Chapter Text
Jason wants it on record that he did not sign up for this sh–sugar.
“Mr. Hood?” A small hand tugs on the hem of his leather jacket. “Cass wants ice cream.”
Jason would point out that Cass doesn’t talk and also has no idea what ice cream is, but since he spent the last ten minutes trying to convince them he’s an okay guy and getting seriously beat up by the assassin child, angering said assassin child by arguing with her self-proclaimed best friend seems like a bad idea.
Also, it’s seriously possible that Stephanie’s magical Cass-understanding powers have translated with this stupid spell and she actually does want ice cream.
“Fine. We’ll get ice cream.”
Steph cheers. Cass’s expression doesn’t change.
“Come on come on come on!” Steph grabs his hand and tugs him along.
Jason reaches for his comm with his free hand as Steph starts talking at Cass about ice cream flavors. “O, come in. O, come in. ANYONE, come in. I’ll even take Replacement—just someone get me out of this cr–crud.”
This is not how Jason expected to spend the evening.
The current conditions between him and the other vigilantes are “fuck off and leave me alone and I won’t kill anyone, got it?”
That had been his exact wording. It’d worked so far.
And then, half an hour ago, he’d been doing his thing over on 23rd and West, right in the middle of Crime Alley, when a blue-skinned dude with a wand had streaked by on a flying fucking carpet, of all the fucking things. Cackling.
You know who cackles? Shady fucking people.
So he knew then and there his nice, peaceful evening of busting druggie heads was gonna head downhill fast.
He couldn’t chase the guy, but the wand he had been carrying was trailing purple sparks that littered the ground in a trail headed straight towards the warehouse district.
That led to him finding two five-year-olds in Batgirl and Black Bat costumes with way too much Kevlar to have originally been made for that size.
Now he’s eating ice cream out of a tub on a playground with two tiny girls wearing now-oversized undershirts as dresses, trying not to think about how much damage control he’ll have to do on his rep after this, and desperately and frantically trying to raise another person on a comm filched from the piles of leftover supplies.
He will bet whatever’s he’s got left on his reputation after word of this incident gets out that O is on the other end, listening and cackling.
Shady people. He knows them.
Jason glares at the security camera on the nearest building and takes a savage bite of his ice cream.
A nut hits him on the forehead, and he turns his glare on the culprit.
Cass, unruffled, simply plucks another nut out of the ice cream and eats it, perched on his helmet like it’s her own personal throne.
“You’re frowning,” Steph tells him. “Stop it.”
The force of the glare turns on Steph now. Cass throws another nut at Jason—this time, one embedded in a glob of ice cream. It smacks into his forehead and slides down, leaving a cold, sticky streak all the way down onto his mask.
He wipes it off and flicks it onto the ground.
“Of course, you do realize,” he says with perfect calm, “that this means war.” He digs his spoon in and flings a chunk of cookie dough at Cass, who snatches it out of the air and smears it onto Steph.
It kind of all devolves from there into a sticky, sugary, giggly mess. Jason hasn’t had this much fun that didn’t involve hurting people since…since…
It is really fucking sad that he can’t remember.
He’s lying on the ground with both girls sitting on top of him—Cass wasn’t too salient on the finer points of play-fighting at first, but a couple bruises more or less won’t really make much difference at this point—and letting them pull at his mask with sticky hands (the thing has withstood fire and near-drowning and way more supervillains than he’s bothered counting, which makes it either sad or hilarious that two small children are getting closer than anyone else) when a shadow looms over him.
Gee, that’s a familiar loom.
He tips his head back and almost gets a finger up a nostril for his troubles. It’s totally worth it for the expression on Bruce’s fucking face.
“Hey,” he says, and that makes the girls look up.
Cass somersaults backwards until she’s crouched in a fighting stance at a safe distance from Bruce, looking back and forth from Jason and Stephanie to the vigilante with panic in her eyes.
Jason realizes that she’s trying to assess whether or not it the two of them would be in more danger if she attacked Batman or not and has to work very hard not to punch something.
He keeps his body language loose and relaxed, knowing that’s what Cass’ll be taking her cues from, and pushes Steph off so he can get to his feet and stand between Cass and Bruce.
Relax, relax…all friends here.
Steph has ducked behind his legs and is peering up at Bruce with caution.
“What. Happened.”
The “I am the Night” voice stopped working on Jason years ago. “The fu—dge should I know? Saw some dude with a wand, traced it back, found them. Physical and mental regression. They’re kids, I’m not a freaking monster. Besides, Cass wanted ice cream.”
He can see Bruce stop in his mental tracks. It’s glorious.
“She wanted ice cream.”
“Yup.”
If Bruce asks, the “world’s greatest detective” game he likes to play is up. If he doesn’t ask, he’ll be consumed by burning curiosity for the rest of time.
Win-win.
It doesn’t get that far. Steph tugs on his jacket again and asks “Why do you know Batman?”
“He and I go way back,” he assures her. “You guys are the only witnesses to a supervillain right now, which makes you super-duper important to his investigation. He’s gonna take you for a ride in his awesome car and ask you some questions and give you the best cookies in the world now, okay?”
“Are you coming too?” And fuck, her eyes are big and blue and wet and fuck.
“Nah. I gotta do some clue-hunting. See if I can track down the dude with the wand you saw.”
Steph looks from him to Batman to Cass, who’s come up behind Jason’s other side at some point, and tugs him down to whisper in his ear.
“Promise it’s safe?”
“Yeah. I promise.” They’ll be a hell of a lot better off at the Manor than they would be with him.
He starts to get up, but she pulls on his sleeve again and he gets back down.
“Can you check on my mom?”
Something in his stomach twists, but he tells her, “Sure,” and lets her rattle off the address he knows is too old to do any good. Jason pinky promises to check up on Crystal, walks the two girls to the Batmobile, and helps them climb in.
Well, Jason helps Steph climb in. Cass hangs back, latches onto his legs from the front for all of five seconds, and then scrambles away and up into the passenger seat next to Steph without any help.
He shuts the door after them and watches it go tearing away.
The comm in Jason’s ear activates with a buzz, proving that O is indeed a sadistic mastermind who could destroy them all if she wanted.
“You were watching everything, weren’t you.”
“You know better than to ask silly questions, Hood.”
“I should. What’s Crystal Brown’s current address?”
“You don’t have to do it. I can send Red Robin, he’s closer.”
“Nah. I pinky-promised.” A thought occurs that sends a wide and wicked smile spreading across his face. “Besides, Big Bird will be calling in all the little birdies any minute now to babysit. I wouldn’t want anything to get in the way of that.”