#I got suckered in by penny-anna's stream of daemon recs if you need someone to blame (or thank! I'm not judgy) for my fic

[zorilleerrant]

Jason thinks the reason Damian is so attached to animals is because he never really found the one that was him. And now he never will.

It’s not like with Jason. He knew exactly who he was, before, died knowing it, and never had a doubt. Or, at least, the version of him that had doubts isn’t one he really remembers clearly, being kind of out of it before the Faustian bargain that brought him all the way back, if not all the way back.

Kitty was a racoon, because of course she was, all tiny searching hands and judging eyes and the instinct to blend into shadows. And she was, before, so often, because Jason had to be quick and quiet and resourceful, too. And she was the day that Jason couldn’t find his mother’s daemon to ask if it was okay to come in, because they were tense, and it was a flexible, useful form. And then it wasn’t flexible anymore, just useful. Useful for years.

He remembers the kinds of looks people gave him, back then, when Kitty just wouldn’t ever change, and the worse ones if they found out she couldn’t except that Bruce had Ace since that night so he just pretended. The way he couldn’t when Damian showed up, nine years old and already alone. Eternal life, yes, but.

Damian carries around a little flask, as if his daemon is shifting from bug to bug, and his glare is surer than any physical measure at keeping people in the dark about it. He’s bad at making friends, sure, and everyone says it’s more how he was socialized than his real personality, but Jason thinks it’s mostly in the fear. If people find out – and that’s why he doesn’t talk about it, even through the wondering, cycling through animals like if he can somewhere find the answer then there won’t be that feeling of promises unfulfilled. Like if he knows then he can finally mourn.

See? Their family says. It hurts, but it’s a healed injury. He hasn’t lost, anywhere along the way, his ability to bond. He stores it in his flask, and his imagination.

Jason carries around a little flask, too. Calls it Kitty. Talks to it, sometimes, when he’s delirious, and doesn’t remember how shitty it’ll make him feel in the morning. Kitty was there, after, helping him claw through dirt, that much he knows. She could change again, he thinks, but she didn’t, not then. He doesn’t know when. She was gone by the time he remembered.

Damian never had one, though. Oh, well, of course he did, back when, but that was years ago at least, before the first time they threw him in the Pit. He doesn’t remember. They never had any favored forms and, as Damian vaguely suggests, sleepily, without prompting, some nights – sometimes they didn’t even have a form at all, just trembling darkness at his side. If they had a name, he doesn’t remember it. He calls his faux grasshopper Iphigeneia, but he doesn’t remember. So he surrounds himself with everything they might have been.

It’s hard to blame Bruce, some days, for assuming he wasn’t human. What’s human that’s all alone, wandering across the city crushing daemons into dust?

And that’s the crux of it, isn’t it. Jason was just some masked homunculus, a simulacrum, a philosophical zombie with a gun to someone’s head. And there the Joker was, in dire straits, and with his daemon all tied up beside him, proving once and for all that he was more human than Jason would ever be again.

(They’re just ignoring the fact that Joker’s daemon is a human, too. Everyone does.)

He can remember the look in Bruce’s eyes too clearly, once he realized, and how hard he fought not to show that look where Jason could see. A member of the family again, he reassures, if never more than half of one. Jason still sees him pull out pictures of Talia, whenever he glances too long at the shadows where Kitty used to sit, but it’s mostly back behind the charming mask, the conversation civil. With Damian –

With Damian, Bruce’s voice breaks every time he remembers. He starts topics, and takes an abrupt left turn, even though all of this stuff is stuff Damian needs to know. More than most, really, when he has no one by his side to help him fake it. It’s not like he’s willing to go to Jason with his questions, after all, engraved cricket cage or no.

Jason can tell he burned the design in by hand, you see. There’s a smudge on the corner of the J that wouldn’t be there if a machine had done it. And the W is just a little too squished.