What if Tim's kid had survived the last installment?

Birth was not something that could be politely hidden away in the lower echelons in the city. Jason was familiar with the process.

Many women Jason knew of had cursed violently through the proceeding. Princess Cassandra, admittedly, was the first he knew of to have literally called down violent curses of the High Magic on the men attempting to kill her husband instead of the husband himself, but, well.

Different circumstances.

He'd found out about the curse thing from an apprentice healer Tim had been kind enough to pretend he didn't know Jason had bribed.

(It was traditional, okay? Red Kings were supposed to spy on the prince of the city. It would be suspicious if he didn't. And it helped him stay informed. Tim had his own spies that Jason pretended not to know about.)

He didn't mind that. Having to find out the details from the healer, that is. No one in this family expected anyone else in it to give up the details about injury or battle; that was what spies were for.

He didn't mind that. But apparently, the girl had fled out of the room with the new baby princess as soon as it was physically possible, so she hadn't actually seen the end of the fight. All she had were rumors, and the rumors, unsurprisingly, were saying just about everything.

Jason figured he'd get the truth from Tim in a couple of nights.

That wasn't what happened.

"I ought to kill you." The words were said lightly, but Jason figured the knife he had to Damian's throat made his point well enough.

Damian sat very still. "Keep your voice down, you fool," he murmured. "Unless you want the baby to wake. Again."

He sounded exhausted. Jason felt viciously glad.

"You know," he breathed, "a more suspicious man than I might wonder why you were waiting - in the dark, with a knife - in the room of the last person between you and the throne. Especially when you hadn't bothered to inform one of the few people who could stop you that his brother was dead. I had to find out from rumors and the official announcement, Damian. I'm hurt."

"I can't leave her alone," Damian spat. Very quietly, though. Jason wondered just how often the baby had been waking up. "The assassins could come back at any time, and we all know the guards are useless. What did you want me to do? Send someone?"

"Yes. Why not send Mar'i?"

"Because the second she knew what had happened, she took off for my grandfather's city to start collecting heads."

Admittedly, that sounded like something Mar'i would do. Still, he could have sent - Not Barbara. Her mind was as sharp as ever, but it was better if she didn't go into the lower city now that she couldn't walk. Too many would see her as any easy target. Duke was off on that mission. He'd have the same problem contacting Stephanie or Lian as he did Jason.

"Carrie. You could have sent Carrie." He wondered suddenly how she was holding up. No Robin was ever ready to lose their Batman.

Damian opened his mouth to answer but closed it again without making a sound. He closed his eyes in exasperation with himself. "Yes. I should have done that. I fear I am not . . . Not quite up to my usual standards."

Jason swallowed. With the rage slowly ebbing, it was getting harder and harder to ignore what was lurking behind it.

Tim was gone.

Cassandra too, but he'd never really known her all that well. But Tim . . .

He lowered the knife.

"Was it quick?" The fight had been long, he knew that much, but no one had much detail on the actual death.

"Yes." Damian's voice was completely flat.

"Liar," Jason said wearily. It should have made him angry, but he was just - tired. So tired. He forced himself not to dwell on it. "You're regent, I'm assuming."

"Naturally."

"Baby's supposed to be presented a week after birth," he remembered. "You've got what, four days left?"

"Yes." Damian hesitated. "They were so sure it was going to be a boy. They never told me what they would name a girl."

That's right. Damian wasn't just in charge of the city, he was in charge of the baby. Jason shoved the knife into his belt and walked over to the crib. It was hard to see details in the darkness, but he thought he could make out a few wisps of dark hair.

"I was thinking perhaps Cassandra," Damian said. "To honor her mother."

Jason made a scoffing noise. Quietly, though. The last thing they needed was a screaming baby. "She's going to have her mom's magic, her dad's title, and who knows how many of our codenames. The last thing that girl needs is more of a legacy to live up to."

Damian looked rather confused by that idea, but he accepted it with a shrug of his shoulders. "Then I am out of ideas," he admitted.

Jason looked at him incredulously. "You've named every dog in the court. And probably half the strays in the lower town."

"Those are dogs," Damian snapped. The baby stirred restlessly. He quickly lowered his voice to a hush. "This is a baby. Someday, she will actually have an opinion on what I come up with."

"Well, you can't just keep calling her the baby," Jason pointed out pragmatically. He leaned down a little closer to get a better look.

He wondered if she had Tim's blue eyes.

"I know that, thank you," Damian said through gritted teeth. "I don't hear you offering up any suggestions."

"Catherine," Jason said instantly and, possibly, without quite thinking it through.

Damian was clearly already geared up for a snappy retort, but he actually swallowed it back. "That . . . is not terrible," he admitted grudgingly. "It might be acceptable."

It wasn't technically a legacy name, Jason assured himself. No one but him still remembered his mother, and it wasn't like he expected his new little niece to be anything like her. No one would put any weight on it.

And it wasn't like he was ever going to have any kids to pass it on to otherwise.

"Hello, Catherine," he whispered. "It's nice to meet you." And if anyone tries to hurt you like they hurt Tim, I'll rip them limb from limb.

The old need for violence was thrumming through his blood now, so he turned away to head for the window.

Unfortunately, Damian's knife was in the way.

Sneaky little brat.

"Next time you insinuate I had something to do with any of the family's deaths," Damian said with the sort of calmness that Jason knew all too well wasn't really calm at all, "I won't stop with the threat." His smile had a touch of the rictus to it. "You'll heal, after all."

"Yep," Jason said equally calmly.

Then he threw himself forward, letting the knife nick his neck, and shoved Damian into the wall.

Kill him, the taint whispered.

No, he growled back. Not kill, just teach him a lesson, teach him not to push when Jason was pulsing with the need to punish a crime that could never be fully avenged -

Damian sprang forward with a battlecry ready, and Jason snarled right back, more than ready to get some blood on his teeth -

Catherine started to wail.

Both men froze and half-turned towards the crib.

Jason slid towards the window as the wails went on. "Well," he said with sudden cheerfulness, "have fun rocking her back to sleep."

Damian turned towards him with a growl. "Don't you dare - "

Jason was already gone.

He ran into Damian on the streets two nights after the official naming ceremony. It seemed Damian had stuck with Catherine.

If Jason felt anything in particular about that, he was going to keep it to himself.

Carrie wasn't with the new Bat. Probably still pulling herself together. Or was her ankle still acting up? Jason couldn't remember how long it had been since she'd been forced to make that truly awful landing when her line snapped.

Either way, that wasn't the main point of business tonight. Jason looked up from the man he was interrogating and nodded at the sudden convergence of shadows. "Bats."

"Red King. I heard screams."

"Did you?" Jason said innocently. "I can't imagine from where. Me and my friend here were just having a nice conversation about drugs. And who you don't sell them to." He peered down at the man. His eyes had glazed over. "Unfortunately, I think he's just about done talking for the night." He let the man fall back against the alley wall and strolled over to Damian. "So how's our newest little bird?"

"She's fine." Damian was already climbing back up the building.

Jason followed. "And how are you handling it?"

"Fine," Damian said tersely. "She's named. The hardest part is over."

Jason stared at him incredulously. "The hardest part?"

Damian shrugged and pulled himself up onto the roof. "The wet-nurses and such were already hired. In a few years I shall vet some tutors, and then there will be nothing to do until she is ready to begin training."

Jason was vaguely aware that his mouth had drifted open. "What." It wasn't even a question, it was just - "Do not tell me you're just going to ignore this kid until she's old enough to be Robin."

"What should I be doing?"

He actually sounded genuinely confused. Jason kind of wanted to shake him. "You have to be involved! Spend time with her!"

"I was given to understand that training children since the time they could walk was not acceptable here."

"Not everything's about training, you idiot! You just - read to her. Or play."

"Play," Damian said flatly.

"Yes. Or tell stories."

"I will . . . consider this."

"You had better do more than consider it."

"Fine," Damian bit out. "But if I'm involved, so are you."

"Apparently I'm going to have to be if this kid isn't going to turn out as messed up as the rest of us."

"You think your influence will help with that?" Damian asked incredulously.

"At least I wasn't planning on ignoring her!"

Damian's shoulders tightened, but he didn't otherwise respond.

Jason sighed. "We need Dick for this."

"Yes," Damian agreed bitterly.

But Dick was gone.

There was a stack of rotting heads on the doorstep of his safe house.

Jason blinked at them for a second. His hand pulled a knife on instinct.

But the figure in blue and black who flipped down down from a window ledge onto his doorstep was familiar.

"Hello, Uncle Red."

"Nightwing," he said automatically. He looked from her to the stack of heads and then back to her again. "You might as well come in." He stepped around the gore and unlocked the door, ushering her inside. "If you brought those, you'd better clean them up before daylight. I'm not in the mood to deal with questions."

"Fair enough," she agreed cheerfully.

He frowned. "How'd you know where I'd be anyway?"

She hopped up onto the rickety table that was the front room's main furnishing. "It's the closest safe house you've got to the fortress," she pointed out.

And she knew him well enough to know he'd want to be close.

He turned to shut the door and got one last good look at the heads as he did so. The skin on them looked half-melted, a side effect the taint sometimes had on bodies it had infected in life. As a consequence they were hard to identify, but that didn't really -

His mouth dropped open. He lunged open and grabbed the one on top by the hair, suddenly grateful he was still wearing gloves. He slammed the door shut and rammed the bolt before turning to the table and holding the head up demeaningly. "Is this Ra's?"

She squinted at it. "If it's not, then his is out there somewhere. I might have gotten them mixed up. It was hard to see through all the cloud cover."

"You beheaded Ra's?"

She set her chin stubbornly. "He gave the order. He was the one responsible."

It wasn't even that he disagreed with her. It was just . . . "We're going to war."

"If Lady Mar'i Grayson had done it, we would be," she agreed. "But it wasn't. It was the half mythical Nightwing who no prince on earth could possibly be responsible for."

"And if the taint takes his city?"

"I think Talia has it under control. Don't look at me like that, of course I didn't go after her! Uncle Damian's still weird about her in a way he isn't about his grandfather. I was careful, I was safe, and you're the last one to be lecturing me about any of those things anyway."

"Dick was right. I really am a bad influence on you."

He dropped the head on the table for lack of anything better to do with it. He'd probably have to abandon this safe house anyway.

Dick would have hated it if he'd known what Mar'i had been driven to after he died.

But Mar'i had been the one to find him, and you couldn't see something like that and not come out changed.

He probably should lecture her a bit more just for form's sake, but, well. Hypocrisy and all that. He'd let the new Bat do it.

Plus, he was dying to know. "How did you behead Ra's?"

She grinned.

" . . . and that is the story of how your grandfather survived the taint and returned to us."

Jason grinned at the scene before him. Damian was cradling Catherine very precisely in his arms. He'd just been finishing the bedtime story as Jason slid in the window. Judging by Catherine's fluttering eyelashes, the baby was just about asleep.

"What, no comments on the violence of my tale?" Damian said. His voice was soft despite the bitter words. Neither of them wanted to disturb the baby.

"Nah," Jason said. "It's a rough world. It's good to let her know how to survive it. That's what all my old bedtime stories seemed to come back to anyway." Don't trust strangers, avoid animals that were acting oddly, don't go out at night. Anyone could be tainted. Any city could fall. It was important to learn what to do if it did.

"And she needs to know her family history," he added.

She needed to know about the parents that had died saving her. She needed to know about the uncle she would never get to meet. She needed to know about the man who had started this whole mess of a family by deciding that the orphaned son of two entertainers in the city at his invitation was his responsibility.

"Speaking of family, you gonna have a problem with Mar'i?"

"My niece has avenged my brother," Damian said. "I see nothing to have a problem about."

Catherine's first word was "Bat." Technically, it was actually "Ba," but since she was holding her arms up imperiously while looking at Damian at the time, Jason was pretty sure she'd meant Bat.

This would have been less of a problem if Damian had been wearing his mask at the time.

Both of them froze. It was just the two of them in the room, at least. It could have been worse.

"Ba," she repeated insistently.

"Bat?" Jason said, outraged. "What about me?"

"That? is your problem?" Damian said in a strangled voice. It didn't stop him from picking her up even if he did add firmly, "Damian. Damian, not Bat."

"Da," she said agreeably.

Damian's arms tightened convulsively. She started to whimper.

"Hand her over," Jason said harshly. He didn't leave Damian much choice, snatching her away before he started to bounce her soothingly. "Shh, shh, it's alright. Uncle Damian can be a real meanie, can't he?"

"I am not her father," Damian hissed.

"Obviously," Jason whisper-snarled back. "Tim would have been smart enough not to hold her that tight."

Had Tim gotten to hold her at all in the hours where he'd lingered, the healers desperately working over him? Or had he only ever gotten one brief, vanishing glimpse as she was whisked out the door?

Catherine was whimpering again. That one was on him.

Jason kept rocking her. "Shh. Shh. Here. That's . . . D. Can you say 'D' for me?" He pointed at Damian.

"Da," Catherine said again, frowning.

"No, D," Jason insisted. "Say D."

Catherine just yawned sleepily and snuggled into his shoulder.

"Aw, kid, don't go to sleep on me yet. I haven't even tried to get you to say 'Jay' yet."

But it was too late. The kid was out for the count.

Damian was still looking at her, face frozen in something that would have been horror in someone less practiced in keeping their face a mask.

Dick, Jason thought, might know what to say. Dick's dad had been a good man from what he'd heard, but that hadn't meant there was no place for Bruce in his life. Tim might have known what to say, but then again, Tim had been willing to turn his dad in for treason, so . . .

Jason never really understood that mess of a family at all.

But Jason's not Dick, and not Tim, and frankly he was glad when Willis stopped coming home, and encouraging words aren't really his thing in any case.

Damian straightened and went to the window. He looked strange and cold in the moonlight. "I should not have been left in charge of a child," he finally said. "You would have done a better job of it."

Jason considered that. "As hesitant as I am to argue with you saying you're inferior at something, I do think you're overlooking a crucial point."

"Oh?"

"Yep. Haven't you ever wondered why I don't show up every night?"

Damian raised his eyebrows. "I presumed you were busy."

Jason snorted. "Sure. Busy convincing the taint that I don't actually want to kill the both of you." The taint rose a bit hopefully at the reminder, and he shoved it back again. He was strong enough for that today.

"So we are both terrible guardians," Damian said flatly. "I do not actually find that reassuring." He glared out the window. "Richard - "

"Would have been great at it." He'd done a fine job with Mar'i, after all.

"Timothy - "

"Goes without saying."

Damian's glare discouraged any further interruptions. "Even Father . . . "

Yeah, Jason was just going to ignore that glare. "Bruce practically made a career of it." He looked at Damian doubtfully. "Maybe he passed on those instincts. You know. Deep, deep down." He handed Catherine back over to Damian, who cradled her carefully, determined not to repeat his earlier mistake.

"Tt. I am not father material."

"Sure you aren't, Bats." Jason smirked. "Or should I say 'Ba?'"

"Red King," Damian growled.

Jason was already out the window, laughing as he went.

It was far too late at night for Catherine to be awake, but in the finest traditions of their family, she was not only awake, she was brandishing a weapon.

"Is that a knife?" Jason demanded, his eyes desperately trying to adjust to the shadowed room. All he had to go on for the moment was a very familiar shape banging surprisingly soundlessly against the crib's bars.

Damian sniffed. "Tt. It is a sword."

"A - " Jason was halfway across the room and reaching for Catherine by this point.

"A cloth one. Stuffed with cotton."

"Oh." That made sense even to Jason's sleep deprived brain. He came to a stop and tried not to sway in place. "Good. She'll need the practice."

Damian's eyes narrowed. "You look about to collapse."

"Don't worry. I'm fine."

"I am not worried, I am uncertain how to explain your bloodless corpse to the nurse in the morning," Damian said sharply. "Sit down and let me see that wound."

Right. The wound. How had he forgotten about the wound?

Jason half-sat, half-collapsed into a chair. He'd let Damian worry about the rest.

Damian hissed when he saw just how much blood had soaked through Jason's shirt. "You fool."

"Can't die," Jason reminded him. "Not till I get the Joker."

"And if you lose every last drop of blood in your body, exactly how long will it take you to heal from that?" Damian snapped.

"Dunno," Jason mumbled. "We could find out."

"After I am dead, you may do as you like," Damian said flatly. "Until then, you will act sensibly if I have to force it at knifepoint."

"'Kay." The rest of the sentence filtered slowly through his brain. He frowned. "I don't want you to die. Then I'll be the last."

Damian started wrapping a strip of cloth firmly across the wound. "Hopefully, that will not be an issue for some time yet. And if we do our jobs properly, you will still have Catherine."

"Then what?" It was probably just the blood loss and the lack of sleep, but suddenly he felt tired right down to his bones. Weary. That was the word he was looking for.

Give up, the taint whispered.

Never.

But that was what he always said, and he couldn't help but wonder . . . How long was never, exactly? How many lifetimes?

"Then you will have her descendants. The House of Wayne shall not fade quietly into the mists." Damian's voice was hushed but no less full of intensity for it.

"Ba!" Catherine agreed in a high pitched, cheerful war cry as she banged her sword even more enthusiastically against the bars.

"See? Everyone sensible in the room agrees with me."

Jason blinked at him. "Did you just call the baby sensible?"

"Compared to you, yes. She tells people when she is hurt."

"Hypocrite," Jason muttered.

Damian might have said something else, but Jason ignored him. He was ready for some sleep.

Jason hoped for Damian's sake that this batch of assassins hadn't been sent from the al Ghuls, because if they had been, Jason might actually have to kill Damian's mother.

At the moment, though, he just staggered to his feet and limped towards the crib. He had to push past two bodies on his way. "Damian?"

"Alive," Damian said through gritted teeth. He was leaning against the wall, hands pressed to his leg. "What, exactly, are we paying the guards to do?"

"Look impressive?" he suggested wearily. He stopped in front of the crib. Catherine looked up at him with tears leaking from her big blue eyes.

Tim's eyes.

"Jay?" she whimpered.

"Now you say it," he grumbled. Her clothes were clean of blood, barely even rumpled. There was an assassin right at the foot of the crib. He'd been so sure . . .

That was when he saw the scorch marks on the man's hand and darkening the wood.

Her father's eyes and her mother's magic. Right.

If she started lashing out like that every time she got scared, they might be in trouble. Maybe they should send a missive to Diana.

But diplomatic requests for assistance were Damian's problem. Jason's problem was a little girl with her arms in the air saying in a trembling voice, "Up, Jay, up."

Jason looked down at his blood slicked hands and grimaced. "Probably shouldn't, kiddo."

Her lip shook. "Up," she insisted.

Jason sighed and picked her up. She immediately snuggled into his shoulder, either not noticing or not caring about the blood slowly drying there.

"What?" he said defensively when he saw Damian looking at him. "I'll clean it off her before she gets back in bed."

"Someone will," Damian agreed. "But since the guards are only incompetent, not deaf, perhaps it should be someone else."

Right. He had to go. He reluctantly passed her over to Damian. She didn't protest the movement too much. "Ba-da," she said, now snuggling into Damian's shoulder.

"It's . . . progress," Jason offered.

Damian looked down at her like he had no idea how his life had gotten to this moment. "It could be worse, I suppose."

Jason raised an eyebrow at the hand curled protectively over Catherine's head, keeping it turned so that she wouldn't see the bodies littering the floor.

But he'd learned a little about Damian-wrangling from Dick, so he kept any comments to himself and kept the satisfied grin suppressed until he turned away.

He didn't know what came after this life, but he wondered if Tim was watching. If he was happy with how they were doing.

Well, if he wasn't, maybe he'd wear himself out punching Damian before Jason got there.

There had to be at least some advantages to near immortality, after all.

A/N : I don't know much about Mar'i Grayson. The part of her characterization that I've latched onto here is that I've read that in the comics, she started using extremely violent tactics as a response to the craziness in the world about her. If I've totally botched her characterization, you have my apologies.