[for Jason and Stephanie] The Short Halloween
Underestimating an enemy is one of the most dangerous mistakes to make. Damian knows this. But they were just toys. Not a threat and more of an annoyance. He didn't think twice about separating himself from Batgirl over the course of the day, wanting the chance to fly solo, to lash out against these paltry opponents, and prove himself still worthy
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It's fitting, he thinks, after a morning of hacking his way through fucking dolls, that he'd find Robin at the bottom of a dogpile, purple haired clowns closing in and fast. Jason hates clowns, for obvious reasons and for the same reason that every kid hates them - they can't stop smiling and it's creepy as fuck.
"Hey chuckles!" he barks, and the clown hanging onto Robin's cape explodes in a burst of cotton. Jason aims his gun again, picks off the clown pressed tight to Damian's back with a marksman's surety, only precious inches to spare and not a one of them wasted. "I thought the pony ride was that way!"
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"Tt," he says, shooting a scathing look towards Todd that's not lessened any by the domino affixed to his face. "What are you doing?"
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He's laughing even as three more burst out at him from the trees. Jason eludes them with a graceful flip, feet catching against a tree trunk and shoving off to send him right over their purple heads. "Shuriken, huh?" he asks as he lands, "Nice," and pulls the keris dagger from the sheath at his hip. It hasn't seen the light of day in months, and he's missed it, missed using it, the truth of it plain in the curve of his smile when he slices right through a cotton throat. "Nothing beats close combat, even when it's stuffed."
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But Damian Wayne isn't most ten-year-olds.
His eyes fall on Todd's knife, glinting in the torchlight. With its distinct, asymmetrical dagger, it could be the twin of one of Ra's al Ghul's weapons.
"Where did you get that?"
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"Focus, little wing." Pulling one of Damian's own blades from a fallen toy, Jason throws it, catches the clown advancing at Damian's back right between the eyes.
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In a move that finds him flipping over the next two dolls who attack, he slices off more cotton-filled heads with the edge of his sword, and upon landing, guts a third.
"They're just toys."
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He leaps into a tree, fires off some shots from above. "The major structures are well defended, but there are stragglers all over," he continues, happy enough to say anything Damian doesn't want to hear. "We need to round them up."
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"Robins are supposed to talk, makes his silence seem that much more terrifying. Or didn't you get the diva memo?"
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With all the noise below -- Todd's incessant chattering, the explosion, the scattered movements of the dolls themselves -- Damian hadn't been paying enough attention to what was above. It's a mistake that might cost him, the sudden weight of a deranged doll clamping on to his head in combination with the fact that Damian was already in the process of jumping causes him to lose his footing and focus both. Deceptively sharp plastic nails dig into his forehead, his cheeks, drawing blood, just like Todd said they could, but Damian hasn't even the time to be irritated, because he's too busy falling, falling, falling. His arm smacks into a branch when he dares reach out to shoot a line, gluing it to his side where it's of no use. He drops like dead weight, blind and suffocating by the press of a cotton body against his mouth.
The ground quickly approaches.
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He leaps, feet against a branch and a push to bear him outward, towards Damian where he's hurtling to the ground. The clown wrapped around Robin is all teeth and claws, and in the space of time left to reach them, Jason can't do more than be there, his arms more forgiving than the ground when the pair fall into them.
Despite the armor and the musculature atypical of other boys, Damian's light in Jason's arms, but he's struggling, and the clown is too, the both of them wriggling right out of his grip and onto the forest floor. "Enough!" Jason barks, annoyed, and draws his gun, popping an explosive round through the clown's head the very instant it detaches from Damian's.
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And then she can hear him through the trees, the sound of a fight. Gunshot. Shit. Steph weaves through the trees as fast as she can and, finally, races into the clearing. To find a prone Damian and standing over him, Jason fucking Todd with a gun in his hand.
Before she can blink, before the rage starts rising in her throat, before she can think up a line to say to this stupid fucking jerk who played the wounded and reformed only to pounce on the first chance to take Damian out, she lets loose a batarang, arcing wicked sharp with perfect aim to the hand holding the gun.
She doesn't even have the space to breath before she's on him.
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Batgirl.
With a muffled shout, Jason heaves her from his body, reclaiming what grace is left to him by dancing back, and reaches for the comfort of smoke yet again. The tiny explosion is all haze and noise, and in its wake Jason leaps, snarling, into the safety of the branches overhead.
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"Stop," bites out Damian with an authority that belies his age, pulling himself up off the ground. Blood drips down from his forehead, the right lens of his domino streaked red. He looks worse for wear, but he stands tall, darting in between Batgirl and the perch Todd has claimed for his own.
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He'd had her buying into his shit too, which was galling and awful, that she'd actually thought he was trying to lead a good life and now he'd-
She whirls around to where Damian had been lying to see him already on his feet and mostly intact, thank God, thank Jesus, thank everything. His words make her stop short after nearly leaping up again after Jason, but she tracks him with her eyes and ears.
"What. Happened."
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"I was... distracted. Fell." He sighs, the sound forceful to his own ears, and folds his arms over his chest. "Red Hood caught me."
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