting to steal the tires off the Batmobile when Father caught you. With Grayson was occupied with the Teen Titans, he took you in and you subsequently became the next Robin." Damian paused, concentrating on his chopping because jumping to the part where Todd met an untimely end seemed a bit presumptuous.

“Close enough,” Jason allowed. Damian could tell him what matched up and what didn’t as they went alone. “Not sure how things went with your version, but Dick and Bruce were having a rough time when I came along. Took a little while before I actually became Robin. I was scrawny as hell. Those old comics are really confused about what a kid looks like when he’s been living on the streets. And it was nice, for a few years, until Bruce and I got to fighting. So I ran off as soon as I got wind of a biological relative. Sound about right?”

He’d read through a number of the comic books he could find online or in comic book stores, even skipped around panels on Google, but he hadn’t unraveled the continuity mess. It was like trying to unravel the Gordian knot.

That was the thing about the Gordian knot. You weren't meant to untie it. At least that wasn't how Alexander the Great had dealt with the problem. With a single stroke, he had created his own solution. Pulling on any strand would have had the exact opposite effect. It might be possible to try to reconcile all the media based on their lives but cutting to the chase was certainly more efficient. Even if there were a few differences along the way.

Damian dumped the cut vegetable in one of the mixing bowls and then began combining spices in another. It wasn't nearly as efficient as it could have been. The teen would pour a measure then move to the sink to rinse and wipe down the measuring spoons only to do it all over again for the next ingredient. "More or less," Damian murmured since Jason was expecting some acknowledgement but stopped him before he could move on. "What did you and Father argue about?"

Jason snorted. “What didn’t we?” He had two of the three ropes he’d need for his second braided loaf ready, and set them out of the way to make room to shape the third. “I was too rough. I took things too far. I was rash. Too violent, too hasty, too angry.” A corner of Jason’s mouth curled up in a smirk. “You know, just like him when he’s got his dander up.” They’d all seen Batman angry almost beyond the point of control at some point in their lives.

“He’d tell me later that he screwed up, that he should have gotten me a different kind of help than a yellow cape and green pixie boots. But I’m skipping ahead.” Jason spread a little more flour on his board to keep the dough from sticking. “There were some cases, when I was fifteen, that got a little close to home. I might have put some thugs in the hospital. Might not have saved one from dying. And Bruce got pissed. It made it real easy to take off once I got wind of Sheila..”

Damian was quiet throughout Jason's answer. He frowned slightly and his hands stilled for a moment on the "too violent, too hasty, too angry" part. It was all just a bit too familiar and yet dissimilar. Bruce had had a choice in adopting Jason and bringing him into the crime fighting fold. He hadn't gotten the same choice with Damian. Each of the Robins had gone through their own set of so-called "growing pains" but Damian wasn't exactly sure he was past his.

"Your biological mother," Damian supplied. Although he was happy to move away from one topic, the next one was hardly any better. He looked down at his bowls. The seasoning was combined so he poured it over the cauliflower and started mixing.

“Not much to write home about,” Jason remarked. “She could have been. If she’d actually be an aid worker in Africa instead of using it as a cover for embezzlement, she might have been worth my time. The real kicker was that Joker got wind of the fact that she was my freaking egg donor.” He paused in his work with the bread. “I don’t know what Bruce told you about what happened. If he condensed it down or retold it or avoided it altogether.”

Jason glanced at Damian, then wiped his hands clean on a towel tucked in his apron. “Choke up your grip on that spoon, Babybat. You’ll get a better toss if you do.” He leaned back against the counter to watch the youngest Robin work.

“Sheila didn’t realize what she’d signed up for, but she let it happen,” he went on while he observed Damian. “Bruce tends to go on and on about how he was too late. I’m not sure he could have saved my ass. Joker wasn’t messing around. Sure, he was enjoying himself, but that’s not the same thing. I probably would’ve died anyway if Bruce had gotten there in time to defuse the bomb. Sheila might have lived, though. Maybe B and I would’ve said some shit that needed to be said before I joined the choir invisible. Of course he didn’t get there in time to do anything more than dig us out of the wreckage.”

Despite the memorial downstairs, Jason's death wasn't something Bruce liked to talk about. Even after Jason's resurrection, it was still a taboo subject although how much was due to the past and how much was due to the present circumstances was up for debate. In any case, Bruce Wayne was not a man who could easily let go of the past.

They'd had a few discussions about Jason. Bruce had taken a very methodical approach when it'd come to family history. Damian hadn't exactly appreciated it at the time but that had changed over the years. And then there were the files in the computer each clinical and precise. In contrast, Alfred and Dick's anecdotes were downright wistful.

Damian looked up at Jason at the sudden comment about his mixing skills. He'd managed to get this far without critique. He scowled slightly but shifted his grip as instructed. It didn't really matter, in a few minutes the oven would be doing all the work. When the cauliflower looked sufficiently coated, he tilted the bowl so Jason could see it better. Todd had clearly taken an interest.

"Father doesn't like to talk about it," Damian replied, "He believes he failed you." The fact that Jason was around and walking and talking in the Manor did nothing to negate the sentiment. There was a long pause as Damian seemed to come to some sort of decision. "Do you remember anything? From when you died?"

Jason shook his head. “No. Nothing. Not unless you count ‘nothing’ as a memory. It’s not the same as blacking out, though. More like the feeling you get when you walk into a dark room, and you know you aren’t alone.” He nodded his approval of Damian’s work on the cauliflower. “Remind me to teach you how to toss stuff right in the bowl.”

To get away from having to watch his younger brother, who had died and come back in his own dramatic fashion, Jason went back to the bread. He worked the dough in silence until he’d finished a good third of the braid. “Bruce has got the worst guilt complex I’ve ever seen. After the Heretic got to you … Damn. Though I’m guessing how that went down is different for you than it is for me. Which is jumping ahead by a few years, but you ever want to talk about it, I’ve got ears.” He got another third of the braid done before he let himself get back on subject.

“I remember actually dying. Or passing out before dying. Whichever it was. And that long stretch of just … absence. And then I woke up in my coffin.”

Damian was content to let the silence stretch. He concentrated on spreading the cauliflower evenly across the baking sheet before popping it on one of the preheated ovens. He glanced at the clock then hopped up on one of the kitchen stools. He was still frowning.

He had been resurrected via a Chaos Shard, drastically different than the Lazarus Pit Jason had mentioned. The aftermath would have been different as well. Whereas the Pit induced a temporary madness, the Chaos Shard had granted him temporary powers. The nightmares may have been the same.

"I remember dying," Damian finally said, head bowed and apparently studying the kitchen counter. And begging for Talia to stop. "Then I was in the cave. I thought it was a dream."

If he hadn’t had raw dough all over his hands, Jason might have reached out to ruffle the kid’s hair. He pushed Damian’s boundaries, citing big brother prerogative, but he was also trying to get the youngest Bat to actually be human. The rest of the family was messed up enough as it was, without letting Damian wallow in the deep, dark hole his mother and grandfather had dug for him.

“You might have gotten lucky there, sprout. Thinking it was a dream.” Jason shrugged. “Maybe I did. Can’t really remember.” He tapped one side of his forehead, right at the base of the shock of white hair. “Fractured skull. A lot of what came after I had to piece together, or Bruce did. There were police reports. They just didn’t have a name to match to me because I wasn’t in the missing persons files.” He broke off from the discussion of resurrection to gesture toward a bowl with a pat of butter in it.

“Toss that in the microwave for me, would you? I need it pretty much melted. Going to brush it on the bread to get a good crust.”

"Tt." Damian had volunteered in the kitchen solely because Jason had been obstinate. He hadn't signed up to be an assistant. He slid off the stool all the same and did as asked. He set the timer for 20 seconds then hopped back on his stool as if nothing had happened. If Jason wanted more help, he'd have to ask. Each and every time.

"What's the first thing you do remember?" Damian asked, slightly relieved that the conversation was moving on. Though given Jason's miraculous recovery, Damian knew they'd eventually end up talking about the League. And his mother.

Ordering Babybat around would never bother Jason. He smiled sweetly when the microwave dinged. “Could you bring that back over here? My hands are all doughy. Food hygiene, you know.” To prove his point, Jason went right back to working with the bread.

“I’ve got bits and pieces. I remember the coffin. Rain, cold. Then there's another blank space. The medical records B found say I was comatose, then pretty much a vegetable. Ward of the state in a long term care facility with crap security, because it looks like I just walked out of there one day. I’ve got flashes of living on the street, and then the League, but I don't remember them actually picking me up. And then that fucking pit.” He clenched his hands around the towel he’d been using to wipe the flour off of his fingers.

“It’s like drowning, only you can't actually suffocate, and there’s all this noise in your head. Your Jason went for a swim too, didn't he? So if he came out crazy, he had a good reason. To be honest, with me, I think they were kind of desperate. ‘Can't have a brain damaged kid underfoot forever, so let's see if we can make him useful’ sort of thing. I’m not sure whose idea it actually was.”

The butter was going to be put on the raw dough so "food hygiene" was a poor excuse. Damian retrieved the bowl from the microwave and grabbed a spoon to stir in any butter that hadn't completely melted then set the bowl down, helpfully, out of Jason's reach. He hopped back on the stool again.

Lazarus Pits and the League of Assassins were both one of those topics. They weren't discussed unless they were a necessity. There were times where Damian was convinced that Bruce didn't want to think of them at all. Ra's al Ghul had bathed in the pits waters numerous times and the insanity always passed. Though, Damian reasoned, it wasn't as if he'd ever met his grandfather before all the delusions of grandeur. Whatever his baseline for sanity once was, it was probably eroded away over the hundreds of years.

'But the pit worked,' Damian wanted to point out, but he didn't. "When did Father find out?"

“When I came back to Gotham guns blazing, probably.” Jason shrugged one shoulder as he dipped his pastry brush into the melted butter, which he had retrieved as casually as though he’d meant for Damian to place it well out of reach. “We actually haven’t hashed that out, the moment he knew it was me. The short version of that story is I was a mess, and I took all the money Talia gave me and spent it on getting really good at hurting people. I set up a trap for the Joker, made sure Bruce caught wind of it, and we had a good old shouting match in the slums with the clown for an audience. Didn’t end well.” If Jason brushed the butter onto the bread a little more rapidly than necessary, he’d thank Damian not to comment on it.

“Since Bruce wouldn’t do what I thought he should do, I figured I’d go after Robin next. Tim, and later you, when you came along. Thought maybe if I put the Replacement in enough danger, B might change his tune. Not that anyone else saw it that way. They weren’t too fond of me taking over the drug trade, either. I got tired of playing the same game over and over, and the Bat not giving an inch, so I left. Tried to put Gotham behind me. Only the old man had to go and ‘die’ and leave a stupid will.”

Damian stiffened slightly at the mention of his mother. Their relationship was complicated, even now. There were moments when she almost seemed to respect Damian's decisions but they were few and far between. Lost in his own musings, Damian barely noticed Jason taking his frustrations out on his cooking.

"Batman will never die," Damian replied stubbornly and almost instinctively. The concept, of course, Grayson had taken up the mantle and it was one of Damian's goal Even McGinnis seemed to be proof of that. And there was also the fact that Batman, Bruce Wayne, could seem larger than life when he wanted to. He'd been lost before, in time or abandoned to his own memories, but he'd still returned. He was too stubborn to give up, or give in, or give an inch when it came to his morals. Jason had been fighting a losing battle even before he'd even started.

That actually won a laugh from Jason. “You’re not wrong. The old man couldn’t go and die properly, could he? Had to get lost in time instead. Not that I found out about that until later. I came back because Tim said Bruce had left something for me. I’m not sure what I expected. This would have been around the time you were getting settled with Dick.” The bread was ready, and Jason set his brush aside. He washed his hands before he set about putting the two loaves he’d made in the oven.

“In retrospect, B probably meant well. He’d recorded this message for me that, in all of his emotionally constipated glory, came across as him saying I was screwed up and hopeless.That also did not go over well. Dick and Tim and I all figured we’d take over being Batman. I might have, you know, stabbed Tim. A little. And threatened you.” He reached for a knife to start chopping vegetables, then thought better of it. “Dick didn’t know what to do once he beat me, so he sent me to Arkham.” Jason stared the floor tiles, considering the next part of the story.

“You don’t need to know what happened there,” he finally decided. “Suffice to say that Tim staged a breakout, which is about the time I started to get along with him. I left the country, got my head put on straight while Tim worked on getting Batman home. Being the Bat’s never been good for Big Bird.”

Damian was quiet having decided not to interrupt Jason's account with his own comments. The two of them had more similarities than they were probably comfortable with but there were also differences as well. It showed in their decisions as well as their relationships with Tim, and Dick, and Bruce.

"Did you ever ask him about it?" Damian asked. It wasn't, 'did he ever offer an explanation?' because it just wasn't in the man's nature. Though he still had a small amount of hero worship, Damian had grown used to his father's taciturn nature. "Or did you–" Damian shrugged. He wasn't sure how to complete that sentence. Get over it? Get past it? Let it drop? Or maybe just pushed it aside to concentrate on saving the city. That would be the most likely situation.

Jason shrugged. “We never really talk about it. He apologized, after I came home. I decided not to push it. Wasn’t feeling up to a fight with him at the time, and then we got tangled up in other things.” Other things being Jason’s physical therapy, Damian’s murder and resurrection, and Dick’s kidnapping and death. They’d had a rough year, even by Bat standards.

The question that faced Jason now was, how much more did he tell Damian? His brother - his youngest brother - had been killed because people who should have protected him, his own mother and grandfather, had launched a plan to to replace him, like he was a car they could drop off at the junkyard and replace with a newer model. Jason might have been able to stop that, if he hadn’t nearly died (again) himself when he stuck his nose in Ra’s al Ghul’s business without enlisting proper backup.

“I don’t think you’ll find that apology in the comics. I poked around, and there are discrepancies that go back years. A lot of the heavy hitters are there, event-wise, but not all.”

Damian glanced at the clock. The cauliflower still had a few more minutes to go. He hopped off the stool then crouched by the oven door to check on the appetizer. It was browning nicely. He straightened up then did a circuit around the room checking what else Jason had made. It all smelled good, not that he was ready to tell Jason that. His ego didn't need more stroking.

"I'll let you know if I see it," Damian replied. The comics didn't seem to have everything, however, there was a lot of narration to be had and many thoughts were written out, if not voiced. It was actually disconcerting. Damian wasn't in a rush to see his so-called debut. "What else do you have left to make?"

Allowing the deflection, and honestly glad of the reprieve, Jason strode over to the refrigerator, where the ingredients for a salad still rested. He and Damian could hash out more details of their respective lives later. Right now, it wa time to get ready to feed some hungry people.

“Come on, squirt. Let’s put those knife skills to good use. I’ve got some carrots that need to be julienned and cucumbers to slice. You can get started on those while I whip up the vinaigrette.” He hadn’t put the salad on the menu selection when he’d polled the audience, but who said no to lettuce smothered in a homemade balsamic honey dressing? No one with any sense of taste, he was sure.

Damian pulled a face. At this rate, he was never going to escape. Luckily, chopping was easy. He could finish the vegetables in moments and maybe sneak out when Jason was busy with the oven. Helping with prep was one thing but Damian refused to get stuck cleaning up as well. There was no way he was going to do dishes, not when they had a perfectly good dishwasher.

And a state of the art appliance as well.