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It’s been almost a year of co-habitating with Roy and Lian, and just over two years from when Roy had first pulled Jason into a kiss, field of poppies that they absolutely did not light on fire burning in the background, when Roy disappears for ‘Arrow business’, leaving Jason to care for Lian by himself. He’s not sure what to do with a ten year old. He’s especially not sure what to do with Lian, Roy’s living breathing heart that exists outside of himself.
“Come on, Jay,” Roy says, packing his gear as Jason mopes on the basement couch. “You know her routines: morning and night tooth brushing. Homework then YouTube. Dessert only comes after dinner.” He looks up, winking at Jason. “You got this dude.”
Jason sniffs, put out. “It would be nice to know what’s so important you’ll leave your only child in the hands of a barely reformed criminal for.”
Roy leers at him, zipping up his duffle. “Only thing criminal about you are those thighs. Ar-oooga.” He bounces bright red eyebrows, tongue between his sharp teeth.
Jason rolls his eyes, whole of his upper body getting in on the motion. “Jesus, I can’t believe I let you sick my dick. You have zero class, Harper. And stop changing the subject. What are you up to?”
Roy walks past the couch, dropping a kiss to Jason’s curls and says, “I give nothing but classy head.” He snags his quiver, tossing it over his shoulder. “It’s just a thing we gotta do, nothing world ending, only gonna take a week, max.” He swings back round, grasping Jason’s chin. “You’ve got a week to spend with my daughter, who is an absolute delight, you lucky bastard. Make sure she eats her veggies.”
Jason stares up at him, lost. “What am I supposed to do with her?”
“Get to know her. You guys have never hung without me there as a buffer.” He bounds up the stairs, calling out, “Lian! Sweet buddy baby! Come tell your papa goodbye!”
Jason hears the pounding of Lian’s running feet across the ceiling of the basement. He shifts back on the couch, overwhelmed by the thought of keeping a ten year old alive, on his own, for the next week. He gives himself a moment to exist without that crushing responsibility weighing on him, then gets up. He might as well start in on dinner.
It’s been hard, living with Roy and Lian, and it took way too long for Jason to realize why: Roy’s a fantastic dad, and Lian is a good kid, and Jason is simultaneously jealous of both, of the uncomplicated and enduring love between the two of them, of the fact that Lian has a parent that’s in recovery for her, that Lian is an easy kid to love. He bites his tongue when they have sweet moments together, half endeared and half seething.
He needs to get over himself, he knows, before he fucks up the first steadily good thing in his life with jealousy.
The first day is easy. Lian goes to school. Jason fucks around in the house, free to straighten to his hearts content while he doesn’t have either Harper underfoot, shifting and placing things where they shouldn’t be. It doesn’t take long, and then he just sits on the porch, zoning out to the sounds of Park Row while he waits to pick Lian up from school, while he freaks out under this responsibility.
He and Lian don’t have much of a relationship, even after a year of sleeping down the hall from one another. Jason kinda feels like an estranged cousin when they go grocery shopping together, when they head down to the park or movie theater, always on the back foot, always slightly out of step in their dynamic.
Lian is always polite, but distant. Wary. And Jason has no idea how to counter that. It’s uncomfortable, feeling like an ornament in his own house. And he knew it made Roy uncomfortable as well, trying to join two important people in his life.
What if he and Lian never gelled? What if Jason was just a background figure in her life, her dad’s weird boyfriend, forever relegated to the background in family pictures and an after thought on holidays?
He needed to use this week to maybe open a door here.
The second day is Saturday, and as Jason lays in bed, early morning light spilling around the curtains, reading Roy’s proof of life text, he watches the day sprawl out with uncomfortable silences and careful edging around one another, Lian putting up with his presence and Jason trying, and failing, to connect to her.
He’s lost as to how to do that though. How does he relate to a ten year old girl? How can he make the next six days of being stuck together without Roy as a buffer suck less? He let’s himself feel the searing jealousy over how easily the rest of the Bats and Birds have wiggled their way into Lian’s good graces, Lian legitimately losing her mind with excitement when Dick or Cass darken their doorstep. And then, because he is a petty, petty man, he lets himself feel smugly superior over how Lian thinks Bruce is creepy in and out of the cowl.
He stumbles down the stairs to start breakfast. Would Lian think he was a try hard if he pulled out all the stops and made waffles with fresh fruit and homemade whipped cream faces? Or would she be offended, thinking it too childish? Should he make bacon and eggs? Is bacon and eggs a more serious breakfast? What do adults eat?
He’s still staring into the fridge, hand loosely gripping the handle, trying to sort his shit when Lian shows up, hair still in it’s sleep braid. She makes a bee line to the pantry, pulling down the box of Cheerios. She hip checks him out of the way of the fridge, pulling out the milk and grabbing a banana.
Jason feels incredibly stupid. He’s going to be an after thought, a footnote in Lian’s life, he just knows it.
He leans against the counter, watching her demolish a bowl of cereal. “So, uh, any plans for today?” Stupid, he knows she doesn’t have plans, Roy left a print out of her schedule posted on the fridge.
Lian just looks at Jason, sliding her eyes to the print out posted on the fridge, milk dripping from her spoon. “Nope,” she said, drawing the ‘o’ out.
Jason closes his eyes and drops his head. “I mean, you wanna do something fun today?”
He hears the scrape of her spoon in the bowl, the smack of her lips. “Like what?”
“The park?”
Lian’s face twists in displeasure.
“A museum?”
Again with the face.
“I don’t know, the freaking mall?”
Lian considers, tapping her spoon down on her cereal. “We could go to the mall. I want an Orange Julius, though.”
The mornings tension slides off Jason’s back in the face of her interest. “We can do that.”
She narrows her eyes. “I want two Orange Julius’.”
Jason rolls his. “Jesus Christ, sure, just don’t tell your dad.”
Jason remembered, back when he was an overwhelmed and excited freshman, the tall and beautiful junior and senior cool kids at Gotham Academy would mill about in the school halls every Monday, recounting their adventures hanging around the Bristol mall. He’d imagined himself surrounded by a gaggle of friends, slurping slushies and digging through stacks of records, having unbothered time to be a kid playing at being an adult. The reality of his short high school years was that he never had the time, between school and homework and training and patrol and, god willing, sleep, to make it to the mall with the few friends he had managed to make. So he’s not entirely sure what kids do at the mall, only that he always wanted to be there.
The mall in the center of the Diamond District is dead, a third of the storefronts dark and empty. The only crowd seems to be in the food court, a knot of thirty something moms and their toddlers in strollers clumped around the Auntie Ann’s. It’s a shame. Jason really wanted a pretzel, but he’s not willing to brave that crowd.
“Hrn,” he says, Lian at his elbow. “Where do you want to go first?”
She shrugs, sipping at her Orange Julius.
God, they just got here and he’s already fucking this up. He should have pressed harder for the museum.
An hour later, and Jason is convinced he will forever be the plus-one in Roy’s life, condemned to “Tell Jason I said hi,”. Lian turns her nose up at Forever 21, they poked disinterestedly at the stacks of graphic tees at Hot Topic. There’s really nothing here to hold interest. Why was this a popular destination when he was a kid? He shakes his head, hoping that the brain damage he’s suffered over the years isn’t manifesting itself way earlier than expected.
He leans forward on the second floor railing, scowling down at the minimal crowd in the food court, Lian by his side, slurping on her second Orange Julius. The Abercrombe & Fitch behind them is blaring out a Taylor Swift song. This isn’t working. The kid is bored, nothing but the overpriced juice in her hand gaining a smile from her. Well, he can only go up from here.
He rubs his hand down his face. “You wanna do something actually fun?”
She grimaces and mutters out, “Sure.”
He straightens and heads for the stairs leading to the food court, Lian trailing in his wake. Pretzels first, then the cool shit.
Jason has one child sized domino, a green one that he had snaked from right underneath Damian’s nose last time he was being particularly annoying. He carefully paints the adhesive on the back. “OK, so, unfortunately you’ve got a very memorable face. Cops see a white kid running, they say, “Oh hey, white kid running.” Maybe the kid has brown hair. What color brown? Dunno, could be any white kid they’ve seen in their life, with any color brown hair. They see you running? “Oh hey, Asian kid running. Bet it’s Lian Harper over on 3rd. Better call her dad.” That’s weird to them. There aren’t a lot of Asian kids in Park Row, is what I’m saying. Do not, under any circumstance, remove your hood or mask.”
Lian is vibrating, hands clenched in her lap, eyes bright. Applying the mask will be difficult with how hard she’s smiling, round cheeks pressing crinkles around her eyes. “Yes sir.”
He delicately lifts the mask and tilts her head up by the chin. “No smiles for the next ten minutes. Think about, I dunno, beheaded puppies or something.”
Her eyes pop open wide, jaw dropping down in shock and Jason slaps the nose of the mask to her bridge, index and pointer fingers smoothing the top of the mask above her eyebrows, thumbs sealing the bottom.
“Jay! That was mean!”
He pats the tips of his fingers over the mask, fitting it more firmly to her face. “Worked, didn’t it? When you’re in the mask, what are you supposed to call me?”
“Hood.” She hops down off the stool, squints up at him. “Do I get a code name?”
“Don’t derail me in the field. Now, who am I?”
Excitement is rebuilding in her slight frame. She bounces a little on her toes. “Team leader!”
Jason puts as much Bruce in his voice as he can, looming over her. “And what does that mean?”
“What you say goes!”
“Exactly freaking right. I tell you to duck and cover, you duck and cover. I tell you to leave it, you leave it. Now, hood up and grab your belt. Let’s do this.”
Lian leaps in the air, punching her fist. “Oh, heck yeah! This is gonna be so much fun!”
It’s weird, having a kid sized shadow trailing him as Jason free runs across the rooftops. He goes slow, both to keep an eye on Lian, and because it was such a mindfuck. The youngest person he had ever worked with was Damian, and the kid was more middle aged man than teenager, so he barely counted.
Lian, though, had boundless enthusiasm over everything. She had pulled every item out of her belt before they had even left the basement, endless questions about each piece that Jason had tried to explain as he re-loaded it all back where it belonged. She had stared in silent awe at his grapple gun, small fingers tracing over it’s edges. She hadn’t even pouted when Jason told her she couldn’t use it, only nodded solemnly.
Now, though, he can hear her breaths panting out behind him. Kid was fast, he’d give her that. He hits the edge of the roof, dropping to a crouch, Lian catching up a few seconds later.
“Nice job with keeping up, kid. Now, our target is in the apartment across from us, top floor, third window from the right. What can you tell me?”
Lian focuses in, crouching down beside him, so short her chin barely clears the ledge. “Lights are on, so someone must be home.”
Jason nods, focused on Lian watching the window. “What can we use to verify?”
She looks up at him. “Omni-directional microphone?”
He clicks his tongue against his teeth, landing a soft punch on her shoulder. “Excellent choice.”
She beams, digging the microphone out of her utility belt. “Can I shoot it?”
“This is your op, kid. I’m just here for moral support.”
Jason walks her through setting the channel on the mic, and she lines up her shot, Jason leaning down to her level. Her panting from the run earlier is evening out, her hands steady. She takes a deep breath, exhales, then releases, the mic flying across the street to land on the pane of the window. Jason watches as it slides from the center of the pane to closer to the sill.
“Crap,” Lian says, shoulders dropping with disappointment.
Jason hums, patting at her shoulder. “Not bad. You gotta put more force behind it to get it to stick where you want it, but the original throw?” Jason curls his fingers up to where his mouth would be on his mouth cover in a chef’s kiss. “Dead on. Good job, kid.”
She nods, tapping on her comm unit to switch to the mic’s singular channel and Jason follows suit. Their target has his radio on low, and there’s the sound of intermentant pages turning and a pen scraping over paper and the occasional low hums.
Their elbows are resting on the ledge as they surveil their target in silence for a few moments. The disappointment from the weak throw earlier has drained out of Lian as she focuses on her next objective. “Now, is the target sufficiently distracted for commencement?” he murmurs softly.
Lian hums next to him, a deeply considering tone for a pre-teen. “I think this is as good as it will get tonight.”
“Good call. On to the next phase of the op.” He smacks his hands down on the ledge, pushing himself up, Lian following his lead as she slips her binoculars back in her belt. He hefts her up in his arms and attaches the wire embedded in his chest armor to the climbing harness Lian is wearing over her tactical gear, Lian already reaching for the jury rigged hand and foot holds he had put on his armor for this mission. “Alright,” he says, testing their connection, “Hold on tight and what?”
Lian clings to him like a koala, head tilted just so to catch his eye. “Don’t move while we’re in the air, and minimal ‘Waa Hoos’.”
“Got it in one. Let’s fly.” He aims his grapple at their target’s apartment across the street, and shoots it off, arcing over the cars streaming by on the street below. They drop onto the fire escape, Jason quickly unlatching Lian and boosting her up to the roof. She scurries into position, vibrating in place as she waits for Jason to heft himself up.
He squats down to face her. “Ready for your mission?” He can’t see her face, what with the domino and the swath of fabric covering her mouth, but he’s pretty sure that’s determination shoring up her stance. It’s getting easier to read the kid the less he can see of her face, ironically. “Alright, what happens if this all goes south?”
“Do not engage. Hit my panic button. Make for the nearest exit and the rendezvous point.”
Jason grins, sharp. “Commence.”
She hefts herself over the ledge, shimmying down to their target’s fire escape near silently. There’s a short blip of noise over the comms and they both freeze in place, Lian with her hands over the windows security, Jason as he leans over the ledge to watch her progress. He spins his fingers in a ‘go on’ motion when the noise resolves to another page turning. The alarm turns green as Lian successfully deactivates it, and then she’s inside. Five minutes later, she’s backing out of the window, sliding it closed. She stands on the fire escape below, arms raised in victory, tub of ice cream balanced on her right hand.
“Toss it up!” Jason whispers, and she does. Jason sets it by his knee as he helps her climb to the roof. “Excellent job, kid. You hit all of your mission parameters.” They high five and Lian pulls two spoons out of her belt, yanking her mouth cover down.
There’s a flush of red under the freckles splashed across her cheeks, and Jason can see her molars, she’s grinning so wide. She rips the lid off the ice cream and digs in, Jason unlocking his mouth cover and following her lead, leaning back against the ledge.
“Oh god,” she moans, going in for another spoonful, “It tastes so much better like this.”
Jason snorts out a laugh, shifting closer to her, pulling out his phone. “Now, to show off.” He snaps a picture of them, spoons loaded down with rocky road, Lian sticking her tongue out, typing out ‘Security so weak, even a kid can foil it’.
They hear the ‘ding!’ of a received text over their comms, a muttered “What the fuck”, then the scraping of a window opening.
“Hey! Hey, you jackass! I know you’re up there!” Tim shouts.
Lian dissolves into giggles at Jason’s side. “He’s so mad!”
Jason pops his head over the ledge, waving down at Tim half hanging out of his window. “Hello there, citizen! What seems to be the problem?” Lian joins him, scarf re-wrapped around her face, hiccuping laughter, spoon still clutched in her hand.
There is palpable annoyance radiating off of Tim, dressed for the comfort of a night off, hair mussed and ink smears across his forearms. He scowls up at Jason. “You’re teaching kids breaking and entering now?”
Jason loops his arm around Lian, tugging her to his side. He yanks the wire out of his chest piece again, hiding the motion below the ledge, and tethering Lian back to him. He taps her wrist twice in signal. “Nah, this little rascal came pre-loaded with that knowledge.”
Lian slaps the lid back on the ice cream and Jason hefts it up, launching it down at Tim’s annoyed face. While he sputters out his rage, Lian shifts over unto Jason’s lap, hands tight on the holds.
“See ya, dweeb!” he calls out, shooting his grapple off into the night, Lian screaming her delight.
They land on a rooftop ten blocks down from Tim’s apartment, and as soon as Jason untethers her, she’s off like a shot, racing around the roof, fists pumping and hoots of pride only slightly loud.
“Did you see his face? That was awesome!”
Jason pulls her to the shadow of the HVAC unit sitting in the western most side of the roof, stripping her mask and gear off and shoving them into her back pack. He removes his own masks, shoving them on top the pile of gear. “Fantastic work, kid. The mission went off without a hitch.”
“Can we do something else?” Her eyes are big and round, lips sticking out in an adorable moue. “I think we should do something else. I can watch you beat up muggers or something! I won’t even try to jump in, promise!”
“No can do, bedtime is 10 PM, and we’re pushing it as is.” He straightens, making for the rooftop access door, Lian groaning in defeat and shuffling to follow. He glances back at her, hoofing it down the shadowy stairs. “But maybe tomorrow we can make the trip up to Blud, see what Uncle Dick’s up to.”
She shoves past him down the stairs, whooping. “That would be awesome!”
“Alright, alright, be cool. Don’t draw attention to us.”
Lian spins, salute at the ready. “Yes sir!” she whispers, slowing her gait. She’s still so keyed up that she can’t help but hop a few of the steps down, humming “Shake It Off”.
He grins, reaching out a hand to ruffle her hair. “Race ya to the train, kid!”
They take the train back to Park Row, Lian the very picture of cool with her hood lowered, hands shoved in her hoodie pockets. Jason slouches on the bench next to her, mean mugging anyone who looks their way.
She slumps against his shoulder, sleepy now that the adrenaline crash is hitting. “This was a lot of fun, Jay.”
He pulls her closer into his side. “It really was. You’re a good partner.” He can see why Bruce consistently uses underage partners, though he’s still adamantly opposed to the concept of sidekicks. They bring a lightness and fun to work. He can’t remember the last time he actually stopped working to enjoy flying around the city.
She grins down at her lap, fingers still twitching with adrenaline. “What are we gonna steal from Uncle Dick tomorrow?”
Jason leans his head back on the window, letting the rocking of the train help to bring him down from his high. “Maybe we should take Haley for a walk.”
Lian’s mouth drops open, horrified laughter spilling out. “Oh man, he’s gonna be so cheesed.”
Jason hums, closing his eyes to picture Dick, out of his mind with worry over a little dognapping. “I know. It’ll be great.”
Lian is dead to the world by the time the train pulls into their station, and Jason carefully slings her up onto his back to disembark.
She stirs slightly, murmur of “Daddy?” right in his ear that has his heart squeezing painfully below his ribs.
“It’s Jay, Lian. Go back to sleep.”
She squeezes her arms around his neck and says, “OK.”
He can work with this.