6841/Bon Voyage, Damian Wayne!

Bon Voyage, Damian Wayne!
Date of Scene:	10 March 2019
Location:	Abandoned Subway Station - 1PP Gotham
Synopsis:	Jason meets with Damian and helps him with supplies and advice before sending him on his way.
Cast of Characters:	Red Hood, Robin (Wayne)

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Red Hood has posed:
After making sure that Kitty, Barbara, and Carrie were off safe for the night, Jason immediately headed for the Redcave. Upon entering, he's already taking off his jacket, the tie lost a while back. "Bail out bag." he reminds himself, heading straight to one of the vending machines to push it out of the way. He doesn't know how much time Colette's going to buy him before Damian decides to head out, but the Boy Wonder asked him a favor.

As much as Jason and Damian may not get along - he's still his brother. And it matters. Just a little. Pulling the bug out bag from it's secure position he moves to sit on the table and unzips it. Methodically, he starts to go through the supplies within. Isreali rations. Medical supplies, disinfectants, first aid kit.

Turning, he heads over to the armory to look over the pistols he has present. With Galina's recent additions, there's also a large Crimson Dynamo armor that's hunched down in power off mode in the middle of the cave.

Robin (Wayne) has posed:
     Damian had picked up what he had already gathered, X-shuriken, throwing weapons, smoke pellets, Ra's' sword.

  He approaches on Goliath, the bat dragon who was his closest and oldest friend. The large red creature follows Damian as he enters the redcave, giving the air sniffs and snorts, circulating the air to catch as many scents to identify them.

  Damian was not dressed as Robin, he had adopted the armored suit of his Red X, stylized silver skull and glowing red X under the eye. Damian makes as much noise as he can as he enters, announcing his arrival, the dragon also helps, he's not a quiet walker.

Red Hood has posed:
"Really, you couldn't save the slamming doors for when you left the manor?" Jason calls out as he grabs the Glock 19 and several boxes of ammunition, tossing them into the bag as he moves to set it down when Damian comes down.

With a pet. A very big pet.

"Holy crap, Bruce got you a damn dragon!" he gawps. "You really are his favorite. He never got Dick a dragon - this isn't one of your little illutsion tricks like last night, is it?" He shakes his head, shocked, frankly.

"And here I thought you were just having a ritalin fit when you talked about it." Jason manages, looking surprised. Okay, he looks down-right shocked. Score one for Damian, he got Jason and got him good.

"Gift from your mom?" he finally decides to ask, because no way Bruce would buy a dragon for him before gesturing. "Arsenal's gear is over there near the video arcade machine. Kit what you need." he comments, setting down the heavy duty bug out bag. "Provisions for a week. Food, medical. Ten thousand in cash, easily convertible. Bruce won't be able to trace you." After a moment's though, he reaches into the bag and pulls out a small device. "Tracker. I thought about turning it on before I tossed it in the bag - but that's the shit he'd pull. And you need the time alone. I've been there. I get it."

Then he glances to Goliath. "I didn't pack any dragon treats though. Good Batdragon." he offers, just to make sure he doesn't get flambe. "It's connected to the computers here and the Clocktower. You click it twice, I'll come running. Even if I have to pull every favor I have."

"Do the Titans know about this trip yet? They may need to know they're going to be without you for a few days." It's a loaded statement. Damian asked for provisions for a week - he's trying to gauge the accuracy of that statement.

Robin (Wayne) has posed:
     Goliath trudges over to Jason, his yellow eyes look him over and his nose sniffs and SNORFS at the older brother.

  Red X takes off his helmet, revealing himself as Damian. "His name is Goliath, and Father did not give him to me. I...killed his family, during the Year of Blood, he's the last of his kind." His voice wavers as he comments on how he got Goliath, it was something he wanted to make amends for on this trip.

  He opens the door to Arsenal's gear, the red scheme is just fine for this purpose. As much as he'd have a good laugh taking his main bow, Damian opts for another. A draw on the bow confirms the draw weight he would be most comfortable with. No fancy arrows, just broadheads, eight of them, packed in a secondary quiver. "If by gift, you mean she allowed me to keep him. I could not kill him, he was a baby, as big as a full grown cat. He showed me no aggression, only love. She allowed me to have him as my protector in the field, and he is much more than that to me." Goliath gives a small whine as he hears there were no treats for him, but he manages to lick at Jason all the same, showing forgiveness easily.

  Damian approaches Goliath and loads the bow and arrows on his back, securing them for a flight. "You already know Stardust. She knows my plans." He looks to Jason as he loads up the gear, then looking to the tracker as he holds it. "You made the right decision, when I had found it, I would have dropped it in the Pacific."

  "The provisions are a backup plan. If I can't find food for more than a week, I don't need to be out there. If you need to contact me, find Stardust, she has instructions on how to contact me."

Red Hood has posed:
"Yeah, well, I was a fifteen year old brat once too." Then Jason pauses for a moment. "Damian." he says, and draws in a breath. He goes to find a seat and settles into it heavily. "Look. I was here once. Right here. I had found out my mother was alive. My birth mother. Not the woman that claimed to raise me." he comments as he folds his hands in front of him.

"I went out on my own. You know the story by now. At least, if Bruce was smart, he told you. We went to Ethopia. Ran into the Joker. The idiots there had given him diplomatic immunity, made him the /god damn/ ambassador." he shakes his head and lets out a breath. "We found her. Shelia Haywood was her name. She was working for a relief agency there. Lots of money and stuff, right? Joker found out about it - was blackmailing her because she was skimming off the top. Real mother of the year material there."

"Me? I just wanted to be a good son. I wanted to impress my mother. Maybe I just wanted to be loved. Bruce hadn't made it there. He wanted me to wait. We would approach Shelia about the blackmail together. But me? I'm a stubborn ass. I go to my mom. I'm going to free her. I'm going to prove to Bruce that I was right. Prove to my mom that I was a good son."

"That didn't happen. Instead, I go in - all kitted up as Robin, thinking I was ready to take on the world - I wasn't ready for the shit that went down. Mom. Dear old mom? She had sold me out. I was so excited to tell her that I was Robin and I had the resources to help her that I never ever thought she'd sell me out to the Clown. But she did. For a fucking fix."

He laughs, a sour tone in his voice. "Oh, he fixed her alright. He let her watch as he beat me to an inch of a life with a crowbar. He wanted to know who the Bat was. He wanted to break me. I didn't break. Lucky me. Finally? The asshat got tired of beating the life out of me. Cause I didn't have much life left, so he knew I'd die before I told him anything. So you know.. he decided to kill me, since I was that useless. And mom? The woman that thought she'd done right and was going to be safe? Nope. She was right there with me in the end."

Reaching up, he rubs at his eyes. "Bruce can be an ass sometimes. Okay, a lot of the time. But everything has a reason. I know you're not right with him right now, or you'd not be wearing that same gear I did a favor with you for once before. So I'm calling in that favor. You get in trouble out there. You think or sense that things are going south? Don't wait for me to find out from Stardust. You don't wait for me to learn that you've been killed. You get a hold of us. I won't tell Bruce. It doesn't make you a failure."

"Perhaps I'm just being a sentimental jerk, but I like having you around, squirt. Don't make me regret what I'm doing."

Jason's sitting at a table as he slides over his primary pistols for Damian to add to his gear. Nearby is the Crimson Dynamo armors and a rather large.. red batdragon thing. That SNORFS. Alot.

Robin (Wayne) has posed:
     Damian takes out a case from Goliath's saddlebag, dropping it on the desk in front of Jason with a light thud. "I had heard about it. He never talked about the fine details, he...is haunted by it, almost as much as he is haunted by his parents' murder. But it's no excuse." Damian reaches out an armored hand to the case and opens it, after a retinal scan.

  Damian takes a moment to look inside, regarding the contents before talking. "I'm not going to be able to call myself Robin while I'm haunted too. I'm not Grayson, I'm not any of you. And that's what he wants, he needs that splash of color in the darkness that is Batman." He turns the case to reveal his Robin uniform, taken from Titans Tower. "He wanted me to open up to him, and I did. When he saw the truth underneath, he stripped me of it. I told him everything I did. Had you shoot me to fool the Titans, stabbed my second in command with this." He takes out one four pronged shuriken, Still stained with blood. "Among other things, done almost two years ago. I wanted to let him in, I wanted to show I was better now. He only saw them as atrocities. And told me I was not good enough for the mantle of Robin."

  "No more public facade, no more pandering to cameras and high society. I make apologies for my past, but I will not dwell on them for the rest of my life. It was not my fault. All the blood on my hands..." He trails off, looking down to his hands in front of him. "He says it was cause I was isolated, he's wrong." His voice wavers, and he drops those hands to his side. "Isolation doesn't explain this. Mother wanted me to be the Demon's Head. I wanted her love. Father wanted me to be his perfect self, I only wanted his acceptance. I cannot have either without cleansing myself of past deeds. I can't love even myself, I can't form the friendships I need how I currently am."

  The pistols are taken as offered, and Damian instinctively inspects the slide and magazine, placing them in holsters by his side. "For what it's worth, I don't hate being your brother, at least as much as when I got here." He adds in, wiping his eyes with his gloved hands.

Red Hood has posed:
There's a sigh of breath. Oh man, is this what it was like when he gave Bruce hell? He'd probably considering apologizing to the old man later..

...if he wasn't firmly on Damian's side in all of this. "Look, none of us are any of the others. None of us are ever going to be. I fucking hate Dick. He's on a high horse all the time, you can imagine /how much/ I really wanted to talk to him when I heard that Mister Perfect had gotten cheated on. After all this time, where he's been so wonderful, so perfect, that girls, partners, even alien princesses threw themselves at him and he'd finally gotten knocked off his perch. Then that all turned out to be a lie and Mister Perfect is still Mister Perfect." he rolls his eyes at that. "Not that it helps that you worship the ground he walks on."

"Then there's Tim. Well, that's Tim. I mean. Whatever it is that Tim does." Really, can anyone figure out Tim Drake? Let Jason knows, he liked to have the answers.

"Bruce forgets sometimes that not everyone can be him. That we can't compartimentalize like he can. When we went to Ethiopia? It was right after Babs was shot. She was still in the hospital and recovering. Told she could never walk again. And all she wanted to do was be Batgirl again." he sighs. Something in that sigh speaks of feelings that he may never bring about.

"We're all haunted. We all have that shit in the pit of our soul that we can't or don't want to address. The best thing that your mother ever did for me was dropping me at the feet of Ducra and the All-Caste so that they could straighten out and at least force me to face that darkness deep inside of me." he explains as he lets out his breath and looks at the sai. "You're just like him. You keep momentos. I thought about doing that. Then I realized.. all that does is make me more like him. And I don't want to be like him. I /don't/ have to be like him. All of us, none of us have to be like Bruce. We can all be ourselves. You don't have to go out in public - hell, that was the best thing about it when everyone assumed I was dead. I miss those days." he admits. "Worse thing Bruce ever did was tell the world I was back. And he did it knowing that it would make me have to be more human, more social."

"You're taking the outfit with you?" he asks, noticing the reds and greens. There's an arch of a brow. "So, I'm going to ask you a question. And I want you to keep your thoughts open on this as you travel. I don't want the answer now. I want it when you come back."

"Do you want to be Robin? Or do you want Robin to be you?"

Robin (Wayne) has posed:
     "Grayson...was the first human that ever protected me, who moved me in order to put me out of harms way." He explains, putting just a little thought on why he actually listened to Dick.

  "That is what I need to learn about myself, away from Father, away from the League."

  Damian closes the case, and takes in the question he was presented. "That's no easy answer." He comments, and looks to Jason, trying to gauge what he means by it.

Red Hood has posed:
Jason considers Damian's words, and then he gives a nod of his head. "Not that you ever needed it - but you totally have my blessings to go on this break. I'd suggest you'd leave that behind.." he gestures to the Robin costume. "So you don't have it hanging over your head like the Sword of Damacles. But you do you in this."

"And I know there's no easy answer to that question. It's the same question I asked myself." There's a shrug of his shoulder and he lets out a sigh of breath, before he rises to his feet. Coming around, he presses a hand to Damian's shoulder. "Now get out of here before Bruce finds whatever you left him and turns the city upside down looking for you when he finds out you and Stardust aren't making moon eyes at each other over milkshakes at the Big Belly." There's a smirk at that.

"And thank whoever that your pet dragon is house trained." With that, he turns to head off.

And he has one more thing he was about to say -- but Damian will probably be gone before he lets it out.

"You're not such a terrible little brother either." he says, when he realizes he's alone. "Be careful. Ducra watch him."

Robin (Wayne) has posed:
     "Colette is a friend. But I don't feel romance." He confesses, not just for her, but for anyone he's ever met. He knew of familial love, but romantic, he hadn't an inkling of how it felt.

  Damian puts the helmet back on, he took out the tracker in the Robin badge, left that in Titans Tower. He always knew about the camera inside it, allowed Bruce to see what he was doing. But no more, Damian needed to find out things on his own.

  He pats Goliath, walking back out and hopping on his back, leathery red wings extend and take off, first towards Bludhaven, he intended to seek out a man he once met. Someone who would have advice without the pretense of an agenda of his own in this matter.