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You would think that with the world tap-dancing of the knife’s edge of chaos this year, Halloween would take a backseat and people would stay the fuck at home for once.
In a fair and just world, you’d think that, and you’d be right.
In this world, every single Bat and Bird is spread thin across Gotham tonight, putting out fires both literal and metaphorical while trying to avoid punching the alarmingly large number of people that think it’s a good idea to cosplay as one of Gotham’s many bastard children.
Jason doesn’t bother trying to come up with an excuse for shoving down every Joker he sees, and makes the effort to aggressively heckle every time he trips up some guy in a Batman costume with padded abs, because it’s better to freak out and be casually mean than it is to freak out and shoot up a bunch of people. Patrolling by the docks, he’s not dealing with nearly as many issues as whatever shit-fest is going on closer to the city centre, but there are a lot of bars in the area and it’s amazing what alcohol does to the idiocy of idiots.
He’s complimenting a woman looking damn mighty fine in a Batgirl outfit, red hair catching the wind like a dream, when there’s a quiet boom that he hears with his body before he hears it with his ears. Even through the filters of his helmet, the wicked ozone-and-vinegar tang of malicious magic comes through.
Ah, Jesus. It’s dirty magic on Halloween, what a fucking cliche. Nobody in this town has a single ounce of taste, and Jason doesn’t have a single ounce of luck. He has to say goodbye to the lady with her sequinned facemask and unbearably long lashes, but as soon as he turns away his head is clear and his gun is in his hands.
Bullets don’t technically work to bring down magic-users, but that’s only if they're expecting it. Fortunately, as absolutely everyone who has ever met him can attest,
Jason’s a loose cannon, and he sure does enjoy going the fuck off.
The scent grows stronger the closer he gets to the refrigerated warehouses, and even in the bright white light of a full moon he can see sparks of sickly green and malevolent purple, followed by all manner of hisses and pops just ‘round another corner.
So a magic-user, currently either up to absolutely no good or neck-deep in a fight. It’s the work of a moment to call up the overlay on his lenses to check if it's a Bat that’s engaged in combat. Hidden just beyond where there’s so much magic being thrown around that the classic October snow-drizzle of Gotham is evaporating in mid-air, Jason tries really hard not to groan, because of-fucking-course.
Of fucking course it’s Bruce having a no-holds-barred slugfest with goddamn Circe, if Alfred’s helpful little tags on the map are to be trusted. God, down by the cathedral Red Robin is apparently facing off against Clayface and Penguin’s armada and Killer Croc, so rest in fucking pieces Tim Drake, you probably will be missed.
Jason’s only close enough to help one family member right now, and lucky him, it’s the biggest and dumbassiest one of them all.
He quietly climbs up the emergency fire escape of the warehouse, banking on the loud refrigeration units to mask his presence and provide cover for a quick snipe. Circe’s gorgeous and powerful and the very definition of a bastard-woman. Thanks to her insultingly long list of powers, she tends to be beyond anybody except Wonder Woman.
Odd for her to show up in Gotham, but last year they had a porpoise swim upriver, right up into the canals, and Circe’s not even endangered, so.
He gets into position and slots the little bespelled silver bullet he keeps on him at all times into the chamber. After tonight, he really needs to remember to send something nice to Zatanna to say ‘thank you’. The generosity of spirit for a person to just sit there and listen to his long, long rant about how terrible it is that magic users can’t be dealt with a gun when she had only swung by the Cave to help with a curse!
The vim and vinegar of a soul that didn’t say something sanctimonious like ‘leave magic to the magicians’ and instead outfitted him with bullets magicked to knock-out shitheads and sorcerers both, oh!
There’s a sweet little hum when he cocks his gun, like the bullet’s as ready to go as he is, mmm. A Desert Eagle’s no sniper rifle, but your average sniper isn’t the Red Hood, so. Jason steadies his breath, finds his centre, rests the butt of the gun on a vent and tries to get a lock on her.
It’s real fucking hard. Bruce is moving at breakneck speed to avoid Circe’s indiscriminate blasts of magic, and all around him things are coming to life. The dumpster the Bat leaps behind gets turned into a pig, a smokebomb thrown bursts in mid-air and turns into a startled flight of doves. The edge of Bruce’s cape gets clipped and turns into an alligator with snapping jaws; Bruce discards it with a casual elbow to a reptilian throat mid-roll.
Circe is in the middle of it all, dressed to the nines and laughing loudly. “Give up, Batman. A mortal man could never hope to resist me!”
It’s an ironic thing to say, because in the time it took for her to brag Batman has hidden knock-out gas charges throughout the alley and is currently, apparently, trying to throw the alligator at her.
Circe seems to figure out that Bruce is resisting just fine, because the next time she opens her mouth all that comes out is a soft, lilting voice that’s singing so sweetly, so lovingly, that Jason just, oh, just wants to get closer.
Ah, shit. It’s a goddamn siren song, and Jason’s hearing his mother’s voice.
Knowing Bruce, he’s probably not hearing Selina, or any of the dozens of women that hang around on his arm. Knowing Bruce, it’s probably Mrs. Wayne, a voice from years and years ago saying come here, darling, come close .
(Like father like son, hah.)
Bruce comes to a standstill, and that snaps Jason out of his trance. It’s almost unimaginable that this shitty little trick is working on this plain human man who’s most outstanding characteristic is his bloody-minded determination to be anything but.
It’s becoming somewhat clear that if Circe really wanted to have an impact, she should maybe take voice lessons and widen her range a little bit. Jason gets ready to take a shot as she floats over to a paralysed Batman, because it’s clear clear clear.
He would’ve sunk like a stone to hear a voice like Bruce's say I’m proud of you, I love you , and isn't that embarrassing?
It’s all ghosts in the head, (un)fortunately.
Jason shakes the thought off, and takes aim. He cocks his gun, and gets ready to pull the trigger in the quiet between heartbeats.
Circe grabs Batman by his chin, stiletto nails raking thin lines into his face, and she’s laughing again, confident in her thrall. “How the mighty have fallen,” she coos. “I may just keep you, Batman. You’ll help me fight Diana, won’t you?”
Bruce nods jerkily, and yeah, that’s enough of that.
He shifts his angle just the slightest bit, because if he's reading Circe’s body language right she’s juuuust about to go in for a non-consensual kiss and despite it all, Jason is not keen to miss and hit Bruce instead, thanks.
Jason takes the shot, aiming for her thigh and uncharitably thinking that oh, this must be what it’s like to tranq a raging rhinoceros. He expects the magic bullet to, well, be magic; quick and instantaneous and flashy, Circe’s maybe going to shriek a little and then collapse in a heap on the ground, unconscious and drooling.
Instead, it really is like tranquilsing a raging rhinoceros, because she doesn’t go down immediately, even if frost has started blossoming from where the bullet dissolved into her skin. “You!” she screams at him, “I will make you regret the day you were born!”, and she’s shooting magic right out her fingers, a stream of black-purple-gold coming right at Jason in bullet-time.
Except it’s intercepted twice over. It’s insane how even now, somehow, Jason can still be taken aback by just how damn fast the Bat can be. The moment Circe’s attention is off of him, Bruce immediately loses the loose-limbed posture of the magically-seduced, and it’s clear he had just been playing along with Circe's assumption, probably to get her in close range.
As soon as Jason gets made, Bruce does two things, so swiftly his movements are a blur even though Circe’s return fire is still slowly, slowly crawling towards Jason.
First he headbutts Circe right in the face, sorceress skull again plate metal and kevlar. Distracted as she was by Jason, Circe didn’t have the time to magic up any response to that, and bam, she’s out like a light.
The second thing he does, and this is the thing that Jason really wants to literally curse him for, is to scrunch down and then shoot up, leaping into the air like a bat out of hell, catching the full brunt of Circe’s attack right in the chest.
Bruce goes down, and from his vantage point on the roof Jason can see that his legs have landed oddly, sticking out the way bones are meant to prevent, and Jason feels so much ugly ugly anger that the world goes green for a moment and all he hears is lightning in his ears.
The moment comes, and then it goes. Pit madness isn’t that different to Circe’s call, after all.
At the end of the day, for better or for worse, Bruce comes first. There’s not a hope in hell that some half-baked magic trick is going to distract him from Batman crumpling up in a broken heap. Jason is leaping off the side of the warehouse and sprinting towards Bruce at the speed of thought, faster than any siren could compel him.
Circe is a pile of silk and skin, but Jason's a bit lost as to how to restrain her. He's already sounded off an alert to the family, who have likely contacted the League, so that's one thing. Help's definitely en route, but just in case a concussion and one bullet aren't enough, Jason tips out the rest of his silver bullets onto her and hopes for the best.
Now, on to more important things.
He gets his hands on Bruce's shoulders, all curled up and ready to shove two hundred and fifty pounds of man and armour somewhere more secure than the middle of an alleyway a couple of feet away from a bitchy magic-woman. Everyone’s had a go of trying to move Bruce quickly while on duty, and the current record is Cass hauling him a hundred yards in under 3 minutes, fuck knows how.
So Jason is ready for a fight, which is what makes him startle so hard when he gets in a rough shove to start things rolling, and Bruce goes flying .
Jason’s first, somewhat-hysterical instinct is that the spell had disintegrated Bruce, that all that’s left is a suit of armour and a bunch of dust. Before panic properly sets in, though, but just after he’s started to draft an explanation for Alfred re: how this happened right in front of his own damn eyes, Jason hears a (blessed, blessed) groan from where he’d flung Bruce, and adrenaline hits so hard his head near explodes.
One moment he’s on his haunches, staring at his hands that apparently just made a whole grown man fly, and the next he’s by Bruce, pulling him onto his back.
Somehow, incomprehensibly, the sight that greets him is more shocking than a pile of Bat-dust.
“B?” he asks, uncertain and a little concerned that he’s straight hallucinating all this, and the Pit had in fact overtaken him without his knowledge.
“.... Hood?” comes the groaned-out reply. “What’s the mission status? Are you injured?”
Jason laughs and pops his helmet off because he’s going stir-crazy and maybe crazy-crazy in there and he just… wants to know that this is the reality of the thing and not just his lenses and himself losing their stupid collective minds. “I’m fine, B, and Circe’s been disarmed. You, uh… You feeling all right?”
Bruce struggles to sit up, and inevitably fails. “Don’t expose your face,” he hisses, before he frowns. “The attack must have missed me; I’m unhurt.”
“That’s one way to phrase it,” Jason says, the most diplomatic he’s ever been in his entire damn life, as he tugs his phone out of his pocket and snaps a quick pic of Bruce.
Or, of what little Bruce is visible (hah!).
He opens the picture and flips his phone to let Bruce see, so that they can have a bonding moment over the absurdity that is their lives.
Bruce is deathly silent for a while, before he starts struggling in earnest to sit up.
It’s futile; a baby-faced kid’s not got a hope in fucking hell of moving the sheer absurd weight of Batman’s full combat armour. Even at the height of his wiggling, all bitty Bruce manages to do is have his cowl slip completely off his face, tilted back and hanging like a precarious crown, black horns on baby.
“Ah.”
“Thanks for the understatement of the century, B,” Jason says, feeling a hell of a lot better just seeing how calmly Bruce has taken to being de-aged a stupid amount. He pulls the cowl off completely, and carefully starts disengaging the dozen or so booby-trapped latches that hold the suit together. “Aside from being, what, 30 years younger? You got anything that needs looking after?”
Bruce looks a terrific mess, grease painted eyes somehow still present, thin slices all up and down his chin from Circe’s claws. His eyes, though, are clear and calm and still, unresisting as he lets Jason free him from the literal prison his suit’s become. “My twisted ankle is still twisted, but I am otherwise unhurt. You?”
“Dying a little from seeing a kid say bullshit like ‘I am otherwise unhurt’, but I’m fine.” With a last little click! the chest piece comes off, and Bruce can gently tug his limbs out from where they had been stuck. Bruce is drowning in his undersuit, but the fabric is soft and light and endlessly preferable to the heavy armour. It works fine enough once Jason helps him fold the sleeves back, even if there’s so much excess fabric that by the end there’s a solid two inches of upturned cuffs round both wrists and both ankles. “This has got to be up there for worst day ever, huh?”
Mister I-Need-Control-And-I-Need-It-Always, rendered vulnerable and useless by magic of all things? Jason can imagine the migraine manifesting, even if it’s harder to read on a face that’s all soft and round, serious and sweet.
Bruce holds on to his shoulder to climb up onto shaky legs, and the touch is so light and the hand is so small Jason barely even registers it. Once Bruce is on his feet, though, he doesn’t let go, and instead just looks down at Jason who’s still crouched on one knee. “It doesn’t even make the top 5,” Bruce says, “and you know it.”
And Jason does, of course he does. On his bad days, coming back to life is much, much worse than dying. On his worst days, he just remembers over and over again that Bruce held his dead body and decided that no, this is not a boy worth avenging.
Today’s neither, though, not too bad and nowhere near the worst, so he just knocks Bruce’s hand off (gently, gently) and gets to his feet. “Last I saw Nightwing’s ETA is another 10 minutes. Just hang tight.” He shrugs off his leather jacket and wraps it around Bruce. Without Circe blasting magic into the atmosphere, the snow’s starting to pile on.
It’s not the sort of situation little kids should be finding themselves in, even if the little kid is Bruce. Jason is, after all, a certified professional on Unpleasant Things Children Should Not Have To Deal With But Do, and he’s not keen to pass the torch.
He pulls the zipper up, and Bruce doesn’t try to fight it. They’re both quiet and the atmosphere is its usual self; depressing and strained but enduring, nevertheless. Eventually, though, they both have to acknowledge the elephant in the room.
Or really, the alligator in the alley. Bruce is already unzipping the leather jacket, and it's been half a minute. “Crocodilians should not be roaming this far up north at this time of the year,” a small child says as he trips on an overlong pant leg while on the way to chuck a sweater at an 8-foot-long gator.
Jason picks Bruce up before he can get much further, and if there’s one positive thing to this transformation, it’s how much easier it is to keep fun-sized Batman away from trouble, wow. “Nightwing's coming in with Robin for back-up, and they’re taking the car so’s Circe can fit. If you think for a second that the little demon’s not gonna be shoving your cape-croc into the boot and adding it to his menagerie, you definitely have a concussion.”
They look as the alligator scuttles behind a couple of trashcans, probably freaking the fuck out because it’s both about 15 minutes old and also meeting snow for the first time ever. “Also, and I cannot stress this enough, fuck you for trying to feed my favourite jacket to a magic alligator.” He shifts Bruce a little where he’s sat on Jason’s shoulder, just to make sure he’s got a better grip on the boy just in case Circe comes to again and he needs to make a speedy escape.
Kid Bruce bopping the back of his head and going “Language, Jason,” ends up being what tips this neatly, cleanly over into becoming the winner of the ‘Weirdest Halloween night of my life’ category, and it’s a testament to what it’s like to be a Bat associate that when Dick pulls up to Jason roaring with laughter, he doesn’t even ask.
Damian, of course, immediately adopts the alligator, and spends the night begrudgingly getting help from Tim to rig up a heated pool and UV lamps for the damn thing, while Bruce gets a very thorough look-over by a suspiciously teary-eyed Alfred. Jason had initially planned to see Bruce home safe and sound and then disappearing, because the Manor became less like home after he got to see the inside of a mausoleum, and even after reconciliation, it's a difficult feeling to forget.
Bruce still is in his jacket, though, looking dwarfed by the cavernous cave ceilings, pale and drawn in the bright floodlights that they have in the medbay. It’s a joke everyone thinks is damn funny, how Bruce can be so cold and callous and cruel but also be singularly unable to turn away from anybody that needed help. How he’s a raging asshole but also 100% the kind of man who would adopt a child he’s never met before just because like recognises like, you know?
Jason’s never thought of himself as a family man, is pretty sure he’s never going to become one. He has as much paternal instinct as Bruce himself does, probably, but with the self-awareness to know that he’s not good at being good to people, and he doesn’t even have a couple billion spare to soften the blow.
He knows all these things about himself and about Bruce, but seeing a scruffy little kid in oversized clothes with muck and blood and snow all over him arouses in Jason an instinct to protect so viciously, so strongly, that it’s miraculous that he manages to just lounge on a stool in a corner of the med bay eating some noodle salad instead of, fuck, biting Alfred’s hand when he’s drawing blood and Bruce is so taken aback by the sharp prick of it that he honest to goodness yelps in surprise.
A peanut explodes into shrapnel from how hard Jason has to clench his jaws to hold himself back. He knows it’s not just him, because he sees Dick, Tim, and Damian whip their heads ‘round, instantly on alert.
Everyone’s ready to throw a punch over Bruce as much as they’re ready to hit Bruce most days, but unsurprisingly having the man be magicked into being a kid’s shifted the scales just enough that everyone’s now a little feral over a little boy.
Alfred, though, is unmoved, quickly and efficiently siphoning blood off before pulling the needle out and applying pressure. He looks as starry-eyed as anyone’s ever seen him, even if his movements are still sure and quick. “My apologies, Master Bruce. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten how you used to be sensitive to needles.” Alfred puts on a band-aid and gently smooths down the edges. “And now we’ve come full circle.”
Bruce bends his elbow and applies some more pressure. “At least this time I won’t have trouble sleeping by myself, or crying every time we pass the family portrait by the staircase.” He’s pulling on one of Damian’s old shirts, which is still a couple of sizes too big, but is endlessly better than Batman armour. “Thank god for little blessings.”
He completely misses the look on everyone’s faces at that, because for most of them it’s only really been a thought exercise to know how little Bruce had been when violence had come for him at top speed, but it’s, ah, not so theoretical now.
The neck of the shirt sags, a little. Damian had been a worryingly muscular super-assassin by the time he had come to the Manor, but this is Bruce scrubbed of age and size and strength, scrubbed of everything except his mind, and IQ doesn’t make a skinny big-eyed kid any bigger.
Jason wishes there were more nuts he can take his aggression and unrest out on in this extremely delicious salad, but it’s all glass noodles and spicy sauce so there’s nothing much to distract him from the bastardisation of the concept of ‘little blessings’.
Luckily, the others aren't as dedicated to maintaining an aloof and bitter persona. Dick’s already rushed into the medbay after blatantly eavesdropping, and he’s pulled Bruce into a hug. Nightwing’s built slim compared to Jason and Bruce, and it just adds to the weird energy of the night to see Bruce Wayne, Bat of Gotham, be totally engulfed in a hug by his oldest son.
“I bet you were a really strange little kid,” is all Dick ends up saying, and Bruce seems at a loss about how to respond, or how to maneuver himself out of what’s starting to look like a particularly persistent Judo grapple. “A really strange little kid that grew up to be a really strange big adult, but….”
Everyone expects something poignant and whole-hearted, because not for nothing is Dick known for being the one with the best communication skills in the whole damn family. It’s a little bonkers how non-genes got distributed; best hair by far , and he can talk down a rampaging wildebeest the way Alfred can talk down a fully-enraged Batman. So they’re expecting a big hitter of a revelation, something everyone’s going to go to bed thinking about and feeling overwhelmed by.
Instead, Dick grins and plants a kiss right on Bruce’s forehead. “But all I have to say, B, is…. Who’s your daddy now?”
Jason’s flung chopsticks hit Dick in the eye a second before Damian’s scream of “Prepare for death, Grayson!” echoes to the rafters, and through it all Bruce remains fully, firmly embraced, escape currently impossible.
If you’ve never seen a kid look like he's regretting every aspect of his extremely short life, you’re really, really missing out. Dick's inability to tell a good joke notwithstanding, he breaks the tension of a number of sons worrying over their dumbass father like a karate chop to rice paper.
In unspoken agreement, everyone stays over at the Manor that night despite Bruce’s protests that he was fine in all ways except literal. The lovely portrait by the stairs, a fixture of daily life for decades so absolute it might as well be a structural support wall, gets an extra surreptitious glance or twelve every time any of them pass it, and the glances become longer looks once Bruce has been put to bed alone despite Alfred’s best go at enforcing company.
Jason’s not even a little surprised that when he’s squinting at the painted Bruce from many, many years ago but also right now, someone creeps up and sits next to him on the banister. It’s gone 4 AM, last Jason checked, so he’d thought it’d just be ghosts like him roaming the hallways.
Instead it’s Bruce, which makes sense. In a lot of ways, he’s the ghastliest one of them all, hey.
“I heard you coming a mile away. The hell are you doing up?”
B’s feet hang so far from the ground that for one hysterical second Jason wants to rest a careful hand on his back to keep him from toppling over backwards. He’s also holding a mug filled with lukewarm chocolate, wearing an expression of supreme long-suffering. “Alfred will take in the hems of Damian’s pants in the morning. Quiet movement is hard to achieve in clothes 2 sizes too big.” He takes a sip of the sugary concoction, and looks conflicted that he’s not more repulsed by it. “Circe took several decades of my life, but she didn’t take my insomnia with it.”
Jason snorts. “Yeah, got two questions ‘bout that. How old do you think you are, right now?”
“Somewhere between 9 and 10. I have lost all my baby teeth, but I was taller when puberty hit.”
“Mmhmm. And how old were you when the nightmares started, and you couldn’t look at your mom’s face without losing your little fucking mind?”
Bruce takes another sip. “The day after they passed, so a little before the age I am now.”
“So eight-ish, right? Don’t go blaming Circe for historical inaccuracy if you’ve always been off.” Jason wishes he had a mug of something sweet and warm too. “While you’re at it, don’t go taking magic blasts meant for other people too, how’s that?”
They subside into silence for a little bit. Jason remembers that he used to think it was the freakiest thing in the world, when he first got brought here and realised that there was a little droplight illuminating the Wayne family portrait even in the dead of night. Nothing so tacky like a halogen lamp blasting the power of the sun to glint off the gold gilding, but enough that you can make out the whites of their eyes all the way from the entrance.
Looking at it now, it’s still incredibly freaky, but the Manor’s a haunted house at the best of times, and picking and highlighting your favourite ghosts probably is just the done thing.
Christ, how the pearlescent paint on the Missus’ pearl necklace gleams when almost no one’s watching. Jason thinks his way through the billion little details of this larger-than-life portrait, because if he thinks too hard about that sensation of seeing Bruce catch a full chest of magic meant for Jason and dropping like a stone, he’s really, really going to need to shoot something.
Bruce shrugs, and Jason feels it against his side; when exactly did they end up slumped against each other? His instincts had gotten away from him, oh. Bruce is carefully tucked under Jason’s arm, carefully protected from falling off the stairs, and this is the closest they’ve been to each other since Jason was the weird little kid haunting these halls.
What a thought.
“If I had known to think it, I would have been happy step in front of my mother that night. Three decades on, Jason, and I have to ask; do you think I’ve learned to love my family any less?”
The answer is no, of course. Bruce's love doesn’t manifest in bringing Jason the Joker’s head on a silver platter, which was a hard lesson to learn, but it does manifest.
Right now, it’s manifesting in 9-year-old Bruce saying that on God given the option he’d always prefer to be the one to die, thanks, and that’s a lot to digest all at once.
Happily, Jason’s always been a good eater. He digs his knuckles into the side of Bruce’s head, a little pleased that he finally gets to experience what it’s like to have a little brother who’ll go along with a bit of rough-housing instead of trying to bite his hand off at the wrist (Damian) or just be confused and vaguely bored (Tim). Bruce struggles half-heartedly but is careful to remain within the circle of Jason’s arm, and that's something too.
“You’re such a bastard man,” Jason says, intent on getting this off his chest. “I’m the fucking Red Hood, and I do not need my dad to come to my rescue, got that?”
Bruce finally pulls Jason’s hand away, holding it still and looking at it contemplatively. Maybe chewing hands off is a Wayne-family special. Maybe with enough provocation, Jason too can bite the hand that feeds.
Instead, Bruce pats the back of Jason’s hand gently, awkwardly, like a little kid pushing his luck and trying to imitate something he saw someone else do, like Bruce is trying to mime his best approximation of tender loving care. “I know, Jason,” he says, intent and focused even in this small a body. “But isn’t it amazing when fathers do it anyways?”
In the soft glow of the dim lights, Thomas Wayne’s eyes seem to twinkle.
And what in the hell can Jason say to that?
“I hate you so much,” is what Jason manages in the end, wrenching his hand free only to tuck Bruce back under again, firmly determined to just enjoy the weirdness of this situation for as long as it lasts. “You’re such a weird kid, and you became an even weirder parent, in case you were wondering.”
“Of course," Bruce agrees solemnly, but amusement's easy to see despite the smaller face. "Thank you for coming to my rescue, Jaybird."
"Yeah, yeah," Jason replies, trying not to sound as embarrassed and pleased as he feels. "C'mon, you need to get some sleep or Alfred's gonna rampage across Gotham to get peace for his kid." He jumps off the banister and catches and carries Bruce before his feet touch the ground. "We can even have another go at the whole 'cool vigilante takes care of irritating little kid' thing, I can show you how it's done."
And if Jason takes the long way back to Bruce's room just for strange, frazzled delight of keeping someone safe in the crook of one arm, no one's going to tell.
At breakfast the next morning, Alfred makes no effort to hide his dismay when Bruce comes down as a hulking adult man instead of a sweet, round-faced boy, and it makes Dick laugh so hard he choked and had to Heimlich itself.
Karma, though, has a damn soft spot for Alfred's wishes. On the next full moon, Red Hood swings by the Cave to pick up some kit and finds fun-sized Bruce hotly arguing with Damian over borrowing his Robin outfit to go out on patrol, while Tim ignores them both.
What a goddamn gift it is to see a child grow, Jason finds himself thinking, trying not to laugh at pre-pubescent crime-fighters trying to out-posture each other, brittle chests puffed all the way out. What a privilege, even if the growing happens overnight, and the gift only comes 'round once a month.
He picks up both Damian and Bruce despite their protests and Tim's laughter, and is intent on delivering them to the kitchen to get Alfred to help broker peace over hot chocolate.
(On the way, Jason finds himself wondering if Mr. and Mrs. Wayne would be proud of him, of them. Then he remembers the portrait with their bright eyes and dimpled grins and oh, he can pretty much guess the answer.)