Jason hadn’t wanted the kid in the manor. None of them had — unless you counted Dick, whose eternal optimism could probably resurrect the dead, and Bruce, who seemed physically incapable of ignoring a stray in need. Alfred… well, Alfred was a category unto himself. He’d probably put a napkin around the neck of a demon if it looked underfed.

But this kid? Joker’s son?

Even if the boy had no idea who his father was, even if he’d been tucked away in some hidden corner of the world until his mother passed… the very idea of Joker’s blood running through his veins made Jason’s stomach tighten. And the fact that Bruce had welcomed him into their already haunted house felt like rubbing salt into old wounds.

The kid had been living there a few weeks. He barely made a sound. He didn’t ask for anything unless everyone else insisted. Handed in neat schoolwork, followed every house rule like it had been carved into stone, never pushed back, never even hovered near a line he might cross. Half the time he didn’t even ask if he could grab food — he simply waited until someone offered it to him. Tell him to do something and he did it like it was instinct.

It wasn’t normal. Boys his age were supposed to be loud, defiant, messy. But he was… compliant. Unnaturally still, like someone had taught him how to vanish in full view. Jason couldn’t decide if that made him dangerous or if it just proved how much damage had already been done.

Jason kept his distance. Tim and Damian did the same, though for different reasons. Dick tried, predictably. Bruce made an effort. And Alfred behaved as though the boy had always belonged under that roof.

But Jason? He stayed away.

Or tried to.

Because every time Jason saw him — curled into the smallest shape he could manage, pretending to read while keeping his eyes lowered — Jason found himself thinking about the life the kid came from. About the things Joker might have done before Bruce found him. About the way the boy didn’t even flinch when someone’s voice rose.

And Jason hated that it stirred something like pity.

Pity made you soften. It made you start wanting to protect someone you should be monitoring from a safe distance. And Jason had already learned, painfully, where that kind of thinking could lead.

One night, he found the kid in the kitchen. The manor was silent, well past midnight, save for the fridge humming softly in the background. The boy sat at the counter, swallowed up in one of Bruce’s massive hoodies, both hands curled around a steaming mug of tea like it was the only warm thing he owned.

He didn’t notice Jason enter — not until a floorboard creaked under his boot.

The boy’s head snapped up. Something quick flickered in his eyes — maybe recognition, maybe caution — and he immediately pushed away from the counter.

“I’ll get out of your way. Sorry.”

He didn’t wait for a response. Didn’t check if he’d misunderstood. Just slipped off the stool and headed toward the doorway with automatic precision.

“Hey—” Jason started, but the kid kept moving.

It wasn’t attitude. It wasn’t fear, exactly. It was the behavior of someone who had learned that the safest option was to disappear the second someone else stepped into a room.

And for reasons Jason couldn’t untangle, that irritated him — not at the kid, but at the world that had made him like that.

“Hey,” he said again, sharper than intended. The boy froze, back going rigid. “You don’t have to leave.”